I hardly know 'er more

In the late 1980's the public library in Lexington, Kentucky was beginning to exit the age of the cassette, and among their fairly sparse classical acquisitions was what is cheekily known as Lucia von Lammermoor if you're that kind. It was my first Callas and maybe my first full opera recording, and then I gave it up for a good fifteen years, not the recording but the whole work. Even with Callas, it felt antique in its expression, like a music box. I gave it up so completely, in fact, that a few weeks ago not only did I find I didn't own a recording, up on which to bone, but...well, I was the fellow standing in the corner of Academy, hoping they didn't have a no-cell-phone rule, muttering at anyone who would pick up, "can you google, uh...try this string: callas, lucia, sextet, encore." Because as it happens, there's a Karajan/Callas/di Stefano from La Scala, so how was I to know? Well, I got the right one, with a little help from my friends. What I didn't remember, actually, is that di Stefano gets a notably warmer hand from the folks in Berlin than Callas. But that's neither here, nor there, nor any of several other places.

It turned out I did remember Lucia pretty damn well. When it's the first opera you practically lock yourself in the bathroom with, it's not recording over anything else. And, as I recalled....you know I'm in favor of performance cuts, right? Even pretty brutal ones. I can't imagine any reason at all to listen to every fucking bar of La Vestale, you know?* I read in the program this evening that Melba pulled the world's most hilariously get-a-load-of-me diva trick and had them lop off everything after the mad scene of Lucia, but I think she started from the wrong end.

The first act of Lucia is approximately as dramatic as clipping your nails. You'll never hear Normanno over the choir, the fountain scene is like an Anna Russell skit making fun of what bel canto operas are like, and okay, it's probably just me, but "veranno a te" has always seemed ideally suited to olympic skating. I feel like the only way to stage it that would be in tune with the hokiness of absolutely everything going on would be for the tenor and the soprano to stand side by side, swaying, and encouraging the audience to follow suit. It's just pure banality. Mary Zimmerman didn't find any way around it, although the dramatic highlight of the act had either to do with Mary Zimmerman flopping a pixieish French voodoo doll around backstage somewhere or an unknown plotline in which Lucia comes up against the dreaded invisible Scottish banana peel of County Clare or wherever the hell Lammermoor is.**

If you were listening to the broadcast and heard excessive audience response to Regnava/Quando rapito, which frankly were good but not star material, sort of Dessay set on "stun", it's because she took a dramatic tumble right in the middle and DIDN'T MISS A SINGLE NOTE. The thing she did miss, it must be said (now that other reviewers have reminded me of it) were the trills. They made an appearance later on, but in this act, I guess they were still in storage.

I think we should talk about Mary Zimmerman for a minute. I mean should we? Nevermind, I forgot I can't hear you. Yes, rumor had it that she and My New Best Friend Natalie Dessay (henceforth: MNBFND) were not sitting up nights braiding each other's hair and talking about boys. I shall never know, as I'm not exactly a lightning rod for gossip. But it does make you wonder: I've heard stories of theater directors showing up for an opera not knowing any of what we ex-linguists call "the target language" at all, and I've heard one particularly alarming tale of a director saying "wait, there's music here but nothing's happening. What's everyone supposed to do?" (At which point the very ground opened up and the earth spake thusly, saying: that's what YOU'RE supposed to figure out.) Like, when your tenor is killing himself and the chorus is singing "Wait. Don't." There has to be SOME reason they're not stopping him unless the revisionist backstory here is that they never liked him that much anyway. See also: when everyone is sitting, waiting for the bride, they should not move in perfect unison like a school of fish when glancing around to see if she's there yet.

I think some of that may have been going on. This was not a bad production, but it didn't make much of a case for replacing the old one. A few touches I liked a lot included one that could have gone horribly wrong: during the sextet, a photographer was grouping everyone but Enrico the Drama Llama (nay, Enrico the Drama Dalai Llama) together for a supremely uncomfortable photograph, complete with flash at the end, so it's a good thing there wasn't an encore this time, though I'd have been all for one. Right, photo. Did I mention the update? I guess the thing going on was kind of Wilkie Colins illustrated by Edward Gorey? There was also some need to literalize the ghost story parts, which I found questionably effective. The other big problem was the use of drops with big holes in them to make two sets out of one. In one of those fickle realism/not-so-realism moments, for me it was the gigantic, scenic version of a plastic pair of glasses with nose and fluffy moustache. Lighting choices were occasionally perverse, as the apparent sunrise followed immediately by rising chandeliers. On the whole there was nothing startling, nothing to boo the production team about.

But, hey, it's all about the mad scene, a bewitching piece of stagecraft all around, and a musical home run, wherein the baseball player in my metaphor then takes a taxi over to a basketball court to sink an equally metaphorical slam dunk. Yes, you get a certain amount of love from the assembled public if you hit all the notes, but it's not by any means an automatic triumph. I once heard the lovely Ruth Ann Swenson sing the thing as if it were the theme song from "Barney." You can put what you want into it, and that includes not only tonally radiant dullery and riveting word painting, but also many combinations of these and any degree of physical acting. It has been lamented in some parts that the Met is heading in the direction of singers who act with their faces but not their voices, and not without reason. Dessay is simply not implicated in this scheme. She's in for a penny; in for a pound.

One had worried about Natalie Dessay. Reports of nodes. Questions about the workability of a shift into solid lyric terrain. If there's anything going wrong now, I can't tell you what it is. I used to find the color of her voice a little acrid when it hit the heights, but what she's doing now is working. The florid facility is still there, the acuti are neither clipped nor taut, and she's comfortable enough doing all of it that she can lend a wonderful improvisational flavor to her ornaments, if they are not in fact improvised, which I don't know. Several of them were certainly not standard. And she walks like she's losing her mind, and though the palette is still not as prodigious as that of the ever-looming Greek shadow, she is able to play a kind of more frenzied neurasthenia to such a pitch as to really impart that thing we hope for: a sense of risk.

No, I'm not actually going to tell you much about the other singers, because I just wasn't as tuned in to them, and that's certainly not their fault. My general impression is that Kwiecien and Relyea gave their all, which is plenty, and though I'd rather hear Giordani in something more dramatic where the sweetness of tone is not missed, he sang with great style and sometimes with lyricisim. A heads up: you might want to catch the performance in which Stephen Costello graduates from...Shemp, or whatever the character's named, to Enrico, because I think in a year or two you may have trouble getting tickets to hear him. This is just a hunch still, based on not that much, but I will tell you the boy isn't even my type so I'm at least not listening with the ears in my pants.

I posted recently about the lack of long ovations. The ovation after the mad scene was long and lusty. The one at the end of the show, so protracted as to be awkward when the lights were already long up. Dessay was hilarious, making fun of her fall, and waving a lot and, well, not so much clapping for Mary Zimmerman, what do cats say in French, miau? And they did the ritual of trotting them all out onto the balcony for the crowd in the Plaza to yell their fool heads off, and when they came back in we yelled some more from the staircases.

A couple of gents carried on the wear-kimonos-to-Butterfly tradition with their kilts, which means I'm going to start a furious campaign to have a season opener of Porgy & Bess one of these seasons just so I can see 90 year old ladies from the Upper East Side in blackface. Renee Fleming and Nathan Gunn will star, with Anna Netrebko as Clara. Ok, it is officially time for me to shut the hell up. [Which I did, kind of, and then posted more in the morning, and then got edit-happy, and my god, if you have this on any kind of feed, you will have received like ten versions of this. Sorry!]

I suppose I didn't really comment on the overall quality of the thing here, spent my time on the trees and neglected the forest. The thing is, I'm really not kidding about cuts, though I suppose I'm, yeah, kidding about cutting all of Act I. But I have older performances in my head, before Bonynge started bobbing for eighth notes in dark cupboards in Italy, bringing home semiquavers for Joanie. And I just think sometimes (as in the end of "Quando rapito") it doesn't make for any great musical truth to restore every last trip through the key signature, and in cases like the Wolf's Glen scene, it is really worth asking why it was so often cut. Here the answer is: it ruins the dramatic pacing. Maury's Law of Editing states that completeness is not the same thing as perfection. There's something extremely satisfying about the arc of superficial cheerfulness-extreme awkwardness-high drama-terror that then sends us out the door with (ideally) the pathos of the tenor's double-header, pace Madame Melba.

Just the same, thanks to Local Hero Levine and yes, also to Mary Zimmerman no doubt, everything after the maybe unavoidably draggy first act (ok, for me, everything except for the Wolf's Glen scene, honestly) was in gear. The second act in particular was transporting, producing near the end that feeling of small-scale cardiac arrest. If I never got that feeling, I'd stop going to the opera. Some have complained of Levine's temperamental disconnect with Donizetti, but I'd have to disagree strongly. I'm as much surprised as pleased to welcome Donizetti With A Pulse from the baton of our hometown Wagnerian.

Last thought: Dessay's post-crackup exit was staged in such a way (and of course I don't know if this was the intended effect) as to milk longer response from the audience, which it certainly did--longer and louder, I can report, having found myself seated in front of that well known purveyor of "private recordings" whose "bravo" is the loudest in the spectator biz.

*sorry, Straussmonster

**I hope it's Scottish and not Irish. Listen, all my life people from the northeast asked if I was from Tennessee and people from the south asked if I was from Connecticut. Don't start with me. p.s. Lammermoor doesn't seem to exist.

Oh wait. I'm not done. You'll be wanting to know what famous people I saw, right?! Well, I almost walked into the ravishing Mary Louise Parker, one of those people who actually is even prettier than you think she is from tv. Um, and there was some gal in an orange frock, and I had a conversation in Spanish with this guy with a camera to try and figure out who she was, and my Spanish being what it was, if this happened in English it would be like

Me: Lady in dress who is?
El dude: blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmovierrrrrrrrrr
Me: (to his girlfriend) I say, dress in lady who is? Is orange, dress is.
La chick: blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrLeonardo di Capriorrrrrrrrrr

Spanish. It's fast. I guess she was in a movie with Leonardo di Caprio. Or she's his mom, and the guy just likes talking about movies.

