Opera Chic

Opera Chic and Grazia.it: Italy's Top 2011/12 Opera Openers!

(Peter Stein's Macbeth from Salzburger Festspiele, credit Silvia Lelli)

While OC's opera-loving NYC friends anticipate September for the American opera launch season, we play by different rules in Italy. Or we take things a little slower. The cold, early-winter weather brings the openings of the Italian opera houses (well, most of them anyway) nicely aligning with the holiday season (we're pragmatists at heart). For OC's latest piece for her Stasera Esco column, she picked her top 5 Italian opera season opening nights for 2011/12 (including the post-dated Peter Stein Macbeth that opened Opera dell'Teatro di Roma on Sunday night). Frankly, it was hard to narrow it all down, but this is where we'd be if we could be everywhere. 

Read all about it here! If your Italian's rusty, well, c'mon, this you can figure out. 

"My Favorite Film: The Red Shoes", by Charlotte Higgins

Just another reason why Charlotte Higgins is awesome -- she's into Powell-Pressburger:

I find that I am lost to the film, every single time I see it, by the end of the opening sequence, in which a group of students burst through the entrance to the "gods" in the Royal Opera House then race up the stairs as if their very lives depended on it. They start to watch the ballet that unfolds before them with the kind of greed with which a condemned man might eat his last meal. It makes me cry, reliably, every time I see it, and I find I'm hard pressed to explain exactly why, except that it must chime profoundly with my own inarticulable feelings about the art I love.

Even if it really needs an actual cinema to be appreciated, the Criterion DVD is the right way to watch "The Red Shoes" at home.

A Macbeth Victory to Open Rome's Teatro dell'Opera 2011-12 Season

German director Peter Stein's new ghost and knight-filled Verdi's Macbeth triumphed as the 2011/12 season opener at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera last night. It's the same production that Stein premiered in August at the Salzburger Festspiele to mixed reviews (photo above). Nevermind - Rome loved it.

"Un grande Macbeth ovazione" was part of the Rome-based daily La Repubblica's headline. Ten minutes of applause, mostly for Riccardo Muti and Russian soprano Tatiana Serjan as Lady Macbeth. Serjan also elicited mid-scene applause during her final aria. Rome's audiences made another statement with mid-scene applause after the chorus' "Patria oppressa" at the beginning of the fourth act. Muti and Serjan had also collaborated with Stein during the August Salzburg edition.

All the VIPs were in the house last night, including the Rome mayor (Gianni Alemanno), the president of the republic (Giorgio Napolitano), and the new culture minister (Lorenzo Ornaghi).

An intrepid youtuber uploaded a clip of Serjan singing Lady Macbeth's final aria.

Schoenberg Does Bologna

(Above: Schoenberg with his family, Los Angeles, 1948. Check out loads more photos here)

Bologna's Teatro Comunale soon opens The Schoenberg Experience with the Austrian composer as protagonist of a four day program dedicated to the coolest of the cool, Arnold Schoenberg, in collaboration with Vienna's Arnold Shoenberg Center (if you visit Vienna, it's mandatory, as well as a slice of Estherhazy torte at Demel and the deli counter at Meinl am Graben).

The Vienna-based foundation, led by president Nuria Schoenberg Nono, is behind Bologna's kick-off concert on December 2. On December 3, Nuria Schoenberg Nono leads a conference titled "Schoenberg in America: 1933-1951". On December 5, the concert hall is swapped for a movie theater where Jean-Marie Straub's and Danièle Huillet's film Moses und Aron will be shown, based on Schoenberg's challenging opera of the same name. 

Sure, Schoenberg was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century and changed the entire trajectory of classical music as we had known it, but when he put on his pants just like the rest of us, he made gold records. And crazy, hand-drawn bridge cards.

Juan Diego Flórez: The Hottest Man in Opera (Literally, Thanks to the Turtleneck)

Juan Diego Flórez makes Sunday relaxed knitwear look secksay during a press conference earlier today at the Hungarian State Opera House.

Tomorrow he makes his Hungarian debut in a recital of Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and others. The opera house is very excited (!!) to have the Peruvian tenor live in its theater.

Enrico Caruso: Swag of a Top Model, Curves Like a Coke Bottle

The mustachioed marauder. They don't come much cooler than that.

American Singers Rock Hammerstein

Here's Marilyn Horne doing what she does best (aside from ripping apart vocal trax) = looking fabulous. The American mezzo was at the 20th Oscar Hammerstein Award gala on November 21 to celebrate honoree Barbara Cook for a Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. Cook also treated the crowds to a live performance from her new CD.

