vilaine fille

Micaëla

It must be the tryptophan from the (kosher, organic) Thanksgiving turkey: I forgot to post the Newsday review by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg of the Met's Carmen.

Alas, Denyce Graves is still in dicey form following her recent health challenges, but the rest of the cast is strong, and Philippe Jordan leads a taut, electrifying account of the score. If, like me, you suffered through James Levine's sludgy, leaden reading of Carmen last season, you owe it to yourself to give your ears a thorough scrubbing chez Jordan.

When Marcello Giordani is good, he's very, very good, particularly in a final scene so powerfully played that it's almost too painful to watch. (Who knew that Giordani had such darkness within him? Don Alvaro, anyone?)

Sor Giorgia, who first alerted us to the charms of young Peppino Filianoti, was right about Erwin Schrott, too. His voice is just as firm and opulent in the house as it is on disc, and—yowza!—does he set pulses racing. (Can you say… testosterone? *Yum.*) Seriously, this giovinetto has million-dollar pipes and charisma to burn and, like Filianoti, he is for now nowhere to be seen on the MetManiac Future Seasons page. I'm considering a trip to London in January for Nozze with an over-the-moon cast (Schrott, Finley, Röschmann, Persson, Shaham) and Traviata starring new vilaine fille coqueluche Ana María Martínez.

Indeed, Martínez's Micaëla walked away with this Carmen. I've been keeping tabs on her mostly via broadcasts (her Houston Roméo et Juliette, which I've not heard, is on NPR World of Opera today), and I reviewed her début CD for TONY earlier this month. Her voice is smaller than I had expected, but she doesn't force it, and she is musical and elegant to the depths of her soul. With rare exceptions—Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's Didon, Giuseppe Sabbatini's des Grieux, Ferruccio Furlanetto's Brogni, and recent appearances by vilaine fille's darling husband—I have not heard French music sung this beautifully at the Met since the days of Alfredo Kraus.

Come to think of it, I have never been to Paris in May…

Uto Ughi

Uto Ughi, a musician dear to vilaine fille's heart, made one of his increasingly rare New York visits earlier this month, a Zankel Hall concert with the Filarmonici di Roma (the former Orchestra da Camera di Santa Cecilia) that I reviewed for USItalia.

The Filarmonici didn't impress me—I am spoiled by the likes of Orpheus and the Orchestra of St. Luke's—but Ughi was in characteristically intense, mercurial form in Mozart, Paganini, and Massenet.

I nearly bailed when Ughi announced as his encore a piece I despise: the "Méditation" from Massenet's opera Thaïs. I stayed out of respect for Maestro Ruggiero Ricci, who was in the house and to whom Ughi dedicated the performance. And what do you know: Ughi slayed me with his chaste, inward, genuinely devout rendition of Massenet's chestnut. As others in the audience commented, there is a piercingly human quality to Ughi's playing. He breathes and phrases like a singer, giving listeners the feeling of sitting across from a friend, sharing confidences.

That said, Ughi is a strange musician and, by some accounts, a strange man. There were tiny burbles in his otherwise splendid playing of Mozart and Massenet that would have left any first-year Juilliard student blushing with shame—though he tore through Paganini with a blistering virtuosity and sprezzatura that had the audience gasping with awe. (I had never heard Paganini's fourth concerto before. What rollicking, shameless fun!) At several points during the Mozart concerto, Ughi stamped his feet and upbraided the Filarmonici. After the concert, he complained from the stage that Zankel Hall "looks like a television studio."

Some twenty years ago, Ughi disrupted a concert by Gidon Kremer, shouting "Buffone! Buffone!" I have no idea what his beef was with Kremer—musical, political, or otherwise. As I recall, Kremer took suave revenge by offering as an encore a transcription of Rossini's "Duetto buffo per due gatti" and dedicating it to Ughi, to the uproarious delight of the Italian audience. (I've not yet made my way through Kremer's new ECM set of the Bach sonatas and partitas, but brother Charles of Ionarts has great praise for it.)

This page has information on Ughi's relatively small catalogue of recordings. I am not familiar with his latest, audiophile discs for Fonè. He is one of many artists speaking out against the current Italian regime's campaign of destruction of Italy's cultural heritage. In his seventh decade, Ughi remains a strikingly handsome man and still plays a 1744 Guarneri del Gesù and the "Kreutzer" Strad.

Happy Thanksgiving

To all who keep Thanksgiving, a safe and happy holiday! *smooch*

Crimson in triumph flashes (again)

Harvard 30, Y*le 24 (3 OT)

For an unprecedented fifth year in a row, the bulldog down at Y*le has no tail.

