#opera review

[meydia]

13 Nov 2022 | Day 6/∞: Hansel & Gretel at the Met Opera (2008) - Engelbert Humperdinck

[revedebeatrice]

IL TROVATORE - 2022/09/10

I'm back from seeing Il trovatore live and WOWWWWWW!!!!

I'm so happy rn it was sooooo good!!!! The cast was literally amazing!

Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Azucena was completely insane and feral in the best way. Her voice held so much emotion and you could hear how haunted she was

Luc Robert made Manrico his normal himbo self and he had a lot of passion in his singing. His scenes with Azucena were wonderful

Nicole Car was such a lovely Leonora and she put so much emotion in her voice 🥹 She got the biggest applause for "D'amor sull'ali rosee" and it was very much deserved

And then Étienne Depuis, our mohawk Rodrigo himself, was just perfect oh my GOD - his voice resonated so much!! He doesn't have a very Verdi baritone voice, but it sounded so smooth and romantic it only made you like the Count more

Production wise it was pretty standard, but the moon projected in the background was very pretty and gave a nice feel to it

Funnily enough tho, this production was way more Leonora/di Luna than Leonora/Manrico (probably because Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis are married... I mean... The chemistry was so obvious that even my friends pointed it out, their interactions felt a lot more natural, and they kissed twice (in the beginning when Leonora mistakes him for Manrico, and after the duet in act IV) while Manrico and Leonora were almost always awkwardly socially distanced except for one hand kiss after "Ah si ben mio")

Also, let me just say.... Il balen del suo sorriso... live... oh my GOD aAAH i tell you i SWOONED it was so beautiful and Étienne Dupuis's voice resonated so well... 10/10 Hearing it live is a whole other experience

The chorus was also very good and the orchestra too. The pacing was right and the intensity was there

All in all, I'm literally so happy I got to see this live and I'm just amazed at how good it was!!!!! I have enough serotonin to last me for a good while <3

[beckmessering]

not too brief thoughts on the zurich rheingold (2022)

in short: this was entertaining af.

in long:

- zurich is a very smol opera house! the decor is adorable.

- acoustics are something to get used to. they’re quite...dry? as in, you can keep apart the different orchestral melodic lines with relative ease. but the sounds does punch you in the face if desired by gianandrea noseda.

- speaking of: noseda’s conducting is very good. pretty snappy and fast, absolutely no dragging here, but he’s also not rushing the singers. 

- THEY DID NOT USE A GLOCKENSPIEL FOR THE DESCENT INTO NIBELHEIM, THANK ODIN

- the production is Very Zurich. stage: minimalist, acting: maximalist. i elaborate:

- zurich’s stage is relatively small and they use is wisely. the whole set is a rotating circus of three white rooms in which characters are occasionally left along to have private conversations. that’s very convenient for these often slightly unwieldy dialogue scenes in rheingold where three characters are talking and the rest is just...sitting there, listening to them talk?!? nope, the talking people wander into another room to chat. adds a nice element of privacy. 

- IT LOOKS LIKE THE CENTENARY RING. it’s been said before and i can confirm. it’s like someone threw centenary rheingold and centenary walküre into a pot and gave it a good stir. it’s very obvious with wotan’s suit, the dark furniture, the general vibe of the gods being upper-class capitalists that aspire to even more and make other people of slightly lower social standing (the giants, wearing neat but simpler clothes and feathered hats) work for them. 

- the resemblance is purely aesthetic, though. it doesn’t have that same specific thought behind it. the closest i can get to deciphering where this will go is that it might be like an epic saga about the rise and decline of a family, which is...pretty close to what a Ring is. not very specific and not that modern, but not really traditional either.

- the acting is MAXIMALIST in that there is not a single fcking second of boredom onstage. everyone is in character, doing something, all the time. we love it

- this might be a Ring i’ve been waiting for for a long time: i’ve always wanted one that gives the difficult and multifaceted relationship in the Ring a very thorough look, and i don’t care how Regie it is otherwise, but i want a 21st-century ring that looks at the relationships in very thorough depth. 

- they do use a few stage tricks to great effect. loge burns things and people. a large closet/wardrobe apparently has magical properties. much smoke in nibelheim

- (nibelheim is a nightmare version of the villa the gods live in: creepy lighting, burnt-looking furniture, a wardrobe with the potential to transform people (alberich) into a dragon, and alberich himself with a whip that he is quite fond of using.)

- about that wardrobe in the third scene: the dragon is OUT OF the closet, i repeat the dragon is OUT OF the closet, but the toad is IN THE CLOSET (and then they drag alberich out of the closet)

- overall fantastical vibe is there. i like it. kind of like a dark, old-fashioned fairytale book that’s both fantastic and a little gruesome and spills right into the ‘real world’. 

