Opera Review: Nature Red in Tooth (and claw)

Manhattan School of Music presents a cunning little Vixen.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Right before the feathers fly: the Vixen Sharp-Ears (Shantal Martin, foreground)
gets ready to ravage a chorus of chickens. Photo courtesty Manhattan School of Music.

Adaptations of cartoons and comics as popular entertainment are now commonplace in popular culture. A hundred years ago, that form of entertainment was opera, and it was Moravian composer Leoš Janáček who had the idea of taking a popular children's comic strip from a Brno paper and making it into an opera. Příhody lišky Bystroušky (literally "The Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears", also known as "The Cunning Little Vixen" was way ahead of its time. On Thursday night, the Senior Opera Theater of Manhattan School of Music unveiled a new bare-bones staging of this challenging three-act opera (sung in English) with a cast of young singers applying themselves to recreating the woodland fantasy of this vivid, vital opera.

Opera Review: New Blood for the Old Kingdom

The third cast is the charm for the Met's long-running Aida.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Radàmes (Jorge de Léon, left) and Aida (Krassmira Stoyanova) in Act III of Aida
at the Metropolitan Opera. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

Old-time opera goers love the Metropolitan Opera's Aida, for Verdi's sublime melodies and for the big, martial choruses. Tourists, who have opted for this Met's Egyptian experience over the Temple of Dendur uptown, love it for the "sandstone" sets and elaborate Egyptian palaces, adorned with heiroglyphics, and the real horses in Act II. The show balances '80s excess with economical stage design and has played successfully for almost thirty years. It is always spectacular. But at the Met, Aida isn't always...ya know, good.

The Richard Strauss Project: Ariadne auf Naxos

This comedy was the first Richard Strauss opera to be about...opera. 

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Twmple of Apollo on the Greek island of Naxos.

In the world of opera not everything goes as planned.

A case in point: Richard Strauss’ sixth opera and third collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The 1912 version of Ariadne auf Naxos was meant to be performed as a pendant to a Hofmannsthal adaptation of the Moliére play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, for which Strauss had written incidental music. Ariadne (planned as a 30 minute divertissement) would be the crowning jewel of the play. Except that Strauss’ opera ran 90 minutes, and when added to the already long Moliére play, the result was an evening longer than Die Meistersinger. 

It was the pair’s first failure. 

Opera Review: There's Not a Lot of Money in Revenge

New Amsterdam Opera mounts La Forza del Destino.

by Paul J. Pelkonen 

Face-off: Tenor Errin Brooks (in profile) confronts baritone Stephen Gaertner
in La Forza del Destino at New Amsterdam Opera. Photo by Bidrum Vabish.

I have a confession to make. Up until yesterday, I had never heard of the New Amsterdam Opera. And then, on Friday afternoon on Facebook, a colleague and fellow critic mentioned that he was going to see their concert performance of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny") in the theater at Riverside church that very night. So it was my great pleasure to finds out that conductor Keith Chambers and his company were tackling Verdi’s most challenging opera in a concert performance.

What’s more, they did it with style.