Urban Shocker
Doyenne
When have I ever not?
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Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Meanwhile, back in the world of opera ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWOU6PmkgXA&eurl=http://parterre.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWOU6PmkgXA&eurl=http://parterre.com/
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
... and tomorrow night I'm off to hear a dream cast do an opera-in-concert The Magic Flute at Roy Thomson Hall:
Bernard Labadie, conductor
Karina Gauvin, soprano (Pamina)
Benjamin Butterfield, tenor (Tamino)
Joshua Hopkins, baritone (Papageno)
Aline Kutan, soprano (Queen of the Night)
Oren Gradus, bass (Sarastro)
Nathan Berg, bass-baritone (Sprecher)
Shannon Mercer, soprano (First Lady)
Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano (Second Lady)
Allyson McHardy, mezzo-soprano (Third Lady)
Rufus Müller, tenor (Monostatos)
Gillian Keith, soprano (Papagena)
Lawrence Wiliford, tenor (Second Priest/First Armed Man)
Thomas Goerz, bass-baritone (First Priest/Second Armed Man)
Gordon Nesbitt, soprano (First Spirit)
Alex Matthews, soprano (Second Spirit)
Ivan Yordanov, alto (Third Spirit)
University of Toronto MacMillan Singers
Bernard Labadie, conductor
Karina Gauvin, soprano (Pamina)
Benjamin Butterfield, tenor (Tamino)
Joshua Hopkins, baritone (Papageno)
Aline Kutan, soprano (Queen of the Night)
Oren Gradus, bass (Sarastro)
Nathan Berg, bass-baritone (Sprecher)
Shannon Mercer, soprano (First Lady)
Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano (Second Lady)
Allyson McHardy, mezzo-soprano (Third Lady)
Rufus Müller, tenor (Monostatos)
Gillian Keith, soprano (Papagena)
Lawrence Wiliford, tenor (Second Priest/First Armed Man)
Thomas Goerz, bass-baritone (First Priest/Second Armed Man)
Gordon Nesbitt, soprano (First Spirit)
Alex Matthews, soprano (Second Spirit)
Ivan Yordanov, alto (Third Spirit)
University of Toronto MacMillan Singers
TonyV
Senior Member
Took in Fidelio (Beethoven) at the opera last night. The big news is that the conductor got booed at the end by a select few patrons. More of that later.
The singing cast in this thing is stellar, in particular Adrianne Pieczonka as Leonore. Mats Algrem (Rocco), Virginia Hatfield (Marzelline), Gidon Saks (Don Pizarro) and Jon Ketilsson (Florestan). These are five really good reasons to catch this production. Singng just doesn't get better.
Staging? Yuck. I’ll say no more.
The orchestra was not up to their usual excellent standards on the night I attended. They sounded as though they were playing cardboard instruments at the start. I don’t know if it was a warm-up issue or if it is what conductor Gregor Buhl intended. Later I found intonation problems, and at the very end (chorus) I felt that he lost the whole thing.
Don’t let it be said that Toronto audiences will take just anything, there was real booing as the conductor took his bows, and he noticed it. Pieczonka and Algrem both drew enormous applause taking their bows.
The singing cast in this thing is stellar, in particular Adrianne Pieczonka as Leonore. Mats Algrem (Rocco), Virginia Hatfield (Marzelline), Gidon Saks (Don Pizarro) and Jon Ketilsson (Florestan). These are five really good reasons to catch this production. Singng just doesn't get better.
Staging? Yuck. I’ll say no more.
The orchestra was not up to their usual excellent standards on the night I attended. They sounded as though they were playing cardboard instruments at the start. I don’t know if it was a warm-up issue or if it is what conductor Gregor Buhl intended. Later I found intonation problems, and at the very end (chorus) I felt that he lost the whole thing.
Don’t let it be said that Toronto audiences will take just anything, there was real booing as the conductor took his bows, and he noticed it. Pieczonka and Algrem both drew enormous applause taking their bows.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I went last Saturday, opening night.
Loved the singing - Pieczonka, Almgren and Saks especially, and the acting. Saks practically chewed up the scenery with his badness, Pieczonka did the pants role with rakish aplomb, and it's always a joy when Mats hits the stage. Virginia Hatfield took a while to warm up, and was strangely quiet at first. I didn't think Ketillson had the best of nights, though he was such a last-minute addition.
