Album Review: John Adams- Girls of the Golden West

John Adams’ operas Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic stupefied my ears and expanded my mind. How is it possible it took the recent Nonesuch Records release of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s reading of Girls of the Golden West to make me aware of the Adams work that premiered in 2017? 

Giacomo Puccini set his 1910 opera La Fanciulla del West amid the American gold rush. (Unlike Girls of the Golden West, it’s an opera I’ve had the pleasure of watching.) Adams successfully refreshes the theme. Girls of the Golden West is so catchy I elected to listen a third time while mowing my lawn yesterday. The valuable time slot had been dedicated to Beyoncé since March 29. 

The shared Western theme aside, the opera is obviously quite not as “country” as Cowboy Carter. Girls of the Golden West more closely resembles an avant-garde “Oklahoma” starring the impeccable Julia Bullock.  Adams’ vigorous pieces about greed, sex and violence at a mining camp are well suited to a sweaty workout in the Kansas humidity.

Concert Review: The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s "Tosca" at Muriel Kauffman Theatre

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I didn’t know what to make of the lovely family seated near me in the cheap seats of Kansas City’s splashy opera house on Friday, May 7.  After witnessing scenes of torture, attempted rape, murder and suicide in Giacomo Puccini’s provocatively melodramatic 1900 opera “Tosca,” two perfectly behaved little girls in matching dresses and their doting parents walked out of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts as if they’d just taken in a showing of Disney on Ice.

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production rattled me.  “Tosca” was the first professional opera I’d experienced in-person since 2019.  As documented extensively at this site, I came to opera late in life.  I immersed myself in the form during the pandemic.  When I finish watching the Hungarian State Opera’s mesmerizing new four-hour rendering of Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal,” I’ll have taken in 303 online operas in the past two years.

The initiative altered my expectations. Having seen Luciano Pavarotti play the ill-fated painter Mario Cavaradossiin in two filmed productions of “Tosca,” my standards are now unreasonably high. Only Marina Costa-Jackson’s turn in the title role didn’t disappoint me last night. Other positives: the Kansas City Symphony was electrifying, the lighting was excellent and the informal banter among patrons in the peanut gallery was refreshing.

February 2022 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of Abbey Lincoln in the trailer of Nothing But a Man by There Stands the Glass.

Top Ten Albums (Released in February)

1. Joyce DiDonato- Eden

Serpent repellent.

2. The Kahil El'Zabar Quartet- A Time for Healing

My review.

3. Binker and Moses- Feeding the Machine

England swings.

4. Sofía Reyes- Mal de Amores

A Mexican mélange of Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.

5. Big K.R.I.T.- Digital Roses Don't Die

The graying of the Dirty South.

6. Del McCoury- Almost Proud

My related essay.

7. Gidon Kremer- Weinberg: Sonatas for Violin Solo

Eastern European angst.

8. The Adam Larson Trio- With Love, From Chicago

My album and concert reviews.

9. Rokia Koné- Bamanan

Metropolitan Malian music.

10. Bad Boy Chiller Crew- Disrespectful

Cretin hop.

Top Ten Songs (Released in February)

1. Jana Rush featuring DJ Paypal- ​​“Lonely”

Ornette Coleman gets the Chicago footwork treatment.

2. Claire Rousay and More Eaze- “floor Pt. 2”

Android dreams of electric sheep.

3. Rosalía- “Saoko”

Transformation.

4. Cécile McLorin Salvant- "Until"

Time stands still.

5. Pusha T- “Diet Coke”

“That’s a joke, right?”

6. $not and A$AP Rocky- “Doja”

Wildcatting.

7. Maren Morris- “Background Music”

Nashville existentialism.

8. Robert Glasper featuring Yebba- "Over"

My favorite Black Radio III track.

9. Willie Nelson- “I’ll Love You Till the Day I Die”

Backatcha, Willie.

10. Lívia Nestrovski and Henrique Eisenmann- "Sete Estrelas"

My concert review.

Top Ten Movies, Television Broadcasts and Streaming Programming (viewed for the first time in February, in lieu of a full resumption of live music)

1. Jeen-yuhs (2022)

My notes.

2. Donda Experience Performance (2022)

“Do I look happy to you?”

3. Nothing but a Man (1964)

Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln star in an excruciating study.

4. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Hypnotic.

5. Cathie Wood interview on CNBC

A robust defense of poor performance.

6. Houston at Wichita State

Bruising double-overtime men’s basketball thriller.

7. Puccini's Madama Butterfly

Timeless heartbreak at Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia.

8. Rosita (1923)

Mary Pickford as a Spanish street singer.

10. Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show (2022)

Forgot about Dre.

Last month’s survey is here.

Concert Review: Joshua Bell and Alessio Bax at Helzberg Hall

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The reacclimation process will be more difficult than anticipated.  Less than two weeks after I posted an essay about how the sonic flaws common to classical recordings make the music more approachable, related forms of distraction irritated me at the first ticketed classical concert I attended in 2021.

A variety of sonic and visual static diminished a distressingly brief and acutely hushed recital by Joshua Bell and Alessio Bax at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, October 2. The concert opened the 2021-22 season of the Harriman-Jewell Series Series.

Much of the audience of about 500 was obligated to contend with the desperate flailing of a large man in the second row of Helzberg Hall during the 65-minute performance.  Clearly experiencing extreme physical discomfort, he frantically fanned himself with a program.  I was genuinely concerned for his welfare.

A phone alarm sounded between the first and second movements of Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2.  An ill-timed cough marred an interpretation of a Giacomo Puccini aria.  And a man near me was compelled to accompany the musicians by eliciting a remarkable range of creaks from his wobbly seat.

My noisy neighbor may have been inspired by Bell.  Edvard Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3, the dramatic opening piece, allowed the star to explore multiple facets of the violin.  While I felt no affinity for the composition, Bell’s ballyhooed technical faculties were astonishing.

A rendition of Ernest Bloch’s earthy “Nigun” was more interesting, but the twists and turns of the Ravel sonata were a revelation.  Having never heard the jazz-tinged piece, the dissonance- punctuated by Bell’s occasional gasps- shocked me.  It was precisely the kind of noise I’m eager to embrace.