Opera Music

As everyone must know by now, Wagner will be 200 tomorrow. I posted a few thoughts a couple of days ago concerning his continuing, inescapable impotance from a standpoint of composition and stage direction. Most of my 2013 Wagner experiences have yet to come, but so far I have no doubt as to that which has made the greatest impression on me: Oper Leipzig's tremendous advocacy for Die Feen. I urge anyone for whom it might be the slightest possibility to consider a visit. It is by any standards a wonderful opera, both in its own right and on account of the uncanny presentiments it offers not only for every single one of Wagner's subsequent stage works, but also for works such as Gurrelieder and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Moreover, it benefits both from an intelligent production and fine musical performances. (The only case in which the Chelsea Opera Group's concert performance a little over a month earlier was preferable was Elisabeth Meister's stunning Lora, though it also had a good cast overall.) If any operatic staging this year, other than Stefan Herheim's forthcoming Salzburg Meistersinger - and I think I can say this before having seen a minute of it - demands wider circulation on DVD, it must be this. In the meantime, the late Wolfgang Sawallisch's recording, from the 1983 Munich season in which he, at the Bavarian State Opera, conducted all of Wagner's dramas, remains the only truly recommenable recorded performance; I provide a link below. Here, howver, is a taste of the twenty-year-old composer's first completed opera, its Overture performed by the same orchestra in 1952, conducted by Franz Konwitschny (yes, father of Peter), who imparts just the right balance between roots in Weber, Marschner, and others (Beethoven and Mozart being more evident elsewhere in the score), and a forward-looking dramatic imperative which belongs unmistakeably to Leipzig's greatest son:

I had one of those tedious days yesterday getting stuff done - but lovely to clear the desk and to-do list.  But it ended with a very happy dinner with David Agler, Artistic Director of the Wexfor Festival, who is in town briefly.  I hope to make it to Wexford again this year......... The rest of the week is somewhat hectic.  I will be in France this afternoon until Thursday morning, the exciting new Wozzeck at the ENO on Thursday evening, on Friday some lovely catch up with a dear friend who is getting married in July - and I can't be at the wedding, and then to Norwich for the weekend. This is for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. From then on its all go until I get back from my Europe Neue Stimmen tour on June 16.  Lots of excitement ahead!

How do you do full justice to one of the greatest geniuses in all music? On May 22, we celebrate the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner. We know from various sources that he was not exactly a Teddybear, but most of us who appreciate opera, treasure his work, separately from any personality characteristics;in fact, if we delved into the lives of many composers, we might not find everyone as lovable as we might want. Who cares? Here are some scenes from his operas with the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Knappertsbusch: Gotterdamerung: Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Funeral Music Parsifal: "Ich sah das Kind" sung by Kirsten Flagstad Walkure Finale sung by George London Tristan und Isolde Prelude and Liebestod sung by Birgit Nilsson. (63 min.)

One startling upset catches the eye among the many winners (if that is the word) of the 2013 Parterre Box Awards. The surprise is “Worst New Production at the Met,” a dubious honor won by David Alden‘s production of Un ballo in maschera. Honestly, La Cieca doesn’t get it, but she hopes that at least some of the 336 of you who votes that way will explain your opinion in the comments section. Continuing with the rest of the awards in their traditional order: Best New Production at the Met: Parsifal, with 513 votes, a clear majority of 61% of total votes cast. Best Revival at the Met: Dialogues des Carmélites Worst Revival at the Met: Der Ring des Nibelungen Best Production at NYCO: Powder Her Face Best Other New York Opera Production: I Lombardi (OONY) Best Performance in a Diva Role: Joyce DiDonato in Maria Stuarda Worst Performance in a Diva Role: Deborah Voigt in Der Ring des Nibelungen Best Performance in a Divo Role: Jonas Kaufmann in Parsifal (over 70% of votes cast) Worst Performance in a Divo Role: Marcello Giordani in Les Troyens Best Performance in a Non-Diva Role: Peter Mattei in Parsifal Most Significant Cancellation: Marcello Giordani in Les Troyens Einspringer of the Year: Bryan Hymel in Les Troyens (over 75% of votes cast) Maestro of the Year: Yannick Nézet-Séguin Debut of the Year: Bryan Hymel in Les Troyens

Malin Christensson and Edwin Crossley-Mercer in Los Angeles (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times)We posted about the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Mozart -Da Ponte Trilogy awhile back. If you missed getting tickets for Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, you missed some serious eye-candy, with three barihunks who have been on this site. Leading the way was the sexy Figaro of Edwin Crossley-Mercer. The LA Times wrote, "Baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer was a distant, angry, virile yet, as Alaïa dressed him, metrosexual Figaro." After seeing the pictures, we would have added "smoking hot" to the list of superlatives. Also in the cast is Christopher Maltman as the Count. The LA Times wrote, "Maltman [wore] tight whites that only a powerful man could get away with, but Maltman is a magnetic baritone scarily uncowed. When outwitted, he still holds all the power, and he sang that way." In the small role of Antonio is Barihunk calendar model Brandon Cedel. Dorothea Röschmann and Christopher Maltman (Genaro Molina) There are still two performances remaining on May 23 and May 25. Conducting wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel is leading the orchestra. Visit their website for tickets. If you want to catch Crossley-Mercer in the United States, you may want to catch one of these performances. When he wraps up on May 25th, he heads back to Europe for a series of concerts and operas in France and Germany. He kicks of on June 9th at the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch Partenkirchen before heading to the Théâtre des Champs Élysées on June 20th for Fauré's Pénélope. There are no other U.S. performances listed on his schedule. If you want to catch Brandon Cedel, he'll be appearing at the Wolf Trap Opera beginning on June 21st in Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims. That production also includes barihunks Aaron Sorensen, Norman Garrett and Steven LaBrie. Additional information is available online.

