opéra chanteuse

La Fleming's New CD

2012-01-30T07:32:00.003-11:00

As art directed by yours truly: well, not really.

A Diva's Duvet Cover

2012-01-30T06:44:00.000-11:00

There is simply no accounting for bad taste, is there?

Aida On A Winter's Night

2012-01-24T04:32:00.015-11:00

Sondra Radvanovsky's Aida was unveiled Saturday night at Lyric Opera of Chicago amid Biblically-epic sets that were more Bollywood than Egypt. The entire production had the chaotic ambiance of a Cecil B. DeMille set, complete with dozens of extras in preposterous get-ups that screamed tacky Las Vegas instead of Cairo chic. I found the costumes for the principals lacking in style. An azure jersey column for Aida was lovely but unimaginatively designed. Remember Aprile Millo's Nile-green costume dangling with tribal beads from circa 1988? Now that was a frock fit for a love-sick Ethiopian princess. But never mind, the uninspired costuming is beside the point.

None of the vulgar pageantry that transpired on stage would have remotely annoyed me had Radvanovsky gave a searing or, at the very least, committed performance of this touchstone role. While the soprano showed considerable power over chorus and orchestra in the unforgiving Triumphal Scene, effortlessly riding the Tsunami-like wave of sound from stage and pit, I thought she gave a frustratingly lackluster Aida, so decidedly devoid of intimacy and pathos, particularly in moments that required intimacy and pathos. Her "Ritorna vincitor!" was bereft of any real hint of agitation or urgency. "O patria mia," though competently sung, was bland and lifeless. Her diction—lazy, slurred beyond recognition—did not help her either. Like a figure skater faced with the daunting task of mastering a quadruple flip at the Olympics, Radvanovsky attacked the dreaded high C with palpable trepidation; the effect was hardly earth-shattering—the pyramids were unharmed. Her showdown with the crude, underpowered Amneris of mezzo Jill Grove also proved disappointing. Vocally, the soprano was in top form, exhibiting impressive agility and power to burn, but dramatically it was not the nasty cat-fight, claws and all, between two bitter rivals. Both singers lacked the fierceness and nastiness required to set this scene on fire. So, naturally, her confrontation with the impassioned Amonasro of baritone Gordon Hawkins was also a let-down. When the time came for the gorgeous "O terra, addio"—ditto. On what should have been the most suitable time for this Aida to redeem herself by delivering a gut-wrenching, Millo-like farewell to life, the soprano once again succumbed to her customary "safe approach," inducing nary a single tear from my eyes. With the rise and fall of the vocal line written to evoke the soul leaving the body, the duet is one of Verdi's most heartfelt melodies, yet both Aida and Radames (a nasal-sounding Marcello Giordani) squandered the golden moment by refusing to give a part of themselves. Opening night nerves? Was the soprano battling a cold? The mere fact that it is January in Chicago? Or is it perhaps because Aida is simply too gigantic a role for this promising Verdian soprano to tackle this early on in her career?

A Pair of Fashion Victims

2012-01-11T05:23:00.006-11:00

Dmitri and Renée, taking their bows at a "special recital" held Saturday night at Lyric, an event staged in honor of ex-manager William Mason. While both singers exhibited vocal élan and admirable musicianship in daring arias and riveting duets as disparate as Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and Massenet's Thais, which soprano and baritone either sang solo or in tandem, their appearances, however, were hard to fathom. Dressed in a black longsleeved top sprinkled with dusts of sequins that morphed into a ballerina's bouffant tulle skirt, Fleming looked like a middle-aged debutante positively giddy at the prospect of receiving her first kiss. Her paramour, meanwhile, had his own fashion statement to make, albeit one that should not have come out of the closet. Hvorostovsky may have been an imposing presence—I half-expected this playboy to grab Renée by the arms and ravish her body—but his swashbuckling costume of black Nehru-inspired silk shirt and skin-tight trousers was as flamboyantly outré as his vocal projection. I'm surprised that this Siberian Fabio did not consider donning a highwayman's cape to go with his Errol Flynn get-up.

Best CD Cover Ever

2012-01-10T09:00:00.002-11:00

The Art of British Restraint

2012-01-02T07:21:00.004-11:00

I offer you this 1969 TV adaptation of Wilde's An Ideal Husband, starring two of my favourite English actor/actress from that long-ago time: the exquisite Margaret Leighton and the magnificent Jeremy Brett. Two thoroughly enchanting performances that are masterclasses in understated elegance and the inimitable art of British refinement and restraint. Enjoy!

2012!

2011-12-31T06:15:00.002-11:00

Angie, Darling, There's Only One Maria: "Moi"

2011-12-14T06:36:00.005-11:00

The day I learned that EMI was putting out a disc with my name on it came hardly as a surprise: they do it all the time. What came as a surprise, however, was the knowledge that my name was going to be placed underneath someone else's. I never imagined such an outright violation of "decency" laws would occur in my other life. I, who topbilled every opera I ever appeared in, was not going to take this one sitting down! What's worse, the name that hovers directly above mine is the very name that has shamelessly capitalized on my fame more than any other soprano, living or dead. The impostor's name is none other than the so-called "definitive diva of the 21st-century": Angela Gheorghiu. A pretty enough name, yes, but you have to admit it lacks the familiar ring and alluring nuance of mine. Further, it's not even her own name: it's her ex-husband's. No, dear, not the fellow who stormed off the stage, but her first husband's name. Really, I have no problem at all with her name or in her dubious choice of men. The one thing that sent my blood pressure rising into the rafters was when I actually received the CD in the mail the other day.

While I'm flattered beyond words to be hyped and celebrated in such a way, what burns me is that Gheorghiu does it horrendously. From the first track to the last, she is downright imitating my style, my voice, my personality in the worst possible manner. It isn't even campy: it's worse than mere camp. It's one thing to do an "homage," it's another story entirely when someone does an utterly tasteless imitation of the person one is giving an homage to. I must admit that she does an admirable job of selling herself—her breasts appear to get bigger and BIGGER every time I see her on T.V.—but she is not an artist in the truest sense of that frequently misused and misapplied of words. For one, true artists never imitate. They may, on occasion, show up late for rehearsals or not show up at all, but they never—and I include myself among this elite group of artists—imitate someone else's vocal style or mannerisms. As for her choice of repertoire: well, it seems to me that when choosing prospective arias to include on the CD, she simply roamed around my vastly opulent garden of a discography and plucked the ones she liked without examining the roots to see if they had anything whatsoever to do with me. I mean, hello, I never even sang Dalila on stage, nor have I made something out of Carmen. I sang Adriana, Mimi, and La Wally on record (and a few times on stage) but these roles never became my signature roles. "Homage" my foot! What was she thinking?! To be perfectly blunt, her voice in the atrocious "Carmen" track, the one where she "duets" with me, is just about the single worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life—and believe me, I've heard my share of atrocities over the years. Listening to it gave me nightmares for several nights. Whoever had the idea of merging our voices into an incohesive duet ought to be fired immediately. (A trusted source tells me that it was not one of those stuffy British EMI executives as I had originally suspected but Gheorghiu herself who broached the monstrous idea.) Pairing our voices together was a proposition as disastrous and ill-advised as Mrs. Kennedy's Grecian nuptials! It just made me sick in disgust. Oh, don't get my blood pressure rising again by mentioning her absolute train wreck of a "Sempre libera". I thought it would never end: all that screeching and howling and barking. She sounds as if her Violetta is about ready to expire right then and there, doing so without fornicating with the sexy Alfredo of one James Valenti. Oh, the sheer horror of it all. Don't get La Divina wrong, I think Gheorghiu a fine artist, but only when she becomes herself. Her silly little tribute to my artistic legacy is nothing more than a clever plot to further her career by selling a few million records. Nothing less, nothing more. But then what can one expect from a self-centered, self-righteous, and self-promoting diva that is Angela Gheorghiu?

