Yet it is not exactly the feel-good opera advertised in Pentatone’s press release; rather, the eponymous Mr. Chips – “the teacher we all wish we’d had” – is a painfully grieving figure, an anachronism of sorts, happily projecting his nostalgia onto the devastating realities of the 20th century and its incumbent wars. A product of Old Europe, he does not belong in a world that has drastically outpaced his Victorianist ideals, let alone his antiquated sense for the Latin pronunciation of “Cicero.” Humor saves him from obliteration, but Mr. Chips is, in essence, of the same stripe as Korngold’s Paul in “Die tote Stadt” – someone who just can’t let go.

Not Letting Go

As his own librettist, Gordon Getty adjusts the plot to, essentially, operatic needs. The action is split into a frame story, and a metadiegetic level of Chips reliving his own memories. It oscillates between his 85-year-old self and episodes from his youth, most notably the tragically ending marriage to Kathie Bridges.

Evidently, the staging of embedded narratives is tricky. But on CD, the layering of storylines proves quite compelling, their friction, so to speak, adding to the main character’s psychological complexity. Kathie in particular is the driving force behind any of Chips’ actions. After her premature death, Chips projects the memory of her onto his very own idiosyncrasies, as when he reacts to his students’ pranks: “How Kathie would have laughed!”

“It was as if Kathie had become a part of him,” the ever so sympathetic Dr. Merrivale comments. Again, one distantly senses the echo of Paul’s pathological remembrance of Marie. Even the doppelgänger motif is of note, with the soprano being required to sing the double role of both Kathie and Linford. But overall, Getty does not draw the drastic consequences of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

A Class Act

The music very much aligns with Getty’s professed self-assessment of being “two-thirds a 19th century composer.” It comfortably stays committed to the tonal language of the pre-avantgarde, though the deployment of chromaticism and an usual array of instruments make for a gently modernist touch to the score.

The piano, for instance, is something of a psychological barometer. It rises to prominence in the sombre keys played after Kathie’s death. At the same time, its syncopated rhythms, together with the strings, effectively cadence the flow of the narrative which, for the frame story especially, relies on the conversational, and relatively fast-paced nature of the libretto.

Getty thus sets the tone for a chamber-like intimacy, far from the grand gestures of full-scale Romanticism or the transitional styles of the early 1900s. Accordingly, the orchestra boasts a reduced brass section but, in a modern twist, expands on the percussion. The result is a somewhat theatrical, if not cinematographic feel casting the orchestra into an subtly devised mood-painting role.

Farewell, Mr. Chips

The Pentatone recording relies on the unmitigated enthusiasm of its principal singers.

First and foremost, Nathan Granner is a stunningly charismatic Mr. Chips, phrasing vividly yet coating every expressive nuance with his recognizably honeyed tenor sound. The absence of any self-contained arias may not do justice to his mere vocal skills; but his interpretive acuity asserts itself in many places, most notably perhaps in the extended lyrical solo of “I’m afraid that six Brookfeldians have died this week.” Standing in the chapel, Chips reads the names of Brookfield alumni killed on the Western front when an air raid siren suddenly goes off, and explosions are heard. The scene masterfully crescendoes into the boys’ choir chiming into the already cacophonous soundscape, and Nathan Granner’s solemnity is increasingly interspersed with quivering moments of anxiety.

Granner finds his equal in Lester Lynch’s wonderfully empathetic Dr. Merrivale who, in the novel, is a secondary character at best; yet with Gordon Getty, he assumes the primary function of being the narrator. Though the part does not call for vocal extravaganza, it requires sustained gravity, malleable diction, and a pitch-perfect sense for dramatic timing. Lynch provides all of the above, and his characteristically fast vibrato adds an air of venerability to the kind doctor.

Finally, Melody Moore’s interpretation is pivotal to the drama’s strong emotional impact. Her role, and especially the ariose “Chips, darling, it’s started,” are Getty’s most traditionally operatic creations per se, with her long monologue arching into ethereally sustained tones, and a resounding climax. The American soprano’s often diaphanous voice is also apt to suggest an otherworldly presence; after all, Kathie makes ghostly comebacks until the opera’s grandiose finale in Act two.

An All-American Affair

An all-American affair, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” is further enlivened by the irreproachable performances of Kevin Short in the double role of Ralston and Rivers. But only thanks to the remarkably warm colors drawn from the Barbary Coast Orchestra does Gordon Getty’s quirky schoolteacher emerge whole from what could easily be perceived as a somewhat fragmented compilation of tangentially related episodes. Conductor Dennis Doubin is not to be rushed, and one readily appreciates every bit of patiently shaped melody, whether instrumental, vocal, or in conjunction with the stirringly glorious San Francisco Boys Chorus.

“Mr. Chips” escapes every attempt at conventional categorization. Despite its modern facture (with some limitations), its two-hour run betrays a deeply felt nostalgia for things well beyond the scope of opera. Chips’ death scene, in particular, is transcended by some life-long yearning for a world sadly gone by. Gordon Getty conjures the memory of it.

The post CD Review: Gordon Getty’s ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ appeared first on OperaWire.

For their 2024 mainstage summer festival season, Opera Theatre Saint Louis (OTSL) paired two fixtures in top-ten performance frequency, “The Barber of Seville” and “La Bohème,” with two exciting, less offered menu items. Philip Glass’s “Galileo Galilei” (2002) received just its fourth staging anywhere, while George Frideric Händel’s operatic capolavoro, “Julius Caesar” (“Giulio Cesare in Egitto,” 1724) achieved an OTSL premiere in its tercentenary. A deep roster of talent made “Julius Caesar” the vocal highlight of this season, and the sort of production that OTSL patrons will recall for years, much like 2023’s “Susannah.”

Celestial Music Descends From the Spheres to Steal My Soul Away

Celebrating its recently deceased founding general director, Englishman Richard Gaddes (1942-2023), the company referenced the Glyndebourne Festival’s influence on OTSL’s now well-known garden and picnic pavilion (AKA “The Tent”). An apologia for opera in English quoting erstwhile artistic director Colin Graham (1931-2007) leads the company’s Anglophone libretti, not only issuing a shoutout to English National Opera but also reminding Americans that ROH Covent Garden too performed mostly in English prior to midcentury’s widespread air travel. With this DNA, you’d believe the company fertile ground for oodles of Handel, but in five decades, only three works by “The Great Bear” have appeared here, a 1987 “Alcina,” a 2000 “Radamisto,” and most recently, a US premiere of a rarity, “Richard the Lionheart” in 2015. OTSL’s most recent venture into pre-Mozart opera, Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,” (1642) coincided with the Saint Louis Blues’ championship parade in 2019. Handel moved into today’s standard operatic repertory in North America more slowly than in Britain, and Saint Louis hasn’t yet seen semi-regulars like “Rodelinda,” “Tamerlano,” and “Partenope.” OTSL used Brian Trowell’s translation, which you can hear in YouTube clips of John Michael Phillips’ 1984 TV movie starring Janet Baker as Caesar and Valerie Masterson as Cleopatra. Heavily cut from Nicola Haym’s original Italian text, the print libretto that OTSL circulates also credits James Robinson as editor, splitting the opera into two acts, not three—the initial stretch of the second act batched with the first, prior to intermission.

So in the Gateway City, now was high time for “Julius Caesar,” which boasts a couple of multifaceted early modern characters in Caesar and Cleopatra, and a hit parade of arias and duets adorning an unrelentingly lovely score. Though this Baroque work functions as Baroque works often do—drama deemed somewhat static by present-day audiences, with the theater located mostly in people’s voices—the score’s delights make a long evening seem short. Perhaps more than any other Baroque opera, “Caesar” sells itself well to the general audience, not just Baroque superfans. When it’s sung well, nothing else matters for three or four hours.

Julius, What Have You Seen?

Nonetheless, one must do something onstage past the old twentieth century park-n-bark. The more conservative corners of The Tent complained about the production, but your reviewer believed it worked dramatically, and more importantly, it put the singers in position to excel, crafting relatively simple set pieces for the arias at Handel’s intersection of Chronos and Kairos, in which ten-minute arias seem like two, but also expansive past the limits of human perception. Director Elkhanah Pulitizer and set designer Allen Moyer crafted a single setting, a contemporary penthouse foyer, backed by symmetrical doors backstage left and right, bookending a row of windows looking onto a hallway from which the dramatis personae entered and exited. Elegant quadrangles framed almost every visual element, with some vaguely Celtic-looking inlay on black wood providing accent. Centerstage, paired with end tables resembling pop-sockets, sat two broad black leather chaises, usually purposed for sitting, but pushed together for Caesar and Cleopatra’s erotic meetings, like two extra long twin beds approximated in a college dorm room when one’s boo visits. This furniture formed the arena of Ptolemy and Achillas’ house of sexual harassment, about which Cornelia moved, evading their advances. Blue-dressed housekeepers cleaned these surroundings; vague hints of sexual captivity wafted from the staging.

This disconcertingly clean, spare environment threw into relief Cleopatra’s divine second act entrance, performed as the finale of the first, for “Imploring, adoring” (“V’adoro, pupille”), the only visual break from the penthouse, its doors and windows rising to reveal Emily Pogorelc atop a platform, backed by a golden and sundried tomato sun, and embraced by oyster shell fans wielded by four backup dancers, rendering Sarah Mesko’s Caesar amorously defenseless. This quartet, Eibhlin Arvizu, Jennifer Egley, Lauren Kravitz, and Alyssa Watson, collected the jocular moniker “the Cle-ettes,” decked in flowy “Charlie’s Angels” jumpsuits—now with 33% more angels. They augmented the production, adding a light sprinkling of kinetics that didn’t vault over the top like some of what we saw in the famed David McVicar production from Glyndebourne and the Met a decade hence, which featured a middle-aged David Daniels attempting to…Riverdance? The inappropriate-laughter-at-supertitles cadre giggled at some of the dance, and inexplicably at Pompey’s severed head, but the Cle-ettes acquitted themselves well, managing to support, not distract from Pogorelc’s otherworldly delivery of “Hear my prayer” (“Se pietà”). The eyes naturally perceived them about her, while never leaving the soprano. Sean Curran’s choreography mostly worked, adding a dash of whimsy to the show’s closing happily-ever-after duet between the leads, who danced with the remaining four principals, the Cle-ettes, and four bodyguards dressed like fellows whom James Bond quietly dispatches.

