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.