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September 2007
ASO’s complete ‘La Boheme’
OPERA REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Performance repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org, 404-733-5000.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At the wrenching emotional crux of Puccini’s “La Boheme” — in the final minutes of Act 3 — the lovers Mimi and Rudolfo bicker and reconcile, then reveal to each other what might be everyone’s greatest fear: they don’t want to be alone.
It’s a ravishing few minutes of hope and pathos, although the orchestra has already confirmed that the worst scenario is inevitable, for we’ve already heard Mimi’s music run through with the icy shiver of death.
Here soprano Norah Amsellem, as the tubercular seamstress, sang exquisite pianissimos, throbbing with expression yet hushed to a whisper.
The scene was given a crystallized, hypnotizing, almost-perfect realization Thursday in Symphony Hall, as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra opened its 63rd season with a complete performance of Puccini’s 1896 masterpiece.
Instead of the statements of artistic policy that typically greet each new season — a program headlined by a symphonic standard and spiced with ear-friendly contemporary music, for example — the ASO and music director Robert Spano are recording the complete “Boheme” this weekend in “live” performances for Telarc (with a closed-door patch session Sunday evening to fix mistakes).
The evening began with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” where the ASO chorus lined the aisles, sang with full brio and gave the non-choristers among us a chance to know what it’s like to blend our voices with theirs, one of many small pleasures of the evening. (Actually, the evening began with a video advertisement from one of the ASO’s sponsors, the insidious creep of commercialization into the concert hall.)
This “Boheme,” stage-directed by James Alexander, came with a few props (tables and chairs, a wood stove), the singers in evening dress and the orchestra on stage, larger and louder than you’d typically hear in an opera pit. The singers acted the melodrama at the front, which meant they were behind the conductor’s back. They could see him via TV monitors at their feet; he could not see them, which led to many tiny problems of coordination between soloist and orchestra.
Perhaps this explains why Act 1, most of which is deliriously gorgeous, lacked drama. Tenor Marcus Haddock, as Rudolfo the poet, sang with strong pipes and a sweet voice when soft and low. Up near the ceiling of his range, it got pinched and unpleasant.
Amsellem, for all her intermittent vocal beauty, also sounded rather shrill when she had to open up for long lines of sustained intensity, which was often. Beyond their Act 3 bliss, neither singer offered much depth of personality. They gave off more light than heat.
Charisma came from the opera’s “B” couple, Musetta and Marcello. Soprano Georgia Jarman is a catch. Aggressive and sexy in manner, she had a clear, agile voice and delivered Musetta’s famous waltz as the show-stopper it’s meant to be.
Baritone Fabio Capitanucci, as Marcello the painter, likewise had the complete package: a vibrant personality, a handsome voice, a theatrical way with the texts.
The two other bohemians — bass Denis Sedov as Colline and baritone Christopher Schaldenbrand as Schaunard — also performed with distinction. Kevin Glavin had a wonderfully goofy turn as the landlord demanding the rent.
In at least one way, this “Boheme” was a milestone performance. The ASO Chorus, with about 170 members, plus the Gwinnett Young Singers, sang the opening scene of Act 2 — a gaggle of street vendors, shoppers, soldiers, parents, children and more — with the choral discipline and seismic force they’d reserve for the “Hallelujah Chorus.” It was surely the loudest and best prepared “Boheme” chorus in the 111-year history of the opera.
Orchestrally, as everyone anticipated, the performance was a revelation. As the dirt-poor bohemians burn Rudolfo’s manuscript to keep warm, the flames flicker bright in the orchestra, then we hear the flames flicker out. Or the ghostly falling snow of Act 3. Or the instant of demented terror — a full orchestral scream — when the landlord knocks. Or the final stab of Mimi’s death.
Spano revealed every nuance of Puccini’s glittery, embroidered score — every bit of it amplified in our consciousness, a performance not soon forgotten.
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Fringe Atlanta’s Most Excellent Debut
CONCERT REVIEW
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Viva la revolucion! Fringe Atlanta, the latest fine-arts group based in the affluent northern suburbs, made a stunning debut Saturday night. Despite the modest ambition suggested by the name, they positioned themselves near the center of the city’s classical music scene. They set a new standard, and I won’t be surprised to see the group, and the concept, take off.
