Opera Chic

Bartoli, le Feu Sacré for Libération

Ceci was yesterday's Libération covergirl with a piece about her latest CD projects -- the forthcoming Steffani Stabat Mater and her most recent Norma -- which she sang in Salzburg in May (with real fire!)

Next year's festival is decidated to Rossini and will roll out new productions of Cenerentola and Otello. Pappano will conduct Petite messe solennelle and Stabat Mater and a gala event will unite Montserrat Caballé, Agnes Baltsa and Ruggero Raimondi.

Claudio Abbado: Senator for Life

Claudio Abbado's just been announced as a Senator for Life by the President of the Italian Republic in recognition for his significant contributions to classical music. The award -- "for outstanding patriotic merits in the social, scientific, artistic or literary field" -- also recognized Renzo Piano, Carlo Rubbia and Elena Cattaneo. Abbado joins Arturo Toscanini as a past awardee.

Was This Review Helpful to You? Amazon's Mélomanes

(Image from here of Alex Ross' library)

A recent piece on Amazon's 'hermetically-sealed' classical music reviewer community: "There are arguments in the comments sections of reviews for Georg Solti’s Ring Cycle on Decca that literally span years."

Chris Ware, the Smartest Kid on Earth, (Naturally) Listens to Brahms

For as many misunderstandings that label opera/classical music as an elitist, expensive hobby for 30-year-old pimply virgins and senile senior citizens, there are just as many misconceptions about graphic novels -- Trade School dropout doodles, collected by adult children -- well, there are much worse things to collect out there!

Way before his comics adorned The New Yorker covers, Chris Ware's been a graphic art demigod for the perfection of his typography, intricate illustrations and blindsiding narratives aching with abandonment, alienation and melancholy.

The American legend has influenced awesome cheerleaders (and practically a surrogate family): Françoise Mouly & Art Spiegelman; fellow cartoonist Ivan Brunetti; brilliant Alfred A. Knopf designer/author Chip Kidd and silver fox poet/librettist J.D. McClatchy.

During the seven years that Ware wrote his y2k breakout, 380-page graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which spans 1890's Chicago and 1980's Michigan as the eponymous anti-hero searches for his father, he was inspired by Brahms. In a current profile by Simon Willis for More Intelligent Life, he said of the artistic process:

"I thought of it musically," he told me. "I was listening to a lot of Brahms at the time—sorry, this sounds so pretentious, but it's true—and I remember feeling that I wanted to produce that sensation on the page, with a large image, and then something much more lyrical and textural, and then into a sweeping passage, and then focusing down into a point. I feel that music does that better than anything; it captures that weird sensation of writing one’s thoughts, that course of consciousness."

Now we want to know the soundtrack for his 2012 coup, Building Stories.

Operalia 2013: The Winners

(Aida Garifullina)

Everyone's a winner (actually, only twelve official finalists are winners) at Plácido Domingo's Operalia, which wrapped its 20th anniversary competition last night in Verona, Italy. Here are the names to remember:

• CulturArte Award: $10,000 to 26-year-old Belarus tenor Vladimir Dmitruk

• Don Plácido Domingo Sr. Award for Zarzuela: $10,000 to 27-year-old American tenor Benjamin Bliss

• Pepita Embil Domingo Zarzuela Award: $10,000 to 29-year-old South Korean soprano Hae Ji Chang

• Birgit Nilsson Remembrance Award (for German Wagner/Strauss Rep): $15,000 each to 31-year-old English contralto Claudia Huckle and 27-year-old American soprano Tracy Cox

• Male and Female Third Award: $10,000 each to 30-year-old American soprano Kathryn Lewek and 29-year-old American tenor Zach Borichevsky

• Male and Female Second Award: $20,000 each to 29-year-old French soprano Julie Fuchs and 28-year-old Italian baritone Simone Piazzola.

• Male and Female First Award: $30,000 each to 25-year-old Russian soprano Aida Garifullina and 25-year-old Chinese bass-baritone Ao Li

• Audience Award: Rolex watches to 30-year-old American soprano Kathryn Lewek and 28-year-old Italian baritone Simone Piazzola

Next year's competition is in Los Angeles (so everyone's a winner because a free trip to Los Angeles is not a bad consolation prize.)


