First Tudor Queen Down – Two More To Go

Donizetti’s Anna Bolena

Metropolitan Opera

October 9, 2015

Queen Anna Bolena unleashes her rage
Photo credit: New York Times

Lei: As bel canto lovers, we are always over the moon when we get to see an opera from Donizetti’s “Tudor trilogy.” In this series the incredibly beautiful and virtuosic singing also serves the purpose of expressing a range of dramatic emotions that runs the gamut, particularly for the regal title roles. Each of these works features a most complex female lead, a queen who rules, loves, rages, suffers, fights, avenges and melts (not necessarily in that order). The singing here is so challenging that there are very few artists able to tackle it. So, when the Met announced that it was going to present all three of the “Donizetti Queens” in the same season, with the title role sang each time by one of the most exciting sopranos around, Sondra Radvanovsky, we started jumping up and down, giddy with excitement and anticipation. Drama! Vocal fireworks! Thundering yet tender but crazy queens!

The Queen cannot believe she's fallen into Henry VIII's trap
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lui: Donizetti’s Anna Bolena is a rare gem. Despite or perhaps due to the musical supremacy of its score and the vocal extravagance it demands of its singers, the first of Donizetti’s three queens only appears all too infrequently. In fact, this season the Met is one of the only two opera houses staging it around the world (the other being Bergamo) – how lucky for us! The role of its heroine comprises an odyssey of musical moods and emotional tones that is among the most dynamic in the repertoire. With its forbidding vocal demands and its broad range that spans the whole spectrum of human emotions from somber sadness to raw feminine heroism, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena is one of the great soprano assoluta roles par excellence, up there with Bellini’s Norma and Donizetti’s third queen, the Elizabeth of Roberto Devereux, who will be making her Met debut later this season.

This was Sondra Radvanovsky’s night in every way. From the very start, she rendered the reflective, nostalgic mood of her opening aria, Come, innocente giovane through lyrical low-lying phrases and intricately delicate coloratura juxtaposed to flexible high notes with several flights into the uppermost registers.

Regal dignity
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lei: In this early aria, the forlorn queen ruminates on her estranged husband and her difficult life at court as a queen who fails to produce male heirs (though she did give birth to Elizabeth but that’s for another opera…). Things heat up shortly thereafter, with Anna’s private, ill-fated encounter with her ex-lover Percy and her subsequent arrest by Henry for adultery (though she was not really adultering – evil skirt-chasing Henry is just making up excuses to get rid of her and marry his new lover, Giovanna Seymour).  

Queen Anna, Queen-to-be Elizabeth and the lusty page Smeaton
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

In terms of the story and score, Anna Bolena’s initial trajectory presents a powerful woman who is steadfast in her convictions as she withstands the temptation of seeing Percy again. Here Radvanovsky demonstrated great feats of coloratura flexibility and a truly resolute, stouthearted tone. In the concluding Ah, segnata è la mia sorte, Radvanovsky gave us the full power of her dramatic sound. The full heroic strength of a true soprano assoluta was on display.

The treacherous Giovanna pleads with Anna
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lui: Incredibly moving was her forgiveness of Giovanna Seymour in the beginning of Act II. The two women share a dramatically charged moment in which Bolena realizes that her rival for the affection of the king is none other than her closest confidant and friend Giovanna Seymour. After an initial moment of surprised growing rage, Radvanovsky’s soaring vocal lines in her recognition that Seymour is as much a victim as she is in this moment of human tenderness and understanding were so transcendent that they sent tingles through my body. The dark dusky hues in her voice that shone through were just so human. 

Lei: This Act II opener really caught me off guard in its surprising human and moving twist. One would expect Bolena to unleash all sorts of insults on her double faced friend who’s sleeping with her husband, but the queen here actually forgives her as she’s been in her same shoes before (when she was the king’s lover causing him to dump his then queen) and so she understands the lure of Henry VIII and the power that comes with him (è reo soltanto / chi tal fiamma accese in te). On the other hand, though, Anna’s forgiveness has the effect of further punishing Giovanna who just cannot bear the guilt of having betrayed the trust of her amazingly gracious queen (ah! peggiore è il tuo perdono / dello sdegno ch’io temea).

The Queen suspects her husband's fidelity
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lui: Dauntless during her trial, Anna expresses regret in haunting, pathetic phrases, ever somber but understated. Radvanovsky’s vocal agility was sensational. Her encyclopedic singing was simply breathtaking. And if you were weren’t satisfied with all of the ground she covered by the end of Act I, she really pulled out all the stops in Act II.

