Perry Street Was Flourishing Romantic Mecca For Love & Art

Far and Away: Harold Eliot Leeds and
Wheaton Galentine NOT on Perry Street.
(Photo: Harold Leeds Estate)

"The house where Carrie Bradshaw lived, supposedly on the Upper East Side but actually at 66 Perry Street in the West Village, still draws a steady stream of Sex and the City fans. They snap photos of the row house, which was built in 1866, as if to partake in the fictional life of a New York writer and the foibles of her quest for lasting romance. But a real New York romance played out at the house next door, No. 64, whose plainer facade served as Carrie’s building for the first three seasons of the show, said Tim Gunn, the fashion executive who lived in an apartment there for 16 years. It lasted almost six decades, linking two men from their first meeting at the Rockefeller Center skating rink during World War II until one of them, Harold Eliot Leeds, an architect and professor of interior design at

Sirens of Perry Street: Carrie Bradshaw on left (played by
Sarah Jessica Parker) and Tim Gunn on right.

Pratt, died in 2002. Inasmuch as Sex and the City opened a window on a certain kind of life in New York, so too does that town house, now on the market for $8.5 million, with its connection to a Village that persists only in memory and imagination, a place that was a magnet and haven for people living outside the mainstream at a time when the idea of two men, or women, marrying was inconceivable....Mr. Leeds, who designed the Paris Theater, the Caribe Hilton in San Juan and Martha Graham’s dance studio, and Mr. Galentine, who made documentary films, many focused on architecture, turned their visual sensibilities toward the house, restoring its architectural features but adding distinctive modernist furnishings. Over the years, Mr. Leeds, who is remembered as a big man with a big,

The most famous exterior on
Perry Street today: Number 66 .

broad personality, taught interior design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he helped establish the graduate school of interior design. Mr. Galentine was quieter, but possessed what the couple's longtime neighbor described as a puckish sense of humor. Endlessly hospitable, the two liked to entertain, playing host to neighbors stopping by for tea or a cocktail, and having dinner parties with the artists, writers and poets who populated their neighborhood, talking about opera or ballet or the theater. They also liked to travel, Mr. Skovgaard said, to Martha’s Vineyard, all over Europe and eventually Southeast Asia." [Source]

Zachary Woolfe Recommends Cavalli's Mega-Hit "Giasone"

Jason & Medea (Giovanni Crosato)

Writer Zachary Woolfe makes a recommendation for New Yorkers in today's edition of the Times: "Opera Omnia (Friday, Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday) Giasone, which had its premiere in Venice in 1649, was Cavalli’s most popular opera in his own time but is a rarity now. That’s a shame, as it features gorgeous music, complex characters and a knowing libretto that treats the story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece with a mixture of emotion and absurdity. This excellent young company is mounting it (in English) in a production directed by Crystal Manich and conducted by Avi Stein, with a cast that includes the dazzling mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn as (who else?) Medea. At 7 p.m., Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, near Thompson Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 505-3474, lepoissonrouge.com; $30 for general seating, $15 for bar/mezzanine seating." [Source]


"Delizie, contenti" Giasone (Cavalli) sung by René Jacobs
"Dell'antro magico" Giasone (Cavalli) sung by Gloria Banditelli

Jason and Medea (John William Waterhouse)

"Opera Omnia presents Francesco Cavalli's Giasone, fully staged in English translation, as a long overdue follow-up to Opera Omnia's sold-out run of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea in 2008. Giasone was the most popular opera of the 17th century; this raucous telling of the Jason and Medea myth features tortured lovers, a bitter old maid, a buffoon servant...and a stuttering hunchback. Using a style that incorporates commedia dell'arte and cabaret, Opera Omnia's version of the quest for the Golden Fleece is sure to delight. Returning Opera Omnia cast members include Hai-Ting Chinn (Medea) and Cherry Duke (Jason), who will be joined by Kathaine Dain (Hipsipyle), Karim Sulayman (Delfa), and Nathan Baer (Besso), with music direction by Avi Stein and stage direction by Crystal Manich, produced by Wesley Chinn. [Source]

Watch some videos featuring Hai-Ting Chinn after the jump.



