Well, that is the opinion of the New York Post critic James Jordan, evidently he is not shy about laying it all out there.  He recently reviewed the final production of the season for New York City Opera, Telemann’s Orpheus.  Check out his ‘candid’ views in the Operagasm Review Rundown!

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg

Looking at the bright side:  “About the only good thing that can be said for New York City Opera’s “Orpheus,” which opened Saturday night, is that it made the rest of the company’s feeble season seem scintillating by comparison.”

Werk it!  “In this long and demanding role, soprano Jennifer Rowley overshot a few high notes, but delivered wild, billowing tone and deliciously over-the-top acting in the queen’s diva tantrums. Tall and full-figured, she fearlessly lurched about the stage in her taffeta ball gown and spike heels.

As Pluto, king of the underworld, Nicholas Pallesen landed his two numbers solidly in a warm baritone. He even maintained his dignity while gobbling oysters in between vocal fireworks.”

I’ll be your private dancer:  “…nothing could redeem in the clunky, cliché-ridden production of Rebecca Taichman, who managed to degrade high tragedy to low camp.  Perhaps her worst idea was the invention of a character called “Thanatos,” giving dancer Catherine Miller a chance to upstage everyone with her wiggling.”

In summation:  “For the past five years, we’ve been asking: Can NYCO survive? But after this fiasco of an “Orpheus,” I begin to wonder: Should it?”

In Gale Martin’s portrayal of a small town opera guild, she weaves together a farcical comedy and light hearted romance that mimics a Mozartian opera. In fact, the book can be construed as a parallel to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, no doubt Martin’s aim, including the bizarre moments that often have opera goers shrugging their shoulders, rolling their eyes and whispering, “That’s opera for you.”

The book is a tale of the Hankey Opera Guild, a dysfunctional gang of volunteers who come together to fight for the success of their small town opera company as they try to mount a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. This group of opera buffs want a pot-boiler to bring in revenue and restore Hankey Opera to its former glory. Thinking to book a famous (albeit out dated) baritone to set the stage – pun intended – for a glorious resurgence, the Guild is floored when their leading man, Donato Bianco is hit by a truck six weeks before opening night. Yes, a truck. Scrambling to find another lecher-worthy baritone to strut to the beat of Don Giovanni’s (ahem) heart, they put their faith in Argentine baritone Leandro Vasquez. A cow herder turned opera star. Yes, a cow herder.

Deanna Lundquist, the no nonsense and somewhat bitter divorcée heads up this group of rag-tag opera enthusiasts and manipulates her way to glory. (At least, that’s how she sees it.) She wheels and deals with the singular purpose of Hankey Opera’s success. Martin portrays Deanna as business-like in the beginning of the book, shallow towards the middle and loving (toward a trio of daschunds) in the end. I’m not sure why Martin has Deanna assaulted in the beginning; maybe as nod to Donna Elvira? I found the occurrence to be disturbing, and Martin’s using the attacker for her Italian Zorro storyline is ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. Not even funny.

Deanna’s minion (at least, that’s how she sees it), is the lovingly sweet virgin Oriane Longenecker. A former nun turned small town soprano, she previously met the swaggering Vasquez and envisioned him as the romantic hero of her virginal dreams. Her character is complete with a little eye winking and an untapped libido. (Paging Zerlina? Zerlina, please come to the front.) I’m sure the fact that Oriane ends up cast as Zerlina in Hankey Opera’s Don Giovanni is Gale Martin’s little joke.

Dr. Richard Rohrer is a rigid and fastidious doctor, who lends levity and culture to the guild. (At least, that’s how he sees it.) He begins the book as the educated doctor, which he loves to point out. And which Deanna loves to counter by telling everyone he’s just a dermatologist. Towards the middle of the book, he turns a little lecherous himself, lusting after the breasts of Vivian Frantz and her flowing red hair. His dead wife Mary, a constant forethought, falls by the wayside under the never noticed bounce of Vivian’s boobs. Vivian, a ketchup heiress, transforms herself from the moment-to-moment bi-polar victim in the book’s beginning to a strong and vibrant woman. I think I hear a Donna Anna reference. Towards the end of the book, Vivian finds grace and strength and loses the confusion and flightiness that defined her. After all, those are two qualities Richard previously despised. A figure like a ketchup bottle and a push-up bra will do that to a man.

