Nov 9, 11, 16, 18   TriCities, Suor Angelica

From Death to Rebirth

The Voice and Opera Department presents

L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells)

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Mark Daniels Recital 

General Admission tickets are $30 and Preferred Seating tickets of $50 will enable you to attend the "Meet the Artists Wine and Hors d'oeuvres Reception" following the performance. Half-priced student tickets will be available at the box office on the day of the recital. Tickets may be purchased in advance at lyrictheatrerochester.org  by clicking on the 'Performances' tab at the top.

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DIE WALKÜRE
Sunday November 25 (Noon)

Muhly, Marnie

Based on a novel by Winston Graham, this new opera by Nico Muhly was commissioned by the Met. It tells the story of a beautiful and elusive woman and the man who pursues her.  Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and baritone Christopher Maltman sing the principals, with Robert Spano at the podium.   Click here to see the essay in this issue.

Verdi, La Traviata

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Michael Mayer's richly textured new production, featuring a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Flórez returns to the Met for the first time in five seasons to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta's hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo's father, Germont, who destroys their relationship.

Cilea, Adriana Lecouvreur

Anna Netrebko sings the title role, based on the life of an actual 18th-century actress who dazzled audiences with her on- and off-stage passion. Piotr Becsala is her lover, Maurizio, and Gianandrea Noseda leads the orchestra. The story is superbly set by David McVicar in a working replica of a Baroque theater.

Bizet, Carmen

Mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine reprises her remarkable portrayal of opera's ultimate seductress, a triumph in her 2017 debut performances of Bizet's masterpiece. Tenor Roberto Alagna is her lover, Don José, in Sir Richard Eyre's powerful production, a Met favorite since its 2009 premiere. Louis Langrée conducts.

Donizetti, La Fille du Régiment

Tenor Javier Camarena and soprano Pretty Yende team up for a feast of Donizetti's bel canto vocal fireworks-including the show-stopping tenor aria "Ah! Mes amis," with its nine high Cs. Maurizio Muraro is the comic Sergeant Sulpice, with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the outlandish Marquise of Berkenfield and Enrique Mazzola in the pit.

Wagner, Die Walküre

In what is expected to be a Wagnerian event for the ages, soprano Christine Goerke plays Brünnhilde, Wotan's willful warrior daughter who loses her immortality in opera's most famous act of filial defiance. Tenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek play the incestuous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Greer Grimsley sings Wotan, Fricka is Jamie Barton, and Hunding, Gunther Groissbock. Philippe Jordan conducts.

Poulenc, Dialogues des Carmélites

Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the classic John Dexter production of Poulenc's devastating story of faith and martyrdom. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the touching role of Blanche and soprano Karita Mattila, a legend in her own time, returns to the Met as the Prioress.

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Opera DVDs on the big screen, introductions by Opera Guild docents, refreshments at intermission. 

Temple B'rith Kodesh, 2131 Elmwood Avenue, Sundays, 1-5 pm.

Opera Talk, David Dean
One of Gounod's "French Provence" operas from 1864 and perhaps the first French impressionist opera.

Opera Talk, Carol Crocca
This production, with Joyce DiDonato and Katherine Ciesynski, is of "a beautifully crafted work, brilliantly molding Alcott's tale into operatic form." (The New Yorker) It is a coming-of-age story with a particular focus and great appeal for adults and children alike.

Opera Talk, Peter Dundas
From 1928. Librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal convinced Strauss to abandon the dissonant style of Electra and to return the lyrical style of Rosenkavalier, with this delightful opera as the result. Today's production features Kiri te Kanawa.

Opera Talk, Art Axelrod
Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera. Two hours long, a satire on military ineptitude with mystical plot elements and beautiful arias and orchestral numbers.

If you are on our snail mail list, you may have received a green flyer which you may return with donation for your selected operas. However, anyone is welcome to come without pre-registration. If you would like to be on our snail-mail list, send your address to PO Box 25613, Rochester, 14625 or visit operaguildofrochester.org for more contact information.

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The Saturn Club, 

Thursday December 6 at 7pm

Hits from  Carousel, Les Miserables, A Little Night Music, Don Quichotte, The Sound of Music and many more! 

$25 per person, limited seating

For more information, please send an eMail to [email protected].

 

Mozart, Don Giovanni

Friday, February 1, 2019 at 8:00 PM  

Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 2:00 PM

Weill, Three Penny Opera

Friday, April 12, 2019 at 8:00 PM  

Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 2:00 PM  

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Join us for a performance by The Academy Salon Trio 

followed by a reception with the artists.

1441 East Avenue, 14610

21st Salon Concert Season

November 4, 2018

February 3, 2019

March 24, 2019

April 28, 2019

All concerts take place at 2:00 pm in the Lyon Family Salon in the Rochester Academy of Medicine. Tickets are $35 at the door, $30 with reservation by phone, online or message. $26 Academy Members with reservation and $5 student. Seating is extremely limited. For more information Click Here.

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From your Opera Guild 

Another reason we are so lucky to be in Rochester: Yesterday (October 25) I received an email from the Friends of Eastman Opera inviting me, as a supporter of that organization, to a session that afternoon with none other than Renée Fleming. As an Eastman Distinguished Visiting Artist, she was making herself available to students and faculty for an update on her activities and questions and answers. I am a profound admirer of Ms. Fleming, and it was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy her generosity in sharing her enthusiasm and experience with the audience. Too late for this issue, but I will tell you all about it next month...

