The Metropolitan Opera Summer Concert with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna

The Met changed its policy for their summer in the parks concerts, instead of doing a concert version of a whole opera in several parks this year they choose a single concert with operas love couple Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Surprisingly they choose to have it in Prospect Park in Brooklyn rather than Central Park in Manhattan where almost all major concerts have been held in the past. Good news for us since we live near the main entrance to the park. They planned for 100,000 people to attend; they had 10 speaker towers and huge TV screens setup going back what seemed like quarter mile. I don’t think nearly that many people attended but there were thousands of us. We got to have our picnic near the stage since my wife and a friend volunteered to stake out a place for us 4 hours before the concert began. I was lucky all I had to do was stop home after work and carry the wine and food to our blanket.

The concert was made up of sentimental favorites for the most part, popular arias, duets and overtures from Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Bizet and Delibes. The music selected was perfect for a crowed of varied knowledge of opera. My guess that most people in the park had never been to an opera house. Even to those of us who go to more than 10 operas a year a smaltzy concert like this is fun. The Alganas (they are a married couple) are old fashioned in their sentimentality and especially Roberto is that way on stage in a role. There is a place for everything is this was the place for pure emotion. The combination of the music, evening and the wine that many people brought led to lots of hugging by young couples, and even to holding hands by us older couples. People who go to opera often let down their critical guard to feel like we did when we first heard it. Tears actually came to people eyes, you can’t really ask for more from art. That said the musical highlight of the evening was provided by both the Met Orchestra and Met Chorus as often happens in operas at the house itself. There “Va, pensiero” was especially good, I was sorry that they didn’t repeat it for the traditional encore.

The sound was good for this type of event; outdoor amplification has come a long way in the years since I first attend the Met in the Parks concerts. It made no real difference that we were near the stage the sound would have been the same a quarter mile back on the meadow. We could see musicians and 2 soloists clearly on the stage but my eyes were often seduced by the giant images on the jumbotron screens on either side of the stage. A pity since up there you could see that Angela and Roberto’s kisses were merely stage kisses. After a bunch of encores we walked back home down a familiar path on the side of the meadow, it seemed strange to see it so crowded at 10:30 at night. People were talking and smiling, it was nice watching everyone melting back into Prospect Heights after a fun evening of song.

Tosca on Steroids

I usually think of concert performances of opera something that is for situations where a staged opera would be difficult and there is no other way to hear the score. Rare operas have often been given this way, the Opera Orchestra of New York has been doing this for years and other ensembles have as well. This year I was grateful to hear Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev do a concert version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Snow Maiden” in concert form since it is unlikely that I’d get to see it again (as it turns out its usually performed in concert form in Russia where its very popular). I was surprised to see The New York Philharmonic announce concert performances of Tosca, after all it’s hardly rare and both of New York’s opera companies give it regularly. It was part of out subscription so we went even though we know it by heart. It gave us the chance to here Lorin Maazel conduct opera, something he rarely does here, save for a few Walküres at the Met this season, but does often in Europe.
We were glad we went as it was really an out there experience. Having the singers and the choruses, there were two New York Choral Artists, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, on the stage with the orchestra allowed everyone to be a little louder. This was especially evident since Maazel did everything possible to enhance the sound and emotions. This was a big Tosca with sweeping emotional love and hate. No room for subtlety in this production, every emotion was magnified to the max. This is not a bad thing since Puccini was into grand gestures and melodrama but rarely have I seen it go this far in a modern production, the word pornography entered my mind during the love scenes. The 3 lead singers acted their parts, although they wore traditional concert dress not costumes. It was fun to watch them act as they sang; it seemed somehow like in a silent movie. In the first act when Tosca points to the painting of Mary Magdalene and is jealous of the model the audience chuckled since she was pointing at the first tier boxes.
The cast was excellent and well into the style of the evening. Tosca was Hui He, who is not well known in the United States but has sung many Puccini heroines in the A list opera houses of Europe. She sang well while at the same time she showed torrents of emotion. She was the audience favorite of the night and received long ovations after her arias and cheers at the end. I look forward to seeing her in staged operas. Walter Fracarro sang wonderfully and acted with more restraint, as he did when he sang Cavaradossi at The Met. He was warmly received by the audience but if he had hammed it up a bit he would have got the cheers his singing deserved. I have heard some world class Scarpias but George Gagnidze will own this role for years to come. Both singing and acting he is cold and evil personified. He got loud cheers from the audience; his performance was everything you could want from a villain. The other principals didn’t really try to act but sang well and kept up their side musically.
There is one other joy to seeing a familiar opera in concert - you can see the orchestra and appreciate their considerable contribution to the evening. Several solos from horns, cellos and violins that I have never really noticed before were played brilliantly, it was a pleasure to watch and listen. They seemed to have no problem with Maazel’s interpretation. Although one critic seemed to think they were a little sloppy Thursday night they worked it out by the second night on Saturday. This time of the year the audience seems younger than usual as the older regular patrons are out in their summer homes. This made for a more enthusiastic audience than usual and lots of well dressed young women teetering around in very high heels during the two intermissions, perhaps a ‘Sex in the City’ after effect. It was a perfect audience for an over the top evening. As we left we saw the film director John Waters chatting happily with his companion, the perfect out there celebrity sighting for an over the top evening.

