And then I woke up.

You know those bizarre dreams where things seem to make complete sense and yet somehow everything is very strange and disconnected?  Yes.  Well.  That is precisely how I felt when I saw this page of the New York Times. The Maestro's year is finished? And no more Ring Cycles or Parsifal or Flying Dutchman at the Lincoln Center?  Because he needs surgery on his elbow?  And why is this on the sports page??  I was on the point of pinching myself when sanity - or as close to it as I get - reasserted itself and I realised it was Billy Wagner (no relation) of whom they wrote and the 'Met' is actually the Mets.  Phew.  What a relief!  For while I have heard the composer of some of the canon's longest operas called many things I have never before seen him referred to as a "left-handed closer".

Last Thursday was the occasion of the La Traviata meet 'n greet.  It was a delightful occasion on which to renew aquaintance with old friends Richard Troxell and Richard Zeller and to meet new people including Clare Burovac the Portland Opera's new Director of Artistic Administration.  As usual there was very interesting chat about the production, the music, the composer and that sort of thing.  Richard Troxell spoke of how he considers Verdi to have written of the human condition in his operas in a way only one other composer has approached and that other composer is Mozart.  That's some club to belong to.  Richard made a compelling case.  Richard Zeller was most entertaining in telling of how he once came to share a dressing-room with a stripper (who hasn't?) and maestro Stephen Lord told of how the job of the conductor goes way beyond standing and waving at the orchestra and singers during the performance and how it is his job in rehearsal to see that, in essence, the production serves the music and the singers.  

Director Jennifer Nicholl answered an interesting question that I suspect many of you have asked yourselves: just what does the programme mean when it says the "Original Production" of this La Traviata is by James Robinson?  She explained how the sets and costumes being used by Portland Opera in their current production were designed and made for a production which was overseen and directed by the renowned director James Robinson.  She has worked with Robinson on a number of occasions in performances of this production and thus has a thorough knowledge and understanding of what Robinson wants the audience to see.  That does not mean that the singers will ape in detail what the singers did when directed  by Robinson but that she, Jennifer Nicholl, using the same sets and costumes that Robinson had at this disposal, will recreate in this production those things which James Robinson considered important to the essence of the work while adapting a good deal of the stage direction to the current singers.  It cannot be a case of one-size-fits-all; different singers look, act and move differently and their particular idiosyncrasies need to be accommodated within Robinson's overall vision.

I am hoping that over the course of the next few weeks I shall have an opportunity to sit down to chat  at greater length with a number of people responsible for this current production and then come to report to you in more detail what they have to say about this work and their time here in Portland.

I have always been a Woody Allen fan.  Bananas, Sleeper, Annie Hall through Manhattan and Mighty Aphrodite.  I've loved 'em all and  quote my favourite lines with or without any request to do so.  How can you not love a man who writes:

Earth hath nothing to show more fair

than a moose

in spats

singing

Embraceable You.

You may take issue with his later movies or indeed his domestic arrangements but it's hard not to accept that the man is something of a genius of the modern theater.  It is therefor with mounting curiosity and excitement that I have been waiting for his opera directorial debut - a production of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi which together with the other operas forming Il Trittico opened Los Angeles Opera's new season on Saturday night.  In what I suspect has been Allen's attempt to keep expectations low, in press interviews he has consistently pleaded both ignorance and incompetence in relation to opera but judging by this review the show's a  hit.  Anthony Tommasini seems to like what Allen did with his opportunity "marred only by a regrettable directorial liberty at the end" when Schicchi is murdered.  I guess Tommasini is also no big fan of Christopher Alden's 'deirectorial liberty' in the recent Portland Opera production of Wagner's Der Fliegender Holländer in which Senta did not, as is traditional, throw herself off a cliff to her death but was shot by her boyfriend.  Actually, I would be in Tommasisni's corner on that one.

The doyenne of all bloggers operatic, La Cieca, has an interesting poll this week concerning the up-coming season at the Met.  It would seem that La Sonnambula is the must-see event, narrowly edging out Massenet's Thais and beating Rigoletto by a thumping 43% - 3%.  I can only assume those who took part in the poll are passing up the Met production in order to see it here in Portland in May '09.

Have a wonderful week.  I shall be heading for southern Oregon again this weekend but hope to have my jottings ready for you before I go so that you can have your weekly dose of Operaman on Monday as usual.