vilaine fille

Noseda leads Shostakovich

From Time Out New York, here is my review of “Words of Michelangelo,” the new CD of works by Shostakovich led by Gianandrea Noseda and featuring basso Ildar Abdrazakov.

Earlier this season at the Met, I was blown away by Abdrazakov’s Alidoro in La Cenerentola—sung with a patrician, long-breathed line and an airiness truly astonishing from such a rich-toned singer. (It’s la scuola di Muti, I’m telling you.)

Abdrazakov appears in recital with Olga Borodina at Carnegie Hall on 25 April (I can’t be there, feh); he is Mustafà to the Lindoro of Juan Diego Flórez in Washington National Opera’s L’Italiana in Algeri, which opens on 13 May.

Abdrazakov is from Bashkortostan—in Tatar, “Başqortostan Respublikası.” (Tatar is hot.)

As for Maestro Noseda, vilaine fille was even more impressed with his conducting when she revisited the Met Forza. Highlights: His dark, fiery account of the sinfonia; the diaphanous tones he drew from the chorus in “La vergine degli angeli”; the uneasy rhythm underpinning “Solenne in quest’ora,” such that you knew Nothing good will come of this; and those searing, from-the-beyond final measures, with the curtain delayed (grazie, maestro), so that we could savor Verdi’s genius and that of the Met’s gallant signori professori d’orchestra.

Noseda’s season continues with the BBC Philharmonic, of which he is principal conductor, and the Stresa Festival. In 2007, at the Teatro Regio di Torino, he leads Dvořák’s Rusalka. He returns to the Met in 2007-08 to lead Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.

***

Speaking of Abdrazakov and Muti, vilaine fille has been poring over Verdi’s Attila in anticipation of the Met production. (2009-10 is right around the corner, mes poules!) How can you not love an opera with lines like

Ma noi, donne italiche,
cinte di ferro il seno,
sul fumido terreno
sempre vedrai pugnar!

[But we, women of Italy,
our breasts girt in iron—
ever will you see us do battle
upon the steaming earth!]

Attila, to his credit, is totally turned on by this. (Où sont les mecs d’antan?) Attila is quite the risorgimentale barn-buster, and vilaine fille can’t wait to hear Maestro Muti kick some serious New York butt.

Still, be warned, il maestrone: If we don’t get Radvanovsky as Odabella, vilaine fille is going to pound nails into your thick Neapolitan skull. (E poi dicono che noi piemontesi abbiamo la testa dura!)

Robert Wilson

Last month, the day before I interviewed Robert Wilson, I met a musicologist friend for coffee. He doesn’t have passionate feelings about Wilson’s work one way or the other—he mentioned being bored by Wilson’s staging of Alceste, but unlike the canaille on opera-l, he doesn’t accuse the director of pædophilia or other depravities.

“What did you like about the Lohengrin?” he asked. The answer I blurted out surprised me: “I felt I had never heard the music before.”

The next day, when I asked Wilson what he hoped to achieve through his against-the-grain choreography, his answer was immediate: “It helps you to hear the music better.”

Here, from Panache magazine, is my profile of Robert Wilson.

Wilson’s staging of Peer Gynt plays at BAM starting 11 April.

P.S. Only 20 days until Lohengrin opens at the Met! (I do admit that my anticipation is somewhat less keen now that Maestro Levine has withdrawn, but I wish Philippe Auguin a hearty in bocca al lupo and m*rde m*rde m*rde.)

Pensées du dimanche 26 mars

Doubt is not a pleasant condition,
but certainty is absurd.

No snowflake in an avalanche
ever feels responsible.

—François Marie Arouet (a.k.a. Voltaire)

Plus ça change…

…plus ça change !

“Working day and night as her own conductor, administrative boss, stage director, talent hunter, principal researcher and fundraiser, [Sarah Caldwell] has become a symbol of the vigorous growth of opera in dozens of cities around the U.S.,” Time wrote.

…plus ça change !

Sarah Caldwell… made Boston an international operatic capital for three decades…

Ms. Caldwell’s work was unified by a profound and comprehensive vision of how opera could be relevant and vital in our time, and defined by a splendid theatricality.

…plus c’est la même chose !

“The major problem in the arts today is money,” she told U.S. News and World Report in 1979. “Unless we have a remarkable infusion of support, we will not achieve the kind of life in the arts for artists and their audiences that we ought to achieve.”

…plus c’est la même chose !

She thought [her public image] a bit distorted—“the idea of a poor little match girl. Lonely. Strange. Only interested in going to libraries. It’s just so totally foreign to my nature,” she told the New York Daily News in a 1981 profile. “The stories probably make great reading if you don’t have to live with them. It did turn me into a bit of a cartoon.”

Quotes from AP and the Boston Globe. Emphasis added in all cases.

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

It was a mark of the harmony that informed every aspect of Sunday’s concert by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir: The ladies’ jackets, in shades of lavender and pink, matched precisely the Lenten banners on display at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola.

From Newsday, here is my review of the concert, which included seven surpassingly beautiful works by Arvo Pärt. While I haven’t been able to write about (or, in some cases, even attend) most of the musical events that have interested me this season, I must say that I’ve had an extraordinary streak of luck since January, getting my world rocked by Hvorostovsky, Podles, Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, this magnificent group… Gotta love our friends from the East!

(Estonian, by the way, is not an Indo-European language. Estonian is cool, like Etruscan, Euskara, Suomi, and MAGYAR, baby!)

Pärt’s Stabat Mater will be performed at St. Ignatius Loyola (a magnficent space for music) on 5 April, as part of the congregation’s “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space” series.