Question is, in artistry and funding, can they sustain it?
Fringe’s aim is to present tried-and-true classical music in what might be called MTV-generation attitudes to entertainment. Advised to “Feel free to get your groove on,” the audience of about 200 people attempted this feat while listening to music by Zoltan Kodaly and Franz Schubert. The results were successful beyond all expectation.
The evening moved from buffet to main course. In the church lobby hung paintings and sketches by local artist Lori-Gene, mostly wispy, hallucinogenic images of classical musicians in motion. Mellow ambient-electronica was spun by Jennifer Mitchell, a local deejay with a serious club following. Beer and wine, served on the patio and consumed inside, helped loosen the knots that some people associate with an evening of chamber music.
Then the lights dimmed and, on a big screen over the altar, we watched a half-hour distillation of Chen Kaige’s 2002 film “Together,” charming and glib, where virtuoso violin playing is as competitive and ruthless as high school football. It got our adrenaline pumped.
Next came short video interviews, done like an info-mercial, with stylized lighting effects, on-screen graphics and conversational chatter (these little films were uncredited in the program notes). Here the performers made the case for themselves and the music.
Co-founder Fia Durrett is a 28-year-old freelance violinist who plays in the Atlanta Opera orchestra and elsewhere, like most of the others. She emphasized her pop-culture bona fides: at home, she doesn’t listen to classical music but prefers rock bands like U2 and Coldplay.
It was a savvy bit of publicity aimed at the captive audience. In this energized atmosphere Durrett and cellist Roy Harran took the stage for Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, a 1914 work of folkish Hungarian instincts and world-weariness, where an ancient culture felt itself on the precipice of extinction. (Interesting choice, given Fringe’s doctrine that classical music needs to be “rescued.”) Their playing was wonderfully alive and polished, at once detailed and with a wide-angle, cinematic sweep.
Another info-mercial introduced Schubert’s time-suspending Quintet in C, from 1828. In the lucidity of their conception, their spirituality and hunger to communicate, these five musicians — violinists Michael Heald and Durrett, violist Joli Wu and cellists Charae Krueger and Harran — put many of the moonlighting Atlanta Symphony Orchestra chamber ensembles to shame.
Yet for all the novelty of the approach, there’s nothing particularly edgy, radical or modernistic about Fringe. They aim to please with traditional artistic values. Their creative synthesis involves combining what’s normal inside a concert hall (performances of the old classics) with what’s normal in the rest of society (the TV-driven media culture). In this world, a pretty face and appealing persona is as important in selling the product as musical chops, and that’s bound to have rippling ramifications, for better and worse.
For now, though, on a relatively generous $30,000 budget, Fringe has its priorities in the right place and more concerts in preparation. Its next mixed-media event is scheduled for December 1.
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Opera Review: Love Stinks?
OPERA REVIEW
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
People who don’t go to the opera often imagine that the art form is about remote subjects with no contemporary relevance. But consider these two scenarios.
In a familiar public place, a woman whom you might recognize waits for a man she’s never met. This could lead to love, Rose imagines of her blind date. On the other hand, perhaps the guy is gay.
In another place, which could be in the distant past or the far-away future, another woman has been swept off her feet by a prince; he turns out to be a selfish lout. The morning after consummating the affair, he jilts her. Given this fella’s low quality, her suicide seems like an over reaction.
The first description is a slice of the action from “At the Statue of Venus,” a monologue for soprano and piano by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrance McNally. It premiered in 2005.
The second opera, Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” was first performed in 1689 at a girl’s school in London. It’s a cautionary tale.
To wit: “The moral,” writes Ellen T. Harris in her definitive book “Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas,” “is that young girls should not accept the advances of young men no matter how ardent their wooing or how persistent their promises.”
This before-and-after double-bill on the dating life was performed over the weekend by Capitol City Opera, a shoe-string budget troupe that, year after year and with only local talent, consistently exceeds all reasonable expectations for community opera. (“Dido” was prepared with two casts; I attended Friday night.)
Putting together the 20-minute “Venus” and the hour-long “Dido” made almost perfect sense. (Among other links overt or subtle: In Virgil’s “Aeneid,” the basis for Nahum Tate’s trenchant libretto, Aeneas’ mother is the goddess Venus.)
