I liked it so much I fixed the line breaks

Look what a treat you're in for: a guest blogger who doesn't share my basic ignorance of almost everything!

He Who Blogs from the Left Coast has saved me from blogging about...I don't even know at this point, blogging about the guy down the other end of the office singing a Sinatra tune as he filled his bottle at the water cooler. (He was fine. Which is to say: I wasn't really listening but he's kind of handsome.)

HWBFTLC has this to say:

Okay, Mr. D'Annato, I don't have to tell you how much I respect John Adams as a composer. I mean, who else writing operas right now has such a recognizable voice, such a combination of sonic complexity and emotional directness? Such a marriage of grand gesture and tiny detail? And the music of A Flowering Tree is filled with both sublime gestures and beautiful, intricate detail. Like the tree itself, depicted by a maze of sparkling string harmonics. Or a passage in which the three percussionists all played shakers or maracas of various sizes, layering their rhythms on top of one another like a dance heard from a distance. Or the contrabassoon, bass clarinet, and trombones playing closely interlocking parts like the calls of enormous bullfrogs. Or the end of the second act, simultaneously overwhelming in it sheer force, and disarmingly understated in its refusal to dwell on the climax achieved.

So that's the good news. The bad news is that the libretto is so wretchedly awful that almost every time I started to pay attention to the works, I wasn't able to think about the music at all. The problem begin at a fundamental level: maybe you've notices that one of the things that opera does really well is let characters express their internal emotions in periods of song-like reflection. We call these arias. They tend to be parts we go back to listen to. On the othe hand opera is really bad at prose narration (unless maybe if it's Wagner and probably not even then). Those are the parts we tend to skip over. So surely, at some point in the process of conceiving, writing, composing and revising this opera, someone could have said: maybe it's not the brightest idea to write an opera that is two and a half hours of almost uninterrupted parlando recitative narration...

And then there's the words themselves. Again someone must have noticed that some of the lines were... odd? Cliché? Hoaky? Unsingable? "My arms had the grace of the bamboo..." "[He was] like an elephant, after eating certain leaves..." "She massaged her chest with the stump where her arm had been..." STUMP?! I wanted to reach out to the supertitles with gigantic red pen and edit. More specifically, the libretto needed to find a tone and then stick to it. One moment we hear, "Was this the bliss I wed you for?" and the next minute, "She tried, but she couldn't, she couldn't..." (And in addition to the jarring tone, the would "couldn't" sounds really dumb when sung operatically/.)

Here's a more elaborate example: in one of the very few actual aria-type moment, when the two lovers express their sadness at being apart, the Prince sings

Four parts of the day I grieve for you
Four parts of the night I'm mad for you

How many different ways is this bad libretto writing? First, I have no idea what it means. Four parts... out of four? Out of twelve? What? Second, you may be surprised to find that when sung, the line sound a lot like, "For parts of the day I grieve..." Which is amusingly insulting. Thirdly, it's telling, not showing. My fifth-grade creating writing teacher told me that was a bad idea, for some reason. AND, grieving and madness aren't exactly the day/night opposition the lines seem to require. AND it's just plain hackneyed.

Hey! I wonder if I could write some better lines?

From dusk to dawn my eyes are red with weeping;
From dawn to dusk my hoarse throat cries your name.

I just came up with that off the top of my head just now. It's not even very good, and still sort of cliché. But it is better, right?

Have you already guessed that Peter Sellars wrote the libretto? Well, technically the libretto is credited to Peter Sellars and John Adams. Why is Adams so devoted to that horrible little man? What does Adams think that Sellars can provide? Has he not noticed that for the past two decades all of the worse aspects of his pieces are Sellars's fault? Okay that's a bit of an overstatement, but still... Mr Adams, get some new collaborators! HIRE A FUCKING POET.

Sigh. There was some singing too... You know how Framtracker.com sometimes plays a game called "Who you wanted, who you got," where they guess who filmmakers originally had in mind for a particular role? ("Harrison Ford isn't available? How about Dennis Quaid?") Well... Did you want Dawn Upshaw? Perhaps we can interest you in Jessica Rivera? This sounds like an insult, and it shouldn't. She's a good singer. She has a piercing top, and interesting diction. She just sounds a lot like Dawn Upshaw, is all I'm saying. The bass Eric Owens sang and sang and sang his wordy talky chatty narration, giving me nothing I feel like I can actually judge his voice with. Russell Thomas was fine. Good, even.

Oh I give up. There was a great big standing O at the end, which just made me sadder. Did I mention that the orchestral music was terrific?

Fucking Peter Sellars...

Triff noch einmal!

Oh life in New York. Listen, some of you out there must be terrible drama queens (well it's an opera blog, after all) and must want to help me come up with a way to wreak Medea-like havoc upon a broker. I hardly need say more than that: brokers, well...come the revolution, they should be shoved up the ass of whoever's first against the wall. If brokers were an opera character, they'd be...instant opera-quiz question in a box: who's the lowest of the low? (Psychoanalyze as you will, my mind raced first to Germont.) Anyway mine has lied to me like it's going out of style and caused me unbelievable stress, so if anyone has excellent ideas involving fire ants and honey--nevermind, Texas reference I think--or knows where to pick up a poisoned diadem of an at-this-point-very-aged Princess of Colchis (now Mingrelia, in Georgia. It all comes back to Georgia.) drop me a line. Or if you're a real estate attorney looking for your pro-bono hours, drop me a line too.

Onegin Afterthoughts

It has been noted that Dimitri Hvorostovsky professes being bored with the role of Onegin. Which is exactly why he is the perfect Onegin.

I snagged his aria on the broadcast the other day with some intention, if I can figure out how and it's not illegal, of posting it and Lisitsian's reading.

Rumor has it the next run will include Mattila and Hampson, which means Very Mixed Feelings here at MFI. Although...

I watched a DVD of Macbeth, possibly my favorite Italian opera, this weekend with Thomas Hampson. He actually sounded pretty good and his fussy acting seemed to have found a good use. Plus it was overshadowed by the very fun over-the-topping of Paoletta Marrccu, who's singing it in DC this Spring (the reason I 'flixed it.) Maroccu doesn't have the world's easiest time with the role, but she doesn't sing it like she's saving herself for a matinee of Boheme the next afternoon, and that's the #1 qualification for singing Lady Gruach. #2 is not sounding like she sang a matinee of Macbeth earlier in the day, and she doesn't, particularly, though she doesn't reach the early Dimitrova standard of a 1:1 ratio of florid and mean. Anyone who's heard her in-house should feel free to tell me exactly how excited I should be. Measured in, um, International Excitement Units. 0=how excited I am about coming to work tomorrow; 10=end of Bush administration or Podles/Klytemnestra.

This didn't end up being very much about Onegin but I'm sure you've figured out by now not to put much stock in my subject lines, or what's beneath them.

Oh wait, I'll add this to bring us back to Onegin: earlier in the week I was asked to recommend a translation of Pushkin's novel in verse. It's a subject I have a hard time not talking to strangers in the street about. In googling around for the spelling of Falen (not Phalen) I found Wikipedia's Onegin page, which has many useful links, including this article by Douglas Hoffstadter in the New York Review of Books (yeah, I'm ordinarily not smart enough to read the NYRB) that talks about the various translations. Naturally enough I am very rah rah Hoffstadter because his predlictions are mine pretty much. Short version: read Falen, avoid Johnston, and don't even dream of going with Nabokov, whose translation is an exercise in snarkyness, or more accurately a novel-length rhetorical gesture on themes of "poetry can't be translated." (Well, it probably can't. But if you don't think so, go stick pins in moths or something and don't waste our time with your unreadable drivel. You might as well have translated it into binary while you were at it.) It's said the accompanying volumes of commentary are extraordinarily enlightening, but I'm sure they'd sit happily next to Falen on the shelf.

Notes in passing

My lovely lad got me a copy of Popp's recording of Daphne, long out of print ("Out of print?" you cry! This fact proves two things: 1) there is a god, and 2) he's an asshole.) The only small trouble here is the first time I listened to the closing scene, on LP, I finished the record, took it off, and semi-promised myself I would never listen to it again, or at least not for twenty five years, or maybe on my death bed. It's been something like twelve years and it seems like a promise worth breaking. Thanks, Boris.*

In other news, someone got tapped as one of the Best Gay Blogs and then gave gracious a nod to some of us other gals! His blog is just a wee bit Not-Safe-For-Work right now, if you're thinking of clicking over and your boss is hovering behind you looking for the Penske file.

Here's good tidings: a bunch of the Lebendige Vergangenheit series is on itunes. I just bought Supervia's oddball Presentazione della Rosa, if that's what you'd call it. I may be guilty of excess extrapolation here, flinging oregano at English words if you will.


*name obviously fictional

A Dumb Idea

I'm not actually sure it's a dumb idea. The title of the post was more a reaction to how every time anyone writes something they think is a little bit edgy they call it "A Modest Proposal" and every time they do, I shoot myself a little.

So I was thinking on the subway...City Opera always seems to be scheming to leave the State Theater, as they should, and real estate is cheaper in Brooklyn, as it should be, and also, too (they say that in the Midwest. "Also, too." Not kidding. I lived there. You can even start a sentence with it. Most of those sentences end with "and what-not.") one of the target audiences involved in the project of opera not dying in twenty years is getting the young 'uns into it. Are you seeing where I'm going with this?

Brooklyn! It's filling up with Young People With Money! First it was Park Slope, then Fort Greene, then Red Hook (p.s. we're not counting Williamsburg-now-Bushwick because those kids would only go if they staged an ironic singspiel on the works of Devo) and really I think if you plunked down an opera company somewhere in downtown Brookers, the crowd that goes to BAM might go. And what-not.

p.s. Happy Schmutz Wednesday! It's the holiday where Maury wants to walk up to random people in the street and say, "Eh, you got some...some schmutz on your forehead!"

Casting Rumors of the Damned, Part II

JSU has hinted at further Norma horrors over at Met Futures. I'm afraid to look.

