Syracuse Stage’s ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ not targeted to adults

Cutesy-poo staged version the C.S. Lewis fable great for kids — but adults beware!

By David Feldman

http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html

OK, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  If you want to know whether this Christmas entertainment at Syracuse Stage is worth your attention as Serious Theater, the fast answer is: no.  If you’ve already committed to taking a Young Person (or several of them) to see it and want to know what you’re in for, read on — but keep the aspirin handy.  

The National Association for the Preservation of Adult Theatergoer Sanity requires that we publish the following warning in case you’re in danger of being talked into taking a Young Person (or several of them) to see this production but there is still time for you to back out: Sir or madam, read no further — beat a hasty retreat to the easy chair and turn on the TV while you can.

This staged version of the C.S. Lewis fable is cute; and there are lots of terrific voices for its music; and Anthony Salatino’s choreography is as usual first rate, if not as exciting as it has been at times (due to no fault of his own, as he’s confined by the requirements of the genre); and the spectacular set by Cary Wong along with certain very clever magic show-type tricks are worth the price of admission (except that you have to sit through the entire production to see them); and the costumes by Catherine Hunt are exceedingly clever and at times stunning (if occasionally a little too-adorable for some tastes); and Rick Paulsen’s lighting is spot-on (pun here); and the music under Dianne Adams McDowell’s ably wielded baton is fine indeed and never obtrusive (although the songs themselves aren’t what even a forgiving person might call memorable); and Linda Hartzell’s direction keeps the stage aswirl with plenty of activity; and the scattering of Equity performers among the cast adds depth to the SU Department of Drama’s students’ energetic (if at times not entirely top-notch) performances.  

The plot is thin as air and has as much drama as instant oatmeal without the raisins.  Four young sibling Brits are evacuated from blitz-imperiled London and find themselves at a country house that has a very large wardrobe with unusual magical capabilities: children who enter it often come out the other side into... get this... Narnia!  Once there, they encounter lots of fantastical creatures including a White Witch (Jacquelyn Piro Donovan) who out of understandable perversity has cast the entire realm into cold and snowy winter for a century.  That means there has been — better sit down now — No Christmas In All That Long Time!  

Think about it, those of you who still haven’t decided what presents to buy Aunt Nell and your sister-in-law’s vicious offspring, not to mention their dog — which even after nearly a decade isn’t fully house-trained.  Think about it, and remember that spot on the good carpet that you still can’t get out.  Some may find a Christmas-less season a trial, but I call it pre-heaven.

Inevitably the four juveniles run into the expectable bunch of fantastical creatures.  Among these are two English yeoman and -women types, who are for also Beavers.  As portrayed by Eric Leviton and Jayne Muirhead they are a delight.  I wish there had been more for them to do besides serve a meal and hasten the Young Persons to their destiny, but soon enough danger arrives in the form of a lion called Aslan (the powerful voice here belongs to Jordan Barbour), who threatens to vanquish the hard working Witch who disposed of Christmas.  The play is essentially tragic: The well-meaning White Witch is defeated and a wicked Father Christmas (James Judy) arrives to distribute presents, some of whose magical powers serve to bring us more quickly than otherwise would have been possible to the ending of the play, but not one of which would have satisfied Aunt Nell, for instance.

One of the things I liked best about this show is that it has a character named Face on Butt (Tara Carbone, who also plays a wolf) and another called Snozzy Bosch (Katie Lamark), who like Ms. Carbone is a student in the Drama Department, and it is a Very Good Thing that this production with its enormous cast gives the students a chance to learn their trade by working with experienced performers and to perform on the main stage in front of a large audience (a great many of whom will, of course, be Children for this production).

Following the Christmas presents business, spring arrives rapidly — which serves to show emphatically that Narnia is not Syracuse.  All of this is done in spectacular fashion with terrific lighting and sets and effects.  Kids who are hooked into the 21st century’s electronic whizz-bang will probably find it “awesome” or “all right,” or whatever it is that they say too often — that is, so long as the kids aren’t over 15.  

But you, serious theatergoer?  Oh no. Go get tickets to NT Live at local movie theaters and see something like the terrific Collaborators I saw last week.  Great work although I’ve liked Simon Russell Beal better at times, and less other times.  It’s a clever play about the Russian playwright Mikhail Bulgakov and Joseph Stalin in 1938.  Coming up are: Traveling Light, about Eastern European immigrants who played an important part in Hollywood’s golden age; The Comedy of Errors and She Stoops to Conquer.

Uh… where was I?  

Oh... Syracuse Stage.  Right.  Back to that.  I suspect the play has been winnowed down to the kind of thing that Young Persons go for and it’s missing what I assume are the resonances and textures and any possible significant meaning of the original Narnia tales.  I wouldn’t know — I’ve never read them.   

Oh… there’s also a character named Warts played by Jonalyn Saxer, who didn’t seem to have any as far as I could tell, but who also played a Nyad, a Reindeer, and a White Stag.  The actors go through an amazing number of costume changes, and praise is due to whoever helps them backstage.  Anyway, Warts — what a wonderful name for a character.

The script, such as it is, is all very archetypal: Young Persons return from their Hero Journey now much wiser than they were before about magic, faraway imaginary places, and about Lions, Life and funny human-sized Beavers and various fantastical creatures.  And they don’t seem much the worse for having portentously been referred to by the inhabitants of Narnia as “Sons of Adam” or “Daughters of Eve.”  That kind of dialogue sets my nerves afire, but perhaps Young Persons won’t notice because of all the dancing and singing and pieces of the set being whizzed in and out and other clever effects, plus fierce sword fights and similar delights that Young Persons seem to enjoy at entertainments of this sort.  And we all agree that anything that takes them away from texting and video games and making it impossible for adult humans to watch the football game if there’s only one television set in the house is a Very Good Thing, indeed.

Well I know, I know: bah humbug — mean old me and all that.  But really, it’s all more than slightly cutesy-poo.  OK, one supposes, for doting uncles and aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers and such who are looking for a Christmas gift that will get some brat away from those damned computer games and cell phone cameras and Facebook business and into a real theater where — and this is of inestimable value — one isn’t allowed to muck around with electronic devices.  

So, to sum up: Fine for the pre-pubescent, and probably OK for those who are recently post-pubescent if they have somehow retained some of their innocence.  Otherwise… don’t say you weren’t warned.

DETAILS BOX:
What: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, dramatized by Adrian Mitchell, music by Shaun Davey
Who: Syracuse Stage
Where: Archbold Theatre, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through Dec. 31.
Length: 2 hours, including a 15-minute intermission.
Tickets: Adults, $28 - $50; 40 and under, $28; 18 and under $18; senior discounts for all performances but Friday and Saturday evenings.  Rush tickets day of performance only:  $20 -$25 general public; $18 with valid student ID, subject to availability. Call 315-443-3275, or www.SyracuseStage.org
Family guide: The kids will love it; not for all adults

Jupiter String Quartet’s engaging SFCM program rewarding, persuasive

The quartet maintains a firm grip on the listener’s attention throughout the versatile program of works spanning three eras

The Met’s ‘Don Giovanni’ eschews gimmickry, lets Mozart’s masterpiece speak for itself

Mille e tre critics can’t be wrong — or can they? Michael Grandage’s controversial new production is better than the nay-sayers would have us believe

By David Rubin

http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Is there, really, much new that any director can say about Mozart’s Don Giovanni without doing violence to the work?  Critics of Michael Grandage’s new production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York complained that it was traditional; that is, set in the right time period with authentic costumes, faithful to Da Ponte’s libretto.

Indeed, it was precisely this conservative approach to the opera that appealed to the Met’s Giovanni, Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, who was singing the role in New York for the first time.  Kwiecien told interviewer Renée Fleming during the intermission of the HD telecast that he and his colleagues Barbara Frittoli (Elvira) and Luca Pisaroni (Leporello), who have sung the opera together often, appreciated Grandage’s production because it is not freighted with high-concept baggage.  They could focus on the singing and the acting.

And do they ever.  With the estimable Fabio Luisi in the pit and a true ensemble of eight strong singers on stage, this is a Don Giovanni for those who like it without directorial gimmicks.  Grandage provided a worn Spanish street scene as a constant backdrop, the residences marked by peeling paint and crumbling plaster.  He stacked small apartments in cellblock fashion, each with a balcony.  The windows on three levels provided a variety of playing spaces for singers and supers.  

Grandage pulled apart this façade to reveal the wedding scene for Zerlina and Masetto in the first act, and to transport the audience to Giovanni’s equally worn palace, dressed up with a few chintzy chandeliers.  This bleak set did force the singers to the front of the stage where most of the action played out.  This permitted the HD audience to focus almost exclusively on the interactions among characters, and on the singing.

Grandage conjured a few deeply satisfying stage pictures.  Zerlina became a wishbone as Elivra tugged on one arm, Giovanni on the other, she trying to save Zerlina from rape, and Giovanni dragging her to it.  

The Commendatore entered the Don’s palace in a ghostly light and dispatched him to hell in a nightmarish scene of real flame and enough smoke to alarm a fire department.

In Leporello’s catalog aria, a sample of Giovanni’s female conquests appeared in the windows of the small apartments, dressed and lit as if in paintings by Vermeer.  It was, or at least could have been, a stunning effect, but it was ruined in the HD telecast because the video director insisted on cutting away from these images quickly to resume the tight close-ups of Leporello and Elvira.  Such relentless close-ups now regularly disfigure these video presentations.  Is Met boss Peter Gelb, the architect of these highly successful telecasts, aware of how annoying this camera work is?

So strong was this cast that no disrespect is meant by first praising the Zerlina and the Ottavio — not the most important characters.  

Making her Met debut as the peasant bride was the German soprano, Mojca Erdmann.  Here the close-ups served the HD audience well.  Erdmann has a magically pliable and expressive face of impish beauty, perfect for a Zerlina who does want to be ravished, until she doesn’t.  Every emotion of her character flickered across her face.  She is model-thin with strawberry blond hair and twinkling eyes.  She had Masetto wrapped around her finger, as any good Zerlina must.  Her voice is agile, pure and clean.  Both Batti, batti and Vedrai, carino brought great pleasure.

Veteran tenor Ramón Vargas was Ottavio, and for a change Ottavio was not a wimp.  Vargas has a more robust tenor than many who assume this role.  He has both volume and sweetness, and his soft singing in Dalla sua pace was melting.  Vargas made an excellent case for casting a tenor who also sings heavier roles, as he has, such as Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera and Rodolfo in La Bohème.  The endlessly vacillating and selfish character of Donna Anna was lucky this Ottavio was interested in her at all.

Kwiecien was singing his first Giovanni at the Met.  The HD relay was his second performance.  He seemed fully recovered from emergency back surgery that kept him on the sidelines opening night.  His voice is more baritone than bass, so don’t expect Cesare Siepi or Samuel Ramey.  He delivered the serenade to Elvira’s maid sweetly and sensitively.  Finch’han dal vino and Gia la mensa e preparata were feverish, fast, and frightening in their intensity.  Grandage clearly wanted an unhinged Giovanni from the beginning.  With his small eyes, somewhat pinched face, and athletic swagger, Kwiecien was a constant menace to all those around him.

Pisaroni’s catalog aria was not as funny as some, but he makes a luscious, round sound that contrasted nicely with Kwiecien’s.  The two were at their best in the recitatives where their experience in the roles together paid dividends.

The two ladies were an unusual pair.  Frittoli is a singer of great dignity and pathos.  She has been a heart-stopping Sister Angelica and a sensitive Desdemona at the Met.  She was not a fiery or half-mad Elvira, as the role is often played.  She is too sane and dignified to have been chasing around this Giovanni.  But as a road-weary Elvira, used and abused, she was a good foil to the younger and fresher Anna, sung by Marina Rebeka, who was making her company debut.

Their voices were also a logical dramatic contrast.  Rebeka has a gleaming top with lots of power and agility, but her voice is a bit characterless.  This fits Donna Anna, a naïve and puzzling woman.  Grandage suggested that she was hardly being assaulted by Giovanni in the opening scene, despite her later protestations.  But who knows?  Only Da Ponte.  Frittoli’s voice is heavier, not as agile, but loaded with personality and the wisdom of experience.   

As Masetto, Joshua Bloom might be a brother to the Rocky of Sylvester Stallone.  He cuts a muscular figure, sang strongly, and acted as the perfect complement to his Zerlina.  Stefan Kocan was sufficiently booming as the Commendatore.

Luisi’s conducting was so perfectly judged that one forgot the opera was actually being conducted.  Every tempo seemed right.  Don Giovanni  is a long opera, but under Luisi’s direction, and with the heavenly Met Orchestra playing at its usual level of perfection, the afternoon was too short.

The Met has not had good luck with this opera for many years.  While some critics groused about the production, it proved to be a very satisfying musical and dramatic experience.  Grandage lets the work speak for itself.  Would that more directors took his cue. 

Details Box:
What: Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Simulcast Live in HD
When: October 29, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Running time: approximately 4 hours
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Encore performance: November 16, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Syracuse Stage’s thought-provoking ‘The Boys Next Door’ takes a closer look at the developmentally disabled

Production overcomes a weak first act to shed light, humor and understanding upon those whom society would just as soon sweep under the carpet

By David Feldman

American Chamber Players in no hurry to satisfy hungry Syracuse crowd

Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music audience wondered “where’s the beef?” but got their just desserts in the end

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

Good things come to those who can wait, or so they say. But don’t tell that to a hungry crowd of music lovers.

Classical music aficionados in Syracuse have worked up a hearty appetite for professional ensemble performances since the demise of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. Just look at the sold-out houses, overcrowded parking lots and long lines waiting to enter the auditorium at the first two Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music concerts this season.   

The crowd’s craving for musical substance had to be placed on hold once again, however — this time during Saturday evening's four-work program presented by the American Chamber Players. Like last month’s SFCM program with the Orion Quartet, American Chamber Players chose to save the meat and potatoes for the final two works on the program. 

Mozart’s light and fluffy Quartet for Flute and Strings in A Major, K.298 (1786), which opened the concert, is a straightforward and uncomplicated work in the style of a divertimento, with simply constructed melodic lines that unfold predictably. Save for some grace-notes and turns, the writing makes precious little demand on the technical capabilities of players.

The flute throughout the three movements is treated here not so much as a soloist than as an equal player in a homogeneous, chamber-like texture of four players. Flutist Sara Stern’s generally reserved style of delivery proved well suited to such an arrangement during the innocuous set of variations that opens the work, and her modest-sized but polished tone consistently maintained a suitable balance with the strings.   

Perhaps the most engaging movement of the Quartet is the amiable Rondieaoux finale — a whimsically titled rondo based upon a borrowed tune from Paisiello’s opera buffa, Gli schiavi per amore. The four players here achieved a relaxed and cozy ensemble, generating a level of comfort that underscored the easy-listening character of this work.

Ernest Bloch’s Concertino for Flute, Viola and Piano (1948), which followed the Mozart, begins with an attractive folk-like theme in the style of Bartok and then begins a slow spiral downward into a bland, amorphous musical experience lacking in substance and imagination. The writing is aimless, consisting principally of a meandering potpourri of musical styles that include brief touches of Bartok and Ravel.  

A work such as this requires careful crafting (and a consummate performance) by the players in order to smooth out the rough edges and turn the music into a persuasive listening experience. It didn’t get it.  

The ensemble comprising Miles Hoffman, Stern and pianist Reiko Uchida never gelled into a cohesive whole, although in their defense they didn’t have a whole lot of substance with which to work. There were also pitch problems, as Bloch’s writing for the viola, which often sits in the higher registers, invites problems of intonation that Hoffman could not always solve. Moreover, Hoffman’s big, portly tone — which helped produce several thrilling moments in the Dvorak Quartet later in the program — dominated the three-voice texture and created balance problems that dwarfed the other players. 

If the Bloch piece had to be programmed, it would have made better sense to do so after Phillipe Gaubert’s Three Watercolors for Flute, Cello and Piano (1926), an attractive French work of far greater harmonic substance, passion and intensity. This would have provided a weighty stylistic contrast to the lighthearted Mozart Quartet.  

Gaubert, a flutist and composer, was one of a long line of Paris Conservatoire composers known for his many solos de concours (contest solos) showcasing the flute. The music looks, feels and sounds so French you can almost smell the perfume. 

Set as a series of mood pieces, Watercolors takes the listener on a pleasant journey from morning to evening, ending in a serenade seasoned with Spanish exoticism. The harmonies are often unpredictable and the juxtaposition of timbral colors is consistently pleasant. In this performance, Stern and Uchida were joined by cellist Stephen Balderston — whose playing throughout the evening was consistently first-rate. 

The opening of the sensuous first movement (On a Clear Morning), consisting of a nicely shaped phrase set in unison between cello and flute, was a sign of good things to come. Stern’s tone, while still somewhat small, was shapely and balanced, and her pitch throughout the evening was exceptional. 

Balderston’s opening solo in the second (Autumn Evening) movement was handsomely shaped, and he played with deep expression throughout this work and the Dvorak Quartet. The captivating final (Serenade) movement, with its pronounced Spanish exoticism, gave pianist Uchida a chance to display her talents mimicking the arpeggiations of a harp — a clever piece of writing, indeed.

Following intermission, the American Chamber Players served up its most satisfying effort of the evening with a superb rendition of Antonin Dvorak's mammoth Quartet in E-flat Major for Piano and Strings, Op. 87 (1890).

Violinist Joanna Maurer, dormant since the Mozart Quartet that opened the program, joined Uchida, Hoffman and Balderston in what proved to be the program’s tour de force. The three players ripped into the sharply defined dotted-rhythmic figures that permeate the opening Allegro con fuoco with flamboyance, capturing the Bohemian/Gypsy ethnic flavors of this movement in convincing fashion. Blend of sound among the three strings was especially rewarding, with a combination of warmth and vigor that captured each mood Dvorak laid before them. 

The slow (Lento) movement, which carries as much dramatic weight as the colossal first movement, reminds me of the slow movement of Schubert’s celebrated C Major Quintet with its ethereal opening and cathartic, contrasting middle section (which the four players milked for all it’s worth). Balderston’s large and mellow tone in the cello’s tenor register was a treat to the ears, as was Uchida’s passage-work, which spanned virtually every dynamic level.

The tongue-in-cheek third movement, a Viennese waltz that the players seasoned with a generous garnishing of schmaltz, eased the tension generated in the prior two movements. The relentless, driving rhythmic propulsion of dotted-note figures in the middle section recalls Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet. Uchida produced some brilliant moments in this movement during the many delicately shaped, rapid finger-work passages.  

The Quartet concluded with an irresistible Gypsy dance that had the crowd’s feet tapping in unison. Balance and ensemble interplay was tight, as the movement’s four-note motif passed seamlessly from one player to another. This is the piece they came to play, and this is what sent the listeners home content.  And on a full stomach.

Details Box:
What: American Chamber Players
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: October 22, 2011
Time: about 2 hours, with intermission

Attendance: About 400 (sold out)
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $20, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org

Next: Jupiter String Quartet, 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12

Syracuse Opera’s season-opening ‘La Traviata’ favors the ears, not the eyes

Singers score well in this sparsely staged production, but acting under Jerald Schweibert’s stage direction leaves much to be desired

By David Rubin

http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Douglas Kinney Frost, the Director of Music at Syracuse Opera, continues to pull the company out of its singing doldrums that undermined performances in recent years. With Frost on the podium, Syracuse Opera offered a well-sung La Traviata that showed his eye for young talent.  

Soprano Danielle Pastin took on the enormous challenge of Violetta, the courtesan with consumption. This was only the second time Pastin has sung the part, the first coming in 2009 with the small New Rochelle Opera. She is highly regarded in Santa Fe, an important training ground. She received a big break there last summer going on as Mimi in La Bohème.

She has an attractive, agile voice of medium weight with the ability to fill a large hall with sound. She offered solid interpretations of all her big numbers including the Act 1 Libiamo and the double aria Ah fors e lui and Sempre libera. Her confrontation with Giorgio Germont in Act 2 was powerful, her farewell to life (Addio, del passato) early in Act 3 appropriately anguished. She wisely chose not to take the high-note variant for Sempre libera, but the rest of her singing was assured and professional. The role seems to hold no terrors for her.

