Opera Review: Tsarface

The Time of Troubles comes to Bard College with Dimitrij.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Family snapshot: the false tsar Dimitrij (Clay Hilley, center)
flanked by Marfa (Nora Sourouzian) and Marina, his wife (Melissa Citro).
Photo courtesy Bard College and Bard SummerScape.

The operas of Antonín Dvorak are central to the repertory in that composer’s native land, but apart from Rusalka, remain neglected here in the United States. That may change after this weekend, when Bard SummerScape offered the first fully staged U.S. Performances of Dimitrij. Planned to be Dvorak's breakthrough international success, this opera is his most ambitious stage work: an absorbing, turbulent drama chronicling the start of the Time of Troubles, the most turbulent period in Russian history,

Summer Festival Preview: Bard SummerScape

False Tsars and Polish piano mastery mark this year's festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Murder of the False Dmitry by Konstantin Makovsky
gives some idea of the mayhem to come at this summer's Bard Festival.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The rolling greens of Bard College, located just off the Hudson River in the quaint but practical little town of Annandale-on-Hudson, welcome music lovers once more. The attraction: Bard SummerScape, offering six weeks of classical music, academic programming and as always, a unique opera that you probably won't hear anywhere else anytime soon.

Opera Review: Truth And Consequences

Le Villi and La Navarraise at the Bard Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sean Pannikar (left) and Talise Trevigne in a tense moment from Puccini's Le Villi.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2016 Bard Music Festival.

This summer's Bard Music Festival is focused almost entirely on the music of Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer who stands at the end of a four hundred-year tradition of opera as that country's dominant art form. From his early competition pieces to the unfinished wonders of his final opera Turandot, Puccini was the climax of a long line of composers and somehow the end of the road.

Opera Review: Love on the Rocks

Ethyl Smyth's The Wreckers rises from the vasty deep.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
(This article is presented in collaboration with our friends at OperaPulse.)

Wrecking crew: (L-r) Katharine Goeldner, Sky Ingram, Michael Mayes, Neal Cooper and Kendra Broom 
in rehearsal for Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers.
Photo by Stephanie Berger © 2015 Bard SummerScape.

Each summer, it is the business of the Bard SummerScape Festival to present an opera that for whatever reason has fallen far from the fringes of the standard repertory. On Friday night, artistic director and Bard College president) Leon Botstein led the first fully staged performance of The Wreckers the 1907 opera by Dame Ethyl Smyth. (The work was first performed in the U.S. by the American Symphony Orchestra under Dr. Botstein at Carnegie Hall in 2007.) This was the first of five scheduled performances this month at the Fisher Center, the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall on the Bard campus that is SummerScape's headquarters.

Summer Marches In: The 2014 Superconductor Festival Guide Part I

Your guide to getting out of New York and hearing great music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Soprano Ellie Dehn is Euryanthe at Bard SummerScape.
Photo by Todd Norwood © 2014 Bard Festival.

As summer marches in, the festival season is upon us. Here's the Superconductor guide to getting out of New York for spectacular scenery, gorgeous music, and opera performances that you'll read about here in the next two months.

The Superconductor Summer Festival Preview Part I

What's on at Caramoor, Bard College and the Glimmerglass Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Opera in the summer north of New York isn't quite this idyllic.
Image: The Orchard by Hudson River School painter Whittredge Worthington.

The concert season is (finally) ending and New Yorkers are getting ready for a slew of summer concerts and festivals. We here at Superconductor would like to offer a preview of what's hot in the hottest weeks of the year. We start the  breakdown of the major classical music, opera and modern music festivals with goings-on just north of New York City.

Opera Review: Divorce, English Style

Read my review of Henry VIII on The Classical Review.

Catherine of Aragon (left) and her lady-in-waiting (and successor) Anne Boleyn.
The two Queens figure prominently in Saint-Saëns' opera Henry VIII.
Photo manipulation by the author. 

