William Kentridge’s drawing style is so bold and lively that it hardly needs animation to bring it to life. And yet his animated films crackle with energy, just like anything he creates, despite the fact that it is nearly entirely done with rare, hence extremely effective, daubs of color. A survey of his work is at MOMA through May 17, entitled William Kentridge: Five Themes, covering major themes and periods in his oeuvre—Ubu, Soho Eckstein/Felix Teitlebaum, in the studio, and his operas. The artist appears frequently as subject matter as well.
The installation’s flow and layout work well with the material at hand. Videos are screened on full walls in cube-shaped rooms with wide doors, integrating them into the larger installation, rather than ghetto-izing them, as often happens with curtained video projection spaces. read more
This week I was reminded once again how hard it is to sell 3,800 seats to an opera most people haven’t heard of. Let me backtrack to two weeks ago, when I thought it would be a fun idea for my mother and me to try to nab two of the Metropolitan Opera’s $20 rush seats to see Carmen. These are the 200 same-day Varis tickets sold for Monday-to-Thursday performances at the Met—covered in a previous column for SundayArts. Alas, this year there are three Carmens—Elina Garanca, Olga Borodina, and Angela Gheorghiu—and because there has been a lot of buzz over Garanca, who we wanted to hear, we missed the boat by a few minutes and all the Varis rush seats were sold out by the time our turn came up. Instead, we decided to see the revival of the Moshinsky production of Ariadne auf Naxos on February 11, and we were not disappointed.
In fact, it seemed almost too easy to get our tickets to Ariadne—they were still selling them at 6 p.m., whereas on some other days I have seen a hundred people waiting in line at 1 p.m. (they don’t hand out the tickets until two hours before curtain, so basically you can spend an afternoon waiting for ticket time). For Ariadne, there’s no question we got our money’s worth. read more
East Village Opera Company, the opera-rock hybrid company, first attracted buzz in 2004 with its live performances at Joe’s Pub. Two members of the company, co-founder Tyley Ross and AnnMarie Milazzo are currently singing miked, rock-infused versions of arias like Lakme’s Flower Duet, Verdi’s “La donne e mobile,” and Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” as part of Remember Me, an integrated production featuring singers onstage with members of the Parsons Dance Company at the Joyce Theater. The show—one of three programs the Parsons is doing during this month’s residency at the Joyce—is billed as a completely revamped version of the show that aired on PBS last year, and features new choreography and costumes by Project Runway designer Austin Scarlett.
Remember Me is a bit analogous to a show like Mamma Mia in that it adds a story line to provide a framework for tunes that people already know—certainly the operagoers in the audience know them, and many of the non-opera audience do as well. read more
Speaking with 28-year-old tenor Sean Panikkar, you get the feeling he could do pretty much anything he set his mind to. He shows virtually none of the stereotypical traits that tend to come to mind when we hear the word “tenor”—the extreme nerves, flightiness, vanity, and so forth. The onetime engineering student, who was a winner of the 2009 George London Foundation Competition, speaks quickly but always with thought and intelligence, and occasional flashes of dry humor. He’s been taking a slow-and-steady approach to his career, which he explained when we met at AQ Kafé early in February, just as he was about to sing a recital on February 7 with soprano June Anderson at the Morgan Library. It was also just a few days before Ariadne auf Naxos was set to open at the Metropolitan Opera; he’s singing the secondary role of Brighella in that opera. (The Met radio broadcast of Ariadne will be on Saturday, February 20.) It’s not his Met debut, though; that was in 2008, when he sang Edmondo in Manon Lescaut. Panikkar, who is from Michigan, talked about why he doesn’t want to burn out by taking too many huge parts too early, the importance of Jon Vickers, playing in pep bands in high school, and balancing family with a career.
Melick: Tell me about your recital at the Morgan Library this Sunday—how long have you been planning it? read more
Call it a week with four Sundays. This past week at the Metropolitan Opera, Placido Domingo (who’s last name means “Sunday” in Spanish) performed in four of the company’s seven performances—a trick the superstar (and the last of the “Three Tenors” still singing opera) will repeat next week as well. He’s singing in a revival of Simon Boccanegra and conducting the revival of Stiffelio, both operas by Verdi—and in an odd coincidence, both productions are directed by Giancarlo Del Monaco, the son of the great tenor Mario Del Monaco.
The main event was Domingo going where no tenor (not even the great Del Monaco) has gone before, singing the baritone title role in Boccanegra. Domingo began his career in Mexico as a baritone, and has always sung his tenor role with rich, burnished low notes, so the switch (while dramatic, and cause for a sold out crowd) was unsurprising given Domingo’s longevity and versatility. read more
I think it’s safe to say that George Steel and Peter Martins are probably two of the happiest men in New York today.