Who else...Bob Balaban....some lady in an ornate dress with red hair I decided was Tina Louise, but ok maybe not...Marilyn Horne, who went up and spoke to the MC beforehand and then must have been quite surprised to hear same MC two minutes later say to Trebs (who looked great) "Oh, you're the first opera singer that's come up to talk to us."

Here for pics of the plaza crowd. Here for a somewhat less than impressed review. Here the always worth reading Mr. Bernheimer finds the cast making up for the production, and also waxing enthusiastic about the young Mr. Costello. I'll stop updating the links now.

Ok, seriously. Good night, opera folks.

Step right up!

I don't have ads on here (mostly out of laziness--I think I got halfway through the google ads thing once and then saw a shiny object or something) but I do think I'll point you toward an opera-for-sale site I stumbled upon via Parterre that has some excellent inventory dirt cheap. I got the free download, was struggling with unzipping it because I'm sort of your grandmother when it comes to computer stuff sometimes, and emailed a little with the guy who runs it, who was helpful and nice and mentioned he's just starting up, so here I am with my megaphone. The site is:

www.operadepot.com

There's some crazy rare Souliotis, a Jenufa with the great Irene Dalis as the big K, things like that. All I've listened to so far is the Tabarro, from which I was expecting little beyond "oh hey, it's Il Tabarro!" because I'd never heard of Clara Petrella and remembered Mirto Picchi dimly as the shadow cast by the blazing light of Callas on some Norma. You know, thinking back on the Met cast, I'm wondering if Il Tabarro is the operatic equivalent of the jeans in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (C'mon guys, secretly you all saw it too, right? Hm. Why are those crickets chirping? Who let crickets in?) in that everyone looks good in it. Petrella seems little bit why-didn't-I-know-about-you though, srsly.

On a wholly, but wholly unrelated note, did anyone else do a double take in the middle of this article about a cow that got loose in Brooklyn? You'll know where.

Stepping off my beat for a moment

God only knows what's with my unmanageable tendency to post about things I'm only halfway through reading.* But here I go again, this time about Joyce Hatto, at least until I veer off somewhere completely unrelated. I'm out of my depth from the git-go on this one, as I love a piano as much as the next Marx brother, but am not really a phile. One thing I do find fascinating is this: as opera fans, we all revel in being able to clock Dusolina Giannini in two measures, at forty paces, aurally speaking. And apparently, from what I'm reading in the New Yorker piece as well as what I remember from rec.music.opera back before I abandoned classical music wherein nobody (Thank you Terrence MacNally) dies....those whose forte is piano get possessed by the exact same gameshow geist.

Surely it adds a flavor of intrigue to think that there may be artifice and therefore mysteries that can't be solved with a glance at the album cover. I've always felt a little extra interest in my Kleiber Rosenkavalier on some fly-by-night label wherein a singer I'm basically positive is the beloved Lucia Popp (and esteemed others have said the same) is cagily listed as one Hilde da Groote--who apparently did exist and even sing, though I find it tough to believe she managed to shovel the same amount of irresistible flirtation into the single word "Quinquin" when Sophie tells Oktavian what the one other etwas she knows about him is.

Here's the thing, for me. I had always wondered if people could tell their favorite instrumentalists apart the way we can tell Janowitz from Brouwenstijn, you and me. Because no matter how individual the fall of your fingers on a keyboard, it's never going to have the same absolutely organic instrument/musician gesammstkunstwerker connection as when the musican is the instrument. So really I find it fascinating to imagine being able to tell instrumentalists apart; I suppose in extreme cases you can see how it could be done, really individualistic accents like Heifetz' legato, that sometimes sounds like a human voice articulating a "w" (here again I betray my prejudice: things are distinct insofar as they're voice-like) or of course people who play a distinctive instrument, Landowska on her Pleyel, and for that matter melting the notes into one another as if it were a flute, which isn't possible. Horowitz, I understand, played with such sheer volume it might tip the listener off, but then wasn't there a scandal of sorts about that, too?

The point here, if there is one, is that our ability to recognize a musician blind is tightly bound to our sense of ourselves as having meaningful feelings about what makes good music. I remember my own first absolutely certain aural i.d., and it was (hi again!) Lucia Popp, and I don't think it's a coincidence she was for many years my vocal uberdivchen and remains essential to my understanding of good singing. Some awful part of us that is structurally related to cosmic trainwrecks like No Child Left Behind, that is to say, to measures of goodness that satisfy us by being consistent but/therefore are troubled or even worthless, is also responsible for the idea that you can't really like Berger better than Gueden if you run any risk of mistaking one for another.

Ah, something there is in me that doesn't love a statistic, that's for sure, and that same thing doesn't love the idea that the value of a performance has anything to do with what face or what fingers brought it into being. But who can deny that part of the love of all of this is a feeling of connection to the chap behind the chaconne? Maybe part of the trend, which I still think may be overstated, toward singers with world-class faces is that we're afraid of being tricked when we love a singer (pianist, violist, glass harmonic...ker) with our ears.

But I don't really think so, not for sure. I'm just talking. Six more days and I can resume talking whereof I have a clue.

Unrelated: I do roll my eyes a bit when people beseech and apostrophize the powers that be on Opera-L or any other den of tinfoil millinery, apparently half expecting Peter Gelb, sitting at a terminal somewhere, to smack his forehead and yelp, "Great Scott! Why didn't I think of that?!" So think of this just as my fantasy, but if it is true what is hinted over at that scandalous rumour mill we call Parterre, and my guess about this rumor in particular is correct, and the lovely Bayrakdarian is going to desusannify due to being otherwise occupied in every sense (picture her with a little sign that says "occupied"...) Well then I just had this divoon thought about what the Met should do, and that's correct an oversight of many years and see what Lisa Saffer's doing. We have spoken.


*"...and he isn't talking," as the punchline goes. The nonexistent can be so taciturn.

Quite wrong

The minute I looked at my program I realized the program was not at all what I thought, not a gala celebration of Sills, but rather a real memorial, a loving tribute by friends and family, with a little music. Not at all appropriate for a frothy write-up of who sang what and how, with cracks at Henry Kissinger (no matter what I may think of him.) Apologies if you read the earlier entry. I'm about to take it down. I hope you heard the broadcast. Carol Burnett and Stanley Sills spoke particularly movingly, and for that matter, it must be admitted, so did Kissinger.

Minutes from the Milton Host Fan Club

A propos de rien, I have to say that the intros over at Unnatural Acts of Opera have gotten riotously funny, in case you haven't heard them lately. The latest doubles as a sort of voice ID quiz gone off the tracks.

Two words more (le diro con due parole)

More than a lot of the singers who have gone, Pav feels like everyone's to mourn, and not mine in particular (I know I say this constantly), but a comment on Parterre reminded me of one small story of my connection to the singer, and I'd like it to be my little garland to throw: In 1992 I was on a flight from Austin to Lexington, one of the last times I flew. I'd tried various things to calm my nerves, breathing deeply, thinking good and floaty thoughts, swilling valerian root as if I were backstage at the Moscow Art Theater in the time of Chekhov...what finally made me feel less like I was going to die or more like it would be okay if I did just then was the friend we've just lost. I had taped the first big chunk of Der Rosenkavalier to cassette, and hadn't really found my way into it, hadn't listened with libretto, didn't know why there was suddenly a tenor and then he was gone for the rest of the opera. But I got to "Di rigori armato," and felt a little better, and from there I rewound and relistened, surely a dozen times, and if you know from irrational fear, you will know I mean it when I say it felt just a little like he saved me from something awful. It's a mildly satirical little cameo, but only works if done sincerely and beautifully. In the hands/cords of LP, legato on the words "ahi che resiste" laid on with evident love, impossible runs up to C delivered with a tiny swagger, it is a thing of beauty, enough beauty to cast a pale glint even over the fear of death. That, I guess, is how I think of his voice, even if I feel the loss less than I have for those whose voices brought up stormier things in my soul.

Another, I'm afraid

Luciano Pavarotti, Italian Tenor, is Dead at 71

No seriously, I'm asking

I was just reading on Wikipedia (yeah, I know) about Nureyev's partnership with Fonteyn. When they danced together in Giselle, "the applause from the audience lasted longer than the ballet itself." Well this is of course what came to mind: one hears from folks who went to the Met back in The Day that the ovations went on for hours, people jumping up and down on their seats, perhaps fans shooting themselves in standing room, having reached the edge of experience. But I trigress. (That's like digressing, but in more directions.) The question is: why, these days, are the ovations, perforce, so short? After about two curtain calls, the house lights inevitably come on, whether people are still shooting themselves or not. Is it just a matter of money? Have crowds become lacklustre in their divadienss, and the shouting isn't loud enough to justify another call? Does this happen differently elsewhere? No, seriously. I want to know. I do actually find it hard to imagine it being very enjoyable for fans or performers after maybe fifteen minutes, but the ovating at the Met truly rarely lasts more than five, it seems to me. The only answer that is forbidden here is, "Oh, there just isn't anyone worth shouting for anymore." Say that, and we are no longer pals.

A different obituary

Parterre has posted an obituary for Rose Bampton, but I've saved my words for someone who has nothing to do with opera.

A year out of college I worked in a bookstore because that's what you did in Austin. Downwardly mobile was the thing. Driving home one day, I had that NPR program on the radio where actors read short stories, is that still around? I'm pretty sure it was Linda Lavin who read Grace Paley's three page story "Wants," and pretty much ended my interest in the novel as a form. Paley put whole lives in these miraculously tiny stories. I've put "Wants" in an email more than once, because I wanted to impress someone, and because it didn't take long to type.

