Beginning today McAllister gives the first three performances of Corigliano’s Triathlon with the San Francisco Symphony. The concerto, commissioned by the SF Symphony, will also be performed Friday and Saturday.

McAllister is no stranger to world premieres. He’s an ardent supporter of new music and has given performances of over 200 new works, most notably John Adams’ Saxophone Concerto in 2013. He’s also a founding member of PRISM Quartet, an award-winning saxophone chamber quartet that focuses on newer music.

Triathlon, however, is unlike any other piece McAllister has performed.

“He’s one of the greatest pros in history and it’s the thrill of my life to work with him,” he said recently during our Zoom conversation. “His real experience with the instrument’s capabilities came from some one-on-one sessions where I flew to his condo in New York and literally brought the instruments to him. He would even show me some drafts, some things, some ideas he had in mind.”

The main idea Corigliano had in mind, which gives the pieces its title, is the use of a different saxophone for each movement: a soprano saxophone for the first; an alto saxophone for the second and the baritone sax for the final movement. So daunting is Triathlon that in many ways, McAllister revealed, he’s training in a way an athlete might for an actual race.

“There’s conditioning required to be able to make those switches and and feel like I can really immediately command the challenges of each of the movements. A Broadway musician is used to switching three or four instruments over the course of a show. But they’re not being asked to tackle the kinds of things we’re talking about in this concerto. For me right now I’m in the habit of doing these kind of global runs where I’m trying to really pace out my energy and really assess whether I have the right set up, right kind of reach, strength or whatever that’s going to allow me to just pick up the next instrument and be able to produce exactly what I want. And I think the greatest challenge.”

He goes to describe how that last switch back in the final moments of the concerto is going to be a true test of his skills.

“At the end of the end of the entire concerto, going right back to the soprano in this massive callback to the first movement, he’s got me immediately playing like really high. And we talked about it a lot and he knows it’s hard. But he really felt that it was crucial to tying the whole piece together.”

Corigliano even asked McAllister if what he was creating was even possible to do.

“We’ve had some back and forth about some passages in his piece where he’s saying, ‘Is that too hard? Is this just unrealistic?’ But my response is what is your vision for this? If you want it there in that range or you want this fast of a passage, if that’s how you hear it, I’m going to fight like hell to give it to you. I want to be committed to what you want. Right now I’m seven out of ten times. I’ll nail it by concert, I promise you. I’m going to get it ten out of ten times.”

Which means McAllister has to do that one thing every musician has to accept: practice, practice, practice. But no matter how much practicing McAllister can do in advance of performance week, there is one thing he can’t replicate.

“When it comes to just being a saxophone, making it through a 30-minute piece, you start to really address how your breathing; pacing yourself in a practice session so I don’t blow out my chops and it doesn’t ruin the next day. We’ve talked a little bit about the challenges of rehearsing it when I think all of the rehearsals are going to be focused primarily on the Wednesday before the first Thursday matinee. John’s worried for me because there will be such an intense day of rehearsing on that day before and then there’ll be a dress rehearsal and then a concert. I really can’t recreate that for myself. I can’t recreate that game speed, so to speak, right? They talk about that in athletics all the time. You don’t really know how you’re going to respond until you get punched in the mouth by your opponent. And I mean, I hate to feel like that, but I’m going to have to leave it up to how I feel in that moment because the orchestral scenario is going to be another challenge that I can’t recreate for myself until I get there.”

Once he gets through these three performances he embarks on a new work by Tyshawn Sorry. But for right now McAllister feels that Triathlon will join the Adams concerto as a pivotal moment in his career.

“These are going to be the cornerstones of my legacy as a performer and teacher. [I’ve] devoted my life to kind of giving back and then paying it forward and trying to make the state of my instrument better than how I found it. Those two pieces, by those two composers – these are dreams come true.”

To see our full interview with Timothy McAllister please go here.

All photos courtesy of Timothy McAllister

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Corigliano and Adamo, who have been together personally for 26 years, wrote The Lord of Cries specifically for Costanzo. When I spoke to Corigliano recently he said, “When you see a countertenor in a modern role it’s very interesting. I think it’s important for someone like Anthony, who is a star, to be in a big real piece and a modern piece.”

“It was really exciting,” Costanzo told me via a Zoom call last week. “I’ve always had the utmost respect for his music. John, and he’ll say this, likes to work with abstraction. He doesn’t like to work with 1990s New York. He likes smoke and ghosts and things like that. This sat in a world of abstraction that worked for his music. But it also had concrete dramatic themes that I felt would really speak to an audience.”

In short, The Lord of Cries uses characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to tell the story Euripides wrote in Bacchae. If that sounds confusing, it initially was for Costanzo as well.

“At first I thought I don’t sort understand the combination of these two disparate works. Within five minutes of talking to them about it, immediately it became clear that it was actually kind of a brilliant way of seeing the underpinnings of the story of Dracula that we all know in this Greek tragedy.” (To see how Corigliano and Adamo describe their opera, please go here.)

Costanzo, who became one of the best known opera singers in the world through his performance in Akhnaten by Philip Glass, regularly worked with the creators to help them fully realize the role, just as opera singers have done for centuries.

“I did go in at different points and try things out and sing things through and let John hear it. I think that gave him something for his inner ear as he was composing to hear it be realized. If you think about the history of opera, a lot of these roles were written with a specific singer in mind. Then other singers went and did it. But that specificity you hear in your mind helps the music take on a shape that I think makes it very singable and very accessible in the best sense.”

The themes Costanzo felt were relevant today tackle both repression and one’s place in society.

“This is an opera about repressed desire and what that does. But even more topical in some ways is this idea of place that’s really in the Euripides as well as the Stoker. One line in the opera they say a lot is ‘Deny him not his place.’ And I think what the repressed Victorian London is kind of saying is ‘He has no place here. You have no place here. There’s no place for an outsider.’

“There are a lot of different things happening in our world and reckonings about identity, whether that be sexual identity or gender identity or racial identity. There is this problematic sense of whether somebody has a place or doesn’t have a place. And I think what Dionysus and Dracula both try and show through being the stranger and the outsider is that we are all the same basically. We come from distinct backgrounds, but we share this communal psychology and I think that’s a powerful message for now.”

As Costanzo was coming of age and becoming aware of his own sexuality, he was very supported by his parents. As he told me, he didn’t have to struggle as much as others with being gay. He did, however, have his own hurdles to climb within the world of opera.

“I had a fairly easy time of it all because my parents are both psychologists and they were very accepting. That said, within the field of opera sometimes I felt that I should fit into a mold, a pre-determined mold. It took a while for me to feel like I could fully actualize my own concept of self in something like Akhnaten which has a gender fluidity and queerness, but also a real sort of powerful beauty and mystery in it. It took me a while to understand I could forge my own path. Now I think that’s a really crucial for art and for our platform as we move forward.”

His increasing fame came along with greater opportunities and greater responsibilities.

