PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Catherine Pisaroni demonstrates in directorial début that not all stagings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte are ‘like that’ (Teatro Grattacielo, New York City; 19 July 2026)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, K. 588 — Yi Liu (Fiordiligi), Ashlyn Taylor King (Dorabella), Hayden Smith (Ferrando), Young-Kwang Yoo (Guglielmo), Ziliang Hao (Don Alfonso), Stella Christine (Despina), Catherine Pisaroni (Cupid); Teatro Grattacielo Orchestra; Abdiel Vázquez, conductor [Catherine Pisaroni, director; Teatro Grattacielo, Ellen Stewart Theatre, Shares at La MaMa, New York City, USA; Sunday, 19 July 2026]

Opera companies face a Mozart problem—or, rather, a host of Mozart problems. The operatic masterworks of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s compositional maturity—Idomeneo, re di Creta, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, La clemenza di Tito, and, above all, Die Zauberflöte and his trio of collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte—are enduringly popular with audiences, yet their logistical challenges are daunting. For all their brilliance, these pieces are not suited to the gargantuan spaces of the largest houses, but smaller companies sometimes lack the resources needed to stage them imaginatively and cast them effectively. Perhaps the greatest marvel of any of Mozart’s post-1780 operas is its ability to delight and move despite musical and dramaturgical adversities. These are operas with plot devices deemed by Nineteenth-Century observers to require editorial correction and thought in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries to demand infusions of ‘relevance.’ Might it not be argued, however, that a work like Così fan tutte—an exquisitely beautiful telling of an outrageously indelicate, even immoral story—succeeds because of its problems, because, under the most thoughtful circumstances, directors, conductors, and singers are compelled to explore beyond prettiness and politeness and thereby to ask audiences to confront their own pettiness and prejudices?

Staging Così fan tutte in the intimate space of the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa, Teatro Grattacielo provided first-time stage director Catherine Pisaroni with precisely the thoughtful circumstances in which to discard tired traditions in order to look deeply into the psychological motivations of the characters created by Mozart and da Ponte and the external forces that manipulate them. Few artists are more immersed in the genre than Pisaroni, but her extensive exposure to all aspects of preparing and performing opera yielded not a clever adaptation of conventional approaches to staging Così but a thorough, unmistakably affectionate dismantling, analysis, and reconstruction of the pitfall-laden drama. Framing the opera as a treatise on ever-evolving, ever-devolving notions of gender, sexuality, and romantic attachments, supervised and narrated with bemused and confounded aloofness—though, owing to the amplification system, not always with audibility—by an unambiguously feminine Cupid, Pisaroni employed simplicity as her most powerful tool in examining the work’s amorous intrigues. As wily as in any production, Despina was here a meddling roommate of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, lending her advice to the ladies greater impact than an impertinent servant’s counsel might wield. Everyone was young and fanciful: even Don Alfonso, though charismatically cunning, was savvy more through experience of the world than time in it. Aptly for a production coinciding with the FIFA World Cup, Ferrando and Guglielmo were boys-next-door standout athletes, ostensibly called up to the major league to facilitate their ‘return’ as stereotypical bad boys.

Utilizing a minimalist setting in which particular emphasis was devoted to differentiating the characters’ individual physical spaces, the sleekness of the concept perpetuated by uncomplicated costume designs, Pisaroni wholly eschewed reliance upon ‘Kleider machen Leute’ characterization, instead encouraging singers and listeners to seek the characters’ emotions and rationales in music and text. Cuts were numerous, including all choral numbers, and sometimes disfiguring, perhaps most regrettably so when Ferrando’s and Guglielmo’s sublime ‘Secondate, aurette amiche’ was interrupted for an intrusion of a modern club vibe, but Ferrando’s too-often-excised ‘Tradito, schernito’ was retained. In the opera’s final minutes, with Cupid’s machinations hurtling towards disaster, Don Alfonso and Despina were transformed into Mozart and da Ponte and tasked with setting things right, only to suggest that there are no right answers to Così’s questions. In affairs of the heart, it was theorized, no outcome is any more right or less wrong than any other. Ferrando therefore claimed the hands of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, Despina connected with Guglielmo, and Don Alfonso turned his attention to a handsome stagehand. It was a plausible resolutuon for an opera with no wholly-logical conclusions; and, most importantly, one achieved with humor and humanity. In her inaugural outing as a director, Pisaroni excelled both at asking herself and her audience why much of Così is uncomfortable and at refusing to attempt to ‘fix’ any of Mozart’s and da Ponte’s perfect imperfections.

Pisaroni had in conductor Abdiel Vázquez an ideal partner for bringing this unique realization of Così to fruition. From the spirited Overture to the valedictory chord of Act Two, the eleven musicians under his baton played with such joy and involvement that infrequent intonational insecurities and moments of disjointed ensemble were unobtrusive. The conductor’s tempi, discernibly rooted in adherence to Mozart’s instructions and familiarity with Eighteenth-Century practice, allowed the singers to breathe air into their much-tested lungs and life into the characters they portrayed. Vázquez’s playing of the continuo was one of the performance’s foremost glories, his virtuosity giving the keyboard an engaging voice in recitatives. The interpolation of the ominous sounds that announce the arrival of the spectral Commendatore in the penultimate scene of Don Giovanni was enthralling, but most inspired was the—admittedly anachronistic—inclusion of the haunting melody of ‘Lacrimosa’ from the Requiem, played with heartrending delicacy. A plethora of advancements in comprehension and execution of period-appropriate style notwithstanding, a half-century of historically-informed handling of Eighteenth-Century music has largely eroded the sort of organic pacing of Mozart’s operas cultivated in earlier generations by conductors such as Josef Krips and Karl Böhm. Vázquez’s conducting of Teatro Grattacielo’s Così fan tutte lacked none of the scholarly accomplishment of recent decades but also exhibited a now-rare fluency in Mozart’s singular musical language.

