A Very Operatic NYC Summer

The Met 13/14 season just ended, but that does not mean that we will have to be opera-deprived for three months. Here's our overview of what looks enticing in New York this summer:

Image Credit: Gotham Chamber Opera

Gotham Chamber Opera will close its own 13/14 season with The Raven, a monodrama by Toshio Hosokawa, based on Poe’s classic narrative poem of love forever lost. We're intrigued by the combination of opera and ballet, as mezzo-soprano Fredrika Brillembourg will perform together with La Scala’s prima ballerina assoluta Alessandra Ferri. May 28 - 31, 2014 at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

One can never get enough Donizetti, particularly if bel canto queen Mariella Devia plays her majesty Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux, with Stephen Costello in the lead tenor role. Brought to us in concert by The Opera Orchestra of New York. June 5 at Carnegie Hall.

Mariella Devia as Elisabetta I in Roberto Devereux
Image credit: Michele Balistreri

We love site-specific operas, even more so if baroque and ripe with Ovid literary references. On Site Opera’s performance of Rameau’s Pygmalion about a sculptor falling in love with his creation promises to deliver all of that with a gala performance set in Madame Tussauds’ wax museum and two additional shows at the Lifestyle-Trimco Showroom. June 17, 20 and 21.

Image Credit: On Site Opera

The feisty Opera Feroce will perform their exhilarating baroque pasticcio Arminio in Armenia we were lucky to catch last January and cannot recommend enough. June 22 at the St. Stephens and St. Martins Church in Brooklyn; June 25, 27, 28 at the Blue Building in Manhattan.

Image Credit: Park Avenue Armory

Park Avenue Armory is such an amazingly unique performance space that it’s hard to resist to pretty much anything they show. Their co-presentation with Lincoln Center Festival of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s holocaust opera The Passenger will take audiences on a voyage from the stylish deck of a luxury liner to the squalor of a Nazi death camp. The opera was banned by Soviet authorities upon its completion in 1968, resurfacing for its first full staging some 40 years later and only now making its New York premiere. July 10-13 at Park Avenue Armory.

The Lincoln Center Festival will also showcase Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, performed by the Bolshoi Opera, no less! Not to be missed if, like us, one got under Russian opera spell cast by the Met earlier this year (with the new productions of Eugene Onegin and Prince Igor). July 12-13 at Avery Fisher Hall. 

Lovely Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts
Photo Credit: Caramoor

Who does not want to drive one hour through the Hudson River Valley to catch some top notch singing performed in a gorgeous Venetian garden theater?!? Caramoor’s rich summer opera program includes semi-staged productions of Lucrezia Borgia and Rigoletto, an “Intimate Donizetti” concert of chamber music and vocal ensembles, a “Bel Canto Showcase” and a myriad of panel discussions, concerts and other operatic goodies. If you need further incentive: Angela Meade (who bewitched everybody with her Norma at the Met last fall) will play Lucrezia Borgia. The Intimate Donizetti: Chamber Music and Vocal Ensembles - June 26; Lucrezia Borgia - July 12 and 18; Bel Canto Showcase: Daniel Mobbs - July 17; Rigoletto - July 19 -- at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. 

Angela Meade in the Venetian Theater
Photo credit: Caramoor

We discovered Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble last summer and were overwhelmed by the extraordinary results of their mission of coaching young opera singers into fresh and energetic (but also seriously solid) performances. This summer they propose an ambitious Shakespeare Repertoire Project, comprised of staged productions of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Salieri’s Falstaff and Verdi’s Macbeth, as well as a concert of arias and duets based on Shakespeare sonnets and plays. August 7-24 at the East 13 Street Theater.

Mostly Mozart festival will be offering two Handel baroque gems by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: Teseo (in concert setting – August 17) and Acis and Galatea (an exciting combination of opera and dance, showcasing the collaboration between choreographer Mark Morris and early-music specialist Nicholas McGegan – August 7-9).

The Mark Morris Dance Group
Photo credit: Mostly Mozart

Finally, for some al fresco operatic pleasure, we’ll look forward the Met Opera Summer Recital Series and its six performances in the parks of all five boroughs (June 23-July 10*). Few things are more blissful than listening to great opera arias while sipping chilled rosé wine on a picnic blanket at dusk - with NYC lights gradually turning on around you…

Lei & Lui

Opera and Manhattan Skyline
Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

* Superstar mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton will perform on June 23 and 25

An Infernal Happy Ending

La descente d’Orphée aux enfers

By Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Gotham Chamber Opera - St. Paul’s Chapel, January 5, 2014

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Every opera has a musical passage, an aria or a duet that gives it its raison d’être: a focal point for the feeling a composer desires to evoke with the piece. In the case of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, the crux of emotions is found in Orpheus’ plea for Pluto’s mercy. In his attempt to persuade the god of the underworld, Orpheus appeals paradoxically to Pluto’s humanity, his ability to empathize with his plight. Charpentier’s Orpheus is both master rhetorician and singer, and tenor Daniel Curran, who sung this part in Gotham Chamber Opera’s recent production, endowed his embodiment of the lovelorn poet with many moments of gut-wrenching beauty, especially when his voice reached up into the higher range. Considering the beauty of the music Charpentier gives Orpheus to sing, it is clear how he might be able to penetrate Pluto’s “cœur impénétrable.” 

