Thursday, April 23, 2015

Living on Love ticket giveaway!

Renée Fleming and Douglas Sills
Courtesy livingonlovebroadway.com
I promised you an opportunity to win a pair of tickets to Living on Love, and here it is:
Renée Fleming plays a diva writing her memoirs in Living on Love. What is the name of Renée's own autobiography?
Answers must be submitted via private message at Taminophile's Facebook page. Answers submitted in any other way will be discarded. Winner will be chosen in a way that will probably be sort of impartial from among correct answers received before midnight, Saturday, April 25 Sunday, April 26.

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The link

I'll be loving you always.....

Your intrepid reporter has traveled far and wide to see opera before, but this was his most challenging assignment yet: to venture into deepest, darkest Manhattan, find parking that didn't require a second mortgage, and see the new Broadway play featuring dear Renée Fleming, Living on Love. For comps your reporter will subject himself to any indignity (opera company marketing and PR departments take note), so your Taminophile grabbed his husband and went. And he didn't regret a minute of it.

Douglas Sills and Renee Fleming
Courtesy livingonlovebroadway.com
What a charming show! Joe DiPietro has adapted Garson Kanin's 1985 play Peccadillo to create Living on Love, a story of a self-absorbed but loveable diva married to a self-absorbed but loveable conductor, and their attempts to use eager young ghost writers Robert and Iris to complete autobiographies.

Of course this whole play is about Renée Fleming, so at this point I must pause to lavish her with praise. The part of Raquel De Angelis is perfect for Miss Fleming, who delighted in portraying the egotism, the false modesty, the brash assurance of the Diva, as she is called by everyone. The moments when she revealed the true Raquel, insecurities and all, were handled skillfully, although at times one suspected the character was using even those moments to manipulate people. In spite of one or two bumpy transitions from the grandiloquent Diva to the genuine Raquel, one was left entirely satisfied by Miss Fleming's portrayal of the Diva.

Blake Hammond and Scott Robertson
Courtesy livingonlovebroadway.com
The casting director for this play, James Calleri, deserves kudos for assembling a marvelous cast of Broadway, film and television veterans. Douglas Sills was all bluster, ego, and self delusion as the Maestro, Vito De Angelis. As the play opens he and Robert, terrified and spineless and played with great aplomb by Jerry O'Connell, are working on the Maestro's autobiography, having made little progress. With Miss Fleming's first sweeping entrance as Raquel De Angelis (nearly all of Miss Flemings's entrances seemed to be of the sweeping sort--go figure!), she establishes both her own grandeur and the important plot point that the Maestro is compelled to finish the book because they've already spent the publisher's advance. Anna Chlumsky plays Iris, junior assistant editor who becomes the Maestro's next ghost writer. Her Iris is all nervous charm and intellectual gusto, and we see both Iris and Robert grow into more confident people as the story unfolds.

With the stage set just so, the rest of the story is no surprise. But that's not important. The Diva explains, recalling a very young fan's comment, people go to the opera because it's better than life. So it is with the theater.

The intricately choreographed efficiency of the two butlers (played by with great joy by Blake Hammond and Scott Robertson) was a delight, both in changing scenes and in their condescending interaction with the two young writers. When they sang along with the opera recordings that accompanied the scene changes--quite well, I might add--it was amusing and quite charming. Their lounge-act performance of "Makin' Whoopie"  as they were setting the stage for the the Diva's and the Maestro's grandest attempts to seduce the two ghost writers was a delight.

Anna Chlumsky and Jerry O'Connell
Courtesy livingonlove.com
Mr. DiPietro's and Mr. Kanin's writing sparkled with clever quips that went by so fast I couldn't make note of any, but also with further interesting detail. There was the obvious metaphor of the snow globes, gifts from the Maestro and the Diva to each other upon return from various tours, featuring important cities in opera. There was the fact that even in their most intimate and genuine moments, the Maestro and the Diva called each other by the labels Husband and Wife, not by their names. In fact, the Maestro didn't seem to call anyone by name, and had a number of colorful labels for the poor young ghost writer Robert. (Giving Robert the surname Samson, seeming to imply his new-found strength was more predestined by God than by conventional plot point, might have been a bit heavy-handed.)

