Richard Sasanow - Page 3

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.

Macheath’s back in town! Or at least he was for a few short days, when the Berliner Ensemble brought its now-famous Barrie Kosky production of THREEPENNY OPERA to BAM, in association with St. Ann’s Warehouse.

What’s a Mozart lover to do? Great music and a more-than-decent cast don’t necessarily add up to an enchanting night at the opera. Yes, it’s true that LE NOZZE DI FIGARO ('The Marriage of Figaro') has some of Mozart’s most delicious music; there’s no denying that. Where do I start? “Dove sono” for the Countess, “Voi che sapete” for Cherubino, Susanna’s “Deh vieni non tardar” and Figaro’s “Non piu andrai” are only the tip of Mozart’s great iceberg of a score.

Imagine being a rising young opera singer and getting to sing two solos from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. And picture receiving $20,000 and the prestige, exposure and networking opportunities that come with it. That's what came to Sopranos Alissa Goretsky and Emma Marhefka, Mezzos Sadie Cheslak and Michelle Mariposa, and Baritone Luke Sutliff, who took top honors and applause from the crowd of thousands at the opera house on Sunday March 16.

Political prisoner is rescued from dungeon by his faithful wife, only to find that she’s pregnant! Shocking! Not really: Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, who’s shown she indispensable in roles from Tchaikovsky’s QUEEN OF SPADES to Strauss’s ARIADNE AUF NAXOS starts her maternity leave at the end of her Met run of Beethoven’s only opera, FIDELIO, on March 15. She’s proven a fearless singer but in this week’s opening of the Beethoven work, as Leonore, she also showed herself a game actor.

MOBY-DICK--Herman Melville’s epic tale of obsession and man-versus-nature, succinctly adapted by composer Jake Heggie with Gene Scheer’s taut libretto--roared into the Met Monday night and begged only one question: What took so long for it to get here?

While opera-lovers wait eagerly for soprano Julia Bullock’s appearance in the latest John Adams lyric drama, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Met in May, Bullock continues to tantalize us with some other parts of her repertoire, from the Baroque (her recent program with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) to this past Tuesday’s entry in Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, HISTORY’S PERSISTENT VOICE, filled with songs and readings about enslavement and incarceration.

The people at Heartbeat Opera--that dazzling reinvention-machine for taking works that you think you might have heard one time too often and making them compelling--must have had a crystal ball when they programmed Strauss’s SALOME long before the current, decadent regime took control in US politics.

Michael Hersch took no prisoners with his new opera, AND WE, EACH, a production of the Baltimore musical organization, Mind on Fire, which had its New York premiere on February 6 at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Anyone who’s spent enough time watching network TV knows an American criminal justice system that is built around simplistic stories of the good guys (hard-working prosecutors and police detectives) putting away the bad guys (“perps” of all stripes) with the help of brilliant DNA evidence that points the way to the truth. That’s not exactly the impression that we get from BLIND INJUSTICE—the opera by composer Scott Davenport Richards and librettist David Cote that had its New York debut this week.