Opera News articles from December 2003

Opera News archives from December 2003

French evolution.(Viewpoint)
December 1, 2003... Curiously, La Juive and Benvenuto Cellini--the two operas marking their Chevron Texaco broadcast debuts this month--both were created during the glory days of French grand opera, an era in musical history now underrepresented in that loosely...

Opera watch.
December 1, 2003... 1. At a September 23 reception at BULGARI in Manhattan, LEONTYNE PRICE was presented with GRAMOPHONE's Lifetime Achievement Award by JAMES JOLLY, the magazine's editor. Other winners of 2003 Gramophone Awards, announced at London's Barbican...

In Bellini's Norma, the marathon vocal lines of the title role present a formidable challenge for any of today's sopranos.(On the Beat)
December 1, 2003... In Bellini's Norma, the marathon vocal lines of the title role present a formidable challenge for any of today's sopranos. Too often, it's the Adalgisa who walks off with the show and the reviews. But on October 7, Armenian soprano HASMIK...

Fall in New York means more than the beginning of the classical-music season: it's also the beginning of party season.(On the Beat)
December 1, 2003... Fall in New York means more than the beginning of the classical-music season; it's also the beginning of party season. In early autumn, I attended two wonderful events. The first, on September 23, was "Diamonds in the Rough," a bash at Cipriani...

Now that the New York Philharmonic has announced that it will not be deserting Lincoln Center for Carnegie Hall: after all, one wonders what the future holds.(On the Beat)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Now that the New York Philharmonic has announced that it will not be deserting Lincoln Center for Carnegie Hall after all, one wonders what the future holds. Certainly a marriage is hardly the same after one party expresses a desire to get out...

Virginia Opera's mission.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... We were delighted to see Virginia Opera given appropriate credit for helping the career of Renee Fleming at the crucial moment when she said giving up entirely was "only months away. Although no one else was offering her roles, we offered her...

Plain speaking.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Bravo to Sir Peter Moores for his championship of opera in English! I had a chance to experience the same when I attended a performance of Tristan and Isolde at English National Opera in London last May. Arriving just before curtain, I didn't...

Brava Bartoli.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Thank you for William Braun's thoughtful interview with Cecilia Bartoli in the October issue of OPERA NEWS, and for her own cogent thoughts on the importance of Antonio Salieri and the value of his works. Older listeners rightly celebrate...

Making tracks.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... It was interesting to read in the October issue about the hard times for classical recordings and then see a full-page ad on the back cover for the latest release from Renee Fleming on Decca. Miss Fleming is one of my favorites and I have...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
December 1, 2003... The iPod can store up to 2,500 songs, not 2,500 hours of material, as stated in "The Case of the Downloaded Diva" (Oct.). In the same article, the most common modem is 56K, not 512K. Patrick Summers is not Australian, as stated in "Hot...

Sound bites.(soprano is first visibly pregnant Lucia di Lammermoor in New York City Opera history)
December 1, 2003... Jennifer Welch-Babidge made the front page of The New York Times this past August as the first visibly pregnant Lucia di Lammermoor in New York City Opera history. (The baby, her second, is due this month.) Her expectant state was welcomed by...

Channeling La Juive: Ira Siff encounters Neil Shicoff during the making of a new music video based on Halevy's opera.
December 1, 2003... March 4, 2003: on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, New York City's oldest synagogue, now houses a studio for the sculptor after whom it is named oil the upper level, a shell of the original synagogue...

Once in a lifetime: although Fromental Halevy wrote thirty-two stage works, La Juive was the only one destined to survive.
December 1, 2003... Profile composers are not always the most enduring: witness the case of Fromental Halevy. La Juive, far and away Halevy's most successful work, returns to the Met repertory this season after a remarkable absence of sixty-seven years. There was...

Wholly Moses: Peter G. Davis on his lifelong fascination with Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.
December 1, 2003... I've given up trying to convince skeptics that I fell hard for Schoenberg's Moses und Aron the very first time I heard it, at age eighteen. Not possible, they say. Even if someone actually does claim to enjoy this fabled, thorny score--the...

Roman holiday: the Met offers an all-too-rare opportunity to experience the carnival spirit of Berlioz's.
December 1, 2003... Each of Berlioz's three operas--the exuberant, impetuous Benvenuto Cellini, embarked on in 1834 when he was in his early thirties; the huge, wonderful Les Troyens twenty years later; and Beatrice et Benedict, that final "caprice, written with...

The rebellious debutant: firebrand stage director Andrei Serban bows at the Met with Benvenuto Cellini.(Interview)
December 1, 2003... It was the frantic summer of 1999. San Francisco Opera was reviving Nikolaus Lehnhoff's relatively realistic, somewhat tired production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. But Lehnhoff wasn't coming back to rewarm the staging scheme. Contrary...

The divine Sarah: Richard Dyer salutes the genius of Sarah Caldwell, whose pioneering productions of Moses und Aron and Benvenuto Cellini helped put opera on the map in Boston.
December 1, 2003... It is difficult to imagine two operas that differ from each other more than Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini and Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, the one a vivacious, cheerfully amoral swashbuckler, the other a profound philosophical meditation on the...

The discreet charm of the Berliozoisie: as she tracks down fellow Berlioz fanatics, Jennifer Melick discovers much about the unique appeal of the composer's music.
December 1, 2003... Hector Berlioz is an odd case: he's widely considered an important composer, but if you are new to classical music, you may never have had the chance to hear a single one of his operas. (Though his two-hundredth birthday arrives this month,...

La Juive.(Metropolitan Opera)
December 1, 2003... BROADCAST OF DECEMBER 13, 2003 SPONSORED BY CHEVRONTEXACO OVER THE CHEVRONTEXACO METROPOLITAN OPERA INTERNATIONAL RADIO NETWORK, 1 P.M. Music by Fromental Halevy Libretto by Eugene Scribe THE STORY ACT I. Constance, 1414. The...

Moses und Aron.(Metropolitan Opera)
December 1, 2003... BROADCAST OF DECEMBER 20, 2003 SPONSORED BY CHEVRONTEXACO OVER THE CHEVRONTEXACO METROPOLITAN OPERA INTERNATIONAL RADIO NETWORK, 12 NOON Music by Arnold Schoenberg Libretto by the composer, after Old Testament texts THE STORY ...

The casts.(Benvenuto Cellini cast member discusses favorite movies, books; notes about other performers)
December 1, 2003... BROADCAST SPOTLIGHT: MARCELLO GIORDANI (Benvenuto Cellini) Most recent book I really loved: Besides La Vita, Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, The King of Torts, by John Grisham. Guilty-pleasure movie: Yes, Giorgio! All-time...

Benvenuto Cellini.(Metropolitan Opera)
December 1, 2003... BROADCAST OF DECEMBER 27, 2003: SPONSORED BY CHEVRONTEXACO OVER THE CHEVRONTEXACO METROPOLITAN OPERA INTERNATIONAL RADIO NETWORK, 1:30 P.M. BENVENUTO CELLINI THE CAST (in order of vocal appearance) Giacomo Balducci ...

Il Barbiere di Siviglia.(Metropolitan Opera)
December 1, 2003... BROADCAST OF JANUARY 3, 2004 SPONSORED BY CHEVRONTEXACO OVER THE CHEVRONTEXACO METROPOLITAN OPERA INTERNATIONAL RADIO NETWORK, 1:30 P.M. IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA THE CAST (in order of vocal appearance) Fiorello ...

High-tech stocking-stuffers.(Sight and Sound)(includes list of phone numbers / web addresses for products described)
December 1, 2003... Like live animals or expensive gym memberships, high-tech gizmos deserve their own category as over-the-top gifts for the holidays. They have similar responsibilities for the giver, too: know your audience, brush up on the technology, and get a...

From around the world: Paris.(International)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... The first new production of Hugues Gall's final season at the Opera National de Paris was Lev Dodin's staging of Strauss's Salome, conducted by music director James Conlon, with Karita Mattila in her role debut as the heroine. Dodin's...

From around the world: Berlin.(International)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Last season marked not only Andreas Homoki's first as chief director of Berlin's Komische Oper but the company's least successful in years. At most performances, fewer than half the seats were sold, and some productions reportedly attracted...

From around the world: Zurich.(International)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Antonio Salieri's Axur, Re d'Ormus, a "tragicomic drama" in five acts, was given its premiere in Vienna in 1788 and was an instant hit, with twenty-nine performances that season (as opposed to fifteen for Don Giovanni, new to Vienna at the...

From around the world: London.(International)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Currently being restored to its full Edwardian glory, the London Coliseum is scheduled to reopen in time for its centenary, in February 2004. Meanwhile, English National Opera is camping out at the Barbican Centre, offering a short season split...

From around the world: Edinburgh.(International)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... The big news at this year's Edinburgh International Festival was two full cycles of Scottish Opera's new-ish production of Wagner's Ring (completed in 2002), .along with the fact that all eight performances were sold out before the rest of the...

From around the world: Los Angeles.(North America)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Los Angeles Opera's partnership with Polish National Opera has paid off, first with a darkly scintillating production of Don Giovanni, now with a bizarre yet superbly coherent La Damnation de Faust, designed and directed by Achim Freyer (also...

From around the world: New York City.(North America)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... This season's Met opening (Sept. 29) brought Renee Fleming's much-anticipated Violetta, in the 1998 Franco Zeffirelli production of La Traviata. Though it was originally planned for Fleming to appear in the premiere of this production, she did...

From around the world: Chicago.(North America)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro has been called one of the great achievements of Western civilization, an assessment reflective of the work's profound treatise on the very nature of humanity, as well as of its glorious music. Lyric Opera of...

From around the world: San Francisco.(North America)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All has been performed by student and regional theaters many times since its modest debut at Columbia University in 1947, but it is rarely staged by major companies--and never by San Francisco Opera, prior to...

From around the world: New Orleans.(North America)(Opera Review)
December 1, 2003... To celebrate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans Opera commissioned Thea Musgrave to write an opera; the result, Pontalba, opened on October 2. Musgrave chose as her subject the Baroness de Pontalba, nee Micaela Almonester,...

From around the world: New York.(Concerts & Recitals ... Renee Fleming and others at Carnegie Hall)(Concert Review)
December 1, 2003... "Relax, it's only a movie," one used to think, whenever the subway rumbled by and spoiled one's concentration during a screening in Carnegie Hall's basement theater. Well, it isn't a movie anymore, it's a concert at the Judy and Arthur Zankel...

From around the world: Philadelphia.(Concerts & Recitals ... Christine Goerke and Tempesta di Mare join forces)(Concert Review)
December 1, 2003... "Murder Most Foul" was the title of Tempesta di Mare's season-opening concert (Oct. 4, at St. Mark's Church). The orchestra, named for one of Vivaldi's dramatic chamber pieces, performed that composer's La Notte and an excerpt from Jean-Fery...

From around the world: December on-line edition of opera news.(Concerts & Recitals)(Brief Article)(Calendar)
December 1, 2003... INTERNATIONAL: In Helsinki, another world-premiere opera depicts Rasputin; Munich Festival hears Handel's Rodelinda and Widmann's new Das Gesicht im Spiegel; in Sydney, Kupfer directs, Young conducts Otello; in Vienna, the State Opera revives...

Handel: Giulio Cesare.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Mijanovic, Kozena, von Otter, Hellekant; B. Mehta, Ewing, Bertin, Ankaoua; Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski. 2002. Text and translation. DG Archiv B0000314-02 (3) My introduction to the operas of Handel was the 1967 LP recording of...

Beethoven: Fidelio.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Denoke, Banse; Villars, Held, Polgar, Trost, Quasthoff, Ebenstein, Tibrea; Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle. Text and translation. EMI 7243 5 57555 (2) What sort of an opera is Fidelio anyway? A staggering preview...

Donizetti: Roberto Devereux.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Miricioiu, Ganassi; Bros, Frontali; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Benini. Text and translation. Opera Rara ORC-24-2 (Harmonia Mundi, dist.) Alongside its Tudor companions, Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena,...

Weill: the Firebrand of Florence.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Fuller, Palmer; Gilfry, Dvorsky, Russell Beak; BBC Symphony, A. Davis. Texts and translations. Capriccio 60 091 The Firebrand of Florence is probably the most European of Kurt Weill's American stage works, an outright operetta, with...

Barber: Vanessa.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Chickering, Matthews, Dry; Bauwens, Conrad; National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Ukraine, Rose. Naxos 8.669140-41 (2) As part of its admirable, ongoing American Opera Classics series, Naxos offers the second studio recording of...

Antonio de Literes: Jupiter y Semele.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Almajano, Cardoso, Casariego, Ardid; Ricart; Al Ayre Espanol, Lopez Banzo. Texts and translations. Harmonia Mundi HMI 987036.37 The Spanish zarzuela has a history as distinguished as, and even longer than, the American musical comedy....

