03_Strauss_Feuersnot.jpgStrauss – Feuersnot
Carbone; Henschel; Wawiloff; Amoretti; Teatro Massimo; Gabriele Ferro
ArtHaus Musik 109065

A handsome suitor unwisely steals a kiss from a girl in the heat of passion whereby she vows revenge and publicly humiliates the young man by leaving him hanging in a basket just below her window. The unfortunate young fellow (actually a wizard and a powerful magician) lays a curse on the town by extinguishing all fires and plunging it into eternal darkness. The young Richard Strauss’ second, almost unknown opera was chosen by Teatro Massimo, the beautiful opera house of Palermo, Sicily to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday. This Italian production is inspiringly directed by the formidably talented Emma Dante who engulfs the entire stage in a burst of colour and incessant movement and dancing, because this is Midsummer Night, a night of love.

The opera is Strauss’ revenge on the philistine burghers of Munich who made Richard Wagner leave in disgrace and booed Strauss’ first opera off the stage. Strauss (another Richard!) also quit Munich and wrote Feuersnot (Lack of Fire) and triumphed with it in 1902, in Dresden. Sumptuous music, full of melody interspersed with sudden outbursts of waltzes, soaring into a glorious climax at the end when the lovers finally unite and embrace. Italian conductor Gabriele Ferro, 80 years young, makes the music shimmer and pulsate with passion. A cast of thousands, soloists, chorus, dancers plus an omnipresent children’s choir singing like angels, makes the show like a fairy tale. Soprano Nicola Beller Carbone, the haughty maiden, is alternately furious, mischievous and funny, eventually surrendering to love in this very taxing role. The handsome wizard cum lover Kunrad, acrobatic German baritone Dietrich Henschel, is a worthy foil to her who manages to carry a tune and roar over the crowded stage while hanging in a basket suspended high in the air.

 

05_Cage_Songs.jpgAria – Nicholas Isherwood performs John Cage
Nicholas Isherwood
BIS BIS-2149

To say that for many music lovers the music of John Cage is an acquired taste is to gloss over the intellectual charge contained within it. Cage was a fearless experimenter and many of his compositions were more of a “project” than a piece of music. Take the title piece Aria, augmented with bizarre tape snippets (Fontana Mix), as restored in 2009 by Gianluca Verlingieri. The sheer audacity of the piece, given it was created in 1958, “for a voice in any range” is enough to give us pause. This album takes us through 43 years of music and includes Cage’s settings from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

It may come as a surprise, given his post-modern inclinations that Cage treated the human voice in the very same way the composers of the Baroque did – as yet another instrument, to be tuned and used to its limits. His favourite instrument was actually the voice of Cathy Berberian, for whom Aria was written. On this recording, Isherwood proves himself to be an attentive custodian of Cage’s music. In the unpublished Chant with Claps, his folksy rendition brings to mind some of the recordings of Appalachian songs by Custer LaRue and emphasizes the improbable: John Cage, the composer, the experimenter, the rebel, the visionary was also a balladeer. This is a great education for the ears – wide open.

 

06_Heller_Streetcar_Songs.jpgCharles Heller – Tramvay Lider
Charles Heller; Bram Goldhammer
Independent (ecanthuspress.com)

Riding transit at rush hour or late at night is rarely fun (save the rare times one encounters live music and dancing on a subway car). A sea of weary, sallow faces (is it the lighting?) can certainly make one feel equally grey and tired but it must have been far more grim during the Great Depression in Toronto. One streetcar conductor, Shimen Nepom, member of a far-left group known as the Proletarian Poets, decided to mine his oftentimes frigid and tedious journey by turning his experiences into a set of Yiddish poems entitled Tramvay Lider (Streetcar Songs), published in 1940 by the Toronto Labour League. Seventy years later, composer Charles Heller learned of Nepom through Gerry Kane, a columnist with the Canadian Jewish News who remembered meeting Nepom when he was a young boy riding the streetcar with his father. Heller then researched the poems, set them to music and now performs them eloquently, yet characteristically on this recording, accompanied by pianist Bram Goldhammer and cellist Rachel Pomedli. The music evokes the clattering tracks, the ringing bells, the bitter winds, but best of all, the poignant stories of the great variety of people who rode the College streetcar back then.