(Zach Borichevsky)

(Julie Fuchs)

(Simone Piazzola)

(Kathryn Lewek)

(Ao Li)

(Domingo)

You Must Remember This: (Professor) Bostridge Rocks!

Not that we'd ever tire of Ian Bostridge's sterling, clarion Schubert & Schumann Lieder -- like his clairvoyant Die schöne Müllerin with Uchida's brightness or his supine, monochromatic Winterreise -- but when we want Bostridge straight-talk, the Oxford/Cambridge-educated English tenor (and twice-published author) went back to school as a panelist at a March Kings College London symposium on music, memory and neuroscience -- The Brain and the Mind.

Opera for the (Fashion) People: Die Entführung in a Hangar, Live from Salzburg

Europe's fetish for staging traditional, staid opera in modern, Metropolis hubs -- like offstage productions of Bohème in Hochhaus Bern and Traviata in Hauptbahnhof Zürich -- makes for alluring metaphor: both opera and transportation stations are gateways to aspirational travel, whether it be through the librettist's transcendent quill or a commuter's escapist fantasies. We've indulged in both.

Tonight, opera goes offsite again for the Salzburger Festspiele's staging of Mozart's Die Entführung under twelve-hundred tons of steel and 380 tons of curved glass at Salzburg Airport's Hangar 7. The backdrop will span ten public spaces, including the hangar's collection of historic airplanes (like a WWII-era P-38 Lightning) collected by historic aircraft enthusiasts The Flying Bulls.

Director Adrian Marthaler, who previously collaborated with the Hauptbahnhof Zürich Traviata, updates 18th century Turkey and the sultan's harem to a modern-day fashion house complete with catwalks, seamstress workshops and photoshoot sets inhabited by photographers, models and stylists. Pasha Selim (orated by Tobias Moretti) is a fashion house designer, Blonde (Rebecca Nelsen) is a makeup artist/stylist and 'Stanze (Desirée Rancatore) is a bourgeois girl seduced by the glitter of the jet-set lifestyle. 

Dressed by Viennese fashion designer Lena Hoschek's costumes and tracked by 16 cameras and 200 technical staff, Die Entführung will be filmed live and streamed at 20.15 GMT+1.

A portentous theme in the run-up to the September fashion shows, fashion pirates will give our predictable Milan Fashion Week stress nightmares a whole new level of terror!

Moritzburg Festival: Chamber Music Unplugged

 

For all of its libations (Bulgari aperitivo in the garden all to yourself) and indulgences (summer sales at Prada), surviving Milan's summers can be undignified -- sweating all over your Prada in Bulgari's garden, spilling to your Negroni (the mixed drink, kids) as you swat blood-lust mosquitoes from your cheeks -- although in today's Corriere, such a hot, white-noise summer after a long, wet, surround-sound spring will jackpot an epic fall grape bounty last sipped 30-40 years ago. So while we're waiting for that final whimper of summer to usher-in the historic grape crop (even utilitarian franciacortia), we've headed to northern exposures for intimate, humble, camel through the eye of the needle chamber music.

So where are we at? A half hour car ride from Dresden (which only seems like fifteen minutes if you're in good company), Moritzburg, where the city’s half-way through a two week annual chamber music festival of concerts, open recitals and lectures with a cast of young soloists and musicians who we just learned -- after an open recital at the Evangelische Kirche -- all look amaaaazing in t-shirts and jeans.

Apse as stage and god on scenography with dusky triptych oils, tonight's open rehearsal packed dark wooden pews with a preview of what's to come over the next two nights at Schloss Moritzburg -- Jan Vogler, cellist, one of the festival's founders and current artistic director, kicked off the rehearsal with Jean-Baptiste Barriere's Sonate fur 2 violoncelli, sparring partner Christian Poltera.

