Cendrillon at the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

Joyce DiDonato Uncelebrated 

Last night, along with every Italian tourist in Manhattan, I went to see Massenet's Cendrillon, hoping for something more than the elevator music which characterised last year's Massenet effort, Thais. Let's just say it was perfect, not only with the box office star Joyce DiDonato as Cendrillon in a Disney princess ballgown, but with the Stephanie Coote as spell-bindingly wicked step mother Madame de la Haltière whose menacing contralto strode the baritonal plain. The entire evening was captivating, the baddies and the mindlessly grasping throng suitably ludicrous, and the hilarious dancing reminiscent of the Time Warp, on such a huge scale that it must have been devised through the wrong end of a long - distance telescope. And yet, despite everything, one was left strangely unmoved. Perhaps it was the simplicity of the story, or the consistent daintiness of the score, or the total absence of dramatic tension. Joyce DiDonato is a global diva, yet her stupendous delivery received no ovations, nor did the hugely comic jokes receive more than a warm titter. The Italian tourists reserved their persistent yelling and chatter for themselves and the people to whom they constantly chattered on their cell phones. Massenet's own strictures about not waiting for inspiration came to mind. Sometimes perfection just isn't enough.

Woody Allen Strikes Again

Jessica Miglio/Amazon Studios

Wonder Wheel

These rotten reviews for Woody Allen's "Wonder Wheel" are either being politically correct, or they
just don't get it. It is compelling, quoting every B grade classic melodrama you ever heard of and adding scenic and cinematographic effects which just make you gasp. This is Kate Winslet at her prime, as if she has finally been yanked from all those roles in which she was either awful or almost good into this moment of brilliance. Her performance had the same effect, on me, as that of Gena Rolands in "A Woman Under the Influence". The entire cast is a superb ensemble which frames Kate Winslet and makes her dazzle, especially Jim Belushi as the broken down, rough-as-guts husband and Justin Timberlake as a cardboard cut-out life guard. How could people say this film is terrible? I can't believe what I am reading.

Watch the trailer:

 

A Sad Time Was Had By All

Russian Lieder at Paul Hall

Having staggered through Arctic wastes from Grand Central to Paul Hall on Monday night I was more than ready for a heady song fest of the Russians. It started off merrily enough with Glinka's liede about the langorous melancholy of despair followed by Rachmaninov's ode to embarrassing conversations. Rimsky Korsakov and Mussorgsky followed in suicidal mode about abandoned rendezvous and dying of love's wild longing before we were swept up by Shostakovich's "Lament for a Dead Infant", a lullaby for a father in prison in Siberia and a song cycle about collective farming ("I lived in a cramped and damp basement room, worn out by poverty.") It lasted only an hour. Some people left in tears.

La Clemenza di Tito at Manhattan School of Music

Pitch Perfect

This brilliant, pitch-perfect production of "La Clemenza Di Tito" last night was not only the best I've seen, but the fastest. They raced through it, with one interval, and we were all out the door 90 minutes later. So much better than the lugubrious, churchy pace of the Metroplitan Opera production, with the two long intervals needed to move massive and unnecessary sets and let the audience finish their dinner.

The Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera

Ken Howard, Metropolitan Opera

Polyamory in Pre-War Thuringia

Titus Groan, or even Hermann Goering, could have starred in the Metropolitan Opera's production of "The Marriage of Figaro" on Wednesday night. None of the hours of preparation I had done for this long and complicated work was adequate for Sir Richard Eyre's pre-war Thuringia setting in what looked like Gormenghast's eerie castle, with gothic turrets throwing spooky shadows, and grim foreboding lurking behind every creaky door and gargoyled gable. Against all this the jolly music and silly adulterous antics were cast in an entirely different light, which I'm really only starting to understand now, almost two days later.

