Corriere della Sera's lionized critic Paolo Isotta flexed his acerbic wit (and gave a shout-out to Flaubert's Salammbô) in his review, praising Ekaterina Semenchuk as Amneris and lauding Hui He in the title role as "a full-bodied, gorgeous voice with an exact vibrato that wasn't too much or too little, elegant portamenti, a proper sense of phrasing (if it hadn't been continuously impeded by Noseda) and perfect Italian diction."
Clearly not impressed with conductor Gianandrea Noseda, Isotta went straight up Salinger-vs.-Chaplin mode: "[...] He rises and falls like a baby on a rocking horse, sending kisses to the stage and the pit, imitating the gestures of Oren and Gergiev. On his arms appear bird wings, tired from a flight devoid of light."
It's a relatively declawed (and poetic) criticism from his usual vinegar, like earlier this year when he vitriolically slammed Harding's Verdi and Wagner, which instigated Lissner's banhammer. If Harding can walk it off, Noseda can, too (espeically since we made this adorable photoshop)!
Remember when we reported last month that young Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber would be named new Music Dork (ok ok fine, "Music Director") of Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia after Madrid's historic daily newspaper, ABC, published the news? It's okay if you were sleeping...March 2010 really sucked anyway.
The story also supported that Gianandrea Noseda, Teatro Regio di Torino Principal Conductor, would be called on for maestro support as Guest Conductor when Wellber was out doing his thang: "Gianandrea Noseda será el director musical invitado".
We were just notified that after news broke last month, Noseda and his manager (Ettore Volontieri) said no to any sort of position within the orchestra owning to an overbooked schedule, and called for a retraction via a letter to Intendant of Palau de les Arts, Helga Schmidt. Musical America ran the story, an excerpt of Noseda's statement here:
“I have learned with surprise and disappointment that you have announced that I will be the Principal Guest Conductor of your Theatre. It was a pleasure to conduct your orchestra on the occasion of the concert on February 11 and also a nice professional experience, but as I told you clearly during our meeting my schedule does not allow me to take on any long term commitments. I have also clearly asked you to be in touch with my manager Ettore Volontieri to explore the possibility of a future collaboration, in connection to co-production projects with the Teatro Regio (Torino).”
We're just trying to get the word out. If you want to catch Noseda in action, do not -- I REPEAT DO NOT -- book a flight to Valencia. Noseda is so outta there.
On Wednesday's night, Laurent Pelly's "Traviata" (first seen in oil-rich Santa Fe with La Nata Dessay) will open Teatro Regio di Torino's season, conducted by Giananadrea Noseda, with Elena Mosuc and Francesco Meli. It will be broadcast live on Italy's Radio 3.
Gergiev invited him to St Petersburg to the Rimsky-Korsakov Festival as
an observer. Noseda, a middle-class son of Milan, arrived in February
1994 with Russia mired in post-communist austerity. “That was a huge
experience. It changed my mind not only towards music but also life,
because I couldn’t find food. I lost 6kg in ten days. That makes a huge
impact on you.” He didn’t speak a word of Russian, and survived on
apples brought from home. But musically it opened a gate.
OC's dear Gianandrea Noseda, today in The Times, talks about dieting for your art, about Russia, about spaghetti & mandolins.
Il Trovatore never ceases to amaze Opera Chic -- its complex, Medieval grace is so very hard to capture on stage and especially in the orchestra pit: the opera contains some of Verdi's best music -- Il Balen del suo Sorriso is very possibly the most beautiful love song in opera, even surpassing the shattering raw emotion of Traviata -- and some of his ugliest. Whatever it is that Verdi-haters hate about Verdi, the Trovatore has in spades -- the sheer improbability of much of the action, the hyperreality of that disorienting setting. And for a conductor you have the constant challenges from that sneaky brass, that elusive pulse (accelerate at your own risk -- Trovatore's score is like a vintage Ferrari, you'll end up in a ditch if you drive too fast and will mercilessly stall if you don't rev that monster engine up), those terribly tricky shifts of musical and emotional gear.
It fills Opera Chic's heart with happiness that BBC Philharmonic and Teatro Regio di Torino Principal Conductor, il maestro Gianandrea Noseda, a man of great talent and deep musical intelligence, has beautifully pulled off Trovatore at the Met -- he has tamed Verdi's monster of a score in one of the world's leading houses.
Sweet SarahB, the woman who sees everything, as always was there.
