The Year in Reviews: Opera in 2011

The 11 Best Operas of 2011
By Paul Pelkonen.

They are the 99%. Tenor Roger Honeywell, soprano Meagan Miller and fine four-fendered friend.
Act III of Die Liebe der Danäe at the Bard SummerScape. Photo by Corey Weaver © 2011 Bard Festival.

This was a busy year. I saw a total of 69 opera performances. 5 of those were broadcasts or live telecasts, but they count. Anyway it's a sexier number than 64. Here's the 11 best opera performances of 2011. Chronological order.


Boston Lyric Opera: The Emperor of Atlantis (Feb. 6)
"Kevin Burdette made an impressive company debut as Death, mugging with John Cleese-like abandon and delivering his noble, impressive music with flair. Heroic tenor John Mac Master was a good choice for Harlequin, Death's companion and a representation (I think) of the madness of war."

Opera Lafayette: Le Magnifique (Feb. 22)
"As the heroine Clémentine, soprano Elizabeth Calleo displayed a pleasing soprano with an unusual, woody timbre. She sounded best in the ensembles, paired with mezzo Marguerite Krull or the paired villains, played by Jeffrey Thompson and Karim Sulayman."

New York Philharmonic: The Cunning Little Vixen (June 24)
"Isabel Bayrakdarian displayed an agile soprano instrument with a pleasing tone and the right amounts of light and shade. She also manipulated the complex costume (including a nearly prehinsile fox-tail) easily, coping with the challenging choreography on the somewhat limited stage."

Royal Danish Opera: Selma Jezkova  (July 30)
"Ylva Kihlberg was a magnetic, heart-tugging presence in the title role, a character created for the film by Icelandic singer Björk. Under Michael Schønwandt's skilled baton, Ms. Kihlberg seduced the listener, leading the audience in Selma's downward spiral."

Bard SummerScape: Die Liebe der Danäe (Aug. 1)
"The soprano part is both long and treacherous, all the way up to a high C# at the very end. Meagan 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."


Budapest Festival Orchestra: Don Giovanni Aug. 8
"Tassis Christoyannis sang with pleasing tone, tripping nimbly through the Champagne Aria and breaking out an unexpected, sweet head voice for his canzonetta in Act II. His death scene was well played: defiance turned to curiosity but never to fear as he met his fate."

Berlin Ensemble: Der Dreigroschen Oper (Oct. 6)
This is not your standard opera-style singing, but Mr. Kurt embodied the character with cynicism, warmth and energy. His Macheath was a homicidal dandy-about-town who owed something to Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in the 1989 Tim Burton film Batman.

Metropolitan Opera: Satyagraha (Nov. 9)
"Richard Croft combines his powerful tenor voice and skilled acting to inhabit the part of Mr. Gandhi. Although the nature of the text prohibits dialogue in the manner of a conventional biography, the singer uses movement and gesture to convey the story. He makes a physical transition as well, from suited, briefcase-toting lawyer to the more familiar figure of the Mahatma, clad in a homespun dhoti and carrying a staff."


Gotham Chamber Opera: Dark Sisters (Nov. 13)
"Mr. Muhly writes  for different types of female voices. He explores the different combinations effectively, having the five women sing in canon, or breaking them out into duets and later, arias. The musical idiom incorporates American hymns, folk music, Adams-style melodic fragments and straight melodic lines."

Juilliard Opera: Kommilitonen! (Nov. 17)
Conductor Anne Manson held this complex score together with tight, sprung rhythms in the orchestra and clear delineation of tone-rows in the woodwinds. Add in  the marching band, the offstage chorus and singers up in the balconies, and Peter Maxwell Davies' opera becomes a tough set of challenges. It came off razor-sharp.

Collegiate Chorale: Moïse et Pharon (Dec. 1)
(Mr. Cutler is) an old-fashioned bel canto tenor who can sing with pliability, accuracy and still be heard over the orchestra. He did a splendid job, despite looking corralled in the close quarters of the concert seating.

Honorable mentions: The Bartered Bride at Juilliard, Cardillac at Opera Boston (R.I.P.), Otello with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Ariadne Auf Naxos at dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, Moshe at HERE, Les Contes d'Hoffmann at Regina Opera, Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung at the New York Philharmonic, L'Elisir d'Amore at New York City Opera, Guillaume Tell at Caramoor, Faust, La Traviata, Le Comte Ory at the Met, La Calista at Vertical Player Repertory.

Visit the rest of the 2011 Year in Reviews, our account of the year that went to "'11".


Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

DVD Review: Getting Out of the 1%

Die Liebe der Danaë from Deutschen Oper Berlin.

Material girl: Midas (Matthias Klink) and Danaë (Manuela Uhl) in Die Liebe der Danaë.
Photo by Barbara Aumüller © 2011 Deutschen Oper Berlin.

A new recording or performance of Die Liebe der Danaë, the penultimate opera by Richard Strauss, is a rare thing. But thanks to curiosity and scholarship, recent years have been kinder to Strauss' "cheerful mythology," a bittersweet comic tale of the god Jupiter (Mark Delavan) and his quest to bed the title character. This production, from the Deutschen Oper Berlin is staged by Kirsten Harms with a minimum of regie interference. Andrew Litton conducts this elaborate score.

Strauss worked on Danaë during the Second World War, and the opera has some of his most inspired orchestral ideas and complex writing for his favorite instrument: the female voice. The title role is taken here by Manuela Uhl, who has made it something of a specialty. She brings powerful, mostly pleasing tone to the high-lying vocal line, although the vibrato widens when the voice is put under pressure The last scene, with some of Strauss' most demanding writing for the soprano, is sung with transcendent, ecstatic power and warmth.

The hardest part to cast in Danaë is that of Midas, the donkey driver turned pretend-king. Tenor Matthias Klink impressed in the role, surmounting the heavy orchestration and reaching a dizzying height. The treacherous part is Act II, with two challenging, back-to-back duets. The first, a face-off with Jupiter, demands heroic singing from both men over a bellowing brass section. The second is the long love duet that ends in Danaë's brief death. 

Surrounded: Jupiter (Mark Delevan) and his ex-lovers in Die Liebe der Danaë.
Photo by Barbara Aumüller © 2011 Deutschen Oper Berlin.

Mr. Delavan is familiar to New Yorkers from the halcyon days of the New York City Opera, is Jupiter. This is Strauss' version of Wagner's Wotan, all hubris in the early going, all regret in the last act. The angry passages are a little much for Mr. Delavan's voice, and he fights admirably against the orchestral clamor. But he brings warmth and resignation to the last scene, when Danaë and Midas are settled in a humble hut, away from all that gold.

The large supporting cast is solid. A pair of character tenors:  Burkhard Ulrich and Thomas Blundelle do well here as the bankrupt King Pollux and Mercury, the gods' playful messenger. The four princesses (Semele, Alkmene, Leda and Europa) are past victims of Jupiter's advances, married off now to mortal princes. These parts are taken by an impressive quartet of singers, who look magnificent in white wigs.

Danaë has the (justified) reputation of being a tough opera to stage. For starters,  the libretto describes Jupiter's entrance as a shower of golden coins. Here, that image takes the form of sheet music, dropped slowly from heaven like divine inspiration. The transformations caused by Midas' deadly golden touch are handled by Manfred Voss' skillful lighting. Why a piano hangs suspended above the stage for the entire opera is anyone's guess. 

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.