Add in the Frenchman Arnaud Marceau (and yes, his name is supposed to rhyme).  He is a balloon designer and the Leporello to Vasquez’s Don Giovanni. A silly character is our Arnaud, and one wonders if Martin went a little too far on the silly scale by creating Arnaud as a ghost whisperer. Yes, a ghost whisperer. It gets even more silly as the parade of ghosts start to march by. We expect only Commendatore as resident ghost in Don Giovanni, but instead Martin gives us many, many ghosts: Mary, Richard’s dutiful wife; Paylor, Vivian’s mentally ill and seriously mean mother; Vivian’s vindictive father; Donato Bianco, the dead baritone; and Luis Garcia, Vasquez’s mentor who took him from a cow herder to the toast of New York’s opera cult. All of these ghosts flit throughout the book, but come together to bully the philandering Vasquez in the last scene of Don Giovanni, not only sending him towards metaphorical Hell, but buffeting him around the stage to the delight of Hankey’s opera elite.

This little operatic and literary farce would not be complete without the wounded Donna Elvira, the wealthy and scorned Jeannie Jacobs, who Vasquez in his ardor mistook for a hooker. Yes, a hooker. When Vasquez tries plowing – pun intended – through the ladies of the Hankey Opera Guild they get together à la Verdi’s Falstaff to teach Don Giovanni, I mean, Don Juan, I mean, Vasquez a lesson. Enter the parade of ghosts. And the resultant shoulder shrugging, eye rolling and the obligatory, “That’s opera for you.”

At the helm of this sinking ship is Carter Knoblauch, whom they all call Knobby. Yes, Knobby. Knobby is the new executive director of the Hankey Opera and lends levity to the flailing storyline. One wonders why Martin gave the poor man a heart attack during the chapter in which he is introduced. Perhaps to bring in the minor character of Mary’s ghost? A little too much bang for the relatively small buck, to my way of thinking. However, Knobby turns out to be the hero at the book’s end, collecting his damsel, Oriane, in the process.

I found Martin’s tale to be humorous and romantic. Romance? You couldn’t have missed it: the Knobby-Oriane connection, the Richard-Vivian connection and the Deanna-daschund connection. I didn’t think the tale to be laugh-out-loud funny, but there were some amusing moments and creative turns of phrases. The characters started out with their own brand of crazy and in-fighting, yet towards the end were all well-adjusted friends. Oh, so Le Nozze di Figaro. However, I felt the characters to be a little one-sided and superficial, almost stereotypical and felt the storyline lacked proper development. Martin took too long to introduce the plot(s) and rushed the conclusion of the storyline(s). I also feel that way about Mozart’s Lorenzo da Ponte. Maybe that was the point? In which case, Martin’s a genius.

The undeveloped sub-plots (the Italian Zorro, for example) were annoying and left me asking, why did Martin waste my time with this? The author’s foray into profanity and overt sexual references were also superficial and undeveloped, and made Martin appear uncomfortable with the literary tools. The pithy (and constant) references to operas, which one can only assume should be taken in a wink-wink, elbowing style seemed a little, well… cheesy. But, hey, that’s opera for you.
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Judy O. Marchman, soprano – Ms. Marchman is currently studying for her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree at the University of Miami.  Roles include Miss Wordsworth in Britten’s Albert Herring and Eurydice in Milhaud’s Les Malheurs d’Orphée , Alice Ford and Nanetta in Verdi’s Falstaff, and Foreign Woman in Menotti’s The Consul. Upcoming performances include John Rutter’s Magnificat and Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, Sorrowful Songs. B.M., Beach Atlantic University, M.M., Florida State University.

I don’t know how to organize my thoughts in order to correctly convey how completely blown away I was by the performance of Who Killed Don Giovanni? presented by The Figaro Project last night at the University of Baltimore. PLEASE BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW AND GO SEE THIS OPERA. Okay, now I will do my best to not ramble and hope to do so by just telling you what this opera DID to ME.

Caitlin Vincent prodigiously crafted an English dialogue that upholds the integrity of Mozart’s operatic legacy. All secco or “dry” recitatives were transformed into snappy, engaging, hysterical, and edifying discourse that gave Mozart and Da Ponte’s interpretation of Tirso de Molina’s play a context for conversation within a contemporary audience of opera lovers and opera novices, and for that matter, people that don’t know shit about opera. EXACTLY what Mozart and Da Ponte set out to do in THEIR time for THEIR community — and even with those intentions, still managed to craft a work of genius for the entire gamut of human intelligence. Vincent and her troupe continue in the same throbbing vein. And it is really exciting to see this happening at a time when opera is striving or fighting or whatever the hell it’s doing for rebirth in Baltimore.

