Opera Review: They Could Be Royals

Amore Opera throws Verdi's Masked Ball.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A throne of games: Tenor José Heredia (center, prone) dies at the end of Un ballo in Maschera/
hoto by Ashley Becker © 2019 Amore Opera.

The Amore Opera ended its tenth season on Sunday afternoon with a performance of Un Ballo in Maschera. Of Verdi's mature operas, Ballo is unique. It is closer to French comic opera in style than anything else the composer wrote, even if it follows the musical conventions of Italian opera with only a sprinkling of French flavor in its score. The text is in Italian, and the musical style is late Verdi, with an almost-Wagnerian use of repeated themes attached to its characters. Although it has a tragic ending, there is am airy lightness to the music and the stage action, which frames a simple love triangle against a wrenching political assassination.

Opera Review: An Old Cuckold (with Horns on His Head)

Ambrogio Maestri returns as the Met's Falstaff.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Va, vecchio John: Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) gives a lesson in personnel management to
Bardolfo (Keith Jameson) and Pistola (Richard Bernstein) in Verdi's Falstaff.
Photo by Karen Almond © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera.

"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.

Opera Review: The Final Stand of the Old Kingdom

The Met revives the Sonja Frisell Aida (probably) for the last time.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Dolora Zajick (kneeling) begs for mercy in Act IV of Verdi's Aida.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera.

Everything ends, even in the world of opera. On Monday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened what is most likely the final run of its thirty-year-old production of Verdi's Aida. (A new staging by Michael Mayer is planned for Opening Night in 2020.) This revival features a new Aida, the house debut of American soprano Kristin Lewis who has sung the role with some success in Vienna and Naples. Opposite her was tenor Yonghoon Lee and mezzo Dolora Zajick, who has been singing the role of the Egyptian princess Amneris in this same staging for thirty seasons.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Aida

A new singer debuts in Verdi's grandest opera. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Met ballet corps gets one last dance in Aida.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2018 the Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi's "Egyptian business" complete with a huge chorus and...Kristin Lewis? The soprano takes over the first run of dates of this revival. This is your last chance to experience the worn but  treasured Sonja Frisell production, which is due for replacement in a new production by Michael Mayer. He's the Broadway director who set Rigoletto in a Vegas casino. We here at Superconductor wonder if his new staging will be set at the Sands, the Sahara or the Desert Inn?

Opera Review: Going For the Throat

Stuart Skelton debuts in Otello.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

There's been a nasty cold rampaging around New York this month. It struck down your faithful correspondent last week, and also afflicted tenor Stuart Skelton, star of the Met's revival of Verdi's Otello. The tenor, acclaimed for his portrayal of Wagner heroes, was scheduled to sing the role for the first time at the Met last Friday, but it wasn't until Monday night that the big man felt well enough to appear. This revival of the Met's season-opening 2015 production featured Mr. Skelton opposite two of that show's stars: soprano Sonya Yoncheva as Desdemona and baritone Zeljko Lučić as the conniving Iago.

Opera Review: Never Send Flowers

The Met uncorks its new La Traviata.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Soprano Diana Damrau and her four-legged friend in the new Metropolitan Opera
production of La Traviata. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

Ask the typical Metropolitan Opera-goer which productions were liked least  in the last decade, and you'll get two answers: One, Michael Mayer's 2013 production of Rigoletto, which moved that drama to 1960s Las Vegas. Two, the 2010 La Traviata by Willy Decker, who set the opera in a sterile white space dominated by a gigantic clock, a heavy metaphor for the heroine Violetta's impending death from tuberculosis. To replace Mr. Decker's production, Met general manager Peter Gelb brought back Mr. Mayer. His assignment: to create a more congenial setting for the death of Verdi's heroine, one  would do less to offend the delicate sensibilities of the audience.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Otello

Gustavo Dudamel makes his Met debut. There's singing, too.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Baritone Željko Lučic returns as the evil Iago from Verdi's Otello.
Photo © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi's tragedy returns to the Met stage for a short run of performances. This is the first revival of the Met's 2015 production of Verdi's opera. Otello is one of the hottest tickets of the early winter, mostly because of who's conducting....

