Well, the season announcement has been made, and I was 80% correct in my previous post.
The summer production, from July 30 to August 20, will be Porgy and Bess, with Gordon Hawkins and Lisa Daltirus in the lead roles, with John DeMain conducting.
Carmen will play from October 15 to 29, with Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen, and Joseph Calleja, returning five years after his local debut, as Don Jose. This will not be a revival of the production from 2004, but a production borrowed from Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
From January 14 to 28 will be the Seattle debut of Verdi's Attila with John Relyea in the title role, Antonello Palombi as Foresto, Ana Lucrecia Garcia as Odabella and Marco Vratogna as Ezio. If the pictures on the Seattle Opera website are any indication, this looks to be a modernized production.
Orpheus and Eurydice by Gluck will play from February 25 - March 10, the one opera I didn't guess. It's the tenor version of the opera with William Burden as Orpheus, Davinia Rodriguez as Eurydice and Julianne Gearhart as Amore.
The season ends with Madama Butterfly from May 5 - 19. Patricia Racette and Stefano Secco make their local debuts in the lead roles.
I can't say that I'm particularly thrilled by the choice of operas--however, the high quality of singers for the season does interest me.
Showing posts with label Seattle Opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle Opera. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Seattle Opera, next season
Normally, Seattle Opera announces the next season in early January, so the 2011-12 announcement is probably only a couple of weeks away.
But usually, it's possible to figure out, from here and there, what they are planning on presenting. However, this time it's been more difficult than usual to figure out their plans in advance.
Originally, the 2011 summer opera was to have been Tannhäuser, a work not seen in Seattle since the 1984-85 season (Speight Jenkins' inaugural season with the company, as a matter of fact). And the title role was to have been played by Christopher Ventris, Seattle's 2003 Parsifal, in his role debut. However, apparently the production has been cancelled. Instead of Wagner, we will be getting Gershwin: Porgy and Bess, last seen in Seattle in 1995.
The January 2012 production will be Verdi--one of his rarer works at that: Attila, the first time it's been performed by the company. Antonello Palombi, last season's Manrico, will take the tenor role of Foresto.
And in October, March, and May? I actually don't know. I'm pretty confident that Madama Butterfly will be one of the works performed, and Carmen is a very likely pick as well. I'd expect that the remaining fifth opera will also be one of the standard canon as well: likely possibilities include Fidelio, Tales of Hoffmann, Elisir d'amore, and Don Pasquale. Rigoletto is less likely, as they are already performing a Verdi work, and the last time they did it, it bombed at the box office. It's unlikely they'll do two Puccini operas in one season, so that eliminates Turandot. It's been a long time since Seattle Opera has done Faust, but Speight Jenkins is on record as hating that opera, so I can't see him programming it in one of his last seasons as the company's director. Maybe they'll surprise us with a mainstage debut of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (based on the interesting production Peter Kazaras did with the Young Artists Program back in 2009).
Anyway, my guesses for 2011-12's five operas are:
But usually, it's possible to figure out, from here and there, what they are planning on presenting. However, this time it's been more difficult than usual to figure out their plans in advance.
Originally, the 2011 summer opera was to have been Tannhäuser, a work not seen in Seattle since the 1984-85 season (Speight Jenkins' inaugural season with the company, as a matter of fact). And the title role was to have been played by Christopher Ventris, Seattle's 2003 Parsifal, in his role debut. However, apparently the production has been cancelled. Instead of Wagner, we will be getting Gershwin: Porgy and Bess, last seen in Seattle in 1995.
The January 2012 production will be Verdi--one of his rarer works at that: Attila, the first time it's been performed by the company. Antonello Palombi, last season's Manrico, will take the tenor role of Foresto.
And in October, March, and May? I actually don't know. I'm pretty confident that Madama Butterfly will be one of the works performed, and Carmen is a very likely pick as well. I'd expect that the remaining fifth opera will also be one of the standard canon as well: likely possibilities include Fidelio, Tales of Hoffmann, Elisir d'amore, and Don Pasquale. Rigoletto is less likely, as they are already performing a Verdi work, and the last time they did it, it bombed at the box office. It's unlikely they'll do two Puccini operas in one season, so that eliminates Turandot. It's been a long time since Seattle Opera has done Faust, but Speight Jenkins is on record as hating that opera, so I can't see him programming it in one of his last seasons as the company's director. Maybe they'll surprise us with a mainstage debut of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (based on the interesting production Peter Kazaras did with the Young Artists Program back in 2009).
