Oberon's Grove

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

Today WQXR broadcast the concluding GOTTERDAMMERUNG from the 2006 Bayreuth RING Cycle. Over the course of the operas I became enthralled with Christian Thielemann's conducting and his conception of the RING which seemed to focus on clarity of expression and beautiful orchestral colours. The weakness of some of the singers offset the conductor's work to an extent, and I would hope there will be some cast changes in the future performances (Bayreuth usually runs a RING Cycle production for five consecutive Summers; cast changes have been known to happen.)

In GOTTERDAMMERUNG, Stephen Gould continued the overall fine impression he made in SIEGFRIED. It is not your usual heldentenor voice, but clear and focussed of tone and quite expressive. The long narrative leading up to his murder was very impressive. Hans-Peter Konig's (photo) cavernous basso was ideal for Hagen and Mihoko Fujimura (photo) was a fascinating Waltraute with her sense of urgency always grounded in the music - a beautiful contralto sound, too. Beyond that we had somewhat disappointing Norns (I love the Norn scene but these three ladies were not first-class vocalists), an unpleasant-sounding Gutrune (Gabriele Fontana), a middling Gunther (Alexander Marco-Buhrmester in a thankless role), a shaky-toned but sinister Alberich (Andrew Shore) and an inadequate Brunnhilde: Linda Watson did have her moments but the tone is metallic, edgy and tends to fight shy of the pitch. Her "Ruhe, ruhe du Gott" in the Immolation Scene - a key phrase musically - was flat.

The mood of the Funeral Music was broken when someone sneezed loudly between the hushed beats of the tympani.

Having finished the book about Cosima, I am re-reading Nike Wagner's THE WAGNERS. She makes this very interesting and accurate observation: that as the RING continues to fascinate us and as more and more companies attempt to mount productions of the Cycle, there is a corresponding decline in the number of singers who are truly capable of performing these fiendishly demanding roles.  New Wagnerian voices must be found and developed if the RING Cycle is to continue to cast its spell.

 

Bayreuth RING 2006 Continues

This morning when we went out on errands, I was tempted to take advantage of the incredible early-Autumn weather and go hiking in the park rather than listening to SIEGFRIED on WQXR. But the chance to hear the RING "live" (well, delayed) in sequence prevailed. There will be other Autumn days.

I used to keep this picture of Cosima framed on my wall starting with my 'Wagner Summer' (1983) when I listened only to his music all summer long. At the end of August that year I heard Hildegard Behrens sing the Wesendonck lieder at Tanglewood under Ozawa's baton, and afternoon I an still vividly remember today.

SIEGFRIED won me over to Thielemann's interpretation; the earlier operas had been perfectly fine but I thought today he and the orchestra achieved a much higher level.

Still dragging the cycle down, however, is some very uneven singing.  Struckmann's Wanderer is workman-like rather than godly - he lacks majesty. In conversational passages, he's usually quite excellent but in the big purple passages you just want more steadiness and beauty of tone. Andrew Shore is a dramatically vivid but vocally tremulous Alberich. Linda Watson could be a superb Brangaene, Fricka or Cassandra in my estimation but the top for Brunnhilde (esp. the SIEGFRIED Brunnhilde) is just not there. She did some fine things, notably using more dynamic variety than we sometimes hear in this music. But the climactic high-C, which is built-up-to for 45 minutes, was flat as a pancake.

On the plus side were Mihoko Fujiwara's sombre, grave-toned Erda and a splendid Fafner from Jyrki Kohonen in the Matti Salminen mode. Robin Johannsen was a vivacious, lyrical Woodbird. Gerhard Siegel was a vastly annoying Mime - and annoyance is just what you want in this role.