Without spoiling. Hm.

I felt like I was in a game of Clue. Like the most awesome game of Clue ever that had a Mozart soundtrack!!!! Director William Schaller’s use of the cast as a set was one of the bravest dramatic choices I have witnessed and it paid dividends. His ability to guide characters through every vantage point of their experience throughout the opera coupled with his ease in cultivating personalities must have been key in motivating the cast to be purposeful with every single motion that takes place on stage — whether it be the slightest fidget of a nail file or the crudest hand gesture to aid in a phallic reference. (Yes, I wanted to say penis, but I decided to be elegant.)

And now, how do I sum up the achievement of the ensemble in a paragraph? HOWWWW??????????!!!! My brain hurts with emotion. Allow me to introduce them first:

Yeah, you know this photo is badass. Photo Credit: Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography

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Nathan Wyatt, Inspector Sebastian Lorenzo (not pictured)
Alex Rosen, Leporello
Lydia Beasley, Donna Anna
Stephen Campbell, Don Ottavio
Jessica Hanel Satava, Donna Elvira
Caitlin Vincent, Zerlina
Greg Hoyt, Masetto
Jeremy Hirsch, Stage Manager (not pictured)
Blair Skinner, The Conductor (not pictured, but he is fiiiiine.)
Ta-Wei Tsai, The Pianist (not pictured)

(Side note to make another Y U NO shout out since they consume my opera brain now: FIGARO PROJECT, Y U NO INCLUDE DON GIOVANNI AND COMMENDATORE? Guess you have to go see.)

The acting across the ensemble was captivating. It takes an incredible amount of support and focused energy from each person on stage to keep an audience poised for almost three hours, and this group easily had another three in them. Wow. They can go ALL night. Really? Is it necessary for that smiley face to just rise up there like it’s the sun or something? Anyway. I cannot yet describe how this “modern re-telling” actually transported me to the 18th century. It was a feeling I’ll never forget. I laughed like an obscene adolescent. And I was sort of ashamed, but then I was like, “EFF that noise! I’m having A GOOD TIME AT THE OPERA! Haven’t you ever seen Amadeus??? That mother fucker laughs his ass off all the time!!! Don’t HATE.” I can say the f word because it’s in quotes.

Personal standouts included every sound that came out of Jessica Hanel Satava’s face, the energetic and responsive orchestra of Mr. Tsai’s ten fingers conducted by Maestro Skinner, Don Ottavio and Donna Anna’s OhmygodIhateeverythingaboutyoubutyou’remyboyfriend relationship, and both Rosen’s and Wyatt’s tremendous skill for transitioning between the show’s spectrum of highly dramatic and extremely funny moments.

I’m not going to beg you to go see this, but I am going to beg everyone to be as brave-and-creative-and-not-afraid-to-show-it as The Figaro Project was last night. There is so much more potential for masterpiece that way.

To purchase tickets to Who Killed Don Giovanni? TONIGHT – LAST CHANCE – click here!

For more information about The Figaro Project, click here!

]]> http://operagasm.com/2012/05/operagasm-exclusive-review-the-figaro-project-effing-kills-giovanni/feed/ 0 http://operagasm.com/2012/05/utah-operas-magnificient-mice-men/ http://operagasm.com/2012/05/utah-operas-magnificient-mice-men/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 11:30:40 +0000 cconnolley http://operagasm.com/?p=19472 by Christie Connolley

Utah Opera is getting great reviews for their recent production of Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice And Men.  Catherine Reese Newton of the Salt Lake Tribune agreed, declaring “every aspect of this production is top-notch!”  Check out her review in the Operagasm Review Rundown!

Photo Credit: Kim Raff

Let’s talk tenor: “Tenor Corey Bix, who had a fantastic Utah Opera debut in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” a few months ago, turns in another tour-de-force performance as Lennie. Not only does Bix’s ample voice soar easily over Floyd’s boldly colored, emotionally wrenching score, he also plays Lennie with such childlike sweetness that the viewer fully understands George’s protectiveness and loyalty.”

