CARMEN GETS WET

Theodore Sarge, Young-Kwang Yoo, Lara Secord-Haid, Matthew Pearce, Tahanee Aluwihare, Quentin Bruno,
and Geddy Warner

If you love revolution in opera, read no further.  Just try to snag a ticket to City Lyric Opera's current production of La Tragédie de Carmen at the West End Theater (at The Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew) before word-of-mouth books up the remaining performances. We promise you an entertaining evening. Our attention was captured for an hour and a half and we left filled with conflicting thoughts and feelings.

This production has one foot in Bizet's 1875 masterpiece and the other in Part III of Prosper Mérimée's novella (which masqueraded as a non-fiction travelogue). But it has both feet in the water upon which we will shortly elaborate. And it is up to its neck in directorial narcissism.

It is our opinion that a work of art should stand on its own merit and should not require exegesis. Imagine explaining the Mona Lisa! For that reason we do not read the program until after an opera ends. We prefer to allow it to affect us. Or not.

The 1981 work La Tragédie de Carmen is an adaptation of Bizet's masterpiece; and it is not a masterpiece. It is a condensed, telescoped version, preserving our favorite arias, but ditching the chorus, the local color, and many of the characters and scenes that tell the story. The emphasis is shifted to the four main characters and their intense interaction. 

Arias have been reshuffled like the cards that the titular Carmen uses to foretell her future. Jean-Claude Carrière wrote dialogue to knit the vignettes together and Marius Constant composed music to weave the arias together. Peter Brook directed it, reminding us how we wish the era of regietheater would end. Opera began as a composer's medium and put the singer center stage. In our opinion this is how it should be. Directors should stick to film!

That being said, it was a canny choice for the relatively young and daring City Lyric Opera. Their mission is to provide one-of-a-kind opera going experiences without expectation or financial burden. This they have achieved. They have managed to keep us well entertained and to find excellent singers to feature in their productions.

For example, we had the marvelous mezzo-soprano Tahanee Aluwihare whose dusky instrument and seductive presentation gave us a believable free-spirited Carmen. As Micaëla, soprano Lara Secord-Haid sang beautifully but had the unenviable task of making the shy but brave character into a nasty jealous shrew who attacks Carmen.

Our Don Jose was superbly portrayed by tenor Matthew Pearce who was strangely "promoted" to the rank of General, which made his subjection to the will of Zuniga (Geddy Warner) rather peculiar. Men of lesser rank cannot demote a General! Forgetting all that, he sang with beautiful tone and lovely phrasing--and no down-time to rest his voice.

As Escamillo, Young-Kwang Yoo used his fine baritone to advantage without any costume choices to aid in his characterization.

Considering musical values aside from voices, Maestro Rebecca Tong led a chamber orchestra of 15, emphasizing the suitability of this production for a boutique opera company. We cannot claim to be completely satisfied with the balance; the piano sounded particularly odd when contrasting the cheerful theme of the bullfight with the tragic theme of Carmen's death. A recording by a full orchestra was used for the bullring music and this was poorly integrated with the live music.

Addressing the production values, some ideas were valid and some struck us as bizarre. The program notes would have the audience believe that the reflections on the water are meant to make us reflect upon our emotional gaps and how we fill them. Not for one moment during the show nor afterward has this entered our introspective mind. We cannot say that mirrors would have served better but we can say that making singers perform in several inches of water seems a form of artist abuse.

When Don Jose and Escamillo fight with water pistols (we kid you not) the audience laughed out loud, as they did at other points in the performance. We are not saying that comic moments don't belong in a tragedy; the Bard himself had humorous scenes in his tragedies. But this was just weird.

It also seemed inapposite for Micaëla and Carmen to have a cuddle session toward the end. There was not a shred of evidence to motivate that scene. As a matter of fact the condensation of the plot did not provide much motivation for a lot of the action. The wedding scene came at a point when Carmen was through with Don Jose and we thought it was a fantasy of his.

In the Mérimée novella, Micaëla does not even exist-- but Garcia, Carmen's husband (Quentin Bruno) does. His presence in this version seemed to serve to illustrate Don Jose's violent nature.

The rape/death scene seemed particularly badly directed since Carmen just lay down in the water as if she wanted to be raped. If this was supposed to make some kind of psychological point, it didn't float.

The production team comprised Victoria Collado as Director, Anna Driftmier as Scenographer/Costume Designer, and Charlotte McPhearson as Lighting Designer. We are not sure but surmise that directorial decisions were made jointly. 

In any case, Ms. McPhearson's lighting was suitably dramatic. An ensemble of three men wore headbands with bright lights which added to the eerie quality. They were Theodore Sarge (who had a brief moment as Lillas Pastia making a speech), Quentin Bruno (who had his brief moment as Garcia), and Geddy Warner (who had his brief moment as Zuniga).

