Music on Air France

Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin
Dutilleux L'arbre des songes *
Delage Four Hindu Poems
Dutilleux Métaboles
Ravel Daphnis and Chloe – Suite No 2

Sir Simon Rattle conductor
Leonidas Kavakos violin *
Julia Bullock soprano
London Symphony Orchestra

While browsing through the airplane entertainment, I found this wonderful concert from last January with exciting music of a certain period.  Every piece displayed colorful orchestration. 

I also found a film of Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov from their Asian tour last March.  They performed first Verdi, from Trovatore, and verismo, ending the official concert with "Vicino a te" from Andrea Chenier.  This last was quite thrilling and suggested that they might try this opera together.  I may change my choice to this one.

Anna's move towards late romantic repertoire makes possible this pairing with her husband.  This concert makes a good case for his place beside her.  He tears up a bit here at the end of  "Vicino a te".

Cavalleria Rusticana in Paris

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Cavalleria Rusticana 

Conductor for both: Carlo Rizzi
Director for both: Mario Martone

Santuzza: Elīna Garanča
Turiddu: Yonghoon Lee
Lucia: Elena Zaremba
Alfio: Vitaliy Bilyy
Lola: Antoinette Dennefeld

Sancta Susanna 

Susanna: Anna Caterina Antonacci
Klementia: Renée Morloc
Alte Nonne: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo

On November 28 we attended Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana paired with Sancta Susanna by Paul Hindemith at the Paris Opera.  This double bill was performed without intermission.  Curious, we said to ourselves.  Why would they do that?  And who ever heard of Sancta Susanna?  Well, it turns out that this opera premiered in 1922 in Frankfurt and was a terrific scandal.  I think the modern day European is much harder to scandalize.

The production for Cavalleria Rusticana reminded me of the Cavalleria Rusticana production at the Met. Just furniture and no set.  Normally the Easter mass is celebrated inside a church which appears in the set and Santuzza stands outside.  Here there is no set, so the mass is celebrated on the stage in our view.  My experience of the mass shows the crowd much more active than here.  People stand and sit, occasionally speak, and move to the front to receive the wafer, but here they only mime, of course.  The characters are in front.  I think it was staged this way to emphasize the importance of religious imagery in the story.  The large crucifix becomes a character.

Though I have written extensively about Elīna Garanča, this is my first live experience of her.  In this house her voice was large, full and very suitable for a wonderful Santuzza.  I withdraw all previous reservations about her transition to spinto mezzo.  The singing was spectacular, but the production very much muted the physical parts of her characterization.  Yonghoon Lee is improving.  He looks good and sounds dramatic.

After a brief pause, the curtain rose on the physical parts of the set.  Sancta Susanna was presented as a small chamber surrounded by a giant blank wall.  We had visited the death chamber of Vincent van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise the day before and thought Susanna's chamber very much resembled it.  Susanna is a nun dressed in white.  Other nuns appear dressed in black and white.

I was explaining to my son that this is expressionism, an art style that consists of realistic details without context.  Then I thought, "oh."  Thus the giant blank wall.  

We are told that Susanna is dying.  The window in her chamber is open, and she intensely enjoys the scents.  Sister Klementia begins a cautionary tale about a woman seen naked in the woods some 30 or 40 years ago.  A space below the chamber opens up, and we see a nude woman and a crucifix much like the one in the previous opera.  Susanna suddenly rips off her habit, revealing her I must say rather gorgeous breasts and declares herself to still be beautiful.  She runs out and throws herself onto the reclining crucifix.  There is much lamenting and confusion.  This is sort of a wtf opera.

Clearly only the beautiful Anna Caterina Antonacci could be expected to pull this off.  Her acting is superb here but the role is a bit contralto for her voice.  As you know, I do not read explanations of what this is supposed to mean before going, but it does seem to me the pairing of these two operas is intended as a religious commentary.  Santuzza tells us that she has been excommunicated but without explanation.

Symbols can be more powerful than reality, and clearly that is the intention here.  It was only partially successful.  It was oddly pleasing to hear Hindemith who is of course nothing like Mascagni but not in any way shocking to modern ears.

Staatskapelle Berlin

On our final night in Berlin we visited Philharmonie, the concert hall for the Berlin Philharmonic. The Berlin Philharmonic was on tour, as usual, and we saw instead the Staatskapelle Berlin.  Disney  Hall in Los Angeles looks far odder on the outside, but inside this one is very confusing indeed.  In fact one of our group members got lost, and a search party had to be dispatched.  Here is the view on the inside.

