Noted.

I think I have discovered Obama's secret governing inspiration:

We interrupt this 19th-century broadcast...

...To bring you a few non-Met operatic events, mostly of the 17th- and 20th-centuries, a change from my normal nonstop late-18th, 19th-, and selective 20th-century coverage around here. There is an article on non-Met opera in the NY Times today, but they missed a few things that I would consider potential season highlights (and most of them are pretty cheap, too).

1. I did catch Opera Omnia's L'incoronazione di Poppea at Le Poisson Rouge the other week, and it was utterly wonderful. Good singing, fun staging, great orchestra (orchestra? well, those folks in the pit, er, off to the side of the stage), nice venue, good beer. What more could you ask for? Maybe some Caccini next? Their future plans will be unveiled, hopefully soon, here.

2. The Wooster Group takes on opera. It's called La Didone and has some things in common with Cavalli's opera of the same title. They describe it thusly:

In The Wooster Group's production of LA DIDONE, Francesco Cavalli's opera, with libretto by Francesco Busenello, (1641) and Mario Brava's cult movie Terrore nello spazio (1965) collide in a war-like symbiosis, dropping Aeneas' ships onto a forbidding planetary landscape and forming a synergy between early baroque opera and pre-moonlanding sci-fi.

Those guys are so predictable. I totally saw this coming. Open rehearsals this month, full run in March, info here.

3. The mother of us all, La Cieca, has already highlighted an interesting production of The Tales of Hoffmann (yes, it's 19th-century, but it's on a dock in Brooklyn). Don't think I'll be able to make it, unfortunately, but you should, and tell me how it is.

4. As mentioned in the Times article, the Juilliard Opera Center will be doing an awesome-sounding triple bill of obscure works:

MUSSORGSKY / TCHEREPNIN The Marriage (Zhenit’ba) music and libretto by Modest Mussorgsky, based on the comedic social-satire by Gogol; KRENEK Heavyweight, or The Pride of the Nation, Op. 55 (Schwergewicht oder Die Ehre der Nation) a farce about European culture between the world wars, with music and libretto by Ernst Krenek; FLEISCHMANN / SHOSTAKOVICH Rothschild’s Violin (Skripka Rotshilda) music and libretto by Benjamin Fleischmann, completed and partly orchestrated by Dmitri Shostakovich, after a short story by Chekhov

Can't find a good website for this, but here's the calendar.

5. A little further down the road, looks like Philly will be the place to be this spring, particularly if you like really loud Italian stuff. AVA will be doing Respighi's La fiamma (January) and, on the traditional side, OCP's non-Zeff Turandot (February). Also one loud Austrian when Curtis Opera does Wozzeck in March (they are also producing a Peter Brooks version of Pelleas, Menotti's The Medium, and Il viaggio a Rheims, check it out).

6. No date yet, but I'll so be at Mark Morris's Haydn opera mentioned in the Times article.

Also, I so needed this (below). See you after La Didone, and then Opening Night (from the park, naturally). That is all.

Met 08-09 Season Preview

Honestly, I’m not super-psyched for this season. But since I’m studying for my qualifying exams this year and working on various other time-consuming projects, I’m not complaining too much about a reduced desire to go to the opera. Since there are fewer things I want to see, I should be able to make it to a good amount of them (at least the ones in the fall). So here's a rough idea of what you might see on this blog in coming months. All categorizations are strictly provisional.

*indicates a new production.

Won’t Miss

• *La Damnation de Faust: I like Berlioz, Lepage, Graham, and Giordani, so why would I miss it? Because this production is already out on DVD? I promise not to watch it, even though from the Met seat I will get, it will probably look better on my iPod (but not sound better!).
• *Doctor Atomic
• Don Giovanni: I’ve seen Don Schott already (you should see him too, especially if he takes off his shirt), and this production is kind of tame. But between the fact that it’s Don Giovanni, with Langrée conducting, and the three super Donna Elviras, you can’t lose. I’ll probably hit up the fall run, because I like Stoyanova.
• Queen of Spades
• Rusalka: I’ll have to Czech this one out. Sorry.
• Salome
• *Il Trovatore
  

I have to conclude from this selection that I have a taste for opera that isn't necessarily in Italian, which cuts down my options somewhat at the Met.