Dress Impeccably and They Remember the Woman

In this century, more than the last, opera companies have realized that of the two main ways to visually titillate the audience, costumes go further than sets, fiscally. Constance Hoffmann’s costumes generally looked handsome but saved all the razzle-dazzle for Cleopatra. I counted six costumes, but upon a query at The Tent, Pogorelc informed me of an additional change of kit, for a total of seven. We’ll not lead you through the whole closet and negligee drawer, but list at least her Carolina blue halter dress as “Lidia” (Cleo’s guise as one of her own attendants), her glittering champagne-colored jumpsuit and cape matching her fluted beverage, and the white and gold pantsuit with bejeweled stiletto boots. While less prepared for the Met Gala, the remaining principals also looked great. Key’mon Murrah’s Ptolemy rocked a burgundy smoking jacket. His henchman, Cory McGee’s Achillas, wore a black militaristic uniform and ominous fingerless gloves. Meridian Prall’s Cornelia dithered anxiously in funereal black, Mary Poppins headed to a wake, with Megan Moore’s Sextus, clad in a purposely sloppy loose necktie and crested private school blazer. Even supporting characters Curio and Nirena got striking costumes, John Mburu in a hunter green leather jacket, and Madeleine Lyon in a smart purple men’s suit. Amid all this color, Sarah Mesko’s Caesar projected that he was powerful enough to need none, with a charcoal suit early and a dark brown trench coat late.

Directing traffic musically, OTSL Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari fulfilled three duties, conducting, prompting, and playing the harpsichord. She reported that when General Director Andrew Jorgensen and Artistic Director James Robinson asked her which of the four 2024 works she wanted to conduct, she didn’t hesitate to reply with “Julius Caesar.” Candillari’s musicianship marks one of the best developments at OTSL in the 2020s, with refreshing renderings of the overprogrammed chestnuts “Tosca” in 2023 and “Carmen” in 2022, and a masterful execution of difficult music in her company debut, 2021’s “New Works Lab” of short one-acts by Laura Karpman, Steven Mackey, and Damien Sneed. She correctly asserted that the oft-denigrated da capo form’s “strict structure allows for improvisation and personalization of the characters.” Form has been making a comeback in the academic humanities; I wished for New Formalist, Caroline Levine as a seat partner. Candillari cited Nikolaus Harnoncourt as a guide for “finding different orchestral colors that could be used to express various dramatic layers and offer a variety of textures.” One cannot gauge whether Baroque performance practice fetishists would ratify Candillari’s reading, but she delivered something far more satisfying than that crew usually manages: three hours of lush, inhabited, breathing beauty. She’s a great singers’ conductor.

Ptolemy Got Served

Maestra Candillari led a festival of alto voices. One is hard pressed to name a better opera, in fact, for the job prospects of mezzo-sopranos and countertenors. “Caesar” features one soprano, five gender-flexible altos, and two basses. In OTSL’s casting, with Sarah Mesko as Caesar and Madeleine Lyon as Nirena, rather than countertenors in either role, no fewer than four women embraced us with mezzo warmth, including Meridian Prall as Cornelia and Megan Moore as Sextus. This Mezzopalooza therefore drew a sharper contrast with the lone countertenor, Key’mon Murrah as Ptolemy.

Murrah’s voice is magnificent. He features a robust lower register, a meaty middle, and a shockingly powerful top, all seamlessly connected. The top of his voice nearly sounds like a female soprano’s, but with more punch. The audience audibly gasped at the high C in “Upstart, barbarian, and traitor” (“L’empio, sleale, indegno vorria”) and showered him with some of the loudest applause of the performance. More delicious yet was the middle D ♮, pianissimo, with the last fermata. He repeated the high C trick effortlessly in his second act aria “Deep within my bosom burning” (“Sì spietata”), driving the crowd wild with a laser-focused sound. His multihued timbral flavor suggests umami in middle and low register, like a vegan broth that carries the force of beef consommé. Dramatically, his Ptolemy displayed thoughtless entitlement and lack of regard for others more than proactive malice. Hilariously, during Cleopatra’s “No don’t despair” (“Non disperar”), the siblings commenced a dance-off. Cleopatra got the better of it, but at that stage of the proceedings one almost rooted for Ptolemy. In the last act, Sextus and Cornelia ganged up on him with daggers in the hallway.

Preceding him in death, bass Cory McGee gave us a gentle and slimy Achillas, who obviously wouldn’t pass muster in post-#metoo standards of behavior but managed something like genuine affection for his captive target, Cornelia. His aria “Don’t deny a tender lover (“Cornelia, se all’amor mio”), though perhaps less idiomatically Baroque than some of the cast, offered a pleasant, sort of Märzen-colored timbre. Opening the third act, McGee was tasked with delivering much of the second-half plot in a text-heavy recit, in extremis. Paired with a cut-n-paste of “Flow my tears” (“Piangerò la sorte mia”), this constructed an extraordinary fifteen-minute scena for Cleopatra, divided only by Achilla’s exposition.

Condemned to Grieve and Cry

Megan Moore’s Sextus and Meridian Prall’s Cornelia kicked off Mezzopalooza during the overture, Cornelia pacing anxiously and an equally stressed Sextus enjoying some snortable white powder his mother proceeded to smack out of his hand. Sextus later emptied his stash in favor of expressing resolve to kill his father Pompey’s murderers. Moore gave a reluctant hero’s affect in Sextus’s development from ineffectual youth to avenging assassin. Of all these alto voices, Moore’s voice is lighter and nearly sopranistic in color, with a Mozartean flavor. Though occasionally a tad flat, she offered float in “The time for tears is past”” (“Vani sono i lamenti”) contrasting appropriately with Prall’s more mature sound. The two aced “Condemned to grieve and cry” (“Son nata a lagrimar”), for my money the most beautiful nine minutes in all of Handel’s currently performed operas. They sang while pantomiming, which found its most effective comment in a mismatched grasping gesture that reminded of gold medalist ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis’s and Guillame Cizeron’s disjointed embrace in their 2022 exhibition routine set to “Avec les temps.” The circling body men departed briefly, and Moore and Prall transported the audience as they ought with those pianissimo repetitions of ‘no more’ (‘mai più’).

Prall’s stunning voice has reached a state of maturity beyond her youth—her next stop after OTSL, no less than Operalia. I’d previously heard her live only in The Atlanta Opera’s “Die Walküre” as Schwertleite—so, barely heard her, individually, since the eight Valkyrie sisters do a lot of cross-squawking and hollering over gargantuan orchestration. Prall stopped time with her first aria “Grief and woe all hope deny me” (“Priva son io d’ogni conforto”). She calibrated pitch-dominant onsets with a perfectly cycled vibrato phasing in. Her fulsome chest voice—yes, people still have those—bathed the room in warmth, with an autumnal color and texture, butternut squash bisque. Cornelia doesn’t enjoy much of a developmental arc—she’s sad, then sad some more, then sad yet more, spelled only by a couple of trips around the penthouse attempting to avoid some #metoo, but Prall sang so beautifully that twice as many grief arias would be welcome. “In your bosom, friendly marble” gave her an opportunity for delicate /u/ vowels with “entombed.” Her evening of controlled sorrow gave way to visible relief after helping her son waste Ptolemy in the corridor. Though cast in a somewhat wooden role in the libretto, Prall nonetheless proceeded to steal every scene in which she appeared, with her voice. One must hear this singer live. She’ll excel in the lanes of repertory associated with the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

He conquers twice, who shows mercy to the conquered

Assisting team Cleopatra & Rome, bass John Mburu’s sonorous Curio and mezzo-soprano Madeleine Lyon’s poised Nirena combined dignity with a lightly comic affect. Neither had many lines past some recitativo secco, as the cuts took Nireno/a’s first act aria.

As Caesar, mezzo-soprano Sarah Mesko anchored the proceedings with ideal vocalism and acting for a breeches role, and my goodness, how much the intimacy director gave her to do with Pogorelc. Act two involved nearly as much osculation and snuggling as singing, atop the chaises and often under a gold-plated, jillion-threadcount sheet. Her sound, unusually, resembles one of your better countertenors, a dark red color, sort of like licorice. The pervasive gender-bending in “Julius Caesar” rates as one of its chief attractions, and Mesko here excelled.

Her vocalism and dramatic sense broadcasted the sort of confidence you need to conquer the whole Mediterranean, with postured benevolence of the Enlightenment era. She flexed agilità in “Evil and full of spite,” with some interesting Bartoli-esque aspiration, tossing platters of jewels with rage upon being presented Pompey’s avulsed cranium in a plastic sack drawn from a gift box. “How silently, how slyly” (“Va tacito”), Mesko’s duet with SLSO principal horn Roger Kaza, unfolded as a delightful symphony of mistrustful looks and deliberate steps between Curio/Caesar and Ptolemy/Achillas. A wheeled liquor cart provided whiskey, from which Caesar toasted but never drank, presuming it poisoned, as Curio made a throat-cut gesture. She punctuated the last verse with a studied impatience. Her superb acting, all evening, gave this Baroque work a modern verisimilitude; her Caesar lost any will to resist Cleopatra, utterly, but by degrees. Mesko’s greatest moment arrived with “Zephyrs fly to me” (“Zeffiri”), leveraging her song with the naturalness of speech; she shapes formants with /i/, an unmusical vowel by its tense, high/front nature, in such a way as to make them attractive. Opening that aria, she built a lovely messa di voce, I can still hear in my mind’s ear. Well received was Mesko’s “Carmen” at OTSL two years ago, but one might agree this repertory better suits her.

Great Jove in His Heaven Hath No Melody to Match Such Peerless Singing

The sum of the above, were that all, would have combined for one of the best sung productions in recent memory at OTSL. This opera, however, might more aptly have been titled “Cleopatra,” and here we meet this roster’s most ravishing singer. We must discuss Emily Pogorelc.

Pogorelc’s voice is so beautiful as to defeat verbal description and one must hear her live. Her voice cuts without the slightest shrillness, as she flawlessly balances warmth and brightness and her technique is solid, which makes her voice seem larger. The production is perfectly lean, and her legato—so important in Handel—flows like massless liquid. Many fine singers successfully connect registers of slightly different timbre; hers displays multifaceted hues but sounds integrally identical throughout Cleopatra’s range. Your reviewer traffics in potable and comestible metaphors for voice but struck out this time. One color Pogorelc gives is like the best thing that happens in life, pretty much, sunlight on a severe clear 60ºF day in October, post-equinox. Inimitable, but vaguely gestured towards by Hoffmann’s final costume for her, a swooshy gown with gold everywhere. She’s the complete package: clarity like Sabine Devielhe, precision headed in a direction towards Erin Morley, and absurd timbral beauty resembling no one else. Not yet thirty, if she cares for this gift and the Opera Machine shoveth her not into too-heavy repertory, we’ll enjoy decades of gorgeous singing. She appears twice at the Metropolitan next year, as Musetta, and Pamina in Julie Taymor’s rather Maurice Sendak-ish, abbreviated, Anglophone “Magic Flute.”

Outfitted in those lucky seven costumes and beneath a wig the shade of red that compromises the decision-making of a guy like Caesar, Pogorelc conquered both Caesar and the Loretto-Hilton Center with her otherworldly voice. “No don’t despair,” sprinkled florid runs on the listener, betraying no effort, as the Cle-ettes unloosed some Macarena-esque moves. From the corridor she surveilled Caesar as he cogitated upon Pompey’s urn—another standout moment for Mesko—and then she emerged to hatch the “Lidia” deception. But her act one was just the beginning.