Let’s talk bass-baritone: “Bass-baritone Matthew Burns gives the opera its moral center with his portrayal of George. He sings with power and assurance from the top to the bottom of his vocal range, and he invests the character with intelligence and integrity while traversing an equally impressive emotional range.”

Now let’s talk all voice parts: “Sara Gartland makes Curley’s wife tragic rather than simply pathetic. The soprano makes the character’s frustration and desperation palpably clear, and she turns in one of the most disturbingly realistic death scenes ever seen at Utah Opera. Tenor Ryan MacPherson plays her brute of a husband with cobra-like menace; it’s a particularly apt match of music and character.  Bass Ryan Allen as the beaten-down but still-hopeful Candy, baritone Marcus DeLoach as the compassionate Slim, tenor James Miller as the unctuous Carlson and tenor Andrew Penning as the sweet-voiced Ballad Singer round out the strong cast.”

Concludes with this all-important recommendation:  “Stash a packet of tissues in your purse or jacket pocket and go see it.”

Has it? Because I totally love that idea!

Washington National Opera is currently celebrating Verdi’s Nabucco through May 21st at The Kennedy Center. Celebrating? That’s what it sounds like to me based on this review. The sets, the costumes, the “audience”..looks like you’re in for a treat! Check out the Operagasm review rundown!

O.G. Nabucco: “To underline the point, Thaddeus Strassberger, the show’s director and set designer, presents it as a play-within-a-play, enacted before a 19th-century audience with a row of armed Austrian soldiers making sure things don’t get out of hand. The play-within-a-play idea has been done to death, but I was tolerant because I got such a kick out of Strassberger’s evocation of opera of a bygone age, and without the frame, the old conventions he duplicated might have come across as wooden.”

Young Artists in the house…wooooot!: “And a couple of the young artists from the Domingo-Cafritz program acquitted themselves very well: Soloman Howard seemed to be channelling the Grand Inquistor from Verdi’s much later “Don Carlo” as a doddering High Priest of Baal with a strong bass voice, and Maria Eugenia Antunez was striking in the often invisible role of Anna. Jeffrey Gwaltney is a towering presence as the all-purpose warrior figure Abdallo, but he took a while to warm up.”

The real stars of the show: “But the main musical force were the WNO chorus and orchestra under Philippe Auguin. What the orchestra did may not have exactly been idiomatic Verdi playing — it was a little too careful and obedient — and Auguin’s tempi sometimes dragged, but it was generally clean and lively. And the chorus, which has a major if not the main role in this opera, rose to the challenge with a kind of energy and power. It was a delight to hear from the chorus.”

Time for your closeup, audience members!!!: “When the curtain calls came, Boross/Abigaille suddenly shushed the audience and began “Va, pensiero” again, while the supertitles flashed the Italian words to enable the audience to join the assembled cast in an a cappella rendering that was some of the evening’s most honest and moving singing yet. But the opening-night audience sat silent. One hopes that future audiences will warm to Strassberger’s karaoke-opera attempt and join in.”

Check out the full review from The Washington Post here!

Four principal performers in the upcoming Opera Colorado performance of Il Trovatore. left to right: Nancy Maultsby, Avgust Amonov, Michele Capalbo, and Robert Hyman. Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post

As a new transplant to CO, Il Trovatore was my very first visit to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in downtown Denver. The house itself is quite lovely. From what I’ve been told, it was in bad need of renovations, which were only recently done (2005) in part thanks to “Denver’s first lady of opera,” Ellie Caulkins. As it happens, the first lady was third in line to greet Nancy Maultsby (singing the role of Azucena) after the production—and I was second. I’m still pondering my brush with greatness.

As most of you know, Il Trovatore is a drastically unrealistic plot of mistaken infanticide, duels, suicides, imprisonment and death sentences. But in this opera, one comes for the singing, not the plot. Verdi asks for the whole package of each of the four leads. Singers Michele Capalbo (Leonora), Robert Hyman (Conte di Luna), Avgust Amonov (Manrico) and Nancy Maultsby (Azucena) all delivered. From what I’ve been told, a terrible cold had swept through the cast the week before opening night, creating lost voices and high stress levels. Knowing this, I was on edge. Turns out I couldn’t even tell the Black Death (for singers, at least) had just swept through. It seems as if confidence within the cast slowly built from Act I, as I became more impressed with the singing as the show went on.