Metropolitan Opera Preview: La Traviata

The Met appeases its audience with a new, traditional staging of Verdi's tragic masterpiece.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Juan Diego Floréz and Diana Damrau in the climax of the Brindisi from Act I of La Traviata.
Image © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

Michael Mayer, the director who put Verdi's Rigoletto on the Vegas strip, offers his vision of La Traviata, a staid staging of the composer's tragedy, set in good old 1853. Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Floréz star.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Rigoletto

Verdi's great tragedy returns for another round at the Vegas tables.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The next whiskey bar: George Gagnifze knocks one back as Rigoletto.
Photo by Richard Termine © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi's tragedy of a hunchback laboring under a curse and the tyrannical rule of his philandering boss, presented here in the strange disguise of two entertainers working in a rug joint on the Las Vegas Strip. Here, the titular jester is an insult comic á la Don Rickles, and his boss is a lounge lizard singer in the mode of Frank Sinatra.

Festival Preview: The Met Live in HD Summer Festival 2018

The Met Live in HD festival Marx the spot with ten operas and a classic screwball comedy.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

That ain't peanuts: Groucho is open for business in a scene from A Night at the Opera
© 1935 Universal Pictures.

As a celebration of opera (and an opportunity for marketing the Metropolitan Opera to the city at large) you can't beat the Met's Live in HD Film Festival. This eleven-evening free event has become a hallmark of the Peter Gelb era at the Met. It allows the revisiting of old favorites or the experience, for the bold opera novice, of something entierey new.

The Verdi Project: Aida

Love, warfare, intrigue and oh yes, the pyramids.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A performance of Aida in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, March 2018.

Throughout his career, Giuseppe Verdi was determined to follow in the footsteps of other Italian composers (most notably Rossini and Donizetti) and conquer the Parisian stage. However, his attempts at grand opera: Jerusalemme, Les vepres Sicilienes and Don Carlos were met with indifference. It was with Aida, set to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni that Verdi would incorporate the lessons of grand opera in a work that combines private anguish and public spectacle and still packs opera houses today.

Great Opera Performances: Spring 2018

Here's the best of the best from the second half of the season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This was an incredibly busy and fascinating few months in the New York opera community. Big houses like the Met sailed forth with good efforts even as they found themselves in a swirling sea of scandal. The Prototype Festival had a strong showing, and a performance of Tristan und Isolde gave compelling reasons to travel to Cleveland, Ohio. Here's the best of 2018 so far.

Concert Review: A String of Pearls

Harlem Chamber Players celebrate a decade with Harlem Songfest.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Harlem Chamber Players (above) conductor David Gilbert
and five fine singers celebrated ten years of music at Miller Theater.

It was billed as Harlem Songfest, but the season-ending tenth anniversary concert of the Harlem Chamber Players was more in the nature of an operatic gala: albeit one on a very modest scale. The celebration, a mix of Verdi, Mozart, Bizet and other operatic favorites was held at the Miller Theater on Friday evening, celebrating the good works of this excellent community orchestra that calls northern Manhattan its home.

The Verdi Project: Don Carlos

Verdi's last opera for Paris has a complicated history.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Troubled youth: the not-so-youthful Placido Domingo as Verdi's Don Carlos.
Photo © 1982 The Metropolitan Opera.

After the experience of Un Ballo in Maschera, Giuseppe Verdi found himself increasingly withdrawn from the world of opera. His hiatus was interrupted for the commissioning and premiere of La Forza del Destino, but the problems surrounding that opera did not encourage him to continue composing. However, he received a commission for the Paris Opera, to write a five-act grand opera in French for the 1866. That opera would be Don Carlos, and its genesis would be the most difficult of any major Verdi work.