There weren't many of them. She had her art firmly in perspective, and what was more important to her, much of the time, was living her life and keeping up her anti-war activism. Apparently she was often to be seen on her corner in the Village handing out pamphlets like Grace Goodside from the Lower East Side, child of radical Jewish immigrants, rather than Grace Paley, beloved and influential writer of stories. She was 84, and had lived as one imagines she wanted to, but there's a certain bitterness that she had to die in this era, having thrown herself unsparingly into agitating against the war in Vietnam.

Paley was a casual linguist with no credential and a better ear than plenty who have one. There is Russian and Yiddish in her stories, and she mines each for its exact emotional content, the things that don't translate and show up only in a sentence spoken in English but thought in Russian. "Goodbye and Good Luck" is a map of starry-eyed regret, and equally of resourcefulness and wit, made perfect by its guilelessly precise sense of what it means to learn to talk about what's going on around you and sometimes talk your way out of it in one country and then, by necessity, in another. In with the bargain, Paley's insistence on looking at the hard part of everything and not blinking.

Immediately he said "Rosie Lieber, you surely got a build on you!"

"It takes all kinds, Mr. Krimberg."

"Don't misunderstand me, little girl," he said. "I appreciate, I appreciate. A young lady lacking fore and aft, her blood is so busy warming the toes and the fingertips, it don't have time to circulate where it's most required."

Everybody likes kindness. I said to him: "Only don't be fresh, Mr. Krimberg, and we'll make a good bargain."

I saw Grace Paley once, reading a story she wrote for The New Yorker in the last decade, at the Chicago Historical Society. It was, truth to tell, a bit of a rehash of older stories, not the better for time and wisdom. It didn't matter much. It was a joy to see her. Studs Terkel also appeared, and for part of the time they were both onstage, affectionately interrupting each other like the grandparents you'd have in a perfect world.

Someone asked Grace Paley to read aloud the little paragraph that serves as an epigraph to her collected stories. Coincidentally I picked the volume up off my shelf this morning and have it at hand. These are the words I got to hear her read aloud in her resolutely prosaic voice, the voice of a century of New York:

It seems right to dedicate this collection to my
friend Sybil Claiborne, my colleague in the Writing
and Mother Trade. I visited her fifth-floor
apartment on Barrow Street one day in 1957.
There before my very eyes were her two husbands
disappointed by the eggs*. After that we talked and
talked for nearly forty years. Then she died.
Three days before that, she said slowly, with the
delicacy of an unsatisfied person with only a dozen
words left, Grace, the real question is--
How are we to live our lives?

*a reference to the first line of "Two Short Sad Stories from a Long and Happy Life"

The things we do...

You had to believe some of them (well, some of us) were doing it for the ritual; come Monday morning, many of the same seats would be available and even the Fille, already very well sold online, isn't so sold that a day would make a difference. Here's a picture of the line snaking a little past the fountain after doubling back on itself five-fold inside. The whole ride took about four hours from fountain to "next Window, please!" All sorts were in line: hip kids, folks who probably heard Melchior in the old house (a woman behind us left after two hours and was asked why. She said, "I'm 85, and this is just stupid.") The usual crazies, people speaking every language though of course more than anything, Russian. The weather outside was foreboding but, for the bulk of the afternoon, pleasantly if strangely autumnal, a little like summer in the Bay Area. Ten places ahead of us, alone, a woman who looked awfully like Maribel Verdu. Behind us, a lovely gentleman who didn't seem offended when we admitted, after the expected opener about what all are you queueing up for, that one thing was Butterfly out of a desire to hear better singing on that magical set. Immediately in front of us I heard a young guy asking the man in front of him about Trebazonko (Ein schoenes war!) and calling his lady friend on cell when he found out half of it had canceled. If you were there in pairs, it was possible to sneak off for lunch, throw a few crumbs for pigeons until they became too assertive, but the guards at the door were on orange alert and would walk to the line with you and say "does anyone recognize this guy? Was he standing near you?" Just after 4, we left, poorer, but with plans.

Can't say it isn't novel

Meanwhile, here's an approach to Erlkonig I've certainly never heard. I won't ruin the surprise for you.

What comes around goes around

I am now the neighbor nobody wants. I received a La Puma Gioconda as a gift and am now joyously playing it for all to hear, as I have had to hear their early morning right wing talk radio, apparently self-taught electric bass, and something that was either one intense S&M scene or domestic violence. Well, take that, neighbors! Learn to fear Olive Middleton! Interestingly, the Cieca on this seems competent, but she may be benefiting from drastically lowered expectations. If someone wished to hear a choice scene or two, all that person would have to do would be tutor me a little in file-sharing is all I'm saying. Well, it's time for everyone's favorite b-flat, so I should probably sign off in case I faint from the ecstasy of art. [Okay I had to check back in to report that, sweetly, the audience gave Madame Middleton a warm round of applause for her very heartfelt a-flat, a tradition carried into the present by fans of Ms. Millo.]

I shot it on the bias! It's artistic!

Too silly and delightful for me to bother much with an introduction. The other acts are on youtube but the filmic concept of the end of the act convinced me to post this one.

More tales from the "What Ever Happened to" Files

When I was but a wee thing, didn't know "Porgi amor" from Porgy and Bess, one of my role models in freaking the fuck out about opera--sort of incidentally the first person to play me Rosa Ponselle--was a delightful fellow who shares my first name (well, my real one) and whose uberdiva was Sylvia Sass. I think fondly of her both because he was so into her, went to a full run of her Toscas I think, and also because I've always liked her lispy lunatic of an Elvira on that one Don Giovanni. I don't know much of the rest of her output, but I'm curious whether she blew it out altogether or just never completely caught on--I think she'd have been pretty young still in the 90's and I'm pretty sure she wasn't singing anywhere, at least in the States.

A very devoted fan on YouTube seems to have posted rather a lot of her work, so here's a clip I liked. Talk of Norma is in the air anyway, these days, isn't it?

And now a word from the Strauss Monster

...whose monstrosity, as you know, extends also to Wagner. Brief digression: the problem with fans, perhaps you'll agree, is often that their fandom isn't grounded in anything; and then on the other hand, the problem with People Who Know Things is they don't get loopy enough about their subject. An admirable exception to both of these generalizations is my pal the Strauss Monster, whose fandom will beat up your fandom, but who also knows whereof she types, big time. Take it away, Straussy.

* * *

So, I waited to write anything on this because I knew a ton (okay, four--but in the opera world I live in that's a ton) of people who were going to the last performance and I didn't want to spoil them, so I could get their aesthetic reactions without bias. I didn't see the other installments--I'm poor and busy and only went to this one thanks to the kindness of strangers--so I don't have an idea of how and/or whether the visual logic linked up, which is very important in a Ring.

That said, somewhere during the second half of the Prologue, my mind christened this "the Valery Gergiev prog metal concept show Ring", and I stand by that. We had Metal Mario Siegfried, Brunnhilde the Queen of the Darkness, manly men in skirts, and lots of dancers. Let's talk about the dancers first.

So, you all remember the production of Helena earlier in the year, right? (I blogged that one out of love for the piece and glee that the Met did it at all.) The overwhelming problem with that production can be summed up in one word: "What?" Operatic production does not have to be literal to be faithful, and not everything symbolic has to be obvious--in fact, it's painful when it's made too obvious, like that dumbass London Ring where Wotan was carrying a traffic sign instead of a spear.

But the audience reaction of a blank, uncomprehending "What?" indicates a basic failure on the part of the producer. The blank stare means that you haven't even managed to connect with a basic level of symbolism that could then be expanded upon, played with, deconstructed. It means you've managed to jolt the audience out of paying attention and into wondering what that was supposed to be. (In Helena Act II I kept wondering what the Omniscient Seashell was doing there, not to mention her male counterpart.) So for me, the giant idols decorating the stage were not full-blown "What?", but the dancer extras almost always were.

Take the Norn Scene. Their costumes were great with weird hats and long robes covered in rope and shells; they looked sufficiently mystical and otherworldly. But what was going on with the rope? It's there, and then the dancers take it over to the side (I was on the angle, so I could see all of that), and then they did some sort of rolling across the stage. The rope comes back on, it gets broken in an undramatic fashion, and there's some generic wandering off for the Norns. (Stage exits were a problem in this production, at least in the Immolation Scene.)

Maybe it's because I didn't see the other installments, but I found other parts of the stage action bewildering, such as the (admittedly very cool looking) Rhinemaiden surrogates with neon green hair, in Act III. Why were they carrying around a glowspear? (I'll resist the urge to detail how a friend and I found ourselves referring to it, afterwards.) I will refrain from making a joke about chickens, too.

The biggest stage disappointment was the Immolation Scene. Like it or not, at least once Brunnhilde is done, it's incredibly visual and narrative music; it reworks two major sets of material that we have heard before, Rhine music and the Valhalla music. (Let's leave aside the motif that everyone argues about.) And there is a very explicit and amazing transition from the Rhine music to the Valhalla music, which then flares forth in its highest glory.

Unless you are an aesthetic tool like Pierre Boulez who rejects the idea of stage/music coordination (it's in some of his comments on Lulu; he may have grown up some since), you need some staging correspondence to this. Nothing. Nada. Not even a good use of the lighting (although I enjoyed the dramatic primary color lighting throughout). Brunnhilde just walked off the back of the stage, no fire. I swear I thought the audience was going to laugh when Hagen went off the back, and I was going to have to kill someone. The fadeout at the end was obscured by clapping, although Gergiev held it nice and long. I thought Wagner audiences had better manners.

So, musical side of things:

Victor Lutsuk (Siegfried): a little rough at first, but I appreciated his stamina, he got the high C in the third act, and as Maury said, a reasonably lyrical death scene. (I like having him do the death scene entirely alone on stage; it emphasizes its hallucinatory/reworking nature.)

Larisa Gogolevskaya (Brynnie): had all the notes, loud, effective, but I was bored. I got no idea of a character off of her.

