The overall performance was adequate. The cast seemed to bring a certain enthusiasm and devotion to the work, heightened by the intimate setting of the black box. Ultimately, however, the great pains that were taken by the cast to give La Rondine its due respect ended up being the downfall of the show. But for this I blame Puccini and his entourage of librettists (A.M. Willner, Heinz Reichert and Giuseppe Adam). The weak plot of nostalgic yearning for spontaneous romance without the treachery and blood and guts cannot be heightened by Puccini’s masterful compositional hand. The problem is that the music attempts to elicit the dramatic effects that one finds in Madama Butterfly or La Bohème without the plot or lyrics to sustain the music. Overall, it seemed as if the entire cast was dedicated to pull the drama out of the opera as much as possible. However, some surprising original moments seemed to go beyond the pedestrian script. Prunier the artist/poet (played by Patrick Massey) sang of love and romance as a new trend (especially among Parisians) with a nuanced irony and self-consciousness that leaped out of the music and lyrics. In the second act, at Bruiller’s night club in Paris, the men’s chorus did a delightful job of fawning over Magda (the lead female role, played by Mary Johnston). She gave the stand-out performance of the night. Despite her weak characterization of a role that was already weak before the show began, her voice soared in her upper register and was clear and declamatory in the tessitura. Johnston was the only vocalist who had the ability to stay with and, at times, rise above the dramatic orchestral swells.

So, if you want high drama and an intriguing plot, La Rondine is not the right opera. But, if you want to just listen to mostly beautiful music and enjoy it intimately, it might just work out, but not without following these suggestions: Don’t read up on the plot of the opera, don’t read the program notes, and don’t even think about reading the English supertitles. I guess the beauty of opera is that there is a potential for the music to stand on its own, separated from the quotidian libretto.

C.A. Gentry, an Arizona native, is a composer and piano teacher in the Boston area, where he resides with his wife, son, and dog.

The Cecilia, under the baton of Donald Teeters with Barbara Bruns at the organ, excelled at interpreting the works of Woodman. His music is grounded in a highly tonal sensibility with some extended harmonies that colorfully enrich the text. Furthermore, his text setting seemed to be of a different age, like many of the Renaissance composers, where the marriage of text and music are intricately bound together by a cohesive understanding of implied and explicit meaning. And the Cecilia beautifully portrayed these intricacies. Whether it be the stark transitions of homophony to heterophony to polyphony in Divinum Mysterium, or the concluding text of The Midwife’s Tale; where the words “child, born of sunlight, radiant, laughing, perfect, eyes flashing lightning!” seem to effervesce from the choir as if being spontaneously contrived as an act of creation or genesis. Which, incidentally, is the essence of the text and message conveyed by Woodman. And this is probably where the concert should have ended.

Yet, there are obligations to be met when it comes to Christmas concerts: carols familiar and new, foreign and native. This is where the Cecilia lost some of its luster. Besides the cursory mistake in the program that categorizes Silent Night as an English carol, not Austrian/German, other parts of the performance were not as compelling as the first half. Most of this came from the 16th-century Spanish carols. There was a certain amount of awkwardness with the singers who were simultaneously playing percussion instruments while singing. There were several times, especially in Rìu Rìu Chìu, where it was hard to find the beat in the music and Teeters (with the tambourine) would bring things back together. The Spanish pronunciation seemed a bit muddled throughout as well. This ambitious program probably could have used some trimming, most of which could have been a lot of the last half. It is great to see, however, that in its 134th season, the Boston Cecilia is dedicated to performing works of living composers. Yet, it is a precarious path to navigate a balance between performing what is familiar (especially with Christmas music) and premiering what is new.

C.A. Gentry, an Arizona native, is a composer and piano teacher in the Boston area, where he resides with his wife, son, and dog.

In the spirit of this continual exhibition and refashioning of Beethoven, the Muir String Quartet played an all-Beethoven concert on Wednesday, October 21,  (part 3 of an ongoing cycle of all the Beethoven quartets). This daunting task of performing a canon of such complexity and significance requires the obvious skill and expressivity that ensembles such as the Muir possesses. Not so obvious, but also unsurprising, it requires careful programming. Even though this becomes somewhat ancillary to the actual performative aspect, it deserves some commentary. The Muir Quartet doesn’t fall into the teleological trap of going from beginning to end as a way to display the evolution and progression of Beethoven’s style over time. This has programmatic problems, especially for those who take preference of one Beethoven stylistic period over another. Rather the Muir carefully crafted a cycle where each concert is an encapsulation of all the stylistic periods of Beethoven without the chronology. This concert exemplified such; going from the whimsical humor and classicism of his early period (No. 3 in D Major, op.18/3) interstitially connected with foreshadowings of irreverence and unrest. Then, the late period’s nostalgic meanderings into and troubling re-fashionings of older forms (“Grosse Fugue” in B-flat Major, op. 133) couched in a style that teeters incessantly between chaos and order. And lastly, a flashback into the middle period as represented by a mature and confident voice of a seasoned and troubled master whose craft (No. 7 in F Major, op. 59/1 “Rasumovsky1”) is securely fastened together by surprising, but intentional treatments of classical form. Not to mention, any of the Rasumovskys tend to be crowd favorites (as indicated by the humming of the cello line of the first movement by at least three or four audience members in my field of hearing).

In addition to this clever programming, the Muir accomplished something else: an embodiment of the group dynamics involved in collective music-making. Each movement of each quartet was carefully shaped and choreographed. Even further were the moments within movements, whether it be the dramatic moment near the end of the exposition, in the first movement of op. 18/3 where all the players dramatically disappear except for a line sustained by the cello, or the sinuous rawness of the second-to-last section of the “Grosse Fugue,” where all of the players dramatically swash-buckled their bows in unified exuberance. And then, there was one of the most arresting moments of collective cohesion from the whole concert where (in the second movement of the Rasumovsky) the whole quartet backed away to make room for one gentle pizzicato shortly before the movement is concluded. This was pure genius on part of the quartet. That single pizzicato, played by the first violin seemed to take the audience by complete and utter surprise. Yet, in the midst of this hyper-self consciousness as a collective and unified instrumental body, there were moments where individuals were allowed to poke through — like when the haunting theme in the third movement (Adagio molto e mesto) of “Rasumovsky 1” (String Quartet No.7 in F Major, Op.59/1), appears out of the texture. It is here where Peter Zazofsky, first violin, pulls it off deftly but without melodrama. Yet his presence as the leader is made clear. Or, throughout the concert, the cellist, Michael Reynolds cleverly negotiates between a supportive background player to a forthright foreground soloist (i.e. the notorious first movement of the Rasumovsky). Each player moves in and out of the roles created by the music with a creative flair that surprisingly, yet satisfactorily re-imagines this icon we call Beethoven.

Addendum: The Muir Quartet will continue its Beethoven on January 20, 2010 at 7:30 in the Tsai Performance Center on Commonwealth Ave in Boston. Click here for more details.

C.A. Gentry, an Arizona native, is a composer and teacher in the Boston area where he resides with his wife, son, and dog.