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Last week at Auditorium di Milano, David Garrett threw on his cleanest t-shirt, stepped into his motorcycle boots and sent Milan's (mostly young, female) admirers into a frenzy with Bruch's concerto for violin and orchestra #1 with John Axelrod and the Orchestra la Verdi. After furious bowing, the violinist signed autographs for his frenzied fans in a scene like a pre-recession Barneys warehouse sale.
OC reported Garrett's la Verdi debut for Grazia.it. You can read all about it here.
Were you lucky enough to be there last Saturday night? OC was. Between Robin Ticciati's shimmery spider webs, John Graham-Hall's grounded lyricism and Richard Jones' dynamic panoramas, La Scala cranked out a Peter Grimes hit. Read all about it here, in Italian, on Grazia.it. (Photos Teatro alla Scala & Brescia and Amisano)
More about Emiliano Cavalli's iconic women (including former adult film star, former member of Italian Parliament and former Mrs Jeff Koons, Cicciolina) here. The artist is showing -- opening on May 31 -- at the Castelli Gallery, Milan.
Roberto Bolle's big-ass face (at 11:57pm) in a red jacket and white bowtie, as chosen by the brilliant Robert Wilson, for his "Crossroads of the World" video portrait project which runs all month.
Bolle's in NYC until the end of June with the ABT, eating sushi and shaking his thang.
For this Fall's opera and symphony opening galas, OC's dipping into OPI's FW2012 twelve-tone palette, inspired by Berlin, specifically the yellow-green shade shade called "Don't Talk Bach to Me".
OPI's current SS2012 palette is a collection of five neutral shades inspired by the New York City Ballet -- Barre My Soul, Care To Dance?, Don't Touch My Tutu!, My Pointe Exactly, You Callin' Me A Lyre? and Pirouette My Whistle.
Valentino Garavani, now that his fashion house is safe in the hands of the dashing Chiuri + Piccioli team, has more time to enjoy his massive art collection and work on his tan: he also found the time to work for the ballet, one of his lifelong passions. The Italian maestro has come back to design -- the costumes for the New York City Ballet fall opening, and this is really good news, for ballet and fashion.
Sometimes we go to the opera theater because we crave -- like a clean Céline cabas or a Marchesi, porcelain-cupped caffè macchiato or a sedimenty Castello dei Rampolla -- a shot of live music, unamplified bliss to spirit us away for three hours from taxes & whorez & second-hand smoke. And sometimes we get to the theater and the sad, sixth replication of some cranked out classic with ill-fitting costumes & a time-beating tyrant doesn't really cut it.
And then there are nights like last's at Teatro alla Scala for the opening of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, thanks to Robin Ticciati's brown curls and six, shiny buttons bouncing to the tempo of his quicksilver baton, leading the orchestra through every eye-watering shade of Britten's score, cinematically-shimmering and more nuanced than Stieglitz's portraits of O'Keeffe's hands, which matched Richard Jones' Duane Hanson-esque production. Lead John Graham-Hall -- who we last saw in March 2011 for Britten's Death in Venice with the unforgettable Edward Gardner, opera's RPattz, in Tom Pye's clean production -- was commanding and grimy, true class.
Full(er) review coming this week for Grazia.it. Radio can't replicate in-house, but Rai5 will broadcast the May 24th production direct from La Scala, 7:50pm Milan time.
One doesn't want to get too eschatological, too misty, but if one day we're called to justify humanity's presence on this planet and we're called upon to list our accomplishments as a species to try to offset the carnage, war, brutality and destruction that accompanied us throughout human history, man-made trauma for legacies & legacies that surving generations continue to bear witness to, we'll make a list where, quite simply, together with Greek tragedy & the Sistine Chapel & King Lear & the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen & Beethoven's symphonies and "Ladri di Biciclette", we'll also mention "Winterreise" sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
In the meantime, one can only be thankful for having had the privilege to hear Fischer-Dieskau's voice.
Last week, Opera Chic reported live from Istanbul, where she checked out the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra with MD Sascha Goetzel (above) and all the other cool initiatives that the Borusan Arts and Culture foundation has given back to the country, linking the East with the West. Go here to read all about it.
Or, snuggle up to the English translation under the cut...
Continue reading "Opera Chic & Grazia.it: Borusan, the Bridge Between Two Worlds" »
Alex Ross runs down American icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opera hit list for The New Yorker's Culture Desk, mostly classics from back in the day, save for a Billy Budd (Harding and the LSO) and a weakness for Matthias Goerne's Schubert and Angelika Kirchschlager's Brahms.
Congratulations to a morning-jacketed Sir Pappano for his knighthood at Buckingham Palace two days ago where he was honored for his achievement in arts and media.
So many opera singers give predictable, boring interviews and then there's Angela with her fangs out, aiming at the jugular. Draculette zipped up a pair of Gucci boots and spoke to Corriere della Sera while vacationing on a Romanian mountaintop.
