vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg picked three of Newsday's top 2005 classical concerts. They are listed below along with seven others to make a neat dizaine. Not all of these concerts are "classical," and not everything that grabbed me made the list. I stand by the rankings of Numbers 1 and 2; from 3 on, please take the numbers with a grain of salt.
My list of 2005's top ten CD's is here.
1. Don Giovanni, The Metropolitan Opera (April)
As ungraspable as its brazen anti-hero, Mozart's Don Giovanni demands a depth of casting that few companies can muster. In the spring, the Met struck gold with the Don of Gerald Finley—a patrician singer and an unnervingly potent actor—Samuel Ramey's seen-it-all Leporello, and a crew of vibrant young artists who brought the ungraspable enthrallingly within reach.
P.S. Back in April, I reviewed this for Newsday and also posted about it. Finley's dynamo of a Don and Tamar Iveri's bold, passionate Donna Anna remain impressed in my mind. Samuel Ramey's Leporello was a revelation, sung with the kind of rhythmic crispness, musical precision, and verbal zing that only a peerless Rossinian can muster.
2. Los Angeles Philharmonic, Avery Fisher Hall (June).
Forget the right turn on red: L.A.'s real cultural advantage is this superb band under Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen, who electrified Avery Fisher Hall with piercingly bleak Shostakovich, arresting Ives and the local premiere of John Adams' glossy, rapturous "The Dharma at Big Sur."
P.S. This, too, I reviewed for Newsday and posted about here. The Adams made my soul explode. Along with LOC's Cenerentola (see below), it was 2005's most sheerly joyous musical event for me. I can't wait to hear it again.
3. International Keyboard Institute & Festival (July-August)
Mannes College of Music's summer extravaganza thrilled once again, with recitals by the likes of Marc-André Hamelin, Earl Wild and Jerome Rose in the kind of intimate surroundings where great piano works were meant to be heard.
P.S. Here are my blog post and Newsday reviews one and two. There is also a TONY preview, but their archives are down right now. I warmly commend to you Fabio Bidini's Clementi, which you can hear at his site.
4. Cecilia Bartoli, Carnegie Hall (October)
I am speechless. Happily, Giambattista Marino was prescient and wrote a fitting tribute to Bartoli some 400 years ago. I am also astonished that Bartoli's heart-wrenching performance of "Caldo sangue" from Scarlatti's Sedecia didn't actually kill me.
My Bartoli Fast Chat from Newsday needs to be uploaded, but in the meantime, here are a nice, juicy post and a 2003 profile.
5. La Cenerentola, Lyric Opera of Chicago (October)
I intended to write a comprehensive post on this but just gave up. March will bring Juan Diego Flórez's Sentimento latino CD, and I need to hold a few superlatives in reserve for that. (Just wait until you hear this boy sing Gardel!)
What can I say? It is a privilege to be on the planet at the same time as such an artist. It is a gift beyond compare to have the opportunity to write about Flórez. It is over-the-moon bliss to talk shop with him, discover a shared veneration for Alfredo Kraus, dissect different styles of legato in Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi. Most of all, it is a joy to bear witness to his seriousness, humility, and drive to do better, dig deeper, and never, ever take the easy way out.
In that respect above all, Flórez reminds me of Maria Callas. Read this snippet from a 2002 interview and tell me that you don't hear the echo of Callas's work ethic in Flórez's words:
Criticism is useful even when it's negative. I can say that I read my negative reviews more attentively. Even if you think that the critic is mistaken, you ask yourself why that observation was made, if there is a basis to it. You reflect, and you can understand that there is truth in the negative review. It can help you to improve and to eliminate those defects that perhaps you hadn't noted.
The Cenerentola was a marvel, a revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's classic production staged by one of the late director's former assistants, keen to both the buffa and the seria aspects of Rossini's dramma giocoso. Alessandro Corbelli's Don Magnifico was perfection, sung with aristocratic élan, portrayed with dry comic fizz and also darkness—as befits this deeply moral, deeply Catholic work.
