La Scala Premiere

'La Traviata' opens at La Scala

The most sought-after ticket in opera is to the opening night of La Scala's season in Milano, in early December. It's "invitation only", meaning seats reserved for political and local heavy-weights of all kinds - the President and Prime Minister attend - and the all-important sponsors. Any remaining tickets are sold to ordinary punters - for up to €4,600 per seat. So, although I was in Milan on the all-important date, my chances of scoring a ticket were slim to zero.

So near and yet so far...

Not that attempts weren't made. By an hour before curtain-up, the box office people were shaking their heads, but mentioning €2,000...Still, I didn't have a thing to wear. This is the fashion event of the calendar in the fashion capital of Europe, location of the Prada mothership and just about every other major Italian haute couture brand. After taking a photo beside the La Scala poster (the traditional design, printed fresh for every performance), noting the squads of police, dozens of TV trucks, barriers and security surrounding the venerable Opera House, dodging a mini-demonstration (all those politicos attract the demonstrators), and considering the broadcast on the big screen in the Galleria, it was back to the hotel to watch the performance on live TV feed. Not the greatest sound quality, but much more comfortable in the end. And cheaper. And I was only three blocks away!

High security and lots of TV.

It was Verdi's 'Traviata', and Violetta was sung by the wonderful Diana Damrau - reputed to be the best Violetta singing today, and on this showing, I can understand why. She completely inhabited the role. Divine. The conductor was Daniele Gatti; and the staging and sets were by the Russian Dmitri Tcherniakov. Here we entered the murky waters of controversy. Tcherniakov had updated our 'Traviata' and not everyone was happy about it. Apart from the modern setting (which worked for me, except perhaps Violetta's leggings in Act II) he'd also given some psychological massaging to the usual characterisations. Alfredo in particular was shown to be a rather weak soul - he seemed keen to leave Violetta's deathbed in the last act, and actually looked at his watch. There was much less of the usual flinging into each other's arms. However, it was an exceedingly believable death from Violetta, one of the best I've ever seen.

Here's Miss Damrau on Rai5, the television station that kindly did a live broadcast for the rest of us..

A very realistic death.

The loggionisti (those in the upstairs balconies) at La Scala didn't like the production. They booed. Yes, the famous boo-ing took place. Sadly, because they didn't like Alfredo's updated reactions, they booed the excellent tenor singing him, Piotr Beczala, which was totally undeserved. Germont was well-sung by Željko Lučić. But the biggest boos were saved for Tcherniakov and his artistic colleagues. I didn't agree with the boo-ers. The production worked for me.

Here's the link to La Scala's site if you'd like to check it out for yourself - I expect the ticket prices are a great deal more reasonable now.

Here's the NYT review which is balanced and sensible:

When Alfredo, bearing flowers and a gift, arrives at the dying Violetta’s bedroom for a reunion with his lover, he doesn’t immediately rush into her arms. Rather, he pauses timidly — he is slightly fearful of how he will be received. That is one of the many details that lift Dmitri Tcherniakov’s captivating staging of “La Traviata,” which on Saturday initiated a new season at Teatro alla Scala before an audience that included Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, and other representatives of the country’s elite....As cutting-edge theater goes, Mr. Tcherniakov’s staging is relatively mild. His work has often been more controversial. But this did not stop La Scala’s notorious “loggionisti,” inhabitants of the upper galleries, from voicing their displeasure at the final curtain.

Read this entertaining blog post for a review of the night, and lots of good stills of the performance.
Then listen to this excerpt and judge for yourself!

Satyagraha

'Satyagraha' is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as:

Hindi: “insistence on truth” or “zeal for truth”) satyagraha [Credit: Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images]concept introduced in the early 20th century by Mahatma Gandhi to designate a determined but nonviolent resistance to evil. Gandhi’s satyagraha became a major tool in the Indian struggle against British imperialism and has since been adopted by protest groups in other countries.

It's not a term that's caught on like a sound-bite, but Gandhi's application of the principal is certainly well-remembered. At the ENO in London I caught a performance of Phillip Glass's opera based on Gandhi's early struggles in South Africa. On the face of it, this opera might have turned out to be a challenge - over three hours of opera sung in Sanskrit with no surtitles. A friend who'd seen the production a few years ago (it is a co-production with The Met in NYC) described it as "meditative." Hmm..