Undecided

• La Traviata: It’s an old and lame production, but I love Anja Harteros.
  
• La Gioconda: I saw the last time it was around, but I have a weakness for this opera. Must confess to not being a Podles, uh, what are her fans called? Podles Pushers?
  
• La Cenerentola
  
• Elisir d’Amore
• 125th Anniversary Gala: officially the coolest-sounding gala ever. But it’s only one night, so I make no promises. Standing room, perhaps.
• Orfeo ed Eurydice
• *Rondine: Not a great opera, but I should see rarities, right?
• *Thaïs
• Tristan und Isolde: Will a more spry cast liven up this static production or is that not allowed?
• Opening Night: “Maybe” in the unlikely case a ticket lands in my lap. I wonder what they’ll use as the Capriccio set, the Met doesn’t own a Capriccio, they borrowed the one for Kiri, right?

Will Miss

• The Ring: Sorry. but a few months before one’s qualifying exams is not the time to devote 18 hours of one’s life (plus much travel time) to Wagner operas. Especially when it’s the Otto Schenk production.
• Adriana Lecouvreur
• La Bohème: I feel like I have been to too many Bohèmes, though I have not seen the famous Met one. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, though, so I’m not in a hurry.
• Cav/Pag
• Eugene Onegin
  
• Lucia: Shut up, I saw it last year
• Madama Butterfly: Saw it last two seasons
• Magic Flute
  
• Rigoletto
• *La Sonnambula: Confession: I really don’t like Bellini much. I have to stop typing now because you probably now hate me.

Hiatus

In case you haven't noticed, this blog will be on the back burner for a while as I approach qualifying exams. They aren't until May, though hopefully I'll see at least a few operas before then.

I did see Die Soldaten, but did not find the energy to blog about it. Go read what Alex Ross said.

Abducted

Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Metropolitan Opera, 5/7/08. Diana Damrau, Aleksandra Kurzak, Matthew Polenzani, Steve Davislim, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Matthias von Stegmann. David Robertson.

I didn't take notes and am very tired, so this is going to be a bit shorter than usual.

This was one of those Volpe-fashioned "opera and nothing but the opera" nights at the Met. Production and stage direction and stuff took a backseat. Acually, singspiel and nothing but the singspiel, and herein lies a problem. The spiel is already pretty half-assed, Act III is utterly unnecessary and the characters are nothing but stock types. On the sing side, several of the arias seem to be about 20% too long. Add a real actor as Bassa Selim to point out that Opera Acting isn't the same thing as Actual Acting and you have, well, not much.

So the singing is going to be the main attraction for this piece most of the time anyway (unless you're a Regie director--a production I saw at the Wiener Burgtheater two years ago showed how weird this can get). But even B+ Mozart is better than A of just about anyone else as far as I'm concerned, and the singing here was excellent.

This was my second Entführung, and my second that featured Diana Damrau as Konstanze. She sings it with all the fireworks one could desire, from huge high notes to secure low ones. I wouldn't describe her voice as rich or warm, but it has a certain shiny, brilliant glamor. Acting-wise, she overcompensated for the bare bones production in "Ach, ich liebe," but calmed down in the later two acts.

Matthew Polenzani hit Belmonte's second Act I aria out of the park, I thought. It was gorgeous. Beautiful tone, elegant phrasing, amazing dynamic control, the whole deal. The other arias didn't quite get to this level. His coloratura didn't quite work right, but I'm not sure why. The sound is a little too thick or something for the notes to be clear.