“I’m going to be the artist-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic next season and the pillar of the programming I have curated is called Authentic Selves. My work over the pandemic creating and producing Bandwagon was both a joy and an education. It was an initiative which first brought a pickup truck to all different neighborhoods. As an extension of that we created partnerships with different institutions. Rather than say we are the New York Phil and we will tell you what we want to do and if you want to participate great. Instead we would go to the National Black Theatre, El Puente Arts, Casita Maria, Flushing Town Hall and say ‘We’ll pay you, we’ll pay the artists, we’ll give you the stage. What do you want to do?’ How can we hand over control in small ways until these seismic changes of representation happen within the field. I think we have to be thinking both micro and macro at all times and working very hard and tirelessly to implement those changes.”

Of course, the classical music world and opera in particular move at pretty slow paces. With the clock ticking ever more loudly about representation in front offices and on-stage, Costanzo feels there’s no time to waste.

“I agree that life is short and opera is long as they say. But I think it is crucial that we be thinking about this all the time. There’s no time to waste. And I think that in the past year we have seen some progress which is encouraging. But I think we are in danger of losing the momentum as we return from COVID and crave the comfort of things going back to the way they were. It’s very important; however, as Masha Gessen said in The New Yorker, not to rebuild what we have lost. We have a chance here to rebuild and we better increase the momentum as opposed to letting it wane in our search for quote unquote comfort.”

For tickets to The Lord of Cries please go here. There are performances on August 5th, 11th and 17th.

This is the fourth in a series of interviews with artists performing at Santa Fe Opera this season.

All Photos: Anthony Roth Costanzo in The Lord of Cries (Photo by Curtis Brown/Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

The post Anthony Roth Costanzo Defines His Place in Opera appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“When we talk about the twelve years,” John Corigliano says during a Zoom conversation recently, “Mark wrote the libretto twelve years ago. It took me that long to write the music. I’m a very slow composer. It took me twelve years to write this just as it did twelve years to write The Ghosts of Versailles.”

He’s talking about his new opera The Lord of Cries which is having its world premiere at Santa Fe Opera. Mark is his spouse of 26 years, librettist Mark Adamo (who is also a composer, but not on this opera.)

Corigliano is perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning score for The Red Violin and his Symphony No. 1 written to commemorate the loss of friends due to AIDS. Adamo is the composer and librettist of the operas Little Women and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

The opera cleverly combines Euripides’ Bacchae with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If that sounds like solely an intellectual exercise, it actually works well.

“It’s seemed so simple if you knew both texts,” Adamo says. “It was Alexander Neef, who was leading the company here before he was summoned to Paris, who was discussing the piece with our assistant Peggy. He said, ‘What’s it about?’ Peggy took a breath and said it was Euripides told through the characters of Stoker. He said that was brilliant.”

Corigliano adds, “In some ways the project is very hard to describe, but very easy to see. If you see the opera it all makes sense. This one is intellectually complicated, but dramatically very simple. It makes perfect sense on the stage.”

Adamo comes up with perhaps the best possible description of their opera. “In the martini of this show, the gin is Euripides and a rinse of vermouth is Stoker; a very dry martini and a little will go a long way. It’s like a Victorian staging of the Bacchae with a little swirl of the Dracula.”

You add to that recipe Corigliano’s writing and you are set according to Adamo. “Everything that John does as a composer, the surrealism, the kind of way in which he finds himself in tonal and legible and formal music that is completely depraved and surreal…if Ghosts was based on the Met, this was really written on him.”

Starring as Dionysus in The Lord of Cries is counter tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. The role was written for him specifically because they knew the role would be set in that range.

“Once it was clear the best way of doing Dracula was going beneath the Stoker was to see what it had in common with Euripides,” offers Adamo, “the notion of the God who is disguised as a vampire in this case made sense for the characters and the story.”

“Anthony is petite, he’s not androgynous, he looks very male, but in the right costume he could be quite androgynous,” opines Corigliano. “That’s what Dionysus was and that’s what I wrote for.”

Adamo adds, “To be gender fluid is very modern, it’s very 2021, but it’s also very 455 B.C. In a certain way you just find the thread that connects the past to the present and do something interesting with it.”

At the core of The Lord of Cries is a story about repression that is as topical today as it was when Euripides first wrote Bacchae.

“It’s almost funny how many stories crop up in the news that could have been motivating this piece. Monsignor Burrill, who wanted to deny President Biden communion because he didn’t agree with his stance on certain sexual issues, had to end his career because he couldn’t tell the truth about who he is. Committing to a church who told him he shouldn’t exist. He becomes an enforcer of that. And lo, he spends the day upholding very brittlly that dogma and spends the night trolling the internet for sex. There’s not a lot you have to do to Euripides to make this contemporary.”

Corigliano summed up rather succinctly the theme of their opera. “If you are repressed and stay repressed and you don’t give into the animal urges ever, you’ll destroy yourself.”

For a composer who relied on take-out chicken, a bottle of wine and ten milligrams of valium* to get through the world premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles at the Metropolitan Opera, he’s not giving into to his own urges to be anxious while attending to the debut of The Lord of Cries in Santa Fe.

“For the first time in my life I actually enjoyed listening to this. Partly because the performances were so secure from the first rehearsal. The orchestra is top-notch. When it got on the stage for some reason I was extremely confident and I went into it without any tension at all. This is the first time in my life. It’s a whole new me.”

“I have to say what have you done to my spouse of 26 years,” Adamo jokingly adds. “This is not John.”

I suggested that it was perhaps a result of working so closely with each other.

“Maybe that’s it,” Corigliano considers. “I don’t know the answer. I’ll know when I go to another performance of my music. This is, at 83, the first time I’ve been able to relax and enjoy the performance.”

Adamo certainly hopes so. “Let’s hope you’ve outlived your life-long anxiety. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.”

To which Corigliano responds simply, “How nice to let it go.”

This is the first in a week-long series of interviews with the artists participating in this year’s Santa Fe Opera season. Come back on Thursday for our interview with Anthony Roth Costanzo.

For tickets to The Lord of Cries, please go here. Three performances remain on August 5th, 11th and 17th.

Main photo: Jarrett Ott, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Matt Boehller and the Santa Fe Opera Chorus in The Lord of Cries (Photo by Curtis Brown/Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

*Corigliano told me about this in a 2015 interview I did with him.

The post John Corigliano and Mark Adamo’s 12-Year Journey with “The Lord of Cries” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“When we talk about the twelve years,” John Corigliano says during a Zoom conversation recently, “Mark wrote the libretto twelve years ago. It took me that long to write the music. I’m a very slow composer. It took me twelve years to write this just as it did twelve years to write The Ghosts of Versailles.”

He’s talking about his new opera The Lord of Cries which is having its world premiere at Santa Fe Opera. Mark is his spouse of 26 years, librettist Mark Adamo (who is also a composer, but not on this opera.)

Corigliano is perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning score for The Red Violin and his Symphony No. 1 written to commemorate the loss of friends due to AIDS. Adamo is the composer and librettist of the operas Little Women and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

The opera cleverly combines Euripides’ Bacchae with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If that sounds like solely an intellectual exercise, it actually works well.

