Reviews from Elsewhere: Paul E. Robinson on Austin Lyric Opera's Magic Flute, November 5, 11 and 13

Found on-line at www.theartoftheconductor.com:

AOL Flute Lacks Magic!

Posted November 8, 2011 at www.theartoftheconductor.com

by Paul E. Robinson in LIVE CONCERT and OPERA REVIEWS

The Magic Flute by Mozart

Austin Lyric Opera directed by James Marvel; Conductor: Richard Buckley
The Long Center, Austin, Texas, November 5, 11 and 13
Review of performance of Saturday November 5

Congratulations are in order for the Austin Lyric Opera on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary. The organization also deserves enormous credit for dealing quickly and apparently effectively with a serious financial crisis that came to a boil last spring. Changes since then have included the resignation of General Director Kevin Patterson, the listing of ALO’s office building for sale, and major program cuts to the 2011-2012 season. Kevin Smith was appointed interim General Director and principal conductor Richard Buckley was given the additional title of Artistic Director.

Mozart’s “The Magic Flute“ was the first opera the ALO produced in its inaugural season in 1987. In a program note Kevin Smith declares that the theme of the 25th anniversary is “Let the Magic continue…;” unfortunately, there was little, if any magic in James Marvel’s production of “The Magic Flute.”

Let it be said at the outset that “The Magic Flute” is full of wonderful music, but the libretto is an unruly mishmash of comedy and spirituality. It is a huge challenge for any director to make sense of it all and put it together in a way that is both faithful to Mozart and intelligible for the audience. Come to think of it, there are any number of Shakespeare plays that have a similar challenge.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I would guess that director Marvel had another challenge too: how to mount a production of one of Mozart’s greatest operas with a severely trimmed budget resulting from the ALO’s financial troubles.

Click to read the full review by Paul E. Robinson at www.theartoftheconductor.com . . . .

Arts Reporting: The Austin Lyric Opera in Crisis, by Paul E. Robinson

A thoughtful account and analysis by Paul Robinson at his blog www.theartoftheconductor.com, May 25:

The Austin Lyric Opera in Crisis: No Easy Answers!

by Paul E. Robinson

The news just keeps getting worse from opera companies across the United States. As the economy ever so slowly rights itself after a devastating recession, ticket buyers and generous donors are hard to find. Endowments have taken a tremendous hit from the stock market collapse. The New York City Opera has been struggling for years and recently announced that it would have to leave Lincoln Center in order to cut costs and remain in business. David Gockley, the San Francisco Opera’s highly-regarded General Director, said that his company was feeling the heat and needed to do some radical restructuring. While Texas has weathered the recession better than most states, the Austin Lyric Opera (ALO) finds itself in serious financial turmoil. General Director Kevin Patterson handed in his resignation in the face of a growing deficit.

ALO Repertoire: Popular Mix too Much for Austin?

Austin is neither New York nor San Francisco, either in size or in the importance of its opera company; it is, however, a vibrant and growing major population center (the Austin Metro area is about 1.4 million people) and problems facing its opera company are fairly representative of what’s facing cities all over the country.

The ALO’s current budget is $4.3 million and its season is comprised of three main stage productions – presented at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, with each opera given four performances. In addition, there are some smaller events and the ALO also runs the Armstrong Community Music School.

Under Kevin Patterson as General Director and Richard Buckley as Principal Conductor, the ALO has developed a reputation for excellent work and for deftly mixing standard fare with off-beat contemporary repertoire. This past season the ALO offered Jonathan Dove’s wonderful opera “Flight,” and the previous season it mounted a production of Chabrier’s rarely-heard opera, “L’Etoile”. In 1997, it presented Philip Glass’ “Waiting for the Barbarians.” One of the AOL’s most enjoyable productions in recent years was an Austin-oriented version of “Die Fledermaus (The Bat).” As travelers to Austin probably know, one of the city’s prime tourist attractions is the daily emergence downtown, at sundown, of something like 1.5 million bats from under the Congress Street bridge.

On the whole, the ALO has given the community a consistently high quality of sophisticated and entertaining repertoire. Although there are few recognizable names among the singers, the mostly young and mostly American singers have been well-chosen and Buckley’s presence in the pit has guaranteed well-rehearsed and well-executed performances. Such quality comes at a price, however, and it is a price that the Austin community apparently is no longer either able to, or prepared to pay.

Several years ago the ALO moved from the Bass Hall on the University of Texas campus to the new Long Center downtown and the move was expected to be a boost for the company. The Bass Hall had 2,900 seats and the Dell Hall in the Long Center only 2,400. With fewer seats to fill, the ALO still averaged only about 45% capacity.

Read more at Robinson's blog The Art of the Conductor . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Paul E. Robinson on ALO's The Italian Girl in Algiers

Found on-line:

Rossini’s “Italian Girl in Algiers” Takes Flight in Austin, Texas

Posted February 4th by Paul E. Robinson

I doubt that Gioachino Rossini had airplanes and hot-air balloons in mind when he wrote his comic opera “L’Italiana in Algeri” in 1813 – but why not? There is so much craziness in the opera as written, that a little more just adds to the fun. And there was plenty of fun in the Austin Lyric Opera (ALO) production that took to the stage at the Long Center last week.

The Austin Lyric Opera is a regional company with a modest budget, struggling every month to keep its head above water; yet it consistently manages to mount one imaginative and entertaining production after another.

General Director Kevin Patterson sure knows how to pick them. The company, which celebrates its 25^th anniversary next season, fully deserves not only the support of the local community, but in my opinion, national recognition as well.

Click to read full review at Paul E. Robinson's website 'The Art of the Conductor,' February 4

Click to read review by Luke Quinton for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, January 31

Reviews from Elsewhere: Austin Symphony's Mixed-Media Exploration of Dvorak's New World Symphony, January 14-15

Found on-line at Paul E. Robinson's www.artoftheconductor.com, January 24:

excerpts:

Austin Symphony’s New World “Beyond the Score”

By Paul E. Robinson

It is always a difficult business to “educate” the classical music audience without talking down to them on the one hand or talking over their heads on the other, and while some subscribers welcome non-musical elements in a concert, others hate them.

The Austin Symphony and conductor Peter Bay deserve full marks for making a valiant effort to both educate and entertain at their Long Center concert last week.

In the first half of the concert, we were given some background on the piece courtesy of the Chicago Symphony’s (CSO) “Beyond the Score” series, a multi-media production incorporating a giant screen over the orchestra, a narrator, two actors, a singer and a pianist. This innovative opening to the concert introduced us to Dvořák the man and the composer, and told us something about his approximately two-year stint (1892-95) in New York as head of the National Conservatory. More importantly, it explored all the elements that inspired Dvořák to create his most famous composition. In the second half, we had a complete performance of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor “From the New World.” [. . .]

Beyond the Score More Fiction than Fact

In this “Beyond the Score” presentation of Dvořák’s “New World Symphony,” McBurney has concentrated on why it is called “From the New World” and made extensive use of Michael Beckerman’s entertaining but highly speculative book “New Worlds of Dvořák.”

The impression left by the “Beyond the Score” presentation is that the middle movements of the symphony are very closely related to the Hiawatha story as told in Longfellow’s poem. We are also left with the impression that Dvořák used actual African-American songs in the symphony. Neither impression is factual. [. . . ]

What did Dvořák have to say on this subject? In a letter written in 1900, he reflected his annoyance with the whole enterprise: “But forget that nonsense, the notion that I used Indian and American melodies, because it is a lie! I tried only to compose in the spirit of those national American melodies.” [. . .]

Taking Beyond the Score Beyond the Familiar

Whether serious or silly, all these stories and anecdotes are amusing and colorful and help to enliven multi-media presentations.

I spoke to several members of the audience after the presentation. They certainly enjoyed it. They felt they learned more about the composer and they embraced the use of visual media and live actors; upon close questioning, however, it also became apparent that they had embraced the still debated message McBurney conveyed, whether deliberately or inadvertently, as factual. i.e., that 1) the symphony quotes “negro” spirituals, and 2) the symphony tells the story of Hiawatha and Minnehaha.

So much for music education.

[. . . .]

In the End, The Sound, not the Story Stirs the Heart

After intermission, we experienced the music without the media, and it was a pleasure. In spite of the familiarity – over-familiarity? – of the piece, Peter Bay and the Austin Symphony gave it a fresh and committed performance.

The orchestra was without its regular concertmaster Jessica Mathaes. Former concertmaster Eugene Gratovich led with authority. All sections were in top form. Special kudos to the horn section, and to the double basses whose difficult four-part chords at the end of the Largo were perfectly in tune, and, of course, to the excellent English horn soloist who played the famous tune earlier in the same movement, with beautiful tone and phrasing.

Click to read Paul E. Robinson's full text at www.artoftheconductor.com . . . .