Alfredo was sung by Nathaniel Peake, whose resume is more advanced than Pastin’s. He has won a fistful of major awards for young singers, including those from the George London Foundation, the Richard Tucker Foundation, and Placido Domingo’s Operalia Competition. He was a 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Winner. He has major roles coming up as Pinkerton in a Houston Grand Opera Butterfly and Tamino in a San Francisco Opera The Magic Flute.  

Perhaps because he was a very young Resident Artist with Syracuse Opera in 2008-09, his mentor Frost had a chance to bring him back even though his fee is probably beyond what Syracuse can offer. His loyalty is commendable. He is clearly being groomed for big things as a lyric tenor. Those in the Traviata audience in Syracuse may be able to say, “We heard him when...”

He does, indeed, have a sweet, ingratiating voice when it is not under pressure. But Alfredo is a touch too heavy for him at this point in his career. His top notes are not as secure or as easily produced as they no doubt will become. The conclusion of his wicked cabaletta that ends Act 2 was hasty rather than thrilling.  He was at his best in the Act 1 drinking song, his duet with Violetta in Act 3, and in all the sections of lyrical dialogue when he didn’t have to force. He was generally a great pleasure to hear.

Baritone Luis Ledesma, who sang Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont, is the most experienced of the three leads. His signature role seems to be Escamillo, but he has a wide-ranging repertoire that embraces Rigoletto and Enrico (in Lucia). His voice doesn’t have the weight of the best rolling Verdi baritones. It lacks resonance and a honeyed quality. But he delivered Di Provenza very well in Act 2 and proved a good foil for Violetta in their confrontation over Alfredo.

All in all, it was a very good night for the singers. Still, the performance failed to touch the heart, and that is because none of the singers yet acts well or received sufficient direction from Jerald Schweibert, who was making his company debut.  

Peake mainly stands and delivers, hands at his side. He is a large man, not assured yet on stage and a bit gawky.  

Not for a minute did Pastin seem consumptive. Admittedly, Violetta is an acting challenge beyond most sopranos, demanding as it does in the course of the evening a jaded courtesan, an ingénue, a coquette, a tragic heroine, and a dying consumptive. Pastin was not really any of these Violettas.  

Ledesma didn’t engage either Alfredo or Violetta as he must if these two confrontations are going to galvanize an audience. He was too far away from them and too wooden.

The emotion in this opera came more often from the pit, where Frost led the remaining members of the bankrupt Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, now performing under their own management as Symphony Syracuse. They often played as if their professional lives depend on it, which they probably do.  

Rhythmically this performance was very exciting. The orchestra took top honors throughout Act 2, particularly in the gambling scene when Alfredo throws money at Violetta. String figurations were sharp, angry, and persistent.

Frost favored slow tempos in the overture and in Violetta’s more anguished moments, but otherwise he moved proceedings quickly and whipped up a storm in the brass and percussion, both of which had a good night. The cellos provided strong underpinning. While the orchestra often played with great volume, Frost was attentive to his singers and rarely covered them.  

The Symphony Syracuse players deserved the many ovations they received from the audience, which clearly misses them in their regular guise as the SSO.

The non-musical aspects of the performance might have come across more effectively if the sets had not been so minimalist. Indeed, this was close to a black box production. The stage was framed with black curtains left and right.  The back wall had a light blue curtain for Act 1, a mauve curtain for Act 2, and black for Act 3. Lighting provided whatever atmosphere there was. Props in all three acts were a few tables, chairs and a bed with pillows. In various arrangements these were meant to suggest everything from Violetta’s Paris apartment to her country house and Flora’s salon. This is a lot to ask of an audience.

Costumes were mostly black tie for the men and mid-19th century ball gowns for the women. The gowns added some color to the proceedings, but this was a production whose dominant color was black.

This might have worked if stage director Schweibert had been able to do more with his singers. In the event, however, the audience was left to fill in the many blanks from its memory bank of past Traviatas. Schweibert’s main virtue was to deliver an economical staging that did little harm. That is a valuable skill in this period of economic depression for the arts.

The audience at the Crouse-Hinds Concert Theater in the Civic Center was large and filled with young people. One hopes they will learn that opera can be more emotionally engaging than this Traviata.           

Details Box:

What: Verdi’s La Traviata

Who: Syracuse Opera

When: 8 p.m. Friday, October 21, 2011

Final performance: 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Crouse-Hinds Theater, John H. Mulroy Civic Center, 411 Montgomery St., Syracuse.

Tickets: $18 to $165

Contact: Box office: 476-7372, http://syracuseopera.com

Anna Netrebko packs house — and costume — in Met’s new production of Anna Bolena

Girlish figure may be gone, but the Russian soprano cuts an otherwise convincing image as the tragic wife of Henry VIII in Donizetti's opera

By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

As compelling musically as portions of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena are, it is a far cry from his Lucia di Lammermoor. Audiences are not dumb. Thus Lucia is on the boards in every major opera house all the time, while Anna awaits a Callas or a Sills (or in this case Anna Netrebko) to bring her to life.

So it is not a shock that the most memorable part of this new production that opened the Met's 2011-2012 season is the costuming. Indeed, David McVicar, who is in charge of the production, made his wisest choice when he engaged Jenny Tiramani to design the costumes.

Tiramani is an acknowledged expert in 16th and 17th century English dress. She researched the clothes being worn at King Henry VIII’s court in part from Holbein portraits.

As Tiramani told interviewer Deborah Voigt during the intermission, she wanted the costumes to be as accurate as possible. Anna, Henry, and Anna’s rival Jane Seymour appeared in multi-layered clothing that starts with linen undergarments. The outer garments — doublets, sleeve jerkins, gowns — are as close to real as Tiramani could create. As tenor Stephen Costello implied (he plays Richard Percy, Anna’s suitor before her marriage to Henry), once you are in one of these costumes you are in it! Forget a bathroom break.

The Met’s HD telecasts are shot so tightly that the movie theater audience could see the careful detail lavished on these costumes, plus the many jewels Henry, Anna and Jane wore — surely a window-full at Bulgari.

Indeed the costumes were the production. There was little else to look at. For backdrops McVicar offered stone, arches, and more stone. We were in Castle Anywhere, without a warming fire in sight. Pieces of this castle rearranged themselves for different scenes, but it was all so murky that after a while one simply focused on the costumes and the voices.

McVicar didn’t bother much with direction or blocking, either. The characters were left to their own devices. The chorus of courtiers stood around in stock conspiratorial mode, whispering or looking pained as the plot rolled to the inevitable beheading. Henry was bug-eyed with feigned outrage most of the time. Anna was bewildered, angry, or loony, as the plot demanded. It’s hard to imagine that anyone on stage or in the audience thought this plot offered anything other than a chance for a good sing.

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera says this was Donizetti’s first big hit, the opera "that gave him his initial exposure to Paris and London." It premiered in 1830 in Milan, and he was fortunate to have Giuditta Pasta as Anna and Giovanni Rubini as Percy, two legends who make one long for a time machine.

The opera’s strengths are a mad scene for Anna that concludes the piece, and a variety of confrontations between the characters that ratchet up the tension: Anna and Percy reunited with Percy still ardent in his love; Jane admitting to Anna that she is Henry’s new lover; Henry breaking into Anna’s bed chamber to confront her with Percy and her page, Mark Smeaton. All these are effectively written. But none has the melodic allure of the Sextet from Lucia or its celebrated mad scene.

Further, if one knows the scene from Verdi’s Don Carlo in which Carlo, also a crazed lover like Percy, approaches another queen (Elizabeth de Valois) to plead his lost cause, the weaknesses of Donizetti’s writing become all too clear. Verdi’s scene is riveting, searing and truly pathetic. Donizetti’s is tepid.

Moreover, much of this music is simply inappropriate to the story. The overture could be from a Rossini comedy (Donizetti’s debt to Rossini is all over this score). Donizetti uses flutes in his orchestration at the most inopportune times. When the situation demands a black or menacing sound, we get flutes.

So why revive this? For Netrebko, of course. She is a Gelb Golden Girl (Peter Gelb being the boss of the Met) and, presumably, a box office draw, even in this. She sang very well, handling the coloratura demands with ease. Her voice has both weight and agility, and the sound is a very attractive one. The mad scene was a triumph. Physically, however, the girlish figure is gone. She has become Mamma Lucia overnight.

Perhaps because this HD telecast was the first beamed into Russia, two of the other lead singers were also Russian, surely strange casting for an Italian opera. The stronger of the two was mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova, as Jane. She matched Netrebko in intensity during their Act II confrontation over Henry. Her voice is accurate and attractive, although the carrying power is impossible to judge in the HD relay. Bass Ildar Abdrazakov, as King Henry, seemed a bit underpowered compared to the ladies, with a cloudy lower register.

Mezzo Tamara Mumford was outstanding in her two arias as the foolish page, Smeaton. This is a trouser-role for a Cherubino-like character who is hopelessly in love with Anna. But unlike Cherubino, Smeaton does some real harm when he lies about a supposed affair he had with the Queen, helping to send her to the block. McVicar did a disservice to Mumford by covering her in blood and stripping her to a tunic with bare legs after she has been tortured, forcing her to sing in an ensemble in this condition.

Some of the most exciting singing came from tenor Stephen Costello, as Percy. His voice has a Juan Diego Florez-like sound, except it’s heavier and not as agile. But it’s an attractive sound, occasionally thrilling. He is a decent actor, believable as the foolish Percy lured into a trap by Henry. He has Nemorino in Vienna and Alfredo in London on his schedule in the next few months, so his time is now. The Met should make good use of him in Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and some Verdi roles.

Conductor Marco Armiliato took a critical beating for his conducting on opening night, but he moved matters along at this matinee and got out of the singers’ way.

Two points of note about this HD presentation. Weather conditions, we were told, led to a blank screen on three occasions — once before the music started and twice in Act 1. Each lasted for only a few minutes, but broke the mood.

These productions are now being shot in such relentless close-up that my companion and I simultaneously exclaimed during the mad scene that we could see Netrebko’s molars. The camera was down her throat. Never once did the director pull back so that the audience in the movie theater could get a sense of the entire stage picture. Despite what Peter Gelb might think, none of the singers can take this sort of microscopic inspection.

Details Box:
What: Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Simulcast Live in HD
When: October 15, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: About 4 hours
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Encore performance: November 2, 2011 6:30 pm
Next simulcast: Mozart’s Don Giovanni, October 29, 2011, 12:55 pm

It takes more than just accomplished playing to fulfill an audience’s expectations

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

There’s nothing wrong with the Orion String Quartet that a good drama coach can’t fix.

The 25-year-old ensemble, which came to Syracuse Saturday evening to open the 62nd season of the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music, has what it takes to stand tall among the best in the chamber music business: a handsome blend of tone, finely honed ensemble-work, dependable playing, gutsy delivery and, when needed, pizzazz. But the four middle-aged players, colorful neckties notwithstanding, need a pointer or two on how to work the crowd.

The eager, sold-out crowd of 400 arrived early, battled one other over available parking spaces, waited patiently to get into the auditorium and then shuffled about in a quest to find the best seats in the house. By 8 p.m. they were chomping at the bit, in a state of excited anticipation, to hear a program spearheaded by Haydn’s buoyant String Quartet in D minor, Op.76 no.2 ("The Fifths"). But while the Haydn quartet may have been the logical and expected choice to begin the evening’s fare, the audience instead received a solemn lecture on contrapuntal procedure: two Contrapuncti from Bach’s The Art of the Fugue.

Concert Experience 101: The opening work on a concert program, like a tasty dinner appetizer, should set both mood and flavor of the experience to come. In the case of Saturday’s program, why not start with Papa Haydn and then segue into the abstruse machinations of the mighty contrapuntist? And while we’re at it, is there any musical merit to dividing first-chair responsibilities between violinist brothers Daniel and Todd Phillips?

Todd, who on this program played first chair only in the Haydn quartet, has a more aggressive and extroverted playing style than does sibling Daniel (as might be expected from the former’s bright cranberry-colored shirt and argyle socks). That’s not to say that Daniel is unworthy of the first-chair. Quite the contrary, he is a solid and dependable lead player, despite of an occasional tendency to sag slightly in pitch. But to the discerning ear (and the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music audience is arguably the most educated and musically erudite in Central NY), the sound and character of a string quartet change significantly when a different violinist is at the helm ― and this changing of the guard does little to advance Orion’s image as a quartet with a unique sound and identity.

When the ensemble finally got to the Haydn quartet (third on the program, preceding intermission), it proved well worth the wait.

Of the many sets of quartets spanning Haydn’s creative years, Op. 76 stands at or near the top of his brilliant chamber music output. Here is the 65-year-old "Father of the String Quartet," as he is often called, in full-bloom at the pinnacle of his long and illustrious career. Nicknamed "The Fifths’’ (no doubt because of the descending intervals of a Perfect-5th that punctuate the opening of the work’s first movement), the D minor Quartet, Op.76 no.2 is a staple of the string quartet repertory and, next to the Emperor Quartet (Op. 76 no.3), my personal favorite of the set of six quartets.

With Todd now at first violin, Orion at once achieved a handsome and engaging blend of tone that made me forget, for the moment, the dry acoustical properties of Lincoln Middle School Auditorium.

The players dug in to the first movement with enthusiasm and gusto, particularly during the rugged transition (between themes one and two) and the tension-building development section. Orion’s approach to the work’s second movement (Andante o più tosto allegretto) was original and refreshing. In place of the customary gentle legato that connects the phrases of slow movements such as this, Orion relaxed the tempo considerably and evoked wistful phrases that gently seasoned the melodic lines, crafting an interpretation that perhaps looked forward a decade and a half later into the Romantic period. The result was a movement full of charm, poise and beauty.

The third movement canon, where four instruments meld into two pairs of voices playing in parallel octaves, was slightly top-heavy as the violin pair overpowered the viola and cello pair. Still, Orion’s rhythmic propulsion in both the Minuet and the Trio made for some exciting and invigorating moments. The four players went for the jugular in the fourth movement Finale, digging into the strings with confidence and vigor, and bringing the work (and the first-half of the program) to an exhilarating close.

Stravinsky’s Concertino for String Quartet (1930), which followed the Bach, recalls the style and feel of one of the composer’s better known chamber works, L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale). Orion delivered the spunky rhythmic ostinatos that permeate the work’s neo-classical framework with suitable flamboyance, while Daniel tossed off the ubiquitous double-stops with grace and élan.

Although the Bach Contrapuncti may not have been an especially wise choice with which to open the program, I must admit I was impressed with the solemnity of Orion’s interpretation. The four voices were well-balanced and equally weighted, as good contrapuntal textures should be, and the ensemble’s addition of a wide variety of dynamic shifts gave emphasis and drama that transcended Bach, at times recalling late Beethoven (particularly the Grosse Fuge).

Those who follow my reviews may find it difficult to believe that it’s possible for me to dislike anything written by Johannes Brahms. For one thing, the archetypical perfectionist burned all the works (particularly his string quartets) he considered unworthy, and whatever works remained are, well, mighty good. This having been said, the String Quartet in A minor, Op.51 no.2 (1873) contains the only slow movement by Brahms (the intolerably long second movement) I wish had gone up in flames with the others.

Orion’s tempos throughout the work suggest a thorough understanding of the composer’s fondness for relaxed tempos, particularly in opening movements. Orion’s leisurely tempo during the first movement allowed the expansive melodic material to breathe and blossom, and the players used the give-and-take of tempo (rubato) to caress the phrases to great effect. Brahms also demands a warm blend of tone in his string chamber music (one of Orion’s strong suits), as well as the ability to craft playful pizzicato accompaniments to the shapely melodic lines, which Orion also does quite well.

Whatever may be lacking in the lengthy second movement is more than compensated for in the mournful third movement (Quasi Minuetto, moderato), an expressive piece of writing that is rich in warmth and pathos. The Finale, too, provided a worthy vehicle for Orion’s sensitive manner of delivery, but by this time Daniel’s pitch was beginning to drift to the flat side, which soon began to detract from the overall mesmerizing effect of Brahms’s music.

Although I was generally impressed with Orion’s delivery and perspicacity of style in the Brahms quartet, I wished their performance had that one elusive element that could have made a good performance a great performance: spontaneity. The players appeared to me to have been just a shade too tired to tackle a work of this magnitude and make it seem as though the notes were distancing themselves from the sheet music. Still, I commend the ensemble for having the good sense to place this piece at the only suitable location on the program: last.

Now, if only they’ll pay as much attention to the beginning… 

Details Box:
What: Orion String Quartet
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: September 24, 2011
Time: about 2 hours, with intermission
Attendance: About 400 (sold out)
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $25, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org 
Next: American Chamber Players, 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22

In her new Beethoven CD Ingrid Fliter stands tall among the great interpreters of the past

Move over Solomon, Bruce Hungerford, Myra Hess and Clara Haskil: The Argentine pianist (and Gilmore Artist Award recipient) has outgrown her image as a Chopin specialist

By Kevin Moore

http://cnycafemomus.com/Kevin_Moore.html

I remember words of wisdom from Anton Kuerti, one of the great Beethoven players in the world today. He said that he had two basic rules for all-Beethoven recitals: no more than one minor key sonata per program and no more than one late-period sonata. Those rules elicited some embarrassment from me when I confessed that my first all-Beethoven recital had four minor key sonatas (Op.10, no.1 in C minor; Op.111 in C minor; op.2, no.1 in F minor and the “Appasionata,” Op.57 in F minor).

Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter’s newly released Beethoven program on EMI Classics does violate that first rule by putting together three minor key sonatas. However, she certainly makes a persuasive case for these three sonatas as a group. They are also three of the “named” sonatas, even if only one of the names (Sonate Pathetique) was given by Beethoven.

Of the 32 standard piano sonatas of Beethoven there are only nine in minor keys, and one of those is the very short Sonata in G minor, Op.49, no.1 where, in fact, the second of its two movements is in G major. And yet the popular image of Beethoven seems rooted in works like the Fifth Symphony (in C minor), the Ninth Symphony (D minor), the Third Piano Concerto (C minor) and other works of basically dark and dramatic character. Despite that image, the predominant character of the piano sonatas is one of sheer lyricism, melodic grace, and warmth of expression.

Ingrid Fliter finds all of those things in the three sonatas of her program. In addition, the slow movements of all three sonatas are in fact in major keys and provide a built-in contrast. But what makes it work first and foremost is the playing itself.

Fliter has developed a sterling reputation as an artist of impeccable taste, possessing an instinctive, natural sense of the music. Her fame grew suddenly and internationally based on her two first recordings for EMI Classics, both of music by Chopin. Her complete Waltzes were hailed as one of the finest accounts of these pieces since Cortot and Rubinstein, an opinion that I share. Her next Chopin recording had a majestic and touching B Minor Sonata, an intensely lyrical yet powerful Fourth Ballade, and a Barcarolle with all the color and imagination one could possibly wish for.

Yet not all great Chopin interpreters have impressed in Beethoven, and vice versa. For example, as beautifully as Wilhelm Backhaus played Chopin (as evidenced in the first ever recording of the complete Etudes, and also a late recording of the “Funeral March” Sonata) his career was associated mostly with the music of Beethoven and Brahms, at least with respect to the listening public. The same could be said of Alfred Brendel who was famous for his recorded cycles of Beethoven and Schubert sonatas. Despite an early recording of Chopin Polonaises, I don’t believe he played Chopin at all during most of his career. And as well as Artur Rubinstein played Beethoven, his greatest successes, and certainly his best playing, was in the music of Chopin.

Beethoven’s music requires a sense of structure and flow that is sectional and periodic, yet cumulative. When he wrote a dynamic like “forte,” or “piano,” he generally intended that to be the general dynamic until he changed it. Not so with Chopin, whose music often requires a fluid and changing dynamic level, within even single phrases. In other words, the styles of Chopin and Beethoven are built from somewhat different aesthetics and have different views of what matters most in the music. To greatly over-simplify I could say that clarity of structure matters more in Beethoven, where beauty of timbre, shaping of phrases and the emotion of the moment matters more in Chopin. What works interpretively with one often does not with the other.

