my party, July 3

The party-open house-soiree at my place in Columbia Town Center is still on for this Saturday, July 3. There will be cake! I've ordered cakes from Touche Touchet Bakery here in Columbia. There also will be wine and beer -- I like this Southern Tier Pale Ale with the fragrant hops and Sierra Nevada Summer Brew that I found at the Perfect Pour. (Sorry for the commercial plugs -- just supporting the local businesses.) Some friends are bringing wine, too, and I'll make non-alcoholic options available, most likely soda. Besides cake to eat, there will be various snacks. Additions are welcome if you're inclined to bring something.

Free feline and botanical entertainment will be provided, though not necessarily together. Party music on the CD player will be interesting, I hope, but won't overpower conversation.

If you're a friend of this blog, please feel welcome to join us any time between 3pm and, say, 9-ish pm. Contact me at farlaf2000@earthlink.net or my other e-mail if you have that, and I'll send more details with directions.

link: Anne Midgette on New American Operas

The Washington Post's Anne Midgette gets slammed for slamming individual opera performances, but her latest writing on new operas by American composers will be interesting reading. Here is a link to Midgette's blog post, which has a link to the first of a two-part article and more.

Opera at Baltimore's Artscape 2010; Other Operatic Developments

abundant free opera at Artscape 2010 ~~ Baltimore Concert Opera's rare repertoire next season ~~ Lyric Opera of Baltimore? ~~ Little Patuxent Opera Institute?

Even more free opera than before is on the schedule at Artscape this year, and I'm so very glad that the opera location is once again MICA's Brown Center. Last year's church location was very attractive, but it had its problems and the Brown Center is equipped with a more comfortable and performance-friendly theater. Here is a link to the Theater and Opera page on Artscape's site. A couple of new or unfamiliar operatic groups are on the list, too, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra also will be operatically inclined over at the Meyerhoff.

A rarity next season at Baltimore Concert Opera! BCO, which will be among the companies active at Artscape, has published its 2010-2011 season and other news on the BCO home page. There are three very familiar operas on the new calendar, plus...."Amleto"? It's not in my Grove Book of Operas! Quick Internet search: It's by a composer named Faccio, a contemporary of Verdi, with libretto by Arrigo Boito (also one of Verdi's librettists and a composer himself). It's another Shakespeare-based opera, and the title is the Italianized form of one of Shakespeare's famous characters. Washington National Opera recently gave us a French operatic interpretation of this play. This is a smart move on BCO's part!

Lyric Opera of Baltimore is one of the new companies on the Artscape list. I recall rumor of this group, but a look at the supplied URL still takes you to Opera New Jersey. (ONJ was in Baltimore with "Carmen" earlier this year.)

Little Patuxent Opera Institute has been training young singers and giving a public performance in the summer at Howard Community College here in Columbia. Last year's potpourri of opera excerpts and staging of Puccini's "Sister Angelica" (in English) provided some memorable summer opera (right next door to me). I can't say for sure if LPOI is in session again this summer, but I've heard that it is. Here is a link to the latest LPOI page with audition information on the Howard Community College site. Understandably, the new Opera Vivente Academy and all the Artscape activity could be taking focus away from LPOI, but Columbia's administrators would do well to consider encouraging a summer opera endeavor in the city, don't you think?

Repertory Opera Theater of Washington

The Repertory came to my attention in the Weekend section of today's Washington Post. There's an Opera category in the Concerts listings whenever there's opera to be had in the area, and I think there has been something listed there every weekend lately. The Repertory is another local group that offers performing opportunities for rising young singers. This weekend, they're giving partially staged performances of Verdi's "Don Carlo" at Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill in Alexandria, Virginia.

The company's web site is here, and I'll put it on my list momentarily: repertoryoperadc.org. (The URL will change to rotw.intuitwebsites.com when you go to the site, but it's still the Repertory.)

I once aspired to trying every company on my regional list at least once, but I soon realized that that might not be feasible. But there's the list for all to explore, and you might find an opera company in your neighborhood. If I can't go hear every company, at least the list demonstrates how much interest there is in the art form in this area.

