Pork intestines (卤煮火燒) with dried tofu and bread wedges; tofu sticks
with celery. The soup offers hints of garlic, fermented tofu paste,
anise, and chili oil. Beijing.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Food: Pork intestines
Burger at Blue Frog
Place: Blue Frog, The Village at Sanlitun, Beijing.
Burger: The blue frog Burger, with cheddar cheese and bacon
Bun: sesame, warmed but not toasted
Architecture: bun, cheddar, patty, bacon, bun; all condiments on the side
Dressing: none. The patty was delivered medium with a hint of scorched butter and just
enough juice to moist up the gigantic and somewhat stale bun.
Admittedly, it was one of the better ground patties I've had in
Beijing, although the meat itself suffered from a general lack of
beefy tones. The bacon didn't jive with the rest of the stack as it
coldly curled up in its solitude, hidden from view (and from taste)
between the patty and the bottom bun. Blue Frog is a wonderful place
to hang out and chill and, in my opinion, makes a solid Americano --
but it isn't quite up to snuff as a legitimate burger joint.
Burger: The blue frog Burger, with cheddar cheese and bacon
Bun: sesame, warmed but not toasted
Architecture: bun, cheddar, patty, bacon, bun; all condiments on the side
Dressing: none. The patty was delivered medium with a hint of scorched butter and just
enough juice to moist up the gigantic and somewhat stale bun.
Admittedly, it was one of the better ground patties I've had in
Beijing, although the meat itself suffered from a general lack of
beefy tones. The bacon didn't jive with the rest of the stack as it
coldly curled up in its solitude, hidden from view (and from taste)
between the patty and the bottom bun. Blue Frog is a wonderful place
to hang out and chill and, in my opinion, makes a solid Americano --
but it isn't quite up to snuff as a legitimate burger joint.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Huaiyang Cuisine
White lion's head (清湯獅子頭) with napa cabbage; Yangzhou fried rice
(揚州炒飯: this is actually Cantonese, but recently "adopted" by modern
Huaiyang cuisine); braised shad (紅燒鰣魚); stir-fried shrimp (清炒蝦仁);
braised pork (東坡肉). Beijing.
(揚州炒飯: this is actually Cantonese, but recently "adopted" by modern
Huaiyang cuisine); braised shad (紅燒鰣魚); stir-fried shrimp (清炒蝦仁);
braised pork (東坡肉). Beijing.
97 Hong Kong! Dessert
Coconut ice cream with tapioca pearlets and freshly cut mangos. 97
Hong Kong! Dessert (玖柒港式甜品), Beijing.
This is an excellent place to grab something light and hang out with friends. Check it out!
Address: 北京市海淀区中关村大街19号新中关购物中心M楼.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Teatro Regio di Parma in Beijing
Teatro Regio di Parma, together with the National Centre for the Performing Arts, staged a stunning production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto this week, during Beijing's Opera Festival. In the early afternoon before Thursday's premiere, Beijing was darkened by rapidly-collecting rainclouds before finally sloshed with heavy rain, a fitting prelude to match the opera's penultimate, or the "Apollo", scene. Another random coincidence was that Rigoletto was first premiered at La Fenice, whose opera company was in Beijing just a week ago.
The stage was designed and produced by the late Pier Luigi Samaritani, who mixed traditional forms and structures with practical solutions of modern minimalism. His Sparafucile house was an elevated stage with a meticulous, castle-like exterior which ruptured laterally at an angle to reveal the interior. This opening worked perfectly, especially during the quartet, Un dì, se ben rammentomi, when the two pairs of characters were supposed to juxtapose vocally without physically being together. The Mantua palace was minimalistic but worked effectively, with plenty of open spaces for the noblemen and the Duke's ladies to jostle around. I'm generally not a fan of modern screens, but the use of a drop-down screen to separate Sparafucile and Rigoletto in the deal scene was effective because it helped to describe the seemingly conflicting notions of the two characters' actual proximity and the darkness that infinitely separated them.
Singing the role of the Duke was Francesco Demuro, whose voice was simply too lightweight for a hall as big as the NCPA's opera house. He was visibly and audibly nervous during La donna è mobile, where his high registers seemed completely forced, dry, and uncontrolled. His lower registers were tidy enough, but for an aria so frequently heard everywhere, tidy enough was not good enough. Demuro wobbled his final B5...with the subsequent applause short and, at least as it sounded to me, almost too unnecessarily gratuitous. As a side note, Demuro was audibly looser and more relaxed in his off-stage aria during Rigoletto's Della vendetta alfin giunge l'istante! recitative -- perhaps that was when the burdensome baggage of the famous aria was finally off his shoulders.
