Gib dem Glück eine Chance, Melanie (German Edition)

Gib dem Glück eine Chance, Melanie by Shirley Jump · Gib dem Glück eine Chance, Melanie. by Shirley Jump. Print book. German. Hamburg Cora- Verl.
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Three choral works followed, in performances by the Coral Harte Vocal. Both the modest dimensions and ambitions of the works themselves, and the renditions by the chorus, reinforced my impression that choral music in Brazil is an area susceptible to considerable growth, and one in which achievements are yet below what is the norm for other genres in Brazil, and below the norm for top choruses elsewhere in the world. The chorus, made up of young, seemingly untrained voices, produced a small sound that barely carried to where I was sitting.

The work is predominantly retrospective and lyrical in tone, with a striking middle movement, Andantino cromatico , played sempre pp. Rather than end this panorama of Brazilian music on a sour note, I will let the first be last, and the last first. The Toccata Metal for solo cello by Yanto Laitano received a virtuoso performance by Paulo Santoro, but to these ears it was naught but sound and fury signifying nothing.

Ambitious but unsatisfying was Pathos for a quartet of clarinet, viola, cello and piano by Bruno Angelo, with many unisons perhaps intended to be dramatic, but which chiefly showed that the young players were incapable of playing in tune, particularly the lamentable cello, excruciatingly out in its high register. The Bienal should be an opportunity for the country to show the best of what it produces to the world, not simply an opportunity for composers and performers to meet.

For the Bienal to fulfill a broader function, it needs to have a firmer organizational and funding base, a base that would allow the festival to be scheduled years, rather than months, in advance, and should make a concerted effort to attract music-lovers from around the world to visit, including the international press.

It is shocking how the Brazilian press itself can ignore this important event, with no prior coverage, and almost no reportage of the concerts of the festival. Music is in Brazil is vital — the composers and performers for this festival were almost all in their forties, thirties, twenties — and it communicates, but it needs help from the media to get its message across.

Taken from performances recorded on 19, 20, and 21 October , this live recording preserves the outstanding association between Haitink and the Chicago Symphony, a relationship that continues through the present season. Because of the expansiveness of the sound involved with this Symphony, the Third is not always readily accessible through recordings. The waves of sound with which the out movements conclude stand in contrast to the delicate and chamber-music-like sonorities of second movement, the Tempo di Menuetto. Likewise, the string textures that dominate the latter movement and the much of the Finale differ in quality from brass timbres of the first movement or the vocal textures in the fifth.

In expressing the world through the genre of the symphony, Mahler made the symphonic idiom a universe of its own, through the range of ton colors and textures, musical forms, and other elements he united in what is, ultimately, a cyclic work. In this recording of his recent performances of the work, Haitink demonstrates the command of the score that made his earlier recording of the Third Symphony memorable when he performed it with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Yet this later performance by Haitink retains its own quality. At the same time the finesse of the Orchestra is apparent throughout, with the solo parts evenly precise and expressive. No concerto for orchestra, this work remains has demands of solo performances and soli sections that exceed the kind usually encountered in a conventional symphony. It requires an ensemble as skilled and integrated as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to approach this score so convincingly, and when as insightful a conductor as Haitink can shape it, the result is memorable.

The vocal element also requires a deft musician, and Michelle De Young is exceptional in this work, and this recording is almost a close-up of her performance, which was more distant when heard from the stage of Symphony Center. Those two shorter pieces are a foil for the slow Finale, in which Love is expressed without words in an instrumental piece that is impressive for its majestic and subtly powerful conclusion.

The solo trumpet — the Posthorn — Mahler scored for the work, is particularly effective in this recording because of its sweet and even sound. Heard live, the sonic distance that occurs in this passage seems greater than it can be rendered in a recording like this. Yet this recording offers a fine representation of the movement, which is also notable for the woodwinds, which demonstrate their remarkably tight ensemble playing. In fact, such playing is evident in the second movement, which is, perhaps, a little faster than some conductors take the movement, but nonetheless effective here.

Again, the sonic quality of this recording is a facsimile of the live performances, but does not resemble completely the experience of this music in performance when heard within the resonant space of Symphony Hall. Nevertheless, the sound derived from the microphones place above the ensemble captures some details that might have escaped the audiences at the concerts.

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It is difficult to deny, though, the powerful conclusion that Haitink draws from the Chicago Symphony in the finale sections of the last movement which, in itself, left a lasting impression about the power of this work in the hands of a master conductor. As the CD by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that inaugurates its own label, this fine release bodes well for future recordings that the ensemble will offer. It was a triumphant tour-de-force that was roundly cheered by that discerning public and critics. It is no accident that he has repeatedly been invited back for his signature Mozart roles and Escamillo, among others.

He is one of those treasurable artists that can totally inhabit a role, all the while singing with great beauty and understanding. Tenor Giuseppe Filianoti has been singing all over the map, at many major houses including the Met, and he deserves to. This is a well-produced, full-sized lyric instrument with enough heft and point in it to edge into a slightly heavier Fach like this one.

