Last weekend in Chicago the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) held its annual meeting, with meetings and discussion built around some major performances. The musical highlight was one of Riccardo Muti’s last concerts as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.
MCANA was founded in 1957 with the express purpose of promoting and developing high standards of professional music criticism. In addition to its annual gathering in a different city each year, and other smaller gatherings from time to time, MCANA has also developed a highly-regarded website devoted to reviews and articles by its members. Classical Voice North America (CVNA) offers reviews of major events around the United States and Canada, as well as from Europe and Australia.
© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2023
MCANA last held its annual meeting in Chicago in 2014, when Muti was just a few years into his music directorship. One of the highlights of that meeting was a CSO performance under Muti of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Muti has said that much of Mahler “does not speak” to him but he led a masterful performance of the First Symphony. This year, after a dress rehearsal of the Missa Solemnis, Muti spoke privately to the MCANA critics and revealed that he had bought a score of Beethoven’s monumental choral work in 1972 but had waited until just a few years ago to conduct it in public. Why? He said he just didn’t feel ready to do it. He conducted it with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in 2021 and last week led three performances with the CSO. In preparation Muti brought in Donald Palumbo from the Metropolitan Opera to train the Chicago Symphony Chorus. His soloists were Erin Morley, soprano, Alisa Kolosova, mzzo-soprano, Giovanni Sala, tenor, and Kyle Ketelson, bass,-baritone.
The rather dry acoustics of Orchestra Hall are not ideal for the Missa Solemnis. More reverberation greatly enhances the effect of the piece. On the positive side, the acoustics enabled one to appreciate the precision and clarity of articulation in Muti’s performance. The chorus was phenomenal in music that is often cruelly taxing. In the Credo, the “Et vitam venturi” fugal writing has undone many a soprano section – but not this one. In this performance Muti showed once again that while Italian opera may be closest to his heart, he conducts with authority in a wide repertoire.
Riccardo Muti conducted the Chicago Symphony for the first time at the Ravinia Festival in 1973. Since then he has gone on to conduct the orchestra in over 500 performances. He became music director in 2010 with a concert before a huge audience in Millenium Park end completed his tenure with another concert in Millenium Park on June 27. Muti now becomes the CSO’s music director emeritus and will probably return every season for at least a few weeks of concerts. Muti was sometimes criticized in Chicago for having a narrow repertoire and for his lack of interest in contemporary music. It is true that his regular performances of Italian operas in concert were unforgettable he conducted memorable Schubert, Bruckner, Shostakovich and Prokofiev too. And his latest recording with the CSO is entirely devoted to contemporary American composers (CSO Resound CSOR 9012301)
© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2023
The Chicago Lyric Opera is one of the largest U.S. opera companies after the Met and is renowned for its wide repertoire and high standards. It is also almost unique in its dedication to the American musical theatre, i.e. Broadway musicals. Over the years it has presented most of the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals and many others besides. In 2019 it mounted a production of West Side Story and this spring it brought it back again. In 2019 virtually all the performances were sold out and just four years later the box office is still pretty healthy. The performance I attended on June 24 had few if any empty seats and the audience loved the show. As well they might. The production by Francesca Zambello was faithful to the original – except that the character of Doc is played by a woman instead of a man – while underlining its contemporary relevance. Racial injustice and intolerance are front and centre issues more than ever and the appalling loss of life to gun violence is a national disgrace. Tony’s murder with a gun at the end of West Side Story was shocking in 1957 and even moreso now, and especially on a stage in Chicago where gun violence keeps spiralling out of control. More power to Chicago Lyric Opera for including a musical like West Side Story in their repertoire. Other opera companies need to take note. Before the performance MCANA members were treated to an illuminating discussion of the problems and benefits of an opera company stretching its mandate to include Broadway, with Lyric’s Cory Lippiello, director of artistic programs, and James Lowe, conductor of West Side Story.
Haymarket Opera was founded in 2010 and is devoted to the presentation of historically informed opera and oratorio from the 17th and 18th centuries. This year, in the Jarvis Opera Hall at DePaul University, Haymarket Opera presented Johann Adolph Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra. The work received its premiere in 1725 at the country estate of Carlo Carmignano, a banker and counselor at the court of Naples. It was probably a concert performance but in Chicago we were given a staged version directed by Chase Hopkins. By modern standards the opera – or more accurately ‘serenata’ – is static in the extreme. There are only two characters and the drama consists of ongoing conversations between them set as arias, recitative and duets. We see Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Alexandria, Egypt after they have been defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium. They sing of their love for each other, then of the hopelessness of their situation as Octavian’s forces advance on them, and agree to commit suicide together. The opera/serenata ends with Mark Antony, Cleopatra, her handmaidens and his bodyguard all taking poison and dying. This may or may not be historically accurate – it is said that Mark Antony died by falling on his sword and that Cleopatra died from a self-inflicted snake bite – but it made for a dramatic ending. Haymarket Opera has made a great effort to create authentic period sets and costumes and added supernumeraries to make the work visually interesting. But the piece ultimately stands or falls by the quality of the music, and its performance. Fortunately, Haymarket Opera had two superb performers in countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim as Cleopatra, and contralto Lauren Decker as Mark Antony. And to be clear, Cleopatra was sung by a man and Mark Antony by a woman, in accordance with period practice. At the first performance Cleopatra was sung by the soprano castrato Carlo Broschi, the legendary Farinelli, and Mark Antony by contralto Vittoria Tesi Tramontini.
© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2023
Both singers in the Haymarket production were superb, exhibiting impeccable phrasing and breath control. And it has to be said that one scarcely noticed the gender switching at all. It was hardly an issue.
All in all, a stimulating weekend in Chicago. And as far as the CSO is concerned an historic one too. Although Muti will be back as a guest conductor next season and leading a European tour, the Muti era is essentially over. But I suspect the musical memories will linger for years to come.
