Opera Chic

KUSC: Ironically Ironic? Or California Kitsch? We Don't Care!

Thanks to the Metropolitan Opera's Station Finder, O.C. found a solid radio frequency serving Southern California, Classical KUSC, which carries the MET's Saturday afternoon broadcasts (in addition to events from the LAPhil), and served us well enough as we banged out some work on Saturday early evening before heading off to a laid-back dinner at Bebel's.

KUSC's headers (below) are suffused with such a retro-retiree-chic it almost makes them ironically cool. Like what Nirvana did for high school cheerleaders or what Lady Gaga did for leotards. It's such a Lite FM/Sade/Christopher Cross/Neil Diamond/Luther Vandross throwback that we're actually a little nostalgic for winter vacations at grandpa's house in Boca. Thanks to KUSC for childhood memories of noxema on sunburns, elevator music in the car, and family dinners at 4pm. Good times!

 

 

 

 

Opera Chic's Week (In Alphabetical Order): Hahn, Luisotti, W Magazine

How was your week?

Opera Chic interviewed Hilary Hahn, interviewed SF Opera Music Director Nicola Luisotti, inaugurated her weekly (every Wednesday) guest blog on W magazine's website.

Then Milan's Fashion Week (menswear) began.

Bolzano Bewbs Make Elektra Complete

 

Bolzano's Teatro Comunale just put on their first Elektra ever! If you happen to find yourself in Italy's Trentino/Alto Adige/Südtirol Northern hauls... the theater's "event of the season" -- Strauss's schlocky revenge extravaganza, the greatest opera Roger Corman never directed. In Bolzano, instead (it later tours Modena, Piacenza and Ferrara), it's been conducted by Gustav Kuhn and directed by Manfred Schweigkofler. The lead is being shared between Anna Katharina Behnke and Elena Popovskaya.

Speaking of sharing things, O.C. doesn't hide her penchant for bewbs which you can find on super-zoom after the cut (along with a couple more shots).

Lisa Larsson & Antonello Manacorda do Mahler's 4th at Milan's Teatro dal Verme

 

O.C. is back in Milan almost two months from an extended summer in NYC -- already here long enough to saturate her tongue in delicate, fishy bagna cauda from Trattoria alle Langhe; syrupy fresh marrons glacés from Giovanni Galli (with candied violet flowers layered on top); and all the wintry grappa she can drink (Bocchino cantina privata from the mid '70s...strong with honey, cinnamon, tabasco, and sometimes bread crusts) -- but the arching shade from this past Fall's Lincoln Center events still touches her shoulders: Bernard Haitink & the London Symphony Orchestra's Mahler concerts. Opera Chic was lucky enough to attend all three concerts at Avery Fisher Hall-- Mahler's 4th, 9th, and Das Lied -- so her last tangible Fourth Symphony still resonates from the old Dutch Master, further encouraged by Sinopoli's Complete Mahler recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

This time in Milan, O.C. wasn't going to pass-up hearing Mahler's Fourth live. Although this time it wasn't the Philharmonia or the LSO, but rather the small corps of practiced musicians of Milan's Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali, a tight orchestra on Thursday night -- with only 30-ish strings, a dozen woodwinds, and half a dozen brass/horns -- a big enough challenge to master even one of Mahler's lighter symphonies that thankfully calls for a smaller orchestra. So that's where O.C. found herself, at Milan's Teatro dal Verme. Dal Verme's stood in Milan since 1872, inaugurated with Meyerbeer's The Huguenots. It also hosted the Italian premieres of Puccini's opera/ballet Le Villi, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and Lehar's Die lustige Witwe.

Thursday's concert featured Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson, who has already cut a few discs in Mozart and Bach, and Torino-born Italian conductor, Antonello Manacorda. Maestro Manacorda, one of the original founders of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, has been collaborating with IPM since the 2006/07 season when he became the Music Director.

