carmina cut-ups May 16, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, soloists & recitals, the orchestra world, add a comment
We had one of those priceless moments tonight during our evening rehearsal (our first with the Portland Symphonic choir for this series) - Soprano Cyndia Sieden was singing that most gorgeous and time-stopping aria (the one that goes up to a super high D) from Carmina Burana. She had just done the slow scale up to the high D, and was at the pause before the phrase ended, and the whole hall was silent: you could have heard a pin drop - she was sounding phenomenal, and everyone didn’t want the spell to be broken, and she turned to Carlos with a slightly helpless look on her face: she’d forgotten the last six notes of the aria! Of course Carlos cracked up, followed by the orchestra, Cyndia, and the entire chorus. It was a nice moment in an otherwise hard-working rehearsal session.
I was a bit out of it for the first part of the rehearsal as I’d decided that riding my bike to work on an 85 degree evening would be fun (plus my wife had the car). It was hot and I didn’t drink enough water along the way, so I was in a bit of a daze for a while. I also learned that riding with my viola on my back is a deal-breaker: the top of the case hits the back of my helmet so I have to keep my head way down to ride. Bummer!
my rosenkavalier moment April 12, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : audio, music, opera, the orchestra world, viola, 2commentsI’ve loved Der Rosenkavalier since I first became acquainted with it during my undergraduate music history courses. What’s not to love? Great melodies, a classic love triangle, and the Vienna Philharmonic!
My favorite moment comes from the mind-blowing trio that concludes the opera (but not the cobble together suite that we’re playing this weekend) - where each of the three main characters express their differing kinds of love for each other, and engage in simultaneous soliloquies about their innermost thoughts and feelings about those forms of love. It’s a tour de force moment in opera composition, and it has few parallels, except perhaps the sextet from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.
So, the trio features as the high point of the entire opera, and the suite which we are playing this weekend at the OSO concerts. Solo strings double the vocal parts (since there are no vocalists in the suite) and there is a suspension that just happens to occur in the second viola solo part (which happens to be played by me) that I (humbly) suggest just might be the most painfully sublime note in the entire suite (except perhaps the high D that principal trumpeter Jeffrey Work is so gorgeously playing at the final climax of the trio) - you be the judge: the note happens right about 51 seconds into this minute-long clip.
Since we don’t have the advantage of voices in the suite version of the opera, I thought it might be fun to give the actual excerpt that you just heard in the form in which it’s heard in the actual opera:
To give credit where credit is due:
The first excerpt is from a performance of the suite by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Andre Previn.
The second excerpt is also the Vienna Philharmonic, this time conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The singers are Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnes Baltsa and Janet Perry.
more raves on seattle opera 08-09 season January 5, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, seattle, add a comment
Gavin Borchert shares my enthusiasm about the Seattle Opera’s 2008-2009 season, especially the Bartók/Schoenberg duo of one-act operas:
Most exciting—unbelievable, in fact—is their presentation of Robert Lepage’s production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung (Feb. 21-March 7), which I saw in Vancouver in 1998 and never dreamed would be done here. I did, however, hang on to the review I wrote:
“Bartok’s 45-minute opera is a duologue between Bluebeard and his bride Judith. In his great hall stand seven doors; one by one she demands to open them, revealing the horrors and wonders within. But behind the last are the apparitions of Bluebeard’s three previous wives, and Judith joins them to be sealed up forever as the curtain falls. In Michael Levine’s black-box set, the floor, ceiling, and walls slope up, down, and in from the proscenium to converge on a portcullised entrance at the rear of the stage—a space which both conveys the somber vastness of a castle hall and becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the psychological screws tighten. Robert Thomson’s lighting was an equal partner in the drama, from the row of illuminated keyholes in the darkness that marked the doors to the dazzling bursts of light as each one opened. Most magical was the moat at the lip of the stage, silvery waters from which the three wives rose, a stunningly beautiful effect.
“Lepage’s Schoenberg staging used the same set. In the original stage directions, a woman wanders through the woods and discovers the body of her lover, who, it is implied, she killed in an insane fit of jealousy. Lepage presented this as a flashback from the woman’s asylum cell, a hallucination decked with Dadaist details: a psychoanalyst in a chair on the wall, a floating bed, a scarlet moon.”
As long as I live, I’ll never forget the moat. “Stunningly beautiful” doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is the must-see of the season, if not the decade.
bad news from astoria January 3, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, the orchestra world, add a commentDavid Stabler reports that the Handel Festival that was to be in Astoria has been canceled. The big storm of last month may have killed the festival.
seattle opera season announced January 3, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, 1 comment so far
David Stabler has provided an outline of the upcoming ‘08-’09 season of the Seattle Opera, which begins with Aida in August. What I’m totally psyched about (and I hope I can go see) is the double bill of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Too cool!!
