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FEATURE: LETTER FROM L.A.
February 26-29, 2004
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By Janos Gereben
LOS ANGELES — In the middle of a month-long run of Madama Butterfly, new principal singers made their debut Thursday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It couldn't have been routine for this was a production by Robert Wilson unlike the traditional Butterfly, a bizarre world of standoffish "love" where the lovers don't touch or even look at each other. The new Cio-Cio San, Xiu Wei Sun, and Pinkerton, Walter Borin, lived up to the difficult demands of the ultra-minimalist production, and their small, pleasant voices blended well with Kent Nagano's restrained, chamber-music-like orchestral accompaniment
Borin has the smaller, but more reliable voice. Tiny Xiu Wei Sun produces a rougher, louder sound, but not always on pitch. Borin's constant examination of the ceiling, with a permanently smug expression, and her words of unconditional devotion and bold rapture addressed to wherever he wasn't both scaled the heights of anti-acting.
Wilson's production of a bare stage, spastic/pseudo-"Oriental" movements for Butterfly along with sumptuous costumes (by Frida Parmeggiani) from some other planet was done for Opera Bastille a decade old and is famous and infamous but made a curiously mild-mannered impression at its North American premiere. Possibly Wilson would have preferred a mix of boos and cheers to what actually happened: uniformly polite applause, and mild approval for an "interesting" production. Celebrating its 100th birthday, Butterfly has been done every which way through the years. The emphasis is usually on passion and tragedy. Occasionally aspects of American imperialism are highlighted and/or the ethnic/economic/political East-West clash. Wilson removes the passion, but leaves everything else in, adding a Marat/Sade aspect of clinical disconnect and barely-controlled insanity throughout.
The other cast members, holdovers in the run, ranged in their performances from the excellence of Susanna Poretsky's Suzuki and Greg Fedderly's Goro, to Alan Opie (Sharpless) whose voice is now barely suitable for the role but is an impressive stage presence. Whatever one felt about the production, there was fine payoff in the exceptionally clear, clean, unsentimental and yet resolutely romantic orchestral performance under Nagano's direction.
Surprisingly effective as Kent Nagano's Butterfly was, coming from somebody not readily identified with Puccini, when he appeared to lead the Los Angeles Opera's Saturday matinee of Die Frau ohne Schatten, the expectation was quite different. Based on his experience and musical interest, the complex and difficult Richard Strauss score would surely be his to master. And so it was. It's still a couple of years before he takes over artistic direction of Strauss' "home company," Munich's Bavarian State Opera, but Nagano is already proving that he belongs there.
With David Hockney's fairytale sets, in John Cox's excellent production, and with an impressive cast, Nagano made the orchestra and the music the rightful centerpiece of the performance. However dense the textures in Strauss' score, there was clarity and the "line" was maintained consistently. Equally important, the balance favored the singers, but not at the cost of holding down the sound from the pit; Nagano guided the orchestral crescendos to the work's great musical/dramatic climaxes so that at the right moment, voices soared.
The Emperor and the Empress usually get top billing, but the roles of the Dyer's Wife and the Nurse are 10 or 20 times the length of the royal pair's contributions. They do the heavy lifting — and three hours of Strauss is heavy, indeed. Linda Watson as the Wife and Doris Soffel as the Nurse were superb. Except for a strange pants suit Watson had to wear, she did everything right, singing rough, shrewish phrases faithfully to the character, and yet with great musical beauty. Soffel's wicked witch of a Nurse was also dramatically convincing, and the voice kept growing throughout the performance, until reaching — just in time for the story — a terrifying climax. Wolfgang Brendel's Barak is a class act, dramatically and vocally; the voice is smaller than one remembers, but its warmth and elegance are as before. Brian Asawa sang the Apparition, somewhat short of fervor and musical aggressiveness.
Robert Dean Smith's Emperor was well sung (not much he can do with the character, especially given his silly hoopskirt-like costume). It was clear why Smith has become Bayreuth's standard Heldentenor, though occasionally he had to make an audible effort to reach high notes. Inga Nielsen as the Empress sang correctly and prettily, but the Empress should do better than that. This is an Empress who is believable when she
tries to portray a servant, but neither in her presence nor in the voice was
there the commanding majesty she is expected to convey.
Royalty was well represented in the orchestra pit, however. From concertmaster Stuart Canin and the string
sections to the much-taxed woodwinds and the greatly challenged brass, all turned out well. There were many small cuts in the score, but the performing version came from a trusted, authentic place: Karl Böhm's version used at the Met. It seems, however, that Böhm cut less when he led performances in San Francisco. Then, almost certainly, the three obnoxious brothers had more, actually too much, stage time.
The composer Osvaldo Golijov, a quiet, shy 43-year-old, stole the show Friday night in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's all-Argentinian program. He prevailed alongside two of his illustrious countrymen, no less than Astor Piazzolla and Alberto Ginastera.
