Opera Chic

Dudi & Danny: La Scala's Odd Couple

When, over the last few days, we began to experience sightings of both Daniel Harding and Gustavo Dudamel around the mean streets of downtown Milan we figured out that it had to be either a case of Yves Saint Laurent sample sale-induced hallucinations (the Opera Chic version of "teh vapors"), or they really had to be here at the same time.

A quick double check to our Blackjack's monstah database of thangs-to-do confirmed that indeed the two little rascals of classical music, the scarily talented young men who have turned major record companies and big opera houses and orchestras into their personal blowup dolls, are bound to appear almost simultaneously at la Scala: Harding debuts on Sunday 18 with a tasty, superkewl Dallapiccola/Bartok double bill, quite possibly the most interesting programs we have witnessed in our 2+ years in Milan (two gems, and indeed good luck selling out the house with that to the army of casual Scala-goers  who are mainly happy to flaunt their Rolexes, their mistresses, their cabana boys, and then proceed to fart their way through another performance of Traviata or Aida).

Dudamel instead will strut his stuff with Filarmonica della Scala Lenny's Chichester Psalms and Mahler's Titan -- funnily enough, one work OC finds deeply moving and the other she instead considers titanically b0ring.

Anyway, what really made us LOL is the idea that maybe, in an era of cutbacks, la Scala has given Harding and Dudamel a two-bedroom apartment to share and they're now roommates for two weeks -- Dudi blasting Kanye on his Macbook, while Danny tries to watch Manchester United on SKY while going over his scores: what we like to think of as the Oscar and Felix of classical music. Sitcom gold.

My First S0ny: Carnegie Hall's Culture Jam

The Sony Philharmonic Orchestra, a full symphonic orchestra comprised of Sony employees and family members who live and work in Japan, will perform at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, October 14, 2008. This event marks the first time the 108 piece orchestra will perform in the United States. The orchestra will be led by Maestro Daniel Harding, Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. World renowned cellist and Sony BMG recording artist, Yo-Yo Ma, will perform as guest soloist

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The Billy Budd Boys Bunch: Harding, Bostridge, Gunn, Lemalu, Rose, Kennedy, Etc

Too bad that on Dec. 7 Opera Chic will be stuck in Milan at la Scala, dawdging paparazzi & rawking some improbable demi-couture at la Prima (the Barenboim-Chéreau Tristan that has us already bored to tears one week before the actual performance); because the place where we'd much rather be is London, the Barbican to be more precise: Britten's Billy Budd will come to life under the mad baton skillz of Daniel Harding and with the voices of our main man Ian Bostridge, and Nathan Gunn, John Relyea, Jonathan Lemalu, Matthew Rose and Andrew Kennedy.

As Comandante Bostridge (by the way, if you don't have his Henze CD, that insanely fierce piece of work, you're automatically not one of the cool kids and OC will not invite you to her parties) himself has explained in an interview,

When I ask him how he sees the character of Vere, Bostridge responds 'I don't really.' But is he a sympathetic character, for instance? 'I think I just have to sing it and see. It's not the way I work, really; I don't subject the person I'm playing to psychoanalysis. I do it, then you take away from it what you want as a member of the audience. I think that's particularly pertinent to Britten, because it's the way he works. He makes everything very ambiguous – the music conflicts with the libretto and you're never quite sure where you are. It's very unsettling. I don't think it's really possible to sum up some of these characters in a straightforward way – which makes them rather real, in fact.'

Instead of savoring the beauty of Bostridge's phrasing and of Harding's ownage of the LSO, OC will be at la Scala trying to survive among the bad plastic surgery, the logorrheic politicians, the TV supercheesy celebrities, the cabana boys, the perennially agitated fashion designers in black t-shirts, the meatpacking industry magnates with bad combovers, and their generally ho-baggy escorts. Listening, to add insult to injury, to Reichmarschall Wagner.

Not to mention, our real problem for that night is, Louboutins or McQueens?