- the singers! the singers!!!

- christopher purves is a classic howling-and-spitting alberich, but to great effect. he initially comes through the window dressed like a chimney sweep to clumsily flirt with bourgeois-looking rhinemaidens in satin pyjamas and gets worse from there. his phrasing is SO detailed! makes me think he understands every single word of what he’s singing, and he has zero accent when he sings, and that is a BIG achievement because alberich is tricky shit and purves is english and you absolutely can’t tell. (i hope this doesn’t sound weird. i’ve just noticed that with many native-english singers, german is particularly hard and tiny lapses in diction can happen even for the best. but no. this man does not lapse. 10/10)

- matthias klink’s loge is a decently drunk jack sparrow variant. i don’t find his voice very pretty and that’s a compliment because he’s a charaktertenor af, and he’s very lively in his drunk mannerisms and occasionally sings straight to the audience (the lights turn on whenever he does??!?)

- the ladies don’t have that much to do but do well. fricka (patricia barton, debut, i think) tries to reign in her husband, to...modest success. freia is pissed as FUCK at her family and doesn’t want to go back to them. “Dünkt euch Holda wirklich der Lösung wert?” was some sarcastic shit. we stan

- tomasz konieczny is fantastic. i feel a new favourite wotan incoming...first of all, he can be LOUD if he wishes, and his phrasing <3 detailed, thoughtful, varied, very fun to listen for the next sentence. (tbh i’m not surprised by that bc i knew of that before - his farewell in walküre is the only one to make me cry on the regular bc its so emotional :,) ) he has a bit of a weird voice for wotan, very much a matter of taste because it has this strong dark undertone but i looooove it. he also has exactly what you need for a character who is essentially a scheming liar 24/7: an apparent jovial manner that absolutely hates when people talk back to him, but more than that, a very cold, menacing streak beneath that just wants people to fucking do as i say or else. koniezcny definitely knows he’s singing a villain. tl;dr abt this guy: i CANNOT WAIT for walküre, i think he’ll rip my heart out

- overall, 9.5/10. had to get used to the acoustics a lil bit, a few people forgot their text (fafner and alberich). WILDLY entertaining, musically first-class, character portrayals were very clever and promising! tangible absolute dedication from everyone!! i stan this

[polinalyapustina]

Also today I got a final press release from Opera de Paris on Les Troyens. Gonna be super cool I guess, but really sad Elīna Garanča dropped out of this production. 

Though I like Ekaterina Semenchuk very much. She’s my favourite Princess Eboli. Yes, I do remember how good Elīna Garanča was, but I do prefer Semenchuk for that role. Hopefully she will perform Dido with the same passion and singing level.

But, oh Gosh, 5 hour 10 min. In French. In winter. 

[beckmessering]

moderately brief thoughts on the met’s new lucia (2022)

- ok i’ll be frank: i LOVE this staging. it’s perfect for a lucia first-timer (says a lucia first-timer). perfect because the thoughts/feelings/motivations of the original story are preserved, and the staging is extremely visually engaging. it’s absolutely impossible to run out of things to look at. also the new context fits the story very, very well, adds some further dimensions to it while supporting the idea that the story is universal (we love it). exactly what a ‘new’ staging should do. 

- idk if everyone felt this way but the production also felt familiar. i guess that’s something for if you’ve ever lived in the US, because what’s going on in declining towns and cities across the country (and in the rust belt) is a present part of the newsfeed. 

- i loved also that the characters felt like people i had seen before. anyone could feel they, too, know a lucia or an edgardo (hopefully not an enrico). maybe loads of people know an edgardo, who sings about oaths he’s sworn but also seems like he just trying to get by like everyone else, and loads of people know a lucia: a young girl, sweet, gentle, and likeable, with wishes to be happy and carefree, yet entirely trapped in her surroundings with pressure that’s too much to bear.

- speaking of: i was never ever afraid for nadine sierra’s voice during her high notes. her mad scene was incredibly engaging as well. i applaud not only everyone who can sing this, but also everyone who can hold the audience’s attention so easily and deservedly, and she does both.

- javier camarena does not have my personal preferred tenor voice, i think, but he was a great edgardo, and i really wanted him to be happy with lucia. he was a great choice for this specific production - i don’t think i could image anyone else in his place.

- artur ruciński was also absolutely 11/10. not only was the singing great, but i really appreciate someone’s dedication to the slack body language of a small-town mafia boss who delves into various degrees of drunk and addicted throughout the opera. 