Kudos to director Kathleen Marshall for a thousand delightful details. Kudos also to the spectacular design team: costume design by Michael Krass, scene design by Derek McLane, wig and hair by Tom Watson. The Eisenhower-era costumes and wigs were absolutely stunning.

One of the most touching details is the story of how the Maestro and the Diva met. Seated next to each other at a sidewalk cafe in Vienna, they both delighted in a small boy performing the Irving Berlin song "Always" on his tiny violin. They asked for another song, but the lad claimed to know no more songs, so he played "Always" again and again, and soon young Vito and Raquel were in love. The Maestro has never been able to progress beyond this story with any of his ghost writers, and at the end, it is instrumental in the Maestro and the Diva reaffirming their love. Miss Fleming's sweet performance of this song almost brought a tear to your hardened reporter's eye. This is how the play ended, and this is how I choose to end this review--with an image of the Diva in the Maestro's arms, singing sweet, romantic songs to him.

Renee Fleming and Douglass Sills
Courtesy livingonlove.com



Wednesday, April 15, 2015

BYOB Opera in Upper Manhattan

Opera Company of Brooklyn (OCB) was founded in 2000 to give young singers experience with opera, and its Bring Your Own Beverage (BYOB) series of intimate readings began in 2005. With very little rehearsal as a group, OCB presents semi-staged readings (not yet memorized) of popular operas in intimate venues such as company founder and Artistic Director Jay Meetze's upper Manhattan apartment. The format of the BYOB series is to cut dialogue and most chorus music to focus on the music of the principal roles. On Saturday I was able to hear the group present the curious combination of The Impresario and Pagliacci.

Aine Hakamatsuka
Courtesy ainehakamatsuka.com
Saturday night's performance began with Mozart's popular one-act opera Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario). Cutting all the dialogue left two arias, a trio, and a quartet, all beautifully sung. My favorite from this small cast was Aine Hakamatsuka, who sang Madame Silberklang with a light, agile sound, and acted the prima donna with the childish impetuousness required. Tenor Ivan Rivera was a fine Vogelsang in the famous trio, trying to make peace between the two warring prima donnas. Heidi Sauser as Madame Hertz and Boris Mitchell as Buff rounded out the cast.

It must have been the limited rehearsal time and the fact some of the singers had previously sung their roles in German that prevented Mr. Meetze from presenting the opera in English to really bring the comedy across. For shows like The Impresario and Die Fledermaus, I'm a big fan of performing in the local language and making the lyrics topical whenever possible.

Elana Gleason
Courtesy elanagleason.com
The undisputed star of Pagliacci was Elana Gleason as Nedda. Although a lighter voice than one usually hears as Nedda, Ms. Gleason sang the role with great skill and beauty. Whether she was acting as Nedda, longing to run away with her lover, or play-acting as Colombine in the play within the play, one couldn't tear one's eyes away.

Nedda's young lover Silvio was well sung by Brian Ming Chiu. Villain Tonio was sung by Michael O'Hearn, who seemed impaired by allergies but otherwise fully committed to the jealous, vengeful clown. Canio, Nedda's husband, was sung by Byron Singleton. I don't think the role suits his voice, but he managed it capably.

Pianist Naoko Aita very capably accompanied both operas, with Mr. Meetze conducting.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

My Bachtrack review of Don Carlo at the Met


(c) Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
On Monday I was in attendance as the Metropolitan Opera presented this season's revival of Nicholas Hytner's 2010 production of Don Carlo. Verdi's longest opera is always a wonder, and this was a successful production, with good singing and acting. 




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