Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Opera

Bidu Sayão Comic Brazil’s Opera Superhero

Who really cares about Batman or Wolverine? Since we’re all basically living in the tropics anymore anyway, here’s a comic book about Bidu Sayão. Thrill to the adventures of Brazil’s most famous operatic soprano!

You have to scroll down to the bottom of Bruce Duffie’s interview to see a more complete spread.

https://www.bruceduffie.com/sayao.html

Sayão was a great champion of the music of her compatriot, Heitor Villa-Lobos. Here she is, in Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5,” with the composer conducting.

Later, she came out of retirement to sing Villa-Lobos’ “Forests of the Amazon.” You can hear some of it at the end of these selections from some of her signature roles (Manon, Juliette, and Mimi). There’s even a Brazilian folk song tossed into the mix.

She’s heavenly in Debussy’s “La Damoiselle élue,” after Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damozel,” recorded here with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

And “Si mes vers avaient des ailes” (“If my verses had wings,” text by Victor Hugo), by Venezuelan-born French composer Reynaldo Hahn.

Once she established herself at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Sayão had the good sense to make her home in the cooler clime of Lincolnville, Maine.

Her comic book dates from the 1940s. I’m hoping for a Jack Kirby-style cover, complete with Bidu punching out Hitler.

August 5, 2024
Benjamin Luxon Cornish Baritone Dies at 87

The Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon has died.

Luxon made more than one hundred recordings, many of them devoted to English song. One of my favorites was a recital on Chandos Records devoted to the songs of Peter Warlock. Of course, Warlock being Warlock, a percentage of those songs are about drinking and milkmaids.

As an up-and-coming singer, Luxon joined Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and went on to appear in a number of the composer’s productions. Britten conceived the title role of his television opera “Owen Wingrave” specifically for Luxon’s voice.

Luxon sang at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and most of the major European houses. He also performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In his quiver of roles were Falstaff, Wozzeck, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, and Papageno.

As a recitalist, his repertoire was broad, ranging from early music to lieder to contemporary song, music hall, and folk music. With tenor Robert Tear, he worked to revive forgotten and dimly-recollected parlor songs. In recital, he was frequently accompanied by pianist David Willison.

Beginning around 1990, Luxon began to experience hearing loss. He retired from singing, but continued to appear as a reader and narrator and to give masterclasses and direct. He lived his final years in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, also home to the Tanglewood Music Center, where he had been a frequent guest.

Luxon died on Thursday at the age of 87. R.I.P.

Channeling “MacArthur Park”-era Richard Harris (but in better voice)

“Johnny, I hardly knew ya’”

Peter Warlock, “Captain Stratton’s Fancy”

As Verdi’s Falstaff (1 of 2)

Falstaff (2 of 2)

Vintage music hall

Narrating Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” at 82

A Cornish tale

2009 radio interview

“Give Me a Ticket to Heaven”

July 29, 2024
Gluck’s Influence on Berlioz & Beyond

I’ve been reading Berlioz’s “Evenings with the Orchestra” in preparation for next month’s Bard Music Festival. (“Hector Berlioz and His World” is the focus. You’ll find more information at a link at the bottom of this post.) The book is a loose collection of tales, anecdotes, and observations shared among bored musicians in the pit over 25 nights of opera performances. Many of the operas and composers come in for Berlioz’s satiric barbs. One of the few exceptions is Christoph Willibald Gluck. In fact, about two thirds of the way through, a Gluck festival becomes the focus of some bizarre sci-fi reflection – complete with air ships – set in the year 2344. The book was written in 1852. Berlioz always was a visionary and quirky fellow!

I’m sure I will offer further impressions of the book in the coming days. For my purposes this morning, I am merely using it as prelude to celebrate the anniversary of Gluck’s birth, on this date in 1714.

We are forever hearing about Christoph Willibald Gluck – if we hear about him at all, that is – as his being a reformer, and in truth his influence on the future of opera was incalculable. He shunned floridity for its own sake. Despite his evident love of nature (at least once, he had his piano carried out to a field), he was not a sensualist. He rebelled against the superficial effects of “opera seria,” with its showy arias ornamented beyond recognition by star castrati, to arrive at something closer to naturalism.