(side note: we as the audience never know if he’s ever really sober throughout. fascinating to think about because it highlights an often-tragic aspect of serious addictions and some mental health problems: they consume you until no one is sure what the personality is and what the addiction is. was enrico always this callous? we don’t know.)

- in general, the dedication to detail in the scenery, the props, and the acting was absolute first-class. 

- bel canto is still not my poison of first choice, but that’s fine - i wasn’t bored for a single second and now know i’d definitely go see a stirring bel canto opera production. 

- LOVED simon stone’s statement about how the end of his imagination should only be the beginning of the singers’ interpretation. YES 

two points of potential criticism:

- the only part in which the production may have been overambitious was in portraying both alcoholism AND the opioid crisis in enrico. doing both of those things in one character of one production is a lot. acting-wise, the alcoholism was emphasised much more, i find, but it’s also not that big of a problem since the production was in no way flippant or trivialising about drugs.

- the production translated extremely well on screen. almost...too well. i started wondering how it must be to see it live. musically, surely thrilling. but is the level of detail in the props even visible from further away? that’s not something that should be corrected by taking away props, though. for a live broadcast, the camera team’s filming proved very helpful because the broadcasters could occasionally switch to their film, and this kept things going. i don’t know how present the camera team is during the whole performance live, though. i hope they’re not there for every single scene because having people follow the singers around at all times is strangely obstructive to the otherwise very real, immediate feel of the production. it introduces a strange artificiality that the whole thing otherwise absolutely doesn’t have.  

final comment:

- THIS is the correct amount of fake blood to be used for a stabbing death. ring cycle (and countless others), take notes. 

[revedebeatrice]

Les Huguenots (Sydney 1990) acts 1&2 review

I've just finished act II ! So far it's really good! I love the staging and the COSTUMES (imo men's fashion peaked at the end of the 16th century)!

For the singing, it's quite good! The french pronunciation is horrendous (thank god for the subtitles) but everything sounds quite nice! I'm not really blown away by any voice (unlike the recording I listened to yesterday), but it's very pleasant and the orchestra is great! Music wise, I still don't have any particular aria in my head, but this is to be expected since this is now only my 2nd time with Les Huguenots... However, I love the beginning (the introduction?), there's a really great theme with the chorus that comes back and that I love!

Okay now for the plot! To be honest, it's quite complicated and I had to go read a bit of the wikipedia summary to make sure I wasn't "dans les patates" as we say in Québec. I'm still not really sure whether or not I understand it fully, but here we go:

Raoul is a protestant and he's been invited to visit the catholic Comte de Nevers to attempt a catholic/protestant reconciliation. Nevers has just become engaged and has to break up with his mistresses. There's also a bit about his servant (Marcel?) finding him frolicking with the catholics and immediately praying and singing a song about killing catholics. Then there's this thing where they see a woman in the streets and Raoul recognizes the mysterious woman he fell in love with but he thinks she's Nevers's mistress. I feel like Nevers is bad catholic representation... but then also the protestants in this are kill joys so.... Anyway, apparently she's not his mistress, she's his fiancé???? So after Raoul gets summoned by Marguerite de Valois because she wants him to marry Valentine (instead of Nevers), but he refuses because he thinks she was Nevers's mistress (he is a tenor afterall, the braincells are quite limited)...

Going forward, I'm not what's going to happen, but I feel like Raoul, being a protestant, will eventually die... unless he pulls a Henri IV and decides to change religion according to public favour... but I don't think he will because, as I said, the braincells are quite scarce

On to act III !

[revedebeatrice]

Incomplete review of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

Okay so since this was the opera for the weekend, yesterday I decided to start listening to an audio recording while I was outside drawing and my dad was keeping me company as he was working...

So. Of course I didn't pay attention to the story, only the music, and it was really weird. I can get behind a bit of tonal dissonance or atonality, and I mean there are some bits that I liked, but I had to stop it a bit after the start of the 2nd act cause my dad sort of hated it and it was giving him a headache....

Anyway, since I really can't be a judge since I didn't finish it, I will just link the parts I liked from act 1:

Anyway... do with that what you will... maybe someday I'll finish it

[zeichens]

practicing being a hater so here it goes:

I did not like Die Frau Ohne Schatten at the Met. I wouldn't consider myself an extremely learned or deeply experienced opera-goer, but I am a classically-trained and experienced singer and I have literally been in productions and usually see one or two performances a year. Which I say only to indicate that I have a pretty reasonable tolerance for typical opera cliche and can usually find something to like, whether it's in the story, a character, the staging, or the music. But man FoS really challenged me.

