Tag Archives: verdi

Is Iago a nihilist?

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I managed to catch the fourth performance of the COC’s current run of Verdi’s Otello last night.  It’s a David Alden production that first aired at ENO and it’s a very dark take on an already dark story.  It’s set maybe circa 1900 and the sets are stark but the lighting is dramatic with lots of contrasts and giant moving shadows.  The overall Zeitgeist seems to be of a society that has seen too much war; a sort of collective PTSD.  This comes over in a number of ways.  The scenes that usually lighten things up a bit; the victory celebrations in Act 1, the children and flowers in Act 2, don’t here.  In fact they are downright creepy.  There’s also a female dancer, used rather as Christopher Alden used Monterone’s daughter in Rigoletto, who clearly doesn’t expect good things from returning soldiers.

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A brace of baritones

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Last night Thomas Hampson, his son in law Luca Pisaroni and pianist Vlad Intifca appeared at Koerner Hall.  It was a curious program.  The first half was made up of opera arias and excerpts.  There was a sequence of Conte/Figaro and Leporello/Don G numbers.  They were, of course, very well sung.  Both singers are noted exponents of these roles but I really didn’t see the point.  They were pieces I’m sure pretty much every audience member has seen with orchestra, on stage, multiple times.  With piano accompaniment it all seemed a bit pointless.  There followed two longish scenes; the Riccardo/Giorgio confrontation from I Puritani and the scene from Don Carlo where Posa pleads with the king for a change in policy in the Netherlands.  These worked better; perhaps because they are less familiar but more likely the fact that each featured Pisaroni in a genuine bass role.  This allowed for more variation of timbre and colour than the Mozart pieces.

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La Traviata at TCO

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Toronto City Opera opened a run of three performances of Verdi’s La Traviata at the Al Green Theatre last night.  It’s a bit of a mixed bag.  Certainly less even than their Le nozze di Figaro earlier in the season.  Director Alaina Viau sets the piece in contemporary Toronto which creates both possibilities and problems.  I’ll come back to that because I want to talk about the performances first.

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A couple more shows in March

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Here are a couple more listings for March.  VOICEBOX are doing Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny on March 30th at 8pm and March 31st at 2.30pm.  The cast includes Beste Kalender, Michael Barrett and Elizabeth DeGrazia.  It will be piano accompaniment with Narmina Afandiyeva at the keyboard.

Toronto City Opera are performing Verdi’s La Traviata at the Al Green Theatre on March 28th and 29th at 7.30pm and the 31st at 2,30pm.  Alaina Viau directs with a musical team of Ivan Jovanovic and Jennifer Tung.  The cast is headed up by Beth Hagerman, Kijong Wi and Handaya Rusli. Apparently it’s a “modern, Toronto setting”.  I’m curious to see how the ideas of “a fallen woman”, “family honour” and “arranged marriage” play out.

COC 19/20 revealed

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The COC 2019/20 season was revealed last night at the Four Seasons Centre.  I liked the set up this time.  A brief introduction from Alexander Neef, an overture and then a well scripted narrative, read by William Webster, describing the works in turn  within the theme of “Once Upon A Time”, with a performance of one number from each opera.  And so, what do we get:

Turandot 5513Puccini – Turandot – September 28th to October 27th 2019 – 9 performances.

This is the Robert Wilson production from Madrid.  Tamara Wilson and Marjorie Owens share the title role with Sergey Skorokhodov and Kamen Chanev as Calaf and Joyce El-Khoury/Vanessa Vasquez as Liu.  Carlo Rizzi conducts.  I’m not a huge fan of Wilson’s elegant but static productions but I could see it working for Turandot.  I’m told the usual Alfano completion will be used.

Lauren Margison gave us Liu’s aria. Continue reading →

Nabucco a la Visconti

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I guess Verdi’s Nabucco is even more closely associated with the Risorgimento than his other works so it’s not perhaps surprising that, for his 2017 production for Verona, Arnaud Bernard made the connection explicit.  We are in Milan during the Five Days.  La Scala; which does duty as the Temple, the Hanging Gardens and itself, stands in the middle of the huge performance space of the Arena di Verona.  Italian and Austrian soldiers, including cavalry, ride around the arena or clamber over the terraces.  It’s wild and spectacular but it’s more than that.

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Il Trovatore meets Huis Clos

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Dmitri Tcherniakov is an interesting and controversial director.  He’s not afraid to take a very radical approach to a work and that method tends to produce uneven results.  At it’s best, as in his Berlin Parsifal, it’s extraordinary and sometimes; his Wozzeck for example, interesting but perhaps not exactly revelatory, and,again, sometimes; as in his Don Giovanni, polarising.  That said he never does anything merely to shock or show off.  There’s always a logic to what he does and that’s certainly true of his quite radical version of Verdi’s Il Trovatore filmed at Brussels’ La Monnaie in 2012.

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Voicebox 2018/19

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mahagonnyVOICEBOX:Opera in Concert announced their 2018/19 season last night.  There are three main stage shows.  Two of them, alas, I can’t muster much enthusiasm for; Massenet’s Werther (November 25th 2018) and Schubert’s Fierabras (February 3rd 2019).  The first features Goethe’s version of Fotherington-Thomas and the latter is one of the most confused and implausible messes ever to “grace” an opera stage.  I’m much more up for the third show; Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (March 30th/31st 2019). No details on casting or anything else but I assume the first two will be piano score and the last a chamber ensemble.  There are also two shows at Gallery 345; Little Mahagonny: a Tribute to Weill (September 25th 2018) and Viva Verdi (April 3rd 2019).

 

 

The Dark and the Light

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David Pountney is rarely afraid of taking risks in pursuit of an idea and that seems to be what’s going on in his 2008 Wiener Staatsoper production of Verdi’s La forza del destino.  The basic concept seems to be to draw as much distinction as possible between the piece’s predominantly dark tone while making the ‘scherzo’ like elements as mad as possible.  And occasionally mixing up the two to create deliberate confusion.  To this end he uses a lot of moving set elements and projections; often fuzzily superimposed on stage action.  Preziosilla and the camp followers are hot pants clad cowgirls.  The full effect is seen in the Act 3 “orgy” where hospital patients, some on drips etc, interact with cow girls and a marching band while giant fuzzy B&W projections of WW2 armour play on the scrim.  It’s really busy and takes some decoding.

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Straightforward Otello from the Met

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In 2015 the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new production of Verdi’s Otello directed by Bartlett Sher.  It was broadcast in the Met in HD series and subsequently released on Blu-ray and DVD.  It’s a bit hard to judge the production on video because of the video direction.  I don’t think there are any big ideas but it’s decorative enough with arrangements and rearrangements of plexiglass wall/rooms and some effective video projections for things like the storm scene.  Only Act 4 breaks the mould with a sparse stage with just a bed and a few chairs.  I strongly suspect though from the occasional wide angle shot that there was a lot more going on visually than one sees on the video.  Costumes are 19th centuryish and quite decorative.

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