Poison Ivy's Wall of Text

NYCB Shows Off Its Strengths

2012-02-25T09:02:00.005-05:00

After a few weeks of hiatus, it was back to the New York City Ballet last night, and as usual, they did not disappoint. Their casting was strong from the last line of the corps de ballet to all the soloists, the program was diverse and artistically gratifying, and even the band sounded good. What's not to like?

The evening started out with Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia in Donizetti Variations. I had seen this ballet earlier with Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz, two excellent technicians who for some reason never fail to bore me. Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia made me see the ballet in a whole new way -- it seemed more like a romantic pas de deux, rather than a typical Balanchine exercise in allegro dancing. I loved the series of supported pirouette followed by a supported air turn in their pas de deux. Peck in particular has a way of simply floating across the stage that suggests the giddiness of someone in love. Particularly impressive were her circle of pique turns, which she slowly accelerated and also, as I said, pushed off with her legs in such a way that made it seem like her feet never touched the ground. Garcia was both an excellent partner and also excellent in his solo variations, with its series of fast pirouettes.

Everyone that I spoke to in the audience raved about Russian Seasons, a ballet I had not seen before last night. So the curtain came up, the violin started wailing, the soprano (Irina Rindzuner) started singing, and the 12 men and women stomped onstage and my first thought was "Les Noces." The second thought was "Dances at a Gathering." The score by Leonid Desyatnikov at times echoes the hymns of the Russian Orthodox Church, the choreography is folk-inflected. I've seen a lot of Ratmansky's choreography and one thing I've noticed is that, whether it's Nutcracker or Bright Stream, Ratmansky likes to punctuate the downbeat of the music. Dancers land from a jump with a hard thud, their arms will swing downwards, their knees and torsos are often even made to bend and curve as if they were humpbacked or an animal. Sometimes the dancers become almost like a percussive instrument, as they all are instructed to land with a thud and pound the stage. A scene (or ballet) can end with everyone lying on the floor. In Nutcracker children stomped their feet on the downbeat, in Little Humpbacked Horse the natural jumper Vladimir Shkyarov repeatedly soared in the air before having to land hard on the downbeat of the music. This aspect of Ratmansky's style is not good or bad, but it does set him apart from, say, Balanchine, who liked devices like lifts or developpes a la seconde as the music rises. This particular choreographic preference of Ratmansky's also makes his ballets stubbornly earth-bound. They're often entertaining, whimsical, charming, but it stops there -- they don't take flight into the sublime.

Anyway my first impression of Russian Seasons was that it's a good middle-bill ballet. Not bad enough for me to flee the theater before the final ballet on the bill, but not really strong enough to start or end an evening either. The ballet as I said favors a lot of folk-like pounding on the downbeat. There were some striking images -- the most memorable one was that of the Green Girl (Abi Stafford) seemingly walking across the stage, but really she's walking on the knees of her three partners (Andrew Veyette, Adrian Danchig-Waring, and Christian Tworyzanski). The entire cast of 12 was excellent -- standouts were Robert Fairchild as the Man in Orange, Rebecca Krohn as his eventual bride, Georgina Pazcoguin as the Woman in Red, and even the often dull Abi Stafford as the Woman in Green. Eh, I don't know. I feel like I'm supposed to like this ballet more than I actually did.

The evening ended with a stunner -- Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3. The ballet was originally of course known as Theme and Variations, but in 1970 Balanchine decided to choreograph the entire Tchaikovsky score, with T&V being the grand finale. The first three movements contrast strongly with the tutu-and-tiara final movement -- in the elegie, waltz, and scherzo, the stage is flooded with women in long dresses and long flowing hair. It's all very over-the-top Romantic, but it kind of isn't Balanchine's best choreography -- too many swoony lunges and dramatic running around the stage for my tastes. It's an example of how strong the NYCB's current roster of women is that I was riveted from start to finish, rather than just waiting for T&V. Teresa Reichlen (Elegie), Rebecca Krohn (Valse Melancholie), and Erica Pereira (Scherzo) all gave outstanding performances, and all three ladies were making their debuts in their roles! I particularly loved Rebecca Krohn's soft, understated style and lovely, pliant back. I wish they'd get rid of that scrim for the first three movements -- depending on where you're sitting in the house, sometimes the dancers look blurry behind the scrim.

The Theme and Variations did not disappoint either. I love this ballet -- my favorite moment is when I the lead ballerina stands center stage, her arms linked to the corps de ballet in a line. It looks like a queen with her attendants. The corps de ballet looked just beautiful under the chandeliers in their tutus and tiaras, and as the princess Ashley Bouder had excellent technique, really perfect for this role. Her balances were solid, her pirouettes were impeccable (no falls tonight), the confidence with which she beams at the audience a joy to watch. Andrew Veyette was an understated, although decent partner. That being said, he at times looked tired, and I don't blame him since he's been dancing almost every night this Winter Season. If there's a chink in the NYCB's armor right now it's that its male roster is not nearly as strong as its female crew.

I will probably be back at the NYCB on Sunday to see Tiler Peck in T&V. Ah, what good memories this season has created.

RIP Whitney

2012-02-12T09:37:00.000-05:00

RIP Whitney. It's always sad when childhood idols pass away. I'll never forget how when I was a little kid Whitney just seemed like the most beautiful woman with the most beautiful voice. Then when she kind of degenerated into tabloid "crack is whack" fodder it was always surreal. I believed it, but didn't want to believe it. Of course I watched Being Bobby Brown and laughed at her antics, but it was sad that she was apparently never able to get her life together. What a voice.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

2012-02-09T11:12:00.004-05:00

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

February 8, 2012

Metropolitan Opera

It's a common consensus among opera lovers that if Wagner, Verdi and Puccini isn't what it used to be, we live in a golden age for Rossini. His rarer operas are being revived, there's a new breed of "Rossini tenors" that can handle his often fiendishly difficult music without cuts and transpositions, and in the old chestnuts like Barber of Seville, corrupt performance practices like huge cuts, line swapping, transpositions, and insertions of different arias into the Lesson Scene have mostly been abolished. This is all very good.

The heart of Il Barbiere of Siviglia, however, lies in the patter arias, duets and ensembles. Besides the three famous "patter" arias ("Largo al factotum," "La calunnia," and "A un dottor"), nearly every ensemble also develops into a "patter," with singers required to master this rapid-fire sing speech that often sounds like gibberish, but underscores the opera's theme of mistaken identities and pretentious, insincere personalities who are "blah blah blah"-ing at each other. The closest equivalent to "patter" would be the overlapping dialogue of the 1930's screwball comedies. Tonight's performance of Barber at the Met made me think that for all the great improvements in Rossini performance practice, the art of the patter has been lost.

To get an idea of what the patter songs can sound like, it's helpful to listen to old recordings. There, you can hear that when done well, the rapid-fire words roll off the tongues of the singer in this natural, sing-songy cadence that really resembles human speech when taken at a very fast rate. It's not about accuracy at all -- to the contrary, many of the old recordings sound almost semi-improvised on the spot. But listen to them, and you just hear a natural charm and joy to the way they patter that's infectious.

Here are a few examples.

The first is Mattia Battistini's "Largo al factotum," recorded in 1903. Notice how much he's rushing to fit the recording on one side of the '78, but how natural all of it sounds, although there are times when he seems to be improvising on the spot.

The second example is Ezio Pinza's "La calunnia." Again, notice both the liberties he takes with the music and the sing-songy cadence that Pinza maintains throughout the aria, that just lends an extra sparkle to the performance.

In tonight's performance, only the aging bass Ferruccio Furlanetto had any idea of how to: 1. project the patter portions of the music, so that they didn't just sound garbled and inaudible; and 2. make it all sound natural and funny. His Don Basilio was a highlight of the evening -- an old master still owning the stage and his voice still impressively majestic. John del Carlo (Bartolo) has a big, booming bass and was broadly comic as Rosina's lecherous guardian, but "A un dottor" become inaudible and weak during the patter portions. Rodion Pogossov (Figaro) -- same thing. Suave, debonair Figaro who has a pleasant lyric baritone, but completely missed the art of the patter.

I found youtube performances of John Del Carlo performing "A un dottor" and you can hear how much his voice drops out during the patter portions, as well as the way he fails to inflect the words with much personality:

Compare this to Renato Capecchi, who doesn't have a conventionally beautiful voice, but infuses the patter with tons of personality and charm, really sing-speech with more of an emphasis on the singing part:

The performance as a whole was fun, as was the Bartlett Sher production, although I thought some of the stage business relied too much on slapstick. Still, it's a production that doesn't really differ from any other Barbiere -- it's traditional, aesthetically pleasing, a good introduction to the opera. I can't believe this is the first time I'm seeing it live, and the first time I've seen Barber live since 2004. Colin Lee, the evening's Count Almaviva, is a singer I've never heard before. "Ecco, ridente" sounded rough vocally but once Lee warmed up he had a pleasing, if somewhat slender and generic-sounding lyric tenor voice. Unfortunately, the rapid-fire passagework was marred by distracting aspirates and snatches of breath, and noticeable physical discomfort. I know that most Almavivas nowadays sing "Cessa di piu resistere" but Lee seemed so out of gas that I thought the bad old days when this aria was cut might have been a good idea in this instance. Dramatically, he was rather reserved, without much of the requisite dash and charm.

Diana Damrau made a strong case for a soprano Rosina (this role was designed for a mezzo, but sopranos continue to be attracted to this role for obvious reasons). Her voice, silvery and bell-like, sails through the large auditorium. Her high notes are piercing but rarely shrill. She decorated her vocal line lavishly in the soprano tradition in both "Una voce poco fa" and "Contro un cor," without any distracting aspirates. Her characterization is definitely more "vipera" than "dolce" but that's just Damrau -- even her Gilda was sexually bold and confident. I didn't really care for the stage business of her doing "Spanish" dancing. For one, Damrau didn't look entirely comfortable doing it. Second of all, Sher's production is one of those "18th century in the middle of nowhere" productions that doesn't attempt an "Spanish" ambience at all, so having characters all of a sudden breaking out in that kind of dancing was weird and out of place.

Here is Damrau's "Una voce poco fa":

The chemistry between the characters in this ensemble opera was inconsistent. Damrau and Pogossov generated more sparks than Damrau and Lee, but I thought the best chemistry of the evening belonged to the Bartolo (Del Carlo) and Basilio (Furlanetto). Two old farts who take pleasure in each other's company.

Maurizio Benini conducted Rossini's sparking, ageless score with an appropriate bubbliness. Where was he when Marco Armiliato was ruining Anna Bolena with his xanax-like conducting?

The house was almost half-empty.

Götterdämmerung Prima

2012-01-28T11:42:00.009-05:00

Wagner - Götterdämmerung

Metropolitan Opera

January 27, 2012 (premiere)

Robert Lepage's final installment of the Ring Cycle premiered last night, and at the end of the evening he was met with a smattering of boos, and also some hearty applause. If it was possible to both applaud and boo at the same time, I would have. There were some absolutely wonderful improvements made in this production, and at the same time some horrifyingly bad misfires. How can someone so good be so bad? Or, on the flip side of the coin, how can someone so bad also be so good?

Let's start with the good news. The musical values were very high last night. First of all, a HUGE hand of applause must go out to the real stars of the evening, conductor Fabio Luisi and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Luisi is a very different kind of conductor than Levine -- for one, he's much faster. A Levine performance would have lasted past midnight -- Luisi was done by 11:45. But he also made the orchestra sound lighter, more accommodating for those with smaller voices, and instead of going for the big lush wall of sound, he brought out details to Wagner's score that I'd never heard or noticed. For instance, whenever Hagen has an evil thought, the woodwinds trill happily, as if echoing his delightfully diabolical mind. I had never noticed Hagen's happy/evil trill motif until last night. Most of all, Luisi never allowed the evening to become a dirge. He kept things moving, in a dramatic, taut and exciting reading of the score all night. Even Siegfried's Death interlude never lost momentum.

A second huge hand of applause -- Hans Peter Koenig as Hagen. He was in previous operas the Fafner and Hunding, but as Hagen he really just took over the stage, took over the storyline, and overwhelmed the performance. His bass voice is huge and booming, his authority absolute, as when he called his vassals, but he could also be quietly menacing. During his Act One monologue he quietly sat in his chair, Michael Corleone-style, and contemplated all his evil plans. Often my mind starts to wander when Wagner's characters sing these long, overly explanatory monologues, but not last night. Koenig was spellbinding. He also made Hagen strangely the most sympathetic character of the opera. Hagen may not be a "nice guy," or a Wagnerian hero, but he's intelligent, and he has a set of values that are admirable. He's avenging his family's honor. Koenig was the star of last night's vocalists.

Gott Siegfried is not as simpatico to Jay Hunter Morris's voice, which really isn't a heldentenor voice. It's light, bright, and metallic, and occasionally he had trouble projecting over the chorus and orchestra. In Act One Siegfried has to pretend to be a baritone. Most heldentenors already have a baritonal timbre to their voice, but JHM is a real tenor and you could feel his vocal discomfort. He also ran out of gas vocally in Act Three, and the sour edge, always there in his voice, became more prominent. But again, he made this often very unlikable and stupid "superhero" (Siegfried's intelligence is below that of 99% of college-age girls in America, who know better than to accept drinks from strangers) sympathetic. For most of this opera Siegfried is acting under a love potion, and behaves horribly. JHM emphasized the character's confusion, his youth, his inexperience, his genuine infatuation with Gutrune, even his drugged up stupor. This is a major-league portrayal.

Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde also surpassed my expectations of her. At the end of the evening she pumped her arms in triumph, like "I did it," and the audience roared back, as if to say, "Yes, you did." And I must say that yes, she really pulled it together. The problems are still there -- the somewhat colorless tone, the hollow and worn lower register, the wide vibrato on sustained notes. But the upper register mostly sounded like "old Debbie" -- bright, beautiful, and gleaming, and what's more, she was able to sustain the quality of her singing for most of the evening. Act One was not that great, but Act Two and Act Three were quite good. Her Immolation Scene had very few wayward notes, and many moments of beauty. Dramatically she was excellent, much better than in Die Walkuere. I loved her scene with Waltraute. She highlighted the transition from happy to see her sister, and hopeful for a reconciliation with Wotan, to proud, disgusted, and defensive.

Speaking of Waltraute, she was played by the ageless Waltraud Meier, and the scene's success was as much hers and Voigt's. It's not a long role, but Meier was, as usual, spellbinding. What an actress! You couldn't take your eyes off her. And her voice maybe aged a bit in tone but still rich and large. The rest of the supporting cast was really fine. Eric Owens had a short but effective scene with his son, and I really, really hope he does not get cast in the "character" roles forever because of his appearance, because he deserves so much more. His voice has a real nobility, and he again made me feel Alberich's rage and pain. Iain Paterson as Gunther and Wendy Bryn Harmer as Gutrune were both superb vocally and dramatically, although Paterson's voice is on the slender side for Wagner. The Norns, the Rheinmaidens, the chorus, they were all deserve a huge hand of applause. And ... I've run out of superlatives so I'll just stop here.

And now the production. The first huge improvement for Lepage was he gave up all the fancy entrances and stunts with body doubles. The body doubles always felt artificial and a case of diminishing returns. The worst case of this was at the end of Die Walkuere, when both real-Brunnhilde and real-Wotan had to make a quick exit while fake-Brunnhilde (who looked nothing like Deborah Voigt) was tied upside down for the final tableau. A distraction at the opera's emotional peak. In Götterdämerung, every entrance and exit was natural, normal, and thus had an effect of humanizing the machine. For the first time, singers looked comfortable on it. The Machine was also quieter - more grease?

A second thing Lepage improved was he finally figured out how to use the Machine, if that makes sense -- that the movable planks should be used to indicate changes of scenery, and to set most of the actual action on the apron planks. In previous productions, he had recessed much of the action to an area behind and below the apron, so that many of the singers were cut off at the knees, and looked and sounded remote and tiny. Jonas Kaufmann said in an Opera News interview that he finally insisted on leaving the "set" to sing on the apron just because he wanted to be closer to the audience. Lepage for Götterdämerung has made a stage platform behind the apron, but on the same level, so there's no more cutting off at the knees, and also singers aren't stuck in such a tiny area, but can easily move back and forth from the apron to the platform. This allowed for much more fluid blocking, smoother transitions, and encouraged more natural interactions between the performers.

Act Two -- well staged, well-acted, well-directed

Direction/blocking/person-regie in this opera was generally, a vast improvement over the previous operas. Even the chorus scenes were well-directed. Interactions between the characters were believable and natural. The best blocking occurred in the second act. Gunther dragging Brunnhilde onstage, Brunnhilde's rage at Siegfried, Siegfried's bewilderment, Hagen, Brunnhilde and Gunther in the Vengeance trio, all this was well-directed, and, more importantly, easy to follow for someone not familiar with the complicated plot details. Siegfried's death was also well-staged. Hagen and his cronies gradually surround the still-unsuspecting hero, and the scene becomes more and more menacing, until the final knife in the back. The dying Siegfried attempts once more to be a superhero and strike back at Hagen before expiring.

Lepage also has something I think many directors lack -- he's a genuine aesthete. He is able to produce images onstage that really are beautiful and/or striking. The first is the Norns scene -- the three Norns are holding onto a heavy web of ropes that are tied to the upper planks of the machine. As they sing, the planks start to rotate and the web of ropes gets cut to nothing. Very cool. Siegfried on the top of the machine, moving on a raft, with the planks undulating to simulate waves of water, was a very beautiful way to reproduce a rather awkward, hard-to-stage scene (the superhero traveling along the Rhine). Gibich Hall is a striking set of gold columns, which symbolizes the kind of excessive luxury of Casa Hagen. I could go on and on, but the point is, aesthetic vision is something a director either has or doesn't have. Kenji Mizoguchi and Albert Hitchcock had it. Lepage also has it.

Three Norns scene

It is genuinely frustrating, then, to have that many miscalculations and misfires and a general feeling of "Well, that didn't work" last night. The costumes and props are an unmitigated disaster, evoking nothing, flattering no one, and repeatedly undercutting the drama with their plastic toy look. I thought nothing would ever beat the toy skeletons the Valkyries tied up in Die Walkuere, until I saw the Tarnhelm last night. The Tarnhelm is this tiny, gold gauze, not even the size of a Vegas-style wedding veil, that barely covers Jay Hunter Morris's face. His kidnapping of Brunnhilde was unintentionally funny as Brunnhilde quaked in fear at a guy in such a ridiculous get-up. Surely they could have devised a cape, or something less literal and more symbolic, and the same plot device could have worked? Grane has to be seen to be believed -- basically it's a metal toy horse that bobs its head up and down when a stagehand pulls some strings. It became unintentionally funny when both Siegfried and Brunnhilde sang the praises of this uber-horse, and the "horse" was onstage, bobbing its head in a way that must have made Jim Henson turn over in his grave. (Seriously, the entire production team could have learned something from watching The Muppets or Sesame Street.) This is one of the things I don't understand about the production -- Lepage can suggest scene changes and images in a rather abstract way using the projections and changes in plank position. But actual props? It's like he visited Toys R' Us.

Bobblehead Grane

Act Three is a mess after Siegfried's death. The funeral pyre is a tiny, wooden campfire box, and Grane was brought onstage, bobbing its head till the bitter end. Brunnhilde climbed on top of Grane, was pulled maybe two feet closer to the campfire, and of course the planks move to fire projections. The ruin of Valhalla was symbolized by these statues of the gods (Wotan, Fricka, Donner) that were seen earlier in Hagen's house rising above the planks, and then there's an explosion and the statues' heads are blown off. And then ... nothing. The planks moved back to their original position, they waved up and down a little bit, there were no projections, no final tableau. People even wondered if there was a mechanical error, since for the last three minutes of orchestral playing, people were just staring at the machine in blank "first position." Also, it seemed as if there was supposed to be something more -- there was some smoke, and a blue background. It wasn't until after the show that I remembered that it was the same scene at the start of Rheingold. I suppose the point was that this was a Ring Cycle, and we're back to Rheingold, but the whole third act was just very prosaic, unimaginative, anti-climactic, as if the director ran out of ideas and was in a hurry for it to be all over.

But I remember feeling the same way about every Lepage production. In Das Rheingold I was bowled over by the simple beauty of having three Rheinmaidens perched atop a sea of blue, and then dismayed when one body-double god after another slid down the planks like an amusement park slide. In Die Walkuere the planks made a stunning image of a snowy forest, but then most of Act One was set in a tiny area below and behind the apron and a tense, dramatically riveting scene was made remote and ineffective. And let's not forget the toy body-bags during the Ride of the Valkyries and the distracting eye during Wotan's monologue. Siegfried had so many beautiful scenes, especially the forest scene, but again, much of the action in Act One was recessed to a tiny back-and-below-stage area so critical moments were hard to see and hear. Really, the final question about Lepage's Ring: how can something so good also be so bad?

Firebird at the NYCB

2012-01-26T23:39:00.002-05:00

The NYCB is known for its diverse triple bill offerings, but occasionally one piece on the program so dominates the evening that one rushes home and can hardly think of anything else. That happened tonight when the NYCB performed Firebird, with Ashley Bouder in the title role. She was so commanding, and the performance such a memorable introduction (for me) to the work, that it was like. huh, Donizetti Variations? There was a Donizetti Variations?

The evening did begin with Donizetti Variations, one of those happy, spritely allegro dancing confections that Balanchine could and probably did cook up in 5 minutes. It's set to a very catchy score from Donizetti's Don Sebastiano, and my friend in intermission observed that it resembled Bournonville in the emphasis on sharp footwork, lightning fast beats, and tricky direction-changing jumps. The women even wear modest, knee-length Bournonville-like costumes. Balanchine did insert a weird, totally out of nowhere joke move in the ballet where one corps girls fakes hurting her foot as she comes down from an entrechat. She makes a big deal of grabbing her foot in pain and hobbling off. The audience laughs but I kind of didn't find the gag all that funny, and it's weird that Balanchine, who was the type of man so famously polite he hand-picked perfumes for his dancers, would insert that kind of joke in the middle of a ballet. It's supposed to look easy, but the steps are tricky, and during the first half of the ballet, the six girls of the corps de ballet had noticeable problems dancing in sync both with each other and with the orchestra. It was nothing major, just a pirouette finished behind the beat here, a supported arabesque out of unison there, but the impression was that of a piece that maybe needed more rehearsal time. The central couple, Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz, were technically flawless but also not very dynamic. The role used to be a favorite of Edward Villella and on the Soviet tour he was such a sensation the audience demanded (and got) and encore in Donizetti. De Luz seemed a bit careful, his landings having the split second hesitation that is so fatal in a ballet like this. Megan Fairchild was better -- I particularly loved the diagonal sequence where she does a supported pirouette with her partner, and then she kind of jumps in the air on her own and does a rotation, and then goes back to a supported pirouette, and back to a unsupported jump, and this repeats itself. Very spritely.

After the intermission it was In Memory Of ... I guess I'll just come out and say this really isn't my favorite ballet, even though I love Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. I find some of the Robbins cliches (girls in long flowing pastel dresses), and the overly literal ending (the Girl is in Heaven, flanked by Angels, and all is white and beautiful) to be a trite interpretation of Berg's haunting but difficult music. It's turned into Angels at a Gathering. That being said, Wendy Whelan was just lovely as the Girl/Angel, and she was partnered beautifully by both Jared Angle and Ask La Cour. But this ballet just doesn't do it for me.

Now, onto Firebird. Before tonight I was only familiar with Fokine's version, and I had actually watched a tape of the Fokine ballet before I went tonight, to compare and contrast. I soon learned to appreciate Balanchine's work as an independent interpretation of Stravinsky's famous ballet score. There was only one moment where I missed a Fokine step, and that's the moment in Fokine's ballet when the Firebird turns towards the Prince, arches backward in a luxurious cambre, and flicks both her arms, fingers, and head, like both a trapped bird and a flickering flame.

The moment I'm talking about is at 5:45 in the video with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes:

But Balanchine's version is a very different ballet. First of all, it uses an abridged edition of the score, so it's shorter, quicker, but these musical cuts I found surprisingly unobtrusive. I also understand that Balanchine rechoreographed the ballet several times. It was originally designed for the magisterial, commanding Maria Tallchief, then redesigned for the feather-light, mercurial Gelsey Kirkland. The version danced tonight I would guess incorporates both versions. The main difference I could see with Balanchine and Fokine is that in the Fokine, the Firebird is a cipher. She's feral, alluring, but ultimately unknowable. In Balanchine's version, she's more womanly. If Balanchine's choreography echoes any ballet, it's Swan Lake. The Firebird's entrance with the big grand jete diagonal recalls Odette's entrance. In the pas de deux with the Prince, the Firebird has a repeated stance which is like an off-balance lunge where her face and arms are towards the audience. It resembles that moment in the Black Swan Pas de Deux when Odile inevitably faces the audience, smirking, arms spread, a temptress seducing not just the Prince but the audience.

For comparison I've found these pictures:

Black Swan pas de deux

Balanchine's Firebird

Another moment which recalls Swan Lake is after the Prince has been rescued by the Firebird from Kastchei the Wizard and the Monsters, she stands all alone and circles the stage, her arms in a slow, undulating flap that is identical to Odette's iconic, mournful wing-flapping exit in Act II. In the Fokine version, the Firebird saves the Prince and her role is done. Balanchine gives us that extra moment to humanize the Firebird, who's now alone again as the Prince marries the Nice Normal Girl. Balanchine was often accused of making ballets that lacked emotion (I don't agree, but it was a criticism). But I think he put the feeling and emotion back in Firebird.

Otherwise the ballet is more spectacle than dance -- the Prince's Bride and the Maidens are on pointe (unlike Fokine), but dressed in these heavy, Russian folk-dance dresses. They also dance on the downbeat, more like folk dance than ballet. The Monster scene is less menacing here than in Fokine -- it looks more like the Nutcracker's Mice Battle, just with more colorful, grotesque costumes. The Chagall backdrops are famous and give the ballet an impressionistic, surreal feel.

Bouder as Firebird

Ashley Bouder was simply spectacular as the Firebird. She's a natural jumper, and what's more, is able to jump across the stage in a light, airy way to suggest, well, a firebird. Bouder can be a nervous performer -- she's famous for occasionally falling -- but this is one role where I think the nervous tics are inherent in the role. The role almost takes all of Bouder's most prominent qualities (her jumps, her speed, even her tendency to turn her face towards the audience in a very forward, prominent manner) and showcases them. I absolutely loved her, and I'll remember her gravity-defying flying across the stage for a long time.

As the Prince, Jonathan Stafford wasn't quite on Bouder's level. He doesn't have much stage presence, and seems, well, kind of lumpy. Doesn't convey the sexual aggressiveness that's suggested by being a "bird hunter." Good partner though. Savannah Lowery replaced Rebecca Krohn as the Prince's Bride and she was perfectly charming except the role is very unmemorable.

But this is probably because the performance was so dominated by Bouder that everyone and everything else seemed secondary. Brava to Ashley and bravo to Mr. B for showcasing his ballerinas with such love and care that great female dancers can continue to draw inspiration from his choreography for what I hope is an eternity.

The phenomenon of Uncle Newt

2012-01-22T16:41:00.001-05:00

I recently found Newt Gingrich's youtube channel. In light of Gingrich's South Carolina primary win, I've been watching a few of these videos. I find them fascinating, and not really for the right reasons. Since these are videos uploaded by the Gingrich campaign, I suppose these are the videos he thinks best represent him.

