Small opera group offers engaging 'Ariadne' (AP)

By MIKE SILVERMAN, For The Associated Press Mike Silverman, For The Associated Press – Sun Aug 14, 2:31 pm ET

NEW YORK – The downsizing of the city's No. 2 opera company is shining a brighter light on the many smaller troupes that have taken fragile root in New York City's cultural soil.

One such group, the Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, is presenting a brief summer season, consisting of Richard Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos" and Mozart's "The Magic Flute." The "Ariadne," especially, is an impressive display of what can be accomplished on a tiny budget.

For decades, the New York City Opera provided a place for up-and-coming singers who sometimes went on to major careers, often at the Metropolitan Opera. But financial problems have driven the NYCO from its Lincoln Center home, and its future is uncertain.

Meanwhile, scrappy companies like Dell'Arte, which was founded in 2000, offer a valuable opportunity for young performers, many of them just out of school. They don't get paid for their work, but they do get a chance to learn new roles, receive intensive coaching — and, best of all, perform in front of a live audience.

On Friday night, a talented cast working on a nearly bare stage in a rented space in the East Village made "Ariadne" come to life more buoyantly than it sometimes does in major houses with lavish sets.

The first half of the performance, the opera's prologue, was especially engaging. Director Benjamin Spierman created sharp interactions among the characters as they made backstage preparations for an entertainment at the estate of the richest man in Vienna. If the evening's second half was less enthralling, that's partly the fault of Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, for stretching out some of the material to the point of tedium.

Almost everyone showed vocal promise. As the Composer, mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel sang with fire and allure; soprano Mary Ann Stewart displayed a big, rich voice as Ariadne, and coloratura Jennifer Moore handled Zerbinetta's vocal acrobatics with aplomb — though her simpering portrayal was ill-advised. As Bacchus, tenor Shawn Thuris managed some heroic high notes with only occasional signs of strain.

It helped that Strauss wrote "Ariadne" for a reduced orchestra, allowing the 11 musicians assembled under conductor Christopher Fecteau's baton to provide a reasonable facsimile of the score.

That wasn't quite the case Thursday, when a different ensemble led by Samuel McCoy sounded underpowered in a transcription of Mozart's opera. And despite a program note promising an interpretation that emphasized the work's Masonic symbolism, director Susan Gonzalez offered little more than characters shuttling on and off stage.

Best among the "Flute" singers was soprano Sable Rivera, who brought a pleasant light lyric sound and an infectious charm to the small role of Papagena.

Both operas will play again next weekend with almost entirely different casts. For the audience, it's a chance to support aspiring singers just launching their careers — and maybe to hear some who will go on to make names for themselves.

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Nelson Mandela opera comes to Johannesburg (AP)

JOHANNESBURG – The refined strains of Western opera and traditional Xhosa song and a sexy dose of jazz drive a new opera that opens Saturday in Johannesburg about South Africa's former president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.

Writer and director Michael Williams said in an interview before a dress rehearsal on Friday that the range of musical styles reflects South Africa's mix of cultures.

The sweeping production shows Mandela cheating on his wife, making political missteps and struggling with the burden of holding others' lives in his hands.

Aubrey Lodewyk, who plays an aging Mandela in the opera, says ordinary people can draw an important lesson from Mandela's life.

Lodewyk says: Mandela "was a human being, he had his faults. But yet he came out as great a man as he is."

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Obscure Strauss opera sparkles at Bard (AP)

By MIKE SILVERMAN, For The Associated Press Mike Silverman, For The Associated Press – 1 hr 40 mins ago

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – Written during World War II when the composer was in his 70s and never performed in his lifetime, Richard Strauss's "Die Liebe der Danae" was long dismissed as a lame effort by an aging genius whose inspiration was running dry.

But the composer's next-to-last opera has also had its champions, none more fervent than Leon Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. Botstein, who is also president of Bard College, had already recorded the work, and on Friday night he brought it to Bard's SummerScape arts festival for what he calls its "first fully-staged New York production."

It turns out the champions were right. The performance made a persuasive case for the opera (whose title translates as "The Love of Danae") as a piece well worth staging, if not quite an unjustly neglected masterpiece.

From its agitated opening chords to its elegiac conclusion, the score contains long passages of gorgeous music — along with a fair share of tedious "note-spinning." And the whimsical mythological plot has some surprisingly effective dramatic moments, made all the more pointed in the wittily updated production by architect Rafael Vinoly and Mimi Lien.

Strauss and his librettist, Joseph Gregor, amalgamated two different myths into one: the story of King Midas, who turns everything he touches to gold, and the legend of Danae, who is impregnated by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold.

In the opera, Danae is the daughter of bankrupt King Pollux, whose only hope for financial salvation is to marry her off to Midas. But this Midas is really just a camel-driver who has been deputized by Jupiter to woo Danae on his behalf. When Midas and Danae fall in love, Jupiter is furious and condemns them to a life of poverty. Eventually, the god learns to accept that for all his power, he can never experience love as mortals do.

It's not such a stretch to see how themes like the pursuit of wealth at all costs versus the triumph of true love in humble surroundings resonate in 21st-century society.

In the Bard production, smoothly directed by Kevin Newbury, Pollux is a corporate mogul who tries to hide under his boardroom table from his creditors. Jupiter's ship arrives in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty faintly discernible in the background. Danae's picture is plastered on billboards advertising a brand of perfume called AU (the chemical symbol for gold). And she and Midas end up not in a hut in the Syrian desert but living in their car in the American West.

Botstein assembled a talented cast of singers who did valiant battle with Strauss' treacherous vocal writing. Meagan Miller, a soprano with a bright sound and impressive power, was Danae. She was able to scale the highest reaches of the role (including a final C-sharp), though sometimes her tone took on a hard, metallic sound. When not pushing for volume, she floated lovely soft high notes, even if once or twice she had trouble sustaining them.

As Midas, tenor Roger Honeywell sang his high-flying phrases ardently, though he seemed to be pressing his modest voice to its limits.

Baritone Carsten Wittmoser's voice isn't really big enough for the stentorian demands Strauss places on Jupiter, but to his credit he never let his tone turn coarse.

As King Pollux, tenor Dennis Petersen hurled out fierce high notes with flair. His four daughters-in-law, all former conquests of Jupiter, have large roles in this opera, and their voices blended nicely even as their antics became wearisome (Strauss' fault, not theirs). They were sopranos Aurora Sein Perry as Semele and Camille Zamora as Europa, and mezzo-sopranos Jamie Van Eyck as Alcmene and Rebecca Ringle as Leda.

The role of Xanthe, Danae's attendant, was sung with sparkle by soprano Sarah Jane McMahon. Her voice blended together bewitchingly with Miller's in their Act 1 duet, which echoes the great duet for sopranos in the composer's much-earlier "Arabella."

The orchestra played the difficult score extremely well under Botstein's persuasive baton.

As is often the case, Strauss saved the best for last. The final 30 minutes, starting with a brooding orchestral interlude and leading into a scene for Danae and Jupiter, show the composer at his most inspired. As the defeated god retreats to Mount Olympus, Danae comforts him with the gift of a golden comb from her hair — the last remnant of the riches she no longer wants. It's an image that resonates all the more for imagining Jupiter as a kind of stand-in for the composer himself.

There are four more performances through Aug. 7.

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Black teen's unusual talent: Singing Chinese opera (AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. – Tyler Thompson is an unlikely star in the world of Chinese opera.

The black teenager from Oakland has captivated audiences in the U.S. and China with his ability to sing pitch-perfect Mandarin and perform the ancient Chinese art form.

"As soon as he opens his mouth and sings in Chinese, the Chinese are very surprised and then feel very proud of him," said his music teacher Sherlyn Chew. "When he puts on the costume, and all the acting, you can see that he's pretty good."

Tyler, 15, is a standout student in Chew's Oakland-based Purple Silk Music Education program, which teaches children and youth — mostly from low-income immigrant families — how to sing and play traditional Chinese music. The program's Great Wall Youth Orchestra & Chorus has performed around the country.

Tyler has learned to sing several well-known pieces of Chinese opera, a centuries-old form of musical theater known for its elaborate costumes, clanging gongs and cymbals, wide-ranging vocals and highly stylized movements.

At the World Children's Festival in Washington in June, Tyler, dressed in a black robe emblazoned with golden dragons, got a standing ovation when he performed as Justice Bao, a famous Song Dynasty judge who fought government corruption, from the Chinese classic "Bao Qing Tian."

"The music is very beautiful, and it's very passionate. You can hear it when it's being played," said Tyler, a theater student at the Oakland School for the Arts. "It's made me want to know more about the world outside of America or California or Oakland."

David Lei, chairman of the Chinese Performing Arts Foundation in San Francisco, has seen Tyler perform several times and arranged to have him sing at the opening of a Chinese opera exhibit several years ago.

"It's very authentic because he hits the tones just right, so you understand everything," Lei said. "People just don't expect an Afro-American kid to be doing it. It's the initial shock. There's a sense of novelty."

Tyler, who comes from a music-loving family, began learning how to sing in Chinese a decade ago when he was a kindergartner in Chew's music class at Oakland's Lincoln Elementary School, where about 90 percent of students are Asian.

Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

"I really took a liking to him and thought he had quite a large range," said Chew, who started the music program at Oakland's Laney College in 1995. "He hears pitch very well, and his pronunciation of Chinese characters is very accurate."

Tyler's mother, Vanessa Ladson, said her son's education at a predominantly Asian elementary school and participation in the Chinese music program have made him more open-minded.

"He's grown a lot," she said. "He's learning a different culture, and the Asian children are learning his culture, so it's a plus-plus for everybody."

Tyler said friends and classmates sometimes poke fun at him, wondering where a black kid from Oakland learned how to sing Chinese opera.

"Sometimes they don't understand it," Tyler said. "It's just joking about the fact that as dark as I am, I'm singing Chinese. What's up with that? If I go to China, I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb. It's just those types of jokes. All in good fun."

Since his first solo at age 6, Tyler has performed at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall and Herbst Theater, on television shows such as "Good Morning America" and at the U.S. State Department, where he sang for then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi.

Tyler became a sensation in China several years ago after Chinese Central Television broadcast his performance at a Lunar New Year show in San Jose.

Tyler, who has learned to speak some basic Chinese, was scheduled to make his debut performance in China in July, but he and his mother ran into trouble getting visas in time, Chew said.

In recent years, Tyler has begun studying theater and acting more seriously, but he plans to keep performing traditional Chinese music, which has opened up a world of opportunities to him.

"I've been sticking to this to see where else it will take me," he said.

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