Opera Chic

Get ur Fill of La Fille du Régiment @ The Metropolitan Opera: The Full Opera Chic Review

(above: impromptu promo space outside of the Metropolitan Opera for La Fille du Régiment.)

We were privy to ours in Milan one year & two months ago, Vienna had theirs one year ago, and now it's New York's chance to hear the applause-inducing man-chine that is Juan Diego Flórez perform his vocal-chord-defying bravado by encoring, "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" (o hai utubes has the clip from the same production) with the "Pour mon âme" cabaletta. For this Donizetti La Fille du Régiment, Flórez belted eighteen high C’s in the span of mere minutes, and effortlessly attacked, strong-armed, devoured and digested those pesky notes.

Flórez. The man should change his name to singular form like Madonna or Elvis, Beyonce or Liberace. He's the perennial favorite, the undefeated champion of high C's. o lawdy i'm still shaking like a leaf. ok, playin. When he encored "Ah! mes amis" at the end of Act I, OC was all like 'o hai this again?' I mean, it's like kinda how Milan is at any given time 6-hours ahead of NYC, so I guess all those extra hours added up, and you NYers got your high C "Pour mon âme" encore in some weird time warp fourteen months later. :-P~~

For the Metropolitan Opera encore, Flórez hit his high C’s effortlessly and confidently, without breaking a sweat, much less staccato from the dress rehearsal, but with a definitive crystalline punch. It was delivered with a lovely bel canto that warmed and froze the clearly smitten Metropolitan audience simultaneously. After three minutes of applause he stood perfectly still with a bowed head, breaking only once to acknowledge the audience. After his amazing encore, the packed house gave him a standing ovation.

The other Flórez crowd-pleaser was his Act II, “Pour me rapprocher de Marie,” an extraordinarily paced aria that he sung sumptuously, with perfect pitch and a delicate, mature understanding, which provided a lovely contrast from his more aggressive and high-energy "Ah! mes amis". Another Flórez accomplishment of the night is his apparent weight gain, which must account for a delicious wedding cake. He looks amazing, a far cry from a sickly, gaunt, thin tenor we flinched at when we saw just three months ago at la Scala in recital.

Onto the performance: fo’reals, if u want a perfect synopsis of the operatic arc, go here to OC’s La Fille dress rehearsal review from Friday, April 18, 2008.

Not terribly much had changed with the staging, although obvs, cast & crew gave like 125.9%. N e wais...Marco, marco, Marco: tonight's conducting by Maestro Armiliato, an unsung conductor with a passion for strong, driven performances and famous among orchestras for his memory (glancing @ scores is 4 lam3rZ) was elegant, once again...animated, sprite, infectiously joyful, but a few instances were just too muscled and large for la Dessay and the ensemble.

OC noticed that some of the visual gags had been completely cut from Laurent Pelly’s direction, and the comic relief had been overall toned down. This fared well for everyone, audience included, as when the giggling got out of hand, harsh shushing erupted from quite a few patrons. Tiny things were cut, which nevertheless went a long way to create a more seamless drama -- as opposed to the dress rehearsal with the constant vie @ visual gags that gave a disjointed, unhinged, and irritated feel to many of the dramatic moments.

The chorus still needs to spend some extra time doing crunches or drills or whatever will not make them almost drop the entire "Allons, plus d'alarmes!" on the stage floor, a moment at the beginning of Act I when OC truly thought that things were going to quickly fall apart, messy, slimy pits all over the floor. Harrowing.

What killed was the not so analogous props during Act I. Here we have Marie doing her awesomely choreographed ironing routine, "Au bruit de la guerre", and in the background are all the laundry washing tools from WWI…like the wooden slat washboard and big iron tubs...yet la Dessay is hemming away at the ironing board with a white plastic iron, something you'd pick up at Sears. It was lost on me. Is it a statement on feminism? Cuz I ain't no Gloria Steinem.

Although on paper & paychex it was JDF's night, the evening belonged to la Dessay. Flawless dialogue crackled through Act I, along with a gorgeous coloratura that she controlled even as she was carried offstage horizontally or flopped over piles of laundry. She is one of the most musically spirited singers on stage, with excellent control, flawless diction, and face it...she's just frikking kewl. She slays you with a huge voice that betrays her lithe body, unleashed at the most unexpected moments, peeling and flaying the gold leaf off the highest rows in the Family Circle. (While we're at it: Gelb, my man, during your reign, plz rename "Family Circle" to something a little edgier. I mean, what the hell? Family Circus, my Disney a$$. Rename it after one of Dante's Circles of Hell. Anything. Something.)

Dessay gorgeously belted her tireless voice throughout the gigantic armory that they call The Metropolitan Opera house, a feat which is quite a challenge stacked against the smaller, more intimate opera houses in Europe. "Chacum le sait, chacun le dit" started with confident, secure top notes, and ended without straining, filled to the end with gorgeous coloratura, soaring and rich, all the while Dessay acted-off her felty 21st Regiment pants.