In the smaller roles, Aleksandra Kurzak sang all those high notes as Blonde, but I actually thought her middle voice sounded very pleasant. Her high notes are there but the sound is kind of white, and since a lot of the role is in the middle voice anyway this was good. Pedrillo always struck me as an utterly thankless role except for the romance which is so late in the opera that no one's really paying attention, but Steve Davislim was sufficiently cute and sang the aria nicely. Polenzani drowned him out in the ensembles, though. These non-Turkish characters in an ensemble remind me of La finta semplice's plethora of sopranos and tenors. Kristinn Siegmundsson hammed it up as Osmin (he must have a line in Turks, I have also seen him as the pasha in L'italiana in Algeri). He doesn't really have the low F, I could hear some sort of rumbling but no clear tone.

I was surprised at how, uh, rudimentary the acting seemed. Since everything seemed utterly by-the-book (though the Osmin/Pedrillo stuff was charmingly done), I'm not going to really blame the singers here for not coming up with much in the way of characterization. Particularly when we're talking about these non-characters. The set matches this acting, and can be charitably described as basic. Act II looks vaguely Japanese. Not sure what's up with that.

So, yeah, if you listened to the broadcast except for the hearing through speakers part you got the best part of the deal.

Book Smut

I was recently directed to this lovely collection of "hot library smut." One of my favorites, not featured on that page, is the Stift St. Florian, outside of Linz:
But when it comes to cover design, don't let the following happen to you! (Sorry for the crappy first picture, my digital camera has died so I couldn't take a shot of my own copy.)
As for teh operas, probably, Entführung this Wednesday and Clemenza a week from Thursday. Probably. We'll see.

Manon Lescaut on TV

Right now, on Thirteen at least.

My review of the first performance of this run here.

Je vais marcher dans votre co-production

La Fille du Régiment, Met Opera, 4/21/08. Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Flórez, Felicity Palmer, Alessandro Corbelli et. al. Marco Armiliato.

Donizetti's Fille du Régiment is an obsession-filled story of a twisted nuclear family. Only when Marie has shed her fractured paternal attachment with the regiment and reluctantly conformed to a traditional model of feminine conduct can she be united with her love, Tonio, who must in turn trade his lederhosen for a uniform to prove his masculinity. Don't make me tell you about the tank.

Just kidding. Mostly. Been reading some Freud recently; it gets to you.

This production is a hoot. It kept coming very close to the line of Too Much, but never really crossed it.

I liked Natalie Dessay's Marie a lot more than I liked her Lucia (not reviewed here because I saw the dress rehearsal). Her Marie is a little like a cartoon character, mixed with a slightly mystifying dose of Olympia and occasionally capable of brief introspection. Her voice is still razor-like and somewhat vinegary, but it suits this role and her interpretation of it precisely. Her middle voice had something of a glow to it that I didn't hear in her Lucia, and her manic presence is also more at home as Marie than as Lucia (where she was hopelessly muted until the Mad Scene). "Forceful" would perhaps describe her voice, but, well, Marie is forceful too. The coloratura is so integrated with the stage action, it's both funny and entirely verisimilar in an operatic way.

My appreciation of this opera will probably be forever hampered by my utter ambivalence about the 9 or however many high C's that take up residence in Tonio's "Ah! mes amis." I have nothing but praise for Senor Flórez's panache in singing them, and recognize that it's an amazing feat, it's just not my preferred mode of vocal athleticism. And I don't find the music itself of this number very interesting. Yes, he sang it twice, it was pretty great the second time too, I'm sure I just saw vocal history but give me the regiment song or the Act II trio, or something with lots of coloratura, or whatever. Bwah. Sorry.

But I love love love Juan Diego Flórez. He's got a lot more than the high C's, namely charm and style. The slow parts were beautiful, and the cute parts totally cute. He's funny without forcing anything. Did I mention that his Tonio is absolutely adorable? Because he is.

