Guleghina on youtube; an analysis

Guleghina ("G"), WTF?  Rejuvenated, powerful, chest, but still deliciously screamy, more-often-than-not in tune. How is this possible?  Let’s all watch a youtube video together - be careful to keep your speaker volume down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VGFMlIPfX4

You have to see it.  She's out of control. G’s chest is back. It’s ugly, but it’s magnificent. And those high notes! Yum! And the less-than-stratospheric notes are even in-tune, some even oh so pretty~!

Second by second, here it goes:

14 seconds: Bb below middle C. Disgusting chest. Rippingly deep. Love it!

27 seconds: more filthy chest. Resonating in a nasty way, delish!

33 seconds: chesty heaven!

41 seconds: here’s the vibrato G I’m used to hearing.

1:00: Yes! Back to usual! But not flat…. Well, almost.

1:05 WTF! Higher? Yes! More please!

1:08 dipping into chest and then back up to highs? Who is this woman?

1:20 "Acting." Haha, she’s so crazy.

1:57 nice try at soft singing Maria, we don’t fall for it.

2:01 flat, sorry.

2:09, same note, better, good job!

2:17 sliding into note, flat flat flat flat, okay.

2:18 grabbing co-star’s ear and trying to tear it off hard is NOT cool. He appears undamaged.

2:24 chest. Yes! He looks disgusted. Is he acting, or his physical response to such ugly sounds; who knows?

2:28 typical G crystal piano, first so far.

2:49 wow, her first breath in a long time.

3:14 first-and-last comment on tenor: “You sound very nice, will blog more about you upon hearing you live.”

4:05 can’t see her, but she’s f-ing loud!

4:30, wow, how does this newly configured Guleghina keep hitting notes on key?

4:36, sorry, sure, she hits them on key, but then she slides all over the f*-ing place.  Get your sh*t together G!

4:59-5:07 – is she using her magnificent powers to suck the singing energy out of him by grabbing his arm? Sounds like it… / What are these sustained notes and where did they come from (stolen from tenor)?

5:31 wow, midrange note, not screaming, not off-pitch, not-crazy-crystal, I’m impressed! Oh so pretty ending to this tenor-soprano duet! Great job G!  

Can’t wait for next Wednesday. So bitter about winning tix for this Saturday and having to give them away (to very cute British boy with adorable accent. And he really almost drowned in the sudden rainstorm tonight, so he must be a deserving fan; note: G – please scream out that E-flat for him, he earned it!).

And G - you’d better save some filthy chest and that E-flat for at least 1of my 4 upcoming Nabuccos... but really, please, please please please scream that E-flat every time so I can go home happy. No matter how badly it turns out.

With my dorky big headphones and J's Ipod, I made a man cringe on the subway today with that E-flat (whoops, was it really that loud?), and I think maybe I lost some hearing (whatevs, worth it!). But it really made my day.  And what's a little ear damage anyway?

Immigration Litigation = Middle School Debate Club?

Remember "Debate Club" in middle school?  You go up and argue for 5 minutes, then your opponent gets 5, then you get 1, then they get 1?  Except often you are arguing one thing, and they aren't arguing the other side of what you just said, they're arguing something totally different?  And neither side ever really debates quite the same thing?  Immigration Litigation is really quite similar. 

In removal (deportation) proceedings, you can ask the judge to continue/adjourn the case (schedule it for a later date) by asking for a continuance.  According to the federal regulations, at 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29, the Immigration Judge can continue proceedings if "good cause" is shown.

Okay, so what's good cause?  The Board of Immigration Appeals, who write opinions that the Immigration Judges have to follow, have held that when someone has a pending petition from an immediate relative (meaning that if the petition is approved they are immediately eligible to apply for adjustment of status, a fancy way of saying apply for their green card in the United States), that pending petition constitutes good cause.  Matter of Hashmi, 24 I. &. N. 785, 787 (BIA 2009). Then they said the same for employment-based petitions where an immigrant visa is immediately available, good cause is shown.  In re Rajah, 25 I. & N. Dec. at 135-36 (2009).

Both Board cases say that relying solely on case completion goals (Immigration Judge's are supposed to finish so many of their pending cases each year so as not to get backlogged) is not permissible, that they have to consider all issues and balance all the factors before denying a continuance request.

We have a case where the client is removable for criminal issues.  When we were before the Immigration Judge ("IJ"), we explained he had hired a criminal attorney and filed motions to reopen and vacate his convictions because his criminal lawyer never told him the immigration consequences of the guilty pleas and he would have plead to more serious offenses and faced more jail time if he could have avoided mandatory deportation.

If our client succeeds with the motions (New York Criminal Procedure Law 440 motions), he would not be removable from the United States, the judge would terminate proceedings, and he'd go back to being a permanent resident.  Rather than decide whether these pending motions constituted "good cause," the Trial Attorneys ("TAs," attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security who argue why a person is removable, the civil law equivalent of what a prosecutor is in criminal court) said, "Hey, well until the criminal courts reopen the case, he's still convicted.  Since he's still convicted and removable, there's no reason to continue the case."  The IJ agreed without explaining whether or how he balanced all the factors he was supposed to.