The staging worked against the story, though the sets were visually arresting - those filing cabinets especially. I can't see the point in trowelling Kafka and some sort of totalitarian ( dare I use the word nazi? ) theme onto an idealistic, early Romantic plotline. Such time shifts worked well with War & Peace, but not here.
I thought the lengthy musical interlude before the last act was wonderful - respite from the annoying staging, it showcased the wonderful acoustics. The sound became three dimensional and tangible, it filled the central space of the hall and became an entity unto itself. Joy!
The end of the evening was an Up With People embarrassment - they milked us mercilessly for encores, apparently so they could get as many Germans from the co-production up on stage at the same time as was humanly possible. Just when we thought it was safe to leave, back they'd trot. I do hope Messers Neef and Debus won't allow this sort of thing to happen too often.
Loved the singing - Pieczonka, Almgren and Saks especially, and the acting. Saks practically chewed up the scenery with his badness, Pieczonka did the pants role with rakish aplomb, and it's always a joy when Mats hits the stage. Virginia Hatfield took a while to warm up, and was strangely quiet at first. I didn't think Ketillson had the best of nights, though he was such a last-minute addition.
The staging worked against the story, though the sets were visually arresting - those filing cabinets especially. I can't see the point in trowelling Kafka and some sort of totalitarian ( dare I use the word nazi? ) theme onto an idealistic, early Romantic plotline. Such time shifts worked well with War & Peace, but not here.
I thought the lengthy musical interlude before the last act was wonderful - respite from the annoying staging, it showcased the wonderful acoustics. The sound became three dimensional and tangible, it filled the central space of the hall and became an entity unto itself. Joy!
The end of the evening was an Up With People embarrassment - they milked us mercilessly for encores, apparently so they could get as many Germans from the co-production up on stage at the same time as was humanly possible. Just when we thought it was safe to leave, back they'd trot. I do hope Messers Neef and Debus won't allow this sort of thing to happen too often.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
The contrast between the staging of Fidelio last week, and Rusalka last night, was like the difference between flashy 'car crash' design ... and beauty.
With Rusalka, the set, costume and lighting design enhanced the content, rather than working against or trying to upstage it.
We sank into a watery world of enchantment, danger, sweetness, surrealism, grand guignol, black humour, mystery ...
It was the first time I've seen anyone arrive on stage in a giant, red directional arrow, dressed like a dominatrix cartoon dinosaur. It worked nicely for bad girl Jezibaba ( who had an equally startling costume change later, carrying a fluffy little doggie, in a cabaret-like scene with a transformed Water Gnome ). Water beetles descended behind a scrim, bearing nymphs in charmingly eccentric costumes. Dvorak's lush score wrapped us in a spell. There was a gorgeous mime sequence with a stage that span round and round endlessly. The fourth wall was broken - twice - to hilarious effect.
The singing was very good - Richard Paul Fink ( Water Gnome ) and Irena Mishura ( Jezibaba ) especially. Julie Makerov ( Rusalka ) was a rather wooden Donna Elvira a few months ago, but her acting's much improved since. Joni Henson ( Foreign Princess ) had a very good night - her character hit the ground running. I wasn't sure if Michael Schade golden lyric tenor suited the role of the Prince, but he was superb.
What a night.
With Rusalka, the set, costume and lighting design enhanced the content, rather than working against or trying to upstage it.
We sank into a watery world of enchantment, danger, sweetness, surrealism, grand guignol, black humour, mystery ...
It was the first time I've seen anyone arrive on stage in a giant, red directional arrow, dressed like a dominatrix cartoon dinosaur. It worked nicely for bad girl Jezibaba ( who had an equally startling costume change later, carrying a fluffy little doggie, in a cabaret-like scene with a transformed Water Gnome ). Water beetles descended behind a scrim, bearing nymphs in charmingly eccentric costumes. Dvorak's lush score wrapped us in a spell. There was a gorgeous mime sequence with a stage that span round and round endlessly. The fourth wall was broken - twice - to hilarious effect.
The singing was very good - Richard Paul Fink ( Water Gnome ) and Irena Mishura ( Jezibaba ) especially. Julie Makerov ( Rusalka ) was a rather wooden Donna Elvira a few months ago, but her acting's much improved since. Joni Henson ( Foreign Princess ) had a very good night - her character hit the ground running. I wasn't sure if Michael Schade golden lyric tenor suited the role of the Prince, but he was superb.