And he is apparently tireless, pouring out searing, balls-to-the-wall phrases and hushed introspective musings alike throughout the evening. Although soprano Elena Mosuc was announced with some drama as indisposed with three different ladies on hand to spell her if needed , it was hard to tell from her authoritative portrayal of the four heroines. And that the attractive Ms. Mosuc certainly does, with considerable success. And this pretty much concludes the great news portion of the evening, for the physical production was somewhat a well-intended grab bag.

Yes, the whole set was a boxy cube, within which most of the time a smaller cube resided, which rotated to reveal our leading ladies through an open fourth wall, or as I refer to it: Designer Hartmut Schoerghofer is on the blame line for this creation. A blue scrim began each act with well-intended but hard-to-see projections, the first being I think disembodied hands - or were they condoms?

That business over, the set-up seemed that we were in the Kantine of the theatre where Stella was performing. It was awfully trendy for a Kantine, though. It must be said the energetic, dedicated cast was immersed in their assignments, and plunged wholeheartedly into everything that was asked of them by director Christine Mielitz. Did the chorus have to jive and weave and bop like White People Dancing Badly? In a horrifying flashback, the sight reminded me of the terrible Wisconsin wedding dances of my youth.

Oh, he covered, and turned the face of it away from us, but the ill omen was communicated. Miracle and Elena Mosuc Antonia. This act was by far the most imaginative direction, compromised as it was with gratuitous futzing around by the chorus, and well, way too much of a pretty good thing. While there was no sound effect, there was a film projection of splattered brains running down the wall that would have made John Carpenter proud. Act Two began with a giant Mylar false proscenium flying in, and then with a loud thunk tipping forward to weakly reflect an overhead view of the real pit musicians.

The sicker she got, the more posies appeared. In this case, young Hulett was a closet ballerina, or cross-dresser, or both and why not? As his dance moves gave way to more strip-tease abandon, he revealed himself to be wearing a camisole, and fishnet stockings, and, after holding a leg up high to one side while singing the last bars, he ended in a really decent split to considerable audience approval! No fooling, this was an inspired moment. One I was still relishing all the way up until. She was the lucky one, I thought, as Venice was.

The chorus members seated on outer sides of the cube seemed to be malcontent-ed street people in rags and tatters. The lighting was so dark it was hard to see. This was clearly a bad part of town. No longer a sex-obsessed juvenile delinquent, he is back to being an unlikable, ranting jerk of a poet. There were actually any number of good ideas here and enough freshly inventive bits that it was a pity that Ms. Mielick and her design team settled for a profusion of images and movement that became less and less focused.

The production could be greatly improved by simply imposing some clarity and discipline in the crowd scenes and, especially, re-considering singer placement on the stage. Happily, the terrific singing was tremendously satisfying.

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I would travel further than Hamburg to hear Mr. Plasson led a brisk, committed reading with all the dramatic consistency that the staging lacked. Written and directed by Christopher Nupen, the result is a solid biographical study of the composer that takes its cue from the various shifts in the reputation of Sibelius, not only within his lifetime, but posthumously. To augment the visual palette, Nupen included various natural scenes from the Finnish countryside, and the subtle motion in the landscapes contributes a subtle touch to the images that are otherwise static, albeit quite effective.

Ultimately the search for answers requires an exploration of both the music and its reception, which results in establishing a context for the success of Sibelius as a composer of both national and international standing. Again, the text bears attention for the choice of works, along with the judicious selection of sources from diaries and other primary sources.

The reliance on firsthand accounts is selective, and contributes a sense of authenticity that films like this require. Never simplistic, Nupen is clear in the aesthetic success of the Fourth Symphony, without exaggerating the popular appeal and immediate success of the Fifth. The selections are well chosen and as much as some are expected, they are nonetheless welcome in this film. At times, one would want to hear the acclaim of the audience at the conclusion of as bold a statement as the Finale of the Second Symphony. At times the careful superimposition of the narration on the music is nicely balanced.

This is a carefully created film that goes far in describing the life and works of Sibelius. With each of the two segments lasting just over fifty minutes, the length of the film is sufficient to explore the subject in some depth, with time enough for sometimes extended musical examples. All in all, this is a fine film that serves both its subject and the music well.

The DVD is a useful means for making available material like this, with its easily searchable contents and excellent sound. A Film in Two Parts. New works by Philip Glass. It is not, however, a crass cartoon. By Susan Elliott [MusicalAmerica. Page is taking a leave of absence to be a visiting professor at the University of Southern California. The Post has been interviewing potential successors for the last several months. Chris Tryhorn [Guardian, 26 October ]. BBC Radio 3 is to video stream an opera on its website for the first time, offering a performance of the English National Opera's current production of Carmen.

At one time, the Fille was more likely to appear as Figlia ; in other words, in Italian translation. The Maria, Maria Costanza Nocentini, produces a metallic, sharp-edged sound that may well carry with distinction in an opera house. As recorded, the effect is not especially appealing. He produces the high Cs at the end of his famous aria; everything before that - and after - feels rough and unshaped. Luciano Motti growls appropriately as Sulpizio. The comic effect of a role like the Marchesa de Berkenfeld carries best in the theater - Milijana Nikolic might be more amusing, seen on stage.