Pensée II

2011-12-12T07:27:00.002-11:00

khalil gibran: "Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror."

Pensée

2011-12-11T09:35:00.002-11:00

albert einstein: "Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."

Belated

2011-12-09T04:39:00.004-11:00

Clearly I am a delinquent. In that I haven't written down a single word about the current Lyric Opera of Chicago season which began some nine or ten weeks ago—practically a lifetime in the world of opera blogging. Whatever the reason(s) may be for my hiatus now seems irrelevant to rehash, for the one crucial thing required of people who intend to "move forward" is to bravely let go of the past and all its excess baggage—let's leave it at that. I will, however, revisit a most memorable performance that I was fortunate enough (really fortunate!) to have witnessed at Lyric this autumn. It made me forget the frustratingly dismal Lucia I saw earlier in the season with Giuseppe Filianoti, as well as a tedious Hoffmann with Matthew Polenzani. That performance was Ariadne auf Naxos, with Amber Wagner in the title role (replacing Deborah Voigt), Anna Christy as Zerbinetta, Alice Coote as the Composer, and Brandon Jovanovich as Bacchus. The production was very Gilbert and Sullivan. The singing, on the other hand, was not. Soprano Wagner, making her Lyric début, was a revelation. A consummate performer, her voice swirled and flowed in the air like French chiffon, majestically and technically secure in all registers. Her soprano soared thrillingly across a flawless Straussian sky. Coote was just as impressive, as was Christy's stratospheric Zerbinetta. Jovanovich was a vocally and visually arresting Bacchus. Like Voigt, the scheduled Ariadne, conductor Andrew Davis has never excelled in Italian operas, but his Ariadne was a sheer delight from beginning to end, as the music of Richard Strauss should be.

The Divine Miss Sarah

2011-12-05T05:03:00.000-11:00

O Angela

2011-04-06T05:07:00.007-11:00

For a change, diva Gheorghiu fulfilled her promise: that of performing with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on Sunday night. My friend T, who trekked up north last weekend specifically for Angela's sake, files his report below. Merci to him, and to the diva herself who, for once, actually turned up after saying she would.

____________________

Angela Gheorghiu's highly-anticipated, rather belated Vancouver debut recital took place at the Orpheum, a palatial venue that, upon entering its cavernous facade, had me worrying like a stage mother. The first thought that creeped into my mind was this: Would Gheorghiu's precious decibels prove deficit against such a vast space? Followed by: Would it soar against full orchestra, project audibly across the hall, without damaging her voice in the process? For after all a singer's number one priority, more than anything, is to be heard loud and clear. I need not have worried, for this soprano soared magnificently into the rafters, the kind of glorious soaring that would render her detractors mute, those who quibble about the size of her voice when they can't find anything else to quibble about. Gheorghiu, on the evening of April 3, once again demonstrated her almost superhuman ability to capture an audience hook, line and sinker, turning the most maudlin of arias into luminous gems, showing off her celebrated soprano as the gods themselves who created it would want her to, singing a treasure trove of arias both genteel and dramatic in nature, earning her lavish praise from the audience who applauded wildly the moment she made her entrance. "Lascia ch'io pianga"—the soprano's favorite warm-up piece—was exactly that: a "safe," risk-free little aria, a balm to soothe her vocal chords as only the music of Handel could, a prelude to the bigger, more riskier numbers such as Rusalka's haunting "Song To The Moon," La Wally's tragic soliloquy "Ebben, ne andro lontana," and Margherita's powerful "L'altra note in fondo al mare"—all of which Gheorghiu delivered with thrilling passion and artistry that the audience, no doubt caught up in the rapture of a voice so bewitching and magical as to seem altogether real, willingly overlooked the constant tug-of-war the diva and conductor Bramwell Tovey were pointlessly playing on stage, and that Schubert's Ständchen did not at all become her—all these minor blemishes vanish the moment one hears the miraculous beauty of Gheorghiu's voice. It also doesn't hurt that the diva cuts a striking figure on stage, looking like a Hindu goddess in a black and white long-sleeved plaid organza ensemble with matching fringed shawl. Gheorghiu looked especially smashing in a flowing hussy-red dress that followed every contour and emphasized every erogenous zone of her hour-glass figure and which, naturally, turned heads whenever she moved which she did quite a bit. The encores—they weren't encores per se, at least spontaneously speaking, for they were obviously rehearsed—the encores were extravagantly sung and extravagantly rewarded with rapturous applause. I'm talking nearly half-a-dozen numbers here that ranged from the infectious "Granada" to the sentimental "All The Things You Are," the latter of which the soprano, accompanied on the piano by conductor Tovey, sang with all the joy and promise of an exuberant, flawless, picture-perfect spring day, the audience barely resisting the urge to sing along with Angela. It was a gorgeous end to a gorgeous recital. Later in the lobby, a few people, perhaps the same ones who found themselves mesmerized by the melody of Jerome Kern's most beloved song as to almost sing backup to Angela, were humming the exquisite melody, doing so without the slightest inhibition, as we all walked out into a cool, moonlit Vancouver night.

To Love Or Not To Love

2011-03-31T04:46:00.006-11:00

"There is no pain like the pain of knowing you love someone but cannot live with them." This line is found on page 17 of Sándor Márai's rediscovered, newly-translated novel, Portraits of a Marriage, but its frankness and simplicity is so powerful in its emotional truth that Márai, had he opened the book with it, may have written an entirely different novel altogether; its stunning impact worthy to be placed alongside other iconic first lines such as: "The past is a different country, they do things differently there," from L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between.

The Hungarian novelist, famous in his native land and who later committed suicide at 89 in San Diego where he lived for many years, has had one of the most enthusiastically-received posthumous careers in recent years, consistently making the bestseller list, all thanks mainly to Alfred A. Knopf who, for the past decade, has devotedly churned out five beloved Márai novels that, once translated into English, put the long-forgotten writer back on the map with his evocative tales of longing and loneliness, unrequited love and immeasurable loss that in their brilliance and breathtaking originality surpass, in scope and magnitude, the novels of that other Astro-Hungarian writer of mad genius who also took his own life, Stefan Zweig.

Márai's Portraits of a Marriage is a searing, intense, thought-provoking dissection of a disastrous marriage told in the distinctly different voices of three protagonists: the man, the woman, and the other woman, with an additional person, an unnamed man, who concludes the story through his own point of view. Peter, who leads an enviable life—fancy car and house, servants, every comfort money could buy—with his adoring wife, Ilonka, in pre-WWI Budapest, has had it with marriage, but who is reluctant to get out of it because of one significant hindrance: a child, the product of this seemingly charmed and ideal union, and whose tragic early death shatters Peter's world and, inevitably, his marriage. Enter the "other woman," Judit, whom Peter marries and eventually divorces. The plot, more or less, ends here. All of the three characters are then given substantial time to vent their innermost feelings, feelings that have been festering inside for years and are freed at last. Painstakingly, these anguished souls reconstruct, reconfigure and revise their fractured lives with unflinching candor, and here is where the novelist's genius is fully revealed. Even though Márai is never subtle when giving voice to his characters, he is an extremely generous writer, often sacrificing subtlety in lieu of powerfully concocted prose. If a thought suddenly enters his mind, he not only writes it down but offers a mini dissertation on the matter, sounding, in most pages, like a Baptist minister who preaches, rather emphatically, that "To love is to know joy as completely as it can be known and then to perish," and that "True love is always fatal. . . it burns with a fierce, more dangerous flame."