Veni, Vidi, Obstipui

Pogorelc’s Cleopatra wrecked Mesko’s Caesar in a mesmerizing set piece for “Adoring, Imploring” (“V’adoro pupille). Candillari led Handel’s orchestration introducing Cleopatra’s stagy reveal atop her podium—though Geoffrey Burgon often garners comparisons to Vivaldi, I think this sound was his aim in his famous soundtrack for “Brideshead Revisited”. All night, concertmaster Celeste Golden Andrews’s violin popped from the pit. Mesko stood agog at the orchestral intro before Pogorelc even sang. With a Statue of Liberty tiara matching the triangular rays of the sun behind her, Pogorelc cascaded the aria’s legato while emerging slowly from the Cle-ettes’ reduced Busby Berkeley number and their oyster shell fans. By the time she’d undone her hair and reached Caesar, Egypt had conquered Rome rather than the other way round.

Pogorelc capped a night of great singing by the whole cast with a soul-takingly beautiful scena, consisting of “Hear my prayer” (“Se Pietà”) and “Flow my tears” (Piangerò), aided by the cuts to occupy the stage only with the Cle-ettes, and interrupted only briefly by Achillas’s news briefing and death. Though warm most of the time, she would accent a phrase with a steely cut like a very sharp knife obliquely caressing skin that it elects not to puncture. In the first aria, effortless spin with vibrant overtones in middle voice in the A section made the voice sound like weeping without tears. She fashioned build with granular dynamic contrasts, a soft trill here or there for accent. Every volume and every register sounded gorgeous. She managed to sing like this while changing her shoes à la Fred Rogers. Then in “Flow my tears,” she authored a jarring transition. From the resigned sorrow of the A section, with each diminuendo forming a droplet, like rain slowly beading from flower petals in Disney’s “Fantasia”, she pivoted to believable rage in the B section, and back again, beginning the da capo in chest voice. The sometimes chatty OTSL audience who had laughed at Pompey’s head and Ptolemy’s and Achillas’s stabbings silenced themselves, making audible her last inhalation, even that, music.

Forever Shine in Grace and Beauty

All the characters who’d escaped stabbing reconvened as audience for the happily-ever-after duet to close the opera, “Dearest, Fairest” (“Caro! Bella!”). Mesko and Pogorelc paired to blend once more, like birds spiraling each other, ending with a last kiss. Lights out for the final tableau, with one photographic flash. An appropriate ending for one of the finest productions in OTSL’s history. Let us pray that OTSL can reemploy each principal singer from this show at some later time, and that Baroque opera returns more frequently than a couple times per decade. This was the highlight of OTSL’s 2024 season.

The post Opera Theatre Saint Louis 2024 Review: Julius Caesar appeared first on OperaWire.

Often after watching a perplexing rendition of “Das Rheingold“, critics and public alike might proclaim: “Let’s see what will happen tomorrow night. Let us hold our judgement until then, to see where all of this is going.” And then, Herheim’s “Die Walküre” began, proving to be the worst of the cycle.

The First Act brought us perhaps “another” opera, partially unrecognizable as to anything ever seen on the Wagnerian stage. Here again, right from the start, no theatre curtain rises, as there is none. Another unwanted, “invented” pantomime within the Prelude sets the tone, bringing us into the unhappy home of a lonely, frustrated woman and her unbearable son, “invented” – Hundingling, or “Little Hunding.” Sieglinde is seated, bent over the pianoforte, as she bangs the keyboard violently. Wagner’s cinematic music depicting Siegmund running for his life through the forest is put on stall; here Sieglinde is packing her bag to flee this nightmarish reality called home – a giant wall of suitcases menacing claustrophobia. There is a somewhat mature boy acting like a demented teen, desperately clutching his teddy bear substitute for his mother’s love. As a storm blows into the room, the thunder of Wagner’s raging timpani drives Sieglinde and her son to scream in anguish, only to seek refuge in sleep.

Examining Herheim’s Perspective

We might associate Herheim’s thinking as that of someone following various theories that began in Wagner’s own lifetime, believing that his music was the cause of nervous modernity pathologies, bringing on exhaustion, degeneration, and pervasion. This was supposedly caused by the length of the operas and the “pathological lack of rhythm” of the symphonic scores, bringing on stress and fatigue. In fact, Ludwig Schnorr, Wagner’s first Tristan, died at the age of 29 shortly after his debut performance. Wagner admitted in a letter that his own music had “driven the singer to the abyss.” It has also been said that women were supposedly susceptible to a disease referred to as ‘Wagnerianism’. The music was even inextricably linked to eroticism, and incest in Sieglinde’s case. Be this all the truth, it must be seen as a mistake to create a visual interpretation through today’s regietheatre as based on personal readings of Wagner’s intentions.

In this “Die Walküre”, an obsession stretches the dramatic out of proportion in an effort to defend parallel structures that, though related, lead one astray and certainly weaken what remains of Wagner. Thus, one might find it unacceptable that Siegmund, just moments after entering Hunding’s grotto, falls into a familial situation of pure mayhem. All attraction he will come to feel for Sieglinde is now filtered through Hundingling, at times portrayed as if he were already his son. The ‘dummy’ wields a knife as a little Nothung, yet instills no fear. He is more frightening with his pathetic teddy bear wrapped in his arms.

Sieglinde’s maternal ties to her son remain strained, almost a love-hate bond. For sure, the staging complicates all this – watch Sieglinde melt as Siegmund’s music possesses her, causing her to run to Hundingling joyously, tickling him with excessive maternity. At other times, she has long kissing bouts with her “saviour,” whom she realizes will be the destined one to pull the sword from the tree. All this creates a twisted, unbelievable new family trio. Siegmund appears no longer free to give himself to Siegliende – that is, not until she slits her son’s throat, undresses, and prepares to consume her incest upon the convenient bed-pianoforte. Through all this, poor Hunding wields a threatening rifle in his hand, has tantrums and fumes, yet only to remain an awkward, dispossessed father and husband right in his own home. This is the weakest shell-of-a-man Wagnerian character ever known. To flaying, agitated violins, the Act closes with Siegmund’s physical gesture of masculine victory, marked as triple forte for the woodwinds and horns, assuring one that a Siegfried is on the way. This is more than regietheatre .; it is an attempt to probe nuances so well-distant from the work at hand that what we see on the stage contains no “theme and variations,” but is a plagiarized opera making no attempts to hide the original. It is a sign of the times, and one must truly ask how much of this should the faithful opera goer continue to accept.

More Production Details

Act two holds few surprises. Wotan comes up through the prompter’s trap door, and one learns that he has just spoken to Erda, begging her to answer his question regarding the destiny of the Gods. He has a score of “Die Walküre” in his hands, but no pants on. He finds Siegmund’s sword on the floor, and puts it into Sieglinde’s hand, while she is sleeping with her brother-lover on the piano. Then he spots the teddy-bear, and drops it with disdain onto the dead Hundingling’s body. Wotan at the piano plays for two minutes as the real music begins, yet he never turns a page in the score. A smattering of wanderers with children and puppy dogs enter. Next, Hunding with his rifle accompanied by his rowdy group of thugs. Though distant from his house where Hundingling had his throat slit by his mother, he seems nsurprised.

Brünnhilde launches into her Valkyrie calls, and the wanderer ladies, really her sisters, don a Valkyrie helmet and spear. One of them is asked in a slapstick bit to bang her foot by accident, and limp off. Hunding remains, crawling to his son’s corpse, and cries as a baby. Fricka arrives through the pianoforte. This Goddess of Marriage does defend the institution, while Wotan seems open to incest and extra-marital affairs – “What was so wrong that was done by the couple that Spring united in love?” Wagner invites one to take sides in a dialogue wherein the diverse stances a married couple may take regarding their children develops. Soon, he will symbolically rape Brünnhilde, ripping off sleeves and skirt, which will be used for the next half hour as, among other things: a slain warrior is limply extended in the Valkyrie’s arms, only to become a seeming matador’s cape as images of the women in Valhalla who will charm him as a warrior slain in action, then as a tug-o-war rope pulled between them, and lastly, as a bedsheet to cover the sleeping Sieglinde.

A last gimmick choreography closes the act: on striking Hunding dead, Wotan prances about the stage, shaking his spear at five of Hunding’s mob, rifles aimed at him, and, on a triple forte brass chord, mowing them down. How much of this makes for a lively show, how much illuminates Wagner’s dramatic action? This is entirely up to those watching.

Musical Highlights

It must be stated that Wotan’s great monologue came off simply, directly, and as expected, the text held sway. This epic soliloquy in the style of Ancient Greek drama, or Shakespeare, too, needs little stage direction as it is Wotan who creates the images, and one’s imagination to follow. He is a messenger from the Antique theatre, where violent acts or tragic episodes happening off-stage are relayed to us through storytelling, one of the most immemorial forms of theatre we have.

The musically impressive “Walküren Ride” that opens Act three has perhaps never been executed well, as many of us may believe. Here, it is truly uninspired and distant from Wagner’s depiction of these dutiful Gods who have the double responsibility of choosing who will die in battle. Two Valkyrie are fighting over possessing a sheet, thought to be Brünnhilde’s skirt from the last scene. But no, these are simply pieces of white silk. The Valkyrie wave them as washerwomen, and we note that the lights in the auditorium are still on. They rip pages out of the score, and some hold these when they sing. As they cheer themselves, the lights upon us in the hall diminish.

They do seem to be having fun, but at our expense. Some Valkyries pick up dead soldiers fallen in battle, but when wrapped in gauze they look like silk cocoons or Egyptian mummies. One of the sisters must count eight on her fingers to realize that one is missing – yes, it’s Brünnhilde. And Hundingling is back; one feels as if to be in an Alain Resnais film, where characters enter and exist, almost surprising themselves. Brünnhilde plays the piano as Sieglinde emits the soaring melody that will conclude the Ring, “Redemption through Love.”

Brünnhilde is then banished from the Valhalla clan in operatic form. When all on stage returns to the opera, we too return to Wagner. The way in which Wotan admits to Brünnhilde and himself that he had to betray his word is emotionally draining. Here the wanderers return, and high upon the wall, the suitcases, observe the intense reality of the father-daughter strife: human love versus the entanglements of power. The wanders now wave a white sheet in a huge circle. Wotan’s spear tip turns red in incandescent heat. To Brünnhilde’s beautiful, lyrical heart-rendering phrase, now only a musical theme, “Inwardly true to the will which inspired this love in my heart, and which bound me to the Walsung”. She and Wotan hug. The wanderers are astonished, moved, but here become an obstacle. Wotan must relate to them all in this sad predicament. Why are they needed – to fold the white sheet that covered the pianoforte forming Brünnhilde’s rock?