The Teatro Marrucino forces are no more than capable. This particular version is no bargain, even at Naxos prices. This staging more than any other has given me continual pause for thought over the years, leading me to better understanding of the piece. Sarastro, too, has something to learn; as he gets to know Pamina better, he loses arrogance that he never knew he had, and comes to respect a woman as an equal.

Andrew Kennedy was a noble Tamino with lovely tone, though his oddly distorted vowel sounds are becoming increasingly irritating. Talking of accents, his disguised Papagena is conventionally played in this production as an elderly Irish tea-lady, which proved a verbal challenge too great for the Swedish soprano Susannah Andersson. He wrote it at roughly the same time as his first full-blown opera seria were starting to roll off that amazingly fruitful production line which was to dominate the English opera scene for decades, and it has music and drama of the same high quality, even if the quantity is more limited.

It is a delightful, if sobering, tale of out-of-control sexual desire which leads to loss and regret; an everyday tale of country folk set in the misty mythological past where nymphs, shepherds and passing gods wreak havoc in the Arcadian calm. The amorous god Apollo spots a nubile young wood nymph called Dafne. He becomes entranced and then besotted with her and in the end his unwanted advances force her to reject him in the only way left open to her: Although this cantata can be viewed as a simple morality tale — and most probably was in — Handel has lavished the full panoply of his skills upon it, though in miniature form compared to his greater vocal works.

He actually started writing it, we think, whilst still in Venice where he was both working and networking among the nobility of that great musical centre of the time. The manuscript had to travel with him when he left for a brief sojourn in Hanover which was where it was completed. A recent national tour by the renowned baroque ensemble The English Concert has put the spotlight back on to Apollo e Dafne and a recent Friday evening saw them performing it as the semi-staged centre piece of an all-Handel programme for an appreciative audience at St.

This lament was plangently sung by visiting Spanish soprano Nuria Rial, who has an ideal voice for this kind of work — clear, limpid and quite white in tone — and she gave a polished if perhaps musically unadventurous reading of it. What was needed was an injection of Italian brio — and we got it with the entrance of Fulvio Bettini as the importuning god Apollo in the main vocal work of the evening.

In telling the story of Katerina Ismailova, Shostakovich portrayed the woman, his Lady Macbeth, with perhaps more sympathy than his nineteenth-century predecessor. The comments by Shostakovich quoted in the notes that accompany this DVD give a concise statement of his intentions:. In this opera the dissonant idiom Shostakovich used is effective as a sonic foundation for the passionate, if angular, vocal lines. The sometimes harsh orchestral accompaniments not only support the vocal lines, but also offer cues to the audience about the emotional pitch of the scenes, and the sensitive conductor Mariss Jansons offers a perceptive reading of this score.

By no means an simple work. Jansons is clear in his interpretations, which offers a clear shape in each scene. As a filmed opera, it preserves the sense of being on stage, yet reproduces some of the necessarily intimate blocking for some scenes, with close-ups that would be difficult to capture from a live performance of the work. This climactic and yet unfathomably deep essence of human behavior is the linchpin of my production. Such a perspective is, perhaps, what makes the heroine Katerina intriguing, and Eva-Maria Westbroek succeeds in depicting the character as someone who is at once victim and perpetrator.

She is the match for Sergei, whom Christopher Ventris plays convincingly. Early in the opera, a member of the crowd warns that Sergei is troublesome, but that does not deter Katerina in her liaison with him. In performing their roles, the two principals display a command of the music and its nuances. Westbroek is as compelling in her solo numbers as she is when her entrance heightens the ensemble numbers.

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As much as the performance requires physicality, her voice matches those demands well, and remains inviting and vibrant. Ventris, whose own presence balances that of Westbroek, is equally adept at the role of Sergei, whose brutality is convincingly offputting. The chorus serves a actor and commentator, and the members of the Netherland Opera offer a vivid sense of the crowds when necessary.

The involvement of the crowd in the sexual attack is stark, and the staging stops short of being graphic. As such, the stage action balances the musical content without overwhelming it. Beyond the sensuality associated with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , the opera conveys a sense of the starkness that affects the characters in different ways. In interpreting the score Jansons is sensitive to that aspect of the music and maintains the intensity throughout the performance.

This, in turn, drives the work to its conclusion, which is at once fitting and tragic. This is a powerful production that makes available on video a fine production of the opera by performers who know the work well. The first two acts fill the first disc, with the third on the second. In fact, the latter contains a documentary about the film by Reiner Moritz, which offers some details about the production and the film itself. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Walther von Stolzing, a young nobleman, has just come to Nuremberg and fallen in love with Eva, the daughter of Pogner, a rich goldsmith and mastersinger, one of the most important men of the town.

