Met in HD Encores – Three Left this Summer

Three Met in HD summer encores are left this year. I  missed the gorgeous Butterfly last week because I was out of town. 

I am not sure I need to see this Trovatore again, but I’ll probably go anyway. 

I used to have the Onegin on DVD (I cannot find it...who did I loan it to? Sorry; to whom did I loan it?); and I think it's a "don't miss" performance and production (all those leaves!). I reviewed this one, and here is the first part. My Uncle (my Dad's brother) had some thoughts about this production of his favorite opera. 

And I simply must see Nina Stemme as Turandot.

Here are the dates the encores playing in my neighborhood (all Wednesdays):

• 06/27 – Trovatore 7:00 PM
• 07/11 – Eugene Onegin 7:00 PM
• 07/18 – Turandot 7:00 PM

Too Many Leaves; Not Enough Sex

Kwiecien and Breslik in Munich- More (implied) sex; fewer leaves.

So, I just chatted with My Uncle (now that Dad has passed on, we'll be hearing more about My Uncle, who is My Dad's younger brother). My Uncle loves opera, choral music, and music in general. He has a beautiful voice, plays piano wonderfully by ear (doesn't read a note of music), and has a rather surreal sense of humor.

He and my cousins saw Eugene Onegin at the Lyric Opera of Chicago last week. Lyric has a pretty stellar cast (Mariusz Kwiecien, Charles Castronovo, Anna Maria Martinez), and the old Met version: Robert Carsen's production with the leaves. My Chicago relatives are not fond of the "new" productions. They prefer rich costuming and scenery to look at as they take in the lovely singing. 

My Uncle's neighbor (a retired music professor) asked how they enjoyed the performance (she happened to attend the same one). 
My Uncle said, "I'd like to see more sets." 
"More sex?!?!" she asked. 
"Well, that too," he added. 
I guess it just depends on which production you see. Hopefully they'll see more sex in Carmen.

Rinat Shaham in Cendrillion at La Monnaie on The Opera Platform

One of my favorite mezzos, Rinat Shaham, as Massenet's Cendrillion at La Monnaie. This broadcast is available starting today from The Opera Platform (an offshoot of Arte Concert, where you can also see Anna Netrebko and Francesco Meli in Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco) 

Here's an excerpt from Cendrillion with Rinat Shaham and Sophie Marilley:

Note: you may want to track down a libretto (here is one in French only) since the website says: Kindly supported by La Monnaie, THE OPERA PLATFORM presents CENDRILLON free of charge as video on demand. This opera is a full-length performance offered in addition to our regular programme. Therefore subtitles will not be provided.

Must See Medici TV – Stars in Concert and Staatsoper Lulu

...and speaking of Thomas Hampson, here he is in concert, along with some other singers you may have heard of...

I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my holiday weekend to-do list. 

Watch this at Medici.TV

And now for something completely different, there's this: 

Watch the opera here on medici.tv 

Thanks to MediciTV for sharing this for those of us who missed the live stream on StaatsoperTV. I watched Act 1 on Saturday, but had to give up at intermission. The storm was really messing with my internet connection. What I've seen and heard is impressive. DT's production seems to really suit the expressionist tone of the plot and music. (Lulu is my number-one top 20th century opera!) 

And the cast is doing an exceptional job so far, featuring singers well-known for their Mozart interpretations (including two former Belmontes as Alwa and the Painter!) Watch this blog for a full review sometime soon.

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 

Watching the Radio – Vocal Treasure from Ö1 Radio

Among the vocal fun on Austria's  Ö1 Radio this week:

Weber’s Oberon, in a recording from 1996, featuring youthful performances by a few familiar singers:

Vesselina Kasarova (Fatime)

Peter Seiffert (Hüon von Bordeaux)

Bo Skovhus (Scherasmin)

Deon van der Walt (Oberon)

Inga Nielsen (Rezia)

Conducted by Marek Janowski

And Monday’s episode of Apropos Musik is 50 minutes of operetta, Broadway, and film music sung by your favorite opera stars. Slumming? No, not at all! It's kind of fun to hear lighter tunes (particularly the operetta) sung by such wonderful voices. The program features: Diana Damrau, Piotr Beczala, Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, Elina Garanca, Renée Fleming, and others. (Well, perhaps AN's voice is not quite so operetta-friendly any more; but still, it's a nice little program)

P.S. "Lied der Eliza aus dem Musical "My fair Lady" is Ich hat getanzt heut' Nacht (gesungen auf Englisch– and DD pulls it off rather well, except for a little odd back-phrasing.)

