I love opera, bluegrass, burger joints and fictional detectives. Mostly, but not always, in that order. Formerly of Dunedin, formerly of Sydney, now travelling the world with the tenor in my life (Stuart Skelton) and blogging as I go.
Huge success. For everyone, my tenor included. Fabio Luisi had, happily enough, heard my telepathic wish for a slightly slower "Winterstürme", which was a lovely bonus in a generally excellent show. (I mean, it was beautiful the first time round too, but I'm always happy for extra basking time in that aria.) Bryn brought the house down, and rightly so. I was so pleased to have this second chance to see and hear this show – not to mention a second chance to worry needlessly about the Brünnhilde double in the final scene – and to say another quick hello to New York. So quick, in fact, that with the show running until after 11pm, and a cab to the airport arriving at 6.15am – not to mention the small matter of dinner in between – we didn't actually sleep until we were airborne. Not to worry. It was worth all the exhaustion.
May 10: Véronique Gens at Wigmore Hall
In the last few years it's been quite an extraordinary experience to finally see live performances by the singers who dominated my CD collection for years. I've ticked quite a few of them off the list – more than I could have hoped for in fact – but Véronique had eluded me until last Friday. I could hardly have wished for a more ideal first encounter than this, a recital of French songs. Débussy, Hahn, Chausson and Fauré...are you drooling yet? I was, and with good reason. She was as divine as I imagined she would be – and then she made life even better by singing one of my favourite songs in the world, French or otherwise, as her encore: Poulenc's "Les chemins de l'amour". And while I was still wiping away my tears from that, she followed up with Fauré's "Les roses d'Ispahan", another song to which I have a bit of a sentimental attachment. Thanks for reading my mind so completely, Véronique.
May 12: La bohème at the ROH
I had no plans to see this while in London because Royal Opera tickets are expensive, the show was pretty much sold out anyway, and besides (pardon the heresy) it's one of my least favourite operas. My plans changed thanks to the unexpected generosity of the lovely Madeline Pierard – New Zealand's Own! – who, as the ROH announced earlier in the day, was going on as Musetta in place of an indisposed Nuccia Focile. So, with permission from you-know-who to ditch that night's performance of Dutchman at the ENO, I took myself to Covent Garden for what turned out to be the best live Bohème of my operagoing career to date. Joe Calleja was a genuinely loveable Rodolfo, to whom I award a special citation for his incredibly upsetting (and totally believable) reaction to Mimì's death; Carmen Giannattasio's oh-so-Italianate Mimì had my attention from note one; and Madeleine was first hilarious and then heartbreaking as Musetta. By the time she reached her prayer in Act IV, I was wished she had a sequel to herself. Rodolfo's bohemian buddies were all very charmingly played too. And as ever, despite earlier hard-heartedness, I succumbed in the end to Puccini's exceptional powers of manipulation and spent the last twenty minutes sniffling along with the rest of the audience.
May 13: Madam Butterfly at the ENO
My favourite Puccini opera. Very nearly my favourite opera. I love it madly. And yes, if I'm honest, I'd probably prefer to hear it in Italian, but it doesn't really matter: that score is what it is, and it makes mincemeat of me no matter what the language. Imprinting and diva worship being what they are, my heart will always belong in the final reckoning to Cheryl Barker and to Moffatt Oxenbould's exquisite Opera Australia production; but I was still enchanted by both Mary Plazas's tiny, porcelain Cio-Cio San and by Anthony Minghella's mesmerising production. And it was just wonderful to see and to hear Pamela Helen Stephen as Suzuki. I last heard her in Australia, when her late and much-missed husband Richard Hickox was chief conductor of Opera Australia. She was lovely then, and she's even lovelier now: a completely captivating Suzuki, which is no mean feat given how little Puccini gives her to work with. The ENO orchestra, who had been playing the living daylights out of Dutchman, were once again sensational, this time under Oleg Caetani. We were close, and it was loud, and I was in heaven. Oh, Cio-Cio San.