The urgent, dashed-off, in-the-heat-of-the-moment tone of the prose has the texture and bleak atmosphere of an Ingmar Bergman or John Cassavetes movie. The conversational, idiosyncratic narrative style is highly effective for a novel that reads like a transcript of an hours-long therapy session where the patient is doing all of the talking and the shrink is virtually mute. The pacing is unconventional: past, present and future are blurred beyond recognition, colliding into each other as in dreams. The dialogue—or, rather, the monologue spoken by the characters as they seem to be talking to an invisible friend and in fact are—are inlaid into the abstract structure of the narrative, piece by piece, like ornate Byzantine mosaics, gleaming with the shine of age-old wisdom: "Let's forget loneliness. Let it go. It may be no more than illusion," one character suggests wearily; while another troubled soul asserts that love is not "a great help to anyone. . . now here, now gone." Márai's clear-eyed, uncompromising insights into the intricately tangled web that is human love teach rather than preach, enlighten rather than condemn. In one particularly memorable episode, a character pours out her heart to a priest in what can be considered the novel's epitaph, the voice of the priest shining forth with conviction, like the gilded altar of the ancient cathedral itself where the confession takes place: "God gave people love so they might bear the world and each other."

At the end of this uncomplicated yet complex, brazenly modern (it was originally published in Hungary seventy years ago) novel, all three characters (along with the reader) will ultimately ask themselves if love, in all its myriad disguises and possibilities, "might prove. . . eternal"—can it "dissolve the distance between two people."? In an appalling age where "lovers make love in a hurry, like children gobbling their food," where love easily succumbs to hate, where it is seldom reciprocated, and where very few people would take the trouble to "strain every muscle and nerve to love"—can love exist, survive or grow at all? Márai, in this exceptionally wise novel, does not give clichéd answers and then tie them all up with a pretty bow; instead, he offers hope: "some hope at the bottom of my heart, that there would be a body, one single, unique body, that would move in perfect harmony with mine, that would succeed in quenching the thirst of desire. . . that people generally refer to as happiness."

Beaton's Met Traviata Revisited

2011-03-24T06:50:00.009-11:00

For the Met's legendary 1966 season, Cecil Beaton was commisioned to design the sets and costumes for Alfred Lunt's new staging of La traviata. The costumes were inspired by the evocative silhouette of 1860s Paris, of the age of Réjane, of the era of the demi-monde. Beaton remarked at the time that he "wanted the colors to have a gold light, dark but sparkling, and scintillating." Violetta's first-act gown, a showstopper in rich brocade, above, captures the courtesan's imperious coquettishness superbly; while the ballgown, below, presumably the one Mlle. V wears in the second scene of the second act, showcases the heroine's killer allure and subtle power to stunning effect. The Violetta of that glittering production, by the way, was the stunningly beautiful Anna Moffo, whose vocal and physical fragility made her one of that century's most visually alluring and compelling la dame aux camélias.

Angela Answers Proust

2011-03-15T07:39:00.012-11:00

The following is the first in a series I'm launching here at Chanteuse, where I'll be conducting imaginary heart-to-heart conversations with sopranos (living or dead) by way of the legendary Proust Questionnaire. It is purely fictional. First at bat is none other than the biggest diva of the age, the "infuriating" yet utterly "sublime" Angela Gheorghiu.

____________________________

Thank you, Ms. Gheorghiu, for taking the time out of your hectic schedule to speak to me.

Shall we begin?

Let's.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

To be away from the stage. To be away from the heroines I love so much to portray on a nightly basis.

Where would you like to live?

Burma. Where I am certain no one has ever heard of me. Why? To simply get away from my chaotic life.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Making love. Figuratively and literally.

To what fault do you feel most indulgent?
Shopping till I drop. A girl can never have too many Christian Louboutins!

Who is your favorite heroine of fiction?

Madame Bovary. She had guts! I envy her that.

Who is your favorite painter?

My make-up artist. I mean, look at me!

What is your favorite color?

Darling, I'm color blind. Perhaps you'd best ask Ms. Fleming this question.

What is your favorite flower?

Luscious pink roses. I always ask my maid to put fresh pink roses in my dressing room no matter what the season. I can't live without them.

Pink roses? But you just said you're color blind.

Yes, darling, but I always see life through rose-tinted glasses.

La vie en rose, you know what I mean?

Who are your favorite poets? And why?

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I've always been drawn to the darker side of life, and both poets were practically suicidal all their lives.

Who is your favorite composer?

Verdi. His music makes me sound rather divine, don't you think?

What is the one quality you most admire in a man?

I don't want to be shallow, but I always judge the men in my life at how good they are at kissing. Me, I mean.

And in a woman?

I have no opinion of other women. Only an estimation. What might that be? Only I know.

What is your favorite virtue?

Staying true to myself at all times.

The one virtue that seems to have gotten me in trouble lately.

What is your favorite occupation?

Heavens, can't you hear I love to sing?

What natural gift would you most like to possess?

I already have it.

How would you like to die?

On the stage. The operatic stage. Is there a better place to expire?

Yes, but I rather asked how.

Peacefully. Serenely. But still on that stage. If it's good enough for Violetta to die in, then it's good enough for me!

What is your greatest achievement?

Overcoming the debilitating fear of wearing a blond wig.

What traits do you deplore in other performers?

Define deplore.

To regret strongly. In other words, loathe.

Lack of talent. An inflated ego.

What traits do you admire in other performers?

Talent and, granted it is reasonable enough, an inflated ego.

What is your motto?

Same as Saint Joan's: "Hold the Cross high so that I may see it through the flames!"

Who would you have liked to be?

My dear, I've never wanted to become anyone else. Never!

From the day I was born, I've always wanted to become Angela Gheorghiu.

Re-Joyce!

2011-02-22T07:21:00.008-11:00

Mezzo phenom Joyce DiDonato, apart from being a down-to-earth, uncomplicated diva, is a very generous performer. A rare trait in this appalling age of half-baked, "where's my money?" performers. An admirable trait, to say the least, that Ms. DiDonato, on Friday night at Mandel Hall in her rather belated Chicago recital début, lavished an adoringly appreciative audience with. The program she and her accompanist David Zobel offered was akin to a ten-course meal served at a three-star Michelin restaurant but at half the price.

Dressed in a Neo-Victorian taffeta gown, Ms. DiDonato began as she always does: with verve, audacity, and guts. She sang a complex Haydn concert aria that would have exhausted Joan Sutherland in her prime and would certainly exasperate the lungs of lesser mortals. Ms. DiDonato's voice shimmered in this opening number like the Mediterranean on a flawless summer's day, dispatching tricky, arabesque notes as though they were the easiest thing in the world to do. A trio (or was it a quartet?) of seldom-heard/performed arias by her friend and master Mr. Rossini melted hearts, as did an array of songs by Reynaldo Hahn, all of which were sumptuously sung, feeding the soul as well as the body. More Rossini was on the menu, giving a decadent reading of "Tanti affetti" from La donna del lago, the basic ingredient of which was charm filled with Italian brio and spice. As an encore, Ms. DiDonato belted (tastefully) Dorothy's gut-wrenching anthem "Over the Rainbow" with all the yearning and pathos the song requires. (No showy, over-the-top "I Could Have Danced All Night" for this diva!) It was a most delectable dessert to end the feast with; a song that satisfied and cleansed my palate as only Joyce DiDonato could.

__________________

P.S. On Saturday morning, I devoured her latest CD, above: a witty concept album—the mezzo plays "bisexual" in this recording—that offers a fattening buffet of arias ranging from Mozart to Massenet. (I hit the gym later in the day.)

Renéliscious

2010-12-13T10:02:00.004-11:00

Stay tuned for a report on La Fleming's concert staged Sunday afternoon at Lyric. In the meantime, the photo above, taken last week at the Kennedy Center Honors, piqued my curiosity: Who is he? Is he the new man in her life? Her new publicist? He can't possibly be her stylist.

