It's almost that time again

Those of you who look forward to the regular Met opera HD transmissions on a Saturday morning at the Regal movie theater near Lloyd Center, and who admire Peter Gelb for having brought about this radical change in the way to enjoy 'live' opera, will be pleased to note that the upcoming season - the fifth - will now be seen in 46 countries and 1500 movie theaters. That is an increase of 300 theaters over last season. There will be 12 transmissions this season, the most yet. The first show will be Wagner's Das Rheingold on October 9th. This is the Robert Lepage production and is currently slated to be conducted by James Levine. I am really looking forward to that one and keeping my fingers crossed that maestro Levine will be in sufficiently robust health to be there in the pit. Bryn Terfel will sing the role of Wotan. Two of the four Ring Cycle operas bookend the Met HD season, with Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund. Terfel will again appear as Wotan. Another must-see, I would have thought! The rest of the season has some interesting stuff, including John Adams conducting his own Nixon in China and Maurizio Benini conducting a new Bartlett Sher production of Rossini's Le Comte Ory with Juan Diégo Florez in the title role. I so enjoyed the last production featuring JDF in a Rossini/Sher production; it was Il Barbiere di Seviglia a couple of seasons ago. I cannot see why this one should not be every bit as much fun. Add to all of these, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov with René Pape and there is the basis of some fine Saturday morning opera. However, as the Met reminds us at each HD showing, wonderful though these transmissions are, they can never replace the experience of attending a live performance in the house. So, if you still haven't got your tickets for our upcoming season, which opens with Pagliacci and Carmina Burana on September 24th, I suggest you get right on it while there are still some good seats left.

And it don't seem a day too much, Maestro!

I cannot mention the Met's resident Maestro, James Levine, without specifically drawing attention to the fact that this season marks his 40^th anniversary since his debut with the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera. He became its director in 1973. In celebration of this event, the Met has opened its recording archives and is issuing a boxed set of CDs of 11 performances led by Levine and another of DVDs containing 11 full operas conducted by him. I am a huge Levine fan. When I sit in my seat and watch him enter the pit and raise his baton, I know that, whatever else may happen, the orchestra is going to be top-rate. Indeed, Levine has made the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra one of the finest orchestras in the world - and not just finest of pit orchestras, either; I am including the world's great symphony orchestras. I'll take the Met orchestra under Levine in preference to the NY Phil any day of the week. Levine has been in poor health this last couple of years. I hope he is well on the road to recovery for he is not just an operatic but a national treasure.

Brava, cara, e toi, toi, toi!

Many of you will remember soprano Sharin Apostolou (seen above) from her days in Portland as a member of the Portland Opera Studio Artists program. She was a great asset to us when she was here, not just with her sparkling voice but her irrepressible, bubbly personality. Well, like me, I am sure you will be delighted to hear that since leaving Portland, Sharin ("with an i") is well on her way to having a fine career. There is no more dramatic demonstration of this than the fact that next Saturday she and nine other finalists will be on the stage of the Dresden Opera House in Germany, competing in the renowned Competizione Dell' Opera 2010. Auditions for this competition were held world-wide and last week Sharin advanced from the pool of ninety-four singers who had been invited to sing in Germany, which pool was whittled down to forty semi-finalists. and she is now one of the elite. Sharin, we are all very proud of you and pulling for you like crazy!

The best of all possible worlds

Last Wednesday would have been Leonard Bernstein's 82nd birthday. Oh, by the way, his name rhymes with 'mine' and not 'been'. Conductor, composer, pedagogue - Lennie excelled at them all. One wonders how many more works he would have composed and delighted us with had he not been so busy conducting. I have been numbered among the Bernstein fan club ever since I saw West Side Story in about 1960. Spending a good deal of time thinking about him and his work last season, when the POSA artists presented his Trouble in Tahiti, I was drawn to listen again to his opera Candide. For reasons which entirely escape me, this opera was not well received initially, but has become a staple and favourite in the canon of american opera. In 2005 it was revived on Broadway as a concert performance, with the New York Phil as the pit band, accompanying a wonderful cast, including Thomas Allen, Kristen Chenoweth and Patti Lupone. The whole thing is on YouTube. Go watch it and have a blast! Here's the opening:

Have a happy and constructive week.