Lei: Her performance was extraordinary throughout the first two thirds of the evening. But by the time she got her grandiose finale that climaxes with the famous “mad scene” in her prison cell and subsequent execution, it was like she was only pacing herself in the lead up to this phenomenal passage of music.

Coppia iniqua!
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lui: For her last scene, Donizetti gives us a panorama of her emotional existence. Radvanovsky’s voice masterfully embodied every contour of her heroine’s psychic landscape with resilience and stamina. Her vocal technique ranged across the spectrum – the melancholy piano pianissimo of her sad and somber reminiscence back to happier times (Al dolce guidami), the hurt (Cielo, a’ miei lunghi spasimi), the heroic (Coppia iniqua). It’s an emotional storm. And Radvanovsky was mind blowing. The way her voice got all friable and frail, almost like dry parchment, during the most delicate moment of her big climax in the mad scene, ranks up there with some of the great Met performances of my humble experience. It’s just a shame that the rest of the cast was rarely at her level.

Serial husband Henry VIII
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lei: Ildar Abdrazakov, who is usually reliable, had his moments but from time to time tonight just couldn’t get there. His voice seemed to drop off and was almost inaudible. Which is only made more conspicuous by the sheer force of his extraordinary female lead. I hate to say it but his heart just didn’t seem to be in it. Taylor Strayton as Percy was a mediocre tenor at best, though he has shown signs of improvement since the last time we saw him in Bellini's La Sonnambula a few years back. Milijana Nikolic in her Met debut as Giovanna Seymour was solid, though I found her sound to be muddled, almost milky. Her enunciation of the Italian wasn’t as crystal clear and cutting as Radvanovsky’s.  

Smeaton pours his heart out.
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Lui: The court singer, Smeaton, sung with romantic agility by one of my favorite bel canto mezzo sopranos, Tamara Mumford was perhaps the highlight of the supporting cast. She has great stage presence and really embodies the lovelorn longing of the young Cherubino-esque farfallone amoroso, who flies a little too close to the flame with tragic results for all involved.

Anna falls into the trap
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

I also came to a greater appreciation of Sir David McVicar’s production this time. I was a little underwhelmed by the starkness of Robert Jones’s sets when we saw this production at its debut back on opening night in 2011. But tonight they really struck me as almost painterly in their attention to period details like the cavernous space of the early modern royal castle and palace. The modular design makes for fluid set changes that keep the action flowing almost oneirically. And Jenny Tiramani’s costumes are just spectacular. So plush in their florid Renaissance flair. Many scenes looks like a Holbein or a Bronzino painting. With the light flooding into the vast interiors of the palace through high gothic windows and the pencil thin trees that populate the wasteland that lies just outside the castle walls, the set design is starkly expressionistic in its minimalist efficacy.

The sets for the big Anna/Giovanna confrontation scene
Photo credit: Met

A more defiant Anna by Netrebko in 2011
Photo credit: Met

Lei: Interestingly, in this run of the production they switched things up for the last “mad scene.” Back in 2011, when Anna Netrebko sung the title role, she wore a fitted black gown and, after attacking the raging aria Coppia iniqua, she lifted her long hair to bare her neck for the executioner’s ax and marched resolutely towards her death, with a feisty defiance that was exciting to see. Radvanovsky, on the other hand, was wearing a loose white tunic, almost like an under garment or the smock of an in-patient at a mental hospital, and, after her ladies in waiting cut her hair to a short bob, she was blindfolded and guided gropingly towards the executioner. While Radvanosky’s singing was sublime (and, in my opinion, superior and more convincing than the Russian’s soprano), her acting was of a terrified madwoman, quite a change from Netrebko’s dramatic and proud interpretation of that same scene. One thing did not change though, the blood-red silk curtain swishing down the scene immediately after the sight of the scary executioner and his ax – that’s what I call a powerful finale!

- Lui & Lei

Radvanovsky's Anna loses it before the executioner
Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Netrebko's Queen is regal till the end
Photo credit: Met

Don G as Diabolical Coke-Sniffing Priest

Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Venture Opera

November 9, 2015

Angel Orensanz Center

Lower East Side, Manhattan

Don G's hellish descent
Photo credit: Ken Howard

You never know in NYC. I thought I was going to see yet another Don Giovanni for the sake of supporting a new indie opera company, but the moment I arrived at the Lower East Side venue, a synagogue turned arts center, something was off: bouncers carded me at the door. Seriously? It’s opera! Amidst what is generally a predominantly geriatric crowd there is no risk of public under drinking age, ever! The clubby aura got even more exclusive once we got in: rows of gold pleated bamboo chairs packed mostly with young professionals (on a Tuesday night!), ladies in ball gowns and venetian masks pacing around as in a trance, a fully stocked bar pumping out mixed drinks. But, it also felt like stepping back to the 1800s, with superbly decadent gothic architectural details, massive gold chandeliers, musicians peeking out from behind red velvet curtains and a first floor wrap around balcony, the space was the most perfect (and immersive) setting for a Don Giovanni. I was definitely excited, and the moment the excellent orchestra led by Ryan McAdams attacked the first notes of the overture, I felt a frisson all over my body - we were off to a great start.

