[41] Teatro Nuovo presents Rossini's "La gazza ladra" at the Rose Theater @ Jazz at Lincoln Center | #1Summer50Concerts

Hannah Ludwig welcoming the audience as Pippo (PC: Steven Pisano)

WHO: Soloists, Chorus, and Orchestra of Teatro Nuovo; Rachelle Jonck, maestro al cembalo; Jakob Lehmann, primo violino e capo d'orchestra
WHAT: ROSSINI La gazza ladra
WHERE: Rose Theater @ Jazz at Lincoln Center
WHEN: July 18, 2019 at 7:30pm

Concert #41: In Which I See a Three-And-A-Half-Hour Opera That Usually Gets Cut Down to Two Hours for a Reason

Don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting Teatro Nuovo for this. I totally understand wanting to play every note that the composer wrote.

But Rossini wrote this opera for a different audience. Back in the early 1800s, the opera was as much a place for social hour as it was a place for musical edification. The 20-minute scenes sung by the protagonist's first cousin's husband's servant were the perfect opportunity for Signore and Signora Garganelli to go over and play cards with their aristocratic friends.

But it's the 21st century. Friends are obsolete. Our phones are the new "friends."

Okay, maybe that's kind of a dystopian read on things. But Wagner invented this idea that music should be all-consuming and everyone should be quiet and do nothing but listen. And now we just sit and listen and roll our eyes at people who cough (don't lie, I do it too -- concert halls literally provide free cough drops, but you can't be bothered to pick a few up before the performance?).

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of saying that I understand why The Met cuts Gazza ladra to two hours. But I'm glad I got to see the whole thing -- again with that reproducibility factor!

You've definitely at least heard the overture to La gazza ladra ("The Thieving Magpie"). It's a favorite among film producers, most notably used in A Clockwork Orange. Couldn't tell you where in the movie -- I don't do psycho-crime movies.

ANYWAY, now that my anti-establishment cynicism is out of the way, I really really enjoyed Teatro Nuovo's performance. The orchestra sounded as great as ever, and I think they saved their real A-cast for this performance. The acting was more acute, though that could possibly be because the staging was slightly more...well, staged. There was a long table in the middle of the stage that at least gave the performers something to work with.

The many faces of Hans Tashjian (PC: Steven Pisano)

The highlight of the performance was mezzo Hannah Ludwig as Pippo, the cheeky trouser-role servant who eventually exonerates the protagonist from her execution (have I mentioned that Italian tragedies are indistinguishable from Italian comedies until the last ten minutes?). Not only did she sing beautifully, but she sparkled in the role, at once naive and all-knowing. Bass Erik van Heyningen's constantly-concerned portrayal of the defected soldier Fernando Villabella was poignant, coupled with a sweetly roaring bass. Hans Tashjian, the main villain, brought an intentional apathy to his character, reinforcing his nuanced vocal technique with an impressive repertoire of cunning smirks, each distinct from the last. And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the sorrowful song of the protagonist herself, Alisa Jordheim as the condemned (then not) Ninetta.

To the uncredited chorus member who played the magpie: the feather-boa-plus-tuxedo look is a keeper. He managed to be the funniest character, even though he only sang two solo lines -- the way he raced around the stage had a Road Runner-esque flair.

The orchestra, as usual, sounded great; a few of them even joined in on some of the buffo fun, the principal flautist and oboist each in their own little solo world until the oboist "realized" that everyone was concentrating on the flute player's thirty-second notes instead of her quarter notes.

So yes, I sat through three and a half hours of opera on this one Thursday night. But I don't have a single regret. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: reproducibility factor never steers me wrong!

