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• Minkowski
- live and in broadcast
In a few hours, I'll be seeing
Marc Minkowski and the Musiciens du Louvre here in Brasília (yes,
miracles do happen). While I wait for the concert, I am listening to
this amazing Mitridate from Salzburg. Together with Norrington's Idomeneo,
the outstanding features in a tepid Anniversary Festival. As always,
Minkowski's ear for dramatic details in the orchestra is exemplary,
his band is one of the most exciting around and he has an excellent
cast. Although Netta Or is not typically lovely-toned, she is a resourceful,
technically accomplished and imaginative, offering an expressive rendition
of the role of Aspasia. Next to her, Miah Persson offers a more immediately
appealing if less heroic soprano and proves to have a fluency with forceful
coloratura I didn't expect from her. Minkowski shows the role of Ismene
under a more tender light (especially in her first aria) and Ingela
Bohlin is aptly creamy-toned. I must confess I have listened to Bejun
Mehta in better shape, but even in his less impressive shape, he has
no rivals in his strong low register in the role of Farnace. Last but
definitely not least, Richard Croft confirms his reputation with a superbly
and intensely sung Mitridate. I read that many performances from this
year's Festival will be released on DVD; if this one is not among them,
record companies have made a serious mistake.
- Back from the concert and
still under the spell. I believe I am entitled to say that there can't
be a more dramatic performance of Idomeneo's ballet music and of Symphonies
no. 40 and 41. If the outer movements were predictably exuberant with
fiery passagework playing and bold accents, the inner movements passed
straight through prettiness and achieved real pathos, especially the
andante cantabile (41). I find it praiseworthy that Minkowski has tried
really hard to give variety of tone colour to the andante (40), a movement
that may pass unnoticed amidst the Sturm und Drang excitement of the
other movements. As an encore, a spirited account of the second moviment
Haydn's symphony no. 101. When you see Les Musiciens du Louvre play,
you understand why they achieve such level of Einverständnis -
it is because these people obviously relate to each other. You would
often see musicians look at each other and exchange congenial glances
while they played - and that these glances reveal an attitude about
what they are playing. Sometimes this doesn't occur in a traditional
orchestra because the thrill is long gone and musicians are just waiting
for the conductor to tell them the concept.
Saturday, October
21st 2006
• Handel from
Glyndenbourne
A review of William Christie's
DVD of Handel's Giulio Cesare has been added to the discography, together
with comments on Harnoncourt's old highlights disc for Teldec.
Thursday, October
19th 2006
• Still messing
with the Mass
Some months ago I have listened
through all my recordings of Mozart's Mass K 427 and made some comments.
Having added Herreweghe's, Karajan's and Louis Langrée's recordings
to my collection, I feel like making some comments.
Karajan's recording on DG
is considered by many a classic - and there is some truth in that. If
you want massive orchestral sound, a big choir and gravitas - this is
your performance. Tempi tend to be slower, but there is clarity aplenty.
I've decided to compare it with Levine, whose orchestral phrasing lacks
definition, not to mention that the chorus lacks discipline. Abbado
is far more buoyant and precise, but the recorded sound is too artifficial.
Also, Karajan has the best soloists in the discography. This is probably
Barbara Hendricks's best recording - she sings affectingly, stylishly
and her tone is at its most velvety. Janet Perry is less imaginative,
but sings with instrumental poist and brightness even in the lowest
reaches of the tessitura. Their voices blend beautifully and both Peter
Schreier and Benjamin Luxon are up to their high standards.
However, it is Louis Langrée
who offers what probably is the definitive recording of this difficult
piece. His approach is impressively dramatic, with theatrical gestures
and amazing sense of atmosphere. Sometimes, this is made at the expense
of detail, but the expressive quality of the choral singing is particularly
admirable. Thank God the recorded sound is natural! And there is Natalie
Dessay's paramount rendition of the part of soprano I. Some snobs may
find too much personality for a performance of sacred music, but even
they won't be able to deny that nobody can sing this better than she
does here. Véronique Gens usually makes strong partnership with
Dessay - and so she does here. She brings her usual elegance and utter
musicianship, but in these fast tempi some of the florid lines seem
to make her a bit nervous. Topi Lehtipuu and Luca Pisaroni complete
the excellent team of soloists. Naturally, this recording demands comparison
with William Christie's, who offers more polished orchestral sound,
but his chorus does not match the Concert d'Astrée's, not to
mention that his team of soloists is overall less accomplished and interesting.
His dance-like approach, however, stands the competition of Langrée's
bold and intense performance.
Herreweghe's beautiful recording
sounds polished and lacking forward movement compared to both French
recordings. He has a lovely and sensitive soprano I in Christiane Oelze,
but Jennifer Larmore's mezzo is too thick and dark for this music, what
impares perfect ensemble with Oelze's plummy light soprano.
Sunday, October
15th 2006
• Salzburg
fights back
I have written about how
disappointing broadcasts from this year's Salzburg Festival have been
- but I have to say that Roger Norrington, now neglected by the international
musical press, seems to be the redeemer of the anniversary performances
in Mozart's birthplace. His reading of Idomeneo is short of revelatory
- absolute clarity with the purpose of highlighting how all the dramatic
cues are produced in the orchestral pit. He was also lucky to find the
best cast in this Festival. Ekaterina Siurina is a crystalline Ilia
- she could be more varied, but her instrumental phrasing is most appealing.
Magdalena Kozena has improved her Idamante - now more appropriately
incisive and forceful than a couple of years ago - to optimal levels.
In the recognition scene, the development from misery, through joyous
surprise to bitter disappointment was made entirely through tone-colouring
and word-pointing while keeping classical purity was masterly built.
I have wondered why Ramón Vargas has not sung the role of Idomeneo
more often - the part fits his voice like a glove. It is true, howeverthat
the long version of Fuor del Mar left him somewhat breathless, even
if his divisions were decently produced. He even decided to resort to
some dangerous (and rather unnecessary) upwards decoration. As for Anja
Harteros, she is an efficient Elektra, although her voice lacks some
loveliness for Idol mio and a more focused and bright tone for the remaining
arias.
• More Mozart
Revies of Wentz's Clemenza
di Tito and Leinsdorf's Così have been added to the discography.
Saturday, October
14th 2006
• Back to Brasília
Having survived a busy schedule
in New York, it is time to listen to my new CDs and watch some new DVDs.
I'll be writing about them soon. Beside the events at the Met and the
NYCO, I had the opportunity to see Lorin Maazel conduct the New York
Philharmonic (in great shape since he has taken over the orchestra)
in a Ravel/Saint-Saëns programme. Before a powerful rendition of
the Organ Symphony, Maazel offered a crystalline if cold approach to
L'Enfant et les Sortilèges. The choir had poor French, but the
soloists were very good - particularly Suzanne Mentzer, spirited if
a bit thick-toned as the child and Patrizia Ciofi, thoroughly musicianly
and technically accomplished as the fire/the princess/the nightingale.
Some of her floated high notes were really haunting, even if the voice
is a bit on the smoky side.
It is a bit early for the
theatre season, but the Roundabout Theatre production
of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House fulfilled my theatrical needs
entirely. Knowing that he has a sensational cast (especially Laila Robins
as Lady Unterwood), director Robin Lefevre gave his actors pride of
place instead of looking for effects - thus one of Shaw's most original
texts could be savoured by the audience without any interference of
a pseudo-imaginative Dramaturg.
Here
are some photos from NY.
Monday, October
9th 2006
• Magic but
not enchanting
If you miss the 80's and
its glitter and glamour, then Julie Taymor's Zauberflöte is your
staging. Sometimes one might think this has been originally staged at
Florent at Gansevoort Street - a bunch of unusual people surrounded
by neon lighting. The rest of the concept has to do with keeping singers
busy and when this is impossible, getting some dolls on stage to provide
the fun. It must be distracting for the cast - especially when conductor
Scott Bergeson's mechanical rendition of the score often left singers
(and the chorus) behind the beat.
Although Isabel Bayrakdarian's
creaminess of tone and richness of middle register invite immediate
fondness, it is impossible not to notice her poor discipline - she is
a bit free with pitch and rhythm and her upper notes require some preparation.
It is a pity, since she is is exceptionally well-equipped for this repertoire
and could have been a remarkable Pamina. I cannot say the same of the
Queen of the Night. Erika Miklosa's tone is quite unsubstantial and
- in the fast tempi provided by the conductor - her runs were quite
smeared. That said, she really manages her high staccato notes with
impressive accuracy.
Maybe because there are not
many outstanding Mozart lyric tenors around these days (the good ones
generally end singing La Traviata or Rigoletto), I have noticed a growing
tendency towards casting the part with jugendlich dramatisch tenors.
Considering the limitation in mellowness and tone-colouring involved
in this option, Jonas Kaufmann acquited himself very well - he can hold
a clean line and showed some flexibility. As for Nathan Gunn, it would
be mean to concentrate in the inbuilt roughness of his vocal production.
He has the necessary charm and buoyance for Papapgeno. In the part of
Sarastro, Stephen Milling proved to be a functional choice - he is a
true bass, but his technique is irregular and the results were simply
unenlightening. Both Volker Vogel and Eike Wim Schulte were excellent
as Monostatos and the Speaker and trio of ladies, quite good.
Saturday, October
7th 2006
• Piccole cose
on a large stage
The shining symbol of the
Met's new management, Anthony Minghella's production of Puccini's Madama
Butterfly has been originally designed for the English National Opera
- and this may account for the show's main virtue and main drawback.
There is no doubt this is an imaginative and exquisite staging, but
when you decide to focus on intimacy in a gigantic venue, the inevitable
result is that it all feels quite distant. The whole staging involves
Japanese sliding doors that might have worked to perfection in the more
modest London Coliseum. At the Met, they are dwarfed by the stage proportions
and - worse than that - you can see what's behind them if your seats
are in the upper levels of the auditorium. Also, one could have the
impression the director did not know what to do with all those square
meters available: the action often concentrates in a restricted area
and the rest is abandoned to "minimalism". As a matter of
fact, the only moment when one feels that the proceedings were blown
up out of "chamber staging" proportions is the truly poetic
love duet, when the events on stage joined the gradual crescendo produced
in the pit. The share of responsibility Minghella has in that is debatable
- when it comes to actor's directing, then one has to concede that the
leading character is very difficult to portray. Making it doll-like
thoroughly throughout is not a new approach - only one that turns down
the drama, especially with an orchestra adjusting to small-caliber soloists.
Some may point out that Ascher Fisch's conducting was coloristic and
transparent; others would say that this is the result of a muffled strings.
From the point-of-view of
interpretation, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs is a complete success.
She masters the style, knows how to create the necessary girly impression,
knowingly colours the text and has an emotional connection with the
dramatic situations. However, there is not an ounce of "spinto-quality"
in her essentially lyric soprano. Of course, she happens to be one in
a long line of lyric sopranos in this role - Victoria de los Angeles
being the most famous example. That said, the legendary Spanish singer
was smart to resist the temptation of emulating a more dramatic voice
for the important moments, keeping her natural bright sound to pierce
through the orchestra. Gallardo-Domâs surrenders to the moment
- and hers is indeed sizeable enough a voice for that - and loses tonal
quality and denies herself operational space. The main evidence of that
was an Un bel dì verging on indifference, the singer more concentrated
on technical aspects, on managing energy in order to survive climaxes.
The rest of the cast contented themselves to stay in the shadow of their
charismatic prima donna: Maria Zifchak out of her natural Fach and very
foreign to Italian language and Marcelo Giordani displaying a constricted
vocal production, but lots of natural Italianate charm. Only Dwayne
Craft showed some determination to win over the audience driving his
handsome baritone with charm and sensitivity through Puccinian lines.
Thursday, October
5th 2006
• Playing safe
with passions
Ponchielli's La Gioconda
goes to the shortlist of operas that still correspond to most people's
prejudiced ideas about accidentally funny plots, incidentally beautiful
tunes and seriously obese people. Peter Gelb's new ideas about the Met
must have something to do about being proud of that and, thus, Margherita
Wallman's production has been taken out of the closet (where it has
been hanging since 1989, already an antique those days) and proudly
paraded to this new century's audiences, who felt enthusiastic enough
to applaud Beni Montresor's Fearless Vampire Killers-like settings.
I have to confess that I cannot imagine Gioconda being staged otherwise
- an Eurotrash staging involving terrorists, the explosion of an airport
and oil tycoons (please, I am not suggesting anything!) would definitely
spoil the fun. La Gioconda involves a very fragile concept which only
survives in the hothouse of its proper aesthetics. Even Victor Hugo,
the author of the play upon which the libretto was based, felt it necessary
to defend this approach in a long prologue - by the way, far better
reading than the play itself…
Truth be said, yesterday's
evening champion - weird as it sound - is conductor Bertrand de Billy,
who accomplished the miraculous feat of cleaning the score from the
anachronic patina of verismo and bringing to the fore the echt Romantic
colours in the orchestral writing. By doing that, he did not turn down
the buttons of emotion, but showed the work under a far more sensitive
lighting. His leading lady, Violeta Urmana, revealed a similar approach
in her utterly musicianly, all-vulgarity-barred, but intense approach.
Although I am an a priori admirer of hers, I still have to adjust to
Urmana, the Italian soprano. There is no doubt she can handle the exposed
high notes, the schyzophrenic tessitura, the occasional floated pianissimo
(Madre! Enzo adorato! Ah, come t'amo!), even the impossible decorations
of the closing scene (exquisitely, as a matter of fact), but there is
an overall lack of morbidezza and the hallmark Italianate brightness
in her singing that makes one compare her with famous exponents of the
part while listening to her (excellent) performance. This could be dangerous
when the seconda donna is Olga Borodina. Even if I had heard her upper
register in more resplendent shape, hers is too commanding a vocal nature
to resist. I felt tempted to say "too formidable" for Laura,
but this seems to be the rule when it comes to casting this role. La
Cieca is a role usually sunk into indifference, but Irina Mishura's
powerful and handsome contralto procured her some of the best moments
in the evening. When it comes to Aquiles Machado, a favourite with the
audience, I cannot make my mind about what I think of his performance.
His hearty and spontaneous tenor might be a balm for ears hurt by the
barking type of tenor we have to deal with these days - and he is reasonably
stylish for a singer in this repertoire - but the tone lacks some appeal.
Maybe it is just the part of Enzo (as much as the role of Rodolfo in
Hugo's play) being so uninteresting. As for Zeliko Lucic (there are
lots of graphic signs in the middle of all that), his healthy authentic
baritone (in opposition to beefed-up Don Giovannis) is certainly refreshing.
This is a singer I would like to see again in a more congenial role:
isn't Barnaba's "I have already killed your mom anyway" the
sickest line in the history of opera? I cannot say I warm to the idea
of seeing Paata Burchuladze in a big role - his singing has lost the
sense of line and whenever he was on stage I had to look down for the
Met's undertitles to get the faintest idea of what he was singing. I
suppose I was not the only one in the auditorium not knowing by heart
Arrigo Boito/Tobia Gorrio's libretto.
Wednesday, October
4th 2006
• Classical
but not a classic
The release on DVD of Jean-Pierre
Ponnelle's productions have revealed a sad truth - the approach has
aged ungraciously. The whole aesthetics have sunk into kitsch and the
repeated repressed laughter from various members of the audience yesterday
at the Metropolitan Opera's revival has only reinforced that. To say
the truth, I have never warmed to the sets, costumes and actors' direction
featured on the DVD with Pavarotti, Von Stade, Behrens and Cotrubas
- but these artists do help to focus the whole idea in a way nowadays
singers will never manage to do - as much as Kate Beckinsale would never
convince anyone that she could be Ava Gardner. Ponnelle's highly stylized
and almost tautological staging requires larger-than-life personalities
(not necessarily talents) to fill in the blanks true expression would
otherwise provide. Take Hildegard Behrens's Elettra, for example. Without
the German's soprano expressionistic intensity, it all looks quite ludicrous,
empty gestures without any practical purpose and no particular beauty
involved. Only an extraordinay musical performance would compensate
the theatrical stolidness - and unfortunately that was not the case.
Although James Levine proves that he still finds room to develop from
his already excellent Mozartian standards, offering swift and intelligent
conducting, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra was not up to the conductor's
level, especially the strings, almost invariably uncomfortable with
fast divisions.