The most striking thing about these videos is their consistent, unabashed, gleeful meanness. Most politicians when running for president affect a geniality that everyone knows is probably phony, but at the same time, totally necessary. You have to kiss those babies and praise those townhall moms whether it's at 5 in the morning or in a midnight rally. You have your wife or mom next to you on the campaign trail to show that you're really just a family man at heart. That's part of the American political process, the unrelieved peppiness that politicians have to fake on the campaign trail. This is reflected to an almost painful degree in the perma-grin/grimace Mitt Romney has pasted on his face at all times.

Mitt's smile/frown - expression never changes

Well Uncle Newt has totally circumvented all that fakeness. He's been married three times, and two of his ex-wives have made the rounds on TV shows talking about what an awful guy he is. He's the only guy who's ever had to utter the words "open marriage" in a debate. His former Congressional colleagues have also spoken to the presses quite frankly about Gingrich's uh, personality. Not that Newt would disagree with his ex-wives' assessments of him, I suspect. On his youtube channel, you can hear him talk about his plan for America's enemies: kill them. You can see him wagging his finger at Juan Williams in a tone that veers dangerously close to "don't get uppity with me, boy" racism. You can hear him call President Obama stupid. In all of the videos, there's not a single "See, I'm just a nice, normal guy" moment. Newt might be the most openly, gleefully mean prominent American politician since Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

I know politicians are complex. I am sure there is more to Newt than the Angriest White Man to ever Angry White Man. What's scary isn't Gingrich's Uncle Scrooge personality and politics, it's the fact that so many Americans are eating it up. Is this really the person people want leading the nation for the next four years? If this is what America wants, well, God bless America.

The Enchanted Island

2012-01-21T19:10:00.005-05:00

The Enchanted Island

January 21, 2012

Metropolitan Opera

It probably helped the cause that I went to The Enchanted Island without much extensive knowledge of baroque opera beyond a few famous arias here and there. Another help to the cause was the fact that I love The Tempest/A Midsummer's Night Dream. The greatest help to The Enchanted Island cause though was the excellent ensemble cast and the engaging and delightful production. Add in some genuine curiosity, a bit of weekend boredom, and it all added up to a very enjoyable afternoon at the opera.

Everyone knows that The Enchanted Island is not a real opera, but a "pastiche" of baroque arias (a selection of Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and Purcell) set to an entirely new libretto. It's the kind of thing that makes baroque purists mad, and if I had intimate, deep knowledge of the original operas, I'd probably be snooty and offended as well. But as I said, I don't, so I found the re-workings of these arias into a new setting clever. Jeremy Sams had a difficult job because baroque arias are full of repeats, and at times his libretto did sound trite and repetitious. But mostly, it was a decent re-working of Shakespeare's two plays, with a nod to 21st century sensibilities -- the pastiche's most sympathetic character is Caliban, who in Shakespeare's play is presented as a savage brute, and Prospero's dark side is very much the focus of the piece, as he rules the enchanted island with an iron fist, like a deluded, Qadaffi-like dictator.

I think a huge chunk of what made the venture so successful (from my point of view at least) was the incredibly strong musical values. From the conductor to the chorus, there literally wasn't a weak link in the entire cast. It's a sign of the high musical values that I didn't often have to read the English surtitles -- clearly the cast (with the exception of Domingo) worked long and hard on enunciating the English text in a crisp, understandable manner. I could hand out roses all day to the large and diverse cast, but I'll single a few out. Lisette Oropesa's (Miranda) bright, bell-like soprano and winning stage personality makes me think that in a few years, she could be a big star. Layla Claire (Helena) has one of the those beautiful, shining soprano voices that immediately makes you sit up, and check the program to see "Who is this girl? She's amazing." Elizabeth Deshong had a rich, fluid mezzo voice that also was the subject of much buzz "Who is this girl?" buzz after the performance. I'm not usually a fan of countertenor voices, but Anthony Costanzo (Ferdinand) has a bright, trumpet-like voice that reinvigorated the entire performance after the second act started to drag a bit. Luca Pisaroni was simply devastating as Caliban, presented here as a sympathetic, sensitive soul who can't believe his good fortune that he's fallen in love. The pastiche's most touching moment was the duet between Caliban and Helena in the woods of the "enchanted island," set to Handel's "Nel riposo e nel contento." For a brief minute, you believed their love could last. The vengeful sorceress is one of baroque opera's most tired cliches, but Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax was really the right mix of den mother and vengeful woman. Her voice had a touch of huskiness in the beginning that eventually disappeared. Her second act aria was beautiful and touching.

But really, this was really ensemble music making at its finest. David Daniels was the right mix of imperious and deluded as Prospero. Some in the audience told me that he used to sound a lot better, but I haven't really followed his career and I thought he sounded fine this afternoon. He ended the first act on a strong note with the aria "We like to wrestle destiny" (taken from Handel's Amadigi di Gaula). Danielle de Niese's scratchy soprano often gets on my nerves, and will probably doom her to a lifetime of -ina and -etta roles, but as Ariel she was ideal. Impish, determined, funny. Even Placido Domingo's cameo as Neptune was unexpectedly endearing. Domingo in recent years has been eroding away some of the goodwill he's built among opera lovers with his middling ventures into Verdi baritone roles, and even worse, his even more middling ventures into conducting. But his walk-on was treated as an in-joke between the audiences and the singers, and even Domingo's garbled English and forgotten lines were somehow cute. William Christie made the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra sound believably baroque, even.

The whole thing isn't perfect. The first act is extremely long (about an hour and forty minutes), but musically and dramatically, it holds your attention. The second act, although much shorter in length, feels much longer because it's weaker both musically and dramatically. It's sort of like all those Broadway musicals where the second act peters out. The Midsummer lovers run around a lot before reuniting, and the only genuinely poignant moment is Caliban's heartbreak and Sycorax's heart-rending aria "Hearts that love can all be broken". There's an unfortunate ballet that had some pretty bad choreography. It felt like a time filler, and could be cut without anyone missing it, although I did like the colorful costumes of the dancers. Ferdinand's much-delayed arrival, Neptune's intervention, Prospero losing the island and asking for forgiveness, all seemed a tidy pat and even corny. Most of all, I noticed that the 44 numbers chosen probably fit the musical tastes of the directors and William Christie, but had an overwhelming tendency to be somewhat slow, elegiac melodies. After awhile, I'll admit they kind of blurred together and sounded the same -- very pretty, but except for some of Sycorax's music, lacking in the kind of vocal fireworks that are associated with baroque operas.

But miraculously, these faults don't detract from the overall quality of the piece as both entertainment and music. The production team deserves a huge hand of applause -- they've created a production that's aesthetically pleasing, often humorous, and very well-directed in terms of person-regie. Phelim McDermott did the impossible -- he created a believably intimate, baroque setting in the often cavernous Met stage. Julian Crouch's sets (a mix of old-fashioned painted drops, scrims, and projections, which seem to be the latest craze in opera productions) really recreated an old-fashioned enchanted island, a frighteningly believable capsized ship, an ocean storm, or a ridiculously over-the-top underwater kingdom. The costumes were colorful, exotic, and very pretty. The retro-prettiness of the production is one of its main strengths.

Bravo to everyone involved in this venture for making something that had the potential to be a cheesy, expensive waste of both time and resources into a delightful entertainment for both opera lovers and maybe the more casual listener.

Here are some pictures:

Hermia and Helena

Ariel and the lovers

Neptune's underwater kingdom


The final reconciliation

NYCB Winter Season Opening Night

2012-01-17T23:24:00.011-05:00

The NYCB's winter season kicked off tonight with an all-Balanchine program that, while maybe not the most exciting, was a good reminder of all the reasons to love the company. Four Balanchine ballets was a nice way to start the season, even if the first half of the program lacked a bit of excitement. The program got better as it went along, and it ended with a truly spectacular performance of Who Cares? It's so good to have ballet season back in NYC that isn't the Nutcracker, however much I might love Nutcracker.

The start to the program was Balanchine's short, somewhat creepy ballet The Steadfast Tin Soldier. It's based on a Hans Cristian Andersen fairy tale and it of course ends on a grim note, as Andersen's fairy tales are wont to do. The choreography is not Balanchine's most inspired -- I think it's meant to convey the inherent awkwardness when a paper doll and a toy soldier dance together, but it at times looks like a caricature of all the stiff pas de deux poses. For more inspired "doll" choreography, watch Balanchine's Coppelia. Megan Fairchild and Daniel Ulbricht gave it their best, but this was a somewhat weak start to the evening.

Le Tombeau de Couperin was next on the program, and it was danced with an easygoing finesse that belied the ballet's often tricky partnering. The dancers on the program are only identified as "Left Quadrille" and "Right Quadrille" and their movements at times resembled formal court dances, and at other times the more informal social dances. This was my first time seeing the work and I have a feeling that, like most Balanchine works, this is one ballet that needs multiple views for me to absorb the delicate beauty of the choreography. It has some Balanchine trademarks, like the men and women linking hands and arms, and sometimes the women fall with a lazy grace into the mens' arms, other times they fly across the stage in quick diagonals. The corps de ballet truly deserve a hand of applause for conquering opening night nerves and dancing this little gem so beautifully.

Next was the ballet gala staple Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette floated onstage, and it looked like it was going to be great. But then ... well, at the beginning of Ashley Bouder's variation, before she danced a step, she fell flat on her butt. No other way to put it, it looked as if she just slipped and fell. Bouder is an avid tweeter (and from the sounds of her tweets, a funny, opinionated, politically liberal, socially conscious young lady) and afterwards she tweeted with good humor "Well, I guess it wouldn't be a NYCB season without a Bouder fall. Your welcome. Let the season begin!" But she got up, and danced the rest of the pas de deux without any hesitation, and got a big hand of applause. Veyette's variation probably could have been danced with more bravura by another male dancer, but the final leaping fishdives were executed with a beautiful snap, so bravo to both Ashley for her gutsiness and Andrew Veyette for his considerate partnering.

Evening ended with Who Cares? The ballet was choreographed in 1970, and its title is commonly thought to refer to Suzanne Farrell's acrimonious departure from the company earlier that year. (For a particularly unflattering description of Farrell's behavior during the split, read d'Amboise's memoir I Was a Dancer.) This little anecdote says a lot about Balanchine's famously passive-aggressive personality, but even more so, the whole ballet seems like a subtle but strong statement to Farrell. It's the kind of all-American, happy, jazzy spectacular that the moody, introspective Farrell never could have pulled off, and it's one ballet that she didn't dance even after she returned to the company in 1975.

The ballet's music is orchestrated Gershwin standards. There's a large cast of corps de ballet, but the heart of the ballet is three pas de deux between a male (originated by Jacques d'Amboise, danced tonight by Robert Fairchild, who was both handsome and elegant and a great partner) and three different females. The most famous of the pas de deux is set to "The Man I Love," and Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild were simply stunning tonight. The pas de deux reminds me of an Astaire-Rogers dance in structure, but without the competitive streak that marked many Astaire-Rogers set pieces. It has Balanchine's inimitable style. I would say more except Balanchine's style can be described with one word: beautiful. Peck and Fairchild seemed like soulmates, their dance had a mesmerizing intimacy. Teresa Reichlen (in "Embraceable You") is a bit too tall for Fairchild, but their duet was lovely nonetheless. The one disappointment was Sara Mearns (who danced "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and "Who Cares?"). I usually like Mearns in almost everything she dances, but she seemed to be attacking the piece like a bull in a china shop, instead of giving off a kind of effortless sass and swagger than I think is more appropriate for the role. Her footwork was labored, almost unattractive as she stomped out the steps. I'm just glad I'm seeing Mearns onstage at all, since she cancelled several Nutcracker performances and I was worried she was injured again.

This promises to be a good winter season. There are repeats of Ocean's Kingdom and Seven Deadly Sins that I will avoid, as well as the dreaded Romeo + Juliet, but lots of "bread and butter" Balanchine/Robbins programs that ensure that for January and February, I'll be spending many evenings at the ballet.

Best and Worst of 2011

2011-12-20T22:52:00.003-05:00

In no particular order ...

1. Best twitter account:
http://twitter.com/#!/hilherbert
I'm proud to say I went to high school with this girl. She's in LA living it up, and her twitter is the one feed that never fails to make me laugh. Her ups and downs are all documented in a fashion that's absolutely hysterical and endearing. She doesn't try to be funny -- she is funny.

2. Best non-arts related blog:
www.pleasedeletenow.com
My friend's hilariously snarky commentary about reality TV shows. I was so happy to hear that he'd gotten death threats from one of the contestants on X-Factor. He's made it to the big time!

3. Best overplayed single:
Every once in awhile an overplayed radio single deserves all the praise it gets. Adele's "Someone Like You" is that single. Listen to it and think about all the times your heart's been broken, and cry.

4. Worst over-played single:
Lady Gaga's worst track on her album Edge of Glory somehow becomes a single and a staple on the radio. I love Gaga, but "You and I" is a crappy song and I just wish it would go away.

5. Best arts-related trend:
HD transmissions of ballet. The Bolshoi Ballet and Royal Ballet do it the most, but even the New York City Ballet has gotten in on the trend. Let's hope this trend only continues in the future.

6. Worst arts-related trend:
Steep ticket price raises across the board. When times are tough and unemployment is high, it hurts to have to cut back on attending performances but there are times when I literally can't afford to go. The NYCB is perhaps the worst offender -- it closed off the historically cheap Fourth Ring for most performances, and jacked up prices in its other three rings.

7. Best Republican debate moment/brain-fart:
No explanation needed.

8. Worst Republican debate moment:
Shameful.

9. Favorite picture:
Myself and the adorable ballet-dancer Vladimir Shklyarov. Need I say more?

10. Most bizarre "personal growth" moment:
The fact that for awhile in 2011, I seriously considered becoming a nun. Never mind the fact that I'm not Roman Catholic. Or even religious. For awhile taking those vows sounded pretty good to me.

Nutcracker on PBS

2011-12-14T22:55:00.004-05:00

I love the Nutcracker so much that I think everyone else should too. So I cajoled my friend into giving the Live from Lincoln Center Nutcracker a chance. (Great show, by the way, although I found Megan Fairchild disappointing as the SPF. Ashley Bouder was predictably spectacular as the Dewdrop).

My friend is not a ballet person, to put it mildly. After about 15 minutes, this is the text message I receive:

"Are you f...king kidding me?!?! 5 minutes! That's all I could see from that show. It's just too much for me. Sorry. Those people dancing and the kids bothering everyone, and the music, NOOOO!!! I just can't."

Me: "What about it was soooooooo bad? There are beautiful dancing snowflakes coming up though."

My friend: "Everything."

LOL. I guess Nut-nuts can't win over everyone.

Nutcracker - pure joy and happiness

2011-12-07T23:16:00.002-05:00

Every year I go see the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker and it's like falling in love again. I can't believe that I've now seen this production maybe 10, 15 times (I've long lost count) and every time I still find a new moment of total enchantment and beauty. This time, it was me noticing that before Marie and the Prince depart the Land of the Sweets, the Prince kisses the Sugar Plum Fairy's hand. Such a little gentleman, and so representative of Balanchine's famously polite, gentle nature. It is true that Balanchine's classic is so enchanting that it's impossible to have a bad performance of it, in the sense that even a hum-drum performance will charm and delight the audiences. But when the stars are all aligned and it's not just a Nutcracker, but a great ballet performance period, the balletomane in me feels the warm fuzzies (so needed on this cold, dreary, rainy NYC night). Tonight, every child was adorable, every mouse was hilariously goofy, every snowflake was a whirlwind of speed, every flower bloomed, and all was beautiful in the Kingdom of Sweets. What more could one ask for?

The performance tonight had some great dancing by the leads. Tiler Peck was the Sugar Plum Fairy, and she's the NYCB's new "anything you can do I can do better" ballerina. Dazzling smile, scarily accurate allegro technique, great balances, beautifully austere classical line. She and her Cavalier Andrew Veyette executed the jump-to-shoulder lifts and promenade balances with absolute security and confidence. Peck positioned herself far away from Veyette before she made the huge jump to his shoulder, and the perfect landing generated screams from the dozens of little girls sitting in the audience. I love that, when performers give more than they have to -- it's in the middle of the Nutcracker marathon but both Peck and Veyette danced as if this was their only performance (it's not, of course).

Tiler Peck as the SPF

I had originally bought the ticket to see Sara Mearns's Dewdrop, but she canceled and Megan Fairchild danced in her place. Fairchild isn't one of my favorite NYCB dancers -- she has great technique and sails through all the Dewdrop's tricky jumps and pirouettes without problems, but she doesn't project. She seems like an eternal child, pixie and cute, but immature as a performer. At times I stopped watching her and was watching the Flower corps de ballet, who were so in synch tonight. I couldn't help but think of Mearns when I saw Fairchild. Mearns is wild and unpredictable, her body often lunging forward and reaching backwards in a motion that resembles a huge ocean current. Fairchild on the other hand is like a wind-up doll, always correct and cute but never more. The other variations were mixed. Savannah Lowery doesn't really have the sinewy body line and hyper-flexibility to make the most out of the Coffee variation. Robert Fairchild started off very strong in the Candy Cane variation but tripped over his hoop towards the end. Brittany Pollack was absolutely enchanting as the Marzipan shepherdess.

The children were, as always, the stars of the show (along with the corps de ballet in the Dance of the Snowflakes and Waltz of the Flowers). Fiona Brennan was an adorable Marie, Colby Clark the Prince. It's always beautiful to see the children of the ballet dance their hearts out. When the Prince re-enacts the mime for the Kingdom of the Sweets, one has to think of Balanchine himself as a student, re-enacting the mime at the Imperial Ballet School. How touching that he re-created it for his own version.

Then again, so much of Balanchine's Nutcracker is really a tribute to the original, 1892 ballet choreographed by Lev Ivanov. Now that we have the Sergeyev notations, we know just how much Balanchine left intact. The King Mouse in the original production really also had 8 heads. The Prince's mime, the Candy Cane and Mother Ginger variation, the snowflakes with their snowflake wands, even the Grand Pas de Deux borrowed heavily from Ivanov. The shoulder jump lifts, and that moment when the Sugar Plum Fairy is pulled across the stage in arabesque by the Cavalier? All in the original notations. What, then, makes Balanchine's Nutcracker still, in my opinion, the greatest of them all? Well for me it's the small moments. The love and care he had for the ballet, for Tchaikovsky's music, practically radiates almost 60 years after its creation. One moment: when the Nutcracker Prince woke up a sleeping Marie and held her hand as they walked offstage, I dare even the most hardened cynic not to be touched by that simple gesture.

But don't just read my description of the Nutcracker. Next Tuesday at 6 PM, the Nutcracker will be playing live in HD in movie theaters across the country, and another performance will be filmed for PBS the following night. So set your DVR's and prepare to be enchanted!

Faust

2011-12-07T13:26:00.001-05:00

Gounod - Faust

Metropolitan Opera

December 6, 2011

If there's any opera in the main repertoire I actively detest, it would be Faust. Yes I know it has great tunes, and good parts for the tenor, bass, soprano, and baritone. But the opera just bores me to tears. I can't stand it. So of course when the Met announces a new production, my first reaction is to buy a ticket. Such is life.

The production is borrowed from the English National Opera. Des MacAnuff has set Faust in a nuclear scientist's lab, and as Faust strikes a deal with the devil, he seems to take a trip back to the future, as all of a sudden the women are wearing 19th century frocks and the men are fighting with swords. (Wait a minute -- in the 19th century swords were out, but no matter.) An industrial unit set with two spiral staircases down the sides of the stage with a few props and changes in lighting (as well as the inevitable projections) indicate changes in scene and mood. The production seems to imply that Faust is a lonely scientist's fantasy (Marguerite is first seen onstage as one of his lab technicians).

It's an interesting concept that for some reason failed to really deliver. For one, the grim scientist's lab setting changes into a corny Army barracks with Valetin, some soldiers, some women dressed in 19th century frocks, a setting so traditional it wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1883 Met debut. The production turns positively treacly when Faust and Marguerite fall in love. All of a sudden, roses fall from the sky and it's pink everywhere. The last two acts have a prominent cross dropped at the center front of the stage as Marguerite goes through her pregnancy and then kills her baby. Then all of a sudden the mushroom cloud explodes ... when Marguerite kills her baby? The last scene was somewhat effective, as Marguerite was locked in a jail and then ascends up the unit staircases to heaven, while Faust wakes up in his lab again. Still, there were many scenes with little to no effective blocking (the Soldier's Chorus is one example), and other scenes which were incomprehensible. Concept productions only work if the concept is carried throughout the opera. Otherwise it just seems like a failed attempt to be clever.

The cast that was assembled was overall a strong one. Jonas Kaufmann in the title role remains a wonder of the opera world -- a deep, rich, baritonal voice that can also ring like a trumpet. He has a solid high C for "Salut", and, for a German, enough of an approximation of the French style. He sang much of the role in mezza voce, managed a beautiful diminuendo at the end of Act Two on "Oh belle infant, j'taime," and tried to inject some genuine Romantic angst into this cardboard role. I just find the role of Faust shallow and unappealing. Marina Poplavskaya (a replacement for chronic canceler Angela Gheorghiu) is one of the strangest singers I have ever encountered. At times her voice can really project a beautiful, intriguingly icy sound. Other times, she sounds like a squealing cat. This can happen from one note to the next. Her top can be solid and open-throated, and then constricted and shrill. As a result of her vocal inconsistency, her performances are always disjointed, her beautiful moments like finding a few diamonds in a coal mine. The "Jewel" song had a smudged trill and some screamed, awkward high notes as well as some yelping coloratura. The final trio has some similar problems. The usually cut prison aria was beautiful though, as was the Thule song. I've heard Poplavskaya several times now and I'm starting to think she's essentially a short soprano with an extremely problematic top. She's a good actress, but she and Kaufmann had little to no chemistry. In fact, they were positively chilly towards each other.

The best music of the opera goes to Mephistopheles, sung with smarmy humor by Rene Pape. It's almost as if Gounod knew that the romance of the opera was treacly and the religious symbolism heavy-handed, so he created one role that was lovably irreverent. The Golden Calf has to be my favorite musical moment of the opera. Pape injected some much-needed lightness and energy into the very long evening. I realize that Pape is a seasoned vet at this opera, and some of the Devil schtick has probably been carried through from production to production, but it was still fun. His basso can sound surprisingly light and lyrical, and at home in the French repertoire. Russell Braun was a solid if unexciting Valentin.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin was another hero of the evening. Gounod has a natural tendency to sound ponderous and treacly, even in orchestration. The pocket-sized conductor kept things moving along, with a light touch. The Met orchestra sounded beautiful under his leadership. One particular moment that stood out to me was the finale of Act Three. It's a rather slow, lugubrious duet between Faust and Marguerite. Poplavskaya was having trouble (another squealing cat moment), and Nezet-Seguin both slowed down the orchestra to accompany Poplavksaya, and also swelled up the sound, so that Poplavskaya's vocal harshness at that moment became barely noticeable under the glimmering wall of sound he created.

I think this will be my last Faust for a long time.

Bruno Mars

2011-11-24T14:39:00.002-05:00

When something is incredible, it's incredible. And Bruno Mars' latest single (taken from the Breaking Dawn soundtrack) is one of the best love songs in recent years. Right now, it's up there with Adele's "Someone Like You" as one great torch song. Listen, think of all your failed relationships, and weep.

Then listen to this even better live rendition:

Bieito's Carmen

2011-11-19T10:30:00.002-05:00

Do we really need another Carmen video on the market? A quick search on Amazon shows dozens of choices, in blu-ray and on regular DVD. Live performances, filmed performances, old videos, new videos. Carmen is also one of those operas where the video library is unusually complete -- renowned performers of the opera, from Franco Corelli's Don Jose to Grace Bumbry's Carmen, have all been caught on film.

The main reason one would be interested in this particular Carmen (filmed in 2010 at the Barcelona Liceu) is that the director is the Calixto Bieito, who has became famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for his controversial productions. Un Ballo et Maschera had a set where men were sitting on a toilet. Bieito productions are supposed to be edgy, controversial, full of violence, the very definition of "Regie-theatre."

When I actually viewed this Carmen though, I didn't find much that was outrageous, shocking, or controversial. It is an "updated" production, set in the late-1950's, and Carmen and her gang run a car smuggling business. The gypsies and factory girls are a little tarted up. At the beginning of Act Four, there's a lone toreador standing buck naked on the stage. But the basics of the storyline are unchanged. Don Jose is still a soldier, Carmen a free-spirited gypsy, Micaela is the girl from home, Escamillo a swaggering stud. The stage directions do tend to emphasize the violent side of the opera, but the opera is pretty violent, and there's nothing that directly contradicts anything in the libretto. At the same time I'd be hard-pressed to admit any new insights I gained into the opera. At times, I think some of the Bieito favorites (cars onstage, some full-frontal nudity) are as predictable as the Zeffirelli menagerie.

The unit set is a giant bull-ring. In Act 1, the bull-ring set approximates an army barracks, and there's a telephone booth from which Carmen first emerges. In Act 2, the scene isn't in a tavern, but in an abandoned locale where Carmen, Escamillo, and other smugglers meet. There's a beat-up car center stage. In Act 3, the set is filled with smuggled cars, and in Act 4, Carmen and Don Jose have their heated confrontation within a circle of chalk in the bull-ring.

Act 3 of Bieto's Carmen

The video is anchored by some strong, compelling performances. The blu-ray format is in some ways the opera singer's worst enemy -- with the high definition, and a director's fondness of close-up, you can see the sweating, straining, the wrinkles, the makeup, the wig lines. The leads of the opera, Beatrice Uria-Monzon (Carmen) and Roberto Alagna (Don Jose) have been singing these roles for many years, and the camera doesn't really flatter them in closeups. A particularly unfortunate moment is when Carmen unbuttons Don Jose's shirt, and you can see, in high definition, all of Roberto Alagna's chest hairs. The key to any great performance though is not to exactly look the part, but to create an illusion and make the audience believe. Uria-Monzon's Carmen is lusty, free-spirited, hyper-sexual, and even her middle-aged appearance is a benefit, as it gives Carmen a careworn look that I see in many "women of a certain profession." Alagna's Don Jose makes a clear transition from uniformed, upstanding soldier to a desperate, murderous vagabond. The Carmen/Jose relationship is portrayed as highly sexual and passionate, even in the later acts when Carmen has tired of Jose.

Bobby, with all his chest-hairs

Vocally, Uria-Monzon's mezzo sounds somewhat over-the-hill. She has the notes, but a certain plumy richness that audiences have come to expect from the role is definitely not there. Alagna on the other hand is going through an Indian summer of sorts with his voice. In the past he's had troubles controlling his pitch, but these problems are not so evident here. As always, his Don Jose is sung with a passion that's hard to beat. It brings sympathy to an otherwise rather creepy character. Even in the opera's violent climax (here, staged with Don Jose slitting Carmen's throat), Alagna can make us feel his pain. "Le fleur que tu m'avais jetee" was sung with feeling, style, and a secure top (something Alagna also doesn't always have).

Erwin Schrott as Escamillo was okay, but I might be the only person who finds the role one of the most tedious in opera, and no amount of pimp-daddy swagger can change that opinion. Schrott has a fine, firm baritone, but my reaction to Escamillo is always the same -- "okay you sang, please go away now." More interesting is Marina Poplavskaya's Micaela. Micaela in this production is presented as someone slightly more worldly than the mousey character she usually is -- she wears rather hip, fashionable clothes and takes picture of the army barracks like a tourist. Poplavskaya has a very beautiful timbre. I don't know much about actual singing technique, but even I can tell that her vocal emission is problematic -- there's no consistency of tone. She can sound ravishingly beautiful one minute, and thin and screechy the next.

Marc Piollet leads a spirited, vigorous reading of the score. The chorus sounds great. Picture quality is excellent. The version used is the standard Guiraud recitatives, even though both Uria-Monzon and Alagna are native French speakers.

