ROSSINI : ERMIONE

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 18th of December 2011 at 3.03 - 5.30 pm

INTRODUCTION 
REVIEW
REVIEW
REVIEW 
REVIEW

ROSSINI: Ermione, an opera in two acts
Ermione........................ Carmen Giannattasio
Andromaca................... Patricia Bardon
Pirro............................. Paul Nilon
Oreste........................... Colin Lee
Pilade............................ Bülent Bezdüz
Fenicio.......................... Graeme Broadbent
Cleone.......................... Rebecca Bottone
Cefisa........................... Victoria Simmonds
Attalo............................ Loïc Félix
Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, London Phil/David Parry
(Opera Rara ORC 42)
Gramophone Awards 2011 Best Opera Recording

Another Trojan War tragedy! Sad to say,  it only received 7 performances in 1819 and then it disappeared, though Rossini knew its true value, and it was eventually revived in 1977. The factors that caused its sudden demise are explained in the introduction and the first of the four reviews (it is thorough and has pictures of the performers at the 2009 concert that became this recording, in the "rare opera" series).

Note that this recording has an essay by New Zealand's own Jeremy Commons.

And how do we pronounce this name ERMIONE in the Italian way. English speakers, who are blissfully or crassly ignorant of phonetic spelling would try Err-my-own-knee. But say the sound (not the name!) of every letter separately E-r-m-i-o-n-e, and then join them up into a unit.

VIVALDI : OTTONE IN VILLA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 11th of December 2011 at 3.03 - 5.30 pm

INTRODUCTION 
PREVIEW
REVIEW

ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741)
Ottone in villa (RV729), an opera in three acts
Ottone.......................... Sonia Prina
Caio Silio...................... Julia Lezhneva
Cleonilla........................ Verónica Cangemi
Tullia............................. Roberta Invernizzi
Decio............................ Topi Lehtipuu
Il Giardino Armonico/Giovanni Antonini
 (Naïve OP 30493)

This is the first of the known operas of Vivaldi; it dates from 1713. Besides all his concertos he also composed many operas, 94 according to his reckoning, and if this is true then only 25% of them have survived.

The title, Ottone in villa, would seem to say "Ottone in town", but apparently it means the opposite; Ottone is on vacation in his country-house, out of town. Ottone is the emperor known as Otho (in Latin), who usurped the throne of Rome in the year 69; he lasted only eight weeks in power, and then committed suicide. He was one of the short-reigning rulers after Nero was deposed and dispatched (Nero took his own life but needed assistance to finish him off). The action takes place in a single day (that was the way it had to be done in the theatre of the olden days); of course, the time is further reduced to a few hours in the performance. Otho was also a character in Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (1642) in which Nero (Nerone) was the dominating protagonist. But in the source for the libretto of Vivaldi's opera, the emperor was Claudius (as in "I Claudius" of Robert Graves).

Ottone in villa is a comedy of errors (people lusting after the wrong persons) and disguises (not to say transvestism) with a role for a soprano castrato (Caio), and a female soprano (Tullia, pursuing Caio amorously while pretending to be a man named Ostilio), and a female contralto portraying the emperor Otho (here in the Italian form Ottone). Murder (private crime of passion against Cleonilla) and execution (imperial and official) are in the pipeline, till all is resolved and Tullia and Caio are wedded at the end of a frantic day (similar to the Marriage of Figaro, actually).

PONCHIELLI : LA GIOCONDA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 4th of December 2011 at 3.03 - 6 pm

 INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO (English translation)
LIBRETTO (pdf)

PONCHIELLI: La Gioconda, an opera in four acts
La Gioconda................. Violeta Urmana
Adorno......................... Luciana D'Intino
Badoero........................ Roberto Scandiuzzi
La Cieca....................... Elisabetta Fiorillo
Grimaldo....................... Plácido Domingo
Barnaba........................ Lado Ataneli
Zuàne............................ Paolo Battaglia
Isèpo............................ Kristian Benedikt
Pilot.............................. Tim Hennis
Barnabite...................... Wolfgang Klose
Bavarian Radio Chorus, Munich Children's Chorus,
Munich Radio Orch/Marcello Viotti (EMI 5 57451)

OPERA WONK dates back to the 23rd day of December 2006, so it has been operating for five years, and yet in that time the Ponchielli blockbuster has not been broadcast on Radio NZ, and so there has been no occasion for analysing and appreciating it. I have just taken a close look at the Operawonk prelude again, and you might like to re-read it and see whether this website is fulfilling its mission statement. One thing is not mentioned there: advertising. The only adverting I do is to operas being broadcast on radio in NZ, including local radio in Palmerston North, and I am promoting John Ward's nightly opera presentations on a special Gramophone Room page, which is advertised (in the neutral sense, devoid of sales promotion) in the sidebar. Personally speaking, I do not like being bombarded with commercial adverts, and I am resisting the temptation to introduce what they call "AdSense" to my four Google sites; but if any such intrusions suddenly pop up, you may send me a sharp rebuke, or assume that I have suddenly been reduced to abject poverty and desperately need the money.


This opera is being broadcast to introduce a week of 'one-hit wonders'. It is the composer's only successful opera, and its brief ballet (The Dance of the Hours) is an all-time favourite. The first performance of the opera was in 1876 in Milan, and was favourably received. But why did this Italian opera include a ballet? Because it was copying Meyerbeer's French style.

The recording I own (and which I am now playing through) consists of three Decca 12-inch vinyl discs; the cast is Caballé, Pavarotti, Ghiaurov, Baltsa, Milnes, and lurking at the bottom of the list as Barnabotto a priest, is our own Reverend Rodney Macann, Baptist minister. This time it is Plácido Domingo. Note that the tenor has the role of Enzo Grimaldo, and Caruso included it in his repertoire.

When I visited the Louvre art gallery in Paris on a Sunday afternoon many summers ago,  I was frequently accosted by signposts pointing the way to La Joconde. We have a word jocund, meaning 'cheerful', but I could not find 'jocond' in my French dictionaries; La Joconde must be a transcription of Italian La Gioconda, ' the Joyous (woman)'. In Paris it refers to da Vinci's [coded?] Mona Lisa (very mysterious), and I did not find her till closing time, and the shock is that she is so petite! In this opera Gioconda is the name of a humble street-singer.  Incidentally, the opera is based on a play by Victor Hugo.

Giuseppe Verdi admired Amilcare Ponchielli and Ponchielli was the teacher of Giacomo Puccini. The librettist of La Gioconda was a certain (or uncertain?) Tobia Gorrio, who was also a composer of operas, and wrote two libretti for Verdi. This pseudonym is an anagram of Arrigo Boito!

BUSONI : DOKTOR FAUST

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 20th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 6.15 pm

BUSONI: Doktor Faust, an opera in two prologues,
two intermezzi, three scenes and an epilogue
Poet.............................. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Doktor Faust................. Dietrich Henschel
Wagner......................... Markus Hollop
Mephistopheles............. Kim Begley
Duke of Parma.............. Torsten Kerl
Duchess of Parma......... Eva Jenis
Master of Ceremonies... Markus Hollop
Soldier.......................... Detlef Roth
Natural Philosopher....... William Dazeley
Geneva Grand Theatre Chorus,
Lyon National Opera Chorus & Orch/
Kent Nagano (Erato 3984 25501)

OVERVIEW 
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS
STORYLINE
SYNOPSIS
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO

Yet another operatic rendering of the Faust legend, and one that is certainly not as well known as the versions of Berlioz and Gounod (French), and Boito (Italian).
     Ferruccio Busoni is the composer, born in Empoli (Italy) in 1866, died in Berlin in 1934. He was Italian by birth, but Teutonic in his upbringing; he aspired to be Italy's Wagner, but found that the German language came to him more easily. Like Wagner he wrote his own librettos, all four of them in German: Die Brautwahl, Turandot, Arlecchino, Doktor Faust). The middle two were premiered together in Zürich in 1917. Turandot is a comic opera, would you believe?  Arlecchino is described as a theatrical caprice; this is the only work of Busoni that O have on a recording (HMV Long play ALP 1223); it was discarded by our local library, and I pounced on it, for a price. In our video opera group we have been playing Rossini's Barber of Seville recently, and it mentions the 17th century comedy L'Inutile Precauzione (The useless precaution), and this play inspired Busoni when he saw it in Bologna in 1912. The Barber is in the style of commedia dell'arte, with Count Almaviva as Harlequin. In Arlecchino Harlequin is neglecting his wife Columbina in favour of a tailor's wife (in this respect he is like the Count in The Marriage of Figaro).
    Doktor Faust is not taken from Goethe's Faust, but from puppet theatre (and also Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), according to the prologue in which the poet speaks. In this respect, notice that in this recording Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has that speaking role, but in an earlier recording he sang the baritone role of Faust.
    Busoni died before the work was completed; the task was taken in hand by Philipp Jarnach; later sketches by Busoni were used by Antony Beaumont to provide a completion that was closer to the composer's intentions. This recording has the final scene according to Beaumont, but also includes the Jarnach version (whether we will get both on the radio remains to be seen, or heard).
    The New York Metropera has staged it (in 2000) so we get introductory notes from their valuable archives.

