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Natalie Dessay's CD 'La Sonnambula' and The Met's charming baritone Jeremy Galyon (Part 2 of 2)
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Natalie Dessay's CD sounds like a dream
La Sonnambula is probably a dream come true for SFO's Adler Fellow Jeremy Galyon, who came "home" to San Francisco this week but is back on the East Coast for Easter. He's ready to rehearse La Cenerentola or Cinderella at the Met for the live broadcast on May 9. Jeremy began his debut year at the Met as Alessio with none other than Natalie Dessay, who has an ethereal and spirited CD out La Sonnambula.
Here is part of the live performance, which I found on Youtube among many Dessay La Sonnambula videos. The conductor is Pido, the same as on the CD.
Getting back to Dessay's portrayal of the innocent orphan girl tormented by romantic trouble into sleepwalking and searching for someone (the village has a legend of a phantom). Do you know the feeling? The anxiousness over why Prince Charming fails to call, he's got my shoe? Don't you hate being left barefoot? Although it's a nice day for a promenade at Crissy Field . . . ya'll know what we journalists do with shoes. . . we don't wait for the other shoe to drop, we hurl those suckers bigtime.
In any event. The woman who wrote up the story in the CD liner says Bellini suppresses Amina’s unfortunate background as not just an orphan but a child born out of wedlock; the child of a local village girl and an aristocrat subsequently banished by his family. Nevertheless it’s in the first sketches of the libretto. Dessay didn’t seem to play her attraction to the stranger, Count Rudolfo, as swooning. Even if it is Michele Pertusi. Not all that romantic, as if she remains innocent of the knowledge of a scandalous past. Instead Dessay's Amina seems attracted in a more childlike way as a modest one would respond to sudden attention, not just flattered by a tall commanding stranger who appears in the village one day asking where his castle is. Dessay’s Amina seemed to respond more to the stranger’s commanding presence and sheer stature. Compare that to her own girlish and petite ballerina’s body. The libretto does come from a ballet-pantomime by Eugene Scribe called La Sonnambule, ou L’Arrivee d’un nouveau seigneur (The Sleepwalker, or the Arrival of a New Squire) from the Paris Opera. This was followed by a comedie-vaudville called La Somnabule in 1819. Dessay herself has a ballet background and during La Sonnambula dances to show joy.
I admit Wagner would appreciate Bellini’s Freudian twists though, with Wagner’s illegitimate fraternal twins Sigmund and Sieglinde finally meeting in the Bavarian forest beneath Valhalla. Similarly not knowing they are related they are so drawn to each other they immediately fall in love even though Sieglinde is married.
It’s the very absence of the father that renders the abandoned children so vulnerable and fragile. The tragedy is that they are innocent victims when they incur the contempt of others; opera tends to punish the victims based on the effect of their actions and the disturbance they cause. Yet Bellini, who died young himself, is much more kind and gentle than Wagner with Wagner’s thunder and lightening and Hellfire and damnation of the gods. Amina is after all a young virginal orphan incapable of committing incest or adultery. Moreover Bellini’s grave is inscribed with the poignant line from the aria Ah! Non credea mirarti . . . Ah! I did not expect to see you fade so soon, little flower.
And the music evokes that with softness, describes the writer on the CD liner:
Amina’s entrance (cavatina: 'Come per me sereno') immediately assures her of a place among Bellini’s great heroines. The catabile section is magically beautiful , with typical Bellini hallmarks: long, often asymmetrical phrases, a blend of tender effusion and expressive declamation, and a very individual way with vocal passage-work. Even the cabaletta 'Sovra il sen la man mi posa', the cascading fioriture never have that quality of self-regarding ostentation that Rossini might have given them. Their presence edges the line toward a certain languor, bringing out incomparably the sheen in the voice. The same softness characterizes Elvino’s cavatina 'Prendi, l’anel ti dono', to which clarinets and horns lend an air of woodland poetry.
As for Dessay, I also have her Fille du Regiment DVD with her La Sonnambula love Juan Diego Florez. Moreover the Met will soon compliment La Sonnambula’s innocence and bel canto with another Cinderella story, La Cenerentola. Perhaps instead of being a feminist and not wanting to play a victim or martyr who doesn’t need a man to save her or make her life complete, I will appreciate the gentleness of these stories where the orphan young ladies get their gentleman, their happy ending and find a home at last. I'll be a girl again, listening to my fairy tales.