Act II's "C'en est donc fait" received one of the highest regards of the evening from the audience, who threw down a chilling tsunami of brava at la Dessay. She was inundated with so much applause, that she sprung forth from the 21st Regiment, motioned for the audience to stop the applause with a decisive cut of her arms, and then leapt back comically and egregiously to her blocked-out position.

This performance, the Marquise of Berkenfield and the Duchess of Krakenthorp had toned-down the interjections of Americanisms, and Krakenthorp seemed a bit detached, less fierce, but both characters still brought the el oh els.

During curtain call, Dessay came out holding Maestro Armiliato's baton, brandishing it at the audience as she took her bows. Between acts, there were too many B-C-D celebrity sightings to relay, but before the opera began, Florez's new father-in-law was front & center on the grand staircase with a posse of fellow blonds, La Trappa looked vary dazzling in Swarovski, and many of the famous faces from the Honorary Committee were in attendance glaming-up the place (check out the names below, click 4 bigger). It was a rilly rilly random mix...Gossip Girl Leighton Meester? hellys naw. Rufus...again with his mother? Yawnz0r. Naomi Campbell in a black jacket and black pants; Stefano Pilati in a weird sparkly YSL cardigan and bedroom slippers; Chuck Close; Olatz Schanbel, designer of US$ 400 plush bathrobes and nice pj's, always a woman of breathtaking beauty, living evidence of her big fat hairy genius of a pajama-wearing husband's impeccable taste, in stunning red; Emmy Rossum in sky-high heels and a sweet black puffy dress; and UFO-like sightings of Anna Wintour, but OC didn't spy her; Susan Graham munching at the first intermission; & most disheartening of the night? JDF colleague Ramón Vargas booking out of the front doors 15 minutes before show time and rushing-off into the approaching dusk. We <3 u Vargas…stay 4 teh show!

We at Team OC are happy that New York City can finally bask in the glow of that same magic we had @ la Scala 14 months ago, when Juan Diego Flórez encored "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" We're like the first ones who could sit through Flórez singing a triple-header of Wagner's Ring Cycle without any intermissions, but to be quite honest, tonight's encore felt like sloppy seconds.

(above: Gossip Girl Leighton Meester @ the MET for la Fille)

(above: Rufus Wainwright @ the MET for La Fille with his mam)

(Stefano Pilati and La Naomi)

(La Editrix)

Olé for Olatz!

OMG Breaking news from Met Opera Florez encores

OC is posting from blackjack II at the intermission: Florez just gifted us an encore of - ah! 'mes amis'. Stay tuned for a full report when the performance is over.

Get Ur Fille On. Tonight.

As of tonight, after Milan last year, after the dress rehearsal the other day at the Met, we're kind of afraid that La Fille Du Regiment may start to sound a little old, despite the presence of la Nata and our sweet lamby prince. We'll see.

Anyway, it's crunch time, again; and Opera Chic is going, and you're not.

You can listen to the high C's live here, though.

But it's good to remember that it's not all about Juan Diego, after all.

Why?

Because "Marie is her, really".

Cello Hero: The Classical Music Videogame

Play a new Saint Saens cello videogame, courtesy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, here.

Not as kewl as Guitar Hero, but it's a start.

(via)

Frengo's Archives Will Remain In Florence: Introducing The "Scuola di alta formazione per le arti e lo spettacolo"

Franco Zeffirelli, fresh from his NYC triumph at the Met (with a touch of drama, ie the thankfully aborted protest), has appeared this morning in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio to introduce to the public together with Florence's Mayor Leonardo Domenici (with Zeffirelli in the photo above) a very ambitious project, the "Scuola di alta formazione per le arti e lo spettacolo"  -- a new school for the arts -- and to generously donate to this project his entire archive of papers, sketches, costumes, letters, and his famous private library of art books, scores, and ancient volumes.

The city of Florence has now full control of Zeffirelli's archives and renovation work has already begun in the ancient Scuderie in Piazzale delle Cascine. The center will be inaugurated in late summer-early fall 2009.

Jenkins @ The TV BAFTAs

Bewbs miracolously under control, and rawking some really, really fine Vivienne Westwood,
Katherine Jenkins @ the TV BAFTA Awards looking really pretty -- let's be fair here -- last night in London.

To keep things in perspective, and oldie but goldie image of La Jenkins and La Church, aka The Battle Of The Bewbs (with oversize football used by Brits for a mysterious ancient game, like a pre-NFL pastime of Britannia's Barbarian populations).

'I liked Justin, but he was too young': How La Netrebka Denied Opera A New Era Of Global Domination

You know, all due respect to that big piece of beefy baritone that is Erwin Schrott, and big blessings to the bebbe-to-be of the Netrebko-Schrott couple, but this quote in a (bad) interview in today's Observer:

What about the rumours she had affairs with both Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams. 'I liked Justin, but he was too young.'

made us realize that Anna, by shooting down poor h0rny Justin Timberlake's pass at her, chose not to create a new golden era of popularity for opera.