“It’s seemed so simple if you knew both texts,” Adamo says. “It was Alexander Neef, who was leading the company here before he was summoned to Paris, who was discussing the piece with our assistant Peggy. He said, ‘What’s it about?’ Peggy took a breath and said it was Euripides told through the characters of Stoker. He said that was brilliant.”

Corigliano adds, “In some ways the project is very hard to describe, but very easy to see. If you see the opera it all makes sense. This one is intellectually complicated, but dramatically very simple. It makes perfect sense on the stage.”

Adamo comes up with perhaps the best possible description of their opera. “In the martini of this show, the gin is Euripides and a rinse of vermouth is Stoker; a very dry martini and a little will go a long way. It’s like a Victorian staging of the Bacchae with a little swirl of the Dracula.”

You add to that recipe Corigliano’s writing and you are set according to Adamo. “Everything that John does as a composer, the surrealism, the kind of way in which he finds himself in tonal and legible and formal music that is completely depraved and surreal…if Ghosts was based on the Met, this was really written on him.”

Starring as Dionysus in The Lord of Cries is counter tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. The role was written for him specifically because they knew the role would be set in that range.

“Once it was clear the best way of doing Dracula was going beneath the Stoker was to see what it had in common with Euripides,” offers Adamo, “the notion of the God who is disguised as a vampire in this case made sense for the characters and the story.”

“Anthony is petite, he’s not androgynous, he looks very male, but in the right costume he could be quite androgynous,” opines Corigliano. “That’s what Dionysus was and that’s what I wrote for.”

Adamo adds, “To be gender fluid is very modern, it’s very 2021, but it’s also very 455 B.C. In a certain way you just find the thread that connects the past to the present and do something interesting with it.”

At the core of The Lord of Cries is a story about repression that is as topical today as it was when Euripides first wrote Bacchae.

“It’s almost funny how many stories crop up in the news that could have been motivating this piece. Monsignor Burrill, who wanted to deny President Biden communion because he didn’t agree with his stance on certain sexual issues, had to end his career because he couldn’t tell the truth about who he is. Committing to a church who told him he shouldn’t exist. He becomes an enforcer of that. And lo, he spends the day upholding very brittlly that dogma and spends the night trolling the internet for sex. There’s not a lot you have to do to Euripides to make this contemporary.”

Corigliano summed up rather succinctly the theme of their opera. “If you are repressed and stay repressed and you don’t give into the animal urges ever, you’ll destroy yourself.”

For a composer who relied on take-out chicken, a bottle of wine and ten milligrams of valium* to get through the world premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles at the Metropolitan Opera, he’s not giving into to his own urges to be anxious while attending to the debut of The Lord of Cries in Santa Fe.

“For the first time in my life I actually enjoyed listening to this. Partly because the performances were so secure from the first rehearsal. The orchestra is top-notch. When it got on the stage for some reason I was extremely confident and I went into it without any tension at all. This is the first time in my life. It’s a whole new me.”

“I have to say what have you done to my spouse of 26 years,” Adamo jokingly adds. “This is not John.”

I suggested that it was perhaps a result of working so closely with each other.

“Maybe that’s it,” Corigliano considers. “I don’t know the answer. I’ll know when I go to another performance of my music. This is, at 83, the first time I’ve been able to relax and enjoy the performance.”

Adamo certainly hopes so. “Let’s hope you’ve outlived your life-long anxiety. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.”

To which Corigliano responds simply, “How nice to let it go.”

This is the first in a week-long series of interviews with the artists participating in this year’s Santa Fe Opera season. Come back on Thursday for our interview with Anthony Roth Costanzo.

For tickets to The Lord of Cries, please go here. Three performances remain on August 5th, 11th and 17th.

Main photo: Jarrett Ott, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Matt Boehller and the Santa Fe Opera Chorus in The Lord of Cries (Photo by Curtis Brown/Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

*Corigliano told me about this in a 2015 interview I did with him.

The post John Corigliano and Mark Adamo’s 12-Year Journey with “The Lord of Cries” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

A pair of composers have two operas being shown this week: John Adams (Doctor Atomic and Nixon in China) and Philip Glass (Akhnaten and Satyagraha). Also represented are John Corigliano, Nico Muhly and Kurt Weill (technically German, but he ultimately became an American citizen).

Since the Met is re-running productions as the bulk of their weekly streaming schedule, I’m going to mix in interviews with the performers and creators in place of clips to avoid the redundancy of showing the same few clips available. Let me know your thoughts!

All productions become available at 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST and remain available for 23 hours. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.

The Met is heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series and the planned resumption of performances in the 2021-2022 season, so you’ll have to go past those announcements and promos to find the streaming productions on the Metropolitan Opera website. 

If you read this column early enough on June 28th, you’ll still have time to see the 2016-2017 season production of Verdi’s La Traviata that was part of Pride Week.

Here is the full line-up for Week 68 at the Met:

Monday, June 28 – Nico Muhly’s Marnie – 3rd Showing – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Conducted by Roberto Spano; starring Isabel Leonard, Iestyn Davies and Christopher Maltman. This Michael Mayer production is from the 2018-2019 season.

Muhly’s opera, with a libretto by Nicholas Wright, had its world premiere at the English National Opera in 2017. The opera is based on Winston Graham’s 1961 novel.

If the title, Marnie, sounds familiar, this is based on the same novel by Winston Graham that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 film. The title character is a woman who steals from people, changes her identity and quickly moves on to other victims. Until an employer catches her and blackmails her.

Anthony Tommasini, in his review for the New York Times, said of the opera, “Marnie benefits from the director Michael Mayer’s sleek and fluid staging, with inventive sets and projections designed by Julian Crouch and 59 Productions. (It was first seen last year in London for the work’s premiere at the English National Opera.) Scenery changes are deftly rendered through sliding and descending panels on which evocative images are projected.

“Mr. Muhly’s music could not have had a better advocate than the conductor Robert Spano, making an absurdly belated Met debut at 57. He highlighted intriguing details, brought out myriad colorings, kept the pacing sure and never covered the singers.”

Tuesday, June 29 – John Adams’s Doctor Atomic – 3rd Showing

Conducted by Alan Gilbert; starring Sasha Cooke, Thomas Glenn, Gerald Finley, Richard Paul Fink and Eric Owens. This Penny Woolcock production is from the 2008-2009 season.

This John Adams opera had its world premiere in 2005 in San Francisco and features a libretto by Peter Sellars. The main source of inspiration for the libretto was declassified government documents from individuals who worked at Los Alamos on the development of the atomic bomb.

Act one of Doctor Atomic takes place approximately one month before the first test. The second act takes place the morning of that test in 1945. At the center of it all is Robert J. Oppenheimer (Finley).

In his review for the New York Times, Anthony Tomassini said of Adams’s score: “This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music. Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density. Mr. Gilbert exposes the inner details and layered elements of the music: obsessive riffs, pungently dissonant cluster chords, elegiac solo instrumental lines that achingly drift atop nervous, jittery orchestral figurations.”

Wednesday, June 30 – John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles – 4th Showing – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Conducted by James Levine; starring Håkan Hagegård, Teresa Stratas, Renée Fleming, Gino Quilico and Marilyn Horne. This Colin Graham production is from the 1991-1992 season.

