1/ Everybody shd see PORGY & BESS. About Black Folk yet written by White Folk, it has bridged that divide since the ‘30s. Also the divide betw B’way & opera. The few White characters are spoken parts: in this show only Black folk sing. Like PETER GRIMES it’s about a community...
2/ - but not as hostile to community. Wayward Bess - wants to break free from criminal Crown and return Porgy’s unconditional love - falls victim to another, different criminal, Sportin’Life - but Porgy will *never* give up on her, even when that means leaving on his goat-cart
3/ on a quixotic journey to find New York, and once there, to find Bess. “Oh Lord, I’m on my way...!” It all leads up to that; it’s all about that.
4/ Great stars in Eric Owens and Angel Blue. Frederick Ballantyne is Sportin’Life, one of American opera’s 1st recognitions of the tenor-villain. Great supporting performances by front-rank singers Latonia Moore and Denyce Graves.
5/ Crown is Alfred Walker, who, like many Crowns, sings Porgy w other companies (and even in some perfs @MetOpera). His Met debut was Titurel In PARSIFAL!
Refreshed the ol’ mem. This performance was from 2/1/2020. Walker was due for at least one performance as Porgy, maybe two, but they got cancelled by lockdown. So did the @WashNatOpera’s
production, where Walker was to have been the principal Porgy.
A lot of work. Owens and Walker had to rehearse their deadly fight, then Walker had to learn it from Porgy’s side with the second-cast Crown.
I’m at “Boat that’s leavin,” and I misspelled the surname of our Sportin’Life: it’s Frederick *Ballantine* - i, not y - and I think he’s an alum of the Governor’s School for the Arts, Norfolk, Va, like bass Ryan Speedo Greern.

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More from @david_m_wagner

19 Dec
1/ They say NABUCCO was Verdi's breakout work. It was certainly the work with which he elevated the baritone from lyric to dramatic and from co-star to star. Only this time we have a late-career tenor in the part, returning to his long-ago baritone Fach. ("Fach" is German for
2/ "operatic vocal category," and all the jokes have been made so don't even try.) The title character is of course Nebuchadnezzar, so to those who've just been watching A Charlie Brown Christmas: "Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it!" But this is an
3/ extra-Biblical tale of how Nebbie, having conquered Jerusalem, proclaimed himself God - and got a mentally disorienting zap for it. But gradually he recovers his wits and, against the odds, defeats the machinations of his power-hungry step-daughter Abigaille, saves the lives
Read 8 tweets
19 Dec
@HumphreyBohun Tbqh I cannot easily tell - at least by the supposedly most salient differences, orchestration and harmony- which one I’m hearing. My test is a line early in the Coronation Scene fanfares: the trumpets’ line goes *down* in “original,” *up* in Rimsky. But unless I hear
@HumphreyBohun representative snippets side-by-side, taste-test style, I’m not rly sure. And I put quotes around “original” bc - has anyone *really* ever heard it? In 1974 the Met made a big covfefe out of how they were at last using Mussorgsky’s original harmonies and orchestration. But
@HumphreyBohun after Maestro Thomas Schippers’s death, his BORIS score was found, and lo, he had made numerous changes in the rehearsal process. The 2010 new production (tonight’s version) has a musicologist it relies on, as the 1955 English-language production relied on Karol Rathaus.
Read 5 tweets
18 Dec
BORIS is on my desert-island list along with FRANCESCA. National epic, imperial whodunnit, Dostoevskian psychodrama, & soul-examination of Russian ppl - traumatized when the first non-Rurikid ruler took the throne and he may, *may*, have killed a Rurikid heir to do so.
2/ Along with same composer’s KHOVANSHCHINA and Borodin’s PRINCE IGOR, this is Russia’s operatic epic. Co-starring the People alongside the title character, it starts w the People, moves to Boris, then back to the People thru a monk-chronicler who, doing what’s possible with
3/ what’s available, gives the People their national story; then in to the unscrupulous rise of the Pretender - Самосванец, self-named - then back to Boris, to whom the Pretender’s choice of an identity is a goad to conscience and madness. Then over to Poland where the Pretender
Read 7 tweets
17 Dec
1/ Just re-upped my thread from when this was last shown. Not a lot to add. When ppl ask me "What's your favorite opera," this is my answer, bc, a., ppl with so little understanding of opera-fandom deserve to be stuck with an answer they almost certainly don't recognize, but b.
2/ bc it wd certainly make my top-ten list (and that's what opera fans do: "desert island" lists). I wish I understood how FRANCESCA happened: I guess, the right conjunction of composer, librettist (D'Annunzio!), period (medieval setting, composed in florescence of late
3/ romanticism), and nation (both native and expatriate literature in Italy were experiencing troubadour-fever in 1st 2 decades of 20thc). There are other Zandonai works, and collaborations by D'Annunzio w other composers, that deserve revival; but somehow their combination
Read 8 tweets
17 Dec
1/ Berlioz determined to set Books II-IV of The Aeneid. Book II becomes Acts 1&2 (La Prise de Troie) and Bks III & IV become Acts 3-5 (Les Troyens à Carthage). Together they are LES TROYENS. The gargantuan-ness of it provokes comparison to Wagner, esp. his GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG,
2/ which we will see later this week Thus equals in mammothosity, Berlioz may compete w Wagner on getting there first and win (1858), or on music and dramaturgy, and IMO *not* win. I’ve tried w Berlioz since I first listened to his DAMNATION DE FAUST a *long* time ago
3/ and i still don’t get what’s out of the ordinary about it, and the dramatic pace in TROYENS is, IMO, glacial. Maybe epic poetry doesn’t translate well to the stage: while there have been great plays and operas based on stories within Homer, and within Dante (yo, FRANCESCA DA
Read 6 tweets
16 Dec
1/ Sorry 2b late - I was out owning this opera’s villainess Ortrud by going to an evening Mass. So we’ve got LOHENGRIN: mid-career Wagner, his last opera b4 embarking in THE RING. It’s a clash of Christian and pagan forces in early 10thc Duchy of Brabant. Elsa von Brabant
2/ is accused of killing her brother, Godfrey, the rightful Duke. She asks God to send her dream-knight to defend her - and He does! What’s more, they can get married if only she’ll refrain, forever, from asking his name or origin. This is a tall order, but Elsa promises it
3/ willingly, and it’s reason has to do with the inscrutable rules of the Grail, which this knight serves: if they become known, they must return. This condition provided the perfect entry point for Ortrud to play on Elsa’s doubts. Ortrud is a proud descendant of Radbod, the
Read 15 tweets

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