Opera Review: Don't Lose Your Head

New Amsterdam Opera performs Massenet's Hérodiade.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The concert performance of Hérodiade (with mezzo Janara Kellerman in blue
in the title role) by New Amsterdam Opera on Friday night. Photo by the author.

Jules Massenet's 1881 opera Hérodiade return to the stage in New York on Friday night after an absence of 26 years. The work was staged in a concert version by the New Amsterdam Opera, Keith Chambers' small but ambitious project that offers concert performances of repertory that terrifies some larger companies. Here, Mr. Chambers and his forces were in the Center at West Park, a landmarked Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side in the middle of a lengthy restoration project. The performance was umbrella'd under the ongoing New York Opera Fest, a two month coalition of smaller opera companies in and around New York.

Obituary: Montserrat Caballé, 1933-2018

The soprano and recording artist was La Superba to her fans.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

I've got a secret: the great Montserrat Caballé could sing anything.

One would argue that in opera singers of a vanished age, it was the voice and only the voice that mattered. These words would be fitting as a eulogy for Montserrat Caballé. The soprano, who passed away yesterday at the age of 85, possessed one of the largest and most flexible instruments of her age, succeeding in everything from Rossini to dramatic operas by Puccini and Strauss. The cause of death was listed as a gall bladder infection.

Moscow is Back on the Hudson

The Met and the Bolshoi prepare to make music together.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Going Vegas? Anna Netrebko's new Aida at the Met will be staged by Michael Mayer.
Here, the diva sings in front of the Luxor Hotel thanks to the magic of digital photo alteration.
Image © Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas. Image of Anna Netrebko © Salzburg Festival. Photoshop by Lord Voldemort.

The Metropolitan Opera has locked down its plans for three new productions between 2019 and 2021. The operas in question are Aida, Salome and Lohengrin Finally, these three new productions will be staged in collaboration with the Bolshoi Theater, the Russian-based opera and ballet company that is Moscow's biggest opera house. Each of these three premieres will feature soprano Anna Netrebko in prominent roles: the title role in Aida and Salome and as Elsa in Lohengrin.

The Richard Strauss Project: Salome

Richard Strauss' shocking opera still makes heads roll.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Depravity: Salome (Camilla Nylund) with the head of Jokanaan (Alan Held)
at the climax of Salome at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.
Photo by  Dominic M. Mercier © 2014 Opera Philadelphia/The Philadelphia Orchestra

When Richard Strauss unveiled Salome in  1905,  he was already a leading light among German composers and conductors. He was born in Bavaria, and his father Franz was =the principal horn player at the first Bayreuth performances of Wagner's Ring.

The Polls Are Closed!

The next Superconductor Audio Guide series will focus on Richard Strauss.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Richard Strauss stuffed the ballot box and will be the subject of the next Superconductor Audio Guide retrospective.
Photoshop and award design by Paul J. Pelkonen.

Superconductor has completed its first-ever reader's poll and the winner is....Richard Strauss!

The German composer is your choice to be the focus of the next series of Superconductor Audio Guides, the regular series that tracks the life of a great composer through a chronological output of operas and other pieces, and offers analysis of some of their major compositions. Last year the operas of Wagner and Mozart have been written up in this fashion, and this year it's Strauss' turn.

Richard Strauss represents the last bastion of German Romanticism. A masterful composer and conductor, he started as a creator of vivid, sometimes shocking tone poems that employed giant orchestras to create incredible effects. Today he is best remembered for the introduction to his tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, used to memorable effect by Stanley Kubrick in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Later in his career, Strauss moved to opera, creating a string of works that ranged from the shocking and violent to drawing-room comedies. He wrote fifteen operas in total. About half of them are in the standard repertory, with rare works popping up when an ambitious conductor and a cast of good German singers are able to revive one. Seven Strauss operas will be looked at in this coming series, with another three added if we're all having a reasonably good time. The plan is as follows:

Salome: Strauss' third opera and first genuine success, the story of the Princess of Judea and the death of John the Baptist

Elektra: Greek tragedy, German orchestration. Blood everywhere.

Der Rosenkavalier: A turn toward Mozartean comedy and Strauss' biggest stage success.

Ariadne auf Naxos: The ultimate "desert island" opera mixes Greek drama and Italian commedia dell'arte

Die Frau ohne Schatten: A "quest" opera: think Die Zauberflöte on a Wagnerian scale.

Arabella: Another Viennese comedy, bittersweet and lovely.

Capriccio: Strauss' last opera is a meditation on the nature of opera itself.

