Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Opera

See “The Barber of Seville” at Princeton Festival

Think you don’t know “The Barber of Seville?” Rossini’s comic opera is one of the most famous of all time. Even if you’ve never seen it, it’s been referenced and parodied in countless movies, cartoons, television shows, and commercials. I’ve included ten such examples at the bottom of this post.

You’ll have three chances to laugh, delight, and walk out humming its hit tunes, tonight, Sunday, and Tuesday at The Princeton Festival, now taking place on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden, at 55 Stockton Street/Route 206.

The opera will be presented in an all-new production, stage-directed by James Marvel, with fun, Cubist set designs by Blair Mielnik suggesting the timeless, madcap nature of the story. Rossen Milanov will conduct the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.

Andrew Garland will portray the resourceful barber and jack-of-all-trades, Nicholas Nestorak the lovestruck and resolute Almaviva, and Kelly Guerra the beautiful and game Rosina, with Steven Condy providing the requisite impediment to young love as the slow-witted and lascivious Dr. Bartolo. Filling out the cast will be Festival veterans Eric Delagrange and Cody Müller, along with Kaitlyn Costello-Fain and the Festival Opera Chorus. Elaborate disguises, conspiracy, and close shaves inform the action, set to Rossini’s spritely and dynamic score.

Tonight’s presentation, under the festival pavilion, will begin at 7:00. The opera will be repeated on Sunday at 4 p.m. and Tuesday at 7 p.m. A pre-concert talk, “The Funny Thing About Figaro,” will be offered by Dr. Timothy Urban at Morven’s Stockton Education Center at 3:00, prior to the Sunday performance.

The Princeton Festival will continue through June 25. Yet to come: a program for string quartet and interpretive dance featuring the Attacca Quartet and members of American Repertory Ballet; a recital of songs by Black composers sung by Metropolitan Opera singer Will Liverman; a “Mazel Tov Cocktail Party” with klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer and friends; Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” performed by The Sebastians (across the street at Trinity Church Princeton); Andrew Lippa’s musical theater oratorio “I Am Harvey Milk;” and a vaudeville-inspired family concert including “Peter and the Wolf” with Michael Boudewyns of Really Inventive Stuff.

Ancillary events, including talks, a film screening, an art installation, Yoga in the Garden sessions, and kid-friendly activities, will also be offered.

The festival’s state-of-the-art pavilion is 11,000 square-feet, clear-span (no poles or obstructed views), and open-sided, allowing for easy access to refreshments, ample picnicking opportunities, a garden stroll, or the simple enjoyment of a late-spring/early-summer evening.

The Princeton Festival is the premier summer arts program of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. For more information, tickets, and a complete schedule, visit princetonsymphony.org/festival.

Did you know:

Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” (1816) is frequently confused with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” (1786). Both operas were based on comedies by the French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, which were considered subversive, even politically incendiary, when they were written in the last quarter of the 18th century, a time of roiling social unrest, as they enact a kind of class warfare, with wily servants getting over on their aristocratic masters. “The Marriage of Figaro” was particularly edgy, facing challenges from censors and causing many a noble’s head to rest uneasily on his satin pillow. A third play, called “The Guilty Mother,” followed in 1791, by which time the Ancien Régime had already been abolished and the French Revolution was in full swing.

All the principal characters of Rossini’s opera appear in Mozart’s. Though Mozart’s was written first – 30 years earlier, in fact – it’s actually based on the second of Beaumarchais’ “Figaro” plays, so the action takes place later, AFTER that of “The Barber of Seville.” Got it?

Other operas to include characters from Beaumarchais’ trilogy include Jules Massenet’s “Chérubin,” Darius Milhaud’s “La mère coupable,” and John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles.” There was also an earlier opera based on “The Barber of Seville,” from 1782, by Giovanni Paisiello.

But Rossini’s is far and away the most famous musical adaptation of Beaumarchais’ “Barber,” and now regarded as his quintessential work. It is quicksilver, farcical, and often very silly – the archetypal opera buffa.

It also contains some of the most recognizable and oft-referenced music in all of opera. Figaro’s “Largo al factotum” (Fi-ga-ro! Fi-ga-ro!), Rosina’s “Una voce poco fa,” and of course the overture are most frequently encountered. Here are ten instances of their use and abuse:

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (1980)

Bugs Bunny, “Rabbit of Seville” (1950)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Sro9rMofg

Fellini’s “8 ½” (1963)

“Breaking Away” (1979)

“Prizzi’s Honor” (1985)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za4LPc0JXLU

“Seinfeld” (1993)

“Citizen Kane” (1941), “Una voce poco fa”

“Oscar” (1991), “Largo al factotum”

“Help!” (1965), “The Barber of Seville” with the Beatles

“Our Gang Follies of 1938,” with Alfalfa and straight razor, but actually no Rossini!