Reading: Rebecca West

"Hour after hour throughout the night a German bomber cruised up and down over the moonlit beechwoods of our valley; and while it is easy enough to sleep through bombing in a shelter, it is difficult to get much sleep at all in a country house with hostile aircraft overhead, because an incendiary bomb would call for so much action..."

-- opening lines of "A Day in Town", 1941, included in "The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose", published this year by Pearhouse Press.

It's a thin but potent volume, and it will be my introduction to Rebecca West, who might be better known today for a huge history and travelogue of Yugoslavia called "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon". West was one of the 20th century's great journalists, and her New Yorker editor entrusted her with covering the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals (as explained on the back of the new book).

Considering Countertenors and Contraltos

Is everybody thinking about contraltos now? When I'm on a roll listening to and posting about countertenors, it's not long before I'm also considering contraltos, and the passing of another great contralto last week (see end note) has me thinking again about the status of contraltos on the opera stage today. Here are some related sites and posts...

A blog called "eye bags" based on the Continent has been watching mezzos and contraltos. Here is a post on the Serbian contralto Marijana Mijanovic. If you want to see all of the blog's contralto-related posts, you have to click on a tag called "hot contraltos in pants". Mijanovic can be heard in the Virgin Classics set of Vivaldi's "Bajazet" conducted by Fabio Biondi (with countertenor David Daniels also in the cast) and the Arkhiv set of Handel's "Floridante", part of Alan Curtis' Handel opera series. I've been listening to the "Floridante" set, where Mijanovic has the title role. She could be mistaken for a countertenor singing in the alto range, but "eye bags" is tired of the repeated suggestion of androgynous sound in descriptions of Mijanovic's voice. She does sound spectacular both in solos and in lovely duets where her dark voice is set against mezzo-soprano Joyce Didonato.

Charles Downey just posted on Ionarts about one of countertenor Philippe Jaroussky's earlier recital albums which features another contralto, Marie-Nicole Lemieux. The original issue of this album is on my shelf. Yes, I'll have to listen again soon, after being caught up with some of Jaroussky's newer sets. When do we get to hear Jaroussky on the stage on this side of the Atlantic?

I found countertenor Lawrence Zazzo's official site. Zazzo also can be heard in the Curtis-Handel recording project. "Opera News" gave him a spread in the Sound Bites feature some time ago (a year or two ago?) and mentioned the internet buzz he was getting then.

We get to hear another new countertenor in the DC area in August, when Ryan Belongie sings Oberon in Wolf Trap Opera's staging of Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

For reference, here is my recent post with links to sites for three other countertenors covered in the July "Opera News".

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Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester passed away last week. The "Opera News" site promises a full obituary in the September issue. Earlier this year, Russian contralto Irina Arkhipova passed away. Recordings by both singers show us what an edge we're missing in the range of singing voices when we don't foster development of contraltos today.

link: Opera Vivente Academy is Under Way!

Opera is very much alive and well in Baltimore, thank you. Even as I check on one of two concert opera companies in the city, the director of Opera Vivente (fully staged chamber performances in English) posts an update on the new Opera Vivente Academy. There is a masterclass by tenor Gran Wilson open to the public this Monday afternoon, if you can attend. Admission $10. Wilson was Prince Ramiro in Vivente's production of Rossini's "Cinderella" last fall.

Mozart's Other Rescue Opera in Concert, Baltimore

I'm watching developments at another new concert opera company in Baltimore, Chesapeake Concert Opera (soon to be Chesapeake Chamber Opera). Wolf Trap is giving us Mozart's early entry in the rescue opera genre, "Zaide" (last performance tonight), and we can enjoy his later, completed rescue opera, "The Abduction from the Seraglio [or Harem]", in a concert performance with piano accompaniment, this weekend in Baltimore. Last night was the opening; second and final performance tonight, June 19.