BERLIOZ : LES TROYENS

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 13th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 7.15 pm 

BERLIOZ: Les Troyens, an opera in five acts
Aeneas.......................... Ben Heppner
Dido............................. Michelle DeYoung
Cassandra..................... Petra Lang
Anna............................. Sara Mingardo
Corebus........................ Peter Mattei
Narbal.......................... Stephen Milling
Iopas............................ Kenneth Tarver
Hylas............................ Toby Spence
Hector's Ghost.............. Orlin Anastassov
Panthus......................... Tigran Martirossian
Ascanius....................... Isabelle Cals
Priam............................ Alan Ewing
Hecuba......................... Guang Yang
Trojan Sentries.............. Andrew Greenan, Roderick Earle
Helenus......................... Bülent Bezdüz
Soldier/Mercury............ Leigh Melrose
Greek Captain............... Mark Stone
London Symphony Chorus & Orch/Colin Davis
(LSO Live LSO 0010)

OVERVIEW
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
SYNOPSIS 
ANALYSIS
REVIEW
LIBRETTO


 Synchronize our watches. We breach the walls of Ilias (code-name Troy) at 1500 hours on Sunday 13th of November. Our tank will be camouflaged as a horse constructed of timber. Several of our soldiers will be hidden inside. They will lead the first offensive after dark. The entire army will proceed at the double through the breach and the opened gates. The city will be ransacked and destroyed, and no prisoners taken.

Hector Berlioz: LES TROYENS (Act 1)
The characters are:
*Aeneas (Énée), son of Anchises and Venus (!), Trojan hero par excellence, who foolishly thinks the horse is blessed by Pallas Athene and should be placed in her temple, and then wisely  flees the conflagration, with his young son *Ascanius (soprano), and other brave pragmatic Trojans, to build a bigger and better city somewhere else. His circuitous route takes him from the Black Sea to NW Africa and then to Italy.

*Cassandra is a tragic princess and prophetess, predicting doom on Troy, and *Choroebos, her betrothed, is worried that she is slightly unhinged).

*Hecuba consort of King *Priam of Troy, who is father of Cassandra, *Polyxena, *Paris [non-appearing role, prudently keeps out of sight after all the trouble he has caused], *Hector [appearing only as a ghost], and *Helenus (a priest), not to be confused with the Spartan belle, *Helen, who keeps right out of sight.  Hector's wife *Andromakhe and their son *Astynax are speechless over all the horror and can only mime their parts. *Pantheus is another priest, and a friend of Aeneas.

Don't expect to see the priest Laokoön throwing his spear at the hated wooden horse gifted by the Greeks {"I fear Daneans even when they are bearing gifts" Vergil, Aeneid}, and then being killed with his sons, by two sea serpents; but Aeneas gives a graphic account of it. Listen for the stirring Trojan march as they drag the horse in through the hole in the wall they make.

Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens (The Trojans)
Act 2: The destruction of Troy
Aeneas is asleep in his palatial mansion, when the ghost of Hector appears to him and cries: "Son of Venus, get thee to Italy". This call is frequent in the opera; he is commissioned to found a new nation in the land of the jackboot (funny thing, Aotearoa likewise looks like a long boot viewed upside down, and Aeneas missed his chance to arrive here before the Maaori Polynesians and the British imperialists laid claim to it).

Pantheus the priest informs Aeneas that the Grecian horse has belched forth enemy soldiers, who have opened the gates to admit the marauding hordes seeking hoards of treasure. It is going to be a night of raping, slaughtering, pillaging, raising hell, and razing the city. King Priam and Troy are both getting the sack. Never mind, it all takes place off stage ["Loud noises and distant cries"].

Ascanius  Aeneas-son (played by a girl-soprano) reports on the destructive fires burning down palaces. Khorebus drags Aeneas off to defend the citadel.

At the altar of Vesta-Kybele, within the palace of Priam, the priestesses and other women are bewailing the fate of their city. Cassandra the prophetess tells them that her beloved Khorebus has died a hero, while Aeneas has done the noble thing and fled, with Priam's treasure in tow. When a Greek captain and his men come bursting in, Cassandra and the women commit mass suicide, their last words being "Italy, Italy".

Act 3: The Trojans at Carthage
After the gloom of Troy, the blazing sun lights up the stage, at the palace of the widow-queen Dido, in Carthage (Phoenician Qart Hadsht, "Newtown"). Great festivity, celebrating seven years of occupying northern Africa. She sits with her sister Anna and her minister Narbal (and her Tyrian poet Iopas is hovering around). Builders, sailors, and farm-workers pay homage to her. The Trojans arrive: first young Ascanius, then Pantheus, and  Aeneas (in disguise). They magnanimously offer to defeat her foes (Iarbas and his Numidians). Everybody suddenly forgets what great losers Trojans are, and the scratch Lions team goes off to take on all the blacks.

Act 4
    We have all heard the "Royal Hunt and Storm" interlude (Beecham used to go through it like a dose of his family's little liver pills charging through the system).
    Aeneas and Dido are on the chase (who or what is being chased or not chaste is clouded in mystery). The clouds burst and the pair get caught in a downpour. They go into a cave to get out of the wet (dancing as they go, like Fred and Ginger, no doubt). Forest nymphs appear, disheveled and screaming the theme-song: "Italy". Satyrs and fauns dance wildly amid lightning and thunder, waving flaming branches from a tree struck by lightning.
    Well, that's what the composer put in his stage instructions (remember, like Wagner, he wrote his own libretto). We shall see what the director chooses to do with that. (He could bring in Gene Kelly, "Singin' in the Rain", for example).
    But a veil is drawn over what happened in the cave (just as it was when I studied Ovid's Latin version at Fort Street school when I was fifteen). But no good will come of it. Queen Dido is hooked (and will eventually be forsooked).
    We are back at the palace, for a concert of ballet (bring on the Egyptian dancing girls and the nubile Nubian slaves) and song (from the Tyrian minstrel Iopas) and tale-telling. “Tell me that one about the fate of Andromakhe”, Dido says to Aeneas, and to her horror she learns that Hector's widow has finally succumbed to the love of Pyrrhus, her captor, and has joined him on the throne of Epirus!
    Young Ascanius helps his father's courtship of Dido by removing her dead husband's ring from her finger. All slip away leaving them in the moonlight, crooning their love duet: "Oh night of intoxication and infinite ecstasy".
    The messenger god Mercury/Hermes suddenly appears with a singing-telegram for Aeneas: "ITALY STOP ITALY STOP ITALY STOP". No, "Go". "Yes, but you don't go", as the Major-General said to W.S. Gilbert's not a happy lot of policemen.

Berlioz, Les Troyens, Act 5 (in 3 scenes).
Scene 1. In the harbour at night, on one of the Trojan ships, Hylas the sailor boy sings a sad song about his homeland. (We really do have to wonder how the Trojans could have constructed a fleet of ships while they were locked inside their besieged city. Never mind. Maybe they stole some of the Greek vessels.) The Trojan chiefs are preparing for departure, and that infernal word "Italy" is coming up out of nowhere again. Aeneas desperately does not want to leave Dido, but again it is fate. The ghosts of Priam, Hector, Cassandra, and Khoirobos give him a shove, while Dido tries to drag him back; but he embarks, goose-stepping to the Trojan march, shouting the fateful name of the country of his destiny.
Scene 2. In the palace, Dido begs her sister Anna to intercede with Aeneas, but Anna knows that it is inevitable. Dido enters into her mad scene, ordering her people to pursue the traitors, but it is too late. As you do at the end of a love affair, she is going to burn everything belonging to the man who jilted her (his pajamas and toothbrush and whatever).
Scene 3. When the pyre is built she mounts it herself, bearing the sword of Aeneas, which she plunges into her breast, after predicting that Hannibal ("Ba'al's grace") will eventually arise and avenge her. A vision of triumphant Rome is presented to her as she dies amid the curses of the Carthaginians against the Trojans.

