tiggymalvern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiggymalvern) wrote2007-03-11 10:04 am
tiggymalvern) wrote2007-03-11 10:04 am
Giulio Cesare, aka The Rise of the Pinniped
Last night, I went to see Seattle Opera's production of Handel's Julius Caesar with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imre_nico and Mr Nico. The results I think it's fair to describe as, um, mixed.
It started off rather amusingly, if perhaps not entertaining in quite the way the choreographer intended, with a dancing battle scene between Roman and Egyptian soldiers during the overture. The problem being it was a little difficult to tell from the ballet-lite style whether we were watching a battle or a slash take on opera, which induced in us inappropriate fits of the giggles.
But things really started to go wrong with the entrance of Caesar. I've been to a lot of opera and I'm used to Caesar being sung by a woman, that's standard. Of course, it helps if the woman isn't short, fat, heavily busted and wearing a gold outfit that accentuates all of the above. But little of that is precisely Ewa Podles' fault and I could have coped if it weren't for the rest of it.
Notes to the casting director:
1) Caesar should not be a contralto trying to sing a mezzo role.
2) Caesar should absolutely, definitely not, above all, look and sound exactly like a sea lion honking whenever the coloratura comes along. Because this is Handel, and the coloratura comes along quite a lot.
The woman has a very powerful voice, and this is good for Caesar, yes. When she was singing in the contralto range and there wasn't any coloratura, she actually had quite a good voice - the slow, mournful aria of the defeated Caesar, she performed well. This in no way compensated for the rest of it. It doesn't matter how funereally the conductor paces the light, bouncing, beautiful hunting aria of act I that is the signature aria of the entire opera, it still won't disguise the fact that Caesar flat out can't sing coloratura. Sorry. When the choreographer has time to insert another Roman/Egyptian erotic 'battle' between the first and second verses of that aria, it might be a tip-off that it needs to move a little faster. It couldn't have been any worse attacked at speed.
This morning I've dug up a couple of reviews from the net on our Caesar. From The Opera Critic - "Podles has a passagio you could throw a theorbo through - she often sounded like two people singing at once, one of them a portly spinto tenor who burst out at Handel's downward finishes. Another distraction was her nearly amphibious breathing technique during Handel's tortuous runs - but the sound of those runs was remarkable." This one boggles me - how can you point out perfectly correctly that Caesar gulps like a frog through Handel's beautiful music, but then try and pretend she was a valid singer of it? Though maybe I'm reading it incorrectly - I'd agree myself that the sound of those runs was indeed 'remarkable', I just wouldn't be implying anything positive by it....
From The Oregonian - "At times, the strain showed. She gulped breaths, shook with effort and stamped her feet, taming the notes like a fighter. The voice itself raises questions: She's a mezzo. No, a contralto. No, a baritone. Her sound wasn't always pretty, but it was compelling" But the whole point of baroque is to be musically beautiful. If you can't manage that, don't torture Handel, go away and sing some Wagner instead. I'm guessing George Frideric didn't cast the loudest croaking frog he could find for his title role.
Anyway, Caesar aside, there were some really nice aspects to the performance. Kristine Jepson, the mezzo who sang Sesto, has a truly beautiful voice, lyrical and expressive and pure, and frankly I would have ditched Podles out of the airlock her elevated heel spaceboots suggested, and had Jepson sing Caesar. Maybe she doesn't have the true power and vocal stamina for it, can't tell from Sesto's role, but she definitely couldn't have sounded worse.
Arthur Woodley as Achilla was another great voice, and a fun actor with it, and Brian Asawa the countertenor did well despite some rather surprising outfits as Ptolemy. Alexandra Deshorties had a slightly shrill quality to her voice in places, and took odd leaps at some of the notes, but her Cleopatra was sassy, confident, devious and fun, which makes up for quite a lot. I think I liked her performance a little more thanimre_nico did.
The set design was modern and stylised and obviously very cheap, and somebody had scribbled all over it with magic marker, but with some clever use of lighting and fabric backdrops, it worked. Somebody obviously put a lot of thought into how to spend money effectively. There was a strong directorial choice at the end of act I, with a very strongly implied rape of Cornelia by Achilla as she was held down by his minions. Sadly, the power of this was damped down rather when it was repeated later in the opera, this time Ptolemy macking on his tied-down sister in a retch-inducing overdose of the Knives-style Seriously Creepy Brother vibes, and it became clear that the director was simply indulging a personal fetish.
So, a mixed evening of operatic entertainment, though at least the bad bits tended to be gigglingly entertainging rather than simply dull. But the worst thing about the event by far was that the Nicos and I seemed to be the extreme minority staring in bulging-eyed horror whenever Caesar opened her mouth to assault and massacre another of Handel's glorious arias. Most of the opera house occupants were applauding with great enthusiasm and yelling 'Brava' and making the people of Seattle look like the most ignorant and least demanding opera-goers in existence. How many of those people had ever seen a performance of Giulio Cesare before? Probably not many, since Handel's only very recently become a big part of the repertoire in the US - Seattle has only ever staged one Handel opera before this one. But I'm left with the impression that almost none of them had ever listened to a recording of the opera either, because nobody who's heard Caesar's role sung properly could have tolerated Ewa Podles. It's the one and only time in my life I've flat-out refused to applaud a singer when they came out to take their bow.
And now the SO and I are about to go on a ranger-led snowshoe-ing trip. We've never tried snowshoe-ing before, and we booked it 6 weeks ago, because they fill up that far in advance. And it's windy and raining - this looks like fun!
imre_nico and Mr Nico. The results I think it's fair to describe as, um, mixed.It started off rather amusingly, if perhaps not entertaining in quite the way the choreographer intended, with a dancing battle scene between Roman and Egyptian soldiers during the overture. The problem being it was a little difficult to tell from the ballet-lite style whether we were watching a battle or a slash take on opera, which induced in us inappropriate fits of the giggles.
But things really started to go wrong with the entrance of Caesar. I've been to a lot of opera and I'm used to Caesar being sung by a woman, that's standard. Of course, it helps if the woman isn't short, fat, heavily busted and wearing a gold outfit that accentuates all of the above. But little of that is precisely Ewa Podles' fault and I could have coped if it weren't for the rest of it.
Notes to the casting director:
1) Caesar should not be a contralto trying to sing a mezzo role.
2) Caesar should absolutely, definitely not, above all, look and sound exactly like a sea lion honking whenever the coloratura comes along. Because this is Handel, and the coloratura comes along quite a lot.
The woman has a very powerful voice, and this is good for Caesar, yes. When she was singing in the contralto range and there wasn't any coloratura, she actually had quite a good voice - the slow, mournful aria of the defeated Caesar, she performed well. This in no way compensated for the rest of it. It doesn't matter how funereally the conductor paces the light, bouncing, beautiful hunting aria of act I that is the signature aria of the entire opera, it still won't disguise the fact that Caesar flat out can't sing coloratura. Sorry. When the choreographer has time to insert another Roman/Egyptian erotic 'battle' between the first and second verses of that aria, it might be a tip-off that it needs to move a little faster. It couldn't have been any worse attacked at speed.
This morning I've dug up a couple of reviews from the net on our Caesar. From The Opera Critic - "Podles has a passagio you could throw a theorbo through - she often sounded like two people singing at once, one of them a portly spinto tenor who burst out at Handel's downward finishes. Another distraction was her nearly amphibious breathing technique during Handel's tortuous runs - but the sound of those runs was remarkable." This one boggles me - how can you point out perfectly correctly that Caesar gulps like a frog through Handel's beautiful music, but then try and pretend she was a valid singer of it? Though maybe I'm reading it incorrectly - I'd agree myself that the sound of those runs was indeed 'remarkable', I just wouldn't be implying anything positive by it....
From The Oregonian - "At times, the strain showed. She gulped breaths, shook with effort and stamped her feet, taming the notes like a fighter. The voice itself raises questions: She's a mezzo. No, a contralto. No, a baritone. Her sound wasn't always pretty, but it was compelling" But the whole point of baroque is to be musically beautiful. If you can't manage that, don't torture Handel, go away and sing some Wagner instead. I'm guessing George Frideric didn't cast the loudest croaking frog he could find for his title role.
Anyway, Caesar aside, there were some really nice aspects to the performance. Kristine Jepson, the mezzo who sang Sesto, has a truly beautiful voice, lyrical and expressive and pure, and frankly I would have ditched Podles out of the airlock her elevated heel spaceboots suggested, and had Jepson sing Caesar. Maybe she doesn't have the true power and vocal stamina for it, can't tell from Sesto's role, but she definitely couldn't have sounded worse.
Arthur Woodley as Achilla was another great voice, and a fun actor with it, and Brian Asawa the countertenor did well despite some rather surprising outfits as Ptolemy. Alexandra Deshorties had a slightly shrill quality to her voice in places, and took odd leaps at some of the notes, but her Cleopatra was sassy, confident, devious and fun, which makes up for quite a lot. I think I liked her performance a little more than
imre_nico did.The set design was modern and stylised and obviously very cheap, and somebody had scribbled all over it with magic marker, but with some clever use of lighting and fabric backdrops, it worked. Somebody obviously put a lot of thought into how to spend money effectively. There was a strong directorial choice at the end of act I, with a very strongly implied rape of Cornelia by Achilla as she was held down by his minions. Sadly, the power of this was damped down rather when it was repeated later in the opera, this time Ptolemy macking on his tied-down sister in a retch-inducing overdose of the Knives-style Seriously Creepy Brother vibes, and it became clear that the director was simply indulging a personal fetish.
So, a mixed evening of operatic entertainment, though at least the bad bits tended to be gigglingly entertainging rather than simply dull. But the worst thing about the event by far was that the Nicos and I seemed to be the extreme minority staring in bulging-eyed horror whenever Caesar opened her mouth to assault and massacre another of Handel's glorious arias. Most of the opera house occupants were applauding with great enthusiasm and yelling 'Brava' and making the people of Seattle look like the most ignorant and least demanding opera-goers in existence. How many of those people had ever seen a performance of Giulio Cesare before? Probably not many, since Handel's only very recently become a big part of the repertoire in the US - Seattle has only ever staged one Handel opera before this one. But I'm left with the impression that almost none of them had ever listened to a recording of the opera either, because nobody who's heard Caesar's role sung properly could have tolerated Ewa Podles. It's the one and only time in my life I've flat-out refused to applaud a singer when they came out to take their bow.
And now the SO and I are about to go on a ranger-led snowshoe-ing trip. We've never tried snowshoe-ing before, and we booked it 6 weeks ago, because they fill up that far in advance. And it's windy and raining - this looks like fun!