He's also mentioned, however, that we're (Jesus, finally!) getting Radvanovsky in Trovatore. It seems to me at this point a house seems a little provincial if it hasn't showcased her Leonora, so I'm glad to hear it. [ETA: hey was anyone getting nostalgic about my glaring factual errors? No need, I'm back in the game! Giorgio gently points out my mistake: R has already sung the role here. I just didn't hear it, because the acoustics aren't that good when my head is up my ass.]

You're not going to believe this, but I sat here for ten full minutes trying to make up a casting joke about Thomas Hampson but they were tending toward the mean and unfunny, and the policy here at My Favorite Intermissions is generally: if you don't like it so much, just don't go, so I'm leaving it alone.

False Advertising

I was going to, but we only ended up staying for half.

Wrong mood, wrong night of the week, wrong production, wrong baritone, kinda.

Positive comment: Gheorghiu projected better than in Traviata.

Negative comment: Hampson crooned the end of the big duet, embarrassingly so.

Sorry!

Encores, etc.

Lucas Rhonn has elbowed me gently in the side to prompt a wee review, y'see. I meant to write one anyway but if you can imagine a steamroller going over a tube of tootpaste, ok see and now the steamroller is my job and the toothpaste, naturally enough, is the human spirit...

Yeah, just woke up, the metaphor center is still operating on a skeleton crew.

Actually first things first. Exhibit #17,923 in the Opera=Mental Illness file is that I was very graciously invited to Onegin last night, demurred on account of I've gone so much lately that opera is just part of the weather...and then everyone said the word "Jenufa" a little too much on Saturday morning, and I realized I'd miss her when she's gone, and I surreptitiously slunk up to standing room after all.

It's impossible to stack the performances up against one another at this point...I feel like I may be making it up if I say Mattila was extra-intense and Silvasti extra-pretty, but of the, um, four I went to, it was certainly one of the four best. Well, fuck me, but they were all great.

This one did have Jay Hunter Morris in for Raymond Very as Steva, and if I had to hand out little soccer trophies, yeah, he'd probably get best Steva. Voice has a bit more presence and probably "face" than Very.

Also we did this thing I haven't done in nearly a decade: we went to the stage door. One has mixed feelings, of course. Getting closer to your beloved star is purely illusory, and except in certain rare instances, is a little disappointing once you do it. You don't want to be one of the OONY sorts that thinks the person emerging from that door is dying to hear your opinions on what s/he should sing next and so forth, but it's also a little bit of a letdown to let the moment go exactly as it should: hand over the program, say "Thank you," and maybe "We came to hear you four times!" or some little compliment, and step aside, unless otherwise engaged by the star in question. (Some people, like say Voigt and Menzter, are quite gregarious. I think it's not presumptuous to chat when the person signing the autograph initiates.) I indulge myself insofar as saying thanks in the star's language if I know it, and that's as close a step as one ought to take to the daydream wherein Madame Cantatrice says, "oh, you're from Antarctica, too?" and the two of you go off and have tea and after that it's all phone calls and birthday cards.

Anyway, we did it because we had in fact gone four times and a souvenir seemed appropriate. It's idiotic to report on it because singers would be well within their rights to skip the whole thing, so a word or two will suffice. Silja, after many years no doubt of doing this, is warm and funny. Someone said how nice it was to hear her at the Met and she said grandly but with umistakeable humor, "After fifty years, they discover me!"

Silvasti was in a rush but sweet and self-effacing. "Four times? Wasn't it too much?" He was off to Zurich, he said, flight in three and a half hours. Barbara Dever was surrounded by a little entourage but made time for everyone and seemed perfectly pleased to do so. Jay Hunter Morris was charmingly Southern and stopped for a minute to tell us about the excitement of getting the call to show up. I know, it's weird: I'm reviewing people offstage. If anyone had been chilly or thrown anything at me, I would've left it out. Frankly, we were thinking it would be an honor, in a way, if Silja murdered or even just threatened us a little.

Mattila, one has heard, will not be seen until she looks perfect, and emerged last in a crazy fur hat. And announced what she's singing next season. Well, she's probably not too worried anyone's going to fire her for it, but just the same it seems like bad etiquette to blurt it out here when it was a casual answer to someone's question backstage. Check out Met Futures--it's probably on there. She has a grand manner about her, a little aloof which god knows is understandable given some of what was standing around in the cold to breathe on her. Seriously, people really get up in a singer's bidness with their video phones and such. I'm not trying to be superior here...I mean, yeah I am, a little...I think it's just bad manners and kind of icky.

...which leaves me about twelve minutes to think of what to say about Follies, because I have a luncheon appointment, I do.

Well first off, cross your fingers the Broadway-bound rumors are for real, because it was a very good time. Apparently Donna Murphy will be busy when they're talking about doing it, which is a big drag, but life goes on.

The Encores series is billed as unstaged, I think, or semi-staged. Keep in mind that I've never seen Follies before, so I may not know my ass from my elbow, but this seemed as staged as it would need to be, being (as it is) set in a somewhat imaginary space. I mean, the first part is set in a theater, but in light of the second part, which is set I suppose in the inner lives of the four protagonists, the whole thing takes on an air of unreality, not much reined in I suppose by the fact that people periodically start singing. Yes, yes, I know. That happens in all musicals. I haven't completely lost my own negligible grasp on reality. I'm just saying in this particular instance, with the semi-staging and stuff, it was extra dreamlike.

Especially when the plum role is that of a woman for whom the line between what's in her head and what's out of it is not extra-special thick. That's Sally, played here by Victoria Clark, who could not have been much better. The show's greatest number, by my reckoning, is "Losing my Mind," which she sang by an imaginary stage, curtains descended from above and a spot, as if holding a little nervous breakdown cabaret in her head. It was at once elegant and terribly sad.

Donna Murphy, as I have implied, was also terrific, and I went in with not the very highest expectations since I was the person who didn't really like her that much in Wonderful Town. I don't know her music as well, but there's a certain cred you get just for making it through the Jesse & Lucy song, sort of like "Getting Married Today" in Company. Her dancing is also spectacular.

The men were not quite on the same level. Victor Garber, who I'm afraid I'll always think of as a tight-lipped secret agent and a really lousy father, was maybe the best actor up there, but the singing is of that "extremely good for an actor" variety more than something I'd want to judge by the barroom, benzedrine standards of this voice-obsessed blog. Um, also, I know he's basically my dad's age, and I always get squicked when people (usually women, come to think of it) go on about how hot Sean Connery is, in fact I'm feeling a little nauseated just typing it, Victor Garber kind of slightly lights my fire. Michael McGrath as Buddy I simply didn't care for that much, but I also don't think it's as good a part as the others.

Christine Baranski got the number everybody loves: "I'm Still Here", complete with the couple of verses that get clipped because nobody gets the references. I'd been watching Yvonne de Carlo a bunch on youtube after she died and I discovered she was the original Carlotta, and Baranski took a different approach, one I generally liked. She didn't come out of the gate belting, let the first half of the song warm up to the balls-out Broadway stuff. This would have been a particular success had the climactic belt of "heeeeeere!" not fallen in a weak or worn part of her voice, or had she not had a dry throat, or whatever happened, but it did, and though it was no Behrens at Tanglewood moment, it let the air out a little.

Mimi Hines, from whom I don't know, was Hattie, who gets to sing "Broadway Baby!" and did so with a great sense of fun. Lucine Amara was Heidi, who sings a duet with her younger self, and it was neat to get to see her, though time and years of faithful service have not left her with a lot.

And I'm done, I think. Longest. Entry. EVAR!

Boccanegra on Monday? Oh, probably.

Bookmeme

Tagged by Alex, to whom my hat is still off for the phrase "pureed diction":

The game: pick up the nearest book, turn to page 123, and copy the 5th, 6th and 7th sentences. The result:

There are cultural variations in the degree to which it is considered desirable to tolerate separation. It is important to differentiate Separation Anxiety Disorder from the high value some cultues place on strong interdependence among family members. The manifestations of the disorder may vary with age.

Brought to you by the florid quill of the American Psychiatric Association. Shame nobody's thought to set the DSM to music, so poetic are its lines.

I'm tagging Burns, Meretrice, and greg from the ol' comments section, which requires all of them to start blogs.

Too much to blog

Ow, my aesthetics are chafed.

It's the week of too damn many performances. Later tonight is the now very well-reviewed Follies at City Center, which depending on how much my job does or doesn't trample my spirit tomorrow, I'll write up a little then. Tuesday was the final installment of Tom Stoppard's fluffy soap opera The Coast of Utopia which was too overwhelming, in itself, to blog though the last part is certainly the least memorable.

Yesterday I took the train to New Brunswick to see a run of I am My Own Wife that's ending its run and anyway le tout New York saw it a few years ago. Tragi-comic story there, I went through the TKTS line twice intending to see it and, at the last moment, decided instead to see 1) the overrated revival of Wonderful Town, but more forehead-smack-inspiringly 2) Stephen Belber's enormously ill-advised Match, in which Frank Langella delivered a lyrical paean to cunnilingus, as I seem to recall through a haze of mortification. I mean, we're all in favor of it, but...

So that leaves Jenufa last night, about which I've already expended verbiage--add only, here, that Forst was really marvellous but both because the one-off cast change produced a less cohesive feel and because everyone's ears are (remarkably) tuned to the color and scale of Silja at this point, it felt like less than it was. Oh and Silvasti was, if possible, even more wonderful than the other two nights I heard him. He's the center of the production, for me, it turns out, despite the caliber of his collaboratrices.

And Onegin.

Onegin was a fine time and I think you should go. Which is not exactly practical advice since either you have a ticket or you're S.O.L. The big question on the minds of people I talked to was: is this going to be a winner for Fleming or a continued slide down the slope. The letter scene as delivered about a year ago at Carnegie wasn't much of an indicator. Which was actually an indicator.