[32] Vivica Genaux and New York Baroque Incorporated at Caramoor | #1Summer50Concerts

Her outfits are to die for

WHO: Vivica Genaux, mezzo-soprano; Aisslinn Nosky, violin; New York Baroque Incorporated
WHAT: Works by Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, Hasse, and Geminiani
WHERE: The Venetian Theater at Caramoor
WHEN: June 30, 2019 at 4pm

Concert #32: In Which I Was a Bad Gay

June 30, 2019 was World Pride. Four million people poured into the lower quadrant of Manhattan and celebrated with rainbows and glitter and hoopla. I was not one of them. This could just be me, but being stuck in a four-million person crowd with no place to go to the bathroom doesn't exactly sound like my idea of a good day.

Plus, I rationalized, it's not like I hadn't been prideful for the entire month leading up to World Pride. I will direct you to concerts #23 and #25, which literally had the word queer in their names.

The truth is, I actually just made a dumb scheduling mistake. I was 100% convinced that the pride march was on Saturday 6/29, so I made plans with a friend's mother to go see this concert on 6/30 (yes, I'm that kid who makes plans with his friends' parents). Turns out I was wrong, and I decided that I wanted to see Vivica more than I wanted to buy a rainbow shirt and ruin it in one go by standing for eight hours in the sauna that is the West Village. Sue me.

Anyway, I think I made the right choice. Katonah is absolutely gorgeous. Everything is green. The air smells less like garbage (why doesn't NYC have dumpsters???? anyone????). I love NYC, but it's anything but a relaxing place. I took one step off the greenery-lined platform at the Katonah Metro-North stop and it was as if my responsibilities vanished -- crazy considering that I was probably ten concert reviews behind at that point.

Weirdly enough, Vivica Genaux never comes to the US. She made only two appearances stateside this year, and she has not a single one scheduled for the 2019-2020 season. Based out of Italy, she gives most of her concerts in western Europe.

The concert, at face value, looked like old-people bait. That one Corelli concerto grosso that everyone knows (D major, Op. 6, No. 4). The obligatory concerto from The Four Seasons. Vivaldi. Handel. Vivaldi knockoff. You know.

But New York Baroque Incorporated did a great job of treading the line between crowd- and connoisseur-pleasing. Their Corelli was whimsy and spontaneous as concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky  goaded solo second violin Alana Youssefian with a twinkle in her eye; on passages of repeated notes, Nosky dared Youssefian to rival her creative ornamentations (Youssefian obliged with a smirk).

The video looks a little bit like one of my fifth-grade iMovie projects, but the playing is top-notch!

Aisslinn Nosky stole the instrumental portion of the show. When I saw her in ChamberQUEER a few weeks before, her motions were moderate (the audience, after all, was about five feet in front of her), but her playing still effectively colored her the badass-du-jour. On the stage of the Venetian Theater, she let loose. Her stylings on "Winter" from The Four Seasons were agitated and overflowing a controlled, but chaotic energy; Nosky's emotion seemed more like that of a rock guitarist than that of a baroque violinist, her blood-red hair barely keeping its faux-hawk. And though harpsichordist Avi Stein was sitting in the conductor's chair, it was obvious throughout the concert that Nosky actually wore the pants in the ensemble -- once again the badass-du-jour.

Badass-du-jour, of course, apart from Vivica Genaux. As soon as she (and her dress-tail) swept on-stage, the presence was palpable. She alternated with facility between the opera seria archetypes: from lovesick, woebegone, and hopeless to oozing bravura at the very touch. Her technique was a little weird -- she produced vibrato and pitch changes by wobbling her lower lip, so even in the arie di bravura she still looked a little bit sad. But close your eyes, and you couldn't tell the difference. In the second half of the concert, she changed to a white pant-suit to sing Handel's cantata Armida abbandonata, the heart-rending story of a Saracen queen's lost love. She continued on with two encores written for Handel's favorite castrato (look it up if you don't know what it is) Farinelli, each delivered with joy and pizzazz.

Did you know one of the B's in ABBA stands for baroque? True story.