Photo credit: Richard Termine

One thing that baroque opera does particularly well is the lament. And the plaintive beauty of Orpheus’ petition to Pluto, which Curran sang with a level of refinement and style that seemed to temporarily stop time, achieved several moments of this particular baroque vocal artistry. Another element of this genre that keeps me coming back are the choral ensemble pieces. This is always where I tend to feel the debt of opera to Ancient Greek theater. Charpentier composed a series of ensemble pieces for his chorus of young men and maidens in the first act, penitent souls and harpies in the second, which provided the backbone for the whole opera. Against this multilayered vocal texture, Orpheus, the heart and soul of the piece, is really the only vocal part that comes to the fore.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

The approach to sets and costumes was on the minimalist side, especially when compared to the recent pyrotechnics of Gotham’s spectacular Baden-Baden 1927, which in many respects was on a whole other level. Here poor male chorus members had to sport very un-manly costumes (pastel colored shirts and berets, poison ivy belts) in Act I, though the ladies had better luck with flowing gowns and scarves that achieved lovely effects with the simple yet effective choreographies.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

I enjoyed the irony of staging a descent to the underworld in a church, with the bonus special hellish effects of the ground trembling under the audience’s feet, courtesy of the NYC subway. The subway’s low shuttering rumble seemed perfectly timed with the narrative on at least two occasions as the story unfolded. Gotham’s set choices were simple, yet made great use of the space. The addition of a white spiral staircase to connect the stage to the church’s balcony created two dynamic levels of action – most effective when divinities “up above” were involved, Apollo in Act I and the Pluto-Proserpina couple in Act II. The series of translucent white canvases around the stage served as screens for computer-animated graphic projections that started as airy clouds when things are all bucolic and happy, then transitioned to very Inferno-like underground roots that seems to pump with blood like veins when the action moves to the underworld. The canvases also served as space dividers between the singers and the musical ensemble, which was rather unusually hidden away behind the stage and only visible to the public as a group of silhouettes.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Act II was more successful, both visually and vocally. The Dantesque projections and gruesome damned souls were a great contrast to the almost psychedelic joyful tones of Act I. In the underworld the breezy light voices of virtually the whole cast were overshadowed by the power of Pluto, who brought some manly thunder to the otherwise gracious singing. Bass Jeffrey Beruan’s Pluto was sensational. His deep, dark, rich voice filled the space effortlessly, and towered over everybody else. As king of the underworld, Beruan's characterization ranged from intransigent authority figure to hopeless romantic when he finally concedes to Orpheus’ plea.

Whether or not there were other acts that went missing, it is striking that what remains of Charpentier’s two act cantata is a positive take on the myth that conveniently disregards the tragic end of the story. We are left with an optimistic belief in the viability of resurrection. And religious imagery is, in fact, present elsewhere as well. In Charpentier’s version, Eurydice is dancing in the garden with her cohort of young maidens on the eve of her wedding to Orpheus when she stumbles on a snake that leads to her fall.

Marc Tansey, Still Life, 1982

 Unlike the standard tragic denouement that is conspicuously missing from Charpentier’s optimistic truncation, this version of the myth of Orpheus holds true on the promise that art is able to betray death, that through artistic expression one is able to achieve immortality. In line with the promotional poster for the Gotham production, though nature inevitably fades and a bouquet of flowers eventually wilts away, its representation in the artist’s painted still life will live on forever. So Charpentier’s Orpheus and Eurydice live happily ever after.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Gotham’s treatment of the ending does not let the couple off so easy. During the concluding musical interlude, as the reunited lovers ascend the spiral staircase together, Orpheus gives us a glimpse of his fateful lack of self control: he looks back too soon to lay eyes on his irresistible love. And this is the fleeting freeze frame this production engrains on our mind’s eye at the last moment before the house lights suddenly and dramatically cut to black, though the libretto and the score only ever get so far as depicting in music and in words the joyous reunion of the young couple. There is an insistence on presenting the conclusion of the tragic story, thus giving us closure, but at the same time undermining the message of the promotional poster: namely, that art saves. Instead, we are reminded of the fact that the artist is also just as capable of irremediably losing that which he regains.

