I really had intended to write up the COC’s new production of Handel’s Hercules tonight. But the best laid plans etc were subverted by the lovely Sasha Djihanian dragging me off to the after party. There will be a proper review in the morning but, if you are smart (and don’t already have tickets) you won’t wait and will go buy some before they sell out.
To tide you over here’s Hercules himself (aka Eric Owens) flanked by Sasha and Rihab Chaieb.
It’s hardly news to regular readers that I watch a lot of opera recordings on DVD and Blu-ray. Until recently though I rarely watched streaming video off the internet as I’m not very keen about sitting in front of a computer for hours. I do enough of that at work! However, it was time to replace our aging TV with something more modern so I used it as an excuse to do some other upgrades (as well as decommissioning the VHS and cassette tape players which haven’t been used for at least 5 years). Basically i hooked up Apple TV to the new TV and the home theatre sound system allowing me to stream anything from the lemur’s Macbook Air and be able to watch it on a large screen TV with 6.1 channel surround sound. A lot of the stuff out there is a bit naff qualitywise but there are some gems. Courtesy of another opera blogger who doesn’t want his bootleg publicising activities publicised I was able to view an extremely high quality feed of the Bregenz 2013 Die Zauberflõte which looked and sounded fantastic. I’m now really looking forward to live streams from Glyndebourne and the Bayerische Staatsoper.
Back in October I posted about The Lady in Number 6; a documentary about pianist and holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer. Some of you may have seen the news that she recently left us at the amazing age of 110. The film has now been nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject category. You can see the trailer on my original post.
ETA March 3rd 2014: The Lady in Number 6 won the Documentary Short Subject Oscar last night.
Lucy over at Opera Obsession has started a very interesting discussion based on a series of German language interviews with opera directors that appeared in book form as Warum Oper? Gespräche mit Opernregisseuren (Why Opera? Conversations with Opera Directors). Some extracts were translated into English and published in The Opera Quarterly Vol 27 so should be available to anyone with JSTOR access.
What’s interesting about the interviews (or at least what I could read in the English extracts) is how far they go beyond the never ending, and ultimately sterile, debate about traditional versus $descriptor_for_non_traditional productions. All the directors take it as read that if one is going to restage a limited list of canonical operas over and over again then they must be reinterpreted. Anything less is something less than art. They differ in the degree to which the original product should be “respected”. Most believe that any production must be closely rooted in the score though the most radical (for example Sebastian Baumgartner) argue that the canon should be treated more as a collective mine from which fragments can be extracted and recombined. I’m pretty sure I would not go that far but after reading some of the other contributions I find myself reevaluating how I think about rearrangement and interpolation at least. It’s certainly a stimulating read and I wish it were easier to have this kind of serious engagement with the interpretive and creative process in North America.
It appears that Warner Classics are slowly releasing some of their back catalogue of video recordings on Blu-ray. These appear to be recordings that were previously available in North America on rather low quality Kultur releases. And by low quality I mean that many of them had serious sound problems as well as annoyances like hard coded English subtitles. These are mostly older recordings; typically 4:3 format picture drawn from TV broadcasts so there is only so much remastering can do for them but, if the Sellars Theodora is anything to go by, they are a huge improvement. Several Glyndebourne classics have appeared including the Anja Silja Makroupolos Case and the Haitink Marriage of Figaro. Pricing is a bit variable but there are some real bargains to be had.
I do read other people’s opera related blogs. Here are a few of the ones I read fairly regularly:
Mostly about the Toronto scene but worth reading anyway
Musical Toronto – Perhaps the most comprehensive blog covering the Toronto classical music scene. John Terauds is a former music critic of the Toronto Star and it was, in large part, his removal from that role (and its elimination) that “inspired” me to write How to write an opera review for a Toronto newspaper.
Definitely the Opera – Lydia Perović’s blog is perhaps not updated as often as one might wish but what is there is always worth a read. This is the only place I know when you can get just about every opera in town dissected through the lens of gender theory, with a distinct queer bias. She’s not a bad novelist either.
barczablog – Leslie Barcza is a self described Pollyanna. If it’s possible to find good in a performance he will. This is not to say he’s not insightful. He is, often brilliantly so. It’s just that he prefers not to dwell on the negative. I’ve learned a lot from him especially when I have found myself reviewing pieces I wouldn’t have chosen to buy tickets for. It may not be my thing but that doesn’t make it bad or wrong. More than a few professional critics could usefully take lessons from this blog.
Random friends in the blogosphere
The Earworm – A very personal, quirky blog written by a young American academic. It contains good thoughtful reviews of performances, mainly at the Met, and detailed dissections of video recordings; mainly baroque and classical and often in several instalments. Also dreams and stuff.
Regie or not Regie – Contains links, information and analysis of just about anything operatic being live streamed anywhere in the world. Also lots of pointers to Youtube clips. For giggles there are also compendia of “stupid reviewer comments” mostly from amazon.com.
Opera Obsession – Another opera blog from a young American academic currently in Germany. It’s very erudite in a good way. I wish I wrote as well as Lucy.
Intermezzo – One of the great news, rumour and gossip sites of the opera world and not nearly as unpleasant as the other one. I don’t know how she does it.
Third Floor Republic – A Boston based opera, music and theatre blog. Quite eclectic, always intelligent and has cats.
Likely Impossibilities – A good place to find long, thoughtful reviews of performances mainly at the Metropolitan Opera.
The first project is to make a recording of Vincent Ho’s concerto for percussion and orchestra, The Shaman, with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Mickelthwate. This piece has been seen in Winnipeg, Toronto and taipei and has received a lot of positive reviews. Full details are here.
In 1937 La Scala held a contest for a new opera. The winning opera should have been La Serenata al Vento composed by Aldo Finzi, a young, but already successful composer. It never played during his lifetime. Finzi was Jewish and the regime wasn’t prepared for a Jew as the heir of Verdi and Puccini. It wasn’t until 2012 that the work premiered at Bergamo. Now Croatian director Sanela Bajric wants to make a documentary about Finzi and his music and, of course, needs to raise the necessary. Full details are here.
Sunday night I attended a performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass and the Ave Verum Corpus at Grace Church on the Hill. It was a charity event in memory of Rachel Krehm’s younger sister Elizabeth. All the cast and so on details are here.
I was/am in no fit state to write any kind of analytical review. There has been far too much death in my life recently and the music and the packed church was pretty much what I needed to process some of my own demons but not to tease out the nuances of the music or the performance. Enough! It was all in aid of St. Michael’s ICU and it must have raised a ton of money judging by the number of people there. I’m really grateful to Rachel for organizing this and for the invite.
The lemur and I flew to New York yesterday. We are going to see Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Met tomorrow. Anyway, following the train ride from Newark to Penn station and then the subway to our hotel, this was the first thing we saw after regaining the upper airs. Appropriate or what.
I have a ticket for tonight’s performance of Opera Atelier’s Abduction from the Seraglio. I’m far too sick to go so if you would like it give me a shout. It’s “print at home” so I should be able to transfer it fairly easily.
operaramblings 