The lid of the pianoforte is closed. White sheets that appear as Caspar the Friendly Ghost are pulled up, and projected images of flames infuse them. The piano opens and Sieglinde appears, in labour. Mime the doctor, Wagner’s image, delivers the hero-child, also receiving the sword in broken pieces. Again, Herheim prepares us for the opera to close. During “Rhiengold’s” end we saw Wotan plummet the sword into the tree. However, here one sees the arrival of Siegfried. This is impressive, but Wagner’s music is all about the fire that steadily encircles Brünnhilde, pure and prohibitive. It being her own wish as that of Wotan that only a hero will arrive to penetrate it. This is their hope, their unified solution to remove the guilt now harbouring in the consciousnesses. Therefore, why is Mime rocking ‘young’ Siegfried to sleep in his arms? Halfway through “Der Ring”, if nothing else, we again realize that the creative energies of Wagner reach us as totally mindboggling – his music and stage visions, here are often distorted.

Illuminating Cast

The orchestra played beautifully throughout, balanced as rarely heard, and compliments must be given to Maestro Runnicles. The singers, Siegmund (Daniel Frank), Sieglinde (Daniela Köhler) and Hunding (Tobias Kehrer) were a formidable trio, each one convincing musically and dramatically. Fricka (Annika Schlicht) was superb on the stage, and her rather huge voice made one ask if a Brünnhilde is in the wind. Wotan (Derek Welton) was totally praiseworthy in his portrayal of Wotan, ever moving, and singing fully with emotion. The eight Valkyrie (Flurina Stucki/Christiane Kohl, Felicia Moore, Maria Motolygina, Elissa Pfaender, Arianna Manganello, Karis Tucker, Nicole Piccolomini, Lauren Decker) were emotionally charged, singing well in ensemble, though weakened by the staging which did make them a bit too human, and overcharged most of the time. Credit must also be given to the actor-mime Eric Naumann, Hundingling, son of Hunding and Sieglinde, however unjustified it did seem, and with an overabundance of erratic emotion as the victim of an unhappy marriage.

The post Deutsche Oper Berlin 2023-24 Review: Die Walküre appeared first on OperaWire.

Dr. Eugene Rogers conducts Morris Robinson in music by Jessie Montgomery, Aaron Copland, and Carlos Simon/Dan Harder. rs.

Performance Dates: Sept. 14, 2024

Dr. Eugene Rogers conducts Suzzette Ortiz.

Performance Dates: Dec. 14-22, 2024

Dr. Eugene Rogers conducts Damian Norfleet and Monique Holmes-Spells in music by Leonard Bernstein, Nkeiru Okoye, Eugene Rogers, and Rollo Dilworth.

Performance Dates: March 15, 2025

Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” will be conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and will star Erika Grimaldi, Rihab Chaieb, Saimir Pirgu, and Marko Mimica.

Performance Dates: May 14-17, 2025

Jonathon Heyward conducts Verdi’s “Aida” with Angel Blue, Melody Moore, Limmie Pulliam, Reginald Smith, Jr., and Mark S. Doss as the soloists.

Performance Dates: June 13 & 15, 2025

The post Morris Robinson, Angel Blue & Erika Grimaldi Lead The Washington Chorus’s 2024-25 Season appeared first on OperaWire.

The season opens with “Tosca” starring Melody Moore, Dominick CHenes, Reginald Smith Jr., and Ivan Griffin. George Manahan conducts and Christopher Mattaliano directs.

Performance Dates: Sept. 27 & 29, 2024

Then comes “Samson and Delilah in Concert. Limmie Pulliam, Raehann Bryce-Davis, and Alfred Walker star. Daniela Candillari conducts.

Performance Dates: Nov. 8 & 10, 2024

Also on the slate is “Opera on the Bayou: Voices of New Orleans,” a one-night concert blends culture and music exclusive to New Orleans.

Performance Dates: Feb. 5, 2025

Then comes “The Elixir of Love” starring Lindsey Reynolds and Matthew Swenson. Nicholas Fox conducts. Ned Canty directs.

Performance Dates: April 4 & 6, 2025

The post New Orleans Opera Announces 2024-25 Season appeared first on OperaWire.

OperaWire spoke with Teezier during a run of performances of a new production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at Teatro Real.

OperaWire: Can you tell me about your musical background and why you became an opera singer?

Ludovic Tézier: I used to listen to music with my father when I was very young: French songs, Spanish songs, Argentinian songs, classical music and opera, of course. And because I was in Marseille, which is a Latin city, I used to listen to the Italian repertoire. Our favorite composer was Verdi. When I was playing with my toys I used to hum and sing Verdi areas. I was bathing in Opera music from quite an early age. But when I started taking vocal lessons, for the very first time, I was singing pop music in a rock band, like; Beatles, Presley, Stones. It was fun. I remember that my friends in the band kept asking me to smoke cigarettes so I could break my voice a bit, he, he ,he… But I didn’t want to smoke. I was doing lots of sports back then. And I was a “passive smoker” anyway, because smoking was allowed anywhere at that time. They said I sounded like Pavarotti too much. And somehow I picked up all the recordings and started to listen to opera music again. I was about sixteen or seventeen, and my voice was very clean and very high, so I began to sing tenor arias. I could sing very high notes in chest voice, which is not usual. But it was difficult for me.

When I started taking lessons with my first teacher: Claudine Dupra, I used to sing the tenor arias from “Carmen” and “Trovatore.” And after one lesson, my teacher said: You will become a great baritone one day. And that felt like the end of the world to me: baritone? But she explained to me that despite the very easy high range, my passaggio was in a lower zone compared to tenors. She told me I could pull the voice towards the high and low notes, but I shouldn’t change the passaggio. Therefore, I was a baritone. She showed me recordings of baritones who could sing B flats. But she told me that I wouldn’t be able to hold a tenor tessitura, without damaging my voice, because I couldn’t handle the passaggio in the tenor tessitura. So, in one lesson this woman saved my life. I trusted her from the very beginning. In one year, she gave me the “tool box” that I used for the first ten years of my career. She said, “You should never suffer in a vocal lesson.” After one hour of good singing your voice should be fresh and in a better placement. And this is true for opera performances too. Even with big roles like Rigoletto, you should start the performance okay, but you should end with the impression that you could sing the part twice. Because the voice placement should be in a perfect position at the end of the show, although you may lack the stamina to keep on singing.

OW: You won a prize in the renown Operalia competition. Was that what launched your opera career?

LT: No, not at all. I was 30 when I did the competition, and I joined the Lucerne Opera company when I was twenty one. I had to sing big parts, and just the first year I sang 80 performances, which is something enormous. I had just two weekends off during the whole first season. And that’s not enough even for a fresh young singer. But this taught me “how to survive,” which is very important for an opera career. I worked hard on my technique every day, so I could sing mostly everyday without harming my voice. I was just losing the will to sing, because after all you are young, and it was too much work. In July I just wanted to have some lazy holidays rather than rehearsals and performances. It was too stressful for me, but my voice was fresh.

I had only 50 performances the second season, which seemed like nothing to me. I moved on into the Lyon Opera Company, which was very different. The schedule was less tight, and I sang there with incredible artist. I did “Cosi fan tutte” with Sir Neville Marriner. Can you believe it? I sang with Gabriel Bacquier, Jose Van Dam, it felt like a connection with a “golden past generation.” And I learned very much from “these guys.” At that moment, my artistry was growing very much. Lucerne was like learning how to settle into an operatic career, singing every day, taking care of the voice and the technique. But Lyon was different, because you were sharing the stage with tremendous people, and you needed to put more artistry into your performance. You couldn’t just sing, you had to get into your part, and that influenced your way to make music too. I considered my experience in Lyon like my second big period of studying. I was on stage, but I was still studying: voilà! I’m still studying, and I will be til the end of my career. After three years in Lyon, I began my freelance career. I was around 27, still quite ahead from Operalia. I had already sung Germont and other bit baritone parts before the contest. It was my agent who suggested I join the Operalia competition because that would be the last year I could do so (because of the age limitations).

And then I asked my agent: Is Plácido Domingo really going to be there? Or is it just a name? Because my only reason for attending Operalia was to meet Domingo in person and thank him for all that he had already taught me when I sang over his recordings when I was young. And it happened that Domingo was supervising and taking care of every singer who was in the contest. I wondered how could he have such energy, but as he is still singing today it doesn’t surprise me anymore. He was like a good father giving advice, and spending a lot of time with each singer, even with the singers that lost a round in the competition. So, I won one prize in Operalia, but this did not help me in my career much because I had a career already. And I have never showed-off that I was an Operalia Winner. I’m not like that, and I knew my reasons for joining the competition. But I have very good memories from it, it was like living in a bubble for a week, it was fun, and the organization was amazing. But I came back home, and my life and my career continued as it was.

OW: Despite having performed lots of Verdi roles, you have also performed Mozart, Bel canto, Puccini, French, German and Russian repertoire. Is there a specific Verdi style when approaching his roles?

LT: I would say that what makes Verdi more exciting than others when you are doing it (because on the score all the composers are genius) is that you have everything in Verdi: the volume of Wagner, the musical charisma of Mozart, you have the beautiful melodies like in Bellini or Donizetti, but you have the “big theatre of Verdi”, “The big machine” which is the impact of the words to me. Every word seems to be part of the music, they are melted together, and I think that’s unique.

When you are singing Wagner, and I love Wagner, you are kind of surfing in the music with the words. In Verdi, you are the music. If you sing Wagner without the orchestra people will be bored after a minute, but if you sing, for example: Count di Luna or Posa you will get lots of attention because “you are the music.” Verdi is like a confrontation between two orchestras, the one you have in your throat and the other one in the pit. Some parts of Verdi touch the Everest of what you can do vocally (Wagner too), and nobody has written something so theatrical in music.

You would succeed by singing Mozart without an orchestra too, and I remember I used to say when I was younger: I am singing Mozart like Verdi, while I think that I am singing Verdi like Mozart right now. I find there’s a connection between Mozart and Verdi. Take, for example, the recitatives in Don Giovanni and the ones in Verdi, they are much alike. That’s why I always advise young singers to sing Mozart, because you can find in his music the way to sing everything, even Wagner. So, there is a connection between Verdi and Mozart.

As there is one with Bel canto and Mozart. Bel canto means beautiful singing, and that’s how you have to sing Mozart. There are just some specific differences like the “aperto ma coperto” technique or the way to approach the passaggio, for the Bel canto repertoire which you don’t need for Mozart. But I would sing Verdi the way I do Mozart, but not in the way I sing Bel canto, because in Verdi the words are first, not the voice. You cannot imagine the great Titto Gobbi in Bel canto (Especially at the end of his career because his voice wasn’t especially beautiful), but his Falstaff is pure madness. At the same time there are moments where you can apply the resources of Bel canto like in Posa’s dying scene. He dies like an angel, so you need this “beautiful singing” to inspire you for the long legato lines. But it is only a tool, nothing more. You have to get out of it many times, you have to take risks, you have to overdramatize sometimes.

That is why singing Verdi is so challenging. Some roles like Yago, for example, you need to find a different color for each line. Because you cannot grab this character, he is like a snake, he is changing all the time like madness, because he is the personification of evil. So, you need to master vocally in every aspect including the Bel canto technique. But there’s a lot of Mozart in Iago too, like in the line: “Era la notte, Cassio dormia…” which has the same quality of “Deh vieni alla finestra” from “Don Giovanni.”