With all this hype around Gotham Chamber Opera right now with everyone waiting for the company to fill the vacuum left by New York City Opera, this production serves as a reminder of their actual caliber. As ever, musically they are truly remarkable and consistently worth following, with a variety of talented young voices always vital and fresh. But their productions are not always at a level one comes to expect from the major leagues. The beauty often lies in the inventiveness they always manage to muster with their many ad hoc venues. They’re still a young company that shows heaps of promise but still has room to grow and we’re eager to track their growth.

- Lui & Lei

Michel Martin Drolling, Orpheus and Eurydice, 1820

A Gotham-Weimar Operetta Feast

Baden-Baden 1927 by Gotham Chamber Opera

October 26, 2013 - The Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College    

Image credit: Georg Baselitz / Gotham Chamber Opera

Gotham Chamber Opera opened its season by taking a fresh look at four one-act operettas first presented at the Baden-Baden Festival of Contemporary Music on July 17, 1927. The quality and caliber of the production were sensational by any standards and even more so for a company of this size. Mixed media techniques were deployed. Live camera recordings were projected on stage in ways that heightened the drama. The stage was transformed into a massive multipurpose art gallery with paintings by German neo-expressionist artist Georg Baselitz. The costumes were playful and cohesive. Paul Curran’s direction was consistently clever and inventive. In short, it was a refreshing contemporary take on material that was avant-garde in 1927. It is always a pleasure and a privilege to be in the presence of such talent and vision.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Each opera was introduced by a different singer who interacted with the public and gave a playful take on each piece. This served both as entertainment during the set changes and also as live production notes. Creating a mise-en-abyme, by placing one form of art inside the other, and posing the overarching question: “What is Art?”, these touches of immersion-theatrical techniques sought to involve the audience, from questions on the plots to on-stage commentary during intermission to the selection of a reluctant dance partner for the two female characters in the last operetta.

Image credit: Gotham Chamber Opera

Though they were doing a lot, they made it all look very simple. After having been so impressed with Gotham's site-specific production of Eliogabalo at the Box (that made our 2012-13 highlights list), the full-on theatrical professionalism on display here was really on a whole other level. The music was electrifying; Neal Goren’s conducting was crisp and dynamic. In many ways it reminded me of Shostakovich, not surprisingly given that these works premiered only three years before The Nose. Helen Donath (soprano), Maeve Höglung (soprano), John Cheek (bass), Matthew Tuell (tenor), Daniel Montenegro (tenor), Michael Mayes (baritone), Jennifer Rivera (mezzo) formed an impressive cast, with top-notch and high-energy singing and acting. All of the singers commanded attention on stage each in their own unique way, evidently having a lot of fun in the process.

On the specific operettas:

Darius Milhaud's L’Enlèvement d’Europe (The Abduction of Europa) is perhaps the shortest opera I have ever seen, at only 8 minutes. The concept of Zeus coming out of a painting (and wearing a camoflaged suit matching the patterns of the painting) was genius. In just a few brushstrokes, the production team was able to communicate the idea of the rapturous power of the divine emerging from a work of art (or is it the other way around?) and seducing a glamorous Europa, with a chorus of little-black-dress gallerinas commenting on the action. It was a slice of Chelsea and a modern spin on a classic myth that made a whole lot of sense.  

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Ernst Tosch's Die Prinzessin Auf Der Ersbe (The Princess and the Pea) was my least favorite portion of the evening. In an effort revamp the original piece, the production took it in a reality-TV direction that I always have a hard time stomaching, even if, as in this case, it is used as social satire. The techniques employed, however, were visually very effective. A live feed of footage being filmed by cameramen buzzing about the stage was projected onto the elaborate sets themselves. The whole thing was very busy but also very carefully choreographed. Kaleidoscopic psychedelia: achieved!

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Paul Hindemith's Hin Und Zuruck (There and Back) was the most delightful of the four for me. It was a perfect little package with a narrative of love, betrayal, murder, suicide, and an Andy Warhol deus-ex-machina that rewinds the story, palindrome-style, to a happy ending: the beginning. Very clever realization with parallel projections of the story running forward while the actors are in the process of unfolding the action in reverse.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Kurt Weill's collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, the Mahagonny Songspiel, was certainly the most famous and recognizable piece of the evening. Its absurd surrealism came across with a zany sense of Weimar-era humor, and the singers lit up the stage with a startlingly fresh take on the classic "Moon of Alabama Song" that has been covered by such acts as the Doors, David Bowie and Nina Simone. As is to be expected, the whole thing was crazy, allegorical quasi-nonsense, although very entertainingly so.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

An extremely satisfying evening at the theater. Makes you think that the spot left by NYC Opera has already been filled by this vibrant, visionary and virtuosic independent company. Especially since a little more than a year ago NYC Opera fleshed out this same space to much less elaborate use with Christopher Alden's monotone and monochrome production of Così fan tutte.