What a night.
taal
Senior Member
What would you guys recommend to see at the 4SC (Four seasons center). Something by the COC of course?
Particularly, something for someone (me) who hasn't seen opera (or anything like it) in his life.
I was hoping for something that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg (at night time, week nights nights are fine).
I love musicals and seen plenty of them (not so many classical ones) if that's any help.
Particularly, something for someone (me) who hasn't seen opera (or anything like it) in his life.
I was hoping for something that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg (at night time, week nights nights are fine).
I love musicals and seen plenty of them (not so many classical ones) if that's any help.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Getting a ticket can be difficult - about 75% are snapped up by subscribers before the rest go on sale to the public. There are a limited number of day-of-the-performance ( "rush" ) tickets, which can be bought at the box office. Good luck!
COC rush tickets go on sale at 11 a.m. on the day of a performance. Tickets can be purchased in person only at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Box Office, 145 Queen St. W., and are subject to availability.
When available, rush tickets are offered in the 3D/4C/5B areas of R. Fraser Elliott Hall at $20 each. Any tickets remaining in other areas of the auditorium may be purchased for half their original price.
Also:
Under 30? Buy Opera for a New Age tickets for just $20!
Approximately 150 seats are reserved in sections 3D/4C/5B for Opera for a New Age ticket buyers and student groups for each mainstage performance.
Opera for a New Age tickets go on sale at least one week before opening night. Order online, or in person at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W.
There is a limit of two tickets per person per opera. Both tickets must be used by patrons under 30 years of age with valid photo ID.
COC rush tickets go on sale at 11 a.m. on the day of a performance. Tickets can be purchased in person only at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Box Office, 145 Queen St. W., and are subject to availability.
When available, rush tickets are offered in the 3D/4C/5B areas of R. Fraser Elliott Hall at $20 each. Any tickets remaining in other areas of the auditorium may be purchased for half their original price.
Also:
Under 30? Buy Opera for a New Age tickets for just $20!
Approximately 150 seats are reserved in sections 3D/4C/5B for Opera for a New Age ticket buyers and student groups for each mainstage performance.
Opera for a New Age tickets go on sale at least one week before opening night. Order online, or in person at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W.
There is a limit of two tickets per person per opera. Both tickets must be used by patrons under 30 years of age with valid photo ID.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
As for what to see, taal, I don't think it matters. Everything will be new to you. There's no point in restricting your options. Buy some rush tickets. See as much as possible. Figure it out as you go along. Compare notes later. Some things you'll enjoy more than others.
There are three operas left in the 08/09 season.
There are three operas left in the 08/09 season.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Post review of Rusalka:
What a fish out of water learns from experience
John Keillor, National Post
Published: Tuesday, February 03, 2009
In opera, plot-pushing symbolism is a hit-and-miss affair, whether attempting to reveal the Masonic codes in Mozart's The Magic Flute, or playing down the disturbing theological pretensions of Wagner's Parsifal. In either case, the props and sets often allude to historical footnotes that baffle and alienate broader audiences.
Dmitri Bertman's staging of Dvorak's Rusalka for the Canadian Opera Company overcomes this problem by literally drawing a line between fantasy and reality as it plays out onstage. It begins with the sensual overture: a thin blue line, slowly rising from the bottom of the curtain to the top. Rusalka is a water-nymph who crosses over from her spirit world to ours so she can love a human prince, much like in Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Her impulsive decision has tragic implications that are illustrated with visual transitions from colourful, woodsy innocence to achromatic, civilized experience.
Set designer Hartmut Schorghofer's adaptation uses translucent screens, a water-filled pond and a huge rotating set to get these points across, which are always folding together in new, arresting ways that could hold their own as abstract visual art.
However, the first thing one will notice is how familiar Dvorak's music seems, even though Rusalka is rarely performed in Canada. The 1901 score is lyrically sumptuous and harmonically straightforward, with wind-heavy orchestration and arabesque melodies that conductor John Keenan illuminates as robustly as Bertman's realization of the setting.
And all the singing is equal to its accompaniment: Soprano Julie Makerov's Rusalka is heartbreaking as a wilful young forest spirit dazzled by the beauty of tenor Michael Schade's oblivious prince, whose black and white world is blind to hopeful supernatural lovers. Her father, baritone Richard Paul Fink's water gnome, patiently explains to her how pursuing this prince will lead to a sterile, geometric world she cannot survive in.
