Category Archives: Classical Music

Rossini's Maometto II at the Santa Fe Opera

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Rossini's 1820 opera Maometto II is not one of the better-known works in the repertory, but the Santa Fe opera's current production, which I attended Aug 2nd, reveals it to be a very rewarding one both musically and theatrically.  I don't know I'm going to end up agreeing completely with the judgement of Philip Gossett, who edited the new critical edition that is soon to appear, and from which Santa Fe worked for this production, that it "is one of the greatest serious operas written during the the 19th century," but it is certainly very good.  Sure, there are stretches of the old rum-ti-tum, I-V-I (this is Rossini, after all) but it takes up surprisingly little of the 3+ hours that the piece runs.  Most of the expository dialogue is musically and melodically interesting, clearly written with care; there is relatively little standard-issue recitative and when it does occur, it's often with interesting twists, like apparently cliché cadences that turn false, or (I think) more, and more unconventional, modulation than usual in such settings.

The plot has some contrived and confusing aspects (though perhaps a read through the libretto would help clarify), but this is opera, so no biggie.  More importantly, some of the contrivance creates an interesting complexity in the relationships between the characters.  Anna, daughter of the Venetian nobleman Paolo Erisso, who commands the Venetian forces in the town of Negroponte, has fallen in love with Maometto II, who wooed her   disguised as a nobleman of Corinth when Anna lived (or visited?) there.  But now Maometto is attacking Negroponte...

The singing at Santa Fe was quite good.  The bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni was superb as Maometto.  He has a burnished, very focused and firm tone, refined and in control, strong but never strained.  His acting was good too, projecting an interpretation of Maometto consonant with the qualities of his voice: refined, very intelligent, though at times shockingly barbaric.  (The latter quality is not so much reflected in the voice!)

Leah Crocetto was outstanding as Anna.  Although I heard some distortion when she unleashed some power in the high register at a couple of points in her earliest stretch of solo singing, her voice seemed to promptly smooth out (perhaps it just needed a warmup) and she sang the rest of the opera with a sweet but complex tone, very lyrically.

The other lead singers did well, but didn't stand out so much.  Mezzo-soprano Patrica Bardon, in a male role as Calbo, a Venetian general, had a strong but at times somewhat rough-toned voice that worked well overall in the part.  Some of her passagework came off quite well but a few times late in the opera she seemed to be having some difficulty with it.  Bruce Sledge, as Paolo Erisso, sang accurately and clearly but his voice was a bit on the small side, especially in comparison with Pisaroni.  This too seems to be in some ways consonant with the director's interpretation of the piece---director David Alden's notes in the program speak of Erisso as "overbearing" and not as "evolved" and "rounded" as Maometto.  He certainly is somewhat overbearing in his attitude toward his daughter, although his voice isn't.  But perhaps his smaller voice helps put across a view of the piece in which Maometto overshadows him. Both Sledge and Bardon are excellent in the ensembles which are such an important part of the piece.

I'll definitely be investigating this opera further, trying to find the many musical epsiodes that came across as superlatively beautiful, and trying to get further impressions of the overall character of the piece.  Was the opera perfect in this performance?  No.  But more importantly, was it magic?  Frequently, yes.  I'm often annoyed at the ease with which American audiences give a performance a standing ovation, especially if it is a prelude to an early exit rather than a long series of curtain calls, but I was happy to join in this one, and the long series of curtainless bows and shouts of "bravo" that it presaged.  (Some did exit early, perhaps on the excuse that a rainstorm seemed to be brewing, and indeed in the final scenes the audience was lashed with some cold wind from the open sides of the theater's midsection, and raindrops even reached the last row where we were seated.)

For an idea of some of the magic in this opera, here are two versions of Anna's aria "Giusto ciel! In tal periglio". First (with 3 minutes of recitative introduction before the aria), Montserrat Caballe from 1968:

 

Second, Joyce DiDonato:

I'm certainly willing to call that one of the great opera arias. But there are plenty of fabulous choruses, duets, and larger ensemble pieces as well as arias, in this excellent opera that I think will become standard repertory with the publication of Baerenreiter's new critical edition.

Free concert in NYC: The Bad Plus play the Rite of Spring

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For readers, if any, in New York City today, definitely check out jazz trio The Bad Plus playing their arrangement, "On Sacred Ground", of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  It's free and outdoors at Lincoln Center at 8:30 PM.  The Brandt Brandauer Frick ensemble, with which I am not familar, opens at 7:30.

If you're wondering to expect, at WBGO's The Checkout you can stream a recording of the whole thing, as well as their radio show on the piece.  TBP pianist Ethan Iverson discusses piano arrangements, transcriptions, and reworkings of the Rite here.

More on upcoming doings by TBP and some of its members here.

I am in New Mexico, so unfortunately won't be able to attend.  I will be going to Rossini's Maometto II at the Santa Fe Opera. Report to follow.

 

Thrift store LP finds: Albinoni oboe from de Vries, Mozart from Radu Lupu

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I've been down a rabbit hole of differential geometry and representation theory, as well as doing some work on a review article with a collaborator lately, so apologies for the posting hiatus.

