Recently in Performances
Barbe & Doucet's new production of Die Zauberflöte at Glyndebourne
No one would pretend that Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto for Mozart's Die Zauberflöte would go down well with the #MeToo generation. Or with first, second or third wave feminists for that matter.
Three Chamber Operas at the Aix Festival
Along with the celestial Mozart Requiem, a doomed Tosca and a gloriously witty Mahagonny the Aix Festival's new artistic director Pierre Audi regaled us with three chamber operas — the premiere of a brilliant Les Mille Endormis, the technically playful Blank Out (on a turgid subject), and a heavy-duty Jakob Lenz.
Laurent Pelly's production of La Fille du régiment returns to Covent Garden
French soprano Sabine Devieilhe seems to find feisty adolescence a neat fit. I first encountered her when she assumed the role of a pill-popping nightclubbing 'Beauty' - raced from ecstasy-induced wonder to emergency ward - when I reviewed the DVD of Krzysztof Warlikowski's production of Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Aix-en-Provence in 2016.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Aix
Make no mistake, this is about you! Jim laid-out dead on the stage floor, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his very loud orchestra (London's Philharmonia) to an abrupt halt. Black out. The maestro then turned his spotlighted face to confront us and he held his stare. There was no mistake, the music was about us.
Mozart's Travels: Classical Opera and The Mozartists at Wigmore Hall
There was a full house at Wigmore Hall for Classical Opera's/The Mozartists' final concert of the 2018-19 season: a musical paysage which chartered, largely chronologically, Mozart's youthful travels from London to The Hague, on to Paris, then Rome, concluding - following stop-overs in European cultural cities such as Munich and Vienna - with an arrival at his final destination, Prague.
Tosca in Aix
From the sublime — the Mozart Requiem — to the ridiculous, namely stage director Christophe Honoré's Tosca. A ridiculous waste of operatic resources.
A terrific, and terrifying, The Turn of the Screw at Garsington
One might describe Christopher Oram's set for Louisa Muller's new production of The Turn of the Screw at Garsington as 'shabby chic' … if it wasn't so sinister.
Mozart Requiem in Aix
Pierre Audi, now the directeur général of the Festival d'Aix as well as the artistic director of New York City's Park Avenue Armory opens a new era for this distinguished opera festival in the south of France with a new work by the Festival's signature composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A Rachmaninov Drama at Middle Temple Hall
It is Rachmaninov's major works for orchestra - the Second and Third Piano Concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Symphonic Dances - alongside the All-Night Vespers and the music for solo piano, which have earned the composer a permanent place in the concert repertoire today.
Fun, Frothy, and Frivolous: L'elisir d'amore at Las Vegas
There are a dizzying array of choices for music entertainment in Las Vegas ranging from Celine Dion and Cher to Paul McCartney and Aerosmith. Admittedly, these performers are a far cry from opera, but the point is that Las Vegas residents have many options when it comes to live music.
McVicar's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro returns to the Royal Opera House
David McVicar's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has been a remarkable success since it debuted in 2006. Set with the Count of Almaviva's fearfully grand household in 1830, McVicar's trick is to surround the principals by servants in a supra-naturalistic production which emphasises how privacy is at a premium.
The Cunning Little Vixen at the Barbican Hall
The presence of a large cast of 'animals' in Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen can encourage directors and designers to create costume-confections ranging from Disney-esque schmaltz to grim naturalism.
Barbe-Bleue in Lyon
Stage director Laurent Pelly is famed for his Offenbach stagings, above all others his masterful rendering of Les Contes d'Hoffmann as a nightmare. Mr. Pelly has staged eleven of Offenbach's ninety-nine operettas over the years (coincidently this production of Barbe-Bleue is Mr. Pelly's ninety-eighth opera staging).
The Princeton Festival Presents Nixon in China
The Princeton Festival has adopted a successful and sophisticated operatic programming strategy, whereby the annual opera alternates between a standard warhorse and a less known, more challenging work. Last year Princeton presented Puccini's Madama Butterfly. This year the choice is Nixon in China by modern American composer John Adams, which opened before a nearly full house of appreciative listeners.
Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel at Grange Park Opera
When Engelbert Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, wrote the libretto to Hansel and Gretel the idea of a poor family living in a hut near the woods, on the bread-line, would have had an element of realism to it despite the sentimental layers which Wette adds to the tale.
Handel's Belshazzar at The Grange Festival
What a treat to see members of The Sixteen letting their hair down. This was no strait-laced post-concert knees-up, but a full on, drunken orgy at the court of the most hedonistic ruler in the Old Testament.
Don Giovanni in Paris
A brutalist Don Giovanni at the Palais Garnier, Belgian set designer Jan Versweyveld installed three huge, a vista raw cement towers that overwhelmed the Opéra Garnier's Second Empire opulence. The eight principals faced off in a battle royale instigated by stage director Ivo van Hove. Conductor Philippe Jordan thrust the Mozart score into the depths of expressionistic conflict.
A riveting Rake's Progress from Snape Maltings at the Aldeburgh Festival
Based on Hogarth's 18th-century morality tale in eight paintings and with a pithy libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, Stravinsky's operatic farewell to Neo-classicism charts Tom Rakewell's ironic 'progress' from blissful ignorance to Bedlam.
The Gardeners: a new opera by Robert Hugill
'When war shall cease this lonely unknown spot,/ Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,/ And flowers will shine in this now barren plot/ And fame upon it through the years descend:/ But many a heart upon each simple cross/ Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss.'
Richard Jones's Boris Godunov returns to Covent Garden
There are never any real surprises with a Richard Jones production and Covent Garden's Boris Godunov, first seen in 2016, is typical of Jones's approach: it's boxy, it's ascetic, it's over-bright, with minimalism turned a touch psychedelic in the visuals.
Les Pêcheurs de perles at the Washington National Opera
The second offering of the current WNO season is a San Diego Opera production of Georges Bizet's Pearl Fishers (1863).
Georges Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de perles
Leïla (Norah Amsellem), Nadir (Charles Castronovo), Zurga (Trevor Scheunemann), Nourabad (Denis Sedov). Washington National Opera. Giuseppe Grazioli (conductor). Andrew Sinclair (Director). Zandra Rhodes (Set and Costume Design)
Above: Norah Amsellem as Leila and Charles Castronovo as Nadir
All photos by Karin Cooper courtesy of Washington National Opera
The 24-year old composer's sixth and his second to be staged, this opera is a relatively little-known example of 19th-century French opera's obsession with exotica. Its mostly Oriental stories are populated by savage primitives, and sexy virgin priestesses who in the course of the plot would invariably fall victim to forbidden love. In The Pearl Fishers, Bizet and his librettists were evidently feeling charitable: the guilty passion for once does not prove fatal for the soprano. Instead, she is saved by the villainous baritone, who belatedly discovers his inner hero, and of course gets himself shot for his trouble.
The 25 September performance was generally of good quality. The orchestra did well under the baton of Ciuseppe Grazioli. So did the chorus— when it was on stage and was able to watch the maestro's baton, that is; the timing in the off-stage numbers was sometimes shaky.
Among the soloists, tenor Charles Castronovo as Nadir definitely stood out from the ensemble. His popular Act 1 romance "Je crois entendre encore" showcased the singer's strong metallic timbre with excellent projection in all registers. His softly beautiful high notes might perhaps be criticized as too thin; I personally liked the pianos and thought they were stylistically appropriate for a French opéra lyrique, which really should sound different from middle-period Verdi, although it rarely does.
Baritone Trevor Scheunemann as Zurga offered a rich vocal timbre and good blending in the ensembles, of which the famous Act 1 duet "Au fond du temple saint" was a particular highlight of the evening. Scheunemann's solos were solid, but not particularly memorable. It seemed to me that his concentration on the dramatic aspects of his part— specifically, his character's inability to decide whether to play a village Count di Luna or Marquis di Poza of Ceylon— sometimes got in the way of sound production.
