Music News
S.F. Performances Sets 29th Season
“Living creator/performers” are featured on San Francisco Performances’ next season (Sept. 6, 2008, through May 9, 2009), which is Founder and President Ruth Felt’s 29th year of musical offerings. Examples: Philip Glass and his ensemble, with a performance of his four-hour Music in Twelve Parts; composer-pianist Thomas Adès and violinist Anthony Marwood in a program focusing on the composer-violinist collaboration of Igor Stravinsky and Samuel Dushkin; double-bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolin player Chris Thile from the acoustic band Nickel Creek in an evening of their original works combined with compositions by J.S. Bach.
San Francisco Performances will also offer musical salutes marking the centennial of Elliott Carter and the bicentennial of Mendelssohn. In celebration of composer-pianist André Previn’s 80th birthday, he will join soprano Barbara Bonney in the performance of his song cycle composed for her, as well as works by Richard Strauss. Among prominent quartets on the schedule: the Kronos and the Tokyo String Quartet with clarinetist Sabine Meyer.
Kronos Quartet (photo by Jay Blakesberg) and Tokyo String Quartet
Among important dance events, S.F. Performances will sponsor the return of the Paul Taylor Dance Company for a weeklong engagement in the spring, with three programs, including two West Coast premieres.
Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian (opera singer, recitalist, and the vocalist on the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings) makes her S.F. Performances debut with the Armenian Orchestra, conducted by Eduard Topchjan, and performing works by Gomidas Vartabed, Bach, Schubert, and Bartók.
Isabel Bayrakdarian
A Berlin Scoop?
It’s not yet on the list of visiting orchestras hosted by the San Francisco Symphony, but Simon Rattle — who should know — told me in Berlin last week that he will bring “his orchestra” (that would be the Berlin Philharmonic) to San Francisco in 2009.
In 2002, when he became music director of the Berlin orchestra, Rattle participated in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s 10th anniversary concert in Herbst Theatre, which was a benefit involving his son Sasha, then 20 and a Marin Academy student. A year later, Rattle led the Philharmonic in two concerts here. Last week, as Rattle took a break from a Berlin Staatsoper rehearsal of Pelléas et Mélisande, he said he will visit here next year, conducting the Philharmonic, presumably in Davies Hall — but he didn’t elaborate.
Simon Rattle
EuroStrident
MUNICH — Of the five operas I’ve seen in three German cities in one week, not one was “EuroTrash,” in the sense of the gratuitous exhibit of bodily functions. And yet there was a clear trend or characteristic: All these modern-dress productions (of Wagner, Mozart, Offenbach, and Verdi) were trying ever so hard to be “different,” and thus ended up very much the same.
What I saw was not “EuroTrash,” but “EuroStrident”: exaggerated, larger-than-life productions, regardless of the subject, music, composer’s intention. They all turned soloists, and especially choruses, into something mechanical and impersonal, avoiding the apparent plague of the lyrical or, heaven save us, sentimental.
I already reported in detail of Hamburg’s March 24 Ring-opening Das Rheingold. The same director, Claus Guth, presented the Bavarian State Opera’s Luisa Miller (seen on March 30) as an endless sequence of mirror images — puzzling, distracting, and finally just irritating.
Also in Munich, Günter Krämer managed to mess with La traviata (March 29) by having the chorus perform in a conga line, then kick up their heels in a kind of csárdás in ensemble numbers, and bounce, bounce, bounce to the music. Soloists and chorus spent the entire “Libiamo” segment with (unsuccessful) attempts for unison body contortions to turn the glasses without spilling the champagne. Why bother with the music when you can watch a high-school quality circus act?
Pet Halmen’s Don Giovanni production in Hamburg (March 25) was dominated by huge portraits upstage, seemingly unrelated to the work, and the director required endless prancing from the singers. Inexplicable motions and actions constantly diverted attention from the music.
Komische Oper Berlin
Strangely, Berlin’s Komische Oper, the granddaddy of Europe’s New-Opera, provided the most “traditional” experience in the sense of a very human Tales of Hoffmann (March 28), even with modern-dress in a cocktail-lounge environment and all. Thilo Reinhardt nevertheless allowed the cast to behave more like people than machines. The result: feelings expressed and experienced, rather than cast, and an audience preoccupied with tricks and pizzazz.
