Opera Review: A Beard Too Far

Gotham Chamber Opera opens with a double bill by Martinů.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Me and my shadow: Jarett Ott (left) and Joseph Beutel (right) flank Jenna Seladie in Alexandre Bis.
Photo © 2014 Richard Termine, courtesy Gotham Chamber Opera.

On Tuesday night, the maverick Gotham Chamber Opera opened its fourteenth season at the Gerald Lynch Theater. The program: a pair of operas by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. Alexandre Bis (1937) and Comedy on the Bridge (1935) were written in those turbulent years before Nazi Germany marched troops into the relatively new nation of Czechoslovakia, an event which would force Martinů himself to escape, first to France and then to America in 1941. These one-act comedies burn with a nervous comic energy, reacting to the insanity of the 1930s with bursts of absurd humor. Under Neal Goren's baton, Martinů's excellent qualities as a composer came to the fore, giving New Yorkers a new appreciation of this composer.

Opera Review: Hell is Below Decks

The Lincoln Center Festival sends out The Passenger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The final tableau of The Passenger showing the split-level set.
Photo by Stephanie Berger for the Lincoln Center Festival © 2014.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg was a minor 20th century composer, best remembered for his association with Dmitri Shostakovich, his large output of string quartets and symphonies, and for his film score to Vinnie-Pukh, a distinctly Russian take on the children's story Winnie The Pooh. The Passenger may be his crowning achievement, a searing, intense opera that finds a German diplomat's wife having to confront her past as an overseer in the S.S. assigned to the concentration camp Auschwitz.

Concert Review: Life During Wartime

Valery Gergiev conducts Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The effects of war: Stalingrad in 1943 after the battle.
Image © 1943 RIAN Archive, licensed through Wikimedia Commons.

The protesters were absent on Friday night, as the Mariinsky Orchestra offered the second of three concerts at Carnegie Hall under the baton of music director Valery Gergiev. Friday's concert was an all-Shostakovich program, with music director Valery Gergiev choosing to highlight two very different works.

The Concerto for Trumpet, Piano and Strings (also in the catalogue as Piano Concerto No. 1) and the Symphony No. 8 stand ten years apart. (About the only thing they have in common is their key signature: C minor.) The concerto is a youthful, early work with the same manic energy that fills his opera The Nose. The Eighth is a war symphony, written in a safe haven deep in Russia as the Nazis advance was finally halted at the year-long Battle of Stalingrad.

Opera Review: Death Quits, Then Punks Hitler

Boston Lyric Opera takes on The Emperor of Atlantis.

Death plays chess: Kevin Burdette in The Emperor of Atlantis.
Photo by Jeffery Dunn © 2011 Boston Lyric Opera.

This week, the Boston Lyric Opera staged Der Kaiser von Atlantis, a powerful opera written in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Billed as The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits, this is a scintillating work by composer Viktor Ullmann. Ullmann, an Austrian composer whose teachers included Alexander von Zemlinsky, was sent to Auschwitz shortly after the first dress rehearsal.

The team of director David Schweizer and set designer Caleb Wertenbaker re-imagined the Calderwood Pavilion as a reclaimed disaster zone, its walls covered in duct-taped rolls of white plastic, the entire production lit by white work-lights. Audience members were greeted by uniformed, zombie-like members of the chorus, wearing dark suits and brassards with a mysterious red symbol on their sleeves. They droned: "Welcome to our performance. The venue is under repair. We apologize for any inconvenience. What is your name?"

(And yes, they even fooled a certain jaded New York opera critic.)