Did you know Ildar Abdrazakov has a brother named Askar Abdrazakov who is also on the Met's roster? There seems certain to be a limerick in this.
A second (bass) fiddle named Askar
Being Russian*, liked opera, not Nascar
˘ ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯
˘ ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯
˘ ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯ ¯
Ideally the last line should not involve references to a song by Tracy Chapman, tempting as it is, since it's not entirely kosher to rhyme "car" and "car" even if the morphology is a little different (car not being truly its own morpheme in Nascar, if you ask me.) References to large islands Southeast of Africa, however, are not only accepted but seemingly right somehow.
(In case you are thinking they did not exactly score big in the name lottery, know that there is an Uzbek name "Dildor" so things could be worse.)
*right, not exactly.
ETA: Here's where we are. Breaking news!
A second (bass) fiddle named Askar
Being Russian*, liked opera, not Nascar
Though his rival fraternal
Made sounds more supernal
(˘) ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯˘ ˘ ¯ ¯
ETA: JFMurray wins. Our condolences to him on this dubious honor.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
A belated tip of the hat
Well it does look like James Jorden is the regular opera reviewer for the New York Post. Two sparrows a spring do make, if you will. I'm not going adjective hunting--this is just great. Mind you I don't write this at the expense of the usual suspect--I am not one to join the Tommasini dogpile. Mr. Tommasini's obviously a smart man and a good writer (I know, I know, "strapping," but you try writing reviews on a regular basis and not developing a few tics*) and he cares about opera.
But a Times review is what it is, has developed a sort of formula where half or more is plot review, however nicely said. What this news means is the Post, of all entities, now has an opera reviewer who writes a review that will neither bore the the coronated opera queen nor mystify the casual tourist in our realm. These, as you know if you've been reading the Gay City News pieces, are reviews for anyone looking for a tight, immaculately-worded take on vocal events backed by a knowledge of the art form and its players you don't want to tangle with. Pardon me for reviewing a reviewer, but there it is.
Mr. Jorden, you know, is a known associate of La Cieca and rumored to have had something to do with the original Parterre Box publication, and for anyone who came to New York in the last so-many years because the opera is here, he is therefore largely responsible for shaping the entire gestalt of the New York opera fanatic.
So hats off to JJ, and many happy reviews, and now if someone catches you reading Page Six you can say you were merely thumbing through for New York's smartest opera review and everyone will think you're fancy.
*no, I refuse to give you an example of an opera writer's over-used rhetorical device. Oh.
But a Times review is what it is, has developed a sort of formula where half or more is plot review, however nicely said. What this news means is the Post, of all entities, now has an opera reviewer who writes a review that will neither bore the the coronated opera queen nor mystify the casual tourist in our realm. These, as you know if you've been reading the Gay City News pieces, are reviews for anyone looking for a tight, immaculately-worded take on vocal events backed by a knowledge of the art form and its players you don't want to tangle with. Pardon me for reviewing a reviewer, but there it is.
Mr. Jorden, you know, is a known associate of La Cieca and rumored to have had something to do with the original Parterre Box publication, and for anyone who came to New York in the last so-many years because the opera is here, he is therefore largely responsible for shaping the entire gestalt of the New York opera fanatic.
So hats off to JJ, and many happy reviews, and now if someone catches you reading Page Six you can say you were merely thumbing through for New York's smartest opera review and everyone will think you're fancy.
*no, I refuse to give you an example of an opera writer's over-used rhetorical device. Oh.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Little Nixie Divey
Current revival of Rusalka seems to me a must-see. In a way, since she's done it here before, least of it is that Fleming finds something in the role to sweep away the cobwebs of habit and mannerism (despite one uncanny vocal reference to her patented "Death to Maury" herky-jerky downward scale from "Je marche sur tous les chemins") and unleash her biggest and best voice, and what's more finds something mythical to connect with in the character to make us forget the perfume, the dessert, and the other trappings of diva-as-Diva. Act II was--despite above-referenced scale and a clunker high note from Sigmundsson--operatic excellence from start to finish. I'm puzzled by the lack of love for Goerke at calls, and gratified by the outpouring for Antonenko, both of whom sang with a brashness I haven't heard recently, encouraged in this by Belohlavek in the pit. Let me not leave out Stephanie Blythe, and forgive me for borrowing last year's internet slang. As Jezibaba, she is EPIC. More later? Eh, probably not. I'll add lastly that it's a profoundly traditional, pretty if dim production with nary a sarcastic dirndl in sight.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Can't quite let it go yet
Funny how, when you're approximately the only person that liked something, you feel like its defender and champion even if you liked it in a decidedly tepid way.