Those of you who read this blog know that my writing sometimes appears on sources other than Superconductor. That said, here's a link to my review of the Camille Saint-Saëns opera  Henry VIII, which closed the 2012 Bard Music Festival in regal fashion on Sunday afternoon.

Here's an excerpt, to whet your...axe.

"The jewels in this performance’s crown were the two queens: soprano Ellie Dehn as Catherine of Aragon and mezzo Jennifer Holloway as Anne Boleyn. Dehn began as an icy presence, but that facade cracked as the reality of her situation became apparent. She achieved dramatic heights in the final act, with a long aria that recalled the plight of another operatic queen in a similar circumstance: Elisabeth de Valois in Verdi's Don Carlos. "

Opera Review: La Plaisanterie Polonaise

Le roi malgré-lui at Bard SummerScape.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Motel hobbies: The Act III set for Le roi maigre-lui at Bard SummerScape.
Photo by Corey Weaver © 2012 Bard SummerScape/Bard Music Festival

The Fisher Center sits on the Bard College campus in the quiet college town of Annendale-on-Hudson. This Frank Gehry-designed theater is home to Bard SummerScape, where New York's opera lovers travel to hear works from deep in the repertory that are way off the beaten path of Verdi, Puccini and even Wagner. This year, the festival made its first comic offering: Emmanuel Chabrier's Le Roi malgré-lui ("The King in Spite of Himself") a comic confection that had just three performances at its 1887 debut--before the theater burned down.

The case for reviving Le roi malgré-lui is a difficult one. Although the opera contains some entertaining melodies, the weak libretto undermines the composer's efforts. The plot is a cross between the (failed) 1840 Verdi comedy Un Giorno di Regno and the composer's later Un Ballo in Maschera--with a reluctant ruler running afoul of an assassination conspiracy--and eventually joining it.

Here's the story: King Henri, a callow French nobleman is newly elected to take the throne of Poland. He hates his job. He abdicates, switches identities with his best friend Nangis, and joins a conspiracy against himself. Finally, he (reluctantly) takes back the reins of power and wins the girl, who happens to be married to one of his courtiers. The story contains a series of comic gyrations that can leave even the most jaded opera-goers scratching their heads.

Opera Preview: Le Roi malgré lui

Leon Botstein unearths a rare gem by Emmanuel Chabrier.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
"I would rather have written Le Roi malgré lui than the Ring of the Nibelungen."--Maurice Ravel

Costume design for the Cossacks in Le Roi malgré lui.
Costume design sketch by Mattie Ulrich © Bard Festival 2012.

This year's Bard Festival is devoted to the music and culture of 19th century France. As a result, the July opera offering at the Fisher Center (located on the picturesque campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson) isLe Roi malgré lui, ("The King in Spite of Himself") a rarely performed comedy by French composer Emmauel Chabrier.

Chabrier is best remembered by opera lovers for writing L'Etoile, a surreal comedy of kingship and succession that has been mounted occasionally at Glimmerglass and at the New York City Opera. Le Roi deals with some similar themes.

It is the story of a ne'er-do-well French nobleman, Henri, who somehow finds himself in line to take the throne of Poland. The opera's plot mainly consists of the reluctant king's increasingly convoluted efforts to escape the country and the pressures of his job.

The 2012 Superconductor Summer Preview

Our handy one-stop guide to summer concerts and festivals.

by Paul Pelkonen

International opera sensation Homer Simpson presents a cogent argument for
going to Tanglewood instead of the beach. Image © Gracie Films, from PopArt.Uk.

The days are getting long and barbecue grills are firing up. But in between bites, there's a smorgasbord of classical music and opera on offer this summer. We present our guide to the best of what's coming up in the summer months.
In New York


The River to River Festival is a month-long event taking place in Manhattan at various venues. It opens June 17 at the Winter Garden with the 2012 Bang on a Can Marathon a free 12-hour event of modern music. On June 20, the Philip Glass Ensemble gives its only free concert of the year, giving concert-goers the opportunity to sing along with Mr. Glass' group. 