As it turned out, the whole thing was dreamy, involving, uplifting and mesmerising. It was the first Phillip Glass opera I'd heard (and I hope not the last). The repetitive themes got into my mind. The sharp little changes kept me on my toes.

The cast? M.K.Gandhi was beautifully sung by Alan Oke; Miss Schlesen (his secretary) by Clare Eggington; and his wife Kasturbai by Stephanie Marshall. Everyone was good, I must say. The director was Phelim McDermott from a theate company called 'Improbable.' The production involves video, some extraordinary puppetry, and a number of acrobatics. In fact, the staging, I'd heard, was some of the best ever, and I did enjoy it. However, it's the strange music that has stayed with me. Hypnotic.

The opera text is adapted from the text of the Bhagavada Gita by Constance de Jong. Phillip Glass composed it 1980. This production dates from 2007. The 'action' jumps about in time, so that the Acts highlight different incidents in Gandhi's South African career, in a time-jumbled order. I found it helpful to have some idea of where and when we were. These are my notes from the program, with my own bits and pieces:

Act I - TOLSTOY (Ghandi’s farm)
The Kuru Field of Justice (Indian myth)
Tolstoy Farm (1910)
The Vow (1906)
Act II - TAGORE (mentor of Ghandi)
Confrontation and rescue (1896) (Mrs Alexander rescues Ghandi)
Indian Opinion (1906) (newspaper)
Protest (1908) (burning registration cards)
Act III - KING
- New Castle March (1913)

But even so, when I looked up the opera on Phillip Glass's web site I see that I missed a few things:

"Each act is dominated by a single historic figure (non-singing role) overlooking the action from above: the Indian poet Ravindranath Tagore in Act I the Russian author Leo Tolstoy in Act II, the American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr in Act III."

Here's the Guardian review:

"Satyagraha makes demands of its audience. Though not as long as the five-hour Einstein on the Beach, which Glass wrote four years earlier, it is fundamentally a reflective work. Although more operatic than Einstein, not much happens in its three acts, in a conventional narrative sense. There is no dialogue. The text, sung by the principals and the excellent chorus, is entirely in Sanskrit, adapted from the Bhagavad Gita. The music, famously so, is patterned and repetitive. The work has to be taken on its own terms."

Images from ENO website.

Backstage!

The scene we saw in rehearsal (source)

In the final exciting instalment of a weekend of opera in New York City -- a peek backstage on a Monday morning, courtesy of a wonderful new friend with a dream job behind the scenes of one of the world's greatest opera houses. She escorted us on a tour of the prop room, the costume department, the wig maker's domain; we threaded our way through carpenters and sopranos and harps in cases; we peeked at the famous auditorium from the orchestra pit; we bumped into and said 'hi' to Peter Gelb, the head man of The Met himself. Read about life backstage at the opera company here.

Tom Watson, wig-maker.

Tom Watson is the wig maker at The Met (and moonlights on Broadway):

With a healthy head of hair, [some singers need] no wig fitting. Just in case, the Met’s wig department has head moulds of roughly 75 singers. “If we know who’s coming in, sometimes I can pull their head off,” and fashion a hairpiece quickly, the Met’s wig master, Tom Watson, said with macabre shorthand. (source)

And then to the auditorium to watch an hour or so of a piano rehearsal of Verdi's 'Falstaff '- with none other than the revered James Levine conducting from the podium (in his new wheelchair). We sat a couple of rows from the front, with a great view into the pit and up onto the stage. An opera-lover's heaven. This is The Met’s first new ‘Falstaff’ since 1964 (they like to squeeze the lemons dry at The Met). From the little I saw of it, it will be worth the wait.

The Falstaff in this production is Italian Ambrogio Maestri, who apparently speaks only Italian. The English director Robert Carson fortunately is fluent in Italian (most people running around backstage in an opera house are multi-lingual, it seems!) The piano rehearsal is the director's domain - where he directs the cast in their acting and staging and so on. At the next rehearsal, the orchestra rehearsal, the conductor takes over and the music is all-important. At this piano rehearsal, they were trying out one of the final scenes which involves a huge chorus augmented by actors. There's lots of fake smoke and everyone wears antlers and cloaks, and people are pushed around on rolling tables - chaos! But brought together so expertly by the consummate professionals involved (with just a little bit of sniping between the director and the chorus-master, who clearly was anxious to look after "his" chorus).