La Toya Jackson @ SemperOpernball, Dresden

If you're cool like amfAR, you can get Janet Jackson to show up at your event as guest of honor and give a speech (the way she did last September in Milan, at La Permanente). If you're SemperOpernball, Dresden, you have to settle for LaToya.

Semperoper in Dresden, Germany, was the setting for the 5th Semper Opera Ball. This year, La Toya Jackson was the guest of honor and accepted an award to posthumously honor her late brother, Michael. Director of the ball, Hans-Joachim Frey, danced with the Jackson sister and shook it on the dance floor, although probably not to "Beat it" or "Thriller". Jose Carreras will also be awarded a prize for artistic achievements.

  

Nucci & Conlon's Rigoletto Is Full Of Win

Last night at la Scala, the opening night of Rigoletto, conducted by James Conlon with Leo Nucci as the giullare, whipped the audience into a frenzy of a final nine-minute ovation for the singer -- it was Nucci's 440th career performance of the part -- and the American conductor. If opera, like baseball, had a Hall of Fame, Nucci -- who's so humble he insists not to be addressed as maestro, even if he deserves the honor more than many, many conductors -- would be a first-ballot inductee .

The Missoni Family Will Set Their Models Free In Milan's Streets, Will Feed You Mortadella & Will Have Themselves Photographed By Juergen Teller

Emporio Armani (broadcast live on the Internet) kicks off Milan's Fashion Week (menswear) tomorrow: today, Missoni models hung out in the streets of downtown Milan -- above, in a AP photo a child walks in front of models posing in front of the Teatro alla Scala, and below, check out the adorable Teresa and Angela Missoni posing in Piazza del Duomo in front of the cathderal -- to display the new collection. 

Later, the Missoni family partied with the usual and not so usual suspects (among the latter, Chris Brown, who as a convicted felon lost the right to own a gun but can apparently still party with fashionistas), drinking Camparis and eating that most unkosher cured meat, mortadella.

Rosita Missoni, Opera Chic Style Icon, is modeling the family wares -- together with her husband, kids, grandkids -- in the new Missoni campaign, photographed by Juergen Teller in Rosita & Ottavio's Milan apartment.

Using Dead Composers to Sell Your Swag, Part XI? XII? (Um, Honestly We've Lost Count)

OC tweeted it when she spied unsexy-as-a-tramp-stamp Albert Einstein in the windows of Via della Spiga's Brunello Cuchinelli boutique, but we see they've up(ped) the ante with a fresh cache of dead composers.

Among a mini-gallery of neighboring Humphrey Bogart & Marcel Proust, Claude Debussy & Igor Stravinsky are sending their patented, consumeristic ~spending rays~ at your wallet and hoping you buy that cashmere sweater in the window for 500 euros. We love any homage to dead composers, but we have to say, as font snobs, that Bradly hand ITC font is killing us softly.

 

 

Massenet's Manon at the Wiener Staatsoper with Diane Damrau

German soprano Diana Damrau covers her sweet goldilocks with an angsty razor cut for Jules Massenet's Manon, which opened at the Wiener Staatsoper last week. Conducted by Betrand de Billy, Damrau is in the title role as Ms. Lescaut vs. Ramón Vargas's Des Grieux. New Yorkers barely have to waitfor Damrau to sing again in NYC because she kicks-off her Big Apple takeover on January 24 at Carnegie Hall, where she's singing against James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for Beethoven's 5th and a Strauss/Schubert program.

Damn-Wow continues in February at NYC's Metropolitan Opera as Marie for Fille du Régiment(with Juan Diego Flórez as Tonio and Kiri Te Kanawa as the Duchess) and Rosina in Barbiere.

OC's still not over a missed Damn-Wow performance at La Scala early Fall 2009 when her friends reported back to her in NYC with tales of smelling salts and tears.

 

Anne Midgette Talks American Opera Companies, Highlights FWO's Before Night Falls

Music critic for The Washington Post, Anne Midgette, spoke to WQXR's "Arts File" about American opera companies who, despite the recession, have found innovative programs for their audiences. Among the hardy few (this year, Seattle Opera is doing Daron Hagne's Amelia & Minnesota Opera is apparently doing Ricky Ian Gordon's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), she cites The Fort Worth Opera's highly-anticipated new opera, Before Night Falls, which has been written and composed by Jorge Martin and is based on the autobiography of late Cuban writer, Reinaldo Arenas.