Mikhail Petrenko (Hagen): I appreciated doing the role without shouting, but Hagen really needs more volume in a few select places, or a voice that projects a little better. Hagen's music is some of my favorite bits of Wagner. Fabulous face paint.

Edem Umerov (Alberich): Awful. Barky. No sense of line.

Everyone's German was fairly mediocre, to the point where I could tell.

Gergiev: idiosyncratic. There were times I was annoyed because I wasn't hearing things that I knew I should have been; I liked a lot of the slow tempos, but things felt disconnected and some of the pauses were very long. Fantastic when he really let the orchestra rip in the Funeral Music. That was awesome.

I could blather on, but I'll end it here, saying thank you to those who hooked me up with a ticket, and I hope this is interesting to those reading it.

* * *

Which of course it is. Thanks SM!

The French-Bavarian-Ossetian Farewell

Ok, a few words of my own about last night, if I can pry my thoughts from the all lesbian Walkuere we were plotting this morning. No, seriously, think about it.

I don't have a Big Statement to make about the Konzept; certain things worked--even some of the crazy ones like Erda's Really Big Hat--and certain other things were little trainwrecks (nobody's fault, but every time Tanovitsky entered in that costume all I could think was "I'll get you my pretty! And your little dog, too!") The one thing that I couldn't accept was the unresponsive staging of the last moments, in which Brunnhilde here makes something of a...I'm told it's called a French Farewell. One minute she's there; the next minute she's in a cab. I'm not the world's biggest literalist, but things have to go boom at the end of Last Call in Walhalla. It can cause a serious aesthetic case of blue balls if they don't. Wow, I never thought I'd use that phrase for anything, and yet there it is. Horrors.

With that quibble behind us, and a bottle in front of us, I am prepared to get all 3rd grade Thanksgiving list about last night's 'erung. Little Maury, what are you thankful for this year? Well, teacher, I'm thankful for Valery Gergiev's savage reading of Siegfried's funeral march, and I'm thankful for Viktor Lutsuk's unflagging fortitude and reasonably lyrical death, and on the whole I'm thankful for Olga Sergeeva.

Because she's here and there a mess, but when she's not, and sometimes when she is, she's excellent in many ways. To describe her in Fametracker fame audit terms:

Current approximate level of fame: Olga Savova
Deserved approximate level of fame: Hildegard Behrens

The part of the voice right below the money notes feels unmistakably unreliable, but maybe she'll get that straightened out. Or maybe it'll get worse, what am I, the amazing Kreskin? All's I'm saying is her Brunnhilde was a portrait, not a sketch. I actually do think Gergiev's G'd'ung might find new dimensions as the years go by, which is not to minimize its pacing or its punch, but some of the music that should be more rapturous ("Frau Sohne sendet") or more stately ("Heil dir, Gunther!") might eventually get colored in as vividly as stuff like the Rhine Journey and the big barbecue.

Tiny what-if's: Nikitin might've made a better Hagen than Petrenko, musclier voice, and first Norn Elena Vitman frankly had more contralto mojo than last night's Erda, Ms. Bulycheva. Anyway that about finishes up the summer for me, with nothing to do for 1.5 months but sit here dabbing my eyes with a kerchief, listening to Frida Leider, and maybe occasionally go to work. And yet I'm bound to go on about something or other.

Meanwhile, look forward to a guest blogger or two, one pretty soon I believe.

I just read Martin Bernheimer's take, and it's a good deal more dour than my own, and I can't entirely disagree with much of it. One thing he points out that I forgot to mention is the hilariously unimaginative staging of the Woodbird. Oh jeez. And yet I'd sit through forty more of this one before I'd willingly return to Otto Schenk's aesthetically mildewed old clunker.

p.s. Alex Ross's's's posting reminded me of another pleasure of last night's hoedown: the minute you set foot out into the plaza for a breath of fresh air or to dash for a sandwich or whatever, there's a bunch more people in one form or other of adoration of music. First there's the swing dancing dealio, which looks like great fun for those enviable souls among us able to get out of bed without breaking an ankle, then there's the big, brilliant art piece "Slow Dancing" projected on the State Theater (finally someone has found a use for the State Theater.) They project them 'til 1 each morning! Now and then, this town reminds you why you moved here, eh?

Etruscan Funerary Statuary

Today's semi-sensical subject line is a phrase I read some twenty years ago in a book about murder mysteries and have used ever since to connote the needlessly arcane. Though in this case it just popped into my head since it's my understanding that Tsypin's (directorless?) Ring takes as its visual seed Scythian funerary statuary. It's not the kind of thing I go around knowing about, so I'll have to just pass that along to you as hopefully true.

What I can tell you about, on the other hand, is the musical values draped thereupon and the dramatic impact, both of which are very high without being such as makes one do backflips down the street. I'd recommend it except of course you'd have about half an hour to get a ticket for the last 1/8 of it.

My hope going in was that this would be some sort of replay of the Kirov's big deal tour to Lincoln Center in the 90's, whereupon we inherited the likes of Olga Borodina and Dmitri Hvorvostovsky, along with some more faded stars like Galina Gorchakova and Sergei Leiferkus who gave some enjoyable performances and some crazy-ass interviews. That is to say, I was hoping we'd find some new stars in this here Ring, and I think on that count, this outing has been a success.

Did you ever get a hunch about a singer from irrelevant details? You think his name sounds right for a marquee or her face is made for the projection of ridiculously outsized emotion? I had that hunch about Mlada Khudoley: just try saying the name--sounds famous doesn't it? I'm hearing she's got real star potential, though I took a pass on Walkuere. But in last night's Siegfried, I can attest directly to the presence of some singers you'd like to hear in upcoming seasons.

Insofar as your tastes line up with mine, who I think you should be most hell-bent on hearing is Aleksei Tanovitsky, our Wanderer. I've heard more boom in a bass, but after years of kvetching about James Morris' Wotan, always to my ear more pedestrian than crossing 34th Street, less inspired even than this review is turning out sofar, I am thrilled to have heard someone...hey I need to run, actually. Because Gotterdammerung is in 50 minutes.

So in fast-forward: Sergeeva started out rotten and then got good, capping things off with an are you kiddingly long C; the evening's Siegfried whose name I'll fill in later was soft-grained in ways that were a relief and a disappointment, a gent named Gorshkov I think was absolutely ideal as Mime, needle-toned without making the milk go sour, and Petrenko mined the depths with presence and the requisite measure of menace. The orch, as expected, messy but descript, resolutely so.

Sorry to blog and run, and of course I've skipped the production altogether. Most likely I'll remedy that, and if not, my friend who has Wagner chops in a way I don't has promised a write-up. See you in six hours, at which point I may try to make this not such a demipygous thing. (Personal to Chalkenteros: forgive my moment of feigned Greek there.)

No wait; this really does end up being about Trovatore, eventually

On a recent ride down from Columbia County, we were listening to the Bohm Rosenkavalier (in which you get the fleeting thrill of hearing the perfect Tatiana Troyanos make a false entrance, by the way.) It's nearly flawless Strauss, Oktavian a better fit for Troyanos than Der Komponist, and Ludwig's Marschallin leaving nothing to want. And then Edith Mathis, who sounds like she might have made an excellent Zdenk@, waltzes in and kills it, every inflection 100% wrong. Had Mrs. P been an opera fanatic, she might have written

Why is it no-one's sent me yet
One perfect Rosenkavalier, do you suppose?
Ah no; it's always just my luck to get
One Perfect Rose, and some bleaty Swiss soubrette.

But she wasn't, and she didn't, oh and also it doesn't rhyme. Just, why are there so many near misses with Rosenkavalier? Popp's definitive Sophie paired with either Gwyneth Jones in jello mode or Fassbander's taffy-pull of an Oktavian, the brilliance that is Donath with the (if memory serves) rather nondescript Minton in the drag bit. Think about it: there's something fairly major wrong with every damn recording of the thing.

That's not what I'm posting about, of course. It was just on the top of the box, mentally speaking, so I had to move it.

Here we pause for an unaccustomed commercial break, because the picnic is as much a part of Caramoor as the yodeling, and one of the fine gents who invited me along when I was whining about taking the bus brought the most ravishing soppressata from a place on Bleecker called Faicco's. Go get some, and email me one, and in the text of the email explain to me once and for all that soppressata doesn't mean a sausage so terrible it must be forgotten.

Am I putting off the actual review? Oh, probably. It's just that Saturday was the first time I ever heard the Podles sing something that is objectively no longer within her vocal means. (Is that the "forced transition" leitmotif I hear? I'm certain it is!) Azucena is, right, not a contralto role. And while the big Rossini extravaganza at Carnegie where first I heard EP had unflappable A's and maybe above, at fifty-whatever-she-is, Madame's voice has settled into a glorious but by no means ambivalent or flexible contralto place. The interesting thing is that she resolutely and repeatedly opts out of the gentlewoman's compromise on high notes, going so far as to put in an extra one in a tiny cadenza in (I think) "Condutta era in cieppi." I think the rhetorical content of what sounded a lot like a scream was: why didn't anyone offer me this role fifteen years ago? Or it may just be that she will do nothing, but nothing halfway.

For, of course, she brought to the role, as always, that Podles touch, playing it with all the quiet dignity of a Mexican variety show, and that is why I will always hear her if I can. A sort of operatic anti-Lillian-Hellman, every word she sings is true, including "e" and "la." There is towering intensity, stopping always before the point of cheap effect, and the low passages remain confounding. What would have been the best approach, according to Emperor of the World Maury, would have been if Crutchfield's deeply permissive ornament-positive attitude had allowed for his Azucena to indulge exclusively in interpolated sub-acuti, and in fact during "Stride," she did indulge thusly with the expected effect. Best of all, to no-one's surprise, was "Deh, rallantate, o barbari," though though "Ai nostri monti" showcased La P's flair for pathos, seen in last year's death of Tancredi.