I think Alessandro Corbelli has somewhat more than the amount of voice required of your average buffo but somewhat less than would be required by most other operatic roles. Tonight, at least, he sounded somewhat small and not quite boomy enough. He's very amusing and his French is fine, though. Felicity Palmer was, as usual, both hilarious and vocally authoritative as the Marquise, nice piano playing too (and re Maury's question: her piano bit sounded vaguely like Act III of Wozzeck to me). Marian Seldes didn't steal the show as the Duchess of Krakenthorp, which I think is a good thing. She did make it pretty funny though, including a recurring joke about a bobsled team that made wonderfully little sense.

They all sell the thing, perhaps a little too well. There isn't a lot of time to breathe. Sometimes the production feels like a slightly overoiled machine. Donizetti comedy is goofy but lovable, without the spicy touch of the surreal that can invade Rossini opera buffa. To be the truly anarchic experience this sucker wants to be, it could use a few more touches of interpolated Wacky to take it out of the "mildly zany" (pace Maury) and into the "totally weird" (though a little bobsled joke goes a long way), or it needs to take the piece as it is and play it a little more straight. It feels like they're going to squeeze the opera too hard and it's going to break, though it never quite happens. The emotional scale is a little too big, they want to be able to be touching and wacky at the same time but the gear shifts don't happen quickly or completely enough and you end up on a fence.

These sell-out-before-anyone-has-seen-it productions bother me. I don't think it's been overhyped exactly, it just seems like it has been ordained a hit regardless of its actual quality. Like the encore, it seems somewhat planned out and calculated when it could use some spontaneity. It's symptomatic of the gains and the losses you get when you import or co-produce something with other houses (in this case, two others--ROH and the Wiener Staatsoper). It arrives battle-tested but maybe just a little bit shrink-wrapped.

Color and light

Sunday in the Park with George, Roundabout Theater Company, 4/5/08.

I really love Sondheim, and wasn't about to miss this first Broadway revival of one of his most important and rarely-produced shows, particularly as it came very highly recommended from a friend who saw the original run in London. The academic obligations have been brutal recently, so I didn't have time to write this up until now. As for future opera, well, nothing very soon, which has more to do with my personal proclivities than an acute shortage of time (don't like Glass much, no desire to see another Bohème).

Sunday is one of the most Sondheim-y of Sondheim shows, meaning that it is full of the tricky, angular melodies, odd subject matter, and outwardly highly analytic, unsentimentalized storytelling singled out by both fans and detractors. It doesn't have many of the triumphant paeans to inspiration of most art about art, but the ones it has are, well, pretty spectacular. While I'm not as allergic to Act II as some people, my main worry is that for a show that touches on so many interesting complexities, its last 15 minutes somehow feel altogether mundane and generic. "Move on" is too close to today's ubiquitous, meaningless "move forward."

But this production must be seen to be believed. I've seen lots of projection scenery used before. Most of the unsubtle efforts have been unsuccessful (the Wiener Staatsoper's Moses und Aron) and the understated ones much more successful (the Met's War and Peace, the only Tsypin production I like). This production uses more projections than most of these others combined (and very little else) and it is almost faultless. Things that had been painted drops in the original production are projections, but unlike painted drops, projections can move. The set, an elegant set of pure white walls, becomes George's canvas. As he imagines things added or subtracted, they appear and disappear. There's some gimmickry, mostly in some projected dogs and a very silent soldier in Act I, but it's a revelation. The trapdoors between George's painting and the dialogue of the characters are suddenly a visual reality. It all works seamlessly. And it's gorgeous.

Musically, I was less happy. I may have unrealistic standards for musical theater, but, honestly, if you're miking your sound and putting it through a computer you have no excuse if the balance is off. For one thing, the orchestra was far too small, as was the chorus, for the Act I finale to make anywhere near the impression it does on the recording (which probably had more musicians than the original stage production did, recordings are usually augmented). The electronics in Act II had been updated, but were still kind of cheesy. I guess that's the point, at least some of the time. But I think the score lost a good amount of potential grandeur.