Let OC explain:

Just as we recently imagined the monster crossover appeal of Juan Diego Florez getting married to Beyoncé (we like la Trappa but the star powah just isn't there), Netrebko + Timberlake would have meant a huge goldmine of media exposure for opera.

I mean, think of Netrebka showing up with Justin at the MTV Awards, Justin sampling Berlioz, Timbaland as special guest at the Vienna Staatsoper when Justin's there in the royal box wearing a tuxedo and Anna's on stage; Rolando Villazon having a steamy love story with Leona Lewis; rappers going to la Scala to catch some lieder recital; kids going nuts for opera after seeing Jay-Z date Garanca and declare that "Haendel is gangsta"; Madge Kozena going out with (monstrously hawt) soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo;  Domingo dating Hillary Clinton. Angela Gheorghiu and Shaquille O'Neal. Lorin Maazel and Paris Hilton (just hold the secks video this time, PLEASE).

That'd mean paparazzi frenzies for opera singers; downtown Vienna like the Sunset Strip; Covent Garden as celebrity magnet, Ralph Fiennes going out with Patrizia Ciofi.

As David Beckham became known to all the people who don't care about soccer by marrying an otherwise lame, washed-up, soon-to-be-ex popstar, what opera needs to boost its popularity and crossover appeal is not opera singers doing popera records, but celebrity intermarriage.

Instead, Anna shot Justin down, and nothing of the sort happened.

In the photo below, Timberlake pining for Anna Bananna.

La Fille, La Dessay, and the Holy Flórez: Metropolitan Opera's Fille du Régiment Dress

(above: Flórez as Tonio, Dessay as Marie, Felicity Palmer as the Marquise of Berkenfield, and Marian Seldes as the Duchess of Krakenthorp)

Opera Chic has been talking about it since February 2007, the London critics went insane over it last winter, and over a year later, Natalie Dessay & Juan Diego Flórez in the Laurent Pelly production of Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, are poised to take over New York City.

OC wasn’t completely left out of the recent La Fille Fever, however, as she was in Milan in January 2007 for Scala’s highly anticipated, historic La Fille, when Juan Diego Flórez broke the long-standing ban against encores, and belted a second round of “Ah! mes amis” to the delight of the bad-boy loving opera world.

Missing from that Scala performance was Natalie Dessay, who, as we reported here, canceled her appearance as lead Marie (rumor had it, purportedly hating as much as we did the garish, dated, and frankly boring Zeffirelli production that Scala fished from storage). Instead we had a sufficient Désirée Rancatore singing the lead as Marie, who unfortunately now pales in comparison to her colleague Dessay after witnessing yesterday’s treat. Not that she wasn't any good...but gott dayyum!

To begin the open dress rehearsal (THANK U MET MANAGEMENT & the NY State Council on the Arts!) Gelb stepped out on the stage and made a few announcements, and the curtain lifted. The overture played while a flat projection took form on stage, showing gray, stacked slabs of concrete with "1840" and "La Fille du Régiment" etched across, homage to the premiere performance at Paris's Opéra-Comique that same year.

(above: costumes on display, taken straight from the Laurent Pelly production of La Fille @ the MET.)

Listen up now and enjoy Marco Armiliato's elegant, controlled color of great understanding and tireless energy -- as the opening piece becomes one of the rare moments during the next couple of hours when the audience doesn't chuckle and guffaw unrestrained at Laurent Pelly's comedic direction or Agathe Mélinand's libretto rewrites (for OC an unfortunate mar of the entire production that decimated Donizetti's lively yet stylish score, the rare moments of subtlety inaudible over the over-achieving audience). Comedic, yes, this production brings the lawls. But the drama comes through too far & few in between, and when it did, it felt disjointed to the prior riots. To counteract the buffoonery of the direction, Maestro Armiliato carefully balanced Donizetti's composition, which was sadly lost in the unvarying hee-hawing of the audience.

Act I's curtain lifted to the Austrian Alps, and the MET chorus was dressed in local villager garb, swarming over their belongings that looked like something out of Fiddler on The Roof, straight from the Broadway stage. The chorus huddled over makeshift
armoires and wardrobes. The chorus performed their first piece, inspired by something from the opening scene of a Mel Brooks’ Broadway ruse, replete with a can-can-style romp. The chorus needs to seriously firm it up, and it seemed the women’s chorus in particular couldn't handle doing two things at once: singing and dancing. Discordant & reedy.