Cecilia Bartoli.(THE SALIERI ALBUM - Arias by Salieri)(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] "THE SALIERI ALBUM" Arias by Salieri. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Fischer. Texts and translations. Decca B0001097-02 Cecilia Bartoli has been following a humanitarian version of "bait and switch" for some time now. With the...

Renee Fleming.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] "BY REQUEST" Arias from Gianni Schicchi, La Wally, Figaro, Cosi, Norma, La Traviata (with Calleja), Madama Butterfly, Manon, Rusalka, Die Tote Stadt; songs by Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Gershwin, Villa-Lobos, Rodgers. London Philharmonic, London...

Jussi Bjorling.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] "BJORLING REDISCOVERED: Carnegie Hall Recital September 24, 1955" Music of Beethoven, Foster, Giordano, Grieg, Mascagni, Puccini, Schubert, Sibelius, Sjoberg, Tosti, et al.; Schauwecker, piano. Texts and translations. RCA Red Seal...

Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini.(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Wells, Williams; Vickers, Reardon, Beni, Gramm; Chorus and Orchestra of the Opera Company of Boston, Caldwell. Brief notes, no libretto. VAI (Video Artists International) VAIA 1214-2 "It had really never occurred to me to take on the...

J. Strauss: Die Fledermaus.(Video Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... [] Delunsch, Hartelius, Moss; Homberger, Hadley, Bar; Mozarteum Orchestra, Arnold Schonberg Chorus, Minkowski. Arte/ArtHaus Musik 100 341 (Naxos, dist.), 170 mins. Remember Die Fledermaus, Johann Strauss's elegant, mellifluous and mildly...

Producers' showcase "Festival of Music" Vol. 1.(Video Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... Producers' Showcase "Festival of Music" Vol. 1 [] Scenes, arias, songs, instrumental solos. Peerce, Warren, Peters, R. Stevens, M. Anderson, M. Miller, Thebom, Milanov, Bjorling, Tebaldi, Rubinstein, Stern, Piatigorsky, Laughton; Showcase...

At the Opera: Tales of the Great Operas.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... by Ann Fiery, illustrations by Peter Malone Chronicle Books, 304 pp. $50 This hefty, silk-bound volume appears just in time for holiday gift-giving, and it's hard to think what the publishers could have done to make it more tempting:...

Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France: the Politics of La Juive.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... by Diana R. Hallman Cambridge University Press, 408 pp. $70 Fromental Halevy would surely be disappointed to learn that, two centuries after his birth (1799), he still is known primarily as a Jewish composer. This scholarly study of his...

Joel Honig.(Obituaries)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... JOEL HONIG, Chicago, IL, October 13, 1936--New York City, September 25, 2003 With Joel Honig's recent death from renal cancer, OPERA NEWS lost a gifted writer who was one of the magazine's most provocative contributors for forty years....

Ian Hunter.(Obituaries)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... IAN HUNTER, Middlesex, UK, April 2, 1919--West Sussex, UK, September 5, 2003 The impresario began his career in 1947, as assistant to artistic director Rudolf Bing at the first Edinburgh Festival. He succeeded Bing in 1950 and remained as...

William Pell.(Obituaries)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... WILLIAM PELL, Denver, CO, August 16, 1947--Nashville, TN, July 26, 2003 The tenor studied at Peabody Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music and Indiana University and was an Affiliate Artist at San Francisco Opera before establishing a...

Dateline.(what's on at opera houses everywhere)(Calendar)
December 1, 2003... METROPOLITAN OPERA (Metropolitan Opera House, 212-362-6000; www.metopera.org) Dec. 1 La Boheme (Puccini), Evseeva, Pulley; La Scola, Kwiecien, Robbins; Oren, Zeffirelli/Pappas, Zeffirelli/Hall Dec. 2 Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart)....

Krassimira Stoyanova as Anna Bolena: the Bulgarian soprano stars in Donizetti's Anna Bolena with opera orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, December 14.(Hot Ticket )(Interview)
December 1, 2003... OPERA NEWS: You've sung with 00NY before, in Les Huguenots and La Battaglia di Legnano in 2001. How does it feel to be returning to New York to sing at Carnegie Hall? KRASSIMIRA STOYANOVA: Oh, this is the type of audience I live for! And...