Opera

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares22 Views

    Klaus Florian Vogt’s Strange, Essential Voice in Opera

    by

    Klaus Florian Vogt, a Wagner specialist with an ethereal yet mighty sound, is returning to the Bayreuth Festival to sing in the “Ring.”Klaus Florian Vogt’s voice is a phenomenon that even he has had trouble grasping. In the early days of his career, he would hear recordings of himself singing and be surprised by the timbre. He knew his tenor was bright, but outside his head it sounded even brighter.He wasn’t the only one unsure of what to make of his voice. Lithe, polished and powerful, it continues to divide listeners. Some critics find it youthful; others, immature. At 54, Vogt is one of the most essential performers in opera. But “there is no voice that divides fans so much,” the music critic Markus Thiel wrote in a review. “‘Ethereal,’ ‘otherworldly,’ some cheer. ‘Boyish,’ ‘Wagner wish-wash,’ others complain.”These days, Vogt isn’t so surprised by his sound. “It’s continually grown closer, what my imagination is of how I want to sing and what the actual result is,” he said in an interview.He has also accepted that his voice is not for everybody. “What I never wanted,” he said, “was to pretend to be something I’m not. That’s what’s dangerous for vocal technique and for a voice in general — when you don’t sing with your own voice.”Vogt is a Wagner specialist, with all of the composer’s major tenor roles in his repertoire as of last year, when he performed as Siegfried in the final two operas of the “Ring” cycle at the Zurich Opera House. On July 31, he will sing the role for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares32 Views

      in Music

      Review: A Lost Opera Returns, and Shouldn’t Be Lost Again

      by

      Teatro Nuovo is giving Carolina Uccelli’s pioneering “Anna di Resburgo” its first performances since its premiere in 1835.Luck has a lot to do with legacy in music, and Carolina Uccelli didn’t have much of it.That’s why you may not recognize the name of this Italian composer, who was born in Florence in 1810 and died there in 1858. She was a promising talent, encouraged by Rossini, and had a first opera, “Saul,” under her belt by the time she was 20.Then came her second opera, “Anna di Resburgo,” in 1835. It had the misfortune of premiering in Naples a month after Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” Both featured a strong-willed soprano, and took place in the countryside of Scotland. But “Lucia” was a masterpiece written by a composer at the height of his powers, while “Anna” was the work of a beginner, not to mention a woman. (Few sophomore outings become classics; there’s a reason you almost never hear Wagner’s “Das Liebesverbot.”)“Anna” was given just two performances before closing. Uccelli went on to write songs and tour with her daughter, Emma. She didn’t, however, compose another opera. The score for “Saul” was lost, and “Anna” went on to languish in a Neapolitan library.That is, until it was picked up by Will Crutchfield, the invaluable bel canto specialist and founder of Teatro Nuovo, which at Montclair State University on Saturday gave the first known performance of “Anna di Resburgo” since 1835. Crutchfield tracked down the score, transcribed its 600 pages of chicken scratches and programmed it for his company, which is giving the opera a fantastic concert showing in repertory with Bellini’s more-famous “I Capuleti e i Montecchi.”“Anna” travels to the Rose Theater in Manhattan on Wednesday. If you’re an opera lover, get a ticket. So rare is it to see this art form’s lost history return to life with such care and expertise. Most important is the revelation that Uccelli never deserved to be overlooked; she may have been a beginner, but she was good.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares58 Views

      in Music

      Eric Garner’s Legacy is Honored by an Opera 10 Years After His Death

      by

      “The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist,” part of Lincoln Center’s summer festival, aims to shine light on police violence in the United States.In the middle of “The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist,” an opera about the police killing of Eric Garner, a singer portraying his daughter reflects on his famous final words: “I can’t breathe.”“I can’t let go,” she sings. “I hear his words again and again. A scream in a dream that escapes as a gasp.”A decade after Garner’s death, “Ritual of Breath,” which comes to Lincoln Center’s summer festival on Friday, aims to shine light on Garner’s legacy and the broader problem of police violence in the United States.The opera, composed by Jonathan Berger to a libretto by the poet Vievee Francis, focuses on Garner’s daughter, Erica, as she grapples with the pain, guilt and anger she feels over her father’s death. But “Ritual of Breath” also spotlights the stories of other Black people killed by the police, and issues a spirited call for empathy and change from performers including a 90-member choir spread across the stage and in the audience.“It’s not enough to say that someone died on the street — to reduce them to a chalk outline,” Francis said. “If we don’t know who that was, if we don’t see them as human, no difference will be made. Art allows us to feel that life.”The creators of “Ritual of Breath,” which premiered in 2022 at Dartmouth College, hope the opera will bring fresh attention to social injustice in American society. Niegel Smith, the show’s director, quoted a line from the opera’s final scene in explaining its message: “When a brother’s breath fails, we pick it up. When a sister’s breath fails, we pick it up.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares90 Views