A Masked Ball@Lyric

2010-11-16T06:28:00.014-11:00

Giuseppe Verdi's 1859 thriller/tearjerker, Un Ballo In Maschera, opened Monday night at Lyric Opera of Chicago. The score, arguably the most beautiful Verdi ever wrote, is a mesmerizing mélange of irresistible orchestral interludes and convivial choruses, punctuated with soul-baring arias and fiery duets scattered strategically throughout three magnificent acts that astonish with their melodic power and beauty. Conductor Asher Fisch led the Lyric orchestra with plenty of dramatic flair and oomph. The overture—a simple, lullaby-like melody that gradually blossoms into a rapturous love theme—was very pretty, reminding us yet again of Verdi's incurable and morbid obsession with romantic love in all its giddy first stages. The prelude that transports us into Ulrica's lair was wonderfully sinister; in sharp contrast, Amelia's prayer from the previous scene, which makes a brief reprise in Act II just before Amelia sings "Ecco l'orrido campo," was especially graceful.

An excellent performance of Ballo depends a great deal on the vocal merits of its leading lady. Amelia, one of Verdi's most inspired heroines, requires a soprano endowed with a range of seismic power to cope with the role's killer music. There are few sopranos today whose lungs are powerful enough to encompass the role's vocal challenges without straining herself. Sondra Radvanovsky (pictured above) is one of those sopranos. She brought out the inherent sadness and desperation that inflames Amelia's conflicted heart without resorting to diva antics. Her voice—mostly made up of piercing head tones with a celestial clarity several carats worth—is an ideal match for Amelia's deeply profound music. From her first tentative utterances in Ulrica's cavern, she perked up my ears. By the time she arrived at the gallows to sing the taxing aria, "Ma dall'arido stelo divulsa"—a five-minute soliloquy that unmasks and reveals the soprano's technique, stamina and everything else in her arsenal—she grabbed me by the throat. Verdi, as though testing the singer's ability, demands breathtaking legato passages, inexhaustible breath control, ample volume, and if that's not enough crowns the aria with a daring high C. Ms. Radvanovsky passed the test, though her Italian diction could use some serious coaching. She did not seem to caress Amelia's exquisite music so much as glide through them from note to note. The searing "Morrò, ma prima in grazia," in her delicate phrasing, was a heartfelt plea devoid of histrionics yet infused with just the right amount of pathos. The series of duets in Act II with Frank Lopardo's Riccardo did not disappoint—or, rather, she did not disappoint. Mr. Lopardo's frayed, rough-around-the-edges tenor fell short of Riccardo's regal and heroic music. The romantic aria "Ma se m'è forza perderti," in Mr. Lopardo's nasal timbre, failed to capture hearts, least of all mine. He had a promising start, I must say: "La rivedrà nell'estasi" was sung with ardor. But that pretty little serenade does not make Riccardo Riccardo. Further, he had no palpable chemistry with Ms. Radvanovsky's heavily cloaked Amelia, and his voice is regional-level opera at best, not meant for the major league that Lyric is. As for Ms. Radvanovsky's vocal style: it was somewhat non-committal, sounding detached during crucial moments. But it was her solid technique and strong demeanor, however, that got her through the demanding role alive, eventually thawing her performance. (She began with a Nordic, Mattila-like palette which gave way towards the end to an autumnal palette of warm, Caravaggio-esque colors.) Baritone Mark Delavan sang Renato's signature "Eri tu" with enough passion but offered none of the manly elegance that someone like Piero Cappuccilli gave to this sublime aria. Debuting mezzo Stephanie Blythe as the fortune-teller Ulrica was insanely brilliant: she stole the entire show, which is a huge accomplishment considering her character appears in one measly scene. Kathleen Kim as the pageboy Oscar was certainly a mischievous young man whose raging hormones and adolescent awkwardness are humorously reflected in his (or her) coloratura roulades, and almost all of which Ms. Kim navigated with confidence, fluttering about the stage like a titillated butterfly. The ageless Renata Scotto directed this traditional but visually arresting production. It runs until December 10.

Patti LuPone

2010-09-28T06:42:00.005-11:00

Broadway's loudest diva since The Merm, La LuPone has come out with her autobiography.

Read it, you'll never be the same.

Yasujirō Ozu

2010-09-12T08:05:00.005-11:00

Watch his films such as Equinox Flower, Late Spring, Early Summer, The End of Summer, An Autumn Afternoon, and countless others to witness Ozu's paean to the pastoral beauty of the ever-changing seasons. The great director's films are devoid of every imaginable cliché; he populates them with genteel people whose grace and serenity, played out against the backdrop of "modern life," shines like a beacon on a bay of daily confusion and intense globalization. If anything, Ozu's films are like an Impressionist canvas: soothing, magnificent in the subtlest of ways, profound, and exquisitely humane. His films speak of lives lived simply but triumphantly.

トウキョウ

2010-09-08T04:52:00.002-11:00

キンギョ

"Stage Magician"

2010-06-19T03:46:00.035-11:00

Summer and Tennessee Williams were made for each other. The atmosphere required of his plays calls for all the infernal heat and seedy sultriness the season can bring, so that his characters may glisten and glow amid the squalor of their lower-class existence—well, their bodies at least. The Glass Menagerie is one of those plays. I recently caught a local (but superb) performance of the playwright's breakthrough masterpiece staged in a community theater just outside Chicago. This revival had no marquee-name actors in it, but rather felt like it did, for the acting was first-rate, anything but provincial. The girl who played Laura was a delicate damsel-in-distress, a brunette Rapunzel constantly on the brink of a nervous breakdown; so fragile in stature was this Laura that if the slightest summer breeze had blown inside the Wingfield's apartment, it could have easily finished her off. The actress who portrayed Amanda, the most overbearing of "stage mothers," had a fierce intensity that was both thrilling and hilarious: she projected her booming voice Ethel Merman-style, provoking barely suppressed giggles from the audience. The parts of Tom and Jim were played admirably by a pair of clean cut twentysomethings whose matinee idol looks had the girl sitting next to me perspire profusely from excitement (or titillation) whenever both actors uttered a word. The set design was minimal, as in hardly any effort was put into its composition: a chair there, a small table in one corner, a dining table for three was the focal point, and a record player sitting all by its lonesome in a little nook added to the dismal décor, from which the music, the audience assumed, came from. Laura's glass menagerie collection was situated in another corner, safely assembled on a tarnished silver tray, placed on top of a coffee table that had seen better days. The Caravaggio-esque lighting was a touch dark at times, shrouding facial expressions during crucial moments. The music was evocative yet subtle, seamlessly integrated to heighten and punctuate major scenes.

Extreme beauty XXVI: Bernini's St. Teresa

2010-05-16T07:07:00.005-11:00

I saw an angel close by me. . . I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to be thrusting it into my heart, and to pierce my entrails, and when he drew it out, he seemed to draw my entire being along with it, leaving me on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great. . . it made me moan.

With those words--brazenly sexual in its implications--as inspiration, the 17th-century phenomenon that was Gianlorenzo Bernini created, to the eyes of the world, his life's crowning achievement and, undoubtedly, his most beautiful creation: the Cornaro Chapel of the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome (1647-1652). The centerpiece of the Chapel is Bernini's immortal altar, on which the seizure-ridden Spanish saint/mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila, takes center stage, captured by Bernini moments after an angel, perched on top of her, darted an arrow or spear straight inside her heart, so she claims, thus inducing an earth-shattering sensation in her that most people today would immediately recognize as an orgasm and nothing else, for what type of pain is there that could make one faint from such overpowering ecstasy? Whatever the case may be, Bernini's St. Teresa is definitely Baroque at its most baroque. The golden rays of the sun that Bernini so masterfully integrated into the scene add luminosity to the afterglow that Saint Teresa is experiencing before our eyes and God's. Converting pain into carnal ecstasy is a feat in itself for us mere mortals, requiring practice on a regular, preferably daily, basis, but to actually depict the whole thrilling occurrence--in marble nonetheless!--is an altogether superhuman task, but of which Bernini--undisputed master of his instrument--rendered so effortlessly, as though, when he was sculpting the swooning figure, he were merely stroking its contours as he would a mass of clay.

