Opera News articles from March 2004

Opera News archives from March 2004

Return engagements.(Viewpoint)(Metropolitan Opera's fisrt production of Salome, 1907)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... In its edition of February 9, 1907, Harper's Weekly, one of the most influential journals of its era, captured the slightly ludicrous drama of the day's biggest story in classical music with a bull's-eye cartoon by W. A. Rogers. The...

Correction.(Viewpoint)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... Fred Plotkin writes: In "Rhapsody for Horne" (January), I mistakenly conflated two different backstage stories and stated that Marilyn Horne had to withdraw from a 1987 performance of Samson et Dalila at the Met. This is incorrect, and I regret...

Opera watch.(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... 1. At a December 11 ceremony at Birdland, the Manhattan jazz club, MUSICAL AMERICA honored its 2004 award recipients, among them WYNTON MARSALIS, named Musician of the Year, and Vocalist of the Year SUSAN GRAHAM. Graham was feted again on...

Deborah Voigt.(On the Beat)(Concert Review)
March 1, 2004... Unless you're a shut-in, it would have been awfully difficult to miss DEBORAH VOIGT in New York during the month of December. At the Met, she could be heard reprising her portrayal of the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten from HERBERT...

Jonathan Sheffer.(On the Beat)(EOS Orchestra's production of The Valkyrie)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... JONATHAN DOVE and GRAHAM VlCK's reduction of Wagner's Ring cycle is not new: it was first revealed at Birmingham Opera back in 1990. But New Yorkers didn't get to experience it until 2002, when the EOS Orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Sheffer,...

Valerie McCarthy.(On the Beat)(Brief Article)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... Recently, at a party at Manhattan's Cipriani 42nd Street, I met a talented young soprano named VALERIE MCCARTHY, who performed excerpts from the BAZ LUHRMANN Broadway production of La Boheme. She had done the show in New York, but her moment of...

John Musta.(On the Beat)(Brief Article)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... When I look at the opera commissions that are awarded these days--A Streetcar Named Desire, Dead Man Walking, An American Tragedy, etc.--I sometimes wonder whether the American composer has forgotten that there's a genre known as comedy. The...

David Del Tredici.(On the Beat)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... Another, more seasoned, American composer has bounced back in the news with a flurry of recording activity. Pulitzer Prize-winner DAVID DEL TREDICI has a string of new CDs appearing this year. The first is the world premiere recording, just...

Sound bites.(Biography)
March 1, 2004... Robin Johannsen says her favorite color these days is red. The Philadelphia-born soprano, who sings Papagena at Deutsche Oper Berlin this month, explains that as a DOB fest contract artist, "I get my schedule very late. The theater needs to...

Donna Anja: Anja Harteros, the Met's newest Donna Anna, has developed a major international reputation without attitude, hype or a single commercial recording.(Interview)(Cover Story)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... It was October 1, the third night of the current Met season, and the bill was Le Nozze di Figaro. But it wasn't just another Figaro. Jonathan Miller's edgy though essentially conventional production, first seen in 1998, had been cleverly...

Visual voice: although Wagner's music dramas had galvanized the world Richard Strauss didn't follow in his footsteps. Instead he created a new, "cinematic" language all his own.(Health)
March 1, 2004... In what must have been a bizarre scene at the Berlin Hotel Bellevue, a reluctant Richard Strauss played (and sang) the final scene of Salome on the piano for Cosima Wagner on Good Friday 1905. The orchestration was not yet complete, and the...

Girl Crazy: there are lots of ways to skin a Salome. David cote looks at some of the more memorable takes on Strauss's high-strung heroine.(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2004... In art, shock value doesn't have a very long shelf life. One generation's cultural outrage is a kits& artifact to the next. Or else, the supposed breach in morals made by a work of art can in fact open the door for like-minded others, becoming...

The Salome scandals of 1907.
March 1, 2004... We don't know exactly what it was that horrified Mrs. Herbert Satterlee at the final rehearsal of Richard Strauss's Salome at the Metropolitan Opera House, after church on Sunday afternoon, January 20, 1907. She never explained it in any form...

Growing pains: Laura Claycomb doesn't want to be typed as just another high-flying coloratura. She wants to be taken seriously. Very seriously.
March 1, 2004... Size matters to opera singers, it's not something discussed in polite company, though. Certainly, soprano Laura Claycomb takes exception to the subject, when it is mentioned in relation to her voice. "I find the premise to be kind of...

Beginning of the end: Jake Heggie's new opera for Houston Grand Opera. The End of the Affair, offers a choice role for soprano Cheryl Barker.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... "I am all about affairs, actually," admits Cheryl Barker, and she's right: rather sordid trysts and Fatal assignations have been compromising her schedule of late. Those unfamiliar with the Australian soprano might think that she is taking the...

Bel canto society videos & CDs.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Il trovatore (London, May 12, 1939, live). Bjorling, Cigna, Wettergren, Basiola, Zambelli; Gui; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. (2 CDs) #5000 $19.95 Il trovatore (Berlin, Oct. 1, 1961, live). Corelli, Parutto,...