Anyway, my guesses for 2011-12's five operas are:
- Porgy and Bess
- Attila
- Madama Butterfly
- Carmen
- L'elisir d'amore
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Lucia di Lammermoor, Seattle Opera (October 16)
No opera fan loves every opera. All fans have some weak spot, some kind of opera which is like kryptonite to them.
For me, it used to be dramatic bel canto opera. I was just fine with the comic ones, the Barbers of Seville and Elixirs of Love, but there was just something ridiculous about the serious ones that annoyed me.
That certainly is not the case in Seattle Opera's magnificent new Lucia di Lammermoor, which succeeds on every level, a near-total triumph to a degree that astonishes me. It's a brilliant night at the opera.
Seattle's last bel canto opera was Bellini's I puritani back in 2008. The performance I attended back then was notable for Lawrence Brownlee's exceptional vocalism (including an unbelievable high F) and basically nothing else. So last night, before the performance began, I noticed a disquieting note in the program booklet. "Set design adapted by Robert A. Dahlstrom from Seattle Opera's 2008 I puritani." Back in 2008, I hated that set. I'm not a fan of unit sets in general, which sucks for me, because the new economic reality of opera means more and more operas will have them. But now? A unit set not only for one opera, but two? I steeled myself for a lousy night at McCaw Hall.
Boy was I wrong.
Let's start with the title role: From Poland, soprano Aleksandra Kurzak made her debut, not only with Seattle Opera, but in the role of Lucia. She was absolutely first-rate. Her voice sounded made-to-order, not just for the role, but for the house: some singers' voices become lost in the spacious hall when singing piano, but not Miss Kurzak's. Even her softest singing filled the house. Her coloratura was clear and agile, her acting was vivid, and she was a beautiful figure on stage. Her arias and mad scene were magnificent and brought the house down.
William Burden, last seen in Seattle in the World Premiere production of Amelia in May, sang Edgardo: I suspect it may have been a role debut for him as well, although there was nothing about that in the program. Frequently, Edgardo is played by more dramatic tenors: Richard Tucker and Placido Domingo are two of the heavier-voiced tenors to be well-known in the part. Burden's lyric tenor was suited to the role and the production well. His death scene was spellbinding, and his singing throughout was bright and refined. He was also a handsome and romantic figure onstage, as if he had stepped right out of the works of Sir Walter Scott.
Lucia's brother Enrico was played by another singer new to Seattle, baritone Ljubomir Puskaric from Croatia. While, as the designated heavy of the piece, he doesn't get as many chances to shine as the leads, he did have several chances to show off his brilliant, clarion high notes.
Arthur Woodley, who played the pastor Raimondo, has been a mainstay at Seattle Opera for over a decade, generally in roles that are too small to be considered principal, but too large to be comprimario: Ferrando in Il trovatore and Bartolo in Nozze di Figaro, for instance. Raimondo, however, is a bonafide principal role, and Woodley was a tower of strength in it, his limber and beautiful bass voice a pleasure to hear in Raimondo's big solo moments. This was the general opinion of the audience, as Woodley deservedly got one of the biggest ovations of the night.
The three smaller roles were all taken by Seattle Opera Young Artists in their mainstage debuts: Normanno was Eric Neuville, Alisa was Lindsey Anderson, and the amusingly smug Arturo was Andrew Stenson. All acquitted themselves well, as did the chorus, appearing onstage for the first time since last March's Falstaff (Amelia had no chorus at all, Tristan und Isolde had men's chorus only, kept offstage).
The conductor, making his Seattle Opera debut was Bruno Cinquegrani from Naples, Italy. The singers and orchestra seemed to be well synchronized and in good balance. If one of the reasons we could hear Miss Kurzak's softest singing was because he kept the orchestra down, well then, bravo to him!