      in Music

      At the Salzburg Festival, Revivals Take Center Stage

      by

      The festival’s chief loves inviting productions back, giving attendees another shot at seeing a beloved show, and allowing directors a chance to nail it on the second try.Lydia Steier’s directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival did not quite go as planned. Her 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte” was savaged by many critics.“Not magical at all,” hissed the Austrian newspaper Kurier, in the headline of its review. Steier, a native of Hartford, Conn., feared she would never work in Mozart’s hometown again.“I’ve never been so stung as by the first reactions to the 2018 ‘Magic Flute,’” the 45-year-old director said in a recent phone interview from her home in Dresden, Germany. “I felt like the concept was fantastic and we didn’t nail it,” she said, adding that the production was bedeviled by many challenges, from problematic casting to the choice of venue.Steier was not alone in thinking that her production had not reached its full potential. Several months after the festival, she heard from Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic director. He wondered, would she be interested in giving the opera another spin for the summer 2020 festival?A rehearsal for Steier’s 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte.” “I felt like the concept was fantastic and we didn’t nail it,” she said.Andreas Schaad/EPA, via ShutterstockSteier was stunned. “He gave us this insane, like, once in a lifetime shot to rejigger the ‘Zauberflöte,’” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares132 Views

      in Music

      This Soprano Sings ‘the Sound of the Soul’

      by

      “Un bel dì,” the title character’s great aria in “Madama Butterfly,” begins with the soprano singing a hovering G flat. Puccini writes in the score that the note is to emerge not just pianissimo, or very soft, but also “come da lontano”: as if coming from far away.The opera is about a young Japanese woman convinced that the American naval officer who abandoned her will return, and “Un bel dì” narrates her fantasy of seeing his ship sailing back into the harbor at Nagasaki.At the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, Ermonela Jaho condenses that desperate illusion into a haunting filament of tone. What’s more, she sings the note while lying on her back on the floor in this bracingly intimate new production of the beloved work.“The attack on the G flat, it’s like hope is being suspended in midair, it’s a sound like the ship appearing on the horizon,” Daniele Rustioni, who conducts the Lyon Opera Orchestra in the production, said in an interview. “And Ermonela does it. You wait for that moment and she delivers.”Jaho, left, and the tenor Adam Smith, as Pinkteron.Ruth WalzJaho, who turns 50 on July 18, delivers these time-stopping threads of sound again and again at moments like Butterfly’s ethereal entrance, marked even softer than pianissimo; during her love duet with Pinkerton, the callous American officer, when she says that the stars are like eyes, gazing at them; and later, when she insists that when Pinkerton returns, their son’s name will change from Sorrow to Joy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares102 Views

      in Music

      A Lost Masterpiece of Opera Returns, Kind Of

      by

      The Aix Festival is presenting a new version of “Samson,” a never-performed work by Rameau and Voltaire, two of France’s most important cultural figures.Voltaire and Rameau looked so much alike, how could they not have ended up as collaborators? An 18th-century drawing shows them bowing to each other, mirror images of gangly bodies and jutting chins.Sealed by resemblance, the pairing of this pioneering philosopher and pioneering composer, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was exuberant — at least at first. “Don’t have children with Madame Rameau, have them with me,” Voltaire wrote to his partner, in a sly allusion to the works he wanted to create together.Their first opera, “Samson,” opened on Thursday in an intense and moving performance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, set in the crumbling ruin of a once-grand hall. But this “Samson” is not the one Rameau and Voltaire wrote. The original score was lost some 250 years ago, so the Aix production — the work of the conductor Raphaël Pichon and the director Claus Guth — is a quiltlike assemblage drawn from other Rameau pieces, with a largely new text inspired by the biblical Samson story.Jarrett Ott as Samson and Jacquelyn Stucker as Dalila in “Samson,” set in the bombed-out ruin of a once-great hall.Monika RittershausThe crucial challenge of such a pastiche is making a sewn-together amalgam feel like an organically flowing work. “There are questions of connection,” Pichon said in an interview. “The tonal relationships between everything, the harmonic journey, the details of orchestration.”But performed with relish by Pygmalion, Pichon’s period-instrument orchestra and choir, this “Samson” retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares137 Views

      in Music

      The Composer Who Changed Opera With ‘a Beautiful Simplicity’