Hmmm...Bass Jeffrey Tarr is Osmin here. I really liked Tarr as Sarastro in "The Magic Flute" and as Collatinus in Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" in recent Peabody seasons.

link: New York's "Le Grand Macabre" Revisited

Monotonous Forest looks at the New York Philharmonic phenomenon again with some description of Ligeti's unconventional score.

movie suggestion: "Krakatoa East of Java"

Understanding that I cannot subsist on opera alone for entertainment, I take a break from opera's improbable, twisted plots and overdone spectacles to look at vintage movies from time to time. The 1969 "Krakatoa East of Java" might not be one of the greats of cinema, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Maltin's Movie Guide points out that Krakatoa was really west of Java, but I have a feeling that when the volcanic island erupted -- exploded -- in 1883, much of it did end up east of Java. The movie has a very watchable cast: actors Maximilian Schell, Brian Keith, Sal Mineo, Italian actor Rossano Brazzi. Actresses Diane Baker and Barbara Werle don't look familiar to me now but bring their own talents to the proceedings. Another actress in the cast attracts attention by her very name: "Jacqui Chan". The score is by De Vol, whose other film credits include the original "The Flight of the Phoenix". If you grew up with TV Land around the 1960s and 70s, you heard a lot of other De Vol, too.

So the movie isn't perfect: There is at least one awkward scene transition which can be attributed to the heavy editing the movie suffered after filming was completed, and there is a corny scene with a song that made me squirm, plus my DVD copy forced me to pull a chair closer to compensate for the middle-of-the-screen letterbox format. But, as I said, it's fun after all. Consider some of the plot elements, augmented by some nice volcanic special effects: a captain and his ship cursed even before the story begins, a chorus of prisoners pining for fresh air, a team of pearl divers, a stormy love triangle, a child reunited with a parent and a climax of all-consuming fire and water. Well, if you're an opera lover watching this movie, what's not to like?

In the July "Opera News": three Handel-singing countertenors

The July issue arrived in the mail yesterday. (Opera News online is in my margin links, but it's still the June issue.) If you're interested in countertenors and Handel (though I wouldn't mind hearing them as Oberon, Griffelkin, Prince Go-Go...), look for a performance review and a recording review in this issue. Judith Malafronte reviews New York City Opera's recent staging of Handel's "Partenope". The cast included Anthony Roth Costanzo, the June issue's Sound Bites subject which I linked recently, as Armindo, and another countertenor, Iestyn Davies, as Arsace. Malafronte on Davies: "...Davies showed all the vocal and musical range Handel's pampered castratos were famous for..." On Costanzo: "In contrast,...Costanzo's leaner, reedier sound brought an attractive impulsiveness to Armindo..." (Among the rest of the cast was bass-baritone Daniel Mobbs, who we have heard on the former Baltimore Opera Company's stage.)

Further on in the recording reviews, David Shengold writes about a new recital CD of Handel mezzo-soprano opera arias sung by Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic. Like Costanzo above, Cencic went straight from boy treble or soprano into the countertenor fach without the usual detour in baritone or tenor.*

Links to the singers' sites: Iestyn Davies ... Anthony Roth Costanzo ... Max Emanuel Cencic

*Oh. There's Cencic in the cast of "Fernando" conducted by Alan Curtis on Virgin Classics. I really ought to browse my own collection more.

link: Wolf Trap's Director on Violence in "Zaide" Staging

Kim Witman responds to the flurry of audience reactions to Wolf Trap Opera's current production of Mozart's "Zaide".

Reality Strikes: Rents, Copyrights and Repertoire Choices in the Opera House

I've been harping on my wishes and likes in opera repertoire here and on other blogs, so here is a list of facts and perceptions of what I understand about the opera world that makes me not harp too much:

Many (most?) opera companies do not own the spaces where they perform and usually pay high rents for them....There is a limited number of performance spaces suitable for opera in the area, especially in Baltimore (but one or more old theaters in Baltimore have been considered for remodeling)....Some prime performance spaces in institutions and conservatories are available only to groups that have some association with those organizations.

New opera, either recently written or older rarely performed works, can be more expensive to stage than core repertoire. There's the matter of acquiring the music in print and then devoting more rehearsal time to an unfamiliar work....Are copyrights or royalties for new works higher than for core repertoire?....Newly written operas could keep the art alive (or kill it, depending on individual works?), but choice of repertoire might be dictated by conservative tastes that provide the major donations.

An additional note: Copyrights on older works can take would-be performers and listeners by surprise. A case in point was the planned staged performance of Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale" by a group of Peabody students a few years ago. The day before the performance and after much rehearsal by both instrumentalists and vocalists, they were informed by authorities that the show could not go on, if they couldn't pay royalties owed for performing the staged work. No problems, however, if they only performed the instrumental parts, so that is what they were forced to do, and the vocalists stayed at home. I was helping a little bit behind the scenes, which is the only reason I know of this case. All parties involved were, indeed, surprised, but it was a lesson learned.

