falstaff

For the latest episode of NostalgiaCast '70s Palooza, Jonny and Darin tackle the faux-documentary / biography / proto-YouTube video essay that is Orson Welles's F FOR FAKE. They talk about the movie as an examination of authorship over art, Welles's (brazen but ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to explode the documentary form, and how a story of charlatans, magicians, and frauds slots into the legendary director's manic career.

Peter Kazaras has been a mainstay of Seattle Opera since his 1985 debut onstage singing the role of Steva in JENŮFA. His debut as a stage director came in 2003. As Artistic Director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program from 2005 to 2013, plus his ongoing work as Director of Opera at UCLA, he has trained a generation of opera artists. For a KING FM Intermission he discussed with Jonathan Dean Verdi’s FALSTAFF, an opera Kazaras first staged in 2007, for the Young Artists, and then in 2010 on Seattle Opera’s mainstage.

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opera buffa, the beloved old Italian tradition of opera comedy, is what you get by adding music to the even older Italian tradition of improvised (artisanal) comedy, commedia dell’arte. The fools and buffoons of commedia—the sassy wenches, befuddled old professors, suicidal young lovers, dirty old misers, hungry Harlequins, arrogant soldiers, zany servants, and all the rest—found new ways of entertaining us once they began singing gloriously. And with the opera orchestra functioning as a laugh track and adding jokes of its own, opera buffa continues to disarm us and charm us while putting a big grin on our faces. The Barber of Seville and The Elixir of Love are great examples of the genre.

Musical examples on the podcast drawn from Seattle Opera recordings of La Cenerentola, 2013, conducted by Giacomo Sagripanti; The Barber of Seville, 2011, conducted by Dean Williamson and starring José Carbo and Lawrence Brownlee; The Marriage of Figaro, 2009, conducted by Dean Williamson and starring Nicolas Cavallier and Barry Johnson; Così fan tutte, 2006, conducted by Andreas Mitisek; the 1986 Hungaroton recording of La serva padrona, starring Katalin Farkas and Jozsef Gregor, with Capella Savaria conducted by Pal Nemeth; Falstaff, conducted by Karajan and starring Luigi Alva, soloists, and the Philharmonia Orchestra (Columbia 1956); Gianni Schicchi, conducted by Antonio Pappano (EMI 1998); and L’elisir d’amore, Ileana Cotrubas, Geraint Evans, and the orchestra of Covent Garden conducted by John Pritchard (Columbia 1977)

Stay tuned for another podcast introducing another kind of opera next week!

Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces the baritone voice, a sound which celebrates the beauty and power of masculinity. In opera, baritones play clowns and kings, urban sophisticates and unlettered innocents; good, bad, and every shade of grey. They win our hearts, melt our hearts, and break our hearts. Featuring musical examples with sweet lyric baritones, proud heroic baritones, snarly dramatic baritones, and many other varieties, including Seattle Opera favorites John Moore, Dale Duesing, Alfonso Antoniozzi, Mariusz Kwiecien, Gordon Hawkins, Richard Stilwell, Will Liverman, David Adam Moore, Vladimir Chernov, Morgan Smith, Christopher Maltman, Julian Patrick, Malcolm Rivers, Andrew Garland, Richard Paul Fink, and Brett Polegato.