As for Signore Maestri, he's a fine figure of a Falstaff, ably supported by some other very fine figures, including the incredible voice of Stephanie Blythe as Mistress Quickly. It's worth checking out Signore maestri's website - he demonstrates Italian cooking!

Read a synopsis of the story of Falstaff here.

It was brilliant. My only regret - and it's a severe one - is that I won't get to see the full performance. But it is being broadcast on The Met's HD cinema program...hmmm...

Strauss at The Met

Marina Serafin and Alice Coote: 'Der Rosenkavalier' (source)

A weekend in New York is always a great opportunity for a weekend at The Metropolitan Opera House. This incredible company has the resources, the history, the support, the house and the singers to stage scads of opera, all usually in unforgettable style. My recent NYC weekend included two Richard Strauss operas (I'm a big Strauss fan), plus the exciting opportunity to visit backstage and sit in on a rehearsal. Opera-lovers' Heaven!

Der Rosenkavalier was first up....

Richard Strauss composed the music to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto in 1911, and it's revered as one of the best-loved operas in the repertoire. Occasionally you'll hear someone deriding it, but trust me, they're only kidding - everyone loves 'Rosenkavalier'!  This particular production, all sumptuous period Vienna, debuted at The Met in 1969!! It's renowned for being one of the longest-running productions in opera history, and those traditional Viennese wigs still look fresh. Well, fresh-ish. The rumour is that this will be the last run for these venerable sets and costumes (which I've seen before, with Renee Fleming as The Marchallin). It was good to see the last run.

The conductor was Edward Gardner (England). Octavian, the trouser-role, was sung by mezzo Alice Coote (England), a veteran of the part, and a singer I like very much. Elina Garança was scheduled to sing Octavian, but the Latvian diva withdrew due to pregnancy (it is an energetic role). Her replacement for the first three performances is Alice Coote. (Daniela Sindram will sing the role in the December performances).

The Marchallin is Martina Serafin (Austria), who was regal and lovely. Perhaps slightly too regal, visually speaking, since she's a head taller than Alice Coote. A little belief had to be suspended to work with the story of a 17-year-old youth in the arms of the statuesque aristocrat.

Baron Ochs, an annoyingly comic role, was sung - comically - by Peter Rose (England). He was a pretty good Ochs. Sophie, the young ingenue for whom Octavian dumps the Marchallin was sung - at the last minute - by Erin Morley (USA). Excitingly, she was the understudy who got to go on, replacing Mojca Erdmann (Germany) who became, er, indisposed, at around the time of the dress rehearsal. It was an excellent Sophie, well sung - congrats to the whole cast for adjusting to the change. That trio -for which the opera is famous - was, as it's supposed to be, to die for.

Sumptuous sets on their last run. (source)

Here's a review from the New York Times - wholly congratulatory. This review from the FT is less impressed.

Anne Schwanewilms as the Empress in 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'  (Source)

'Die Frau ohne Schatten' was next...

Still Strauss, but a change of pace in 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' (The Women Without a Shadow). This was the work of Strauss and von Hofmannsthal  a few years later, in 1919. It's not performed very often, partly because the storyline is quite obscure, the opera is long, and you need a huge orchestra and an inventive staging. And you also need five excellent principals who can sing difficult music. This production premiered at The Met in 2001, and manages to handle the story convincingly -- the spirit world of the Emperor and Empress alternates with the grungy hovel of the Dyer and his Wife, each being lowered and raised to and from The Met's copious basement space. It's great theatre.

...in 2001... Herbert Wernicke startled the basically conservative Met with an astonishingly progressive production of Richard Strauss’s magnificently bloated Die Frau ohne Schatten. He actually made theatrical sense of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s high-minded, hopelessly convoluted libretto.

And superlative singing, particularly by the US soprano Christine Goerke as The Dyer's Wife. I'd heard rave reviews, and  they weren't kidding. Her incredibly rich voice handled the wide range of the role, and her acting was utterly focussed and spot on. The conductor  was Russian wunderkind Vladimir Jurowski. The other important roles were also superbly performed: The Nurse - Ildikó Komlósi (Hungary); The Emperor - Torsten Kerl (Germany); The Empress - Anne Schwanewilms (Germany); and Barak, The Dyer - Johan Reuter (Denmark) - he was excellent in this role of 'the nicest man in opera.'

The story? Well, I'm not sure you have time...the 'woman without a shadow' is a reference to the Empress, a spirit who married a human and so cannot have children. She tries to buy a 'shadow' from the Dyer's Wife, who lives in poverty and frustration...read the whole whole synopsis here.