Tatiana was a mixed bag for The Beautiful Voice. She was a bit underpowered, but sang with real fire in the last act, the kind we sometimes miss in her mannered, well-mannered accounts of certain roles, and recall fondly in older essays. The letter had a kind of spontanaeity, but...the energy I long for here is nervous intelligence, kind of like Dessay brings to pretty much everything, if that makes things clearer at all. That's who Tatiana is, in the novel: she's this girl who likes to read and probably gets told to cheer up a lot and goes off the deep end a bit when she meets someone totally not from her hick town. This is not Fleming's long suit, this restlessness, which is not to imply she's not smart. The very pleasant news is that she sang many notes at one fixed dynamic, adding to my theory that she doesn't have to make every note a little concerto when she's busy concentrating on things like palatalized t's and dark l's.

Not for nothing, wouldn't it be great if the Met had a soprano with native Russian who was really pretty, could look girlish or regal, and whose acting got a lot of raves, and whose voice had in recent years had gotten quite plummy to the point that her Puccini was a lot more enjoyable than her bel canto, suggesting an ability to be heard in the loudish final confrontation where Chaikovskii's Tatiana is considerably less composed than Pushkin's? That would be downright habit-forming.

Anyway they did hire a native for Onegin. Not doing so would almost be crazy--like do you remember that film of Othello some years back with Irene Jacob as Desdemona and it pretty much didn't work? Pushkin, chopped up as we may find him chez Chaikovskii, is something you want delivered by someone who is not reciting phonemes. Hvorostovky is such an obvious choice in this. He's not quite handsome but extremely interesting-looking, and his vocal suavity and the hint of coldness about him are Onegin in a nutshell. Additionally, he sings the fuckity fuck out of Onegin's splendid, introverted, better-than-the-tenor-aria aria.

Vargas is kind of a favorite of mine but Lensky, not so much my favorite role. He was at his best in the aria, and moving elsewhere I suppose. The less said about his lady love, the better, strange to say given the phalanxes of able mezzos out there. Olga isn't the brightest bulb, but if there's no mystery at all about her, the romance with Lensky plays as farce, and that's no good.

All I have to say about the conducting is: Gergiev/Obama '08.

Seriously, he really gets it.

Oh, um, I've seen Follies now, but this is getting longsome. So maybe tomorrow. My goal for this week is to avoid culture altogether. I may go so far as to read The Post on the subway tomorrow.

Begone, veil of secrecy!

Fine, fine, Oberon. I'll post a picture of me.



D'oh! Not me after all. I've succumbed to the call of catblogging, like Alex Ross. Contrary to visual evidence, Dora the Cat is not available for purchase at Zabar's. She is simply doing her impression of a chocolate babka.

p.s. yeah that little program insert says what you think it does. Dora is a whore for 90's musicals.

If You'll Pardon the Autobiography...

You've heard this one before, but you're not allowed to stop me.

The first time I had any inkling my life was about to be hijacked by a large building in the West 60's (though verily I didn't know the West 60's from the West Indies at that point) was around 1990. In the car. I was driving home from whatever effort I had made on a Saturday to stave off the suburban soul-death of high school, and the radio was on, and it was Der Rosenkavalier. I wouldn't get Strauss for a couple of years, but the crazy, pesky little chords that play as Sophie and Oktavian are singing about how goddamn much they like each other flipped some kind of switch, for better or worse. And then I proceeded to go batshit mad for opera, first La Traviata, then anything with Callas, and on and on. And sometime in the middle of college I knew with grim resignation that I was going to have to go to the Met.

I did so in 1997. This here story is feeling like it's about to get unusually autobiographical, and geographical. Maybe it will. I just got the latest issue of The Atlantic--you're bored, you can borrow it.

I think I had just quit a job, and I drove to Beaumont, Texas, as one does. Spent the night in a friend's worn but also lovely house on the Bayou, sleeping among the victrolae. And then to Montgomery where I stayed with the first person I ever...well, let's get back to opera. I drove on to Charlotte, dropped my car off with my sister, and took the train to New York. Yes, it was all out of fear of flying, but it's a hell of a way to see the country, and a hell of a way to arrive in New York. And it feels more like a pilgrimate if you're going to see one eminence of the stage do her thing, so that's worth doing, too.

Stayed with a friend who sings a fine Wotan. He was in law school at NYU and I hadn't an idea of New York so I thought: I wonder if I'm going to get mugged around here, which now is pretty funny. Mugged by Meryl Streep maybe. We walked from NYU to Lincoln Center, stopping at Carnegie Hall so he could give me a backstage tour. He didn't work there but he said if you went down this one hallway and looked like you belonged, you could look out onto the stage or even go out onto it. So we talked really loudly about James Levine and did just that.

On the walk up, another devastating addiction was initiated: Academy Records.

Oh, hm. It's not really possible to digress from something as utterly meandering and pointless as this, so I'll just quickly mention that I also saw Dixie Carter do The Master Class with surprising conviction and Stockard Channing (with a young, hot Frederick Weller) in a Little Foxes that didn't quite gel. And went backstage to have Ms. Channing, who is actually Ms. Stockard, sign a copy of Six Degrees of Separation--the only thing I've ever stolen!

I had a ticket for a non-cycle Walkuere, because this pilgrimage was largely meant to land me at the hem of Deborah Voigt's garment. Voigt and Domingo were doing their Act I show, and Janis Martin was in for Eaglen, which is probably why I was able to score a ticket, and I guess James Morris was there, the beginning of my many years of almost exhausting indifference to him. I had listened to Wotan's Farewell plenty of times and knew it was meant to put her, not us, to sleep.

I had bought my ticket on rec.music.opera from someone I met briefly at intermission who told me her favorite tenor was Bjorling, pronounced Beejerling, which kind of amused me and also let me feel superior because my Swedish is so world-renowned. I was 23 and kind of a putz. She seemed nice.

Oh wait, the point. My friend Wotan and I walked all the way up the day before, and while we were up there, we decided to see if there was standing room for whatever was playing that night, and there was, so I made an unschedued Met debut. The opera that night was Evgenii Onegin, performed by Galina Gorchakova, Vladimir Chernov, a pre-awful Franco Farina...Arkhipova was making her laughably delayed debut as a touching Filipevna and Michel Senechal pulled something off I'd never heard as Triquet, a pianissimo that reached the back row and pinged off the gold paint. Gorchakova hadn't blown it out and was pretty and convincing as Tatiana, young and grown up. Carsen's immaculate production, I believe, was premiering, and there was some consternation about the way he staged the Polonaise. I still think it's a stroke of genius.

Afterward, following instructions from rec.music.opera, I went backstage to have the singers sign my program though I didn't really know of them, to speak of. I asked someone: will Ms. Gorchakova be signing programs? Yes, they said, but she doesn't speak much English. And thus was my entire college education justified. (Well, not really. I've always maintained that reading Onegin in the original is the only real reason to go to the trouble of learning Russian.) She was friendly and pleasant, flattered me by asking, when I said "I'm a student of Russian," "Student, a ne uchitel'?" A student, not a teacher? There's a picture of me with her. I look thin.

I bring it up at all because tomorrow night is my 75th trip to the building in the West 60's, and they're so kind as to indulge my nostalgia, putting on the very same opera.

A dream come, oh, about half true

As subcribers now know...

Opera fans at Lincoln Center will at long last hear Barber's Vanessa again (yay!) and with Lauran Flanigan in the title role (ZOMG TEH YAYS!), but they will have to take a left turn as they walk onto the plaza and hear it in the piss-poor acoustics and aesthetics of The Little Company that Sometimes Could (Um...yay, ok, better than nothing.) Katherine Goeldner, whose Orlofsky we did admire at the other house on the block, will sing Erika. I forgot who the others are, actually. Anne Manson conducts.

The rest of the season seemed like pretty standard fare with here and there an interest-piquing cast member like Beth Clayton (as Carmen.)

Hey it's not immoral or illegal or anything for me to pass this info on, is it? If I get a cease and desist email I will perform both verbs promptly. Which, considering that I tend to slag on the company, I could hardly kick about.

Casting Rumors of the Damned

We hear...that Anja Silja, buoyed by raves for her Kostelnicka, is having one last fling at Salome, replacing Karita Mattila in the next run. Not one to do anything halfway, she's sticking with Ms. Mattila's costuming choices for the dance.

Well, that idea fizzled out pretty quickly. I started to make up a lot of over the top fake casting rumors, but my heart wasn't really in it.

Instead, for lack of better until Onegin (which by the way will probably be my 75th opera at the 'politan. It was also my first. I love it when the universe lines up that way) I thought I'd share a meaningess anecdote entitled: How I found my Bravo. It's a coming of age story of the lowest order. Gather round the fire, young'uns.

Sometime around 1998 I was taken, by someone who otherwise did rather little to earn my love or respect, to a benefit concert given by the Opera Orchestra of New York in Alice Tully unless I mean Avery Fisher but I think I don't. This was actually the occasion upon which I realized I don't, um, like a certain kind of opera queens all that much. The fellow next to me, friend of my benefactor, sat through Alessandra Marc's In Questa Reggia exclusively so he could hiss, the moment the music stopped, that Nilsson did it better. And so I killed him, barbecued him, and served him on paper plates to all of my friends.

Anyway.

Semi-benefactor took me because Ghena Dimitrova was singing and he knew I worshipped the ground she Bulgarianly trod upon. Ghenadammerung sang, let's see, she sight-read her way through the Aida catfight with Millo. She was Amneris, in glasses. It wasn't extraordinary, though it was good fun to see them battle over who could be more frumpy in a very glamorous scene. But then she sang La Luce Langue and oh my god, I am so pissed off that she's dead. It was a pleasure if not an honor to hear, and afterward we went backstage and I gave her some incredibly cheap looking flowers and said to her in not very good Bulgarian, "that was very lovely music." She chuckled, if you can imagine that, and stroked my cheek. Like Marcia Brady, kissed by Davy Jones, I have not washed it since. Well, a couple of times, on special occasions.