Stephen Gould was the unknown quantity for me; in a brief interview the American tenor talked about singing something like 3,000 performances of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and finally discovering opera in his mid 30s. He spent three years preparing his voice for the demands of an operatic career, working with John Fiorito and meanwhile holding down a job in the financial sector. He didn't mention how he came to be Bayreuth's Siegfried, but he sure did a fine job. The voice is steady & stalwart, lacking neither stamina nor emotion. It doesn't ring, but it registers without bleating or barking. In the final duet, he still seemed reasonably fresh after the hellish demands of the earlier acts. As operatic roles go, this is the proverbial killer. He made a very strong impression.

During these weeks of the RING, I am re-reading George Marek's biography of Cosima Wagner. We use the word "fascinating" too often perhaps, but I think it really applies to Cosima. One of the most beautiful episodes in her long, event-filled life was her awakening at Triebschen on the morning of December 25, 1870, hearing the strains of the Siegfried Idyll floating up the stairway. Wagner had composed it as a 33rd birthday gift for her and organized a small orchestra to perform it at the villa. When one thinks of incredible gifts that have been given throughout history, this would rank very high - of the same beauty and meaning as white roses. 

 

Wagner's RING from Bayreuth

Hail to WQXR! The station is broadcasting this Summer's RING Cycle from the Bayreuth Festival on the four Saturday afternoons in October. Hearing the four operas performed a week apart is the next best thing to hearing the whole cycle as Wagner intended: during the course of a single week.

Conductor Christian Thielemann is offering a somewhat lighter-textured RING than we are accustomed to, using singers who for the most part lack the titanic instruments of famous RING voices from the recent past. In general, this Bayreuth Cycle reflects a downward trend in vocal majesty which has been affecting opera across the board for the last decade or so. There are good and exciting singers these days, but they are fewer and further between as time goes by. Bayreuth used to attract the great Wagnerian voices of each era; in the present cast there are many good, workmanlike performances but hardly any vocalism that really commands attention.

An exception is the South African mezzo Michele Breedt as Fricka. I knew nothing about this artist before hearing her on these broadcasts. It is a beautiful instrument, expressively used. In a pre-RHEINGOLD interview Ms. Breedt mentioned that Maestro Thielemann was continually exhorting the singers: "Piano! Pianissimo!" and she follows his urgings, deploying some wonderful lyrical phrases in music that is often brazened out.

Adrianne Pieczonka, who I saw at the Met as Sieglinde two years ago, has a very attractive sound and she has found greater clarity and meaning in the text as well as an enhanced dynamic spectrum in this music. Endrick Wottrich as Siegmund has a timbre similar to the late James McCracken's though darker in colour. He is a passionate singer despite a less-than-beautiful sound. I didn't care for Falk Struckmann's Wotan in RHEINGOLD - he seemed unfocussed tonally at times - but enjoyed most of his WALKURE until, near the end, he cracked and then had to make some adjustments to get thru to the end. Sadly, Linda Watson's desperate top notes are preventing her Brunnhilde from making a good impression, though in the Todesverkundigung (the heart of the opera) she & Wottrich enhanced the musical spell that Wagner casts with their poignant, intense expression. {Photos: Struckmann & Watson in Act III; Wottrich as Siegmund.}

I wondered if Thielemann might have made a greater effect if he had had greater voices spurring him on. For all that, it's exciting to have the Cycle at our fingertips. Thank you, WQXR!

WALKURE curtain call...

Colorful ZAUBERFLOETE at the Met

This was my first viewing of the Julie Taymor ZAUBERFLOETE; it is eye-filling though I do not find the production details deter at all from the work. Some people find it "too busy" but I felt the stage business was very suitable to the story and very entertaining. Numerous opaque or translucent panels, mirrors, magical lighting effects, glowing crystals, and vivid runes illuminated in vibrant colors draw the eye constantly.

FLUTE's story never really made sense to me, and the second act is overly-long. But when you have music like this, it hardly matters. I do wish the Papageno-aspects could be trimmed back a little. But of course, the crowd loves him. The flamingo-ballerinas-on-stilts and the huge silky polar bears were a visual treat.