There were three times during the opera that I really felt an emotional pull, i.e. chills, etc. Two came from Nancy Maultsby (Azucena). Her voice has a beautiful quality that really carries. The story she told of murdering her own son as well as the climactic revenge moment at the very end of the opera really moved me. Michele Capalbo (Leonora) also did some great singing, though I wasn’t a fan of the overuse of her beautiful pianissimo high notes. After a while, it’s just not special anymore. Robert Hyman (Conte di Luna) also contributed some great sounds, though I missed dynamic swells and missed opportunities for nuanced singing. As far as Avgust Amonov (Manrico), welI, I guess I need to just come right out and say it: Manrico doesn’t—or can’t—act. However, he has a gorgeous tenor voice. Of particular note was his aria in Part III right before he is supposed to wed Leonora. During his beautiful rendition, though, he barely gave her a glance! At the end, she had to walk over to him and basically force him to turn towards her. What’s worse, Manrico had a bad habit of turning away from the very people he was supposed to be communicating with throughout the opera. It certainly made for a boring look onstage, and the other singers were left high and dry for something to play off of. I noticed when Manrico was off-stage, things got a lot more interesting…I saw hidden glances, minute facial changes and gesturing, all of which made me feel like I’d just had a Venti coffee when compared to Manrico’s scenes. Capalbo

The backdrop for almost the whole opera were two and sometimes three sets of ancient, broken-down columns jutting up at different angles from floor. The stage was framed with an actual gigantic picture frame that had chunks broken out of it. All-together, not terribly believable, but what part of this opera is? Now let’s talk costumes: Il Travatore takes place in the very early 1400s, and the first scene with soldiers entering in their armor and helmets had me thinking John Conklin, Costume Design, was going for a literal translation. But then Ferrando, the army captain, enters in a beige overcoat picked up at the Men’s Wearhouse two weeks ago, along with a medieval collar. What? Does not compute. Also, there were guns involved, particularly of notice in Part III. Manrico’s rebel forces looked more like rambos, complete with gun belts slung over their shoulders. From what I could Wiki (is that a verb now?), guns did not exist in hand-to-hand combat back then, and the use of canons was only getting started. I just couldn’t figure out what, if any, the esoteric meaning was behind the costumes.

The stage was quite minimalist, leaving the singers to rely almost solely on their acting skills, or just simply to stand and sing, as Manrico did well. My wish was that Tara Faircloth (Stage Director) would have added more movement for visual interest. Of course, her wishes may have been held back the tenor just not “going there.”

Overall, a very enjoyable night at Opera Colorado!
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Anne Breeden, pianist, graduated from The Eastman School of Music studying piano under Dr. Jean Barr. Anne received awards during her Master’s of Chamber Music and Accompanying degree such as The Drucker Scholarship, The Barbara M.H. Koeng Award, and the C. Eschenbach Award. At Eastman, she was heavily involved with the Institute for Music Leadership. Formative education for the native San Franciscan includes the Cleveland Institute of Music and DePaul University, cum laude.

In 2005, Ms. Breeden founded Arts At Large, an organization that unites emerging artists with underserved audiences. Shortly thereafter she was invited to take part in the Illinois Arts Alliance’s Mentoring year-long Program and in 2006, the City of Chicago awarded her a CAAP grant for individual artists. The Entrepreneurship Program at the Eastman School of Music recently invited Anne to guest lecture and 2008 saw an invitation from the City of Chicago to judge its Junior Citizens program.

As a pianist, Ms. Breeden has collaborated with members of the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Concertante di Chicago, The Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, Chicago Opera Theatre, and The Chicago Children’s Choir. She has also performed in the Dame Myra Hess Series, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Three Arts Club. Performances across the United States complement Ms. Breeden’s wide ranging travels to Germany, Norway, Finland, Italy, and Japan, as well as judging for the Deutsche Schule Helsinki’s International Music Competition.

I have a confession to make: I am a Massenet Manon kind of girl.  The story of Manon is, at its heart, a story of the excesses of Paris and how it uses up the youth of one exceptionally pretty girl.  So, it’s basically every 18^th century French story ever written.  Wednesday night’s Manon Lescaut at Opera Company of Philadelphia was my first live viewing of Puccini’s telling of this particular tale.