I often say Ilia is the main
character - from the musical point of view - in Idomeneo, but an Idomeneo
with two Ilias is hardly my idea of perfection in a performance of this
work. Olga Makarina is a resourceful singer - her amazingly long breath
comes dangerously close to show-off - but her soprano is too pretty
and her attitude to well-behaved for this role. She could find some
bite in her low register without resorting to awkward register break,
but she lacks the kind of flash top notes and forcefulness that are
the essence of this work. As a result, only Idol mio worked as required
and going for a top note in the end of D'Oreste, d'Ajacce was the (cunning)
resort to get the ovation this aria usually invites. Properly cast as
Ilia, Dorothea Röschmann always impresses by her resourcefulness
- hers is a warm, entirely homogeneous, flexible soprano, she is a stylish
singer and is not afraid to trill. However, her voice has lost some
of its former brightness and the fact that it grew more and more opaque
during the performance makes me think she is overkilling these days.
The most immediate symptom is an absence of legato that makes arias
such as Zeffiretti lusinghieri less charming than usual. Although she
is a very good actress, she seemed uncomfortable with the doll-like
attitude required from her by the direction. I had never seen or heard
Kristine Jepson before this performance and was most impressed by her
thoroughly and stylishly sung Idamante. Her mezzo soprano is taylor-made
for Mozartian trouser roles and she cuts a convincingly boyish figure
on stage. On the other hand, Ben Heppner's tenor is hardly anyone's
ideal for Idomeneo, but his artistic generosity and impressive vocal
resources got him the audience's partiality. It is amazing that a tenor
used to heavier repertoire still keeps his freshness of tone. Moreover,
his ease in the lower reaches of the tessitura was exceptionally spontaneous.
Not only did he tackled the more florid passages (albeit the laboured
results), but also tried some decoration in b section. As Arbace, Jeffrey
Francis was a bit more precise, but the tone was glaring in an unpleasant
way. Stephen Milling was a convincingly dark and powerful Oracle.
Monday, October
1st 2006
• Top notes
are a girl's best friends
Stephen Lawless's production
of Handel's Semele for the New York City Opera does not avoid this work's
ambiguous opera/oratorio nature - it brings this to the fore and makes
it a virtue. The curtains open to reveal a theatre in the taste of the
1960's , where Semele and Athamas's engagement ceremony is presented
in the shape of a concert performance, in which Semele is the temperamental
prima donna. Being abducted by Jove trnsforms her in Marilyn Monroe
and the rest of the show involves the triangle between Semele/Marilyn,
Juno/Jackie O and Jove/JFK.
In order to make William
Congreve's libretto fit into this American tragicomedy, the score endured
a severe edition, in which almost the rest of the cast is reduced to
comprimario status (those who actually sing something substantial respond
for two roles, such as Juno/Ino and Cadmus/Somnus) and the remaining
arias are often deprived their b sections and repeats. I can't say I
approve the loss of so many bits of beautiful music, but it certainly
helped "Semele, the play". An interesting idea was the replacement
of Apollo by Jove himself in a sort of press conference. All in all,
the director showed imagination, often hilarious ideas (laughter drawned
singers now and then…), elegant and efficient sceneries and costumes
- and he had a cast of good actor to make it work.
In the title role, Elizabeth
Futral proved she is a consumate actress and she certainly has the looks
and attitude for the part. Vocally speaking, her Semele was more functional
than illuminating - her lyric soprano copes beautifully with coloratura,
but her high register is too unfocused for comfort. In order to achieve
purity of tone, she had to drain her singing from vibrato in a not unpleasant
manner, truth be said. Her interpretation turned around coquetterie
and she would now and then distort her tone for effects - in a way Kathleen
Battle, for example, would not need to do, because the sexiness is inbuilt
in her voice. As her rival (and also her sister), Vivica Genaux displayed
a far more accomplished and stylish performance - and her also skills
are almost most impressive. This was the first time I've seen this her
live and, in the flesh, her voice does sound less artifficial (although
her contralto extension has a strange colour to it and her top notes
lack power).
When one casts the part of
Jove with a Charaktertenor, nasal sounds and rebellious pitch are included
items. Robert Breault is no exception. At least, he really tries to
deal with his divisions and his hit number Where'er you walk was sung
with true sense of line and affection. In the parts of Cadmus and Somnus,
Sanford Sylvan stole the show with his dulcet flexible baritone.
Based on my experience with
Orlando in the same venue with the same conductor, I felt a bit disappointed
with the square rendition of the score, especially the heavy unflowing
overture. Maybe conductor Anthony Walker was trying to keep things operational
for an opera house chorus not used to this kind of complex writing.
In the end, although I certainly enjoyed the theatrical experience,
the overall experience lacked the beguilement offered by an echt Handelian
team with the whole sets of arias such as Hymen, haste or Behold in
this mirror. I do recall a broadcast from London - a stage performance
also - in which Rosemary Joshua proved why Jove would resign his bolts
to her arms and his lighting to her eyes.
Saturday, September
30th 2006
• Off to New
York
Friday, September
29th 2006
• Comments
from Paris
Olivier has just written
telling me he saw the Don Giovanni from the Théâtre des
Champs-Elysées. He told me Dietrich Henschel never sung in this
production, having been refused by the conductor due to lack of italianità.
His replacement was Lucio Gallo. This is quite puzzling, for the singer
in the broadcast suffered from the kind of absence of legato one would
never associate to an Italian singer!
Thursday, September
21st 2006
• Guess what?
More Mozart
Today I could listen a broadcast
from Paris that struck me as one of the most interesting in this Mozart
year. Although I am a great admirer of Jacobs in his Handel recordings,
I tend to find his Mozart recordings enervating because of its disfiguring
self-indulgent mannerisms. At the same time, it is frustrating when
one "burns" good singers and orchestra in a recording you
know you won't come back to. It seems that someone in Paris heard my
prayers. Last june, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées,
someone was able to pull out a Jacobs' Don Giovanni without the conductor
and - most important of all - the annoying fortepiano playing that pervades
every number of the score in his performances. It is most curious that
even Jacobs' orchestra has been invited to the enterprise - the Concerto
Köln. Under the bâton of the underestimated Evangelino Pidò,
the period-instrument orchestra offered the best Mozart performance
of its life. Free from the obligation of trying to prove any conductor's
whimsical points, those musicians could concentrate on producing rich,
clean and perfectly articulated phrasing - and Pidò's sense of
theatrical tempo is admirable. Many a conductor would envy his ability
of shifting pace according to dramatic situations without giving the
impression that this is his but rather Mozart's and Da Ponte's idea.
Although his overall approach was fast and rhythmically disciplinarian,
he knows the art of helping his singers to produce the best effect in
tricky passages, such as the last bars of Or sai chi l'onore. As a matter
of fact, the casting of Patrizia Ciofi (Jacobs' Susanna) in the part
of Donna Anna gives this performance immediate appeal. Although on paper
the role is heavier than her natural Fach, the overall results are more
than positive. Predictably, her first aria was the only moment when
one would feel a bit worried for her - having to beef up her middle
register for the dramatic recitative, the voice went off and on focus
in a not entirely pleasant manner. In the aria itself, she was cunning
to adapt the exposed high notes to mezza voce, producing a more vulnerable
effect than what we are used to hear. In the rest of the role, her ease
with coloratura, idiomatic Italian, stylishness and imagination made
for a very good performance. One must point out, though, that high notes,
easy as they are, reveal a pronounced flutter. It is curious that Jacobs'
Vitellia, Alexandrina Pendatschanka proved to be ill at ease with the
part of Elvira. In theory, hers is a far more forceful instrument than
Ciofi's, but - at least to the microphones - her middle and low registers
could not pierce through the orchestra and her high register was too
glaring for this repertoire. Worse than that, her metallic vocal production
is not really flattering, what makes moments such as Mi tradì
a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the marvelous Anna Bonitatibus
is an outstanding Zerlina, offering an all-round perfect sexy and utterly
Mozartian rendition of her role. Francesco Meli is a powerful and positive
Ottavio, entirely at ease either in forte or piano and flexible enough
for his runs. In the title role, Dietrich Henschel, as much as the other
Dietrich, offers too a Germanic approach - hectoring through the part
in a far from seductive way. On the other hand, Lorenzo Regazzo (Jacobs'
Figaro) offers a refreshingly unsophisticated richt-toned Leporello.
Checking at the web, I discovered
that René Jacobs' actual Don Giovanni features some alternative
pieces of casting - Regazzo and Pendatschanska keep their roles, but
we have a Svetlana Doneva instead of Ciofi, Sunhae Im instead of Bonitatibus
(too bad for Jacobs...), Werner Güra instead of Merli (idem ibidem)
and Johannes Weisser instead of Henschel.
• More Four
Last Songs
The discography and comments
on R. Strauss's Four Last Songs has been updated. On doing that, I could
listen to some interesting broadcasts too. First, Julia Varady and Kurt
Masur (1992). Definitely Masur's best shot at these songs - maybe Varady
has something to do with it. When you have listened to 10 recordings
at the same day and something strikes you as original, there must be
something in it. The truth is that most singers go for the same patterns
and standards and generally those who stray from that fail horribly
(e.g. Caballé), but sometimes someone can still find new possibilities
within Straussian vocabulary - and that's what Varady does here. I am
sure if she had recorded these songs those days, she would certainly
hit the shortlist. Other illuminating performance is Jessye Norman's
with Giuseppe Sinopoli - a marriage made in heaven in the sense that
she was one of the few singers around who would survive Sinopoli's slow/analytic
approach, which may have produced a stunning effect live. On recording,
the whole performance is certainly revelatory but a bit artifficial
and demonstrative. Among those who are not entirely memorable, but still
most effective, is Polish soprano Aga Mikolaj, whose live performance
under Karl Sollak (2002) shows one of the most smoothly sung rendition
of these songs. I have checked Mikolaj's website and have to confess
that nothing there shows the same level of accomplishment. Compared
to Mikolaj, Angela Denoke (under the baton of Philippe Jordan) sounds
far less impressive. Her jugendlich dramatisch soprano is certainly
clean and pleasant, but the slow tempi only highlight some awkward moments
and some lack of imagination and charisma.
Sunday, September
18th 2006
• More photos
Here
Monday, September
4th 2006
• Mozartian
drawbacks
More disappointments from
Salzburg. After reading a positive review of the Lucio Silla from this
year's festival, I have to confess I've been doubting the general opinion
that we live in a golden age of Mozartian singing. And this time once
cannot blame the conductor, since Tomas Netopil proved to make the right
choices and to be really considerate to his singers. First of all, I'll
be candid about my puzzlement towards Annick Massis. This is a singer
who can be truly admirable (I have in mind a Sonnambula from Madrid),
but is often really underaccomplished. Here she shows a bleached out
unsubstantial tone that acquires a sour edge in the top register. This
is certainly not the voice for an opera seria prima donna! Monica Bacelli
is more responsive in the part of Cecilio, but the voice is similarly
colourless. I could not understand the casting of the part of Cinna
with Verónica Cangemi, whose lightness of tone makes her inadequate
for a male part. I am curious to read the notes in the title role's
arias. On hearing, one might think this is the easiest among Mozart's
big tenor roles, but the treatment of poor singing it has received over
the years makes me think I must be wrong. Roberto Saccà's voice
sounds so poorly focused here that I felt a certain melancholy for Peter
Schreier's pinched un-Italianate singing for Hager and Harnoncourt.
Lost in this Mozartian misfiring is the utterly gracious Julia Kleiter.
I have seen her live only once in my life, in a minor role in Semyon
Bychkow's performance of R. Strauss's Daphne at the Carnegie Hall and
I felt she would be an ideal Mozart singer. I was not wrong - her singing
in the part of Celia is the dictionary definition of Mozartian singing.
Although she is the junior member of the cast, she is in the position
to give a masterclass to her colleagues at the Felsenreitschule.
The production of Cosi Fan
Tutte from the same provenance proves to be in superior class. I have
had my share of disappointment with Manfred Honeck (a truly frustrating
experience live in Munich with one of my favourite orchestras, the Bavarian
Radio SO), but here he displayed the right sense of forward movement
and excitement, especially in ensembles, but the key element of having
the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit is providing firework-like articulate
phrasing - and that did not seem to be the case, at lease judging from
the broadcast sound. If I had seen this cast in Rio, I would have found
it a more than satisfying performance - but then I remember that the
Fiordiligi I saw there back in the late 90's had a far more substantial
soprano (Barbara Shirvis) and that there was a far more dulcet tenor
(the young Fernando Portari). That memory made me still more disappointed.
Ana María Martínez is an industrious singer - she knows
the limits of her voice and is generally able to produce the right effect
in the right moments, as she has done in her two arias - but the voice
has a generalized colour and her top register requires some shifting
into fifth gear. There is no hint of the kind of instant vocal personality
and grace that makes one overlook minor flaws, as someone Gundula Janowitz
proved to provide in her live recording from the same venue (or Margaret
Price in the broadcast from Munich with Sawallisch). Some may point
out that I'm mentioning legendary singers - but that's the sort of thing
one expects from Salzburg. I have to confess that my memory of Barbara
Frittoli, live at the Met, puts Ms. Martínez to shame. It is
also curious that my memory of seeing this singer live at the Met, in
the role of Micaela, revealed a far more charming voice, slightly reminiscent
of Luba Orgonasová's in its floaty vibration.
The part of Dorabella requires
a remarkable singer - otherwise you won't notice her presence. Unfortunately,
this is not Sophie Koch's case. She is a hard-working well-intentioned
singer, but lacks all the weapons a true Dorabella needs to go to her
battle against seconda-donna-ism: a sexy flexible tone, ease with high
tessitura, melting mezza voce and vivid Italian declamation (as Magdalena
Kozená showed next to Frittoli in 2005 at the Met). In the role
of Ferrando, Shawn Matthey proved to be far more adventurous - his tenor
has no inbuilt charm and he often has rough patches, but he really tries
to produce clean phrasing, mezza voce and clean divisions. The performance's
Guglielmo, Stéphane Degout, is an altogether more finished singer
with an energetic attitude, but his baritone lacks variety. It is sad
to realize that, even far far far from their truly functional days,
Thomas Allen and even Helen Donath are really the saving graces of this
cast. Although their basic tone is used, the force of their personalities
and the recognisable quality of their voices are still strong assets
in this ocean of indistinctiveness.
• Quick notes
I have rewritten my review
of Sawallisch's Elektra on the Strauss page and have been going through
an overbusy period. So please forgive me if I take some time to answer
letters.
Sunday, August 27th
2006
• Broadcasting
A Saturday afternoon zapping
through the web has revealed some unusual surprises. Because of the
Mozart year, Salzburg has planned the ambitious program of Mozart opera(tic)
omnia, from Bastien und Bastienne to La Clemenza di Tito. It seems that
the producers have found this fascinating idea not enough to draw the
audiences to the Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz - my two samples from this
year's festival reveal a desperate urge to make it different. For example,
Thomas Hengelbrock's obsession about making it different and exciting
robbed Il Rè Pastore from its bucolic charm. Worse - the ballistic
speeds made it impossible for singers to tackle their divisions with
naturalness and elegance. The usually immaculate Marlis Petersen was
forced to blur her divisions in an unglamourous manner. Annette Dach's
Aminta produced mechanic coloratura and, compared to the naturally less
young- and firm-toned Ann Murray (in Harnoncourt's recording) proved
to lack imagination. I was curious to hear Krassimir Spicer, here taking
the role of Alessandro, to my disappointment. At first, I was happy
to find a non-nasal, non-tight tenor voice, but then the whole method
is so artifficial and his sense of pitch in runs so suspect that I decided
to shift to Harnoncourt's Le Nozze di Figaro.
