➤ LAST MET CHANCE, from p.48
song to warm up — sang extremely
well, with a wide dynamic palette,
pillowy legato, and refreshingly accurate
attack throughout a considerable
range. Once again, the
Latvian artist worked with a music
stand, but was less visually wedded
to it than at her October Carnegie
recital. Some crisper consonants
might have helped, but she sang
with feeling in gratifyingly long
phrases. There are deeper probing
artists, but few more beautiful instruments
around these days; and
the instrumental solos — oboe,
fl ute, bassoon — proved superb.
After a memorably mellow “Ich
bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,”
➤ ROJO, from p.47
the background, in the air.”
Argentina’s dictatorship of the
‘70s and early ‘80s deprived political
prisoners of their identities and
lives by turning them into “the disappeared.”
Claudio’s motivation is
personal, but his actions turn out
to be a premonition of the tyranny
my guest and I fl ed, not wanting
to endure, however well-played,
Bruckner’s emptily bombastic Seventh.
On June 27 in the Upper East
Side’s Church of the Heavenly
Rest, Will Crutchfi eld’s Teatro
Nuovo program concentrating on
promulgating and investigating
bel canto gave an impressive “calling
card” performance out in front
of their Bellini and Rossini opera
offerings later this month at Purchase
and in Lincoln Center’s Jazz
Theater. Crutchfi eld led the fi ne
period instrument band in Donizetti’s
“Symphony in E Minor,” reconstructed
by Gabriele Dotto with
the fourth movement deftly scored
to come. The banality of evil has
become a cliché, but “Rojo” uses a
familiar plot to show a country selling
its soul in miniature. Its story
isn’t told in grand gestures. Someone
with little knowledge of Argentine
politics might entirely miss the
larger point, although if one knows
‘70s Latin American history, the
presence of Chilean and North
by Crutchfi eld. A very enjoyable
piece, to my ear it suggested the
infl uence of Donizetti’s Bavarianborn
teacher Johann Simon Mayr,
with its echoes of Weber and an
adagio second movement evoking
Beethoven in celestial mode.
Then the ensemble, under the
highly organized conductor Jakob
Lehmann, offered Rossini’s
infl uential “Stabat mater,” deploying
many of the program’s young
artists to alternate the S/ M/ T/
B solo work. We heard fi ve sopranos,
fi ve mezzos, four tenors, and
fi ve basses or bass-baritones. All
evidenced vocal talent worth pursuing
and some grasp of bel canto
style — tough learning that takes
time. For example, none of the
American characters — cowboys,
even — makes the context clear.
Unlike “El Movimiento,” however,
the plot of “Rojo” has a meh quality
even at its most dramatic. The
fi lm actually follows a three-act
structure faithfully, but one of its
achievements is making life as a
“good German” feel pretty boring,
even when it involves crime and
striking-timbred lower-voiced men
showed full evenness of vocal production.
There were very exciting
contributions from the leads of the
upcoming “La Straniera,” luminous
soprano Christine Lyons and
ringing tenor Derrek Stark. But the
mezzos took the collective palm,
all displaying memorable personal
timbres and technical accomplishment.
They were SarahAnn Duffy,
Amanda Fink, Allison Gish, Maya
Gour, and Hannah Ludwig, who
takes the key role of Pippo in “La
gazza ladra” where the rich-voiced
Gish also appears.
David Shengold ( shengold@yahoo.
com ) writes about opera for many
venues.
violence.
ROJO | Directed by Benjamin Naishtat
| Distrib Films US | In Spanish
with English subtitles | Open
Jul. 12 | Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th
St.; quadcinema.com | Film at Lincoln
Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe
Film Center, 144 W. 65th St.; fi lmlinc.
org
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