Yet in this new Beethoven CD Fliter shows that she understands all that, possibly intuitively. Her playing is not focused on the studied perfection and polish that is so often the case with younger competition-winning pianists today. Rather it makes these pieces come alive with a natural and unforced quality that underscores the very real perfection of the playing. It simply grabs the listener the way great Beethoven pieces should. Fliter brings an entirely apt integrity, depth of understanding and seriousness to these classic works.

This is truly great Beethoven playing. It brings to mind the old recordings of Solomon, Hungerford, Myra Hess or Clara Haskil.

In the first sonata on the program, the Sonata Pathetique, Op. 13, she quite rightly repeats the introductory Grave along with the Allegro di molto e con brio exposition. That puts her in the minority of recorded pianists but still in excellent company (Serkin, Kuerti, Hewitt, et al.). In that opening Grave she highlights the seriousness with quite a slow tempo, sharply etched dotted-rhythms and a truly serious sense of weight and depth of sound. The Allegro di molto e con brio is brilliant and intense, yet under firm control of rhythm and tempo. She sings the Adagio cantabile exquisitely. And the Allegro finale has exceptional weight and depth to it.

She lets the music speak for itself and take its own time, while imposing nothing willful or arbitrary on it. She lets it tell its own story, which still seems painted so vividly. Every detail registers clearly, yet all sound like a natural exposition of what the piece simply is.

In the first movement of the “Tempest” Sonata, Op.31, no.2, the contrasts in tempo, mood and intensity are the essence of it all. Her slow tempos are very slow, yet flow with exactly the right sense of proportion. The faster sections seem like extensions of the slow interruptions. The famous ghostly recitatives in this movement, which are very difficult to pedal properly, are exactly as they should be. It is all remarkably powerful and dramatic, even when soft and slow, maybe especially then. Not many pianists can “explain” this movement in so convincing a fashion.

The warmth and deep lyricism of the Adagio are remarkable. And her galloping finale is done with just the right amount of restraint to maintain the wonderful sense of passion churning just beneath the surface.

Fliter’s Appassionata can be placed among the great recordings of this sonata, and I’ve heard most of them. For me the summit of the “Appassionata” Sonata was reached most convincingly by Rudolf Serkin, Solomon and Myra Hess (and also maybe Nicholai Medtner, better known as composer than pianist). But even next to those, Fliter is dramatically convincing, serious, powerful and simply magnificent. It is the kind of artistry that makes comparisons completely irrelevant and leaves me vainly striving to put into words something that’s ineffable. You just have to listen to it.

After her two Chopin albums it was clear that the Gilmore Artist Award, which she received in 2006, was well and wisely chosen. If anything, this Beethoven CD is even finer and surely some of the finest Beethoven playing that can be found. That she seems to be pursuing an upward curve artistically is an affirmation of the good that an award like the Gilmore can do. May she long continue in the same direction! I look forward to whatever she chooses to play. 

Details Box:
Genre: CD review: Ingrid Fliter, piano
What: Ludwig van  Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. 8, 17, 23

Label: EMI Classics 0 94573 2

Release date: June 7, 2011

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

As I headed to the town famous for its Baseball Hall of Fame to hear a program titled "Boston Comes to Cooperstown," the only players that came immediately to mind were Red Sox legends Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Carlton Fisk and Wade Boggs.

The team that arrived to play at the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival Wednesday evening came from Boston, all right ― but they weren’t carrying bats. The five-member ensemble, most of whom have ties either to the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Boston Chamber Music Society, nevertheless played as well together as any All Stars you’ll ever see at Fenway Park. Wednesday’s concert was by any measure first-rate and top-notch, and I’d be hard-pressed to think of any group of players capable of topping them. Except maybe the Yankees.

The six-work program opened with Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, K.370, giving the capacity crowd at The Farmers’ Museum’s Louis C. Jones Center a chance to experience the formidable talents of BSO Assistant Principal Oboist, Keisuke Wakao.

Written in 1781 to showcase the virtuosic wizardry of his friend, Munich oboist Freidrich Ramm, Mozart’s delightful quartet makes great demands on the oboist’s technical facility and command of the high register ― which is at once apparent from the heavy use of turns and trills in the opening movement.

As may be expected from one who occupies a position of such prominence in a major symphony orchestra, Wakao’s technique is flawless. The Tokyo native tossed off one pernicious ornament after another effortlessly, and delivered the rapid scale-wise passages with grace and élan. What impressed me most about Wakao’s playing, however, was the intense degree of sensitivity he brought to his phrasing of the lyrical passages, such as in the softer sections of the aria-like slow movement. His eyes closed, the oboist gently mimicked a vocal soloist with melodic lines that often cadenced in whisper-quiet pianissimos, even in the instrument’s extreme high register.

It was a pleasure to hear Wakao’s added embellishments (some rather wild) to Mozart’s writing in the sprightly Rondo movement that concluded the work, which I suspect Ramm had done to impress the audience during the work’s premiere. The strings (violin, viola and cello) exercised a marvelous blend of tone and politely stayed out of Wakao’s way in the softer sections. I commend the ensemble for following the composer’s wishes during the first movement by repeating the exposition ― a practice often ignored today in the interests of time and expediency.

The unusually scored Trio for Flute, Viola and Cello, Op. 40 by French composer Albert Roussel that followed is essentially a neo-classical work whose outer two movements combine snappy, syncopated rhythmic effects with ethnic folk-like harmonic flavors designed to keep the listener engaged. There’s lots of Prokofiev to be found here, especially in the opening Allegro grazioso ― whose percussive flute effects recall the celebrated Flute Sonata in D Major. Throughout the work I was often reminded of the melodic flavors of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, who in fact studied with Roussel.

Flautist (and Festival Director) Linda Chesis captured the charm and allure of Roussel’s ethnic melodic flavors through a rich tone and a sublime legato that appeared to glide across the instrument’s register changes. Moreover, her rhythmic precision in the recurring motif, comprising two sixteenth-notes followed by an eighth-note, helped capture a sense of joie de vivre that permeated all three movements of this demanding work. The level of performance was heightened considerably by some incredibly lovely and sensitive playing in the mesmerizing slow movement by Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev, whose lush, resonant tone and sensuous phrasing sent me into a peaceful trance that I hope to recapture during my next visit to the dentist. Violist Marcus Thompson provided joyful animation in the ubiquitous arpeggiated figures that provided shimmer and sparkle within the texture’s inner-parts.

Benjamin Britten was only 18 when he wrote his engaging Phantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings, Op. 2, which closed the first-half of the program. Britten, in this neo-Romantic work, is extremely effective in his writing for the strings ― particularly in his use of ostinato (repeated) patterns in the cello part. The writing for strings here is so beautiful that the oboe seems rather superfluous to the four-voice texture ― as if Britten had written the woodwind part more as an afterthought rather than as an organic part of the work as a whole. This point was apparently not lost on Wakao, whose brief but telling pre-concert remarks about the piece astounded the audience when he gratuitously proclaimed, "Britten is not my favorite composer," which he quickly followed by way of an apology, "…but this is a beautiful piece."

A set of duet arrangements followed intermission: the first a setting for flute and cello of three of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions, and the second a set of variations for flute and oboe on three arias of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. I thought the Bach transcriptions worked rather well, in part because the two instruments here are in contrasting ranges (bass and treble) but mostly because Bach sounds good on just about anything. Not so with Mozart. This transcription sounded rather bland throughout, largely because of the lack of register contrast between the two treble instruments.

The program closed with fitting flamboyance, and elegance, with one of the great warhorses of the string trio literature: the Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 by Ernö von Dohnányi.

As is the case with Brahms’s chamber works, playing Dohnányi convincingly requires strength, endurance and sufficient muscle to produce a collective sound than appears to double or even treble the number of players onstage. The big, brawny tone of violinist Alexander Velinzon, the BSO’s Assistant Concertmaster, matched both in depth and volume by cellist Segev and violist Thompson, produced a strongly defined sound that breathed life into the performance. This power of delivery peaked during the rapid sixteenth-note passages of the Rondo-Finale, which at times sounded more like an octet than a trio.

Ensemble interplay throughout the five movements was razor sharp, as the three musicians produced clearly defined entrances and phrase endings and balanced textures that allowed the melodic lines to buoy to the top. But it was the individual efforts ― more so than the collective ensemble effort ― that captured my fancy in this performance. And my ears rarely wandered far from the demanding cello part.

Segev’s playing combines the muscle and panache of a Nathaniel Rosen with the graceful lyricism of a Steven Doane (two cellists I’ve long admired). The rich intensity and delicacy of legato in her exquisite solo in the instrument’s altissimo register during the Tema con variazioni movement left me breathless, while in the louder sections she played with fearless intensity and determination. All this was evident not only to the ears, but also the eyes. Watching the gesticulate cellist in action afforded the listener a window into her soul.

Like Segev, Velinzon is a pleasure to watch as he moves and sways to the music ― which in the case of Dohnányi is difficult to avoid. I only wish that the comparatively undemonstrative Thompson showed as much emotion and depth of involvement as the other two players. His straightforward, business-like demeanor as he plays belies the beauty that radiates from his instrument. Thompson’s serene high-register solo in the second movement Romanza sounded beautiful, but here too I wish his face had revealed what my ears had experienced, so as to draw the listener into a shared experience.

The Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, which this season changed its name from "Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival" to better reflect its eclectic offerings, is a blossoming seasonal arts organization that is rapidly shaping into one of the premiere seasonal arts organizations in New York.

It’s well worth the trip to experience playing of this caliber. Just like the Yankees.

By David Rubin
http://www.cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

To open its 2011 season, the Glimmerglass Festival outside Cooperstown, New York offered two French operas with strong (and nasty) women at their centers: Georges Bizet’s chestnut Carmen, and Luigi Cherubini’s rarity Medea. First performed in 1797, Medea has never been very popular. Carmen was clearly meant to sell tickets. Medea was meant to attract attention.

Here is a prediction. Medea will be an unexpected sensation and should outsell a lackluster Carmen. The opera is musically exciting; and it features a riveting, fearless performance by soprano Alexandra Deshorties in the title role. I saw it with a large group of Glimmerglass regulars who all asked, "Where has this opera been all our lives?"

If Medea is familiar at all it is because of the Maria Callas performance in 1953 at La Scala that helped define her as a singer with extraordinary acting talents. Its vigorous overture has been recorded, but opera lovers unfamiliar with the Callas CD probably haven’t heard a note of the rest of it.

Cherubini was much admired by his contemporary Carl Maria von Weber, who wrote Der Freischütz. He influenced the course of French opera all the way to Bizet. His music iswas studied by Brahms, Bruckner and Wagner. Today he is remembered, if at all, as a gifted teacher and musical administrator. As a composer, however, his operas were popular only in Germany.

He lacks Mozart’s divine melodic gift, but he knew how to use the orchestra to convey emotion and build tension. In Medea he makes effective use of woodwinds (particularly oboe and English horn) and percussion. It is no surprise that Wagner admired him because the orchestra expertly conveys and supports the emotions on stage.

The mythological Medea provides Cherubini with a gruesome but intriguing — even sexy — character. She is the sorceress who employed her dark arts to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece from her home island of Colchis in exchange for his promise of marriage. Cad that he is, Jason then conveniently overlooks that she murdered her own brother to help them escape from Colchis. He abandons her anyway in order to marry the princess Glauce, daughter of King Creon of Corinth. When Medea’s entreaties to Jason fail, she takes her famous revenge by killing their two children so that Jason cannot raise them. The hapless Glauce becomes collateral damage.

Once Medea appears onstage in the middle of the first act she is rarely absent. Cherubini has given her a role requiring the stamina and the voice of an Isolde. But any singer who assumes the part must make her much more than a monster. If the audience is unwilling to see the situation from her perspective and take her part against Jason, the whole thing can fall to pieces.

This no doubt explains why the opera is rarely done. Not many sopranos combine the vocal goods, the acting ability, the stamina, and the physique to pull it off. Given that most opera impresarios don’t offer it, why bother to learn it?

Despite all these challenges, the performance by Alexandra Deshorties was jaw-dropping. If opera houses are not beseeching her to sing this part from here to Vienna and back, then there is no justice in the opera world (which is probably the case).

Deshorties is a tall woman with an angular, handsome face and sallow cheeks. With long black hair, she looks both beautiful and evil. With the assistance of director Michael Barker-Caven, she mastered the ability to contort her body into the position painted on classic Greek vases. Or she slithered around the stage like the snake that was part of the set.

Her grief flowed through her limbs, out her throat, and into the audience. Her plea to Jason to remain with her was gripping. Her request to King Creon for asylum in Corinth, and then for permission to remain with her children for just one day, was entirely credible. She had the audience hanging on her every word.

Deshorties modulated her medium-weight soprano perfectly for the size of the Alice Busch Opera Theater (just under 1000 seats). She used her voice to snarl, plead, threaten, beg, conspire and declaim. She totally inhabited the character of Medea. In the final scene she emerged from the crypt, having slain her children, covered in blood, wearing little more for modesty’s sake than an antique version of a Greek bikini, triumphant and hysterical.

This part is delicately poised on the knife-edge of believability. One wrong move or gesture and it can easily become camp—an operatic Fatal Attraction. Deshorties made not a single false move.

She had two very strong singing actors to help her. Bass-baritone David Pittsinger sang King Creon. He projected nobility in both bearing and voice. His instrument is a bit pale at the top end of the range, but his overall sound is warm and full. He stood his ground with Medea in his big scene when he refuses to grant her asylum but then foolishly allows her just one more day with her children.

Medea’s confidante, Neris, was sung by mezzo-soprano Sarah Larsen. She is a member of the company’s Young Artists Program. Neris has some important singing to do in the scene leading up to the murder of the children. This is not a small role for the typical handmaiden. Larsen was just as riveting as Deshorties, able to project both loyalty to her mistress and horror at what she knew was to come. She sang confidently and she projected easily into the hall. She should have a strong career.

Jason was sung by tenor Jason Collins. He has the physique of a Greek hero. The middle of his voice is pleasant, and he has sufficient volume. But the top is a bit shaky under pressure and the basic instrument lacks juice, making the voice somewhat monochromatic. Next to Deshorties, he seemed not to be acting at all. She ate him up.

The hapless Glauce, killed off by Medea with a poisoned crown presented to her as a wedding gift, was sung by soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer. She recently sang Freia at the Met in Das Rheingold. Here she sang as if she had to fill a house of 3800 seats. If she files down the voice and focuses on the lyricism of the part, it will work. At the performance reviewed, she was far too loud. At the top of her range she was quite unpleasant to hear.

Conductor Daniele Rustioni threw himself into the score, never letting up the tension. Coordination with the singers was excellent. Tempos seemed very well judged. He accompanied Deshorties with great skill and they seemed in complete agreement about how the role should go. Despite his youth, he has conducted at Covent Garden, La Scala, St. Petersburg, and Venice, among other prime locations. Given the rarity of the work, he did an amazing job. He is a valuable addition to the Glimmerglass conducting roster.

The set was antique grunge, with objects strewn here and there in a vaguely classic setting. The Golden Fleece was hoisted over the stage during part one, and after the interval a pale full moon (which would have been at home in a production of Salome) glowed ominously over part two, turning a predictable blood red at the end. No matter that the setting was so dull. Everyone was transfixed by Deshorties. The set simply disappeared.

The opera was given in an Italian translation, with the recitatives sung.

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera reports that the very first Medea, Julie-Angelique Scio, died young from tuberculosis "attributed to vocal gymnastics" in roles such as this one. We are all in Ms. Deshorties’ s debt for taking it on.

By David Abrams
http://www.cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

The 2011 Glimmerglass Festival (formerly Glimmerglass Opera) marks the first year of programming under Francesca Zambello, the iconoclastic opera director appointed Artistic and General Director of the festival in September 2010. Life will no longer be the same in and around Cooperstown.

For this new production of Bizet’s Carmen, Zambello (who will be directing two of this season’s four operatic/musical theater productions) decided to shake things up and engage veteran theater director Anne Bogart to craft a production that would capture, to quote Bogart, "…the fluidity and theatricality of a film set." Saturday evening’s sold-out, opening-night performance suggests that, in this Bizet classic, life will no longer be the same in and around Seville, either.

Bogart, the Artistic Director for SITI (a contemporary theatrical ensemble dedicated in part to training young theater artists), crafts and sustains action onstage that is full of energy, motion, vitality, spirit and purpose — a joie-de-vivre that keeps all eyes glued to the stage (throughout the nearly three-hour production I never once longed to play with my iPhone). Action continues onstage even during the overture and entr’actes to Acts 2, 3 and 4. And there always seems to be a sense of purpose to the action onstage; nothing here is gratuitous or overdone.

In her first lead role, 24-year-old mezzo-soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson forged an alluring Carmen who gained immediate credibility as the gypsy femme fatale when she first appeared onstage to deliver her character-defining Habanera.

The beguiling looks and naturally dark skin of the Palermo-born singer (whom some will remember as the Indian woman Wowkle in the Met’s HD Simulcast of La Fanciulla del West last January) obviates the need for heavy makeup and wigs — unlike the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Latvian mezzo-soprano, Elīna Garanĉa, who played Carmen at the Met early last year. Whether slinking around in a sheer, body-clinging gown or dancing table-top at Lillias Pastia’s Tavern, Costa-Jackson has what it takes to command attention. And that’s what the role demands.

At this early stage in her promising career, Costa-Jackson’s dark mezzo-soprano is not yet a sizeable vocal presence. True, her voice is sturdy enough to stand out from the chorus of cigarette factory women, but I often found myself wishing her voice would come to me, rather than the other way around. Still, her voice is impressive in that there are no discernable changes of timbre we have come to expect as mezzos change vocal registers during leaps and wide scalewise passages. There were no seams in the spacious octave leaps that permeate the Seguidilla.

As an actress, however, Costa-Jackson lacks consistency. The role of Carmen must be cool, calculating and utterly fearless, even in the face of immediate death. Costa-Jackson exudes sufficient stoicism throughout the first two acts, but in the third-act Card Aria she shows increasing alarm and frustration as the fortune cards continually predict death — first for her, then for Don José. In the final act, rather than accept her fate Carmen displays fear and misgivings when Frasquita and Mercedes warn her that Don José is lurking among the crowd.

As Micaëla, Anya Matanovič — in her Glimmerglass Festival debut — delivered the most impressive vocal effort of the evening and a solid acting effort, as well. Dressed in a humble, plain-Jane costume, Matanovič projected an image of the iconic character Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz — fresh out of Kansas. She played her character to perfection, projecting an aura of innocence, simplicity and purity that contrasted sharply with that of Carmen. The result was a clearly defined choice of good or evil for Don José to consider (had it been me, Matanovič’s golden soprano would have been more than enough to turn my back on Carmen and return home to mother).

The lustrous quality of Matanovič’s sinuous soprano, with its golden timbre and silky-smooth legato, charmed the ears immediately when we first encounter her as a frightened peasant girl who has wandered far from home in search of her elusive fiancé. Her performance in the exquisitely written duet with Don José (Ma mère, je la vois) evoked endless shades of feeling and nuance.

Matanovič’s signature third-act aria (Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante), which proved the artistic highpoint of the production, might have been used in a master-class to demonstrate nuance of phrasing, control of dynamics, maintaining quality of the high register and confident, effortless delivery. This was a first-class performance, and the most satisfying Micaëla I have heard to date.

It took Adam Diegel, as the ill-fated corporal, Don José, much of the first two acts to find his voice. And once he found it, it was quite attractive.

Diegel, whose hefty, self-confident tenor many will remember from his role as Cavaradossi in last season’s Glimmerglass production of Tosca, appeared uneasy early on — his voice thin and tight as if forced to sing with a noose around his neck. His problems were most evident during the first-act duet with Matanovič, where Diegel’s herky-jerky melodic phrases from note-to-note stood in stark contrast to his paramour’s velvety legato.

Diegel’s voice briefly regained its power and command following the Seguidilla, but then reverted to the earlier problems during the second-act Flower Song, before finally reaching full throttle toward the close of the third-act. Diegel’s voice had power to spare throughout the final act, hitting his high notes solidly and with panache.

