Things that make my heart melt....

Thanks twistty100 for the video!



Thanks coloraturafan for the video!

I can't explain how much i love this opera and miss hearing it live!!! I just stumbled upon this in youtube and i literally melted. And these two are gorgeous in one of the scenes i love most in this opera....

And it sounds just es gorgeous in French as in Italian.

Listen, watch.. enjoy :-)

Domingo still = Otello!

The Met 125 gala is just coming to its end, crazy and exciting as it was :-)

I've never been a fan, but then again i never heard or saw him live... never, ever ...

But there was one king of the castle tonight and his name is Domingo! To be singing better with each aria/duet at his age is no minor success. For me it was his night!

The scene from Boccanegra with Angela Gheorghiu was beautiful beyond words and i can only hope that his promise to come and sing it at the ROH will be kept. I don't care that he probably sounded less baritonal than in any other aria he sang tonight, it was musical and lush and Verdi all around. It sounded right and i hope that if i never got to hear him before, i will at least get to see and hear him sing this!

Then the crowning jewel, his Otello! as intense, as powerful, as fresh and emotional as ever, as if not a day had passed since he has first sung it. I really think this should have been the last piece of the night. There could not have been a more perfect ending. Pity it wasn't.

All i can say, maestro... BRAVISSIMO!!! I hope you stay healthy and special as you are today and that i may yet live to tell about the time i first say you sing live :-)

A beautiful night, all glam and very Met ;-) Wonderful music! And thanks for sharing it live and free with all of us :-) And bravo to all ( Hvorostovsky too was especially exquisite tonight) and Levine, well he's magic :-)

PS. Just wished they gave Juandi something more juicy than La donna....but then again hey... anyone up for that kind of high note at the end with no air input? Well then...guess not ;-)))) He is much more than that tho, just for the record ;-)

And i loved Dessay's Violetta, much more than i thought i would. You go girl!

And Heppner rocked as Siegfried! What a pleasure to hear that ending fresh and powerful. What a rush!

Chicago Lyric Operathon! Saturday, the 18th of October

No, I haven't moved to Chicago...yet ;-) But i do love the Lyric Opera "activities"!!

For all of you fancying a bit of wonderful music, check this out!

and
are offering all of us 16 hours of music in the OPERATHON 2008 !!!
LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO · 98.7WMFT SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 8 AM TO MIDNIGHT

I got it from the Sun Times article and it announces that:

"The 29th annual radio marathon fundraiser benefits the Lyric Opera's education and community-engagement programs. The on-air appearances will be from stars of the Lyric's fall productions of "Manon," "The Pearl Fishers," "Lulu" and "Porgy and Bess." The Lyric's general director, William Mason; music director Sir Andrew Davis, and other opera celebrities, will take part in the Operathon."

And you can give a little thank you and make a donation by either calling the number in the article or on the Lyric site.

You can stream 98.7WMFT live here.

And you can check you time to be live with Chicago here . For us in London it is 6hours later, so it starts at 2pm and ends at 6am Sunday ;-) Brew yourselves a biiig pot of coffee!!

Manon, see, hear and experience Jonas Kaufmann and Natalie Dessay :-)

I can't resist this! A litte gift from Lyric Opera Chicago :-) Aren't they a dream????

All together now: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Watch our for the drool, it may damage your keyboard ;-))))

Enchanteur et Enchanteresse! (Jonas Kaufmann and Natalie Dessay in Lyric's Manon)

Foto curtesy of the Daily Herald Chicago (in turn Courtesy Robert Kusel/Lyric Opera of Chicago)


It is Sunday, 11 am and I couldn’t wait to get out of bed! Don’t make funny faces! I only went to bed at 5am..ahhhhhh, now you get it :-) Few of you will understand how unique this is for me ;-)

I am still buzzing from last night and a still largely speechless! I don’t know if this will be the case with any of the viewers who were sitting yesterday night in the beautiful Lyric Opera but I still hear that captivating singing as if it was a recording for ever replaying inside of me...and I hope it will keep on doing that for the whole day.

Before I get too carried away let me say a biiiig thank you to WFMT and their sponsors for the live broadcast! It is the only chance some of us will get to listen to this particular production and I am immensely grateful for the opportunity, especially since the sound quality of the broadcast was amazing! Never once did it crackle, nor did the server die, nor was there any singing into each others microphones, nor did the orchestra cover the singers or vice versa. None of the typical flaws of such live vents were audible and we could sit back, relax and let the music flow…

Having seen the DVD of the BCN production of Manon, I was anxious about the audio alone being able to convey the complexity of this particular concept of the opera. Having a general idea about what would be going on on stage certainly helped put things in context and also helped fade some of the stage noises into the background, so that they never disturbed the enjoyment of the music.

So was the audio enough? Did it tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Manon? I think it did! At least for me, least of sitting there in the first row, with the nose glued to the stage, it couldn’t have felt more real. I was drawn into it, transported over the ocean and not only into the theatre, but on stage among the characters, where I felt their story unfolding around me, within me. I giggled and danced with Manon, tenderly caressed “notre petite table”, swayed and felt the pull of life in love and life in comfort, got swept of my feet by le chevalier, smiled tenderly at his letters, suffered his torment in St Sulpice, immersed in his ardent passion and cried with both at the sadness of “l’histoire de Manon Lescaut”.

Undoubtedly, the magic of last night is due mainly to Nathalie and Jonas, who gave it all and when you thought your heart would burst with emotion, gave it some more! They engaged me with every breath, with every note and every step. You could hear the laughs in their voices, feel the tenderness and the caresses and your skin.

I loved the way Natalie portrayed the girlish joy of life and how she suffered under her own fickleness and constant desire for more. This Manon had depth, she didn’t mindlessly flow from one situation to another, but felt the pressure of her own desires, but is nevertheless a victim of these, she isn’t able to win the battle with herself, she is just too young and is just too eager to experience life at full. And this brightness and joy with which she lives her life to the fullest is what attracts De Grieux and becomes his undoing. His attention is captured by her girlish looks, but soon this “enchanteresse” takes hold of his heart. She brings the sparkle into his life and the fire soon consumes the young chevalier. The both live too intensely, love too passionately for all that emotion and energy to be contained in a normal human existence and even less in one incarcerated in the constraints of their times. The fire consumes them until nothing is left but ashes… But until then they immerse us with them in this whirlwind of emotions.

I used to think that there couldn’t be a more romantic hero in opera than Romeo… boring and unimaginative old me! Le Chevalier was an enchanteur like few would ever get the chance to be. Manon rightly says about his words “Elles charment le coeur en charmant les oreilles!”. There is lightness and oh so very French flourish in his first words and his every note has the power of tender and gentle seduction. And the notes only grow in intensity from here. Each je t’aime and je t’adore has a different colour, sometimes with rapture, sometimes with tenderness, sometimes with passion, sometimes with jealousy and most sweetly with abandonment. As if he opens his chest to take his heart out and hand it to her, especially at the end of St Sulpice. It is than that we feel he realises he cannot be free of her and will follow her wherever she leads, until destruction. But I like that Jonas portrayed his De Griuex with steel within, not as a weakling, who is helpless against where life takes him. Even when he throws away all remaining dignity and gambles against his own better judgement, there is still honour in his tone. This man is still le chevalier, it is as if it is not love that drowns him, but he throws himself at it with his whole being. I like this feeling that his decision is a conscious one in the end and it makes us not only feel sorrow for his suffering, but also admire his dedication. He makes you believe that he is the man Manon finally sees in the end, although sadly too late.

The final scene was particularly touching because their singing conveyed that at last, they are one, at last they fully understand and accept each other, but it is too late for this lifetime.

And all this was conveyed in a musical feast to remember for years! I savoured every word and every note, delighted in every colour and shading of both their voices. Such outstanding singing is truly rare. Natalie gave it all and she put such feeling across, that any natural strain in such a long performance only became an instrument to connect to the inner life of the character.

Jonas was simply amazing! I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, that depth and power in the voice, where it was coming from and never seemed to reach any limits. I never realised just how difficult this score is and he took me into a very special kind of vocal paradise. The lines were endless and his voice just kept flying higher and higher. There was no breathing to be heard anywhere, the voice dropped instantly from the cliffs of acuti to soft and tender waters of piani. You could hear him from within choruses, embracing with his tone the whole ensemble. And all of this done with the utmost French elegance and refinement. No French lover has ever professed love so convincingly. It was so overpowering, it almost gave me vertigo!

Emmanuel Villaume encased the whole piece in a wonderfully guided musical construction. It sounded period true, completely harmonic, extremely romantic and with a touch of violence at the same time. For me he conveyed the flourish of the time which never managed to disguise the violence of the feelings and drives underneath. I was slightly amused to hear him be just as taken by the St Sulpice scene as everyone else ( it was then when his breathing got really audible in the broadcast) ;-) He skilfully and tastefully constructed the perfect Manon for this production with this orchestra, you could feel him adding the touches to the atmosphere like a painter with a sure hand mixing the colours in the landscape.

I also liked Christopher Feigum as Lescaut. His singing and French were of the special quality this night brought with it and he also colour his characters with shades that made the character believable and touching. Not so much for Guillot and the Count, who had a French - as a friend of mine very plastically put it - from the Bronx. I was also under wowed by both voices, although Raymond Aceto managed to convey some of the sternness and haughtiness of his character.

I am sure David McVicar was proud last night of his stars! Knowing what wonderful actors both Natalie and Jonas are, I can’t imagine them being anything else than captivating last night. It was a nice touch to hear that Jonas brought Davin on stage as I am sure they shared numerous enviable moment of artistic creativity during the last weeks :-)

For me, all there is left to be said is BRAVOOOOOOOOO, BRAVIIIIII, BRAVISSIMIIIII!!!!!!

Jonas and Natalie, you are my personal Enchanteur et Enchanteresse! There is nothing that could ever touch the memory of you two sining:

“N'est-ce pas ma main que cette main presse,
N'est-ce pas ma voix!
n'est-elle pour toi plus une caresse tout comme autrefois! »



Lyric Opera Chicago

Manon: Natalie Dessay
Des Grieux: Jonas Kaufmann
Lescaut: Christopher Feigum
Count des Grieux: Raymond Aceto
Guillot: David Cangelosi
Brétigny: Jake Gardner
Conductor: Emmanuel Villaume
Director: David McVicar

The fotos except for the first, curtesy of Keith Hale/Sun-Times from the Wednesday general rehearsal in the South Town Star

Operanuts found them first ;-))
PS Check out the WFMT website, they will do more live broadcasts, including the first night of the Les pêcheurs de perles on the 6th of October.
And here come the reviews:

Daily Herlad Chicago 28/09/08

Chicago Tribune 28/09/08

Opera Chanteuse Blog

Chicago Sun Times 29/09/08

another Chicago Tribune article 29/09/08

Time Out Chicago 29/09/08 they loved it too ;-)

New City stage 29/09/08

Seenandheard 29/09/08

South Town Star 03/10/08

I am especially glad that some more people got to enjoy the performance as much as I did and for this one which i will now link to i am particularily glad! Ximo, como me hubiera gustado poder charlar sobre esta funccion en particular en vivo! Gracias por el post, como siempre!

http://ximo.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/el-saint-sulpice-de-chicago-dessay-kaufmann/

Dear readers use this translator to read http://traductor.gencat.cat/

I encourage you to do so, you will discover just how well this Manon was received in Spain as well, where Jonas has more admirers than he probably knows :-)

De Grieux gets a haircut ;-) ( well Jonas Kaufmann does..)

Upate 21pm GMT... 3pm Chicago ...are you getting ready? 3 more hours to go!!! I'm sooo exciteddd and i just can't hide it ;-))

Join in about 2h 45 min here WFMT (thanks again for the broadcast!) --> click open not save and open with Winamp, you'll get the best sound. For alternatives and personal preferences click here: Listen live to WFMT http://www.wfmt.com/main.taf?p=4







Check this out!!! in advance of tomorrow night :-)



Thanks to the Wall Street Journal we get a small preview of tomorrow's Manon in Chicago!

http://online.wsj.com/video/a-new-breed-of-opera-directors/E8497D1E-D340-4617-9957-0ECEF395CE32.html

and Marion found the related article with some nice pictures as well here

A Manon to die for! (Nathalie Dessay, Jonas Kaufmann at the Lyric Opera Chicago)

Click on the image to listen to or download the podcast.

Thank you Lyric Opera Chicago for this preview!!!

I can honestly say there is nothing that can compensate me for not being able to see this Manon live.

The podcast is brilliant! And if the chemistry that transpires in the podcast between cast, conductor and public is even only a shadow of the final product, well this will be a Manon to remember for those lucky enough to see it.

For the equally eager but less lucky of us the Lyric is once again generous and we will be getting this:

The premiere Live on 98.7WFMT: 27. September 2008, 5.45 pm, Manon --> the time is Chicago time

For your time check this out: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Here is a little teaser, for which i will pinch the words of conductor Emmanuel Villaume and call it "From organ to orgy" ;-)))

Thanks DessayBestSinger for the video

Addition... I just remembered that some time ago i promised to bring the link for a very entertaining discussion I had about the Montpellier concert of Dessay and Kaufmann (from which the above exerpt is extracted). Well, here it is , from the wonderful blog of Ximo :-)

The discussion happened in a mixture of Catalan and Spanish, so use the following if you are not familiar with either:

http://traductor.gencat.cat/index_en.jsp good online translator from the Generalitat de Catalunya

You can also use the following: http://www.translendium.com/

And you can also use them for spanish, or for example this one: http://www.freetranslation.com/

And the old one : http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
http://translate.google.com/translate_t#
http://www.windowslivetranslator.com/Default.aspx

Back in business

I was going to jump straight back into music but i thought maybe some of you might want to know if in the meantime i had been abducted by aliens or something....

Sadly, no such thing happend...now, that would have been something to write about!!!

I just moved from the Auld Reekie to the Big Smoke... Or for those of you not from round here from here :

to here:

I won't bore you with horror details of the move, just take my advice: if you are thinking of moving, unless it is a matter of life and death...forget it!!!!

As to Edinburgh.... I will always love it and although there is not a drop of Scottish blood in my veins, there will always be a wee corner of my heart which has become Scottish and will stay that way forever :-)

I don't know if i will ever love London.... it will never have the spicy homey smell of malt... it will always be dusty and crowded ...or maybe i am just too provicial... i guess, in the end i will learn to live with it. And whenever i will find myself disliking something about it, i will just keep reminding myself that at least i adore one part of it, which is the ROH :-)

Inbetween the boxes and the stress there was music, because there was the Festival! It began with Hvorostovsky, but luckily it didn't end there: there was the London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev and the fascinating Prokofiev, Leonidas Kavakos and Tatjana Vassiljeva, there was the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, Ades and Messiaen, there was Christine Schafer. I promise to come back to them and tell you all about it. I am sorry, it will be old news by then, but at least it will be good news.

It was a long, long and pretty cold summer, in which i terribly missed the warm voice of Jonas Kaufmann. The radiobroadcast of the Montpellier concert with Nathalie Dessay provided some relief and i wrote and wrote and wrote about it (unfortunately in every prossible language but English and not in my own blog :-( I wish i was a less distracted person! I might try and at least leave here a post with links to some of my digressions on the subject). The preview on his upcoming Romeo next year was amazing to say the least! Even I was surprised by the utter sweetness, tenderness and dreamlike quality of his love duet with Juliet!!! And the bits from Manon with Nathalie almost drove me to buying a Lottery ticket in the hope of being able to make that trip to Chicago... Alas, i am poorer then ever (a move does that to one's budget!) but thanks to generous American sponsors we all will be able to indulge in the premiere of the event via radio ( check out Marion's page for details). I will stop myself from going on about the subject, but don't worry, you will not be dissapointed! as i am sure rivers will flow from my pen after the broadcast :-)

But i did say i was back in business and i am still talking in past tense...

Yesterday night the moving blues gave way to joy thanks to my personal kick off of the London music season. In this post i will just say one name: Joyce DiDonato!

PS Thanks so very very much to everyone who showed, told, wrote me their support and sorry if i was a pain from time to time...it is all over now :-) And thanks to all of you, i didn't jump of a bridge, down a hill or even down the waaay to narrow stairs of my house ;-)))