Scott Bergeson gave us a warm & ideally weighted FLUTE; the orchestral sound was full and the voices always clearly audible.

Of the singers, I think pride of place goes to Jonas Kaufmann as Tamino. He looked striking in his "Asian prince" costume, top-knot and white-masque make-up. His voice is clear and sizeable though not especially beautiful in timbre; he reminded me vocally a bit of Marcel Wittrisch. In the central scene outside the Temple, where Tamino's world is turned upside-down in his meeting with the Speaker, Kaufmann and veteran Eike Wilm Schulte had just the right gravity. In the reflective passages following their dialogue, Kaufmann was truly splendid.

The production makes Pamina look more like a gypsy than a princess; Isabel Bayrakdarian has a very pretty voice but I think Pamina in a big house is a bit heavy for her and she seemed to be pushing for volume. As her mother, Erika Miklosa (photo, top) nailed the dizzy high-wire passages of the Queen's two arias, her high F's spot on. But there is an area of her voice, just at the junction of her high register and the super-high, that comes out flat sometimes.  "Der holle rache" won her a very prolonged and deserved ovation. At the other end of the scale, literally, towering Stephen Milling put me in mind of the great Martti Talvela both in stature and vocal quality; Milling's speaking voice was - if anything - even more profound than his singing. Nathan Gunn was a lively and ingratiating Papageno; he sings very well though his voice lacks a distinctive quality. Monica Yunus, who I knew at Juilliard, was a well-portrayed Papagena. Erika Sunnegardh, last season's famous "waitress-turned-Fidelio", was a vocally prominent 1st Lady. Joined by Theodora Hanslowe and Malin Fritz, Sunnegardh maintained a high level of vocal interest, piquing my curiosity about her upcoming Turandots. Volker Vogel was a funny and grotesque Monastatos, singing well. It was great to see (and hear) veteran John Cheek onstage as the 2nd Guard, sturdily anchoring the duet and subsequent quartet. The Three Boys were weak and ill-pitched vocally. I would rather hear females in this music; remember that Frederica von Stade made her Met debut as the 2nd Boy though I think we called them Genii in those days. Anyway, their music is too lovely to be squandered on the pallid tones of boy sopranos.

Vollard Exhibit at the Met

Ambroise Vollard was an art dealer who helped bring several great artist's work to prominence; in Paris from the late 19th century til his death in 1939, Vollard bought, sold & exhibited works by such legends as Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Degas and Picasso among others.

The Met has mounted a handsome collection of works associated with Vollard, works which in one way or another actually passed through his hands. In many instances, both the price he paid and the price he fetched for a particular work is cited. He must have kept prodigious records.

My friends Deborah and Richard came down from Connecticut and we spent 2 hours viewing some of the most gorgeous colours one could imagine. The Met has done its usual fine job of showing the paintings to the best advantage; what a thrill to actually see one of van Gogh's "starry nights" and the famous Cezanne still-lifes looking remarkably 'modern' so many decades after they were created. The centerpiece of the exhibit is the huge Gauguin, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" Phenomenal shades of blue.  As we viewed the paintings, I was struck by how many of them show utterly ordinary people doing the most ordinary things. I wonder if any of these subjects would have guessed that people would be lining up to look at them a century later. And lining up they were: the huge crowd made it impossible to really devote the necessary time and reverie to each work; a tour was passing through and while the guide had interesting things to say, I prefer viewing art works in silence, an experience further precluded today by two women who brought very young crying children in strollers. The toddlers were not enjoying the show, and they prevented the women from enjoying the show: a thoughtless intrusion on everyone's experience. A no-win situation.

I was taken with some works by Georges Rouault, designer of the original sets for PRODIGAL SON; his designs are still used in the NYC Ballet's production of the work. His characteristic style of heavy black outlines and rich, dark colours has a somewhat ominous feeling.

For all the visual richness of the exhibit, I found the most fascinating element to be a two-minute silent black-and-white 1915 film clip of Vollard with the elderly Renoir. They are sitting, smoking cigarettes and discussing a painting Vollard holds up to show the aging artist. One notices the horrible arthritic deformity of Renoir's hands. Renoir seems to briefly work at a canvas, and in the final moment he stares directly into the camera; the film freezes on this ghostly image. I watched this eight or nine times, mesmerized.   

   

Met GIOCONDA: Ballet Outshines Singing

I remember back in 1966 when the current production of GIOCONDA opened at the (then) New Met, my friends and I took the opportunity, during the Dance of the Hours, to sit down against the standing room wall and rest our feet 'til the singing started up again. Ballets in opera? What could be worse?

Last night, the Dance of the Hours stopped the show. Christopher Wheeldon crafted a beautiful, very classic piece featuring Angel Corella (the Moon) and Letizia Giuliani (the Sun) and eight girls from the Met's corps de ballet. In beautiful costumes (4 creamy day-time hours and 4 midnight blue-black ladies of the night), the corps wove patterns as Angel and Signorina Giuliani engaged in tricky steps, turns and  wafting jumps before melding into a lovely adagio during the big theme. Then there was a burst from the corps as the stretta began. Chris gave the Met girls a challenge but also made them look good. They seemed very happy to be dancing such fine steps. Then Angel went into a dazzling series of rapid-fire turns while Giuliani did brilliant piques in a circle around him. The house went wild; they had to bow several times as waves of applause and cheers swept over the footlights.

Would that the rest of the opera had been at this level; alas we do not have a Tebaldi, Marton or Dimitrova today - to say nothing of a Corelli, a Tucker or Bergonzi. GIOCONDA needs 6 magnificent voices. It is not an opera to offer if you can't do it in a big way.

GIOCONDA has been my passionate favorite of all the Italian operas for years.  Just before my voice changed, I used to sing the title role along with the Milanov recording. I know almost every word of this opera; it's in my blood. The Tebaldi performances (I will be writing about her soon) burned the opera permanently into my brain cells, and Marton & Dimitrova carried the torch into the early 1990s.  But who...WHO?...could be a real Gioconda today? Sylvie Valayre tried it at Carnegie a few years ago, further eroding her voice in the process. Debbie Voigt? Don't make me laugh...she has no passion and now that she's been "stapled" she should be singing Countess Almaviva. Andrea Gruber? You can drive a truck thru that wobble. Alessandra Marc?  Not any more.

The Met chose Violeta Urmana. Urmana's switch from mezzo to soprano has been one of the more unfortunate voice-tamperings in recent years. A few years ago, her Met debut as a Kundry of contralto-tinged magnificence was nothing short of revelatory. But now she is a soprano and while she has all the instincts and looks great, she just doesn't have the chops for Gioconda. She treads carefully in the chest voice now, something a great Gioconda can't do, and her top is narrow and strident. Along the way she has many fine passages but in the end you feel she is expending a teriffic amount of vocal energy with very little to show for it. A couple times there was a husky quality in her lower-range singing; that is a bad sign. The news that she is to do Odabella in Verdi's ATTILA here in a year or two is discouraging. A killer role; and it's the voice that gets killed.

I believe the orginal plan for this season was to open with the Fleming/Hvorostovsky/Vargas ONEGIN and present the Met's in-rep BUTTERFLY later, and that Marcello Giordani was to be Enzo in GIOCONDA. He would be the most viable choice for Enzo among today's tenors, though he is an erratic singer. Then Gelb decided to open with a new production; the ONEGIN was pushed back and Giordani got pulled from GIOCONDA and stuck in BUTTERFLY. (He is going to do 2 Enzos next week).

