KAI TA LOIPA: November 2007

I give you now the Opera Log of our vacation. We did other things too. Pictures will be coming along in due course.

Sunday:

Medea in Corinto (Giovanni Simone Mayr)

Written in 1813 for the Italian market, this work is highly attractive. Medea’s first aria has a violin concertato! And Creusa’s aria in act 2 has a harp concertato! In this opera seria, weezgotcherconcertatiritcheer!

!!

Jane Eaglen is in the lead and there is stong casting elsewhere with Raul Gimenez, Bruce Ford, and Yvonne Kenny. As everyone who is anybody knows, this is a production from Opera Rara. It dates from 1994. Eaglen sounds great (which is not so surprising--- she was really good in the bel-canto repertoire back in the early 90s; I head her as Norma twice and the first time she was pretty darn good--- but she was not the living end--- she lacks an opulence of tone and the risk-taking instincts I like to see in a bel-canto diva). Anyway, this is a well-judged performance of an admirable opera that while it is not all sexxaay like some barn-burner from Pacini, it is elegant and interesting. And it is unfair of me even to bring up Pacini; this is 1813 and those super fun moves the boys will be coming up with in the 1820s and 30s are, well, in the future. I will return to this opera AND this performance often.

Penelope (Faure)

This is the studio from Erato with Jessye Norman. She was at the top of her game at this time and she is a treat. I have always liked her. Alain Vanzo and Jose Van Dam are super. Charles Dutoit shapes it quite nicely all the way through and there are many moments that I like very much for their poetic sensibility. A lovely piece. Perhaps a little sedate but that’s Faure for you. I really like it and some portions are hauntingly beautiful. The ending is drop-dead gorgeous a masterpiece of happy/sad. Here it is. Pull out your handkerchiefs; ur gonna need’em. Here it is.

Monday:

Manon (Massanet)

The Sills studio with Rudel conducting and Gedda as Des Grieux. Awesome recording all around. We thoroughly enjoyed this as we love the opera and the artists.

La Verità in Cimento (Vivaldi)

A rarity from 1720. The plot set in two mythical sultanates is pretty complicated. I will not deal with it here though were this opera to become a favorite with the public and with me I would no doubt be at least tempted to rush to a defense of the plot of this opera. Is that co-dependent somehow? Listening to the opening right now--- this is baroque conducting in the mode of accentuating the extremes. It has lots of slashing figures. It is invigorating...though, am I bleeding? I think I may need a bandage or two.

Tuesday:

Liden Kirsten (AKA Little Kirsten) (J. P E. Hartmann)

A total rarity. Danish. 1849. Libretto by Hans Christian Anderson. Set in Denmark in about 1000 or so. It has a happy ending as mistaken identities are all sorted out leaving the female lead able to avoid the convent and able to marry the male lead who turns out NOT to be her brother (things look incestuous for a moment). A minor Danish composer, Hartmann has a fluent manner.

Wednesday:

Thais (Massanet)

The 2000 studio with Fleming and Hampson. Fleming sounds good. She is certainly distinctive. Her voice is so totally recognizable! This is a good role for her, by the way---which is no doubt one of the reasons she chose it--- but I am quite happy to fault some of her choices--- I mean what is it with her and the Bel-Canto heroines?--- she just does things at times that I just don’t get in that repertoire--- but at this point I am intoning tiring words to a worn melody [which I am trying to redeem through metaphor? O h y e a h]; in any case, her portamenti and self-indulgence find a most congenial home in the character of this soon-to-be-reformed-but-not-just-yet-as-I wish-to-wallow-a-bit-in-the-ostensibly-meaningless-life-of-mine-and-then-I-need-to-narcissistically-reject-it courtesan from late-ancient Alexandria. I must stress that her portamenti are most welcome as they ARE seductive. Furthermore, her top while a tad labored is nonetheless rewarding to hear and indeed brilliant in this outing. Hampson sounds glum and the tenor Sabbatini cannot compare to Gedda on the Sills recording of this opera. Not even. Conducting by Abel is good but I think I prefer Rudel in the Sills recording. TRH prefers Sills in this role. I am on the fence here. They bring different things to it and Sills was past her prime when she made her recording. Had the recording been made during Sills’ prime…

Thursday and Friday:

Rienzi (Wagner)

Complete. COM-PLETE. That means this baby is almost five hours long. The ballet-pantomime in Act II is 40 effing minutes long! Fuck! I did it over two days. Anyway, there was that studio with Kollo which has good points (especially the recording of the orchestra) but on the whole this one is the one to have. The sound is good even if some orchestral detail is lost at times. The singing is better right down the line with the possible exception of the trouser role, Adriano. The Rienzi of John Mitchinson is solid, musical, and even delicate at times. It is nice to avoid Kollo’s scolding timbre.

This work possesses considerable power and they say had Wagner died right after writing it that it would be a repertory item. That impresses me as reasonable. The music is great and with tyranny on the move in the world and religion a tool of oppression the story remains timely. Rienzi who has brought freedom to the Romans from aristocratic oppression (in the 1300s) is brought down by a papal excommunication engineered by his opponents.

To give you a flavor of the piece, here is a theme from the excellent overture as it is being put to use in the development section.

Here it is in Act III when things are still going well for Rienzi.

And here is its final shattering appearance at the end (and this is, of course, the end of the entire opera).

Tragic opera indeed.

Here we have Grace Bumbry from the 80s I think. She is rawking da haus in one of the Spanish houses.

The story in brief: La Gioconda has made a deal with Barnaba that she will give herself to him. He is now coming to "collect." At first she pushes him away, "Hold on Romeo; I gotta make myself all pretty-like for ya." And he is all, "you have got my motor running, mamma!" And then she says, "you wanted me? You can have me dead!" and she kills herself. Barnaba, ever the gentleman, tells the dying La Gioconda that he strangled her mother. (Though in this production, the decision seems to have been that he is telling this to her corpse.) Curtain falls to loud f-minor chords.

Though a mezzo at least some of the time in her career, Bumbry really had the dramatic soprano goods.

The performance is a little wild especially at the top but she has nice tone in all the registers. She also knows how a diva is supposed to act in this repertoire. Check out the dramatic way she kneels, with one arm up as she goes down. The fall when she kills herself is disturbing because it seems real! The switch to overhead camera is shocking! The plucked lower strings when he shakes what he realizes is a corpse? Conductor!! [thumb up]!!

(I am not sure what the story is with the figure that we see at the end. Is it the Virgin, who has been remarkably unhelpful to our poor heroine? Could be. Oh irony!)

PS I will be on the south island for a week. I will be back with pictures and, most importantly, OPERA LOG!