La Sonnambula

2011-11-12T20:51:00.000-05:00

La Sonnambula is an opera in search of a great video. There's a B&W RAI film from the 1950's with a very young, pre-nosejob Anna Moffo that's vocally excellent, but has all the artificiality and poor picture/sound quality you'd expect from an RAI film of that era. And from then on it's slim pickings. The Met released a video of Dessay and Florez in the critically panned Mary Zimmerman production that's hampered not just by the silly production, but by Dessay's precarious vocal estate around the time of filming. Such a shame that Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Renata Scotto never filmed their Aminas (although there are plenty of excellent live and studio recordings of their renditions).

This new release on Dynamic is, all things considered, maybe the best La Sonnambula video on the market. That's not really saying much, granted, but still. The sound and picture quality is fine, the singers range from very good to acceptable, and the production is very pretty.

This performance was recorded at the Teatro Lirico in 2008. I have no idea where this theater is, a quick Google search tells me it's located in Cagliari, Italy, and seats 1,628 people. In other words, a small regional theater that's probably much more appropriate for Bellini's opera than the "major" opera theaters of the world. The staging is visually very pretty. It seems to be set at a Victorian picnic, with everyone seated on some grassy hills, all dressed in very fancy 19th century frocks that are kind of inappropriate for a simple Tyrolean village. At times the chorus stops for poses and look as if they jumped out of a painting. The back cover of the DVD says the production was "inspired" by Visconti's famous 1955 production for La Scala. I don't know.

Eglise Gutierrez is the Amina and she has a dusky, warm lyric soprano that's very pleasant on the ears. It's a joy to hear a beautiful voice sing such beautiful music. She looks good too -- pretty in a wholesome, healthy, pink-cheeked way. Weaknesses: she also unfortunately has a thin, penny-whistle upper register that sounds completely disembodied from the rest of her voice. Another weakness with Gutierrez that her Amina is somewhat blank dramatically; she seems to be singing a concert opera rather than living a role. Gutierrez is stronger in the solo portions of the role -- her voice, dusky and soft-grained, doesn't really project in the ensembles. For a comparison, you can hear old recordings of Callas and Scotto and how their sharper, edgier timbres absolutely cut through the ensemble to the point where Amina's vocal line was practically all you heard. But her vocal displays are very impressive, and this is definitely a voice to watch.

Here's her "Ah non credea mirarti" and "Ah non giunge":

The Elvino of this disc is the main weakness -- Antonino Siragusa has a pinched, hard, nasal tenor voice. It has no sweetness, no tenderness. He also has a tendency to sing a shade under the pitch. The absolutely beautiful duets between Amina and Elvino in Act One ("Prendi, l'aneli ti dono" and "Son geloso") are marred by what I can only call Siragusa's whiny, unpleasant sound.

Here's the famous Act One finale, where you can hear both Gutierrez's tendency to disappear in ensemble and Siragusa's unpleasant timbre:

Simone Alaimo is the Count Rodolfo -- not much to say about him other than he sounds pretty good for his age. Maurizio Benini's conducting is very singer-centered, meaning he's completely happy to stop the music completely to accommodate the singers. This sometimes gives the performance a rather shapeless feel, especially in the choruses and ensembles.

La Sonnambula is one of my favorite operas and I feel it often gets a bad rap, from singers, directors, even operaphiles. They deride the weak, old-fashioned storyline. But I firmly believe the music is some of the most beautiful ever written for the human voice, and so a new video is always a curiosity for me. This release on Dynamic gets a tentative thumbs-up.

Angela, I mean, Adriana Lecouvreur

2011-11-09T20:10:00.004-05:00

When I was living at home with my parents, my dad and I used to have a little thing. Whenever my mom went out of town, the first thing we did was we bought a big box of pizza. My mom, of course, would never allow us just to eat pizza and soda for dinner, so whenever she wasn't around, the first thing we did was pig out on pizza and soda.

Adriana Lecouvreur is opera's equivalent of a big, greasy, pepperoni-filled pizza pie. It's cheesy (forgive the pun), but oh boy is it fun, so much more so than "eat your spinach" operas like, uh, Tannhauser. I've never really been able to follow the particulars of the plot except this: Adriana is an actress and that she's loved by a tenor and baritone, but there's a mezzo that gets jealous and poisons poor Adriana. Last night's performance of Adriana at the OONY reminded me of all the times I wolfed down pizza the minute my mom left the house. Ah, fun times.

Adriana is one of the those operas that's only as good as the singers. It has meaty parts for soprano, tenor, mezzo, and baritone, which might explain its stubborn staying power despite being derided by conductors and serious musicians since, well, the premiere (1902, with Enrico Caruso and Angelica Pandolfini -- thanks for the correction, readers!). Soprano divas love the part, which doesn't have many fearsome high notes but does have plenty of opportunities for fancy costumes, dramatic "acting," and of course, a beautiful death. In the 1930s, Rosa Ponselle begged Edward Johnson for Adriana. He refused, and she quit opera. In the 1960's, Renata Tebaldi insisted on a new production of Adriana and Rudolf Bing reluctantly accepted. In his autobiography he recalled the incident with such bitterness, you would have thought Renata ran over his puppy. Today, performances are even rarer, especially performances with grade-A casts, which might explain the high turnout last night at Carnegie Hall.

Angela Gheorghiu's performances in New York at least have become rarer and rarer. Just in the past two years she's cancelled entire runs of Carmen, Romeo et Juliette, and Faust. Up until the last minute there was web chatter about whether she'd show up at all for this engagement. But she was good to her word, and really delivered last night. She was in temperament an almost perfect Adriana -- haughty, theatrical, but with a touch of kookiness and fragility. Her voice is too soft-grained for some of the more declamatory parts of the role, and she also is over-fond of some effects that after awhile seem like mannerisms -- reducing her voice to a thread, only to swell it back up to a loud forte, some idiosynchratic phrasing, and often deliberately lagging behind the conductor. Despite these diva mannerisms, there was undeniable beauty, charm, and pathos in the way she sang last night. She needed time to warm up -- “Io son l’umile ancella,” was rather weak and at times inaudible, but once she did warm up she put on a great show. "Poveri fiori" was particularly lovely, as was her very protracted death scene. She also looked stunning in first a sparkly black evening gown, and then for the second act a white toga-like dress. Adriana is a diva, and Angela doesn't have to play the part -- it all comes naturally to her.

Jonas Kaufmann was the ying to Angela's yang. I can never figure out whether Maurizio is a likable character -- he's a gigolo to a married woman, and he has a romance on the side with Adriana, and he's also ... a war hero? I don't know. Whereas Angela simply marks sections of the score that are less musically notable, Kaufmann sang the sometimes bombastic, Andrew Lloyd Webber-like score as if it were a lieder recital. His timbre is dark and baritonal and can sound a bit throaty, but at other times it can ring like a trumpet, and he was in very good voice last night. Great to see him back after he cancelled some performances this summer for surgery. He and Gheorghiu have a strange but effective chemistry. They definitely seem like stage lovers, with a lot of air-kisses and no-contact embraces, but in its own theatrical way it was romantic.

Anita Rachvelishvili as the jealous, murderous Principessa has one of those huge, throaty, cavernous Russian voices that makes opera fans wild, and critics fret. It's a big, undisciplined voice and she's apparently very young (not even 30). Definitely a name to watch. Ambrogio Maestri was a very sympathetic Michonnet, with a smooth, well-produced baritone. I enjoyed watching Alberto Veronesi conduct. He has that big, poofy conductor hair and he looked like he was doing a Leonard Bernstein imitation, with the jumping, dramatic starts/stops and frantic stick-waving. He made the score sound like 1930's MGM movie music, but it was endearing to see a conductor treating Cilea like Mahler.

The audience was highly enthusiastic. Weeping, screaming, stomping. There really is nothing like scarfing down pizza the minute mom leaves.

Siegfried - Under the Boardwalk, Part 3

2011-11-05T20:44:00.002-04:00

Richard Wagner - Siegfried

Metropolitan Opera

November 5, 2011

Robert Lepage's third installment of The Ring, Siegfried, debuted last week, and was only given a paltry three performances in the initial fall run (there will be full cycles in the spring). I caught the last of the three performances, in a performance that was also broadcast to HD.

By now it's become fashionable to complain about The Machine, and to deride the Lepage production as either: 1. unimaginative; and/or 2. all 3-D style and no substance. I had some of the same complaints in my reactions to Das Rheingold and Die Walkuere, but with Siegfried I didn't have many complaints. I thought the production was very clever, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing, and was true to Wagner's idea of Siegfried being the "scherzo" of the cycle -- a more light-hearted opera among all the themes of the World Coming to an End and The Evils of Greed that dominate the other operas of the cycle.

Siegfried resembles a comic book adventure, with a fearless man-child hero, a magic weapon, dragon-slaying adventures, talking animals, and a rather bombastic romantic ending. Even the villain of the piece is not a chilling uber-badass (unlike Hunding or Hagen), but a pathetic little dwarf appropriately named Mime, whose machinations are more funny than truly menacing. The Lepage production as usual relied heavily on 3-D projections, but they were effectively used to evoke the woodsy areas of Siegfried's life. One of the most charming features of the production was the projection of the fluttering Forest Bird, who resembled a Disney movie animal. Fafner the dragon was also straight out of a comic book -- he looked like a Pixar animation. On Tuesday night the Machine malfunctioned in Act 3, but this afternoon there were no glitches. Act 3 had some stunning projections of a fire and an overgrown grassland where Brunnhilde was at first almost invisible.

That being said, the Machine is not without its problems. The main problem is the big immobile set of planks that line the apron of the stage -- the boardwalk. They're just there, gray and industrial-looking, and Lepage has decided to set more and more of the action away from the apron, on either the steeply raked movable planks, or in some cases, behind the apron planks. The reason is probably because when the singers climb onto the boardwalk to sing, it looks like they are on a concert platform, and little to no blocking can be done on them. But if you put the singers behind the apron or upstage on the movable planks, they often look and (more importantly) sound distant, in some of the worst acoustic spots on the Met stage. I remember Jonas Kaufmann's interview where he said he insisted on singing the latter part of Act One in Die Walkuere on the platform to feel closer to the audience. So singers continue to find ways to climb onto the boardwalk to stand-and-sing, while Lepage continues to set more and more of the stage directions away from the apron.

But enough about the production. What made the afternoon a success was the strength of the musical performance. Fabio Luisi led a light, taut, briskly paced Met orchestra, and really captured the lightness and even delicacy of many of the orchestral interludes of the opera. Luisi's Siegfried is much faster than Levine's would have been, but it was a very beautifully led performance and always sensitive to the needs of the singers.

Jay Hunter Morris was a last minute substitute for Gary Lehman (who replaced Ben Heppner). If I were to be objective about it, I'd say that his voice is somewhat light-sounding for Siegfried, and that when pushed, it can have a nasal edge that isn't the most pleasant to listen to. But what an energetic, charming portrayal! From his entrance to the last high C (lightly touched and then quickly ducked by both Morris and Voigt), this Siegfried carried the afternoon. He made the young superhero likable, which is rare in most of the performances I've seen of this opera. Too often, Siegfried is portrayed as all mass, no class. Testosterone overload. JHM made the character believable as not just a superhero, but a naive child. I do worry what a steady diet of Siegfrieds will do to a voice that's essentially too lyric for the part. But oh well.

The Das Rheingold jerks were back, and all in fine form. (Wotan, Alberich, Fafner, Mime -- Wagner sure knew how to make hateful gods, dwarves and dragons.) Bryn Terfel as the Wanderer (Wotan) was excellent. In this opera the Wanderer is a cynical, philosophical figure, and also sort of creepy if you think about the fact that he spends much of the opera angling for his grandson to get it on with his daughter. Terfel's voice always had a hard, snarly edge and this part suits him better than Die Walkuere Wotan. Eric Owens made a powerful impression as nasty Alberich. Some day I'd like to hear him sing Wotan, and I wonder if his looks are preventing him from getting more prominent parts because his bass-baritone has the amplitude, volume, and timbre for the nobler parts. Hans-Peter Konig was almost stunningly good as Fafner the dragon. For most of the opera he was amplified and singing behind the big rubber Dragon (see picture below). But once Siegfried gave him the moral blow he climbed onto the apron and with his deep, rich bass made me feel the dragon's pain, if that's even possible.

The deepest impression was left by Gerhard Siegel as Mime. Mime is really a very funny character -- more laughable than menacing, and Siegel tore up the stage as the sniveling, whiny dwarf. In this production Lepage has Mime steal Siegfried from a dying Sieglinde's arms in a pantomime during the Prologue, maybe to underscore how Mime never had good intentions, but it was a touch I admit I didn't really enjoy, because to me, I like Mime purely for the comic relief. His cowardice, his greed, his self-pity, and those sing-songy melodies he sings to Siegfried are all very funny. Yes I know he's also evil, and murderous and greedy, but he's more of a comic-book villain. Mime only became chilling in his final scene, when he gleefully talked about murdering Siegfried.

The women of the afternoon were less strong. Mojca Erdmann chirped squeakily as the Forest Bird. Patricia Bardon's voice is really too light and mezzo-ish for Erda, and she exudes no authority towards Wotan. Her scene went for naught. Deborah Voigt sounded better than she has in a long time, but that's really not saying much. She really acted the part of Brunnhilde very well, making a clear transition between the sleeping Valkyrie of the previous opera and the shy mortal woman that Siegfried wakes up. Brunnhilde in this opera is a shorter part. Her voice remains like Swiss cheese -- holes everywhere. She can sometimes focus her tone and a big, beautiful sound can come out, but other times she sounds croaky and colorless, and top notes are are hit and miss. Her final high C was gingerly touched and then quickly dropped, but many Wagnerian sopranos have difficulties with a high C. It's the inconsistency of tone that's the most worrisome -- I dread hearing her Gotterdamerung. She seems to be getting through the Ring on sheer will.

But some sour notes from the Brunnhilde weren't enough to detract from a generally excellent afternoon at the opera. Siegfried isn't always an opera I actively seek out, but I'm always surprised by how much I enjoy it when I do see it -- Wagner that actually makes me laugh! I think of all Lepage installments, Siegfried is also his most successful production. Thumbs up for everyone.

Angela Meade's Anna

2011-10-22T14:31:00.002-04:00

I really can't believe I've now sat through three performances of Anna Bolena within a rather short amount of time. It's not my favorite opera by a long-shot, and the production is absolutely dreary. Read my thoughts on the first-cast performance here. But the buzz about the second-cast Anna Bolena has been strong among operaphiles, who have whispered that Anna Netrebko is the bigger star but Angela Meade the better vocalist. Meade made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 as a last minute substitution in Ernani, and since then has slowly been building up quite a following. So last night I dragged myself to the Met to sit through Anna Bolena again. Yippee.

It's weird though, the things that can contribute to a performance. There was the substitution of an ailing Ekaterina Gubanova with Katharine Goeldner. Goeldner's voice is not as large and rich as Gubanova's. But it sounds edgy, with a fast vibrato, that made a nice contrast with Meade's voice. Also, Goeldner is a slim, good-looking woman (she's sung Carmen before) who made a natural, believable romantic rival for Anna Bolena.

Angela Meade (picture above) is a very large woman. She would have been considered large and unglamorous in any era of opera (see the old reviews of singers -- they were full of un-PC comments about weight and appearance). There are the singers who can get away with a less than ideal appearance, and the singers who can't. The minute I heard Angela Meade open her mouth last night it was apparent she fell into the first category, although her appearance will probably prevent her from super-stardom. Her voice is beautiful. It's as large and warm as Netrebko's, but with a slightly harder edge that suits this kind of music. Her diction is clearer, and she's more comfortable with the rapid ascending and descending scales of this music. Lovely sense of line and legato, with some beautiful floated notes. The only worrisome thing is that her voice tends to thin on top. She insists on singing some high options that might have been better left untouched, since they came out as thin screams. Unfortunately, the ending of "Coppia iniqua" was one of those moments where she went for a high note that wasn't quite there. Also, everyone told me that Meade had a great trill, but I was disappointed in her trills in both "Al dolce guidami" and "Coppia iniqua." Netrebko's trill is problematic and comes and goes, but Meade's trill sounds like a weak little Caballe flutter.

Here's an interesting side-by-side comparison of "Coppia iniqua":

To these ears, both sopranos have trouble with the ascending trills. Meade's high notes have a tendency to fly wild and, while Netrebko has more control over her top and doesn't take the E-flat option. Meade's voice however is sharper, edgier, and flies through the music, while Netrebko's darker, more luxuriant timbre can make the music sound sluggish.

It's unfortunate that Meade's appearance probably prevents a stronger stage presence, because I thought that if I were to look at only the actual acting, Meade has a stronger understanding of the role than Netrebko. Netrebko was very queenly, but Meade was more of what I imagine the real Anne to have been like -- jittery, neurotic, temperamental. She moves with a lot of energy onstage, often running and pacing back and forth as Anna's situation becomes more desperate. Meade also has a better instinctual understanding of how to inject the drama into bel canto music. The key to Netrebko's success I think is her essentially placid, fun-loving persona. She's always been the pretty, down-to-earth diva-next-door who just happens to have a great voice. High tragedy doesn't come naturally to her, though. That's why I think her Anna Bolena was a beautiful failure. Meade's Anna Bolena is vocally a better fit.

The other singers pretty much confirmed my impressions of them the first time around. I was sitting in the balcony, and Costello's voice sounded more audible tonight, but that bleaty, forced, tight sound is still there, as is the complete inability to sing "Vivi tu." (He ducked out of the most of the cabaletta, if that's even possible.) He also still looks shy and mortified on the big Met stage. Tamara Mumford remains one to watch -- she has a really mellifluous mezzo, and made the smallish role of Smeaton one of the most memorable of the evening. Ildar Abdrazakov was a properly hateful, menacing Henry, so much so that I heard a smattering of boos during the curtain calls. Marco Armiliato was a much stronger conductor tonight than the first night I heard him. He actually had some sense of rhythm and timing.

The auditorium was fairly crowded for a second-cast performance. Meade got a huge ovation at the end of the evening.

La Esmeralda in HD, Askegard's Farewell

2011-10-09T21:14:00.005-04:00

The Bolshoi's live in HD program continued this Sunday with a transmission of Esmeralda. Esmeralda is actually a very old ballet; it had its debut in 1844, with choreography by Jules Perrot and music by Cesare Pugni. It had numerous restaging, and was rechoreographed by Marius Petipa. It was a favorite vehicle of Mariinsky prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya, who used to take her own pet goat onstage. But the ballet fell out of the repertory, some showpieces aside, until it was revived by the Bolshoi Ballet in 2009. The reconstruction has taken out the "Esmeralda pas de deux" with the tambourine kicking variation, but has kept Agrippina Vaganova's "Diana and Acteon" pas de deux. Weird.

I don't know how much extant choreography is left and how much was recreated, but Esmeralda today seems rather old-fashioned. It has its moments, including the famous pas de six, and the interpolated Diana and Acteon pas de deux, but it also has long dull stretches. The first act is interminable, contains very little dancing, and about a third of the movie theater left before the second act. Pugni's music is pleasant but mostly unmemorable. It's very loosely based on Victor Hugo's novel, but of course Quasimodo is reduced to a side spectacle and the focus is on Esmeralda, the gypsy girl who loves a good-looking but shallow captain. The storyline has a very weird, contrived happy ending which involves someone who was fatally stabbed coming back to life. (In the novel there are no such miracles.) The costumes and sets are very pretty, as is often the case with reconstructions. It's never less than watchable, but I can see why this fell out of the repertory.

Maria Alexandrova is a strong technician with a nice, down-to-earth persona that's fitting for a gypsy girl. She has a buoyant jump, a great classical line, and an unpretentious way of dancing. But she's singularly unlyrical. Part of the problem is her look -- she's tall with a compact, block-like torso and no flexibility in the spine. Her face is a rather expressionless, vacant mask. But it's also the way she dances -- her style is too straightforward to really be poetic. In the famous pas de six, in which Esmeralda is forced to dance at the engagement party of the man she loves, I've seen ballerinas who made it seem as if their tambourines were weeping. Alexandrova brought no such vulnerability, and her unflexible spine and legs made the repeated arabesque penchee promenades look ugly.

To see how beautiful and heart-rending Esmeralda can/should look, here's an old clip of the Mariinsky Ballet in the pas de six:

Watch how the ballerina makes so much of the motion of letting her back and arms hang backwards, while rustling the tambourine. It was said that long after the affair with the Czar was over, Mathilde Kschessinskaya used to dance the Esmeralda pas de six with the Czar watching, and weep as life imitated art.

Alexandrova also has an irritating habit of rushing through the pantomime. This is an old ballet, and there's a lot of mime. It needs to be clear and expressive. It should tell a story. Alexandrova quite honestly looked like she was waving her arms around and directing traffic.

Ruslan Svortsov as Captain Phoebus really doesn't have that much to do besides look pretty and partner well, and he did both things. He has very nice-looking legs and feet. Ekaterina Krysanova was really delightful as Phoebus's fiance Fleur-de-Lys. She reminded me of a small elf in the way she darted around the stage, and finished off her variation with a very nice set of single-double fouettes. The unannounced Diana and Acteon were fabulous -- I just wish the program said who they were. Denis Savin as Gringoire and Igor Tsvirko as Quasimodo provided a welcome dignity to roles that are supposed to be somewhat secondary and clownish. The villain Frollo was given an appropriately hammy performance by Alexei Loparevich. One thing that the Bolshoi HD telecasts show repeatedly is how strong the company is in these supporting character roles.

After the HD I headed crosstown to catch the Charles Askegard farewell at New York City Ballet. I haven't been to City Ballet at all during their fall season. The farewell performance was not sold out, with even the Fourth Ring half-empty and half-empty rows littering the orchestra. It felt more like a private performance than a huge event. I saw Paloma Herrera, Hee Seo, and Michele Wiles during intermission -- they looked gorgeous! The performance was a rather eclectic selection -- the Diamonds pas de deux, Episodes, In Memory Of ..., and Western Symphony. I kind of wonder why Episodes and In Memory Of ... were chosen -- they're not really ballets I associate with a farewell gala. They're very grim and serious. Western Symphony provided the much-needed levity and festivity. His frequent partners (Maria Kowroski, Sara Mearns, Wendy Whelan) were all there, and perhaps in deference to their retiring partner, all danced very "small" today, very low-key.

At the end of the performance, all the City Ballet female principals came onstage to present Askegard with huge bouquets, and then the men were led onstage by Peter Martins to pay homage. Askegard was showered with confetti and bouquets, and I could see Maria Kowroski wiping away tears. It was a very nice way for City Ballet to end their fall season.

Anna Bolena

2011-10-04T19:05:00.002-04:00

Anna Bolena

Metropolitan Opera

October 3, 2011

If I could have played a drinking game last night, it was "drink once every time a singer stomps to a doorway, pauses, then turns around, fists balled, to launch into an angry cabaletta." It seems as if David McVicar's directions for Donizetti's Anna Bolena basically amounted to this repeated action, over and over again. Donizetti's Anna Bolena is not as interesting as the real Anne Boleyn, who went to her death fiery, clearheaded, and unrepentant. She even made a grim joke about her neck on her way out. Donizetti's heroine of course none of the real Anne Boleyn's complexity -- she's a put-upon heroine, and of course she has to have a spectacular, pitiful mad scene. But still, with all the knowledge and popularity of these historical characters on TV, film, and books, surely they could have made a more interesting production?

Musically the evening was at a pretty high level, one or two exceptions aside. The worst performance bar none came from conductor Marco Armiliato. These ottocento operas need a sense of rhythm and urgency, and a contrast of tempi to mark changes in moods or scenes, or musical transitions. Armiliato conducted the whole evening as if he were, like, you know, at a Deadhead concert. He slacked constantly behind the singers, sometimes completely missing their entrances or cues by a few beats. The ensembles (including the Act One finale) sounded disjointed, with the chorus and the singers not really in sync. The Met orchestra was also noticeably out of tune. It was a horrible performance that really gave a low level of energy to the whole evening.

Tenor Steven Costello as Percy was also a big disappointment. His voice is narrow and reedy, with a tight, constricted top. Not much volume or projection, either. He was professional, but his voice has no beauty and no bloom. I thought his big second act aria "Vivi tu" should have been cut as by then he was also out of gas and bleating very badly. I really can't picture him as Romeo or Rodolfo in a big house like the Met. Tamara Mumford in the trouser role of Smeaton was an unexpected delight. Very smooth, silvery mezzo, with a fast but controlled vibrato. Her serenade in the beginning of the opera was excellent. Ildar Abdrazakov (Henry) has a hard-edged, cold bass that was fitting for the role of the cruel monarch.

Ekaterina Gubanova (Seymour) was a substitute for a pregnant Elina Garanca. The plain, dumpy Gubanova actually looks more like the Seymour of history than the glamorous Garanca. Her voice is also warmer, and she's a more sympathetic stage presence than Garanca's mezzo, which often sounds like a sheet of ice. But in the duet with Anne, her timbre doesn't have enough of a contrast with Netrebko to really make an impact. She sounds like Anne's little sister, rather than a hated rival. The best Anne/Seymour combination remains Callas and Simionato in those famous 1957 Scala performances. (The opera, by the way, gives us a highly sympathetic version of the real Jane Seymour, who was apparently quite heartless in moving from Anne's lady-in-waiting to Henry's wife within a matter of months.)

Anna Netrebko's highly anticipated performances as the doomed queen were both more and less than I expected. I saw the opening night transmission at Times Square, and she seemed more driven on opening night to put on a grand show. Last night in Act One she seemed almost to be marking much of the time, probably to conserve energy for the much more famous, musically compelling second act. Her voice remains a wonder in the opera world -- rich, warm, almost mezzo-ish, but with a bright and trumpet-like top that extends all the way up to E flat in alt. Vocally the performance was conscientious -- almost as if she were answering her critics. Some say she tends to sing without much dynamics, and last night she floated a beautiful pianissimo in the mad scene. She's worked on her much-criticized trills, articulating them clearly in "Al dolce guidami" and making a stab at them in "Coppia iniqua." (In fairness, I've heard almost all the extant recordings of "Coppia iniqua" and even Callas and Sills can't handle the repeated ascending trills without some slurring and smudging.) Her scales are cleaner, without the distracting snatches of breath that marred her Lucia di Lammermoor. Her diction remains a problem -- often cloudy and mushy. But obviously she's studied the score and done the rule musical justice.

Nevertheless it was kind of a dull performance, without much of the famous Netrebko spontaneity and charm. She only occasionally took flight from dutiful to truly inspired. Maybe it was the grim production and costumes, with almost everyone dressed in historically correct gowns, but in varying shades of black, black, and more black. Maybe it was the direction, which as I said consists of people stomping out of doorways, only to turn around, "furious", to sing an angry cabaletta. I actually think that this is Anna trying to be serious, queenly, "grown up," but she's mistaken dull for dignified. Opening night Anna broke character and smiled at the audience after "Al dolce guidami" but last night her expression never changed -- it was always a frown. Of course Anna Bolena is a purely tragic role, but more vivacity and fire would have been both more historically accurate and more entertaining.

The sets and production were very "bel canto," which means lots of vaguely historical-looking sliding panels, fancy period costumes, and drab lighting, with the chorus standing around for much of the evening looking alternately bored and pained. In Vienna during the final moments of the opera Anna starts playing with her very very long wig, curling it into a sort of bun and leaving her neck exposed. This hair fussing is in the Met production as well, and it was an annoying distraction. The final tableau used the Met stage elevator to reveal an executioner awaiting Anna, and then there was a symbolic red curtain. Except the red curtain didn't really fall on time to make the required effect. It also got snagged on the scenery. One thing I will say: the wolfhounds were adorable, lighting up the stage the way only cute doggies can. In the hunt scene, my eyes naturally just drifted towards the two darlings.

