[LJ2ME] SLO Motion
I was supposed to review this for Life! but Tou Liang will be doing it instead. Look out for his review on Monday. I guess it all turned out for the best. I'm not sure how I could have done it with a clear conscience without offending many if not most. And I would have been restricted by the word limit.
The SLO's An Evening of Romantic and Tragic Love was promising with choice highlights and scenes from opera, all of which if, when, sang well, would provide unforgettable memories. This was however not to be. It was an evening more tragic than romantic, if one referenced the singing. Love hurts indeed. And boy, was it excruciating to watch and listen. Ouch!
Mezzo soprano Anna Koor opened with a lackluster Che faro senza Euridice where her voice was neither the heroic tenor the character is or the resonant alto usually fielded. She lacked the sugar-coated menace and arsenic-laced malice as Amneris when baiting Radames and Aida and her mewing next to Ee Ping's strident exhortations seemed to temper the princess-slave dynamics. She capped her Dalila with a soaring climax but was otherwise breathy and punctured in her projection. As Carmen, she fared slightly better with the can't-miss-it music, but more enjoyment was derived from the outlandish acting. And what was with her diction or lack thereof?
The best thing to come out of the evening was baritone, Zhang Feng, whose write-up mentioned his bel canto schooling. True enough, his was the one voice from this evening's quartet which I could picture on the world stage. Despite not carrying well because of its timbre, it resonated within the house and inside me. Stylish and restrained, he never resorted to cheap theatrical tricks to milk the applause. Unlike a certain someone in the form of tenor, Simon Kyung Lee, who was of the "uncle" mould, to quote ryanfoster, and excelled in the can belto school where his baleful remonstrations were meant to convey passion, rage, indifference and all the other 5,862 nuances of expression in between.
Ee Ping, the star of the evening (because she changed gowns and Anna didn't), was OK, her Mimi and Micaela sincere and sweet and her Stridono lassu was easy, breezy, beautiful and topped with a cherry at the end. Let's just say we're glad it's soomeone else for a change as opposed to the other soprano who shall not be named. The four came together to close the evening with the Rigoletto quartet where one cannot help but be distracted by the bosom of Isola Jones one had mentally pictured on Anna's chest.
I wouldn't have minded it one bit if the programme was tweaked just slightly by, say, removing all the singers and just having accompanist Lim Yan play an opera-themed piano recital. Like a trusty repetiteur, he capably condensed the orchestra into his keyboard and if one closed one's eyes and concentrated hard enough, one could almost hear the shimmering string tremolos in Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix and the lilting harp arpeggios in Au fond du temple saint.
What compromised this concert was the lack of the visual spectacle of lavish sets and elaborate costumes in a stage production or the aural impact of a concert with full orchestral backing, either to supplement or to detract from the aural presentation.
You could gauge the performance from the reception at the end where the grand total of, let me count them, wait for it, ONE man gave a standing ovation while the rest politely applauded but the true connoisseurs were already hot-footing it out the door. Alas, an encore had been planned and was to be given. I'd have revised my opinion more favorably if they had done E nel tuo from Così but they had to trot out the bastardised Brindisi with photocopied scores in hand, where attempts to engage the audience failed spectacularly.
The marketing materials must have prophecised the outcome, for the wilting rose and thorns intact hinted at the ugly and painful episode which we had just witnessed. And what was that nonsense in the programme with "Rigoletto and his sister, Madalena"? And please excise the voice-over commentary. It's not a live Met broadcast. Far from it.
You know the true mark of a good writer? You can create something out of nothing. *snort* That's what I'm expecting on Monday. *snigger* You know what you've just read definitely would not make the cut. *screech*
The SLO's An Evening of Romantic and Tragic Love was promising with choice highlights and scenes from opera, all of which if, when, sang well, would provide unforgettable memories. This was however not to be. It was an evening more tragic than romantic, if one referenced the singing. Love hurts indeed. And boy, was it excruciating to watch and listen. Ouch!
Mezzo soprano Anna Koor opened with a lackluster Che faro senza Euridice where her voice was neither the heroic tenor the character is or the resonant alto usually fielded. She lacked the sugar-coated menace and arsenic-laced malice as Amneris when baiting Radames and Aida and her mewing next to Ee Ping's strident exhortations seemed to temper the princess-slave dynamics. She capped her Dalila with a soaring climax but was otherwise breathy and punctured in her projection. As Carmen, she fared slightly better with the can't-miss-it music, but more enjoyment was derived from the outlandish acting. And what was with her diction or lack thereof?
The best thing to come out of the evening was baritone, Zhang Feng, whose write-up mentioned his bel canto schooling. True enough, his was the one voice from this evening's quartet which I could picture on the world stage. Despite not carrying well because of its timbre, it resonated within the house and inside me. Stylish and restrained, he never resorted to cheap theatrical tricks to milk the applause. Unlike a certain someone in the form of tenor, Simon Kyung Lee, who was of the "uncle" mould, to quote ryanfoster, and excelled in the can belto school where his baleful remonstrations were meant to convey passion, rage, indifference and all the other 5,862 nuances of expression in between.
Ee Ping, the star of the evening (because she changed gowns and Anna didn't), was OK, her Mimi and Micaela sincere and sweet and her Stridono lassu was easy, breezy, beautiful and topped with a cherry at the end. Let's just say we're glad it's soomeone else for a change as opposed to the other soprano who shall not be named. The four came together to close the evening with the Rigoletto quartet where one cannot help but be distracted by the bosom of Isola Jones one had mentally pictured on Anna's chest.
I wouldn't have minded it one bit if the programme was tweaked just slightly by, say, removing all the singers and just having accompanist Lim Yan play an opera-themed piano recital. Like a trusty repetiteur, he capably condensed the orchestra into his keyboard and if one closed one's eyes and concentrated hard enough, one could almost hear the shimmering string tremolos in Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix and the lilting harp arpeggios in Au fond du temple saint.
What compromised this concert was the lack of the visual spectacle of lavish sets and elaborate costumes in a stage production or the aural impact of a concert with full orchestral backing, either to supplement or to detract from the aural presentation.
You could gauge the performance from the reception at the end where the grand total of, let me count them, wait for it, ONE man gave a standing ovation while the rest politely applauded but the true connoisseurs were already hot-footing it out the door. Alas, an encore had been planned and was to be given. I'd have revised my opinion more favorably if they had done E nel tuo from Così but they had to trot out the bastardised Brindisi with photocopied scores in hand, where attempts to engage the audience failed spectacularly.
The marketing materials must have prophecised the outcome, for the wilting rose and thorns intact hinted at the ugly and painful episode which we had just witnessed. And what was that nonsense in the programme with "Rigoletto and his sister, Madalena"? And please excise the voice-over commentary. It's not a live Met broadcast. Far from it.
You know the true mark of a good writer? You can create something out of nothing. *snort* That's what I'm expecting on Monday. *snigger* You know what you've just read definitely would not make the cut. *screech*