Friday Photo (A Bit Early)

At the grave of Hector Berlioz (December 11 1803 - March 8, 1869).

His wives Harriet Smithson and Marie Recio are also buried here.

October, 2018

 

Now Streaming: Paris Opera Les Troyens

This is the production I saw three years ago in Paris, during the 350th anniversary season of the Paris Opera. It was a season of big operas, including Tristan und Isolde (the Peter Sellars "Tristan Experience," with videos by Bill Viola), Les Huguenots, and Rusalka. The cast for Troyens was something: Brandon Jovanovich, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Stéphan Degout, Christian Van Horn, and others, with a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov that I liked and found thought-provoking, though I did not like the cuts.

You can now stream this on the web site of the Opera National de Paris for $7.99. (I hope that it doesn't turn out that I need a VPN because they're in Europe.) You can read a review of the production at Mark Berry's blog Boulezian. I interviewed Jovanovich and Van Horn during the Troyens run.

Will He or Won't He?

I'm about ready to start a betting pool on whether tenor Bryan Hymel will sing any of his upcoming engagements. His cancelation history when I'm anywhere near by isn't good:

• He sang half his scheduled performances of Les Troyens in San Francisco
• He withdrew from the Santa Fe Opera Rigoletto that was scheduled immediately following Les Troyens. (He was signed up to rehearse the Duke while singing Enée - madness.)
• He withdrew from the Paris Les Huguenots ten days before opening.

A friend who saw him earlier this year in I vespri siciliani said he was wonderful until he cracked a note, and after that, he struggled.

Figuring out what the issues are is not really possible unless you're one of Hymel's intimates (his teacher, his coach, his manager, his family). Is it nerves? Vocal problems? Voice changing, as voices do? Plain old audience members have no way to know.

My personal interest in this is a plan to attend Les Troyens in February, in Paris. I'm very curious who will sing the male lead.

A Visit to Chicago 3: The Complaints Post

"Cuts? What do you mean, cuts? You cannot cut this opera!"

Actually Susan Graham (Didon) threatening the departing Brandon Jovanovich (Eneé) in Act V.

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago

You knew there would be some, right? Even in the context of a superbly performed and well-directed Troyens? Here I go.

Yes, it's about cuts, and I found them objectionable on musical and dramatic grounds. There were four, maybe five, cuts total:

1. To the ceremonial music in Act 1; the particular section cut is where Berlioz specifies something like Greek games, which would have been a religious observance. (That is not how it was done in SF; this was the section with children running around and playing Ring Around the Rosie.) H/T Rob Gordon for identifying the cut; I thought something had gone missing in Act I, but wasn't sure what.
2. All of the Act III ballet music surrounded by the chorus "Gloire a Didon," which totally jammed together the different versions of the chorus and buried the dances for the baker, the farmer, the builder, etc. Musically, this is a very damaging cut, plus it removes much of the justification for "Gloire a Didon" and the awards she makes to the different professions. We have to see what she has done for the city, which has only existed for seven years.
3. Two of the three ballet sequences in act IV before the quintet / septet / love duet, one of which provides the only upbeat music in the act other than the Royal Hunt & Storm at the very top of the act. Again H/T to Rob,  for the specific cut and for noting the musical reason for keeping the contrasting dance music.
4. They may have cut one verse of Iopas's song "O blonde Ceres" in Act IV. I wasn't counting but Rob was and thinks there might have been a cut here.
5. The two-minute scene in act V with the two Trojan sentries who really don't want to leave Carthage and their compliant mistresses. This one is defensible on no grounds whatsoever. It is short; it can be done by good local singers (Adler Fellows in SF, should have been done by the equivalents, Ryan Center singers, at LOC); it provides the only humor in a long and often-grim score; it was Berlioz's nod to Shakespeare, one of his great heroes, along with Gluck and Virgil.

The ballets they retained (the Royal Hunt and the single sequence later in Act IV) were much better danced than in SF.

My stance about cuts is mostly that composers knew what they wanted and why.* In the talk-backs after the performances, Anthony Freund, the general director of LOC, tried to defend these, but I wasn't buying what he said. 1) "Cuts in opera are always controversial" (yes - with good reason) 2) "We had to bring it in under 5 hours" (SF did this by omitting repeats in the ballet music and, I think, the second verse of "Inutile regrets".) 3) "The director and conductor agreed that these scenes didn't advance the story and could safely be cut." Well, okay, maybe they do know better than Berlioz, but I don't believe that for a minute. It is really obvious that most of the cuts were to avoid paying for dancers and a lot of ballet rehearsal time. Cutting "O blonde Ceres" and the sentry scene saved them no more than five minutes of performance time and two inexpensive singers.

I also want to mention a few bits here and there in the operatic repertory that don't exactly advance the plot, but there would be justified howls of outrage if they were cut.

