Hudson Valley Summer 2004—Sutton Foster at Caramoor and Sandra Bernhard at Bard

Sutton Foster at Caramoor

July 13, 2024

Katonah, NY

caramoor.org

Sandra Bernhard at Bard 

August 9 and 10, 2024

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Fishercenter.bard.edu

Sutton Foster performing at Caramoor (photo: Gabe Palacio)

Broadway superstar Sutton Foster has gone from strength to strength since Thoroughly Modern Millie introduced her to musical-theater audiences. Just this year, the Tony-winning actress stepped into the Sweeney Todd revival before returning in spectacular fashion to a role seemingly written for her in the slight but delectable revival of Once Upon a Mattress, in which Foster starred for a two-week Encores run before bringing it to Broadway. Originally a vehicle for Carol Burnett, the show hinges on Foster’s magnificent performance, which combines her unmatched vocal prowess, comic timing and physical aptitude.

For her one-night-only concert at Caramoor this summer, Foster was something else again. Resplendent in a green dress, Foster looked as cool as a cucumber on a hot and sticky July evening, even joking with her long-time musical director and pianist Michael Rafter that he was probably sorry to be wearing a suit and tie. (Rafter did look uncomfortably sweaty but accompanied Foster superbly throughout, as on the amusing references to the balmy weather in Christine Lavin’s hoot of a tune, “Air Conditioner.”)

Onstage, Foster is effortlessly charming and natural, a combination of her Georgia birthplace and Michigan upbringing. Opening with “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story, Foster leaned heavily on showtunes but sang a bountiful and entertaining mix of old and new, serious and funny, sentimental and witty: Willy Wonka’s “Pure Imagination” gave way to Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You” while Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” was followed by Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.”

Foster’s pristine soprano was on display in songs as diverse as Jason Robert Brown’s “Stars and the Moon,” John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” and “Goodnight My Someone” from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, which Foster memorably starred in on Broadway with Hugh Jackman in 2022. She closed with a lovely “Til There Was You,” her character Marion’s signature tune from the same show. 

But the best moments were the more intimate ones, especially the humorous but touching stories she told about her young daughter, Emily, for whom she sang “Raining Tacos,” or when she brought out a chair, sat down and crocheted—her favorite hobby, as chronicled in her entertaining memoir, Hooked—while singing. Whether in character or as herself, Sutton Foster remains one of our musical treasures.

Sandra Bernhard

In the “I Know I’m Getting Old Department,” it’s been exactly four decades since I first saw Sandra Bernhard, at the old Tralfamadore Café in Buffalo (now it’s Electric City). In the many times I’ve seen her since, whether off-Broadway, at Joe’s Pub or at City Winery, she still hilariously and savvily dissects our curdled celebrity culture. And her latest appearance, at the striking, mirrored Spiegeltent on the Bard College campus (the first of her two evenings there), showed that Bernhard has lost none of her ability to wrench singular insights out of our political and social-media climate.

Of course, with the fast-moving political events of the past few weeks, culminating in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz resuscitating the Democratic ticket in the upcoming election, Bernhard was in her element. Right after her opening song—“Ride Like the Wind,” by Christopher Cross, which she made her own and showed off impressive vocal chops—Bernhard wasted no time ecstatically conveying how she felt about the new dream team. In fact, she got so carried away with her joy over the ascension of Harris that she spoke for nearly half an hour before launching into her next song, an affecting version of “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Lisa Marie Presley.

Although hilarious, Bernhard’s commentary isn’t standup in the traditional sense—her “jokes” are instead anecdotes that highlight the absurdities in our daily lives, permeated by telling details that mark her singular storytelling genius. A recent trip to the Hamptons to visit friends, for example, provided grist for Bernhard, who described the ride out east on the Jitney bus and the return journey on the Long Island Rail Road, which entailed a change of train and a sympathetic conductor who didn't believe that she was old enough to buy a senior ticket. 

Her 90 minutes onstage toggles between perfectly pitched stories and songs as disparate as Rod Stewart’s “Reason to Believe,” Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and, in a terrific tribute to Tina Turner, the Beatles’ “Help!” done in Tina’s inimitable style. Backing was her tight three-piece band—drummer Andy Martinek, guitarist Oscar Batista and pianist Mitch Kaplan, Bernhard’s longtime music director whom she jokingly introduced as playing with her since 1885.

