The Barber of Seville - A Visual Treat

As part of Opera Theatre of St. Louis' 40th anniversary season, it commissioned a new translation of Rossini's The Barber of Seville  from Kelley Rourke.  Of course the story is still the same:  Count Almaviva is still in love (from afar) with Rosina, the ward of prominent Doctor Bartolo and he still asks the local barber and busybody, Figaro, to help him win Rosina.  But the action is now specifically set in Seville during the April Fair and the time period is updated to, perhaps, the 1960's.  It's hard to tell.  The production notes tell us that during the April Fair people dress in costume - including historical costume.  Figaro wears a costume that might not look out of place during the original time period but Dr. Bartolo is in the short sleeves and tie that men wore when I was a child.   Parts of the chorus look like circus performers (including a person on stilts).  While a bit confusing from a historical perspective, it still worked well (far better than many of OTSL's attempts to update operas, especially Mozart operas).

Rosina (Emily Fons) is now the Doctor's assistant, working in his office (he is now an optometrist) and is no longer quite as passive as she has been in past productions.  Fons is making her OTSL main stage debut and has a lovely mezzo-soprano voice with pure diction.  She was a joy to listen to.  Christopher Tiesi, also making his OTSL main stage debut, started out somewhat weakly as Almaviva but as his voice warmed up he proved up to the role.  Both are good actors as well as singers and handled the comedy ably.  The true comedian turned out to be Dale Travis in the role of Dr. Bartolo, a role that I remember in the past as being nothing other than an annoyance.  Here, Bartolo, still schemes to marry his ward while at the same time being obsessed with chickens. 

Yes, that's right.  Chickens.   The production design, which is meant to evoke the films of Pedro Almodovar, is infused with images of chickens as well as chicken props.   The colors are vivid and it took me a while to notice the chicken design at the bottom of the semi-sheer curtain that is occasionally drawn across the back of the stage. 

But it is Benjamin Taylor who stands out as the self-confidant and funny Figaro.  He is unafraid to play the role broadly, which is exactly what it needs amidst all the color and confetti on stage.  And his voice was a delight.   Conductor Ryan McAdams did not let the tempos lag and some of the music is tricky to sing (much less enunciate) in the original Italian far less in the clunkier English.  But he handled it brilliantly.

In fact all of the enunciation was terrific - a far cry from some productions where they might as well be singing in Polish.  I wondered if it might have seemed better to me because we changed our season tickets and are sitting further back this year.   For the last 28 years we sat on the lower level, but on the side.  Last year we tired of regularly not being able to see.  Rather than cancel our subscription, we changed our seats.

Since Tim O'Leary took the reins as the artistic director he hasn't seemed to have made an effort to require his directors and set designers to direct and design for the 3 quarter stage at the Loretto Hilton Theater.  Regularly cast members and often scenery is put at the side of the stage blocking the view of those who sit on the side.  And in fact, this production has a large piece set on one side of the stage during the first scene, filled with sitting singers, blocking the view over there.  This is just laziness on the part of Opera Theatre - certainly the Rep, which stages many more productions in that same theater each year, never has that problem.   And OTSL never had that problem under Charles McKay.

But since O'Leary clearly isn't going to change his ways, we eventually decided to change ours and move our seats.  We also decided to sit center for the first time.  I'd like to be able to tell you it made a difference, but alas I can't.  When we arrived in our seats on Thursday we found ourselves surrounded by 20-25 small children who are part of OTSL's summer camp.  We asked for our seats to be changed and were moved to one of the sides.   After a long day at work when all I wanted to do was sit back and enjoy the music, the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by other people's children.  Children, no matter how well behaved, are still children.   While I applaud OTSLs efforts to build a young audience, children belong at matinees, not evening performances.  And if they will insist on giving them tickets to an evening performance, season ticket holders should be warned in advance.

Other than having to change our seats, however, the evening was enjoyable and the production was a visual treat.  I can only imagine what it looks like when not looking at it from an angle. 

The Daughter of the Regiment

Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment is a lovely bit of fluff which, although I saw it a few weeks ago, I’ve saved for my last OTSL review because it was so much fun.

It is a comedy.  Tomboy Marie was found as a baby on a battlefield and was adopted by an entire regiment of French soldiers.  All of these fathers pose a problem for the young man, Tonio, who wants to marry her.  Eventually he joins the Regiment to prove his worth.  But in the meantime Marie’s “Aunt” finds her and takes her away to be trained as a lady and to marry a Duke.  Fortunately, the “Aunt” turns out to be Marie’s mother and so, as a bastard, she isn’t eligible for the Duke and gets to marry Tonio.  Simple plot, lots of high notes to hit.  The part of Tonio made Luciano Pavarotti famous because of an aria that contains a whole lotta high “C”s. 

Rene Barbera hit all the “C”s effortlessly.  Ashley Emerson’s Marie was perky and, although I might have wished for her voice to be slightly stronger, she sang well.  She was a good actress and made a very believable Marie.  Dale Travis, who played her principal “father”, was a delight and he was a good actor too and his scenes with Emerson were delightful.  Dorothy Byrne, as the “aunt” was a good comic actress.  Her lower notes were a little bit lost but it didn’t matter.

One of the highlights of the evening was the return of Sylvia McNair to the OTSL stage playing the Duchess of Crackentorp, whose role was expanded from a few moments of comedy to include a musical number.  McNair, who no longer does opera, was delightful and the audience loved it.   She had a few nice moments interacting with conductor John McDaniel in the pit.

McDaniel did a great job and no one would have known this was the first opera he has conducted if we hadn’t been told by numerous newspaper articles.  He kept things moving at a nice clip and kept the orchestra from overwhelming the singers. There wasn’t a moment in the performance where the orchestra and the singers weren’t as one.   Full disclosure requires me to say that I know McDaniel, a native St. Louisan, from long ago but that isn’t influencing me when I say that I hope they have him back for another opera (if he wants to take time off from Broadway, of course).

The costumes were colorful and the scenery was fun.  There was lots of movement and the scene where Marie is supposed to be learning the ballet is hilarious. 

All in all, it was a wonderful night at the opera.  My group agreed that it was the most enjoyable opera of this season.  I was not able to see Peleus and Melisande so I can’t compare it to that, but it certainly beats The Death of Klinghoffer and Don Giovanni for entertainment value. 

Here’s the link to OTSL’s video preview and again, I have no idea why they don’t make them able to be embedded. (And again, I can’t get it to play correctly on any of my computers).

The Death of Klinghoffer

The chorus was magnificent. This might have been the finest choral work I’ve ever heard in an opera production. Every word was intelligible and every measure was pitch perfect and the intensity was palpable.

Conductor Michael Christie was a joy to watch in the pit (as he was during Ghosts of Versailles) and he had the orchestra and the chorus in perfect balance. There were times during the very difficult music that every eye in the chorus was trained on him and he brought them through safely.

If only I had liked the music they were singing.

I’m just not a fan of John Adams’ music. So it is high praise indeed from me when I say that I, at points in the performance, thought that I’d like to hear the choral pieces again sometime outside the confines of the opera.

The opera opens with the chorus singing the “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” and then moves immediately into the “Chorus of Exiled Jews”. The chorus never leaves the stage. I would guess it was close to a half hour of choral singing. And I tip my hat to costume designer James Schuette because with the adjustment of a shawl, a change of handbag, the losing of a hat, the chorus changed identity so completely between the two pieces that they might have been different people.

After these two long choral works the action of the opera begins, if you can call it action. This is, of course, the story of the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by a group of Palestinian terrorists and the killing of wheel chair bound, American Jewish tourist Leon Klinghoffer. The two long choral pieces at the beginning set the stage for the political situation.