I found the acting mostly very good. Neither Daniel Evans nor Jenna Russell have the star power or zing of the original cast, but this didn't seem at all a bad thing. Evans's George is less manic energy and more self-contained and awkward, his voice somewhat nasal and precise rather than melodious. Russell's Dot generous and wise, as is her Marie (in a different way, of course). Her voice does not sound ideal for the role; she sounds more like a soprano than a belter and doesn't always have the chest voice oomph to give Dot's music the punch it demands, but this fits with her more restrained interpretation. The supporting character are similarly sympathetic and uncarictatured, which minimizes the show's occasional tendencies towards brutal satire (with the exception of the Americans in Act I, who are as ugly as ever).

While for me musical reservations are no small matter, I can highly recommend this show on almost every other count. Go see it, God knows when you'll get the chance again.

Where art thou

Just a reminder if you're stopping by: the Met's Romèo et Juliette with Anna Netrebko will be broadcast on most PBS stations at 8:00 tonight (it's on NYC's Thirteen, at least).

My thoughts on this production here. (I saw Joseph Kaiser as Romèo; the broadcast will feature the inimitable Roberto Alagna.)

Later. Alagna sounds decent if intonationally and rhythmically suspect at times. There was a solid high C at the end of the fight scene. I'm checking out now, at the beginning of Act V. I can only take so much Gounod. I know my mom is going to call me tomorrow and tell me that she liked it but thought Alagna looked too old. And I thought it was us younguns who were promoting lookism in opera.

Also, how long has my blog's title been misspelled in the header? That's rather embarrassing. I'm somewhat dyslexic and have trouble typing the URL in correctly sometimes, but I like the title too much to change it. I can't believe I messed this one up, though!

I'm going to Sunday in the Park with George on Saturday night. We'll see if the orchestration in Act II has survived the '80s.

Taking a gamble

Prokofiev, The Gambler. Metropolitan Opera, 3/1/08.

I called my mom and told her I was going to see a Russian opera.

"Is Dmitri Hvorostovsky in it?" she asked.
"No."
"Then I don't care."

That seems to be the reaction of the blogosphere (with the exception of Opera Chic), which is a shame. It's quite marvelous.

Knowledgeable persons told me to listen to it beforehand. Being a slacker, I didn't, but I didn't mind. I thought the music was totally accessible, vivid, exciting, powerful, and all that. The orchestra and Gergiev were super. It's not as easy on the ears as War and Peace, but it's not Moses und Aron, either (which, by the way, is fantastic).

Dramatically, though, I found it challenging. I just couldn't quite parse it psychologically. I can tell you it's about a lot of obsessive gamblers who destroy their relationships, but I can't tell you much about what it's about. I think I'm going to have to let it grow on me a little; these twentieth-century jobs just don't follow any rules. And that's why I love 'em.

The production didn't really help me get into it, either. Alexei's depressing little room was hanging out stage left and sometimes when something serious was happening it would happen there instead of in the main area. Sometimes this was because it was something happening in his room, but sometimes it seemed to be just because. I tried to unpack something symbolic from this about reality and delusion or something but can't quite get it to all add up. Gah, if I weren't so busy I would go again and try to figure it out more, but that's not going to happen.

This being a George Tsypin-designed production, we had lots and lots of shiny swoopy mystery set pieces, a raked stage, and a giant tubular frame thing I could swear I saw in Mazeppa but then it had severed heads hanging from it, not a spinning center roulette wheel bit with flashing lights that when vertical looks more like a ferris wheel. One of the shiny bits shoots sparks when Granny tells the General that she absolutely won't give him any money. It's sort of dumb, but it's fun. But later a horse statue starts shooting sparks and shoots up into the flies at a very tense moment near the end of the opera, which is just egregiously wrong. It looked silly, people laughed, and it totally broke the mood, which had been cooking along quite nicely. And it was so near the end we never really got back into it.

