Jennifer Larmore

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concert at UCLA's Royce Hall Sunday night did not make sense. Mannequins in the lobby displayed gowns courtesy of Judy Lee Design. The evening was titled "Italian Inflections," but much of the music didn't fit. The evening's soloist, Jennifer Larmore, sounded like Jennifer Larmore, but she didn't look like the well-known American mezzo-soprano. Segues -- from silliness to sadness -- shocked. But music sometimes makes its own kind of sense.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concert at UCLA's Royce Hall Sunday night did not make sense. Mannequins in the lobby displayed gowns courtesy of Judy Lee Design. The evening was titled "Italian Inflections," but much of the music didn't fit. The evening's soloist, Jennifer Larmore, sounded like Jennifer Larmore, but she didn't look like the well-known American mezzo-soprano. Segues -- from silliness to sadness -- shocked. But music sometimes makes its own kind of sense.

In a rehearsal room at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the cast of Rossini's bel canto screwball comedy "L'italiana in Algeri" (The Italian Girl in Algiers) is learning how to be confused and stupefied in proper buffo style.

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore appears, allegro ma grazioso, at the door of a Dorothy Chandler Pavilion rehearsal room. She pauses at the threshold to apologize for some imagined tardiness ("Hope I haven't kept y'all waiting!") and alights delicately in a chair--offering proof that the diva's entrance isn't a lost art after all.

The masses are agog about the three tenors. But the aficionados are talking about the two mezzo-sopranos. First there was Cecilia Bartoli, everybody's Italian darling. Now there is Jennifer Larmore, 36, of Atlanta, who makes her Music Center Opera debut Jan. 17 in "L'Italiana in Algeri." Rossini's comedy hasn't been performed here since 1966, when it served as a vehicle for one of Larmore's idols: Marilyn Horne. Although Larmore's dark, wide-ranging, unusually flexible voice has been heard in most of Europe's great houses since 1986, her U.S. career is just beginning.

A recital is not a cabaret--it need not be motley and it must not be frenzied. Jennifer Larmore--media darling in the latest crop of low-voiced American divas--erred on the side of more-is-too-much at her West Coast debut recital Sunday afternoon at Veterans Wadsworth Theater in Westwood. What she sang best--florid, quick-note showpieces by Mozart and Handel--confirmed Larmore's place as royalty in the realm of roulades.

With American mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore and tenor Placido Domingo in the leading roles, Bizet's "Carmen" will open L.A. Opera's 1998-99 season Sept. 8 in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center. Also in the eight-opera, 56-performance season, ending June 13, 1999, are two works new to the company's repertory, Massenet's "Werther" and a world premiere, American composer Tobias Picker's "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

The city that loves a star is agog with anticipation. On Thursday, Cecilia Bartoli, latest darling of the operatic universe, will finally make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. There are certain ironies here. Bartoli is best-known and best-loved as a coloratura mezzo-soprano par excellence, and thus as a specialist in the florid, low-lying heroines of Rossini. Yet, for her introductory vehicle here, she has chosen the secondary chirping-soubrette duties of Despina in Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte."

Carmen. Forget the music for a minute, and just think about who the character is and what she represents. She is one of the great figures in drama, a great icon of the modern world and a great woman around whom we love to spin fantasies and theories. Men love, and always have loved, Carmen, because she is so seductive and so true to herself. And women, right up to today's new generation of feminist musicologists, love her for exactly the same reason.

The fine art of songwriting, in the art song tradition, has been a practice paid ambivalent attention in our century. San Francisco-based pianist and composer Heggie has taken it upon himself to delve into the venerable songwriting tradition, often referring, stylistically, to romantic 19th century models and hints of smarter Broadway musical thinking, and now has well more than 100 pieces to show for the effort.

"Carmen" is one of the best known, if not the best known, of all operas. It is so well known that it is even possible to be familiar with the story and not the opera; the gypsy seductress has been the subject of movies from the silent era to the present, movies in which she has been everything from vamp to lesbian. Bizet's tunes, too, are so famous that it is also easy to know the music and not the opera; even Bart and Homer Simpson have done their parody of the "Toreador Song."

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore appears, allegro ma grazioso, at the door of a Dorothy Chandler Pavilion rehearsal room. She pauses at the threshold to apologize for some imagined tardiness ("Hope I haven't kept y'all waiting!") and alights delicately in a chair--offering proof that the diva's entrance isn't a lost art after all.

With American mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore and tenor Placido Domingo in the leading roles, Bizet's "Carmen" will open L.A. Opera's 1998-99 season Sept. 8 in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center. Also in the eight-opera, 56-performance season, ending June 13, 1999, are two works new to the company's repertory, Massenet's "Werther" and a world premiere, American composer Tobias Picker's "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

Carmen. Forget the music for a minute, and just think about who the character is and what she represents. She is one of the great figures in drama, a great icon of the modern world and a great woman around whom we love to spin fantasies and theories. Men love, and always have loved, Carmen, because she is so seductive and so true to herself. And women, right up to today's new generation of feminist musicologists, love her for exactly the same reason.

A recital is not a cabaret--it need not be motley and it must not be frenzied. Jennifer Larmore--media darling in the latest crop of low-voiced American divas--erred on the side of more-is-too-much at her West Coast debut recital Sunday afternoon at Veterans Wadsworth Theater in Westwood. What she sang best--florid, quick-note showpieces by Mozart and Handel--confirmed Larmore's place as royalty in the realm of roulades.

"Carmen" is one of the best known, if not the best known, of all operas. It is so well known that it is even possible to be familiar with the story and not the opera; the gypsy seductress has been the subject of movies from the silent era to the present, movies in which she has been everything from vamp to lesbian. Bizet's tunes, too, are so famous that it is also easy to know the music and not the opera; even Bart and Homer Simpson have done their parody of the "Toreador Song."

The fine art of songwriting, in the art song tradition, has been a practice paid ambivalent attention in our century. San Francisco-based pianist and composer Heggie has taken it upon himself to delve into the venerable songwriting tradition, often referring, stylistically, to romantic 19th century models and hints of smarter Broadway musical thinking, and now has well more than 100 pieces to show for the effort.

The city that loves a star is agog with anticipation. On Thursday, Cecilia Bartoli, latest darling of the operatic universe, will finally make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. There are certain ironies here. Bartoli is best-known and best-loved as a coloratura mezzo-soprano par excellence, and thus as a specialist in the florid, low-lying heroines of Rossini. Yet, for her introductory vehicle here, she has chosen the secondary chirping-soubrette duties of Despina in Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte."

In a rehearsal room at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the cast of Rossini's bel canto screwball comedy "L'italiana in Algeri" (The Italian Girl in Algiers) is learning how to be confused and stupefied in proper buffo style.