General Opera News

Started by uffeviking, April 08, 2007, 06:49:51 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Lilas Pastia

Lis, I haven't seen Kaufmann's Don José. Just seen a few Youtube extracts from the 2006 covent Garden produciton. He definitely has the chops for it. An extremely difficult role. It has to be sung, but the temptation to ham it and act as in a silent movie is hard to resist for many tenors. He doesn't seem to interact with Micaela in the first act ("Parle-moi de ma mère"). This is the part in the opera where complete surrender to the music and attention to the other character is paramount. Very few tenors manage to sing this part of the opera witout coming across as either uninterested or cloying. Kaufmann seems to alternate between shameless womanizer and obedient son. Maybe a valid view, but certainly unconventional. There's no question about his singing though. It's gorgeous. His ascent to the pp high ending is breathtaking. Some tenors resort to falsetto here, and it always meke me feel queasy (Vickers is a case in point).

Cura's is a thrillingly sung José, raw nerves and all in that dramatic last scene (is there a more shocking ending in all opera?). But I missed the first half of the Met broadcast, so I can't vouch for his lyrical capacities.

Lilas Pastia

QuoteJose Cura was last week's Met Don José.

Wendell E politely and very correctly pointed to me that Cura never sang Jose at the Met, and that Carmen was not staged there either this season.

What I heard was the Wiener Staatsoper production. Sorry for the confusion. "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera" relays Met broadcasts every weekend. When the Met season is over, broadcasts from the rest of the world fill in until it resumes in Fall.

So, maybe there's a chance that this superb team will be heard at the Met eventually!

Wendell_E

      
This caught my eye while I was looking at the upcoming week's Internet Opera broadcasts on operacast.com:

QuoteFRIDAY, JULY 3
GMT 1900/EDT 3:00PM
RADIO OESTERREICH INTERNATIONAL
Vienna, AUSTRIA

SPECIAL PROGRAM: George Gershwin: "Porgy and Bess"
Mit Jonathan Lemalu (Porgy), Measha Brueggergosman (Bess), Angela Renée Simpson (Serena), Michael Forest (Sportin Life), Gregg Baker, Bibiana Nwobilo und Roberta Alexander; Arnold Schoenberg Chor; Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Dirigent: Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Übertragung aus der Helmut-List-Halle in Graz im Rahmen der "styriarte 2009") (3 hrs., 30 min.)



Brueggergosman's out due to her recent health problems, and is being replaced by Isabelle Kabatu, the Dolly in Carreras's recording of Sly.

http://www.operacast.com/thisfri.htm
"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." ― Mark Twain

Lilas Pastia

What happened to Brueggergosman?  ??? She was born to sing Bess !

bhodges

Open-heart surgery!  :o  I saw the story on Cafe Aman, here.

--Bruce

Lilas Pastia


She recently lost 150 pounds  :o :o :o after a "Bikram yoga" and stomach bypass operation. Ouch!  Jessye Norman went from normal to obese in a few years. Faithful readers ;D will recall I described her 1970something appearance on stage as jaw dropping: bosom and belly appearing from left stage, followed 2 feet later by her regal face.

Brueggergosman has a sweeter, slightly wirier voice than Norman's. I hope she gets well soon. She is noted for her indomitable cheerfulness.

bhodges

I have seen her twice recently: first with the Cleveland Orchestra in the Wesendonck Lieder (excellent) and then with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (!) in John Cage's Aria (the best thing on a very long program).  A wonderful singer, very expressive. 

--Bruce

Brünnhilde ewig

Any GMG opera and Wagner fan attending all or part of the Seattle RING, the socalled 'Green Ring'?

I'll see Walküre on the 26th of August.  ;D

bhodges

By now it is all over the Internet and opera blogs, but just in case... 

On Saturday night Joyce DiDonato was starring in The Barber of Seville at Covent Garden, when early in Act I she broke her leg.  Apparently she decided "the show must go on" and performed the entire opera before eventually going to the emergency room.  She has put up some entertaining posts about it on her blog, Yankee Diva, here.

--Bruce

knight66

Covent Garden must contrast this with the withdrawl of Bryn from The Ring due to his son having an operation on his finger.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

jlaurson

Interview with the GMD of the Bavarian State Opera, Nikolaus Bachler:


"It Makes Me Unhappy When Nothing Happens"

QuoteNikolaus Bachler knows why he moved the Munich Opera administration's offices to the new building behind the opera house. When he started his new job as the Intendant, the general artistic and managing director of the Bavarian State Opera last year, he came in saying:

"People have to go new ways. Literally. For 30 years they were used to taking the elevator to the 5th floor of the old building... now everyone doesn't know where to go. That was strategically done, and it's very creative, in a way."

I cast my eye around Bachler's spacious corner office overlooking—through two floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows—the plaza in front of the former Royal Stables to the English Garden and reckon that he couldn't have been too displeased with some of the side-effects from achieving this creative confusion...