Agnus Dei: from Requiem for fossil fuels from Bruce Odland on Vimeo.



Lucid Possession Trailer from Toni Dove on Vimeo.

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]

Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey Is Officially Married

The Newlyweds
(Photo: Meghan McMackin/NY Times)

"Kate Lindsey, a daughter of Nancy R. Lindsey and the Rev. Richard H. Lindsey Jr. of Richmond, Va., was married Saturday afternoon to Landon John Jones, a son of Cathryn M. Jones and Martin J. Jones of Carbon, Iowa. Ms. Lindsey, 30, is keeping her name. She is a mezzo-soprano who this year sang the role of Nicklausse in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Metropolitan Opera, with which she is a principal artist and where later this year she is to appear as Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. In June, she sang in Mozart’s Idomeneo at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. She graduated from Indiana University. The couple met in April 2010 when Dr. Jones, far from an opera buff, agreed to play tour guide to Ms. Lindsey, then preparing to perform in the title role of the Seattle Opera’s Amelia, a new work. He did so only as a favor to his best friend, who also happened to be Ms.

Lindsey in Amelia
at Seattle Opera.

Lindsey’s sister-in-law. 'I had been to an opera in Houston,' he said. 'It was three hours, and it couldn’t be over soon enough.' After he and Ms. Lindsey had gone on two platonic hiking trips, Dr. Jones could not get her out of his head. 'I’m getting flyers of the Amelia opera in the mail,' he remembered. 'I’m seeing her face everywhere on posters.' When she opened in Amelia that May, he decided to give opera another chance, and then built up the courage to ask her a few days later to go on a kayaking date with him. 'It was our first real date,' he said." [Source]

Deborah Voigt: Alcoholism, Obesity, Suicide Despair, Vocal Decline

Opera singer Deborah Voigt has collaborated with playwright Terrence McNally, director Francesca Zambello and pianist Kevin Stites, to create an autobiographical one-woman show titled "Voigt Lessons" which features 18 pieces of music to accompany her timeline. It premiered on last Friday at the Glimmerglass Festival. All the below excerpts are from the New York Times. Read the full article here.

The dramatic soprano singing in 2009.

"Though keeping the timeline a little vague, Ms. Voigt spoke courageously of suicidal despair, alcohol abuse and a low point of her life, when she 'jumped into a bottle and went into a 35-hour blackout.” That is long enough, she said, 'to fly around the world' or 'to sing two Ring cycles,' referring to Wagner’s epic four-opera Ring des Nibelungen, in which she has been appearing at the Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Voigt shared with her audience what she called the eight words that saved her life: 'My name is Debbie, and I’m an alcoholic.' She followed this admission with an elegantly unsentimental account of the pop standard 'Smile' ('Smile though your heart is aching')."

Carnegie Hall in 2004.

"About halfway through the program Ms. Voigt said that up to that point she had been avoiding the subject of 'fatness,' a condition she likened to an expletive. Before she underwent surgery, Ms. Voigt said, she was not 'full-figured' or 'Junoesque' or 'heavyset.' She was fat. At her worst, her weight hit 333 pounds, three digits she will never forget, she said."

Richard Tucker Gala 1992.

"In recent years some critics and opera buffs have noted with concern that Ms. Voigt’s voice is becoming brighter, a little hard-edged and less warm. Toward the end of 'Voigt Lessons' she acknowledged that her voice is changing in its colors and texture. But she feels good, she said; she is comfortable in her body and with her singing."

One confusing section in the NYTimes piece describes the soprano's desire to sing her first aria, but the author makes it unclear whether she only was mistaken about the aria not being in her fach or did she also think it was from the opera Tosca rather than Turandot: "In her youth Ms. Voigt was not really an opera fan, she said. When she finally enrolled at California State University at Fullerton, to study with a voice professor, Jane Paul, she arrived at her first lesson hoping to sing an absolutely beautiful aria she had come upon: 'Nessun dorma' from Puccini’s Tosca. Ms. Paul explained that this was a tenor aria. Well, in 'Voigt Lessons,' Ms. Voigt sang it, an exuberant performance that drew a rousing ovation from the delighted audience."

Deborah Voigt during the rehearsals of Annie Get Your Gun at Glimmerglass 2011.

"Life Is Short, Opera Is Long" - The New York Times

Watch a behind-the-scenes video of young singers from this year's Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/05/19/magazine/100000000823450/life-is-short-opera-is-long.html.

Sondra Radvanovsky Profiled by the New York Times

La Diva Radvanovsky in New York
(Photo: Vivien Schweitzer/NYTimes)

The soprano, who makes her return to the David McVicar production of Il Trovatore this evening at the Metropolitan Opera, gives an interview to the New York Times about the long road it has been to success in the world's greatest opera houses. She describes the difficulty of administrators not really "getting" her unique voice and how hard she has worked to prove she is one of the leading Verdi sopranos of this generation. She discusses her relationship with the Peter Gelb and how her early involvement with MET - winning the National Council Auditions and being a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Program - never secured her hiring by the house for large roles. Through determination and hard work, she showed fellow colleagues like Plácido Domingo and Dmitri Hvorostovsky that she had not only the vocal goods but the stage craft to rank among the best. In discussing her own unique voice the article states, "Ms. Radvanovsky admires Maria Callas, because 'she paid attention to the text and the music and was willing to make an ugly sound, if the text and music called for it,' she said. 'She was one of the best storytellers ever.' She compares her voice to Callas’s in the sense that audiences 'love it or hate it.'" [Source]

Fit Opera Singers Are Featured in New York Times

Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard's workout
(Photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

The New York Times features young opera singers that are bucking the stereotype of being overweight in order to do their jobs. The profile includes five artists and the workout routines that keep them fit. Click here to see the photo gallery that focuses on Isabel Leonard, Lawrence Brownlee, Joseph Kaiser, Tamara Mumford and Julie Boulianne. [Source]

Renée Fleming Highlighted as Sophisticated Lady

"Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Norah Jones, Renée Fleming and Ruth Cameron: the lineup of singers performing popular standards and vintage obscurities on “Sophisticated Ladies,” the 25th-anniversary album of Charlie Haden Quartet West, is formidable. The 12-cut CD is the deepest immersion in the quartet’s moody retro film noir style since its 1999 album, “The Art of the Song,” which featured the guest vocalists Shirley Horn and Bill Henderson...The happiest surprise is Ms. Fleming’s voluptuously besotted rendition of 'A Love Like This,' composed by Victor Young as a theme for the 1943 movie 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' with lyrics by Ned Washington. Ms. Fleming’s rich, gliding voice evokes a woman wallowing in heedless sensual afterglow, her half-choked singing flooded with emotion." [Source]

Big, Large and In Charge: Opera Singers With a Football Past

Ta'u Pupu'a letting his tenor out
(Photo: Michael J. Lutch/New York Times)

Back in January this blog did a post on football players trading in the pig skin to sing in the opera world. Now the New York Times has a full-blown article about the people Opera Fresh mentioned and more! "Opera singers with a football past include Ta’u Pupu’a, a lineman drafted by the Cleveland Browns; Keith Miller, a former Arena League fullback who appeared in two bowl games with Colorado; the former Harvard players Ray Hornblower and Noah Van Niel; and Morrison Robinson, who played on the offensive line for the Citadel." Read the whole article by clicking here. In addition to photos of the football players turned

opera divos, the article has a wonderful video that features Noah Van Niel in the locker room being supported by his teammates, who dub him Pavarotti, as he sings "God Bless America" in full tenor voice. Watch the video here. A previous New York Times feature on Noah while he was at Harvard can be found here.