Whitsun 2020 - Cancelled

Pauline Viardot-Garcia

Cecilia Bartoli's Whitsun Festival at Salzburg in 2020 will be an homage to Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821 – 1910), the sister of Maria Malibran.  Viardot's voice did not precisely mesh with Cecilia's, which explains why she has not featured her before.

The Pfingstfest as curated by La Bartoli usually features a fully staged opera starring herself that is presented twice.  Next year it will be Donizetti's Don Pasquale sung in a version ornamented for Viardot and directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier.  This should be fun.

Berlioz created an arrangement of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice for Pauline which she sang over 150 times.  This will be the second opera and will not feature Cecilia.  I once reviewed this arrangement from a DVD here.

The remainder of the festival generally involves concerts.  One will feature the great choral works the Fauré Requiem and the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, both works which I love very much.  There will be a staged song matinee with songs by Viardot and starring mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux.

The festival will end with a gala concert designed as an homage to the entire Garcia family:  Cecilia Bartoli as Maria Malibran, Varduhi Abrahamyan as Pauline Viardot, and Javier Camarena as Manuel García.  There is much to love.  I haven't been traveling for health reasons, but perhaps I should at least consider this.  The dates are May 29 - June 1.

P.S. Cecilia Bartoli has extended her Whitsun Festival contract to 2026.

Arias for Farinelli

This was very much a Baroque weekend.  On Saturday night was Vivica Genaux with the Philharmonia Baroque in Berkeley doing her Arias for Farinelli program.

Philharmonia Baroque performs in the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, and after living in Sacramento for a while, I am feeling a bit of envy for such a spacious room with such nice acoustics.

This was sort of an anyone but Bach concert from the generation born from the decade 1678-88:

• We begin with a concerto for six woodwinds by Johann Friedrich Fasch, who worked within 50 miles of Bach.  This was on the program as a memorial for two of their woodwind players who died last spring.

• Then Vivica thrilled us with three arias by Antonio Vivaldi.

• Georg Philipp Telemann's "Sinfonia Spirituosa"

• Then we have two arias by Nicola Porpora and one by Roccardo Broschi.  Broschi is heard only because he was Farinelli's brother and wrote a number of show piece arias for him.  He is younger than the others.  These were pretty flashy.

• The program closed with a suite by Jean -Philippe Rameau from La Guirlande.  This included some very primitive looking percussion--a tall drum and a tambourine. 

• Vivica sang "Agitata da due venti" from Vivaldi's Griselda as an encore.  I don't think it was as funny as this film.

 

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Vivaldi Ercole

There's some pretty wonderful stuff in this recording of Vivaldi's Ercole sul Termodonte (1722) with Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante.

This performance is yet another result of the current burst of Italian musicology. The booklet that comes with the CDs describes the process required to revive this opera and recreate the original score.

The opera was written for Rome, and even at this late date the roles seem all to have been performed by men, either castrati or tenors. The casting for the recording is somewhat curious. Hercules and his band of Greeks have been tasked with stealing the arms of Antiope, the queen of the Amazons. The Greek roles consist of two tenors and two mezzo-sopranos: Ercole (Hercules) is sung by Rolando Villazon; Teseo (Theseus) is sung by Romina Basso, a female mezzo, not a bass; Alceste is sung by Philippe Jaroussky, the only countertenor; and Telamone is sung by another tenor, Topi Lehtipuu.

Both camps, Greeks and Amazons, are composed of two distinct types of personalities: lovers and fighters. For the Greeks the tenors represent the fighters, and the mezzos are the lovers. On the Amazon side Antiope, the queen, sung by Vivica Genaux, mezzo-soprano, and Orizia, her sister, sung by Patrizia Ciofi, soprano, are the fighters. Ippolita, another sister of the queen, sung by Joyce DiDonato, mezzo, and Martesia, the queen's daughter, sung by Diana Damrau, soprano, are the lovers.

That's a lot of treble characters. Some are pissed off and want to kill people, while others are desperately in love and pine for their lovers. The plot has an annoyingly conventional ending with no one dying and both pairs of lovers getting together. And incidentally the queen gives Hercules her arms. They all live happily ever after in the by then well established tradition of Neapolitan Opera.

By now in 2011 we are accustomed to the sound of Handel operas with their Germanic density of instrumentation. It's nice to hear this transparency. Italian opera is about singing.