"Opera Now" May/June Issue on American Companies -- Opera Vivente Featured

I posted earlier about an elusive feature by or about Baltimore's Opera Vivente in the "Opera Now" magazine. There's a web site, but there are some articles you can't see if you're not a subscriber, so I bought the May/June issue (here at the Borders in Columbia). The cover story about opera in America begins with a focus on three small companies written by directors of the companies: Opera Vivente, Opera to Go (in Alaska) and Opera Providence (Rhode Island). Some very interesting reading is to be had in those pages, and there are side bars giving potential visitors a little more information about the companies' respective cities.

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Note: Not that I get a lot of comments here, but I decided to turn on comment moderation to keep out the spam.

Mozart's "Zaide" ~~ Fabulous Summer Opera at Wolf Trap

Sorry, if an amateur opera blogger who is new to Wolf Trap Opera gushes here a bit. This is a quick post for benefit of my blogosphere contacts and any readers in the Columbia-Baltimore area here in Maryland. I just made it back from today's expedition to the Barns at Wolf Trap, where this company performs. Not a bad little trip, as far as roads and traffic are concerned. Absolutely a superb trip as far as destination and the performance are concerned! This was the second show in Wolf Trap Opera's current run of Mozart's early operatic work, "Zaide" (tsa-ee-da). If you're looking for opera in the summer and want to see a stupendous show, this one has two more shows on June 15 and 19. Sung in German with spoken dialog in English.

The young singers are stars in the making, if not already stars, and various individual arias and ensemble scenes are impressive. (I read in the company literature today that a certain tenor who sang Almaviva in Washington's Barber this past season sang on Wolf Trap's stage in 2001.) Costumes are terrific -- Allazim's is one of the most bizarre but beautiful costumes I've seen recently. Would describing it as a cross between Papageno and Wotan work? Zaide's costume is quite alluring. The prison guards in this modern-looking production with hints of science fiction might show up in my nightmares later. I could hum the set and the lighting, too, and it should be pointed out that all this is achieved in a matter of months in comparison to other company's productions. Wolf Trap selects its singers for the upcoming summer first then decides what repertoire would be best for them. (I'm so glad a countertenor suitable for Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" later this summer appeared on the scene.)

This was my first experience of the Barns' interior. You have to go see and hear this. The interior is the original wood of ancient barns moved from another location (New England?), warts and all, and I believe I also read that this is the key to the hall's wonderful acoustics.

P.S. Mozart didn't finish this opera. The audience gets to vote during intermission on three optional endings, which must make things interesting for the cast and orchestra.

Here is the latest Wolf Trap Opera blog post with more information.

spam, spam, bots and spam

There are a couple of new comments on previous posts that are just more commercial spam. If I delete and repost one of the posts in question, I'll lose a more cherished comment with the original. (The blog managing features seem to exclude an option to delete individual comments, or I haven't found out how to delete them yet.) I think I have the right setting on my comment options to screen out riff-raff short of moderating comments myself. Any way, I apologize for any ill effects from such comments. The only comfort I can offer is to assure you that no spammers or bots will be allowed at my party on July 3.

Addendum: I am trying comment moderation after all. It means some extra key strokes by me, but it will be worth it if it keeps out the spam.

party on July 3 with the colascione, nyckelharpa and chitarra battente

I'm not sure if the event alert system on Facebook worked quite the way I thought it would, but I am having an open house at my home in Columbia Town Center on July 3. If you are associated with any of the performing groups I follow or are in the HoCo Blogs group or are just another music lover who lives nearby, and you'd like to join us, get in touch with me at farlaf2000@earthlink.net (or my other e-mail if you have it). I'll send the details to you.

I would have this event on July 4, but the traffic and parking situation so close to Columbia's fireworks location makes that impossible.