As I mentioned last month, the Board of Directors' main task this year is attracting new members. However, we have at last gotten started on getting some high school students to the Met HD broadcasts in December. We also have a presentation at St. John Bosco School in East Rochester for Opera Week, which grew out of contacts made for Bravo Nights. And, we'll be showing an opera at Beat the Blahs on January 20^th suitable for children and high school students, as well as equally entertaining for adults: Mark Adamo's Little Women, based on Louisa May Alcott's classic novel.   

Our fundraising campaign is underway! Please help us continue and expand our programming in support of opera in the Rochester region! 

 

Carol Crocca, President

 

 

Donations

As an Amici, your contribution in any amount is greatly appreciated. All donation levels receive an invitation to the Annual Recital; those listed below will be given priority until a date specified on the invitation, and at the Comprimario level and above may request extra tickets.  

Chorus: $50 per person, $80 per couple.
Comprimario: $100-$149.
Primo: $150-$199.
Maestro: $200-$299.
Impresario: $300 or more. 
 
You may also mail a check to Opera Guild of Rochester, P.O. Box 25613, Rochester, NY 14625. Please include an email or other address for your tax receipt.

This section brings you articles written by Opera Guild docents, previously distributed at HD performances. Other essays previously published as Reader Articles are also published in this section. All these essays are available on the Website in the Reading Room.

The Composer and the Thief

By Carol Crocca (Disclaimer: I am in general not a fan of late 20th and 21st century opera.)

Nico Muhly, who is all of 37 years old and has an extensive list of compositions and collaborations in several genres, was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and began piano study at age 10. He attended the Wheeler School, received an English degree from Columbia and completed a master's degree in music at the Juilliard School. Muhly has also studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse. (Wikipedia.) He has composed three operas: Dark Sisters, a chamber work about family crisis for four wives in a fundamentalist Mormon polygamous family; Two Boys, an opera about one teen-aged boy killing another based on relationships developed through the internet, staged by the Met in 2013; and the current Marnie, which premiered at English National Opera in fall, 2017.

Marnie is different because the other works concern contemporary events ( Dark Sisters was inspired by news coverage of a government raid on the Mormon compound after allegations of child abuse) and Marnie is set in and evocative of 1950's England, based on a 1961 novel by Winston Graham. It tells the story of a young woman who moves compulsively from job to job, embezzling money from each employer and creating a new identity for herself with each move to cover her tracks. She is phobic about interactions with men, and avoids or merely endures their attentions, both appropriate and inappropriate. Ironically, however, with recent emphasis on revelations of sexual harassment and coercion in the workplace, Marnie may be, in part, the most relevant of all. Depictions of unwanted sexual approaches in employment situations are unfortunately still realistic over sixty years later.

I did not see the Alfred Hitchcock film (1964), which apparently diverges significantly from the opera in emphasis and plot. (For a detailed comparison of opera and film, see operawire.com/opera-meets-film.) Although the creators emphasized that the opera is based on the novel rather than the movie, this did not stop the Met from capitalizing on the inevitable comparisons by having Tippi Hedron, who played Marnie in the film, come out on stage, age 88, at the end of the premiere.

Sexual harassment is not, however, at the core of the Marnie story. She is dissociated from ordinary life and love because of childhood experiences of which she herself is not consciously aware. Her criminal activity exerts its usual fascination on the law-abiding, but her inner life is, or should be, the pivot of the story. Especially since the novel is written from her point of view, the opera should be judged on how well it conveys this inner life.

All Muhly's works have gotten mixed reviews, both in the sense of some favorable and some not, and in the sense of critics finding considerable merit, but significant flaws as well. One critic suggested that Muhly has spread himself too thin and therefore not evolved as an opera composer. The snippets of music I listened to are not ugly and jarring (let me qualify the implication of that statement: ugly and jarring have their dramatic importance - I just don't care to sit through three hours of ugly and jarring), so I am prepared to listen with an open mind. The staging, video projections and costuming have been uniformly praised and the performances almost so. One sidelight: it seems that even the Met cannot realistically stage a fox hunt!

After reading some of the composer's blog, and listening to his comments on the opera, I found him intelligent and engaging in spite of an excessive use of "like'' and other indicia of his generation (he begins his blog thus: "Beloveds''), far removed from mine. Here are some of his remarks on Marnie which you might find helpful:

On the four characters surrounding Isabel Leonard as Marnie: "The Shadow Marnies represent her past personas, and they are invisible ghost-like figures who surround her, encourage her, antagonize her and echo her. With a few exceptions, they don't sing complicated text, and usually their text is fragmented and more sonically interesting: They sing without vibrato, in a kind of early music style, setting them apart from the rest of the singers and the chorus. It's almost like another character made of four people, and another set of instruments as well." [It should be noted here that Marnie does not have multiple personalities: she has created different identities to escape detection in her criminal activities.]

On the male dancers: "The decision to include dancers I think arose from the idea of the Shadow Marnies - we have these woman constantly there, but also, it was important to show her always subtly antagonized by men - they represent a sort of male gaze which exists less as specific incidences of harassment and more as an atmosphere of vague menace."

On what opera might be like in the future: "I really hope nobody has an answer to this! We just have to fight for this thing to still exist, and to open the doors wider, and to create new doors if the ones we have aren't big enough."

All from an interview reported on allarts.wliw.org, October 17, Elizabeth Svokos

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