IN REVIEW: Metropolitan Opera – Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel
Engelbert Humperdinck

PRINCIPAL CAST:
Conductor: Vladimir Jurowski
Gretel: Christine Schäfer
Hansel: Alice Coote
Gertrude: Rosalind Plowright
The Witch: Philip Langridge
Peter: Alan Held
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Production: Richard Jones
Set & Costume Designer: John Macfarlane
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Tipton
Choreographer: Linda Dobell
English Version: David Pountney

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – (December 29, 2007) The Metropolitan Opera House closed the year with a bang (and a lovely bang too) with a broadcast of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. This gym of the German Repertoire is neglected in large part. This is because the opera was written for children in large part, and people still believe it’s subject matter to be childish – and in some ways it is – but this doesn’t mean that the opera has nothing to say.

The was some evidence of Peter Gelb (the Great Satan) and his style in this production but for once I found it completely satisfying. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski – Glyndebourne’s Music Director – led the orchestra in the finest playing I’ve ever heard them in. For once the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra had a German sound and his tempo and volume was completely appropriate.

German Soprano Christine Schäfer was difficult to understand in the English version of the opera, but as the performance went on it became unnoticeable. Schäfer’s sweet lyric soprano was perfect for Gretel. She worked perfectly moving about the registers seamlessly with a nearly perfect technique. Her physical portrayal was convincing and she proved herself not just a singing actress, but also a fine comic with her witty performance
Alice Coote’s Hansel was also very fine. Like Schäfer, Coote was a smart actress and provided sufficient charm for the boy. She had the awkwardness of a seven year old child and made me smile as the opera went forward.

The low point of the evening was the Gertrude (Mother) of Rosalind Plowright. The Mezzo had that squawk that some dramatic mezzos have. She proved fine for the part, but I wouldn’t like to hear her as much else. The voice was large and her acting was convincing. Her prayer that her children return was very beautiful.

American Baritone Alan Held’s portrayal of Peter (Father) was the highlight of the evening. He sings a sort monologue about the difficulty of life as a poor man, and he left the crowd wanting more. He was fatherly and kind. Held will appear as the Dutchman in Washington later this season, and it will be worth a trip.

Philip Langridge appeared as the Witch. The role was perfect for him, and it gave him an opportunity to show off his gift as an actor. The voice was large yet brilliant and lyric, it was perfect for parts like this or Loge. The Witch’s part is also very small, and he left us wanting more or wishing that the villain had consumed the children so that we might her another aria about how good they taste.

The set was witty, using large pieces of artwork as a the curtain between acts. In the beginning as the prelude played there was a large empty plate which showed the children’s hunger, later as the children entered the haunted forest the plate was replaced with an awful mouth that was hungry for blood. The device worked well.

The first act took place in a sparse and small room. This was the children’s impoverished home. It is clean but shows sings of disrepair. Hansel and Gretel play games to pass the time rather than doing their charms. Their dancing game has an enchanting duet (which later becomes a hymn of praise and thanksgiving) and the pair performed the scene very well. They break the glass jug of milk, the family’s only source of nourishment and when Mother finds out she sends them away into the woods to pick berries so they will have something to eat. She prays to find a way to free her children.

Father comes home drunk and then shows his wife the huge amount of food he has gotten during the day and telling her the milk was “no loss on a day like this”. He asks where the children are and nearly beats her for sending the children into the woods. He explains that the woods have an awful old woman who likes to eat children living there. The parents are soon off to look for Hansel and Gretel.

The visual highlight of the opera came at the end of the second act after the Sandman puts the children to sleep. Traditionally they are in a wood, but in the Met’s version the siblings found themselves in a large room with wallpaper that looked like the forest. It was very artistic (very Gelb) but worked well. There was a long table. Sandman blesses the children and keeps them safe in the night. The production also broke from tradition by eliminating the angels that often come to protect the children after they say evening prayers in a stunning duet.