Finally the peasants' carts roll away to reveal Act I's scenery: three large maps folded and re-molded to create life-sized mountains and mounds as the troops of the 21st regiment campgrounds, sleeping cots sprinkled through the folds. Set designer Chantal Thomas said during the Q&A that the scale of such common things to create landscapes was to create discordance between predictable human scales. More curious, Chantal continued that it also helped make the 21st Regiment seem like toy soldiers on a battlefield. Very sweet, as indeed the regiment takes on a dioramic toy solider feel.

La Fille is supposed to take place in the early 1800s, during the Napoleonic Wars, but Pelly's is updated to occur during WWI. Because of this, lots of rewrites in the libretto glibly pepper the dialogue, aiming to refresh and satirize the old version, but more on that later.

The heroine of the opera, Natalie Dessay entered holding white laundry in her arms; a white wife beater tucked into the washed, seal blue felty uniform pants of the 21st regiment, a wig showing a shock of orange hair and a small braid in the back. Elastic suspenders were a nice touch, which she snapped against her (non existent) bewbs during one of her early tantrums.

(above: costumes for the 21st Regiment for the Laurent Pelly production of La Fille @ the MET)

Dessay is a good sport for wearing something so insanely unflattering and icky, both color and cut. But she is Marie, the embodiment of the tough & fast-talking (but sensitive & tender) tomboy. Although insanely petite and slender, her lithe dancers’ body is magnetic, and it's impossible to track anyone else when she's on. Her first vocal feat -- in tandem with on stage-daddy, an endearing Sergeant Sulpice sung by bass Alessandro Corbelli --  "Et comme un soldat j'ai du coeur!", slowly built to a memorable duet, where moments of comic relief were indeed apropos to the libretto, as in one instance, she recalled when he took her riding as a little girl, and then proceeded to mount him as if he were a horse, riding on his back and spouting her lines.

Fast forward to Juan Diego Flórez's entrance, in clean, adorable, traditional Tyrolean lederhosen...a white blouse, a full flap, shorts, and oatmeal wool knee socks with boots. Sexay. A new OC fetish? Or is it Tyrolean chic?

Fomr the first time Flórez and Dessay were together on stage, they fit against each other perfectly. Both petite and buoyant, their bodies echoed and folded on stage as comfortably as twins, although they simultaneously managed to spark that necessary chemistry as young, excitable lovers.

Dessay was sublime. She truly gave everything she had in creating Marie, a role she clearly enjoys. The energy is unable to be contained, and she twirled around the stage like a hyperactive kid. The role fits her like a glove, and once you see her as Marie, you can't imagine anyone ever coming close, and the recyclable Maries that we've seen on stage before are simply underwhelming. She had moments of brilliant, spoken-word vignettes, perfectly regressing into the saturnine mind of a reeling teen between the turmoil of love and adolescence. One of her memorable bits of comedy occurred as she read the letter outing her legacy before Suplice and the Marquise of Berkenfield, doing so in a choppy flow of latent illiteracy for what seemed ten minutes.

Flórez’s “Ah! mes amis” had a less-than-stellar male chorus struggling to keep sync with Armiliato's sprite, but not-too-quick tempo. It was far from perfect, but it simply made Flórez shine all the more. He proceeded to push his notes out more staccato than I've ever heard, but still in perfect form.

Marie’s tragic “Il faut partir, adieu!” is not a moment of omg lol, but as Dessay came out hauling a wash line of the 21st Regiment's long johns to begin her aria, the audience was hysterical, only to be deafened in silence 10 seconds later when they realized it wasn't a work of comedic relief. For this OC was not so fond of such egregious ploys at rewrites and slapstick direction…as the audience began to single out the smallest idiosyncrasy as a bid for comedy.

(above: costume sketches from the Laurent Pelly La Fille @ the MET)

It was during Act II's opening scene (where the castle has been represented as a skewed drawing room with picture frames instead of walls), with such a delicate and elegant touch by Maestro Armiliato that the comedic action on stage was just oblivious to Donizetti's score (as well as later on when the wedding guests arrive, stooped over in old age and tottering around on stage, the audience was laughing so loud that the graceful undertones of the strings could not be heard at all). As four maids dusted the Berkenfield castle, it seemed to bring on paroxysms that lasted like 5 minutes.

It was also during Act II that the rewrites from the Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-Francois-Alfred Bayard libretto went into overdrive. The Duchess of Krakenthorp (played by an excellent Marian Seldes, replacing an ill Zoe Caldwell for the entire run, who we don’t mind as a Tony-Award winning Broadway actress who made her stage debut in 1947) made comments about arriving to the palace from her Bentley, with another comment thrown around from the Marquise about someone being on the bobsled team. Don't ask.

Loads of English language dialogue is thrown in from the Duchess of Krakenthorp (and the Marquise of Berkenfield, too), who plowed ahead bullying everyone with American idioms and phrases like, "whatever, whatever". There were also rewrites that weren't necessarily from Donizetti's time, such as an order for the wedding party, to "not be stingy with the verve clicquot." ho hum. Another instance? In Act I, after Tonio utters, "Je t'aime, Marie," their subsequent duet literally interjects their love feeling like, "électrochoc". One of the punchier aberrations of the dialogue (tho' an addition in French) is when Marie screams to the audience that she is a free woman, ending the statement with a triumphant, "merde".