Beaumarchais is the playwright who wrote the plays that inspired Rossini’s The Barber of Sevilleand Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. His third play in that series, The Guilty Mother, serves as the inspiration for this opera by John Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffman.

In the opera, ghosts occupy the theatre at Versailles. Marie Antoinette, not too happy about her execution, spurns the advances of Beaumarchais. He offers his new opera, A Figaro for Antonia, as a means to win her love and change her fate. Now an opera appears within the opera, utilizing the familiar Figaro characters.

The Metropolitan Opera commissioned this work for its 100th anniversary in 1983. It wasn’t performed there until eight years after that centennial. This film is from those performances.

I interviewed Corigliano when LA Opera performed The Ghosts of Versailles. Here’s what he told me about how he handled opening night at the Met:

“The premiere of the opera, this is what I did. I sent out for a take-out chicken. I had a bottle of wine and ten milligrams of valium. I ate the chicken, took the valium and wine to the opening. If you’re asking about something that happened at opening night, I was a zombie. It was traumatizing. I’d never written an opera, it was overwhelming. I couldn’t face it without a little help.”

Both this Metropolitan Opera production and the more recent The LA Opera production were amazing and I personally think Corigliano had nothing to worry about. This is a terrific work.

Thursday, July 1 – Philip Glass’s Satyagraha – 3rd Showing – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Conducted by Dante Anzolini; starring Rachelle Durkin, Richard Croft, Kim Josephson and Alfred Walker. This is a revival of Phelim McDermott’s 2008 production from the 2011-2012 season.

This Philip Glass opera had its world premiere in 1980 in Rotterdam. The libretto was written by Glass and Candace DeJong. The title means “insistence on truth” in Sanskrit.

The life of Gandhi is depicted in a story that goes backwards and forwards through time as a way to examine his life in South Africa and leading to his belief in non-violent protests. Sung in Sanskrit with projected titles on the stage itself, this is one unique opera that is staged beautifully and powerfully.

James R. Oestreich, writing in the New York Times, said of this revival (which took place during a celebration of the the composer’s 75th birthday):

“The singers were exceptionally fine and well matched, starting with the tenor Richard Croft, strong yet vulnerable as Gandhi. Like Mr. Croft, Rachelle Durkin as Gandhi’s secretary, Miss Schlesen; Maria Zifchak as his wife, Kasturbai; and Alfred Walker as his Indian co-worker Parsi Rustomji were veterans of the 2008 premiere, and all were excellent except for a bit of strain in Ms. Durkin’s sustained high work in the newspaper scene. Kim Josephson was also strong as Gandhi’s European colleague Mr. Kallenbach.”

I challenge anyone to get to Satyagraha‘s final aria, “Evening Song,” and not be utterly moved.

Friday, July 2 – John Adams’s Nixon in China – 4th Showing

Conducted by John Adams; starring Kathleen Kim, Janis Kelly, Robert Brubaker, Russell Braun, James Maddalena and Richard Paul Fink. This Peter Sellars production is from the 2010-2011 season.

Nixon in China had its world premiere in Houston in 1987 in a production directed by Peter Sellars. Inspired by President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the opera features a libretto by Alice Goodman.

It was wholly unlikely that someone as anti-Communist as Nixon would make a trip to China. That trip forged new relations between the two countries and helped thaw the icy relationship the United States had with the then Soviet Union. Nixon and his wife Pat, Chou En-lai, Mao Tse-tung, Henry Kissinger and Madame Mao all play prominent roles in the opera.

This 2011 production, while a Met debut for Nixon in China, was not the New York debut of the opera. It was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 1987 following its premiere in Houston. Critical reaction upon its premiere was quite mixed.

By the time of this production (which found Sellars revisiting his original work and that of a 2006 revival), Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times called it an “audacious and moving opera.”

Saturday, July 3 –Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny – 2nd Showing

Conducted by James Levine; starring Teresa Stratas, Astrid Varnay, Richard Cassilly and Cornell MacNeil. This John Dexter production is from the 1979-1980 season. 

Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny had its world premiere in Leipzig in 1930. The libretto, of course, is by Bertolt Brecht.

Three fugitives and four lumberjacks make their way to Mahagonny. The fugitives are trying to elude the authorities and enjoy themselves in a city where men can get all their needs met. The lumberjacks are looking for opportunity. 

A prostitute named Jenny is, at first, attracted by the presence of the fugitives and their money. But she finds herself falling for one of the lumberjacks, Jimmy, who gets more and more in debt as the opera progresses.

As both personal and city financial problems mount, the lives of all eight characters will be changed forever and the shining city will collapse into chaos.

This was the first ever production of this opera at The Met. Harold C. Schonberg, writing in the New York Times, opened his review this way:

“The Weill‐Brecht Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny came to the Metropolitan Opera Friday night, and at least one question about the work was answered. There were those who predicted that Mahagonny with its cabaret roots, smallish orchestra and jazz elements, would not ‘go’ in a house as big as the Met’s. It does. Whether or not it is an opera, and Weill strongly insisted that it is, it does use voices skillfully, it has a big chorus, and it was not lost on the stage of the big house.”

Sunday, July 4 – Philip Glass’s Akhnaten – 6th Showing – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Conducted by Karen Kamensek; starring Dísella Lárusdóttir, J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Aaron Blake, Will Liverman, Richard Bernstein and Zachary James. This Phelim McDermott production is from the 2019-2020. 

Akhnaten is one of Glass’s three biographical operas (the others are Einstein on the Beach and Saturday’s opera, Satyagraha.) The composer also wrote the libretto with the assistance of Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel, Richard Riddell and Jerome Robbins.

Akhnaten was a pharaoh who was controversial for his views on worshipping more than one God. He suggested just worshipping one – the sun. He was husband to Nefertitti and father of Tutankhamun. This opera does not have a linear storyline.

In his New York Times review, Anthony Tommasini praised the leads:

“Wearing gauzy red robes with extravagantly long trains, Mr. Costanzo and Ms. Bridges seem at once otherworldly and achingly real. His ethereal tones combine affectingly with her plush, deep-set voice. Ms. Kamensek, while keeping the orchestra supportive, brings out the restless rhythmic elements that suggest the couple’s intensity.”

I’ve seen this production with Costanzo singing the title role and cannot recommend taking the time to watch Akhnaten highly enough. 

That’s the full line-up for Week 68 at the Met. At press time we had no details for next week.

Enjoy your week! Enjoy the operas! Happy Birthday America!

Photo: James Maddalena, Russell Braun and Janis Kelly in Nixon in China (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy Metropolitan Opera)

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Goldenthal won his Oscar for the score to Julie Taymor’s film Frida. (Taymor, it should be noted, is also his partner). Amongst his other film credits are Drugstore Cowboy, Interview with the Vampire, Heat, The Butcher Boy, Titus (a particular favorite), Collateral and most recently The Glorias.

On stage he has written scores for Juan Darién (and received a Tony Award nomination), The Green Bird and the 2017 revival of M. Butterfly.

In 2006 Los Angeles Opera gave the world premiere production of his opera Grendel, which look at the Beowulf story from the point-of-view of the monster. I was lucky enough to attend opening night of that production.

