Met-HD Simulcast JANUARY 5 , 2013 ~ 12:00 pm ET (Note early start)
Les troyens
Berlioz’s Les Troyens
January 5, 2012, 12 pm ET
The Met offers a rare opportunity to witness Berlioz’s
vast epic, last performed at the house in 2003. Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham,
Bryan Hymel, and Dwayne Croft lead the starry cast, portraying characters from
the Trojan War. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi marshals the large-scale
musical forces.
Susan Graham "commanded the stage during the
final three acts as Dido, the queen of Carthage... Her tones were burnished,
her acting impassioned. Her final-act aria, "Je vais mourir (I am going to
die)," was tender and emotional, causing the audience to erupt in a huge
ovation." (Associated Press)
As Aeneas, Brian Hymel “sang with unflagging stamina
and impetuous abandon, giving an impassioned and confident performance of a
heroic role” (New York Times).
Synopsis available in English, French, German,
Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish:
Q&A with Susan Graham, Deborah Voigt, and
Francesca Zambello:
Approximate runtime: 5:20
 |
| Susan Graham as Dido |
This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
Satyagraha
Great Performances at the Met
|
Saturday, January 5 -- 8:00pm; Sunday, January 6 -- 3:00am; Monday, January 7 -- 12:00am
Satyagraha
A performance of Philip Glass' "Satyagraha," about the early years of Mahatma Gandhi (Richard Croft). The production costars Rachelle Durkin, Alfred Walker and Kim Josephson; and features large-scale puppetry and sets made of corrugated metal.
DURATION: 180 MIN
DETAILS: [CC] [STEREO]
GENRE: PARENTS PICKS
Rene De La Garza, baritone will be performing songs to
be performed in Bangkok, Thailand,. at the Fine Arts
Center Concert Hall at URI in Kingston, with pianist Laura Hibbard on January 5, 2013 at 8pm..
Rene de la Garza
Baritone RENE DE LA GARZA's singing has been praised
for its rich color and strong dramatic delivery. The talented baritone has sung
with the Albany Symphony, the New Haven Symphony, The Brooklyn Philharmonic
under Lukas Foss, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. In the standard operatic
repertory he has sung Rossini's Figaro, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Germont
in La Traviata, Ford in Falstaff, Marcello in La Boheme, the title role in
Rigoletto and Baron Scarpia in Tosca. Of his performance in Boito'sNerone, The
New Yorker wrote, "Rene de la Garza, a baritone I expect to hear again,
was a gleaming, potent Simon Mago."
He has performed with the Opera Company of Boston,
Boston Academy of Music, Opera New England, New Jersey Lyric Opera, Opera
Providence, the Hartford Concert Opera and at Trinity Repertory Theatre in
Richard Cumming's opera Picnic which was directed by Oskar Eustis. In New York
he has appeared with Repertorio Espanol as Vidal in Moreno Torroba's Luisa
Fernanda.
Frequently in demand as a solo recitalist, he has
appeared at The Newport Music Festival, The Kennedy Center and on concert
series throughout New England. As a soloist in Orchestral and Choral music, he
has sung Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn Songs, Bach's B Minor Mass with the
Aston Magna orchestra, Brahm's Ein Deutsches Requiem, Haydn's Creation,
Mendelssohn's Elijah, Orff's Carmina Burana, soloist in Britten's War Requiem,
Vaughan Williams Hodie, Faure's Requiem, Jesus in Bach's St. John Passion and
Mozart's Requiemwith conductor Paavo Jarvi. He has appeared with the Chatham
Chorale, the Chorus of Westerly, The Rhode Island Civic Chorale, The Providence
Singers, Albany Chorus Pro Musica, Capitol Hill Choral Society and the
Waterbury Chorale.
Mr. de la Garza has recorded on the New World Records
label in Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnsonwith the Boston Camerata. Recent
performances include a solo vocal recital in Barcelona, Spain in a multi-media
presentation Pictures in Sound. This Fall he appeared in the premier of John
Sumerlin's opera Air at Rhode Island College. He also appeared in a concert
performance of Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson on the Bank of America Concert
Series in Boston. Mr. de la Garza is a professor of voice at the University of
Rhode Island where he also directs the opera program.
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CARMEN FROM THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
OVERVIEW
An opera in four acts by George Bizet, with libretto
by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, Carmen is one of the world’s most popular
operas. It had its world premiere at
Paris’s Opéra Comique in March, 1875.
SYNOPSIS
Carmen, a gypsy cigarette girl, fights with another
girl working in her factory. She is
placed in the custody of Don José, an incorruptible corporal in the Spanish
Civil Guard. Don José is smitten by
her, and though Carmen seduces him, her heart belongs to the dashing toreador
Escamillo. Obsessed, Don José follows
Carmen to the bullring in Seville…with tragic consequences.