With this collection of singers there is a lot of fabulous singing. Everyone gets something nice, but the sweetest arias are for Joyce DiDonato. She shines.  So does Rolando Villazon.  It's a good recording.
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Echo Klassik Awards for 2010

Sängerin des Jahres:  

• 

 Joyce DiDonato -Colbran, The Muse

Sänger des Jahres:

• 

  Jonas Kaufmann -Sehnsucht

Operneinspielung des Jahres - (17. - 18. Jahrhundert)

Juan-Diego Florez -Christoph Willibald Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice 

Operneinspielung des Jahres - Opernarien & Duette

• 

  Cecilia Bartoli -Sacrificium

• 

  Vivica Genaux -Antonio Vivaldi: Opera Arias – Pyrotechnics

• 

  Bryn Terfel -Bad Boys

Joyce and Vivica

Both of these recordings are from Virgin Classics.

This is Joyce DiDonato's all Rossini album, Colbran, the Muse, and it's magnificent. Her tone is gorgeous, and her style is very pleasing.

And this is Vivica Genaux's all Vivaldi album, Pyrotechnics. This is quite wowie.

If you're not mad for La Gioiosa, or even if you are, you might want to try one of these fabulous ladies.
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Telepathy

I am psychic, though not in any significant way.

Vivica Genaux and Joyce DiDonato appeared in my head together. So I ordered both of their new CDs from Amazon: Pyrotechnics and Colbran the Muse respectively.

Then I posted pictures of them. And now I find that they are giving a recital together on February 22 at the University of Chicago in honor of Philip Gossett's retirement. Both sing his Italian specialty composers, so that is what you should expect on the program.

Best wishes to Dr. Gossett on his retirement.


Vivica Genaux, Philip Gossett, Lawrence Brownlee.

Mezzos

In and out of drag.


Vivica Genaux. I have no idea what's going on here, but isn't it great!

Vivica. This is the most butch picture I've seen of her.

Joyce DiDonato.

Joyce. I was starting to think there were no drag pictures of her.
More later.

Mezzos doing Handel

Mezzo-sopranos singing Handel arias on YouTube. Most of them don't seem to have pictures. These are arranged in a not precise order of ascending weight.


Cecilia Bartoli singing "Da tempeste" from Giulio Cesare. I don't know if this counts since she's singing Cleopatra. In a proper comparison she would have to be singing a castrato part. This is a pirate recording from Zurich.


Vivica Genaux singing "Spero per voi, si, si" from Ariodante.


Anna Bonitatibus singing "Un pensiero nemico di pace".  I've seen her in Zurich and like her a lot. 


I have added Susan Graham just ahead of Joyce singing "Verdi Prati" from Alcina. She has one of the most beautiful mezzo voices around.


Joyce Di Donato singing "Where shall I fly?" from Hercules. Joyce is definitely growing on me. This is awesome.


Vesselina Kasarova singing "Mi lusinga il dolce affetto" from Alcina. **This is now a different aria also from Alcina. The closeups are priceless.


Alice Coote singing Sesto's "Cara speme, questo core" from Giulio Cesare.


Ewa Podleś singing "Dover, giustizia, amor" from Ariodante. This is what we missed when she didn't come to San Francisco.

Does this tell you anything about technique in the time of Handel? I always feel Handel in the mezzo Fach is pitched all wrong for women, but these particular women seem to be handling it well. Pun intended.

Sexiest in Drag

I have to keep up these posts since I am still the only one doing it. These pictures are all of Vivica Genaux, the first one from Siege of Corinth in Baltimore, the same opera production I reviewed here.


This is Semiramide.


These two are from Rinaldo, where she probably sang Rinaldo.



She also looks quite nice in girl's clothes, as here in this fabulous picture with Rodney Gilfry in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.

Bianca e Falliero

I went to Rossini's Bianca e Falliero at the Washington Concert Opera Sunday. I now know what it's about, so maybe I should watch my DVD again. It's a standard operatic thwarted love plot, but has a few interesting features.

There was a very nice quartet toward the end where the four main characters stand and tell their personal thoughts that reminded me very much of the canon from Fidelio. There were some lovely love duets between the title characters, sung by Anna Christy and Vivica Genaux. And the whole thing ended with "Tanti affetti" with different words. It worked the first time, so why not try it again? It worked for me since it is some of my favorite Rossini.