Undeterred, Rusalka gets help from a witch, mezzo Irina Mishura's Jezibaba, who lives in a coffin-like red arrow pointing upwards. She casts a spell to make the young sprite mortal, while warning her that if her lover is ever unfaithful to her, they will both be damned. Also, Rusalka will lose the ability to speak while in human form.
The prince finds the transformed Rusalka while hunting, and immediately falls in love with her. But soon Schade's credulous prince is getting bored of his mute wife, and the interloping Jezibaba seduces the naive aristocrat, dooming the couple.
Mishura's Jezibaba is a deliciously wicked villain, flirtatious and corrupt, singing with commanding vampiric gusto. She's the antipode to Fink's retiring phantom father character, who will only advise his daughter but never force his judgment upon her. Schade and Makerov, when their characters finally sing together, generate a romantic heat worthy of Tristan and Isolde.
But the really striking element to this emotional quagmire is how Jezibaba is not just a baddie. She is a manifestation of fate. And fate, as it turns out, is an interested party. We are all doomed to gain experience and to be deprived of our innocence. That process is painful, as Rusalka discovers when she loses her voice, her immortality and her sisters (who hate her for leaving them). She doesn't even get to keep the guy she gave everything up for, and she can't go back. Experience cannot be recanted. Jezibaba has a sinister appetite for her work, but she is not evil. She is inevitable. Her red arrow domicile points in one direction, the way fate does. That's life.
Symbols like this one accrue more and more meaning throughout the production. When Rusalka's father cautions her about impetuous love, for example, he uses a goldfish in a clear bowl to represent attraction. Later, when the prince is vulnerable to Jezibaba's advances, the set rolls back for a moment, and we see the father again, sadly pouring water out from a goldfish's bowl -- the pleasures of innocence being lost.
Bertman takes a rather simple story and injects it with Fellini-like significance that doesn't slow down the action or dampen the drama as Rusalka rides the line between purity and desire.
Many opera plots thrive on the complications surrounding love. Here, Bertman makes love subordinate to destiny. This fascinating manoeuvre constitutes a real adult theme. If you don't go to the opera because love stories are just too similar most of the time, then this is the show for you. The director is interested in how the same sort of romantic problems pass themselves on from generation to generation. Bertman allows us to view the mechanics of our eternal erotic tragedy. The fresh and seamless execution of this production makes it absolutely necessary viewing for opera veterans and newbies alike.
Globe review of Rusalka:
This fairy tale sings despite staging missteps
ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
February 2, 2009
Dvorak thought of himself mainly as an opera composer, and spent the last busy decade of his life writing only for the stage. Yet many fans of his symphonies and chamber music know only one little bit from his 11 operas: Rusalka's Aria to the Moon.
Rusalka is the only Dvorak opera to have legs outside Czechoslovakia, and must have been in the long-term plans of the two Czech immigrants (Nicholas Goldschmidt and Arnold Walter) who helped found the Canadian Opera Company. Sixty years later, the opera finally arrived on the stage of the company's Four Seasons Centre.
Rusalka is a "lyric fairy tale" about a water nymph who falls in love with a princely hunter who sometimes swims in her pond. She convinces a witch (Jezibaba) to make her sufficiently human to pursue him. The transformation is not reversible, and doesn't give Rusalka the power of human speech.
That last detail is one reason why Rusalka hasn't held the stage as strongly as it might. The heroine stays mute for about half the show, and doesn't sing with her prince till the very last scene.
Nonetheless, it's well worth hearing for its rich melodic score, and even for the many echoes it contains of other fairy-tale operas by other hands. The mysterious Rusalka and her baffled boyfriend are cousins of Debussy's Mélisande and Golaud, Rusalka's sister nymphs act a lot like Rhinemaidens, and Wagnerian motifs (including a six-chord sequence I think of as the "hard truths" motif) bubble up frequently.
The COC's production, rented from Theater Erfurt in Germany, features a strong cast and a recklessly imaginative staging. Tenor Michael Schade's bright, clear tone and intelligent phrasing told us things about the Prince that his rather stolid physical presence could not. Julie Makerov was better at portraying Rusalka's fearful yearning than I would have expected after her passive turn as Donna Elvira in last fall's Don Giovanni. Her warm soprano bloomed beautifully at many crucial moments.
Mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura played Jezibaba as a powerfully sensuous creature with a voice to match. She ruled the stage whenever she appeared, and not just when she had the water gnome Vodnik (sung by the superb character baritone Richard Paul Fink) twitching at the end of her fishhook.
Yes, the witch in this production is an angler, and a schemer, and a bawd, all of which might have surprised Dvorak and librettist Jaroslav Kvapil. Director Dmitri Bertman even puts Jezibaba directly in charge of Rusalka's humiliation by the malicious Foreign Princess (dramatic soprano Joni Henson, who sounds more commanding with every appearance).
The witch's comment about the rootlessness of humankind also seems to have influenced Hartmut Schorghofer's carousel stage set, which abounded in greenery and water on one side (astutely lit by Thomas C. Hase), and put the Prince in a cold, colourless world on the other. I got very tired of this carousel during the ballet, when it made four slow pirouettes that failed to shake my belief that a ballet should include dancing.
Bertman has a way of fetishizing props (a conch shell, a white necklace, the Prince's bed) that actually limits their effectiveness as visual symbols. He's also inclined to push a good idea too far, as he did when a clever piece of staging for the Gamekeeper (tenor Michael Barrett) and Turnspit (soprano Betty Allison) became pointlessly farcical the second time round. And did we really need to have Schade blunder in and lie on his back during Rusalka's famous appeal to the moon?
Corinna Crome's costuming was austere for the Prince and chorus (black and white evening wear), wildly exuberant for almost everyone else. Jezibaba wore a sparkly crimson dress slit up to the thigh, Vodnik looked like an especially flamboyant hippie, and the three wood nymphs (Teiya Kasahara, Lisa DiMaria and Erin Fisher) were well on their way to becoming insects. Two of them descended on giant flies, surely this show's most spectacular effect.
But there were many times when I found it best to focus on the assured, lyrical sounds coming from cast, chorus and orchestra, all of which were eloquently led by conductor John Keenan. Rusalka is about giving up too much of your true self in pursuit of your dream, but these performers always held on to the best of what they had to offer, even when the dream on stage went awry.
What a fish out of water learns from experience
John Keillor, National Post
Published: Tuesday, February 03, 2009
In opera, plot-pushing symbolism is a hit-and-miss affair, whether attempting to reveal the Masonic codes in Mozart's The Magic Flute, or playing down the disturbing theological pretensions of Wagner's Parsifal. In either case, the props and sets often allude to historical footnotes that baffle and alienate broader audiences.
Dmitri Bertman's staging of Dvorak's Rusalka for the Canadian Opera Company overcomes this problem by literally drawing a line between fantasy and reality as it plays out onstage. It begins with the sensual overture: a thin blue line, slowly rising from the bottom of the curtain to the top. Rusalka is a water-nymph who crosses over from her spirit world to ours so she can love a human prince, much like in Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Her impulsive decision has tragic implications that are illustrated with visual transitions from colourful, woodsy innocence to achromatic, civilized experience.
Set designer Hartmut Schorghofer's adaptation uses translucent screens, a water-filled pond and a huge rotating set to get these points across, which are always folding together in new, arresting ways that could hold their own as abstract visual art.
However, the first thing one will notice is how familiar Dvorak's music seems, even though Rusalka is rarely performed in Canada. The 1901 score is lyrically sumptuous and harmonically straightforward, with wind-heavy orchestration and arabesque melodies that conductor John Keenan illuminates as robustly as Bertman's realization of the setting.
And all the singing is equal to its accompaniment: Soprano Julie Makerov's Rusalka is heartbreaking as a wilful young forest spirit dazzled by the beauty of tenor Michael Schade's oblivious prince, whose black and white world is blind to hopeful supernatural lovers. Her father, baritone Richard Paul Fink's water gnome, patiently explains to her how pursuing this prince will lead to a sterile, geometric world she cannot survive in.
Undeterred, Rusalka gets help from a witch, mezzo Irina Mishura's Jezibaba, who lives in a coffin-like red arrow pointing upwards. She casts a spell to make the young sprite mortal, while warning her that if her lover is ever unfaithful to her, they will both be damned. Also, Rusalka will lose the ability to speak while in human form.
The prince finds the transformed Rusalka while hunting, and immediately falls in love with her. But soon Schade's credulous prince is getting bored of his mute wife, and the interloping Jezibaba seduces the naive aristocrat, dooming the couple.