“C'en est donc fait” was lovely from Marie, but the orchestra still had a few obvious rusty spots to be worked on. The climax of Act II, when the 21st Regiment came rushing in to reunite with their beloved Marie is loads of fun, via a makeshift, miniaturized army tank ferrying the way loaded with too many soldiers like a circus clown car.

“Tous les trois réunis” was adorable, with lightning-fast head turns from Dessay to echo the opening measures that had the audience reeling. The closing finale ended with an etching of a rooster suspended from the ceiling, who crowed a triumphant call at the closing strains of the opera.

The upcoming performance on April 26, 2008 from The Metropolitan Opera House will be transmitted live in high definition to movie theaters for those of you who didn’t spring to pluck-up tickets back in January (when they were almost already sold-out), most likey from the two identical cameras on dollies that swing obnoxiously from the first two opposing parterre boxes. O hai btw, practically this whole production is on youtube, as it was broadcast live from Austria's ORF.

During the Q&A after the performance, Marco Armiliato was delayed, as the starchy tuxedo was just too much for him to bear any longer, and reappeared wearing a red cotton polo shirt, black blazer, and jeans, in great spirits, complimenting cast and crew alike.

(above: Maestro Marco Armiliato, bro of Fabio, and Alessandro Corbelli as Sulpice during the Q&A for the MET's Laurent Pelly la Fille)

Newlywed La Julia Trappe was in the audience waiting for her new husband, wearing the spoils of the recent wedding gifts from head to toe, cashing in on the lovely exchange rate for Euro card holders…Extensions added to her newly-platinum locks (which she wore in a ponytail), a cream-colored blazer and bright, um, slacks...sporting a new Gucci (we're pretty sure) bag from the Spring line and silk scarf.

Flórez, when questioned, said that this cast was the original, and the best he’s worked with. The same from London, rehearsals in NYC were much easier this time. Dessay spoke about her energy and physical prowess on stage, saying that her voice was gone by the end of the dress rehearsal (we noticed, but hey, it's the dress rehearsal). And Marian Seldes as the Duchess of Krakenthorp said that it was her opera stage debut.

We rushed out into the gorgeous Spring weather after the show, confident that this one will again, conquer its critics and adhere itself as one of the resonant, iconic Filles of the new generation. OC will be there for la prima on Monday night, ready to report any revisions or if the drama llama rears its ugly head!

Praesident Taerfel Will Force You To Learn Welsh: The San Francisco Chronicle Endorsement For The White House

The San Francisco Chronicle's choice for change:

If not for the fact that he's a Welsh national - and is certainly too smart to want the job - I suspect that Bryn Terfel could be elected president tomorrow.

I don't even know what his position is on trade, or how well he bowls. But on Thursday night, in a magnificent recital that marked his first visit to the Bay Area in eight years, the great bass-baritone revealed an ability to woo a crowd that most politicians could only dream of.

To sum it up: big guy with a thick accent, foreign born, no political experience whatsoevah.

Ollie & Kalle BFF&E: Oliver Knussen Pays Hommage To Karlheinz Stockhausen

There was something deliciously absurd -- and Stockhausen himself would have loved it, we think -- in the way the news of Karlheinz Stockhausen's death came to the foyer of la Scala exactly during intermission at la prima, when the nightmarish fauna of rich people, politicians, socialites aggrieved by their bad plastic surgery, minor TV personalities, skanky escorts, cabana boys, agents, publicists, friends of friends of singers managers, dealers, and various hangers-on learned the news of the great innovator's passing.

The debate -- "genius or charlatan?", that always struck OC as being beside the point, since the two categories aren't  and have never been mutually exclusive -- didn't really start because in that most conservative night in that most conservative of opera houses (despite the rare moments of trendy, occasional experimentation in the 1970s) the peoples of la prima, still trying to digest their Wagner, were mostly kinda, huh, yea, Stockhausen, bring teh noize lol klang klang lol.

One of the deeper moments of analysis came when someone said something like "Huh, Stockhausen wrote like, pieces that lasted for days,  lol". And it's true and everything ridiculous you can say about Stockhausen is probably true, as well, but the point that almost everybody misses -- or chooses to ignore -- is that Stockhausen right in the middle of that big ole mess that is his body of work has composed music of incredible, blinding beauty. Certainly superior to most of his contemporaries -- especially some of the gloomier ones.

The good news now come thanks to that sweet bear of a man, Oliver Knussen (we hereby admit our pro-Ollie bias: he is an admirer and friend of Hans Werner Henze, and if you like HWH, well, you're fine by OC):

London’s Southbank Centre has announced plans for a festival to celebrate the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died in December.