I festeggiamenti prematuri: (from left to right) tenor Hayden Smith as Ferrando, bass-baritone Ziliang Hao as Don Alfonso, soprano Stella Christine as Despina, and baritone Young-Kwang Yoo as Guglielmo in Teatro Grattacielo’s performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte, 19 July 2026
[Photograph © by Wesley Sherow and Teatro Grattacielo]

Vivid of personality but wan of voice in Despina’s interactions with Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Don Alfonso in Act One, soprano Stella Christine found her vocal footing during the interval and launched Act Two with an incisive, artfully-sung account of ‘Una donna a quindici anni.’ As the romantic entanglements careened from playful subterfuge to life-altering betrayal, Christine limned the metamorphosis of Despina’s ennui into apprehensiveness with immediacy and increasing musical comfort. With each successive ensemble, she seized opportunities to distinguish Despina from her female counterparts with greater confidence. The voice’s focus blossomed as the line ascended, bringing Despina musically and theatrically to the core of the opera’s emotional upheaval.

Were they to stage their hometown composer’s Così fan tutte, the fictionalized sisters of Stift Nonnberg might ask, ‘How do you solve a problem like Don Alfonso?’ Directors and interpreters of the part contend with difficult decisions about the character’s constitution and intentions, Mozart and da Ponte having drawn a figure of chameleonic morality whose ambitions ultimately remain enigmatic. Under Pisaroni’s guidance, bass-baritone Ziliang Hao’s Don Alfonso was assured but never asinine, persuading without bullying. Singing boldly and with easy command of the range, Hao avoided the vocal bluster and acerbic scheming that can make the character insufferably pompous. There was a glimmer of genuine feeling in the voice in ‘Soave sia il vento’, and his Alfonso sparred with his male friends and captivated the ladies with equal fervor. In recitative, aria, and ensemble, text provided the impetus for singing, accentuating the mastery of the collaboration between composer and librettist. Hao’s Don Alfonso unashamedly enjoyed his game, but this was no ‘retired’ Don Giovanni still exulting in debauchery. There was no overt effort to explicate or justify Alfonso’s actions, which seemed to be the point. ‘Così fan tutte,’ after all: are gli uomini not as inclined as le donne to certain inscrutable behaviors?

The dashing Guglielmo, often portrayed as the more assertive of the suitors, was sung by baritone Young-Kwang Yoo with a finely-judged balance of sophistication and bravado. The effervescent swagger of Yoo’s vocalism enlivened ensembles without overwhelming the music or his onstage colleagues. Like all of the principals in this performance, he dedicated close attention to maintaining verbal lucidity even in the music’s most demanding passages. Yoo delivered ‘Non siate ritrosi’ captivatingly, the interplay between words and music propelling the performance. ‘Donne mie, la fate a tanti’ was sung with equal commitment to allying dramatic thrust with unimpeachable musicality. Musically, Guglielmo is no easy sing, the center of vocal gravity positioned awkwardly for many of today’s singers. In conquering this potential obstacle, as well as in credibly imparting the character’s impetuous machismo, Yoo’s youth was a boon, one upon which he instinctually capitalized.

Though initially paired with Ferrando, Dorabella is more temperamentally aligned with Guglielmo, her innate adventurousness needing little provocation to suppress orthodox propriety and capitulate to a new lover’s wooing. Mezzo-soprano Ashlyn Taylor King’s Dorabella was the epitome of a young woman immersed in the turmoil of finding her own identity amidst societal dictates and expectations. The voice’s shimmering timbre gave emphasis to the character’s lines in ensembles, but it was the intelligence of the singer’s interpretation that inspired greatest admiration. There were ascending phrases in which vocal comfort was compromised, but pitches were accurate despite moments of toil. An especially ebullient presence in recitative, King also sang ‘Smanie implacabili’ strikingly, articulating the text with wit. ‘È amore un ladroncello’ was shaped with complementary involvement, the voice serving as a conduit for the aria’s sentiments. King’s Dorabella was passionate but principled: both erotic zeal and conscience resounded in the voice.

Some of the afternoon’s most alluring and authentically Mozartian singing was contributed by tenor Hayden Smith, whose boyish but soulful Ferrando beguiled with expressive sincerity and tonal luster. A worthy comrade for Yoo’s Guglielmo, Smith’s Ferrando was deceptive without ever being duplicitous, his courting of Fiordiligi executed without ill intent—and thus all the more cogent when, contrary to his will, it assumed a measure of earnestness. The celebrated ‘Un’ aura amorosa’ was phrased with eloquence and subtlety, the voice gleaming and secure even when reduced to a wonderfully-projected mezza voce. The nimbleness with which the fiorature in the final scene of Act One were sung increased the injustice of the omission of ‘Ah! lo veggio, quell’anima,’ but Smith voiced ‘Tradito, schernito dal perfido cor’ with unflinching vulnerability that belied the unassailable technical adroitness that enabled it. Both Fiordiligi and Dorabella choosing Ferrando was an unexpected result of the opera’s sensual meanderings, but this Ferrando earned the double adulation, Smith’s singing consistently affirming Mozart’s comprehensive understanding of the mesmerizing capabilities of the human voice.

That Fiordiligi was in this production less an archetypal operatic leading lady and more a multi-dimensional young woman on the brink of sexual awakening was due in part to Pisaroni’s direction and still more so to the performance of soprano Yi Liu. As she sang the rôle, the expansive range of Fiordiligi’s music was dreaded by neither singer nor audience, the voice evenly produced across two octaves to C₆. Like her Dorabella and Don Alfonso, Liu’s Fiordiligi was affecting in her singing in ‘Soave sia il vento,’ and poised vocalism in ensembles was a considerable strength of the soprano’s performance. Defiance and indignation boiled in her voicing of ‘Come scoglio immoto resta,’ rhythmic precision heightening the potency of the text, and, as Fiordiligi conceded her acquiescence to Ferrando’s advances, ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’ was sung with wrenching self-reproach tempered by an understated thrill of liberation. Like the production’s voyeuristic Cupid, Fiordiligi found contentment by relinquishing her flawed control over her situation, surrendering not to duty but to desire.

