Broadway, Chopin and opera

Barbara Cook held the packed house at the Mahaiwe in the palm of her hand Sunday night. Looking and sounding years younger than her octogenarian status, she delivered deeply felt accounts of songs by Rodgers (with lyrics by both Hart and Hammerstein), Arlen and Harburg, Wilder, and Sondheim. Backed by a fine trio headed by pianist Andy Einhorn, she roamed the stage without sitting for 90 minutes despite knee problems.

She interspersed the songs with witty, dry remarks about her colleagues on Broadway that often convulsed the crowd. Midway through the evening she sang a soaring version of “This Nearly Was Mine†from South Pacific; as far as I could tell, the Mahaiwe was completely hers from start to finish.

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson comes to our neighborhood in the next few days. One of today’s finest musicians, he took Warsaw by storm in 1970, becoming the first American to win the International Frederic Chopin Competition. Other honors followed, including the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and a Grammy. On Aug. 20 he will play the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto under Lawrence Foster as the Philadelphia Orchestra heads into the home stretch at Saratoga this weekend. Good tickets still available at spac.org.

And next week Ohlsson brings two programs of Chopin to Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. Reached by phone at his San Francisco home, he said, “Chopin wrote melodies that actually surpassed the bel canto masters, but he supported them with a Bach and Mozartian contrapuntal mastery that no opera composer at the time dreamt of.†This will certainly be evident in the Impromptu, Op. 36 and Two Nocturnes Op. 27 on the bill Aug. 24 at 8 p.m., along with the complete Preludes, of which Ohlsson says, “If some catastrophe were to befall our civilization and all of Chopin were destroyed except the Preludes, we’d still have virtually all of him. It shows every facet from the most exquisite melodic, to the most aphoristic, to the most demonic intensity.†The Aug. 26 program includes the B Minor sonata and the E major Scherzo.

Complete details and remaining tickets at tanglewood.org.

It’s well worth the not-quite three hour drive to catch Handel’s magnificent opera “Tolomeo,†at Glimmerglass. There’s phenomenal singing by the five-member cast, particularly Julie Boulianne and Joélle Harvey, as well as counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. Primarily a sequence of solo arias with the plot advanced by duet recitatives, the music is inspired, keenly sensitive to the text and finely accompanied by a small orchestra. This first American-staged production is hampered by Chas Rader-Shieber’s preposterous direction that repeatedly undercuts the feeling of the music and pulls focus from the singers for the sake of gags and endless bits of scenery shifting. One more performance on Aug. 23 at 2 p.m. Copland’s lyrical opera, “The Tender Land,†fared better visually, and offered the young resident company a chance to show their stuff, with beautiful performances from soprano Lindsay Russell and Andrew Stenson. Remaining tickets for these two operas, plus “Tosca†and “The Marriage of Figaro†at glimmerglass.org or (607) 547-2255.

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