Miscellany

The crowds that filled the Met for its end-of-season run of Tosca seemed mainly focused on Anna Netrebko's role début as the titular diva. As in the past, I reveled in the power and beauty of Nebtreko's voice but found her less than fully gripping as a stage presence. (Heidi Waleson, in the Wall Street Journal, felt much as I did.) The revelation of the night, instead, was the Scarpia of Michael Volle. I'd admired Volle in Meistersinger and Dutchman, but this outing revealed a degree of dramatic intensity and moment-to-moment electricity that I hadn't heard from him before. I'm listening happily to his Orfeo album of Wagner arias and excerpts.... Similarly, the highlight of the Boston Symphony's concert performance of Act II of Tristan was not Jonas Kaufmann's elegant, diffident Tristan but Georg Zeppenfeld's transfixing King Mark. Only there did text and drama come to life in the voice; I always have difficulty making out what Kaufmann is singing. Buy that man some consonants! .... On May 26 at St. Peter's in Chelsea, NYC, the vocal ensemble Ekmeles performs Stockhausen's Stimmung alongside End Words, a new piece by Christopher Trapani.... Cantata Profana plays a meaty program at National Sawdust on June 2-3: George Aperghis’s Sept crimes de l’amour, Simon Steen-Andersen’s Difficulties Putting it into Practice, Mauricio Kagel’s Unguis Incarnatus Est, and Philippe Leroux’s Voi(Rex)... On May 25, New Music Detroit presents Annie Gosfield's new piece Detroit Industry: The Goddess Stamps Metal While the Blast Furnace Sings. It will be played beneath Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of the Arts... On May 21, Monday Evening Concerts in LA reunites Meredith Monk and Julius Eastman; Eastman once sang in Monk's Dolmen Music ensemble. Two nights later, MEC offers an evening of Éliane Radigue, with Nate Wooley on trumpet and Michael Pisaro handling sound.... The schedule for the 2018 edition of Pisaro's Dog Star Orchestra, a highlight of new-music life in LA, is now up; it runs June 2-16.... The American new-music world has been shaken by the sudden death of Matt Marks, a composer-performer who threw himself into organizing and proselytizing on behalf of colleagues, notably through the New Music Gathering, which he co-founded. The gathering will happen next weekend in Boston, and the sadness is certain to be intense.