Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci (Staatskapelle Dresden)

The twin verismo peaks of ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ have oft appeared on the same programme since they were first shackled together by the Met in 1893 (bizarrely, they’d previously coupled ‘Pag’ with Gluck’s Orfeo in a staging where Melba sang Nedda). Less frequent has been the same tenor singing both Turiddù and Canio on the same evening (Domingo and Vickers pull it off on DVD), while a double role debut is even less common. Now you can add Jonas Kaufmann to that list (at the 2015 Salzburg Easter Festival), and here he is on film to prove it. Philipp Stölzl’s compartmentalised staging works well, solving problems inherent in the Salzburg stage – one of the widest on the circuit – and his mix of dramatic snapshots and live video pulls the action together in intriguing and illuminating ways. Take for instance the opening of Cavalleria Rusticana. Instead of an offstage serenade, Kaufmann’s Turridù is discovered in the attic garret he shares with Santuzza and their young child (spot the backstory) singing dreamily over the rooftops to Lola who lives across the street. Projected large on the opposite side of the divided stage, what might be hard for an audience to……

August 19, 2016
Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Smetana: Dalibor (BBC Symphony Orchestra/Jiri Belohlávek)

Written at the height of his powers, Bedrˇich Smetana’s third opera Dalibor polarised critics and failed to capture the public imagination. What a loss, for as the liner notes to this magnificent BBC recording point out “Dalibor is Smetana’s loveliest operatic score and a great deal subtler than his first two works for stage,” (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride). In fact, Smetana grew resentful of the Bride’s success, dismissing it as a “toy” for those who thought he was incapable of writing a comedy. The tragic chivalric tale of Dalibor with its plot reminiscent of Fidelio is full of superb music, particularly the beautiful duet in Act 2 when Milada, disguised as a minstrel boy, smuggles an old fiddle into Dalibor’s cell. Packed with great solos shared among five major characters, the vibrant score covers a broad canvas and there are some great theatrical moments, including the pompous Judges’ March which almost pre-empts Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. However, the Prague musical establishment considered Dalibor too Wagnerian for the new national musical movement and it was shelved. Although revived in the 1890s after Smetana’s death, with Mahler conducting a performance in Vienna, it has… Continue reading Get unlimited…

August 19, 2016
Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Mayr: Saffo (Concerto de Bassus)

Johann Simon Mayr’s delightful two-act opera Saffo, here receiving its first recording, features a love triangle between the eponymous poetess (soprano Andrea Lauren Brown) her former lover Faone (soprano Jaewon Yun), whom Saffo still desires but who still pines for his late wife, and the poet Alceo (tenor Markus Schäfer), in love with Saffo. Set in and around a Greek temple near the Rock of Leucas, from which dejected lovers are prone to throw themselves, the opera includes a host of other characters such as the oracular priestess Amfizione (mezzo Marie Sande Papenmeyer). The first of 70 operas by the Bavarian composer (1763-1845), Saffo premiered at La Fenice in 1794. As Marion Englhart writes in her booklet note, “Perhaps Mayr’s musical achievement was not least to combine innovations from the so-called Viennese School of Classicism with the Italian ideal of bel canto.” But it is his peculiar ear for orchestral colour, which comes to the forefront in this fine recording under Franz Hauk on Naxos. To sample the aforementioned qualities, one need look no further than Saffo’s first aria L’onda del mar, che al vento, where she compares her sufferings to a breaking wave. The undulating melodies… Continue reading Get…

August 19, 2016