ON THE BEAT.(Review)

Anne Sofie von Otter, Queen of Cool; Elizabeth Bishop in San Francisco and Ramon Vargas in Houston; Caballe faces Barcelona's men-only edict

The question has been asked again and again over the past fifteen years, as "crossover" has become a fixture of the classical industry: how many opera singers are convincing as pop-music stylists? Well, most would agree that EILEEN FARRELL is the Queen of Crossover ("Why the hell did you call me that?" Farrell barked at me several years ago, after OPERA NEWS ran a cover line describing her thus). DOROTHY KIRSTEN was pretty good, too, and of the current generation, I admire DAWN UPSHAW's approach -- unlike most of her colleagues, she sounds as if she's actually having a good time, rather than faking having a good time.

With her new Deutsche Grammophon release, For the Stars, ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER goes near the top of the list of opera-turned-pop divas. For years, I've found von Otter one of the most endearingly no-nonsense singers around; this was clinched for me in 1999 at a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center concert in which she sang a stunning program of Korngold songs, then came out for the second half and sat calmly turning pages for pianist BENGT FORSBERG while he performed with the Society's chamber musicians. Now, listening to For the Stars, I'm convinced that she really is the opera world's Queen of Cool.

On For the Stars, she teams up with ELVIS COSTELLO, who did the arrangements and produced the disc. He's been a von Otter groupie for a while; sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that he listed her 1996 CD Wings in the Night among his top 500 favorite albums in Vanity Fairs' November 2000 music issue. The songs on For the Stars range from the title cut and "No Wonder," both by Costello, to TOM WAITS's "Broken Bicycles" and PAUL McCARTNEY's "Junk" to JESSIE MAE ROBINSON's "The Other Woman." There's not a trace of the opera-singer-letting-her-hair-down. It's an unmannered, contemporary sound. At times, her timbre might make you think of JANIS IAN, at others of BETTY CARTER, but in the end, it's pure von Otter. DG's executives probably have good reason to celebrate: For the Stars may well turn out to be the classical-recording industry's hippest release of the year.

The Metropolitan Opera has canceled its new production of Falstaff, planned for the 2001-02 season. Instead, the existing FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI production, which has stood the company in good stead for season after season since it bowed in 1964, will receive a major face-lift, courtesy of Zeffirelli himself. This will probably cheer those of us who think that this staging presents the director at his very best. The cast, which includes BRYN TERFEL and MARINA MESCHERIAKOVA, remains the same.

This month, rising American mezzo ELIZABETH BISHOP makes her San Francisco recital debut at the Old First Church (on the Schwabacher Debut Recitals series). A friend recently described Bishop as "a corker"; I found this was true a few days later, when I spoke with her on the telephone. (With her Greenville, South Carolina, accent, she sounds a little like a cross between HOLLY HUNTER and KATHY NAJIMY.) "Kind of a morose program, isn't it? she says, referring to the San Francisco recital, which includes the Wesendonck Lieder and Dominick Argento's From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. At the time, she was preparing for her first performances of Princess Eboli in Washington Opera's Italian four-act version of Don Carlo." Eboli really is a bipolar role, for cryin'out loud," she says. "Before I tackled this role, I kept hearing the old line about whoever can sing the veil song can't sing'O don fatale. `There's a grain of truth in it. Of course, the first Eboli got fired, and another one got pulled in before the premiere, so it really was written for two different women." Unlike some young singers, Bishop doesn't shy away from listening to recordings made by great interpreters, past and present." The two I've listened to most are SHIRLEY VERRETT, who sounds like an Amtrak train -- just enormous. Onstage, I've liked DOLORA ZAJICK. From the time I've been aware, Dolora is the Eboli. I held off singing it for a while because of her, and then I thought, `Well, there are other ways you can do this.'"

Bishop is perhaps best-known for her appearances in CONRAD SUSA and PHILIP LITTELL's The Dangerous Liaisons. At its world premiere at San Francisco Opera in 1994, she sang the part of Emilie, the innocent young girl seduced by the corrupt Valmont (played by THOMAS HAMPSON). "I spent a couple of years going into auditions with people saying, `Weren't you the half-naked one lying on top of Thomas Hampson?'" A few years later, at Washington Opera, she graduated to the star role of the manipulative Marquise de Merteuil. "Now, if you follow the movie versions that came out around the same time," says Bishop, "FLICKA VON STADE was more like GLENN CLOSE. Like a black diamond, glittery and steely. I can't do that, so I tried to find something new. I was more influenced by Valmont, where ANNETTE BENING was a softer, rounder sort of Marquise. Plus Valmont had COLIN FIRTH in it, and I would have drunk his bathwater."