OTSL’s production of this opera is the first staged United States production since it was staged in 1991. This is, apparently, a controversial opera. OTSL spent a great deal of time and money on community outreach. OTSL General Director Timothy O’Leary described it as “educational events designed to help the production inspire the kind of informed, thoughtful dialogue among diverse groups that the arts have a special power to help create.” I didn’t go to any of them but I know people who did go and found them very informative.

My biggest problem with the opera wasn’t the subject matter. It was the libretto. During most of Act I we are told what happened to characters but are seldom shown what happened. I’ve noticed this a lot with modern opera librettos. Characters stand on stage and sing at the audience, telling them a story. Let’s face it, most operas involve singers standing on stages and singing at audiences. But usually they are singing about their interior lives. Usually love. Often rage. Sometimes despair. But modern operas seem to eschew the steamy emotions and prefer to simply tell us about the character’s actions. So we hear … And then I went to my stateroom and there I washed my face and then I went to find some lunch. It’s like Facebook status updates set to opera music.

I find it really boring. And when it is combined with John Adams minimalist style it is usually a recipe for me to go to sleep and most likely leave at intermission. I barely made it to intermission when OTSL did Nixon in China. So the fact that I stuck it out to the end of Klinghoffer tells you just how much I enjoyed the chorus.

Of course one reason that this particular group of chorus members may have sung this particular opera so well is that the blocking for this particular opera was also minimalist. Mostly non-existent when it came to the chorus. They often stood in rows on stage, facing the conductor, and sang. They didn’t have to sing and dance around and interact with other each other and the main characters. They just had to sing. And they even, at one point, sang touching each other’s arms which must have been a huge help in timing their breathing so that the long, utterly beautiful, sustained notes just floated around the theater.

It would have been nice to have some choreography or, at least, a little more movement. But at least we had the glorious sound of their voices.

Kudos also to Christopher Mageira, who played the Captain and who was outstanding. The others in the cast were also quite fine.

In the end, I would say this was a brilliant production of an opera that I never intend to see again. But I’m glad that I saw it once.

Here’s a link to OTSL’s multimedia preview of this opera (although I can’t get it to play correctly on any of my computers).

Don Giovanni

Two years ago, Opera Theatre of St. Louis produced the most exquisite production of Mozart’s Il Re Pastore.  As I said at the time, the voices were perfect.  Clear, with perfect diction.  I think that people can have different ideas about what constitutes the perfect voice to sing Mozart.  In my book, the singers in that production of Il Re Pastore were the perfect Mozart singers.

Last year, OTSL produced Mozart’s  The Marriage of Figaro.   I wrote that, although I enjoyed the performance, I thought that it was, musically, a little bit sloppy. And although I enjoyed a few of the voices, I didn’t like Maria Kanyova’s performance because her diction was poor.  And the orchestra and the singers didn’t seem together sometimes.

This year, OTSL is producing Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  Don Giovanni is a womanizer and possibly a rapist, who murders the father of one of his proposed victims at the beginning of the opera.  Throughout the opera he is unrepentant and at the end a statue of the murdered man comes to life and tells him if he doesn’t repent he will go to hell.  He goes to hell.   It’s a long opera (as are most Mozart operas) and there is a lot of decadence and carousing and people impersonating each other during that time.  It isn’t my favorite Mozart opera and I think I’ve only seen it two other times.  But it is Mozart and I’ve always enjoyed it before.

I thought about not even writing about this production.  As Thumper’s father said, if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.  But I do have a few nice things to say.  It was worth the price of admission to hear David Portillo’s Don Ottavio.  He had what I consider the perfect voice for Mozart – clear, ringing and perfect diction.  I wouldn’t say he was the best actor of the bunch, but Don Ottavio is a bit of a stiff character anyway.  Kathryn Leemhuis was also very good as Zerlina, a country girl who is spotted by Don Giovanni on her wedding day but manages to fight him off.   Andrew Gangestad was The Commendatore, the statue who comes to life, and he was so mesmerizing in his scene toward the end that I didn’t even notice that the conductor disappeared at some point to be replaced by someone else in the pit.  His voice was simply perfect, although I rather wish they had staged him up on a pedestal so he would have been physically more imposing.

The other singers worked very hard to put on a fine performance in less than ideal circumstances.  The fact is that they all had lovely voices – they just weren’t my ideal Mozart voices.  If I had been casting this opera I would have cast others.  But they did a fine job.   Maria Kanyova, who I adored in Ghosts of Versailles, gave a moving performance although she was once again plagued by terrible diction.  Although when she was singing with David Portillo he seemed to bring out the best in her.  

If the production behind the singers hadn’t been such a mess, I would be telling you that it was a fine production despite the fact that the voices were not my perfect Mozart voices.  But it wasn’t a fine production.

It isn’t even the problem that I didn’t like the set or the costumes or the lighting.  Although I didn’t.  The costumes were all from different time periods and didn’t go together.  That was just weird.  The set was boring and the lighting was too dark and it made me want to go to sleep.  Which is not something you need in an opera that is over 3 hours long.  And while I get that Don Giovanni was hosting an orgy – the background “choreography” in the scene at the end of the first half was just far to distracting.  Background actors should enhance the lead actors and NOTHING should distract from the music.  The choreography did both.

But I might have even been able to get beyond all that if it had been a clean production.   I often go to productions that I think are OK even when I don’t agree with the choice of set or costumes, etc.  But the production last Thursday was just a mess, beginning with the overture. The overture to Don Giovanni is pretty famous and it sets the tone.   And at OTSL the orchestra is made up of the Saint Louis Symphony so it isn’t as if there are a bunch of amateurs playing.  But the overture was muddled.  Then the first 10 minutes of the opera were almost unintelligible.  The diction was so bad that even the recitatives were beyond comprehension (and for some reason they don’t put supertitles for the recitatives, so we had no help).  I’m inclined to blame the conductor, Jane Glover.  And since she disappeared before the end of the production I’m wondering if she wasn’t feeling well and that affected the performance.  The final sextet was the clearest and most cohesive bit of music in the production and it was done under the direction of whoever it was that took over in the pit and the singers had their eyes glued to him.  Other than that sextet, there wasn’t a moment in the opera where I listened to the voices blending and didn’t think – “but they aren’t blending!”

But the absolute worst moment in the opera was toward the end of the second half when Maria Kanyova was singing a lovely and melancholy aria.  The scene was being changed behind the curtain and it sounded for all the world like the entire cast had donned army boots and were marching up and down behind the curtain.  There were loud sounds as scenery was moved.  It almost became funny.  All the people around me were looking at each other with their eyebrows raised.  

I didn’t go on opening night so it wasn’t as if there were still kinks to be worked out.  I delayed writing this.  I don’t really like to write anything about OTSL that is not mostly glowing.  This is the 25th year that I’ve had season tickets.  So  I thought that maybe as I thought about it more this week I would feel less irritation.  But I didn’t.   Maybe the other performances will be cleaner.  I hope so.  Because OTSL has a reputation to maintain. 

Oh, one other good thing about the performance last Thursday.  As we walked into the theater one person in my group said that she had never seen an audience at OTSL with so many people who were younger than us.  Which is great!  It’s a shame they didn’t see OTSL at its best. 

Click here for a video about the production.  And no, I have no idea why OTSL doesn’t produce videos that can be embedded.  But they don’t.

Another Fine OTSL Season

Well, opera season is over here in St. Louis.  My allergies were acting up the last week and I was coughing so much that I ended up skipping the last opera in my series:  The Golden Ticket.   I was sorry to miss it since I always like the (very strange) Willy Wonka story.