After closing the main set with a hard-hitting take on the late-'80s Lita Ford anthem, “Kiss Me Deadly,” Bernhard returned for a couple of encores: her ubiquitous but soulful version of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” and a poignant tune by the British boy band East 17, “Stay Another Day.” It was another satisfying trip to Sandyland.

2022 Summer Festivals—Bard Summerscape and Tanglewood

Bard Summerscape

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Through August 14, 2022

Fishercenter.bard.edu

Tanglewood

Lenox, Mass.

Through September 4, 2022

tanglewood.org

Richard Strauss' opera The Silent Woman at Bard Summerscape
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

More than two years into the pandemic, summer music festivals are getting back to normal. There were still masks being worn in the Sosnoff Theater at Bard College, whose annual Bard Summerscape returned to its lovely campus two-plus hours north of New York City, for a Richard Strauss operatic rarity, Der schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), but at Tanglewood, on the equally bucolic campus in the Berkshires, masks were optional for concerts at the outdoor Koussevitzky Music Shed and the indoor Seiji Ozawa Hall.

The Silent Woman contains some of Strauss’ most luscious and elegant music at the service of a knockabout comedy that may have seemed beneath the composer of such opera masterworks as Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Capriccio. The libretto, by the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and based on, of all things a play by the Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson, concerns Sir Morosus, a rich and retired admiral who cannot abide noise of any kind. 

Enter his beloved nephew, Henry, who has, to the morose Morosus’ consternation, joined a opera troupe and even married one of the performers, Aminta. Morosus disinherits his nephew in a fit of pique. Morosus’ barber and Henry then concoct a ruse that a disguised, “quiet” Aminta will become the old man’s wife—only to then noisily force a divorce, which will presumably reinstate Henry’s inheritance. The rest of the opera concerns the rough-and-tumble comedy of Aminta, Henry, the Barber and the troupe making life a living hell for Morosus.

German director Christian Räth’s decision to stage The Silent Woman as an opera-within-an-opera isn’t very original, but it’s effective in this context: even if it’s far too long (over four hours) for the amusing if slight material, this elaborate in-joke celebrating performers leans on Mattie Ullrich’s garishly funny costumes, Räth’s own cleverly tongue-in-cheek sets and Rick Fisher’s seductive lighting.

The singers are up to the task of Strauss’ luminous but demanding vocal writing. Harold Wilson (Morosus), Edward Nelson (Barber) and David Portillo (Henry) sound terrific in the main male roles, but the true focus is on Jana McIntyre, who plays the spirited Aminta with a lightness and buoyant vocalism that marks her as a fantastic interpreter of Strauss heroines. Leon Botstein capably leads the American Symphony Orchestra—and James Bagwell does the honors for the Bard Festival Chorale—in yet another of Botstein’s necessary operatic excavations.

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At Tanglewood, two concerts in one day (July 31) brought a surfeit of great sounds. First, for the afternoon concert in the shed, the Boston Symphony Orchestra was led by its music director, Andris Nelsons, in wonderfully precise readings of two works by women: first, the world premiere of Elizabeth Ogonek’s vigorous and humorous orchestral workout, Starling Variations; and 19th century French composer Louise Ferrenc’s derivative but propulsive Symphony No. 3. Then, after intermission, we got to witness a master at work: English pianist Paul Lewis, finishing his traversal of all five Beethoven piano concertos in a single weekend with the monumental fifth concerto, the “Emperor.” Lewis was scintillating but in masterly control throughout, and even the most jaded audience member responded enthusiastically to this superlative performance.

That evening, it was the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra’s turn in the intimate Ozawa Hall. This ensemble, put together every summer with students chosen from all across the country and around the world, spends eight weeks rehearsing and playing together, and this concert of lesser-known 20th-century pieces made from an illuminating and impressive night of music.

The conductors comprised two Tanglewood student fellows and two established veterans. The fellows were Nicolo Foron from Italy, who led the opener, Debussy’s Printemps, and Rita Castro Blanco from Portugal, who was on the podium for Lumina by Olly Wilson. Both had fine command of the orchestra in difficult but accessible works. In between, Ades led the ensemble in a finely articulated reading of Agon, one of Stravinsky’s 12-tone works. The evening ended with a rousing version of Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, led by JoAnn Falletta, the longtime music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, making her belated Tanglewood debut at this concert and making sure with this bracing performance that she will be welcomed back.