If you voted for Giuseppe Verdi or Giacomo Puccini, they will both be covered in future blog installments. As of this writing, the plan is for seven (or ten) Strauss operas, followed by the early operas of Verdi (Nabucco through La Traviata) the major works of Puccini Manon Lescaut to Turandot) and finally, the late operas of Verdi (Simon Boccanegra to Falstaff. Yes there are gaps in that list.) That's the plan as of this writing but things could of course change. 

Opera Review: The Girl Who Has (Almost) Everything

Patricia Racette brings her Salome to the Met.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

A head in the opera business: Patricia Racette holds the severed head of Jokaanan (John the Baptist)
in the climactic scene of Salome. Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

When the Metropolitan Opera announces a cast change in the weeks leading up to an important mid-season revival, opera critics sometimes get nervous. (Your humble blogger is no exception.) At the Met on Monday night where the company's first 2016 performance of the Richard Strauss shocker  Salome was about to take place, a sense of foreboding, even trepidation hung over New York's largest opera house. Patrons crossing the plaza were unusually subdued. This revival (originally meant to feature soprano Catherine Naglestad) now starred a familiar Met trouper: soprano Patricia Racette. Ms. Racette, who has been acclaimed in past seasons but more hit-and-miss in recent years, had never sung this role before in New York.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Salome

The opera that made Richard Strauss a household name and shocked the world.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Head-hunter: Patricia Racette is Salome in the Met's new revival of Strauss' opera.
Photo © San Antonio Opera.

Salome is a white-knuckle ride down the road of excess, leading not to the palace of wisdom but to depravity and death. And yes the Met has scheduled performances of it right around the holidays.

2014 In Review: The Five Best Opera Performances

Severed heads and demonic visitors made for an entertaining year.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Depravity: Salome (Camilla Nylund) with the head of Jokanaan (Alan Held)

at the climax of Salome at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

Photo by  Dominic M. Mercier © 2014 Opera Philadelphia/The Philadelphia Orchestra

Opera may be the trickiest of all art forms but it nonetheless remains the beating and sometimes bleeding heart of this blog. And this year, there haven't been quite as many opera reviews...but there have been some most impressive performances. Here's a look at 2014 in opera with the five best things I saw appearing below in chronological order.

Opera Review: Death From Above

The Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia team up for Salome.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Depravity: Salome (Camilla Nylund) with the head of Jokanaan (Alan Held)
at the climax of Salome at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.
Photo by  Dominic M. Mercier © 2014 Opera Philadelphia/The Philadelphia Orchestra

In a year celebrating the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss, the most exciting concert event of the spring season was the premiere last night of Salome in Philadelphia. Strauss' opera was presented in a new semi-stage production by Kevin Newbury. This was a first-time collaboration between Opera Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Orchestra's music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. With an imaginative staging and an all-star cast, this was a riveting performance that explored this blood-drenched opera in great and sometimes uncomfortable depths.

Festival Preview: The Ringstrasse Cycle

Carnegie Hall opens Vienna: City of Dreams.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Carnegie Hall moves to the Ringstrasse for
Vienna: City of Dreams, this year's music festival at the famous venue.
Photo manipulation by Paul J. Pelkonen.

This week marks the opening of Vienna: City of Dreams, a three-week Carnegie Hall festival focusing on the artistic and musical legacy of the capital of Austria. In addition to six concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic (two of them featuring performers from the Vienna State Opera) the series includes lectures, films and an exploration of an age before World Wars, when Vienna was the crossroads and cultural capital of central Europe.

Opera Review: The Invisible Head

The Cleveland Orchestra mounts Salome at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul Pelkonen

The girl who has everything: soprano Nina Stemme.
Photo © EMI Classics.

The finest opera performance of the spring 2012 season in New York was at Carnegie Hall last night, when the Cleveland Orchestra presented a complete performance of Richard Strauss' Salome, under their music director Franz Welser-Möst.

Salome needs little introduction. Strauss' first successful opera (he used to brag that it paid for his villa) uses the composer's stunning orchestral gifts to bring the story of the Princess Salome and her unhealthy obsession with Jokaanan (John the Baptist) to vivid life. In a concert setting though, the traditional props: Herod's death-ring, the executioner's sword, and the prophet's bloody, severed head are invisible. It is up to the orchestra to tell the story.

