Most DVD film commentaries are snoozefests, but on the original “Amadeus” commentary that was made for the laserdisc version in the mid-1990s, a fascinating and spirited argument takes place between “Amadeus” playwright Peter Shaffer and filmmaker Milos Forman, who directed the film version. Shaffer is thinking out loud that he never should have allowed Forman to talk him into having the lead character of the play, composer Antonio Salieri, tell his story to a priest rather than directly to the audience, as he does in the play. “No, no!” Forman scolds. “Peter, in the play, the people are THERE! This is a film, a projected shadow on a wall: when an actor on a stage looks into an audience’s eyes, it is engaged and drawn in. When an actor looks directly into a camera lens, the audience is reminded it is watching a film and loses its engagement and the whole thing comes crashing down as artificial.”

That difference is one reason that for all of the magnificence of the film, it is still far more engaging to have Salieri confide to you eye to eye rather than through a projected intermediary. As if to emphasize the point, director Gary Griffin has the two sides of the audience see the other side of the audience in a ceiling mirror as Robert Sella’s Salieri compellingly unspools his woeful (and yes, mostly fictional) yarn of jealousy and murder in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s brilliant new production. But the real surprise of this version is the character of Mozart himself, traditionally a cutout throwaway role that has often been the property of teen idols of yesteryear. Robbie Collier Sublett gives Mozart’s arrogance and vulgarity a credible context as well as shows us Mozart’s heart and soul in Act II. The contrast between a mediocre and great composer in every respect is drawn sharply and convincingly.

The one aspect that keeps this production from heading into the stratosphere is that with the exception of a single soprano who sings along with recordings karaoke-style, all of the music is canned. Finding a small, first-rate ensemble to play live Mozart in a city the size of Chicago would not be hard and would immensely enhance the proceedings. (Dennis Polkow)

At Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 East Grand (at Navy Pier), (312)595-5600, Through November 9, $54-$70.

Watching veteran bass Samuel Ramey perform the supporting role of Leporello, the servant to Don Giovanni—the title role that Ramey played countless times throughout his long career—it was hard not to be struck by the irony of a singer at the twilight of a career juxtaposed next to a young singer, Italian baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, who has been principally thus far associated with Leporello singing the Don next to yesteryear’s Don of Dons. But old habits apparently die hard, and as D’Arcangelo was singing away, the still far more charismatic Ramey could be seen actually mouthing the starring role along with him throughout the evening. Even more ironically, at one point the staging calls for Ramey to mouth for D’Arcangelo, when the plot calls for one to pose as the other. It was the highest drama to be experienced in an otherwise problematic production that was hopelessly confused and convoluted. Unlike the responsive ensemble of Chicago Symphony musicians assembled for “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” this alternate set of players of more high profile orchestral personnel never got the right feel for this music, performing in a consistently stodgy and heavy-handed manner, despite conductor James Conlon’s best attempts to keep things light and moving. Even worse, the recitatives are left to be played by a harpsichord far from the stage that had singers falling even further behind. Add to all this that the cast assembled to sing these iconic roles are by and large ill-equipped to sing Mozart and substitute heavy vibrato and a lack of precision for music that needs to be flexible and transparent, and the contrast couldn’t be more dramatic than the excellence being displayed during the “Abduction” performances that are running in repertory with this poorly done “Don” that unfortunately, descends into hell long before the Don himself gets there in the climax. (Dennis Polkow)

Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” plays through August 17 at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre, Lake-Cook at Green Bay Rds., Highland Park, (847)266-5100.

