Tag: opera

Opera crash course

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in opera recordings for the past four or five months. I didn’t have many (well, any) opera recordings prior to that, save a fantastic Colin Davis recording of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust that I ordered after we performed it with the BSO last fall (under Charles Dutoit, but that’s a different story). But then the records started arriving…

There’s something pretty fantastic about being a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus: your fellow musicians are all well connected to people who have been making and living music for a long time. One of my fellow choristers, for instance, is good friends with the former head usher at Tanglewood. And it turns out that he was a rabid collector of opera recordings, and now needs to downsize his collection. So she asked the group at large, Does anyone want some records? Reader, I said yes.

And then the first batch of recordings arrived a few months ago: two cardboard boxes full of opera sets, most only played once. Huge amounts of Massenet and Verdi, some Douglas Moore (The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Ballad of Baby Doe), and Meyerbeer and Richard Strauss and Tschaikovsky and…

Needless to say, I’ve been kept busy digitizing and listening. And in the process I’ve learned that I really like listening to opera. It wasn’t something that my family prepared me for—while classical radio was on all they time in my home when I grew up, it was almost always instrumental or (sometimes) sacred choral. Opera was something that we occasionally would tune into with Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts but wouldn’t seek out. My perspective began to change after I started singing in opera choruses with the TFC, but this immersion is really starting to make me want to listen to more.

Which is good, because two new boxes arrived last week. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me…

Simon Boccanegra: the restraint of power

The BSO’s run on Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, in which I’m singing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, has been eventful so far. Thursday was opening night, and both José Van Dam and James Morris had bad colds, taking the edge off the extremities of their ranges and generally blunting the dramatic momentum. Add to that the normal panoply of nerves and the show felt … well, not rough exactly, but not great.

What a difference two days make. Just before the opening of Saturday’s performance, the BSO management came out and announced that Morris had a bad cold and was withdrawing; taking his place would be Raymond Aceto, who had sung the relatively minor role of Pietro in rehearsals and opening night. Another singer would fill in Pietro’s role. In the chorus bleachers, I don’t think anyone was surprised that Morris wasn’t in, but there was a certain amount of anticipation for what would come next.

And Aceto’s performance made a world of difference. Where Morris played Fiesco as a menacing but relatively immobile force of nature, Aceto’s performance was resonant and dynamic, his acting vivid, and it sparked something in each of his collaborators. (I learned without surprise afterwards that he had sung the role at least once before, in Houston.) Everything snapped into focus in this production: for the chorus, crisp entrances and clearer diction; for the principals, more dramatic gestures and even better vocal control. Three cheers for Aceto, whose last-minute substitution saved the performance, if not the run.

So much for the performance. The opera itself is still working its way through me. Like a Shakespearian “problem play,” it does not categorize easily. Is it a political drama? Yes, but there’s also a substantial theme of family responsibility. Is it a comedy of mistaken identity? Well, it is right up until it turns tragic. (One backstage wit summarized the plot thus: “Boccanegra is a corsair, Fiesco hates him, Paolo is the bad guy, the tenor’s a bit dim, and the soprano needs to stop keeping secrets.”)

But the center of the play, first expounded in the council chamber scene and then echoed in Boccanegra’s reaction to his assassination, is about the restraint of power. Boccanegra could have set the hounds out and turned the mob on those that kidnapped his daughter and caused chaos in the streets, but instead settles the people and deals with the matter in private. Poisoned, he confronts his old enemy Fiesco and reveals Amelia’s identity, returning her to her family and settling an old grievance, and sets up a peaceful succession.

Is it then a political play? On paper, perhaps–and certainly, in the modern context, the temptation to make explicit parallels with modern history is strong. Ultimately, though, it’s the rediscovered connection between Boccanegra and Amelia that forms the pivot of the work, and for that one can only sit back and listen as the old doge’s love for the dead Maria is given new life in the duet with his daughter.

Hitting the boards again: Verdi, Simon Boccanegra

I’ve been a little busy lately with work and have let my link-posting take over the site. This week I finally got a break to do something a little different again. I’m singing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, with James Levine directing and José Van Dam in the title role, with Marcello Giordani and James Morris in key supporting roles.

The last Tanglewood Festival Chorus production I sang in (aside from Holiday Pops) was the Brahms Requiem, and the last opera was Berlioz’s Les Troyens. Needless to say, the Verdi is a different animal from them both–an opera both political and personal, on a much smaller scale than Les Troyens but with its own share of intense moments.

It’s been…interesting preparing this opera with the head cold I have right now. I hope I have a voice by the time the first performance is done tonight.