From concert hall to music school, from theater to college auditorium to church basement, opera is thriving in New York. The Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera seasons are already in full swing, but some of the most eagerly anticipated operatic events will take place in venues other than the opera houses. Let's see what some companies have slated.
For their 36th season of operas-in-concert, vivid even without scenery and costumes, Eve Queler and her Opera Orchestra of New York (OONY) turn to three genres of 19th century opera that have been among their particular specialties. They begin their season at Carnegie Hall with mid-century, five-act French grand opera, albeit by an Italian bel canto (literally, beautiful singing) composer-Gaetano Donizetti's swan song, "Dom Sébastien" (November 7); continue with Italian bel canto from early in the century-Gioachino Rossini's "Otello" (January 17); and conclude with Italian verismo (hyperrealism) from the end of the 1800s-Francesco Cilea's "other opera," "L'Arlesiana" (February 21). All performances begin at 7:30 and are conducted by Maestra Queler.
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Eve Queler
Photo by Steve J. Sherman |
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Set in Portugal and Morocco and concerning the fictionalized adventures of an actual 16th century Portuguese king, "Dom Sébastien" (1843), with libretto by Eugène Scribe after plays by Paul Foucher (1838) and John Dryden (1689), foreshadows French grand opera's premier exponent Giacomo Meyerbeer's posthumously premiered "L'Africaine" (1865), also to a text by Scribe, in its settings, of court at Lisbon and lush gardens in Africa, and theme of ill-starred, interracial romance between the title character, to be sung by tenor Dmitry Korchak in his OONY debut, and Zayda, daughter of the Moorish king, who will be portrayed by Vesselina Kesserova, who has been heard here in Rossini's "Tancredi" and Vincenzo Bellini's "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" (with OONY) and Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" and Jules Massenet's "Werther" (with the Met). Stephen Powell plays the poet and soldier Camoëns and Daniel Lewis Williams, the Grand Inquisitor. Cognoscenti will be listening especially closely to Sébastien's romance, "Seul sur la terre"-recorded by Luciano Pavarotti as "Deserto in terra," complete with three high Cs and a high D-flat-which concludes Act Two. OONY also gave "Dom Sébastien" on March 23, 1984, with Richard Leech, before he made his mark as a high lyric tenor to be reckoned with, and Klara Takacs.
New York notably heard Rossini's "Otello" (1816)--the foremost operatic setting of Shakespeare's tragedy, until eclipsed by Giuseppe Verdi's towering version seven decades later, much as Rossini's own comic masterpiece, "Barbiere di Siviglia," stole the thunder from Giovanni Paisiello's 18th century setting--in three staged performances at the Met by the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (Rome Opera), on tour here in June and July 1968, with dynamic soprano Virginia Zeani's Desdemona, defending herself against tenor Aldo Bottion's Otello's jealous rage in the tragic third act, and tenor Pietro Bottazzo handily dispatching Rodrigo's cascades of florid runs in a cabaletta whose melody the composer borrowed for his comic "Cat Duet." Eileen Farrell, Thomas Hayward and Loren Driscoll took these parts in an airing of "Otello" in the 1950s by OONY's leading predecessor in the concert opera business, the American Opera Society. Frederica von Stade, José Carreras and Salvatore Fisichella recorded the roles for the Philips label. Met singers Ramón Vargas, Ruxandra Donose-entrusted with the haunting Willow Song, "Assisa a piè d'un salice" (which many of us first learned from Marilyn Horne's recording)--and Kenneth Tarver, all making OONY debuts, sing the leads here in February. Robert McPherson, Maria Zifchak and Daniel Mobbs have other key assignments.
OONY introduces soprano Latonia Moore in the role of Vivetta in the turbulent "L'Arlesiana" (1898), based on Alphonse Daudet's play (for which Georges Bizet wrote incidental music) "L'Arlésienne" and his earlier short story. The company also presents Moore in a recital of music by Giacomo Puccini, Sergey Rachmaninoff and others at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall on May 3 at 8 p.m. To tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, who made a splash last season at the Met in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "L'Elisir d'Amore," falls the responsibility for the Cilea score's most frequently heard aria, the Lamento di Federico, "E la solita soria," first sung by Enrico Caruso and tackled by numerous others since. Mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti, as Federico's imposing mother, Rosa Mamai, laments her own lot in the opera's other well-known solo, "Esser madre è un inferno." OONY investigated Cilea's much more familiar diva vehicle, "Adriana Lecouvreur," on March 3, 2002, with Aprile Millo, Marcello Giordani and Dolora Zajick, directed by Ira Siff--AKA La Gran Scena Opera soprano Vera Galupe-Borszkh-a man who certainly knows his way around divas.
