Tag Archives: poulenc

An Hour of Peaceful Holiday Song With Choral Arts

Choral Arts (Photo: Choral Arts)

For those on the go during the holidays, Choral Arts‘ annual Christmas concert provides an tiny oasis of calm during December’s hustle and bustle. The choir’s hour-long program, sung with no breaks between pieces, is perfectly tailored to busy holiday schedules. The first of two performances of this yuletide program, the December 14th concert at First Hill’s Trinity Church drew a crowd that filled most of the church’s central pews, making for a cozy atmosphere. A second performance was held the next night at the roomier Capitol Hill’s St. Joseph’s.

Robert Bode, Artistic Director of Choral Arts (Photo: Choral Arts)

Ranging from medieval chant to contemporary carols, the medley of choral gems sparkled in Trinity’s intimate space. Despite the emphasis on meditative works that invite reflection and relaxation, the hour seemed to fly by, smoothly flowing from one tune to the next. At the helm, Artistic Director Robert Bode tied the program together with clear conducting and careful pacing. As a final touch, Bode and the ensemble wrapped each piece up with a perfectly-executed conclusion, final chords hanging in the air for just a moment before fading away. This is an ensemble that has mastered art of the juicy ending.

A small ensemble with the sound of a large choir, the 26-voice Choral Arts can do it all, from the rollicking Stephen Foster tune “Hard Times Come Again No More” to Robert Young’s setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” While the former flowed with the ease of a hearty pub shanty, filling the Trinity sanctuary, the latter unfolded with the steady pace of footsteps in newly-fallen snow. As the ensemble sung of the frosty morning of the first Christmas, the atmosphere seemed to grow more peaceful and intimate with each stanza.

Two highlights of the program were tiny masterpiece that would be poignant at any time of year. Full of shifting vocal textures, Francis Poulenc’s “Hodie Christus Natus Est” blends unusual harmonies with moving countermelodies in the men’s voices. Jake Runestad‘s “Nada te Turbe” combines staggered melodies passed between sections of the choir with accompaniment that evokes gently rolling waves. The 27-year-old Runestad has already received commissions from ensembles around the country. It’s worth keeping an eye on this young composer as his career unfolds in the coming years.

This year’s concert saw the return of guest guitarist Robert McCafferey-Lent, who performed a series of instrumental interludes and accompanied the ensemble on several pieces. McCafferey-Lent’s mix of gentle guitar melodies and carol excerpts provided an elegant bridge between vocal works. A former Choral Arts singer, the classical and Irish folk guitarist has plenty of experience in blending with a choir. His sensitive accompaniment colored Rick Asher’s “Psallite”, which alternates between peaceful and upbeat sections, and the 16th century chant “O Magnum Mysterium”, sung with tenderness by soprano Rebekah Gilmore.

The hour of music ended with a little bit of audience participation during two classic carols, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Silent Night”. Bode turned around to conduct the crowd as the sanctuary filled with singing voices, an uplifting conclusion to one of Seattle’s most contemplative and peaceful holiday concert traditions. For those who missed this year’s “Christmas with Choral Arts,” head over to Seattle radio station KING FM’s Soundcloud page, where a streaming recording of the program is available.

Bode and the singers of Choral Arts have a busy schedule in 2014. In March, they’ll sing Brahms’ notoriously difficult “Ein Deutsches Requiem” as part of the University of Washington’s Brahms Symposium. They’ll follow that performance with a program of world folk music in May.

Two Women on the Verge in “Suor Angelica” & “Voix Humaine”

La Voix Humane_Sour Angelica
La Voix Humane_Sour Angelica

Nuccia Focile in La Voix Humaine (Photo: © Elise Bakketun)

Puccini’s Suor Angelica takes place in a convent in Italy. (Photo: © Elise Bakketun)

Rosalind Plowright as The Princess (Photo: © Elise Bakketun)

Maria Gavrilova as Suor Angelica (Photo: © Elise Bakketun)

This past Saturday, Seattle Opera opened a double bill of La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica. The two, short operas will run through May 18 with five more performances. These are the last performances of the 2012 – 13 season and, sadly, they bring down the house on Seattle Opera subscription seasons as we have known them over the last 30 years. It was therefore a landmark night, though few noticed.

Since the mid-1980s, Seattle Opera has run five operas a season (though, as with this season, they have occasionally run two shorter operas together). Due to the lingering recession, a declining subscriber base, the inability to develop a larger, younger audience; and some major budget shortfalls, this will be the last five-opera subscriber series for the near future. This summer, the Opera will produce the Wagner Ring Festival, followed by a four-opera season, and in 2014, faithful subscribers will face famine with only three operas, plus have the chance to attend the International Wagner Competition, instead of a Meistersinger previously planned, along with their subscription season.

But if this is the end of an era, the Opera is going out on top. 2012-13 was one of the company’s best seasons in years. Seattle Opera presented a dazzling, exotic turn on Puccini’s Turandot; a somber, tense reading of Beethoven’s Fidelio; a rollicking, wickedly funny take on Rossini’s La Cenerentola; a breathtaking, beautiful conception of Puccini’s La bohème, and has concluded the season with this double-bill.

I don’t see how La Voix Humaine and Sour Angelica could be much better. Composed by Francis Poulenc in 1959, with a libretto by Jean Cocteau, La Voix Humaine is a short, powerful take on the end of a love affair. Only one performer takes the stage. In this case, Elle, the spurned lover who is caught in a long telephone call with her departed lover, carries the show.

Portrayed by the amazing Nuccia Focile, Elle is part courage, part anger, and partly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Focile navigates the story with uncommon acting chops and a luscious, supple voice that conveys both the depth of Elle’s despair and the character’s strong will. The story feels modern, and the music, under the sympathetic baton of conductor Gary Thor Wedow, is romantic, lustful, and complex.

The modernity, ironically, comes from its portrayal of 20th-century communications – how they tend to separate us and interfere with our emotions. Who among us hasn’t been on one of those calls where you would say anything to make a lover stay on the phone just a minute longer? Responding to her lover’s question about her possible suicide, Elle says, “Can you imagine me with a gun? I don’t even know where to get one.”

Focile, who has done magnificent work at Seattle Opera as Iphigénie in Iphigénie en Tauride and many others, moves around the single bedroom set with grace and excellence; at one point she wraps the phone cord around her neck and in the audience there is a chilling sense of doom. She is a revelation as both a singer and actor here.

Luckily, the composer and librettist give her a few moments of humor as the phone continually drops out or unseen callers join her party line. No one in the audience will miss the point that service assurance wasn’t any better for 50s-era French landlines than it is for 21st-century cell users. At one point, Elle even says, “Can you hear me now?”

With only one singer and one set, this opera can’t be very expensive to mount, and I wonder if Seattle Opera’s creative team couldn’t find other small opera gems to expand future seasons. Menotti’s The Medium, anyone? With someone as powerful as Focile, even modest opera is a wonder to behold.

The second half of the night’s double treat was a seldom-seen Puccini opera, Suor Angelica. Set in an abbey in 1600s Italy, the opera, with its all-women cast, presents us with the story of a humble nun who was once a princess. The young princess had a child out of wedlock, was separated from her son, and sent to a lifetime of penance as an abbess.

This one-act opera starts with Angelica working in the abbey’s garden. Other nuns gently tease her about her past, but, inwardly, she is desperate to hear news from her family. It has been seven long years since she last held her newborn. In a plot worthy of O’Neill or O. Henry, Angelica is visited by her aunt on official family business, who near the end of her visit offhandedly mentions to Angelica that her son is dead, a victim of an unidentified illness.

In her sorrow, Angelica makes the heart-rending decision to take her life. As the poison takes effect, she realizes she has committed a mortal sin.

General Director Speight Jenkins was canny to put these two operas together. Both are stories of discarded women who are robbed of everything they have, even their illusions. Maria Gavrilova sings the role of Sister Angelica with power and sadness. It would be easy to see Angelica as a victim, but Gavrilova steers the character out of the pits of despair and presents her as a strong-willed, but naïve woman.

Rosalind Plowright plays the pious aunt with bone-hard conviction and holier-than-thou righteousness. With acting skills to match her instrument, Plowright comes up with the best performance I’ve seen at Seattle Opera this year.

Also coming through with an amazing performance is the Seattle Opera chorus under the direction of chorusmaster Beth Kirchhoff. Kirchhoff is a jewel among music direction in Seattle or anywhere else. In Suor Angelica, she guides the women’s chorus through a triumphant reading of Puccini’s music, which has overtones of sacred vespers. It’s powerfully nostalgic if, like me, you were taught by Catholic nuns, who sang their morning devotions.

Despite the evening’s sad overtones, you walk out thinking about miracles — a happy presentation for all concerned.

Vespertine Opera’s Playful Les Mamelles de Tirésias at Columbia City Theater

Vespertine Opera Ensemble in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

Tess Altiveros as Thérèse in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

Tess Altiveros as Tirésias, José Rubio as The Husband in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

The anti-childbearing army in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

José Rubio as The Husband in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

José Rubio as The Husband after a night of childbirth in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Dan Miller)

Tess Altiveros as Thérèse in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Marnie Cumings)

Tess Altiveros as Thérèse and her impressive mammaries in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Marnie Cumings)

José Rubio as The Husband and Daniel Oakden as The Gendarme in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Marnie Cumings)

Vespertine Opera Ensemble in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Photo: Marnie Cumings)

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For many of us, opera can be a somewhat remote experience. We sit far away from the singers in a large hall, and while we can hear every emotion in their voices, we sometimes have a hard time seeing emotional nuances in their faces. But Vespertine Opera Theater’s production of Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tirésias)  is up close and visceral at Columbia City Theater (last show tonight at 8 p.m.).

Based on the surrealist play of the same name by Guillaume Apollinaire, the opera takes place in the fictional town of Zanzibar, in the south of France. A woman named Thérèse, fed up with her husband and womanly expectations, finds that she’s turning into a man (Tirésias). She becomes a famous general and leads a charge against childbirth and children. Meanwhile, her husband decides that since his wife has become a man, c’est logique that he must be a woman, and proceeds to birth over 1,000 children in a single afternoon.

Full of double entendres, word play (the relationship and translation between French and English is a fertile field), and a playful disregard of logic and sense, the story will amuse you. The singing will also please you; the small cast is full of young rising singers. José Rubio, The Husband, has quite a powerful voice – at times in that small space it was like he was standing right next to me, singing in my ear. He also has a marvelously elastic face, making the more ridiculous moments hilariously funny.

Tess Altiveros, as Thérèse/Tirésias, also did a fabulous job. She handled the non-linear and wide-ranging part with finesse, and her voice warmed in Act II. As The Director/The Gendarme, Daniel Oakden did a fine job (he, too, is blessed with an expressive face). They were supported by a superb chorus, some of whom stand out for named roles or a few lines sung from the audience.

Dan Wallace Miller’s direction is apparent in every scene. He does a great job of emphasizing the farce without going over the top, allowing the music and the libretto their fullest expression. Playing a part in the music’s expression are co-music directors and pianists Dean Williamson and David McDade, who took turns conducting at key moments from the pianos. They played seamlessly together, as well as supporting and balancing the singers.

Lighting and co-set designer Marnie Cumings lit the stage and the rest of the house (when the singers were in it, that is) with precision. Sets, co-designed with Miller, were minimal but expressive of the setting – metal palm trees and a backdrop by Christopher Mumaw made the small theater feel fairly tropical.

Geoff Rozmyn created three witty posters for Tirésias’s campaign against childbirth and children, rich and cartoonish and big audience favorites. Costume designer Savannah Baltazar presented a cohesive palate of color and era, and facilitated a few witty costume changes on stage. Also impressive was her design of Thérèse’s dress, which accommodated both natural and huge (unnatural, ballooning) breasts.

This production is a historical one, as this is its U.S. premiere. In 1956, Benjamin Britten became a big fan of the French opera, and discussed with Poulenc the possibility of performing it at the Aldeburgh Festival (co-founded by Britten). To suit the space, Britten and long-term collaborator Viola Tunnard arranged the opera for voice and two pianos. Tenor Peter Pears, stage director Colin Graham, and choreographer John Cranko produced an English libretto, and it was performed in June of 1958. It then disappeared, resurfacing only in 2011.

Edited by Emily Hindrichs, it was performed again in the UK in October of 2012, over half a century from its first performance. That version premiered here Tuesday night, and will be reprised tonight, Thursday.