Directed by Francesca Zambello
Starring Anna Caterina Antonacci and Jonas Kaufmann
Sung in French
2 hrs 38 mins including one intermission
OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D' AGUANNO
This coming Saturday afternoon (January 5),
most internet radio stations will be broadcasting the performance from the Met
of Berlioz's "Les Troyens" as it's being simulcast in area movie
theaters. Due to its length, the opera will begin at noontime and probably end
some time around midnight -- Well, no, maybe late afternoon (after sunset, for
sure).
(www.wrti.org/)
The Belgian station Klara is continuing the
holiday spirit with a broadcast of a performance from last month of the Johann
Strauss perennial-favorite "Die Fledermaus." It was performed in
concert form in Brussels.
(http://radio.klara.be/radio/10_home.php)
French Radio, in keeping with the
light-heartedness of the offering from Belgium, will be airing a rare
performance of "The Florentine Straw Hat" by Nino Rota, the same
composer who wrote the music for such well-known films as "Romeo &
Juliet" (early 70s) & "The Godfather." The performance of
his comic opera comes from Nantes (11/30/12).
(http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/accueil/)
And for those of you who absolutely must
listen to Wagner as often as you can, there's a re-broadcast over on ORF of the
La Scala opening night performance of "Lohengrin" (Dec. 7), starring
tenor Jonas Kaufmann.
(http://oe1.orf/at)
Happy New Year to you all !!
DAVE
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The Met radio broadcast,
Hector Berlioz's
LES TROYENS
Listen to the Met Opera Saturday afternoon
broadcasts on Harvard Radio, 95.3 in the Boston area or live-streaming online at http://www.whrb.org
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COMING TO THE JANE PICKENS THEATER, Newport
Sunday, January 13, 2012, at 11 AM
Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu singing, on ice skates? NO.
OVERVIEW
Opera On Ice is the coming together of the marvels of opera music and the acrobatic maneuvers of figure skating all in one show. Recorded in the magical setting of the Verona Arena, the largest open-air opera theater in the world, Opera on Ice offers some of the most famous arias from twelve operas which have made music history: Don Giovanni – Aida – Carmen – Romeo and Juliet – Turandot – Tosca – La Traviata – Rigoletto – Nabucco - William Tell – L’Elisir d’Amore – Gianni Schicchi.
The international importance of the show is also due to the chorus, the orchestra and the Verona Arena singers as well as to the figure skating stars taking part, first and foremost Carolina Kostner and Olympic champion Stephane Lambiel. Italian skater, Carolina Kostner, has just won the European Championships and comes first in the world ranking.
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Joyce DiDonato will be signing her new album, Drama Queens, at the Met Opera Shop (at the Met, NYC) on Friday, January 11, 2013, at 5pm.
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The Met HD Maria Stuarda will be simulcast on Saturday, January 19, 2013. Mark your calendars!
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The Met HD Maria Stuarda will be simulcast on Saturday, January 19, 2013. Mark your calendars!
from THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/arts/music/elza-van-den-heever-in-maria-stuarda-at-the-met.html?_r=0
When the Costume Isn’t Enough
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: December 30, 2012
The title character in “The Bald Soprano,” the absurdist Ionesco play, never shows up, but watch for her at the Metropolitan Opera.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Elza van den Heever shaved her head for a role at the Met.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Elza van den Heever as Queen Elizabeth I in the Met’s production of “Maria Stuarda.”
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Jimmy Cortés, a makeup artist, fitting a wig on Elza van den Heever.
Elza van den Heever, 33, a promising South African soprano, has had her head shaved for the role of Queen Elizabeth I, the wig-bearing monarch whose portraits often depicted her with an unusually high forehead, in the Met’s new production of “Maria Stuarda” by Donizetti. It opens Monday, and also stars Joyce DiDonato as Mary Stuart and Matthew Polenzani as Leicester. David McVicar is the director; Maurizio Benini, the conductor.
It is not exactly as radical as Robert De Niro adding dozens of pounds of fat to play the boxer Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.” But it still is not an easy step for a diva to shear off her locks.
“Usually hair is part of the look,” she said, emphasizing that she does not particularly consider herself a diva. Instead, “as an actress, it was an opportunity to delve as deep as I could” into the role, Ms. van den Heever said, taking the view that the queen was bald, a subject of some debate. (Smallpox is often blamed.)