Perhaps, this production and the artists who gave it life proposed, it is not so much that ‘così fan tutte’ but, rather, that così dovrebbero essere tutti; or, as Cicero put it, ‘esse quam videri,’ it is better to be than to seem.

BOOK REVIEW: Ben Bliss — Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts (ISBN 979-8254608806, 2026)

BEN BLISS (born 1985): Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts [231 pages, ISBN 979-8254608806; Available from Amazon]

Thirty-four years after James Carville asserted in response to debate over which issue most motivates voters’ choices at the polls that it is ‘the economy, stupid,’, far too many artists—and not solely those in the formative phases of their careers—continue to underestimate the extent to which personal and global economic conditions affect the success and longevity of artistic journeys. It is not only artist’ financial health that is tested by the booms and busts of the gig economy, but the emotional, social, and physiological tolls of struggles with solvency remain too seldom acknowledged. Sadly, mentorship sometimes exacerbates the neglect of hollistic approaches to career-building: an attitude of ‘If you are not thriving, you are not doing it correctly’ is still over-prevalent amongst the institutions and individuals guiding young artists. Amidst so many concerns about musical education that promotes erudition at the expense of practicality, is the failure to adequately prepare young artists to manage the business interests of their careers perhaps the most injurious disservice?

Though eclipsed by the incalculable impact of the lives lost, the battle for financial survival that compelled many artists to curtail or abandon their careers was a particular horror of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work stopped, but the bills came. The rent was due. Student debt loomed. In a time of life-threatening illness, insurance premiums needed to be paid. Despite well-meaning assurances of all of humanity being ‘in the same boat,’ some freelance artists watched from leaking rafts as colleagues with extensive management and representation teams sailed past aboard yachts, certainly not enjoying carefree voyages but buoyed by hope for an eventual entry into tranquil waters. ‘What have I been doing wrong?’ sinking freelancers asked. Pandemics of course defy predictions and preparation, but insightful, self-cognizant artists found that there were no simple or uniform answers. Rarely are foolish actions wholly the cause of strife, but acting wisely, both in the moment and in years to come, is the necessary foundation of a career—and a life—that could withstand future calamities.

The development and deployment of strategic wisdom are the central focus of Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts, a work of engaging but challenging depth from the pen of acclaimed tenor Ben Bliss. Equally adept at turning a lathe, distinguishing a true classic car from merely old ones, and projecting alluring tone into the vast spaces of the world’s most prestigious opera houses, Bliss demonstrates in Making It Work that he also excels at both devising innovative ways to solve problems that plague today’s freelance artists and advising his readers with unflinching honesty. When Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January 1776, sense may well have been common, but Bliss recognizes that the do-or-die cultivation of business sense by freelance artists is now dismayingly uncommon. As early as the book’s Disclaimer, its author’s abiding counsel to fellow artists is succinctly articulated: ‘You alone bear full responsibility for evaluating the merits and risks associated with any decisions you make’ (Kindle edition location 4/1330).

In her autobiography, Dame Joan Sutherland expressed disdain for haggling over performance fees and contract terms, but trusted sources impart that, knowing her worth, she weaponized conviviality with remarkable effectiveness. Today’s Arts environment has evolved in ways that would likely baffle even the most business-savvy artists of past generations, but Bliss advances aspects of Sutherland’s ‘conquer by kindness’ mentality in his suggestions to freelancers, writing, ‘Use your judgement to push back with enough strength to not leave any money on the table.’ He continues with a reminder of the power of finesse, recommending ‘also being realistic, respectful and not souring your relationship with the presenter’ (Kindle edition loc. 869/1330). From this start, Bliss argues, the conscientious freelance artist can fashion a career in which self-interest, self-promotion, and self-reliance are strengths rather than stumbling blocks, allying the benefits of traditional channels of external influence in the full utilization of the artist’s own intellect and intuition.

Throughout Making It Work, Bliss provides cogent, well-reasoned proposals that are specific enough to be valuable to a broad array of artistic ventures yet of universal importance to all readers. Moreover, the precepts addressed in these pages arise from lived experirnce and are conveyed with unadorned language, ensuring that every point is made with clarity. Outlining the obstacles that obstruct freelance artists’ paths, the book’s real-world scenarios are explained and analyzed with disarming candor. Never shrinking from admitting his own mistakes and miscalculations, but owning them with self-depricating playfulness, Bliss avoids any vestige of the condescending ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ tome. Espousing an artist’s unique variation on Shakespeare’s ‘to thine own self be true,’ this book seeks above all to instill in readers an unalterable awareness that ‘this is show business, not show thanks-for-letting-me-be-on-stage’ (Kindle edition loc. 850/1330).

Musicians who, as Ben Bliss has done in rightly-acclaimed portrayals of parts like Bajazet in Händel’s Tamerlano and Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, succeed in Baroque and Classical works understand that a vital component of their success is delivering ‘dry’ recitatives with vigor that heightens the drama rather than distracting from it. The same might be said of writing about the behind-the-scenes machinations of freelance artists’ careers. Though humorously warning that he may ‘sound like your Mom or your rich uncle’ (Kindle edition loc. 1023/1330), Bliss transforms topics that some readers might be inclined to find tedious into threads in an informative, entertaining, and ultimately enlightening narrative. Should anything else have been expected of one of the lyric stage’s most captivating storytellers?

Note: Citations in this review refer to the digital edition of Making It Work compatible with Kindle version 8.148.1.0, updated on 21 May 2026. Location designations will not correspond with locations in editions compatible with other Kindle versions or with the print edition.