According to an email I got from Timothy O’Leary, OTSL’S general director, this season earned Opera Theatre its highest box office revenue ever even though they didn’t raise ticket prices.  Since 2008, they’ve seen an audience increase of 5.5% and they were at 90% capacity over this season which, in this economy, is almost a miracle.  The good box office this year surely had to do with choosing to bring in new audience members by doing A Little Night Music.  22% of the audience was brand new this year.   I hope they all come back next year for at least one opera.

And speaking of next year:

Meanwhile, subscriptions for 2011 go on sale next week, and I hope you will join us for a season that opens with Mozart's masterpiece Don Giovanni, and continues with Donizetti's hilarious The Daughter of the Regiment, as well as OTSL's first-ever Pelléas and Mélisande featuring the much-anticipated return of soprano Kelly Kaduce, and John Adams's chilling tragedy The Death of Klinghoffer, created by the same team that brought us OTSL's landmark production of Nixon in China in 2004.

I’m particularly excited about The Daughter of the Regiment.  I’ve seen it before and it’s a lot of fun.  PLUS it will mark the conducting debut at OTSL of John McDaniel who I knew back in high school.   It’s a comedy and a classic and probably is the opera to choose if you’ve never been to opera before.

Of course you couldn’t go wrong with Don Giovanni either -  after all, it’s Mozart.  But it’s not a comedy.  

Every year OTSL does four operas and I always classify them as The Big Draw (Don Giovanni), The Other Classic (Daughter of the Regiment), The Less Peformed One (Pelleas and Mellisande) and The Modern One (The Death of Klinghoffer).  This year they shook things up a bit by throwing A Little Night Music in the mix as The Less Performed One.

It used to be that there was a better than 50/50 chance that I would think The Modern One was horrible (musically) and The Less Performed One would be … well, let’s just say that it would be obvious to me why it wasn’t performed as often. Over the years, though,  I’ve grown to really like most of The Modern Ones and the productions of The Less Performed Operas have been such clever productions that I often like them the best.  So I’m really looking forward to next year’s Pelleas and Melisande because it features Kelly Kaduce who was the simply outstanding Salome in 2009 (and in pretty much every thing else I’ve seen her in).  That leaves Klinghoffer.  Let’s just say I’m not a big fan of John Adams.  But I’m going to keep an open mind.

So make plans for next season – May and June in St. Louis. 

And in the meantime we have another smaller opera company called Union Avenue Opera.  It has been around since 1994 when it was founded by Scott Schoonover, the music director of Union Avenue Christian Church, which serves as the venue for the operas.   They do a very good job with a very small space.   I’m going to go see The Pirates of Penzance in a couple of weeks.

A Little Night Music

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music is probably the strangest production of that show that I’ve ever seen. Isaac Mizrahi is the director and also designed the sets and costumes. In the trailer for the production, he says that the year he first saw A Little Night Music he was also working on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and they got muddled in his mind. So when asked to do this production he went with the muddle. And it worked. Although it is really hard to explain.

Act I takes place in three locations: at the town home of a lawyer and his wife, at a theater and at the home of a dragoon and his wife. Act II takes place at a country home. But this production takes place in the woods. The floor is covered with grass, there are trees in which people sit, and furniture is moved in and out to suggest inside locations. The chorus (a quintet) who are usually dressed as servants or other household supernumeraries are, in this production, dressed in odd little costumes that look like, but aren’t quite, underwear. And they have little puck-like wings on their backs. Strange. But it worked! The set production was delightful. It might have been better on a stage that revolved because moving all the furniture in and out was cumbersome. But it never took too long, and we usually got to listen to the quintet sing (and flit around in the trees) while things were being moved.

The main characters are still the main characters and they do nothing strange with their performances. Fredrik Egerman is married to his very young, very beautiful second wife, Anne. Who is still a virgin after 11 months of marriage. Who is also the object of desire of Fredrik’s son Henrik. Fredrik and Anne attend a theatre performance starring Desiree Armfeld who, it turns out, is Fredrik’s old flame. There are still sparks between Desiree and Fredrik but she is involved with a married dragoon who has an abused wife, Charlotte, who loves and hates him. Desiree thinks maybe she’s at a point in her life where she should settle down. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Fredrik go all those years ago. So she engineers a weekend at her mother’s country estate to see what will happen. I won’t go into everything that happens.

There was nothing odd about the performance of any of these roles. What was odd, however, was the combination of actors and singers. I know, you’re thinking, there are always combinations of actors and singers in musicals. Yes. But not in operas. Not generally. In operas everyone is a singer and we live in hope that they can also act. And we don’t notice too much when they can’t. But here we had an opera production starring … Amy Irving – yes, the movie star and broadway actress Amy Irving who sings in the production but isn’t, herself, a singer. Surrounded by opera singers. So it was all just slightly … out of balance. But not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the evening.

Amy Irving was a low-key but completely believable Desiree Armfeld and Send in the Clowns doesn’t really depend on vocal abilities anyway, it depends on an actress who can carry off the pathos. Sian Phillips, another actress who is not an opera singer, played Mdm. Amfeld with just the right acerbic note. But since this was an opera production it was very noticeable that they each could do no more than carry a tune, whereas in a “normal” production of this show it might not have been so noticeable.

Christopher Herbert, an opera singer who can act, was however, a very believable Fredrik Egerman, with a delightful full voice. His duet with tenor Lee Gregory (another opera singer who can act), as the dragoon Carl-Magnus Malcom, was a highlight of Act II. Herbert and Amy Irving had enough chemistry to make their relationship work for the audience. Gregory was good enough with comedy to make Carl-Magnus a comic terror.

Amanda Squitieri (playing Anne Egerman) and Erin Holland (playing Charlotte Malcom) had beautiful voices and their duet in Act I was a highlight. Both were decent enough actresses that in an ordinary opera production I might be complimenting their acting performances. But here, in comparison with the acting of Irving and Phillips, they were merely adequate. Squitieri seemed a little too old to be a believable Anne (and seemed to be robbing the cradle with Henrik) and Holland wasn’t a good enough actress to blend the pathos and comedy of the role of Charlotte. She mostly just seemed cranky. But it didn’t really matter because there is so much going on in this show that their scenes would sweep into the next scene before their acting could slow down the performance.

From an opera perspective, the quintet of supernumeraries was the best part of the production. They are part of Opera Theatre’s young artist program and they were delightful.

The only thing I really didn’t like about the show was that it was miked.

Really. That was the only thing I really didn’t like. At the end we all said to each other … I liked that!

Then we added … but I hope they got this out of their system and don’t do anything like it again.

It’s hard to explain why. I did like it. Really. I’m glad they tried it. I’m glad I saw it. It’s just that I’ve seen better productions of A Little Night Music. In fact, I saw a production of A Little Night Music on the exact same stage ten years ago done by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis that was the best production I’ve ever seen. Maybe that affected my perspective.

But also, it just wasn’t a show that lent itself well to opera.

It isn’t that I don’t think opera companies can’t or shouldn’t do musical productions. I just think this particular show isn’t a good choice because the character who is the linchpin of the entire plot is required to be an actress first and foremost and doesn’t necessarily need to be able to sing well. As I said, it threw the production out of balance.

Maybe they could try Carousel. Or Phantom of the Opera. Or even Sweeney Todd. If they really want to do musical comedy.

But … and yes here is where I’m going to whine. Just a little bit. Opera season is very short. There are only four productions a year. Five miles away, across the city, in the middle of Forest Park, is an outdoor ampitheatre where The Municipal Opera Association (the MUNY) puts on an entire summer of musical comedies. And during the fall, winter and spring months, the FOX brings in touring companies doing … musical comedies. Wicked is playing right now. And the Rep always does at least one musical. As does The Black Rep.