This should by rights have been my New Year's Eve post, a round up of all that was grand and glorious for me in 2011, just as it drew to a close. Then several things got in the way: my incompetence, which caused me inadvertently to delete said post; Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve; our own New Year's Eve celebrations; sleep; and last, but not least, a drive to Miami and a flight to Spain, with absurd behaviour from American Airlines obstructing our progress wherever possible.
We made it, however, and are now starting to settle into Oviedo. Rehearsals for Peter Grimes are in their second day and although 2012 is nearly half a week old, I'd still like to celebrate a few of last year's highlights. After all, there's no opera here until Grimes opens, in three weeks or so, so I have to find other blogging fodder, and what better than a list? I love lists.
Thus I give you, in no particular order, my Top Eleven of 2011.
London
Our travel for the year began here, and while it was not my first visit, it was my longest, and reinforced once again my eternal love for this city. I mean, the duck confit sandwiches at Borough Market would actually be reason enough on their own for devotion, but then you start piling on the museums, the parks, the shopping, the Indian food, the sheer sense of history, the theatre and oh my gosh the music. I don't know how people who live there permanently cope with it all: we were only there for eight weeks, and the volume and quality of live classical music on offer was already overwhelming. I saw plenty, but missed even more; and such was the concentration of brilliance that I was twice obliged to forsake my own tenor's Parsifal in favour of other, less repeatable delights. The weather was pretty rotten but if I could have stayed forever, I'd still have done so in a heartbeat.
The Met
Mecca. I finally made it there, and for the most part it lived up to my expectations. Which is to say, it was huge, quite glamorous, and offered an impressive variety of repertoire and an even more impressive line-up of star soloists. Suddenly my CD collection came to life: there were Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez, Renée Fleming, Joe Calleja, Bryn Terfel, Deborah Voigt, Karita Mattila, Peter Mattei, Natalie Dessay and and and ... the list goes on.
And because I was there in the company of another of those star soloists – whose own Met début was even more exciting than any of the star spotting – I was able to experience the backstage half of the company too. I was in the Green Room on opening night of Walküre when ill health forced the divine Eva Maria Westbroek out halfway through and Margaret Jane Wray was summoned to take over (which she did magnificently). We went and said hi to Joyce before she strutted her stuff as the Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos. I was even hugged by Bryn Terfel. And I'm sure this all sounds like so much insufferable namedropping, but believe me, it's said with nothing but awe and disbelief. Maybe as time goes by, I'll become jaded, but right now I'm still wide-eyed as anything.
Michelle DeYoung
I've lost count of how many times I've raved about Michelle this year, but it's quite a few. She's so worth it. I was fortunate enough to hear Michelle three times this year, in three different countries: as Judith in Bluebeard's Castle with the New York Philharmonic, then in Das Lied von der Erde in Hong Kong and again in Sydney in Mahler 2. Believe it or not, I'm actually not stalking her; but given half a chance, I probably would. She's truly amazing: a wonderful artist, with a voice which is both heaven and earth, all at once, and also one of the coolest people I know. Michelle, you rule.
Orchestras with proper pits
Sydneysiders will understand. While I will always feel a sort of filial affection (coupled with seething frustration) for the Sydney Opera House's Opera Theatre, with its dodgy acoustic and hellish concrete pit, it has been quite a revelation to spend this year in opera houses which don't stow their orchestras under the stage, and whose auditoria are actually, you know, designed for opera. Even the Santa Fe Opera, which is effectively outside, pulls off a fuller, more convincing sound, and the Met, or in Zürich or at either of London's opera houses, well, let's just say you don't know what you're missing until it smacks you round the head. In a good way.