In this version there was a long dream sequence where the children are no longer hungry because they are fed by a large group of funny looking chefs and a butler with the head of a fish. It serves to enforce the feeling that the children are very hungry, and you can understand their happiness as the long table is set for a king, and they are able to eat.

In the third act there is no gingerbread house, instead the children are beckoned though the curtain which has become a mouth with it’s tongue sticking out and a cake on the tongue. The children can’t resist the treat and find themselves in the Witch’s industrial kitchen. Gingerbread children can be seen all around and when the audiences catches a peek into the large stainless steel refrigerator they see arms and legs.

The Witch is killed by Hansel and Gretel as they push her into the oven. Her spell is broken, and after an explosion and a moment of darkness and time in from of a curtain (now a broken plate) the Hansel and Gretel find that the gingerbread statues have turned back into live children. Here the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus sings the sublime chorus as they cry because their eyesight has been lost. Hansel and Gretel break this spell too by giving every child a “tender touch”. They sing and joyously as they once more see the light, and it was the most touching moment I’ve seen over the last year.

Finally Mother and Father (Gertrude and Peter) find the children. Held performs the melody of the children’s dancing duet, but this time he thanks God for delivering the family from evil. The production avoids obvious Germanic clichés and feels like it could be just about anywhere. The message is clear, family and love is the most important thing and that God will deliver those who love their families.

TOP 5: reasons we loved 2007

OPERA in AMERICA is “A candid discussion of all things opera, music and the other finest things in life.” The time has come to take a moment and remember the best (and most ridicules) events in American Opera in the year 2007.

5. Joyce DiDonato: American Beauty’s return

This year was the breakout of a diva true that a quality aficionado has been following for some time. Joyce DiDonato arrived at the center of the scene as Rosina in The Metropolitan Opera’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, she was awarded the Beverly Sills Award, and the prestigious cover of Opera News (the coveted diva issue at that). DiDonato is singing all of the best, and most challenging repertoire – Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Cenerentola and Cendrillon – and doing to great acclaim.

I first learned of the Mezzo with a Paris Barbiere, set in Moorish Seville and it was just wonderful. She is now performing at all of the world’s top houses and brining them down too. This is the sort of singer who makes Americans proud…intelligent, talented, skilled kind and beautiful, Joyce DiDonato’s broke out this year; it’s about time.

4. Peter Gelb: The Great Satan

Gelb is one of the two reasons we loved 2007 for something negative. OPERA in AMERICA feels that he has a sick mind and we love that the Metropolitan Opera has given us someone to hate.

Gelb appeared on the shit list after his negative comments about Joe Volpe (who I think rocks) and his discrimination against Ruth Ann Swenson, despite her triumphs at the house as Cleopatra and Marguerite. We love to hate Peter Gelb, the Great Satan and we can’t wait until he leaves the Metropolitan Opera House.

3. Die Agyptische Helena at the Metropolitan Opera

Will I ever hear such a performance again? I seriously doubt it, so I am glad to have made the trip last March to hear Strauss’ rarity in New York. Deborah Voigt proved herself the heir to Leonie Rysanek and the composer’s dramatic repertoire from the moment she took the stage. “Zweite Brautnacht” was erotic and magical, and she spun out the lyrical lines of the scene with a silver tone not usually heard. Voigt’s performance is the sort that will go down in history as one of the greats. The diva truly deserves her throne as today’s finest dramatic soprano.

Jill Grove’s Omniscient Sea-Shell was unbelievably great. She hit every note; from the contralto bottom to the top of the staff. This was another woman who showed that she is the finest in the fach. Grove is in a class of her own in the German Mezzo Repertoire.

Finally the Aithra of Diana Demrau was the toast of New York. Her large bright coloratura soared over the thick orchestra of Strauss’s score. She gracefully etched the difficult part and showed that she was the premier Struassian Coloratura.

The Met’s Helena was just incredible. The house brought together a Strauss Trinity of the finest caliber. A finer cast couldn’t have been created.

