Opera News articles from September 2001

Opera News archives from September 2001

SEPTEMBER SONG.
September 1, 2001... My September anthem was always a three-word threnody: "Back to School." My last brush with an institution of even moderate learning was in 1968, but for nearly three decades the final days of August brought with them a feeling of disquiet that...

LETTERS.
September 1, 2001... BAYREUTH EXIT The articles celebrating the 125th anniversary of Bayreuth [May] were of particular interest. I, too, was in attendance at the "holy of holies" last summer. After trying to get tickets for more than ten years, I discovered...

CORRECTIONS:.(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2001... An editorial typo in Leighton Kerner's review of the Met's Parsifal [July] resulted in a reference to "alto soloists," when in fact there is only one. The James Conlon recording of Zemlinsky's Der Traumgorge is not the opera's...

OPERA WATCH.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... 1. When Philip Glass's opera The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five had its U.S. premiere in June at the DePaul University Opera Theatre, SUSANNE MENTZER was among the faculty members present on opening night at the Merle Reskin...

Hanchard's Once Canciones is a winner; Jellinek, the voice of WQXR; Judgment in Los Angeles: Schell directs Lohengrin; Lilith on a shoestring at NYCO; Barenboim shakes up Israeli audience with Wagner.
September 1, 2001... Over the summer, with the season at bay, there's finally time to sit down and listen carefully to the mountain of recordings that are sent OPERA NEWS's way. One of the most thrilling discoveries I've made lately is Once Canciones, a collection...

THE POP SIDE.(Keely Smith)(Brief Article)(Interview)
September 1, 2001... Recently, I was browsing in Tower Records when the unmistakable voice of Keely Smith poured forth from the loudspeakers. The song was "Down Mexico Way." I didn't know Smith had ever recorded it, and I started flipping through the bin to see...

SOUND BiTES: Joyce DiDonato.(Brief Article)(Interview)
September 1, 2001... "My Cinderella year" is the way Joyce DiDonato describes 2000-01, which saw her sing Rossini's La Cenerentola at New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, Madrid's Teatro Real and La Scala. "Angelina's a great person to spend a year with. She's such a...

SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE.(sound systems)
September 1, 2001... You'd never buy one brand of speaker for the left channel of your stereo and a different brand for the right, would you? Crazy as this question may seem, home-theater customers often make similar mistakes by purchasing front-channel speakers...

ENTRANCE MUSIC.(Pamela Rosenberg)(Interview)
September 1, 2001... PAMELA ROSENBERG BEGINS HER FIRST SEASON AS SAN FRANCISCO OPERA'S GENERAL DIRECTOR As far as news is concerned, one debut at San Francisco Opera this season dwarfs all the others: that of Pamela Rosenberg, the company's new general...

Diva, Inc.(Denyce Graves)(Interview)
September 1, 2001... DENYCE GRAVES DOESN'T NEED CAREER COUNSELING: SHE WANTS PEOPLE TO REMEMBER HER NAME, AND SHE'S GOT A LONG-TERM MARKETING STRATEGY TO MAKE SURE THEY DO Denyce Graves is a study in perpetual motion. Spend a little time with her, and you...

HOT TICKETS!(upcoming operas)
September 1, 2001... REBECCA PALLER'S TOP PICKS FOR THE 2001-02 SEASON We're on the threshold of a new season, one that marks the end of the centennial commemoration of Verdi's death and the arrival in New York of an acclaimed production of Prokofiev's heroic...

Dark Waters.(THERESE RAQUIN (Opera))
September 1, 2001... ZOLA'S MASTERPIECE OF NATURALISM, THERESE RAQUIN, HAS A ROCKY HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ADAPTATIONS. WILL THE NEW OPERA BY TOBIAS PICKER AND GENE SCHEER, BOWING IN DALLAS IN NOVEMBER, BEAT THE ODDS? In a golden glade along the Hudson, Richard...

Mark's Passion.(BARITONE MARK DELAVAN)
September 1, 2001... BARITONE MARK DELAVAN'S LONG STRUGGLE FOR ACCEPTANCE HAS ONLY MADE HIS TRIUMPHS SWEETER Mark Delavan did not want to be an opera singer. "I wanted to be a football player. I knew what I wanted to play, and for whom: tight end for the...

