The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: University Opera’s “Poppea” proves engaging, satisfying and timely. Performances remain this afternoon at 2 and Tuesday night at 7:30
Leave a Comment
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.
By Jacob Stockinger
Larry Wells – who is The Opera Guy for The Well-Tempered Ear blog – went to the recent production of the University Opera and filed this review, with rehearsal photos of students, who alternate roles in different performances, by Michael R. Anderson.
By Larry Wells
The only other time I attended a performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea” (1643) was in the early 1980s at The San Francisco Opera. Despite the appearance of Tatiana Troyanos as Poppea, I remember being baffled by both the static nature of the music and the grandness of the production of what seemed should be an intimate opera.
That memory, in addition to my being a fan of 20th-century music, made attending the opening performance of University Opera’s performance Friday evening fraught with foreboding.
Despite the production being a lengthy three hours, I must praise the ensemble and director David Ronis — who never disappoints — for keeping my attention throughout the evening as I witnessed an intimate retelling of the passion between Nero and Poppea (portrayed below by Benjamin Hopkins and Anja Pustaver).
The opera was staged in Music Hall on a semicircular platform with the small instrumental ensemble directly to the front side of the audience. Stunning lighting and beautiful costumes made up for the minimal set. I was seated in the center of the first row of the balcony and must say that the sightlines and the sound were superb, even though it was very hot up there. (Below is the coronation scene with Hopkins and Pustaver in the center.)
The ensemble was conducted by Chad Hutchinson (below) whom I had heard conduct the UW Symphony Orchestra the night before in a rousing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. The plucked instruments – harp, guitars, theorbo (I had to look it up, too) and harpsichords – were the backbone of the accompaniment. Strings and recorders completed the orchestra, and they were a delight to the ear – totally delicate and restrained.
The plot of the opera involves love triangles and political intrigue. The supertitles created by David Ronis (below, in a photo by Luke Dalalio) were amusing and colloquial. So much of the political posturing by Nero, whose main motivation is consistently self-interest, seemed to be pertinent to our time.
Nero was sung by countertenor Thomas Aláan who has a voice of great agility and expressiveness. His lover, Poppea, who yearns to be his empress, was sung by Talia Engstrom. Hers is a voice of great suppleness and flexibility. Throughout the evening she acted and sang with great subtlety, and I admired her performance very much.
I had been primed for the opera’s very final duet (heard in the YouTube video at the bottom) to be the most sublime moment of the opera, but I was much more aroused by the farewell duet between Nero and Poppea toward the end of the first act. It was highly charged vocally and erotic in its beauty and delivery.
Other characters included Seneca, portrayed by bass Benjamin Galvin (below left front, surrounded, from left to right, by Eliav Goldman, Jack Innes, Jiabao Zhang, Jake Elfner and Noah Bossert.) The lower range of his voice is profound and impressive.
Kevin Green (below right with Pustaver) portrayed the hapless Ottone, and his baritone voice shows promise.
It was, however, a night for the female singers. Cayla Rosché’s Ottavia was beautifully sung. She was completely believable as the spurned wife of Nero. Likewise Kelsey Wang’s Drusilla, Ottone’s second choice, was also wonderfully sung.
In the first scene we were introduced to Fortuna, Virtù and Amore who shone vocally. Throughout the remainder of the opera they silently hovered in the background as visual reminders of the forces driving the plots. Love, portrayed by Emily Vandenberg, eventually triumphed and got to sing a bit more.
There were moments of humor sprinkled throughout the production. I do not know how historically informed they were, but they did help to lighten the heaviness of the political intrigue and amorous complexities.
Some were perhaps unintentional – particularly the absurdly amusing wig that Fortuna wore. But Professor Mimmi Fulmer, in the small role as Nutrice, had a moment of complete hilarity. Her performance – both vocally and as an actress – underlined the contrast between earnestly serious, focused students and a relaxed, confident professional. (Below is the final scene with Nero and Poppea).
