« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 »
It's dress rehearsal time at Salzburg's Whitsun Festival for Giovanni Paisiello's Il Matrimonio Inaspettato, forgotten old skooly score dug out of an old dusty Naples library by Riccardo Muti, that premieres on Friday Night.
In the photo above, Alessia Nadin (Vespina) and Markus Werba (Giorgino) get naughty; in the photo below, Nicola Alaimo (Tulipano) and Werba.
In the last image, Werba and Nadin, again. (All fotos, Kalle Tornstrom/Reuters)
(above: the yellow circle shows the location of Il Marchesino, the newest restaurant in Scala's building that opened today.)
One of Italy's most accomplished and talented chefs, Gualtiero Marchesi, has been poised to open a new restaurant in Milan to add to his culinary dynasty. The dream was realized today, as Il Marchesino celebrated its first day open to the public.
Pushing 80-years-old, the Michelin-rated star chef had previously struck a deal with Teatro alla Scala to move into the old Biffi Scala location, #2 Via Filodrammatici at the left corner of Piazza della Scala. The restaurant opened today, completely redone and redesigned by Ettore Mocchetti, with grays and darks on the floors and banquettes, and big red chairs upholstered in the same color as the chairs you sit on in the theater.
The menu is a pared-down reading of the Milanese classics (about 30 dishes to choose from) without anything too fancy (although there is an "Italian sushi bar" that holds half a dozen people...so whut whut). Marchesi wants to return to his culinary roots for his new restaurant. For instance, you'll find his trademark Risotto Milanese, but without his signature gold leaf square that marks the yellow rice at his other prestigious restaurant (in his own name, Ristorante Gualtiero Marchesi in Erbusco). In addition to dinner service, there is a coffee bar, a tea salon, and a dessert bar. Its main competitor will remain the always convenient Trussardi alla Scala on the opposite corner, which just re-opened after a brilliant redesign.
Jonas Kaufmann Gets Bigger, Thicker:
I see myself going towards the heavier roles but in all the repertories: the French, the German and the Italian. And I'll try to keep as much of the lighter things as possible in between, just to keep the voice in good shape, to keep its flexibility and to be able to sing Lied, which I adore. I don't want to miss out by screwing up or fooling about with the voice. The problem in our business is that you plan so far in advance; there are so many decisions you have to take now for things that come in six or seven years and it's ridiculous because you're not a machine or some sort of medium who can see the future. You're dealing with more human material and it's a good thing that we grow with the things we do, that we change slightly, develop, increase, whatever you want to call it.
He's doing his first Cavaradossi at Covent Garden: Die Walküre, Troyens and much moah already planned for the future.
Big interview in yesterday's Corriere della Sera with Riccardo Muti about his new Chicago job.
The interview (not online 4 u) Muti -- who during his Milan years dreamt up unorthodox events like a famous attempt to bring his orchestra to Lebanon (the trip was canceled days before leaving Italy for security reasons) and even to play in a prison -- explains that Chicago will be the ideal stage for new ideas:
"In a country as multiethnic and multicultural as the U.S., I intend to bring music out of concert halls and opera houses, to reach new audiences, even those who are now very far from classical music".
But the maestro also went back to the beginning of his career, in 1967, and gave a touching portrait of himself 40 years ago, Muti at 26:
"I barely earned a living as piano teacher at the Conservatorio when the manager of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino invited me there to conduct a concert with the great Richter! I thought I was dreaming. With the Maggio orchestra, I hit it off perfectly, the concert was a success, and I was invited to conduct again. Then the Orchestra, which needed a music director, chose me, a kid. They took a chance on me. But it was a different era, a beautiful madness, '68. There was great passion, great energy back then, it was in the air."
"The Maggio Musicale gave me for the first time a steady income, and the chance to be financially stable enough to marry Cristina. We still had to be careful with money. We found an apartment close to the theatre, we didn't even have a fridge, but I knew that the thing I wanted the most was a piano. I bought one and paid in installments for it, it took me two years. That piano has been a lifetime companion, I still have it, after 40 years, in my home, it's the piano I play and work with".
"In the theater we breathed freedom, the first opera I conducted was Masnadieri, then Puritani, Cavalleria, Pagliacci. And the Guillaume Tell, the complete score: we began at 8PM and finished at 2AM, and then we went out to party with the audience, everybody chanted 'Viva Rossini! Viva l'Italia!' Florence is my family. And the Maggio Musicale, to this day, I consider to be 'my' orchestra... I love Dante and I collect rare editions of the Divina Commedia, what a place to start a career ... All our kids were born in Florence".
