Tosca on the Edge: The Glimmerglass Opera, 2010, by Seth Lachterman

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Castel Sant'Angelo (with St. Peter's in distance) where Tosca leaps to her death

Tosca

Music By Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Luigi Illiaca and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the play by Victorien Sardou

David Angus, Conductor

;  Ned Canty, Director; Donald Eastman,Sets; Matthew Pachtman, Costumes; Jeff Harris, Lighting; Zachary Schwartzman, Assistant Conductor; Richard K. Blanton,Assistant DirectorJeanne-Minette Cilliers, Principal Coach/Accompanist; Ming Kwong, Assistant Coach/Accompanist;Richard K. Blanton, Stage Manager; Anne Ford-Coates, Hair and Makeup Design

Cast

Floria Tosca, Lise Lindstrom
Mario Cavaradossi, Adam Diegel
Baron Scarpia, Lester Lynch
Cesare Angelotti, Aaron Sorensen
Sacristan, Robert Kerr
Spoletta, Dominick Rodriguez
Sciarrone, Zachary Nelson
Shepherd, Xi Wang
Jailer, Jonathan Lasch

The great scandal surrounding the Met’s 2010 production of Tosca seemed to be a hyperbolic reaction to the palpably conflicting musical and psychological currents of Puccini’s darkest opera.  Joseph Kerman’s famous dismissal of it as a “shabby little shocker” is at least one-third correct: shocking it is. Yet, swathing those nasty bits with the sounds and imagery of the Catholic liturgy – Puccini’s innovative use of Latin plainchant, modal counterpoint, carillons and chimes, vaulted church interiors, ritratti della Madonna, and the spectacle of worship – is the primary way Puccini projects a creepy sense of moral and psychological irony and repression throughout. The character of Tosca – passionate, obtuse in her petty jealousies and perception of others, at times cloyingly pious and self-righteous – is sometimes at odds with the lush, gorgeous music the composer gives her. Throughout this work, Puccini mixes a brew of seedy lasciviousness, human weakness, and the hopelessness of piety, all with beautiful and memorable music. The three or four arias and duets that emerge as “set” pieces (well shrouded in Puccini’s experimentation with through-composition) have immortalized this work for over a century.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Love Potion Opus 60: Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at Tanglewood, August 2, 2010, by Seth Lachterman

Ariadne auf Naxos

Opera in One Act with a Prologue by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Music by Richard Strauss, Opus 60
1916 Version

Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor,

 August 1 and 2
Keitaro Harada (TMC Conducting Fellow), conductor, August 4

Ira Siff, director
Eduardo Sicangco, set and costume designer
Matthew McCarthy, lighting designer

The Major-Domo, Hans Pieter Herman (spoken)
The Music Master/Harlekin, Elliot Madore, baritone
A Lackey, Shea Owens, baritone
An Officer, Javier Bernardo, baritone
The Composer, Cecelia Hall, mezzo-soprano
Bacchus/The Tenor, Ta’u Pupu’a, tenor
Wigmaker, Justin Welsh, baritone


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Zerbinetta, Audrey Elizabeth Luna, soprano; Christoph von Dohnányi (Hillary Scott)


Zerbinetta, Audrey Elizabeth Luna, soprano
Ariadne/The Prima Donna, Emalie Savoy, soprano
The Dancing Master, Patrick Jang, tenor
Brighella, Lawrence Jones, tenor
Scaramuccio, Martin Bakari, tenor
Truffaldino, David Salsbery Fry, bass
Najade, Deanna Breiwick, soprano
Dryade, Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano
Echo, Emily Duncan-Brown, soprano

Strauss was never more the musical conjurer than he was inAriadne auf Naxos. With an ensemble of  thirty-seven instruments, including harmonium, celesta, piano, harps and percussion, a shimmering and transparent opera emerges and asserts its lean clarity against a perceived Wagnerian monumentalism. Even when Strauss wants his cake after eating it, and strives for a Tristan-like blossom in the second half (the one and only “Act” of this work, the first half being a Prologue), one cannot fault the ensemble for sounding a bit threadbare in its overreaching to the Bayreuth master.  After all, this textural contrast of light and heavy is all in line with the clever libretto of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which is an ironic comment on Love the Ideal and what we know as reality in our all-too-human relationships. Our fleeting romantic encounters, part of the everydayness of our sexual selves, are contrasted with Love, that mysterious and eternal bond that poets extol as our raison d’être. The cabaret characters in the play (Zerbinetta and the clowns) seem bound to the temporal and ephemeral love – an elucidation that Strauss takes for the correlative of the chamber element of this work; Ariadne and Bacchus, as visions of a poet (The Composer role in the opera) are symbols of the seemingly immortal qualities of love as a transforming force in life, imbuing mortals with the lasting values of selflessness, sacrifice, care, and, most of all, constancy. Yet, in the intertextual world of von Hofmannsthal’s play, Ariadne and Bacchus are both human performers and avatars of The Composer’s imagination. At some point, between the silliness and contrivances of the Prologue and the Opera-cum-Commedia dell'arte-within-an-opera of the second half, the pejoratives of casual encounter and the trivial banter of the sexes are transfigured musically to the sublime in Strauss’s score. Strauss, in an almost unparalleled way, is able to balance the light and fancy of his harlequins’ cabaret music, the coloratura-infused bel canto à la Rossini for Zerbinetta, with the convincing grandeur and heart-rending sweep of a late Romantic.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Hubbard Hall Opera Theater's upcoming "Hansel and Gretel" - an Interview with Cast Members

