About next season

I'm very angry. It looks list it's true: No Ruth Ann Swenson at the Met.



But the world goes on.That time has come when every opera fan must begin to consider their plans for this fall; what to see and where to go.

A few things stick as points of interest for the coming season and I’m sure that the entire blog community will take time to get to the opera houses and hear a few productions. Today the OPERA in AMERICA blog is proud to name the most important productions in America in the Autumn Season.

Manon – Chicago Lyric Oprea
September 27 – October 31, 2008
The world’s most famous coloratura Natalie Dessay will team up with my favorite young tenor Jonas Kauffman for Massenet’s masterpiece.


Don Giovanni: Metropolitan Opera
September 27, 2008 – April 24, 2009
Erwin Schrott leads a glorious cast which includes the likes of Barbra Frittoli, Susan Graham, Matthew Polenzani and Samuel Ramey. A special treat will be Peter Mattei who will round out the performances as the Don.

Porgy and Bess – Chicago Lyric Opera
November 18 – December 19
The lyric opera seems to draw me into operas which I normally hate by providing stellar casts and this Porgy is no exception. A lineup of today’s finest African-American singers will be led by Gordon Hawkins – who I believe to be the finest working dramatic baritone of our age – as Porgy together with names such as the stunning Lisa Daltirus, future star Laquita Mitchell and established goddess Marietta Simpson.

As much as I hate Progy and Bess, the Lyric can expect a visit from me in December.

La Gioconda – Metropolitan Opera
September 24, 2008 - October 9, 2008
Two words: "Suicidio!” and Voigt…

Add Olga Borodina, and Ewa Podles and you have me there.

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.

Isolde’s Liebestod…just without Isolde.

Understanding (or trying to) orchestras who don’t use singers for Wagner’s Opera



This evening as I drove back into the city from dinner with friends about an hour away, I heard something extraordinary. It was the Liebestod, and I’d never heard an orchestra play it so well before. James Levine led the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in a concert version.

I was very upset however that they did they didn’t have a singer at all. I hate this practice, and so I had to take the place of some dramatic soprano. I must say I do as well as many of the so called Wagnerians currently working. It seemed odd to me that they made this choice, to leave out a soprano.

For all the mud I sling – as I just did – about the current dramatic bunch, I really do believe there are some incredible voices which are suited to the challenges of this work. Christine Brewer, Debroah Voigt, Nina Stemme just to name a few of the wonderful voices…and this was James Levine after all. Waltrud Meier is doing it in Milan this very week. The excuse that there are “simply no voices around for it” is just stupid.

Is it possible that some of these people who go to the symphony are not willing to pay to hear a singer like they would a violinist or pianist? I don’t think so: a few years ago when Debroah Voigt and Ben Heppner came to sing a concert version of Tristan in Cincinnati the place was packed…all four thousand seats (yes our opera house is bigger than Chicago’s) sold out. Jeanine Jansen – the world class violinist – played the Tchaikovsky Concerto the same year, and only about three thousand showed up.

My own home town orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra plays very wonderfully…but they rarely have great singer come during the normal season. Matthias Gorne appeared a few years ago, and they play an annual festival of nothing but operatic and choral music, but as a general rule Cincinnati’s Orchestra – like any other medium sized city – gives us very few concerts with the great singers.

Where are they then? Well, looking at the schedules of any of the fine singers I have mentioned, you will find them performing often in Europe or New York, but they rarely come outside of Manhattan to share their voices with the world. It’s a shame that I have to go so far to see a great singer.

If opera is to survive as an art form, the great singers have to end the monopoly that the Metropolitan, La Scala, Covent Garden, and Staatsoper have established (splitting the rest of their time between Chicago, San Francisco and such places). They have to make sure that people know that Liebestod with an Isolde is better than without.

It bothers me however, that that singers often show up in Cincinnati (because the reputation of our kindly nature, and enthusiasm) to try a role out a new roll, or espically after some sort of trauma. That same Voigt/Heppner Concert was her first outing after the surgery and it was his first appearance after a crisis of vocal health. We loved them! We were honored to have them and the city was proud that they had been a part of our illustrious musical history …it is after all as fine as that of New York, but just not as hot right now.

Birgit Nilsson, Placido Domingo, Leonie Rysanek, Jussi Bjorling, James Levine, Martina Arroyo, Leontyne Price…even Richard Strauss have all been at Cincinnati multiple times and even have been regulars (okay not Strauss, he just came twice). It’s a shame that today we have to work so hard (and pay so much) to have this sort of talent come, unless they want us to stoke their ego after they get their nodules removed.

