Opera News articles from October 2004

Opera News archives from October 2004

Crossover fire.(Viewpoint)
October 1, 2004... Just what is crossover, anyway? If a singer "crosses over," in which direction is he or she supposed to be traveling? The crossover label evidently applies when a classical singer tries out material that is supposed to be more "popular" than...

Rolando Villazon, who finishes a run as Alfredo Germont for San Francisco Opera at the beginning of this month (October 3, 5, 8), moves on to Manhattan for his U.S. recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, on Monday, October 11, at 8:00 p.m.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 1. ROLANDO VILLAZON, who finishes a run as Alfredo Germont for San Francisco Opera at the beginning of this month (October 3, 5, 8), moves on to Manhattan for his U.S. recital debut at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART's Temple of Dendur, on...

Carnegie Hall.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 2. CARNEGIE HALL has announced the appointment of CLIVE GILLINSON as its new executive and artistic director. Born in India and trained as a cellist at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Gillinson has been managing director of the LONDON...

In November, the University Press of Kentucky will publish The Bennetts: an Acting Family, by Opera News features editor Brian Kellow.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 3. In November, the University Press of Kentucky will publish THE BENNETTS: AN ACTING FAMILY, by OPERA NEWS features editor BRIAN KELLOW. A biography of film stars JOAN and CONSTANCE BENNETT, their father, Broadway great RICHARD BENNETT, and...

This fall, Roberto Abbado leads The Baltimore Symphony (Oct. 14, 15, 16) and Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Oct. 21-30) before traveling to Vienna for his first appearances with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in November (19, 20, 21).(Opera Watch)(Calendar)
October 1, 2004... 4. This fall, ROBERTO ABBADO leads THE BALTIMORE SYMPHONY (Oct. 14, 15, 16) and DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Oct. 21-30) before traveling to Vienna for his first appearances with the VIENNA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA in November (19, 20, 21). Other...

On Tuesday, October 5, artists of the Moritzburg Festival will present a chamber-music concert at the New York Yacht Club in support of the reopening of the Frauenkirche in Dresden in 2005.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 5. On Tuesday, October 5, artists of the MORITZBURG FESTIVAL will present a chamber-music concert at the New York Yacht Club in support of the reopening of the FRAUENKIRCHE in DRESDEN in 2005. The Frauenkirche, a landmark in Dresden's cultural...

Julie Andrews hosts Broadway: the American Musical, a six-part, six-hour documentary series presented by Thirteen/WNET New York that has its premiere showing on PBS October 19, 20 and 21.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 6. JULIE ANDREWS hosts BROADWAY: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL, a six-part, six-hour documentary series presented by Thirteen/WNET New York that has its premiere showing on PBS October 19, 20 and 21. (Check local listings for details.) The programs will...

It was in the early 1980s that I first encountered the legendary public-relations guru Herbert Breslin.(On the Beat)
October 1, 2004... It was in the early 1980s that I first encountered the legendary public-relations guru HERBERT BRESLIN. I was working in the concert division of Manhattan's Ninety-second Street YMHA, and he telephoned to complain about some alleged mishandling...

La Fanciulla del West doesn't reach the stage very often, for a number of reasons.(On the Beat)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... La Fanciulla del West doesn't reach the stage very often, for a number of reasons. Chief among them is the expense--the opera calls for a huge cast. (There are fourteen secondary characters). But there's also the not-so-minor detail that very...

Sound bites.
October 1, 2004... John Matz admits that his career path may seem a tad circuitous. The twenty-six-year-old tenor, who spent the 2003-04 season winning praise for his Pinkerton in Los Angeles Opera's Madama Butterfly and Alfredo in Washington National Opera's...

He's got rhythm: Ernie Gilbert, a distributor of classic video gold, branches out into musical comedy.
October 1, 2004... Ethel Merman and Mary Martin doing a thirteen-minute duet-medley of twenty-nine songs? Sounds fabulous. But to Ernie Gilbert, president of Video Artists International, who brought them to us on DVD this year, getting it out was "a logistical...

Broadway comebacks: how a small label has come to the rescue of long-defunct Broadway shows.
October 1, 2004... Anyone who thinks each new Broadway musical automatically gets an original-cast recording is still living in 1951. Long gone are the days when the cast and orchestra of every Broadway show, hit or flop, showed up ready for work in the recording...

Striking gold.
October 1, 2004... In the 1980s, opera's most famous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, had attracted a huge audience at a Madison Square Garden concert. But even that triumph was eclipsed by the Three Tenors arena concerts--the most successful concert presentations in...