It's been awhile ...

2011-09-10T01:17:00.001-04:00

Since my last post. This summer after dance season ended I basically started indulging in my big summer passion -- Big Brother! I also went on vacation twice, and have just been super busy. But now it's fall, and this blog is going to be busy again! Meanwhile, listen to this and have your heart totally break:

Mariinsky in Carmen and Symphony in C

2011-07-17T04:44:00.001-04:00

Carmen/Symphony in C

Mariinsky Ballet

July 16 and 17, 2011

Ballet season officially ended for me tonight with a double bill of the Mariinsky Ballet in Carmen and Symphony in C. I also attended last night's performance which had the same program but a different cast. This has been by far the busiest spring season of ballet I've ever attended, with me going 3 or 4 times a week, and I've made great new friends. It's been tiring but exhilarating, as today I rushed from a Mets game to the ballet and scarfed down dinner at the Lincoln Center plaza before rushing inside to the ballet.

The Mariinsky opened both last night and tonight with Alberto Alonso's Carmen. The music is from Bizet's opera, but reorchestrated and arranged by Rodin Schedrin, aka Mr. Maya Plisetskaya. This piece was a favorite vehicle for an aging Alicia Alonso and Maya Plisetskaya. Last night's performance starred Diana Vishneva, Yuri Smekalov, and Yevgeny Ivanchenko. Tonight it had Uliana Lopatkina, Daniil Korsuntsev, and Yevgeny Ivanchenko. Vishneva and Lopatkina are two of the greatest female ballerinas on the planet right now, but even they couldn't save this mess of a ballet. It's choreographically almost completely empty, with one move repeated over and over -- Carmen does a grand battement, kicks her leg over Don Jose's shoulder, and Don Jose drags her across the stage. Sometimes Don Jose will act as a pole for Carmen the stripper/ballerina to rotate around. Wash, rinse, repeat, fifty minutes later, still the same move. I suppose this became a favorite vehicle of Alonso and Plisetskaya when things like Odette/Odile were beyond their means, but it was a shame seeing Vishneva and Lopatkina wasted in such trash.

Of the two ballerinas, I'd say Lopatkina had a little more of the brittle "Carmen" hardness, and better looking legs, than Vishneva. Lopatkina enhanced the look of her legs by dancing without tights, while Vishneva wore the thick pink ballet tights. Lopatkina is taller, with a more austere line, and is capable of using her long legs as knives. Vishneva is more petite, more "girlish" figure, and her kittenish Carmen didn't quite work. In Bizet's opera, Don Jose is a huge, complex character who often steals the show from the Carmen. But in this ballet, he's nothing more than a pole for Carmen to lean on, except for a bizarre moment near the end of the ballet when he prances onstage in a hot pink polka dotted silk shirt (see above picture). The dignified and elegant Yevgeny Ivanchenko looked absolutely mortified (the way some dancers do when they're stuck dancing really bad ballets) prancing and preening aimlessly in the ridiculous role of the Toreador. I'd really rather erase Carmen from my memory.

The real reason I attended both performances was of course to see Balanchine's masterpiece Symphony in C. I had only seen the "Bizet" done at the New York City Ballet and was interested in seeing another company's take. Could the Mariinsky dancers really nail the sharp attack and relentless energy of Balanchine? Well, no, they couldn't, but nevertheless it was still an excellent attempt, and there were some wonderful performances. I thought that overall tonight's performance was better than last night's. It had more snap, more attack, more go-for-broke energy. The soloists tonight were also superior to last night's soloists.

Part of the joy of seeing the Mariinsky in Symphony in C was their beautiful corps de ballet. The Mariinsky's production follows the original costume design, with the corps in white, and all the soloists wearing colored tutus. But the corps looked beautiful -- lines all straight, arms completely synchronized, glittering in their white tutus and tiaras. Lovely port de bras. That being said, they definitely had times when they were completely out of sync with the orchestra. Last night, in the fourth movement, it seemed as if they were always either a phrase behind or ahead of the orchestra -- never exactly on the beat. Tonight it was better, but the quickness and sharpness of attack that I look for in Balanchine just doesn't come naturally to a corps that dances an endless diet of Swan Lake and La Bayadere. Still, one had to admire the lovely images they made.

In the first movement, last night it was Alina Somova and Andrian Fadeev. Somova is a weird dancer -- famous for her "ear-whacking" beyond-180 degree extensions, but strangely stiff in the spine, tense in the shoulders and arms, and weakly turned out. Her arabesques lack control, so when she throws her leg to over 180 degrees, it looks floppy, and there's no sense of a deliberate movement upwards. Her feet are another issue -- it's jarring to see a principal in a world class company forget to point her toes when doing beats with her legs, or in passe/releve, but that's Somova. She also does a lot of what my friend called "chin dancing." Tonight, Viktoria Tereshkina took Alina Somova's place. Tereshkina is the opposite of Somova -- her body is taut and lean, and technically it seems there's nothing she can't do. The sissones which looked wild with Somova were solid and sharp tonight with Tereshkina. In fact, there's a "just-the-steps" quality to Tereshkina that I bet Mr. B would have loved. But there's still something about Tereshkina that prevents me from loving her. Don't know what it is -- maybe it's that she's strangely too perfect to the point of seeming slightly hard-boiled and sterile. Fadeev is I believe retiring but you could never tell from the way he's dancing. He has such an elegant line and bearing.

Last night's adagio movement was danced by Uliana Lopatkina and Daniil Korsuntsev, tonight it was Ekaterina Kondaurova and Yevgeny Ivanchenko. Everyone loves the second movement of Symphony in C, and this choreography is pretty fool-proof. I thought of the two females, I marginally preferred Kondaurova to Lopatkina. Lopatkina took the adagio at a much slower pace, but at times seemed so concentrated in showing off the great control she had over her entire body, as she moved at such a glacial pace. Kondaurova took the adagio at a slightly brisker pace, and her body line is not as beautiful as Lopatkina's from a purely aesthetic viewpoint. But Kondaurova's phrasing was softer than Lopatkina's, and more natural. Both ladies are extremely flexible, and both tried the famous knee-touching arabesque penchee that was popularized when Suzanne Farrell used to do the second movement. Korsuntsev and Ivanchenko were both excellent partners who provided great support to their ballerinas.

The thrilling third movement is probably the only movement in Symphony in C where the male has a prominent virtuoso role. The movement requires two strong allegro dancers. Edward Villela used to specialize in the third movement. Both nights at the Mariinsky the third movement was danced by Evgenia Obraztsova and Vladimir Shklyarov. Balanchine has the third movement couple mirror their movements. I thought in this sense they were mismatched because Shklyarov is a much more powerful dancer than Obraztsova. Those slender thighs and beautiful feet of Shklyarov hide a surprising amount of power -- he has great elevation and ballon. Shklyarov stormed onstage and did a series of double air turns that just flew, while Obraztsova seemed unable to keep up with her high-energy partner. Don't get me wrong, Obraztsova is a charming dancer, but this movement needs a dynamo like Ashley Bouder to make it work. Shklyarov on the other hand was the most at home with the Balanchine style, and really added so much vitality to the performance.

The fourth movement is supposed to be one of the most thrilling, exhilarating finales in all of ballet. With the Mariinsky, the problems with corps de ballet had keeping up with the orchestra, and some of the problems the soloists had in timing their entrances and exits made the finale perhaps less of a stand-up-and-cheer occasion than it should have been. The fourth movement soloists, Maria Shirinkina and Alexander Timofeev, seemed most lost with the Balanchine style. Both good dancers, but just not at home in Balanchine as of now. Also, when all the soloists run back onstage, all of them seemed very uncomfortable with the Balanchine method of pirouettes, which is snappy and unprepared. They all go with the Russian method of conspicuous stops and preparations. Still, Symphony in C in even a less than perfect performance is a mood lifter, a beautiful and happy ballet that leaves the audience smiling and cheering. You could see that the Mariinsky dancers (or most of them) were trying very hard to master the style, and so you had to give them an A for effort. And sometimes, even the NYCB has trouble giving Mr. B's masterpiece the performance it deserves.

Yesterday for the first time this season I did the "stage door" thing with my friend. We figured that since just about everyone was dancing, we'd get a chance to meet the whole Mariinsky company. My friend and I both agreed that if anything, we really really hoped to have our picture taken with Vladimir Sklyarov. And while we got our programs signed by just about everyone (Diana Vishneva, Uliana Lopatina, Daniil Korsuntsev, Andrian Fadeev, Evgenia Obraztsova, Maria Shirinkina), when we saw Shklyarov come out we both started squealing like complete fangirls. He is so cute in person offstage, and so stylish too in his designer jeans and LV bag. Long story short, I think we would have been crushed had he been rude or abrupt, but he was as nice and sweet as his stage persona would suggest. He must have been exhausted after dancing three times in less than a week, but he still seemed genuinely happy to greet his fans. So ... here's the picture. He and his girlfriend Maria Shirinkina were so cute together. Is he not the most adorable man on the planet?

Me and the cutie pie

Yay! I love ballet. That is all.

The Mariinsky Pays a Visit

2011-07-14T13:57:00.005-04:00

The Little Humpbacked Horse

July 13, 2011, matinee performance

Mariinsky Ballet

Vladimir Shklyarov, Evgenia Obraztsova, Vasily Tkachenko

The last time the Mariinsky visited NY was 2008, and I went to several of their performances at the City Center before falling so sick I could barely get out of bed, much less go to the ballet. Since then somehow I've always missed their trips to Washington D.C., and so when I heard they were making a brief trip back to NYC this summer, I was determined to go, ridiculously inflated ticket prices notwithstanding. Turns out tickets were relatively easy to get at the usual discount venues (the Atrium, student tickets, coupon codes). This was not a sold-out tour.

The first performance I went to was the Wednesday matinee of Alexei Ratmansky's The Little Humpbacked Horse. The ballet is based on an old Russian folk tale, and has had numerous incarnations on the ballet stage. There was a famous ballet to the music by Pugni and choreographed by Petipa that believe is still occasionally performed by the Vaganova Academy and other smaller ballet companies in Russia. The story concerns the tale of the simple son Ivan, who wins the hand of the Tsar Maiden over a vain and foolish Tsar with the help of a clever Little Humpbacked Horse.

Ratmansky's revival used Rodin Schedrin's 1955 score. Schedrin's score is tuneful and inflected with Russian folk rhythms. It sounds like second-rate Prokofiev. Is it great music? No, but for the purposes of a ballet it's just fine. There's a film danced by Maya Plisetskaya and Vladimir Vasiliev of a Bolshoi revival in the late 1950s that is fun to watch and available on DVD. (Schedrin is better known to the world as Mr. Maya Plisetskaya). Ratmansky's revival for the Mariinsky kept Schedrin's score but included all-new choreography. Ratmansky's treatment of the fairy tale is full of his by now familiar comical, whimsical touches. For instance, the Tsar Maiden in Ratmansky's choreography is not queenly and aloof, but rather a tomboy trapped in beautiful robes and a tiara and braids. Her imperious appearance fades the minute she starts to dance. Ivan the fool is genuinely goofy, an overgrown boy dressed in soccer shorts. In the final pas de deux, both the Tsar Maiden and Ivan do a parody on the classical virtuoso variation. Ivan in particular has to restart his variation twice after falling, to the delight of the audience. The Little Humpbacked Horse in this ballet is an actual dancing character, whose steps often mirror that of Ivan's. In a play on the age-old fable of the emperor having no clothes, the Tsar is a childish midget who needs to be tickled by a gaggle of "Wet-Nurses." (I wonder how the Imperial family would have liked the original ballet.)

Nevertheless Ratmansky's strength as a choreographer is that unlike most modern ballet choreographer he's not afraid of story-ballets, he's not even afraid of mime, and he's fond of mixing classical ballet vocabulary with Russian folk dance. The Mariinsky's large company is put to good use both in the various character and demi-charactere roles Ratmansky created and in the larger corps de ballet dances. There are dancers that represent firebirds, forest trees, and there's even that stand-by of 19th century ballet -- the water maidens. And gypsies too. Sometimes the dances look like Petipa, other times they look like Russian folk dance, with the strong emphasis on pounding the floor in the downbeat of the music.

Maxim Isayev's sets and costumes were much talked about. Some people liked them, others hated them. The costumes are a mix of modern (Ivan's soccer shorts) and traditional "Russian" folk. The "Gypsies" dance in oversized t-shirts with faces imprinted on the t-shirts, and even the water maidens have these long blue tutus with faces on them. The sets are surprisingly plain and minimalist, and looked even more bare-bones on the large Met stage. There was a video screen in the back that had some school assembly-like projections.

The cast I caught on Wednesday afternoon was Vladimir Shklyarov as Ivan, Evgenia Obraztsova as the Tsar Maiden, and Vasily Tkachenko as the Little Humpbacked Horse, and Andrei Ivanov as the Tsar. I fell in love immediately with Shklyarov, who mixed a beautiful line, wonderful technique, boyish good looks, with an all-important sense of humor. Not just coy simpering "ballet humor," but actual goofy humor. This Ivan was mentally sort of slow, in an endearing kind of way. Shklaryov is so delicately good-looking that it was then a delight and to see him barreling his way across the stage in turns and jumps the typical "Russian" way. Those slender thighs hide a surprising amount of power. Yesterday I wrote about Leonid Sarafanov's sterile Albrecht. Shklyarov has the same boyish looks and flawless technique of Sarafanov, but he also has personality to burn. Definitely a star.

Evgenia Obraztsova is a tiny little ballerina, very cute and doll-like. This was my first time actually seeing her because she rarely tours with the company. She has a heart-shaped face and a winning smile. I was told by people who saw Viktoria Tereshkina opening night that the Tsar Maiden is supposed to be way more of a tomboy. Obraztsova was charming, but at times I thought she was simpering and mugging too much in the "typical" ballerina way, and could have taken more risks and played more against type. I was also told that Tereshkina was stronger in the variations. Obraztsova did have a very playful, unforced chemistry with Shklyarov.

I found this youtube video of Obraztsova's debut as the Tsar Maiden:

The afternoon would have been nothing without the various character and demi-charactere dancers (Vasily Tkachenko as Little Humpbacked Horse, Islom Baimuradov as the Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Anastasia Petushkova as the Young Mare/Princess of the Sea, and Andrei Ivanov as Tsar were standouts) in the smaller roles, and the corps de ballet. The corps in particualr -- the elegance and uniformity with which they dance everything, from a Firebird-like dance to Cossack-flavored folk dance, is as always remarkable.

This ballet showed the Mariinsky is a rare light mood, and it was just fun to watch them overall. Ratmansky is certainly the best modern choreographer and it's not a surprise why he's in such demand all over the world.

Here are some pictures I took of the curtain calls:

Giselle in 3-D

2011-07-13T01:39:00.004-04:00

After a long break the last days of spring dance season rolled around. This week the Mariinsky is in town, and I'm going to see them tomorrow. Today I dragged myself out of bed to watch Giselle in 3-D, a 3-D presentation of a performance filmed last year. It starred Bolshoi guest artist Natalia Osipova as Giselle, Leonid Sarafanov (no longer with the Mariinsky) as Albrecht, and Ekaterina Kondaurova is Myrtha.

Overall I thought the 3-D experiment was a failure. At the theater I went to for the first 15 minutes the screen was completely blurry and distorted in color, and people complained before it was finally fixed. But the 3-D made the dancers look very artificial and mechanical, kind of like dancing dolls, and other times they looked blurry and out-of-focus. The camera-work was also very poor. It cut dancers off at the feet or in the face. In the Mad Scene, Sarafanov's head was cut off so we couldn't see his expressions as he watched Giselle stumble around the stage. At other times, the relentless close-ups made Osipova's facial expressions look muggy, and we also saw Giselle's mother carefully removing Osipova's hair clips so her hair could tumble loose at the start of the Mad Scene. The camera work was better in Act Two, but still at odd times feet or hands were cut off, and you couldn't really get a good idea of dancers traveling through space, which kind of defeats the purpose of a 3-D presentation, doesn't it?

I saw Osipova's Giselle at the ABT in 2009 and this performance was pretty much how I remembered her live -- her ballon is incredible, she has a wonderful natural lightness and speed, but pure tragedy is not really her forte. Her arms don't have the super-tapered look so prized by balletomanes. Her Giselle is more impressive in the more abstract second act than the character-driven first act. In the first act I felt like despite her formidable technique (she's the only dancer I know who makes everything she does look so damned easy), this was basically someone who had gone to Giselle school and remembered the outlines of what the teacher wrote on the board. It wasn't really memorable for any special details. Maybe most disappointing of all was the weakly sketched Mad Scene. She dutifully hit all the major points without giving the impression of any deep feelings.

In Act Two, her Giselle from the opening initiation (where Osipova basically defied the rules of physics and turned with more speed than I thought humanly possible) really took off as thrilling pure-dance. Other Giselles are maybe more moving, have more emotional impact, but they don't articulate the choreography as thrillingly as Osipova. Her flying entrechats were as marvelous as I remember them being live -- she would hop in the air, hang there for a second, then cross her legs in beats before coming back down. The only thing is that after seeing Diana Vishneva and Alina Cojoaru this year, there's something a bit detached about Osipova's approach to Giselle. She makes the story too happy, if that even makes sense. In Act Two it seems like the coolest thing in the world, to be a spirit and jump the way she does through the woods. When she departed from Albrecht for the last time, she made a beeline off the stage, as if to say, "See ya! Wouldn't want to be ya!" This was definitely a Giselle that focused more on the dance than the romance.

I also think the 3-D process strangely diminishes the impact of Osipova's dancing, because her most remarkable quality (her ability to just devour the stage with her jumps) is not as apparent in 3-D. You get less of a feel for the height, distance, and amplitude of her dancing. The relentless close-ups also focused unfortunately on Osipova's tendency to grimace-smile when she dances.

She wasn't helped by her Albrecht, Leonid Sarafanov, who is that particular type of dancer with flawless line, superb, even flashy, technique, good looks, and yet manages to be dull as dirt. His Albrecht had a vacant face for the entire ballet -- he never grows from the careless playboy of Act One. He's also a weak partner, and there were several partnering issues in Act Two, particularly the famous overhead lifts. I've never seen such an emotionally blank Albrecht. I felt nothing for him. Even in the desperate entrechats of Act Two, Sarafanov never gave me the feeling of being willed to dance by the Wilis -- he just looked like a kid in class demonstrating how to do entrechats. He left the Mariinsky soon after this performance was filmed.

Ekaterina Kondaurova is a tall redhead and she is currently the chief Myrtha at the Mariinsky. She certainly looks the part of the Queen of the Wilis, Unfortunately her bourrees are bumpy and her jump doesn't look particularly powerful. The Mariinsky corps de ballet is famous for their elegance and uniformity, but I saw some surprising mistakes when the Wilis do their famous traveling arabesque hops and when they line up across the stage in a diagonal line and send Hilarion to his death. Legs not at the same height, arms not coordinated. I like how the corps formations are much more complex than the ABT's -- in particular, the Mariinsky Wilis circle around their male victims like a flock of vultures. Very creepy.

The Mariinsky production is very pretty and traditional, although much of the mime of Act One is cut. The peasant pas de deux was also cut in the 3-D film, although it's usually in most Mariinsky performances. The Act Two has Wilis flown across the stage on wires. The ending of the Mariinsky Giselle is rather abrupt and sudden, without much of a farewell between Giselle and Albrecht.

The Bolshoi in HD and the Danes

2011-06-19T21:54:00.002-04:00

I had an absolutely packed day of ballet today. I woke up today to see the Bolshoi in HD again -- this time, it was Swan Lake. I've greatly enjoyed the Bolshoi in HD series, but there had to be one clunker among the lot, and I'm afraid this was it. I was disappointed in everything, from the choreography (Grigorovich's quite awful production, which I'd only seen a long time ago on video) to the Odette/Odile (Maria Alexandrova), to even the corps de ballet work. Afterwards I knew I needed a palette cleanser, so along with my friends that I met at the cinema, we all walked over to Lincoln Center and saw the Royal Danish Ballet's final performance of their tour. So despite the quite awful Swan Lake, the day wasn't a waste, because the RDB made it all worth it.

How awful can the Bolshoi in Swan Lake be? Pretty awful. It's hard to get past Grigorovich's production, which both rearranges the score in all sorts of terrible ways, adds a whole bunch of "pure dance" that somehow became mind-numbingly similar, and is ugly aesthetically to boot. Grigorovich's main conceit is to have Rothbart/Evil Genius a sort of alter ego of Prince Siegfried. Evil Genius (played with campy perfection by Nicolai Tsiskaridze) mirrors the Prince in much of his steps. I suppose this was to give more dancing opportunities for the Bolshoi's famously strong male roster, but after awhile it was sort of "Okay, please go away anytime." Prince Siegfried isn't given a bow and arrow for his birthday, he's just sort of led astray by Evil Genius. All the mime and any sense of story is erased. In this version, the whole second act is a sort of "vision" by the Evil Genius, which means that in the lakeside scene, all the swans and Odette are already onstage by the time Siegfried arrives. Odette doesn't make her famous entrance by boureeing onstage and then doing a grande jete -- she's already onstage, so she circles around the stage on pointe and then jumps. This arrangement also robs Swan Lake of one of its most magical scenes -- the entrance of the swans, all flying onstage on arabesque saute.

Grigorovich's other idea is to absolutely butcher Act Three and Act Four. No other way to put it -- all the character dances are gone, and danced on pointe. The mazurka, the czardas, the Neapolitan dance, all gone, gone, gone. Odile makes her entrance with a gaggle of black swans to music usually played in Act Four, and the Black Swan pas de deux is mix-matched in terms of musical arrangements. Act Four is even worse -- the Drigo arrangements are gone, but there's no music in place of the Valse Bluette and Un poco di Chopin. Most unforgivably, Grigorovich cuts the music Tchaikovsky wrote for the Apotheosis, and instead reinserts the music that usually starts the Act Two lakeside scene. I suppose this was because Grigorovich's 2001 version of Swan Lake ends with Evil Genius whisking Odette's image away, and Siegfried left alone. So sad ending = sad music? I have no idea. But whatever the case, I know the end result was to rob Tchaikovsky's ballet of all meaning and poetry and instead make it another Big Ugly Grigorovich Spectacle. Petipa and Ivanov are but bit players in the Grigorovich Show.

Maybe a good Odette/Odile could have saved this sorry mess, but Maria Alexandrova was not that ballerina. I like Alexandrova in everything I've seen her in, but this was a major case of miscasting. Or maybe a bad performance? Alexandrova is renowned for her powerful jumps and bubbly stage personality. She's a famous Kitri, Myrtha, and Gamzatti. As O/O, she looks like someone who's gone to Swan Lake School, and memorized all the steps and imitated all the hand-flapping mannerisms. But not for a second was she actually believable as the Swan Queen. She was very by-the-numbers, but there was no beauty or soul. She doesn't have a very free upper body or a pliant back (Makarova would call it a "singing" line), so the famous, arching arabesques of Odette never come to life. The best Odettes will make one feel her yearning for freedom with just one arabesque. With Alexandrova, it was just steps, nothing more. One would expect her to be a better Odile, but she wasn't. She was technically fine, but, perhaps conscious of her natural tendency towards bubbliness, had her face frozen in a tight smile. She wasn't seductive enough. Again, her stiff, blocklike torso lacked sensuality. Her fouettes had some fancy changes in port-de-bras but by that time I had already tuned out of her O/O.

I want to say I liked the Bolshoi swans, but I didn't. Their unison was excellent, but somehow Swan Lake really isn't their ballet. The same corps de ballet that dazzles so much in Don Quixote looked dull and inelegant in Swan Lake. It didn't help that Grigorovich had them constantly arranged in these geometric formations that looked fussy rather than beautiful. The saving grace of the whole performance (besides Tsiskaridze's delightfully old-fashioned, hammy Evil Genius) was Ruslan Svortsov's Prince Siegfried. He was strong and muscular in the Bolshoi tradition, but also elegant and noble in bearing, and a good partner. He alone understood that the ballet is about love.

The other plus of the day was that I ran into several balletomane friends Eli and Susan and finally met Tonya, whose wonderful dancing blog I follow religiously. After such a disappointing Swan Lake, I knew I needed something to redeem my ballet-going day, so the four of us headed to Lincoln Center to see the Danes again. I scored some cheap orchestra seats for students, and then ran into another balletomane friend at the State Theater. Sitting in the same row as me were Daniil Simkin, Peter Martins, Darci Kistler, Nikolaj Hubbe, and some old Royal Danish Ballet stars. What a palette cleanser to see the Danes!

Lund and Praetorius rehearsing The Lesson

The program opened with Fleming Flindt's uber-creepy The Lesson, which is about a sadistic ballet master who becomes increasingly deranged as his pupil injures herself doing pointe work. There's not much "dancing" to speak of in this ballet, but it does show off the Danes' famous acting and miming skills. Thomas Lund gave you the creepy crawlies the moment he stepped onstage, and Ida Praetorius (apparently only an apprentice) was unnervingly believable as the child-like student, who has her dancing spirit and life spirit broken by Lund. The Pianist was Gudrun Bojensen, who was the Sylph in Friday night's performance, but transformed herself into a believably plain and dumpy middle-aged martinet. It's not a ballet I would rush to see again, but it is effective in its own way as a theater piece.

As a sidenote, I once saw a documentary about the Perm Ballet School. There was this scary-looking teacher who screamed non-stop at her terrified, crying pupils, and even hit them in the legs or pushed them away from the barre when they angered her. And then there's the famous story of how Marie Taglioni's father made her practice six hours a day for six months, mercilessly pushing her until she developed her pointe technique without modern blocked toe shoes. So the dynamics portrayed in The Lesson are exaggerated, but definitely do exist in the fanatically disciplined ballet world.

Grinder and Kupinski

The real reason I went was of course to see La Sylphide again. It was the same cast as yesterday's matinee, but I mentioned to a friend that I could see the Danes dance this ballet for eternity and never get tired of its ageless beauty. The music is so lovely, the choreography so perfect. The mime is so eloquent, without a single false note -- there's Madge (Mette Botcher), miming to Effy (a charming, tiny Louise Ostergard) to marry Gurn, there's the Sylph, miming how James killed her with the scarf. One understands it all, and what's more, it doesn't seem old-fashioned. One marvels at how beautiful all the feet of the company are -- not really in their shape so much as the way they use the feet to extend the line, or articulate a step. I also paid more attention to the different directions Bournonville has his dancers jump -- not just forwards in a diagonal or circling around the stage, but sideways, backwards, basically every position in a compass. When other companies dance this ballet, I feel like they can put together great principals, but they can't dance this ballet as completely and organically as the Danes. Everything about this production and their style is just so right. It's like finding fault with Nozze di Figaro -- you just can't.

Performance-wise the company kind of looked like they were at the end of a long tour. Susanne Grinder was sharper in yesterday's performance, and I noticed the sylph corps in Act Two make a few mistakes. The way Bournonville has dancers in those rapid beats, with every landing followed by a connecting step or another jump, makes any small mistake so exposed. Grinder also had a wardrobe malfunction with the wings -- one fell off too quickly, the other wouldn't quite come off, and so she had to turn around and a sylph quickly grabbed the wing and let it fall to the ground. But Grinder quickly made me forget her malfunction in her dying farewell to James. She's really a lovely dancer. Marcin Kupinksi however was stronger today than yesterday, and again, I love how this production has James looking so glum while dancing folk dance, and then soaring in the air in ecstasy, arms crowned above his head in fifth, while thinking of the Sylph. Alexander Staegar again impressed as Gurn.