• The Norn scene in Götterdämmerung. This was a routine cut at the Met before World War I, I believe.
• Also in Götterdämmerung, the short scene before the Immolation where Gutrune, wandering alone around Gibichung Hall, hear's Siegfried's horse whinny and has a premonition of what has happened. From something in John Culshaw's Ring Resounding, I think this was also a routine cut before the 1960s, except at Bayreuth.
• The Ride of the Valkyries. I mean, does it advance the plot? No, but it sets up the rest of the act nicely.
• "Vallon sonore," at the very top of Act V of Les Troyens. It doesn't advance the plot, but it does set up the sentry scene, providing a melancholy contrast to the sentries. You really can't cut this, though - can you imagine launching the act with the Trojans eagerly chatting about how Enée has finally decided it's time to leave? It's a moment of wistful repose before an emotionally fraught act.

A Visit to Chicago 2: Les Troyens

Lyric Opera Chorus, with Christine Goerke 

(Cassandre) way up at the top of the set, far right.

This is from the opening scene of the opera.

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago

More than two nine months late, but what the hey. I'd like to get this report in print for posterity. It is less a review than what I would tell a friend who hadn't been there, so um it's a lot longer than any of my published reviews. I am one lucky opera-goer, to have seen this great opera two years in a row, in very different productions.

I saw the first two performances of Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Les Troyens, and they might best be summed up as "Holy cow!" A terrific cast, great playing by the orchestra, tremendous work by the LOC Chorus, excellent conducting by Sir Andrew Davis, and mostly-on-point direction by Tim Albery made for a richly rewarding production of Berlioz's gigantic masterpiece. The production got a few things wrong, some of which I discuss here, but it also got a long stretch of the opera and some important details much more right than David McVicar's well-traveled production, which we saw last year in 2015 at SF Opera. (The other things it got wrong - the CUTS - I discuss in a separate post.)

I reviewed the SFO production for SFO, I saw it 3.5 times, and pace the late Bob Commanday, I am going to make comparisons between the two. The production differences illuminate some significant points about the opera. It is a huge piece with a large cast and, from all reports, a real bear to stage.

Albery and Lyric Opera went with a fairly austere physical production in the form of a pair of unit sets, one for Troy and one for Carthage, that were built along similar lines. The costumes were not handmade, but mostly off-the-shelf modern outfits, with credits given in the program. This makes a lot of sense, considering that LOC doesn't have a co-producing house and bore all of the costs on its own. For the more elaborate McVicar set and costumes, the costs were split up among the Royal Opera, San Francisco Opera, La Scala, and the Wiener Staatsopera. Yeah, I'm sure it's costly to ship those 20 containers of sets and scenery around the world, but in total it's gotta be a whole lot cheaper for each house than rolling its own Troyens.

In the photo at the top of this post, you can see one side of LOC's Troy set, consisting of a tall curved wall with an irregular semicircular opening at the base and with a pile of rubble to the right. The Carthage set was nearly identical, except there was no rubble, and in addition to the cut in the base, the set was equipped with some movable elements that opened and closed, providing entry points for the Trojans' first appearance, Didon's entrance toward the end of the opera, and others.

Lyric Opera's press photos don't include photos of both sets in their various configurations, or I'd put them right here. Both sets could be reversed, so that each location could have both concave and convex views of the set. Further, the production makes excellent use of the stage turntable, so that you often saw the set revolving during a scene. At the very opening of the opera, before the music starts, you see a worried-looking Cassandre looking through a cutout high in the set overlooking the giant wall; as it revolved, you saw the chorus come out for the opening and heard the music starting up. This was mirrored at the opening of the very last act, where the young sailor Hylas sang "Vallon Sonore" from a parallel cutout in the Carthage set.

The cutout at the base gets used in various ways as well. Here's the Act II scene where the ghost of Hector tells Enée to get out of dodge and head for Italy; you can see the flames of the burning city of Troy projected onto the set.

Brandon Jovanovich (Enée) and Bradley Smoak (Hector's ghost)

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

And here's Iopas singing "O blonde Ceres" to Didon and Enée, well into Act IV, in the equivalent set cutout:

Mingjie Lei (Iopas), Susan Graham (Didon), Brandon Jovanovich (Enée)

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

Both of the above shots are on the convex side of the sets. On the concave side, here's the waterfall in the Royal Hunt & Storm, complete with dancers:

Dancers; Susan Graham to the far right

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

"Nuit d'Ivresse," the Act IV love duet, with the back wall used to project stars and the planets:

Susan Graham (Didon) and Brandon Jovanovich (Enée)

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

So you might be wondering about the horse. If you saw the SFO production, you know that the McVicar has a 25-foot-tall horse - okay, a horse's head - that makes an utterly terrifying first appearance and then bursts into flames toward the end of the Troy scenes.

