Richard Sasanow - Page 19

“RUSALKA is an operatic fairytale with a strong message about the consequences of over-reaching--an appropriate, cautionary tale for our times,” said Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager, introducing a panel at the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series that included director Mary Zimmerman and conductor Mark Elder. The new production opens at the Met on February 2--“and that's not an 'alternative fact,'” said Gelb--starring soprano Kristine Opolais as Rusalka, tenor Brandon Jovanovich as the Prince, mezzo Jamie Barton as Jezibaba (the witch), and bass-baritone Eric Owens as the Water Gnome (Rusalka's father).

At last month's concert in Carnegie Hall, Joyce DiDonato was glorious musically but less-than-cheery philosophically--and that was before the guy in the White House started taking aim at arts and education funding. Taking the stage at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on Saturday, at THE MARILYN HORNE SONG CELEBRATION, Marilyn Horne was in a feistier frame of mind about the fight for our hearts, minds and souls--though she admittedly hadn't figured out a way for her personally to take on the battle . It seemed to me that the evening, with emerging singers and the great guest, was a pretty good way to get the ball rolling.

It's that time of the year again, when the flu season gives artistic administrators big headaches, trying to fill in the blanks when a headliner calls in sick. CARMEN's been a particular headache, with mezzo Sophie Koch out of action in the title role after rehearsals had started. Luckily, Clementine Margaine--scheduled for the second cast--was able to step into her flamenco shoes for the first night--and all to follow--doing a bang-up job.

It didn't strike me until the lights were going down for the start of CARMEN last Thursday that this was the second night in a row that Met audiences were being transported to the same town in sunny Spain. Truth be told, “sunny” is hardly an adjective I'd hardly use to describe Bizet's tragedy in the shadow of the bullring, while it's just about right for dizzy events of Rossini's charmer, IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, which I'd heard the night before.

What's new in opera? Everything you can imagine--and much that you couldn't conceive of--all in the space of a few days in New York.

There's some famous and gorgeous music in Gounod's ROMEO ET JULIETTE—Juliet's waltz, Romeo's “Ah, leve-toi, soleil” and a number of duets —but this is definitely not one of those operas where the title characters can take turns with the showpieces but never look each other in the eye. Luckily, that wasn't the case with Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo in the Met's new Bartlett Sher production, where they lit some fires at Tuesday's performance.

The life and times of the spy-as-femme-fatale, Mata Hari, has always attracted the interest of film and stage artists. Now we have the Matt Marks-Paul Peers opera MATA HARI—which opened New York's fifth Prototype Festival last week and continues through Saturday the 14th—though I think of it as more of a dance than an opera. Not literally, of course, but dramatically, as a dance of death for the title character and the men (and one woman) who surround her in this compelling, though somewhat messy, work.

When I saw that New York City Opera was doing Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE at the same time as New York's Prototype Festival--with Missy Mazzoli's BREAKING THE WAVES opening the festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre on the same night—I thought that it was great counter-programming. After all, what could be further from Mazzoli's brilliant but grim gem than Bernstein's comic masterpiece--proving there's more than one way to skin a music theatre piece?

Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE has had more lives than that proverbial cat--the latest being New York City Opera's new take on it, opening on January 6 for a ten-performance run at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre. It is, once again, helmed by director Hal Prince and choreographer Pat Birch, who were responsible--with librettist Hugh Wheeler and conductor John Mauceri--for the resuscitation and renovation of the once-considered unproducible work, more than 40 years ago.

For a new opera to have its second major showing less than four months after its premiere is unheard of—but then BREAKING THE WAVES, based on the Lars Von Trier film of the same name, isn't just any opera. This triumph by composer Missy Mazzoli, librettist Royce Vavrek, and direction by James Darrah—with a star-making turn by soprano Kiera Duffy in the central role of Bess—debuted at Opera Philadelphia last September and is having its New York premiere on January 6-9, 2017, over the first weekend of the Prototype Festival at NYU's Skirball Center.

At IN WAR & PEACE, HARMONY THROUGH MUSIC, her Carnegie Hall concert the other night with the Baroque ensemble, Il Pomo d'Oro, mezzo Joyce DiDonato was in fine voice, if not in high spirits—and who could blame her? The state of the world is about as bad as it has been for a long time, with death and taxes far from the only certainties, starting in our own backyard.

On paper, it might seem that Kaija Saariaho's L'AMOUR DE LOIN (LOVE FROM AFAR), libretto by Amin Maalouf, couldn't possibly fill a stage the size of the Met's: three characters and a chorus that bobs in and out of the action. Yet, in action, this breathtaking, shimmering piece not only seems at home--particularly in the able hands of soprano Susanna Phillips and the Met orchestra under the  Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki in Robert Lepage's production--but it's hard to imagine hearing it any other way.

Despite some fine singing from soprano Patricia Racette (who also went the Full Monty in the title role), the Met's revival of Richard Strauss's SALOME was a little tame--something that it should never be.

Composer Kaija Saariaho is a woman of few words but potent music, judging by her comments about her acclaimed opera, L'AMOUR DE LOIN, and the excerpts performed at the Guggenheim's Works & Process series several weeks ago, in preparation for the opera's much-anticipated Met debut on Thursday, December 1.

Take Puccini's LA BOHEME for granted at your peril. Sure, it has more gorgeous music per square inch than just about any other opera in the repertoire, but that doesn't mean that it always falls together, even at the Met. Lucky for those attending the current run of the opera, the stars are in alignment--with Kristine Opolais (Mimi), Piotr Beczala (Rodolfo), Brigitta Kele (Musetta) and Massimo Cavalletti (Marcello) as the stellar central quartet and not a weak link down the line.

When Massimo Cavelletti stepped on stage at the Met on November 16, it was a milestone: His 100th performance as Marcello, the baritone lead in LA BOHEME and part of the quartet at the opera's heart: There's Mimi, the seamstress, the sad soul who dies at the opera's end; Rodolfo, the heartthrob tenor, a poet, in love with her; Musetta, the spitfire who eats men for breakfast; and then there's Marcello, a painter, her lover—and, aah, the linchpin that holds it all together.

Like a morsel of Proust's madeleine soaking in a cup of tea, the setting of Juilliard Opera's new production of Jonathan Dove's opera FLIGHT took me back to another age, and Eero Saarinen's modernistic TWA (now Jet Blue) Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York. But the only thing retro about the evening itself is a return to a golden age, with the excellent performance of the cast and orchestra, under conductor Steven Osgood and the direction of James Darrah.

Georgia O'Keeffe dressed in monk-like clothes and probably wouldn't have worn lipstick on a dare--hardly the image you'd associate with glamorous soprano Renee Fleming. But when Fleming opened her mouth and began to sing the first of the five songs in Kevin Puts' song cycle, LETTERS FROM GEORGIA, at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, these two disparate artists became one.

Always looking for new worlds to conquer, Gioachino Rossini wrote GUILLAUME TELL in French, as Paris became the center of the opera world. Despite his successes there, this was to be his operatic swan song, a story glorifying a revolutionary character--with a message that resonated, loud and strong, at the performance the night after the troubling American election.

Since writing his first opera, SILENT NIGHT--the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner for Music--with librettist Mark Campbell, composer Kevin Puts he has done two other operas, also with Campbell. This time around, he has a different collaborator: famed American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose correspondence provides the text of his song cycle, LETTERS FROM GEORGIA, commissioned for opera superstar Renee Fleming by the Eastman School of Music. It makes its New York debut on November 14.