Now, a musically excellent performance was not a surprise to me. What was a surprise was the dramatic excellence. Yes, the old I puritani set--a series of cast-iron catwalks and staircases--loomed over the stage for the entire performance. However, director Tomer Zvulun (from Tel Aviv) and American designer Dahlstrom created a performance area in front of the iron construction which used a minimum of set decoration to create distinctly different scenes. A conceit of the production was that Lucia was haunted from the beginning, and the production used scrims, the many catwalks, clever lighting effects (lighting designer Robert Wierzel), and numerous supernumeraries and actors to show ghosts either reenacting horrors of the past, or perhaps simply predicting Lucia's future fate. Presumably Wierzel was also reponsible for the cloud animation that appeared on the curtain before the performance, during intermissions and scene changes--it set a nice Sturm und Drang vibe for the whole performance. Deborah Trout's costume designs avoided the traditional, anachronistic kilts: the costumes seemed to be set during the time period of the opera's composition.
Costume design and lighting design came together in an extraordinary way during the mad scene: the lighting seemed to wash out any of the colors in the costumes of the chorus and other singers, leaving them appearing monochromatic, causing the blood on Lucia's clothes to jump out in comparison.
It was a wonderful night at the opera. Was it perfect? No. Am I going to tell you about the imperfections? Also no, because frankly, considering the overall excellence of the performance, any imperfections are not worth mentioning.
Further performances with this cast are on Wednesday the 20th, Saturday the 23rd (which will also be broadcast on KING FM), Wednesday the 27th, and Saturday the 30th. The alternate cast (Davinia Rodriguez as Lucia, Scott Piper as Edgardo and Philip Cutlip as Enrico, all other cast members the same) will perform on Sunday the 17th and 24th (both matinee performances) and Friday the 29th.
I'm going to go again, myself. Two more times, if possible. Because a performance like this is what opera should be.
For me, it used to be dramatic bel canto opera. I was just fine with the comic ones, the Barbers of Seville and Elixirs of Love, but there was just something ridiculous about the serious ones that annoyed me.
That certainly is not the case in Seattle Opera's magnificent new Lucia di Lammermoor, which succeeds on every level, a near-total triumph to a degree that astonishes me. It's a brilliant night at the opera.
Seattle's last bel canto opera was Bellini's I puritani back in 2008. The performance I attended back then was notable for Lawrence Brownlee's exceptional vocalism (including an unbelievable high F) and basically nothing else. So last night, before the performance began, I noticed a disquieting note in the program booklet. "Set design adapted by Robert A. Dahlstrom from Seattle Opera's 2008 I puritani." Back in 2008, I hated that set. I'm not a fan of unit sets in general, which sucks for me, because the new economic reality of opera means more and more operas will have them. But now? A unit set not only for one opera, but two? I steeled myself for a lousy night at McCaw Hall.
Boy was I wrong.
Let's start with the title role: From Poland, soprano Aleksandra Kurzak made her debut, not only with Seattle Opera, but in the role of Lucia. She was absolutely first-rate. Her voice sounded made-to-order, not just for the role, but for the house: some singers' voices become lost in the spacious hall when singing piano, but not Miss Kurzak's. Even her softest singing filled the house. Her coloratura was clear and agile, her acting was vivid, and she was a beautiful figure on stage. Her arias and mad scene were magnificent and brought the house down.
William Burden, last seen in Seattle in the World Premiere production of Amelia in May, sang Edgardo: I suspect it may have been a role debut for him as well, although there was nothing about that in the program. Frequently, Edgardo is played by more dramatic tenors: Richard Tucker and Placido Domingo are two of the heavier-voiced tenors to be well-known in the part. Burden's lyric tenor was suited to the role and the production well. His death scene was spellbinding, and his singing throughout was bright and refined. He was also a handsome and romantic figure onstage, as if he had stepped right out of the works of Sir Walter Scott.
Lucia's brother Enrico was played by another singer new to Seattle, baritone Ljubomir Puskaric from Croatia. While, as the designated heavy of the piece, he doesn't get as many chances to shine as the leads, he did have several chances to show off his brilliant, clarion high notes.
Arthur Woodley, who played the pastor Raimondo, has been a mainstay at Seattle Opera for over a decade, generally in roles that are too small to be considered principal, but too large to be comprimario: Ferrando in Il trovatore and Bartolo in Nozze di Figaro, for instance. Raimondo, however, is a bonafide principal role, and Woodley was a tower of strength in it, his limber and beautiful bass voice a pleasure to hear in Raimondo's big solo moments. This was the general opinion of the audience, as Woodley deservedly got one of the biggest ovations of the night.
