Opera Music

Nmon FordWhen one thinks of the operatic version of Macbeth, one immediately thinks of Giuseppe Verdi. However, the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch wrote a highly dramatic version in 1906, which has only been performed once in the U.S., at the Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1973.The opera is about to double the number of U.S. performances it has received, with performances at the Long Beach Opera from June 15-23, 2013 and again at the Chicago Opera Theater from September 13-21, 2014. The Long Beach performances will feature Panamanian-American barihunk Nmon Ford in the title role and Suzan Hanson as his scheming wife Lady Macbeth. Adding to the dramatic effect will be the location of the performance, which will be in a vast industrial space at the Port of Los Angeles. The Chicago Opera Theater has not confirmed casting. The great Inge Borkh sings Bloch's Macbeth: Bloch’s opera reveals the influence of Wagner's music dramas and Claude Debussy's symbolist opera "Pelleas et Melisande." Bloch's probing and dramatic score powerfully illuminates the central couple, and deeply examines the temptation of promised power and its influence over our actions. but it did not receive its first performance until November 30, 1910 by the Opéra-Comique Paris. After the premiere production, the opera was staged in 1938 in Naples, but was then banned on orders of the Fascist government. Subsequently, the opera was produced in Rome in 1953, and in Trieste.

Admit it: You thought we were gonna say Solti or von Karajan, right? Girls, girls, tuck your brass knuckles back...

Royal Festival Hall Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act One Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act One and ‘Liebestod’ Die Walküre: Act Three Isolde, Brünnhilde – Susan Bullock Sieglinde – Giselle Allen Wotan – James Rutherford Helmwige – Katherine Broderick Gerhilde – Mariya Krywaniuk Siegrune – Magdalen Ashman Grimgerde – Antonia Sotgiu Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill Waltraute – Jennifer Johnston Rossweisse – Maria Jones Schwertleite – Miriam Sharrad David Edwards (director) David Holmes (lighting) Philharmonia Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis (director) London’s two principal opera companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s two-hundredth anniversary. With ENO, once home to Reginald Goodall, one may delete the ‘near’; the Royal Opera has opted for a single production, in November, of Parsifal, whose casting does not exactly lift the spirits. There is certainly nothing anywhere near the composer’s birthday itself. The BBC Proms have valiantly stepped into the gap, offering concert performances of the Ring (Barenboim), Tristan und Isolde (Bychkov), Parsifal (Elder) and Tannhäuser (Runnicles). Those concerts, however, will not take place until July and August. For 22 May, London’s offering was a Philharmonia concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Doubtless there was stiff competition for Wagner conductors on the day, and Chirstian Thielemann was otherwise occupied in Bayreuth, but it was difficult not to feel that someone with greater Wagerian credentials might at least have been a possibility. Bernard Haitink, for instance? Most of us would readily have swapped the aforementioned Parsifal to hear the Royal Opera’s erstwhile music director once again in Wagner. Was I being unfair? The proof of the aural pudding would, as always, be in the hearing. Sadly, the Prelude to the first act of Die Meistersinger – not its ‘Overture’, as the programme insert had it – received an account, which, if undoubtedly preferable to the straightforward incomprehension Antonio Pappano had shown conducting the entire opera at Covent Garden, proved no more than Kapellmeister-ish. Timings as such tell one nothing, but it felt rushed, often more martial than celebratory. There was certainly no sense of midsummer blaze or indeed embers. The Philharmonia strings, though many in number, sometimes tended towards wiriness. Detail was either skated or fussed over. Though there was more fire towards the close, it was really too late by then. It doubtless had not helped that, earlier in the day, I had listened to Furtwängler conducting the same music in 1931, but even taking that into account, it was an undistinguished performance. Rather to my surprise, the Tristan excerpts worked better. I remain sceptical, to put it mildly, about the wisdom of pairing the first act Prelude and the so-called ‘Liebestod’ (Liszt’s wretched description of Isolde’s Transfiguration). Though I am well aware of the distinguished precedents – even Furtwängler and Boulez have followed the practice – to my ears it jars. That said, both conductor and orchestra were on better form. Not only was their a fuller string sound but Davis now seemed to understand, certainly to communicate, that something was at stake. He struck a good balance between forward impulse and a more analytical approach to the score. Though certainly not plumbing any Furtwänglerian metaphysical depths, it was a satisfying enough musical experience. Susan Bullock, joining for the ‘Liebestod’, held her line well enough. At some times, she shaded sensitively; at others, she proved rather squally. The Philharmonia, however, offered beautifully shimmering and pulsating support. Whoever interposed immediately with a boorish ‘Bravo!’ should be condemned to listen to Verdi for the rest of Wagner’s anniversary year. The second half was devoted to the third act of Die Walküre. It is

La Scala formally announced its 2013-14 season today, confirming last month's leak. A full calendar and cast details are now available on the La Scala website. Another important announcement may be made by La Scala later today.

