vilaine fille

A force, a wind, impatience, passion…

That's how brother Søren Kierkegaard described Don Giovanni, and it is with that elusiveness that Mozart and da Ponte's "young and extremely licentious cavalier" comes across in the new TDK DVD of Roberto de Simone's 1999 Vienna production. The images above show Carlos Álvarez in three of the many guises that Don Giovanni takes on during the show.

I contrast de Simone's "traditional" staging with Peter Sellars' "revisionist" take on Don Giovanni in my Newsday essay, Cutting-edge? Cut it out.

The image below shows the Act I finale of Don Giovanni in Sellars' production, which has just been issued on DVD along with the other da Ponte/Mozart operas, Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte. (The trio will be available as a boxed set later this year.)

While both performances of Don Giovanni are musically strong, my preference in this respect is for the Vienna set. Yes, it boasts the starrier cast—though my beloved Anna Caterina Antonacci (Donna Elvira) has not one but several holes in her voice. But it also has Riccardo Muti at the helm, who shapes Mozart's music with fire and supple grace. (By the way, did you catch Muti's sublime Salzburg Festival Zauberflöte? *vilaine fille faints from bliss*) Craig Smith, bless his heart, presides over a loving, beautiful, but unbelievably portentous reading of the score. (Completists, take note: Smith includes Zerlina and Leporello's "Per queste tue manine" duet.)

According to Dana Sanderson's invaluable Opera on DVD page, Calixto Bieito's Barcelona staging of Don Giovanni will be released in the States in November. *That* should be an eyeful. (I have never seen a Bieito show, but trusted friends who know his work tell me that it is both appallingly outré and stunningly keen and thoughtful.) We'll see…

La dolce vita

A study in operatic iconography: The cover of Cecilia Bartoli's forthcoming CD (devoted to music from the era when opera was banned in Rome) and its illustrious source: Anita Ekberg in the Fontana di Trevi from Fellini's La dolce vita.

Cheeky and *very* nicely done, I think.

1 August update: There is an e-card (along with a soundclip) available at Bartoli's official site. (Thanks to darling Sarah for the tip.)

Weekend opera webcasts

As always, please visit Operacast.com for full broadcast details. Here are a few webcasts that jingle vilaine fille's bells:

On WHRB, Sunday at 19h00 EDT, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde from the Opéra Bastille, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Live from Salzburg, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte conducted by today's birthday-boy, Riccardo Muti (auguri e cent'anni!)

Taped in London last December, Donizetti's Don Pasquale with the great Juan Diego Flórez and the great Alessandro Corbelli

The 1953 Trieste performance of Bellini's Norma with Maria Callas

The classic studio recording of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra led by Claudio Abbado, the most beautiful performance of an opera I have heard

Several Wagner operas from Bayreuth, including Lohengrin and Holländer

From the Proms, Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette with marvelous John Relyea

Phew, and all this is with *thin* listings available (as of this posting) at Operacast.com. Imagine what you'll find when the site is fully updated!

Buon ascolto!

La traviata

Last weekend at the Caramoor Festival, Maestro Will Crutchfield presided over a grand giornata verdiana. The highlight was a complete performance of La traviata as it might have been given during Verdi's lifetime: uncut, with tasteful, expressive ornaments for the second verses of arias and cabalettas.

The other superb offerings included a zesty program of Verdi songs performed by pianist Rachelle Jonck and apprentice singers (Albert Lee, an elegant tenor, is one to look out for); a chewy lecture by Gary Moulsdale about prostitution and invention in the biography of Marie Duplessis, the Parisian prostitute who inspired Dumas' La Dame aux camélias; Crutchfield's lecture on Verdi's singers, featuring recordings by artists who worked with Verdi; and a concert performance of the 1853 version of the Violetta-Germont duet.

Read all about it in the Newsday article by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg: Come to Papa: Verdi is ripe for rediscovery.

Some of the recordings that Crutchfield offered were heart-stopping. There was a rare private cylinder (which lives at Y*le) of Jean-Baptiste Faure, the first Rodrigue in Don Carlos. There was Victor Maurel (who created Iago, Falstaff, the title role in the revised Simon Boccanegra, and Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) in his famous recording of "Quand'ero paggio" from Falstaff (complete with tris and claque!) and in Paladilhe's "Mandolinata," which Crutchfield rightly singled out for its inimitable swagger.

We also heard Adelina Patti, an artist for whom Verdi had the utmost admiration, in Tosti's "Serenata." (My source identifies this as the same 1906 recording played at Caramoor, but I'm not so sure. I *think* I remember certain musical details differently.) In any event, Patti may have been past her prime in 1906, but still: Revel in her feather-light ornaments, pearly tone, verve, velvety attacks…

Verdi, often chary of praise, described Patti as:

a perfect blend of singer and actress… a born artist in every sense of the word. When I heard her for the first time (she was 18) in London I was astounded not only by her marvellous performance but also by several coups de scène which revealed a great actress. I recall her chaste and modest bearing when in La sonnambula she lay on the soldier's bed, and how in Don Giovanni she left the libertine's room, defiled. I recall a certain gesture of hers during Don Bartolo's aria in Il barbiere, and most of all I recall her in the recitative which precedes the quartet in Rigoletto, when her father points out her lover in the tavern and says "And you still love him?", and she replies "I love him." Words cannot express the sublime effect of these words, when sung by her…

Lovely Georgia Jarman was a remarkable Violetta in the complete Traviata. I did not sense that any part of this long, killing role seriously tested her. Jarman is a coltish young artist with a show-stopping presence; what she lacks for now is the inward, sickly quality that a great Violetta needs. However, she seems to have the soul and the smarts to get there. Do give a listen over at Jarman's website—keeping in mind that none of the recordings there, in my opinion, rises to the level of her Violetta.