Just like middle school debate.  We say we have a reason to continue, they say he's still convicted of his crimes without saying why our reason isn't a good reason.  Very frustrating, but quite typical.  Seems like arguments that your guilty plea is unconstitutional because you were provided ineffective assistance by your criminal lawyer might constitute a good reason to prolong removal proceedings and delay possible deportation when there is a good chance the criminal court will later vacate the conviction, doesn't it?  DHS and the IJ don't seem to see it that way.

Maria Guleghina, the reason I will go prematurely deaf

I blew out my speakers and did some ear damage last night watching the youtube clips of Maria Guleghina rehearsing Nabucco and more clips of her on the Tuesday opening.  And she tears up the end of the big duet with an E-flat.  Serious?  This is the woman who couldn't sing C's in Turandot just two years ago.  Who wobbled the hell out of everything that she could sing.  And now she's screaming out E-flats?  Love it.  That note is about 5 times louder than the notes before or after.  Sure, it's a scream, it's not singing, but hey, it's damned loud, perfectly on pitch, and not wobbly at all (how is that even possible?!).  I can't wait.  6 more long days to go until Wednesday when I get to see her.  She'd better rip that E-flat out for me.

Serious.  Nobody is more hit and miss.  But nobody is louder.  And boomier.  And NOBODY tries harder, or takes more risks.  I mean, even in crap voice, she will always take the highest available high option.  I like that.  Guleghina is definitely a favorite here.  One of my biggest opera regrets was not getting tickets to her Macbeth (we opted for Andrea Gruber, J's first Tosca who was fantastic, but then she cancelled and we got Papian).  I have the DVD of the HD, and it is great. Demented. Sick. Ugly. Perfect. I wish I had been there.


My first Guleghina was Norma in 2007.  I didn't really know anything about Norma except for Casta Diva.  And it's practically the first thing out the gates.  And it was awful.  Like people leaving the theater awful, there was strangulation, screaming, hooting, garbling, and just plain ugly.  The cabaletta was insane, not because it was also awful, but because she still kept taking every high option she could.  But then it just got better and better.  And even when she's hooting, screeching, screaming, wobbling, and putting out that weird crystal piano sound where her voice gets so thin yet huge yet soft yet ugly, she's always exciting.  By intermission, I was on board.  Plus Zajick was there to help clean up some of the filth, maybe my first time seeing her too, although I think I'd probably seen an Amneris or two prior.  And in that crazy part where they are both cabaletting together in thirds, Guleghina was perfectly aligned with Zajick, an impressive feat.  By the end of the opera, I was a huge Guleghina fan.  Her last note sounded like a nuclear explosion.

Next was Queen of Spades, an opera I had seen in Toronto (I think with Papian) and really really loved.  I am so in love with Tchaikovsky operas.  So much clarinet and so many tragic diminished chords.  Heaven.  Anyway, it was Guleghina vs. Ben Heppner's voice cracks.  I saw three performances.  One he cracked a bit, one announced as ill he cracked everything, third time, all better, no cracks.  Poor guy.  But all three times, Guleghina brought sickening volume to everything. It was amazing.  Her big scene was spectacular.  And although her acting is cheesy and old-school, it is so effective nonetheless.  The most conviction I've ever seen on the opera stage is her suicide.  The scene is set at the harbor; a two-foot wall rises near the front of the stage to portion off a narrow boardwalk, fog is pumped behind the wall to create the illusion of water, and tiny model boats are way backstage giving the illusion of distance.   Extremely effective.  So when Guleghina jumps the wall and wades knee-deep in the fog while two giant walls close from either side, she doesn't just go through the opening and keep going; no, crazy Guleghina waits until there is almost no room and lunges through the narrow opening like a space battle in Star Wars with the Millennium Falcon barely squeezing between giant star destroyers, and everyone is convinced she will die a horrific crushing death before our eyes.  It was demented. She made it all three times, but I think her dress almost didn't the third time, and the two walls crashed into each other really really loudly.  Everyone sighed in relief that she made it and that the walls didn't fall down and kill someone. 

Then a very respectable Adriana Lecouvreur, shared with Domingo (how is he so old and still sound so good?) and Borodina.  Actual soft singing (albiet in that freaky crystal voice), really good acting, all so good.  Crazy bitch fight with Borodina was amazingly catty.  Domingo sounds old, sure, and singing high is not easy for him, but he still sounds like a star.  It was a pretty memorable performance.

Then she sang Aida at the 125 Gala opposite Blythe in their great Act II duet.  It didn't even sound like her.  The loud was there sure, but so was the soft, the pleading, the desperate.  Notes were uncharacteristically on-key.  Acting was not over the top.  High notes were plush notes, not screams.  It was really great.  I'm glad she got that after having been at the Met for so many years.  One of my favs from that evening of many great performances.