David Robertson – New York Philharmonic – Korngold

David Robinson is a highly respected conductor in New York, party on the basis of his willingness to program contemporary music. Last February when he came with his Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra he programmed works by John Adams and Alban Berg. In the second week of his New York Philharmonic guest stint he will conduct Berio. But in the first week, ending Saturday May 27, he played a curiously conservative program.

The first piece he played was the Symphony in B minor, Unfinished. With its lovely melodies it is one of the most popular pieces in the repertory. The Philharmonic under Mr. Robinson played a nice lean version that never was mawkish but didn’t deny its sentimentality either.

Next up was the Korngold Violin Concerto with NY Phil concertmaster Glenn Dicterow as soloist. Besides his opera ‘Die tote Stadt’, Erich Wolfgang Korngold is mostly known as a writer of film music, if he is known at all. His film scores are immensely influential; John Williams is influenced by Korngold to the extent that he would be selling popcorn in a concession stand if he had never heard Korngolde’s music. The violin concerto is pleasant enough, clearly it was written to allow the solo violin plenty of space to show off. Mr. Dicterow was prepared to impress us. It was kina of fun listening to it but it helped to screen a Steven Spielberg film in your mind. The audience loved it with a long standing ovation and some raucous cheering from the third tier. My wife and I decided the cheering must have come from Mr. Dicterow’s Juilliard students.

After the intermission another conventional piece, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1. It was played well and I enjoyed it as did most of the audience. Sibelius’s music is very well crafted and always worth listening to but his dependence on Tchaikovsky is in some way troubling. I felt I could be listening to Tchaikovsky instead of a good copy. Sibelius may have agreed, after 7 symphonies he simply quit composing for the 26 years that remained in his life.

Jonathan Biss James Levine and The MET Orchestra

The last concert of the 3 the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra played in its Carnegie Hall series was held Thursday 5/22. It was in the familiar format of a contemporary piece followed by a concerto by a noted soloist and a universally loved war horse after the intermission. Still with the contemporary composer being Levine favorite Eliot Carter and the soloist being the hot 28year old Jonathan Biss led to an exceptional evening. The scalpers and people looking for tickets in the crowed out front proved that there was some buzz too.

Eliot Carter’s Variations for Orchestra from the mid-1950s has obvious references many earlier composers: Ives, Schoenberg and Berg were obvious to me and I’m sure others caught more influences in the 10 variations. That said it was more Cater than anything else, like all worthwhile composers he is mostly himself. Carter was born in 1908 and has seen a lot of styles and has been influenced by many of them. The Met players played the variations well although they are difficult but after all they are used to playing a different style each night at the opera house, they are stars at adapting.