The plot was not at all ridiculous. Bianca's father wants to marry her to a rich guy so he can have more money. Bianca is in love with a military hero who may not be particularly rich. Falliero is caught escaping from Bianca's house through the grounds of the Spanish embassy and is charged with a capital crime: consorting with foreign ambassadors. Bianca saves him, and they live happily ever after.

I went to see Vivica Genaux, who I think is perfectly marvelous. Someone came out before the performance and said she was having an allergy attack, but she was great. She had a very nice rage aria toward the end when she thinks Bianca has married the other guy. She is golden. I went back to say hi, and as usual thought of nothing very creative to say. Maybe if I practiced I could get better at it.

Anna Christy is an excellent light coloratura.

This is an interesting group, though the orchestra could have spent more time tuning. Next year they are doing Donizetti's Maria Padilla.

Other recordings

I have been buying a lot of CD's lately, including Dawn Upshaw's Canteloube: Chants d'Auvergne. This is a collection of folk songs from Auvergne, a region in central France with its own dialect, called Auvergnat. Cantaloube's songs are in this dialect, though the liner notes show only French and English. This makes it more difficult to match the singing with the translation.

Joseph Cantaloube is known primarily for these songs which were composed over a long period from 1923 to 1955. The orchestral accompaniment seems to answer the question, "What if these songs were in a movie?" We're hearing post-impressionism. Alternate question, "If these songs were a movie, what would the plot be?"

Dawn Upshaw's main talent is her ability to bring a sense of ecstasy into unusual music, a talent strongly in evidence here. It's not a new recording.

I also bought:
Elīna Garanča Aria Cantilena
Angela Gheorghiu Live from La Scala
Measha Bruggergosman Surprise
Vivica Genaux Handel & Hasse Opera Arias
Netrebko and Villazon duets
Natalie Dessay French Opera Arias
Lotte Lenya Kurt Weill
Matthias Goerne Schumann

In the mail is Jonas Kaufmann's Strauss Lieder. I'll let you know if I think of anything to say about them.

Florez' Arias for Rubini is out in Europe, but I can't find it here.
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Following

And who are these people I am supposed to be following?




Measha Brueggergosman whose Deutsche Grammophon recording is now out. Notice how her dress hides her feet.


Erin Wall who has a web site "coming soon" here. Sorry, that's hurricane Erin. Meanwhile, hear her on MySpace.


Tracie Luck who appeared recently in New York in Margaret Garner.


Jonas Kaufmann who can be seen here. He just won the award from Gramophone magazine for best vocal album for a Strauss Lieder recording. I'll have to look into this. He's just been signed by Decca.


Vivica Genaux seen here as Jackie Kennedy in Semele. It's the pillbox hat that gives it away, the one in the assassination photos. Doing it in pink would have been bad taste.

That's a few anyway. This is not an official list.

Retirement

Since I retired in May of 2006 I have seen as many operas as I could, including a number of operas that I had not seen before. Anyone can still have things to look forward to. Maybe I should make a wish list.

In June 2006 I saw my first Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans at the San Francisco Opera. Dolora Zajick made this a fabulous experience.

Then in September 2006 I experienced Handel's Semele at the New York City Opera in a spectacular Marilyn Monroe vs Jackie Kennedy production with Elizabeth Futral and Vivica Genaux. This may be Handel's only comedy and has become a personal favorite.

In October 2006 I went to Baltimore to see Elizabeth Futral and Vivica Genaux together again in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth. This was the version created for Beverly Sills and Marilyn Horne.

Surely I must have seen Massenet's Manon before I went to Los Angeles, but none of them made any impression at all. Perhaps Netrebko's performance erased all others.

All of these new experiences were incredible. It is a lot of fun traveling around looking for operas. I have been deliberately seeking out new operas to experience, beginning with Maw's Sophie's Choice at the Washington National Opera. It was a rare instance of a new opera with what I felt to be a good libretto and bad writing for voices. The good libretto is the rare part. Bad writing for voices is not that unusual.

In January 2007 I had a new opera experience in the simulcasts from the Metropolitan Opera with Tan Dun's The First Emperor . I liked the first half but felt it petered out after that.

Then I went to Europe to see Cecilia in Handel's Semele and saw also Handel's Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Zurich. This work was not originally intended to be staged, but seemed to be relatively successful as an opera.