Huzzah!

Shelter

I have no time to craft a worthwhile post on Shelter, the new-to-New-York multimedia project by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Deborah Artman, Bill Morrison, Laurie Olinder, and many other gifted souls, that bowed at BAM last night.

I reviewed Shelter for Newsday, but my review doesn't run until Saturday, and it does not do justice to this dense, haunting, and absorbing work. I urge everyone in the New York area to experience it.

As I told one musical friend earlier today, if the local papers had wanted to do right by Shelter, they would have sent both a music flack *and* a film or visual arts critic to cover it and allocated space accordingly. (Heaven help me, there was an entire essay's worth of stuff to say about the imagery alone in the section "A Boy Sleeps.") To which my friend replied, more or less (I paraphrase): "Tu délires, ma poule." She's right, of course, and that's sad.

A special word of praise for my beloved trio mediæval, Shelter's over-the-moon splendiferous vocalists, on whom I wrote an advance just before they shot into the stratosphere. Their latest ECM CD, like their earlier ones, is glorious. They tour the U.S. next month and play Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall on 10 December (same night as the Met Rigoletto prima, drat).

A plus tard, and with more substance, I hope! *smooch*

Update: Here is the Newsday review.

Kaffeeklatsch

vilaine fille welcomes to the Kaffeeklatsch the following out-there souls:

Fullermusic, curated by WGBH's Cathy Fuller

M. Keiser's chewy Music in a suburban scene

One Bad Zoot's downtheinkwell, "on literature, philosophy, and mental illness," a combo vilaine fille totally digs

I will update the sidebar lists of vilaines filles and mauvais garçons over the weekend. If you link to me and I have not reciprocated, *please* let me know. I'm not super-conscientious about checking my referrer log.

Shout-out: One of vilaine fille's favorite writers, Kathleen Watt, has posted a superb article about Rachel Portman and The Little Prince. Don't miss it.

Edgardo di Ravenswood

During vilaine fille's funk, tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, the first-cast Edgardo in this season's Met revival of Lucia, became the it-boy of la blogosfera—or at least of our bent little corner thereof.

Les enfants, vilaine fille has several things to say, starting with: I told you so. In fact, I told you so twice. And our darling sorella romana posted a magnificent clip way back in May.

vilaine fille will share her impressions of young Filianoti à la brother Tom, moving from the general to the particular. "Enthusiasm": from enthousiazein, "to be inspired by a god," in a state that commands assent and awe. Filianoti oozes this quality, whether sprinting out for his bow with the glee of a child chasing an ice cream truck, or swearing revenge, cursing fate, or otherwise tending to a hochromantische hero's chores.

Brother Steve nailed it: Filianoti's Edgardo met his end with a swooning grace, a death-besotted bliss, that was boldly archaic and utterly true to Donizetti's ethos. And guess what? No one laughed. No one *breathed.* (By contrast, Elizabeth Futral's faints consistently prompted guffaws.) If Filianoti husbands his resources with care, he might one day be a mind-blowing Ernani.*

* [Ernani is another opera that demands over-the-top sincerity and abandon. And guess what? The first Ernani also sang Nemorino. Modern notions of Fach are rubbish!]

At times, when he is not lurching about, Filianoti's stylized gestures recall Alfredo Kraus—the most regal and poetic artist of vilaine fille's experience. He does the cape-et-épée bits with flair and, like Kraus, knows from old-school gallantry. Who could forget the sight of Filianoti gazing up at Futral with rapture, or cradling her face in his fluid, expressive hands? Filianoti has a way to go before matching Kraus's preternatural elegance, but he seems to have the goods to get there. From vilaine fille, that is very high praise.

The flip side of Filianoti's enthusiasm: Over-enthusiasm. Like Rolando Villazón (at the moment, a considerably more polished performer), Filianoti sometimes hurls his voice at the music, bringing to mind a charge once leveled at Giuseppe di Stefano: "What is so exciting about him is that he is dying as he is singing." vilaine fille can do without that kind of excitement. I've seen this season's Lucia twice: The first time, Filianoti's post-sextet confrontation with Futral was heart-wrenching—his "A me rispondi!" shot through with anguish, disbelief, the abject vulnerability of love. The second time, it was a blustery mess.

Brother JSU rightly underscores il nostro's "slightly unhinged self-regard." vilaine fille will be charitable for now and call Filianoti's mien "Byronic." She is waiting to see what he does with Nemorino, a harder role to bring off. (Read again the Lucia program note by the great William Weaver: He calls Elisir "idyllic." That's learnèd, sentimental fun, people—not slapstick.)

