Opera News articles from September 2004

Opera News archives from September 2004

The promise of autumn.(Viewpoint)
September 1, 2004... For many opera-lovers, September is the cruelest month. The summer mail has brought a basketful of slickly designed brochures and performance schedules from every venue imaginable, each with enticing invitations far subscription, each promising...

1. Marcello Giordani heads the bill at the eleventh annual memorial concert of the Sergio Franchi Vocal Scholarship Foundation.(Opera Watch)
September 1, 2004... 1. MARCELLO GIORDANI heads the bill at the eleventh annual memorial concert of the SERGIO FRANCHI VOCAL SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION. The September 11 concert, to be held on the grounds of the Franchi estate in Stonington, CT, beginning at 3 P.M.,...

2. On June 4, Frederica Von Stade kicked up her heels for San Francisco Opera as a guest star in a special gala performance of San Francisco's long-running revue, Steve Silver's Beach Blanket Babylon.(Opera Watch)
September 1, 2004... 2. On June 4, FREDERICA VON STADE kicked up her heels for SAN FRANCISCO OPERA as a guest star in a special gala performance of San Francisco's long-running revue, Steve Silver's BEACH BLANKET BABYLON. Von Stade's Babylon appearance, which...

3. Opera Orchestra Of New York's 2004-05 season at Carnegie Hall begins on Monday, November 22, with Eve Queler conducting Aprile Millo and Carl Tanner in La Fanciulla Del West.(Opera Watch)
September 1, 2004... 3. OPERA ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK's 2004-05 season at Carnegie Hall begins on Monday , November 22, with EVE QUELER conducting APRILE MILLO and CARL TANNER in LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST. OONY's season continues on Thursday, April 7, 2005, when...

4. Galison New York has published a set of Mozart Opera notes, featuring the artwork of Rebecca Bradley of Lilla Rogers Studio.(Opera Watch)
September 1, 2004... 4. GALISON NEW YORK has published a set of MOZART OPERA notes, featuring the artwork of REBECCA BRADLEY of Lilla Rogers Studio. The portfolio of twelve cards, with images of Cosi Fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflote,...

5. Yale University Press's new Encyclopedia Of Opera On Screen.(Opera Watch)
September 1, 2004... 5. Yale University Press's new ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OPERA ON SCREEN, by Ken Wlaschin, is a comprehensive guide to hundreds of films, videos and DVDs featuring opera singers and operas--or even parts of operas--from 1896 to the present day. At more...

Lotte Lehmann's words.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... * I was saddened to read the article about Lotte Lehmann, "Sieglinde in Santa Barbara," in your April issue--saddened by the underlying negative tone that emerged from the reminiscences of a few of Mme. Lehmann's former students. Here is...

Ozawa at Tanglewood.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... * Being a Tanglewooder since 1946, when, as students of Boris Goldovsky in the opera department, mezzo-soprano Mildred Miller and I were the two Nieces in the U.S. premiere of Peter Grimes, I am delighted to have the June edition of OPERA NEWS...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2004... Strauss's Die Schweigsame Frau has had at least one U.S. professional production in addition to those mentioned in Hot Ticket (June). Chautauqua Opera presented it in 1976. Andrew Foldi made his career as a bass, not a tenor, as stated in...

Sound bites.
September 1, 2004... Georgia Jarman was ten when she decided she wanted to be Cherubino. "My dad took me to the Met to see Le Nozze di Figaro, and I was completely smitten with the character Frederica von Stade created. Cherubino struck a chord in me, and I fell in...

God, I hope I get it.(Singer's Diary)(Column)
September 1, 2004... "I want to be moved in an audition, the way I want to be moved in a performance," says Darren K. Woods, general director of Fort Worth Opera. "I want to feel that, if the next breath is my last, it will be worth it, because I have heard this...

Letter from Italy.
September 1, 2004... After three seasons at the new Teatro degli Arcimboldi, La Scala is ready to return to its old home, presently closed for renovation. The company's comeback is scheduled for December 7, 2004. Panels that cover the scaffolding in front of the...

