More Bellini from the opening night at Bastille on 24-IV-2014....

Deh! tu, Deh tu, Bell'anima!
Lyrics (owing to Aria database)
Karine Deshayes and Yun Jung Choi.

Great uploads to be grateful for!

Brilliant 2014-2015 season at Marseille Opera House!!

Invited as always, but almost never present!
This season which is on line has jewels and it will be sheer joy to go to Marseille again.

At Bastille Karine Deshayes was Romeo and found a new Giullieta for the opening night!

Last thursday night, I was at Bastille Opera House for the opening night of Bellini's Romeo and Giulietta, which could well be the title of this opera.... like Shakespeare 's play, Gounod's opera, and Berlioz's symphonic work . Instead, it is called "I Capuleti e i Montecchi",  based on ancestral conflicts between two sides of Verona's citizens under the ruling of two wealthy families leading each group.(in this Robert Carsen production the Montague ones wear black outfit, the Capulet ones wear red).

 I also went to the Bayerische Staatsoper to listen to Vesselina kasarova's Romeo and her Giullieta-Eri Nakamura, replacing Anna Netrebko.
It goes without saying that this opening night was for me an important date with Karine Deshayes and Bellini.
I was here in 2008, at the  same Carsen production with Joyce Di Donato-Romeo and Anna Netrebko-Giullieta in the main roles. Then I saw another production at the Bayerische Staatsoper with Vesselina Kasarova in Romeo, for my greatest pleasure, another mezzo, another wonderful Bellini's evening!
This time no washbasin on the wall... and no last walk hand in hand into Eternity for our heros, but similar beautiful Bellini's solos with French horn, clarinet, flute and the cello.
Last thursday, the balance between the pit and the stage was  efficient and moving, much more than what I can recall from the same production in 2008 under E.Pido.
I enjoyed this opening night with thorough excitement and pleasure! Romeo was so accurate and juvenile, with dream tops and heroic accents when necessary, acting like it was a real story to my eyes and ears. I could not find one second of non-commitment from her acting and singing. She slipped into this transvestite role with ease and was really stunning,  elegant singing, juvenile acting, terribly affectionate with her young and pretty Giullieta.
 Karine Deshayes does not play to impress, her singing is sufficient already to make us feel the soul and heart of her role, then all the rest comes with simplicity which implies so much work  accomplished to seem so natural ! She manages  her lower range and with this role it is quite impressive. I had a great night, following her handling the sword, fencing against Tebaldo and jumping fiercely in front of him. Tebaldo- Charles Castronovo  is also very natural.  He seemed a bit stiff in the first scene  when he offered his  services to Giullieta's father as a replacement son for Capellio's one stabbed by Romeo,  but his top voice soared brilliantly too, and gradually he became more convincing with fusing tops and coloratura.  Before the ouverture, unfortunately, an announcement was made to excuse Ekaterina Siurina, being not well, and replaced by Yun Jung Choi. Owing to the great professionalism of all the singers, especially this Korean singer and Karine Deshayes for the heavy parts shared in this work, this opening night did not suffer at all from this sudden change in the cast. Giullieta sounded wonderful, acting with her Romeo as if she had covered all the rehearsals. What a sweet voice too for this role... again a singer who does nor rely on her looks but on her musical abilities, and the duets and ensembles sounded terrific! Nearly each ensemble received thundering applause.. even when I was totally in rapture with the duet "Deh! t'arrendi a'preghi miei, se ti cal della mia vita: se fedele ancor mi sei, ah! non udir que il nostro amor" ..."Se ogni speme è a me rapita: ma tu pure alcun mi dèi sacrifizio del tuo cor",  the audience broke into applause... to my surprise because it is so moving... how could we produce noise at that moment when tears are at the back of our throats?
There was fantastic chemistry with actors and chorus who played the violent parts with style,  in slow motion when they are fighting, fencing. These movements  match  the music and singing so well .. "all'armi' or "guerra' seemed part of this gloomy reddish light which conveys the terrible feudal  assaults from these two families. I loved the minimalist setting( like I did in 2008), but this time, the ensembles were perfect. It was again the Renaissance atmosphere felt in some paintings, with strict costumes, straight lines, high walls and small doors, hardly any furniture, and the imagination does it all, with the movements on stage, the light effects and the music!
