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Opera Stars of Today—Diana Damrau

2012
01.27

Diana Damrau [b. 1971] is an operatic soprano—her style is technically “coloratura”—from Günzberg, Germany.  Although currently enjoying worldwide exposure in opera houses throughout Europe and North America, Damrau spent the first six years of her professional career [1996–2002] formally contracted to three different opera companies in her native land.  These were Würzburg—the site of her 1995 debut, as Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro—Mannheim and Frankfurt, spending two years at each of these respective venues.

Damrau’s contractual circumstances, however, did not prevent her from appearing elsewhere during this stretch.  She sang her first Queen of the Night (from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte) in Berlin in 1998, and it is the role with which she is most often associated.  However, it was as Zerbinetta in the Richard Strauss opera, Ariade auf Naxos that she made her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which took place in 2005.

In addition to performing in many operas from the basic repertoire—aside from the aforementioned Mozart and Strauss roles, Damrau has appeared multiple times in several Wagner operas, plus in Rigoletto and Un ballo in maschera, both by Verdi—she has enjoyed considerable acclaim in productions that are well out of the mainstream.  For example, Damrau was invited to perform the title role in Europa reconosciuta by Antonio Salieri, in honor of the 2004 reopening of Milan’s La Scala opera house after it had undergone considerable renovation.  She has also sung important roles in several other fairly obscure operas, such as Rita by Gaetano Donizetti, Ascanio in Alba and Zaïde by Mozart, and 1984 by Loren Maazel.

During 2011–12, Damrau is debuting in several new roles in various European venues.  In Munich this past November, she sang all four heroine roles in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and the current season also marks her first performance as the title characters in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamonix (Barcelona) and in Mignon (Geneva) by Ambroise Thomas.

Damrau sings the famous Queen of the Night aria, “Der Hölle Rache,” in a Salzburg production from 2006:

Category Opera Stars of Today |

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Masters of the Podium—James Levine

2012
01.25

James Levine [b. 1943] began his musical life as a pianist but rose to become one of the most prominent opera and orchestra conductors of the latter part of the 20th century.  Although he has been stricken with health problems that stretch back over the past decade, Levine remains a prominent force with the two institutions he is most often associated: the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he debuted with the local symphony at the age of ten, performing Mendelssohn’s second piano concerto.  In 1963, after studying piano and conducting at Juilliard, Levine accepted the position of assistant conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra, which at the time was led by George Szell.  His experience there helped raise his skill level as well as his professional profile.  Levine first appeared on the podium of the Metropolitan Opera in 1971, where he conducted Puccini’s Tosca.  Two years later he became the company’s principal conductor, and he was named to the post of music director in 1976.

More than any single person, Levine’s tenure at the Met has led to its continued prominence as the top opera company in the world.  In his role as music director, Levine is the primary decision maker for each season’s repertoire.  He also enjoys unofficial “right of first refusal” as to which productions he will personally conduct, although these have declined considerably over the past few years as he has battled back problems and other ills.

Simultaneous to his long career at the Met, Levine has also been intimately associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO).  His first appearance there took place in 1972, and every year since he has conducted a number of programs with the ensemble.  However, it wasn’t until 2001 that he officially became music director of the BSO, but that was more a formality as he’d effectively fulfilled that role for several decades.

With the Met in 1980, Levine was the initiator of their Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, which has served as a major proving ground for up-and-coming opera singers.  Among those who have benefited from membership in this program are Renée Fleming, Danielle de Niese, Dwayne Croft, Eric Cutler, Nathan Gunn, and Sondra Radvanovsky, among many others.

Levine conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in the overture (and a bit of the first-act orchestration) to the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet:

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Modern American Composers—Virgil Thomson

2012
01.23

Virgil Thomson [1896–1989], born in Kansas City, Missouri, was a composer who contributed to nearly every classical genre—orchestral, chamber music, choral, operatic, solo voice, and solo instrument—and whose music is considered among the most accessible to young singers and musicians.  After a course of study at Harvard, Thomson lived for 15 years in Paris [1925–40] and spent considerable time with prominent members of what was considered Bohemian Society back then.  Members of his social circle included writers Joyce and Hemingway, fellow musicians Stravinsky and Copland, and Gertrude Stein.  The latter became his mentor and artistic collaborator, and Thomson would later write the opera, The Mother of Us All [1947]—which depicting the life of suffragist Susan B. Anthony—to a Stein libretto.

The music of fellow Paris resident Erik Satie was considerably influential in the material Thomson would create throughout his life.  Nonetheless, his music is decidedly American in theme and rhythm, with critics describing his overall work as having “hymnbook-type harmony.”  Many of his early works were for chorus or vocal soloist, or a combination of the two, and tended to reflect a religious theme.  Included among these are Sanctus [1921], Missa brevis [1924], and Five Phrases from “The Song of Solomon” [1925].

Thomson was also famous for creating what he called “musical portraits” of people he knew.  Some of these individuals were quite famous—philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim [1940] and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia [1942]—with others considerably less so, such as French Surrealist writer Lisa Deharme [1940].  Among his orchestral works are three symphonies, the final one composed in 1972, as well as a number of movie scores.  These include documentaries The Plow That Broke the Plains [1936] and The River [1938], both directed by Pare Lorentz, and Louisiana Story [1948], directed by Robert Flaherty.  This latter effort won Thomson a Pulitzer Prize.  He also received the National Medal of Arts in 1988.

A brief excerpt from the film, The Plow That Broke the Plains, with a score by Virgil Thomson:

Category Modern American Composers |

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Opera Stars of Today—Ramón Vargas

2012
01.20

Ramón Vargas [b. 1960] is an operatic tenor from Mexico City, whose singing career began at the age of nine as a member of the boys’ choir of the Basilica of Guadalupe.  Continuing his studies in his native country, Vargas took first prize in the 1982 Carlo Morelli National Vocal Competition.  Shortly thereafter, he made his professional operatic debut in Monterrey, Mexico, in a production of Lo Speziale by G.F. Handel.  He appeared in two additional roles on Mexican stages—as Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff, and as Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni—before traveling to Italy in 1986 and taking the top prize in Milan’s Enrico Caruso Tenor Competition.  That award was key in allowing him to continue his vocal studies with the school attached to the Vienna State Opera in the Austrian capital.  Vargas continues to make his home in Vienna.

For Vargas, his international operatic debut came courtesy of a cancellation, replacing Luciano Pavarotti (as Edgardo) at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in a 1992 performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.  A year later he reprised his Fenton role at La Scala in Milan, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the premiere of Falstaff.

Vargas has risen to become one of the sought-after tenors in opera.  A list of the places where he has performed is a Who’s Who—or perhaps more accurately, a “Where It’s At”—of the most prominent venues around the world.  In addition to the aforementioned New York and Milan opera houses, Vargas has appeared at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Teatro Real in Madrid, Opéra Bastille in Paris, Opera di Verona in Italy, and Covent Garden in London, among many others.

The Vargas repertoire is heavily invested in the Italian repertoire; most notably this includes works by Verdi and Donizetti.  He has performed regularly as the lead tenor in La traviata, Un ballo in maschera, Rigoletto, and Don Carlos [Verdi], plus La favorita, Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereaux, and L’elisir d’amore [Donizetti].  Thanks to the worldwide exposure offered by the “Met in HD” series that transmits Saturday afternoon performances of the Metropolitan Opera to movie theatres on five continents, Vargas has enjoyed great popular acclaim for such performances as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème [2008, opposite Angela Gheorghiu] and as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin [2008, opposite Renée Fleming].  His most recent HD appearance was as Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) during the current [2011–12] Met season.

Vargas sings “Lensky’s Aria” from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin [Met Opera, 2008]:

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Famous Soloists—David Guerrier

2012
01.18

David Guerrier [b. 1984] is that most unconventional of solo classical artists, in that he plays the trumpet.  Born in southeastern France, he took up the instrument at the age of seven.  Over a two-year period that began in 1998, even before his thirteenth birthday, Guerrier scored no fewer than four first-place victories in European horn competitions.

His early musical career centered primarily on performing in various orchestras and smaller ensembles.  These included membership in the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra in 1998.  Guerrier also toured the following summer with the European Union Youth Orchestra, which had as its conductors such luminaries as Bernard Haitink, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Sir Colin Davis.  As a member of Ensembles Turbulences in September 2001, he received yet another first prize, that time in the Philips Jones International Competition.

Guerrier was principal horn player with the French National Orchestra from 2005–09, where Kurt Masur was music director, before moving to the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra during 2009–10.  Today he performs as a member of La Chambre Philharmonique, which is a small ensemble that specializes in performing works from the Classical and Romantic periods while playing “period” instruments.  He has also formed his own group—Quatuor David Guerrier—comprising three additional young horn players (Anne Boussard, Guillaume Begni, and Pierre Burnet) who specialize in works for all-horn ensembles (Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Strauss), as well as grander pieces for multiple horns plus orchestra (Mozart, Schumann).

His solo career has brought him to the attention of U.S. audiences, as Guerrier has appeared with top American orchestras to perform several of the important trumpet concertos from the standard classical repertoire.  He has recorded a Mozart horn concerto as well as a septet by Camille Saint-Saens.  In addition to his performing career, Guerrier is horn professor at CNSM (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique) in Lyon, France.

Guerrier solos in Variations on “Carnival of Venice” (folk tune), accompanied by Ensembles Turbulences:

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Composer’s Corner—Igor Stravinsky

2012
01.16

Igor Stravinsky [1882–1971], while born in Russia, was perhaps the epitome of the international composer as he became—in turn—first a naturalized French citizen [1934] and then an American one [1945].  His father was a member of the chorus at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the young Stravinsky became a devoted piano student in his early teens.  Despite parental pressure to study law, Stravinsky instead worked directly with composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; however, the music of Ravel and Debussy proved a greater influence on his own composing style.

Stravinky’s first taste of success was the debut of his ballet, The Firebird, which he wrote for Sergei Diaghilev and his Parisian company, the Ballets Russe [1910].  After attending the premiere in Paris, Stravinsky relocated to Switzerland for a decade, where he composed three other full-length ballets for the Russian impresario—Petroushka [1911], The Rite of Spring [1913], and Pulchinella [1920]—with the latter ballet performed in costumes designed by Pablo Picasso.  His “Rite” (French title: Le Sacre du Printemps) was evidence of the “barbarism” that became a major element of Stravinsky’s music, so much so that some members of the audience at its premiere were near riotous.

Following a tuberculosis outbreak in Paris that deeply affected Stravinsky and cost him his wife and daughter, and coinciding with the onset of the Second World War, Stravinsky relocated to the United States in 1939.  By then he was already at work on his Symphony in C, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and first performed in 1940.  His so-called neo-classical period came to a close in 1951 with the debut of his opera, The Rake’s Progress, whose libretto was by poet W.H. Auden.  Much of his later music employed the twelve-tone methodology first popularized by Arnold Schoenberg, although Stravinsky also utilized other types of serial composition techniques as well.  Combined with his signature offbeat rhythms, much of his material from the 1950s onward is truly the face of what most lay people consider “modern” classical music.

In addition to the aforementioned Symphony in C, Stravinsky wrote a fair amount of unconventional orchestral music.  This included Circus Polka [1942], Scherzo à la russe [1944], which he later arranged to accommodate a Big Band sound, and Variations [1964] that was created as homage to his friend, author Aldous Huxley (“Brave New World”).  Stravinsky also wrote a fair amount of chamber music—many piano pieces but also works for recorder, a septet for mixed instruments, and a two-trumpet fanfare—as well as choral masses, the most famous of which is Symphony of Psalms [1930].

NHK Symphony Orchestra (Hiroyuki Iwaki, conductor) plays “Sacrificial Dance” from Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps [1981]:

Category Composer's Corner |

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