Radio silence explained by life events: I've become de facto executor for the estate of a French relative. I'll say only that it's an exacting and extremely edifying cultural experience that I would recommend to no one. Still no time for long essays, but I have attended many fine musical events and heard new talents that should not go unmentioned.   A tickler: last night the Wagner 200th birthday gala concert in Bayreuth was broadcast on the French-German ARTE TV network. After taking the stage will ...

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  Once again French TV stupifies. Tuesday night 2 1/2 hours of prime time on the major French network channel France 2 were devoted to La Grande Battle, a "reality" competition to choose the best interpreter of a theme from classical music. Nagui, the game and genial MC, clearly not a classical music lover, managed three panelists, including tenor Rolando Villazon, an orchestra of young conservatory grads lead by a cute female conductor , a genial co-host who provided music appreciation ...

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  Valery Gergiev certainly believes so. In a move to expand audience capacity and enhance the appeal of St. Petersburg, the Mariinsky Theater is set to open its new opera house just six months from now. The new theater, across the canal from the existing 19th century house, will double the seating capacity for opera and ballet while further increasing capacity with its expanded behind-the-scenes facilities. Not halfway through Naomi Lewin's interview with Maestro Gergiev, everyone in the room was plotting how to swing a ...

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  You're not going to see anything like a traditional production on the Green Hill. On the contrary, the Festspiel has a reputation for hiring the most forward-looking stage directors in the business. In a mini press conference with critics during the second intermission of Sebastien Baumgarten's controversial Tannhaüser, Eva Wagner-Pasquier declared, "We should be an example for the world in the interpretation. Of course, tradition is very good, but if you say a ‘new tradition’ it has to be ...

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  Baroque music performed by candlelight sounds better than it looks: that is, the idea is more imaginative than practical, and the musical experience is likely to be more alluring than the visual. Case in point: when I saw Cavalli's Egisto at the Opéra Comique in Paris last January, I wanted to run down from my perch in the front row of the third balcony seat and demand of Vincent Dumestre exactly what he was thinking, staging an opera in a 1250-seat house and lighting the stage only with candles? Even ...

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  The tourist map of Bayreuth immediately plunges one into the deep Bavarian world of Richard Wagner. To get to the Festspielhaus, get yourself to Kaiser Wilhelm Square, reachable via Friedrich V. Schiller Street, Karl Marx Street, or Goethe Street. From there proceed up Nibelungen Street, cross Meistersinger Street. At the junction of Parsifal Street and Tristan  Street the avenue enters the park and becomes Siegfried Wagner Allee. Instead of entering the park you can proceed to the right along Tristan Street, then turn right ...

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From a letter published in the Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1891. Long, but worth it.   "It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train--and it was the longest train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It ...

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  Bayreuth, a small town in the lush German Bavarian countryside, is famously the home of the annual Richard Wagner Festival, founded by Wagner to perform his operas according to his standards, for audiences freed from the distractions of daily life. After more than a century opera lovers still dream of making the pilgrimage, faithfully applying for tickets for years before at last gaining admission to the Promised Land. It's almost embarrassing to admit that I've had the good fortune to jump the queue by participating in an ...

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  In my fourth season of regular attendance at the Paris Opera, I've recently had some, ah, interesting experiences buying tickets. I bought a fairly last minute seat, at the box office, to a performance of Salome on September 14. I asked whether there were any discounts for regular customers but was told no, so I paid rather more than I wanted to just to satisfy my curiosity about the soprano (scroll down to read my post from 10/19/11). The show wasn't a complete disaster, but on the whole I wish I'd saved my ...

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    You've probably heard: Canadian folk-rocker and opera fan Rufus Wainwright wrote an opera. Prima Donna opened its third run in New York City Opera's production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Sunday (February 19). It's better than I expected but still a mixed bag.   It's the story of a reclusive semi-retired diva's attempted comeback in the commissioned opera which, confusingly, was both her greatest triumph and her downfall, as she lost her voice during its single performance ...

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  The expectations we carry into a performance inevitably influence our response to that event. In 2011 I spent many wonderful evenings in concert halls and theaters, but sometimes the show felt perhaps not as special as I wanted, simply because I expected so much. However, I had a number of happy surprises, when I dragged into a concert or opera almost reluctantly and the evening turned out to be quite special. So instead of a Top 10, here in chronological order are ten "sleepers": performances that I attended with little ...

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  The final Sunday performance (Nov. 27) of Siegfried at Oper Frankfurt was delayed by about 10 minutes because of "technical difficulties". Amid the politely agitated buzz that greeted the announcement I wondered whether the Met's machine ills (see previous post) were contagious. No worries--the show actually did begin within a few minutes and ran without noticeable mishap. The updated production plays with contemporary references while avoiding the gratuitously outrageous conceits.   ...