OW: Are you still singing the Mozart repertoire?

LT: I do sing Mozart for myself every day. Unfortunately, I am not asked for Mozart roles anymore, which I consider a big mistake. I would sing Mozart tomorrow itself if I am asked. Because it is my center, the home of my voice. When I have the chance to sing a concert with my wife, who is a wonderful Mozart singer, we sing Mozart duets and it feels so relaxing, so healthy.

OW: Speaking of Rigoletto, which you are currently singing at Teatro Real, is this the ultimate baritone role?

LT: Yes, it is one of the biggest. Like most Verdi baritone parts (like Renato in “Ballo in Maschera”) you have to change gears. You begin like a high baritone, but at the point you are going to sing the Quartet in act three you are a bass-baritone, but with high tenor-like notes like A flat in “Vendetta” or A natural in the final “maledizione.” And a bass-baritone with high notes is a dramatic baritone. You have to go through this arch from a lyrical high baritone to the dramatic one at the end. The Quartet is very low writing.

To me Verdi’s big baritone parts are split in two, and it’s very difficult to change gears, like with a sportscar that you have to change from fifth to third gear. Until the “vendetta,” Rigoletto is full of energy, and then he becomes very mad. But when he returns to the stage for act three, he is more bitter, he is on the other side of the mirror, in the dark side of the mirror, and therefore you need to find a much darker sound. Because he is obsessed with vengeance and killing the Duke. When people are that obsessed they basically stop eating and sleeping, they become thinner.

And that’s why I think Rigoletto’s character changes drastically, during this month which passes between the “vendetta” and the third act. You can feel that he is eating himself with hatred, and this fascinates me. He changes, of course, when he has his daughter dying in his arms. He becomes, for the very first time, a “real” father. He sings he is not allowed to cry in: “Parisiamo…” but tragically, he can finally cry at the end. After this whole long story, he is finally a normal human being. Because of the pureness of Gilda and her sacrifice, he is allowed to cry.

OW: Many baritones in Verdi’s most famous operas, except Posa, are villains or fathers. You have performed in two French operas where the baritone is the hero and protagonist: Hamlet (which you just sang last February in Paris Opera) and Werther (the baritone version). What would be the difference between a leading French baritone role and Verdi’s?

LT: They are vocally very different, because the language is different. You have to adapt your technique to the language you are singing. Then again, the French legato is very different from Verdi. The French legato is one syllable after the other that comes through your eyes and gets into the room. In the Italian legato you open your throat, and the sound goes straight into your mouth. And these differences are the reason why it is sometimes, too hard to skip from one into the other. The only common thing between French and Italian repertoire are the high notes. High notes are just high notes. So you have to work on the different legatos which mark the style so you can sing with different colors, otherwise it would be too boring because it would all sound alike. Working in different repertoires widens your color palette.

OW: Is Hamlet harder than Rigoletto?

LT: Oh Yeah! It’s huge. And it is not as well-written as Rigoletto is. The role was originally written for a tenor who happened to not be available for the premiere, so Thomas (Hamlet’s composer) had to rewrite the part for a baritone, and this is sometimes shown in the vocal writing of Shakespeare’s hero. But it’s above all a theatrical piece, you really have to pull in the direction of the theatre. Otherwise, it is just nice music. And music should be beautiful, strong, intense… but not nice.

You have a song in “Hamlet,” the “wine song,” and you have to sing it as it is. But the rest of the role is words with music and that requires a different approach, so the role works both vocally and dramatically. You have to be connected to your character the whole time. You can not be a singer who sings. It’s really demanding and difficult, but very rewarding at the same time.

OW: You are a regular at Teatro Real where you have sung “Ballo,” “Puritani,” “Trovatore,” and “Rigoletto.” How do you feel working in this theatre?

LT: This is a house that improves every time I come, and it was already a wonderful theatre the first time I came. I debuted at Teatro Real with Ballo in 2008, when I had to step in as I was singing “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Barcelona. So I found myself alternating between two very different roles and taking the AVE (the fast Spanish train) daily. It is funny because back then Joan Matabosch was the director of Teatre del Liceu, and is director of Teatro Real right now.

After “Ballo,” I sang in Madrid one of the most beautiful productions of “Le Nozze di Figaro” I have ever done. It was directed by Emilio Sagi, a Spanish stage director who is a genius and is an angel. Two qualities that rarely mixed together. When he looks at you, you immediately know what he wants. And then after “Puritani” I did a wonderful production of “Il Trovatore.” It was legendary. So, I have sung my best Figaro and Count di Luna at Teatro Real, so you can imagine how I feel about this theatre.

Plus, the atmosphere at the theatre is very relaxing while working. They are super professional and easy going. They are like a big family. It is beautiful and it sounds good. When some trouble or problem arises during rehearsals, they just fix it. And that is the point: to make beautiful performances not beautiful rehearsals. I can tell that they work very hard about this. And then, how many theatres around the world did what Teatro Real did during the COVID? (Teatro Real opened its doors in June 2022, after three months of mandatory lockdown, with a strict social distance in the audience and the stage). It was along with Monte Carlo, the only theatres opened worldwide. That is why I really appreciate this house, and I have many beautiful projects in Madrid in the next few years.

The post Q & A: Ludovic Tézier on His Career as Today’s Ultimate Baritone appeared first on OperaWire.

Northern Ireland Opera is not flush with money. Fortunately, however, it has an imaginative artistic director in Cameron Menzies, whose innovative approach ensures that the company is able to provide a wide range of productions over the season, which it tours to locations across the province.

Unable to afford more than a single fully staged opera production a year, Menzies searches out alternative ways of bringing the art form to its audience. One of his ideas was the introduction of the “Salon Series,” six one-act staged works for voice and piano. The series includes presentations from a variety of genres, such as Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” a selection of songs from the golden age of American musical theatre with works by Gershwin, Sondheim and others.

A Clearly Visualized Staging & A Fascinating Program

In early November, Belfast’s Metropolitan Arts Centre (the MAC) hosted a presentation of the company’s “Sea Wrack,” a song cycle of traditional Irish ballads rearranged as art songs by a diverse range of composers, stretching from the 19^th century to the present day, on the theme of the passing of time, of memories conjuring up feelings of absence, death, lost love and homesickness.

The audience was met by a colorful, aesthetically pleasing stage set, designed by Menzies, cluttered with 19^th century lamps and paraphernalia, including plenty of suitcases with a grand piano situated centrally, hinting simultaneously at the idea of the salon and travel. It functioned perfectly as a backdrop for the singers and the sentiments they were expressing, as well as an area that allowed them to take a seat amongst the onstage clutter, from which they reemerged as needed, and successfully distanced it from the impression of a concert performance. Costumes were similarly designed to create an impression of the salon.

The program had a pleasing balance, moving between songs for solo voice and duets, employing a soprano, a mezzo, a tenor and a baritone in various combinations.

However, the performance began with “Sea Wrack,” an ensemble piece using all four voices, taken from Agnes Shakespeare Higginson’s “Songs of Antrim” and set to music by Hamilton Harty in the early 1900s, in a new arrangement by Bryan Evans. It is an attractive song with a poignant melody that tells of two men collecting the wrack, a pungent seaweed found on the beaches and seas around Ireland, to turn into kelp. The death of wrack is intimately bound to the fate of the two men, one of whom appears to drown while the other is abandoned on the rocks.

It is a fascinating song in which you can feel the waves of the sea and sense an eerie, even sinister, atmosphere in the music. Evans’ arrangement made excellent use of the four individual voices and as a chorus, whose intonation sounded like a presence, ominously hinting at the fate that befell the men.

Four Fine Soloists

Soprano Susie Gibbons took full advantage of the opportunity to show off her interpretative skills with a fine reading of “A Young Maid Stood in Her Father’s Garden,” a traditional ballad that relates a love story, arranged by Herbert Hughes. She provided a sensitive rendition without descending into emotional excess, in which her attention to phrasing and articulation impressed.

Her singing of “To the Gods of the Harbour and Heartland” by Hamilton Harty was a little less successful. Although she produced an expressively strong and resonantly powerful rendition, she gave the impression of making too much effort, which compromised the clarity of her diction.

The most well-known of the songs was “Carrickfergus,” which was performed in an arrangement by Matthew Owens for mezzo-soprano. It was given a warm and heartfelt reading by Jenny Bourke, who brilliantly captured the feeling of homesickness, in which her voice sensitively caressed the line, imbuing it with a sentimental longing that showed off her wonderful alluring, middle register to good effect.

She also gave a moving rendition of Hamilton Harty’s “Lovely Jimmie,” in which she engaged thoughtfully with the text, although it was noticeable that her voice became a little harsh as she pushed forcefully into the upper register.

Baritone Seamus Brady possesses a truly beautiful voice with a burnished timbre that retains its sheen as he moves across the range. His essaying of “She is Far from the Land,” with a text by the famous Irish poet Thomas Moore on lost love, allowed him to show off the wonderful qualities of his voice along with his sensitivity in bringing out the meaning of the text. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to swallow his words and, on occasions, let words trickle off the tongue without sufficient emphasis. Taking into account that he is only 21 years of age and still studying, it was an impressive performance and suggests he has a bright future ahead of him.

In 1789, the Irish rebel Robert Emmet stood on the gallows and made a speech that was to echo down the years. Hector Berlioz moved by the words set Thomas Moore’s account of the incident to music in his song “Elergie.” Tenor Michael Bell, producing a standout performance, managed to bring out the full impact of the text with a detailed, thoughtful and expressively strong rendition, which displayed his vocal versatility and seamless passaggio to good effect.

He also sang “At the Mid-Hour of Night” by Charles Wood, to which he once again brought expressive strength, versatility and vocal beauty.

The songs for solo voice were interspersed with three duets.

Neil Martin made a quite beautiful and sensitive arrangement of the traditional air “Méilte Cheann Dubhrann” for mezzo and baritone. The air, written in Gaelic, relates a man’s sad reflections on leaving his homeland, to which he never expects to return. While Brady’s warm-toned baritone brought out the depth of his love for the land, Bourke’s steely-toned upper register was able to capture the pain of his thoughts of separation from the land of his birth. The two voices combined wonderfully to create a full picture of the man’s heartfelt feelings about having to emigrate.

The other two duets, “A River Runs Beneath Us” by Peter Wilson in an arrangement by Matthew Reeve and “Sainted Mother, Guide His Footsteps” by William Vincent Wallace, were both written for soprano and mezzo. Gibbons and Bourke’s contrasting voices combined nicely to give both pieces a pleasing tonal texture, which added to their appeal. “A River Runs Beneath Us” also showed off Gibbons’ naturally attractive upper register.

The program was brought to a pleasing conclusion with Neil Hannon’s “Sunrise” in an arrangement by Paul Campbell for the full ensemble, in which Bell’s wonderful singing once again caught the attention. He is a talent to watch!