Here's a review raving about the production. The New York Times was impressed. "Goerke unmissable in the Met's Die Frau ohne Schatten" says one review. I agree!

Christine Goerke (The Dyer's Wife) and Johan Reuter (Barak the Dyer) (source)

It's sometimes said that Strauss and von Hofmannsthal had Mozart's great operas in mind when composing these two of their own:

If “Der Rosenkavalier” amounted to Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s “Marriage of Figaro,” a sophisticated comedy of thoroughly grown-up relationships, then “Frau” — started in 1911, completed in 1917 and first staged in 1919 — was their “Magic Flute,” a fable intertwining the fates of two couples in a mystical rite of passage. (source)

Although I can see the link, don't come to these two expecting Mozart - they are both thoroughly Strauss-ian and incredibly involving. Loved them.

Lyric Opera in Chicago

Marrina Rebeka as Violetta in Chicago Lyric Opera's 'Traviata'.

A couple of opera firsts for me in Chicago: wearing a beanie to the opera (it was below freezing); and an opera house that provided an orderly cab queue after the performance (well done).

The company was the Chicago Lyric Opera,  the production was Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’, with the excellent Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja singing Alfredo. Our Violetta - a demanding role for a lyric soprano, the classic ‘singing while she’s dying role', a tough one to pull off well - was a Latvian soprano, Marina Rebeka; and the baritone Germont was Quinn Kelsey, a product of the Chicago Opera’s young artists program.

My verdict? I thought Alfredo was smooth, easy, rich and nuanced. I thought Violetta was a huge effort, acting needs more work, a lovely voice but could be modulated a little more (read = loud); but it’s a tough role, and a bouquet for Miss Rebeka. I thought the Germont was well sung but not inspiring. [PS I heard later that Ms Rebeka was not well. If true, she deserves a second bouquet]. On a good night at a 'Traviata', the second act (where Germont and Violetta have their big confrontation) should have me in tears. This one didn’t quite achieve that, but was nevertheless enjoyable.

The rest of the cast all seemed to be from the company and to have come up through the young artists program. The singing was patchy (what I could hear - some were too faint); and the young singers, bless them, looked like they were playing dress ups in a high school show - not comfy in their 19th century outfits. I also thought the direction lacked a little. One’s principals shouldn’t be turning their backs to the audience, or putting their hands to their mouths quite so much (as Violetta did). This was a debut opera for a theatre director, and it showed a bit. The production, a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and Canadian Opera Company, was...ok. I think designers should be braver about putting something IN the era. It doesn’t need to be ‘time-less’ to be timeless, if you know what I mean.

Act One.

It was opening night. I see that the reviewer in the Chicago Tribune agrees with me:

It would be nice to be able to report that Lyric's new production of this melodious tearjerker, which opened Wednesday night at the Civic Opera House, got such special treatment. What we had instead was an uneven "Traviata," unobjectionable on musical, dramatic and scenic grounds, that failed to touch the heart in the way exceptional performances of Verdi's middle-period masterpiece can do.... 

A striking beauty blessed with a bright, ravishing timbre and top notes like laser beams, Rebeka had what it took to nail her big aria (with its restored second verse) and florid cabaletta in Act I. The rest of her performance disappointed. The emotionally buffeted Violetta of Act 2 and the dying Violetta of Act 3 needed more oomph in the middle and bottom registers and a keener sense of dramatic involvement in the characterization. Neither Violetta's noble act of self-sacrifice nor her farewell to earthly things, the aria "Addio del passato," really tugged at the requisite heartstrings... 

Not that the emotional punch of the Violetta-Germont confrontation in Act 2 was helped by Kelsey's somewhat growly, if voluminous sound and the condescending smugness and lack of sympathy with which Alfredo's father treated his son's lover... 

Thank goodness for Calleja, a handsome Alfredo whose easy outpouring of burnished tone and ardent manner were everything one looks for in the role of the naïve country boy who seeks true love in the fleshpots of the Parisian demimonde. Calleja is the main reason to catch this new "Traviata."

Act Three: drama in red.

