Robert D. Thomas/Class Act

SAME-DAY REVIEW: Met's "Siegfried" live in HD in theaters

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD — Richard Wagner: Siegfried
Saturday, November 5, 2011 • Alhambra Renaissance 14 Theater
Encore performance: TBD
Next segment: Gotterdämerüng, telecast on Feb. 11 beginning at 9 a.m. (PST)
Information: www.metopera.org
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For reasons not explained (at least not that I have seen), the encore performance of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” telecast of Wagner’s Siegfried is listed as TBD. Part of the issue may be finding a time slot in theaters for a 5-hour-plus-long telecast. But whenever it is, you don’t want to miss it, especially if you’re a Wagner fan, so keep checking the Met’s Web site (above).

As most opera lovers know, the Met has been unveiling segments of its new production of Wagner’s four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, over the past year so, leading to three productions of the entire cycle beginning April 7, 2012 (see the Hemidemisemiquaver below).

The new production, which replaced a 20-year-old version, was designed by Canadian Robert LePage and is dominated by an extremely large, heavy (45 tons, so heavy that the Met had to install three 65-fooot steel girders to reinforce its stage), complicated and expensive apparatus known by some as “The Machine,” which uses 24 Fafner-sized metal planks that rotate, pivot, move up and down, etc. to create sets for the four operas.

As was the case with LA Opera’s Ring cycle a few years ago, things seem to be improving significantly for the Met’s Ring as it moves forward, at least based on what I saw at my local movie theater today. Part of that is due to improvements in the technology, including the addition of some striking video projections and 3D animation effects. However, those took a back seat to the music: the Met Orchestra, led by the company’s Principal Conductor, Fabio Luisi, and the cast, headed by what amounts to a Peggy Sawyer story (think of the 42nd St. movie) for American tenor Jay Hunter Morris.

Morris, who hails from Paris, Texas and speaks with a distinctive drawl (that doesn’t show up when he sings German), replaced Gary Lehman in the title role eight days before opening night when the latter came down with an undisclosed illness. Morris wasn’t exactly Sawyer (who stepped onstage as literally an overnight replacement) and this wasn’t exactly new; he actually made the same sort of rescue earlier in the year when he replaced Ian Storey in the same role for San Francisco Opera’s Ring.

Nonetheless, Morris had to get up to speed on a complicated production, mesh with cast members who were already deep into rehearsal, and get ready to sing at the Met for the first time (the opening of the telecast showed him getting lost trying to find the Met cafeteria and exclaiming at the view of the empty opera house from the orchestra pit).

The first thing to say is that Morris’ youthful good looks mean that he comes as close to what Wagner imagined for the youthful Siegfried as probably anyone. In truth, Wagner asked for the impossible; he wanted a teenager who could sing like an adult heldentenor for five or so hours, finishing with a duet with a soprano who has been resting until those climactic moments. You can get one or the other but not both, but Morris comes pretty darned close to the ideal. His voice doesn’t quite have that heldentenor ring yet but it is bright and gleaming. He held his own with Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and sang with lyrical grace whenever possible. Moreover, Morris acted the role with real sensitivity (as did Voigt) — more on that in a moment.

Perhaps more than anything, today’s telecast was another potent argument for the validity — and indeed, in some ways, the superiority — of seeing an opera in the movie theaters. I don’t want to debate the merits of seeing a production live as opposed to telecast from a sound point of view or the electricity that can leap between performer and audience in a live house on the best of days. Nonetheless, those in the theaters enjoyed some visuals that can’t possibly have been seen from most of the seats in the opera house.

Two examples: When Morris and Voigt were singing their final 35-minute duet, there was a moment when Voigt was lamenting her fate and Morris gave her a swift — almost infinitesimal — side glance of sympathy (mirth? pathos?). I doubt anyone in the Met could have seen it. Moreover, I wonder how many people in the opera house could have seen how the woodbird was “singing” in synch with soprano Modjca Erdmann (sort of a reverse Milli Vanilli); an intermission interview revealed that the singer was actually controlling the animation effect through her voice. Those were just two of many such episodes.

As usual, the intermission features were fascinating, beginning with the exhilaration being felt by the singers as the came offstage at the end of each act. A segment on Morris showed him collapsing on a couch in his dressing room at the end of Act II in dress rehearsal, pulling off the infamous ring and saying, “Here, take it!” He did the same thing, playfully, to Renée Fleming, who was the performance hostess, at the end of Act II today. A lengthy feature on Morris’ rise to this point in his career displayed a great deal of humanity from the singer — he’s still somewhat in the “don’t pinch me in case I wake up” mode.

