Nathan Gunn, a onetime college athlete, now a leading "barihunk" (baritone + hunk), mulls the art of singing in public with your clothes off. "There's a shift in opera where physicality is very important – not only how you act but how you look," Gunn tells the Los Angeles Times' Irene Lacher:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-gunn29-2009nov29,0,2702052.story
Virginia Opera
Joseph Walsh conducting
Nov. 27, Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage
The Virginia Opera’s current production of Donizetti’s "La Fille du régiment" ("The Daughter of the Regiment") is Manon Strauss Evrard’s show. This company’s star voice in recent years, the soprano 
As Marie, a foundling adopted by the troops of Napoloeon’s 21st Regiment as their "daughter" (and laundress, barber and bootblack), Evrard is strappingly tomboyish, even in love scenes and laments. Her vitality is such that you wonder whether she’ll throw her beloved, Tonio, over her shoulder and march off to bliss at the end. (No such luck.)
In the first of two Richmond performances, Evrard handled her role’s abundant, often florid tessitura and its many big, high notes capably if not always in secure pitch. A few of her big finishes verged on shrieks. She also – involuntarily, it seemed – overbalanced the male principals, Gennard Lombardozzi (as Tonio) and Todd Robinson (Sulpice, the regimental sergeant). Robinson compensated with physical gesture; Lomardozzi never quite made it into the foreground.
Josepha Geyer (the Marquise of Berkenfeld) and Jenni Harrison (the Duchess of Krakenthorp) took on their overstuffed-dowager roles with good humor; Geyer and David Barron (Hortensius, the Marquise’s manservant) added some nice comic vocal touches.
This production is conducted by Joseph Walsh, the Virginia Opera’s associate artistic director and chorusmaster; so it wasn’t too surprising that the chorus, especially the men who populate the regiment, made a stronger than usual impression. So did the small pit orchestra of Virginia Symphony musicians, with excellent solos from French horn player David Wick, English horn player George Corbett and cellist Rebecca Gilmore.
Dorothy Danner, the stage director, opts for a physical production, but apportions the comic shtick unevenly, leaving a lot of choristers and supernumeraries taking up space to no particular effect for what seem to be long stretches. (If everyone were cavorting, chaos might ensue; but Danner might have taken a few more chances.)
The set appears to be recycled from spare parts – you might recognize the corduroy hillsides from Carlisle Floyd’s "Susannah" a couple of years ago – and other production elements are pretty basic.
A repeat performance begins at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 29 at the Carpenter Theatre. Tickets: $29-$99. Details: (866) 673-7282 (Ticketmaster). Fairfax performances are at 8 p.m. Dec. 4 and 2 p.m. Dec. 6 at the Center for the Arts, George Mason University. Tickets: $44-$98. Details: (888) 945-2468 (Tickets.com); www.vaopera.org
Pascal Rogé, the French pianist, will perform next week with the North Carolina Symphony for no fee after the 
"[I]deally, concerts are about love of the music and love for the audience. It's nice to be able, for once, to do a concert for the real reason," Rogé tells Rob Christensen of The News & Observer:
http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/arts/story/210106.html
David Brooks, The New York Times op-ed columnist, rarely writes about music. But he quite perceptively writes about the "emotional education" he received from the songs and concert performances of Bruce Springsteen. (I'm a little older than Brooks. My emotional education through music began with Otis Redding; and, thanks to my career path, has continued under the tutelage of a wide variety of composers and performers.)
Brooks' piece is well worth reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1
This being "black Friday," the perversely named official starting day of the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice shopping season, I thought I should suggest some 
The most lavish set on the market this year is "Yo-Yo Ma – 30 Years Outside the Box" (Sony Classical 752307), a 90(!)-disc collection containing virtually every piece ever written for the cello, as well as a great deal that wasn’t originally (Paganini caprices, Cole Porter tunes), played by Yo-Yo Know Who with colleagues ranging from pianist Emanuel Ax to Yang Wei, the pipa (Chinese lute) player who recently performed with the Richmond Symphony. About two-thirds of the 400+ selections are classical, including a number of contemporary pieces that Ma commissioned and/or premiered; the rest chronicles his Silk Road Ensemble excursions into Asian music and his various crossover ventures. The set lists at $790; Arkiv Music is selling it "for a very limited time" for $500.
(I’m quoting, and rounding, prices from Arkiv Music – www.ArkivMusic.com – which, I’ve found, has the largest inventory and generally the lowest prices among online retailers of classical CDs. But Smokey Robinson’s mama told him he’d better shop around, and you might do the same.)
Nearly as big a box (55 discs), less lavishly priced ($150), is "111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon" (DG 001341002). These discs (sleeved with original cover art) sample the major names on the label’s roster, with some emphasis on currently working artists. Standard European repertory; nice mix of orchestral, vocal and chamber music. The earliest of these recordings date from the 1950s.
Now that we’ve stuffed Bigfoot’s stocking, on to more practical gift suggestions:
* The Beethoven symphony cycle of Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra (BIS 1825/6, five discs) has been praised to the heavens by every critic on the planet – yours truly included, although I could do without the over-enunciating chorus and rather militant quality of this "Ode to Joy" – and BIS’s high-definition recordings are state-of-the-art or Da Bomb or whatever superlative is favored these days by audiophiles. (They sound very good on little speakers, too.) Purchased one disc at a time, this cycle would run you close to $100. The boxed set goes for $37.
* DG has issued two "Martha Argerich Collections," one of solo-piano recordings (DG 001190702, eight discs, $33), the other of concertos (DG 001319202, seven discs, $37). Argerich is the greatest living pianist (really); so both collections are highly recommended, the solo set a couple or three notches above the concerto set. (Argerich has done her best chamber-music recordings for EMI Classics, which apparently hasn’t big-boxed them yet. Maybe next Christmas.)
* Yuja Wang, who may be the greatest living pianist when we check back around 2040, released her debut album, "Sonatas and Études" (DG 001253402, $11) earlier this year. Wang has dazzled audiences wherever she’s played – twice so far at the University of Richmond, to which she returns with the Shanghai Quartet on Feb. 14 – both with her virtuosity and a musicality that few performers in their 20s have developed. This disc is a genuine piano recital in its stylistic variety (Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin, Ligeti), and a journey of discovery both in its programming and in the ways that Wang treats these pieces. Her exceptionally clarified, almost Mozartian, treatment of Ravel’s "La Valse" can be heard and seen on the DVD "Verbier Festival Highlights 2008" (Euroarts 3078178, $20), alongside performances by Argerich, Menahem Pressler, Joshua Bell, Gaudier Capuçon and Salvatore Accardo, among others.
* Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have just toured the U.S. playing Brahms, just as their Brahms symphony cycle (EMI Classics 67254, three discs, $27) hit the market. The concerts have received glowing reviews, the recordings less so. If I were buying a box of Brahms symphonies, it would be the Kurt Sanderling-Dresden Staatskapelle set (RCA 130367, three discs, $19), excellent interpretations, suitably burnished and properly paced, very listenable (re?)masterings of early 1970s analogue stereo recordings. I can highly recommend Rattle and the Berliners playing the Schoenberg orchestration of Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor and, with Daniel Barenboim, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, on a DVD, "Europa-Konzert at Athens" (Euroarts 2053658, $22), videotaped and digitally recorded in 2004 at the amphitheater at the foot of the Acropolis.
* While we’re on the subject of Europa-Konzerts, the Berliners’ annual trips to striking locales around the continent, I should mention the 2001 edition from Istanbul (Euroarts 2051229, $17.50), with Mariss Jansons conducting. The venue is the 6th-century Byzantine church of Hagia Eirene (St. Irene), a magically stark setting that makes one of the best available recordings of Berlioz’s "Symphonie fantastique" even more desirable. The program also includes very fine performances of Haydn’s "Surprise" Symphony (No. 94) and Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D major, with Emmanuel Pahud as soloist.
As the 200th anniversary year of Joseph Haydn nears its end, the composer's premier modern advocate, H.C. (Howard Chandler) Robbins Landon, has died at the age of 83.
A Boston-born musicologist who spent his career mostly in Europe, Robbins Landon wrote several definitive books on Haydn (as well as countless articles and liner notes for recordings) and advised generations of artists about performing the composer's music. He also conducted research and wrote on other composers and music of the classical period.
He was a leading player in the historical forensic research that identified the likely cause of Mozart's death in 1791 (prognosis: kidney failure), and prepared new performing editions of a number of classical works, notably Mozart's "Idomeneo" and Requiem.
His obituary, in The Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/6646024/HC-Robbins-Landon.html
Robbins Landon's "infectious enthusiasm for the subject under discussion, coupled with an encyclopedic memory and almost recklessly fluent delivery, allowed him to engage lay audiences in a way that few scholars are able," Barry Millington writes in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/24/hc-robbins-landon-obituary
All you need to know, in one easy gulp, from John Adams:
http://www.earbox.com/posts/40#post
(via Alex Ross)
POSTSCRIPT: Almost all. Adams forgot "intensity." Gotta have that.