The great Mario del Monaco sang his first Otello in Buenos Aires in 1952.The conductor is Antonino Votto. The late Delia Rigal sings Desdemona, and the role of Iago (who became an Otello years later) is sung by Carlos Guichandut. The Cassio is Eugenio Valori and the Emilia is Emma Brizzio. (71 min.)

A small catalogue, and a huge impact. by Paul J. Pelkonen Composer Henri Dutilleux died May 22, 2013 in Paris, France. The great French composer Henri Dutilleux has died in Paris. He was 97. Dutilleux helped guide the path of concert music in the 20th century away from the serial techniques first practiced by Schoenberg and Webern. His two Symphonies and Cello Concerto are among his most important works, complex pieces that challenged the ear while fearlessly breaking ground in the use of modes and atonality. A fierce self-critic, Dutilleux published a small catalogue of pieces over a long compositional career. Henri Dutilleux was born in Algiers in 1916. Although he studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire and won the 1938 Prix de Rome, the outbreak of World War II put his music career on hold. The composer served a year as a medical orderly in the French Army, and then taught music, managed the chorus at the Paris Opera and worked at Radio France until 1963. He later taught at the Conservatoire. As the war continued, Dutilleux began to gain a reputation as a significant compositional voice with chamber music and songs. His 1950s output included the First Symphony (1951) which drew fiery criticism from a young French composer named Pierre Boulez. “He was very brutal," Dutilleux told an interviewer once, (as reported in an obituary published earlier today in the Daily Telegraph.) "When he was young, he didn’t like what I wrote, and I didn’t agree with his aesthetics at all. The problem was he had a lot more power than me." Listen to a performance of Dutilleux' Métaboles. Later works included the Symphony No. 2 (Le Double) and the Cello Concerto 'Tout un monde lointain...' inspired by the poetry of Charles Baudelaire (and the composer's favorite work among his output) were commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Slowly, Dutilleux began to make his reputation overseas. In 1985, Isaac Stern premiered L'arbre des songes, a violin concerto that he himself commissioned. Other works in his sparse catalogue were inspired by literature and art. Notable among these were The Shadows of Time which is dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank, and Timbres, espace, mouvement, a musical evocation of the Van Gogh painting Starry Night. In 2012, the New York Philharmonic held a special all-Dutilleux concert to commemorate the composer being awarded the first Marie-Josée Prize for New Music. That concert featured the composer's orchestral work Métaboles and the Míro String Quartet playing Ainsi la nuit, one of his few chamber pieces. The concert ended with Yo-Yo Ma playing the aforementioned Cello Concerto. A review appeared on Superconductor.

I will make every effort to stop reading like a Cecilia Bartoli fanzine now that the Whitsun Festival is over. Cecilia's contract has been renewed until 2016, because she has been wildly successful. A quote from the Salzburg Times:The Whitsun Festival in Salzburg has set a new record of visitors and revenue. Cecilia Bartoli, a popular soloist and the artistic director of the festival, was particularly popular.13,450 visitors from 43 countries attended the concerts and performances in Salzburg and bought tickets for 1.3 million Euros. The contract with the artistic director for the Whitsun Festival, Cecilia Bartoli, has been extended until 2016.“I am very happy to be able to bring music and pleasure to Salzburg until 2016”, Ms Bartoli said. She has been artistic director as well as soloist of opera and concert in the four-day festival.“I look forward to carry out many ideas at the Whitsun Festival, of which I have dreamt of for years. I am very thankful that such a huge and interested audience is so enthusiastic about us being adventurous”, Ms Bartoli said.In 2012 the attendance was 10,520, and in 2011, before Cecilia took over, it was 7,600. Next year it will be June 5 to 9, and will celebrate Rossini, including Otello and La Cenerentola. Cecilia sang Otello just last year, but I don't think she's done Cenerentola for quite a while, or at least since I began blogging. I don't know when the tickets go on sale.

