Thursday's Something Else (Lakmé is in a Trance)

I nicked today's post title from dehggial, who writes the nifty blog opera, init? My petty theft is only semi-appropriate, since this post will appear on Friday in most parts of the world. It’s also only semi-appropriate because it’s not as far off-topic for this blog as it may seem.

Regular readers of my posts and the occasional chat threads will not be totally surprised by a trance arrangement of the Flower Duet from Lakmé. Especially not after discussions of Reggae Vitellia, House Vitellia, Big Band and/or Blues Vitellia; plus a few other odd (imagined or real) fusions of opera and dance music.

I love discovering pieces/songs in my music library that I had no idea I owned. I was listening to this trance album today (Thursday). Yes, some opera fans are dance music fans, too—even though we do realize that most trance music sounds like most other trance music. But about four minutes into this song, I started thinking, “That little vocal riff sounds so familiar!”

If you don’t like dance music, or classical music turned into dance music, or classical music generally messed with at all, you’ll probably hate this track.

If you need to cleanse your aural palate, here's a more traditional version.

Opera from Salzburg (and beyond) on Medici.TV

I tuned in to medici.tv this afternoon just in time to see the curtain calls (live) for Il Trovatore. But not to worry, it will be available in archive very soon. Some additional exciting opera performances from the Salzburger Festspiele are (or will be) on medici.tv this month. And they feature some of our favorite singers, including DR, LP, and MS.

I like what I've seen/heard so far of Don G. First of all, any production with Brando and Luca is going to look and sound good. And when Donna Elvira enters a muddy, torn wedding gown, immediately heads for the bar, skips the glass and goes straight for the bottle, you know it's going to be an interesting ride! (Not to mention Anna poking Ottavio in the chest with the knife that offed her father...she seemed to actually be holding the knife (trying to get it away from DG) when it killed her dad. I am interested to see where they go with that!)


Mozart: Don Giovanni

Lenneke Ruiten (Donna Anna) 

Anett Fritsch (Donna Elvira) 
Valentina Nafornita (Zerlina) 
Ildebrando D’Arcangelo (Don Giovanni) 
Luca Pisaroni (Leporello) 
Tomasz Konieczny (Il Commendatore) 
Andrew Staples (Don Ottavio) 
Alessio Arduini (Masetto)

Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic 
Philharmonia Chor Wien 
Wiener Philharmoniker 

Christoph Eschenbach conductor
Sven-Eric Bechtolf stage director
Rolf Glittenberg set designer
Marianne Glittenberg costumes
Friedrich Rom lighting
Ronny Dietrich dramaturgy
Walter Zeh chorus master

Verdi: Il Trovatore

Anna Netrebko (Leonora) 

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Azucena) 
Diana Haller member of the young singers project (Ines) 
Francesco Meli (Manrico) 
Plácido Domingo (Count di Luna) 
Riccardo Zanellato (Ferrando) 
Gerard Schneider member of the young singers project (Ruiz) 
Miloš Bulajić member of the young singers project (A Messenger) 
Raimundas Juzuitis member of the young singers project (An Old Gypsy)

Members of the Angelika Prokopp Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic 
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus 
Wiener Philharmoniker

Daniele Gatti conductor 

Alvis Hermanis stage director, set designer
Eva Dessecker costumes
Gleb Filshtinsky lightings
Ineta Sipunova video
Gudrun Hartmann associate director
Uta Gruber-Ballehr associate set designer
Ronny Dietrich dramaturgy
Ernst Raffelsberger chorus master

And Coming Soon:

Schubert: Fierrabras

Broadcast date : Aug. 25, 2014, 1 p.m. EST

Julia Kleiter (Emma)
Dorothea Röschmann (Florinda)
Marie-Claude Chappuis (Maragond)
Michael Schade (Fierrabras)
Georg Zeppenfeld (King Karl)
Markus Werba (Roland)
Benjamin Bernheim (Eginhard)
Peter Kálmán (Boland)