I am always surprised how
un-Italianate and theatrically-wrong Harnoncourt's approach to the Da
Ponte operas is. The flow of rhythm is constantly interrupted by mannered
ritardandi and accelerandi which bring very little compensation. Also,
the Vienna Philharmonic sounded rough and uninspired, probably uncomfortable
with a concept which goes against everything they are used to do. I
have to confess that rarely a glamourous cast such as this one has proved
to be so disappointing. As I disliked the performance, I confess I missed
parts of it, so I can't say anything about Christine Schäfer's
Cherubino. Dorothea Röschmann is an intelligent singer, but probably
the wrong one for the part of the Countess. First of all, floating mezza
voce has never been entirely into her powers and this is a role in which
that ability is essential. Then her habit of chopping her phrasing into
non-legato is getting more and more foreign to Mozartian style. The
homogeneity of her voice seems to be under serious threat too - her
low register is no longer well-managed as it used to be and extreme
top notes stress her. Maybe it is time to re-evaluate what she has been
doing with her voice. Compared to Röschmann's Countess, Anna Netrebko's
Susanna sounded particularly refreshing in her cleanliness of phrasing.
But the Russian soprano is so uneventful in this wittiest of roles that
one always mistakes her for a second Countess, in her languid generalised
attitude, clouded vowels and absent-mindness. To keep within the feminine
part of the cast, I found Marie McLaughlin's rendition of Il capro e
la capretta embarassing. Why not cutting the aria altogether? This would
have made sense if McLaughlin was a veteran singer, whereas she is only
a prematurely worn-sounding one. To make things worse, Boje Skovhus'
Count seemed to be a series of variation on the theme "roughness",
not to mention that his low register has become history. If we have
in mind that his Italian is non-existant, this was a performance very
hard to diggest. As a result, the saving grace in the cast was the firm-toned
and idiomatic Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, in the role of Figaro.
Shifting to the non-Salzburger
Don Giovanni from the Theater an der Wieden, I found that Betrand de
Billy's undemonstrative conducting did a far better service to Mozart.
Not to mention that, under his baton, the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
certainly sounded more transparent and accurate than the Philharmonic
in Salzburg. Outstanding in the cast were Gerald Finley's seductive
Don Giovanni, Hanno-Müller Brachmann's vivacious Leporello, impressively
at east with his Italian text and the stylish and impassionate Heidi
Brunner (whom I saw as Zerlina ages ago...). It was endearing to find
the Brazilian soprano Adriane Queiroz as Zerlina. Her whole method made
me think of a lighter version of Barbara Frittoli. The voice lacks the
repose echt Mozartian singers usually feature, but, as much as her Milanese
colleague, this does not impare her flexibility, legato and imagination.
• Subtle art
Today I saw on the TV a most
sensitive unpretentious movie named "In the Gloaming". I would
later discover the director was Cristopher Reeve (yes, the "original"
superman). Although the art direction was a bit obvious, Reeve gave
his exceptional cast all the time and space they needed to produce realistic
and therefore extremely touching performances, helped by a direct script
never trying to be larger-than-life: although it is a sad story, it
is told in a refreshingly un-tragic manner. Both Glenn Close and Whoopi
Goldberg offer their best acting in years. In performances free from
any trace of mannerism, we are reminded of how powerful these actresses
can be. Robert Sean Leonard offers the performance of his life and David
Strathairn and Bridget Fonda prove that there is not such thing as secondary
roles.
Saturday, August
19th 2006
• Muy Buenos
Aires
It seems my list of favourite
places in the world has a new item - Buenos Aires has a bit of Milan,
a bit of Paris, a bit of New York's Upper East Side, a bit of the Flamengo
Beach in Rio de Janeiro and lots of its unique self. It is the most
accomplished attempt of out-Europe-ing Europe and curiously its patchwork
of Italian, Spanish and French influence, its self-important grandeur,
its debonair lifestyle do reveal its Latin American roots behind the
stucco and the marble. I have always said that the best thing about
Brazil is the Brazilian people, but I am made to notice that the best
thing about South America is that people are really nice everywhere.
The Argentinians are spontaneous, friendly, stylish (sometimes in an
over-the-top manner) and amazingly bon-vivant.
My friend Felipe seems to
be 100% into the porteño way-of-life and got himself a cozy apartment
near the Plazoleta Carlos Pellegrini, where the Brazilian Ambassador's
residence makes you think someone had transported the whole thing from
the Loire Valley. My first "must-do" appointment was the Teatro
Colón. After managing to find a ticket to the guided visited,
I was introduced into the grandiose building. The large halls in contrasted
French and Italian style are certainly impressive, but the auditorium
is the one to survive longer in one's mind. Its glamourous boxes framed
with gold and red curtains grant it an almost eerie atmosphere. I would
come back at night to see Viktor Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis.
It is an opera I had never seen (or heard) before and I left the theatre
most impressed. It is a short work (no longer than an hour) using a
wide range of music-dramatic techniques - cabaret, daring harmonies,
late Romantic melodism, unusual orchestration, you name it, not to mention
quotations from source as varied as Bach and American musical theatre.
The Ensemble Instrumental de la Ópera de Cámara played
richly for its conductor, Guillermo Brizzio, and the casting has practically
no weak link. Soprano Laura Rizzo found no trouble in the high tessitura
and still had operating space for liquid floating pianissimi. Mezzo
Alejandra Malvino featured a strong voice and impressive control of
registers, especially in a part abundant in wide intervals. Both tenors
- Enrique Folger as the Harlequin and Gabriel Renaud as A Soldier -
featured healthy voices adept to the high-lying declamatory style required
from them. Hernán Iturralde's strong bass baritone caused a great
impression in the role of Death and, if Luciano Garay's voice may have
its effortful moment, he is a most intelligent singer, using a wide
tonal palette to portray the title role's contradictory mind. The whole
cast seemed comfortable with Marcelo Lombardero's direction and Gastón
Joubert's production could make no wrong in its simplicity and directness.
I was able to visit two museums
in Buenos Aires: the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the MALBA. The
former features a strange collection of secondary paintings by important
European artists and a series of interesting modern art. I have to confess
my favourite piece was a painting by a late-Romantic French painter
named William Adolphe Bouguereau named Le
Premier Deuil. I would later discover that he was a sort of Impressionist-hater
who was considered to be one of the best painters of his day and is
largely forgotten today. The museum also featured a temporary exhibit
of paintings about violence
in Colombia by Botero. Unusual.
The MALBA is a museum of
modern and contemporary Latin American art and has become well-known
in Brazil because it shows one of the most famous examples of Brazilian
modern painting, which is Tarsila do Amaral's Abaporu.
It is a beautiful building and precisely the room where you can find
Abaporu is the best one, with exquisite works by Covarrubias,
José Cuneo
and Diego Rivera.
Buenos Aires is also a great
place to eat in. Restaurants are marvelous and incredibly cheap. We
tasted the famous Argentinian beef in La Cabrera, a cozy restaurant
in Palermo. The next day we would visit Palermo again for dinner at
the trendy Casa Cruz , where
you can eat what they call "Argentinian urban cuisine". The
dishes look great and taste even better. La
Petanque, in San Telmo, was a great choice for lunch (Felipe's choice
- noblesse oblige). It is a French restaurant, with traditional dishes
and an unforgettable tarte tatin. There is also a funny restaurant named
Piegari,
at La Recova, a kind of gourmet area which happens to be under a highway
overpass! It is the kind of restaurant my friend Isabela calls "mafia
grandpa's favourite restaurant" with its 80's décors, mighty
amounts of food and older clientelle. The black ravioli with salmons
and almonds was delicious and, as always in Buenos Aires, the tiramisù
is heavenly.
My favourite street in Buenos
Aires: Arroyo. My best buy: shoes at Lopez
Taibo. My "don't go there" in Buenos Aires: Café
Tortoni, really overrated. My regret in Buenos Aires: not going to the
theater to see either John Patrick Shanley's Doubt or Edward Albee's
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Best laugh in Buenos Aires: Pamela
- this poster is unbelievable! We have no idea who she is, but she is
certainly (un)dressed to kill!
Here
are some of my photos.
Wednesday, August
9th 2006
• Off to Buenos
Aires
So it is - I'm finally visiting
Argentina. This might seem odd to some of you who must be asking themselves
why I have never done this before, but sometimes one just keeps good
stuff in stock for the right occasion. And that's the case right now.
This is going to be a very short trip, so I intend to write my impression
on the Argentine capital city very soon.
• Lots of stuff
- Kiri Te Kanawa singing
Laudate Dominum from Mozart's K 339 is one of the most perfect pieces
of singing ever recorded. I have used it in the Mozart "lesson"
and I kept waiting for someone to say "Oh my God, who is THIS singer?",
but then I realized it sounded so uncomplicatedly pleasant that no layman
would be able to notice its exceptionality. And that's exactly a good
definition to the adjective "Mozartian".
- Ann Hallenberg - Has someone
probably since Bernarda Fink sung Handel and Bach so admirably? Having
listened to her sincerely touching Agnus Dei from Bach's Messe H-moll
and her incendiary Rompo i lacci (Flavio), I am desperate for more!
- YouTube - If you like music,
this is highly addictive. Back to earth after a bit of it, I've realized
I had spent some hours on it!
- Duncan Tucker's Transamerica
(yes, I took a while to finally watch this one) is one of the best comedy
movies made in the USA in the last 10 years. In the sense that it avoids
nastiness and overcuteness, it seems the sanitized (meaning that everything
looks and feels clean and cool) version of an Almodóvar movie.
On saying this, I imply no criticism: on the contrary, I see it as a
dramatic point the semi-bourgeois way it tells the story of two outcasts.
From that point of view, this is an encounter between two Americas -
the land of possibilities is also a land where everything is possible.
Felicity Huffman offers a tour de force and virtuoso-like acting, achieving
the difficult task of being funny and touching at the same time. Out
of Ireland, Fionnula Flanagan is just amazing in her portrayal of the
decadent momma from Dixieland.
- On the other hand, Steven
Soderbergh's Bubble offers a realistic (in the Émile Zola sense
of the word) view of America, but the fragility implied in the title
seems to concern the whole premise of the movie. When one uses non-actors,
the whole point is to highlight artlessness. Think of Italian neo-realism.
When you take ordinary people, place them in front of the camera and
ask them to do extraordinay things, they neither act like themselves
nor give the impression that they could be someone who would actually
perform the actions described in the script. Considering the story-telling's
slow pace, one sees the blanks proper acting would have filled in.
Thursday, August
3rd 2006
•
What a mass!
Having to select the tracks
for a lesson on Mozart in the small course of History of Music I am
offering to a group of friends, I have discovered something I had not
really thought about: the Mass K427 does not have bad luck in recordings,
it actually has bad luck everywhere, because it is a very very difficult
piece to pull off. I don't have every recording of it, but only some
seven or eight - none of them perfect.
To start with, almost every recording has poor balance: most of them
service soloists and muffle the orchestra. Among my recordings, only
William Christie sounds like natural recorded sound. Abbado does feature
clarity, but the soloists are recorded unnaturaly close. I would say
Levine has something acceptable, but the scale is too grande to make
sense. It is frightening that, among my recordings only Christie seems
to focus the structural aspects - the phrasing is clear and organic
and his choice of tempi, even if a bit swift now and then, brings to
the fore the dance rhythms and make everything sound crispy and accurate.
However, his chorus is good but not outstanding.
When it comes to Christie's soloists, Alan Ewing is the only singer
to cause an impression: Lynne Dawson is efficient, the tenor seems a
bit nervous with his divisions and Patricia Petibon is not entirely
comfortable with what she has to sing. She does all the notes all round
and knows the proper style, but is rarely beguiling. At least, she seems
alive. I cannot say the same of the lovely Barbara Bonney for Abbado
or - worse - the desincarnated Sylvia McNair for Gardiner. In this competition,
Margaret Marshall, despite an unexceptional voice, does a very good
work for Marriner. I was inclined to say something about Ileana Cotrubas
- she was in pretty voice and seems to take some interest in the proceedings,
but there are lots of minor untidy details that ultimately turn me off.
And her soprano II is the young Kiri Te Kanawa, who would have done
something more impressive. In the end, there is only one soprano who
really goes to the heart of the matter: Kathleen Battle.
To start with, she seems comfortable with what she has to sing, phrases
graciously all the way, offers the kind of sensuous approach this work
(weird as it sound) asks for and has a kind of fervour, probably due
to her gospel background, light sopranos rarely have. It is most unfortunate
that Lella Cuberli is in such ugly voice in this recording. If Battle
had someone like, say, Lucia Popp as soprano II (we can always dream
of stuff like that...), I guess I could put up with Levine's heavyweight
approach. In any case, soprano II seems to be better cast in a general
sense - I thought Felicity Palmer a bit nervous with the high tessitura
and Arleen Augér (Abbado) a bit vinegary, but Monika Frimmer
and Diana Montague have done a beautiful job. It is a pity that, according
to my memories, I haven't been impressed by neither Arleen Augér
nor Frederica von Stade in Bernstein's video. Regarding tenors, Anthony
Rolfe-Johnson and Cristoph Prégardien are exemplary. Hans-Peter
Blochwitz is also very reliable, but Peter Seiffert - even those days
- is just a curiosity.
I have been told that Herreweghe offers an all-round excellent performance
and I imagine Christiane Oelze and Jennifer Larmore could be terrific.
I am curious now. In any case, I would love to hear something like Rosemary
Joshua, Joyce DiDonato, Werner Güra and a good Bachian bass (those
who know how to sound dark and tackle runs) and maybe who knows Charles
Mackeras, but not the chorus from Edinburgh...I
say Mackerras because, on comparative listening for the same lessons,
I simply didn't choose his Mozart opera recordings over all others for
reasons of casting. His sense of structural balance and clarity and
the rightness of his tempi is truly masterly.
•
More Clemenza
A review of Harnoncourt's
video from Salzburg has been added to the discography.
Sunday, July 9th
2006
• To a friend
Great
minds against themselves conspire
And shun the cure they most desire
Monday, June 26th
2006
• Tito again
Just to tell that reviews
of both Mackerras and Jacobs have been added to the discography of La
Clemenza di Tito. I have to thank Lennart for his help on that.
Saturday, June 24th
2006
• I like Kiri
I risk to be snobbed by "connoiseurs"
when I say that, but I believe snobs always have less fun than anyone
else. Therefore, beguiled by the velvety feminine patrician but seductive
voice of Kiri Te Kanawa, I really don't care about snobs. I have transferred
Keilberth's recording of R. Strauss's Arabella with Lisa della Casato
my i-pod and, on returning home, ran to the Tate CDs and there she is
- this is the voice of the girl whose picture would bring someone from
irgendwo in Slavonien to Vienna. She is the provocative but lovely,
sophisticated but warm-hearted girl whose sister who has renounced everything
for her would love nonetheless. The smile and the melancholy appear
behind the golden creamy tone the purity of which has nothing disembodied
about it. She is the perfect Arabella and, in 50 years, dictionaries
will mention that we were lucky to witness her live - especially in
this role in which she has not one rival.
Thursday, June 22nd
2006
• A harpsichord
Since I was twelve years
old I have always dreamt of having a harpsichord - and all my attempts
to play one were frustrated. The owner - very understandably when it
happened during an intermission of a concert - would cut short my Anna-Magdalena
Bach menuet before I could finish the first phrase. Today a colleague
from work, Leonardo, saved me from going to the tomb with this frustration.
He has a beautiful instrument bought in Milan and, while we had our
drinks before lunch, he asked me if I wanted to play. Foreseeing that
something like that might happen, I had taken my volume of Bach's transcriptions
of Vivaldi's concerti for the harpsichord and tried my luck. I won't
mind sounding silly, but it was wonderful. For those who play the piano,
it is a weird sensation of something familiar but challenging. The keys
don't produce the sensation of firmness as in the piano and you feel
really afraid of breaking something. On the other hand, the almost physical
sensation of the saltarelli plucking the strings is amazing. It is curious
that the structural possibilities of the keyboard almost lead you to
produce something close to baroque phrasing. Deprived from dynamic possibilities,
one starts to play with speed and there's one's own version of inégalité!
Wednesday, June
21st 2006
• More Mozart
For those who like Mozart's
La Clemenza di Tito, this year is a dream come true. I have been writing
about new releases (reviews will follow) and today, right from Geneva,
a most compelling performance was broadcast through BBC. I was glad
to read that conductor Christian Zacharias and I share some ideas about
the opera, judging from his interview and his grasp of what he calls
"Beethovenian" in the finale ultimo is most enlightening.