The forty-six-year old, who says that she's booked through 2016, returns to La Scala after a five-year absence for a late September Zeffirelli La Boheme. And who could forget that last time? The incredibly sucky La Traviata with Lorin Maazel that was ripped apart by the loggionisti -- "Poor Verdi", "Poor Italy" and "Conduct a band of amateurs instead" was shouted at Maazel while Angela was labeled as "capricious" in the Italian press.
When asked about the state of opera directors in Italy, Angela says that since she hasn't been in Italy in the past five years, she doesn't really know and continued, "For fifteen years I've had the possibility to have the director that I've wanted, if I do a La Traviata, I ask for Richard Eyre, someone who isn't part of the trends," and then she gave props to conductors Evelino Pido and Marco Armilliato.
She says that she prefers classic opera productions, citing Zeffirelli's la Boheme that can resist the passage of time as opposed to Willy Decker's Salzburg Traviata, saying that even Netrebko didn't want to reprise Violetta in that production.
How does she perceive Italy? "Colleagues always say to me 'Ah no, I won't put a foot into Italy.' You guys are like the wolf in the woods, ready to eat us. You guys are starting to get associated with negative ideas about the behavior of the theaters and the audiences. You know how we joke with each other? Watch out or I'll send you to sing in Italy! In the rest of the world, booing doesn't exist."
So it's disagreed that booing's the right of the audience if they don't like the show. Are you saying that abroad they don't boo?
"Sure, but rarely and not in such a savage manner, which creates enormous psychological damages in the artists. Some of those boos to us is like stalking. Italy's remained backwards, also for this reason. We hear it like bulls in an arena. But in Spain, the bullfight has less importance. The audience comes to the theater and spends money to hear me, and I want to give everything to conquer them."
Anna the diva.
"What's wrong with stardom? If lots of things she does is to entertain, it works. I'm not a hypocrite. The people in the theater are interested in whimsy which surprises them, that which is the most prudent usually bores the most."
Is being nude on stage still provocative?
"If you have nice body, then maybe. The fact is that they don't recruit voices but bodies. If young Pavarotti today was to go to an audition, they'd send him away after two seconds without even listening to his voice. The theaters are full of gorgeous bodies and none pays attention to the timbre. If a singer's ugly and sings well, I see him as gorgeous. If a singer is gorgeous and sings poorly, I see hi as ugly. It's like that to me."
When Cappelli asked if she prefered to be on stage with her ex-husband, Roberto Alagna, Angela said, "Here's the latest -- we're back together, reunited." Alagna has scrapped the crusty tentacles from Angela's heart with an oyster shucker. She said that he's a changed man and that she didn't want to throw away everything that they had built together.
Angela on her closest rival: "I don't know...with Renee Fleming, we started together, so we don't steal the scenes. Tenors are more preoccupied with rivalry."
She finished the interview by begging Roberto Benigni for a role in his next films and she's got a thing for Meryl Streep who apparently told her that if she was reborn, she'd want to be Angela, and Angela said that it's mutual.
A+++ Angela delivers. Now if only she could be as consistently present on stage as she is in interviews.
Susan Graham was front and center (and then backstage) for the Saturday night premiere of La Bohème at the Los Angeles Opera. Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello sang Puccini's tragic couple with Patrick Summers on the podium.
Here's Elina Garanca as Sesto in the upcoming Jürgen Flimm production of Mozart's La Clemenza that opens at the Wiener Staatsoper on May 17. Louis Langrée conducts Michael Schade as Tito, Juliane Banse as Vitellia and Chen Reiss as Servilia. We'd swap tickets of Clemenza's Roman bonfires (when you've seen Graham Vick's slick-haired Tito-as-Mussolini transported to Facist Italy, you're tapped out) for the bone-chilling biblical teen lust of Salome with Lise Lindstrom killing it (with Dame Gwynnie Jones) in Boleslaw Barlog's production, ending on May 18.
Since OC will be recapping her Istanbul adventure with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra for Grazia.it later this week, we're going to leave you with photographic impressions until then...
Sergiu Celibidache, the cranky Romanian maestro who refused to record (although OC has a few compilations) explained that an opera needed to be heard live, in the same space as the musicians. The anti-Von Karajan.
We just missed Angelika Kirchschlager!
Borusan Contemporary, a modern art space/office space headquarters of the Borusan Holding, has a very serious Mark Levinson stereo system. These are the luckiest CDs in the world.
Pimp, ganster or maestro?
The t-shirted Maestro -- Sascha Goetzel came out in a cool, handwritten t-shirt at the final curtain call of the BIPO's final concert. Below, properly dressed.
Muti in Alitalia's inflight magazine.
The coolness that is Hagia Sophia
Chairperson of the Borusan Culture and Arts, Zeynep Hamedi, and BIPO's MD Sascha Goetzel
Ertuğ & Kocabıyık Publications' insane book on the most gorgeous opera houses in the world.
Goodbye Istanbul -- we already miss you!
