Christine Goerke sings the title role. Go see it.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Say hello to her little friend: Christine Goerke as Elektra in San Francisco.
Photo by Cory Weaver for the San Francisco Opera.
Soprano of the moment Christine Goerke, who has sung Elektra in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and on the stage of Carnegie Hall, takes on the towering title role in Richard Strauss' harrowing take on Greek tragedy.
Although it is one of the loudest operas ever written, Richard Strauss' Elektra is spoken of in hushed tones. It is Greek tragedy writ large: an intense 100-minute thrill ride through a musical funhouse. Here, Nina Stemme takes on the challenging title role in this new production, an import from Aix-en-Provence.
Bard SummerScape presents Taneyev's Oresteia.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Detail from The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862.)
Image from Project Gutenberg, used under license through Wikimedia Commons.
A summer visit to the Fisher Center, that Frank Gehry-designed theater plunked down in the rolling greens of Bard College means that the average opera-lover is going to hear something that they've never heard before. On Friday night, Bard President (and Bard SummerScape music director) Leon Botstein offered up the United States stage premiere of Oresteia, by forgotten Russian composer Sergei Taneyev. Dr. Botstein conducted the American Symphony Orchestra, who played this sumptuous music at their usual high standard of execution.
The dreaded "backstage plague" struck the Met on Wednesday night, sidelining mezzo-soprano Susan Graham for that evening's performance of Iphigénie en Tauride. Placìdo Domingo went on as Orest, although he too was suffering from a cold.
The story of Iphigénie picks up where Elektra leaves off. Orestes is hounded by the Furies, running for his life in the company of his friend Pylade. He winds up in Tauride (modern-day Scythia) where he is scheduled to be sacrificed by the high priestess of Diana. What he doesn't know is that this is his sister, Iphigénie.
The Metropolitan Opera makes a policy of hiring cover singers to take over a role at the last minute in the event of illness. On Wednesday evening, it was Elizabeth Bishop in the title role. Ms. Bishop, a winner at the 1993 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, made a strong impression as the Greek princess-turned-priestess in Gluck's drama.
Like Ms. Graham, she is an American singer, with a good command of French and a strong onstage presence. However, she was at her best in the lower reaches of the role, as her voice tended to compress and develop a vibrato whenever she reached for her higher range. She was well matched with the ailing Mr. Domingo as Orestes. The 70-year-old super-tenor managed some fine, heroic singing despite his illness. There was nothing wrong with his acting.
With one star down and another suffering, that left tenor Paul Groves to carry the evening as Orestes' best friend, Pylade. Mr. Groves has a fine heroic instrument and an idiomatic command of French. He took the lead in the third act, singing his ensemble with the other two leads as Orestes and Pylade each attempt to be first on the altar under Iphigénie's knife.
The second half of the show had more momentum than the first, with a driven dynamic intensity as the cast settled into their roles. Patrick Summers led a crystal-clear performance in the pit, allowing the audience to hear the radical, almost revolutionary nature of Gluck's score, which paved the way for every opera that followed in the next 250 years.
Stephen Wadsworth's production remains an imaginative exercise in grimness that combines elements of Indiana Jones and Saw--imagining Diana's temple and its bloody altar as a chamber of horrors. That said, the imaginative use of actual torches on the stage, carefully choreographed ritual dances and (unaccountably) a ballet that takes place behind a big, solid wall (thus, invisible to the audience) makes this one of the more innovative productions of the Peter Gelb era.
One of the unexpected trends at the Peter Gelb Met has been a renewed interest in the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck, the masterful German composer who standardized the forms of French opera in the 18th century.
Gluck's work stands at the beginning of the Classical period, when the flourishes of baroque opera were rejected in favor of a strict reliance on musical forms and the fusion of words and music to make a dramatic whole. The classical ideas of Gluck would influence many composers that followed: from Mozart, to Berlioz to Richard Wagner.
Iphigénie is one of the composer's most sophisticated, powerful creations, a tragédie-lyrique that crackles with nervous tension as it veers toward a (potentially) bloody climax. Susan Graham sings the title role--the daughter of the Greek king Agamemnon who is transported by the Gods to the land of Tauris (now the Crimea.) There, she is drafted into the priesthood, and ordered to sacrifice anyone who comes ashore.
The next victim? Her own brother, Orestes.
Oh, and Orestes is played by 70-year old super-tenor Placìdo Domingo, which alone makes this revival worth seeing.
Recordings Overview:
This opera has been surprisingly well-served on disc.
Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala cond. Riccardo Muti (Sony) Iphigénie: Carol Vaness Orest: Thomas Allen Pylade: Gosta Winbergh
This just-reissued set features the control-freak conducting of Riccardo Muti, leading his La Scala forces in a large-scale approach to Gluck's tragedy. Recently reissued as part of the Sony Opera House series.
Boston Baroque cond. Martin Pearlman (Telarc) Iphegénie: Christine Goerke Orest: Rodney Gilfry Pylade: Vinson Cole
This was the first recording of this opera on "period" instruments. This is a stellar cast, with Goerke and Gilfry veterans of John Eliot Gardiner's excellent Mozart opera recordings.