It was a very wowie concert.  We started off with that rarest of pieces, the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto.  I feel fairly certain I haven't heard it before.  A piano concerto is supposed to be a  battle between equals, but in this work the piano wins hands down.  In the first movement the orchestra hardly has a chance to compete.  For the pianist it is notoriously, spectacularly difficult.  Our pianist was Daniil Trifonov, and he never stumbled once.  If you haven't heard of him, watch out.  It was marvelous.

The second half of the program was Manuel de Falla's Three Cornered Hat.  It was fun and very loud.  That might possibly be a problem with really good acoustics.

Der Rosenkavalier at Deutsche Oper, Berlin

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Conductor: Ulf Schirmer
Production: Götz Friedrich

Die Feldmarschallin Fürstin Werdenberg: Michaela Kaune (soprano)
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau: Albert Pesendorfer (bass)
Octavian: Daniela Sindram (mezzo-soprano)
Der Herr von Faninal: Michael Kupfer-Radecky (baritone)
Sophie, his daughter: Siobhan Stagg (soprano)
Valzacchi: Patrick Vogel (tenor)
Annina: Stephanie Lauricella (contralto)
Ein Sänger: Matthew Newlin (tenor)

This performance of Der Rosenkavalier has to be ranked a success, even though the much anticipated Anja Harteros did not appear. I noticed that I was hallucinating her voice throughout the first act.  For the first time the orchestra was not too loud.

Daniela Sindram projected a very boyish Octavian in a pleasing style.  The falling in love was beautifully staged in very traditional looking costumes.  Everything else seemed contemporary with the opera (1912). The opera was not upstaged by its production as is often the case these days.  The third act was not over-staged, and so remained clear.

I love, among many things, when Ochs says after finding out that Octavian and Mariandel are the same person, "I will never stop feeling astounded.  Such finesse."  He is genuinely impressed. The trio was spectacular.  At the very end the Feldmarschallin watches from a distance.

Forgive me for not writing a long essay.

Die Liebe der Danae at Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Jupiter with his 4 exes

Conductor: Sebastian Weigle
Production: Kirsten Harms

Pollux: Andrew Dickinson (tenor)
Danae, his daughter: Manuela Uhl (soprano)
Midas: Raymond Very (tenor)
Jupiter: Mark Delavan (baritone)
Merkur: Thomas Blondelle (tenor)
Semele: Nicole Haslett (soprano)
Europa: Martina Welschenbach (soprano)
Alkmene: Rebecca Jo Loeb (mezzo-soprano)
Leda: Katharina Peetz (contralto)

I rather liked Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae, another opera I had never seen before.  I will try to explain the plot.  King Pollux, who lives in a palace filled with classical art, has fallen on hard times.  His creditors are there to haul off all his belongings.  A piano is lifted into the air where it turns throughout the opera.  Hmmm.

According to the plot summery, Danae dreams of gold falling from the sky.  In our production it was sheets of paper.  We thought perhaps they were sheets of music but couldn't tell.

They think they can save things by marrying Danae off to Midas who has the power to turn anything into gold by touching it.  Midas shows up wearing gloves and pretending to be Chrystopher, the servant of Midas.  He and Danae fall in love.  Jupiter then shows up disguised as Midas to woo Danae.  He doesn't know he is already too late.  His four ex girlfriends also show up:  Semele, Europa, Alkmene, and Leda who all seem like four Barbie dolls.  Danae is more of a real girl.

First the real Midas turns everything into gold, including Danae when he tries to kiss her.  Then Jupiter turns her back into a human.  She chooses Midas over Jupiter even though he has lost his power to turn things into gold and she will live in poverty.  Jupiter gets angry and blows everything up.  The other gods laugh at him.

There is a lot of beautiful love music in this opera, but it isn't done often enough to result in very polished performances.  All seemed to be struggling with their roles.  The orchestra was much too loud, which contributed to the problem.  It was nice to see Mark Delavan again.

At the end of the opera Danae looks up--at last someone looks up--and notices the piano floating in the air.  I kept worrying it would fall on someone.  She knows we are in the tumbled down old palace and that this is her piano.  She finds the piano stool and sets it down in its former place.  She finds the suitcase of treasures from prosperous times.  She knows she is at home and is happy with her present life.

