Verdi: I Due Foscari. Plácido Domingo, Francesco Meli, Maria Agresta,
Maurizio Muraro, Samuel Sakker, Rachel Kelly, Lee Hickenbottom; Royal Opera
Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Antonio Pappano. Opus
Arte DVD. $29.99.
Puccini: La Rondine. Dinara
Alieva, Charles Castronovo, Alexandra Hutton, Alvaro Zambrano, Stephen Bronk;
Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin conducted by Roberto Rizzi
Brignoli. Delos DVD. $19.99.
Nicolas Kaviani: Te Deum (2005);
Tous les Matins du Monde (2014). Janáček Opera Choir and Moravian
Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Petr Vronský; Prague Mixed Chamber Choir
conducted by Jiří Petrdlík. Navona. $18.99 (CD+DVD).
Alan Beeler: The Sutton Songs;
Symphony No. 3, “Shaker Hymns”; Jabberwocky; Inhuman Henry. Navona. $14.99.
Opera performances that have
strengths and weaknesses onstage retain them on DVD, even though the DVD-viewing
experience, guided by the decisions of a video director, is quite different from
that of attending a performance and deciding where to focus one’s attention at
any given time. New DVD releases of less-known Verdi and Puccini operas provide
ample opportunity for one’s attention to wander despite the necessity of
watching just what the video displays – rather than making one’s own decision
about how to combine visual and auditory elements. Verdi’s sixth opera, I Due Foscari, is one of his darkest,
its score filled with deep brass and low strings to an extent unusual in
Verdi’s music. When well done, this is a deeply sad work, in which the
adherence of the Doge of Venice to the letter of the law leads him to turn his
back on his own son – and on justice. That was the point of Byron’s fact-based drama,
on which Verdi’s opera is based. But the point comes through with less than
total clarity in the production by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on a
new Opus Arte DVD. The problem is not with the music, which Antonio Pappano
conducts with suitable intensity and attentiveness to detail. Nor is it with Plácido Domingo, who, as the older
Foscari – the Doge, Francesco – shows himself as strong-voiced and convincing
in this baritone role as he used to be in tenor parts (although he does not
have a full, warm lower baritone range). The issue here lies more with the
younger Foscari, Jacopo (Francesco Meli), who offers appealing pathos but
little subtlety; and his wife, Lucrezia (Maria Agresta), whose wildness is
always on the verge of being overdone – and becomes so at the very end, when
she goes mad (which Verdi did not
intend) and even tries to drown one of her children, thus distracting from
Domingo’s final aria. The opera’s conclusion is tragic only by the excesses of
Romantic melodrama: both Francesco and Jacopo die of broken hearts, within minutes
of each other. But the ending can work when sufficiently well sung and well
staged. The staging by Thaddeus Strassberger, though, is the biggest disappointment
here: individuals and groups move about to no special purpose; inserted scenes
of torture are presumably supposed to be chilling but simply seem meaningless;
and both the costumes and the exaggerated, rubble-like settings draw mostly
negative attention, more or less fitting the era of the story (the 15th
century) but adding very little to the impact of the libretto or the singing.
Fans of Domingo will enjoy the DVD, which shows him doing quite well in one of
his new baritone roles, but fans of Verdi will find they are not so well
served.
Nor do Puccini fans have
much to hold onto in the Deutsche Oper Berlin version of La Rondine. A simplistic opera originally commissioned as an
operetta and dismissed by Puccini’s publisher, with some justification, as “bad
Lehár,” La Rondine is yet another of those tales of a courtesan with a
heart of gold who nobly gives up true love for the sake of the honor of her
lover’s family. It has elements not only of La
Traviata but also of Die Fledermaus,
and suffers by comparison with both. It does have some gorgeous music (and
Puccini’s only dance music), and it can work when all the main singers are
attentive to the work’s dramatic and comedic elements and the production
emphasizes the human scale of the drama. Unfortunately, few of these elements
are present in the new Delos DVD performance conducted by Roberto Rizzi
Brignoli. As the more-or-less-tragic heroine, Magda, Dinara Alieva is
smooth-voiced and convincing, but as her lover, Ruggero, Charles Castronovo is
scarcely warm or seductive enough to seem a worthwhile match – although their
final exchange, before Magda returns to her former life as the mistress of
Rambaldo (a strong, stolid Stephen Bronk), is appropriately emotional. The
work’s second couple (part of the typical design of an operetta of this
vintage) also suffers a mismatch. As Magda’s maid, Lisette, Alexandra Hutton is
appropriately spirited; but as her lover, the poet Prunier, Alvaro Zambrano
offers ragged-edged vocals and little sense of the buffo spirit of his role. And here as in the new Verdi recording,
the sets get in the way of the performance. This is Roland Villazón's Berlin
debut as stage director, and what he does with it is update the story from the
1890s to the 1920s so he can bring in surrealistic elements that do not fit at
all and are a constant distraction – notably three faceless men who lurk around
Magda at all times, as if representing the ghosts of her many past lovers and
indicating the impossibility of her finding happiness with Ruggero. The conceit
is both over-the-top and over-obvious. And there are other visual oddities, too,
such as costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s decision to have Lisette show
up at one point in a tuxedo and top hat despite the libretto’s explicit call
for her to be in a black silk coat. On top of all this, the orchestra’s playing
is subpar, with many passages so thick they sound muddy and some parts of the
score simply dragging. La Rondine is
not often performed, and it does deserve to be heard more frequently; but this
recording does it no favors.