A few links related to my Newsday article:

Gustavo III (the ur-Un ballo in maschera)

Opera Rara's Verdi Originals (Macbeth, Les Vepres Siciliennes, Simon Boccanegra, La forza del destino; Don Carlos is a future release)

The now-classic Gardiner recording of the Messa da Requiem, plus the Messa per Rossini for which Verdi composed the "Libera me"

Daniel Schmid's marvelous documentary Tosca's Kiss

vilaine fille's December 2004 salute to the great Philip Gossett

Quest'onta laverò !

A new article is out, supposedly written by me, in which there are two misstatements *not* of my making that I was *not* given a chance to correct. This marks the third time in a month that something like this has happened.

May I say on behalf of other writers: Journalism is a rough-and-tumble world, more so now than in years past given staff cutbacks, draconian budgets, and our culture's general decline in basic literacy.

The next time you are tempted to excoriate a journalist for errors, please consider that perhaps she or he is not responsible for them. Think about erring on the side of mercy.

End of rant. Now, how do I deal with this? With an asp, à la Cleopatra? By doing a poor gal's Anna Karenina and throwing myself in front of the E train? By burning all my belongings and striding into the conflagration: "Contenta il rogo—io ascenderò!" (Callas '53? '55? the second EMI set?)

Your suggestions are welcome.

Pensée du lundi 25 juillet

Bésame
con un beso enamorado
como nadie me ha besado
desde el día en que nací…
Quiéreme, quiéreme hasta la locura,
y así sabrás la amargura
que estoy sufriendo por ti !
—María Grever, "Júrame"

Do you also get especially naughty during the hot weather?

Arlecchino triumphans

If you are within striking distance of New York, do whatever you have to do—beg, borrow, steal, or resort to more dire measures—to see Giorgio Strehler's Piccolo Teatro di Milano production of Carlo Goldoni's Arlecchino: Servitore di due padroni at Lincoln Center.

From today's Newsday, a review of Arlecchino by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg.

There are only two more performances, tonight and Saturday (though I suspect the ninnies at Lincoln Center could have sold out a month's run).

In coming months, the show travels to the Colorado Festival of World Theatre, UCLA, Berkeley (Cal Performances), Ann Arbor, Minneapolis (the Guthrie), and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And I may have to travel to see it again.

Weekend opera webcasts

Please visit Operacast.com for full details on upcoming opera webcasts. Here are a few that caught vilaine fille's eye:

Sunday at 20h00 EDT on WHRB: Mozart's Don Giovanni with an all-Hungarian cast.

Bayreuth 2005: Starting 25 July, with repeats over the coming weeks. This year's lineup consists of Parsifal under Pierre Boulez, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Holländer.

More by mighty Riccardo the elder: The Proms Walküre with Plácido Domingo, Bryn Terfel, and Waltraud Meier. (Visit mad musings of me for first-hand reports and photos of the hunky stars.)

Rossini's Guillaume Tell with the great Giuseppe Sabbatini and Thomas Hampson.

Classic recordings of Verdi's Don Carlos (Giulini) and Boieldieu's La dame blanche (Sénéchal).

Two works vilaine fille has heard of but never heard: Rossellini's L'avventuriero and von Reznicek's Donna Diana.

Happy listening!

Pensée du lundi 18 juillet

Supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt, quod sont futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater… Quis hunc nostrum chamaeleonta non admiretur?—Pico della Mirandola, De homini dignitate

[Spiritual beings, either from the beginning or soon thereafter, become what they are to be forever and ever. On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life… Who would not admire this our chameleon?]

[The image is a self-portrait by Pontormo, a stunning drawing that I saw last winter at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's "Pontormo, Bronzino and the Medici" exhibit.]

Benvenuti

vilaine fille, who is catching up on site maintenance, sends a hearty thank-you to the following folks who kindly link to her humble site:

Dashing saxophonist Brian Sacawa of Sounds Like Now

The Topmost Apple, which classifies vilaine fille (in an excess of caritas) among the "hilarious opera blogs"

Jason Hibbard, curator of the thoughtful I Am Sitting In A Room

Shrill the opera girl, based in London (bon courage) but from the civilized nation to my north

Lynn S. of Reflections in d minor, where vilaine fille is thrilled to be part of the Web's Greatest Links Page

If I've overlooked you, just let me know! *smooch*

20 July update: Oaf that I am, I omitted E. J. Michel and the passionate a southern girl in the north. Désolée !