And now...Pigoletto!

Five minutes of Verdi, for my friend's birthday.

A young hopeful sings her first Aida at the Muppet Theater.
Image © 1980 Jim Henson Productions/CBS.

For your musical edification (and for the entertainment of a dear friend who is having her birthday today) we are proud to present The Muppetropolitan Opera's production of Pigoletto, a pastiche of Verdi, Wagner, and Bizet that's even more fun than The Enchanted Island.

Pigoletto stars Beverly Sills as Violetta. Her grace and good humor do credit to those of us who aspire to a higher art than spoon hanging.

Enjoy.

Footage from The Muppet Show: "Beverly Sills." © 1980 Jim Henson Productions/CBS.

DVD Review: The Red Sword of Courage

La Forza del Destino from Vienna.
by Paul Pelkonen

Pistol packin' Presiozilla (Nadia Kristeva) confronts Don Carlo (Carlos Álvarez)
in Act II of La Forza del Destino. Image © 2008 Vienna State Opera

Giuseppe Verdi's La Forza del Destino remains the most challenging of the composer's operas to produce successfully. With a huge story that sprawls across two countries and many different locations, this attempt to completely destroy the dramatic concept of Aristotelian unity can be a director's nightmare. On this DVD from the Vienna State Opera, (filmed on March 1, 2008) British director David Pountey offers some innovative solutions, drawing inspiration from the spare writing of Cormac McCarthy. and the opera's wartime setting.

The production, designed by Richard Hudson, places most of the action on a unit set, a white rotating plinth with a door at one end. This unit does heavy duty as bed-chamber, tavern, monastery and battlefield as needed. In the last scene, it rotates one last time to become the area before Leonora's cave, with a door at one end the gateway to sanctuary and redemption.  A high scaffolding surrounds the action, providing different acting surfaces for the tavern scene and the battlefields of Act III.

Blood-red swords (indications of the coming fight between Don Alvaro and Don Carlo) are a recurring motif), doubling as crosses. Bodies hang from the scaffold as a grisly chandelier. Images of war and blood are projected on the action, which might have looked better in the theater than on video. The costumes move between Westerns and 20th century military dress, with the old fascist colors of red, white and black predominating.

Concert Review: The Phoenix Force

The St. Louis Symphony returns to Carnegie Hall. 

by Paul Pelkonen

The "Phoenix Force" from Classic X-Men No. 8. 
Art by John Bolton. © 1988 Marvel Comics. 
Licensed through Wikipedia.

Founded in 1880, the  St. Louis Symphony is the second-oldest major American orchestra. But in today's classical music world, the accolades and exposure enjoyed by the "Big Five" continues to elude the ensemble from the Gateway City. 

On Saturday night, the orchestra made its annual visit to Carnegie Hall, under the baton of current music director David Robertson. The program featured early works by Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, and the New York premiere of Quatre Instants, (Four Instances) a song cycle by current Carnegie Hall composer-in-residence Kaija Saariaho. 

The concert opened with Printemps, an early example of Debussy's innovative approach to tonality. This 15-minute tone poem (originally created for the piano) finds the young composer trying to shrug off the effect of the flowery perfumes of Wagner's Parsifal. With mysterious, minor-key ninth chords and a solo flute that presages the latter adventures of a certain faun, the composer succeeded. 

Ms. Saariaho's song cycle uses French texts (instead of her native Finnish) to paint four images of the different stages of a relationship. The songs, with words by Amin Maalouf, were sung to thrilling effect by Karita Mattila, the Finnish soprano whose searing delivery and magnetic stage presence made each chanson a probing, psychological journey. Attente used water imagery to project the coming instability. Doleur was a picture of self-castigation. And Parfum de l'instant had a smoky, atmospheric texture of need and regret.

The sparse orchestral textures and innovative accompaniment built to a climax with Résonances, the last of the four songs. Here, soprano, poet and composer brought back themes from the three previous songs, creating a tragic portrait of a shattered heart. Mr. Robertson proved an expert collaborator, working closely with the singer to deliver the maximum emotional impact of each piece.