As an actor, Diegel was mostly unconvincing. The role of Don José demands an actor who projects the agony of a proud man torn between two very different worlds — an exciting one ruled entirely by compulsion, and a virtuous but boring one leading to redemption. We saw none of this dichotomy in his character, just a narrow grab-bag of stock expressions and, during moments of anger, overacting.

Bass-baritone Keith Miller, as the charismatic toreador (and rival to Don José in Carmen’s affections) Escamillo, looked spectacular when we first see him enter Lillias Pastia’s Tavern in Act 2 in a gangster-like pin-stripe suit, gold-chain and spats, and again dressed to the nines in his toreador regalia in Act 4.

Miller was in sturdy voice as Wells Fargo stagecoach agent Ashby in the Met’s La Fanciulla del West last January, and again a year earlier as Zuniga in the Met’s spectacular production of Carmen. Hopes were high, then, for Miller’s Glimmerglass Festival debut Saturday. Alas, the brawny bass-baritone appeared to be fighting hoarseness (singing through a cold, perhaps?) that affected his high register throughout much of the performance. To his credit, Miller belted out his character’s signature Toreador Song (and third-act duet with Diegel), apparently content to capture the moment dramatically, if not in voice. I imagine that Miller’s voice will recover in time for the next performance on July 9.

Young Artist Aaron Sorensen seemed miscast as the unctuous Captain of the dragoons, Zuniga. Sorensen, whose performance last season as the disheveled political prisoner Angelotti in the Glimmerglass production of Tosca revealed a promising but under-projected bass-baritone, showed great improvement Saturday in the focusing of his pleasant, deep baritone. In this production he still looks disheveled — and his lank posture and wimpy onstage demeanor did little to add weight and credence to his character. When Sorensen struggled to break up the unruly cigarette factory workers and restore order in Act 1, I for one began to fear that the girls would soon take this man down. Hard.

Young Artists soprano Lindsay Russell (last season’s Laurie in The Tender Land) and mezzo-soprano Cynthia Hanna, as Frasquita and Mercedes, respectively, brightened the stage immeasurably as the lively pair of gypsy cohorts to Carmen. Their delightful third-act duet, in which the two coyly importune the cards to reveal who their future lovers will be, brought smiles across the faces of the listeners. In spite of the disparity in vocal ranges, Russell and Hanna were remarkably well-paired in terms of tone quality: Try as I might I couldn’t tell whether the singers were switching parts to keep the higher voice in the soprano (Bizet wrote the parts in overlapping fashion, which doesn’t always work especially well).

Set and Costume Director James Schuette’s economy-minded set design, set in the 1920s and comprising three unadorned walls, a wooden table and some chairs, looked as if purloined from an Ingmar Bergman film. For much of the production the rear wall of the set was removed — unabashedly exposing the rear of the Alice Busch Theater stage, as if the opera had been designed as experimental theater. Happily, Bogart’s animated staging proved to be a welcome attention-grabber, designed perhaps to keep the listener’s eyes focused more on the characters than on their surroundings. The look and feel of the drab costumes worn by the cigarette workers, soldiers and smugglers were generally in-harmony with Bogart’s post-World War I period staging, although a more colorful assortment of gypsy attire might have been easier on the eyes.

Robert Wierzel’s clever lighting effects helped ease the monotony of the impoverished set, such as his illumination of the cigarette factory workers as the women make their way onstage from the factory in Act 1, and again as the children prance onstage for their chorus. Barney O’Hanlon, another member of SITI, crafted some lively choreography at Lillias Pastia’s Tavern that was suitably energetic (if not borderline orgiastic).

Conductor Director David Angus led a well-prepared and enthusiastic Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra in a rendition of the score that generally favored quicker tempos. At times Angus’s tempos were just a bit too spunky for comfort — such as in the sultry Habanera, which at this tempo could not quite capture the aura of seduction built in to the mesmerizing Spanish dance.

Credit Angus for keeping the chorus in-sync with the orchestra even during the busiest and most challenging ensemble numbers, such as in the pandemonium that follows the fight between Carmen and Manuelita, and again during the rapid parlando ensemble section in the second-act Quintet at Lillias Pastia’s Tavern.

The Glimmerglass Festival Chorus was strong in voice and sang with superb ensemble throughout the evening. The nine soldiers delivered their dotted-rhythmic patterns in the opening number with good execution, and the stirring ensemble of gypsy smugglers at the end of Act 2 was right-on. The Act 1 Children’s Chorus, comprising a gleeful assortment of eight girls and four boys, was especially vibrant as they mimicked the soldiers, moving about the stage enthusiastically and singing tutti-ensemble to a steady beat during the march.

The current Glimmerglass production reverts to Bizet’s original opéra-comique format, meaning it uses spoken dialogue in place of the more usual recitatives that had been the tradition ever since composer Ernest Guiraud re-worked the opera just months after its 1875 premiere. But while historically accurate, the presence of spoken dialogue invites problems for the singers, who tend to sing in French better than they can speak it.

Diction in the current production was all over the place, ranging from rather good (Ginger Costa-Jackson, whose preparation for the role took her to Paris) to downright poor. Perhaps there’s merit to doing the spoken parts in English, as is often done in this country for German singspiel, such as in Die Zauberflöte.

Audience reaction to the performance was decidedly enthusiastic, with frequent applause between numbers and a (mostly) standing ovation at the end. Curiously, the crowd found ample places within the performance to laugh — suggesting perhaps that the term opéra-comique denotes more to some listeners than just spoken dialogue.

Details Box:
What: Bizet’s Carmen
When: July 2, 2011 (opening night)
Who: Glimmerglass Festival (formerly Glimmerglass Opera)
Time: 2 hours and 50 minutes, with one intermission
Call: Glimmerglass Box office: (607) 547-2255
Ticket prices: $26 to $126 weekends; $26 to $106 weekdays
(discounts include: 50% students, 35% educators, 10% seniors)
Website: http://www.glimmerglass.org 
Remaining performances: July: 9, 11m, 15, 19m, 23, 25m, 31m;
August: 5m (special performance, Young Artists), 5, 8m, 11, 13m, 20, 23m
(m=matinee)

The celebrated director’s thought-provoking video projections throughout the cycle of music dramas stimulate the imagination, and outshine the singing

By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

San Francisco is a city with a strong commitment to environmental protection. So it is not surprising that director Francesca Zambello created an Eco-Ring for the city that suggests the world will end in suffocating industrial pollution, filthy rivers, and denuded forests.

SU Drama’s smart production of ‘A New Brain’ in dire need of music and lyrics transplant

Good ensemble work in this fast-paced production cannot overcome uninspired music and stale lyrics

By David Feldman
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html 

As plots go, the one that tugs along the action in the S.U. Department of Drama musical, A New Brain, isn’t what you’d call full of promise.  Songwriter Gordon Michael Schwinn (Marcelo Pereira) is stuck in a job he hates writing ditties for one of those by now cliché children’s TV show stars: a frog who is cute onstage and mean offstage named Mr. Bungee (Elliot O’Rourke Peterson, energetic and fun, in a really terrific froggie costume).  

Gordon would rather create his own music, but he’s blocked and he’s being worked too hard by Mr. Bungee.  Soon after bemoaning his fate at a restaurant, Gordon collapses face first into his spaghetti and ends out in the hospital with a brain aneurism.  What little promise the story line has goes into the pasta with him.  From there on in, whether in his hospital bed, while in an MRI machine, about to be operated on, etc., Gordon composes the songs he really wants to write, while his cliché Jewish mother (Alliy Drago), his boyfriend (Matthew Hazen), a gay nurse (Sammy Lopez), his friend (the strong voiced Marie Eife) and a distracted and uncaring neurosurgeon (Ross Baum, with some terrific physically comic moments) attend to him.  

Having almost nothing to do with the plot are LilyAnn Carlson, who does nice work as a homeless lady, Mary Claire King as a second nurse (fun and raunchy early on, but directed into the background too soon) and Brian Michael Hart as a minister who almost seems about to perform a wedding for Gordon and his boyfriend at the end, but that segment is so hazy I wondered if there was a statement being made about gay marriage or if he’d simply found himself center stage, unsure of why he was sent out there with a Bible in-hand. 

Music and lyrics for A New Brain are by William Finn with the book by Finn and James Lapine.  This is the same duo that created Little Miss Sunshine and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but their inventiveness seems to have failed them here.  The songs feel like material they had hanging around waiting for a story to hang them from.  The lyrics are determinedly uninspired, with not an unexpected or clever rhyme in all 35 numbers (sample lyric: Tomorrow they’ll strap me down on a bed/And cut off the top of my head).

The choreography is pleasant and energetic, but mostly routine.  Danielle Hodgins's attractive wide open set with convenient ramps for multiple levels and a turntable at center stage could be filled more effectively.  

Simply outstanding and enormously creative, though, is a kind of backdrop between the stage and a seven-piece orchestra (effectively directed by Brian Cimmet) that consists of different size circles onto which a great variety of images are projected to establish different scenes or situations –– such as a hospital, a group of brain scans, the sea where the boyfriend loves to sail, and so on.  Much credit here to Projections Designer David Tennent for this imaginative work.  But beware, those of you affected by flashing lights: There’s a series of projections of eye-like illustrations early on that seem designed to test your ability to withstand headaches.

There’s a lot of solid ensemble work by the cast of A New Brain, and the show is fast-paced, the performances always winning.   Look for the Storch stage to be used both by the Department of Drama and by Syracuse Stage featuring a revised configuration for some performances and for some student productions to be done in the Archbold Theatre next year. 

DETAILS BOX:
What: A New Brain, music and lyrics by William Finn; book by Finn and James Lapine
Where: Storch Theatre at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through May 14
Length of performance: 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $8, rush one hour before curtain;  $16, students and seniors; $18, general admission. May 11: "pay what you can night" with student ID.  Call 315-443-3275, or http://vpa.syr.edu/drama
Family guide: Some gay themes and action

Syracuse Stage’s season-closing production of ‘The Clean House’ shines

Stage closes out its most solid season in years with a sometimes-poignant, sometimes-funny work by the promising American playwright, Sarah Ruhl

By David Feldman
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html 

I saw The Clean House several years ago at Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca and thought it was an engaging evening in the theater.  But before I went to the current Syracuse Stage production (attentively directed by Michael Barakiva) I realized I couldn’t remember much of the action except that it included a perky Brazilian maid in an American home who spends none of her time cleaning and much of it trying to come up with the perfect joke.  Blame age creeping up on my brain if you like, but I think this is not a stick-to-your-memory play.

It is fun and clever, though.  And it has put Ruhl at the head of the class of bright, up-and-coming American playwrights.  

Lights up on John Iacovelli’s interior of a sleek and modern home, all off-whites, silver and gray, with a balcony running up high behind it.  And there is the maid Matilde (the perkily pretty, charmingly accented and thoroughly delightful Gisela Chipe) all in black, telling us a joke in Portuguese but telling it with so much physical emphasis that the power of body language trumps the need for words.   Despite her joke, we soon learn Matilde is mourning the death of her parents, both lovers of good jokes.  Indeed, her mother died from laughing at the world’s funniest joke (gun in the drawer hint: This quirky bit will emerge to tie things up in the end), after which she moved from Brazil to the U.S. and took a job as a maid despite the fact that she hates to clean house.

Enter next her employer Lane (Carol Halstead), dressed all in light shades (colors are important in this production’s concept), a physician who is married to a surgeon (David Adkins) who, it turns out, is offstage at the hospital taking an older woman as lover.  We get clues about this when red and black undies appear in the laundry, while Lane’s own lingerie is all white.  

It is Lane’s sister Virginia (Linda Marie Larson) who finds out about the undies.  She’s there because she loves to clean and has nothing much else to do anyway.  So she convinces Matilde to let her take on the job without Lane’s knowledge.

Got all that?  Well, it’s one of those plots that’s more confusing to relate than it is to comprehend when you’re in the audience.

And it gets more complex when husband Charles brings his lover home to meet the extended family.  She’s Ana, much older than Charles, and the two fell in love when discussing her upcoming mastectomy. Played by Alma Cuervo, Ana is just about the warmest, sweetest person you ever hope to know, with a smile that simply lights up the stage (and our hearts) in soft, warm tones.

Ana lives in a small place overlooking the sea, where life is far more engaging and emotional than it is in the sprawling, monochromatic home of those doctors.  In that house, life and human contact are kept so clean and neat there’s not much emotional connection between any of the occupants.  By the end of the play the warmth of Ana will have been invited into that too-clean home.  And since this play is more magic realism where the old Aristotelian unities of time and place don’t count for much than it is old fashioned realism, many objects of bright colors will have been passed or thrown directly from Ana’s house to Lane’s, even though they’re nowhere near one-another.  And Charles will have brought home a very large yew tree from Alaska in a vain attempt to heal Ana, whose cancer has returned.

But that won’t save Ana, who’d rather have a relationship with death and die loving life and laughter and friends than a relationship with the world of medicine –– which isn’t concerned with the genuine life values that Ana represents.

And by the end, a group of people who for the first three-quarters of the production are placed so they almost never come near each other –– emphasizing their emotional distance (good use of the stage by director Barakiva) –– will all end up surrounding Ana.  The women will even eat chocolate ice cream from the same bowl together.  And all of them end up loving each other and being loved, even in pain and death, by Ana.  Ah . . . did I give away the ending?  No, it’s how she dies (see hint above) that’s surprising and delightful, and extremely moving.

Thomas C. Hase’s lighting design complements the theme and the direction.  It is strikingly dramatic at times and varies in actual and emotional colors to suit the action.  Oana Botez-Ban’s costumes, too, complement the action –– monochromatic on Charles and the two sisters, brightly colored and/or black for Ana and Matilde.

Personally, I thought the chocolate ice cream bit was pushing things a bit.  That’s almost a sitcom piece of action.  And there are so many cutesy pronunciations to Matilde’s name (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) that any possible humor in the subject falls flat the third time around and slows down the action.  I also thought the production, while as clever as the play, was a bit too glitzy and sleek at times.  And there are moments when I wish director Barakiva had paced things faster.  But that’s me quibbling from under my critic’s cap.  Quibbles aside, this is a thoroughly first-class production of an intriguing play by one of the bright new stars on the theater’s horizon and a fine end to one of the most solid Syracuse Stage seasons in years.  It’s been a season on which Tim Bond has firmly put his stamp as artistic director and which has had record audiences –– all of which bodes well for the future of the area’s premiere theater company.

DETAILS BOX:
What: The Clean House, by Sarah Ruhl, performed by Syracuse Stage
Where: Archbold Theatre, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through May 22
Length:  2 hours, including one 15-minute intermission
Tickets: Adults, $25 to $48; 40 and under, $25; 18 and under,  $16; student rush, $15 Call 315-443-3275, or www.SyracuseStage.org 
Family guide: Some adult themes and situations

By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Audience members attending the Met’s May 5 performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre came with at least three questions. Would the company’s ailing music director James Levine conduct, as advertised? Would Robert Lepage’s wildly expensive, computerized stage machinery bring some scenic magic to the production? And would the cast, so strong on paper, sing like the gods many of them are?

Starting at the top, Maestro Levine cancelled on fairly short notice. One orchestra member said she learned of the cancellation when she arrived at the house. Audience members were informed with a sign in the lobby and an insert to the program. I doubt anyone, at this stage of the game, was surprised, or even annoyed.

In his place was Derrick Inouye, who has considerable experience with the Met dating from 2003, when he stepped in for Levine to conduct Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini. (I happened to be there for that, too.) Inouye delivered a very satisfying performance of Walküre. Many orchestra members turned to applaud him from the pit during the final curtain calls, and the audience received him respectfully, if not with the rapture that greets Levine.

Inouye’s performance was, like Levine’s, on the slow side, particularly in Act 2, which needs all the prodding a conductor can provide. The justly famous first 30 minutes of Act 3, with the Valkyries collecting the remains of dead heroes and then protecting their errant sister Brünnhilde, were thrilling. Wotan’s closing "Farewell" to Brünnhilde was touching, if not quite as heart-wrenching as it should be. The opening of Act 1 was appropriately urgent as Siegmund staggered into Hunding’s hut.

In short, Inouye proved to be a skillful substitute who nailed the big moments.

Puzzlingly, Lepage’s stage set was put to even less use in Walküre than it had been in Das Rheingold earlier this season. At this point everyone in the opera world is aware that Lepage built a set consisting of panels that can lay flat, rise vertically and move independently to create a variety of playing surfaces. He can also project images onto the panels and use them as a movie screen. Yet for much of the second and third acts the planks were in vertical mode, forming a mountainous backdrop to the action. This could easily have been achieved in a less-costly fashion.

Lepage did offer some striking images. A vigorous snowstorm blew in with Siegmund in Act 1. The individual planks were arranged vertically to suggest large trees in a forest through which Siegmund was running to escape his enemies. One of the planks served as the ash tree from which Siegmund withdrew the sword Nothung.

In Act 3 the Valkyrie sisters, positioned high above the stage, held onto the reins and "rode" the planks, which moved up and down like bucking broncos. When their ride was over, they slid down the planks, perhaps twenty feet to the stage floor. Some executed this maneuver with aplomb, others with a look of terror on their faces. It was great fun to see, and the audience loved it.

At the close, when Wotan surrounds his favorite Valkyrie with a ring of fire to protect her from all but the most heroic of men, Lepage substituted a body double for Brünnhilde. With the set in vertical mode, suggesting a mountaintop, Wotan led this substitute Brünnhilde to the very top. He then anchored her by her ankles to the planks as she lay on her back, with her head pointed straight down to the stage floor. The audience viewed Brünnhilde as if we were eagles flying high above her. As the mountain was lit with yellow and red "flames," Lepage left the audience with a spine-tingling image.

At that point one could claim the enormous cost of this production was perhaps worth it. But these effects, spaced out over a five-hour evening, do not overcome doubts that Lepage’s imagination is more limited than we Wagnerians had assumed. Perhaps our hopes for scenic magic were unrealistic to begin with.

Lepage has yet to demonstrate that he has any view of the characters in the Ring or any particular statement to make about it –– political, social, economic, or otherwise. Those who loved the previous Otto Schenk Met production because it was "realistic" and permitted the audience to find its own meaning need not have worried. Lepage’s is equally blank.

At least Lepage did a slightly better job directing his Walküre characters than he had in Rheingold. The grouping and stage movements of the Valkyries in Act 3 as they tried to shield Brünnhilde from the raging Wotan was quite effective. The interplay between Wotan and Brünnhilde in the "Farewell" scene of Act 3 was touching. Siegmund and Sieglinde were a passionate and believable love match. Still, the Great Stage Machine has engaged Lepage’s attention more than character development.

So, this leaves the singing, and when it is this good, who cares what the Great Stage Machine is doing? This was a night of vocal splendor. All who attended will remember it for a long, long time.

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann has been receiving ecstatic reviews all over the world, and for good reason. His instrument is warm, caressing to the ear and powerful. He reminds one of the American James King, who sang Siegmund in this house, except that Kaufman’s voice is sweeter and no less powerful. He is handsome to behold and a good actor. He delivered "Winterstürme" with great confidence and beauty. His plea to his absent father Walse to provide a sword in his hour of need rang out over the auditorium so long and with such power that the audience was breathless. Just that one note was worth the whole evening.

Kaufman has the looks of the late Peter Hoffmann; the musicianship of Placido Domingo; the power of James King; and the magnetism of Jon Vickers. Was there ever a better Siegmund?

His sister-bride Sieglinde, sung by Eva-Maria Westbroek, was just as compelling. A tall, handsome woman (who had just played Anna Nicole Smith in London in a new opera), Westbroek is a skilled actress. She shrank from her brutal husband Hunding, was ecstatic in expressing her love for Siegmund, and proud when told by Brünnhilde that she was carrying in her womb the hero Siegfried. Her voice is not quite the laser beam that is Stephanie Blythe’s (the Fricka in this production), but it is close. She is always on-pitch, without any of the wildness of Leonie Rysanek, who was much beloved in this part. For my money, I’ll take Westbroek.