A Season of Song.
September 1, 2001... OPERA NEWS's 2001-02 International Forecast USA ALABAMA MOBILE OPERA (Mobile Civic Center Theater, 334-476-7372; www.mobileopera.org) Rigoletto. Oct. 25, 27 "Bravo Broadway." Jan. 10,12 Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Mar....

"ARIAS & SCENES".(Review)
September 1, 2001... Karita Mattila [] "ARIAS & SCENES" from The Queen of Spades; Manon Lescaut, Lohengrin, Simon Boccanegra, Jenufa, Die Walkure, Elektra and Die Lustige Witwe. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sado. Texts and translations. Erato 8573-85787-2...

SUPPE: Die Schone Galathee.(Review)
September 1, 2001... OPERA AND ORATORIO SUPPE: Die Schone Galathee [] Bogner, Heyn; Rickenbacher, Kupfer; Koblenz City Theater Chorus, Rhine Philharmonic State Orchestra, Eitler. Text and translation. CPO 999 726 Franz von Suppe (1819-95) is on the...

ROSSINI: Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo, Il Pianto d'Armonia.(Review)
September 1, 2001... ROSSINI: Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo, Il Pianto d'Armonia [] "CANTATAS, VOLUME 2" With Scano, Bartoli, Barcellona; Florez, Petroni, Kelly; Coro Filarmonico della Scala, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Chailly Decca 289 466 328-2 ...

BERLIOZ: La Damnation de Faust.(Review)
September 1, 2001... BERLIOZ: La Damnation de Faust [] Shkosa; Sabbatini, Pertusi, Wilson-Johnson; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Davis. Text and translation. LSO Live 0008 (Koch, dist.) This recording was taken from two live performances at the...

AUBER: Les Diamants de la Couronne.(Review)
September 1, 2001... AUBER: Les Diamants de la Couronne [] Raphanel, Morner; Einhorn, Ploteau, Arapian, Medioni Choeurs Cori Spezzati, Orchestre de Picardie, Colomer. Notes and French libretto. Mandala 5003/05 (3) (Harmonia Mundi, dist.) Think of...

SULLIVAN: Utopia, Limited.(Review)
September 1, 2001... SULLIVAN: Utopia, Limited [] Balach, Pickerell; Christopher, Oliver, Thomann, Meacham; Orchestra and Chorus of Ohio Light Opera, Thompson. Notes and complete text. Newport Classic NPD 85659 This latest CD from Ohio Light Opera is a...

SULLIVAN: Haddon Hall.(Review)
September 1, 2001... SULLIVAN: Haddon Hall [] Members of the Prince Consort, Edinburgh, Lyle. Text and translation. The Divine Art 21201 (2) The bad blood between Gilbert and Sullivan around the time of The Gondoliers (1889) -- ironically one of their...

MENDELSSOHN: Paulus.(Review)
September 1, 2001... MENDELSSOHN: Paulus [] Gritton, Rigby; Banks, Coleman-Wright; BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales, Hickox. Text and translation. Chandos 9882(2) Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of oratorio recognizes Felix...

"CASTA DIVA".(Review)
September 1, 2001... RECITAL Angela Gheorghiu [] "CASTA DIVA" Arias by Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini. London Symphony Orchestra, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Pido. Texts and translations. EMI 57163 When singers first stood in front of...

"SCHUBERT LIEDER, VOLUME II".(Review)
September 1, 2001... Ian Bostridge [] "SCHUBERT LIEDER, VOLUME II" With Drake, piano. Texts and translations. EMI 57141 Recitals of Schubert songs often fall into one of two categories. There are many where the singer is clearly in charge (this is not...

"TO A POET".(Review)
September 1, 2001... Brett Polegato [] "TO A POET" Songs of Finzi, Britten, Chanler, Butterworth, Ireland. Burnside, piano. English texts. CBC Records/Les disques SRC MVCD 1134 Baritone Brett Polegato sings like someone who cares deeply about poetry....

"DUO D'AMORE".(Review)
September 1, 2001... Annick Massis and Marco Lazzara [] "DUO D'AMORE" Arias and duets by Rossini. Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Mazzola. Texts. Forlane 16807 Rossini understood the particular appeal of treble voices in tandem, and in this recording,...

"LOEWE: SONGS AND BALLADS, VOL. 14".(Review)
September 1, 2001... Kurt Moll [] "LOEWE: SONGS AND BALLADS, VOL. 14" With Garben, piano. Texts and translations. CPO 999412 Carl Loewe (1796-1869), a master of the ballad, knew the art of telling a story in music. He wrote five operas, of which only one...

DANIELPOUR: Elegies; Sonnets to Orpheus.(Review)
September 1, 2001... CHORAL AND SONG DANIELPOUR: Elegies; Sonnets to Orpheus [] Huang, von Stade; Hampson; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Perspectives Ensemble, Nierenberg. Texts. Sony SK 60850 Six weeks before Frederica von Stade was born, her father,...

BORODIN: Complete Songs and Romances.(Review)
September 1, 2001... BORODIN: Complete Songs and Romances [] Tarassova; Pluzhnikov, Slavny, Okhotnikov; Molokhina, cello, Serov, piano. Texts and translations. Delos DE 3277 Alexander Borodin's melding of text to music is far more specific, less generic...

HANDEL: Salomo.(Review)
September 1, 2001... HANDEL: Salomo [] Schiml, Werner, Bundschuh, Termer, Suske; Buchner, Polster, Vogt; Berlin Radio Chorus, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rogner. 1981. Sung in German. Text and translation (original English). Berlin Classics Z1892B (3)...

BEETHOVEN: Fidelio.(Review)
September 1, 2001... BEETHOVEN: Fidelio [] Nilsson, Wenglor; Hopf, Unger, Schoffler, Braun, Frick; Orchestra and Chorus of Cologne Radio, E. Kleiber. Notes, no text. Koch Schwann 3-1641-2 (2) Erich Kleiber (1890-1956) recorded this Fidelio at Cologne Radio...