After the church service Eva contrives a few minutes with Walther to explain, in answer to his eager questions, that, although she loves him, she is not free to marry. Her father has decided to offer her hand to the winner of a mastersinging contest to be held the next day, for the festival of St John, Midsummer's Day.

Eva's maid and companion, Magdalena, arranges for her sweetheart, the apprentice David, to prepare Walther for the contest, since only mastersingers are eligible to compete. David is horrified to discover that Walther knows nothing at all about the art of mastersinging and that he hopes to reach in one day a stage which requires years of painful study - such as he is undergoing himself as he studies singing as well as shoemaking under Hans Sachs, the greatest of the mastersingers. Other apprentices are meanwhile arranging the church for a singing test. The mastersingers begin to arrive. First are Pogner and Beckmesser, the town clerk who wants to marry Eva and is trying to urge her father to put in a good word for him.

Walther takes Pogner aside and explains that he wants to join the mastersingers guild. Beckmesser eyes him off suspiciously. When the meeting begins Pogner announces that he intends to give his daughter and her dowry as a prize in the festival song contest. Sachs suggests that the people ought to have some say in the judging, since the contest is to be public, An argument develops between Sachs and Beckmesser,who clearly regards Sachs, a widower, as a rival for Eva's hand.

Sachsenrages him by answering that they are both too old for a young girl. Pogner then presents Walther as a candidate for the guild. To prove his suitability he has to sing a song but is failed by Beckmesser, who acts as examiner. Sachs defends the song and accuses Beckmesser of not being objective, but the other masters also reject the song, finding it too free and not in accordance with the strict rules of their craft.

In the ensuing argument Beckmesser complains that Sachs should spend less time on poetry and more on the pair of shoes he has ordered for the next day. Eva, having learned of Walther's failure to become a master, goes along to Sachs to find out the full story. He, still reflecting on the strange beauty of Walther's song, tests Eva's feelings.

She responds so hotly to his disparaging remarks about Walther that he realises she loves him.

He is now able to plan how to help the lovers. When Walther comes along to find Eva he is still very angry with the masters and persuades Eva to elope with him. She goes inside to change clothes with Magdalena, so that she can escape unnoticed and also so that Magdalena can take her place at the window to listen to a serenade which Beckmesser is supposed to be singing to her that night. Walther and Eva wait in the street for a chance to slip away but Sachs,inside his shop, has heard their plans and is determined to stop them from taking such a rash step, so he keeps a light shining across the street so they cannot get past unobserved.

When Beckmesser begins his serenade Sachs begins to hammer and sing a vigorous cobbling song. To Beckmesser's objections he agrees to stop singing but points out that he has to keep hammering - to finish the shoes Beckmesser has been complaining about. After some argument it is agreed that Sachs is to act as marker for Beckmesser's song, only hammering when he makes a mistake.

But when Beckmesser sings the hammering is so fast and furious that the shoes are finished before the song. Then David sees Magdalena at the window and rushes out jealously to attack Beckmesser. People open their windows to see what is going on. Apprentices from rival guilds rush into the street and a general brawl develops, only broken off by the appearance of the night watchman. Sachs manages to bundle Eva into her own house and pull Walther with him into his house just as they are on the point of running away in the confusion. Hans Sachs is in a reflective mood, thinking of the midsummer madness of the night before, but still eager to help Eva and Walther.

Learning that Walther has had a dream he encourages him to make it into a song, teaching as he goes along how to frame it so as not to outrage too violently the mastersingers' rules and writing it down himself as Walther sings it. With the final stanza still uncomposed they go into another room to change their clothes, leaving the song on the bench. Beckmesser comes in and pockets the song gleefully, thinking it is by Sachs.

To his surprise, Sachs does not object when he finds out, but makes him a present of it. He is torn between gratitude, feeling certain that a song by Sachs will win him the prize, and distrust that Sachs has something up his sleeve - as indeed he does, though all Beckmesser's guesses are wide of the mark.

He goes off to learn the song. Eva comes in, ostensibly to complain about her shoes. Walther is inspired by her presence to finish the song, which Sachs, putting his own feelings for Eva aside and satisfied with his matchmaking, pronounces to be a mastersong. Eva and Walther are deeply grateful to him for his help. Sachs calls David and Magdalena in to help celebrate the new song and also promotes David to the status of journeyman, which means that he and Magdalena will be able to get married.

They all set off for the festival. The apprentices of the different guilds dance and sing while waiting for the arrival of the masters. Then the proper business of the day begins: The first competitor is Beckmesser, who makes a hopeless mess of Walther's song. In the face of general derision he defends himself by claiming that the song is by Sachs. Sachs denies this and tells them that the song is beautiful but has been ruined by Beckmesser. To prove his case he calls on the real composer to sing the song, thus giving Walther a chance to be heard - which otherwise, as an outsider, he would not have had.

