Opera Chic

Ah, bravo Figaro!

Figaro shaving foam from a Milan supermarket.

Muti & Miuccia Together Again

(Left, Miuccia Prada and Riccardo Muti center. Images courtesy of Vogue.com)

The Italian powerhouses last shared the spotlight two years ago for a February 2010 Verdi Attila, backed by NYC's The Metropolitan Opera, outfitted by Miuccia Prada's atelier and conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Earlier this week, the two met-up again. Muti was at Rome's Villa Aurelia where he was presented with the 2012 McKim Medal. Miuccia and Ennio Morricone, both former McKim Medal awardees, were on hand to celebrate the Maestro's victory, presented by Mercedes Bass, head of the American Academy in Rome (photo below).

Muti's currently in Rome conducting at the Teatro dell'Opera in a new Pier Luigi Pizzi production of Attila that opened on May 25 and stars Ildar Abdrazakov as the mighty Hun, which exited to positive reviews. Happily ever Attila...

Hahn & Hauschka for Ladies who Lunch

What's better than rummaging through Nordstrom's shoe department for a killer Chloe wedge? Doing it to a live soundtrack from violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Hauschka, the soloists behind a new, atmospheric CD, Silfra.
 
Earlier this week, between the accessories and beauty departments, Hahn & Hauschka played at the Seattle Nordstrom Flagship store. Let's hope Hahn asked for her performance fee to be paid in shoes.  

OC & Grazia.it: David Garrett Rocks Milan

Last week at Auditorium di Milano, David Garrett threw on his cleanest t-shirt, stepped into his motorcycle boots and sent Milan's (mostly young, female) admirers into a frenzy with Bruch's concerto for violin and orchestra #1 with John Axelrod and the Orchestra la Verdi. After furious bowing, the violinist signed autographs for his frenzied fans in a scene like a pre-recession Barneys warehouse sale.

OC reported Garrett's la Verdi debut for Grazia.it. You can read all about it here.

From Workshop to Stage of a NYCB Tutu

The Atlantic profiles the director of the New York City Ballet's costume studio and takes us into the workshop.

You Down With MTT?

Michael Tilson Thomas, featured earlier this month for TED, spoke about the development of classical music, with awesome pull quotes like this: “The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations."

Opera Chic & Grazia.it: Peter Grimes at Teatro alla Scala

Were you lucky enough to be there last Saturday night? OC was. Between Robin Ticciati's shimmery spider webs, John Graham-Hall's grounded lyricism and Richard Jones' dynamic panoramas, La Scala cranked out a Peter Grimes hit. Read all about it here, in Italian, on Grazia.it. (Photos Teatro alla Scala & Brescia and Amisano)

Michael Haneke Wins (Another) Palme d'Or @ Cannes Film Festival

Film and opera director Michael Haneke, simply one of the greatest living directors, just grabbed his well-deserved Palme d'Or for his new film, "Amour", trailer above with Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major. The maestro managed to lure Jean-Louis Trintignant, 81, out of retirement. Trintignant's costar? Oh, it's Emmanuelle Riva -- a.k.a "She" from "Hiroshima Mon Amour".

Haneke's words of wisdom: "Within a dialog you have to find the right emotions. It's like an opera in that sense."

Here's Haneke's Don Giovanni in Paris:

And here's Horowitz playing the Schubert piece in Vienna:

Fragile Myths: Emiliano Cavalli's Women

More about Emiliano Cavalli's iconic women (including former adult film star, former member of Italian Parliament and former Mrs Jeff Koons, Cicciolina) here. The artist is showing -- opening on May 31 -- at the Castelli Gallery, Milan.

Two Bobs in Times Square

Roberto Bolle's big-ass face (at 11:57pm) in a red jacket and white bowtie, as chosen by the brilliant Robert Wilson, for his "Crossroads of the World" video portrait project which runs all month. 

Bolle's in NYC until the end of June with the ABT, eating sushi and shaking his thang.

Beauy & the Bach

For this Fall's opera and symphony opening galas, OC's dipping into OPI's FW2012 twelve-tone palette, inspired by Berlin, specifically the yellow-green shade shade called "Don't Talk Bach to Me".

OPI's current SS2012 palette is a collection of five neutral shades inspired by the New York City Ballet -- Barre My Soul, Care To Dance?, Don't Touch My Tutu!, My Pointe Exactly, You Callin' Me A Lyre? and Pirouette My Whistle.

Valentino Garavani's New York City Ballet Comeback

Valentino Garavani, now that his fashion house is safe in the hands of the dashing Chiuri + Piccioli team, has more time to enjoy his massive art collection and work on his tan: he also found the time to work for the ballet, one of his lifelong passions. The Italian maestro has come back to design -- the costumes for the New York City Ballet fall opening, and this is really good news, for ballet and fashion.

Cold Killing It, Peter Grimes Style: Ticciati's Britten at La Scala

Sometimes we go to the opera theater because we crave -- like a clean Céline cabas or a Marchesi, porcelain-cupped caffè macchiato or a sedimenty Castello dei Rampolla -- a shot of live music, unamplified bliss to spirit us away for three hours from taxes & whorez & second-hand smoke. And sometimes we get to the theater and the sad, sixth replication of some cranked out classic with ill-fitting costumes & a time-beating tyrant doesn't really cut it. 

And then there are nights like last's at Teatro alla Scala for the opening of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, thanks to Robin Ticciati's brown curls and six, shiny buttons bouncing to the tempo of his quicksilver baton, leading the orchestra through every eye-watering shade of Britten's score, cinematically-shimmering and more nuanced than Stieglitz's portraits of O'Keeffe's hands, which matched Richard Jones' Duane Hanson-esque production. Lead John Graham-Hall -- who we last saw in March 2011 for Britten's Death in Venice with the unforgettable Edward Gardner, opera's RPattz, in Tom Pye's clean production -- was commanding and grimy, true class.