2. Neruda Songs

The recording of the late Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson singing her husband Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs (a cycle for Soprano and Orchestra) was a love letter saying goodbye to her fans. Hitting the shelves in January the piece was just stunning.

If only music could all sound like this. Peter Lieberson created something classic…for me Neruda Songs will be the same as Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and will become an American Classic.

Lorraine Hunt sings the music with passion and every word is colored perfectly. We will miss Hunt-Lieberson, but we will never forget her.

1. The Alagnas

She is awful. He is ridicules. One is off pitch, the other is a bitch. One got booed by Italians, the other got fired by one.

In one year Roberto got booed off stage, then needed his wife at his side. While she was standing in the wings of the Metropolitan Opera, she skipped out on her Chicago Mimi and was dismissed from the production, which was directed by Renata Scotto. They should be humiliated after this year. When the Met Opera Shop gave –for free, I’ll never pay for her music – me this CD called “Angela Gheorghiu - A Portrait” and it turned out to be a twenty-five minute interview filled with self praise (together with praise from Carol Neblett) over her less than perfect singing. I threw it away.

The Alagans made 2007 something to laugh at.

I denounce Gerard Mortier as a collaborator with Satan

Why NYCO's incomming director is on OPERA in AMERICA's bad side.


Upon hearing more of the closing of the New York Sate Theatre so that construction to the acoustically – as well as aesthetically, visually, and in other ways – awful theatre can be renovated before the new New York City Opera’s General Director (to be) Gerard Mortier, comes to town. I got to thinking, “who is this Gerard Mortier, and what does this mean to opera in New York and more importantly Opera in America?”

The first thing I did was think of the productions I know of from his current home at Opéra National de Paris. I immediately thought of this Ariadne auf Naxos (the clip above) where Natalie Dessay is whoring around as she sings “Grossmächtige Prinzessin” in an orange bikini. So many things are wrong with that…most of which is the idea that pasty white little Natalie Dessay had orange on…with pink hair I must add. It was not becoming to a woman of her very French coloring.

He seems to be a lot like his colleague from across the plaza, the Great Satan himself, Peter Gelb. I simply hope this doesn’t mean more puppets at Lincoln Center. At the Met they have been everything from really cool and trippy (Taymor’s Flute) to stupid and distracting (the little boy in Butterfly). I also hope that this doesn’t mean that I will have to go to other houses to hear the best signing from singers who don’t look like they came out of Cosmo.

I love Ruth Ann Swenson, who rocked Marguerite here in Cincinnati (after her acclaimed Met Performances of the same role…I saw it, and it was great… and Cleopatra) just after having her jobs taken at the Met by the Great Satan in his quest to stage with for skinny bitches. Ruth Ann is wonderful, she just is. I don’t find her fat, in fact I find her just right, and there is no one more suited to Violetta or many similar rolls. She is a darling in New York, as is Aprile Millo, but the Great Satan doesn’t like them so the world will not hear them in his house.

Back to the point: Mortier’s most famous so called staging was a Salzburg Fledermaus complete with heroin and crack whores. Seems like the Party was a sort of rave. I love that actually…but I would rather hear great signing then see silly pretty women rolling around in nasty outfits and shooting up. He also plans to stage a lot of crap.

Britten's Death in Venice
Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach
Janáček's The Makropulos Case
Adams's Nixon in China
Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande
Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress
Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise.

Needless to say, Valois will not be going out of his way to visit the NYCO.

Netrebko? A lesbian? No way!

Netrebko? A lesbian? No way!
Only the Germans… Well, I never got the lesbian vibe watching her on stage, but it would say a lot about why Peter Gelb (the Great Satan) likes her so much…


As was well chronicled on the opera blogs yesterday (operachick broke the story), after much gossip among the Germans, Anna Netrebko felt the need to clarify, “Ein für alle Mal: Ich bin nicht lesbisch!" Well, she didn’t say she has never had a lesbian experience: she could still have another top selling video if it was on tape. I for one think a little rug munching could be a great career move as it certainly would fill up the opera house with a different crowd.

