My performance in Amsterdam’s first String Quartet Biennale festival of Schoenberg’s second string quartet with Cuarteto Quiroga (on a concert also featuring Cappella Amsterdam in a world premiere of José Maria Sánchez-Verdu) will be broadcast live on NPO Radio 4. On February 1st at 8:15 pm Netherlands time, tune in to hear a live stream of the concert.
Update: if you missed it, you can listen back here. The Schoenberg starts at 1:38:30.
My first Konstanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (in January in Clermont-Ferrand, and touring afterwards to Avignon, Rouen, Massy, and Reims) is garnering excellent reviews. Forum Opera says: “hyper technicienne et flamboyante de passion vécue pour un ‘Martern alle Arten’ de haute volée. Cette autre lauréate du 25e Concours de Chant déploie une projection radieuse, qu’elle sublime dans un ‘Ach, ich liebte’ aux fins aigus vertigineux d’une noblesse désespérée qui n’a d’égal que l’admirable puissance dramatique du ‘Welcher Wechsel.'” (“An extreme technician, blazing with passion in a first-rate ‘Martern aller Arten.’ This laureate of the 25th International Competition projects a radiant presence, sublimated from the slimmest vertiginous heights of ‘Ach, ich liebte’ to a desperate nobility which nothing can equal but the admirable dramatic power of ‘Welcher Wechsel.'”)READ MORE
In Kyoto, / hearing the cuckoo, / I long for Kyoto. —Basho
I’ve been using my current production of Entführung as a lens for some musings on identity: how a character can change us, and then about some of the challenges of physicalizing such a piece of music. I’ve known there was a third post I needed to write, the most personal one (strange when the others were about love and body image!), and it’s taken some time for it to come. Now that it’s all out, I realize that it is 1. the longest (sorry!) and 2. the most important—that is, it’s the most specific to my own experience; it’s the story that only I can tell. We open tomorrow night, and I’m glad to have verbalized these thoughts at last. It’s a rather vulnerable look at the intersection of identity and the voice itself.READ MORE
Several French publications are excited about my upcoming Entführung. Diapason lists this production in its top three performances not to miss in January, calling my performance at the Clermont-Ferrand competition a “revelation.” La Montagne did a nice preview article with an interview, and Zap Magazine published a very different, very fun interview about some of my extra-Mozartean musical interests. All three clippings can be seen here.
“You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it to. You have everything it takes to be a lovely woman except the one essential: an understanding heart. And without that you might just as well be made of bronze.” –The Philadelphia Story
Previously, in Katharine’s Epically Long Musings on Identity And Her First Entführung: some thoughts about the character of Konstanze and how she relates to (and is changing) my own identity. Today, I want to write about bodies.
The body can be a vehicle for music, for illness, for slight inebriation on delicious French wine, for pulses of the blood and hormones, for fatigue. The body can be a magnet for desire, for criticism, for violence, for love. As a singer, my body is my instrument: I can’t escape this identification of my body with my work, my self, my value, my effectiveness. Being a singer (or any kind of performer) has a lot in common with being an athlete–no matter what your gifts, you’re only as strong and stable as your body is, and this is complicated. This part of my identity has been both affirmed and challenged mightily in the last few weeks.READ MORE
Since I arrived in Clermont-Ferrand to begin rehearsals on my first Konstanze (in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail) in the second week of December, so much—in myself, in my singing, in my thinking—has shifted, or begun to shift. I couldn’t have asked for a more focused, attenuated, ambitious work process to bridge this change in the year and point the way forward. A lot of this focus has come from working on such a rich and challenging role, of course. Konstanze is changing me as much as I’m trying to shape her in rehearsal, and I feel so lucky to be here doing this piece in particular, and with this team. But this hasn’t been the only thing working on me.READ MORE
Gentle reader, if you’re laboring under the misconception that my job is glamorous and high-brow, let me set the record straight.
That picture up above? It’s me (already in concert makeup) and an internationally renowned pianist crawling around under a resoundingly mediocre rented grand piano an hour before our recital together, trying to identify the source of an annoying pedal-related squeak and WD-40 it out of existence. We only kind of managed, but in the meantime, the presenter, laughing uproariously, snapped this picture and declared he was going to use it in next year’s season brochure.
On December 3rd, my first commercial recording as a soloist will be released on the Etcetera label: a live recording of the world premiere in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw of Insonia, one huge movement from Dutch composer Jan van de Putte’s monumental Pessoa-Cyclus. The CD, which also features sopranos Barbara Hannigan and Keren Motseri, mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj, Cappella Amsterdam, and Asko|Schönberg under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw, will be available for purchase here in a few weeks.READ MORE
I’m back in gorgeous Aldeburgh for a Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme course on Strauss songs and arias. It’s a pretty wonderful way to spend a week–sleeping in absolute silence, waking up to sounds of gulls, working all day on subtleties of music and German with immensely skilled and generous people, making a quiet dinner, walking on a rocky beach, going to sleep. Yesterday, on our day off, we toured Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears’ beautiful brick house and studio and gardens and archive; standing in Britten’s composition studio, looking out at his apple trees which were his view when writing some of his late pieces, was very special.READ MORE
Last week, I unexpectedly replaced ill soloists in two unrelated concerts. The first was a Carmina Burana in the Concertgebouw on about eight hours’ notice, broadcast live on Radio 4 (and still available for listening), favorably reviewed in Place de l’Opéra. The second was a recital of Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt, Hahn, and Poulenc with pianist Tom Poster in the English countryside. Both were absolutely a delight.
Greetings from gorgeous Finland, where I am hiking, cycling, sleeping, sauna-ing, birdwatching, eating a lot of strawberries and salmon and rye bread, and generally letting the dust settle from this season. I’m also sifting my thoughts about high and low points and how I want to move forward; probably there will be a longer post about this later.
For now, though, there’s just a rowboat.
“Katharine Dain was an unusually youthful Marschallin, lovely in the Act One Monologue. At the close of the act, her line “…da drinnist die silberne Ros’n” with its arching high piano was beautifully done, as was the opening line of the Final Trio.” Musical Toronto, 12 June
Indeed, I’m “unusually youthful” compared to this role’s usual casting, although the character herself is meant to be close to my age. I hope this was the first of many chances to dive into this most beautiful of roles and operas–what a joy. Bravi tutti.
I’m in Toronto, and last night was Rosenkavalier dress rehearsal. I’m singing Marschallin in two concert performances with chamber orchestra this weekend, and the process of learning this monumental score has been overwhelming, joyful, fraught, thoughtful, stressful, beautiful—depends on which day you ask.
Tomorrow night is the first performance, and today is a rest day. I’m staying with some family who live just outside of town. What have I done so far today, after last night’s tiring rehearsal? I woke up late, talked to my husband on Facetime, went downstairs, ate breakfast, chatted with my aunt and uncle; but then, they turned on the TV to the live coverage of James Comey testifying before the Senate about his firing as FBI director. I stayed for five minutes of it, couldn’t stand any more, and fled upstairs. Intensely curious, I spent the next hour constantly refreshing the New York Times live commentary feed, avid to know what was going on but unable to watch.
“Soprano Katharine Dain’s delivery of the plaintive, tender melody, ‘Aus Liebe, Aus Liebe’, with flute accompaniment, held everyone spellbound and caught at precisely its right moment the sheer depth of a sorrow that would only be finally alleviated by the warm reassurance of the aria, ‘Mache dich, mein Herze,’ sung with robust conviction by impressive bass Brindley Sherratt.” Cambridge News, 12 April 2017