Emmanuel Villaume Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra

Mystification and Adulation

Emmanuel Villaume, whose conducting was so restrained during the Metropolitan Opera's muzak version of "Thais", let loose on Monday when he led a massive orchestra through Ravel's untypically dainty Menuet Antique followed by Debussy's la Mer, three symphonic sketches which were as overwhelming as they were hypnotic. What followed was peculiar as well as spectacular: the bizarre "L'enfant et les Sortileges", a highly visual fantasy about a naughty child's rebellious dream in which dancing tea cups and singing animals are enacted by by a large chorus embedded in the orchestra. Its hallucinatory qualities might be explained by the fact that Collette wrote the lyrics which were then set to music by Ravel while he was in the middle of fighting in WW1. The audience were mystified, then adulatory, and Emmanuel Villaume at last seemed liberated.

Juilliard Vocal Arts Recital

Aneas Humm, (Der Spiegel)

Dazzling Singing (and Couture)

Last night Juilliard pushed its singing students onto the recital drop, resulting not only in an entrancing evening of Duparc, Schonberg, Strauss, Wolf, Ullman and Manuel de Falla but also the most dazzling array of platform fashions, ranging from elegant Greek drapery for the fantastic Felicia Moore(already a regular soloist in New York) and a size XS Dior evening suit with patent leather slippers for the stunning (and slim) baritone Aneas Humm. Natalia Kutateladze, who sang the de Falla in black, wore a giant emerald scarab on her wrist. Rebecca Pedersen (the Strauss) wore ivory YSL, with a silk wrap, and later on I found out that she is not only a perfect pitch soprano, but also that she is deaf, which is amazing.

Juilliard String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall

Colbert Artist Management www.colbertartists.com

Infamously Difficult

If there were musical Olympics and it was 1980, the Juilliard String Quartet would be the East German athletic team. Last night they showed off by playing Hayden's infamously difficult Quartet in D Major, which is all sarcastic jokes and inversions, and Dvorak's No. 11 in C Major, which is equally complicated, and in between they exemplified perfection with Bartok's Number 5 which is so technically difficult that Bartok got fed up because he couldn't find anyone who could play it. I was transported by it and went into a sort of trance, spinning around with the atoms and the stars and the universe. It was like an out of body experience and literally amazing. The funny thing is, the rest of the audience didn't like it; they were pretty unresponsive and the people on either side of me actually said they hated it and wished it had been shorter.

Barak Obama

Reuters

The Final Year

This film, on preview at Cinema Village, focuses on Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor, and Samantha Power, the UN Ambassador, young idealists, recruited at the earliest stages of Obama's national career, who assert his audacious hope. Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, looks on as though she knows a thing or two she doesn't especially want to discuss, John Kerry buzzes around, and Obama himself lets his aged yet open face receive the audience's projection of its own sense of tragedy. As Trump wins the election, Rhodes tries and fails to describe his feelings but he achieves a constructive outlook in positioning Putin, and by implication Trump, as looking out only for themselves, thereby leaving the bigger global picture open for future change. As Power wearily says as she packs up her office, they now know they are in for the long haul.

Watch the trailer:

Elevator Music at the Met

Metropolitan Opera

"Thais" at the Metropolitan Opera

Remember elevator music, those soothing strains of strings and muted xylophone to which we ascended through luxe hotels and department stores? Well, if you needed reminding, last night's performance of "Thais" might have been of help. The original production of Massenet's opera, about a prostitute who became an ascetic hermit and died in a holy grotto surrounded by angels, must have been quite racy because Anatole France, who was always being provocative, was thrilled by it and after the Vatican's representatives had seen the opera (over and over again) they put the novel on the Index of Forbidden Books, which thrilled Anatole France even more. But last night's version looked and sounded like a slow afternoon at Bergdorf's, which might have worked well had that had been the director's intention, and Iris Apfel could have have had a cameo.