Mr. Right: Nathan Gunn believes that there is a correct way of doing things--and it's paying off with a calendar of blue-chip engagements, including the Met's next world premiere.
September 1, 2004... "Can I ask you a question?" says Nathan Gunn, leaning forward slightly in his chair. "Why did you want to interview me?" It's late April, and we're in the bar of a restaurant in Philadelphia, where Gunn is currently singing Zurga in Les...

Hot tickets! Best bets for the season.
September 1, 2004... The last two years have been rough ones for the arts, but the prospects for the new opera season seem quite upbeat, with lots of innovative repertory planned. Although the schedules kicking off at the world's opera companies promise no shortage...

The Alchemist: stage and screen sorceress Julie Taymor reveals the secrets of her dark and mysterious Die Zauberflote, due at the Met in October.
September 1, 2004... One could say that Julie Taymor has always been making opera. The celebrated designer and mastermind behind Disney's long-running Broadway hit The Lion King and the critically acclaimed movies Titus (1999) and Frida (2002) refuses to separate...

Fearsome fairyland: Charles Wuorinen's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, based on Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoria, bows at New York City Opera.
September 1, 2004... Fix your anticipating mind, if you will, on the idea of a new, sophisticated, adult fantasy-opera based on an equivalently sophisticated children's novel written by a man under a death sentence. Consider further that the novel and opera...

Pamela, interrupted: in June, San Francisco Opera's general director, Pamela Rosenberg, made the startling announcement that she would not renew her contract. But don't count her out yet.
September 1, 2004... Whether you consider it a total surprise or a foregone conclusion, the Great Bay Area Experiment in contemporary lyric theater has come to an end. On June 24, Pamela Rosenberg informed the board of directors of San Francisco Opera that she will...

Downtown dreams and travertine: now that New York City Opera has been denied a home at Ground Zero, will it stay put at Lincoln Center--or look elsewhere?
September 1, 2004... That thought might have crossed more than a few minds on Tuesday, June 10, when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation finally announced the constituent groups that would occupy space at the Ground Zero cultural complex in Manhattan. The...

Going through customs: Jennifer Melick talks to writers and critics about the dramas that take place off the opera stage.
September 1, 2004... The first time I ever went to the Met, a performance of La Boheme in the mid-1980s, I was reprimanded by an usher in the Family Circle for using a penlight to try to read my program as the lights were going down. Truth be told, I don't remember...

Indian summer: fifty years ago this season. contralto Marian Anderson became the first black singer to appear in a principal role on the Met stage. Sadly, by her own admission, it came too late.
September 1, 2004... In 1941 Paul D. Cravath, president and board chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, strongly encouraged the engagement of the "distinguished Negro contralto" Marian Anderson ("black" and "African-American" were not yet in the lexicon) for the...

A season of song: opera news's 2004-05 International Opera forecast.(Calendar)
September 1, 2004... U S A ALABAMA MOBILE OPERA (Mobile Civic Center Theater, 251-432-6772; www.mobileopera.org) Madama Butterfly. Oct. 21, 23 Show Boat (Kern). Jan. 6, 8 Don Giovanni. Mar. 17, 19 OPERA BIRMINGHAM (Alabama...

London.(International)(opera premiere)
September 1, 2004... It's been sixteen years since Gounod's Faust graced the Covent Garden stage, but this once-ubiquitous then long-discarded staple of the nineteenth-century French repertory seems once again to be surging up in the popularity stakes. At least,...

Glyndebourne.(International)(opera premieres)
September 1, 2004... Two repertory premieres for the Sussex festival formed the second of its two new 2004 productions--one familiar elsewhere, the other obscure. Rachmaninoff's The Miserly Knight, first played at Moscow's Bolshoi in 1906, was paired with Puccini's...

Paris.(International)(opera premiere)
September 1, 2004... The last new production of Hugues Gall's directorship of the Opera National de Paris was Robert Carsen's eagerly awaited Capriccio, by Richard Strauss, at the Palais Garnier, with Renee Fleming taking on the role of Countess Madeleine. The...