RECORDING REVIEW: Franz Schubert, John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, & George Harrison — SCHUBERT/BEATLES (Theo Hoffman, Julia Bullock, Andrew Owens; New York Festival of Song; NYFOS Records 838999)

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828), JOHN LENNON (1940 – 1980), SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY (born 1942), and GEORGE HARRISON (1943 – 2001): Schubert/Beatles — Theo Hoffman, baritone; Julia Bullock, soprano; Andrew Owens, tenor; Rupert Boyd and Alex Levine, guitar; Rubén Rengel, violin; Sam Weber, bass; Steven Blier and Kunal Lahiry, piano; New York Festival of Song [Recorded at Big Orange Sheep, Brooklyn, New York, USA, 23 – 27 April and 16 July 2024, and at Second Take Sound, New York City, USA, 10 September 2024; NYFOS Records 838999; 1 CD, 56:33; Available from New York Festival of Song Records and major music retailers and streaming services]

4 May 1856. 9 February 1964. These dates are of little consequence in the broadest historical context, but their significance to music lovers is enormous and enduring. On 4 May 1856, a Viennese audience heard the first known complete performance of Franz Schubert’s Liederzyklus Die schöne Müllerin, completed in 1823 but not sung publicly in its entirely until nearly three decades after the composer’s death. On the inauspicious Sunday evening of 9 February 1964, American television viewers were introduced to The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show—a cultural milestone with few equivalents in the annals of Western music. The chasm that might seem to separate these two events, temporally and stylistically, is bridged by the melodic fecundity and mastery of word setting shared by Schubert, John Lennon, and Sir Paul McCartney. In a sense, these performances were very different manifestations of a timeless, universal artistic spirit, singular but closely-connected steps along a long and winding musical road.

Motivated in part by the musical foundation upon which the band and their frequent producer Sir George Martin built their body of work, the inclination to analyze The Beatles’ songs from the perspectives of and perform them with aesthetics borrowed from traditional Classical Music has intensified in the years since the 1991 première of McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio codified the links between Classical idioms and The Beatles’s Blues-influenced Rock language. Bringing avant-garde points of view and innovative interpretive nuances to Art Song repertory, not least by recalibrating audiences’ perceptions of the genre’s conventions, is a core focus of New York Festival of Song’s endeavors, one of the most remarkable of which—first in performance and now on disc—is the partnering of Schubert Lieder with Beatles songs that explore related themes. In the fifty-six minutes of Schubert/Beatles, recorded with aural clarity and an appealing suggestion of an intimate performance space, the gravity of the societal metamorphoses that divide Schubert, The Beatles, and Twenty-First-Century listeners is lightened, commonality found not in familiarity but in undeviating—and all-too-rare—artistic integrity.

Guided by NYFOS co-founder and Artistic Director Steven Blier, the artistic collaborations that yield the thoughtful, thought-provoking performances on Schubert/Beatles are at once reverent and rebellious, combining meticulous preparation and stylistic acumen with originality and spontaneity. It is always hoped that new generations of interpreters of music as emotionally layered as Scubert Lieder and Beatles songs will bring unique insights to their explorations of these works, but lackluster accounts of Winterreise and pedestrian covers of Lennon and McCartney standards have reduced the notion of distinctiveness to a cliché. This is a project that rewards optimism, however. Blier and fellow collaborative pianist Kunal Lahiry play with technical accomplishment that is too easily neglected whilst listening to this disc, the unfettered exuberance of their scene-setting outshining the virtuosity that facilitates it.

The salons of Schubert’s Vienna perhaps exhibited few similarities with Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club, but they are here linked by Blier, Lahiry, and guitarists Rupert Boyd and Alex Levine as irrevocably and captivatingly as was the Gershwins’ New York with DuBose Heyward’s Catfish Row. In the context of these musicians’ contributions to this disc, along with those of violinist Rubén Rengel and bassist Sam Weber, it can be asserted that consistency is the enemy of critique: so uniformly energizing, illuminating, and musically expert are their performances that praising any individual phrase or piece as superior to its companions would be disingenuous.

Few segments of the Art Song repertoire have amassed discographies as expansive as that of which Schubert’s Lieder can boast. A boon to listeners, this abundance tasks interpreters whose performances of Schubert Lieder are committed to disc with justifying their presence among accounts by storied artists. In the opening phrases of ‘Die Taubenpost’ (D.965A), delivered with a heartening avoidance of artifice, baritone Theo Hoffman answers the question of whether he is a Schubertian whose work merits recorded documentation with a resounding ‘Jawohl.’ Here and in all of the Schubert Lieder sung on this disc, Hoffman’s timbre is reminiscent of that of Gérard Souzay, the silvery lower octave integrated with a shimmering, soft-grained upper register, but the younger singer shapes literary and musical phrases with markedly greater sincerity than his predecessor often employed.

As sung in this recital, Friedrich Rochlitz’s words are granted clarity equal to that devoted to Schubert’s music in ‘Alinde' (D.904). Hoffman enunciates the line ‘Noch will sie nicht kommen’ with particular psychological ardor, heightening the anguish of the sentiment without distorting the musical line. Similarly, the words ‘Weit, hoch, herrlich’ from Goethe’s text ideally characterize Hoffman’s voicing of ‘An Schwager Kronos’ (D.369), his vivid but unexaggerated declamation differentiating the transitions of mood among the stanzas. His singing teems with drama, but it is always discernibly that of the song’s narrator.

Despite his unsurpassed affinity for melodic bounty, Schubert did not achieve lasting success with opera, his music for Alfonso und Estrella and Fierrabras—neither of which was performed in its entirety during his lifetime—judged by his contemporaries to be insufficient to overcome the deficiencies of the respective libretti. Nevertheless, Schubert wrote effectively for ensembles of voices in both sacred and secular works, his dexterity at intertwining vocal and instrumental lines reaching a zenith in the duet ‘Licht und Liebe’ (D.352). Hoffman is joined in his performance of ‘Licht und Liebe’ by tenor Andrew Owens, whose refulgent, sagaciously-inflected singing is marginally disserved by editing that favors his colleague, yet the imbalance between the voices intensifies focus on the intricacy of the interweaving lines and lends the articulations of ‘ein süßes Licht,’ rendered with unaffected beauty, hypnotic plaintiveness.

