Carmen in a Sydney High Summer

The Sydney Opera House. Photo: Alan Miller.

Carmen

Music - Georges Bizet
Libretto - Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 24 January 2011
continues until 30 March

Conductor - Guillaume Tourniaire
Director - Francesca Zambello
Set and Costume Designer - Tanya McCallin
Lighting Designer - Paule Constable
Choreographer - Arthur Pita

Carmen - Rinat Shaham
Don José - Richard Troxell
Escamillo - Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Micaëla - Nicole Car
Frasquita - Jane Parkin
Mercédès - Sian Pendry
Dancairo - Luke Gabbedy
Remendado - Kanen Breen
Zuniga - Richard Anderson
Moralès - Andrew Jones
Lillas Pastia - Danielle Antaki
Guide - Robert Mitchell

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Opera Australia Chorus, Children's Chorus and Dancers

If Carmen is a femme fatale, then her opera could play as a kind of hybrid of an Anthony Mann western and film noir. It has the gun runners and even a climactic fight on a rocky crag, but also the weak man haunted by his past, falling in love with the woman he later remembers he doesn't particularly like. Micaëla would be the innocent girl he really loves, but in trying to protect her from himself, just draws her into his disastrous life. This production, however, is different. Carmen becomes as sympathetic as one could imagine, with no material desires, she loves only freedom but to the point of self-banishment, to paraphrase John Donne. At least, she is sympathetic in contrast with a Don José who is an extreme introvert, more haunted and broken than weak, who eventually succumbs to insanity. Carmen is a rather extreme extrovert which brings its own problems, and the concept of opposites attracting is played convincingly: the pair's initial mutual fascination and affection becomes binding and they continuously rub each-other the wrong way until they mutually annihilate.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House, by Andrew Miller

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Cio-Cio-San (Patricia Racette) enters in Act I. Photo: Branco Gaica.

Madama Butterfly
Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 17 January 2011
continues in Sydney until 3 March

Director - Moffatt Oxenbould
Set and Costume Designers - Peter England and Russell Cohen
Lighting Designer - Robert Bryan

Cio-Cio-San - Patricia Racette
Pinkerton - David Corcoran
Suzuki - Jacqueline Dark
Sharpless - Barry Ryan
Goro - Graeme Macfarlane
Kate - Jane Parkin
The Bonze - Jud Arthur
Yamadori - Samuel Dundas
The Imperial Commissioner - Sam Roberts-Smith
The Official Registrar - Gregory Brown

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Conductor - Massimo Zanetti
Opera Australia Chorus

One could say that Madama Butterfly is a distilled and simplified presentation of the stereotypical opera plot. It is a romance told very straight with spurning, madness leading to the female lead's suicide with good songs and a bit of exoticism, but it lacks the twists in the plot which Mozart's operas have (at least Donna Elvira tries to chase down Don Giovanni) to deepen the characters' relationships. This leaves all the characterization to the music and I don't think Puccini's is up to it. Cio-Cio-San is too pathetic and doormat-ish and it's hard to feel into her character when the music doesn't sink deeply enough into the listener to help them understand her or link her into the greater universe. Perhaps that is unfair to the music since the libretto and story itself doesn't give much to go on to divine her motivations, but Puccini did choose the story. Pinkerton too isn't exactly 4-dimensional. He is a cad with neither redeeming qualities, magnetism nor charm. Having said that, the opera can be enjoyable at some level if, as in this case, the music is well played and sung, making the more dragging parts of Act II bearable, though this enjoyment was marred by a certain noisy leading tenor.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Opera as Oxymoron: Pelléas et Mélisande at the Met, by Larry Wallach

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Gerald Finley and Magdalena Kožená, Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera


Metropolitan Opera House
January 1, 2011

Claude Debussy
Pelléas et Mélisande
Libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck

Pelléas - Stéphane Dégout
Mélisande - Magdalena Kožená
Golaud - Gerald Finley
Arkel - Willard White
Geneviève - Felicity Palmer
Yniold - Neel Ram Nagarajan
Physician - Paul Corona
Shepherd - Donovan Singletary

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Conductor - Sir Simon Rattle

Production - Jonathan Miller
Stage Director - Paula Williams
Set designer - John Conklin
Costume designer - Clare Mitchell
Lighting designer - Duane Schuler

