Christie's minstrels
Michael Christie, the conductor from Buffalo who is now the music director of the Phoenix Symphony, had a high-profile engagement recently. He conducted John Corigliano's opera "The Ghosts of Versailles" at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. The six-performance run wound up Saturday.
There are a lot of notes and features on the performance here at the St. Louis troupe's Web site. the arresting poster for the production is pictured at left.
Here in Buffalo we have gotten to know Corigliano's music through his visits here and the performances of his music by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
The production Christie conducted in St. Louis was described as new and improved. Musical America just published this assessment of it that suggests that "new and improved" means streamlined and simplified.
When it premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991, John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles celebrated and exploited the wealth and resources of the company that commissioned it. A new version, heard at Opera Theater of Saint Louis at its opening on June 17, makes a strong case for intimacy within a score designed for ostentatious display.
In its first iteration, Ghosts had Big Name star power, a supporting cast of dozens, a big chorus, an onstage orchestra in full costume and sets that included a 35-foot tall puppet Pasha whose turban exploded. The spectacle tended to overwhelm the storyline, which is confusing anyway. Ghosts had one other outing at the Met, as well as one at Lyric Opera of Chicago. And there, professionally speaking, it ended. Ghosts was just too big for anyone else to consider – including, in this economy, the Met itself, which cancelled a revival scheduled for 2009-2010 due to its cost. Too big until now, that is.
You can watch a clip of Renee Fleming in the 1991 production of "Ghosts" here.
Christie is on Twitter and recently he wrote: "Thanks to all for a great run.. .. We will miss St. Louis and all the great people we met."
He twittered a few days later: "Turning 35 today. Holy smokes time moves."
-- Mary Kunz Goldman