A regular at the Frankfurt Opera who has also sung in San Francisco, Chicago, Munich and Paris, Ms. van den Heeveris making her Met debut. She said she was moved to shave her head as a way of contributing to the professionalism she saw around her at the Met, taking note of the highly detailed and rich costumes.
“I did my part,” she said during an interview, while a makeup artist, Jimmy Cortés, worked on her face before a rehearsal last week. Ms. van den Heever met with a reporter despite expressing reservations about discussing her shaved head, fearful it would be perceived as a publicity stunt.
Practical reasons also came into play. The bald cap that would have been necessary took a long time to apply and caused glue to get stuck in her hair. And Ms. van den Heever will appear in the movie theater simulcast of theopera, when high-definition cameras pick up the tiniest of details — including the edges of a bald cap. “People will be looking for it,” she said.
She said she decided spontaneously to expose her scalp about 10 days before opening night. She made pigtails, cut them off with a scissors and then had Mr. Cortés shave her head with an electric trimmer.
Was it tough to do? Not so much, she said, adding that she has held a secret desire to shave her head since seeing a bald Demi Moore in the movie “G.I. Jane” and was used to changing her hair length. Still, she shed a tear when the deed was done. “I look in the mirror and hardly recognize myself,” she said.
One of triplets, Ms. van den Heever displayed her new look to her parents in Johannesburg during a Skype session. “My father fell out of his chair, laughing so hard,” she said.
Ms. van den Heever said she planned to braid the shorn pigtails and give them as gifts. As she put it, “Here’s a piece of me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/arts/music/joyce-didonato-takes-on-maria-stuarda-at-the-met.html?pagewanted=all
Giving History a Bel Canto Twist
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Joyce DiDonato warming up in her dressing room, top, and rehearsing onstage for “Maria Stuarda” at the Metropolitan Opera.
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
Published: December 28, 2012
WEARING a black dress and clutching a Bible, the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato walked stiffly on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera during a recent rehearsal for Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda,” which will open on New Year’s Eve and be broadcast Live in HD on Jan. 19. First kneeling, then standing, her aching movements in the final scenes reflected the title character’s physical demise after years of imprisonment.
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Ms. DiDonato’s voice took on a hard-edged sheen as she sang “Tutto col sangue cancellerò” (“For with my blood all is washed away”) from “D’un cor che muore”(“From a dying heart”). In this aria, in which Mary forgives Queen Elizabeth for sending her to her execution, Ms. DiDonato imbued the words with a potency missing from even some of the most beautifully sung recorded interpretations.
For David McVicar, who is directing the new production, this opera and other bel canto pieces “can stand on their own two feet if all you want is canary fancying, if you think this is all about warbling prettily,” he said during an interview at the Met. “But if you bother to take them seriously and question them and treat them with intelligence, they pay you back and reveal themselves as being so much more interesting than people think they are.”
At the Met, Mr. McVicar has already directed “Anna Bolena,” the first opera in Donizetti’s “Three Queens” Tudor trilogy, which opened last season with Anna Netrebko in the title role. “Maria Stuarda” is the second, and there are plans in the works for him to direct “Roberto Devereux,” the final installment, at the Met.
“Bringing a strong sense of history fleshes out the opera,” Mr. McVicar said about “Maria Stuarda.” History, however, is liberally blended with fantasy in the work, which has a libretto based on “Mary Stuart,” Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play about a fictitious meeting between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.
The opera also includes a love affair between Mary Stuart and Robert Dudley, the first Earl of Leicester. “I find that harder to stomach than the fake meeting between the queens,” said Mr. McVicar, while acknowledging that “there a little kernel of truth, since Leicester was twice a suitor for Mary’s hand.”
In their meeting Mary accuses Elizabeth of being a “vile bastard,” which displeased the Italian censors. (She also accuses Elizabeth of being an “obscene, unworthy whore.”) Maria Malibran, the mezzo soprano, rebelled against the censorship and reinserted “vil bastarda” when she sang in the 1835 premiere at La Scala; the opera was then banned in Milan.
The work boasts several such dramatically colorful scenes and some of Donizetti’s most haunting music, like Mary’s Act III prayer, in which her voice soars over the chorus. Donizetti had already composed more than 40 operas, and his writing for Mary is masterly, particularly in arias like “O nube! che lieve per l’aria,” her poignant reminiscence of France and freedom.
Discussing his staging of the opera Mr. McVicar emphasized that he doesn’t “work conceptually.”