Filianoti's voice at its finest is as clear and bracing as spring water, plaintive or ringing as the occasion requires. He tends to sing vehement passages appallingly "aperto," and he needs to lose the Gigli-esque sobs that sometimes soil his generally elegant work. Choice details: "Ivi t'ucciderò!" at the Wolf's Crag: adamantine, aflame with rage; "Quale ardire!": spat out with incredulous pique. Note that Filianoti takes the "stock phrases" of ottocento opera and makes them kicks in the gut, telling and specific. This is one thing that separates potentially great artists from run-of-the-mill ones.

He brought an enchanting lilt and a long, flowing line to "Verranno a te." The finale was pinched and bumpy the first time I heard him but sublime a few nights later. Lucia is a subtly wrought opera, opening and closing with against-the-grain writing for male voices. In the first scene, the baritone thrusts up-up-up as he spews martial bile. In the finale, that hatred leaves in its wake ashes and mourning, a tenor whose phrases sigh and collapse and pull him inexorably towards death. Filianoti spun "Tu che a D-o" in a dreamy, exquisitely shaded mezza-voce that was the very stuff of Romantic transport. Sister Sieglinde is correct: When Filianoti is in top form, "his legato has legato," and from a ripping good tenor he becomes a beautiful musician.

In summary: A diamond in the rough, Filianoti made an impressive début. Down the line, I want to hear more tidiness and cannier use of his penetrating but not huge voice. Overall, though, my response is: More, please. (Note that Filianoti is nowhere to be seen on the MetManiac's future seasons page. Perhaps that will change, or perhaps he will join the ranks of Cappuccilli, Gruberová, Hynninen, Bartoli, Massis… Hélas.)

***

vilaine fille must now dispute sister Sieglinde's wanton and contradictory claims: "Filianoti is greater than Flórez"; "Filianoti is the next Juan Diego Flórez." I mean: Bite me, or as brother Jerry would say: Qui habet aures audiendi, audiat.

Sorry, I don't think that Filianoti has that kind of singing in him. He smudged nearly all the small notes in Lucia's Wolf's Crag scene, whereas in Rossini's sublime Donna del lago, the über-fastidious JDF cleanly articulates—burnishes—caresses—a vastly greater abundance of such notes, turning them into showers of jewels, the ecstatic outpourings of an impassioned heart. (Get yourself the aria or, better yet, the complete Donna as soon as possible: It ranks with Callas's Berlin Lucia and Cologne Sonnambula as some of the greatest music-making ever captured in sound.)

That said, Filianoti already has in his repertoire Werther, Faust, Fernand (Favorite), and other heavy roles that JDF will probably never attempt. So let us leave irrelevant comparisons aside and allow Filianoti and Flórez be their own very different selves—with audiences all the richer for it.

I offer a paraphrase of the Donna text, in honor of all our coqueluches:

Non curo il mio stato,
Non ho più consiglio;
[Sentirti] un momento,
Bearmi in quel [canto,]
È il dolce contento,
Che anela il mio cor !

[I care nothing for my state, I've lost my reason; To hear you one moment, to exult in that song, is the sweet contentment for which my heart yearns!]

In the news

Gianmaria Testa's United States début was a great success. Here are concert reviews from the Los Angeles Times and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as well as my review from USItalia, which recently re-launched. If my review seems familiar, it's because my editor specifically requested a reworking of this post, given that he was putting together a spread devoted to Torino 2006. (*ka-ching!*)

Lisa and Steve offer links to and commentary on a recent New York Times piece that struck me as vile. The article is a tease, a heap of speculation, about the health of an artist who is described therein as "extremely private." If she is indeed battling cancer and opting to do so out of the public eye (as is her absolute right), to deny her that right seems to me the journalistic equivalent of rape.

If she had wanted to "share," she could have issued a statement, authorized associates to speak on her behalf, or (duh) started a blog. It's not as if she is, say, a commercial airline pilot, or a fictional President with MS, or a real-life President who is a drunk and a cokehead, in which case the public would have a compelling need to know about potential impairments. I don't see how such an article can do anything but compound the distress of a person who, one way or another, is ill.

Surely if "the community" had wanted to "express support," they could have written letters, sent brownies, said prayers, given tzedakah, whatever, instead of trumpeting this artist's presumed troubles to millions of people whom she clearly does not want involved in her personal affairs.

For my part, I wish her well and hope that she may be granted the space and time to deal with her challenges, whatever they may be, *precisely* as she chooses.

Girl crush

Per G : E se creassimo un Secondo Teorema di Da Ponte ?

