Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company unveiled a stellar artistic line-up for its 2012/2013 season today at a press conference at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The company’s 63rd season is a celebration of opera’s greatest masterpieces and features the return of works both long absent and familiar to the COC stage. The COC presents Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus in a new COC production, Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Richard Strauss’s Salome and Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.

A dazzling array of the opera world’s leading artists will appear with the COC in 12/13. No less than 33 singers, conductors, directors and designers make their company debuts, including singers Anna Christy, Stephen Costello, Melanie Diener, Elza van den Heever, Isabel Leonard, Brian Mulligan, Franz-Josef Selig and Erika Sunnegårdh; conductor Jiří Bělohlávek; director Peter Sellars; and visual artists Jean-Noël Lavesvre and Bill Viola. Returning artists include singers Isabel Bayrakdarian, Russell Braun, Judith Forst, Alan Held, Ben Heppner, Richard Margison, Adrianne Pieczonka, Michael Schade, Ramón Vargas and Tamara Wilson; conductor Stephen Lord; directors Christopher Alden, David Alden, Robert Carsen and Atom Egoyan; and designer Michael Levine. All performances take place in the company’s home, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, and feature the renowned COC Orchestra and Chorus.

Baritone, Russell Braun

Soprano, Adrianne Pieczonka

Tenor, Ramon Vargas

Rising Tenor, Stephen Costello

“I’m very proud of the artists and productions the COC has secured for its 12/13 season. Exceptional artists enjoy working with exceptional companies, and the COC has become a destination for artists of a truly remarkable calibre.” says COC General Director Alexander Neef. “The 12/13 season has an ambitious and creative vision that distinguishes the Canadian Opera Company as a home for truly special programming devoted to achieving the greatest heights of artistic excellence.”

The Canadian Opera Company’s 12/13 season opens with the quintessential Italian opera, Giuseppe Verdi’s
Il Trovatore, last performed by the COC in 2005. A staple of the operatic repertoire, Il Trovatore has mesmerized audiences since its premiere in 1853 with its scorching tale of the vengeful gypsy Azucena, her son Manrico’s romance with the noblewoman Leonora, and his rivalry with the Conte di Luna. A world-class cast helms this fiery melodrama: internationally renowned Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas, who appeared with the COC for the company’s 60th anniversary concert, makes his mainstage and role debut as Manrico; acclaimed Canadian baritone Russell Braun (Jaufré in the COC’s 11/12 production of Love from Afar) makes his role debut as the Conte di Luna; South-African soprano Elza van den Heever, in a COC debut, appears as Leonora; and Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Manistina makes her COC debut as the gypsy Azucena, a role she reprises following performances with Gran Teatre del Liceu and Opéra National de Bordeaux. Rounding out the cast is Italian tenor Riccardo Massi, in his COC debut, who sings the role of Manrico for two performances. Ukrainian bass Dmitry Beloselsky appears with the COC for the first time as Ferrando. The COC’s Il Trovatore features director Charles Roubaud’s acclaimed production from Opéra de Marseille and celebrated conductor Marco Guidarini leading the COC Orchestra and Chorus through Verdi’s rich score, which highlights some of Romantic opera’s most beautiful and recognizable music. Designer and sculptor Jean-Noël Lavesvre has created an atmospheric set that is at once castle and gypsy camp.

Maria Jeritza

Years ago, when I began studying Puccini’s Turandot, I came across the name Maria Jeritza in Mosco Carner’s biography “Puccini: A Critical Biography,” along with several other names that ended up fuelling my operatic interests and studies for the next several years.  Jeritza, born in Brno in 1887 is a singer who perhaps deserves more attention than she has yet received, both historically and as a performance icon.  Fascinating because she created several of the most coveted roles in all of opera and worked with the greatest composers of her era, Jeritza belonged to a generation of singer that honed their instruments to a point that any major composer had to seek them, a practice that seems to have dissipated in recent years.  For me, her work with Puccini and Strauss is the most valuable to sopranos who are learning or attempting to sing the roles she created, because she worked hand in hand with the composers and was able to produce the vocal nuances and stylistic aspects they desired in their heroines.