America’s most celebrated living composer is in town for a two-week festival spanning multiple venues. This week, the Library of Congress hosts Adams in residency. Various chamber groups and soloists will perform his work beginning tonight, including the premiere of a newly commissioned piece on Friday with the International Contemporary Ensemble. The following week, Adams conducts the National Symphony Orchestra as they perform his City Noir symphony at the Kennedy Center. Adams spoke with the Washington City Paper by phone from his home in California.

One of the legendary Maria Callas performances. This Tosca from Mexico 1952 is conducted by Guido Picco. Giuseppe Di Stefano is the Cavaradossi and Piero Campolonghi is the Scarpia (72 min.)

Likely more than 30,000 people attended the ten-performance run of the Met’s recent Giulio Cesare (with many thousands more viewing its April 27 HD-transmission). Probably no more than 100 gathered Tuesday in a curtained-off space in the lobby of NYC’s Gershwin Hotel to witness the North American premiere of Rodrigo by operamission. But much of this wildly uneven version of Handel’s second opera felt more deeply genuine than the Met’s more polished, yet vapid “show biz” effort. Last year in the same space Jennifer Peterson’s group gave the US stage premiere of Handel’s first opera Almira. Perhaps they are planning to work chronologically through the composer’s oeuvre since this year we got his fifth opera as the three German-Italian works he composed for Hamburg to follow-up on the success of Almira have not survived. Handel’s trip to Italy proved the crucial moment in his development as a composer, particularly as a composer of vocal music, arriving in Florence in 1706 at the age of 21. By the next year he had moved on to Rome where he composed his first fully Italian opera Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria (To conquer oneself is the greatest victory), more easily known by its hero’s name—Rodrigo–for a premiere at Florence’s Teatro Cocomero in late 1707. After those performances, the work disappeared completely until its resurrection at the 1984 Innsbruck Festival, conducted by Alan Curtis, whose excellent 1997 complete recording far outshines a more recent effort by Eduardo López Banzo. Although Winton Dean in the first volume of his towering study of Handel’s operas gives Rodrigo a hard time, we do find the composer still finding his way, but the score, while not the masterpiece his next opera Agrippina would be, contains many memorable arias (some familiar from the many cantatas he wrote during this time) that could only be by Handel, plus the very first of his great duets for the hero and heroine “Prendi l’alma e prendi il core.” Part of Rodrigo’s problem is that that hero is quite an unlikeable chap—a King of Castille who has seduced and impregnated Florinda, the sister of his trusted general Giuliano who has been assisting his ambitions to conquer Aragon, whose king Evanco has been captured. Despite his ruthless political and erotic maneuvering, Rodrigo’s barren queen Esilea remains fanatically loyal to him, magnanimously offering to step aside and let Florinda and her child ascend to the throne. Of course, Rodrigo eventually sees the errors of his ways and returns to his faithful wife while a chastened Florinda (who spends most of the opera plotting vengeance on the duplicitous Rodrigo) turns her amorous attentions to the newly freed Evanco. Dean’s critique of the opera often has to do with problems with the libretto, one derived from Francesco Silvani’s for M.A. Ziani’s 1699 opera Il duello d’amore e di vendetta. However, many adjustments were made for Handel–due to the excellence of the tenor assigned to the role of Giuliano, his character’s music grew from two arias in the Ziani original to seven in Handel’s final version. Evanco has three arias in the first two acts of Rodrigo, then three more (all pretty much on the same subject—his hopeful love for Florinda) unhelpfully bunched together within the final six numbers before the final coro. Yet nearly all the arias are beguiling, moving and most of all revelatory of their characters, while still occasionally providing the opportunity for the singer to display his florid skills. Tuesday’s mostly-American cast—directed simply but effectively by Jeff Caldwell—was not the last word in virtuosity, yet it by and large gave committed, persuasive performances. The performance did not begin promisingly, however. As Peterson’s edition chose not to reconstruct music missing from the material rediscovered in the 70s and 80s, the performance began (after the nearly 20-minute overture) with Florinda’s first aria “Pugneran con noi le stelle” in which Madelin