RECOMMENDED

For the first decades of its existence, Ravinia was the summer opera capital of the United States and concert opera was a significant element of the 22-year music directorship of James Levine, who was also music director of the Metropolitan Opera. That tradition stopped under Christoph Eschenbach but has continued on under James Conlon, who is also music director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Cincinnati May Festival, where this semi-staged version of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio” originated in 2006 conceived around Michael York narrating the spoken portions with a script by Marie Therese Squerciati that streamlines much of the action as well as wryly interpolates the proceedings for a modern audience with an Anglo sensibility that perfectly suits York’s narration. But make no mistake: it is the singing and the music that are the clear stars of this production, from Morris Robinson’s velvet-smooth deep bass and terrifying yet comical portrayal of the sadistic Osmin to Hanan Alattar’s stunning ease through the soprano stratosphere as Konstanze to James Conlon’s lively tempos and brilliant shaping of a chamber ensemble made up of non-vacationing Chicago Symphony members. What a rare treat it is to hear a Mozart opera in Ravinia’s Martin Theatre, with its 800-plus seats, close to the size of the theaters that Mozart had in mind when he wrote these works rather than the too large Harris Theater (Chicago Opera Theater) or the cavernous Civic Opera House (Lyric Opera) where nuance and subtlety are lost. The experience is nothing short of revelatory and long may this glorious tradition continue. But next time around, please, Ravinia, keep the standards consistent and hire a professional chorus, preferably members of the CSO’s own unparalleled ensemble rather than a volunteer chorus. For this work a chorus is only heard twice, but they are crucial and climactic moments that mar what precedes them, kind of like baking a cake from scratch and using canned frosting to top it off. (Dennis Polkow)

Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio” plays through August 16 at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre, Lake-Cook at Green Bay Rds., Highland Park, (847)266-5100.

RECOMMENDED

Chicago Opera Theater had its say, now James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony have their turn at the work that many consider the most perfect of all operas. Ildebrando D’Arcangelo stars as the Don and longtime Giovanni of yesteryear and Chicagoan Samuel Ramey sings the role of his servant Leporello in these semi-staged Martin Theatre performances. Ramey, the most recorded bass in history who was so loyal to Lyric Opera and such a mainstay there for so many years that he moved to Chicago (it helped that he married a member of the chorus), is no longer engaged by Lyric now that he’s at the twilight of his long and wonderful career, but unlike his close friend and tenor Jerry Hadley, who was so despondent about roles drying up that he committed suicide last year, Ramey has taken a far more optimistic attitude and could well end up stealing the show from the Don as several notable Leporellos have done over the years. The woman seduced by the Don but faithfully cataloged in song by Leporello include Ellie Dehn as Donna Anna, Soile Isokoski as Donna Elvira and Heidi Grant Murphy as Zerlina. (Dennis Polkow)

At Ravinia Festival’s Martin Theatre, Lake-Cook & Green Bay Rds., Highland Park, 847)266-5100, 7pm August 15, 2pm August 17. $10-$75.

The last time veteran actor Michael York was in Chicago, performing the role of King Arthur in “Camelot” on a national tour last year, he had hoped to not only see the city inside and out, but the rest of the country as well. “You have to read the fine print on these things,” York admits. “Coast to coast, eight shows a week and you travel on the rest days, so you’re always catching up with yourself. It’s quite demanding.”

Things will be more relaxed this time around as he narrates and performs the role of Pasha Salim in Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio” at the Ravinia Festival across two performances with a day off in between.

Lest anyone worry about York’s operatic prowess, the role of the Pasha is a speaking part, though pivotal in the opera. “This was actually the first opera I ever attended at 14 years old in Glyndebourne,” York recalls, “and I was totally enchanted. It marked me for life. It offers so much: spectacle, music, laughter, betrayal, sex. I’m an opera lover, and love working with music. It’s pure self-indulgence. As narrator, I join all of the great bits together and play the ruler in charge of the court where all of these Europeans are sequestered. The piece is more relevant than ever, given the whole Muslim context of the piece. Pasha Salim is a great example of the extraordinary magnanimity and clemency that we expect of all great statesmen.”

Compassion is also a major trait of King Arthur, but “the great thing about ‘Camelot’ is that Lancelot does all of the showing off and the role of Arthur fits within a small range and the songs fit comfortably within the register,” notes York, written as it was for Richard Burton, who starred with York in “The Taming of the Shrew,” York’s first film across a long cinematic career that began back in 1967.

Two years ago York played Salieri in a version of “Amadeus” directed by playwright Peter Shaffer himself at the Hollywood Bowl. “There is that great speech where Salieri thinks he’s heard the voice of God and the Grand Partita strikes up, and we had it strike up live, and it made the hairs of one’s neck stand up on end. Here, I get to stand there in the midst of those glorious ensemble pieces that close the acts, and it is glorious.”

Like Shakespeare, which York has done so often that he wrote a book about performing the Bard, York sees Mozart as having a mutual “hair-raising sensibility and compassion, which is why they’re both still done today. They would have really got on, don’t you think? Can you imagine the collaboration? That would have really been something.” (Dennis Polkow)

Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio” plays at Ravinia Festival’s Martin Theatre at 7pm August 14 and 2pm August 16, (847) 266-5100.

Being a huge admirer of the previous operas of John Adams, I had high expectations for “Doctor Atomic.” Adams seemed a Teflon composer and virtually any subject that he touched, no matter how diverse and controversial (the Cold War, 9/11, Middle East terrorism, the Nativity story, et al) he seemed to be able to write engaging music that complemented the drama in compelling terms. What went wrong with “Atomic,” which given the scope of the subject matter, might well have been expected to be Adams’ masterpiece? In a word, the libretto. I hadn’t given much thought to how crucial a component Adams’ longtime librettist and poet Alice Goodman had been to his previous successes, but given how huge of a void her absence creates in this work, it is now clear that it was a role as big a role as say, Lorenzo DaPonte with Mozart, or Hugo von Hofmannstahl with Richard Strauss. Read the rest of this entry »

Being a huge admirer of the previous operas of John Adams, I had high expectations for “Doctor Atomic.” Adams seemed a Teflon composer and virtually any subject that he touched, no matter how diverse and controversial (the Cold War, 9/11, Middle East terrorism, the Nativity story, et al) he seemed to be able to write engaging music that complemented the drama in compelling terms. What went wrong with “Atomic,” which given the scope of the subject matter, might well have been expected to be Adams’ masterpiece? In a word, the libretto. I hadn’t given much thought to how crucial a component Adams’ longtime librettist and poet Alice Goodman had been to his previous successes, but given how huge of a void her absence creates in this work, it is now clear that it was a role as big a role as say, Lorenzo DaPonte with Mozart, or Hugo von Hofmannstahl with Richard Strauss. Director Peter Sellars tried to step in and fill Goodman’s shoes when she pulled out, but his bizarre solution to a dramaturgical problem that Goodman apparently could not solve was to take literal transcripts of technical documents and assemble them into a hodgepodge of atomic academia that ends up offering little, if any, insight into the genesis of the nuclear era that couldn’t be found far more thoroughly in a book on the subject. The result is a choir standing on the edge of the stage having to sing such non-singable syllables as “icosahedron” and “dodecahedron.” Weighing in at more than three hours, the drama revolves around the question, “Will the bomb work?” It is amazing that we don’t care, not only because we already know the answer and the far more compelling drama that followed that first test, but also because we don’t get to really know any of the cardboard characters in the opera, particular the mysterious title character, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Imagine if Mario Puzo instead of writing a detailed fictional account of gangster life complete with character development and inside views decided to compile trial transcripts and police reports to write “The Godfather.” What little drama there is here, will the bomb, that is suspended mid-stage a la “Phantom of the Opera” chandelier (but never moving, nor exploding with the time-frame of the static “action”) work, is never resolved. If you didn’t know the story, you would never know. The fact that a handful of male dancers skip around here and there with truncated Jerome Robbins-like choreography suggesting that they are passing through on their way to audition for a high-school production of “West Side Story,” is never explained. Perhaps admirers of the work will insist that the work is ambiguous, like the atomic age itself, but uh, we kind of knew that much coming in. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, (312)332-2244. This production is now closed. 

RECOMMENDED

It took twenty-three years for it to be heard here, and the version that we are hearing has more than two dozen cuts to it, but at long last, Richard Strauss’ glorious and soaring epic “Die Frau ohne Schatten” has finally made its way back to Lyric Opera and features two of the reigning Strauss divas of our day, Deborah Voigt and Christine Brewer, filling every inch of the cavernous Civic Opera House with radiant sound. The work is the sixth and final collaboration between Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an elaborate fairy tale tone poem saluting and reflecting centuries of German art that had the misfortune to be conceived and written during World War I and which as a result still has yet to fully find the same international audience that their earlier collaborations have. Musically, it may well stand as their greatest achievement, however, and to those of us at home in the sound and symbol world of Wagner’s “Ring,” Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and the parabolic allusions of Goethe’s “Faust,” the work stands as the culmination of an epoch. Legendary German soprano Lotte Lehman, who sang the post-war premiere, made an infamous quip about the libretto being incomprehensible that is often repeated, but it is only the work’s unfamiliarity that make this problematic. Mastering the comings and goings of the three worlds of “Schatten” is less difficult than keeping track of a single “Ring” plot line and far more relevant to the contemporary human condition. At its heart, the work is a parallel domestic battle of the sexes that mirrors the hopes and fears of every couple concerning reproduction, the “schatten” or shadow of the title, as a “Frau” or married woman who will not (clearly distinguished from <I>can</I> not) bear children casts no shadow within her. But is that the only thing that makes us “human,” our ability to reproduce ourselves? What is the deeper meaning of life that makes the gift of life desirable and meaningful? These were very bizarre questions to be asking during or even in the wake of a world war, where death, not life, ruled the day. And in this day and age of automated and extended reproduction where fetuses can be virtually created and destroyed on demand—something unimaginable when this work was conceived—questions that resonate perhaps more deeply now than then. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Civic Opera House, Wacker Drive at Madison, (312)332-2244. This production is now closed. 

RECOMMENDED

Admittedly, the plot of “Cosi fan tutte” is the most absurd of the three Mozart/DaPonte collaborations. Unlike “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” “Cosi” was not an adaptation of an earlier, well-known story but, rather, was an original DaPonte libretto that has even been staged on its own. Ironically, the plot with its caviler view of female fidelity was so offensive to nineteenth-century sensibilities that the work virtually disappeared for a century only to resurface with considerable plot changes. Though the music is some of Mozart’s most exquisite, the opera takes so many liberties with reality that unless it is superbly sung with great attention to its comedic value, it can be a tedious affair. Happily, Lyric has assembled a first-class cast of mostly young singers to bring off Mozart’s glorious score whether in solos, duets or ensemble numbers, and John Cox’s updated staging from the eighteenth-century to a pre-World War I colorful Mediterranean resort works well and freshens up the work. The one caveat is Sir Andrew Davis’ stodgy tempos and tediously unimaginative recitative accompaniment. (Dennis Polkow)

7:30pm, Feb. 16, 19, 2pm, Feb. 21, 8pm, Feb. 24, 28, 2pm, Sunday, March 4, 7, 10, 16, Civic Opera House, Wacker Drive at Madison, (312)332-2244. $31-$179. Through Mar 16.  This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

In what has become the most anticipated operatic event of the summer, the eighth annual Chicago Cultural Center summer opera is celebrating Mozart’s 250^th birthday with his most magical and imaginative musical-theater piece, “The Magic Flute”—sung in English, but also saluting the city’s Silk Road Chicago initiative by elaborately drawing upon Kutiyattam, the Sanskit Theater of India as well as Balinese theater styles to convey a cross-cultural fable that should make the transition convincingly. Directed by Farley Richmond with Indian and Balinese-inspired costumes, props and production design by Loyce Arthur and featuring the New Millennium Orchestra under the direction of Francesco Milioto and the After School Matters/Sherwood Conservatory of Music Vocal Arts Ensemble under the direction of Nadine Gomes and Phillip Caldwell, the cast includes Lyric Opera baritone Levi Hernandez as Papageno, soprano Michelle Areyzaga as Pamina and New York City Opera Company tenor Darren Anderson as Tamino. Most of the free tickets for this production have been distributed, but there will be tickets available an hour before each performance on a first-come, first-served basis, and note that a special lunchtime “highlights” performance at noon on Friday at Millennium Park does not require tickets. (Dennis Polkow) 

“The Magic Flute” plays Friday, noon-1pm, (highlights), Millennium Park’s Wrigley Square. Pritzker Pavilion, Michigan at Randolph; 7pm, August 7, 9 and 10; 3pm, August 13, Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, 78 East Washington, (312)742-8497. Free.