La Traviata.(Metropolitan Opera)
March 1, 2004... Broadcast of March 6, 2004: sponsored by ChevronTexaco over the ChevronTexaco metropolitan opera international radio network, 1:30 p.m. THE STORY ACT I. In her Paris salon, the courtesan Violetta Valery welcomes her guests, among them...

Don Giovanni.(Metropolitan Opera)(Radio Program Review)
March 1, 2004... Broadcast of March 13, 2004: sponsored by ChevronTexaco over the ChevronTexaco metropolitan opera international radio network, 1:30 p.m. THE STORY ACT I. At night, outside the Commendatore's palace in Seville, Leporello grumbles about...

The casts.
March 1, 2004... Renee Fleming (Violetta) began 2004 with a concert tour to Paris, Munich and Dortmund, then settled in Washington, DC, for a Kennedy Center residency, giving master classes and concerts with the National Symphony, plus a duo recital with Susan...

Das Rheingold.(Metropolitan Opera)(Radio Program Review)
March 1, 2004... roadcast of March 29, 2004: sponsored by ChevronTexaco over the ChevronTexaco metropolitan opera international radio network, 1:30 p.m. THE STORY In the depths of the Rhine, three Rhinemaidens--Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde,...

Salome.(Metropolitan Opera)(Radio Program Review)
March 1, 2004... Broadcast of March 27, 2004 sponsored by ChevronTexaco over the ChevronTexaco Metropolitan Opera international radio network, 2:00 p.m. THE STORY From the moonlit terrace of Herodes's palace, Narraboth, captain of the guard, gazes...

New York City.(In Reviews: from around the world: North America - Benvenuto Cellini; The Merry Widow)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... The Met's Berlioz bicentennial celebration started last season with a new Les Troyens and now (Dec. 4) has enriched the company's repertoire with his remarkable Benvenuto Cellini. It's safe to predict that this most neglected of Berlioz's...

Chicago.(In Reviews: from around the world: North America)(Faust)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... The once-ubiquitous Faust has suffered a decided fall in popularity in the post-modern age. Most attempts to blow the dust off Gounod's Victorian morality fable with deconstructed, high-concept stagings have jarred with the sweeping Romanticism...

Paris.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Ariadne auf Naxos)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... It was good to see Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos promoted to the Palais Garnier from the Opera Comique, where the Paris premiere of the work took place in 1943, with Roger Desormiere conducting Germaine Lubin as Ariadne and Janine Micheau as...

London.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Sweeney Todd; Lucia di Lammermoor)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... Covent Garden has occasionally resounded to the strains of operetta--Offenbach's Grande-Duchesse had its first London run there between opera seasons in 1867; Die Fledermaus made its debut at the house in 1930; and Welsh National Opera...

Milan.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Moise et Pharaon)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... Rossini's Moise et Pharaon is one of the very few non-comic operas by Rossini to have remained consistently in the repertoire in Italy, but until very recently it was always heavily cut and performed in an unsatisfactory Italian translation....

Naples.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Elektra)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... The new production of Elektra--the first here in forty-seven years--that inaugurated the season at the San Carlo was designed by the remarkable German artist and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, who was making his opera debut. A rectangular space...

Rome.(In Reviews: from around the world: International)(Francesca da Rimini at the Teatro dell'Opera)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini (1914) is perhaps best described as an Italian equivalent of Tristan und Isolde, in which the two lovers--Francesca and Paolo--are instantly murdered, rather than being lengthily lectured to, by the cuckolded...

Stockholm.(In Reviews: from around the world: International)(L'Elisir d'Amore at Royal Opera in Stockholm)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... The new production of L'Elisir d'Amore at the Royal Opera in Stockholm had Jonathan Miller taking the directorial chair for the first time in Sweden. Replacing the original Italian village with an American 1950s diner, "Adina's," the director...

Munich.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Idomeneo)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... Munich's Residenztheater hosted the world premiere of Mozart's Idomeneo on January 29, 1781. On December 21, 2003, the Staatstheater am Gartnerplatz unveiled a new production of the work, sung in the German translation of Kurt Honolka. Nothing...

Brooklyn.(In Reviews: from around the world: Concerts)(The Death of Klinghoffer at Brooklyn Academy of Music)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2004... The intrusive, airport-style security search at the Brooklyn Academy of Music could mean only one thing: The Death of Klinghoffer was back, after twelve years (heard Dec. 5). John Adams and Alice Goodman's opera, of which everyone debates the...

March on-line edition of opera news.(In Reviews: from around the world: Concerts)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... NORTH AMERICA: In Manhattan, The Met's Moses, Perichole at DiCapo; OONY's Anna Bolena and NYPO Messiah; Thais in Montreal; COC teams Bach and Purcell. INTERNATIONAL: Domino Noir in Venice; Adam at the Opera Comique; Vienna's Hollander; Berlioz...

Marilyn Horne "Just for the Record: The Golden Voice".(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Arias, duets and songs by Bellini, Copland, Handel, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Verdi and others. Various orchestras and conductors. Decca B0001512-02 (2) Marilyn Horne's career took her, in nearly five decades, from the back lot at 20th Century...

