Alice Coote Talks about Fate, Cross-dressing, and Mozart

Alice Coote, mezzo-soprano. (Benjamin Ealovega)

…and whether men or women are better kissers.

I mentioned the new podcast from WQXR: He Sang She Sang in a recent post. Each week they spend about 20 to 40 minutes discussing the upcoming Met radio (and HD, when applicable) opera broadcast. 

This podcast is a great companion to the more scholarly (and sometimes less engaging) pre-opera lectures from the Met Opera Guild (those are good too; but sometimes they can be a bit stuffy).

Although this episode is hosted by just the “insider,” He Sang She Sang usually has two or three hosts, at least one of whom is an opera neophyte. This lightens the discussion considerably, and…well the conversation is less stuffy (and sometimes just a bit irreverent.) They talk about the upcoming opera and play some musical excerpts. Almost every week they interview someone involved with the current production—often, and most interestingly, one of the singers.

This episode focuses on Alice Coote, even more than on Idomeneo—and that’s not a bad thing! She gives us her take on Mozart, Idomeneo, fate, saying goodbye, and dressing up as a man—among other things. We also get to hear a few excerpts from the 1996 Met recording. On the podcast website, there’s also a link to a clip from the current production.

Go. Listen. Enjoy. And check out the other episodes. Even if you already know all about the opera under discussion, I am sure you’ll enjoy the conversations, the music, and—yes—the fun.

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 

Placido Domingo – Both Baritone and Tenor in Verdi (Now and Then)

Nabucco, Vienna 2014

Ö1 Radio is allowing us a "what a difference 30 years makes" comparison. We have Placido Domingo in his tenor heyday (1984) as Manrico in Il Trovatore, and in the new Wiener Staatsoper production of Nabucco (2014 – 47 years after his Vienna debut!) in his new career as a baritone.

Il Trovatore, Rome 1984

Some might wonder if Domingo 2.0 would be singing at all if not for the fabulous career of Domingo 1.0. Is he stealing roles from other deserving baritones? Are the opera houses using him as audience bait? There's no doubt he's an excellent musician, and he still sings pretty darned well, so debate may be beside the point. 

We have lots of time to ponder these and other possibly imponderable questions (and to listen to that Trovatore—a commercial recording—which is his second, I think). But we have only a few more days to listen to the Nabucco on Ö1 .  

Watching the Radio – Domingo This Week; Veracini Next Week on Ö1

Saturday night (tonight), Domingo explores more of the baritone repertoire in a live broadcast from the Theater an der Wien of Verdi’s I due Foscari.

Placido Domingo (Francesco Foscari)

Arturo Chacón-Cruz (Jacopo Foscari)

Davinia Rodriguez (Lucrezia Contarini)

Roberto Tagliavini (Jacopo Loredano)

Andrew Owens (Barbarigo)

Gaia Petrone (Pisana); 

Arnold Schoenberg Chor

ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester

Conducted by James Conlon

PD as uno Foscari

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.

Plácido Domingo (und Freundinnen) auf der Freilichtbühne Loreley

Last night at the Freilichtbühne Loreley in Germany, Plácido Domingo held forth for a pleasant evening concert of opera excerpts, mostly Verdi and Wagner (I wonder how they came up with that program idea?) 

With him were two young up-and-coming American sopranos, whose careers he has been championing lately. The program kicks off with a rough-n-ready Meistersinger Prelude. You can see it for a few months on Arte LiveWeb.

La Traviata from The Met – Only 3 More Days of the Radio Broadcast Archive

If you missed the Met's direct webcast of this year's La Traviata, then zoned out last Saturday and missed the radio broadcast (like I did), BBC Radio 3 is giving you one more another chance! There are still 3 days left to hear this performance. 

Violetta Valery...........Diana Damrau
Alfredo Germont...........Saimir Pirgu
Giorgio Germont..Placido Domingo
And a host of others…plus

The Chorus and Orchestra of The Metropolitan Opera, New York

Yannick Nezet-Seguin, conductor. 

La Traviata – Duet from Debut of Damrau and Domingo

Diana Damrau and Placido Domingo debuted Thursday night as Violetta and Germont pére, and some enterprising opera lover captured some of the live audio stream. 

Mike Silverman of the AP said Damrau "was nothing short of sensational," and Domingo's "portrayal of the stern father was unusually tender and melancholy."