opera

I'm looking forward to seeing the ROH Barber of Seville this week. There is a huge buzz about Javier Camarena matching (or even outshining) Florez as Almaviva. I've never heard him sing before but he's apparently only the third person to get an encore at the Met, after Pavarotti and JDF, since they banned them.

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/03/28/471842692/the-show-stopping-singing-of-javier-camarena

Guys are you familiar with an aria about Ophelia sung in English?

Never mind. It was the "Vilja Song" from The Merry Widow.

Tickets for the new Royal Opera House season go on sale this month and i have my eye on Written On Skin (with Iestyn Davies), Les Contes d’Hoffmann, The Nose and a few other bits and pieces. Netrebko decided she didn't want to do Norma, having already been announced, but that could be good too.

Yoncheva was sensational as a replacement for Netrebko. One of the best lead performances I have seen in ages.

Ah. Didn't you also say you were going to see Sondra R sing Manon on the other thread? Envious.

I am! That's next month. Should be fantastic.

I'm a huge fan of Sondra's because:

• She is an immense talent
• I was a relatively early adopter/early member of her fanbase
• She is friends with Dmitri Hvorostovsky
• My neighbor who works production at the Met says she is a really nice person

Is this melody actually from The Barber of Seville? Does not sound very Rossini-esque.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKkJAu16yJ0

lol, Radvanovsky appears to have liked my tweet saying the staging of Manon Lescaut is garish and awful and she looked even more uncomfortable than Opolais as a vamp but she sang fabulously.

The Kentridge staging of Lulu that did its run at the ENO must've been great. His show at the Whitechapel has one work based on it and its the best thing on the entire show.

Didn't see the ENO but caught the Met performance of it on their streaming service and it is very good. His staging of The Nose is also excellent and better than the recent Kosky version at the ROH, though that was quite fun.

Joyce el-Khoury was wonderful in La Traviata at the ROH last night. She was a little raw in the first act but phenomenal after that. Sergey Romanovsky, who i don't think i'd been before, was very good as Alfredo as well.

http://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/la-traviata-royal-opera-1

I also saw Written On Skin with the terrific pairing of Barbara Hannigan and Iestyn Davies - enough to convince even the curmudgeonly Rupert Christiansen of The Telegraph to break out the five stars:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/what-to-see/written-skin-one-operatic-masterpieces-time-review/

They seem to have jacked the ticket prices up this time around and there are lots still available for the rest of the run - though not all performances are with Hannigan.

Thanks.

lol, Radvanovsky appears to have liked my tweet saying the staging of Manon Lescaut is garish and awful and she looked even more uncomfortable than Opolais as a vamp but she sang fabulously.

Her Twitter account isn't verified but seems (i think) to be her.

The 2017/2018 season at Covent Garden isn't hugely inspiring but i have picked up tickets for Cav / Pag (primarily because of Elina Garanca), Lucia di Lammermoor and Les Vêpres Siciliennes in Autumn.

Semiramide with Joyce DiDonato and Salome with Malin Byström might be the pick of winter. Not massively exciting though.

Went to see Norma tonight and it was fine, but I'm really such a Sondra stan and she isn't singing it anymore this season.

Plus I still haven't processed the death of her "opera boyfriend," as she calls him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81z1YzH_994

Who was the lead tonight?

Angela Meade

Also just thought to look at Spotify and wondering if the streaming services have operas with recent casts or not. Seems the answer is no, just older casts or solo albums of arias by recent performers.

Just got firsthand confirmation from source mentioned up thread that Dmitri Hvorostovsky was universally loved by the production crew at the Met.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/arts/music/metropolitan-opera-john-copley.html

John Copley fired by the Met for "inappropriate behaviour". Levine still suspended.

Hmm:

https://slippedisc.com/2018/02/exclusive-why-peter-gelb-fired-uncle-john-copley/

Assuming that blog post is accurate (a big assumption), this seems like the most OTM comment:

What this incident reveals is that the Met has no policy or protocol in place for dealing with harassment complaints. (Probably should have put “harassment” in quote marks, here) To instantly fire someone with no apparent method of investigation and resolution, is crazy.

Digging this Philip Glass Orphee I am hearing on WKCR’s Saturday Night at the Opera.

Really curious about this production of Adriana Lecouvrer with Anna N. and Piotr B. but doubt I will get over there before it finishes.

