The Opera Tattler

Reviews of Performances and their Audiences

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  • Opera San José’s Faust

    Pk0418faustmargueritea* Notes *
    Faust (    Act II with Michael Dailey and Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste, photograph by P. Kirk) opened at Opera San José last night. The ambitious performance had some lovely points, but was, on the whole, rather scattershot. The orchestra, lead by David Rohrbaugh, sounded slightly lax. The overture was drawn out so that we could hear all the tunes we would be hearing later in the evening. The tempi were not too slow as much as simply lacking tension. The woodwinds did sound clear and sweet. The organ was also excellent.

    The chorus was a little patchy, perhaps the music simply demands a few more people. Evan Brummel sang Valentin well, his voice is dry but pleasant. Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste (Marguerite) has a rich, powerful sound. Her big aria, the Jewel Song, could have been more smoothly sung, and her top is a bit on the raw side. Silas Elash looked like a pirate version of Méphistophéles. His voice is strong, a little gravelly, with a great openness his higher notes. Michael Dailey’s Faust was distinctive. His nasal, somewhat petulant tone did not make the character sympathetic, but was perhaps appropriate for the role.

    The production, directed by Brad Dalton, evoked the Flemish Primitives. The backdrops recreated various paintings by Bosch, Bruegel, and the like. There was no strong sense of interior or exterior parts of the set. The cast seemed drawn to standing on whatever was highest: chairs, tables, or rickety staircases. Dalton referred to Marguerite’s dead sister throughout the opera, and used a young supernumerary to this end. The effect was eerie, but not exactly in line with the music. Four dancers were also employed as minions of Méphistophéles, pushing the action along.

    * Tattling * 
    The couple in Row M Seats 108 and 109 talked the entire evening. Otherwise the audience was supportive and engaged.

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  • Dominique Labelle Interview

    Dominique-labelle-lino-alvarezSoprano Dominique Labelle (pictured left, photograph by Lino Alvarez) is currently singing with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. She spoke with The Opera Tattler on April 17, 2012 after rehearsal in Berkeley.

    How did you start singing?
    I started singing when I was very young. When I was about 13 I played flute, piano, and guitar. At the time I was writing poems and set them to music, and just started singing that way. I didn't even know I had a voice, it just turned out that way. I always loved music, and wanted to be inside of it. Singing happens to be how I am able to do that.

    Was your family musical?
    My mother always sang in choruses, as did her mother. My father played accordion. I do have a singer in my genealogy, Emma Albani. Her grandmother was a Labelle. Albani was born in the 1840s. She studied in Italy and even sang at Covent Garden. It took a long time for her to get married, because in those days a woman had to be a mother and stay at home. She would not have been able to continue her career if she had married. She was very brave. She sang all over, in Australia and Russia. I have heard recordings of her, but of course, it was very late in her career so it is hard to tell what her voice was really like. It is remarkable, because where she was from, people were mostly farmers.

    You are from Laval, Quebec. Why is it that Canada produces so many great singers?
    I think it might be a mixture of discipline and freedom. We don't have the constraints of tradition that perhaps effects the Europeans. We might not have the same pressures of making money as Americans do. But there are many great singers from different places.

    How did you find yourself living in Central Massachusetts?
    I went to Tanglewood Music Center in 1986 and met Phyllis Curtin. I wanted to really study with her, and was able to get a scholarship to attend Boston University. I moved to Massachusetts in 1988. I met my husband at school, he is a tenor. We did those love scenes over and over and it got us in trouble!

    You sing a lot of Baroque music. What do you think of contemporary works?
    I love all music, but new music can sometimes be hard on the voice. Especially with young composers, you really have to look at the score. There might be five pages of B flats, who knows! In any case, I love to be part of the music.

    The ABA form that characterizes many Baroque arias can seem static. How do you avoid being dull?
    Remember that this music was written before radio or recordings. The ABA form is quite nice if it is the first time you are hearing a piece. It helps familiarize the listener, and when the A part comes back, it is always a little bit transformed. You have to find that difference within yourself as an artist, and it is one of the challenges of singing Baroque music.

    How is working with Philharmonia Baroque?
    Everyone is involved in putting the music together. It is a collaborative environment, like a family.

    Tell me about the piece you are singing with PBO, Alexander's Feast.
    The text adapted from a Dryden poem written for Saint Cecilia. It is beautiful music. It is not dramatic, and there is no real narrative. We are at party, and there is lots of energy, ideas, and creativity.

    You must love Handel, you sing a lot of his work.
    Handel demands your whole life! I've thought a lot about the fascinating characters in his pieces. I am always trying to figure out what shaped the story at hand, because can be so much range of emotion in the arias of a given character.

    What is next for you?
    I am off to a concert in Monterrey, Mexico. I have been traveling since the middle of December!

    What was the last movie you saw?
    I saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about Jiro Ono, the famous sushi chef who is 85 years old. It really stuck with me, how obsessed with he is with getting everything exactly right.