Perhaps 2011 will be the year of the oxymoron. Certainly having a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and administration feels oxymoronic enough without having a Tea Party within the Republican ranks to pile contradiction upon contradiction. It may be that such a tangle of cross-purposes will mute the stridency of our public discourse, and suggest that we must consider the contrary case before asserting our own point of view. If that is to be the character of the year to come, one can, with cautious optimism, hope that it will provide relief from the noisy mindlessness we have been subjected to in the preceding one. Seeing Debussy’s only completed opera on the first day of the new year prompts such hopes: Debussy was passionately committed to finding his truth within quietude and ambiguity.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




A Singer’s Notes 27: Christmas Past

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Eric Hill as Scrooge at the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Production of "A Christmas Carol"

Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is a moralizing tale, strictly speaking. It's one of those that's mostly tough with the sweetmeats at the end. It's a story you already know. It is such a good tale structurally that it has proved irresistible to tinkerers of all sorts. The layout works. It has a little bit of everything — ghosts, little children, Christmas stuff, a happy ending. It seems to me the great message of the story is not the happy result of generosity, but something much more private, the promise that there still is time. It is not too late for Scrooge. This is the center of it. Good productions say this clearly. Eric Hill, in the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Unicorn, got this across clearly. This actor has a technique so finished it disappears. At one point wandering around his premises, he made a series of sub-verbal noises — moans, groans — you knew exactly what he meant.  He wasn't a ferocious Scrooge; he just didn't care - didn't want to be bothered. This seemed right to me. He didn't exaggerate his fear when Marley's ghost appeared, nor did he overdo the high jinks at the end. I see this same economy in his directing, sometimes almost too much so, as in the recent Macbeth. But there is always a center line to what he does, and there is always cohesion. This was a real performance, not a holiday treat.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Wagner, Die Walküre, at La Scala under Barenboim, in Guy Cassier's Production (Toneelhuis, Antwerp)

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Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre at Teatro alla Scala. Brescia e Amisano.


Teatro alla Scala, 2 January 2011

Die Walküre

by Richard Wagner

Conductor - Daniel Barenboim
Stage Director - Guy Cassiers
Scene Design - Guy Cassiers e Enrico Bagnoli
Costumes - Tim van Steenbergen
Lighting - Enrico Bagnoli
Video design - Arjen Klerkx e Kurt D’Haeseleer
Choreography - Csilla Lakatos

Cast:
Siegmund - Simon O’Neill
Hunding - John Tomlinson
Wotan - Vitalij Kowaljow
Sieglinde - Waltraud Meier
Brünnhilde - Nina Stemme
Fricka - Ekaterina Gubanova
Gerhilde - Danielle Halbwachs
Ortlinde - Carola Höhn
Waltraute - Ivonne Fuchs
Schwertleite - Anaik Morel
Helmwige - Susan Foster
Siegrune - Leann Sandel-Pantaleo
Gringerde - Nicole Piccolomini
Rossweisse - Simone Schröder
Danzatori - Guro Schia, Vebjørn Sundby

In co-production with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin and in collaboration with Toneelhuis (Antwerpen)

It is a curiosity of our times that I write this review of La Scala’s sixth and last performance of their new production of 

 several weeks after audiences around the world have seen high definition video projections of earlier performances of the same production. A friend of mine residing in the Midwest has already seen it twice, but questions remain: seeing a broadcast through the eyes of video cameras is not the same as sitting in the house, with the interventions of the television director and the videographers standing between the audience and the event at La Scala. I haven't seen a La Scala broadcast, and I have no idea of their particular style, which is hopefully more straightforward than the extremely mannered — no, gimmicky — Met broadcasts.

One has to begin with the extraordinary acoustics of La Scala. No other house, I believe, conveys the human voice in all its individual character as La Scala. The bloom of reverberation supports the tone, but stands discreetly back from the direct sound of the voice, giving the listener a vivid impression of the human voice like no other.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Bronzino: Medici Court Painter and Poet at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, by Daniel B. Gallagher

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Venus, Cupid and Satyr (1553-1555), Agnolo di Cosimo named Bronzino (Monticelli, Florence 1503 - Florence 1572) 4 Oil on panel 135x231 cm Rome, Galleria Colonna, Inv. Salviati


Complementing the drawings shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year is this exhibition at the Strozzi Palace featuring fifty-four of Bronzino’s seventy paintings: the largest exhibition of the Florentine master’s work to date. The son of a butcher, Agnolo di Cosimo Tori (1503-1572), nicknamed “Bronzino”, spent the bulk of his career in the Medici court until Giorgio Vasari succeeded him in 1564. Vasari in fact plays a large role in this show, as curators Cristina Acidini, Carlo Falciani, and Antonio Natali rely heavily on information contained in his biography of Bronzino. The pictures themselves tell much of the story, demonstrating that the artist is not readily classifiable as a Mannerist given his tendency towards natural, austere beauty in affectedly bright colors.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Metropolitan Opera House

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Magdalena Kožená and Stéphane Degout in the Metropolitan Opera's Pelléas et Mélisande. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.

