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Praise for Operas by Picker, Reimann, Rihm, Ligeti, and Maw

Jun. 08, 2010

The 2009/10 opera season was brought to a close in spectacular fashion as new productions of Tobias Picker's Emmeline, Aribert Reimann's Medea, Wolfgang Rihm's Proserpina, and György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre all opened to widespread critical and popular acclaim in recent months in the US and Europe.

György Ligeti
Le Grand Macabre
New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert, Music Director
Douglas Fitch, Director

… an exhilarating success, offering an eager and excellent cast, a brilliant and assured performance of Ligeti's daunting score and a disarming production, designed and directed by Doug Fitch, that makes ingenious use of playful video images. Not just opera, but challenging contemporary opera in an inventive and effective production, has come to the Philharmonic, thanks to Mr. Gilbert and his colleague Mr. Fitch. This was an instant Philharmonic milestone.
– Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

Tobias Picker
Emmeline-chamber orchestration
Cinnabar Theater
Nina Shuman, Music Director
Elly Lichenstein, Director

The Cinnabar Theater has once again raised the musical and theatrical bar in their terrific production of Tobias Picker's 1996 opera Emmeline that opened a West Coast premiere May 28 to a boisterous full house in their Petaluma theater. Mr. Picker's score is balanced dramatically and musically… and clearly reflects the opposing dissonance and rare harmony of Emmeline's life, and occasionally combining the two in a fashion completely true to the action and story. A testament to Mr. Picker's score is that it is lush and romantic when necessary, even in this condensed orchestration, yet pointed and intricate when the story calls for that support. So often composers simply miss that all-important link to the complexities of the stage. Tobias Picker does not.
– Richard Riccardi, Classical Sonoma.org

Emmelinemore than deserves the enthusiasm of opera-goers and performers, and should receive a permanent place in the repertoire. Catch it while you can.
– Jeff Kaliss, San Francisco Classical Voice

Wolfgang Rihm
Proserpina
Spoleto Festival USA
John Kennedy, Music Director
Ken Rus Schmoll, Director

The U.S. premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's one-woman opera with chorus, Proserpina, is a remarkable tour-de-force vehicle for soprano Heather Buck. Like this contemporary composer's music, her artistry fulfills us in unexpected and unforeseen ways. Rihm's music thrives on a connection with the rich past of German music; among the ghosts haunting the underworld in this piece Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss are eminently present. The sustained lyrical line, even when it dips and vaults into the stratosphere, is constantly present. Proserpina is scored for a small chamber ensemble. This smaller musical group allows the vocalists, solo, and chorus to shine while providing support, timbral variety and musical dominance when necessary. The sound design in this production which projected the unseen chorus and the brass sonorities evoking Pluto's dark presence to different areas behind the set, is also noteworthy.
– Fernando Rivas, Charleston City Paper

Mr. Rihm's music ranges widely and ingeniously through contemporary styles and includes a sort of historical framing, as he seamlessly weaves in patches of music from Goethe's era.
– James R. Oestreich, The New York Times

Aribert Reimann
Medea
Staatsoper Wien
Michael Boder, Music Director
Marco Arturo Marelli, Director

… a magnificent work of music theater… the composer Aribert Reimann is a master of his trade. If any evidence had been necessary that it is still possible to write attractive operas for a large audience whose tastes are largely conservative, the maestro from Berlin has provided it.
– The Austrian Kurier

the frenetic applause seemed to go on and on… in fact, it lasted about 25 minutes: a great triumph for new music.
– Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

And now available on DVD:

Nicholas Maw
Sophie's Choice
Opus Arte
Production: Royal Opera House, 2002
Sir Simon Rattle, Music Director
Trevor Nunn, Director

Maw's is an expressionist score, softened by the neo-Romantic gestures for which he was well known: there are many passages of exquisite lyricism. Maw's music-rooted in a confident, mobile combination of recitative and arioso-moves the action forward with fluency and flow. Musical techniques of memory and expectation help the listener along, rather as leitmotifs do; musical ideas involving intervals, chords, lines and timbres (gorgeously luminous string passages, for example) play an important role. Through such devices, crucial moments are finely framed and pointed… the most intensely dramatic sections…burst with creative invention.
– Christopher Ballantine, Opera

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