Gilda was sung by Désirée Rancatore, whose voice was bright and impassioned. In Sì! Vendetta, tremenda vendetta!, she hit her un-scored Eb6 with apparently little effort. She actually did it twice -- but I'll explain later. So it was slightly disappointing that she chose not to hit the dominating but somewhat frivolous "diva Db6" in the quartet. The only blemish in her voice was the world's difference between her high-range singing voice and her lower-range speaking voice. When she sang a passage that hit both ranges, she sounded like two voices combined in one -- sort of like listening to Hasselbeck and Goldberg bitch-slapping each other on The View (ok, maybe this was an unfair analogy, but I ran out of ideas as I wrapped up writing this entry at 3am). Felipe Bou delivered a solid Sparafucile, with a devilish playfulness during the deal scene and a forceful assertion during the Apollo scene. The rest of the cast was solid, including Francesca Franci, who blossomed with an abundance of molasses-like sassyness in the contralto role of Maddalena, and Roberto Tagliavini, who delivered a warm-voiced Count Monterone.
But the night, without a doubt, belonged to Leo Nucci. At 67, I had little expectation, especially given that my experience with José Carreras last year, then at 61, was less than completely satisfying. But Nucci was dominant from the get-go, with a powerful voice that permeated all corners of the opera house, and with spot-on acting that brought out the complicated emotions of the title role. His Rigoletto was complex, with alternating tinges of deviousness and compassion. His voice sounded best when the lighting was mostly off, or when he hid in an unlid portion of the stage -- that was where there was no visual distraction, thereby pushing his notes after notes of deliciousness to the showcasing center. With a convexly humped spine and a weather-washed visage, Nucci was the perfect Rigoletto: Nucci was Rigoletto as much as Rigoletto was Nucci. In Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, his impassioned display of paternal love and human fragility brought the entire audience to their feet. With a prolonged ovation, Nucci had to step out of his role to thank the audience and the orchestra, and deservedly, he seemed to relish that moment. Barely two bars later, he slipped back into his character, which he must have played a million times, as he made eye contact with Gilda and responded with:
That line radiated a quality of loving sentimentalism that befitted a Thursday evening just before Father's Day weekend.
I don't say this often, but this was definitely one of my favorite opera experiences. Nucci was hands-down my favorite Rigoletto, surpassing even Wixell in the monumental '83 production with Chailly/VPO, or MacNeil in the passionate '77 live recording with Levine/Met. When Sì! Vendetta concluded Act II, the audience's reception was so rapturous that Nucci, beaming with satisfaction, called upon conductor Donato Renzetti to encore the duet (that was also where Rancatore hit her second Eb6). When his voice began to speak Verdi's language, his enduring charisma had the entire audience on a tight leash. Ultimately, it was obvious why Nucci owned both the audience and the night.
The stage was designed and produced by the late Pier Luigi Samaritani, who mixed traditional forms and structures with practical solutions of modern minimalism. His Sparafucile house was an elevated stage with a meticulous, castle-like exterior which ruptured laterally at an angle to reveal the interior. This opening worked perfectly, especially during the quartet, Un dì, se ben rammentomi, when the two pairs of characters were supposed to juxtapose vocally without physically being together. The Mantua palace was minimalistic but worked effectively, with plenty of open spaces for the noblemen and the Duke's ladies to jostle around. I'm generally not a fan of modern screens, but the use of a drop-down screen to separate Sparafucile and Rigoletto in the deal scene was effective because it helped to describe the seemingly conflicting notions of the two characters' actual proximity and the darkness that infinitely separated them.
Singing the role of the Duke was Francesco Demuro, whose voice was simply too lightweight for a hall as big as the NCPA's opera house. He was visibly and audibly nervous during La donna è mobile, where his high registers seemed completely forced, dry, and uncontrolled. His lower registers were tidy enough, but for an aria so frequently heard everywhere, tidy enough was not good enough. Demuro wobbled his final B5...with the subsequent applause short and, at least as it sounded to me, almost too unnecessarily gratuitous. As a side note, Demuro was audibly looser and more relaxed in his off-stage aria during Rigoletto's Della vendetta alfin giunge l'istante! recitative -- perhaps that was when the burdensome baggage of the famous aria was finally off his shoulders.
Gilda was sung by Désirée Rancatore, whose voice was bright and impassioned. In Sì! Vendetta, tremenda vendetta!, she hit her un-scored Eb6 with apparently little effort. She actually did it twice -- but I'll explain later. So it was slightly disappointing that she chose not to hit the dominating but somewhat frivolous "diva Db6" in the quartet. The only blemish in her voice was the world's difference between her high-range singing voice and her lower-range speaking voice. When she sang a passage that hit both ranges, she sounded like two voices combined in one -- sort of like listening to Hasselbeck and Goldberg bitch-slapping each other on The View (ok, maybe this was an unfair analogy, but I ran out of ideas as I wrapped up writing this entry at 3am). Felipe Bou delivered a solid Sparafucile, with a devilish playfulness during the deal scene and a forceful assertion during the Apollo scene. The rest of the cast was solid, including Francesca Franci, who blossomed with an abundance of molasses-like sassyness in the contralto role of Maddalena, and Roberto Tagliavini, who delivered a warm-voiced Count Monterone.
But the night, without a doubt, belonged to Leo Nucci. At 67, I had little expectation, especially given that my experience with José Carreras last year, then at 61, was less than completely satisfying. But Nucci was dominant from the get-go, with a powerful voice that permeated all corners of the opera house, and with spot-on acting that brought out the complicated emotions of the title role. His Rigoletto was complex, with alternating tinges of deviousness and compassion. His voice sounded best when the lighting was mostly off, or when he hid in an unlid portion of the stage -- that was where there was no visual distraction, thereby pushing his notes after notes of deliciousness to the showcasing center. With a convexly humped spine and a weather-washed visage, Nucci was the perfect Rigoletto: Nucci was Rigoletto as much as Rigoletto was Nucci. In Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, his impassioned display of paternal love and human fragility brought the entire audience to their feet. With a prolonged ovation, Nucci had to step out of his role to thank the audience and the orchestra, and deservedly, he seemed to relish that moment. Barely two bars later, he slipped back into his character, which he must have played a million times, as he made eye contact with Gilda and responded with:
"Dio! mia Gilda!"
"Gilda, my daughter!" (my translation)
"Gilda, my daughter!" (my translation)
That line radiated a quality of loving sentimentalism that befitted a Thursday evening just before Father's Day weekend.
I don't say this often, but this was definitely one of my favorite opera experiences. Nucci was hands-down my favorite Rigoletto, surpassing even Wixell in the monumental '83 production with Chailly/VPO, or MacNeil in the passionate '77 live recording with Levine/Met. When Sì! Vendetta concluded Act II, the audience's reception was so rapturous that Nucci, beaming with satisfaction, called upon conductor Donato Renzetti to encore the duet (that was also where Rancatore hit her second Eb6). When his voice began to speak Verdi's language, his enduring charisma had the entire audience on a tight leash. Ultimately, it was obvious why Nucci owned both the audience and the night.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Modern Yunnan Cuisine
Shrimp salad with chameleon leaves and lemon vinaigrette (榄柠虾),
sauteed boletes with thinly-sliced baraniku beef (雪牛爆牛肝菌), scrambled
eggs with jasmine buds (蛋炒茉莉花), and grilled fish wrapped in banana
leaves (蕉叶烤鱼). Middle 8th (中8楼) at Sanlitun, Beijing.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Madama Butterfly
Beijing's opera season steps into high gear with Madama Butterfly, a co-production between La Fenice di Venezia and the National Centre for the Performing Arts. This marks the first collaboration between the two groups. Based on the fruits of their efforts, there is no reason why there shouldn't be more collaborations to come.
The production, directed by Daniele Abbado, featured a minimalist set that felt like a simple tesseract projected into our three-dimensional world. Puccini's characters would then move about in the inner cube. The set's simplicity was augmented with a thoughtful, albeit at times too cerebral, interchange of lighting colors. These colors were meant to emphasize the natural colors of Nagasaki's seasons and the more iconographic shadings of the libretto's mood. The stage sported a chessboard of translucent panels illuminated from below, pulsating with varying colors as the music motioned forward: brighter when the mood was light, and darker when the mood was sappy and subdued. Similarly back-lit translucent walls reflected mood and time of day. The rest of the stage was devoid of other props, except the presence of a table and two zabutons (for kneeling) which, in my opinion, rightfully paid tribute to the sort of minimalist furniture setup in traditional Asian theater (一桌兩椅).
Butterfly was the Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka: her Cio Cio San, emanating an air of fragility and natural bereavement, was spot-on. Her voice, like aged Burgundy, was sultry and round. Her upper registers were brilliant and brisk, albeit also slightly asserted -- the effect was, especially in softer passages, an audible, though not persistent, loss in command of dynamics control. More impressive, by comparison, was her natural beauty and fluid body movements, which readily seduced Pinkerton. During the love duet, Bimba, Bimba, non piangere, the two characters' beautiful, intertwining voices drew the audience to the edge of their seats and, at the moment when Pinkerton waxed poetic about Cio Cio San's intoxicating eyes:
triggered in me an emotional wildfire where my burning desire to jump on stage and be part of their tight embrace was only marginally suppressed by what remained of my rapidly-deteriorating self-restraint.
Pinkerton, sung by tenor Kamen Chanev, captured the character's shift from a vibrant, passionate lover to a dark, remorseful sinner. Sharpless was sung by baritone Simone Piazzola, who was comfortably solid and clear.
Daniela Innamorati, as Suzuki, had a solid stage presence that was commanding yet inoffensive. When Cio Cio San asked that all-important question in "Suzuki, Suzuki!", Suzuki's response, a soft "Si", evoked a whiff of inevitability and vulnerability that, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulated the climatic moment of the entire piece's storyline. Her Suzuki moved me in ways that many Suzukis in the past could not.
Conductor Nicola Luisotti kept the thrust of Puccini's melodic line in locomotion without caving into singers' preferred tempos, which, in the case of Madama Butterfly, were often slower and more drawn-out. During the mellow chorus, "Coro a bocca chiusa", Luisotti was respectful to the notation and spirit of the music, and led the orchestra into an idyllic, almost solipsistic sojourn. Less respectful was the audience, who managed to generate a fair amount of noise that didn't jive well with the ethereal fluidity of Puccini's passage. But as a whole, this Madama Butterfly, though not without inadequacies, was successfully executed and a well-deserved star of the opera season.
The production, directed by Daniele Abbado, featured a minimalist set that felt like a simple tesseract projected into our three-dimensional world. Puccini's characters would then move about in the inner cube. The set's simplicity was augmented with a thoughtful, albeit at times too cerebral, interchange of lighting colors. These colors were meant to emphasize the natural colors of Nagasaki's seasons and the more iconographic shadings of the libretto's mood. The stage sported a chessboard of translucent panels illuminated from below, pulsating with varying colors as the music motioned forward: brighter when the mood was light, and darker when the mood was sappy and subdued. Similarly back-lit translucent walls reflected mood and time of day. The rest of the stage was devoid of other props, except the presence of a table and two zabutons (for kneeling) which, in my opinion, rightfully paid tribute to the sort of minimalist furniture setup in traditional Asian theater (一桌兩椅).
Butterfly was the Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka: her Cio Cio San, emanating an air of fragility and natural bereavement, was spot-on. Her voice, like aged Burgundy, was sultry and round. Her upper registers were brilliant and brisk, albeit also slightly asserted -- the effect was, especially in softer passages, an audible, though not persistent, loss in command of dynamics control. More impressive, by comparison, was her natural beauty and fluid body movements, which readily seduced Pinkerton. During the love duet, Bimba, Bimba, non piangere, the two characters' beautiful, intertwining voices drew the audience to the edge of their seats and, at the moment when Pinkerton waxed poetic about Cio Cio San's intoxicating eyes:
"Tutta la tua tribù e i Bonzi tutti del Giappon
non valgono il pianto di quegli occhi cari e belli."
non valgono il pianto di quegli occhi cari e belli."
"Your family and priests in Japan
are not worth the tears from your loving, beautiful eyes." (my translation)
are not worth the tears from your loving, beautiful eyes." (my translation)
triggered in me an emotional wildfire where my burning desire to jump on stage and be part of their tight embrace was only marginally suppressed by what remained of my rapidly-deteriorating self-restraint.
Pinkerton, sung by tenor Kamen Chanev, captured the character's shift from a vibrant, passionate lover to a dark, remorseful sinner. Sharpless was sung by baritone Simone Piazzola, who was comfortably solid and clear.
Daniela Innamorati, as Suzuki, had a solid stage presence that was commanding yet inoffensive. When Cio Cio San asked that all-important question in "Suzuki, Suzuki!", Suzuki's response, a soft "Si", evoked a whiff of inevitability and vulnerability that, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulated the climatic moment of the entire piece's storyline. Her Suzuki moved me in ways that many Suzukis in the past could not.
Conductor Nicola Luisotti kept the thrust of Puccini's melodic line in locomotion without caving into singers' preferred tempos, which, in the case of Madama Butterfly, were often slower and more drawn-out. During the mellow chorus, "Coro a bocca chiusa", Luisotti was respectful to the notation and spirit of the music, and led the orchestra into an idyllic, almost solipsistic sojourn. Less respectful was the audience, who managed to generate a fair amount of noise that didn't jive well with the ethereal fluidity of Puccini's passage. But as a whole, this Madama Butterfly, though not without inadequacies, was successfully executed and a well-deserved star of the opera season.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Yuja Wang at the NCPA: a house of flying daggers
Yuja Wang is undoubtedly talented. Her debut recording, Sonatas and Etudes, with DG, provides an early glimpse of what the 22-year-old pianist is capable of: her technique is feisty but confident, while her attacking style is relentless but controlled. When her two hands propel onwards, her piano notes fly off my loudspeaker like a swarm of flying daggers.
But her concert on June 4 at the the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) showed nothing of that promise. Her concentration was clearly absent at the beginning, when she moved a quartet of Scarlatti Sonatas with an air of banality and seeming indifference. She seemed more at ease and warmed up, albeit marginally, by the time she began Brahms' 28 Variations on a Theme by Paganini. In Book I, she managed to sustain a slow but steady build-up, with the final few variations blossoming to life. But that was when the evening took a dramatic turn. Her Book II was unsentimental, and for some unspoken reason, Wang, having seemingly lost her steady tempo, began a mad dash to the finish in a way that felt unnecessarily rushed. After the intermission, she played a lackadaisical Chopin Sonata No. 2 that was adequate on the surface but devoid of any passionate resonance -- it was almost as if Chopin's score was scanned into the music machine and reconstituted, via digital MIDI, in mechanical verbatim. The evening's final, programmed piece was Stravinsky's Petrouchka, which she played by the book but lacked the kind of playfulness often expected from Stravinsky's piece.
I certainly came to the concert hall expecting something great from Wang, but her performance tonight was anything but. Overall, she seemed to have used her sustain pedal just a tad more than she needed to, thereby rendering a night that felt more like a syrupy Monet when, given the programme's flavor, it should really have been a crisp van Eyck. More troubling was a very audible (at least to me) imbalance between a stronger left and a weaker right hand throughout the evening -- something that was clearly not an issue in her debut recording. Her last two encore pieces showed not the kind of pianist Wang could be (I believe she could be much more than displayed tonight) but should be (at least for this particular evening in Beijing): a dexterous, flamboyant artist who not only can show the [predominantly Chinese] audience a good time but can have a good time herself. Her rendition of Rondo alla Turca a la Volodos was energetic and colorful, while her Flight of the Bumble Bee was spontaneous but unflushed. It was these last two encores where the flying daggers hit their intended targets, and brought the half-sold-out audience to their feet.
But her concert on June 4 at the the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) showed nothing of that promise. Her concentration was clearly absent at the beginning, when she moved a quartet of Scarlatti Sonatas with an air of banality and seeming indifference. She seemed more at ease and warmed up, albeit marginally, by the time she began Brahms' 28 Variations on a Theme by Paganini. In Book I, she managed to sustain a slow but steady build-up, with the final few variations blossoming to life. But that was when the evening took a dramatic turn. Her Book II was unsentimental, and for some unspoken reason, Wang, having seemingly lost her steady tempo, began a mad dash to the finish in a way that felt unnecessarily rushed. After the intermission, she played a lackadaisical Chopin Sonata No. 2 that was adequate on the surface but devoid of any passionate resonance -- it was almost as if Chopin's score was scanned into the music machine and reconstituted, via digital MIDI, in mechanical verbatim. The evening's final, programmed piece was Stravinsky's Petrouchka, which she played by the book but lacked the kind of playfulness often expected from Stravinsky's piece.
I certainly came to the concert hall expecting something great from Wang, but her performance tonight was anything but. Overall, she seemed to have used her sustain pedal just a tad more than she needed to, thereby rendering a night that felt more like a syrupy Monet when, given the programme's flavor, it should really have been a crisp van Eyck. More troubling was a very audible (at least to me) imbalance between a stronger left and a weaker right hand throughout the evening -- something that was clearly not an issue in her debut recording. Her last two encore pieces showed not the kind of pianist Wang could be (I believe she could be much more than displayed tonight) but should be (at least for this particular evening in Beijing): a dexterous, flamboyant artist who not only can show the [predominantly Chinese] audience a good time but can have a good time herself. Her rendition of Rondo alla Turca a la Volodos was energetic and colorful, while her Flight of the Bumble Bee was spontaneous but unflushed. It was these last two encores where the flying daggers hit their intended targets, and brought the half-sold-out audience to their feet.
Maison Boulud
Foie gras terrine, pâté, and seared foie gras with morchella; white
asparagus with dijonnaise and soft egg yolk; Lobster with boletes; the
ultimate db burger. 23 Qianmen "Legation Quarter", Beijing.
Rating: 1 star to the restaurant for its terrific food, great atmosphere, and professional waitstaff.
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