The first act of Akhnaten at the ENO was one of the best things I have seen in a while. The remaining two thirds contains altogether too much juggling but is still pretty good.

Good value tickets (£20) too.

hot take opera is good

Starting to stream this recording of Rigoletto I just found with my old favorite Dmitri H and new krush Nadine S.

Piotr B loves to post smiling pictures of himself and others on social media.

for opera i mostly listen to the super old acoustic recordings, probably because they're short and i don't have the stamina for a whole opera

huh that's a coincidence, I saw my first opera ever last night and now I see ILM's talking about it

I saw Puccini's La Boheme with my girlfriend for Valentine's Day, it was excellent!

I’ve been working my way through the Theodore Curentzis opera recordings since seeing his Beethoven’s 5th last year (really, really good). Really refreshing interpretations. He hasn’t recorded the magic flute yet which is the one I really want to hear.

Piotr finishing up run of Tosca at Wiener Staatsoper and has been posting lots of pictures of him and Sondra R.

Hi all, so I've been listening to classical/lieder/opera a lot the past few years. Right now I'm on the biggest Verdi trip, collecting good cd versions of all of them. It's incredible how he's like always super good, even in the early years when he was just cranking operas out left and right. Astounding even. Outrageous even. It's the most exciting thing I've ever encountered in music. I mean I'm big on operas by Puccini and Mussorgsky and Monteverdi and Mozart too, but Verdi's achievement just overshadows those masters! Anyway.

Only a Factory URL -- did that Rigoletto actually sound good and is it available on cd? I wasted money on Giulini, whose acclaimed version is for shit -- unbalanced instruments/singers/chorus + the stereo is all on one side -- ditto Muti who I just hate in general. Rigoletto is I think the only major Verdi where an acceptable/listenable version continues to elude me. I understand this particular opera has a lot of secondary off stage/distant orchestra stuff, so it's always going to sound a little weird, but the versions I've heard are excessively/needlessly weird. Or so it seems?

I don't do spotify or anything like that, and some cheaper MP3 download versions I've bought were useless because digital watermarking ruins choruses and it drives me absolutely insane with rage... and I'm the only person in the world who seems to care about or even notice that kind of thing. I basically blind purchase things I can't find at the local library to test drive. So I'd appreciate any help at all here! As far as it goes, I really like 50's-70's recordings where everything is equal, instruments and voices interchangeable and supporting each other and carrying each other along on the tidal wave, recordings where it seems like there's just 2 mics for the entire room with the singers more or less in the middle? So it sounds like how the composer wrote it? Toscanini, Mehta, and the old Phillips series of cd releases by Gardelli are the kind of sound I like for Verdi, where the instruments are actually in proportion to the singers/choruses. And where it's energetic and forthright, as clearly it should be. Even in slow/somber parts I feel like Verdi should always be electric with energy.

Also am I alone in not giving a shit about the singers or the stories? Like actually watching opera is not even on my radar. For me it's just the most fantastic and ambitious music of all and functions quite well as such, especially Verdi where even the plot stuff is highly controlled and always super musical! I myself absolutely do have the stamina for long operas, and in fact I listen to music like most people watch TV, with my full attention and totally enraptured. I would recommend total darkness/immersion to intrepid listeners who struggle with opera (I used to!)

Reading reviews about opera is problematic for me because all people seem to talk about are the singers and stories; ditto the reference books I own! The singers all sound the same to me except for phrasing, it seems to my perhaps uncultured ears that once the human voice is projected at a loud volume all the nuance and timbral coloring/shading (like what you find in pop music) goes right out the window to my ears so I really don't understand the whole obsession with the singers? The reviews are always like 'oh yeah, and there's some good tunes because after all it's Verdi' and that's all they ever say about the actual music. Though it's true he's so extraordinarily good what is there really to say? Ha! The no duh aspect to Verdi is very strange to me, nonetheless. In fact this whole strange thread is cryptic like that, almost like reading another language to this neophyte!

I no longer know where I'm going with all this, but those are my thoughts this morning! Basta!

Re watermarking - I am the other person who cares and notices. It is a crime, especially, as you say, in music with choruses.