Blythe delivered her relatively short part in Act 2 sitting on a chariot seat with rams’ horns as arm rests. Clearly she can sing anything (probably Siegfried, if the Met asked her to). Her mezzo is rock-solid from bottom to top, and she can easily fill the cavernous Met with sound, reducing it in size to a mere salon. Lepage didn’t ask her to act. She just sat and sang, which was plenty. Blythe’s voice is a trumpet; other mezzos in this part are clarinets.

Earlier this season Bryn Terfel was not well costumed or directed as Wotan in Rheingold. Matters improved considerably for him here. Gone was the stringy, filthy hair that covered one eye. He looked more god-like. He was permitted to move around the stage and interact with the other players, rather than remain hunched in a corner, stage left.

Problems remain, however. He was not made up to look old enough to play Wotan. His characterization is unrelentingly fearsome, with no humor and little pathos. (That is not likely to work well when he takes up The Wanderer in Siegfried, a comic part.) His bass-baritone is powerful and beautifully produced if a bit anonymous in character. He did not seem to tire at all in this the longest of the Wotan roles. Good as Terfel is, it will take more exposure to his Wotan to determine if he is the heir to James Morris.

Hans-Peter König held his own in this starry company as Hunding, boasting a huge voice and a huge mid-section. He looked every inch a menacing, wife-beating Viking warrior.

The eight Valkyries were spirited, on pitch, and clarion. Many of them have solo Wagner careers in their futures. Their cavorting was great fun to watch in Act 3.

Last, but hardly least, is the Brünnhilde of Deborah Voigt. Her best work came in Act 3 at the point she tries to convince Wotan that his sentence is too harsh ("Was it so shameful what I did?"). She may have been saving herself vocally for this moment because her soprano sounded stronger and fuller than in Act 2. From this point until the end of the opera Voigt sounded most like the Voigt of old, a combination of power and vulnerability. She was an eager, confident teenager in her Act 2 interactions with her father. In Act 3 her pleas to Wotan to save her from a mere mortal were heartbreaking.

The Siegfried Brünnhilde next season should pose no problems for her, but the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde, based on this performance, will be a real test of her stamina and ability to project into the Met auditorium.

This Walküre will be telecast into movie theaters worldwide from the Met on Saturday, May 14. Don’t miss it.

Deborah Voigt, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel, Hans-Peter König, Derrick Inouye (conductor)
HD Live Simulcast: May 14, 2011, 12:00 noon

By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Some of the drama accompanying the Metropolitan Opera’s matinee offering of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory on April 9 came about 35 minutes before the 1 p.m. curtain. That is when Juan Diego Florez’s first child arrived in a home birth. Florez helped ease his son into the world and then raced to the opera house. Fortunately his character, Ory, does not appear until well into the first act.

Florez had been up all night with his wife, so he was singing on pure joy and adrenalin. And what a performance he gave. Perhaps inspired by the new papa, the entire cast performed at a level that was astonishing in its assured delivery of Rossini’s taxing vocal line. This was clearly an afternoon for lovers of the voice.

Rossini’s second-to-last opera (with only the great William Tell to come) is a rarity in New York. The Met had never performed it. New York City Opera offered it in English in the late 1970s with Rockwell Blake, Ashley Putnam and Faith Esham, plus the young Sam Ramey in the role of the Tutor.

Dramatically Le Comte Ory is absurd rubbish, which is one reason it is rarely done, even though the music is glorious. Rossini was searching for a vehicle on which to hang music he had written for the coronation of Charles the Tenth. This piece is Il viaggio a Reims. It is occasionally offered under festival conditions as a singing spectacular, but it’s not an opera. So Rossini grabbed a story about a real-life Don Juan character (Ory) from an 18th century ballad and stuffed some of the Reims music into it.

The other reason Le Comte Ory is such a rarity is that it requires three spectacular singers in the lead roles, and three really good singers in the subsidiary roles. Such singers are often not available at any price.

For this production the Met assembled three of the leading bel canto singers in the world: tenor Florez as the randy young Count Ory who is in pursuit of the Countess Adele, and every other woman on stage; soprano Diana Damrau as Adele, who has sworn off sex until her brother returns from the Crusades; and mezzo Joyce DiDonato in the pants role of Isolier, Ory’s page, who is his rival for the affections of Adele.

Nor did the Met stint on the supporting cast, which also has tuneful and difficult music to sing. Baritone Michele Pertusi was Ory’s tutor who is trying to track Ory down and bring him back to the castle of his father. Baritone Stephane Degout was Raimbaud, Ory’s friend and enforcer. And mezzo Susanne Resmark was Dame Ragonde, servant to Adele.

The vocal highlights could fill a CD by themselves. In Act 2 Ory, disguised as a nun, woos Adele in a splendid duet. This is soon followed by a glorious trio for Ory, Adele and Isolier in which Ory thinks he is wooing Adele, and not Isolier. (In this staging all three are in the same bed in the dark, sort of. It’s crude and unfunny.) Act 1 includes a number for the tutor and female chorus that helped make Ramey’s reputation when he sang it at City Opera. The act ends with a typically bouncy Rossini theme for the leads and chorus, ripped straight from Reims, in which all exclaim on the confusion of the moment. (Think Barber of Seville.) Once you hear the tunes in this Act 1 finale, you will never forget them.

Florez was in typically firm and assured voice. The very, very top turns a bit nasal, but he is right on pitch and totally assured. His comic timing is exquisite and he seems to be having great fun, even when singing the most difficult music. The audience never has to worry that Florez won’t hit the high notes. He always does, and he holds them. He repeatedly cut through the male chorus of his followers with high notes as they were getting drunk on expensive wine, each note nailed to the wall. Florez is a heartthrob, but in this staging he was dressed as an ancient Hebrew prophet in Act 1, complete with scraggly beard and wig. In Act 2 he was wrapped in a nun’s habit. Nevertheless the Florez charisma and charm came through.

We are living in a golden age of mezzo-sopranos. Joyce DiDonato is one, along with Susan Graham, Stephanie Blythe, Jennifer Larmore, and many more. DiDonato has an open, androgynous, handsome face that suits the pants role of Isolier perfectly. She could be a man, or a woman. Dressed in a long red leather jacket and boots she looked every bit the page to a nobleman. She blended deliciously with Florez and Damrau in the concluding trio. Her voice is not as dusky as some mezzos. Hers is clearer and sweeter. From lows to highs she can handle everything.

The high-flying soprano Damrau has been a successful Rosina at the Met, and she was enchanting as Aithra in the Strauss rarity The Egyptian Helen. Mozart, Rossini, Strauss—she can sing it all. She is a dazzling blond; her beauty was shown to good advantage in royal gowns of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The role of Adele lies high but posed no troubles for her. She handled the hijinks in the staging with a knowing coyness. It is hard to imagine singing more assured and beautiful.

Of the three lesser characters, Michele Pertusi as the Tutor dispatched his Act 1 aria with great skill and deserved a better ovation from the Met audience.

Susanne Resmark has quite a bit to sing as Dame Ragonde, Adele’s attendant. Her voice is strong and smoky. She established her own authoritative stage presence, although her ample bosom, pushed up in an absurdly low cut dress, usually stole attention from her singing. The extreme close-ups in the Met telecast did her costume, and overflowing bosom, no favors.

Special attention should be paid to Stephane Degout in the baritone part of Raimbaud, Ory’s sidekick. He delivered an energetic aria in Act 2 with the male chorus of "nuns" after he has stolen some cases of wine from the cellar of the castle. Degout’s voice is strong with a menacing growl. He has been singing all over the world, principally in Europe, for more than a decade. This season he was also in the Met’s Pelleas. He should be better known here.

Director Bartlett Sher (of South Pacific revival fame) didn’t have much to work with dramatically. When the plot pivots on the return of medieval French Crusaders with Saracen blood on their swords, it’s probably best to ignore the period setting lest the audience dwell on current Middle East problems.

Sher constructed an early nineteenth century stage within the Met’s stage. The opera was offered as it might have looked when Rossini wrote it. Faux gas lamps lit the stage. A shambling stagehand in raggedy 1820s garb appeared during the overture to set the scene. He was on stage throughout along with other costumed stagehands who carried trees and benches and who manipulated stage-machinery in full view of the audience. They used a winch to raise chandeliers at the start—perhaps in honor of the Met’s own ascending chandeliers. They cranked a wind machine and shook a sheet of metal to create thunder for a typical Rossini storm scene in Act 2. (Rossini stuck all his old tricks into this opera to try to give it some life.)

But no director could make this creaky vehicle either funny or comprehensible. At least it was fun to watch, and the costumes, in reds and purples and peaches, were a delight.

If you like an opera that’s about something serious –– Don Carlo, Wozzeck, Meistersinger, Cosi –– then Le Comte Ory is not for you. But if you want a singing festival with two hours of bel canto music that will put a grin on your face, this is it.

Details Box:
What: Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, simulcast live in HD
When: April 9, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Time of performance: about 3 hours
Cast: Maurizio Benini; Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Susanne Resmark, Juan Diego Flórez, Stéphane Degout, Michele Pertusi
Encore performance: Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
Next simulcast: Strauss’s Capriccio, April 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET

SU Drama Department mounts a difficult assignment in Shepard’s ‘Curse of the Starving Class’

The young cast, many in their stage debuts, earns an "A" for effort –– but not execution –– in this difficult script

By David Feldman
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html

Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class premiered in 1978 at the New York Shakespeare Festival.  No doubt it was a stunner in its day.  But as the current SU Department of Drama reveals, the script is showing its age.  The plot (such as it is) meanders, the characters are mostly clichés, and the theme is treated in a heavy-handed manner.  More than that, the famous powerful Shepard language only emerges sporadically.  This production, though, is a good exercise for the students –– most of whom are making their main stage debuts in it.  But it’s a tough script for young performers.  

Its subject is the American Dream, or rather its failure.  

A quintessentially standard American family –– father, mother, son and daughter –– try to wrest a living off a run-down piece of land out on the far fringes of America:  contemporary California.  The father, Weston Tate (Phil Blechman, doing vigorous work but with an accent that sounds more Jersey than true West), is a drunk who wants to sell the ranch and start a new life in Mexico.  But the mother, Ella, has been convinced by a slick-talking local con man that she’s the rightful owner.  She wants to sell out so she can go to Europe and the con man can turn it into a development; meanwhile she’s carrying on an affair with him.  

The heirs to this mess are son Wesley, who also dreams of getting away, and very young teen daughter Emma, who has her dreams, too –– of winning a prize for her demonstration on how to cut up a chicken for cooking, or maybe taking the family horse and running away on her own.   She’s got other problems, too.  For one thing, Wesley urinates on her show-and-tell material, not to mention that she’s just had her first menstrual period which her mother spends a fair amount of Act I telling her and us about.  This is not a family that hides its secrets.

In a nice touch, Director Gerardine Clark has double-cast the female roles so the woman students can get their chances to perform in a major production.  Allana Rogers played a strong but somewhat shrill mother the evening I went, and Emily Robinson was a bouncy and convincingly young daughter.  They’ll alternate with Mary Ann Pianka and Elizabeth Boyke, respectively.

This is not a play that hides its secrets, either.  Shepard makes it unsubtly clear that this family has reached a dead end. Their cries of pain are the last whimpers of the American dream.  Their land, one way or another, is going to be taken over by the "Zombies" who want only to become rich off it, not produce anything worthwhile (not even the avocados which seem to be the only thing that grows there –– not counting anger and frustration, that is –– and which father Wesley brings home one day to feed a family that is starving not so much for food as for something significant to live for).  

Lest we miss the point, consider the last lines of the play in which son Wesley and mother Ella have a vision of where this will all end.  The eagle is both the American dream and the father, now sobered up and the only one who decides to stay and keep the ranch going.  The tomcat represents all those advertising people and lawyers and real estate developers and corporate types who only want to make money off it:

WESLEY:  And that eagle comes down and picks up the cat in his talons and carries him screaming off into the sky.

ELLA:  That’s right.  And they fight.  They fight like crazy in the middle of the sky.  The cat’s tearing his chest out, and the eagle’s trying to drop him, but the cat won’t let go because he knows if he falls he’ll die.

WESLEY:  And the eagle’s being torn apart in midair  . . .  trying to free himself from the cat, and the cat won’t let him go.

ELLA:  And they come crashing down to earth.  Both of them come crashing down.  Like one whole thing.

Not very subtle, any of that, and not Shepard at his best.  And certainly not very easy for inexperienced performers to pull off.  

One delightful star of this production is a real live lamb who bleats loudly and comically to us and to the cast, which plays off it without missing a beat in a professionally impromptu fashion.  There are other comical bits and some moments of strength here but things tend to move rather slowly in the production, while Shepard begs for action to go in double-time.  But you’ve got to give the cast an "A" for effort, if not for execution, in even taking on this difficult script.  David Siciliano does convincing work as the slimy lawyer.  So does Will Pullen as the son.  Corey Steiner and Peter Sansbury are comically menacing as two small-time thugs.  

Also very nice are Katie Strube’s oddball costumes and the sound design by Kate Foretek.   I especially liked her starting it all off with a curtain raiser recording of Perry Como singing Catch a Falling Star.  That nicely sets in the right period and adds an ironic touch.  The star of the Tate family has fallen, and who will be there to catch it except for those most mendacious of Americans, the ones who would destroy the Tate’s dream in the name of "progress" and the almighty dollar? 

DETAILS BOX:
What: Curse of the Starving Class, by Sam Shepard
Where: Storch Theatre at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through April 10
Length of performance: Two hours and 45 minutes, including two intermissions
Tickets:  $8, rush one hour before curtain; $16, students and seniors; $18, general admission. (April 6:  "pay what you can night" with student ID.)  Call 315-443-3275, or http://vpa.syr.edu/drama
Family guide: Strong language, adult themes and action, nudity

Syracuse Stage’s well-crafted, inspirational ‘The Miracle Worker’ delivers

Fine cast and skillful directing captures the many facets of the celebrated play and conveys a message likely to resonate with audiences of all ages

By David Feldman
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html

William Gibson said that when he wrote The Miracle Worker –– first as a television drama in 1957 and then when it became a Broadway hit in 1959 (winning four Tonys and catapulting Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft to stardom) –– everybody knew the story of Helen Keller, whose autobiography had been required reading in schools throughout the country for decades.  But by the 1980s the story of the blind and deaf Alabama girl who became a national inspiration after learning to communicate (thanks to the efforts of her teacher, Annie Sullivan) seemed to have almost disappeared from the national consciousness, he once told me.  

Syracuse’s Stage production features two outstanding performances: Anna O’Donoghue, as a feisty Annie, and the enormously talented 11-year-old Jacqueline Baum, whose stunning work as Helen marks her first ever onstage role.  There’s some fine directing by Paul Barnes, who’s sensitive to the fact this is really Annie’s play.  She’s the one who makes things happen and who brings a wild child into the world of knowledge despite enormous odds.  Too many directors have become smitten by Helen’s part and its potential (and that of an energetic and talented young performer) to steal the show.  

I wish Michael Vaughn Sims’s set were as successful.  There’s the Keller family dining room to one side, Annie’s bedroom up and off to another, the front porch to the side and down from the dining room.  All well and good.  But there’s also a front door that leads nowhere.  Ditto a door that should lead to a kitchen but enters to a backdrop of the outdoors.  And there’s a space stage right that at different times serves as an asylum in Massachusetts (where Annie and her brother were sent as children), as the Perkins School in Boston where Annie is trained, and again as the summer house where Annie takes Helen for two weeks to take her away from the intrusive overprotection of her family.  But that space serves none of these locations well.  Then there’s the water pump, placed so prominently down front and dead center that it telegraphs the climax of the play and distracts us from some important dramatic action upstage (especially in the subplot).  It all violates Gibson’s original caution that "the less set there is, the better" so we won’t be distracted from all that physical action and powerful drama.  

Yes, there is a subplot –– although it’s easy to overlook because of the fierce contest between willful Helen and the determined Annie.  It’s the story of Captain Keller vs. his son, Jamie.  James Lloyd Reynolds brings the right amount of strength to his role as the overbearing former Confederate officer, and he knows how to lower the energy level for some well-placed comic moments.  Jamie (somewhat underplayed by Eric Gilde) struggles to overcome his domineering father and also to reconcile his own feelings against having had a loving mother replaced after her death by the Captain’s second wife, Kate (Regan Thompson, doing fine work in a part that can easily be overshadowed by Helen and Annie).  But just when the subplot reaches its climax, and Jamie finally becomes a man in his own right, our attention is diverted from his actions up in the dining room to some noisy stage business down at that way-too-prominent water pump.  

To see this play, rather than only to read the script, is to become aware of just how much physical action Gibson puts into it.  Consider the delightful segment where Annie is locked in her room by Helen.  Captain Keller, ever the clueless Southern gentleman, insists on carrying her down a ladder despite her protestations that she can easily climb down herself.  And there’s the famous dining room scene, all action and no dialogue, when Annie kicks the family out and spends the better part of a day teaching Helen to feed herself and even fold her napkin.  Too many directors give that scene away to Helen.  But Barnes’s direction puts the major focus where it should be –– on Annie’s efforts. 

DETAILS BOX:
What: The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, performed by Syracuse Stage
Where: Archbold Theatre, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through April 23
Length: 2 hours and 45 minutes, including two 15-minute intermissions
Tickets: Adults, $25 to $48; 40 and under, $25; 18 and under $16; student rush, $15. Call 315-443-3275, or www.SyracuseStage.org
Family guide: Recommended for audiences of all ages.  Note: Many of the performances are open-captioned or sign language-interpreted.  Call the box office for more information

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

The Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music audience knows all too well the caveats of ambitious programming, particularly with respect to the music of Johannes Brahms. The profundity of the mighty composer’s weighty and demanding chamber works presents a number of challenges for ensembles to mount –– and mixed results from recent SFCM-sponsored concerts suggest that too many performers simply bite off more than they can chew (see my earlier review of November’s SFCM program with the Walden Chamber Players).

The Ames Piano Quartet Saturday evening came to Syracuse with an ambitious appetite that included Brahms’s mammoth Quartet No. 1 in G Minor. This brilliant but taxing work is a mouthful, to be sure –– but Ames Saturday evening showed an appreciative audience what it takes to digest this sumptuous, four-movement feast.

Few chamber ensembles earn a living today performing exclusively piano quartets. Unlike the vast string quartet repertory –– chamber music’s equivalent of the horn of plenty –– there are relatively few deserving works scored for violin, viola, cello and piano (most notably a pair of quartets by Mozart and three quartets each by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms). The Ames Piano Quartet, which touts itself as "one of the few piano quartets in the world," survives by anchoring itself as Ensemble-in-Residence at Iowa State University, where each player is also a member of the school’s music faculty. Those wondering how this piano quartet arrived at its name should know that ISU is located in Ames, Iowa.

The Brahms Quartet in G Minor, which closed the three-work program, demands rich and resonant playing that can fill the hall with a collective vibrancy of tone. And that’s no easy task at Lincoln Auditorium. Ames produced sufficient depth of sound to sustain the intensity throughout the lengthy opening movement, although balance among the strings was somewhat skewered by violinist Mahlon Darlington’s bright-sounding instrument and overbearing dynamic levels. Still, there was a convincing sense of purpose in the Ames Quartet’s delivery and spontaneity of phrasing (particularly in the louder, richly sonorous sections) that provided authority and substance to this poignant movement.

The sharply-dotted rhythmic figures that permeate the third (Andante con moto) movement were executed with precision and confidence, and Ames captured the full force of Brahms’s angst in the triumphant middle section of this movement, which at times recalls the glorious energy of the third movement of the composer’s better-known F Minor Piano Quintet. The four players, led by a brilliant effort on the part of pianist William David, let their hair down in the rousing Gypsy-inspired Rondo alla Zingarese –– tearing through the movement with reckless abandon and creating an ethnocentric potpourri heavily seasoned with schmaltz and finished with a dash of panache.

Paul Schoenfield’s Carolina Réveille, which preceded the Brahms, is a set of variations on the popular tune Carolina in the Morning, composed in 1922 by Walter Donaldson. Listeners must be patient, though, since these abstract variations begin rather slowly before gradually building tempo and momentum until the music blossoms, at last, into the familiar tune near the end of the 12-minute work.