The Metropolitan Opera has decided to disband its resident ballet company, whose roots date back to the opera’s founding in 1883. The 8 remaining dancers of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, down from 16 in 2011, have accepted buyout packages and left the company, their union confirmed.

As you may have already spotted, the Guardian is streaming all six of this season's Glyndebourne productions on its website this summer. Three are live (including the two new productions, Ariadne auf Naxos and Hippolyte et Aricie) and three are recorded. Here are the times: Ariadne auf Naxos – Strauss (live broadcast): 4 June, 7pm Falstaff – Verdi (recorded 2009): 21 June, 1.30pm Le Nozze di Figaro – Mozart (recorded 2012): 12 July, 1.30pm Hippolyte et Aricie – Rameau (live broadcast): 25 July, 6.15pm Don Pasquale – Donizetti (live broadcast): 6 August, 7.15pm Billy Budd – Britten (recorded in 2010): 23 August, 1.30pm

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • May 19, 2013 We tend to be a little buttoned down here in Washington — our suit-to-hipster ratio is a zillion to one, at last count — so outsiders are sometimes surprised to find that the District has one of the most interesting and adventurous contemporary music scenes on the East Coast. Part of the credit goes to the Great Noise Ensemble, a virtuosic outfit that — in a must-hear series at the Atlas Performing Arts Center over the past year — has showcased more than a dozen rising young American composers and revealed some spectacular talent.Shawn JaegerThat talent was amply on display at the series’s closing concert Friday night. Shawn Jaeger’s “Poor and Wretched,” which opened the program, was inspired by an arcane form of hymn singing, used by Appalachian Baptist congregations, in which the chorus freely echoes a leader rather than precisely following a score. “I wanted to capture the complexity, rawness and honesty” of that music, Jaeger told the audience.“Poor” proved to be a luminous piece that treated the instrumental ensemble much like a chorus, united in a loosely flowing, soft-edged sort of hymn, full of the natural inflections and patterns of human speech. There may have been more calculated inexactness to the music than raw spontaneity, and it never quite captured the ecstatic quality of the original singing. But the work’s warmth and quiet beauty were often deeply moving.It’s just a coincidence — a happy one — that the new “Great Gatsby” film has appeared at the same time as “Letters From Zelda,” in which Sean Doyle sets to music the letters written to F. Scott Fitzgerald by his wife. Penned by a woman who was extraordinary in every way, Zelda’s letters range from her love-struck days in the 1920s to her final years in a sanatorium two decades later, suffering from bipolar disorder. It’s Sean Doylerich material, and Doyle’s vivid, eventful score captured the intensity and hyper-articulate confusion that run through the letters — the music of a poetic mind slowly falling apart. Brilliantly written, full of the anything-goes spirit of the Jazz Age, “Letters” captured the shimmering highs and bleak lows of Zelda’s life, and soprano Lisa Perry (valiantly holding her own over a large and exuberant ensemble) brought a fine, delicately unhinged edge to the music.Daniel Felsenfeld calls his “Revolutions of Ruin” a kind of “road oratorio” about adolescence and the path to adulthood. It’s a journey we’ve all made, and Felsenfeld taps into the intensity, anguish, self-absorption and inner turmoil we endure in forging our identities. But “Revolutions” isn’t some pat coming-of-age story — it resolves not into self-knowledge but into a full-fledged adolescent power fantasy, awash in apocalyptic blood lust (towns burn, heads are dashed, the rich are torn limb from limb) and a kind of glorious solipsism. The fine baritone Joshua Brown joined Perry for the lead roles in this remarkable (and musically gorgeous) epic, with support from the HexaCollective vocal ensemble.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died. My son is a bigger fan than I am, so I have asked him to recommend some films. He is very young in this one, surely. I like.This is a huge contrast. He is much older. Back to young again for Don Carlo.I probably wouldn't have picked this one. Oh well.In my youth he was the most recorded of classical musicians. I enjoyed this selection more than I thought I would, and don't forget I posted him singing "Dover Beach."

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, GermanyMay 20, 2013DON GIOVANNIDramma giocoso in two actsMusic by Wolfgang Amadeus MozartLibretto by Lorenzo da PonteThomas Hengelbrock, Musical DirectionPhilipp Himmelmann, StagingFlorence von Gerkan, CostumesJohannes Leiacker, Stage DesignBalthasar-Neumann-ChoirBalthasar-Neumann-OrchestraJory Vinikour PianoAnna Netrebko, Donna AnnaErwin Schrott, Don GiovanniLuca Pisaroni, LeporelloMalena Ernman, Donna ElviraCharles Castronovo, Don OttavioKatija Dragojevic, ZerlinaJonathan Lemalu, MasettoMario Luperi, KomturREVIEWBy HerbertThe second show of Don Giovanni went smoother than the premiere, but this is quite normal. The singers were less nervous after the opening night, so everything went alright. It was a great show with Anna Netrebko, Erwin Schrott and Luca Pisaroni at the centre.After the performance all artists left the Festspielhaus at the stage door. Anna had a text book of Britten's WAR REQUIEM in her hand, and I asked her if this was to prepare for Salzburg. She said long before Salzburg there would be a recording of the War Requiem with Pappano.PHOTOSDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertErwin Schrott. Don Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertErwin Schrott. Don Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertAnna Netrebko. Don Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: HerbertAnna Netrebko. Don Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 20. May 2013. Photo: Herbert