The Chicago Sun-Times reviewer was also unimpressed, even criticising Italian conductor Massimo Zanetti (with whom I had no quibble). He complains about Ms Rebeka:  "after Violetta’s Act 1 half-hour mini-opera, the wan singer just does not have the voice for the next two highly demanding acts. She is even almost inaudible in the famed letter-reading introduction to the Act 3 signature, “Addio del passato..” and says of Mr Kelsey that he "fails to stake his claim on the elder Germont.." and "is generally hulking, skulking and one-dimensional in both his singing and in his acting."

It's nice to find the critics agreeing with me! However, it was an enjoyable if not great 'Traviata.' I have seen Calleja sing this role with Reneé Fleming as Violetta and Thomas Hampson as Germont, and that’s a very high bar.

Act Four: the death scene.

Check out the lavish production  and a little of Verdi's fabulous music, in this trailer:



The Chicago Civic Opera House is delightful - an Art Deco and Art Nouveau confection festooned with decorative touches. The seating seems to all have good sight lines (it's not a traditional horse-shoe with the usual sight-restricted side boxes). I had front row of the dress circle, which was an excellent view, though perhaps closer might have been better. It’s a large house.

Civic Opera House, Chicago
"a giant throne..."

It’s not Chicago's original opera house - that was built in 1885 but demolished after a number of fires in 1913.  The current building, the Chicago Civic Opera House, was built in 1929 (and restored in 1996), and is described on its website  as “one of Chicago's historic landmarks and among the world's most beautiful buildings...a hybrid of Art Nouveau and Art Deco designs”. Here’s a description of the Opera House (which is topped by offices) in rather purple prose:

The Civic Opera Building is a majestic limestone skyscraper with a 45-story office tower and two 22-story wings. Shaped like a gigantic throne facing the Chicago River between Washington and Madison streets, it was completed after just 22 months of planning and construction. The auditorium and its backstage areas occupy approximately one-third of the total space of the building. The distinguishing feature on the Wacker Drive side of the Civic Opera Building is the colonnaded portico that runs the entire length of the building. 

At the south end, large bronze doors open onto the grand foyer of the Civic Opera House, whose gilt cornices glitter beneath the sparkling lights of Austrian crystal chandeliers and elaborately stenciled ceilings. The magnificent space features a floor and wainscoting of pink and gray Tennessee marble, and fluted Roman travertine columns and pilasters. The 40-foot-high columns are topped with carved capitals covered in gold leaf. ..An imposing grand double staircase leads to the mezzanine foyer, where there are thirty-one boxes. Above this box level are two more balconies, each with 800 seats. The Civic Opera House seats 3,563. 

That’s BIG.

Michael Black

In other news, the program informed me that the chorusmaster from Opera Australia, Michael Black, has decamped to Chicago to become concertmaster for the Lyric. That will be a loss to the Sydney company. In an article about Black, the program expressed surprise that Opera Australia produces about 500 performances a year, and that Australian public schools place so little importance on music. Yup. Apparently Black worked as 'interim chorusmaster' in Chicago in 2011, and is now back full time - they liked him.

As with so many great US opera companies, there’s an impressive list of donors and supporters. And an advertisement in the program headed: “Let’s Leave It All To Lyric!” Given the size and scope of Chicago Lyric Opera, and the fact that it has Reneé Fleming as its artistic advisor, I was a bit surprised to read a comment in an program article insisting that, in comparison to other US and European houses, “we can hold our head high, high, high. We’re every bit as fine as any of them.” Hmm...who would have thought that wonderful, brash, fabulous Chicago would have a bit of a  cringe complex?

Art Deco meets Art Nouveau in the Chicago Civic Opera House (source)

Opera in Bilbao

Palacio Euskalduna (source)

Bilbao is know the world over for its iconic Frank Gehry building, the Guggenheim Modern Art Museum. But that’s not the only striking new building in the city, by any means. The Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall (Euskalduna Jauregia, in Basque), also called the Palacio Euskalduna, sits on the edge of the water in this northern industrial and port city like a great ship about to be launched -- which it is meant to resemble. In fact, when the building was opened it was “christened” with a magnum of champagne just like a ship being launched.

Although it’s deigned as a multi-purpose building, today it’s most important function - in my opinion! - is to house opera performances.  It was designed by architects Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios. Work started in 1994, and the building was opened in February 1999. It functions as a conference center, opera house and concert hall. In 2003 it was declared by the International Congress Palace Association as the world's best congress centre. 

The official website tells us: 

Designed by architects Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios as a vessel permanently under construction that stands in a dock on the site of the former Euskalduna Shipyard, the Conference Centre received the 2001 Enric Miralles award at the 6th Biennial of Spanish Architecture.