The week-long event, which opens on November 1, will be curated by Oliver Knussen, to whom Stockhausen had entrusted the performance of what turned out to be the German composer’s last work, Zodiac. This will be one of several UK premieres during the week, along with several pieces from the KLANG cycle including Glanz for ensemble and Freude for two Harps. Other performances include Mantra, Stimmung and Trans.

Listen Like A Pope: San Placido Live From L.A. On KUSC

Tutti lo cercano, tutti lo vogliono; and Placido Domingo, fresh from his meeting with the Pope will tonight celebrate his 40 years of professional activity in Los Angeles by giving a LA Opera gala (with Patricia Racette, James Conlon cond.).

The good men and women at KUSC classical fm 91.5 will broadcast the Yay Placido Yay event
tonight -- 730PM Los Angeles time, 1030PM NYC time, 430AM Milan time

Listen without prejudice by clicking here

And, if by the time you read this, the recital will be already over (or not yet begun), you can simply listen to the regular KUSC programming.

(via Maldito Candelabro)

OMG The Merkel Bewb Video! The Controversy Rages On, Germany Goes Bananies. Merkel Has To Give Interview About Own Breasts. Our Advice To Angela: Just Flash Them, And Let's Get This Over With

Opera Chic loves the German papers because, unlike most American ones, they seem to operate under the assumption that "classical music" isn't a cuss word and concerts and the opera aren't just pastimes for the morons who don't appreciate a nice night sitting in front of the TV  watching reruns of American TV shows (or even worse, reruns of non-American TV shows).

But the usually rational German press -- and frankly, a lot of Germans, too, apprently -- seems to have lost its collective head over the fact that the Chancellor has breasts (old superfat Helmut Kohl's man bewbs don't count, we assume), as she demonstrated a few days ago at the inauguration of Oslo's opera house.

Days after the Angela Merkel Oslo "incident", where by "incident" one means "went to the opera with a dress, not with a burqa), the debate in the press rages on.

You have the podcasts (the last resort of the desperate, more often than not).

You have the funny guy in Stern who must have watched some dubbed MTV: "P1mp My Dress".

Merkel herself had to actually talk to the media today to try and stop to the circus:

"In any event, there certainly wouldn't be a discussion like this with a man".

Heh.

(Not that anybody would even want to discuss the bulge in former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's pants, frankly). OC of all people understands the appeal of bewbs -- she even inaugurated her blog a year and a half ago posting about Mozart's bewbs. Our unofficial motto is "Viva Le Bewbs".

But this Merkel thing is getting silly now.

Opera Chic's advice to Angela: just flash them.

Really.

They're all fourteen year olds, deep inside, these press dudes. And like fourteen year olds  they'll all blush, run away, and then we'll all finally be able to move on.

The Mozart Underground: The Magic Flute Goes Down

Die Zauberflote in the Berlin subway.

srsly

Tickets cost slightly more than a Metrocard but it looks like it's worth it.

"A cesspit of human pettiness", "A private concentration camp": Norman Lebrecht Reviews Bayreuth

Diplomatic as always, Unkle Normy (Norman Lebrecht for the general public) comments on the Wagner family shenanigans we reported about earlier this week:

The only way to redeem the Wagner shrine from its appalling past is to remove the Wagners from its management. They are the last unconstitutional monarchy on the European continent and their festival is among the last enclaves of encrusted privilege to receive public funds, a regressive spa for the super-rich. It will take more than a pair of squabbling sisters to refresh that scenario.

Rampling, Greenaway, Henze, Mehta, Radu Lupu, Muti, Chailly, Lang Lang, Conlon, R. Abbado, Ozawa, The Wieners And Much More: Maggio Musicale Fiorentino For Peace

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opens on April 26, and the full program introduced today at a press event is very, very cool.

The theme for this years' Tuscan festival is dedicated to peace and to women: operas (Carmen,  Lady Macbeth, Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra), concerts  (Lupu, Mehta, Muti, Chailly, Ozawa, Remmereit), ballet and theater. 

Clearly, a major event is the Italian premiere of a work that had its world premiere just seven months ago, Phaedra by the greatest living composer, Hans Werner Henze (already sold out, good luck with the scalpers and on eBay, it's what we'll have to do, too).

Charlotte Rampling, OC's dear Auntie Charlotte will be the narrator of Schoenberg's A Survivor From Warsaw, a multimedia performance directed by Peter Greenaway and conducted by Zubin Mehta (that night, Mehta will also conduct Haydn's Missa in tempore belli, the Wartime Mass, and Britten's Requiem Symphony, all with Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino).

Carmen will be directed by Carlos Saura, with a big cast: Julia Gertseva, Elena Maximova, Marcelo Alvarez, Carl Tanner, Inva Mula, Serena Daolio, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Dario Solari. James Conlon will conduct Lady Macbeth, directed by crazy genius Lev Dodin.

Riccardo Muti will conduct a night of Mozart, Beethoven and Cherubini, Gewandhaus Orchester under Riccardo Chailly wil kick some serious German butt, then the Wiener Philharmoniker, Radu Lupu, Ozawa, Lang Lang, until the big finale on July 1 in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, Mehta conducting Beethoven's Ninth.

We're feuertrunken already.

Putting the Beef Back in Texas: Stephen Costello Heads to Fort Worth Opera

We've long been aware of Fort Worth Opera's awesome programming, with season after season of sweeeeet offers that makes us srsly consider visiting the Lone Star state for our next vacation. In their latest e-Newsletter, tenor Stephen Costello gets some prime promo e-space (with head shot above, who could easily be Ethan Hawke's hawter, cleaner, long-lost brother).

Costello is returning to the Fort Worth Opera this May (where he made his first pro stage debut as Rodolfo in the FWO 2005-06 season), singing Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. You'll have to go to the Fort Worth Opera site to sign up for their newsletter, which is in the Learning Center (no direct linkage & media alert: an auto stream of Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma.), where an even larger Costello awaits!

Tu Quoque

Spanish Angelicus

Why YouTube Is Not Enough: The New York Times Joins The Grigory Sokolov Fan Club

OperaChic has basked in the glow of Grigory Sokolov's genius, and you haven't.

The New York Times, for once, got it:

That Mr. Sokolov, whose talent is beyond dispute, disproves this notion should remind us not only of our persistent parochialism but also of our delusions about technology. The Web, on which he can be found on YouTube, giving astonishing performances, clearly doesn’t substitute for hearing him live. Neither do discs, which, as a perfectionist, he stopped issuing in 1995 (this partly explains his American situation), although years ago Mr. Sokolov’s recordings sent me hunting for a chance to hear him in person. On one of those discs he played Chopin’s 24 Preludes with great sensitivity. He played them again the other night. It was, like all concerts likely to stay in the mind forever, nothing that could ever be captured digitally.

Now, by0tching about a performance one witnesses by playing a video through one's cr4ppy computer speakers via shaky blurry YouTube is one of America's greatest agoraphobic pastimes (actually getting on the subway or catching a cab or driving somewhere to personally appear at a concert hall / opera haus is a bit of a revolutionary concept for many Rapidshare junkies) there are times when YouTube just isn't enough.

Not to mention that, in Sokolov's case, if you live in the UK you won't get to hear him play live in the future, at least for a while, because the maestro has obviously had to take enough sh^t under Soviet rule to actually be willing, at his age, to go back to submitting himself to intrusive police controls (and the Westerners among us can't really blame him for that). The obvious solution here, as pointed out by Jess, would be to create a special path or visa waiver program for sports and entertainment visitors who travel to a country for a very limited period, usually days, to do their thang and then leave. Unless one seriously thinks that elderly professional violinists from the former USSR and soccer players from South America are actually a risk and they could come to a country not for a concert or a game but to blow themselves up on a bus, which, when you think about it, is a possibility that Homeland Security would probably not discard.

Another solution would, of course, be less parochial when booking artists -- this is true for American insititutions and European ones as well (it's probably telling that we heard Sokolov play Milan's Auditorium, not at la Scala).

Nathan Gunn Recital @ Zankel Hall

(above: Julie Gunn, Nathan Gunn, and the private dancer, Sonia Warfel. Photo credit: Thanks to Bradley.)

Last night at Zankel Hall, a former subterranean movie theater in the massive armory of Carnegie’s 57th & 7th enclosure (so very subterranean that the walls were shared with the local subway line, which roared by almost continuously), baritone Nathan Gunn and wife Julie held a sold-out, short performance for an intimate crowd.

With Julie on the ivories and Nathan singing, there was also a woman who performed an interpretive dance throughout the sets, doing like the whole, “I’m washing my laundry on an old scrub board” pantomime. The all-English language program started with Frank Ferko's “Five Songs on Poems of Thomas Merton”, (Ferko took a bow from the audience during the very brief curtain call – with no encores either) and laid the formula for the rest of the evening: seriously yawn inducing music, unchallenging vocal lines, and really long piano breakdowns.

Julie and Nathan were dressed informally, she in a v-neck black sleeveless shirt coupled with black pants, and he in an all-black suit ensemble. The dancer was equally in all black, a mandarin-style blouse and yoga pants. At the wood backboard of the stage, the words to the first poem, “In Silence”, trailed across in a light projection, as was the protocol for many of the following works.

Julie rocked the conservative look, but Gunn was hurting in an ill-fitting, too-large suit. Shirtless would have been much better (heyll, even in a t-shirt & jeans would have been a better choice). Gunn and the dancer swirled around each other as Julie plucked at the keys under filtered lights that swarmed from blue to gold to green. Ferko's composition was um, you know…very minuet-like styling that would give way to waltzy ballroom thang. “Reduced to This” was basically Satie’s first Gymnopédie rehashed...although it was during “Reduced to This” that Gunn departed from a very straight-forward, reserved, concentrated, and stoic presentation...and finally experimented with the word play of the Thomas Merton text…but only a teasing glimpse.