Also, not to be mean, but you may be pleased to hear she was not wearing the gold lame thing, for once.

The thing about cult divas is they sometimes fall prey to what I think I'll call The Curse of Magda, singing with drastically inferior support from their colleagues. Not the case, this fine evening, at least not all around. The young Juliana di Giacomo provided me with the opportunity to watch a singer turn it around entirely between acts: "Tacea" wasn't conservatory stuff but it was more promise than delivery. Everything that followed was cheeringly splendid, especially "D'amor," which she decanted like the fine stuff it is. There's room later for more ideas in the flow of sound, but no-one could complain it wasn't beautiful.

Do you really want to hear about Mr. Casanova? Srsly? Well, better you should hear about him than hear him. Famous to you, perhaps, for his lumpen stage presence, he should instead be famous for his exasperating singing. The thing is, you can't completely dismiss him, because the voice is good in places and there are even moments of elegance; "Ah si, be mio" was not half bad. And then "the pira" as I understand it's called by opera-fan-as-sports-fans (yes, we're all guilty of this sometimes) who almost literally sit with a scorecard, shuffling around and waiting for the second-to-last note so they can rate things in comparison to dead people...where was this sentence going? Rightyo, the pira was by way of "Di Quella Pierrot Lunaire," and I'm not at all kidding. Scarcely a note where you'd expect it, and a veritable seventh inning stretch while we waited for him to rejoin us for the C.

I'm a little lost trying to talk about the performance's Di Luna, Daniel Sutin. I am usually in favor of singers who look like their heads are going to explode or like they may faint from their physical involvement in what they're doing, speaking of Troyanos as I was once upon a time, but in this case it came a little at the expense of the line. The Verdi Line--sounds like a fleet of cruise ships, when really it's just an opera writing cliche. But how else am I gonna say it? Di Luna is an elegant role, and the fury must be presented with the genteel strictures of the style. Sutin sometimes did and sometimes didn't pull off this act of aesthetic trickery. I guess I don't mind a little Wagner in my Verdi, but maybe just a half cup less. I see he's in National's Elektra next season, and I'm pretty sure he'll be terrific.

Did I mention the performance was mic'd to the point that I, who never notice these things, or any other things, felt a little iffy about writing a review of what I'd heard? Where it bothered me most was at the very beginning, when Daniel Mobbs, a singer of reliably high quality, was singing a robust account of Ferrando's air that was nonetheless tough to size up on account of the electronics. It's also one of those no-win arias like the drinking song from Otello, I'd say, but with that in mind, I think he did admirable work.

So, whither Podles? If it were up to me, there would be Mahler and Wagner in the future, more Klytamnestren, maybe some Gaeae. Things like that. And of course the Russian program she takes on the road will never fail her. It is too early in the game to give her the parting gift that is the Pikovaia Dama Countess. Actually, her Polish website usually lists a long way into the future but right now seems to have only three things past Friday's Trovatore, not including the rumored La Cieca at the Big House. So I'm afraid that may be all I hear this season.

Next up, Siegfried and Gergi-dammerung. Thanks again to my expedition-mates for having me along! One of whom, before I sign off, emailed me something for the gameshow portion of My Favorite Intermissions, namely a crazy Victorian singing translation of Trovatore. So here are three excerpts, and you can try and guess what they are! I actually don't know, so it's only a game really in the way that, say, voting in Ohio is a game.

Manrico:
Tremble, ye tyrants!
I will chastise ye,
My flaming beacon
ye have uprais’d,
Yes, by that burning pile
My wrath defies ye,
Your blood I’ll scatter
Where it hath blaz’d.


Leonora:
Here at thy feet a suppliant
Oh, let my tears implore thee!
If neither tears nor pray’rs avail
My lifeblood I’ll pour before thee.
Let me die! Let me die!
If vainly I kneel before thee
Then tread upon my lifeless corse,
But harm not the Troubador.


Azucena:
Oh, tyrants, loose these cruel bonds
Ye drive me to distraction,
Let death at once release me
But spare me this protra-ha-ha-haction.
Thou impious son of cruel sire,
I he-e-e-e-re defy thee
Tremble, there is a pitying God,
His wrath on thee shall fall,
Tremble, there is a pitying God,
His wrath on thee shall fall

Good luck!

Helas, those summer nights

Well thank god I know clever people to quote so you'll keep me around when I have nothing to say. (Perhaps I ought to take the good advice of David Byrne whose lips, you know, are sealed when he has nothing to say. Yeah I was just watching that on Netflix.) Anyway this requires a tiny bit of backstory but I'm certain you'll find it worth it: in discussing Steber and Les Nuits D'Ete, actually before the passing of the much beloved Mme. Crespin, Stewball of the North and I both started to make a knee-slapper on Nuits d'Ete and "Summer Nights" from Grease and then dismissed it, aghast at ourselves. Having so confessed, though...

Writes our Stewball:

...And now that the doors are open, I
think I've come up the most fantastic Konzept production of
Grease ever. All the regular songs will be replaced by
Berlioz selections which address the same themes. Les Nuits
d'Ete works nicely as a back and forth boy/girl number and
is thus a perfect replacement for Summer Nights. Then we can
have Hero's aria from B and B in place of Hopelessly Devoted
to You, There Are Worse Things I Could Do is replaced by
D'Amour l'ardente flamme, obviously cause of the whole
knocked up thing, and for You're the One that I Want, well I
guess Nuit d'ivresse from Troyens. I'm not sure what to do
about Beauty School Dropout. But really, this will be a huge
success on the Bregenz Floating Stage, I'm convinced of it.

Well, I have no connections at Bregenz, but if you do, you might bring it up. I can't see how they'd say no, right? Suggestions are being solicited for appropriate Berliozian stand-ins for "Beauty School Dropout." Riffing on the whole issue of hair color, I suggested "O Blonde Ceres," but I don't think either of us was quite satisfied with it, me in part because I know none of the other words to the aria so I don't know what it's about, but almost certainly not failure and disappointment, teenage style. That's awfully specific.

Aright, gotta get going to that malt shop in the sky. Next up: Podles conquers the outdoors.

Off chance...

Has anyone a cheapish set of Kirov Ring tickets (i.e. one seat, all four operas) they'd like to unload at face value, all legal-like, to a certain pal of mine? I mean, frankly, jesus will like you even better if you just give 'em to her, but I'm trying to be realistic. Drop me an email if you have tickets yearning to breathe free.

Another farewell

Comfort and solace to the family of Beverly Sills and all who adored her, who will feel lonely tonight, upon reading the news, though she never knew them. They've lost a friend, as surely as...

The first opera set I ever owned, given to me by my father (who thinks he recalls hearing her in Dallas, when he was young) was her Traviata. I don't have it anymore--it got scratched, and my tastes changed--and change still: I'd love to hear it again, though she was not among my most cherished. She was a vibrant public face of opera, this I know, and listening now to a memorial track or two, I certainly value the vitality of her singing. In high school I listened to "So anch'io la virtu magica" on warped cassettes; she was my introduction, I think to Olympia's air. The public library had her Manon on LP. In some indirect ways, she's prominent in my love of the art, though not lately someone I doted on. (I say this not to disparage, least of all now, but so as to avoid ostentation in telling you what I've lost--you may be the more bereft. When my favorites go, you can let me do the wailing. But she's too important to let her passing go without comment.)

One thing I always loved: somewhere or other I taped the old, scratchy broadcast she did of the original-key Zerbinetta scene. She leaves out a note or two but as for the rest, it's unadulterated delight. I said to a friend that her singing in it was "fearless." He said that was the right word. I think it was.

I have the impression, rightly or not, she was someone we'd like to have known, not just for her singing.

Maybe you can listen to a little of your favorite performance if you've just read the news, and remember her fondly, even if you just loved her records. The Puritani scene has just come on, and it's certainly a fine thing.

Part II of a Very Limited Series

In the ongoing series of Pictures of Francophone Tenors of a Bygone Era Who Like[d] Cats....

A very happy 105 to Hugues Ceunod. I don't really know his stuff, so I'll let you wax enthusiastic, if you adore him. My hat is simply off to him for landing a boyfriend who's like forty years younger than him. Not that I'd want to date someone who's negative seven years old, mind you. It just seems like an accomplishment.

Not for the faint of heart

Scant days ago I was telling someone this trio is among the very highlights of the operatic literature, and here it is in all its...in all its...uh, I can't find quite the right word.

In C, on Cornelia Street

So we're traipsing around the Village last night, trying to kill an hour because Mary's Fish Camp? It takes like a fucking fortnight to get a space at the flingin' flangin' bar. Anyway, we are as far afield from our promised treif repast as Cornelia Street, fortunately a good while before the rain, and we randomly stumble upon dozens of musicians in the middle of the street performing Terry Riley's In C, with many more standing around enjoying or WTFing. It wasn't something I'd want to stick around for much of, but the fact of it happening there gave me an odd rush of pride in my current adopted hometown.

(Happy Anniversary to me and New York next Tuesday. Three years is the leather anniversary: somewhat appropriate since you have to be a little bit of a bondage bottom to live here. "Please sir jack my rent up again sir! Ow! Thank you sir!")

Touched by an Angel, but not in a good way

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...how does the rest of that go? Oh, but nevermind. Can I tell you about one of my least favorite things?

So, I wasn't going to write anything about The Second Tosca. And I'm sort of still not, except tangentially, because both reviews I've read commented enthusiastically on the performance of two-time Tony nominee Vivian Reed as a larger than life diva-in-decline. I did enjoy this, in a way. She did 100% of what the script asked her to do. Thing is, and I'm not casting aspersions on the play as a whole, which was funny and well-paced...but when do we get to retire the archetype of the Black Woman Who Will Tell It To You Straight? And then maybe slam a door. It's sort of the verso of the very funny Mad T.V. sketch you may have seen floating around on youtube mocking the yearly ritual of an execrable movie about a Nice White Lady who teaches the kids at an inner city school not only to write/dance/juggle/play canasta, but [gulp, gulp, gulp, taking my anti-emetic] to LIVE.

I know this is a play in which everyone is to some extent a type. But this particular type is a wearying fetish, embarassing for everyone on either end of the equation, particularly when coupled in a sort of hybrid with The Sassy Black Woman Who Always Gets The Last Word (Oh No She Di-glottal stop-unt! Sass-amplifying Finger Wag!) The only opportunity they missed was having her cook for the whole family and dispense earthy wisdom. Even the horny, catty, gay character felt less problematic, maybe because he had a bit more of a story in him. It's not lost on me that a white guy critiquing portrayals of black characters is an iffy enterprise, by the way. Anyway, um, it was a pleasure to see a play about opera, and Rachel de Benedet was terrific, and I think I meant this to be about a sentence long but this medium-deeply pisses me off. Do I need to just take a fucking valium, or does this bug anyone else a lot?

The Ring, Announced

Casting for the Kirov/Gergiev/Tsypin Ring is now announced.

A week ago, anyhow, so maybe this is news only in my world. Valery Gergiev is Ossetian? I don't know whether you knew that – I mean, did you know that?

The highish number of unfamiliar names I find oddly cheering. It's exciting to think one of them may break out of the pack and be this year's find. I'm hoping it's Leonid Zakazhaev because we need one of those most. Or Victor Lutsuk, who needs a stage name. It just rhymes with too much.

Olga Sergeeva seems like a piece of good news. She acquitted herself admirably in the stand-alone Walkuere some 2-3 seasons back, though I don't remember being dumbstruck by her. She's young, yet.

p.s. yes I'm going, to part of it.

Tony vs. Tony

Just time for a quick entry before I have to run off and have myself cloned so one of me can watch the Sopranos swansong while the other watches the Tony Awards. Perhaps I should have a spare made that actually goes out and does things, but three's a crowd, I think I've heard.

Well the ur-Maury, the one who exists now and is primarily occupied with typing, was outdoors long enough to score halfsies for Spring Awakening because studies show the Tony Awards* are most fun when you have a few horses in the race. Somehow the season went by and I saw almost nothing until the bitter end. Maaaaybe because I was somewhere else most of the time, somewhere that starts with M and rhymes with "Petropolitan Opera." I'm not naming names. [I have the faint sense of perhaps having made that crack before. Me and my senile dementia offer our apologies.]

My impressions, in list form:

1) Fuck me running! $59 is a half price ticket these days?! I'm not exactly in my dotage and I have a feeling my first Broadway show cost less than that at full price. (This is pure speculation since the D'Annato family shall we say rarely pays full price.) Well, I had my chance. I think before they lugged it to Broadway, the thing was playing in an elementary school gym or something, but I was too busy seeing my 29th Aida no doubt. Tak oshibsja, tak nakazan, as Onegin might say, lamenting his failure to see, I dunno, Cats.**

2) That said, it was thoroughly enjoyable, and p.s. what does it take in this town to be financially secure enough that one needn't think of EVERYTHING in terms of how much it costs? The answer, I suspect, is the theme of my alternate viewing option. Look for a spinoff blog about my new career in Waste Management.

3) Thoroughly enjoyable, but oh my god, the lyrics. Like: how the hell did this make it from off to Broadway without someone saying, "Um...guys? About the lyrics?" Top notch song-writing if you're a native of Zambia and can't understand what anyone is singing.*** One friend says, and I tentatively agree pending further review of the soundtrack, that "We've all got our junk, and my junk is you," wins the abomination award. But I'm pretty sure the Act II finale contained the phrase...let me stop and compose myself before saying this..."a child will lead the way." If not that, something a lot like it.

4) Good performances. That should probably not win Tony Awards, because they were mostly of the variety that inspires phrases like "fresh, spirited young cast." They were super enthusiastic and, for the most part, a little green. Actually the guy who's up for "featured" maybe should win. But if it's that Groff fellow (cute, nice ass, totally decent singing voice) versus Raul Esparza, whose Bobby in Company yea verily seared my soul, there is an objective right answer. Somewhat tucked away in the cast is a gal with a not quite standard issue Broadway voice that made me sit up and take notice. Retrieving program from bathroom (what, like you read Ulysses on the goddamn toilet) so I can tell you her name is...Lauren Pritchard.

5) I can't decide whether to take half-hearted umbrage at the way the tiny gay subplot was played for laughs while everything else was so angstily serious, albeit occasionally laced with an underlying hipster irony. It doesn't really seem worth the effort. No thank you, no umbrage for me. I'm on a diet.

In other Tony races, well...I do think Christine Ebersole should win. All else aside, if Audra MacDonald gets any more Tony Statuettes, she's going to be able to play chess with them. But no, she should win mostly because of the uncanny thing she did up there: half acting, half seance. Same goes for Mary Louise Wilson, I think, though maybe I mostly want her to win because I'm so fucking tired of actors with one name, and think they should be discouraged when possible. In the same spirit of teaching by punitive example, Legally Blonde must win nothing so people will write fewer musicals based on pop culture detritus, which is so tiresome, except for Xanadu which I really want to see before it closes, presumably on opening night.

Other than that, I guess I'm out of opinions.

Next up: pictures of my cat, or something equally fascinating.

*no, I can't quite bring myself to pluralize the word Tony. Tonys, Tony's, Tonies. They all make me squint.

**Seriously, though, the only time I've ever seen Jesus Christ Superstar (I can tolerate religion in the context of showtunes, apparently) was in Russian. Funny thing is I'm sure musicals and anything else lyrical involve massive re-writing since things in Russian tend to have way more syllables.

***Great, I go and pull a country out of the hat and it turns out the official language is English. At least this time I did a preemptive mistake google and avoided huffy emails from my heretofore silent Zambian readership with this footnote! Please amend to "native of Zambia who by circumstances too elaborate to outline here, is a monolingual speaker of Wendish."

Kindly Accept Substitutes: Tony Edition

The season's in the rearview, so it's going to be nothing but lunatic ramblings about Inge Borkh, catblogging, and the occasional theater review for a while. And what better time for theater reviews? This Sunday is a total nervous breakdown for some of us: miss the last Sopranos and risk reading spoilers before seeing it, or miss an hour of the Tony awards? I find awards shows to be sort of like sporting events in that the idea of watching them anything but live is weirdly disappointing---don't you? So it's Tony Vs. Tony, for better or worse. As it happens, I've done a bit of theater-going lately. (You remember theater. It's the one where people speak their lines instead of singing them.)

A visit from the folks a few weeks ago, for instance, led to the requisite D'Annato family TKTS marathon. Aright, not a marathon like the time we spent all day at Long Day's Journey and then--no, I'm serious--went to Take Me Out. Let me take this opportunity to recommend not going to Take Me Out with your family, if it's ever an option, unless you're weirdly comfortable with your family. Anyhow, this time it was one play a day, chosen by the elder D'Annati: first Inherit the Wind, then A Moon for the Misbegotten.

The former, ok, is simply a rotten play. Morally neatly schematic, not particularly clever in its use of language, and at this juncture, in this setting, it's just a bunch of New York liberal back-patting. Not that I have a huge problem with that, per se, but it's not what I want in a night at the theater.

Brian Dennehy was surprisingly dull (or not surprising to me since I know next to nothing about him and had the vague idea he had been in a famous action movie, but everyone seemed to be throwing up from excitement about his participation) in a role that--again, at this point in history, in this place--amounts to so much moustache-twirling. Christopher Plummer was on the other hand kind of a treat, oh and hey the guy who played the not even 1 dimensional role of the teacher was someone I met at a Golden Globes party once. Get me! Fancy me! The gal who played his um, gal, was an actress of the school whose main drama is generated by the urgency of the question "what on earth do I do with my HANDS?"

Maybe the best thing going for the production is the old timey gospel ensemble (think Carter Family, I guess--not quite so country, but there's a zither and all) that pops up at the beginning of the show and at intermission, lending a sort of flavor the rest of the proceedings didn't so much have. The set, by the probably deservedly ubiquitous Santo Loquasto, was big and detailed and somber and unfortunately featured rows of seating for a chunk of audience. Yeah, onstage. If I may partially inappropriately quote a John Guare line that sometimes pops into my head, Silver Beaver: Why??*

Oh, and if I may spoilerize what I had assumed was a directorial clunker until [see comments], the thing ended with Plummer packing up his books, taking a long, meaningful look at Dennehy's bible and another at the teacher's volume of Darwin, then putting them, side by side into his bag. Just before the scene went dim, I'm pretty sure I heard the ghost of Clarence Darrow and that of William Jennings Bryan singing a sarcastic verse or two of "Ebony and Ivory."

Now, Moon. I am fundamentally not set up to appreciate the plays of Eugene O'Neill. I know Catholics and Jews are supposed to have a good deal in common, but our neuroses come in somewhat different flavors, and watching this or even Long, Long, Long Day's Journey into Night, I just can't quite grasp what much of the fuss is about. On some level, please understand, my ideal playwright is Chekhov. So O'Neill just feels so damned bloated. Anyway, it is what it is, and obviously the deficiency is mine rather than that of a canonical playwright. As with certain operas I don't adore, I can at least enjoy the performance and leave the text for others to love.

So it was a jolly enough time, in its fashion (as I believe one character says, putting me inevitably in mind of Cole Porter) though not without its issues. Mama D'annato termed it "a little too loud," and I can't argue--some of this surely could have been done with a lower incidence of shouting. The complaint that is being most widely made (and the charge leveled by Papa D'Annato) is that the script spends a good long time hammering home the fact that Josie is, in so many words, a big fat horrible ugly unattractive ten-foot-pole-requiring...I think they call her a cow a few times. Not subtle, and you know for what it's worth, it's not that hard to google O'Neill and see for yourself that he was not exactly the stuff porn is made of. There, I've gone and done the work for you, see up top and try not to let your libido run amok. Anyway Eve Best is strikingly distinctive I guess, but basically conventially pretty and not particularly big. Put it this way: if I were bisexual and stuck on an island with Eugene O'Neill and Eve Best, I'm pretty sure I know who I'd want under my palm tree at night. Didn't matter much because she gave this extraordinarily energetic, provocative, brutally physical performance. There was that rare and cherished appearance of spontanaeity to it I assume we all wait for.

