Opera Now 2005

Here in Orange, France, on a windswept, night in 1974, they had greatness itself. Pierre Jourdan's film of the event is a priceless document, first of all, in the history of the opera. Stage-settings of Norma are usually hopeless: an offence to the eye, a chafing confutation of the spirit by gross matter. The ancient Roman amphitheatre is at any rate worthy and appropriate, and the Mistral, which threatened to close down the whole show and turn away an audience estimated at 10,000, adds a fine reminder of the power of Nature as it sets the druidical robes billowing and attacks the microphones.

Somehow, leading Norway's Tristania to the top of the goth metal heap wasn't enough for vocalist/guitarist Morten Veland, who unilaterally seceded from the union in the year 2000 to found a brand-spanking-new though similar-sounding band named Sirenia…

Vialka is a French avant-progressive band in the Rock in Opposition vein. Their music is a great mixture of genres and influences such as folk, rock, punk (in their musical "attitude", mostly) and Balkan music, notably. Formed in 2002, Vialka consists of Marylise Frecheville and Éric Boros…

Ah Rossini…! The real inventor of the assembly line. That Ford fellow was just a copycat. One-size-fits-all overtures. Arias you swear you've heard before (you did). Plots that are reused more often than a sandlot league baseball. Why do we love him so much? Because his music is so infectious that it gets under your skin faster than a splinter from a bamboo shade. (Amazon.com; Mike Birman)

Götz Friedrich’s 1981 Elektra film sets Richard Strauss’ opera in a dark and dingy abandoned 20th-century factory populated by grungy denizens in psuedo-Greek garb. Elektra herself appears like some deranged homeless woman reeking with sweat and slime (in the rain). And the depravity doesn’t stop there. Friedrich plays up the work’s sado-masochistic elements, with bloody whippings and an orgy sequence involving nude lesbians bathing themselves in the blood of a sacrificial ram. Now you might think that all of this detracts from the score, but on the contrary, the production matches image to music so brilliantly that anyone seeing this opera for the first time would think they were created for each other (which allows you to ignore the occasional useless, almost silly gesture, such as the frequent and prolonged shots of Agamemnon’s bloodied visage during Elektra’s opening monologue).

Stephen Hough has the ample virtuoso credentials to excel in these demanding exemplars of Romantic piano music. Only rarely do we miss the rhetorical flourishes or the big, burnished tone and philosophical depth of an Arrau, but this is a first-rate reading of wonderful piano music. Hough's performance of "Vallé d'Obermann," the longest by far of the Swiss book of the Années, is played like the large-scale tone poem it is, and he fully conveys the work's meditation on nature's mysteries. His tempo freedoms in "Au bord d'une source" help make this astounding "water music" a miracle of color and mood. Throughout, Hough's fleet fingers dazzle in the difficult passages and his tonal subtleties reflect the poetry in these nine pieces.

In Between (2005). The Israeli prog scene enjoys a kind of renaissance in early '05 with the release of several excellent debut albums by young groups, each and every one of them surprisingly excellent and refreshing. This one is perhaps the most ambitious of them all, presenting an entire new rock-opera rather than a collection of individual songs. The music, arrangements and orchestration (including a string quartet) are definitely worthy of comparison to similar projects attempted in the 1970's. The four members of the group play a wide selection of instruments and strengthened by additional players and vocalists they manage quite successfully to achieve a grandiose production…

This band was from Scotland, their name is derived from a novel by the poet John Gray in 1728. The musicians of Beggars Opera were Martin Griffiths (vocals), Rick Gardiner (guitar and vocals), Alan Park (keyboards), Gordon Sellar (bass, acoustic guitar and vocals), Virginia Scott (Mellotron and vocals) and Raymond Wilson (drums and percussion).
Their debut album "Act One" (1970) contains fluent and tasteful organ driven progrock with powerful "Sixties" sounding guitarwork. The long track "Raymond's Road" is a splendid tribute to the "classics" featuring Mozart's A la Turka, Bach's Toaccata in d-fuga en Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite on the Hammond organ. The second album "Waters of Change" (1971) is build around the dual keyboardplay of Alan Park and newcomer Virginia Scott and the distinctive, a bit cynical vocals of Gardiner…