Geneva.(International)(opera premiere)
September 1, 2004... The arrival of Natalie Dessay's nunnery-bound Manon--frailly virginal, vulnerably white--lifted Alain Garichot's intelligent, Art Deco-look production of Massenet's opera for Geneva's Grand Theatre to the international level. What a truly...

Zurich.(International)(opera)
September 1, 2004... The new Rosenkavalier at the Zurich Opernhaus (seen July 4) seeemed to place the action within a wintry landscape. At least that was how one perceived the outer surroundings through the frosted panes of the tall doors in Acts I and III; the...

Vienna.(International)(opera premiere)
September 1, 2004... With today's technology, something approaching a realistic staging, faithful to Joseph Gregor's ponderous libretto for Richard Strauss's Daphne, just might be achievable--the title character is, after all, supposed to turn into a laurel tree...

Munich.(International)(Gounod's Romeo et Juliette opera)
September 1, 2004... Entering the Nationalthearer for the Bavarian State Opera's new production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, one was immediately struck by the oversized cover of Shakespeare's work (in the familiar orange-and-white Penguin edition) that...

San Francisco.(North America)(opera premieres)(The Cunning Little Vixen)(Doktor Faust)(Opera Review)
September 1, 2004... Two widely contrasting works from the 1920s, Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen and Busoni's Doktor Faust, received their San Francisco Opera premieres during the summer segment of the company's 2004 season. Both productions boasted...

Los Angeles.(North America)(Le Nozze di Figaro)(Opera Review)
September 1, 2004... Four years ago, Isabel Bayrakdarian won over Los Angeles audiences with a sterling rendition of Rossini's "Bel raggio lusinghier" in the finals of Placido Domingo's Operalia competition. Scheduling conflicts have kept the Canadian-Armenian...

Saint Louis.(North America)(The Secret Marriage)(Carmen)(Sister Angelica)(Nixon in China)(Opera Review)
September 1, 2004... Opera Theater of Saint Louis's five-week season offered repertory staples, something old and something new-ish, in a variety of production styles, and with nearly uniform success. Cimarosa's score to The Secret Marriage (here heard in an...

September online edition of opera news.
September 1, 2004... NORTH AMERICA: Festival reports from Wolf Trap, Spoleto USA, Ravinia, Des Moines and Ojai; The Silent Woman in Long Beach; Trovatore in Los Angeles; Traviata and Otello in Washington, D.C.; Michigan's Pearl Fishers; Chicago Sweethearts Anne...

Moniuszko: the Haunted Manor.(opera)
September 1, 2004... Hossa, Lubanska, Toczyska; Kruszewski, Stachura, Nowacki, Szmyt, Macias, Tesarowicz; Chorus and Orchestra of the Polish National Opera Warsaw, Kaspszyk. Text and translations. EMI Classics 57489 The Haunted Manor (Straszny Dwor), by...

Martin Y Soler: La Capricciosa Corretta.(operas)
September 1, 2004... Krull, Milanesi, Vellataz; Gonzalez-Toro, Saelens, Bacquerizo, Marin, Ramon; Les Talem Lyriques, Rousset. Synopsis and libretto. Naive E 8887 (2) The title La Capricciosa Corretta, ossia La Scuola de' Maritati (The Capricious Woman...

Handel: Imeneo.(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * Stojkovic, Thornhill, Hallenberg; Stiefermann, Chung; Vocal Ensemble of Cologne, Capella Augustina, Spering. Text and translation. CPO 999 915-2 The mammoth Handel revival of the last generation unearthed Imeneo earlier than many other...

Pasatieri: Letter to Warsaw.(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * Eaglen; Music of Remembrance, Schwartz. English text. Naxos 8. 559219 Thomas Pasatieri's Letter to Warsaw was commissioned last year for soprano Jane Eaglen and conductor Gerard Schwartz by Music of Remembrance, a Seattle-based group...

Karita Mattila.(Grieg and Sibelius Songs)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * "GRIEG AND SIBELIUS SONGS" City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oramo. Texts and translations. Warner Classics 8573 80243-2 Karita Mattila is a singer of rare communicative gifts. In each item of this collection, the timbre of her voice...