Voi star dentro con la bella
Photo credit: Ken Howard

I did not have time to read the director’s notes in the program so I was caught off guard by the radically unusual take of this production. My scribbly notes on the opening scene go like this: “Catholic ecclesiastical setting. Is Don G a priest?!? And he is stabbing the Commendatore with a crucifix!!” Indeed, Don Giovanni made his first grandiose appearance in the guise of a diabolical Catholic priest. Turns out director Edwin Cahill’s production is set to explore “the theme of corruption of power with Don Giovanni as a leader of the Catholic Church.” And the inspiration for this pretty unusual idea seems to be in the real lives of Tirso de Molina (author of the first Don Juan) and Lorenzo Da Ponte (librettist of the Mozart opera) that were intertwined with the paradoxes and excesses of the Catholic Church. De Molina was a Jew who converted to Catholicism to protect his family from the Spanish Inquisition and became an ordained priest, while Da Ponte, coincidentally also a converted Jew and a Catholic priest, lead a dissolute life and was accused of public concubinage and abduction of respectable women.

Don G officiating some rites
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Cahill’s take on Mozart’s opera opens with the ghost of Tirso de Molina summoning, during the overture, the phantom souls of the Don Giovanni characters who then proceed to “sing the greatest story of divine retribution” (or so the program notes tell us). And so, in this setting, Don Giovanni is a renegade dissolute priest (Da Ponte’s alter ego?), at the center of a number of more or less plausible satirical vignettes: his attempted rape of Donna Anna happens under a church altar, during the Madamina il catalogo e’ questo aria a bunch of nuns of all shapes and sizes pop out to represent the Don’s conquests, at the end of the Champagne aria he sprinkles the public with holy water, the Commendatore statue thundering Pentiti! (Repent!) has a Jesus-like appearance and so on. While this interpretation was at times a bit of a stretch, having Don G. be a priest was a propelling force on the magnitude of his excesses (in Act III, the piatto saporito contains multiple lines of cocaine), resulting in a perversely unsettling yet addictive effect from one scene to the other.

Sta a veder che il malandrino
Mi fara' precipitar
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Charismatic and intense, baritone Philip Cutlip embodied the title character with a devilish energy that carried and made the show. Sporting red patent leather pants, a disheveled priest collar, red latex finger gloves and a combed back mohawk, Cutlip was every inch a dangerous and powerful but somehow irresistible villain. His singing was consistently strong throughout the opera yet never swooningly seductive (as can happen with more lyric baritones) but, rather, with a brutal Mephistophelic edge – this Don Giovanni gets his way more by force than by charm. Bass-baritone Eric Downs had great stage presence as Don G’s sidekick Leporello and possibly the singer who interacted most with the public, particularly in his rants against his master.

Soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra as Donna Anna was the vocal highlight of the evening. No surprise since she already had her Met debut (last year in Die Zauberflote). Her sound was crystal clear, soaring and electrifying, particularly in Or sai chi l’onore, when Donna Anna demands vengeance for her sullied honor. Mezzo Cecelia Hall was an excellent Zerlina, seductive and coquette yet sweet and loving too, a true pleasure to hear. Mezzo Marquita Raley embodied an uber-furious and clingy Donna Elvira, at times forcing her hand a bit too much, however coming out really strong and lyrical, with the right balance between heartache and hope in her rendition of Mi tradi’ quell’alma ingrata.

 

 Venite pure avanti / vezzose mascherine
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Venture Opera, led by its general director Jonathon Thierer, delivered superb quality curated to the last detail, setting the bar pretty high for an indie company (or any company for that matter). New crazy ideas, a tight convincing cast with exciting peaks (Don G, Donna Anna, Zerlina), a great use of an extraordinary space, and an electrifying orchestra were the ingredients of a sexy, irreverent yet highly polished show. No detail was small enough: effective costumes (Brandon McDonald), sophisticated lighting design (Yael Lubetzky), thoughtful props and the additional layer of the Tirso de Molina back story (that came up in overture and at in the finale) were all perfectly executed. This company has access to good money and knows how to put it to great use – looks like they had ads running in Times Square and the Orensanz Center is a most coveted wedding and corporate event space in lower Manhattan.

