MACBETH - REVIEW OF LIVE IN HD FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth, René Pape as Banquo, and Željko Lučić as Macbeth. Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Reviewed by James Karas

The Metropolitan Opera’s ninth season of broadcasting productions from New York to cinemas around the world is under way with an exceptional revival of Adrian Noble’s staging of Macbeth. The production is dramatically intense with a triumphal finish and a fine twist in the final tableau.

The first-rate cast is dominated by the plush voice and extraordinary beauty of Anna Netrerbko as Lady Macbeth. This Lady Macbeth dominates her husband by the force of her character and the magnitude of her ambition without histrionics or overt pressure. Her physical appearance and vocal prowess establish and maintain her authority right to the end. Her Mad Scene is a model of restraint and controlled drama. The drama comes from within and not from any overt melodramatic movements. What a performance.

Baritone Željko Lučić is the ideal husband and foil for this Lady Macbeth. He appears older than her and although he falls in for her ambition, it seems as if it is not entirely in his nature. Even after he commits horrendous crimes, we never grow to hate him completely. Lučić has a wonderful voice, on the lighter side of the baritone scale, thus giving him a more humane and less threatening persona.

Bass René Pape and tenor Joseph Calleja play Banquo and Macduff respectively. They are both victims of Macbeth with Banquo being assassinated because the witches predicted that his children will inherit the throne and Macduff’s family being eliminated as a precaution. They sing impeccably.

Verdi augments Shakespeare’s witches into the dozens giving himself the opportunity to compose some outstanding choruses. The Metropolitan Opera Chorus looked like a bunch of bag ladies and the children looked like ragamuffins but all to good effect. The bag ladies carried purses which shone a light on their faces when opened. That is how they can foretell the future, I suppose, but they also sang marvelously.

Noble and Set and Costume Designer Mark Thompson deliver a dark and brooding production in modern dress with no attempt at realistic sets. The set is dominated by huge black columns that resemble tree trunks with rings of light. There are also leafless trees and for many stretches we see only a dark background. Much of the performance is done in a spotlight with red as the contrasting colour to the darkness. Blood is a dominant image of the opera, of course, with Macbeth emerging covered in blood after the murder of the king. Banquo and Lady Macbeth also appear covered in blood.

The staging is highly effective with numerous brilliant directorial touches. King Duncan’s bed can be seen on the stage between the columns. After the murder, his slit throat on the blood-spattered bed is revealed in an intensely dramatic scene.

The Met Orchestra is conducted with vigour and intensity by Fabio Luisi.

You will recall that the witches predict that Banquo’s descendants will occupy the throne of Scotland. We see Banquo and his son Fleance (Moritz Linn), the latter wearing a bright red scarf, leave the palace followed by Macbeth’s henchmen with orders to kill them. They kill Banquo but Fleance escapes.

At the end of the opera, order is restored with the crowning of Malcolm (Noah Baetge), the son of the murdered king. As the newly crowned king rises, he glances to his left and sees the boy in the red scarf. Is this the restoration of order or simply a prelude to the next battle for the Scottish crow? Marvelous touch.

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Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi was shown Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on October 11, 2014 at the Beach Cinemas, 1651 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON, M4L 1G5 (416) 699-1327 and other cinemas. Encores will be shown on November 10 and 15, 2014. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

MARRIAGE OF FIGARO IN ST. MARK’S ENGLISH CHURCH, FLORENCE

View of St. Mark's English Church, Florence.

Reviewed by James Karas

How is this for an opera season: forty-five performances of ten operas and an evening of love duets. Most opera companies don’t come even near those numbers.

Early September can be a dry month for operas in many cities. But that does not apply tp Florence, Italy where St. Mark’s Opera Company started its fall season on September 2.

Producing opera in St. Mark’s, the English Church in Florence, is like entering a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back. The odds are stacked against you but that does not mean you will not get in a lot of jabs and hooks to leave your supporters cheering.

The programme lists only four singers, a pianist and a Narrator. The latter is Franz Moser who, with his wife Ilse, founded the opera company that is now in its twelfth season. No director is listed and I will assume that Moser does that job. He is also the audience welcoming committee, the prop mover between acts and who knows what else.

Much credit goes to the singers who perform under less than ideal conditions. Elise Efremov is a lovely and lively Susanna. She sings beautifully in challenging surroundings and is spritely and comic. Alvaro Lozano has a good, big voice but he suffered from the acoustics of the Church.

Chiara Panacci was a moving Contessa Almaviva. One could see why the Count’s eye may stray toward the lively Susanna but Panacci’s rendition of her two great arias, “Porgi amor” and “Dove sono” convince us that she deserves to be treated well.

