Mad props to whichever clever being at the Independent thought up the headline A SVELTER BELTER for my piece today about the glorious Deborah Voigt, who is back at Covent Garden next week after an eight-year absence to sing Ariadne auf Naxos, complete with THAT little black dress.
Here's one of the cuter promotional videos I've encountered:
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Mary Whitehouse moment...
Having missed The Minotaur at Covent Garden, I watched it on TV yesterday - yes, BBC2 actually decided to show an entire brand-new opera by Birtwistle from the Royal Opera House on Saturday night at prime time (so full marks for that).
I ended up hiding behind the sofa. Honest to goodness, guv, I haven't seen anything so scary since the Daleks, or anything so horrific since Downfall.
Of course, it was fantastic - amazing singing and great performances from everyone and especially John Tomlinson and Christine Rice, huge power in the music even if it's tough on the ears and brain (I liked the use of the cimbalom), and the libretto is very striking indeed. I was just relieved not to have been locked into a Bayreuth-style pew for the duration and I really don't think they should have shown it before the watershed.
Could someone over the Pond please tell us something: are Birtwistle's operas performed much in the States, and how do they go over? Ditto for Germany, France and Italy?
I ended up hiding behind the sofa. Honest to goodness, guv, I haven't seen anything so scary since the Daleks, or anything so horrific since Downfall.
Of course, it was fantastic - amazing singing and great performances from everyone and especially John Tomlinson and Christine Rice, huge power in the music even if it's tough on the ears and brain (I liked the use of the cimbalom), and the libretto is very striking indeed. I was just relieved not to have been locked into a Bayreuth-style pew for the duration and I really don't think they should have shown it before the watershed.
Could someone over the Pond please tell us something: are Birtwistle's operas performed much in the States, and how do they go over? Ditto for Germany, France and Italy?
Tragic deaths of Halle Orchestra couple
I'm sorry to have to report that Halle Orchestra musicians Mike and Dorothy Hall have been killed in an avalanche while on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees. Full story here.
Mike, a violinist, was a student alongside my husband a few decades ago and Tom describes him as one of the most positive and supportive people he knew. Dorothy was a cellist. I never met them, but after a wonderful phone chat with Mike I made him one of the 'case studies' in a piece I wrote about orchestral life a few years ago.
Mike, a violinist, was a student alongside my husband a few decades ago and Tom describes him as one of the most positive and supportive people he knew. Dorothy was a cellist. I never met them, but after a wonderful phone chat with Mike I made him one of the 'case studies' in a piece I wrote about orchestral life a few years ago.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Why didn't he just turn the guy into a flautist?
My eye was caught today by this story from The Times about 'the cellist of Sarajevo', who is extremely upset by a novel called, er, The Cellist of Sarajevo. The author, Steven Galloway, raises some interesting points in the article about how to draw the line between fiction and reality, eg whether you have to pay off the latter if creating the former. (His book raises even more interesting questions about this. I am in the middle of it at the moment and feel, so far, that it straddles both fiction and reality, therefore satisfies entirely as neither.)
But what excellent publicity...
But what excellent publicity...
Friday, June 06, 2008
Tosca, or Why the Best is the Enemy of the Vaguely OK
It was one of those Cloud 9 moments: a man on a ladder starts to sing, the sound hits you in the gut and you undergo some kind of out-of-body experience...The ladder was on stage at Covent Garden, the man was Cavaradossi, aka Jonas Kaufmann and I am still afloat 14 hours later.
The trouble with placing a voice like Kaufmann's centre stage in Tosca, though, is that you need a soprano and a baritone who function at the same artistic level. Not to mention a conductor who knows what his singers are doing. Micaela Carosi as Tosca looked gorgeous and has a big voice, but she proved irritatingly mannered - too much swooping and mucking about with vibrato and lack of - and though she milked 'Vissi d'arte' and got a huge round of applause, it left me faintly chilly. Paolo Gavanelli as Scarpia looked great, but had neither sound nor charisma to match - you kept thinking he was probably quite a nice guy underneath. Paul Wynne Griffiths, in the pit, didn't seem to have liaised much with the chorus master and he and Kaufmann parted company rather drastically several times.
Kaufmann bowls out his black-coffee tenor tone as if it's the easiest thing on earth: it's dark, delicious and leaves you unable to sleep. And he can act, too. He simply showed the others up.
The production, by Jonathan Kent, does what it says on the tin. This is the most classic Tosca you could hope for. Beautiful designs, correct period setting, no monkey business other than that explicitly stipulated. A Tosca for tourists, I thought, trying hard to wish for something more imaginative. But it looks so good that it was impossible to keep thinking that...and I liked the attention to detail: Cavaradossi descending the ladder on a descent in the orchestra, and running up the stairs on an ascent, or a soldier putting out a cigarette at the beginning of Act III with a flourish of light matching a squiggle on the flute.
As for Kaufmann - please, G-d, if you're there, take good care of this guy. Let that voice stick around for a long, long time. It's proof that miracles exist.
There is a video on Youtube of him singing 'E lucevan le stelle' in a TV show, but I think he is best in operatic context, which shows the full range of what he can do. So here he is in the Flower Song from Carmen at Covent Garden last year. Enjoy.
The trouble with placing a voice like Kaufmann's centre stage in Tosca, though, is that you need a soprano and a baritone who function at the same artistic level. Not to mention a conductor who knows what his singers are doing. Micaela Carosi as Tosca looked gorgeous and has a big voice, but she proved irritatingly mannered - too much swooping and mucking about with vibrato and lack of - and though she milked 'Vissi d'arte' and got a huge round of applause, it left me faintly chilly. Paolo Gavanelli as Scarpia looked great, but had neither sound nor charisma to match - you kept thinking he was probably quite a nice guy underneath. Paul Wynne Griffiths, in the pit, didn't seem to have liaised much with the chorus master and he and Kaufmann parted company rather drastically several times.
Kaufmann bowls out his black-coffee tenor tone as if it's the easiest thing on earth: it's dark, delicious and leaves you unable to sleep. And he can act, too. He simply showed the others up.
The production, by Jonathan Kent, does what it says on the tin. This is the most classic Tosca you could hope for. Beautiful designs, correct period setting, no monkey business other than that explicitly stipulated. A Tosca for tourists, I thought, trying hard to wish for something more imaginative. But it looks so good that it was impossible to keep thinking that...and I liked the attention to detail: Cavaradossi descending the ladder on a descent in the orchestra, and running up the stairs on an ascent, or a soldier putting out a cigarette at the beginning of Act III with a flourish of light matching a squiggle on the flute.
As for Kaufmann - please, G-d, if you're there, take good care of this guy. Let that voice stick around for a long, long time. It's proof that miracles exist.
There is a video on Youtube of him singing 'E lucevan le stelle' in a TV show, but I think he is best in operatic context, which shows the full range of what he can do. So here he is in the Flower Song from Carmen at Covent Garden last year. Enjoy.
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