Bard Summerscape 2021: Chausson Opera, Boulanger Concert

Bard Music Festival/Summerscape 2021

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

July 8-August 15, 2021

fishercenter.bard.edu

DVD: Women Composers (Film Movement)

After its COVID cancellation last summer, Bard College’s annual Summerscape returned to the bucolic campus two-plus hours north of New York City for live performances, both indoors and outside, in front of real audiences—along with the livestreaming that all of us have gotten used to over the past 18 months.

French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger—an important teacher to countless prominent European and American composers—was the centerpiece of this year’s Bard Music Festival, after having been the one to be feted last summer. Although “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” included a few pieces by Nadia, it was mainly filled by dozens of works by composers in her orbit for decades, including her talented sister, Lili Boulanger, an accomplished composer in her own right who died at age 25 in 1918. (Nadia died at age 92 in 1979.)

Ernest Chausson's opera King Arthur (photo: Maria Baranova)

Summerscape’s centerpiece was King Arthur, a grand lyric opera by Frenchman Ernest Chausson, another tragic case of a composer dying young (he was 44 when he crashed his bike into a brick wall in 1899). Since I was unable to attend live performances of the opera, I did the next best thing, which was watch the livestream—professionally shot, edited and subtitled for maximum viewer enjoyment—at home.

Chausson’s gorgeous opera unashamedly bows to the temple of Wagner—in sound and story there are hints of Tristan and Parsifal, for starters—but its decidedly French delicacy tempers the weightiness of subject and music. Louisa Proske’s illuminating production was realistic and mystical by turns, the leads—Norman Garrett (Arthur), Sasha Cooke (Genièvre), Matthew White (Lancelot) and Troy Cook (Merlin)—were in magnificent voice, and Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra and the Bard Festival Chorale (director, James Bagwell) in a transcendent musical performance, highlighted by the opera’s magisterial finale.

Nadia Boulanger

I attended one of the Bard Music Festival concerts. As usual, it was a superbly curated program, nearly three hours long—almost too much despite the rich music and performances we heard. Titled Remembering Ethyl Smyth and Boulanger’s Circle at Home and Abroad, it was just that—beginning with a concert version of Smyth’s delightful one-act opera Fête galante, followed by a 90-minute second half. (In fact, the evening could have been shorn of the Smyth opera and still would have been musically fulfilling.)

First there was a lovely reading of Lili Boulanger’s elegant Theme and Variations, newly arranged for orchestra by Richard Wilson. Then came a propulsive performance of Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 4 and a scintillating solo turn by Luosha Fang in underrated Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicż’ Violin Concerto No. 5. Finally, Aaron Copland’s patriotic Lincoln Portrait provided a rousing finale, with Patrick Gaspard intoning the 16th president’s immortal words and sending everyone home sated.

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Lili Boulanger—along with Fanny Mendlessohn-Hensel and the previously unknown to me Mel Bonis—is profiled in Women Composers (Film Movement DVD), an informative if too short documentary by pianist Kyra Steckeweh and Tim van Beveren. Steckeweh started researching female composers when she was looking for new and different repertoire to perform in a classical world dominated by dead European males. The film briefly examines these women’s personal and musical histories, which provides opportunities for Steckeweh to perform their works without stigmatizing them. Bonus features on the DVD are a Q&A with the directors and a performance of Bonis’ piano work “Ophelie” by Steckeweh.

Summer Music Roundup—From the Hudson Valley to London, England

Bard Summerscape/Bard Music Festival
Performances June 29-August 18, 2019
fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape

Laura Benanti at Caramoor
July 6, 2019
caramoor.org

Lunchtime Concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields
June 4, 2019
stmartin-in-the-fields.org 

Violinist Daniel Pioro at Wigmore Hall
June 2, 2019
wigmore-hall.org.uk

Composer Erich Korngold

Now that fall is here, let’s backtrack to a summer of performances on both sides of the Atlantic. First, Bard Summerscape, Bard College’s annual summer arts festival on the bucolic shores of the Hudson River, two hours north of Manhattan, and the accompanying Bard Music Festival looked at Korngold and His World: the great Viennese composer Erich Korngold was best known for his fantastic film scores when he went to Hollywood during the golden era of the 1930s but, as artistic director Leon Botsein showed in his usual impeccable and provocative programming, Korngold and his music were so much more.

I caught two Korngold programs at Bard: a concert anchored by his orchestral music and a fully-staged production of his opera Das Wunder der Heliane, both conducted by Botstein and both equally accomplished and mesmerizing musically, if—in the opera’s case—less so dramatically. The orchestral concert, titled The Orchestral Imagination, was highlighted by Korngold’s dazzling piano concerto for the left hand, played with aplomb by stellar soloist Orion Weiss, even at times he and Botstein didn’t seem to be on the same musical page.

Also on the program were works by other underrated Viennese composers Franz Schreker (his Vom ewigen Leben comprises lovely settings of two Walt Whitman poems) and Alexander Zemlinsky, whose Lyric Symphony is a large-scale wonder. Botstein, despite bumpy patches, led the American Symphony Orchestra in a vivid reading of Zemlinsky’s masterpiece, with stellar vocal contributions by soprano Erica Petrocelli and baritone Michael J. Hawk. The same goes for the orchestra’s playing during Korngold’s Heliane, an opera filled with beautiful, memorable melodies but whose libretto—takes convolutedness to another level.

Korngold's opera Das Wunder der Heliane at Bard Summerscape (photo: Stephanie Berger)

If director Christian Räth’s visuals are too extreme—but which still let Thomas C. Hase’s magisterial lighting come to the fore—the orchestra, chorus and the leads, particularly Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte’s virtuoso Heliane, give the audience a chance to concentrate on Korngold’s music, among his very best.

Closer to Manhattan, the summer festival at Caramoor (in Katonah) comprises orchestral and chamber concerts, jazz performances and sundry other events, including the appearance of Broadway diva Laura Benanti—one of the Great White Way’s brightest lights—and her fabulous new show, Tales from the Soprano Isle.

Soprano Laura Benanti (photo: Jenny Anderson)

In addition to singing both Broadway standards and contemporary tunes, along with a marvelously delivered mini-suite of classics from My Fair Lady, in which she recently starred on Broadway, with her silvery, shimmery soprano, Benanti tells stories about her career and her life which now features her toddler daughter) with her singularly hilarious and pointed sarcasm. Accompanied by pianist Todd Almond, Benanti proves herself (once again) as a multi-threat hyphenate: singer-actor-comedian-storyteller extraordinaire.

The summer music season began early in June on a trip to London, which included terrific concerts at Wigmore Hall and the Church at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The latter hosted the formidable Kennedy Ensemble played Mendlessohn’s Octet in a fiery (and free!) performance that caught the playfulness and seriousness of purpose the 16-year-old composer corralled for one of his greatest works.

Violinist Daniel Pioro (photo: Hugh Carswell)

The storied and acoustically perfect Wigmore Hall was the setting for a superbly programmed recital by violinist Daniel Pioro. Opening with an exquisite version of Biber’s singular G Minor Passacaglia, Pioro was joined by pianist Roderick Chadwick for an arresting rendition of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10 and then, finally and most thrillingly, was a breathtaking arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ yearning The Lark Ascending for violin, piano, cello and viola by cellist Clare O’Connell (who joined the men and violist Charlotte Bonneton for the performance). Pioro’s passionate playing of Vaughan Williams' lovely violin line allowed us to hear this familiar but gorgeous piece anew.

2015 Summer Festivals—Shaw Festival, Caramoor, Bard Summerscape

Shaw Festival
Performances through November 1, 2015
Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
shawfest.com

Caramoor Summer Music Festival
Performances through August 2, 2015
Katonah, NY
caramoor.org

Bard Summerscape
Performances through August 16, 2015
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
fishercenter.bard.edu

Canada's Shaw Festival continues to be the premier summer theater destination, not only for its lovely lakeside location (whose cool breezes and usually moderate temperatures are the opposite of New York's sultry weather) but for its mostly superior productions of plays by Shaw and his contemporaries and—straying from the festival's original mandate—classic musicals and new plays by writers influenced by Bernard Shaw. 

Julie Martell (center) in Sweet Charity (photo: Emily Cooper)

This summer's musical, Sweet Charity, has two long shadows: it's based on Federico Fellini's classic 1956 film, The Nights of Cabiria, starring his beloved wife Giulietta Masina; and the original Broadway production, by Bob Fosse, starred his beloved wife Gwen Verdon. So that's four legends of film and theater towering over any production of this musical, which has a beguilingly tuneful score by Cy Coleman and an amusingly sassy book by Neil Simon.

Happily, multifaceted singer-dancer-actress Julie Martell brings her own mix of lovable naivete and hard-as-nails New York toughness to the lead role of Charity, and a large and merry cast surrounds her. Ken MacDonald's nicely evocative '60s New York sets, Cameron Davis's astute projections, Bonnie Beecher's lively lighting and Charlotte Dean's dead-on costumes complement the boisterous choreography of Parker Esse and solid direction by Morris Panych, which combine to make this Charity sweet indeed.

Harveen Sandhu (center) and Patrick McManus (right) in Pygmalion (photo: Emily Cooper)

The same cannot be said for a new production of Pygmalion, one of Bernard Shaw's supreme masterpieces that's best known as the basis of the beloved musical My Fair Lady. Shaw's biting satire of class warfare has been pointlessly updated to the present day by director Peter Hinton (who did similar damage to Oscar Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan a couple of summers back), in the hopes that everyone "gets" that Shaw's 100-year-old play is still relevant today.

Well, of course it is, and we don't need Hinton's sledgehammer introductions of pontificating TV talking heads and other video footage, an extraneous fashion show—yes, you read that right— and lousy contemporary songs to alert us to that fact. (When Vaughan Williams' elegaic Tallis Fantasia is heard during a scene, the effect in this confused context is of sheer irrationality.) 

And, contrary to his published director's note, Hinton has "modernized" more than just dialogue about financial matters in order to push stodgy old Shaw into the 21st century. Whereas in the original, Eliza Doolittle famously used the expletive "bloody" to shock Shaw's upper-crust phonies, now she uses a more infamous F-word. It's good for an easy laugh—and feigned shock from an audience desensitized to hearing it by now—but little more. 

In such a farrago, the actors don't stand a chance: even experienced Shaw Fest vets like Patrick McManus and Mary Haney as Henry Higgins and his mother are defeated by their director; poor McManus even has to fight off a collapsing chair in a painfully unfunny bit of slapstick. For her part, Harveen Sandhu is everything you would want in an Eliza: maybe she'll get to play her again in a more felicitous production of Pygmalion.  

Dialogues des Carmélites: Jennifer Cheek, conductor Will Crutchfield, Alisa Jordheim (photo: Gabe Palacio)

From Canada to two musical oases north of the city, each staging opera this summer. Caramoor, an estate in Katonah, 45 minutes north of Manhattan, hosts a music festival each summer that includes classical, jazz and folk, along with two operas in the "Bel Canto at Caramoor" series. However, this summer—in addition to Donzietti's bel canto La Favorite—a mid-20th century masterpiece was performed: Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites.

It was a wise choice for the outdoor Venetian Theater: Poulenc's extraordinarily moving drama about a group of martyred nuns during the French Revolution was given a forceful reading by conductor Will Crutchfield and his skilled orchestral forces, choir and singers, led by the formidable Jennifer Cheek's young nun Blanche and Alisa Jordheim's breakout performance as the novice nun Constance.

Directed adroitly if minimally on the cramped stage by Victoria Crutchfield (the conductor's talented daughter), this Carmelites was involving musical drama of the highest order.

A scene from The Wreckers (photo: Cory Weaver)

Would that I could say the same about Ethel Smyth's middling The Wreckers, this summer's operatic offering at the annual must-attend Bard Summerscape, on Bard College's campus two hours north of New York. Smyth was a contemporary of Mexican composer Carlos Chavez, the subject of this summer's Bard Music Festival, which is why her 1908 opera—never before staged in America—was chosen, but a sketchy libretto and long, arid stretches of uninspired music drag it down.

Smyth's melodies are remindful of Wagner, Strauss and particularly Bizet and Carmen, but without reaching the emotional or dramatic heights of those masters. And director Thaddeus Strassberger forced the poor performers to navigate what looked like a precarious setup of crates that could at any moment send them tumbling into the orchestra pit. As it is, only soprano Sky Ingram made any vocal or dramatic impression in a cast that might have been more capable in more sympathetic circumstances. 

Leon Botstein ably conducted the American Symphony Orchestra, but the end result was indifference toward an operatic oddity with little to recommend it. Perhaps Chavez's only opera, The Visitors, should have been staged instead.