The crossover question: just why are so many people up in arms about the popularity of crossover recordings?
October 1, 2004... Crossover: the salvation of the classical recording business, or the end of civilization as we know it? If only the phenomenon were less amorphous. The term arises wherever musicians fail to honor the strict boundary between classical...

The two live of Marni Nixon: the soprano's stint in Hollywood, ghosting the vocals for the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood, was only one small part of a multifaceted performing career.
October 1, 2004... It could be argued that more people have heard Marni Nixon's voice than that of any soprano in history. Although she has a cherishable recording of Debussy songs that recalls the glory days of Maggie Teyte, and she was almost frighteningly...

Hollywood highbrow: how the talkies decided they couldn't do without opera.
October 1, 2004... "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" asked Warner Bros.' Harry Warner at the dawn of Hollywood's sound era. The talkie was to be built around music--production numbers, dance specialties, choruses, charm songs, love songs, torch songs,...

Imperfect partners: Lynn Garafola charts the rocky course of George Balanchine's career at the Met during the Edward Johnson years.
October 1, 2004... In August 1935, after months of rumors, Edward Johnson hired George Balanchine and the American Ballet to take over the Metropolilan Opera's "dance features and divertissements." Johnson, the Met's new general manager, had vowed to revive its...

Innocence rewarded: today's high cost of recording kills many projects before they ever get off the ground. But William Bolcom found a cost-effective way to record his mammoth Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
October 1, 2004... In 1992, composer William Bolcom asked a record-producer friend what it would cost to commit his gigantic symphonic setting of William Blake's complete Songs of Innocence and of Experience to compact disc. Written for hundreds of musicians, a...

Creative play: some musicians and presenters have used offbeat methods to get their music on disc.
October 1, 2004... As musicians try to get record deals made in the current economic climate, the talk typically is not about sales but about the value of the recording document itself. "I think we have to put the sound first," says Augusta Read Thomas, Mead...

The man who had everything: Eric Myers looks at the spectacular rise and swift decline of James Melton--tenor, entrepreneur and movie star.
October 1, 2004... Crossover was with us in the early decades of the twentieth century, but back then the crossing tended to be in the reverse direction. Rosa Ponselle got her start in vaudeville before she hit the Met; Dorothy Kirsten had a well-established...

Bayreuth.(International)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... When Christoph Schlingensief--a director of scandalous if politically provocative theater and film productions but an artist with no previous opera experience--was announced for Bayreuth's new production of Parsifal, skepticism abounded. Were...

Munich.(International)(opera)(Munich Festival)
October 1, 2004... This year's Munich Festival, which traditionally ends with a performance of Wagner's Die Meisteninger von Nurnberg, began with a new production of this magnificent work in the Nationalthearer. After twenty five years of service, August...

Aix-en-Provence.(International)(La Traviata)(The Love for Three Oranges)(Hercules)(Hanjo)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Aix-en-Provence is back on track again. Last year, most of the French summer festivals had to be canceled because of the intermittents--part--time actors and stage technicians who protested against a tightening of the conditions to get...

Orange.(International)(Nabucco)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... A few drops of rain just before curtain time delayed the opening night of the Choregies d'Orange on July 10 by a quarter of an hour. A few minutes later and the shower would have seriously interrupted Act I of Verdi's Nabucco, but the gods were...

Montpellier.(International)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... The only fully staged opera presentation at this year's Festival de Radio France et Montpellier was Des Esels Schatten, by Richard Strauss, in a French version (L'Ombre de l'Ane) by festival director Rend Koering. Expectations ran high for an...

London.(International)(Peter Grimes)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Covent Garden was not the birthplace of Peter Grimes: the company that would become English National Opera gave the work's premiere at London's Sadler's Wells in 1945. But it entered the Royal Opera House repertory two years later and has...

St. Petersburg.(International)(A Life for the Tsar)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... The 200th anniversary of Mikhail Glinka's birth has received little attention outside Russia, but the Mariinsky Theater, as part of the Stars of the White Nights Festival, honored the man hailed as the country's first great composer with a new...

Cincinnati.(North America)(Don Giovanni)(Carmen)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Why do Don Giovanni if you don't have a compelling Giovanni? I have seen artists the caliber of Samuel Ramey and Dmitri Hvorostovsky miss the mark as the Don (and for the same reason--that they played the general rather than the specific). So...

Lenox, Ma.(North America)(A Midsummer Night's Dream)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... There was a genuine full moon over Tanglewood in late July for the first of two performances of Benjamin Britten's 1960 A Midsummer Night's Dream. If ever proof were needed for the idea that a perfectly wonderful opera experience demands...

Central City.(North America)(Jongleur de Notre Dame)(Contes d'Hoffmann)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Central City's delightful historic theater housed two French works this summer: July 24 afforded visitors both Massenet's 1904 Jongleur de Notre Dame, which left repertory currency with Mary Garden (who commandeered the tenor lead for herself),...

Seattle.(North America)(Lohengrin)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Stephen Wadsworth returned to Seattle Opera to recreate his foursquare Lohengrin, first seen and heard in 1994 with Ben Heppner as the "Swan Knight." The big star of this year's revival (seen 31 July) was Jane Eaglen, taking on Ortrud for the...

October online edition of opera news.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... INTERNATIONAL: World premieres at Vadstena and Drottningholm; Weill double bill at Bregenz; Vienna welcomes Domingo as Menotti's Goya; Der Fliegende Hollander in Moscow; La Traviata and Butterfly at Verona; Lacoste Festival's Die Zauberflote;...

The diva is in: Anna Netrebko's second disc of opera arias confirms her status as a superstar in the making.(Recordings)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Anna Netrebko "SEMPRE LIBERA" Opera scenes and arias. With Mingardo; Pirgu, Ulivieri, Concetti; Coro Sinfonico di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Abbado. Texts and translations. Deutsche Grammophon 4748002 It's...

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde Voigt, Lang; Moser, Weber, R. Holl; Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Thielemann. Text and translation. Deutsche Grammophon DG B0002250 Despite the recent furor over Deborah Voigt's physique and...

Verdi: Il Trovatore.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... VERDI: Il Trovatore Villarroel, Zaremba, Calderone; Bocelli, Guelfi, Colombara; Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Massimo Bellini di Catania, Mercurio. Text and translation. Decca B0002629-02 (2) If the Verdi for Dummies-level liner notes...

Tamberg: Cyrano de Bergerac.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... TAMBERG: Cyrano de Bergerac Huhta, Airenne; Korts, Tiilikainen, Zahharov, Elp; Orchestra and Chorus of the Estonian National Opera, Magi. Text and translation. CPO 999 832-2 (2) Cyrano, it seems, is in the air. This season, as the Met...

Offenbach: Les Brigands.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... OFFENBACH: Les Brigands (in English) Simmonds, Beatty, Knox, Blankenheim, Howle, Stuart, Wuehrmann; Ohio Light Opera, Thompson. Text. Albany Records TROY 660/661 Pop quiz: Name a comic opera, lyrics by W. S. Gilbert, about the...

Falla: La Vida Breve.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... FALLA: La Vida Breve Sanchez, Nafe Suarez; Valls, Echeverria, Baquerizo; Asturias Symphony Orchestra, Prince of Asturias Foundation Choir, Valdes. Naxos 8.660155 Written in 1905, this neglected opera deserves more frequent hearings....

Mozart: Requiem.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... MOZART: Requiem Schafer, Fink; Streit, Finley; Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Concentus Musicus Wien, Harnoncourt. Text and translation. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 82876 58705-2 It's hard to believe that Nikolaus Harnoncourt has another trick...

Vivaldi: Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... VIVALDI: Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine Bertagnolli, Invernizzi, Simboli, Mingardo; Ferrarini, Bellotto; De Secondi, violin, Concerto Italiano, Alessandrini. Texts and translations. Opus 111 OP30383 (2) VIVALDI: Sacred...

Yu Qiang Dai.(Brief Article)(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Yu Qiang Dai ARIAS by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti, Ponchielli, others. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Molina. Texts and translations. EMI 57791 It's sometimes difficult to fathom the ways of record companies in this barren climate for...

Arianna Savall.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Ariana Savall "BELLA TERRA" Savall, harp; Psonis, Estevan, percussion; Andrade, bass. Texts and translations. Alia Vox AV9833 Arianna Savall makes a much stronger impression here than in her first release, Sopra la Rosa (Mirare),...

Susanne Ryden.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Susanne Ryden "LA BELLA CANTATRICE" Cantatas by Keiser. Capella Orlandi Bremen. Texts and translations. CPO 999956-2 Although his 1740 obituary referred to him as "the greatest opera composer in the world," Reinhard Keiser is known...