Altogether, it was a surprisingly engaging evening. There remain chances to see it this afternoon and Tuesday evening. It is not a brief or light evening of entertainment, but it is wholly engaging, thought provoking, timely and certainly something out of the ordinary.
Two more performances take place in Music Hall: today at 2 p.m. and Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. For more information including how to get tickets – adults are $25, seniors are $20 and students are $10 — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/university-opera-monteverdis-the-coronation-of-poppea/
Tags: #20thCentury, #AncientRome, #BaroqueComposer, #BaroqueMusic, #BaroqueOpera, #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #ChadHutchinson, #ClaudioMonteverdi, #DavidRonis, #EarlyBaroque, #EmperorNero, #FacebookPost, #FacultyMember, #FemaleSingers, #FirstAct, #GuitarMusic, #HarpMusic, #HarpsichordContinuo, #LarryWells, #LoveTriangle, #MichaelR.Anderson, #MimmiFulmer, #ModernMusic, #MusicHall, #MusicReview, #NewMusic, #OperaReview, #OurTime, #OutoftheOrdinary, #PeterIlyichTchaikovsky, #PluckedInstruments, #PoliticalIntrigue, #RecorderMusic, #SanFrancisco, #SanFranciscoOpera, #SightLines, #StringMusic, #Sundayafternoon, #TatianaTroyanos, #TheCoronationofPoppea, #TheOperaGuy, #theorbomusic, #TheWell-TemperedEar, #ThoughtProvoking, #Tuesdaynight, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #UniversityOpera, #VocalMusic, #YouTubevideo, accompaniment, actress, afternoon, agility, amorous, amusing, Ancient Rome, Arts, backbone, balcony, baritone, Baroque, bass, beauty, brief, California, Chad Hutchinson, Chamber music, Classical music, Claudio Monteverdi, colloquial, composer, conductor, contrast, coronation, costumes, countertenor, David Ronis, delicate, delight, delivery, director, duet, ear, early Baroque, Early music, earlymusic, earnest, Emperor Nero, empress, engaged, engaging, ensmeble, Entertainment, erotic, evening, expressiveness, Facebook, faculty, faculty member, female, female singers, first act, flexibility, foreboding, fortune, grandness, guitar, harp, harp music, harpsichord, hilarity, historical, Historically informed performance, historically informed performance practices, hot, Humor, impressive, informed, intimate, Jacob Stockinger, Larry Wells, lengthy, light, lighting, link, Love, love triangle, lover, Madison, Michael R. Anderson, Mimmi Fulmer, minimal, modern, modern music, moment'duet, motivation, Music Hall, music review, nature, Nero, New Music, opera, Opera review, Orchestra, ordinary, out of the ordinary, Passion, performance, pertinent, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, photo, plot, plucked instruments, political, political intrigue, Poppea, production, professional, professor, profound, provocative, recorder, rehearsal, restrained, rousing, scene, self-interest, Seneca, serious, set, share, sing, singer, Sound, stage, staged, static, strings, students, subime, Sunday, sung, superb, supertitles, suppleness, symphony, tag, The Coronation of Poppea, The Opera Guy, The Well-Tempered Ear, theorbo, thought provoking, time, Tuesday, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University Opera, UW, UW-Madison, Viola, Violin, virtue, vocal, vocal music, voice, wife, wig, Wisconsin, witness, YouTube
Classical music: The new period-instrument group Sonata à Quattro makes its debut and excels in early Baroque music
Leave a Comment
ALERT: The All-Festival Concert that closes this summer’s 19th annual Madison Early Musical Festival will take place in Mills Hall on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $20 for the general public, $10 for seniors and students. Here are two links where you can find more specific information, including composers and works on the program:
https://memf.wisc.edu/event/all-fest-2018/
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show once a month on Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
Marika Fischer Hoyt (below) is becoming another powerhouse in our musical scene. Already a spark plug of the Ancora String Quartet, and now the director of the annual “Bach Around the Clock” bashes, she has organized a new ensemble, Sonata à Quattro, which made its debut on Wednesday night at Pres House.