Totally with you on singers and the frustration of opera reviews/voice mavens. I am here for narratively fueled music for orchestra and voices. IDGAF about whether Freni is ‘scooping’ or w/e

Also yes Verdi rules

Only a Factory URL -- did that Rigoletto actually sound good and is it available on cd?

You can read a review of the CD here. Please filter it through the appropriate lens.
https://operawire.com/rigoletto-cd-review-dmitri-hvorostovsky-delivers-immersive-performance-in-otherwise-disappointing-package/

I thought by "disappointing package" the reviewer would be referring to the somewhat cheesy cover design.

Another opinion: https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2017/12/Recordings/VERDI__Rigoletto.html

Great, thanks a lot, it's appreciate!

Appreciated!

Pleased to report for the benefit of any future viewers of this thread who also might perhaps be aggravated by the Rigoletto version problem -- the thorn in my now almost complete Verdi collection's side for the past two months -- that I just got the 1964 Kubelik (w/Fischer-Dieskau in the title role) version on DG and it's acceptable! The voices still sometimes sound disproportionate to the instruments to a distressing degree, but the singers are much better balanced and the musicality of their sung melodies carry the tunes in those instances far better than the other versions I've spent time with. It's also an energetic and enthusiastic version. I hesitated to get this one because I have the same team doing Pelleas et Melisande circa 1971 and that version isn't particularly convincing (though it's not uninteresting because it is bone dry and the instruments sound really stark as opposed to the lush treatment Debussy usually gets) but their Rigoletto is totally worth 13$ or whatever relative pittance you can find it for used. It is similarly stark, crisp, and window-clear, but that works better I think for Verdi!

I also think it's worth reiterating that the early Verdi operas including but not limited to Stiffellio, Il Corsaro, I Lombardi, Ernani, I Masnedieri, Alzira, Attilla, Un Giorno di Regno, Giovanna d'Arco, Macbeth, Nabucco, Luisa Miller, and Le Battaglia de Legnano make for uniformly incredible music-listening and represent an absolutely outrageous unbroken run of masterpieces -- and this before he even gets to his canonical "mature" works!

Finally, I do think I understand now better why opera reviews always deal with the actors and have a "no duh" factor when it comes to the actual music -- it's like reviewing Shakespeare performances I guess? That kind of thing totally makes sense when it comes to the Bard or Euripides or something. It's unfortunate all the same though. I feel like so many more people would be huge on Verdi (or Monteverdi, or whomever) if it weren't for all that theatrical baggage; with all that baggage he and other opera composers get relegated to this exotic and eccentric extramusical ghetto of sorts. I guess I just wish I myself had known/realized the very real musical virtue of it a long time ago! I wish I had known it was safe and even profitable to ignore the visual/story side, that the translated lyrics and all that aren't in fact vital to the music's success! The more I listen the more I feel like while the story and theatrical aspects are a great reason/pretext for operas to exist at all, in the long run they just get in the way!

There's a Kubelik Pelleas et Melisande? Is it a live audience recording?

Yes to both, and no audience chatter/clapping; it's on the Orfeo label. It's probably worth checking out! Sounds pretty different from the other versions I have, and I believe it's sung in French too.

I like the idea of a super dry unblended pelleas recording

Right! It's pretty novel, you can like distinguish the cellos from the violins and hear the bowing texture, the timpani become prominent, and so on, ha! I listened to it again last night and had a lot of fun.

That one part where a chorus appears (and vanishes a few bars later if I remember rightly!) is even stranger!

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/apr/07/white-porgy-and-bess-cast-forced-to-say-they-identify-as-african-american

The fact that the debate is framed in explicitly fascist terms is hardly surprising in the land of Viktor Orban, but this is actually a fair point in Eastern Europe:

The opera house’s contention is that in a country such as Hungary, the all-black cast rule essentially makes the work impossible to perform.

Saw Davóne Tines _The Black Clown_ last night and it was absolute dynamite, one of the best things I've seen in a very good year. really hope it gets picked up for a longer run in a more appropriate theater.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/langston-hughes-black-clown-mostly-mozart-lincoln-center.html

The first act of Akhnaten at the ENO was one of the best things I have seen in a while. The remaining two thirds contains altogether too much juggling but is still pretty good.

Good value tickets (£20) too.

― ShariVari, Monday, February 11, 2019 6:33 PM (eight months ago)

This is in NYC at the Met now, contemplating checking it out