Extreme beauty XXV: Sondheim's Passion

2010-05-14T06:12:00.006-11:00

That sadness in your eyes

That day

When we glanced

At each other in the park. . .

All this happiness

Merely from a glance

In the park.

With those absurdly simple but ingenious lines, Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning masterpiece, Passion, begins. This has always been Sondheim's forte: deceptively simple lyrics begin a song or a scene before blossoming into larger themes of increasing complexity, the brilliance of which has never been surpassed in the entire history of the American musical theater. Actually, the show opens a few lines before the excerpt above is sung, in what has got to be the sexiest opening scene Broadway had ever seen up until that point in 1994, the year the show opened. The scene I'm referring to involves two lovers, totally naked, sweating it out in bed, singing of their love: "I'm so happy, I'm afraid I'll die in your arms." The romantic in Sondheim conveys--in the style of a haiku--both aurally and visually the orgasm(s) that had just occurred, from which the lovers, the incandescent Clara and the handsome Giorgio, are basking in its afterglow. No other opening scene since then has captured an audience's attention in such a visceral way. But the heart of the story transpires between the platonic love (at first) that Giorgio, a few scenes later after that eye-popping bed scene, shares with the almost grotesque Fosca, a woman who suffers from severe melancholy of which Giorgio can only heal through affectionate words of love. Sondheim, ever the non-traditionalist, encapsulates the nature of their relationship in six simple words: "They hear drums, we hear music." But then the composer's genius goes into overdrive with a series of heart-rending "letter scenes," a highly effective and affecting "invention" much in the style of Onegin's Tatyana but not at all like it, for the three lovers read (or sing) aloud the other's letters, often containing sentences of staggering beauty, thus reiterating the observation that people in love--truly in love--tend to know what the other is thinking or feeling even before the beloved knows it herself: You in me, me in you. . .

I wish I could forget you,

Erase you from my mind

I wish that I could love you. . .

A love that, like a knife,

Has cut into a life

I wanted left alone.

A love I may regret,

But one I can't forget.

In five succinct lines, Sondheim paints a scene that give new meaning to the martyrdom that is unrequited love:

Fosca: "Do you think my heart is good?"

Giorgio: "Yes, I do."

Fosca: "How do the good hearts beat?

Can you distinguish them from the bad?

Listen to mine. My heart says it loves you.

I was all of thirteen when I saw Passion for the first time, in its original run on Broadway. What does one know at that age? But even then, I somehow sensed an extraordinarily profound thing unfolding before my eyes and ears. This was not Cats, Les Misérables, or Phantom of the Opera, but musical theater elevated to high art, the subtle beauty and magnitude of which would take me years before I understood full well its meaning and myriad revelations: "Die for me? What kind of love is that?" "The truest love." "To die loved is to have lived." Passion in an unforgettable experience in the theater that reveals the power of a visionary's inexhaustible imagination, artistic originality, and featuring lyrics that appear to say very little--stark, devoid of embroidery--but yet says it all: "What is love unless it is unconditional?"

Misty American Memories

2010-05-13T05:51:00.011-11:00

The cast of characters that populate the "dream world" of Tennessee Williams often find themselves wishing--in vain, so it seems--that someone, anyone, would whisk them away to some far-flung and unknown planet, the farthest from earth the better--anywhere, but "here." Laura, the heroine of the playwright's other masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie, is a young woman who is constantly on the verge of self-discovery, but, due to a debilitating disability that hinders her from achieving just about anything she wants to achieve, never actually goes beyond the suffocating confines of a cramped St. Louis apartment and an overbearing mother whose idiosyncrasies (well-meaning, of course) could probably drive any sane person to the precipice. Laura, unlike Blanche, is sensible or sane enough to know her limits, but then, like Blanche, shuns the life she's been handed by retreating, without fanfare, into a world entirely of her own invention, a world in which a handful of loyal subjects, in the form of miniature unicorns made of glass, are under her watchful and loving care. When the curtain rises to reveal the living quarters of the Wingfields--seemingly enveloped at first glance in a mist of diaphanous fog--the vulnerability of the characters are laid bare. The foundation on which these lives are based hint at Williams' own colorful family, and this is nowhere more apparent than in the role of Laura, who, directly or indirectly, is modeled, too clearly, after the writer's own "troubled" and beloved sister, Rose. The beauty and pain of this line--spoken with anguish by Laura's brother, Tom, towards the end of the play--is quintessential Tennessee, in its unequivocal, rapturous use of language and his shameless love of it: "I didn't go to the moon, I went much farther--for time is the longest distance between two places. I traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow."

_______________

Tennessee Williams, in almost all of his plays--in fact I'm quite certain in nearly all of them--gave us "illusion that had the appearance of truth," and, through the sheer force of his protean, once-in-a-century talent, and his voracious, unquenchable thirst to capture the human condition in brutal candor and grace, offered and gave us "truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." What a gift he has given and left the world with, a world in which illusion and truth are blurred, distorted beyond any comparable recognition that we constantly confuse and mistake the two on a daily basis. Tennessee, in Menagerie, in Streetcar, helps us to differentiate and recognize the truth and the illusion that make up the fabric of our lives a little more accurately and clearly.

_______________

Above, Odilon Redon's majestic pastel, Pegasus (c. 1900, Hiroshima Museum of Art), is a most apt image to accompany this post, don't you think? You see, Redon's a current obsession for me, and, as a matter of fact, to my eyes his strange and mystical paintings somewhat allude to the oeuvre of Tennessee Williams, or, in this case, vice versa. Like the master playwright, Redon was drawn to the mysterious and the fragile, the fleeting and the indelible. To peer into his canvases is to peer into the opulent forest of the subconscious, as we do when we watch a Tennessee Williams play. They are far removed from reality yet so utterly realistic all the same that we come away more aware of the world and ourselves than when we first came inside the theater.