Les Musiciens de Louvre cond. Marc Minkowski (DG Archiv) Iphegenie: Mireille Delunsch Orest: Simon Keenlyside Pylade: Yan Beuron
Period instrument precision and authentic French stylings are the order of the day in this impressive installment in Marc Minkowski's survey of Gluck operas. Minkowski takes a go-for-the-throat approach that is entirely suited to this intense drama.
This DVD of Richard Strauss' blood-drenched Greek tragedy was filmed in June of 2010 at Baden-Baden. This is a successful, almost clinical staging of the opera, staged by Herbert Wernicke without the usual gore and decay. Mr. Wernicke's set is stark and geometric, dominated by a giant rotating, black rectangle that turns on its diagonal axis to reveal bright hues. It's like a Robert Wilson production, unhampered by awkward body movements.
In the opening monologue, soprano Linda Watson pushes her instrument to the absolute limit, and beyond. Elektra is a murderously difficult role, and this American soprano sings with a searing sound when at full voice over Strauss' gigantic orchestra. Ms. Watson achieves command of Strauss' tricky waltz rhythms in the second part of the aria, and manages a full, powerful presence, never leaving the center of attention. She is sweet, even cloying in her scenes with Chrysothemis. Finally, she opens up her voice for an impressive "Recognition Scene" with Orest, raising her voice high against the (temporarily) lightened orchestration in a soaring arch of sound.
Klytaemnestra is played with a grandiose, Sunset Boulevard decadence by Jane Henschel. Strauss reserved his most difficult music for this mother-daughter confrontation, sinuous, ear-scraping orchestral figures that broke the limits of tonality and inspired many modern composers.
The confrontation is masterfully acted and powerfully sung, with impressive, almost growled low notes from Ms. Henschel. Klytaemnestra's scarlet-and-gold train is put to good use as a as a symbol of power and a surrogate bloodstain for the murder that is to come.
As Chrysothemis, the "good" sister embroiled in Elektra's plan to avenge the murder of her father, Manuela Uhl makes a solid impression. Ms. Uhl has a hard, bright instrument that is also taxed by the heavy orchestra. Emotionally, she is limited to fear and confusion, caught between her mother's machinations and her sister's raw blood lust, but those are the two central emotions of this weak character. One clever touch: after Klytaemnestra is axed, her younger daughter wastes no time in appropriating the baubles, charms and beads from the Queen's corpse--effectively taking her mother's place.
In an opera with three leading ladies, it is sometimes hard for the men to be noticed. Rene Kollo is Aegisth, the latest in a line of faded heldentenors to be led to the slaughter. Albert Dohmen is a powerful, if unemotional Orest, determined to kill his mother and steeled to the task at hand. This sturdy Wagner baritone does not have time to give much more information than that.
On the podium, Christian Thielemann shows great command of rhythm and Strauss' rich orchestral detail. He leads the Munich Philharmonic with a light, airy touch, letting the orchestra waltz in demented triple time before letting the brass smash out great, slab-like chords. Mr. Thielemann is a fine Strauss conductor, who follows the composer's advice about Elektra: to conduct "as if it were by Mendelssohn: fairy music."
Opening monologue from Elektra, sung by Linda Watson
Valery Gergiev, looking priestly. Photo by Chris Lee.
Thursday night's installment of the New York Philharmonic's three-week festival The Russian Stravinsky featured a powerful performance of Oedipus Rex, the two-act "opera-oratorio" based on Sophocles' tragedy. With its unique structure short length and lack of dramatic action, Oedipus Rex is ideally suited to the concert stage. Mr. Gergiev used his characteristic, muscular approach to conducting this score. Although the balance of brass and chorus threatened at times to drown out the soloists, this was exciting music-making.
Anthony Dean Griffey and Waltraud Meier gave strong performances as Oedipus and Jocasta, the married King and Queen of Thebes who discover that they are actually mother and son. Mr. Griffey is an instinctive actor, even in the concert setting. He has a fine, ringing tenor that was well-suited to the note of false nobility that Stravinsky gives Oedipus before his downfall. Mr. Griffey's best moment though, was silent. When denying his guilt in Act I, he shifted, darted his eyes and looked Nixon-like in his guilt. Ms. Meier, the Wagnerian mezzo familiar from countless performances of Parsifal brought her steely, dramatic instrument to the short role of Jocasta. The rapid-fire duet between these two singers was one of the pleasures of the evening.
Oedipus Rex alternates Latin text with a Narration that moves the drama forward. In this case, Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons used his fine, Shakespearean voice to lend weight to the proceedings. He was aided by the all-male Mariinsky chorus and fine vocal soloists. Russian bass Ilya Bannik took the roles of Creon and the Messenger. His delivery of the news of Jocasta's death and Oedipus' self-blinding, backed by heavy chords in the brass and the response of the chorus, made a powerful close to the opera.
The concert opened with the rarely performed Le Roi d'Etoile, a Stravinsky work for chorus and orchestra that echoes the composer's admiration for the works of Claude Debussy. It was followed by the Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos as an exciting soloist. Mr.Kavakos showed great command of phrasing and Stravinsky's tricky rhythms, soaring through the four movements including the difficult final Capriccio. Met with rapturous applause, he returned and dazzled the audience with a violin transcription of the Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Spanish guitar virtuoso Francisco Tárrega.