So the Met got Aquiles Machado for Enzo; Mr. Machado was a lirico tenor a few years ago when he sang at the Cardiff Competition. As with many goodish tenors in recent years, he has pushed into heavier rep and now the tone has a steady beat in sustained notes. It's a big enough voice, and he did some nice things (esp. in the duet with Laura, an oasis of repose in an otherwise vein-popping role) but eventually listening to the fluctuating tones became a bit tedious. He is very a very short man, coming up to the bosoms of the two ladies who are rivals for his affection. This sort of performance gives GIOCONDA a bad name. Still, there was an endearing quaility to Machado's efforts; it would be good to hear him in a less taxing & exposed role. Pinkerton, maybe.

Olga Borodina has in recent years been a stunning Dalila and a magnificent Marfa in KHOVASCHINA with the visiting Kirov but tonight as Laura she sounded over-blown, her pitch wandered and her top notes were pushed. Again, in that duet with Machado, she seemed at her best.

Paata Burchuladze's tone is extremely covered and his wobble sounds like an old Buick with transmission problems. He has power but it is not a pleasant voice. Where is the Siepi, Tozzi or Giaiotti of today? Where - for that matter - is the next Plishka or Ramey?

There was a well-sung Monk from Ricardo Lugo, and there were two very exciting assumptions: Irina Mishura as Cieca and Zeljko Lucic as Barnaba. Mishura, looking thin and frail, sang the "Voce di donna" with dusky lower notes and a strong emotional tug. Mr. Lucic is a big, strapping man with an evil glint in his eye and an oily black wig that makes him fearsome. His strong, Met-filling voice is vividly inflected and he tossed some really pungent phrases out into the house. Top notes were casually sustained to powerful effect. Mishura and Lucic follow proudly in the footsteps of their Met predecessors in these roles (Amparan/Baldani/Dunn/Chookasian/the magnificent Bianca Berini for her; MacNeil, Merrill, Quilico, Manuguerra & Colzani for him) BRAVI!! (Note to Peter Gelb: re-engage Mr. Lucic NOW!)

The ultimate blame for the "failure" of this performance lies with the conductor, Bertrand de Billy. As with his TURANDOT last season, de Billy shows he is not a viable conductor for the big Italian works. He is too slow, too refined; he seems to want to apologize for the fact that it isn't great music but he'll do his best to make it attractive to us. GIOCONDA, more than any other Italian opera, needs a real Italian maestro...someone with spaghetti sauce in his veins and heavy on the garlic and pepper...it needs Cleva, Bartoletti, Patane, Il Duce Nello Santi. Without that sweep and passion, GIOCONDA becomes a chalky tiramisu...heavy, stuffy and sleep-inducing.

Food of Love

Sometimes I feel my life is inundated with music; working in a place where classical music plays all day long might sound like a pleasure, but much of the time I am listening to things someone else chose. And I have found that I listen to less and less music at home because I have been over-exposed at work.

But a new CD has come in and we played it yesterday and when track 3 came on, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it. The disc, on the Naxos label (#8.559302) features the John Adams Violin Concerto as the main work, and further includes the Red Violin 'Chaconne' of Corigliano and a brief bit of Enescu.

But it is Franz Waxman's 'Tristan & Isolde Fantasia' that really makes the disc worth having. Originally set by Waxman for the 1946 film HUMORESQUE, the piece weaves the Liebestod theme of Wagner's opera into a spell-bindingly rhapsodic piece for violin and orchestra. Violinist Chloe Hanslip has satiny tone and just the right impulses to set the music on wing; there is an interwoven piano part (Charles Owen) and the orchestra under Leonard Slatkin perfectly captures the sensuous flow of the Wagner masterpiece.

The entire disc is striking. Of course, I couldn't help visualizing a ballet to the eleven-minute Waxman/Wagner score...a distillation of the longing and transfiguration of Tristan and Isolde.

I immediately bought 2 copies though I admit so far I haven't played it at home...waiting for just the right moment. The other copy's for my friend Jan; I know it is something he will love.