The three smaller roles were all taken by Seattle Opera Young Artists in their mainstage debuts: Normanno was Eric Neuville, Alisa was Lindsey Anderson, and the amusingly smug Arturo was Andrew Stenson. All acquitted themselves well, as did the chorus, appearing onstage for the first time since last March's Falstaff (Amelia had no chorus at all, Tristan und Isolde had men's chorus only, kept offstage).
The conductor, making his Seattle Opera debut was Bruno Cinquegrani from Naples, Italy. The singers and orchestra seemed to be well synchronized and in good balance. If one of the reasons we could hear Miss Kurzak's softest singing was because he kept the orchestra down, well then, bravo to him!
Now, a musically excellent performance was not a surprise to me. What was a surprise was the dramatic excellence. Yes, the old I puritani set--a series of cast-iron catwalks and staircases--loomed over the stage for the entire performance. However, director Tomer Zvulun (from Tel Aviv) and American designer Dahlstrom created a performance area in front of the iron construction which used a minimum of set decoration to create distinctly different scenes. A conceit of the production was that Lucia was haunted from the beginning, and the production used scrims, the many catwalks, clever lighting effects (lighting designer Robert Wierzel), and numerous supernumeraries and actors to show ghosts either reenacting horrors of the past, or perhaps simply predicting Lucia's future fate. Presumably Wierzel was also reponsible for the cloud animation that appeared on the curtain before the performance, during intermissions and scene changes--it set a nice Sturm und Drang vibe for the whole performance. Deborah Trout's costume designs avoided the traditional, anachronistic kilts: the costumes seemed to be set during the time period of the opera's composition.
Costume design and lighting design came together in an extraordinary way during the mad scene: the lighting seemed to wash out any of the colors in the costumes of the chorus and other singers, leaving them appearing monochromatic, causing the blood on Lucia's clothes to jump out in comparison.
It was a wonderful night at the opera. Was it perfect? No. Am I going to tell you about the imperfections? Also no, because frankly, considering the overall excellence of the performance, any imperfections are not worth mentioning.
Further performances with this cast are on Wednesday the 20th, Saturday the 23rd (which will also be broadcast on KING FM), Wednesday the 27th, and Saturday the 30th. The alternate cast (Davinia Rodriguez as Lucia, Scott Piper as Edgardo and Philip Cutlip as Enrico, all other cast members the same) will perform on Sunday the 17th and 24th (both matinee performances) and Friday the 29th.
I'm going to go again, myself. Two more times, if possible. Because a performance like this is what opera should be.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tristan und Isolde, Seattle Opera (July 31)
Tristan und Isolde is not an easy opera. It's not easy to stage, nor to sing, nor to listen to. In fact, I've sometimes entertained the philistine notion that the opera would be twice as good if it were half as long.
When I first heard that Seattle Opera was planning on making TuI their Summer 2010 opera, I assumed it would be a revival of their 1998 production (the production that marked the role debuts for Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen, who for the next few years were briefly the top couple for the title roles). To my surprise, it was announced it would be a new production by Peter Kazaras. To my greater surprise, it turns out that a new production would be less expensive than a revival.
Well, it certainly looked cheap. Like too many of Seattle Opera's recent productions, it was based around a unit set (designed, along with the costumes, by Robert Israel) that was essentially like a giant, empty, dark marble bank lobby, with minimal props onstage to indicate the various scenes. The program notes stated that the production would use expensive new projection technology, but said projections seemed to be used very sparingly. (Nowhere near the stunning projections I recently saw at Vancouver Opera's Nixon in China or San Francisco's Die Walküre).
The costumes seemed to be Japanese-inspired, some apparently soaked with blood. A reference, perhaps, to Yukio Mishima, the Japanese novelist who directed a film where a couple commits ritual suicide to Tristan? (Mishima himself famously later committed seppuku.) However, the costumes, along with the vague set and props led the viewer to believe that some sort of point was being made. What point that might be was not clear.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the stage direction was the fact that the title couple never actually made any physical contact until the final moments: amorous obsession seen through the lens of medieval courtly love.
