Tag Archives: didonato

With tender pity swells

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Here’s another fine example of how well Handel’s oratorios can work when staged.  It’s a recording of Hercules made at Paris’ Palais Garnier in 2004.  The staging is by Luc Bondy and William Christie and Les Arts Florissants are joined by a youngish cast of extremely good singers.  It’s compelling stuff.  I think what, for me, makes the oratorios much more interesting than most of Handel’s opera seria is structural.  The operas tend to alternate recit and da capo aria with maybe a duet or chorus to close an act but they are pretty predictable.  In the oratorios Handel makes much more use of ensembles and the chorus and, for me, that’s vastly preferable.

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Cendrillon

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Massenet’s Cendrillon is less often performed than Rossini’s take on the same basic story.  I’m really not sure why.  Rossini’s take is a bit weird (in a good way), especially in the Ponelle production, but Massenet’s is much more interesting musically.  Oddly enough there’s only one version on DVD; a 2011 recording from the Royal Opera House.  Fortunately it’s very good.  The production is by Laurent Pelly and it has quite a bit in common with his La Fille du Regiment.  Here the set is made up of pages from the original syory by Perrault rather than military maps but the effect is similar.  Costumes are quite cartoonish (shades of the recent Alice in Wonderland ballet) except for Cendrillon herself, the prince and her father.  There’s a strong emphasis on the humorous side of the piece and the “ballets” are thoroughly subverted.

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Sher ham

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Bartlett Sher’s concept for his production of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is a theatre within a theatre setting with scruffy bewigged footmen types operating old fashioned stage machinery.  Throw in costume design that seems to cross the slutty middle ages with My Little Pony and one gets a production that would probably appeal to the average seven year old girl.  Fortunately the singing and acting is really rather fine with splendid vocal contributions from Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato and Diana Damrau well backed up by the likes of Stéphane Degout and Susanne Resmark and it’s Maurizio Benini and the Met orchestra so no problems there either.  To be honest they are hamming it up for all its worth but that doesn’t seem unreasonable in this very silly piece.  The second act trio which features some mind boggling gender bending with the three principals swapping partners faster than Liz Taylor swapped husbands is hilarious.

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Catholic kitsch

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Don Giovanni is one of the most fascinating operas in part because it can be reinterpreted in so many different ways.  There’s also the tension between a story with elements of murder, rape, revenge and damnation and broad humour.  It’s tricky to find a balance.  There’s also a decision to be made between a concept based production and a more laissez faire approach.  Francesca Zambello’s production for the Royal Opera House, recorded in 2008 doesn’t really have a concept and sort of goes with the flow mixing very broad humour with lots of Catholic kitsch and some flamboyant stage effects.  As a production I find it distinctly underwhelming.

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More Tudor queens

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confrontationToday’s MetHD broadcast of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda was a bit of a mixed bag.  There were some really good performances.  Joyce DiDonato in particular gave what may well have been a truly great performance and I would have loved to have seen it live.  David McVicar’s production was much better than his Anna Bolena; visually interesting and with some strong dramatic ideas.  However the good was pretty seriously undermined by another really awful piece of video directing by Gary Halvorson.  I guessed it was him after about ten minutes. The incessant use of the nose cam and the incredibly irritating low level tracking shots were a dead give away.  It was a big disappointment since the last two shows I saw, La Clemenza di Tito and Les Troyens, were filmed by Barbara Willis-Sweete and had given me some faint hope that the Met was capable of self analysis and improvement in this area.  Hope that was, alas, sadly dashed today.

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Le Comte Ory

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Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is a very silly opera about the wicked count and his equally randy page scheming to get into the pants of the virtuous, more or less, Countess Adele while all the local men, including the countess’ brother are off at the crusades. To this end in Act 1 the count appears disguised as a hermit and in Act 2 as a nun. Add to the silliness a fiendishly difficult set of vocal parts and you have a sort of bel canto comedy extreme. To up the ante, today’s Comte, Juan-Diego Florez had been up all night waiting for his wife to pop a pup which she did 35 minutes before curtain.

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