What opera have you been watching lately?

[Nemorino]

What I’ve been watching in April ranked, although to be fair #1-#4 were all really strong and I could have put them in almost any order:

#1 - Mozart – Lucio Silla – La Monnaie, Streaming on Operavision
A luridly entertaining version where the title character is a contemporary 1%-er. (A video during the overture links images of dictators to the wealth of powerful businessmen.) The portrayal of Silla is so over-the-top it’s kind of silly, and it becomes hard to believe his redemptive turn at the the end. But I think the director does what’s necessary to keep this opera engaging from start to finish. Some of it is not Mozart at his most inspired, but some of it is, and this production makes it feel like one of his masterworks.

#2 - Thomson – The Mother of Us All – Juilliard & The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Streaming on Youtube
This has a reputation as one of the great American operas, and to the extent that it's messy and overstuffed with broadly-drawn characters... it is certainly the most American of great operas. There’s more ceremony than plot; dozens of characters – some fictional, and some historical (from incongruous time periods) – convene to discuss Susan B. Anthony’s legacy and grapple with the women’s rights that she introduced to America. The libretto by Gertrude Stein is often too florid, but occasionally she illuminates the impact of women’s suffrage in ways I had never thought about before. The score by Virgil Thomson is vibrant, Copland-esque, and an orchestra of just 7 instruments is scored so perfectly it does not feel like a “reduction”. The unusual orchestra, and an outsized cast of over 30 singers, is the only reason I can fathom this isn’t performed by major opera companies all the time, but it is perfect for the needs of American music colleges.

#3 - Lang – Anatomy Theater – Beth Morrison Projects, Streamed on Vimeo
Beth Morrison Projects commissions a lot of interesting experimental operas. They are incredible at fostering opera talent, and also new, younger audiences. They are streaming many of their past works for the first time, a different one every week. In this one-acter which takes place in the 19th century, there is a prologue - the hanging of a woman who has murdered her family - and then the rest of the opera takes place a few hours later at an anatomy lecture where they dissect her “donated” body. Despite the fact she was an awful person, the subsequent relish with which the characters talk about her like an object is disturbing, and the way the audience is addressed as a character, implicates us and forces us to face our own capacity to objectify stigmatized people. David Lang’s music is tonal & approachable without being insipid, and I think the opera is very well-conceived and effective.

#4 - Verdi – Nabucco – Teatro Regio Parma, Streaming on Operavision
Hearing Verdi played by an Italian orchestra is the most perfect thing in the world. The difference is somehow both subtle and huge; it's so much more clear and pure. This production draws a parallel between the displacement of Hebrews with modern-day refugees. Although some of the choreographed movement on stage was totally bizarre, the designs and costumes made for striking stage pictures, and an extra-quiet first verse of "Va, pensiero" is ethereal and haunting.

#5 - Verdi – Falstaff – Hamburg State Opera, Streamed on arte.tv
Great cast, okay production. Not very funny, which that was to be expected with Calixto Bieito, who was sure to be more interested in holding a mirror up to our foibles as a society. But what could he add that Shakespeare didn’t already bake into the text? Not much, it turns out. He just made Falstaff the pig even sloppier and more disgusting. The rotating Boar’s Head set was handsome but looked crowded when the actors were in it; most scenes were staged way out in front of it.

[Florestan]

[Ann Lander (sospiro)]

I don't know if that's a typo, or a pun, but either way

I thought the same!!

[Soave_Fanciulla]

I haven't been watching much opera recently but I'm currently watching La Forza del Destino from Royal Opera House with Der Jonas, Trebs and Ludovic Tezier who is actually acting!!!! What a difference that makes, because his singing has always been excellent.

Was this one that you saw live, Annie?

[MAuer]

Speaking of der Jonas . . . There’s no lack of excellent recordings of Carmen, and this one from the Royal Opera House with JK and Anna Caterina Antonacci is one of the best. And, yes, there’s another Cincinnati Opera alumna among the principals: Norah Amsellem (Micaëla), who appeared with the CO as Liù in the 2015 production of Turandot and as Violetta in the 2018 La Traviata.

[MAuer]

Though it’s not up to the standard of Fidelio or possibly even Paer’s Leonora, I still enjoy Gaveaux’s setting of J. N. Bouilly’s Léonore. This video of Opera Lafayette’s production includes another Cincinnati Opera alumnus, Jean-Michel Richer (Florestan), who appeared with the CO as the Father in the 2018 U.S. premiere of Another Brick in the Wall.
Though I wasn’t involved in my own Cincinnati Opera centennial listening/viewing project when I put the Salzburg Festival recording of Rusalka (with Nylund and Beczala) on the CD player, it, too, includes a CO alumnus in the cast with Alan Held (Water Sprite), who appeared in Cincinnati’s 1990 production of Lucia di Lammermoor as Raimondo.
While I have more recordings featuring CO alums Caballé, Domingo, Milnes, and Levine, none of them include any other Cincinnati Opera veterans who have not been represented on the other recordings to which I’ve listened or which I’ve watched over the past few weeks. And the company has hosted some pretty starry cast members over the past century, listed here by decade:

1920s-1940s
Coe Glade, Frederick Jagel, Bruna Castagna, Gladys Swarthout, James Melton, Robert Weede, Elisabeth Rethberg, Raoul Jobin, Giovanni Martinelli, Leonard Warren, Dorothy Kirsten, Bidu Sayao, Kersten Thorborg, Nan Merriman, Jarmila Novatna, Stella Roman, Risë Stevens, Eugene Conley, Jan Kiepura, Licia Albanese, Zinka Milanov, Charles Kullman, Lawrence Tibbett, Alexander Kipnis, Jeanette MacDonald, Martial Singher, Marjorie Lawrence, Salvatore Baccalone, Ezio Pinza, Ramon Vinay, Margaret Harshaw, Martha Lipton, Osie Hawkins, Set Svanholm, Italo Tajo

1950s-1960s
John Alexander, Blanche Thebon, Jerome Hines, Robert Merrill, Eleanor Steber, Herva Nelli, Barry Morell, Frances Bible, Antonietta Stella, Giuseppe Campora, Charles Anthony, Phyllis Curtin, Mary Curtis-Verna, Giuseppe di Stefano, Mary Costa, Andrea Velis, Arlene Saunders, Ezio Flagello, Lucine Amara, Felicia Weathers, Theodor Uppman, Lili Chookasian, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Anna Moffo, Kenneth Riegel

1970s-1990s
Gilda Cruz-Romo, William Cochran, Veriano Luchetti, Karan Armstrong, Johanna Meier, Jeanne Piland, James McCracken, Alan Titus, Gianna Rolandi, Catherine Malfitano, Neil Shicoff, John Brecknock, Bianca Berini, Erie Mills, Greer Grimsley (as Papageno!), Eric Halfvarson, Richard Leech, John Cheek, Isola Jones, Don Bernardini, Hei-Kyung Hong, Raymond Aceto, Fabio Armiliato

While they never sang in any CO performances, Renata Tebaldi and Franco Corelli were the featured soloists in a gala concert sponsored by the company in 1973. In 1979, Dame Joan Sutherland and conductor Richard Bonynge were the stars of a gala benefit concert at Music Hall given for the Cincinnati Opera.

Those on the podium of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for CO performances have included Fausto Cleva, the company’s Music Director/Musical Advisor from 1934-1962; Sir Thomas Beecham, Thor Johnson, Anton Guadagno, Erich Kunzel (subsequently Music Director of the Cincinnati Pops), Nicholas Rescigno, Michael Tilson Thomas, Alberto Zedda, Marco Armiliato, and Louis Langrée, who joins Thomas Schippers and Max Rudolf as CSO music directors who conducted their band in CO performances. Not too shabby for a small opera company in the American Midwest.

[Ann Lander (sospiro)]

I haven't been watching much opera recently but I'm currently watching La Forza del Destino from Royal Opera House with Der Jonas, Trebs and Ludovic Tezier who is actually acting!!!! What a difference that makes, because his singing has always been excellent.

Was this one that you saw live, Annie?

Didn't see it. Couldn't get ticket.

[Florestan]

Excellent production in all respects.
Sung in English and has available subtitles.
Jon Vickers is awesome as Vasek, best stutter singing ever!

[Adrian]

[Florestan]

Awesome performance by Doris Soffel! If you like a good mezzo, get this!

[Soave_Fanciulla]

I watched this candyfloss version of Barry's The Importance of being Earnest on OperaVision. This is the second production of this recent opera that I have seen, the first enlivened by the incomparable Barbara Hannigan. The absurdist lot is mirrored in the absurdist music, complete with plate-smashing as percussion. I appreciate that the librettist left Wilde's words intact, (Thomas Adès could have learned from that in The Tempest when he reduced Shakespeare to prose of the highest banality). Good ensemble cast, a pretty pastel set and some stratospheric singing from Alison Scherzer as Cecily. Recommended.

[Soave_Fanciulla]

Still working my way though the Operavision backlog and I am very happy that I decided to watch this Rusalka. The singers are all doubled by dancers and this opera-ballet version works very well, partly due to the fact that there is a good deal of orchestral music in the opera and the ballet fills in here (after all, what are the singers supposed to do during all this down time?). A simple but beautiful and effective set (the kind of Machine that actually works) and some nice singing, especially the Water-Sprite.

[MAuer]

[Ann Lander (sospiro)]

Still working my way though the Operavision backlog and I am very happy that I decided to watch this Rusalka. The singers are all doubled by dancers and this opera-ballet version works very well, partly due to the fact that there is a good deal of orchestral music in the opera and the ballet fills in here (after all, what are the singers supposed to do during all this down time?). A simple but beautiful and effective set (the kind of Machine that actually works) and some nice singing, especially the Water-Sprite.

" ...some nice singing, especially the Water-Sprite." Sold!

[Adrian]

Been awhile since I watched this one, so a nice cuppa and let start !!!