Copyright Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

I like spectacle as much as the next person, and hey, maybe Berlioz would have liked this. He did write a rather elaborate and spectacular scenario for the Royal Hunt and Storm! But it seems pretty clear from the libretto that he did not expect to have a Trojan horse on stage: instead, the chorus and Cassandre narrate the horse's appearance and movements through the city. LOC handled this with a fabulous projection of the horse on the convex side of the set; the chorus was stationed on a narrow bit of the stage between the set and the orchestra pit, and oh man, they were fantastic in this scene, and very, very loud. No photo, alas!

One of the most beautiful and effective parts of McVicar's staging was the long ceremonial scene in Act I, where King Priam and Queen Hecuba appear, and Andromache, Hector's widow, pays respects to the fallen Trojans with her young son. SFO doesn't have a photo of this scene for press use, but I can tell you that the set opened up and a long procession came through and then the nobles arrayed themselves on stage. Andromache was played by a dancer - it's a non-singing role - and she was magnificently eloquent. 

This is one scene where Albery made a huge mistake. That the scene was less impressively staged overall isn't the big mistake, though the comparative informality of everyone's appearance made it less impressive than it could be. No, the mistake is that when everyone has entered, King Priam washes the feet of a Trojan soldier, which was described in the talk-back after the opera as an act of humility. Introducing an element so strongly associated with Christianity into this pre-Christian and Greek-religion-oriented opera is simply wrong, striking very much the wrong note.

David Govertsen (King Priam) and the bowl of water

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

[This is where I picked up writing this review in August, 2017.]

On the other hand, there's a scene toward the very end of the opera that McVicar got wrong and Albery got right, and that's Didon's long scene when she knows that Enée has left and also that she is going to commit suicide. The McVicar production plays the previous scene, with Narbal and Anna, in front of a plain black drop curtain, at the front of the stage, exclusively to accommodate a scene change for the ceremony with the people of Carthage, Didon's final scene and suicide, and the very last chorus. It could have been done on the regular Carthage set, and that would have been much better than what we got.

Albery plays this scene out on the first Carthage set, which is austere but has a raised platform from which Didon sings both at the opening of the Carthage scenes and now at the end. His staging was amazingly well done; very simple and straightforward, but also so effective that at the second performance, even though I knew perfectly well what was coming, I was surprised when Didon committed suicide. That's a good staging. There were also fantastic horrified reactions from Christian Van Horn (Narbal) and Okka von der Damerau (Anna).

Christian Van Horn (Narbal) and Susan Graham (Didon)

"Gloire a Didon"

Noting here that Graham's outfits got less modern and more Greek as the opera progressed.

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

And on to the cast, which I would say was on par with the SFO cast, with different strengths, because with two exceptions, we had very different casts. 

The exceptions, of course, were Susan Graham as Didon, a late substitution for Sophie Koch, who withdrew from the production, and Christian Van Horn as Narbal. Narbal's role as Didon's prime minister or chief of staff (or something like that) was far clearer in this production than in the McVicar, where I feel that Narbal just spent a lot of time standing around. The costuming helped; there was a real distinction between the government (Narbal, Didon, Anna) and the citizens (chorus, not dressed in formal officewear). In SF, everybody wore beautiful robes that didn't distinguish much among the social classes. Van Horn sounded even better than in SF.

Graham gave a performance the dramatic equal of her SF performance, nobly acted and well sung, and yet....I feel that she is a bit underpowered for this part. She has said herself in an interview that her training and the roles she has accepted are mostly for high mezzo - no Carmen for her - and that this was a deliberate choice on her part. So she cannot quite muster as much power as one might want when she is raging at Enée and awaiting her own death, because this is in her lower register. Still, this is about the only flaw I can find. In the more lyrical parts of the opera, she was marvelous, particularly in the long and beautiful ensembles of Act IV and the love duet.

Christian Van Horn (Narbal) and Okka von der Damerau (Anna)

Act IV; May I say that I love her dress and want to buy a copy?

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

Speaking of distinctions, in SF Sasha Cooke, singing Anna, really did sound a great deal like Graham, so it was easy to hear them as sisters. Still, the score calls for a contralto for the part, and Okka von der Damerau, while not a contralto, does have a darker-toned voice than Graham or Cooke, so there was more vocal contrast. Probably as a result of Albery's direction, Anna's scheming to get Didon together with that handsome young Trojan was more to the fore than in SF, and she certainly came off as more Machiavellian. Von der Damerau is an excellent singer and I hope she'll get more work in the US.

Brandon Jovanovich (Enée), Annie Rosen (Ascanius), Philip Horst (Panthee)

Act I, as everything is falling apart.