June 16, 2023
“Omar” Wins Pulitzer Prize for Music

And this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music goes to… Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels for the opera “Omar.”

“Omar” was inspired by the memoir of an enslaved Muslim man, Omar ibn Said, whose autobiography was written, mostly in Arabic, in 1831. In 1807, Said was captured during a military conflict, taken from his home in Futa Toro (in what is now Senegal), and sold to slavers. He was 37 years-old. He was also from a wealthy family and highly educated.

In the U.S., he had contrasting experiences under a cruel master and one who realized his exceptional nature. It was the latter who encouraged him to write his story down. Said was offered the chance to return home, but doubtful about the fate of his people, he chose to remain in North Carolina.

The opera was commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA. Giddens wrote the libretto and composed the music, and then handed it off to co-composer Abels for him to orchestrate it. According to The New York Times, the score is “a melting pot inspired by bluegrass, hymns, spirituals, and more, with nods to traditions from Africa and Islam. It’s an unforced ideal of American sound: expansive and ever-changing.”

And according to the Pulitzer committee, it’s “an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries, a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage.”

Here are some clips and promotional material from the West Coast premiere with LA Opera:

https://www.laopera.org/performances/202223-season/omar/

The composers talk a little bit about it here:

Congratulations to Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels!

May 8, 2023
Grace Bumbry, Opera Legend, Dies at 86

One of the first African American singers to conquer the international opera stage, soprano/mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry has died. Her career spanned some 40 years.

Born into humble circumstances in 1937 – her father was a railway clerk and her mother was a teacher – she grew up in segregated St. Louis, learning early on that if she hoped to pursue her dreams, she would have to get out.

As a teen, she entered a radio contest for a shot at a scholarship to the now-defunct St. Louis Institute of Music. It was a blind competition, with Bumbry singing from behind a screen. After she was declared the winner, the conservatory declined to admit her because of her race. They offered to give her private lessons instead. She declined and received scholarships to study at Boston University and Northwestern University, where she attended masterclasses with Lotte Lehmann. She followed Lehmann to the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.

Bumbry launched her career in Europe at a time when Marian Anderson (from whom she received encouragement) and Leontyne Price were blazing trails at home.

She also had the support of Jacqueline Kennedy, who may have had a hand in her debut at the Paris Opera House in 1960, as Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida.” Two years later, Bumbry was invited to the White House to perform at a state dinner.

In 1961, she made headlines as the first Black singer to perform at the Bayreuth Festival, dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner. (We all know how enlightened Wagner was in matters of race.) Bumbry was cast as Venus, the goddess of love, in “Tannhäuser.” She received 42 curtain calls, and the ovation lasted some 30 minutes.

Then she signed a contract with Sol Hurok, manager of Arthur Rubinstein and Isaac Stern, and he saw to it that she became a star on both sides of the Atlantic.

She achieved success in the mezzo roles of Carmen, Delila, and Princess Eboli, and the soprano roles of Salome, Norma, Tosca, and Medea, among others.

Her Metropolitan Opera debut was as Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in 1965. In 1985, when “Porgy and Bess” finally made it to the Met, she sang opposite Simon Estes. It was a long journey for “Porgy.” The opera was first performed on Broadway 50 years earlier.

Bumbry sang in the world’s leading opera houses, was widely decorated, and left behind many fine recordings. She died yesterday in Vienna at the age of 86.

O don fatale from Verdi’s “Don Carlo”

As Carmen

The Black Venus of Bayreuth

As Amneris

As Salome, serenading the head of Jochanaan

R.I.P.

May 8, 2023
Loving the Tedious: “Parsifal” and Art’s Slow Burn

Is there an opera, or even a movie, that you find boring as hell, and yet somehow you also love it?

For me, it’s Wagner’s “Parsifal.” A music drama steeped in Christian symbolism involving the Knights of the Grail and their redeemer (a “pure fool, enlightened by compassion”), the opera can be ponderous in the extreme. But it took a cinematic genius like Hans-Jürgen Syberberg to turn it into, at times, an even more tedious 4-hour-plus movie (short by Syberberg standards) in 1982. I finally sat down to revisit the film on Saturday for the first time in 40 years. You can read all about my first viewing, in the early ‘80s, here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1074150483504014&set=a.883855802533484

In Syberberg’s telling, Act I is especially stagnant, at nearly two hours (the length of a movie in itself), for most of it Gurnemanz supplying his prolix exposition while seated on a boulder. Amusingly – and I didn’t pick up on this when I was a teenager – the long-suffering Amfortas, afflicted with a wound that will not heal, is played by the conductor, Armin Jordan – an interesting casting choice, with a subtext (intended?) of martyrdom for one’s art.