Jonathan Biss is well known already, although he is young, I was anxious to hear him play for myself. I was very happy with what I heard. His playing of the solo parts of the Schumann Piano Concerto were very mindful the works Romantic period but played with intelligence and feeling never with unnecessary flash. We may have come to a glorious time in performance history where intelligence is held in higher regard than gloss, or perhaps I’ve just been lucky lately. Levine and his forces also played in a restrained intelligent way, a perfect match.

The season started Oct 1^st with Lucia di Lammermoor, since then its been 7 operas a week, with the occasional Sunday for Carnegie Hall performances. For a last piece maestro Levine gave them Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. This gives most of the musicians a chance to play all out and they seemed to have fun doing it. Not the most subtle music ever written but it gave each section a chance to strut itself. The audience loved it. At the end Levine asked each section to stand starting with the woodwinds and each section got a huge ovation. Levine got a larger ovation than and section and the whole orchestra the greatest ovation of all. It was fun for the audience too; it gave us a chance to thank them for a nice concert and a great season.

Met Orchestra, Modeste Mussorgsky – Gergiev, René Pape

With the Metropolitan Opera season having just finished The Met Orchestra has the time for the last 2 of it 3 concert series at Carnegie Hall. Sunday’s concert was the last in the Carnegie Hall Perspectives: Valery Gergiev series which has lasted all season and presented Mr. Gergiev with both his own Kirov Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Gergiev decided to program a concert of work by the most purely Russian composer of all - Modeste Mussorgsky.

The first piece on the program was St. John’s Night On Bald Mountain was played here in its rare original form by Mussorgsky not the more common version by Rimsky-Korsakoff. This version is perhaps more ragged but retains a greater feeling of a Russian legend – full of awe and wonder and almost child-like. Gergiev played it with great feeling that the audience loved and I suspect Mussorgsky would have approved of.

The next pieces featured the great German bass-baritone René Pape. The first Songs and Poems of Death joined wonderful coloration from the orchestra with the pure tone of Mr. Pape. The impressionistic orchestration was quite a contrast to the straight forward singing. After intermission Me. Pape sang the more familiar Monologue of Boris from Act II of Boris Godunov. It was once again performed in its original version and again it was a pleasure to note the unapologetically pure Russian style. Mr. Pape got several curtain calls – perhaps there will be a Met Boris in his future, at least a woman we met on the subway going home had a strong desire for a Pape Boris.

Mr. Gergiev saved the most popular piece for last, Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Ravel. This seems to be a crowed pleaser no matter how its played. The last time I heard it Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic played it fast and rather light and people gave a standing ovation that lasted a good five minutes. Mr. Gergiev and Met Orchestra played a much slower and moodier take on it but the result was the same – a long ecstatic ovation. Gergiev’s version might not have been as much fun, people did not leave the hall whistling it, but it made us feel and think more. I think it was more Russian and more Mussorgsky.

La Fille du Régiment - Metropolitan Opera

Donizetti had one desire as a writer of opera – entertainment. He has no obvious philosophy, politics, axe to grind. True he wrote many operas on historical topics, but I don’t think you will find a historian who takes his portrays very seriously. What he gives you music written for the beautiful voice, bel canto, and either lots of broad comedy or lots of blood. This season we got blood from him on opening night in the form of Lucia di Lammermoor and comedy for the last new production of the season La fille du régiment. In both cases Natalie Dessay was the eponymous heroine. She was fine as the doomed Lucia and sang wonderfully but it was hard to take the stilted libretto, for the comedy of La fille du régiment she was brilliant in every way Either way, like Donizetti, she’s as great at over the top as she is as singing and acting.

