Richard Sasanow - Page 2

Maestro Karen Kamensek opened the Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra’s concert at Geffen Hall—“Paris to Patagonia”—with some interesting introductory remarks that almost sounded like an audition for the Philharmonic’s storied Young People’s Concerts. While fascinating in their own way, they didn’t quite prepare us for what the program really had in store for us.

Though Bedrich Smetana’s DALIBOR—seen this week at Bard SummmerStage in a wonderful production by Jean-Romain Vesperini, with an ingenious set design by Bruno de Lavenere, a fine cast and the American Symphony Orchestra in impeccable form under Leon Botstein—was reputedly the composer’s favorite among his eight operas, it was a failure at its opening in Prague in 1868. There was never a fully staged production in this country until this current one. (I saw the July 30 matinee.)

“Timeless Transformations” is a key theme of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center’s season at Geffen Hall this year (itself transformed from Avery Fisher Hall and, earlier, Philharmonic Hall). It certainly ran rampant last weekend, as British conductor Dame Jane Glover led the orchestral musicians and some bright soloists through their paces in works by Michael Abels (via Vivaldi), Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

I must admit that I was a little disappointed when I read that this season’s offerings from Will Crutchfield’s Teatro Nuovo featured a couple of familiar titles: Verdi’s MACBETH and Bellini’s LA SONNAMBULA, particularly the former, which one doesn’t think of in the domain of bel canto, the group’s specialty. I needn’t have worried, for this performance made it clearer than usual why Verdi said that “this MACBETH…I love in preference to my other operas.”

The recent New York premiere of Yuval Sharon’s production of THE COMET/POPPEA at Lincoln Center kicked off the summer’s 5-week residency of the American Modern Opera Company (cheekily known as AMOC, after its penchant for taking a somewhat wild and crazy approach to the art form).

One of the operas at the top of my list for next season at the Met is the Deborah Warner staging of Tchaikovsky’s EUGENE ONEGIN that brings back soprano Asmik Grigorian for the first time since her 2024 debut in MADAMA BUTTERFLY. Not that there’s anything wrong with Puccini, the major composer I’ve heard her sing. The first was that Met debut with her golden-throated, heart-breaking Cio-Cio San, followed by her blonde bombshell of a Freudian Turandot (plus a recital) at the Vienna State Opera. Very recently, there was this season’s justifiable cheering from the audience--myself included--when she took on the three soprano roles in IL TRITTICO at the Paris Opera’s home at the Bastille.

This past weekend, composer Kevin Puts’s BRIGHTNESS OF LIGHT, based on the long, abundant correspondence of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer/gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, had its long overdue New York premiere, with the New York Philharmonic under debuting conductor Brett Mitchell, and soprano Renee Fleming as O’Keeffe and baritone Rod Gilfry as Stieglitz, friends and lovers (marital and otherwise).

When mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina stepped on stage in the Met’s new production of CARMEN, back on New Year’s Eve of 2023, it was hard to imagine her in any other role because of the way she completely inhabited it. Would we ever be able to watch her in anything else, despite credits from other houses that ran from Elisabetta in MARIA STUARDA to Charlotte in WERTHER and, yes, Rosina in IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA? Now that she made her house role debut as Rosina at the Met, this past Friday, any concerns seem moot. She was terrific.

There’s an old expression, “A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” While John Adams didn’t decide to take on the libretto for his latest opera, Monday night’s Met premiere, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, all on his own, I wonder whether he might have bypassed the one resource that might have been most useful: Arrigo Boito.

By definition, the historical view of the oratorio is that it’s typically religious in nature, performed unstaged and without costumes or scenery. Going by that description, The Oratorio Society of New York’s (OSNY) program at Carnegie Hall this week—a combination of contemporary and classical works--under conductor Kent Tritle, broke some rules in both parts of its stirring, gorgeously sung and played program.

Playwright Peter Danish—a long-time writer and observer of the opera and classical music scene in New York and around the world—wrote LAST CALL, just finishing a limited run at Broadway’s New World Stages, as a love letter to two 20th century music giants, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan.

Even without an over-the-top production—and the Met has had a couple of those—Richard Strauss’s SALOME has been outraging audiences for more than 120 years. This week’s new take by director Claus Guth in his Met debut was no exception.

When we last saw Brunnhilde in Atlanta, in the second segment of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, DIE WALKURE, she’d been punished by the gods for saving Sieglinde, but rescued by her father, Wotan. She was forced into sleep on a rock surrounded by a ring of fire, until wakened some day by a hero. Ta-da! SIEGFRIED’s eponymous hero, sung brilliantly by heldentenor Stefan Vinke, arrived to save the day.

The Oratorio Society of New York (OSNY) under Maestro Kent Tritle brings the world premiere performance of ALL SHALL RISE, by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell, to Carnegie Hall on May 5. It concludes their American Voices trilogy of choral works—this one about the history of voting rights in the US.