Let me tell you, OCP definitely got the “exceptionally pretty” part of this tale right.  Michelle Johnson and Thiago Arancam were an absolutely gorgeous spectacle throughout the evening. Both of them are talented young artists who clearly deserve the accolades they’re getting.  Johnson in particular is absolutely luminous—I could practically hear Peter Gelb ordering her first HD broadcast in the background when she stepped onstage. The costumes cannot be described with any word other than “delicious”.  From the sumptuous blue cape and gown Johnson arrives in onstage for the first time, to the foppish, elaborate coats of Daniel Mobbs’ Geronte, the costuming never stepped a foot wrong.  Other than some hiccups I discuss below, the lighting was gorgeous as well.  Particularly the love duets in Acts I and II were lit spectacularly and effectively removed Des Grieux and Manon into their own beautiful world.

I wish I could be as effusive about the staging.  Given the rapturous reviews it has received elsewhere, I am quite possibly alone in this opinion, but there were a number of problems that should have been fixed by the time I saw Manon.  Four performances into a run is too late for a production to still be experiencing visible problems with follow spots or the various moving pieces of the set.  And a convention that other reviewers found affecting—separating Manon and Des Grieux in the final scene as she dies and having her deliver her last lines from center stage while Grieux looks on from a distance—left me completely alienated from the action just as I wanted to be wholly wrapped up in it.  Conceptually, the staging was lovely.  The sets were beautiful, and some of the trappings of Manon’s luxurious life in Act II come back to haunt her in the wreckage of Act IV, which I thought was a lovely touch.

More accolades must go to the Geronte of Daniel Mobbs.  (Full disclosure: I have worked with him before and he is absolutely lovely in person.)  Mobbs is a tremendous singing actor—every inflection of his eyebrow seemed to tell a tale—and his lovely, rich baritone was never in danger of being swallowed up by the sometimes-too-enthusiastic orchestra.  He filled the space beautifully with both his presence and his sound. Troy Cook was also a stand-out.  The role of Lescaut can sometimes be unforgiving in its caddishness, but Mr. Cook was a complicated and very sympathetic rogue of the first order, and has a first-rate voice to boot.
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Soprano Jessica Lennick “is a complete package, including a terrific smile and stage presence to go along with her pleasing voice” according to The Baltimore Examiner.  She is excited to return to the Caramoor Festival this summer where she will open the season as the Soprano Soloist in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and cover the role of Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi. She is looking forward to returning to the Maryland Choral Arts Society as soloist for their 2012 performance of Vaughan-Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem” after singing the Brahms Requiemwith them in 2010.

In the spring of 2011 she reprised her role as Die Königin in Die Zauberflöte with Ohio University as a visiting artist.   In 2010 she also had the delight of performing Adina in L’elisir d’amore four times in one year in Philadelphia, D.C. and Baltimore.  2010 also saw her role debuts as First Lady and Papagena in Magic Flute, and Spirit in Dido and Aeneus with Center City Opera Theater; Blonde in Enthführung aus dem Serail with Chesapeake Chamber Opera; and Gretel with DC Camerata.

A champion of new music, she premiered the role of Patrick Leahy in the Gonzales Cantata, as well as Gonzales composer Melissa Dunphy’s new song cycle, “Tesla’s Pigeon”.  A veteran of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, she also premiered the role of Angeline in Crowded House in 2010 and was delighted to make her third Philly Fringe appearance last fall as part of “Love Lost,” a program of all contemporary music.  In April she will debut a new song cycle by Tony Solitro for the Upenn Composer’s Guild.

If you are not familiar with the composer and pianist Jake Heggie, you should be.  If you have never heard of four time Emmy award winner, conductor, lyricist, and composer Glen Roven, get acquainted.  If the refined voice and artistry of soprano Talise Trevigne doesn’t ring a bell, drop everything and listen to the album “At the Statue of Venus,” which features her beautiful interpretation of two of Heggie’s song cycles “Natural Selection” with poetry by Gini Savage and “At the Statue of Venus,” with libretto by Terrence McNally and Roven’s settings of poems by various poets, accompanied by the composers themselves.

The first set of songs, “Natural Selection,” “trace a young woman’s search for her own identity.”  The first notes of Heggie’s piano introduction in the song “Creation” paint a vivid image of a young woman opening her eyes for the first time to the idea of being an adult out from under the watchful eyes of her parents, with beautiful two note suspensions and resolutions leading into a soft entrance of the vocal line, managed exquisitely by Trevigne.   The next song in the set describes a youthful evolvement of the character’s sexuality.  Entitled “Animal Passion,” Heggie mimicks animal sounds in the piano accompaniment while the vocal line dips and soars in a wide range of melody that Trevigne handles with technical expertise and stellar musicianship.