Then Turandot.  Everyone joked it was the opera in which she couldn't sing half the notes.  On my first of two outings, I'd have to agree.  High notes disappeared.  Even the really important ones.  Mouth open; no sound.  On occasions with sound, it was the note, plus wobbles a couple half-steps in either direction.  Brutal.  It was like grandma brought the megaphone.  But clearly it was an off night (or, conversely, the next time was a really good night) because I saw a spectacular Turandot a while later, and all the notes were there.  The riddle scene was a lesson in declamatory singing and acting.  The wobble was almost gone.  The high notes were there.  And, what seemed to go unappreciated, but I found amazing, was that her last note (is it a C?) when she says his name is "love" actually sounded pretty, and was not the ultra-forte we usually expect from Guleghina, but a very well projected medium-piano.  It was beautiful and long-held.  I was very impressed, especially given how unfortunate the earlier performance was.


Last year, Carnegie Hall presented the Opera Orchestra of New York in concert, doing La Navaresse (huh, I hadn't heard of it either) and Cavalleria Rusticana.  I thought, "Cavalleria, wow, perfect for the old chesty Guleghina I know only from youtube."  But from what I can tell, Guleghina doesn't do chest any more.  Ever.  No matter how weak her other register is or how low she has to drag it to avoid chesting a note.  And then she opened her mouth for the Easter Hymn, and it was a fresh voice.  New.  Seemingly sized down considerably, but none of that crap wobble.  And then there was chest.  It wasn't crazy loud or anything, but respectable.  She pulled out all the stops in her desperate duet with whats-his-name (my tenor boyfriend Alagna), her curse was pretty fierce, and her final scream was impressively loud with some serious bite, so she certainly could bring back the old volume in short bursts when she wanted.  It was really quite promising.

And now, according to youtube, that same fresh-voiced Guleghina is back doing Nabucco.  Except it sounds like some fierce chesting is happening.  And apparently the previously-unreachable C's are back.  I mean, even in the youtubes of her doing Nabucco at the Met 10 years ago she barely hits the C's and they are brutally flat.  And here, according to unreliable footage from youtube, she's ripping out bang-on C's and screaming a horrifically delicious E flat.  The attack on that note, both in the rehearsal footage and from the 27th prima, is spectacular.  So I really can't wait.  If she delivers, I may see all remaining Nabuccos with her.  And the great thing with Guleghina is that it doesn't matter where you sit; you will hear her.  And her cheesy opera acting could be seen from space.  So hey, even if the only cheap seats left are the rear side of the family circle, whatevs.  She will still blow you out of your seat.  I hope someone gets a good recording from next Wednesday; my luck - every time the Met does their weekly free live broadcast, I'm actually there and can't record it from home.

Anna Bolena 9/26/2011

On Monday night, J and I made our annual outing to the Met's season opener.  This is our 4th so far: we saw Renee's big opening, the booed Tosca, and the intermission-less Rheingold.  This year, they had a new way of issuing tickets; before you could buy best available seats the moment after you subscribed, and I always went psycho subscribing the very first second subscriptions could be renewed and then got great opening night tickets.  This time, they allegedly waited and issued the tickets based on subscription priority or something like that.  The end result?   The same - Row A of Balcony, off to the side.  $140 a ticket seems reasonable for a gala, and J gets to use the tax deductible part.

Armed with black suits and cute skinny ties, we stood around and watched famous people for a while before going in.  Nobody super exciting, was nice to see LeeLee Solbiesky not pregnant-and-about-to-pop like last time we saw her.  The best part was when super cute Mariusz Kwiecien came to the area where only recognized VIP's may enter, and the girl holding pages and pages of photos of famous people tried keep him out.  She had no idea who he was.  Their star baritone plastered on ads everywhere for Donny G, and she had no idea who he was.  He looked amused, and had to spell out his name to her.

Everyone was excited for Trebs as Bolena.  Maybe too excited.  The bouncy Italian conductor popped out of nowhere and did the national anthem, all the crowd pretended like they could sing when they really couldn't, and then the conductor walked off.  Then, gone.  Was he doing a stupid HD interview?  'Cause we were all waiting forever in the dark.  And then the longest overture ever.  I hate overtures.  Except the cutesy ones that play all the hits we are going to hear.  But this? Long. Long. Long.  I like the opera, not the symphony, sorry.  Bring out the singers.

When the curtain finally did come up, it was a dark dark room.  Kind of boring.  I mean, I know it was night-time, but it was just too dark.  And everyone in dark drab colors.  And stars looking really obvious when the only light in the house was the mega-spot shining on them.

It took a while, but eventually Trebs came on, there was clapping, she sang some sad stuff, whatever. Beautiful voice, unfamiliar music, not terribly exciting.  Garanca would have been fun to see, I think, but Ekaterina Gubanova seemed fine to me.  Rough edgy voice, exciting if frayed top, some good chesty lows.  A very mezzo high voice, unlike Garanca who to me sounds very soprano on high notes.  Great chemistry and acting with Ildar Abdrazakov, who I did not like at all.  He was just not loud.  Could not hear him in ensembles, over orchestra, and when singing alone just never had enough authority or volume in his voice.  Smeton's song had some very yummy contralto lows. 