   What a feast of beautiful and stirring music Hector Berlioz has regaled us with, both lyrical (that exquisite love duet in Act 4) and dramatic (Cassandra's outpourings).
   I own two audio recordings of this (Colin Davis 1969 on vinyl, Charles Dutoit on compact silver disc, with Deborah Voigt) and one video performance (John Eliot Gardiner, with Gregory Kunde and Susan Graham, and that is what the above commentary refers to; it is all done with mirrors, by the way).
   Poor Hector Berlioz never saw a complete performance: he experienced The Trojans at Carthage (Acts 3 to 5), but not The Fall of Troy (Acts 1 and 2).

MOZART : LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 6th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 6.05 pm

MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro, an opera in four acts
Count Almaviva............. Simon Keenlyside
Countess....................... Véronique Gens
Susanna........................ Patrizia Ciofi
Figaro........................... Lorenzo Regazzo
Cherubino..................... Angelika Kirchschlager
Marcellina..................... Marie McLaughlin
Basilio........................... Kobie van Rensburg
Bartolo.......................... Antonio Abete
Barbarina...................... Nuria Rial
Girls.............................. Elisabeth Rapp, Yeree Suh
Collegium Vocale Gent, Concerto Cologne/ René Jacobs
(Harmonia Mundi HMC 80 1818.20)

COMPOSER
OVERVIEW
REVIEW 
CHARACTERS 
STORYLINE 
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO 

Mozart, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (Le Nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata)
Note at the outset that all the action takes place in a single day, according to the classical conventions. The subtitle says so: "the day of madness". The same applies to The Barber of Seville.  
    We are in the 18th century, in Spain, near Seville, in a palatial mansion, initially in a backroom, next to the bedroom of the Count Almaviva and his Countess (her name is Rosina, as we learned from the Barber of Seville, but it is never mentioned, right? Wrong. But what is the Count's personal name?). Their servants, Susanna and Figaro (the erstwhile barber), are preparing for their wedding (already announced in the title of the opera).
Overture: busy, bustling, beautiful, and brief; it takes the time needed for boiling an egg (I’m not making this up; Beecham did; and it includes space for regular taking of your Beecham pills, to keep you regular).
Act 1
[1.1]  Duet: 5, 10, 20, 30. Figaro is measuring the floor for positioning the marital bed; Susanna is trying on her home-made bonnet, looking into a mirror, if the director allows.
[1.2] They differ over the suitability of this room: he says they will be able to respond immediately when their master and mistress ring the bell (Ding ding!); she says the lord can come in when he likes, and (being another Don Juan) he can exercise his lordly rights in their bed for idle half-hours; and that’s why he gave her a large dowry.
[1.3] Cavatina. Susanna is called away (by that bell); Figaro muses over this scenario; if the Count wants to have a ball, he will be dancing to Figaro’s tune; all your machinations I will overturn.
[1.4] Change of scenery? Bartolo and Marcellina (formerly his servant) are plotting to subvert the marriage; she has a contract, and Figaro will be sued for breach of promise;  pay up or marry her.
Aria : La vendetta. Bartolo will be glad to get revenge on Figaro, who had conspired to take his ward Rosina from him, and give her to Count Almaviva.
[1.5] Marcellina and Susanna meet. Who defers at the door? Age before beauty, et cetera.
[1.6] Susanna remains. Young Cherubino appears, disconsolate and desolate; the Count found him alone with Barbarina (the gardener’s daughter) and has dismissed him. The randy teenager loves all the women on the estate; and he would like Susanna’s job, dressing and undressing the Countess. He sings his song about his state of mind; crazy with love and longing; he’s a mixed-up kid: I don’t know what I am or what I am doing.
[1.7] Recitative (heaps of it, but plenty of action, too). The Count is coming, and Cherubino hides behind a chair; the Count sits in it; he mentions his appointment as ambassador to Britain, and he will take Figaro and her with him to London; and tonight he would like to meet her in the garden at dusk. Basilio (music teacher and purveyor of gossip) is heard approaching; the Count goes behind the chair, while Cherubino secretly takes his place in it, and Suzy covers him with a dress. Basilio is actually reporting the Count’s admiration for Susan, and the boy’s infatuation for the Countess. The Count reveals himself, and they sing as a trio; Cherubino is silent, but he is discovered and speaks; the Count wishes to summon Figaro to see his bride with the pageboy.
[1.8] Chorus. Figaro arrives with  a company of peasants, to honour their lord for abolishing his right to the first night; he has done that publicly but he wants to continue his pursuit of sweet Sue privately; so he prevaricates. He sends Cherubino off to join his regiment as an officer, forthwith.
[9] Aria. Figaro bids him fare well with a parting greeting that contrasts his life as an amorous butterfly with the soldier’s hardships; no more fandango-dancing, now it is marching through mud (fango): Cherubino, on to victory, to military glory! All depart to the sound of a martial march.

 Cherubino in love. The end of Act 1 together with the whole of Act 2 covers all the Cherubino scenes, with his two songs about love (or teenager lust), and his two attempts to conceal himself from the wrath of the Count; he pops up again in the finale. He goes on to have an entire French comic opera devoted to him, namely Chérubin, by Jules Massenet: at seventeen he is pursuing a famous dancer, but he has a lover named Nina (Barbarina is not in sight), and he is still treasuring the Countess’s ribbon in his pocket; Nina wins in the end. Frederica von Stade continues to play the pageboy in a recording of this (so his voice has still not broken!). Incidentally, Roger Wilson has revealed in a record review that there is an intact male soprano around, who plays Cherubino. This eases the complication in Act 2,  dressing ‘him’ in feminine clothing when he is in actuality a woman pretending to be a boy.

In Act 1 (6-9). Cherubino has been discovered alone with Barbarina, and the Count is sending him away to be an officer in his regiment. Figaro marches him off to military glory (but he does not go).
Act 2 
[2.1] Porgi amor (cavatina). The Countess is alone, imploring Love to grant her relief from her sorrow and her sighing, by giving her beloved back to her, or else let her die.
[2.2] She and Susanna discuss the Count’s infidelity. Figaro comes along la-la-laring, as he did when he was the barber of Seville. He has a plan to defeat his employer in his quest for Susanna’s favour. This point always eludes me in the opera house, so I will write it down here: because Susanna has refused the Count’s offer to be confidential attachée to the embassy in London, when he is made ambassador, he will transfer the honour to Marcellina; so, Figaro has sent Basilio to him, with a letter disclosing a proposed assignation  of the Countess with a lover at the ball that evening; in his confusion he will not be able to prevent Figaro’s wedding (see the title of the opera). Susanna points out that Marcellina will still oppose their marriage. Figaro says they can disguise Cherubino as Susanna, send the Count to meet ‘her’, and surprise him; and then Figaro will make the Count dance to his tune (as promised in Act 1).
[2.3] Voi che sapete (canzona). Cherubino arrives to be dressed; he is sighing and blushing, and he sings his song ‘Tell me ladies, you who know what love is, whether it is what I have in my heart’.  He describes his symptoms: shivers and hot flushes (or similar).  Susanna sings an aria as they dress him. They discover the Countess’s ribbon tied around his lily-white arm.
[2.4] The Count is supposedly off hunting for a few hours, but here he is, banging at the locked door, wanting to know what is going on in there. The boy hides in the closet, or dressing room.
[2.5] The Count enters suspiciously; there is a crash from the toilet-room; he is told, eventually, that it is Susanna. The Count has Figaro’s letter with him; he is seeking an explanation.
[2.6] Trio. Susanna enters, unnoticed, while the Count is calling on her to come out of the other room (he is told that she is trying on her wedding dress, and can not); she sizes up the situation, hides in an alcove, and practices voice-throwing; she suggests this could cause a scandal in the house. Indeed, so the Count locks the other doors, and takes his wife with him to get a tool to break into the little room.
[2.7] Cherubino now comes out, and takes his only way of escape by jumping through the second-storey window into the garden.
[2.8] The master and mistress return with the wherewithal to force the door. Slowly she confesses it is a child hiding in the room, after they had been having a harmless diversion, and it is in fact Cherubino. Consternation, the pesky page is everywhere.
[2.9] Susanna appears from the room, to the astonishment of both; he begs her pardon.
[2.10] Enter Figaro, to be questioned about the letter (the women have already said that he sent it); he denies any knowledge of it.
[2.11] Antonio the gardener bursts in, to report a person jumping on his garden and damaging his plants. Figaro takes the blame; but the paper that was dropped was Cherubino’s commission; yes, it still needed to be sealed.
[2.12] Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio arrive, demanding justice for the lady; confusion reigns, in a septet.
Act 3
[3.1] The Count recounts (to himself) an account of the details of the muddle (while playing with a machine in this production):
(1) an anonymous letter (about an assignation with Susanna; we know that Figaro concocted it; another letter will replace it soon);
(2) the maid locked in the dressing room (actually Cherubino);
(3) the Countess flustering (she did not know Susanna had taken Cherubino’s place);
(4) a man leaping onto the garden; (5) another (Figaro) claiming he was the one;
(6) the Countess could not be guilty, as she has too much respect for his honour, which is, however, fraught with human frailty.
[3.2] Susanna comes (feigning to search for her Lady’s smelling salts) and tells the Count she will submit to his desire in exchange for a dowry; he calls her Carissima (Dearest).
[3.3] Figaro interrupts, and she takes him off telling him that he has won his case without needing a lawyer.
[3.4] The Count hears this, and muses angrily over exacting revenge on his serf; why should this nobody have and enjoy the object of my passion, Susanna?
[3.5] The lawyer Curzio leads Figaro with Marcellina and Bartolo into the presence of the Count. It is decided: Figaro must pay back the two thousand pieces of silver that Marcellina lent him, or marry her (she confesses she does love him). Figaro claims he is of noble birth, and would need his parents’ consent; he was stolen by bandits in infancy; he has a spatula birthmark, which proves that he is Raffaelo,  the child of Marcellina herself, and also of Bartolo. At this moment Susanna arrives with the money to redeem her fiancé, and she is astonished to see him embracing Marcellina lovingly; she slaps his face; but Marcellina offers her embrace to her, as his mother (sua madre? sua madre!).
[3.6] Gazing on the fruit of their early love, the old couple decide to make it a double wedding. Susanna gives Figaro the money, and Bartolo makes a contribution, too. Everyone is blissfully happy, except the Count.
[3.7] Barbarina tells the page Cherubino that they are going to dress him in women’s clothing, so that the Count will not be able to find him.