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  • Welser-Möst conducts Cleveland in Beethoven, Adès, & Smetana

    Cleveland-orchestra-roger-mastroianni* Notes * 
    Cleveland Orchestra (pictured left at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in 2008, photograph by Roger Mastroianni) played a second concert at San Francisco Symphony on Monday night. The program, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, began with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The soloist, Nikolaj Znaider, showed a predilection for strong contrasts. One of the cadenzas was filled with choppy, violent double stops. At other points Znaider sounded rather plaintive, and he played with the orchestra, but did not blend in with the rest of the musicians. The horns lacked clarity in their first entrance but otherwise played perfectly well. The second half of the night featured Dances from Powder Her Face by Adès. The pieces were fun to listen to and looked fun to play. The evening ended with the first half of Smetana’s Má vlast. The two harps that began Vyšehrad seemed almost scarily together. Vltava flowed, danced, and sparkled. The brass played nicely in Šárka.

    * Tattling * 
    There was light, excited talking during the Adès.

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  • Welser-Möst conducts Cleveland in Mendelssohn, Saariaho, & Shostakovich

    Franz-welser-moest* Notes * 
    Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst (pictured left, photograph by Roger Mastroianni), played the first of a two night residency at San Francisco Symphony yesterday. The performance started with Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, Scottish. The quiet parts were restrained and tasteful, the louder parts appropriately ponderous. The musicians played rather smoothly. After the intermission came the more interesting pieces, beginning with Saariaho's Orion, which Cleveland Orchestra commissioned a decade ago. The first movement, with the title "Memento mori," was a bit like a spectral, somewhat demented music box. The second movement ("Winter Sky") was more subdued, and the final one ("Hunter") spiraled in a dizzying fashion. The concert ended with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6. The Largo was mysterious, the sound from the orchestra tense and together. The Allegro was bright, and the Presto exhilarating.

    * Tattling * 
    The audience was fairly quiet for most of the evening. A metallic noise in the Orchestra Level, near Row A Seats 6 and 8 was heard during the last movement of the Mendelssohn. An elderly couple in Row G Seats 111 and 112 spoke during the Shostakovich.

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  • Love/Hate Premiere at ODC Theater

    Adlers 1* Notes *
    Love/Hate, a chamber opera by composer Jack Perla and librettist Rob Bailis, premiered to a sold-out ODC Theater on Thursday night. The collaboration between ODC Theater, American Opera Projects, and Music Without Walls features the San Francisco Opera Center's Adler Fellows singing, playing, and even conducting. The piece calls for only four musicians: a violinist, a cellist, a clarinetist, and a pianist. Likewise there are only four singers, each a different voice type. Conductor David Hanlon kept everyone together with grace.

    The singing was all quite powerful. Tenor Thomas Glenn was clear and his movements smooth. Soprano Marina Boudart Harris was winsome. Ao Li (baritone, pictured above with Laura Krumm, photograph by Laura Kudritzky) was able to switch from awkward George to confident Casanova without missing a beat. Laura Krumm's mezzo-soprano voice has a lightness that does not lack for volume.

    The opera itself has a wry sensibility, starting off with popular cellular phone rings, and continuing in this amusing vein for most of the evening. The words were prominent. The set, designed by Bethanie Baeyen, is effective, evoking changes in time and space with the same drollness as the libretto and music. M. Graham Smith's direction was entertaining, though the choreography from Chris Black tended toward artificial.

    * Tattling *
    The audience talked, especially during the beginning of the piece.

    A thunderstorm during the opera was audible in the theater, but it suited the piece, since it seems our protagonists are at Muni bus stop on a rainy day.

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  • Radiohead at the HP Pavilion

    Radiohead-show-san-jose-2012* Notes *
    Radiohead played a show at the HP Pavilion in San Jose on Wednesday, before heading south to Santa Barbara and Coachella. Though half of a dozen of the songs played were from The King of Limbs, the show featured works from nearly all of Radiohead's albums. The visual aspect of the performance was striking. There were many screens on wires that were arranged in a variety of ways above the stage, sometimes showing images of the performers. Thom Yorke danced quite a bit, in his characteristic fluid manner. Much of the audience was also dancing.

    * Tattling *
    The audience was very excited and there was not a lot of talking. I was befuddled that the performance was taking place in a hockey arena, and imagined what would happen if the ice were not covered.

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  • Jeff Mangum at the Fox Theater

    Jeff-mangum-show-oakland-2012* Notes *
    Jeff Mangum played the first of two shows at the Fox Theater in Oakland yesterday as part of his current West Coast tour. Mangum performed a dozen Neutral Milk Hotel songs, most from In the Aeroplane over the Sea. He also sang Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End” in the middle of the set. Various brass instrumentalists joined in on songs, including Scott Spillane, who also opened with Andrew Reiger and Laura Carter of Elf Power. A cellist joined for at least one of the pieces. Magnum has a somewhat raw, metallic voice that has reedy qualities to it as well. He urged the audience to sing along with him, and his performance was rather heartfelt and warm. Mangum gave two encores, the first consisted of “Ferris Wheel on Fire” and “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” and ended the show with “Engine.”