The biggest malfunction occurred during the curtain calls -- hard to believe, but the curtains wouldn't part to allow the dancers to take any curtain calls! There was a pause, and then I believe two stagehands must have manually pulled apart the curtains to create a narrow gap, enough for the company to scrunch together and take their calls. It was both a cute and absurd sight. Nikolaj Hubbe even took a curtain call with the company while squeezing through the small gap. The audience gave this wonderful company a well-deserved ovation.

Royal Danish Ballet - The Great Danes

2011-06-18T20:21:00.006-04:00

La Sylphide and Napoli, Act III

Royal Danish Ballet

June 18, 2011

This has been a great spring season of dance. I've seen many great performances, from Chase Finlay's debut in Apollo to Alina Cojocaru and David Hallberg in Giselle to Natalia Osipova in anything. But with all due respect to those wonderful performers, the greatest overall ballet performance belongs to the one I saw this afternoon -- the Royal Danish Ballet dancing their two signature pieces, La Sylphide and Napoli, Act III. It was such a great overall performance that I could probably write about it forever, and still miss details of why it was so great.

First of all, it was my first time seeing the Royal Danish Ballet live, and I don't know what I really expected of them, but they shattered every pre-conceived notion I had of them as a quaint, charming little company. It is true that the Bournonville style can look old-fashioned, but the dancing itself was not for a minute stilted or fossilized. It was wonderfully alive, and this was true from the mime characters to the corps de ballet to the lead dancers. I've heard the Danish style called "modest" so many times it's become a cliche, but when you see them in Napoli you realize they're thankfully not as modest as you expected. For instance, in the middle of the most frenetic dances, I often saw the male soloists hang in the air, as time stopped still and one wondered how they defied gravity. The women will subtly accent a step with a small flourish of the arms that nevertheless gets the "I'm very good and I know it" point across to a 3,000 member audience. The company obviously selects for great jumpers, and it's one thing to know that La Sylphide was created as Bournonville's tribute to Marie Taglioni's legendary elevation. It's another to see the whole company fly into the air, landing without a sound, and then taking off before one even has a chance to see the landing.

The Bournonville vocabulary of jumps is seemingly inexhaustible. For one he constantly demands petit allegro jumps, and so one can look at the way the dancers have to cross their legs in lightning fast beats all day. The use of entrechats is an artform by itself -- they symbolize restlessness, love, joy, the whole gamut of emotions. I love the way his dancers will do the same jump but alternate their arm positions -- they stereotypical Bournonville jump has the dancers with their arms firmly at their hips in first position. But then the dancers will open their arms to second position, and then in the third jump, snap them triumphantly in fifth, as if to say, "I did it!" The other Bournonville jump I love is the way the dancers grande jete. Most dancers around the world nowadays do it the "Russian" way, with the forward leg shooting out like an arrow, and the backward leg pulled straight. The impression is of a dancer pushing himself upwards and forward in the air. The Danes have the trailing leg bent in a low attitude. This effect first of all makes it harder for dancers to give the illusion of having more elevation, since all the height must be achieved with the forward leg. But more importantly, it gives the impression of a dancer not pushing himself into the air, but rather effortlessly sailing through space. The dancer's body in motion makes a beautiful arc. The best dancers will hang in the air, mid-jump, to demonstrate their ballon. Their arms will rise, to make sure the audience sees the amazing feat. And the dancers will somehow always land on the downbeat of the music, to finish the musical phrase. Enchanting.

Kupinski and Grinder

Marcin Kupinski

La Sylphide opened the program. The RDB production is absolutely beautiful to look at, very realistic in its depiction of a Scottish home in Act One and a forest for Act Two. Very often I think the State Theater stage looks shallow and prosaic, but the Danes figured out a way to give it depth and grandeur. The beautiful lighting helped, as did the proportioned sets that weren't simply one layer after another of curtain drops. Act Two's forest was particularly beautiful.

But one doesn't really go to the ballet to look at the sets. It was the dancing that made this very old ballet come alive. Marcin Kupinski was the James, and he doesn't really have the ballon that I saw in some of the other men, but his James was still sympathetic, stylish, and he had a strong but not flashy technique. This production telegraphed the ennui that James felt in ways I've never seen in other productions. For instance, when Effy (Louise Ostergaard) first sees her fiance, she mimes "What's wrong with you?" and then touches him on the forehead and heart. She knows that James' mind and heart are elsewhere. When James is thinking of the Sylph, he soars in the air in a series of cabrioles or entrechats, with arms in first position by the hips, then opening up into second position, and finally rising triumphantly in fifth. But when he's with Effy, he joins her in a hard, earthbound Scottish folk dance and looks glum and unhappy the whole time. The implication is clear -- ballet is an expression of the soul, of what can't exist in mundane life. La Sylphide is the first (but not last) story disguised as a valentine to ballet. It might not end happily, but there's a feeling that James' life nevertheless has been touched by a unique force and spirit.

Susanne Grinder

When I first saw Susanne Grinder I thought she looked too tall, too elongated, too modern, to be the Sylph. I imagine most Sylphs to be tiny, just as most Giselles to this day remain petite. But then she started dancing, and the doubts melted away. She too has that great jump and ballon, and also an innocent but aloof stage presence that really gets to the heart of this ballet. The Sylph, unlike other ballet heroines like Giselle or even Odette/Odile is never "real" -- she's a fantasy, and the trick is to make her both elusive and irresistible at the same time. Grinder's mime was clear and well-articulated, especially the final sequence where she sadly told James how he had killed her with the scarf. The only thing I wish was that her leg was a little more secure in arabesque -- in Act Two there were a couple wobbles that detracted from the ethereal image of the leg floating upwards effortlessly.

Madge is a great mime role, the grandmother of Carabosse and Mette Bodcher was a wonderful old hag. She wasn't over the top or hammy, which made her that much more frightening. When the girls lined up for their fortunes she took evident delight in miming their fates. Alexander Staeger as Gurn looked like he was auditioning for James. He, unlike Kupinski, does have that unique ability to hang in the air before landing. The corps de ballet was stunning in the Act One folk dance and in Act Two as the band of sylphs.

The score by Severin Lovenskiod is something I've never really given much thought to, but I realized its utter beauty this afternoon (especially as played by the NYCO orchestra). The rustic Scottish countryside is vividly evoked by the music, from the folk dances to the atmospheric "Sylph" motif -- it soars upwards with the jumpers, as a metaphor for the hope and joy of love. (People in love often say that they are walking on air.) When the Sylph loses her wings, the score turns funereal, as James is brutally brought back to earth. The final scene of a dying James left alone with Madge, while the lifeless Sylph flies over the stage, had the audience stunned into silence.

Act Three of Napoli

I thought nothing could top La Sylphide, but after a rather lengthy intermission the curtain came up on Act Three of Napoli, which until now I'd only seen on video. Video though is nothing compared to the real thing, where the vitality of the Neapolitan spirit seems perfectly captured in time by the severe and moralistic Danish ballet master. Nikolaj Hubbe's new production has been updated to the 1950s, but except for some 1950's clothes on the spectators and the final image being of Teresina and Gennaro on a scooter, this is basically the same "everybody let's dance" Napoli that people know and love. What a fun, exhilarating pure-dance spectacle it is! The three main set pieces are the pas de six, the tarantella, and the finale, in which the whole stage (including the old and the young) seems to explode together in a whirlwind of dancing. Amy Watson was the Teresina and Alban Lendorf the Gennaro, and both were absolutely delightful. Lendorf had the most ballon of anyone in the cast, and that's saying a lot. The whole cast was, really, but the real star was Bournonville's choreography. Every dance starts out simply, almost casually, before somehow exploding into a whirlwind of jumps, plies, pirouettes, the dance equivalent of a Rossini crescendo. One finally gets exhausted (but in a good way) just watching the dancers alternate between terre a terre moves and flying forwards, backwards, sideways, up, down in an endless series of jumps that are an expression of pure joy. If La Sylphide implies that ballet is a rarefied art, Napoli gives the impression that dancing is a communal experience. The finale practically makes you want to bang a tambourine and jump onstage and dance.

It's a shame the Royal Danish Ballet hardly ever tours in the United States. This one experience left me feeling like Oliver Twist. Please sir, I want some more.

Coppelia at the ABT

2011-06-18T01:52:00.004-04:00

Coppelia

American Ballet Theatre

June 17, 2011

Coppelia at the ABT tonight was given a fun-filled performance thanks to the high-flying, tiny dynamo team of Natalia Osipova and Danil Simkin. The ABT's production of Coppelia is by Freddie Franklin, who danced this ballet often in the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. I last saw Vikharev reconstruction of Coppelia in the Bolshoi in HD transmission a few weeks ago, and I've also seen the NYCB version by Alexandra Danilova and Balanchine. It's remarkable how little these versions differ, from the choreography to the mime to the stage business. It's obvious that the different versions are based on the same notations, and in this case, the ballet seems to have been remarkably well-preserved. It's not really my favorite ballet, but it is fun, and Delibes' score is lovely.

The ABT's version is nonetheless a more intimate, small-scale ballet than the version I saw in the Bolshoi HD transmission. Part of this is necessity -- the ABT is a smaller company. The other is the different accents the companies put on the ballet -- the Bolshoi performance predictably was stronger in the character dancing sequences and corps de ballet work. It was slightly weaker on the comedy bits than the ABT. The ABT's Dr. Coppelius is more of a weirdo than the Bolshoi's harmless eccentric, and the antics of Swanilda and her friends are more obnoxious. The plus side to the ABT's approach is that the leading roles of Swanilda and Franz get more focus -- they never get lost in the crowd. And when the Swanilda is Natalia Osipova and the Franz is Danil Simkin, that's a pretty amazing night of dancing.

Natalia Osipova's virtues as a ballerina are by now well-known -- her extraordinary elevation and ballon, her ability to seem feather-light and athletic at the same time, her great turning abilities, her naturally bubbly stage presence. Swanilda is just about the perfect role for her -- she's equally at ease leaping across the stage in her variations, or hamming it up in Act Two, when Swanilda impersonates a doll. And it's not a tutu ballet, so Osipova's one weakness, lack of a traditionally beautiful classical line, is not an issue at all. Part of the fascination became how a dancer as relentlessly dynamic as Osipova could all of a sudden stiffen into a believable doll. But Osipova is a natural showoff, and she nailed the doll impersonation. Her body froze in stiff angular positions and a creepy smile. She used her natural flexibility to flop her torso dramatically up and down, like a rag doll. She lessened her turn out and flexed her feet in such a way to look less ballerina and more doll. Act One and Three showed the Osipova who has become familiar all over the world -- the high-kicking, flying phenom. Act Two showed that Osipova isn't a circus act -- she's also a charming stage actress. She made Swanilda a mean girl, who took pleasure in not only fooling Dr. Coppelius, but tormenting him.

Danil Simkin is physically so slight and boyish looking that Franz's immaturity as a character became very believable. One worries for the Swanilda/Franz nuptuals -- these two kids seem way too immature to be married. Simkin's also a great jumper and has the same showboating style as Osipova. One of Act One's most charming moves is Franz leaping offstage exactly to the beat of Delibes' chord. Simkin put a spin on this famous jump by leaping over the stage bench. But as a partner for Osipova, he has some work to do. In their Act Three pas de deux, his hand often shook, and he looked shaky as well on the lifts. In most productions, Swanilda ends the pas de deux's coda by leaping in a big fishdive into Franz's arms. Osipova, who I've seen absolutely hurl herself across the stage into a partner's arms, skipped this fishdive and instead the coda ended with a rather timid lift. I don't know if Simkin will ever have the gravitas for the more princely roles, but in this kind of demi-charactere role he's maybe the best the ABT has.

I was a little disappointed with the quality of performance from the rest of the performers. Roman Zhurbin was fantastic in the mime role of Dr. Coppelius, really a very strange fellow, and he kept up with Osipova's frenetic doll hijinks very well. The Dance of the Hours brought the young girls of the JKO School, and they were cute. But Simone Messmer was surprisingly blah as Dawn. She rushed through her solo with brisk, brittle, unpoetic efficiency. Hee Seo, whom I usually look forward to seeing, was disappointing as Prayer. Her leg shook whenever she tried to raise it in arabesque or developpe, and the wobbles detracted from the line of this dancer's gorgeously tapered legs and arched feet.

The most disappointing was the corps de ballet, that looked so energized just this Tuesday in Bright Stream. Tonight, the bad old ABT corps habits were back -- the line formations that aren't straight, the lack of coordination in movements, the dissimilar port de bras, the legs that aren't held at the same height, the heavy, leaden, low-energy dancing. The corps girls don't even bother to end a musical phrase at the same time -- often, one girl's leg will fall as the other starts to rise in arabesque. Swanilda's friends and the Czardas in Act One were particularly ragged. Part of what I love about ballet is that even people who aren't hardcore balletomanes can notice mistakes and imperfections right away. I was sitting with some friends who don't go to the ballet that often, and they noticed the "clunky" and "under-rehearsed" corps as well. There is no cheating in ballet. The orchestra blared Delibes' lovely, lilting score loudly and gracelessly and at times they were completely out of tune.

Bright Stream

2011-06-11T18:52:00.006-04:00

The Bright Stream

American Ballet Theatre

June 11, 2011

After a dreary week in which I had to skip Thursday's premiere of Bright Stream, I decided to cheer myself up by going to the Saturday matinee performance at the ABT. It was absolutely a delight from start to finish, and I had the extra bonus of seeing Bolshoi superstars Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova. What could be better?

Bright Stream is Alexei Ratmansky's revival of Dmitri Shostakovich's ill-fated ballet, which so angered Josef Stalin that the librettist for the original ballet librettist was sent to a gulag. The crime? Apparently this bright, sunny "tractor" ballet was considered too frivolous as a depiction of Soviet farm life. For a long time, Bright Stream seemed lost to ballet history. But in 2003, Ratmansky rechoreographed and revived this long-lost ballet to great acclaim for the Bolshoi Ballet, and this year the ABT acquired the ballet. Ratmansky's choreography is consistently entertaining and engaging, and Shostakovich's score has lost none of its bright, bouncy, sunny charm. This is also the perfect ballet for a smaller company like the ABT. The corps de ballet, which often looks so ragged in Swan Lake or Giselle, looked great today. The whole company seemed happy to be dancing, and it was overall just a wonderful and entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

The plot is simple but complicated, if that makes sense. Zina (Xiomara Reyes) and Pyotr (Ivan Vasiliev) are a happy farming couple whose lives are interrupted by Zina's old friend, who is now a glamorous Ballerina (Natalia Osipova), and her glamorous dancing partner (Danil Simkin). Pyotr is infatuated with the Ballerina, and the two women decide to teach the husband a lesson. There's also a sub-plot about two old Dacha Dwellers, (Susan Jones and Clinton Luckett), and a host of secondary characters, but it's best not to get too bogged down in the details of the plot. Just enjoy the comedy and the delightful music.

Ratmansky's choreography is one big reason to see this ballet. It's consistently funny, charming, and keeps the audience cheering. Farmers do cartwheels, there's a dancing dog, dancers ride a bicycle while posed in arabesque, a man dances in a Sylph costume (and the diminutive Danil Simkin was weirdly convincing not just as a man-in-drag on pointe, but as an actual Sylph), and the role for the Ballerina gently parodies the famously muscular Bolshoi style. In other words, it's the perfect role for Natalia Osipova, who throws herself into the role with her usual gusto. Her amazing jump never ceases to astonish (she can seemingly cross the huge Met stage with one grande jete), and at one point she hurled herself in the air across the stage into Vasiliev's arms (echoes of Kitri), but she also made herself fit into this ensemble ballet. Her rapport with Reyes (Zina) was unexpectedly genuine, and Osipova when dancing with Reyes toned down some of her more extreme extensions and explosive power to fit Reyes' more low-key style. I loved Osipova's cabrioles in Act Two, when she dresses herself up as a man. Reyes in turn seemed energized by Osipova's presence and danced with more gusto and less cutesiness than I've ever seen her. She completed some great fouettes, with doubles thrown in. Susan Jones was also very funny as the Anxious-to-be-Younger-Than-She-Is Dacha Dweller. She earned well-deserved applause for pushing herself on pointe.

The men were equally strong as the women. Ivan Vasiliev as Pyotr wowed the crowd with his barrel turns, lightning fast pirouettes (with little hops while devlishly turning a la seconde) and huge, stage-devouring jumps, but he also made the character delightfully boyish and endearing. The fact that he's easy on the eyes helps. This Pyotr isn't so much an intentionally philandering husband as a misbehaving child. His pas de deux with a disguised Zina was a highlight. Danil Simkin as the Ballet Dancer in the second act has one of the funniest pieces of choreography, as he disguises himself as a Ballerina and dances a pas de deux with the Old Dacha Dweller (Clinton Luckett). Ratmansky has the Sylph parody parts of Giselle, Les Sylphides, and even Apollo (the famous "swimming" moment). Simkin danced on pointe with no notable strain, and as I mentioned earlier, his small frame and androgynous looks made him believable as a Ballerina. He even executed a nice triple pirouette. Craig Salstein almost stole the show in the first act as an accordion player.

I could go on about the ballet, but the bottom line is: it's just so damned fun. So if you're in a bad mood because of a guy, work, an expired ATM card, anything, just go to Bright Stream, and your day will seem brighter.

Jewels at the NYCB

2011-06-05T13:47:00.000-04:00

Jewels

New York City Ballet

June 3, 20011

Spring season of ballet continued with another trip to the NYCB to see their latest revival of Jewels. Balanchine's uber-popular full-length plotless ballet is never out of the NYCB rep for long, but every revival usually brings a debut, and this time it was Tiler Peck's debut in the Emeralds section that forced me to buy a ticket.

Emeralds is my favorite section of Jewels, but it's also the most delicate. The dreamy reverie that Faure's music and Balanchine's choreography create can be ruined by one over-eager smile to the audience, one overly sold step, one awkward break in movement. Last night, this might seem minor, but I kept getting distracted by Tiler Peck's ill-fitting tutu. Peck was lovely as the first ballerina in Emeralds, but since this was her debut I felt as if there's still some room to grow in her interpretation. At times I thought she was a little too light, too spritely, in a role that should evoke more mystery. She was really sparkling in the "finger" solo though. Sara Mearns as the second ballerina was her usual magnificent self. She just has a way of projecting every step while giving the impression that she's lost in her own world. I love the grandness of her repeated grand battements followed by cambre lunges. Emeralds has two of the most beautiful pas de deux Balanchine ever composed, and Jared Angle and Ask La Cour might not be the most exciting dancers on the planet, but they partnered their ballerinas beautifully. But the best performance came from Sean Suozzi, Alina Dronova, and Ashley Laracey in the pas de trois. The three dancers just danced with so much energy and commitment.

Rubies was okay, nothing more. Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz are both great technicians, but for some reason the sass and swagger that are so important in this ballet were decidedly missing from the performance. Fairchild has great technique, impressive elevation, a wonderful jump, and a winning smile. But she's still dancing "small," as if she were afraid to really go for broke and sell her performance, and Rubies is all about hard sell. Savannah Lowery as the Tall Girl gave the best performance. She's really an energetic, committed performer, although she isn't blessed with a particularly beautiful body or face. I loved the evident pleasure on her face when the male corps de ballet manipulated her legs this way and that way.

Diamonds is always a let-down for me, after the magnificence of Emeralds and Rubies. Other than the grand pas de deux, I feel like this ballet goes on for way too long and has some real filler work with the corps de ballet. It takes a really special ballerina to make Diamonds sparkle. Wendy Whelan is now unfortunately no longer at the stage in her career where she can pull Diamonds off. She gave a polished, professional performance, but the tension in her upper body, always there, is now distracting from the classical line. When she does those repeated lunge arabesques, you can see how her shoulders are tense and so what's supposed to be reckless and beautiful looks careful and small-scale. She can still do a leotard ballet like Agon, but in this very classical role, it just doesn't look right. Tyler Angle was a good partner, but overall the finale of Diamonds seemed anti-climactic.

Bolshoi's Coppelia in HD

2011-05-29T16:05:00.004-04:00

At this point I'm really going to collapse from ballet-induced narcolepsy. After catching two Giselles in a row, I woke up early this morning to catch the Bolshoi in HD series, their last of the season. My main reason to see this was I wanted to see Sergei Vikharev's "new-old" reconstruction of Coppelia. I've seen both the ABT and NYCB versions, as well as the version the Royal Ballet does. But Vikharev's reconstructions are from the Sergeyev notations of the 1894 Petipa/Ceccheti version, and I was curious. The Leo Delibes score is always so delightful to listen to. And of course, I wanted to see Natalia Osipova.

What did I learn? Well, for one, that the Vikharev reconstruction looks basically like the versions the ABT and NYCB do. There are no major differences in either choreography, mime, or traditional stage business. The ABT version is by Freddie Franklin and Alexandra Danilova, the NYCB has Balanchine and Danilova, and after watching the Vikharev I must say Danilova and Balanchine must have had great memories of their days as students in the Imperial Ballet School, because their versions echo the Vikharev reconstruction note by note, step by step. Only Vikharev's costumes are more old-fashioned. I guess this is one ballet that has been fairly well-preserved, including the mime. The NYCB version has some original Balanchine choreography in the third divertissement act, but even then ... it kind of looks the same. There's even that big leap into fishdive that ends the wedding pas de deux.

The major difference in seeing the transmission was seeing the Bolshoi company itself present this ballet. They have over 200 dancers, including some dancers that are specialized in character dancing and folk dancing, and it shows. In Act One the character dancers tore up the Mazurka and Czardas in a whirlwind of foot stomping and hand clapping that American companies can never replicate. In American companies, the same dancers who dance the "character dances" have to jump into pointe shoes to dance the "classical" corps, and as a result they always look awkward with this sort of dancing. One or two soloists can pull it off, but the Bolshoi has like an army of dancers who can do this sort of thing in their sleep.

The other thing that's obvious from watching these transmissions is the top-down strength of the company. All of Swanilda's friends looked like future Swanildas in the making. Natalia Osipova when she dances with the ABT has such a different technique and style that it looks like a real Star Turn. When she's dancing at the Bolshoi, you see little Osipovas all over the place. They might not have her astounding elevation or her ability to turn like a top, but you can see the similarity in training and style. In the Act Three divertissement, Anna Tikhomirova danced the most showy variation (Folly), and showed off her huge jumps and theatrical flair. Russian ballet schools are famous for being basically 9 year uber-competitive torture chambers, where girls are plucked from all over the country and danced to death, until only the very strongest graduate. The upside is that the ones who make it are the best dancers in the world. It's cruel, but when it produces a corps de ballet that look like they are all stars in the making, it's hard to complain.

Natalia Osipova's Swanilda was basically all I expected from her. Great leaps and turns, very saucy personality. Swanilda is a mean girl, and Osipova played that part of the character wonderfully. The camera close-ups caught an upturned nose and patented bitch-face, and in Act Two this Swanilda takes real delight in torturing poor Dr. Coppelius (Gennadi Yanin). She was good pretending to be a stiff doll, but even then you could see the restlessness -- this doll really wanted to jump across the stage and cause trouble. In Act Three she predictably wowed the audience with some bouncy scissones, a series of traveling hops on pointe, and then finished with a series of traveling fouettes. As Franz, Vyacheslav Lopatin had much less dancing to do, but he was perfectly charming, if not exactly spectacular. I notice this is the downside to having an entire company of little Spartacuses and Basilios -- the Bolshoi often comes up short in the more low-key roles like Franz, I suspect because the "real stars" think a role like Franz is beneath them.

Osipova as jumping doll

I found a few videos of Osipova and Lopatin in Coppelia:

The costumes and scenery were all very pretty, without much of the heaviness and over-ornateness that reconstructions often have. The dresses were very charming village cotton skirts, and Dr. Coppelius's study looked less "weird" than in Western productions. The Act Three was extremely well-staged, with a huge clock in the background and little angels, and all the variations were excellent. Only Anna Nikulina in Prayer was sort of weak. Overall, a fun afternoon, even if Coppelia really isn't my favorite ballet. As a sidenote, before the performance began you could see Natalia Osipova smooching with her on-and-offstage partner, Ivan Vasiliev. It was sweet.


Act Three

Two Great Giselles

2011-05-29T10:04:00.004-04:00

Giselle

American Ballet Theatre

May 27 and May 28, 2011

The whirlwind spring ballet season continued this week with me seeing two consecutive performances of Giselle at the ABT. Last night I saw Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes give what I thought was an unbeatable performance of Giselle. But the ballet is so great that a different night, a different Giselle, gives a completely different experience. Alina Cojocaru and David Hallberg tonight were as different from Vishneva and Gomes as could be, and I just feel lucky that I got to see two of the best possible Giselles and Albrechts two nights in a row.

Vishneva and Gomes

Diana Vishneva's Giselle is absolutely unique -- it really has to be experienced to be believed. From the moment she steps out her cottage, Vishneva brings a kind of moody intensity to the role that can't be topped. Think Giselle is a pretty ballet about a girl who dies for love? Vishneva will make you think again. This Giselle will stare emptily at the ground, as if lost in her own world. When she did the Spessivtseva variation, in her hops on pointe she turned towards Albrecht, in an almost erotic exhibition of this girl's love of dance. Seeing Albrecht and Bathilde together will unhinge her so much that her hair falls out while she's breaking them apart, not when she falls to the ground. In the mad scene she bumped into Bathilde before making a curtsy, with a completely blank, demented look on her face. When she mimed the "he loves me, he loves me not" bit in the Mad Scene, she mimed herself angrily tearing up the flower. Vishneva now conserves some energy for Act Two, but the basic outline of her Giselle hasn't changed over the years (I've now seen it three times). She has a doll-like face, but emphasizes the serious, dark side to this ballet.

Vishneva in Act Two is still probably the most intense, well-rounded characterization I've seen of the role. When Myrtha initiates her as a Wili, Vishneva sudden dropped her head to the ground and started turning furiously, really possessed. Natalia Osipova's turns might have been faster, but they had a lightness to them that left a completely different impression. Vishneva was stern and unsettling, as she never lifted her eyes, never let you forget that this was a ghost. Her eyes remained downcast for the entire second act, even when she did the developpes or the bunny hops. She wore a huge white skirt with many layers that flew in every which direction, and her eyes were drawn with dark eyeshadow. There was a wraith-like quality to Vishneva's Giselle that was frightening. She used her long arms to create an impression of a complete ghost, as she often would whirl her arms in different directions as she danced. When she grand jeted across the stage, she pounded her feet hard. One great example of a dancer reworking a role to suit her strengths -- Vishneva doesn't have the effortless, airy jump of, say, Alina Cojocaru, so she even makes her jumps fierce and forbidding.

Diana had wonderful chemistry with Marcelo Gomes, the Albrecht, who brought his own moody intensity to the ballet. Technically he was superb, but he made the dancing serve the drama, just like Vishneva. In Act One when Giselle expired in his arms Gomes visibly panicked more than any other Albrecht I've seen. When Myrtha commanded him to dance, he did a series of entrechat sixes that moved closer and closer to Myrtha, as if drawn by some sinister spirit. Gomes was a great partner -- he lifted Vishneva as if she were paper. Perhaps the greatest moment of last night's Giselle was when the clock struck four, and Albrecht was saved. Gomes carried Vishneva to her grave, and Vishneva let all life drain out of her. Her arms and legs dropped lifelessly, and all of a sudden Albrecht was carrying a corpse. It was spooky. Vishneva then repeatedly crossed her arms whenever Albrecht tried to touch her, really as an untouchable spirit. She bourreed farther and farther away, and then she was gone. She never looked at him directly. Vishneva and Gomes made Giselle an unsettling, unforgettable gothic love story.

Veronika Part as the Queen of the Wilis was tall, stern, commanding, and really Vishneva and Part together made for one scary stage of Wilis. Myrtha is one of Part's best roles -- it takes advantage of her strengths (her commanding appearance, the surprising lightness of her jumps), and she really has the role perfected. The imperious sweep of her arms as she commands her intendants, Giselle, and Albrecht was something else. Maria Riccetto and Jared Matthews gave one of those "nothing special" performances of the peasant pas de deux.

If Diana was so ghostly that it made your hair curl, tonight Alina Cojocaru, David Hallberg, and Stella Abrera (subbing for an injured Gillian Murphy) made Giselle a kinder, gentler ballet. Cojocaru is naturally sweet and waif-like, Hallberg a sort of blond prince whose elegance of dancing is accompanied by a nice guy stage persona. The two of them were adorable in Act One. It was puppy-love at its most endearing -- I loved the way they giggled together while sitting on the bench. Their dances together had the joy and spring of young love. Cojocaru was really believable as a peasant too, not just as a ballerina posing as a peasant. Her hair was almost casually pulled behind her head with some flowers, and she smiled and curtsied to everyone with a winning artlessness. In the Mad Scene she didn't really run around the stage and swoon dramatically, but often stood or sat alone, arms folded, crying, like a teenager.

Here's a video of her Mad Scene with the Royal Ballet:

In Act Two, Cojocaru and Hallberg made it a continuation of their love story in Act One, rather than a shocking contrast (as Vishneva and Gomes made Act Two). They touched each other gently throughout the ballet blanc. It almost felt like in Act Two, this Giselle and Albrecht finally consummated their relationship. The same white Giselle costume looked ghostly on Vishneva but looked like a wedding dress on Cojocaru. Cojocaru was not really wraith-like -- this was the same sweet girl of Act One. Whereas Vishneva had her eyes downcast the entire act, Cojocaru often looked upwards, as if drawn by some kind of divine, benevolent force. Cojocaru and Hallberg embraced tightly when the clock struck four, and Cojocaru did something I've never seen any other Giselle do -- she steered Albrecht away from her grave until the last possible musical cue, at which point she all of a sudden stopped and bourreed offstage, but not before dropping a daisy center stage. This Giselle simply could not be morbid, even in death. Giselle might not have had a happy ending, but there was something uplifting about it as portrayed by Hallberg and Cojocaru -- two lovers who cannot be together in life reunite in the afterlife.

Cojocaru has had a number of injuries, and there were moments where she visibly had difficulty with the technical demands of the ballet. One such moment was the Spessivtseva variation. Cojocaru's feet are disfigured by bunions, and I imagine this kind of pounding on pointe must be extremely painful. For a moment I thought she simply would not do the variation, as she stopped onstage and seemed frozen. But she grimly did the hops across the stage, but not traveling very far. Her arms were gripped tightly to her side. She stopped around center-stage and to everyone's relief went to the pique turns that end the variation. In Act Two, she had a wonderful lightness of movement and an airy jump, but I notice she was careful with the series of backward-traveling entrechats. Her initiation as a Wili didn't have the breakneck fury of Vishneva, but Cojocaru is able to make everything so enchanting. She accelerated her turns, and made the audience forget that she was doing less actual rotations. Cojocaru took advantage of what she does have -- namely, exquisite flexibility, elevation, grace and lightness. Even her bourress are so silky she drew applause just for bourreeing offstage. She brought her own personality to the ballet -- Cojocaru was the most lovable Giselle I've ever seen. You practically wanted to run onstage and give this Giselle a hug. Whereas Vishneva made her arms spooky looking, Cojocaru always had her arms tilted in these series of soft Romantic poses.

David Hallberg complemented Cojocaru beautifully. His Albrecht is not really a cad, just a good-looking and somewhat careless playboy. He's much taller than Cojocaru, but their body line matched each other and they looked born to dance together. In Act Two, Hallberg was the same as he was with Natalia Osipova two years ago -- somewhat reserved, but inspired to dance beautifully. Whereas Gomes collapsed beneath Myrtha, Hallberg looked like he could have danced all night without collapsing. His entrechats had a wonderful spring to them. His less Byronic portrayal would have clashed terribly with Vishneva's Grimm Brothers approach to the ballet, but it matched Cojocaru's softer approach perfectly. He's really a very elegant-looking dancer, and he and Gomes are really stepping up to the plate this season as the ABT's male roster seems to be disappearing.

Here are two pictures I took of Alina and David during the curtain calls:

Stella Abrera stepped in for an injured Gillian Murphy and she's a beautiful dancer, but I kept thinking that this was a Giselle rather than a Myrtha. She didn't have the block-like torso and imperious "queenly" look of most Myrthas. Hee Seo was a standout as Zulma, really beautiful and elegant. Danil Simkin and Sarah Lane in the peasant pas de deux were technically impressive in their variations but had some visible partnering problems. At this point he's too skinny and scrawny and short to partner most ballerinas, even if he is a technical wunderkind.

One last thing -- the curtain calls. Both Vishneva and Cojocaru took them "in character." Vishneva stared moodily at the stage, her face stern and her eyes blank, for all of the curtain calls. She never looked up at the cheering audience, and never dropped character. Cojocaru on the other hand echoed the low curtsies and shy smiles of her Giselle. They were both works of art.

Giselle is such a great ballet because it really requires dancers to put the whole of their personality and technique into the role. I've met both Diana Vishneva and Alina Cojocaru offstage, and their personalities matched their Giselles. Vishneva was a dark-haired, intense woman, gracious but serious and a bit aloof. Cojocaru was just effortlessly sweet and humble. That is what I saw onstage the last two nights. No wonder ballerinas are famous for clinging to this role even after their technique flags and audiences I've seen scream and cheer after this ballet like no other. Besides being the ultimate female wish-fulfillment (men are faithless and women have to save them -- literally), Giselle is about love of dance, love for a man, and, when the Giselle is great enough, it's a love affair between the audience and the ballerina.

Born This Way

2011-05-22T12:44:00.006-04:00

I downloaded the by now very very leaked Born This Way album yesterday. I played it basically all day long (sorry neighbors!) and here's my track-by-track breakdown:

1. Marry the Night - awesome, catchy song. Yes it sounds like a generic power ballad mixed with a club song, but try not to listen to it and not want to get up and dance. It's hard. And I think that this should have been the single off the album, not "Hair" or "Judas." The lyrics are about prostitution, but who could mix such downer lyrics with such an exuberant dance song?

I'm gonna lace up my boots
Throw on some leather and cruise
Down the street that I love
in my fishnet gloves
I'm a sinner

Then I'll go down to the bar
Where I won't cry anymore
I'll hold my whiskey up high,
kiss the bartender twice
I'm a loser

I'm gonna Marry The Night

2. Born This Way - the gay-rights anthem that's melody-wise also a direct ripoff of Madonna's "Express Yourself," but somehow has the neurotic beat and knife-like Gaga voice that makes it a very different song. Works better as a live act than as a radio single I think. Only misfire of this song is the overlong middle bridge section which contains these nuggets of wisdom:

Don't be a drag
Just be a queen
Whether you're broke or evergreen
You're black, white, beige, chola descent
You're Lebanese, you're Orient
Whether life's disabilities
Left you outcast, bullied, or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
Because baby, you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born to survive
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or Orient made
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born to be brave

"Lebanese or Orient"? That's just bad lyric-writing. I find it interesting that in most live acts Gaga drops the second bridge.

3. Government Hooker - strangest song of the album, that starts out with a Phantom-of-the-Opera intro and ends with her fantasizing about John F. Kennedy. Lyrically a weird song, but also one of the hardest to get out of your head because of the slow but relentless dance beat that's at the heart of the song. This is a weird comparison but the song almost sounds like a post-KidA Radiohead song, with its wailing existential vocals and electronic synthesizer beats. "Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy/I'll make you squeal, baby/As long as you pay me" she screams.

4. Judas - this song is a hot mess, but after 10 listens it becomes lodged in your brain until I found myself singing along to even the bridge. It sounds like four completely different songs looped together, and has a weird bridge that makes the song a good minute too long. I don't think Gaga does "religious symbolism-laden love song" as well as Madonna though.

5. Americano - Gaga meets mariachi! It's like "Alejandro," except about a girl this time. I guess it's about an illegal immigrant, but really it's just this delightfully silly club song with a mariachi melody. Gaga's Spanish is horrible, but I guess that's the point. But you have to love any song with lyrics like these. "Jesus Christo"? LOL.

I will cry for, I have fought for
How I love you
I have cried for I will die for
How I care
In the mountains, las campanas
Están sonando
Todo los chicos, y los chicos
Se están besando

I don't speak your
I don't speak your
Language, oh no
I don't speak your
I won't speak your
Jesus Cristo

6. Hair - Depending on your POV, either the worst song on the album, or Gaga at her best. The melody sounds like up-tempo 80s, but the song basically repeats lyrics like "I am my hair" and "I'm as free as my hair," and a bridge that intones solemnly:

Sometimes I waltz around, Put on red highlights/Sometimes I want some rocket/rockin' red highlights?)
Just because I want my friends,
To think I'm dynamite.
And on Friday rocks in,
High school dance.
I got my bangs too hot,
That I don't stand a chance.

This is Gaga speaking to her teen fanbase, but it never gets deeper than Gaga talking about her hair. Gaga being Gaga, I can just picture her singing "I am my hair" and her face dripping with black mascara. I remember my parents forcing me to keep my hair short when I was little, so I can relate to the song, but it's overproduced (did we really need a Clarence Clemons sax solo?) and thus a light little ditty becomes either overlong and just flat out annoying or the guilty pleasure of the album. Think of it like the "Boys Boys Boys" of the album - so bad it's good.

7. Scheiße- "I don't speak German, but can if you like" Gaga announces, before doing a game impersonation of European industrial dance sound. This song is getting a lot of buzz from hard-core Gaga fans, but I find the somewhat cold sound and German-glish lyrics kind of pretentious.

8. Bloody Mary - along with "Bad Kids," maybe the worst song of the album. It's very dull, with a very loooooooooooooooong, drawn out melody that never goes anywhere, and more Catholic angst: "I'll dance, dance, dance/With my hands, hands, hands/Above my head, head, head/Like Jesus said."

9. Black Jesus + Amen Fashion - one of the tracks on the bonus edition of the album, and I can understand why it didn't make the album proper. It's not really much of a song, sounds like something Madonna could have written in her sleep.

10. Bad Kids - this is the song I like least on the album. The others I can find something catchy in the song, but "Bad Kids" is again Gaga singing to her tween fanbase, but with lyrics as vapid as the tween generation. "I'm a twit" and "I'm a nerd." I feel like playing that SNL game "Really?" with this one. The melody has more than a passing resemblance to "Holiday." Really, for teen angst and insecurity, nobody did it better than Kurt Cobain, and no one should even try.

11. Fashion of Your Love - another track that didn't make the album proper. Again, I understand why. Very 80s' Madonna ripoff, but the song doesn't go anywhere or make much of an impact.

12. Highway Unicorn - Album picks up again at this track. Very uplifting, uptempo song. "We can be strong/on the road to love" is so cheesy that it instantly causes replay. I'm not really sure what the song is supposed to be about, but I do know that after four kind of meh tracks, this is the kind of danceable song that the album needed.

13. Heavy Metal Lover - Probably won't get much radio play because of the racy opening lyrics, "I want your whiskey mouth/All over my blond south." Too bad because it's one of the best songs on the album, a follow-up to "Teeth" in its fierceness.

14. Electric Chapel - along with "Marry the Night," probably the best dance track of the album. Starts out like a Bon Jovi song, complete with riffing, wailing guitars, but reverts to the by-now familiar half-sung echo voice of Gaga's "dance" songs. But then the song becomes ... well, I never thought Gaga would use church bells to underline the beat of a song, but she does. The lyrics mix Catholic angst with a delightfully cheeky entreaty to meet her at the "electric chapel." I just love, love, love this song.

Follow me
Don't be such a holy fool
Follow me
I need something sacred from you
Together we'll both find a way
To make it pure
Love work and a dirty way

If you want me
Meet me at electric chapel
If you want me
Meet me at electric chapel
If you wanna steal my heart away
Meet me, meet me baby in a safe place
Come on, meet me in electric chapel

15. The Queen - a bonus track that didn't make the cut. This is the one extra song I thought should have made the album proper. One of those Gaga self-help songs that actually works, because the propulsive joy of the melody, and the unpretentiously conceited, chest-beating lyrics. I actually think this is a better gay anthem than BTW. I suspect that this will become a future Gaga radio single. It seems like too good of a song to keep as a bonus track.

Whenever I start feeling strong,
I`m called a bitch in the night,
But I don't need these 14 carat guns to win,
I am a woman, I insist, it's my life

I can be, the queen that's inside of me
This is my chance to release it,
Be brave for you you'll see
I can be, the queen you need me to be
This is my chance,
To be the dance,
Our dream is happening,
I can be the queen

16. You and I - this is a minority opinion, but I'm disappointed by the country-twang mix Gaga chose for the album proper. I also think this is a bad follow up to "Speechless," which is probably one of the best power ballads ever made. I enjoyed "You and I" more when she sat down at the piano and sang this straight. The country mixing somehow goes on for way too long and by the end of the song I was bored. I much prefer live piano versions like this one:

17. Edge of Glory - the album ends on a bang. "Edge of Glory" is one of the happiest, most joyful songs I've ever heard. Yes, the Springsteen-style sax solo is a bit much, but the song is just so over-the-top. Gaga claims that this song is about someone's "last minutes on earth," and I can just say, I hope my last moment on earth is as filled with joy as this song. I think this song plays better if she just admitted it was a love song, because the song perfectly captures the happiness, insecurity, and craziness of being on the "edge of glory" with someone. The song is like one huge fluttering heart and flushed face.

There ain't no reason you and me should be alone tonight
Yeah baby. Tonight, yeah baby
I gotta reason that you should take me home tonight
I need a man that thinks it's right when it's all wrong tonight
Yeah, baby. Tonight, yeah baby
Right on the limb is where we know we both belong tonight

It's hard to feel the rush
To brush the dangerous
I'm gonna run right to, to the edge with you
Where we can both fall in love

The second CD has some remixes. I haven't really listened to any of them the whole way through, except for "Scheiße." Very meh remixes, I thought.

Overall, Born This Way is definitely a more sprawling, ambitious album than The Fame and Fame Monster, and not everything works. It's a long album, and some of the songs sound overproduced, others sound trite. I think it's important to remember though that the now-canonized Fame had "Paparazzi," "Poker Face," "Just Dance," and "Paper Gangsta," but it also had pure filler like "Boys Boys Boys" and "Disco Heaven." When people say that BTW is less consistent than old-Gaga, I think they're really talking about the 8-song whopper of the Fame Monster EP, where there really wasn't a weak song among the lot. But the album also is everything I love about Gaga: over the top, cheesy, frantic, manic, and insanely catchy. She's the only person in the world who can have over 10 million followers on twitter and seem genuine when she talks about being a "freak" -- because she is a freak. She's not beautiful (unlike the too-perfect Beyonce), her voice is not the octave-jumping pipe machine of the younger Mariah Carey or Christina, and she lacks the real "F__k you" brazenness of Madonna. She's just the Mother Monster of Pop Music, that's all.

Don Quixote at the ABT

2011-05-21T00:54:00.006-04:00

Don Quixote - Alina Cojocaru, Jose Manuel Carreno, Maria Riccetto

American Ballet Theatre

May 20, 2011

Ballet season is nuts. The opera season is very long and easy to pace. But when spring fever at the ballet starts, especially the time when both the ABT and NYCB are playing, I often find myself going to the ballet twice, three times a week. It seems like life is really reduced to dashing back and forth between the plazas. Tonight was my third trip to the ballet in a week, and the first time seeing the ABT this season.

My last exposure Don Quixote was the Bolshoi in HD, which was pretty hard to top. In the first act I couldn't help but find the ABT production a bit prim and bare-bones compared to the swirling extravaganza the Bolshoi puts on for this ballet. The Bolshoi just has an endless reserve of character dancers that make the corps de ballet dances hard to beat. The dramatic way they do those backbends, with a huge sweep of the arm and snap of the fan, and their lower body strength, makes them seem like real folk dancers. You can tell the difference just in the way they bang the tambourines in Act One -- the Bolshoi practically pounds those tambourines broken, while the ABT dancers tap at them gingerly. (Sort of off-topic but not really: why can Tiler Peck and Daniel Ulbricht in Tarantella pound the tambourine with more conviction than the ABT dancers? It's a puzzlement.) The Bolshoi production can seem busy and at times even sort of vulgar, but it has a vitality and spirit that the ABT's production lacks. The ABT's production, despite rather fancy sets and pretty costumes, lacks any Spanish flair, and is only as good as the Kitri and Basilio.

That being said, the ABT still attracts some of the world's best guest artists for its spring season. Last year for Don Quixote they had the incomparable Natalia Osipova. This year they brought in Alina Cojocaru, who was such an enchanting Aurora last year. It was Cojocaru that I saw tonight. Cojocaru's Kitri is a very different dancer from the spitfire techical wunderkind that is Natalia Osipova. Osipova is powerful and athletic, Cojocaru light and delicate. Both of them are great jumpers, but Osipova leaps through the air like a cheetah, while Cojocaru seems to float through space with a fairy-like airiness. Alina is a dancer whose career has been plagued with major injuries. You can see the signs of them in the extra-wide Gaynor Mindens she wears, that cover up huge bunions that are visible no matter how far back in the auditorium one sits. She also has a badly sickled left foot. But what I love about her is that despite the injuries, she holds nothing back. Her Kitri was a charmer, and she probably could have smiled and waved her fan a lot and the audience would have loved her. But she didn't just coast on her naturally sweet stage presence, she also pushed herself to do the technical tricks that are now a hallmark of this role. She took risks, and if she had a shaky moment or two, I admired her gutsiness. She did the Plisetskaya kicks to the back of the head, but in the diagonal of pirouettes that ends that variation, she stumbled badly and the audience gasped. In the Dream Sequence her upper body was just beautiful, as were the spring in her sissones. In the Act 3 grand pas de deux she held some mind-boggling balances, and in each fish dive seemed to devise a new trick with her excellent partner Carreno supporting her the entire way. She did some backwards fish dives where she spun in the air a rotation before landing in the fish dive, and she also did a split jete into a fish dive. She did the "jumping" version of Kitri's fan variation, and then finished the evening with an excellent set of fouettes -- doubles alternating with singles, and ended on a triple. The audience obviously admired this tiny, waif-like ballerina's determination, and rewarded her with a warm ovation. I cannot wait for next week's Giselle.

Jose Manuel Carreno (Basilio) judging from tonight could probably dance a couple more seasons. He's no longer a powerhouse, but he's still an excellent and strong partner (the one-handed lifts drew the predictable applause), and a stylish dancer. His trademark slow decelerating turns still draw applause. He can no longer do the barrel turns and some of the more spectacular tricks, but he made up for it in the elegance of his dancing. He and Cojocaru were a good match -- neither really overpowering in stage presence, but complementing each other beautifully. The only thing that betrays his age is his thinning hairline. It's been commented upon that the ABT's famously strong male roster is aging and getting weaker. Carreno retiring will really seem like the end of an era.

I think it's in the secondary characters and the corps de ballet that the ABT really suffers as a company. I've made three trips to the City Ballet in about two weeks, and one of the things I notice about that company is how night after night, they look so in unison, their footwork lightning fast, the steps sure and secure. The ABT corps not only don't have the Bolshoi's unbeatable energy and pizzazz, they don't have the City Ballet's well-drilled, professional polish and unison. When they move as a group their movements are muted in attitude and lack amplitude. Maria Riccetto was a disappointing Mercedes/Queen of the Dryads -- she lacked the flamboyance to do justice to the street dancer, and then lacked the technical security for the Dryad Queen. She struggled in her series of developpes, and then struggled with the Italian fouettes. She seemed to have a lot of trouble both raising her leg in developpe a la seconde and completing the rotation. She has a small-scale presence too that doesn't really project into a huge house like the Met. Gennadi Saveliev was way too stolid and plain-vanilla to make a convincing Espada. His square, inexpressive face, and the bored way he swung his cape made for a rather dull bull-fighter. The four matadors who danced a little number were noticeably out-of-synch with each other during their entire dance. They didn't take off at the same time, didn't wave their capes the same way, didn't land at the same time, or in the same position. It was distracting. Renata Pavam was okay as Cupid. Bright spots were to be found in Simone Messmer's game attempt at the Gypsy, and Isabella Boylston and Sarah Lane (now better known in the press as The Girl Benjamin Dumped For Natalie and The Girl Who Did the Dancing For Natalie) as the Flower Girls. Victor Barbee was also an endearing Don Quixote who recovered nicely from a nasty spill off the windmill.

By the way, there were depressing ROWS of empty seats tonight. Is everyone worried about the end of the world that's supposed to happen tomorrow?

I come home from the ballet tonight, and immediately saw that the casting for Jewels at the City Ballet was up, and now it's just choosing which cast I want to see. Ah, the crazy joys of ballet season.

AAA at NYCB

2011-05-18T22:29:00.011-04:00

Apollo, Afternoon of a Faun, Antique Epigraphs
New York City Ballet
May 18, 2011

Tonight's bill at the NYCB consisted of three ballets starting with "A" - Apollo, Afternoon of a Faun, and Antique Epigraphs. I had to leave before the final ballet (La Sonnambula), which would have broken the A chain, but oh well. More importantly, the NYCB dancers brought their A game onstage tonight, and as a result the ovations were longer and louder than I've ever heard them, especially after Apollo. When Chase Finlay came out for his solo bow, the way the crowd roared, it was something else.

Chase Finlay again was Apollo, but he had a very different set of muses tonight, so different that the ballet almost seemed like a different ballet. Last week's cast of Scheller, Peck, and Hyltin are all sweet, playful dancers, petite in size and charming in movement. Tonight Teresa Reichlen, Sara Mearns, and Maria Kowroski are all glamorous blondes who dance big. This is my second time seeing Finlay dance Apollo and I think he was better last week. Tonight Finlay had some unsure moments, including the opening solo where he was tripped over a step and was this close to falling. He also had another near-slip/fall at the end of his second solo. His interactions with the Muses was also different. Last week, there was a childlike quality to the whole ballet. Tonight, it seemed like three Women educating the young god about the ways of the world. The muses kind of took over the ballet -- they literally seemed to glow, and dripped glamor even in their plain white tunics. Finlay seemed awestruck by the muses, and maybe it was their energy that inspired him to dance bigger and soar higher, because he improved as the ballet went on. Teresa Reichlen was so dazzling as Calliope that one wondered why Apollo would turn this muse away. And then Sara Mearns absolutely blew the Polyhymnia solo out of the ballpark. The amplitude of her dancing never ceases to astonish me, the way she glues your eye to every move she makes. In the series of half-pirouettes into arabesque, I remember Tiler Peck being light and fleet. Mearns stretched the line of the arabesque dramatically each time, and lifted her arms upwards, as if she were trying to fly. Amazing. Maria Kowroski as Terpsichore wasn't like Hyltin's coquettish portrayal at all. Kowroski was flat-out sexy, and she knew it. When Terpsichore enters in her solo, Balanchine has her slowly rotate her hips as she steps on pointe, and Kowroski made this hip turning extremely seductive. The pas de deux with Hyltin last week was sweet and tender. Tonight it was ... well, it was hot. The "swimming" moment could have had a tad more security, but why quibble? It was overall a great performance, with a high level of energy and commitment from the quartet. Sidenote: on my way out of the theater I ran into Chase Finlay and congratulated him on his performance. He was gracious but seemed surprised that he was being recognized. My god he looks young! Like a regular young New Yorker. Onstage he looks and dances like a god.

Afternoon of a Faun was danced by Craig Hall and Janie Taylor. Craig Hall caught my attention the other night as one of the hapless dancers in Seven Deadly Sins. I love this ballet -- I feel as if it's Robbins' most perfect work, and the ballet studio backdrop a wonderful contrast to the animalistic, mysterious nature of the dancers. His Faun was sensual and narcissistic. Hall had absolute control of his limbs during the long adagio passages of this ballet -- I didn't see shaking, not once. Janie Taylor entered as a vision, her blond hair glowing, as she entered the ballet studio. Her pas de deux with the Faun sizzled. Just as mysteriously, she abandons the Faun. During the whole time onstage Taylor was mysterious and alluring. I love how she enters, goes to the barre, and slowly does a grand plie. She makes the movement very provocative. Her pale complexion contrasted beautifully with Hall's dark skin. It was riveting.

After two such performances, Antique Epigraphs did seem like sort of a let-down. The ballet was designed by Jerome Robbins and showcases 8 women, all posed like Greek statues and they move very slowly and deliberately to Debussy's music. There are some striking classical poses that look like something Isadora Duncan would have danced. It's a good mood piece, and the four soloists (Rachel Rutherford, Savannah Lowery, Teresa Reichlen, and Sara Mearns) were all excellent in their solos. Mearns -- at this point I'd pay good money to see her dance the electric slide. But the ballet just doesn't have the impact of Apollo or Faun.

But the NYCB right now has maybe the strongest roster of female dancers anywhere. It used to be the cliche that you went to City Ballet for the ballets, and ABT for the dancers. Well, this is no longer true anymore -- Ashley Bouder and Sara Mearns have both guested abroad, and dancers like Mearns, Bouder, Peck, Taylor, and Hyltin bring a level of excitement every time they step onstage. Kowroski is dancing with more confidence than I've seen her in a long time. The buzz about Finlay's Apollo was incredible. These are exciting times for a balletomane like me.

Die Walküre

2011-05-15T00:02:00.014-04:00

Richard Wagner - Die Walkuere
Bryn Terfel, Deborah Voigt, Jonas Kaufmann, Eva Marie Westbroek, Stephanie Blythe, Hans-Peter Konig, James Levine cond.
Metropolitan Opera
May 14, 2011

As you might have remembered, I had a ticket for last Thursday's Walkuere, and couldn't make it. So this morning I got up at 10:00 and called for a standing room ticket. I got it, and I don't think I've ever been so excited to go to Lincoln Center. After all, final chance to see Die Walkuere this season.

When I got to the theatre, there was a stupefying number of people still standing outside, and it was curtain time. I asked around, and the guy in the Met gift shop said, "The performance is delayed." "How long?" "I don't know." "Why?" "The Machine is broken," he said flatly.

The Machine eventually got fixed, and the performance went on after a 45 minute delay, but somehow this terse little exchange exemplified all that was right, and all that was wrong, about Robert LePage's Ring production. The Machine is capable of some grand effects, and the production overall is an improvement over the Disneyfied Otto Schenk production. It's also an improvement over LePage's Das Rheingold. But The Machine also is noisy, creaky, at times clunky, and the "magic" of some of the effects aren't as magical when you can see stagehands frantically running under the Machine during the whole performance. LePage is way too fond of the "lineup of army tanks" plank configuration. It was overused in Rheingold and continued in Walkure. LePage mixes the beautiful and grand with a kind of over-literalism that would have embarrassed Cosima Wagner.

The army tank configuration

I notice that LePage's best ideas were always at the beginning of an act, depressingly like the way his Rheingold never really topped the simple beauty of the three Rheinmaidens perched over the blue water. The performance got off to a promising start. The upper movable planks turned themselves into a nice, eery forest, with the help of projections. There was a pretty snowstorm. Later, the planks formed the roof of Hunding's hut. Then ... the major miscalculation happened. For some reason. LePage decided to have most of Act One take place behind the first, apron-lining immovable planks (what I call the boardwalk). Not only did it recess most of the singers from the most attractive sound spots in the stage, it made many of their movements and interactions cut off at the knee. During Siegmund's monologue there was a shadowplay of his life projected onto the planks. But with Met Titles, such literalism isn't necessary. When Jonas Kaufmann finally climbed onto the planks to sing "Walse! Walse!" I realized how much placing the singers behind the boardwalk garbled the acoustical sound of the singers. Thankfully, the final love scene was played mostly on the apron. But why did it only happen in the last 15 minutes of the act?

Act Two was again started off promisingly. The Machine twisted itself into a nice representation of a mountain top, and Fricka was drawn onstage in a huge ram-driven chariot, just as Wagner's original stagings dictate. Her thrillingly tense scene with Wotan was symbolized by the way Wotan literally ended up cowering before the chariot.

Fricka and Wotan

But then ... for the central Brunnhilde/Wotan scene, for some reason there was a huge eyeball that popped up between the boardwalks. The eyeball looked like a birthday balloon. The eyeball had different projections on it, but the whole entire time I never knew what purpose it served, other than to look slightly creepy. Was it supposed to represent Wotan's missing eye? Wotan had his crucial monologue while I was distracted looking at the changes in the eyeball. When the eye finally disappeared, LePage thankfully let the drama for the rest of the act play out without much noise from the Machine. I thought Wotan striking Hunding was played just right -- Hunding fell dead after one gesture across the stage from Wotan.

The giant eyeball

The Ride of the Valkyries

Act Three again started well. The different planks were "ridden" by the Valkyries as they mimicked harnessing horses. One by one, each slid off the plank. It was a nice clever touch that drew applause. But again, Lepage couldn't sustain the good ideas. The Valkyries descended and Lepage had them picking up toy bones and packing them up in "bodybags." It was a mindbogglingly over-literal translation of the libretto. Yes the Valkyries bring the corpses of warriors to Valhalla, but do we need to see them tying up little toy bodybags? The planks again twisted into a mountaintop, and Wotan and Brunnhilde were left to stand and sing for their duet. But the final scene between Wotan and Brunnhilde, one of the most tender and moving scenes in all of opera, ends lamely with Wotan leading Brunnhilde offstage. Some moments later, they reappear at the top of the mountain, and a body double of Brunnhilde is hung upside down as the planks move into the "fire" tableau. The planks creaked noisily into the final tableau (over the Magic Fire Music), and I saw stagehands running beneath the Machine. The fact that Brunnhilde was obviously a body double gave a level of artificiality to the performance that stuck in my mind, and detracted from the fact that I thought the fire tableau was very striking indeed. But surely it was a bad idea to break the flow of the emotional scene by Wotan taking Brunnhilde offstage in the first place? It softens the relentless blow of Wotan abandoning his beloved daughter.

The costumes by Francois St. Aubin were generally less cartoonish than they had been in Das Rheingold, but again, I think there's been too much of an attempt to recreate the original Bayreuth costumes, to mixed results. The ratty wigs (although Brunnhilde gets a nice red wavy wig), Viking helmets, shiny breastplates, long skirts were never attractive, and surely for a Ring that's supposed to be innovative, there could have been more thinking outside the box?

Original production Brunnhilde

Thankfully, the music-making was generally on a very high level today. The ailing James Levine seemed to summon all his strength for one last hurrah, and I always marvel at the way he's able to draw out such beautiful sounds from the Met orchestra. His reading was sensitive and tense at the same time, and ended with the haunting sounds of the Magic Fire Scene. The Met orchestra really deserve a huge hand of applause for turning in such beautiful performances, night-in, night-out, every time I've seen them this season.

Kaufmann and Westbroek

The Walsung twins were phenomenal. No other word for Jonas Kaufmann and Eva-Marie Westbroek. Some might carp that their voices are too lyrical for these roles, that Kaufmann's baritonal timbre doesn't mean he's a real heldentenor, that Westbroek sometimes sounded underpowered. But who cares, when they can make the music sound so beautiful? These twins are well-matched both physically and vocally. For once, Hunding's observation, "You look alike" is accurate. Both Kaufmann and Westbroek have medium-sized voices that are unusually dark and round in timbre. Their voices are not really large, but their color blends perfectly with the cello-heavy orchestration Wagner uses for the twins. In fact, "cello-like" is a good way to describe how both Westbroek and Kaufmann sound. But their voices can also surprise with the way they ring, trumpet-like, when asked to take the vocal line higher and to soar over the orchestra. For the first time, I heard how Wagner "twinned" the music of Siegmund and Sieglinde. He has them sing in a very similar style, and their vocal lines often mirror each other. It's a beautiful musical observation of the way twins will sound remarkably alike in their vocal cadence. I've never heard it before Kaufmann and Westbroek made me hear it. Kaufmann's "Walse" cries might not have shaken the rafters, but when was the last time the "Winterstume" was sung so ravishingly? When was the last time Siegmund really seemed like a frightened, ardent young man? Westbroek's soprano is really one of the most beautiful I've heard in a long time -- really rich and warm. "Du bist der Lenz" was a vocal highlight. The twins made a believable romantic couple, and overall were so overpowering that when Kaufmann was struck dead by Wotan's spear, a little of the energy of the performance died as well. And when Westbroek sang Sieglinde's farewell, a lot of the energy of the performance went with her.

Stephanie Blythe's Fricka was also wonderfully imperious vocally. She uses the icy edge to her voice very effectively, to underline Fricka's nonstop moralizing. But I had a problem with her "acting." She (or LePage) decided to make this Fricka somewhat of a emotional mess, at times breaking down in sobs and at other times reaching for Wotan's hand. On another singer, it might have worked, but Blythe's stage presence is so magisterial, her voice so cold in sound, that I wanted this Fricka to be relentless in her insistence on what she feels is her due, and I wanted Fricka and Wotan's conversation to be a real "checkmate" moment. I would have preferred had Blythe gone with a more one-dimensional approach, strangely. The Hunding was also very strong. Hans-Peter Konig had the menace and black bass sound of Hunding, and his burly, rough frame made a nice dramatic foil for the matinee-idol handsome Kaufmann. One effective touch of the production is to have Hunding throw a plate and cup at Sieglinde during the tense conversation with Siegmund. Hunding is a brutal man, and all of a sudden Sieglinde's situation is hair-raisingly real.

I thought Bryn Terfel deserves an A for effort with Wotan, but only a B+ for actual execution. In Das Rheingold I thought he sounded too lyrical for Wotan. But this afternoon, he thundered as mightily as he could in Walkuere. He has the right idea of Wotan as well as a character -- this was a proud, conflicted god, and Terfel also showed the essential weakness and pettiness of this character. His contemptuous gesture as he struck Hunding dead was just right, as was the way he often ended up crouching on the stage, a huge bear reduced to nothingness when confronted with his own hypocrisy. But this cold view of Wotan was lacking in the tenderness that made me not really empathize with him in any way. It was as if Terfel's worked out an interpretation of Wotan that's so tilted towards one side of the character (the arrogance and pride), that there was no room left for us to feel Wotan's pain. Unfortunately, I thought that in the most crucial moment of the opera, Wotan's farewell to Brunnhilde ("Leb wohl") was sorely lacking in real emotion. Terfel was more convincing when he cradled a dead Siegmund. The way he did it, had a real "I have failed you as a father" tinge of regret. But Terfel seemed uncomfortable with the sentimental farewell to Brunnhilde, and he also ran out of gas vocally at just that moment. The opera's emotional peak was strangely flat and unconvincing. I just have to remember that the last time I saw James Morris, who really knew how to work the spear, but the actual music? Not so much.

Terfel had a distinct lack of chemistry with his beloved daughter, sung by Deborah Voigt. At this point, the Voigt voice is what it is -- shrunken in volume, drained of color and warmth, occasionally still trumpet-like on top, inaudible on the bottom. That she got through the run without cancelling was already a surprise. "Ho jo to ho" showed that she still has those top B's and C's, but they sound curdled and shrieky now. I couldn't really get into the Brunnhilde storyline when the Brunnhilde sounded (literally) like a rather whiny teenager -- the colorless, flat voice worked against Wagner's music, particularly the rich orchestra sounds he always lavished on Brunnhilde. Voigt looks good but her conception of the character is also shallow. Too many times, when Brunnhilde should be the beating heart of the opera, Voigt stared vacantly, and smiled at the most inappropriate times. One such moment was the Todesverkundung "Siegmund! Sieh auf mich!" Brunnhilde within one scene goes from formal and godly to human and compassionate. But Voigt simply could not color her voice or shape the phrases of the music to underline this transformation. The scene was completely overshadowed by Kaufmann's ardent Siegmund. Brunnhilde's farewell to Wotan, a scene that usually has me wiping away tears (and I'm a firm believer that people who cry at the opera constantly are as annoying as the coughers), left me cold. I suppose I could reconcile myself with the thought that the other two Brunnhilde's I've seen are Jane Eaglen and Irene Theorin, and Voigt was better than Eaglen and not really that much below Theorin, but that's not saying much.

Maybe one could also say that the Machine made the Brunnhilde/Wotan scenes rather sterile and unaffecting, but Westbroek and Kaufmann were able to generate tons of heat while recessed behind the boardwalk, with half their bodies cut off from view. Ultimately, it was Voigt's failure to portray Die Walkure, the moral center of the whole Ring.

The audience was deliriously appreciative and happy at the end of the performance. I could understand why -- the emotional impact of Wagner's music is so overpowering that Die Walkuere experience feels cathartic, longeurs aside. It's probably, all things considered, Wagner's most touching, accessible opera. Even in the context of the Ring Cycle, Die Walkuere works as a standalone. I might be reading too much into it, but I always thought of this opera as a rare moment of self-awareness from Wagner. In the greedy, conflicted, but ultimately heartless god, Wagner painted a self-portrait more candid than all those copious diary entries and letters. Maybe that's why the opera always makes me want to become a better person -- more compassionate, more emotional, less calculating.

But I left the theater in a circumspect mood. I hated Otto Schenk's Disneyfied, park-and-bark production. LePage's vision at least conveys the mythic grandeur of Wagner's achievement more than Schenk's styrofoam rocks and paper trees. It also really took a hard look at some of the more specific but odd touches of the libretto (like Fricka's entrance in a ram-drawn chariot) than Schenk's "enter stage left, exit stage right" non-direction. But LePage can create a striking tableau one minute and the next fill the stage with plastic toys and shockingly banal directions. One minute the Machine can seem like a strikingly effective unit set, the next it literally creaks into yet another army tank shape. Maybe over time the misfires can be taken out, and the production can become more abstract, more focused on the symbolism and representations. After all, there's still two operas to go.

NYCB - Three Masterpieces and a Stinker

2011-05-14T01:03:00.007-04:00

New York City Ballet

May 13. 2011

Concerto Barocco, Tarantella, Seven Deadly Sins, Vienna Waltzes

Tonight at the NYCB I saw three Balanchine masterpieces, and a total dud. Three out of four isn't bad is one way to think of it. On the other hand, to see some of the country's best dancers performing the junk that is Lynne-Taylor Corbett's Seven Deadly Sins is not something I will subject myself to anytime soon. Which probably means that it's going to be the "middle ballet" in some all-Balanchine programs for the next few seasons.

The evening started out with Balanchine's 1941 masterpiece Concerto Barocco. The two violins were Teresa Reichlen and Sara Mearns, and Justin Peck was the male partner for the First Violin. When I saw the casting I immediately thought that the violins should have been reversed -- Sara Mearns should have been First Violin, and Reichlen the Second Violin. Mearns is probably the best adagio dancer the NYCB has right now, and I would have loved to see her dance the pas de deux for the First Violin. Reichlen I think of as a more spiky, aggressive dancer, and thus more appropriate for the Second Violin. But Reichlen did an admirable job as First Violin, and Justin Peck was an excellent partner. The real flowers of the night belong to the eight corps de ballet girls who accompanied the Two Violins so beautifully all night. Last week I complained that the corps were unable to keep up with Ashley Bouder in Square Dance. Tonight they were on -- energetic, musical, sensitive. There are so many beautiful moments in this ballet that every time I see it I notice another moment. Tonight my mind focused on the lovely moment when the First Violin and all the corps link hands and walk in circles. Such a simple movement on the surface, but Balanchine is able to make it look so beautiful.

After Concerto Barocco, the curtain rose on Tarantella, which I like to think is Balanchine's nod to the Imperial Ballet tradition. Despite music from an American composer (Louis Moreau Gottschalk), this piece really resembles an old-fashioned whiz-bang pas de deux in design and feel. It's like Balanchine's version of the Don Quixote pas de deux. The male even has a solo where he sails around the stage in coup jetes. The tambourines, old-fashioned costumes, and emphasis on terre a terre allegro dancing made me think that this was something Mathilde Kschessinskaya could have nailed. This piece was created on the two dynamos Edward Villela and Patricia McBride, and tonight it was cast with the two dynamos Tiler Peck and Daniel Ulbricht. What joy they brought to the theater! They are both such skilled allegro dancers and made the whole thing look like effortless fun.

After an intermission came Seven Deadly Sins. And well, there's no way to be nice about it -- the ballet (if it can even be called a ballet) sucks. I can understand how the idea looked good on paper. Balanchine had made two versions to Kurt Weill's music, once in 1933, and more famously, in 1958 with Lotte Lenya and Allegra Kent. The choreography for both versions has been lost. This new version stars Patti Lupone as singing Anna and Wendy Whelan as dancing Anna. The storyline is that both Annas travel from their Louisiana home, across the country, and encounter the Seven Deadly Sins . I have no idea what Balanchine's versions were like, but I think the point of the ballet is that the seven deadly sins are also decadent, erotic, and, well, fun. I found some pictures of the Lenya/Kent version, and clearly Balanchine meant to show off Kent's nymph-like sexiness.

In contrast, Corbett's version is a joyless, prudish affair. The "sins" aren't something likely to surprise even the most priggish Daughters of the American Revolution member. This isn't even good Broadway, this is like the type of show that would close after three weeks. Lupone pushes her brassy voice to the limit and often sounded strained and out-of-tune. Her diction is cloudy. Dancing Anna is supposed to the sexier, looser, more impulsive alter-ego to Singing Anna, but Wendy Whelan is not at the point in her career where she can project the kind of free-wheeling descent into sloth, pride, anger, gluttony, lust, greed, and envy. She's just not sexy in that kind of way. When she was reduced to rolling around on the floor, I cringed for her. At other times, I felt like playing that Saturday Night Live game "Really?" Like, really, the best representation of "Sloth" is to have a big truckload of dirty laundry pushed across the stage? Really, for "Anger," you could think of nothing more than Sara Mearns (horridly bewigged but as unmistakable as ever in the grandiosity of her dancing) doing a samba, then getting mad at her partner (Justin Peck), stamping her feet, and giving him a kick in the groin? Really? In this day and age, there is nothing remotely decadent about dirty laundry and Latin ballroom dancing. I thought things might heat up with Lust, but instead, no, we got Wendy Whelan rolling around a bed with Craig Hall in a pas de deux that wouldn't even merit a "PG" rating. I kept thinking back to last week's performance, when Wendy Whelan danced Agon, and she laid on the floor and spread-eagled herself. Now, that was erotic. The ballet was only about 30 minutes long, but felt like 30 hours. I spotted Chase Finlay, who just made his spectacular debut as Apollo, in the corps de ballet, and felt embarrassment for him. In fact, as I said, I felt embarrassment for all of the NYCB dancers who had to participate in this mess.

Thankfully, the evening was saved by more Balanchine. Vienna Waltzes is a ballet that can't be killed, and so I notice that Martins often likes to cast Vienna Waltzes with the veterans of the company who aren't necessarily technical whizbangs anymore. Plus, only one section requires pointework (the Voices of Spring Waltz). Tonight, Ellen Bar (retiring after this season) danced the "Tales From Vienna Woods" section with Jared Angle. This is the most formal section of the ballet, so I didn't mind that Bar and Angle seemed, well, stiff and formal. There was a mess as one of the waltzing couples' skirt got caught up in the scenery, and for a moment, the dancer desperately tugged to release the skirt so she could finish the waltz. I love the finale the Tales section though, as Angle and Bar walk offstage arm in arm. Very romantic. A pleasant surprise was Megan Fairchild, a dancer I often find irritatingly small-scaled, positively sparkled in the "Voices of Spring" section, and Joaquin de Luz was her excellent partner. Ana Sophia Scheller and Adam Hendrickson were in the Explosions Polka, a section I feel might contain Balanchine's most generic, forgettable choreography. The disappointment was Jenifer Ringer (another veteran) and Ask la Cour in the Lehar Waltz section. Before I went to tonight's performance I pulled out my video of Heather Watts and Peter Martins' in this section, and both Watts and Martins were able to project more of a "mature lovers" feel than Ringer and la Cour, who seemed strangely disconnected from each other the whole time. But Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard were excellent in the famous final section, set to the Der Rosenkavalier waltz. Kowroski is a dancer I've seen give some really off performances. She's a veteran (principal since 1999) who can sometimes, in the middle of a performance, suddenly make a huge and noticeable mistake. But this year I saw her sizzle as the Siren in Prodigal Son, and tonight she was glamorous and mysterious in her solo waltz to the mirror. And the finale, with the room flooded with waltzing couples and billowing silver dresses, well, hard to beat in terms of a gorgeous tableau. The audience literally sighed and the evening ended with a hearty ovation to the entire cast.

This spring season has been heavy on Balanchine masterpieces, and please, keep it that way. I was thinking of the reason Balanchine was such a genius, and I think it can all be summed up in one sentence: "His ballets make people happy." On Sunday there's a program I want to see, but that would mean suffering through Seven Deadly Sins again. Ugh, what to do?

Edge of Glory

2011-05-09T20:15:00.001-04:00

Words cannot describe how awesome this song is. Gagagoddess eternal love!
And how awesome is this cover?

Balanchine Black and White

2011-05-07T21:28:00.009-04:00

New York City Ballet
May 7, 2011, matinee performance
Apollo, Square Dance, Agon

This afternoon at the NYCB I saw an extraordinary interpretation of Apollo by a newcomer, who is still listed only as a corps de ballet member. Chase Finlay danced like a god, and at the end of the performance the usually somnolent NYCB audience gave him a roar of approval. Hard to believe this is only his second performance of the ballet. I knew when the curtain rose and Finlay began to swing his arms with a slow but thrilling acceleration that this was not "just another" Apollo. Throughout the whole ballet he showed extraordinary confidence and musicality of a kind that cannot be taught. He also partnered the three muses with sensitivity and skill. Even though Balanchine made Apollo less and less of a narrative ballet over the years with different revisions, Finlay brought a sense of story to the ballet -- that of a young god's coming of age. He was with the muses alternately playful and shy, and that moment when Terpsichore cups his face in her hands was startlingly tender. I miss the old ending, in which Apollo was led up the stairs to Mount Olympus (it can be seen in the dvd about Jacques d'Amboise), but the later "sun-dial" ending did make for a striking final tableau. Finlay had help with his three muses -- Ana Sophia Scheller (Calliope), Tiler Peck (Polyhymnia), and Sterling Hyltin (Terpsichore). All three ladies captured the playful, flirtatious spirit behind their variations, and Hyltin and Finlay in their famous pas de deux looked as if they were born to dance together. If I have one slight quibble with Hyltin is that she made Terpsichore almost too sweet. In my opinion the Muses should be flirtatious, but also a bit aloof, as all muses are. It was all in all a magnificent performance. By the way before the performance started I saw Peter Martins stride to his seat in the back of the orchestra. He looked older but still handsome, and I wonder how he must have felt seeing his trademark role danced with such aplomb by Finlay.

Bouder and Stanley in Square Dance

Square Dance was a surprising disappointment. I would really like to see the original Square Dance with the caller, but I've seen this ballet done by NYCB before and in order to work everyone from the lead soloists to the last row of the corps de ballet has to have nonstop pep and energy. Onstage today, only one person (Ashley Bouder) had that kind of Energizer Bunny vigor. The corps de ballet looked tired and listless, and I even saw some uncharacteristically sloppy arms and overly flapping wrists. Taylor Stanley in the male solo had weak turnout, a stiff, tense back, and a nervous, jittery style of dancing that kind of killed his big adagio solo. Fortunately, there was still that little dynamo named Ashley Bouder to save the day. In this kind of allegro role, full of batterie and jumps, Bouder can't be beat. I absolutely loved her series of flying coupe jetes, where she really just devoured the air and at the end smiled a little "aww shucks, that was nothing" smile at the audience. Her pas de chats were done with just that extra sparkle that separates the Stars from the stars. I cannot even imagine the performance had she not been there to give it that much-needed spirit.


Whelan and Marcovici in Agon

Mitchell and Adams

Agon closed the program. This ballet premiered in 1957, and I was talking to a friend I ran into during the performance that at that time, the ballet must have shocked. It wasn't just the 12-tone score, it was the gender roles that Balanchine created. The women in this ballet are not put on a pedestal (an accusation often made of Balanchine ballets). They are rather hard and predatory, as they bound onstage, kicking their legs like knives. The whole ballet at times seems like a dance competition between the girls and the boys. The most provocative part of the ballet was the erotic, intimate pas de deux between the African-American Arthur Mitchell and the lily-white Diana Adams. So many years later, I admit I still get a shock when I see the ballerina (in this performance, Wendy Whelan) lie down on the floor and literally spread eagle herself. But the racial implications are gone now from the ballet, and what we're left with is simply a titillating, thrilling masterpiece.

It was overall an excellent performance. Andrew Veyette was elegant and princely in the Sarabande, Teresa Reichlen both queenly and seductive in the Bransle Gay. I love the sweep of her grande battements, and her Farrell-like use of her wide hips and long legs. She had two excellent partners in Amar Ramanasar and Daniel Applebaum. I love the moment when she dives down further in arabesque penchee, to grab the hands of her two men. In the climactic pas de deux, I thought Sebastien Marcovici seemed a little unsure of himself in some moments of the tricky, spidery partnering. When he lay down on the floor I saw his hand shake as he reached for Wendy Whelan's hand. Whelan herself is going through a real Indian summer in her dancing -- she's now blonder, gained more weight, and as a result her famously hard, angular plumb line has softened and become more feminine. Part III of this ballet is always so thrilling, down to the final image of the four men with their backs to the audience, images frozen while still in motion. A sexy, provocative ending to Balanchine's sexy, provocative masterpiece.

The best Balanchine ballets I feel create their own universe in which time seems to stand still, and one has the feeling that after the curtain falls, Apollo and Terpsichore will continue to dance. The timelessness of Balanchine's ballets was brought to the forefront after the performance, when the NYCB presented a seminar on Apollo. Peter Martins, one of NYCB's most famous Apollos, was of course on hand to give his thoughts on the ballet, and the Apollo and Terpsichore of today's performance, Chase Finlay and Sterling Hyltin, danced parts of the ballet, with Martins occasionally offering corrections. I realized I wasn't tired of seeing Apollo less than two hours after just seeing the whole ballet. The narrator of the seminar, Nancy Goldner, got into an interesting exchange with Martins about Balanchine's deletion of the birth scene and the coda. Martins defended the choice, saying that Balanchine said, "Who wants to see a woman give birth onstage?" Goldner retorted, "I still want to see the whole ballet." Martins shot back, not a little testily, "Well go to another country then. They like to do it, we don't." A nice reminder that Balanchine ballets are not museum pieces, and that debates about which versions to perform, and how to present them, are still very vital and even controversial.

Die Walkuere - or not

2011-05-05T20:58:00.002-04:00

Ugh, I had plans to see Die Walkuere tonight. Tickets in my hand. But real life events made it impossible. Ugh ugh ugh. Maybe I still will be able to see it somehow. Right now I am bummed beyond belief about a lot of things.

Dvorak's Stabat Mater

2011-05-01T19:05:00.002-04:00

I'll be the first to admit that I know practically nothing about choral works. I guess it's the part of me that is my father's daughter, to not really be interested in that kind of music. But this afternoon I ventured to Carnegie Hall to see Antonin Dvorak's Stabat Mater, simply because I wanted to see what the buzz was all about with Angela Meade, who's being whispered among hard-core opera fans as the next Sutherland/Caballe/Callas/Sills all rolled into one.

Without knowing much about choral works, it seems to me that Dvorak's Stabat Mater is more instrumental than vocal, with the chorus and soloists acting as another instrument, so to speak. The New York Choral Society and Brooklyn Philharmonic sounded absolutely stunning at Carnegie Hall, maybe the best acoustic hall I've ever stepped in -- sounds are so vivid, as if they were literally buzzing next to your ear. The melodies of Stabat Mater seem more romantic and less formally religious. But again, I really shouldn't comment too much about the music, since it my first time hearing it.

How were the soloists? Well I have this theory that everyone sounds great in Carnegie Hall -- it's such a perfectly designed hall, and voices sound larger, richer, and riper there than anywhere else. That being said, it's clear that Angela Meade has a major league voice. It's bright, it soars over the orchestra and chorus, just a gorgeous sound. The glow of her voice really made her sound celestial. She really might be the next bright hope for dramatic coloratura sopranos. I look forward to her Anna Bolena next year at the Met, a role she will be sharing with Anna Netrebko. Yeghishe Manucharyan, an Armenian tenor, had a pleasant lyric tenor that just occasionally sounded metallic and nasal. Tamara Mumford was the alto and she was stuck with the most formal, least interesting solo of the piece. She was one of the Rheinmaidens this year -- her voice is definitely rich and plummy, a real mezzo. She's also a striking looking woman. Barak Bilgili rounded out the quartet as the bass, and he was maybe the weak link? His bass just didn't have the resonance I associate with this fach, and often sounded hollow and inaudible.

Overall I was glad I went, even though choral works are still not my cup of tea in general. But the four soloists are promising artists, and as always, sitting in Carnegie Hall is a thrill. I especially love how in the lobby there's an autographed photograph of this nobody named Tchaikovsky.

Gone With the Wind on blu-ray

2011-04-29T20:03:00.008-04:00

Some movies really are not improved by the blu-ray format. Most black and white films, for instance. But then there are the films where watching on blu-ray really changes and enhances thee film so much that I don't think I can ever watch them on DVD again. Gone With the Wind is one such film. It's available in various packages (a deluxe package, the three-dvd "Scarlett" edition which is the one I have, and a bare-bones just the movies version). Whichever version you decide to get, the remastering of the film is nothing short of astonishing. Colors are more vivid than ever, and for the first time you can see the tiny details, like the wrinkles on Vivien Leigh's face or the brocade on the ladies' dresses. The Technicolor print is restored to its full glory. The only negative is that the sound is not as good as it could be.

As for the movie itself, it's become fashionable to poo-poo it nowadays. Certainly the flaws are glaring -- the naive, picture-postcard view of the antebellum South, the condescending racial attitudes, the dull-as-dirt and miscast Leslie Howards as Ashley Wilkes, and the fact that so many different directors (there are three credited -- Victor Fleming, Sam Woods, and George Cukor) and screenwriters (one of them was F. Scott Fitzgerald) give the film a piecemeal quality, without the unity of style and script of, say, real masterpieces like Citizen Kane or Casablanca.

But I still love the film like oxygen. Every time I watch the film I'm amazed at how strong the performances are from the minor players to the stars. Vivien Leigh's Southern accent comes and goes, but her portrayal of the spitfire Scarlett is still one of the most memorable screen portrayals of all time. Scarlett is a villainess technically, but Leigh makes her a charming villainess, one that the audience can't help but love. She's spirited, she's smart, she's tough, and I think many women love the film because we love her strength of character. We understand why Rhett Butler would follow her around for years, just hoping that she'll return even a fraction of his love for her. There are small moments of her performance that I love. One is after she returns to Tara, and the slave Mammy needles her with questions. "I don't know," she says, her voice flat and exhausted. The scene that follows is one of the film's most famous -- as Scarlett stands in her garden and says "As God is my witness I'll never be hungry again." But I still think that small moment when she is too exhausted to even answer Mammy is more touching. I love the spunk with which she throws dirt at the former overseer and says "That's all of Tara you'll ever get." And of course who doesn't love the final scene of the film, when Scarlett swears she'll get Rhett back. "After all, tomorrow is another day!" she says, her face tearful but not broken. Leigh makes Scarlett so determined and yes, so lovable, that I don't doubt for a minute that tomorrow, she will set up a plan to get her man back.