Members of the Angelika Prokopp 
Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic
Wiener Philharmoniker 

Ingo Metzmacher conductor 

Peter Stein stage director
Ferdinand Wögerbauer set designer
Annamaria Heinreich costumes
Joachim Barth lighting
Ernst Raffelsberger chorus master

This Just in from Switzerland:

There's also a quite nice concert performance of  Beethoven's Fidelio from the Verbier Festival. Nicely sung, and OKly acted. The singers did their best, I guess, but it looks like, with a little stage direction, they could have done so much more with the drama. I'd love to see a stage director have a bit of input in concert performances of opera. Although EN seems to be the biggest name there, I thought he was well outshone by Messers Gleadow and Jovanovich (hooray for North American singers) and Frau Brimberg (another exciting sound from Sweden.) The ingenues, the phantom baritone (Don F.), and M. Minkowski all did a great job, too. 

Ingela Brimberg (Leonore)
Brandon Jovanovich (Florestan)
Evgeny Nikitin (Don Pizarro)
Robert Gleadow (Rocco)
Sylvia Schwartz (Marzelline)
Bernard Richter (Jaquino)
Charles Dekeyser (Don Fernando)

Collegiate Chorale 
Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra 
Marc Minkowski conductor 

La Forza del Friday – It's Back!

I was actually looking for the ROH Manon Lescaut with JK, and I came across this instead. But don't tell anyone, just go watch it! It's got JK, AH, LT, and German subtitles!

Zero Degrees of Separation – Stéphanie d'Oustrac and Thomas Dolie

This audio clip features yesterday's Dido from Calvados and Aneas from Amsterdam as Rosina and Figaro in Bordeaux.

Purcell: Dido and Aneas Times Two

A video of a semi-staged performance featuring Stephanie d'Oustrac and Nicolas Rivenq with William Christie and Les Artes Florissants (with gowns by Lacroix, sweetie. Lacroix!)

…and a concert performance from 2009 on Concerthuis 4, with the wonderful Ann Hallenberg as Dido and Thomas Dolie as Aneas. (Unfortunately, I cannot get this broadcast to play all the way through. I don't know if it's a local internet issue, or a question of trying to listen to it in the wrong country. I am hoping my readers in the UK and Europe may get to hear the whole thing.)

Another Gratuitous Daniel Behle Post

So, Daniel Behle just got a recording contract with Decca (who hasn't, you ask? Well, JK for one...) And since it's the year of the Gluck, he has a brand new recital of Gluck arias, both rare and familiar. The first video is a promo clip with some chatting and rehearsal moments. 

The second video is a complete performance of “Quercia annosa sull'erte pendici” from Antigono (no, I've never heard of it either.) Finally, we have an audio-only clip of a more familiar aria (unfortunately for him—and I do love you, Daniel—he has a ton of heavy competition on this one, including (to name but two) the recent La Monnaie performance by Stéphanie d'Oustrac, and an awesome Richard Croft recording. But we won't write him off for that. He has a lot to offer, and (hopefully) many more years of singing ahead of him!

Die Winterreise im Sommer – Daniel Behle and the Oliver Schnyder Trio

In honor of this Daniel Behle Winterreise post hitting the top 10 this month (even though it was originally posted nearly a year ago), here is the video of the live performance associated with that rehearsal clip.

I noted last September that it must have been strange singing this chilly cycle in the heat of an Austrian summer. We notice that Herr Behle takes off his jacket early in the program. Will he take anything else off? (He doesn't, but it did make you stop and wonder for a second, didn't it?)

Sunday Brunch – Miah and Ann and John Eliot and Wolfie

Miah Persson, Ann Hallenberg, Peter Mattei, John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir...

...and Mozart. Need I say more? *

*Probably, but I wanted to make sure you had a chance to hear it. Then we can talk!

(If you don’t have a lot of time, at least take a few minutes to check out the soprano duel duet that starts at about 16 minutes in.)