Baden-Baden 1927 was an impressive display of creative power, innovative thinking and top-notch execution by Gotham Chamber Opera. This company showed it has the means and vision to bring some high quality fresh air into NYC’s opera scene. Eagerly awaiting their next shows this season, I am particularly intrigued by the site-specific production of Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in the armor room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 26 and 27, 2014.

Gotham Chamber Opera, what you do to me, I want done forever!

– Lei & Lui

2012-2013 SEASON RECAP

- HIGHLIGHTS -

Photo Credit: Lucie Jansch

Einstein came to Brooklyn.  A year ago Satyagraha cast a meditative spell on me at the Met, this year I remained entranced by the utterly unique experience of watching that bar of light in Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach almost imperceptibly rise to the beat of Glass' signature droning score. If you’ve seen it, you know which bar of light I’m talking about. Brilliant the places it takes you. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced, in completely unexpected ways. Thank you BAM. (Lui)

Photo Credit: Met

Giulio Cesare went to Bollywood (and other places too).  The most delightful and entertaining show of the season.  Not only we got baroque opera, which is in itself too rare a pleasure at the Met, but David McVicar spiced up this Giulio Cesare with Bollywood dances that went beautifully with Handel’s score and he played with times and styles mixing up roman armor, British colonial helmets, flapper fringes and baroque wigs. This pastiche fully worked, making the opera timeless and revamping its core. Also, it was a real pleasure to see Natalie Dessay at the top of her form as a multi-faceted whirlwind of a Cleopatra. Encore, s’il vous plait! (Lei)

Photo Credit: Met

Rigoletto went to Vegas.  If Lucic is singing it, Rigoletto could be staged in a safari in Tanzania and still work. Nobody made me cry more copiously than him this season. His duets with Damrau were the quintessential heartbreaking expression of father-daughter love and in Cortigiani vil razza dannata he was deep, raging and moving at the same time. On top of the extraordinary singing, the bold Vegas setting was refreshing and actually worked in unexpected ways. The Met should take these risks (and get Lucic) more often. (Lei)

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg

Mosè in the digital desert.  With their production of Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, NYC Opera is responsible for the most visionary staging of the year that made so very much out of what deceptively seemed like so little. The animated computer generated projections and use of rotating platforms on the stage floor were responsible for many surprising effects that I found dynamic and extremely captivating. Director Michael Counts and his production team are pointing the way to something new. His is a vision rife with possibility for future productions in this mold. (Lui) 

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Eliogabalo brought sexy back.  It didn’t get much hotter than Gotham Chamber Opera’s titillating production of Cavalli’s Eliogabalo at the Box. The whole thing exuded sex. Gyrating virtually nude female torsos greeted the audience as they arrived. The emperor worked the catwalk that was set up through the center of the nightclub like a glam rocker. But the steamy sensuality of the whole thing was just icing on the delicious cake of Cavalli’s baroque score. Particularly memorable amongst the singers were Christopher Ainslie’s Ziggy Stardust of an Eliogabalo and Emily Grace Righter’s Alessandro. (Lui)

Image Credit: Opera Mission

Rodrigo (finally) made it to a NYC Hotel.  Rodrigo was Handel's first opera written for performance in Italy in 1707 but premiered in the U.S. only in May 2013. Opera Mission brought this baroque jewel to American life in the intimate lobby of the Gershwin hotel, with a committed cast of singers and a wonderful period orchestra. Second’s act thumping bass “Siete assai superbe, o stelle” by the tormented king Rodrigo was a great surprise of pure baroque fiery power. I hope there are many other hidden eighteen-century operas out there and more companies like Opera Mission to dig them out for us. (Lei)

- LOWLIGHTS - 

Photo Credit: Met

Elisir lost its magic powers.  Gala openings should make a statement, either showcasing rarely performed pieces or revisiting old favorites in a new light. Elisir is my favorite Donizetti and I am still quite upset with the Met for having missed an opportunity to make it extraordinary at the underwhelming September 2012 season opening, that did not bring anything remotely new to the table and was certainly not gala material. Netrebko and Kwiecien were as usual quite good but not enough to save the production. Here’s to the Met redeeming itself with Eugene Onegin this next September 23rd. (Lei)

Image Credit: New York City Opera

Too much Powder [on] Her Face.  The NYC Opera had its hits and its misses this season. Their production of Adès’ Powder Her Face at BAM missed the mark. Jay Schreib and his team simply had too many ideas, too much going on, too many distractions packed into their staging rather than just let the varied and idiosyncratic music breathe. (Lui)

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg 

La Perichole & Jim Carrey.  Turning an opera buffa into a stupid screwball comedy will always be a turn off for me. No matter how good everything else may be, I just cannot forgive NYC Opera having its singers act like they’re in the dumbest of Jim Carrey’s movies. (Lei)