Opera review: Placido Domingo in L.A. Opera's 'Simon Boccanegra'

Perhaps to establish their bona fides, critics reviewing Plácido Domingo in the title role of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” tend to point out that Domingo is not a baritone, as the role calls for. While it’s true that Domingo first positioned himself as a baritone, that was a long time ago, and he very quickly moved up to tenor roles, in which he established a stellar reputation.

In recent years, however, the 71-year-old, who is also general director of Los Angeles Opera, has transposed some tenor roles downward, and Boccanegra seems to sit reasonably comfortably in his range.

None of these issues mattered much Saturday to an enthusiastic audience when Domingo starred in Verdi’s opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Baritone, schmaritone: Domingo was a commanding vocal and dramatic presence, and especially touching in his death scene.

PHOTOS: Los Angeles Opera's "Simon Boccanegra" with Plácido Domingo

To be sure, his voice has contracted in dimension and has acquired some sandpaper, but there was still plenty of power and expression when needed. One could argue that Domingo’s dramatic capabilities have actually grown. In addition to his death scene, one thinks of Boccanegra’s meditations on power, his deep-felt efforts to heal the city's and country’s social and political divisions, and especially his restraint in the touching scene in which he discovers his long-lost daughter, Amelia.

“Simon Boccanegra” is a strange child in the Verdi canon. It flopped when it premiered in 1857, but it took on new life when the composer revised it in 1881, with the essential input of Arrigo Boito, who created the amazing Council Scene in Act 1. Even so, it hasn’t exactly become an audience favorite, perhaps because of the low, dark vocal coloring — there is only one female principal role — and the gloom and improbability of the plot. It usually takes someone with the stature of Domingo to bring it to the stage.

Opera review: 'Maria de Buenos Aires' by Long Beach Opera

How much depth can you expect to find in a tango? As it turns out, there’s far more than you think. That revelation came during Long Beach Opera’s stunning new production of Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer’s “Maria de Buenos Aires,” which opened Sunday at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro.

Long Beach ventured “Maria” once before, in 2004, in a production directed by John Lloyd Davies. Davies’ approach was predictable: You hear the term “tango opera,” so you set the action in a low-down cabaret. Not much depth there, but a lot of clichés.

Long Beach Opera general director Andreas Mitisek jettisoned that version and set the piece during the 1976-83 “Dirty War” in Argentina, when an estimated 30,000 people were abducted, tortured, murdered or simply disappeared.

PHOTOS: "Maria de Buenos Aires"

Mitisek boiled down Ferrer’s surrealistic text, combining characters to create three singing or speaking parts, a menacing silent figure, and using the Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre to take on various dancing and non-dancing roles. Did the music bear the weight of this story? Absolutely. The result is a 70-minute tour de force.

In so far as it can be parsed, the libretto tells the story of a woman “born on a day when God was drunk” who grows up to inspire both great love and hate, and who is eventually killed by thieves and pimps. She is the incarnation of tango itself, and her story traces the dance’s emergence from the bars and brothels of the Buenos Aires waterfront.

Music review: Susan Graham at the Valley Performing Arts Center

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham inhabited many fascinating women, from the Virgin Mary to Lady Macbeth, in her splendid recital Wednesday at the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge. She drew all vividly and credibly, singing with vocal poise and silvery tone, and interpreting the texts with detailed, knowing emphasis.

But Graham got most personal in Ben Moore’s “Sexy Lady.” Composed for her, this jazzy song, with witty wordplay and musical quotations, bemoans the cross-dressing roles that mezzos such as Graham often take on. (Who would have expected anyone to rhyme “David Daniels” with “cocker spaniel”?) Even the role Jake Heggie wrote for her, she joked from the stage, Sister Helen Prejean in the opera “Dead Man Walking,” was “a sexless nun.”

Well, she wants the world to know that there’s lots of fire within.

But first came the “good girls” — the Virgin, Ophelia and Goethe’s Mignon in settings by six different composers, all presented in a svelte white gown. She sang Purcell’s “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” with restrained grace. Berlioz’s delicate “La Mort d’Ophélie” was poignant. The settings of Mignon by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Duparc and Wolf grew increasingly dramatic and expansive.

Music review: Audra McDonald sings at Segerstrom Concert Hall

Four-time Tony Award-winner Audra McDonald is amazing. She becomes the character of every song she sings. Yet she slips easily in and out of character to charm with personal stories. So maybe there were 20 different McDonalds when she sang American songs from 1922 to the present, Saturday at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.

It wasn’t all fun and games, though. At least four songs struck so deeply at the heart that it was hard to hold back sobs.

McDonald has a rich, honeyed voice with a top extension that has operatic heft. She used the “big” voice judiciously for climaxes, but changed her delivery for youthful innocence, fear of betrayal, or sassy, come-on sexuality.

Getting off to a fast start, she joked about speeding from eating too much junk food driving to Costa Mesa from Fresno, where she grew up. She talked about being a mother whose 3-year-old daughter didn’t like her singing. (Now 10, Zoe Madeline has found her own voice and modified her opinion.) She dedicated Adam Guettel’s “Migratory V” to her father, who died four years ago in a plane accident.

Recurring themes included marriage equality and social justice.

Music review: Jessye Norman helps launch Rachael Worby's Muse/ique

The low-peaked roof of Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium blew off its spindly columns as soprano Jessye Norman unleashed her amazing powers Saturday night. And for the record, Norman was singing outside that Arabian-styled building, on a stage set up on the lush green lawn. The beloved soprano from Georgia was helping conductor Rachael Worby debut her new ensemble, Muse/ique, in a crossover program that included songs by Gershwin, Ellington and Monk, and instrumental music by John Williams and other composers.

Norman’s entrance, from the side of the lawn, gave cause for concern, however. Singing “Somewhere” from Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” Norman sounded wobbly, edgy at the top and patchy in color. She still had volcanic power over and above the miking; even so, one worried how much of her fabled velvety voice remained after largely departing her operatic career. Still, she got an instant standing ovation from the 600 or so guests who had been enjoying alfresco dinners at comfortable tables arranged on the grounds.  

There were other moments of iffy pitch and dry color, especially when she sang softly, as in Gershwin’s “Love Walked In” or Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." But Norman showed she could easily both power up and soar, and also pull in, get down and put over a song with sassiness and stylish scat singing, whatever the piece.

Dance review: American Ballet Theatre dances 'The Bright Stream' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

 

Part cartoon, part silent movie, part lyric, folk and heroic ballet, Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Bright Stream” is a dizzying romp. American Ballet Theatre opened a five-performance run of this attractive work Thursday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as part of the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center series.

Still, “Bright Stream” has a dark history. The ballet, given its premiere in 1935, and its creators fell victim to Stalin’s anger. Choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov saw his professional career suddenly stall. His co-librettist, Adrian Piotrovsky, was arrested and sent to one of the gulags, where he died. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich — who had been attacked in Pravda for his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District” no less than 10 days earlier — felt terrorized and expected immediate arrest. But he and the score survived, although the ballet, like his opera, at once vanished from the stage.

When Ratmansky heard a recording of the music, he fell in love with its colorful, diverse, witty and fast-paced qualities. So he revived the work for the Bolshoi Ballet in 2003. A year later, the company danced it at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. ABT’s performances are the first in Los Angeles.

Ratmansky followed the original scenario but had to devise his own choreography. Perhaps remembering Shostakovich’s early days playing piano accompaniment for silent films, Ratmansky turned to that era’s many moments of madcap fun. Certainly, his characters are shallow, more types than individuals, but he tells the story clearly.

Dance review: Los Angeles Ballet dances 'Giselle' at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center

For all the opening-night jitters and imperfections, Los Angeles Ballet gave a credible, even moving, performance of “Giselle” on Saturday at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. The essential Giselle experience remained intact: Love survives the grave, bestows forgiveness on an unworthy bad boy and transforms him into a decent human being. Hmm. Sounds like the plot of a movie or two, or a dozen. 

Giselle is a village girl courted by a prince disguised as a peasant. She falls in love with him, but when she finds out his identity -- and that he’s engaged to someone else -- she loses her mind and dies. End of ballet? Not by a long shot. In Act 2, she appears as a spirit newly enrolled in the ranks of the Wilis, night creatures that wreak vengeance on perjured suitors. Giselle resists her new duties and saves her prince.

Allyssa Bross danced the title role with appealing sweetness and vulnerability. She made her mad scene nuanced and sparked with creepiness, and if she had some unsteadiness in her ghostly extended balances, she more than compensated elsewhere with poise.

Giselle’s character is straightforward, but that of Prince Albrecht is ambiguous. Is he merely dallying, really in love, torn between court and country? Unfortunately, Christopher Revels gave no clear take on the prince’s motives, although his repentance and sense of loss at the end looked genuine. Revels danced with princely bearing, partnered with consideration, and executed his second act marathon challenges with strength, though he looked more on the edge of real rather than dramatic exhaustion.

Dance Review: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

A program that opens with a work called “Anointed” and ends with one called “Revelations” probably has something serious on its mind. That was the case when the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicked off a 10-performance run Friday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as part of the “Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center” series.

“Revelations,” of course, is the beloved work that, astonishingly, is 51 years old yet still hits you with the force of a joyous revival meeting. “Anointed” is the troupe’s newest piece.

The seriousness concerns the company’s transition in leadership. Robert Battle takes over as artistic director from Judith Jamison on July 1.  Ailey’s chosen successor, Jamison has led the troupe since 1989, strengthening it, enlarging the repertory and purging the bumps and grinds that accreted on “Revelations” to reveal the clean, muscular frame beneath.

She is passing the torch now to Battle, who knows the responsibilities and standards he must uphold. One of his works on the tour, “The Hunt,” is serving as a kind of calling card. But more on that later.

Music review: Jeffrey Kahane, Sasha Cooke and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at the Alex Theatre in Glendale

The audience gave an affectionate welcome to Jeffrey Kahane, music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, when he returned to his dual roles of pianist and conductor of the ensemble Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. For several months Kahane had been recuperating from a bout of mononucleosis, but he looked in strong health at the celebratory Bach program that also enlisted mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke.

Cooke, a Riverside native, had won praise as Kitty Oppenheimer at the Met’s premiere of John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic” in 2008 and was making her Los Angeles-area debut. An expectant mother, Cooke sang the solo cantata No. 170, “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust” (Contented Rest, Beloved Soul’s Desire), and the aria “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” (Have Mercy, My God) from the “St. Matthew Passion.” The five-part cantata has a number of distinguishing features, including grim and gritty descriptions of life on Earth and a central recitative that depicts lost souls aimlessly blown about. In both selections Cooke sang with fresh, vibrant, well-focused tone and sensitivity to the dramatic nuances of the text.

Kahane served as soloist and conductor in the Keyboard Concerto No. 6, a cat-and-mouse reworking of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, with the keyboardist alternately merging into the ensemble and standing out as an individual. Kahane was self-effacing, then dazzling in swooping arabesques tossed off with joyful flourish. He also led a sparkling Suite No. 3, or rather did not lead the famous Air, standing by to let concertmaster Margaret Batjer and her string colleagues perform a magical account of this famous movement.

For lack of an available dual keyboard organ, Kahane ingeniously reassigned the recitative accompaniment to David Shostac (flute) and Allan Vogel (oboe d’amore). Shostac and colleague Susan Greenberg were also the burbling flutists in the Keyboard Concerto.

— Chris Pasles

Photo: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra musical director Jeffrey Kahane applauds the introduction of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. Credit: Bret Hartman/ For The Times

Music Review: Tenor Jonas Kaufmann makes U.S. recital debut at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

In recent years the opera world has obsessed over who qualifies as a “Barihunk,” a baritone so handsome that audiences yearn to see him sing with his shirt off. Tenors must have wondered what the big deal was. People have been swooning over these higher-voiced singers for ages.

The latest swoon-worthy tenor is Munich-born Jonas Kaufmann, who drove the audience nuts Friday at his U.S. recital debut sponsored by the Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Fans demanded no fewer than five encores, including one played by accompanist Helmut Deutsch from an iPad. O brave new world.

Kaufmann is tall, poised, curly-haired. He has chiseled looks and dramatic presence. His voice has a baritone’s dark coloring and weight, and he can use it for poetic effect. He knows that less is more, so he did not rely on extraneous gestures to punch up his program of lieder by Schumann and Strauss.

What’s not to like? Well, Kaufmann took a long time to warm up. He sounded most comfortable in mid-range. Moving up, his throat tended to tighten, making his upper notes -- unless super-powered -- thin and dry, and he did not linger on them long. When he did, they could be arresting, but they could also be harsh. One fears he may be living off his capital not his interest.

Kaufmann’s most telling moments came in Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” — lovely coloring in “Im wunderschönen Monat-Mai” and  controlled intimacy in “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” — and more frequently in such personal Strauss songs as “Sehnsucht,” “Morgen” and “Cäcilie.”

Throughout, Deutsch was his sensitive collaborator.

Kaufmann’s career vaults forward: He sings his first Siegmund in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” next month. The performance can be seen in a “Live in HD” transmission May 14.

— Chris Pasles

Photo: Kaufmann at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion Friday night. Credit: Robert Millard