With the unfair assistance of a full orchestra and chorus to back him, compared to Beckmesser's solitary lute, he sings his song, to general acclaim. Eva crowns him with the victor's garland and Pogner offers him the chain of a mastersinger. He rejects it angrily, but Sachs reproves him, telling him to honor the masters because their care has kept the art of poetry alive. Click here for the complete libretto. Having collaborated in the past with choreographers including Mark Morris, the company is now two thirds of the way through a Monteverdi opera cycle in collaboration with Chinese-American director Chen Shi-Zheng, the Orange Blossom Dance Company from Indonesia, and the early-music specialist conductor Laurence Cummings.

A precedent was set by the opening opera of the cycle in spring — an Orfeo of spectacularly hypnotic, fluid beauty. Projected images on the backdrop reinforced this idea; she was an icon, virtually a graven image to be worshipped. Otherwise, the cast was a bit weak and underpowered. It is, perhaps, unfair to blame the singers for this; Monteverdi operas were not designed for a space the size of the Coliseum.

Tim Mead's Ottone started off with that slightly yelpy sound which countertenors get when they over-project though he sorted this out by the second half. Anna Grevelius, as Nerone, sang very sweetly but didn't project any masculinity either vocally or physically - certainly not enough to convince as an egomaniacal ruler.

Indeed, the costumes and props seemed incidental to the opera, and at times even a hindrance. Sometimes it was more like a fashion show, with wacky structured haute-couture costumes which made me wonder whether we'd accidentally strayed into the Zandra Rhodes-designed Aida a few weeks early. The production did have moments of real beauty - like the dancers in the dragonfly costumes rising slowly into the air during "Pur ti miro".

And there was great beauty in the music — is it even possible not to make this score beautiful? Laurence Cummings really understands Monteverdian line and seemed to have taken considerable trouble to share this with the cast.

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But compared with Orfeo , with its sense of "flow" and constantly visually-arresting use of colour and movement, this Poppea staging was scrappy and disappointing. In truth, the biggest problems were the failure to communicate the humanity of the characters, and the fundamental sense of division between the musical performance and the visual spectacle.

Chen Shi-Zheng has shown himself to be yet another director who allows his personal vision for a production to take priority over the work being performed. After its premiere Verdi revised it in , the composer dedicated it to his beloved father-in-law, calling it "dearer to me than all my other operas.

The current fad for unearthing forgotten operas has turned up some duds. Justly neglected flops are diligently dusted and polished so that they can flop again. All are called upon to maintain a mounting and plausible tension in the plentiful dialogue. In my experience the two separate Frankfurt productions one memorable only for a terrific Angela Denoke, the other for the goofiness of having the hunters got-up as Hassidic Jews ; the Achim Freyer version in Stuttgart which others liked much more than I ; and even a well-meant staging in Seattle with a slightly mis-cast Deborah Voigt; all left me admiring individual components but none adding up to a total package.

Cologne Opera has unveiled a new staging under the sure direction of Michael Heinicke, with a pleasing traditional set and costume design by Jens Kilian, all quite beautifully lit by Hans Toelstede. In the first flush of fall, its leaves just turning, and beautifully lit, it elicited gasps at curtain rise. Heinicke is an unfussy director who, blessedly, does not seem to need to impose much of anything but common sense and strong stage pictures onto the piece.

Almost everything and everybody is what or who they are supposed to be. He has elicited sincere and affecting performances from an excellent cast. Just after Max loses the initial shooting contest, the taunting chorus is suddenly joined by a sextet of actual pit musicians, playing onstage in their concert attire, who join in tormenting him. She is so clearly not playing it that it only distracts.

I would hope that some consideration would be given to tweaking these jarring bits, because for the rest of the evening I thought the staging had most everything one could want. The acting was not only believable, but for once the declamation was not of the phoney- baloney Dudley Do-Right School of Operatic Elocution. Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte had just the right amount of heft and metal in her pleasing sound to make a winning Agathe.

She was totally committed to the Nervous Nellie characterization that was asked of her. Indeed, I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown in several moments -- at least I hope she was acting! It was reminiscent of Judy in her later years. Thomas Mohr was a splendid Max. While his firm lower-voiced singing displays some signs of his former life as a baritone, the top rings true, his sense of line is commendable, his dramatic commitment is effectively varied, and he poured out beautiful sound all night long in all registers. We may have gotten spoiled, wishing every leading tenor could look like Juan Diego Florez or William Burden, and that Mr.

But he exuded a genuine, conflicted appeal nonetheless, albeit more in the Paul Giamatti mode. His focused, steely tone cut through the orchestra with ease, and his fiery melismatic work was right on the money. Moreover, he avoided every cliche that has encumbered this role in the past with acting of amazing nuance.

I should add that he was ably abetted by some very good, strobe-like lighting effects which made the static tree actually seem to move about. But even in the relatively dry acoustic of the Cologne house, the Guerzenich Orchestra, chorus and cast responded to him with often expansive, always persuasive Romantic music-making of a very high order. After all there are two official recordings made in her prime and there are the widely popular live-recordings made at the Met Bergonzi-Gorr-Solti ; one even made the same year as this Rome-issue and it has the glorious voice of Franco Corelli as a bonus in the tenor role.