Composed in 1826 to verses by Johann Gabriel Seidl, ‘Der Wanderer an den Mond’ (D.870) exemplifies the endearing guilelessness of Schubert’s art, the song’s structure assuming the strophic lucidity of a Volkslied. Hoffman pronounces each word of the text with interpretive alertness, but he is also attentive to the song’s prevailing straightforwardness, following rather than imposing the gently-ebbing phrasing. ‘Du bist die Ruh’ (D.776) is rightly among the most popular of Schubert’s settings of lines by Friedrich Rückert, but it is sung here with fascinating individuality, the baritone’s performance gratifyingly untouched by the ponderousness too often derived from the Lied’s recorded legacy. The union of tonal luster, verbal acuity, and expressive sensitivity that characterizes Hoffman’s singing of these Schubert Lieder provides a performance of ‘In Frühling’ (D.882) that blossoms with vernal renewal.

It is nonsensical when so little singing of distinction is now heard in any repertoire that so much effort is wasted on debating by which voices music like Beatles songs should be sung. Naturally, there are listeners for whom the original Beatles recordings of the songs are sacrosanct, but the surest measure of a song’s quality is its effectiveness in performances by artists other than those by and for whom it was created. Is it not more advantageous, for instance, to consider how the composer, the performer, and listeners benefit from such an endeavor than to question the artistic value of Sting’s recordings of songs by John Dowland?

Alongside like-minded—and equally-talented—musical partners, Hoffman demonstrates that there is no single type of voice that is exclusively ‘right’ for Beatles songs. A lauded exponent of bel canto repertoire whose repertory also includes McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio, Owens again duets with Hoffman in ‘The Word,’ their voices proving to be as thrilling individually and in ensemble in this music as in Schubert. Perpetuating the ebullience of Hoffman’s singing, Owens repeatedly ascends to top C with giddy ease that elucidates the song’s words. The vastly different atmospheres of ‘Taxman’ and ‘If I Fell,’ the latter one of the jewels of Hard Day’s Night, are explicated with poetic wonder and metaphysical depth that never threaten to supercede the radiant joy of making music.

Released on the 1966 album Revolver, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ is cited as one of McCartney’s favorites among his songs penned for the Beatles. Hearing Hoffman’s handling of his words and melodic lines, the subtleties of which are conveyed with understated intensity and interplay between voice and piano recalling the mélodies of Duparc, might well further increase his esteem for the song. Likewise, the wistful, affectionate strains of ‘Julia,’ written by Lennon as a tribute to his mother a decade after her early passing, are sculpted with tenderness, though Hoffman and Blier maintain clear-sighted objectivity, thereby inviting the listener to draw subtexts from personal experiences. The voice is always centered in the words, from which the music emerges with conversational directness.

In comparison with much of the music that she sings in her career in opera, concert, and recital, Beatles songs virtually constitute ‘Early Music’ for soprano Julia Bullock. The intelligence and imagination of Bullock’s singing of Beatles songs spotlight unexpected parallels between this material and the works of John Adams that are prominent in her repertoire, not the least significant of which is an embrace of melancholy when the meaning of a word or the projection of a feeling requires it. Released on the genre-defying 1967 LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ‘She’s Leaving Home’ becomes in the performance by Bullock and Hoffman a wrenchingly poignant paean to self-reliance and the conflicting grief, guilt, and elation of leaving and being left behind. Acclaimed since its first airplay in 1965 as a pinnacle of the poetic eloquence of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, ‘Norwegian Wood’ has been sung in the subsequent decades by an array of voices, few of which imparted its charms as mesmerizingly as Bullock’s.

Had his storied career produced no other songs, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ would have secured George Harrison’s prominence among the Twentieth Century’s best songwriters. Like a small number of Schubert’s Lieder, the song has achieved widespread recognition beyond its inaugural context, its entrancing hook and ambivalent harmonic progressions—immediately identifiable as Harrison’s yet as universal as birdsong and the roar of the sea—enthralling artists and listeners. Unsurprisingly, Bullock and Hoffman approach the song with their own perspectives, but Harrison’s writing is honored with loving fidelity. The pain that throbs in the words is healed by the balm of these voices, the bronzed richness of Bullock’s lower register glowing like magma as it cascades through phrases.

‘Yesterday’ is arguably the most iconic of the Beatles songs chosen for this recording; and perhaps also the most-frequently-covered of all Beatles songs. As with recordings of Schubert Lieder, a new cover of ‘Yesterday’ must earn its place among its brethren, justifying its existence not solely by novelty—after all, what can a singer do with this music that has not already been done?—but, more importantly, by quality. Regret, longing, and uncertainty simmer in Hoffman’s singing, but the generality with which some singers interpret the song is supplanted here by near-confessional specificity. It is not necessary to know of which aspects of his life Hoffman sings: the candor of his ‘Yesterday’ resonates as movingly as the sound of the voice. Schubert’s and the Beatles’ yesterdays now seem so far away, but, when sung with the unflagging engagement and excitement heard on this disc, their songs are undeniably and deservedly here to stay.