In “Venus,” McNally’s words sketch a woman who is emotionally complicated, self-absorbed, outwardly confident but still a vulnerable little girl inside. With a pretty, light voice and go-for-broke acting, soprano Sherri Seiden pulled it off brilliantly, at turns hilarious, neurotic, tender or on the verge of tears.
Heggie’s music — edgy or glittery or sentimental, often tuneful — is the real star. He gives the soprano freedom of self-expression with chatty, conversational phrases or long, lyrical lines.
The piano part becomes Rose’s pulse, her libido, her psyche. By constantly shifting meters and creating multiple textures moment by moment, Heggie’s piano part helps compress the action — the opera’s 20 minutes is really just an instant in Rose’s head — much like the cinematic effect of jumpy edits from a hand-held camera, or, like David Hockney’s famous Polaroid photocollages, which convey at once a static snapshot and movement.
Pianist Russell Young played the piano in “Venus” with virtuosity and insight. With equal clarity, he then conducted a six-member instrumental ensemble in “Dido and Aeneas.”
If only “Dido” had been as ideally presented. With mixed success, Michael Nutter’s staging reached for timeless elegance, drawing inspiration from scenes painted on ancient Greek kraters.
The trouble came with the mismatched love couple. Perri Montane’s Queen Dido sounded and looked a generation or more older than her Aeneas, sung by William Scott Mize, a tenor with the best legs in the cast and a thin, raspy voice. Neither got inside their character, and like everyone else in Nutter’s overly stylized production, they felt disconected from each other and from the audience. Lost were the opera’s layered themes, of nobility, fate, loyalty, sacrifice.
Still, for community opera, it was a handsome achievement, and others in the cast offered many surprises. Soprano Emily Parrott was youthful and pure as Belinda, Dido’s confidant. Laurie Swann’s Sorceress was appropriately menacing in voice and manner. Amusingly, as the witches danced, played and plotted their queen’s destruction, Nutter had them stab one another till, finally, they’d all killed each other, round-robin style.
Countertenor Clarke Harris was chillingly effective as the Spirit who tricks Aeneas into fulfilling his destiny (the founding of Rome) and thus dumping Dido — the plot twist that brought the love-sucks evening full circle.
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Atlanta, America’s New Opera Capital?
Classical Con Blasto blog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let’s see, in the month of September, residents of a major U.S. city can attend five opera productions. These include a world premiere; a local premiere of a recent work by a celebrated young composer; and three old favorites, each of them in a new production. And one of these last productions will include a famous conductor, a top orchestra, a starry cast of singers and will be recorded by an award-winning, internationally distributed label.
Are we talking Chicago, Houston, San Francisco?
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New ‘Solomon’ Opera from Sharon Willis
OPERA REVIEW Sharon Willis' "The Seduction of King Solomon." Friday at the Interdenominational Theological Center. www.americoloropera.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Talented Atlanta composers who complain they can’t get their music performed — you know who you are — should pay attention to Sharon Willis, Atlanta’s opera composer.
Seven years ago, Willis, a Clark Atlanta University music professor, formed a community troupe, Americolor Opera Alliance, for the purpose of staging her own works.
In that time, she’s been a model of industry: she’s written, produced and premiered seven evening-length operas, most of them exploring the tangled themes of ambition, racism and the African-American struggle — from Atlanta’s first black millionaire (“The Herndons”) to the slave who traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition (“The Great Divide”). In creative drive and chutzpah, no other Atlanta composer can match her.
Her latest, “The Seduction of King Solomon,” premiered Friday in the chapel of the Interdenominational Theological Center. It’s a retelling of the biblical Israelite ruler’s wisdom, splendor and his ultimate sex-and-idolatry downfall.
At three hours long, with a cast of 32 local singers, plus dancers, narrator and assorted extras, “Solomon” is a typical Willis creation: she’s made room for the whole community. Homemade costumes, screens draped with colorful fabric and a few pharaoh-era props — a golden throne, tall columns, warriors with faux-leather breastplates and feather-capped helmets — served as the visuals.
Like her earlier operas, too, Willis’ libretto is sprawling, earnest and devoid of irony. Rare among 21st century composers, it seems, she doesn’t do post-modern artifice; she doesn’t use opera to delve into psychoanalysis, philosophy or the agony and euphoria of the human spirit.