This one I could do again.  The role of Danae is very sweet.  Manuela Uhl also sang the sister in Elektra.

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Die ägyptische Helena at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Menelas and Helena

Conductor: Andrew Litton

Helena: Ricarda Merbeth (soprano)
Menelas: Stefan Vinke (tenor)
Aithra, a sorceress: Laura Aikin (soprano)
Altair: Derek Welton (baritone)
Da-Ud: Andrew Dickinson (tenor)
The allknowing mussel: Ronnita Miller (contralto)

Friday night we saw Strauss's Die ägyptische Helena, me for the first time. 

It is interesting to realize that all three Greek generals in the Trojan war have returning home operas.  One of the first operas, Monteverdi's Il ritorna de Ulisse in Patria concerns the return of Ulysses to Ithica after years of wandering around lost in the Mediterranean.  He sees his wife's suitors and just kills them all.  Short work.

Elektra is another after the Trojan war story.  Agamemnon returns home to his wife and apparently fails to notice her new lover.  Instead of Agamemnon killing the boy friend, the boy friend kills him.  Elektra, his daughter, doesn't respond well and obsesses over her revenge.

The last of our trilogy is King Menelaus, whose wife was kidnapped by Paris as a gift from Venus.  He is the cause of the Trojan war and brings his wife back with him from the war after ten years of fighting.  It is to argue whether Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, is kidnapped or goes off on her own.  In this version King Menelaus seems to believe it was all her idea.  So this is one long jealous tantrum.

For some reason they are in Egypt.  Aithra, intensely obsessed with Helen of Troy, is a sorceress who apparently lives in an Egyptian brothel with a clam who knows everything.  The clam tells Aithra that Helen is in the sea near their island with her husband who is trying to kill her.  Aithra conjures a storm to distract Menelaus from killing his wife, then sends it away before it kills both of them.

Various tricks and potions are tried to trick Menelaus to take his wife back.  First they try forgetting which is temporarily successful.  The second act starts with the aria "Zweite Brautnacht,"[Second bridal night].



The plot gets vague at this point.  He gets angry, kills people, etc.  but finally they are resolved, and all ends happily.

I'm not sure this worked for me.  The final happiness was far too abrupt.  The orchestra was too loud.  I discussed this with other people, and they seemed to feel this was an acoustical problem.  The role of Menelaus is the only extended role for tenor I have heard from Strauss.  He sings constantly and very loudly.  Stefan Vinke was game.  This was a new opera for me so I have nothing to compare it to.

Elektra at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

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Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Production: Kirsten Harms

Klytämnestra, Elektra's mother: Doris Soffel (mezzo-soprano)
Elektra: Evelyn Herlitzius (soprano)
Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister: Manuela Uhl (soprano)
Aegisth, Klytämnestra's new husband: Clemens Bieber (tenor)
Orest, Elektra's brother: Tobias Kehrer (baritone)

It was a wonderful privilege to experience this production of Strauss's Elektra at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.  I am very familiar with Donald Runnicles, of course, from his years at the San Francisco Opera.  He still comes to us on occasion to bring us wonderful things like the recent Les Troyens. Elektra is just his stuff.  It was beautiful and intensely dramatic throughout.  Runnicles is a great Wagnerian, and this is the most Wagnerian of Strauss's scores.

Elektra comes every day to a sacred place to mourn the death of her father Agamemnon.  In our production this is something like a dirt filled trash heap.  New trash falls from above during the opera.  The other women of the palace ridicule her.

Klytämnestra cannot sleep and comes to ask Elektra for advice.  She has been executing people and enters carrying an ax.  She imagines that if she kills the right person, her nightmares will stop.  Elektra explains that it is she who must die.  In the above picture Elektra holds the ax and Klytämnestra lies on the ground.

The cast was all excellent, but it was Evelyn Herlitzius with the guidance of Runnicles who brought the opera to a state of overwhelming intensity.  It would be difficult to imagine something more difficult.  Bravi.  It was very moving.

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I have to add:  you will notice from the pictures that this is my second opera with an ax since arriving in Berlin.  In Der Vampyr the heroine wields her ax in an attempt to hit a vampire, but misses and hits her father instead.  In Elektra Klytämnestra wanders around the house using an ax rather like a cane.  In case there is a problem she has a weapon ready.  She leaves it behind when she leaves in a hurry.

