Following the Sunday matinee of Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”) at the Metropolitan Opera, the composer and some of the principals joined general manager Peter Gelb onstage for a post-performance conversation.
Seeing Frank in the flesh set me thinking: how many Pulitzer Prize winners (for music) have I encountered in person? Alphabetically, I think this is a comprehensive list: William Bolcom, George Crumb, David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Wynton Marsalis, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Moravec, Bernard Rands, Shulamit Ran, Ned Rorem, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, Melinda Wagner, George Walker, Richard Wernick, Julia Wolfe.
Some of these composers I saw more than once, a few were chance encounters, some I basically said hello to or had a quick exchange with, some of them I interviewed, a few I had actual, candid conversations with.
Those of you who are a little older or who had more mobility than I did as a teenager may have interacted with more of the legends I would have loved to have seen. Sadly, for all my precocity, I was somewhat of a provincial child and not very proactive about figuring out how to buy concert tickets and climb on a bus to New York or Philadelphia.
I would be delighted to read about any of your Pulitzer-winner encounters, if you care to share them in the comments below!
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PHOTO (left-to-right): librettist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz, Pulitzer Prize winning 0composer Gabriela Lena Frank, countertenor Nils Wanderer (Leonardo), baritone Carlos Álvarez (Diego Rivera), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Frida Kahlo), general director Peter Gelb.
Gabriella Reyes (Catrina, Keeper of the Dead) was already backstage – Gelb explained that it takes an hour for her to remove her costume and make-up – and Yannick Nézet-Séguin was off to Germany to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.
Tag: Opera
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A Frank Recollection of Pulitzer Prize Winners
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Opera Weekend: “Andrea Chénier” at OperaDelaware; “Frida y Diego” at the Met
Since I was taken ill a few weeks ago, when I was hoping to get in to the Metropolitan Opera for a Saturday matinee of “Eugene Onegin,” my ticket was exchanged for a new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank, longtime composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose stock has since skyrocketed, as she was recently awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. I had intended to catch “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” anyway, at the movies, as part of the Met Live in HD series (on May 30 or June 3). That said, how lucky I was to actually experience it in the house!
The opera, a postscript to the tempestuous real-life love story of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is ingeniously set during El Día del Los Muertos – the Day of the Dead. Kahlo’s spirit returns in a kind of reverse Orpheus and Eurydice story to guide Rivera to the afterlife. A great many operas can be summed up in a line or two, but any such synopsis cannot do justice to the Met’s production design (by Jon Bausor) and choreography (by director Deborah Colker). Predictably, some of Kahlo’s most iconic paintings are recreated, and Diego perches on a scaffold before one of his murals in its early stages, but the eyepopping supernatural element brings a whole other element of interest.
As with this season’s immigrant experience/proto-superhero comic book “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” another Met debut, I was set to wondering how well the work succeeds as an opera, as opposed to a functional score elevated by all the superlative stagecraft. As I remarked about “Kavalier & Clay,” I’m not sure if the music in itself fits the bill, but I am unshakeable in my conviction that it’s one hell of a show. Frankly, comparing the two is kind of like comparing a corned beef sandwich and a tamale. Anyway, even a fabulous score can misalign on the opera stage, where words and music, conflict and emotion need to strike a perfect balance. There are plenty of great composers who have been unable to stick the landing.
My impression of “Frida y Diego,” on first hearing, is that the music is on an entirely different level than Mason Bates’ for “Kavalier & Clay,” perhaps less overtly melodic (“K&C” was almost like a movie in sound and execution), yet ultimately having greater resonance. The piece is marvelously orchestrated (although I can’t say I could really make out some of the more novel touches, such as when one of the percussionists ran bows along the keys of a marimba). But not all operas are driven by melody. It’s not that “Frida y Diego” is not “melodic” (it’s definitely tonal), it just doesn’t really have any big tunes. So don’t go into it expecting to luxuriate in bel canto.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have arias and even some showstopping moments. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, as always, is excellent as Frida – and my, did the make-up people transform her into the spitting image of Kahlo – even when she was called upon to lie down or execute certain pieces of choreography.
However, soprano Gabriella Reyes brought it big time as Catrina, Keeper of the Dead, transcending, rather than being swallowed up by, her incredible skull-and-bones costume. She positively owned the role.
It says something for countertenor Nils Wanderer that up against such a powerhouse that he would make such a strong impression as Leonardo, a Greta Garbo impersonator(!) dressed as Queen Christina. It’s hard to explain this element, but just go with it. It’s oddly moving, and it works. Also, watch “Queen Christina.” It’s a great movie.