The pianist Frasier Hickland provided splendid accompaniment with a dramatically sensitive, clear performance that successfully caught the melody of each piece. He also had a close connection with the singers, ensuring a pleasing balance existed throughout the evening.

Lasting only about an hour in length, “Sea Wrack” proved to be an absorbing and imaginative production that revealed the beauty of traditional Irish songs when refashioned as art songs. It captured the sentimentality and nostalgia that lie at the heart of Irish traditional music and successfully presented it through the refined lens of the salon. It worked splendidly, and the audience brought the cast back for an encore of the opening piece, “Sea Wrack.” One can only hope that there is an innovative company out there willing to make a commercial recording.

The post Northern Ireland Opera 2023-24 Review: Sea Wrack appeared first on OperaWire.

This week you get albums from two very famous singers, a soundtrack to one of this year’s Oscar contenders, and two complete opera recordings you cannot miss.

Maestro

Deutsche Grammophon releases the official soundtrack to Bradley Cooper’s new film “Maestro.”

The recording features the London Symphony Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The recording includes Rosa Feola and Isabel Leonard performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 as well as music by Bernstein including excerpts from “West Side Story,” “Candide,” “On the Town,” “Mass,” Chichester Psalms and Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3. It also includes music by Beethoven, Mahler, Schumann, and Walton.

Christmas From Norway

Lise Davidsen is set to release a “Christmas From Norway” via Decca Classics on Nov. 10, 2023.

The new album is being described as a “delightful and personally selected collection” of traditional Norwegian Christmas music and classic festive favorites.

For this album, the soprano draws inspiration from the classic albums of iconic predecessors on Decca Classics, such as Kirsten Flagstad and Birgit Nilsson. The album features arrangements drawn from the label’s archive, originally made for such legendary singers as Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price, and Renée Fleming.

Davidsen is set to be accompanied by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Soloists’ Choir, and National Opera Children’s Choir.

Forget this Night

The Dutch label 7 Mountain Records releases “Forget This Night,” a new album by Edison-award-winning duo Katharine Dain and Sam Armstrong featuring music by Lili Boulanger, Karol Szymanowski, and Grażyna Bacewicz.

In a statement, Katharine Dain said, “Our program of passionate, pensive French and Polish songs circles a universal human question: how fully do we allow ourselves to open and blossom despite the knowledge that our bodies, desires, and relationships are ephemeral? Can we find meaning in fragile moments of love and beauty—although they pass, as they pass, because they pass? How did these composers, writing amid the political upheaval of Europe at the crossroads of two world wars, celebrate what is fleeting and cope with inevitable loss?”

Christmas With Pavarotti

Decca Classics presents Luciano Pavarotti, with his most popular performances of Christmas classics on CD and color LP.

Arvo Pärt: Tractus

Tractus work by Arvo Pärt emphasizes the compositions that blend the timbres of string orchestra and choir. The new recording features the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste’s direction.

The Tractus album includes a booklet with all sung texts and liner notes by Wolfgang Sandner (in German), and by Kai Kutman (in English).

Unholy Sonnets

Unholy Sonnets is an album that features a collection of songs by German-born American Samuel Adler. The recording features Joseph Evans, Rebecca Karpoff, Freda Herseth, Cary Lewis, and Atlanta Winds.

Sumptuous Planet 

The Crossing, releases its 31st studio album featuring composer David Shapiro’s piece, a virtuosic and spectacular concert-length work based primarily on the writings of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

In a statement David Shapiro said, “‘Sumptuous Planet’ is a celebration of belief within a scientific view of life and the universe. It is constructed along the lines of a Christian mass, though a major textual source is a devout atheist, biologist Richard Dawkins. The work begins with a setting of physicist Richard Feynman’s lament that ‘The value of science remains unsung by singers. This is not yet a scientific age.’ From there, the piece proceeds to glorify the world as it really is, unadorned by myths or miracle stories. In other words, before the piece begins, we do not yet live in a scientific age. By the end, we do.”

Illumine

The GRAMMY® Award-winning National Children’s Chorus is set to release Illumine, an album of holiday music from different countries and cultures around the world. Lexicon Classics releases the album which includes students, ages 10-17.

The album includes traditional Spanish, Hebrew, Nigerian, and German songs, and four NCC commissions in Filipino, Hindi, Hebrew, and Spanish.

Tosca

The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and conductor Carlo Montanaro present a new recording of “Tosca.” The cast includes Melody Moore (Tosca), Ștefan Pop (Cavaradossi), and Lester Lynch (Scarpia).

Kevin Short (Angelotti), Alexander Köpeczi (Un Sagrestano), Colin Judson (Spoletta), Georg Streuber (Sciarrone), Axel Scheidig (Un Carceriere), and Lean Miray Yüksel (Un Pastore) round out the cast. Pentatone releases the album which OperaWire called “a very suitable introduction to Puccini and to “Tosca” in particular.”

Dispersed and Transcendental Chants, Op. 18

Daniel Knaggs: Two Streams

Cappella Records releases the world première recording of Two Streams performed by Houston Chamber Choir led by Robert Simpson, with string ensemble Kinetic and world-class soloists.

“Two Streams” is structured around the words of Polish nun Maria Faustina Kowalska. From a poor family that struggled during the years of the First World War, she joined the Congregation of Sisters of Mercy where she received heavenly messages to share with the world, inspiring this sublime music by Daniel Knaggs.

La Favorite

Dynamic releases Donizetti’s rare work in a production from the Donizetti Opera Festival. The cast includes Annalisa Stroppa, Javier Camarena, Florian Sempey, and Evgeny Stavinsky. Riccardo Frizza conducts the production by Valentina Carrasco.

Of the production, OperaWire noted, “Florian Sempey & Javier Camarena Shine In the Deeply Reflective Production of Valentina Carrasco.”

The post Annalisa Stroppa, Lise Davidsen, Luciano Pavarotti & Yannick Nézet-Séguin Lead New CD/DVD Releases appeared first on OperaWire.

Yet, Carlo Montanaro and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester do not pretend to proverbially reinvent the wheel the way Rostropovich famously did in 1976; instead, they produce a balanced take, dramatic but lean and straightforward overall. Their “Tosca,” in short, is apt to captivate new audiences more than the entrenched Puccinian who, when in doubt, will still resort to old-time favorites.

Rushing the Action

For their “Tosca,” Pentatone and conductor Carlo Montanaro can rely on a solid cast of soloists headed, in the title-role, by the American Melody Moore.

Moore has an impressive track record of Puccini heroines, including Minnie, Butterfly, and even the stevedore’s wife Giorgetta. In “Tosca” she makes use of her voice’s dramatic inflections while curating the lyrical, if not vulnerable side of her character nonetheless.

The latter, however, one wished Montanaro gave more room for as his tempi are generally fast and it seems that, occasionally, Moore would have benefitted from more relaxed time constraints. The end of the love duet in Act one is a case in point: surely, Moore’s “Quanto m’affretti” did not have to seemingly be the fastest on record!

Much the same holds true for the bittersweetness of Tosca’s preceding lines, “E mi prometti: sia caso o fortuna, sia treccia bionda o bruna, a pregar non verrà donna nessuna,” which make Moore feel rushed and, consequently, only scratch the very surface of her psychographic capabilities. This is a shame as they could have been drawn out to much greater effect, as is demonstrated by Mirella Freni, for instance, in the Rescigno recording from 1978.

Luckily, Montanaro slows down for “Vissi d’arte” which is tender, supplicant, and imaginative. Moore showcases technical variety and, in terms of style and expression, a sweet-toned mezza voce which supplements the steel of her otherwise very bright and trenchant instrument.

Her Tosca, in short, is aligned with the dramatic sopranos of the past and vocally holds her own in a musical environment that does not always work in her favor.

The Stars Shone Poetically

At Moore’s side, tenor Stefan Pop makes for a valiant and clear-timbered Cavaradossi who is exultant at will and tender when needed.

His “Recondita Armonia” is heroic and the B flat has a metallic ring which suits the impetuousness of his general characterization. In the duet, one may regret that the transition from “s’affisa intero” to “occhio all’amor soave” is not sustained in the way Bergonzi, for instance, heightened the lyricism of these lines.

However, in “E lucevan le stelle” Pop delivers a truly inspired rendition, finding the perfect balance between poetic expressiveness and fine legato singing. It is, to who currently writes, the Pentatone release’s pièce de résistance and, as such, represents a testament to his quickly ascending career.

The Snarl of Scarpia

The trio of protagonists is completed by the American Lester Lynch whose imposing baritone has all the right colours for a particularly villainous Scarpia. Yet an occasional tendency to vocally overact makes some of his musical choices suboptimal.

Lynch’s full-throated “Tartaruga,” for instance, takes Puccini’s indication of impaziente to an extreme which may seem appropriate in a live setting; on disc, however, it diverts from the subtlety of an otherwise nuanced and technically versatile performance.

In particular, this versatility extends to the recitativo-style parts of Act two which he phrases intelligently and with a keen sense for psychological subtext. It even includes an Italianate snarl which in sottovoce passages like “Ho sortito l’effetto” adds to his menacing presence.

Among the comprimarii American listeners are likely to recognize Kevin Short in the role of the Roman Consul Angelotti. Soprano Lean Miray Yüksel sings an alluring shepherd boy. A final accolade goes to the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin which pays extraordinary attention to orchestral detail, rendered with utmost clarity.

“Tosca” for Starters

Overall, the Pentatone “Tosca” comes across as lean, direct, and sometimes unwilling to indulge in moments of near-overwrought lyricism.

This is mostly the result of crisp tempi which, especially in Act one, tend to make too stark a push forward for the listener to relish the expanse of Puccini’s melodic writing. It even takes an occasional toll on the cast’s ability to infuse their relationships with deeper psychological insight or, in the case of Tosca and Cavaradossi, the additional Romantic spark.

I therefore do commend the release as a very suitable introduction to Puccini and to “Tosca” in particular. It does not, however, have the appeal to compete, much less replace some of the discography’s most cherished entries to which buffs are much likelier to return time and again.

The post CD Review: Pentatone’s ‘Tosca’ appeared first on OperaWire.

The Metropolitan Opera re-opened its doors on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023, with a new production of “Dead Man Walking” by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally.

The production kicks off a major initiative for the company. Last year, the Met announced that due to the success of contemporary works, including “The Hours,” it would invest more potently on newer opera with the hopes of building a new audience. This year, the company is set to feature six operas from the late 20th and early 21st century as part of that initiative. Furthermore, for the near future, only newer operas would open the seasons.

It feels kind of strange to call “Dead Man Walking” a “new opera,” given that it premiered nearly 23 years ago (though if we compare it to most of the works presented at the Met, it is). But the fact that it took so long for the opera, which has been around the globe, to get to the Met stage, speaks to the company’s inability to pivot quickly over the past few decades to keep up with the overall industry at large. Nonetheless, better late than never definitely applies here because “Dead Man Walking” is a special work.

