Opera Boston’s Tancredi

Even though it was rainy and cold and a weekday I made it out to the last performance of Opera Boston’s production of Rossini’s melodrama Tancredi last Tuesday. The opera, his first serious opera and written at the ripe old age of 19, isn’t one of his greatest works: the plot is extremely far-fetched even by opera standards and the music oftentimes has an oratorio-like stiffness. The main draw for me and I’m sure many others was the Polish contralto Ewa Podles in the title “pants” role as an exiled soldier. Tancredi has become a signature role for Podles for good reason: her immediately distinctive, rich voice enables her to give the character a convincingly masculine portrayal, yet her voice is pliable enough to tackle Rossini’s coloratura with ease. I was familiar with her recording of the opera on Naxos (with the great Sumi Jo, who I’m a big fan of but who alas doesn’t perform in the US much), so I was looking forward to her live performance.

From her first appearance Podles commands the stage. She has a stage presence that no one else in the cast quite matched, and showed off not only her extensive vocal range (which, annoyingly, prompted the two men in front of me to wink and nudge at each other every time she hit a high or a low note) but her acting as well: her opening aria “Oh, patria” had a touching tenderness and her death scene was also surprisingly moving. At times her performance was more subtle than the orchestra’s (conducted by Gil Rose), although in general both were in full Rossini mode where little subtlety is required and instead in Tancredi we get a full dose of pageantry to substitute.

As you’d expect the various news rags around town disagreed about the performances of the singers. I agree with Jeremy Eichler’s opinion in The Globe that “Amanda Forsythe was a lovely, agile, and affecting Amenaide, even if her featherweight soprano naturally made for a lopsided pairing with Podles’s vast contralto.” Although Forsythe wasn’t able to keep the interactions between the two leads completely balanced, for the most part she did an admirable job and her prison scene was also affecting.

Although he sang well, I agree with Heidi Waleson at The Wall Street Journal and the reviewer for the MIT Tech that the tenor Yeghishe Manucharyan as Argirio, Amenaide’s father, had a nasal, pinched sound that was off-putting. Everyone seemed to agree that the baritone DongWon Kim, in the thankless role of Tancredi’s rival, was fantastic, and no one seemed to care for the production much, which was directed by Kristine McIntyre and featured a mostly bare set. I agree with Mark Kroll at the The Boston Musical Intelligencer, that the direction was too static and there was too much “park and bark” staging. Despite the dull production, two fine leads and two strong supporting singers made this one well worth seeing.

Cambridge Elections

I’ve got a couple of reviews in the pipeline, but this is just a quick post to say that the Cambridge elections are tomorrow. This Cambridge City Council elections are this year, and if you live in Cambridge you’ve probably already been inundated with all the various pamphlets and flyers for the candidates. wickedlocal.com has a site that includes a Q&A with all the Cambridge City Council candidates as well as the School Committee candidates. Go vote!

Historical Cambridgeport

Ech. Still haven’t gotten caught up enough to get out and about, but one thing I’ve been meaning to post about is The Cambridge Historical Society’s “If This House Could Talk …” event that happened a couple of weeks ago. I noticed the signs around my neighborhood and read them with interest, but I only recently got around to looking up the website and reading more about the event and the group. The signs were posted in front of houses and each included historical information or an interesting anecdote, and the event was part of a larger “Cambridgeport History Project”. I’ve been meaning to find out more about the area, and although I didn’t have time to track down many of the signs while they were still up, luckily the text of the participating addresses (or at least most of them) has been archived on the group’s website. I’ve been particularly interested in the architecture of the area, which has an unusually eclectic range, and if it weren’t so creepy I would take and post pictures of some of the more interesting places. But instead you can read about some of the styles represented and go visit the houses yourself. The text includes a range of interesting information, including an explanation for the mural near the parking lot of the local Trader Joe’s, and rekindled my interest in some of the local public areas, such as Dana Park, Hastings Square, and Fort Washington Park.

Speaking of the latter, apparently as part of the CHS’s celebration, the Fort Washington Park was rededicated. The CHS has some pictures up here. The website also has a great map highlighting historic Cambridgeport.

While I’m on the subject, I thought I’d also mention the Cambridge Historical Commission’s Historic Marker Program. If you walk around Cambridge at all you’re bound to come across one of the blue oval markers posted to commemorate historic events and places. The site has a list of all the locations and their text. Uh-oh. Checklists tend to bring out my OCD side … Must … resist … … …

Another season, and more conflicting concert dates!: BMOP and BMV’s season openers

The new season has crept up on me. I just realized that BMOP’s “Voices of America” festival, which includes Florestan’s BarberFest, is next weekend, at Tufts’ Distler Performance Hall (just a short walk from Davis Square ). For more info on the festival check out this preview at Boston.com and for a complete schedule see BMOP’s website.

I’m a big fan of Barber’s songs, and Florestan has tracked down “more than a dozen” of his unpublished songs, including what appear to be nursery song settings from when the composer was 10-13 years old. Many of the unpublished works seems to be scheduled for the second of their three concerts. Lest anyone fear this is purely an academic exercise, no, they are not performing Barber’s songs in chronological order. And also, although the majority of the unpublished songs are juvenilia, one just has to listen to his other early works that have been recorded, such as “With rue my heart is laden” (opus 2, from 1927 when the composer was only 17), to immediately realize that Barber was an assured composer at an extremely early age.

One of the connective threads between the two groups’ concert series (aside from the obvious fact that each BMOP concert is preceded by a Florestan recital) is that two of Barber’s greatest vocal works, Dover Beach and the much-beloved Knoxville, Summer of 1915 will be performed at BMOP’s third concert. Now the only problem is deciding which of the three pairs of concerts to attend. Too bad they didn’t offer weekend passes!

In reference to the title of this post, the first conflict of the season is unfortunately BMV’s first concert of the season, also this Friday. Alas, such is life.The concert includes the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s song cycle The Seven Ages.

Brunch in Central Square

I’ve been meaning to write up a post on brunches for awhile now. A is a big fan of brunch, so even though I’m not really into it (given the limited vegetarian options) we’ve checked out a lot of different places. Here’s a quick run-down of some places worth mentioning (in approximate order of preference).

At the top of the list for A (and not far from the top of my list either) is Tosci’s in Central Square (899 Main St.), yes the ice cream place. Although brunch is a small operation mostly focused on sandwiches, eggs, and pastries, the food is solid and they always have some version of pancakes for me which are actually some of the most enjoyable I’ve had as they’re not too heavy. The wait is generally not long because (for now) it’s still a lesser-known secret, although be forewarned that on holiday weekends brunch usually isn’t served. Also, although I don’t think I’ve mentioned it already, Tosci’s is by far my favorite ice cream place in Boston. Or anywhere for that matter. Here’s an interesting post about some of their more-unique flavors, from their website.

Next up, and just down the street, is Craigie on Main (853 Main Street). Craigie is much more of the complete brunch, and although it has a high standard, the two times we’ve been the presentation was a bit better than the actual food which didn’t quite achieve greatness. We both really appreciate its move to Central Square, and A finally made it over there for dinner and it was apparently just as good as we had hoped (although he went without me the jerk and I still haven’t been yet. So sad.) It gets crowded, but they take reservations.

Onto the second tier. Among the places that are perfectly serviceable but not really standouts is Plough & Stars (912 Mass Ave., between Harvard and Central Squares). We actually just checked it out for the first time last week, and although they didn’t have much in the way of vegetarian/vegan options the food was still pretty good.

Another place we checked out recently is S&S in Inman Square (1334 Cambridge St.). This place really feels like a well-oiled institution, and in that sense reminded me of Katz’s Deli in New York. The food is hearty; the waitresses are diner efficient; and the place is huge.

Cafe Luna (403 Mass Ave.), just up the street from Tosci’s, is another viable brunch alternative. They always seem to be packed when we walk by, and in the summer there were a lot of people sitting at the tables outside. The couple of times I’ve been they had musicians on Sundays, which made the small space even more cramped. I’m not a fan of live music for brunch, but it’s a nice alternative and I appreciate that its popularity keeps Tosci’s from getting crowded, haha.

Brookline Lunch (in Central, 9 Brookline St., a few steps away from The Middle East) is kind of dark inside and definitely on the slower, greasier side of food life, but it’s another viable brunch alternative.

At the bottom of the barrel of course there’s the afore-mentioned Miracle of Service (i.e. Miracle of Science). I’m also going to have to include Sunny’s Diner (7 Landsdowne St.). Although W has praised them on several occasions, the two times A and I tried to go we waited for more than 10 minutes without any acknowledgement that we were ever going to get even a coffee so we just gave up and left. Although brunch is a leisurely meal, there’s a difference between leisurely and complete lack of service, particularly when a place isn’t even busy.

And to wrap up, some places where the food is edible but why go there when you can go somewhere much better are Mass Avenue Restaurant (906 Mass Ave.), a greasy-spoon-type eatery, and Zoe’s (1105 Mass Ave.), which is less greasy and definitely better overall, but still hasn’t been worth a second trip for us. Both are in between Harvard and Central.

Looking over the lists of brunch places in Cambridge there are still a lot of places I haven’t been or haven’t been in a long time, so at some point I may make a sequel to this post. Reader, beware …

Comics, cartoons, and graphic novels in Boston

[Yeah, yeah, I know that I've been completely lax in updating all summer. Part of it is that there's just less arts stuff going on during the summer, and part of it is just me being busy (and lazy) and not making the blog as a priority. I'm still not sure how much I'm going to chain myself to the blog in the future, but I've got a couple of long-overdue posts lined up and I'll probably post more as the arts season gets back into full swing.]

This quickie post for today is focused on comics, etc. in Boston. I happened to come across a copy of a publication by a group I hadn’t realized existed, the Boston Comics Roundtable. They’re apparently a group of local comic writers and artists, and I flipped through their 3rd issue of “Inbound” and it looks great. Looking forward to seeing more from them.

While I’m on the subject, thought I would throw in a plug for a friend of mine (in Boston) who has been writing/drawing a pretty entertaining comic for a while now, called Wasteland Mega. The comedy is a bit twenty-something, Friends-esque, but it’s balanced by the constant thread of failure woven in for good measure. Here’s a sample of the latter, excerpted from the comic’s previous incarnation’s website:

unhelpful things to say to unemployed
-well what do you REALLY REALLY WANT TO DO?
-why can’t you just…do what you REALLY REALLY LIKE?

Ha ha. My favorite comic store in Boston (not to diss the other noteworthy stores, but I suppose my preference is partly because its location was so convenient to me for so many years) is Comicopia in Kenmore Square (464 Commonwealth Ave #13). They have a weekly mailing list with info on new arrivals, recommendations, as well as special offers. They stock a wide variety of books, including manga and indie comics, and a nice not-too-geeky-for-casual-comic-book-readers ambience. I also swing by Tokyo Kid in Harvard Square (in the garage, across the hall from Newbury Comics) if I’m in the mood for browsing manga specifically. Despite the name, Newbury Comics isn’t the first place you’d go for comics as they mostly just stock recent issues and popular graphic novels (and some manga); but they’re useful if you’re looking to one-stop-shop while you’re picking up music, video, or video games (and they’re great for used stuff).

Other noteworthy comic stores are New England Comics (various locations, including Brookline and Harvard Square) and The Million Year Picnic (also in Harvard Square). So check ‘em out, why don’tcha!

Two restaurant closings

Today was quite a sad day. A and I hadn’t been to Shilla in Harvard Square for a while, so we swung by for lunch. It was only after we’d sat down and ordered that we noticed the sign on the wall … and found out that after 23 years it’s closing its doors tomorrow due to having to give up their lease. In a previous post I’d mentioned that we were regulars there, and so of course this was incredibly disappointing news. The sign mentions that the restaurant directly up two flights of stairs, the relatively new Shabu-Ya, is owned by the same people and will feature some Korean items on their menu. I don’t hold out much hope that it’ll be much of a consolation, but we’ll definitely be checking it out.

In other restaurant closing news, Great Bay also closed, just a couple of weeks or so ago. It was sad to see it go, although we had observed its steady decline. One can only hope that new restaurants will help fill the void.

A lifelong dream realized: A trip to the Cape Cod Chip Factory

A couple of months ago I fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams: to visit the Cape Cod Chip Factory. I’ve been a fan of the chips ever since I first came to Boston (although I was heartbroken when they substituted their spicy barbeque flavor for a milder one), and I’d been intrigued by the promise of factory tours printed on the back of every bag. Although I’ve been to the Cape several times I’d never managed to fit the tour in, partly I suppose because they only run them during normal business hours (i.e. M-F 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), closed on weekends and holidays. But I finally made it, and now my life is complete.

Alas, poor reader, they don’t allow pictures of the factory itself. The pictures above are from the parking lot which has signs every few feet to lead potato chip pilgrims to the entrance. The tour is self-guided and pretty minimal: just a handful of signs with diagrams and explanations in front of the glassed-off area where the machinery is working. There are also various letters and photos framed from fans. It would take you a minimum of five minutes to get through it all, and even if you’re a chip aficionado like myself and want to soak in the atmosphere you’d be hard-pressed to stretch the tour out to much beyond 15 minutes. So it’s not really worth a special trip for the general tourist, although it’s certainly easy to get there on the way to/from the rest of the Cape.

You’ll also be able to milk a few more minutes out of the experience by perusing the gift shop (which we were allowed to take pictures of). Apparently the company runs an annual competition for local schools where the kids make dinosaurs out of chips:

Alsome. Anyway, if you’re looking for more info, check out their website. Also, I was somewhat surprised to find out they’re doing popcorn now as well. I bought a bag and quite enjoyed it, but I haven’t found anywhere nearby that carries them (if anyone has encountered them, please let me know!), although the Harvest Co-op in Central Square carries a wide selection of their chips. Mmmmmm. Time to go to the grocery store.

Thumbs up: Cambridge 1, The Red House, and Centre Street Cafe

Since it seems like all I’ve been doing lately is complain about restaurants, I thought I’d just throw together a quick post about some places that we’ve actually had good experiences at.

In contrast to the dismal service at Chris Lutes’ Miracle of Science (as recounted in the immediately preceding post), the service at Cambridge 1 (27 Church Street, Cambridge) in Harvard Square has always been friendly and attentive. The food is also quite commendable: a small menu featuring pizzas with robust flavors. The casual ambience (the back overlooks the peaceful Cambridge Cemetery) tops it off to make us happy to be regulars there. [Actually I just noticed that they opened a second location in the Fenway (1381 Boylston St, Boston) in August of 2007. The review in The Globe of the new location isn't too complimentary, although I agree somewhat that the quality of the food in the original location has gone down some since it first opened in 2002; but certainly not enough to put us off from going there.]

Last week was a week of exploring, and we hit up The Red House (98 Winthrop St, Cambridge), also in Harvard Square, for the first time. We went on a whim for lunch one weekday not expecting much, and we were pleasantly surprised. The food was much better than average: I had the artichoke pasta, which was surprisingly flavorful, and A had the “breadless club sandwich”, which turned out to be the insides of a club sandwich on four skewers. The service was great, and the dessert turned out to be a real find. We were torn between the tiramisu and the cake-like dessert with berries and red currants (and Chantilly cream?), but we chose the latter and it was easily one of the best desserts I’ve had in Boston in a very long time. We’ll definitely be making a trip back just for that. The reviews on Yelp are less encouraging and may indicate a lack of consistency, but we’re keeping our hopes up.

Lastly, A and I happened to eat at Centre Street Cafe (669A Centre Street, Jamaica Plain) two days in a row, once for brunch and once for dinner. The place is a small, casual, neighborhood restaurant that is completely unassuming but serves honest and unfussy food with friendly service. Such a place should be far more common than it is, and we were won over. If we lived in JP this would be a great place for a laid-back meal.

Just a sampling of some good meals recently. This post serves as a good reminder to myself that yes, there are still good dining experiences to be had in Boston, both old and new.

Miracle of Science = A miracle if you get served

Jumping to the top of the list of places to avoid like the plague is Miracle of Science (321 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) near Central Square. I used to go there a fair amount when I was in school, but I don’t remember the service being nearly as bad as it’s been for quite some time now. The slow and inattentive service has been so annoying for so long that I’ve been avoiding it more often than not, but last weekend was the last straw.

A and I went in last Saturday and there were only a few people already seated, so we were looking forward to a quick and easy lunch. But alas, it was not to be. We ordered, and then we waited … and waited … and waited. By the time we realized we’d been waiting for almost half an hour and noticed that the waitstaff and cook had just been pretty much standing around chatting all that time, we finally got up and asked what was going on. Some guy, who I presume was a manager or something, told us there’d been a mistake and they’d lost our order. When A pointed out they could’ve told us when they realized what had happened instead of just letting us wait even longer, rather than apologize or offer us some compensation the guy just got defensive and started blustering that it was “just a simple mistake” and that our food was on its way. Okay, I can understand a place that’s busy if it makes a mistake, but when there are three people handling waiting duties at a small place like the Miracle of Science and there are only three tables to attend to, I’d like to think that any half-decent place would notice if one of those tables was still waiting for their food. By that time we were ravenous, of course, and we just couldn’t be bothered to wait even longer, so we just got up and left.

It’s a mystery how service can be so bad in a place that otherwise has a lot going for it. The owner, Chris Lutes, also owns Cambridge 1 which always has fantastic service, as well as Audubon Circle. The food at Miracle is definitely not worth the shoddy service, and it’s too bad that this experience has tipped us over the edge since it’s pretty much fine as a bar. Maybe their main problems are with their lunch staff. But in any case we’re never going to go there again; there are more than enough places to go with good service that Miracle certainly won’t be missed.