Musically, she blends traditional opera styles, spirituals, Gershwinesque songs and, in some of the slow numbers, R&B pop ballads. While no tunes stick in the head, the music is singable.
And by including West African djembe drums among her nine-musician ensemble, she rejects now-fashionable notions of pictorial authenticity: just as Bach made Christ a German Lutheran in his Passions, so Willis sets the ancient Holy Land in some idealized black America of the Deep South.
For all that, the score’s cragginess is its defining element. Like the best folk art, the whole show feels homemade, sincere, outside the mainstream.
The principal singers were uniformly appealing, if not all up to the vocal challenges. Baritone Jonathan Blanchard, as Solomon, wavered out of tune but held a commanding presence. As Queen Ameera, soprano Reisha Jones mostly pouted on stage, but she was wonderful in the aria “Am I Not the Pharoah’s Daughter?,” with its pleasing high notes and falling chromatic scales.
The opera’s musical highlight came in Solomon’s most sensational action: two harlots each claim a baby as their own; the wise king calls their bluff and offers to split the infant with a sword; the real mother sacrifices her claim to save the baby’s life.
Soprano Bernice Hogan Hall, as the honest harlot, had the best voice in the cast, powerful, clear and ringing. She sparred to great effect with Kimberly Edwards-Hall, as the lying harlot. (Interesting comparison: in George Frideric Handel’s 1749 oratorio of “Solomon,” he reveals each harlot’s character in the music, one sweet and patient, the other jumpy and neurotic. Willis depicts both woman in musical parallel, where only their words set them apart.)
Still, this potent little scene raised several questions. How would Willis’ opera sound with skilled singers and a much smaller cast? What if the operas were much shorter, with less spoken dialogue and more to-the-point arias? While offering fewer opportunities for local singers, Willis’ operatic voice might fully blossom.
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Pavarotti’s Outrageous Best
Classical Con Blasto blog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s funny how superstardom operates, isn’t it? First the artist works hard, pays attention to craft, builds a resume of transcendent accomplishments, finds a unique presence. Then, as glaring fame approaches, the gears shift and the art and craft is gradually replaced with schlocky pandering to an attention-deficit mass audience.
That was the case with the great Luciano Pavarotti, whose staggering vocal charisma — pre-Three Tenors — can be heard in a 1979 “La Boheme” in this YouTube video from 1979, conducted by the elusive genius Carlos Kleiber. Follow the links on the YouTube page and you can watch most of Act 1. Amazing singing, superlative conducting.
Also, the good folks at WABE (90.1-FM and www.wabe.org) just sent me word that tonight at 8 p.m. they’ll broadcast a two-hour tribute to Pavarotti from “Performance Today.”
5 p.m. Update: The Atlanta Opera writes: General Director Dennis Hanthorn was interviewed on CNN International this afternoon at 3:12 pm (to be exact). I’m trying to get a copy of the interview and will certainly share when I get it. He was interviewed by Stephen Frazier on the World News show and was commenting on Pavorotti’s death and what Pavarotti meant to the opera industry. Very exciting for us…”
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ASO Hires Concert Promoter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hoping to draw more lucrative acts to Chastain Park Amphitheatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has signed an exclusive, multi-year agreement with Live-360, an Indianapolis-based concert promoter that will replace the ASO’s in-house booking agent.
Live-360 also will be the sole booker for the ASO’s Verizon Wireless Amphitheater at Encore Park, a 12,000-seat pavilion in the northern suburb of Alpharetta, scheduled to open next May.
ASO President Allison Vulgamore describes the new agreement as “a chance to give our audiences a tremendous synergy of both Chastain and Verizon Wireless [amphitheater], a chance to leverage our booking muscle.”
Although a Live-360 consultant will work out of the ASO’s offices in the Woodruff Arts Center, Vulgamore adds that “the ASO isn’t giving up its responsibility for the tone and success of both venues, each with its distinct character.”
Industry analysts were surprised by the announcement, which could result in higher earnings for the ASO pops programs while watering down its unique profile.
The move eliminates the job of the ASO’s director of presentations, Rudy Schlagel, who in the past dozen years was nationally credited as one of the most successful pops and rock promoters working for an orchestra. Schlagel was also responsible for ASO pops in Symphony Hall, a role that remains vacant.