[As a side note, I wish more companies would be as excited about giving third, fourth or fifth productions of new operas as they are about offering up premieres. Let’s see another production of Grendel!]

Amongst other important compositions of Goldenthal’s is Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio which was commissioned by the Pacific Symphony in 1993.

If you need more details about Goldenthal, he studied with Aaron Copland and John Corigliano.

With all this information, it is no wonder that on Tuesday, April 27th, this massively talented composer will be joining Salastina for their weekly Happy Hour. The Zoom event will take place at 6:00 PM PDT and last approximately one hour.

There’s no charge to join in the conversation. I’ll be there…will you?

Photo of Elliot Goldenthal/Courtesy Salastina

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It’s busy time for Darrah. He’s overseeing Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Close Quarters series which just last week premiered their sixth new film and has a seventh scheduled for January 29th. Last week his digital short, The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings (inspired by Missy Mazzoli’s opera, Proving Up) debuted on LA Opera’s website. On Friday a film he produced of David T. Little’s Soldier Songs for Opera Philadelphia premieres. Next week LA Opera offers two additional premieres: a film of the Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins Pulitzer Prize-winning opera p r i s m and another digital short, Lumee’s Dream (inspired by p r i s m). That’s only what’s happening in January.

Truth be told, this entire column could be filled with just what Darrah has on his schedule. So I was pleasantly surprised when he took time last week to talk about his perspective on how cultural institutions can embrace today’s evolving technology. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

What do you think are the one or two most important things video/film can do for classical music and opera and is the pandemic how this voluminous amount of work came your way?

I think the pandemic has less motivated the content itself and more highlighted that certain cultural institutions were willing to embrace the way the internet works. There’s a reality of content and how it is put online and how people and what demographics work with that. I’ve been careful not to make content that feels about the pandemic, but the time has allowed the opportunity to shift the DNA to something that’s full of possibilities.

You directed p r i s m and Proving Up on stage. You were already making a name for yourself as a stage director, did this DNA shift create a cottage industry for you and has it redefined who you are as an artist?

It just made me realize that I don’t want my artistic practice to be narrowly defined. Opera files everyone away as a singer, designer, director…Most of the people I work with are breaking those boundaries down.

I’m annoyed when people say I’m an opera director. For Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra there’s no opera involved. I think this is the future of the form.

In terms of my own work, I was already asking “How do we embrace everyone who is on an app and can cultural institutions embrace that on a higher level?” Ownership is sexy. If you are doing a chamber concert, own it. But if you’re going to work in the visual world, work with what they do. All I’ve done is bank on the fact that there were audiences who didn’t want to watch musicians stare at scores. People are signing up to see something that will say something and move them and is still musically based. We’ll see how much further I can push that. The guiding principle is use this time to generate things that surprise people and create original content.

You’ve expressed in several interviews that performances in empty venues with masks has value “relegated to the audience that already existed.” How do you think your work will translate into people attending live performances once it is safe to do so?

I’m always careful to say I’m not advocating for abolishing of live performances. We can’t have them now, so cultivate that audience and point them to voice and instruments live. It doesn’t mean every concert or opera needs the same visual acumen. But you should be known as a curator of sound in the community and how sound interacts with visuals. What’s the hook that makes me want to seek that out? It emboldens a brand and brings new people into a concert.

You get to revisit both p r i s m and Proving Up with these digital shorts. How did the time and distance away from the productions of those works allow for a new perspective for you?

Both are in the universe of those pieces, but are something all by themselves. They are both different.

Proving Up is an excerpt, but I didn’t want it to feel like an excerpt. It was an opportunity to lean into 1980s and 90s counterculture. I’m using all my favorite horror movies and there’s a twist that allows us to think about the mystique of it. Let’s not tell the story of Proving Up, but let’s build mythology around this character and what he would look like in 2021.

p r i s m also inspired another visual realm of universe. That is a more sensory experience and it is long form. They feel rooted in the same peripheral universe.

Later this year you are scheduled to direct the world premiere of John Corigliano’s new opera, The Lord of Cries at Santa Fe Opera. What can you reveal about that project?

I’ve seen the whole score and it is wild. Whether you are in the theatre or out of the theatre you are in for an exciting ride. It is really bold orchestrally. It’s the same design team that did Breaking the Waves and Proving Up with me. I can’t say too much about it, but people will be surprised.

There are probably a lot of people who would say what you’re doing is detrimental to classical music.

I have so many friends in other art forms say they didn’t know that LACO existed. I feel there are big seismic shifts happening everywhere. We look and we pretend it shouldn’t happen in the culture world. What are we going to do to actually shift it?

For ten years I’ve heard this lip service that our audiences are dwindling, donors are dying off and classical music is dying. Well maybe there’s something occasionally that gives this life.

Can we just all agree to do something about it? You have to play by the rules of what Gen Z does. Use the internet the way they do.

Main Photo: James Darrah (Photo by Jordan Geiger/Courtesy Aleba & Co.)

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The composers represented this week are Thomas Adés (who has two operas being streamed), John Adams, Benjamin Britten, John Corigliano, George Gershwin and Kurt Weill. I think there are some really amazing productions available this week.

Each production becomes available at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT on the Metropolitan Opera website. Every opera remains available for 23 hours.

They are heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series, their New Year’s Eve Gala and the planned resumption of performances in the 2021-2022 season, so you’ll have to go past those announcements and promos to find the streaming productions. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.

If you read this column early enough on December 7th, you might still have time to catch the 1978-1979 season production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini that concludes last week’s Stars in Signature Roles series. 

Here is the line-up for Week 39 at the Met:

Monday, December 7 – Thomas Adès’s The Tempest

Conducted by Thomas Adès; starring Audrey Luna, Isabel Leonard, Alek Shrader, Alan Oke and Simon Keenlyside. This Robert Lepage production is from the 2012-2013 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on May 12th and September 6th.

The Tempest by Thomas Adés had its world premiere in London in 2004. The libretto, by Meredith Oakes, is inspired by William Shakespeare’s play, but is not slave to it. There are differences.

The Duke of Milan, Prospero, has been exiled and with his daughter, Miranda, they have been set to sea. They ultimately land on an island filled with spirits. Amongst those spirits are Ariel and the monster, Caliban. Prospero, who has magical powers, causes a ship carrying the King of Naples and his son Ferdinand to wreck during a storm Prospero created. Relations both personal and professional collide leaving each of the participants changed and one of the characters alone in the island.

Between its London premiere and its debut at the Met in 2012, there had already been four other productions of The Tempest. Few contemporary operas get that many productions in so short a period of time.

Alex Ross, writing for The New Yorker, said of Adés’ opera (one of at least fifty operas based on Shakespeare’s play), “The Tempest is the opposite of a disappointment; it is a masterpiece of airy beauty and eerie power. As if on schedule, Adès, at thirty-two, is now the major artist that his earliest works promised he would become.”

Tuesday, December 8 – John Adams’s Doctor Atomic

Conducted by Alan Gilbert; starring Sasha Cooke, Thomas Glenn, Gerald Finley, Richard Paul Fink and Eric Owens. This Penny Woolcock production is from the 2008-2009 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 23rd.