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

Brandon Jovanovich, making his role debut as Enée, sang the role very, very well, handling Enée's impossible entry in Act I with aplomb and sounding good even when suffering from a slight cold in the second of the performances I saw. (I understand that he missed one performance, and Corey Bix sang it.) He was especially good in the most lyrical moments and very tender in the scenes with Ascanius, Enée's son. (He has two young sons and commented on this during one of the post-performance talk-backs.) He doesn't have quite the amazing high notes of Bryan Hymel, who also is more dashing on stage, but that is okay! Jovanovich is handsome, moves well, and generally cuts a good figure. It is a long and difficult role, and I would be very happy to see him sing it again.

Also making a role debut was Christine Goerke as Cassandre, and this was quite a spectacular debut. Vocally, the role, which is set on the low side and is very dramatic, suites her extremely well. Goerke's special power seems to be bringing human vulnerability to characters who aren't usually played that way; that was certainly the case for her Dyer's Wife at the Met and was the case here. Cassandre is cursed with the ability to foresee the future....without being believed by those around her. The McVicar production portrays her as an eerie outsider, and Anna Caterina Antonacci, who was in that production from the start, really embodied that. Goerke was more human, and more humanly vulnerable, especially in her scene with Chorebe. I think that these are both completely valid and interesting ways to play the part. (Also: can't wait to see what she does with Elektra.)

And, of course, Goerke has about twice as much voice as Antonacci, and put it to good use. She also has perhaps the most beautiful dramatic soprano voice currently to be heard, and is a tremendous actor. So we saw a truly complete assumption of the role in every way. 

Lucas Meachem (Chorebe) and Christine Goerke

Act I

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

I liked Lucas Meachem a whole lot as Chorebe. I had just seen him as Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, a slight thing. He was a strongly masculine Chorebe, a bit more rough-hewn than Biran Mulligan in SF, and that was exactly right for this production and for his relationship with Goerke's Cassandre. Annie Rosen was a lovely Ascanius, younger and shyer than Nian Wang's leggy teen in SF. 

Mingjei Lie (Iopas), Susan Graham (Didon), Brandon Jovanovich (Enée)

Act IV, "O blonde Ceres"

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

Albery's production had Iopas on stage as the royal chorus master; he conducted the chorus in "Gloire a Didon" as well as singing "O blonde Ceres" in Act IV. Mingjei Lie, a fellow at LOC's Ryan Center (the equivalent of SFO's Adler program) sang and acted perfectly well, but, well, it was luxury casting to have Rene Barbera in SF. Similarly, Jonathan Johnson was a good Hylas, without quite having the beautiful sound of SF's Chong Wang.

All other roles were ably handled; surprisingly, the best French in the cast came from Bradley Smoak, whose brief appearances as the Ghost of Hector were memorably haunting.

Bradley Smoak (Ghost of Hector)

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

The LOC Chorus worked their share of miracles in this piece. What a terrific group! Their sound was huge and beautiful, and I believe they were more precise than the SFO chorus. That's saying a lot: the SFO chorus was pretty great in this work, which has an enormous amount of choral music.

Part of the LOC Chorus, heroes

Todd Rosenberg photo, courtesy of LOC

I thought Andrew Davis pretty great, although there was something not quite right in the Troy scenes of the first performance, when for some reason the orchestra seemed less present than it ought to have been. Whatever was going on, they were fine in the second performance. Davis handled the huge forces with plenty of authority and gave the piece the special grandeur that it needs. The orchestra was mostly excellent, perhaps the horns are not as good as SFO's; I thought there were some discontinuities in the Royal Hunt & Storm's big solos, and for some reason it sure sounded as though the principal horn was in the pit rather than offstage. 

Now, it's not as though this was a perfect production. There were cuts, some of them, imo, unnecessary. I've got another post coming up on them. All around, it was a satisfying production of a great piece, well performed and certainly very well worth traveling for.

Minor Explanation

The next few posts I publish are going to be very very chronologically disjointed: they're the three posts I wrote, or started to write, after last November's trip to Chicago for a pair of, ah, very different 19th c. French operas: Massenet's Don Quichotte, which is a trifle next to Berlioz's mightly Les Troyens, the greatest of them all.

Why have I been sitting on them? I....can't remember. The Troyens post is not quite finished, so it may not turn up until tomorrow. Why am I publishing them now? Because I might as well get them published before Elektra, starring Christine Goerke, opens in two weeks.

Big thanks to Lyric Opera of Chicago, for giving me access to the press photos for both operas! And let me say that my friend Brian was absolutely right when he told me that the Civic Opera House is the most beautiful in the US. It is glorious and it also has big, comfortable seats and fine acoustics, better than the War Memorial Opera House, imo.

Hector, I Love You, But What Were You Thinking?