In the (old) photo above, Muti with daughter Chiara, the actress and lucky owner of those hawt Riccardo+Cristina genes.
Now that the Neapolitan conductor, via Florence, London (Philharmonia), Philly, Milan (Scala) and New York is a Chicago man, we think that even if Muti doesn't particularly like hip-hop, the right way to welcome him to that city of awesome rappers (Common, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West) is this tribute page: (WARNING: page loads a rap music mp3 omg rap) Muti's Top Dawg in Chicago. Welcome to Chi-town, M'DAWG!
(& have you seen Andrew Patner's brilliant Muti Fun Facts?)
The powers that be has deemed May the official "Better Hearing and Speech Month" so can everyone just shut the f**k up and stop screaming? In celebration of glorious May’s message, the Hear the World Foundation is offering the public a chance to peruse photographic art for the sake of raising awareness on hearing loss and preservation.
Hear the World is a 2-year-old international foundation created by Phonak, a Zurich-based company, which has developed & produced hearing systems for improving one’s hearing abilities. They asked former rawker/now photographer Bryan Adams (who JDF asked to photograph his recent wedding extravaganza in Lima, although Adams had to gracefully decline) to be their official photog, and to take portraits of their many musical ambassadors for the sake of hearing & hearing loss awareness.
One of those Hear the World ambassadors is Plácido Domingo, and we also have in the mix Annie Lennox, the Wiener Philharmoniker, Bobby McFerrin, Josh Groban, Lindsay Lohan (??), Mick Jagger, and Rod Stewart.
The portrait endeavor is currently being shown in one of NYC's meatpacking district galleries (@ 413-415 W. 14th Street) for the next two weeks (and here online), which will culminate in an auction with all proceeds aiding the Hear the World Foundation.
I’m not a fan of what Adams did with the Dominger. He looks like he’s been embalmed. I see a point & shoot portrait with a lot of fancy back-end manipulation. heh. It's like..."hey, i'm bryan adams. With a 'y'. Today i ate pastrami on rye and washed it down with welsh;s grape soday. My dog's name is zeus like higgens's dog from magnum p.i."
*click*
There are conductors who, maybe, if the past indeed was really as awesome as they told us it was -- Opera Chic isn't necessarily a big fan of nostalgia -- would not have been that big a deal fifty or sixty years ago -- but then, men like Votto and Molinari Pradelli and so many other conductors were considered solidly second string too, back then, and today one suspects they'd be the very cream of the crop.
Christoph von Dohnányi is one such conductor: variously dismissed as "cold fish", "ice man" or as a merely correct second-string conductor, some sort of living breathing human metronome (and yes, he is not another Claudio Abbado obv -- but then who is nowadays?) to Opera Chic's ears his work consistently sounds very precise, very clean, elegantly transparent, and his confident grasp of Brahms, Strauss, Beethoven is indeed very impressive.
Now, if one's local concert hall or opera house is routinely graced by the presence of Wilhelm Furtwängler's, Otto Klemperer's and Bruno Walter's ghosts then one can safely deride CvD (who comes from a most musical family) as a lamer and a "routinier" (the same destiny that struck another conductor whom OC deeply respects, Kurt Masur).
But unless those giants of the past conduct regularly at a venue near you, well, then there isn't much room to feel dismissive about El Christoforo either.
Anyway: he's appearing tonight in Los Angeles in the debut of the Philharmonia at Frank Gehry's cool metal box, with this program:
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 @ 8 pm
Philharmonia Orchestra
Christop von Dohnányi, conductor
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, “Italian”
Mahler's Symphony No. 1Wednesday, May 7, 2008 @ 8 pm
Philharmonia Orchestra
Christop von Dohnányi, conductor
Beethoven's Egmont Overture
Schumann's Symphony No. 1, “Spring”
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5
Our words of advice to CvD: dye that hair platinum blonde, or wear a wig; and make them play louder.
***update***
Tim Mangan compares the 78-year-old maestro to Wilt Chamberlain.
