Opera Review: The Fast Track to Hell

Juilliard Opera ends its season with Don Giovanni.
by Paul Pelkonen

Donna Elvira (Devon Guthrie) the Don (JeongChal Cha) and Leporello (Alexander Hajek)
party on in Stephen Wadsworth's new Don Giovanni. Photo by Nan Merriman © 2012 The Juilliard School.

In the past two years, the Juilliard Opera has produced performances at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater that have regularly outshined their bigger, flossier neighbors at the opera house with (hocked) Marc Chagall paintings in its windows. This week, they did it again with a new Don Giovanni, a sleek, uproarious production that captures the anarchist spirit of Mozart's darkest comedy.

This new production by Steven Wadsworth is also a treat for Mozart nerds (like this writer.) Mr. Wadsworth chose to present the 1788 Vienna edition of the dramma giocoso, which has a new scene for Leporello and Zerlina, and a number of important stage cuts (one tenor aria and the Epilogue.) The opera now ends with Don Giovanni's damnation and Mozart's bleak D minor chords.

Opera Review: The Glittering Undead

The Manhattan School of Music resurrects The Ghosts of Versailles.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marie Antoinette.
Painting by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

In 1991, John Corigliano's opera The Ghosts of Versailles was the toast of New York. The witty libretto (by William Hoffmann) fearlessly combined Beaumarchais' robust comedy with the grief of an uncertain afterlife and the bloody nightmare of the French Revolution. Mr. Corigliano's music is a perfect complement, a polymath score rife with references and musical riddles, incorporating modern music alongside classicism. Its vibrant, emotional heart is wrapped in gilt.

Following one revival at the Met, Ghosts was silenced in New York. This sparkling revival is mounted by the Manhattan School of Music. (The school also happens to be Mr. Corigliano's alma mater.) Due to limitations of the Borden's orchestra pit, certain large instruments (percussion, harps) had to be played elsewhere in the school, and digitally mixed with the main performance.

These performances were also the first New York stagings of a smart, spiffy production by Jay Lesenger. The massive orchestration was also carved down (by orchestrator John David Earnest) to a lean 48 players under the taut control of Steven Osgood. These two artists (exiles from New York City Opera after that company's recent turmoil) worked together to create a grand evening, and one of the most enjoyable opera performances of this spring season.

Concert Review: Across the Narrow Sea

The Philharmonic premieres Mark Neikrug's Concerto for Orchestra.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura (The Great Wave) by Hokusai
as it appeared on the score cover of Debussys La Mer.

Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura

This week, the New York Philharmonic launched the first performances of Marc Neikrug's Concerto for Orchestra, a major work by this modern composer dedicated to music director Alan Gilbert and designed to show the players of this famous orchestra to maximum effect. Mr. Gilbert conducted.

Mr. Neikrug's Concerto was framed as the centerpiece in a centuries-spanning program that ranged over 400 years of music making, from the delicate classicism of Mozart to the modern ideas of Mr. Neikrug. Friday's matinee concert opened with Hector Berlioz' overture Le Corsaire. Although the woodwinds sounded muddled in the early pages of the work, the ensemble recovered to deliver a thrilling, salty performance, reveling in this composer's complex orchestrations.

Despite some unusual orchestral textures and a penchant for dissonance that made members of the staid Friday matinee subscription audience somewhat uncomfortable, Mr. Neikrug's creation is a fairly conventional four-movement work. In fact, this Concerto seems more like a symphony under another name, as it has a scherzo, slow movement and blazing finale, forms that have more in common with that genre.

Showdown at the Gates of Hades

City Opera's Orpheus threatened by union protest. 

by Paul Pelkonen

Strikebreaker Abraham "Grampa" Simpson describes a trip to Shelbyville.
Image from The Simpsons episode Last Exit to Springfield © 1992 Gracie Films/20th Century Fox.

The New York City Opera is having trouble with unions again. 

However, while the cash-strapped opera company has drawn fire from unions for its hard-nosed tactics in the past year, this protest is not directed directly at City Opera. The conflict is between El Museo del Barrio and members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One.

A report in the Wall Street Journal  stated that union officials are counting on a visible picket outside the opera company's new production of Georg Philipp Telemann's Orpheus to open a dialogue between representatives from El Museo and from Local One. The opera is being performed at El Teatro, a jewel box theater usually reserved for lectures and discussion panels. The union's labor leaders want the Upper East Side arts venue to become unionized.