This was done under the aegis of the current Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF) as a “fringe concert” — in the manner long-established by the Boston Early Music Festival. Plus, the concert’s theme was “The Lübeck Connection,” clearly tying it to the MEMF.
The music was early Baroque, almost entirely from the 17th century.
The first half presented pieces by seven composers, including, among the better-known ones, Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Gabrieli, Heinrich Schütz, Heinrich Ignaz Biber and Antonio Vivaldi.
In the earlier pieces, the instruments were not originally specified at all — and one of them was in fact purely vocal. But the later ones clearly displayed the definition of the early string ensemble.
Indeed, the basic players — besides the backup harpsichord — were seated (below) in what is now familiar in the configuration of the latter-day string quartet, with the subtle suggestion that the earlier sonata à quattro genre was its natural predecessor.
The presence here of Vivaldi—besides Gabrieli, the only Italian among these Germans, and of later date—seemed a bit incongruous, but his familiar Sinfonia ‘al Santo Sepolcro’ actually illustrated well the mature à quattro texture. (You can hear the Vivaldi in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
And a most impressive conclusion for this first half of the program was the fascinating eight-part Sonata in A minor by the sadly neglected Samuel Capricornus (1628-1665)—its eight-voice scoring not serving as a double choir but as a richly textured study in contrasting high with low parts.
For this first half, the core performers were Nathan Giglierano and Christine Hauptly Annin, violins; Fischer-Hoyt, viola; and Charlie Rasmussen, cello, with harpsichordist Daniel Sullivan.
They were joined along the way by gambist Phillip Serna (below top) who performed later on violone; and, for the Capricornus also violinist Thalia Coombs (below second), violist Micah Behr (below third) and viola da gambist Eric Miller (below bottom, in a photo by Katrin Talbot).
The program’s second half was devoted entirely to the music of Dietrich Buxtehude (below, ca. 1637-1707), the big star of the MEMF constellation.
First we had a Trio in B-flat from his Op. 2 collection, then a slightly French-style solo harpsichord Suite in D minor from Daniel Sullivan (below top).
Finally, we had two solo cantatas, sung by Kristin Knutson (below bottom), whose lovely soprano voice blended beautifully with the instruments.
This new ensemble will continue with concerts scheduled ahead for the coming season. But certainly this appearance represents a beautiful, and perfectly timed, introduction in a concert of true delight.
Tags: #AmericanRecordGuide, #AncoraStringQuartet, #AntonioVivaldi, #BachAroundtheClock, #BaroqueEra, #BaroqueMusic, #BostonEarlyMusicFestival, #ChamberMusic, #DietrichBuxtehude, #EarlyBaroque, #GermanBaroque, #GermanComposers, #GermanMusic, #GiovanniGabrieli, #HarpsichordContinuo, #HarpsichordMusic, #HeinrichBiber, #HeinrichSchütz, #IsthmusNewspaper, #ItalianBaroque, #ItalianComposers, #JohannSebastianBach, #JohnW.Barker, #LübeckGermany, #MadisonEarlyMusicFestival, #MedievalHistory, #MichaelPraetorius, #MusicCritic, #PeriodInstrument, #PresHouse, #RadioHost, #SamuelCapricornus, #SonataaQuattro, #StringQuartet, #UniversityofWisconsin, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #WORT-FM89.9, #YouTubevideo, American Record Guide, Ancora String Quartet, Antonio Vivaldi, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Boston Early Music Festival, Cantata, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, composer, critic, debut, Dietrich Buxtehude, Early music, ensemble, Gabrieli, Germany, Giovanni Gabrieli, harpsichord, Heinrich Biber, Heinrich Schütz, History, Isthmus, Italian Baroque, Italian composers, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, John W. Barker, lecture, Madison Early Music Festival, Medieval, MEMF, Michael Praetorius, Music, natural, public, Radio, Samuel Capricornus, show, solo, Sonata, soprano, String quartet, Student, Suite, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, viola da gamba, Violin, violone, Vivaldi, vocal music, voice, Wisconsin, WORT-FM 89.9, YouTube
Recent Comments
The Well-Tempered Ear 