I love musical comedy. It sends me out humming and singing. This production of A Little Night Music sent me out humming and singing. But it isn’t as if there is a dearth of musical comedy in St. Louis . There is no musical comedy void that needs to be filled.

So maybe OTSL should stick with what they do best – opera. Because there is not nearly enough opera in St. Louis.

Here is the trailer for a taste.

Eugene Onegin

I saw my second Opera Theatre of St. Louis production this season last Thursday when I saw Eugene Onegin.   With music by Tchaikovsky, based on the Pushkin epic poem, Eugene Onegin is, of course, very Russian.  And, perfectly, OTSL found a Russian soprano, Dina Kuznetsova, to sing the lead role of Tatiana, a shy upper class Russian girl.  Kuznetsova’s voice was rich, pitch perfect, and flowed seemingly effortlessly through the Russian melodies.  More, she inhabited the role of Tatiana as if she were born to play her.  And the icing on the cake was that this non-native English speaker sang the role with perfect American diction while at the same time, especially during her final anguished scenes with Onegin, bringing a slight Russian inflexion to the words that was perfect.

Baritone Christopher Magiera did a fine job with Onegin, a difficult role to act since he is not a very likeable fellow.  In fact, the only other time I’ve seen this opera the baritone singing Onegin was so smarmy from the first moment he stepped on stage that it was beyond belief that Tatiana would fall for him.  But Magiera did well enough with his representation of Onegin in the first scene that it was believable that inexperienced Tatiana would fall for this man simply because he was pleasant to her.

Lindsay Amman sang the role of Tatiana’s sister Olga.  Her voice was a deep contralto that was beautiful but seemed completely wrong for the young, flirtatious blond character.  I wonder why Tchaikovsky decided Olga was a contralto.  Finally, Olga’s beau, Lensky, was sung by Sean Panikkar who sang Count Almaviva in last year’s Ghosts of Versailles.  I would like to see him come back in a lead role because he has a beautiful tenor voice that has only improved in the interval since last year.   His character this year dies in the first Act.  I think he has a voice that could carry a tenor-centric opera and I’d like to see him in one.

The production design was gorgeous.  The country scenes had rows of sunflowers and the interior party scenes were richly costumed.  The direction by Kevin Newberry made sure that the singers didn’t neglect the audience on the sides of OTSL’s thrust stage so we all felt included.  The chorus was a joy to hear.  All in all, it was an outstanding performance.

Now … the story.

As I said, I have seen Eugene Onegin once before and the only thing I can remember about it was that I wanted to shout at Tatiana that Onegin Just. Wasn’t. Worth. It.  But this was at least 20 years ago and I had forgotten all the details of the story so it was nice to come at it fresh.  I’ve never read the Pushkin poem but now that I’ve spent the last two years on my Tolstoy novels I looked at the story more closely as it unfolded. 

What is with the Russian obsession with ‘happy peasants’?  Both of the Tolstoy novels I read elevated rural Russia to an almost mythological level and this was no different.  The peasants came in from the fields like the happiest field hands in the world.  And it suddenly made me want to hear a comparison between Russian writers’ views of rural Russia and the American mythology that the ‘true’ Americans are from small towns in rural America. In fact, the beginning of this opera was staged almost exactly like the opening of Oklahoma except instead of a row of corn in the background there is a row of sunflowers and instead of Aunt Eller churning butter upstage there is a character shucking corn.  I assume this was intentional.   On the other hand there are shelves of American novels celebrating the big city (almost always New York) experience.  Are there similar classic Russian novels that celebrate life in urban Moscow?  Is there a Russian Edith Wharton or Theodore Dreiser?  Maybe Poemless will drop by and give us the scoop.

The other thing that struck me about the story this time was how the second half really makes a wonderful revenge fantasy.  For those that don’t know the story, here it is in a nutshell.   Tatiana and Olga live with their mother on a farm although (based on the end) they must be of a higher class of Russian life.  Olga, a joyous, flirtatious girl,  is in love with the neighbor Lensky and he is head over heels in love with her.  Tatiana, on the other hand, is quiet and shy and spends her time reading novels.  Lensky visits, bringing his friend Eugene Onegin,  Onegin and Tatiana converse (about nothing much) and (unaccountably) Tatiana falls head over heels in love with Onegin.  The second scene takes place in Tatiana’s bedroom where she has a long aria (almost the entire scene) in which she decides to write to Onegin to declare her love for him but worries that she is doing the wrong thing.  She does it anyway.   It is here that I wanted to shout out in the first production I saw and say “Are you kidding?  He’s such a jerk!”  But in this production it wasn’t yet clear that Onegin wasn’t worthy. So there is a little bit of anticipation as we wait to find out how Onegin will receive the letter.  He politely but somewhat condescendingly tells her that he isn’t interested in her, flirts with her sister Olga to make Lensky jealous and then denies that was his intent.  Lensky calls him out and challenges him to a duel.  Onegin kills Lensky and Act One is over.  

In the Second Act, Onegin is tired of his life.  He has been travelling abroad and has finally returned. At a party he meets Tatiana again.  She is now married to a Prince and is grown up and very poised and beautiful.  He falls head over heels in love with her.  She tells him it is too late.  He is devastated and says that all that is left for him is death.  The End.  

Kuznetsova’s acting of Tatiana was perfect.  In the first Act she was shy and tongue tied around company, mostly with her nose in a book.  Even at her own birthday party she is in the corner reading a book.  Her letter-writing aria, when she is alone, is feverished and is exactly what a young girl who lives through romantic tales might go through when she develops a crush.  The look on her face when he tells her he isn’t interested and she probably shouldn’t write letters like that to men was just heartbreaking.  The Tatiana who returns in Act 2 though is, in some ways, a fantasy Tatiana.  Seen from afar by Onegin, she is bejewelled and poised.  A beautiful, married woman with a husband who adores her.  If this were a 20th opera this Cinderella-like transformation would also have been revealed as a fantasy and Tatiana would be revealed as a lonely unmarried woman still living in a fantasy world.  But this isn’t a bleak but realistic 20th century opera, this is a romantic 19th century opera.  And isn’t it every woman’s fantasy that some day the man who has spurned her will be VERY SORRY?  So what a revenge fantasy to move on with your life, marry someone handsome and wealthy who worships the ground that you walk on and then have the man who rejected your youthful crush show up and see you and fall in love with you.  Of course there is that moment of remembering your own love and wondering if maybe … ah, but no .. you must tell him that you can’t leave your husband.  And you sweep out of the room leaving him devastated.  

It was hard to feel sorry for Onegin there at the end.   But I don’t think we were supposed to.

I’m thinking maybe I should read the original Pushkin.

Here is a link to the trailer if you want to see it.

The Marriage of Figaro

Figaro. …Figaro. ….Figaro, Figaro, Figaro …

oops. Same Figaro, wrong opera.

Last year Opera Theatre of St. Louis performed The Ghosts of Versailles which utilized a play-within-a play concept. The opera that was performed within the opera was a production of an operatic version of the Beaumarchais play The Guilty Mother, which itself is the third play in Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy. The first two plays in the trilogy were made into operas that almost all opera-goers are intimately familiar with – Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (in which the famous Figaro, Figaro, Figaro aria is heard) and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.

