Richard Sasanow - Page 29

Talk about baptism by fire! That's what Gustavo Dudamel--that wunderkind of the classical conducting world--faced as he reached the podium of the Met for the first time Friday night. Not only was he conducting Verdi's great opera, OTELLO, but he was doing so with a last-minute substitute in the title role. The result: All went well with the Met's production of the masterwork.

I hope somebody from New York City Opera was at BAM last weekend, because Mark-Anthony Turnage's GREEK--a modern retelling of the Oedipus myth from Scottish Opera/Opera Ventures, presented by BAM's Next Wave Festival--is just what the doctor ordered for that company. A great story, a small cast, a score that maybe won't leave you humming but moves like gangbusters, a simple production that doesn't look cheesy (except maybe in a mozzarella-ish way). And, oh yes, a happy audience for a work that deserves greater reach on these shores.

The touching, moving, brilliantly site-specific version of Gian Carlo Menotti's AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS, performed this week by New York's vibrant On Site Opera (OSO), had the audience at the Church of the Holy Apostles Church alternately in tears and cheering.

I interviewed Diana Damrau when she had just done her first Violetta, her role debut in the Met's old Willy Decker production. It was a part she lusted over from the time she saw the 1982 Zeffirelli film, but was careful about taking on--waiting for the right time in her vocal development. That was nearly six years ago and the good news is that she has developed into a first-rate Violetta, sounding better than she has in some time, and looking every inch the glamorous (yet consumptive) courtesan.

Tenor Javier Camarena--who completes his run as Nadir, the love-struck tenor lead in Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES (THE PEARL FISHERS) this Saturday--isn't finished wow-ing Met audiences for the season. Not by a long shot. He's back in February to throw off those nine High Cs in “Ah, mes amis!” the show-stopping aria--that toast to love and camaraderie--in Donizetti's LA FILLE DU REGIMENT (DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT) that Luciano Pavarotti made famous for modern opera audiences.

No one can accuse countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo of sitting around and waiting for projects to fall into his lap. GLASS HANDEL was first produced by the singer with Visionaire and Cath Brittan at Opera Philadelphia's (OP) O18 Operafest in September and presented in NY by OP and National Sawdust for four performances this week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (a co-producer), GLASS HANDEL was a trip--in many senses of the word.

Handel's AMINTA E FILLIDE doesn't have much of a libretto--'nymph meets swain and complications arise,' says the program, and that's about it--and there were just a handful of musicians from Juilliard's early music program on stage at the Morgan Library's tiny Gilder Lehrman Hall. for a work that lasted less than an hour. Yet Handel's opera/pastoral/cantata goes on my list as one of the most gorgeous performances of the year in New York, under guest artist-in-residence, William Christie.

With a formidable cast of three, and a brilliant ensemble of voices and instrumental musicians, Kaija Saariaho's ONLY THE SOUND REMAINS swept through town last weekend, created with director Peter Sellars. Once again, she left us in awe of how she can fill an impossibly large theatre with what seems on paper to be the tiniest of works.

We thought things were exciting last week, when Christian Van Horn brought his Mefistofele to the Met last week, getting all his exercise for the month in the athletic staging and nailing his first big role in the house. However, that was “business as usual” compared to the mid-performance debut, just a few days later, of baritone Alexander Birch Elliott, as Zurga, in Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES (THE PEARL FISHERS) in the opera's first performance of the season.

I caught up with rising star bass-baritone Christian Van Horn the other day, to find out what the devil was going on with his starring role in the Met's first performance of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE in almost 20 years. Were you nervous as hell (pun intended) on the first night, I asked Van Horn, winner of this year's prestigious Richard Tucker Award, in your role as the Devil?

Short on financial resources but long on ambition, Utopia Opera started its eighth season last weekend with a New York premiere: Thea Musgrave's THE STORY OF HARRIET TUBMAN. It's a 90-minute chamber version, orchestrated by composer Julian Grant, of Musgrave's full-length, two-act HARRIET, THE WOMAN CALLED MOSES, which debuted in 1985 at the Virginia Opera, with some fervent portrayals by its cast of about two dozen, including the stellar soprano MaKayla McDonald as Harriet and mezzo Karmesha Peake as her mother, Rit.

The Met is offering Robert Carsen's 1999 production of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE to show us what bass-baritone Christian Van Horn--winner of this year's Richard Tucker Award--could do in his first starring role at the house and the answer was: plenty.

To say that this was an unusual week for opera-goers venturing into BAM's Next Wave Festival would be an understatement—but then the unexpected is what makes it is an indispensable component of the New York arts scene, with Philip Glass's SATYAGRAHA and Douglas J. Cuomo's SAVAGE WINTER.

The traffic in midtown Manhattan was its usual horror at lunchtime last Friday--and Anna Netrebko was stuck in it. She was on the way to Cipriani 42nd Street, across from Grand Central Station, where the Metropolitan Opera Guild was celebrating the soprano at its 84th Annual Luncheon. Despite her delayed arrival, the soprano made some time to talk to me about her voice, her roles and what lies ahead--and, by the way, to be absolutely charming and laugh prodigiously in between her serious discussions about her voice and career.

While many people from the current generation don't know the Marx Brothers, the comic geniuses of stage, film and early television, probably even fewer are familiar with one of their masterworks, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. Filled with the sound of music, it also is brimming with laughs and general silliness. What the film does not provide, however, is to show how opera can change lives--but OPERA America's 10th annual National Opera Week, from Oct. 26-Nov. 4, is attempting to change that perception.

Site-specific performances are the latest thing for opera companies wanting to venture into works that wouldn't comfortably fit in a 500-, 1000- (or more) seat theatre. New York City Opera has tried this in the past, but never in a venue quite as intimate or louche as Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street, where Astor Piazzola's MARIA DE BUENOS AIRES, an operita (little opera or, perhaps, operetta), is earthily tango-ing its way into audience hearts.

Sometimes, it's nice to remember a time when opera was all about wonderful singing, singing and more singing. Sunday's annual concert of the Richard Tucker Foundation--celebrating the current winner of its top prize, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn--was a great salute to this artist in particular but to the form in general. And the presence of opera-loving Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—still doing her best to keep the flame at 85--was the cherry on the sundae.

Nico Muhly's MARNIE, aided and abetted by Nicholas Wright's libretto, dramaturg Paul Cremo and the sweeping production of Michael Mayer--which had its US premiere Friday night at the Met--is that fabled “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Nothing is quite what it seems or results in easy answers--for the characters or the audience.

Anyone who was expecting the equivalent of Bette Midler's arrival as Dolly in the Harmonia Gardens when Jonas Kaufmann finally returned to the Met, on October 17, after four years and some high-profile cancellations, must have been wildly disappointed. Oh sure, Kaufmann looked like a glamorous buckaroo and compared to some of the star tenor misfires already this season at the Met, he had a triumph.

When the Met's literary advisor asked Nicholas Wright what he thought about doing the libretto for MARNIE, he said yes because he was really interested in working with composer Nico Muhly and Michael Mayer. He was somewhat reserved, however, about whether it was a good opera subject. That was understandable, of course, when he admitted, laughing, a case of mistaken identity.