As Turandot

As Marie/Marietta

She created the roles of Blanchefleur in Kienl’s opera Der Keurigen (1911), Ariadne in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), the Empress in his Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), and Marie/Marietta in Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt (1920), the latter also being the role of her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on November 19, 1921.

With Richard Strauss

On November 16, 1926, she starred in the title role of Puccini’s Turandot in its North American premiere at the Metropolitan, where she also created the title or leading soprano roles in Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa (1924), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrarri’s I Gioelli Della Madonna (1925), Korngold’s Violante (1927), Richard Strauss’ Die Āgyptsche Helena (1928), and Franz Von Suppé’s Boccaccio (1931) and Donna Juanita (1932.) Her popularity at the Metropolitan was, as in Vienna, immense, especially as Tosca, Carmen and Massenet’s Thaïs.

In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musician’s, it states:

Her Covent Garden performances were confined to seven roles during 1925 and 1926, whereas at the Metropolitan she sang 290 performances in 20 roles. After World War II she made isolated appearances in Vienna and New York (having become a naturalized American). Though endowed with an ample and lustrous voice, Jeritza belonged to the category of artist known as a ‘singing actress’, freely yielding both dramatically and vocally to impulses that were sometimes more flamboyant than refined. In her numerous recordings, faults of taste and technique co-exist with genuine vocal achievements. Archival material from the Vienna Staatsoper in the 1930s testifies to the magnetic effect she had on audiences. (Desmond Shawe-Taylor/R).

In 1948 she married New Jersey businessman Irving Seery and moved to a mansion located in the Forrest Hill neighborhood of Newark, NJ where she made her home until her death in 1982, at age 94. She died in Orange, New Jersey, and is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington, New Jersey.

Jeritza made a number of 78-rpm recordings which testify to the high quality of her voice. Many of these recordings have been released on CD. She also wrote an autobiography called “Sunlight and Song” in 1924.

From Vienna in May 1923, Puccini wrote a letter to Giueseppe Adami, which indicates the type of power a singer like Maria Jeritza held over productions and over the composers who sought her talent.  He wrote:

Dear Adamino,

In hate: arrived safely.  Cool today, but very warm journey.  There is talk of “Manon” for September.  They are giving “Cappelli Bianchi” in a few days.  Eisenschitz wanted to give you a pleasant surprise.  If Jeritza accepts they will do “Manon.”  If not I shall return to my work.  But I shall stay here a little while for the festivities which they have prepared for me.  They treat me here as if I were the Kaiser or the Crown Prince.  Living is enormously dear.  My bedroom and sitting-room cost 500,000 crowns a day.  I am well.  My thoughts are on the lovely “Turandot,” lovely in her newest attire, thanks to the great “tailleur” Adamino.  And talking of beauty, last night at the Opera, in Strauss’s “Legend of Joseph” there was an ensemble of the feminine nude that would have turned the head of St. Francis.  Good-bye.  Greetings to you from us all. (Giuseppe Adami, ed., “The Letters of Giacomo Puccini,” Translated by Ena Makin, (London: Harrap & Co, 1931), 307).

I find it fascinating that unless Jeritza accepted the offer to sing Manon Lescaut, Puccini would simply just return to his work.  It is also interesting to note that Puccini was at this time already thinking of Turandot.  It is no big surprise that Jeritza would sing its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.

Mosco Carner recounts:  ”Jeritza was to become a celebrated interpreter of this role [Tosca] as well as that of Minnie in La Fanciulla; Puccini himself later declared her his best Tosca and ‘one of the most original artists I have ever known’.  It was, incidentally, Jeritza who by an accident introduced the half-lying position in which most Toscas now address their “Vissi D’Arte” to Scarpia.  In her tussle with the Roman Chief of Police she had, during a rehearsal, slipped to the ground, a position which Puccini considered in perfect keeping with the emotional situation at that moment and which he asked her to retain.”  Apparently, she received over 50 curtain called for her portrayal.