Some assembly required

There is an ongoing conversation, particularly among people who are older than, say, 23, concerning the issue of what has become known as social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.) I think I can fairly state that it boils down to this: is Twitter, for example, a valid means of forming and sustaining a community or is it just another technological black hole down which endless hours of time disappear when they might have been more usefully engaged? While I have never been much of a presence on Facebook, I do like Twitter and am a regular contributor. I have 'met' a number of people through our interaction on Twitter and in particular am in touch with numerous opera fans, some of whom I correspond with on a daily basis (when your message is limited to 140 characters there really is no excuse for not keeping in touch.) This last few days has seen an event unfolding in New York that I believe may very well point the way towards the happy partnership of internet technology and the performing arts and I am very excited by it. Here's the story...

"Summer is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different types of good weather"  (Henry David Thoreau)

It wasn't just us who thought it was great...

It would be hard not to lead off this week's post with anything other than Anthony Tommasini's review in The New York Times of Portland Opera's recently-released recording of Philip Glass's Orphée. I already commented a couple of weeks back, on the release date, that this album is something of which Portland Opera can justly be very proud, but ain't it nice to have validation in the form of a positive review from the classical music critic in one of the world's leading newspapers? The review is here. Granted, much of the review speaks of the piece rather than the CD, but Tommasini has kind things to say about Ann Manson's conducting, and the performances of Philip Cutlip, Lisa Saffer and Ryan MacPherson in the leading roles. Especially gratifying is that Tommasini especially mentioned tenor Steven Brennfleck, who sang the role of Cégeste as "a standout". Steven is one of the participants in this year's Portland Opera Studio Artists programme. This is his second year with us. Last year, in addition to Orphée, he also appeared in all three of the operas that formed the evening at the Newmark Theater and gave a splendid recital with Maestro Robert Ainsley. Our congratulations go out to him and we look forward to seeing much of him again this year.

All Wagner all the time!

For those of you that just cannot get enough Wagner here is the site for you. Live performances of opening night performance broadcasts from the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Something I found interesting as I scanned the cast lists, was that I didn't recognise the name of one single singer. They have to be among the best opera singers in the world, right, but as I am so unfamiliar with this particular part of the operatic repertoire their talents have been hidden from me. I am planning to listen to a performance or two. It really is time Wagner and I became, at the very least, somewhat acquainted.

This past week saw the passing of Australian conductor, Sir Charles Mackerras. He was 84 years old. A man of mind-boggling musical diversity, he managed to be a specialist in the works of composers as different as Mozart, Janácek and Gilbert and Sullivan. Although his parents were Australian, he was born in Schenectady, New York, but moved to Australia when he was three years old. His achievements and honours - including his knighthood which was conferred on him in 1979, can be read about in any of the many tributes showered on him immediately following his death. I am writing of him here today not for the purposes of adding yet another obituary to the burgeoning list of such, but because I shall always remember him fondly as the very first conductor of opera I ever worked with. At the age of eleven I auditioned for, and secured, the gig of playing treble recorder in the orchestra for a then brand-new work written by Benjamin Britten, Noye's Fludde. Rehearsals took place not too far from where I was at boarding school and arrangements were made for me to attend them. Those rehearsals were led by a delightful, and, as I later came to know, very able conductor named Merlin Channon. In due course, there were full rehearsals with the professional singers and the English Chamber Orchestra, leading to the first performance of the piece in Southwark Cathedral in South London, and subsequently in Orford Church, near Britten's home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. The principal conductor was Charles Mackerras, then aged 32. He had come to know Britten when both men were associated with Sadler's Wells Opera, shortly after the end of the war.