 The tomb last scene with the flight of stairs to the cavernous place, is very dark and cold, opposed to the very poetic white veil on Giullieta's body, strewned with roses... when Romeo asked to have it removed to have a last look at Giullieta's beauty, all the roses fell... autumn of life, premise of death...
Act II is a model of the genre in itself with a dramatic crescendo to the death of both heros and the fatal ending.  Scene VI took place in front of the curtain: Tebaldo is facing Romeo, they are ready to fight, both shouting " All'armi", while the curtain rises slowly on a funeral procession, with the  funeral march for Giulietta, a very soft and sad tune, almost like a prayer, 'Pace alla tua bell'anima" where male and female voices are heard together for the first time in the opera, ( up to now we had  a male chorus either Capuleti or Montecchi soldiers).
From here onward,  the music and singing bring tears and move me so much!
 In this setting, in dim light and almost bare scenery,  there is no eye -catching from the heart of the drama, the pain is huge and shared I think by the whole house. The silenced coughs  are a proof of the concentration! Although we all know the ending we are under the spell of these singers.  In this production we do not see the actual death of Tybalt, Romeo at the sight of Giullieta's procession throws his sword away, and dashes on Tybalt to wrestle, they both feel guilty, and even compare their sufferings:"Ah! di te più disperato, più di te son io trafitto" sings Tebaldo...when he implores "pietà" it means Romeo has almost killed him... while singing again and again 'E morta"... really they both want to die in this last and fatal fight. Fate is also inscribed in Bellini's score. When  Romeo sings'Svena,ah, svena" Tebaldo sings" Vivi, ah! vivi," which will be his last tune in this scene and opera under virtiginous violin scores.
The wheel of fate is turning. Romeo looked for  Lorenzo, after the fight in the Capuleti camp, but did not meet him again, and knows nothing of the fake Giullieta's death.
The tomb scene is certainly the best one, with percussion  to come down to it. The Montecchi soldiers are on the steps trying to drag Romeo away, feeling his dispair and sorrow are bad for him. They show comradeship and sympathy for their leader. But Romeo is almost falling in a kind of delirium, completely lost in his pain. I have the feeling he shares Lucia's foolish state of mind, losing reason (Donizetti knew his Bellini well) because of his lost love. Bellini is the best to express in music and singing the feelings of loss and despair. The poems written by Felice Romani are also a fantastic support for these feelings.
Here we are faced with the finest tunes ever written. (Gounod's found some nice bits and pieces but not for the entire opera).
 "Ecco la tomba... ancor di fiora sparsa, molli di pianto ancor: Il...mio....ricevi...più doloroso, amaro"
The clarinet, then the French horn are the solo instruments accompanying Romeo's despair and melancholy. The last dialogue with the French horn was really overwhelming last thursday night, Karine Deshayes displayed all the colours of her voice in this arioso, and her bel canto was the real thing to my ears as well as her acting until the brief gesture at the back of the stage almost completely dark, swallowing the poison.  I do hope she will record these arias one day.
The last duet was heaven because the voices were well -matched, the soprano voice was agile and young, pure, with spontaneous acting, without affectation, also well chosen to pair Karine's skills.
It was credible and beautiful,  a very touching end.
The cast on the male side was also impressive, all mastering bel canto and soberness in acting.
The conductor B. Campanella is the best I heard conducting this music. The applause were tremendous and lasted almost half an hour. Lucky Paris folks who can go several times to see this cast again and again at cheap prices.. just for the singing and the music.. ! I would, because lyrical "stars" like the ones on this cast are rare and precious.
But at the Parterre where I was sitting,  some of the neighbours were in a hurry to leave and walked past us, the audience who enjoy clapping to thank the artists, and of course I resented this because one can 'escape' from the sides at Bastille and not make shadows on the curtain calls on my video...
Back home, I had time to read the excellent articles in the programme, one particularly from Dominique Fernandez on "gender", explaining why Bellini called his opera 'Capuleti e i Montecchi'.. I will come back to it one day, I hope.
At the stage door: Karine Deshayes and Yun Jung Choi. We can feel they had shared a tremendous work together and thanked each over with affection here.

My curtain calls with shadows... I stopped  the video before the end and decided to clap until the curtain fell for good and made my way to the stage door, so happy with Bellini and this wonderful cast...and I thanked the artists, Charles Castronovo who told me he does not know yet who will sing Marguerite in Baden-Baden on june the 6th, we enquired about his wife's health of course and hoped she recovers  soon. we greeted Paul Gay, Karine Deshayes, and the brave Yun Jung Choi who saved the show!
Not to be forgotten on this page : Happy 450 anniversary to Bill (was on the 23rd )!!!!without whom nothing would be the same...

Otello, theatre des Champs Elysees, 9-04-2014

Otello, TEC.

 

It is amazing to see the way Cécilia Bartoli  completely launches herself in a role and does not care about her appearance, because what counts most is her singing and acting. As a true trouper she interferes with the members of the cast with total passion.  She does not mind wearing a   white pettitcoat  for her very last breath, when Otello, a disheartened outcast, furiously and madly in love, stabbed her in a diabolic embrace, while the singing is  excrutiatingly painful and tearjerking from both of them. 

I remember she also gave us outstanding singing in Semele, which  I watched on my telly, and I was shocked to think the producer made her act in the same sort of underwear... and leaving us knocked out at the very end... breathless.


Cecilia,  even in petticoat and bare feet, with blood stains at the front,  is the keystone of the whole  production, making us cry when she has sorrow in her voice, sending us to another dimension with her fantastic vocalisms, delivering Rossini's notes which seem truly to have been written for her,
(or for very similar twin-singers like la Colbran). I simply adore watching her on stage. That is why I was at the TCE on april the 9th, and I can never have too much of Cecilia, even in bare whitish petticoat.

I made the journey to Paris for Rossini and Cecilia Bartoli,  who defends Desdemona's role for nearly three hours.
It was the second time I had seen her in an opera in Paris, the first one being Cenerentola, which she sang beautifully on her Malibran celebration day in 2008.

The period instruments in JC Spinosi 's orchestra also attracted me. Of course they are not always safe, like the inevitable jarring sounds of the French horn.. but I do not mind, J C Spinosi is energetic and very careful with the singers : when you handle three tenors with acrobatic scores plus a Diva who is a Rossini specialist, you constantly keep an eye on the singers and I liked what I listened to that night. The young woman harpist did not go out for the interval break but stayed there and practiced. I got up and walked to see her and sort of stared at her practising  the Saule aria, which is even nicer than Verdi's.)

I was not far from the pit and could see young Spinosi who after the interval wore a dry black shirt... because the white one had been soaked with transpiration... (in French, to "wet your shirt" means to  make a great effort!)

In 2010, I came to the TCE  for a concert version of  Otello and loved the music and singing a lot. The great singer-actress Anna Caterina Antonacci was Desdemona and Otello was  also John Osborn with  a normal orchestra conducted by E. Pido; it was a fine Rossinian evening, and I was thrilled by the beauty of all the ensembles.

 The musical skills in Otello are not so different to my ears from the ones I like  in Le comte Ory or Le Voyage à Reims, but the music has  different meanings, tragic and biting, and the vocalisms have a  moving strength.
It seems improbable that all these strettas and coloraturas which usually sound so jolly and exhilarating  will have tragic echos here.
This is Rossini's miracle!

There is something special in this opera; the music for each role is a real delight, we have three tenors in the main  masculine roles and two mezzo in the only feminine ones, plus another sweet tenor tune from the gondolier who we can hear in the distance...

I loved the setting which gave to act 3 the leitmotiv of the scene: Desdemona is in the huge bedroom, with her confident (this wall has the mouldy colour of the Venitian Palazzo).  She tags the wall with the words  in red, (soon the paint will be dripping like the tears we are shedding, listening to Cecila 's Saule aria) of a melancholic tune coming through the open window overlooking the Venitian laguna:
the poetry of the scene for me, here, is at its utmost: the gondolier's voice is so nice, and the long white curtains are swaying in the wind which will soon turn into a thuderstorm, like the feelings in her heart, which are storming and devastating but which will find some kind of soothing when she listens to the song from her friend Isaura, which she plays on the record player; she feels they have a similar fate...  (a smashing tour de force to have singers, orchestra, and audience dead silent while listening to the recorded tune... on the old fashioned gramophone).

