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.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Falstaff

Shakespeare's fat knight goes a-courtin' in Windsor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Va, vecchio Ambrogio! Ambrogio Maestri returns to the role of Falstaff at the Met.
Photo © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

The big fella is back. Ambrogio Maestri revives his acclaimed portrayal of Jack Falstaff in this welcome revival of the Robert Carsen  production.

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.

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....

The Verdi Project: Falstaff

The 87-year old composer gets the last laugh with his last opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Falstaff in the Laundry Basket by Johann Heinrich Füssli, painted in 1792.

(Ed. note: This is the last installment in The Verdi Project, Superconductor's deep dive into the major operas of Giuseppe Verdi. This project started with Nabucco back in February of this year and has covered fourteen (half) of the composer's twenty-eight operas. In coming weeks, Superconductor will finish The Richard Strauss Project and then figure out what composer is next.)

Sometimes the end is the beginning and sometimes the beginning is the end. In order to understand Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi's final opera and only successful comedy, one must look back to the year 1840 when the composer than a young man had a miserable failure at La Scala with Un Giorno di Regno, his second opera. This was a forgettable comedy of mistaken identities surrounding the royal court of Poland. Today, Un Giorno di Regno is infrequently revived, usually as part of "marathon" performances of all twenty-eight Verdi operas.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Roméo et Juliette

Charles Castronovo and Ailyn Perez are Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Everybody onstage: the masquerade ball from Roméo et Juliette.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

The news is that tenor Bryan Hymel has withdrawn from this run of Romeo et Juliette, the evergreen Charles Gounod adaptation of Shakespeare's play. Charles Castronovo is his replacement, but he's been replaced by Andrea Shin in a plague that seems to only affect members of the House of Montague.  Ailyn Perez, fresh off a mostly successful run in the Massenet chestnut Thaïs, is his Juliet. Placido Domingo conducts this first revival of the Met's staging by Bart Sher.

Opera Review: The Case for a Basket

Juilliard Opera takes on Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Falstaff in the Basket by Henry Fuseli
© Die Kunsthaus, Zurich

When Giuseppe Verdi ended his career with Falstaff, he was not the first composer to take on Shakespeare's corpulent knight as an operatic subject. In 1847, the mostly forgotten Otto Nicolai wrote Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, a singspiel of considerable flexibility and charm.  Nicolai's score, which sets Sir John's amorous adventures to an enchanting series of Viennese waltzes and florid writing for a large cast, is being staged this weekend at Juilliard, in the intimate  Willson Theateron the conservatory's third floor. It opened Wednesday night.

Opera Review: It Ain't Exactly Shakespeare

Loft Opera mounts the Rossini Otello.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A word before you go: Otello (Bernard Holcomb) assaults Desdemona (Cecilia Lopez) in Rossini's opera.
Photo by Robert Altman for LoftOpera.

LoftOpera opened its 2017 season last night, choosing LightSpace Studio, a high-ceilinged, white-walled warehouse on Flushing Avenue in Bushwick as the venue for the company's first staging of Rossini's Otello. Yes, you read that right. There's a (now mostly forgotten) Rossini version of this Shakespeare story, written back in 1816 and a pinnacle of the repertory before it was eclipsed by the Giuseppe Verdi opera from 1887. This performance marked the first New York staging in forty years.

Opera Review: Blood and Chocolate

LoftOpera mounts Verdi's Macbeth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Uneasy lies the head: Macbeth (Craig Irvin, center)
sees Banco's ghost in Verdi's Macbeth. 
Photo by Robert Altman © 2016 LoftOpera.

LoftOpera, that entertaining and ambitious company co-founded by step-siblings Brianna Maury and Daniel Ellis-Ferris has capped their 2016 season with their first grand opera, a new production of Verdi's Macbeth. For this show, Loft made an inspired if chilly choice, a long, high, recently renovated industrial space located in the heart of Brooklyn Navy Yard. The building will soon to be home to the Mast Brothers' new chocolate factory.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Otello

The first new Met production of the 2015-16 season returns.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The green-eyed monster: Iago (Željko Lučić, right) works his spell on Otello
(Aleksandrs Antonenko) in the Met's new production of Otello.Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Director Bart Sher steps away from the buffa comedies of Rossini and Donizetti to try his hand at Verdi's version of Shakespeare's tragedy. Aleksandrs Antonenko takes on the daunting title role in this new production, which opened the 2015-16 Met season. A review of opening night can be found here on Superconductor. Željko Lučić returns as Iago  and Hibla Gerzmava sings the role of Desdemona.

Opera Review: Heart of Glass

The Met opens with Bartlett Sher's new Otello.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The ocular proof: Iago (Željko Lučić, left) reminds Otello (Aleksandrs Antonenko)
why Verdi considered naming this opera Jago.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Verdi's Otello, which opened the company's 2015 season last night in a special gala performance, contains a preponderance of good directorial ideas, supporting a strong cast in this adaptation of Shakespeare's drama. This performance was broadcast live in Times Square on that crossing's giant television screens, and lost none of its power to shock and entertain despite having to compete with tourists, fire trucks, chattering desnudas and a street performer in an Elmo costume who stopped bothering said tourists long enough to watch the drama unfold.