Ageless Southern Belle

2010-04-07T06:32:00.007-11:00

Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the most poetic play ever written by an American author. Never before has disenchantment and disillusionment seemed as ethereal or lyrical as Williams's Blanche makes it out to be, to dazzling, heartbreaking effect. No other play in the last century or so had been dissected or exhumed as much; no scene left unanalyzed by critics and aficionados alike finding in these lines some extraordinary truths about the human condition. The crumbling terrain of memory, the harsh realities of lower class existence, the squalor and stigma attached to it, and the degradation of physical abuse—all figure prominently and reverberates throughout in the play. Williams, in his most compellingly Chekhovian poetic voice, assigns Stanley, Stella, (but most of all) Blanche with some of the most memorable and powerful lines ever uttered on stage and on screen, Blanche: "I don't want realism. I want magic! I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth! And if that is sinful, let me be damned for it!" These lines have become for the heroine (and for its creator as well) an artistic credo, their own "Vissi d'arte" or "Mild und leise". When Blanche first enters in her déshabille peignoir à la Lucia sans blood, one can be sure that she has the unsuspecting audience completely in her thrall. She need not utter a single word for we know instantly who and what she is. Blanche is not only a slave to a sordid past, nor to Stanley's relentless manipulation and bullying, nor to Mitch's sly deception, but, to a certain extent, she is a slave of fashion. The role is a costume designer's dream. From her first entrance on stage to her polarizing final scenes, one can chart and judge the "states of mind" she's in through mere appearance alone, as we pay close attention not to what her outfits reveal about herself and the suffocating world that conspires to ruin her but to what they conceal underneath: the prim and ladylike Della Robbia-blue woolen suit she wears upon arriving on a dark New Orleans night in the very first scene (movie version); her "luggage" containing fur stoles and an assortment of sequined pieces fit for a cabaret or burlesque star; and one can immediately spot her fragility in the signature Renoir nightgown (made in soft pastel chiffon) she changes into upon arriving at Stella and Stanley's ramshackle of an apartment; the very nightgown she parades around in when, subconsciously, she permits her "brute" of a brother-in-law to peer into her psyche, as though she were giving a private performance in which Stanley participates as voyeur. From there on, as scene after scene of increasing despair and beauty unfurls onstage, we bear witness to the said nightgown's tragic demise: at first delicately disheveled, then turning seedier as the tension between Stanley and Blanche escalates, before we finally see it torn and tattered as madness begins to weave it mesmerizing spell on our defenseless heroine; this look is topped off with a sparkling tiara, as if to crown the nightgown's riveting performance, a triumphant—and "magical"—mad scene all its own. It is hard to think of Mlle. DuBois in anything else other than in her frilly nightgown, which conjures up all kinds of erotic thoughts in me, much too erotic in nature to enumerate each one of those thoughts on here without violating OC's PG-13 rating.

_____________

One wonders: had André Previn created a more memorable opera and cast a more compelling soprano in the role, might Blanche, the operatic heroine, be deemed worthy to be spoken of in the same breath as Violetta, Butterfly, Manon, Isolde, Gioconda, and Salome? Would the immortal words of Tennessee Williams acquire more pathos had Previn concocted, say, a Puccini-style score? Just think of the beauty these lines would further acquire had they been set to great music: "Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable, and the one thing of which I have never, ever been guilty of. . . I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. . . I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is 50% illusion. . . Straight? What's '"straight'"? A line can be straight, or a street. But the heart of a human being?"

"When my soul touches yours. . ."

2010-03-19T07:11:00.003-11:00

I am endorsing, albeit half-a-decade late, Joyce DiDonato's sublime 2005/2006 release of art songs by Bernstein, Copland and Jake Heggie, The Deepest Desire. Set to the exquisitely composed, heartrending poems of Emily Dickinson and Rilke, among others, this disc shows off the mezzo's plush, never-cloying mezzo to compelling effect. Deeply felt. Lush. Velvety. As only Joyce can be.

Pensée du jour

2010-02-14T06:35:00.004-11:00

OC wishes you a Valentine filled with. . . that thing most people can't seem to find but once they do can't seem to fully comprehend its mystery, its allure, its hypnotic pull. What is that thing called? The L word. That word: what atrocities, what desperate acts have been committed in its name. Yet, what other emotion can strike our souls with as much power, depth and thrill? I wish that Cupid's mighty arrow hits you today where it hurts so good.

Tender Is The Night

2010-02-03T07:15:00.003-11:00

As though by tradition, second novels, like second children, could never seem to surpass the earth-shattering emotion one felt that came with the birth of the first. André Aciman's latest and second novel, Eight White Nights, sadly, validates this theory all too well. His début novel, Call Me by Your Name—a riveting romp through a torrid summer love by way of Proust—had critics and readers around the world reaching for superlatives rapturous enough to convey their admiration. Now, this author who is the unrivaled twenty-first century incarnation of Marcel, sets his sights on Dostoyevsky's snowy, and therefore white, Saint Petersburg, only his own tale takes place in New York during the last eight days of December, when the decay of the passing year is contrasted sharply against the cleansing promise of the coming year. The two night owls who roam NYC during unholy hours of the evening and early morning in search of paradise (disguised here in the form of Beethoven, Handel, Rohmer, among others) are Clara and the unnamed twenty-something narrator, who, at the very moment Clara "put out a hand and introduced herself," becomes instantly drawn to her, to her name, to her "voile-thin crimson shirt which she wore unbuttoned to her breastbone, the swell of skin as smooth and as forbidding as the diamond stud on her thin platinum necklace."

_________

These two souls—lonely, detached, aloof—are both in their twenties, but live a particular lifestyle that doesn't correlate at all to their ages. For one, both live in ritzy Manhattan; have wealthy older friends for another; (possibly) know a foreign language or two; can quote Henry Vaughan if a heightened moment demands it ("Last night I saw Eternity. . ."); and have an entourage of equally sophisticated friends with "uptown" names like Gretchen, Boris, Rachel and Lauren, the types of which who have nothing better to do, so it seems, than to sit through Rohmer and throw dinner parties that stifle with their pretentiousness rather than endear. Aciman's prose remains so incurably Proustian that it takes an extremely patient reader to digest a baroque procession of extravagantly prolonged sentences crammed with as many therefores, howevers, maybes and perhapses as a sentence is legally allowed. The story revolves in the span of only eight chapters but rather feels like the span of two lifetimes had already elapsed between night one and night three, for these eight nights, no matter how stylishly rendered, are filled to the brim with over-inflected, flowery prose that dampen climactic scenes and vignettes such as the sex scene that never occurs in night six or seven: ". . . just make me make trouble, make me do something, make me hurt you, Clara, and hurt me hard, because this staying put like two boats tied to a dock is like waiting decades on death row." A microscopic attention to detail and a general sense of repetition bombard the reader, all of which easily filled up the 360 pages or so allotted to him by his publisher, and all of which one must slog through, out of a sense of duty, for Aciman is immensely gifted, and who can, at will and through sheer force of talent, weave a tapestry of spellbinding language and concoct inspired declarations such as this one: ". . . I'll say it now, not because I've lost you, but I've lost you because I loved you, because I saw eternity with you. . ."

The only thing missing was an olive

2010-01-25T07:18:00.007-11:00

Gaetano Donizetti's unfailingly charming, wonderfully boisterous L'elisir d'amore imported plenty of much-needed Tuscan sun to frigid Chicago Saturday night, as Giuseppe Filianoti (in his belated Lyric début), Nicole Cabell, Alessandro Corbelli, and the rest treated a hibernating, flu-ridden audience to some luscious and heartwarming Italianate singing not heard at Civic for some time; not since Aprile Millo's series of red hot Toscas here did I "hear" and "see" Italy so vividly. Filianoti—whose voice is the very sound of romantic longing—was the lovesick Nemorino. One could—and one would—listen to him toss a note in mid-air, suspend it for a moment or two, and bring it right back down to earth relatively unscathed. Most of the people in my row—if I read their minds correctly—seemed to want to bask in the splendor of his voice forever; an elderly lady sitting next to me actually said so, for to listen to it, if one can get past the oh-so-minor imperfections, is to glimpse not spring nor printemps, but primavera. "Una furtiva lagrima" throbbed with a young man's deepest yearning, eliciting rapturous first-time audience love unheard at Lyric in years. The man may hail from sun-scorched Calabria, but what I saw—through his picturesque, Ferruccio Tagliavini-esque timbre—was not that southernmost of Italian cities, but the sobering grandeur of Firenze. Why that man, clearly possessing in my opinion the most stunningly beautiful tenor heard today, does not have a recording contract, I simply cannot fathom! I think I shall have to go back for another helping of G-Fil, for this overflowing banquet of a feast celebrating every aspect of amore not only shows off the tenor's one-in-a-million voice and artistry but illuminates it sublimely.