Other than the goofy set, the production was dramatically quite strong. It's mostly the same cast as the 2001 premier of this Temur Chkheidze production, and the mostly-Russian cast has lived with these roles (and, I think, each other in these roles) long enough for it to be detailed and precise. The principals seemed more at ease and confident than most of the casts I've seen this season. The chorus came out at one point in Act IV and just lined up across the stage in generic concert black and I kind of wondered if someone had forgotten to stage them, but whatever.

The best thing I can say about the singing was that it was as intense as the acting. Which, in this opera, is really important. Vladimir Galouzine does not have the most beautiful voice, it can be metallic and lacks much in the way of ring. But he's so loud, and so committed, that it absolutely works. I'm not sure if a pretty voice would have helped too much. Olga Gurykova had a rough first two acts with some very uneven singing--loud and wobbly high notes and not very audible other notes--but seemed to smooth out a bit after intermission and, while still a bit wobbly and harsh of tone, was solid. Sergei Aleksashkin was overpowered by the orchestra at some key moments but his solo scene was still very memorable, though I'm not convinced his voice is really big enough for the role. Olga Savova sounded good and very very very loud as Blanche (according to her bio, she's a Brunnhilde, which doesn't entirely surprise me). ETA: How could I have forgotten the wonderful Larissa Diadkova, who was great as Granny, who has quite an attitude?

So, yeah. Go. It's not hard to get a ticket. You're missing out if you don't.

As for me, I'm skipping Bohème and probably Satayagraha as well. So I probably won't be back until Tito, Fille, and maybe Macbeth if my liking for René Pape turns out to be stronger than my dislike for Andrea Gruber. Unless something else pops up.

Ernani

Verdi-Piave, Ernani. Metropolitan Opera, 3/21/08. With Angela Meade, Marcello Giordani, Thomas Hampson, Ferruccio Furlanetto; Roberto Abbado. Production by Pier Luigi Samritani. Peter McClintock, stage director

Ernani has to set some record for number of drawn sharp objects on stage. Every ten minutes the chorus of bandits or the king's guard collectively draw their swords, or Elvira whips out her knife, or Silva waves a sword at someone, or something. It's amazing that the body count isn't higher.

This was fitting, as I was in a foul mood yesterday. I had been shopping for a new pair of stronger opera glasses (to avoid another Grimes-style "I can't see anything" fiasco) and all of the camera stores were closed for Purim. WTF, Purim isn't an important holiday and I was already mad at Christians for hijacking classical radio with their Passions this week, so I was feeling irreligious. It was nice to hear a good Beviam! Beviam! chorus that involved drinking something other than das Blut Jesu.

And I like Ernani a lot. I'm not going to complain about the plot. It might involve too many hiding spots and too much honor but it's vintage 19th-century Italian and if you don't like this kind of thing you can just forget about a lot of Italian opera. It doesn't have the wonderful pacing of later Verdi, but it gets the job done and the tension never lets up.

Not such a fan of conductor Roberto Abbado. Things hung together, but the orchestra was way too loud. I don't want to hear oom-pahs, even if they are exquisitely played oom-pahs, I want to hear the singers. Some tempos were on the slow side, but it was mostly the balance that was the problem. Also the lack of real climaxes in the ensembles. Things just didn't have enough forward momentum towards the high points. I know it's all high dramatic stuff, but there's tense and there's tense, and there wasn't much in the way of differentiation.

The big story, I suppose, was debuting soprano Angela Meade, subbing for the ailing Sondra Radvonovsky. She's got a big, lovely, youthful sound with a lot of vibrato but not in an annoying way. Her high notes are great and she has a chest voice (though it seemed perilous intonation-wise), she disappears a little bit in the lower middle part of her range, and a trill of the lasar gun Sutherland variety. Her diction is somewhat lacking. She was a fine Elvira, but at this point at least she seems to be a big lyric with a nice airy sound. I don't think her sound has the weight and body for most Verdi; I can't hear her in Trovatore or Ballo at this point. Her "Ernani involami" was more gentle and pretty than most (which tend towards the aggressive), which was actually a nice change. But anything requiring a young-sounding but big lyric with good coloratura would be a good bet. She's large, but expressive and moves well even on all those perilous stairs that feature in the sets for this opera.