What I love about this last video is not just the singing but the gallant manner of introduction for these two artists, the respect paid to them by the speaker, the idea that opera singers were adored at a level that surpassed the normative artist.  Where has this well-deserved respect and gracious manner gone?  Those who lived during this period had less in terms of technology and methods of communication, but the thought that families would turn on the radio and listen to something like this, together, and in respect of great art, might just be worth turning back the clock…even if for a little while.

© Mary-Lou Vetere, 2012

2012…Can you imagine?  Years ago, those who read Huxley’s 1984 might have thought, “Wow, the future!,” and now we embark on the second year of the second decade of the 21st millennium. For opera, this year is a relaxed one since there really isn’t a major composer’s anniversary on tap.  Of any importance, Friedrich von Flowtow (1812-1883) celebrates 200 years, the impressionist Claude Debussy (1862-1918) celebrates 150 years, film composer David Raksin (1912-2004) best known for his score for the film “Laura” celebrates 100 years, the silence loving John Cage (1912-1992) also celebrates 100 years.  Although the music these gentleman left behind might not be authentic opera, per se (except for Debussy’s exotic Pélleas et Mélisande) their compositions certainly retained a flavour that was operatic.  A rather quiet year for opera in this regard, perhaps in preparation for the 200th anniversary of two operatic giants:  Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner.

How fascinating that these two men, who continue to retain individual camps where opera aficionados are concerned, would have anniversaries in the same year.  Their music is markedly different, and yet their focus was unified:  to present a satisfying, dramatic, and musical fusion of melody, harmony, orchestral fabric, and don’t forget those memorable tunes!  Perhaps it was Wagner who was more the innovator, with his expansion of the orchestra, use of a more chromatic harmonic palate, and the interweaving of the vocal melody with the orchestra, as well as the development of leitmotivs; yet, Verdi was no slouch.  From beginning to end, his repertoire saw an expansion of almost every operatic facet, especially the melding of words to music and the dramatic interplay between characters.  His melodies are universal and above all he kept the voice prominent, as the most sacred aspect of the operatic machine.  It will be interesting to see what opera companies in North America and internationally will conjure up to celebrate these great men.

Although Verdi and Wagner are certainly celebrated at the highest level,other operatic composers will also be noted:  Scapigliato and Verista Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) celebrates 150 years, and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) celebrates 100 years.

So what are opera companies opening 2012 with:

At the Canadian Opera Company, from January 21-February 25th, Adrienne Pieczonka/Julie Makerov, Carlo Ventre, Mark Delevan, and Peter Strummer star in Puccini’s “Tosca.”

At the Metropolitan Opera, “La Fille du Regiment,”Hansel and Gretel,” “The Enchanted Island,” and “Faust” play in the opening weeks of January, followed by Patricia Racette and Roberto Alagna in Puccini’s “Tosca” premiering tomorrow night (January 10th).  Deborah Voigt and Waltraud Meier will star in Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” beginning Friday, January 27th at 6pm.

Here’s wishing all singers, musicians, conductors and, of course, aficionados a safe, prosperous, and successful 2012 Season!

A Queen’s Delusion and Defiance Opens the Met

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Published: September 27, 2011

Since arriving at the Metropolitan Opera as general manager in 2006, Peter Gelb has been angling to make the soprano Anna Netrebko a house prima donna in the old-world sense: a first among equals. On Monday night Mr. Gelb must have felt that the plan was working.

Ms. Netrebko sang the punishing title role of Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” to open the Met’s season, the company’s first production of this breakthrough Donizetti work from 1830. The extended last scene was the high point of Ms. Netrebko’s performance as the distraught British queen (based on the historic Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII). Having been falsely condemned for betraying her husband, Anna drifts in and out of sanity.