_____

Cabell—whose rather placid career aboard a boat marooned within the confines of a modest bay, but ambitious enough to sail over into the more shimmering port that docks the enviable yachts of Gheorghiu, Fleming and Netrebko—was the evening's poised Adina, here disguised as a sun-kissed, mannequin-like gypsy in rich-peasant outfits that screamed: Umbria. Ms. Cabell was graceful, lithe, smart, and commanding, but her voice seemed at various points tentative when attempting to caress one of Donizetti's most alluring and sensual music; her top notes were executed well enough, but left one with the sense that these money notes were survived rather than mastered. Alas, her vocal palette is pretty limited as well. Cabell might profit in this department by asking A.G. for some of hers.

_____

Corbelli was a stout, robust, and brilliantly hilarious Dulcamara: who else could he have been?

_____

This production—as traditional as it gets, in a lovely bucolic setting and bathed with luminous lighting meant to evoke Italy's famed hill towns—is staged like an American sitcom: everyone barging in on everyone, unannounced. Simply brilliant! An inspired farce transpired every time Corbelli entered or exited. Filianoti and Cabell have good chemistry together, which is crucial if we are to believe their ardor for each other.

_____

Bruno Campanella conducted the orchestra as though he were a gondolier navigating his way across turbulent Adriatic waters.

_____

Just an afterthought: How could a tortured soul (I asked myself this as Giuseppe sang the darling cavatina that introduces the simple yet impassioned hero to us, the kind we love to root for) create such a light-hearted, life-affirming opera (brimming with youthful love) so atypical to his nature? Could this possibly be the same man who turned Lucia into the most hair-raisingly demented—next to Lady Macbeth—operatic heroine ever?

Veraaysmo: Renée-style

2009-09-08T07:59:00.007-11:00

I don't know where to begin. Renée Fleming has rendered me speechless for one whole week. Me, silent? Not in a million years. I, who grew up in Ceauşescu's Romania, have never learned the meaning of the word. Until about a week ago.

____

I had the misfortune of listening to an advance copy of Ms. Fleming's upcoming CD, unimaginatively titled Verismo (why not: "Blood and Guts," or even: "Renée sings Verismo" might have added more flair to the album's title, but never mind. . .). Listening to it nearly killed me. First off, the album's sedate cover strikes me as totally lacking in imagination. I expected La Fleming to pose à la Beverly Sills with snakes for hair and monstrous makeup. Instead, I was assaulted by a smiling, badly-gowned Renée. A recycled photo at that! Which is baffling, for isn't she "supposed to be" Decca's premier, best-selling, Grammy-winning house artist? So why did Decca all of a sudden become frugal with her? But this is beside the point. Her singing? Yes, I was just getting to that. Before I do so, I just want to throw this out there: I'm not doing this because I'm jealous of La Fleming--far, far, far be it from me to be envious of anybody named Renée. (Or Anna. Or Karita. Or Natalie for that matter.) I am merely venting out what's in my heart. All right, let's get this over with. Fleming's singing is utterly atrocious in verismo. Not even my favorite conductor, Marco Armiliato, could mask or dissimulate the fact how "wrong" her voice sounds. The quality of her voice, I must admit, remains lovely, if a tad bit syrupy and frothy, but this repertoire is simply wrong for her soprano, the cajoling timbre of which makes verismo sound like a Brahms lullaby. (Imagine in your ears Astrid Varnay recording a disc of flagrantly sweet Massenet arias: see what I mean?!) What's worse, her legions of fans (who, by the way, are never fans of mine) have been waxing upon her lavish praise; some of them are even comparing their beloved soprano to giants like Magda Olivero and Renato Scotto. They might as well compare an exquisite marquise-cut Tiffany solitaire to a factory made cubic zirconia one buys at JC Penney! Further, she has gotten into my territory without permission with her jazz-inflected, scoooops galore rendition of one of my signature roles, Magda from La Rondine--with my preferred boytoy of choice, Jonas Kaufmann, to boot! Listening to her sing the famous quartet with J. K. and the chorus--the one that my voice Puccini seemed to have in mind when he sat down to compose it--made me cringe in horror and disgust. She sings it as though she were belting out the hair-raising trio from Nabucco: the oddest sounds come out of her mouth, like she's from another species, like Ghena Dimitrova inhaled helium or something. I must say that she retains a strong technique from time to time, and is able to produce moments of pure rapture, at will, whenever she finds it necessary to caramelize a phrase, but as an artist she says absolutely nothing with her instrument. Where's the anguish? the despair? the frustration and longing she is supposed to be conveying in gems like Zaza's gut-wrenching finale, or Mimi's pair of soaringly beautiful arias? Her singing is devoid of a real and authentic emotion that one expects from this red-hot music. She has virtually no understanding of what really goes on inside the hearts and minds of these brave heroines she has misguidedly chosen to tackle. Violence, crime, starvation, unrequited love, et al., are main ingredients of the boiling stew that is verismo. On several occasions on this CD, she sounds as though she is about to break into Manon's jovial, innocent Gavotte any minute. Verismo singing must be suffused with a sexual glow: Fleming is neither sensual nor voraciously sexual (like me)--on or off the stage. For me, she has always been mortifyingly dowdy. It even trickles down into her singing. May I remind her, too, that a yelp, a scoop, a most annoying howling effect that hopes to masquerade as terror DO NOT, for a blink of an eye, make for a compelling characterization. It accomplishes nothing, yet only adds to the stigma that opera is fake and silly and preposterous.

L'amour non partagé

2009-06-01T06:22:00.003-11:00

Abraham Cowley:

A mighty pain to love it is. . .

But of all pains, the greatest pain

Is to love, but love in vain.

______________

James Matthew Barrie:

Let no one who loves be called unhappy.

Even love unreturned has its rainbow.

27 is the new. . . 27

2009-05-30T17:00:00.006-11:00

Twenty-seven is such a beautiful, elegant, attractive number; an odd number that is anything but odd. It seems to insinuate itself into my life for some strange, mysterious reason. As a matter of fact this "number" is staring at me as I type. It looks good on a cake. It is the number that rules all. . . . that, or I'm just plain deluded. What do you think? Read below. . .

____________________

One summer, to my heart's utter delight and joy, I read 27 novels: every day, every afternoon, every night, every waking moment of my existence that summer was spent on reading the classics new and old: Sons and Lovers; Jude The Obscure; A Ship Made Of Paper; Portrait Of A Lady—among the greatest masterpieces of the language. The next summer, on a fishing trip, I helped catch 27 big ones, after what felt like 27 hours of waiting and waiting on that boat, floating around Lake Michigan's choppy waters à la Tallulah Bankhead in Hitchcock's Lifeboat. There are 27 books in the New Testament. Arithmetically speaking, in a prime reciprocal magic square of the multiples of 1/7, the magic constant is 27. (According to Wikipedia.) Scientifically, the Chemical Element Cobalt has an atomic number of 27. The planet Uranus has 27 moons. In the year 27 AD, apricots were brought to Rome from Asia. The same year, the Chinese philosopher Wang Chong was born. (According to my oldest friend; himself born on the 27th of September, the 270th day of the year.) Materially, I own 27 pairs of jeans in every possible shade. Artistically, Kandinsky's 1912 masterpiece, The Garden of Love, which hangs at the Metropolitan Museum, is also known as Improvisation No. 27. Musically, I own 27 renditions of Violetta's first act showstopper, "Sempre libera," that I downloaded the autumn I discovered the profound, deeply penetrating beauty of La Traviata. Mozart—the greatest composer in history, bar none—completed a grand total of—count 'em—27 concerti for piano and orchestra; himself born on the 27th of the first month of 1756. Verdi, the greatest Italian operatic composer of all time, wrote 27 hair-raising operas; my all-time favorite Traviata is one of them. I've seen Angela's La Scala Traviata DVD a whopping 27 times in the last three months. On a personal note, my mother was at the most ideal age of 27 when she gave birth to me, after what seemed (according to her) like 27 straight days of intense, earth-shattering labor. . . . twenty-seven years ago; or, to be more precise, 27 May thirty-firsts ago this very day. Odd, for I essentially feel I've lived only half of those 27 years, which reduces me down to 13.5 years old. Nah, who wants to be a teenager again! 27 is much better: a beautiful, elegant, attractive number.

