Richard Sasanow - Page 17

Award-winner Angel Blue started off the proceedings at the Richard Tucker Gala (after Barry Tucker’s usual introduction/ode to his father, the great tenor) with a bang: Puccini’s justly famous aria “Vissi d’arte” from TOSCA. For those of us who’ve only heard her as Bess in Gershwin’s PORGY & BESS at the Met, it was a revelation to hear her lush, velvety voice raise the rafters on the hall, with no warm up.

Last season, the company gave its first presentation of the French version (that’s the one called DON CARLOS, with a final S to his first name), in the five-act version that lasted almost 5 hours. This year, we’re back to Italian, under Carlo Rizzi’s firm baton, in one of a number of versions (this one running about 4 hours) of DON CARLO, which uses shortcuts to tell the story elements deleted with the excision of the first act (usually referred to as “the Fontainebleau scene”).

HOMETOWN TO THE WORLD--the 70-minute contemporary chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky and Kimberly Reed about the aftermath of a 2008 raid by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa--is about as far from the Midwest of Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN imaginable.

Will Crutchfield’s gutsy Teatro Nuovo brought New Yorkers a chance to evaluate Rossini's MAOMETTO SECONDO the other day at Jazz from Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre. Kudos to Crutchfield, who continues on his quest for the most authentic of the authentic in bel canto, even when the originals weren’t exactly smash hits to begin with. That includes MAOMETTO, which has had a quite checkered past.

When Paul Moravec calls himself as “a sort of Method composer,” in describing his work on A NATION OF OTHERS, commissioned for the Oratorio Society of NY, debuting at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 15, he’s likening his writing to the “Method Acting” technique: getting inside the heads of his characters, understanding their inner motivation and emotions, connecting his own life to theirs.

In EVERYTHING RISES--a one-hour performance piece from African American bass-baritone Davone Tines and Korean American violinist Jennifer Koh that had its East Coast premiere last week as part of BAM’s Next Wave series--we see these two virtuoso musicians take control of their careers, with the help of their matriarchs.

Afraid of Shostakovich? Don’t be. LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK is a glory to behold, in Graham Vick’s knockout production, designed and costumed by Paul Brown, staged this time by Paula Suozzi, with Ron Howell’s choreography. And there were times when the music, with the Met orchestra under the firm, smart baton of Keri-Lynn Wilson, almost sounded like, yes, Puccini, while it was clearly expressionist as well.

O22, as Opera Philadelphia's festival was called this year, wasn’t exactly “something old, something new” but more like big fat sandwich cookie. On one side, there was a kind of “traditional” contemporary opera, Hosokawa’s THE RAVEN , a big filling of Rossini’s OTELLO opera seria in the middle, and finished with the Little-Waldman BLACK LODGE, a rock opera that was half ear-blasting concert performed live, half film.

On the second night of the new season, the Met went for Mozart, with his early success, IDOMENEO, in a fluid and elegant performance, but it was hardly 'business as usual.'

Written over 400 years ago, Cherubini’s MEDEA finally made it to the Met on the season’s opening night, in a new production by David McVicar. Was it worth the wait? If you take it for Sondra Radvanovsky’s performance in the title role, a chilling, a Herculean task, it earns an unqualified yes. She’s not afraid to rant and rave, or emit ugly sounds to show off her anger.

The new opera season started out for me far from Lincoln Center’s madding crowds, in Brooklyn’s Irondale Center, near BAM, with a pair of short pieces by French composers that definitely had their charms.

I’ve heard much praise about the quality of the vocal writing of Jake Heggie from singers who adore the way his music caresses their voices. But THREE DECEMBERS, performed this past weekend at the Berkshire Opera Festival at Pavilion Theatre, PS21 in Chatham, New York, was the first time I heard a complete dramatic work by the composer. As characters from FOLLIES by Sondheim--a composer whose music echoes in Heggie’s score--said about showing up at the reunion that frames that musical, “I’m so glad I came.”

Last week, “The Angel’s Share”--which falls under the 'Death of Classical' umbrella--kicked off its new season at Green-Wood with a deeply poignant piece, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s MASS FOR THE ENDANGERED, a re-imagining of the Latin Mass with text, combining traditional and new, by poet Nathan Bellows.

You’d have thought that the Met Orchestra would have had enough by the end of the season in the opera house, but, no. Their New York season really ended at Carnegie Hall this week with a pair of concerts combining some opera excerpts with orchestral pieces by composers also known for their opera work.

While I was watching the Met’s current beautiful yet somehow languid production of the Igor Stravinsky and WH Auden/Chester Kallman opera THE RAKE’S PROGRESS the other night--with only two more performances until it goes back into mothballs for probably many years--I couldn’t help wishing that the opera house was more like Broadway.

Is there another Shakespearean drama filled with as many quotable quotes as “Hamlet” (even when they’re used out of context and given a foreign meaning)? But “To be or not to be” is surely the most referenced and, certainly, in the new operatic HAMLET currently at the Met by Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn, in Neil Armfield’s thoughtful, urgent production, it's given the best showcase. Indeed, it helps shed a different light on the hero of the story.

On Saturday night, Version 2.0 of the Mason Bates-Mark Campbell opera, THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS, opened brilliantly as a mainstage production of the Atlanta Opera, in its East Coast premiere, under Tomer Zvulun’s taut direction and Michael Christie’s smart baton. To say the audience greeted the work joyfully would be an understatement.

Well, no one can say that the Met doesn’t have guts. After the tepid response that subscribers gave its Las Vegas version of Verdi’s RIGOLETTO by Michael Mayer, no one would have suspected that they’d come up with a version of Donizetti’s LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR that made anything else it’s produced look tame. And while the new LUCIA isn’t something that will send every Met attendee into quivers of excitement--I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many pros and cons discussed at an intermission before--it also won’t send them to sleep either.

Joyce DiDonato’s recitals-as-events--where she introduces her personal philosophies as well as her art into the evening--have their ups and downs. Sometimes they are marvelous. Saturday night at Carnegie Hall, the concert, directed by Marie Lambert-Le Bihan with lighting by John Torres, that also served as part of her publicity tour for her new recording, EDEN (Erato), seemed less than the sum of its parts.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary season, On Site Opera gave its audiences a present: The lively, fun-filled GIANNI SCHICCHI--the only comedy in Puccini’s trifecta, IL TRITTICO, which had its world premiere at the Met in 1918 and is surely its most popular of the triptych of one-acts. Of course, the composer’s written about greed, love and violence before, but never in a way to lift the spirits and tickle one’s fancy, using Giovacchino Forzano’s libretto.