      by

      In the mid-1700s, Christoph Willibald Gluck overthrew the musical excesses around him. A marathon double bill in France shows the vibrancy of his vision.A young woman is offered as a sacrifice to save her people before being rescued by divine intervention. Then a war is fought. Years pass, and, now living some 2,000 miles away, the same woman receives an agonizing order to perform a sacrifice herself, another bloody gift to the gods.That is a summary of two operas, both by Christoph Willibald Gluck: “Iphigénie en Aulide” and “Iphigénie en Tauride.” They were written five years apart and were never intended to be performed together. Each is a full-length score of about two hours, and while they share a protagonist, the vocal range for the character isn’t quite the same in both.But their plots — which tell the story of Greek myth’s Iphigenia, first in Aulis as a would-be victim, then in Tauris as a would-be murderer — flow together with uncanny ease. And on Wednesday, the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France opened a production that pairs the works in a marathon double bill, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov as a brooding reflection on the numbness of endless conflict.Tcherniakov sets the two operas in a stage-filling, prisonlike skeleton of a house, with “Aulide” as the last gasp of a frivolous prewar elite. His “Tauride” depicts the somber aftermath of years of brutal battles, and the physical and emotional toll — the paranoia, the twisted fantasies — on those who remain.Today, Gluck suffers a little from a reputation for formality, even stodginess. But with the period instrument ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée conducted gracefully yet energetically by Emmanuelle Haïm, the Aix double bill was a reminder of the vibrancy of his vision, a majestic yet vigorous directness.This rare juxtaposition offers an immersion in Gluck’s revolutionary innovations — what became known as his reform of opera, paving the way for Wagner and modernity. By the middle of the 18th century, bloated extravagance was the mainstream of Italian opera, dominated by singers burbling mindless coloratura in an endless parade of arias that barely held together as narrative.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares96 Views

      in Music

      The Nearly Lost Work of a ‘Born Opera Composer’ Returns

      by

      Historians try to be precise, so it is awkward to admit that I can’t recall exactly when I first noticed the existence of an opera by Carolina Uccelli. At some point, maybe about six years ago, the name jumped out at me from a list. I do recall my reaction. A female composer got an opera onto the stage in 1835? With an all-star cast? She must have been extraordinary!That was the start of a journey that culminates this month with the modern premiere of Uccelli’s “Anna di Resburgo” by the Teatro Nuovo company, in Montclair, N.J., on July 20 and in New York on the 24. Uccelli was indeed extraordinary, and so is the single surviving opera by which we can assess her abilities. Behind it lies a human story, touching and somewhat sad, to which there is now a chance to add a happy postscript.Italian opera was the single most competitive and economically significant branch of music worldwide in the early 19th century. No female composer ever established herself in it. Success for women, at the time, meant publishing miniatures for the salon, and Uccelli achieved that while still in her teens. But conceiving whole music-dramas and wrangling them through the marketplace was a gritty, cutthroat business; nobody could imagine a woman pursuing it.The brave youngster who tried to make herself an exception was born Carolina Pazzini, in 1810, to an upper-class Florentine family. She had thorough musical training and gained a precocious local reputation for her singing and keyboard improvisations. Around 1827, when Italy’s leading publisher issued an album of her ariettas, she married the widower Filippo Uccelli, a celebrated and sometimes controversial physician who was supportive of her improbable ambitions. He passed along to journalists a letter from Gioachino Rossini in praise of her first opera, “Saul,” produced in Florence in 1830. He probably also paid some of its costs; one of Filippo’s students later wrote disapprovingly that the good doctor had squandered what should have been his sons’ inheritance on the “caprices” of their young stepmother.The opening night of “Saul” was by all accounts a triumph, but later in its run came evidence of the prejudice that could greet a woman stepping outside her expected sphere. The Harmonicon in London reported that “the Florentines have been making themselves merry, as well in verse as in prose, upon this lady’s production, and the high and mighty protection which Rossini is known to have afforded her.” The German periodical Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung allowed itself a baseless hint that Rossini’s interest might have been more in Uccelli’s beauty than in her talent. The Florence journal Il Censore rebuked the theater for giving place to “feminine vanity.”The only surviving copy of “Anna di Resburgo” is at the Naples Conservatory in Italy.Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, NapoliConservatorio San Pietro a Majella, NapoliWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      DeSantis Vetoes All Arts Grants in Florida

      by

      Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no explanation for zeroing out the $32 million in grants that were approved by state lawmakers.For the past 10 days, Richard Russell has been rattled, poring over budgets and working the phones in an attempt to limit the consequences of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s veto pen.Mr. Russell, the general director of the Sarasota Opera on Florida’s Gulf Coast, had expected his nonprofit organization to receive a state grant of about $70,000 once Mr. DeSantis signed a budget that state lawmakers had approved in March.But in a move that stunned arts and culture organizations, Mr. DeSantis vetoed the entirety of their grant funding — about $32 million — on June 12, leaving them scrambling to figure out how to offset the shortfall.“It’s not going to close us,” Mr. Russell said. “But it is a gap that I am going to have to figure out how to make up, and if I don’t find alternate sources of funding, that could be someone’s job.”Leaders of arts organizations in Florida, many of whom have worked in the state for decades, cannot remember a governor ever eliminating all of their grant funding. Even in the lean years of the Great Recession, at least a nominal amount — say, 5 percent of the recommended total — was approved.Established arts organizations usually know better than to overly rely on nonrecurring state dollars subject to the discretion of politicians, said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. But to cut funding at a time when arts organizations are still struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic sends a concerning message “that taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture,” he added.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More