Samuel Barber's "Hermit Songs" (Opus 29) didn't offer anything terribly enticing in their 10-set list, although #6, Sea Snatch, won the award for the best named work of the evening. O yae flapping sea snatch. I was bored dot com. Of the tri-state blogging scene, Susan was there also.

"Please do not turn the page until the end of the song," was stamped at the bottom of each page of the lyric insert, but, "Please do not leave the performance until it has finished," would probably have been a better choice.

Angela Gheorghiu Disses Martha Stewart, Cancels Her Met Bohème

I mean, come on.

Kathy Battle sings for the Pope & the President; and Angela Gheorghiu doesn't even sing for Martha Stewart?

Gheorghiu canceled her Bohème last night. Elena Evseeva covered for her. Martha Stewart was in the audience.

Martha is a strong girl, she could take federal pen she can take Angela dissing her at the Met.

I mean, Martha's dog just died, for cripes sakes! (maybe Angela had something to do with that, too?

But still, no secret appetizer recipes for Angela this year!

Here's Martha's late dawg, Paw-Paw. omg i'm like srsly crying over here :"-[ R.I.P PAW PAW~

*~*~*

"He needed to come". Kathy Battle Sings The Lord's Prayer For The Pope

Kathleen Battle, the Pope and George W. Bush are at the White House, and then...

Just throw in a rabbi and an elephant and it's like the perfect setup for a joke.

Anyways:

"A few yelled Viva il Papa"

We'd yell "Viva la Kathy", but that's just OC.

***update***

OMG controversy!

Soprano Kathleen Battle has been enlisted to sing “The Lord’s Prayer” — a decision the White House defended as appropriate despite the overt insertion of religion into a public event. “I think we’ve struck the right balance,” Perino said

*****update, with video*****
 

Video:

Huge Battle photo on the White House's website here

More youtubes here

Bullish On Opera: Birtwistle's Minotaur Scawes London

Tony Pappano introduced a bovine new hero of the opera in London last night.

Hilarity ensued.

Rape, massacre and the consumption of the Minotaur's half-dead sacrificial victims, the Innocents, by the greedy Keres, vulture-like harpies: all were to follow

And:

Ten half-dead bodies spew their guts all over the stage. The killer, a grotesque man-bull, staggers around in bloodlust. A gloating chorus bays from the tier of a gore-smeared bullring.

The orchestra lurches into a macabre dance of death, propelled by jagged percussion blitzes and searing woodwind discords. Screeching harpies swoop on the bodies and rip out their hearts.

See also:

Primeval violence and ritual sacrifice shape the drama, punctuated by the sex-starved longings of Ariadne, fearsomely portrayed by Christine Rice, who sets her gaze on Theseus, sung by the excellent, lithe Danish baritone Johan Reuter. It is his destiny to enter the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur, the climax of the opera.

More on Birtwistle here.

Roger Waters' Fitzcarraldo Moment: Ça Ira, In Manaus

A scene from the Brazilian premiere of the opera Ça Ira composed by former Pink Floyd Roger Waters, (and already recorded by the gentle giant Bryn Terfel), presented with the Amazonas Philharmonic Orchestra and an all-Brazilian cast on the opening day of the 12th Amazonas Opera Festival, in the Amazon Theater in Manaus last night.

Not as insanely awesome as Fitzcarraldo, but pretty dang cool anyway.

Bavarian Governor To Merkel's Rescue Over The Bewbs Opera Incident

Unlike some of his fellow countrymen who did indeed object to the sudden discovery of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ownership of a pair of breasts, that she suddendly displayed in Oslo creating a bit of a media stir, the powerful Bavarian Governor voted "aye" for bewbs, and more powah to him for that.

Günther Beckstein has spoken in favor of Angela Merkel's powerful display of (o) (o) the other night at Oslo's opera (to examine Opera Chic's previous post click here, with in-depth analysis and photographic evidence). Herr Doktor Beckstein was "pleased" by Merkel's outfit, because "we in Bavaria appreciate joie de vivre, I have no objections at all".

And with this we hope the proverbial tempest in a D-cup is finally over.

For The "How Many Bohèmes Can You See In One Lifetime?" Series

Another day, another Bohème (this is the Florida Grand Opera's turn).

When your direction is reduced to having the children's chorus sitting at the front of the stage waving flags, you got a problem.

Ouch.

(Production photo via)

Tragically enough, that big secksy man that is James Valenti (see image above) will be part of la Scala's Bohème we'll be subjected to in a couple months, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, in Franco Zeffirelli's dusty old staging. No little kids waving flags there, right?