To SF Symphony last night for the second of three performances of Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, better known as the Requiem, Op. 5, of Hector Berlioz.

James Keller's notes for the piece are a hoot, but the first thing that caught my eye is that these performances are being done in a reduced version by conductor Charles Dutoit, who is on the podium this week. Reduced, and yet:

4 flutes, 2 oboes and 2 English horns, 4 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 8 trombones (all offstage), 3 tubas, 8 timpani (some timpanists also play percussion), bass drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tenor drum, and strings (16 1st violin, 14, 2nd violin, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 8 double basses), mixed chorus of 80 sopranos and altos, 60 tenors, 70 basses, and a tenor soloist. In addition, 4 brass ensembles positioned at the four points of the compass, consisting of N, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, and tuba, E 2 trumpets and 2 trombones, W 2 trumpets and 2 trombones, and S 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and 2 tubas.

The score also gives instructions should a performance feature more players.

In any event, holy cow, this is a bizarre piece even by Berlioz's standards. Completed in 1837, the composer revised it in 1852 and in 1866-67, so evidently....well, I'm curious about the earlier versions and might check whether the first version has ever been recorded. I mean, I am making an assumption here, that only the last version is performed and recorded these days.

As I said, it is a rather bizarre work. It is quite long at about 80 minutes, and Berlioz makes compositional choices that, shall we say, are not the obvious ones. Your typical Dies Irae is a flamethrower; see Verdi, for example. Not this one, which is hushed and slow-ish, with Berlioz holding the fireworks for the Tuba Mirum and, perhaps, Symphonie Fantastique. The text-setting is awkward and so is the vocal phrasing. Last night was the first time in a long while that I really regretted not getting a recording in advance of a performance, because I'd never heard a note of the piece, and, well. I wish I'd had an idea of what was coming.

It has some fabulous moments, some very loud, as when everybody is going at once and the only way you know there are strings is that you can see them bowing furiously, and some very quiet, as in the closing Sanctus, and some in the middle (whichever movement it is where the strings and brass do nothing for an extended period and it's just the chorus and winds). But formally, well, it is messy and awkward, the composer's immense ambition somewhat exceeding his ability to create something unified. By Les Troyens, with a great dramatic libretto to hang his fabulous music on, he'd come a long way.

I must also say that the performance itself left something to be desired. The orchestra, normally a miracle of precision, had some off moments at the beginnings of phrases. The huge chorus, consisting of the SF Symphony Chorus, Young Women's Choral Projects of San Francisco (Susan McMane, dir.), and Golden Gate Men's Chorus (Joseph Piazza, dir.) sounded as though it needed to live with the work for a good deal longer, which is one way of saying they sounded underrehearsed. There was a general lack of confidence, heads were deep in scores much of the time, and the sopranos in particular had noticeable tuning problems in exposed phrases, of which, alas, there are many.

This piece is nothing like the other big choral works in the SFS Chorus's repertory; that's a group that could probably sing the Brahms or Verdi Requiems from memory and that does amazing work on shorter and less oddball works. But it's strange enough to make the Missa Solemnis sound easy, and that is saying something.

Other opinions:

• Joshua Kosman, Chron, calls the performance anemic, and yeah, I'll go along with that. Surprising lack of energy for the number of people in the house. I found myself wondering at one point what Donald Runnicles would have done with it.

Look What Came in the Mail!

I hadn't taken volume 2c, the critical notes, out of the plastic wrap when I took the photo. Now I have to spend some time clearing space for the score in my bookcases.

The advantage of having the physical score, rather than trying to read a PDF of a deeply flawed 19th c. edition, is that, well, there it is. And on the very first page there's a line of music I had not really noticed in the PDF: the top line isn't the piccolo, it's for "doubles flute antiques," which are supposed to be on stage on the grave of Achilles. Apparently what Berlioz expected was that the oboes would play this, as can be heard on every recording of the work.

Berlioz to the North

Seattle Opera's 2017-18 season includes Beatrice et Benedict! Except that it's going to be in English (wut?). Details:

“Beatrice & Benedict,” by Hector Berlioz, opening Feb. 24, 2018: This is a locally created collaborative premiere that builds on the Berlioz framework, adding text straight from “Much Ado About Nothing.” ACT artistic director John Langs will be the stage director; Seattle Symphony music director Ludovic Morlot will conduct. To be performed in English, it will kick off the citywide “Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare” programming.

Nothing on their web site yet; the announcement is today. I'm betting that the Seattle Times forgot the meaning of "embargoed press release" and published a few hours early. H/T Opera Tattler for the Seattle Times link!

UPDATE: The Seattle Opera web site has been updated now. Here's the page for Beatrice. In other news, the RETNA/Zambello Aida production heads north for Seattle's 2017-18 season as well, complete with Brian Jagde and Leah Crocetto.