With Gluck, words and music bore equal weight. Drama was of the foremost importance. He tossed out the dry recitative to create a more continuous flow in the action. Performers took a back seat to emotional truth. The effect was kind of a chaste grandeur, simplicity at the service of theatrical power. Works such as “Orfeo ed Euridice” and “Alceste” were radical for their time.

Gluck’s influence runs through Mozart to Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner. Yet today his works are less frequently performed than those of any of his followers. In fact, of his dozens of operas (about 35 survive), he’s pretty much remembered by your average classical music Joe for but a single work, “Orfeo ed Euridice” – especially the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits.” Think you don’t know it? Click here:

On the other side of the coin is his “Dance of the Furies.” I wonder if Gluck would find the diablerie of this interpretation as intriguing as I do?

Also from “Orfeo,” Dame Janet Baker sings “Che farò senza Euridice?”

Here’s Wagner’s arrangement of the overture to Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” conducted by Otto Klemperer:

The overture will be performed in Wagner’s arrangement on an August 10 concert at this year’s Bard Music Festival, “Hector Berlioz and His World,” to be held at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, August 9-18. You’ll find more information here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Berlioz was notably ambivalent about the artistry of another successful opera composer, Giacomo Meyerbeer. As preamble to the festival, and as part of its broader “SummerScape” celebration of the arts, Bard will present Meyerbeer’s rarely-staged “La prophète,” in its first U.S. production in 47 years, July 26-August 1.

https://www.bard.edu/news/july-26august-4-bard-summerscape-presents-first-new-us-production-of-meyerbeers-grand-opera-le-prophete-in-47-years-2024-04-17

Fisher Center at Bard

“There are two supreme gods in the art of music: Beethoven and Gluck. The former’s realm is that of infinite thought, the latter’s that of infinite passion; and though Beethoven is far above Gluck as a musician, there is so much of each in the other that these two Jupiters form a single god, and all we can do is to lose ourselves in admiration and respect for him.” – Hector Berlioz

Learn more about Gluck in “Gluck the Reformer” (featuring John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and others) here:

July 2, 2024
Cosi fan tutte Last Chance Princeton

Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” is a farce with humanity. You have one more chance to see it at The Princeton Festival. The opera concludes its run at the performance pavilion on the grounds of historic Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton St. (Route 206), on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Did you know that originally Antonio Salieri took a crack at composing it? In 1994, two fragments in Salieri’s hand were discovered in the Austrian National Library. That was before Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto was taken up by “the creature.”

Of course, Mozart had an “in,” as he had already collaborated with Da Ponte on “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Don Giovanni.” And anyway, with all respect to Signor Salieri, the subject matter seems much more in line with Mozart’s saucy sensibility. While the Viennese of 1790 were worldly folk, “Cosi” would be given the side-eye in the 19th century, when the opera was deemed risqué or even immoral. If it was done at all, it was presented with tasteful alterations. It was only in the 20th century that the work’s reputation was restored.

Yeah, the characters are knuckleheads – flawed, irrational, and stupid – but they are also capable of great beauty. It’s all right there in the title, often translated, if anyone bothers, as “So Do They All.”

The festival’s final week will continue to embrace a variety of genres. A Juneteenth celebration will culminate in a concert of Black choral music, sung by the Capital Singers of Trenton and friends, under the direction of Westminster Choir College’s Vinroy D. Brown, at the pavilion on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The program will include Robert Ray’s “Gospel Mass.” Earlier, there will be a flag raising ceremony, food, reflection, and fun. For details, visit the festival website at the link below.

On Thursday at 7 p.m., The Sebastians will return for a program of Baroque favorites, with a selection of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, along with works by Telemann and Vivaldi. That concert will be held across the street at Trinity Church Princeton (33 Mercer St.).

On Friday at 7 p.m., back at the pavilion, the Juilliard-trained, genre-defying trio Empire Wild will unpack its signature mix of original music, inventive covers, and twists on the classical canon.

Finally, on Saturday at 7 p.m., Tony Award winning Santino Fontana, star of stage (“Tootsie,” “Cinderella”), film (Disney’s “Frozen”), and television (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel”), will bring the festival to an uplifting conclusion with an evening of pops, cabaret, and Broadway, accompanied by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, again under the performance pavilion at Morven.

