You might think a great movie director could easily direct an opera - but directing movies and directing opera on stage are totally different animals.    An opera director doesn’t have the luxury of camera angles, special effects, multiple takes - and most importantly - the music happens, dictating the overall flow of the piece.  Opera is even different that theater because when you add the music and singing, you have to deal with timing and where the focus is on stage.

Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi is what Woody Allen took on at the LA Opera.   Gianni Schicchi is an hour-long gem, part of a trilogy of one-act operas called Il Trittico, and the LA Opera staged all three last fall.  Sounds like the opera’s general director Placido Domingo was determined to use Allen, and he did an outstanding job staging this comic opera.

Here are some excerpts from this smart review By Mark Swed, Times Music Critic:

Allen also called “Schicchi” “funny compared to ‘Tosca,’ not funny compared to ‘Duck Soup.’ ” Don’t believe that either. A production of genius, his “Gianni Schicchi” is a riot. And I say this as someone seldom attuned to Allen’s comic sensibility and drawn, if at all to his films, to those in a more pretentious Bergmanesque mode.

But maybe all he needs is great material….
Allen’s “Schicchi” is really the Allens’ “Schicchi.” Updated to Florence in the 1960s, it stars the veteran baritone Thomas Allen in the title role, and what fun he is in his Mafia striped suit and two-tone shoes, his hair slicked back and his mustache rakishly thin. Loquasto’s set is its own riot, a mansion in wild disrepair. The opera’s 50 minutes are not enough to drink in the fabulous details.

But what is perhaps most surprising about Allen’s production, which is brilliantly sung and acted down to the most minor character and walk-on, is how uncinematic it is. He begins with a screen in front of the stage projecting silly film credits, but that only underscores the sheer theatricality of the classic farce that follows.

Allen — Woody, that is — manages to be both irreverent and absolutely true to the music and the spirit of the work. He adds all kinds of inventions in the bedchamber of Buoso Donati, who has just died. The relatives are gathered to read the will. Schicchi is a schemer brought in to forge a better one.

The young lovers, Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta (Laura Tatulescu) and Rinuccio (Saimir Pirgu) are uncommonly sexy. Jill Grove as the wiliest of the relatives is a hoot. Everyone is a hoot. In his greatest stroke of all, Allen makes even the opera’s maudlin hit tune, “O mio babbino caro,” hilarious.

Allen did not take a bow, but the dead Buoso did.

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The San Diego Opera opened this year’s season with Puccini’s favorite.

Here’s Marcus L. Overton’s informed review.

And here’s a puff piece on the Texan Tenor who made the big time.  Yee-haw!

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Don’t get stressed - get Straussed!

Eeek.

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I’m glad Giuseppe Filianoti is back in the saddle at the Met after getting an ignominious bounce out of the La Scala production of Don Carlo.  Still - lots of light, lyric tenors try to sing roles that are too big for their britches.   Maybe Filianoti needs to stick with roles that are even lighter tha Verdi.   This article from the NYT says it all.   Nobody wants the Duke of Mantua to have constricted high notes…

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Mexicans boo Mayan pyramids concert by Great Tenor

MERIDA, Mexico (AP) - Placido Domingo’s concert at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza on Saturday night is being billed as “the world’s greatest tenor at one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World,” a claim few lovers of opera or history would dispute.

But some Mexicans question whether the show should go on at all.

Archaeologists are pressing for criminal charges against the organizers, reviving a debate over how to use treasured ancient sites.

It’s a balancing act many countries face as they try to promote and protect their cultural heritage. As artists seek to perform in stunning places from the Great Wall of China to India’s Taj Majal and ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian structures, many worry not only about damage but also about cultural propriety.

Domingo sought to reassure his critics Thursday, saying “I know there has been some discomfort in Mexico because I was going to perform at this site, but we have taken care of every detail to carry out this event.”

Mexico’s federal government turns down almost all requests to hold concerts at ancient temples, but they are increasingly pressured by state governors to promote ruins already swamped with tourists.   …the whole thing

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I sang Rodolfo back in grad school. I’m afraid I was a little big for the part - I certainly didn’t look like a poet in search of his next meal…

And now - slim is the only way to go for some opera companies.

Traditionally, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings. But it seems it will soon be over for the singing fat lady. The stereotypical large woman in a horned helmet and braids belting out Wagner is preparing for her swansong as opera embraces a new, younger audience.

The drive to reach out to these fans is resulting in slimmer, fitter and more glamorous singers on stage. New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Opera is in the vanguard of this movement, according to John Allison, editor of Opera magazine. “I have noticed the slimming down of performers,” he says, “and I think this is largely driven by the Met, which feels that audiences are more likely to connect with a glamorous, thin singer.”

Elaine Padmore, director of opera at London’s Royal Opera House (ROH), has also seen a move away from large women to more petite performers in certain roles. “We have been seeing glamorous women and handsome leading men for a time now, but this is the entertainment world, after all,” she says. “It is expected these days, when people are used to seeing beautiful people in films and on the television.” …read the whole article

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Hat’s off to the marketing people at the Washington National Opera - this is a great campaign.

It’s Saturday night, and about 15,000 people have come to Nationals Park to see a winning performance. The anticipation is palpable. Across town, decked-out folks sit in the red-velvet womb of the Kennedy Center Opera House, awaiting the live performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata.” Here, though, everyone from the teething to the tattooed has pulled up a chair or a patch of grass for the Washington National Opera’s first live simulcast into the stadium.

Watching in high definition on the JumboTron means that, as Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger stands in the orchestra pit, you can see the roosterlike combs in his gelled and spiked blond coiffure, shadows carving his face like a mask, as he stands motionless in his black frock coat. Suddenly, Ettinger lifts his baton, the fingers on his other hand vibrate and pulse as if playing the violin, and the music begins: gorgeous, symphonic sound swelling through the ballpark.

The curtain rises and we see a party, circa 19th-century Paris. There’s Violetta (soprano Elizabeth Futral), flirting and kicking back champagne, singing, “Pleasure cures every ill and life is to be enjoyed. . . . Without pleasure, life isn’t worth living.” …read the whole article.

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What a voice!

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