Last night, as if exploring Istanbul under atmospheric skies wasn't cool enough, OC tripped out at the Lutfi Kirdar Anadolu Auditorium -- although maybe it was a contraband flacon of Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet that Malpensa customs didn't ~borrow~ combined with the jitter-inducing brackish & blackish Turkish coffee nursed from fine porcelain at Müzedechanga (which a lovely lunch companion inverted and read OC's future Prada-encased footsteps in thick coffee sludge dumped onto a bone-fine saucer, full of faraway lands, epic adventures and Yoda-like guides -- c'mon fate, we're tempting you), tangerine-flavored Turkish delight mixed with OC's Rouge D'Armani gloss, but we frankly lost our sh*t at last night's BIPO concert "You Wish, We Play" final gathering of the season (Sizin Seçtikleriniz -- how much cooler is that?), under the lanky wing span of Sascha Goetzel who could slam dunk a three point foul shot from courtside with a Western set list of Mahler, Strauss (his Four Last Songs sung by strident American-born, Austria-based soprano Michele Crider), Beethoven, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Brahms and more, democratically deigned by BIPO's power-to-the-people audience and played by precise woodwinds, spirited strings and juicy brass.
Straight outta Istanbul since its inaugural season of y2k, that motley crew of BIPO's young musicians, the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, who were even cooler than those Turks that we prayed we would never bump into in a dark alley if we ever hopped into the DeLorean at 88 mph and were dumped out somewhere along the syllabus of our college history requirement timeline, Ancient Warfare, or along that ornamental Hagia Sophia breather in Art History class between the Byzantine and the Middle Ages.
The young musicians of Turkey's finest, led by Sascha Goetzel, the Vienna wonder who studied years at The Juilliard School and then under Seiji Ozawa, passion in his fingertips as he leads the well-oiled BIPO (since 2008) machinery from fishermen-laden, feral-cat roaming shores of the Bosphorus, where international artists come for edgy and spirited collaborations with a orchestra that in the next season will tackle Carmina Burana, Mahler's 3rd with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Salome with Nadja Michals and wraps on May 23, 2013 with a Thomas Hampson spectacular.
This is all part of Istanbul's thriving culture and arts scene, thanks to the The Borusan Holding, an old school industrial Turkey conglomerate that supports that eternal relic of lofty ideas and transcendence -- classical music (and art). With headquarters in the Yusuf Ziya Pasa Pavilion, a towering 20th century monolith enchanted known as the "house of spirits" for the whistles of the Bosphorus zephyrs that whips it daily, which was renovated lovingly by Hakan Kiran in the late 1990s, it's also a contemporary art museum where you can wander its nine floors stacked as high as Yves Saint Laurent stilettos on the weekend (not in YSL stilettos, natch, we rock instead Church's sweet Prince Albert linen slippers, OC's preferred travel shoe) with curated works by Jim Dine and Robert Mapplethorpe, inter alia, among the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection and a welcome-to-the-big-boys-club Mark Leveinson stereo system.
The Borusan Culture and Arts Foundation is along the Istiklal Caddesi, kind of like Vienna's Kärntner Straße. The library nerd in us (shhhhh!) loves its music library, where you might bump into an l'enfant terrible of the young Turkish composing jetset pouring over one its 7k music scores, 10k CDs, or almost 9k books or leaf through a seriously cool Ertug & Kocabiyik photography book that'd be right at home on your Poltrona Frau coffee table alongside Avedon's lean lines & Helmut Newton's amazon nudes.
l8rz, from Istanbul's minaret-dotted landscape, with love from the cats in Istanbul that melt hearts...BIPO bop hooray!
More photos on OC's twitter here...
For this week's Grazia.it column, OC got the 411 from young Italian conductor, Michele Mariotti, as he shapes the Italian bel canto landscape under the shadows of Rossini's hometown where he was born and bred. Head over to Grazia.it for the scoop as he prepares to premiere Norma at Teatro Regio di Torino.
Continue reading "5 + 1 Opera Hotties In Marie Claire Italia" »
Krystian Zimerman has cancelled his Italian tour, citing health reasons. He was supposed to play the last concert of Teatro Regio di Parma's symphonic season on May 17, but if you had tickets, you can ask for a refund from the theater until June 16. He's also cancelled a May 8 concert for the Concorso Paganini di Genova and is replaced by young violinist Francesca Dego.
Zimerman's that dude who ships his own piano to recitals and tries to boycott America for political reasons, but shows up anyway and freaks out mid-rectial, like he did in 2009 in Los Angeles.
Gaetano Donizetti’s story of Christian martyrs, Poliuto, opens on Sunday at the Zurich Opera House with Damiano Michieletto's new production. The Venice-born, 37-year-old opera director, who spoke to us in February for OC's weekly column on Grazia.it, said that his conception was an atmospheric industry where men live underground like mice and religion's viewed as something that can give valor to human life against mass consumption. Whoaaa high concept. Conducted by Nello Santi, Massimiliano Pisapia sings the title role.
This summer, Michieletto will premiere an already-sold-out La Boheme (Netrebko as Mimì, natch) at the Salzburger Festspiele, conducted by Daniele Gatti in August. He's the first Italian opera director since Strehler and Ronconi to bring a new opera to the Austrian festival and already revealed that it'll be a carefree version.