Although the Laurent Pelly production is new to the Met, it has already been done with Ms. Dessay and her Tonio, Juan Diego Flórez, in Vienna and London where the production was co-produced. Mr. Florez got most of the press for getting a rare encore for the aria "Ah! mes amis" and its 9 high Cs. The encore was hardly a surprise since it was widely expected; Flórez sang one in Milan for the same aria last year, breaking a rule put in place by none other than Toscanini, and the Met broke its own rule before by giving Pavarotti one for "Ah! mes amis" in 1984. The whole audience seemed to know that the whole charade was bogus. Everyone dutifully cheered and applauded for minutes until Flórez meekly bowed at the audience motioned to conductor Marco Armiliato to begin again and did in fact sing it better the second time than the first. It was great fun but I had the nagging feeling I had participated in something slightly bogus. Its OK since Flórez sang the aria so effortlessly it was hard remember most tenors can’t sing it at all, his ease at the high notes certainly beat out my memory of Pavarotti singing the same thing, he seemed to be reaching a bit. I have heard many women who sounded great in the bel canto repertory but Juan Diego Flórez is the fist man I know who completely owns the genre.

Donizetti is just so much pretty fluff but that’s just fine once in a while. The Met probably put his work on for opening night and the last new production galas is fine because they are fun and the gala audiences are probably looking for fluff for their $5000.00 opera plus dinner. Fortunately we got Peter Grimes, Satyagraha, Tristan und Isolde and other serious nights in between.

Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at The Metropolitan Opera

Opera librettos don’t really have a good reputation, a few librettists like Lorenzo Da Ponte and Hugo von Hoffmansthal are respected but often the libretto is either derided or not even mentioned when talking about opera. Its no wonder since the story is most often just a framework to give the work form, the real point being communicated by music. Phillip Glass realized this and deals with the problem by doing away with the liner story completely replacing it with meditations on the subjects work, philosophy and illuminating moments. When Mr. Glass jumped into public view with Einstein on the Beach this seemed as much a part of Minimalism as the music. I thought the combination was potent when I first saw Satyagraha in 1981 and still found it moving and effective when I saw at The Met on Monday.

Satyagraha has been translated as a compound of two Sanskrit words meaning, according to the Met Playbill as truth force or holding on to truth. The libretto is indeed in Sanskrit and is made of excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sources that illuminate the opera’s subject - the ideas of peace, human rights and self respect that transformed Gandhi and through him Indians in South Africa and India and eventually others around the world, specifically Martin Luther King Jr. This may sound very static but I found the combination of the music played by a small orchestra of strings and woodwinds (with a single electronic keyboard), the production and words to be very effective. The music the first score Glass wrote for traditional rather than electronic instruments, when I first heard it I was amazed at the increased interest the traditional instruments add to the minimalist style. As conducted by second generation Glass specialist Dante Anzolini the music was meditative in just the way the opera demands. Its not that it doesn’t move its that it moves you in ways too subtle to think about but just right for feeling. The flutes and bassoons were particularly effective; they have been noticeably effective all season. The Chorus and soloists performed the music like theve been singing it all their lives. Richard Croft as Gandhi used his gentle tenor voice with true grace. I know some people are offended by Glass’s music but that is hard for me to understand since it works so well for me.

The production was by Phelim McDermott of the Improbable Theater Company was created jointly with The English National Opera and has already played successfully in London. While the production is respectful to the subject matter it is also fanciful in many places. I especially liked a bit when coat hangers came down from the ceiling as Gandhi, his supporters and the Indian workers took off their European closees, put them on the hangers leaving them in their traditional Indian garb. This scene simply said more both musically and theatrically than a more traditional opera ever could. If the first two acts were kind of George Grosz meets Julie Taymor, which ain’t bad, The last act, called King, was especially moving. As the act unfolded an actor mutely portrayed Dr. King giving his famous speech at the Washington Mall. Film of the event was also projected on the back of the stage. As the scene went on the window grew large enough to fill the entire back of the stage. In its way it reminds us that what started as a personal journey by one man grew to affect the whole world. In many was this production at the Met was done better than the one I saw in Brooklyn in 1981, but by far the best difference is that apartheid doesn’t exist in South Africa anymore.

