Concert Review: Oedipus Rex at the Philharmonic

Valery Gergiev, looking priestly. Photo by Chris Lee.

Thursday night's installment of the New York Philharmonic's three-week festival The Russian Stravinsky featured a powerful performance of Oedipus Rex, the two-act "opera-oratorio" based on Sophocles' tragedy. With its unique structure short length and lack of dramatic action, Oedipus Rex is ideally suited to the concert stage. Mr. Gergiev used his characteristic, muscular approach to conducting this score. Although the balance of brass and chorus threatened at times to drown out the soloists, this was exciting music-making.

Anthony Dean Griffey and Waltraud Meier gave strong performances as Oedipus and Jocasta, the married King and Queen of Thebes who discover that they are actually mother and son. Mr. Griffey is an instinctive actor, even in the concert setting. He has a fine, ringing tenor that was well-suited to the note of false nobility that Stravinsky gives Oedipus before his downfall. Mr. Griffey's best moment though, was silent. When denying his guilt in Act I, he shifted, darted his eyes and looked Nixon-like in his guilt. Ms. Meier, the Wagnerian mezzo familiar from countless performances of Parsifal brought her steely, dramatic instrument to the short role of Jocasta. The rapid-fire duet between these two singers was one of the pleasures of the evening.



Oedipus Rex alternates Latin text with a Narration that moves the drama forward. In this case, Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons used his fine, Shakespearean voice to lend weight to the proceedings. He was aided by the all-male Mariinsky chorus and fine vocal soloists. Russian bass Ilya Bannik took the roles of Creon and the Messenger. His delivery of the news of Jocasta's death and Oedipus' self-blinding, backed by heavy chords in the brass and the response of the chorus, made a powerful close to the opera.

The concert opened with the rarely performed Le Roi d'Etoile, a Stravinsky work for chorus and orchestra that echoes the composer's admiration for the works of Claude Debussy. It was followed by the Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos as an exciting soloist. Mr.Kavakos showed great command of phrasing and Stravinsky's tricky rhythms, soaring through the four movements including the difficult final Capriccio. Met with rapturous applause, he returned and dazzled the audience with a violin transcription of the Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Spanish guitar virtuoso Francisco Tárrega.

Lyric Opera of Chicago Announces 2010-2011 Season

The Lyric Opera of Chicago has a slate of eight operas planned for next season. Under the baton of Music Director Sir Andrew Davis, the company will present a wide variety of works, from baroque Handel to romantic Verdi and Wagner. Here's a quick look at their planned season:

Packing heat: Deborah Voigt in La Fanciulla del WestMacbeth
Barbara Gaines directs this production of Verdi's adaptation of the Scottish play. Thomas Hampson plays the ambitious Thane who kills his way to the throne and then pays for it afterwards.


Carmen
Kate Aldrich, who has impressed at the Metropolitan Opera this season, brings her interpretation of Bizet's famous Gypsy to Chicago. Younghoon Lee sings Don José in the fall cast. Carmen returns in the spring, starring Nadia Krasteva and Brandon Jovanovich in the leading roles.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy stars David Daniels. The countertenor will soar to new heights as Oberon, King of the Faeries and master of the woodland realm. British bass Peter Rose is a bully Bottom.

Un Ballo in Maschera
Renata Scotto takes the director's chair in this production imported from the San Francisco Opera. Frank Lopardo, Sondra Radvanovsky and Mark Delevan form the love triangle at the core of Verdi's most romantic drama.

The Mikado
Wotan himself: James Morris puts down his spear and picks up a snicker-snee in this production of Gilbert and Sullivan's wittiest operetta.

La Fanciulla del West
Deborah Voigt sings what William Berger called "the most difficult role in Puccini". Minnie is a hard-riding whiskey-drinking girl of the Golden West, but she's an angel at heart. Want proof? The character is onstage for three hours but never gets an aria.