RECORDING REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi — NOBLE RENEGADES (Charles Castronovo, tenor; Delos DE3605)

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Noble Renegades – Scenes and Arias from Don Carlos, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Luisa Miller, Jérusalem, and Il corsaro — Charles Castronovo, tenor; Kristin Sampson, soprano; Tomas Pavilionis, tenor; Tadas Girininkas, bass; Kauno Valstybinis Choras (Kaunas State Choir), Kauno simfoninis orkestras (Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra); Constantine Orbelian, conductor [Recorded in Kaunas State Philharmonic Hall, Kaunas, Lithuania, 27 – 29 June 2022; Delos DE3605; 1 CD, 55:58; Available from Outhere Music/Delos, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Music (UK), and major music retailers and streaming services]

Lamentation is one of the cornerstones of opera, on and off the stage. Purcell’s Dido, Händel’s Bertarido, Bellini’s Elvino, Wagner’s Brünnhilde, and Strauss’s Ariadne lament their lovers’ betrayals, real or perceived, and aficionados lament the dearth of voices capable of reaching past generations’ highest standards of singing those characters’ music. Disenfranchised opera lovers sometimes suggest that certain repertoire should be shelved lest it be sung inadequately—an understandable proposition but one that is inherently inimical to the nurturing of new generations of singers. It is true that there are no Flagstad, no Varnay, no Mödl and Nilsson in today’s performances of Götterdämmerung and Tristan und Isolde, but there are dedicated, gifted singers giving of their best who deserve to be heard. In the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, more of which are now included in the international repertory than at any previous time since the composer’s death in 1901, paragons of refinement and vocal refulgence are similarly rare, but this is no recent phenomenon. There is no Carlo Bergonzi singing Verdi’s tenor rôles in this third decade of the Twenty-First Century, operaphiles justly complain. Indeed, Bergonzi can no longer be heard except on recordings, but in the singing of Charles Castronovo today’s Verdi lovers have cause to curtail their lamenting.

Born in Queens and raised in California, Castronovo can be said to have benefited from the artistic traditions of both American coasts, his early engagements with Los Angeles Opera fostering formative contact with accomplished Verdians and opening avenues to venerable East-Coast and European institutions. Despite having garnered acclaim as Alfredo in La traviata, the Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto, and Fenton in Falstaff in s​ome of the world’s most prestigious venues, as well as recording an exhilarating portrayal of Alfredo opposite the Violetta of Marina Rebeka for Prima Classic, he was not heard in a Verdi rôle at the Metropolitan Opera, with which company he débuted in 2001 as Beppe in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, until October 2023, when he portrayed Gustavo in a revival of David Alden’s provocative staging of Un ballo in maschera.

What might appear to be a regrettable series of missed opportunities yielded an atypical occurrence in today’s opera world: a singer taking the right rôle at the right time, particularly in a house of the MET’s size and significance. [In the performance attended by this author on 27 October 2023, Castronovo’s Gustavo—heard from the second row of the Grand Tier—easily filled the capacious auditorium with firm, well-supported sound and ample evidence of the charisma that so enamored Angela Meade’s Amelia, fueled the jealousy of Quinn Kelsey’s Anckarström, and earned the loyalty of Liv Redpath’s Oscar.] That Castronovo’s expansion of his Verdi résumé is in reaction to his cognizance of vocal readiness is validated by his singing on Noble Renegades, this Delos recording of scenes from works ranging from the early I due Foscari and I Lombardi alla prima crociata to the original 1867 Paris version of Don Carlos.

Like a number of praiseworthy Delos projects in recent years, Noble Renegades enjoys sterling support from the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Constantine Orbelian. Playing with reliable professionalism, sophistication, and well-rehearsed ensemble, the Lithuanian ensemble’s musicians bring equal adroitness to both the bel canto writing of the earlier scores and the more symphonic later works, the development of Verdi’s instrumental writing surveyed with comprehension of its origins and ultimate destinations. The voices of the Kaunas State Choir are added to their company in the excerpts from Luisa Miller and Il corsaro, and the choristers’ efforts equal those of their orchestral colleagues in preparedness and excellence of execution.

As in his discs of Verdi arias and scenes with Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the late baritone’s complete recordings of Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, Orbelian exhibits laudable affinity for all variations of the composer’s style. His tempi are at once propulsive without rushing and respectful of his soloist’s breathing without languishing, and each of the scenes included in the programme offers a suggestion of the unique atmosphere of the opera from which it is drawn. Only occasionally, as in the solo scenes from Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera, are the performances more redolent of the studio than of the opera house, but the avoidance of overwrought mannerisms is most welcome.

Though Richard Tucker, Jon Vickers, and Franco Corelli sang the rôle in its Italian incarnation thrillingly, spinto and dramatic voices cannot claim exclusive rights to the music for the titular prince in Don Carlos. Remembered for singing parts like Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (a rôle in which Castronovo also garnered acclaim), Catalan tenor Juan Oncina proved to be an unexpectedly effective Don Carlo, his bel canto credentials yielding particularly sensitive handling of Verdi’s vocal lines. The success of Castronovo’s excursion into the forest of Fontainebleau in Carlos’s Act One scene is more predictable. Often reminiscent of that of the young José Carreras, Castronovo’s varnished-mahogany timbre shimmers in ‘Fontainebleau! Forêt immense et solitaire,’ the vowels shaped with an equilibrium between proper Francophone nasality and Latin openness that ideally suits the music. The finesse that can elude larger voices blossoms in this voice’s reading of the aria ‘Je l’ai vue, et dans son sourire.’ Carlos is sometimes the least-interesting character in performances of Don Carlos, but Castronovo weds the Infante’s words with melody hypnotically, the tenderness within the man’s troubled soul communicated to the listener with diaphanous tones.

Jacopo Foscari in I due Foscari was one of the first rôles that Bergonzi sang—and in which his work was documented on records, owing to a 1951 broadcast performance in conjunction with Italian radio’s observance of the fiftieth anniversary of Verdi’s death—after transitioning from baritone to tenor. Bergonzi’s legacy of Verdi singing is rightly ubiquitous, but Castronovo extends his own legacy with his singing of Jacopo Foscari’s scene from the opera’s first act, in which he is ably partnered by tenor Tomas Pavilionis’s Fante dei Consiglio dei Dieci. Declaiming ‘Qui ti rimani’ incisively, the tenor intimates that the fuse of the Doge’s son’s temper burns brightly and rapidly. The aria ‘Dal più remoto esilio’ is sung with passion befitting the character and the suavity demanded by the music, Verdi’s arching vocal line sustained with instinctual phrasing and control. The drama of the cabaletta ‘Odio solo, ed odio atroce’ is heightened by the restraint of Castronovo’s performance, the music truly sung rather than shouted.

Considering the relatively brief duration of the rôle of Macduff in Macbeth, the variety of famed tenors who have portrayed the character, whether on stage or in recording studios, is incredible—and attributable to the part having in the opera’s fourth act one of Verdi’s most beautiful arias for tenor. As sung by Castronovo on this disc, Macduff’s grief for his murdered children bursts viscerally from ‘O figli, o figli miei,’ the voice suffused with paternal affection and regret. ‘Ah, la paterna mano’ is voiced with simmering pain and burgeoning determination to enact justice, the aria’s top B𝄫 a grieving father’s despondent cry, not a display of a tenor’s vanity. A hard edge intermittently emerges in the upper register, but this is put to apt use as an aural manifestation of characters’ inner conflicts.

Recorded a year in advance of his MET appearances as Gustavo, Castronovo’s performance on this disc of the doomed Swedish king’s scene from Act Three of Un ballo in maschera might be said to be a delayed preview of his approach to the rôle. His phrasing of ‘Forse la soglia attinse’ conveys aristocratic integrity, but despair and desperation are also discernible in the fervor with which the words are enunciated. As was true of his performance of the aria in New York, the contrasting complexity and simplicity of Gustavo’s predicament resound in ‘Ma se m’è forza perderti.’ As a man in love with a woman who is already committed to a strong-willed, dangerous husband, Gustavo is a typical operatic protagonist, but his sacrifice of first his own happiness and then his life for the preservation of his beloved’s honor qualifies him as one of the noble renegades of the disc’s title. Even without this psychological context, the vocalism is compelling, the line caressed with beautifully-judged dynamic gradations.

An added pleasure of Castronovo’s pulse-quickening traversal of Oronte’s oft-excerpted scene from Act Two of I Lombardi alla prima crociata is the singing of the music for Oronte’s mother Sofia by soprano Kristin Sampson, who makes each word and note matter. With such an able partner, Castronovo devotes perceptibly sharpened concentration to the drama of ‘O madre mia, che fa colei,’ conjuring a persuasive sense of the scene’s consequence in I Lombardi’s cumulative narrative flow. Far more tenors include the aria ‘La mia letizia infondere’ in their concert and recital repertoires than ever perform the complete opera, but few recorded interpreters handle the aria and its cabaletta, ‘Come poteva un angelo,’ as idiomatically as Castronovo. The upper register always integrated with both the music’s melodic progression and the voice’s lower reaches, the tenor’s vocalism shimmers with reverent zeal, Oronte’s demeanor febrile but still that of the son of a governor of Antioch.

Castronovo is joined by Pavilionis’s Contadino and bass Tadas Girininkas’s Wurm in a superb performance of music from Act Two of Luisa Miller, a masterful score that continues to be neglected by too many opera companies—even as Verdi-loving a company as the MET, the ninety-three performances that Luisa has received there dwarfed by the showings amassed to date by Rigoletto (926), La traviata (1,056), and Aida (1,191). Rodolfo’s lines in ‘Il foglio dunque?’ are delivered with ringing conviction, Castronovo’s vocal colorations corruscating with the emotional shifts in the text. ‘Quando le sere al placido’ is one of the last true bel canto arias for tenor, and the performance that it receives here honors its kinship with Donizetti’s music for characters like Fernand in La favorite. The arching melody, recalling that of Fernand’s ‘Ange si pur,’ unfurls like a silk banner, borne aloft by the tenor’s beautiful tone and well-honed technique. His trademark expressive intensity cascades through ‘Di me chiedeste’ and the cabaletta ‘L’ara, o l’avello apprestami,’ notes above the stave projected with arresting bravado.

Having been urged since 1845 by the company’s intendant Léon Pillet to write an opera for the Académie Royale de la Musique in Paris, Verdi relented in the summer of 1847 by accepting Pillet’s commission to adapt I Lombardi to a French libretto written by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, familiar in Italian opera circles for having supplied the text for Donizetti’s La favorite. Despite containing new music that demo​nstrates the advances in his style since the completion of I Lombardi at the end of 1842, the resulting work, Jérusalem, is one of Verdi’s least-performed operas. Castronovo chose as one of his noble renegades Jérusalem’s Gaston, vicomte de Béarn, a rôle sung in the opera’s November 1847 première in Salle Le Peletier by Gilbert Duprez. Singing Gaston’s scene for Act Three, Castronovo is an expert successor to Duprez, the words of ‘L’infamie! Prenez ma vie!’ providing the momentum for stirring voc​alism. His performance of ‘Ô mes amis, mes frères d’armes’ throbs with feeling but maintains stylistic fidelity and elegance, cogently advocating for a reevaluation of Jérusalem‘s merits.

First performed in Trieste in 1848, Il corsaro shares with I due Foscari the seeming distinction of being derived from a work by Lord Byron, yet its libretto is subjected to near-universal derision. Whatever limitations Francesco Maria Piave’s adaptation of its Byronic source material imposes upon the opera’s palatability for Twenty-First-Century audiences, a strong performance of Il corsaro substantiates that Verdi’s score can overcome the scorned plot. Castronovo reserves some of his most polished vocalism for the corsair Corrado’s Act One aria ‘Tutto parea sorridere all’amor mio primiero,’ the security of his singing throughout the compass augmenting the histrionic impact of his clear diction. Each thought limned in ‘Pronti siate a seguitarmi’ is here as vital as the notes and words with which it is imparted. The cabaletta ‘Sì, de’corsari il fulmine’ serves as an electrifying finale for Noble Renegades. Singing with rabble-rousing machismo of the sort seldom heard in today’s indifferent, too-cautious performances of Verdi repertoire, Castronovo restores to this scene the swashbuckling grandeur that it needs.

The nobility of each character portrayed on this recording and of the singer bringing them to life is obvious, but Castronovo is the most radical of these renegades. There is no lack of poetry and poise when they are required, but this is not polite, gratuitously pretty singing. This is Verdi as his music was meant to be sung.