We're looking forward to composer-in-residence Wolfgang Rihm's Musik fur drei Streicher; anything with cello's answer to Jonas Kaufmann (in looks, not voice, a broodier prototype) Nicolas Altstaedt; Astor Piazzolla's beat-ripping rhymes; and Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps with Daniel Ottensamer on clarinet (him of hot brethren), Mira Wang on violin, Christian Poltera on viola and Alice Sara Ott on piano (with her sweet sister Mona Asuka scrolling the score).

What else are we looking forward to? Right now? Three magic letters: bed.

 

 

 

Summer School Never Looked so Cool: Carol Burnett & Music Academy of the West

(Carol Burnett & Marilyn Horne, among guests)

We'll never forget the September 2007 tribute to a recently-departed Beverly Sills at The Metropolitan Opera when a random mix of opera singers, New Yorkers and luminaries toasted the memory of the Brooklyn diva, including Plácido Domingo, accompanied by a then-ursine James Levine for 'Ombra mai fu' or pocket-sized Barbara Walters who read a note on behalf of Sills' daughter Muffy or Carol Burnett's heartbreaking lament at the loss of her close friend and colleague. 

Despite DNA programmed to entertain, Burnett departed the stage in tears, and we understood that the comedienne (and childhood idol -- c'mon: Annie) had a very deep connection to opera and its brightest protagonists. Lately she's been involved in the Music Academy of the West, a Santa Barbara-based organization that backs young classical singers through scholarships. In the role of creative contributor, she recently coached its young singers for its fundraiser gala, Cabaret, joined by Marilyn Horne, a program director at the org (photo above).

Here she is leading a recent masterclass, which is the second time that summer school has looked so cool. (First time = Mr. Shoop!) 

Mitsuko Uchida: Hands Off My Steinways!

Mitsuko Uchida -- our go-to for intelligent, elegant Mozart, Schumann and Schubert -- knows if you've been playing one of her four coveted Steinways. 

"A good car driver will know if someone else has driven their car. It's the same for me: if someone has touched one of my pianos, I will know instantly, because the piano will be cross!"

Read more on her extrasensory pianos, which she regards as sons. 

America's Impresario and The Swedish Nightingale

In a WSJ piece adapted from Brenda Wineapple’s new book about nascent America's biggest dreamers, included is P.T. Barnum's dip into opera as he ushered Swedish soprano Jenny Lind in a sold-out tour across North America in the 1850s.

Stephen Sondheim, The Art of the Musical

The Paris Review excerpts a comprehensive 1997 interview with Stephen Sondheim where the American composer/lyricist talks shop, legacy and everything in between with James Lipton.

 

88 Keys to Lady Edith Crawley's Style

 

At a recent PBS event at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, actress Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith Crawley on Downton Abbey, wore a piano-themed Moschino Cheap and Chic drop-waist, little black dress with a piano-key hemline.

Dario Argento Makes his Opera Debut, Fittingly, with Verdi's Macbeth

While we were busy repressing childhood terrors like fear of the dark, ghosts and rabid dogs (and rabid ghost dogs), horror filmmaker Dario Argento (whose biggest idol is Hitchcock, naturally) harnessed his demons and scared the crap out of his audiences with cheesy 80s/90s thrillers such as Deep Red  and Creepers.

Die hard fans lament Argento's post-90s downtick, but this should make up for it: The Italian filmmaker bows his opera directorial debut this fall in Verdi's Macbeth set in bloody, violent WWI, the landscape haunted by ghosts.

Verdi's Macbeth is archive material to Argento, who used it to frame the plot of his 1987 Italian-language thriller, Opera, (above, dubbed, NSFW for gore, obvs) about a diva in the role of Lady Macbeth (filmed at Teatro Regio di Parma), who is stalked by a bloodthirsty murderer.

Argento elaborated to La Repubblica about his opera debut (all translations OC):

"I set the work during the First World War, the conflict that's the most ferocious and bloody. It will be cast with scenes of fighting and bombings, it will explain what it means to take power with blood. In the tragedy, the diabolical couple's unbalanced:  the black soul is Lady Macbeth. It's the goriest of Shakespeare's tragedies, between crimes and ghosts, it's the perfect environment to create a climate of anguish. Naturally I'll use special effects."

