David Daniels Sings For His Supper in San Francisco

Countertenor David Daniels has arrived in San Francisco, California, where he will be singing for a private dinner, prepared by Chef Scott Peacock, at the house of Alice Waters to honor the 40th Anniversary of Chez Panisse. [Source]

Chef Peacock

"Chez Panisse‘s 40th birthday extravaganza will take place on the weekend of August 26. With the goal of raising funds and awareness for the Edible Schoolyard program, now in its 15th year, Alice Waters and friends are holding a bunch of events throughout the weekend. Nearly all are open to the public. Some are free, some are not. The full schedule is online, and the Cliff’s Notes version was shared in the print edition, with two big highlights being the Smithsonian’s unveiling of Waters’ portrait for the National Portrait Gallery (a.k.a. recognition as a national treasure!) on Friday, August 26,

Alice Waters
(Photo: Russell Yip)

and OPENeducation at the Berkeley Art Museum on Saturday, August 27. Tickets for the portrait unveiling are $100; OPENrestaurant‘s edible installation is free but you can reserve a space here. Below, check out the preliminary list of Chez Panisse alumni dinners, which will take place in various private homes throughout the Bay Area on the evening of August 27. Tickets for the dinners vary in price ($500 – $2,000 per person), and are available by calling Krissa Nichols at (510) 843-3811. Funds go to the Edible Schoolyard, remember." [Source]

For more information about the event, visit the official website here. The full dinner list is after the jump.
-An Intimate Chinese Banquet at the home of Cecilia Chiang with Patricia Unterman, special guest Ruth Reichl and Bill He in the kitchen with Cecilia.
-Una Cena Sul Campo at the Berkeley hills home and garden of China specialist Orville Schell and wife Baifang Liu with chef Mona Talbott of the American Academy in Rome.
-Sicilian Wild Boar Roast at Angelo Garro’s Renaissance Forge with chef Melissa Fernandez, Boz and Dominique Scaggs and NPR Kitchen Sisters’ Davia Nelson.
-A Napa Garden Party with chef Kelsie Kerr, and Cowgirl Creamery’s Peggy Smith and Sue Conley. At the Napa home of Patty Curtan and Stephen Thomas, with special guest Margrit Mondavi.
-A Provençal Dinner prepared by Traci Des Jardins at the Berkeley home of Ross Levy and author Daphne Miller with special guest Raj Patel, wines from Scribe winery and flowers by Louesa Roebuck.
-Supper in the Pantry hosted by Sam Hamilton and Jennifer Chaiken, with chef Brian Espinoza in the carriage house at San Francisco interiors store, March.
-Pig Roast! A backyard pig roast at the Berkeley home of Michael Pollan and Judith Belzer with pitmasters Jack Hitt and Samin Nosrat.
-A Middle Eastern Lamb Roast at the Piedmont home of Frank and Maryellen Herringer with chefs Michael Emanuel, Chad Robertson, and June Taylor. Special guests: artists Hung Liu and Catherine Wagner.
-¡Flamenco y Paella! cooked over the flames at the Berkeley home of Anthony and Daniella Sueuga with Michael and Sylvie Sullivan of Beaune Imports.
-Nose-to-Tail with Chris Kronner and author Novella Carpenter in the Rose Street cottage of Jane White in North Berkeley.
-Supper in a Jewel Box at the San Francisco home of Peggy Knickerbocker and Robert Fisher with Christopher Hirsheimer and Niloufer Ichaporia King.
-Omedetai! in the Berkeley hills home and garden of artist Lauren McIntosh of Tail of the Yak and Steven Walrod with chef Sylvan Mishima Brackett of Peko Peko Catering.
-Carciofi alla Giudia. A Roman meal with chefs Christopher Lee and Joan Nathan and special guest Daniel Ellsberg at the home of Hilary and Daniel Goldstine, nestled in the Berkeley Hills.

Zachary Woolfe Explores "Charisma" in Opera Singers

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most
charismatic of them all?
Maria Callas photographed by Angus McBean.