There were no other new ones until April 2007 when I saw my first Suor Angelica from Puccini's Il Trittico in the Met simulcast. Stephanie Blythe made this successful for me. That same month I saw my first Handel's Flavio at Pocket Opera in San Francisco. This was not good. There are probably a lot more Handel Operas I haven't seen.

In May 2007 I saw something that was newly created: Gounod / Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Berkeley Opera. Shakespeare's play and Gounod's Opera were combined in a shotgun wedding.

In June 2007 I saw my first performance of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at the San Francisco Opera. I don't really remember seeing a Gluck opera before this. I apologize for the way I described this performance, which was really quite lovely.

In July 2007 I went to Santa Fe because of all the operas they were doing that I hadn't seen. I saw Strauss' Daphne in a concert performance at Kennedy Center but Santa Fe was my first staged version. Rameau's Platée was new, as was Dun's Tea, a Mirror of Soul.

In August 2007 I went to Glimmerglass for the same reason. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo was the only opera I had seen before--last year in London. Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice , Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and
Glass' Orphée were all new.

16 out of 31 operas in this time period were new for me. This is rather an awesome statistic. I do seek out things I haven't seen before, and I would be bored to death by endless repetitions of La Boheme. There are a couple of instances where I may have simply forgotten performances that I saw years before.

Long ago I saw Bellini's I Puritani in Sacramento at the barnlike Memorial Auditorium with Joan Sutherland, so Netrebko's version was not the first.

It has been a truly extraordinary year, and I am not suddenly poor. Of all these new operas I think these are my favorites:

Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans for the incredible power of the singing of Dolora Zajick.

Glass' Orphée for the abstraction and lyricism of a new opera.

Handel's Semele both productions for the gorgeous music, lightness of spirit and high quality performances by some great stars.

Dun's Tea, a Mirror of Soul for the depth of concept and originality of execution.

Rossini's The Siege of Corinth for Vivica Genaux.

Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride I'm not really sure why. It's sneakily engulfing.

The list does not include any videos which also included a lot of new operas. It's nice to think that after all these years of going to the opera it's still possible to see something new.

Current pickings

I am living a kind of austere life and have only the following CD’s to listen to:

Alison Krauss A Hundred Miles or More
Anna Netrebko Russian Album
Anne Sophie von Otter Speak Low
Beatles Love
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Neruda Songs
Norah Jones Not Too Late
Rolando Villazon Combattimento
Rolando Villazon Gitano
Susan Graham Ives
Vivica Genaux Arias for Farinelli

I will annotate and rank this pathetic list. No wonder my brain is melting down. Rankings are on two levels: greatness and whether or not I actually listen to it.

For greatness Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Neruda Songs has to be number one. For depth, for beauty, for emotion, for tone, and I’m sure a lot more things.

For whether or not I listen, I confess Anne Sophie von Otter Speak Low really grabs me. For one thing there is this great photo on the cover with all that eye shadow and cynicism. It lacks a cigarette and drink, though. See Greta Garbo in Anna Christie to get the right way to play this. In fact Anne Sophie could take on Greta as a role model. She could use a little more mystery. Our Swedish mezzo gets completely into songs that are not in her native language. Are you listening, Americans?

The latest thing on Weill is that Lotte Lenya says there is no German Weill and American Weill. There is just Weill. How can I argue? Why would I argue? Of all the Weill I have heard since I started blogging, Bebe probably got it best. Only her voice failed her.

Both Alison Krauss and Norah Jones have done better. I very much prefer the Live album for Alison Krauss. Too many dead people on this one for me.

Rolando Villazon Combattimento may just be a great recording. It’s hard to imagine improving on this performance of Monteverdi.

I do indeed listen to Anna Netrebko Russian Album regularly, much more than anything else on this list. It wears well. The Rachmaninov is all completely exquisite. I continue to wish she would do a Rachmaninov songs album for us, but this is probably not the direction she wants to take. Rimsky and Tchaikovsky are also lovely. I am beginning to feel a longing for things Russian.

Beatles Love feels stale and overworked.

There’s nothing wrong with Rolando Villazon Gitano, but I doubt I’ll ever get really into zarzuela.