Mr. Welser-Möst, who also serves as music director of the Vienna State Opera, accomplished an astonishing effect in this performance. Somehow, his Cleveland players sounded "Viennese", putting a lilt under strings and winds, and driving the work with a light, frothy texture. The big brass themes for Jokaanan (John the Baptist) were played with sonorous beauty, and the vague Orientalisms of the Dance of the Seven Veils appeared in sharp relief.

Another Opening, Another Season, Another Show

Philharmonic opens with concert, free dress rehearsal.

The diva: Deborah Voigt sings at the
New York Philharmonic on Wed.

The New York Philharmonic season opens on Wednesday night, with a concert featuring Deborah Voigt singing "Dich, teure halle" from Wagner's Tannhäuser and the final scene of Richard Strauss' Salome. Alan Gilbert will conduct. 

Tomorrow morning at 8am, the Philharmonic will make tickets available for the orchestra's open rehearsal at 9:45am. Fans wishing to attend may line up in Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza in order to get tickets. Sponsored by Credit Suisse, the open rehearsal will feature a complete performance of that evening's concert. 

Music lovers lining up for tickets will also be elegible to receive an ITunes download card containing excerpts from last year's performances of Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Some lucky fans will also receive IPod Shuffles, pre-loaded with the orchestra's performance of the Brahms Fourth Symphony, conducted by Alan Gilbert.

The concert, which also includes two pieces by American composer Samuel Barber will be broadcast (with tape delay) at 8pm on Wednesday night. The performances will be shown on PBS as part of the Live from Lincoln Center series, and will also be carried on WQXR 105.9FM and as a live audio webstream on WQXR.org.

The Philharmonic's subscription season begins on Thursday evening with encore performances of Gustav Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, featured in the ensemble's Sept. 10 concert honoring the first responders, survivors and deceased of the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Alan Gilbert conducts. 

For further information and tickets to the New York Philharmonic, visit NYPhil.org.

DVD Review: The Finnish Flash

Salome from the Met with Karita Mattila.
by Paul Pelkonen

Femme fatale: Karita Mattila as Salome.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2008 The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera has released this fine 2008 performance of Richard Strauss' Salome as part of a Sony series of Met Live in HD broadcasts, now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. Karita Mattila is the title role--the princess of Judea who does the most famous strip-tease in history in exchange for the head of Jokaanan (John the Baptist.)

The Finnish soprano is a slinky, blonde force of nature in this production, soaring to Strauss' glittering vocal peaks and meeting all the physical challenges of the role. Playful at first, monstrous at the end, her Salome is a little girl gone very wrong. And yes, she does the Dance of the Seven Veils herself, although the camera cuts away (to a thrilled Herod) at the moment when she bares all.

The object of her desire is fellow Finn Juha Uusitalo. This is a voice and star in development. His rich, dark bass has resonance and power, and much potential. However, his Jokaanan sounds better when echoing out of the cistern. He produces a vibrato which grows more pronounced as the role goes on, and is most noticeable when Jokaanan curses Salome. Kim Begley is a reliable, experienced Herod in the late stages of his career. Ildikó Komlóski is a large-voiced, if unsteady Herodias. Joseph Kaiser displays a fine, light tenor as Narraboth.


Ms. Mattila's finest moments come after the Veils, when she floats her first "den kopf des Jokaanan" with a pianissimo high note, then plunging into the depths for the sprechstimme phrases where she demands the head. She turns on the power in the final scene, singing to the severed head with warmth and passion, scaling those forbidding high notes in a fearless performance.

Jürgen Flimm's production re-imagines the work as a cocktail party at the end of the world, against a backdrop of 20th century doo-wop archictecture. A scaffold and mine-shaft splits the middle of the stage. From this, a rusted, metal dumb-waiter arises, revealing the bound, blindfolded, and later, beheaded Jokaanan--without his body. This is an effective moment.

This was an early Live in HD effort, and the opportunity to see this particular opera close-up (very close up) lends the drama a whole new dimension. It appears that the recording team was still learning where to put the microphones, and the singers' breathing is audible. (This is particularly disturbing when Ms. Mattila has kissed the bloody head.) The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is in exceptional form, led by Patrick Summers in a bravura performance.

The Roots of Horror

Richard Strauss and the 20th Century.
"A viper in my bosom." That is how Kaiser Wilhelm II described Richard Strauss, following the 1905 premiere of the shocking, bloody opera Salome. In 1909, he offended the ears of English monarch George V with the slashing score of Elektra. Upon hearing a 'selection of themes' played by the Buckingham Palace band, the King sent out his major-domo with instructions that the music was "never to be repeated."

