Richard Sasanow - Page 20

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.

If "satire is what closes on Saturday night" (according to the great playwright and wit George S. Kaufman), then contemporary opera is usually not far behind. That is, unless it's Kevin Puts' and Mark Campbell's prize-winning SILENT NIGHT, which actually opened on Saturday night (this past weekend) at Atlanta's Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, in a moving new production by the company's General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun that doesn't go for the heart strings but gets there anyway.

The opera's called JENUFA, after the unfortunate young woman at the center of its story. But the star of the show at the Met's revival of this soaring musical masterpiece by Janacek is the Kostelnicka of the magnificent Finnish soprano Karita Mattila.

Returning to Carnegie Hall this year after more than 25 years, the Richard Tucker Gala—celebrating the current winner of the Richard Tucker Award, soprano Tamara Wilson, as well as the life and career of the famed tenor for whom it was named—was a grand night for singing.

"Art isn't easy," Stephen Sondheim wrote famously in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Some artists, however, make it look simpler than others--like composer Kevin Puts, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for SILENT NIGHT, with Mark Campbell's libretto, for his first try at the notoriously difficult art form. (The Southeast premiere is opening at Atlanta Opera on November 5.) Easy? Well, looks can be deceiving.

In many ways, '27'--the 90-minute the chamber opera about Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and their circle, composed by Ricky Ian Gordon to a Royce Vavrek libretto--is an old-fashioned love story. It just happens to be about two women who entertained and collected (in all senses) some of the most important visual artists and writers of the first half of the century. And it happens to take place when Paris was still the hub of the artistic world and 27 rue de Fleurus, the women's home, was its epicenter.

Although '27'--the opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek about the lives of Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and their circle of friends--had its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) in 2014, its upcoming performances at City Center in New York, on October 20-21, are a debut of a different color. As part of the 75th anniversary season of MasterVoices, formerly The Collegiate Chorale, 27 has had some interesting changes since the performances seen in St. Louis.

When the Met's production of Rossini's L'ITALIANA IN ALGIERI made its debut in 1973, it must have seemed a welcome laugh riot. Think of it as a kind of Hope-Crosby “Road” picture from the '40s. Flip forward 43 years to last week, and the world has changed much--for better and worse--but “The Road to Algiers” keeps rolling along. Thank heavens for that.

For the sheer magnitude of its singing, there hasn't been anything like the Met's ecstatic new production of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE--seen a week after it opened the season on September 26--in a very long time.

On Site Opera is one of New York's most endearing little companies, under Artistic Director Eric Einhorn, frequently giving us a chance to hear unfamiliar works in congenial settings and get up close and personal with the performers. For its first benefit dinner, the company presented a double bill of LA MORT DE CLEOPATRE and MISS HAVISHAM'S WEDDING NIGHT, simply and surely directed by Einhorn, in a ballroom of the Harmonie Club on East 60th Street in New York.

When last seen at the Met , baritone Simon Keenlyside showed off his suave vocalism and superior acting skills in operas based on Shakespeare: He was elegant and intelligent in HAMLET by Ambroise Thomas and a charismatic Prospero in Thomas Ades's THE TEMPEST. He could have picked up on any of those traits and translated them into a memorable Don Giovanni. Instead, he turned in a well-sung but low-key performance that didn't quite pull the opera together.

BREAKING THE WAVES, the stark, brutal new opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, had its premiere last week at Opera Philadelphia, with a thrilling score and a star-making turn by soprano Kiera Duffy. Directed by James Darrah, the gripping production doesn't let anyone off easy, including the audience.

Quick: What film won the Golden Globe for Best Movie in 1997? It was THE ENGLISH PATIENT. But more important for composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, the question is “What film didn't win the Golden Globe in 1997?” The answer (for them, at least) is Lars von Trier's BREAKING THE WAVES, which they've transformed into an opera of the same name, premiering at Opera Philadelphia, September 22.

While listening to baritone Rod Gilfry's masterful, mesmerizing performance in the world premiere of David Lang's monodrama, THE LOSER, at BAM's “Next Wave Festival,” I thought I could listen to him sing the telephone book. Come to think of it, he came pretty close to that, at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, with this one-hour post-minimalist rant about the effect of the brilliant pianist Glenn Gould on the careers of lesser musicians.

After hearing Leoncavallo's I PAGLIACCI, on New York City Opera's new double bill with Rachmaninoff's ALEKO, I'll never think of it the same way again.