The new opera season will start soon and, while we are
excited about the Met’s program (and bought tickets for 15 shows so far), the NYC’s
opera scene goes way beyond it. Here’s an overview of the non-Met performances
we’ll be looking forward to this fall:
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| Wilson meets Shakespeare meets Wainwright Photo credit: Lesley Leslie-Spinks |
BAM’s Next Wave Festival offers a collaboration
between director Robert Wilson and composer Rufus Wainwright to
transpose 25 Shakespeare Sonnets into music, set to “everything
from medieval German Minnesang to cabaret rock”. While not strictly operatic,
we enjoyed Wilson’s work in Einstein on the Beach and The Life and Death of
Marina Abramović, so this one, too, may be an interesting experiment. Berliner
Ensemble will perform. October 7-12 at BAM Opera House.
We’re always ready to discover a new Donizetti and are
thankful to Amore Opera for showing his rarely performed opera semiseria
La Zingara. Good old L'Elisir D’Amore is also a
sure pleasure. Both operas are scheduled for dates in October TBA at the
Connelly Theater.
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| Gioacchino Rossini |
And speaking of non-mainstream bel canto, we’re in for a
Rossini treat, with performances of L’Italiana in Algeri (by Utopia
Opera) and Il Turco in Italia (by Juilliard). It will
be interesting to catch these two in the same month as the 22-year-old Rossini
composed Il Turco only a year after the successful premiere of L’Italiana.
This second work stirred so much animosity that the 1814 Milan public accused
the composer of cheating them, given the similarity between the two works. Let’s
see what the NYC public thinks this November. Utopia Opera: November 14-15 at the Lang Recital Hall (Hunter College) – Juilliard: November 19, 21 and 23 in Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp
Theater.
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| The first one of the two-fold Rossini bill this November |
Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival proposes
innovative and often experimental takes on traditional works. Of particular
interest this year we flag two sacred music performances and one Romantic song
cycle. Peter Sellars will stage Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion at the always-exciting Park Avenue Armory
space. The performance will eliminate the separation between artist and
audience, with “musicians and singers moving amongst each other.” Music by the
Berliner Philharmoniker, with notable singers such as Eric Owens, Mark Padmore
and Christian Gerhaher. October 7-8 at Park Avenue Armory.
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| Image credit: Park Avenue Armory |
Another oratorio-ish White Light Festival experience will be How like an angel, where six acrobats
will be soaring over the audience to the overtones of sacred song in a
collaboration between Australian avant-garde circus troupe Circa and early-music choir I
Fagiolini. Music will range from Renaissance motets, medieval monody, South
African gospel, to contemporary music. Everything will be set in a church, of
course. October 22-24 at the James Memorial Chapel, Union Theological
Seminar.
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| Circus acrobats and sacred music Photo credit: Chris Taylor |
After being blown away by William Kentridge’s hypnotic
animations for Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Met, we cannot but run to get our tickets for the South
African artist’s new work of mixed-media landscapes for Schubert’s Romantic
song cycle Winterreise.
Baritone Matthias Goerne (who got many accolades last year for his last minute
Wozzeck) will perform. November 11 at Alice Tully Hall.
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| Schubert meets Kentridge Photo credit: Lukas Beck |
Regina Opera’s Rigoletto was one of our great
discoveries this year. Who knew such great Verdian talent was hiding in a
church theater in Sunset Park. They will be doing another Verdi (Un Ballo in Maschera) in November. We’ll be there, ready to weep. November
22-23 and 29-30 at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help School (OLPH)
Auditorium.
And of course one cannot go wrong with the always wonderful Joyce Di Donato. The mezzo soprano will be in charge of a “Perspectives” series
at Carnegie Hall and she’ll be uncovering rarely performed baroque works
such as Handel’s Alcina with an opera in concert on October 26 and
Vivaldi/Rossini/Hahn arias in a recital evocatively named “A journey through Venice”
on November 4.
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| Diva Di Donato Photo credit: Yankee Diva website |
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| Image credit: One World Symphony |
One World Symphony caught our eye with their pop
culture flavoring of operatic recitals. Their marketing is catchy and cleverly
aims at making classical themes universal and contemporary . An example of their
“operasodes” (operatic episodes?) is “New Girls,” inspired by an apparently popular TV series - though we confess
we are not familiar with it so perhaps we're not the targeted audience here. Regardless of the funky packaging, the show promises to deliver “some
of opera’s most vivacious divas in their own life and love endeavors: feisty females like Adele (Die Fledermaus)
or Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro),
starlit scene stealers like Musetta (La
Bohème), heart-melting heroines like Mimi (La Bohème) or Contessa (Figaro),
or the ultimate new girl like The Merry
Widow.” We’re all for sexing up opera to spread it to the wider younger
crowds and we’ll be curious to see if the level of the performance will be up to
the marketing one. October 26-27 at Holy Apostles (296 Ninth Avenue
at West 28th Street, Manhattan).
We bid Natalie Dessay’s adieu to the operatic stage a
year ago, and cannot be more excited that she’s apparently taking a break from
her new jazz career to perform Le Concert d’Astrée, an all Handel program (including her dazzling
Cleopatra from Giulio Cesare) at Alice Tully Hall. It’s a concert setting so
probably no Bollywood dancing as in David McVicar’s production but still it
should be grand. November 30 at Alice Tully Hall.
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| Our favorite Cleopatra Photo credit: Marty Sohl / The Metropolitan Opera |
- Lui & Lei