In addition to Morris, the balance of the cast was excellent. Voigt has gotten snipes in reviews for her singing but I thought she sounded lustrous today and brought real pathos to the role of the woman who goes to sleep as a goddess 18 years earlier (as she joked in an interview — there was an 18-year-gap between when Wagner completed Act II and began Act III) and wakes up as a mortal. Moreover, she and Morris genuinely seemed smitten with each other by the final curtain (it doesn’t always happen).

Bryn Terfel sang with impressive majesty as the Wanderer; he’s clearly a worthy successor to Thomas Stewart and James Morris in the Met’s Wotan/Wanderer legacy, and if he isn’t then Eric Owens, whose dark bass voice was perfect for the malevolent Alberich, could be next in line.

Another star was Gerhard Siegel as Mime; he’s sung the role of Siegfried many times and he has that sort of voice, which was on full display as he portrayed the scheming dward. Siegel also related in an intermission that when he was singing in the Met’s 2009 presentation of the Ring, he suffered a heart attack (“The Met saved my life,” he exclaimed fervently). Hans-Peter König boomed darkly as Fafner.

The Met Orchestra remains one of the marvels of the musical world; it hasn’t lost a beat under Luisi’s ministrations. The Italian maestro moved things along briskly — the performance lasted far less than the six hours that the Met’s Web site had forecast. Luisi also showed a great deal of sensitivity in accompanying his cast and really let Wagner’s music speak for itself.

Speaking of Fafner, the Met follows in a long tradition of being unable to come up with a convincing dragon. You’d think with the amount of money being spent on this production that someone could have created something more convincing than a head with sharp teeth and a long neck. As I said, others have failed, as well. The performance did have a bear that made a brief appearance in Act I, although he looked more cuddly than ferocious.

The video projections on the 24 giant planks were striking and, in most cases, added to the drama. The video wizards managed to create an effective stream that, inexplicably, seemed to run through Mimi’s hut/cave and also added reflections in the water that showed up when Siegfried is wondering how he can be related to Mime. The projections also created a realistic forest for Act II, although Fafner’s cave was somewhat indistinguishable.

The real oddities came in Act III. The pulsating prelude was accompanied by Wotan/Wanderer stirring a lake that eventually dissolved into a glacier (ask not why). After Siegfried got through the fire surrounding the rock where Brünnhilde lay asleep (highly effective) he seemed to have trouble discerning someone lying on the rock; it was difficult to see it in the movie theater and I suspect might have been even more incomprehensible inside the Met.

All of these are minor quibbles in the grand (5-hour-plus) scheme of things. As I said, things seem to be looking up for the cycle and, as was the case in Los Angeles, I suspect that the totality of the Met’s cycle will be much greater than its individual parts that we’ve seen so far. If anyone has a few thousand dollars and wants to sponsor me, I’d love to go.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• When the Met announced it would begin telecasting operas into movie theaters, those of us on the West Coast joked that people might come in their pajamas. That certainly was possible today with a 9 a.m. start time but a good-sized crowd showed up at the Alhambra Renaissance 14 Theater.
• Considering the kvetching that occurred when LA Opera ran its cycles over a nine-day cycle (the traditional cycle — i.e., Bayreuth — usually takes six days), it’s interesting to note that the first of the Met’s Ring cycles begins April 7 and ends April 24, while the second and third cycles stretch over eight days each.
• Although James Levine is currently listed as the conductor for 2012 Ring cycles, Fabio Luisi will be conducting the performances of Gotterdämerüng, which begin January 27 (the theater telecast is slated for Feb. 11) while Levine continues to recuperate from back surgery. Stories printed yesterday said that a decision on whether Levine would conduct the cycles would be made within the next two months.
• Casts announced for the cycles also involve some interesting changes. Gary Lehman, who was replaced by Jay Hunter Morris for this Siegfried and the January-February Gotterdämerüng, is currently slated to sing the roles in the cycles. Seems a little unfair for Morris. Meanwhile, Deborah Voigt will be alternating roles with Swedish Katarina Dalayman in the three cycles.
• Morris was replacing Lehman who replaced Ben Heffner, who pulled out in February. That eventually set off a set of musical chairs that involves San Diego Opera’s production of Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick. Read about it HERE.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

SAME-DAY REVIEW: James Conlon, Yuja Wang and L.A. Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Los Angeles Philharmonic; James Conlon, conductor, Yuja Wang, pianist
Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem; Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3; Dvorak: Symphony No. 7
Friday, November 4, 2011 • Walt Disney Concert Hall
Next concerts: Tomorrow at 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m.
Info: www.laphil.com
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With Music Director Gustavo Dudamel away from Los Angeles for the balance of 2011 (he will be leading his Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela on a European tour later this month, then heading to Tel Aviv to conduct the Israel Philharmonic), the Los Angeles Philharmonic this morning began a series of concerts led by guest conductors with Los Angeles Opera Music Director James Conlon on the podium. As is usually the case for midday concerts, a large crowd showed up at Walt Disney Concert Hall, braving drizzle (which had turned to steady rain by the time the concert let out) and cool temperatures.