Ms. Netrebko sang an elegantly sad aria with lustrous warmth, aching vulnerability and floating high notes. When the audience broke into prolonged applause and bravos, Ms. Netrebko seemed to break character and smiled a couple of times, though her look could have been taken as appropriate to the dramatic moment, since the delusional Anna is lost in reverie about happy days with her former lover.

Then at the end of this “Mad Scene,” when Anna, restored to horrific reality, curses the king and his new queen, Giovanna (Jane Seymour), and stalks off to her execution, Ms. Netrebko dispatched Donizetti’s cabaletta, all brilliant coloratura runs and vehement phrases, with a defiance that brought down the house.

Yet Ms. Netrebko’s Anna and the overall performance of “Anna Bolena” were not what they could have been. The production, by the director David McVicar, is uninventive and safe. The sets, by Robert Jones (in his Met debut), are handsome and efficient but tamely traditional, using a matrix of rotating white brick walls and sliding wood panels to evoke the interiors and environs of Henry’s palaces. In Act I, when the king’s hunting party gathers, complete with two impressively large dogs, a bit of abstraction is introduced into the look of the production through some sculptural gray trees. Jenny Tiramani’s costumes are colorful, detailed and true to the period. Too true. This Henry could have come from the set of almost any of the innumerable films and television shows that have been made about the Tudors.

But the bigger problem was Marco Armiliato’s routine conducting. Mr. Armiliato has been valuable to the Met’s Italian repertory wing since his 1998 house debut. In “Anna Bolena” he conveyed an understanding of bel canto style, in which arching lines must be given room to spin and cast their spell and accompaniment patterns have to be flexible.

The singers seemed to feel supported by Mr. Armiliato, who was always there when they took expressive liberties. That was the problem. This performance needed a conductor to instill some intensity into the music, to keep the cast more on edge, especially in the early scenes. Much of the action occurs in highly charged bursts of dramatic recitative. But too often here the orchestra chords that buttress the vocal lines were listless. And the orchestra’s playing lacked character.

Previously, Ms. Netrebko had sung the role of Anna only at the Vienna State Opera this spring. She started tentatively on Monday, perhaps settling in for the long, hard night of singing that awaited her. She looked regal and splendid. And in a nice directorial touch, Anna first appeared with a little red-haired girl, clearly her daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth.

At 40, Ms. Netrebko may be in her vocal prime. Her sound is meltingly rich yet focused. Sustained tones have body and depth. Her contained vibrato exposed every slight slip from the center of a pitch, especially in midrange, but I’m not complaining. This remains a major voice, with resplendent colorings and built-in expressivity.

Bel canto purists have long debated whether Ms. Netrebko is a natural to the style, especially in her execution of coloratura passagework. She may not have the nimble precision exemplified by Beverly Sills (who was criticized in some circles for that very accuracy). Ms. Netrebko’s approach is to sing coloratura as an expressive elaboration of the vocal line, as she did affectingly as Anna. And she exudes vocal charisma.

Still, at moments throughout the evening her singing seemed cautious. She was at her best when sparring with other singers, especially the mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, who was Giovanna (the queen’s lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour, though it’s best to stick to the Italian names, since “Anna Bolena,” with a libretto by Felice Romani, plays very loose with history). Ms. Gubanova has an ample, dark voice with a slightly hard-edged quality that takes some adjusting to. She sang Giovanna with incisive delivery, folding embellishments and runs into impassioned vocal lines.

Her character was a bundle of nerves in Donizetti’s inspired Act II scene in which Giovanna finally confesses to the queen that she has been the king’s mistress and will become his new wife. Again the orchestra under Mr. Armiliato seemed to hold back, rather than empower, the intensity these two artists were trying to summon on stage.

The bass Ildar Abdrazakov brought his earthy, muscular voice to the role of Enrico (Henry VIII). Though his passagework was muffled by his gravelly tones at times, he was an imposing presence, and he did not overplay the king’s brutishness. The tenor Stephen Costello won a hearty ovation for his Riccardo (Lord Richard Percy, Anna’s former lover). This was a big assignment for the gifted and game young tenor. Mr. Costello captured the character’s consuming adoration for Anna through his impetuous and anguished singing.