The next two songs in this set “Alas! Alack!” and “Indian Summer” may be my two favorite in this cycle.  The former’s poem compares the different men that the character dates to all sorts of heroes and villains from various well-known operas, like Tosca and The Magic Flute, which is perhaps my singer’s biased affinity coming forth.  In “Indian Summer,” Heggie spices the music up with a jazz bass line in the piano while Trevigne adds some delicious, darker colors to her voice.

When listening to the next set of songs on this album, Roven’s “Santa Fe” songs, one word comes to mind and that is melancholy.  In the liner notes of the CD, Roven explains the process out of which these songs came to be:  During the summer of 2011 in the wake of a “monumental personal tragedy” he found himself in the city of Santa Fe where the town’s “mystical magic crept into [his] very marrow although [he] didn’t know it the time.”  Attempting to come to terms with his loss he came upon a book of Santa Fe poems that he later evolved into this set of songs, ultimately aiding his healing process.  The result is this beautiful, deeply personal and raw setting of emotions into his “Santa Fe Songs.”

The music in these songs requires the performers, both pianist and vocalist, to be masters of their craft.  “Spring, 1948,” for example, has completely opposing piano and vocal lines where one does not lend itself to the other, meaning both musicians must know exactly what they are doing. Roven and Trevigne pull this off effortlessly, uniting the two lines into a duet that makes the words and music come together seamlessly but with the sad passion that which the composer wrote it.

Like Heggie, Roven also includes a jazz-infused song in this set called “Listening to jazz now.” This being one of the peppier tunes, the piano is a fun partner to a lighter tone in Trevigne’s vocal line, which add to the phrases in the poem such as “I’m happy, sun shining outside like it was my lifetime achievement award.”

Two of my other favorites from this set are “Signs and Portents”, in which Trevigne displays her marvelous breath control and musical understanding of the strikingly morbid words in the poem, and “Bowl,” where Roven writes some gorgeous melodies to a tender poem by Valerie Martinez.

The last set on the album, “At the Statue of Venus,” could be called a one-woman show, similar to “The Vagina Monologues,” only set to music.  The libretto by Terrence McNally is a hilarious description of a woman named Rose waiting for a blind date at the Statue of Venus, a situation that all of us can relate to on some level, whether or not we’ve ever been set up on a blind date before or not.  In his brief note on the set Heggie asks “To be willing to be judged by another person – does anything make us more vulnerable but human, too?”  An excellent point and idea to keep in mind as one listens to his setting.

The first song’s title, “The Slacks Were a Mistake,” in and of itself made me LOL.  In the piano introduction Heggie sets the stage as though Rose were nervously walking to her destination at the Statue, sits down or stops walking once she reaches it, and declares with a gripping interval that the slacks were indeed a mistake.  The piano brilliantly accompanies the rest of the character’s monologue as if it were her thoughts, imitating and exaggerating the words she is saying.

One of the elements I appreciate in contemporary music, especially if the composer is alive and you are able to discuss with them their intent when they wrote their music, is that some rules are often thrown out.  In classical singing, sliding notes together (a lazy glissando, if you will) might be frowned upon, but Trevigne and/or Heggie (I’m not sure whose decision it was) makes a splendid use of this ornament in the second song, “It Was a Sexy Voice.”  When imitating the “sexy voice”, the singer appropriately uses the “lazy glissando” on words like “sexy” or the phrase “shall we” when the character’s date is speaking to her.

In several of the songs in the set “Rose” sings “la, la, la, la…” to a simple melody, depicting the character’s uneasy mind frame.  I enjoy the fact that Trevigne held back in this part of the song and kept it uncomplicated.  Each time it happens in the music she doesn’t turn it into a moment of operatic display: She keeps it simple, in tune with the character’s overall anxious sentiment.

Criticisms I have of this work are few but if I had one it would be that, as a singer, knowing how difficult English is to sing in and often understand (although Ms. Trevigne does an overall excellent job with her diction) it would have been nice if the CD came with the words printed in the jacket.  However, GPRecords has conveniently made note that the texts are available on their web site, GPRecords.com.

If you consider yourself a champion of classical music, if you claim to know very little but would like to learn more about the composers of the twenty-first century, this album is an excellent place to start.  Jake Heggie and Glen Roven are clearly some of today’s outstanding composers, pianists, and conductors, and Talise Trevigne puts a unique and enjoyable stamp on their compositions.