Also she signed my LP of the Italian recital, not the weird Puccini one with her hilarious Mimi and O Mio Babbino. I'm afraid to look, because like an idiot I had her sign it as it was, sealed in plastic, and I'm afraid perhaps it's faded entirely. Plus I can never play the record, even if I could get my turntable working.

Rewind a little, though. Well first rewind a lot so I can establish clearly what's so great about GD, which is that her voice could wake the dead. Not just the volume, but the bandsaw edge. But it wasn't a big godzilla stomping through Tokyo voice like, say, Guleghina--it really hung together when she was in the mood to make it do so.

Notably she was not always. There are Normas from Houston where she can't be bothered with the high notes and approximates other stuff, then one from I think Rouen where she's just simply a dream. There's a story that Stratas and whoever the tenor was visibly rolled their eyes as she sang Turandot, or maybe that's a story about Gwyneth Jones, come to think of it. That was how she was I guess: sometimes she lunged half-heartedly at the monstrous roles that were thrust upon her and sometimes she casually conquered them. To hear her studio Abigaille is to understand why it wrecks singers and why they try it anyway. Somehow she was not wrecked.

But that's not where I was going, at all in fact. After her big aria was done, I clapped 'til bones were broken, but didn't do anything more. Knowing my Ghenaphilia, semi-benefactor said "aren't you going to brava?" I muttered something about not having a good voice for it and he said, and was right, that you really owe it to your diva.

I am, believe it or not, very awkward at certain things. Oh, you hush. I can't dance to save my life, I can't make that "woo" noise one makes at football games or the Letterman Show, which is fine because I don't go to either, and when I yell bravo, it doesn'ts ound convincing. Only lately I think it does, more, and I think it was a matter of having the conviction to do it.

I mention it because I was screaming like a ninny at the recent Jenufa, and it felt good, because they deserved it.

This Just In: Waiting for the Barbarians in Austin

Friend of many years and Austin correspondent Lucas Rhon brings you this account of an operatic premiere:

Maury, I saw Philip Glass' newest opera, Waiting for the Barbarians on Saturday night. It had a very good crowd, not sold out, but quite substantial. This work should be required presentation at all of the opera companies is the USA. Its message is so pertinent to the situation the USA now finds itself as a result of Bush's Middle East policies. The book was written in 1980 and the idea and composition of the opera were all pre 9/11; while it was not conceived an an anti-Bush work, it certainly can fit like a glove today.

There has been all sorts of reaction to the work. A friend that works at ALO told me one woman called and said she was returning her tickets because the opera was anti-Bush. The caller was told that the work predates the Middle East situation and was finished before the invasion; the woman would still not come to see it. But last night the upper balcony where I sit was full; the company is selling rush tickets to UT students beginning about two hours before the performance and the students certainly took advantage of them last night, and they did not leave at the intermission. The story is so compelling and with the clear diction of the singers plus the titles it was an engrossing work and evening.

The work was first presented in Erfurt, Germany, in September, 2005. The production designed by George Tsypin and the stage director, Guy Montavon, were imported from Germany for this USA premiere. It is a stunning work. Glass' signature underpinnings have developed from his earlier compositions and in this work they are a perfect accompaniment to the text by Christopher Hampton; the vocal line is of the 'sung speech' nature: not a high C to worry about. To sum it all up: it ain't Puccini, but first class Glass! Sorry you could not be present.

Two of the original creators, Richard Salter, the Magistrate, and Eugene Perry, Colonel Joll, recreated their roles. The important part of the Barbarian woman was sung by Adriana Zabala and Wilbur Pauley was Joll's officer who does the dirty work! Richard Buckley conducted magnificently. The work is really stunning and the audience gave it very prolonged standing appreciation at the end. To see what the Barbarians went through with imprisonment and torture was horrifying enough but then there are the contemporary parallels which cannot be put out of the mind. The work is about 2 and a half hours in length. The first act is about 75 minutes and the last about 60. Time just flew by. I saw two performances and had to miss the dress rehearsal because of the icy weather situation we had on that night.


There was a symposium on the opera two weeks ago; Glass was present. He is very articulate and could be very amusing too. I had seen him eating at a restaurant, Kiev, 8th and 2nd Avenue, in NYC on several occasions in the past. On my last visit, the restaurant had been redecorated, the prices raised, and the food quality not nearly as good. At the reception after the symposium, I told him this little story and he immediately said the Kiev was now closed and the place to go now was two blocks up the street at 10th and 2nd Avenue; I will check it out on my next trip. I cannot recall the name of the approved eating place but it does have a Slavic name.

***

Thanks, L.R., and keep us posted. ALO really matured from a regional-feeling house to something more during my seven years in Austin. Late in my years there, they presented a memorable, very well-staged Chenier, and these days they get some distinctly non-regional singers. p.s. we suspect Mr. Glass' culinary haunt is Veselka, home of many happy fried potato products.

And now Menotti

Dead at 95.

A story that sticks with me is that Menotti, while writing the libretto for Vanessa, told Barber that he wasn't able to write words without imagining music as well, so there was a whole other Vanessa by Menotti. Much as I love the Barber version, it's intriguing to imagine maybe he remembered it or even wrote it down someday, put it in a trunk...

Recommended listening: Inge Borkh's heavily accented account of "To This We've Come" from The Consul. I don't know a lot of Menotti, but that's a wonderful scene.

Farewell to a great fellow Texan

Molly Ivins has left us to fend for ourselves. Anyone who writes anything should mourn the loss.

In the first few weeks after 9/11 when almost everyone was a hysterical mess, I remember the relief of reading Molly and thinking: well, at least someone's not lost her mind. I actually emailed the contact link on her column once to urge her to run for president. It was a fanboy gesture, but fueled by a sincere fantasy.

This, more than any of last year's spate of operatic losses, feels like losing a friend, and maybe harder to take still, a protector against the worst.

ETA: As the day wears on, I'm coming to find people without a Texas connection don't necessarily know who she was. Suffice it to say: a columnist, a no-bullshit liberal, an intense intellect almost problematically unable to indulge in self-importance or pretense, a riotous wit, an American in an individualist sense now mostly consigned to history. I realize this sounds over-the-top. What can I say?

I want a name with a circular diacritic

--o
Maury


I understand if I were on a Mac that would actually look real and be easy to do, but you know what? My ipod is a piece of crap, itunes is infuriatingly proprietary and makes me upgrade to a thousand features I won't use every few months, and their ads are smug in a way that rubs me wrong. So despite the fact I think identifying with macs OR PCs is a little loopy, I'm not rushing out and buying a Mac just so I can type diacritics. So there. Take that.

Oh, that's right. This is supposed to be about opera. Conveniently, I've just been to see the shockingly undersold revival of Jenufa at the Metrupulitan. Fuck, again that would only work with diacritics.

We're talking only-one-section-sold-out undersold. Big red stripes of velvet visible in prime orch. And this is odd considering Jenufa is from its first note to its last, operatic perfection. Now, I know. Aesthetics are subjective, no matter how many classes you took at Yale. No matter how much I hate it, The Piano is never going to be objectively a bad movie. But I can't shake the feeling, listening to it all these years, in a studio apartment with no furniture in Texas or a car driving between Ann Arbor and Detroit or half asleep with a fever in Brooklyn, that it is this chunk of Janacek's unconscious mind, where all art springs from (well not all art from his, but stick with me) lifted out into the light, without the translation that waters down most creative acts. The fun thing, as Jonathan pointed out, is that because it is thus, and because it's also in some way forbidding, the crowd you get is really invested in it. J says, in fact, and I'm wondering if he might post about this, that at intermission, you hear solitary opera fans, in line for a scotch, humming little hidden semi-melodies from the opera.

Like maybe Laca's confession to the foreman that he loves Jenufa, which is the first place in the evening my heart stopped. Yes, it is almost stupid how many good tenors the 'politan (oh, just for variety) has on its roster. A year ago, I casually told someone there were ten tenors singing there I'd be happy to hear any night, and when challenged, I rattled them off without too much thought. Some of them are duplicates in a sense--I'd love to hear Beczala again in Rigoletto. Or Villazon--and some have a niche. Jorma Silvasti is just a little bit special, I think. It's not just the fast vibrato, either. It's...what that you say? Shut up and tell you whether Silja sank or swam? Well, alright then. (But Silvasti, really. I'm telling you.)

Reactions were mixed when Silja was announced for this revival. Deborah Polaski, for one thing, was extremely "on" last time around, and though her voice is worn, she is not 400 years old like certain other people. Some ten years ago, when she was 390 but to be polite everyone was saying 389, Silja sang Act II with Roberta Alexander and the Philadelphia Orchestra at I think Carnegie, and it was (as termed by Dawn Fatale at intermission) "decrepit diva heaven." An unqualified success. Last night was not a succes d'estime. It was a triumph d'estime. You had to take it for what it was, and ignore the hollowness in the middle that made Auntie K's Act I parade-raining a largely visual affair. And yes, on those terms, Silja delivers 100% of the time, but this is opera and that ain't enough.

Perhaps she was husbanding her resources, and there are no rules against that. Act II was art without compromise. Squally? Of course. But she didn't duck a note or clip one short, and somehow she earned each wobble. That, taken with the fact that she's been singing the role since long before it was written, and taken with her exquisitely strange face, put it over in a way I'm pretty sure won't come across on Sirius. God knows it didn't on the Glyndebourne recording where the only thing that saved her from disgrace was Jerry Hadley, by comparison. But in the house, it was exactly right. There are other singers I'd like to hear have a go at it, and I'm looking forward to Forst and then to Malfitano in DC, but in the moment, she lacked nothing. There's no reason to record it. It was ephemeral, but beautiful. Ugly-beautiful.