Franco Rossi as Almaviva was impressive and when caught acting like a fool with an axe in his hand, he was quite funny. Eva Mabellini  was fine vocally as a red-haired Cherubino but she was somewhat stilted in a role that requires  a body trembling with sexual excitement.

All the other characters and the chorus were deleted and as a result the opera was done in two hours including an intermission.

The vaulted ceiling of St. Mark’s Church is not opera-friendly. The piano playing of Eugenio Milazzo displayed some very intricate finger acrobatics but it suffered for coming out fortissimo because of the acoustics when less volume would have been more pleasing to the ear. The same fate befell the singers especially the strong, low registers of Rossi and Lozano. The sopranos fared better.

In the tiny playing area of the church there is hardly much room for maneuvering and the set consisted of a couch and a few essential furniture. The seats did not allow much of a view and we had to settle for seeing most things above the knees of the singers.

Yes, this is not La Scala but there is an intimacy and a sense of opera in the raw and on the inexpensive all worthwhile.       

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The Marriage of Figaro by W. A. Mozart was performed on September 4, 2014 at St. Mark’s English Church, Florence, Italy.  http://stmarksitaly.com/music-arts/opera-at-st-marks/

ARIADNE AUF NAXOS – REVIEW OF GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

The Glimmerglass Festival's 2014 production of Strauss' "Ariadne in Naxos." 

Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Reviewed by James Karas

If you see two goats, a rooster and bales of hay in front of a barn door on stage, you may well conclude that you are in Kansas. The map of New York State superimposed on the barn door will dissipate that illusion and you will recall that you are on the shores of Otsego Lake. So be it but what are those farm animals doing in Ariadne Auf Naxos?

In fact you are watching Francesca Zambello’s re-imagination of the Strauss/Hofmannsthal opera for the Glimmerglass Festival. The production is successful on most fronts. It is done mostly in English and the comic parts of the opera, especially the spoken sections, gain a great deal by being immediately understood by nn-German speakers. The sections involving Ariadne’s life on Naxos are sung in German and they are very effective.

Ariadne auf Naxos is set in the house of the richest man in Vienna where an opera and a comedy are to be put on to entertain guests after dinner. Scheduling problems force the host to order both to be performed simultaneously.

Zambello moves the opera from Vienna to a mansion in upstate New York and it works. We do not get a sense of the mansion because the “performances” seem to take place on a make-shift stage in the barn. Unless, the rich host keeps hay in his private theatre, that is, but the setting is effective.

The main characters appear as “themselves” and as people in the comedy or the opera that are performed in the second act. American Soprano Christine Goerke is the Prima Donna, a sort of caricature of the haughty singer, in the first act and Ariadne, the grieving princess abandoned on Naxos by Theseus, in the second act.

She has a big voice, a magisterial presence and some impressive low notes that make her a convincing Ariadne. She is interrupted by the comedians who are trying to comfort her but in the end her plush voice dominates the performance.

 Rachele Gilmore as Zerbinetta (center) and the ensemble in Strauss' "Ariadne in Naxos." 

Photo: Jessica Kray/The Glimmerglass Festival

Her comic opposite is Zerbinetta, the star of the comedy that is to be put on. She is smart, resourceful, agile, funny and a delight to watch and hear. All of which applies to soprano Rachele Gilmore. She has a purer voice than Goerke’s and the contrast between the two performers was a delight to behold.

The opera company has a tenor who plays the part of Bacchus in the “opera.” Corey Bix was not the best choice for the role. He has a small voice and his impressive physical presence could not make up for it. There were times when he was almost drowned by the orchestra and he suffered by being outsung by Goerke in their duets.

Mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin sang the pants role of the passionate and temperamental Composer. She displayed high dudgeon and tenderness as she got some instruction in reality. Martin does a very good job in the role.

Glimmerglass has an outstanding Young Artists Program and makes extensive use of the budding talents that it tries to shape. The comedians, the dryads and the other minor roles are almost all assigned to the young artists. The young artists and Glimmerglass deserve a huge bow for this.

The Glimmerglass Festival Opera was conducted by Kathleen Kelly and sounded simply marvelous. Yes, a woman conducted the orchestra and when, oh when, will we be able not to notice or comment on the gender of the conductor. Right now, women conductors are a rarity by any standard.

Zambello has found a refreshing and outstanding approach to Ariadne. We get the full benefit of the comic parts which can be drowned in a production that uses the original German. The tragic part is done superbly in its original language. Combined with the lush playing of the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra, this ends up being an exceptional and memorable Ariadne auf Naxos.