 

07_Rainshadows_Edge.jpgSongs from the Rainshadow’s Edge – a song cycle by Benton Roark
Arkora
Redshift Records TK444 (redshiftmusic.org)

Anyone who has lived in Vancouver will be familiar with the term “rainshadow” which, in turn, conveys the elusiveness of sunshine. This lends a rather dreamy, mystical aura to the area and the rainshadow’s edge mirrors that same misty, shimmering border between contrasting states of the psyche. Scored for soprano, flute, viola, bass, electric guitar, percussion and narrator, drawing on texts by Huxley, Carroll, Eckhart, Sartre and composer Benton Roark, the multi-layered five-part song cycle takes the listener on a Jungian journey beyond the edge and back again.

The composer, who based the work on his recollection of a state of depersonalization after a series of crises, did well in selecting the ensemble to perform it. Arkora, a self-described new music collective dedicated to contemporary vocal chamber music in its many forms and led by soprano Kathleen Allan, clearly possesses the fluidity to skillfully evoke the surreal experience of “loss of self” and the struggle between inner and outer realities. Allan’s purity of vocal tone is perfection in its adaptations through the ever-changing mix of genres and mysterious landscape of instrumental timbre.

 

01_Cavilieri_Rappresentatione.jpgEmilio de Cavalieri – Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo
Soloists; Staatsopernchor Berlin; Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin; René Jacobs
harmonia mundi 902200.01

Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (1600) dramatizes how the Body and the Soul both reject the blandishments of Pleasure and of Worldly Life and choose Eternal Life over Damnation. Such a summary makes the work seem very dreary but it can hold the attention of a modern audience, as was demonstrated by the Canadian Opera Company in its 1983/84 season. Although the Rappresentatione is not, in my view, an opera, it undoubtedly influenced that newly emerging genre through its staging and through its use of solo singing with chordal accompaniment.

Both the singing and the instrumental playing on this CD are very fine. The performance is based on that of a production at the Schiller Theater in Berlin in 2012. Although the work’s first publication provided the melody and the bass line, a performance can only be realized by enriching the chords needed and by adding further melodic and contrapuntal lines. There is a great deal of instrumental variety on this recording. Of particular interest is the arch-cittern or ceterone (which bears a similar relationship to the cittern as the theorbo does to the lute). The instrument used here was built for the Musée de la Musique in Paris on the basis of an original preserved in Florence.

 

02_Purcell_Dido.jpgPurcell – Dido & Aeneas
Le Poème Harmonique; Vincent Dumestre; Choeur Accentus; Opera de Rouen Haute-Normandie;
Alpha 706

An opera by a composer described as the English Orpheus and selected by a French music company? And one which has never paid homage to an English composer before? Musical director Vincent Dumestre gives his reasons. First, there is Purcell’s pure genius – he could not have been more than 25 when he composed Dido and Aeneas. What is more, he combined the melancholy of composers such as Dowland with the vitality of earlier English masques and the genius of contemporary composer Lully.

Purcell’s operas did not stint on the elaborate nature of their stage productions, although this production differs in terms of its ingenuity in stage construction, its lack of complexity and certain demands on the performers. Marc Mauillon’s sorceress/sailor roles exploit his gymnastic and trapeze skills, and the first witch and other sorceresses perform with agility on ropes – when they are not scaring the audience!

Vivica Genaux is a magnificent Dido, fully conveying the anguish of her isolation. Her rendition of When I am laid in earth, always a test for singers of all ranges and backgrounds, is accomplished with a haunting quality of which Purcell would no doubt be proud. In addition, Caroline Meng’s first witch leaves no doubt as to the character’s evil intent.

All in all, a highly original performance but one that still brings home Purcell’s compassionate treatment of a tragic love story.

 

03_Gluck_Alceste.jpgGluck – Alceste
Angela Denoke; Paul Groves; Willard White; Teatro Real; Ivor Bolton
EuroArts 3074978

Gluck’s Alceste was first performed, in Italian, in 1767; a French version followed in 1776. It is the French version that we see and hear on this DVD. The source for the opera is a play by Euripides, in which it has been decreed that Admetus, King of Pherae, must die unless another is willing to take his place. Euripides makes a great deal of the cowardice of the king’s subjects, especially that of his aging parents, who do not have that long to live anyway. Admetus’ wife, Alcestis, then offers herself up and the most interesting issue in the play is why the King is willing to accept her sacrifice.