NB the scenes are not always in this order; Dove sono? appeared before 3.5, and also 3.7.


Act 4 On the night of the wedding celebrations the Countess and her maid Susanna exchange clothes, creating a farcical scene in the garden: the Count is unwittingly making love to his own wife. All ends happily, when all is revealed and the Count begs Rosina for forgiveness.

A BBC poll determined that the three most loved opera arias are not by Verdi or Puccini or Rossini, but by Purcell, Mozart, and Wagner. Can you guess what they are? They are all sad songs, two of them being closely connected with death, the other one is concerned with the loss of the joy of young love. The second place-winner: Dove sono i bei momenti, Where are the lovely moments of sweetness and pleasure? This is sung by the Countess, in Act 3 of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.

BOITO : MEFISTOFELE

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 30th of October 2011 at 3.03 - 5.20 pm

BOÏTO: Mefistofele, an opera in four acts with prologue and epilogue
Mefistofele.............................. Ferruccio Furlanetto
Faust...................................... Giuseppe Filianoti
Margherita/Helen of Troy........ Dimitra Theodossiou
Marta..................................... Sonia Zaramella
Wagner.................................. Mimmo Ghegghi
Pantalis................................... Monica Minarelli
Teatro Massimo, Palermo Chorus & Orch/Stefano Ranzini (Naxos 8.660248)

INTRODUCTION 
SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO (Italian)

In this version of the FAUST story, though Mefistofele igets top billing in the title, he is still the villain, and he loses out in the end, as first Margarita (Gretchen = Gretel) and then Faust find redemption and go to sing in the heavenly choir. (This is going one better than Gounod.)

I have two recordings of MEFISTOFELE and one of NERONE. If you like this Naxos recording you can buy it!

GOETHE IN MUSIC
"Music begins where words end" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

CHEETHAM : PECAN SUMMER

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 16th of October 2011 at 3.03 - 4.45 pm

INTRODUCTION
HISTORY
COMPOSER
SINGER
PICTURES
SYNOPSIS
REVIEW
CHEETHAM orchestrated Wells: Pecan Summer,
an opera in two acts with a prelude and postlude
Gomuka ....................... Rachael Woods
Dunatpan...................... Sermsah Bin Saad
Frank............................ John Wayne Parsons
Sarah............................ Karen Cummings
Old Alice...................... Ursula Yovich
Michael......................... Carlos Barcenas
Young Alice.................. Jessica Hitchcock
Jimmy........................... Zoy Frangos
Ella............................... Deborah Cheetham
McGuiggan................... Stephen Grant
James............................ Tiriki Onus
Elizabeth....................... Shauntaii Batzke
Frances......................... Minjara Atkinson
Mrs Joyce..................... Patricia Oakley
The Minister.................. Jonathon Welch
The Minister's Wife....... Rosamund Illing
Dhungala Children's Choir, Short Black Opera Company, Melbourne Chamber Orch/David Kram (ABC)
This is basically the life-story of Alice; it draws on the history of the devastating losses experienced by indigenous families affected by the policies of forced child removal that operated across Australia over many decades up until the early 1970s; it focuses on the walkout from a mission station (concentration camp) in New South Wales in 1939; the people crossed the Murray River and "went walkabout" but settled in such towns as Echuca and Shepparton in Victoria. The drama ends movingly with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Labor Party) giving a public apology (saying "Sorry") for the past policies, something John Howard (so-called Liberal Party) had neglected to do.
   Deborah Cheetham is the librettist, composer, director, and singer of the role of Ella in this production of her indigenous Australian opera; the score was orchestrated by Jessica Wells. Deborah was herself taken from her mother and brought up in a white family (as a White Baptist Abba Fan, according to the title of her autobiographical play). She studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
   Deborah has sung in New Zealand, and (topically, October 2011) she sang with Argentinian tenor José Cura at the opening of the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
   (Of course, probably none of this would have happened if she had not been adopted out.)
   We Collesses have strong blood-ties with Aboriginal Australians, and also Maori (not just with the two transported convicts from whom we are descended), and we are proud of all three of these connections.
   My wife Helen and I once had a memorable week with a big group of Aboriginal children, who were brought from the outback to Bondi Beach; the team lived in a church hall with them, and went to swim in the sea; it was Sunday school every day of the week; one vivid memory is the fanfare that was used to get them assembled for meals and lessons: Suppé's Light Cavalry Overture (which I eventually played my trumpet in,  here in the Manawatu Youth Orchestra when I was forty).

WEBER : DER FREISCHÜTZ

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 9th of October 2011 at 3.03 - 6.05 pm

WEBER: Der Freischütz, an opera in three acts
Max.............................. Andrew Kennedy

Agathe.......................... Sophie Karthäuser
Kaspar.......................... Gidon Saks
Aennchen...................... Virginie Pochon
Kuno............................ Matthew Brook
Hermit........................... Luc Bertin-Hugault
Kilian............................ Samuel Evans
Ottokar......................... Robert Davies
Monteverdi Chorus, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
John Eliot Gardiner  
(recorded in the Royal Albert Hall, London by the BBC)

INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
SYNOPSIS

REVIEW 
REVIEW
REVIEW


This is the first opportunity I have had to comment on an opera (The Free Shooter) which I  saw long ago, and have been admiring ever since, studying the German libretto I bought in my student years. This was the first German romantic opera (and I do not mean simply that it has a love story in it). In high school my German teacher said that this was the opera that inspired Wagner.
   Sadly, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) died of tuberculosis, and he lost two months of his productive life after mistakenly drinking deadly acid from a wine bottle; his father used it for engraving, and Carl himself learned the art to make the plates for his own music.
   I recall a production at Melbourne University, when my young son Michael was so interested in looking into the orchestra pit that the conductor had to tell him to go back to his seat so that  he could start the second part. One thing that intrigued him was the chess game in the brass section. That reminded me of a book I was reading in those days, namely Nights in the Orchestra, in which Hector Berlioz reported discussions he allegedly had with musicians during performances of operas.
   Berlioz had an interesting connection with this "free-shooting" opera:  it contains spoken dialogue (like Mozart's Seraglio, and Beethoven's Fidelio), and this was not allowed in the Paris Opera House (same problem with Bizet's Carmen), so Berlioz was commissioned to fix it, and to add a ballet (obligatory, as Wagner and Verdi well knew); he orchestrated Weber's piano piece known as Invitation to to the Dance (Dum di dum dum dum) for the occasion.
   For this Proms performance on original instruments, the French version is presented, without staging (the orchestra fills the stage), though there is action, overseen by the head of Sir Henry Wood.
   The three reviews offered above seem to suggest that it is better to just listen. Warning: we will hear some gunshots (from magic bullets).


