THE MAGIC FLUTE - REVIEW OF STREAMING OF PARIS OPERA PRODUCTION

 James Karas

The Magic Flute was the brainchild of Emanuel Schikaneder, an extraordinarily talented man of popular theatre in Vienne in the latter half of the 18th century. That happens to coincide with the life of Mozart and Schikaneder wanted to put together a money-making singspiel based on his libretto for his Theatre auf der Wieden in a suburb of Vienna.

The opera with singing and spoken dialogue had other contributors to the libretto including fairy tales and a healthy dose of the philosophy of freemasonry. The Magic Flute opened on September 30, 1791 and was a big hit. It would almost certainly have joined the countless other hits of the era on the dusty shelves or dustbins of history were it not for the magical music composed by Mozart.

Some 230 years later, the Paris Opera has produced the work in an empty Opéra Bastille trying to observe some Covid-19 protocols. The effects of the disease are everywhere, and the news delivers frightful numbers of infections and deaths. Director Robert Carsen’s 2014 production zeroed in on the idea of death in general and in the opera in particular and it inadvertently takes full cognizance of what is happening during the current pandemic. The idea and the reality of the death of millions of people is all around and a more appropriate production can hardly be found.

In the opening scene our hero Tamino collapses near some mounds in the clearing of the forest. The mounds will turn out to be graves. The nasty Monostatos who will try to rape the lovely Pamina is a gravedigger. Graves will appear several times in the production as will a human skeleton and a skull. No one will miss the reference to the gravediggers’ scene from Hamlet when a skull is greeted with the words “Alas, Poor Yorick!” The appearance of coffins, black costumes and funereal veils will impress on us the idea of death.

Carsen uses modern costumes almost entirely black or white in conjunction with death as well as the moral lessons of the opera. The Magic Flute is a morality tale. Light, white, love, virtue, truth, and good are posed against darkness, black, hatred, vice, lies and evil. That is what fairy tales tell us and the freemasons, we suppose, stand for.

In the background we have the projection of a green forest. Its colours will change to brown, snow-covered white and barren to indicate the passage of time and the change of the seasons.

An aggressive morality tale amidst graves and coffins could be a fail-poof formula to keep people away from a production even during a lockdown. This production is nothing of the kind. It stands as an interesting view of the opera and a sheer pleasure to watch and hear.

The cast may not be from the top tier of singers, but their performance is superb. Tenor Cyrille Dubois is the heroic Tamino and he does a fine job in the role. He pursues the lovely Pamina, sung by soprano Julie Fuchs with a delicious voice and youthful ardour.

The comic relief is provided by the agile and irreverent Papageno of bass-baritone Alex Esposito who has made a career of singing comic character roles and he makes it perfectly obvious why in this performance.

Soprano Nina Minasyan is the Queen of the Night and she handles the regal rage and leaps across the two octaves of her mainstay aria. Sarastro (bass Nicolas Testé) is her opposite as the symbol of love and wisdom that he displays with sonorous beauty in his fine arias "O Isis und Osiris" and ‘In diesen heil'gen Hallen.”

The grave-digging, shovel-carrying and would-be rapist Monostatos is in the hands of Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. Carsen does not overdo him because someone who tries to rape a woman does not need to be exaggerated.

The orchestra and chorus of the Paris National Opera were conducted by Cornelius Meister. 

Performing to an empty house during a pandemic has definite drawbacks. All involved, including the orchestra try to wear masks. That works for the strings, but the wind instrument players can’t very well blow in a flute. The chorus wears masks and sings with gusto. I could not tell if they were pre-recorded or if they managed to sound that good with their mouths covered. The main singers did not wear masks and social distancing was not exactly adhered to.

Whether you absorb the masonic virtues of strength, goodness, veracity, love and wisdom is up to you. You should enjoy this production done under difficult circumstanced, regardless of your moral standards. 

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The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is streamed by the Opéra national de Paris until February 22, 2021 with some cast changes. For more information visit: https://chezsoi.operadeparis.fr/products/the-magic-flute or  https://www.operadeparis.fr/

THE GLASS MENAGERIE – REVIEW OF NATIONAL THEATRE OF GREECE PRODUCTION

 James Karas

How do you produce a great play under Covid-19 strict social distancing conditions? How well can you do with a production that will be performed only once, without an audience and streamed live around the world in Greek?

The play is Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (Ο Γυάλινος Κόσμος) which was produced by the National Theatre of Greece on January 23, 2021 precisely as described above. It was a stunning production and interpretation of the play that deserves a much greater audience than could be garnered by one broadcast.

A lion’s share of the credit must go to director Giorgos Nanouris for his brilliant and imaginative approach to the play and his compliance with distancing requirements that took nothing away from the power of the play. He and set designer Mary Tagari have the play performed on a stage that has a kitchen table and a sofa well apart. Nothing else.

The all-important glass menagerie, the collection of delicate figurines that constitute Laura’s world are represented by a chandelier with delicate-looking bulbs. The chandelier is lowered to head level and raised as required and it works extremely well. Having Laura play with small figurines would have required a breach of social distancing and the solution seems simply inspired. The background is entirely black with a white smoke visible now and then. It is a dream play and again the indication provided by the background is appropriate and superb.

The action of the play is what Tom remembers about life with his mother Amanda, his disabled sister Laura and a visitor Jim in Mississippi in the 1930’s. All the characters have an alternate universe, a memory of another  world that did not or does not exist. A production needs to capture those worlds, take us through the lives of the characters to the devastating and tragic end. 

Konstantinos Babis gives us an angry, troubled and desperate Tom stuck in a dead-end job with an unbearable mother and a troubled sister. He writes poetry on his job in a shoe warehouse and goes to the movies to find escape and solace. Babis makes us feel his anger and his desperation and  we share his guilt about leaving his sister behind.

The mother, Amanda (Anna Moscha), is just as desperate and frustrated as Tom. She is garrulous, annoying and unable to see beyond her own unhappiness. Her alternate world is her imaginary youth. She considers herself a former Southern belle, a beautiful, aristocratic woman who was visited by numerous high-class suitors. She chose a loser. Moscha gives us a marvelous portrayal of this pathetic woman who does love her children but cannot grasp reality or dispose of her dream world.

The glass menagerie is Laura’s (Lena Papaligoura) other world. Her physical defect, a foot that makes her limp, has caused psychological injury to the extent that she is almost incapable of living in the real world. She is as delicate as the figurines (in this production the lightbulbs) that she loves and when one of them is broken she cries inconsolably. It is an extraordinarily moving scene. In Jim, the gentleman visitor that her brother brings as a possible suitor, she meets someone that she knew and had a crush on in high school. He manages to bring her out – dance with her and kiss her – and then tells her he is engaged. (The kiss is indicated by clever use of shadows.) He destroys her. A moving and beautifully nuanced performance of a tough role.

Anastasis Roilos plays Jim. He is a young man full of confidence, great dreams and a bright future. Maybe. He was a popular high school student who showed  great promise – he could have become president before thirty, he thought. He fizzed out and ended up working in a shoe warehouse with Tom. All that is left is his glorious past, his terrible present and his dreams for the future. He has a lot in common with the other characters in the play. Roilos exudes Jim’s confidence and humanity impeccably.

The National Theatre of Greece has had is ups and downs since its inception in 1890 including disappearing for decades. That is in the past and now it is recognized as a major cultural organization. Its forays abroad have been severely curtailed, but streaming should offer opportunities for gaining a worldwide audience. It should aim for more than Greeks of the diaspora and having subtitles in English and other languages is a must. Let us hope they will pick up the torch.

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The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was streamed on January 30, 2021 live from the Nikos Kourkoulos stage of the  Ziller Building,  Athens, Greece. For more information visit: www.n-t.gr

MEDEA STREAMED FROM THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF GREECE

By James Karas 

In 431 BC Euripides submitted Medea as part of a trilogy to compete for what we may classify as the ancient Olympics of Drama. His competitors were Sophocles and Euphorion (the son of Aeschylus). Euphorion came in first, Sophocles, second and Euripides third. Medea is the only surviving play from that year’s competition.

Undaunted by the pandemic, the National Theatre of Greece has streamed a production of the play to be viewed around the world live on January 10, 2021. The production may more accurately be described as a recital of the play due to the severe restrictions imposed to fight the virus that is ravaging the world.

The recital is produced by the newly formed Classical Drama Research Theatre of the National Theatre. It is directed by Martha Frintzila who also plays Medea.  There are two other actors (Andreas Konstantinou and Thanos Tokakis) who play all the other roles, including the Chorus of Corinthian Women. There are three musicians on stage (Panagiotis Manouilidis, Vasilis Mantzoukis and Nikos Papaioannou who play various instruments and sing/recite some lines.

A recital has its drawbacks. It may uncharitably be described as boxing with one hand tied behind your back. But there are many recitals especially of operas and a good boxer can do a lot and Frintzila does. There is very little movement during the performance for Covid-19 related reasons.  Medea is seated on a raised area draped in black coverlets and dressed in black. In fact, everything in the small playing area is aggressively black including the ubiquitous rocks strewn on the stage.

The two actors playing all the characters accords with what Athenians saw in 431 BC. The Chorus is the exception, of course. The actors would have worn different masks for each character. In this production there were no masks and at times it was hard to distinguish which character they represented. 

Frintzila takes liberties with the text, as do most directors, but she transposes some of Medea’s lines to the two actors. One of the most dramatic scenes in the play is Medea’s heart wrenching farewell to her children in Episode 5. She is bent on revenge but her resolve almost falters when she is about to send her children to their death. I cannot understand the reason for the transposition of lines in a pivotal scene. Frintzila has a beautiful, resonant voice and she should be heard reciting all her lines. Some of the choral odes are recited by the musicians. 

The black-clad Frintzila with braided hair looks regal and commanding. She recites her lines meticulously and expressively. She is almost static almost throughout the play until the end when she unbraids her hair, sheds some of her clothes and throws her arms in the air and does modified dance movements of triumph.

Konstantinou and Tokakis move around the playing area, lie down and recite most of the lines of the play with some help from the musicians.

The music, with some exceptions, has Eastern tones, almost invariably dramatic, played by 2 double basses, percussion, a guitar, and a keyboard.   

The English title of the production is given as Medea’s Son(g)s with appropriate references to the children and the operatic provenance of the play.  

The streaming was advertised as having English subtitles. It may well be my severely limited technical competence, but I was unable to find them.

Despite the obvious limitations that are not the fault of the director or the cast, this was a highly creditable production of a complex play. We saw Aeschylus’s’ Persians last July streamed from Epidaurus and one hopes that this will become a frequent habit.

At the premiere of Medea at dawn in the spring of 431 BC about 15,000 Athenians saw the play in the Theatre of Dionysus. The streaming was viewed by about 1300. The National Theatre has a world to conquer live or through streaming. We can’t wait.

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Medea by Euripides was streamed live by the National Theatre of Greece on January 10, 2021. https://www.n-t.gr/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appeared first in the newspaper.

A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN MACEDONIA - MEMORIES OF ARMENOHORI

By James Karas

In the north-western corner of Greece, a stone’s throw away from the borders of Albania and North Macedonia, lies the city of Florina. A few kilometers east of Florina lies a village of ancient lineage, incomparable beauty and immeasurable importance. The allotment of these attributes to this village is not based on any unreliable esthetic criteria or mere human judgment. It is based on the simple fact that I was born there. Armenohori is the most beautiful village in Greece.

There is archeological evidence (not based on the fact that I was born there) that the village has been inhabited for at least the past three and a half thousand years. Alexander the Great’s grandmother, Eurydice, was a princess from Lynkestis (the ancient name of the area) and I firmly hold that he went by my village many times on his way to visit his relatives. In this case, faith trumps lack of historical evidence.

I spent about a decade of my childhood in Armenohori, back in the 1950’s and it has left me with memories that are, as Ernest Hemingway said about Paris in the 1920’s, a moveable feast.

In the 1950’s Armenohori was an agrarian village where little had changed since the time Princess Eurydice of Lynkestis (mother of Philip II) left to marry King Amyntas III of Macedon. There was no electricity, no plumbing and nothing mechanical. Water was brought in from a well at the edge of the village in pitchers that resembled those used in the Bronze Age. Although horses were around, the most frequently used source of power was a team of oxen. It was an integrated society that still told stories about the Turks (the area was liberated in 1912) and had lived through world wars, famines and a civil war. The villagers were completely self-sufficient and remembered with pride that while people were dying in the streets of the big cities of Greece during World War II, no one went hungry in our village.

Life in the village was centered around work and religious holidays. Easter was the most important religious event but Christmas provided the most excitement for the children. One great tradition was the kalanda which started with the lighting of bonfires in every neighbourhood (mahala) during the night before Christmas Eve.

Gathering the wood for the bonfires was the job for youngsters and it took weeks of scavenging to find enough (mostly) twigs. Armenohori is in a valley with very few trees around and the houses were heated mostly with coal. Finding wood therefore was no easy task and we had to go out in the country looking for some dead tree or shrub that had not been carried away already. 

ARMENOHORI

There was an open space near the gate of my house and that was where the bonfire was lit around midnight. We piled the wood in my yard near the front gate and got up as soon as our mothers would let us. We carried the wood across the road to the open space and lit the fire. I still remember my mother telling me that I had to get some sleep or she would not let me go.

Naturally, there was fierce competition about which neighbourhood would have the biggest bonfire. That depended on the number of youngsters of the mahala and their industry. My neighbourhood had pride of place when I was small but by the time I was ten, many of the houses had been left empty. The villagers had started leaving for Australia and Canada. The handful of us that were left did our utmost to keep up. One Christmas, we gathered in my yard to carry the wood to the bonfire and discovered that nothing had been left. Youngsters from another mahala had come and carried away every twig.

My mother woke up the other neighbors (my father had already left for Canada) and they all pitched in and in a short time there was enough wood to start a respectable fire.

The tradition was that the youngsters started the fire and the men joined them before dawn. The men brought tsipouro and chestnuts and sat around the fire eating and drinking. The women were at home preparing for Christmas.

Just before dawn all the children from the village gathered at the gate of a house on the edge of the village. This was the starting point for visiting every house in the village where we were given a chestnut or a potato. The chestnuts were usually boiled and sometimes raw; the potatoes (given by poorer families) were always boiled.

The anticipation for the woman in the first house to come out and give us the chestnuts was no less than waiting for a rock star to appear. When she came to the gate, we rushed at her as if she were about to distribute manna to Moses’ followers. From there we followed a well-defined route that allowed us to visit every house in the village.

There was even more excitement when we stopped by the homes of relatives where we could expect a coin in addition to a few extra chestnuts. Five, ten or twenty centimes was the going rate depending on the wealth of your relative. These were the coins with the hole in the middle and, to put it in context, a drachma had one hundred centimes.

It took several hours to visit every house in the village, and you ended up with a satchel full of chestnuts and maybe a couple of drachmas. In short, you were wealthy.

The fat guy with the red suit and the ruddy cheeks also known as Santa Claus had not heard of Armenohori yet and we had not heard of him either. I first saw him on a Christmas card that my sister sent me from Canada, but he made no impression on me and I had no idea that he was supposed to drop in through the chimney on Christmas and bring me presents. The only presents we got were a couple of luxury items such as apples or oranges and they were just handed to us. The Christmas tree had not been invented yet. My version of Santa Claus was of course St. Basil but he wore a halo and looked like all the other scary saints that I saw in church and had to kiss on Sunday.

The traditional Christmas food in the village was pifti, boiled pig’s fat that had formed into a jelly with pig’s feet, knuckles and other such delicacies in it. It was larded with garlic and eaten cold. I could not get enough of the stuff. More than a half a century later, my sisters still make this item of peasant haute cuisine but, alas, my enthusiasm for eating it has been reduced to honoris causa and only a small plate, please.

The bonfires were lit again on New Year’s Eve and the same tradition was followed. St. Basil did arrive at midnight without any of his North American paraphernalia: no deer, no costume and no gifts except for some fruit on the table. On New Year’s Day we had the traditional vasilopita with the coin in it. It was cut in ritual fashion, one piece for each member of the family and one for the house. The pan was twirled around three times and we were then allowed to take the piece that stopped in front of us.

 Starting with Christmas, there is a name day to be celebrated every other day it seems. People named Christos, Stefanos, Vasilios, Fotis, Yannis and others have their saint’s day and an excuse for the men of the village to visit them for a drink and meze. The drink was almost invariably tsipouro which had been made a few weeks earlier in the village still. The women join the men for visits to close relatives but there were no restrictions on the men.

January 6 is the Epiphany and for Armenohori it meant that the whole village went to the river after church service. The priest, my grandfather, conducted a service there and threw a cross in the river. The water was cold and frequently had a thin sheet of ice on top but this did not stop the young men from entering the river in order to catch the cross. My mother would not allow me to get near the water – I was simply too young. The man who caught the cross was considered lucky and he and his friends went around the houses where they were given money. 

Armenohori is still there but my village has disappeared. When I returned as an adult the bridge that was a couple hundred yards from my house and where I used to play had changed completely. The huge steel span across a roaring watercourse of my memory had shrunk into a pot-hole ridden, rusty bridge that could fit only one car at a time. The river was a mere rivulet that in the summer went almost dry. I used to swim and catch fish in it when I was a child. The water buffalos, the sheep and cattle that crowded the muddy streets are gone and finding a parking space has become an issue. The grass was not as green, the sun was not as bright, even the roads had shrunk; all had changed.

The best parts, however, still remain. Like Keats’s Grecian Urn, what Armenohori has left me shall be forever new, forever warm, forever young and still to be enjoyed: it has left me with prime memories of undiminished splendor.

TAMING OF THE SHREW – REVIEW OF STREAMING OF 1988 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas
 
The Stratford Festival of Canada has a fine library of filmed productions that are available in various forms. Some have been seen in cinemas, many on television and are available now free, on demand, on DVD or Blu-ray.
 
The Festival has made numerous production available for home viewing during the pandemic crisis. The 2020 season was cancelled and for many of us it was nothing short of a disaster. What is available for watching at home goes some ways in assuaging the loss.
 
There are a dozen major productions available on demand ranging from King Lear with Colm Feore, The Tempest with Martha henry, Timon of Athens with Joseph Ziegler, Coriolanus with Michael Blake, Macbeth with Ian Lake and others.
 
There are also some gems from older productions, and I watched the 1988 production of The Taming of the Shrew. I saw it 32 years ago and remembered it somewhat but unfortunately most of the details have been taken away by Lethe.
 
One of the interesting things about watching a performance that was filmed so many years ago was seeing so many familiar performers in their youth or remembering some that have died. Ricard Monette directed a top-notch cast, and the result was and remains a brilliant, imaginative, and simply hilarious rendering of the problematic play.
 
Monette sets the play in Italy in the 1950’s. There is liberal and comic use of Italian, Petruchio rides a Vespa, and some actors have “Italian” accents.
 
Monette finds or invents humour continually and many times unexpectedly. He makes short shrift of the Induction with the drunken Christopher Sly (Colm Feore) but what he keeps is funny. For example, the drunk Sly tries to light a cigarette but he cannot see the lighter properly, so he puts his hand over one eye and manages to light is smoke.
 
Colm Feore as Petruchio is agile, blissfully honest about his mercenary attraction to the curst Kate and somehow manages to reduce his apparent cruelty. Goldie Semple as Kate is no doubt abused but she never shows anger or suffering. When Petruchio tells her the sun is the moon and vice versa, she looks at him and smiles the way one would at an idiot making outrageous remarks. She knows him and seems certain that she will triumph.
 
When Kate goes after her sister Bianca (Kim Horsman) the scene becomes a gale of laughter. She whacks Bianca with a pillow and then takes her teddy bear, dismembers it limb by limb and tosses the pieces to her screaming sister. Hilarious.
 
When Lucentio (Henry Czerny) and his servant Tranio (Scott Wentworth) start undressing on stage so they can exchange their identities, as they lower their pants, two nuns come walking across the stage and it is simply funny.
 
Monette invests all the characters with humour including the prissy Gremio (Brian Tree) and the scholarly Hortensio (Geraint Wyn Davies)
 
Monette does not and cannot solve the central problem of the play which is the mistreatment and bullying of a woman into submission. But he covers it up by making Kate an intelligent woman who knows how to put up with her husband’s idiocies. Monette shows us that Kate is attracted to Petruchio after their forced kiss and that is emphasized even during the “Fie, fie” speech of submission at the end. Here Semple emphasizes the word love and she intones the word obey in a way as to produce laughter. Petruchio also shows love and the final kiss ends the play on a positive note.
 
The production was produced and directed for CBC television by Norman Campbell. The video is not quite to HD standards, but it is an intelligently made film of an outstanding production
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The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is available from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival here: https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/AtHome

MADAMA BUTTERFLY – REVIEW OF GREEK NATIONAL OPERA PRODUCTION

 By James Karas

This is a review of Madama Butterfly produced by the Greek National Opera and streamed around the world.

No, that is not a misprint. There is a Greek National Opera (GNO) that is alive and kicking. It has a stunning new home in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre in Athens, and it is has produced and telecast a redoubtable production of Madama Butterfly. More about Greek opera later.

Performances of Madama Butterfly started in October and a recording was made in November just before all events were cancelled due to Covid-19. To their great credit they have decided to stream the recorded performance and remind us of the existence of the Greek National Opera.

Gianluca Terranova and Ermonela Jaho in GNO's Madama Butterfly

The production features Albanian Soprano Ermonela Jaho as Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly), the 15-year-old Japanese geisha who falls hopelessly in love with Lieut. Pinkerton of the United States Navy. She delivers a splendid Cio-Cio San. Not only does she sing with sterling vocal beauty but invests the role with emotional depth that is exhilarating and heart-breaking. We see the happy bride who is in love and will do anything to please her lover. In “Un bel di vedremo” she imagines Pinkerton’s return after having been abandoned three years before. There is longing, playfulness, beautifully imagined happiness, all done superbly by Jaho.

The tragic end is yet to come when she realizes the extent of Pinkerton’s perfidy and she has to give up her son and then her life. A performance full of vocal beauty and pathos.

Italian tenor Gianluca Terranova played Pinkerton as an arrogant, self-centered, amoral, “ugly American” who “marries” a young girl to satisfy his lust. Butterfly is a temporary wife, and he can get rid of her on a month’s notice when he has a real wedding with an American girl. Terranova is fine as a swaggering scoundrel and his voice soars to the high notes of his braggadocio. Director Hugo de Ana has him dressed all too casually in an open shirt and slacks. It does not quite befit a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy who is most likely to wear a dress uniform.

Baritone Dionysios Sourbis as the American Consul Sharpless appears more nervous than sympathetic at the start, but he eventually sings and acts like a mensch when the extent of Butterfly’s tragedy strikes him in the face.

Mezzo-soprano Chrysanthi Spitadi deserves kudos for her performance as Butterfly’s faithful servant Suzuki. She sees and knows the truth and tries to help the besotted Butterfly. A completely sympathetic character done well by Spitadi.

Hugo de Ana gives us a classic, conservative production that has many fine details. For example, Butterfly has an icon, a rosary and wears blue jeans. She has renounced her entire cultural background to become an American wife and please Pinkerton. The final scene is done with deep pathos with Butterfly’s suicide handled with effectiveness and restraint.

De Ana goes overboard with some of his costumes for Butterfly’s visitors. Yamadori (Marios Sarntidis) and Bonzo (Yianni Yannisis) don huge, ridiculous wigs. The rest are mostly tasteful and there are some beautiful Japanese costumes.

The set is fairly Spartan but appropriate with skeletons of structures and backdrops indicating the port and appropriate lighting. There is judicious use of video projections especially during the interminable intermezzo.

Lukas Karytinos conducted the Orchestra of the GNO. Because of Covid-19, the size of the orchestra was reduced but it still sounded excellent. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem with the hall’s acoustics. While the orchestra sounded fine, there was a difference in volume coming from the stage. The singers were never overwhelmed but there were times when it was difficult to hear them. When the main characters sang at full throttle, there was no issue. At other times there was.

Giorgos Koumendakis, the GNO’s Artistic Director, advises that more productions will be televised starting January 2021. That is an incredible step forward for Greek culture.

The Greek National Opera was formed in 1939 and it had its first production on October 25, 1940. In attendance were numerous notables including the Italian Ambassador to Greece, Emanuele Grazzi. He is the one that three days later, in the middle on the night of October 28, 1940 visited Dictator Ioannis Metaxas and delivered Italy’s ultimatum. By the morning, Greece had entered World War II. This production of Madama Butterfly marks the 80^th anniversary of the 1940 opening.

There have been many productions since 1940 but very few have merited international attention. A young girl named Mary Kalogeropoulos sang on its stage during the war. She left Greece and went to Italy and became Maria Callas. There are many world-class singers and musicians, and all should be brought to Athens to make the world notice the GNO.

The GNO already has a large roster of in-house singers, dancers, musicians and behind-the-scenes personnel. It promises to telecast more productions to the world. We wait with anticipation and hope.  ______________

Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini is being streamed by the Greek National Opera. For more information go to:  https://www.nationalopera.gr/ or  https://tv.nationalopera.gr/

 

TOSCA – 1978 MET PRODUCTION STREAMING AND MUCH MORE

Reviewed by James Karas 

Have you heard or seen Tosca recently? How many times? Have you heard Maria Callas in her 1953 recording?

New York’s Metropolitan Opera offered us another chance to see Tosca by streaming its 1978 production. It is part of its daily streaming of productions new and old during the pandemic. It is a redoubtable show by any standard, but you may wish to complain about the pre-digital age video. You should not.

Tosca requires three topnotch singers: a soprano, a tenor and a baritone. With some exaggeration one can state that almost every topnotch soprano, tenor and baritone has recorded Tosca, many more than once, but more about that later.

Maria Callas

The production streamed for us featured Shirley Verrett as Tosca, Luciano Pavarotti as Cavaradossi and Cornell MacNeil as Scarpia. That is star power. Verrett started as a mezzo but had the high notes to sing soprano roles and she does a stunning Tosca. She has a richly toned voice and dramatic talent, and her Tosca has grand emotional depth and strength. She is coy and jealous in the beginning but progresses into a woman who is deeply in love in the duet with Cavaradossi. Her “Vissi d’arte” is almost a prayer and we relish her murder of Scarpia as she glorifies in her stabbing and cries “Muori donato! Muori, Muori!”

Luciano Pavarotti, who dominated the tenor repertoire, made his Met debut in the role of the heroic Cavaradossi. He sings with ease and assurance and his splendid middle range is a delight while the high notes seem to come effortlessly. Much younger then, he is physically adroit and gives us a memorable Cavaradossi.

Cornell MacNeil was one of the foremost baritones of the era and interestingly was directed by another outstanding Scarpia – Tito Gobbi. Gobbi sang Scarpia in perhaps the greatest recording of Tosca, the one with Maria Callas in 1953. MacNeil as Scarpia is made to look like Gobbi did in the role especially in the 1964 production at Covent Garden. That production, with Maria Callas of course, was directed by Franco Zeffirelli part of it is available on YouTube.

Gobbi’s adept production is Zeffirellian in its approach. He wants us to see details of the church in the first act and the room in the Palazzo Farnese in the second act as well as a giving us a good impression of the Castel Sant’ Angelo in the third act.

Zeffirelli produced his version of Tosca at the Met in 1985 and it was revived numerous times for the next 25 years. It starred Hildegard Behrens, Placido Domingo and Cornell MacNeill. It is lavish, opulent, stunning, vocally and physically. Enough said. Just see it.

Zeffirelli’s unforgettable production was replaced by Luc Bondy’s staging in 2009 and it was roundly booed. In 2017 Bondy’s production was replaced by one directed by David McVicar. The latter avoided Bondy’s pitfalls and gave a traditional production laden with many fine details that made it look fresh. It was a success.

Opera listeners come in several categories. Normal people who see and listen to standard repertory productions. They come in various gradations of dedication to the art. In the other extreme are the opera buffs or aficionados. There dedication has no bounds – they are nuts – who want every recording of their favourite opera or singer and argue about her high notes, his wobbly low notes and everything in between.

If you see one production of, say, Tosca, you want to see a couple more, no? Yes. But which one do you choose? In 1978, a critic reviewed recordings of Tosca and listed a mere 24 complete recordings starting in 1920. That is a pittance, and most aficionados would have had no difficulty acquiring most of them. Digital recordings, videos and streaming arrive, and the number of recordings goes through the roof. It seems that there are more than 250 recordings of Tosca today. Trying hearing, seeing or buying most of them!

But mention Tosca and all afficionados will immediately point to the 1953 Callas, Gobbi and Giuseppe di Stefano recording. It is spectacular in every aspect and listening to the enhanced CD has the advantage of letting you imagine the action. As I said almost every soprano has recorded Tosca and you will not go wrong with Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Montserrat Caballe and many others. But like a Muslim going to Mecca, you cannot go though life by not hearing that recording.

There is no shortage of Tosca recordings available on DVDs and on YouTube. In 1976 Gianfranco de Bosio made a notable film with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo and Sherril Milnes in the main roles. It has the advantages of a movie without interfering with the music or the libretto We see the exteriors and interior of Sant’ Andrea Della Valle Church, get a view of the Palazzo Farnese as well as the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The great scenes are a bonus to the stunning performances of the young singers. A couple of hours well spent.

But things do not always work out. If you want to see the “big names” together in a production that stinks, see Tosca in the 2000 production at the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma. The stage looks like something you find in a high school auditorium. It has no real orchestra pit and the musicians are encroaching on the playing area which is tiny. The set is pathetic, what you can see of it when the camera is not relentlessly zeroing in on the faces of the singers.

 It was the 100^th anniversary of the opera and Franco Zeffirelli directed it. He did not have much to work with and crammed whatever he could on the tiny stage. Venezuelan soprano Ines Salazar as Tosca sang forcefully and well but she looked like she just stepped out of the shower and had no time to do her hair. Luciano Pavarotti sang Cavaradossi and wowed the audience. They gave him thunderous applause and Juan Pons was Scarpa. Fine singing but simply awful production values.

Covid-19 is making life hell but a few hours with Tosca, Maria Callas and a few others like her and life will seem a lot better.

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James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appeared first in the newspaper