Apparently Anna met German (lesbian) pop sensation Lucy Diakovska at a taping of a television program and the two hit it off (in a non-sexual way) and went out to lunch a few times. Photos were taken of the friends and suddenly every man in the Father Land had something new to dream of.

I feel that this only strengthens my case that Anna is the opera world’s Angelina Jolie…Sexual ambiguity and so on. Take a look at the clip above and tell me it isn’t a little lesbianesque. I do wish that more of our divas sparked this sort of controversy.

In other news, Netrebko will be taking on the Strauss rarity Das Lesbische Jungfrau (the Virgin Lesbian)in a Peter Sellers production this year at Santa Fe, and her next album will be a studio production complete with Ann Shophie von Otter. The opera is the tale of a virgin (das Junfrau, sung by Netrebko) who gives up her “golden rose” to sexually adventurous older woman (von Otter) who in the end goes back to her husband (Botha). The Junfrau is ruined and kills herself in a fit of anger and sexual furry…in other words, it’s like everything else the von Hofmannsthal/Strauss team ever did.

IN REVIEW: Metropolitan Opera – Aida

Aida
Giuseppe Verdi

CAST:
Conductor: Kazushi Ono
Aida: Angela M. Brown
Amneris: Dolora Zajick
Radamès: Marco Berti
Amonasro: Andrzej Dobber
Ramfis: Carlo Colombara
The King: Dimitri Kavrakos

PRODUCION TEAM:
Production: Sonja Frisell
Set Designer: Gianni Quaranta
Costume Designer: Dada Saligeri
Lighting Designer: Gil Wechsler
Choreographer: Rodney Griffin
Stage Director: Stephen Pickover

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (September 29, 2007) – When one goes to see an Aida one expects spectacle. When one goes to the Metropolitan Opera House, one expects the best opera has to offer. This Aida was a pile of shit. The singing was good…some of it…but the production, I have seen better productions in high schools.

From the beginning, everything looked like Halloween. In the opening scene tenor Marco Berti’s Radames sounded strained to my ear. His “Celeste Aida” drew a few bravos, but was not to my liking.

Angela Brown’s Aida was as wonderful as I remembered, and as she sang her first Aria (“Ritorna vincitor!”) the opera took a turn for the better. I nearly forgot about the fact that she was standing in a place where I could hardly see her from my box as she floated out the last notes wonderfully. As the performance progressed I had my first experience hearing Dolora Zajick who was Amneris. She was stunning…just amazing!

The triumphant scene was a joke. I had just been a part of the chorus for a production in Cincinnati and I noticed quickly as they removed several choral parts from the scene. What a waste of time, we laughed out loud as the Ethiopian prisoners entered. Andrzej Dobber, the baritone who sang the part of Amonasro, wasn’t a good singer, and he couldn’t act either. His costume had him looking something like a Klingon, the alien race from Star Treck, and it was just awful.

Conductor Kazushi Ono’s tempo was too fast throughout the evening and he ruined one of the opera’s most personal moments Aida’s aria “O patria mio”. Angela Browns radiant soprano sounded like something out of I Puritani as the aria went so fast that Verdi’s gentle phrases came at coloratura speeds. Maybe it wasn’t that bad….maybe…but none the less it was just awful.

Peter Gelb should be ashamed of himself as he puts this third rate production on stage. If this were my first time at the Met, I would be very disappointed and may never have returned.

IN REVIEW: MET – Lucia di Lammermoor

Lucia di Lammermoor
Gaetano Donizetti

CAST:
Conductor: James Levine
Lucia: Natalie Dessay
Edgardo: Marcello Giordani
Enrico: Mariusz Kwiecien
Raimondo: John Relyea
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Production: Mary Zimmerman
Set Designer: Daniel Ostling

Lighting Designer: T. J. Gerckens

Choreographer: Daniel Pelzig

NEW YORK, NEW YORK(September 27, 2007) – The Metropolitan Opera opened with Lucia di Lammermoor in September. Peter Gelb once more successfully billed the new production’s premier as an event, and many famous faces were in the audience opening night.