You know what the thing that really cracks me up about Jenufa is? This production, I mean (since obviously the fun never stops in Preissova's bubbly comedy)? All the clothes on the floor. I'm not sure what it's supposed to represent, unless Oliver Tambosi is commenting on how I keep my apartment.* For that matter, I'm not sure about the big boulder either, but I don't object to it. It's a very, very pretty production and you'd have to be kind of a killjoy to begrudge it its inscrutable imagery. Who could fail to reach for a sweater when the house opens up to reveal the snow in Act II? Actually one thing that truly was funny: one line of the translation has the Kostenlicka telling Jenufa how much better it would all be if god would "take the child off your hands." Doesn't that sound kind of like they're at a swap meet or something? What IS a swap meet anyway? I've never known. But I'm certain that's how they talk there. Can I take that baby off your hands? I've got this swell rosemary plant filled with worms. I think they say "swell" a lot at swap meets, too.

Raymond Very was, oh Heather, so very. Which is to say Steva isn't the great role Laca is but he acquitted himself quite nicely, and can now change his name to Raymond Nicely. Barbara Dever got a pretty enthusiastic ovation, and why shouldn't she? On the merits of volume alone, she was topped only by...

Karita Mattila. Who is in bigger voice every time I hear her, especially Up There. That should be read with a suggestive lear, like the southern euphemism "Down There." I have a silly fantasy she could leapfrog certain other singers and be the next big deal dramatic after all, so solid has her voice become in every octave. I don't think it'll really happen, but if it does, you heard it prophesied here. Bear in mind she was on for Turandot for a while, then ditched it. For now, her brand of tightly wound sonic neurosis works very well indeed in Jenufa. I'm still holding out for Ariadne, but that's not going to stop me from going to most of the Jenufy. (Why do Czech conductors only do Janacek operas in the genitive pural? Because several are Jenuf. That used to be a joke about French chefs and eggs, and was the better for it.)

The conducting, eh, was not for me much of the time. Things were muted that I didn't want muted, especially in Act I. The ending, from "Odesli..." was happily luminescent, however.

(Oh and there was one little white slip I was hoping to see in the program, though I'm not sure whether the subject of that tiny piece of literature would have wanted to be there anyhow.)

*For the mental health mavens out there, this particular delusion is known as "Ideas of Reference." Which is also the name of one of my imaginary bands, in which I play gamelan flute and waterphone. My other imaginary band is called Bad Breast. Our lyrics are taken from the writings of Melanie Klein.

Birthday Wishes...

...to cousin Louie Tremava, and many happy returns of the day.

(a little belated, I'm afraid)

I'd love to, but I have to groom the mule

Of the traditional, 100% representational productions at the Met, I must say Battlestaria Galacticana and Pagliacci are two of my faves. Yes, they indulge in the livestock fetish that has become one of opera's hoary cliches, but they evoke a real sense of place (says me who was in Italy exactly once, at the age of 13, or twice if you count that we flew out of Milan. Fool that I was, I didn't insist on a pilgrimage to weep at the steps of La Scala.) Well, Italy aside, they're nicely lit/lighted and the way the sets hold a crowd avoids some of the "Hi, we're extras. Watch us move our hands" effect. It's one of those productions it's hard to imagine them bothering or indeed having any good reason to replace for a long time. As opposed to things like their Gioconda, which they just won't replace since they practically never do it and in some sense, a new production of Gioconda (and I say this as one much devoted) is like buying a nice new silver chalice to serve Yoo-Hoo in.

The only quasi-substantial comment I have on the performances is that it's difficult to watch Krasimira Stoyanova and fully understand the marketing campaign behind Anna Netrebko. See, she has this neat, somewhat hootily Viennese voice that is pretty malleable, an lively stage manner that, no, doesn't really have the electricity of A.N.*, and she's not bad looking. I know, it sounds like I've just tried to compliment someone's dorky sister, but what I'm trying to say is this is a good, capable, well-endowed, watchable singer who you won't see on a poster in the lobby that says "Stoyanova is Habit-Forming!" which by the way, wasn't that the ad campaign for Nunsense? It's meaningless to compliment her by detracting from someone else, but it popped into my head, and that usually means it's coming to a screen near you pretty soon, unless my internal editor is having a rare sober day.

Licitra was Licitra and much better than in Verdi, at that. The Siciliana, sure, can be sung more prettily, but he's not lacking in heft, and besides, he gets a furlong's handicap for volunteering last minute for an indisposed colleague. The big Pagliacci to-do was dramatic and blustery and, well, better in tune. Zajick remains an extremely gifted singer I can't quite love, but I'm always grateful to a Santuzza who shouts her "Bada!" and "Mala pasqua!" rather than making that uniquely operatic noise that is meant to convey rage but sounds like a vocal warmup of some sort. And the low notes, my god, are not going anywhere. Alfio found Delavan in good voice but somehow out of his element. It's an awkward role...More and more I wonder if that Chicago Parsifal was his zenith or if he just needs to be singing more Wagner. We'll find out, as I think I saw he's on for Wotan somewhere, and soon.

Um, what do you guys think of Ataneli? The theme of today's posting is: I can't make up my mind. Either he's variable or I am. The house received him kindly. Russell Braun gets a pass this time around because I dug him but don't have any useful adjectives for him.

*Yeah, I feel like I'm blowing hot and cold vis-a-vis the Trebazoid as well. That's what you were going to say, right?

In continuing news of always-the-blogmaid-never-the-blogger, I once again was not quoted on the radio!

Briefly Noted

Do you ever silently, in a moment of pre-composition, mix up the words caveat and cadenza? I do it constantly, and I guess I must make a lot of caveats because I'm developing and absolute complex about it. Well, if I offer you cadenzas or even credenzas, I guess now you'll know just what I'm talking about, even if you also think I'm an oaf.

I went to see Alarm Will Sound at the Miller Theater Friday doing their "If it ain't Varese, it ain't in there" show. But why, you will ask in a hopefully not too skeptical voice, would you go and do that, Maury, you who are something of a stick in the mud about music you can't walk home humming. Rather than humming Ionisation just to spite you, I will remind you 1) that I occasionally try not to be such a lowbrow, and 2) that I am on speaking terms with a couple of the alarmniks. And then I will pick up my violin and play a whole bunch of notes and eventually return to the tonic and nod at the conductor, because that's my cadenza, I mean caveat, I mean filing cabinet. You can't really do much with my review of their concerts, because I'm automatically going to think they're neat.

Well actually, though, there is still a lot of Varese I am quite prepared to do without for the rest of my days, and even a stellar performance won't sway me. If I never hear Deserts again, it's no skin off my ass. And I think I'm still on record as on the fence about the staging of concert works, though the audience was riveted by what director Nigel Maister did with Integrales to close the program. Staging isn't quite the right word, though I don't have a better one: it's not the clumsy kind of thing they always do at the opera these days during the overture, trying to give non-programmatic music a plot of any of that. It is in fact quite the opposite of staging, taking the concert in part off the stage, into the theater.

I think I'm for it in principle, but then you have to do it in an actual theater and results may vary. Hey, maybe you could name a lesser ensemble that: Results May Vary. Anyway yes, what I'm trying to put into words is that I happened to be in this terrific seat a nice old man gave me, and so the musicians were all around me, but in other parts of the theater, I am told the effect was a bit puzzling. And, wait here while I set this comment up by saying I really did adore the theatrical element of their Cale/Warhol thing at Zankel...for me, house lights to black at the end of a piece comes from a certain corner of the effect drawer. So, alright: mixed feelings, but I'm glad they do these things. Unlike the Cage piece (also Zankel) Integrales mostly just required the performers, when they weren't playing, to appear fascinated by each other's music-making, and I feel safe in saying they honestly were.

One of the fun things at an AWS concert is the moment where they do something they really oughtn't be able to. In my experience there tends to be at least one piece that seems like a little bit of the impossible laid before you. This time it had to do with Poeme Electronique. Now, if I understood the program notes correctly, Poeme Electronique springs from Varese's idea that the most wonderful thing in the world would be if we could have music without performers. This is of course wrong-headed, impossible, uninteresting, and stupid. In that order. The only stupider idea I can think of is: hey wouldn't it be neat if we had music without listeners?

In this admittedly pouty mindset, I suffered through the tape of Poeme Electronique before the intermission. And then, after the intermission, they played the thing live. And then we all rose as a unit and carried conductor Alan Pierson through the streets on our shoulders in celebration of the gall of trying it and the unblinking derring-do of pulling it off. Well, we should have.

I think the person who gets singled out this time for the absurd reward of my praise is going to be Jessica Johnson, who plays flute and piccolo for the group. I'll admit right now when I saw her putting in an earplug for the extended, merciless piccolo passages in Hyperprism (I think it was that one) I wondered if the piece might not be issued with a few extra pair for audience members, but that's just me and my highly conditional love of modernism. So, after intermission, she performed Density 21.5, a flute solo. I think it is fair to say the music is not dramatically less thorny, but her performance was so assured as to make easy sense of it, make it beguiling, even, and far more than a box of avant-garde trickery.

Nods also to the Manhattan School of Music Percussion Ensemble, who were tight as you could ask in Ionisation, and also somehow relaxed. Um, and cute. Sorry boys, can't help but notice. (And why are 93% of percussionists boys, I wonder? I mean, don't do a research study or anything, but why?)

Well, there may be a Cavalleria in the offing, or if not, next stop: Jenufa.

07/08

Looks like season announcements are beginning to roll in.

DC has announced, as I learned from Operatically Inclined. Not the world's most exciting season, in my book, but any Elektra is cause for dancing (oneself to death) in the streets. I have vague memories of Susan Bullock as Butterfly, subbing for someone else, in Houston in the mid '90s but couldn't say much about her. Goerke, one always hears, is a committed performer, often at the expense of disciplined vocalism, and that's something you either like or don't. Meanwhile, Domingo is singing Handel? Seriously?

Notice that there is no Siegfried next season. Has the Zambello Ring been scrapped?