    * Tattling *
    The audience in the friends and family area talked rather intently, especially if the songs were not from the aforementioned Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane over the Sea.

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  • Chicago Opera Theater’s 2013 Season

    February 23- March 1 2013: Glass' The Fall of the House of Usher
    April 20-28 2013: Piazzolla's María de Buenos Aires
    September 14-22 2013: Verdi's Giovanna d’Arco

    General Director Andreas Mitisek announced Chicago Opera Theater's 2013 season today.

    Official Site

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  • Ute Lemper at SF Performances

    SFP-UteLemper-03* Notes *
    Last night Ute Lemper (pictured left), the Vogler Quartet, and Stefan Malzew made their San Francisco debut at Herbst Theatre. The performance commenced with the three of Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet (1924), played by the Vogler Quartet. Before Lemper took the stage, Malzew brought out his accordion and clarinet, and set up by the piano opposite the quartet.

    The songs began with Piaf, first "Elle fréquentait la Rue Pigalle" and then "L'accordéoniste." In between she explained the narrative of the performance, not only of the individual songs, but of a journey from Paris to Berlin and then eastwards and southwards, around the world, only to end back in Europe. She introduced the other musicians and was sure to point out that Malzew had arranged all the songs. Two Weill pieces followed, "Surabaya Johnny" from Happy End and "Mack the Knife" ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer") from The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper). These were sung with phrases in English and German, as were the Eisler songs that came next, these being "Der Graben," "Über den Selbstmord," and "Ballad vom Wasserrad." They went right into the Russian folksong "Tyomnaja Notch" ("Тeмная ночь") and ended the first half of the program with Alberstein's "Stiller Abend," sung in Yiddish. Lemper bends the vowels rather dramatically, so it is difficult to understand exactly what words she is singing. Nonetheless, she communicated the meaning of the text anyway, by her manner and movements.

    After the intermission we heard the rest of the Schulhoff piece, then Alberstein's "Ikh stey unter a Bokserboym." There were issues with the amplification, and one of the speakers hummed noisily. This was rectified for the Piazolla songs "Yo Soy Maria," "Oblivion," and "La última grela." This was perhaps the weakest part of an otherwise intensely engaging evening. Thankfully, Brel's "Chanson de Jacky," "Ne me quitte pas," and "Amsterdam" were performed with verve. The encore was a startling improvisation of Weill's "Speak Low," which featured Lemper scat singing with each of the other musicians in turn. Lemper is completely fearless. Her voice has not a trace of prettines. It is a sound that is the epitome of "jolie laide," somehow both beautiful and ugly at once, or even beautiful because of its ugliness.

    * Tattling *
    The audience clapped for each of Schulhoff's pieces. Someone may have booed during the ovation before intermission, and there was noticeable attrition after the first half. Someone else was very excited to hear Ms. Lemper, screaming "Ute" perhaps a dozen times.

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  • SFCM’s Così fan tutte

    Cosi fan tutte* Notes *
    San Francisco Conservatory of Music‘s spring opera this year is Così fan tutte (Sergio González, Kate Allen, Julie Adams, and Efraín Solís pictured left in Act I, photograph by Betsy Kershner), which opened at Cowell Theater last night. The orchestra was lead by the resident conductor of San Francisco Opera, Giuseppe Finzi, who kept the students together despite the challenges of the space. The tempi were rapid, perhaps even somewhat rushed, but the playing approached a certain crispness not usually heard in Cowell, as the pit is not ideal.

    The singers were all quite game, acting and singing with exuberance. Randall Bunnell (Don Alfonso) sounded light and fresh. Sergio González may have sung the role of Ferrando rather gingerly at times, but made it all the way through the piece without a problem. Efraín Solís sang Guglielmo with richness and volume. Julie Adams (Fiordiligi) has lovely high notes, though her low ones lack the same pleasant resonances. Kate Allen (Dorabella) has a strong, pretty voice. Soprano Maya Kherani was a charming, engaging Despina, and really hammed it up as the Doctor and the Notary.

    The production, directed by Heather Mathews, is frothy and silly. Perhaps this is most appropriate for students, but it did not leave much room for the characters to develop. The set involves various arches, pillars, and such that could be turned around or pulled here and there to change the scenes. There were a lot of whimsical details, such as apparent trios of winged jelly donuts atop each of the two arches. The choreography was similarly cute. The chorus did have some trouble marching on beat for “Bella vita militar,” but otherwise the movements and gestures all read well.

    * Tattling *
    There was some sort of frilly painted piece of wood at the beginning of Act II, Scene 1 that I was not able to make sense of, at first it seemed like a bed, but then Despina walked behind it. Perhaps it was a bathtub? In any case, I didn’t understand why Fiordiligi and Dorabella would be wearing shoes in either a bed or a bathtub.

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