Concert Review: Mister Lovejoy

David Robertson brings the Turangalîla-Symphonie to Juilliard.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

David Robertson leads the Juilliard Orchestra. Photo by Jennifer Taylor.

It is one of the seminal symphonic works of the 20th century but  Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie has always struggled to find its audience. Of massive length and requiring an army of skilled musicians, this hybrid of symphony and concerto has in the past cleared halls of would-be listeners or been avoided by concert subscribers altogether. On Friday night conductor David Robertson led the expanded forces of the Juilliard Orchestra in this huge ten-movement work. Despite the technical difficulty of music this was a performance brimming with love, joy and the enthusiasm of an orchestra come priced entirely of conservatory students.

Opera Review: Just a Small Town Girl

Emmeline takes off at Manhattan School of Music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Living in her lonely world: Blair Cagney as Emmeline.
Photo by Carol Rosegg for the Manhattan School of Music.

Composer Tobias Picker returned to his alma mater,  the Manhattan School of Music last week bringing a new staging of his first opera, Emmeline. A searing re-telling of the Oedipus myth among the hardscrabble folks of a small New England town, this opera helped put the Santa Fe Opera Festival on the map. Here, the work received a new staging from director Thaddeus Strassberger, and an update to the libretto to better reflect the troubled 21st century. Touches like home shopping channel footage and even texting (used brilliantly in the projected titles at one point made the whole show a reflection on the current screwed-up state of affairs in this country.

Opera Review: Nature Red in Tooth (and claw)

Manhattan School of Music presents a cunning little Vixen.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Right before the feathers fly: the Vixen Sharp-Ears (Shantal Martin, foreground)
gets ready to ravage a chorus of chickens. Photo courtesty Manhattan School of Music.

Adaptations of cartoons and comics as popular entertainment are now commonplace in popular culture. A hundred years ago, that form of entertainment was opera, and it was Moravian composer Leoš Janáček who had the idea of taking a popular children's comic strip from a Brno paper and making it into an opera. Příhody lišky Bystroušky (literally "The Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears", also known as "The Cunning Little Vixen" was way ahead of its time. On Thursday night, the Senior Opera Theater of Manhattan School of Music unveiled a new bare-bones staging of this challenging three-act opera (sung in English) with a cast of young singers applying themselves to recreating the woodland fantasy of this vivid, vital opera.

Opera Review: Après de La Belle Epoque

The Manhattan School of Music offers a French double bill.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Images related to L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (left) and Persée et Andromède
presented as a double bill this week by the Manhattan School of Music.

French opera in the 1920s was marked by a spirit of wild experimentation. Composers, shocked by the destruction of the First World War, explored subjects from childhood or Greek mythology in an attempt to reach some sort of musical truth. This week, the Manhattan School of Music presented a pair of these works from 1924: Jacques Ibert's Persée et Andromède and Maurice Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges, in the conservatory's final opera production of this current season.

Opera Review: Fezzes Are Cool

Juilliard Opera takes on Rossini's Il Turco in Italia.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hyesang Park as Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2014 The Juilliard School.

The Juilliard Opera opened its 2014 season this week with a new production of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, a genial comedy of manners that never caught fire with the opera-going public of the composer's day. Turco was viewed as an inferior sequel to the composer's wildly successful L'Italiana in Algeri and its libretto, chronicling the bed-hopping adventures of a licentious and married woman at a resort near Naples was considered immoral in Rossini's day. And it is a rarity: this was the first fully staged New York performance of the score since a New York City Opera production from 1978.