For tickets and information about parking, concessions, and more, visit the Princeton Festival website, at princetonsymphony.org/festival.

Video samples:

Behind the scenes of “Cosi fan tutte”

The Sebastians perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6

Empire Wild in 5 minutes

Santino Fontana

June 17, 2024
Così fan tutte at Princeton Festival

A wager on the inconstancy of young love leads to farcical complications in Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.” The title has always been as uncomfortable to translate as the comic anguish endured by its leads. Variously known in English (if at all) as “So Do They All” and “Women Are Like That,” it’s probably best to stick with the Italian. Whatever you call it, it is generally bracketed in the composer’s top-four operas. Unsurprisingly the libretti for three of them were quilled by the flamboyant Lorenzo da Ponte, poet, priest, and profligate, friend of Casanova, and eventually professor of Italian literature at Columbia University.

The opera forms the centerpiece of this year’s The Princeton Festival. You’ll have three chances to see it, on Friday at 7 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m., and Tuesday at 7 p.m. Performances will be held outdoors in the open-flapped, state-of-the-art performance pavilion on the grounds of historic Morven Museum & Garden, at 55 Stockton St. (Route 206).

The stage direction is by James Marvel, who, with a game cast and scenic design by Blair Mielnik, ensured last year’s production of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” was such an imaginative romp. This year, the team promises a fresh, contemporary take on “Così,” setting it in a pastel-colored dreamhouse villa, high above the glamorous Amalfi Coast. Attired by costume designer Maria Miller, the high-styled, jet-setting characters’ loyalty to one another is tested as the plot – and hilarity – unfolds.

The opera will be sung in Italian with English subtitles. The Princeton Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by its music director, Rossen Milanov.

Two pre-performance talks, “Not So Cozy Così,” with Julian Grant (on Friday), and “Exploring Così fan tutte,” with Timothy Urban (on Tuesday), will be offered at Morven’s Stockton Education Center at 5:30 p.m.

Also coming up: the Abeo Quartet will perform chamber music by Reena Esmail, Shostakovich, and Schubert, tomorrow, Thursday, at 7 p.m., across the road at Trinity Church Princeton (33 Mercer St.).

American Repertory Ballet will bring dance to the pavilion, with choreography by Arthur Mitchell and Meredith Rainey, and Milanov conducting members of the PSO in music by Philip Glass (“Quartetsatz”), Miranda Scripp (“Intrare Forma”), Jean Sibelius (“Impromptu for Strings”), and Edvard Grieg (the “Holberg Suite”), on Saturday at 7 p.m.

Wednesday, June 19, will be a big day, with a program of Black choral music, featuring the Capital Singers of Trenton and friends, under the direction of Westminster Choir College’s Vinroy D. Brown, providing the capstone to a Juneteenth celebration. The program will include Robert Ray’s “Gospel Mass.” The concert will be held at the performance pavilion at 7 p.m.

A Juneteenth flag raising ceremony will take place next door, at the Municipality of Princeton, at 1 p.m. The festival will continue at Morven at 4 p.m., with plenty of food, reflection, and fun, leading up to the choral concert.

On Thursday, June 20, The Sebastians will return to Trinity Church Princeton for a program of Baroque favorites, with a selection of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos offered, cheek-by-jowl, with works by Telemann and Vivaldi.

The Juilliard-trained, genre-defying trio Empire Wild will electrify the pavilion with its signature mix of original music, inventive covers, and twists on the classical canon, on Friday, June 21, at 7 p.m.

Finally, on Saturday, June 22, at 7 p.m., Tony Award winning Santino Fontana, star of stage (“Tootsie,” “Cinderella”), film (Disney’s “Frozen”), and television (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel”), will bring the festival to a lively conclusion with an evening of pops, cabaret, and Broadway, accompanied by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, again under the performance pavilion at Morven.

For additional events, like Yoga in the Garden and the Juneteenth oral history project, as well as information on tickets, parking, and concessions, visit the Princeton Festival website, at princetonsymphony.org/festival.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: “Così fan tutte,” American Repertory Ballet, Empire Wild, and Santino Fontana

June 12, 2024

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