“Rudy’s time at the orchestra is coming to a close,” said Vulgamore. “He’s certainly welcome to be here with us the rest of this week.” Schlagel declined to comment for this article.
The booking-agent reorganization for Chastain is the ASO’s latest effort to improve its financial picture. With just a third of the money raised, the orchestra has shut down its campaign to build a $300 million concert hall in Midtown.
Now the ASO is addressing its rivalry with Live Nation, the country’s dominant concert and events promoter, which also books shows for the Chastain stage at the city-of-Atlanta-owned outdoor venue. (ASO-sponsored events are called “Classic Chastain.”)
Live-360? Live Nation? If those names confuse folks who simply want to enjoy a summertime Jimmy Buffett concert, the tangled history of both concert-promotion companies is positively Byzantine.
Live Nation, based in California, had been managed by Dave Lucas and owned by Clear Channel, the media conglomerate.
“Their hope was to find great synergies between [Live Nation’s] concerts and [Clear Channel’s] radio stations, which didn’t happen,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of PollStar, which tracks concert trends and earnings.
Lucas wasn’t able to produce the earnings Clear Channel wanted, says Bongiovanni, and eventually the corporate giant sold Live Nation at a considerable loss. Live Nation is now a free-standing, publicly traded company.
Lucas, meanwhile, left the company and in 2004 founded Live-360, staffing it with former Clear Channel employees. Atlanta will be the company’s largest market.
“Dave Lucas is a very savvy guy,” Bongiovanni offers. “The only odd thing about his Atlanta Symphony connection is that he’s out of Indianapolis.”
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New Trinity Baroque Plays the Hits
CONCERT REVIEW New Trinity Baroque. Saturday at Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. www.newtrintitybaroque.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Trinity Baroque, Atlanta’s most established early music group, is entering its ninth season. But a first-time listener is struck by the earnestness and engagement of the players. This concert, billed at “Best of Baroque,” featured some of the most popular pieces from past seasons, especially Handel and Bach.
A recurring theme during much of the evening was the tension between the concertmaster, Carrie Krause, who plays a baroque violin, and baroque cellist Andre Laurent O’Neil. A striking and charismatic blonde, Krause turns her playing into something resembling a dance. In the first two pieces, excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Solomon,” she was handicapped by tuning problems. But she redeemed herself through the rest of the evening, with a tone that balanced sweetness with character. Like a little two-cycle engine, she takes a while to get warmed up, and then off she goes.
O’Neil is musically her peer, as became clear in Francesco Geminiani’s Concerto in D Minor, based on Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 12. The final piece before the intermission, it became a sort of “dueling banjos” competition between Krause and O’Neil. His playing is intense and, despite being stuck behind a cello, he is almost as riveting to watch as Krause.
Two vocalists appeared as guests: Kathryn Mueller, a young soprano, and Terry Barber, a high countertenor. Mr. Barber seemed at first underpowered in the lower part of his voice, as he and Mueller sang a duet from “Solomon.” But as the evening progressed, he gained strength and confidence. When we got to Bach’s “Erbarme dich,” he was ready to take on Krause in another of the evening’s riveting rivalries.
Sacred music made up the first part of the program. After the intermission, things became secular. And that, of course, includes opera. Here, in Nicola Porpora’s “Alto Giove,” an aria from “Polifemo,” and Handel’s popular “Ombra ma fu,” an ode to a shade tree from “Serse” (with some music shared with “Messiah”), Barber demonstrated his delightfully natural soaring high register. It was easy to imagine the powerful castrati voices that once rang on the same arias.
Mueller has the kind of pure sound, with little vibrato, that is ideal for this material. Her voice was well matched to Barber’s more silvery tones, and she held her own in the duets. She showed a good sense of tragedy in Handel’s “Lascia ch’io pianga” from “Rinaldo,” one of the composer’s youthful masterpieces. But in his soprano showcase “Tornami a vagheggiar,” from “Alcina,” one of Handel’s last and most ornate operas, she struggled to reach the high notes.
Predrag Gosta, the group’s founder, conducted from the keyboards. He kept things together, mostly, and his tempi were lively and sensitive. His witty and informed comments enlivened the evening.
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