Musically, it was a much happier evening. Annalena Persson, from Sweden, making her US debut, may not have beguiled with beauty of tone, but the role clearly held no terrors for her. Hers was an Isolde seething from the very beginning. Clifton Forbis is well-known for his Tristan by now. Again, no honey in his voice, but a grand sense of self-contempt from Act 1 on.
I'm a big fan of Margaret Jane Wray's Sieglinde, and as I expected, Brangäne suited her voice (somewhere between a soprano and a mezzo) very well. Her devotion and regret were well-portrayed. Kurwenal is a comparably small role, so it was a bit of surprise for Greer Grimsley to take the role, as his last Seattle assignment was Wotan. Frankly, Kurwenal isn't that interesting of a part, and Mr. Grimsley didn't make it any more interesting. Stephen Milling, on the other hand, was simply sensational as Marke, making his long scene (which in the wrong hands can be terribly boring) one of the best of the night.
Asher Fisch, Seattle Opera's principal guest conductor, really came into his own in this production. He kept a good balance with the singers--none were ever overwhelmed by the orchestra. He lingered on the more beautiful moments, but kept the opera moving along at a good pace. The Seattle Symphony played as well as I've ever heard them.
Ultimately, however, it was an evening that left me unsatisfied. Tristan und Isolde, as I stated before, is a difficult work, and it takes a special kind of performance to turn it into the kind of hyper-romantic dementia that Wagner conjured up. I had no complaints with the musical side of the evening. It was what I saw that left me cold.
When I first heard that Seattle Opera was planning on making TuI their Summer 2010 opera, I assumed it would be a revival of their 1998 production (the production that marked the role debuts for Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen, who for the next few years were briefly the top couple for the title roles). To my surprise, it was announced it would be a new production by Peter Kazaras. To my greater surprise, it turns out that a new production would be less expensive than a revival.
Well, it certainly looked cheap. Like too many of Seattle Opera's recent productions, it was based around a unit set (designed, along with the costumes, by Robert Israel) that was essentially like a giant, empty, dark marble bank lobby, with minimal props onstage to indicate the various scenes. The program notes stated that the production would use expensive new projection technology, but said projections seemed to be used very sparingly. (Nowhere near the stunning projections I recently saw at Vancouver Opera's Nixon in China or San Francisco's Die Walküre).
The costumes seemed to be Japanese-inspired, some apparently soaked with blood. A reference, perhaps, to Yukio Mishima, the Japanese novelist who directed a film where a couple commits ritual suicide to Tristan? (Mishima himself famously later committed seppuku.) However, the costumes, along with the vague set and props led the viewer to believe that some sort of point was being made. What point that might be was not clear.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the stage direction was the fact that the title couple never actually made any physical contact until the final moments: amorous obsession seen through the lens of medieval courtly love.
Musically, it was a much happier evening. Annalena Persson, from Sweden, making her US debut, may not have beguiled with beauty of tone, but the role clearly held no terrors for her. Hers was an Isolde seething from the very beginning. Clifton Forbis is well-known for his Tristan by now. Again, no honey in his voice, but a grand sense of self-contempt from Act 1 on.
I'm a big fan of Margaret Jane Wray's Sieglinde, and as I expected, Brangäne suited her voice (somewhere between a soprano and a mezzo) very well. Her devotion and regret were well-portrayed. Kurwenal is a comparably small role, so it was a bit of surprise for Greer Grimsley to take the role, as his last Seattle assignment was Wotan. Frankly, Kurwenal isn't that interesting of a part, and Mr. Grimsley didn't make it any more interesting. Stephen Milling, on the other hand, was simply sensational as Marke, making his long scene (which in the wrong hands can be terribly boring) one of the best of the night.
Asher Fisch, Seattle Opera's principal guest conductor, really came into his own in this production. He kept a good balance with the singers--none were ever overwhelmed by the orchestra. He lingered on the more beautiful moments, but kept the opera moving along at a good pace. The Seattle Symphony played as well as I've ever heard them.
Ultimately, however, it was an evening that left me unsatisfied. Tristan und Isolde, as I stated before, is a difficult work, and it takes a special kind of performance to turn it into the kind of hyper-romantic dementia that Wagner conjured up. I had no complaints with the musical side of the evening. It was what I saw that left me cold.
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