The Admète in the opera is made of sterner stuff. When he is told that someone has been found who is willing to take his place, it takes him a long time to realize that the someone is his own wife. Once he has realized it, he refuses to accept the offer. Alceste did not think life was worth living without her husband; he does not think life is worth living without his wife. It is Hercule, who resolves the impasse by descending into the Underworld and rescuing Alceste.

This DVD gives us a production of the opera from the Teatro Real in Madrid, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, who has chosen to superimpose the story of Princess Diana. Here Alceste chooses death not because she loves her husband so much but because it offers her a way out of a loveless marriage. When Hercule snatches her from the Underworld, she is deprived of what she most wishes.

One of the dangers with Gluck is that his music may sound marmoreal. That is certainly not the case with this production, which is full-blooded and passionate. There is fine singing from Angela Denoke (Alceste), Paul Groves (Admète) and Willard White (in the twin roles of the High Priest of Apollon and Thanatos). It is clear, however, that the whole point of the opera has been subverted.

 

04_Rossini_Guillaume_Tell.jpgRossini in Wildbad – Guillaume Tell
Festival Wildbad: Various Vocalists; Camerata Bach Choir; Virtuosi Brunensis; Antonino Fogliani
Bongiovani AB 20029

Still not yet 40 and full of his creative powers, Rossini certainly went out with a bang, creating something original and big for the wealthy Paris audiences of the Second Empire. With a cast of thousands William Tell easily became very long, even overblown, so Rossini’s biggest problem was how to cut back and tighten the reins. For posterity the opera was very successful even in its excised form, but for the Wildbad Festival in Germany, 2013, it was decided, wisely (or unwisely) to perform the entire score for the first time in its history. If authenticity is a guiding principle it will certainly please musicologists and completists and assorted people with good intentions, but we all know where good intentions tend to lead… Much could be written on the updated staging that carries an inevitable political message, rather explicitly of oppressors vs. the oppressed, unfortunately neglecting the gorgeous Swiss scenery that’s omnipresent in Rossini’s score.

In purely musical terms the festival did gather optimum forces. First and foremost, conductor Antonino Fogliani (who is beginning to look like Rossini himself) has this music in his blood and moves it with a sparkling upbeat tempo, finesse and humour, having a great old time doing it. The soloists are all of high quality. Six topnotch singers are required to cope with the enormous demands of the work. American heroic tenor Michael Spyres as Arnold carries the Olympic torch in one of the most gruelling tenor roles and he is undoubtedly best in show. Highest credit must also go to the chorus, the Camerata Bach Choir that sings and even dances the many ensembles this opera is famous for. And a resounding yes to the fully complete ballet no French opera would do without (even if it’s written by an Italian). My fondest memory however will always be the “sublime second act” (Berlioz) that even another bel canto genius, Donizetti, admitted was “written by the Gods.”

 

05_Berg_Lulu.jpgBerg – Lulu
Mojca Erdmann; Deborah Polaski; Michael Volle; Thomas Piffka; Stephan Rugamer; Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon 0440073 4934

After Alban Berg’s death in 1935, his great opera Lulu remained incomplete – until Friedrich Cerha orchestrated the final act in 1979. For this production from the Berlin Staatsoper in 2012, a new version of all three acts has been created. Berg’s sardonic Prologue has been replaced by an actor lying on the floor reciting Kierkegaard. Instead of Berg’s precisely described silent movie, we now see Lulu’s blinking eyes projected on the windshield of one of the cars that litter the stage. The first scene of Act III has been cut altogether.

What remains of the third act has been newly orchestrated by David Robert Coleman, using noticeably leaner textures than Berg and Cerha and some non-Bergian instruments like steel drums and marimba. His completion doesn’t fit in, but it brings out Berg’s expressionist lines.

Director Andrea Breth’s staging fails to reveal how exciting the plot of Lulu is. The single set – with wrecked cars piled up on one side, and what appear to be cages or prison bars erected on the other – is relentlessly grim, especially when watched through camerawork so close that we rarely see the whole stage.

Breth’s Lulu is a victim, as affectless as a puppet. But the Lulu created by Berg and playwright Frank Wedekind is an amoral, willful seductress. Mojca Erdmann makes a lovely, alluring Lulu, but can’t convey the spine-tingling danger that the great Lulus, from Evelyn Lear and Teresa Stratas to Christine Schäfer and Barbara Hannigan, present. Michael Volle makes a powerful Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper and Deborah Polaski is moving as the doomed Countess. But the most enthralling moments come from Daniel Barenboim’s amazing Staatskapelle orchestra.

 

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