Blogging

I am in Berlin for the Strauss, 5 Strauss operas in as many days.  Today is Elektra.

I was in Berlin once in the seventies when Germany was still divided.  I remember only a few things.  I went once to east Berlin to see Nefertiti.  The buildings were all black and dented.  I went two times to the Deutsche Oper where my friend Janis Martin was singing.  I saw her in Tosca and Le Nozze di Figaro.  After one of the performances we went out to eat steak.  She told me I should have come in the sixties.

Berlin has become very modern in the intervening years.  Here and there are old buildings, but not many.  It is less chaotic than New York and more orderly than Paris.  Somehow one longs for cars that drive recklessly and people that walk too fast.

I get to practice my German which is not bad.

Salome at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Conductor: Alain Altinoglu
Production: Claus Guth

Herodes:  Thomas Blondelle (tenor)
Herodias: Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet (mezzo-soprano)
Salome: Allison Oakes (soprano)
Jochanaan: Michael Volle (baritone)
Narraboth: Attilio Glaser (tenor)

In case you hadn't noticed before, Salome is an abused child.  She is sexually obsessed because she has had sex since she was small.  My feeling is that this is absolutely so.  There are many things about this production that I could not explain, but one thing seemed clear--Herod is sexually obsessed with Salome.  You knew that.  His wife knows it.  Perhaps it is as I have long suspected, perhaps Herodias has suggested to Salome that Jochanaan would be better off dead.  Certainly she has told Salome that he is ranting about her.

Jochanaan arises from a pile of clothing on the floor wearing only underpants.  Blond girls of various ages come out and dress him.  I cannot explain the pile of clothing, but the young girls seem skilled at dressing an adult man. From years of practice, perhaps.  Salome begins in a nightgown and changes to a dress.  The other girls remain in their night gowns.  Clearly the girls represent Salome at various stages of her life.

At the end we are in a men's clothing store.  I have no idea why.  Clearly this is a regie opera.  For no reason that I could possibly explain I enjoyed this.  Strauss' Salome is generally about dancing, which here is only symbolic.  Be aware that there are virtually no opera singers who can both sing Salome and actually dance.  Our Salome danced with Herodes.  Perhaps that is why he liked it.

I have seen Alain Altinoglu before only with Jonas Kaufmann.  He conducted the Munich Manon Lescaut and the Met Werther.  He was excellent then and now.  The music was varied and interesting, expressing the changing atmosphere of the scenes as they progressed.

Alison Oakes seems a young woman, who nevertheless performed this difficult role well.  Of the others, I especially liked.Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet.  For some reason there was a lot of twitching which appeared and disappeared.  Men from the ballet stood around and then twitched.  Jeanne-Michele twitched rather better than the others.  IMHO:

Salome normally builds to an overwhelming climax, one where you also feel that someone should kill Salome.  But in this production the perversity is blunted.  She does not actually kiss the head of Jochanaan, though she says she does.  She sings and then sort of wanders off.  They don't kill her.  The effect is unmelodramatic and seems more a successfully executed revenge on Herodes than an obsession.

Footnote:  Michael Volle was the Sachs in the wonderful Die Meistersinger I saw at Salzburg.

Lieder in Berlin

I went to hear a recital with Heidi Stober at the Deutsche Oper because she and Simon Pauly were performing Lieder by Mahler, Pfitzner, and Wolf, all composers that I enjoy very much.  They know when to clap here.

Someone named Monika Rinck spoke similar but not exactly the same texts between them.  This I have never seen before. They called it Lieder und Dichter.

I have seen Heidi many times in San Francisco and three times in Santa Fe.

I had a fine dinner before at the restaurant at the opera.  I was here at this opera once before in the 70s to see Janis Martin who is not completely forgotten.

Der Vampyr 👍🏻

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I had other choices of things to see in Berlin, but I thought Der Vampyr by Heinrich Marschner at the Komische Oper would be fun, and I was right.  Or as it says in the program 'after Heinrich Marschner.'  The Dracula novel appeared in 1897 while this opera was first performed in 1828.