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Hubbard Hall Opera Theater presents

Hansel and Gretel, by Engelbert Humperdinck

Come see this fully costumed and staged opera, sung in English with supertitles and a 28 piece orchestra!
Performance dates: August 13, 14, 19, 20 at 8pm, August 22nd at 2pm

Read the full interview on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



The Business of Designing Dreams: Christopher Nolan’s Inception by Alan Miller

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One day during my architecture studies, a lecturer gave the game away. He said that the fun part of architecture, coming up with an idea for a building, was only about ten percent of the whole job. The dreary bit, the part after the initial thrill of creation, the part for which architects perpetually wear black in mourning and for which they are paid, is the part which takes up so much time that most architects find themselves giving up the fun part entirely, if only to save time. The ones who end up designing great buildings don’t resist their plight, but dive headlong into the reality of working drawings, doorknobs, hinges and balustrade details. Those who love architecture, but find themselves unfit to join the inner circle, where it is said acolytes literally kneel down before travertine skirting boards, might take heart from the career of Rem Koolhaas (who himself is in that circle, even as he gazes outside). In the mid-nineties, while designing a new headquarters for Universal Studios in Los Angeles, Koolhaas found the practice of architecture redefined right before his eyes. As the design progressed, it became clear that the client was having trouble committing themselves to a work of architecture. Their circumstances were in flux, and were changing too fast to be defined in concrete and glass. As a result the project remains unbuilt, but the experience taught Koolhaas that there was more to architectural practice than designing buildings, that the architectural design process itself had resulted in certain insights into the state of his client and the world which were of value with or without the final edifice.

 on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Alan Miller

Simon Rattle Conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Love Scene from Roméo et Juliette and Wagner's Tristan, Act II, by Huntley dent

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Simon Rattle


Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet

 – Love Scene
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde – Act 2

Violeta Urmana Isolde
Ben Heppner Tristan
Franz-Josef Selig King Mark
Sarah Connolly Brangäne
Timothy Robinson Melot
Henk Neven Kurwenal

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Sir Simon Rattle conductor

Point taken. Whenever period orchestras venture far beyond the Baroque, they have something to prove. But at last night’s concert of Wagner and Berlioz by the esteemed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, some of the proof was self-evident. Banished completely are the intonation problems that plagued such ensembles in the past; one felt secure in the technical abilities of every section; the wind soloists played as expressively as anyone could wish. London is a center for period performance, which has become beloved. Sir Simon Rattle has conducted Act II of Tristan, in concert with the forces of Berlin and Vienna, but it’s good to be flexible, and since he enjoys a long-standing rapport with the OAE, they were a comfortable fit.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Lewis Spratlan's Opera Life is a Dream Premiered at the Santa Fe Opera, by Charles Warren

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Lewis Spratlan


Life Is a Dream

Santa Fe Opera, July 24th through august 19th
Music by Lewis Spratlan
Text by James Maraniss, after Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Conductor: Leonard Slatkin
Director: Kevin Newbury

Cast:
Segismundo - Roger Honeywell
Basilio - John Cheek
Rosaura - Ellie Dehn
Clotaldo - James Maddalena
Clarin - Keith Jameson
Astolfo - Craig Verm
Estrella - Carin Gilfry

The story has been well told in the musical press by now about the delay in production of Lewis Spratlan’s great opera Life Is a Dream — commissioned in the late 1970s by an opera company that went out of business before the opera could be produced; rejected numerous times by other American and European companies; awarded the Pulitzer Prize a decade ago for a concert performance of Act II; more rejections for a full staging… Congratulations and thanks are due at last to General Director Charles Mackay and the Santa Fe Opera for taking a new look at this work, seeing its intrinsic worth and its great potential as staged music drama, believing in it, and now giving it a committed and brilliant production. This occasion is a triumph for all concerned. Here palpably, for the eyes and ears and mind, is one of the great American operas, one of the great modern operas, one of the great operas.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Preview of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, by Larry Wallach

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Intermission at the Carter Tribute 2008. Photo Michael Miller.


