Richard Sasanow - Page 23

Anna Netrebko came out on stage in a shimmering white and silver gown with matching headband, looking like an Art Deco goddess in a poster by Alfonso Mucha. It's a look that suited her--not only because the Russian soprano has Bellini's NORMA on her Met schedule in the not-too-distant future, but because she's about as close to a goddess as the Met can conjure up these days (with maybe one or two competitors). And the audience ate it up.

Lincoln Center's American Songbook series doesn't usually cross the road to opera-land, but I'm glad it did, when it presented the Ricky Ian Gordon-Leonard Foglia chamber opera A COFFIN IN EGYPT with mezzo extraordinaire Frederica von Stade last week. Performed in Jazz at Lincoln Center's tiny Appel Room, EGYPT brought us up close and personal to von Stade--and her alter-ego here, 90-year-old Myrtle Bledsoe--and proved she still has “it” as a performer.

Grand opera--lavish in scale, setting and voices--certainly has its place, but, oh, the joys of hearing Cavalli and Faustini's bawdy, early baroque charmer LA CALISTO in a theatre with fewer than 100 seats! The Juilliard Opera production not only proved a great showcase for the singers, dancers and instrumentalists involved but for the opera itself, which is still infrequently heard and should be better known.

Take one part “Casablanca,” a taste of Bernstein's CANDIDE, some Alfred Hitchcock and you get Sir Richard Eyre's film noir concept for the Met's new MANON LESCAUT, now set in France in the 1940s, complete with Nazis. Tack on that behind-the-scenes drama of “Roberto Alagna to the rescue”--when tenor Jonas Kaufmann cancelled at the last minute--and add the visual and vocal glamour of soprano Kristine Opolais and you have, well, a messy-but-enjoyable evening at the opera.

It's a shame that Bellini wasn't Donizetti--because the story of LA SONNAMBULA seems to be begging for the full comic treatment and could have been a great companion to L'ELISIR D'AMORE. (I'm not sure how Maria Callas would have felt about changes in one of her great roles.) As it stands, performing the semi-serious work in a concert format--as The Juilliard Opera did last week--is the next best thing, putting the emphasis on the music and the virtuoso singing it calls for and less on the absurd storyline.

Opera for the 21st century is more than setting RUSALKA in a whorehouse, populating RIGOLETTO with a cast of apes or sending MARIA STUARDA to a maximum security prison. It must start with a different vocabulary for the words and music--one that still appeals to traditional audiences while also being true to new listeners. Achieving that goal is not easy. As American Lyric Theater (ALT)--founded by Lawrence Edelson in 2005--puts it, “Great Operas Don't Just Happen.”

There's a great Scottish word that came to mind while I was watching Emmanuel Chabrier's one-act French operetta, UNE EDUCATION MANQUEE (AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION), this past weekend by Washington, DC's Opera Lafayette at the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York. It's “twee,” which roughly translates as “affectedly dainty” or “quaint.” The French don't seem to have an equivalent; the closest I could come up with is “mignon,” which means “cute” and doesn't quite fit the bill for this slight-yet-charming piece of Gallic fluff.

With MARIA STUARDA at the Met, we're back for the second installment of Donizetti's so-called Tudor Trilogy, with ANNA BOLENA (Anne Boleyn) already off to the gallows and ROBERTO DEVEREUX (with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, it was “Elizabeth and Essex”) still to come. It's the first time the Met is doing all three operas, with the singular soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Anna, Maria and Elisabetta (in DEVEREUX, next month). Her Anna was grand, but her Maria was even better.

Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see how that descriptor applies to the latter when Jonas Kaufmann steps on stage for the new production of LESCAUT.)

It seems ironic--to me at least--that New York's venerable City Opera would be returning to life at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, just as the “Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now” festival was finishing up its run at alternative venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prototype “unleashed a powerful wave of opera-theatre and music-theatre from a new generation of classical and post-classical composers and librettists”--their words, not mine, but I won't dispute it--while City is doing a warhorse.

One more BOHEME? Yet another TOSCA? How about BARBIERE redux? Sometimes the standard repertoire of opera companies seems too standard. That's why it was good to hear that the Met was mounting Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES for the first time in a century, as a showcase for one of its top divas, Diana Damrau with tenor Matthew Polenzani, one of the company's secret treasures.

No more carping about out-of-tune singing (for the rest of 2015). No more bemoaning opera directors who don't seem to like the art of opera (for the next five minutes). No more worrying whether traditional opera will go the way of all flesh (for the next few days, at least). It's time to give up on my Scrooge tendencies and be thankful for the gifts that opera gave me, in and around New York this past year, alphabetically speaking.

“Often when I tell people I'm doing a new production, the first question they ask is: 'What time period are you going to do it in and where?' I think that's a superficial approach, almost a cliche,” says Tomer Zvulun, General and Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera. “The first thing I ask myself is: Why am I telling this story now? Why would the audience care? And, how would I connect with them in the most effect way while respecting the piece?” But that's not Tvulun's point of view.

On paper, Vivaldi's 1737 opera seria CATONE IN UTICA--involving a confrontation between Cato and Caesar--seems a big mess: The music from the first act is missing and musicologists can't agree what the third act should look and sound like, leaving Act II to make or break a performance of the opera. Opera Lafayette brought us a version that sometimes thrilled us, sometimes tantalized us, but always made us grateful for the performance, fluidly directed by Tazewell Thompson.

The Met's production of Verdi's great opera RIGOLETTO, is often referred to as the 'Ratpack' version--because it is set in the Las Vegas days of Frank Sinatra and his high-living cronies. From its debut, it was a huge success for the company and with good cause. It was brilliantly conceived and sung, even though the title role seemed fuzzier than it usually is in the standard setting. But how would it stand up, season after season, I wondered, when the novelty wore off? The good news is that the production (excitingly designed by Christine Jones) not only remains effective and entertaining, but, in a key way, it is even better than at the premiere nearly three years ago.

Who or what is Lulu, the eponymous character in Alban Berg's landmark opera? Is she saint or sinner? Femme fatale or victim? Put-upon or mistress of her own fate? Whatever else she might be, she is fabulous in the hands of German soprano Marlis Petersen, as the center of William Kentridge's vibrant, thrilling new production at the Met.

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual galas--celebrating each year's winner of the Tucker Award to young American singers--are known for two things. First, they are notoriously fun evenings of opera warhorses and, second, they are guessing games: Which of the singers scheduled to perform won't show up? This year's gala fulfilled the first object delectably, as it celebrated mezzo Jamie Barton, but, surprise!, almost everyone appeared as scheduled, with one very noticeable exception.

The title character in Puccini's TOSCA is the quintessential diva--a grand performer ('goddess' in Italian) who thinks the world revolves around her, particularly when it comers to her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi. The same might be said for soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who used to be a top attraction at the Met, until cancellations and other prima donna-ish actions saw her fall from favor, despite her fine singing and acting skills. Well, she came back for two performances of her well-traveled (and -received) Floria Tosca and the result was, well, disappointing.

The recital at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on October 24 by the winners of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition was like an “amuse bouche”--a gift from the chef at the start of a meal at a fine French restaurant to tickle your tongue. It was absolutely delicious, but left you hungering for more.

When singers seem to come out of nowhere, it's usually not the case at all, but the culmination of years of hard work. But for Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko--the Met's current Gilda in the lively 'Ratpack' production of Verdi's RIGOLETTO--it certainly seemed like it.