Baltimore has announced as well, and the reason to get on the Chinatown bus--other than who wants to live forever--is: Maria Stuarda. Maybe with a recovered Swenson? I'm just guessing. No casting is listed on their site. I can think of worse things. Let's daydream for a moment it's Flanigan, though.

The Big House hasn't announced, but of course we know practically everything. Sometimes I miss the old element of surprise, but then whose fault is it I click over to Met Futures every twenty minutes? The clip on youtube of Dessay singing the Lucia marble-losing scene has me much more eager for opening night than expected, considering what a drag Lucia can be. It's not even the singing, but the acting: Dessay's unhinged laughter at the end is a masterstroke.

Seattle soldiers on as the Eaglenhaus, for whatever reason, presenting her near the end of the summer as Senta. Listen, I'm told with the right direction she's capable of arousing interest onstage--her Ortrud was by one report "terrifying." Also on the lineup: Iphegenia in Everywhere, now required by law to be showing at an operahouse near you; and Puritani. And Pagliacci without its friend Cavalleria.

Caro Soles from our civilized neighbor to the North points us to Canadian Opera Company's season. See comments, or of course their website. If I lived closer I'd surely pop in for Bayrakdarian's Melisande, and though I've never given it a careful listen, I suspect you can never have too much House of the Dead--it's like Jello that way. Maybe Melisande would have gotten some damn therapy if they'd had socialized medicine in the kingdom of Allemonde.

Chime in if your home company has announced. I'm not deeply invested in being the one who breaks the story! ETA: for more, see comments, as people are indeed chiming in. I will only add that Chicago will be a happy place for opera fans next season.

Wait, I will add one more thing: I always wait for OONY to announce their season with an anticipation that doesn't make much sense, considering every season they trot out stuff I don't really care about and the only thing I've ever seen there was a Fanciulla with a certain over-ripe Minnie. Um, and also that the OONY crowd worries me. But I always think: this year's the year they're going to pull another one out like the Jenufa with Rysanek and Benackova! I just know it! And then they don't.

Hardly a Review

Is Phillip Glass the new John Williams? Is minimalism the new sound of movie soundtracks? I'd be tickled to think so. Glass plays a very strange role in Notes on a Scandal, namely lending something that looks like class or gravitas to a story that, without his score, would be pulp. Pulp with marvellous acting, yeah. But in my mind, the movie comes closest to Baby Jane: it's two mammoth personalities who have agreed to a no-niceties roll in the mud.

Slight spoiler alert: I am kind of gratified that the old trope of the queer who tries to gets his/her tentacles on a straightnik has been subverted. I mean, we've come far enough that a homo villain is not an issue, because it's not a mainstream idea anymore that that's redundant. As long as you're able to be the good guy, even just the faintly mortifying snappy best friend, it's no longer such a trap to be the bad guy.

But in this film, it seems to me, the creepishness is embedded instead in the pathology of being closeted. People in the movie ask Judi Dench's character about someone who had been perceived as her former paramour and she snaps back she has no idea what they're talking about and these are the moments her psyche is most pointedly revealed, in its interface with society, as being non-functional. I can live with that. (And p.s., larger spoiler alert though if you've read any reviews, you know this: Cate Blanchett's character is boinking a 15-year-old so she's not exactly set up as the moral foil.)

Anyway the screenplay is for the most part without any particular point of view, but the thing speeds by and somehow you never feel dirty enjoying it. Maybe partly because of that soundtrack--it's by Phillip Glass! The guy that wrote that music you could put on in college to impress a date with how intellectual you were! Oh wait, that was only me! I'll be in my room if anyone needs me!

The problem with very small venues

Jeez, who do you have to blow to get Neko Case tickets...
< /disgruntled >

Tired mumblings about Floot

Grnkh.

See, the thing about Rene Pape is he saved me from getting boringly giddy for the grillionth time because Sarastro is really a dull role for him. I susppose I liked Morris Robinson better because he's got better sub-woofers, more growl on bottom.

My boxmates were iffy on Miklosa but I remain impressed. She's singing QoN every-goddamn-where, which I guess is what happens when you don't ever sound at all like you're going to miss the f's and include every note of the tweedliest passages of O Zittre Nicht. I wonder what she vocalizes up to. Isn't there some singer rule about the interval between the highest note you vocalize to and the highest note you'll sing in public? Anyway it's hard to say what else she'd be this good in. Boxmates noted a lack of oomph below the tweedlerealm.

Anyone else think the Met needs to let Polenzani move on from Mozart? He was in fine voice, because that's apparently the only voice he has, but there were hints of boredom and a punchy quality to the louder notes that sounded like vocal chomping at the bit, to me. And of course he was dressed up like an extra for Memoirs of a Geisha, but that's just the production, which I have publicly noted mixed feelings about. (The best of its images remain home-runs of fairy-tale invention, but you pile it on so thick and it begins to seem like Der Kitschensink, an opera about a land where you need to take aspirin just from looking around.)

I was not inclined to like Pogosov after a thing or two I read about him but it was a losing battle against his charm. He's really very funny and sings just fine in a role that makes my teeth hurt. I'm just sad I didn't get to hear him sing my new lifetime low in opera translations "cuckoo with bliss." It would sound particularly funny with a Russian accent.

Milne, hm. Yeah, fine. Pretty voice. As you can tell, it's a little bit hard to evaluate singers in roles that I find inherently irritating. So, got through "Ach" without any audible or visible fear, tone more appropriate for Mozart than my last Pamina, Dunleavy, and oh, I thought of something a little more interesting to report: she actually uses a little rubato. In Mozart, which can save things from John Eliot Gardnerdom. I'm all for that.

The (I suppose) unintentional scenic nod to Twin Peaks still smacks me in the eye.

Ho hum. Worse ways to spend an evening. Jenufa is next. Jenufa makes everything better.

Aside to fellow blogsterinos

If I haven't blogrolled you or don't comment much on your blog, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't read it.

A story we have always enjoyed

Cousin Louie Tremava recounts the following tale of the Old Met, which
took place 56 years ago today:

It was January 5th, 1951, after one of Helen Traubel's 4 performances
as The Marshallin. I was going to walk home but was curious about a
small knot of people outside the stage door on W. 40th St. and
decided to wait. Eventually the door opened and out came Mme.
Traubel wrapped in mink. A man raised his hat and said, "Schöne
Musik, madame." Traubel nodded her thanks and got into a waiting car.
After a while the door opened again and out came Risë Stevens, also
wrapped in mink. The same man doffed his hat and repeated his
compliment. Stevens smiled, said "Danke schön," and got into a
waiting car. Another short wait and the door opened again. Out came
Erna Berger, also wrapped in mink. This time a woman burbled, "What
beautiful music!" Berger said, "Oh no it wasn't, lady," and got into
a waiting car.

Thanks, cugino. Louie has such better stories than I, it must be said.

The Maury Myth

That's what it would be called if Norman Lebrecht wrote a book about me, I suppose. It'd be more of a pamphlet, I'm guessing.

Right, so ostensibly I did just write something for someone affiliated with same. I suppose I should say I was drunk when I wrote it and then go into rehab like prominent republicans do when it's found out they're boinking little boys. But actually I have no idea, it may have been brilliant! I was at work and the only thing my brain can process when I'm at work is how much I'd like to be doing something else, so really I haven't the foggiest notion. Wouldn't it be kind of fun, though, if it were accidentally (as certain among us used to say) a stunning indictment of Thatcherist Britain?

It was also long-winded, not to knock you over with that piece of news. Anyway Woody Allen supposedly once took a speed reading course and then read War & Peace. "It's about Russia," he said. So, since I am clearly the Tolstoy of people who write about Rose Pauly talking to you from beyond the grave, let's just say: it's about blogging.

Expected next opera attendance: Der Stupidfloot soonish. Which in a way is needless to blog, because Sirius is at this point more or less The Magic Flute Channel.

Expected next entry: a story of thwarted passion. And Erna Berger.

Happy

A very lovely New Year's Eve and New Year to you and yours from me and Rose Pauly. Seriously, I'm channeling her and she really likes you guys and wants to wish you a super 2007. "Super"--that was her word!

Maury D'Annato is the Male, Jewish, Non-Singing Callas

Maria Callas is the Greek Anna Netrebko
Ewa Podles is the Polish Samuel Ramey
Patricia Racette is the American Lucine Amara who was already American
Patricia Racette is the Lesbian Lucine Amara
Brigitte Fassbaender is the Lesbian David Daniels
David Daniels is the Lesbian David Daniels
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is the dead, Nazi Renee Fleming
Anna Netrebko is the Russian Anna Netrebko

A moment of live-blog agony

Oh, that c sharp. That did not bode well. We here at My Favorite Intermissions are, in the spirit of daring inspired by Parterre's call on Levine, going to lay good odds on Kunde bowing out at intermission. Is there a cover for the cover? [D'oh! Wrong as usual!]

Also I'm ready to declare this not Netrebko's rep because the passagework is not entirely working out and the first high note of the evening was definitely iffy, but she sure sounds pretty in the simple lyric moments.

Ok and the bass singing Ah per sempre (if I'm not mixing up my wholly interchangeable bel canto arias): that was a lesson in what bel canto style is not. That is to say, I Puritani is not by Mascagni.

Not heart-broken about not having gone to this. Will update later, no doubt. Having a bit of a compulsive writing day.

Ok and Son Vergin is sounding perfectly adequate, and no high note. Hm. Yeah, sorry, it sounds idiotic to yelp "No e flat! No e flat!" except it's I Puritani, so it's kind of part of the package.

And then John Relyea shows up to save the day, singing a very pretty "Cinta di Fiori"...

Qui la voce: droopy in that pretty, dreamy late Sutherland way. Vien diletto: a little bit droopy in the not so good way, i.e. approximate, but very pleasant to listen to. E flat? Long, solid, and perhaps a shade flatter than intended? Someone tell me if I'm wrong, Netrebko always sounds pitchy to me. Crowd: loving her.

