Metropolitan Opera Preview: La Fanciulla del West

Italian opera goes west...with Jonas Kaufmann.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Just a small-town girl: Eva-Marie Westbroek as Minnie in La Fanciulla del West.
Photo © 2018 Royal Opera House of Covent Garden.

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Eva-Marie Westbroek are reunited in Puccini's boiled spaghetti Western. This is the story of a barmaid and a bandit and their forbidden love against the spectacular backdrop of the California gold rush. It premiered at the Met in 1910. Beloved by connoisseurs, Fanciulla stands as one of the great Italian operas, and a work that is only revived occasionally. See it!

Opera Review: Lips Inc.

The New York City Opera resurrects L'Amore di Tre Re.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Skirt thing: tenor Raffaele Abete engages in some unlikely fetishism in L'Amore di Tre Re.
Photo © 2018 The New York City Opera.

The New York City Opera exists now through a strange disguise, as a kind of hybrid company presenting a few shows each year at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater and a few others at smaller spaces around New York. This week featured the company's first production in decades of Italo Montemezzi's  L'Amore di Tre Re, in a new staging by company general manager Michael Capasso. This opera is like a collision between every great love story: Tristan, Otello and Pelleas et Melisande packed into a lean ninety-minute score.

Opera Review: The Exes Mark the Spot

Vittorio Grigolo procrastinates through Les Contes d'Hoffmann.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Left behind: Stella (Anna Hartig, center) leaves Hoffmann (Vittorio Grigolo, left)
with the diabolical Lindorf (right) in the finale of Les contes d'Hoffmann.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

As a writer, it's hard not to have a soft spot for Les contes d'Hoffmann. No matter how many times this reviewer has seen it (ten), the final opera by Jacques Offenbach (English title: "The Tales of Hoffmann") never fails to move. Offenbach's opera, which was unfinished at the time of the composer's death, features the poet, composer and writer E.T.A. Hoffmann as the unwilling and unwitting protagonist of his own fantastical stories. He sits in a Munich tavern, drinking and telling tales of his past romantic affairs as he waits for his beloved Stella, an opera singer performing next door.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Les contes d'Hoffmann

Is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?
by Paul J. Pelkonen

I love you Miss Robot:  Erin Morley in a scene from Les contes d'Hoffmann.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Met revives Offenbach's final opera, a phantasmagorical tale about a writer trapped in stories of his own creation. Vittorio Grigolo is the hapless hero in this tragicomic classic.

Opera Review: A Girl with a Bad Reputation

Bard SummerScape presents Euryanthe.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hand jive: Euryanthe (Ellie Dehn) and Eglantine (Wendy Bryn Harmer) face off in
a scene from Weber's romantic opera Euryanthe. Photo by Cory Weaver © 2014 Bard SummerScape.

Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe has finally beaten the odds.

The opera, which is running at the Bard Festival as part of that institution's SummerScape series, has overcome a bad libretto, a hard-to-pronounce title (it's "Oy-ree-an-theh") and consignment to the yawning void reserved for German romantic operas that were written before the rise of Richard Wagner. These performances, conducted by Bard president Leon Botstein at the helm of the American Symphony Orchestra mark the first fully staged performances of the opera in the U.S. since a brief run at the Met in the 1914-15 season.

Opera Review: Taking the Plunge

Renée Fleming returns as Rusalka.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Her kisses can kill: Rusalka (Renée Fleming) woos the Prince (Piotr Beczala)
in Act III of Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

The title role of Rusalka, Antonín Dvořák's long-suffering aquatic sprite, has effectively belonged to soprano Renée Fleming for nearly two decades. From her first performances of the role at the Seattle Opera to the start of her reign in the Metropolitan Operas's handsome, elaborate staging, she has been inextricably linked with Dvořák's most successful opera.  Now, with the advent of the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD broadcasts, Ms. Fleming has plunged once more into Rusalka, with the goal of preserving her interpretation for posterity and eventual release on home video.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Rusalka

Renée Fleming returns to the water as a love-struck mermaid.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Fathoms below: Renée Fleming in the title role of Rusalka.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2009 The Metropolitan Opera.

The return of soprano Renée Fleming is always anticipated at the Metropolitan Opera. And here, she returns t the role that has become one of her signatures in the last 15 years: the title character in this revival of Antonin Dvořák's Rusalka.

The Top Five Storm Scenes in Opera

Something to read during Hurricane Irene!

Storm effects have always been an integral part of opera composition. Whether adding the effect of wind by a hand-turned drum or thunder with strategically placed metal sheets, the storm is a standard element of many dramatic works, and even comedies.

5) Britten: Second Sea Interlude from Peter Grimes

Benjamin Britten's opera about a misanthropic fisherman living in perpetual exile from a small English fishing village swims with powerful imagery of the vast oceans. The storm's fury is unleashed in the Second Interlude, which depicts the hero's struggle to reach his fishing hut during a ferocious storm.

4) Rossini: Temporale from Act II of Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Rossini worked storms into a number of his operas, including a memorable one in the overture to William Tell. Barbiere has one of his best comic tempests, starting with little stabs and drips in the strings before unleashing the full fury of the heavens (and the orchestra.) Although it can be played by a small orchestra, Rossini's brilliant writing packs a mean meteorological wallop. And like most summer rainstorms, it is over before it begins. 

3) Gluck: Introduction and Chorus from Act I of Iphigénie en Tauride

The great operatic reformer Christophe Willibald Gluck created the model for an orchestral tempest with the powerful overture of his second opera based on the tragic story of Iphigenia. The opera has no overture (another innovation) drawing the listener in with a few string chords that swell like clouds about to burst. When the storm breaks, the leading lady and her priestesses sing an evocation against soaring, chugging strings and rolls on the timpani, an effect later borrowed by Verdi for the opening scene of his Otello.

2) Wagner: Prelude to Act I of Die Walküre. 

The Ring has its share of stormy moments. But nothing is more impressive than this scene which depicts Wotan's conjured tempest chasing poor hapless Siegmund into the hut of his enemy. The heavy, descending figure carries the weight of the raindrops, and the Wagner tubas ring out with Donner's "He-da! He-da! He-do!" theme, which last appeared when the thunder god let out a bolt of lightning at the end of Das Rheingold. An perfect operatic storm.

1) Verdi: "Bella figlia dell'amore" (Quartet and Storm) from Act III of Rigoletto.

The third act of Rigoletto is the full flowering of the mature Verdi's genius. He creates a mighty storm with the simplest effect: a group of choristers in the orchestra pit, humming a wordless melody to create the effect of oncoming thunder and rising, gale-force winds. The storm serves as background to the great quartet (sung by the Duke, Maddalena, Sparafucile and Gilda) which ends in the leading lady's death at the hands of the assassin.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Prelude to Act I of Die Walküre.
© 2010 La Scala.