Instrumentation

Allegro con fuoco

It shouldn't be too tough to figure out what work has the following orchestration. Let's just say that some day I'd like to hear it in person with every instrument its composer calls for.  The six to eight harps would be mighty tough to wedge into the pit, I know. For St. Francois, San Francisco Opera built out a couple of platforms on the sides of the theater to house the three Ondes Martenon and the three additional mallet instruments required by that score; such a solution could work here as well.

• In the orchestra:
• Woodwinds: piccolo, 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), 4 bassoons
• Brass: 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 valve cornets, 3 trombones, ophicleide or tuba
• Percussion: timpani, triangles, bass drum, cymbals, tenor drum (caisse roulante), drum without snares (tambour sans timbre), tenor drum (tambourin), tam-tam, 2 pairs of small antique cymbals in E and F, 6 or 8 harps
• Strings

• Offstage:
  • 3 oboes
  • 3 trombones
  • Saxhorns: sopranino in B-flat (petit saxhorn suraigu en si♭), sopranos in E-flat (or valve trumpets in E-flat), altos in B-flat (or valve trumpets in B-flat), tenors in E-flat (or horns in E-flat), contrabasses in E-flat (or tubas in E-flat)
  • Percussion: pairs of timpani, several pairs of cymbals, thunder machine (roulement de tonnerre), antique sistrums, tarbuka, tam-tam

Lyric Opera Cast Change Announcement

I don't have the press release, but we'll assume that the Chicago Sun-Times isn't lying: Sophie Koch, scheduled to sing Didon, has withdrawn from the upcoming production of Les Troyens.

You can keep breathing: stepping in is

Susan Graham.

Graham was magnificent last year in SF, but I must admit that I was looking forward to Koch, about whom I have heard only good things.

Not a Minimalist Troyens

Graphic from Lyric Opera web site. I hope there will be a t-shirt.

Found on the Lyric Opera of Chicago web site, some statistics, which I quote directly:

• More than 225 acclaimed singers, dancers. and musicians performing. 
• Almost three years of design, development and construction of more than 80,000 pounds of scenery, hundreds of costumes, and countless wigs. 
• An army of theater professionals and craftspeople working behind the scenes to coordinate more than 30 automation motors during more than 100 hours of technical rehearsals.
• Running time of four hours and 55 minutes, with two intermissions, about the same time as last year's SF production, suggesting that any cuts are small.

It's the 80,000 pounds of scenery that really caught my eye: the set for the ROH / La Scala / SFO / Vienna production weighs only about 65,000 pounds. Of course, I think I forgot to ask what our steampunk, fire-breathing Trojan horse weighed.

Lyric Opera, You Tease!

Click Buy Tickets and you see this:

Click one of those date links, scroll down, and....

For anyone needing a refresher, here are my personal reasons for going: Christine Goerke, Cassandre; Brandon Jovanovich, Énée; Sophie Koch, Didon; Lucas Meachem, Chorèbe; Christian Van Horn, Narbal; Okka von der Damerau, Anna.

And the star of the show, Hector Berlioz.

Hector Berlioz Will Live Into the 24th Century

We know this because a few minutes into Star Trek: First Contact, Jean-Luc Picard, far from home, is listening to Ryland Davies sing "Vallon sonore."

h/t Steve Hicken for pointing this out to me.

Les Troyens: 3.5

Tickets and program

After some back and forth with myself, I took Wednesday, July 1, off work and went to the last Troyens performance. I also dragged a friend there, which involved offering her my ticket in the Dress Circle, buying one of two remaining seats in the orchestra, and getting my girlfriend on the phone with her to tell her that she had to go. 

At the end of the performance, she looked at me and said "Let's plan a trip to Vienna," which of course is where the McVicar production is headed next (as far as we know, because who knows which production Chicago is doing next fall). And also "I have a new favorite opera." My life's work might be done.

I also took my tickets to the next-to-last Figaro and swapped it for Troyens tickets for friends who didn't have the budget to see it. I mean, how could I not? Those signs outside the opera house saying "Once in a lifetime" might be right, given how expensive it is to stage. But I also think that this run proved that there is an audience for the opera, which is as it should be. As far as I can tell, from having looked at the ticketing page for each performance, it was pretty close to a sellout.

About that last performance: yes, Bryan Hymel did sing it, and yes, he was in great form, and so was everybody else. It was a breathtakingly great performance, with everyone giving their all, one of those performances everyone who attended will be remembering decades from now. 

I think having Hymel on stage was certainly part of it, given his star quality and magnificent singing, but also, it was the last performance of a great run, and it was an OperaVision night, with the cameras rolling. 