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Ariadne auf Naxos  by Richard Strauss (music) and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (libretto) opened on July 19 and will be performed in repertory eight times until August 23, 2014 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

MADAME BUTTERFLY – REVIEW OF GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Yunah Lee as Cio-Cio-San and Dinyar Vania as Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton. 

Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Reviewed by James Karas

WOW!

That is my review of Francesca Zambello’s production of Madame Butterfly for the Glimmerglass Festival. I will use a few more words to describe the production for understandable reasons.

The production has an outstanding cast starting with soprano Yunah Lee as Cio-Cio San. The 15-year Japanese girl who marries Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton (tenor Dinyar Vania) can be seen as fragile, weak and the victim of her family and the American officer. Not in this production. Lee portrays Cio-Cio San as a strong woman who is genuinely in love. She has a beautiful and strong voice that carries magnificently and this Madame Butterfly dies in the end because she is strong. A brilliant and memorable performance that garnered a well-deserved standing ovation.

Vania’s Pinkerton was excellent if more the text-book variety. With his fine singing and handsome bearing, Vania gave us a well-done, haughty Pinkerton who repents his errors in the end. You can’t ask for much more and I mean of Vania, not of Pinkerton’s morality.

The role of Sharpless, the American Consul, usually does not get much attention. In this production Ukrainian baritone Aleksey Bogdanov made Sharpless into an exceptionally humane person. With his fine voice and outstanding acting, Bogdanov gave us a decent and sympathetic Consul that stood out from the rest of the people.

American mezzo-soprano Kristen Choi was a superb Suzuki and the rest of the relatively minor characters made a strong cast in this WOW production. 

The highest praise belongs to Zambello, the Artistic and General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival. The conception and execution of the production belong to her. The music is delivered gorgeously by the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra conducted by Joseph Colaneri.

Madame Butterfly is set in a Japanese house on a hill overlooking the harbour and the city of Nagasaki. Zambello and Set Designer Michael Yeargan have moved most of the action to the American Consulate in Nagasaki. There are a couple of scenes in the house on the hill but the consular offices decorated with a few desks and other such furniture are the focal point.  

There are some odd things but the conception works marvellously giving the production an American slant and feel. In the opening scene Goro the marriage broker (Ian McEuen) is showing off the house on the hill. We are in the consulate in this production and Zambello solves the problem by having Goro show a model of the house. When Sharpless complains about the hard climb, we just ignore it.

When the Bonze (Thomas Richards) appears to renounce and denounce Cio-Cio San appears the lighting changes, the furniture fades away and we are transported to the top of the hill. A few simple, translucent panels are sufficient to indicate Pinkerton’s and Cio-Cio-San’s brief love nest.

The overall effect is startling, electric, astounding. Madame Butterfly, a strong woman, in the busy American consular offices gives a very different feel from her as a poor girl on the top of a hill. She sings her moving aria “Un bel di vedremo” in the consulate rather than on the hill and it is full of passion, faith and longing.

In the final scene, she stabs herself and a blood-red curtain is lowered on the stage. Pinkerton rushes on stage, tears down the curtain and embraces Butterfly. Their little boy (the very cute Louis McKinny) rushes in and jumps on his father’s back. There is not a dry eye in the house.

WOW!   

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Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini John opened on July 11 and will be performed a total of thirteen times until August 23, 2014 as part of the Glimmerglass Festival at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

CAROUSEL – REVIEW OF GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Ryan McKinny as Billy Bigelow and the ensemble in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2014 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Reviewed by James Karas

The Glimmerglass Festival, under its Artistic and General Director Francesca Zambello, is continuing with its established programming of one chestnut (Madame Butterfly), one less well-known work (Ariadne auf Naxos), one modern opera (An American Tragedy) and a Broadway musical (Carousel). Running from July 11 to August 24, 2014 in a picture-perfect setting on Lake Otsego near Cooperstown, New York, the Festival is the ideal companion piece for baseball enthusiasts. (No, companion piece does not mean antidote!)      

This year’s Broadway offering is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel in a production directed by Charles Newell. It is an intelligent work that, in addition to its great melodies, comedy and drama, touches on the question of good and evil and travels to the afterlife and back.

Billy Bigelow (Ryan McKinny) is a carousel barker with many unpleasant traits including ill temper, violence, and attempted robbery to his discredit. Julie Jordan (Andrea Carroll) sees his good side and marries him despite being struck by him. The robbery is botched and Billy stabs himself. He is not permitted to enter heaven because he has not done enough good and he returns here 15 years later to see his daughter and the rest of his circle.

