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Inna Los as Cio-Cio-San and James Slayden as U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, Photo: Ken Howard

Butterfly Emerges Strong in Berkshire Opera Festival Debut

By Charles Geyer on 31 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

OPERA REVIEW: Madama Butterfly, inaugural production of the new Berkshire Opera Festival INTERVIEW: Jonathon Loy, BOF General Director Opera is back in the Berkshires! The new Berkshire Opera Festival took its first bow on August 27 with its fascinating and beautiful new production of Puccini’s perennially popular Madama Butterfly at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. If first impressions are everything, a better introduction could not have been imagined. Of course we know Butterfly well, don’t we? For 112 years she has tantalized and beguiled operagoers (and shamed Western sensibilities) with her tale of innocent, exotic victimhood – the geisha…

Mary Beth Nelson as Betty Parris, Ariana Wehr as Abigail Williams, Emma Grimsley as Ruth Putnam and Molly Jane Hill as Susanna Walcott, Photo: Karli Cade

Witches! Thieves! Cutthroats! At Glimmerglass!

By Charles Geyer on 26 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Interviews, Musical Theatre, Opera

OPERA REVIEWS: The Crucible (August 20); The Thieving Magpie (August 20); Sweeney Todd (August 21); La bohème (August 22, matinee) INTERVIEW: Francesca Zambello Salem Village is stalked by the devil. A servant girl in France faces the gallows for the theft of some tableware. Vengeance is decimating London’s Fleet Street district (while a concomitant new gastronomic craze takes disturbing hold). Oh, and might one mention? – Paris isn’t paying its artists enough! Jealousies, grudges (and strange gravies) simmer. Accusations (and human-sized birds) fly. Cue the orchestra! It’s all the stuff of a glorious and bracing three-days’ visit to the Glimmerglass…

Aleksey Bogdanov (Baron Scarpia), Tosca, Opera North, Photo: Lisa Morrison

Review: Putting Puccini in His Place

By Charles Geyer on 19 August 2016 Art Song, Choral, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera, Orchestral, Romantic

CONCERTS: Puccini “Beyond Verismo” at Bard SummerScape 2016 OPERA: Tosca at Opera North Puccini qua, Puccini là! Arguably the most popular and successful opera composer in history has been enjoying his typical ubiquity this summer, as a single weekend’s sampling around the Northeast United States will demonstrate. Friday, August 12 saw the closing performance of the maestro’s Tosca as rendered by Opera North (Lebanon, New Hampshire) in a taut, handsome production. And at Bard College’s final weekend of SummerScape 2016 (Dutchess County, New York), three full days of programming (August 12 through 14) were dedicated to winding up an exploration of…

Lebrecht Weekly – Martinu: Ariane (Supraphon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 19 August 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Orchestral

I am beginning to wonder if posterity will ever place Bohuslav Martinů where he justly belongs, as the last in a quartet of Czech geniuses, after Smetana, Dvořák, and Janáček. With each passing year, Martinů (1890–1959) seems to recede further into the mists, his 16 operas unstaged, his six symphonies unperformed. Czechs find him too cosmopolitan – he lived most of his life in France and the US – while others are daunted by his mountainous output. There are more than 400 recorded works by Martinů, all of high proficiency. When the innocent ear catches Martinů for the first time, it recognises a …

Matthew Boehler (bass) and Talise Trevigne (soprano), Iris, Bard SummerScape, Photo: Cory Weaver

SummerScape 2016 Pitches a Big Tent at Bard

By Charles Geyer on 6 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Musical Theatre, Opera

OPERA: Mascagni’s IRIS – a dark, neglected opus by Puccini’s friend and rival; plus CABARET: Music, Mischief, and Oddball Chic at the House of Whimsy From the freakish, the fractious and the “fabulous,” to the tragic, transcendent and sublime – a single summer weekend’s visit to the Bard College campus in Dutchess County, New York for the 27th annual SummerScape Festival yielded a riot of indelible impressions. In the category Freakish, et seq., count the “House of Whimsy” – an edgy evening of pan-gender provocation and cultural protest, replete with bearded cross-dressers (some performing, some in the audience) and even…

Franz Liszt

Daily News Roundup: 29 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 29 July 2016 Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Opera, Romantic

+ This is one the world has been waiting for: Norman Lebrecht reviews the Minnesota Orchestra’s final disc of their Sibelius cycle. + Shanghai Opera brings Thunderstorm to London. Read a review by the Financial Times here. + A recent biography about Liszt by Oliver Hilmes might simply be unnecessary. Read a review of the book here. “The weight of biographical commentary on Liszt is simply colossal. People have been writing full-length accounts of him since he was in his early 20s, and touring 1830s Europe. The first biographies written with the declared aim of stripping away accumulated myths appeared…

Daily News Roundup: 27 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 27 July 2016 Chamber Music, Daily News Roundup, Opera, Piano, Romantic

+ Read a review of the Carmel Bach festival by Richard S. Ginell. + Schmopera asks, “What else are singers great at?” “What do singers do well? Sing, obviously. But the career comes with plenty of extra skill-building opportunities. Not everyone is a master chef or a DIY pro, but working singers know that making sound with their throat is the tip of the iceberg.” + Lara St. John plays at the Ottawa Chamberfest tonight. Watch her performs songs from Shiksa on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concerts as today’s Video of the Day. + This Day in Music July 27, 1877,…

Marc Andre Hamelin (Photo: Fran Kaufmann)

Daily News Roundup: 26 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 26 July 2016 Daily News Roundup, Opera, Orchestral, Piano, Scena Jazz, Vocal Jazz

+ Sir Roger Norrington is celebrating the unorthodox at the Proms this week. “As a rule, conductors stand on their dignity. They take themselves seriously. They like to be revered. In his own idiosyncratic way, Norrington himself is all three: dignified, serious and revered. But he is also a lot of fun. He wants to connect with his audience. So when his listeners laughed out loud at a musical joke during his performance of a Haydn symphony, he was not offended but delighted.” + Speaking of the Proms, read a review of Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra performing…

The Witches Dance from The Witches of Venice, Photo: Gary David Gold

Opera Saratoga: Singing at the Springs

By Charles Geyer on 26 July 2016 Concert Reviews, Interviews, Opera

Nestled in the Adirondack foothills near the headstreams of the Hudson River, the City of Saratoga Springs in upstate New York was once the dowager empress of America’s great Victorian-era summer resorts, its fame resting on an abundance of fresh, natural mineral springs bubbling up from faults far below the earth’s surface, and alleged to possess restorative powers. Those magical waters still flow from the city’s protected aquifer today; but in a recreational economy that long ago diversified beyond mineral spas – racetrack, casino, restaurants and contending cultural attractions – one ought not overlook another local font whose output springs…

American composer Steve Reich

Daily News Roundup: 25 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 25 July 2016 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Opera, Piano

Today’s Daily News Roundup is celebrating Bösendorfer pianos, welcoming a new contributor, and learning how to dress properly for concerts. + Read a review of three performances from the Lincoln Center Festival that featured maverick-turned-music-hero Steve Reich. + The Guardian’s Juanjo Mena explores the seduction of the Alhambra and Andalucían influences on Alberto Ginastera’s works. + La Scena Musicale’s newest contributor Andrew Burn asks if it is a good time to be a cynic. “When I am given the opportunity to speak in front of a group of musicians, I usually conduct an exercise or two. One of my most though-provoking…

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