The Two New War Requiem Recordings (Plus One)

On the (near) eve of the U.S. release Antonio Pappano's recording of Britten's War Requiem (November 19), we can hear the entire performance online at NPR for about a week. The soloists are Anna Netrebko, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Hampson. Pappano leads the Coro e Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. (Thanks to Mr. Hampson for the heads-up.)

Meanwhile, the Mariss Jansons recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, the Tölzer Boys Choir, soprano Emily Magee, tenor Mark Padmore, and baritone Christian Gerhaher is available now. And you can download it from Amazon.com for less than six bucks!

Update: Thanks to Stray (see below) we also have a link to a recent Boston Symphony Orchestra broadcast. Soloists are Tatiana Pavlovskaya, John Mark Ainsley, and Matthias Goerne, with Charles Dutoit conducting. The BSO Media Center is a super resource, with lots of great information, videos, broadcasts and podcasts, including an 11-minute video that offers background on Britten and the War Requiem.

Britten's War Requiem – Netrebko, Bostridge, and Hampson

As Seen on Facebook:

Thomas Hampson

Listen to the entire new recording of Britten's War Requiem before it comes out!

The Guardian Article  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can listen to it at Soundcloud for about another week.

Watching the Radio – Soprano Sendungen von Ö1

Joyce, Anna, Nuria, and Miah

If you have the kind of trouble I have finding programmes on BBC Radio 3, and you can’t access U-toob* at work, you can at least listen to the broadcast from the Last Night of the Proms on my new favorite radio station, Austria’s Ö1. Of course, it’s a great listen, plus it’s fun to hear the Austrian announcer pronounce “Last Night of the Proms” perfectly, then stumble over “DiDonato.” The program is on 7 Tage, and is available for a few more days online or on your mobile Ö1 app.  

Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco on Austria's Ö1 Radio – But Only for a Few Days

Austria's Ö1 radio has a great archive system called 7 Tage Ö1, which holds broadcasts for replay for ... um, 7 days. I highly recommend it for everything, but in particular, I enjoyed Saturday’s concert performance of Giovanna d'Arco with Placido Domingo, Anna Netrebko, and some other singers. (I'm being facetious  It's a strong cast all around.) Paolo Carignani conducts the Philharmonia Chor Wien and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester.

(Early) Gratuitous Friday – Kaufmann and Netrebko sing Verdi

OK, know it's only Thursday, but if I wait till tomorrow to post this, it'll be too late to hear the radio broadcast (unless BR archives it)! Anyway, since it seems to be JK week again here at RnR:

In the spirit of Tuesday's post and as a semi-preview of today’s audio webcast (7 PM CET; around 2 PM Eastern) and next Friday's video webcast from the Bayrische Staatsoper, here are Jonas Kaufmann and (mostly) some soprano (who isn't Anja Harteros) singing an excerpt from Act 4 of Il Trovatore. Happy Friday! 

Sunday Brunch – Lakmé: Flower Duet

This is a beautiful, wonderful duet, even before British Airways hijacked it for a TV commercial and turned it into a warhorse! I remember back in my dark ages (LPs and Reel-to-Reel tapes) my parents hung out with a bunch of other singers. Two of their soprano buddies sang this duet and Mira, O Norma (and Sull' aria, of course) pretty much at the drop of hat! I was hooked on soprano duets before I even knew what was going on!  

Expecting L'Elisir d'Bore – Got L'Elisir d’Like: Met in HD

Maybe it’s because I read all the lukewarm reviews of opening night and was prepared for the worst; maybe it’s because I was excited by finally getting to see my first Met in HD broadcast; or maybe it’s because it just wasn't all that bad.

La Traviata, Salzburg 2005: I Have a Theory, and it's Mine

Probably no one needs to say anything more about the Willy Decker production of La Traviata. But I never let that stop me before, and with a blog called “Regie, or Not Regie?” I feel obligated to address it. In this post, I will present several theories, answer a few questions, and make a suggestion.

Blog Posts I Wish I had Written

Every once in a while, I come across a blog post that really speaks to me; it usually says, "Why didn't you think of that?"  It might be deep, thoughtful, spiritual, analytic, or just silly.  Here are a few blog posts that I wish I had written, and some clips to go with them.

The Second Post: In which the author discusses the purpose of his blog

Welcome Back!

I would like to mention a few things about my blog and me. 

1.      I am not here to argue REGIE: Pro or Con. (Well, OK. I may be preaching some tolerance, at least!)  Although, it might be interesting to argue whether a particular production is Regie or just interesting (edit 10/03/12: Or just bad).

2.      I am not here (usually) to bust the divas and divos for messing up.  I am here to chat about opera productions I have enjoyed (or hated.)  And to find out what my readers (if there are any) think about it.