Opera Review: Double Toil, Double Trouble

MSM Opera unearths Ernest Bloch's Macbeth
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Uneasy lies the head...Composer Ernst Bloch, creator of Macbeth. 
Photo © G. Schirmer, image alteration by the author. 

The ever-searching and ever curious musical minds that program operas for graduate level performers at Manhattan School of Music have really dug up a doozy. On Wednesday night, MSM presented artistic director Dona D. Vaughan's staging of Macbeth, an innovative adaptation of Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy by composer Ernst Bloch. This was the New York premiere of the opera in its original French text, and the first staging of the Bloch Macbeth in New York since 1973.

It was well worth the wait.

Concert Review: It's a Kind of Magic

The Orchestra of St. Luke's opens its 2014 at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pablo Heras-Casado. Photo by Josep Molina © 2014 Harmonia Mundi.

The Orchestra of St. Luke's marks four decades this year. They remain one of this city's most versatile ensembles, at home in everything from Mozart to Metallica. For their 2014 season opener at Carnegie Hall, principal conductor Pablo Heras-Casado designed a program that illustrated his ensemble's flexibility, featuring four different pieces in a jarring juxtaposition of styles. In the end, this program's combination of Purcell, Tchaikovsky, Dallapiccola and Mendelssohn, four different composers from different historical periods, proved unique and ultimately, satisfying.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Macbeth

The Met revives the Scottish tragedy (not Lucia) for Anna Netrebko. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A dame to kill for: a bewigged Anna Netrebko in Martin Kušej' Munich  Macbeth.
Photo © 2014 Bayerische Staatsoper.

The Metropolitan Opera is hoping that Giuseppe Verdi's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's bloody tragedy will translate into good box office gold by casting Russian superstar Anna Netrebko in the key role of Lady Macbeth. The soprano recently sang the role in Munich at the Bayerische Staatsoper.

Opera Review: Not the Jack You Know

Dell'Arte Opera presents Falstaff...by Antonio Salieri.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Windsor Forest in a wrestling singlet: Gary Ramsey (center) stars in Falstaff.
Photo by Brian Long © 2014 Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble.

Thanks to the 1984 Academy Award-winning film Amadeus, the composer Antonio Salieri is, to most people "the guy who killed Mozart."  Last week, the Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, currently in the middle of a festival celebrating operatic adaptations of the work of Shakespeare, chose to mount Salieri's 1799 opera Falstaff, ossia il tre Burle ("The Three Jokes"), providing some much needed healing for this unjustly ignored composer, whose forty operas lie mostly in the locked desk drawers of history.

Opera Review: The Real Housewives of Windsor

The Met unveils Robert Carsen's Falstaff.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hampered: Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri, center) seeks an exit in Act II of Verdi's comedy.
Helping him are Meg Page (Jennifer Jonson Cano, l.) and Mistress Quickly (Stephanie Blythe.)
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

Falstaff is unique. Verdi's last opera (and his lone successful comedy) arrived when the composer was 79 and still in full command of his powers. Yet despite its tunefulness, the score lacks the "big numbers" of Rigoletto, Aida and Otello, choosing to present the comedy as a complex dialogue between singers and orchestra. As a result, Falstaff, though a respected opera is considered an opera for connoisseurs, and appears only occasionally on the operatic stage.

Opera Review: East Side Story

The New York Opera Exchange presents Romeo et Juliette.
by Ellen Fishbein, special to Superconductor.

Kendra Berentsen (left) and Scott Ingham star in Romeo et Juliette.
Photo courtesy New York Opera Exchange.

On Sunday evening, the fledgling New York Opera Exchange explored French repertory with a charming production of Romeo et Juliette, the five-act adaptation of Shakespeare's play by composer Charles Gounod. The production was mounted at the Unitarian Church of All Souls on Lexington Avenue. Though beautiful, the space was a risky choice: sound resonated freely in the room, but so did  mistakes. A few hiccups in the overture gave way to a consistent performance from the orchestra, which navigated Gounod’s delicate dissonances smoothly under conductor David Liebowitz.

Opera Review: Goodfellows

The Met reawakens A Midsummer Night's Dream.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bottom at bay: Tytania (Kathleen Kim) charms a translated Nick Bottom
(Matthew Rose, with ass's head) in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The spirit of William Shakespeare was definitely evident in the Metropolitan Opera's current revival of its  Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, seen Tuesday night at Lincoln Center. This is the first presentation of the company's 1996 production (by Tim Albery and designer Antony MacDonald) in ten years. The occasion? The composer's 100th birthday, which falls on Nov. 22 of this year.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Very tragical mirth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Nick Bottom the Weaver (Peter Rose, with ass's head) confronts
the fairy folk in a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Image © 2002 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Met celebrates the legacy (and 100th birthday) of composer Benjamin Britten with his fantastical  comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, based on the beloved Shakespeare play.

Opera Review: Practical Magic

Thomas Adés' The Tempest opens at the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ariel--aerialist: Audrey Luna flies high in The Tempest.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

In a dreary Metropolitan Opera fall season dominated so far by (dull-to-competent) revivals, the New York premiere of Thomas Adés' opera The Tempest (seen from the very last row of the house on opening night) provides a sorely needed breath of musical and dramatic innovation.