Someone once said, “there is nothing better than great Shakespeare, and nothing worse than bad either.” The same is true of Wagner, and until the singers decide they are going to do it in places like Cincinnati more often, it just will be done with an orchestra. James Levine has no excuse to have done this without Isolde…but unfortunately most conductors do.

IN REVIEW: Chicago Lyric Opera - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Die Frau ohne Schatten
Richard Strauss



CAST:
Empress: Deborah Voigt
Dyer's Wife: Christine Brewer
Emperor: Robert Dean Smith
Barak: Franz Hawlata
Nurse: Jill Grove (illness: Sub unknown good singer)
Spirit Messenger: Quinn Kelsey
Voice of the Falcon: Stacey Tappan
Hunchbacked Brother: John Easterlin
One-Eyed Brother: Daniel Sutin
One-Armed Brother: Andrew Funk
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Conductor: Sir Andrew Davis
Director: Paul Curran
Designer: Kevin Knight
Lighting Designer: David Jacques
Chorus Master: Donald Nally
Ballet Mistress: August Tye

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (November 30, 2007) – Upon my arrival in the Civic Theater I was disappointed. The man who soled my ticket seemed unwilling to help me. I got the feeling it was because I was a young black man in jeans, however I am not sure. I asked him several times where the best place to sit acoustically was. He continued to ask how much I was willing to spend…and didn’t seem to notice that money wasn’t a particular concern. I have seats in the third row, orchestra….that was too close, this man was an idiot, and must never have gone to the opera. More likely he thought that I had never been. This house was off to a bad start.

When I finally took my seat (far away and much more expensive than the Metropolitan) a man stepped out from behind the curtain. He announced that Jill Grove was ill and would replaced by another mezzo, whose name I didn’t know. The girl was alright, though she wasn’t the Strauss mezzo Goddess that Grove is, and she sang the roll of the Nurse well enough. Franz Hawlata, the baritone who performed Barak was also ill, and the gentleman asked the audience’s indulgence.

This work has a reputation as being one of the most difficult to stage pieces in operatic history. Complete with spiritual forces, Gods, and multiple dimensional realms setting this opera in a relevant way is a challenge. Robert Dean Smith was a wonderful Emperor, with sufficient vocal power to compete the roll well and I liked someone other than the women for once.

From the moment the empress appeared onstage director Paul Curran failed to establish the Freudian motives of the characters. Deborah Voigt’s playful and somewhat childish Empress sounded wonderful, a perfect roll for the diva vocally. She was a little too childish for my taste, and I didn’t find her alluring enough. After a night in bed with the empower she didn’t seem like she had just woken up from….a romp.

The Dyer’s Wife seemed less complex and sophisticated than Hofmannsthal intended. Like the Empress, she didn’t seem in touch with the sexual love the woman needed…so central to the character.

The set worked well, and the company employed a clever use of ballet to explain the visions many of the characters have. Occasionally there was too much going on in the sparse setting…crazy men hanging from cables, it was all very Cirque du Soleil and I am not a fan. When the emperor flew in on a plastic horse, following the Falcon (great young singer) who flew in a cube surrounded by florescent tube lighting people laughed…so did I. It was very Studio 54, in an opera that other than that was fairly pretty. The laughing continued as the Emperor tried to climb back onto the stallion and it shook and leaned from side to side.

Robert Dean Smith kept it together through all of these challenges…and seemed to care very much about the Empress. The Barak of Franz Hawlata was also very wonderful and his love for his wife was understood…though his desire for her only in a sexual and unemotional way wasn’t clear. Director Paul Curran’s biggest mistake was making the men so complete that women seemed like bitches: He didn’t understand Strauss’ stories, where the only important characters are women which are either power-hungry and needing to be put back in place, or needing the love they deserve from their husbands.

Christine Brewer’s voice was stunning. At times I wondered if the Dyer’s Wife and the Empress should have been switched? I guess not, but it could have been interesting. Brewer and Voigt were very naturally the highlights of the evening, Robert Dean Smith’s Emperor was very impressive as well. Other notable were that of baritone Franz Hawlata, I would love to have heard him in better health and the Falcon Stacey Tappan sounded wonderful in the high flying passages.

Sir Andrew Davis led the orchestra. They, per their usual, sounded very bright…annoyingly bright even. The strings tripped over each other in some of the more challenging passages. Growing up with the Cincinnati Symphony (who play in residence) at the Cincinnati Opera’s Summer Festival I have grown to expect a world class orchestra in the pit when I hear opera. Metropolitan is a part of this tradition (fellow Cincinnatian James Levin leading them) and I am always satisfied. Chicago’s orchestra was in that opera class, and didn’t hold up to a quality symphony or philharmonic.

Chicago’s Frau was a vehicle for some wonderful singing, but fell sort of my expectations for the piece.