Still Price-fans will miss out on a treat. She is in fabulous and firm voice: By the mid-sixties some Price-performances and even recordings were sometimes marred by her not being able or not wanting to produce a homogenous sound. She sometimes sounded as if she was experimenting with different kinds of vocal timbre so that several voices could be heard in one performance, even in one aria; all of them exciting but sometimes somewhat incompatible.

She was not above growling parts of her role too. Nothing of that is to be heard in this recording: Her second aria is truly astounding, capped with an ethereal fine high C. Giorgio Lamberti was still very young at the time, only three years into his career. In the house the voice was probably fine but the unremitting penetrating sound tries the listener.

Later on in his career he would have a better sense of legato, and would even succeed in giving us some pianissimi I often heard him in the flesh; he still lives in my own Flanders but these qualities were still to come. Mirella Parutto has a fruity mezzo and is a fine and convincing mezzo, as long as Price is not in the neighbourhood.

Mario Zanasi in one of his rare recordings shows off a big agreeable voice, though still singing in the verismo style in use at the Italian provincial houses. Veteran conductor De Fabritiis is fine most of the time, driving on his forces at a good Verdian speed. But now and then, mostly in the cabalettas, he gets a dose of stimulating substances or he wants to show his singers who is the boss and then he hurries along at a breakneck speed which must have made the singers curse him.

Then it was the long road downhill until its demolition in Happily for the Sevillanos, the refurbishment of the whole city due to the world exhibition and the awful amount of money put into Spain by the European Union once more gave them an opera house, the Teatro de la Maestranza which opened in And several earlier issues are better pitched; the De Lucia record is a case in question, a tone too high.

The redeeming feature of the CD is the introduction of some almost forgotten Spanish singers like Utam, Tabuyo and Granados; not all on the same level as their more famous countrymen and women but still good examples of their art and times. Perhaps a full CD with those and other lesser known performers would have found wider circulation among vocal record collectors.

Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Georg Solti. Decca [2CDs]. Arabella may be the opera suffering most from surtitles. I remember an astonished lady, finally able to grasp every detail, who commented during the pause of a Ghent performance: Lehar and Kalman and Romberg would have accepted some of the sillier aspects of the libretto like the big guy falling in love with a portrait. But the structure of boy meets girl first act , boy and girl quarrel second act and boy and girl nevertheless find happiness is indeed completely derived from Gypsy Princess , Countess Maritza and Naughty Marietta.

Georg Solti however with his nervous and dramatic conducting makes the piece less sentimental than it can be and he has at his disposal an astounding cast. Most of them belong to the fabulous post-war ensemble of the Vienna State opera and they are able to sing and to record everything between Mozart and Lehar in a still unsurpassed way. The first thing that struck me was the sound. Though recorded in early stereo in it is still amazingly warm and fresh after half a century. Therefore nobody can discard this recording in the series The Originals because it sounds old and worn.

Moreover all of the singers are at the height of their powers. I cannot imagine a better Zdenka than the boyish sound of Hilde Gueden which becomes appropriately sensuous when she once more becomes a girl in love. She is sparkling and technically proficient and her small role is a plea to Decca to reissue her recitals. The male department is almost as strong. Anton Dermota as Matteo is far better than the average Matteo. It is an ungrateful role but Dermota with his experience of Mozart and his fine un-German somewhat grainy timbre succeeds in creating a sympathetic suitor.

And then there is the singer whom many Americans and others as well will prefer as Mandryka and whom I have doubts about. For my personal taste the bass-baritone of George London is a bit too gruff, too throaty though he brings warmth to it in the third act. Mandryka may be rough from time to time but he is a nobleman. For me London is the relatively less than perfect singer in the recording but all in all, this budget issue is unbelievably fine and convincing and maybe the best around.

Readers of The New Yorker are already familiar with music critic Alex Ross's insightful writing and his ability to bring sounds and styles alive through erudite yet passionate consideration. Her whole life was glowing testimony to its validity. A farm girl born in southern Sweden in , she grew up pulling weeds and milking cows — things that she continued to do on visits home even after moving to Stockholm to study at the Royal Academy of Music and Opera School. She describes a professional journey made with feet firmly on the ground.

It was a no-nonsense career that paid off handsomely with a stellar position in the opera world for four decades. Nilsson organizes the immense detail of her long career in chapters focused on the cities enriched by her talent: An appreciation of her husband concludes the book. This series of Isoldes became legendary, when she sang opposite three indisposed tenors in a single performance: Each sang one act.

Nilsson has more to say about rehearsals than performances, and this gives the book an intimate feeling of opera from the inside. Although a number of dressing-room events provide color, she eschews gossip; she even leaves the soprano for whom Wieland Wagner left wife and family unnamed. It was Anna Silja. She writes generously of colleagues, and among the conductors with whom she worked she speaks only of Herbert von Karajan with reserve.

Prompters, she notes, were usually half asleep. It was exactly so. Although her career stands as a major chapter in the history of opera, Nilsson nonetheless lived between major musical epochs.