Lohengrin
Johann Botha catches a swan-drawn boat across Lake Michigan to sing the titular role in Wagner's famous drama. But sssh…you don't know what his name is, do you? Oh wait, it's on the marquee.

Hercules
David Daniels closes out the season in this presentation of Handel's heroic drama. Peter Sellers directs.

For more information about the Lyric Opera, visit their official website at LyricOpera.Org

And now...Eine Kleine Nichtmusik

For your listening displeasure, the work of P.D.Q. Bach


From the biographical sketch, by Professor Peter Schickele.

P.D.Q. Bach once said that his illustrious father gave him no training in music whatsoever, and it is one of the few things he said that we can believe without reservation. His rebelliousness was such, in fact, that he avoided music as much as possible until he was well into his thirties (as a teenager he did assist in the construction of the loudest instrument ever created, the pandemonium, but he wisely skipped town before the instrument’s completion, having sensed with uncanny accuracy, that the Pavilion of Glass was perhaps not the most felicitous location for the inaugural concert). But by the mid 1770s he realized that, given his last name, writing music was the easiest thing he could do, and he began composing the works that were to catapult him into obscurity.

This most mini musical life has been divided into three creative periods: the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition. The middle period was by far the longest of the three, and was characterized by a multiplicity of contrapuntal lines and a greater richness of harmony due to almost constant double vision. It was during this period that he emulated (i.e., stole from) the music of Haydn and Mozart, but his pathetic attempts to be au courant were no more successful than his pathetic attempts to be passé had been during the Initial Plunge; having to cope with the problems that accompany immense popularity was something P.D.Q. Bach managed to avoid. It has been said that the only original places in his music are those places where he forgot what he was stealing. And, since his memory was even shorter than his sightedness, he was in point of fact one of the most original composers ever to stumble along the musical pike.

DVD Review: Il Turco in Genoa

Simone Alaimo (with turban) and Myrtò Papatanasiu in Il Turco in Italia.

Written in 1814, Il Turco in Italia has always lived in the second rank of Rossini's comic operas. A follow-up to his wildly popular L'Italiana in Algeri, the opera bombed at its Rome premiere, and was rarely performed until 1954. Then, it was rediscovered by Maria Callas, who realized that the role of Fiorilla was perfectly suited to her voice. This live DVD from the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa preserves a "classic-style" Rossini staging, which was originally presented in 1983 to celebrate the composer's 100th birthday.

In fact, although this is a Rossini comedy, Turco is more of a dramma giocoso, a serious opera about love and marriage that has its comic moments. The titular Turk arrives in Italy looking for a new bride for his harem. He is torn between Zaide, a gypsy woman who was once part of his harem, and Fiorilla, a married woman who is the romantic focus of no less than three men: Selim, her husband Don Geronio, and Narciso, the ardent tenor. Eventually, she reunites with her husband, Zaide sails off with the Turk, and everyone is happy. But Rossini was also an expert at writing tragic opera too, and his attempts to fuse the two styles here make this a unique opera.


The proceedings are dominated by Simone Alaimo, a veteran bass with much experience in the comic operas of Rossini. As Selim, the title character, Alaimo manages to combine heartbreak and nobility. He sings the virtuoso arias--most of them in classic patter style, with precise diction and flair, racing up and down through the figures with ease. He is well complemented by Bruno di Simone as Don Geronio, and their duet in the second act is a highlight.

Myrtò Papatansiu takes Fiorilla (the Callas role) and does very well with it. Her Act II aria, "Squallida, veste e bruna" belongs in a tragic opera and reflects her real dilemma of being emotionally torn between three men. Antonella Nappa makes the most of the smaller role of Zaida. As Narciso, tenor Antonio Siragusa is a throwback to the old-fashioned tenors of the 19th century, singing with his head voice and using his instrument like a silver rapier. Jonathan Webb does a competent job in the pit, leading a traditional Rossini-sized orchestra. The overture, with its long solo played on what looked like an antique valved horn, is excellent.