Stephen Costello was great in Act I.  His voice was exciting, high, pretty loud, and he looked good.  He and Trebs had a great scene near the end of Act I.  Here was the first part where I felt Trebs was really living up to expectation.  She was intense, and chesty.  She flung out some fearsome high notes that were very loud.  Lots of smiling from me here.  One note right before she told Percy she'd never see him again was of particular mention, and the whole audience was jolted by the urgency and loudness of the outburst. 

The the big Act I finale started out great, the cabaletta part was crazy fast.  Trebs's voice was flying all over the place and sounding great.  The two crazy high notes were great.  And then came time for the high D and...... a small bird being squeezed to death tweeted from her throat.  It was a D, bang on, for sure.  It was singing, sort-of.  But from another register in another singer in another opera.  And she was trying her all to make it work, and held it the full length, and pushed more air and made it a bit louder, but it never worked.  It was really strange.  What should have been the moment where she dominated as she usually does best, it just came off a bit wimpy.  I heard people complaining as J and I went in search of a shorter bar line at intermission.

Act II was long.  WTF? Every other Donizetti opera is like 70 minutes, 30 minute intermission, 50 minutes, done.  Not Anna Bolena.  90 minutes and then 90 minutes is too much bel canto.  So many scenes.  Not enough cabalettas - were they cut or something?  All that slow music just made 90 minutes feel longer. 

Each scene was better than the last.  The confrontation was great.  Trebs was doing some great fake crying at the beginning.  She is excellent when she's being sad, crazy, or an angry raging bitch.  The rest of the time, meh.  This duet was all angry raging bitch.  She looked furious.  Jane looked seriously afraid of being smacked.  It was great. Audience loved it - first clapping of the night that felt more than polite post-final-chord claps. 

Jane was fantastic begging for Anna to be spared.  Henry would have been great if another singer was hiding behind him and singing for him.  Alternating between desperate, sad, and raging bitch, Trebs was in top form in her confrontation with Henry, great stuff.  Smeton came out tied to a 2-by-4 and looked really miserable.  Then Percy had a really long scene with his killer aria.  And for all of his great singing all night, which I thought was virile and loud, he just ran out of, well, everything.  He almost strangled himself on the high bits.  It was brutal.  He was trying so so hard, but it was not coming out properly.  Poor guy.

Then, as if we hadn't endured enough and weren't totally starved waiting for dinner, a long long women's chorus sang forever about something.  Finally, we got to Trebs losing her mind, and it was fantastic.  Everything as it should be. Beautiful singing, crazy outbursts, great acting.  Loved how through the rest of the opera her hair was under hats and such, because here was the beautiful Trebs we're used to seeing looking great with long hair.  Some scarily off-pitch high notes, but oh so pretty.  And crazy clapping after.  And then she even smiled, she didn't even try not to as she usually does, she knew she made it. 

Then to outbitchify her prior angry bitch moments, when the bells started ringing and the pre-amble to the final cabaletta started, she made a fearsome face clearly seen by all the house.  It was her "I'll cut a bitch" face, I'm telling you.  The cabaletta was faster than I've heard it in recordings, and it was fierce.  She chested the hell out of every low note she could push into.  Her high notes, which sounded on youtube from Vienna to be often sharp, seemed perfectly placed.  And loud. Very loud.  Then she flung her hair in a bun, and with more conviction than any opera acting (except maybe Guleghina killing herself in Queen of Spades) she walked to the guards and off to her execution screaming out a spectacularly loud final note.  Even after she passed through the door and was facing away from us behind a giant wall with only a small door opening, the sound was booming.  Crowd became hysterical.  Even all the non-opera rich people, who never really know what's going on, what's good, or why they're clapping, seemed to be frenzied by the cabaletta.  It was some rocking good stuff.  The giant shiny red curtain thing that fell was great too - very effective and not cheesy, as claimed by some of the stuff I've read. 

So why wasn't the show overall the 5-star show we all wanted it to be?  Well, I think Trebs's placement on the stage was based on seeing her in my favorite Trebs moment, the poison aria in Romeo & Juliette.  She acts, she sings loud, and she sounds great facing away from us.  She spent so much of the performance not singing like the others, eg,. facing the audience no matter who they're singing to, but singing in whatever direction she happens to be facing.  She sings into Henry's chest, to the top of Percy's head, to the back of the stage, to the floor, the ceiling, everywhere except to us.  And sure, when she's singing loud you could hear her if a 747 was crashing into the orchestra between you and her.  But when she's singing regularly, her sound isn't as good as it would be delivered actually to the audience.  Maybe it's to look good for the HD, but she should sing more to us and less to imaginary cameras please. 

Also, thanks to my favorite place where they post recordings from the live broadcasts, I got to listen to a recording of Monday.  And, funny thing, although Trebs's middle and high notes generally sound pretty much as they do live, her chest sounds even more deliciously chestier (it was pretty chestily impressive, but recorded it sounds contraltoish), and the D at the end of Act I sounds completely not the same.  It's still not good.  But it is more than audible ands sounds like a deperate scream, which at least suits the scene.  Don't be fooled, it was an awful whir.  Also, on recording, you can hear Henry and he sounds great. 

It really makes you appreciate the superhuman volume of the big stars, because less-than-great people seem to record pretty well at the Met, but up in the Balcony, only the true good voices carry well.  And not necessarily just the loud ones.  And in his 15 seconds of singing, Bolena's brother (he's a bass, right?) made me wonder why he wasn't singing Henry because: a) his sound was huge, and b) he sounded really great and menacing.  All in all, a fun night.

Fury and damnation to Ed's Chowder House, by the way.  I made reservations for 9:45.  Upon learning that this opera is way longer than it should be, I went in person and told them I needed to make the reservation later.  The girl said: "sure, just come after the opera."  So at 10:25, after throwing ourselves in front of aging seniors, flying out the secret emergency exit, being trapped by the stupid tent and having some jerk security guard argue with us and try and make us go back in and leave through another exit, we got to dinner.  And when we got to the check-in, a bitchy waiter looked at his watch and said "Sorry, 10:30, kitchen's closed!"  Clearly these people didn't know the cardinal rule: Don't f*ck with J, he'll end you.  After 15 minutes of arguing with the manager, hopefully getting that stupid girl fired, we left starving.  Thanks to Ariba Ariba and our hot waiter there for a great dinner.

Trebs

As I start this blog, for some singers, I want to share past memories before blogging about current performances. Here, Anna Netrebko ("Trebs") has just sang Anna Bolena for opening night (a soon-to-be-posted entry), but I have many mostly-fond memories of Trebs since 2007.

Romeo

Trebs and I go back 4 years, when she sang Romeo & Julliette.  Villazon had cancelled, and Roberto Alagna was the replacement Romeo.  It was a performance to remember.  Trebs totally flubbed the coloratura aria, as expected - mushy notes and smudgy runs.  But then as the night wore on, things got better and better.  There was the amazingly nude duet in bed, and then the poison aria.  No wonder Gheurghiu came to New York and got fired in Chicago - she wanted to keep her man in line.  He and Trebs had so much chemistry in that bed one wondered what exactly they were doing in it before the curtain came up.  And her porn-star-body was put to good use here with the lowest-cut nightgown in opera history.  And Roberto was in cute little shorts.  He's no 30 or even 35, but he still pulls off the boyish thing.

The poison aria set the standard to which all Trebs performances must now be compared.  She took a pretty little aria and turned it into a horrific mad scene.  There was some shrieking, some off-pitch highs, but it was LOUD.  And she was CRAZY.  Like Tybalt's ghost was there coming to get her.  Palpable fear.  And then as she walked up the stairs to the bed she suddenly faced exactly away from the audience and bellowed the last 30 seconds of the aria to the rear stage.  And you know what?  It was louder than anything I'd ever heard live.  So loud. So big.  Sound coming not from one tiny mouth but from deep inside the Met from a hundred directions.  And then right before her big trill-less final phrase, she slowly turned around and the sound transformed from everywhere to laser beam as it cut from right-to-left.  The house was in hysteria. 

The live-HD recording, made a few months later but with the same cast, captures this scene exactly as I remember.  Trebs does record very well, unlike others, like Radvanovsky, who sounds entirely like another person live vs. recorded (a thrilling live voice).  And, by the way, Trebs has this thing that is captured in every HD broadcast, where after a successful sing, but before the clapping starts, she wants so so so badly to grin like a 6-year-old at a school talent show - sometimes she suppresses it, but often fails (see the end of the mad scene in the Puritani HD).  After knocking back the potion she totally smiled before putting on her serious face and fainting.

The final scene was very touching.  Roberto was great, people were actually crying in the audience.  The acting was fantastic and the trying-but-failing to hold hands before dying was perfect.  Crowd went wild.

Lucia

Then there was the Lucia.  A night to remember.  Also the day before I started my first full-time permanent job ever, at the law firm where I currently work.  January 26, 2009.  Villazon was finally back after canceling everything I had bought tickets to see him sing for like 2 or 3 years (and then doing same in future, so far to date).  My first time hearing him.  Everyone was like: “Trebs as Lucia? But she can't do coloratura!!”  Having seen the HD of Puritani, I thought, well, she can't really do fast notes, but she might be game for most of this.  Her voice was crazy dark.  But weirdly none of that huge sound from Romeo.  It was like she had redone her voice - it was more accurate, more put together, but had lost some volume.  At least for a while. 