This John Adams opera had its world premiere in 2005 in San Francisco and features a libretto by Peter Sellars. The main source of inspiration for the libretto was declassified government documents from individuals who worked at Los Alamos on the development of the atomic bomb.

Act one of Doctor Atomic takes place approximately one month before the first test. The second act takes place the morning of that test in 1945. At the center of it all is Robert J. Oppenheimer (Finley).

In his review for the New York Times, Anthony Tomassini said of Adams’s score: “This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music. Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density. Mr. Gilbert exposes the inner details and layered elements of the music: obsessive riffs, pungently dissonant cluster chords, elegiac solo instrumental lines that achingly drift atop nervous, jittery orchestral figurations.”

Wednesday, December 9 – Britten’s Peter Grimes

Conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles; starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey and Anthony Michaels-Moore. This John Doyle production is from the 2007-2008 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on May 14th, September 1st and November 13th.

Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes had its world premiere in London in 1945. The libretto was written by Montagu Slater who based it on a poem in The Borough by George Crabbe.

In Peter Grimes, the title character is facing intense questioning after his apprentice has died. The townsfolk believe him to be responsible, the coroner rules he was not. Shortly afterward, Grimes recruits another apprentice, John. Ellen, the only person in town who believes Grimes, later finds herself questioning Grimes when she finds that John has intense bruising on his neck. Word spreads quickly about the boy’s injuries and the people in town want an investigation. What follows is tragic on multiple levels.

The title role was written by Benjamin Britten for his partner, Peter Pears. In the mid 60s, Jon Vickers’s performance has been considered definitive for quite some time.

John Doyle, best known for his minimalist productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals, made his Met Opera debut with this production of Peter Grimes. Griffey, having sung this opera a few times before this production, finally found his way into a lead role at the Met.

Anthony Tommasini, writing in the New York Times, found some unique qualities in how Griffey tackled the part: “Mr. Griffey, even though his voice has heft and carrying power, is essentially a lyric tenor. And it is disarming to hear the role sung with such vocal grace, even sweetness in places. Every word of his diction is clear. You sense Grimes’s dreamy side struggling to emerge. The moments of gentleness, though, make Mr. Griffey’s impulsive fits of hostility, his bursts of raw vocal power, seem even more threatening.”

Thursday, December 10 – Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel

Conducted by Thomas Adès; starring Audrey Luna, Amanda Echalaz, Sally Matthews, Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, Frédéric Antoun, David Portillo, David Adam Moore, Rod Gilfry, Kevin Burdette, Christian Van Horn and John Tomlinson. This Tom Cairns production was from the 2017-2018 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 5th and November 15th.

British composer Adés’s opera, based on the Luis Buñuel film from 1962, had its world premiere in Salzburg in 2016. Tom Cairns, who directed this production, wrote the libretto.

The Exterminating Angel depicts an elaborate dinner party where all the attendees suddenly and mysteriously cannot leave the room. As the hours turn into days, they lose any sense of privilege and pretense and are reduced to more animalistic tendencies.

If you saw the composer’s The Tempest (which opened Week 39 at the Met), you know that Adés is one of our most compelling and intriguing composers. 

Feel free to check out Anthony Tomassini’s review in the New York Times. I’ll just give you the last sentence from his review: “If you go to a single production this season, make it this one.” I’ve seen it and wholeheartedly agree.

Friday, December 11 – The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

Conducted by David Robertson; starring Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Denyce Graves, Frederick Ballentine, Eric Owens, Alfred Walker and Donovan Singletary. This James Robinson production is from the 2019-2020 season. This is an encore presentation of the production previously made available on September 5th and 6th.

DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy, was the inspiration for a play written by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. That play served as the inspiration for this opera by George Gershwin with a libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Porgy and Bess had its world premiere in 1935 at Boston’s Colonial Theatre.

In the opera, Porgy lives in Charleston’s slums. He’s disabled and spends his time begging. He is enamored with Bess and does everything he can to rescue her from an abusive lover, Crown and a far-too-seductive drug dealer, Sportin’ Life.

If you saw the Broadway version which went by the name The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, that was a truncated version and it was also modified to fit more contemporary times. The Metropolitan Opera production is the full opera as originally written by George Gershwin, Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin.

Gershwin’s score features such beloved songs as Summertime, I Loves You Porgy and It Ain’t Necessarily So.

Anthony Tommasini, writing for the New York Times, raved about the production and, in particular, its two stars:

“As Porgy, the magnificent bass-baritone Eric Owens gives one of the finest performances of his distinguished career. His powerful voice, with its earthy textures and resonant sound, is ideal for the role. His sensitivity into the layered feelings and conflicts that drive his character made even the most familiar moments of the music seem startlingly fresh. And, as Bess, the sumptuously voiced soprano Angel Blue is radiant, capturing both the pride and fragility of the character.”

Saturday, December 12 – Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny 

Conducted by James Levine; starring Teresa Stratas, Astrid Varnay, Richard Cassilly and Cornell MacNeil. This John Dexter production is from the 1979-1980 season.

Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny had its world premiere in Leipzig in 1930. The libretto, of course, is by Bertolt Brecht.

Three fugitives and four lumberjacks make their way to Mahagonny. The fugitives are trying to elude the authorities and enjoy themselves in a city where men can get all their needs met. The lumberjacks are looking for opportunity.

A prostitute named Jenny is, at first, attracted by the presence of the fugitives and their money. But she finds herself falling for one of the lumberjacks, Jimmy, who gets more and more in debt as the opera progresses.

As both personal and city financial problems mount, the lives of all eight characters will be changed forever and the shining city will collapse into chaos.

This was the first ever production of this opera at The Met. Harold C. Schonberg, writing in the New York Times, opened his review this way: “The Weill‐Brecht Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny came to the Metropolitan Opera Friday night, and at least one question about the work was answered. There were those who predicted that ‘Mahagonny’ with its cabaret roots, smallish orchestra and jazz elements, would not ‘go’ in a house as big as the Met’s. It does. Whether or not it is an opera, and Weill strongly insisted that it is, it does use voices skillfully, it has a big chorus, and it was not lost on the stage of the big house.”

Sunday, December 13 – John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles

Conducted by James Levine; starring Håkan Hagegård, Teresa Stratas, Renée Fleming, Gino Quilico and Marilyn Horne. This Colin Graham production is from the 1991-1992 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 11th and October 31st.

Beaumarchais is the playwright who wrote the plays that inspired Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. His third play in that series, The Guilty Mother, serves as the inspiration for this opera by John Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffman.

In the opera, ghosts occupy the theatre at Versailles. Marie Antoinette, not too happy about her execution, spurns the advances of Beaumarchais. He offers his new opera, A Figaro for Antonia, as a means to win her love and change her fate. Now an opera appears within the opera, utilizing the familiar Figaro characters.

The Metropolitan Opera commissioned this work for its 100th anniversary in 1983. It wasn’t performed there until eight years after that centennial. This film is from those performances.