Cheryl's Tosca
Let me get this out of the way first: I am stupendously grateful to whichever operatic deity ensured that Cheryl didn't cancel on me. She has been known to do so, and while I, whose devotion is unconditional, always forgive her for it, it might have been a bitterer pill to swallow this time. When I lived in Sydney, I just booked for every show so that I was covered either way. But I had to fly to Brisbane from Taiwan, and I could only stay long enough for two shows, so the potential for a shattered heart was far greater. Actually she did shatter my heart, but by showing up, not by cancelling. Her Tosca was all I could have hoped for – and I'd been hoping for a while, ever since she was announced for – and then bowed out of – Opera Australia's Tosca two years earlier. As spoilt rotten with opera as I am these days, it still stings a little that I've left the town where I could see my favouritest soprano on a remarkably regular basis – pursuing her is harder now, but my dash across the globe for her Tosca proved that it's still ridiculously worthwhile.
Wagner
From the moment I was brave enough to dip my toes in Wagnerian waters, I've loved the stuff, but for many years never felt I had the fortitude to spend more than the occasional afternoon in its company. Wagner, I felt, was the antithesis of background music – it required all of my energies and attentions – and thus, because I am inherently lazy, I ended up listening to very little. Then along came a Heldentenor and I had no choice but to be immersed. Well, it's been grand. I know Parsifal almost as well now as I know Don Giovanni or Vec Makropulos – a circumstance I hardly saw coming – and can make Lohengrin jokes with the best of them. I know Walküre better than I did a year ago and by the end of 2013 I think I'll probably have it (or at least the first two acts...) down pat.
I love it still, and I still find it perfect and transcendent and all of that stuff which Wagner so patently is. Never too long, too ponderous, too slow or too loud. I've seen more Parsifals this year than your average bear – fifteen I think, in two productions – and it only gets better. I've learnt to love Wagner in rehearsal chunks and in full performance, and I look forward to the day – and it will come – when Tristan arrives.
God
Meaning, of course, Sir John Tomlinson. His Gurnemanz at the ENO was awe-inspiring – imposing and sonorous yet quivering with human emotion, a privilege to behold every single time. And yes, I was also lucky enough to experience Matti Salminen's Gurnemanz, and yes, he's also God, pretty much, though in a rather scarier, Old Testament-y way. Sir John's was the one that got to my heart, however. He was also the first person this year to turn me into a babbling fangrrl when I met him.
Ned Canty
The whole Santa Fe experience was fantastic from start to finish – the food was excellent, the views mindboggling, the opera company treated us beautifully and the show we were there for, Daniel Slater's production of Wozzeck under the inspired leadership of David Robertson, was a massive success. The town itself, and its surrounds, were a revelation in themselves. But operatically speaking, the biggest revelation was the directorial genius of Ned Canty, whose production of Menotti's rarely performed The Last Savage provided one of the smartest, funniest and most captivating nights I've ever had in the theatre. The opera itself was fine, musically, and surprisingly hilarious, but I have no doubt that it was Canty's superb production – and the pitch-perfect performances he drew from a very talented cast – which really caused this rarity to scintillate. I really, really hope to have another chance to see his work, and soon.
Eva Maria Westbroek
I fell for her first in Turnage's Anna Nicole, which did her glorious talents scant justice but still couldn't hide her radiant presence or the liquid gold of her voice. I fell for her again on DVD, in a weirdo production of Fanciulla del West, where I wished she could sing forever, in every role. I missed her, would you believe, in Walküre; even being Siegmund's cover (or his consort) wasn't enough to get tickets for that sold out show. I did meet her, by happy chance, and reverted to babbling fangrrl mode once again. I've been devouring YouTube clips ever since. And this year on April 13 – o wondrous day! – I shall submit to a surfeit of delights, when the Met starts Ring-cycling again and my tenor sings Siegmund to Eva Maria's Sieglinde. I should start training my hands now for the ovations.