"Charismatic performers are those whom you simply can’t look away from. Their charisma is an almost physical presence, a spark that powers even the most unassuming musical passage. To experience a charismatic performance is to feel elevated, simultaneously dazed and focused, galvanized and enlarged. It is to surrender to something raw and elemental, to feel happy but also unsatisfied. Charisma calls forth a melancholy, a vaguely unrequited feeling. I’ve caught myself, after certain performances of an aria or a movement, leaning forward, as if drawn against my will. Charisma requires that you acknowledge a new, larger set of possibilities. It is demanding. We are told of Callas’s overwhelming use of her body and voice onstage. As Schonberg added, of that 1965 Tosca, 'the stage presence shown by Callas in her performance would have raised the hackles on a deaf man.' The question is whether people want to be swept up. Charisma can be exhilarating but also frightening. Our surrender to it demands a trust that is not easily conceded. If our desire from performance is only for comfort and reassurance, charisma will repel us. It is about revealing scope, and it raises the stakes dangerously high....Recently I was in the Met Opera Shop, and a video clip came on the screen above the CD racks. The longtime Met soprano Aprile Millo was singing 'La mamma morta,' the ecstatic aria from Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, with burning intensity. The sales clerk and I both watched raptly. Later I e-mailed Ms. Millo to ask her what charisma is. 'Hemingway gave us a haunting clue to it,' she replied. 'In his obsession with the Spanish bullfights, he spoke of the lust of the crowd and its desire to feel something special, a raw authenticity, even in so brutal a setting. What he mentions is the hush that would come over the crowd at the entrance of the toreadors. The people could sense the difference between those who did it for the fame, the paycheck, and those who had the old spirit: the nobility, bravery, heart, ‘duende.’ I believe this also happens in the theater. The crowd can sense the one with the authentic message, the connection to the truth.'" [Source]

Review: Vivaldi's "Griselda" Opens at the Santa Fe Opera

Leonard and Abrams
(Photo: Ken Howard)

"...countertenor Yuri Minenko, who portrayed this 'man in the middle' counselor, was the only person in the cast who combined elegant, agile vocalism with a sense of period musical style. His voice is small but handsome, his technique immaculate. He projects just enough to be heard clearly, but he demands that listeners give him their complete attention. In a production in which most of the characters flounced about with awkwardness that could border on the irrational, Minenko maintained a dignified bearing even while wearing what came close to a pastel green leisure suit. The opening night's other countertenor was Jason Abrams (in his house début), the understudy for David Daniels, who called in sick. He held up his own in the role of Roberto (part of a love-interest subplot), and his attractive voice may earn him continuing plaudits as he addresses some inconsistencies that have not yet been worked out of his vocal production at this emergent moment of his career. As Ottone (who lusts after Griselda), soprano Amanda Majeski was made to run around dressed like an MTV award presenter. Her shrill timbre was not unsuited to her aria 'Scocca dardi,' which describes how Griselda's eyes throw darts into her soul, but in other contexts her tone seemed less apposite and her precisely notated arpeggios were the stuff of approximation. Some fine singing arrived via Isabel Leonard, a mezzo-soprano rising fast in the world of lyric theater. Nonetheless, she did not seem well suited to her role of Costanza, whom Gualtiero pretends he will marry, though he knows
(as she does not) that she is his and Griselda's long-concealed daughter. She boasts a lovely voice that displayed admirable amplitude when she spun out the finely crafted lines of her aria 'Ombre vane,' and she kept a firm beat even at fast tempos (not a given in this cast). To her fell the work's most famous aria, 'Agitata da due venti,' fearsome in its dazzling coloratura and spitfire repeated attacks, the former delivered capably, the latter somewhat glossed over. One sensed an excellent singer in the wrong role, a description that carries over to the tenor Paul Groves, as Gualtiero, whose lunging for notes yielded unconvincing results and whose ornamentation in the da capos came from who knows what universe — perhaps from the same realm of indistinct romanticism that fueled his interpretation of recitative. At the center of the action was contralto

Majeski and Groves
(Photo: Ken Howard)

Meredith Arwady as Griselda, whose uncentered pitches, swallowed diction and graceless stage deportment rendered her casting incomprehensible. Her only tolerable singing came near the end, when Sellars bizarrely replaced an aria Vivaldi wrote with the opening of his Stabat Mater, composed in a distinctly different style — a substitution that I suspect might have been illegal in Vivaldi's Venice. Grant Gershon's conducting was supportive of the singers; like most of them, he seemed several decades behind the times in conveying what we surmise about period style. Sellars' staging was heavy on such overused directorial devices as secret service agents and many, many guns, which characters pointed here and there without seeming much committed to them. The blocking could descend to rudeness, as when characters were made to upstage colleagues' arias by walking between the singer and the audience. The cast rolled about on the floor more than you might think necessary." [Source]

Coffee Break: Gorgeous Baroque Duet Executed in Glory

"Son nata a lagrimar" Giulio Cesare (Händel)

Live from the Metropolitan Opera, 1999
David Daniels........Sesto
Stephanie Blythe....Cornelia

David Daniels Joins Shakespeareans at Juilliard: Listen Live!