Mishura's Jezibaba is a deliciously wicked villain, flirtatious and corrupt, singing with commanding vampiric gusto. She's the antipode to Fink's retiring phantom father character, who will only advise his daughter but never force his judgment upon her. Schade and Makerov, when their characters finally sing together, generate a romantic heat worthy of Tristan and Isolde.
But the really striking element to this emotional quagmire is how Jezibaba is not just a baddie. She is a manifestation of fate. And fate, as it turns out, is an interested party. We are all doomed to gain experience and to be deprived of our innocence. That process is painful, as Rusalka discovers when she loses her voice, her immortality and her sisters (who hate her for leaving them). She doesn't even get to keep the guy she gave everything up for, and she can't go back. Experience cannot be recanted. Jezibaba has a sinister appetite for her work, but she is not evil. She is inevitable. Her red arrow domicile points in one direction, the way fate does. That's life.
Symbols like this one accrue more and more meaning throughout the production. When Rusalka's father cautions her about impetuous love, for example, he uses a goldfish in a clear bowl to represent attraction. Later, when the prince is vulnerable to Jezibaba's advances, the set rolls back for a moment, and we see the father again, sadly pouring water out from a goldfish's bowl -- the pleasures of innocence being lost.
Bertman takes a rather simple story and injects it with Fellini-like significance that doesn't slow down the action or dampen the drama as Rusalka rides the line between purity and desire.
Many opera plots thrive on the complications surrounding love. Here, Bertman makes love subordinate to destiny. This fascinating manoeuvre constitutes a real adult theme. If you don't go to the opera because love stories are just too similar most of the time, then this is the show for you. The director is interested in how the same sort of romantic problems pass themselves on from generation to generation. Bertman allows us to view the mechanics of our eternal erotic tragedy. The fresh and seamless execution of this production makes it absolutely necessary viewing for opera veterans and newbies alike.
Globe review of Rusalka:
This fairy tale sings despite staging missteps
ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
February 2, 2009
Dvorak thought of himself mainly as an opera composer, and spent the last busy decade of his life writing only for the stage. Yet many fans of his symphonies and chamber music know only one little bit from his 11 operas: Rusalka's Aria to the Moon.
Rusalka is the only Dvorak opera to have legs outside Czechoslovakia, and must have been in the long-term plans of the two Czech immigrants (Nicholas Goldschmidt and Arnold Walter) who helped found the Canadian Opera Company. Sixty years later, the opera finally arrived on the stage of the company's Four Seasons Centre.
Rusalka is a "lyric fairy tale" about a water nymph who falls in love with a princely hunter who sometimes swims in her pond. She convinces a witch (Jezibaba) to make her sufficiently human to pursue him. The transformation is not reversible, and doesn't give Rusalka the power of human speech.
That last detail is one reason why Rusalka hasn't held the stage as strongly as it might. The heroine stays mute for about half the show, and doesn't sing with her prince till the very last scene.
Nonetheless, it's well worth hearing for its rich melodic score, and even for the many echoes it contains of other fairy-tale operas by other hands. The mysterious Rusalka and her baffled boyfriend are cousins of Debussy's Mélisande and Golaud, Rusalka's sister nymphs act a lot like Rhinemaidens, and Wagnerian motifs (including a six-chord sequence I think of as the "hard truths" motif) bubble up frequently.
The COC's production, rented from Theater Erfurt in Germany, features a strong cast and a recklessly imaginative staging. Tenor Michael Schade's bright, clear tone and intelligent phrasing told us things about the Prince that his rather stolid physical presence could not. Julie Makerov was better at portraying Rusalka's fearful yearning than I would have expected after her passive turn as Donna Elvira in last fall's Don Giovanni. Her warm soprano bloomed beautifully at many crucial moments.
Mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura played Jezibaba as a powerfully sensuous creature with a voice to match. She ruled the stage whenever she appeared, and not just when she had the water gnome Vodnik (sung by the superb character baritone Richard Paul Fink) twitching at the end of her fishhook.
Yes, the witch in this production is an angler, and a schemer, and a bawd, all of which might have surprised Dvorak and librettist Jaroslav Kvapil. Director Dmitri Bertman even puts Jezibaba directly in charge of Rusalka's humiliation by the malicious Foreign Princess (dramatic soprano Joni Henson, who sounds more commanding with every appearance).
