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Musical highlights across North America richard Croft: reprises his role of Gandhi in Philip Glass’s Satyagraha neW York Metropolitan opera Siegfried (October 27 – November 5) Satyagraha (November 4 – December 1) Faust (November 29 – January 19) November at the Met brings three composers, in two new productions and a revival. Robert Lepage has demonstrated through the first half of his Ring cycle a great deal of technical pomp and flash. With Siegfried, arguably the most romantically involved of the four operas, Lepage’s ability to mine the human aspects of Wagner’s immortal characters will be tested. Tenor Gary Lehman, who made his Met debut in 2008 with a commendable Tristan opposite Deborah Voigt, reunites with Voigt once again as the Siegfried to her Brünnhilde. Also returning to the production are Bryn Terfel and Eric Owens, reprising their roles as Wotan and Alberich. James Levine conducts.

Propelling forward some years is the revival of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, an exquisitely meditative work exploring Gandhi’s time in South Africa. Tenor Richard Croft reprises his role of Gandhi, one for which he shaved his head and shed 10 pounds, accompanied by a crowd of elaborate and large-scale puppets courtesy of Phelim McDermott. Traditionalism

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and modernity collide in the Met’s other new production for November, Gounod’s Faust. The work that opened up the original Met in the 19th century gets a World War Two–style makeover by Des McAnuff. The dazzling conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes on his third Met assignment and his third new production for the company, leading an opening-night cast that features soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite, Jonas Kaufmann as Faust and René Pape as the devilish Méphistophélès. www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/

hoUston houston grand opera Fidelio (October 28 – November 13) Would it be somewhat of an overstatement to dub Karita Mattila the Leonore of our generation? It’s no small claim. But each era has had its outstanding exponents of the role (as we can tell from fine recordings by the likes of Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson and Gundula Janowitz) and Mattila’s bashful yet steadfast portrayal of a woman bent on rescuing her husband more than holds its own. The Finnish soprano takes her signature role to Houston in Jürgen Flimm’s stark, contemporary staging that still retains the soul of Beethoven’s opera. Like Mattila, Flimm’s Fidelio has been making the rounds since it opened at the Met 11 years ago. Simon O’Neill sings the role of Florestan, Leonore’s imprisoned husband. A high-calibre group including Tómas Tómasson as Don Pizzaro, Kristinn Sigmundsson as Rocco and Kyle Ketelsen as Don Fernando, round out the cast, led by Michael Hofstetter at the podium. www.houstongrandopera.org toronto opera atelier Don Giovanni (October 29 – November 5) While a new production of Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s amorous work takes New York by storm at the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Atelier presents its own stylised take on Seville’s salacious goings-on. Co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg direct and choreograph this periodspecific production conducted by Stefano Montanari and with the Tafelmusik Orchestra in the pit. Last seen with Opera Atelier as the Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Canadian baritone Phillip Addis sings the title role. Meghan Lindsay, Peggy Kriha Dye and Carla Huhtanen play Donna Anna, Donna Elvira and

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Zerlina, respectively. Adding to the testosterone on stage are Vasil Garvanliev as Leporello, Lawrence Wiliford as Don Ottavio and Curtis Sullivan as Masetto and the Commendatore. www.operaatelier.com

Washington, DC national symphony orchestra Oliver Knussen and Peter Serkin (November 3-5) Conductor Oliver Knussen taps into ornithology for an evening of modern works. The NSO gives its first ever performances of Messiaen’s Le réveil des oiseaux, a work that epitomises the composer’s own obsession with birds and birdsong, drawing entirely on the musical language of these creatures for the length of the work. Knussen takes a look at another key figure of 20th–century music in Igor Stravinsky, performing the Suite from The Firebird, which culminates in a glorious French horn–infused finale. In between these two monumental works is British composer and Messiaen protégé George Benjamin’s Duet for piano and orchestra, a work that was originally commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and featured Pierre-Laurent Aimard in its premiere. Here, equally modernist pianist Peter Serkin takes to the keyboard. The programme kicks off with another work for which Knussen has been a tireless champion: Sean Shepherd’s exhilarating Wanderlust. www.kennedy-center.org

ChiCago Chicago symphony orchestra Handel’s Water Music (November 3-6) Les Violons du Roy founder Bernard Labadie and its organist Richard Paré may be too hot to handle. Labadie has established himself as one of the most sought-after interpreters of Baroque works, receiving the Juno Award in his native Canada both for his recordings of Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Mozart’s Requiem. Paré is equally busy in his home province of Québec as a harpsichordist, organist and a founding member of the baroque ensemble La Band. However, this Olympian pair is never too hot to Handel, offering a threesome of the composer’s First and Fourth Organ Concerti, performed on Symphony Center’s house organ, and the royal barge party work, Water Music, here played in its entirety by the CSO under Labadie. www.cso.org seattle seattle symphony Isabelle Faust (November 3-6) Even if her name didn’t hint at any Goethean overtones, Isabelle Faust has a particular flair for the Germanic Romantics, offering several recording salvos by composers such as Brahms, Beethoven and Schumann. Due to what one cheeky critic deemed a “devil-may-care attitude” when it comes to marketing, Faust has begun to assert both her presence and her pure technique stateside in light of a prodigious career that began in her home near Stuttgart. Faust brings Schumann to the Emerald City for the composer’s mystical Violin Concerto. Written for virtuoso Joseph Joachim at a time when Schumann’s mental and spiritual capacities were diminished, Joachim donated the manuscript and stipulated that it should not be played nor published until the centennial of Schumann’s death in 1956. A séance in the 1930s, however, put Joachim’s grand-nieces in touch with Schumann and Joachim, who both said that the work should be performed. An otherworldly concerto meets an ethereal interpreter in a program that also includes Bruckner’s Symphony No 7 in E major, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. www.seattlesymphony.org

Isabelle Faust: brings schumann to seattle san FranCisCo san Francisco opera Carmen (November 6 – December 4) With a warhorse like Carmen, it helps to have a winning cast. San Francisco Opera adds a few more trophies to its shelf with a quartet of vocalists both musically and physically poised to inhabit Bizet’s timeless characters. Mezzosoprano Kate Aldrich, who has gained steam with her, well, steamy portrayal of Carmen thanks to the Metropolitan Opera’s new production, returns to Seville in San Francisco. Last heard in SFO’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam returns to the Bay Area to tango with the role of Don José, earning stiff competition in Tony laureate baritone Paulo Szot, making his company debut as Escamillo. Promising young soprano Sara Gartland sings Micaëla. Conducting this revival production from José Maria Condemi and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle is Nicola Luisotti. www.sfopera.com neW York gotham Chamber opera Dark Sisters (November 9–19) London saw Muhly mania this past summer with the world premiere of the composer’s first opera, Two Boys, a whirligig ride combining a police procedural with some serious nods to Benjamin Britten. The production will reach the Metropolitan Opera in the 2013-14 season. Prior to that New Yorkers get a taste of Muhly’s operatic chops with the world premiere of his second dramatic vocal work, Dark Sisters. Identity comes into play here as it does in Two Boys, this time pinning the theme to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous sect in the Southwestern United States whose compounds were raided twice in 1953 and 2008, creating severe consequences for the children of these multi-wife marriages. For this production, Muhly reunites with 59 Productions, turning the entire stage into a fully animated space with projections, news footage and desert textures. www.gothamchamberopera.org toronto toronto symphony orchestra Lang Lang Plays Beethoven (November 9-19) Not one to shy away from showmanship, pianist Lang Lang descends on Toronto for a cycle of Beethoven’s five piano concertos.

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