That said, there was nothing heavy or overgrand in his conducting. At
the contrary, he offered a kapellmeisterlich-in-the-good-sense performance,
clear and undemonstrative and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne offered
rich and flexible playing. In the difficult role of Vitellia, Anna Caterina
Antonacci offered one of her most compelling performances. I read on
Gramophone that she feels better about her voice and technique these
days - and I must share her feeling. Compared to Muti's Don Giovanni
on DVD, she sounds a completely different singer - the voice is far
richer and powerful, without loosing an inch of its ductility. Also,
her varied use of recitatives allied amazing homogeneity of registers
over a long range, allied to a irresistible nut not entirely alluring
tonal quality, make her an exemplary Vitellia. I hope someone plans
to release this performance or to schedule Antonacci in a new Tito recording
somewhere else. She deserves to make part of the discography, especially
when there are so few outstanding exponents of this role. That said,
it is Joyce DiDonato who deserves the warmest praises for a perfect,
dictionary-specimen Mozartian performance - and when I say perfect,
I don't mean boring-perfect, but vital, exciting and mesmerizing perfect.
At gunpoint, if I was made to invent a drawback, I would say that maybe
her voice is too lovely for a guy's role, but that is so silly that
maybe I would brave the bullets and keep quiet. Both these singers are
probably the best pairing in the leading roles in any performance of
this opera. As for Charles Workman, as he names says, his hard-working
elegant performance does deserve some praises, but the artifficial placement
in his voice makes for an overall lack of interpretative spontaneity
and for some bleached-out top notes. In any case, I guess I would prefer
him to, say, Cristoph Prégardien in the video from Paris. The
other singers are reliable, with the probable exception of a gusty Servilia
from Corinna Mologni. This is a role where grace and loveliness is everything.
• Down there
with Bach
Bach's writing for alto is
so difficult that we are always faced with the dilemma: expressive contralto
with very little punch or "positive" but uniform contratenor?
Although one should bother with authenticity, my heart always goes for
the contralto who knows to produce a bright and forward sound, what
is very rare. Listening again to John Eliot Gardiner's volume one in
the Soli Deo Gloria Bach cantata series, I finally realized how lucky
we are to have Wilke Te Brummelstroete around. In my opinion, she is
the best Bachian contralto these days and could face competion any time.
She has entirely mastered her low passaggio and produces a rich low
notes without sounding matronly. All that while keeping a light and
pleasant firm sound in her high notes. Pity she is such an infrequent
guest of recording studios.
Saturday, June 17th
2006
• A voice from
the East
My friend Isabela has just
arrived from Tokyo and brought me a very special gift - a newly released
CD featuring a Japanese soprano whom I have never seen or heard before
named Akiko Nakajima. She is the kind of singer whose basic pleasant
vocal quality is never lost. Her challenge seems therefore to resist
the temptation to go beyond her natural limits, since she still retains
her appeal even when under pressure. It is a most curious disc when
one hears a singer overparted in every track. Hers is a lyric soprano,
even through the whole range. Her low register shows she doesn't have
the ability to "spingere" down there (I'm afraid she won't
ever be a Cio-cio-san, at least without compromising her vocal health),
but she is an expert in concentrating and rotating her tone in the Janowitz/Schwarzkopf/Isokoski
sense in her top notes. Therefore, she is able to create some stunning
effects in Spitzennoten. As these comparisons tell, this singer should
have showed her possibilities in her Fach before venturing into foreign
territory. Why not a Susanna/Zerlina
Adina/Juliette/Micaela disc?
I have to confess I have
always been curious about those singers whose names are not written
in katakana in Japanese catalogues - and, thanks to Isabela, I was finally
able to listen to one. I imagined this kind of singer would sound like
the best-behaved girl in the voice department, but Nakajima is a very
vivid performer. Although some of her vowels could
be clearer, she really goes deep in the text, never singing repeats
in the same way and colouring the text with almost spontaneous use of
rubato. However, the voice is not one of an Italian soprano and, in
her best moment, La Traviata's Addio del Passato, she curiously sounds
like those Rumanian Violettas, singing in a shimmering slightly veiled
tone. It is a fact that she should avoid coloratura repertoire, when
she sounds really ill at ease, as much as her tenor, the Argentinian
Dario Schmunck, whose spontaneous light lyric tenor is pleasant when
not spinning Bellini's high-lying phrasing. The highlight in this disc
is probably L'Amico Fritz's cherry duet, when both singers sound believably
young, fresh and lovely in a non-larger than life way which is most
suitable to the text.
Monday, June 12nd
2006
• Movies
Some artists seem to become
a kind of trademark of themselves - you get their products and recognise
a generalized standard of quality but the importance is more related
to the name than to the product in itself. Maybe this is a shallow opinion,
but I guess it is the case of Wim Wenders probably since Der Himmel
über Berlin. His last movie, Don't Come Knocking,
does look like the work of a master, but not one you would declare to
like or even recommend - such as those scraps of paper with three pencilstrokes
and a signature by Picasso hanging in the walls of second-hand museums.
Although all the symbols involved are American - the wide landscapes,
cowboys, neon-lit casinos, diners, empty utilitarian urban sceneries
(it often and beautifully looks like a painting by Hopper) - the eye
of the director is definitely European. The tempo, the analytic building
of scenes and the use of cameras cry to the audience there is someone
German behind the cameras. The fractionary plot and sketched characters
with dialogues with the "meaningful moment" tag is, however,
a trademark of Sam Sheppard, the playwright. This aesthetics certainly
work better on stage. On the big screen, one expects acting of a denser
level. Here Jessica Lange and Sheppard himself seem to be directed to
offer acting of a very superficial kind, which only adds to a certain
naïve and (unintentionally) kitsch feeling (and I am not referring
to the tacky interiors one would find in the good old far west - that
is actually endearing). A final question - has Fairuza Balk been playing
the same character since American History X? What has happened
to her?
Costa-Gavras, on the other
hand, seems to be working really hard to keep updated and to absord
new ideas. Le Couperet is really something
very different from Amen, Mad City or Music Box
- and I don't say that in the Match Point sense: those were
films with different levels of sucess and the new one is not necessarily
better than the other ones. It is just a differnet film. Compared to
the Americanized film-making Costa-Gavras has adopted, Le Couperet
does look like the kind of French film we have been watching since
the late 90's. It certainly boasts irresistible black humour and director/screen-writer
know when to shift to a serious mood or to a more raw kind of comedy.
The way the leading character plots and commits his crimes is most believable
in its awkward and opportunistic manner, but there is a moment when
you feel "there goes again other murder" and you start to
count that there are two or three left. In this sense, subplots could
be more organic with the main story-telling. With some 30 min less,
this could have been unnecessary.
• Broadcasts
I haven't had these days
the opportunity to listen to broadcasts as often as I used to do, but
these two last week-ends I could listen to a bit longer to the Tannhäuser
from Génève, in which Nina Stemme is a superlative Elisabeth,
fullt-toned but rich in tone-colouring, and Stephen Gould is a creative
Minnesänger. The role might be a bit of a stretch for him, but
the voice is consistently pleasant. There is also the Don Giovanni from
Paris - I wish I could have seen Michael Hanneke's "corporative
world"-production, since the musical aspects of this performance
are rarely above routine. Cambreling offers a safe effective rendition
of the score (the act I finale was unusually well-organized) and the
cast had some good singings below their usual form or miscast. The fach
of Christine Schäfer's soprano has always been a mistery to me.
When I first heard it, I thought "an Edith Mathis with a touch
of Anja Silja". That may be the reason why she shifts from purely
lyric to coloratura and sometimes even beyond that, rarely sounding
entirely succesful although she is often congenial. Her Donna Anna has
some bright forceful top notes, but her high phrasing rarely floats
and her low notes are usually hoarse. Her fioritura runs dangerously
close to savonnement as well. That said, she is an urgent and quite
patrician. Mireille Delunsch's heavy usage of her voice shows in the
eventual awkward phrasing and her tone has lost some of its loveliness.
I can think of more seductive Zerlinas than Alexandra Zamojska, but
she is definitely an efficient and stylish one. As for Shawn Mathey,
this is definitely a more robust Ottavio than usual, but Dalla sua pace
resented his abuse of glottal attack. Peter Mattei is an acknowledged
exponent of the part of Don Giovanni and sings with added insight (compared
to Daniel Harding's performances from Aix). Robert Lloyd is still truly
formidable as the Commendatore.
• Will I finally
visit Buenos Aires?
My attempts to visit the
capital city of Argentina are getting three years-old. Because of the
Teatro Colón's Kafka-esque ticket-selling system, it is almost
impossible to schedule one's trip if one insists on visiting the traditional
Argentinian operatic venue (as I do). Because of my friend Felipe, who
lives there now and pointed out to me the closing of the opera house
for some years due to restoration, I am decided to see Salieri's La
Grotta di Trofonio there, but this is taking the strategical planning
of a Napoleonic war. Because of Felipe's kindness and good intentions,
I think I'll succeed this time. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, June 10th
2006
• Choses cachées
dans "Caché"
Thanks to Telma, my boss's
omniscient secretary, I was able to discover that the ending of Michael
Hanneke's Caché is less "open" and "exoteric"
than I had thought. If you pay lots of attention to the left upper part
of the screen during the last scene, you'll see something that will
make everything more logic in the ordinary sense of the world, but also
quite puzzling. Telma was so upset because she was the only one to see
that in a group of ten people (she had asked around). Now that I've
seen the movie again, I have to say that some people really see more
than others (in the physical sense of the word).
Sunday, June 5th
2006
• Sei pur vaga,
brillante Zerlina
It is truly commendable Maestro
Silvio Barbato's campaign to transform the large pyramidal building
in the heart of Brazil's capital city into a genuine National Theatre.
Judging from tonight's performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni, it sounds
like an act of courage. Barbato himself is an acquired taste of mine.
I did see in the past some atrocious performances by him, but the Idomeneo
in Rio made me give him a second chance. He knows what Mozartian style
is, but I don't know wether the sloppy orchestral playing that has become
a kind of hallmark of his performances is the result of underprepared
musicians and bad instruments or his lack of ability to cultivate the
sound of an ensemble. When it comes to the orchestra in the Teatro Nacional,
I am inclined to blame the forces available. If I am to overlook the
poor poor POOR playing tonight, I may retain the interesting tempi and
use of accent and time shifts to create dramatic effects. I would mention
the pride of place given to woodwind, but I guess that was the result
of hoarse and blurred string sound. In the end, I was a bit thankful
for the cuts in the finale ultimo.
All that said, it is admirable
that Mr. Barbato has been able to gather a team of Mozartian singers
in a country with no tradition in this repertoire. Imported from São
Paulo, soprano Claudia Riccitelli was given the role of Donna Anna.
Her voice is not what the French would call flatteuse. Her Leila (in
Bizet's Les Pecheurs de Perles) in Rio showed an imaginative but hardworking
singer. In a part which requires a voice happy to float above the stage,
Riccitelli operated an inch from her very limits from the first scene.
She pulled out a presentable if worrisome Or sai chi l'onore. Non mi
dir was the dubious triumph of confidence in one own's technique on
inadequate resources. I was disappointed to find Janette Dornellas,
Rio's more than acceptable Elettra in Idomeneo this year, ill at ease
as Donna Elvira. Her bright and powerful voice crossed the limits of
overmetallic sound and her low register was entirely disconnected from
the rest of her voice. A pity, since she seemed to have good ideas about
the role. In the title role, Leonardo Neiva displayed a velvety and
flexible baritone. Exposed high notes tended to sound bleached, though.
Pepes do Valle was a natural and engaging Leporello who knew how to
explore buffo possibilities without hamming or cheating with Mozartian
lines.
However, the truly marvelous
Luisa Francesconi exposed the different levels of shortcoming of the
performance, offering one of the most engaging mezzo-soprano Zerlinas
in my experience. I have to confess I had my doubts on how charming
she might sound in such a seductive role after seeing her impressively
convincing James Dean-like (and look-a-like) Idamante in Rio. This Protean
artist showed herself tonight as the most feminine, volatile and sexy
of Zerlinas. Although her tone is unmistakably mezzo-tinted, she successfully
adapted her high register to the kind of bell-like sound one would expect
in a role like that, beguiling the audience with exemplary renditions
of her arias and strong contribution to ensembles. Once again I state
that the fact that this singer has not been exposed to the audiences
of the world's leading opera houses is entirely their loss. Since she
is a native of Brasília, I would really enjoy to see her singing
repertoire in which she could show the entirety of her resources, such
as Handel's La Lucrezia. There are reasonably good baroque musique specialists
in this town...
I guess the kind of staging
adopted by director Gianmaria Romagnoli is what one calls semi-staging.
The orchestra was inserted downstage, while two opposite sets of steps
lead to the proper "stage", organized as a courtroom. All
singers remained onstage throughout the show and stood up for their
contributions as if "testifying" and "reviving"
the events - the kind of stuff that only makes the story more confuse
and does not look good. It seems that actors' direction took profit
of how talented each member of the cast was - and there was too much
information going on (such as a Spike Lee's Inside Man's Jodie
Foster-like angel playing cards with Don Giovanni's lawyer, a kind of
literal translation of the Devil's advocate...). In any case, my friend
Isabela is entirely right on saying that the staging's most valuable
asset was the fact that everyone in the cast looked like their characters.
When my friend Bruno told her that he was going to see it comme
il faut in Milan, she said he might not have such a collection
of physiques de rôle so perfect as tonight's. Let's see.
Tuesday, May 30th
2006
• Photos
From a short-trip to Pirenopolis.
160 km from Brasilia.
Sunday, May 28th
2006
• Staying home
with British movies
Having nothing to do last
week-end, I stayed home and turned the tv on only to find this puzzling
and fascinating Victorian half-Lesbian half-Dickensian story with lots
of surprising volte-faces and amazing actresses. This happened to be
BBC's Fingersmith.
I saw the whole thing into the night and had a great time.
Both Elayne Cassidy (from Alejandro Almenábar's The Others and
Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey) and Sally Hawkins are excellent and
Rupert Evans (from Shakespeare Retold - Midsummer Night Dream) showed
his credentials in a performance entirely made in demi-tintes, where
most others could just ham it entirely. And there are expectedly great
performances from Imelda Staunton and Charles Dance. Sarah Waters is
the author of the book on which the screenplay has been made. Judging
from the movie, at first sight, it all looks as if Wilkie Collins could
have written it if there had not been so much "continental"
decadence and sexuality involved. It is curious, though, that the ending
feels so much like Jane Austen (in the Keira Knightely "incandenscently
in love"-sense) if we overlook the fact that those are two girls.
Although this is not necessarily original per se, it is formally speaking,
I guess.
In an entirely different
genre, the other British movie to entertain me through my week-end is
a horror B movie from the 50's called "Night of the Demon",
by a French-born American director Jacques Tourneur, whom I discovered
to be the author of the original Cat People (remember, Nastasja Kinski?).
Instead of letting myself turn off by special (d)effects, the story
really made me curious. Although there is nothing terrifying going on
for modern tastes, the whole plot is built on interesting slightly bizarre
dialogues and dramatic situations, with more than a touch of sense of
humour - in the end you're really into it. Although the whole appreciation
turns around the idea of "cult trash", there is much to take
seriously, such as a masterly scene in a train wagon where all characters
involved are trying to pass on to each other a cursed parchment which
is timed to perfection in good theatrical tradition. Not to everyone's
taste, I know, but definitely for those who like to see unusual things.
• Cagion di
meraviglia
I have been a proud advocate
of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito since my early days of listening to
vocal music. For a long while, I was also proud to say I had all the
recordings of this greatest and last of opere serie, but these months
have challenged my budget and spiced my collector's obsession. Not only
has DG released MacKerras, but also Harmonia Mundi offers René
Jacobs and TDK, Harnoncourt's performance from Salzburg - not to mention
Cambreling from Paris. I have already purchased MacKerras and, on listening
to it, I cannot cease to marvel. Maybe because of the little course
on History of Music, I have been listening to everything as if I had
never done that before. So I have caught myself these days in awe more
frequently than I use to. I believe that never has Mozart followed the
classic motto inutilia truncat as perfectly as here. Every
note in the score is timed to perfect dramatic effect and in the end
you feel you really know these people. No other composer would convince
us of Vitellia's soul-searching plus "doing-the-right-thing"
or that Tito is such a really good guy that it is actually difficult
to suffer him and that Sesto is such a likeable emotion-driven person
that a friend could actually forgive his betrayal.