Most of my issue, I'll admit, is coming from the story and composition itself. It is assuredly a post-war (1) artifact and only makes sense as an incredibly heavy-handed warning for the "new woman" of the postwar period to quickly return to her childrearing duties or else. (or else be killed, as every male character threatens to do to his associated bride at least once). The whole thing feels like a whining complaint by men that women won't put out--and the reason they refuse to do so is because they are basically child-murderers in waiting who will wipe out a generation just to have some shiny gold shit in their hair. The nauseatingly dull and shallow "mystical world" that was apparently von Hofmannsthal's creation feels like a childish flight from reality. It made me want to re-read Lukacs's criticism of Expressionism again (and also Krakauer). Maybe I'm too deep in this material (I am) but I swear this kind of interwar fantasy bullshit seems to point directly to the later embrace of fascist fantasy. "From Caligari to Hitler," from FoS to Anschluss??

The production notes had a strange description of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, comparing them to a "laborador retriever" and a "siamese cat". Fair enough, the notes themselves seemed to admit there's something not quite right about this piece. Hofmannsthal went for the esoteric, the "symbolic", while Strauss' music was heavy-handed and pompous. A strange match, the writers admitted, but still did not apologize for giving such attention to this bizarre and empty work.

Despite being a "Germanist" (lol), I don't actually usually like German operas. I wouldn't have been interested in FoS to be honest if it weren't for the images of the staging advertised. And this is probably where I do find more to speak nicely about. The cube of mirrors with its depth illusion was striking and the way that they used it to play with light throughout the performance was really interesting. At some points, especially as a character droned on and on, I found the cube to be somewhat boring. There's nothing for characters to interact with--they float in it, completely detached from context. This was of course the point of such staging and it is effective--but personally it only reinforced the sense of a lack of any real stakes in the story. This place isn't real, these characters aren't real--just allegories telling me I better fuck and give birth or else. So. Interesting, but perhaps also a missed opportunities to give these characters some real context.

(Also the whole contraption groans and shudders when withdrawing backstage--something which was normally fairly unobtrusive due to the pomp of the music, except for the very last time the stage withdraws, which took place when orchestra and singers were for once pianissimo, meaning the whirring and moaning of the thing nearly drowned out the music. I was dying holding back the laughter.)

Additionally the "human world" was so frustratingly ugly. Can we ban those greys and browns from Met staging? I had the same thought suffering through Wozzeck a few years ago (NOT because of the music or the performance, which I loved, but because the set was so tear-inducingly drab). There HAS to be another way for stage designers to represent poverty other than fucking rags and industrial sites.

This is not to say that there were not some truly stunning moments in the piece. In the middle of act three, the father Keikobad is powerfully revealed while the music finally, FINALLY does something truly interesting and captivating ("Weh mir, Erfüllt der Flucht!"). The precision and control of the orchestra was breathtaking. Keikobad slowly rises, unmoving, dressed in a cloak of mirrors that flings blinding light at the audience--he was truly difficult to look at. The impression of divinity was powerful. (I noted the program said "strobe effects" for the performance--this turned out to be entirely in reference to the flashing of mirrors rather than any actual strobing lights. The analogue effects were an invigorating choice.)

And to continue that sense of something truly special, the Empress delivers her pleas as a spoken, plaintive, recitative-like plea for mercy. I have always been a bit weak for these kinds of scenes, especially since Peter Lorre's trial scene in M is fairly imprinted onto my soul. For once forgoing the controlled beauty of her voice, the soprano is stripped of her power and reduced to naked begging before a shining deity. It was jawdropping. Truly raw. I was captivated and I have huge respect for this aspect of the performance. I don't usually think much of the acting abilities in an opera performance--it's honestly less important to me--but van den Heever delivered something achingly real and beautiful here. Indeed this moment was the only one in which I felt I was seeing an actual person, full of the real complexities of life, rather than a tired flat allegory.

I can admit to some things on my end. I was fairly occupied with the text throughout the performance (I unfortunately cannot use the English subtitles when the singing is in German because my brain just starts frantically translating and trying to anticipate what I'll hear) and so it is likely that I missed a lot of the real acrobatics of the vocality. Nevertheless at no point (other than the act 3 moment above) did the music really make itself known to me. It could very well be that I simply don't like Strauss (I think I am leaning that way).

Okay I think I have expelled most of what I wanted to expel. Am I qualified to comment on opera? Maybe loosely. Not enough to write for the NYT obviously. But I'm practicing having opinions on things nevertheless. Here's to being hater. It just means that I really do give a fuck.