Andrew Patner: The View from Here

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'new' production of 'La bohème' -- My Sun-Times review

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Tuesday January 22, 2013 5:14PM CST

Lyric’s ‘new’ ‘La boheme’ charming but ordinary

BY ANDREW PATNER

Rodolfo, portrayed by Dimitri Pittas, and Mimi, portrayed by Ana María Martínez, during a performance of Puccini's La Boheme at the Civic Opera House in Chicago, Ill., on Friday, January 18, 2013. | Andrew A. Nelles~Sun-Times Media

‘La Boheme’

RECOMMENDED

 Through Feb. 27;
second cast, March 9-28

 Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker

 Tickets, $34-$256

 (312) 322-2244; lyricopera.org

It’s the fail-safe opera, one that requires no genius in the pit, no innovative direction, no great stars onstage. No matter how many times we’ve seen it, we know that in the last minutes of Puccini’s “La boheme,” as Mimi is about to die or as Rodolfo is shielded from her death, we’re going to cry and not much else that has happened is going to matter in retrospect.

So it was when “La boheme,” in a new production replacing Lyric’s relic from 1972, opened Monday night at the Civic Opera House. However, this staging is a 1996 import from San Francisco (when that company was using a Broadway-size theater during earthquake-proofing of its home). Michael Yeargan’s winning sets are “new” but still wholly traditional. What else is one supposed to do — what else should one do? — with “Boheme”?

In the pit, Lyric has a passionate and serious conductor, Emmanuel Villaume, who lets the score be as sentimental as it is, but not more so, and who brings out the genius of craftsmanship and tunefulness that have kept this work alive for almost 120 years.

The Metropolitan Opera staff director with a highly operatic-sounding name, Louisa Muller, animates Mark Lamos’ original concept and has a sense of how to make the performers playing these young bohemians actually seem like young bohemians. Let’s hope her unneeded fussiness in the last scene can be toned down or dropped altogether.

Lyric is offering a double cast. Mega-stars Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja take over the lead roles for six March performances. The supporting cast, which will remain the same, is charming and strong. And the leads for this January-February run have their merits.

As Mimi, soprano Ana María Martínez at first seems too mature for her part, but this could be due to Walter Mahoney’s period-true mid-19th-century costumes. Her voice and manner open up in Acts 3 and 4. Her “Donde lieta usci,” proposing that she and Rodolfo part without rancor, was very fine, and her death scene touching. In his Lyric debut, tenor Dimitri Pittas simply does not have the power, range or magnetism for Rodolfo’s solo numbers, but he is a caring partner as a singer and character.

Baritone Lucas Meacham is a natural Marcello vocally and theatrically. While local favorite Elizabeth Futral does not have the megaphone that Musetta’s vocal part requires, her stage performance is convincing throughout, and these two North Carolina natives make an excellent “second couple.”

Italian bass Andrea Silvestrelli is luxury casting as the philosopher Colline in the quartet of young garrett-dwelling men. Ryan Center baritone Joseph Lim shows potential and a winning stage presence as Schaunard. Veteran Lyric character bass-baritone Dale Travis handles Benoit the landlord and Alcindoro, Musetta’s sugar daddy, with his customary insight.

Duane Schuler’s wholly atmospheric lighting, guest chorus master Ian Robertson (also of San Francisco), the Chicago Children’s Choir and their director Josephine Lee round out the pleasant cast. Mimi always proposed waiting for spring as her life philosophy. You’ll cry when she dies here. Perhaps some fireworks will be added to the production in March.

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Riccardo Muti surgery goes smoothly, CSO says - My Chicago Sun-Times update

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Monday January 21, 2013 3:32PM CST

Riccardo Muti surgery goes smoothly, CSO says

 

Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti had surgery without complications Monday morning in his native Italy for an inguinal hernia, according to a CSO statement.

A CSO spokeswoman said Monday afternoon that Muti’s surgery “went smoothly and he is already resting comfortably.” She said the conductor, 71, is scheduled to return to his home in Ravenna on Tuesday.

The CSO had announced last week that the hernia and surgery would cause Muti to withdraw from the CSO’s impending two-week, six-city tour of Far East Asia. Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä will fill in as conductor at Friday and Saturday concerts in Taipei, Taiwan. Veteran conductor Lorin Maazel was previously announced to lead concerts in Hong Kong, three cities in Mainland China, and in Seoul, South Korea.

-- Andrew Patner

 

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Osmo Vänskä will replace Riccardo Muti for Chicago Symphony Orchestra Taipei dates; Vengerov, Chen solo in added concertos

 

For Immediate Release January 19, 2013

OSMO VÄNSKÄ TO REPLACE MUSIC DIRECTOR RICCARDO MUTI IN CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S UPCOMING PERFORMANCES IN TAIWAN Violinists Maxim Vengerov and CSO Concertmaster Robert Chen Added as Soloists

CHICAGO—The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) announced today that Osmo Vänskä (music director, Minnesota Orchestra) will conduct the CSO in its upcoming performances in Taipei, Taiwan, on January 25 and 26. CSO Concertmaster Robert Chen appears as soloist on the January 25 concert in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The remainder of the program is Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, K.551 (Jupiter) and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. Violinist Maxim Vengerov joins the CSO as soloist for the January 26 program, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Also featured on that performance is Verdi’s Overture to I vespri siciliani and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). The tour performance schedule remains the same, with subsequent concerts to be led by Lorin Maazel in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Seoul. As previously announced, Maestro Muti is unavailable for this tour due to upcoming surgery required to correct an inguinal hernia. Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2000 and has returned to conduct works by Beethoven, Brahms and, notably, the music of his fellow countryman Jean Sibelius. In 2009, he led the CSO in Sibelius's Fifth Symphony as part of the orchestra's acclaimed Beyond the Score series. Most recently, he led the CSO in an all-Brahms program in October 2012. Osmo Vänskä has been music director of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003; the first recording in their complete Sibelius symphonies series was recently released on CD. Robert Chen, appointed concertmaster in 1999, first appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in June 2000, in Saint-Saëns’s The Muse and the Poet with Yo-Yo Ma, and Christoph Eschenbach conducting. He made his subscription concert debut as soloist at Orchestra Hall in November and December 2000, in Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto with Daniel Barenboim conducting. Chen most recently appeared as soloist at the Ravinia Festival in July 2011 in Brahms’s Violin Concerto with James Conlon conducting. He most recently appeared as soloist on subscription concerts at Orchestra Hall in December 2012 in Barber’s Violin Concerto with Vasily Petrenko conducting.

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Riccardo Muti drops out of the CSO’s upcoming Asia tour -- Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Thursday January 17, 2013 10:26PM CST

Riccardo Muti drops out of the CSO’s upcoming Asia tour

Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti, who canceled his winter residency due to the flu, will not be able to lead the CSO on its upcoming tour of Asia, the CSO Association announced Thursday night.

Substituting for Muti on the two-week tour, which begins Jan. 25 in Taipei, Taiwan, will be Lorin Maazel, music director of the Munich Philharmonic, who will lead CSO concerts in Hong Kong, China and Korea. The conductor for dates in Taiwan will be announced later this weekend.

Muti was forced to drop out of the tour when his doctors in Italy diagnosed him with an inguinal hernia, which requires immediate surgical treatment. To delay the surgery until after the tour could lead to complications, his doctors told him.

“I feel very sad, frustrated and upset to leave my wonderful musicians and audiences in Chicago and on this very important tour that I was expecting with great anticipation,” Muti said in a statement. “I look forward to returning to Chicago in April when we can once again make beautiful music together.”

Suffering from the flu, Muti flew home to Italy last week but hoped to recover in time to lead the CSO on tour. The hernia was discovered when he sought medical treatment in Italy.

“The thoughts and good wishes of the entire CSO family are with our beloved Maestro Muti as he undergoes surgery,” said CSO president Deborah Rutter in a statement. “Naturally, we are disappointed that he was not able to lead the orchestra here in Chicago and will be unable to join us on our tour beginning next week. However, we completely understand that this is a health situation beyond his control and eagerly await his return to Chicago in April.”

This development marks the latest in a series of health-related cancellations for Muti, 71, since he became the CSO’s music director in the fall of 2010.

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'The Second City Guide to the Opera' at Lyric Opera of Chicago -- My Sun-Times review

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Sunday January 6, 2013 5:44PM CST

Lyric Opera, Second City make for a mirthful mix

BY ANDREW PATNER

The intense singing of a co-worker (Renee Fleming) ruins the retirement party of a Kinko's manager (Patrick Stewart) in a sketch from "The Second City Guide to the Opera." | Todd Rosenberg Photography

 

 

Did you hear the one about the international grand opera company that woke up one day to realize that the world’s greatest improvisational comedy troupe has been located just up the street for 53 years?

Sometimes it takes outsiders or newcomers to tell locals the obvious. But when diva soprano Renée Fleming and her husband paid their first visit to The Second City in fall 2011, the lightbulb went off quickly. Proving again her value not only as a performer but as creative consultant and a board vice president at Lyric Opera of Chicago, La Fleming immediately called Anthony Freud, the Brit who literally had just started as Lyric’s first non-Chicagoan general director.

“We have to do something with them,” the singer/impresaria said. “We can tap a new audience for opera and, if all goes well, we can laugh our heads off!” Freud agreed and found he wasn’t the only one wondering why this collaboration had never happened before. A call went to Kelly Leonard, longtime head of many of the comedy hub’s Chicago operations, and the project began.

And after more than a year of planning, writing, improvising and stagework between the two companies, “The Second City Guide to the Opera” played Saturday night at the Civic Opera House to a highly mirthful sold-out crowd of 3,700-plus. It was a great night for Lyric and its Freud-launched Lyric Unlimited audience and civic development project. And for Second City, too, with a reminder of just how funny the group can be when it’s not afraid to go back to its roots in brainy, cultural parody as well as its current embrace of wiseacre straphanger and scatological humor.

Six Second Citizens, none from the mainstage but all excellent (and one doubling as a writer), two bright-voiced singers from Lyric’s Ryan Center training program, a Second City resident director, its e.t.c. stage musical director, five additional musicians and a writer from the company’s corporate comedy division were joined by Fleming herself as co-host with her pal “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star and stage vet Patrick Stewart.

Two hourlong sets of ten sketches surrounded an intermission, with each section getting its own explanatory song, “It’s Called the Overture,” “Intermission” and “Finale,” which took on both the concept of opera organization (“If this is Verdi, we all die/If this is Wagner, we all die but you don’t care”) and audience logistics (“It’s intermission? I thought it was over!” and planning an interval trip to one of the house’s limited number of washrooms).

 

 

There were no sacred cows, especially not Lyric’s upper-end and front-rows-occupying financial supporters. An impish, black-tied Stewart explained that opera is “where beauty is created for old people to sleep through.” And an improvised Shakespeare skit in the second half apparently inadvertently took the names and occupations of local head of PNC Bank Joseph Gregoire, his wife Claire and seat-companion socialite and philanthropist Renee Crown as meat and title for a wicked sendup of the indifference of bankers to today’s realities.

Fleming skewered herself in a routine about everybody’s least favorite Kinko’s “co-worker” sabotaging a retirement party for the store manager (Stewart) with her insistence on singing “all operalike” and in another over-the-top scene of a master class conducted by the fearless Beth Melewski, who also later stripped, back to camera, for a befuddled backstage Stewart unaware that opera performers have quite healthy physical appetites.

Director Billy Bungeroth and actor-writer Timothy Sniffen, writer Kate James and composer-arranger Jesse Case worked strong variations on Second City standbys such as the job interview sketch, here with an underemployed six-member Lyric chorus applying in unison to work for the price of one clerk. Or an OkCupid blind date unfurling to expose two opera fanatics who really probably are made for each other and for watching all 16 hours of the Ring Cycle in one performance.

Marvelously off-kilter Ross Bryant delivered 12-tone composition revolutionary Arnold Schoenberg as an in-your-face 1930s refugee stand-up comedian in a routine that would have had the late Severn Darden smiling. The deceptively named Joey Bland, in addition to rattling off the improvised Shakespeare as if the Avon flowed through his veins, paired with Ryan Center mezzo J’nai Bridges for a musical encounter between a staunchly monolingual American backpacker and an Italian aria-spinning, and costumed, maiden. Carisa Barreca was a ditzy blonde soprano whose ill-chosen snatches from a Russian opera nearly send a Russian man stricken on the street to his grave. (“But how do these help him?” “Oh, it’s a Russian opera: Help never comes.”)

On-target contributions came as well from Second City’s Tawny Newsome, game Ryan Center tenor Bernard Holcomb, Lyric music director Andrew Davis (on audiotape with some pre-performance announcement zingers), and on video, two relationship therapist sessions with bohemians Mimi and Rodolfo and gingerbread-shunning Hansel and Gretel.

 

 

 

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