It was good to see baritone Carlos Álvarez back on the Met stage, but especially in the scene where he’s standing on the scaffold, the acoustic did his voice no favors. It’s not that he sounded bad – he did not – it’s just that he didn’t carry as well as did his higher-voiced colleagues. With six levels and close to 4,000 seats, the Met is an enormous house. Speaking of enormous, I do hope that the costumers gave him a padded suit to play Rivera. I would hate to think that he let himself go to the point that he now has the physique of Fred Mertz. Since Rivera generally looked like Darius Milhaud on a bad day, I would think that it was an artistic transformation.
The skeletal dancers busted some very impressive moves. Some of them would not have been out of place in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Even more astonishing was the ability of the dancers to stay in sync with one another in situations where they were either in cumbersome-looking, sight-obstructing masks or otherwise blocked from one another’s view.
Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin was in the pit. In his other role, as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he’s had a wealth of experience conducting Frank’s music. He didn’t conduct with quite the brio he can sometimes bring, whether you want it or not, but here that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Really, it’s a more atmospheric piece. There was plenty of energy onstage, and Frank’s sound-world kept the ear engaged, with the character of Leonardo getting the most sensuous music. I confess, there were times, given the subject matter, that I wondered if I might be watching a dry run for Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” set to make its Met debut next season.
Whether or not Frank’s opera will endure, no one can predict with any certainty, but experiencing it now at the Met is definitely worthwhile. You won’t leave the house (or the movie theater) whistling any of the tunes, but it is an absorbing magical realism experiment, and I think it works. I wouldn’t mind catching it again. Perhaps I will, at the movie theater.
Incredibly, it turned out to be a two-opera weekend for me, as Friday evening I drove down to Wilmington for OperaDelaware’s concluding performance of Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier.” This was a more traditional, blood-and-thunder operatic experience, composed during the height of the verismo craze (the libretto is by frequent Puccini collaborator Luigi Illica), though set during the French Revolution.
The work was sung with great passion by soprano Toni Marie Palmertree, tenor Dane Suarez, and baritone Gerald Moon. (Palmertree went for broke as Tosca at last year’s Princeton Festival; she’ll return to Princeton next month as Madama Butterfly – a role she sang this year at the Met!) Contralto Daryl Freedman deserves special mention for her poignant, showstopping aria as Madelon, a blind woman nearing the end of her days, who commits her grandson, the last of her line, to the cause of the Revolution.
The opera was presented with minimal props, a few tables and chairs, and some bleachers in the courtroom scene. Singers were in period costume. Stylized, bisected windows formed the backdrop throughout, but the mood was varied, in no small part through skillful lighting, whether supporting a garish party of willfully oblivious aristocrats or doomed lovers languishing in a prison cell. Most effective was a silhouetted guillotine, an imaginative touch toward the end, its blade dropping with shattering finality at the curtain. The chorus sang lustily, lending the performance a sense of grandeur and scope.
The experience was enhanced by the charmingly intimate and historic 1,140-seat Wilmington Grand Opera House. With its frescos and muraled ceilings, tiered wooden seats, and wraparound stalls and balcony, the theater embodies a kind of 19th century craftsmanship one rarely encounters these days. It’s practically a toy theater compared to the Met, more in line with what I imagine would have been the norm with many European houses, back in the day. Ingmar Bergman would have loved this place. Perhaps Wes Anderson too. What a great venue!
The orchestra played well, if not impeccably. The fact that it did play so well made the (very) occasional cracked note in the pit serve as a reminder that this was, after all, live music-making, not karaoke, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The dramatic sweep of the performance was authentic and all the more compelling for it. How many freelance musicians and singers are out there, playing regional houses, and making music of this quality?
Conductor Anthony Barrese directed a flowing, emotionally immediate performance. He generously offered the baton to an assistant for the opera’s eventful second act, citing the fact that he himself was only able to learn on the job and opportunities to do so in opera are scant. In the event – to my ears, anyway – the assistant acquitted himself beautifully. Barrese also provided one of the program booklet’s informative historical notes. He and outgoing general director Brendan Cooke, who share a rich history spanning decades and several opera companies, exchanged some poignant words before the evening’s performance. So not all the tears were on the stage!
I should mention that the stage director, Octavio Cardenas, also contributed to the booklet. His thought-provoking introduction brings into focus the dangerous – and innately human – factors that contributed to the tragedy and violence of a political movement that turned into one of history’s most horrific bloodbaths. (Keep in mind, the opera was written scarcely a hundred years after the period in which it is set.)
“This production of ‘Andrea Chénier’ is driven by a central question: what happens when idealism stops being a guiding principle and becomes a form of blindness? Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the opera is not presented as a celebration of political awakening, but as an examination of how moral certainty can harden into cruelty. The Revolution in this reading is not simply an historical force, but a mirror of human nature itself, capable of both aspiration and destruction, often at the same time.”