We were wondering whether opera newbies would be the right audience for this piece. It is short. It is dramatic. It has sex and violence. We tried to approach it with the openness of a newbie and still found fault. What about diehard opera fans? We think they would find it a travesty with all that cut-and-paste of the music. Of course, it could be fun to identify where in the Bizet the music was taken from. "Oh wait!  Isn't that the music from where Micaëla is looking for Don Jose in the mountains?"

Perhaps if someone want to retell the Carmen story, he/she might consider writing their own music!

Photos from the production can be seen on our Facebook page--Voce di Meche.

(c) meche kroop

2017 GEORGE LONDON FOUNDATION AWARDS COMPETITION FINALS

Nora London and 2017 Award Recipients

Award recitals are such fun.  We get to see and hear the young singers we know and love; we get to witness the fruits of their long years of study; we get to participate in honoring them.  All award recitals are fun but the George London Foundation Awards Recital offers something special. The judging takes place at the end of the competition whilst we wait outside the hall at the Morgan Library and Museum. The finalists are there with us so we have the opportunity to speak with them about their selections, their preparations, their anxiety (or lack of), their training, even their gowns.

What a generous history has the George London Foundation!  And an even greater present since the ante was upped this year. $75,000 in prizes was awarded to the 18 singers. Every single finalist received an award. In our eyes as well, they were all winners. About half of them are known to us from prior recitals and competitions and the other half will, we hope, perform in New York City so that we can hear them again.

We have written every year about the foundation and the role of Nora London in perpetuating the memory of her husband, the famous George London. What better way to honor someone than to pass the torch.

As is our wont, we will not tell you the size of anyone's award, information you can find on the Foundation's website. We are more interested in the quality of the performance. Often, we agreed with the decisions of the judges; when we did not, we are prepared to admit that they recognized a quality or a promise that we missed. 

We surely agreed with them about soprano Michelle Bradley who gave an electrifying performance of "D'amor sull ali rosee" from Verdi's Il Trovatore. Here is a true Verdian voice with an expansive top and plenty of strength in the lower register. We loved the variety of color and dynamics and the lavish expressiveness.

Bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum impressed us with the devilish demeanor with which he invested Mefistofele in "Vous qui faites l'endormie" from Gounod's Faust.  The lovely French lines were punctuated with mocking laughter. Sympathy for the Devil indeed!

Aaron Blake's sweet tenor drew us into Edgardo's suffering in "Tombe degli avi miei" from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. The resonance was just right for the character and the portrayal was more than usually affecting. We felt his pain.

Some of the choices of arias seemed a bit strange to us but, as we learned, the judges selected from the artists' lists the one they wanted to hear. We observed an emphasis on 20th c. works, some of which we had never heard, some of which we had heard and disliked, and one which we actually had enjoyed at Juilliard. In any case, one can love the singer and not love the song!

For example, baritone Shea Owens did a beautiful job with "Batter my Heart" from John Adams' Doctor Atomic. We truly loathed the opera BUT Mr. Owens made the aria meaningful and intense. Happily he made every word count.

Another example--we don't think we could sit through hours of Alban Berg, but Lara Secord-Haid gave a stunning and expressive performance of "Lied der Lulu" with its jagged vocal lines. Her German was enviable and crisp.

A couple works by Benjamin Britten put in an appearance. A most convincing performance of the "Mad Scene" from Peter Grimes was given by tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven. There aren't too many mad scenes for men in the operatic canon; this one is a doozy. We believed every word of it. Although it is more difficult to evaluate someone's voice in a piece like this, the artist was totally immersed in the dramatic intent. 

"I know a bank" from Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed by countertenor Daniel Moody, who made the aria live with some superb acting, word coloration, and apt dynamic variation. He succeeded in creating an otherworldly character.

We do love countertenors and there were two of them. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen performed "Dawn, still darkness" from Jonathan Dove's Flight. Having seen the opera recently at Juilliard (and enjoyed it) we were able to put the work in context and understand why the character was feeling such pain--pain that Mr. Cohen conveyed successfully.

Baritone Brian Vu sang Onegin's response to Tatiana's letter and he sang it in excellent Russian, an opinion we got from our Russian speaking companion. His voice has a lovely quality and he employed gentler colors than customary to create a kinder more avuncular Onegin, an interpretation with which we are comfortable. We never think of Onegin as a heel, but rather as a Dutch Uncle. Tchaikovsky surely gave him some wonderful music to sing.

More Russian was on hand from Rimsky-Korsakov. Baritone Will Liverman has a substantial sound that seemed just right for "Grigory's Aria" from The Tsar's Bride.