It opens on October 4th at Novara's Teatro Coccia and continues to its co-producers, Teatro Politeama in Catanzaro and Teatro Verdi in Pisa. Casting's still TBA, although Giuseppe Sabbatini is listed as conductor, and (whoops!) Dimitra Theodossiou's website states that she'll be singing Lady Macbeth.

On lead character psychology, Argento said:

"I'm fascinated by the idea that a woman with such grand force, at a certain point, goes crazy and turns weak because she can't stand the tension. It's a tragedy that suits me: Macbeth and the wife are a diabolical couple. She's strong, but he's more servile. It made me think of the Novi Ligure murders -- it's the same dynamic between the two."

We're cool with it -- like Terry Gilliam and Michael Haneke before him -- even if we would have prefered to see movie directors like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino crossover first. We'll wait...

Steamy Siem Breaks Out Paganini for Harper's Bazaar

He's been a tough sell to classical music critics, but violinist Charlie Siem has had no problem enchanting style titles, like Harper's Bazaar, who describes him as, "stupidly good looking". With the help of maximum hold hair gel (and possible tailoring hacks), Siem flays Paganini’s punishing 5th Caprice for the American glossy, filmed by Argentinean fashion photographer Felipe Sanguinetti. Like Siem, Sanguinetti crosses between fashion and classical music -- he's shot portraits of the violinist in the past (as well as Barenboim and Domingo) and snaps production stills at Glyndebourne, Deutsche Oper Berlin and The Royal Opera House.

The Baritone & HARDtalk: Thomas Hampson Shows You How It's Done

Beauty and the beast. (Hint: this time, the blonde isn't the beauty.) Calm down. We're not talking about looks. We're going skin deep -- a turn of phrase burdened by as much double entendre as HARDtalk (the HARD is ~extra hard~ caps lock for plebeians), where Thomas Hampson graciously agreed to a half hour interview with Sarah Montague, who gets, at least, one thing right from her bafflingly-outdated lede by introducing him as an "opera superstar".

We're thrilled that HARDtalk has validated opera as a viable industry and glad that they didn’t tap the usual suspects -- genius/madmen intendants, like Barenboim, who was tied up in his agony & ecstasy BBC Proms Wagner Ring. No stranger to international news outlets, Hampson's humanitarian merits and artistic endeavors make him an excellent interviewee. He's the real deal, far from today's famous-for-being-famous scavengers where celebrity status converges through Amex'd twitter follower hacks and faux awards.

Offstage, Hampson’s philanthropy, backed by deep humanity, makes him unique among his colleagues -- his Heidelberg Lied Academy, Hampsong Foundation and Song of America have created cross-cultural, musical frameworks that will outlast his career (although he’s still going strong at 58). Onstage, his artistry is generous and meticulously prepared, divergent from Montague, who didn't bother to learn the pronunciation of Montserrat Caballé (nor cite an opera singer who, you know, has actually sang onstage in the last decade).

Based on her generalization that opera’s possibly the most expensive, elitist art form in the world, attended by a tiny audience of old, rich, well-educated people, we’re pretty sure that she knew what she thought she was getting into with Hampson by cuing up old BBC Pavarotti interviews and expecting nothing more than a warmly-smiling divo whose hands are more expressive than his words.

The pure magic of the Hampson interview is that HARDtalk's MCs normally spar with presidents who eat road kill for breakfast or venture capitalists with Ivy League braggadocio or billionaire briefcases backed by millionaire press secretaries etc., -- yet humble Hampson, buoyed only by his innate graciousness and intelligence, outclassed someone whose robust paychecks (are supposed to) ensure incisive, well-researched interviews. Hampson’s art wasn’t in playing hardball with an out-of-touch interviewer; it was in not getting lost in it.

Despite relegating opera's sterling ambassador as an oddity who’s devoted his life to entertaining thin slices of gray-haired elitists (when she interviewed Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson last year, did she label his fan base as tattooed, heavy metal degenerates? – don’t know, didn’t watch!), the real mistake is to make this about Montague.

It’s really about the almost-extinct art of being a gentleman, showing the world with poise, patience and (more importantly) humor that opera isn’t populated by hot-tempered, badly mannered, egotistical singers. We'll leave that behavior to the presenters.