Full(er) review coming this week for Grazia.it. Radio can't replicate in-house, but Rai5 will broadcast the May 24th production direct from La Scala, 7:50pm Milan time.

Fischer Dieskau's Ode to Music

One doesn't want to get too eschatological, too misty, but if one day we're called to justify humanity's presence on this planet and we're called upon to list our accomplishments as a species to try to offset the carnage, war, brutality and destruction that accompanied us throughout human history, man-made trauma for legacies & legacies that surving generations continue to bear witness to, we'll make a list where, quite simply, together with Greek tragedy & the Sistine Chapel & King Lear & the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen & Beethoven's symphonies and "Ladri di Biciclette", we'll also mention "Winterreise" sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

In the meantime, one can only be thankful for having had the privilege to hear Fischer-Dieskau's voice.

 

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 1925 - 2012

The end of an era. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the great lyric baritone and Lieder maestro, has passed away at 86 years old. Above, Der Lindenbaum from Die Winterreise.

Opera Chic & Grazia.it: Borusan, the Bridge Between Two Worlds

Last week, Opera Chic reported live from Istanbul, where she checked out the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra with MD Sascha Goetzel (above) and all the other cool initiatives that the Borusan Arts and Culture foundation has given back to the country, linking the East with the West. Go here to read all about it.

Or, snuggle up to the English translation under the cut...

Ginsburg's Greatest Hits

Alex Ross runs down American icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opera hit list for The New Yorker's Culture Desk, mostly classics from back in the day, save for a Billy Budd (Harding and the LSO) and a weakness for Matthias Goerne's Schubert and Angelika Kirchschlager's Brahms.

Sir Tony Meets the Prince

Congratulations to a morning-jacketed Sir Pappano for his knighthood at Buckingham Palace two days ago where he was honored for his achievement in arts and media.

Angela Speaks! About Alagna, Netrebko, Booing, Fleming, etc.

So many opera singers give predictable, boring interviews and then there's Angela with her fangs out, aiming at the jugular. Draculette zipped up a pair of Gucci boots and spoke to Corriere della Sera while vacationing on a Romanian mountaintop.

The forty-six-year old, who says that she's booked through 2016, returns to La Scala after a five-year absence for a late September Zeffirelli La Boheme. And who could forget that last time? The incredibly sucky La Traviata with Lorin Maazel that was ripped apart by the loggionisti -- "Poor Verdi", "Poor Italy" and "Conduct a band of amateurs instead" was shouted at Maazel while Angela was labeled as "capricious" in the Italian press.

When asked about the state of opera directors in Italy, Angela says that since she hasn't been in Italy in the past five years, she doesn't really know and continued, "For fifteen years I've had the possibility to have the director that I've wanted, if I do a La Traviata, I ask for Richard Eyre, someone who isn't part of the trends," and then she gave props to conductors Evelino Pido and Marco Armilliato.

She says that she prefers classic opera productions, citing Zeffirelli's la Boheme that can resist the passage of time as opposed to Willy Decker's Salzburg Traviata, saying that even Netrebko didn't want to reprise Violetta in that production.

How does she perceive Italy? "Colleagues always say to me 'Ah no, I won't put a foot into Italy.' You guys are like the wolf in the woods, ready to eat us. You guys are starting to get associated with negative ideas about the behavior of the theaters and the audiences. You know how we joke with each other? Watch out or I'll send you to sing in Italy! In the rest of the world, booing doesn't exist."

So it's disagreed that booing's the right of the audience if they don't like the show. Are you saying that abroad they don't boo?

"Sure, but rarely and not in such a savage manner, which creates enormous psychological damages in the artists. Some of those boos to us is like stalking. Italy's remained backwards, also for this reason. We hear it like bulls in an arena. But in Spain, the bullfight has less importance. The audience comes to the theater and spends money to hear me, and I want to give everything to conquer them."

Anna the diva.

"What's wrong with stardom? If lots of things she does is to entertain, it works. I'm not a hypocrite. The people in the theater are interested in whimsy which surprises them, that which is the most prudent usually bores the most."

Is being nude on stage still provocative?

"If you have nice body, then maybe. The fact is that they don't recruit voices but bodies. If young Pavarotti today was to go to an audition, they'd send him away after two seconds without even listening to his voice. The theaters are full of gorgeous bodies and none pays attention to the timbre. If a singer's ugly and sings well, I see him as gorgeous. If a singer is gorgeous and sings poorly, I see hi as ugly. It's like that to me."

When Cappelli asked if she prefered to be on stage with her ex-husband, Roberto Alagna, Angela said, "Here's the latest -- we're back together, reunited." Alagna has scrapped the crusty tentacles from Angela's heart with an oyster shucker. She said that he's a changed man and that she didn't want to throw away everything that they had built together.

Angela on her closest rival: "I don't know...with Renee Fleming, we started together, so we don't steal the scenes. Tenors are more preoccupied with rivalry."

She finished the interview by begging Roberto Benigni for a role in his next films and she's got a thing for Meryl Streep who apparently told her that if she was reborn, she'd want to be Angela, and Angela said that it's mutual. 

A+++ Angela delivers. Now if only she could be as consistently present on stage as she is in interviews. 

Behind the Scenes at L.A. Opera's La Bohème

Susan Graham was front and center (and then backstage) for the Saturday night premiere of La Bohème at the Los Angeles Opera. Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello sang Puccini's tragic couple with Patrick Summers on the podium.