(ph. Steve Pyke)

Daniel Harding Shows Off His Wiener

Down in the pit with il maestrino inglese:

'You spend too much time talking about music," said Daniel Harding, as he prepared to conduct The Marriage of Figaro at the Salzburg Festival. "Why don't you come and see at first hand how musicians make it work?" Not many music-lovers are granted such a golden opportunity, no matter how long they live. And that is how I found myself this week in the pit at the Haus für Mozart, sitting next to members of the great Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra as Harding, the 31-year-old Englishman, took them through Mozart's masterpiece. "Wear something dark," said Danny, "sit behind the violins, and don't applaud."

"Danny?"

Back To Nozze: Daniel Harding Does His Thang

Mad props to il maestrino Daniel Harding, who worked that baby-faced mojo of his to pump life and wit and music back into the corpse of last year's Harnoncourt Nozze, showing that the lifelessness of that production wasn't really the fault of the director, Claus "Yes, I Like Strindberg An Awful Lot, Yes" Guth and his monochrome, desaturated staging.

And Harding did it all without la Netrebka.   

Voi Che Sapete Cosa E' Mozart

Opera Chic would have loved to be present, tomorrow night @ the Haus Fur Mozart in Salzburg, for la premiere of Daniel Harding's Nozze di Figaro. It's the same -- bafflingly Strindbergian -- production that was staged last year for Mozart's Birthday, but luckily Niki Harnoncourt is not on the podium anymore to suck all the life, the air, and the joy out of  l'opera perfetta. And OC loves the way il maestrino Harding handles Mozart -- check out the recording of his Idomeneo at la Scala if you haven't already.

In bocca al lupo signor Harding!

Harding Is All Like "I'm Gonna Board Your Ship & Turn It On Out"

Let's take a breather, shall we? I mean, the world of opera isn't comprised solely of pole-dancing, b1tchy, flakey divas // oh gawd. wait...is it?! I promise we'll get back to Angela in a sec...you're not going to believe what she's gone on the record with...but for now:

As earlier reported here, Young Maestro (/and Man Utd fan go utd go) Daniel Harding is currently on tour throughout Asia as Principal Guest Conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, and shuttling between Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur. One of the benevolent endeavors of the tour was the implementation of a Masterclass with Beijing's behemoth Central Conservatory of Music, where as of a few days ago, Harding guided three lucky students (a selection of promising young talent) around the nuances of conducting an orchestra.

China Central Television carries the story, as well as a two-minute segment film (direct media link here). Everything seems copacetic enough, so here's hoping that Harding doesn't pull a Celibidache /// anyone ever seen "Sergiu Celibidache's Garden"?! omg omg i had nightmares for weeks!

(for those of you who haven't seen it yet, you should: you see 'The Good Celi' sweetly feeding the ducks in his Zen garden, and then it cuts to 'The Bad Celi' sadistically eviscerating his horrified masterclass students right in front of a roomful of their peers, using his baton the way Uma Thurman used her katana in the tarantino movies).

Comrade Harding Goes to China

After conducting an impressive Salome here at la Scala,  almost-honorary-Milanese Daniel Harding came back to London  where he's all over his new "irresistible if obscure" gig as guest conductor of the LSO. And Comrade Harding will be soon flying, together with the LSO, to China. Where he will hold concerts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

But the fun part is that

As part of the tour, LSO and its sole sponsor Rolls Royce plc, a world-leading provider of power systems and services, will hold, in partnership with a Chinese company Poly Culture and Arts and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, a Masterclass, during which three students will have the opportunity to conduct members of the LSO under the guidance of Daniel Harding. The Masterclass will be held in Beijing from April 19 to 20.

Now isn't that cool.

Anyway: Opera Chic was delighted to read in the Independent our intrepid Daniel Harding sensibly point out that

We have spent so much time re-evaluating 18th-century performance practice, but what about the 19th and 20th centuries?

