Philharmonic Pop in the Park (STUB)

Bramwell Tovey conducted Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Sousa's Washington Post March, Liberty Bell March, and Stars and Stripes Forever, with an orchestral arrangement (don't know by whom - possibly Tovey himself?) of Jimi Hendrix/Led Zeppelin's Purple Haze as an encore. Nice fireworks. I had a VIP seat thanks to my best-friend-at-work's boss' sister working for Lincoln Center!

More later.

Friday in the Park with Gheorghiu (and Alagna) (STUB)

Roberto, Angela, and Maestro Ion Marin taking their bows at the end of the first part of the Metropolitan Opera Summer Concert

Angela Gheorghiu, soprano

Roberto Alagna, tenor

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Ion Marin, conductor

Donald Palumbo, Chorus Master

Long Meadow, Prospect Park, June 20, 2008, 8:00 PM

Verdi: Overture to La Forza Del Destino

Bizet: "Ton coeur n'a pas compris le mien" from Les Pecheurs de Perles

Catalani: "Ebben? Ne andrò lontano" from La Wally

D. Alagna: Air du condamné from Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné

Verdi: "Vedi, le fosche" (Anvil Chorus) from Il Trovatore

Donizetti: "Ah, talor del tuo pensiero ... Verrano a te" from Lucia di Lammermoor

Verdi: Overture to Nabucco

Verdi: "Parigi, o cara" from La Traviata

Puccini: "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca

Puccini: "Un bel di, vedremo" from Madama Butterfly

Verdi: "Va, pensiero" from Nabucco

Delibes: "C'est le Dieu!" from Lakme

Encores:

Dalla: "Caruso" (Angela)

Puccini: "Nessun Dorma" (Roberto)

Dendrino: "Te iubesc" from Lăsaţi-mă Să Cânt (Both)

"Granada" (Both)

"O Sole Mio" (Both)

Verdi: Brindisi from La Traviata (All)

"Granada" (Reprise, Both)

This is the initial E-mail I sent to Brad Wilber with my thoughts on this fabulous night. I'll elaborate more in the next few days. If you're wondering about the "Judaism" label, I'll also go into some detail about how I fitted my Shabbat observance around this concert.

"Roberto and Angela completely, utterly, wonderfully magnificent. So was the Met Chorus - can you imagine what it's like being serenaded with the Ultimate Jewish Chorus, "Va, pensiero", while watching your Shabbat candles burn? Gorgeous day, too. They have something I think no other singer today has - you really sense that they love to sing! I think the only other singers today I get that from are Bryn Terfel and Cecilia Bartoli. For too many singers it's "I am a professional. I am just doing my job". I do get "I need to sing" from some of today's greats, or more accurately "Io sono umile servo/ancella di musica", but that's not quite the same thing as "I love to sing". To be fair, I don't often hear Ramon Vargas, Marcello Giordani, and Olga Borodina, for example, singing stuff that's fun. And there are the great Ravenclaws of the opera world like Thomas Hampson (and Cecilia) who clearly have deep intellectual identification with poets and composers, but that's not quite the same thing either.

Only negatives - if the Met had done this in Central Park, they might have gotten the 150,000 people they wanted instead of "only" 50,000 (still twice as much as for the biggest singer prior, Patti Labelle, who's quite a bit better known than Roberto and Angela!), the fact that there were no texts/translations (criminal considering the rarities and the fact that no one outside France has heard David Alagna's opera!), and the fact that I forgot my binoculars. Yes, I was reasonably close to the stage (the equivalent of the back of the orchestra), but I couldn't see facial expressions, and while they did have the big screens, they weren't in 3D, and during duets the cameras only focused on one singer at a time during "solo" moments and I couldn't see reactions from the other."

Re the title of this post, variations of which have been all over the blogosphere, I really regret having missed the original of this, Sunday in The Park with George, not only when I went to London, but also when the same immensely-acclaimed production came to New York. (SIGH) At least Roberto and Angela were free. It was worth a million.

"Tosca" in concert at the Philharmonic (STUB)

... with Hui He as Tosca (excellent, but needs a staged performance to judge her as an actress), Walter Fracarro as Cavaradossi (big, powerful voice, good high notes, but needed much more sensitivity) and George Gadzigne as Scarpia (superb - brutal, calculating, and based on a real police chief in Gadzigne's native Georgia). Lorin Maazel conducting. Interesting to hear with the orchestra on stage, brought out a lot of things I didn't notice, especially with the cantata and the "dance band" fully audible.

More later.