No, not that way.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra said Monday that it had engaged Riccardo Muti as its next music director, luring the charismatic Italian maestro — one of a dwindling band of podium eminences — to the United States and adding a layer of luster to the city's cultural profile. Mr. Muti, 66, will take over in the 2010-11 season. His contract will run for five years, and he is expected to conduct a minimum of 10 weeks a season and lead tours. "I would like to make this last engagement as music director in my life something that can enrich people," Mr. Muti said Monday in his first interview after signing the contract. As recently as last September, Mr. Muti had emphatically rejected the idea of taking over the responsibilities of an American music directorship and all the nonmusical duties the job entails. But his tone shifted after an electric month conducting the orchestra at the start of this season, half in Symphony Hall in Chicago and half on a European tour.
Muti Named New Director at Chicago Symphony
***update***
Andrew Patner, our fav Chicago arts critic @ The View from Here weighs in.
On the WFMT podcast an interview by Patner with Muti from last September, downloadable here
The Chicago Muti Fever hit Japan, too.
*****update*****
Handy infographic on the 9 previous music directors of the CSO here
As for spectacle - slightly comic spectacle, admittedly - he never, ever disappointed. Is there a link between Alagna's somewhat constrained dramatic skills and the Las Vegas rigours of his stance, body leaning forward, right hand pinned to chest or lapel, left hand stretched toward an invisible microphone or a sob? Maybe a doctor can advise.
And this from a guy who actually really liked the recital (complete with "a limp Desdemona impersonated by Alagna's jacket").
Tomorrow night premieres another homage to the legacy that is la Maria Callas. Milan's Teatro degli Arcimboldi (TAM we're fond to call it) will host artist Micha van Hoecke's vision of the legendary diva through dance, played out by his company of 17 ballerinas. The show was created (and funded) originally for the Ravenna Festival under the patronage of Mrs. Cristina Muti, who shared with van Hoecke a mutual admiration and respect for the late diva. The show was intended to fill the void at the occasion of Callas's 2530th year of death, which passed in 2007.
Van Hoecke spoke to la Repubblica in an article this weekend, "Cosi' la Callas rivive nel mio spettacolo" ("Like this Callas lives again in my show").
The show is called, "Maria Callas, la voix des choses" (The Voice of Things), which is intended to be ambiguous, as Callas to him was a force greater than nature, and someone indefinable (He said to the press, "Her voice is like an alchemist searching for the philosopher's stone...it's something unreachable, but nevertheless necessary"). He goes on to say that she transcended normal humanity, a desperate woman who was born to be sacrificed, and lived a life of torment typical of many great artists.
Next for van Hoecke is another collaboration with Mrs. Riccardo Muti for an upcoming Salome and a Traviata.
Here's a little promo that Teatro degli Arcimboldi put out on the ut00bs. i would probably go but i can't go anyway so I wouldn’t go foreals tia. Frankly, I'd rather have Eliot Spitzer fly over to Milan and steamroll me. I'M A F**KING STEAMROLLA!
There was a moment the other night, at Teatro Comunale di Bologna, where we decided that we couldn't possibly include Kate Aldrich's Adalgisa in the body of the review of Norma -- because that night belonged to Daniela Dessì, and rightly so, but still Aldrich did so many things that were so very special that she totally deserved a review of her own.
We were first exposed to the Aldrich kind of magic a few years ago, watching the 2001 Aida staged in Busseto's incredibly tiny, 300-seat Teatro Verdi, with a stage as big as your kitchen and an orchestra pit where you can barely shoehorn little more than a string quartet, a unique opera house that OC tries to visit every time she is in the area because it looks like the sort of home movie theater rich people have built for themselves in the basements of their Bel Air homes...only for opera, and like, it's 150 years ago.
That mini-Aida, pocket-size, and full of ideas was one of Franco Zeffirelli's best moments -- even if you don't appreciate Frengo's old skooley supertraditional (and, in later times, borderline trashy) approach.
In that production, Aldrich was a pitch-perfect Amneris, radiating dignity and class. After that she appeared in a lot of productions, from Haendel to Verdi via Donizetti and Bellini with great success; and in Bologna she's a beautifully burnished Adalgisa, perfectly holding her own opposite one of the great singers of today, Daniela Dessì, who wiped the floors of opera houses worldwide with many famous colleagues -- and what a pleasure to see Kate, a native Mainer (who could almost be Dessì's daughter btw) attack her part with confidence, sporting a beautifully burnished voice. But the most striking part of her performance was the deep understanding of the dramatic thrust of Felice Romani's libretto, the devastating moment in which, during "Tremi Tu? E per chi?", at the end of Act I, you can witness Aldrich's Adalgisa heart break on that stage, as Norma says the words, "Trema per te, fellone... pei figli tuoi... per me".