Surreal encounters
There have been a few, but the winner has to be the day we arrived in Zürich – and my apologies if I've told you this story before – and found that the key to our apartment didn't work. In the ensuing attempts to unlock the door, we were assisted by two of our neighbours: who turned out to be José van Dam and Peter Seiffert. José made many valiant attempts to wrestle the door open, but in the end it was to no avail, so his wife kindly drove off to collect a new key for us while Peter provided red wine and chocolates. The image of us all, clustered together on the landing and conducting trilingual conversation – while my inner voice squealed that's Lucia Popp's widower! – is not one I'm ever likely to forget. And if I were in need of an emblem of how completely different my life became in 2011, well, there it is.
The tenor in my life
Forgive me now if I get soppy and a bit more autobiographical than usual. It's only for a moment. It has to be said, however, that the facilitator of practically all of the above – the glamorous, the gorgeous, the transcendent, the surreal and the newly pervasive first person plural pronoun – has of course been Stuart, the tenor I ran off with just as 2010 was ending. 2011 has meant a completely new life for me. When I announced all the changes, almost exactly a year ago, I titled the post "Happy New Everything". Well, it's a little less new these days, I suppose, but believe me, just as happy. Happier, in fact. I'm living a life I could never have predicted, an opera fanatic's dream in many ways; but the best thing about it, when it comes down to it, is just having an awesome person to share it all with. He's got a nasty habit of murdering swans, of course, but hey – nobody's perfect.
Right, that's the soppy bit – and the list as a whole – over and done with. Here's your reward for making it this far.
It's Joyce! Because I can't quite believe I didn't give her a separate listing here.
We went to London for fairly practical reasons, but I engineered it so we'd spend an extra night and see Cendrillon at the Royal Opera. It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that you can't come within reach of a Joyce DiDonato performance and decide not to bother. Although, perhaps not as universally as you'd think: the show wasn't sold out, and I booked my ticket on the morning of the show.
Just one ticket, as it turned out. It would have been two, but my date was called upon to save the day and step in for the Verdi Requiem here in Zürich — so after 24 hours in London, he was on a plane again, bound for rehearsals, and I stayed for shopping and mezzo-sopranos. Sounds like a fair balance, don't you think?
And there really are a lot of mezzo-sopranos in Cendrillon. My hat is off to whoever went to the trouble of assembling Joyce DiDonato, Alice Coote and Ewa Podles (who's a contralto, but still) in one cast. It's such a surfeit of low-voiced pleasure that when the ominous man-with-a-microphone appeared onstage with an announcement, and said "Joyce DiDonato..." and I thought she might have cancelled, I remained philosophical, because, hey, we'd still have Alice and Ewa. As it was, however, she who sang Rosina on a broken leg, was still singing — she just craved our indulgence if her illness interfered.
She needn't have apologised. I bet there are singers who'd happily buy and imbibe a bottled form of whatever ailment she was suffering, if it would make their voices glow as hers did. She sounds lovely in French — I started wishing that her next solo disc would be French art songs — and sweet, generous, resilient Cinderella fits her temperamentally to a tee, I think. Alice Coote sounded eerily similar to her at times, yet different enough to keep the two voices distinct, and to blend beautifully in their duets, which are probably some of the best music in the opera. To nobody's surprise, Ewa Podles's outrageous (and hilariously curvaceous) Evil Stepmother stole the show. Evidently, along with freakish vocal gifts (as impressive in-house as on record) she's also blessed with natural comic timing.
Honestly, I think this opera is the female equivalent of Parsifal in terms of skewed gender balance. There are almost no men. There are, however, two stepsisters, played with priceless vacuity by Madeleine Pierard (my compatriot!) and Kai Rüütel, and the platinum blonde Fairy Godmother — Intermezzo nailed it with the Dusty Springfield comparison — of Eglise Gutierrez on coloratura duty. Jean-Philippe Lafont, as Cendrillon's father (still alive, in this one, but powerless to resist his horrid wife's bullying) has the only sizeable male role, and struck a kindly if cowering figure; and I wished that Jeremy White, as a rather sprightly king, had had more to do.