Surprise choice? If you think so, you have never heard him conduct. Fabio Luisi is Opera Chic's Conductor of the Year 2008 because he has a German brain and an Italian heart. Because with the Dresden Staatskapelle – “Dresden’s gold”, wrote the following day august Corriere della Sera newspaper -- he appeared at la Scala, in a benefit concert, and showed those of us who were ready to listen that Heldenleben (with the original finale, and Konzertmeister Kai Vogler teaching how you play the violin) is a masterpiece of subtlety and even irony far different than the usual windbaggy, sappy, irony-free piece we’re accustomed to hear (and that includes Herbie, genius as he was, photographed with his airplane and his Porsche, triumphant over his enemies). Luisi can do Wagner, he can do Italian opera (AND he recorded “Jerusalem”, that forgotten Verdi masterpiece). Because he once conducted in a Pink Panther costume (long story). Because his website seriously rules. Because he published his autobiography in Germany and Austria, and he isn’t even 50. He went so native that now he even speaks Italian with a faint Teutonic inflection. He has two cute pugs. Luisi downright rawks.
SINGER OF THE YEAR, FEMALE Diana Damrau Because if an alien race of giant rabid mutant penguins threatened to invade Earth she’d wear her Queen of the Night costume and she’d stare them into submission even before opening her mouth. Then she’d proceed to bash all their heads with a baseball bat and she’d make herself an alien penguin sandwich. On rye. With mayo.
SINGER OF THE YEAR, MALE Ernesto Palacio What? He retired years ago? Yes, he did – as a singer, OK. But he manages Juan Diego Florez in a way that he makes us wish he ran the careers of so many singers of great talent we see crash and burn for so many reasons. Maestro Palacio is behind Juan Diego’s decision to drop for the time being the Duke of Mantua after one preview in Lima and one run in Dresden; Palacio understands that the increased visibility that Verdi gives you is not worth damaging your voice; Verdi (except for Fenton, but you don’t really build a career on that role) is too heavy for Juan Diego’s perfectly tuned instrument. Hence, he will not push his voice to do Verdi. Better to be the king of Rossini and Donizetti, “el mejor tenor libero de la historia” in Placido Domingo’s words, than to be just another tenor who pushed his voice and crashed and burned. Opera Chic knows he’s busy but she’d like Palacio to be an adviser for her personal decisions, too – like a life coach. Fish or chicken? Ask Palacio. Seaside or mountains? Ask Palacio. Creme brulee or panettone? Ask Palacio.
OPERA PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR Salomé, with Nicola Beller Carbone, directed by Robert Carsen, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, Teatro Regio di Torino Salome in a Vegas casino vault? Horrible slimy old men stripping down during the dance of the seven veils instead of Salome? Salome surviving the end of the opera, in a genius plot twist? Leave it to Carsen to twist the Strauss opera on its ear finding new layers of meaning in that wonderful way of his. Whenever Carsen is on, he’s totally on. Noseda (OC did not hear him conduct when she saw Salome, it was his night off, but she's well aware of his work) may be the most underrated major conductor out there. And Teatro Regio di Torino does very interesting first class productions without the same massive amount of public financing enjoyed for example by la Scala.
NEW WORK OF THE YEAR “Elogium Musicum”, Hans Werner Henze On October 2, 2008, Riccardo Chailly conducted in Leipzig Hans Werner Henze's latest work, Elogium Musicum Amatissimi Amici Nunc Remoti, the 25-minutes elegy Henze wrote -- with prominent Classics professor Franco Serpa's Latin text -- in memory of Henze's companion of more than 40 years, Fausto Moroni, who died unexpectedly in April 2007. It's the story of two falcons always flying side by side, until one of them disappears from the sky; the music begins as a heartbreakingly beautiful string quartet, in quiet and serenity that gets increasingly animate -- then the second movement, "Nox", Night, becomes dissonant and chaotic and upsetting, a tempest of sorrow.
It's a stunning work by a man who had to endure a crushing blow and nevertheless turned it into art, a work made even more heartbreaking by the fact that, as the music in the finale seems to resign itself to disappear into nothingness, an alto saxophone appears, faintly at first, then stronger: it's Fausto. And Hans Werner Henze's dark night of the soul ends in the warm light of an Italian dawn.
Well, what to say of a work of such power? In the indifference of the blissfully distracted American media, German opinion immediately understood that we are dealing with a historic work here: Neues Deutschland called the elegy Henze's "Opus summum", the pinnacle of his work. The economy and precision of Henze's writing reminded Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Verdi's Quattro Pezzi Sacri. "History is being made again, finally, in Leipzig", exulted the Leipziger Volkszeitung.
This is just a silly blog of a silly girl somewhere on the Internet; and our calling Elogium Musicum the new work of the year 2008 is nothing. But our admiration is real -- as is the timeless beauty of that elegy.
DUMBEST DECISION OF THE YEAR La Scala unions' strike for 3 nights of Dudamel's Boheme. The winner, hands down, is the Scala unions who senselessly -- and masochistically -- chose to sink the first three nights of Gustavo Dudamel's "La Bohéme" at la Scala. A hot young conductor, an interesting young cast (among them the really cool James Valenti) and Franco Zeffirelli's super-famous staging of the work, all at la Scala, made for a really cool event. The cancellation created a flurry of reimbursements for the three sold-out shows, didn't do anything to advance the contract drama that was protracted to this month a few hours before la prima and is probably not entirely over yet anyway. What it did, it punished the audience and disrespected a conductor who had already conducted an interesting Don Giovanni at la Scala -- but who won't appear in another opera here in Milan for a while now. The opera had the eventual greenlight by the unions in the second half of July, in the semi-deserted city, in the silence of the international media -- despite Dudamel's prominence -- and even hometown paper Corriere della Sera relegated the show to a small notice. But then la Scala's leadership in shooting themselves in the foot is a well known fact.