An earlier revival of "L'Arlesiana" was undertaken by one of the city's newer companies presenting operas-in-concert, Teatro Grattacielo, at Alice Tully Hall on November 15, 1999, with Gerard Powers, Eugenie Grunewald, Carol Ann Manzi and Michael Corvino, with Fiora Contino presiding. This November 11, at 8 p.m. at Tully, the "skyscraper theater," which programmed the North American premiere of Riccardo Zandonai's historical drama, "I Cavalieri di Ekebù" the year after "L'Arlesiana," fields the North American premiere of his final opera, the romantic comedy "La Farsa Amorosa" (1933). A Zandonai comedy? When one thinks of Zandonai, the blood and thunder of "Francesca da Rimini," last considered by the Met from 1984 to 1986, with Renata Scotto and, initially, Plácido Domingo, come to mind. Grattacielo Founding Executive & Artistic Director Duane D. Printz assures us that this "amorous farce" comprises "a series of mishaps," "masquerading," a lustful public official "taught a lesson," "couples end[ing] up happily back together," and "two little donkeys also in love," all sung to "brilliant melodies, vivacious rhythms, and colorful orchestration." Mafalda Favero, Salvatore Baccaloni and Alessio De Paolis were in the world premiere, under the composer's baton, at the Teatro Reale in Rome. Todd Geer, Monica Yunus, Peter Castaldi, Anna Tonna and Steven Goldstein, guided by British-born conductor David Wroe, are featured in Grattacielo's performance. The composer's daughter, Jolanda Tarquinia Zandonai, is to be the guest of honor at this hearing, which is dedicated to the memory of Maestro Alfredo Silipigni, who led the company in Pietro Mascagni's "Guglielmo Ratcliff," Umberto Giordano's "La Cena delle Beffe," and Ruggiero Leoncavallo's "Zazà" during the last three seasons.
The efforts of New York's music schools are always of interest. At Lincoln Center, Juilliard Opera Center, which offered the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann and J.D. "Sandy" McClatchy's gripping "Miss Lonelyhearts," after Nathaniel West's novel, this past April, has comedies "Orphée aux Enfers" ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), with its famous "infernal gallop" or can-can, by Jacques Offenbach (November 15, 17 and 19), and "La Finta Giardiniera" (approximately "The Pretend Gardening Girl"), of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (April 25, 27 and 29), on tap. Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater, uptown on Claremont Avenue, has scheduled a double bill of short American rarities, Rafaello de Banfield's "Lord Byron's Love Letter" and Stephen Paulus' later "The Village Singer," originally written for English soprano Pauline Tinsley (December 6, 8 and 10), and Domenico Cimarosa's comedy "L'Italiana in Londra" (April 25, 27 and 29). Set in New Orleans' French Quarter, "Lord Byron's Love Letter," the first opera based on a Tennessee Williams play-succeeded since by Lee Hoiby and Lanford Wilson's "Summer and Smoke" (1971), Bruce Saylor and McClatchy's "Orpheus Descending" (1994), and André Previn and Philip Littell's "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1998)-concerns a grandmother and granddaughter whose livelihood depends on showing tourists an ancient missive that Byron once sent to the older woman. The New Orleans Opera Guild sponsored its first dozen hearings, at Tulane University early in 1955, and it reached the Lyric Opera of Chicago, for a pair of performances with great Wagnerian soprano Astrid Varnay (as Irénée Marguerite de Poitevent, the grandmother), Gertrude Ribla (as Ariadne, the granddaughter), and Claramae Turner (as Mrs. Tutwiler from Milwaukee), under Nicola Rescigno, that fall.
Among New York's reliable smaller companies, Dicapo Opera Theatre, which makes its home in the basement of St. Jean Baptiste, the formidable church at 76th Street and Lexington Avenue, and began its season with Franz Lehár's popular operetta "The Merry Widow," will give the American premiere of the revised version of "Thérèse Raquin" (2001), based on Emile Zola's tale of passion, murder, and guilt, by Tobias Picker and Gene Scheer, whose "American Tragedy," after Theodore Dreiser, had its world premiere at the Met last December 2. Dates for Dicapo's "Thérèse Raquin" are February 16 to 18 and 23 to 25. Early Puccini-the opera-ballet "Le Villi" (1884) and the "Messa di Gloria" (1880) (January 12 to 14) and "Manon Lescaut" (1894) (April 13 to 15 and 20 to 22)-makes up the rest of the fare planned by the company, which staged Puccini's rare "Edgar" (1889) in 2002.
Always a lively presence on the music scene, the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players deliver Sullivan comedy "The Rose of Persia," written with Basil Hood, on January 11 at 8 p.m., during their season at City Center (West 55th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues), which will begin with G & S's grandly operatic "Yeomen of the Guard" (January 5, 7 matinee and 13 evening) and the ever-popular "Mikado" (January 6 matinee and evening, 9, 13 evening, and 14 matinee).
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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center |
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Operatic Americana is due on January 13, 14, 20 and 21, in the Bronx and Manhattan, as the Bronx Opera reconsiders Aaron Copland's folk opera "The Tender Land," which the company gave in 1976 and 1995. Reviewing the latter revival for the now-defunct New York Native newspaper, I commented, "Copland's music often succeeds in elevating the folksiness with sophisticated 'contemporary'-sounding arias for the soprano heroine; sincere, hymn-like sextet, concluding Act One, and tenor solo, in Act Two; a lively hoedown; touching duet for soprano and tenor lovers; and gruff song of life on the open road for the baritone." Bizet's always popular "Carmen," on May 11, 12, 18 and 19, in the Bronx and on Long Island, is the Bronx Opera's other offering this season.
Next May 2 at 6 p.m. and 5 at 2 p.m., controversial director Peter Sellars, opera's perennial enfant terrible, and video artist Bill Viola will bring their multimedia production of Richard Wagner's monumental love story "Tristan und Isolde," a joint effort of Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Paris National Opera, to Avery Fisher Hall as part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series. Billed as "The Tristan Project," these hearings feature Alan Woodrow as Tristan, Christine Brewer as Isolde, Anne Sofie von Otter as Brangäne, John Relyea as King Marke, and Esa-Pekka Salonen leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
You can expect to read more about these and many of the busy season's other exciting musical events in these pages.