The point being that the opera-as-funeral-like-event-for-teh-rich-peoples attitude needs a bit of readjusting, as of 2007. La Scala itself was a famous venue for card-playing, the Ridotto dei Palchi a sort of casino, where fortunes were literally made and lost by Rawdon Crawley-esque opera fans. And operas, of course, were performed with the house lights always on, burning bright. And silence-in-the-audience was of course a very relative concept in those unruly times.

It was of course the great Maestro Toscanini to change everything -- lights out, absolute silence,  no encores, no applause even after very popular arias. Now, here at Opera Chic Headquarters (it's like the BatCave, only not underground, and in a 200-year-old Milanese palazzo) -- we're not nostalgicks for the opera-as-Moulin-Rouge distant past, and we like to listen in peace, but there's no denying that the stony looks one gets for shifting in one's seat or, gawd forbid, eating some candy really really need to go. The authoritarian streak -- audio fascism? -- inherent in nowadays symphony halls or opera houses is a thing of a distant, way-too-Prussian past.

So give it up for maestro Harding and his new ideas and his China-bound team, the LSO (by the way their new box set, Beethoven 1-9 conducted by Haitink, looks pretty yummy -- even if, of course, our favorite LSO performance ev4r is the old Beethoven 9 conducted by our beloved Maestro Giulini in the 1960s).

Salome: It pretty much rawked.

From last night’s la prima of Strauss’ Salome at Teatro alla Scala, the staging is basically the same as this DVD from a few years ago, which is the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden BBC filming that was conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi, and starred Catherine Malfitano as Salome, and Jochanaan as Bryn Terfel. It is also somewhat the same as the Salzburg Festival production from 1992, with a few modifications.

For those who are thinking of going: if you sit anywhere stage right for this production, you won’t see anything. I mean nothing. Bondy has implemented a very user-unfriendly, deep staging that left a few of OC’s friends from last night (who had very expensive palchi) very dissatisfied.

(Image of Bondy-directed Salome from the 15 euro production catalog.)

The scenery resembled an underground utility space evocative of the maze-like concrete structures that stretch under many USA colleges. Jochanaan’s cistern was a cavernous, menacing trench in the ground (heh: he was a cave troll), which was flanked by an angled ramp, where much of the action and flitting of Salome took place (she took a full roll down it during the Dance of the Seven Veils, wrapped like a mummy in a silver scarf, and shedding the layers as she tumbled downwards).

Nadja Michael's Salome adhered to her latest quotes and description from La Repubblica. She came across as an immature, annoying, spoiled sixteen-year old girl. Her swimmer’s form gave her an agile, toned, athletic edge, and she leapt around the stage as lithely as a gymnast. She commanded a full voice, with deafening passages that somehow even soared above Harding’s super-thunderous conducting. She rose to the demand of the incredibly difficult music, and was petit enough to be somatically-convincing of the part (at thirty-seven years, she is nevertheless petite and fresh-faced enough to pull-off a teenager). La Danza dei Sette Veli was choreographed by a ballerina, and retained that signature. The dance was difficult (and was lauded more for technique/skill rather than interpretation), and had so many opportunities for the soprano to stumble or falter, but she pulled it off wonderfully.

Jochanaan was Falk Struckmann, with a powerful voice, and a towering presence. The one thing lacking in this Salome was the complete absence of sexy. It just wasn’t there. The combination of cold blue lighting, with the rawk-hard body of Nadja Michael, and the fact that she remained covered in her diaphanous layers just didn’t bring tha passion. She had stated in that La Repubblica article, “La mia danza e' si piena di erotismo...” But I saw more erotic behavior on that C-SPAN Senate hearing on School Food Nutrition.

Harding was fluent, and purveyed a huge, distressing sound. The loggionisti lost their pewp during his curtain call, but he was well-deserving. Chilling at parts, especially during "Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund gekusst, Jochanann." He proficiently suffused the score with full expression during Salome’s delirious moments of joy, and then turned the sound absolutely chilly during moments of insanity. He was amazingly proficient.