    

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV : TSAR'S BRIDE

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 18th of September 2011 at 3.03 - 6.15 pm

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: The Tsar's Bride, an opera in four acts
Vasily Sobakin.............. Paata Burchuladze
Marfa............................ Marina Poplavskaya
Grigory Gryaznoy.......... Johann Reuter
Malyuta Skuratov.......... Alexander Vinogradov
Ivan Lïkov..................... Dmitry Popov
Lyubasha...................... Ekaterina Gubanova
Bomelius....................... Vasily Gorchkov
Saburova...................... Elizabeth Woollett
Dunyasha...................... Jurgita Adamonyte
Petrovna....................... Anne-Marie Owens
Orch of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Mark Elder  
(recorded in Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by BBC)

INTRODUCTION 
PREVIEW
REVIEW
REVIEW (9/10)
REVIEW (8/10)
RECORDINGS

These notes apply particularly to the film version (1966),
Tsarskaya Nevesta (The Tsar's Bride) (1898)

Vasily Stepanovich Sobakin, Novgorodian merchant     bass
Marfa, his daughter     soprano
Grigory Gryaznoy, an oprichnik     baritone
Malyuta Skuratov, an oprichnik     bass
Boyar Ivan Sergeyevich Lïkov     tenor
Lyubasha     mezzo-soprano
Yelisey Bomelius, the Tsar's physician     tenor
Domna Ivanovna Saburova, a merchant woman     soprano
Dunyasha, her daughter, Marfa's girlfriend     mezzo-soprano
Petrovna, the Sobakins' housekeeper     mezzo-soprano

The Tsar is Ivan IV (the “Terrible”). The deaths  occur in Act 4. The drama is set in Moscow in 1572.
This is a “film”, in which actors mouth the words of the singers. Russian with English subtitles.
Orchestra and choir of the Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow), Yevgeni Svetlanov conductor.
Note that the Tsar neither sings nor speaks whenever he appears; he simply gives everyone the evil eye.
Time: Autumn, 1572
Place: Aleksandrovsky settlement, Moscow, Russia

ACT 1  Grigory GRYAZNOY, a bodyguard (oprichnik), has unrequited love for  MARFA (Martha), daughter of  the Novgorodian merchant Vasily Stepanovich SOBAKIN. His current mistress is LYUBASHA, who is feeling neglected. Marfa is already loved by the boyar Ivan Sergeyevich LYKOV, and in jealousy Gryaznoy arranges to cast a spell on Marfa with a magic potion from Yelisey BOMELIUS, the Tsar’s physician; and Lyubasha has overheard this.

(1) Overture (2) I can think of nothing (3) Malyuta [Skuratov, a bodyguard] has come to see me
(4) Summon your singers (5) Greetings, godddaughter (6) Bomelius, I have a request  (7) Why are you here?

ACT 2   MARFA is talking about her beloved IVAN, with her friend DUNYASHA, daughter of  Domna Ivanova Saburova, a merchant woman (8-10). The TSAR comes riding  by and pauses to gaze at Marfa (11). Ivan arrives  and they go by boat to the Sobakin home (12). Lyubasha  walks through the fields (13); she wants to know what Marfa looks like, and to consider how strong a rival she is (14); she spies Dunyasha at the window of the house, and is somewhat reassured, but then she sees the real Marfa. So Lyubasha also obtains a potion from Bomelius, designed to remove Gryaznoi’s feelings of love towards Marfa, but the price to be paid by Lyubasha is an intimate session with Bomelius.

(8) Introduction (9) Have you seen Ivan? (10) We were neighbours in Novgorod (11) What could that mean? (12) Be patient, dear daughter (13) Intermezzo  (14) Aha! So this is where the dear dove’s nest is (15) See what I’ve come to, Gregory (16) You’ve come. Where is the powder? (17) Those were not falcons gathering on high.

ACT 3   The Tsar inspects a line-up of beautiful Russian aristocratic maidens. (This would be where the craze for Russian brides originated?) Back at the Sobakin homestead, the celebration of the betrothal of Marfa and Ivan Lykov is taking place. Gryaznoy slips a powder into Marfa’s drink, believing it to be the philtre he obtained from Bomelius. (How do these love potions work? How do the chemicals know  that  when they arouse love they are only to apply to the person who had the prescription made up and the person who receives the philtre?) Surprise and horror, Boyars bring tidings of the Tsar’s chosen bride: it is Marfa.

(18) Opening (19) Here’s the mead and the cups (20) Did I not say there was no need (21) You get more, and she gets less (22) Let us sing the praises (23) The Boyars are coming

ACT 4   Marfa, now installed in the Tsar’s palace, has become seriously ill. The Tsar  has been unlucky in love again.  Gryaznoy brings news: Ivan Lykov was accused of attempting to kill Marfa, and  he was executed (at the instigation of Gryaznoi).  When Marfa hears that her Ivan is dead, she goes insane, but sings on happily (the last of the operatic mad scenes for soprano, 1899?)  Gryaznoy admits that he had put a powder in Marfa’s cup, and now that he realizes it was poison he asks to be executed also. Lyubasha confesses that she substituted her potion from Bomelius, and that concoction was given to Marfa. Enraged, Gryaznoy slays Lyubasha, and he is arrested for eventual execution. Marfa thinks he is Ivan, and she invites him to  visit her again on the morrow. Then she dies, and the bodies of the two women are lying on the cold palace floor.

(24) Introduction  (25) Greetings to Boyar Vasily Stepanovich (26) The poor Tsarina’s life is ruined
(27) Let’s go to the orchard, Ivan  (28) It’s more than I can bear

LULLY : ATYS

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 11th of September 2011 at 3.03 - 6.15 pm

LULLY: Atys, an opera in a prologue and five acts

Atys.............................. Bernard Richter
Cybèle.......................... Stéphanie d'Oustrac
Sangaride...................... Emmanuelle de Negri
Célénus......................... Nicolas Rivenq
Idas.............................. Marc Mauillon
Doris............................. Sophie Daneman
Mélisse......................... Jaël Azzaretti
Le Sommeil................... Paul Agnew
Morphée....................... Cyril Auvity
Le Temps, Le Fleuve..... Bernard Deletré
Flore............................. Elodie Fonnard
Iris................................ Rachel Redmond
Melpomène................... Anna Reinhold
Zéphir........................... Francisco Rueda
Zéphir........................... Reinoud van Mechelen
Phobétor....................... Callum Thorpe
Les Arts Florissants Chorus & Orch/William Christie
(recorded in the Opéra Comique, Paris by Radio France

INTRODUCTION 
COMPOSER
PREVIEW
REVIEW
RECORDING

When William Christie's recording of Lully's Atys came out in 1987, GRAMOPHONE magazine featured it on the front cover of the July issue; inside was an article on Lully (157-158) and a review of the recording (215-216), both by Nicholas Anderson. He gave it a resounding bravo! and audiences at this revival were saying Magnifique! Extraordinaire! I have all three of those pieces from the magazine, neatly folded and tucked into the compact-disc box with the libretto (which has the original print of the text; fortunately I have studied French literature ancient and modern so I can handle it). I acquired the box-set second-hand at Slow Boat Records in Wellington, also the source of countless operas on 12-inch records in my collection. (Amazon can sell you one, as noted under "recording" above.)

The work is a "tragédie lyrique", and concerns a love affair of a shepherd (Atys) with a goddess (Cybèle); she wants him badly; but he prefers a nymph (Sangaride); she deceitfully causes him to kill his beloved and then turns him into a pine tree.

The cast is dressed in costumes of the 17th century, the time of Louis XIV (oui, le Roi Soleil), for whom the opera was composed, and who loved it.

Lully was Italian but he composed in a French style. He worked closely with his librettist Quinault to ensure that their eleven operas (1673-1686) matched the quality of the classical dramas of Racine and Corneille; but he also collaborated with Molière on Le bourgois gentilhomme (1670). So it was just like Gilbert and Sullivan, first Cox and Box without Gilbert, then all the Savoy operas. Quinault and Lully for ever.