Sharin Apostolou as Carrie, Andrea Carroll as Julie and Ryan McKinny as Billy Bigelow in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Bass-baritone McKinny gives a fine accounting of the role of Billy. We don’t like Billy but, like Julie, we want to like him. McKinny soars when he sings and we find sympathy for his character and his desire to help his daughter.

Carroll’s Julie is the soul of forbearance, forgiveness and love in a fine performance. She is matched by soprano Sharin Apostolou as Carrie, the woman who marries Enoch (tenor Joe Shadday) for practical reasons. She ends up with wealth, status and many children.

Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel gives a superb performance as Nettie Fowler as does Rebecca Finnegan as Mrs. Mullin. Shadday fell a bit short of the vocal requirements for Enoch but overall the singing and acting were very good.

Carolina M. Villaraos as Louise and Tyler Whitaker as Enoch Snow Jr. danced the beautiful ballet sequence in the second act. Kudos to choreographer Daniel Pelzig.

John Culbert’s sets are Spartan but effective. There is the suggestion of a fishing village with very little ornamentation and the scene in heaven is done with changes in lighting and little else. You can provide elaborate sets but you don’t need them for a fine production. Mark McCullough deserves special kudos for his imaginative and highly effective use of lighting.  

Doug Peck conducts The Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra in a fine rendition of Rodgers’s score.

Charles Newell directs with economy of ornamentation but with musical and emotional effectiveness.         _____

Carousel by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) opened on July 12 and will be performed twelve times in repertory until August 22, 2014 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

TRAUERNACHT - REVIEW OF AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

With Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Handel as its lead composers, this year’s opera offerings by the Aix-en-Provence Festival have a decidedly Germanic dominance. Only Rossini has no Teutonic connection. And all this on top of the World Cup.

You didn’t know that J. S. Bach composed an opera? Well, he didn’t but he did compose some 400 cantatas of which only half have survived. Conductor Raphaël Pichon and Director Katie Mitchell decided that they can fashion an opera using some of Bach’s cantatas and the result is Trauernacht or Night of Mourning. Mitchell has described the production as a meditation on death.

They have chosen parts from about a dozen cantatas and fashioned them thematically into a night of mourning by a family. Only the Father (Frode Olsen) is identified. The other four singers are identified only by their vocal range: soprano (Aoife Miskelly), alto (Eve-Maud Hubeaux), tenor (Rupert Charlesworth) and bass (Andri Bjorn Robertsson).

They are accompanied by the 11-member Ensemble baroque de l’Academie européenne de music conducted by Pichon.

There has clearly been a death in the family and the four singers sit around a simple table in a sparsely furnished kitchen. The father is a few feet behind them.

The programme opens with Johann Christoph Bach’s somber motet “Mit Weinen hebt’s an” (the only piece not by Johann Sebastian Bach). We are afflicted with sorrows from birth to death and only then do they cease, according to the motet. The programme then continues with cantatas sung by the five singers as solos or in various groupings. The singers carry out some mundane activities around the “kitchen” always moving slowly and methodically.    

The Chorus of Cantata BWV 146 continues the theme of our destiny to suffer: "Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal" (we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God). But the soprano aria from Cantata BWV 127 “Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen” (my soul rests in the hands of Jesus) gives hope of everlasting life.

The tenor and alto follow with the recitative from Cantata BWV 60  “O Schwerer Gang” (O difficult way) where fear of death and suffering is superseded by faith in a merciful God.

The programme leads to Cantata BWV 82 - "Ich habe genug" (I have enough) where the faithful has taken Jesus into his heart and is ready to join Him. The programme ends with the Chorale BWV 668 “Vor deinem Thron” (before your throne) where the poor sinner is past the sorrows of mortals and appears before God’s throne praying for His grace.

The singers have commendable voices and the instrumental performances were sound. The performance lasts 90 minutes without an intermission. The idea of creating an opera out of Bach’s cantatas is interesting and meditating on death is a sobering experience. The beauty of Bach’s music and the hope given by Christian faith make this meditation quite other-worldly and the World Cup utterly mundane.       

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Trauernacht by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach opened on July 11 and will be performed a total of six times until July 21, 2014 at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/

IL TURCO IN ITALIA - REVIEW OF AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Fate was simply not on the side of the Aix-en-Provence Festival for a couple of days this year. Perhaps that eschatological supposition is exaggerated. Let’s say that the union representing stage hands and technicians who work occasionally, “les intermittents,” went on strike. A polite strike in the end but sufficiently bad to cause the cancellation of the opening production of Il Turco in Italia on July 4.