A quick note on weekend listening: I picked up an EMI/Angel LP (SZ-37802) of Albinoni oboe concertos Nos. 2, 5, 8, and 11 for a buck at a thrift shop. Han de Vries, soloist, with Alma Musica Amsterdam, produced in 1981. Bob van Asperen, harpsichord, is billed just after de Vries, so perhaps this is a harpsichordist-led ensemble.  Very pleasing listening---I got a good copy with very little surface noise and distortion. The sound is reminiscent of 1970s and early 80s Phillips LPs (like the Marriner/ Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Musical Offering)---a slight, but not excessive thinness, but more liquidity and sweetness, good detail and separation of instruments---a reasonable soundstage if not a huge sense of room acoustics.  The music is excellent, not the world's deepest and most intense stuff, but melodic, at times dancing, and very assured writing.  Nothing really breaking out of baroque conventions (although I'm not hugely up on baroque musical history, and Albinoni, along with Vivaldi, Telemann, and Handel, may well have been establishing said conventions here), but very poised and graceful writing, with a lot of low-key melodic interest to lift it well above generic baroque.  Superb playing from oboeist and orchestra both, to my ear.

One of my favorite pianists, Radu Lupu, playing Mozart concertos Nos. 21 in C and 12 with the English Chamber Orchestra and Uri Segal (London LP CS 6894, from 1974) is also sounding great, a slightly noisier copy but no problems with the music.  Another excellent recording job---really good piano tone, a slightly more midrangy balance than the above, to judge by the strings, well-captured bass.   But in general, in the same ballpark of slightly-on-the-lush-side, detailed but sweet sound that some of the major classical labels seem to have locked onto in the late 70s and early 80s, especially with chamber to moderate-sized orchestral ensembles.  Easy to hear what's going in each part of the orchestra, and to separate the soloist from the orchestra.  Is it a natural soundstage, or is the piano closely miked?  Who knows... who cares.  I love Radu Lupu's playing on this.  Relaxed, lyrical, but not exaggeratedly so.  Fantastic touch as always, and sensitivity to nuances in the music.  His work in the brilliant arpeggiated passages is, perhaps surprisingly, as nuanced and singing as the more cantabile passages, and fantastically accurate and rhythmically perfectly placed, while remaining unstrained and natural.  The orchestra is superb and superbly conducted---able to provide drama when needed without excessive Sturm und Drang.  And that's just the first movement of No. 21 so far... now here comes Lupu on the melody of the sublime second movement, Andante... not surprisingly, magic.  Not as heart-on-the-sleeve as some renditions of this classic slow movement can be... but none the less moving for that.  Just beautiful.  (This is some of the deepest and most intense stuff around.)  I've long loved Lupu's Schubert... marveled at his Debussy at a concert in Santa Fe a few years back... and now I'm a big fan of his Mozart.  One of the truly great pianists.

Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka) on Hyperion (Voronezh, New London)

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I finally listened to my Hyperion CD of a 1990 recording of Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka, The Wedding), with the New London Chamber Choir and Ensemble, directed by James Wood, and The Voronezh Chamber Choir, directed by Oleg Shepel. Stunning. I knew this work previously through the Bernstein/English Bach Festival Orchestra and Choir version on Deutsche Grammophon.  In that version, I found it an interesting work, but a bit hard to sit through the whole thing repeatedly.  Bernstein's version emphasized the percussive aspects.  I probably was moved to buy the Hyperion version by composer John Adams' praise for it on his blog, Hellmouth.  The NL/Voronezh version is much more nuanced and for me, balances percussiveness and aggression better with lyricism.  It has superb sound overall, with a fairly realistic, broad and deep soundstage and good hall atmospherics.  I'm not completely sure how naturally it was achieved---there are either drummers on each side of the stage, or the drums were recorded with multiple mikes and mixed with excessive stereo separation of the different drums, but it sounds good overall.  Very sweet and clear instrumental timbres, and extremely good resolution of accompanying instruments allowing subtle details of the piece to be heard.  I found some of the higher female voices to sound a bit thin and perhaps distorted at times (could be my system, or an issue with microphone preamps (distortion) or with mixing or even the actual voices (thinness)).  But overall the quality of the voices and singing, and the recording of them, is excellent.

Musically, the piece sounds like it could have been a predecessor, rather than, as it actually was, a successor, to the Rite of Spring.  It provides a more relaxed, less avant-garde setting than Rite for exploring the folk-music-based modes, and the percussiveness and somewhat dissonant chord extensions, and the occasional use of multiple modal melodies in dissonant counterpoint, that provide a lot of the musical language of Rite.  Even before reading it in the liner notes, you sense that the often arranged, and highly ritualized, Russian peasant weddings being portrayed, are a less extreme analog of the sacrifice in Rite, though with less predictably dire results, from a modern point of view.  And in the hands of this ensemble, the piece's goal of portraying the human drama of such an event (or at least, the version Stravinsky wants us to experience), is fully achieved.  Though similarities to Rite are there, the texture and mood are overall quite different.  I'd earlier not thought Noces to be even nearly on the level of the great triumvirate of Firebird, Petrushka, and the Rite, but on the strength of this recording, I now think it's close.

9.5 overall for this CD on my 10 point scale that goes to 11.