Why isn’t Vivica Genaux rich and famous? She does not rise to the level of frighteningly awesome that La Bartoli manages, but she’s pretty damn good. Vivica Genaux Arias for Farinelli is highly recommended. She could loosen up a little, look longer and deeper for the feeling of each piece. Everyone could, for that matter.

I like Ives. I have no other excuse.

Maybe I should get a job in a music store like Sarah. Or is there such a thing in America?

Arias for Farinelli

Vivica Genaux has a new album called Arias for Farinelli, a castrato who sang in the period most represented these days by George Frederick Handel. It was, however, the competition who hired him while he was in London from 1734-37. This album gives a picture of Italian opera in the time of Handel, a repertoire we seldom hear.

Represented are Nicola Porpora, Geminiano Giacomelli, Riccardo Broschi (Farinelli’s brother), Johann Adolf Hasse, and Baldassari Galuppi, listed here chronologically in the order of their birth dates. René Jacobs, the conductor, says in his notes, “The composers of our arias were themselves trained singers, and understood the human vocal instrument so well that they occasionally gave singing lessons; Porpora even made it his profession.” I didn’t think of that when giving advice to composers, but why not? Find out what Fach suits your own voice. Learn a few arias and perform them for your friends, preferably your singer friends. I would remove my prohibition that they compose for themselves if composers actually were trained as opera singers. Forgive me, as usual I have digressed.

Jacobs also speaks of “hermaphroditic dreams,” satisfied both by castrati in female roles and contraltos in trouser parts, sometimes together in the same opera. Gender confusion as a method for increasing pleasure is what we are talking about here. We have suspected as much.

Jacobs discusses at length the suitability of falsettists in replacing castrati and makes the statement, “…when it comes to replacing soprano castratos like Farinelli, unfortunately no falsettist in existence today fulfils [the] desire for full and rounded lower notes, combined with high notes that must be gently placed, unforced and capable of modulation.” Senisino yes, Farinelli no. How fascinating! He says in this period “…the voice should sound ‘large and powerful in the low register, of moderate volume in the middle register, and increasingly softer in the higher reaches,’” (a quote from a treatise written in 1474.) This is, of course, the opposite of modern practice where practically all high notes are blasted out as loudly as possible. You will have to read the whole liner note for yourself. As castrati gradually died out, they were replaced by women, not falsettists.

Farinelli’s range extended from a to d’’’. For Sarah I quote: “Farinelli’s public expected him to sing his arias in a new way, that is with new ‘graces’, each time he sang them: many opera fans attended every performance of a production!” There are still those who do it now.

I am supposed to be writing about Vivica Genaux’s performance of the selected arias. I like her voice a great deal. In the past I compared her to Marilyn Horne. I think Vivica is a true mezzo and would not have contracted as a soprano in her youth as Marilyn is known to have done. Her voice is placed ideally for the extravagant ornamentation beautifully performed here.

She misses only the miraculous flow of the phrase attained in my lifetime only by one singer. Whom I will not name. You know who I mean.

“Quell’ usignolo” by Giacomelli goes on for over 14 minutes on six lines of text about a nightingale. What fun this is. The cadenzas are wonderful. Vivica Genaux is one of the best people around today, and this is a great way to hear her.
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News

Here is an interview with Vivica Genaux. I especially liked the end where she is talking about what she didn't learn in school:

'I’m enjoying the music a lot more because, rather than just singing notes off the score, I get to be somebody inside the music. I make it my own. It’s not just somebody singing Cenerentola, but it’s me singing Cenerentola. Before, I was looking at myself always from the outside, because I was working with directors and conductors who wanted to put their stamp on what I was doing. I worried whether I was meeting other people’s expectations of me, and I can’t do that anymore. I mustn’t do that anymore. I have to be the one that says: “It’s my music, it’s my soul, and my interpretation.” '

La Cieca is about the only one still blogging. Everyone else seems to have a life. I have decided to move from Maryland whether my house sells or not. Perhaps then I can begin to have a life, too.

End of Divas and Scholars

I am finally getting to the end of Divas and Scholars. Unlike the hundreds of books that recount the plots of operas, this book is about the actual work of musicians and others who create the operas we see.

I began by looking up every entry about Cecilia Bartoli and commenting on that.

Then I did one of my rants about natural horns.

Then I noticed he'd discussed a performance of Il Trovatore that I had a DVD of, so I did a review of it, trying to detect some of the things he talked about.