Conductor:  Antony Hermus
Director:  Antu Romero Nunes

Lord Ruthven, Vampire:  Heiko Trinsinger (baritone)
Sir Humphrey, Lord von Davenaut:  Jens Larsen (bass)
Malwina, his daughter:  Nicole Chevalier (soprano)
Edgar Aubrey: Zoltan Nyari (tenor)
Emmy:  Maria Fiselier (soprano)
George Dibdin:  Ivan Tursic (tenor)

This opera is primarily about costume and makeup.  They also do not hesitate to lower painted sets from the flies which makes all the scenes flow rapidly from one to the other.  The stage is enhanced with a nice runway around the orchestra.

We begin with Edgar roaming the stage, coming out of a casket, going back in.  Then the actual opera begins with Ruthven and the other vampires, who all look ghastly.  Other ghastly looking vampires roamed the audience.  A woman behind me screamed.  Ruthven can only stay alive if he gets and kills two brides by midnight.  He sets to work.

Here is a scene with Edgar and Malvina making love.  The main arias are here.  The vampire Ruthven comes and takes her off.  Her father prefers Ruthven.  We have a ball where everyone looks lovely, but then for some reason they become hideous.  Someone shoots them all with a machine gun, including the conductor who comes out of the pit for this.

Maybe I shouldn't tell everything.  Eventually the clock strikes 12 and Ruthven has only one bride with one more to go.  Not good for him.  I have to tell the end.  Edgar gets Malwina and starts to bite her on the neck.  She pulls out her wooden stake and goes to work on him.

I enjoyed this a lot but found the music wandering away from standard Spieloper style.  Spieloper is basically the style of opera in Germany between Beethoven and Wagner, practiced by Marschner and Lorzing, and generally resembles Weber.  It differs from Singspiel primarily for the slightly more serious subject matter.  More modern musical effects were sometimes heard.

One doesn't want to always be serious.

Falstaff in Florence

Direttore: Zubin Mehta
Regia: Luca Ronconi
Scene: Tiziano Santi

Sir John Falstaff: Ambrogio Maestri
Fenton: Yijie Shi
Ford, marito d'Alice: Roberto De Candia
Mrs. Alice Ford: Eva Mei
Nannetta, figlia d'Alice: Ekaterina Sadovnikova
Mrs. Quickly: Elena Zilio
Mrs. Meg Page: Laura Polverelli
Bardolfo: Gianluca Sorrentino
Pistola: Mario Luperi
Dr. Cajus: Carlo Bosi

We wanted very much to see the new opera house in Florence, so we booked ourselves for Falstaff in Florence on Tuesday.  We thought we would see Roberto De Candia as Falstaff until the replacement with Ambrogio Maestri was announced. 

I included the picture above to give you an idea of the production.  This is from the second scene where the ladies have received their letters and are planning their revenge.  It is possible to interpret this production as Falstaff's dream.  It begins with him in bed and ends the same way.  He is lying in bed when the oak tree descends to hang over the bed.

There is a flock of geese on the stage at one point, stuffed, of course.  Then later the women pluck at the feathers on the geese.  Chi e?



Maestri is huge, just as Sir John needs to be.  He sings huge as well.  Perhaps you might be impressed with his enormous size after all.  He is glorious.

I enjoyed very much the "reverenza" of Mrs. Quickly.  My only complaint about the ladies was that their costumes were too similar to be able to distinguish them.  Nannetta was also lovely with a very nice high pianissimo.

It is good to hear Verdi in Italy.  It is an endless surprise.  In Falstaff the violins played with an almost constant leggiero technique, making it truly sound like a buffa opera.  That means they played with the sense of tiny spaces between the notes, creating an atmosphere of lightness and frivolity.  People constantly talk about late Verdi resembling Wagner to the point that our orchestras then play it as though it actually were Wagner.  All Verdi is still Italian, and it might be well for us to remember it on occasion.  Kudos to Maestro Mehta.

It was difficult to tell if the theater was completely finished.  The production did not require any elaborate stage machinery.  Our one complaint was that in the balcony a thin line of steel runs across the middle of one's view of the stage. 

Go see some Verdi in Italy.

Simon Boccanegra at La Fenice

Conductor:  Myung-Whun Chung
Production:  Andrea De Rosa

Simon Boccanegra:  Simone Piazzola
Jacopo Fiesco, his enemy:  Giacomo Prestia
Paolo Albiani:  Julian Kim
Maria Boccanegra:  Maria Agresta
Gabriele Adorno:  Francesco Meli

My operas seen in Italy are La Cenerentola and La Legenda di Sakuntala at the Rome opera, Aida in the Baths of Caracalla, Butterfly and Aida at the Arena di Verona and La Traviata near the Porta Romana in Florence.  None of them prepared me for the amazing experience of Simon Boccanegra at La Fenice in Venice.

We sat in expensive boxes which reduce the space available for the sound to enter.  In spite of this they could have been performing the opera inside the box with us, the acoustics were that good.  There was never any sense of over singing or covering by the orchestra.  I understand that the orchestra pit can be lowered to different levels to balance the sound.  This left these wonderful artists to fully express the emotions of this opera.

Remarkably, two of the singers participated in both Simon Boccanegra and I due Foscari, seen at home a few days ago:  soprano Maria Agresta and tenor Francesco Meli, both marvelous singers.  It is the warmth of the Simon character that elevates this opera to greatness, and Simone Piazzola succeeded brilliantly.

Remember Romeo and Juliet?  Feuding families is a common theme in Italian drama.  I have explained elsewhere that this has to do with the two factions:  Guelphs and Ghibellines.  In one opera(located in Venice) the enemy completely crushes the Foscari family for no apparent reason.  In the other (located in Genoa) while Simon dies, the others live on to a peaceful resolution. 

Simon Boccanegra was a pirate before he became the Doge of Genoa.  His life as a pirate is evoked throughout the opera through the projection of films of the sea projected on a scrim at the back of the stage.  The waves could be seen moving, and occasionally a gull would fly by.  This more than compensated for the fact that everything else except Maria was black.

With one more exception.  At the last while Simon is dying, a woman appears in a white gown and bare feet.  She walks slowly over the floor and kneals down behind Simon.  As he breathes his last, she embraces him.  It has to be his dead wife Maria.  He speaks her name and dies.

The performance was intense from the first note to the last with a vivid expressiveness such as I have never experienced.  I can't help thinking that Verdi would approve.  I used to have a derrogatory remark to go with this opera, but now I think it is my favorite.

Palazzo Ducale

On our first full day in Venice we took a well-led tour of the Palazzo Ducale or Doge's Palace.  Since it was only a few days ago that I saw I due Foscari, an opera about a Doge of Venice, the rooms took on the quality of a stage set.

We visited the room where the Doge, the council of ten and the senate met to make decisions.  The Doge's throne and the seats for the 10 looked very familiar.  Only the huge dark paintings were missing from the opera.  Paintings of the 10 showed their red robes trimmed with fur.

We visited the room where cases were tried, the torture room, the bridge of sighs and the prison cells.  The characters from the opera filled the empty spaces.

Church of Chatter

They called it the Church of Beethoven because every Sunday morning they have a concert at The Kosmos at 1715 5th street.    The space doesn't really look like a church.  There was a coffee shop on one side.

I went for the program.

"At the River" (1916) by Charles Ives, an arrangement for violin and piano of one of Ives' songs.  (I sang this in college.)  It's one of those pieces where Ives changes a hymn into something unexpected.

Chaconne (1998) from The Red Violin by John Corigliano.  This was a very enjoyable selection in neo-romantic style from the sound track of the movie.  I have no idea if it followed the Baroque form for chaconne.  I wasn't paying enough attention.

Poet Bill Nevins, who teaches at UNM, read selections from his recently published book Heartbreak Ridge.

Two minutes of silence.

Sonata No 2 for Violin and Piano (1919) by Charles Ives.
I    Autumn:  Adagio maestoso - Allegro moderato
II   In the Barn:  Presto - Allegro moderato
III  The Revival:  Largo - Allegretto

The artists were David Felberg, violin, and Pamela Viktoria Pyle, piano.  They were both enthusiastic players of this excellent exciting music.  I have loved the work of Charles Ives for many years, and found the intensity of their playing transformative.  It should never be less than this.  David managed to break a few bow strings even.

Coffee, poetry, music, silence.  And no chatter during the playing.  As I always do, I tried to start up a conversation, but it didn't work this time.  Try this if you are ever in Albuquerque.

Chatter

Chatter is an odd name for a chamber orchestra, but there you are. Perhaps in Albuquerque this is not odd. They used to be called the Church of Beethoven, but did not wish to be called "The ensemble that used to be called the Church of Beethoven" when they lost rights to the name.