Kevin Spacey was by no means her equal, but perhaps he was devoting his energy to keeping his wrist level, haw haw. He was fine at times and overly fussy at times. I guess I'm just not that keen on him, and the role is a beast anyway, full-on nervous breakdowns to be had. His desperation was the more tiring for the want of nuance, though. O'Neill without some serious actorial invention is awfully emphatic.

The strangest thing is they had all this slide guitar in the fairly obtrusive score and fluffy clouds and sort of deeply blue lighting, and despite the fact that I found the set pretty excellent, it kept bugging me that they seemed to have located Connecticut next to Arizona.

And tomorrow or the next day I'll try and blab about Spring Awakening, and Who I Want to Win What.

*Mr. Guare, it is safe to say, would have clutched his head in consternation over the working water pump in the Moon set. But I'm not him, and I thought it was neat.

I am defeated by Antonietta Stella

And the answers have been revealed over yonder at Parterre. And I feel awfully smug about having nailed 1-5. And the last one was...Antonietta Stella!?!? I could have guessed for days and I'd never have gotten there.

Meta-Blogging

Hey are you guys taking the Tosca Challenge (it's like the Pepsi Challenge, only without blindfolds. Or soft drinks.) over at Parterre? I figure I may as well blerg about it since at worst I'm telling you my right answers which I already sent in, and at (likely) best, I'm misleading you with my wild guesses, mwar har har!

1: You know, I'm pretty sure this is...no, wait, I do feel like I'm giving away something, despite all my prodigous self-doubt. soooooo instead I'm going to be so cryptic as to obviate any need to read the rest of this posting. Ok. I'm pretty sure this is someone who sang Tosca not only at the Met, but in San Francisco. A very long time ago, dig? Puccini was surprisingly hard for me to find my way into when I was but an opera kitten, and I have the same memory of her recording of Vissi as I do of learning to read, a sudden "I get how this works," because and aria I had always found meandering seemed to have a shape when it was shown to me by an expert guide.

2: If this is who I think it is, she has two studio recordings, and I've never associated her much with Tosca because on the one I heard first (and last), her "Questo e il baccio" had an unmistakeable Minnie Mouse quality to it. By "muori, dannato!" I'd taken the damn thing off. Not fair, but first impressions are hard to shake. Anyway I feel increasingly certain of this one, which will make it all the more poignant when I'm wrong, wrong, wrong.

3: Well, I mean she has to be in here somewhere, though the only reason I listen to her Tosca usually is to hear Corelli sing the "o" in "Vittoria!" until everyone else on stage dies of hunger or old age. No, in truth I'm not at all sure it's her. I just thought the "perche" had that...quality. Went back and listened to a record of the lady in question in early years and was quite unsure. Some have said this selection might be the voice of a Parterre favorite and MFI punching bag, but unless La Cieca has pulled the old "Nilsson on a cylinder" trick from Opera Quiz lore, the sound quality suggests to me that it is not. Who did you think it was? Say so in comments. I won't tell anyone.

4: No idea, so I took a wild, screaming, random guess...and vent home.

5: I had help on this one, though I'd like to think I might have gotten it on my own. After all, who else does the trick of not breathing between the climactic note and the, uh, anticlimatic? note. Who else could, if they wanted to? At least without making horrible gasping noises afterward, I mean I could do that.

6: I have no idea. I punted, thinking maybe it could be her, another inevitable exponent, in late, not so healthy years--isn't there one from Paris or something, or is that a Norma? I don't go in for necrophilia, so I try to stick to prime or shortly past.

Well it's been a pleasure half-misleading you, at best. I'm afraid there's nothing else to do for a while unless you're absolutely salivating at the thought of hearing what I think of the old Hvorostovsky disc I snagged for $3.99 at Academy (so old he has brown hair. Are things allowed to have happened 15 years ago at this point? Oh vecchiaia maledetta ! Son da tutti disprezzata!) but I'm bored enough for both of us imagining that posting, so this is looking like a summer lull at least until Caramoor (or perhaps slightly earlier if the heavens should grant me a seat at the Kirov Ring.) I do enjoy the thought of making a voice ID quiz of my own, though without the delightful incentive of a prize, but I'm dragging my feet on figuring out how to host sound files, not to mention editing them together as La Cieca has done.

IM IN UR OPERA SINGIN UR NOTEZ

Georges Thill loved cats, it seems. This is only one reason to adore him.

Hat tips to Greg, who finds these things in places you and I would not be likely to look.

Aw, man!

The Manprano blog has left the building. Bloghalla giveth, and bloghalla taketh away.

I wonder...

Pleased as I am to hear that the Met movie-casts are a success, I find myself wondering if the immediate expansion of the program isn't jumping the gun a little. You have to factor in the novelty of it, I think, and give it some time to settle, no? I'm wary of what happens if turnout next season is disappointing--do they can the whole thing, as it's evidently quite expensive? Hopefully I am dead wrong and what is in fact happening is some kind of opera youthquake and soon all the kids' MySpace pages will have pictures of Jarmila Novotna and Richard Crooks on them (unless in fact MySpace is very ten minutes ago already and I am as usual genus: Fuddy, species: Duddy.)

A better way to end the season

It wouldn't have done to have the season sputter out with two acts of Turandot or a a misbegotten Orfeo, though everyone's sincere love for the latter is beginning to make me wonder if I'm guilty of excessive fuddy-duddery. Be that as it may, the season should end on a note of mad opera-lust, or what's to get us through the summer, other than the sincere desire to stay home for a few evenings in a row or occasionally breathe the air of the outdoors?

Anyway, the question is now an academic one, as I did in fact leave the auditorium for the last time this season with that unique sensation of having been pounded with a meat tenderizer then doused in Listerine that comes so rare. And who do you think was weilding said kitchen implement? I'll give you a hint: I've expressed ambivalence about her before, in particular when she was trussed up in regal garb and making out with Johan Botha.

That's right, it's Patricia Racette. We've had a long journey, she and I, not that she is aware of this fact. We are now pals. She's not aware of that either. Nay, not pals, rather I bow my head in the presence of she who may no longer be regarded as only a singer. Patricia Racette is an artist, which lots of you apparently already knew. Jenufa is something she's sung a lot, and familiarity in this case has bred foremost an absolute dramatic commitment to the role.

Now, there is no reason to compare Racette's Jenufa to Mattila's, at least not in that scorecard way. I will say, though, that Racette's is in no way a lesser achievement, and as you can probably guess from my having heard Mattila sing it five times, that's a compliment. Much as I've loved on the Met production, Racette had the advantage of singing her Jenufa surrounded by a more character-driven one, that of David Alden for ENO. It's bleak and shrill and nearly perfect, though I remain agnostic about the staging of the "Let's Get Jenufa!" scene in the last act with everyone breaking in the windows.

Hey, guess what happened. Nah, I'll tell you. I sort of forgot the rest of what I was going to say because first we had to drive back and then I got the most vicious flu and then suddenly it was today (no more suddenly than usual, I guess) and who can remember anything they were going to say for more than a day or so? It doubtless had something to do with Malfitano and my high level of satisfaction therewith. In a different way than Silja, she ate up the stage, and was in good voice besides. I'm beginning to think the Regina from Lyric a few years ago, where I thought she'd reached the end of the line, was just an off night.

Oh, you're probably used to me doing this, this bit where I imagine what some idiotic directorial idea would look like, but just for sport, what if Kostelnicka forewent (is that a word?) her stern black wardrobe in some production and instead was a sort of hot older gal, a FILF if you will (Fostermother I'd Like to...you know the rest)? I'm not saying anyone should do it, just it popped into my head, and generally when that happens, you're subjected to it. Besides which someone probably has done it.

So that's my season. If there were a weepy film montage right here, it would probably feature the love duet from Minghella's Butterfly (um, with audio from some other production), Florez singing "Cessa di piu resistere," the Tristan Project with me standing outside looking sad, one of each Jenufa, Podlektra, DV's "Zweite Brautnacht," Dmitri telling Renee thanks but no thanks, and doubtless a couple of things I loved but can't think of just now. I think the end of the season also merits a tip of the hat to La Juntwait, whose intermission interviews were done in just the right way.

There will be things to write about over the summer, I assume.

I screen, you screen...

The good word on National Opera's Macbeth, which opened this evening, is that it's not the kind of pallid, 98-pound Verdi some of us have come to dread. (I remember once in a PhD program in a kingdom far away, a t.a. with bad boundaries suggested to me "you might want to try using your whole ass next time." That's what a lot of Verdi productions have made me feel like saying in the last few seasons.) The conducting is full-blooded and Italianate, and the singing, whose glories and belly-flops I'll get around to in a sec, is never less than balls-out.

The bad word is, unless you poke your eyes out, you have to watch it, too. The designer of the thing, whose name I resolutely decline to look up in the program, has a vocabulary whose richness is matched only by the Smurfs. Now, if we've talked at all, you and I, you probably know that high on the list of things I think should reassign someone's profession from director/designer to perhaps lead usher is the overuse of scrims. Through a haze of scantly diminished fury, I recall a Chicago Dutchman which took place I believe 100% behind scrims, and they didn't do a thing to contain the sound of Malfitano's voice*, so really I never figured out what they were there for.

