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Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
How sassy is it to inaugurate an opera production whose silent protagonist is a menacing clock on the holiday where it's all about ~the countdown~? Willy Decker's 5-year-old La Traviata takes its premiere tomorrow night (New Year's Eve!) at The Metropolitan Opera, his minimalist concept that features a large clock on a stark, Richard Serra curve, monopolizing the pulse of Verdi's score (and tragic heroine's demise) that starts the countdown from the first, loaded bars of the overture.
Everyone on stage in clean blacks, whites and reds, Decker's Traviata premiered in 2005 at the Salzburger Festspiele and starred La Netrebko as Violetta, Thomas Hampson as Germont and Rolando Villazón as Alfredo (with Carlo Rizzi conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker). It was lauded for its streamlined approach which allowed the characters to shed the often-overbearing architecture of hyper-realistic stagings.
Decker's new vision was cheered in Europe, but will his giant clock become a metaphor of NYC's collective cultural phobia of time marching on? Get with it or get lost in it! Are you ready? 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 -- Operapocalypse!
La Traviata for The Met stars Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Andrzej Dobber as Germont with Gianandrea Noseda representing Verdi's twinkling score.
Preview it (with Salzburger's original cast) on YouTube. All photos copyright of The Met's go-to photographer, Ken Howard
Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
© Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Some guys travelled back in time with their Tamagotchis and Pokemons and started an online petition to nominate Milanese Maestro Daniele Gatti for La Scala's vacant* Music Director position. *Vacant? Not really -- between General Manager Stéphane Lissner and Daniel Barenboim as Maestro Scaligero's ~Honorary Maestro~, they've definitely been bringing-in their first round draft picks the past 4 years.
So how much do online petitions rule? It's possible to nominate literally anyone in the free world for new Music Director of La Scala. The Italians love George Clooney -- and he looks great in a Tom Ford tux! Why not?
Anyway, Opera Chic's talked about what's going on with Daniele Gatti's chance for MD extensively here. And here. And here.
Sadly, the Milanese Maestro keeps getting the fuzzy end of the La Scala lollipop. We don't so easily forget that drama-llama Don Carlo of 2008, and we definitely don't have the energy to get back into former/present contenders' trials -- Harding, Dudamel, Chailly, Myung-whun Chung, etc. -- and nothing's happening until 2015 anyway.
So to keep pitching Gatti for MD is like holding out hope that your douchy ex-boyfriend from college who dumped you and made secks on the entire cheerleading team will one day wake from his Jägerbomb hangover and realize that you were his soul mate. But you've already married the rich lawyer and have two kids (and a sweet golden retriever) so who cares?
Well, at least they made the Italian news! Here's a tip, guys: when I pop the trunk, hit the deck. Here's another: It's 2010 (almost 2011) -- there's Facebook for all your petition needs!
(photo from bleedingcool dot com)
After contributing hundreds of original scores to tv and film for over 50 years, Ennio Morricone is now composing 15 ringtone music for LG's upcoming optiumus 2x mobile phone. And if those don't make you happy, you'll be able to dip into an additional colection the 82-year-old Italian composer's classics, too. Next up, Morricone will be dj'ing for Kanye West and writing Britney Spears' comback album.
Above, Edita Gruberova from the concert version of La Traviata at Wiener Musikverein last week, the soprano stepped back into Violetta Valery's gown at 60-something-years-old after a decade of retiring the role. Blazing through December, she already sang the role in Hamburg, Munich, and Vienna (at the Musikverein, which was billed as her final Violetta performance). Roles may change but cleavage (and a nice smile) never goes out of style.
Here's a tease of Act III's Addio del passato from Munich.
Did you get books for Christmas? Don't be whiny! It means somebody loves you!
Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans
Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of ballet. It's like The Red Shoes in book form, without the color red. (UK link here)
Listen To This by Alex Ross
Listen to this -- or listen to nothing. It's pure Ross musical goodness, distilled. (UK link here)
The Prada Life by Gian Luigi Paracchini
Finally the English translation of the Italian biography of the fashion empress. (UK link here)
Serving Genius: Carlo Maria Giulini by Thomas D. Saler
Giulini's genius, his kindness, his work: a comprehensive biography with many in-depth interviews and new information about the late Italian conductor. (UK link here)
Seven Mozart Librettos by JD McClatchy
How do you render Da Ponte's and Metastasio's and Schikaneder's genius (and Varesco, and Stephanie) into English verse? You only need a great poet like McClatchy. (UK link here)
Mozart's Blood by Louise Marley
The first Donna Anna? She was a vampire. Really. (UK link here)
Outtakes by Charles Wright
Anybody don’t like potry go home see television shots of big-hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses, as Uncle Jack used to say. (UK link here)
Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel
Millionaire, bada$$ biker, style icon, Diane Von Furstenberg BFF & one of America's greatest living poets: all Fred, all the time. (UK link here)
Shazam! by Chip Kidd
Kidd is fun fun fun -- his visual genius and his taste make weird old comics soar. (UK link here)
This month's Dazed & Confused magazine runs a 3D photo spread of semi-anonymous, masked French electronic music kings Daft Punk. The duo is celebrating the success (to sci-fi nerds worldwide, at least) of their electronic-symphonic score for the "Tron Legacy" soundtrack. Comprised of 22 tracks (including an overture, an adagio and a nocturne) it was recorded in London by "one hundred world class musicians". Oh okay. With "Tron Legacy" being all about neon and lasers, they should have asked Achim Freyer to style the photoshoot!
Click for the rest!
Continue reading "Chips and Cellos: Daft Punk's "Tron Legacy" Symphony" »
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung has this awesome photo of Bert, a famous prankster, and his then-girlfriend photographed in 1919 dressed up in 18th century gear -- Mozart and Constanze for a brave new Century.
Before they were even talking about the anorexia glam, the couture costumes, and the juicy backstory, (and The Winona!) Black Swan was pretty much knows as "that movie where Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis have hawt lesbian secks".
[UPDATE UPDATE]: Less than 1 hour after we posted, the clip has been yanked. You snooze, you lose!
Now you can see what it was all about...
(I hope OC doesn't have to warn you that a very NSFW link is under the cut)
~**lol embedding disabled by request: Go here, intrepid voyeur!**~
Let's all look at Boston Celtics Center Shaquille O’Neal in a tux (made with enough fabric to put Tom Ford in back orders for a month) in his conducting premiere with the festive "Sleigh Ride" for The Boston Pops Orchestra in Beantown on Monday night.
The Celtics/BPO tie-in has saturated the internet, and when Hollywood gossip heavyhitter TMZ picks it up, you know (at whatever cost) you've done something right -- (TMZ is the New York Times of Hollywood gossip reporting -- the same people who brought us such good times like Britney Spears' head shaving incident, Tiger Woods' crash&burn, Rhianna's Chris Brown beat down photos, and Miley Cyrus sucking on a bong video) and frankly, probably the first time in their five year existence that TMZ used "orchestra" in a(n) URL.
So aside from giving big props to the BPO for making it to the pages of the unwashed heathens (in the form of influential gossip blogs) is this how to save classical music? Making it cool by association? Our good friend Socrates said, "Be as you wish to seem".
Although our other good friend Kurt Cobain said, "Rather be dead than cool."
Love the way you lie handle Handel:
A spontaneous musical concert at a California shopping mall ended with the entire complex being evacuated after some 5,000 people turned up to sing.
The incident happened at the Roseville Galleria shopping mall, which is reported to have started shaking due to the volume of people inside.
Fire and safety officials struggled not to spoil the festive mood as they evacuated the mall.
One warden said: "You can keep singing, but please walk."
Thousands had gathered at the shopping mall's food court to take part in a group rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus as part of a flash-mob concert - when groups of people - often strangers - conspire on social networking websites to turn up at the same place at the same time and start singing.
(via William Gibson @GreatDismal)
Fondazione Scala Vice President Bruno Ermolli said earlier today to ANSA news agency that planned government cuts to arts funding, if not revoked, will provoke a € 5,000,000 deficit for 2010, and the deficit would rise in 2011 with an additional - € 12,000,000
Nevertheless, the opera house does not plan to cut any performances from the season's program.
Plácido Domingo's in Budapest, Hungary where today he spoke in a press conference to announce that he'll conduct Bánk bán, an opera by 19th century composer Ferenc Erkel for the Los Angeles Opera's 2011/12 season. Bánk bán, written in 1861, follows the 1213 assassination of Queen Gertrud, the first wife of Andrew II, king of Hungary.
Later he ducked into a tree-trimming charity event. ~I wish I was a sentimental ornament you hung on the Christmas tree~.
No matter how many times he's cancelled shows, no matter how many fans he's pissed off, and no matter how many floperas© he's pulled, he's got a huge heart. Rolando Villazon made an appearance in Berlin for the Ein Herz für Kinder (A Heart for Children) charity telethon. Won't somebody please think of the children?! Ahhhhhhh ok cool -- Rolando's called shotgun on that. (photos Reuters)
Magdalena Kozena is Melisande, Stephane Degout is Pelleas, Gerald Finley is Golaud, Simon Rattle conducts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York
(photos Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
European champions Internazionale FC won the FIFA Club World Cup beating Africa's TP Mazembe 3-0 in the final earlier today.
We are world champions now.
Europe-based American Maestro John Axelrod touched down in Milan to give a program of Cha-Cha-Tchaikovsky's and Schumann's symphonic romanticisms with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi -- Musical Director Xian Zhang's Grammy-winning kids that shred it down in Milan's southern Corso San Gottardo neighborhood, right by our funky Navigli (and Porta Ticinese where OC goes for her John Richmond and Marithé et François Girbaud fix).
Spinning Schumann and Tchaikovsky, Maestro Axelrod brought out passages of pure, old school-ish la Verdi, from when (now Honorary Director) Riccardo Chailly was around and Carlo Maria Giulini (Direttore Emerito) branded his highly-cherished, burnished sound. Opera Chic was there on Thursday night (there was also a replication last night and there's one more on Sunday afternoon) and listened to the la Verdi kids under the magic of Axelrod's baton (and first violinist Luca Santaniello who, as always, was relentless).
Schumann's Third Symphony was composed in 1850, the “Rhenish”, which is his last (but not the last that was published). Maestro Axelrod gave a majestic reading of the last(ish) symphony, dignified and subdued with a burnished underbelly, a tease of Giulini's mark. At small moments it bordered on sentimental overload for OC's black heart but it was overshadowed by the sweetly woven intricacies of Schumann's notes. The Fifth movement Lebhaft (Vivace) was an unstoppable drive of Axelrod's direction that we last saw during his Lang Lang/Herbie Hancock ~Music for the People~ tour. When the music calls for it, Maestro Axelrod excels at punching through the score to the most euphoric passages.
Continue reading "Maestro John Axelrod's Schumann and Tchaikovsky at Milan's La Verdi" »
Anna Netrebko tried to bring her game face to a recent press conference -- but then she decided to thrown on a pair of sunnies instead. The Russian soprano joined the cast of the Royal Danish Theatre in an indoor press call to hype the current run of La Boheme at the Copenhagen opera house. Singing lead Mimi in two performances, Anna's making her house debut. Wait a sec...are those Erwin's shades? Unisecks was never so secksy! (AP photo & Joachim Adrian)
As we enter SAD season, The Guardian writes:
Creative artists are fifth in the top 10 professions with high rates of depressive illness. But does depression attract them to the job? Or does the job make them depressed?
Although we like to chase away the blues with symphony, we offer a preemptive hug to all the emo musicians -- especially David Garrett (above) -- for clinical angst in their pants.
Carnegie Hall's JapanNYC festival kicked off on Tuesday in a city-wide celebration of Japanese culture that resumes in March & April 2011 to complete its 65 events. This week's launch (consisting of three concerts) commenced with Artistic Director Seiji Ozawa conducting the 26-year-old Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he co-founded with fellow conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama to honor his late mentor Hideo Saito.
Tuesday's concert consisted of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with soloist Mitsuko Uchida), Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, and the U.S. premiere of a Carnegie Hall commission, Atsuhiko Gondai’s Decathexis, both Ozawa and Tatsuya Shimono sharing in the conducting duties, earlier cited for health reasons.
Above the Maestro pauses for an adorable breath. Below, Uchida takes a bow (with Shimono on the far left and composer Atsuhiko Gondai rocking the red jacket).
Why is today the best blogging day? Because Opera Chic just found out that, according to a BSO PR blast, "THE ONE AND ONLY SHAQUILLE O'NEAL, IN WHITE TIE AND TAILS, MAKES HIS CONDUCTING DEBUT LEADING THE BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA" [...]
CAPSLOCK IS TOTALLY APPROPRIATE FOR THE EXCITEMENT IN OUR PANTS!
December 20 at Boston Symphony Hall, Boston Celtics center Shaq will be on the podium, conducting the Boston Pops in a wicked version of "Sleigh Ride". Shaq shafted Santa as special guest! Who has more pull than Santa? Shaq! ~Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about? Shaq, right on!~