SULLIVAN : THE MIKADO

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 4th of September 2011 at 3.03 - 6.05 pm 

SULLIVAN: The Mikado, an operetta in two acts
The Mikado.................. James Morris
Nanki-Poo.................... Toby Spence
Ko-Ko......................... Neal Davies
Pooh-Bah..................... Andrew Shore
Pish-Tush...................... Phillip Kraus
Yum-Yum..................... Andriana Chuchman
Pitti-Sing....................... Katharine Goeldner
Peep-Bo....................... Emily Fons
Katisha......................... Stephanie Blythe
Lyric Opera Chorus & Orch/Andrew Davis  
(recorded at the Lyric Opera, Chicago by WFMT)

INTRODUCTION
ARCHIVE
PREVIEW 
REVIEW 
REVIEW


Sullivan's Ivanhoe is the only one of his works to appear on this website so far, but it gives me great pleasure to add The Mikado, the most operatic of his operettas. In 1884 (after Thespis [never heard of it?], Trial by Jury, Sorcerer, Pinafore, Pirates, Patience, Iolanthe, Princess Ida) Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) had reached a point in his relationship with his wonderful witty librettist, W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911), where he wanted to produce more serious musical compositions. He baulked at the idea of a magic lozenge that makes people fall in love (similar to The Sorcerer, and Donizetti's Elixir of Love), and Gilbert came up with a satire on Japan, which (as ever) had reference to English society and the British Empire.

This is the 9th of the collaborative works (fourteen comic operas, thoughthe first, Thespis, is not in my book of librettos) by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, and it almost did not happen. Sullivan rejected the idea of a magic lozenge for lovers, and Gilbert had to find a new subject rapidly. Did the Japanese ceremonial sword fall from the wall or not at all? Anyway, the composer was happy with a play set in Japan but satirising Imperial Britain. The names are not Nipponese but Chinese, and I am wondering whether this was intentional or not.

This is a performance from the Chicago LyricOpera house. It is conducted by the genial Andrew Davis, who has obviously not put all the nonsense of the Last Night of the Proms behind him yet.

The unsmiling Mikado (letting the punishment fit the crime) is the demoted from divinity Wotan named James Morris; and Katisha his fearsome daughter-in-law elect (who actually loses the election to Yum-Yum, and gets the lowly Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko as her partner in life, instead of the
prince Nanki-Poo) is the sublime Stephanie Blythe. We know both of them fromthe NY Metropera.

Stephanie Blythe is a marvel; her body fills quite a bit of space on a stage, but her voice and the personas she projects into the theatre are glorious and moving (Orpheus, Fricka).

Above we have a set of study guides that give us all we need. The Wiki article covers everything, and provides access to each item in the show, one by one: example, "The sun whose rays are all ablaze".

The attribution "Gilbert and Sullivan" is right; it started the American way in crediting the creators of musical plays (Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe). Gilbert saw their relationship as "master and master", not "slave and master".

VERDI : AIDA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 28th of August 2011 at 3.03 pm

Sunday 25th of April 2010 at 3.03 pm
Sunday 21st of December 2008 at 3 pm
Sunday 19th of August 2007 at 3 pm


VERDI: Aida, an opera in four acts
Aida.............................. Hui He
King of Egypt................ Roberto Tagliavini
Amneris........................ Luciana D'Intino
Radames....................... Marco Berti
Amonasro..................... Ambrogio Maestri
Ramfis........................... Giacomo Prestia
Messenger.................... Saverio Fiore
Voice of a Priestess....... Caterina Di Tonno
Florence May Festival Chorus & Orch/Zubin Mehta  
(recorded in the Teatro Comunale, Florence by Italian Radio)

INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
FOREGROUND
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO


The New York Metropolitan Opera has staged this spectacle regularly, and so we have good study guides (Placido Domingo is pictured in the STORYLINE presentation). The two background essays give a good summary of ancient Egyptian culture (a subject I used to tell students about). The writer argues for a setting in the Old Kingdom (around 2500 BCE, the time of the great pyramids), but the presence of Ethiopians should put it long after that (there were Ethiopic rulers over Egypt). Anyway, it is fictional, and an idea of the French archaeologist Mariette. The names are Greek forms of Egyptian originals. The capital city is given as Memphis, in northern ("Lower" not "Upper") Egypt, with its chief god Ptah (pronounce every letter, please).


The question of the occasion of composition is not in the Metropera notes. In this regard, I remember a Saturday night in 1962-3, in Victor Harbor (South Australia), at the local music club, when a question was asked: What did Verdi's opera Aida commemorate? I rushed in with the answer I had seen on the back of a record cover: 'the opening of the Suez Canal' (I have been there since then, and I went under it in a bus). 'No', said the lady quizmaster (Mrs Overall, wife of the local undertaker), 'the opening of the Cairo Opera House'. I muttered that I thought they coincided. The Oxford Dictionary of Opera states: "Aida was not, as generally supposed, written for the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), but was commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt to open the new Cairo Opera House the same year". In the event, Aida missed the bus or the boat, and the first performance was on the 24th of December 1871 in Cairo (Verdi was absent), and the season at La Scala in Milan began on 8th of February 1872. The delay was caused allegedly by Verdi's interest not being fully aroused until someone suggested Wagner might like to do it (see below), and second by the Franco-Prussian war preventing the scenery and costumes from leaving Paris.

Let's consider some facts about the origins of Aida (from Charles Osborne’s handbook on the operas of Verdi, 1969, 371-382). It is derived from a libretto by Metastasio. Truly. Pietro Metastasio’s Nitteti (based on stories in Herodotos and Diodorus of Sicily) shares these details with Aida: triumphal pageant; two royal women loving the same man (Nitteti is equivalent to Amneris); the hero’s rejection of one of the unloved woman’s attempt to save his life; the threat of death by entombment (but this has a happy ending). More than ten composers set it to music in the 18th century.

Now, the Aida libretto arose from a story by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette (who knew about the wars between Egypt and Ethiopia, and the setting of his tale is correctly around 1000 before the current era); but his brother Edouard claimed it was stolen from a novel he had drafted in 1866. Anyway, Mariette suggested to the Khedive (the title used by the viceroy of Egypt in the time of Turkish rule, 1867-1914) that it could be made into an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The Khedive agreed that Verdi should be offered it first, then Gounod and Wagner. The rumour that Verdi was not interested till this rivalry provoked him into action, might not be true.

Certainly, Verdi had retired after Don Carlo(s), and would need persuasion (after Aida, his masterworks Otello and Falstaff had to be dragged out of him by Boito). Camille Du Locle, of the Paris Opéra, had been trying unsuccessfully to interest Verdi in composing another French opera for his theatre, and he sent a four-page synopsis of the ancient Egyptian opera to Verdi, who liked it and accepted the challenge; Du Locle wrote the libretto in French; Verdi insisted on Italian, and he hired Antonio Ghislanzoni for the task; he himself made many suggestions and even wrote some of the text (the last scene).

Osborne rejects both of the oft-cited connections, that Aida was created to inaugurate the Suez Canal or the Cairo opera house: the canal opened in November 1869, before Verdi had even seen Du Socle’s synopsis (in the spring of 1870); the opera house had already been launched with a performance of Rigoletto on the 1st of November 1869.

However, the connections still stand if we go back to Mariette and the Khedive: apparently the idea they had was to make an opera out of his story for the opening of the canal and presumably also for the new opera house, and Verdi was the composer they had in mind (and he was the right person, rather than Gounod or Wagner). He definitely was commissioned to compose Aida for the Cairo Opera House, within the last six months of 1871, and he did.

Aida did not appear in Paris till 1876, and not at the Opéra but at the Théâtre Italien.

Well, I have seen this one in the movies a few times. Sophia Lauren played the Ethiopian princess (covered in Kiwi boot polish), in a print that had been around the world before it reached the Regent cinema theatre in Palmerston North, perhaps passing through the priestly censoring in Cinema Paradiso. It had hundreds of cuts and splices, and the continual breaks in the flow of the music were disconcerting. But my earliest acquaintance with Aida was when she was buried alive with Mario Lanza (as Radamès) in The Great Caruso.

Denis Forman (The Good Opera Guide) sees this 'enjoyable' opera as 'Verdi at the zenith of his power', and he awards it A+ (alpha-plus).

Sunday 25th of April 2010 at 3.03 pm

VERDI: Aida, an opera in four acts
Aida.............................. Hui He
Amneris........................ Dolora Zajick
Radamès....................... Salvatore Licitra
Amonasro..................... Carlo Guelfi
Ramfis........................... Carlo Colombara
The King....................... Stefan Kocán
High Priestess................ Elizabeth DeShong
Messenger.................... Diego Torre
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Paolo Carignani

Sunday 21st of December 2008 at 3 pm
VERDI: Aida, an opera in four acts
Aida.............................. Mirella Freni
Radamès....................... José Carreras
Amneris........................ Agnes Baltsa
Amonasro..................... Piero Cappuccilli
Ramfis........................... Ruggero Raimondi
King of Egypt................ José van Dam
Messenger.................... Thomas Moser
Priestess........................ Katia Ricciarelli
Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic
Herbert von Karajan (EMI 3 81877)

This is the sumptuous splendiferous performance of Karajan. Having recently seen a documentary about him I have been playing his Beethoven recordings. His time working for the Nazi regime may have helped him direct parades of marching and pageantry. What is its Xmas message, I wonder. An opportunity to hear Carreras when his beautiful tenor voice was young, before his battle with cancer.