At the Lincoln Center campus, there is programming all summer long with a bevy of entertainment options . In addition to the outdoor dance party A Midsummer Night's Swing and the jazz and world music oriented Lincoln Center Out of Doors, there's the Lincoln Center Festival.

Opera Review: Jumpin' Jupiter!

Die Liebe der Danae at Bard SummerScape.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Tenor Roger Honeywell, soprano Meagan Miller and four-fendered friend.
Act III of Die Liebe der Danae at the Bard Festival. Photo by Corey Weaver © 2011 Bard Festival.

The first fully staged performances of Richard Strauss' Die Liebe der Danaë took place this weekend at the Bard Festival. Leon Botstein conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in a persuasive performance that should help restore this ignored opera to the repertory.

The demanding title role was sung by Meagan Miller, as the Greek maiden who finds herself pursued by the god Jupiter (baritone Carsten Wittmoser) and Midas, (Roger Honeywell) a donkey-driver who is Jupiter's cats-paw. In this version of myth (the libretto is by Josef Gregor) Midas gets the "golden touch" from Jupiter as a way of running interference with the god's jealous wife, Juno. But when Danae falls for Midas, the two men become rivals. Eventually, Midas and Danae are stripped of their assets. They choose a life together over Jupiter's golden temples. In a moving duet, the god reluctantly bids her farewell.

Like the other late Strauss operas, Danae is loaded with difficult vocal writing. The soprano part is both long and treacherous, all the way up to a high C-sharp at the very end. Ms. Miller, a past grand finalist at the Metropolitan Opera's vocal competitions, handled the part with power and beauty of tone. Baritone Carsten Witmoser was a moving presence as Jupiter, a high baritonal part that is a mirror of Strauss himself. Portrayed here as a money-throwing Wall Street maven à la Bernie Madoff, Mr. Wittmoser's Jupiter travels from romantic ardor to Wagnerian, godly rage, to warm resignation as he realizes that Danae really prefers Midas' hand and a life of poverty.

As Midas, tenor Roger Honeywell has a pleasing voice, but it was neither large enough or expansive enough to cope with Strauss' stentorian orchestra. Like most Strauss tenors, Mr. Honeywell did what he could with the punishing part, writing that indicated Strauss' sadistic attitude towards tenors. Although he had trouble with the extensive Act II love duet, he recovered for the last act, singing with beauty and sweetness in the duet as Midas and Danae explored their new circumstances as members of the suburban poor.

While Dr. Botstein led the New York premiere of the opera in a concert staging in Jan. 2000, (a performance recorded and released on Telarc) Danae remains one of the most obscure Strauss operas. It presents considerable challenges for the bold director willing to take it on. This smart staging by Kevin Newbury (with clever, minimal sets by Rafael Viñoly amd Mimi Lien) updated the court of King Pollux to the board-room of a Wall Street skyscraper. The choristers: suited businessmen attempting to collect debts. Danae herself is a high-fashion model, appearing in perfume ads as a kind of operatic Mary Jane Watson.

The many visual challenges (Jupiter's entry as a shower of golden rain, Danae being turned into a golden statue) were solved with wit and smart visuals. The humble third act was set in the swamps of Jersey, the sole shelter being a lone two-door hatchback (which looked like an AMC Pacer), parked in the marsh, with the towers of Manhattan far in the distance.

Strauss composed Danae in 1940, as the dark clouds of war roiled over Germany. He saw a dress rehearsal at the Salzburg Festival in 1944, but the work was never performed in his lifetime. In fact, it belongs to the beginning of the composer's late period. The score is burnished with warm chords that echo its gold-obsessed plot, lending an autumnal glow to the complex harmonies. The libretto has some unexpected twists and turns and real humor. Much of this was lent by tenor Dennis Petersen as the bankrupt King Pollux, and a fine quartet of budding divas: Aurora Sein Perry, Camille Zamora, Jamie Van Euck and Rebecca Ringle as four of Jupiter's ex-lovers.