Last night I saw this year’s Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of The Marriage of Figaro. It has always been one of my favorite operas. It is an almost perfect opera – a score filled with hit after hit after hit, multiple roles for women, much comedy, a lesson to be learned. It’s hard to mess up The Marriage of Figaro too – although I thought Opera Theatre missed the mark with their last production in 1999 when they had a truly murderous count. But this time they decided that the Count was just having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It worked much better.

Here’s the plot. Figaro works for the Count and is in love with Susanna who works for the countess. The Count is tired of the Countess for no good reason (after all he spent all of The Barber of Seville wooing her) and has his eye on Susanna and wants to throw a monkey-wrench into the marriage plans. But the Count doesn’t want the Countess to have her eye on anyone. She is carrying on a flirtation with a boy called Cherubino who is enamored of her. Much comedy ensues, the women plot together to teach the men a lesson, there are mistaken identities and long lost mothers, and Cherubino (who is always played by a woman dressed like a man) disguised as a girl. It is a comedy. It has a happy ending. It has glorious music by Mozart. If you’ve never seen an opera you wouldn’t go wrong choosing The Marriage of Figaro as your first opera. If only the garden scene at the end didn’t drag on a bit it would be the perfect opera.

Figaro was sung by Christopher Feigum who also sang the Figaro role in last years Ghosts of Versailles. I enjoyed his performance, he was an appropriately jovial and yet sly Figaro. He sang well although I would have sometimes wished for his lower range to have been stronger. Truthfully, all the principal male singers seemed to be having trouble with their lower ranges so maybe it was just the St.Louis “crud” affecting them. It has been a horrible allergy season this year.

One really pleasant surprise was Amanda Majeska as the Countess. From the moment she opened her mouth I loved her. And she brought to the Countess a real feel of an attractive woman who, for no good reason, has a husband who has lost interest in her. I was more touched than usual in the final scene when the Count asks her for forgiveness. I can’t put my finger on what it was about her performance; it was maybe even a combination of the way she carried herself and the slightly risque costume that they had her in. At intermission I was surprised to read that she sang Musetta in that production of La Boheme last year that I disliked and I remember really not liking her performance. Looking up what I wrote about her last year, I said she “got all the notes right and that's about all I can say for her.” Well, she more than made up for it this year.

Another pleasant surprise was that the woman who sang Cherubino actually made us forget she was a woman. I always have trouble suspending disbelief for the “trouser” roles but Jamie van Eyck pulled it off. Her voice wasn’t perfect, it didn’t seem as if she was hitting every note with the precision that Mozart requires. But her diction was the best of all the women and I really did believe she was a boy.

On the other hand, I was very disappointed with Maria Kanyova’s performance as Susanna. She was Marie Antoinette last year in Ghosts and I was really looking forward to hearing her again. She didn’t bring nearly enough playfulness to Susanna and I had a very hard time understanding her even (maybe especially) during the recitatives. There is no point in having an opera sung in English if the diction is going to be so bad that they might as well be singing in Italian. Oddly, I remember her diction last year being perfect, so I don’t know what happened. And the other thing was … she wasn’t funny enough. Susanna is a comic role, she needs a commedienne to play her. I got tired of watching Kanyova fan herself whenever Susanna got into a tight spot. I always assumed Susanna never sweated the small stuff or the big stuff.

Finally, although I did enjoy the production I thought that, musically, it was a little bit sloppy. It sometimes seemed as if the orchestra and the singers weren’t quite together, which is something that almost never happens at Opera Theatre (and the orchestra was FAR too loud which is something that happens a lot at Opera Theatre). I started paying attention to the conductor and noticed that he seldom looked up from the music – which seemed a bit odd. I finally realized that he wasn’t the conductor listed in the program, but was Steven Lord who I ordinarily think is wonderful. Turns out that the scheduled conductor had to back out at the last minute and Lord took over for the season. Maybe that was part of the problem. I admit that at first I thought maybe I was seeing one of the first performances of this production and they just weren’t quite “ready” but at intermission I looked it up and we are already far enough into the run that these problems should be ironed out.

Anyway, while it was not the best production of Marriage of Figaro that I’ve ever seen it was certainly not the worst and I enjoyed most of it. Here is a link to a preview.

UPDATE:

Here's a promotional video I found on youtube I found for OTSL - most of the scenes are from last year's season (the wonderful Ghosts of Versailles, Il re Pastore, and Salome and the not so good in my opinion La Boheme). It shows the lawn where we picnic and the tent for intermission and after opera partying and clips from productions. I encourage anyone in or near St. Louis to give it a try:

Rules are Meant to be Broken?

I got my season renewal packet for Opera Theatre of St. Louis this week.   I get (have) to sit through The Marriage of Figaro  yet again.  But that’s ok, I like Figaro.  Usually.   And I get to see Eugene Onegin again.  I saw it so long ago I barely remember it.   Then there is an Isaac Mizrahi  designed production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.   I love Sondheim and will be exciting to see what OTSL does with it.  Last, but certainly not least, there will be the world premiere of The Golden Ticket,  an operatic version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  

Alt-Classical

Music critic Greg Sandow, who writes among other things about the future of classical music,  has just written a thought provoking series of blog posts comparing the history and current state of contemporary classical music with the history and current state of contemporary art. 

The Ghosts of Versailles

The 2009 Opera Theatre of St. Louis season is now over and it ended on a high note with the newly commissioned re-orchestrated The Ghosts of Versailles.   Although I usually avoid reading reviews of the operas before I attend (and even try to avoid reading the synopsis so that I can "be surprised" by stories I don't know) I did my homework on this one.   This opera was originally staged at the Metropolitan Opera by Colin Graham, the artistic director of OTSL from 1985 until his death two years ago, and I knew it was important to OTSL to get this "smaller" version commissioned and performed.  So I wanted to go into it understanding it as much as possible.  

What I expected was that I would get what I often got with a Graham-produced opera:  a spectacularly staged and acted production, superb voices, perfect balance between voice and orchestra ... and music that I didn't particularly care for.  Graham fully supported 20th century composers. I give him credit for that.  I appreciate 20th century opera much more from having listened to years of it at OTSL.  But I have a hard time with it.  I can't just sit back and enjoy it as I can with Verdi and Mozart and Puccini.  

And sometimes, try as hard as I might, I just can't sit through it.  It tires me out, because I am trying so hard to understand it, and by about 10:00 on a Thursday night I can reach my limit. Fortunately many modern operas are short.   But I knew that The Ghosts of Versailles  was not short - it was a standard three hour opera.

So last Thursday I arrived at my seat wondering if I would make it through John Corigliano's music or if I would be sneaking out at intermission.   The first twenty minutes was not promising.

I don't know enough about styles of 20th century music to be able to talk intelligently about them.  In some ways they all sound alike to me and they often fall into what I call the "whiney opera" category.  The music is in minor keys, there is no discernable melody, it all sounds angst ridden and ... well ... to my ears it whines.  The first half hour, as the ghosts of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and Beaumarchais wandered around a palely lit set, dressed in shades of gray with white hair, singing with a lot of angst,  made me feel certain that I would not last beyond intermission.  The voices were beautiful.  They were performing the music wonderfully.  The set was interesting. The costumes and makeup were ... ghostlike.   The orchestra was not overpowering.  But.  I just don't like the style of music.

And then everything changed.

The plot of The Ghosts of Versailles is complicated.  Marie Antoinette is an unhappy ghost; she believes that she was innocent and unjustly executed and she can't get her untimely end out of her mind.  Louis XVI keeps telling her to lighten up.  The ghosts of many other French aristocrats who went to the guillotine are also wandering around.  The ghost of the playwright Beaumarchais has fallen in love with Marie Antoinette and he decides to cheer her up with a new opera, an opera that will re-write history and make her live again. 

Beaumarchais waves his hand and his old familiar characters appear on the little stage at Versailles dressed in non-ghostlike colors with non-ghostlike lighting:  Figaro, Susanna, the Count Almaviva, his wife the Countess Rosina and Cherubino.  Yes, the cast from Beaumarchais' three plays about Figaro - - one of which was set to music by (among others) Rossini as The Barber of Seville and one of which was set to music by Mozart as The Marriage of Figaro.   Corigliano loosely uses the third Figaro play, in which all the characters are 20 years older, as his opera-within-an-opera in The Ghosts of Versailles.

At that moment The Ghosts of Versailles came alive despite it's ghostly cast and it never died for the rest of the night.  It was a fabulous production.   In the opera-within-an-opera Count Almaviva decides to rescue Marie Antoinette with the aid of his servant Figaro.  But Figaro suddenly states that he will not help the queen.  Beaumarchais, shocked that his character is staging a revolution, decides he himself must take the stage and set Figaro straight.  He enters the production much to the astonishment of Figaro and Susanna (who are YOU? they ask when Beaumarchais appears on stage.  I am your creator, he declaims in a musical homage to Don Giovanni.)   Beaumarchais gets things back on track by having Figaro witness the trial of Marie Antoinette which is a kangaroo court at best.  And Figaro realizes that she was set up and had no chance.  In the end they are able to save the Queen, but Marie Antoinette at the last moment decides that history should not be changed and she allows herself to be beheaded again.  She returns the love of Beaumarchais and there is a happy ending.

I enjoyed it.  I even enjoyed the music (well, most of it) as Corigliano added allusions to Mozart's operas in the opera-within-the-opera which were fun to catch.  This is an opera that has ten main characters and most of them sang brilliantly, especially James Westman as Beaumarchais and Christopher Feigum as Figaro (I do love baritones).   Sean Panikkar as Almaviva sang very well.  Elizabeth Batton stole the show as the Turkish performer Samira who rode in on a camel that looked like it was stolen off of an exotic carousel and then sang and belly danced, with Figaro behind her in disguise as a harem girl.  Maria Kanyova sang a fine Marie Antoinette (it isn't her fault that the music she was asked to sing was my least favorite in the entire opera; but even though I didn't like it I acknowledge that she sang it well).  Her portrayal of Marie Antoinette was touching although I found such an emaciated looking ghost a little distracting.   Michael Christie conducted and he is another conductor that I would like to see come back to OTSL, I truly enjoyed watching him in the pit.

It was a little long.  I understand that they cut a half hour out of the original production but I think they could have cut more.   I would have cut the corps de ballet numbers, the stage at the Loretto Hilton is too small to really appreciate them.  I also would have cut the love duet between the young lovers Leon and Florestine.  In my opinion love duets between young people never really work in modern opera because the music is just too angst ridden to make for believable young love.  So they should only be done if it is absolutely necessary to move the story forward and in this case it wasn't.

But, even running slightly too long and even with the "whiney opera" music,  I really enjoyed it.  In the first twenty minutes  I found myself wondering why 20th century composers so seldom found anything fun to put in opera and why they so seldom composed comedies.  And then Corigliano proved to me that he can compose comedy as well as anyone. Thank goodness.

This production is a co-production with the Wexford Festival in Ireland and Vancouver Opera, and it will travel to the Wexford Festival in October and the Vancouver Opera in November 2011. As I read the reviews that are coming in I realize that the opera world is  watching this production closely to see if a scaled down version of Ghosts will work.  The full production is too expensive for most opera companies and in fact the Met canceled its own revival of the "big production" that it had scheduled for the 2009-2010 season ( Kristin Chenowith was to have played the Turkish performer Samira which would have been something to see.) I think the small production worked very well so, hopefully, this opera will be accessible to more audiences in the future.

Here is the Trailer where you can see the costumes and the set.  There is also a documentary that is very interesting about the production and how it was designed.

Now that the season is over I can say that I think it was one of the best seasons I've seen in my over 20 years as a subscriber.  I say that despite the disappointing La Boheme.  The productions of Salome, Il Re Pastore, and The Ghosts of Versailles were stellar and each season has one opera I am not wild about.  Plus, this year three out of the four weeks that I went had spectacular weather in which to picnic on the lawn.  This was the first full season under the direction of the new production team (only Stephen Lord, the musical director, is an old hand) and I whole-heartedly applaud them.   The out-of-town reviews are trickling in:  Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times.  

And this:

It is quite possible that Opera Theatre of St. Louis is the leading summer opera destination in the United States.

There. I said it. Let the Glimmerglasswegians and the Santa Fesions rail and fuss, but OTSL has really got the whole package together: top quality musical offerings, exciting young singers well on the road to major careers, well-considered theatrical stagings that rival any major house (any), and an extra-musical ambiance that is just about unbeatable. Approaching the house through the lawn area profuse with candle-lit tables, free to any pre-show picnickers who care to use them, and being able to stay after the show to party, applaud, and mingle with the artists in the large Fest tent, well, it is sort of Glyndebourne without the ‘tude.

Add to the mix the fact that this troupe has consistently performed their repertoire in English, in a small house that fosters great immediacy of the theatrical experience, at competitive prices, and, good God, it is 'popular' opera! (Even when the title is not of the bread-and-butter variety). True, the Loretto Hilton lobby is cramped on SRO evenings but. . .there is always a stroll available on that candle-dotted lawn.

Next year we will see Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Eugene Onegin, both of which have been done by OTSL before (Figaro a number of times).  We will also see "the directing debut of famed designer Isaac Mizrahi with A Little Night Music, and the world premiere of a spectacular new family opera, The Golden Ticket. "   You should come.

Il Re Pastore

The third production in my Opera Theatre of St. Louis subscription series was Mozart's Il Re Pastore which was composed when Mozart was only nineteen. I had never seen (or heard) it before but it was Mozart so I knew I'd enjoy the music even if the production bored me. But the production was riveting.

 

First the story.

It takes place in ancient times right after Alessandro the King of Macedonia has overthrown the tyrant of Sidon. Alessandro is searching for the rightful heir of Sidon while Tamiri, the daughter of the overthrown tyrant, is waiting to find out what will happen to her. As the story opens Aminta, a young shepherd, is in love with a young woman named Elisa and they plan to marry. But then Alessandro determines that Aminta is the rightful heir of Sidon. So Alessandro's sidekick, Agenore, whisks Aminta away to teach him how to be king and Alessandro decides that Aminta will marry Tamiri. Tamiri, though, is really in love with Agenore, who is also in love with her.

 

Lots of confusion ensues (but not really comic confusion) as the two sets of lovers sing of their angst. Lots of emoting about the conflict between love and duty. Finally Alessandro is convinced to let the couples that are in love marry and there is a happy ending.

 

The music is beautiful and the voices were perfect. Heidi Stober sings Aminta. This is her OTSL debut and I want her back! (Yes, she is a woman singing a man's role. It's called a "pants role" and Mozart and other composers used this often when the character was supposed to be a young man. It can be very confusing.) Her soprano is clear and warm and her diction perfect. Maureen McKay sang Elisa and her soprano was bell-like. I've heard her before and enjoyed her performance but she was outstanding this year. The men, Alek Shrader as Alessandro and Paul Appleby as Agenore, were outstanding, particularly Shrader. Daniela Mack rounds out the cast as Tamiri and her mezzo was warm but clear.