I liked Laurent Pelly's production a lot. It's all made to look as if it's been fashioned out of a big old-fashioned book of fairytales. The walls are printed pages, chairs are made from letters, the carriage is shaped like the word "carosse", and almost everything sticks to a black/white/red/gold colour scheme. Cendrillon is allowed some shades of grey, however, in her rather fetching rags — an outfit which wouldn't look out of the place in the window of Anthropologie — and her ballgown (pictured above) is a beacon of light in a sea of ladies in bizarre scarlet concoctions.
Pelly goes with the fairytale flow, he doesn't try to subvert it, and I'm glad. The show was laugh-out-loud funny in front of an audience of adults, and I'm certain an audience of children would be even more enchanted than we were. What a shame the Royal Opera hasn't made it easier for them to come; a Christmas season of matinées — you wouldn't even need the same, starry cast — would be ideal.
As it was, my inner child and I were delighted by the frolicking horses, the red-painted servants, the fairy godmother's chimney-top world and the dancing. Oh, the dancing. We wanted to hug both Alice's adorably shy Prince Charmant and Joyce's radiant Cendrillon. We laughed at the silly stepfamily, and forgave them when Cendrillon did — they're pretty harmless in this version, Madame de la Haltière is not exactly Angelica Huston, and the sisters are to easily flummoxed to pose a threat. We cried sad tears when the lovers were separated, and happy tears when everyone lived happily ever after. It was all pretty magical.
The music, well, it's Massenet in sugary fairytale mode. Well, apart from that bit where he forgets, and turns Cendrillon into Thaïs or Manon in their respective repentant modes, singing expansively about redemption and misery. It showed everybody's voices off well — especially our trio of low-voiced ladies — without ever turning into, say, great art. But who needed great art anyway? That's what I have Parsifal for. Cendrillon is not Massenet's most memorable score, but while you're actually listening to it, it evokes the shiny unreality of the tale quite wonderfully. Having previously known only a couple of arias, and not the score as a whole, I can't say much to the merits of Bertrand de Billy's conducting; but the magic in the pit seemed basically to match the magic onstage. Ça suffit.
Now I'm back in Zürich, gearing up for a Verdi Requiem and one last Parsifal, before flying to Santa Fe — where, as it happens, this production of Cendrillon had its premiere — for Wozzeck. All very serious, weighty music, and magnificent of course, but I have to say: I'm glad I had my little sliver of enchantment in between.
Photo: Bill Cooper
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Shooting swans (in the non-Parsifal sense) in Hyde Park. (Taken with instagram)
Back to Wigmore Hall again last night — maybe I should just pitch a tent in the foyer — this time for a song recital by Amanda Roocroft, part of a series curated by King of Accompanists, Malcolm Martineau, surveying German art song from 1810 to 1910, one decade at a time.
Amanda's decade was 1860-1870. She won me over immediately by wearing a dress that suited the period, a gorgeous white creation complete with bustle. Then she won me over a little more by sweetly encouraging the latecomers at the back of the hall to come in before she started singing. Then she started singing and I liked her more than ever. I've heard her once before, only on CD, so to all intents and purposes this was a new voice to me and I like it a lot: graceful enough to do the Lieder thing beautifully, forceful and dramatic enough that I'd love now to see her in opera.
Nice programme, too, which I gather is His Majesty Malcolm Martineau's doing. I knew almost none of it. Cornelius, Jensen and Liszt in the first half, Bruch and Brahms in the second. The Bruch was especially pretty, a bit of a revelation to me; the Brahms, too, was wonderful. And Martineau's claim to the throne is as secure as ever. I loved Amanda's very funny spoken interjections, too, as she stopped to tell anecdotes — or just to praise Martineau and the music — not just between brackets of songs but sometimes halfway through them. She's pretty irresistible, all in all.