There was a second performance scheduled for July 7 and all was well with union. It was no so with the weather as rain was forecast and playing in the open-air Théâtre de l'Archevêché, was not a good idea. They decided to transfer the performance to the Grand Théâtre de Provence and tell everyone about the switch. Somehow the message trickled through but the performance was to be a concert version or a semi-staged affair at best.

Fortunately the union and the weather cooperated and the opera was performed at l'Archevêché on July 9, 2014.

There is nothing more pleasant than seeing a production twice in three days unless, that is, you can see it three times. The concert performance was thoroughly enjoyable. The characters wore the same costumes as in the staged performance and you got some idea of what Director Christopher Alden had in mind.

Alden seems to have taken some inspiration for his conception of the opera from Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Il Turco is structured around a poet looking for plot ideas from the happenings on the beach of Naples. A Turk arrives and falls in love with the lovely Fiorilla. Don Narcisso is already in love with her and her husband Don Geronio is pretty mad about it. The Turk is followed by Zaida, a former love of his. For the poet this is pretty juicy stuff and excellent plot material.

In the concert version, Il Turco turned into Seven Characters in Search of a Director. When I saw the staged version, I confirmed that the characters in the concert performance appeared in costume. They all wore modern clothes that would be suitable in Naples, I suppose. There was nothing particularly notable about what any of them wore except for Fiorilla who was a knockout.

There was some interaction among the characters to be sure but with the stage occupied by Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble there was not much space to do very much. Under the circumstances, the cast did extraordinary work. In the end, the performers received a thoroughly enthusiastic and sustained ovation.                     

However good, it was still like kissing through a fence – something was missing. There is no substitute for a fully staged performance.

Alden converts Rossini’s “dramma buffa” into a play-within-a-play using the character of the Poet Prosdocimo as the directing mind of the unfolding events. The Poet is not just an observer of happenings; he directs and creates some of the events of the opera. He gives the characters sheets of paper containing dialogue and they read out what he has written for them. The Poet becomes the most important character in the opera.

The major characters are on stage most of the time, even when they have nothing to do. After all this is a play/opera in the making and not an actual performance.    

Who makes the poet’s plot?

Fiorilla (sung beautifully by Olga Peretyatko) is an airhead but she is a gorgeous airhead. She is also a coquette, a teaser and a sexual magnet that no sensible man could resist. She puts on a blonde wig, strips to a slip and drives men crazy. She is married to the older Don Geronio (Alessandro Corbelli) and falls in love with Selim the Turk (Adrian Sampetrean) and invites him to her house for coffee. Peretyatko brings out all these traits and in the end sings “Squallida veste e bruna,” a show-stopping aria where Fiorilla repents and sees herself as she is. With beautiful but restrained ornamentation and outpouring of emotion, her bravura performance brings the house down. In the concert performance Peretyatko fell on her knees; in the staged performance she wrapped herself in the sail of the ship that is part of the set. Both nights she was magnificent.

Corbelli, short, chubby, is the perfect comic character. He can do patter songs, comic business and deliver those funny baritone roles as if they written for him.    

Sampetrean as Selim appears just like any visitor to Naples, wearing a not-too-distinctive cap. There are no jewels on his turban, nor any fancy robes as the libretto mentions. He serves the production well vocally.        

Baritone Pietro Spagnoli, as I said, is given center stage by Alden. Even before the overture, we see him pacing up and down, looking at his typewriter, a man in distress. He is suffering from writer’s block until he sees a good story unfolding before his eyes. He controls the development of the characters until a couple of them rebel against their creator. Spagnoli is a fine acting singer who brings to life the Poet.

Don Narcisso is a puzzling character. He is in love with Fiorilla and provides one more source of fun, I suppose. He is a relatively minor character but he does get a major aria in “Tu seconda il mio disegno.” But do you bring the extraordinary tenor Lawrence Brownlee for that? Alden makes Narcisso into a pathetic non-entity in a trench coat. He walks with his head down, tilted to the side; he looks and acts like a lifeless loser. In the concert version, Brownlee walked on stage with self-assurance. In the staged performance, he had to act the role of the dummy and I am not sure why Alden cast the character as such.

By adopting Pirandellian ideas for Il Turco, Alden makes the opera more interesting and perhaps a more substantial work. Its silly plot becomes a play in the making, Prosdocimo becomes a writer in search of a plot whose characters rebel against him. Not bad for an opera whose plot seems pretty inane.  

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Il Turco in Italia by Gioacchino Rossini was performed in a concert version on July 7 at the Grand Théâtre de Provence and in a fully staged version on July 9 at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché where it will be performed another five times until July 22, 2014 in Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/