The witch's comment about the rootlessness of humankind also seems to have influenced Hartmut Schorghofer's carousel stage set, which abounded in greenery and water on one side (astutely lit by Thomas C. Hase), and put the Prince in a cold, colourless world on the other. I got very tired of this carousel during the ballet, when it made four slow pirouettes that failed to shake my belief that a ballet should include dancing.
Bertman has a way of fetishizing props (a conch shell, a white necklace, the Prince's bed) that actually limits their effectiveness as visual symbols. He's also inclined to push a good idea too far, as he did when a clever piece of staging for the Gamekeeper (tenor Michael Barrett) and Turnspit (soprano Betty Allison) became pointlessly farcical the second time round. And did we really need to have Schade blunder in and lie on his back during Rusalka's famous appeal to the moon?
Corinna Crome's costuming was austere for the Prince and chorus (black and white evening wear), wildly exuberant for almost everyone else. Jezibaba wore a sparkly crimson dress slit up to the thigh, Vodnik looked like an especially flamboyant hippie, and the three wood nymphs (Teiya Kasahara, Lisa DiMaria and Erin Fisher) were well on their way to becoming insects. Two of them descended on giant flies, surely this show's most spectacular effect.
But there were many times when I found it best to focus on the assured, lyrical sounds coming from cast, chorus and orchestra, all of which were eloquently led by conductor John Keenan. Rusalka is about giving up too much of your true self in pursuit of your dream, but these performers always held on to the best of what they had to offer, even when the dream on stage went awry.
taal
Senior Member
Thanks! I'll take that advice and try to get out to one later this month.
ganjavih
Senior Member
Taal - you have six more chances each to see either Rusalka or Fidelio through the remainder of February after tonight.
In mid-March the National Ballet brings Romeo and Juliet to the FSCotPF. Ballet tickets can be easier to get. Not that the hall is empty those nights - far from it - but the ballet does not sell as much as the COC at the moment, so you might try that if you have trouble getting seats for the opera.
In April and early May the COC parts the curtains again, but this time for 3 operas to run in repertory: Simon Boccanegra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the biggie, La Bohème. I know that Shocker told you not to stop yourself from going to any opera, and I agree, but as a potential starter opera, La Bohème would be a good choice. It's the classic romantic, heartstring pulling, tear-jerker that people who don't go to operas imagine they are going to see when they go to their first opera. There are extra performances of it too, because there are a lot more people who do go to operas that only want to see that kind of opera too, so you have more chances with that.
At the end of May, the Ballet is back in the house with Giselle, and tickets are already on sale for that too. In fact by checking this out today, I see that the National Ballet's website has the very best (java based?) ticketing system I have ever seen online - it allows you to sweep through the hall seeing how many tickets are available on which levels, and then will show you every available seat and allow you to pick whichever ones you want. This makes me hate Ticketmaster all the more... unless they've changed to this this way now too. No, it wouldn't matter, I still hate Ticketmaster...
Finally, in the fall, with the new season of the COC coming to life in late September through October, you have two very interesting possibilities: Madame Butterfly is another classic in the La Bohème tradition, another one of those operas that everyone has heard of, and already heard a little of here and there... and then there is Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Other Short Fables. What's especially worth noting about it is that it will be the first time that renowned director Robert Lepage will be working with the COC since they collaborated on Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung, which was the most stunningly presented (pair of one act) opera(s) I have ever seen them do. If Nightingale turns out anything like Bluebeard, then the COC will end up lighting up stages the world again to rave reviews. I cannot wait for that one.
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Oh, and speaking of Fidelio, would any of you that have seen it care to interpret the meaning of what I call the 'triumph of the blue filing cabinets' at the end of the opera? What the bleepety bleep bleep was that bleeping about? Shocker - you may not even have seen them down in your orchestra seat, as they were turning up some high intensity lights on you at the time, so you may have been blinded.
Still, every note sung that night made up for the entirely puzzling staging.
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Still, every note sung that night made up for the entirely puzzling staging.
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Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I saw nothing.
The extremely bright lights went on. Couldn't see a damned thing.
I delivered my line: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up ..."
Rapturous applause!
I went home.
The extremely bright lights went on. Couldn't see a damned thing.
I delivered my line: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up ..."
Rapturous applause!
I went home.