I interviewed Corigliano when LA Opera performed The Ghosts of Versailles. Here’s what he told me about how he handled opening night at the Met:

“The premiere of the opera, this is what I did. I sent out for a take-out chicken. I had a bottle of wine and ten milligrams of valium. I ate the chicken, took the valium and wine to the opening. If you’re asking about something that happened at opening night, I was a zombie. It was traumatizing. I’d never written an opera, it was overwhelming. I couldn’t face it without a little help.”

Both this Metropolitan Opera production and the more recent The LA Opera production were amazing and I personally think Corigliano had nothing to worry about. This is a terrific work.

This is also a terrific week of operas. So many great productions. I hope you enjoy Week 39 at the Met.

Photo: Audrey Luna and Simon Keenlyside in The Tempest (Photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

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The politics in these operas include challenges and imbroglios in Spain, Russia, Italy, France, finds an American President making a truly historic trip to China and a non-violent resistance leader in India finding his voice. (Can you guess all seven operas?)

Each production becomes available at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT on the Metropolitan Opera website. Every opera remains available for 23 hours. They are heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series and recently announced the cancellation of the full 2020-2021 season, so you’ll have to go past those announcements and promos to find the streaming productions. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.

If you read this column early enough on October 26th, you might still have time to catch the 2016-2017 season production of Der Rosenkavalier that concludes last week’s Operatic Comedies week. 

Here is the line-up for Week 33 at the Met:

Monday, October 26 – Verdi’s Don Carlo

Conducted by James Levine; starring Renata Scotto, Tatiana Troyanos, Vasile Moldoveanu, Sherrill Milnes and Paul Plishka. This John Dexter production is from the 1979-1980 season.

Don Carlo had its world premiere in 1867 in Paris. Friedrich Schiller’s play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien, served as the basis for the libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle. The opera was originally performed in French. Three months after its debut in Paris, Don Carlo was performed in Italian. First at Covent Garden in London and later in Bologna. It is most frequently performed in Italian.

Don Carlo of Spain and Elisabetta of Valois are betrothed to one another. They have never met. Don Carlo sneaks away to meet this unknown woman. They fall in love. However, their happiness is quickly ruined when Carlo’s father, Filippo, announces that he’s in love with her and she is to be his bride.

Even though she is now his stepmother, Don Carlo tries multiple times to woo Elisabetta away from his father. With the Spanish Inquisition ongoing, the affairs of all three and the appearance of a mysterious monk lead to murder plots, revenge, unrequited love, thievery and more being played out in Verdi’s longest opera.

Rather than offer a critic’s opinion of this production, I found this information about which version of Don Carlo was being performed interesting. This is from Harold C. Schonberg‘s review in the New York Times.

“Musically this was not the Don Carlo of 1950. The last three decades have seen a burgeoning of Verdi scholarship, and today matters of authenticity are taken much more seriously than they used to be. Thus the Metropolitan Opera is now staging Verdi’s original Act I, the Fontainebleau act that he wrote for the original production in Paris, 1867. In the years following the Paris premiere, Verdi spent much time on Don Carlo, and a revised version was given at La Scala in 1884 – without the Fontainebleau act. Only two years after that, Verdi had additional thoughts, and restored Fontainebleau. This new Metropolitan Opera version is a substantially complete 1886 Don Carlo. It started last night at 7:15 and ended after 11:30, which puts it into Gotterdammerung length.”

Tuesday, October 27 – Handel’s Agrippina

Conducted by Harry Bicket; starring Brenda Rae, Joyce DiDonato, Kate Lindsey, Iestyn Davies, Duncan Rock and Matthew Rose. This David McVicar production is from the 2019-2020 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on August 8th.

George Frideric Handel’s Agrippina has a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. The opera had its world premiere in 1709 in Venice at the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo which was owned by Grimani.

Agrippina is the Roman empress who is fixated on the idea of having her highly unqualified son, Nerone, take over the throne. To do that, she will stop at nothing to get her husband, Claudio, to cede it to him.

Though McVicar’s production was first staged in Brussels in 2000, this marked the first ever Metropolitan Opera production of Agrippina. Conductor Harry Bicket lead from the harpsichord and audiences and critics were enthralled.

Zachary Woolfe, in his review for the New York Times said, “Three centuries on, Agrippina remains bracing in its bitterness, with few glimmers of hope or virtue in the cynical darkness. But it’s irresistible in its intelligence — and in the shamelessness it depicts with such clear yet understanding eyes.”

Wednesday, October 28 – Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra

Conducted by James Levine; starring Adrianne Pieczonka, Marcello Giordani, Plácido Domingo and James Morris. This revival of Giancarlo del Monaco’s 1995 production is from the 2009-2010 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on August 21st.

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera is based on a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez, the same playwright whose work inspired Il Trovatore.  Francesco Maria Piave wrote the libretto. Simon Boccanegrahad its world premiere in its first version in Venice in 1857. Verdi re-worked the opera and the revised version (with assistance from Arrigo Boito) was first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1881.

Simon Boccanegra is the Doge of Genoa. As the opera begins politics surround him and threaten to envelop him as rumors about his past follow him. But they are not just rumors. Twenty-five years ago Maria, his lover, died and their daughter disappeared.

Maria’s father and his adopted daughter are plotting to overthrow Boccanegra. Simultaneously the Doge is going to finally discover the whereabouts of his missing daughter. But will his enemies and the rising political storm make him another casualty?

This production marked the first appearance by Plácido Domingo in a baritone role at the Met. He sings the title character. Anthony Tommasini, writing for the New York Times said of his performance:

“But he sounded liberated as Boccanegra, a tormented doge in 14th-century Genoa. At times his voice had a worn cast. And when he dipped into the lower baritone register, he had to fortify his sound with chesty, sometimes leathery power. Still, this was some of his freshest singing in years.”

Thursday, October 29 – John Adams’s Nixon in China

Conducted by John Adams; starring Kathleen Kim, Janis Kelly, Robert Brubaker, Russell Braun, James Maddalena and Richard Paul Fink. This Peter Sellars production is from the 2010-2011 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on April 1st and September 2nd.

Nixon in China had its world premiere in Houston in 1987 in a production directed by Peter Sellars. Inspired by President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the opera features a libretto by Alice Goodman.

It was wholly unlikely that someone as anti-Communist as Nixon would make a trip to China. That trip forged new relations between the two countries and helped thaw the icy relationship the United States had with the then Soviet Union. Nixon and his wife Pat, Chou En-lai, Mao Tse-tung, Henry Kissinger and Madame Mao all play prominent roles in the opera.

This 2011 production, while a Met debut for Nixon in China, was not the New York debut of the opera. It was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 1987 following its premiere in Houston. Critical reaction upon its premiere was quite mixed. By the time of this production (which founds Sellars revisiting his original work and that of a 2006 revival), Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times called it an “audacious and moving opera.”

Friday, October 30 – Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov

Conducted by Valery Gergiev; starring Ekaterina Semenchuk, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Oleg Balashov, Evgeny Nikitin, René Pape, Mikhail Petrenko and Vladimir Ognovenko. This Stephen Wadsworth production (taking over from Peter Stein who quit a few months prior to opening) is from the 2010-2011 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on April 14th.

