Metropolitan Opera – Ades’s The Exterminating Angel. November 21, 2017.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.  Balcony (Seat B115, $92.50).

Story.  The setting is a mansion in a large city suggestive of Mexico City during the 1960s.  Strange things happen at a dinner party hosted by Lucia and Edmundo Nobile.  First the butler and two maids escape, along with some other servants.  The whole plot is surreal, with a dancing bear and lambs (which get slaughtered).  Other things that happen (which may or may not be important) include: Blanca performing at the piano, lovers Eduardo and Beatriz retreat to a private room but eventually commit suicide, there is no water so the guests break a pipe, a hand that wanders around on stage, mobs try to storm the house, soldiers appear to stop them.  During all these events the guests try but fail to leave the mansion, and are forced to stay the night.  They eventually feel it is necessary to sacrifice the host but stop because they realize they are back in the same places they were the night before.  They manage to cross the threshold, but something bad happens.

Conductor – Thomas Ades. The Hosts: Edmundo de Nobile – Joseph Kaiser, Lucia – Amanda Echalaz; Their Guests – Leticia – Audrey Luna, Leonara – Alice Coote, Silvia de Avila – Sally Matthews, Francisco de Avila – Iestyn Davies, Blanca Delgado – Christine Rice, Alberto Roc – Rod Gilfry, Beatriz – Sophie Bevan, Eduardo – David Portillo, Raul Yebenes – Frederic Antoun, Colonel Alvaro Gomez – David Adam Moore, Senor Russell – Kevin Burdette, Doctor Carlos Conde – Sir John Tomlinson; The Staff: Julio – Christian van Horn, Lucas – John Irvin, Enrique – Ian Koziara, Pablo – Paul Corona, Meni – Mary Dunleavy, Camila – Catherine Cooke, Servants – Andrea Coleman & Marc Persing.  Outside the House: Padre Sanson – Jeff Mattsey, Yoli – Lucas Mann.

The actual synopsis is over two pages long.  I read it several times and still couldn’t make any sense of it.  The opera is based on Luis Bunuel’s “classic” 1962 film of the same name.  The lady sitting next to us told us she watched the movie before this performance, and that the opera hewed close to the plot of the movie.

My overall conclusion was: a plot I don’t get, music I don’t get, and – with seats in the balcony – roles I can’t tell apart.  None of that probably mattered.  I would draw a parallel with a Dali painting.  If you look at it once, you wonder what he is trying to say.  You look at it for a long time, you begine to find out what the “hidden objects” are in the painting, but there is no hope of trying to make sense out of it.  The Playbill does contain this statement about the film: “… defies attempts at systematic analysis and even seems to denounce the need for answers as one of society’s many pathologies.”  I can try to sound deep and link all this to post-modernism, but it would be a waste of time.

To me the most unfortunate part is the score seems to demand a lot from the musicians.  It goes without saying that the music is atonal, but what was unexpected was how high the voices had to reach.  Of course the singers could be doing random notes and few in the audience would notice.  The applause was quite enthusiastic, and the house was quite full.

I had a prior encounter with Ades’s music – Three Studies from Couperin.  I liked it, per my blog. I am not sure I would recommend this opera to anyone, but not quite ready to discourage someone from going.

 There are 15 solo roles in this opera.

Thomas Ades taking a bow.

The New York Times review, however, is glowing, going so far as to say “if you go to a single production this season, make it this one.”  Reading it did jog my memory: the chandeliers in the auditorium were used as part of the set; and Audrey Luna was the coloratura soprano.  There is another New York Times article contains a discussion on the opera.

New York Philharmonic – Alan Gilbert, conductor; Joshua Bell, violin; Kelly O-Connor, mezzo-soprano. October 31, 2017.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat X103, $66.25).

Program – Bernstein’s Philharmonic, A Centennial Festival

Boundless (Homage to L.B.) by Roukens (b. 1982).

Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for Violin, String Orchestra, Harp, and Percussion (1953-54) by Berstein (1918-1990).

Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah (1942) by Bernstein.

We have been in the Boston area since mid-October.  I needed to take care of a few things back home and took advantage of the reduced-price offer for this concert.  This is a multi-week event celebrating Bernstein’s centennial (one could argue the celebration should be held next year, as Bernstein was born in 1918.)  We hadn’t planned on any of these concerts, our plans to be out of town was one factor, but my general lack of interest in Bernstein’s music was another.  This concert – or rather the Program Notes – certainly added quite a bit to my knowledge of Bernstein as a composer.

The other thing I didn’t expect was Gilbert was to be the conductor.  He came out to tremendous applause from the audience.  He asked the audience to observe a moment of silence for the victims of the morning’s terrorist attack.

Joey Roukens is a young Dutch composer who wrote this piece on commission from the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and its premiere was conducted by Gilbert.  The piece consists of three movements - manically, glacially, propulsively – played without break.  The changes in tempo was so obvious that not much guesswork was required.  Between the annotator’s notes and the “composer’s words” segment one could get a pretty good picture of what Roukens is trying to say.  To me the first movement has a strong dose of jazz, the second reasonably successfully evoked Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Adagietto, and the last movement was a free for all.  The composition probably is more nuanced than that, but the highest compliment I can give it would be that it can be passed off as a Bernstein piece to folks that are not Bernstein scholars.

Also, the piece was designed as a companion piece to the Serenade, with very similar instrumentation.  There are a few major differences though: no solo violin, a larger set of percussion instruments, and the use of a keyboard.

The Serenade was modeled after Plato’s Symposium with dialogs from different characters: (i) Phaedrus: Pausanias (Lento – Allegro marcato); (ii) Aristophanes (Allegretto); (iii) Eryximachus (Presto); (iv) Agathon (Adagio); and (v) Socrates: Alcibiades (Molto tenuto – Allegro molto vivace – Presto vivace).  The work was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in memory of the deceased conductor.  There is a lot of discussion whether Bernstein tried to fit his music into the titles, or the inspiration did come of the speeches made by the individuals.  Since I also know little about Plato, I didn’t try to find out which argument was correct.

I remember having trouble with Joshua Bell’s playing on several occasions, most on intonation issues with familiar pieces. Today I had no reservations at all that he did a great job.  The piece is not overtly difficult, but calls for many double stops and high notes.  Bell did them well.  There was a movement (iv, I believe) that was essentially a duet with the cello, and Bell went to Carter Brey to thank him at the end, well and good.  I noticed that he ignored Huang, wonder if that was an oversight or on purpose.

Carter Brey being acknowledged at the conclusion of Bernstein's Serenade. 

Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 is based loosely on the story of Jeremiah and his Lamentations.  Indeed the first sketches Bernstein made was a “lamentation” for soprano and orchestra while he was still at Harvard.  When the work was premiered, Bernstein provided some notes for it.  “Prophecy” is to parallel the intensity of the prophet’s pleas with his people, “profanation” is a scherzo describing the destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people, and “lamentation,” set to Hebrew poetic text, is a more literary conception of the cry of Jeremiah.

The Playbill says the piece lasts about 27 minutes; it lasted perhaps 22.  I didn’t hear a break between the first and second movements, and was wondering why the soloist would come out for the second movement – and I was sure I didn’t doze off.  O’Connor generally did well, although the full orchestra drowned her out on occasion.

Kelly O'Connor taking a bow.

Most people who know anything about Bernstein know he shot onto the conducting scene by substituting for Bruno Walter on short notice in a nationally broadcast concert.  So people paid a lot of attention when this Symphony was premiered a couple of months later, with the Pittsburgh Symphony, in its hometown.  The performance got uniformly great review, and Bernstein became an instant composing conductor (or the other way around, as Salonen often debates.)

I guess the life lesson here is one should always try to be well prepared as there is no telling what opportunities would come along.

Attendance at this concert (last of five in this series) was quite good; I am sure the discount helped.  The people next to me didn’t stay for the second half, so I moved one over, which gave me an excellent view of the stage.

The New YorkTimes reviewer loved the concert.  The review also contains some useful details of the pieces.

I took the train in.  The concert ended early enough that I made the 9:38 pm train back, so I was home a little after 11 pm.