A moment which had never fired my imagination actually caught my attention
today. It is the recitative in which Tito tells Sesto he may open his
heart since he is speaking to a friend, not to the Emperor. In this
moment, being a criminal and practically sentenced to death, Sesto is
a free man who doesn't fear and owes nothing to his sovereign. This
is the moment where they speak man-to-man for the first time. It is
the moment when Tito actually begs Sesto to tell him, to explain. He
is an Emperor who has always longed to have someone willing to put the
protocol aside and be himself with him - and he finds this person in
someone who actually betrayed him. One understands why he forgives him.
"Let my friend live, even if he has betrayed me", he would
say. Sesto is unfaithful, but in the end he might be his only friend.
That very betrayal has cancelled the "infinite space" set
by the gods between these two men. Of course, saying this I am praising
Metastasio's skills, but I am sure that his words only speak to our
souls because Mozart gave them a soul in the first place.
Friday, May 26th
2006
• My two cents
on Puccini
Nobody likes to say he or
she likes Puccini. Although I don't think it's not the kind of music
I would listen to everyday, it does fit a special occasion. Some would
say this is the musical equivalent of "Da Vinci Code", but
- even if Puccini would squeeze tears and blood from music to win over
the audience, the hands of a master were employed to do the work. You
just have to compare him to all those wannabes from the Verismo days
all over Europe. In any case, I may have said that before, the duet
from Manon Lescaut, "Tu, amore, tu", is the sexiest thing
ever done in opera. The energetic preliminary interaction evolving to
ardourous surrendering building up to almost athletic almost angular
climax... It is wonderful how old times' public moral straightjacket
really made those people creative in getting their point taken. And
you do get the point with Mediterranean sensuous singing from Montserrat
Caballé and Plácido Domingo wrapped in sensuous orchestral
cushions provided by the excited beat of the young James Levine back
in the Rudolf Bing gala at the Metropolitan Opera. I do wonder if the
Joseph Volpe one
will reserve us something as GOOD as that.
• Glad to share
My friend Luisfel is so upset
I haven't written about the cozy slightly ambitious but unpretentious
course on History of Music I have organized for my friends that I take
the opportunity to write about that here. The whole idea is to give
the basic information one needs in order to have an independent opinion
and taste in music. After a first semi-schyzophrenic st meeting when
we discussed the origins of music and the shaping of its basic elements,
we have been travelling in time from the Middle Ages and next time we
get to Baroque Music. It has been great to revisit some basic concepts
and - most of all - to listen to familiar stuff afresh, since some of
the most difficult and exciting work has been "butchering"
long pieces into attractive and meaningful bleeding chunks. For example,
which 8 minutes from the Matthäus-Passion to highlight? [that was
easy - at least for me - St. Peter's three-fold denial plus Erbarme
dich...] Also, I have been surprised by my inclination for Orlando when
I had to choose one of his operas to explore the basic concepts. On
the other side, it was hugely disappointing to discover that there is
only one recording of the final duet from L'Incoronazione di Poppea
which I really like, which is Mireille Delunsch and Anne Sofie von Otter's
in William Christie's DVD, in which both singers know that it is cool
to produce plummy seductive tones but also that it is cooler when you
can get those ultra-sexy dissonances really electrical through perfect
matching of fixed (but not wiry) tone. Unfortunately, my CD burnt from
that is not working properly and I had to resort to second choice, Jacobs'
with Danielle Borst and Guillemette Laurens.
• Movies
Michael Hanneke's Caché
not only is his best movie, but also the best piece of acting from Juliette
Binoche I have ever seen, not to mention that Daniel Auteil proves again
that there never is "another" film with him. The metalinguistic
camerawork is masterly, the almost classical (in the Ingres sense of
this word) art direction is mesmerizing: there is no superfluous beauty
in this film, those images and dialogues simply display naturalness
and economy of means. The ending might seem puzzling, but again Hanneke
followed the golden rule of inutilia truncat. A friend of mine asked
me - what do you think of the whole story? Things only look proper and
clean if seen in a certain perspective, was my immediate answer. I don't
know if I am able to develope from that, but I felt comfortable with
it.
Thursday, May 18th
2006
• Idomeneo
in Rio
Because the series of performances
of Mozart´s Idomeneo taking place at Rio´s Theatro Municipal
were supposed to be the Brazilian première*, the idea was to
hire only Brazilian artists. Inviting Brazilian painter Adriana Varejão
seemed to be a happy choice. In her career, she has explored a kind
of post-modernistic recreation of Brazilian baroque, and - in theory
- this is the kind of trend Eurotrash productions like to investigate.
I would say she bothered to read the libretto. It seems she associates
the plot of Idomeneo with liquids - blood, tears, the ocean - and the
action has been set in a large room covered with white tiles. It might
represent a bathing place or a slaughterhouse. The setting is cunningly
transformed to comply with the requirements of different scenes. For
example, the shipwrecked Idomeneo emerges from a vapor pool in a striking
effect and the most "public" scenes seem to represent one
of those old grand-hôtels. I have no problem with Varejão's
ideas, but I don't think I like the way they have been crafted into
sceneries. When you have settings that revolve about tiles, they ought
to look realistic. Otherwise, it is only cardboard surfaces covered
with bright plastic squares. I also believe that using 5-meter tall
water gushes during zeffiretti lusinghieri and the ensuing
duet is far from being a wise idea, since the dripping noises are not
prescribed by Mozart. It is true, however, that everything looked beautiful
compared to Marcelo Marques' ugly costumes, which seem to serve no purpose:
they failed to portrait XVIIIth century clothing-style, they failed
to look stylized (Japanese katanas didn't help at all) and the colours
in ensemble didn't match, they also seemed to have no point in the whole
bathing/butchering concept.
I am not sure if this is André Heller-Lopes's first full staging
for the Theatro Municipal, but it is telling the fact that inviting
someone exposed to the practices adopted in the main opera houses in
the world - especially after a long diet of unexperienced theatre directors
who barely see any opera at all. That said, some basic mistakes an experienced
theatre director would never permit intrude now and then - such as choristers
crossing in front of the main soloists. Worse of all, although the singer
taking the part of Idomeneo seemed to be willing to follow the director's
instructions, they simply were beyond his acting possibilities. As a
result, he looked unintentionally comic and some members of the audience
had to repress their laughter. It would have been wiser to chose a palette
of acting possibilities with which the tenor would feel more comfortable.
After an untidy overfast Magic Flute in the same theatre, I was a bit
suspicious of conductor Silvio Barbato - only to be positively surprised.
He seems to be in better understanding with the orchestra and his ability
to give space to soloists is greatly improved. Of course, mismatches
would creep over now and then, especially in fast violin passagework
and choral episodes, but all in all it was a stylish performance. At
the end, however, the musicians seemed to be tired and the preexisting
theatricality dropped to dangerous levels. Silviane Bellato had everything
to be a charming Ilia - she knows her Mozart and has elegant phrasing,
but her velvety voice lacks the edge to cut through the orchestra into
the hall. Playing her Elettra as a sort of débauchée straying
from some operetta (not a bad idea, although the replacement of hysteria
for nymphomania doesn't make lots of sense), Janette Dornellas displays
a strong rich soprano, solid from bottom to top. Although coloratura
and floated pianissimi are not exactly natural for her, she is the kind
of singer who has everything under control in the best way nature provided
her. Because of that, her Idol mio was well sculpted, but not necessarily
beguiling. On the other hand, she was entirely at home in D'Oreste,
d´Ajacce. I feel inclined to say she should be more incisive about
her words there, but then it would feel picky and maybe her comfortable-with-her-sexuality
Elettra was supposed to sound that way. In the role of Idomeneo, Fernando
Portari no longer has the dulcet voice of his Ferrando days, but the
stronger and darker sound he offers now is more akin to the role. His
naturalness with Italian declamation and tone colouring are indeed admirable
and the choice for the more ornamented version of Fuor del mar is commendable,
even if he had to chop a bit his otherwise smooth coloratura for extra
breaths. I believe Theatro Municipal was lucky to find him; juding from
recent broadcasts, La Scala and the Wiener Staatsoper have had bad weather
on casting this role. Finally, crowing the whole performance, Luiza
Francesconi offered an Idamante to the manner born. Her clean mezzo
soprano is deeply rooted in rock-solid low notes, she has all the necessary
expressive and technical devices to produce echt Mozartian phrasing,
has a strong stage presence and looks great. Any opera house in the
world would feel proud to feature this singer in this role.
*I write "supposed to" because the program
never says that, in spite of what had been written by the local press.
In any case, it sounds realistic.
•
Fresh winds are blowing on the OSB
Roberto Minczuk, the conductor
who has won the hearts of the audiences in São Paulo, is now
the leading conductor with the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra in Rio.
Leaving the prestigious OSESP for the decadent OSB seemed to be risky,
but judging from his Sunday concert at the Theatro Municipal, this man
has cards under his sleeves. First of all, what a likeable person he
is! The Sunday concert was conceived for younger audiences and Mr. Minczuk
was amazingly at ease with a microphone, introducing the orchestra to
the audience, making funny jokes (he is looking for an "pipe-organ
donator" for the orchestra's new venue...) etc. His enthusiasm
is so genuine and inspiring that, even if it is too early to make assessments,
I can say that I have never seen the musicians so willing to give their
best as that afternoon. Although they still have trouble with passages
where there are "too many notes", the orchestral sound was
richer and more ductile than in the previous years. I think Rio is very
lucky to have Minczuk responsible for the city's leading orchestra.
I'm eager to hear more from him.
Wednesday, May 10th
2006
• Describing
the undescribable
The most unfrequent moviemaker
around, Terence Malick made a movie on Pocahontas. This didn't seem
promising, but I have enjoyed The Thin Red Line and decided to give
it a chance. Lucky me. Two hours and a half of sheer poetry. Instead
of telling the facts of this potentially saccharine story, Malick has
decided to plunge into the mind and hearts of their characters avoiding
ready-made psychology and offering a genuine insight into this most
wonderful among adventures - having to challenge the unknown. From the
mysterious paradisiacal landscapes and the imminent sensation of underlying
physical danger to the discovery of unknown feelings. With marvelous
vertiginously cut cinematographic streams of consciousness,
exquisite photography, creative use of voice-over (for once in American
movies, not explaining what we had perfectly learnt
by ourselves from the images shown on screen) and immaculate
soundtrack (intelligent musical associations of the opening bars of
Wagner's Rheingold for the idea of flowing and transformation and also
of Mozart, for the "heaven-on-Earth"-effect ), this entirely
personal perspective makes the story paradoxically more universal, for
everyone can readily identify with the excitement, wonder and apprehension
of having to deal and being attracted for what you just don't know and
understand. As we would say in Brazil, Malick was not afraid of being
happy - he openheartedly relished in the description of feelings, portraying
enamoring, disillusion, bliss and affection with masterly paintbrush.
He was also very fortunate to find Q'orianka Kilcher. A friend of mine
says that the camera is very fickle about actresses - for no reason
it just "likes" some of them, regardless of talent, beauty
or sex appeal. As much as Captain Smith, the camera has a loving eye
for Kilcher - it gives her all the time of the world and it feels as
if we could have yet a bit more of her.
Thursday, April
27th 2006
• Heil Dir,
São Paulo!
I had not been in São
Paulo for a long while - 2003 was my last visit - and, although I have
always known I really like the town, I notice that I haven't really
got it so far. Most people would imagine that a huge city like that
is the dictionary example of urban hell, but the truth is that São
Paulo, with its valley/hill perspectives, small almost suburban houses
ocasionally pierced by a half-kitsch neo-classical tall building has
a certain cozy unpretentious charm. As someone from Rio, I would say
Copacabana is far more claustrophobic with its neverending walls of
grey buildings.
Sankt Paulus der Koch muss sein
It is also true that restaurants there are wonderful.
I have visited some no-frills Italian places where you can eat like
a king. As a tribute to my father, I have also been at the Familia Mancini,
a restaurant he always talks about. The fetuccini Mastroianni was really
worth while the visit. Also as a tribute to Isabela, I have visited
the trendy Café Suplicy, where they offer an extra-cream version
of a cappuccino for the price of a (expensive) drink. Anyway, it was
part of the echt-Jardins (the fashion district) experience. BTW, Rua
Oscar Freire, São Paulo's answer to Milan's Via Monte Napoleone,
is the less formidable elegant place I have ever been. It looks like
an ordinary street anywhere else until you see something like Diesel
or Armani popping out when you less expect. Maybe the bottom line is
- when you are truly chic you don't have to trumpet that fact all over
the place. Who knows?
Art, art, art
I have visited an unbelievable number of museums thanks
to expert advice of my friend Maurício. I have to confess that
visiting the MASP was truly disappointing. Once the prince among Brazilian
museums, it exudes decadence now. Lina Bo Bardi's marvelous building
has been conceived so as to exhibit the impressive collection (Boticelli,
Bosch, Renoir, Manet, Van Gogh et al) in glass stands in an open hall
surrounded by windows. The idea was that one would be able to see the
paintings in filtered natural light as if they floated above the urban
landscape. When I first visited the museums some years ago, it used
to be like that (follow the link
and scroll down to the 11th picture to see how it used to be). Now the
glass stands are gone, the windows are shut and walls have been built.
There is insufficient information to visitors, temporary exhibits are
bureaucratic, the museum-shop doesn't provide postcards of the works
in their collections. My conclusion is that the MASP seriously needs
a new director.
The other museum which has
captured my attention is the MAC/USP, the museum of contemporary art
at the São Paulo University. Their permanent collection displays
handpicked masterpieces by Kandinsky, Modigliani, Calder, de Chirico
et al, the facilities are excellent and the tiny museum shop is quite
good. I have even bought a book with the cute naïf paintings by
the Japanese artist Taizi Harada for the price of a Big Mac menu.
A museum which I have always
enjoyed is the Pinacoteca do Estado, a wonderful neo-classical building
entirely made of rough bricks. The exhibit on Mannerism has some interesting
paintings by Tintoretto and El Greco and a profusion of portraits of
David with Goliath's head - I had never realized that this was a "popular"
theme then. The permanent collection includes some charming XIXth century
Brazilian paintings we should see more often.
O süsseste Wonne! Seligste Weib!
The main purpose of my visit to São Paulo was,
however, the famous Sala São Paulo, the city's main concert hall
and home to the OSESP, arguably the leading orchestra in South America.
The hall has been built in an old train station and has received the
most sophisticated acoustic treatment available. For example, the height
of the ceiling is adjustable according to the repertoire. It is a beautiful
hall and certainly one where the public is treated to the most delicious
snacks for the best price ever (after all, this is São Paulo).
That afternoon, the programme started with Hugo Wolf's tone poem inspired
by Kleist's Penthesilea, a piece I had never listened to before. Conductor
Ira Levin had his clumsy moments but the nobility of the string section
in this orchestra saved the day. The second part of the concert featured
Wagner's Die Walküre, act I. Although Levin has been receiving
a great deal of bad press, his Karajan-esque approach served well the
lushness of the orchestral sound (strongly aided by the impressively
immediate acoustic of the hall - we are simply flooded with sound) and
allowed clean and natural violin passagework. The diminished lighting
also highlighted the intimate atmosphere and spiritual communion between
artists and the audience built by the soloist's emotional commitment
and sense of style. As Sieglinde, Violeta Urmana was at her most feminine
and rich-toned. The velvety quality of her voice, both in soft and loud
dynamics is one of the marvels of this world. I also find praiseworthy
that, unlike most mezzo-tinted exponents of this part, she avoids a
grand, larger-than-life approach to this role of a suffering young woman
whose surrendering to passion should not sound earth-shattering but
touching and disarming. As Siegmund, American tenor Stephen Gould displayed
thorough technique and unusual attentiveness to the text. He has a healthy
low register and the top acquires the necessary brightness in the most
exposed moments. There are some tense and constricted patches in his
range, but the tone is pleasant all the way and his musicianship is
beyond any suspicion. Last but not least, the American baritone Stephen
Bronk, a resident of Brazil, was a forceful all-round perfect Hunding.
It is a pity, though, that the supertitles displayed such a poor translation,
with spelling errors in Portuguese and other bizarreries.
The theatres
I must confess I had expected more of the theatre programme
in a city famous for its theatrical life. So I decided to take some
risks. Newspaper Folha de São Paulo published a rather
unpleasant review of Patrícia Melo's play The Kidney.
