La Duchesse de Crackentorp is “TBC” at the Royal Opera’s website listing for next April’s performances of La Fille du Régiment, but Intermezzo says that Dame Edna Everage has been penciled in.
UPDATE: “More on Dame Edna — I hear she had talks with the ROH but they couldn’t make it work: Broadway commitments in part. That’s it, possums!”–Neil Fisher, Twitter
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Vittorio Grigolo — KlickKlack interview (in German)
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Video of rehearsal in Boston for Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers
Filed under: Uncategorized — Administrator @ 10:12 am
I saw Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera on the night of Saturday October 22, 2011. The sets and costumes for this new production, set in the eighteenth century, were OK but nothing very special. A bit too much of the façades à la Hollywood Squares. No gratuitous displays of flesh, no dancing around in underpants, and no changing of shirts, as in so many recent productions here and there, but I don’t need to see any of that at the opera.
Ramón Vargas as Don Ottavio was by far the best member of the cast. He ranks among the best singers to perform the role, IMHO. Excellent projection and lovely sound. Barbara Frittoli as Donna Elvira and Marina Rebeka as Donna Anna also projected their voices very well. The other singers–among them Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni and Luca Pisaroni as Leporello–seemed not quite up to the size of the Met. They would have made more impression for me in a house with 3,000 seats or fewer, not the Met’s 4,000 or so. On the whole, though, a very satisfactory performance, just somewhat lacking in pizazz. The singers were not always singing, in the recitatives in particular, as if they expected the audience to hear and understand the words. And I suppose much of the audience would not have understood them. The audience laughed, when it laughed, at the translations on the little screens, not at the singer’s delivery of the words. Still the performance would have more punch if the singers did more to sing as if the words were to be heard and understood.
I also wonder whether bits of the recitatives were excised in a few places, but I can’t really say for sure. Maybe. Maybe not. For example, I don’t recall hearing the exchange:
MASETTO
Io, per servirla.
DON GIOVANNI
Oh bravo! Per servirmi;
questo è vero parlar da galantuomo.
Maybe there were such cuts, or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.
Pianist Yefim Bronfman has been advised by his doctors to take one week to rest and recuperate from an injury to one of his fingers, and will not be able to perform Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in the Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts of October 20, 21, and 22, 2011. Pianist Nicholas Angelich will perform the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 for these performances, making his BSO debut. The program will begin with the Piano Concerto No. 2, and will conclude with Brahms’s Symphony No. 3.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PROGRAM LISTING, OCTOBER 20-22, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 10:30 a.m. (Open Rehearsal)
Thursday, October 20, 8 p.m.
Friday, October 21, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 22, 8 p.m.
Kurt Masur, conductor
Yefim Bronfman, piano
ALL-BRAHMS PROGRAM
Piano Concerto No. 2
Symphony No. 3
NICHOLAS ANGELICH
Award-winning pianist Nicholas Angelich has been praised for his impressive interpretations of classical and romantic repertoire. The Daily Telegraph raved, “Angelich always compels with his concentration and coloristic subtlety, and his illumination of Brahms’s intricate contrapuntal textures.”
His chamber collaborations include critically acclaimed performances with Dimitri Sitkovetsky, Joshua Bell, Alexander Kniazev, Jian Wang, Paul Meyer, and Gautier and Renaud Capuçon. His recording of the Brahms Trios with the Capuçons for Virgin Classics was awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize. Mr. Angelich has also released recordings for Harmonia Mundi, Lyrinx, and Mirare.
In the 2010-11 season Mr. Angelich made his recital debut with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Concert and Lecture series, and his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut under Stéphane Denève.
