Philadelphia Orchestra Concert - Die Meistersinger 13 November 2008

Sam Shirakawa journeyed to Philadelphia last night to see and hear James Morris in some Die Meistersinger highlights with the Philadelphia Orchestra .... but.....well, read on:

The management of the Philadelphia Orchestra this week found that Friday the 13th fell on Thursday.

Mid-morning on 13 November, baritone and renowned Wagner singer James Morris declared indisposition and cancelled his appearance at that evening's concert in Verizon Hall. A frantic search ultimately led to Myrtle Beach, where a replacement was hastily recruited in the person of Tom Fox.

No announcement of the day's events was made to the audience in attendance until just before Mr. Fox appeared on stage -- possibly because he arrived at the hall after the first half of the concert had begun. Nobody, I guess, was sure if he would show up.

Well, he did show up, and an hour's worth of "bleeding chunks" from Die Meistersinger went off as though Mr. Fox had been originally scheduled. While his performance fell a tad short of commanding, his traversal of the Fliedermonolog, the Wahnmonolog and Hans Sach's final oration was imbued with confidence, a firm line, rhythmic incisiveness and stylistic grace.

It would be churlish to delve further into the performance of any last-minute replacement, especially one that literally had just popped in off the street, so I won't. If his name doesn't ring a bell, you may remember him as Alberich or as Jaroslav Prus [pop quiz: what's the opera?] at the Met. But all that was at least seven years ago, and Mr. Fox has spent the interim years building his sizable repertoire at numerous European venues, notably in Mannheim, where he appeared as Hans Sachs for the first time earlier this month in a new production of Meistersinger directed by Jens-Daniel Herzog and led by Friedemann Layer.

The current string of concerts is being led by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, a popular guest with the Orchestra and possibly one of the five most underrated conductors in the last third of the 20th century. [Pick the other four yourself.] Given the massive truncations necessary in reducing the Meistersinger excerpts to an hour's length and the requisite compromises in accommodating a last-minute stand-in, Frühbeck could only render an inkling of what he might do with a complete performance of Wagner's masterpiece. But it was a tantalizing inkling.

Brief and also tantalizing interjections were provided by Canadian tenor Jeffrey Halili and soprano Jessica Julin, as well as the Philadelphia Singers Chorale.

The only palpable evidence of mishaps occurred in the surtitles flashed above the performing platform. Mechanical failures or human error left the words "ignore them" on the scrim for an inordinately long time during the Fliedermonolog.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the program was the reading of Beethoven's Symphony Nr. 8, which took up the first half of the program. But a website devoted to opera is not the place for a discussion of it.

Whether James Morris will appear at all remains to be heard. He has two more chances: tonight and tomorrow [editor's note: according to the Philadelphia Orchestra website, Mr. Fox was scheduled to sing Friday's and Saturday's concerts]. If Tom Fox continues to replace him, it would be worth hearing how good a fit he makes by Saturday evening.

©Sam H. Shirakawa

Digital Damnation - Metropolitan Opera / November 7, 2008

Sam Shirakawa attended the Opening Night of the Met's new production of La Damnation de Faust. Here is his squib:

If you were sitting in the uppermost tier (Balcony/Family Circle) of the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night, you could both see and hear the much vaunted computer-driven settings that are flashed onto the stage in the new production of Berlioz' Le Damnation de Faust -- the composer's discursive take on Goethe's epic.

See AND hear?

The whirring motors driving/cooling the projectors in the booth protruding from the ceiling were so loud, that you were hard put to hear anything from the stage or pit registering below mezzo-forte--which was often.

The complexities of Robert Lepage's pretty and pretty interactive production are outlined in Daniel Wakin's New York Times article, so I won't rehash them here.

But...

The mammoth five-level grid that Lepage imposes on the proscenium is so shallow that the stage becomes a giant computer screen on which singers and dancers move up, down and across, but never to and fro. It's all in your face, oddly two-dimensional, and somehow heartless. You get some sense of depth from the reflector scrims at the rear of the grid, but they also mirror (irritatingly, I might add) the lights on the music stands in the orchestra pit, as well as James Levine sawing away on the podium.

So shallow a stage space, however, turned out to be a boon for the singers trying to project over the augmented orchestra and the droning projector motors, lest we forget that opera is primarily about singing. The title role is a killer, but Marcello Giordano seemed to have no problems scaling its heights on Friday night. John Relyea cut an imposing figure as Mephistopheles and cut through dense orchestral thickets without effort. Susan Graham may be listed on the roster as a mezzo-soprano, but her as-usual flawless portrayal of Marguerite smacked more of Schwarzkopf than of Suzanne Danco. (I can't say anything about her rendition of " D'Amour l'ardente flamme" because she was no match for the projector motors going full tilt.) The chorus--also augmented--seemed muffled throughout the performance, especially in the penultimate pandemonium, where literally all hell breaks loose.

It's easy to take James Levine for granted, because he almost always makes everything work. Berlioz more often than not requires a traffic cop on the podium rather than a conductor, and Levine steered the orchestra, chorus and cast through choppy straits with his customary elan.

For all the high falutin' digital decor in this production, poor Susan Graham sicut Marguerite had to ascend to Heaven the old-fashioned analogue way -- schlepping step by step up a frail ladder into the flies. But maybe that's LaPage's ultimate point: Paradise awaits at the top of a five-story walk-up.

© Sam H. Shirakawa