Hearing and seeing Conlon outside the opera pit is always welcome and this morning was no exception. Now age 61, he’s an experienced hand in symphonic repertoire (earlier in his career he was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and later of Cologne’s symphony orchestra) and one has only to read laudatory reviews from cities such as San Francisco and Chicago to know he hasn’t lost his touch. Too bad Phil management hasn’t been able to snare him for a longer stretch of engagements (can anyone spell Principal Guest Conductor?), but don’t miss out on the remaining concerts this weekend.

Conlon began with a mid-20th century piece — Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem — and worked backwards in time to Prokofiev’s third piano concerto and Dvorak’s seventh symphony. The two symphonies, as Conlon noted in a brief preconcert chat, are in the key of D — major for the Britten and minor for the Dvorak. Each was written during a period of national struggle.

It’s no surprise that Conlon elected to open with a Britten piece. Few conductors working today revere the British conductor more than Conlon, who is in the midst of a three-year-cycle of programming the English composer’s works leading up to the centenary of his birth in 2013.

L.A. Opera performed Britten’s The Turn of the Screw last season and will tackle Albert Herring next spring. One assumes that one of the big Britten operas (e.g., Peter Grimes or Billy Budd) will show up on next year’s LAO schedule (2013 also happens to be the bicentennial of the births of Verdi and Wagner, so opera companies will be awash in anniversary celebrations for the next couple of years).

Although the LAPO didn’t first perform Sinfonia da Requiem until 1971, the work is by now a well-established repertoire piece (all things are relative — this is Britten, after all). The back-story of the work is quite interesting (see some history details below in Hemidemisemiquavers).

Conlon led a compelling performance of the 20-minute work, which contains three connected movements. He sustained the gripping tension in the outer sections masterfully and kept the Dies Irae movement (with its Verdi Requiem allusions) moving along snappily. The large orchestra (the piece includes some major percussion moments) responded powerfully.

Given Conlon’s obvious affinity for Britten, I hope the Phil will sign him to conduct the composer’s War Requiem during the 2012-2013 season. Another reason would be that the 50th anniversary of that landmark piece is May 30, 2012. I could easily imagine soloists in different parts of Disney Hall, children’s chorus and chamber orchestra in the balconies, the Disney Hall organ booming, etc. Would be quite something in Disney’s acoustics, I suspect.

Yuja Wang, the 24-year-old Chinese pianist who created quite a stir at Hollywood Bowl last summer for her “little orange dress,” was the soloist in Prokofiev’s third piano concerto. To get the obvious out of the way, she was dressed this morning in a long, elegant floor-length black gown, which meant that all attention could be focused on her playing where it belongs.

Wang is a very special talent as she proved again this morning. That isn’t due to merely to her ability to race through the bravura sections of this concerto, although race she did, with hands flying up and down the keyboard through octaves, runs and glissandos. What sets her apart from other performers (and there have been several run-throughs of this concerto recently) was the sublime sense of musicality that permeated her entire performance. Even at breakneck speed, she took time to shape the whiz-bang sections and her meditative variations in the second movement were played with elegant, pearly tones. As one audience member said at intermission, “She’s more than a dress.” That she is!

Conlon took extreme care to collaborate as smoothly as possible with Wang and the orchestra, which played wonderfully and earns extra plaudits for being locked into Conlon’s tempo shifts that were necessary to accommodate the soloist. Lorin Levee’s wistful clarinet solo got things off to a scintillating start.

After intermission, Conlon and Co. gave an unhurried, majestic reading of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7. Conlon conducted without a score and connected the last three movements without pause. Under his steady hand, the performance that seemed to unfold naturally without any attempt to make the work more than it is. The orchestra, which had several principal players on vacation, delivered a first-rate performance, although there were a few moments where the ensemble’s customary rhythmic precision seemed to be lacking (those will probably evaporate in the next two concerts). Nonetheless, overall it proved to be a satisfying conclusion to an excellent program.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• Sinfonia da Requiem has quite a history, as Herbert Glass relates in his program notes (LINK). For reasons that no one seems to be able to explain, the Japanese commissioned Britten in 1940 to write a symphony for ceremonies celebrating the 2,600th anniversary of the emperor of Japan. What made this request unique (foolish?) was that Britten was an avowed pacifist while Japan was by then three years into a bloody war with China and was becoming an axis partner with Nazi Germany.