Chatter gave a concert in the Albuquerque Art Museum last night in the same space as a Christo exhibit. When I was in New York for The Gates, I loved it, but Christo as just photographs and drawings is less than spectacular. Maybe it's for nostalgia. It turned out to be an excellent performance space: no echo, easy to hear, not too loud. Even the synthesizer wasn't too loud.

A synthesizer in Mahler 4? We heard it in an arrangement for chamber ensemble done in 2007 by Klaus Simon. This was in turn based on a similar arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg which undoubtedly did not include synthesizer. This arrangement seriously reduces the strings and winds to one player per section. I sat behind the piano and synthesizer.

It was lovely but different. Mahler loves to make interesting sounds with combinations of winds and percussion. The interesting sounds were still there, but the much smaller string section moved the sound ideal from late Romantic closer to the sound ideal of Schoenberg. Transparency of texture is a feature of this style. Synthesizer fills in some of the thinning of texture when it becomes excessive but the wind players predominate. The soprano was Hannah Stephens. I enjoyed the whole performance.

The program notes seemed to be taken as is from Wikipedia, except when they were explaining that Mahler was forbidden by the Nazis, they left out that this was because Mahler was Jewish. It can't have been for anything about the music.

Dialogues of the Carmelites

Conductor:  Ward Stare

The Marquis de la Force:  Troy Cook
Blanche, his daughter:  Kelly Kaduce
The Chevalier, his son:  Michael Porter
Madame de Croissy, Prioress of the Carmelites:  Meredith Arwady
Madame Lidoine, the new Prioress:  Christine Brewer
Mother Marie of the Incarnation, Assistant Prioress:  Daveda Karanas
Sister Constance of St.Denis, a very young nun:  Ashley Emerson
Mother Jeanne of the Child Jesus, Dean of the Community:  Sofia Selowsky
Sister Mathilde:  Stephanie Sanchez
Father Confessor of the Convent:  Kyle Erdos-Knapp

While in Saint Louis I also saw Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. At Poulenc's specific request this opera is always done in the language of the audience.  In this performance they have used the translation by Joseph Machlis created for the original American performance of the opera in 1957 at the San Francisco Opera.

It isn't just a story.  A real group of nuns were killed in the French Revolution just 10 days before the end of the terror.  The story is that they went to their deaths singing parts of the liturgy while the usually noisy crowd stood silent.  It is a message of grace.  Basically each says I die in the place of others.  Perhaps they were right.  It is not unbelievable that their deaths caused the terror to end.

It is interesting to see Les mamelles de Tirésias and Dialogues so close in succession. One is entirely frivolous and the other deeply serious. Poulenc made studious choices in writing this very serious opera which consists of a lot of very wordy recitative that only occasionally rises to aria, plus choral singing in Latin of catholic liturgical texts.  For the style of the recitative he thanks Monteverdi.

The set is shown in the picture above.  It turns to different angles in the 3/4 round stage and adds tables and chairs when needed.  It seemed strange but effective until the final death scene.  This could have been staged for more impact.  The 2 novices, Blanche and Constance, can be seen in white behind Christine Brewer, a sympathetic new Prioress. 

Most memorable was the performance as the old Prioress of Meredith Arwady.  She dies in a most intense manner.  It was a pleasure to see this.  It was my first time with supertitles which most enhance the operatic experience in works with lots of text.  The message of death as grace was successfully communicated.

27

Composer:  Ricky Ian Gordon
Librettist:  Royce Vavrek
Conductor: Michael Christie
Gertrude Stein:  Stephanie Blythe
Alice B. Toklas:  Elizabeth Futral
Everyone else:  Theo Lebow, Tobias Greenhalgh, Daniel Brevik

27 is short for 27 Rue de Fleurus, the address of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas in Paris. It is also the title of a new opera at Opera Theater of Saint Louis.

Waiting for the before-performance lecture to begin I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me.  We compared notes about being Gertrude Stein fanatics, and about sneaking inside the gate at 27 Rue de Fleurus in Paris.  She was caught and got thrown out, but I made it into the back where the famous atelier still stood and escaped with no one catching me.

I told her of our summer of Steins in San Francisco where many of the art works were on display and Four Saints in Three Acts was presented.  I told her how I had read all the biographies and many of the works.  Perhaps I am over trained for this performance.  I'm trying to think of a biographical opera that isn't about a queen.

I came because I once portrayed Gertrude Stein in an opera.  Her character was much more completely developed here.

