More Must-See Medici.TV (Mozart and Beethoven)

Tristan and Luca

Luca Pisaroni as the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro. Do I really need to say more? 

The performances are quite good, and I really dig the Upstairs/
Downstairs theme (and set.) Having the Count, Countess, Figaro and Susanna all about the same age also makes sense. I am not sure I like seeing Luca as a bad guy. I mean he does it well, playing a textbook abusive husband, alternately loving and threatening. But, well...Luca's such a nice guy, I think he should always be the hero! The whole cast is pretty impressive*, including Zurich stalwart Martina Janková as Susanna, and Anett Fritsch (a cool Donna Elvira last season), and Adam Plachetka as Figaro. ...and the rest! Anyway, watch it while you can. 

Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro – Dan Ettinger, Sven-Eric Bechtolf – Salzburg Festival on medici.tv.

*including a furry cameo by Luca's doxy Tristan as, appropriately, the Count's Dog. I am still waiting to see Lenny get a juicy opera role. 

While you're hanging out at medici.tv, be sure to watch the new Claus Guth production of Fidelio with Jonas Kaufmann and Adrianne Pieczonka. I’ve seen only a brief excerpt so far. But it looks pretty good. I mean, it's Claus Guth...and of course, there's JK and AP! (It also has dancer Paul Lorenger, and sign language artist Nadia Kichler who both appeared in Guth’s amazing staging of Handel’s Messiah.)

Fidelio: Beethoven – Claus Guth, Franz Welser­-Möst – Salzburg Festival – With Jonas Kaufmann on medici.tv.

Having missed all but Act 1 of Carmen, and barely catching the Bayerische Staatsoper Lulu** before it went off the web***, I am pledging to myself to re-watch Nozze and watch Fidelio from beginning to end before they disappear!!

**Marlis Peterson is amazing as Lulu. I thought Tcherniakov’s production was illuminating—in Acts 1 and 2. Act 3 seems to be a stumbling block for many directors. But MP is amazing—really the whole cast is impressive. If it turns up—ahem—elsewhere, do take time to watch it. I am looking forward to hearing MP in the new Met production. Speaking of Lulu at the Met, there is a really good article/appreciation of this opera in the latest issue of Opera News. Lulu (like Wozzeck, I guess, but I am not as big a fan) provides new insights (to the music and to the characters) with multiple hearings. 

***I left the browser window open for the past few days, and still was able to watch Act 3 today, even though technically it was no longer available.

Gratuitous Friday Benjamin Appl Sings Beethoven

Here is Benjamin Appl with Jonathan Ware, performing Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte at the Ravinia Festival (Chicago), Summer 2010. I fell in love with his recent Schubert recital from Schwarzenberg. His singing is so expressive that you don't need to see him to "get" what he's doing. But it doesn't hurt, either! Happy Friday!

Laurence Equilbey Conducts Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber

Live broadcast on medici.tv: October 11, 2pm (Eastern U.S. time) 

and in archive for a while thereafter.

 I just acquired LE's Mozart Requiem recording. Of course, it's amazing. 

More to follow about that. But meanwhile be sure this concert is on your to do list!

What Was I Thinking? Wunderlich's "An die ferne Geliebte" Revisited

About a year and a half ago, I did a column on Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. In it, I reviewed several tenor performances, and promised to talk about the baritones next. Well, this is not about the baritones. (I did recently hear one baritone version I was not too thrilled about, but I’ll save that for later.)

Anyway, in my review, I said of FW, "He may seem slightly less involved in the text than the other performers."* 

What was I thinking? I don’t know. Maybe it was Beethoven Burnout. Today, I happened upon this version again and it moved me nearly to tears. I felt Fritz was really inside both the music and the text. The way he paints a phrase here and there, and stretches and inflects, and caresses certain words. 

You can hear it right in the first song. Some singers make this strophic song sounds so...strophic. (Here's stanza 1, OK now we're repeating the music with different words, ah one note is changed... maybe...) Fritz makes every stanza sound fresh, almost as if the song is through-composed; and when he bends it like Beethoven in the third stanza, he is definitely involved in this Poet's story!

The man is a genius—Fritz I mean. (Beethoven is generally acknowledged, so I wasn’t going there again.) Fritz’s poet is wistful yet hopeful about seeing his love again. But as the cycle continues, he gradually realizes he really isn’t going to see her ever again. 

Here it is again, for your consideration:

*To be fair to myself, I did add, "But in reality, he is just way more subtle."

200th Anniversary of the Premier of the Final Version of Fidelio

Knowing how persnickety Beethoven was, and how many permutations his poor opera went through, it’s surprising that anyone was able to determine an actual date of an actual premier of an actual final version. 

Be that as it may, Chris Tina Tengel figured it out, and presented an edition of Stimmen Hören on Fidelio and a few other Beethoven works. The 90-minute program features a multitude of singers, including Theo Adam, Sena Jurianc, Rose Pauly (the most celebrated Elektra of the 1930s), James King, Wolfgang Windgassen, Jessye Norman, and Helge Rosvaenge, to name a few.

The program was broadcast yesterday, so we have about six more days to listen. O namenlose freude!

Lieder in a Foreign Land – Two Recitals on Radio 4 Concerthuis

For about 20 more days you can listen to Austrian Florian Boesch singing in England and Michael Schade (oft described as German/ Canadian) singing in Switzerland.

Here is Herr Boesch's recent Wigmore Hall recital of Schubert and Wolf, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau.

And here is Herr Schade's Freiberg program of mostly Schubert and Beethoven, accompanied by Justus Zeyen and recorded in June 2013.

Happy Listening!

Gratuitous Friday Special Edition – Die Ferne Geliebte is Closer Than You Think

You know how you hear a piece maybe one time—maybe it was a long time ago—and you never really think about it again? Then all of a sudden it's everywhere you look (listen). I finally downloaded Christian Gerhaher's recording of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) (mostly for the Berg and Schoenberg selections) and rediscovered the joys of this song cycle.

Beethoven's little work allegedly started the whole German song cycle craze. Most song cycles we know comprise many individual songs, and this one does, too, but Beethoven's prototype is a continuous stetting. Many recitalists will program just a few songs from a Schubert or Schumann or Wolf cycle, but I can't imagine anyone excerpting one song from this set. The final stanza of the opening song even comes back at the end—very cyclical.

More Joy from Malin Hartelius

The MDR Radio Choir will perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on New Year’s Eve with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Choir under the leadership of Riccardo Chailly. Why do we care? The soprano soloist will be none other than Malin Hartelius, and Matthias Goerne will sing the bass part.

MDR Figaro radio will broadcast the concert live on December 31 at 17:00, Leipzig time, which by my calculation is 11:00 AM here in the Eastern United States. There is more information at the MDR website about the concert. Here, with the help of Bing and Google translating engines (and somewhat cleaned up by me) is a translation of the blurb from MDR Figaro: