Archive for December, 2011

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Opera Stars of Today—Deborah Voigt


2011
12.30

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Deborah Voigt [b. 1960] is an American soprano from Wheeling, Illinois.  After moving to California with her family at the age of 14, she starred in a number of high school musical productions before proceeding to study voice at Cal State–Fullerton.  Her professional career was given a significant boost in 1985, when she was named a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.  Voigt also took first place in two other prestigious contests, Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition and Philadelphia’s Pavarotti Vocal Competition.

After serving a two-year apprenticeship in the Merola Program, managed by the San Francisco Opera, Voigt’s breakout role was as the title character in the Richard Strauss opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, which she performed with the Boston Lyric Opera in 1991.  Later that same year she made her Met Opera debut in a Verdi classic, Un ballo in maschera, singing the lead female role of Amelia.  Her next appearance there was in March 1992 in another Strauss epic, Elektra, where she appeared as Chrysothemis.

Even this early in her career, Voigt was being pegged as a Wagnerian soprano, capable of singing the most taxing roles in opera that require significant stamina, a vast range, and the ability to be heard at the far reaches of the opera house, even when singing pianissimo.  She continued to explore this heavier repertoire while still performing in a number of Verdi operas, including Il trovatore (as Leonora) and La forza del destino (as yet another Leonora).

In 2004, Voight underwent much-publicized weight reduction surgery, taking her from a size 30 to about a size 14.  Thankfully the procedure did not negatively affect her singing skills.  In fact, she admits to having much more energy since the surgery, which has had the effect of improving her acting skills—one of the few criticisms she endured during her formative years on the stage.

Considered today’s reigning Wagnerian soprano, the Metropolitan Opera invested heavily in Voight by naming her to a prominent place in the four Wagner “Ring Cycle” operas that were part of the new Robert LePage stagings for the 2010–11 and 2011–12 seasons.  Over the past few years she has also appeared as Senta in The Flying Dutchman and as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde.

Voigt sings a short aria from the Richard Strauss opera, Salome, with the Verbier Festival Orchestra (Valery Gergiev, conductor) [2010]:

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Masters of the Podium—Eve Queler


2011
12.28

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Eve Queler [b. 1936], a native of New York City, is a classical conductor whose name is synonymous with the organization she founded in 1971, Opera Orchestra of New York (OONY).  Her musical talents were apparent from an early age, granting her the ability to attend the city’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.  She studied piano and conducting at The New School’s Mannes College for Music in Greenwich Village and was later a student of conductors Walter Susskind and Leonard Slatkin.

Throughout her career, her skill with opera has allowed her to appear as a guest conductor in many international venues, including the Mariinsky Theatre (Saint Petersburg, Russia), the Hamburg (Germany) State Opera, the National Theater (Prague, Czech Republic), and many others.  However, it is due to her position as artistic director and principal conductor of OONY that Queler has received the bulk of her accolades and awards—most recently, the 2010 National Endowment of the Arts’ “Lifetime Achievement in Opera” award.

The unique premise behind Opera Orchestra of New York is Queler’s unbridled interest in operatic rarities, those works that have disappeared from the standard repertoire in the decades (or centuries) since they were first performed.  These operas are generally performed in a concert-only format, which means there are no sets or costumes, and the singers share the stage with the orchestra in a gala-type presentation.  This methodology helps keep costs to a minimum, which is particularly important since OONY usually performs each work only once.  Queler was the first conductor to present the Mussorgsky opera Khovanshchina on a U.S. stage, and she has introduced American audiences to a number of other Russian and Czech operas as well.

Because of Queler’s reputation on the podium and as an impresario, she is able to attract some of the world’s best singers to her twice- or thrice-per-year productions.  This is especially true for stars anxious to sing roles they might otherwise never have a chance to perform elsewhere during their careers.  Richard Tucker appeared in Meyerbeer’s L’africaine in 1972, Carlo Bergonzi sang in Puccini’s Edgar in 1977, and Nicolai Gedda fulfilled the title role in the Berlioz extravaganza, Benvenuto Cellini, in 1983, three of the greatest tenors of their era.  Some of the other big-name singers to have appeared in an OONY production during their prime (or even earlier) are José Carreras, Placido Domingo, Aprille Millo, Montserrat Caballé, Renate Scotto, Grace Bumbry, Katia Riccciarrelli, Juan Pons, James Morris, Eva Marton, Leonie Rysanek, Dolora Zajick, Renée Fleming, Jennifer Larmore, June Anderson, John Relyea, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Marcello Giordani.