Sunday 19th of August 2007 at 3 pm
VERDI: Aida, an opera in four acts
Aida.............................. Violeta Urmana
Radamès....................... Roberto Alagna
Amneris........................ Ildiko Komiosi
Amonasro..................... Carlo Guelfi
Ramphis........................ Giorgio Giuseppini
King of Egypt................ Marco Spotti
Messenger.................... Antonello Ceron
Priestess........................ Sae Kyung Rim
La Scala Chorus & Orch/Riccardo Chailly
(recorded at La Scala, Milan in December 2006)

This is Franco Zeffirelli's lavish and spectacular production of Aida, after Riccardo Muti had given up the directorship of La Scala and had thus cleared the way for his harshest critic to return in triumph. Not exactly a cast of thousands, but three hundred fill the stage for the grand march scene. And this recording has caught Roberto Alagna before the night when he walked out because he was treated disrespectfully by the audience.

DONIZETTI : ANNA BOLENA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 21st of August 2011 at 3.03 - 6.10 pm

DONIZETTI: Anna Bolena, an opera in two acts
Anna Bolena................. Anna Netrebko
Enrico........................... Ildebrando D'Arcangelo
Giovanna....................... Elina Garanca
Lord Rochefort............. Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Lord Percy.................... Francesco Meli
Smeton......................... Elisabeth Kulman
Hervey.......................... Peter Jelosists
Vienna State Opera Chorus & Orch/Evelino Pidò
(recorded in the State Opera, Vienna by Austrian Radio)

INTRODUCTION 
SYNOPSIS
REVIEW 
REVIEW (Lash)
REVIEW (Zerbinetta)
METROPERA
MET PLAYER

This opera is about King Henry the Eighth's rejection of his wife Anne Boleyn (Anna Bolena) in favour of Jane Seymour (Giovanna di Seymour) her lady-in-waiting. It was the first of Donizetti's works to achieve significant success. As usual, history is not closely adhered to.

Three reviews of this production are provided above. The first (uncredited to its author) is favourable in every department. The second (by L. L. Lash) is satisfied with the singers and the orchestra, but he notes that the director was given deafening sounds of disapproval). The third (by "Zerbinetta") is scathing with regard to the staging, and the lack of passion in the performance ("Everyone stood stiffly in place"), though Anna Netrebko "did not lose her head" in her first assumption of this role; she was passionate and magnificent, and she will open the New York Metropera season in this opera in 2011.  However, Elina Garanc(h)a from Latvia sang the coloratura bel canto music of Jane Seymour cleanly and evenly but boringly. At the NYMet we have seen her as Cinderella (Rossini) and Carmen (no lack of passion there!); I have a video recording in which Anna and Elina sing some duets; but they will not be together in the New York version.

This is a long opera, as evidenced by the four 12" discs in the Decca set I own. Marilyn Horne is Jane, but I was surprised to find that Anna  was not Joan Sutherland but Elena Souliotis from Buenos Aires. This is also from the Vienna Opera, in 1970; Sutherland and Bonynge did it for Decca in 1987 (Welsh Opera); there is a video recording from 1984, made in Canada. Of course, Maria Callas started the head rolling in 1957 (La Scala, Milano).

RAMEAU : PYGMALION

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 14th of August 2011 at 3.03 - 4.55 pm

RAMEAU: Anacréon; Pygmalion, two one act operas
Anacréon
La Prêtresse de Bacchus …Emmanuelle de Negri
L’Amour………………… Hanna Bayodi-Hirt
Agathocle………………... Ed Lyon
Anacreón………………... Alan Buet
Euricles………………….. Jean-Yves Ravoux
Pygmalion
L’Amour………………… Emmanuelle de Negri
La Statue…………………Hanna Bayodi-Hirt
Pygmalion……………….. Ed Lyon
Céphise…………………...Virginie Thomas
Les Arts Florissants/William Christie  
(recorded in Salle Pleyel, Paris by Radio France)

Anacréon
INTRODUCTION 
RECORDING (Christie)
LIBRETTO (French)

Pygmalion
INTRODUCTION 
BACKGROUND
RECORDING (Christie)
LIBRETTO (French)

These two brief pieces are both operas, from our point of view (listening without seeing), but the French term is "acte de ballet". As we know, and as Wagner learned with his French version of Tannhäuser, French operas must include ballet, at least in the second act. These two music-drama ballets have only one act each, and the dancing is interspersed throughout (we will know from the music and the silence of the singers that there is pantomime and movement taking place). 

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)  a contemporary of Bach and Handel, was an important figure in music history, being not only a composer but also a theorist of music (a veritable Newton of music). Beginning as violinist, organist, and harpsichordist, he did not have an opera performed till 1733 (1733 minus 1683 = 50 years!).

Pygmalion dates from 1748. It is based on a story in Ovid's Metamorphoses (10.234ff), and is also the basis for Shaw's Pygmalion (alias My Fair Lady when set to music). The original Pygmalion sculpted a woman out of ivory (it must have been a mammoth's tusk he worked on?!), fell in love with her, and by the will of the goddess of love she came alive (and became pregnant, and in due course gave birth to a child, but Rameau omits these details, since it is hard enough fitting 24 hours into 45 minutes, so 9 months does not fit in the frame of the picture).

Anacréon (the 1757 version) is devoted to the subject of love and wine (a dangerous concoction, an inflammable mixture, I would say) and the deity involved is Bacchus (Dionysios). I have recently seen a thesis (devilishly and diabolically plausible) arguing that Dionysios was a Greek version of Hebrew Yahweh, both being basically associated with metallurgy.

VERDI : NABUCCO

VERDI'S NABUCCO (or NABUCODONOSOR)

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 7th of August 2011 at 3.03 - 5.15 pm

VERDI: Nabucco, an opera in four acts
Nabucco....................... Leo Nucci
Ismaele......................... Antonio Poli
Zaccaria....................... Dmitry Beloselsky
Fenena......................... Anna Malavasi
Anna............................ Erika Grimaldi
Abdallo........................ Saveria Fiore
High Priest of Baal...... Gotran Juric
Rome Opera Chorus & Orch/Riccardo Muti
(recorded in the Teatro dell'Opera, Rome by Italian Radio)

INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO (English translation)


Vivaldi's Nabucco: that is what it said in the New Zealand Listener (in 2007) for this week's opera (when it was previously broadcast, see below). That got me thinking. I looked up the list of Vivaldi's works and could not find that among them. I was highly suspicious, because that name Nabucco is peculiar to Verdi. His opera was first known as Nabucodonosor, and (as my Sunday-school taunt said: Nebuchadnezzar is a very big name, and I bet you can't spell it; all that was required in response was "I-T") Nabucodonosor needed to be trimmed down to Nabucco (making the name meaningless in the process). The original Babylonian is Nabu-kudurri-usur, and another biblical form, which is closer to that, is Nebuchadrezzar (with -r- not -n-). Nebukadressar is the way I spell it, but editors always change it (there is red warning line under it as I write it here). His name begins with Nabu, the God who looked after destinies, and Nabu would protect him and his empire. He reigned from 605 till 562 BCE.

My first contact with the opera was by hearsay. One day I came home from work (teaching Latin and French at Granville Boys' High School in Sydney) and Helen told me about a beautiful chorus she had heard on the ABC, in their daily opera-half-hour (talk about rationing, but they did give us all the Bayreuth Festival recordings at night). Eventually, we both sang it in a choral concert, here {in a foreign land?}. It was the chorus of the Hebrew slaves, which they sing on the banks of the Euphrates river. "Go, my thought, on gilded wings" (Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate); and "Greet the banks of the Jordan, and Sion's razed towers"; and "Harp of gold, why do you hang mute on the willow?".

Obviously we are hearing reminscences of that Hebrew Psalm (137): "By the rivers of Babel we sat down and wept, when we remembered Sion. On the poplar-trees we hung up our harps, when our captors asked us for songs.... How could we sing the song of Yahweh, when we were on foreign soil?" The Jews exiled in Babylonia were not pleased about their situation, and wanted utu: "Happy the man who seizes your children and dashes them against a rock". (You don't hear that verse read out in church.)