Schoenfield’s writing maintains the parlor-music character of the song, even during the most abstract and rhapsodic parts of the variations, through morphing harmonic flavors that include touches of jazz. His process of variations bears a strong resemblance to the thematic transformation technique of Franz Liszt insofar as Schoenfield’s variations are virtually emancipated from the theme upon which they are based. The work also makes considerable technical demands upon all four players, which the Ames Quartet (by now well acquainted with this work) played magnificently. As part of his informative remarks prior to the performance, pianist David played a richly harmonized version of the tune on the piano –– which alone was worth the price of admission.

The only weak link on the program came at the very beginning, with a lackluster rendition of Mozart’s Piano Quartet No.1 in G Minor, K.478.

This delightful work calls for restraint, delicacy of phrasing, crystal-clear execution of the scalewise passages and, above all, a firm sense of balance among the four players. Such was not the case during the opening movement, as Darlington’s heavy bowing all but sucked the elegance and grace out of Mozart’s delicate score. Moreover, the violinist’s pitch tended to sag throughout the movement. Phrases were generally choppy and full of seams, and there was precious little blend of tone to be heard among the three strings. Things improved, although not dramatically, during the remaining two movements –– especially in the sprightly Rondo movement, whose trills, turns and musical ornamentations sprang to life during David’s stunning piano passagework.

Considering that this Mozart’s Quartet is recognized as the first important work in the piano quartet medium, the Ames Piano Quartet ought to give it the time, care, love and attention it apparently extended to the Schoenfield and Brahms works.

What: Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Simulcast Live in HD
When: January 8, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: 3 hours and 30 minutes, including two intermissions
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Cast: Deborah Voigt, Marcello Giordani, Lucio Gallo, Nicola Luisotti (conductor)
Encore performance: Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011 6:30 p.m.
Next simulcast: Adams’s Nixon in China, February 12, 2011, 1:00 pm ET

CD reviews: Schumann bicentennial recordings, Canadian style

Recently released Schumann recordings by Canadian pianists Angela Hewitt and Anton Kuerti reveal stylistic differences worth pondering

By Kevin Moore
http://cnycafemomus.com/Kevin_Moore.html  

This past year has seen many recordings and concerts celebrating the bicentennial of the births of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Such coincidences of year seem to be good excuses for performers to do music that is well known and loved and for scholars to publish new papers on related research. In 2009 it paid off handsomely with the bicentennials of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and death of Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). In fact, Mendelssohn was shown to be one of the few major composers of the 19th century with multiple unpublished major works that are currently unknown to the listening public.

Two recent CDs of the piano music of Schumann are positive examples of the bicentennial spirit, interestingly both by Canadian pianists. Angela Hewitt’s new recording was released in November by Hyperion Records. Recorded in Dobbiaco, Italy in November of 2009 it contains the Kinderscenen, Op.15, Davidsbundlertanze, Op.6 and the Piano Sonata no.2 in G minor.

Anton Kuerti’s new Schumann recording was released this past July by Doremi records. Recorded in Toronto in the summer of 2009 it contains the Fantasie in C major, Op.17 and the Piano Sonata no.2 in G minor, Op.22, including both the original Presto Passionato finale, and Schumann’s second finale.

At the outset, it’s easy to recommend both of these recordings. These are pianists of vast experience and the playing throughout is on a very high level. And they both outdistance most of the recordings available in recent years in this repertoire. But some of their differences of approach are interesting and well worth discussing.

Angela Hewitt has become famous largely through her performances and recordings of the complete keyboard works of J.S. Bach. And a year ago she spent an entire season playing concerts featuring Bach’s Well Tempered Klavier which she did complete in two concerts, each repeated in several dozen locations around the world. That year culminated in her second recording of the complete set. Her Bach is indeed vividly musical, tastefully restrained, and often focused on the dance forms that dominate much of that music. She plays with immaculate textures, clarity of line, and a deeply affecting understanding of the basic aesthetic of Bach’s music. She has also made recordings of other Baroque literature including three CDs of Couperin and one of Rameau.

Hewitt’s Bach playing is not her only strength, as evidenced by her recording of the complete piano works of Ravel –– one of the finest such recordings ever made. She has also championed the piano music of Olivier Messaien, and recorded works by Chabrier, Granados, the complete Chopin Nocturnes, the Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Cello with cellist Daniel Mueller-Schott, and is engaged in an apparently complete Beethoven piano sonata project with three CDs released to-date.

Anton Kuerti is of the next older generation. At age 72 he has an entire lifetime of playing experience on the highest level. When Kuerti was still a student of Rudolf Serkin at The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia he won the prestigious Leventritt Competition, which led to appearances with a long list of famous orchestras and conductors. In 1974-75 he recorded the complete Beethoven piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, Op.120 for Aquitaine and Columbia/Odyssey, one of the deepest and most satisfying recordings of those pieces. In fact, Kuerti is most famous for his frequent Beethoven performances and a classic recording of the five Beethoven piano concertos with Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony in 1986 (available since 1997 on CBC Records). There are also recordings of both Brahms concertos, both Mendelssohn concertos, the Schumann Concerto, most of the solo works of Schubert, and solo works by Chopin, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Scriabin, and Berg. His more recent re-recording of Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas (Analekta, 2004) was hailed by Gramophone Magazine as "Kuerti at the summit." The same Magazine’s critic also referred to him as "one of the great Schumann players of our day.…" In 2007, Kuerti received the Schumann Prize from the Schumann Gesellschaft in Germany in recognition of his efforts in this repertoire.

I have had the pleasure of hearing several wonderful live performances by each of these great artists, many more by Kuerti because he is older. Unlike some pianists I have heard, the recordings of both pianists merely confirm what happens on the concert stage in live performance.

Every serious performer struggles with stylistic issues that fundamentally affect their interpretive decisions. One issue is the disconnect that exists between the original intentions of the composer and the current expectations of listeners. Every era has its own aesthetic of style in musical performance –– one that changes with fashions and concert experience. Serious performers must find the right balance among those factors if they are to communicate with a modern audience in music written nearly two centuries ago. Some performers don’t seem to care about this and give performances that sound merely willful, or like a conglomeration of all the most recent recordings. One could pose the issue starkly as a choice between merely entertaining the listener, or enlightening and educating him/her. The contrast between the two present recordings is certainly not that stark; nor is either less than stylistically convincing. Yet the differences are nevertheless significant.

Angela Hewitt’s new recording is the second she has made of works by Schumann. Her earlier recording, also on Hyperion and released in 2007 contained the Piano Sonata no.1 in F-sharp minor, Op.11 and the Humoresque, Op.20.

On this new CD, I found the Davidsbundlertanze, Op.6 to be the most convincing. It is Schumann’s most intimate and emotionally revealing work. There are a series of 18 relatively short pieces, most of them labeled at the end with an "E" or an "F" for Eusebius ("E") and Florestan ("F"), Schumann’s pen names for characters he assumed in his prose writings. Eusebius represented the dreamy and lyrical side of his nature, and Florestan the impetuous and passionate. Hewitt revels in these vivid contrasts between the many fiery and passionate pieces and some of the most intimately confessional and touching pieces that Schumann ever wrote.

Her tendency to a liberal application of rubato, an expressive pushing and pulling of the tempo, is done tastefully. There are times, however, where it is a bit repetitive and predictable, and a few spots where it obscures Schumann’s characteristic rhythmic displacements and syncopations. That’s noticeable in the Sonata in G minor, in the second theme of the first movement, the middle section of the third movement Scherzo and the slower sections of the finale.

The Kinderscenen, Op.15 (Scenes from Childhood) have fewer of the rhythmic complexities found in the Davidsbundlertanze, but they are quite pushed and pulled in a manner that I don’t always find convincing. This is particularly true in the famous Traumerei (dreaming), no.7 of the 13 pieces that make up Kinderscenen, which seems quite self-consciously "expressive." It may be personal to me, but I prefer a more restrained, classical approach –– as heard, for example, in classic accounts by Clifford Curzon or Radu Lupu. Her final piece, though, Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks) is particularly touching and a marvelously effective ending of the set.

A more judicious and restrained use of rubato is found when you turn to the new recording by Anton Kuerti. It is certainly deeply expressive playing, yet the rhetorical stretching or compressing of phrases feels slightly more natural and convincing. The Piano Sonata no.2 in G minor makes the best and most interesting comparison since it appears on both of these CDs. The opening movement is marked So rasch wie möglich (as fast as possible). Hewitt does take it quite fast, but takes a lot of time at the ends of phrases, and in between phrases. That certainly moderates the technical difficulties for the pianist, but for my taste seems a bit contrived and somewhat predictable. With Kuerti, although the total timing of the first movement is within a few seconds of Hewitt’s, it sounds faster and is more continuous. And his rubato never obscures the syncopations or rhythmic games that Schumann so frequently plays.

The second movement Andantino (Getragen) is particularly interesting. Hewitt does this very beautifully, with a lingering, tender mood that is quite touching. Kuerti is more restrained and moves it along a bit more. In fact, there is a significant difference of tempo with timings of 4’20" for Kuerti and 5’43" for Hewitt. In the third movement Scherzo: Sehr rasch und markiert, both performances are quite similar although again Kuerti’s syncopated middle section is much clearer and more direct.

Kuerti’s recording also includes the original finale of this Sonata. Entitled Presto Passionato, it wasn’t published until 10 years after Schumann’s death. Evidently Schumann replaced this because his wife, Clara, thought it too difficult. And Kuerti infuses the piece with richness, color and passion in a very convincing performance. He plays this in its right order following the first three movements, and then adds Schumann’s replacement finale. As he points out in his excellent notes, that’s akin to the two scherzos that Schumann placed in the later version of the Piano Sonata no.3 in F minor, Op.14. And it works very well.

This comparison led me to revisit Kuerti’s older recording of the Davidsbundlertanze (Analekta, recorded in Toronto in 1990), which is not included on the current CD. After listening to Hewitt’s very fine performance, Kuerti took me to a different and higher level of color, richness of pedal, and technical command. I felt that I was in the presence of a master musician and truly great Schumann player. It is richer in sound, even more vivid in contrasts, and musically convincing. And his restrained but effective rubato shows the same differences noted in the two recordings of the G minor Sonata. It is a classic, truly memorable performance.

As for Kuerti’s Fantasy in C major, Op.17, this is simply one of the great recorded performances of the piece. It’s a work which Kuerti first recorded on LP in 1971 (CBC Radio Canada Broadcast Recording) and which I heard him play in recital at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in the fall of 1970, again in Niagara-on-the-Lake during the summer about 6 years ago, and yet again this past summer at Koerner Hall at the Toronto Conservatory. This most recent performance was part of an all-Schumann recital that remains one of the finest live solo recitals I have every heard. On each occasion with Kuerti’s Schumann Fantasie, I heard a pianist deeply immersed in this masterpiece and communicating it on the highest level. This recording confirms that judgment.

The essential differences in the two present Schumann recordings is that Kuerti tends towards a more restrained, classical approach to tempo, phrase structure and rhythmic flow. But he also uses the pedal more richly for color, and infuses the music with tremendous passion. Hewitt plays with immaculate clarity and very convincing musicianship. Her pedaling is masterful yet used more for legato connection than color. They both have stunning technical command of the instrument.

The Kuerti performance sounds like it is recorded more closely to the instrument, compared with Hewitt, which sounds more spacious, but both feature very fine warmth of tone and piano sound. And both recordings contain liner notes by the artists that are articulate, interesting and scholarly. These are serious, thinking scholar/artists fully able to articulate convincing views of the pieces they are recording.

Despite minor observations about interpretive approach as written above, I enjoyed both these recordings and can recommend them highly. While I find Kuerti’s approach more stylistically convincing, that’s a question of individual taste more than level of music-making involved. These are wonderful artists and you can’t go wrong with either recording.

Details Box:
Genre: CD reviews, works of Robert Schumann
What: Angela Hewitt plays Kinderscenen, Op.15, Davidsbundlertanze, Op.6 and the Piano Sonata no.2 in G minor, released November, 2010; Anton Kuerti plays Fantasie in C major, Op.17 and the Piano Sonata no.2 in G minor, Op.22, released July, 2010
Artists: Pianists Angela Hewitt and Anton Kuerti
Labels: Hyperion Records, CDA67780 (Hewitt); Doremi Records, DDR-6608 (Kuerti)

By Kevin Moore
http://cnycafemomus.com/Kevin_Moore.html

A fellow pianist once told me that the true definition of Baroque ornamentation was "that stuff that pianists agonize over but listeners couldn’t care less about." There is certainly a grain of truth in that. However, Baroque ornamentation came to mind recently when listening to pianist Murray Perahia’s new CD containing Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, op.24.

Brahms’s classic work was dedicated to his "beloved friend," Clara Schumann, and given to her on her 42nd birthday on September 13, 1861. It is based on the third movement Aria con variazioni of George Frederick Handel’s Harpsichord Suite no.1 in Bb major, HWV 434. Handel’s original is an Aria with 5 variations, while Brahms’s expanded his work to 25 variations and a lengthy fugue in conclusion. The piece is a prime example of Brahms’s frequent reliance on Baroque models, something that continued throughout his lifetime.

An important initial question for the performer is how to play the ornaments of which there are eight in this two-part, 8-measure theme. Seven of them are marked with a simple "tr" indicating a trill, while one uses the short wavy line indicating a Baroque trill, either long or short (pralltriller). In the 19th century all such ornaments were simply called mordents and generally all played the same way. It is clear today that Handel expected most trills to begin on the upper note, at least when not preceded by that note. But throughout the 19th century and until the 1920’s almost all performers began their trills on the starting note. Which did Brahms intend? I don’t know, but suspect that he followed the prevailing fashion. I do know that most performers in the 20th and 21st centuries begin these trills from above, in the Baroque fashion, the way we now believe Handel would have wanted. In fact, a quick check of recordings by Moiseiwitsch, Serkin, Ashkenazy, Kovacevich, Ax and Kuerti found that all but one of these begin the trills on the upper note. It’s interesting that only the oldest of those pianists, Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963), begins on the starting note. Perahia does the same, and that changes the melodic contour of the Aria.

Is this a good thing? I think it is. It highlights the stepwise, limited range of the theme and its lyrical, melodic quality. Most performers tend to approach this piece in general as a work of heroic proportions, which of course it is. And that gets translated into a bigness of tone, projection and style. Baroque-style trills in the Aria give a formal, stately, proud and royal processional kind of quality to the theme. Perahia simply makes it sing. His performance is relatively soft-focused and rounded in tone. Yet there is muscle and power where necessary.

He also does the mordents in variation 19 the same way –– and here, also, starting them ahead of the beat in distinct 19th century style. It’s also easier to play them this way, and almost certainly the way Brahms would have preferred.

There are many wonderful details that catch the ear in this recording. The pacing seems exactly right and the character of each variation is beautifully detailed. Unlike Beethoven in his Variations on a Theme of Diabelli, op.120, Brahms stays close to the character of the Aria. Yet within that character he finds an incredible variety of possibilities that stretches from the powerful and dramatic to the tender and lyrical. Perahia details these with care and scrupulous musicianship.

This is a rich, wonderful performance that invited me to re-think a work I have performed many times. And that is exactly what is so enriching about hearing an artist of the thoughtfulness and musicianship of Murray Perahia. It brings you a great work like this realized by a great musical mind and imagination, and shows the possibilities inherent in Brahms’s writing.

The recording venue, the Funkhaus Berlin seems nearly ideal and the beautifully regulated instrument has richness and warmth yet startling clarity. From an engineering standpoint it is marvelously recorded. And the written album notes, originally in German by Katrin Eich, are enriched by interesting and well researched historical background.

Even in the company of classic recordings by Moiseiwitsch, Serkin, Fleischer or Anton Kuerti, this recording stands up well. It also has a good bit in common with the recorded performance of Emanuel Ax.

The remainder of the CD consists of the two Rhapsodies, op.79 and the ten Piano Pieces (Klavierstücke) making up opp.118 and 119. While the Handel Variations represent the young, athletic and virtuosic Brahms, these are the distillation of a lifetime of compositional skill. And the key to their character can be seen in directions to the performer that are literally strewn across the pages. Terms like sotto voce (in a lower voice), dolce (sweetly), teneramente (tenderly), espressivo (expressively), grazioso (gracefully), perdendo (dying away), sostenuto (sustained, slower), all represent a gentle, mostly quiet and lyrical intensity. Only the Ballade in G minor, op.118, no.3 and the Rhapsody in Eb major, op.119, no.4 are of a more vigorous nature, yet even the Rhapsody ends unexpectedly in minor. On the whole these pieces seem to contain all of life, viewed from the perspective of one approaching the end.

In Perahia’s hands the passionate intensity and overlapping lines of the first Intermezzo in op.118 simply soar. The second one, in A major, tugs gently at the listener’s heartstrings, with its deeply expressive and subtle counterpoint managed exquisitely yet avoiding the cloying sentimentality that some performers bring to it. Perahia’s performance is gently propulsive and with a natural give and take.

The Intermezzo in Eb minor, the sixth and last piece in this set mesmerizes with its sad, misty, autumnal nostalgia. The major key section is suddenly brighter yet it all fades away into sad mystery. It is done just wonderfully.

The first of the op.119 pieces, the Intermezzo in B minor, was mentioned by Brahms in a May 1893 letter to Clara Schumann. He wrote that it was:

Perahia takes seriously this revealing comment by Brahms and makes this piece linger in the memory.

Perahia plays this entire CD with an appropriate classical restraint that throws a clear light on all of the works. Yet there is warmth and lyricism aplenty that finds the full measure of Brahms’ great pieces. And this CD will go on my shelf right next to treasured recordings of Kempff, Katchen, Kovacevich, Lupu, and Kuerti.

By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Don Carlo, Verdi’s sprawling historical drama of doomed love, colonial tyranny, and church-state relations during the Inquisition, based on a poem by Schiller, has been a pivotal opera in the history of the Met over the last 60 years.

A new production in 1950 opened the first season in the tenure of Rudolf Bing, who was to run the house for the next 22 years.

When James Levine conduced a new John Dexter production in 1979 it confirmed his arrival as the Met’s music director of the future. He has owned this opera at the Met, coveting it as his personal property and delivering many memorable performances in frequent revivals.

Now the Met has a new and gripping production from English director Nicholas Hytner, making his overdue Met debut. In the pit is the tyro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the French Canadian who has been tapped to take over the Philadelphia Orchestra. His conducting was so natural, exciting and supportive of the singers that, blindfolded, one would have thought Levine was still in the pit. No praise can be higher in this opera.

Where the old Dexter/David Reppa production was realistic and sumptuous, this Hytner production, with sets and costumes by Bob Crowley and lighting by Mark Henderson (also in their Met debuts), is more subdued. It relies heavily on filtered lighting and a black and red color scheme that represents the darkness at the heart of Spain under Philip II and the blood of the Inquisition.

Hytner demonstrates in the opening scene in the Fontainebleau Forest that he has caught the essence of this grim masterpiece. A jagged black path in the woods divides the stage into two sections of snowy ground, surrounded by trees that have shed their leaves. The jagged path that splits the stage space underlines that this is an opera about serious divisions.

The first begins with Carlo, who believes he is to be married to the French Princess Elizabeth to cement peace between France and Spain. To his shock, and hers, Carlo learns in this first scene (the only one with even 30 minutes of happy music) that he has lost Elizabeth to his father Philip. King Henry of France, Elizabeth’s father, has decided to give her to Philip, not Carlo. This royal separation eventually drives Carlo mad and leads to his revolt against his father and, in the final scene, his death.

Philip is divided from his people who hate his harsh rule, particularly his brutal treatment of the Flemish. So unpopular is he that when his son draws a sword against him, no one will come to his aid except his one friend at Court, Rodrigo, the Marquis of Posa.

Philip is divided from his wife Elizabeth. He correctly observes this in his great aria "She never loved me," and indeed she didn’t. She loved his son, and Philip should have left well enough alone and let them marry.

Philip is divided from Rodrigo over the fate of the Flemish people. Philip sees them as revolutionaries, while Rodrigo sees them as helpless victims of Spain’s colonial tyranny.

Philip is also divided from the Church and its Grand Inquisitor, who does not believe that the King understands the danger posed to the Inquisition by Rodrigo. In demonstrating the power of the Church over the State, the Grand Inquisitor has Rodrigo assassinated.

