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Cecile Cooper newspaper clippings, 1966-1987
1984-06-03 ""This Met tour goes first class"" Page 2
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Des Moines Sunday Register 6/3/84 This Met tour goes first class" By Joan Bunke Critic at Large MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. -- Metropolitan Opera Week 1984 in Minneapolis was a perfect demonstration of the rewards, visual and musical, of heeding the admonition: "Cast thy bread upon the waters: For thou shalt find it after many days." It wasn't mere bread that the Met-on-tour returned to its contributors and ticket-buyers. It was, in more than a few cases, ambrosia. The superstars -- Marilyn Horne, Placido Domingo, Renata Scotto -- were out in force and displaying high artistry. So were stars like Sherrill Milnes and Jon Vickers, and singers like Simon Estes, Johanna Meier and Benita Valente, whose voices glow and glitter even if their names aren't yet doing the same on magazine covers outside the world of opera. Such a concentrated serving of stage and musical magic doesn't come along very often; it takes a great deal of support and it demonstrates the complexity of artistic connections in this country and how truly national in flavor the Met has become, while still glorying in the Italian wing. The quality and variety of this tour, unlike the generally lackluster 1983 tour roster, was a tribute to the Met's focus on celebrating its 100th anniversary and the local Met organization's strenuous efforts to mark the 40th anniversary of the Met tour to Minneapolis. Contributors and ticket-buyers, and regional opera supporters, too, were getting back their own. The non-New York audience, which the Met has said accounts for 25 percent of its support, was getting to see what it supports; regional opera people were seeing singers who'd passed this way in their early careers (the spectacular bass Samuel Ramey, a native of Colby, Kan., was heard at Opera/Omaha), and fans of other all-American stars, among them Milnes (Downers Grove, Ill. and Des Moines), Estes (Centerville) and Meier (Spearfish, S.D.) were rewarded with first-class performances by their "own." And those who plead for corporate and foundation support for the arts saw the results of assiduous Met support by the Marshalltown's Gramma Fisher Foundation. New York may be American opera's Mecca, but the Met's success is more than a little due to True Believers from the hinterlands. Opera addicts, those of us who bought tickets to all seven operas during the Met's May 21-26 stand at Northrop Auditorium, got to see rarely staged (in America, anyway) productions like Handel's "Rinaldo" and Ricardo Zandonai's "Francesca da Rimini" and Guiseppe Verdi's "Earani," made possible by a gift from the Gramma Fisher Foundation. Wagerites got to hear the Met's "Die Walkure," featuring tenor Vickers, who, at age 58, is singing the role of Siegmund with the power, resonance and vocal sheen of a great tenor in his 30s prime. Vickers fans also heard him offer similar astonishingly high quality in a role he "owns," the title role in Benjamin Briten's "Peter Grimes." In both operas, he was superbly matched by the glowing power of soprano Meier and in "Die Walkure" he was joined by an imposing Wotan sung by bass-baritone Estes, whose voice is of lighter weight than the customary Wotan but who commands the stage with great presence. For those who go to the opera to see and be seen and to be entertained, there was a lively, storybook-styled production of Mozart's "Abduction of the Seralglio" whose only drawback was that the Met wasn't doing this absurd comedy in English. And for lovers of Puccini's great, melodic melodrama, that "shabby shocker," "Tosca," there was a decidedly unshabby performance, with Milnes pouring out his rich, flexible, agile baritone and his considerable stage skills on the role of the vile seducer and chief of police, Scarpia, and with svelte, petite soprano Scotto demonstrating how much she has learned about acting subtleties, about producing a beautifully modulated "Vissi d'arte" and about controlling the wobble that frequently afflicts her voice in the heavier, dramatic passages. This handsome, traditional production, designed by Tito Gobbi, also was underwritten by the Marshalltown foundation. For admirers of the ability to make art with all the forces at your command while minimizing your negative qualities, Scotto is a model of courage, tenacity and artistry; she also showed that quality, despite a more obvious wobble, in the beautiful if musically unmemborable "Francesca da Rimini," where she was partnered by Domingo, in silvery, lyric vocal form. Admitting a partiality for Scotto's less-than-wonderful voice is reminiscent of the 1950s arguments one could indulge over preferring Maria Callas to Renata Tebaldi. One may have preferred to [[italics]]listen[[end italics]] to Tebaldi's honied, elegant voice but one wanted to [[italics]]see[[end italics]] a performance by the vocally flawed but dramatically superlative Callas. Opera is, after all, music [[italics]]theater[[end italics]]. BEFORE IT MOVED on to Detroit, the Met tour wound up its Minneapolis week with a theatrical bang. Frank Corsaro's production of the baroque "Rinaldo," a vividly staged singathon, featured mezzo soprano Horne, as the Christian general Rinaldo, in sumptuous voice, aided and abetted by a cast that matched her agility and power in Handel's demanding, florid runs. Not only was there Ramey, tall, dark and imposing in his Saracen general's regalia, but there was also the serendipity of discovering the high quality of the unheralded but abundantly talented soprano, Valente, whose rich tonal beauty as Almirena showed why she's singing in Horne's league. The production, on loan from Canada's National Arts Centre, also features solid support from tenor Dano Raffanti as the Christian king and brilliant, if "white"-voiced, singing from Berlin's Edda Moser, a soprano who has the legs as well as the voice to create a credible vamp-villainess. As Armida, the magic-working Saracen queen, she was a spectacular vision in lavender body suit and glitter-boots, a costume that Marlene Dietrich, in her prime vixen days, might have envied Moser. The stage fireworks produced supertheater, including a red-eyed, smoke-breathing flying-dragon contraption that was almost as impressive as the acrobatic finale, the battle between Rinaldo's Christians and the Saracens outside the gates of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, in the 11th century. In that dazzling scene, Corsaro faces two teams of explosively talented acrobats against each other. Jumping, tumbling, all but flying, the Christians flail away at the Saracens in what surely must be one of the most vivid pieces of action stagecraft in the conservative Metropolitan Opera's history. To say that with these agile Handelian voices, "Rinaldo" could easily be a concert performance is to ignore our need for spectacles. We [[italics]]do[[end italics]] need circuses as well as bread, and the Met, for this tour at least, had at least three rings going, vocally and visually. Next year's tour promises less adventure and more tradition. As touring costs mount, officials of the Met and of the Metropolitan Opera in the Upper Midwest continue to talk of the need for more corporate and box-office support. Charles S. Bellows, president of the Minneapolis organization, reported at week's end that the week "finished in the black and the Met's fee was paid in full." That fee was listed at $818,000, and local costs brought the production figure to $1.14 million. That's a good deal of bread cast upon artistic waters, and it's important to note for bottom-liners that the economic impact of the Met's Minneapolis tour stand, which draws operagoesrs from 29 states and Ontario to buy the 33,500 available tickets, extends far beyond aficionados. Bellows told a reporter that the retailers estimate "tat the Met generates between $3 million and $4 million" in business during its tour run.The art speaks for itself, and so, apparently, does the business. p. 2 (of 2)
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Des Moines Sunday Register 6/3/84 This Met tour goes first class" By Joan Bunke Critic at Large MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. -- Metropolitan Opera Week 1984 in Minneapolis was a perfect demonstration of the rewards, visual and musical, of heeding the admonition: "Cast thy bread upon the waters: For thou shalt find it after many days." It wasn't mere bread that the Met-on-tour returned to its contributors and ticket-buyers. It was, in more than a few cases, ambrosia. The superstars -- Marilyn Horne, Placido Domingo, Renata Scotto -- were out in force and displaying high artistry. So were stars like Sherrill Milnes and Jon Vickers, and singers like Simon Estes, Johanna Meier and Benita Valente, whose voices glow and glitter even if their names aren't yet doing the same on magazine covers outside the world of opera. Such a concentrated serving of stage and musical magic doesn't come along very often; it takes a great deal of support and it demonstrates the complexity of artistic connections in this country and how truly national in flavor the Met has become, while still glorying in the Italian wing. The quality and variety of this tour, unlike the generally lackluster 1983 tour roster, was a tribute to the Met's focus on celebrating its 100th anniversary and the local Met organization's strenuous efforts to mark the 40th anniversary of the Met tour to Minneapolis. Contributors and ticket-buyers, and regional opera supporters, too, were getting back their own. The non-New York audience, which the Met has said accounts for 25 percent of its support, was getting to see what it supports; regional opera people were seeing singers who'd passed this way in their early careers (the spectacular bass Samuel Ramey, a native of Colby, Kan., was heard at Opera/Omaha), and fans of other all-American stars, among them Milnes (Downers Grove, Ill. and Des Moines), Estes (Centerville) and Meier (Spearfish, S.D.) were rewarded with first-class performances by their "own." And those who plead for corporate and foundation support for the arts saw the results of assiduous Met support by the Marshalltown's Gramma Fisher Foundation. New York may be American opera's Mecca, but the Met's success is more than a little due to True Believers from the hinterlands. Opera addicts, those of us who bought tickets to all seven operas during the Met's May 21-26 stand at Northrop Auditorium, got to see rarely staged (in America, anyway) productions like Handel's "Rinaldo" and Ricardo Zandonai's "Francesca da Rimini" and Guiseppe Verdi's "Earani," made possible by a gift from the Gramma Fisher Foundation. Wagerites got to hear the Met's "Die Walkure," featuring tenor Vickers, who, at age 58, is singing the role of Siegmund with the power, resonance and vocal sheen of a great tenor in his 30s prime. Vickers fans also heard him offer similar astonishingly high quality in a role he "owns," the title role in Benjamin Briten's "Peter Grimes." In both operas, he was superbly matched by the glowing power of soprano Meier and in "Die Walkure" he was joined by an imposing Wotan sung by bass-baritone Estes, whose voice is of lighter weight than the customary Wotan but who commands the stage with great presence. For those who go to the opera to see and be seen and to be entertained, there was a lively, storybook-styled production of Mozart's "Abduction of the Seralglio" whose only drawback was that the Met wasn't doing this absurd comedy in English. And for lovers of Puccini's great, melodic melodrama, that "shabby shocker," "Tosca," there was a decidedly unshabby performance, with Milnes pouring out his rich, flexible, agile baritone and his considerable stage skills on the role of the vile seducer and chief of police, Scarpia, and with svelte, petite soprano Scotto demonstrating how much she has learned about acting subtleties, about producing a beautifully modulated "Vissi d'arte" and about controlling the wobble that frequently afflicts her voice in the heavier, dramatic passages. This handsome, traditional production, designed by Tito Gobbi, also was underwritten by the Marshalltown foundation. For admirers of the ability to make art with all the forces at your command while minimizing your negative qualities, Scotto is a model of courage, tenacity and artistry; she also showed that quality, despite a more obvious wobble, in the beautiful if musically unmemborable "Francesca da Rimini," where she was partnered by Domingo, in silvery, lyric vocal form. Admitting a partiality for Scotto's less-than-wonderful voice is reminiscent of the 1950s arguments one could indulge over preferring Maria Callas to Renata Tebaldi. One may have preferred to [[italics]]listen[[end italics]] to Tebaldi's honied, elegant voice but one wanted to [[italics]]see[[end italics]] a performance by the vocally flawed but dramatically superlative Callas. Opera is, after all, music [[italics]]theater[[end italics]]. BEFORE IT MOVED on to Detroit, the Met tour wound up its Minneapolis week with a theatrical bang. Frank Corsaro's production of the baroque "Rinaldo," a vividly staged singathon, featured mezzo soprano Horne, as the Christian general Rinaldo, in sumptuous voice, aided and abetted by a cast that matched her agility and power in Handel's demanding, florid runs. Not only was there Ramey, tall, dark and imposing in his Saracen general's regalia, but there was also the serendipity of discovering the high quality of the unheralded but abundantly talented soprano, Valente, whose rich tonal beauty as Almirena showed why she's singing in Horne's league. The production, on loan from Canada's National Arts Centre, also features solid support from tenor Dano Raffanti as the Christian king and brilliant, if "white"-voiced, singing from Berlin's Edda Moser, a soprano who has the legs as well as the voice to create a credible vamp-villainess. As Armida, the magic-working Saracen queen, she was a spectacular vision in lavender body suit and glitter-boots, a costume that Marlene Dietrich, in her prime vixen days, might have envied Moser. The stage fireworks produced supertheater, including a red-eyed, smoke-breathing flying-dragon contraption that was almost as impressive as the acrobatic finale, the battle between Rinaldo's Christians and the Saracens outside the gates of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, in the 11th century. In that dazzling scene, Corsaro faces two teams of explosively talented acrobats against each other. Jumping, tumbling, all but flying, the Christians flail away at the Saracens in what surely must be one of the most vivid pieces of action stagecraft in the conservative Metropolitan Opera's history. To say that with these agile Handelian voices, "Rinaldo" could easily be a concert performance is to ignore our need for spectacles. We [[italics]]do[[end italics]] need circuses as well as bread, and the Met, for this tour at least, had at least three rings going, vocally and visually. Next year's tour promises less adventure and more tradition. As touring costs mount, officials of the Met and of the Metropolitan Opera in the Upper Midwest continue to talk of the need for more corporate and box-office support. Charles S. Bellows, president of the Minneapolis organization, reported at week's end that the week "finished in the black and the Met's fee was paid in full." That fee was listed at $818,000, and local costs brought the production figure to $1.14 million. That's a good deal of bread cast upon artistic waters, and it's important to note for bottom-liners that the economic impact of the Met's Minneapolis tour stand, which draws operagoesrs from 29 states and Ontario to buy the 33,500 available tickets, extends far beyond aficionados. Bellows told a reporter that the retailers estimate "tat the Met generates between $3 million and $4 million" in business during its tour run.The art speaks for itself, and so, apparently, does the business. p. 2 (of 2)
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