Fraught with tension, atonality, brilliant orchestral effects and bloody climaxes, Salome and her sister Elektra are the most notorious among Strauss's 15 operas. These two one-act dramas each laid the musical framework for much of the 20th century, particularly the horror-movie scores of Hollywood composers like Bernard Herrmann (Psycho), John Williams (Jaws) and Wendy Carlos (The Shining).

Strauss used atonal harmonies, minor-key chords and dark, menacing figures in the woodwinds to create an atmosphere of depravity, decay and dread. Salome is all orchestral color and faux-Oriental shimmer, until Jokaanan (John the Baptist) gets decapitated. His head is then served to the title character as a reward for the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Elektra is built from heavy, monolithic chords with slithering strings and winds that preface the matricidal revenge of Elektra's axe-wieding brother Orestes. Composers in Hollywood took inspiration from Strauss, culminating in Bernard Hermann's use of shrieking violins in Psycho as Janet Leigh is murdered. The idea was borrowed from Salome, where scraped double basses evoke the sawing noises as the prophet Jokaanan (literally) loses his head.

Two excellent recordings made by Birgit Nilsson, Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic provide the best opportunity to hear these "shock operas" in all their glory. Each set was recently remastered and reissued as part of Decca's mid-priced The Originals series, and they sound (nearly) as good as the original vinyl. Nilsson is the ideal singer for both operas.

In Salome it is no insult to say that she is surrounded by an appropriate freak-show cast, featuring the twisted Herod of Gerhard Stolze. The Elektra features a demented performance by Regina Resnik as the heroine's mother, Klytaemnestra.

Both were recorded using the much-ballyhooed "Sonicstage" stereo technique developed by John Culshaw for the famous Decca recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle. They are must-haves for Strauss aficionadoes and horror fans alike.

Georg Solti and producer John Culshaw. Photo © Decca.

Opera Buff: The Met Revives Salome

Karita Mattila as Salome. Photo by Ken Howard © 2004 The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera opened its regular season on Tuesday night with a dazzling revival of Salome starring Karita Mattila. The Finnish soprano rose admirably to the many challenges of the title role, navigating the dizzying heights and gut-churning low notes with ease. Her star turn was ably supported by a solid supporting cast and virtuso performances from the orchestra pit.

When this opera premiered, Strauss commented that the work called for a "16-year old princess with the voice of an Isolde". Both of those qualities are present in Ms. Mattila's performance. Hers is a confused, oversexed adolescent, a fascinating mix of kittenish need, raw sexual energy and outright female domination. For 100 minutes, she was the focus of attention from her first entry, tossing off high notes to the moon, pulling the audience along on the journey from teasing temptress to depraved necrophiliac.

From the opening clarinet glissando, Strauss' opera is a mass of contradictions. It starts almost innocently, flirtatiously, with this production (by Jürgen Flimm) portraying Herod's court as a 1950's Hollywood cocktail party. The only sour note at the soiree is the presence of that pesky prophet John the Baptist (newcomer Juha Uusitalo) imprisoned by Herod (Kim Begley) in a cistern.

Salome, Herod's stepdaughter becomes sexually fascinated with Jokaanan. She descends into dangerous obsession when he rejects her advances. She agrees to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils, and demands the holy man's head as payment. Horrified, Herod orders her killed as the curtain crashes down.

In his Metropolitan opera debut, Juha Uusitalo wass a fine, resonant Jokaanan, stoic in his interactions with the princess. Character tenor Kim Begley was a twitchy, neurotic Herod, shrill and panicked in the opera's most atonal passages, singing all of the difficult nuances of Strauss' score. His counterpart, Ildiko Komlosi, was an impressive, piercing Herodias, whose approval of her daughter quickly vanished into a drunken haze of disgust at the opera's end. Joseph Kaiser was a fine resonant Narraboth, giving lie to the old saying that Strauss didn't write good parts for tenors. Patrick Summers led the enormous pit forces wilth lyricism and taste, conducting the opera (as Strauss himself directed) "like Fairy Music."

As for the famous Dance, it was staged here as a gender-bending exercise in tease and denial with multiple male victims dancing support roles to Ms. Mattila. Doug Varone's choreography combined elements of ballet, lap-dancing and sheer bump-and-grind. And yes, curious opera-goers, Ms. Mattila goes the full monty in this performance, leaving her audience stunned. What was even more amazing was that after receiving the severed head, Mattila then let the life and sexual anima drain from her performance, becoming nothing more than a depraved necrophage with a severed head of her very own.