#Pascale Obrecht

[erratumgalerie]

Playlist

Opening Saturday 4 November, 17:00 - 21:00

Erratum is very pleased to reopen its doors with yet another exhibition on painting. To alleviate any thematic fatigue, the new four-headed team will kick off with a light and playful mode, gently experimenting with the qualities and features of the paint medium within the Raum.

As for introduction, the exhibition is conceived as a playlist de coeur from Dean, Franck, Linda, and Raphaël-Bachir. On the walls unfolds a spectrum of small-sized paintings displayed edge to edge, according to a simple principle of formal affinities and associations: a sort of visual mixtape of pieces by various artists.

This arbitrary arrangement provides the opportunity for some movements. The borders of each canvas become transitions, taking on new importance beyond the usual hierarchies and rules of seeing. The optical center is allowed to travel across the surfaces, and the installation evolves paintings into an elusive ensemble, which aims at soliciting a plurality of readings.

The purpose is not to drown the individual paintings into a larger whole, but rather to activate free shuffling between the different dimensions and genres of painting. It is about playing with “limit-situations”, to literally use the words of Olivier Mosset — that is to say painting as a becoming. From illusionism to materiality, from the cosa mentale to the readymade, Erratum hopes to initiate a friendly conversation between the contemporary practices of painting. An audio edition completes and extends the installation on display. Available on CD, it contains a second playlist of sounds and recordings submitted by the artists.

Text by Lily Matras, editing by Zoe Harris

Playlist is a group compilation featuring works by Dean Annunziata, Alexandre Bavard, Mireille Blanc, Volodymir Bevza, Mathieu Boisadan, Fritz Bornstück, Claire Decet, Daniel Ewinger, Ivan Fayard, Samuel François, Vincent Gallais, Paris Giachoustidis, Lukas Glinkowski, Anneliese Grève, Philip Grözinger, Christina Hartwich, Aurélie de Heinzelin, Pascal Hointza, Robin Isenmann, Heike Kelter, Youcef Korichi, Frédéric Léglise, Elodie Lesourd, Anna Ley, Caroline Meyer Bickenbach, Filip Mirazovic, Marc Molk, Pedro Moraes Landucci, Simon Morda-Cotel, Jan Muche, Audrey Nervi, Maël Nozahic, Florence Obrecht, Raphaël-Bachir Osman, Axel Pahlavi, Simon Pasieka, Nazanin Pouyandeh, Paul Pretzer, Robin Rapp, Franck Rausch, Mathias Schech, Götz Schramm, Alexander Skorobogatov, Juliette Sturlèse, Alex Tennigkeit & Paul Barnett, Alexander Tillegreen, Tyra Tingleff, Isabella Uhl, Raphaël Vincenot, Frank Vivier, Marta Vovk, Alexander Wagner and Sarah Wohler.

Inspired by the exhibition Lily Matras wrote the poem „Finissage“. She read it at the closing on December 16th. You can download it here.

Dates: November 4th – December 16th, 2017

Location: Erratum, Böckhstr. 40, 10967 Berlin

Team: Dean Annunziata, Linda Franken, Raphaël-Bachir Osman, Franck Rausch

Text: Lily Matras

Editing: Zoë Harris

Graphic Design of Edition: Daniel Seemayer

[gramilano]

Meyerbeer: GRAND OPERA with Diana Damrau

Diana Damrau, Meyerbeer: Grand Opera

This glorious new album finds Diana Damrau in sparkling, top-notch form. The exacting demands that Meyerbeer makes on the soprano voice are shrugged off by a diva in her prime.

Meyerbeer was German (Prussian) by birth, French by adoption, and Italian by formation; a true European. Born Jacob Liebmann Meyer Beer, his first name became ‘Giacomo’ during his years in Italy, where he headed on the advice of Salieri after the poor reception in Germany and Vienna of his first two operas. Inspired by the music of Rossini – six months his junior – he embarked on a string of seven operas in Italian during the ten-years he lived there. The last of these was Il crociato in Egitto, which premiered in Venice in 1824. A year later it was performed in Paris, and the city opened its doors to him. His first French opera was premiered in Paris in 1831, and it launched him into the opera stratosphere: Robert le diable, his first ‘grand opéra’.

Until his death in 1864 he remained wildly popular. So popular and so wealthy as to rub his contemporaries up the wrong way; Wagner said he was “a Jewish banker to whom it occurred to compose operas”. Meyerbeer’s operas on a grand scale gradually fell out of fashion in the latter part of the 1800s, and were hardly performed at all during the first half of the 20th century. The cost of large casts, the difficulty of Meyerbeer’s virtuoso writing, and the banning of the Jewish composer in Nazi Germany and other countries, all effected their popularity. A 1962 production of Les Huguenots at La Scala (with Joan Sutherland, Franco Corelli, Giulietta Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto and Nicolai Ghiaurov… Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducting!) jump-started a revival and, together with Robert le diable, Le prophète, and L’Africaine, Meyerbeer’s grand operas are now to be found in in opera seasons the world over.

Diana Damrau by Jürgen Frank

Diana Damrau by Jürgen Frank

Diana Damrau by Jürgen Frank

Diana Damrau by Jürgen Frank

Damrau has been interested in Meyerbeer’s music since performing in his cantata Gli amori di Teolinda as a student, and the idea for an entire disc dedicated to his arias has been on her mind for a decade.

Erato has treated her nobly with this album, Meyerbeer: Grand Opera, a recording featuring the Lyon National Opera Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of Emmanuel Villaume, together with soloists Kate Aldrich, Charles Workman and Laurent Naouri, which gives the excerpts their due importance. The 82-minute album was recorded in the summer of 2015.

Ten operas are represented, including the big four. Arias from his early opera Alimelek, oder die beiden Kalifen and a Singspiel from his later period called Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, have both been recorded for the first time.

Maybe the best-known aria included here is ‘Ô beau pays de la Touraine’ from Les Huguenots, and even if it is impossible to cut the umbilical cord with Sutherland, Damrau makes it her own. She doesn’t have Sutherland’s warm top notes (who does?) but she gives more weight to the text both in clarity and interpretation.

Two operas written for the Opéra-Comique in Paris – L’étoile du nord and Le pardon de Ploërmel (known as Dinorah from when it was translated into Italian for its premiere Covent Garden) – allow Damrau to fire off her coloratura big guns, which she does with dazzling aplomb. However, she intelligently chooses to conclude not with vocal fireworks, but with the seductive, forlorn lyricism of ‘Adieu, mon doux rivage’, an aria often cut, from Meyerbeer’s last opera, L’Africaine.

A few months before he died, Meyerbeer wrote a prayer: “Preserve my artistic creativity.. and ennoble my artistic fame,” he asked. Diana Damrau has done something towards answering that prayer.

  Meyerbeer: GRAND OPERA on Erato (5 May 2017)

LE PROPHÈTE (1849): Mon coeur s’élance et palpite Berthe 4:05 ROBERT LE DIABLE (1831): Robert, toi que j’aime Isabelle 5:52 Robert: Charles Workman tenor ALIMELEK, ODER: DIE BEIDEN KALIFEN (1814) Nur in der Dämm’rung Stille Irene 6:17*** L’ÉTOILE DU NORD (1854) Ah, mon Dieu !… C’est bien l’air que chaque matin Catherine 6:58 L’AFRICAINE (1865) Là-bas, sous l’arbre noir… Fleurs nouvelles Inès 5:34 IL CROCIATO IN EGITTO (1824) D’una madre disperata…Con qual gioia Palmide 9:20 Aladino: Laurent Naouri bass LE PARDON DE PLOËRMEL (1859) (DINORAH) Comme cette nuit est lente à se dissiper !… Ombre légère Dinorah 8:20 EIN FELDLAGER IN SCHLESIEN (1844) Oh Schwester, find’ ich dich!… Lebe wohl, geliebte Schwester Therese 6:53 Vielka: Kate Aldrich mezzo-soprano*** EMMA DI RESBURGO (1819) Sulla rupe triste, sola…Ah questo bacio Emma 6:38 LES HUGUENOTS (1836) Ô beau pays de la Touraine Marguerite 12:55 Urbain: Pei Min Yu soprano Coryphée: Pascale Obrecht soprano Dame d’honneur: Joanna Curelaru Kata mezzo-soprano L’AFRICAINE (1865) Anna, qu’entends-je…“Adieu, mon doux rivage” Inès 8:34 Anna: Kate Aldrich mezzo-soprano

***World premiere recording

CD review: Diana Damrau in Meyerbeer’s Grand Operas – a diva in her prime Meyerbeer: GRAND OPERA with Diana Damrau This glorious new album finds Diana Damrau in sparkling, top-notch form.