If I thought long and hard, I could come up with isolated uses of a scrim that worked out well. But you don't want to wait while I do that, so let's just say generally I find them to be a lazy lunge at an effect that automatically diminishes my enjoyment of what I'm watching. Now, just as Mrs. Parker was able to think of something that could write worse than a Theodore Dreiser**, I have just been helped to come up with what I like less than an entire opera behind scrims.

That would be an entire opera behind scrims onto which inscrutable, frequently unintentionally funny images are projected, almost throughout. Absolutely headache-inducing. Subtle, also--I may be wrong, but my feminine intuition tells me the incessant use of red might bear some kind of semiotically complex relation to blood. I don't know. Don't quote me. The program makes mention of "new media," which is a scream, since the media implicated would seem to be 1) computer design, which ain't that new, 2) projection, whose newness would be a shock to Alban Berg among others, and 3) thoughtless, schematic story-telling. Maybe that last one is the innovation. Stupid is the new smart, isn't it?

I'm dwelling on this because it stinks, and because it at times diminished my enjoyment of Verdi's most richly characterized score. (Really do think so. Can't back it up.) What saved it was a lot of good music-making of different kinds. It wasn't, vocally, the strongest cast you could come up with, in fact. Other than Vitaly Kowaljow, whose Banquo was beyond reproach, a mixed bag.

Paoletta Marrocu is banking on a number of things, I think. She has a pretty powerful voice, she's a good actress in a way that's low-key but not afraid of a few campy gestures, and she's willing to put it on the line. A good example of all of this was her sleepwalking scene, nuanced throughout and physically well played, vocally ragged here and there, worst of all a shout of a c#, the note you should probably just leave out if you don't really have it, but never tentative and overall convincing. Vocally, La Luce Language worked out better--it ends at B and doesn't ask you to dip into chest as much. But it was the sleepwalking scene that affected my heart-rate. Her technique sounds a little crazy and I'm not sure she won't blow it out, but if she doesn't, I look forward to hearing more of her.

Lado Ataneli feels like someone I go back a long way with, if only because I heard him before his Met career began, in Cincinnati singing Nabucco to Flanigan's off-the-hook Abby (at the time I termed it "extravagantly dykey," which I kind of still like.) There's no way around it: he's a singer of uneven quality. Some things work, and some don't. There was a bit of an ugly crack tonight that he caught quickly, and a lot of over-taxed sounding singing in "Pieta, Rispetto, Amore, and other abstract Italian nouns," though it warranted the most noise this fairly quiet audience made in response to anything.

You know why nobody does Macbeth much, don't you? It's not because it's bad luck. It's because the tenor part is so negligible. John Matz sounded nervous but stylistically dead-on as MacDuff. So but the overall deal is that everyone had some flaws, and the big picture was an exciting, worthy reading of let me tell you again how much I love Macbeth, which I love. Really there was nothing wrong with the whole evening that a long ladder and an exacto knife couldn't cut down to size. All eyes (well, all of mine) are on the Met next season, wondering what the new production will be like, whether Zeljko Lucic who made a decent impression in Gioconda wil shine, and what the hell Gruber is going to do with the part of the role that lies in the curdly part of her voice. Time will tell.

Believe it or not, at 2 tomorrow, I will duck into Kennedy Center again, for Jenny, Jenny, I got your number (867-5309)...

*Customary snark mitigation: her Kundry? Loved it, with no reservations. She was my first Lady Macbeth as well, and was riveting. Oh and tomorrow I'm hearing her Kostelnicka, and look forward to it. Senta was just the wrong idea.

**Two Theodore Dreisers

See? See?

Well at least I'm not completely alone in my distaste for this production.

Not exactly a bang, but not quite a wimper, either

Well, it's a little sad. With the end of the riddle scene this evening, the season drew to a close for me (that's right, notably the season I left after more second acts than ever before...sometimes I think my love for opera is tightening in some way. It's harder to sit through something I never felt even a little bit giddy anticipating.)

Yes, I love the Met's Turandot. Shit like that is why Zefirelli will coast to the grave on rehashings, because once he dazzled us. The big "Holy Fuck!" set on which the opera's best music is delivered remains, I'm sorry, the biggest visual wallop I've ever been on the business end of; not just an overload but a real thrill.

I'd love it even more if the singing more often really matched the wallpaper. Tonight was actually fine. I was pleasantly surprised in a number of ways, the biggest of which was that Margison, who over the radio sounds like what you'd scrape into the sink, has a lot left in-house. The act II interpolated C, it is true, absolutely must go. I'm neither joking nor exaggerating when I say it sounds for all the world like a 1983 Chrysler on a January morn in Chicago, and you should really only pull that note out of your holster if you're planning on killing with it. Up to that point, though, the guy just sounds remarkably solid. It's what I remember about his Bacchus: the sweet relief of no worries.

Hey I'm going to write a version of Turandot from the point of view of Ping, Pang and Pong. It'll be just like Wicked, only with a higher suicide rate among the audience I guess. Don't Ping, Pang, and Pong kind of make you want to end it? Anyway it'll be called Pwng, and nobody will know how to pronounce it.

Actually, know what the other nice surprise was? It was an unsurprising surprise, because basically any time someone starts singing these days in a small role and you think to yourself "why isn't he in a much bigger role?" it's Patrick Carfizzi. I'm giving him his own paragraph, that's how much I like him, and it was a bit of a blind tasting because I didn't look at the program to see who was going to be singing the Mandarin. (Who does?) For once I'm not playing "Let's Pretend We're Agents" and don't have roles in mind. I just think he's underused.

Liping "Lizards" Zhang didn't make a huge impression on me but I've never gotten as weepy about Liu as a lot of folks. If you can float a b flat, you do it, and everyone puts a checkmark in the blank. The rest is about trying to make us believe that pathetic devotion to a guy who's really no prize is a romantic virtue. It might make sense for some not particularly sentimental director some day to stage Turandot with the corpse of Liu left onstage for the remainder of the opera for everyone to step over since for Pete's sake, she killed herself ten minutes ago and you, Calaf, you big brute, are already halfway through the love duet, such as it is. Anyway she sounded pretty, despite an "almost" at the beginning of said b-flat, and that's all I have prepared on that topic.

And so, with that...oh, the Turandot, you say? That would be Erika Sunnegardh, she of the healthy top and almost nothing else, I'm genuinely sorry to say. Still, it's a pleasure to hear someone not struggle with the riddles, albeit a limited pleasure.

I hate to end on that note, so I'll probably review the weekend's DC excursion and pretend it happened here. So,

Next Up: Macbeth

Dispiriting, to say the least

Can't bring myself to write a typical M.D' 90-page gab about the Met's...well-intentioned Orfeo. It just felt like bad decision after bad decision, to the extent that the overwhelming wrongness drowned out a couple of moments of bright, shiny joy, notably in the dance at the end of the opera. Yes, I think we all enjoyed seeing dance with a pulse on the old stage, but as for the rest, I will be lazy and borrow from Twain on Fenimore-Cooper: out of a possible 115 musico-theatrical offenses, it committed 114.

Chief among these was the decision to put Levine at the helm for music he is very, very, very ill-suited to. Repeating an intensifier--that's lousy writing. That's all I can muster. Orfeo can go in a couple of directions: bloodless early music/HIP approach, happy medium of pathos with some lightness, or Brahmsian dirge, which is what Levine served up. Gluck, and we may as well face it, runs the risk of being dull, and as if driven by a lacklustre sort of sadism, Levine underlined this in almost every phrase. Long pauses between scenes and immediately after the orchestral prelude were awkward. Please bear in mind my general esteem for this dedicated and accomplished conductor when I tell you how hard he sucks ass in Gluck.

Next in line was probably the casting of the very fine artist who is David Daniels. I get the feeling a countertenor in the Met has to spend all his energy being heard, and on top of that, as has been pointed out here and there, the role is low for him. And yes, I know I've been conditioned to a contralto sound in the role by my blithering Podles idolatry, but there just does have to be some chest there and Daniels is sparing with it these days. I was playfully chided by someone who knows a hell of a lot more about music than I do, for wanting a very narrow thing from my protagonist. "You're a Wagnerian!" she said, and indeed, I want my Orfeo to weep and wail. Despite my objection to Levine's heavy reading, in the singing I want something on a grand scale. It may well go over the top, but it has to aspire to the mythic and the Greek.* I don't think these needs are necessarily contradictory; think of Maureen Forrester with Mackerras: there is restraint and there is grief. Daniels' approach was one of eloquent simplicity that I suspect I could live with in a different production in a different house. Here it was a cypher. "Che faro?" was just a question.

Anyway, the rest...Kovalevska was fine. I hear she's pretty from those in the care. I wished like hell they were doing the Berlioz with its lovely scene for Eurydice, not to speak of the sparklers and batons aria for the big O. Heidi Grant Murphy sounded really very lovely--I liked her better in this than in anything I've heard her in, despite some wacky stylistic choices toward the end of Amore's aria that seemed maybe to spring from Levine's death march through the score. But (he said in a high pitched, testy voice) she sounded really very lovely in a pink Izod shirt with plushie angel wings. I hear Mark Morris is a warm and thoughtful human being, so I'd feel awful knowing that if I ran into him and had to slug him. [Okay, that sounds like I've turned into one of those humorless opera queens. Substitute "and had to be politely ironic and raise my eyebrows at him."] If you don't get why this kind of cutesy ootsy humor makes me livid, I'm not going to be able to explain. Pretend you really love this opera and take it a little bit seriously for a minute, and you might get there.

What else...uh...chorus of dead famous people (no, seriously. keep an eye out for Abe Lincoln. He's the one with the hat, the beard, and the vanished dignity), ostentatious and pointless use of Met's stage resources, overuse of murky lighting. Folks, I'm sorry. I hated this.

ETA: Everyone else appears to have loved it. Ah well, a stick in the mud I remain.

*Ok, for the hell of it, Orpheus was perhaps Bulgarian. I think it's stated somewhere that he was from the Rhodope mountains in Trakia aka Thrace.