Then I tried to get more serious about the whole thing and wrote about the conflict between scholarship and tradition, the conflict between the opera as it originally existed and the opera as we have had it handed down to us and know from recodings and traditional performances.

Then I learned that there is a term for a theater that presents the operas one at a time: stagione. The term repertory I was already familiar with. I wrote that researsal space and time were probably the crucial issue in deciding between repertory and stagione, but I have since thought of another issue: space for the sets. In San Francisco they occasionally put sets out in the street covered with a tarp, but now the opera house has been expanded to increase the space behind the scenes. If there is nowhere to put the sets you are not using, you are stagione.

I commented on Marilyn Horne's place in the whole process of returning original performing editions into use, especially editions of Rossini.

I commented on the status of German vs Italian musicology.

I wrote about the effect on my life of reading this. I speculated that Rubini might have been a falsettist.

I began corresponding with Professor Gossett. I blogged this email exchange because he commented on my gossip about Domingo. I loved this piece of gossip. He admitted he is a friend of Vivica Genaux and that he had read my blog, facts that may be connected.

I was reminded of the song "Yesterday". Then I tried to explain the issues about French operas translated into Italian operas in a serious way.

I wrote about the changing weight of the orchestra in the nineteenth century, a subject of very great importance.

Then I called them all fuddy-duddies for rejecting the modern staging ideas and took it back here. Then I talked briefly about the three types of productions.

I started to write about censorship, but decided you would need to read about it for yourself.

I liked it that Philip Gossett wrote himself into the story. In fact I liked it all and will miss it. It is an autobiography in music.

It has made me realize how much I miss the life of music, my life's one true passion. Blogging helps, but it's not enough.

The Siege of Corinth

I am irresistibly attracted to the serious operas of Gioachino Rossini. For my heart Rossini is perfect exactly the way he is and does not require the "improvements" of Verdi. There is a perfection of lightness in the coloratura that is not improved by the weight of future generations. I am happy to see this style returning to our ears, to hear the wonderfully ornamented da capos done as they were meant to be. Viva Rossini!

I went on Sunday to see the Baltimore Opera Company present Rossini's L'Assedio di Corinto or The Siege of Corinth, an actual historical event which took place in the 1450's. A Christian country is being invaded by Moslems who are heard praying to the prophet, something I am not sure actually happens. Never mind.

The production was traditional with Turks looking pretty much the way they do in Italian Renaissance paintings and the Greeks looking almost antique. I'm not sure my comments about the historical accuracy of costumes can be relied upon so we will assume they are not displaced from their intended setting. The two groups, Greeks and Turks, were easy to distinguish from one another, making the drama easy to follow.

The historical event requires a love theme to make it work as an opera. In preparation for invasion Maometto II has been personally casing the Greek cities, and while looking over Athens, he meets and falls in love with Pamira, daughter of the Governor of Corinth. Her father Cleomene, here sung by Bruce Ford, asks her to marry Neocle, but she refuses, saying her heart already belongs to another. Only during the opera does she discover that it is Maometto II himself that she loves. She vacillates, but ultimately decides on martyrdom with her countrymen over marriage to a foreigner.

The unusual feature of this opera is the presence of chorus in every scene, representing primarily the Greek people. It is a surprise in an Italian opera to hear so much chorus. It is they who carry the spirit of patriotism and martyrdom that is the main theme of the opera. They sing in simple block chords without counterpoint. This was very well done and effective.

Elizabeth Futral as Pamira was in a little over her head. She was better and more secure in the more solid Handel of Semele than here. The more ethereal Rossini caused her voice to become fluttery.

Vivica Genaux in the role of Neocle was a revelation. She did not quite achieve the godlike standards of Marilyn Horne, but definitely merited comparison, as great a compliment as I can imagine for a coloratura mezzo. Brava! And, yes, she looked fabulous.

Candidate

We have a new candidate for sexiest in drag: Vivica Genaux.

Ariodante

Les Huguenots

Siege

The tag team of Elizabeth Futral and Vivica Genaux from Semele are appearing at the Baltimore Opera in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth in October. Bruce Ford is also in the cast. Cool! This sounds really exciting!

See review of Semele here. Note comment about resisting pop influence in ornamentation. I wrote extensively about this last year and still find it interesting that pop is now more ornamented than classical, though in a completely different style.