While the rest of the stage settings do not attain the logic and beauty of the Fontainbleau scene, Hytner offers a St. Yuste monastery in Scene Two that is smoky and spooky, with pale light filtering through dozens of small square windows. One can easily believe that the ghost of Philip’s father, Charles V, who is buried there, does indeed haunt the place, as everyone seems to think. The St. Yuste setting returns at the end of the opera when Carlo and Elizabeth say their final goodbyes, and Carlo is murdered.

Elsewhere Hytner seems intentionally to reject portraying the bright Spanish sun or the green poplar trees that were a part of the Dexter/Reppa production (and that are in the libretto). His view is dark throughout. One always leaves a good performance of Don Carlo wrung out. It is, after all, four and a half hours of forbidden love, treachery, burnings, and murder. This production is especially brutal, but rightly so.

The Met has always cast this opera from strength. The six leads demand it, or the opera is not worth staging. Bing’s production offered, among others, Jussi Bjorling at Don Carlo, Cesare Siepi as King Philip, Robert Merrill as Rodrigo, and Fedora Barbieri as the Princess Eboli, mistress to the King and rival to Elizabeth.

For the premier of the Dexter production in 1979 Levine assembled Renata Scotto (one of his favorites) as Elizabeth, Sherrill Milnes as Rodrigo, Marilyn Horne as Eboli, and Nicolai Ghiaurov as the King. Not bad!

Cast members on December 11 proudly held their own in comparison to these past stars.

The greatest ovation went to tenor Roberto Alagna, as Carlo. He was in full command of his lyric voice from top to bottom. He sang confidently. He has an Italianate throb, an almost-ringing top, and a lovely soft voice. Carlo however is a crazed character, and Alagna is too much a doughy, open-faced bumpkin to look crazed or frightening. As an actor he lacks the intensity that Neil Shicoff brought to the part in the 1980s, but I wouldn’t trade Alagna’s singing for Shicoff’s acting.

Marina Poplavskaya, the Elizabeth, has a face that belongs in an Old Master painting. She looked regal and edgy. The close-ups for the HD Simulcast exaggerated her sturdy jaw bone, making her resemble a blond Joan Sutherland. Her voice has plenty of heft for the part. It doesn‘t have much velvet, but it’s accurate and pleasant. As an actress she was believable as the Queen, trapped in a loveless marriage but unable to acknowledge her love for Carlo, her "son."

The veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, who made his debut at the Met in 1980 as the Grand Inquisitor in this opera, was a frightening but vulnerable King. He delivered "She never loved me" with pathos. His face-off with the Grand Inquisitor in which they duel over the primacy of church or state was hair-raising. (Is there a more galvanizing entry in all opera than the one Verdi provides to the Grand Inquisitor when he is led in to meet the King, accompanied by double bassoons, double basses and brass?) As the Grand Inquisitor, bass Eric Halfvarson, blind, gnomish, and terrifying, more than held his own in his encounter with the King.

The English baritone Simon Keenlyside offered a more devious and manipulative Rodrigo than is often encountered. Indeed, he is a Iago-like character, although no villain. It is clear in this production that Rodrigo is using Carlo to free the Flemish people. Keenlyside’s voice is not as large as that of Sherrill Milnes or as black as that of Eberhard Wachter. But it is accurate and fully up to the demands of the part. One felt he was always in full control.

That leaves the Eboli of Anna Smirnova, in her Met debut. She was the one weak link. Smirnova does not have the physical appearance for the beauty Eboli, mistress to the King. The close-ups in the HD Simulcast were not kind to her figure. She is not much of an actress. The voice is plummy and Slavic. The Veil Song in Scene 3 went for little. She did better with O Don Fatale, hurling out the notes and making clear her remorse for the problems she caused Elizabeth. But with all the American and Italian mezzo-sopranos on the scene today who are more camera-friendly, this must count as a casting miscalculation by Peter Gelb.

Eboli aside, Hytner and Nézet-Séguin provided a completely satisfying realization of Verdi’s most Wagnerian opera. This is a production that should last the next 30 years. For those who have never seen Don Carlo (and many in the Syracuse, New York audience with me had not) and who think Verdi means only Traviata and Aida, this production will be a revelation.

Details Box

What: Verdi’s Don Carlo, Simulcast Live in HD
When: December 11, 2010
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: Approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Cast: Roberto Alagna, Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside, Anna Smirnova, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Eric Halfvarson, Mark Henderson
Next simulcast: La Fanciulla del West, January 8, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET

By David Abrams
http://www.cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html    

Since its founding in 1949 by venerable violinist Louis Krasner, the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music has been serving music lovers within Central New York a steady diet of first-rate chamber ensembles and the staples of the classical, Romantic and 20th-century chamber music repertory. Every so often, the conservative arts organization reaches deeper into the till to retrieve programs that offer its listeners something a bit different.

Saturday evening’s concert, presented by The Aulos Ensemble and titled Music at Versailles: a Royal Entertainment, drew from the highly stylized and heavily perfumed era of the French Baroque and Rococo periods. But while the program had its share of delightful moments, it was difficult to dismiss the acoustical shortcomings of Lincoln Middle School Auditorium, which tended to dampen the effervescence of the heavily ornamented embellishments (agréments) endemic to French music of this era.

The New York-based period-instrument ensemble, founded in 1973 and now comprising five instrumentalists, began life as one of the pioneering champions of historically informed performance (HIP) in this country. HIP ensembles use period instruments, subscribe to original tuning and temperament conventions and generally remain faithful to authentic performance practice conventions –– which, in the case of French Baroque music, means expertise in the execution of the pervasive agréments.

There’s no question that Aulos was thoroughly at home with the seemingly endless dressings of trills, mordents, turns and appoggiaturas throughout the four-work program. Still, I was left with the feeling that much of the manner of performance during the ensemble’s transcriptions of a pair of Rameau opera suites, Les Indes Galantes and Les Fêtes d'hébé (each of which was assembled from the composer’s own "short-score" manuscripts) was somewhat lacking in energy, vitality and spontaneity. Similarly, Couperin’s Rococo-flavored chamber suite, Troisième Concert Royal, provided more somnolence than it did stimulation.

Although no specific instrumentation for the suite to Les Fêtes d'hébé was given by Rameau, Aulos’ arrangement for three treble instruments (Baroque flute, Baroque oboe and Baroque violin) plus continuo (Baroque cello and clavecin) appeared sufficient to achieve a solid foundation of high and low voices throughout the five-dance suite. Unfortunately, balance here among the individual players was uneven and spotty, both in the oboe (Marc Schachman) –– which struggled throughout the evening with muffled tones (particularly in the lower register) and questionable pitch –– and in the flute (Christopher Krueger), whose notes in the lower register were swallowed by the other instruments or else disappeared into the parched acoustical vacuum of the auditorium.

Issues of tone and balance aside, there were plenty of attractive moments in Aulos’ chamber arrangement of three gorgeous character pieces (originally for clavecin) by Claude-Bénigne Balbastre. This unusual arrangement treats the cello (Myron Lutzke) as a virtual second violin, with lots of writing in the instrument’s treble range –– although I would have much preferred a second violin for the handsome middle movement, La Morisseau, a movement that portends the Romantic period and which makes several unidiomatic demands upon the cellist. I enjoyed the technique of double-stops in the violin (played by Linda Quan) during the arrangement of La Castelmore, in spite of the obvious anachronism of sound due to the Baroque instrument’s gentle-sounding gut strings.

If the novel arrangement of the Balbastre pieces provided the most interesting parts of the program, Aulos’ clever transcription of Rameau’s sparkling opéra-ballet, Les Indes Galantes, provided the most convincing contrast of instrumental combinations.

The many episodes of dance numbers and charming airs in Rameau’s large-scale work provide good fodder for this 13-movement arrangement for five instruments, creating colorful combinations of instrumental pairings, such as the oboe piping a tune over a cello drone set to the interval of a Perfect 5th during the Musette. There was some charming interplay between violin and flute during the relaxed Air vif pour Zéphire, and again within the Air pour Borée et la Rose. There were also quite a number of opportunities for clavecinist Arthur Haas to shine, such as during the Air pour les Esclaves affricains.

The crafty arrangement came to an agreeable conclusion at the final Tambourins –– whose lively writing and sharply edged wind articulations provided the singular greatest moment of excitement of the evening.

Details box:

What: The Aulos Ensemble
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: December 4, 2010, 8 p.m.
Time: 1 hour and 40 minutes, including intermission
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $25, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org    
Next: "Quintessential Quintets" January 25, 7:30 p.m. at Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church, 5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

Am I the only person in America who has never seen the film A Christmas Story or the play derived from it? Well all the better, then, as I won’t feel obliged to compare it to any other version –– and you, dear reader, won’t be burdened by tedious comparisons.

So, then, on to this terminally cute Syracuse Stage production.

The story-line hardly breaks new ground: Young Ralphie (Nicholas Deapo), who seems to understand what being a grade-school anti-hero growing up in 1930s Indiana is all about, wants a Daisy air rifle for Christmas so badly he is willing to write a composition for his mean old teacher (more than somewhat broadly played by Pat Nesbit) on the subject. The plot (such as it is) hinges on whether he’ll get it, and what standard variety youthful adventures he’ll go through until the audience learns whether he’ll be blessed with the gift of his dreams (complete with built-in compass and sundial).  

Along the way to the predictably warm-hearted ending we endure such standard all-American growing-up stuff as: the kid who gets dared into sticking his tongue to a lamp post one freezing day during recess; the dad whose car keeps breaking down and who seems ineffectual at almost everything about child-rearing (but who in the end really, really understands his son); a very cute younger brother (acted with genuinely lovable cuteness by Hunter Metnick) who spends most of his time hiding under the kitchen sink, in a box filled with packing material, behind the couch, etc., or having to go "wee-wee;" a bully (the appropriately not-really-menacing Danny Mulvihill) who finally gets his comeuppance; the predictably understanding, long-suffering but wise wife (nearly underplayed and very nicely so, indeed, by Elizabeth Ann Townsend); the sweet neighborhood girl (Sara Goodwin, really sweet) who manages to touch our pre-teen hero’s heart; and so on and so forth.  

This is pretty much standard stuff (see: Finn, Huck; and Sawyer, Tom –– both of whose stories have the genuine humor and ironic distance that this tale lacks). A Christmas Story is all about growing up in a nostalgic America that probably never really existed except in the gentle myth of adult memory. As the narrator (a very one-dimensional Timothy Davis-Reed) intones, nailing down the moral in case we were such fools to have missed it: Despite all the disasters, it was a good Christmas because we had love and we had each other.  

Oh, well yes –– I guess it was so in this photo-album world. But if I remember Jean Shepherd, from whose stories this script was derived, he always managed a waggishly ironic undertone to let us know that the nostalgic memories do not paint an accurate picture of real-life experiences. The narrator, who is the young boy now-grown-up revisiting his youth, ought to be able to convey that irony to us –– but Davis-Reed apparently never achieves this revelation (or perhaps director Seth Gordon shrinks from horrifying a Yuletide audience by instructing him not to do so).

The kids, who in addition to those already mentioned, include Madison Gregory, Ted Potter and Tristan Tierney, do truly outstanding work. If you like to experience heart-warming theater with on-the-button performances by young actors, this is the show for you. Director Gordon seems to have a knack for bringing out the best from his child performers. An awful lot of what else goes on is slow-paced, overdone or painted with the broadest of strokes –– especially a bit over-the-top Charles Kartali as the father.  

Michael Ganio’s set uses the Archbold Stage well. The family home is both spread out and confining, with set segments like the entire house and the schoolroom moving in and out without slowing down the action (such as it is). I could have lived without the giant snow flakes gently falling and then somehow rising (nostalgia is a strange world, indeed) at the end. David Kay Mickelsen’s costumes seem right for the period and Jonathan R. Herter’s sound design pleasantly underscores the action, except at one point when it drowns out young Ralphie.  Richard Winkler's lighting is very, how shall one say, Christmas-like.

To sum up, then: This is pleasant but predictable Christmas-time theater fare.  Fun for the kids. A good show to share with them. Comforting in the way that canned pie-filling can be. More carbs than protein. The sort of pseudo-warmth that only an artificial fireplace can produce. You get the point –– not for Grinches, Scrooges (before that wonderful codger’s unfortunate conversion) or cranky critics, but very popular. If the sold-out house the night I attended and the fact that tickets for most performances are extremely scarce right now are any indication, I’d bet you a Daisy air rifle it’ll be back next year.  

DETAILS BOX:
What: A Christmas Story, performed by Syracuse Stage
Where: Archbold Theatre at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.
When: Through Dec. 30.
Length of Performance: 2 hours and 15 minutes; including one intermission.
Tickets: $16 - $48. Call 315-443-3275, or www.syracusestage.org   
Family guide: Recommended for audiences of all ages; especially appropriate for youngsters.

By Kevin Moore
http://cnycafemomus.com/Kevin_Moore.html

Felix Mendelssohn once wrote to the effect "It’s not that music is too vague for words, but rather too specific." He was right, and words about music will always fall short of the experience. Music’s emotional and spiritual depth is simply beyond their domain.

Having said that, however, every true musician casts a very special light on anything that he/she performs, and that can extend to words. And Anna Goldsworthy’s book, Piano Lessons: a Memoir indeed has a very special light within it. It’s a treasure that reveals the intertwining of her life and her experience of music. It is compelling reading and takes us from her years as a young piano student in Adelaide in Australia, then as a developing pianist of obvious sensitivity and depth of thought, and finally to a serious artist with a commensurate facility with words.

I couldn’t put it down. The very first pages bring you into her very close family and the day she met her new piano teacher. And you feel like you are there. Although it all centers on piano lessons and the author’s gradual development as an artist, it is through a very personal, sometimes private lens. You feel her insecurity and fear as a young, very bright girl who doesn’t know if she wants to pursue this all-consuming thing called music. And as a young girl who encounters stiff competition from some nasty peers, she has close friends and, most important, a teacher who understands. It has just enough very personal revelation to feel real and very human.

More important, the book is a special tribute to her teacher and mentor, Russian immigrant Eleanora Sivan, who had taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. It’s all about the special bond that made Sivan a kind of second parent. This has deep resonance for anyone who has studied music seriously. The musical and life wisdom imparted by her teacher goes to the essence of what music is about. The profound nature of music and the deep spiritual, intellectual and emotional corners that it fills in human life just spills out of this account.

As her story goes on she comes to know her teacher more as a person, which deepens their connection. It seems that every aspect of her life is filled with the wisdom of this kind, generous and demanding teacher. Near the end, when her teacher seems near death in the hospital, she flies home from Texas immediately, feeling as if her own life is somehow imperiled.

Her teacher’s witticisms, often in quite fractured English, are priceless and wise and, in fact, the most important part of this book for musicians. "We are not teaching piano playing. We are teaching philosophy and life and music digested." Yes!

"Not! Stop! Not! You are playing, not listening....Never just playing, but listening inside."

"What is the result of a clever, clever heart and a very kind and generous brain? Clever hands!" Of course!

"Never beautify Mozart. He is beautiful enough already." This is particularly wise advice, especially in our current era of "gilding the lily", which often seems the predominant ethos of the concert stage.

After playing the first movement of a Mozart Sonata the author was told, "Every piece tells a story. Next week I want you to tell me story of this second movement…Every note is important, every sound says something."

The chapters are titled with composer’s names: Bach, Mozart, Shostakovich, Debussy, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart (again!), Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev, Bach, (again!), Rachmaninov, Beethoven (again!), Shostakovich (again!), Khachaturian, Mozart (and again!), Chopin (again!). In each case, Mrs. Sivan provides words that lead her student into the special world of that composer and their music.

"Bach is never finished. Life in this music is ENDLESS… What Bach gives? Peace, of course…For Bach, all endings are happy. Why? Because he is deeply religious in belief. Brings full peace: peace of contact, of surroundings, of support, of communications, and of respect."

"Who is Mozart? Absolute genius composer, of course. But more: he was music himself. And we have only one Mozart. In my opinion was the face of God."

"Shostakovich was epitome of dignity, of culture, of moral. Just unbelievable quality this man was."

"I repeat: music is logically organized fantasy. You must develop your emotional logic. And your taste."

"My darling, life in music always learning, always growing. What is the difference between a good and great pianist? Little bit more hearing, little bit more understanding, little bit more logic in fantasy, little bit more fantasy in logic. Do you understand how little bits? But these little bits take whole lifetime."

"To be great artist, of course you must first be great scientist, you must understand every little thing! Without organization, it is chaos. Anarchy. But without freedom, it is…dead. It is post-mortem examination."

"People talk about talent. What is this talent? Talent does not play itself. Talent is money in the bank, only. How you spend it, this is up to you."

"Of course, liar cannot play piano. Impossible. With words we can find ways to cover, but with sounds, not. And sometimes not necessary to lie. Sometimes enough to say nothing…Very important to have foundation of morals. If you lie, your sounds will be killed immediately."

"Not all students will be professional pianist, but equally important to educate audiences. In some ways teaching is highest calling. Because must be able to do, first, but then translate into words. And sometimes what we try to explain is so…elusive. Like tiny fish in your palm, you catch, and then- boom! –– it jump out of your hand."

And on and on…in every case, this book is filled with touching and insightful thoughts!

One profound thought comes from the very ill Sivan near the end of the book. "I was from absolutely atheistic background, completely. More than atheistic: communistic. But I came to God through the music. Look at this beautiful world- all for nothing? We don’t know that. But definitely, definitely something, otherwise this music not exist."

This book is so filled with Mrs. Sivan’s deep wisdom that I want to quote every last little bit of it. Better yet, I can say honestly that every musician should read this book. And every reader will be touched and enriched by it. I certainly was.

DETAILS:
Title: Piano Lessons: a Memoir, by Anna Goldsworthy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (October 12, 2010)
Language: English
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-64628-8
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
Website: http://www.pianolessonsthebook.com/

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html    

Pasquale, the well-to-do elderly bachelor in this delightful opera buffa, never has a fighting chance against the conspirators bent on teaching him a lesson (and a costly one at that) –– spearheaded by a young widow who is arguably every lustful old man’s worst nightmare: Norina. And thanks to the Metropolitan Opera’s November 13 matinee performance, simulcast live around the globe, tens of thousands got to see Anna Netrebko throw this poor man a sucker punch that will likely be remembered for years.

Like Garanča in last season’s production of the Met’s Carmen, Netrebko is simply too compelling a figure to take one’s eyes off her –– whether she’s bouncing up and down on the sofa bed, stretching stocking over her legs or beating up on the hapless Pasquale. Vocally, hers was only one of a number of strong efforts –– although here, too, she stood out as the only high voice among a sea of male voices. And while the lightness of her character Norina (a.k.a. Sofronia) traditionally indicates a soubrette, the increasingly dark timbres of Anna Nebrebko’s lyric soprano (occasionally hinting at the darker hues of a mezzo-soprano) seemed only to enhance her dominant presence onstage.

Netrebko’s signature cavatina, Quel guardo, il cavaliere –– which she brazenly delivers on her veranda while suggestively rolling a pair of stocking up her legs –– displays the unmistakable charm and allure of the femme fatale who knows a thing or two about men and how to handle them, and she easily navigated through the many skips and coloraturas of her character’s elastic vocal line. Her Act 3 Garden Duet with paramour Ernesto (Matthew Polenzani), Tornami a dir che m’ami, was especially beautiful –– as Donizetti takes a cue from Mozart in his use of two clarinets, playing in thirds, to signal love.

Matthew Polenzani’s Ernesto, Pasquale’s defiant nephew, was entirely convincing as the confused heart-throb forced to choose between his true love, Norina, and the Pasquale family fortune, and he possesses a smooth lyric tenor and liquid legato well-suited to bel canto. Polenzani’s "woe is me" aria at the opening of Act 2 (Checherò lontana terra), set lugubriously in a minor key following a maudlin trumpet solo of great length, revealed a wide array of dynamic contrasts and secure high notes that never quivered or wavered –– no matter how lengthy the phrase. His sensitively delivered duet with Netrebko in the Garden Scene during Act 3, in which the two lovers express their unwavering devotion to one-another, made the conspiracy against Pasquale seem all the more understandable –– and forgivable.