She is a respected author and the whole criticism involed the casting
of TV-personality Adriane Galisteu in the leading role (actually a replacement
for an actress whose talents are more than dubious to my taste). The
fact is that the article made me curious. Besides, the cast features
two actors I really like.
As it is, The Kidney
is an interesting play, the kind of comedy exploring a broad sense of
humour which has strong appeal with uneducated theatre-goers, with an
unusual and most welcome sense of cynicism, black humour and theatrical
references though. There is a somewhat clumsy transition to the denoument,
but the final volte-face is truly surprising and also illuminating.
Folha de São Paulo accuses Galisteu of making her character
Rosário, a bookworm desperately in need of getting a life, a
doll in a play for children. Although I agree she looks too good for
her character, I believe she unintentionally brought some truth to her
part. Although her character has an obsession for reading, her lines
don't make us believe she is neither an intellectual nor particularly
intelligent. With her enthusiastic but a bit dumb-blond attitude, she
makes the character's naïveté realistic - I have met some
girls like that. Moreover, she has a good voice and moves spontaneously
on stage. I think her performance is a bit more than "not spoiling
the show". And that is particularly complimentary when there are
the fabulous Ivone Hoffman and Bruce Gomlevsky playing her soap-opera
obsessed mother and her opera-queen-wannabe brother. They are both hilariouys
and relish the broad comic gestures con gusto. Many an experienced
actress would be overshadowed by these two... I have found sceneries
and sountrack ingenuous, but would have preferred a different actor
for the key role of Augusto. His onedimensional portrayal tunes down
an important element of the play, the underlying danger.
It is most curious, though,
that one big hit in São Paulo's theatre, with the blessing of
some reviews, is a staging of Neil Simon's Jakes' Women. I have the
strong impression that Antonio Fagundes is the kind of actor who wants
to be everything in a show. Bureaucratic directing, unefficient cast,
ugly sceneries - everything is thoroughly provided in order to make
sure that everything is about him. I wonder why one would think like
that, if one has the talents of Fagundes, though. He is a sensational
actor, who uses his stage skills like a virtuoso playing his violin.
If there was something close to good around him, I am sure his performance
would be even greater than it was. As it is, it made me regret having
spent my money on that, especially when there are so many good restaurants
nearby! It is also strange that Folha de São Paulo had
been revolted with Adriane Galisteu when some actresses in this play
make her seem a Cate Blanchett in comparison, with the notable exception
of Amanda Acosta, who has a touching voice and presence in the part
of Julie. It was not a surprise for me reading that she has a career
as a singer and is a trained soprano.
Finally, I have bought a
digital camera. Since I have learned to take picture with an old Nikon,
I still have to adapt with all those buttons and functions. In any case,
you can sample some pictures of my trip here.
Sunday, April 17th
2006
• Best movie
Although everybody with an
IQ above 60 knows that the Academy Awards has nothing to do with art,
the force of habit makes us wonder whether the Oscar has gone to the
right hands. Last week I finally saw Bennett Miller's Capote and I have
no doubt that this is the best North-American movie last year - Philip
Seymour Hoffman has always been a favourite and he is magnificent here.
One could watch his face for hours, so rich the expression and intelligent
his character building. Truth be said, the whole cast is amazing. And
having both Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in the same frame is
worth 10 times the price of the ticket. I would like to write about
the austere and elegant colour-palette, the amazing dialogues that never
gravitate around the obvious... but that's what one does when one feels
obliged to convince readers about the quality of a movie. And Capote
doesn't need rhetorical devices - its quality speaks for itself.
• Movies again
La Demoiselle d'Honneur is
Claude Chabrol at its vintage best. I have always loved the classical
directness of Chabrol's movies and the way his "back to basics"
always makes things look instead more complex. Here the story could
have run dangerously close to the "sexy-gal-gets-nuts" cliché,
but the dryness and naturalism (in the literary sense) of the story
telling, the utter charm of the characters, the marvelous acting (the
cast is so consistently excellent, that I feel uncomfortable to give
pride of place to the leadings actors, the fabulous Benoît Magimel
and Laura Smet) and the unashamed sense of (black?) humour make it something
very special. My friend Marcos asked me - what kind of symbology is
involved in the sculpture named Flora? I would rather point out the
fact that, although the main female character is named Senta, it is
rather the youngman who - as much as the Wagnerian character - idealizes
the representation of the ideal partner in need of redemption. On the
other hand, does he himself need to be redempted from suburban proper
monotony?
• Alcina from
Paris
Saturday I listened to a
broadcast of Handel's Alcina from Paris. It was a 2005 stylish if a
tiny bit unimaginative performance conducted by Cristophe Rousset, in
which Sylvia Tro Santafé was a superlative Ruggiero, dazzling
in the arie di bravura and naturally touching in the arie d'affetto.
Christine Schäfer was an expressive Sourceress if a bit out of
sorts with the technical demands made on her. It is a pity that a singer
more adept with fioriture has not been chosen, since the very fast account
of Ombre palide might have worked in an interesting unusual way. Ingela
Bohlin is not the kind of high soprano one would expect to find in the
role of Morgana, but she adapted the part to her light lyric soprano
more successfully than many a famous rival. Unfortunately, Marjana Mijanovic
sounded too pale of tone to my taste in the difficult role of Bradamante.
My dream team for Alcina:
Dorothea Röschmann, Sandrine Piau, Joyce DiDonato, Stephanie Blythe.
René Jacobs conducting.
Wednesday, April
5th 2006
• Remains from
the trip
I have recently discussed
both with Lia and Isabela about art (one of the reasons remains in the
fact that Lia is a painter) and how some prejudices about contemporary
production seem to be in a process of revision. For example, for a long
while, it has been a given truth that "hoch" painting is supposed
to be abstract (or even conceptual), at least in Brazil. But abstract
painting has been so much abused to a kind of "chain production"
of uninspired stuff to be hung in lobbies that just hanging a figurative
painting in your wall was suddenly comparable to an act of courage.
Judging from the windows of art galleries in New York, it seems that
this seems to be the new trend there. I remember having discussed with
Lia that computer graphic design must have something to do with it,
because it has rekindled the interest of working from a figure, a photo
and expanded the possibilities of treatment and technique even to banal
objects. And suddenly the possibilities offered by the technique of
painting (volume, texture, colours) seem to see to the same kind of
approach of graphic design, publicity etc. In a very cold day, while
walking at Madison Avenue, I saw some paintings in a gallery and asked
for the name of the artist so that I could read more about him on the
Internet. I think he is a good example of this "new approach"
and, more than that (since I am no expert and don't intend to give the
impression that I am), I just like his work. His name is Vincent Hron
and you can see his photos of his painting following this link.
Sunday, March 26th
2006
• Cantos de
la latinidad
During the marvelous Ewa
Podles's recital at the Avery Fisher Hall, I had the luck to find a
friend and colleague, Stela Maria Brandão, a singer and professor
whose hard work on trying to make Brazilian repertoire more widely known
abroad is what I call a true service to art and her country. She introduced
me to mezzo-soprano Nan Maro Babakhanian, who is organizing the International
Festival of Voice, Guitar, Piano and Collaborative Piano on July in
Granada (for more information, click on this link).
By a coincidence, Stela will be in Barcelona one month before, where
she is a guest teacher at the Festival
of Song. We talked about both assignments and both of them
are so interesting and valuable for anyone interested in Spanish and
Latin-American repertoire that I told them I would advertise them here.
• More reviews
In the Mozart and Handel
discographies, reviews of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito on DVD from Paris
and Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto on DVD from both Paris and Sydney.
Sunday, March 19th
2006
• Wien, Orchester
meiner Träume
As I have said before, it
is so difficult to judge an orchestral concert and say something definitive
about an orchestra based on one performance. As it is, Riccardo Muti
is one of my very favourite conductors and the Vienna Philharmonic one
of my very favourite orchestras. Their concert at the Carnegie Hall
in a thoroughly enjoyable programme - Schubert's Rosamunde and 4th symphony,
plus Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and R. Strauss's Tod und Verklärung
- reserved some surprises. Because of Muti's acknowledged reputation
as a Mozartian, I felt a bit puzzled by his somewhat overelegant account
of the sinfonia concertante, where the orchestra's spalla and main violist's
Einverständnis was truly remarkable. On the other hand, the Straussian
Tone Poem seemed to lack some grandeur (the brass section had more than
one moment where a more patrician and clean sound would have been helpful).
That said, the unique blended of sections and the uniquely crystalline
strings in this orchestra are one of the wonders of the modern world.
In the Schubertian part of the programme, Muti seemed to be at his most
masterly, handling his orchestra the way a singer would phrase in a
Bellini opera. Some of the sounds produced by the Viennese were so exceptional
and otherworldly that one couldn't help feeling the enthusiasm one feels
when witnessing a miracle. The excitement of the audience has certainly
moved the orchestra to produce one of the most exciting account of the
Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino, where Muti's legendary mastery
of fast tempi and clean articulation made for the orchestral display
of one's life. The guys who played it at the Met on Tuesday and their
conductor should be tied to the seats at the Carnegie Hall and forced
to listen to it a hundred times to understand how this music should
sound.
• Mr. Sloane
and entertainment
"One should never help
the obvious", says a friend of mine with a lifetime experience
with theatre. So seems to believe director Scott Ellis on staging Joe
Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane. Although one could expect a powerful
amount of underlying nastiness and violence in a staging of this play,
this production seems to deny understatement or even overstatement as
an expressive tool. The whole action takes place in a house in a wastefill
area and this might point out to the fact that there must be a subtle
sense of disgust related to the events here depicted. However, as staged
here, the proceedings look extraordinarily clean. The casting of Chris
Carmack just reinforces that. Of course this is a role hard to cast,
and Carmack seems to have done his homework both at dramatic and fitness
academy. However, I wonder if his thoroughly good looks don't make the
siblings' interest for him more "acceptable" in the Uncle
Vanya's sense that beauty is to blame for disorder. Maybe if Mr. Sloane
was just a young sturdy fellow, the sordidness might have come to the
fore. Both Jan Maxwell and Richard Easton are entirely satisfying in
the roles of Kath and Kemp, handling their British accents to great
effect. Alec Baldwin is a bit less adept in this particular aspect,
but his personal charisma and unfailing comedy timing are irresistible.
Saturday, March
4th 2006
• High-speed
Ibsen
On my way through Nevins
St., I couldn't make my mind whether director Robyn Nevin likes Ibsen
or not. When a director believes a text to lack rhythm, he usually has
it adapted. So did Ms. Nevin on asking Andrew Upton to fix it up here
and there. But, even then, it seems, she felt the play needed still
some extra energy. That must be the reason for the peripathetic approach
to Hedda Gabler, here transformed into a black-humour comedy with frantic
dialogue delivery and overbusy acting. It is hard to move an audience
with the egg-timer on, but you can always extract some laughs from them,
when you have the dream-team of a cast. In the title role, Cate Blanchett
proved to be one of the most technically-accomplished stage actresses
of her generation. She could rush as an athlete from one theatrical
gesture to the other with breathtaking virtuoso quality. However, the
fast-forward approach made her Hedda more excentric than desperate.
The touch of repressed fierceness that should take the audience to the
edge of their seats - this sort of hallmark of the title role - has
been unfortunately denied by the director to her brilliant but helpless
actress. In this sense, Justine Clark was given more operating space
to play fast speed in her favour in order to portray an an anxious high-strung
Thea. Aden Young was similarly at ease as Eilert, but his expressive
palette was accordingly less varied. In the role of Jorgen Tesman, Anthony
Weigh seemed a bit lost - high speeds don't really go with what his
character is supposed to be. I was inclined to say the cast was homogeneously
competent, but I' m afraid I have to single out Hugo Weaving, in the
role of Judge Brack. He alone could find the way to find dramatic thuthfulness
in spite of the marathon required from the cast. An exceptional performance.
One must point out that costumes and settings revealed extremely good
taste.
Friday, March 3rd
2006
• Dalila et...
What's the point of being
a seductress if there is nothing tempting on stage? That's the problem
Olga Borodina had to deal with tonight. Her extra-rich mezzo soprano,
sultry from bottom to top, is the very definition of suppleness. However,
her sophisticated sense of phrasing and impressive vocal resources did
not dispel a certain atmosphere of routine - but I guess it must be
impossible to be eletrifying when you're playing to the void. Jon Frederic
West's heldentenor has a sort of stentorian metallic bleating quality
which is quite challenging to the ears. In the past, he used to be more
efficient about his top register too. Now the ending of Mon coeur
s'ouvre à ta voix takes him to his very limites. On the
other hand, although Jean-Philippe Lafont's baritone has some rough
patches in the top register, his imagination, idiomatic French and tonal
variety certainly pay off. No wonder Borodina seemed to be at her best
when singing with him. Emmanuel Villaume is entirely at ease with late
Romantic style and was able to join clarity and voluptuous sounds -
only string fast divisions could be more clearly articulated.
Thursday, March
2nd 2006
• Nothing like
having no expectations
Having arrived too late for
a show the ticket of which had costed me a great deal of money, I had
lost hopes of having a good time until I saw myself in front of Walter
Kerr Theatre. I could buy a low-priced ticket and the pleasure to discover
a most enjoyable play named Doubt, whose author - I would discover
later - had been awarded the Pulitzer last year. John Patrick Shanley
has the gift of fluent dialogues with the right larger-than-life touch
which is in the heart of good theatre. He handles here a difficult subject
eschewing all the clichés he could have easily let himself to
indulge in. And he has Dame Eileen Atkins in a sensational performance,
alternatively formidable and touching in the right moments. Next to
her, Ron Eldard's vocal range seemed a bit restricted, even if his character
building is intelligent and subtle. In the small role of Mrs. Muller,
Adrienne Lennox found truth and intensity. Only Jena Malone - in her
Broadway debut - seemed ill at ease in a performance entirely built
on an artifficial and monotone falsetto-ish speaking voice. Director
Doug Hughes was wise enough to give his actors all the time and space
they needed - and John Lee Beatty's ingenuous settings also deserve
to be mentioned.
Wednesday, March
1st 2006
• Forza and
its weaknesses
Italians tend to think that
there is a kind of curse about Forza del Destino. Supposedly bad things
happen when this opera is performed. At the Met today, except for someone
throwing up two rows in front of me during the end of act I (I would
paraphrase Beecham and say that, even if this is gross, it is some kind
of valid criticism), nothing exceptionally bad happened last night.
Leonora is a fiendishly difficult
role and very few sopranos could pass through it without some scratches.
Some of them, such as Leontyne Price, made those scratches a virtue.
Unfortunately that was not the case of Deborah Voigt. Her voice does
not take well to low tessitura, where it acquires a raspish and unfocused
quality. It also seemed that the constant descent to low notes seemed
to displace he rest of her range throughout, with the exception of purely
lyrical passages. Also, her Italian belongs rather to Bleeker Street
than to the Italian peninsula. I can't say that Preziosilla is a good
role for Ildiko Komlosi. Her once beautiful tone has grown more robust,
vibrant (overvibrant?) and metallic, but still lacks the necessary spaciousness.
Also, with her aristocratic manners, she seemed a bit silly trying to
behave "gipsy". As for Salvatore Licitra, I am afraid that
my statement that he sounded better every time I see him is no longer
true. Yesterday, I cannot really say he was at his best. Because it
is a voice of unusual quality and beauty and his manners reveal good
taste and musicianship, one can put up with a tone sometimes clumsily
placed and straight unrounded top notes. Fortunately this did not damage
a beautiful Solene in quest'ora, where all that evoked a certain vulnerability.
Mark Delavan's also wanted some focus - as a result his voice sounded
rather yawny and uningratiating. As Carlo is one of the less pleasant
characters in the operatic literature, one can put up with that. Although
Samuel Ramey's voice has lots most of its usual firmness, it still has
the necessary authority, volume and weight of tone for the role of Father
Guardiano, but I wonder if it is going to sound perverse that the overall
most satisfying singer in the cast is the one taking the role of Melitone,
the Spanish baritone Juan Pons, who stole the show in all his scenes,
refusing any kind of comic unspontaneous clichés and building
up a convincingly funny ill-humoured fellow.
