The past recaptured

by Tim Pfaff

The huge expansion of the active opera repertory that has taken place in our lifetimes has been less about birthing viable new operas than with the revivals of “old” operas that have, over time, fallen off the stage. The notion that operas fade into the wings because they’re not up to snuff –some conservative wags have dubbed revivals “exhumations”– is now itself out of date.

No other living musician has done more not just to reinstate neglected operas but also to prove why they were once exemplary and still reward re-hearings than Christophe Rousset, leading his now 30-year-old ensemble Les Talens Lyriques. It’s now become a bit of a shock when the intrepid band turns its attention to repertory chestnuts like Gounod’s “Faust,” but when they do, they make the old new again. Now a recording of Gaspare Spontini’s “La Vestale” (Palazetto Bru Zane) has gotten its turn.

Turning the light back on

The opera, which had its premiere in Paris in 1807, tells the story of Vestal Virgin Julia, who almost fatally lets the fire on the sacred altar go out. Predictable amorous chaos ensues until, three acts and onstage hours later, a stroke of lightning rekindles the flame. This manifestation of divine forgiveness of Julia leads promptly to her now-sanctioned marriage to Roman General Licinius. A major success, it has yielded some revivals in French, but its tenuous place in the repertory since has benefitted from a translation into Italian by which it has largely been known.

Important singers have taken on the role of Julia over the decades, but it was the recording of the 1954 La Scala production featuring Maria Callas, and her famous performance of its main aria in a Frankfurt recital in 1959, that has kept Julia’s nose over the water line ever since. But even Callas at her most fiery can’t wholly conceal that rather static oratorio of the Italian “Vestale.”

Of course there’s more to translation than a swap of words, and the Italian “La Vestale” is nearly a different opera from its French parent. As with the Italian “Medea,” the success of any “Vestale” has largely depended on star performers willing to sing the hell of the thing. For Rousset, Marina Rebeka is tasked with making her mark in Callas’s sonic shadow, but she is as incisive and individual.

There’s nothing pastel about Rousset’s mainly francophone cast. It’s an object lesson in the particulars of French singing, a style that is having something of its own revival. You hear it in the agile tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac (Julia’s love interest Licinius) and woodwindpungent baritone Tassis Christoyannis (Cinna). But, as usual, it’s Rousset’s keen sense of style, pungent sonorities –and, preeminently, drama– that fires all the musicians. This “La Vestale” has a future as well as a past.

The Rachmaninov year

If there were major productions of operas by Sergei Rachmaninov during “The Rachmaninov Year,” just ending, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, they would certainly have qualified as revivals, but if there were any, they eluded me. But audiences have never stopped loving, and demanding, music by the man now known as “the Rach” in some circles.

The new recordings of the composer’s Second and Third Symphonies and tone poem “The Isle of the Dead,” bring to a finish Yannick Nezet-Seguin’s illustrious survey of the major orchestral music with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra’s long, direct Rachmaninov association began in 1909, when Rach was in the audience for the Philadelphia premiere of the Second, having conducted the premiere the previous year.

The Second –the big-ticket item here– can be a long night in the auditorium, with multiple orgasms that can be cumulatively draining. NezetSeguin spares us excesses in a performance rich in both detail and sweep. You really can hear everything in the score, with the elements in ideal balance, all stretched over a huge dynamic canvas near inaudibility at the lower end.

Does sex sell?

In the first third of the last century, Franz Schreker was a composer of original operas second only to Richard Strauss. The difference between the two men’s work was less musical than thematic. Schreker, who wrote his own librettos, drew heavily from the burgeoning psychology of his era to create dramas with a psycho-sexual focus that can make “Salome” and “Elektra” seem tame or at least better behaved.

Nazi persecution put an end to Schreker’s career (and, eventually, life), and for decades the only two of his completed operas to maintain a place, however tenuous, in the repertory were “Der ferne Klang” and “Die Gezeichneten.” Recently, enterprising European opera companies have mounted productions of all the Schreker operas, while on this side of the Atlantic, only the two biggies have been staged.

Schreker’s penchant for technicolor orchestration and his overall genius with instrumental music –music not tied to texts– kept his work in such circulation as it had. In a new recording of suites and chamber compositions, conductor Christoph Eschenbach, leading Berlin’s Concerthouse Orchestra (DG), captures Schreker’s unique idiom, beginning with the Nachtstück interlude from “Der ferne Klang.”

Taking the place of opera excerpts here are five orchestral songs superbly sung by Matthias Goerne and the early two-song cycle “Von ewigen Leben” (“On Eternal Life”), featuring soprano Chen Reiss. The texts for the latter are by Walt Whitman, and those for the orchestral songs from a German translation of the “Arabian Nights.”

Even at its most pointed Schreker’s vocal music can be elusive, but these superb musicians cut to the expressive chase with revelatory fervor, yielding sonorities that decay only in the natural way sounds do, otherwise leaving lingering, if often disturbing, impressions. Eschenbach has succeeded in making music that can be hard to get a grip on theatrically gripping.t

Gaspare Spontini, “La Vestale,” Christophe Rousset, director, 2 CDs and streaming, $39.95 www.bru-zane.com

Glad as you are that Nezet-Seguin does not fake an orgasm, beneath or behind it all there’s a weird, unexpected reticence that can increasingly feel like a lack of depth. The orchestra (and most of the music world, really) is even more besotted with Nezet-Seguin than with Rach. The instrumentalists play their hearts out for him if not quite for all of us.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, “The Isle of the Dead,” Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, conductor, CD and streaming, $19.98 www.deutschegrammophon.com

Franz Schreker, “Der ferne Klang,” orchestral works and songs, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, 2 CDs and streaming, $19.98 www.deutschegrammophon.com

It was like that song had to have a little bit of restraint and then build it, but it was strange because we didn’t know what kind of approach we were going to take with that song.

It kind of revealed itself in the studio when I was doing the background vocals on that song. It started reminding me a little bit of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” I wanted it to have that element of restraint. I think we achieved that. I think it’s an amazing song and it’s one of my favorites off the EP.

“Big Big Love” sounds like it could become a summer teadance classic… …[laughs] I hope so!

Especially in the hands of the right DJ or remixer. What would it mean to you to have the LGBTQ community embrace the song and take it to the top of the Billboard Dance chart?

That would be it for me! To be able to walk into a gay bar seeing it on the monitor or blasting? That would be amazing. My son, who you probably know is gay, is like, “Mom! This could be amazing in the clubs.” I hope so!

“Sanity” is by far the most dramatic track on the “Kismet.” It’s the kind of number you could imagine a drag queen having a field day with. Have you encountered drag queens doing Belinda Carlisle numbers over the years, and if so, did you have a favorite performer and song?

I haven’t really seen somebody as me singing, no. But I would love that. “I Couldn’t Do That To Me” would be perfect, or “Sanity” or “Heaven (Is A Place On Earth).” I mean there’s plenty to pick from through the years. That would be epic.

Speaking of drag queens, the LGBTQ community, especially the drag and trans communities, are under attack from conservatives across the country, and around the world. As the mother of a gay son, as well as a longtime ally, do you have any thoughts about that?

I don’t understand non-acceptance. It’s hard for me to get my head around. I think it’s very sad. My son came out when he was fourteen. What kind of world is he going to live in? What kind of world is it going to be for him? Since then, it’s been like ten steps forward and then five back. We’re in five back period right now. It’s heartbreaking. But I think you just have to keep at it. Hopefully, we’ll get to a place where there’s acceptance of everyone. That’s all I can hope for.

Back to “Kismet.” Is there any possibility that these songs might be incorporated into a full-length album, or that you have a different full-length album in the works?

I have a completely separate project that we started doing before the pandemic with Gabe Lopez, who is a great songwriter. He works on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and all sorts of stuff for RuPaul. He’s a great artist, himself. I have a project with him that I have to finish, which I’ll probably finish early next year. I don’t ever plan things. I just kind of winged as I went along.

Working with Diane and Mati was such an amazing experience that I’m totally open to doing something else. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know when, because my life is pretty full, but if something comes along that I love, I’ll make time for it, for sure.

Do you have plans to perform live shows in support of “Kismet”?

I have a string of dates on the East Coast in July, and I have a string of dates on the West Coast in August. I have Australia at the end of the year. People can go to the Facebook page and see what those dates are; they’re up there.t

Belinda Carlisle performs on August 20 at August Hall in San Francisco. $15-$50, 8pm. All ages. 420 Mason St. www.augusthallsf.com www.facebook.com/BelindaCarlisleOfficial

by Tim Pfaff

Oh, to judge a book by its cover. Eliot Duncan’s debut novel, “Ponyboy” (Norton), enters wearing a striking collage of photos by three different photographers, provocatively welded together by designer Richard Ljoenes. It’s the kind of cover that will make queers of a certain slant of mind and lovers of black and white photography generally want to pick it up. Just as in