And later…
“Ultimately the production emphasizes that human nature resists purity. Even the most noble ideas are filtered through fear, desire, and self-preservation. The opera’s final moments do not offer resolution in a political sense, but instead reveal a more intimate truth: that love and cruelty, clarity and blindness, idealism and violence can coexist in the same human heart.”
Bravo. And God help us all.
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Gabriella Reyes raises the dead as Catrina in “El último sueño de Frida y Diego”
Isabel Leonard as Frida
Skeletons in rehearsal
Five more performances of “Frida y Diego,” through June 5
https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diego/
Can’t make it to New York? The Met Live in HD will bring it to select movie theaters, May 30 & June 3 (search by clicking the red bar beneath the banner, at the right of the screen)
https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diego/
OperaDelaware website (next season yet to be announced)
https://www.operade.org/ -
Felicity Lott: Aptly Named, She Will Be Missed
I am saddened to learn of the death of Dame Felicity Lott.
I never saw the English soprano live, and yet somehow from her recordings, performance videos, and vivacious interviews, I came to adore her. She seemed like a genuinely nice person and an inextinguishable spirit. Now, only days after revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis, she is gone.
“Flott,” as she was known to her colleagues and fans, earned her BA in French and Latin from Royal Holloway, University of London. During the course of her studies, she spent a year in France – and she certainly put it to good use, as she was always very much at home in French chansons.
She also excelled in Britten and Richard Strauss, in opera and recital, in drama and comedy. It seemed there was nothing she could not do well. Often, she performed in tandem with Graham Johnson, her accompanist since her student years.
Lott died on Friday at the age of 79. Only a few days before, she gave an interview on BBC Four, exuding her usual warmth, candor, humor and grace, in which she shared her terminal status. She said she had known about it for nearly a year.
“I’m just so happy at the moment,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to be sad, because I’m having a ball. I can’t understand it, because I’m not very well.
“I’ve known about being ill for almost a year and, my goodness, it was a shock. But here I am for a bit longer, and I’ve had time to look back and think, “Golly, you lucky thing… you’ve met all these wonderful people and had a wonderful life. You’ve been all over the world!”
Time and again, critics and admirers have cited the beauty and humanity of her characterization of the Marschallin in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier.”
Of her many recordings I have broadcast over the years, this is one of my favorites. Ernest Chausson’s “Poèmes de l’amour et de la mer” (“Poems of Love and the Sea”) incorporates two texts by Maurice Bouchor. The poems, “The Flowers of the Waters” and “The Death of Love,” are separated by a brief orchestral interlude.
Lott as Helen of Troy… with sheep!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KI_IhUEdTUEverything on this album, “Felicity Lott s’amuse,” is a delight, as may be divined from her Satie. By coincidence, today is Satie’s birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfrsUsRw1Q
Rest in peace, Dame Felicity.
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Fancy Feline Footware on “The Lost Chord”
You can tune an orchestra, but you can’t tun-a fish.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we put the “cat” in Catalan music with selections from Xavier Montsalvatge’s one-act opera “Puss in Boots.”
“Puss in Boots,” Montsalvatge’s first opera, was composed in 1947. We all know the story. The tale, in its best-known guise, was published by Charles Perrault in 1695 as one of the “Tales of Mother Goose.”
A poor miller laments his inheritance. Most of the family property – the mill and the mules – goes to his elder brothers, and all that’s left for him is an unprepossessing cat. He wonders of what use to him a cat could possibly be. He contemplates eating it, perhaps using the skin to make a hat. The cat, however, promptly endears himself, and offers to gain his master a fortune, a kingdom, and the hand of a beautiful princess. All he asks in exchange is a pair of boots to spare his feet, a stylish hat with a plume, a cape, and a sword fashioned out of bone.
Since the cat presents him with a ring from the hand of the princess, the Miller considers it a fair deal, and sets about getting, by hook or by crook, whatever the cat desires.
Throughout the course of the story, with his cunning and superior wits, the cat is able to deliver on everything he promises.
We’ll heard selections from a 2004 recording on the Columna Musica label, with Argentine mezzo-soprano Marisa Martins as Puss (an unusual take on the traditional “trouser role”) and tenor Antonio Comas as the Miller. The Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu is conducted by Antoni Ros Marba.
Listen for charming cat-like touches in the strings and the use of piano throughout to emulate the decorative style of 18th century recitative.
That’s “Fur Love and Valor” – highlights from Xavier Montsalvatge’s “Puss in Boots” – on “The Lost Chord, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu -
Timothée Chalamet and the Performing Arts: No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?