Her autobiography is thus without great excitement; careful consideration of assignments and thorough preparation kept disaster at bay. She married her first love, Bertil Niklasson, a veterinarian who later went into business on his own and frequently accompanied the soprano on her many trips abroad.

This - strangely — is a translation from the German — not from the original Swedish. And although — says the translator in a brief preface — Nilsson saw the English text and liked it — or found it better at least than two others that she saw, one wonders why the English version is not based on the Swedish original.

October 30, 2007

The English version suggests — although this is no where said — that Nilsson wrote the text. I discovered Nilsson — as it were — on my own. Nilsson reports that the Vienna Philharmonic, pit orchestra in the State Opera, tunes almost half a step higher than A Hertz to achieve a brighter sound. Mazzocchi has several strikes against him — first, his production is exclusively vocal, and so inaccessible to listeners who don't know Italian or Latin or both.

More importantly, even at this late stage in the early music and perhaps due to reason number one , most of his work still remains inaccessible in modern editions for example, the book of madrigals from , with 24 works was only excerpted with a modern edition presenting six. The late collection of Sacrae Cantiones is available complete. Not only is there first-rate music here, but it is most winningly performed by Les Paladins.

Particular applause must go to the excellent bass singing of Renaud Delaigue, who carries off deep and florid parts not an easy combination! Indeed, this moment is too brief, since here and elsewhere in the disc, for reasons of time? Try to rectify this next time, please! Nevertheless, this is a most valuable contribution to the yet-small Mazzocchi discography. To make things even worse, on the podium stood a Catholic priest, Vivaldi himself, acting in the many capacities of composer, conductor, solo violinist - and probably also stage director.

Suspension of disbelief, albeit on the basis of lip-service to morals, was apparently much needed…. The pendulum has now swung so far that, having to dispense with the unavailable castrati, Fabio Biondi selected no less than five ladies, plus one countertenor - and yes! This bears witness to the situation recently described by the Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot: Was the whole painstaking process worth trying? Judging from the results, it was. It exhibits most features thereof: In other words, variety pays a premium over dramatic consistency or psychological credibility.

Thus, for instance, the title-role Ercole aptly delivers a row of warlike and menacing arias as he keeps clubbing his way to the final triumph; nevertheless, he also produces himself in a sort of love lesson paternally delivered to Martesia, an Amazon princess who ignores the very basics of marriage and wavers between the competing Greek princes Alceste and Telamone, both in love with her. Among the singing company, high praise was due to both Amazon queens and sisters , mezzo Romina Basso as Antiope and soprano Roberta Invernizzi as Ippolita, for their unfailing intonation and agility, clear diction, style competence and acting stamina.

The same was true for Laura Polverelli in the trousers role of Alceste, prince of Sparta, as well as for tenor Carlo Allemano in the title-role, who displayed a doughy quasi-baritone register and a bodily appearance well matching the muscular demi-god he was supposed to impersonate. Both Emanuela Galli as Orizia and Mark Milhofer as Telamone got going very hard, yet their vocal technique still needs some refinement in order to meet the stipulations of this particular repertoire. His Europa Galante sounded like a large multi-register theorbo struck by a single hand: Biondi has clearly got a signature sound, one of the most exciting in the early music scene today — to say nothing of his individual prowess on the baroque violin.

Some disappointment was instead caused by the fixed set which, according to ongoing anticipations, was due to be part of an historically informed staging care of the Arts Faculty, University of Venice, under the supervision of Walter Le Moli, a respected professional. Actually, it was all about huge square portals in the mould of stock Neoclassic, providing functional in-and-out access to the backstage. No machines, no decorations, no spectacular effects whatsoever. As it turned out, the present Venice production was only semi-staged, with the characters dressed in modern black attires as if for a formal cocktail party, and all of the action revolving, in a rather indecipherable manner, around a Victorian-style couch in red velvet.

The barbaric warlord Tamerlano was Daniela Barcellona, towering for her imposing physical shape no less than for the force and precision of her deep mezzo. As the destitute Little Orphan Asteria, Marina De Liso unfolded hot temperament and versatility in her four widely diverse arias. Notoriously, Bajazet is a thoroughgoing pasticcio, in which several arias are favorites of the singers themselves, a.

Despite that, tenor Christian Senn emerged with full honors from his unrewarding part. The sole survivor from the recording was Vivica Genaux, in the not-so-important role of Irene. However, her appearance raised an unprecedented salvo of curtain calls among the demanding operagoers of Venice. During the intermissions, there was much arguing among the patrons about the frantic quivering motions of her lips and lower jaw.

The dispute was solved by an old gentleman who suggested with a meek smile: Indeed, it had been a theatrically-compelling staging — at its Glyndebourne home. On its own terms, however, the musical performance was very strong, led by Vladimir Jurowski whose conducting had rhythmic delicacy and dramatic sweep.