Vesselina Kasarova sometimes sounds like she's gargling motor oil, but when she forgets the expressionistic tics and just sings, she is stupendous. Her voice of amber and bronze shoots blazing like a comet out of its smoky depths, but she can also caress a phrase, an ornament, a word, with gossamer softness, summoning infinitely subtle gradations of color and emotion. (What I would give to hear her Monteverdi!) Like Ponnelle and Corbelli, Kasarova, "gets" Cenerentola. What's more, she's utterly gorgeous, not for nothing a favorite chez Operadykes.
As for Flórez, I'll limit myself to a single observation. In the Act I duet, when he and Kasarova were trading off phrases ("una grazia," "un certo incanto," etc.), they echoed each other with uncanny precision, responding to tiny shadings, rhythmic and tonal flickers, and itsy-bitsy tickles of rubato. They created the illusion of utter spontaneity, though if you know anything at all about bel canto, you realize they worked *very* hard to get there.
Flórez listens to praise politely, serenely, with an air of having heard it all before (because he has). But when I interviewed him the day after the performance and complimented him on that delicious echo effect—"It must have taken a lot of effort to make that seem so unstudied"—the boy lit up like a Christmas tree. No detail is too small for this fastidious musician!
P.S. Those who would dismiss Ramiro as a "tenorino" part should keep in mind what Flórez snorted during an earlier interview: "They call them 'tenorino' roles because for so long they were cut down to nothing, since no one could sing them properly!" Yup.
6. Borodin Quartet, 92nd Street Y (April)
This was an evening of profound, searching music-making of the utmost integrity. Read my Newsday review and last spring's post.
7. Gianmaria Testa, Joe's Pub (November)
Regular readers know that Testa is one of vilaine fille's favorite musicians. This post, with background and links to sound files, gets an enormous amount of traffic; this one includes reviews of Testa's U.S. début concerts.
8. Yasmin Levy, Zankel Hall (December)
I've now heard Levy's discs Romance & Yasmin and La Judería, and while they are wonderful, she has already grown far beyond them. (This happens frequently with young artists: You-know-who's Rossini CD is superb but no longer representative of the depth and polish he can bring to this music.) My post on Levy includes a link to my Newsday review, still "live" as I write.
9. Don Carlos led by Fabio Luisi, The Metropolitan Opera (March)
In addition to being the handsomest man in New York, Martin Bernheimer is also a keenly discerning Verdian. He wrote of Don Carlos led by Fabio Luisi: "New York hasn’t heard Italian opera performed with such enlightened sensitivity for years. Maybe decades."
Here is my March post (another reader favorite) on Don Carlos. The performance added up to far more than the sum of its parts, thanks largely to Luisi's grave and beautiful reading of the score and to Ferruccio Furlanetto's shattering portrayal of Philippe II.
Fabio Luisi, incidentally, is one of the Three Fabulous Fabios, along with Fabio Bidini and Fabio Biondi.
10. Shelter, BAM (November)
I need to upload my Newsday review; here is my post, which doesn't say much. Shelter's imagery still ripples through my mind, and I long for a chance to experience it again.
"Always leave 'em wanting more" is age-old showbiz wisdom, and Giuseppe Filianoti did just that in his final Met Lucia for the season. It was by far the best of the three performances I heard, capped by a suave and wildly erotic "Tu che a D-o." The audience awarded him with a long, roaring ovation and confetti. (Ma sœur Sieglinde, fut-ce toi ?)
Since some of the people dearest to vilaine fille's heart are far away in time and space (UTC +11 hours!), she would like to take a moment now to wish everyone good health, joy, and success in 2006.
È al convito che s'apre ogni cor !
Here in New York, the end-of-year exodus has begun, so vilaine fille thinks it best not to tarry. She sends best wishes for good health, sweetness, and much love in 2006 to her fellow bloggatrici and bloggatori and to her 
NYC transit strike is making for cold, hard, and long days. (Heaven help the folks who live really far from their places of work.) Back in a few, with Top Ten CD's of 2005. *smooch*
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From Newsday, my review of the Met's Rigoletto revival:
One cannot determine whether the score belongs to opera seria, buffa, or whatever.
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