Last Thursday morning, Steel and Martins—the general director of New York City Opera and Ballet Master in Chief of the New York City Ballet—invited members of the press to a preview of the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater (a.k.a. the New York State Theater), which is finally set to re-open on November 5 with American Voices, a program of American music. The gala reopening will honor Koch, who gave a $100 million lead gift to the joint capital campaign of the two companies, which both perform at the theater. Also at this morning’s preview was New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin—the city of New York also donated $26.9 million toward the rebuilding project. Steel joked that the opening-night gala will be an opportunity to hear “ballet, opera-theater, and Rufus Wainwright—all at one low price.” Martins quipped that the theater’s 40-foot legroom space would be maintained, and the theater’s changes meant that Tchaikovsky could now be heard “as he was meant to be heard.” After the jump, you can see some pictures of the newly renovated space. read more
If you believe the adage that no publicity is bad publicity, then perhaps the Met’s opening-night Tosca Monday night was a success. By now, you’ve probably read about the prolonged booing that greeted Luc Bondy’s new production, which starred Karita Mattila as Tosca, Marcelo Alvarez as Cavaradossi, and George Gagnidze as Scarpia. Yes, in operaworld people get more than a little upset when you change the plot—the directorial equivalent of spitting on tradition. (You can read more about the brouhaha in HuffPo and the New York Times.)
I, however, was not in the house, surrounded by other lovers of opera and opera tradition, when this all transpired. Instead, when the evening began at 6:30, I was 20 blocks away in Times Square. I was curious to see what sort of reception Puccini might get in the noisy crossroads of the world. read more
Back in the spring of 2008, New York opera-lovers were aflutter over Juan Diego Flórez’s nine spectacular high Cs in “Ah, mes amis (Pour mon âme)” from La Fille Du Régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, with Natalie Dessay, whose Marie wasn’t exactly chopped liver. And guess what? You can hear them again during the Met’s free summer HD festival which begins on August 29 with that Donizetti opera.
Just like an ongoing television series set for a new season, it’s always useful to re-run the previous season, to get in the mood and to reacquaint yourself with your favorite heroes and villains. The mood in the city is a little less upbeat than in spring of 2008, when the economy’s unraveling was less in full swing. The Met opens its season on September 21 with Karita Mattila in Tosca, but for the city’s recently downsized and underemployed workers, the HD broadcasts may be one of the Met’s most opera affordable options this year. Certainly the weather was splendid on July 14, when the New York Philharmonic performed in Central Park, but you have to wonder if such employment factors are what attracted the unusually large crowd. read more
When you first got your driver’s license, did you take your parents’ car out? Perhaps tentatively at first, and then with more confidence each time? And yet, it was always your parents’ car, and always would be, but you got used to it, and maybe they got used to the idea of you in it. Well Mark Morris has had the proverbial keys to the parents’ car—Lincoln Center—for several years now. Even so, given his puckish nature, he’ll always seem like the teenager in the Buick Roadmaster. And that’s not a bad thing.
Lincoln Center, where Mark Morris Dance Group has performed regularly in recent years—with more frequency than even BAM, near his headquarters—dominates Manhattan’s culturescape in the genres of classical ballet, music and opera. Morris is no neophyte, with his company nearly 30 (!) years old. His modern style is straightforward, rhythmically attentive, often joyous. And yet he structures his dances with the great care of a classicist, from the full-length works to the shorter ones. It’s earthbound and exalted all at once. read more
The hot ticket this past weekend was John Adams’ latest opera, A Flowering Tree. Walking into the lobby on Sunday afternoon there was a queue of at least 50 people hoping for cancellations. Inside the theater was a starry crowd gathered for the Mostly Mozart event—in the seats just around me were opera singers (Renée Fleming) ballet dancers (Wendy Whelan) rock stars (David Byrne) movie stars (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and even a Nobel Laureate (Toni Morrison).
All of us at Rose Hall were treated to some of John Adams’ best vocal writing to date—and one his finest collaborations with the indefatigable Peter Sellars. A Flowering Tree (which debuted in Vienna back in 2006) was written to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth by paying homage to the composer’s final opera, The Magic Flute. The two operas share exotic settings and plots that involve magic, marriage and a little mayhem (though this is the case with many musical dramas). Regardless of its inspiration, A Flowering Tree works on its own merits. read more
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