Cannibals!

Posted on February 27, 2013 by operaramblings

Apparently Peter Gelb made a statement yesterday that the “Live in HD” broadcasts were “cannibalising” the in-house audience at the Met. I’d love to see the data on which that statement was based. I’d also love to see what data the Met has on how other companies are being impacted. My guess is that, if the statement about the Met audience is true, it will show other companies suffering too. So much for attracting a new audience for live opera.

I’m not sure I’d want to go down in opera history as the guy who killed the live audience with a second rate ersatz product…

ETA: Do not Google “cannibal cartoons”. It’s a bit like watching Puccini.

Dull MetHD line up

Posted on February 27, 2013 by operaramblings

The Metropolitan Opera has announced the line up of HD broadcasts for 2013/14. My first observation is that there are only ten versus twelve last year (and even more some years if I recall correctly). Is the gloss coming off this initiative?

Frankly, too, it looks pretty dull unless one’s taste is for starry casts in unchallenging productions. My comments follow each listing.

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Signal boost

Posted on February 25, 2013 by operaramblings

It’s not often someone takes the piss out of one of my favourite operas and leaves me laughing like a drain but Chris Gillett has done it with his synopsis of a recently discovered Britten opera Tyco the Vegan.

This may inspire me to go further with describing the late Puccini “masterpiece” Lorenzo d’Arabia featuring belly dancers, dodgy Arabs, stiff upper lipped Brits, sheep’s eyeballs, a trio by Ali, Abdul and Achmet and a touching final scene where the beautiful princess Salima sings desperately of her abandonment by Lorenzo while buried up to the neck in sand. Of course she dies. Horribly.

Carsen’s Hoffmann riffs off Don Giovanni

Posted on February 24, 2013 by operaramblings

Robert Carsen’s production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann does a very decent job of presenting this rather muddled and overly long piece. He sets it in and around a production of Don Giovanni in which Hoffmann’s current infatuation, Stella, is singing Donna Anna. There are several quite clever DG references scattered around. By and large it works and is one of the better “theatre in theatre” treatments that I’ve seen.

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Ex Alden semper aliquot novis

Posted on February 23, 2013 by operaramblings

Last night saw the final performance of the COC’s run of La clemenza di Tito. I had seen the Ensemble Studio performance a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it but had some questions and reservations about the production. Last night many of those issues were resolved. It seemed more closely directed and the characterizations were more fully rehearsed. A good example of this would be Michael Schade’s intensely neurotic Tito which was central to the concept. Many things make sense if one sees Tito as being in love with an idea of himself. In this context his betrayal by Sesto is particularly hurtful because it implies that his closest confidante isn’t buying it and his “clemency” is necessary to restore his faith in his own self-projection. This Tito gives Robert Gleadow’s Publio space and reason to be more than the dutiful, rather thick plod. He’s the one who has seen through Tito but must “play the game”. His final, rather sharp, exchanges with Vitellia suggest a genuine capacity for malevolence. This is, after all, an Imperial Court, where by definition life is dangerous and nothing what it seems.

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200 disks

Posted on February 20, 2013 by operaramblings

I’ve now reviewed 200 opera performances on DVD and Blu-Ray. They range alphabetically from Adams to Zemlinsky and chronologically from Monteverdi to Reimann. The oldest performance is a 1931 film of Die Dreigroschenoper and the latest a 2012 recording of Arabella. Just for fun I did some quick stats on four parameters; century of composition, decade of performance, language of performance and place of performance.

The century of composition stats show, perhaps unsurprisingly, that my tastes don’t lie in opera’s temporal sweet spot, the 19th century. My most popular century is the 20th with lots of Britten and Richard Strauss contributing a good chunk of the 73 disks. The 19th does come in second at 58 but it’s only just ahead of the 18th at 51 with strong contributions from Mozart (of course), Handel and Rameau. Continue reading →

Slapstick stick slapping

Posted on February 18, 2013 by operaramblings

If you have ever wondered why a slapstick comedy is so called then look no further than Gilbert Deflo’s production of Prokofiev’s L’Amour des trois oranges recorded by L’Opéra de Paris in 2005. There’s a great deal of smacking with sticks; most of it by Barry Banks who gleefully whacks just about any bottom, male or female, that comes within range. The production is also slapstick in the generally understood sense of broad physical comedy. There are elements of commedia del arte and lots of circus; jugglers, clowns, fire swallowers, all wrapped up in a sort of 20s vamp aesthetic. It’s wildly chaotic in a rather fun way though it’s all a bit overwhelming and probably worked better in the theatre than on DVD.

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The raptur’d soul

Posted on February 17, 2013 by operaramblings

Christof Loy’s production of Handel’s late oratorio Theodora was a critical and popular success at the 2009 Salzburg Festival and deservedly so. That said, certain decisions seem a bit perverse. The G minor organ concerto HWV 310 is interpolated in Part 3, which is fine, but why cut a fine number like “Bane of virtue” in Part 1 or “Whither, Princess,do you Fly?” in Part 3? There are a bunch of other, rather odd, cuts in Part 3. Still it doesn’t do serious damage to a fine performance of an interesting production.

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Vive l’amour

Posted on February 14, 2013 by operaramblings

Every year the COC Ensemble Studio engages in an exchange programme with the Atelier Lyrique of L’Opéra de Montréal. Each year that results in a joint lunchtime recital in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. It seems to be a popular gig. The doors were closed today at 11.40 for the noon performance (it’s first come, first served). Thankfully, writing this stuff gets me a reserved seat or I would have missed out. The show is always worth seeing because it’s not at all unusual for the best singers from the Montreal programme to move onto the Ensemble Studio.

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Look! No hippogriff

Posted on February 14, 2013 by operaramblings

Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso is based, like so many operas, on an episode in Ariosto’s work of the same name. In this case it relates the events that take place during Orlandos stay on the enchanted island of the sorceress Alcina. There are two love triangles, enchantments and Orlando goes mad before order is restored, the island is disenchanted and Alcina, as befits a woman who gets uppity in an eighteenth century opera, is restored to her rightful place in the Outer Darkness. Structurally it’s pretty typical of the period with a lot of showy arias in a variety of forms plus a couple of decent choruses.

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