Trolling Timothée Chalamet for his blithe dismissal of opera and ballet as no longer relevant is so last month. But the media is not done with it. This morning a friend texted me a link to an article from the BBC in which Sir Alex Beard, chief executive of the Royal Ballet and Opera, thanks Chalamet for actually boosting ticket sales. Of course he did! Because this tempest in a teapot actually put opera and ballet in the news. And there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
In case, like most of the world, you’ve already moved on, Chalamet’s misstep occurred during an exchange with Matthew McConaughey about the preservation of cinema, which took place at the University of Texas before a live audience. “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,” Chalamet let drop, presumably to underline the comparative vitality and relevance of film. Carried away by his own eloquence, he continued, “‘… even though, like, no one cares about this anymore.’”
In all likelihood immediately sensing the remark was a little extreme (his own family includes three generations of ballet dancers), he quickly added, “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.” Then he actually made it worse with an aside: “I just lost 14 cents in viewership.” Ouch.
Not the end of the world, of course, but in the age of social media, where sharpened knives are no further away than a cell phone or a computer keyboard and everyone is looking for a chance to be offended, Chalamet’s attempts to come across as a regular, relatable dude were received as fightin’ words.
It’s not hard to understand why they would get a rise out of anyone in the arts – who wants to be told that their life’s passion is meaningless? – but the wider backlash irrupted into a dogpile. Yeah, he’s an ignorant jackass, but so what? That’s democracy.
Widespread indignation, naturally, brings out the vultures, carpetbaggers, and trolls, so that following the initial salvo of outrage came all the reactionary posts, articles, and cartoons lampooning everyone for pearl-clutching by asking the rhetorical question, when was the last time any of you have been to an opera or a ballet?
For myself, I can say truthfully that I’ve been to more performing arts events in the past few years than I ever have. But I realize I am not widely representative of John Q. Public.
Actually, some of the arts organizations themselves did some of the best trolling. I’m not sure that any of them outdid Seattle Opera, which immediately responded with a 14-percent discount on tickets when using the promotional code TIMOTHEE. That was savage
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From a certain point of view, perhaps counterintuitively, the Chalamet kerfuffle is proof that the arts are still powerful. The problem is not relevance, as art will always be relevant; it’s lack of exposure.
Time was when kids were exposed to the arts at school. At home, they encountered Arthur Fiedler, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Metropolitan Opera on PBS. Pavarotti and Virgil Fox were on talk shows. Rudolf Firkušný and Manuel Barrueco did television commercials. Samuel Ramey was on “Sesame Street,” singing about the letter “L.” Bugs Bunny cross-dressed to Wagner. Danny Kaye, in front of an orchestra, and Victor Borge, at the piano, made our parents laugh, and us too. Classical music was still a part of the conversation.
But somewhere along the way, some fat cats in a boardroom somewhere began to wonder why in the world the media was wasting valuable resources on all this long-hair stuff, when it could be maximizing profits by dumbing down and squeezing juice from the wallets of the lowest common denominator.
In the meantime, there was a longstanding tradition among populist entertainers of mocking the arts. So you have The Three Stooges flipping grapes and bananas into opera singers’ mouths. Not that I don’t love that stuff. Anything with staid traditions and certain protocols is easy to ridicule. Comedy mocks the establishment. It punches up, seldom down. To really enjoy music, you have to sit still and pay attention and actually listen to it. That’s just the way music and theater work. But I admit, it can seem ridiculous to an outsider, especially to one with no experience of it.
That said, the arts are no more “elitist” than rock concerts or sporting events, and they are often a lot less expensive. What’s more, they lend just as much to the economy, as people who attend concerts have to park, they have to eat, they like to shop, and since concerts frequently take place in cities, ticket-holders often come to town early and take in other attractions. A lot of businesses benefit. Also, nobody drinks too much and there’s comparatively little property damage afterward.
I find, once the novelty wears off, that the average sporting event has stretches more boring than anything I’ve ever endured in an opera house. Presumably the fans hang in there for the high points – the adrenaline rush of a touchdown or a homerun, the thrill of a close contest as the clock runs down, the euphoria of victory, the camaraderie of a roaring crowd.
We experience similar sensations in the performing arts: the emotional impact of an acrobatic aria, the grace and physicality of ballet, the spinetingling climax of a grand romantic symphony. Just like with a ballgame, not every experience is a world-beater, but when it’s at its best, there are moments you will carry with you for the rest of your life.
Moreover, it reminds us of the necessity of beauty and keeps us in touch with our shared humanity. That somebody born 150 years ago and lived their life in a foreign land without what we take for modern conveniences can continue to communicate with us, and even move us, in a language that transcends discernible words is miraculous.
If an orchestra plays and no one is there to hear it, does it still make music? Whether or not Chalamet really meant what he said, the performing arts endure for those of us who will have them. The public just needs to be reminded that they’re there. So yes, thank you, Timothée Chalamet.
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