Brigadoon at City Center

www.broadwayworld.com

Suspending Disbelief

Brigadoon is one of those plays that you couldn't make up. Oh hang on. Well anyway, seeing as it was made up, it is impossible to imagine the investors' meeting when the plot was pitched. If any musical requires suspension of disbelief, it has to be this one, and even then, suspension is impossible. Anyway, I quite like to believe. The reason "Brigadoon" has passed into loving legend has to be the score which is haunting, sombre, melancholy, wistful, yearning. As this production shows, Lerner and Loewe wrote songs which were such box office gold that anything they wrote made the plot irrelevant. Beneath even the merriest and most furious of the Highland strains is a sadness which resonates with audiences in a way that is understood only in hindsight, or therapy, whichever comes last.

La Finta Giardiniera at Juilliard Opera

Hiroyuki Ito

Country Matters 

Mozart must have been precocious in country matters as well as music because otherwise he could never have written La Finta Giadiniera in 1774, when he was 18. It's a romp of concupiscence, longing and betrayal, set in various vineyards, flower beds and canapes before the purifying flames of hell uplift the lust-lorn unto the Platonic ideal of love and harmony. The music is sublimely beautiful and foreshadows almost every opera Mozart ever wrote, which might explain why it is hardly ever performed. This production indulged in as much over-wrought opera buffa stage business and mugging as could be squeezed in which at times had the same effect as dressing the Venus de Milo in a frilly print frock but it was all very suitable for a beer hall, so Mozart would have loved it.

Thomas Ades

Thomas Ades at Alice Tully Hall

 

Photo:  Richard Termine 

Thomas Ades had no opera performance last night so instead he conducted a riotous concert at Alice Tully Hall which hypnotised the audience with his own mystical poem "All Shall Be Well", sliced through the Elgar cello concerto (Australian undergraduate cellist Rachel Siu) with the most precise conducting I've ever seen, and then played his "Three Studies of Couperin" which give voice to sounds which may be implied in the original scores and may or may not be inevitable. Some sounded like Couperin played on a mouth organ and some sounded like instrumental mistakes and all were fascinating. Then he expanded the orchestra into a scary monster, and belted out Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements (written in a state of high anxiety in LA during the war). People screamed, then left in silence.

Sarah Cunningham and Richard Egarr at Paul Hall

Photos by Jubal Battisti & Matthew Murphy, http://www.nybaroque.org

Next week Sarah Cunningham and Richard Egarr are recording numerous Bach sonatas and suites, transcribed for viola da gamba and harpsichord, so tonight they practiced by giving a concert at Paul Hall. Sarah made the point that the pursuit of Lutheran contrapuntal strictness and the elusive "authentic"interpretation misses Bach's fundamental use of improvisation and transcription. So she followed his example and translated some of his most familiar work, music we have all heard played on the organ, in concertii, and as solos for various instruments, for performance by Viola da Gamba and harpsichord. The result entranced the audience for over two hours in a delicate, gentle yet exciting display of virtuosity, Sarah, stooped, with her tongue out, grimacing, and Richard raising his eyebrows and sometimes looking startled at the sounds which emerged. They concluded with the famous Sonata in G Minor BVW 1029, written for organ, in which the Viola da Gamba played the right hand and the harpsichord played the left hand (on the right hand) and the foot (on the left hand). People gasped but not as much as the performers who seemed to be relieved when it was over.

Mick Rock at NYPL

www.beautifulcrime.gallery/artists/mick-rock/

Mick Rock and David Fricke at the New York Public Library

Last night Mick Rock (photographer) reminisced with David Fricke (Rolling Stone) about his life and Lou Reed's Transformer album. "Vose girls" [sic], David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and most of the early Glam Rockers, all shared the same clothes and make up and never wore the same thing twice. None of them had any idea they were making musical history except for Bowie, and none of them earned anything, except for Bowie. Lou Reed was much loved by all, except for Bowie, and Reed was fascinated by people in the housebreaking business. One day, when he found his own house had been broken into, nothing was missing but all the furniture had been re-arranged. Mick Rock summarized his career as a lot of fun at everyone else's expense, except for Bowie. "It wasn't effing lucky," he said, "but it was effing PROPITIOUS."

Watch Mick Rock discuss his career: