Ken Howard's photo of American mezzo Kate Aldrich as Carmen is flawless with bewbage. Kate prepares to sing her last NYC Carmen performance on Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera against Jonas Kaufmann's Don José. Aldrich took over the role after Angela Gheorghiu canceled, the Romanian soprano stating that she was unprepared. Or the dog ate my music score. Or the dog ate my vocal cords.
Click the link below for a close up!
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Jennifer Rivera (below) interviews [friend, neighbor, colleague, and fellow mezzo] Kate Aldrich (above).
In a stunning upset win for the USA -- and the State of Maine -- young Mainer mezzo Kate Aldrich (whom Opera Chic saw as a stunning Adalgisa last year in Bologna) will be Carmen in the Emma Dante (a young emerging Italian director) production conducted by Daniel Barenboim, opening December 7, 2009 as la prima of next season (Jonas Kauffman and Erwin Schrott complete the cast, as previously announced by the company).
Among the highlights of the coming season, besides this production that sounds really interesting -- the director has stated that the inspiration will be Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and we're already intrigued as huge Calvino admirers -- there will be Hans Werner Henze's L'Upupa, finally at la Scala to honor the greatest living composer, a JDF Barbiere, a Norma that worries us since they apparently want to seriously cast Violeta Urmana as the lead, the classic Ronconi Tosca to be conducted by Barenboim, and a few other highlights.
But this is Aldrich's red carpet moment -- the last time la Scala opened with Carmen was in 1984, a controversial production with Domingo/Verrett/Raimondi conducted by Abbado and directed by Piero Faggioni.
***update***
Jeffrey Mitchell from Zemsky Green Management wrote Opera Chic this morning in an email:
Opera Chic stands by her report.
Tonight at the Bayerische Staatsoper, OC's girl Kate Aldrich will be Carmen replacing Marina Domashenko in the title role; and Escamillo will be that guy who sired a child with Anna Netrebko, who anyway is by now accustomed to be upstaged by taller, more interesting women. o hai! it's Christian Van Horn singing Zuniga! It's like all my favorite singers rolled into one, big ~smoking~ production.
The production is the classic Wertmuller/Job Italian job.
It's druid fever up in ~casa O.C.~, as we snagged another edition of the "Passione Lirica - La Musica di Repubblica/L'espresso" series, now spinning the DVD of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna's Norma production from April 2008.
OC was lucky enough to be in the audience for the opening night 7 months ago in Bologna, not wanting to miss Daniela Dessì's first crack at Norma. Accompanied by husband Fabio Armiliato's Pollione & Kate Aldrich's Adalgisa, the entire cast did justice to the Bellini dream.
We were curious to see just how the post-production would excise the nasty sabotage of a rogue cell phone during the opening phrases of "Casta Diva", and we're happy to report that no trace of the shill mechanical ring can be heard. Bravo to the (lol) back-end team, and of course, la Dessì for her elegant grace under fire.
Next up, Fab & Dani are preparing for a NYC ^Gala Pucciniano^ with the Dicapo Opera Theatre, and soloists & members of The Opera Orchestra of New York.
Monday, December 22, 2008 will find the dy-no-mite Italian duo at Rose Theater for a Puccini 150th Anniversary Gala, celebrating the 150th birthday of the dead maestro.
Hosted by Renata Scotto, with appearances by Francisco Casanova, Aprile Millo, Francesca Patané (and others T.B.A.), the evening will boast excerpts from every single Puccini opera. Fo'realio? We humbly request that fake, self-adhesive Puccini-esque mustaches are passed out at the front door and worn by *everyone* in attendance, homage to that famous ladykiller!
We were smitten last April when we went to see Bellini's Norma at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. American mezzo-soprano, Kate Aldrich, won over the cynical been-there/done-that audience with a stellar performance of Adalgisa, and left us reeling over our post-opera tortellini al brodo.
Sign On San Diego (via the San Diego Union Tribune) is currently carrying Ms. Aldrich's profile in their "Walk-In Closet" series, which you can find here. Kate gives us a peek into her [traveling] wardrobe, and shares her system for keeping everything in order. The segment was filmed last February when Kate was in town for the San Diego Opera's Maria Stuarda, where she wowed the audiences with her portrayal of Elisabetta.
Two minutes and thirty-one seconds of heaven! If they did a profile on O.C., you'd need like 10 hours. They call me the Milanese Imelda Marcos. But Aldrich's suitcase offerings aren't too shabby. We'd swap Louboutins with her anytime.
There was a moment the other night, at Teatro Comunale di Bologna, where we decided that we couldn't possibly include Kate Aldrich's Adalgisa in the body of the review of Norma -- because that night belonged to Daniela Dessì, and rightly so, but still Aldrich did so many things that were so very special that she totally deserved a review of her own.
We were first exposed to the Aldrich kind of magic a few years ago, watching the 2001 Aida staged in Busseto's incredibly tiny, 300-seat Teatro Verdi, with a stage as big as your kitchen and an orchestra pit where you can barely shoehorn little more than a string quartet, a unique opera house that OC tries to visit every time she is in the area because it looks like the sort of home movie theater rich people have built for themselves in the basements of their Bel Air homes...only for opera, and like, it's 150 years ago.
That mini-Aida, pocket-size, and full of ideas was one of Franco Zeffirelli's best moments -- even if you don't appreciate Frengo's old skooley supertraditional (and, in later times, borderline trashy) approach.
In that production, Aldrich was a pitch-perfect Amneris, radiating dignity and class. After that she appeared in a lot of productions, from Haendel to Verdi via Donizetti and Bellini with great success; and in Bologna she's a beautifully burnished Adalgisa, perfectly holding her own opposite one of the great singers of today, Daniela Dessì, who wiped the floors of opera houses worldwide with many famous colleagues -- and what a pleasure to see Kate, a native Mainer (who could almost be Dessì's daughter btw) attack her part with confidence, sporting a beautifully burnished voice. But the most striking part of her performance was the deep understanding of the dramatic thrust of Felice Romani's libretto, the devastating moment in which, during "Tremi Tu? E per chi?", at the end of Act I, you can witness Aldrich's Adalgisa heart break on that stage, as Norma says the words, "Trema per te, fellone... pei figli tuoi... per me".
The mention of Pollione's children with Norma is the moment when Adalgisa's dreams come crashing down forever; and Aldrich spends the rest of the opera walking among those ruins, a shell-shocked sonnambula with a broken heart -- if you're good enough you don't need an entire mad scene, but simply a reaction to another singer's line.
Opera, nowadays, is stingy with transcendent moments; Kate Aldrich gave us one of those the other night, and for that we are very grateful.
In the video we embed below you can see her -- and other singers -- rehearse "Lucrezia Borgia" in Turin two onths ago under the watchful eye of conductor Bruno Campanella. Around 4:00 you can see Kate almost fell off a stool, with a bonus of the lulz:
And you got to love the moment when Bruno Campanella, that underrated great conductor, cheerfully explains the comedy hidden in Lucrezia: "When her son gets poisoned for the second time, she says, 'My son, you've been poisoned again?' as if to say, you're really a moron, didn't I warn you about what sort of house this is? And every time I get to this moment I really ask myself, what is this, a tragedy? Because it's supposed to be a tragedy but this looks like comedy to me, frankly..."".