The Verdi Project: La Forza del Destino

The one where everybody (pretty much) dies.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bang: Verdi's La Forza del Destino opens with an accidental domestic shooting.
Art by Don Falcone.

Following the premiere of Un Ballo in Maschera, Verdi received a commission from the Imperial Russian Opera in St. Petersburg. For a subject, he came up with Don Alvaro, o La Fuerza del Sino, a Spanish play by the Duke of Rivas. This would premiere in Russia in 1862 as La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny.") . It was a success but performances of the opera in Italy (retitled "Don Alvaro") were met with indifference.

The Verdi Project: Un ballo in Maschera

Giuseppe Verdi versus the censors of Naples.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Verdi (right) confronts an anonymous Neopolitan censor over the libretto to Un ballo in Maschera.
The original title Una vendetta in domino is visible. Image from 1857 by Delfico.

"Don't forget. I've got tickets for the opera tonight for Un ballo in maschera."
"Oh, stuff Un ballo in maschera!" -- John Mortimer

After the failure of the 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra, Verdi was looking for an easy success. He thought he had found it with Un Ballo in Maschera, a libretto by Antonio Somma that was itself an adaptation of an older libretto by Eugéne Scribe. Verdi had worked with that legendary (and well-named) Scribe on Les vepres sicillienes. The grand old man of the Paris Opera was the most successful librettist in Europe since Pietro Metastasio. What could go wrong?

The Verdi Project: Simon Boccanegra

Verdi's most political opera gets it right...eventually.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The digital Doge: Simon Boccanegra as he appears in the video game
Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World. Image © 2010 Firaxis Games.

Not every great opera is a success out of the box. La Traviata is one of those major works that bombed on opening night. But that's nothing compared to the struggles that Simon Boccanegra faced on its long and torturous path into the standard operatic repertory. Verdi's eighteenth opera was a failure at its 1857 premiere. It went through heavy revisions in 1881. Those extensive revisions marked Verdi's first collaboration with librettist and composer Arrigo Boito, with whom he would later create Otello and Falstaff. The title role is one of the pillars of the baritone repertory.

The Verdi Project: Il Trovatore

Sometimes too much popularity can be a bad thing.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Metropolitan Opera does the Anvil Chorus in the David Macvicar production of Il Trovatore.
Image © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

There is no opera that needs defending more than Il Trovatore. Verdi's eighteenth opera burst upon thestage at the Teatro Apollo in Rome like a cannon shot in 1853. It was the second of the operas still referred to as Big Three, following Rigoletto and preceding La Traviata and it quickly earned a place as one of his most popular and reliable stage works. It has some of Verdi's best tunes. It was brilliant, terrifying and original. It played everywhere.

And then came the Marx Brothers.

Opera Review: The Passing of the Torch

The Met's Luisa Miller shows a company in transition.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Take my daughter, please: Sonya Yoncheva, Placido Domingo and Piotr Beczala in Luisa Miller.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera's revival of its 2001 production of Luisa Miller looks backwards and forwards at once. It features Placido Domingo singing the latest in a line of Verdi baritone roles that the aging tenor has used to extend his already distinguished career. (It was also supposed to reunite the singer with James Levine, but the conductor's firing due to repeated accusations of sexual misconduct by multiple parties spoiled that happy event.) It looks forward in that its two leads, Piotr Beczala and Sondra Yoncheva, represent the cutting edge of a new generation of opera singers that are having their well-deserved moment in the spotlight.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Luisa Miller

Placido Domingo returns (but not as the tenor lead) in Verdi's opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

We're the Millers: Sonya Yoncheva (right) is Luisa and Placido Domingo is her ill-starred father in Verdi's Luisa Miller.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera marketing department is trumpeting that this year's revival of Luisa Miller features soprano Sonya Yoncheva paired with a very familiar name: Placido Domingo. However, those materials neglect to mention that Mr. Domingo is not playing Rodolfo, the handsome young hero in Verdi's Luisa Miller, but rather the role of Luisa's father, a part usually taken by a baritone of the first rank.