Yes we do still want the fairy tale, don't we? Even in Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts recognizes herself as the courtesan in La Traviata. The scene where corporate raider/john Richard Gere rents some diamonds for his diamond in the rough and places them both in a box seat at SFO. Puccini’s courtesan Violetta, who returns to SFO this June, beseeches her young man to love her, to love her as she loves him . . . and Julia's hooker learns her lesson well. I want the fairy tale, she says, writing her own ending. Here's John Martin's picture of me as a courtesan in Rigoletto, just for fun. How do you like the lips? Laurel, a veteran super, and I called them Tim lips in honor of the make up artist.
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Speaking of happy endings. Jeremy Galyon, TDH (tall dark and handsome), played the lovelorn farmer/actor Alessio in La Sonnambula. He pined for the stage manager Lisa, performed by Jennifer Black, and got the girl in the end. According to his long time friend who sings in his hometown choir, Jeremy is starting rehearsals for La Cenerentola, to be broadcast live from the Met. Jeremy was just in San Francisco briefly where his brother lives before flying back to his home of Pennsylvania to sing in his church's Easter production. Here's a picture from his days in Rigoletto at San Francisco Opera, where he was in the Merola Program then an Adler Fellowship. The photographer John Martin, a long time super working on a book about SFO's singers called In Character says of Jeremy's character . . .
Yes. I like Jeremy, he's a really nice guy. Great voice . . . Handsome devil isn't he?
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His friend Cheryl Tubio emails:
He was in San Diego on Wednesday, San Francisco on Thursday and walked in to the choir loft in Bethlehem on Friday. He's like Batman.....
. . . he's starting rehearsals this coming Monday in NYC for a new production at the Met.
. . . He did a lovely duet today with another fellow re the final words of Jesus. . . .
Last week Cheryl emailed about where Jeremy comes from and goes home to, singing with his family:
Central Moravian was built in 1806, the town having been settled by Moravians from what is now Czechoslovakia in 1741. It is a German Protestant sect.
In a town of 580 people in 1806, they built a church that would hold 1500 people, so they were very forward-thinking people! Yesterday and all during Holy Week, we shall be singing portions of Faure's Requiem, (Sanctus), de Victoria's Hosanna filio David, Maessaien's O Sacrum Convivium, Herbst's God Was in Christ, Courtney's Behold the Lamb of God. Great Sabbath (Saturday) will be Durufle's Kyrie, Handel's Surely, and Casals, O Vos Omnes. Next Sunday, Jeremy will solo in Handel's And The Trumpet Shall Sound with the Mainstreet Brass, which is always so stirring, as well as Vaughan Williams Easter, and (what else?) Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. So happy to hear it is nice in San Fran!
Update: Cheryl emails Easter morning,
He sang the bass solo in Handel's "And the Trumpet Will Sound" one hour ago: beautifully, as one would expect. He also was such a wonderful addition to our choir! Church was packed. I think all 1500 seats were filled.
Jay Stebley at SFO’s opera shop tells me he has both the La Sonnambula CD and Dessay’s La Fille Du Regiment DVD, the latter production coming to SFO this year as well.
Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez just got Best DVD at the BBC Music Awards for this DVD, La Fille Du Regiment. Review to come.
For more info: www.SFOpera.com
Natalie Dessay CD Part One, ladies do we still want the fairy tale?
Brotherhood and sisterhood, love and peace forevermore
Handel's Wicked Queen comes to Berkeley, Palo Alto, SF: Going for Baroque
Berkeley Opera celebrates with some jewels (part two of three)
Berkeley Opera celebrates with bubbly Ruth Ann Swenson and champagne (part one of three)
Tosca Cafe drinks to doomed lovers
The Tosca Project World Premiere at ACT
Dessay and Juan Diego LIVE awaken love in La Sonnambula
Anna Netrebko sings Violetta in June's La Traviata
Life should feel like a Mardi Gras again
Anna N (as in Anna Nicole) and why her opera may still sound bafflin' on some remote island
Anna Nicole fights back from the grave and how opera takes on the bourgeoisie
Tone deaf diva touches and eviscerates
Tales of Hoffman sells out in a good not bourgeois way
Tales of Hoffman as bourgeoisie and the devil thwart poet's love
Anna Nicole and subject of celebrity a worthy one
Anna Nicole Smith weapon of mass distraction
Francesca Zambello to direct Die Walkure
Wotan shares his dressing room
Greer Grimsley Impressions, Passions, Stand by Me, Dreams
Tosca and how opera's embattled stay in fighting shape
Oscar Wilde and the 'love that dares not speak it's name'
Opera announces 2009/2010 season
. . . in conclusion, isn't it nice to come home to your pets no matter what . . . here's the writer cat sitting in a rooftop garden in the Fillmore at her friend Holly's . . .
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. . . and here's Tuxie's buddy Myles on the left . . .
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Happy Easter all.
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