Cesare Adventure

PS* before I even begin, let me point out that I’m writing this at the sound of Vesselina Kasarova’s
Moscow concert, which is awesome and everyone should watch, it’s on YouTube

 

I must admit I’ve been postponing writing another post since my “Vesselina Kasarova” adventures were such a tough act of follow. But it’s been more than a week and I’m kind of still under the effects of the concert. Sometimes I start laughing out of joy remembering how she extended her hand to me and how she so magnificently sang. Ok, too much information.

First of all I’d like to say a BIG GIGANT Thank You to everybody who read, commented, sent me messages. And most especially to Rob, Smorg, Thadieu and The Eyes Have it, , who went the extra mile to recommend my blog in their own blogs, I was extremely touched and very happy you guys enjoyed my writing so much!

Not much has happened this past week in regards to my musical life, no exciting new concerts, or operas (we unfortunately do not get as much of these as we should). But I did do that test I was absolutely terrified of, and believe it or not, it went pretty well. I was petrified as I entered the classroom, so very scared, but I tried to think about the wonderful moments of my past week and I managed to walk in with a warm smile. The teacher was really nice to me, I sang what I had to sing and he told me I had done pretty well. Then I told him I was sorry for the things that had happened between us, and he told me that what’s in the past is in the past and we shouldn’t dwell on that and that, if it depended on him, it was all right between us. I was, I must admit, at first stunned, but then said that I absolutely agreed with him and we ended up having a quite nice chat about the new building.

But back to opera, I’d like to tackle a subject I haven’t talked about before and that I most appreciate that exists. Audio Streams, more specifically the Met’s Live Streams that brighten up a couple of evenings of my week. This past Tuesday we’ve had quite a surprisingly wonderful stream of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Look, I’m not going to lie, I’m just gonna say it that, in my opinion, it was just so great that Danielle De Niese filled in for Natalie Dessay. Now, some say that she hadn’t rehearsed any of the material of that production in a long time, and yet others say the director had secretly been rehearsing with her just in case something went wrong. Anyway, she did the most amazing job!

Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra

I was actually at the gym when I heard (saw on twitter actually) that Danielle was going in as Cleopatra that day and immediately regretted the class schedule I had prepared for myself that day which would keep me there until 8pm (7pm Eastern Time). The opera started at 6:55 and as I rushed out of my spinning class I desperately tried to get the Met player on my phone. But those guys in my gym are smart, in order for us not to be distracted by our buzzing phones they’ve done something in there and the signal is almost inexistent! So as I showered and changed I tried to listen to the broadcast, without any success, as I left the gym (cursing all involved in the signal shield) my bars went up and I was in, listening just in time to hear Dani sing, Non Disperar, chi sà? Her first aria, there was still hope, but then the obvious happened, since I’m such a lucky person, my phone died.

It was quite obvious that was going to happen, since I spend most of my battery trying to get signal. Well, I had a silent trip home, and as I am crazy, crazy I decided I wanted to only take one bus and one train, instead of having to change trains. So I took the bus to one of the most dangerous places in town, at night, and there I walked, alone. Yes, I’m insane, I’m not doing that again, rest assured, I just really wanted to get home soon! I did have an opera moment then though, a what I call Micaela moment, third act Micaela moment, when she enters the gypsies camp and is scared half to death for her life, that’s exactly what I felt.

David Daniels as Cesare and Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra

Got home and immediately tuned in and the first act had just ended. I was upset, since most of my favorite arias are in the first act. But then we had trivia, a tricky one I could never get: What characters in opera can be played by both men and women? Operas that are less than 150 years old, I must add. Well all my baroque dreams went to the dumps with that 150 years old thing. I had no idea, but my dear friend Melanie Spector did, she’s also known as the queen of trivia, and it was quite funny because when William Berger said the first answer was Melanie’s the presenter, Margareth, said “Why, of course!” and William went on to saying “But wasn’t she watching the Met’s game today?” and I was like, “Holy shot, my friend is famous on the Met Radio!”.

Well, trivia aside, the performance was wonderful, I can attest for the music at least. I was live tweeting with my usual international opera buddies, but to my delight I was also commenting the performance with my new opera bff on facebook in Portuguese. Which is, I think, so good, because there are some things I think about that only are funny and witty when said in Portuguese and I could finally share them with someone who knows what he’s talking about and who is actually also listening.

There was a pretty awesome plus in the whole performance, the fact that one of my favorite mezzo sopranos was singing, Alice Coote. Unfortunately she wasn’t playing Cesare, which I do prefer when is sung by a mezzo instead of a countertenor, she was playing Sesto, but she nailed it.

Alice Coote as Sesto and Patricia Barton as Cornelia

When Da Tempesta was up everyone in their little corner of the world seemed to be doing the Bollywood dance of this production and Danielle sounded so enthusiastic and amazing. And her Piangero La Sorte Mia was heart breaking, I love this aria, it’s one of my favorites of the whole opera! I was so very lucky because my cousin wasn’t home so I could sing along to everything I knew, which was about 60% of the opera so you can imagine it wouldn’t be possible to have my fun with the cousin home.

The opera ended around 1:30 in the morning in my local time and I knew I was doomed the next day, but again, I didn’t care, I somehow had gotten yet another great day at the opera listening to top notch singers, so I was cool. The next day I was a wreck, because I’ve also contracted a flu, but did get a great day of study.

AAAH, and I got today my DON’T SMOKE, SING BAROQUE (OPERA IT’S COOL: YOU CANT HANDEL US) shirt and wore it in college and none of my ‘musician’ friends thought much about it (I say ‘musician’ because you can’t be a real musician and not thing that shirt is FREAKING AWESOME), but what do they know? My cousin liked it!

Gotta go! Peace all!

Confessions of a Shopaholic!

Where do I start? First by saying, holy cow, I haven’t posted in a while hun… I’m still in my never ending Orlando trip here in the US. But I’m getting back to Brasil tomorrow and actually getting there on Saturday and going straight to the movie theatre to watch Rigoletto. Everything you can imagine went wrong in regards to my dreamy trip to NY this weekend, as you may know, it didn’t happen. Yeah, damn snow that cancelled my flight on Friday and made me lose my Rigoletto and my mum’s mind. She got real upset about it, and I decided that for her sake I wouldn’t go, I was sure that she would get real sick if I went. So as you may imagine, I’m very upset and have been compulsively shopping ever since (in Amazon and Macy’s, oh credit card bill).

I have never been this upset before; I’m seriously feeling very broken. I had been planning and paying for this trip to NY myself for months now and I was so looking forward to meeting some of the terrific people I’ve befriended on twitter. What really got to me the most apart from not seeing my friends was not being able to watch Rigoletto. You see, two of my favorite opera singers are in this production. Piotr Beczala was my first tenor crush and it was in last year’s production of Manon, in which he was playing De Chevalier de Griex, that I feel in love with opera. And Diana Damrau is hands down my favorite soprano, I could listen to her sing any part, do anything, she’s the coloratura light of my life (SOPRANO coloratura light of my life, the coloratura light of my life is Joyce!). And plus I was gonna get to meet them on Monday, actually talk to them and have Diana sign all my cds! That I think was what I was most looking forward to.

And of course seeing the HOT Mariusz in Elisir wouldn’t be bad eighter, all of the cast of Elisir is very dear to me, Matthew Polenzani, Anna Netrebko and Erwin Shrott all hold a very dear place in my heart. So yeah, I was very and continue to be UTTERLY upset about everything that happened.

THANK GOD I decided to order on Amazon most of the things I planned to buy at the Met store! And that was actually what I wanted to talk about, I’m sorry if the beginning of this post is sort of depressing but I had to let it out somehow.

Well I got in total 16 cds, 4 books and 1 DVD! Yeah, a lot of stuff, but all very much necessary, let’s start with the cds, shall we?

So Joyce DiDonato is like my idol and favorite singer of all time, so I bought 5 of her CDS! I was most craving to get my hands on the so well acclaimed Drama Queens and Furore. I was most hooked on Diva Divo, the idea is already very intriguing but the different colors she brings to the table with this recording is just out of this world! I also got Rossini: Colbran, the muse, because well, I love Rossini and the Songs by Fauré, Hahn and Head Arias by Rossini and Handel. Very pleased with all of them for sure!

Then my second diva, I got 2 Diana Damrau CDS. Coloraturas for obvious reasons that have already been brought up in this post and the Mozart Arias one, because Mozart rocks my world and so does Diana!

I also got stuff from my favorite barihunks ;) Simon Keenlyside’s Tales of Opera and Erwin Schrott’s Opera Arias cds. Alongside with the baritones I also got some things from some of my favorite tenors, Juan Diego Florez’s Rossini Arias for again obvious reasons and Joseph Calleja’s The Maltese Tenor because I find his voice’s color so different and intriguing I can’t get enough of it!

Other two sopranos that hold a very dear place in my heart and in my opera CD collection have completely different voices. First we have Danielle DeNiece’s Handel Arias cd that is Dani doing what does best, baroque, baroque, baroque! And then we have Sondra Radvanovsky also doing what she does best, Verdi in her Verdi Arias cd.

And to end my perfect cd collection, at least for now, the amazing recording of Don Giovanni with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo as Don Giovanni, Diana Damrau as Donna Anna, Joyce DiDonato as Donna Elvira, Luca Pisaroni as Leporello, Rolando Villazon as Don Ottavio, Konstantin Wolff as Masetto and Vitalij Kowaljow as Zerlina. This is truly an opera treasure and a dream cast, although I would have picked another Ottavio, but that’s another story.

Then on to the books I didn’t get all the one I wanted but elas!

These three books give you an idea of how the opera singer life is, from three very different points of view with three very different enphasis, the point of view of a successful opera singer, the point of view of a jornalist and the point of view of a teacher

This one I actually started reading yesterday, right after I opened the box containing it. It’s Renée Fleming’s The Inner Voice that is absolutely amazing and it is a MUST have for anyone who is aspiring to be an opera singer. I’m not gonna talk a lot about it right now because when I finish reading it I want to do post only on it. But it’s GOOOOOOD!

Then I got something I thought I would enjoy reading thoroughly, Joshua Jampol’s Living Opera, a series of interviews with many opera singers, young ones and old in many stages of their operatic careers.

This one I got because of Joyce’s first or second vlog in which she recommends this said book that was written by her vocal instructor called The Naked Voice by W. Stephen Smith.

Something that I saw in a book store in Brasil last year that got me salivating with Mozart hunger but was like R$150,00, which would be $70,00, I got on Amazon for $30! The Seven Mozart Librettos: A Verse Translation, this is every Mozart fan’s dream come true! And the pages are all aged and the ends are made as if they’ve been sort of eaten by time, it’s a gorgeous gigantic book and I LOVE IT!

And finally a book one of my good friend and most faithful silent reader of this blog recommended to have as a quick answer go to book The Eyewitness Companion of Opera by Alan Riding and Leslie Dunton Downer.

Now finally, for the one and only DVD I got. CENDRILLON my all time favorite French opera EVER, the Royal Opera House production with Joyce DiDonato as Cendrillon, Alice Coote as Prince Charmant, Eglise Gutirrrez as La Fée and Ewa Podles as Madame de la Haltiere. Just bliss!

Apart from the fact I bought so many clothes I had to buy myself an extra bag to take them back home with me to Brasil, and I spend the little that was left of my money in Slytherin themed stuff in the Harry Potter park (where I cried, a lot). But in my own defense, the things here are so much cheaper than in Brasil, I had to make to most of it ;)

Ok, I’m gonna stop now! You all have a good one and wish me a safe journey back to my culturally undeveloped country! ;) Cheers! Oh and Happy Valantines Day everyone, it's not Valentine's Day in Brasil though, ours is on the 12th of June.

AND HAPPY BDAY TO JOYCE DIDONATO AND RENEE FLEMING THAT GET MORE FABULOUS ONE RIGHT AFTER THE OTHER :)

Double Baroque Trouble

Is the title too Harry Potterish? Ah well, this has been a week of studying languages (Italian and French mostly, I’m kinda running away from the German), talking a lot about opera (I really had a blast at the #operarox live show, really, those people are awesome, they get me! It’s so difficult to find people who are willing to talk about opera nonstop), and watching new stuff (new to me, this stuff is ancient actually).



Sarah Connolly as Cesare and Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra

Well, I’m gonna talk about the two last operas that I saw, Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Monteverdi’s L'incoronazzione de Poppea both productions from the Glyndebourne Opera and also staring Danielle De Niese as the leading lady. What I think is super cool about these baroque operas is that gender isn’t really an issue, I mean, you have women playing man and man playing women and it’s ok. And it works, and that for me is awesome, especially since I came from a very theatrical background where gender sometimes really doesn’t matter.



Danielle De Niese as Poppea

and Alice Coote as Nero

 

Well I automatically feel in love with the two leading couples! I love this more fiery kind of love that both have as opposed to sweet and tender one, I like love with action! Also I think it’s so cool how both ladies start off maybe not really in love with the guys, but then fall helplessly for them (especially Cleopatra, she turns out to be so devoted to Cesare!). And really, I don’t blame them because, those guys are really something! I don’t know if it’s the fact that they are Emperors, they have that power allure, although the power doesn’t attract me, what does it’s the attitude and the posture one has when it has absolute power. Does that even make sense?

Well, I loved both productions, I thought they were very well done, and it was my first time seeing both and they were both staged in a nontraditional setting. But as I’ve said before, these stories live through so many years because they are timeless. So you get it when Cleopatra wears a little black dress to seduce Cesare and then does the victory dance when she’s successful! I absolutely adored the guy who was the lady in waiting for Cleopatra (his character is a guy) so funny, like the sassy gay friend! Who would have thought there were sassy gay friends in Ancient Egypt! Again TIMELESS stuff!

While watching Poppea I made sure my bedroom door was locked, the last thing I needed was my parents walking into one of those spicy scenes. The opera itself kinda shocked me a little bit because I kept going back to something Tony Pappano said in a documentary about Italian opera, that Monteverdi was 70 something years old in the 17^th century holding the most important church musician position when he wrote this opera. And it’s pretty steamy; it’s one of the fieriest things I’ve seen so far in the world of opera.



Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra



I love Danielle De Niesse, I think she’s so fresh and she brings something so hers to the pieces. She’s a very physical performer, which I like very much, she can move, she can dance while singing and that I think adds so much to the whole interpretation of the operas. Sarah Connolly stole my heart as Cesare, she’s one of those women that just KNOW how to play man, she’s got the man swag, and I felt a lot of attraction toward her Cesare, she looked really hot. But to me, you really can't tell that she's a woman in that costume or whenever she plays guys really. Just to be sure, I asked my sister (expert cross-dressing cosplayer that she is) if she looked like a real man or not, and she told me she definitely did. Another mezzo who has got the man swag up her sleeve is Alice Coote who was playing the ever scary Nero (he scares me because he’s kinda like a serial killer). I’ve said before on the Cendrillon post that she is such a marvelous pants role performer and in this that the character is so different from Prince Charmant, she also nails.



Sarah Connolly as Cesare

I particularly like the scene in the second act where Nero is singing a duet with one of his senate companions (I really don’t know who that guy is actually) and they are talking about ruby red lips, delicious, irresistible, and it’s just so sexy! The music, Alice’s face changes with every passing phrase, Nero seems to at first be talking about Poppea’s lips, but then he looks at his fellow differently, and at first it’s an odd feeling for him, but then he kinda surrenders to it and just enjoys singing about the guy’s lips. And then singing about it isn’t enough, he has to kiss him, so he does and it’s a very “hold your breath” moment, he seems to enjoy it and but then he can’t do that, so with all his absolute power and grace he drowns the guy, still singing about the red lips! For me that was unbelievable, it was so intense, I loved it! 

But to me one of the most moving piece of music in Poppea is the final duet, oh God, it's so beautiful and the way they end in unison, they are one! And even though this opera is about power, sex and passion, with that duet it ends up being a piece about love and about two people who adore each other. Even though historically Nero kills Poppea one year after with a kick on her pregnant stomach, but let’s just pretend they lived happily ever after :)



 Alice Coote as Nero

Well, I don’t care about what other people say baroque opera rocks!

My first post on Cendrillon!

Yesterday was Christmas day and I must confess I had the best Christmas ever! Since I live in Brasil the season now is summer, so, hot as hell summer. So we had a barbecue by the pool with constant jumping inside it, it was the only way to keep our bodies in a bearable temperature. But it was rather fun! So since we’re talking about good times, let’s talk about something I love love love from my favorite French composer…

My first post on Massenet’s Cendrillon. So I haven’t watched the whole opera yet for one simple reason, I can’t find it anywhere on the internet, and stores just don’t sell these DVDs here in Brazil. Yes, yes, there are many, many productions out there on YouTube of Cendrillon, but I wanna watch the one from the Royal Opera House with Joyce DiDonato and Alice Coot!

There are a few clips, manly of Joyce, on YouTube from this opera, and only watching these snippets already made me absolutely fall in love with this opera! I already love Massenet, Manon was the opera that made me like opera in general after all, and oh God, it is impossible not to fall in love with his Cinderella. I’ve put up there the videos of the parts I’m gonna talk about in case you guys wanna see it.

One of the parts I like the most is the trio at the end of the third act! How the mezzos voices entwine and just sound so lovely, the color that comes out of it is superb! A especific moment in that trio is when the Fairy Godmother finally lets Cendrillon and the Prince Charmant see each other. The chorus kicks in ever so softly with a little melody that sounds so much like a Disney dream (I’m sure Disney stole this idea or something from Massenet).  And Cendrillon just looks scared and even a little ashamed because she’s in rags (correct me if I’m wrong, it’s just what I see) in front of her Prince, but then the prince calls her out and they embrace and it’s just SO ROMANTIC! God, really, I’m not a very romantic person, but, this moment is so full of pure sentiment and love, oh, it brings tears to my eyes, ‘cause at the end of the day they are so young and ingénue!  And especially when they arrive to plead mercy to the Fairy Godmother, the sound is just, crazy good (I wish you people could see my face, it describes what I feel about this moment perfectly!).

Oh and then there is Cendrillon’s and Prince Charmart’s alone encounter, which is just, so good! The guy is head over hills in love with her, and she can hardly believe that she’s actually there nevertheless that the prince himself feel for her. It’s just, this piece found its way through my heart and I must say, I can listen to it over and over again, and even though I don’t speak French, the music speaks for itself. The music alone can tell the story. And Alice Coot has some serious man swag going on. I showed this to my sister (my sister is a cosplayer so she's more than used to seeing girls playing boys, she herself does that a lot, so she can't be fooled easly) and she was astonished to learn that it was a woman. She could only tell once Alice started singing, but she tells me that before that she could have sworn Alice was in fact a man!

Another part that I love is Cendrillon’s first aria, oh sooo melancholic, and not in an annoying way (I normally find melancholic stuff irritating), it’s just Massenet, and I love his music! Well this first aria is awesome, so of course I went out there and asked my teacher if I could sing it. Yeah, I’m really a soprano so you can only guess that she said no. I was a bit upset, but she let me pick anything from the soprano French repertoire. But then when I downloaded the whole score from IMSLP the characters descriptions says that Cendrillon is a soprano! Don't believe me? I'll printscreen it for you! LOL Just in case you are wondering, I printed the part for this aria, just in case :)

Reste au foyer petit grillon, résignetoi Cendrille!

Sometimes I think the voice is like women’s hair, we’re never satisfied with it, it’s always “Oh, it could be slightly darker” or “Why can’t I reach that note with that color?” these little phrases even seem as if I’m talking about hair for Christ sakes!

I love French and I love French opera, so this is definitely not my only post on Cendrillon, but I just wanted to leave my first impression of the piece. Have a good one peeps!