Opera review: Esa-Pekka Salonen makes Met debut in New York

From the house of the dead -- as I’ve heard the Metropolitan Opera grumpily described from time to time -- comes a great “From the House of the Dead.”  OK, that’s a cheap shot, but a company generally eager to please has finally tackled Janácek’s last and least ingratiating opera, with the acclaimed French theater, film and sometimes opera director Patrice Chéreau and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen making their Met debuts.

The result is an unusually uncompromising artistic triumph for the Met, and a surprising hit. For 90 transfixing minutes Monday night, at the second of seven performances (running through Dec. 5), an audience of nearly 4,000 sat in remarkable, stunned silence.

“From the House of the Dead,” which is based on Dostoevski’s 1862 exposé of a Siberian prison camp, may not be anyone’s idea of an evening’s entertainment, especially in a weak economy. The opera offers no big starring roles, little conventional plot, unrelentingly intense music and a principally male cast of hardened criminals and cruel guards. But last week's opening night reviews were raves, and shortly before Monday’s curtain, scalpers were circling the new Las Vegas-style dancing fountain in Lincoln Center plaza.

Monster Mash: Edvard Munch artwork stolen; Salonen makes Met Opera debut; Dame Edna's hoax

-- Without a trace: A lithograph by Edvard Munch has been stolen from a gallery in Norway. (Radio Netherlands)

-- Elaborate charade: Dame Edna and Michael Feinstein said they will merge their two solo Broadway shows after a public quarrel that turned out to be a publicity stunt. (Variety)

-- Onward and upward: Esa-Pekka Salonen made his Metropolitan Opera debut Thursday night conducting Janacek's "From the House of the Dead." (New York Times)

-- Honored: Artist Cindy Sherman will receive the Jewish Museum's Man Ray Award. (Art Info)

-- Change of heart: The Aspen Music Festival has offered to rehire Alan Fletcher as president and CEO after firing him a month ago. (The Aspen Times)

-- Restitution: Germany's parliament will return a painting that has hung in a lawmaker's office after learning that the work was looted by the Nazis. (Bloomberg)

-- Unsinkable: Debbie Reynolds will tour Britain with her one-woman show, with plans to play on London's West End. (Playbill)

-- And in the L.A. Times: MOCA looks on the bright side of 30.

-- David Ng

Photo: "Historien," a lithograph by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch that was stolen today. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Making room for the new guy: Salonen on Dudamel

 

As he was the leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years, there are some who probably expected former music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, 51 -- also composer of  "L.A. Variations" and "Wing on Wing," which had their world premieres with the Philharmonic   -- to be sitting front and center when his successor, 28-year-old Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel (do we really need to keep saying who this guy is?) stepped up to the podium for his inaugural concerts earlier this month at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

But that's not Salonen's style. During a recent telephone chat with Culture Monster, Salonen, who stepped down from the post largely to pursue his passion for composing and now holds the heady title of the Philharmonic's first Conductor Laureate, talked about why he was conspicuously absent from the hoopla.

Speaking from New York, where the Finnish-born conductor was rehearsing for his much-anticipated debut conducting the Metropolitan Opera in November, Salonen talked about why he didn't show up to walk the pink carpet at Disney Hall (yeah, it was pink) to smile for the cameras and engage in what would definitely have been a photo-op group hug.

The point of our conversation was to talk about composer John Adams, the Phil's new creative chairman and curator of the upcoming West Coast, Left Coast festival of California music, running Nov.21 to Dec. 8. 

What led Salonen to talk about Dudamel was the question: Would you have wanted to curate the festival?

"Not this close to the end of my tenure," said Salonen quickly. "At some point in the future I would be very happy to do something of this sort, but I really felt that there's a new guy in town, and he should get on with it and do his own thing. I really felt that it would be sort of a natural, right thing to do to give him some space. Which is not to say that I wouldn't be listening."

Continued Salonen: "I'll come back at some point when the dust has settled and start working with the Phil again in a different capacity, a different sort of thing -- but not quite yet."

Monster Mash: Whitney Museum's expansion; art theft gets complicated; Artes Mundi prize

-- Expanding: The Whitney Museum of American Art (left) is moving ahead with plans to build a new museum near New York's High Line. (The New York Times)

-- Plot thickens: The recent $80-million art theft case in Pebble Beach gets weirder as police investigate whether one of the victims was trying to swindle his partner. (The Boston Globe)

-- And the nominees are: Eight artists have been named finalists for the Artes Mundi, Britain's biggest visual-arts prize. (BBC News)

-- What goes up...: China's contemporary art market is experiencing a plunge in prices. (Reuters)

-- Ultimatum: Iran has given the British Museum a two-month deadline to loan an ancient artifact called the Cyrus Cylinders. (Bloomberg)

-- Unconventional parking: A planned automobile museum in China will allow visitors to drive through the building. (Daily Telegraph)

-- High culture: Not everyone is happy about efforts by Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre Museum in Paris, to loosen up the institution. (The New York Times)

-- Eureka: Santa Fe Opera upsets locals after it gives permission for oil drilling on some of its property. (Associated Press)

-- Blackout: Esa-Pekka Salonen runs into electrical problems during a recent performance in London. (The Guardian)

-- Flat note: Contract negotiations at the New Mexico Symphony have hit a wall. (KRQE)

-- Soldiering on: Lynn Redgrave is still scheduled to open in the New York run of her solo show despite a recent undisclosed medical diagnosis. (Variety)

-- Le divorce?: Opera star Roberto Alagna confirms that he has separated from his wife, soprano Angela Gheorghiu. (Le Figaro)

-- And from the L.A. Times: Tim Robbins discusses the latest initiative by his theater company, the Actors' Gang. (Los Angeles Times)

-- David Ng

Photo: A view of the Whitney Museum in New York. Credit: Los Angeles Times

L.A. Philharmonic releases new live Salonen recording

Local classical music fans who are experiencing Esa-Pekka Salonen withdrawal symptoms can assuage their melancholy with a new live recording that will be released Tuesday by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The album, which goes on sale via iTunes, is part of the DG Concert Series released by Deutsche Grammophon. The recording features Salonen conducting the L.A. Philharmonic in three pieces: Three Dances from "El Amor Brujo" by Manuel de Falla; "La Mer" by Claude Debussy; and Maurice Ravel’s "Mother Goose."  

The orchestra said that the album was recorded live in Walt Disney Concert Hall during performances on Oct. 3-5, 2008.

In his review of the concerts, Times music critic Mark Swed wrote that "Saturday night was simply the Philharmonic at its best. Gorgeously colored music was, well, gorgeously colored, sounding fresh as a burbling spring, the morning dew or any other cliché you might select."

-- David Ng

Credit: Los Angeles Philharmonic / Deutsche Grammophon

Monster Mash: Autry drops expansion plans; Wall Project coming to L.A.; LACMA to meet with spurned film fans

-- About face: The Autry National Center has dropped plans for a $175-million expansion in Griffith Park.

-- Public art: L.A.'s Wilshire Boulevard will close to traffic for three hours on Nov. 8 for the Wall Project, an artistic commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

-- Reeling: LACMA's Michael Govan is planning to meet with members of Save Film at LACMA to discuss the fate of the museum's film program.

-- Remember him? Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of four composers commissioned by the New York City Ballet to write new scores for the company's upcoming season.

-- Change of pace: David Mamet is teaming with Disney to adapt and direct a new film version of "The Diary of Anne Frank."

-- Big debut: Martin McDonagh's new play, "A Behanding in Spokane," is set to have its world premiere in March on Broadway.

-- Budgetary cuts: The Cleveland Museum of Art has laid off 14 employees and will leave eight posts vacant in an attempt to balance its budget.

-- An offer you can't refuse: "Come Fly With Me," the upcoming Frank Sinatra musical directed by Twyla Tharp, will tour North America in 2010 after premiering in Atlanta.

-- Casting nightmare: Opera divas Angela Gheorgiu and Anna Netrebko have withdrawn from performances of "Carmen" and "La Traviata," respectively, in the Metropolitan Opera's upcoming season.

-- David Ng

Photo: the Autry National Center. Credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times

A banner day at Disney Concert Hall, UPDATED

UPDATED STORY

What goes up must come down, and that certainly holds true for the huge L.A. Philharmonic banners that flank the Walt Disney Concert Hall that herald the orchestra’s changing of the guard.

These outsize advertisements — made of reinforced vinyl and called building banners in the trade — stand tall at two points along the building’s plain limestone facade, on the corners of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street and at Hope and 1st streets.

Of the two, the vertical Grand Avenue banner, which measures roughly 20 feet wide by 40 feet high, is the more visible and traditionally features just the Philharmonic’s music director, while the horizontal one at Hope and 1st (9 feet high and 47 feet wide) depicts the maestro and the orchestra.

For the last six seasons, the earnest visage of Esa-Pekka Salonen, in various incarnations, gazed into the beyond. But as of early Tuesday morning, the Philharmonic’s longest-serving music director no longer guards the entrance to the orchestra’s administrative offices. His mug has been replaced with that of a more exuberant character, 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel, who officially becomes the 11th music director of the Philharmonic in September.

The banners are produced by American Fleet and Retail Graphics of Ontario, which specializes in the much smaller light-pole banners that dot the metropolitan area trumpeting various cultural institutions, including the Philharmonic. The firm has created all the banners that have hung at Disney since Frank Gehry’s distinctive symphonic hall opened in October 2003.

Until now, that challenge involved representing Salonen alone — the changing, often blurred, faces of the orchestra members at 1st and Hope notwithstanding. But with the ascent of the much younger, and by all accounts more colorful, Dudamel, a different approach was inevitably required.

The task fell to the Philharmonic’s marketing departments, but there was plenty of input from various quarters, including Dudamel’s representatives. “More or less, it’s a collaborative effort,” said Shana Mathur, the orchestra’s vice president of marketing and communications. “This first Gustavo campaign was particularly of interest to people given the magnitude of the campaign, and there’s a lot of newness around it.”

The most striking element is the fuchsia that dominates the top of the Grand Avenue banner, perhaps suggesting not only Dudamel’s flair on the podium, but also his Latin heritage, which in turn is underscored by the word Pasión (Spanish for passion) in letters even bigger than the conductor’s name. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s the central image: a looming above-the-waist shot of

Dudamel, wearing white tie, his head thrown back, his hands spread wide and his back arched.

Pasión, indeed.

-- David Mermelstein

Photo credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Esa-Pekka Salonen's Metropolitan Opera debut not coming to movie theaters*

It looks like those of us in L.A. who want to experience Esa-Pekka Salonen's much-anticipated debut at the Metropolitan Opera in November are going to have to buy a plane ticket to New York.

The opera company told Culture Monster that it won't broadcast Leoš Janáček's "From the House of the Dead" to movie theaters as part of its Live in HD series. Salonen, who is ending his tenure as the L.A. Philharmonic's music director, is scheduled to conduct the opera for seven performances in New York starting Nov. 12.

Nor can we expect the production to appear on PBS' "Great Performances" series anytime soon. The Met said that there are currently no plans to film the production in any format.

But all hope is not lost.

Still for sale: Esa-Pekka Salonen's Brentwood home

Esa-Pekka Salonen, the outgoing music director of the L.A. Philharmonic, has already struck camp and moved the family base to London, but he is far from being free of the L.A. real estate market.

Several weeks ago, the Finnish conductor put his Brentwood home on the market and even came close to reaching a sale only to have it fall through, according to a sales agent close to the deal.

So last week, the house officially went back on the market. Current asking price: $4.1 million.

The white, two-story contemporary house was built in 1993 by Ted Tokio Tanaka, the L.A.-based architect whose firm's projects include the LAX Gateway, the Bannings Landing Community Center and several notable private residences throughout Southern California.

Music review: Salonen Piano Concerto at Hollywood Bowl

 

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto received a brightly confident performance at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night. The date marks the first day in the rest of the life of a major work.   

The concerto's first performance was early in 2007 by the New York Philharmonic. Salonen conducted and Yefim Bronfman, for whom the concerto was written and to whom it is dedicated, was soloist.  Salonen and Bronfman recorded the concerto in Los Angeles last year at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the CD was released in the U.S. in April to coincide with Salonen’s final concerts as Los Angeles Philharmonic music director. They play it next month in Scotland, at the Edinburgh Festival.

But for all the excitement a stellar composer/conductor and stellar pianist bring, the concerto needs a ready supply of fresh blood in order to survive in the repertory. The first transfusion was the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Tuesday Bowl concert, when a 28-year-old Finnish pianist, Juho Pohjonen, became the first pianist after Bronfman to tackle the concerto. He was accompanied by Lionel Bringuier, the orchestra’s 22-year-old associate conductor. The combined age of both young men is a year less than Salonen’s, who turned 51 in June.