As for the EPCC, do visit their official site, which includes a full discography.  I chose Baltic Voices 3 as one of 2005’s top CDs for Newsday. EPCC’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil is gorgeous, albeit a wee bit pristine for my taste—I do like my Russian Orthodox music wild and wooly. EPCC’s Arvo Pärt Tribute is a must-have, as are their many ECM discs, including Pärt’s Te Deum and Litany.

Kronos at Zankel

Kronos Quartet’s Live Mix series opens on Friday at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. I had the great honor and joy of writing a program note for Alexandra du Bois’s Nachtliederen, which receives its New York premiere on Friday. (Hélas, the program note appears on Carnegie’s website without paragraph breaks.)

I’ve not yet heard Nachtliederen, but based on what I know of Alexandra’s earlier work—including the haunting Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat—I imagine it will be thrilling.

Sunday’s concert is one of the events I’ve been most looking forward to all season: “Notes from Azerbaijan,” focussing on the fierce and sensual music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh. Regular visitors to this humble blague will recall that I chose Kronos’s Mugam Sayagi as one of 2005’s best CDs.

6 and 7 April bring programs featuring the wondrous pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

(By the way: So sorry to be parochial, but *yay* for us gals!)

If you are not familiar with the writings of Etty Hillesum, the inspiration for Alexandra du Bois’s Nachtliederen, I urge you to get to know them right away. How strange that a young Jewish woman murdered by the Nazis nearly 70 years ago should remain one of the most vibrantly, triumphantly alive souls on this planet. Once you dive into Etty’s words—all that’s left of a restless, self-absorbed, painstakingly honest, and radiantly compassionate individual—she becomes a presence in your life. A prick to your conscience when you let fear or laziness get the better of you, Etty is ever a beacon of strength and humanity.

In Greek mythology, Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, led a revolt against his father Uranus (be nice), only to be overthrown in turn by his own son, Zeus. (There’s enough there to keep legions of shrinks in deep clover, wouldn’t you say?) I think it’s über-cool that the Kronos Quartet, 34 years young and counting, seeks out and embraces the challenges offered by up-and-coming composers such as Alexandra du Bois.

See you at Zankel!

P.S. Only 27 days until Lohengrin opens!

Pensée du dimanche 19 mars

…besides, in Spain,
Don Juan’s to blame…
—Rufus Wainwright, “Barcelona”

Gergiev leads Shostakovich

From Newsday, here is my review of the opening concert in Valery Gergiev’s Lincoln Center cycle of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich.

I don’t have much to add, except that I am surpassingly grateful for the chance to commune with Dima il grande (not to be confused with Dima il piccolo, with whom I also enjoy communing). It’s strange that in 2006, Shostakovich’s bitter, astringent, adult music should still stand as a reproach to the neo-Romantic slop that so many composers churn out.

I also remember why I fell in love with Maestro Gergiev back in 1992, when the Kirov visited New York. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for his assaults on Verdi—though, to be fair, those 2003 Met Traviatas had, uh, other issues.

Select the links for information on the Gergiev and Emerson Quartet Shostakovich cycles and the New York Philharmonic concerts led by Mstislav Rostropovich.

P.S. Why isn’t the Met reviving Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk—one of its two finest productions—for, say, Karita Mattila or Patricia Racette? Katerina Ismailova is my hero.

Link dump: 15 March 2006

• How was your Purim? The Ahasuer-Us Weekly image is from the Forward, New York’s best read, which offers chewy articles on new editions of Megillat Esther and the darkness of Purim. (I confess that this holiday makes me very pensive and heavy-hearted. And, yes, I have written for the Forward.)

• In the year 2025, according to the JBloggers Purim Spiel ’66:
  
  A retiring Eliot Spitzer declares being first Jewish President “not what I expected.” He moves into Century Village in Boca Raton, FL, and immediately announces an investigation into the residence’s board. After two years of subpoenas, Spitzer and board president Murray Wasserman announce the return of two shuffleboard cues to the cabana closet, with no admission of wrongdoing.

• The Manolo, he is looking for the help! Allez-y, les boys !

• JDF’s Sentimiento latino is now available! And via Voce di tenore come links to several charming Flórez videos and a gorgeous selection from Pepito Cura’s finest recording, Anhelo.

• There are only 33 days until Lohengrin— sans Maestro Levine, hélas.

Purim 5766

The name of a thing conveys its essence. Thus, the name Esther suggests the concealment that we find in the Megillah. “Esther comes from the same root as hester, or hiding. Indeed, it alludes to a double hiding, as we find in the Talmud (Chullin 139b): ‘Where is the name Esther indicated in the Torah?’ (In the verse) ‘I will hide, yes hide my face.’” (Deut. 31:18). But revelation is also implicit in the name “Megillat Esther,” for Megillah means “revelation” (Pri Eitz Chayim).
—Rabbi Yosef B. Marcus

…Purim is about remembering. We are told, with one half of our brain, to remember; with the other, to blot out the name of the villain forever and ever. Remember the Amalekites (Deut. 25:17), remember that evil Haman, remember Hitler. In the midst of my laughter at this funny costume, or that funny joke, I remember our enemies past and present. The names change, but not the character or intent… I must remember my enemies with a passion as fierce as my love for the little children masquerading this night in synagogues all over the world. Somehow, we must be strong enough to protect them.
—Blu Greenberg, How to run a traditional Jewish household

The observance of Purim was apparently well known to the Nazi leadership. Julius Streicher, perhaps the most vicious antisemite among the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, shouted out as he marched to the gallows, “Purimfest.”
—Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish literacy

Megilat Esther (JPS text)

Purim from Judaism 101 and My Jewish Learning

JTSA and OU Purim resources, including Purim mitzvot

The month of Adar from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine (one of vilaine fille’s very favorite websites)

Wonderful Purim e-cards