“The concept is embedded in my work with the singers,” he said. “I am very unfashionable, I suppose. I don’t believe the concept should be jumping up and down beside the singers waving its arms like an adolescent in class going, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ ”
The sets are by John Macfarlane, who brings a “painterly” perspective, Mr. McVicar said, adding that the writing on the wall in Act III evokes the letters that the imprisoned Mary actually wrote to Elizabeth. Presumably they will contrast with the monochromatic and sometimes unimaginative sets Robert Jones designed for “Anna Bolena.”
Mr. McVicar prefers a collaborative approach with his singers, he said. “If they bring a lot to the table, if they’ve done the historical research, if they already have a strong idea about their character and the person, it makes my job much more fun,” he said “I have something to work with, rather than spoon-feeding them. Some singers have zero intellectual curiosity.”
That hasn’t been the case with this strong cast, he added, which in addition to Ms. DiDonato features Elza van den Heever as Elisabetta, Matthew Polenzani as Leicester, Joshua Hopkins as Cecil and Matthew Rose as Talbot.
Ms. DiDonato is an experienced purveyor of tortured bel canto and baroque heroines, most recently with her dazzling recent performance and recording of “Drama Queens,” a compilation of baroque selections sung with vocal agility and emotional potency. In song recitals she has an unusually gregarious stage presence and dispenses with the often off-putting formality of recitals, which she says needs “to be booted into the 21st century” to survive.
Regarding the coloratura contortions of the florid baroque and bel canto repertory she champions, Ms. DiDonato said she learned from performing Handel that “if you don’t infuse meaning into it, it can be superfluous.” A lot of singers just sing the notes, she added, instead of infusing them “with real vocal purity and real theatrical commitment.”
“The phrase has to turn a certain way because of the emotional journey,” she said.
The heroines of bel canto express their suffering through heart-wrenchingly beautiful music, conveying a combination of beauty and pain that often reflects real life, said Ms. DiDonato. During a recent interview in the Met’s press room, her eyes misted over as she recalled how the death of her father in 2006 “was actually beautiful.” After a month in intensive care, she said, his tubes were removed, he asked for white wine and to sit up, and then died a few hours later.
“In one minute I’m heaving with horror that this is happening, then I’m marveling at how this is so peaceful, so beautiful,” Ms. DiDonato said softly. With bel canto, “there is the same juxtaposition.”
Ms. DiDonato, 43, who was raised as a Roman Catholic in Prairie Village, Kan., said she also identified with Mary Stuart, the Catholic queen, even though she no longer is a churchgoer. Speaking about the confession scene with Talbot, Mary’s ally, Ms. DiDonato recalled her own childhood as one of seven children, whose monthly confession schedules were marked in the calendar by their mother.
“You’re dreading it, and your stomach is turning in knots,” she said. “Then you come out, and there is this cleansing that happens. So I get that whole idea of martyrdom and righteousness.”
Ms. DiDonato recently sang the title role at the Houston Grand Opera; she has also sung the role of Elizabeth, both originally written for sopranos but now sometimes sung by mezzos. “I’ve never been a singer who is worried about competing with ghosts, although I know that’s part of the culture of opera, and I respect that,” she said, adding that in Donizetti’s era it was common to tinker with keys and transpositions to accommodate different performers.
The vocal demands of “Maria Stuarda” are huge, she noted. At the end of the rehearsal on the main stage, after Ms. DiDonato and her colleagues finessed logistical details concerning the blindfold Mary wears to her death, she walked over to the pit to discuss the most effective pacing for her final arias. “I need to have momentum,” she told Maurizio Benini, who is conducting the production.
Partly because of Marco Armiliato’s conducting, the “Anna Bolena” last season felt uninspired, lacking a vital intensity. Mr. Benini, a bel canto expert, said that pacing is a crucial element of the genre. The music “needs to live,” he told the orchestra musicians at a previous rehearsal, advising them how to phrase a descending motif more effectively in an Act I duo between Elizabeth and Leicester.
In an interview Mr. Benini explained that some of the om-pah-pah orchestration is so simple that the musicians can easily lose concentration: “There is nothing to do, so few notes. But the problem is that these notes must have life, and if you don’t think about the line, it quickly becomes boring. I ask for life and expression in the accompaniment. Each note must have emotional importance.”
Like Mozart’s music, bel canto is “very naked,” he said, “with nowhere to hide. The simplest things are always the most difficult.”
In verismo, he added, the singers can get away with a little “sporcizia,” or dirtiness, but not so in bel canto.
That combination of vocal and spiritual purity adds an extra resonance to the part of Mary, Ms. DiDonato said. “There is this transcendence that happens to her as she takes on being a martyr,” she explained. “There’s still fear, but a kind of joy in it. I think that’s one of the reasons the opera is so compelling.”
NO OPERA ON WGBH TV
THIS WEEK!
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