We were even treated to some Wagner as tenor Errin Duane Brooks sang "Siegmund heiss ich" from our favorite part of The Ring Cycle when Siegmund pulls his father's sword out of the ash tree in Hunding's hut. This always gives us goosebumps.

A tenor of a different type, Jonas Hacker sang "Salut demeure chaste et pure" from Faust--and he sang it in excellent French with a nice easy delivery. It was great to hear someone sing it without any straining.

We witnessed a high quality of singing in several women. Andrea Nunez generated a lot of coloratura excitement in "No, no, I'll take no less" from Handel's Semele. Her upper range was so scintillating we kept thinking "Queen of the Night".

Soprano Danielle Beckvermit sang "Depuis le jour" from Charpentier's Louise. We liked her French and the attractive resonance of her voice which has a nice bloom in the upper register.

Mezzo-soprano Megan Marino sang "Connais-tu le pays" from Ambroise Thomas' Mignon, another iteration of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. I liked the pronounced vibrato which lent additional sympathy to a sympathetic character.

Soprano Lauren Margison sang one of our favorite Mozart arias--"Porgi amor" from Le nozze di Figaro. This one is a real heartbreaker!

Mezzo-soprano Carolyn Sproule invested Charlotte's "Air des lettres" from Massenet's Werther with a great deal of emotional power.  Her French was quite good.

Good English is even more difficult to find but mezzo-soprano Evanna Lai made every word understandable in "Things change Jo" from Mark Adamo's Little Women. It was a persuasive and lovely performance.

We heard 18 singers in two hours and enjoyed them all. We hope that the awards will further their careers so we can hear more of them.

(c) meche kroop

LIEDER ARE FOR LOVERS

Our favorite hang

It is impossible to sit in Paul Hall at Juilliard during one of the liederabend without feeling grateful for the opportunity to hear the stars of tomorrow and being impressed by the quality of the talent.  These young artists are already performing professionally around the USA and abroad and/or recording.  We have them right here to enjoy and the recitals are free.  Take that, Cleveland!

Last night's program was bookended by barihunks.  Philip Stoddard, partnered by pianist Jung A. Bang opened with four selections from Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, performed with consummate sensitivity and musicality.  In "Ich atmet' einen linden Duft" one could sense the aroma in the air.  And just listen to what Mr. Stoddard did with the word "frühling"!  This delicacy was followed by the wry mood of "Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder" and the solitude of "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen".  We were totally transported by the variety of moods.  The lovely Ms. Bang has an equally sensitive light touch on the keys.

Partnered by Kyung Hee Kim, soprano Lindsey Nakatani used her bright soprano to perform Walzer Gesänge by Alexander Zemlinsky, settings of poetry by Ferdinand Gregorovius which Ms. Nakatani translated herself.  These are songs with which we wish to become better acquainted.

We have heard Mr. Bielfield and his superb tenor several times before and it was exciting to see him grow in a new direction, performing two selections from Liszt's Tre Sonetti di Petrarca.  With excellent support from pianist Ari Livne he conveyed the anxiety and the passion of the poet in "Pace non trovo". 

Soprano Lilla Heinrich-Szász sang Sechs Lieder, Op. 48 of Edvard Grieg accompanied by Dan K. Kurland, a fine partnership if we ever heard one.  Many moods were expressed and we especially enjoyed the lighthearted "Lauf der Welt" and "Die verschwiegene Nachtigall" and the always lovely "Ein Traum".  Ms. Heinrich-Szász will have the stage to herself Saturday night at 8:30 and we will be there.

Soprano Lara Secord-Haid and pianist Art Williford sang four selections from Enrique Granados' Canciones Amatorias.  We always welcome the opportunity to hear Spanish songs and these were lovely.

Baritone Emmett O'Hanlon closed the program with some American songs, stepping out of the late 19th c. from whence came the other songs on the program.  Piano partner Lachlan Glen, well known from Schubert&Co's year long perusal of all of Schubert's 600+ songs, showed us a different aspect of his pianistic skills in the songs by Charles Ives which Mr. O'Hanlon sang with fine technique and depth of feeling.  The optimistic "He is there!" contrasted with the sad "In Flanders Fields".  In the former, flutist Daniel James added his silvery voice.  But it was in the final song that Mr. O'Hanlon was the most moving,  Lee Hoiby's setting of "Last Letter Home", an actual letter by Pfc. Jesse Givens who apparently lost his life in service to our country.  It was difficult to hold back the tears.

Let it be noted that the singers were all involved with their material and connected with the audience; they stepped forward away from the piano and used their entire bodies to convey the meaning of the song.  We have complained often about famous singers who hang onto the piano or who have not memorized the music and are so pleased to know that these young singers are not falling into those dreaded habits.

Mr. Stoddard's graduation recital will be April 8th at 8PM so if you missed his superb performance last night you will get another opportunity.

© meche kroop