OperaVision exists partly to provide a closer view for the balcony audience, which is pretty damn far away from the stage, and also to capture video for possible TV or movie theater screenings. The company uses the system for three performances of each run. For Troyens, they filmed 1, 2, and 6. Presumably, they'd use primarily performances 1 and 6, because the second performance was one of those where Cassandre was sung by Michaela Martens. I saw that, and she was excellent, but Antonacci is one of the stars, so they'd use 1 or 6 for the Troy scenes with Cassandre, meaning....most of the two acts.

The company has been able to broadcast several operas each season on KQED for the last few years. Troyens has the disadvantage of taking up four hours of air time, and the advantage of being a great, great opera given a terrific run of performances. So we'll see if it turns up on TV. I certainly hope so.

Yes, I Am Planning a Trip to Chicago Next Fall.

Opera Magazine confirms a rumor I'd already heard: Les Troyens, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Fall, 2016, Brandon Jovanovich.

Cut Sheet

The recent SF Opera performances of Les Troyens lasted around 5 hours, including two intermissions totaling nearly an hour, so, four hours of music. The evening performances all started at 6 p.m. so that everybody could head out around 11 p.m.

Back in the 1960s, the company performed the work in three seasons.  Those performances started at 8 p.m., which is when typical three-hour opera performances generally started then. Let's assume that they ended around 11:30 and had two intermissions totaling 45 minutes, although I do not have timings for these performances. These assumptions imply an opera with less than three hours of music.

What could they have possibly cut? Well, I don't know for sure, but here is some speculation, after which I will ask.

• Ballet music. I myself would start here, with the dances in Act III by the laborers, the farmers, and the builders. There's a ballet in Act IV someplace before "Nuit d'ivresse." 
• But I hope they wouldn't cut the Royal Hunt & Storm, the best-known ten minutes of the opera, despite Berlioz's staging demands. Only the terrible Choudens score was available then, so I'm also curious about the placement of the Royal Hunt & Storm: at the beginning or end of Act IV?
• You could cut a verse here and there from various arias and duets, perhaps from the Didon/Anna duet in Act III. You could cut a verse from "Nuit d'ivresse," but I hope not, and possibly shorten the extremely long introduction to the scene.
• There is a little slack in the grand ceremonies of Act I; it might occur to some that you could remove the scene with Andromache and her son, who never sing a word. 
• I've heard some of a heavily-cut French concert performance that made some startling cuts in Act I. Well, startling if you've only heard this work uncut, anyway.

Les Troyens: 2.5 and Counting

Back in the fall - this seems a million years ago now - I swapped my Troyens subscription seats from a night assigned to Davida Karanas for Cassandre to one of the nights when Anna Caterina Antonacci was singing. I now wish I had not, what with Karanas leaving the production and Michaela Martens coming in, but I think I was sick or recovering from being sick that Saturday night, and anyway I did get to see Martens at the second performance.

What I did not expect, and neither did anyone else, was that star tenor Bryan Hymel would sing the first two performances, then get sick and miss the third, fourth, and fifth performances. So last Thursday, I heard Corey Bix as Enée. David Gockley came out to announce that Hymel was indisposed, which by then I had known for about two hours anyway, because when I arrived at the opera house I could see the ushers putting the announcement in the programs. Gockley mentioned that the part is "one of the five most difficult" tenor roles as a graceful way to tell us to give Bix the benefit of the doubt. 

As I've noted, there aren't very many active singers who even know this role (I count nine at most), and the ones who do know it mostly have big careers and are not available to cover each other. I suppose if Roberto Alagna were on vacation and SFO asked him to sing a couple of Troyens performances, sure, he might do it, for the glory and the paycheck. But you can't count on a famous singer's availability in this situation. (That 1983 SFO Otello where Placido Domingo flew across country on a private jet, had a police escort from the airport, and the curtain went up at 10 p.m. or something? It was opening night, and saving the day must have been irresistible.)

So yes, I am completely happy to give Bix the benefit of the doubt, and more. I give him major props for a credible performance under difficult circumstances in, yes, one of the most difficult of tenor roles. He has a sizable, hefty, dark-toned tenor; unlike Hymel, he's not a high-note singer and so Enée is not a perfect fit. (Okay, must state clearly: Enée is a perfect fit for WHO, exactly?) He paced himself carefully, a smart thing to do in this situation, and this role, and sounded good in the big duet, which calls on the tenor's lyric capabilities rather than heroic.

It was, overall, an honorable performance, and SFO is lucky to have him on hand.

For those of us who've heard both Hymel and Bix, it's also an object lesson in what makes a star. Bix is a big, tall guy, and yet he didn't present as a heroic figure; Hymel looks like a gods-driven man of action, somehow giving the impression that he is about to run off and found the Roman Empire dash across the stage and into battle when he's standing still with a sword in hand. And Hymel's vocal self-confidence and ability to pop out those high notes make a huge difference in this opera.

