Reviews:
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Alex Ross, The New Yorker
- Zachary Woolfe, NY Times
- Shirley Apthorp, Financial Times
- David Karlin, Bachtrack
Previews:
- Rebecca Schmid, NY Times
- Alan Riding, NY Times
Friday, October 19, 2018
Paris Les Huguenots Media Round-Up
I'm finding a fair number of reviews of this opera and I'm behind in elaborating on my multi-opera Letter from Paris, so!
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2 comments:
I’ve often joked, with friends who also sat through it dying for a chance to escape, that Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin set my personal gold standard in buttock-aching operatic boredom. You can’t really compare Saariaho’s score with Michael Jarrell’s. It would be like comparing chalk and cheese or silk brocade (Saariaho) and sackcloth: they have nothing much in common other than that they are, each in its own way, more atmospheric than action-packed. Jarrell’s is uncompromisingly bleak: long, dark chords or clusters punctuated with outbursts of brass or percussion. The singing, mainly recitative, sometimes virtuoso to suit Barbara Hannigan’s powers, sounds almost unrelated, laid on top of the gritty undercurrents.
I see, reading the professional reviews, that I’m not alone in wondering whether it will get performed much, or be worth listening to at home once out on CD: it's been described as both monotonous and boring.
I love both L'Amour de Loin (seen on HD) and Saariaho's second opera, Adriana Mater, which I reviewed at its US premiere in Santa Fe.
I hear both Jarrell and Saariaho as coming from the spectralism corner of the compositional universe, despite their divergent styles.
I did not find Bérénice either monotonous or boring. (Well, obv, given my review!)
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