A Complicated Matter

The opera, which is based on a non-fiction work by Sister Helen Prejean and a subsequent award-winning film, features Sister Helen and her interactions with Joseph De Rocher, a man convicted of rape and murder at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. During her journey as his spiritual advisor, she faces a great deal of pushback and emotional turmoil stemming from the conflict between her faith and morality.

And that’s what makes the opera both rich and complicated. Joseph De Rocher is a murderer and a rapist. It’s very hard to feel anything for him but disgust even though the opera, through Sister Helen’s perspective and how much time is allotted to her attempts to “redeem” him, aims to ask us to try and find some empathy for him. How? By pitting the morality of the situation against another moral issue – capital punishment. I am very much against the death penalty, and the question stands regarding my experience of this work: how should I feel about someone who has committed the ultimate acts of depravity facing systematic execution? That’s where the opera maintains the audience’s attention both emotionally and philosophically. It pushes us to question our limits as humans presenting us with an endless array of scenes full of contradicting arguments and characters.

That serves as both a boon and a problem for the work because it makes it impossible to fully divorce the politics of the situation and our relationship to religion from the piece. If you are on the other side of the spectrum and support the government’s power to systematically execute a criminal, then the issue becomes one of patience with the characters of the opera. If that person is a religious, then it becomes of question of their connection to Sister Helen and the ideals of compassion she is preaching and those inherent contradictions. Conversely, if someone is pro-death penalty and not religious, this work might not be for them. Meanwhile, for those who aren’t religious, it might be difficult to get lessons in compassion for a criminal from someone who belongs to an institution that, in 2023, has limited compassion for marginalized groups.

Regardless of where you stand on this, the fact that opera gets us thinking about these issues as deeply as it does speaks to its importance.

Modern Opera at Its Most Effective

One of the biggest critiques of modern opera comes down to the accessibility of the music. Everyone has a different opinion on this, but personally, music is a universal language because it can connect with us all on a truly visceral level. It stays with us, continuing to work on us emotionally. As I start writing this review, streams of music from this opera keep playing. The opening overture, with its flowing line, is full of tension and foreboding. Then there’s the simple beauty of “He will gather us around.” And most prominently, the gorgeous ensemble “You don’t know” when parents confront Sister Helen about losing their children. The melodic development of that piece is gut-wrenching and simply beautiful. It connects and stays with you. Personally, it’s the musical high point of “Dead Man Walking.”

Heggie’s vocal writing is brilliant in how simple but varied it is. The nuns at large get lyrical, even a jazz-like vocal language, contrasted with the more speech-like quality of Joseph DeRocher; there is no melody in his singing at all, a smart move on Heggie’s part as it makes him the most inaccessible character musically. Contrast that with the parents, who are given voice through song. Meanwhile, Joseph’s mother is a mix of her son’s speech-like lines, emphasizing her alliance with him, but also more lyrical passages that line up with the victims’ parents and show her understanding of their plight. Sister Helen is all of these, her vocal writing altering depending on where she is and who she is with. But most telling is that she opens and closes the opera on an acapella line, “He will gather us around,” a simple tune that gets ample development throughout the opera and further emphasizes her emotional openness as the core dramatically and musically. That we return to this initial seed at the close of the opera, a single voice amidst the void, is heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, the orchestra furthers these connections with De Rocher and the prison associated with darker instruments (and lower voices with the prison guards and warden baritones or basses). As we get closer to his execution, the music’s color shifts accordingly to further emphasize those instruments and sounds. The religious figures are all higher voices, including the dubious priest – a tenor – and are often accompanied by more delicate textures. We see this most prominently at the start of Act two, where Sister Helen and Sister Rose, another nun, sing a glorious duet together. The rest of humanity is a mix, with the quintet of parents all differing voice types. The orchestration there is richer and more varied, best exemplified by the “You Don’t Know” ensemble.

At the center of how this music stays with you is that music is direct and emotional about its methods, a connected whole with musical themes and ideas joining and developing throughout. It is intended for the audience sitting there before them, not a specific one of musicologists or audiences predisposed toward a specific kind of classical music. It’s bare and immediate, and as a result, it is memorable. It’s not about “testing the limits” of the art form, or being different but about engaging with the audience’s expectations, both to challenge them and also to embrace them. Take the ending of Act one. The entire ensemble takes over the stage, and as the orchestra explodes with sound, the entire vocal group starts singing, seemingly improvising anything in the moment; the incoherence of the music works because it coheres with the madness and confusion that Helen is feeling. It’s a traditional choral climax with a bold twist.

Blending ‘Don Giovanni’ & ‘West Side Story’

When the Met announced that Ivo van Hove would be directing this production, I was very excited. I personally loved his “Don Giovanni,” especially when I first saw it in Paris. It was interesting to see how it evolved and adapted to an American audience last season, but I still found it to be insightful and potent.

But when the opera actually started, I didn’t get memories of “Don Giovanni,” but another work I saw Van Hove stage in New York – “West Side Story.” That production didn’t last long in the Big Apple, and for good reason. With the use of live video feed and a massive screen to project that dwarfed the stage performers, that production almost felt like Van Hove really wanted to make a movie but had to settle for theater instead. It cheapened the experience as a whole because it was nowhere near a movie but also not really theater; it was a theatrical Frankenstein.

For his production of “Dead Man Walking,” we got some of the best of “Don Giovanni” and many of the problems that plagued his “West Side Story.”

The set is a massive white box with a few doors that allow the stage flexibility to shift from scene to scene. There is also a large cube hanging over the center of the stage (but more on that later). The real key here is in the lighting and how it is employed to differentiate space. Hope House is characterized by its warmer orange hue, while Angola State Prison is awash in a cold blue. It’s a simple rule, but it’s incredibly effective and perhaps comes to greatest fruition at the top of Act two when we see the two main characters, Sister Helen and Joe, on the stage, but separated by this lighting motif, establishing that the audience in both locations at the same time and allowing for the opening to connect/counterpoint thematically and emotionally.

For most scenes, Van Hove plays it rather safely, relying heavily on the singers’ performances to lead us through scenes, which is especially effective when it’s a two-person or one-person scene. It gets a bit messier, sometimes intentionally, other times not, when there are more people in the room. Case in point would be the best scene in the opera (my opinion) during the appeal hearing. There’s a long table established across the stage that features all the scene’s major players, the parents and Sister Helen. Initially, the rigidity of the scene works for the formality of the hearing. But once everyone has to stand around and wait for the decision, chaos ensues, and the staging goes all over the place. The parents of the two slain children are placed on one side of the stage while Ms. De Rocher is on the other with her children. And yet, because of how massive the stage feels, they all look like bodies floating in a large space without physical anchors. It’s an intimate scene, and the inability of the staging to replicate that amidst the largeness of the space takes away from it. Thankfully, the music is so powerful that nothing else really matters.

With bigger crowds, it was a mixed bag. Musically it wasn’t always successful with soloists placed upstage and the chorus closer to the audience, thus obscuring the former or forcing soloists to oversing and strain (and throw in the fact that the set was a massive box that didn’t seem to do much for vocal projection to begin with). That said, the actual aesthetics of the staging were more successful conceptually. During the opening scene, Van Hove has the children run and whirl around Sister Helen; that staging is matched and corrupted when she heads to prison and seeks out Joseph for the first time. It’s a potent counterpoint showing us the contrast between innocence and depravity, but all the same, in Helen’s eyes, they are children of God. The first Act ends with a similarly massive choral scene in which the entire cast stands behind Helen, almost as if weighing on her, furthering the impact of her fainting right at the close of the Act. Conversely, the ending, with the lethal injection featuring bleachers, is particularly powerful because it mirrors the audience in the opera house, including us in the act as voyeurs.

(Credit: Karen Almond)

Turning Us into Voyeurs

Speaking of being voyeurs, let’s talk about the use of video in this production.

The opera opens with a short film. The camera flies overhead through a forest. Then it enters that forest before whisking us away down a countryside road and into a bar where we see a a man and woman interacting. We get a Lynchian closeup of a woman before the man rushes out into a truck. All of this over the opera’s foreboding overture. Then the orchestra stops, and some tune starts on the radio, and the film cuts to a couple of young kids having a romantic evening in the forest. The tension builds as we see two silhouetted men arrive then attack them… and all hell breaks loose. We see the crime take place, the curtain rises, and Sister Helen sings her first “He will gather us around.”

Opening the opera with a film is not new and can be a very effective technique. And this one could have been if not for two factors (the second comes up later and needs to be addressed). First off, we have a very particular relationship to film. Modern-day audiences are literate visually and can tell when something comes off as overly staged. The choreography for the murder, unfortunately, felt like that, and no quick editing in the world (which is essentially how they tried to fix this problem) was going to change that. The fact that the film didn’t really line up with the music’s intensity didn’t improve matters. Later in the opera, we get blurred closeups of the girl screaming, appearing as memories and dreams to the main characters. In all honesty, the music tells us EXACTLY what is happening, and a sudden cut to black right as the murder takes place probably would have been more effective than what we got. Less is more, and sometimes having the audience imagine the crime is all the more horrifying than watching one whose staging plays it overly safe. To then have those memory videos come back would likely have been more effective because, instead of reminding us of the staging of the film, it connects us with the dread and emotion that the music gives us.

And as a side note, regardless of whether a production is revived later on with a different cast, it also would have been nice to match up the content/performers of the video with the casting on stage (i.e., it should be re-shootable). Asking the audience to suspend disbelief for one group of parents but not the others is… not optimal in this day and age.

At the other end of the opera is a live video feed of the lethal injection of Joe, which is undeniably the coup de théâtre that Van Hove was likely looking for and delivered. As the staging takes place, a live camera recorded, in closeup, every single step of the way, the images projected on the aforementioned cube hanging over the stage. The entire process is intense and powerful, putting the audience in the middle of the action. It’s kind of ironic to say this, but nothing has ever sounded so unforgettable at the Met than the silence that accompanied this entire scene. Not one note. The silence was deafening – uncomfortably but also viscerally. If I struggled the entire night with my feelings toward Joe and how the opera seemed to want me to feel about him, this moment of intense voyeurism, of participating in the spectacle of systematically executing another human being, transcended that. I didn’t see Joe, but another human. And that was devastating. When DiDonato sang the final “He will gather us around” to close the opera, the effect was just too much to bear.

The Limits of Theatrical Live Video Feed

The problem was that this was the end of the opera, and it felt clear as day that the use of live feed, and by extension, the cube screen atop the stage, was all about this moment and that everything else was reverse-engineered around it, almost as if to justify it all from a production/budgetary standpoint. Because the truth of the matter is that the other instances of live feed were not only superfluous but not necessary. If Van Hove started the opera with a film, interspersed it with a few projections of the crime (or of Sister Helen driving), and ended it all with this live video, it would have been truly powerful. Less is truly more.

