Musings & Reflections
Returning yesterday from conducting a season of Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in sunny Brisbane - affectionately known as BrisVegas - for Opera Queensland, I felt both elated and exhausted. Rossini's masterpiece is a work that I have conducted nearly thirty times in the past year or two and it never bores me. Rehearsals sometimes bore but the opera itself - never. The season coincided with the release of the Best Seller and at least half of the show's publicity was devoted to Losing the Plot in Opera. Sure, I had to outdo my previous offerings of popular tunes on the harpsichord. One particular performance in the run seemed like a Barry Manilow Tribute night from centre orchestra pit - so healthy was the presence of his tunes. The orchestra wondered what was happening..... Mr Sondheim was played in my recitatives on opening night to honour my wife's presence in the auditorium, and Mr Rossini himself was acknowledged with gems from his opera-seria at a later performance when a distinguished tenor of the previous generation was rumoured to be in the House.
And for those of you who wonder if we actually performed the opera that the ticked buyers had paid for ..... We did - and received rave reviews. Even I was blessed with a Critic's nod. (Mind you, if you believe the good crits you should believe the bad ones. The truth, usually, is somewhere in between)
The news that the soprano Leyla Gencer, the Turkish Delight - passed away a few weeks ago saddened many of my colleagues. She was certainly the last of a rare breed. Whether you liked her or not (one famous married couple titled her "Madame Coup de Glot") she was a very great artist of that ‘old school' where the four important ingredients were voice, voice, voice and a ton of drama. The wonderful Giuseppe di Stefano left us for the Heavenly Casino a few days before Mme Gencer departed. They're all leaving us...Yet Renee Fleming lives!