Verdi: Don Carlo.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Martinpelto, Tobiason; Cleveman, Mattei, Ryhanen, Rundgren, Wallen; Chorus and Orchestra of Royal Opera House Stockholm, Hold-Garrido. Italian text only. Naxos 8.660096-98 (3) The budget-priced opera recordings on the Naxos label are a...

Bizet: Carmen.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Uria-Monzon, Vaduva; Papi]s, le Texier; Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Choeur de Grand-Theatre de Bordeaux, Lombard. Naive V4964 (Naxos, dist.) The authentic Gallic favor of this Carmen distinguishes it from most of the recent...

Meyerbeer: Margherita d'Anjou.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Massis, Barcellona; Ford, Previati, Miles, Putnins; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, Parry. Text and translations. Opera Rata ORC 25 (3) (Harmonia Mundi, dist.) German-born Giacomo Meyerbeer changed the world of opera...

Paisiello: Le Due Contesse/ Il Duello Comico.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Donzelli, Alessio; Zanfardino, Cordella, Spina (Contesse). Donzelli, Alessio, Rondinone, R. Zaccaria; Zanfardino, Colaianni, Spina, Cappelluti (Duello); Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia, Carella. Text and translation. Dynamic CDS 420/1-3...

Henze: Choral Works.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Gruberova, Moser, Mayr; Krenn, Fischer-Dieskau; ORF Choir and Symphony Orchestra, Segerstam, Horvat. Texts and translations. Orfeo C 609 031 B (Qualiton, dist.) In his prickly autobiography, Bohemian Fifths (Princeton, 1999), Hans Werner...

Natalie Dessay.(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Arias by Massenet, Thomas, Boieldieu, Offenbach, Rossini, Donizetti, Gounod. Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Plasson. Texts and translations. Virgin Classics 45610 Every once in a while, a singer comes along whose skills are so...

"Ideale".(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Songs by Tosti. Members of the London Symphony Orchestra. Texts and translations. Deutsche Grammophon 4715572 The songs of Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) make their way onto the recital platform now and then, mainly as encores, because...

Eva Urbanova "Italian Opera Arias" .(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Arias by Bellini, Cilea, Puccini, Catalani, Mascagni, Verdi. Prague National Theatre Orchestra, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Lenard. No texts or translations. Supraphon SU3763-2 631 (Qualiton, dist.) Eva Urbanova is such a conscientious...

Galina Vishnevskaya "Songs and Opera Arias".(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Arias and songs by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. London Philharmonic Orchestra, M. Rostropovich, piano and conductor. Transliterated texts and translations. EMI Great Recordings of the Century 62654 Today, when Galina...

Rossini: II Barbiere di Siviglia.(Video Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Bartoli, Kuebler, G. Quilico, Lloyd Feller; Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Choir of Cologne City Opera, Ferro. Schwetzingen, 1988. Arthaus Musik DVD 100 091 (Naxos, dist.), 157 mins., subtitled This Barbiere dates from the tail end of...

Puccini: Turandot.(Video Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Schnaut, Gallardo-Domas; Botha, Burchuladze, Tear, Daniel, Ombuena, Davislim, Bork; Vienna State Opera Chores, Tolz Boys Choir, Vienna Philharmonic, Gergiev. TDK DVD-OPTURSF (Naxos, dist.), subtitled, 125 mins. (including interview feature) ...

The Great Singers of Russia: Vol. 1 "From Chaliapin to Reizen".(Video Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... The Great Singers of Russia: Vol. 1 "From Chaliapin to Reizen" With Barsova, Obukhova, Shpiller; Chaliapin, Kozlovsky, Lemeshev, Mikhailov, Lisitsian, Nelepp, Pirogov, Reizen. Commentary by Kazarnovskaya, Petrov, Dornemann. VAI DVD 4257 75...

Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Armando Cesari Baskerville Publishers, 350pp. $45 The subtitle of this book--the seventh in the "Great Voices" series by Baskerville Publishers, which has included volumes on Renara Tebaldi, Franco Corelli and Giulietta Simionato--is an...

Obituaries.
March 1, 2004... HANS HOTTER, Offenbach-am-Main, Germany, January 19, 1909--Grunwald, Germany, December 6, 2003 A magisterial singing actor, bass-baritone Hans Hotter was the dominant Wotan of the post-World War II era in his native Germany and throughout...

Dateline.(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... METROPOLITAN OPERA (Metropolitan Opera House, 212-362-6000; www.metopera.orq) Mar. 1 Don Giovanni (Mozart), Harteros, Goerke, Hong; Hampson, Turay, Pape, Abdrazakov, Ens; Levine, Keller, Yeargan/Rabot-Pinson, Kalman Mar. 2 La Traviata...

Mourning comes again.(Coda)
March 1, 2004... Although I didn't know where it would take me, opera captured me at age ten. It was at a Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinee of La Traviata with Frederick Jagel, Lawrence Tibbett and the incomparable Licia Albanese. Soon my parents were taking...