EARLY HALLOWEEN

 Joshua Jeremiah as Frankenstein's Monster (Photo by Kevin Condon)

We are in the catacombs of Greenwood Cemetery, ready to be creeped out by another site specific work presented by Andrew Ousley as the last entry in a season called The Angel’s Share.  And if you are curious about that name, please see our earlier reviews.  Mr. Ousley seems to have a taste for the spooky, considering his other series in the subterranean Crypt of the Church of the Intercession.

The presentation lasted slightly over an hour, less than the time it took us to get to this remote corner of Brooklyn. The summer event had allowed us to stroll uphill through the verdant and peaceful resting place for New York notables. But tonight we were brought uphill by trolley, following a whiskey tasting, of which we did not partake. Theatrical judgment requires sobriety!

And what a theatrical evening it was, stimulating to eye and ear. We had composer Gregg Kallor at the piano, introducing sketches of an opera he is developing based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 Gothic tale Frankenstein. The scene we heard was the part in which the “monster” confronts his creator, the scientist Victor Frankenstein. 

His frightening appearance has caused him to be shunned by society. We couldn’t keep ourself from thinking about the “aliens” in our midst, those who arrive in our country without knowing the language, trying to learn and get accepted. But this monster knows he will never be accepted, although he has been hanging around a nice family, observing their customs and learning to read from their books.  Only the blind old grandfather accepted him.

He is demanding that Frankenstein create a mate for him; in a blackmail move, he threatens to visit his creator on Frankenstein's wedding night; we know that it won’t be a friendly visit!  Things go downhill from there but that part of the opera has yet to be written. Mr. Kallor’s piano was accompanied by Joshua Roman’s cello. 

The music was filled with anxiety as befits the tale, although we preferred the rare lyrical passage. The libretto was a bit to literary for our taste and seemed awkward to sing, although baritone Joshua Jeremiah sang powerfully as the monster and acted the part every bit as well as he sang. In the role of the frightened Frankenstein, tenor Brian Cheney was similarly effective. As  “the bride of Frankenstein”, Jennifer Johnson Cano made a brief and welcome appearance, trying to comfort her fiancé.

After a piano interlude celebrating Leonard Bernstein, Ms. Cano performed the chilling piece The Tell-Tale Heart—Edgar Allen Poe’s 1843 short story, a monologue by a murderous psychopath whose guilt leads him to have auditory hallucinations of the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floorboards where he buried the dismembered body. We heard this piece before at one of the Crypt performances; the review can be found through the search bar.

Although horror is our least favorite genre, we must admit that Ms. Cano’s intense and self-effacing performance held our attention and drove the audience to wild applause. For our taste, we have preferred her performances of more lyrical material, performances we have often reviewed. She is indeed a wonder of versatility!

Sarah Meyers directed the evening and Tláloc López-Watermann provided the highly effective and evocative lighting. Fay Eva’s costume design was just right, with the monster’s face mostly hidden by a hoodie.

The evening had a powerful effect; we were too shaken to walk down the dark pathway to the exit and were happy to ride the trolley!

Happy Halloween!  We got a jump start on ya’!

(c) meche kroop

COME TO THE CRYPT

Joshua Roman, Gregg Kallor, and Elizabeth Pojanowski (photo by Andrew Ousley)

What better place to experience The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 short story, than the spooky crypt of a church?  What better time than Halloween? We are deep underground at the Church of the Intercession in Harlem to experience a landmark collaboration between On Site Opera and Crypt Sessions. We are not here for a reading but for the premiere of a new dramatic cantata composed by pianist/recording artist/composer Gregg Kallor.

Both collaborating companies have found their niche in the wild west landscape of 21st century music performance. On Site Opera produces operas in site-specific locations and has been reviewed by us many times. Crypt Sessions produces a series of compelling works, all in the crypt of the church.  They are new to us.

There were two curtain-raisers that gave us a flavor of Mr. Kallor's writing style. The first short solo entitled "Where You Are" pleased us with it's ear-tickling melding of classical and jazz styles.

The second piece, entitled "Undercurrent", (premiered recently at SubCulture) was a three movement "sonata" for piano and cello which couldn't have been more different than the Debussy piece we heard two days ago at Music Talks. It seemed to be a dialogue between the percussive piano and the lyrical lines of the cello, beautifully played by Joshua Roman. The dialogue often seemed at cross purposes except for the lyrical central movement; we seem to always prefer the Adagio in any piece!  

The centerpiece of the evening was the premiere of Mr. Kallor's The Tell-Tale Heart. The two musicians were joined by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Pojanowski who performed the story with fine English diction and dramatic intensity. We were amazed that this difficult work with its strange vocal lines had been committed to memory and we appreciate the effort. A music stand would have destroyed the carefully crafted illusion of madness created by Ms. Pojanowski.

The narrator of the story is a madman, a psychopathic murderer who tries to convince us of his sanity. Our diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia due to the presence of delusions about the victim's eye and auditory hallucinations!  The narrator gives himself away, thinking that the police can hear the beating of the corpse's heart from under the floorboards but readers can assume it is his guilt producing the hallucination.

The performance was directed by Sarah Meyers with spooky lighting designed by Shawn Kaufman.