LISTENING ROOM.
September 1, 2001... OPERA NEWS offers the second installment of a new semiregular column that peers into the private collections of some of the music business's brightest lights. GREGORY TURAY, tenor I have been listening a lot to Mozart for Babies. My...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: ST. LOUIS.(La Boheme, Hippolytus and Aricia, Miss Havisham's Fire)(Review)
September 1, 2001... The landscape of American opera is littered with the corpses of noble, well-intentioned failures: born in hope, prepared with loving care and christened with a flourish, only to be received with scorn, then banished to an operatic twilight...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: LONDON.(Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Paradise Moscow , Don Giovanni)(Review)
September 1, 2001... The new Don Giovanni at the Coliseum brought English National Opera one of its rowdiest first-night receptions in a long while (May 31). The work of the Spanish team of director Calixto Bieito, and designers Alfons Flores (sets) and Merce...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: MELBOURNE.(Batavia)(Review)
September 1, 2001... It's not often that an Australian opera audience offers a standing ovation to anything other than Wagner or a Baz Luhrmann La Boheme. But Batavia, the new work by Richard Mills and Peter Goldsworthy, specially commissioned to mark the centenary...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: STRASBOURG.(Il Tito)(Review)
September 1, 2001... Has the time arrived for reassessment of Antonio (Pietro) Cesti (1623-69), the third and youngest (after Monteverdi and Cavalli) of the Venetian opera triumvirate? In June, l'Opera National du Rhin of Strasbourg struck gold with a production of...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: MILAN.(Review)
September 1, 2001... La Scala's new production of Un Ballo in Maschera was booed on opening night, but by the fourth performance (May 20), it was working quite well, and there was much to enjoy musically. The orchestral playing under Riccardo Muti's baton was...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: FLORENCE.(Review)
September 1, 2001... The Maggio Musicale's opening production of Il Trovatore received mediocre reviews in the press and ovations from audiences. Judging by the performance on May 16, the audiences were right. The production was overwhelmingly effective as a whole,...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: LOS ANGELES.(Review)
September 1, 2001... High on a wall, silhouetted against a lurid red sky, the dark figure of a woman gesticulates furiously with clenched fists. She looks like a predatory bird about to swoop down on the soldiers and police who stand frozen with horror in the...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: COPENHAGEN.(Review)
September 1, 2001... However well-equipped the current legion of Danish star singers at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen seems to deal with the specific stylistic requirements of the Verdi repertoire, it remains a fact that productions of Romantic Italian opera are...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: MUNICH.(Review)
September 1, 2001... What if stage directors could be sued for damage inflicted on works of music? In hundreds of European theaters, opera is viewed as a living art form and the too-traditional is decried from all sides. The modern director is condemned to walk a...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: VIENNA.(Review)
September 1, 2001... The Theater an der Wien was the scene, on May 27, of the world premiere of SzenePenthesileaEin Traum(1999-2000), with music by Christian Ofenbauer, a work commissioned by the Vienna Festival and the Volksoper, where it is scheduled for the...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: DENVER.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Opera Colorado seems to have adopted the same survival philosophy as the shark: keep moving or die. By bringing aboard James Robinson as artistic director last year -- and, more recently, Peter Russell as general director -- the Denver-based...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CAPE TOWN.(Review)
September 1, 2001... In June, Cape Town Opera, the privately-funded company (founded 1998) that grew out of a previously state-subsidized body, mounted a lush, memorable version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, as part of an action-packed winter season. "As we...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: LONG BEACH.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Of the many opera composers who have tried to evoke the cathartic effect of Greek tragedy, Richard Strauss may have been the most successful. Elektra is one hundred minutes of visceral pity and terror, exhausting but also deeply moving. The...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: TURIN.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The coupling of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) with Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at the Teatro Regio was justified by their both featuring characters who are physically deformed. Yet above all, the juxtaposition revealed the obvious theatrical...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CARDIFF.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Welsh National Opera's new Kata Kabanova (New Theatre, May 19) marked the last production to be launched by the company's departing musical director, Carlo Rizzi, who is leaving after ten successful seasons. A high proportion of his work with...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: ATLANTA.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Atlanta Opera continued its current all-Verdi season with a handsome but frustratingly uneven new production of Un Ballo in Maschera (seen June 10). Stage director Ken Cazan's absolutely shattering 1992 Carmen remains the artistic high-water...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: NEW YORK CITY.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Philip Glass's career as a composer for the theater has had its peaks (such as Orphee) and valleys (La Belle et la Bete, also based on a Cocteau film). His recent one-act chamber opera, In the Penal Colony, based on Franz Kafka's nightmarish,...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CONCERTS AND RECITALS CINCINNATI.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The Cincinnati May Festival, founded in 1873 and the oldest choral music festival in the Western Hemisphere, has continually grown in prestige, concentrating on the great choral works, with some excursions into more esoteric repertoire, along...

FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CONCERTS AND RECITALS LONDON.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The Royal Opera ended its season with two concert performances of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, in the original 1762 Vienna version, starring David Daniels in his debut at the theater. (His previous appearances with the company had been as Sesto...

OBITUARIES.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
September 1, 2001... GINA CIGNA, Paris, March 6, 1900--Milan, June 26, 2001 One of the most beloved sopranos of her generation in Europe, Cigna began her musical education as a pianist, studying under Alfred Cortot at the Paris Conservatoire. When she began...

Chinese Opera.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Chinese Opera by Jessica 55n Gudnason, with text by Gong Li. Abbeville Press, 152 pp. $85 This sumptuous coffee-table book differs from other tomes on Chinese opera by providing page after colorful page of 10"x13" portraits of actors in...

Handel: Who Knew What He Liked.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Handel: Who Knew What He Liked by M. C. Anderson; illus. Kevin Hawkes Candlewick Press, 48 pp. $16.99 M. C. Anderson's text-heavy picture book, Handel: Who Knew What He Liked is cast in the mold of children's-book author Diane Stanley's...

The Art of Grace Bumbry.(Arias from Jeanne d'Arc, Le Cid and Un Ballo in Maschera; songs by Liszt, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf)(Review)
September 1, 2001... [] Arias from Jeanne d'Arc, Le Cid and Un Ballo in Maschera; songs by Liszt, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf. Taped for Radio-Canada, 1972. Orchestra of Radio-Canada, Jacques Beaudry cond. John Newmark, piano. VAI VHS 69430, 39 mins. This...

GOLDEN SEASON.(Metropolitan Opera)
September 1, 2001... The 1951-52 season, the second in Rudolf Bing's tenure as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, saw a number of talented newcomers join the house's roster. This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their debuts. How many of...