The second half of the concert featured a full performance of The Firebird, the ballet score that made Igor Stravinsky a household name. Mr. Robertson led a slow, atmospheric account of the score, letting the instrumental textures shimmer and the woodwinds pop out for the occasional solo. This was Stravinsky's music at its most romantic, with the influence of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov clearly heard.

With its fortissimo sections--particularly the two frenzied dances of Katschei the Immortal--this Firebird spread its wings and burst into full flame. The dances were played with rude, primal energy. Offstage brass (placed in the lower balcony) added to the enveloping wall of sonic power. The bright acoustic of Carnegie Hall seemed to surround and engulf the listener.

The famous final section, where Stravinsky resolves plot and tonality with a simple, descending figure for French horn, swelled with redemptive power. Mr. Robertson brought in the strings, creating an upswelling of emotion. As the final chords crashed down, the audience rose in a ten-minute standing ovation. This superb orchestra had earned it.

Concert Review: La Nouvelle Baton

Stéphane Denève leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Not James Levine: Conductor Stéphane Denève.
Photo by Drew Farrell © 2011 IMG Artists.

On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, the venerable Boston Symphony Orchestra were led by a stockily built conductor with glasses and a great mass of frizzy hair.

No, it wasn't James Levine.

The conductor was Stéphane Denève, a French maestro who is among the parade of fine conductors that this orchestra has assembled following Mr. Levine's 2011 decision to step down as the BSO's music director. He is currently the head of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. This concert marked Mr. Denève's Carnegie Hall debut.

The program (originally planned by Mr. Levine) presented a triptych of 20th century compositions. It opened with a  finely detailed account of Maurice Ravel's "Ma Mere L'Oye," a suite based on the children's tales of Mother Goose. The opening pages were played at a snail's pace, stretching the fine web of orchestral fabric into a lucid, gossamer sound.

Mr. Deneve focused on the detail and beauty of Ravel's orchestration, whether getting lost in the woods with Tom Thumb or exploring the courtship of Beauty and the Beast. By placing the basses on stage left, the conductor created a spatial effect between those instruments and the contrabassoon representing the Beast. The final Magic Garden opened with ethereal sounds in the strings and wind before rising to its climax on a mighty swell of sound.

The violins, violas and cellos left the stage for the Concerto for Piano and Winds, featuring soloist Peter Serkin. Mr. Serkin is a skilled interpreter of this music, and has been playing Stravinsky concertos with some regularity this season. Here, his steel-fingered approach to the music locked in with Mr. Deneve's conducting to create a tense, terse performance.

The energy of the Stravinsky piece carried into this performance of the Fifth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. This is one of the composer's most enduring and popular works. And it should be: Shostakovich wrote it after an article in Pravda appeared attacking his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The editorial was written in response to the opera, which had offended Josef Stalin.

The attack article appeared in January of 1936. Shostakovich had just finished his radical three-movement Fourth Symphony and had begun rehearsing the new work. Fearing for his life, the composer locked his new work away (it emerged in 1961) and set to work on the Fifth. The result is a conventional, but potent four-movement symphony on a huge scale: a concert hall favorite that allows a great orchestra to show its quality.

Mr. Denève brought a granite-like weight to the symphony, carving sturdy blocks of sound. In turn, they supported ornate sculptures of woodwind and strings. This is Shostakovich at his most tonal, moving between granite-like chords representing the heroism of the socialist struggle and stark, confessional passages, most notably a long, anguished Largo that allowed the composer to bare his soul for all the world to hear.

Under Mr. Denève, the Boston forces presented a powerful reading of this score, with tight rhythms, burly brass and respect for the complexity of the composer's musical vision. The French conductor was active on the podium, urging the heavy brass passages forward in the early passages and guiding the first violins with a crook of fingers or a "stop" gesture with his left hand. Tempos were leisurely in the slow movement, but the brassy finale had muscle and drive.