Lang Lang, Tan Dun , New York Philharmonic

The great thing about attending a world primer is that you get to hear a piece without any pre-conceived notion about what you are about to listen to. Unfortunately the silly people who run the education department of the New York Philharmonic decided to have a speaker tell us what we were to think about Tan Dun’s new piano concerto before we heard it. The speaker was described as a ‘composer’, although I don’t know or much care exactly what he composes. He also played a video of him interviewing Tan Dun who said his piano concerto was like martial arts. I don’t know what this middle brow drivel is supposed to add to the musical experience but I suspect its one of the reasons more people don’t take classical music seriously. Fortunately it was easy to ignore the assault on our intelligence once the musicians came onstage and the concert proper commenced.

The piano concerto was clearly written with Lang Lang in mind, both his fiery percussive playing he is known for and there more lyrical style he seems to be moving towards. The concerto makes ample use of percussion including the solo piano. This aspect of the music is undeniably exciting. This concerto also lets the soloist go in the area his going as he becomes more mature and gives him lots of melody to play, which he does with greater feeling than I remember him displaying in the past. It must be remembered that both Tan Dun and Lang Lang play western music and the fleeting influence of Chinese music is an influence in the same way the folk music has influenced European composers for the last 100 years. It is hard to really judge the success of a new work on first hearing but it was an exciting performance featuring one of music’s most charismatic players. Lang Lang, Tan Dun and the conductor Leonard Slatkin received an extended standing ovation from what seemed to be a sold out house.

After intermission the Philharmonic played the complete ballet music from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Mr. Slatkin did not seem to have a strong unifying conception of the music but the Philharmonic played both ensembles and solos with grace and precision. The audience certainly seemed to leave the concert happily and it was a fun evening. I couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit ironic that Stravinsky has become the composers to pair with a modern composer to keep the conservatives in the audience happy. This concert repeated 4 times Wednesday – Saturday, I attended on Thursday.

Richard Goode, Sir Colin Davis and The New York Philharmonic

Intelligence is hard thing to find in this world, even in the rarefied world of classical music, so it was with some delight that I noticed that all three concerts NYP concerts featuring conductor Sir Colin Davis and pianist Richard Goode were sold out. Mr. Davis and Mr. Goode may not be the flashiest musicians out there but the seem to consider the result of every gesture they make and the result makes you listen a little more closer to the music. This was useful since the first half of the program featured familiar pieces by Beethoven.

The first was the Leonore Overture No. 2. I always enjoy this whether played fast or slow, spirited or even perfunctory. Davis’s reading was more significant than most because he seems to remember its roots in the opera Leonore/Fidelio, which returns the music the composer’s intention in writing it. Davis places the offstage horns into the one of the upper tiers of the hall and their playing really reminds those of us who know the opera of the rescuers coming to save the day. This rendition is quite literally a condensed version of the opera, just as Beethoven meant it to be.

A piece like Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 is so popular it takes something

special to make it memorable. When I heard it in February played by Hélène Grimaud with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by conductor Xian Zhang it was pleasant and very well played. Grimaud and Zhang are young and their interpretation reflected the energy of the young. Goode and Davis are older and have had more time to think about it. As in his celebrated CD set of the Beethoven piano sonatas every phrase Goode plays in the solos is an essay that demands your complete attention and is like a standalone work on its own. The tempo changed in each solo depending on what Goode wanted to communicate. Davis clearly was in tune with Goode’s conception and the result left the audience deeply involved with the music.

My vision of Ralph Vaughan Williams is of a perpetually old and kindly country gentleman. Listening to his Symphony No. 4 for the first time I realized he can have a knurly and angry aspect as well. The work is modern and complex and fit in very nicely with the Beethoven that made up the rest of the evening. Sir Colin is a regular visitor to New York, most years with at least a week with the New York Philharmonic and three programs with the LSO. Over the years he has introduced us to a lot of British music we may have otherwise missed, I glad he introduced us to Vaughan Williams 4^th, it rounded out an intelligent evening.