And those “few egregious moments” yesterday?: As Herod's Jewish guests arrived in full white beards and tallitot, there were a few grumblings from the loggione, mine included. They were clearly arguing theology in an exaggerated debate, one even wielding a scrolled torah. Ok fine. whatevs. But what I don’t understand is this: at one point, there were a dozen Hassidim lined-up stage left, two rows deep, pressed against the wall, and praying/davening to mimic the Western Wall. F-wording F, what the hell was that all about?

The worst transgression? Later in action, when Salome demands the head of Jochanaan from Herodes, and he tries to placate her desire with the hidden jewels and riches of her mother, six of the Hassidum come out of the wings, acting in the background. They stand together, rending their hands in greedy desire, jostling each other, pointing insanely at the jewelry, and holding each other back from rushing to steal the tempting pile of jewels that Herodes slowly displays. lol greedy jews omg they want those emeralds so bad. I normally like Bondy, but in this production he came across as an a$$h0le, and I have no idea what would make anyone think different.

Nicely, the gore-factor wasn’t there either (OC isn’t a big fan), with Jochanaan’s head wrapped in a sparsely bloody white cloth. At the finale, Salome was squished to death by four riot gear cops with full-blown shields that crowded her. Like she stole a new dvd player in a riot or something and they caught her.

Oh noes. Opera Chic has just wandered into a wireless blindspo

Initial Report: March 6, 2007 La Scala Salome la prima

(OC is teh suck at using the new camera. Here is a blurry, over-exposed curtain call for your enjoyment! yay!)

I went to Salome at La Scala tonight because I constantly crave the brief flicker of warmth that only La Scala can provide me. heh. just playin.

I actually went because thanks to Harding (thou art that of questionable popularity & following), la prima wasn’t sold-out, and tickets were abundant. I also went because of rumors that the loggionisti would find Luc Bondy’s direction so dreadful, that hearty booing would possibly ensue during curtain call.

Well, apparently everyone was feeling civilized tonight, and the only disapproval heard was a smattering of jeers for Iris Vermillion's Herodias. Harding’s conducting was full of pathos, frantic and visceral, and completely adept, that he was treated to waves of apropos cheers. Nadja Michael's Salome was immense (more on her lithe dancing tomorrow), and she was appropriately commended. Falk Struckmann's Jochanaan was yummy.

Despite a few egregious moments (mostly concerning really horribly exaggerated stereotyping), it was a pretty banging night -- regardless of the fact that it had been rendered completely devoid of sexiness, and was overall pretty damn sterile.

...and btw, a kind reader sent OC a recording of the finale, which can be found via a YouSendIt link here.

Luc Bondy: "Salome = Paris Hilton" aka Losing Your Head For Paris

 

As Opera Chic was getting ready for her night at la Scala -- OMG
the Daniel Harding-conducted Salome premiere OMG!!! -- she opened her copy of la Repubblica and she went all like, dude wtf?????

Because (Former East) German soprano Nadja Michael tells the newspaper that director Luc Bondy -- responsible for many stark, elegant, minimalist opera stagings that Opera Chic really really liked -- instructed her so:

"Salome is not truly evil. She's a 16 year old girl: egotistical, too rich, too spoiled, always getting what she wants. Think of Paris Hilton: a woman who's almost beautiful (ed: zing!) who says I want this, I want that, without thinking of the consequences".

The Bondy goes on to pontificate -- frankly, quite weirdly -- about his ideas for the staging

"centered around the clash between the sacred and the earthly in a changing world, the religious disputes between Judeans and Nazarenes, whom I imagined as hippies form the 1960s, as pacifist flower children: it reminds me of the current clash between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq (ed: ?)".

The staging had its début in Salzburg, 1992, but since then the sets got damaged, so the ones we'll see at la Scala tonight are spanking (heh) new. Anyway, Opera Chic will be there, to report later.