 

Young American baritone Wes Mason (photo above) will be singing the lead, the same character that put that delicious imported Spanish fillet, Javier Bardem, on the radar in Julian Schnabel's y2k movie of the same name.

You can find as many Before Night Falls videos as your heart desires on the Lone Star Opera website -- interviews with Wes "Javier Bar-damn!" Mason on the opera, as well as round-tables between Fort Worth Opera General Director Darren Woods and composer Jorge Martin.

 

Now we'd like to kindly request from FWO more media for Ovidio, sung by tenor Jesus Garcia (photo above) and for Victor, sung by Seth Mease Carico (photo below), the hot buttered rolls to Mason's luncheon meat. More like "Before Our Underwear Falls"!

 

Nicola Luisotti On "The Conductor's Time Machine": The Opera Chic Interview

 
(photo Terrence McCarthy)

Italian Maestro Nicola Luisotti may still be only a few months into his official tenure at the San Francisco Opera as new Music Director (taking over ~The Runnicles's~ 17-year reign), but he's already shaken-up the Bay City in his own way. In an attempt to return to an Italian opera repertory, SFO has certainly picked the right dude: Born into a fabulously well-connected Italian family in Viareggio (in Tuscany), his great great uncle enjoyed duck hunting on Lago di Massaciuccoli with Maestro Puccini. How's that for an enviable musical legacy and/or awesome bragging rights? He's paid his dues and earned his conducting chops already at Milan's Teatro alla Scala (rehearsal pianist and assistant conductor), Florence's Maggio Musicale (a member of the chorus for their festivals), and at Venice's La Fenice (as a chorus master).

Although now a lover of everything West Coast, the Italian translpant still finds time in his schedule to make plenty of appearances on his native soil. He's leading Teatro Comunale di Bologna's prestigious season-opening ceremonies (this Saturday, January 16) with his powerful Strauss, zapping the audience into submission with a Salome stunner (with Swedish-American soprano Erika Sunnegårdh replacing a 12th hour cancellation from German soprano and OC-fav Nadja Michael) and all-around talented cast. If you can't be in Bologna on Saturday night, you can catch the performance in a live simulcast at select theaters.  

Maestro Luisotti spoke right before his Bologna Salome with Opera Chic in his native Italian. Sucks for you if you don't speak Italian! <-- Just kidding! Opera Chic presents the interview in both Italian and English. Remember, all translations copyright Opera Chic, k thx!

Click the link below to be transported to a world of time-travel, Verdi's Attila, a window into San Francisco, and how a maestro needs to keep it real.

Opera Chic, Guest Blogger For "W" Magazine: Every Wednesday

Starting from today, Opera Chic will be guest blogging on W Magazine's Editor's Blog every Wednesday. Here's OC's first post:

"So now that you've managed to score tickets to a performance at Teatro alla Scala, the real panic sets in: What on earth are you going to wear?"

So what are you doing still here? Click the link above and READ!

The King And The Kaiser: Also Sprach Elvis

From "75 things you didn't know about Elvis":

48 In the 1970s, Presley would start every concert with Also Sprach Zarathustra

Then he died.

Wilde At Heart: Oscar & Domenico & Stefano

(via)

Oh, and check out on YouTube the "Pre-Show Diaries" after the jump...

Rigoletto Evolutions: Leo Nucci Talks About Verdi's Characters, the Dangers of Overacting, and the Perfect Opera

Leo Nucci -- don't call him maestro! -- talked to Corriere della Sera about his work, and his evolution in approaching the character of Rigoletto (on Friday night, Rigoletto opens at la Scala, conducted by our dear James Conlon, with Leo Nucci as the giullare): 

«In the past I seconded an interpretive tradition that was then very popular, and I made the mistake of approaching this opera in a Romantic manner: but theater is life lived in every moment, and the actors must always look for that truth, careful not to overact... Over the years, over 400 performances, my understanding of the character has evolved, I tried to understand his spirit more, probing deeply: it takes patience, it takes work in rehearsal».