A bunch of what leads up to Vieni was quite heart-breaking. It seemed like Kunde was trying super-hard to sound younger and prettier, and it wasn't happening. And then the duet itself was sort of ok, and the f was weird, as it must be, but not bad and not wholly falsetto.

And then, I just can't put sugar on it, there was a howl of desperation from Netrebko to end the opera that just, ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Blekh. What can I say to convey the wrongness of that note? But you know what? I'm giving her points for trying it. Without that kind of chutzpah we wouldn't have had the e flat in the Callas Mexico City Aida. It could have been a triumph, if it hadn't been a fiery freeway accident.

Is it time to put Puritani back into the crate for another twenty years, or fifty?

Callas-Krasnodarka?

Can we stop with the Netrebko=Callas? Like, immediately? I can't begin to understand this comparison except as a bit of wishful thinking: we'd all love to have an epoch-making diva.

Netrebko is a singer to be reckoned with. She's hot stuff onstage and off, and yes, off does matter--making a splash is the difference between an artist and a star. Who knows which one she wants to be eventually...She's more a star at present, albeit a star with fantastic theatrical instincts and a lot to work with in the chords.

But where to start? 1) She could never, ever sing Brunnhilde, or Isolde and if she's got a Norma up her couture sleeve, it's many years down the pike (though honestly, the rhetoric around Norma does get a little hard to wade through--mortals have made their way through it and even sung parts of it well.) Fine, Callas might well have sucked as Lyudmila. 2) She (Trebko? Net, spasibo) didn't have to totally overhaul herself to be (conventionally) hot; she was already there. 3) The florid technique is just not remotely as fine tuned chez la Russe as chez la Grecque 4) Her public persona is rather straightforward and conventional, no champagne vs. Coca Cola remarks, no running off with famous people, though I guess there's still time, but she just doesn't seem like she's going to die alone, mysteriously, in an apartment in Paris. Etc., und so weiter, i tak dalee...

Most importantly, though, her acting is more physical than vocal. That is the main way in which she is not Callas.

Anyway wouldn't it be more fun to call her The Cossack Callas than The Russian Callas? She's from Krasnodar. It's Cossack Country. I googled it.

That answers that question

(Sign in the window at Lincoln Center branch, RIP)

We're Open Today

I do so hate it when everything's closed on, you know, that holiday, the one they have in December, with the suicides and the...you know, I read people spend on average $800 a year on gifts, which is just nuts. So I wanted to post something, in the spirit of not being closed, only I haven't gone to much I could write up. I did see Company again, and it is if anything, tightened up, Raul Esparza's 11:00 number even more intense. That's not much to tell you. Also, la sorella D'annato is in town and as she is crazy mad for Rent we saw that, and though I can't say much for the crowd, the show has happily cycled through every C-grade celeb that wanted to sing in it, so now it's just these young, not-half-bad kids who probably dreamed of being on Broadway, which I'm guessing Joey Fatone did not.

I got a recording or two, nothing new, just old stuff I had wanted for a while. Solti's Figaro, can you believe I didn't have it? When I was just getting into Figaro I had it in my head Susanna's entrance should have a certain lilting, easy quality and it turned out I had heard the Solti some time earlier and that's what I had in my head, the perfection that is Popp. If you haven't listened to it in a while, treat yourself. I haven't gotten to the Count's aria yet, but I'm looking backward/forward to it (having doubtless heard it years ago.) Also the other day on Sirius they were playing a Manon Lescaut excerpt that appealed, and to my shock it was Albanese, who I've never, ever liked. So I waltzed over to J&R, at this point practically the only game in town, and I bought that, the old studio deal with Bjorling. The croaky quality is indeed there in Albanese's singing, but it's forgivable. It seems to be finally getting me into the opera that may in fact be the first one I ever saw but has never really grabbed me.

Coming up: can I drag myself to Puritani after re-discovering at Caramoor what a lumbering bore of a thing it is? Well, it'll be hard not to, with the usual expectations about Trebbers (I really want much, much more vocal purity in things like "Qui la voce" but if anyone can enliven this walking Ambien of a character, it could be her) and my really very happy impression of Cutler last year. Also I"m trying to figure out what Amato is doing but their website is much in keeping with the air of charming disrepair one hears characterizes the company. That's right, I've never been to the Amato.

And of course there's the countdown to Jenufa. Well, that's all I got...

Aright, off to partake of the traditional Chinatown fare of the Hebrews.

A Message from a Nightingale

And now a few words about the first act of The First Emperor. No, cherished reader, not because it's late and I need my sleep do I bring you news only of the first half of this much-hyped premiere. Rather because I am not a food writer, and I was enjoying a plate of tacos al pastor at Hell's Kitchen's El Azteca during act two of The First Emperor, the ghastly and unlovable flop that landed with a thud on the stage of the Metropolitan this evening. And no, I'm not trying to make up for my sunny tone of late. If I'd been on the aisle, I might very well have left twenty minutes sooner.

To pass the time, since there's not much to say, here's a brief history of your humble correspondent and 20+ century music. At age tennish he was taken by an overly optimistic father to a program of chamber works by, I'm not sure, did Xenakis write for violin and piano? Someone whose name struck ten-year-old ears as exotic and whose music scared a young Maury away from the twentieth century for the next six or seven years until Poulenc and Ravel provided an easier way in. Time passes, M.d' becomes a perfectly respectable listener who, while he might have to pretend he gets Ligeti, is not one to go into things raring to declare them monstrosities. Or even lifeless, hectoring bores, but we'll get there...

Now, I'll admit I went into last year's excellent An American Tragedy wary that it might be one of those pieces of dutiful modernism that loses its way between 21st century concessions to the existence of the audience and presumably conservatory-instilled horror of sounding anything like Puccini, never finding a personal voice and never displaying any understanding of what people want from an opera. I'm just talking about a basic narrative thrust that is reflected somehow in the vocal line. Lulu meets this criterion just the same as Don Giovanni, and opera audiences flock to it despite its daunting language. Am-Trag turned out to meet it admirably as well. The First Emperor fails spectularly.

Perhaps JSU is right and the libretto is the rug that got yanked out from under things. I'm trying to imagine act one with a text less redolent of Vogon poetry, but I just can't do it. The problem with putting over ideas that feel mythic in scale is that mythology (pace Joseph Campbell) can be a very local thing, and so your language is going to have to be extremely assured when, let's say, you show a princess seducing a prince by spitting food into his mouth. If it's unconvincing, everything will just seem exotic with all the worst weight of that word. If it's truly ungainly, you may have a comedy on your hands. Toss in some leaden music with nary an appealing vocal line in the first hour and a half, and the question you see in the eyes of your audience might just be, "how long 'til that thrill ride, Akhnaten?"

There is almost nothing to redeem this work, unless act two includes a screening of Xanadu. Paul Groves, reliably sympathetic and sweet of voice, almost manages to puncture the dreadful gloom of the scene in which his character fucks Elizabeth Futral so hard she can walk again --insert standard Anna Russell disclaimer--but not really, not quite. Futral is asked to sing wretched, clumsy sounding lines, though fortunately her diction is not as good as Groves' and you can't always make out the deeply unpoetic libretto. (One exception I regret most is when she calls his mouth "a stubborn oyster.") Groves, by the way, is the Anatol in the Vanessa that keeps opening at the hallucinated Metropolitan Opera in my head, and he's swell.

Suzanne Mentzer, in her only Met appearance this season, had about two lines in the first act, which is criminal. Michelle de Young had many, and I have no other hearings to judge her by but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she sounds better in less grating music. Hao Jing Tian displayed a bit of grace when he was given the opportunity.

I just have no way to judge Domingo. He was certainly there, ergo the sold-out run.

The design is briefly striking, but largely static. An illustration of what Minghella's Butterfly might have looked like with a good deal less taste and imagination, it is arresting in that way that doesn't last very long. Another production might choose to root the poetastery of the libretto in something a little more literal, but with any luck, there will never be another production.

ETA: apparently not a flop. Jonathan has noted a screaming audience response on the broadcast...I mean, who's to call it a flop when it sells really well, but I did assume people would hate it. Opinion on Opera-L, for what that's worth, was looking pluralistic when I checked in last night.

A singer of note goes online

http://www.pendatchanska.com/

Some of us are chewing our nails to the quick waiting for She of Many Syllables to sink her teeth into...honestly not the world's meatiest role at City Opera this Spring.

Evviva Bulgaria, as usual.

Letter from an Imaginary Reader

Dearest Maury,

Please advise me on the following point of etiquette:

If I have a case of Martian Death Flu, as just about everyone in New York does right now, only I simply adore Rigoletto and decide to go anyway, what is the appropriate behavior? First of all, should I unwrap my Kleenex at the beginning, or would that be unimaginative? Should I, maybe, instead, buy one of those plastic packs that has a little seal on it so I can seal and unseal it every wonderful time the urge to blow my nose arises?

Well, and speaking of the blowing of noses, should I dab at my nose in a genteel fashion, quietly expel air and offending matter, or (oh, I just know you'll choose this one, since it obviously the proper manner of conduct) opt for the florid splendor of the loud, long, cartoonish honk followed each and every time by two wet coughs?

Heavens, I know I'm pushing it by asking so many darn questions, but there's just one more, 'kay Maurizio, old thing? Let's say I've opted for the crinkling and the honking. Should I do it when there's applause, or at intermission, or when they go more or less apeshit with the wind machine during the storm? Or might it really spice things up more to blow my nose loudly in quiet moments, in the middle of Sparafucile's low F, during Parmi Veder le Lagrime, and just about every other possible exposed moment as if I WERE FOLLOWING WITH A FUCKING SCORE.

All the very best,
The person behind you

Aright, that's out of my system.