The role includes a touchstone tenor aria, “Vivi tu,” in which the condemned Riccardo implores his friend Lord Rocheford (Anna’s brother, here the solid bass-baritone Keith Miller) to evade the king’s wrath and go on living. Mr. Costello mostly navigated the music’s demanding passagework and exposed high notes. To hear this rising artist stretching himself was part of the excitement.

The mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford took on the trouser role of Mark Smeaton, a court musician with a fatal crush on Anna. Her singing was sometimes shaky but always honest and ardent. The able tenor Eduardo Valdes as the court official Hervey rounded out the cast. Every role is significant in an opera so rich with ensembles, including a climactic Act I sextet almost as memorable as the enduring sextet from Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” and more contrapuntally intricate.

Mr. Gelb has said that ideally the Met should make an artistic statement by presenting an ambitious new production every opening night. Two years ago he took a chance on Luc Bondy’s ill-conceived staging of Puccini’s “Tosca.” Last season came the premiere of Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s “Rheingold,” which is still being argued over, as audiences await the last two installments of the complete “Ring” cycle this season.

“Anna Bolena” represented a different sort of risk. To make a case for this great, overlooked opera a company must have a stellar soprano in the title role. Ms. Netrebko is that artist. If only she and her colleagues on stage had received more help from Mr. McVicar and Mr. Armiliato.

The gala evening performance was relayed to Times Square and to Lincoln Center Plaza, where there was seating for some 3,000 people who had scooped up free tickets earlier. After the curtain calls on stage, the “Anna Bolena” cast appeared on the Met’s outdoor balcony to the cheers of the crowd. This is becoming a welcome tradition under Mr. Gelb.

“Anna Bolena” runs through Oct. 28, with additional performances in February, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000, metopera.org.

As ever, in the history of music, the “critics” are the ones who write and in many cases enhanced or destroyed a singer/musician’s career.  This has been the constant case from the inception of musical criticism with Schumann and Berlioz in the mid-nineteenth century.  This is not to say that Tommassini has any power to ruin Netrebko’s career, but he does have a huge audience by being the critic of one of the most powerful and well-read newspapers in the world.  So, NOW, now he chooses to talk about Bel Canto, about Italian singing when the last year brought absolutely horrifying presentations of Puccini and Verdi?  I absolutely agree with Mr. Tommassini, that Netrebko’s voice is one of the most beautiful voices cast at the Met this year, but let’s not discuss pitch or wavering from it, shall we, or we ought to have a new society for it.  Forgive me but Netrebko is the LEAST off pitch and her tone is unparalleled by her colleagues singing at the Met.  It seems that nothing was said about the extravagant flatness, sharpness, and completely disgusting Italian diction that was presented last season, was it?  In all, her singing is always expressive and she carries some of the mystique that singers of old carried with them, that implausible something that elevates them to the level of artists.  I agree that Armiliato was probably not the best choice to conduct Bolena and it is certainly too bad that Maestro Levine was not able to conduct this opening.  However, Bel Canto as the opening opera is not a choice made just to appease the rowdy public after that disastrous Tosca premiere last year (truly abominable), as Tommassini writes.  Bel Canto is the heart’s blood of the operatic machine that has withstood centuries.  More Bel Canto should be performed so that young singers will approach it without fear and with a more familiar ear.  I applaud the Met for presenting this difficult opera and to those who stretched their limits in trying to do the only thing they could in an age when those who truly understand Bel Canto are few and far between.

More Reviews:

Review by Mike Silverman of the Associated Press

“A Philadelphia Son Storms The Met” (Wall Street Journal)

L’Accordéoniste: Peter Tiefenbach (piano), Kimberly Barber (mezzo-soprano), Mary-Lou Vetere (accordion) with

Carol Bauman, percussion