The mention of Pollione's children with Norma is the moment when Adalgisa's dreams come crashing down forever; and Aldrich spends the rest of the opera walking among those ruins, a shell-shocked sonnambula with a broken heart -- if you're good enough you don't need an entire mad scene, but simply a reaction to another singer's line.
Opera, nowadays, is stingy with transcendent moments; Kate Aldrich gave us one of those the other night, and for that we are very grateful.
In the video we embed below you can see her -- and other singers -- rehearse "Lucrezia Borgia" in Turin two onths ago under the watchful eye of conductor Bruno Campanella. Around 4:00 you can see Kate almost fell off a stool, with a bonus of the lulz:
And you got to love the moment when Bruno Campanella, that underrated great conductor, cheerfully explains the comedy hidden in Lucrezia: "When her son gets poisoned for the second time, she says, 'My son, you've been poisoned again?' as if to say, you're really a moron, didn't I warn you about what sort of house this is? And every time I get to this moment I really ask myself, what is this, a tragedy? Because it's supposed to be a tragedy but this looks like comedy to me, frankly..."".
*
In Utah Opera's new production of Mozart's timeless masterpiece, which opens Saturday in the Capitol Theatre, stage director Nicolette Molnar takes a different approach. Hell is represented by seven masked women who, when they unveil themselves, are faceless."Don Giovanni feels that you can live without rules or obligations, but that doesn't work. Hell is (Don Giovanni) being himself. He can no longer escape from himself, and these mysterious women drag him off."
The action has ben moved to New Orleans:
Molnár imagines someone like Don Giovanni being drawn naturally to the New World. "It would have appealed to his sense of adventure and freedom; it was a new frontier in every sense."
* In the photo above, Christopher Schaldenbrand as Don Giovanni and Susanna Phillips as Donna Anna (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )
Etoiles Wilfried Romoli and Kader Belarbi of the Paris Opera Ballet strut their stuff on the Grand Staircase of the Opera Garnier in Paris. After (respectively) 29 and 28 years at the Paris Opera Ballet, both greats will retire at the end of the season.
Belarbi will continue his work as choreographer; Romoli will teach at the Opera Danse School starting this September.
Romoli's last performance is on May 6, Belardi's on July 13.
(foto Afp)
Glass Notes was at the Friday night, May 2, last Satyagraha performance at the Metropolitan Opera, and reports that Maestro Glass surprised the New York opera house by appearing at the final curtain call.
What he failed to report was that Glass actually came out in red heels, skintight leather pants, rawkin a motorcycle jacket and a perm, and smoking a cigarette. I got chills...they're multiplying! And I'm losing control! 'Cause the power you're supplying...IT'S ELECTRIFYING!
New York magazine has a helpful guide if you feel like damaging artistic landmarks in NYC with your XBox360 or PS3.
"Look, up there! It's the Metropolitan Opera House! (Never mind the crashed helicopter in the fountain.) Why not buy a ticket and see if Juan Diego Florez can break the law against solo encores and escape before the cops get him?"
(photo Lane Brown).
As we explained this past February, in a post about Signor John Crispo, the wonderful Opera Man of Bay City, MI, State Park, this crazy business of stylish -- and less stylish -- musicians we daily praise or make fun of, exists only because at the root, there's people's infinite passion for the music, the love of the opera. And it's always healthy to remind oneself of that.
Opera Chic is proud today to introduce you Maestro Jack Harvey, one-man wind section of the dairy section of Weis Market, Honeygo Village Center, Perry Hall, MD:
Jack Harvey whistles while he works at Weis Market in the Honeygo Village Center.
Usually, he's whistling Mozart.
"I might as well entertain myself with the best," he said while stocking milk, butter and yogurt in the dairy department he manages.
Mozart's music is so perfect, "He must have taken dictation from God," Harvey said.
Shoppers occasionally come up to him and express surprise that someone is whistling classical music in the mundane setting of a grocery store.
Co-workers have noticed it, but sometimes don't recognize the source. "He perks me up just seeing him in the morning," said Anne Murphy, manager of health, beauty and general merchandise. I hear him all the time. It's contagious, and it puts a smile on your face just walking past him," said Dawnn Jones, front end manager. She didn't know it was Mozart, Jones said.