A strange decision

I was surprised to read this article just yesterday. Apparently the OC Register has pulled the plug on its Arts Blog which, after regular postings for a period of four and a half years, has, as the paper put it "run its span". And this was clearly not a mutual desire on the part of the publisher and the blogger Tim Mangan - indeed he said as much in a reply to one of the many comments that appeared in answer to his announcement and which unanimously decried the decision. I say this is a strange decision for the paper to make, because it comes at a time when those whose duty or job it is to communicate to the general public what is happening in the arts, whether generally (as with the OC Register) or on behalf of a particular organisation (your own Operaman) are increasingly becoming aware not just of the existence but of the importance of what has come to be termed 'social media'. I am not trumpeting the demise of print media but there is no doubt that an ever-increasing number of people go to their favourite sites on the internet to glean the information they want, or to keep up to date with matters of particular interest to them. This has led to a blossoming of specialist blogs, covering just about every imaginable topic, an exponential growth in the use of Twitter, for those who want their information in bite-sized chunks, and the continuing popularity of Facebook. An arts blog, such as Mangan's was more than a simple newspaper column. It was a chatty, informative and informal connection between the newspaper itself and a section of its readership. I cannot understand why it was decided that its usefulness had "run its span" and I am hoping that we may soon find out.

Wednesday of last week saw one of the most important days in the entire history of Portland Opera. It was the day that Orange Mountain Records, Philip Glass' in-house record label, released their recording of Glass' opera Orphée. Performances of this work formed a part of Portland Opera's 09/10 season. There are a number of factors make this a particularly event. First, it should be noted that this is the very first recording of this opera and came about at the instigation of Orange Mountain Records. Executives of that label approached Portland Opera prior to the production and asked whether we would be interested in having the performances recorded with a view to later release. So, this wasn't a case of Portland Opera begging for the opportunity to record a Philip Glass opera and making its own approach to the label. Apparently, Glass was so impressed with the cast assembled for this production (including Philip Cutlip, Ryan MacPherson and Lisa Saffer), the conductor, Ann Manson, and director Sam Helfrich, that he considered this the ideal chance to complete the recordings of his Cocteau trilogy (the others being La Belle et La Bete and Les Enfants Terrible.) When show time came, Glass came to town and was present at the final dress rehearsal before zooming off the following day to Europe. The performances themselves were a great success and perhaps the most oft-heard phrase was "I didn't think I liked Glass but..." I have to admit to having used that phrase myself. While I knew very little of Glass's music, it had not captivated me on previous occasions. This opera held me spell-bound and I saw all four performances.

"My early life came from a place of deep curiosity fed by material deprivation."
Robert Ainsley

I thought it might be fun over the Summer to interview a number of members of Portland Opera who are responsible for giving us operas of an increasingly high standard, but who you rarely hear from in person. And who better to begin with than Maestro Robert Ainsley, our Associate Music Director and Chorus Master. Rob and I have things in common - both English, went to Cambridge University and have a fondness for cosmos. Talking to him about his youth and early musical life made me realise that, compared to him, I am basically illiterate and have a tin ear. There was so much to talk about with him I have decided to write about him in three installments. Here's the first one. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed my time chatting with Rob. I should mention that it is compiled from notes I took at the time but which made only little sense when I went back and looked at them.

Operaman: Welcome to the Commodore Gentleman’s Club and Grill Room, Rob. Thank you for joining me. Take a swig of that bloody mary and let’s get right to it. Tell me about your early years and what brought you to music.

"You can imagine how Burgundy hit me like a ton of bricks.."

It's not much of a stretch to say that the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera is the best opera orchestra in the world. And, on its day, may be the best orchestra in America. That's a bit more of a stretch, yes, but an argument could be made. The concert master is a man named David Chan. He secured this job in 2000 when he was the ripe old age of 27. Since then he has led the world's greatest pit band in some ravishing performances night in and night out. Those of you who saw the Met HD transmission of Thais last year will doubtless remember his wonderful rendition of the Méditation that somehow infused new life into what has, let's face it, become something of an old chestnut. That was no mean feat. A couple of days ago I came across a New York Times article about Mr Chan from November 2008 that I had bookmarked and had been meaning to share with you. This shows what Mr Chan does with his spare time and spare cash - he's a wine expert. My kinda guy. Apparently, he is a completist:

    "As a teenager, if I discovered one Mahler symphony, I had to know all of them - one Wagner opera, I had to know them all. You can imagine how Burgundy hit me like a ton of bricks. If I had one producer's Meursault Genevrière one night I had to have the Perrières the next night. Whatever would advance the knowledge."

Thank you Mr Chan. You have provided me with the perfect excuse for the next occasion that I awake to find the previous night's Burgundy has hit me like a ton of bricks. I was just advancing the knowledge, that's all.