Strong performances too came from Andrzej Dobber in the title role, and Peter Auty as a young Macduff who is matured by his personal tragedy. Of the supporting cast, the Scottish mezzo Karen Cargill gave a notably excellent performance as Waltraute; her focused, dramatic sound and expansive phrasing will surely stand her in good stead for similar repertoire in the future.

Only the Norns — Andrea Baker, Natascha Petrinsky and Miranda Keys — sounded as though they had not been employed with the success of the ensemble in mind, and even this is no reflection on the individual singers. This performance was a great achievement and, like all successful Wagner performances, succeeded in making six hours go by in the blink of an eye. This cannot have done much for the morale of the orchestra or soloists, but this Bluebeard performance would surely have been disappointing in any case. Charlotte Hellekant was miscast as Judit, her glacial poise giving no indication of the warmth she promises to bring to her chilly new home.

Correspondingly there was scant evocation of this in the orchestral playing, and little sense of the richly-drawn individual musical worlds to be found behind each of the seven doors. This performance fell on September 6th, the day Luciano Pavarotti died, and the performance was dedicated to his memory. This experience was evident too in the disciplined and vivid singing of the chorus, and in the wonderful orchestral playing especially in some of the solo woodwind.

James Conlon is a good friend to Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Zemlinsky is a good friend to him.

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Conlon is the American conductor who is now music director of the Los Angeles Opera and some other things ; Zemlinsky is the Viennese composer who straddled two centuries, living from to Conlon has recorded a good deal of his music, including "A Florentine Tragedy," a short opera.

He showed their frailties, their ability to love and hate, to be good, evil, pompous, humble, callous and kind. Poppea is unashamedly popular in its treatment of love, lust and power. Princess, sorceress, child-murderer - Medea is a goldmine for dramatists and composers. And they don't come much grimmer than Medea, who leaves a trail of havoc through a whole series of Greek myths.

Myths recounted by Greeks, that is, for the whole point of Medea is that she's not Greek at all. She's an exotic, a sorceress from a mysterious land at the very edge of the world. Sergej Prokofieff ist wahrscheinlich einer der besonders falsch bewerteten Meister der musikalischen Moderne.

The work was completed in April and premiered in Stuttgart the following October. As Charles Osborne notes:. Eventually, the work was revised with the first part being entirely rewritten as a prologue to the opera. The incidental music that Strauss had composed would reappear later as Le Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite In the house of the richest man in Vienna, where a sumptuous banquet is to be held in the evening, two theatrical groups are busy preparing their entertainments.

The Music Master protests to the Major-domo about the decision to follow his pupil's opera seria, Ariadne auf Naxos, with 'vulgar buffoonery'. The Major-domo makes it plain that he who pays the piper calls the tune and that the fireworks display will begin at nine o'clock. The Composer wants a last-minute rehearsal with the violinists, but they are playing during dinner. The soprano who is to sing Ariadne is not available to go through her aria; the tenor cast as Vacchus objects to his wig. There is typical backstage chaos. Seeing the attractive Zerbinetta and inquiring who she is, the composer is told by the Music Master that she is leader of the commedia dell'arte group which is to perform after the opera.

Outraged, the Composer's wrath is turned aside when a new melody occurs to him. The Major-domo returns to announce that his master now requires both entertainments to be performed simultaneously and still to end at nine o'clock sharp. More uproar, during which the Dancing Master suggests that the Composer should cut his opera to accommodate the harlequinade's dances.

The plot of Ariadne is explained to Zerbinetta, who mocks the idea of 'languishing in passionate longing and praying for death'. To her, another lover is the answer. Zerbinetta and the Composer find they have something in common when Zerbinetta tells him 'A moment is nothing - a glance is much'. But when he sees the comedians scampering about, he cries, 'I should not have allowed it. On the island of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned by Theseus, who took her with him from Crete after she had helped him to kill the Minotaur. Ariadne is asleep, watched over by three nymphs, Naiad, Dryad and Echo.

They describe her perpetual inconsolable weeping. She can think of nothing except her betrayal by Theseus and she wants death to end her suffering. Zerbinetta and the comedians cannot believe in her desperation and Harlequin vainly tries to cheer her with a song about the joys of life. She sings of the purity of the kingdom of death and longs for Hermes to lead her there. The comedians again try to cheer her up with singing and dancing, but to no avail.

Zerbinetta sends them away and tries on her own, with her long coloratura aria, the gist of which is that there are plenty of other men besides Theseus. In the middle of the aria, Ariadne goes into her cave. Zerbinetta and her troupe then enact their entertainment in which the four comedians court her. The three nymphs excitedly announce the arrival of the young god Bacchus, who has just escaped from the sorceress Circe. At first he mistakes Ariadne for another Circe, while she mistakes him for Theseus and then Hermes.

But in the duet that follows, reality takes over and Ariadne's longing for death becomes a longing for love as Bacchus becomes aware of his divinity. As passion enfolds them, Zerbinetta comments that she was right all along: Click here for the full text of the libretto. Live performance, 20 April , Weiner Staatsoper, Vienna. Collection Baccara Band How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long. Your display name should be at least 2 characters long.

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