An extensive interview with Eve Queler upon her receipt of the NEA Opera Honors Award [2010]:

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Modern American Composers—Aaron Copland


2011
12.26

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Aaron Copland [1900–1990] was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.  His older sister introduced him to the piano during his pre-teen years, and he eventually began formal music lessons at the age of 16.  After his attention turned more toward composing than performing, Copland’s parents were convinced to help him further those studies by engaging Rubin Goldmark—an American composer known primarily for his highly nationalistic musical style—as his teacher.  Copland wrote a piano sonata as his Goldmark “graduation piece” and then elected to try his luck in Paris instead of entering college, as his parents had wished.

Copland arrived in Paris during a culturally rich period, and not just musically.  Among his contemporaries were writers Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Sinclair Lewis, plus painters Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, and French intellectuals Marcel Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre.  Upon settling there in 1920, Copland enrolled in a summer school for American music students, at Fontainebleau, but he later changed instructors and began studying with the famous Nadia Boulanger.  Through her, Copland was introduced to conductor Serge Koussevitsky, who engaged the young American to compose something for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where the Russian émigré was music director.  That piece turned out to be his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra [1925], the composition that helped launch Copland’s career back in the States.  He was quite enamored of jazz and infused its rhythms and harmonies in two follow-up compositions, Music for the Theater [1925] and Piano Concerto [1926].

Returning home in the mid-1920s, Copland managed to survive thanks primarily to two separate Guggenheim fellowships, as well as his lectures and music instruction.  His extensive foreign travels throughout the balance of the decade and well into the 1930s brought him into contact with a number of folk music idioms.  A brief stay “south of the border” inspired him to compose El Salón México [1935].  His greatest decade, however, was the 1940s, a period where he wrote his two incredibly popular ballets—Rodeo [1942] and Appalachian Spring [1944]—in addition to Fanfare for the Common Man and A Lincoln Portrait [both 1942], as well as the final of his three symphonies.

Copland has often been called the quintessential American composer, generally in recognition of his use of familiar folk themes—a Shaker hymn in Appalachian Spring, or decidedly Old West-style music in his ballet Billy the Kid [1938]—but also thanks to the film scores he wrote.  These include Of Mice and Men [1939], The North Star [1943] (both of which earned him Academy Award nominations), plus The Red Pony [1948], and The Heiress [1949], which finally gave him his Oscar.  Copland composed one opera, The Tender Land [1954], which relates a Depression-era story about a struggling midwestern family.

Bass Samuel Ramey sings “Shall We Gather by the River” by Aaron Copland (Warren Jones, pianist) [followed by a version scored by Charles Ives]:

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Opera Stars of Today—Dmitri Hvorostovsky


2011
12.23

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Dmitri Hvorostovsky [b. 1962] is an operatic baritone from Russia, born and raised in the far-flung Siberian outpost of Krasnoyarsk, the 19th century center of the Cossack movement.  He made his professional debut at the civic opera house there, singing a minor role in the Verdi opera, Rigoletto.  However, it was his success at winning vocal competitions that brought him onto the world stage, where he continues today as one of the most in-demand baritones in all of opera.

Hvorostovsky took first place in the Glinka Competition [Russia] in 1987 and also won the International Singing Competition of Toulouse [France] in 1988.  The 1989 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition proved to be his greatest triumph of all, where he edged out Welsh favorite son Bryn Terfel for the crystal vase and a first-place finish.  After that, the offers rolled in; he made his London recital debut later the same year, and first appeared in New York in 1990.

The first opera house outside Russia to feature Hvorostovsky in a starring role was in Nice, France, where he sang in a 1989 production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.  His Italian debut was at La Fenice in Venice as the title character in another Tchaikovsky opera, Eugene Onegin—a role he has performed many times since, including a highly acclaimed Metropolitan Opera appearance in 2008 alongside Renée Fleming—and his American debut came with Chicago’s Lyric Opera in 1993 in Verdi’s La traviata.

Most of the roles Hvorostovsky has preferred over the past decade have been in Verdi operas, including Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Count di Luna in Il trovatore, and the title roles in Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra.  But he has continued to maintain strong musical contact with Russia, including a Moscow concert series titled “Dmitri Hvorostovky and Friends” that has featured him in recital with the aforementioned Fleming, plus sopranos Sumi Jo, Sondra Radvanovsky, and others.  He was also the first opera singer to headline a concert in Red Square—accompanied by a chorus and full orchestra—that was broadcast to more than 25 countries.  Hvorostovsky teamed up with Fleming again in 2009 in a DVD release that combined a visual tour of St. Petersburg with a dual recital at the Hermitage in front of a small but very appreciative audience.  Several of his CDs have included collections of Russian songs by classical composers as well as folk tunes.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings “Eri tu che macchiavi” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera to win the 1989 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World award:

Hvorostovsky & Fleming perform the Act IV duet from Verdi’s Il trovatore at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia [2009]:

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Famous Soloists—Gil Shaham


2011
12.21

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Gil Shaham [b. 1971], a classical violinist, was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to Israeli husband-and-wife scientists who were working at the time at the University of Illinois.  He returned with them to Israel when he was two, and five years later began violin lessons at Jerusalem’s Rubin Academy of Music.  At age nine he played for several professional violinists, Isaac Stern among them, and a year later made his professional debut as a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony.

In 1982, when he was 11, Shaham won the Claremont Competition and used that prize to help secure a scholarship to the Juilliard School; he is one of the youngest students to attend that institution.  Along with his sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, Gil also attended classes at Columbia University.  At the age of 19 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Shaham’s solo career has included appearances with most of the world’s top orchestras.  This list includes the New York, Israel, Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, and the Russian National Orchestra.  His list of recordings is broad and extensive, including many of the most popular violin concertos—by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruch—but also a number of lesser known pieces which have become more popular thanks to his stewardship.  These include Violin Concertos No. 1 and No. 2 by Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski, violin concertos by Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok and Samuel Barber, and chamber pieces by Messiaen, Prokofiev, Franck, and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Shaham is a multiple Grammy Award winner and has also received acknowledgements for excellence in classical recording from Gramophone and in winning the Grand Prix du Disc.  In 2007 he formed his own record label, Canary Classics, for which he has recorded five CDs thus far.  These include Mozart’s Six Sonatas (Op. 1) with Orli Shaham on piano, and the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor (Op. 50) with Truls Mørk on cello and Yefim Bronfman on piano.  Shaham’s instrument is the 1699 “Comtesse de Polignac” Stradivarius, on loan to him by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.

Shaham performs the final part of Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate (Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor):

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Composer’s Corner—Robert Schumann


2011
12.19

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Robert Schumann [1810–1856] was a German composer firmly entrenched in the Romantic period.  Although encouraged by his family to become an attorney, his itinerant piano studies soon captured his full attention, and he twice withdrew from his law classes—first at Leipzig University and later at Heidelberg University—until abandoning them forever at the age of 20.  He eventually married Clara Wieck, the daughter of his piano teacher and herself an accomplished pianist.  She became his muse over the course of his career as a composer, although there was considerable tension as well since she out-earned him during much of their life together.  His original plans to become a concert pianist were thwarted by a finger injury that caused his right hand irreparable damage.

A great deal of Schumann’s early output (from 1832 through 1839) was for the piano, but the year 1840 saw the beginning of his interest in composing songs; he wrote more than 160 that year alone.  Many of his song cycles involved music set to the works of well-known poets, among them Heine, Goethe, Burns and Byron (translated into German, of course), and these remain among his most popular works today.  The following year, Schumann composed his first two symphonies—there were four in all—while 1842 was a year primarily devoted to the creation of various chamber pieces, including one of his best-known works, the Piano Quintet in E flat.

In the mid-1840s, Schumann’s health—never especially robust to begin with—became a serious issue and greatly affected his music.  After returning home to Germany in late 1844 after touring Russia with Clara, symptoms of nervous exhaustion and the fear of even the most benign everyday items and scenarios seeped into his music.  This sense of unease is clearly heard in his Symphony in C, which he published in 1845.  Feeling somewhat recovered a year later, he visited Prague and Vienna with the hope of increasing awareness of his music beyond the narrow scope of Dresden and Leipzig.

Schumann wrote his only opera in 1848.  Based on a medieval legend, Genoveva premiered in 1850 but was so poorly received that it was performed only three times during its initial run before disappearing for close to 70 years.  Sufficiently discouraged and thus vowing never to compose another opera, Schumann’s groundbreaking methodology of writing virtually nonstop music (in other words, a total lack of recitatives) was soon adopted by Richard Wagner and thoroughly exploited in the latter’s operatic Ring Cycle.

In 1853, Schumann was introduced to Johannes Brahms, at the time a 20-year-old music student, and the younger man quickly became the elder’s protégé.  However, it was during this time that Schumann’s ills made a sharp return, combining hallucinogenic sensations—he is reported to have heard a near-continuous string of musical notes as well as disembodied voices—with actual physical symptoms thanks to what was most likely late-stage syphilis.  Schumann died in a sanatorium, slightly more than two years after he had attempted suicide by leaping from a bridge over the Rhine.

Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sings “Mondnacht” by Robert Schumann [1974]:

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