After a boring beginning to the next act, she had her duet with the hot (is he gay?) baritone brother, Mariusz Kwiecien, which had all kinds of creepy incestuous vibes to it.  Suddenly there was chest voice ripping everything on stage apart.  And then possibly the loudest note I've ever heard live, she ended the duet with the most frighteningly loud D-or-whatever, and probably caused brain damage to poor Mariusz.  It was thrilling. 

Then Villazon ended his career by singing an awful awful awful note, then lunging up to a higher note and cracking, then staring for 7 seconds in panic while Trebs and others looked back with even more panic, then singing the lower note again and having it sound (how it was possible, I don't know) even worse than the first try.  It was rough.  I must add, though, that they announced him as ill but soldiering on, and when he sang the final scene, (the one where everyone in the house is thinking, ugh, the mad scene is over, the soprano is backstage drinking by now, why are we still here?), Villazon was totally on fire.  Sure, apparently it was transposed down, but some of the best tenor singing I've heard.  The audience ate it up. 

The mad scene came, and everything was great until the duet-with-flute part, which, although fine, had none of the usual high stuff, and just seemed too safe to be worthwhile.  Then the supposed-to-be-high-e-flat was (I swear!) a flat D, and everything fell off track.  Then the Spargi, ____ wasn't so hot.  And the high Eflat was not only a flat D, but was in some alien register of her voice, part scream, part whirr, part teeny-tiny bird being squeezed to death.  People didn't know what to do, and the staging was set for two men to carry Lucia up a long flight of stairs during screaming and "brava's" for like a minute, but the clapping was over before they got up the first step, and it was really embarrassing.  At curtain calls, Anna looked really miserable.  Not happy at all.
The live HD broadcast captured no off-tune notes, but she didn't take the first e-flat, and the second one was kind of short, but at least loud and on pitch.  Even in that, she looks so miserable in the broadcast during curtain calls.  And not to agree with Anthony Tommassini, who always puts out totally bullshit opera reviews that are not in touch with reality, but he said something to the effect of "great singing except for those pesky high notes."  So true, everything else was great, but, as I have come to realize, the most important part of opera is high notes.  You can screw up an entire aria, but if you nail the last note, and hold it as long as you can, people will cheer.

Hoffman
Hoffman was supposed to be Villazon.  Trebs was supposed to sing all 3 female leads (why do they call them "Heroines?").  She dropped the coloratura doll and the whatever-she-is-sounds-like-mezzo, leaving Antonia.  I couldn't imagine in any world her singing the doll song, so thank goodness for that.  I think the 3rd act would have been fine for Trebs, but why bother singing 2 of 3?  Antonia was perfect for her.  Her first aria kind of sucked, just never got off the ground.  Duet with Hoffman was pretty great, and then the trio at the end was spectacular.  Again with the crazy Juliette bellowing voice.  Ultra loud.  I read somewhere that Trebs "dominated" the trio, and that is exactly it.  Dominated.  Obliterated.  And some really game acting, grasping at the sheet music in desperation. 

But then at the very end of the trio, there is a high note, and then a slightly higher one which ends the trio.  And again that weird bird-register voice appeared.  The first slightly lower note, was in bellowing voice - full, lush, rich, thrilling.  The high note (I think C-sharp maybe?), suddenly caused her voice to shift gears into that other register, and it wasn't so good.  And she totally knew because the second the sound started she realized it wasn't loud enough and started pushing hard.  And it got louder, and fuller, (sort-of), but it just sounded weird. 

And then I think she trilled on her death note.  Sounded like a trill to me - all this blog-hate of her not trilling, and I could swear that this was a Sutherland trill.  But whatever, she never trills anywhere where she actually should, so some of the blog-hate is justified. 

The opera continued through the boring third act, the muse looking really cute as a boy with that very fine line of how-nude-can-you-make-the-mezzo-and-still-have-her-as-a-convincing-boy?  Then the finale had all the singers in a giant chorus.  But you would think it was just Trebs.  There was the drone of many people singing, and blasting above it all was Trebs.  It was great.  For less than an hour of singing in a very very long opera, she certainly got more cheers than anyone else, even (unfairly, because he was great) the Hoffman, Joseph Calleja.

Boheme
Possibly my best night at the opera so far, was this Boheme.  Trebs, Ruth Ann Swenson, Piotr whats-his-name, and some dude as Marcello.  The tenor aria was spectacular, Piotr sang his heart out.  Trebs fooled us all with a delicately beautiful Mimi aria.  I thought, huh, suddenly she sings all lyrical and pretty?  Cool!  But then she shifted into a higher gear, and the size of her voice exploded.  The duet ending the first act was spectacular.  The offstage ending sounded as if she was standing in front of the orchestra pit with a megaphone.  It was sound coming from all directions.  Somewhere deep below was the tenor voice, but hers dominated.