Rolf Langenfass’s sets create a vision of Don Pasquale’s bachelor abode that, like the Don himself, reveals a disheveled, dusty old caricature of a once-proud institution that over the years has fallen into gross disrepair. The second floor of the house, supported precariously by a single Corinthian column, is connected to the first level by a winding staircase that, considering the Don’s limited physical conditioning, explains why his bed remains on the ground floor. Norina’s rooftop veranda, overlooking a series of nearby rooftops (and cheerfully bathed in moonlight by Duane Schuler), is embellished with a recliner, an umbrella and a prominently displayed clothesline from which dangle a pair of corsets and underwear.

Details Box:
What: Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Simulcast Live in HD
When: November 13, 2010 at 1:00 pm ET
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: 3 hours and 15 minutes, including intermission
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Cast: Anna Netrebko, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, John Del Carlo
Next simulcast: Verdi’s Don Carlo, December 11, 2010 at 12:30 pm ET

Boston-based chamber ensemble presents musical potpourri of several works featuring unusual instrumental combinations

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

It’s nice to hear some off-the-beaten-path musical works spicing up the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music’s generally mainstream programming. Then again, it is well to remember that many such works have been "beaten off the path" for good reason.

The Walden Chamber Players Saturday evening presented a four-work program of mostly good music that was mostly well-played. But the weaker elements on this program –– including a rarely-heard mixed quartet by Krzysztov Penderecki and a lackluster performance of Brahms’s mighty Clarinet Trio –– were difficult to ignore. In the end, I left the auditorium feeling that a promising musical experience had somehow eluded us.

Duke Ellington used to say that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. For my tastes, Penderecki’s Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio falls into the latter category.

Written in 1993 and scored for the unusual combination of clarinet, violin, viola and cello, this four-movement work appears to have all the trappings of program music, with long sections of meandering, esoteric content and a suggestive title to its final movement, Abschied (farewell). Rather than reveal the program, however, Penderecki seems content to leave the listener clueless, taking him/her instead on a cryptic journey through an abstract patchwork of jagged melodic lines and incongruent musical ideas that lack sufficient cohesion to glue the disparate musical episodes together. Somewhere along this journey, the listener is left behind.

Granted, there are occasional moments of interest in Penderecki’s Quartet, with shades of Messiaen in the mournful clarinet solo that opens the first movement and a sprinkling of interesting syncopations in the unison/octave passages among the three strings during the rapid 16th-note passages of the Scherzo. Still, this work –– which Walden spokesperson/violist Christof Huebner in his pre-performance talk from the stage dubbed Penderecki’s "Post-Romantic" style –– is hardly a convincing argument for either Penderecki or Post-Romanticism. Towards the end of the final movement, the elderly gentleman in the seat directly in front of me let out a loud and lengthy yawn, thus summing up in a single gesture the composite listening experience.

The rest of the works on the program were of solid musical substance, even if not played entirely in convincing fashion. One of the ensemble’s better efforts was Schubert’s Adagio and Rondo Concertante in F Major (D. 487), a quartet written when the composer was 19. Scored for an orthodox arrangement of piano, violin, viola and cello, this work is a delightful composition that bubbles with Mozartean effervescence and joie de vivre.

The strings were well in-tune throughout the many unison and octave passages in the opening Adagio, and although first-violinist Irina Muresanu’s bright tone stood out somewhat from the others, the composite blend of tone among the four instrumentalists was generally sonorous. I was especially impressed with pianist (and founding member of the Walden Chamber Players) Jonathan Bass, who played with a suitably delicate classical touch throughout the work –– executing the many trills, turns, appoggiaturas and other musical ornaments with the unmistakable grace and élan of a seasoned performer/scholar. The quickly paced triplet figures passed among the four players during the Rondo were clean and even, yielding well-shaped phrases that blended seamlessly into one-another throughout this charming movement.

The Sextet for Horn, Clarinet, Strings and Piano, Op. 37 of Hungarian composer, Ernö Dohnányi, is one of those neglected works that deserves to be played more often. There aren’t many compositions for this arrangement of instruments, and while Dohnányi in this work appears to neglect the full timbral possibilities of such an assortment, he does craft a work with considerable harmonic interest –– such as in the curious dichotomy of major and minor modes that pervades the opening movement.

Dohnányi’s lengthy and dramatic first movement (Allegro appassionato), based on the melodic interval of a tritone, teases the listener’s sensibilities by vacillating between major and minor modes. The harmonic tension thus created keeps the listener in a constant state of speculation, yielding an enchanting but unpredictable listening experience that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The ensemble played this movement, and those that followed, in convincing fashion –– although it must be mentioned that Walden’s young horn player cracked far too many notes in this and all following movements.

The shifting between major and minor tonalities continues into the second movement Intermezzo, a rather lugubrious movement whose middle section pumps up the tension with loud and sharply defined rhythmic figures made all the more dramatic by Bass’s commanding effort at the piano. The final movement, with its sparkling folk-like tuneful writing (and which Dohnányi seems reluctant to end), tricks the listener into believing that the work ends on the flat-supertonic (D-flat Major), before the final C-Major chord that sets things straight once and for all.

What should have been the weightiest piece on the program, Brahms’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Op. 114, turned out to be a disappointment. This was sterile Brahms –– pretty, perhaps, to those hearing the work for the first time, but stylistically unconvincing to those who have heard it played well before.

Brahms came out of retirement in 1891 to write this sublime Trio (and several other works for clarinet), enchanted by the instrument’s vivid timbral colors and depth of volume and expression. The weighty masterpiece nevertheless requires a great deal of intensity and a wide array of dynamic contrasts to achieve the catharsis endemic to the composer’s mammoth chamber works.

Clarinetist Michael Wayne plays with a pleasant tone and produces a smooth legato that connects the instrument’s registers in seamless fashion. On this occasion, however, he had neither the power of projection nor the range of volume to do justice to this work.

Wayne’s amiable, chamber-like tone –– which appears better suited to Mozart than Brahms –– never rose above a mezzo-forte throughout the four movements, and as such he never was able to reach below the surface of the music to explore the depths of Brahms’s development sections in the outer two movements. Bass, at the piano, and cellist Ashima Scripp, appeared willing (and perhaps eager) to give more sound and intensity when the music called for it, but were reluctant to overshadow Wayne’s limited range of volume and energy.

Had the players been able to achieve more sound in the opening movement, the gentle pianissimo of the ethereal slow (Adagio) would have provided a welcome contrast. This poignant lyrical movement, which has the power to leave the listener breathless, lacked sufficient expression and subtlety, particularly at the recapitulation –– where the clarinet outlines the opening melody as the cello strums a gentle pizzicato accompaniment. This section rushed and left little time for the listener to savor the sensuous melodic line.

The third (Andante Grazioso) movement was inexcusably fast and stylistically inappropriate, yielding more of an allegro than an andante and steamrolling over the many subtleties of this charming minuet-like movement. I very much enjoyed Scripp’s angstful stürm und drang opening passage in the fourth movement, with its sharply dotted rhythmic propulsion. But here, too, Wayne was unable (or unwilling) to open the throttle and join the other players in creating and maintaining the level of anxiety demanded by Brahms. There were also a number of shaky moments in the development section –– leading me to wonder whether this piece was sufficiently rehearsed.

When it comes to Brahms’s chamber music, I live by one mantra: If you can’t do Brahms right, don’t do Brahms.

Details box
What: The Walden Chamber Players
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: November 13, 2010, 8 p.m.
Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $25, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org   
Next: Aulos Ensemble, December 4, 8 p.m.

SU Drama Department’s ‘Jungalbook’ exciting and energetic theater

By David Feldman
Contributing writer

The Syracuse University Drama Department has a new Chair, Ralph Zito, and under his leadership and that of Timothy Bond, Syracuse Stage’s Producing Artistic Director, the program’s mission seems to be shifting. Take their program notes for the current production of Jungalbook: They announce for this adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book that "the designers, performers, stage managers and technicians whose work you are about to see are participants in a rigorous program of conservatory-style training" – and note the use of the word "conservatory."

The department has been debating for years whether it should continue as a professional-oriented academic/liberal arts theater program or move toward the conservatory approach, which stresses the training of future theater professionals. If Felix Ivanoff ‘s high-intensity adaptation is any indication, the conservatory model is where things are headed. 

Jungalbook as a performance is more a spectacle than what you’d call a conventional theater piece. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as the spectacle here is . . . well . . . pretty spectacular. But its intention is clearly as much to train students in the skills needed for eye-popping physical movement onstage as it is to delight the audience – which it effectively does. And it will be especially appealing to young viewers.  

The story is straight out of Kipling. A human infant is adopted by a pack of jungle wolves at the insistence of Bagheera, the panther (sensually purred and slithered by Farasha Baylock). She was once captured by humans and, having escaped, believes she owes a debt for what she learned from them. She repays the debt by saving the child from becoming a tasty morsel for Sherakhan, the Tiger (growlingly and menacingly played by Matt Smith). As the child Mowgli grows up within the wolf pack, Sherakhan’s appetite for his human flesh grows too, until the not very dramatic moment when the wolf-man decides he can’t play at being a wolf forever and takes on Sherakahn using human tricks – thereby breaking the laws of the jungle as enunciated by the hulking but friendly and wise bear (Jon Schoss), who acts as both narrator for much of the play and as Mowgli’s teacher. Among these laws are: There’s a truce from killing when the drought-stricken jungle creatures come to the shrinking river to drink; and killing is for eating, not for any other purpose. But Sherakahn has already broken that last one by interfering with the wolf-pack’s own rules, so a human-style payback is inevitable.

Along the way, Mowgli grows up and learns that being human is far more complicated than being a wild beast – but one must accept what one is. That climax is more a matter of theme (it’s never easy to adapt fiction to the stage) than dramatic conflict. And this production becomes a tour de force, showcasing the outstanding physical work of these students rather than being a conventional dialogue-centered stage play.

All the action, and there’s lots and lots of it (at times thrilling enough to make you gasp), is played out on an inventive set consisting of steel platforms, netting, posts, etc., designed by Elizabeth Gleason, a junior in the department. The animals swing, hiss, sway, jump around and lurk about, under and over the set so effectively that you often forget they are humans. Much of the credit for this goes to Director Ivanoff, who is interested here in using the body in a manner that is something like choreographed acrobatics. And these young and vigorous performers are terrific at doing just that.  

As inventive as the set is, so are the costumes by Emily Springer, another Drama Department student (as are all the designers). Springer’s knee pads, rags, boots and dresses are not of the Halloween-type animal variety intended to imitate how animals look, but rather how these animals act – which largely contributes to the production’s power.

As Mowgli, Christian Leadly leaps about the stage growling with the wolves and trying (not always convincingly) to figure out where a human fits into this world. Christopher Pesto and Troy Dangerfield will have you believing a human can become a python and elephant, respectively. Chelsea Rolfes is suitably wolf-like as the leader of the pack, although she never quite conveys the menace one might expect the Alpha-wolf to possess. There is also a trio of vultures (Lindsey Van Horn, Brenna Carlin and Anya Johnson) that at first will make you laugh and then pray that you never end up dying of thirst on the banks of a dried out riverbed.

This SU Drama Department production is exciting and energetic theater, showcasing its young performers and demonstrating how much they can do with superbly trained bodies, so "three cheers" for trying something non-standard and for succeeding so well, and kudos for doing so professional a job with something new and different on the Storch Stage.

Another indication that the department is moving toward a more professional orientation: No sappy "Thanks, Mom and Dad for never giving up on me," or "I love ya Muffin, hugs and kisses" program notes. The ones here are straightforward and professional, simply announcing the background (and often the quite impressive credits) of the cast, period. Thanks SU Drama.

DETAILS BOX:
What: Jungalbook, based on The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Where: Storch Theatre at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.
When: Through Nov. 21
Length of Performance: about 1 hour and 15 minutes; no intermission
Tickets: $18 adults, $16 students; $7 rush tickets one hour before curtain 
Call 315-443-3275, or http://vpa.syr.edu/drama
Family guide: Recommended for audiences of all ages

By David Abrams
http://www.cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

Listening to mostly male voices (and basses at that) delivering recitatives and monologues in Russian for four and a half hours can be enough to, well, foment a revolution. Perhaps that’s why master-orchestrator Rimsky-Korsakov twice revised Mussorgsky’s bland musical score to Boris Godunov, injecting color and fizz in an attempt to sustain musical interest throughout the lengthy epic drama.

Until fairly recently, Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1908 re-orchestration (which included an extra clarinet and trumpet) was the preferred version. Today, however, most productions have returned to Mussorgsky’s own pen. The Met in its new production uses the composer’s mid-1870s revisions to his 1869 original, thus satisfying a certain curiosity with respect to the opera’s musical genesis but at the same time inviting the inevitable comparisons to the Rimsky-Korsakov version. For my tastes, and taking into account some magnificent vocal efforts Saturday afternoon that included a veritable tour de force by René Pape as the title character, there’s simply not enough carbonation in the Mussorgsky orchestration to last four and one-half hours without going flat.

The story, by Aleksandr Pushkin, is culled from Russian history. Boris Godunov, whose ruthless ascent to power at the turn of the 17th-century was believed to have included the murder of the young heir to the throne, Czarevitch Dimitri, has regained his moral compass and now strives to govern fairly and justly. The remorseful Tsar however grows increasingly despondent over his horrific past deed, and this relentless sense of guilt slowly consumes and ultimately destroys him. Ironically, history has since cleared Boris of this crime.

Pushkin pits the protagonist’s crisis of conscience against the backdrop of the Russian peasantry, whose perpetual misery in a never-ending cycle of despair comes full-circle in this tale –– from the bloody, sadistic conduct at the hands of the soldiers at the opening Prologue to the hateful mob of revengeful peasants toppling the reign of Boris at the end of the opera, and ultimately to the people’s blind faith in the next tyrant-to-be, Dimitri. The message of Boris Godunov is perhaps best articulated at the very end of the opera ("Flow on, bitter tears") by the Holy Fool who, although a "simpleton," is the only character capable of seeing the obvious: Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it.

In his voice and mannerisms, René Pape captured his character’s many faces and contradictions, projecting a complicated monarch torn between his responsibilities as a ruler and the unforgivable moral lapse that had thrust him to power. When in Act 2 Pape declares, "I have achieved the highest power but there is no joy in my soul," he is at once believable as a proud but troubled man unable to come to grips with his conscience. No supertitles were needed to translate the despondent look on Pape’s trodden face and weary eyes.

Pape’s charismatic stage presence and expressive bass, with its dark timbres and cleanly articulated high register, forged a convincing combination of power, vulnerability and pathos. He played the part of the devoted father with genuine tenderness and affection, and his touching farewell to the children in Act 4, capped by the ominous tones of the bass trombone and the tolling of the bells, was truly unforgettable.

Boy soprano Jonathan Makepeace, as Feodor, delivered his second-act "Parrot Song," with buoyancy and confidence that belies his age and experience (although his voice sounded as if it might change at any moment). As Boris’ emotionally fragile daughter Xenia, Jennifer Zetlan provided a convincing character on whom Boris could shower his fatherly affection, and her sweet, innocent soprano provided a most welcome timbral contrast to those of the male-dominated cast.

The Holy Fool, played by a scraggly-looking Andrey Popov, pantomimes the Prologue and then rises to prominence in Act 4. Popov kept the audience guessing whether his character is a religious fanatic, a clairvoyant, a beggar or the town idiot. The only thing I knew for certain was that Popov had immersed himself thoroughly in the role. Even his exaggerated manner of singing was in-character.

As the monk-historian, Pimen, Mikhail Petrenko sang in a large and commanding voice during his first-act narrative as he celebrates the near-completion of his book on the history of Russia, and his bass –– like that of Pape –– was full of nuance and expression. The boyar Shchelkalov, sung beautifully by baritone Alexy Markov, played his minor yet crucial dramatic role with style and poise. Tenor Oleg Balashov was credibly unctuous as Prince Shuisky, the not-too-loyal court advisor to Boris.

Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko, as the ambitious Grigory (a.k.a. Dmitri), possesses a bold and supple voice that exudes great warmth and self-assurance. What a pity the man cannot act. The drunken monk, Varlan, played by Vladimir Ognovenko, provided some much-needed comic relief during the Inn scene, where he playfully embellishes upon the siege of Kazan under Ivan the Terrible.

Ekaterina Semenchuk, as the spoiled and power-hungry object of Dimitri’s affections, Marina Mnishek, looked and acted the part of the superficial Polish princess, with facial expressions (especially the movement of her eyes) that added depth to her character. Her interplay with Antonenko in their lengthy third-act duet was outstanding, although the Belarus star’s rich and thickly timbred mezzo-soprano often muddies her words (which I imagined would have sounded no more intelligible to me had they been sung in English).

Dressed in a full-length black coat that might just as well have had a flashing neon sign proclaiming "storm trooper," Evgeny Nikitin forged a persuasive and cunning Rangoni, the Jesuit priest who manipulates Marina into manipulating Dimitri, with the aim of strengthening the Church’s grip on the new Tsar. Nikitin’s small but pleasant bass was nevertheless painfully sharp in pitch for most of the third act.

Director Stephen Wadsworth took the reigns at the 11th-hour from the celebrated German director, Peter Stein, after Stein withdrew from the production over visa complications. Yet while Wadsworth may have had little influence with respect to the sets and costumes (and no doubt some of the staging instructions) already in place, he managed nevertheless to mold a cohesive bond among the many characters in this work that tethered them to Pushkin’s story.

Set Designer Ferdinand Wögerbauer’s unembellished walls and barren wood-studded stage floor, sparsely adorned with props that include a throne perched unpretentiously atop a raised platform, lent a cold and barren chill throughout the four acts that, with the help of Duane Schuler’s complementary lighting techniques, mirrored the despondent mood of the oppressed Russian peasantry. The centerpiece of this set is a massive book, its pages open and clearly visible to the audience, intended to chronicle the monk Pimen’s ongoing account of Russian history but more likely symbolizing the country’s terrifying past.

Compared with the minimalist sets, Moidele Bickel’s colorful costumes stand out rather brashly –– in much the same fashion as those familiar De Beer commercials where a sparkling diamond shines kaleidoscopically against a black & white backdrop. Bickel also creates a pervasive motif of the color red (as in blood) symbolizing oppression, beginning with the red-coated soldiers as they mercilessly beat the peasants outside Novodievichy monastery in Act 1, then again in the oversized red gloves worn by devious Jesuit priest, Rangoni, in Act 3 and yet again in the all-red attire of the soon-to-be tyrant, Dimitri, later in that act.

Russian conductor Valery Gergiev forged a detail-oriented rendition of the Mussorgsky score that allowed the pervasive wind writing (especially clarinets) to soar above the string textures, and kept the unusually large chorus mostly in-sync with the orchestra. Still, aside from the flamboyant Coronation Scene (Prologue) and evocative fourth-act crowd scene outside the Cathedral of St. Basil, Gergiev could do little to keep Mussorgsky’s musical score from growing tiresome and predictable. The Met Orchestra, which I continue to call the finest orchestra in the world, did not disappoint.

The 120-strong Met Opera Chorus of Russian peasants, boyars (noblemen) and soldiers, under the watchful eye of choirmaster Donald Palumbo, sang in good voice and navigated its way through the pernicious Russian diction with poise and confidence. As Palumbo told the worldwide broadcast audience during an intermission interview, the chorus had been preparing its parts since early August. In spite of the inevitable ensemble problems endemic to such a large body of singers with limited lines-of-sight to the conductor (e.g., problems staying with Gergiev’s beat in the Prologue during the orchestra’s relentless triplet figures), Saturday afternoon’s effort by the chorus will nevertheless be remembered as a collective effort par excellence, one unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon.

What: Moussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Simulcast Live in HD
When: October 23, 2010
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: 4 hours 25 minutes, including 2 intermissions
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Cast: René Pape, Mikhail Petrenko, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Evgeny Nikitin, Vladimir Ognovenko, Andrey Popov, Alexey Markov
Next simulcast: Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, 1 pm ET November 13, 2010