Next up is Marcello Giordani in the title role. I like him a lot and his Italian-ness is unquestionable, but I feared at the beginning of this opera his lack of subtlety combined with the music's lack of subtlety was going to be a fatefully unsubtle combination. The actual problem was that his sound seemed small and pinched in Act I, but by Act II he seemed to open up to his more usual squillo-ness and, while he is still kind of a cudgel of Italian tenoring (does the man sing anything other than forte? ever?), he's a good one and effective here, if not the knockout he was in Manon Lescaut (maybe it was just an off night for him).

His opposite was Thomas Hampson as Carlo, who has even less of an Italian sound than La Karita in said Manon Lescaut but probably an excess amount of subtlety for this sort of music. Sometimes he seemed to be straining towards a much rounder sound than he has, which mostly resulted in some unfortunate sforzandi. Once you (and he) got past the fact that Verdi-baritone booming just wasn't in the cards, much of it was very good, smart and interestingly done with good phrasing and details.

In the booming department we had Ferruccio Furlanetto as Silva. A bit woolly, yes, but a real bass like not so many are. And a real Italian bass. And his age was entirely appropriate. According to his bio in the program he has sung des Grieux in Manon, which I kind of doubt.

The production was the sort that you leave until the end to discuss. I like the many grand staircases, though it's somewhat odd to have parallel stair designs in three of the acts but almost entirely leave this out in Act II (a few steps, but nothing that could be called a staircase). Direction seemed to be more or less non-existent; there was much park and bark and frequent positioning into "trio configuration" or "quartet configuration" during orchestral introductions. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it mostly worked, but it seemed to miss some chances for some good drama. A little more over-the-topness was necessary. It's big and obvious, make it exciting. The production seems to be a bit in the vein of the Dexter Don Carlo (which I like a lot and though I hope the Hytner will be good I will be sad to see the Dexter go!) but the slight starkness didn't seem to be as carefully edited. Those leaves on the plain black floor in Act I are disconcerting.

But as a primarily musical performance (with some impressively elaborate and shiny costumes), a good time! Not to be missed for early Verdi fans in particular.

On that note, my bad Saturday mood is starting up. My computer, tuned to WQXR for the Tristan, crashed just in time to miss the curse.

CD covers

Brent has an indie rock CD cover meme. I made two, and while I admit to cheating a little bit with the Wikipedia part, that's only because the first thing that came up was an actual band. I think it worked pretty well:
No Photoshop here, though. All done with Word!

I'm going to Ernani on Friday, will report back after that. I'm busy trying to protect my identity. I'm just glad that the university in question is the richest school in the universe. If it had been one of the state schools I applied to, I'm sure they would have also felt bad but may not have been able to go all-out with the damage control.

Knights of the frayed XML

City Opera needs some website help, quick. My ticket-wrangling for King Arthur involved 45 minutes of battling with their website's "Server Error in '/' Application" notices, which interfered whenever I tried to check out. It took so long that by the time I got to the end of the process my cart was empty--my assigned seat getting progressively worse every time through--and I started the whole thing over again.

I then called the Box Office and spent 20 minutes on hold without even any hold music. I am severely dissatisfied with their customer service right now, but after some fuming at the woman I finally did manage to speak to, I will be there on Thursday.

I heard they were giving free seats to bloggers. But all I've gotten is an invitation to be a PR whore for a reality TV show. And it wasn't Project Runway. I thought about replying that I don't have a TV, which is a lie. The truth is, I have a TV (a CRT bought from an undergrad for $20) which is only hooked up to a DVD player to watch movies and gets no channels at all. Which is probably worse, actually.