Wendell_E

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." ― Mark Twain

Sarastro

Quote from: knight on July 07, 2009, 07:35:43 AM
Covent Garden must contrast this with the withdrawl of Bryn from The Ring due to his son having an operation on his finger.

;D

Lilas Pastia

Quote from: Wendell_E on August 18, 2009, 07:53:26 PM
Hildegard Behrens dies in Tokyo

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gALQ4ey5uFSZvFj3k-8BLMn5GZ7gD9A5N7TG1

R.I.P.

A very intense performer. According to this article she was named singer of the year in 1996 and 1997 - at age 60 ! She seems to have been a late bloomer, bursting on the world scene when Karajan chose her as Salome. By then she was already over 40.

jlaurson

Quote from: Lilas Pastia on August 20, 2009, 05:45:08 PM
A very intense performer. According to this article she was named singer of the year in 1996 and 1997 - at age 60 ! She seems to have been a late bloomer, bursting on the world scene when Karajan chose her as Salome. By then she was already over 40.

20.8.09

Hildegard Behrens (1937-2009) on Record

As reported by every opera fan with a keyboard and internet access, Hildegard Behrens died Tuesday
night in a hospital in Tokyo. (Blog post in the NYT, for example; Tommasini's obituary here.) Behrens
leapt into the limelight at age 40, when Herbert von Karajan pronounced to have found his Salome.
"Ten years I have waited for a Salome; now I think I have found her" he allgedly proclaimed after
watching her in Düsseldorf (1974) in another of her signature roles, that of Marie in Wozzeck. He took
her to the Salzburg Festival, and from that moment on she was one of the great dramatic Strauss and
Wagner sopranos—with hailed stops at Shostakovich (Lady Macbeth) and Janáček (Jenůfa)—until her
voice left her in the early 90s...[/url]

DarkAngel

New production of Tosca at Metroploitan Opera goes over like a lead ballon.........
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/music/23opera.html

I would think this is a rare occurance to be loudly booed by opera crowd, anyone here attend the opening?
Anyone ever see someone take a curtain call and be booed off the stage?

Anne

I did not attend opening night.  In fact I've only gone to the Met once thanks to the kindness of a friend who invited my husband and myself to spend the weekend at his home.  We saw Karita Mattila sing Eva in Die Meistersinger.  I had pneumonia at the time but the tickets were already purchased and we had no idea if there would be another chance to go.  I spent 1/2 the time in the lobby and outdoors coughing.  Once I was on the plane headed for Michigan, I fell asleep and awoke as the plane was circling Detroit.

There was another time for booing at the Met in the late '90's.  The director's name was Wilson and it was a Wagner opera.  Wilson's style was to have the singers stand absolutely still, so there was no movement on stage.  That was loudly booed. It generated a lot of discussion on music boards.

Just recently a French tenor, Georgiou's ex-husband, was booed at La Scala; he was very upset about it.  Mirella Freni was also booed at La Scala.  Someone threw something at her and she was bleeding as a result but she held her ground and didn't retreat.  The next time she came there they were nicer to her.

Gabriel

A few words to tell you about a very beautiful musical experience I had today: I attended the first performance of Grétry's Andromaque since, if I remember correctly, 1781. In general I've considered his music as a bit light, in the best style of opéra comique.

Such prejudices were totally destroyed by today's performance, for Andromaque resulted to be a tragédie in the style of the great operas of Gluck. I wouldn't doubt to qualify it as a masterpiece of classical French opera. Grétry got perfectly the dynamic sense of Gluck's tragedy, adding his own contributions: some very strange modulations, experimental textures, and even explorations in timbre that anticipate Méhul or Berlioz (the recitatives of Andromaque were often accompanied by three flutes, something quite unusual for those years). Really great music (and I can't understand how such a score could have been waiting for more than two centuries to be played again).

Grétry: Andromaque. October 18th 2009, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Van Wanroij, Wesseling, Guèze, Christoyannis. Orchestre et Choeur du Concert Spirituel, Les Chantres du CMBV, Hervé Niquet.

knight66

DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

listener

Vancouver BC  2010-2011 season

The world première of a brand-new VO-commissioned opera, the appearance of the prodigiously talented stage director Sir Jonathan Miller, the return of one of opera's most coveted sopranos, and the Vancouver première of Mozart's rarely-performed La Clemenza di Tito are just four highlights of Vancouver Opera's 51st season.

VO's 2010-2011 season will include Lillian Alling, by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell (October 16 – 23, 2010); Donizetti's moving Lucia di Lammermoor (December 4 – 11, 2010); Mozart's final opera, La Clemenza di Tito (February 5 –12, 2011); and Verdi's beloved La Traviata (April 30 – May 12, 2011).

link  http://vancouveropera.blogspot.com/
"Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail as you walk through life's pathway."