Luba Tcheresky.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... Luba Tcheresky "IN THIS LIFE" Arias and songs by Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Puccini, Purcell, Mascagni, Debussy, Duke, Kander and Ebb, et al. Various accompanying artists. Recorded c. 1950-70. Texts and translations. Original Cast Records...

Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana.(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... MASCAGNI: Cavalleria Rusticana Varnay, Scholl, Munch; Hopf, Pease; Chorus and Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, Sawallisch. No libretto. Myto 042086 (1) It would be a stretch to call this melodiously sordid slice of life autentico, but...

Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... BELLINI: I Capuleti e i Montecchi Sills, Troyanos; Evans, Beattie, Trehy; Chorus and Orchestra of the Opera Company of Boston, Caldwell/Scott. No text or translation, VAIA 1221-2 (2) Beverly Sills had a very special relationship with...

Handel: Belshazzar.(Opera Review)
October 1, 2004... HANDEL: Belshazzar Auger, Robbin; Bowman, Rolfe Johnson, Wilson-Johnson; The English Consort, Pinnock. Synopsis, no libretto. Archly 477 037-2 (3) Archiv's budget reissue of this compelling 1990 Belshazzar proves doubly welcome, since...

Offenbach: La Belle Helene.(Video Recording Review)
October 1, 2004... OFFENBACH: La Belle Helene Lott, Todorovitch, Thebault, Leger, d'Oustrac; Beuron, Le Roux, Senechal, Naouri, Huchet, Gabriel, Alvaro; Les Musiciens du Louvre (Grenoble), Minkowski. Kultur DVD D2916, 126 mins. A Belle Helene fit for the...

Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos.(Video Recording Review)
October 1, 2004... STRAUSS: Ariadne auf Naxos Anthony, Koch, Martinez; Villars, Adam, Junge; Orch. of the Semperoper Dresden, C. Davis. Kultur DVD D2909, 133 mins. Strauss and Hofmannsthal created one of opera's most deliciously complex works in Ariadne...

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2004... DONIZETTI: Lucia di Lammermoor Devia, Sovilla; La Scola, Gavazzi, Berti, Bruson, Colombara; Orchestra & Chorus of Teatro alla Scala, Ranzani. Opus Arte DVD OA LS3003 D (Naxos, dist.), subtitled, 140 mins. As with any performance of...

Albeniz: Merlin.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2004... ALBENIZ: Merlin Marton, Vaness; Wilson-Johnson, Skelton; Coro y Orquestra Titular del Teatro Real de Madrid; de Eusebio. BBC/Opus Arte OA0888 D (Naxos, dist.), 184 mins. In the 1890s, the banker and amateur poet Francis Burdett...

Mozart: Die Zauberflote.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2004... Hartelius, Mosuc; Beczala, Scharinger, Salminen; Chorus and Orchestra of Opernhaus Zurich, Welser-Most. Kultur DVD D2910, 151 mins. Roschmann, Damrau; Hartmann, Keenlyside, Selig; Royal Opera, Covent Garden, C. Davis. BBC/Opus Arte OA 0886D...

Sleeping with Schubert.(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson Random House, 378pp. $21.95 CD: Sony Classics SK92596 $11.98 Would you be embarrassed to be seen with a book entitled Sleeping with Schubert? If you can get past that hurdle, certain pleasures await...

Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. By Roger Scruton Oxford Univ. Press, 2004 238 pp. If you're going to disagree with Nietzsche, Plato and Schopenhauer, you'd best have your own house in order. Roger...

Obituaries.(Obituary)
October 1, 2004... CARLOS KLEIBER, Berlin, July 3, 1930--Konjsica, Slovenia, July 13, 2004 Everyone knows the lore. Carlos Kleiber was a recluse, an eccentric, a loner, a perfectionist. He didn't play by the rules, not even the rules reserved for...

Dateline.(Calendar)
October 1, 2004... METROPOLITAN OPERA (Metropolitan Opera House, New York, 212-362-6000; www.metopera.org) Oct. 1 Otello (Verdi). Frittoli; Heppner, Guelfi; Levine, Moshinsky, Yeargan/Hall Oct. 2m Die Walkure (Wagner). Sergeeva, Pieczonka, Naef; Domingo,...

Mezzo dearest.(Coda)
October 1, 2004... One of the greatest names in American movies went from being a superstar to a camp figure to sick joke. For many today, the mere mention of Joan Crawford elicits guffaws, thanks in no small measure to her daughter Christina's book Mommie...