As a farewell to 1999, we’ll be presenting a series of our entertainment critics’ choices for the best and worst entertainment events of the year. Today John von Rhein offers his picks for the highlights and lowlights of local classical music in 1999.
Highlights
– Lyric Opera world premiere of William Bolcom’s “A View from the Bridge,” Oct. 9 to Nov. 5, Civic Opera House. Bolcom’s operatic retelling of the classic Arthur Miller play got a tremendous buildup in the national press. Fortunately the opera lived up to the hype. A Greek tragedy set on the Brooklyn docks, “View from the Bridge” had a strong, atmospheric score, beautifully crafted vocal lines and a story that grabbed audiences in the gut. Frank Galati’s staging could hardly have served it more faithfully. The final decade of the century has produced few operas one is convinced will last very long into the new millennium, but Bolcom’s latest promises to be a happy exception.
– Shostakovich Festival, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, May 27 to June 12 at Symphony Center: Who would have thought Dmitri Shostakovich would be the hottest ticket in town? Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, the composer’s most devoted podium advocate, took charge of a dozen programs of orchestral and chamber music that, for three exhilarating weeks, made Chicago the Shostakovich capital of the capitalist West. This Dmitri-fest was rife with revelations. Audiences came away with a heightened appreciation of a composer whose artistic worth has for too long been distorted by Cold War politics. The 72-year-old Rostropovich’s deep personal identification with Shostakovich and his music was reflected in the vigorous intensity he brought to each performance.
– Lyric Opera production of Handel’s “Alcina,” Oct. 30 to Nov. 29, Civic Opera House: The Lyric delivered a dream team of singers — Renee Fleming, Natalie Dessay, Jennifer Larmore, Kathleen Kuhlmann and Rockwell Blake — for its first foray into this Baroque masterwork. Local Handelians were in heaven. More than four hours, the show did not feel a semiquaver too long, thanks to the vocal virtuosity of the performers. And the imaginative new production by Robert Carsen and Tobias Hoheisel was a model of style, elegance and psychological illumination.
– Chicago premiere of the Elgar/Payne: Symphony No. 3, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis conducting, March 4 at Symphony Center: Edward Elgar never lived to complete his Third Symphony, but more than a half century later, the British composer Anthony Payne did. Nobody could pretend the result is exactly how the symphony would have sounded were Elgar able to have realized his intentions. Even so, in building a symphonic frame from the surviving sketches, Payne gave us an absolutely convincing “new” piece of late Elgar. The CSO performance, led by the Lyric’s music director-designate, delighted local Elgar lovers while making a convincing case for the piece’s being accorded repertory status.
– Renee Fleming, Jan. 24 at Symphony Center: Chicagoans were lucky to have heard the celebrated American soprano in two appearances this year–in the title role of Handel’s “Alcina” and in a song recital at Orchestra Hall. Fleming’s agenda–German lieder to Goethe texts, plus songs by Debussy and Richard Strauss — was anything but your typical diva fare, while her performances (with Steven Blier at the piano) capitalized on the voluptuous beauty of her voice and sympathetic attention to texts.
– Purcell’s “King Arthur” by Les Arts Florissants, Nov. 8 at Symphony Center: Henry Purcell’s whimsical Baroque semi-opera was treated to an enchanting performance by director William Christie and his expert singers and instrumentalists, in a co-production with the University of Chicago Presents series. The crisp, tangy timbres of period instruments cushioned the singing with sounds as magical as the world of Purcell.
– U.S. premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s “Sotto Voce” by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim conducting, Oct. 1 at Symphony Center: One of the year’s finest new symphonic pieces, this latest by the respected German composer is a Mozart homage that doesn’t really resemble the Wunderkind of Salzburg at all. This is beautiful, accessible music, transparently scored, infused with infinite subtlety and nuance. (The Italian title suggests a stage whisper in opera.) The performance, led by Barenboim from the piano, made it sound like a very still, almost painfully delicate accompaniment to a Mozart aria that’s being sung far, far away.
– Chicago Opera Theater’s production of “There Is a Garden,” June 4 to 12, Athenaeum Theatre: Soprano Angelina Reaux’s revue, a tribute to the multifaceted musical genius of Leonard Bernstein, went on too long for the purposes it set for itself. But Reaux’s reluctance to say goodnight to her audience was oddly fitting for a show celebrating an artist who lived life to glorious excess until the very end. And the performances by Reaux and five other singers would have earned emotional bear-hugs from the Man himself.
– Riccardo Chailly with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Nov. 11 at Symphony Center: If all concerts of standard repertory were as expertly prepared and lovingly executed as the guest conductor’s Tchaikovsky-Chopin program, critics would not have to issue stern warnings about orchestras ossifying into museums for the glorification of dead European composers. Listeners would then appreciate what makes the canonic masterpieces important to our cultural well-being.
– Marilyn Horne, Nov. 28 at Symphony Center: The American mezzo-soprano, 65, chose Chicago as the site of her final classical concert, and it was a bittersweet valedictory all around. How Horne sang was less important than the memories evoked of a 45-year career marked by one remarkable achievement after the other. A touching farewell from a great artist.
Lowlights
– Worst Eurotrash opera production of the year: Director David Alden’s insufferably gimmicky update of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at Lyric Opera, which turned Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into cartoon tyrants.
– Second worst Eurotrash opera production of the year: The hideous sets imported from Brussels for Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger,” also at Lyric. Who approves these things?
– Most unfortunate operatic debut of the year: Tenor Andrea Bocelli’s woeful attempt to sing the demanding title role in Massenet’s “Werther,” with the Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit.
– Most flagrant example of marketing masquerading as art: Bocelli amplified to the eyeteeth at the Allstate Arena.
– Dumbest movie ripping off a classical musician: Anand Tucker’s “Hilary and Jackie,” which appropriated the life of the great British cellist Jacqueline du Pre for commercial purposes.