This opera by Modest Mussorgsky had its world premiere in St. Petersburg in 1874. The libretto, written by the composer, was based on Aleksandr Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. Mussorgky completed an earlier version of the opera in 1869, but it was rejected. He revised the opera and included elements from History of the Russian State by Nikolay Karamzin to gain approval and ultimately a production in 1874.

In the opera, a retired and very reluctant Boris Godunov assumes the throne as Tsar. He is bedeviled by a constant foreboding and hopes his prayers will help him navigate what lies ahead. An old monk named Pimen discusses the murder of Tsarevich Dimitri with Gregory, a novice. Had he lived, Dimitri might have ascended to the throne. Godunov was implicated in his murder years ago. What follows is one man’s pursuit of forgiveness, his being haunted by the Dimitri’s ghost and the Russian people who demand justice.

Anthony Tommasini, writing in the New York Times, spent a considerable amount of his review discussing Pape in the title role.

“With his towering physique and unforced charisma, Mr. Pape looks regal and imposing. Yet with his vacant stare, the haggard intensity in his face, his stringy long hair and his hulking gait, he is already bent over with guilt and doubt. Mr. Pape has vocal charisma as well, and his dark, penetrating voice is ideal for the role. Not knowing Russian, I cannot vouch for the idiomatic quality of his singing. But his enunciation was crisp and natural. And in every language, Mr. Pape makes words matter.

“During the coronation there is a soul-searching moment when Boris removes his crown and voices his remorse to himself. Some great Borises have conveyed the character as beset with internalized torment. Mr. Pape’s anguish is always raw, fitful and on the surface. But the volatility is balanced by the magisterial power he conveys.”

Saturday, October 31 – John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles

Conducted by James Levine; starring Håkan Hagegård, Teresa Stratas, Renée Fleming, Gino Quilico and Marilyn Horne. This Colin Graham production is from the 1991-1992 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 11th.

The Metropolitan Opera commissioned this work for its 100th anniversary in 1983. It wasn’t performed there until eight years after that centennial. This film is from those performances.

Beaumarchais is the playwright who wrote the plays that inspired Rossini’s The Barber of Sevilleand Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. His third play in that series, The Guilty Mother, serves as the inspiration for this opera by John Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffman.

In the opera, ghosts occupy the theatre at Versailles. Marie Antoinette, not too happy about her execution, spurns the advances of Beaumarchais. He offers his new opera, A Figaro for Antonia, as a means to win her love and change her fate. Now an opera appears within the opera, utilizing the familiar Figaro characters.

I interviewed Corigliano when LA Opera performed The Ghosts of Versailles. Here’s what he told me about how he handled opening night at the Met:

“The premiere of the opera, this is what I did. I sent out for a take-out chicken. I had a bottle of wine and ten milligrams of valium. I ate the chicken, took the valium and wine to the opening. If you’re asking about something that happened at opening night, I was a zombie. It was traumatizing. I’d never written an opera, it was overwhelming. I couldn’t face it without a little help.”

Both this Metropolitan Opera production and the more recent The LA Opera production were amazing and I personally think Corigliano had nothing to worry about. This is a terrific work.

Sunday, November 1 – Philip Glass’s Satyagraha

Conducted by Dante Anzolini; starring Rachelle Durkin, Richard Croft, Kim Josephson and Alfred Walker. This is a revival of Phelim McDermott’s 2008 production from the 2011-2012 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on June 21st.

This Philip Glass opera had its world premiere in 1980 in Rotterdam. The libretto was written by Glass and Candace DeJong. The title means “insistence on truth” in Sanskrit.

The life of Gandhi is depicted in a story that goes backwards and forwards through time as a way to examine his life in South Africa and leading to his belief in non-violent protests. Sung in Sanskrit with projected titles on the stage itself, this is one unique opera that is staged beautifully and powerfully.

James R. Oestreich, writing in the New York Times, said of this revival (which took place during a celebration of the the composer’s 75th birthday), “The singers were exceptionally fine and well matched, starting with the tenor Richard Croft, strong yet vulnerable as Gandhi. Like Mr. Croft, Rachelle Durkin as Gandhi’s secretary, Miss Schlesen; Maria Zifchak as his wife, Kasturbai; and Alfred Walker as his Indian co-worker Parsi Rustomji were veterans of the 2008 premiere, and all were excellent except for a bit of strain in Ms. Durkin’s sustained high work in the newspaper scene. Kim Josephson was also strong as Gandhi’s European colleague Mr. Kallenbach.”

I’ve also seen this production and would challenge anyone to get to Satyagraha‘s final aria, “Evening Song,” and not be utterly moved.

Which opera will you vote to watch this week? Just one? Or will multiples of these candidates earn your attention? You have great choices during Week 33 at the Met.

Enjoy the operas and enjoy your week.

Photo: Janis Kelly and James Maddalena in Nixon in China (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy Metropolitan Opera)

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LA Opera will be streaming their Grammy Award-winning recording of The Ghosts of Versailles on Thursday, July 16th at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT. The opera will be streamed on LA Opera’s Facebook page as part of their LA Opera at Home programming.

It’s audio only, but there is a reason it won the Grammy for Best Opera Recording and a second Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Classical. It’s that good.

This meta opera by John Corigliano and William Hoffman takes the third Figaro play by Beaumarchais (who wrote the plays that inspired The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro) as the opera within the opera.

The story takes place after Marie Antoinette has been beheaded. Beaumarchais, trying to calm down a very upset Antoinette – who is now a ghost – puts on an opera for her. The opera, based on the real Beaumarchais’ play La Mère coupable, uses the characters and situations from his first two Figaro plays.

In the opera created within the opera, Count Almaviva is an ambassador from Spain living in Paris. Along with Figaro they try to rescue Marie Antoinette well before she is set for beheading. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned and Beaumarchais enters the opera in an attempt to rescue Antoinette with the help of Figaro and Susanna, Figaro’s wife.

Here are a few video excerpts from LA Opera’s production from the 2014-2015 season:

The cast of The Ghosts of Versailles included Patricia Racette as “Marie Antoinette,” Christopher Maltman as “Beaumarchais,” Lucas Meachem as “Figaro” and Lucy Schaufer as “Susanna.”

You might have noticed Broadway star Patti LuPone in the clips above. Her character, Samira, comes on late in the first act. It is one of the most hilarious numbers I’ve seen staged in any opera.

Darko Tresnjak, the Tony Award-winning director of A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder, directed this production. James Conlon lead the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra.

I attended opening night of this production and frankly wished I had attended a second or even a third performance. This was truly one of the best nights of opera I’ve ever experienced.

When Richard S. Ginell reviewed The Ghosts of Versailles for the Los Angeles Times he concluded his review by saying, “…there will be a ghostly afterlife for this production, for L.A. Opera is recording it in audio for release sometime ‘next fall,’ according to L.A. Opera President and Chief Executive Christopher Koelsch. It ought to be a treat.”

It is indeed a treat and one I recommend you enjoy when LA Opera streams the recording on Thursday.

Photo of the LA Opera production of The Ghosts of Versailles by Craig T. Mathew/Courtesy of LA Opera

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