To see how perfect Leigh was for the role, one only has to watch screen tests of other actresses in the part. Lana Turner is particularly unsuited:

What is well-known is that Leigh fought tooth and nail to make Scarlett a complex character, and not just a stock vixen. She fought with the director Victor Fleming, she fought with Gable, and in the end, we can see the wisdom of her approach. There's always a hint of vulnerability lurking behind Scarlett's cold, scheming smirk or heartless words and actions. In order for the movie to work, one has to understand why decent people like Rhett and Melanie and Ashley love Scarlett, even if she's manipulative, selfish, greedy, and at times just flat out mean. The scene where she stares down everyone at Ashley's birthday party with the biggest bitchface known to man is priceless. Leigh makes us understand the love. I cannot imagine the film with any other actress.

Clark Gable is also just about perfect as the tough/tender Rhett. In the very first scene he's leering at Scarlett, and seems like the typical rascal. But he gradually becomes the most lovable character of the film -- funny, tough, smart, and someone who actually understands the meaning of being a friend. In fact, Rhett and Scarlett might be one of the first screen portrayals of a long-standing male-female friendship. Of course one party is madly in love with the other, but ... well, that's typical of friends too. I like the small moments which show that despite what Scarlett says, it's Rhett that is her real friend. When she has to flee Atlanta with Melanie and the baby, Rhett is the one who supplies the horse and buggy. There's a moment of real tenderness between them when Scarlett finally screams, "I WANT TO GO HOME!!!" I always love the moment when after Rhett comforts her they walk arm in arm. The chemistry between Leigh and Gable is extremely strong, even though offscreen the actors rarely interacted and Leigh said later that she found Gable lazy, stubborn, and "his dentures smelled something awful." When Rhett says "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," I actually feel Rhett's pain. After so many years of rejection, the parting between Scarlett and Rhett is inevitable, although in my heart, I don't think the estrangement is permanent.

The first infatuated stare

The bitter goodbye

I absolutely love the scene where Rhett proposes. The sarcasm with which he masks his deep feelings melts my heart every time. This is a painful contrast to the finale of the movie, when Rhett doesn't give a damn anymore.

Olivia de Havilland also gives a wonderful performance as Melanie Hamilton, the Southern lady made of fine steel. Her soft doe-eyes, her gentle manner,and mousier appearance make her a perfect foil for Scarlett. The only major miscast is Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes. Howard is way too old for the part, and although the Ashley in the book is a milquetoast, he's also a charming, dignified, lovable milquetoast. Howard drains all color from the character, and frankly is dull as dirt every time he's onscreen.

You ain't never gonna be 18 inches again.

The supporting characters are all cast from strength. MGM in those days really had such a stable of excellent character actors, who gave the film vitality and humor. Of course one has to mention Hattie MacDaniel as Mammy, who gives this stereotypical role such strength and dignity that she almost single-handedly saves the film from seeming incredibly racist. Butterfly McQueen as Prissy provides some of the film's best comic relief, although I know many people find the stereotype of the ditzy "darky" as offensive. Laura Hope Crewes as the interminably silly Aunt Pittypat and Jane Darwell as the gossipy Mrs. Merriwether are also very funny. As Scarlett's sister SueEllen, Evelyn Keyes is properly prissy and sour. Alicia Rhett is another standout as the bitter India Wilkes, and Thomas Mitchell as Gerald O'Hara. Ona Wilkes manages to make the most cloying stereotypical character (the hooker with a heart of gold) endearing.

GWTW's strongest moments of the film come in the first three quarters, when Scarlett goes from Southern belle to picking cotton in the fields of Tara to remaking her fortune during Reconstruction. There are so many iconic moments in the first half of the film. The scene at the train station, when Scarlett is walking among a screen of dead or wounded soldiers is one. Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and the baby frantically fleeing from the Siege of Atlanta is still seat-of-your-pants thrilling. Scarlett standing in the fields of Tara, swearing that she'll never be hungry again, is another iconic moment. But my favorite moment is when Scarlett shoots the robber. The way she stares down the robber is priceless, as is the picture of Melanie, still weak from giving birth, rushing downstairs with her sword. GWTW in those scenes is really a feminist movie, as Scarlett and Melanie (and Mammy) will their way through the worst of the Civil War.

After Rhett and Scarlett marry, the film drops off in quality. It's not that these scenes are badly directed or acted, but my mom and I always talk about how irritated we are with Scarlett after she marries Rhett. "Such a good husband, and she treats him like shit," is what my mom says. (And no she doesn't use those kinds of words often.) It becomes a soap opera. The ending is depressing, with Bonnie's death, Melanie's death, and the final parting between Rhett and Scarlett. The romantic in me always thinks (or hopes) that tomorrow is another day, and Rhett and Scarlett will get back together though.

Yet none of this detracts from the overall quality of the film. The film is four hours long, but it's amazing how it maintains audience interest. GWTW is the story of one remarkable woman's survival, but it's also become etched in popular culture as the image of the Old South. I know many people who talk about the Old South and immediately say, "Don't you remember how in GWTW they said ..." And despite some deletions of characters and events, the movie remains an incredibly faithful adaptation of the novel. If you haven't seen this movie in a long time, buy the blu-ray and rewatch this classic.

The "Scarlett Edition" comes with three discs, the first being the movie itself. The second disc has 8 hours of extras, from documentaries about the making of the movie, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, to a made-for-TV movie about the famous "search for Scarlett" by producing David O. Selznick. The making of the movie documentary is the most fascinating, as it shows, for instance, a revolving floor when Clark Gable "dances" with Vivien Leigh. Or the endless costume tests, in which Gable is visibly impatient. The third disc is a 6 hour documentary about MGM. This package is a bargain. Don't think about it tomorrow -- get it today.

Altynai's Giselle

2011-04-29T00:29:00.005-04:00

Is Altynai Asylmuratova not the most beautiful dancer to ever step onstage? Those Asian, exotic features, the huge, dark eyes, the sweet cherry smile is enough to make me have a girl-crush on her. She's one dancer I really wish I had seen live.

Unfortunately videos of this exquisite dancer are hard to find, even on youtube. So imagine my excitement when I found this (see after the jump):

It's 20 minutes of excerpts from Altynai Asylmuratova's Giselle. I wish it included more, but I'm grateful for what I have. I never got to see Asylmuratova live -- by the time I was even vaguely interested in ballet, she had retired. She's not that well-represented on video either -- there's a La Bayadere, Le Corsaire, Les Sylphides, and a VHS of Sleeping Beauty that has long been out of print. She's also featured in a documentary called Backstage at the Kirov. She's featured in some Kirov compilations, including one where she dances the Esmeralda pas de six with so much beauty it's hard to even watch anyone else dance this piece. She's exquisite in all her videos, but except for La Bayadere and the Esmeralda clip, I think her greatest strength as a dancer -- her sense of drama -- is not really captured in the extant videos. Her video of La Bayadere is what got me really hooked onto ballet. Now when I watch the video the strength of her characterization as Nikya still astounds me. In the Shades pas de deux, notice how she lifts her arms with such force and triumph, as if to remind Solor that even in an opium dream, he is not forgiven.

Anyway, back to the Giselle clip. Asylmuratova was never known as a strong technician, and you can see this in the clip -- she seems to tire at the end of her Act Two variation. Her upper body, especially her incredibly supple back, was her glory, but her lower body lacks terre a terre strength. Her entrechats are a bit sketchy. Her arabesque is uneven -- not always lifted to the same height, and her effort to raise her leg in arabesque is sometimes apparent. But the effortless, girlish charm of Act One, and the rather unique take on Act Two are wonderful. Asylmuratova, unlike many Russian ballerinas, wasn't blessed with one of those big, floating, airy jumps. She can get in the air, and has decent elevation, but not much ballon. Sometimes her jumps tend to land with a hard thud. Her arms also don't have that feather light look of so many Giselles. She has her own methods of appearing ethereal -- in the series of lifts, she lifts her arms higher and higher, as if being pulled towards the heavens. Asylmuratova works around her rather hard jump and forceful attack -- it gives her Giselle a sternness that I very much like in my Act Two Giselles. Mariinsky ballerina Diana Vishneva today does a very similar interpretation -- the stern wraith no longer reachable by anyone, driven only by a mysterious inner force to save the man who betrayed her.

There are many Giselles who turn Act Two into a rather sappy story of forgiveness. But Asylmuratova, with her intense face, and her forceful, un-mannered style of dancing, shows that love =/= forgiveness. I especially love the way she ends the ballet. Once Albrecht has been saved, Asylmuratova lifts his arm, but avoids physical contact. Albrecht carries her back to the grave and she really appears lifeless, no longer of this earth. As she bourrees farther and farther away from Albrecht, she lifts her arms a little each time, but it's not clear whether she's reaching out to Albrecht or whether she is already in another world. She has become distant and unreachable.

The staying power of Giselle is the idea that love can be real, yet impossible. In the second act, Giselles will sometimes descend into a series of litographic poses, and one will forget that this can be a blood-curdling ghost story about death, revenge, and redemption. Although I wish a complete Giselle with Asylmuratova existed, I'm excited to see this extensive clip that gives a hint of how special she undoubtedly was in the role.

Rigoletto - finalmente!

2011-04-27T02:09:00.015-04:00

Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto

Starring Zeljko Lucic, Diana Damrau, Giuseppe Filianoti, Stefan Kocan, Fabio Luisi cond.

April 26, 2011

When the curtain fell on Rigoletto tonight, the Met crowd roared in approval. I have no idea whether this is true, but my feeling is that the reason there was such a roar of approval was that after years of perfectly serviceable but vocally unmemorable Rigolettos like Leo Nucci or Juan Pons (and some other mediocre baritones thrown into the lot) we finally had a "real" hunchback jester. Lucic's voice has a great deal of natural, unforced beauty. There is no "dark and bark" for him -- the sound just seems to emanate from him naturally. It's not a lyric baritone voice either -- it has the heft, body, and volume for Verdi's cruelly challenging vocal writing. He was able to thunder in "Cortigiani" and yet sing a beautiful legato line in his duets with Gilda. He absolutely blew "Piangi, fanciulla, piangi" out of the park.

Rigoletto happens to be one of my favorite operas, maybe because of my dad. My father's not hunchbacked, nor would he ever put a hit out on anyone, but the sharp tongue, the defiance, and the fierce devotion to his loved ones, that's my dad. I absolutely despise the fact that barking and mugging are so typical nowadays for Rigoletto. The bug-eyes, the snarling, the sobbing/laughing, walking with a severe hunchback. Watch various Leo Nucci videos of Rigoletto from the recent years to see what I'm talking about. Lucic has been careful to avoid the "Rigoletto"-isms. Lucic mostly avoids any of this and concentrates instead on singing. I think he went a little too far in making this Rigoletto an aural experience. He often stood completely upright as he stood downstage center to sing, and I was thinking that a slight hunch of the shoulders might have had more dramatic effect. Still, what a wonderful change to have this role actually sung, and he sang with so much feeling that I could not help but feel his pain.

One thing that was refreshing and realistic was that his interactions with his daughter didn't have the cloying "I'm a middle-aged soprano sitting on a middle-aged baritones lap because that's just what Gildas do." They are a father-daughter who have lived together for a long time and so it's natural that much of their affection would be implied rather than in-your-face. More problematic was that Damrau and the Duke (Filianoti) had no chemistry to speak of. Did they ever look at each other?

Damrau and Lucic

Diana Damrau as Gilda also had a huge success with this role. I mentioned in my review of the Dresden dvd that Damrau is not a typical Gilda -- she's too confident, too mature, to really play the part of the sweet, sheltered convent girl convincingly. But tonight she dialed down a lot of the brassy sexuality of the Dresden video, and instead made Gilda a curious, passionate young woman.I never noticed how persistent Gilda is about asking for her family history until I saw Damrau and Lucic tonight. Her voice has grown in size and color since she had the baby -- it is now a very large lyric soprano voice that can easily fill the barn. Her trill is weak, but vocally she has to be one of the most secure singers onstage today. Her "Caro nome" had a softness and dreaminess that I don't recall hearing before. She went for the optional E-flat at the end of "Si vendetta" and she was a shade flat, but it's nice to see sopranos taking risks. Bravo to both father and daughter.

This is Damrau's "Caro nome" from a few years ago. If you listen to her, you'll hear that the glassy hardness is gone. There's only one more Damrau Gilda this season - GO!

Here are some clips of Lucic and Damrau in the Dresden video:

I wish I could say the same about Giuseppe Filianoti. I sincerely hope he was sick tonight, and thus not sounding his best, because if this is the best he can sound then ... The voice has become hard and metallic, and he cannot negotiate any notes around the passagio or above the staff with ease, not even the cadenza at the end of "Parmi veder le lagrime." I thought he might actually choke during "Possente amor." Many of his notes have a strangulated sound to them that sounds like late-in-the-day Martinelli. The high B climax to "La Donna e mobile" was unfortunate. He's certainly handsome, and looks like he could fit in with The Tudors or Borgias cast. But he sounds awful. Or sounded awful last night.

Here are some clips singing the Duke in earlier productions. Voice has always been a bit metallic, but nothing like the strangulated, struggling tenor I heard tonight.

I thought Fabio Luisi did an excellent job making the prelude sound ominous and he accompanied the duets and arias with Gilda with lovely, soft soaring orchestration. I thought though that sometimes he and the singers were not well-coordinated in the ensembles. I could hear some miscues in "Bella figlia dell' amore." Maybe some more rehearsal was needed? Some of the smaller roles were sung well -- Stefan Kocan as Sparafucile, Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Maddelena.

As for the production, it premiered in 1989, and is looking its age. The whole thing has a careworn, "this needs a trip to the paintshop" feel. Zack Brown's sets for Rigoletto's house and the inn actually have a nice look to them -- it would make sense that Rigoletto would live in a small house, or that the Duke would frequent seedy taverns. Both the prologue and Act Two are set in some kind of party at the Duke's palace. But it makes no sense to set the prologue and the Duke's palace in the same set, especially since there are several references to being inside in Act Two. The libretto says, "Living room inside the ducal palace. There are two side doors. At the sides hung portraits of the Duke and Duchess. There is a chair at a table covered with velvet." There's another instance in Act Two when the Duke's wife asks to see him and he blows her off. This would make much more sense in an interior setting than an outside garden party.

Then I read that for some reason the Act Two set was dropped this year. I have no idea why. Otto Schenk was the original director but I doubt nowadays much is going on in rehearsals other than "chorus enters stage left, Rigoletto, enter stage right." I heard this Rigoletto is getting its "farewell tour" this season. Hopefully the next Rigoletto will be slightly more dynamic.

Here is a picture of the Act Two set that was not used for this revival:

More pictures from the production:

But at the end of the day, people want voices for Rigoletto, and that was what we got tonight.

And now let me end on another note: Damrau is yet another in a long line of absolutely transcendent German-born Gildas. I'll just let the singing "sing" for itself. Hard to believe Berger was 50 when she made this recording! She sounds 30 years younger. Gueden's voice is sweet and dreamy, but enough of an edge to it to avoid sounding saccharine. And Freida Hempel's recording has very primitive sound but you can hear what a wonderful trill she has -- she trills all the way up to high E. Rothenberger is a singer who is criminally underrated by opera buffs. What a beautiful voice! Try to ignore the weird camera angles for that video.

ENJOY!

Erna Berger

Frieda Hempel:

Hilde Gueden:

Anneliese Rothenberger:

Rigoletto - Lucic, Damrau, Florez

2011-04-19T10:08:00.006-04:00

Forgive the pun, but Rigoletto is cursed on video. One of the greatest and most popular operas of all time, with great roles for the baritone, tenor, and soprano, and there's barely any good video of it around. Every video that I've had has disappointed in some way. In recent years the title role has been hogged on video by Carlos Alvarez and Leo Nucci, two perfectly serviceable but unremarkable baritones. Well, the curse is finally broken -- this video from Dresden, filmed in 2008, has strong performances from all the leads, a thoughtful "modern" production, and jumps to the top of the pack as the Rigoletto to get on video. I am excited too because next week I have tickets to see both Zeljko Lucic and Diana Damrau in Rigoletto. This video whets my appetite. Fabio Luisi's conducting throughout the video is sensitive and atmospheric.

The weakest vocal performance belongs to that of Juan Diego Florez, as the debauched Duke of Mantua. Florez has since dropped the role from his repertory, and I can understand why. It's a good stab at the role, and he has the high notes, but Florez's tenor is essentially too lean and slender for the blustery, showboaty music Verdi wrote for the Duke. He's more at ease in the more lyrical moments of the opera, like the Act One duet with Gilda. His best moment is in "Parmi verder le lagrime." Also, Florez seems inherently uncomfortable playing such a cruel character. He wears a mullet, and tries his best to look uber-slimy, but the role is not a natural fit for him either vocally or temperamentally. Florez being Florez, he infuses the role with his typical vocal polish, but I'd deem the performance a mixed success, at best. Here is his "La donna e mobile." You can hear how a tenor the aria really needs a lyric tenor with a beefier voice. It's curiously underpowered coming from Florez.

It's funny how Florez isn't really able to overcome the challenges of not being a "natural Duke," but Diana Damrau is able to make something of Gilda, even if temperamentally, she's not the typical Gilda. Damrau's whole persona is that of a boldly confident woman, not that of a shy, sheltered girl. Her voice is bright and a bit on the metallic side, with a secure upper extension. She interpolates an E-flat into the end of "Si vendetta." Vocally she can do almost anything (although her trill is weak). Her timbre just lacks that sweetness and girlishness of the classic Gildas like Erna Berger or Hilde Gueden. But this more sexually adventurous, womanly Gilda worked for me. It made me rethink my usual conception of the character, and how most sopranos have a hard time convincing audiences that they really are a sheltered teen. Damrau didn't even try -- this was a girl who was eager, even impatient, to leave her father's overprotective house. She sang "Caro nome" as a sexual fantasy, with her stretching on her bed. I just wish Damrau had a touch more vulnerability to both her voice and her personality. As it is, one can't picture this Gilda willingly walking into her death for anyone, much less a faithless rapist. Another quibble I have with Damrau is the fact that when she sings, the way she positions her mouth always makes her look like she's smiling slightly. This can be slightly jarring when she's say, dying.

The real reason for this set though is Lucic's performance in the title role. Lucic managed to do something that Nucci and Alvarez could not in their various videos in various productions -- make me feel Rigoletto's pain. Lucic has reclaimed the opera as truly Rigoletto's story. And he's done it without any cheap effects that unfortunately have become so common in this role. (Watch Leo Nucci's almost unbearable interpretation in recent years.) No barking, no sobbing, no hamming, just pure, heartfelt singing. Lucic doesn't have the kind of big, thunderous baritone of Leonard Warren or Robert Merrill, but he sings the role with beauty, style, and feeling. His "Cortigiani" and two duets with his daughter in Act Two broke my heart. His jester is younger and less pathetic than usual -- he has no usual physical deformity. His Rigoletto is played as a more-or-less normal man who is driven to terrible acts. The prelude begins with him alone onstage, as he puts on his jester costume. This establishes sympathy for the character that doesn't wane for the next two hours.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong. The lovely lyric soprano Hei Kyung Hong is luxury casting as Countess Ceprano. Georg Zeppenfeld's Sparafucile is appropriately menacing, and also a rare find nowadays -- a deep rich bass. Christina Mayer's zaftig, earthy Maddalena makes a good foil for Damrau.

The production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff is one of those modern updates that doesn't change the story. The first scene is a pretty wild orgy. The Duke is cavorting with topless chicken dancers. People are wearing modern clothes, but the production (like the Decker Traviata) has a timeless feel to it. It tells the story in a straightforward, effective, if somewhat stylized way. One of the loveliest scenes is Gilda's bedroom, a simple white room with some crosses painted on the wall, and a small, girlish bed. It really captures the repressively sheltered feel of Gilda's upbringing. The only major change the production makes is with the character of Gilda, who is less of a sheltered girl than an extremely fecund woman. But as I said, I am not sure how much of this is the director's vision, and how much of this is simply Damrau herself, as I've seen Damrau in several roles and she always projects the same almost brassy, bold sexuality.

Overall this is a great modern video of Rigoletto. For those of you who despaired for years at "yet another Nucci/Alvarez Rigoletto" snap this one up -- finally a baritone who really sings the role! It's not available on blu-ray yet, only DVD.

A bargain from the Kirov

2011-04-11T23:15:00.000-04:00

For a walloping $5.49 at Amazon, you can get this little-known 1968 film of Swan Lake from the Kirov Ballet. I watched it this afternoon, and I found myself surprised at the film. I can't say it was the greatest Swan Lake ever filmed, but it's definitely worth that $5.49.

First of all, the version of Swan Lake used here is not a carbon copy of the Konstantin Sergeyev version the Kirov/Mariinsky has danced for so many years, and which is available in three other complete videos. There was some attempt to make some cheesy-looking studio sets. One cool effect is that the soundstage has been repainted to resemble frozen-over water, so they are literally dancing on a swan lake. There's a prologue which shows Odette being transformed from a girl into a swan which is not in the Sergeyev version. There's an interpolated "moody solo" for Siegfried in Act One that is also not in the Sergeyev. But most importantly, the director chose to excise the Drigo arrangements of Valse Bluette and Un poco di Chopin in Act Four, and instead restored some of Tchaikovsky's original Swan Lake music. I don't know what exactly those pieces are called, but they can be heard in the Royal Ballet video with Makarova and Dowell. I find these musical selections much more atmospheric than the Drigo arrangements.

The film of course cuts Tchaikovsky's ballet significantly -- it totals about 83 minutes, which to my estimation is at least 40 minutes of music. The pas de trois in Act One is cut (although the annoying Jester is present). More unforgivably, the Waltz of the Swans and Dance of the Big Swans in Act Two are cut. Ivanov's choreographic structure in Act Two is so perfect that I always find any cuts incredibly disfiguring. Act Three has some abridgments. Only Act Four is left pretty much intact. Of course there's the abrupt, unmusical Soviet-style happy ending, and this time the director actually has the swans transformed back into maidens. And all the mime is deleted, Soviet style. Another particularly annoying "director's touch" is to have the swans make their entrance at the very beginning of Act Two, before Siegfried sees Odette, and then make another entrance in the famous arabesque sautee sequence.

The director also employed some "special effects" which today look like a special brand of cheesiness unique to Soviet dance films. Some of them are fairly innocuous (for instance, various people come in and out of focus, suggesting that the whole thing might be a dream by Prince Siegfried), but some really damage the structure of the ballet. One such instance is in the Black Swan pas de deux. One of the most famous parts of the pas de deux is when Odile imitates Odette's gestures, fooling Prince Siegfried into forgetting his love for that crucial split second. She sits on the ground, and flaps her arms like Odette. She even does the shy head gesture of Odette. A test of the ballerina's mettle as Odile is how she handles this imitation. It's tricky -- it's the ballerina imitating herself. But in this film, the director at this moment has the ballerina back in her Odette tutu, so it's not so much an imitation as a "vision" by Siegfried of Odette. To see what I mean fast forward to 4:27 of this video:

In her autobiography Natalia Makarova claimed that she was originally slated to dance Odette/Odile in this film, but that she had a disagreement with the director and withdrew. It would have been interesting to see pre-defection Makarova in this role, but on the other hand I wouldn't want to be without Yelena Yevteyeva's O/O. She's not the "typical" Mariinsky O/O that we are accustomed to nowadays -- Uliana Lopatkina has become the standard-bearer of O/O at the Mariinsky. Lopatkina is tall and majestic, with freakishly long limbs. She dances with an almost glacial reserve and calculation. Yevteyeva is smaller, more compact, and also less self-consciously Tragic Russian Ballerina. Her arms and hands don't have the exquisitely tapered look of the modern Mariinsky, but on the other hand, there's something more spontaneous, more natural about Yevteyeva's movements. Compare the two O/O's. Very similar pose. Yevteyeva is on the left, Lopatkina on the right. Lopatkina's wrists are bent at an extreme angle, her fingers artfully positioned. Yevteyeva's hands and fingers are flatter. Her pose looks sturdier. But she also looks more womanly, more real, than Lopatkina.

To see what I mean, watch the famous White Swan Pas de Deux over the years. Yevteyeva takes the pas de deux at a fairly brisk pace, without much of the careful posing that's become the standard nowadays. It clocks in at six minutes. This is by the way the first White Swan pas de deux that I've seen on video that ends with the by-now standard arabesque penchee.

Now watch Uliana Lopatkina and Danila Korsuntsev dance the same piece. Even without the harp introduction, the pas de deux is a full two minutes longer. Lopatkina pauses after every move, as if to say, "Take a picture of this gorgeousness." Movement has in my opinion become a series of poses, albeit very beautiful poses. It leaves me cold. Sara Mearns at the NYCB this year proved that an Odette can be full of those arching backbends and lunging arabesques, without descending into mere posing.

John Markovsky is the Siegfried to Yevteyeva's O/O. He's very handsome, and the director seems to be in love with him, as barely a second goes by without a cutaway to his face. But his dancing can seem sloppy by today's standards. For instance, his turnout is incomplete, and his toes aren't always pointed. Valery Panov is the appropriately hyperactive Jester, but for me the Jester has to be the most irritating interpolation in all of classical ballet. I always wonder if he's there just so dancers who don't look "princely" enough to dance Siegfried or Albrecht can still get an applause-milking solo. There's something chilling about seeing Panov dance -- for two years, he was harassed and even imprisoned about his desire to emigrate to Israel. The case became an international sensation.

The Mariinsky/Kirov swans are beautiful, but in a different way. Again, in 1968 they were all more compact -- shorter, not as bone-thin, less majestic, but also more spontaneous. Their movements are quicker and lighter. Over the years, the Mariinsky swans have gotten more glacial as their Odettes have frozen over.

The Toob

2011-04-10T18:39:00.001-04:00

Have you ever watched a youtube video that was great, but gave practically no information whatsoever on the actual video? No documentation, no lyrics for songs, nothing. I direct you then to Toob. It's an awesome website that my friend Travis made. He describes it as "animated, wikified YouTube video annotations." Travis has already gotten plenty attention for his projects -- this article has a nice interview with Travis about the website that preceeded Toob.

Recently, Travis made this annotation of a classic, much-watched youtube opera clip. It's the famous video of Anna Netrebko singing "Ah forse lui/Sempre libera" in Salzburg. He's helpfully added both English and Italian subtitles, running side by side. There's not even an opera DVD that does what Travis has done here -- in DVD's you have to choose one language for the subtitles (English/German/Chinese etc.). At the Met, the titles in the back of the seats are also in the one-language-at-a-time format.

This is very helpful for the opera newcomer, or even a youtube browser, since most youtube videos of opera do not have subtitles. When I saw the Italian and English subtitles running side by side for this video I realized a couple things: one, how stilted English subtitles often sound in Italian opera. "E strano!" sounds poetic, like a romantic fantasy. "It's strange" sounds ... strange. I'm a firm believer in performing operas in their original language, as I think there is always something lost in translation (literally), and this video just confirmed my beliefs. But look at how magnetic Netrebko is in this video. How much she owns that red cocktail dress and heels. Also, the subtitles emphasize how expressive she is as a singer -- you can see the mood in her face go from pensive, to wistful, to a kind of reckless defiance, as the scena's mood changes. You can see why this is the production that vaulted her to superstardom.

If you really want a youtube video annotated, just do it yourself!