Thomas Quasthoff.(A Romantic Songbook)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * "A ROMANTIC SONGBOOK" Songs by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Wolf, Schumann, Loewe, Strauss. Zeyen, piano. Texts and translations. Deutsche Grammophon B 0002192-02 Mercifully, A Romantic Songbook is not Thomas Quasthoff's foray into Rodgers and...

Dmitri Hvorostovsky.(Petersburg: A Vocal Poem)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * "SVIRIDOV: PETERSBURG, A VOCAL POEM" and other songs. Arkadiev, piano. Transliterated texts and translations. Delos 3311 Dmitri Hvorostovsky's ongoing collaboration with Delos has explored many worthwhile sides of the Siberian baritone's...

Patrizia Ciofi and Joyce DiDonato.(opera duets)(Amor e Gelosia)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... "AMOR E GELOSIA" Handel opera duets. Il Complesso Barocco, Curtis. Virgin Veritas 45628 "This is not what eighteenth-century audiences would have considered a collection of operatic highlights," states Simon Heights in the program notes...

Massenet: Manon.(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * Sills; Gedda, Bacquier, Souzay, Trempont, Castel; New Philharmonia Orchestra and Ambrosian Opera Chorus. Rudel. Text and translation. DG 474 950-2 DG'S resuscitation of this 1970 recording does little to improve the situation with Manon...

Wagner: Das Rheingold.(Die Walkure)(Siegfried)(Gotterdammerung)(Video Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... * Schuster, Indridadottir, Ejsing, Smith, Ullrich, Joswig; Probst, Kaston, Schneider; Kunzli, Ruuttunen, Lorenz, Bracht; Staatsorchester Stuttgart, Zagrosek. EuroArts/TDK/SWR DVD DVUS-OPRN-DR (Naxos, dist.), 152 mins. WAGNER: Die Walkure *...

Sonya Haddad.(Obituaries)(Obituary)
September 1, 2004... SONYA HADDAD. Canton, Ohio, November 9, 1936--Bronx, New York, .June 15, 2004 Sonya Haddad joined the editorial staff of OPERA NEWS in 1998 and, in her quiet, elegant way, very quickly became a fixture. To those of us who had the privilege...

Pavel Lisitsian.(Obituaries)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
September 1, 2004... PAVEL LISITSIAN, Vladikavkaz, Russia, November 6, 1911--Moscow, July 7, 2004 The Armenian baritone was one of the leading artists of the Bolshoi Opera for more than a quarter-century, credited with more than 1,800 performances there...

E(dward). Thomas Glasow.(Obituaries)(Obituary)
September 1, 2004... E(DWARD). THOMAS GLASOW, Rochester, New York, Dec. 5, 1947--June 15, 2004 Author and critic Glasow was one of OPERA NEWS's upstate New York correspondents for nearly thirty years (from 1973), covering opera in Chautauqua, Binghamton and...

Adele Leigh.(Obituaries)(Obituary)
September 1, 2004... ADELE LEIGH, London, June 15, 1928--Vienna, May 23. 2004 A piquant, pretty lyric soprano, Leigh was recruited into the resident company of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, at the age of nineteen. Early successes there included Pamina,...

William Wildermann.(Obituaries)(Obituary)
September 1, 2004... WILLIAM WlLDERMANN, Stuttgart, December 2, 1919--Stamford, New York, May 17, 2004 The bass made his NYCO debut in 1953, as Horace Giddens in the company premiere of Regina. Other NYCO roles ranged from Ochs and Don Giovanni to the...

Dateline.(Calendar)
September 1, 2004... METROPOLITAN OPERA (Metropolitan Opera House, 212-362-6000, www.metopera.org) Sept. 20 Otello (Verdi). Frittoli; Heppner, Guelfi; Levine, Moshinsky, Yeargan/Hall Sept. 21 Carmen (Bizet). Hong, Borodina; Shicoff, Abdrazakov; Levine,...

Don't look back.(Coda)(Opera in New York)
September 1, 2004... Recently I saw Rick McKay's critically praised documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, an entertaining look at the New York theater scene in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Through a series of filmed interviews and rare archival footage, McKay makes a...