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Elizabeth Mattox is a native of Richmond, Virginia.  She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Music degree also in Vocal Performance from Colorado State University. Currently residing in Virginia Beach, VA she maintains a private voice and piano studio there and sings regularly with First Presbyterian Church of Virginia Beach.

Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle is not without some serious opinions about a new chamber opera Love/Hate, commissioned by the ODC Theatre in cooperation with the San Francisco Opera Center.   Let’s start with the title of his review, shall we?  ‘Love/Hate’ review: Rhapsody in blah.  Here is the Operagasm Review Rundown!

Musical Schizophrenia: “He alternates bursts of tango, blues and soft-shoe with longer stretches of lyrical rhapsodizing or swift, functional recitative. He writes a witty instrumental fantasia on telephone ring tones and a deft Sondheimesque opening ensemble. He quotes, in passing, from songs by the Doors and the Fifth Dimension, then weaves a beautiful four-voice coda to close the piece.  It’s an impressive display of stylistic versatility, but the reason behind this breathless quick-change act is only too apparent: Perla is working overtime to keep afloat a work that is about nothing at all.”

Doing the most with what you got: “Director M. Graham Smith works hard to give each of these scenes a bit of theatrical flair, but he can’t do much to breathe life into the piece’s stick figures, or to draw helpful connections among the disjointed scenes. It’s telling that explanatory supertitles are needed to identify the premise of each flashback.”

At least the singing was on point:  “As the two lovers, baritone Ao Li and mezzo-soprano Laura Krumm moved deftly from crisp, jazzy patter to long-breathed lyricism and back again. Tenor Thomas Glenn was a dashing, insinuating Death and a poignant figure as George’s wounded former boyfriend. But the evening’s high point came in soprano Marina Boudart Harris’ arching, emotionally urgent solo as Laura’s former lover, Samantha. It’s a wonderful evocation of true love, with all its exhilaration and heartache, and Boudart Harris sang it radiantly.”

Arthur Kaptainis reports for The National Post on the Canadian Opera Company’s latest overnight drunk. Les Contes d’Hoffman or The Tales of Hoffman as the Canadians are calling it these days, is certainly reminiscent of some drunken friend’s account of their crazy night and can leave you a bit confused. But at least the music is gorg and you can’t smell Hoffman’s vodka breath from your seat.  Check out the Operagasm review rundown!

He still sounds fabulous after all that drank!: “Russell Thomas as the drunken protagonist of the title…might not win many awards for his acting, but his pure, ringing tone and crystalline diction were a joy to hear. And they remained so to the bitter end, a point worth making, this being one of the longer hauls in the tenor repertoire.”

Distaff just sounds like an insult: “Other notable males were baritone Gregory Dahl, grimly powerful as Crespel, and Steven Cole, amusing in four comic supporting roles. His fellow tenor Michael Barrett was an extrovert Spalanzani. Sounds were fine also on the distaff side. Mezzo-soprano Lauren Segal was warm in the trouser role of Nicklausse. Sopranos Keri Alkema was lustrous as Giulietta and Erin Wall evoked genuine pathos as Antonia. Andriana Chuchman produced a gleaming coloratura sound as the mechanical doll Olympia…”

High E stands for ELECTRIC SCHOCK: “Staging did little to clarify the motley collection of “Tales,” which find the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann in pursuit of various lovelies in fantastic settings of his own devising. The Olympia sequence, one of the delights of the piece, was something close to a bummer as staged by Lee Blakeley, a British director on his first COC assignment. Done up like the Bride of Frankenstein, the soprano-automaton was cruelly jolted by electric shocks rather than wound up by the traditional key in her back.”

And while we’re on the subject of Hoffman, can I just say…: “Permit me now to change the subject and draw attention to the fact that this is the third time this season that the Canadian Opera Company has presented a French opera under a translated title (even the Metropolitan Opera uses Les Contes d’Hoffmann) and with nothing but English projected on the surtitle screen above the stage. I suspect a minority of COC patrons read a little French; many others would like to believe that they do. To see the original words of the libretto is a great boon to appreciation, to say nothing of the honour that accrues to a company that behaves like the national institution it is. Signage at the Royal Ontario Museum is proudly bilingual. The time has come for the COC to get with the program.”

Click here for the full review!