I’m actually not sure where to start with Stephen Lawless’ production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette recorded at the Liceu in 2018. The production is a bit weird but then so is the libretto. It follows the basic plot of Shakespeare’s play but weakens it dramatically in all the wrong places which appears to be why Lawless made some of his, to my mind, less felicitous decisions.
It’s quite rare nowadays to stage all three Il Trittico operas in one evening and it will probably get rarer as financial pressures force shorter shows. Nonetheless it was done in Salzburg in 2022 in productions by Christof Loy. The USP was having Asmik Grigorian sing all three principal soprano roles so, not unreasonably, the usual order was switched up with Gianni Schicchi coming first and Suor Angelica closing things out. Unsurprisingly, and as intended, the evening increasingly became the Grigorian show as each opera succeeded the previous one.
Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz might be the perfect antidote to an unsuccessful reimagining of Götterdämmerung. It’s short, uncomplicated, tuneful and nobody dies. It’s a simple love story in which an Alsatian landowner, who is a confirmed bachelor, makes a bet with the local rabbi that he can’t find him a bride. Then he falls hopelessly in love with the daughter of his tenant and they all live happily ever after.
Giordano’s Siberia is less well known than some of his other works such as Andrea Chenier and Feodora but it has been getting something of a revival recently with a production at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2021 (released on Blu-ray and DVD by Dynamic) and at the Bregenz Festival in 2022 which has also now been released on Blu-ray and DVD.
Acis et Galatée was Lully’s last completed opera. Like pretty much all of his work it displays in abundance the qualities that Voltaire claimed made Racine and Corneille superior to Shakespeare. How you feel about that will probably affect how you feel about Acis et Galatée, which is an elegant and classically correct retelling of Ovid’s tale of a nymph who loves a shepherd and the Cyclops who spoils the fun. It has an allegorical prologue too, which celebrates the glories of Louis XIV (natch). It also has lots of dance numbers.
There’s a new recording out of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen recorded at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last year. Now the DOB claims a special relationship with the music of Wagner (the “Winter Bayreuth”) and it is, of course, in Berlin which adds an unavoidable dimension to the performance history there. It has also had, for more than twenty years, Götz Friedrich’s famous production in its repertoire. So, a new Ring at DOB is a big thing. Given that, what I want to do in terms of engaging with the recording is to bookend reviews of the four videos of the operas in the usual fashion with two general pieces; one laying out my expectations based on the “bonus” material in the boxed set and the booklets, and one as a sort of final conclusion having watched the whole thing. This post is, of course, the first of those.
Fuoco Sacro is a film by Jan Schmidt-Garre. It’s subtitled “A Search for the Sacred Fire of Song” and was inspired by Schmidt-Garre’s passion for Italian singing of a slightly earlier era rekindled when he heard Ermonela Jaho on his car radio. This led him to explore how certain singers create something more than “just singing”. In the film he does this by following the lives of three singers; all women (he clearly doesn’t believe that men have this elusive “sacred fire”) and all very different. They are Ermonela Jaho (of course), Barbara Hannigan and Asmik Grigorian. Now these are all singers about whom I have strong opinions and that may colour my view of the film. You have been warned. What follows concentrates on what I think the film tells us about its three principals. The film does this more by show than tell with lots of performance and rehearsal footage as well as interviews.
In May of this year I reviewed a recording of Janáček’s Jenůfa from the Staatsoper unter den Linden that impressed me enough to get onto my all time favourites list. I really did not expect to come across another as good for a very long time, let alone one that is, perhaps, even better within a few months but I have. It’s the 2021 recording from the Royal Opera House and it’s really fine.
Dmitri Tcherniakov directed Der fliegende Holländer in Bayreuth in 2021 where it was recorded. It’s no surprise given (a)Tcherniakov and (b)Bayreuth that it’s not a straightforward production. I’m not sure I have fully unpacked it and there isn’t anything in the disk package to help (just the usual essay telling the reader what he/she/they already know/s).
Verdi’s Falstaff, of course, is a farce so there’s no reason why a director shouldn’t treat it as one but all three of the other productions I’ve seen in the last few years have transposed it to the 1950s and put a spin on it. Sven-Eric Bechtolf, in his production for the 2021 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, just doesn’t do that. It’s a 1590s (ish) setting and it’s played very broad. There are big costumes, big gestures, entrances and exits and characters “hidden in plain view”. It could be Dario Fo or Brian Rix.
operaramblings 