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Programme was as follows: Cornelius: Abendgefühl, Im tiefsten Herzen, Warum sind denn die Rosen so blass?, Vision Jensen: Nos. 1, 2, 5 & 6 from Dolorosa Op. 30 Liszt: Die drei Zigeuner, Die stille Wasserrose, Ich liebe dich, Freudvoll und leidvoll, Ich scheide, Jugendglück Bruch: Lausche, lausche, An den Jesusknaben, Verlassen, Im tiefen Tale Brahms: Am Sonntag Morgen, An die Nachtigall, Herbstgefühl, Sonntag, Wiegenlied, Die Mainacht, Von ewiger Liebe Encore: None but the lonely heart (Tchaikovsky)
To Wigmore Hall this afternoon for a short and sweet programme of Schubert songs and chamber works, courtesy of Antoine Tamestit (viola), Markus Hadulla (piano) and — it's me, so there has to be a singer in there somewhere — soprano Sandrine Piau. It was a BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert, so less than an hour long and broadcast live.
I went to hear Sandrine, no point pretending otherwise; I've loved her for a long time, and her recital disc Evocations in particular is one of the prettiest recordings I own. That said, she's more famous for 18th-century repertoire than for art song, and rightly so: her singing today was gorgeous, no doubt about it, and she's a great singer to watch in action — provided you don't mind a bit (or a lot) of movement — but not quite what I'd call idiomatic. Which just served to remind me how spectacularly idiomatic she is in Mozart, Handel and Vivaldi. All of her songs were charming, and expressively delivered, but I couldn't help noticing that she seemed especially happy in the florid last part of "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" — about as close as Schubert ever gets to the coloratura challenges of a Vivaldi motet. In fact, if anything, she possibly sang it too fast, but it was dazzling nonetheless and again, reminded me how much I'd love to hear her in a whole opera's worth of coloratura.
Oh well. One day. In the meantime this was a fairly wonderful way to pass an otherwise disgustingly cold and wet afternoon. (And I didn't realise Sandrine looked so much like Isabella Rossellini. Some girls have all the luck!) Anyway, to be honest, it was the violist, Tamestit, who was the real star: partnered beautifully by Hadulla, he shone in the Arpeggione sonata particularly, and was delightful in their arrangement of Die Taubenpost. Not quite so sure about the viola replacing the clarinet in Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, but it was still an interesting version to hear.
The trio have, as it turns out, recorded this programme (with a couple of additions) for the Naïve label. Worth pursuing, I'd say, for violaphiles, Schubert lovers and Sandrine groupies alike.
I had a perfectly good time at Anna Nicole. It was a polished and basically enjoyable piece of theatre, and there was nothing in Mark-Anthony Turnage's score – loud and blaring though it sometimes gets – with which I had difficulty coping. Librettist Richard Thomas has opted to approach it as a sort of operatic E! True Hollywood Story, with much – possibly even most – of the dialogue delivered to camera/audience rather than in dialogue between characters. This I think has its merits, since the constant filming and image-awareness (and greediness of the scandal-hungry audience) of Anna Nicole's life is a vital part of her decline and fall. But the format is also inherently limiting, particularly with regard to the inner lives and humanity of its characters: the façade and the fakery are rehashed where to have them torn down or challenged would likely be more engaging. As a satire on tabloid insanity, it has its moments; as a human story, it's harder to connect with, and really good opera needs a human heart to truly sing.
There's excellent singing here, lots to look at and some truly funny lines among the endless rhyming couplets. Richard Jones's staging is mostly pretty slick, and I did love the candy-coloured Americana kitsch of the sets and costumes. And hey, I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it; plenty of people have found plenty to like and even rave about, so it certainly has an audience. I'm glad to have seen and heard it. I just don't feel that magnetic pull to do so again.
That's the short version. There's more on my other blog.
Anna Nicole (Taken with Instagram at Royal Opera House)