BOOK REVIEW: Ricky Ian Gordon — SEEING THROUGH: A CHRONCLE OF SEX, DRUGS, AND OPERA (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ISBN 9781250390424, 23 July 2024)

RICKY IAN GORDON (born 1956): Seeing Through: a Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera [Released on 23 July 2024, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Picador/Macmillan); ISBN 9781250390424, 480 pages; Available from Macmillan Publishers (hardcover, paperback, and e-book), Amazon (hardcover, digital, and audio), Barnes and Noble (hardcover, paperback, and e-book), and major media retailers]

Readers of autobiographical works by eminent artists sometimes meet therein either the artistry or the humans whose experiences molded it but must look elsewhere to find comprehensive evaluations of all aspects of the lives of creators and their creative processes. Perhaps this is truer in music than in other disciplines, owing in no small part to music being an ephemeral assimilation of instincts and inspirations that continually evolves. Perhaps, too, there is a predisposition amongst musical innovators to celebrate and perpetuate their own ingenuity by fashioning personal mythologies as Hector Berlioz did in his Mémoires. What musical artists’ self-penned reminiscences sometimes lack is neither fact nor fascination: rather, the resulting fusions of sincerity and sensationalism are deficient in objectivity, showing not who artists are but who they believe themselves to be. The pointed self-awareness that fills each of the 480 pages of renowned composer Ricky Ian Gordon’s memoir Seeing Through: a Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera is therefore made all the more exceptional and courageous by its piercing introspection and clear-sighted candor, the author’s self-analysis proving to be most endearing when it is least flattering.

Ricky Ian Gordon the artist hardly needs any introduction to music-loving readers who are familiar with American song, opera, and musical theater of the past quarter-century. A native Long Islander whose educational trajectory took him to Pittsburgh for studies at Carnegie Mellon University, Gordon has established himself with works like the song cycles Green Sneakers for Baritone, String Quartet, Empty Chair and Piano and Rappahannock County and the operas The Grapes of Wrath and Intimate Apparel as a peer of Douglas Moore, Ned Rorem, Carlisle Floyd, and William Bolcom. Despite his ravenous consumption and absorption of Classical traditions and the accents of uniquely American musical voices, none more consequential than that of Stephen Sondheim, Gordon’s growth as a man and an artist was most enduringly affected by his relationship with his beloved partner Jeffrey Michael Grossi (1964 – 1996), whose passing after a harrowing five-year battle against AIDS shaped the composer as profoundly as it shattered the man. Grossi’s voice is heard in all of the music written by Gordon since 1 August 1996, and his spirit smiles on every page of Seeing Through, sometimes angrily, sometimes wistfully, sometimes playfully, but always with boundless love.

Though there are many dolorous passages, as there are likely to be in any account of the life and losses endured by a sensitive man, Seeing Through is not a melancholy book; nor is it a queer book or an artistic treatise. Like the best novels of Ernest Hemingway, Seeing Through succeeds on multiple levels. For the casual reader in pursuit of entertainment, it offers an immersive narrative with sufficient doses of the sex and drugs promised by the title to quicken the pulse of thrill seekers. ‘With the help of speed,’ he recounts on page 89, ‘I was a very different actor in the [Carnegie Mellon] drama department,’ yet even these episodes of decadent adventure are tempered by abundant moments of grace like that of describing Broadway star Audra McDonald as ‘an explosion of everything good’ (p. 226). Moreover, a central theme of the book is the ambiguity of the link between uncertainty and self-cognizance and the rôles that both have played in Gordon’s life since adolescence. Recalling the prevalence of behind-closed-doors sexual encounters in the bathhouses and nightclubs frequented by his gay friends in the 1970s, Gordon cites his ambivalence concerning his inclinations as a subconscious blessing of self-preservation, writing that ‘some of this confusion may be why I am still alive’ (p. 181).

As he chronicles them, even the most painful events in Gordon’s life are viewed from a perspective of gratitude. A pervasive tone of his sagaciously-paced, beautifully-formed writing is appreciation for the people and places of significance in his journey, tinged with regret and self-recrimination. Honoring the all-encompassing love that he shares with his late partner, as powerful today as in that sorrowful August twenty-eight years ago, is an expected focus of the book, but beauty, art, and irrepressible wit are always visible through the tears that his observations of simple occu​rrences like visiting New York’s Central Park impel.

After Jeffrey died, I walked to Central Park one day to weep at the Bethesda Fountain, because Tony [Kushner] had given it to me [in the Perestroika segment of Angels in America] as my own monument, our monument. I have never been able to walk past it again without thinking about that. (pp. 370 – 371)

The doubt and fear that make Gordon’s writing about the time at which Grossi determined to forgo pharmaceuticals and combat AIDS holistically one of the book’s most wrenching parts disclose a subtle but gnawing survivor’s guilt that also arises in the context of his mother’s decline and death.

Why wasn’t I the kind of son who moved in with my mother when her death was imminent, or moved her in with me? Why, in the last few years of her life, did we put her in the place she never ever wanted to be—a nursing home? (p. 427)

In addition to the personal but universal difficulty of these situations, all of the emotional tribulations and triumphs of Seeing Through are imparted with language that is at once accomplished and accessible. This is a book that never seems to grasp for literary virtuosity: it achieves that distinction with the same effortless directness that characterizes Gordon’s music.

Too many memoirs ultimately are not what their subjects strive to be: memorable. Marooned in vast oceans of words, the basic elements that give lives their commonality and thereby their interest to others are obscured. The most effective, unforgettable memoirs are distinguished not by tales of glamor, excess, and familiar names, no matter how eloquently they are told, but by accounts of decency, empathy, and familiar emotions. On page 181 of Seeing Through, Ricky Ian Gordon shares, ‘I have never known where I fit in.’ The reader sees through the pages of this book that this remarkable artist fits in wherever hearts are open to healing.