Zzzzzz

2008-07-17T09:52:00.003-11:00

Ten FULL hours of sleep last night. And I'm still tired!

The Dress That Started It All

2008-05-28T06:44:00.005-11:00

A gourmet cookie induced Marcel Proust to discover his infamous "madeleine". Mine was a shimmering dress that my mother wore so memorably to a wedding in 1987 for which I stood as ring bearer, and she as the First Reader. Whose nuptial it was, I forget; yet the vivid memory of that dress burns brighter than ever, indelibly stamped in my mind. Every aspect of the dress, every delicate ruffle, where it was purchased, every seam of that dangerously haughty and "so-eighties!" frock, all feels as if it were worn by my mother only yesterday. Time may have elapsed and poked tiny holes through the silken fabric, but my recollection of it has never waned nor tarnished in any way. I can still recall, twenty-one years later, when my mother and I ventured out on an unusually warm, practically tropical, December evening to buy that dress. I remember how impatient I grew as any kid would when his mother has tried on every dress on the rack, figuring out the possibilities, every variation, every color scheme, Would this enhance my skin tone?, as if she were debating to buy a house and lot. Then, finally, she put on the dress and when she came out of the dressing room to make her grand entrance, I was floored. I marveled, with jaws dropped to the floor, at the frou-frouness of the dress. If only I knew, then, the impact that night would have on me, a dress which for over two decades has quenched and satisfied my greatest fashion longings. It was a truly life-altering moment. Like a person who has witnessed an apparition as a child in a forest somewhere, the vision and memory of that spellbinding dress on my mother has haunted and enriched my imagination and is solely responsible for forming the seeds of my childhood dreams and aspirations.

How profound and bold an impact that Carmen-inspired dress has had on my perception of fashion, too. A creation which is the epitome of 80's excess of the most opulent kind: An ankle-length, bracelet-sleeved dress cut in black and silver textured satin with a whimsical print that suggested the amusing characters of the commedia dell'arte, and featuring a drop-waist
reminiscent of the 20's, further emphasized by a sash in lipstick-red chiffon ~ but that is not all ~ the skirt portion of the dress was gathered abundantly at the hips so that it would flounce and flutter, flaunting into a three-tiered ruffle, which seemed to scream "Ole!" whenever my mother walked and sashayed and danced in it. It was truly a dress on the edge of creativity. It is incomprehensible to fathom how a couture-copied dress from way back in my history could still have the alluring power to haunt me in my dreams or whenever I see a production of Carmen, or see a replica of it, inducing me to fondly reminisce of my growing up years, one that was infected with an incurable obsession with the art of fashion and of dressing. Gratefully, I was born into a family that even though far from being extremely well-off, took the business of style with passion and with elegance, but above all, with dignity. The women in my family, which outnumbers the men, by the way ~ my mother bien-sur, my aunts, my female cousins ~ all fostered my obvious fascination with fashion from a very young age, happily and willingly going against the grain by buying me fashion magazines, even when boys my own age were preoccupied with Matchboxes and toy soldiers. That dress is still in my mother's possession after all this time, stored like a museum artifact in one of the many closets that house her clothes, documenting her many fashion "eras" for when she was sizes 4, 6, 8, 12, and up to the healthy secret size that she is now.

It is like a particularly unforgettable scent that could harken and bring the past back to vivid life in the slightest provocation. It will remain to reside in my memory, and in the closet, hanging there on a silk-covered hanger no less. Sometimes, when I think about it, I could almost smell it reeking of Lolita Lempicka, the perfume my mother was using at the time. Though outmoded in every sense, it is still as vibrant and full of life as ever, and beautiful and timeless, like a bird poised for flight, ready to take off in any minute. Staring at it today and stroking the silken fabric opened the floodgates of memory. It is the enchanting madeleine of my childhood. In summation, I think I was definitely born with a voracious lust and love for fashion, which along with my slavish devotion to music and art, I thank wholeheartedly whatever magical potion or enchanted fruit my mother ate during the course of her pregnancy with me, everyday of my life, always, and perhaps forever.

.... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom , my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ~Remembrance of Things Past. Volume 1: Swann's Way: Within a Budding Grove.

Die Frau: Voigt/Brewer Showdown

2007-11-17T05:44:00.000-11:00

Where is Birgit Nilsson when you need her?

Generally speaking, Lyric's new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten is Cirque du Soleil meets Rent with just a hint of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The lighting design conjures up a burlesque show or a dazzling revue at the Lido; in the first Act, there were giant dye pots filled with neon colors which evoked exotic countries like Pakistan or Syria. They were baffling yet oddly eye-catching. As for the opera itself, well, it's all just so silly, really. Filled with a myriad of symbolisms that I don't really care to decipher; the music I'm told is supposed to be "more stirring" than Salome and "charming" than Der Rosenkavalier. I beg to differ. This production is definitely eye-candy, just a tad bit too eye-candy. Not to mention hokey. I found myself half-expecting Josephine Baker to swing down from the ceiling in her banana skirt. I also found myself increasingly stirred by the uncoventional beauty of Lyric débutante Cristine's Brewer's voice. I found myself wishing in vain all evening that she was singing the Empress.

Deborah Voigt's reputation as a formidable soprano, one who specializes in Strauss has been dubbed celestial and otherworldly, lustrous and orgasmic. But like a person tossing and turning in bed, trying to find the best position, I had a hard time searching something in her soprano that remotely conjured up the satisfaction or reception of beautiful singing. It goes without saying that her tone is rich and lush; her timbre, however, is one that does not bloom; it lacks color, if I may be so blunt. Ms. Brewer's voice, meanwhile, was ravishing last night as the Dyer's wife, at several instances, it forced my eyes closed. The timbre of her voice, a strata of silk with intricate beading; the tone, light as chiffon, and fluid as charmeuse is most perfect for the music of the Empress or any other Strauss heroine you care to name. Voigt's Empress was mere flurries to Brewer's blizzard of a Dyer's wife. Listening to Ms. Voigt's colorless soprano, it made me long all over again for Angela's timbre. If the color of Gheorghiu's voice evokes Rome at dusk, Voigt's resembled Seville in the scorching heat of the midday sun: Glaring, blinding, and at times, painful to take all in. She looks ravishing, though. Franz Hawlata, Jill Grove and Robert Dean Smith complete the solid cast. Paul Curran is the director. This opera is the type of opera Andrew Davis ought to conduct more often, instead of Puccini. In this Frau, the orchestra was thrilling and vivacious, ravishing and atmospheric. If only the soprano who sang the "shadowless woman" sounded that way.

The Violetta Mystique

2006-11-27T06:33:00.000-11:00

I had a dream about Violetta Valery last night. I'm not exactly sure how or why. But perhaps listening to four different recordings of La traviata- Callas, Moffo, Cotrubas, and Gheorghiu- in the last month, triggered something. So, who was the Violetta of my dreams? I forget. (Why do dreams quickly fade?) But she certainly had the melancholic tone of Callas and most definitely Gheorghiu's darkest hue. In this rather vague dream, it got me thinking. No heroine in the entire operatic repertoire is more beloved and feared than Ms. Valery. Not even Tosca, the Countess or Cio-Cio San for that matter, can equal the irresistable allure and conviction of this tragic courtesan with the heart of gold. Part of her charm lies in the fact that she is totally believable. Interestingly enough, most women today still relate to her sad predicament. How many operatic characters can you say that about?