For one night only at Juilliard, on Monday, June 13 at 7 PM, actors Sir Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford, and Juilliard alumna Monica Raymund perform selected readings from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, complemented by 17th–century songs and instrumental highlights inspired by Shakespeare’s play and compiled into an early operatic version. Countertenor David Daniels and baritone Bob McDonald are featured vocalists, performing with Juilliard415, the School’s highly praised student historical performance group. Public radio station WQXR 105.9 will host a live stream of this special performance. An encore presentation on Classical 105.9 FM WQXR, featuring largely the musical portions of the performance, will air on Sunday, June 26 at 4 PM. Juilliard’s June 13 performance is a benefit for the Juilliard Drama Division. A limited number of benefit tickets remain for the performance and post-performance dinner, ranging from $1,000 - $50,000. Performance-only benefit tickets range in price from $75 - $125. For Benefit Ticket Information, call (212) 799-5000 ext. 329. A very limited number of non-benefit balcony seats priced at $50 are available at the Janet and Leonard Kramer Box Office at Juilliard; may be purchased online at http://events.juilliard.edu; or by calling CenterCharge (212) 721-6500. Juilliard is located at Lincoln Center, at 155 West 65th Street, just west of Broadway. Adapted and directed by Mr. Clifford, this presentation of The Tempest with period music was first performed in 2010 by the Folger Consort, early music ensemble-in-residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, with mostly the same cast. Robert Eisenstein was musical director. Thought to have been written by Shakespeare about 1610, The Tempest is among the great plays of his late period. Frequently adapted in performance, it also has been the inspiration for operatic treatments, tone poems, and numerous song texts. At Juilliard, the benefit reading includes a setting of Shakespeare’s text from a 1674 staging of The Tempest as well as other period works; the composers are Matthew Locke, John Banister, Pelham Humfrey, Georg Frideric Handel, and Antonino Reggio. [Source]

Two Debuts & One Return in MET "Orfeo ed Euridice" Revival

MET debutantes Royal and Walker flank Daniels
on opening night (Photo: William Scott Walters)

"Soprano Kate Royal sang powerfully and emotionally as Euridice in a winning Met debut, displaying a strong upper register. She earned robust applause for 'Che fiero momento (What a proud moment).' Countertenor David Daniels once again was the star of the show, reprising his performance as Orfeo. The part was sung by the castrato Gaetano Guadagni at its premiere and also can be sung by a mezzo-soprano — Stephanie Blythe performed it at the Met two years ago. Slimmed down and looking radiant with sparkles on his clothes and a guitar dangling from his back, Daniels commanded the stage, conveying his pain at not being allowed to look at Euridice. His liquid voice dazzled in 'Che faro senza Euridice? (What shall I do without Euridice?)' .... Australian conductor Anthony Walker made his Met debut, leading a propulsive performance but one that was less frothy than James Levine's version when the staging was new." [Source]

A History of "Orfeo ed Euridice" at the Metropolitan Opera

Risë Stevens as Orfeo (Photo: Tony Vaccaro)

As Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice is set to open tonight at the Metropolitan Opera with David Daniels, let's take a look back at the many stars who have sung the role of Orfeo at this famous company. The first performance given by the MET was actually at the Boston Theatre in Massachusetts and was sung in German with Marianne Brandt taking on the lead role in 1885. The next performance took place in 1891 with Giulia Ravogli singing Orfeo in Chicago, Illinois. In an interesting pairing, the work received its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on December 11, 1893, with Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci taking the second part of the evening. Sofia Scalchi sang Orfeo and Nellie Melba sang Nedda. Quite an interesting night to be sure. The production returned in 1895 with Marie Brema as Orfeo and this time sharing the evening with Emma Calvé as Anita in the U.S. premiere of Massenet's La Navarraise. The opera gets revived in 1909 with Louise Homer in a new production with a drastically revised score by conductor of the performances, Arturo Toscanini. Marie Delna makes her debut as Orfeo in the last performance of this run. The original cast of this production returned for the 1910-11 and 1911-12 seasons for a revival with Margarete Matzenauer stepping in for one performance as Orfeo. There is one more performance on March 2, 1914, before this production takes a respite until 1936 when Orfeo ed Euridice returns to the MET in a new production conceived by George Balanchine that puts the singers in the orchestra pit and dancers portraying them on stage. Anna Kaskas was Orfeo

David Daniels as Orfeo at the Metropolitan (Photo: Annie Leibovitz)

and the performance was on a double-bill with Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. Kerstin Thorborg arrives in 1938 as Orfeo in a new production directed by Herbert Graf with sets by Harry Horner. When brought back in 1939, Erich Leinsdorf takes over conducting duties when Artur Bodanzky passes away and in 1941, Bruno Walter steps into the pit for Maestro duties. In February 1955, a new era began with Risë Stevens taking on the title role under conductor Pierre Monteux. From this point on a series of popular mezzo-sopranos including Grace Bumbry (1970) and Marilyn Horne (1972). The opera disappeared until the current Mark Morris production premiered in 2007 with costumes by Isaac Mizrahi and conducted by James Levine. The performances also marked the MET role debut as Orfeo for David Daniels. The role was put back in the hands of mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe when the production was revived in 2009. In addition to countertenor David Daniels, the current run will mark the debut of soprano Kate Royal as Euridice and the Amor of Lisette Oropesa, all under conductor Antony Walker. [Source]

A listening guide through various interpretations of "Che farò senza Euridice" throughout MET history:

Risë Stevens

Grace Bumbry

Marilyn Horne

David Daniels and Aretha Franklin Visit "The View"

Countertenor David Daniels was a VIP guest today in the audience at ABC's The View. Performing on stage was none other than the "Queen of Soul"Aretha Franklin. And no, she did not perform "Nessun Dorma."

MET Sirius XM Radio Tonight: "Die Walküre"

Listen to the Metropolitan Opera perform Wagner's Die Walküre live tonight at 6:30 PM EST on Sirius XM radio. Intermission guests: Sondra Radvanovsky, David Daniels, Tyne Daly and Robert Dean Smith.

Countertenor David Daniels Featured on Atlanta Home Tour

The view from the living room.

"Music and art are integral in the lives of David Daniels and Scott Walters, and the design of their modern loft reflects their passions. David is an opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera, so you’ll see a large sign from his debut performance. There’s also a black upright piano and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that showcase some of the couple’s musical collection. The condo features dark hardwood floors and is decorated in bold colors including red and purple. Most of the art on the walls is the work of Scott’s late mother, Reina Carrillo, including the ceramic jars in the living room and kitchen. 'She was a tortured soul, which shows in a lot of the work,' the homeowners said. Another of the couple’s favorite possessions is a piece by artist Renea Menzies, which was purchased at her Santa Fe gallery. 'The painting is thick wet oil that is [manipulated] into shape and color with a spackle. It takes up to three years to dry,' Daniels and Walters said." [Source]

David Daniels & Dorothea Röschmann Impress at Carnegie Hall

Soprano Röschmann and Countertenor Daniels in duet
(Photo: Hiroyuki Ito/The New York Times)

"The program focused on Handel’s sober, reflective side, featuring several arias and duets from his 1725 opera Rodelinda. Mr. Daniels had a few moments of high-spirited virtuosity, but for the most part the selections played to both singers’ strengths: purity of line and sincerity of feeling. The ornamentation was clean and stylish throughout, and at the best moments, as in Ms. Röschmann’s 'V’adoro pupille' from Giulio Cesare, it gave the crucial illusion of spontaneity....The recital moved into quite another sphere in the encores: Ms. Röschmann’s transcendent “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo and Mr. Daniels’s deeply felt 'Ch’io parta' from Partenope. The final encore was the only selection by a composer other than Handel: 'Pur ti miro,' the love duet from the end of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. This is as expressive as music gets, and Ms. Röschmann and Mr. Daniels traded off the arching phrases with floating eloquence and poise over a steady bass line. It was simply flawless. In its beauty and restraint, its sense of tremendous energy and emotion held in just barely, the performance captured everything the Baroque can teach us." [Source]

LOC "Hercules" Production Claimed Success For Sellars

Alice Coote, David Daniels and Eric Owens

"This isn't just a brilliant conclusion to the season. The new production of Handel's Hercules at Lyric Opera of Chicago goes well beyond that. It could be an important springboard for a renewed civic and, indeed, national conversation about issues concerning America's war veterans, issues many people would just as soon sweep under a rug. What happens to these soldiers when they return home, bringing their post-traumatic stress with them? Having turned off their emotions for combat, how do they turn them back on with the family and friends they left behind? The answer, in director Peter Sellars' thoughtful and enthralling new production, which opened Friday night at the Civic Opera House, is they don't." [Source]

 "The cast is exceptional, with debutante English soprano Lucy Crowe breaking out astonishingly in a chilling Abu Ghraib costume and English mezzo Alice Coote making Dejanira dramatically complete. American tenor Richard Croft is a steadfast and dutiful Hyllus. Countertenor David Daniels was born for this music and his Lichas grabs your heart. And American bass-baritone Eric Owens speaks to you even in his silences — Handel gave his title character the least amount of music — and shakes you when he sings." [Source]

Read more about the production here. One more review out from the L.A. Times and can be found here.