Gianandrea Noseda seemed
to give pride of place to excitement and rhythmic propulsion, but the
orchestra sounded rather unwieldy. Worst of all, the lack of blending
between strings and brass made for a band-like sound which is unlovely,
lacking nobility and the opposite of what a Romantic orchestra should
sound. Because of that, the overture sounded like circus music. Giancarlo
del Monaco's production was a bit uncreative, but not necessarily offensive
to the eyes. However, acting was so hammy and lacking timing that some
less familiar member of the audience mistook the whole show for a comedy.
By a miraculous turn of events, the last scene seemed to be touched
by the hands of the gods of theatre: Voigt rounded her tone for Pace,
pace, offering some stunning effects either in mezza or full voice and
the orchestra finally seemed to be warmed up to real full-toned warm
sounds. At least we could go home feeling less miserable than Alvaro
in the end of it.
Tuesday, February
28th 2006
•
Traviata, but not misguided
Although Angela Gheorghiu
can still boast to be an international diva, the truth is that she has
been a bit out of the limelight these days. Her return to the Met, in
a production by Zeffirelli (with whom she had had her share of argument)
may be the first sign of her comeback to the very fore of the operatic
stardom. As everybody knows, Violetta is the role that made Gheorghiu
famous. Many years have passed since then, but the Rumanian soprano
is still one of the leading exponents of this part. Although the velvety
quality of her soprano runs sometime dangerously close to a veiled sound,
hers is still a seductive immediately recognizable voice with impressive
resources. One might point out that her Violetta has now lost the kind
of uniqueness that illuminates one' s concept of a role - such as Callas
or Cotrubas did in the past. That said, her performance in such a difficult
role is really consistent throughout the opera. She was amazingly at
ease with all required from her and entirely available to concentrate
on interpretation. Her coloratura in act I was more functional than
breathtaking, but she didn' t for a moment seem overwhelmed by it, even
in the conductor's fast tempi chosen for Sempre libera. In act II, her
beautiful usage of Italian language and tone colouring really brought
her Violetta to life and, in act III, she was able to depict the character'
s frail health without disfiguring her cantabile. Her graceful figure
and charisma are praiseworthy - also her unexaggerated if not electrifying
acting.
As for Jonas Kaufmann, I
wonder if his baritonal tenor, whose top register only acquires the
right brightness with a certain kind of di forza vocalization, is the
right instrument for Alfredo. The results lacked some graciousness and
finish. I kept asking myself if his approach was unitalianate, but that
seemed not to be the case. Only his phrasing lacked the liquidity associated
to lyric tenors in this repertoire. He did go for the top note in his
act II cabaletta, but the rest of what he had to sing there seemed to
be sacrificed in order for him to achieve that. His macho attitude seemed
to please the audience too, although there was more than a hint of artificiality
in his otherwise agile and energetic acting.
Anthony Michaels-Moore' s
clean spacious baritone fills a Verdian line most beautifully, but he
occasionally attacks his top notes from below.
Marco Armiliato's unfussed
and forward-moving approach to the score is certainly refreshing, and
the clarity of ensemble praiseworthy. I only feel that a lack of refulgence
in the strings made for a certain "band-like" sound that robbed
the score of some of its nobility. Zeffirelli' s production has realistic
and exquisite sets, but actors' direction leaves something to be desired.
All in all, the most dramatic moments seemed rather tame and the whole
show carried a certain "large-gestures-for-the--to-the last-seat-in-the-house"
attitude.
Monday, February
27th 2006
• Force of
nature
At the end of Ewa Podles'
s recital at the Avery Fisher Hall everybody kept asking each other
why this singer is not in the first rank of soloists in the leading
opera houses and concert halls in the world. Her performance this Sunday
was a powerful display of artistry and vocal technique. In Salvatore
Sciarrino's expert and colourful arrangement of Rossini' s Giovanna
d' Arco, the Polish contralto seemed entirely at ease either in expressive
recitative or in florid passages, using each note, including those in
very fast divisions, to its dramatic purpose. Later in Mussorgsky' s
Songs and Dances of Death, she used her theatrical skills to the best.
There is something eerie (in the best sense of the word) in her tone,
and that was used to great effect in the depictions of death, while
her endless resources of tone-colouring rendered the characterization
there implied virtually perfect. She was a believable mother, young
woman, soldier and commander of massacre. The encores reserved for the
enthralled audience two deeply heartfelt performances of the Young Maiden'
s aria from Prokofiev' s Alexander Nevsky and the Arioso from Tchaikovsky'
s Moscow cantata. I have never affected a strong congeniality with Russian
repertoire (to my own loss, I know), but - if it needs an advocate -
Podles seemed to be a persuasive one. I even bought the disc. One must
not forget to mention the Moscow Chamber Orchestra' s distinctive full
and expressive sound, not entirely at home in Haydn' s "La Passione"
, which sounded Brucknerian and unattractive, but certainly proved to
be in great advantage in Barshai' s arrangement of Shostakovich' s Chamber
Symphony in C Minor.
•
An avis rara
If Lakme sang like Eglise
Gutierrez, Nikalantha would have butchered the whole town after her
performance of the Bell Song - who would have remained insensitive to
her floating 100% agile velvety soprano? There is something of the young
Mirella Freni (albeit in a slimmer and higher mode) that suggest innocence
and affection, which is simply irresistible. If I had to be picky (and
if I'm not, nobody will believe she was that good anyway…), because
of her amazing ease with high mezza voce, she relies too much on that
to get away with the most melodic passages, where more varied tone colouring
could have produced more intense pathos. In any case, while listening
to those immaterial high pianissimi, I was entirely satisfied. The Armenian
Yehishe Manuchayan required from me a certain time to adjust to his
not immediately attractive tenor. His first octave is a bit nasal, and
the second is a bit unfocused. At his best, he sounded like the poorman'
s Frank Lopardo. That said, in the two last acts, he produced singing
of sensitive and stylish nature. James Morris is not a singer one would
expect to find in a French opera. He took some time to warm up and,
when he did not sound a bit curdled, the power and authority of his
singing was most rewarding. Among the minor roles, I must point out
Stephanie Weiss, who, in the tiny role of Rose, proved to have a charming
lyric soprano. I must point out that Eve Queler is a thorough stylist
in this repertoire - she resisted Italianate bombastics and German overseriousness
and guaranteed an elegant and touching approach throughout the score.
The Opera Orchestra of New York is surprisingly consistent, offering
perfect ensemble and noble string sounds. Also, the New York Choral
Society has clean enough a sound to make many a opera house envious,
especially the Met.
Saturday, February
26th 2006
•
Off to New York
I'll be away for a while
and, if I have some time, I intend to keep updates in a pre-historic
file. In any case, when I'm back I'll fix everything up in the usual
blog format.
Wednesday, February
22nd 2006
• English images
I left The Taming of
the Shrew in the Shakespeare Retold series behind because I couldn't
see very well how this story would work in a modernized setting. Well,
my compliments to screenwriter Sally Wainwright: her retelling is masterly
in the sense she could deal with the politically incorrect aspects of
the plot without making them correct, but putting them into a perspective
when they actually reveal some charm. All that without trying to make
the whole thing serious, but keeping a certain buffoonery which is an
essential part of the play. Although the style of acting required here
is a bit over-the-top, Shirley Henderson very expertly catches the shifts
of humor of her Catherine, here radical almost fanatical opposition
politician. As for Rufus Sewell, I guess he has never done anything
better as a Petrucchio suffering Peter-Pan-syndrome with cross-dressing
episodes (!).
Also, my good friend Luís
Felipe brought me straight from England the DVD of Joe Wright's Pride
and Prejudice. I am glad the American ending has not been available
in Brazil - it feels too Sex and the City for the circumstances and
adds nothing. I am happy to end the movie with the marvelous Donald
Sutherland in bittersweet mood. The featurettes are lovely, especially
the visit to the exquisite mansions chosen as locations. It made me
feel terribly frustrated for knowing so little of England! Pity it is
so expensive to be a tourist there…
Sunday, February
18th 2006
• Movies and
expectation again
I have been thinking a lot
about whether I became too particular about movies. Maybe listening
to too much music has developed in me the habit of expecting this sort
of "enlightenment through feelings" that is the key feature
of musical art - and maybe cinema is not necessarily about that. I don't
know. In any case this week I could experience again the clash of expectation
and reality about movies. For example, George Clooney's Good Night
and Good Luck. I had no clue about the movie and decided to see
it because some friends had invited me to do it. And I thank them for
the invitation. This is one of the most aesthetically and thematically
exact movies I have seen these days - done with classical restraint,
elegance and economy of means. The screenplay masterly finds the right
balance between History and story-telling, resisting the temptation
of being didactic, propaganda-ish or panegyrical. The black-and-white
grainy photography, the jazzy soundtrack, the dream-team casting (Robert
Downey, Jr., and Patricia Clarkson in short roles, for example), the
straight-to-the-matter script, the importance of its message in an age
in which arts and information are supposed to be blended with the entertainment
industry - all that makes it a very special film.
On the other hand, those
who read this blog know how much I like Woody Allen and may imagine
how anxious I was to see the movie the director himself called his supreme
masterpiece. A friend of mine had told me this is a movie those who
dislike Allen would like. I wonder if those who like him would share
the same opinion. I can't recognize Allen in one still of this movie
- and this has nothing to do with the fact that it wasn't shot in New
York. Everybody says 'I love you', for instance, has 2/3 set
in Venice and in Paris - and the same loving eye applied to NY has been
applied to these cities. In Match Point, London looks quite
plain, as seen from on outsider, and beautiful manors in the English
countryside are to be the appealing sceneries in the movie. However,
I still find unsettling to see all that green lawns and blond wheat-fields
in a Woody Allen movie after all those years of Santo Loquasto's Whistler-like
narrower colour palette. Still more unsettling is the slow self-indulgent
rhythm of dialogues. It felt as if the British cast approach Allen's
dialogues as if they had been written by Bernard Shaw or something like
that. The result is comic timing largely loss and a pompous approach
to the more dramatic scenes. I am sure this is not the fault of the
talented cast, but it seems that the director told his actors something
like "Act English!" and they ended on being self-conscious.
Many have said that the movie is a kind of pastiche of George Stevens'
A Place in the Sun. With some opera added. There must be something
in the air in NY about Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy
and opera, I guess. In any case, the plot is far from original and resents
the absence of the director's personal touch. The idea of opera might
have something to do with the artificiality and grandiloquence intended
here, but its existence in the movie didn't work for me. I found charming
to read the credits with Caruso's voice, but the intimate old recording
acoustics seemed rather misplaced to me in a movie which is everything
but intimate. I also found the Otello/Iago scene in the assassination
scene also disturbing, as when one is listening to music and has a movie
on the TV at the same time. I also couldn't understand why the Royal
Opera House was denied its orchestra in the "live at the opera"
scenes. Are we supposed to believe that the British Endowment to the
Arts is so low as to prevent the nation's leading opera company to have
a band? To make me look more picky and snob (to my own shame), I cannot
say I like the leading couple. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers seems entirely at
a loss about what style of acting he would adopt. It seems he took the
safe choice of doing very little under the disguise of "economic
acting". And why does he have such a weird clumsy gait in this
movie? As for Scarlett Johannsen, although she is all right irresistible,
I think she is too "green" for this kind of role. She does
seduction pretty well, even if an oversmoky speaking voice allows very
little variety, but is uncomfortable as a hysterical desperate paramour.
Finally, I can't tell if my dislike has to do with my disappointment.
I just wonder why Allen has decided to do a movie he had already done
so beautifully, which is Crime and Misdemeanours.
Other film seen with no expectation
was Paul Haggis's Crash - a movie which would certainly be
harmed by any hope of its being good. Expecting nothing, I enjoyed what
I got. Being the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby, Haggis should
know the value of understatement. As it is, the plot is too "manipulated"
for comfort - a sort of clumsy Short Cuts with a moral. It
is refreshing, though, the story's playing with the concept of prejudice
as presupposition. In the middle of all that, two interesting episodes:
one involving Thandie Newton as a rich African American woman and Matt
Dillon as a racist policeman who harasses her in a day only to save
her life in the next day and other involving Michael Peña as
a Latino hard-working father who witnesses a "miracle" when
an Iranian unsatisfied client tries to shoot him.
Last but not least, I have
to confess: I love movies based on Jane Austen and, even if reviewers
say Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice is routine, I still had
a great time with it. The images are beautiful, the camerawork in the
ball scenes is breathtaking, the settings and costumes are exquisite,
the music is charming and the cast is marvelous. Brenda Blethyn and
Donald Sutherland are truly magnificent, Matthew Macfadyen is simply
the perfect Mr. Darcy (even compared to Colin Firth in the BBC series)
and Kiera Knightley uses her "sweetheart" manners to great
effect as Lizzie Bennett.
Saturday, February
11th 2006
• More about
movies and expectation
My friend Isabela accuses
me of not getting the point in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. The idea
would be showing that NOTHING is happening, although those people love
each other immensely, because of constraints of society. Therefore,
expecting a flood of emotions, even if repressed, would be against the
very idea that guides the whole film. I could sense that this might
be the point, but - again - I could get it only intellectually.
On the other hand, I had
no expectations about Wong Kar Wai's 2046. I like In the Mood for Love,
but went to the theatre to see 2046 completely clueless and left it
far more than positively impressed. Let's start with the drawback: I
always feel that Wong Kar Wai is too self-indulgent about the length
of his movies and this one is no exception. That said, the thorough
sense of beauty in every scene is more than compensation. Cinematography,
soundtrack, casting, dialogues - everything is chosen and realized scrumptiously.
This kind of Tales of Hofmann (Offenbach's, of course) with a certain
Fellinian touch in its sub-plots and character-building has, noblesse
oblige, its own Claudia Cardinale, the delicious Zhang Ziyi, in her
sexiest and most intense performance so far. A film to be seen more
than once.
Sunday, February
5th 2005
• Expectation
and criticism
It is very difficult to know
how objetive a reviewer can be and his psychological disposition prior
to watch a movie, for example, might play an important part on what
he is going to write about it. For example, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain
was supposed to be a must-see. Being a fan of Lee's, I ran to the theatre
next to me only to feel hugely disappointed. I know writing dialogues
for unsophisticated cowboys must be a difficult task, but barring all
kind of dramatic confrontation has to be the wrong answer. I know -
human mind would never imagine something like that - Heath Ledger offers
dense acting the silences of which should speak more than words, but
unfortunately that was not enough. All the suffering, the loneliness,
lack of communication, frustration, hopelessness involved in that situation
(and if you have seen James Ivory's Maurice, you'll know what I'm talking
about - and, yes, I know, the movie was based on E.M. Forster) are largely
absent of the movie. As it is, the movie is the strongest defense of
heterosexuality I have ever seen. As portrayed in the movie, being gay
is the most boring thing that can happen in someone's life. I was wondering
why those guys bothered to attend their meetings all those years. Even
the sheep had more fun than they had (and they risked to be devoured
by coyottes). Unless the idea was meeting with nature in a XIXth century
Romanticism Waldseligkeit atmosphere. But then dialogues are far better
in the likes of Chateaubriand.
On the other hand, I was
made to understand I should dislike Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha.
And he has directed Chicago - so it all made sense. But then, starting
from expectation zero, I had far more fun with it than with Ang Lee's
movie. If I am not to learn anything about life in a movie, at least
I hope to be entertained. And that operetta approach to Japan, with
all the artifficial clichés, is a feast to the eyes. I guess
those who really know about Japan must feel indignant, but - although
I am always curious about this fascinating country - I am still very
very very far from being a connoisseur. In any case, if he shuts his
brain down, even a specialist on Japanese History could have some fun
with it - especially when you have Gong Li on the screen. If you're
a fan of hers such as I am, don't miss it. She is mesmerizing and seems
to be at the peak of her legendary beauty.
Saturday, February
4th 2005
• More January
anniversaries
It is another coincidence
that took me to discover a writer relatively unknown to me the day after
his birthday (January 26th 1781). Until now Achim von Arnim was to me
the co-author of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, but having read one of his novellas
in a anthology of fantastic stories made me ready for more. This most
fascinating story is called Melück Marie Brainville, die Hausprophetin
aus Arabien. This literary stravaganza gathers all kinds of archetypes
of Roman literature - pirates, theatre, the exotic Orient, witchcraft,
étude des moeurs, you name it... It does have something of Balzac
"philosophic" stories, but Arnim is more spontaneous and less
cynical - and his style is colourful à la E.T.A. Hofmann. If
you read French, this
is the only version I could find on-line.