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  Flames weren't meant to rage for the entire final scene of the Met's new Siegfried, but during the scenic transition from forest to mountain, as Siegfried was about to climb through the inferno to find his well rested Brunnhilde, Robert Lepage's infamous stage machine halted mid-rotation with a tremendous crash. And there it stayed, girders criss-crossed, serving as a screen for projected flames, like a giant Yule log video. Instead of being revealed asleep in a raised clearing, Deborah Voigt finally ...

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    Opéra de Paris has done some clean-up over the summer. At the Palais Garnier a restaurant has opened in the back of the building, facing the Apple Store across the street. The controversial design features walls of undulating white marble, red upholstery, and vast expanses of glass that somehow met the approval of the historic monuments people. Food and service have pleased the critics somewhat less, though it seems to be crowded whenever I walk by. More pleasingly, the Chagall gracing the ceiling of the ...

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  My intention for this season was to move away from straight reviews, but finally I've seen a production that inspires a few words. The revival of Robert Carsen's production of Tannhäuser currently playing at Opera de Paris is that rare beast: an updating which reveals new meaning without being ridiculous.   Tannhäuser is a painter, Venus is his inspiration, and his studo, Venusberg, overflows with the fruits of his creativity--the stage is empty but for a bed, which sees plenty of ...

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  This gloss on the charming 1994 film by Michael Radford about an imagined friendship between Chilean poet Pablo Neruda exiled in Italy and the young postman who delivers his mail fit perfectly into the Châtelet's current trend toward lighter lyric programming, straddling as it does the bounderies between opera and musical theater. The third incarnation of the Los Angeles/Vienna/Châtelet production was a perfect summer interlude, chiefly as a chance to hear Placido Domingo in good voice (June 27).   ...

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  The chicken didn't rate top billing--nor any program mention, for that matter. But it came close to upstaging the rest of the cast during the second act of Les Brigands, currently playing at Opéra Comique during the third of seventh performances (seen on June 26). This was no mean feat, considering the frenetic bustle of activity generated by one of the funniest ensemble casts I've seen in this theater.   Jacques Offenbach's final opéra bouffe (a satiric genre, distinct from the ...

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Oakland ex-pat in Paris Gertrude Stein is the woman of the moment here in San Francisco, with two exhibitions in town devoted to her and her artistic milieu, so I couldn't resist cribbing her title for a discussion of Francesca Zambello's production of the Ring Cycle. In its original (and partial) incarnation at Washington's National Opera it was dubbed "A Ring for America". Now three-quarters of the way through the Cycle (which I'll be covering more fully elsewhere) I wanted to muse about just what makes this ...

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  Just a short note about Atys, as I'll be covering this show in print when Les Arts Florissants come to Brooklyn in September. Arriving with only a 6€ "sans visibilité" ticket in hand for the May 12 opening night of the Opéra Comique revival, I was thrilled to find a subscriber with an extra ticket dead center in the third balcony. It was well worth the extra investment--this is a beautiful production to see as well as hear. The theater as usual was uncomfortably stuffy and severe ...

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  Transient Glory Tenth Anniversary Concert, May 6, 2011   I first encountered these wonderful young musicians on assignment a few years ago, and I've since enjoyed their contributions to events like the 2008 Bang on A Can All Stars Marathon and the 2010 Terry Riley In C Anniversary concert in Carnegie Hall. The touchingly pure sound of young voices is irresistible to begin with; this ensemble's fearless performances of impressively difficult contemporary music is astonishing. So this isn't ...

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Every perplexing updated opera production offers an "ah-ha" moment which gives a clue to the director's original inspiration. For the Met's new Die Walküre (seen on April 28 and May 2) it's at the beginning of the third act, when the eight eponymous warrior maidens ride the undulating girders of Robert Lepage's infamous Machine, bucking like a chorus line of mechanical bulls. For the rest of the evening, the $45 million contraption leads a rambunctious and noisy life of its own, ...

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  In late January I was invited to a concert at Bargemusic, Olga Bloom's delightful floating concert hall anchored on the Brooklyn side of the East River. Mirror Visions Ensemble performed two recent song cycles, Russell Platt's From Noon to Starry Night: A Walt Whitman Cantata and Tom Cipullo's A Visit with Emily. The trek out to Brooklyn yielded many rewards, not the least of which was the enchanting venue, but I also found myself revisiting a vague question raised in the first ...