Ah, guarda, sorella,
se bocca più bella,
se petto più nobile,
si può ritrovar.

I quote the New York Times:

[A girl crush] refers to that fervent infatuation that one heterosexual woman develops for another woman who may seem impossibly sophisticated, gifted, beautiful or accomplished. And while a girl crush is, by its informal definition, not sexual in nature, the feelings that it triggers—excitement, nervousness, a sense of novelty—are very much like those that accompany a new romance.

"Not sexual in nature." Right. Because if I were to confess to how, um… beguiled I was by the sight of Barbara Frittoli licking chocolate off a spoon while sitting on the floor, legs spread, during the Met's Così, I would have to surrender my Heterosexual I.D. Card.*

* [Self-test: Burly boy toys. Fiamma e dardi sembran scoccar. vilaine fille still straight. (*fans self*) What's more, tatas still do absolutely nothing for me.]

That said, surely no human being more beautiful than Barbara Frittoli has ever graced this wretched planet. I spent a fair amount of time during Così testing my powers of telepathy: "Ma, Barbara, che ci facciamo con questi str*nzi di maschietti ? Vieni via con me…" Invano.

Oh, well. There were the consolations of Così, though I liked the show considerably less than my sisters and brothers in blog as well as Messrs. Bernheimer and Davis, two gentlemen by whose opinions I set great store.

First problem: Cheap-and-nasty production, so-so direction. Second problem: Though I went to Così disposed to like it, particularly on the strength of sister Sieglinde's raptures, I found Maestro Levine's way with the score both heavy-handed and rushed. Nonetheless, I looked at my watch some half-dozen times during Act II: The show felt *long* to me. I admit that, among the da Ponte-Mozart operas, I find Così the least suited to a big-house, modern-instruments treatment—though I loved Les Violons du Roy's take on the piece. Mystère.

The cast: I was right. Frittoli's growing flutter is troublesome in this music. But it's a flutter through periwinkle silk, shaded with gunmetal grey and shimmering with peachy-gold and pearls. (Though Frittoli is from Milano, her timbre makes me *see* Venezia.) Like Sondra Radvanovsky but for different reasons—Radvanovsky's huge voice is unwieldy, Frittoli's is simply frayed—Frittoli gives her best in leaping, intricate music, which tapers her sound and brings it under control. (Her command of long phrases is prodigious.) "Per pietà" slayed me and will stay with me forever. Sopranos sometimes make this aria grim and heavy, like those old-time, "mässig" performances of the Bach Passions. Frittoli's Fiordiligi was aware, but not excessively so—Così isn't the Confessions of Saint Augustine, after all. She trailed in her wake the effervescence of youth and sensuality, and the ditziness that comes with the unreal world of privilege. And, yes, she was *surpassingly* beautiful. Who wouldn't love her?

I missed Sir Thomas (with Pertusi, today's finest Don Alfonso, though I've seen him elsewhere) and Magdalena Koženà's Dorabella, which I regret. I loved Nuccia Focile as Despina—nothing beats da Ponte sung by native speakers of Italian—though I would pay real money to learn how this gal manages Elisabeth de Valois and Desdemona. As was the case last season with his Silvio in Pagliacci, I sense that Marius Kwiecien has traded some measure of finesse for volume—always a bad move in vilaine fille's book—but he's still a dandy performer. Matthew Polenzani's soft singing was consistently gorgeous and occasionally effortful, perhaps a function of my having seen the last performance of the run.

P.S. Those of you tempted to write off Alexandra Deshorties based on her lamb-led-to-slaughter Kostanze at the Met: I heard her Fiordiligi at BAM a couple of years ago, and she was superb. I suspect that Così will be well worth revisiting in January.

De profundis clamavi

vilaine fille is still miserable, but that shouldn't stop you from feeling the love: Please visit Felsenmusick, the online home of composer and all-around righteous dude Daniel Felsenfeld; and wellsung, the opera blog of giovinetti Alex and Jonathan.

By the way, I do have posts in the works on the Met's Così and Lucia, both of which I found enjoyable but not earth-shattering. And, no, that's not anhedonia speaking, but it may be Flórez-itis: So soon after hearing JDF, it's hard to wax enthusiastic over people who sing like mere mortals. (I'm also trying to post on the LOC Cenerentola, but time is scarce right now.)

Listen to this selection from Rossini's La donna del lago (courtesy of the excellent Voce di tenore, curated by a fellow Cliffie!), and perhaps you will begin to understand vilaine fille's views. Of course, it was recorded nearly two years ago, and JDF is even better now. Furthermore, trust me: It wasn't even his best bit in that particular performance.

Can you get your head around that?