So TL;DR, no, I don't regret my decision. I came back to the city in the late evening and I was hydrated, fed, and had Handel in my ear. I heard World Pride was a spectacle to behold. But honestly, my biggest regret was not seeing the MET float, complete with Anthony Roth-Costanzo in drag and Stephanie Blythe in flashy surrealist garb. All the other corporate BS, I was happy to do without.

Caramoor's summer is almost over -- make sure you stop by before the end of the summer festival or for one of their precious few year-round performances!

[29] Teatro Nuovo performs Donizetti and Rossini at Church of the Heavenly Rest | #1Summer50Concerts

That's an ophicleide, the love-child between a tuba and a bassoon, but cooler (PC: Gregory D'Agostino)

WHO: Teatro Nuovo soloists, chorus, and orchestra
WHAT: DONIZETTI Symphony in E minor; ROSSINI Stabat mater
WHERE: Church of the Heavenly Rest
WHEN: June 27, 2019 at 8:00pm

I always feel a little bit mean when I review young artist programs. Like, I'm not currently a powerful reviewer by any stretch of the imagination, but what if a review of mine goes viral and ruins someone's career? I don't know. I could discuss the what-ifs of music criticism all day. But we just have to keep in mind what the wise Ratatouille character Anton Ego once said: "The bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

Now that I'm done being angsty and self-deprecating, I should say that I loved this performance. The young artists were great. No one's career is getting ruined tonight.
Everyone loves to perform German early romantic music as it might have sounded in Beethoven or Schubert's day. There are some fabulous period Beethoven recordings out there -- my go-to is the fiery symphony-and-overture cycle from Anima Eterna Brugge. But no one considers the historical sound of their counterparts down in southern Europe; Rossini's Barber of Seville premiered in the same year as Beethoven's seventh symphony! Perhaps it's that whole opera aesthetic -- howling is howling!

Listen to the beginning of Coriolan. Your soul will be seared.

Anyway, Will Crutchfield's Teatro Nuovo performs bel canto opera as it might have been at the time. Usually that means no conductor -- more on that when I go to see the fully staged operas. But this time, they were seated as an orchestra usually sits (except the bassists were divided, two on each side), conductor in front, just like usual.

The orchestra, made up of NYC's finest period-performance freelancers (i.e. all the same ones that played on all the other period performance concerts), started with a Crutchfield-led performance of a Donizetti symphony, one that hadn't seen the light of day since the bel canto-ist's heyday. The orchestra clearly had a lot of technical talent, but it was clear their opinion of the piece was similar to mine: perhaps it should be re-buried.

But the orchestra perked up for the Rossini Stabat mater, because everyone likes that piece. It's kind of like if Rossini wrote an opera in Latin. Is it the most pious work? Hell no. Did Rossini go to hell for setting a series of corny cabalettas to biblical text? Probably. But is it kind of fun? Yeah.

At the helm for the Rossini was Jakob Lehmann, who has regularly played with and conducted Anima Eterna Brugge in similar repertoire. His gesture was clear, his interpretation vibrant; he elicited something different out of the orchestra (or maybe that was Rossini, who knows?). The chorus ranks were filled with the Teatro Nuovo students, each of whom is an opera singer. The sound, while somewhat wobbly and unblended, felt authentic to the 19th-century Italian opera chorus that probably premiered the piece.

Lehmann staring daggers at the violin section (PC: Gregory D'Agostino)

Of the soloists, tenor Derrek Stark stood out with his "Cujus animam gementem" -- the frequent octave-plus leaps sounded like no skin off of his back. The next movement's duo was equally memorable, with cheery soprano Christine Lyons and mezzo-soprano profundo Hannah Ludwig blending their vibrato perfectly. Ludwig, unlike most mezzos I've seen, took her cadenza to the lowest part of her voice instead of the highest part; she convincingly hit a note low enough that mezzos don't usually sing it.

Teatro Nuovo is an incredible project, and they execute their mission flawlessly. I know this is short notice, but if you can you should go see Teatro Nuovo, this Wednesday and Thursday, doing Bellini's La straniera and Rossini's La gazza ladra, respectively. I know I'm going to be there.