In its twitter account @ventureopera presents itself “a new opera company producing installation events around classical repertoire” which is yet another indication of their appeal for an audience beyond the traditional opera aficionados, as this Don G production clearly showed. They have a similar formula to LoftOpera in making opera “cool” and targeting audiences under 40. Where LoftOpera is Brooklyn hipster though (public sitting on the floor sipping beers), Venture Opera is Manhattan exclusive (gold pleated chairs, mixed drinks in calices). Even the after party was pretty wild: right after curtain call the space was cleared of all chairs, a fancy deejay started pumping out dance music and an acrobat popped up doing impressive tricks with a neon-lit hula hoop. Again, not what you see at the end of your average opera show on a Tuesday (or any day). Next up in Venture Opera’s season are Carmen and Pagliacci on February and August 2016, respectively and we cannot wait to see how they tackle these. Rumor has it that the Pagliacci production will team up with an honest to goodness itinerant circus and its acrobats….

- Lei & Lui

 

The Orensanz Center
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

O statua gentilissima del Gran Commendatore
Photo credit: Ken Howard

From Noon to Midnight at the Met, Part II

Turandot

Giacomo Puccini

Metropolitan Opera

October 3, 2015

Zeffirelli's grand Orientalist extravaganza
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

After having seen just a few hours earlier the Goya-dark and emotions-stirring Trovatore matinee, the Turandot evening show on the very same stage felt like a kitschy operatic Disneyland – all glitter but no depth or complexity of any sort. And we experienced Puccini’s Oriental extravaganza in its best possible form (Zeffirelli’s grand production) with a sensational cast (Goerke, Alvarez, Gerzmava). The performance was truly spectacular, the way a Turandot should be. One could see why this is a house-filling blockbuster: elaborate sets that create an exotic fantasyland, extremely straightforward fairy tale plot and dozens of dancers and singers swarming all over the stage, doing all sorts of eye-catching stuff. Had I seen Turandot any other evening, I would have probably been pretty excited about it, but catching it on the same day I witnessed the best Trovatore ever, I really could not help but compare the two operas and the Verdi one was the clear winner for me, mostly because I found the plot way more multi-layered, relatable and interesting than Puccini’s. No matter how gorgeous the music, if the narrative does not captivate me, I simply don’t enjoy an opera as much.

Disneyland glitz in all its glory at the Met
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

Putting aside the sets’ many bells and whistles and the excellent lead singers, the Met Orchestra and the Met Chorus, led by maestri Paolo Carignani and Donald Palumbo, respectively, were the true protagonists of this piece. The orchestration was through the roof. I never heard the Met Orchestra playing like that. So loud, so full. So grandiose. And the Met Chorus as the Peking mob and the court at Turandot’s imperial palace was truly sensational and carried the opera through, matching the explosive grandiosity of the orchestra.

Calaf mourns the loss of Liu
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

When it comes to Turandot’s individual singers and smaller ensembles, though, while there were many perfectly enjoyable moments, very few were memorable or captivating to me. And not for any singer’s fault. It’s just that the opera itself does not have more than a handful of truly compelling arias, basically Nessun dorma by prince Calaf and Tanto amore segreto by the loving slave Liu before she kills herself. Nessun dorma is one of the most famous operatic arias ever, as Sir Denis Forman put it in Night at the Opera, this “wonderful aria shines out, pure Italian gold, amidst all the surrounding exotica. It has a sweeping line, a great climax and if you don’t fall for this you might as well give up hope of a good relationship with Italian opera.”

Timur and his faithful Liu fare their way
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

The Argentine tenor Marcelo Alvarez was a force of nature as Calaf. This singer is growing on me every time I see him. He truly rides orchestras and has a manly melodic power that is a pleasure to hear and at times pretty gut stirring, too. I particularly liked his soaring Nessun dorma and the power with which he attacked his responses to the three riddles. Russian up-and-coming soprano Hibla Gerzmava was a moving and intense Liu. I will be interested to see her again in other roles. American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke as the ice princess Turandot had impressive and almost thunderous power, however, her lines are pretty declamatory in nature and there’s not much expressivity that can come out of that no matter how good the singer.

Trovatore and Turandot together total more than Die Meistersinger, however, after spending over six hours at the Met, I actually felt pretty exhilarated about the Verdi + Puccini operatic overload – which I could not really say after equally long yet painful Wagnerian experiences. Just another confirmation of the fact that I can take Italian opera in huge doses but continue to have digestive issues with Wagner...

– Lei & Lui

The ice princess Turandot remains impenetrable
Photo credit: Marty Sohl