There is a DVD as well in a
new Navona release of half an hour of music by Nicolas Kaviani – a presentation
implying high significance of both the composer and his music. Neither really
deserves so strong a focus: the 25-minute Te
Deum has interesting elements and the five-minute Tous les Matins du Monde, for 16 unaccompanied voices, shows real
skill in vocal writing, but nothing here justifies a very short full-price CD
packaged with a “making of” DVD documentary.
There is a certain grandiosity of intent and purpose here: Kaviani has
the interesting notion of turning the distinctly religious Te Deum into a secular work appropriate for a modern era that is less
accepting of the certainties of organized religion. The concept deserves praise
for its boldness even though it does not really work emotionally: those
who know the Latin words will find it
hard to accept them as humanistically directed, while those who do not may
simply find the whole experience puzzling. Kaviani certainly strives for
emotional connection here, and uses a great many classical styles to do so,
reaching back to Gregorian chant and forward to a variety of contemporary
techniques. He gets the underlying celebratory nature of the old Te Deum right, but his method of
presenting it as humanism devoid of strict religiosity comes across as more
quixotic than convincing. Tous les Matins
du Monde is actually a more successful and involving piece, its alternation
of sadness with thoughtfulness readily comprehensible and its eventual sense of
transcendence almost palpable. The performances are fine, and so is the music,
but “fine” does not really justify the unusual attention lavished on this
release.
By contrast, the vocal music
of Alan Beeler is presented in a more-standard way on another Navona CD, and is
the better for it. The CD is more reasonable in length – over 50 minutes – and
more varied in tone. The seven movements of The
Sutton Songs are settings of poetry by Dorothy Sutton, a former Beeler colleague
at Eastern Kentucky University. As sung by soprano Aliana de la Guardia with
accompaniment by pianist Karolina Rojahn, the works come across as
comparatively straightforward emotional miniatures with impressions ranging
from the tart and slightly sarcastic to the warm and lyrical. Symphony No. 3, “Shaker Hymns,” is
performed by the Choir and Orchestra of the Târgu Mureş State Philharmonic,
conducted by Ovidiu Marinescu. It explores some familiar Shaker music in
pleasantly involving ways, and never strays far from the tonality and
simplicity that continue to make these hymns moving in simple but thoughtful
ways. Some of this work – arranged in a traditional four-movement symphonic
structure of Allegro, Andante, Scherzo and Finale – bears inevitable comparison
with the music of Copland, which in some ways it distinctly and perhaps deliberately
echoes. But Beeler uses the hymns differently and with some interesting touches
in turning them into a convincing vocal symphony (and a brief one, lasting less
than 15 minutes). Also on this disc are two pleasantly quirky works whose humor
contrasts nicely with the generalized seriousness of classical vocal music. One
is Jabberwocky, to the familiar Lewis
Carroll nonsense poem, done to a fine turn by baritone Brian Church and the
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under Jiří Petrdlík. The other, Inhuman Henry, is less-known but more
intriguing. The poem here, by A.E. Houseman, is about things unexpected,
unusual and surprising. Tenor Eric Christopher Perry and the Moravian orchestra
under its more-usual conductor, Petr Vronský, revel in exploring Houseman’s
doggerel, which is about a “bloody-minded boy,” a “sanguinary lad,” who sets a
lion upon some unicorns and finds himself consumed when the lion cannot catch
them – and which ends with the admonition to “be kind to unicorns.” Tenor and orchestra present the material with
suitable gentle strangeness and amusement. Beeler here exhibits a fine sense of
fun at the chance to use atonality to tell an out-of-this-world tale; indeed,
the CD as a whole displays the composer’s skill in mixing tonal and atonal
elements in ways that allow vocal and instrumental lines alike to flourish with
their own individual and generally very effective expressivity.
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