Of course, the story in the opera is fiction, but it takes the madness and self-deification of Nebukadressar from the Book of Daniel. The text wrongly calls the Kaldeans (Babylonians) "Assyrians" (but Nineveh and the Assyrian empire fell in 612 BCE).

But this work stirred the hearts of Italians against their "Assyrian" (actually Austrian) oppressors, and Verdi himself became the figurehead of this nationalistic movement.

As we know, Verdi had lost his wife and two children and despaired of his own life. He was sworn off music, until he happened to open this libretto, and the ice was broken. Through it he met his lifelong companion, the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, the first Abigail.

I have seen a concert version in Wellington, and watched it on video. My three 12-inch plastic discs have Matteo Manuguerra as the King, Nicolai Ghiaurov as the High Priest Zaccaria, and the Priest of Baal is Robert Lloyd (remember him as Amfortas in Parsifal, the movie? he is nearly as old as me, but still performing in London and New York); Renata Scotto is Abigaille, and Elena Obraztsova is Fenena. Riccardo Muti conducts the great Philharmonia Orchestra (1978).

Nabucco has not made it into The Good Opera Guide of Denis Forman, so there cannot have been three recordings of it in the catalogue around 1990 (Gardelli, and Sinopoli, but Muti had been withdrawn!).

Sunday 21st of October 2007 at 3 pm
Opera in English
VERDI: Nabucco, an opera in four parts
Nabucco....................... Alan Opie
Ismael........................... Leonardo Capalbo
Zachariah...................... Alastair Miles
Abigail.......................... Susan Patterson
Fenena.......................... Jane Irwin
High Priest of Baal......... Dean Robinson
Abdullah....................... Paul Wade
Anna............................. Camilla Roberts
Opera North Chorus & Orch/David Parry
(Chandos CHAN 3136)

WAGNER : TANNHÄUSER

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 31st of July 2011 at 3.03 - 7  pm

WAGNER: Tannhäuser, an opera in three acts
Tannhäuser.................... Johan Botha
Elisabeth....................... Eva-Maria Westbroek
Venus........................... Michaela Schuster
Wolfram........................ Christian Gerhaher
Hermann....................... Christof Fischesser
Walter........................... Timothy Robinson
Biterolf.......................... Clive Bayley
Heinrich........................ Steven Ebel
Reinmar........................ Jeremy White
Young shepherd............ Alexander Lee
Royal Opera House Chorus & Orch, Covent Garden
Semyon Bychkov (BBC)

INTRODUCTION 
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS 
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND 
ANALYSIS 
PREVIEW
REVIEW (10/10)
REVIEW (7/10)
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE (pictures)
LIBRETTO (German)


Operawonk began circulating on the 23rd of December in 2006, and the index shows a host of operas (count 'em, there should be more than 200, but I really don't know) and yet I am astonished to see that Wagner's Tannhäuser does not appear among them. (Please remember to observe the Umlaut: the name is pronounced as in English tun/ton + hoyzer, NOT tan+howser.)
   This music-drama (psycho-drama even) has had a significant place in my life. I was first thrilled by the overture at a youth concert of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Some years later I heard a performance of it on the radio; it was from a concert put on for medicos at a conference; it was conducted by Bernard Heinze, and the return of the pilgrim chorus at the end took off thrillingly. (In the Paris version of the opera, this glorious reprise is omitted, and the music leaps into the Venusberg and its sensuous ballet.) In Melbourne I saw a performance of the original Dresden version on a week night, and I came back to the Saturday matinee, to let it have its powerful effect on my psyche again. I owned a second-hand version of the overture and the music of the Venusberg (Latin Mons Veneris), with the prelude and love-death from Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Paul Kletzki; the cover depicted the love-goddess naked; I now have a world Record Club pressing with a plain cover. This London production is the Vienna version, a mix of the old and the new; the denizens of the den of sensuality are not unclothed, or even in skin-coloured body suits, but in evening dress.

   Of all the opinions about the opera expressed under those various headings up there, the one that I was most intrigued to read was by the Reverend Father Owen Lee (in the "underground" section, from the Metropera archives); he has been a regular commentator in the opera broadcasts from New York: “Tannhäuser is not, then a simple dramatization of the victory of sacred over profane, of spirit over flesh, of Christianity over paganism. It is a celebration of a synthesis of those two opposites, the healing of a soul torn between two worlds."  I think it has indeed done that for me, even though I have also studied a heap of ascetic and mystical literature, which has urged me to avoid sexual thoughts and acts entirely.  Not too long ago, I got to sing the pilgrim chorus, and this performance of it included the women of the Palmerston North Choral Society, thus achieving further resolution of opposites.

GOLIJOV : AINADAMAR

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Tuesday 19th of July 2011 at 8 pm

Osvaldo GOLIJOV's Ainadamar, three images about
the martyred Spanish writer, Federico Garcia Lorca
Margarita Xirgu.................. Dawn Upshaw
Federico Garcia Lorca....... Kelley O'Connor
Nuria................................. Jessica Rivera
Ruiz Alonso....................... Jesús Montoya
José Tripaldi...................... Eduardo Chama
Maestro............................. Sean Mayer
Torero............................... Robb Asklof
Voices of the fountain......... Anne-Carolyn Bird
.......................................... Sindhu Chandrasekaran
Woman of the Atlanta SO Chorus, Atlanta SO/Robert Spano
(DG 477 6165)

COMPOSER
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
SYNOPSIS
REVIEW (2004)
REVIEW (2006)
REVIEW (2006)


Golijov achieved early fame with his Spanish SAINT MARK PASSION. He was born into a Jewish family in Argentina in 1960. The title AINADAMAR means "fountain of tears" (I can detect the Hebrew words for "eye/spring" and "tears" in it, but it is Arabic, and the name of the well in Granada where Federico Garcia Lorca was slain). 
The notes cited above will take you to a mine of information about the opera and its recording. 
 It lasts 80 minutes. 
Mezzo Kelley O'Connor plays the role of the poet and playwright who was executed in Fascist Spain in 1936 (the year I came in, as his reincarnation?), and thereafter his works could only be performed in Latin America. 
Dawn Upshaw (celebrated for her 1993 recording of Gorecki's Sorrowful Songs Symphony) is Margarita Xirgu, the Catalan actress who worked "with" the poet before and long after his death.

VERDI : LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 17th of July 2011 at 3.03 - 6  pm

VERDI: La Forza del Destino, an opera in four acts
Marquis of Calatrava..... Enrico Iori
Leonora........................ Violeta Urmana
Don Carlo..................... Roberto Frontali
Don Alvaro................... Salvatore Licitra
Curra............................ Antonella Trevisan
Preziosilla...................... Elena Maximova
Maestro Trabuco.......... Carlo Bosi
Padre Guardiano........... Robert Scandiuzzi
Fra Melitone................. Roberto De Candia
Alcade.......................... Filippo Polinelli
Florence May Festival Chorus & Orch/Zubin Mehta  
(recorded in the Teatro Comunale, Florence by Italian Radio)

COMPOSER
INTRODUCTION 
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE 
BACKGROUND 
UNDERGROUND
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO (Italian) 
LIBRETTO (English)


This Force of Destiny drama is said to be Verdi's Russian opera, and not only because it had its opening night in Saint Petersburg in 1862 (see Background).
I have never seen it in a theatre or a cinema, but I remember the report from the Metropera in 1960: when Leonard Warren (the American baritone, aged 48) was about to sing the lines in Act 3, Morir, tremenda cosa ("dying is a tremendous thing"), he actually died on stage, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Pavarotti shied away from the alleged curse of the opera with its Force of Destiny.
As it was performed again in 2006 at the Met, with Deborah Voigt, there are ample notes available from their archives, including pictures (see Storyline).
Honor and blood-vengeance are the driving forces, rather than blind fate, and it all stems from an accidental death when a pistol dropped by the Peruvian suitor Alvaro fires a bullet which kills a nobleman protecting his daughter Leonora from abduction (she was willing, but because she dithered she was caught in the act of elopement). She becomes a monk in a hermitage at a monastery. Her brother Carlo pursues Alvaro, mistakenly swears lifelong friendship with him (just so we can have another of those male-bonding duets), then wants to kill him, and when Alvaro is gravely wounded in battle, he wills him back to life so he can slay him with his own hand. In the end Alvaro wins the duel, Carlo stabs his sister, and Alvaro jumps off a cliff cursing fate. However, the revised ending has him closing with prayer in the presence of Leonora and a friar.
Notice that like Beethoven's Leonora, she disguises herself as a man.