• Making the
exotic familiar
No, I'm not speaking of Anthropology.
It has been a serious limitation to explore some of the operatic repertoire
composed by Slavic composers not understanding a coma of their language,
especially in not-completely-melodic composers, such as Janacek, whose
Jenufa I came to appreciate thanks to videos and subtitles. Listening
only has been a bit of a trial to my patience - handling small libretti
and not concentrating on music does not help it at all. Today at Parterre's
Unnatural
Acts of Opera I saw this Eugene Oneguin translated to English
exquisitely sung by Margaret Price and John Shirley-Quirk and, for the
first time, I really had fun with this opera, which counts with my good
disposition due to the source of its libretto, Pushkin's brilliant novel-in-sonets.
It is a pity, though, that I cannot find time to learn Russian or Czech,
the charming consonant effects of which sound really charming to my
ears.
Saturday, January
28th 2006
• Lots of Mozart
A coincidence (?) made my
day an unplanned Mozartian celebration. First of all, I have listened
to a broadcast from Vienna - Idomeneo, brilliantly conducted by the
sadly underrated Mozartian conductor Seiji Ozawa. The performance was
graced by the crystalline soprano of Genia Kühlmeier, whose credentials
in this repertoire have been thankfully recognized by people like Riccardo
Muti. As I have felt live both in Vienna and New York, one takes some
minutes to adjust to Barbara Frittoli's smoky vibrant soprano, but once
you do that nothing but good surprises await you. Here she easily produced
a caressing Idol mio and a truly formidable D'Oreste, d'Ajacce - the
forceful staccato figure that ultimates Elettra's hysteria done with
craftsmanship. Unfortunately, Angelika Kirchschlager was not at her
freshest-toned, but still a reliable boyish Idamante. It is truly a
pity that Neil Shicoff has been cast in a role made impossible for him
by his technique and the wear in his tone. In any case, I wouldn't miss
the opportunity to grab a performance like this because of the sopranos,
orchestra and conductor involved.
A visit to Deutsche
Grammophon website showed me also some Mozartian treats
- Abbado's Zauberflöte is due to be released in April, and MacKerras'
Tito in March. There are some previews of the latter in their website.
Judging from the tiny samples, the conducting is classical in the Böhm-ian
sense of the word, extra clarity and lightness added by the Scottish
Chamber Orchestra; Kozena's stretta to Parto, ma tu ben mio is beautifully
done if too feminine. Rainer Trost is a bit nervous with Se all'impero.
He does his fioriture a tempo but the articulation is a bit weird. There
is too little of Hillevi Martinpelto's Vitellia - and this is a role
that doesn't seem quite fit to her temper and manners. In any case,
I'm curious for this one.
• More samples
Thanks to Vilaine
Fille, whose beautiful blog should inspire me to do something
tidier of this humble blog of mine, I could listen to some interesting
stuff today: Irene Minghini-Cattaneo's powerful Amneris in the old Sabajno's
recording (which sounds btw marvelous for its age) and an excerpt of
La Sonnambula with Juan Diego Flórez. I have to confess Vilaine
Fille was here a healthy influence on me. I have a broadcast from Vienna
(with Stefania Bonfadelli) when I hadn't found Flórez really
expressive, but in the performance available at her website, he really
shows not only imagination but better control of dynamics and tone-colouring.
And Mary Dunleavy, whose Pamina didn't impress me that much in the broadcast
from the Met, sounds so gentle and adorable here! I wish I could hear
a bit more of her Amina...
Friday, January
27th 2006
• Titus from
Brussels
Listening to this broadcast,
I realised how sad it is when you have the disposition to like something,
but fails to accomplish that in spite of all your best intentions. That
is my case with Jacobs' Mozart. There is no scholarly reasoning able
to convince me that his is the right approach to this music. It does
not sound well and does not make justice to the music. The underpowered
underarticulated string playing and the overpresent pseudo-cool cute
fortepiano playing - the whole thing puts me entirely out. Also, the
excessive embellishment (difiguring even section A of numbers) adopted
by singers ruined some numbers, such as the Duettino between Servilia
and Anno. That said, when he is not desperately trying to be original
(as in the overslow-overfast overture), his Tito benefits from a kind
of energetic theatrical beat that produces some impressive moments,
such as the finale to act I. Alexandrina Pendatschanska's soprano is
not entirely ease on the ear, but it is an admirably forceful flexible
instrument (and Jacobs fast tempi made it particularly difficult for
her), irregular as it is (as the role of Vitellia). Strong chest register.
She has a vivid dramatic temper too. Although Bernarda Fink was a bit
laboured in the stretta of Parto, she proved wonderfully expressive
throughout in a role a bit difficult for her. MarkPadmore was predictably
overstretched as Tito, but managed to offer some stylish soft-grained
singing, but his blurred coloratura leaves more than something to be
desired. As Annio, Marie-Claude Chappuis offered a lovely firm-toned
clear mezzo and Sunhae Im's bell-like soprano was also entirely lovely.
Her S'altro che lagrime, crowned by admirably full top notes, is one
of the best I have ever heard (and I have high standards for this role,
namely Lucia Popp in her two recordings as Servilia). Lorenzo Coppola's
splendid basset horn playing also deserves mention.
• Carmen from
Vienna
The legendary Carmen Herbert
von Karajan conducted in Vienna in 1954 has finally been released from
the original masters (Rot-weiss-rot archives). Those were days when
Karajan wanted to prove what the Wiener Staatsoper was loosing by not
inviting him. So he arranged this concert performance with the Wiener
Symphoniker with a mix of his La Scala soloists and some Viennese favourites.
The result is amazing. This is one of the most electrifying renditions
of this score - the technical finish in the orchestra allied to a powerful
theatricality are simply unforgettable. Unfortunately, some scenic effects
have not been arranged, such as Don José's Qui va là,
dragon d'Alcala? and the chorus in the closing scene sung on stage,
but that's a minor drawback in a grandiose release, offered in spectacularly
clear recorded sound. In the title role, Giulietta Simionato has commits
mistakes in pronunciation now and then, but tha's her only (minor) fault.
She is a formidable Carmen. She is not particularly sexy or teazing,
but a strong woman ready to face pleasure and pain as both sides of
the same coin. Her down-to-earth confrontation with death in the final
act is particularly telling. On the other hand, Hilde Güden is
too seductive a Micaela. Some of her sex-appeal is operetta-ish, but
Bizet's lines are really congenial to her. Michael Roux is a light and
light-hearted Escamillo, but it is Nicolai Gedda who steals the show
as a boyish and impetuous Don José. Highly recommended.
• Rigoletto
A review of Edward Downes'
Rigoletto from Covent Garden has been added to the discography.
Sunday, January
22nd 2006
• Vanity's
unfair
Although Mira Nair's adaptation
for the screen of Thackeray's classic novel is a charming movie - I
guess the problem is that it is too charming. When I have read that
Reese Witherspoon was going to play Becky Sharp, I wondered how she
would manage to make of this character something more than a darling.
The answer is - she was not supposed to. In Nair's movie, lots of modern
social psychology has been applied to this story and the result is that
Becky's ambition is justified by a poor childhood of humiliation and
contempt for her talent. In Thackeray's novel, we are supposed to side
with Becky - not because she is adorable, but because it is impossible
to resist her. Thackeray's Becky is the opposite of adorable: she seens
nothing but herself. She marries for money and position (and maybe because
the guy is attractive), she doesn't think twice before letting her only
friend down, she doesn't care for her own son and she steps over everybody
and everything that comes between her and her aims. She is like those
lianas in rain forest: if they don't climb to the top, they'll die out
of lack of sunlight. That is why she is supposed to be irresistible
- because she is a force of nature, something that the very structure
of society creates and that keeps it moving. For example, in the movie,
the most powerful blow in Becky's social ambition - her husband's attack
on her protector - is shown as a necessary step for her to do some soul
searching, get a job and then help herself and everybody to be happy
in the end. If I am not mistaken, in the book, the idea was that Becky
resisted to take the further step with the guy because this would mean
acquiring a reputation and loosing all possibility of attending respectable
society. When she is accidentally involved in scandal, she moves to
Germany to be something like a demi-mondaine, not a hard-working girl
wishing for a light in the end of the tunnel. The whole idea of Becky
is that there is no blow of which she cannot recover from and that's
shown in the end of the book (not in the end of the film, when she goes
to a sort of Nirvana and is purified by the blessing experience of getting
in touch with different cultures).
As a final note, why couldn't
the producers get a really good singer to dub Witherspoon? I can't see
why that breathy puff of singing is supposed to be irresistible. Why
coudn't they hire Rosemary Joshua?
•
More Troyanos
Just finished acts
I and III (and again act II) from the Geneva Samson et Dalila with Tatiana
Troyanos. I sustain my opinion - sexy, classy and intense. It has rekindled
my passion for Troyanos, a singer I just adore. It also made me check
on amazon.com, the samples of the Leinsdorf Così, a recording
I used to see in the dusty shelves of CD stores as a kind of no.1 prize
for Mozartian bizarrerie. I have to confess my surprise - judging from
the first minute of each track, it is certainly old-fashioned, but deligtfully
so. And there are surprises - full edition and regular usage of ornamentation.
I am curious to hear more of Leontyne Price's Fiordiligi, but I guess
I'll never recover from Troyanos' Dorabella. Her clarinette-like voice
just makes the perfect blended for È amore un ladroncello and
the duet with Guglielmo promises to be the sexiest ever. Milnes seems
to be better than I had imagined and I still have to hear more of George
Shirley's dark-toned Ferrando. It is high on my "wish list",
but unfortunately also on the "hard-to-find" list. So - if
someone is ready to sell, lend, make a copy etc, I'm ready to do business!
If you want to do
some reading on Troyanos, check this
loving portrait. It has caught my attention the fact that the
author mentions a broadcast of her Kundry next to Jon Vickers' Parsifal.
Monday, January
16th 2005
• More from
Parterre
This time it was R. Strauss'
Vier letzte Lieder, with Margaret Price, Claudio Abbado and what I suppose
to be the Chicago SO. I had already listened to a recording of these
songs with Price, also with Abbado, from Edinburgh, but I thought this
one is far superior - she is more inspired and more stylish, I don't
know. In the same file, there are also songs from Mahler's Knaben Wunderhorn,
smoothly and imaginatively sung, plus an exciting Leise, leise from
the Freischütz with Sawallisch (I guess it is from that broadcast
with Helen Donath I have been looking for for ages...).
I could also listen to Saint-Saëns's
Samson et Dalila, act II, from Geneva, with Tatiana Troyanos, Guy Chauvet
and Giuseppe Patanè. Although the role is a bit on the low side
for her, she is sexy sexy all the way. A friend of mine once said he
thinks most Delilah sound too cavernous for his taste - maybe he should
listen to this one. Chauvet is a good tenor and has very clear diction.
Sunday, January
15th 2005
• Übermachte
im Spiel
Browsing through the internet,
I ran into this most pleasant of surprises. On Parterre Box website,
there is a page called Unnatural
Acts, where one can find some complete broadcasts for download.
Although there seems to be lots of interesting things, my eye immediately
caught this Frau ohne Schatten from Paris, 1980. I have always thought
that Karajan's performance in Vienna with Rysanek, Ludwig, Hoffman,
Thomas and Berry (plus Popp and Wunderlich) was the most exciting night
at the opera ever, I have to confess this one is a serious contender.
Lucia Popp used to say a singer is in good voice around six times a
year. It seems that the whole cast was in one of these days that night
in Paris. Those who know Hildegard Behrens' Färberin from Solti's
studio recording should listen to her Empress - she is at her most radiant,
singing her high phrases in rounded yet powerful voice. One of her best
recorded performances ever. Even in the moments when she is not entirely
comfortable (the tricky florid phrasing at her first scene, for example),
she sounds free and enchanting. Similarly in wonderful shape, Gwyneth
Jones is simply the best Färberin I have ever heard. Although she
doesn't display Christa Ludwig's sex-appeal and apt histeria, nobody
has ever sung the part with such cleanliness of phrasing, especially
the high-lying end of act II. More so, act III duet shows her supremacy
in the role - has any other Färberin floated her marital love duet
in such caressing mezza voce? And there is the rarely recorded Mignon
Dunn, offering a true dramatic mezzo (as required in the score), a flashing
temper and lots of imagination. Also, René Kollo was in unusually
ringing firm voice. The tenor heard here has nothing to do with the
one in Sawallisch's studio recording. Although he was a veteran by then,
Walter Berry responds to his amazing counterparts with the same level
of accomplishment. He is in excellent voice and sounds far more concerned
than in Böhm's DG recording. Unfortunately, the recorded sound
is too favourable for singers' voices, but one can still feel how electrifying
and theatrical Dohnányi's conducting was that night. The orchestral
interludes are wonderfully atmospheric and I am sure that, if the original
source should be released, we would be able to listen to the orchestral
tutti with more transparence and detail.
Saturday, January
14th 2005
• I'll miss
Nilsson
When the James Levine Anniversary
Gala was released on DVD, I was so thrilled to see Birgit Nilsson show
up, speak something at the microphone then getting away from it and
pulling out a ho-jo-to-ho! For Nilsson has always been a force of nature
to me - in that minute I had the impression that there really are among
us some who are indestructible.
Wednesday, January
10th 2005
• London's
Mitridate
Today I could listen to the
second and third acts of Mozart's Mitridate broadcast from London (July
2005). In the prima donna role, Aleksandra Kurzak - until then unknown
to me - pulled out an impressive performance. Her warm beautiful soprano
was entirely at ease in the difficult fioriture and produced some amazing
pearly staccato notes. She is also a stylist singer who can phrase sensitively,
as in Pallide Ombre, when she also displayed a healthy low register.
One could complaint of a certain metallic quality in top notes, but
that didn't bother me and is probably irrelevant live. In the second
soprano role, Susan Gritton offered a capable performance, but I can
remember of more beguiling Ismenes. Taking the role of Sifare, Andrea
Rost displayed an edgy rather tense sound, but coped with her divisions
without effort and could manage to produce a touching performance. In
the end, one could take her for a light mezzo taking a high soprano
role. I only wonder how she does to manage Pamina these days. The other
breeches role was taken by David Daniels. Although his low register
live is not penetrating enough for this kind of role, he displayed a
healthy pleasant voice and dramatic commitment. As for Bruce Ford, the
voice is less ingratiating than in his video from the same venue, but
still firm and strong in this most difficult of roles. I found Richard
Hickox's conducting exemplary - exciting in the lively moments and expressive
in the lyric passages - the strings sounded particularly velvety but
still clear in articulation. A beautiful performance.
Monday, January
2nd 2005
• More Shakespeare
Retold
I have just seen the Midsummer
Night's Dream episode of the series and, much to my surprise, enjoyed
it. I have to confess that somehow I still think that this play is not
exactly the right stuff for updating. In order for all that to make
sense in today's point of view, I believe that the whole "magic"
thing should be re-built into something else. Maybe that wouldn't make
any sense in Britain, but in Brazil everybody would have gone to Visconde
de Mauá, a village in the mountain which serves as a refuge to
old hippies or people who would like to pretend they're still in the
60's, being treated to mushroom tea etc - but that would be silly anyway.
In any case, even if I believe that the whole fairy magic stuff being
preserved exactly as it was only proves that the play is not entirely
fit to updating, I have enjoyed it - especially because the actors are
so good. Many faces are familiar from small parts in big movies such
as William Ash in Nicholas Nickleby or Lennie James in Snatch, but this
is an opportunity to sample their talents in proper circumstances. Many
people hate Michael Hoffmann's movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, but I like
it. It is intoxicatingly beautiful and the comedy parts, performed by
Kevin Kline, Sam Rockwell et al, are done in such a funny and touching
way that makes it irresistible. In the BBC series, this part of the
play is probably the one more poorly handled - and that unbalances the
whole thing, but I have ultimately enjoyed it and don't want to extend
my criticism.
•Capriccio
A review of the DVD of Richard
Strauss's Capriccio from the Opéra National de Paris has been
added to the discography.
Sunday, January
1st 2006
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