French soprano Norah Amsellem as Leila was another solid choice in casting. Despite her vocal excellence, however, the singer, like her colleague Mr. Scheunemann, also seemed trapped in the inner contradictions of her character. This time, the issue is not young Bizet's inexperience as a dramatist, but rather the ideological "baggage" attached to the female lead in French Orientalist opera. Is she a virginal victim or an exotic seductress? One of these two favored clichés demands pure, crystalline high register and "floating" timbre with not much support; the other calls for a throaty, rich low and middle range, with rare but powerful highs. Although Ms Amsellem herself seemed to try charting some sort of middle ground, the casting of this singer, a dramatic soprano, indicates the director's preference for the seductress image. As a result, in my opinion, this Leila often sounded much too heavy for Bizet's delicate creation who, after all, is more Michaela than Carmen.
Norah Amsellem as Leila and Denis Sedov as Nourabad
Bass Denis Sedov as high priest Nouraband cut an imposing figure, but despite occasionally powerful sound did not impress with either diction or articulation. In this production, however, the very tall singer's towering physique was evidently more in demand than his vocal prowess. The stage director, Australian Andrew Sinclair, has attempted to both dramatize and modernize the story by superimposing a political intrigue à la Boris Godunov onto Bizet's unsuspecting characters, with Mr Sedov's Nouraband serving as the evil "old order" genius who masterminds the collapse of "liberal" Zurga's rule. Since no one told the composer about this particular plot twist, there was little in the score to support it. Instead, it was delivered entirely via stage business, which required a lot of "extra-curricular" wandering about the stage from Mr Sedov who did manage to look suitably menacing most of the time.
Another directorial attempt to make Bizet's dramatically challenging early work more palatable to modern audiences included the revamping of Act 3. It used neither the original love duet nor its common trio substitute, but did entail Leila partially disrobing, then getting assaulted during her duet with Zurga. Alas, the tedious scene was not at all improved by that spectacle. It did, however, allow Ms. Amsellem to showcase once again Leila's fanciful costume of an orange sari wrapped around a classic "Oriental" ensemble of a skimpy pink top with bare midriff and the see-through harem pants.
The bright palette of reds, oranges, pinks, and turquoise greens dominated the vibrant décor by celebrated British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Among the often striking visual effects she created, enhanced by the excellent lighting by Ron Vodicka, particularly notable was the scene of Leila's first appearance— carried on a live chariot by six men, immobile like a Buddha statue, her orange and gold veil spotlighted against deep purple backdrop. Rhodes' design ideas were always vivid and always intriguing. What bothered me in her vision was the stylistic discontinuity between the sets and costumes. The latter were colorful, with a nod to geographic authenticity, and in tune with the production's realist acting and staging. The former— deliberately perspective-less, two-dimensional, with fauvist-leaning color palette and a neo-primitivism-inspired images— were anything but "real."
The designer's closest stylistic ally in this production was John Malashock's choreography, on display so much that it became almost as ubiquitous as Ms Rhodes' sets. Indeed, even by dance-crazy French standards, ballet was often entirely superfluous, such as the number for what was evidently the "spirits of fire" that provided the background for the introduction to Leila's Act 1 prayer. When staging The Pearl Fishers, Mr. Sinclair outlawed "proper" ballet as unsuitable for the subject; thus, there was not a pointed shoe in sight (or any kind of shoe, for that matter, as all the dancers performed barefoot). Rare nods to "Oriental" choreography were confined to women's numbers, which unfortunately suffered from weak execution (this specifically refers to the quartet of Leila's attendants). The male dances, in a counterpart to Bizet's imaginary Ceylon, offered a picture of the "imaginary primitives" brandishing fighting pikes: their movements were athletic, aggressive, and purposefully inelegant, with ground stomping, angular hand and feet positions; pirouettes replaced by cartwheels. The Act 3 finale opened with a pas de trois in The Lion King-size animal masks— which was perhaps a little much, but it did save the director a major headache of having to come up with stage business for the endless choruses of this scene.
Norah Amsellem (top, veiled) as Leila, Trevor Scheunemann (foreground) as Zurga
Overall, the Washington audiences were presented with a solid, colorful, mostly traditional Les Pêcheurs de perles, well performed (despite some misgivings on my part) by a consistently good cast. The production, which runs through 7 October, offers few vocal fireworks; nor can it boast a truly new word in staging. Yet, for an old-fashioned opera lover, after last season's symbolist Dutchman and Nazi-fied Tamerlano, these realistic and suitably "Oriental" Pearl Fishers might be a welcome relief.
Olga Haldey