But, the inclusion of those other live videos were hit or miss and didn’t cohere at all aside from the fact that they were live video. We get two similar instances during the intros to the prison. The cameras whirl around chaotically as the prisoners enter the stage and then leave. It’s a very brief moment and pure visual chaos. But the chaos is already there on stage, and the camera, which aims to show us Sister Helen’s perspective, is detrimental. The problem comes down to direction. You are asking the audience to choose – watch what’s on stage or look at the screen. On screen, we see Helen’s point of view. But on stage, in the form of Joyce DiDonato’s performance, we also see her point of view. So, which one should we focus on? If we choose the camera, we disconnect from DiDonato’s interpretation. If we stay with her, we might feel we are missing out on this cool new technique that’s just been introduced to us visually, and that must have a point. So naturally, we move toward the novelty, and DiDonato’s work on stage is lost to the audience. We disconnect from the character momentarily.

It gets better the next time it comes around because the camera is shooting at a different framerate and exposure, creating a blurring effect that doesn’t force us to look at the camera the entire time. Once we understand the technique and intention, we can move on from it quickly and see it for what it is – an added effect. But the first instance of live feed is realistic in approach and execution, so it detracts from the impact of the moment.

But the most problematic is the top of Act two. As noted, the staging here is simple but brilliant. De Rocher and Helen are both on stage, lit in different hues to imply their connection/disconnection across time and space. She’s asleep, and he’s awake, and when we shift to her scene with Sister Rose, he sits still, allowing those two scenes to rhyme and contrast emotionally and thematically.

Van Hove adds two cameras and creates a split-screen on the overhead cube, creating a myriad of issues for the audience. The two cameras are set up to film close-ups of the two characters. First off, the duration of a shot creates tension. The tension comes from waiting for the visual payoff, the suspense of knowing where this is leading. Holding on someone sleeping would lead you to wonder if they might wake up at some point. There must be a reason we are being asked to pay attention to this image, as it will most surely have an impact on an upcoming moment. Nothing actually happens until it’s time for her scene, so there is no real payoff to having her shot during his scene and vice versa. One camera would have sufficed.

But of course, the problems multiply because keeping an eye on that image of the sleeping Helen forces us to disconnect from the other of Joe’s monologue, hence why movies rarely do split-screens during a conversation – the directors want us to focus on one particular moment at a time. The problem is multiplied on stage because, since the stage is lit, it implies that the director also wants the viewer to pay attention to the stage action, especially if the camera isn’t capturing it all (it doesn’t and can’t). So as a viewer, you end up confused about what you are looking at. Choice is nice, but the choice here isn’t between following two characters, but which perspective on a specific character we are meant to immerse with – screen De Rocher or stage De Rocher. Because it’s not the same. One is constantly singing and facing the audience creating one interaction. The other is kept in profile by the camera until he looks right into the camera, creating a completely different experience. It’s two different relationships with the audience – in one, he’s interacting with us, and in the other, he’s in partial view until he chooses to look at us (the fourth wall breaking into the camera comes off as jarring as a result). Which one do we interact with? If one wanted to be generous, you could argue that this lines up with how we feel about Rocher – “conflicted.” But then how does it line up with Sister Helen and this sudden split personality? That’s where it starts to stretch credulity.

Then there’s the introduction of Sister Rose. She’s an essential part of the scene, but she’s barely on camera save for a few moments (or when she’s awkwardly in the background of De Rocher’s closeup, which, based on the lighting, breaks the entire intention of the staging). If the intention is for us to focus on the camera images, then her character means nothing to the scene. But if we’re meant to interact with the stage versions, then the live feed is pointless. And when she does get a moment onscreen at the end, it doesn’t add much. We can see that Sister Rose has sat beside Sister Helen and is holding hands. We don’t need a closeup of the hands to understand what it means nor the subsequent two-shot of them embracing. We see it on stage. It’s there for us already.

As I watched these scenes unfold, and unfortunately had most of these thoughts running through my head, I couldn’t help feeling that either Van Hove had no confidence in his staging of the scenes and hence added the live feeds to create more visual “stuff” to contrast the stillness of the staging, or that he was mandated to do more with the live feeds to justify their existence for the final scene (I imagine that HD audiences will get the best experience as the camera feeds will likely be used directly for the video transmission or replaced by them and the visual disconnect from the screen won’t be as big a part of the experience for cinemagoers). Either way, artistically or practically, it didn’t work. And it’s a shame. Because the recipe for success of that scene was already there. The end of the first half of the opera was a coup, and I was excited for it to start up again. This took me right out of it. If Van Hove were to take the video feeds away for subsequent performances, those scenes would be infinitely better with what’s already there. And that’s because the performers deliver those scenes brilliantly. In fact, the performers were the key to the opera’s overall success. I wouldn’t say that they succeeded in spite of the production or staging, but when Van Hove’s direction faltered, they kept me in it.

(Credit: Karen Almond)

Contrasting Stars

The MVP of the night was Joyce DiDonato, who, at this point, is an American treasure. Last season she was the star of “The Hours” and that was no different on this night. From her opening “He will gather us around,” sung with the most delicate and thread-like sound, you were with her. There was both serenity and yearning in her singing, the contradiction perfectly establishing the character’s emotional journey throughout. From there, she sang with ebullience when “He will gather us around” turned into a full-blown choral celebration with the children and Sister Rose before singing with similar brightness and charm during the drive to Angola.

That’s about as long as that cheery nature would last, with DiDonato’s Helen shifting toward increased desperation during her scenes with De Rocher. The first scene pitted the two characters against one another in stark terms, but in the second, where she tells him that “The Truth Will Set You Free,” her singing takes on a more delicate quality, and at one point when he turns to her and acknowledged that he liked that, you could see him visibly shake with hope as she said “Me too,” her singing full of warmth.

One of the standout moments for DiDonato (which is where I double down and say that Van Hove’s decision to bring in the camera at the top of Act was unnecessary) was during the Courtroom scene where Sister Helen is often on the sidelines and gets the brunt of the attack from the parents of the victims. A lot of the time, her back is to the audience, her attention on the other characters. And even then, her body language communicated the conflict. The pain at listening to them and understanding and even siding with them and yet holding on to a conviction that was more than that somehow. It was all there, on stage, in DiDonato’s performance. No need for a closeup to emphasize it.

The same for the top of Act two, where her own moral quandary is at its greatest following a dream. In places, DiDonato was at her most agitated, her voice and articulation of the text pointed. But as Sister Rose comforted her, she settled back into that serenity of the opera’s opening for the sublime duet.

In subsequent scenes, that calm remained even as she begged Joe to speak the truth, and the ending sequences of the opera, in which DiDonato was just asked to listen, were among her strongest moments. It was through her, not Joe, that we were experiencing the horrors. And at those moments, we could understand what it was she was searching for. Having her gentle voice end the opera was a balm to the chilling experience, and even as I write this, I can still hear it. It is going to haunt me for some time.

As Joseph De Rocher, Ryan McKinny delivered a tremendous performance, providing a perfect counterpoint to DiDonato. His voice has a thick and earthbound quality that suits the character. With his imposing stature and gait, a rigidness in his early appearances matched his unyielding stance on the truth. He sang with a dark, direct, and often jagged line, making him completely unapproachable. But then the opera allowed for moments of warmth, such as the second scene with Sister Helen after he finds out that he is to be executed. When he repeats, “The Truth will set me free,” his voice takes on a thread-like quality that matches DiDonato’s similar prayer-like phrasing.

McKinny’s opening monologue in the second act is a unique exploration of the character, allowing him to reveal his feelings about his impending execution. In the production, McKinny does pushups and then sits and sings to the audience, occasionally turning to the camera. While McKinny’s singing was powerful and potent, it was hard to connect here, mainly because of the camera issues stated. McKinny has a solid camera presence, which I witnessed in the scant moments he got here (especially the ending scene) and from past work he’s done. But asking him to play to the camera and theater audience simultaneously is a challenge for any actor, and his looks to the camera, which picks up the most subtle of details in closeup, came off as distracting and off-putting (not in the right way). It hindered the quality of his overall excellent performance.

That said, as the story moved closer to its climax, McKinny imbued Joe with greater vulnerability, particularly during the scenes with his mother and brothers, his confession, and the ending. The gruffness of his voice developed into a more delicate tone that coalesced with DiDonato’s. When he finally reveals the truth, McKinny’s De Rocher sits down, his legs close to his body in a child-like position, delivering the narrative of his crime with increased agitation. When he utters his last words, in that final moment, McKinny portrays a man full of fear with hushed utterances.

Other Standouts

Susan Graham gave one of the night’s standout performances, especially when she appeared before the appeals board and made her statement. Her voice sounded weak and muted at the outset, emphasizing her anxiety in the moment. But as the scene developed and her desperation grew, her singing did as well, exploding with tremendous strength at several moments as she pleaded for her son’s life.

As Sister Rose, Latonia Moore’s soprano shone in the space, particularly during the Act two duet, where her smoother sound complemented DiDonato’s more anxious tone.

Chad Shelton provided comic relief as the snarky Father Grenville, his voice pointed in its delivery. Being the first line of conflict that Helen faces in the opera, his sardonic delivery provides a fitting change of tone. Meanwhile, despite his darker tones, Raymond Aceto had a rounder quality that counteracted Shelton’s interpretation in the previous scene, amplifying the work’s musical and dramatic qualities.

As the victims’ parents, the Harts and Bouchers, Rod Gilfry, Krysty Swann, Wendy Bryn Harmer, and Chauncey Packer sang beautifully as an ensemble. The fact that their vocal qualities were so different allowed each one to stand out among the vocal ensemble. Gilfry’s character arguably gets the most prominence here as he lambasts Sister Helen most profusely at the start and then essentially reconciles with her at the end. Gilfry developed this brief arc, his singing stern and aggressive in the first scene but softer and rounder in the latter scene.

The opera also featured a larger ensemble of performances by Christopher Job and John Hancock as prison guards; Justin Austin as the Motorcycle Cop; Alex Jarvis as Mrs. Charlton, Briana Hunter as Sister Lillianne; Helena Brown as Mother; Jonah Mussolino and Mark Joseph Mitrano as Joseph’s brothers; Patrick Miller, Jonathan Scott, Earle Patriarco, Ross Benoliel, and Tyler Simpson as Inmates; and Regan Sims as a Paralegal.

In the pit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Newer music is his strong suit, and here was no different as the orchestra sounded at its finest throughout the night. The overture of the opera was a major standout. There were some moments with the ensembles that sounded a bit messy, with balance a bit all over the place, though personally, I think this might have had to do with the staging more so than the musical execution overall. When the soloists were closest to the front of the stage (at the end of Act one), the balance was cleaner and tighter.

Pacing is always key to newer works, especially since they have more scenes than more traditional ones, thus more of a musical and tonal shift. Nézet-Séguin has always excelled in this particular aspect of modern opera and definitely nailed it here as well as the opera moved at a solid pace, never lagging.

While the production leaves a lot to be desired, it’s impossible not to appreciate the big swings it takes. More importantly, it’s the vessel through which a work like “Dead Man Walking” and its amazing cast are allowed to take the Met stage. And that’s the key here. This is the season that Met Opera management has decreed as a shift in direction, and this is the first statement of intent. It’s a solid one.

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