The auditorium itself is impressive. It’s lined in acoustically-friendly wood, with banks of seats angled towards the stage. The seating is some of the most pleasant I’ve experienced in an opera house (possibly because it’s actually a conference centre): plumply upholstered in red wool, with a wide space for people to walk in front of the seats, giving no bother at all when latecomers need to edge by. The auditorium has 2,164 seats, and they all looked like they had a great view. Eat your heart out, La Scala.

The stage seemed narrow to me, but perhaps that was in relation to the size of the auditorium - it’s the largest stage of any theatre in Europe with 1,770 sq. metres. There’s some nice video of the interior here.

Interior set up for the orchestra. The hall is also home to the Bilbao Symphony. (source)

Opera performances at this concert hall are presented by the ABAO-OLBE - the Association of Friends of the Opera in Bilbao. Like everyone else in this Verdi anniversary year, they were staging plenty of Verdi, including Rigoletto - my third this year, I think. Though my first opera ever where the surtitles were given in Spanish and Basque. Lucky I know the story!

Our Rigoletto was the Italian baritone Leo Nucci - known for being (a) 71 years old; and (b) having sung the role of Rigoletto more than 450 times. In fact, one review quotes him as saying: " “if not because of some cancellations, this would be my 500th Rigoletto.” Yikes!

He, along with the wonderful Gilda, Romanian soprano Elena Mosuc, provided another opera first for me: having completed their dramatic duo in Act II, they paused to receive enthusiastic applause. So enthusiastic was it, that Signor Nucci was moved to nod to the conductor and give us the dramatic duo one more time. Our Gilda could not help but follow his lead. This type of thing was quite the norm back in the day, when opera was opera and audiences were heavily into it; but I don’t recall having witnessed it myself before.

Leo Nucci as Rigoletto leads the cast. (source)

Perhaps it was something about the Bilbao audience. There were several incidents of sustained applause during the performance. One had Gilda rising from a pose of repose, from which she was about to be abducted, to come to the front of the stage to take a few more mid-performance bows. She then returned to her resting position and the abduction proceeded.

Gilda and Rigoletto. (source)

I’ve seen productions of Rigoletto that were more striking, and I’ve heard some good Gildas. But Ms Mosuc was especially impressive, holding the high notes just because she could, and looking suitably vulnerable (she’s very short). Signor Nucci started perhaps a little weakly - 71 years old! - but very much warmed up as the performance proceeded. His singing was impressive, and the drama of the last moments (when he finds Gilda dead in the sack, instead of the dastardly Duke), were very finely portrayed.

Here's a review (though excuse the poor translation to English). The review was enamoured of Signor Nucci:

Leo Nucci gave us a masterclass of singing and interpretation, by calculating every nuance, dominating every dynamic to perfection, from the pianíssimo to the very strong season, as in the famous aria from the end of the second Act, “Cortiggiani…”. He sang with line and diction impeccable, delighting an audience delivered in advance. It has an enviable voice at age 71, with a resounding and uniform timbre. He makes some nasal sounds on purpose, to give a sarcastic tone to his Parliament, and to rest the “guttural”, why not say it, but it does so with the restraint that only grant mastery and experience.

The reviewer was there a few nights before me, but noted that "Elena Mosuc and Leo Nucci will have to encore the Duetto of the end of the second Act." Looks like that encore mid-opera was somewhat less spontaneous that I thought.

Still, a fine night at the opera.

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

Renée Fleming is one of the greatest sopranos singing today and a renowned 'Strauss soprano'. Richard Strauss is one of the greatest 20th century composers. And his last opera, Capriccio, is - IMHO - his greatest. Thus, we had a winning combination at the Wiener Staatsoper - Vienna State Opera. Ms Fleming was stunning, and equalled by her excellent fellow cast members, under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach. Sublime indeed.

Capriccio (1941) is an intriguing opera about opera. It is a charming, reflective, intellectual conversation piece composed of a great swathe of mesmerising music that continues for two hours and a quarter. At the end, you're walking on clouds. There's very little action as such, but the premise is a debate between friends over what is more important, the music or the words. Music is represented by the tenor, a young composer named Flamand (Michael Schade); and words by the baritone, a poet named Olivier (Markus Eiche). Both are in love with the Countess, Madeleine (Ms Fleming), she playing the role of muse for both of them. The argument in favour of the director, the staging, the production and the design is made by La Roche, a humorous bass role (Kurt Rydl); and we also have Clarion the actress (Angelika Kirchschlager) and the Count, Madeleine's brother, playing an unmusical critic (Bo Skovhus).