Musically, too, Hoffmann worked the best, with a fine ensemble cast doing well under Kimbo Ishii-Eto’s baton. Kor-Jan Dusseljee in the title role looked a bit old to be the romantic hero, but sounded well enough, and Stella Doufexis’ Muse provided a committed, edgy musical and dramatic performance. Carsten Sabrowski overacted slightly as the Nemeses Four, and the heroines were just right: Leonie Abbassi as Stella, Victoria Joyce as Olympia, Elaine Ortiz-Arandes as Antonia, and Karolina Gumos as Giulietta.
The Hamburg Don Giovanni was a bit of a shock: The night after Simone Young’s outstandingly consistent Das Rheingold, she and the orchestra sounded tentative and off in the Mozart. The overture raised eyebrows and, in my case, hackles. (This was Young’s fourth performance, plus one extensive rehearsal, in four days; she may think she is invincible, but … ) The orchestra picked up later, but William Shimell’s worn voice in the title role didn’t; a young Tim Mirfin’s Leporello was amateurish; Tarnar Iveri’s Donna Anna, Miriam Gordon-Stewart’s Donna Elvira, and Kari Postma’s Zerlina were merely passable.
Paolo Gavanelli, the stalwart Miller of Munich’s Luisa Miller
Massimo Zanetti conducted the Munich Luisa Miller with gusto and frequent slurring of pivotal phrases. It may be something highly subjective, but I never heard a performance by Paolo Gavanelli I didn’t like (or “heart,” actually), and even in the middle of all the mirror-miming monkey business, his Miller was tremendous. Krassimira Stoyanova in the title role sang well, the rest of the cast not so much. The Rodolfo, Mikhail Agafonov, has the voice, but not the experience (which can be obtained), or musicality (more of a problem).
Zanetti was also in charge of Traviata, but you couldn’t tell that by watching him grin through it all, nor from the expressions of the musicians who tried to look at the conductor as little as possible. (Note to self: Don’t ever sit in the first row again.)
Two Merolini in the news: Munich Traviata’s Norah Amsellem, with future San Francisco Ring Wotan Mark Delavan (in a recent joint appearance)
Photo by Hiroyuki Ito
I thought the world of the young Norah Amsellem when she was in the Merola Program, but as the Woman Who Strayed, she just leaned way back to get out the high notes, and mostly she managed, but it all looked and — especially — sounded like Effort with a capital E. Franco Vassallo’s Germont was sonorous and Massimo Giordano’s Alfredo even more laborious than Amsellem’s Violetta. There is a great big voice there, but hidden under a lot of bad singing.
By far the best musical experience of the week: Christian Gerhaher’s all-Brahms recital in the Berlin Philharmonic’s Kammermusiksaal, on March 27. Supported by a true and grand accompanist, Gerold Huber, Gerhaher sang quietly (what acoustics that hall has!), consistently, clearly, beautifully, with impeccable diction, from the heart, without artifice or posing, investing all of himself in the music. Why can’t opera productions be like that?
Christian Gerhaher, with pianist Gerold Huber
Photo by Alexander Basta
Seattle’s Wagner Competition Finalists
Seattle Opera’s 2008 International Wagner Competition has named eight singers, including San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Elza van den Heever, as finalists for the decisive concert event, to be held on Aug. 16. They are:
- Erin Caves, tenor, from Stockton, Calif.
- Jason Collins, tenor, from Beaufort/Seneca, S.C.
- Deborah Humble, mezzo-soprano, from Adelaide, Australia
- Darren Jeffery, bass-baritone, from Cambridgeshire, England
- Peter Lobert, bass, from Jena, Germany
- Michael Weinius, tenor, from Stockholm, Sweden
- Nadine Weissmann, mezzo-soprano, from Berlin, Germany
- Elza van den Heever, soprano, from Johannesburg, South Africa
Peabody for MTT Files
The Michael Tilson Thomas and San Francisco Symphony “Keeping Score” series’ “MTT Files” (plugged here before with great enthusiasm) has won a Peabody Award for Radio Programming, among 35 programs called the best in electronic media for 2007.
As Classical Voice reader Harvey G. Lehtman has pointed out in a previous News column, the “MTT Files” are archived at the American Public Media Web site. For other public-radio classical music programs, see this listing: www.publicradiofan.com.
EU to Ban Respighi?
The question is only semi-jocular, referring to a composer many adore, while others find way too noisy … but the emerging regulation of orchestral volume in European Union countries is no joke. A lengthy and thorough report by Debra Craine in The Times of London says:
Imagine how you would feel if you were a professional musician and you were playing Sleeping Beauty every night, or indeed Strauss’ Salome, or any part of Wagner’s Ring cycle? A wall of sound may be exciting for audiences, but it can also mean exposure to damaging levels of noise for musicians trapped in a pit like goldfish in a bowl. …
Along with other opera and ballet companies in the U.K., Covent Garden is preparing itself for amendments to EU legislation relating to noise in the workplace. For most industries the regulations came into effect two years ago, but music and entertainment were granted an extra two years to find ways to adapt to the limits. That extension expired on Sunday, and orchestral managers have been thrown into a tailspin.
They are spending tens of thousands of pounds consulting acoustic engineers and compiling complex databases, installing noise-reducing screens and buying earplugs for their players. They are metering their shows and rearranging their performance schedules accordingly, so that noisier productions are shared with quieter ones during the working week. And all without leaving audiences feeling that their musical night out has been compromised as a result. …
After years of campaigning to protect its members’ hearing, the Musicians’ Union has welcomed the revised guidelines and has even come up with “hearing passports” to help freelance members to calculate their daily or weekly noise exposure. “Let’s be realistic,” says Pauline Dalby, the union’s safety and learning officer. “Most musicians will have to resort to wearing earplugs at some time during their playing, but there are lots of other combinations of noise control.” Which is just as well since, unlike rock stars who routinely use them, many orchestral musicians are reluctant to wear earplugs because they dull the nuances of their sound.
Olivia Stapp Sets the Record Straight
World-famous soprano, former Festival Opera director, stage director, and Classical Voice reviewer Olivia Stapp has been in the news lately for something that happened during one of her New York City Opera performances many years ago. Various opera lists and blog messages such as this appeared this week:
Olivia Stapp
Subject: NYC Opera Disturbance
The year — 1981 — that very disturbed woman showed up at the NYC Opera for a couple of nights, to the best of my recollection, at a performance of Maria Stuarda April 5, 1981, when Ashley Putnam was singing the title role … a few nights after, on April 8, the same troubled woman was in the audience for Anna Bolena with Olivia Stapp in the title role … and let off with an enormous cry, interrupting the performance …
But on this occasion, we had Olivia Stapp, who was not going allow this to go unchallenged … as I recall Stapp, in a loud voice that no one had ever heard previously from her throat, before or since … shouted “Shut up!” Which appeared to stun or silence the deranged woman in question.
Asked about the story on April 8 — 27 years to the day after the alleged incident — Olivia Stapp responded:
Totally false — it was Cavalleria — a beautifully dressed woman in the front of the theater started to shout, right after the processional and “Inneggiamo.” At first I thought “OK, she hates my singing,” and I was fine with it. But she did not stop. I finally tuned into her words and realized she was not shouting boo, she was screaming, “The priests killed my brother, the priests killed my brother,” and something about the Catholic Church.
The audience started to rumble, “Quiet lady … Ah shut up,” things like that, but she did not stop. The City Opera has no center aisle, and it would have been hard to fetch her out. I could see the house manager and some ushers running down from the back. The introduction music to the aria was beginning, and the audience was getting very restless and tense.
So I stepped forward put my hand up and said “quiet please” to her. The audience applauded, and by that time the house manager got to her and escorted her out — she was having some kind of psychotic breakdown, poor thing. The house manager thanked me, the people backstage thanked me, the directors, too. A couple said the fans in the balcony were ready to throw their Sony recorders at her. So there you have it.
But: The next day in The New York Daily News, the headline read “Soprano Tells Patron to Shut Up.” No good deed goes unpunished. To this day it continues. I must admit that this latest version is very imaginative, filled with even newer and better inventions.
Angel Joy Blue Makes a Name for Herself
This column, with its consistent interest in and reports about young singers, couldn’t possibly miss a Los Angeles Times story about a 24-year-old singer making her Los Angeles Opera debut as Musetta in La Bohème, under the direction of Plácido Domingo. Her name is Angel Joy Blue, she is a member of Domingo’s Young Artist Program, and she will never have a problem with name recognition.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
Isabelle is not the lone vocalist on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. She isn’t even the main vocalist. Renee Fleming is the voice heard in the movies. Isabelle, Renee, Enya, Annie Lennox and a few others are all on the recording.
Posted by a on April 9, 2008 at 3:40 pm