À vos jeux, mes amis

Although Carmen is still under my skin, I had a pleasant musical interlude on Saturday: the graduate recital of one my oldest friends, no less! A soprano, she chose madness as the theme of her recital, and it was tremendous fun, as well as, for me, a surprising experience to sit and hear someone whom I know quite well open their mouth, strike an attitude, and create a vivid characterization through difficult repertoire. (I have talented friends... so thrilling!) A standout was, unsurprisingly, the mad scene of Ambroise Thomas' Ophelie; you can find Mady Mesplé singing it here.

This recital was also the occasion of a discovery for me: Richard Strauss' Ophelia-Lieder which (Really Shameful Confession) I did not know at all, despite my love for Strauss, Shakespeare, and Lieder. Shocking. Searching for them to hear again via YouTube, I found surprisingly little, but I did find a gripping rendition of all three ("Wie erkenn' ich mein Treulieb," "Guten Morgen, 's ist Sanktvalentinstag," "Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß") by Camilla Tilling. Which brought me to the question, who is Camilla Tilling? IMG Artists tells me that she is a Swedish soprano in a still young career, a "versatile concert artist and committed recitalist." Poaching on White Shirt territory, here she is in "Si io non moro a questi accenti" with Joyce DiDonato, and here she is singing "Saper vorreste," in what strikes me as a pleasingly stylized production by Gilbert Deflo for the Opera National de Paris:

I still remember listening to Ballo for the first time, absolutely cold, and thinking: Oscar, no, don't taunt him; you're going to die!!! I do believe that Ballo was the opera which started me on the path to Verdi-love, first through the recording above, and then through Callas, Di Stefano, and Bastianini live at La Scala. A few clicks of research reveal that this production only seems to be available on DVD under less-than-completely-official circumstances. It also appears to be on YouTube, having been broadcast on French television. All very mysterious.

Strauss discoveries and Verdi productions are all I have for now, except for a very warm welcome to readers who have found their way here from the Carmen review at Likely Impossibilities (recommended generally for a more musically savvy and hilariously irreverent take on all things operatic than my own.) I hope you stick around (and say hello, if you feel like it.) If you have found your way to this post while searching for reviews of Jonas Kaufmann's recent performances at the Met, here are my Tosca and Carmen reviews; Carmen now has audio, thanks to YouTube user Macbett0. Wenn deutsche Zusammenfassungen oder Übersetzungen von diesen (oder sogar anderen!) Rezensionen wunschenswert wären, bitte sagen Sie es in den "Comments"! A closing tidbit: at the reception on Saturday, I was asked by a friendly acquaintance (with whom I was animatedly discussing Jon Vickers), "Warum bist du keine Musikerin? Du strahlst ja!" Why am I not a musician, when opera (apparently) makes me glow? Well, the answer to that question is possibly that, when I was supposed to be practicing the piano, there was always a book I wanted to be reading. So I turned into an opera-going medievalist.

Update: just as I was going back from the world of opera news to the world of medieval monasticism, what should I find (via Intermezzo) but THIS:

...I'm still not sure whether I'm excited or afraid, but I think I'm excited. And I like the costumes.

Voi che sapete

On Thursday morning, I opened an e-mail from Carnegie Hall, detailing the concerts included in this week's student ticket program. The first listing was for that very evening: the farewell recital of Frederica von Stade. I called (no, they weren't sold out! your loss, other students of New York!), I went, I purchased. On the one hand, I felt a bit shy, as if I were trying to be part of something I hadn't earned by attending a tribute to a career I hadn't been around to follow. On the other hand... I knew her recorded Cherubino as a thing of beauty, and, in a carpe diem sort of mood, I decided that if there could only be one night when my opera-going and Frederica von Stade's singing coincided, then one night there would certainly be.

Les plus sages sont les fous

Monday night's performance of Ambroise Thomas' "Hamlet" set me reeling, and not just--not even mostly--because I have the Shakespearean text quasi-memorized, its complex dramas held close to my heart. For one thing, I was taking in much of the music for the first time; NOT ideal, but what's a girl to do when the NYPL collections are non-circulating? For another, the Caurier-Leiser production was making a lot of interesting choices which kept me busily thinking. For another, the elegantly stylized costumes were making similarly provocative choices; Hamlet, for instance, was initially dressed in white (appropriately vulnerable and disheveled, pale as his shirt, but not in the trappings and the suits of woe), and Gertrude's hair and makeup were strongly reminiscent of a caricatured 1950s trophy wife. For another, there was the pungent, unmistakable smell of burning shortly before the interval... disquieting, especially when accompanied by the growing rustle of several hundred people shifting and whispering, the disturbance of several dozen people self-evacuating, and the businesslike, unanticipated activities of ushers in the darkness. The New York Fire Department was in evidence at the interval, but we were told that a light cover had begun to smoke and smolder but had been quickly doused with no danger to the public. A non-event, but added still further to the disquiet of the evening!

For it was a disquieting evening. The battlements of Elsinore might have been an innocuous stone gray slightly overgrown with moss, but their streaky color increasingly came to look like something stagnant, putrid... yes, rotten. The initially innocuous-seeming, even welcoming interior walls, with rosy brick and white paint gently netted with pink (suitable to Vaguely 19th Century setting) began first to look as though dripping with blood, and then began to inch closer to the protagonists, once literally swinging across to bar Hamlet's exit from a scene. "Denmark's a prison..." No liberty in this nutshell. This, the stark lighting, and the spare choreography made the whole thing a rather Brechtian (to use the term loosely) experience of being encouraged to sit back and think rather than lean forward and lose oneself. The banquet, appropriately in my view, formed the dramatic highlight of the evening, brilliantly staged with the "Murder of Gonzago" an obscene, offensive farce, shadows of dumbshow-king and dumbshow-queen looming grotesquely over the seated Claudius and Gertrude. When Keenlyside then leapt up onto the banqueting table and started scattering glassware, I think I stopped breathing, as he shouted and gibbered and repeated, chillingly, snatches of the drinking song he had earlier shared with the players. Here he is wrapped in the wine-soaked tablecloth. Different from Shakespeare. Shocking. Absolutely effective.