It can't have been much more or less than a year ago that I got exceedingly enthusiastic about Villazon, and had my first deeply mixed feelings about Anna Dovol'no-trebko. Who I'm smarmily happy to report is a full tilt knockout in person, drinking her champagne five feet away near what we've come to refer to as the barbecue deck (because that's exactly what they should do with it at intermissions in nice weather, Rene Pape out there flipping burgers) in her totally cute skirt and long boots. There's always the temptation to say something to glamorous personages one runs across, but if you imagine the conversation, I mean really go through with it in your head, it ends up sounding like that bit from The Waltz: "Did you go to the circus this year, what’s your favorite kind of ice cream, how do you spell cat?" Only possibly in Russian. And I mean how well is "your Gilda was magnificent except for the singing" going to go over? (I'm just fishing for a laugh here; I could easily and sincerely praise Miss N's exquisite Mimi.)

What I remember most about that earlier Rigoletto, and what I think I'll remember when I'm a withered old windbag (shuddup) is the jittery energy with which Rolandochka (as I'm certain Trebs calls him...I should've asked) swaggered around, physically and vocally, during "Possente Amor," and then ran offstage like he was really, truly about to get laid. I have to admit, that was missing tonight in Piotr Beczala's Duke, but nothing else was. I'm dying to hear what everyone else* thought of him because I was Im. Pressed. As was pointed out to me, there were some choppy phrases and weird cutoffs, but really it was a most athletic piece of singing. I suppose I should throw in the word slancio somewhere here, so there it is, and there it was. If I had to choose between hearing Beczala and Villazon, I think what I'd most likely do is start a new paragraph, about Ekaterina Siurina.

Bit of a drag to go point by point here, comparing last year and this year, but it's late and I had this weird blood sugar thing going on all night, so humor me. Trebbers wowed me last season (twice) without actually doing much singing I liked. She's very alive onstage, and the girth of her voice is exciting, but in every other regard, Kathy S. is her vocal better. The voice itself is that kind that should be a dime a dozen but ain't. It's sunny and even-tempered and makes soft landings wherever it goes. It is, for me, illustrative of why "pretty" is not necessarily faint praise. I want a duvet filled with it for all the winter nights we're apparently not having anymore since we're headed straight for the sun. I want to bathe in it. It should be noted that Ms. Siurina doesn't so much as roll her eyes when there's a trill in the score, so YMMV if you're a stickler about those things. And her acting, yeah, is generalized. She should probably be enrolled in that deprogramming course where lyric sopranos are broken, by any means necessary, of the habit of spinning around with their arms up when they're playing happy, but if she started singing, her deprogrammers would make like the animals in the Magic Flute and start dancing around, and she'd escape.

What am I talking about, though? The real news, given the things we have and don't have, is probably Carlos Alvarez. I do mean Carlos, right? I'm not just making up some Mexican sounding name because I can't remember his real one? Oh, whatevs, call him Fifi Alvarez if you need to; just call him next time anyone's doing Verdi. I saw this one coming when he sang in Ballo with Debbie. I mean...sometimes lately I feel like the Roger Ebert of opera bloggers, not in terms of anyone actually reading me or havng a tv show or anything, but rather because I'm relatively enthusiastic about what I hear, at cumulative risk of sounding uncritical. So let's say this was not perfection, but certainly it was excellence. Ok, back to the drawing board on toning things down. And even though this is one of those hoary cliches of opera reviewing, I just gotta say it's a pleasure to hear the role sung rather than shouted. I can't seem to write my way around it. The only thing missing in Paco Alvarez' assumption of the role of Rigoletto is the spark from within that makes people like Villazon and Netrebko appear to be living their roles, making it up as they go along. The motivation here is so clearly externally motivated, the action frenetic without a point, and though Alvarez stays in character a while into curtain calls, which suggests a connection he can sense, it hasn't made its way out, to us, yet.

Just the same, with that, we may have reinstated another vocal category missing for some time in any confidently claimable way from the Metropolitan: the Verdi Baritone.

I am in serious need of sleep right now, but don't want to sign off without noting Robert Lloyd's luxuriantly charred-black sound and Kate Aldrich's fluid physicality and decidedly non-comprimaria sound as Maddalena. And now I'm off to dream a little dream about Kleenex filled with chloroform.


*okay, except for some people

Holiday Wishes

Happy Chaka Kahn to all you of the Hebraic persuasion!

Alagna-Schmalagna...

They're making a broadway musical of Xanadu!!!

Starring Magdalena Kozena!!! (not really. but they are making a musical.) And Thomas Hampson!!!

I'm going to look like the world's biggest hypocrite for finding this exciting after whining about pre-fab musicals like The Wedding Singer, but if you've ever seen Xanadu, maybe you'll understand. Because unlike middlebrow, ephemeral but acceptable nothings like High Fidelity, Xanadu is utter crap! "Exuberantly idiotic and wrong," said one critic (me). "Divinely sincere in its embarassing missteps," said another (still me.)

It has its own music. And it's by E.L.O.! It has a crazy number where an old Andrews Sisters type number has to share the stage with that crazy 80's "Rock and Roll" sound, so it's kind of like Ariadne auf Naxos that way. It's fool-proof. Like a musical of, I don't know, Carrie.

what's attractive on stage need not necessarily be attractive off

If you like your opera, well, operatic, it's hard to do better than the current to-do at La Scala. You can find the blow-by-blow over at OperaChic. In depth commentary and all manner of footnotes from the peanut gallery, as usual, at Parterre. I, for once, don't have a damn thing to say except it's made for exceptionally fun reading.

[The secondary theme of this posting is: yes, I have a line from All About Eve for every occasion. Much like Uncle Tom's Cabin, it is the key to all knowledge and culture.]

Like Eliza on the Ice

My friend Emily once said, in the middle of a very, very long story, "There is a point to this story. I'm famous for always getting to the point." I think we should all be famous for something, don't you? Even if nobody knows who the hell we are? I, for instance, am famous for just going ahead and saying it even though it's stupid.

Now is the part of Shprockets ven ve commit blasphemy. You're going to run around clutching your heads acting like Jews #1-5 when Herod gives the go-ahead or rather the go-behead, but I'm going to say it anyway.* Naturally, in December the mind turns to making lists of the best and worst things that happened over the year, if one is a particular sort of ninny, and I am. Not to get all Oscarific, the Best Male Performance I saw all year was pretty likely Rene Pape as Phillip II. And the second best was...

Raul Esparza in the brilliant revival of Sondheim's Company playing at the Barrymore. Now, don't faint or anything...I'm not exactly equating the two things. Esparza gets to sing into a microphone in a small theater. From the standpoint of quasi-athletic achievement, it doesn't take the same kind of chops, though Esparza's production is indeed well schooled and easy. Main thing is, he convinced me that a role I never really liked is actually a magnificent piece of writing. Favorite performances of the year aren't about being convinced, though; they're about being shaken or stirred (anyone feel like a martini?) I left the theater quite moved. I'll have to see it again, I think.

Actually, I reevaluated the whole show, not just Bobby. Please understand: I really like the original cast recording, in a certain sense of the verb "to like." I enjoy the story behind it, have watched the documentary with everyone staying up all night to record it. I listened to it a bunch before I ever saw the show, and once I got past the annoying opening chorus, I found the writing delightful. I think almost all of it, however, is improved upon by this cast, and I can't wait for their recording.

Highlights include: 1) Heather Laws' so-fast-it's-physically-impossible delivery of Amy's mad scene/patter song "Not Getting Married." Her deliver, also, is so funny as to almost diminish my monomaniacal love for the platonic-ideal that is Beth Howland, creatrix of the role's original reading. (Amy Justman as Susan also displays formidable musicianship in the opening bars, shrieked rather hellishly on the 1970 version.) Bear in mind all these people are traipsing around the stage playing various instruments. The one that struck me as particularly funny was Barbara Walsh as Joanne, laconically playing the triangle.

Walsh is the cast member most likely to be raked over the coals of comparison, of course. But, what can I say. Blasphemy #2: while I admire the ferocity in Elaine Stritch's account of the show's best known tune, "The Ladies who Lunch," (and it is ferocity that Walsh lacks, a little) I've never really bought her as Joanne as the book and score present her: a well heeled society gal who's hard-as-nails as an acquired accent to her basically classy nature. Yes, she's screaming inside, but she has mastered the WASP trick of not letting it out, and when she does, it's a party trick.

Stritch, in delivery and vocal persona, is a bit too much the broad. She doesn't sing with any introspection, so I've never totally bought her as Joanne, and you can disinvite me to your Sondheim karaoke party now, though I think I'd do a nice "Ladies who Lunch." Barbara Walsh isn't 100% convincing in the scene that leads up to the number, but her delivery of the song itself has a certain refinement to it that I think is necessary. [In moderation. Check out this hilarious disaster to see what happens if things get too genteel.] Not that Company is big on coherence, but "Ladies who Lunch" really can pop out of the frame excessively if it turns into a real bar brawl. Walsh makes it a contained breakdown--the availability of vibrato, for instance, reminds us who the character is. Not a trick Stritch had in her bag.

The production has a cold and sophisticated look, and the "look, ma--no band" idea works very differently than it did in Sweeney Todd, but equally well I think. I'm thinking if I shut up about the concept and the staging and all that, though, a certain other blogsterino might take up the topic better than I can.

I realize this makes me sound like a whore, but truthfully, I'm not getting paid to urge you to run out and see this, if you like musical theater at all. Last season's gem, The Drowsy Chaperone, just recouped its investment and another jukebox musical just closed (who knows which one, and who cares?) So my point here is go see high quality stuff, vote at the box office, and maybe good revivals and good new musicals will seem like a good investment to the people who fund this stuff and we won't have to live under the constant threat of a musical version of Mean Girls or Sometimes I Give Myself the Creeps: The Green Day Musical.

Oh, not for nothing, I made the title of this posting what it is as a sort of string around my finger to remind me to ask if anyone knows what the hell this line from "Not Getting Married" refers to ("Why/Watch me die/Like Eliza on the ice?") since I've never known.

*Right, yes, I'm pretending anyone who reads this is an opera fuddy-duddy. I know it's not true, but for some reason it's more fun if I imagine you're going to be scandalized.