Having been thoroughly creeped out, it was quite a relief to hear the soothing Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt. We loved the part in which the piano played repetitive arpeggios in second inversion with the cello providing lyrical passages of ascending and descending scale passages. The overall effect was a peaceful meditative one that calmed down our rapid heartbeat.  And we lived to tell the tale!

(c) meche kroop

TWO IMPRESSIVE DEBUTS at WEILL RECITAL HALL

Melody Moore (photo by Chip Gillespie)

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg

It isn't every day that we get to celebrate two debuts--that of the aptly named famous soprano Melody Moore, heretofore unknown to us, and that of musical wunderkind Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, about whom we have been writing  for several years.  Mr. Wenzelberg sings, conducts, plays several instruments and composes. He is finishing his first opera.  But last night's impressive debut was a song he was commissioned to write for Ms. Moore.

It isn't every day that we hear the "f word" in Carnegie Hall and that is another first that we will get to further along in our review

Ms. Moore has been making quite a name for herself with her highly dramatic interpretations and warm stage presence.  The list of roles she has tackled and those upcoming give one the impression of astonishing versatility--Mozart, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, and Jerome Kern are all represented. With collaborative pianist Robert Mollicone, she held the Weill Recital Hall audience in rapt attention. 

Stefano Donaudy and Ottorino Respighi were contemporaries but their turn of the 20th c. songs could not be more different.  Donaudy looked backward to the 19th c. that we so love and Ms. Moore sang his "Amorosi miei giorni" with an attractive vibrato and well-shaped phrasing. The embellishments were superbly handled and we are hoping that Ms. Moore may get interested in the bel canto repertory.

Respighi's work looked more toward the future with less glorious melodic invention but more interesting harmonic structure.  Ms. Moore sang his "Notte" with gorgeous coloring. 

But nothing captivated us as much as  Puccini's early song "Sole e amore" to which, we believe, he wrote the text himself. We felt our eyes tearing up and realized that the melody and accompaniment were almost identical with those heard in his opera La Bohème!

Claude Debussy, a contemporary of Puccini, distinguished himself from his colleagues by setting prose and free verse that he wrote himself.  Thus what we are hearing seems to be an aural counterpart to paintings of the Impressionist school, although Debussy vociferously objected to his music being called impressionistic.  One's ears are surrounded by beauty that is mutable and unstable.

We were delighted to be introduced to his Proses lyriques, in which Ms. Moore and Mr. Mollicone painted pictures in sound.  In "De grève", the piano provided multiple images of the sea, both at rest and in its wildest moments. The final song "De soir" gave the singer an opportunity to paint auditory portraits of Debussy's varied images by means of gesture and vocal coloring.

The second half of the program began with Strauss songs, in which Ms. Moore's operatic voice seemed more at home. In the first half, the bronchitis which she had pushed aside (a less confident artist might have begged the audience's indulgence) lent a somewhat hard edge to her voice when she pushed for volume in the upper range. But in the Strauss, everything sounded just fine. 

We always love the bittersweet "Befreit" from his Op.39 in which the words speak of joy but the occasion is one of releasing a loved one to death. We heard a beautifully modulated performance in which Ms. Moore spun out the final note to great emotional effect.

The final work on the program sprang from an original idea. Ms. Moore asked five composers to set texts by a poet of whom she is very fond, Clementine von Radics. This young poet has been well-celebrated; we can understand why her texts about the female experience of love have resonated with her readers.

But when we read the texts they seemed to us like novelistic prose, requiring no music to make their impact. Obviously, the five composers felt otherwise and managed to make music for Ms. Moore and Mr. Mollicone to perform.

Having just reviewed an evening of Stephen Schwartz' music at Manhattan School of Music, we were most eager to hear what this versatile composer, equally at home with Broadway musicals and opera, would add to the text. We found he was the most successful of the group at emphasizing the vocal line, making it interesting and singable. His lyricism is wondrously accessible and he knows how to write for the voice so that every single word can be understood. We liked the way he used repetition, especially of the word "river" in "Someday I Will Stop Being Young and Wanting Stupid Tattoos".

It is interesting that Mr. Wenzelberg became friendly with Ms. Moore on the set of Mr. Schwartz' 2011 opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon, one of a very few contemporary operas that we would want to see a second time. We care not a whit if other reviewers find his work "too accessible"!

As far as the texts set by other composers, we admired the pianistic writing more than the vocal line. Since certain verses and lines were omitted from the program notes, there were many phrases that went by without comprehension, although it was no challenge to get the gist of what Ms. Moore was singing about.

Each composer was able to choose the text he wanted to set and Mr. Wenzelberg had felt a special affinity for "Some Things You Could Do to Heal Yourself".  We loved the dramatic intensity and the melismatic vocal line on the word "silly".

Scott Gendel's setting had some lovely writing for piano and Gregg Kallor wrote a suitably quiet setting for the text of "A Prayer".  David Hanlon wrote the cabaret-inflected music for "Poems and Other Sentimental Bullshit". 

It was in this song that the f-bomb was dropped. At the risk of sounding prudish, we do not find the "f word" suitable in an art song.  Clearly we were outvoted since the audience seemed to love this instance of  épater le bourgeois.  We would prefer "sentimental bullshit"!

As encore, Ms. Moore sang Mr. Rogers' song "It's You I Like", an original way to end the evening.

(c) meche kroop