Britten wrote what amounts to a lament, with titles — Lacrymosa, Dies Irae and Requiem aeterna — (pre-approved, inexplicably, by the Japanese government) taken from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, although the work has no obvious religious overtones. Nearly a quarter-century later, Britten would merge the Mass texts with words from poet Wilfred Owen to create his “magnum opus,” War Requiem, as part of the consecration of the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral.

When Japan received the Sinfonia da Requiem commission, it was not pleased and an acrimonious exchange between embassies (i.e., not directly with Britten) ensued. Eventually the Japanese rejected the piece as unsuitable for a celebration and John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic ended up premiering the work on March 29, 1941 by at Carnegie Hall. Ironically, Britten eventually would go on to the first Japanese performance of the piece in 1956.

One other interesting note (as Glass relates): the Japanese did not request that Britten return its commissioning fee. He used it to buy his first automobile — a vintage Ford.

• Prokofiev was the soloist when the L.A. Phil first played his Piano Concerto No. 3 on February 13, 1930 with Artur Rodzinski conducting, nine years after its premiere in Chicago.

• Nathan Cole, the Phil’s first associate concertmaster who was in the first chair today, appeared to remind Conlon of the orchestra’s tradition of bowing to those seated behind the ensemble. Good catch — it’s always a nice touch.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

Five-Spot: What caught my eye on November 3, 2011

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Each Thursday morning, I list five events (actually six this week) that peak my interest, including (ideally) at least one with free admission (or, at a minimum, inexpensive tickets). And this doesn’t count the Metropolitan Opera’s HD telecast of Siegfried on Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. at theaters in the area — be forewarned: the running time is approximately six hours! (LINK).

Here’s today’s grouping:
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• Tomorrow at 11 a.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic. James Conlon, conductor; Yuja Wang, pianist
Much of the attention will, undoubtedly, be focused on what the young Chinese pianist will wear (she of the “little orange dress” notoriety — LINK) but the real story should be a wonderfully constructed program — Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 — led by LA Opera Music Director James Conlon with Wang as soloist. Tip: if you’ve never attended a morning L.A. Phil concert, this would be a great time to try it out, but check for ticket availability. Info: www.laphil.com

• Tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Alex Theatre (Glendale) and Sunday at 7 p.m. at Royce Hall (UCLA)
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra plays Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti
The six Bach Brandenburg Concerti are about as far away from Prokofiev’s 3rd (above) as you can get, but Bach’s famous sextet is indelibly linked with LACO — this will be the 51st time that the orchestra has played all or some of the pieces. Concertmaster Margaret Batjer will lead the performance from her first-chair position. Info: www.laco.org

• Sunday at 2 p.m. at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Los Angeles Opera’s Romeo et Juliette
LAO brings back its Ian Judge-created production of Gounod’s take on Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers. Tenor Vittorio Grigolo and soprano Nino Machaidze sing the title roles; Plácido Domingo conducts. A Los Angeles Times story on the young soprano is HERE. Info: www.losangelesopera.com

• Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Lang Lang in recital
What caught my eye about this concert was the program, which begins with Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-flat, continues with Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat, and Chopin’s 12 Etudes, Op. 25 — three pieces of distinctly contrasting styles that should be fascinating in the hands and mind of the young Chinese pianist (this is obviously a weekend for young Chinese pianists). Info: www.laphil.com

• Monday at 7 p.m. at Castle Press (Pasadena)
Muse-ique stops the presses
Rachael Worby continues her penchant in Muse-ique’s first year of presenting programs in unusual sites — in this case, the Doric String Quartet making its Los Angeles debut amid stacks of paper and the printing presses of this north Pasadena establishment (the musicians will be standing on the press while the audience will sit on other presses and rolls of paper).

The featured work on the evening will be a new string quartet by Southern California native Peter Knell that the composer and Worby will discuss and the Doric Quartet (which took first prize in the 2008 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition) will play. The evening will also contain movements from quartets by Haydn, Schubert and Bartok, and — given that Worby is in charge — there’s sure to be a surprise or two. Info: 626/539-7085; www.muse-ique.com

And the weekend’s “free admission” program …

Friday at 8 p.m. at Pasadena Nazarene Church
Pasadena Community Orchestra with Suzanna Guzmán as soloist
Music Director Alan Reinecke conducts a program that features one of the nation’s finest mezzo-sopranos, Suzanna Guzmán, as soloist in Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer. The program also features music by Bartok, Howard Hanson, Prokofiev and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Info: www.pcomusic.org
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.