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  Demand to see the blockbuster Monet show at Paris's Grand Palais was so great that when I tried to reserve a ticket at the end of November, the only times that remained were in the wee hours of the final weekend of the exhibit. So late Sunday night I took the latest possible metro to be in time for my 1:30 a.m. January 24 viewing slot. I had plenty of company: of the 913,000 visitors to the exhibit (more than any exhibit since King Tut in 1967), an estimated 40,000 came on the final weekend.   Arriving at the ...

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  Giulio Cesare Georg Frederic Handel Libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Giacomo Francesco Bussani   Paris, Opéra Garnier   Conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm Production by Laurent Pelly (director & costumes), Chantal Thomas (sets), Joël Adam (lighting), Agathe Mélinand (dramaturg & assistant director)   With: Lawrence Zazzo (Cesare), Varduhi Abrahamyan (Cornelia), Isabel Leonard (Sesto), Natalie Dessay (Cleopatra), Christophe Dumieux (Tolomeo), ...

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  Every winter when the season programs are announced I spot a few absolutely-must-sees, a number of things that appeal, and great numbers of performances that don't interest me at all.  But fine music-making endures, and inevitably many of the best evenings come as a complete surprise. Here are ten of them, more or less.   In January I was bowled over by La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein in a most original production by Christoph Marthaler at the Stadtsteater Basel. Anne-Sofie von Otter ...

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  Laurent Pelly's 2003 production of Ariadne auf Naxos has returned to Opera Bastille for eight performances this December. I was on hand to enjoy the show on opening night, December 11.   It's a typically quirky Pelly production, with the first act set in a grand and vaguely 30s-era salon dominated by a stairway and balcony downstage left, with falling snow visible beyond an upstage row of columns; the second act takes place in an abandoned construction site, with Ariadne asleep among ...

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  Before the November 12 George London recital  at the Morgan Library I had a few minutes to peruse a heart-stopping exhibit, "Anne Morgan's War: Rebuilding Devastated France 1917-1924". The daughter of industrialist Pierpont Morgan, Anne Morgan found her life's purpose in mobilizing aid for the dispossessed of northeastern France. The Great War's unprecedented and shocking destruction, which reduced Picardy to rubble and the country folk to a life of unimaginable hardship, is vividly documented in ...

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        When did it become de rigueur to stage the fanciful and flamboyant Les Contes d'Hoffmann in a black box, like the three versions I've seen in the past year in New York, Paris, and Frankfurt? It's bad enough to have such a colorful tale rendered noir, but Oper Frankfurt's new production, directed by Dale Duesing, eliminated not only light and color (other than Arno Bremers's jewel-tone modern costumes and the back-lighting on the unit set, a bar) ...

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    After living without a TV for most of my adult life I've recently become quite addicted to the Tube. An American who doesn't follow sports, I still don't own a set at home, but in France I turn the thing on as soon as the alarm goes off. TF2's  morning show, Telematin, helps me start each day in French, and to fill in time between weather and news bulletins the program runs segments that clue me in to cultural goings on in Paris and elsewhere in the Hexagon. After ...

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  Il Trittico just completed its first run in Paris since 1987, and its very first appearance at Opéra Nationale de Paris, in Luca Ronconi's coproduction from La Scala. I thought it a mixed success: the spare, semi-abstract staging, lacked Puccini's signal specificity of place and looked even cheaper in the opera house than it did in La Scala's cinema broadcast. But it was a rare opportunity for Parisian audiences to see the trilogy, and some felicitous casting redeemed a not-so-exciting evening. ...

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    I'm a bit late weighing in on Das Rheingold at the Met, but after all the brouhaha over the new $45 million high-tech Ring production, it seems that Robert LePage and company have delivered an utterly traditional First Festival Evening in every way that matters. The saga is presented without heavy subtext, other than the PR for the unit set whose weight required costly reinforcement to the Met stage. The rotating girders and interactive projections (the latter used by Le Page to more dramatic effect ...

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  What is Nicolas Joel up to? Opéra de Paris's 2010-11 season features some intriguing new productions, repertoire rareties, and new works, but Bastille's first two shows are both Willy Decker revivals from the last century. Twice in just over a week I saw sparse unit sets decorated with a few sticks of furniture, with sweeping 19th century score and narrative shoehorned into a narrow physical and psychological framework. Decker's interiorizing approach restores something of Pushkin's original epistolary ...

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  I walk into a musical event filled with hope and anticipation: for a performance that catches fire, the discovery of a wonderful new artist, a veteran's finest hour, a peak experience. Reality rarely lives up to that exalted fantasy, but my assumption is that the artists will make their best effort to honor the music and share it with the audience. So, toi toi toi: I want them to have a good night, for the listener's sake and for their own. Thus I am not a "gotcha" critic, and I can forgive many faults in a ...

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