 

The music itself is ... Mozart. Glorious. Although there is, as with most Mozart, a lot of repetition that can get a little tedious if it is not in capable hands.  That was not a problem with this production. Unlike later Mozart operas, Il Re Pastore is not an opera with trios and quartets that make things a little more interesting. Mostly each singer would sing an individual aria, followed by a responsive aria by another singer. Sort of like a cantata. It is not until the end that all five protagonists sing together. That part was exquisite as the voices were perfectly matched. Conductor, Canadian Jean-Marie Zeitouni, is a newcomer and is also someone else I want back again. His orchestra and his singers did not fight each other but blended in a perfection of notes that almost made one forget there was an orchesta.

 

Sometimes this type of opera ends up being a musically brilliant but visually uninteresting evening. But not this night. Director Charles Rader-Shieber and set designer David Zinn worked together to create a show-within-a-show. The set is a late Victorian/Edwardian country home where a woman and her new fiance are entertaining guests for the weekend to celebrate the engagement. Servants in black are serving tea and dusting and setting flower arrangements in the background. The woman decides (this is all without words) that the weekend is going to be spent performing Il Re Pastore (the way some hostesses might decide to perform a murder mystery or have a bridge tournament) and she starts things off by taking the part of Aminta and she recruits one of the maids to play Elisa (to the jealousy and chagrin of the other servants). Her fiance (cast as Alessandro) is less sure of the whole idea but the male guest (cast as Agenore) jumps right in. His wife doesn't seem too interested until her time to play Tamiri comes around and then she finds herself swept into the part.

 

At first I thought this "back story" would be distracting but I grew to love it. It gave the audience things to watch and think about that did not in any way distract from the story of Il Re Pastore. It helped make the "pants role" a bit less distracting than it usually is because there was no pretense that the singer was a man, it was clearly a woman singing a man's role. And it layered the meaning of the text so that the audience had multiple things to think about in this story of the tension between love and duty.

 

The set was glorious - if the house existed in real life I'd like to live in it. The costumes were magnificent, especially the gown "Aminta" wears in the second half. The orchestra was precise and not overpowering; the lighting, especially through the stained glass windows, evoked a fading day perfectly. All in all it was a perfect night.

 

Here is the Trailer for it. Watch it just to see the set and the costumes. There is also a short documentary at that site that tells more about the production itself.

Salome

I went to see Opera Theatre of St. Louis' production of Salome with some trepidation.  The prior week I had seen La Boheme, expecting to be enchanted, and ended up leaving early.  I had never seen an entire production of Salome.  (I had seen a dress rehearsal of a production in DC back in the late 1970's.) I knew I didn't care for the music of Richard Strauss as much as I love Puccini and the religious story wasn't really of interest to me.  On the other hand, the folks at OTSL constantly amaze me so I knew it was possible that I would end up loving it.

And I did.

Salome was, in my opinion, one of the best operas that OTSL has ever produced.  And what a surprise that is.  It is a difficult opera.  Strauss' music requires a soprano in the role of Salome who has a strong legitimate voice and yet the role is that of a teenager mesmerized by her own sexuality and the erotic feelings she is having.  It is difficult to find a soprano who can sing the part who also looks the part. 

Enter Kelly Kaduce.  I can't say enough about her performance.  I had seen her before and enjoyed her.  She gave a beautiful performance as Cio-Cio San in Madame Butterfly.  She gave a riveting interpretation of Anna in Colin Graham's last production, Anna Karenina.  In 2006 she starred in the production of Jane Eyre.   But her performance as Salome took things to a different level.

First, of course, she sounded gorgeous.  I'm not sure she has a big enough voice to do Salome on the great stages of the world, she probably should stick with Puccini and some of the modern operas. But her voice was perfect for the confines of The Loretto Hilton Theater where OTSL performs.  Second, she is small enough and lithe enough to be a believable teenager.   Those two traits combined might have been enough to make this an excellent performance.  But, it turns out she can also dance.   Or, at least, dance well enough to do a very believable Dance of the Seven Veils. 

In the end though, what made this a stellar evening was the fact that she is a singer who can act.  From the moment she took the stage through the last mesmerizing twenty minutes as she made love to the severed head of John the Baptist she grabbed the spotlight and never let go.  She acted the hell out of a difficult role.  Salome is on stage for almost the entire length of this two hour opera that runs without an intermission.  During a long period in the middle she is on stage but has nothing to sing while her mother and step-father sing over her.  Kaduce was never out-of-character.

It is a difficult monstrous character to play.  And in the end Kaduce made Salome the monster she was and yet ... maybe if Salome had a different mother ... or maybe if Salome hadn't had a lecherous stepfather ... or maybe if Salome hadn't been born with all the power of a princess ... maybe, maybe, maybe .. she might have been different.  Kaduce layered the character the way a dramatic actress might and in a way that few opera singers are capable of doing. 

The rest of the cast was fabulous.  Maria T. Zifchak, as Salome's horrible mother, was especially good and her diction was perfect (I vividly remember her as the witch in Hansel and Gretel, she just has the perfect voice for evil).  Michael Hayes played a very nuanced Herod.  Gregory Dahl as the John the Baptist character was more earthy than I had imagined the role being.  The set worked perfectly.  The severed head with the blood dripping slowly from it was appropriately gruesome. The direction was superb.  The director, Sean Curran, is also a choreographer and it showed.  Not just in The Dance of the Seven Veils but in the way that key actions were timed to the music. 

Finally, and maybe most importantly, Stephen Lord in the orchestra pit was, as always, a joy to watch.  He controlled the orchestra and the production with a gentle but sure hand, as usual.     

Click through to watch OTSL's trailer for Salome to see what I mean.  (I like this portion of OTSL's website but I wish OTSL would allow the trailers to be embedded so that they could be shared easily on facebook and on blogs). There is also a longer documentary for those who are interested which, among other things, shows how they made the head and got the blood to drip out.

One final thought.  I never realized before that Salome, written by the German composer Richard Strauss, is based on a French language play by, of all people, Oscar Wilde.  If he truly imagined the blood soaked Salome with her tongue down the throat of John the Baptist's severed head, he's a more complex playwright than I ever realized.

There are two more performances of Salome before the season ends.  I'm tempted to go again.

La Boheme

It has been more than a week since I went to Opera Theatre of St. Louis to see this year's production of La Boheme and I'm still somewhat in shock. This is at least the fifth production of Boheme that I've seen. It might be the sixth but I'm not sure. And that doesn't count watching PBS productions.

It is hard not to do a decent production of Boheme. First, it has a simple but moving story. Mimi, a seamstress, lives in Paris supporting herself with her needle. In the same building live four men living the Bohemian lifestyle of artists. They have not much money but they are happy. The writer, Rudolfo, meets Mimi when her candle has gone out and she comes by their place for a light. They fall in love. Lots of beautiful love songs ensue. They are happy. Lots of joyous cafe music ensues. But Mimi is ill (tuberculosis) and of course eventually dies. Lots of beautiful sad death music ensues. The story is easy to follow, the music is gorgeous. How can any production go wrong.

I've been a season ticket holder at Opera Theatre since 1986. I've seen some fabulous productions (the La Traviata done a few years ago comes to mind; Billy Budd in 1993 was magnificent). I've seen only a few dogs (Under the Double Moon is the standard for dogs.). And I've seen good solid productions. I'm seldom disappointed. There is almost always something good I can say about the production (except Under the Double Moon which was horrible in all respects). I walked out of Christopher Alden's production of Marriage of Figaro because I didn't like the staging (I've seen Figaro a million times and I've never seen it staged where the count holds a knife to the throat of the countess, one of only a number of problems with that production) but I did think that the singing was beautiful.

But.

I am at a loss to find anything nice to say about this year's La Boheme. The biggest problem was the voices. Through all these years I've sat in the same seats except when I've occasionally had to switch tickets. They are on the side in a theater with a thrust stage . I'm well aware that the sound is not as good as the sound for those that sit center. But I've always found that this is a good way to figure out just how far the singer is going to go. If they can sound fabulous to me in my seats - they are going places. If they can sound merely good that means they are fine singers. But sitting where I sit also shows up every flaw of technique and diction and I can tell when a singer needs work.

Derek Taylor as Rudolfo simply did not have a big enough voice for this production. Perhaps in a smaller production with a smaller orchestra he would have been fine. Perhaps he was having allergy problems. Perhaps I caught him on a bad night. Whatever. It was very difficult to hear him over the orchestra from my seats and that was a HUGE problem during moments when his arias are supposed to soar.

Alyson Cambridge (who was wonderful in Carmen a few years ago) was definitely having allergy problems the night I heard her. She has a lovely voice, but it was just not at its best that night. Amanda Majeski as Musetta got all the notes right and that's about all I can say for her. Timothy Mix as Marcello was actually fine when he sang alone. Unfortunately Marcello doesn't sing alone all that often. And that was the biggest problem. Whenever there was a duet or trio or quartet, the singers just did not seem to be together. Their cutoffs were sloppy, their voices did not blend. I blame the conductor.

What a disappointment. But it might have been mitigated by good acting or brilliant staging. The acting was pedestrian. There was no chemistry that I could see between Mimi and Rudolfo. And Majeski's portrayal of Musetta was so annoying that I wondered why anyone would have been attracted to her. The production is supposed to be a revival of the 2001 production. I saw the 2001 production and thought it was magical. Somehow the magic was lost in this production. The cafe scene especially just seemed ... crowded.

At the first intermission I turned to the people I was with and said I really wasn't liking it much. One of my friends, in relief, said she thought it had just been her, that she was just not in the right mood, but she thought it was a mess. At the second intermission we all decided to leave. We decided it was the worst La Boheme we'd seen and there was no reason to stay. We'd all seen it enough times; why leave a bad taste in our mouths?

But what a disappointment. I've never come out of a production of La Boheme ever before that I wasn't humming and excited and upbeat despite the sad ending. Not until last week.

Here's a nice version of O Soave Fanciulla I found to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Diamonds are a Girl's ...

...well, maybe not best friend, but sometimes a girl needs something glittery on a gray wintery day.


Kristin Chenoweth performed here last week. I don't know what she performed but, since she performed with the Saint Louis Symphony, I bet she did this.



Aw heck. Encore! Kristin singing on Pushing Daisies:

And an added bonus - Kristin explains to Ellen that to sing you have to breathe from your Hoo-Hoo.

I love Ellen. She's fearless.

A Voice From the Past

Each year, Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents four operas in a festival setting. In 1995, the highlight of the season was a production of Puccini’s Tosca.

I’ve had season tickets to Opera Theatre with my friend L and others since the mid-1980’s but I had never seen Tosca before. I didn’t know the story but I knew that I loved Puccini’s music. As usual I didn’t read the synopsis before the lights went down – I like to be surprised by the storyline. And what a storyline Tosca turned out to have.

I'll try to briefly summarize the plot.

Tosca is an opera singer and she is in love with a painter named Cavaradossi. Tosca, in turn, is the obsession of Scarpia - a powerful man. Scarpia arrests Cavarodossi on trumped-up charges for which Cavarodossi is to be executed. Following time-honored tradition, Scarpia offers to trade Cavaradossi’s life for sex with Tosca. He tells Tosca that he will arrange for a mock execution in which Cavaradossi will appear to die but in reality will live. Scarpia has papers that will allow Tosca and Cavarodossi to flee the country together. Tosca agrees but at the last minute instead stabs Scarpia to death and takes the papers. In the meantime Scarpia has double crossed Tosca by arranging for Cavaradossi to actually be executed by the firing squad. Tosca, believing the execution to be a fake, watches. It is only after it is over that she realizes her lover is dead. As the police show up to arrest her for the murder of Scarpia she flings herself off the battlements of the castle, committing suicide.

I know. It sounds depressing. But it is mesmerizing. And timeless.

As a reviewer wrote:

Anyone who thinks that there's anything new about the phenomenon of public figures hiding their profane desires under a blanket of bogus piety needs to take a look at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis' production of Puccini's 1900 political melodrama Tosca. The villain of the opera, Baron Scarpia, is a classic example of how morality and respect for order can become a false front for lust, violence, and falsehood. Scarpia also provides us one of the great moments of Italian opera in the final scene of Act I as he plots the seduction and betrayal of Tosca while the crowd celebrates High Mass. It's a spectacular scene, and one of the best examples of dramatic irony you'll ever see.

Yes, it is a great story with soaring music. And the 1995 production also offered a young tenor in the role of Cavaradossi who was, literally, breathtaking.

As another reviewer wrote, he was:

extremely good-looking, and on Saturday night he was in great voice as Cavaradossi. His good looks -- and the fact that he seemed younger than Tosca -- made her jealousy all the more credible.

Yes, I can attest. He was extremely good looking. And his voice was perfect. He might have been the most perfect young tenor I’ve ever seen at Opera Theatre.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an Opera News review of the same tenor in another production of Tosca (no link, sorry):

After Cavaradossi was dragged onstage shirtless in Act II of Piedmont Opera's opening-night Tosca … [he] drew himself up to full stature with arms outspread and elicited gasps from women in the audience. After he sang "Vittoria!" and was being dragged off-stage, he won an ovation.

Shirtless? In my production he had his shirt on but it was ripped down the front. And did I mention, he could really sing?

My friend L and I went back and saw it a second time. I had never gone to an opera production twice in one season ever before. I’ve only done it two times since.

For years L and I talked about that production. We assumed we’d see the young tenor again. Opera Theatre serves as a training ground for young singers and a successful singer is often invited back until he or she becomes “too big” for us. When he didn’t come back I think we assumed he had become “too big” for Opera Theatre.

Eventually we realized that Google had been invented and we racked our brains to remember his name so we could Google him. But Google turned up … nothing. There were some reviews of his performances at Opera Theatre and earlier but nothing else. He had totally disappeared.

Until last summer.

I was at home reading a book when the phone rang. It was L.

Me: "Hello?"
L: "Is your TV on?”
Me: "L? Is that you?"
L: "Yeah, yeah. Is your tv on?"
Me: "Uh, no, but I can turn it on if you want."
L: "Do it."
Me: "What am I supposed to be watching?"
L: "America’s Got Talent. HURRY."

I'm now frantically pushing buttons on the remote, looking for the right station.

L: "Is that him? Is it? Is it?"
Me: "Who? What are you talking about?"
L: "His name was Donald Braswell, wasn’t it? Is that him?"
Me: "Who?"

I was totally confused.

L: "The guy from Tosca. The one who disappeared. YOU KNOW"

And suddenly there he was on television. 11 years older, telling his story. In 1995 (the same year that we had seen him) he was performing with the Welsh National Opera when he was involved in a terrible bicycling accident that had severely damaged the soft tissue of his throat. Not only could he no longer sing, the doctors thought he would never speak again. And yet he had worked through it and … here he was competing on America’s Got Talent.

Me: "Oh my God, it's him. It's him!"
L: "Yes!!!"

He’s still handsome. And he’s singing again, although the soaring sounds of a full length Puccini opera are probably beyond him at this point. He didn’t win the contest, but he came in fourth and was a crowd favorite.

Every ten years or so Opera Theatre has a gala and singers return. I hope they invite him to return to the next gala.

I wish there was a youtube to show how he sang when he was younger, before the accident. But (so far) there are none. So here he is as he is now.