Esa-Pekka Salonen On "Esa", By His Old Teacher And Mentor, The Late Franco Donatoni

Opera Chic was lucky enough to listen to this piece at la Scala, and it was simply one of those nights that make everything worthwile.

Opera Chic and Grazia.it: Il Destino dell'Opera Russa

After shopping Prada on via Montenapoleone and ducking into Cova for a warm, gooey tramezzino of acciughe and mozzarella, OC stopped at via Sant'andrea's Palazzo Morando to catch the last day of an opera exhibition called Il Destino dell'Opera Russa, which explored the long-running links between Russian and Italian opera through costumes, sketches, and lithographs. Read about it here, in Italian, on OC's Grazia.it column, Stasera Esco.

Drei Cheers for Alex Ross

Alex Ross is the 2011 winner of the Belmont Prize for contemporary music, an award given every two years by the Forberg Schneider Stiftung for innovation in the arts. Ross' endowment surges at €20.000 ($26,700 USD at current exchange) which buys enough Katzen Milch to fill the Panama Canal for Penelope (above), a cat who knows more about Mahler and Schoenberg than you will probably ever learn in your entire lifetime. The award ceremony takes place on January 26 2012 in Munich.

Il Teatro alla Moda -- Theater in Fashion

(Organza and silk dress by Gianni Versace, from Salome at Teatro alla Scala in 1987, directed by Robert Wilson)

In the mid 1920s, Diaghiev commissioned French cherry bomb Coco Chanel as la costumière for the premiere of ballet Le Train Bleu, an ode to contemporary fashion with libretto by Jean Cocteau as danced by Les Ballets Russes, which sparked untapped collaborations between fashion houses and theaters. After Coco's success, French designers such as Lanvin, Balmain, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent followed.

On the Italian end, Elsa Schiaparelli slashed and burned her way through opera and theater, and from her provenance came the Italian designers such as Giorgio Armani, Emanuel Ungaro, Alberta Ferretti, Valentino, and Antonio Marras who crossed into the arts.

Traveling exhibition "Il Teatro alla Moda -- Theater in Fashion" explores the Italian narrative between fashion and opera and highlights costumes created by iconic Italian fashion designers since 1980. The collection, which catalogs more than 80 costumes made by 11 Italian fashion designers for opera, ballet, and theater, made its American premiere in Los Angeles last month and has been extended until December 18.

Sponsored by the yet-unopened Beverly Hills performance space, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, the collection is in a temporary gallery space on the ground floor of the new MGM Place in Los Angeles.

The work of Gianni Versace is especially stunning. There's just no one else who does like he could.

Photos are from here.

(Roberto Capucci dress in georgette for Anna Caterina Antonacci in 1991 for a Tokyo concert)

(Gianni Versace from Stravinsky's The Firebird from the Royal Opera House in 1991)

(Valentino from 1994's Washington National Opera The Dream of Valentino)

(Roberto Capucci's taffeta and silk dress for 1986 Norma at Arena di Verona directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi)

(Valentino from 1994's Washington National Opera The Dream of Valentino)

(Gianni Versace for Kiri Te Kanawa in a 1990 Capriccio and the San Francisco Opera, directed by John Cox)

Montserrat Figueras 1948-2011

Via Alex Ross, sad news: the exquisite Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras passed away today at the age of 63.

Arvo Pärt In Dealey Plaza: "Spiegel Im Spiegel" For "The Umbrella Man" By Errol Morris

It's November 22, so Errol Morris made a little video to explain the extremely weird story of The Umbrella Man standing in the blinding light of Dealey Plaza, that nightmarish day in 1963 -- so nightmarish, actually, that even Stephen King wrote a book about it.

And the music is Arvo Pärt's.

 

Gianni Versace, Bob Wilson and a Milk Bottle

This story from 1993 is very, very cool:

Wilson continues to draw, lost in absolute concentration, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. After an eternity, he raises his head. "This is how I think," he explains, holding aloft the pencil. He shows the group a drawing: a milk bottle with nails stuck all over it. "I thought I would have a screen over the stage with a film of someone driving nails into a milk bottle, but the milk doesn't run out."

Giacomo Manzoni, the befuddled composer, asks what the milk bottle means. "What does meaning mean?" returns the director. "I'm an artist, not a philosopher. I draw pictures. I don't draw meanings. The audience creates the meaning."

The composer continues to grumble. "But the scene takes place in a bordello. The audience won't know it's a bordello. That milk bottle doesn't have anything to do with my opera."

"You don't have to be in a bordello visually," Wilson shoots back. "This milk bottle is interesting to look at."

Versace stares blankly at the two men.