2010 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, AUGUST 12-16, CELEBRATES THE

70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER

Concerts:

Thursday, August 12, 8 p.m. Ozawa Hall, Oliver Knussen, conductor

Friday, August 13, 2:30 p.m. Ozawa Hall

Friday, August 13, 8:30 p.m. Shed:

 Caminos del Inka: A Musical Journey; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor

Saturday, August 14, 2:30 p.m. Ozawa Hall

Sunday, August 15, 10 a.m. Ozawa Hall

Sunday, August 15, 2:30 p.m. Shed, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano, conductor

Sunday, August 15, 8 p.m. Ozawa Hall Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and Orchestra, Stefan Asbury, conductor

Monday, August 16, 8 p.m. Ozawa Hall: Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Robert Spano, conductor

This summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music is so different from its predecessors that it really ought to be given a different title. In fact, “contemporary” music, in the sense of brand new works by up-and-coming young composers, will be conspicuously absent. Perhaps “Retrospective of Seventy Years of ‘New’ Music” would offer a more accurate description. In the past, the Fromm Foundation has offered commissions for new works to be premiered during this week with the composers presiding; this summer, the five-day event will look back on the entire seventy years of Tanglewood rather than the fifty-four years of the Festival of Contemporary Music, as supported by Fromm.

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Music@Menlo, The English Voice: Britten, Walton, and Elgar

Music@Menlo
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Palo Alto
July 27, 2010

The English Voice

Benjamin Britten - 

A Charm of Lullabies,
 op.41 (1947)
Sasha Cooke, soprano
Inon Barnatan, piano

William Walton - Piano Quartet (1918-1921, revised 1955, 1974-5)
Wu Han, piano
Ani Kavafian, violin
Lily Francis, viola
David Finckel, cello

Edward Elgar - Piano Quintet in a minor, op. 84 (1918-1919)
Inon Barnatan, piano
Miro Quartet
Daniel Ching, Sandy Yamamoto, violins
John Largess, viola
Joshua Gindele, cello

The saving grace of "music for children,”

 I find, is that it is never really composed for children, but about them — or more usually about the part of us which traffics in irony, yet yearns to remain simple and pure. There are few lullabies effective for sleep which would long engage an adult mind, so I know Sasha Cooke will forgive me for saying that her stunningly effective rendition of Britten's Charm of Lullabies last Tuesday at Music at Menlo, outwitted Morpheus.

Ms. Cooke has a fine intuitive sense of what underlies words, and just as in recent Berlioz performances with the San Francisco Symphony, her melting way with cadences and refrains was something to savor.  "Heel Balou,” in the Robert Burns song, was mesmerizing. Blake's ending of "beguiles"...beguiled. The Nurse's Song brought moments of Gerontius-like dignity ("thy shield and comfort in need"), followed by the heartrending fadeaway of "lullabylabylabylaby baby." And, in between, for contrast, Thomas Randolph's ironically named "Charm" raged noisily for quiet, its message essentially murderous. Inon Barnatan proved a sensitive and energetic accompanist, very much on the same page with Ms. Cooke. The English enigmas of the evening had revealingly and excellently begun.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



Our Town Is More Than Ever: Thornton Wilder's Our Town at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, by Deborah Brown

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Will Rogers, Emma Rosenthal in Our Town at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Our Town

by Thornton Wilder

Williamstown Theatre Festival
July 28 – August 8
Directed by Nicholas Martin

Scenic Design by David Korins
Costume Design by Gabriel Berry
Lighting Design by Kenneth Posner
Sound Design by Drew Levy

Cast:

Becky Ann Baker
Dylan Baker
Kevin Cahoon
Nancy E. Carroll
Sam Crane
Jeff Cuttler
Zackary Grady
Jessica Hecht
Brie Larson
Adam Lerman
Brian Lewis
Bryce Pinkham
Gayle Rankin
Will Rogers
Emma Rosenthal
Graham Rowat
John Rubinstein
Campbell Scott
Jon Patrick Walker

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

 lives and breathes and gently enlarges how we see ourselves way beyond the confines of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire or small town America — thanks to the current production at the Williamstown Theater Festival directed by Nicholas Martin.  Martin has staged it exactly as it was written and first produced in 1938 at the McCarter Theater in Princeton and a month later on Broadway. The text is verbatim and the notes for no scenery — only wooden straight-backed chairs (quite an enormous number here hang off the backdrop), two round wooden tables and no props — are followed to a T.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


San Francisco Symphony with Alondra de la Parra conductor and Joyce Yang, piano in Glinka, Rachmaninoff, and Mussorgsky, by Steven Kruger

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Alondra de la Parra. Photo Courtney Perry.

The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, July 23, 2010

Alondra de la Parra, Conductor

Joyce Yang, piano

Glinka, Overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla

Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Opus 30
Mussorgsky-Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition

Summer concerts in the city are frequently revealing in their own several ways. A quick look around Davies Hall last Friday would have reminded locals that there is no need to escape San Francisco in July. Many of the regular faces were present, and so, too, were throngs of young couples in from the suburbs. In the shirt-sleevy dusk, Van Ness Avenue and its many venues seemed the focal point of date night. The line for will-call tickets snaked around the block.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller