Richard Sasanow - Page 16

Nothing says Christmas in New York like a performance of Handel's great sacred oratorio MESSIAH--okay, for some it's the windows at one of the big department stores--with some outings decidedly religious, like this week's pair of wonderful performances at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. Featuring the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, with the New York Baroque Incorporated ensemble and some terrific soloists under conductor Daniel Hyde (Saint Thomas's organist and music director), it was a grand start to the season.

The Juilliard Orchestra and Opera beat the Met to the punch this week, featuring French conductor Emmanuel Villaume in a superb concert of Ravel and Debussy, including a lovely performance of Ravel's short opera, L'ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES, with its clever libretto by the French novelist, Colette. It took place just the night before he was announced to be taking on the premiere of the Met's new TOSCA--left empty when the opera company suspended its former music director James Levine after he was charged with sexual improprieties with minors.

Nothing beats sitting in the opera house for the thrill of hearing singers giving their all. But the new recording of Berlioz's LES TROYENS (THE TROJANS), conducted by John Nelson, comes pretty close. Taken from a couple of live concert performances in Strasbourg, France, at the Salle Erasme, with a cast headed by mezzo Joyce DiDonato as Dido (Didon, en francais), tenor Michael Spyres as Aeneas (Enee) and Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Cassandra (Cassandre) plus that famed Trojan horse--brings us all the chills and thrills we could want, short of being there.

It was a fitting gesture that the Met dedicated this season's performances of Verdi's MESSA DA REQUIEM to the great baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died on November 22 of brain cancer, at 55. The Russian Hvosotovsky may not have had the largest voice ever heard in his chosen repertoire--the last time I heard him was in IL TROVATORE with Netrebko--but it was unquestionably distinctive and exciting to hear. And he was a powerful stage presence second to none something that the Met has found difficult to muster from its soloists these days.

Anyone arriving at the San Francisco Opera expecting that the new John Adams-Peter Sellars collaboration, GIRLS OF THE GOLDEN WEST, will sound like any of their previous projects--THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, DR. ATOMIC (also a SF Opera commission) or NIXON IN CHINA--will probably be in for a big surprise. The opera has its world premiere on November 21 in what was once a small town until the boom of California's Gold Rush.

Is it time for a re-evaluation of Massenet's place in the current repertoire and put it up a notch? I wondered after seeing the season's opening performance of the Met's John Cox production of Massenet's THAIS on Saturday afternoon. With the right performers, there's a good case for his juicy, melodic writing--among the plethora of BOHEMES, TURANDOTS and BUTTERYFLYs on the season's schedule--although the stipulation of right performers is, as always, the catch.

Atlanta may be landlocked, but a thrilling new sailing vessel came to town on Saturday night, in the new production of Wagner's DIE FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN), at the Atlanta Opera in Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. The company's General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun commanded the helm of the production--a particularly fitting description for an opera about the sea, how it taketh from and giveth to the men who call it home as well as to the women who love them.

Lincoln Center's White Light Festival devoted a pair of evenings last week to a staged performance of Pergolesi's gorgeous hymn to Mary, STABAT MATER, directed by choreographer Jessica Lang (originally done several years ago at the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate NY). It featured a pair of lyric soloists, soprano Adriana Chuchman and star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, with the Orchestra of St Luke's under Speranza Scappucci's thoughtful baton, at the Rose Theatre of Jazz from Lincoln Center.

It's Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1828 and the city's world-renowned anatomy schools are suffering from a cadaver shortage. Enter two immoral and highly industrious men--William Burke and William Hare--who pick up the slack by murdering disenfranchised citizens and selling their corpses to one of these schools, Dr. Knox's Academy. Perfect story for a chamber opera, eh? Well, yes, actually, says composer Julian Grant (even if it's opening a bit late for Halloween).

It's 'deja vu all over again' goes the quip attributed to the NY Yankees pitcher Yogi Berra. But that's the feeling I had with Thomas Ades's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, with libretto based on the Luis Bunuel film, 'El angel exterminador,' by Tom Cairns and the composer. (Cairns also directed.) Not that the opera looks or sounds like anything else recently produced on the Met's stage, except perhaps for Ades's own TEMPEST. Rather, it's because it seems like the operatic arm of France's Nouvelle Vague, the New Wave, of the late '50s and '60s.

There are no second acts in American lives, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in 'The Last Tycoon.' New York City Opera proves him wrong, with its new chamber version of the Tobias Picker-JD McClatchy 2013 opus DOLORES CLAIBORNE. Based on a novel by Stephen King perhaps better known from the film starring Kathy Bates this terse retelling of murder and misery among the rich and poor is never less than interesting and sometimes compelling in Michael Capasso's quickly moving production.

'Bread-and-butter operas usually bore me,' tenor Russell Thomas told me frankly, as he prepared for his first performance of Rodolfo, at the Met, in Puccini's LA BOHEME--one of opera's most popular tenor roles--in nearly 15 years. But it wasn't any disdain for the role that kept him away from it: It was James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera's Music Director for 40 years (and still sometimes conductor) who led to his decision.

Though the classical music season is still young, it'll be tough for anything that lies ahead to compete with Friday night's performance at Carnegie Hall by Martha Argerich, who seemed to be having the time of her life, while showing total skill and control. The audience was hers from the get-go, stomping and whistling before she even sat down at the keyboard--as if they were at Madison Square Garden rather than this sometimes-demure palace of classical music.

Yuval Sharon, founder and artistic director of The Industry, a Los Angeles based production company, is one of the new class of 24 Extraordinarily Creative People Who Inspire Us All, according to the MacArthur Foundation, and has been named one of the MacArthur Fellows better known as the genius grant.

WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED, which made its NY debut in a pair of performances at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem last weekend, after its world premiere at Opera Philadelphia's O17 festival last month, is more than an opera or performance piece. And it sure as hell isn't an evening's entertainment. Composed by Daniel Bernard Roumarin with libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and directed, choreographed and shaped by Bill T. Jones, it is by turns incredibly moving and infuriatingly contemporary in a bold performance that I won't soon forget.

There are no happy endings for the poet Hoffmann (even in the solid hands of the charismatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo) or any of the women he fantasizes about in Offenbach's LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN (TALES OF HOFFMANN). Still, there are enough enjoyable moments to make Offenbach's music worth hearing once and again.

I wouldn't exactly call Matt Aucoin, 27, a show-off, even though he wrote the music and libretto for THE CROSSING--his 2015 opera having its NY debut at BAM's Next Wave Festival this past week--and conducted the performance as well. (He left the subtle, fine direction to Diane Paulus, who originally mounted it at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, where it was commissioned for the National Civil War Project.) But I would say he's remarkably (and justifiably) confident.

The trio of soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, mezzo Joyce DiDonato and tenor Joseph Calleja promised a fine evening of singing for the Met's new NORMA and, for the most part, there wasn't much to quibble about. Too bad Sir David McVicar--and his design team--couldn't come up with something a little bolder, a little braver, a little more inventive than wandering trees and a giant lair that looked like an igloo in the off season to anchor its new production.

Winston Churchill called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.' Well, Mother Russia had nothing on ELIZABETH CREE, the new chamber opera by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, based on Peter Ackroyd's novel--having all those traits plus a brilliant score and a smart libretto that raced forward with cinematic speed.

Superficially, Wolfgang Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (or DIE ZAUBERFLOTE for you purists) and David Hertzberg's THE WAKE WORLD couldn't seem less alike and, taken together, they stretch the definition of what makes an opera. Yet, as part of Opera Philadelphia's daring new O17 opera festival, they have a surprising amount in common including spectacular scores that demand to be heard again and again.