Nine months later, "Doktor Faustus" opens to roaring cheers.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

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Dip into Raina Kabaivanska's Closet for a Good Cause

Alongside celebrities such as Elle McPherson, Uma Thurman and Celine Dion (and loads of Italians), Raina Kabaivanksa is the next to donate from her closet to E For People, a non-profit initiative to help Ethiopian children and to help build the first pediatric hospital in the African country.

For the 7th edition, la Kabaivanksa donated about 15 pieces (photos below) including a wool and silk military-green 1980s Armani pantsuit, a 1980s Fendi loden jacket with a fur collar, and a dozen 80s-era silk and taffeta Roberto Capucci dresses.

She said to Corriere della Sera: "There's the dress from Il Trovatore in Salzburg alongside Domingo, directed by Karajan. There's also the one from the concert at the Metropolitan Opera of New York with dear Luciano Pavarotti and the dress from the concert at San Marco in Venice. They're dresses that gave me lots of confidence and beauty. Now it's best to donate them to a noble cause."

La Kabaivanska adds to a pot of over 10,000 articles for men, women and children from more than 150 high-end brands that are sold at auction.

Rolando's Lucky Boxer Briefs

Rolando shows-off his package to his adoring fans [VIA]

Renée Fleming and Alec Baldwin do it for the Kids

Renée Fleming and Alec Baldwin shared Love Letters during a Thursday night performance of the work by American playwright A.R. Gurney to benefit the Carnegie Hall Notables membership/ticket program for young music enthusiasts at Zankel Hall.

(Renee and Alec with A.R. Gurney)

Opera Chic and Grazia.it: Blow Baby Blow

OC's latest piece for her weekly column, Stasera Esco at Grazia.it is about last weekend's trombone strumpet concert with Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali which was an earnest effort but, um, kind of blew :/ Read about it here.

Bruce Weber And Stravinsky

Just another reason why Bruce Weber is so cool:

...I collected pictures ever since I had 20 bucks in my pocket. I had seen a photograph of Stravinsky that I loved by George Platt Lynes at the Sonnabend gallery. I had no money, but Mrs. Sonnabend really trusted me. I paid it off, it took me about six months, but I finally got it.

A Very Young Dancer Becomes a Very Cool Woman

When OC was a little oc, she wanted to be a ballerina, but a tutu was too itchy to sit at the piano for hours doing Hanon exercises and too impractical for diving on the soccer field. Ballet lust was sparked by a hand-me-down book called A Very Young Dancer by Jill Krementz which followed a 10-year-old ballerina named Stephanie from the classrooms of NYC's School of American Ballet to the stages of Lincoln Center as Marie in the NYCB's Nutcracker.

A prodigious talent at ten, handpicked by Balanchine for her role in the Nutcracker, Stephanie had all the marks of a great career. But through Jill Krementz, The New York Times tracked her down in Wyoming (where she lives now with her husband) and the former ballerina has a different story to tell.

Read about Stephanie's lost decades here.

Mozart Gets an Italian Premiere

For the first time ever, the entire 826 known letters written by Clan Mozart (including those written by daddy Leopold and wife 'Stanze) have been translated and published into Italian language.

Bolzano notary Marco Murara edited, curated and translated the 3- volume book set, L'epistolario completo della famiglia Mozart (1755-1791), which runs 1958 pages and costs 89 euro. At Tomorrow night's launch party at Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Amadeus freaks are gonna party like it's 1799.

The Met HD in Milan

Passing one of Milan's movie theaters the other day...

Here's the same version for the Americans:

Angela Meade on Closing-out a Stellar Year: The Opera Chic Interview

(Above: Angela Meade, credit Edward Acker)

Last weekend we wrote about the 36th annual Richard Tucker Gala, a celebratory concert that bears witness to the long legacy of its founder and to toast its 2011 awardee, American soprano Angela Meade.

We wanted to hear more from Meade, who made her professional debut three years ago at The Metropolitan Opera, about finishing such an important year of career development.

In an exclusive interview, she talked to us all about bel canto styles, singing Norma, the dangers of burning out, future roles, and most curiously -- what's she going to do with that 30K Richard Tucker award?!

Click the link below for the entire interview.

Party in the Rectory with Riccardo Muti

Heh. Riccardo Muti went to Torino not just for the city's antique caffes omg those caffes but to pick up an honorary degree awarded for disseminating Italian culture through his art and spreading messages of peace worldwide (officially in "History and Criticism of Musical Cultures"), organized by Torino vocal academy La Nuova Arca.

Afterwards he conducted the Orchestra dei Talenti Musicali della Fondazione Crt in the first movement of Mozart's Serenade No. 12 in C minor. In the rectory. With the rector. It never gets old.