Opera Chic

OC & Auditorium Magazine: Nicolas Altstaedt & Dichterliebe

How thrilled were we to interview young cellist Nicolas Altstaedt for October's austere Black & White issue of Auditorium Magazine? Pretty dang thrilled. Onstage, the soft-spoken, Berlin-based soloist delights with his two cellos, young and old -- a 1789 Giulio Cesare Gigli and a 2012 Robert König -- turned out in scruffy-lux Issey Miyake gear. Offstage, he's a dream boss as the artistic director of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival. Download some black & white swoon right here.

We also reviewed the Jan Vogler & Hélène Grimaud Schumann Fantasiestücke & Dichterliebe CD, a super-friend dialogue between two artists, Vogler's cello ripping through Heine's poems. Novel and unexpected, this one's not for the Lieder purists.

The latest issue (which is sadly OC-free) switches back to color.

 

OC in September Print: Auditorium Magazine & Opera Now Magazine -- Pisaroni, Naples & Verona

OC loves her opera/performing arts glossies so much that she would sucker-punch a shark's toothy snout if he tried to swim off with them. (No Animals Were Harmed ® in the making this metaphor.)

This summer, between G&Ts at Armani's 7th floor masculine-grey lounge (with Monkey 47 Schwarzwald, Mr. Armani's favorite gin) and rosemary mint juleps, OC escaped Milan's oppressive heat to even more oppressively-steamy domestic cities -- Naples and Verona -- on behalf of her beloved, darling glossies.

For Auditorium Magazine, we spent a couple sweltering, fragrant days in jolly Naples at the historic, opulent Teatro di San Carlo for the world premiere of NYC-based Chinese choreographer Shen Wei's Carmina Burana, the ubiquitous Carl Orff scenic cantata that's been spun into hilarious parodies (like 'Gopher Tuna'). For more vicarious adventures, follow the Ed-in-Chief's rich travels through its official twitter account. PDF here. O fortuna!

For Opera Now Magazine, we put on Balenciaga silk and Jil Sander heels for the Fondazione Arena di Verona's 100th birthday celebration on August 10th, the feast day of San Lorenzo marked by Perseid meteor showers, la notte di stelle cadenti. Onstage, a century-old art deco Aida by 20th century architect Ettore Fagiuoli rolled out under shooting stars. PDF here and here. 

We also chatted with spirited Italian bass-baritone, Luca Pisaroni, who was raised in Verdi’s hometown of Busseto, and despite the dearth of native Verdian bass-baritones (let's face it, tenors, too), he's only sung in Italy four times since his international debut in 2002 (Salzburg, Don Giovanni Masetto). In fluent English that bubbled with sardonic Italian wit, he spoke about his absence from his native 'terre verdiane', especially during this 200th bicentennial Verdi birth year, with the exception of a one-off Verdi Gala held in Busseto's sweet Piazza Verdi in June, where he sang against father-in-law Thomas Hampson. PDF here.

Now, go support your opera and performing arts magazines with digital and print subscriptions.

OC & Auditorium Magazine: Ballo at La Scala & Rigoletto at Opernhaus Zürich

There's an old expression (extrapolated from Greek granddaddy Aesop) that postulates, "Don't judge a book by it's cover."

Haaaaa. C'mon.

The other day as we were reading the July/August double-issue of Auditorium Magazine with its mixed media, artfully-commissioned cover (inspired by Siegfried's Nothung fetish -- "stiff and firm it is, masterful the hard steel: soon it will draw hot blood!"), we looked up from the pages and there was Cartier ice around our neck, statement Nikes on our feet and Madonna's masseuse docked her iPod to vintage Massive Attack and offered us tantric massage. That never happens when we read The Economist!

With the launch of its English edition in April, Auditorium brings magazine milieu back to an era that merited back-edition archives as collectibles. We discovered it in April at the ROH gift shop when we visited London (it's also stocked in NYC at the 57th Street Rizzoli) and we were charmed by its glossy covers and thick-as-thieves matte paper stock in large format, but we stayed for its cutting-edge graphic design, genre-killing content and juicy exclusives/collaborations. Between editions, we're hooked on editor-in-chief Desmond Chewyn's postcards from the world's most covetable performing arts venues.

And now, as proud contributor, we point you to a couple reviews that we've recently penned.

Men Behaving Badly: From Zürich, we loved Tatjana Gürbaca's youthful, new Rigoletto at Opernhaus Zürich's Zürcher Festspiele -- modulated, modern and faithful to the libretto with Fabio Luisi's meticulous packaging and Saimir Pirgu's stellar Duke.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: From La Scala, we endured Un ballo in maschera under Daniele Rustioni's anemic baton, much in need of beef & iron, in Damiano Michieletto's (dramaturgically patriotic) update, which was wrathfully-contested by Milan's public.

All Things Egypt: Super Avanti Auditorium Magazine

Exhibit A: The impossibly thin, eternally cat-eyed ghost of Liz Taylor's 1963 Egyptian Queen laid with Bulgari jewels, courted by the glitterati in late May at the Cannes Film Festival for a 50th anniversary Cleopatra viewing at Cannes Film Festival.

Exhibit B: Next week, Arena di Verona fêtes its 100 anniversary season with a La Fura dels Baus Aida (the Egyptian-style Verdi opera inaugurated its 1913 season), Omer Meir Wellber on the podium. *pssst* Italy's Classica will relay a live stream and ZDF will transmit their own version two days later stamped by odd couple Nina Eichinger and Rolando Villazón.

Exhibit C: Coveted independent performing arts glossy, Auditorium Magazine, celebrates its newly-launched European edition with Hiam Abbass on its June cover, above, taken from David Krippendorff's Nothing Escapes My Eyes, a short film about cultural identity shifts via Aida/Cairo, filming this summer. (Although so not cool was the recent Cairo Opera House strike earlier this month that slashed a performance of Aida.)

May's cover, below, featured Finnish dancer and choreographer Tero Saarinen in Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, the Italian-born designer of the French fashion house and BFF of Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kanye. With a whole classical elements /earth/wind/fire/ thing going on, we can't wait for the next cover.