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My idea of party music is represented by a selection of CDs from my collection that includes Chris Norman's "The Man with the Wooden Flute", various discs of vihuela and lute music and John Williams and friends' various albums. I'm listening to a new CD this evening, and it's definitely my idea of party music, too. Rolf Lislevand and company have recorded a new album called "Diminuito" on ECM. This is their take -- with some departures from the way I've heard some of these pieces performed before -- on early music by composers such as Ortiz, Mudarra and the ubiquitous "Anonymus" (as spelled in the program). The ensemble includes more of those exotic instruments from the deeps of time such as we encounter in this area in groups like the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, Harmonious Blacksmith and American Opera Theater's baroque orchestras. (I read the review in the June Gramophone and found the disc at the Columbia Borders when I went hunting for it last night.)

link and discussion: A Pop Singer (Unknowingly) Sheds Light on Performing Opera

After watching Christina Aguilera on TV, Brendan Cooke of Baltimore Concert Opera muses and poses questions about attracting more people to opera. Readers are invited to join the discussion on the post in the link above.

blathering with all the windows open and the cat enjoying it on a beautiful day in June

~~next season in Washington and Baltimore~~Tim Nelson directs "Giulio Cesare"~~current state of opera in America~~those fabulous Gramophone CD interviews~~

I have to get back into the regular agenda of this blog (if it has a regular agenda), and there's just no right way to do it.

After debating with myself over full seasons and mini-seasons at Washington National Opera, I relented and bought tickets for all five operas next season (leaving out the concert performances by opera stars Florez and Terfel, though I could add them later). Just call 1-800-USOPERA! (Yes, that is WNO's real 1-800 number, if you need it.)

And I still intend to get up to Baltimore again for more opera. We know that Opera Vivente will be performing one of Donizetti's most famous operas (Lucia), Handel's "Rinaldo" and little-known Puccini ("Le Villi"). What's in store at the other companies next season? Peabody always has something interesting and different going on, but we'll just have to wait and see. I wonder if we'll get Handel's "Giulio Cesare" in Baltimore? American Opera Theater's Tim Nelson just staged it in London with different organizations. It's a different kind of a production, in the style of AOT. (WNO's "Iphigenie en Tauride" in May 2011 also will update baroque opera.) Here is a review of the London staging.

Another Baltimore-based opera director, John Bowen of Opera Vivente, speaks out in Opera Now magazine. Here is the current main editorial with quote from Bowen. The whole editorial on the current state of opera in America is vital reading, but was there a letter or article by Bowen that I missed?

Esa-Pekka Salonen discusses Stravinsky on the attached CD of Gramophone's June issue. Other recent issues had Ashkenazy discussing Rachmaninov and Gergiev discussing Tchaikovsky. Thoroughly enchanted by these interviews, besides what's inside the newly redesigned magazine, I've renewed my interrupted subscription. The interviews are worth repeated listening, and I thought Salonen on Stravinsky was particularly fascinating. (He almost bought the composer's old house in Los Angeles, too.)

Before we get to the next opera season, there's still summer opera. I'm looking forward to my first visit to Wolf Trap Opera this weekend -- that is to say, my first visit with a ticket prudently purchased in advance.

the oil spill

Friday was a real emotional rollercoaster that didn't stop completely this weekend. I returned to an old habit of buying the Friday Washington Post to avail myself of the Weekend section's guide to movies, music and other events. There were the photographs of birds in extreme distress on the front page of the paper. Of course, this is the most visible and sensational impact documented in photographs, and there is and will be much more wildlife suffering unseen, and we're not forgetting the impact on human lives along the coast. These new photographs, however, made the disaster really hit home here in my suburban Maryland hideout far from the Gulf.

It started before I went on my vacation to Asheville, NC, early in May, and I met people at the B&B who either lived close to the affected area or had changed vacation plans as a result. I was surprised to learn in the news that the oil was still spewing from the sea floor. Well, it's not as if the Earth bleeds and the bleeding eventually clots.

The headlines are everywhere, but here is a blog that's tracking developments. A recent post includes those disturbing images shot by AP photographer Charlie Riedel.

a blogger meeting tonight in Ellicott City

An interesting idea: Face time for bloggers and blog readers. I only just found out about this meeting through Tales of Two Cities in my blog roll. Two other local bloggers are hosting this event at Pure Wine Cafe on Main Street, Ellicott City, this evening.

[Thanks for the comments and update!]