 She is disheartened by the turn of her fate, imploring pity, advice from her confident Emilia,  waiting for Otello, in dismal. She was rejected by her father when he discovered they were secretly married. She knows how strongly Otello is banned from her white social aristocratic circle: accepted as a successful soldier but rejected for being black and therefore, for them, barbarian.
 
This production made it clear that jealousy is not like in Shakeapeare and Verdi the center piece of the drama. Here it is centered on discrimination. John Osborn made it clear in his acting, that he is rejected.  During act 2, when we see him in his kind of den, (Leiser and Caurier chose to create a café for immigrants, and not the garden of his house like in Berio di Salsa's libretto), he is lying on a  sagging sofa, sipping a beer I think, not far from an old fridge: the setting is 1960 Venice, and he is wearing military dark blue navy oufit through the whole opera, so that all the tragic effects are based on his voice and gestures and he is so powerful as to share all the downward feelings right through his arias. They are both rejected because of their love for each other. They are both lost in their sorrow, looking for pity and recognition.

Rossini did not write a love duet in this opera. Instead, there is this amazing last embrace when he  stabs her... The singing for each role in this cast serves the musical text, the music throughout, and it is ouststanding that the team worked on the musical text so much. I can follow Italian when it is sung the way it was  that night, by Cecilia Bartoli, John Osborn, Edgardo Rocha, Barry Banks, Peter Kalman, Liliana Nikiteanu, Nicola Pamio and the sweet gondolier, E. D Hys. Italian words mean so much with Rossini's music. 

Maybe, I will never be moved by another Otello so much... and Cecilia Bartoli is outstanding: even in petticoat or little black dress, this is a Desdemona to remember.

 Rossini, seen through  2014 eyes  looks more modern than Verdi, because racism is still around us and there are gestures in this opera which somehow give a modern outlook which is not felt either in Shakespeare or Verdi (like the  kicks  to a black waiter or to a black corpse  when the curtain falls).

From Youtube( and Mezzo, I watched it several times..) many thanks to the uploader, act3 sc 1

 First short curtain call, with the main roles, to be followed by the  full curtain calls.(TCE 9-04-2014)

Two important dates with Anja Harteros, my DPD...

 Applause, after the recital!

(photo, Feldmarschallin, Munich The Four last Songs recital)

My Discreet Profile Diva  I did not see in Paris in March and will not see in Paris in June, will be on air twice very soon, on the 19th and 20th.
 Feldmarschallin nicely warned me, so here  are the imporant dates, to keep in touch with her art of singing which is so pure and moving.
1)http://www.br.de/radio/br-klassik/programmkalender/sendung771066.html

2) http://oe1.orf.at/programm/369819 .
I will be there!!!

(un)Happy Hour.

                                                             Desperately seeking Marguerite... 

No news from the Baden-Baden front....so far!

 WANTED... Margot...
 No blonde in sight,
 'Cause blonde wigs do not suit  raven- black Divas,
That's why
They either do not turn up with excuses, or  quit with excuses, which are  good excuses for them...
 I guess it's the wig....
"Les  brunes comptent pas pour des prunes...." .....quite, quite.

Marseille, capitale de la rupture.

Droite (61)      Gauche (20)      Front national (20)
Maire de Marseille
Sortant

It took me two days to react, because the blow is tremendous.
What we call the Republican Right (UMP and UID) has for the first time, obviously, agreed to join the Far Right (Marine, but it is not so nice as it sounds, and I am beginning to hate this word and what it implies now).
For Marseille, the result is obvious and shows that not only they joined the UMP but they also managed to gain seats and a sector (7è) and a Mayor.

It is hard to believe that this Far Right ideology is spreading and that suddenly I happen to live in a country where it seems to be the dominant one.
When I was teaching, I always had a trade union activity linked to what I believed,  ideal inherited from the Revolution which roughly means that we are Equal and that Solidarity is the key word linked to Hope for the best for all of us.
This is too much to digest, because it is the same here, in the village.
My fellow citizens are probably scared of me, too....

This young singer, Keny Arkana makes me cry here, and many thanks for this uplaod, which today, after the blow of the Elections, sounds even truer to reality...