I arrived in New York to see the second performance, just two days after the premier. The entire city was a buzz with excitement over the new Lucia. A first class advertising campaign covered billboards and busses with a slogan someone thought was cute, “you’ll be MAD you missed it!”

Mary Zimmerman’s first major opera placed the saga in a sort of Jane Austin-esque Scotland. The opera opened strangely, with a large black wall covering all but a small area of the stage. Behind the wall was a several hills, a friend I attended with joked that it looked like a large pile of dog poop...I think she was sort of correct. As they brought large hounds across the stage searching for an intruder the small opening didn’t serve anything well and the male chorus and dogs hobbled around the awkward opening. Finally as the first aria began.

Leading the serious of challenging arias to come was Baritone Mariusz Kwiecien as Enrico. Sufficiently nasty, the young baritone proved himself to be among the finest interpreters of the Bel Canto literature. In his aria “Cruda, funesta smania”, where he talks about his desire to see an enemy struck down by lightning he was very commanding.

Natalie Dessay’s Lucia was wonderful from the start, and herfirst notes were stunning. She sang them with her back to the audience, and the voice was large and attractive in the Met’s massive house. In her first aria (“Quando rapito in estasi”) she sang about the sprit that haunts the estate of her family. A woman appeared as Lucia told the tale, she was painted white with very messy hair; yes, the ghost actually appears in Mary Zimmerman’s sick mind. It was just the first of many distractions from a director who doesn’t yet understand that sometimes it can be just about music.

Marcello Giordani’s Edgardo was an impressive and convincing one. From the moment that he entered the stage and Natalie Dessay and him came together I felt that they really were in love. His signing was also as convincing.

In the second act as Lucia learns of her impending marriage the Polish baritone’s Enrico was once more a great force. Lucia began to loose it here, as her home was cleaned up, somehow turned from a dusty parlor to a splendid ballroom before our eyes. One device I loved was after the signing of the marriage documents, Lucia knocked the ink well over as she laments, “I have signed my death warrant” and the ink appeared as blood.

The septet was so well sung I could hardly believe it. Once more Zimmerman had too much going on at once. As each party entered a photographer arranged a group photo culminating in an old fashioned exploding flash bulb at the end of the music. What a distraction. Edgardo’s entrance to the wedding was convincing, but as always in Lucia, the audience was waiting for the mad scene and the moment just seemed long, but well done.

The castle hall was a large stairway and it was filled with well wishers after the wedding. The joy faded quickly as Lucia entered covered in blood for the Mad Scene. The French Soprano knows how to act…it was one of those things that seemed so natural that the music was like speech. Her Lucia had lost her mind completely and killing her husband seemed natural, it was tragic and frightening to watch. She went from sexual bliss to despair to a state of joy throughout the “Spargi d'amaro pianto” section of the scene. The traditional flute was replaced with the original glass armonica producing a ghostly sound. The famous ‘flute cadenza’ was sung without flute as well. The drama of the scene worked better this way.

Dessay proved in the scene why she is the world’s leading Lucia as she ran around the stage, and laid on her back to sing this most difficult scene. She was taken off stage, having fallen dead after a brilliant high f#. The audience went wild, and I understood why it is said that a second performance is better than the first. The audience made missing the opening worth it.

The last act was dominated by Tenor Marcello Giordani’s performance of his suicide aria. I don’t remember much, the signing was good, but I was quite distracted as Natalie Dessay arrived…painted white and with messed up hair…yes she was a ghost too. She helped her lover kill himself; it must have seemed like a good idea in Zimmerman’s sick mind. To me it just seemed like she was a selfish nasty little bitch.

The orchestra was in world class form under James Levines able hands, and brilliant singing, that’s for sure. The Met’s new Lucia was a failure as a new production. Perhaps with another director things like the ghost will not appear, and Lucia will not come back looking like a bag lady. Dessay was stunning, Giordani was very good, and the sexy baritone Mariusz Kwiecien was very fine.