The Red Shoes

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is the kind of legendary film it pays to watch once in a while to remember that sometimes legends are not empty but contain some things that are quite real. It seems to me that the story of a young composer and aspiring ballet dancer still has considerable life to it while Anton Walbrook’s portrayal of the maniacal producer of the ballet company, at once an artistic hero and a destroyer of lives to suit his own purposes is breathtaking.

Despite the use of a Hans Christian Anderson story as the basis of the film superficially, The Rite of Spring is the more important inspiration. Anton Wallbrook is clearly a intended to remind us of Diagliev with his combination of artistic excellence and Barnum like promotion. The young composer reminds us a young Stravinsky, pre Firebird at least and the relationship between impresario and composer is compatible to that between Diagliev and Stravinsky. Even more is the basis of each story – the idea of a girl dancing to her death. A good part of the film is concerned with the idea of genius and the suffering that great art requires.

The idea of suffering for you art is so strong that people get terribly upset if you point out that many people suffer and many artists don’t particularly suffer more than anyone else. If any group of artists suffer for their art its ballet dancers. Any number of books by prima ballerinas describes the bleeding feet, starvation diets and almost mandatory drug use. The Red Shoes it shows the long hours of arduous practice but also meddling in private lives where marriage and even dating are not allowed. This is the main idea in The Red shoes, a ballerina must choose between her art and the composer she loves. It’s a hackneyed idea and wouldn’t make for much of a film if it wasn’t for the beauty of the film, not only the incredible red-headed beauty of Moira Shearer but also of the production as a whole, and by its connection to the legends of Diagliev, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring.

Person Michael Powell

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Chamber Ensembles

Many orchestras have created chamber
ensembles made up their first chair and
other leading players. They offer audiences
repertory that is not appropriate for the full
orchestra and they often offer more
sophisticated programs than their parents can usually present.
I saw two of these ensembles this weekend
and both provided interesting well played
programs both in the 600 seat Zankel Hall in
the basement of Carnegie Hall.

The first on Friday evening we heard the
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
which consists of members of The City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was
formed by Sir Simon Rattle. They were
conducted by the composer Thomas Ades,
who conducted a program of his own music
on Saturday, which I unfortunately did not
attend. On Friday they performed a
chamber opera by Irish composer Gerald
Barry,’ The Triumph of Beauty AND Deceit'.
Its a short (52 minute) piece written
originally for Channel 4 in the UK. It turned
out to be a facile and rather minor work.
The evening was saved by the excellent
playing of the Birmingham group and the
spirited pacing by Mr .Ades. I know of no
composer of Mr. Ades' stature who does
some much to promote the work of other
composers.

On Sunday we had our regular subscription
concert with the Met Chamber Ensemble
conducted by their founder James Levine.
They are made up by leading players of
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
The first piece was Mozart's Serenade in
B-flat Major k.361, which I was not familiar
with before this. Its scored for only
woodwinds and horns save for a single
double bass. Its a very complex work that
must have seemed difficult to listeners of
Mozart's time, its seems sophisticated to me
and was difficult for the players, they
seemed exhausted after playing for an hour.
After intermission we heard a Piece by
Gunther Schuller a living composer and
composition teacher. It is scored for all
percussion including Harp, Celesta and Piano.
It is a work of infectious energy that even
the skeptical women who sit behind use
ended up loving in spite of themselves. I
remember Schuller as a composer of exciting
third stream music in the '60s and '70s and
it made me feel good watching him get an
extended ovation.
The last work on the program was Mozart's
ever popular Eine Kleine Nactmusik. It’s all
strings and was played with warmth and
charm. It was the perfect end to an early
spring concert.

Slightly off topic but can any of you music
professionals explain to me why the women
horn and woodwind players all dress kind of
nerdy while the string players, regardless of
age, dressed in high fashion and even sexy?
Is it because the strings usually sit in front?