Most of the singers on the soundtrack are doubled by actors, who lip-sync. A fresh performance was recorded for the film, since Syberberg managed to alienate descendants of the Bayreuth Circle with his earlier, five-hour documentary about unabashed Hitler-sympathizer Winifred Wagner (the composer’s daughter-in-law, who confided things like “For us, he was not the Führer; just a wonderful family friend”).

Two of the singers actually do appear in the film: Robert Lloyd as Gurnemanz, elder knight of the Grail, and Aage Hauglund as the magician Klingsor, who castrates himself because of his inability to stay chaste. Act II is full of hilarious phallic imagery. Also, some of the action is carried by marionettes (brought back from the opera’s Prelude).

Edith Clever is excellent, the most intense and invested of the onscreen actors, even as she mouths Yvonne Minton’s vocals, as Kundry. But it is Karin Krick who truly mesmerizes, when she takes over the title role, midway into Act II, lip-syncing to the unmistakably male tenor voice of Rainer Goldberg. Syberberg has his reasons, I’m sure, but I notice she appears at the moment that Parsifal experiences the epiphany that awakens him to compassion. Is compassion then, to be considered a feminine trait? In a work of art that’s built on the iconography of Jesus’ sacrifice, it’s a peculiar observation. Perhaps in his denial of Kundry, sidestepping the snare that claimed Amfortas, the character attains a kind of androgyny. Or perhaps the director was aiming for some sort of statement about Parsifal’s universality?

Whatever Syberberg’s rationale for the gender-swap, Krick is superb. I find her riveting in a way her male counterpart in the role (Michael Kutter) is not – even though they both portray the character as a kind of disembodied dreamer – and I am very curious to know what became of her. Numerous Google searches yield nothing beyond her participation in this film. If she’s still alive, she couldn’t be any older than about 60.

The mystery remains unresolved, even as Syberberg’s Mystery has run its course. It took me six hours, but once again I managed to get through his vision of “Parsifal.” Now I can set the opera aside for another year. Since the last act is set on Good Friday, and the legacy of Christ infuses the entire work, understandably I associate it with Easter.

Of course, art exists outside of time. Part of what makes it so frustrating to be trapped in a world of texting and soundbites is their incompatibility with a spirit of reflection. Art requires space to breathe. Equally, one needs space in order to prepare oneself to enter into an alternate reality that reflects and yet somehow transcends our own. The noise, pace, and distractions of contemporary life are totally at odds with the needs of the spirit.

I think of the current state of our classical music stations, many of which no longer play complete works over a certain length, except occasionally perhaps, if they happen to be the most famous. As if music is nothing more than a string of pretty tunes. There’s no opportunity to get lost in the imagination, the fantasy, or even the logic of the music. You’re drawn into the first movement of a symphony and then, bam, you’re yanked back into the prosaic world by some inanity being spouted by the announcer. What about the rest of the piece? When I was in a position to do so, I fought this trend for a long, long time.

For me, “Parsifal” is like a narcotic. Undoubtedly there are some who believe I should enter a 12-step program. But the high is too good, even if it sometimes puts me through hell to get to heaven.

I’m curious, are there any works of art, in whatever medium, that affect you like that? If so, I would be curious to hear about them. Don’t just sit there. That’s what the comments are for!

PHOTO: The duality of Parsifal – Karin Krick and Michael Kutter – presented before Wagner’s death mask

April 17, 2023
Syberberg’s Parsifal A Hilarious Opera Odyssey

It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.

As my friend climbed into the car, he enthused, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Milton Cross’ “Complete Stories of the Great Operas.” When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were primed for some serious action!

When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the screening, an empty bottle of spirits rolled past our feet, clanking against the chair legs.

The film was shown the old-fashioned way, employing a 1970s-style high school movie projector, so that periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.

Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described by Milton Cross, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner. Or more accurately, his death mask.

Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the death mask revelation, that had knights processing down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.

By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.

I arrived home around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a jail cell. We were watching “Parsifal.”

I think of this every year on Good Friday, since the Good Friday Spell of Act III is one of the high points of the opera and frequently excerpted. Naturally, this entails a Google search to see if the film has been posted online. In previous years, I’ve come up with only a stray clip, but this year the angels are with me, as I find someone has posted the entire film on YouTube in two parts.

Of course, last year, I finally broke down and purchased the rare, out-of-print DVD from eBay.

This Good Friday is very good indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZSlOFjgjwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLNShPJdTYQ

April 7, 2023

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