Grimes

Peter Grimes, Metropolitan Opera, 2/28/08.

Yeah, I've just about given up on the punny titles. Sorry. Also about the lateness. The academic life is eating me alive currently, and will always come first (Professor, if you're still reading, take note!).

This was another one that stumped the busking flutist in the subway station, who was giving a uniquely pointless rendition of Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. On solo flute. Then he played Pomp and Circumstance, because Elgar was also English. Oh, yeah, the performance. In the opera house. Right.

After one more disclaimer: I like Britten, but am not a fanatic. This was my first time seeing Peter Grimes live.

Musically, it was stunning. I don't know where that chorus came from, but I don't think it's the one I was hearing a year ago. The blending problems have disappeared completely, and the result is very very very good. I think Doyle's static direction helped, but Donald Palumbo deserves an awful lot of credit. I already expected a lot of out the orchestra, and they delivered. This also goes out to conductor Donald Runnicles. I heard a few minor coordination problems in some exposed sections, and in the first act the orchestra drowned out the soloists more than a few times, but things settled down into consistent magnificence by Act II.

Before I get to the principals, the problem: that would be the production. I really really really didn't like John Doyle's Sweeney Todd, and somehow it doesn't surprise me that this production is a product of the same director. In Sweeney, the actor-instrumentalists seemed to be the only thing animating the blocking, and any good combinations were just a coincidence of the orchestration. So I wasn't sure what would happen when that element disappeared, and the answer is a lot of people standing still a lot. Not that there is anything inherently wrong about a very static production, but it didn't work out well here.

The set is a big dark wall that moves up and downstage, effectively making the stage considerably smaller at most points. A few scenes are opened out a bit, but for much of the time everyone is crowded down on the apron. Doors on the wall open to reveal bit characters, which I thought was one of the best parts of the set, making quick entrances and exits not seem awkward and emphasizing the survelliance of the borough residents. But the set was just kind of big and ugly without providing much of anything in the way of atmosphere or place (literal or not--it just loomed). It's the Season of the Unit Set at the Met this year, apparently.

All of this crowding downstage I think was supposed to convey a sense of claustrophobia but occasionally restricted the amount of movement that was possible in a crowded space. Too much of the blocking was tableau-like and flat, and restored none of the life that was sucked out by the set. The costumes were dark and monotonous, which sometimes made it difficult for me up in the Family Circle to identify who was singing, which is always a problem.

I gather that Anthony Dean Griffey is an experienced Grimes, and you could hear it. He has a beautifully pure tenor sound, but still projects enough for the house. But I'm afraid he didn't make a giant impression on me. I say all of this with a large grain of salt because I was, as I said, in the Family Circle. I don't think this production was directed in a way to work very well from such a distance, and I just lost so much of the intensity that I can only hope was more readily apparent from the orchestra. It's obvious that Grimes is complicated, but I could never really tell what the Griffey take on him was until the last act.

I love Patricia Racette, and she was marvelous here, though she suffered from some of the same dramatic vagueness. Her singing seemed absolutely perfect for Ellen Orford, and her diction outstanding (as was Griffey's).

Digression: I tried to not turn on the titles, but was struggling so much to understand things that I gave in halfway through Act I. I don't have enough experience know if this is normal for Britten in the Family Circle or not. I could tell there was a colorful mixture of accents at work, though.

I'm going to pull a Tommasini and not really say much specific about the other singers, but note that they were "strong," particularly Anthony Michaels-Moore's Balstrode (thankfully not pulling a Borodina and speaking the lines at the end very well).

Go see it if you can, but don't miss the radio broadcast for anything.

I suppose I have to mention Jon Vickers in here somewhere, because everyone does, but, to tell the truth I haven't seen him, because the DVD was checked out of the library (I watched the Zurich one with Ventris instead). But now he has been mentioned, and I will go back and watch the video once it reappears.