Metropolitan Opera House
December 20, 2010

Claude Debussy

Pelléas et Mélisande

Libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck

Pelléas - Stéphane Degout
Mélisande - Magdalena Kožená
Golaud - Gerald Finley
Arkel - Willard White
Genevive - Felicity Palmer
Yniold - Neel Ram Nagarajan
Physician - Paul Corona
Shepherd - Donovan Singletary

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Conductor - Sir Simon Rattle

Production - Jonathan Miller
Stage Director - Paula Williams
Set designer - John Conklin
Costume designer - Clare Mitchell
Lighting designer - Duane Schuler

There was a grand sense of occasion as one filed into the Metropolitan Opera house on the evening of December 20th 2010. The strange and mystical energy of the holidays added a humming buzz to what was already an anticipation-filled atmosphere haunting the foyer. One had the impression of being about to see something important: but covertly important, as though a secret society of only those truly in the know were about to be witness to the event — a performance of one of the 20th century's greatest works.

In his book on Symbolism in the beginning of a chapter entitled "The Great Upheaval," Michael Gibson writes that "Symbolism [is] less an artistic movement than a state of mind." One could also say the same of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélis

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Rome meets Mexico. A special contribution to celebrate the 15 years of independence of the Central American country and an exploration of its art, by Silvia Magna (English version)

Rome meets Mexico. A special contribution to celebrate the 15 years of independence of the Central American country and an exploration of its art.
(original Italian version)


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Autore sconosciuto (attribuita a Casasola) Zapata con fucile, fascia e sciabola, Cuernavaca, 1915 ca.


Palazzo delle Esposizioni

Via Nazionale 194, Roma
Info: www.palazzodellesposizioni.it

Mexican art comes to Rome, making the present and the past converge, combining the crafts of the most ancient civilizations with photographic images of the revolution of the first decades of the twentieth century and once again with the contemporary creations of Carlos Morales. A panoramic experience which can stimulate the mind, as it seeks points of contact in the evolution of Mexican culture and thought.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, through March 13, 2011

Albrecht Dürer, Knot with a Heart-Shaped Shield, c. 1507, Woodcut. Sterling and Francine Art Institute 1968.280


The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer


Curated by Jay Clark
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
November 14, 2010, through March 13, 2011

In The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer, the Clark produced a most enjoyable exhition, which should prove a fertile opportunity for Williams undergraduates and the general public to discover an important body of work from one of the West's very great artists, Albrecht Dürer. Very few American museums can boast the depth in their holdings of a single artist to attempt this. In Abstract Expressionism the Museum of Modern Art has, with one of the strongest areas of their collection, just created the kind of experience one might find at the Prado or the Uffizi. The Clark's holdings of Dürer prints are so extensive and of such high quality that they make it possible to offer a survey of similar quality, with 75 of 300 prints in all.  The Clark possesses most of Dürer's subjects and many impressions are of the highest quality. Hence, this exhibition is an ideal opportunity to get to know a body of work that occupies a central place in western culture

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Caravaggio e caravaggeschi a Firenze, the Galleria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi (Florence), until Jan 9, 2011, by Daniel Gallagher

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Medusa, Collezione Robert Longhi, Firenze.


Caravaggio e caravaggeschi a Firenze, 
the Galleria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi (Florence). Closing January 9th

Caravaggio’s power to captivate us today makes us wonder whether he was not four hundred years ahead of his time. This anniversary exhibition, perhaps more than others across Italy, shows that he was not. His genius was readily recognized and tirelessly sought even during his own day, and even by the Grand Dukes of Florence who had every reason to restrict their patronage to the their own well-established Tuscan tradition. So while artists in Florence remained aloof to the emerging naturalism and quotidian predilections of Caravaggio and the Caravaggeschi, their rulers worked assiduously to acquire the master’s Bacchus, Medusa, and Cavadenti within the first two decades of the seventeenth century. Evidently, the Medici even had it in mind to lure Caravaggio to Florence; something they might well have accomplished had not the painter been forced to flee Rome as a wanted murderer. In his stead, the Grand Dukes enjoyed the presence of protégés such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Battistello Caracciolo, and Theodor Rombouts.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller