The New York Times’s classical music and opera critics see and hear much more than they review. Here is what has hooked them recently. Leave your own favorites in the comments.
‘The Barber of Seville’
For an opera lover seeking a bit of escapist fun, Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” seems like a safe bet. The April 21 performance of Bartlett Sher’s fluffy production at the Metropolitan Opera delivered just that, with the tenor Lawrence Brownlee and the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard goofing about adroitly as the young lovers scrambling to outwit a jealous guardian and the Machiavellian music teacher who advises him.
But then came the “Slander” aria, in which that teacher, Don Basilio — sung with chilling charisma by the bass Alexander Vinogradov — outlines a method for ruining a rival’s reputation. Rossini writes one of his trademark crescendos, painstakingly building up texture, volume and dramatic oomph.
Elsewhere in the opera, he uses this device to ratchet up the comic confusion of a group scene or highlight a character’s emotional exuberance. Here, as Basilio sings about planting a falsehood and watching it take root in the public conscience, the “Rossini crescendo” becomes a demonstration of the virality of fake news that is all the more devastating for being so delicious. Next week, a new set of singers step into the principal roles in “Barber,” but Vinogradov stays on as Basilio, injecting his brilliant, unsettling venom into an otherwise rosy-hued romantic comedy. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
When Klaus Mäkelä was announced as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s next music director last season, it was with a well-calculated rollout that included a concert with his future ensemble the same week. Then he went back to his busy, peripatetic schedule.
He didn’t return until April, but he announced himself in grand fashion: with Mahler’s Third Symphony, a 100-minute, nature-encompassing sprawl complete with a vocal soloist and two choirs (the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the girls of Uniting Voices Chicago, warmly angelic in the fifth movement).
One person told me it was nice to have Mäkelä back, but multiple audience members expressed excitement at hearing Esteban Batallán, the principal trumpet. He had left for the Philadelphia Orchestra last fall only to return to Chicago after half a season. Regardless of what has happened behind the scenes recently, it didn’t take long in Mahler’s Third to understand why any ensemble would be lucky to have him.
Given its scale, Mahler’s Third is hard to forget, but this performance was particularly memorable for Batallán’s delivery of the famous posthorn solo in the third movement. Playing offstage, he was an invisible scene-stealer: jaw-droppingly impressive on a technical level, but also intensely moving as his pastoral calls gave way to lyrical expressions of longing and nostalgia. JOSHUA BARONE
Tomeka Reid
At Firehouse12 in New Haven, Conn., I recently heard an evening set led by the cellist and composer Tomeka Reid. A star in progressive jazz circles, she has also written music for exciting chamber music musicians like Johnny Gandelsman.
On this night, Reid led an improvising septet in what she called “A Tribute to Ellington.” The compositions (all by her) were co-commissioned by the Kennedy Center and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Reid’s music could be aggressive in its extended technique, but it also featured plenty of delightful melodic interplay. An unofficial string trio within the ensemble — including the bassist Silvia Bolognesi, the violist Paul Barrels and Reid — gave elegant voice to the composer’s talent for designing polyphony within steady, collective groove.
From the stage, Reid said that this program of septet music would be recorded at the venue (which doubles as a recording studio) the next day for a future release. Until that comes out, those curious to explore Reid’s style should investigate her past albums for improvising groups, as well as pieces for classical players, like “Prospective Dwellers,” memorably recorded by the Spektral Quartet on YouTube. Following Ellington’s example, Reid is pursuing music that can exist comfortably “beyond category.” SETH COLTER WALLS
‘Salome’
Watching Richard Strauss’s one-act opera “Salome,” it’s easy to forget that the title character is a 16-year-old girl. Sopranos who can sing the role are often in their 30s and 40s. Salome’s youth, though, is at the crux of the work’s sensationalism: This teenager is supposed to do an erotic dance for her stepfather, King Herod, in exchange for one wish, which she uses to demand the head of Jochanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter.
The director Claus Guth, in his Metropolitan Opera debut, reorients the entire work around the idea that Salome’s sexual precocity is a tragedy and not a moral failing that the audience accepts because it comes with a magnificent final monologue. Having been abused by Herod, Salome associates expressions of adoration with sexual violence. When Elza van den Heever, as Salome, sings “Jochanaan! Ich bin verliebt,” dressed in a girlish frock and surrounded by the toys and relics of Salome’s childhood, her voice sounds clean and glittery, but her eyes, wild with focus, betray the danger posed by her mangled mind.
A compelling actor, van den Heever pushes Guth’s concept further after Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. Ready to make her wish, her Salome sidesteps the usual grotesquerie that sopranos use to indicate a descent into depravity and instead asks for Jochanaan’s head in a cutesy, innocent, understated way. Here is a confused teenager, both mature and immature for her 16 years, whose sexual awakening mixes with baby-doll mannerisms to create something truly horrid. OUSSAMA ZAHR
‘The Wooden Prince’
It’s the least played (by far) of Bartok’s three stage works, but the fairy-tale ballet “The Wooden Prince” is a gorgeous treat. I’d been excited for the New York Philharmonic’s recent performances since they were announced more than a year ago — particularly because Ivan Fischer, who brings infectious vitality to everything he touches, was conducting.
Nearly an hour long, “The Wooden Prince” is scored for Bartok’s grandest orchestra, including two contrabassoons, two saxophonists, two celesta players — the works! From a primordial beginning, perhaps inspired by Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” these huge forces travel through music alternately raucous and glistening, hearty and dreamlike, telling the story of a prince who tries to seduce a princess with a puppet version of himself. (Bela Balazs, who came up with the story, suggested it’s an allegory of an artist’s rivalry with his own creations.)
When the princess grabs the wooden prince for a burly dance, Bartok gives them a fanciful hoedown, like an Orientalist Copland. Here and throughout, the Philharmonic projected the stage directions above the players, a smart way to keep the audience along for the sprawling ride through the radiant apotheosis, with the prince reveling in the majesty of nature, to the luminous finale, with love triumphant. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Joshua Barone is the assistant classical music and dance editor on the Culture Desk and a contributing classical music critic.
Zachary Woolfe is the classical music critic of The Times.
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