At least some of this is teachable; you can learn how to present with self-confidence, or more self-confidence, with various kinds of training, whether martial arts, public speaking, or acting. Bix made what looked like a self-deprecating gesture during the bows, which I took as a modest acknowledgement that he wasn't quite what the audience was hoping for. I think he is going to have a decent career, probably in the regional companies, because there certainly IS a need for reliable singers with good, beefy voices at all levels. And he has sung a few major roles with more visible companies; Bacchus at Glimmerglass, Erik with LA Opera, and so on. So keep an eye on him; maybe he will make the jump to stardom.

As for the rest of the performance, I'm still not entirely happy with Antonacci. Sitting in the dress circle, I could hear her better than in the orchestra, but her voice still seems too lyric, too small, for this role in a huge house. At the end of Act I, for example, Cassandre is obviously supposed to flood the hall with sound, but Antonacci just can't do it. "La prise de Troie" sagged a few times, and I think it might have been because Runnicles had to tone down the orchestra to properly support her without drowning her out. A friend pooh-poohed me when I mentioned her voice size as an issue, saying it's Enée and Didon who are supposed to fill the hall, but look at the great Cassandres of the past 50 years and you see a string of dramatic voices: Crespin, Verrett, Ludwig, Norman. (I have a fantasy that a certain dramatic soprano with a great lower register might be learning the role, and she would be a sensational Cassandre, based on the available evidence, including a known ability to outsing a very large orchestra.)

On the other hand, Susan Graham. Oh, man, she was even better than opening night, really heartbreaking. She cracked a couple of times in the parting scene with Enée, which reinforced what she is putting into the performance. A great, great assumption; I'm lucky to be seeing it.

More to come, because I have a ticket for Troyens no. 6.

Sellout

You'd better buy your tickets right away if you want to see Les Troyens at San Francisco Opera. For tomorrow night's performance, Thursday, June 25, there are 80 seats left; for Wednesday, July 1, there are 118. That's in a house that seats nearly 3200.

As John Marcher said the other day in his review, seeing Troyens has somehow become A Thing to Do in San Francisco. And does that ever make me happy.

Tenor Roulette

A friend said something on Facebook the other day about his upcoming Troyens ticket: So I am playing tenor roulette, then? And two of us replied, with opera, you're always playing roulette.

Yes, that's right. You just never know who will cancel or why. The last SFO Jenufa lost its Jenufa and Kostelnicka less than two months before the run. Janice Watson had just learned Eva for the SFO Meistersinger, and she had a new baby, and Jenufa was too much for her. Patricia Racette stepped in. Elizabeth Connell, scheduled for Kostelnicka, had to head for England, where her house had been burglarized. Kathryn Harries took that role.

See also: that Otello that Ben Heppner was supposed to sing here, where I think four tenors subbed for him, and the Tristan in NYC that was billed as "Heppner & Voigt, together at last!" Except that they were both in and out for most of the run.

We're now 4 performances into Troyens, and so far it's Bryan Hymel 2, Corey Bix 2. Everyone is hoping Hymel will be back on stage for performances 5 and 6; if not, Bix will be singing.

I was idly thinking of who, among living tenors, even knows the role, which is set on the high and heroic side. It's not like trying to find someone to sing Rodolfo, which is in the repertory of every lyric tenor.

Here are the lucky few, several of whom are no longer capable of singing the part, for reasons of voice, age, or health. (Several added as an update following a comment from the invaluable and well-informed Rob Gordon.)

• Jon Vickers (in his late 80s, rumored to be in poor health)
• Giorgio Lamberti (retired)
• Placido Domingo (there is no way)
• Gregory Kunde
• Ben Heppner (retired)
• Bryan Hymel (felled by the SF fog?)
• Corey Bix (covering Hymel)
• Marcello Giordani (more or less fired from the part in favor of Hymel at the Met in 2013; retired the role when he dropped out of the run)
• Brandon Jovanovich (Rumored to be learning the part and said in an interview that he planned to sing Enée)
• Roberto Alagna (sang it in Europe in 2013 and 2014)
• Jonas Kaufmann? An article on Hymel indicates that Kaufmann was to sing the ROH production.
• Lance Ryan
• Richard Crawley 
• Sergei Semishkur
• Leonid Zakhozhaev
• Viktor Lutsyuk

Undoubtedly somebody else in Europe. Who sang Enee at...was it Deutsch Opera, Karlsruhe, or both, a few years back?

Surely I'm missing someone. And if my name were, say, Stuart Skelton, I'd think about learning this part. He and Jovanovich have that rare combination of vocal weight and purely beautiful sound, and they sing an overlapping and somewhat unusual repertory. They are the two tenors I would most want to hear as Enée.