After all, on his very death bed, the great Wolfgang Amadeus himself, of all his great works, hummed to himself "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" -- until Kappelmeister Roser was summoned, sat at the harpsichord and played and sang the great aria from The Magic Flute -- the jolly birdcatcher's song was the music Mozart needed to hear before he took leave of this world.
We like to think that that "celestial man", as Da Ponte called him, would be as happy to hear his music whistled by the dairy guy at at the grocery store as he'd be to hear it sung and played in any swanky opera house.
As an avid gamer, Opera Chic has long learned to deeply distrust the videogame reviews on gamer sites because, obviously, so many of them live on revenue from gamer industry ads and, really, the bad games are generally the ones that get "omg masterpiece AAA+++ go buy nine copies NOW".
Then, there are the games they really praise (it's stuff that makes your average college grade inflation memories look like the Spanish inquisition in comparison).
Now, cash-hungry classical music magazines seem bound to follow the same path, building a more shiny version of the usual Amazon Associates plan: August Gramophone magazine, the New York Times reports,
plans to allow readers to buy CDs and downloads from its Web site. This means that it may profit from recordings on which it is passing critical judgment.
Even if we seriously doubt that many people buy or download classical music based on reviews they read on the Internet (including, with all due respect, on Gramophone's site), unsurprisingly record companies are thrilled at the idea -- they fully realize that ad copy stinks less if it's coated by some sort of journalistic veneer.
The New York Philharmonic has put up a slide show of the upcoming performances of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot musical. Among Broadway, theater, and opera stars, Nathan Gunn is slated to play Lancelot along with Gabriel Byrne's Arthur and Marin Mazzie's Guenevere.
It also stars Fran Drescher, Christopher Lloyd, and Stacy Keach (as Merlyn) in a semi-staged version with a full cast, costumes, and sets.
(The Gunnster does have big hands).
It opens on May 7 with five performances through May 10. It's a revival of the Broadway 1960s smash hit @ the Majestic Theater, which starred Richard Burton as King Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guenevere, Robert Goulet as Lancelot. Go here for the full Gunn experience.
Drop it like it's hawt!
Last summer, OC traveled to the gorgeous deserts & hills of the Land of Enchantment, nesting in Santa Fe for a few nights to experience the unique beastly beauty that is the Santa Fe Opera. After chillaxing thru Tan Dun's American premiere of Tea and La Boheme, OC dropped some well-spent $$$ on Lucchese boots, and went back to Milan rawking the whole saddle-slicker style. You know...a Givenchy fringed leather vest, Lacroix spurs (with little crucifixes), and obviously, Jean Paul Gaultier pink leather chaps.
Speaking of leather chaps, this summer, the 2008 Santa Fe opera line-up boasts Teddy Tahu Rhodes in Britten's Billy Budd, and Joseph Kaiser (who we last saw via p2p as Tamino in the Branagh Magic Flute...and suck it, h8rs...we loved Branagh's opera4tehpeople, fairytale reading of the tale for the big screen, especially the animated, endearing performance of Benjamin Jay Davis as Papageno) in the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater. But we think we'll save our frequent flier miles for the stellar 2009 season, which the SFO announced yesterday.
The 2009 season opens July 3 (and runs through August 29)
with the world premiere of a SFO commission, The Letter, composed by Paul
Moravec (his first opera evar) with English libretto by Terry Teachout. The big
draw, especially for OC, is that Santa Fe native Tom Ford (who single-handedly glam-ified the house of Gucci and
Yves Saint Laurent, but now designs solo) is premiering/moonlighting as a SFO costume designer, supplying the sartorial treasures to The Letter.
Singing the lead as Leslie Crosbie is Patricia Racette, and frankly, we can wait to see what Ford does to/with her.
We also can't wait for Natalie Dessay's first Violetta evar
in the new Laurent Pelly directed production
(with Chantal Thomas sidekick) of Verdi's La Traviata, and a never before performed Gluck's Alceste, with Christine Brewer in the title role.
Donizetti's L'elixir d'amore is also in a new production, and boasts the 5x Tony Award winning William Ivey-Long as costumiere. Conductor Corrado Rovaris (who we heard during our visit to Santa Fe last summer for La Boheme) joins the team with Dimitri Pittas as Nemorino and Jennifer Black as Adina.
We're so there...for a season that offers glam, secks, and Dessay in the middle of the desert.