Act II brought out Ruth Ann Swenson, a favorite that I regret not having seen much of.  I saw her in Julius Caesar, where she was amazing and fresh-voiced.  Then in a Traviata that was supposedly her last Met performance, which was heartbreaking and so so good (and with Kauffman I think, yum).  Then suddenly, she's back at the Met for half of the Musettas.  And her voice is not really that loud, but it is a laser beam.  Thrills for sure.  I was with a friend sitting about the middle of the balcony boxes, and you could really notice the difference in volume from when she was facing away, facing the middle of the audience, or aiming the laser right at the balcony boxes.  And luckily she aimed the laser at us pretty much all the time.  It tore through all other sound with sweet precision, and it was a great performance, especially in the last act with some excellent acting.

Act III came, the "snow scene" (J’s favorite), and here was Trebs in full form.  No sick-and-dying bullshit, just plain old mega volume.  My friend pointed out my habit, unknown to me until that night, that I grin like a fool on good high notes.  I spent the whole act grinning.  Trebs, as they say, "sang the shit" out of this music.  She needs to do more Puccini.  Manon Lescaut, please! 

Act IV brought on brilliant changing in tone of the voice, still loud, but wane and sad sounding.  Except the "I have so many things to tell you, well, one thing to tell you" part, which was maybe the loudest singing of the night.  Poor tenor had to have his big emotional outburst immediately following, and he didn't stand a chance of producing anything close to the same volume.  And then she died after some very loud breathing.  Nobody could have believed for a second that she had consumption with such huge singing, but some very good acting and a lot of chemistry with Piotr.  Hysteria during the curtain calls, very much deserved.  My face hurt from smiling.

Don Pasquale
I had very high expectations for this performance.  I knew nothing about the opera except the big aria.  I must have listened to her sing it from 2006 maybe 1,000 times on my ipod.  It's fantastic all the way through except the smudged fast notes, but she ends it with a ridiculously long thrilling high note.  So when, in 2010, the last note wasn't as loud or as long, it was a bit disappointing.  Still great, but I thought, huh, I guess she's just not as loud anymore.  And let's be honest, the most exciting thing about Trebs is superhuman volume.  And low-cut outfits.

After the initial disappointment on the big aria, things improved remarkably.  In the scene where she tricks Pasquale into marrying her, once she ripped off her hat and transformed from the innocent nunnery-girl to, well, Trebs, the huge voice was back.  Violently loud high outbursts all over the place to match the trashing of Pasqual's house.  Vases thrown, beds jumped on (screaming high notes and jumping on a bed at the same time, amazing!), stools flung dangerously close to the orchestra pit.  It was great great fun. 
The second half, I didn't enjoy as much, she's a bitch, she feels sorry, etc.  The finale was great, the "old men shouldn't get married" tune was very cute, and she soared above everyone (not difficult - wimpy tenor, old man, and super-hot Mariusz not really booming out like we know he can).  I think Levine was trying to make the singers balance out at the end, because I felt like she wanted to sing out more but was holding back - she had potential to rip out some stunning final notes, but instead blended nicely with everyone else - musical, but not as fun.  All in all, pretty good.  Memories of smudged coloratura were definitely erased by watching her trash Pasqual's place in the HD movie.  Sure, it’s cheesy and she’s campy, but its funny, and this is a comedy.  If she didn’t ham it up it would be as lame as, well, every time I’ve seen the Barber of Seville. 

Immigration Law & Opera - a little about me

My friend S has been telling me I should blog opera for some time now.  S is the reason I am an opera addict - we met in junior high school in Calgary, Alberta, and started doing the yearly talent show - I play piano and S is a coloratura soprano (well actually an architect, but that's a long story).  She took me to my first opera when I was 17, Die Fledermaus.

I moved to Toronto for college, where they had great student deals and I saw most of the operas they put on between 2001 and 2005.  Some were great, some were fantastic, some were okay.  Die Walkure was pretty awesome, Oedopus Rex was pretty disgusting, Rigoletto had a very funny moment I'll blog about another time (made funnier by the horrific cold I had and the bottle of cough syrup I drank so as not to cough like those old people I hate that sit in Family Circle).  And, as luck always turns out, when Toronto finally finished building its fancy new opera house, I moved to New York.  I went back last year for an Aida, and thought the lobby looked a lot better than the inside, but whatever, cool opera house and way nicer than the Hummingbird Center from before.

My first Met performance was a trip with S to New York in college.  A family friend bought us specatular seats to Julius Caesar with Ruth Ann Swenson and David Daniels.  Great stuff.  We also saw the Broadway La Boheme this trip, which I loved.  I did the rush thing all day and got us front row tickets.  Rodolfo was crazy hot, and he got so into it that he couldn't stop the tears in the last scene and ended up crying the entire way through the curtain calls.  Marcello was also crazy hot, had good chemistry with Musetta.  My favorite moment in Boheme is in Act II during Musetta's aria where Marcello suddenly gives up pretending not to like her and has a sudden outburst - he did this perfectly.  Don't ask me anything else about the singing, that was before my opera obsession and inner critic had really been turned on, and it was miked, and whatever with the opera vs. broadway fighting, it was still pretty cool. 

My weirdest opera experience was again with S and the family friend, this time in Paris seeing some new opera about a mother and son and a war and some blood, dunno.  Sometimes I email her about operas and she's always telling me I should blog.  One day I'll pull some emails and post them. 

Then in 2005 I moved to New York for law school, and have become an opera addict.

I've been going to the Met since I moved to New York in 2005, and going like crazy to almost everything at the Met since 2008.  I used to do some city opera, we usually do Caramoor, and sometimes I see operas on vacations in fun places (or find excuses to go places but do so actually to see an opera, eg Toronto Aida), but mostly I do the Met.  Family Circle usually, balcony boxes preferred, amazing orchestra/grand tier when I win the weekend draws, and (hopefully) some great student tickets this year with my very useful intern, who is under 30 and a full-time student. 

For a living, I work as an immigration lawyer.  Immigration law just kind of happened to me, the professor who teaches it came to me the first week of law school and said "you aren't a U.S. citizen, you should take my class."  And I loved it.  Everything about it.  Confusing laws, constitutional issues, court, crazy clients, and lots of satisfaction helping people stay here with their families.  After a rocky start at the beginning of the recession, I finally landed my first-time-ever full-time permanent job, working in a small office for an immigration attorney practicing more than 30 years, BB.  My secretary, MF, and I have grand plans to write a book about the crazy that goes down at work, and maybe that will overlap into this blog - we will see.

Also, conveniently, working as an immigration lawyer, at least for BB, means work ends pretty promptly at 6pm every night.  Which, in prior years, meant running to the subway, going home (Hell's kitchen, conveniently 10 minutes walk to the Met), having a (some) glass(es) of wine, scarfing down dinner, and then walking over for 8pm.  This year, with 7:30 performances and BB trying harder to keep me late at work, we'll see how that eating-at-home things goes.

My partner J, who I met in law school, sometimes goes to the opera with me.  He's not in love with it, but I did my best to hook him.  His first opera was a Hei-Kyung Hong Boheme, and the "snow scene" kept him talking for days.  We've found a good balance of joint performances for him - about 7 this year - and the rest I usually go alone or find fresh victims.  He really hates Handle.  We mostly see Italian stuff, since he's got Sicilian blood I guess that means it has more impact on him.  So far I have something like 40 tickets for this upcoming year, but I usually break down and buy more (so many Aidas, and I think I only have 1 ticket?!).  Plus the weekend drawings are good, I even won this Saturday for Nabucco but I can't go and gave the tickets to a friend. 

J is much more into musicals, so we do a few of those a year. I had a musical phase in junior high - les miserables and phantom, but I think that was just a phase that led from musicals-pretending-to-be-opera to real opera.  There is something way more thrilling about unamplified singing than musicals, but musicals can be a lot of fun.  J has no formal musical training, but he sings.  It took a while to get him to sing the right notes, and then in tune, and then in his own voice instead of a crap artificial voice, but I play piano and he sings.  Judy, Liza, all the usual gay stuff.  Lotsa fun.  He's starting to get really good - maybe he'll take my hints and sign up for actual singing lessons so we can see his full potential. Our newest book of songs, all Elvis, has some good ones for him. "It's now or never" is a good one, and he tears it up with a G at the end that is in a very good place in his voice right now.  BTW, he's tenorish.  When he sings in cheesy opera tenor voice instead of the usual boyband voice, I can almost believe it.  Maybe with lessons.

And, by the way, I have no formal opera/singing training.  I know some of the lingo from S and generally from opera reviews and blogs.  I certainly can't sing, although I never really tried and maybe if I saw a voice teacher I could at least figure out my voice type.  I think baritone probably, and not very good.  I can sing extremely loudly and have huge lungs, so maybe I just need lessons?  But who wants to be a baritone, anyway?  S says that I have a good ear though, because when she sends me recordings of her at vocal competitions I can usually come up with good comments and suggestions even though I'm not using the technical terms.

One thing I must say, though, is either other bloggers and reviewers have way better ears than me or are just really mean and bitchy, because there are so many singers/performances that other people say are off pitch and I didn't notice/can't tell.  Like Sondra Radvanovsky.  Everyone says she's flat all the time.  Am I deaf or something?  She sounds fine to me most of the time.  Meanwhile, Trebs and Mattila are sharp all the time on high notes and nobody seems to notice.  Whatever.  I can't quite explain the intricate formula of how I decide whether I like someone, but let's just say that volume probably factors in a lot more than pitch.  And I can't tell you why, but I am so in love with chest voice.  Dolora Zajick does it best.  She did La Luce Langue on the Met stage at one of the council auditions a few years ago and I thought I was going to pee my pants it was so good. 

Enough about me though, on to actual blogging of stuff.  If you enjoy reading, or if you want to talk immigration law, shoot an email or make comments.  And, if by chance you actually know me, I'm not trying very hard to hide my (or others') identity(/ies) or anything like that, but I'm calling most people by one or two letters instead of their full name - please do the same if you comment.