This concert, added to the West Coast premiere of Golijov's opera, Ainamadar, on Sunday (see review below), created a major new appreciation for this composer. Until now, ironically, this Jewish composer has been known for and identified with his Hispanic "folk Mass," La Pasión según San Marcos. The highlight of the Friday concert was Golijov's Last Round, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya on fire, and played by the Philharmonic as if possessed,
Written in 1996 for an English chamber group but having had limited exposure in the US, the Last Round consists of two contrasting parts, which combine into an overwhelming Gestalt. The first movement is a tribute to the spirit of the bandoneón, though actually not using the accordion-like instrument itself. That Golijov explains saying, "In the shadow of Piazzolla, [using the bandoneón] is just not to be done any more than composing mazurkas after Chopin." That first movement is a brilliant, headlong rush into a sonic explosion. The first-chair players stand (in the spirit of the tango), and the dark-hued strings create a syncopated turmoil that would be as much at home in Bartók's Hungary and Janácek's Moravia as in Piazzolla's Argentina.
The second movement is a prayer-like adagio, a series of simple, heartfelt variations on a Carlos Gardel song. They weave a seductive symphonic spell around the theme of "Muertes del angel." In just 15 minutes, Last Round pursues a breathtaking journey, with as much substance as some great hour-long symphonic works. The Philharmonic itself was hardly recognizable, so much has it changed as a result of Disney Hall's incredible acoustics. Now the musicians can hear each other — and each player recognizes that his or her instrument can be clearly distinguished anywhere in the hall. The Los Angeles orchestra has taken a quantum leap in quality. The orchestra shone in both Piazzolla's Bandoneón Concerto (with Horacio Romo) and Tangazo, and in Ginastera's Variaciones concertantes. Principal horn Elizabeth Cook-Shen produced a wonderfully warm, singing tone in her Tangazo solo, and in the Ginastera, where a concerto-for-orchestra structure features all the principal players. Firsts among equals were concertmaster Martin Chalifour, cellist Peter Stumpf (who must have one of the great instruments), violist Dale Hikawa Silverman (whose passionate playing was astounding), oboist Marion Arthur Kuszyk, and bassist Christopher Hanulik. However many raves about Disney Hall you might have read (the most complete being here), there is no substitute for experiencing it for yourself. Before the concert I politely listened to a colleague comparing the hall's sound with the most famous concert venues in Europe. Once the concert began, I knew he was wrong. Disney is better. In no other hall have I heard sound that live, immediate, vibrant, and glorious. In fact, the only problem with the creation of acousticians Yasuhisa Toyota and Minoru Nagata is that it pretty much spoils all other venues in comparison.
As you sit, seemingly in the nave of a ship-like cathedral, with that wild
bunch of wood-covered organ pipes up front, blue patches of "sky"
interspersed with gently curving blond wood surfaces, the place feels good, comfortable, and the perfect setting for such a superb concert as the Philharmonic produced for its tribute to Argentina on this night.
At the West Coast premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar in Disney Hall Sunday night, you catch your breath during the opening bars and, seemingly, hold it for 65 minutes. The audience did even better, sitting silently after the music ended, before exploding in a 10-minute ovation.
Ainadamar is the Moorish "fountain of youth" near Granada, where Federico Garcia Lorca and other civilians were executed without a trial. This was in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Unlike another recent work about the poet, Nilo Cruz's complex, lengthy Lorca in a Green Dress, the opera doesn't deal with Lorca's psychological/political history, but presents characters and relationships and, above all, moves the listener. The music has many sources — from flamenco to early, lush Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss at maximum intensity — but Ainadamar is all of one piece and it's all Golijov's.
The 2003 work, premiered at Tanglewood last fall, is a glorious contribution to the genre of musical theater. Its simple melodrama, gripping story-telling, sense of sorrow, tragic conclusion leading to true catharsis put it in the same class with Sondheim's Passion. (Sondheim's opera is called a musical, while Ainadamar is presented as an opera, although it's clearly a zarzuela. Categories don't matter; whatever makes you hold your breath does.) Miguel Harth-Bedoya led the stellar cast and Los Angeles Philharmonic with fervor and excellence.
Dawn Upshaw has been indisposed several times in recent months; her illness, in fact, led to the cancellation of Ainadamar at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Here she was fine, delivering a most striking vocal/dramatic performance. She sang the role of the actress Margarita Xirgu, who is about to go on stage, but feels lost in her memories of Lorca, the friend whose sudden, violent death haunted her throughout her life. Lorca himself appears in Xirgu's fantasy, sung by Kelley O'Connor, a very young contralto with an astonishing voice. Think of a male alto and tweak the sound to make it a female bass-baritone . . . with some great high notes. Neither the strangeness of O'Connor's voice nor the trouser role representing Lorca's sexual ambiguity matters. She is Lorca and owns the role. Amanda Forsythe, with a brilliant coloratura, is the third leading singer as the young Margarita. The three sing in trio near the end of the work, bringing the Rosenkavalier finale to mind, though the music is firmly in the Spanish idiom. There are numerous small roles, and a sextet of young women who participate in and comment on the action. Staged on a platform above the orchestra, the production pointed at a weakness of the otherwise near-perfect Disney Hall. With the orchestra front-and-center, and the singers behind the musicians, it was a "reversed Bayreuth" sound, inevitably masking the voices. Future concert performances will have to deal with this problem of placement. Or, Ainadamar might be presented in an opera house, possibly as part of a double- or even triple-bill . . . perhaps with works by Falla, Granados and Piazzolla, for a great Hispanic musical orgy.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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Linda Watson (Barak's Wife)
Inga Nielsen (Empress)
Amanda Forsythe (the young Margarita)