Below, Dudamel's triumph in Berlin with the same opera.
Robert Carsen, nowhere to be seen these days around Milan since his problematic Candide last season (the one with George W. Bush, Silvio Berlusconi and other world leaders dancing in their underwares that underwent a bit of a rewrite before it was introduced to la Scala audience's delicate sensibilities), is about to introduce his Salome (his second, actually, since he already did one in the early 1990s with Kent Nagano using the French language libretto) to audiences in Turin.
One week from now the Teatro Regio di Torino will be turned, Ocean's 11 style, into a luxury casino's vault, complete with big screens with the "live" footage of security cameras around the casino's floor, for Carsen's Salome.
Among Carsen's ideas, besides the Ocean's 11 casino thing, the fact that Salome won't get n4ked but a bunch of lewd onlookers will -- Nicola Beller Carbone will stay clothed, random old fat maen will drop trou. Grammy winner Mark S. Doss, as Jokanaan, in a rare concession to orthodoxy, will indeed lose his head.
The recording industry deems a record gold if it sells 500,000 copies
and platinum if it sells 1 million. So what do you call a free
classical download that was accessed 1.4 million times over a brief
period? Shocking, that's what. Yet that's what happened when live
recordings of Gianandrea Noseda's conducting of Beethoven's complete
symphonies with the BBC Philharmonic were made available for free over
the Internet for three weeks in 2005.
Young Milanese maestro (and BBC Philharmonic Chief Conductor) Gianandrea Noseda, who looks like the cute shy lawyer who lives down the hall and, sadly, maybe for his good manners and his lack of arrogance and bravado gets more often than not forgotten whenever people discuss really, really talented conductors -- the wonderful Roberto Abbado is another victim of the same phenomenon -- is currently getting the ovations he deserves: nowadays he's burning the PSO's Heinz Hall down with a series of concerts with program of rare elegance and refinement: Respighi's "Metamorphoseon Modi XII" and his "Burlesque" (Noseda is recording some bada$$ Respighi here), Bruno Maderna's "Music of Gaiety" -- in which the super-avantgarde BM orchestrated pieces
from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, a manuscript of keyboard works from
the 16th and 17th centuries -- and much more.
Noseda is -- very smartly -- proceeding with small, if elegant, steps in his opera conducting career: but OC is ready to bet that, in a few years, we'll have in him one of our most interesting opera conductors.
Yesterday's Corriere della Sera carried a big interview with Turin's Teatro RegioMusic Director & Artistic Director Gianandrea Noseda: the maestro will conduct on Monday night at la Scala the Scala orchestra (Shostakovich's Suite on Verses of Michelangelo op.145, and Beethoven's Eroica).
"It's a strong, big emotion to conduct for the first time the Scala orchestra. To me, a Milanese who graduated from Milan's Conservatorio where I studied piano, composition and conducting, la Scala is like home. I have to demonstrate my worth".
Noseda had already conducted at la Scala, but with the Marinskjj orchestra (Opera Chic's favorite drunken genius, Valery Gergiev, is a Noseda fan). Then Noseda explains how he used to sneak in the loggione as a student:
"I had very little money but so much passion. I remember a concert, Georg Solti conducting Brahms , the 1st and the 3rd. This debut is a great accomplishment for me, prominent Italian conductors work at la Scala now: Chailly, Gatti".
A not so subtle dig at the recent Muti era when Italian conductors didn't appear much at la Scala.
Two thumbs up to Milanese conductor Gianandrea Noseda (who is currently enjoying a small, deserved triumph with the Robert Carsen-directed Rusalka in Turin). Cherubic-faced Noseda has been nominated Musical Director of Teatro Regio in Turin, and in his first interview with hometown newspaper La Stampa explains that he'll conduct with "quiet folly". Coming soon in Turin under Noseda's directorship: Falstaff, Carsen's staging of Salome, and an intriguing staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Mendelssohn's music.
Opera Chic's suggestions to add a bit of folly to the quietness: a Japan-themed, cosplay-heavy Falstaff with manga sets; ditch Carsen's staging and cast pr0n empress Jenna Jameson as Salome and have her lyp-synch, Brecht-style, an old scratchy Birgit Nilsson LP (btw, has anyone seen Jena lately [link maybe NSFW]...she's gotten all anorexic and has the omg-im-loosing-my-hair-Posh-cut); and for A Midsummer Night's Dream Opera Chic has only one word: smurfs ewoks.