[18] The MET Orchestra and Elīna Garanča perform Mahler and Bruckner at Carnegie Hall | #1Summer50Concerts

                                           

Look at that SMILE!

WHO: The MET Orchestra; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Elīna Garanča, mezzo-soprano
WHAT: MAHLER Rückert-Lieder; BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7
WHERE: Carnegie Hall
WHEN: June 14, 2019, 8:00pm

I'm pretty much convinced that Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the perfect human being.

His conducting is fabulous. He is the principal conductor of three orchestras (MET, Philadelphia, and Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal) and everyone in each of those orchestras loves him. He is always smiling. He can light up a room the size of Carnegie Hall. And my friends who have met him have assured me that he's just as nice in person. Even his bald spot is perfectly round.

Yeah, he's kind of my celebrity crush. Don't tell him, though.

I have this weird thing where I love going to see Mahler symphonies live, but I can't bring myself to listen to them in my free time. I'm not exactly sure why -- I obviously like them at least some, but for some reason my idea of "fun listening" (especially background listening) isn't an hour of hyper-dramatic maximalist symphony.

Mahler's song cycles, on the other hand, are far more reserved. Mahler had to tame his bombastic tendencies to fit a whole orchestra underneath a vocal soloist, and it shows. Some of the song cycles have a theme -- for instance, the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children -- super uplifting) -- but others are simply themed with a poet. These five songs, to texts by Friedrich Rückert, fall staunchly in the latter category, and I think they're my favorite thing that Mahler ever wrote. Vivid orchestral color, tear-jerking melodies, equal opportunity for heart-rending theatricism and musical bravura.

So, what do you get when you combine a perfect conductor, a perfect mezzo-soprano, a perfect orchestra, and a perfect piece?

Yup, this performance was damn near perfect. Garanča's tone was always enough to fill the hall, even in the rare moment when she traded her full splendor for a more impish affect. The MET Orchestra sounded like a multi-headed beast, so perfectly attuned to one another that it almost felt like the musicians were being operated by a switchboard backstage -- of course, the musicality remained uncompromised. And Yannick....well, he was perfect.

All was perfect until that moment of silence after the last chord of the piece petered out -- probably my favorite part of the entire song cycle -- when some asshole in the audience shouted "BRAVA!!!!" before Yannick even had a chance to put his arms down. If you're that guy, and you're reading this, then fuck you. Full stop.

Much in the same way that I never listen to Mahler symphonies in my free time, I had never listened to a full Bruckner symphony before this concert. I'd been told that it was like Mahler, but boring -- not my style. But I was pleasantly surprised, not only by the piece, but by how the MET Orchestra worked their magic (I feel like that's a theme, maybe it shouldn't surprise me anymore).

He's like classical music James Corden!

Mahler's big hallmark is the loud-and-louder concept -- louder than loud is louder, louder than louder is blow-your-brains-out loud, and so on and so forth. Bruckner didn't feel like loud and louder. Bruckner felt like deep and deeper. When Bruckner wanted loud, he added an extra instrument or two in a lower or higher octave, maturing the sound. And the MET orchestra highlighted that perfectly. Every member of that orchestra knew the score perfectly, and when it was their turn to play they slipped into the timbre of the chord seamlessly. In any other orchestra, I'd say that was because they'd played it 40 times before, but Yannick himself said from the stage that it was the first time the orchestra had ever played a Bruckner symphony.

And speaking of Yannick: he was perfect.

So I know I made a little bit of a jab at the MET orchestra in my last post for not having a particularly pride-friendly program for this concert. But you know, with a concert of this quality, I really shouldn't complain. Get excited for next MET season -- the orchestra is going to get its chance to shine in a few of the productions (Wozzeck, Flying Dutchman, Rosenkavalier, Káťa Kabanová), so keep an ear out for them.