Nucci, who still studies on his facsimile of Verdi's autograph score, add, surprisingly, that for all his Rigoletto love, Nucci thinks that the perfect Verdi opera is... Macbeth:

«L'opera perfetta. On stage I'm always relaxed, because I know Verdi never wrote one note that wasn't just right. Not even his fortissimo drowns out your voice».

Only You and You Alone Can Thrill Me Like You Do: The Italian Press Bows To Hans Werner Henze (And His Dog)

Hans Werner Henze's new work "Opfergang" (Immolazione), that premiered the other night in Rome, conducted by Antonio Pappano with Orchestra di Santa Cecilia (the singers: Ian Bostridge as The Dog and Sir John Tomlinson as The Wanderer), received an enormous outpouring of applause, and now the reviews in the Italian press hail the work as a triumph.

Corriere della Sera's hard-to-please lead critic today hails HWH as "the greatest living composer" and "the last composer". He writes (review not online until tomorrow) that

"Nowadays, only Henze can create a score of such quality", and that "It's hard to imagine how the octuagenarian composer can still project such force, with such merciless control: composing, for him, must be a form of immolation".

Rome's Il Tempo called Bostridge's singing "astonishing" (and proudly points out that Henze, who has been living in Italy since the 1950s, after the performance said that he feels so completely at home here that he now uses the expression "we Italians").

Shimmering, Iridescent, Deathless Sappho: Charlotte Higgins On The Poet Of The Personal

"I used to listen to Beethoven’s late quartets when I was translating Empedocles. I think I’ll try Gregorian chant for Vergil."

Stanley Lombardo, of course, is the classical music loving author of the coolest translations of Homer since, well, Logue's. And friend of Opera Chic Charlotte Higgins -- who uses words like "peripenultimate" in a blog and therefore is our heroine -- just gave a big shoutout to Stanley in her blog post about history's most famous Lesbian -- and one of its greatest poets, also.

Charlotte says:

Most of all, I am fascinated by the way she takes on Homer – and subverts him. Look at the peripenultimate Lombardo translation in this selection published in Jacket magazine. (The one starting "Some say an army on horseback".) The poem takes the values of the Iliad and turns them on their head. Helen (vilified at various points in the Iliad as the cause of the Trojan war) was right to leave her home, her parents, her children to go off to Troy, suggests the poem. There is no mention, let it be said, of Helen's parents or children in the Iliad – Sappho's poem personalises, intensifies and romanticises Helen's experiences. And it likens Helen's emotional world to that of the narrator: her longing for Anactoria, whom she'd rather see "than all the chariots/ and armed men in Lydia".

Guess Who?

The Mysteries Of Interpretation -- Hilary Hahn : The Opera Chic Interview

 
(Photo: Olaf Heine / DG)

At 30-years-old with roughly half of her lifetime already producing best-selling CDs, winning big awards, and touring the world, you'd think American violinist Hilary Hahn would be ready for a vacation. Don't hold your breath. Hahn is currently gearing-up for her highly-anticipated CD, "Bach: Violin and Voice" which drops on January 12, a first-ever collaboration between the soloist and opera singers. 

A couple Grammy awards already under her belt, the Lexington, Virginia home-girl showed early proclivities with the violin, and released her first album (Bach) when she was 17-years-old. Celebrating her 30th birthday just a couple months ago, she's spent the last decade of her life on stage while churning out polished and intuitive interpretations on disc, and has kept us duly entertained with her delve into the digital age -- she's on YouTube, writes a journal on her blog, and is on twitter (to be honest, her personified violin case does all the tweeting).

Her new CD is unique in that she collaborates for the first time with opera soloists -- baritone Matthias Goerne and soprano Christine Schäfer -- in a program of Bach cantatas, choral selections, arias, and duets from St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor with conductor Alexander Liebreich and the Munich Chamber Orchestra.

In celebration of the new CD, SIRIUS XM Radio will be broadcasting an intimate interview with Hahn at 1:30pm on January 12...catch it during your lunch break! If lunch is blocked, you can boogie down to Bleecker Street later that night (at 7:30pm) to catch Hahn's "Bach Party" at (le) poisson rouge, where Hahn will be on hand with her super-friends in a live performance of Bach's Chaconne in D minor and the Aria Variata for solo piano. She's also making an appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien’s January 14th show (along with stellar guests Rob Lowe & Jane Krakowski!! <3 <3)

OC chatted with the violinist a few days ago, live & uncut from America's heartland. Here's how it all went down, although you'll have to read after the cut to find out:

Walter Samuel Takes Off His Shirt

Late Walter Samuel Goal Gives First-Place Inter Milan 4-3 Win Over Siena

More shirtless men after the jump!

Teatro alla Scala Goes New Age

Piazza della Scala is currently channeling a mystical vibe. Light projections amid darkness and new-agey, spa music is what you'll experience if you traverse the piazza (naturally, on your way to Bagutta for a crema calda di carciofi con crostini...).

Here's a view of the spectators entranced with the facade of La Scala:

 

Antonio Marras's Lovely Ballerinas

 

Antonio Marras's gorgeously clean Via San Spirito shop windows caught OC's eye as she walked past the other day. The Creative Director of Kenzo also has his own shop among Milan's most prive' real estate, next door to The Four Seasons.

 

A Voice Lesson with Katherine Jenkins

As reported here, ~opera star~ Katherine Jenkins is all over her new role as vocal coach, teaching eight pop stars how to sing opera in a reality show for British television. The challenge will turn the pop stars "into accomplished opera singers in the space of six weeks" and we're dying at the irony of Kay-Jay saddled with the role as mentor. Below is a clip from a short interview where Jenkins gives a few singing tips. That's right, Bergonzi, you can just go ahead and close your school, Accademia Verdiana. Jenkins will skool you on Verdi.

Now check out the HUGE 'FRO that Rolando Villazon is sporting in the show's official trailer:

"The Supreme Wisdom And the Primal Love": Visiting Maestro Henze

The Financial Times demonstrates once again with this story that it's probably the English-language newspaper with the best arts coverage of all (and yes, American newspapers were apparently too bust [typo and it stays] to ask the greatest living composer for a lunch date at his Italian villa, La Leprara:

Taking a sip of his aperitif, he gestures towards a stack of books from which I extract the relevant volume. Above the first page lies an enigmatic Italian motto La somma sapienza è il primo amore (The supreme wisdom is the first love*, that is, non-judgmental love). “When the dog [to be sung by Ian Bostridge] meets the stranger [John Tomlinson] he says: ‘My Lord, my Lord, I now know why I ran away from the woman who owned me, from the cutlet I was fed and the good life I had, because you were always in my dreams. I weep with all my soul because love is starting ... ’The dog wants to be accepted as a companion. But he also learns that you cannot love without experiencing pain.”

Hans Werner Henze's new work, "Immolazione", opens tomorrow in Rome.

Maestro (Yes, Maestro) George Steel at Miller Theatre

 

While on winter break from NYCO's 2009/2010 cost-efficient, abbreviated season at the David H. Koch Theater, George Steel could be improving his backswing or learning new yoga moves or relaxing in Palm Springs. But the hardworking GM of the NYCO shows-off his latent, classical music proclivities during his downtime.

On Saturday, February 6 in NYC, Steel goes back to his conducting roots and returns to Columbia University's Miller Theatre as maestro for their Early Music Series. He'll be leading the Vox Vocal Ensemble in a program "The Art of the Canon" that follows the development of the canon from the 13th through the 20th century. We're not worried that Steel doesn't have the conducting chops to lead the Vox Vocal Ensemble -- after all, he's the founder!