Their favorite Stein phrase was "Before the flowers of friendship faded, friendship faded."  This was all I recognized, I must say.

The opera was divided into 5 short acts with the first one the longest.  I very much liked the portrayal of Leo Stein.  Let's start with something good.  I love that the librettist included Basket, Gertrude and Alice's standard white poodle.

Now we get into complaints.

My biggest complaint concerns the portrayal of Gertrude Stein in WWI.  In the opera she whines about being safe and not having any coal.  In real life she drove an ambulance, not really the choice of someone obsessed with safety.

She makes ridiculously insulting remarks to Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  If  she spoke like that to them, why would they keep coming back?  Why would Hemingway remember them so fondly in his memoir?

This is GS for the 21st century.  She constantly calls Alice wife, something I don't really recall.  This could always be just my memory.  I do recall "lovey" and "pussy."  The most favorably portrayed aspect of the real Gertrude Stein in this opera is of her relationship with Alice.

The librettist spent 3 weeks familiarizing himself with Gertrude, resulting in small incidents being blown up into huge parts of the plot.  It is true that after France was liberated, Gertrude announced to the world that she was safe.  This was blown up into a constant whining theme throughout the opera.

We are dealing with a mythical GS.  They may be forgiven for the fact that by the beginning of WWII they no longer lived at 27 Rue de Fleurus.  Also no mention was made of the fact that during the war they lived at their summer home in the French countryside where they were protected by their French neighbors.

One of Gertrude's pre-war friends knew where she lived, and when he became a member of the Vichy government of France, in exchange for not telling the Nazis they were Jews and where they lived, he required her to do translations for him.  Not wanting to be massacred isn't really one of the major crimes in the world.  Admittedly her political views at this period of history were not what today is regarded as politically correct.

Stephanie Blythe is a force of nature and was very convincing in the role.  She dressed as Gertrude between the wars.  Elizabeth Futral successfully suggested Alice.

I enjoyed the music which was very good for singing.  It was dramatically and theatrically coherent enough for the audience to occasionally burst into applause, always at exactly the right moment.  The supertitles were too small. 

This isn't my Gertrude Stein.  This GS is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing, cowardly, disgusting Nazi bitch.  I naturally have a different opinion.  They were focused entirely on making this a fun entertainment, and in many ways they succeeded.
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Post Script to Salzburg

There is something I forgot to say in my writing about Salzburg.  Both the Large Hall and the House for Mozart have really excellent acoustics.  I sat in various areas in both rooms and could always hear the singers.  I am accustomed to the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House which has truly terrible acoustics, so this was a treat.  In its defense I don't think either of the Salzburg houses are as large as the War Memorial.  Bad seats.  Marvelous acoustics.  Perhaps this is the proper prioritization.

Salzburg Festival

The large hall set up for a concert.

I enjoyed very much my visit to the Salzburg Festival.  I went on a tour which meant that I was well taken care of to compensate for my somewhat ill health.  Instead of doing touristy things, I generally sat in my room and watched television.  This helped to revive my German.  At one point I even carried on a long political conversation with the bus driver, all in German.  It is easier for me to talk about American politics with people who are as puzzled by it as I am.

The quality of the music for everything I saw was very high.  I thought of suggesting that American singers to be sure their careers include time spent in the German speaking world, for this is truly the center of opera today.

I was as stunned by Norma as I expected to be.  It felt revolutionary to me.  To move the opera to another time and place in order to more fully explain it, instead of the usual reason which seems to be to obscure it with irrelevant nonsense.  The purpose of modern productions often seems to be to relieve the boredom of the producers, to alleviate the tedium of having to stage the same operas over and over. 

I began to wonder if other operas might benefit from this approach.  The most film noir of plots is Streetcar, coming this year to the LA Opera.  A brutal and dark approach might bring it to life.  I'll try to think of some others.  It was, of course, the intensity of Cecilia's acting that brought Norma to this level of success.  Other singing actors might not be able to reach this.  Does that mean they shouldn't try?

Next year Luca Pisaroni will sing his Leporello.

P.S.  I promise to stop yammering about the Salzburg Festival, but I forgot to mention something.  At all the concert performances the orchestra swarms together onto the stage--to applause--just before the conductor enters.  There is none of this meandering onto the stage one by one, sitting around gossiping and fiddling with equipment that seems universal in the English speaking world. So there are options available.