The cast of Capriccio takes a well-earned bow.

In the course of this careful debate, Strauss manages to reference all kinds of musical motifs, including some of his own, and to criticise Italian opera rather obviously -- there is an interlude with two Italian singers melodramatically performing 'in the Italian style', and some cutting lines about triumphal marches (take that, Verdi). Strauss has his characters consider the subject of opera itself - and then compose one, in fact, the one we're hearing. A clever conceit. The opera ends with the Countess, in a long and extraordinarily beautiful monologue, still unable to decide between her two suitors or between words and music, which she decides are best entwined. We end with one of the most trivial finales in all opera - the major domo appears and says, 'Dinner is served'. Bliss.

The drawbacks of opera are also frankly aired -- the loudness of the orchestra drowning the singers, the absurdity of discussing politics in song, or dying while singing a loud aria.

And the very next night, the Wiener Staatsoper treated its audience to a resounding example showcasing most of these absurdities (excepting only the triumphal march). A performance of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1867) included several prime examples of quarrels performed in song, to say nothing of the incredibly long and forceful death scene, with the two main protagonists spending at least half an hour dying, vigorously. The staging also included just about every cliché in the repertoire -- after the fireworks, the on-stage photography, the banks of candles, the twilight stars, what else could there be? Ah yes, someone rides on a bicycle, there's an on-stage band, with a piano accordion; and wait - there's another bicycle. Sadly, though the tenor singing Romeo did his best alongside an excessively loud Juliet -- and I have to say they both worked very hard -- the singing did not save the production or the composition.

However, the cast did not appear to realise this, and a small portion of the audience was very enthusiastic. Perhaps they like loudness in their sopranos. I always make it a point to stay for the curtain calls of the cast. Whatever the evening has been like, they do work hard. But on this night they kept coming back and back...and back...most of the audience had left long since, but a few hardy fools remained applauding, which seemed to encourage the cast to come back yet one more time. Couldn't they see that there's only six people left clapping? Placido Domingo was conducting, too - you'd think that a fine old hand like him would have stopped their foolishness. I think they were still rushing back to take another bow to two or three appreciative fans as I made my way out of the theatre.

As if to make sure that all the awful things that can go wrong in an evening at the opera were taken care of in the one visit, this evening also included a small child in my box who insisted on kicking, pulling and climbing on the back of my chair throughout, when she wasn't prodding me in the back. Could anything could be more distracting? Yes! The deplorable English translation of the libretto for the sur-titles was so astoundingly awful that they managed to take my attention, with awful fascination, away from kicking child, bicycles and foghorn soprano. A few samples linger in my memory...and always will, I fear.

....How bright thy front. A palace it outvies.
...She looks at me and raises.
...I embrace your knees.

Ridiculous indeed.

Vienna State Opera advertises Roméo et Juliette. Don't be tempted.

Un giorno in Napoli

View of the Bay of Naples
(from the 30th floor of the Ambassador Hotel)

A photo-essay: twenty-four hours in Napoli....

Buon giorno...

Mosaic on the floor of the Galleria Umberto

Galleria Umberto

Side streets of the Spanish Quarter

The opera tonight: Verdi's 'Rigoletto'

Napolitani

Gambrinus, the cafe where 'O sole mio was composed

Piazza del Plebiscito (with Pantheon lookalike)

View of Vesuvio

The Royal Palace

Vesuvio and the Bay of Naples

Memorial to al soldati

Santa Lucia

Buena sera....

Neapolitan pizza in Santa Lucia

Maestro Giovanni Fummo

Capodimonte Museum:

The museum houses the collections Farnese and Bourbon which are the main parts of the museum of Capodimonte. The origin of the Farnese collection must be political action and the cultural choices of Alessandro Farnese (1468-1549), who, even before he became pope under the name of Paul III, he had cultivated the interest in collecting art and antiques.

Museo Capodimonte

Museo Capodimonte

And to finish a day in Napoli, of course a visit to the newly-restored Teatro San Carlo to hear a rousing Neapolitan version of Verdi's 'Rigoletto'.

Teatro San Carlo, the oldest Opera House in Italy

The boxes of Teatro San Carlo

Buona notte di Napoli....