Here's what I think happened, though I didn't come up with this entirely on my own: people read/heard/read about/heard about Dessay's dismissive remarks about Sonnambula and it colored their reaction to the entire piece, made them see satire and condescension where, by and large, it wasn't there (even if what was there wasn't exactly beauty or genius.) Central to this idea, for me, is the now much bemoaned piece of business in which Dessay makes her entrance to that enchanting orchestral bit just before singing "Ah, se una volta sola..." and walks up to the board on which has been written "Village Square" and all that, and dreamily writes "ARIA" in big letters.
Judging by the reaction, people find this to be a gigantic "fuck you" to Bellini, to the audience, to the stagehands, to Jesus, and pretty much everyone else. I kind of understand why, especially when I reach back and think of Mark Morris' kitschy-cute biz for Amor in his Orfeo, but I just think this reaction is mostly about things external to the moment. When I saw it, before the angry outpouring, I found it to be gently funny, albeit basically of a piece with the shallow self-referentiality that even I concede makes the Concept ultimately unworkable.
There is only one truly derisive gesture in the piece (coupled with one absolutely inexplicable one, the tearing of the scores and that whole hoedown before the first curtain) which is the aggressively dopey Swissing it up for "Ah, non giunge." Perhaps people are right to feel poked in the eye by that one. Since I don't love the opera itself, I found it funny, but this is (a little to my surprise, I'll admit) a minority opinion.
Listen, our forgiveness of ridiculous libretti is, I think, directly proportional to our love for the music. I guess I might get indignant about a production that seemed to mock La Gioconda even though it's asking for it. I pissed off a friend by calling Sonnambula nonsense: it's no more nonsensical than plenty of other things. I've just never found the music sufficiently wonderful to transport me to that land of suspended disbelief we ideally inhabit in the opera house when we need to.
The reaction at the prima still feels bitter and puritanical to me, but only in tenor and volume; I'm willing to grant that Ms. Zimmerman took a potshot at her audience (and by this I mean the people she should have considered her audience--the people who love the opera she chose to conceptualize) with the sarcastic folk-dancing, even if it felt more like a gentle nudge to me.
Here's what I think happened, though I didn't come up with this entirely on my own: people read/heard/read about/heard about Dessay's dismissive remarks about Sonnambula and it colored their reaction to the entire piece, made them see satire and condescension where, by and large, it wasn't there (even if what was there wasn't exactly beauty or genius.) Central to this idea, for me, is the now much bemoaned piece of business in which Dessay makes her entrance to that enchanting orchestral bit just before singing "Ah, se una volta sola..." and walks up to the board on which has been written "Village Square" and all that, and dreamily writes "ARIA" in big letters.
Judging by the reaction, people find this to be a gigantic "fuck you" to Bellini, to the audience, to the stagehands, to Jesus, and pretty much everyone else. I kind of understand why, especially when I reach back and think of Mark Morris' kitschy-cute biz for Amor in his Orfeo, but I just think this reaction is mostly about things external to the moment. When I saw it, before the angry outpouring, I found it to be gently funny, albeit basically of a piece with the shallow self-referentiality that even I concede makes the Concept ultimately unworkable.
There is only one truly derisive gesture in the piece (coupled with one absolutely inexplicable one, the tearing of the scores and that whole hoedown before the first curtain) which is the aggressively dopey Swissing it up for "Ah, non giunge." Perhaps people are right to feel poked in the eye by that one. Since I don't love the opera itself, I found it funny, but this is (a little to my surprise, I'll admit) a minority opinion.
Listen, our forgiveness of ridiculous libretti is, I think, directly proportional to our love for the music. I guess I might get indignant about a production that seemed to mock La Gioconda even though it's asking for it. I pissed off a friend by calling Sonnambula nonsense: it's no more nonsensical than plenty of other things. I've just never found the music sufficiently wonderful to transport me to that land of suspended disbelief we ideally inhabit in the opera house when we need to.
The reaction at the prima still feels bitter and puritanical to me, but only in tenor and volume; I'm willing to grant that Ms. Zimmerman took a potshot at her audience (and by this I mean the people she should have considered her audience--the people who love the opera she chose to conceptualize) with the sarcastic folk-dancing, even if it felt more like a gentle nudge to me.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
briefly noted
Check 5BMF.org for details: March 20 @ 7:30, a recital by former (?) blogstress and very fine soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird et al.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
ETA, sort of
There's actually one thing I wrote that I just reread and felt like an asshole for saying, which is that people who love Sonnambula probably don't have adventurous tastes in theater, basically. I was take to task for a couple of things, but not this one for some reason. It's just not fair, and I wish to request those words on a plate with some sauce, k?
Monday, March 02, 2009
Another openin', another show
So when I was studying some language or other, the professor, if you said something in a way that was viable but unlikely, would reach his right arm around the back of his head and grab his left ear [you should do this. it still won't necessarily make sense but I want to feel I have some influence in the world] and say "that's one way of saying it."
That's more or less my reaction to Mary Zimmerman's perfectly acceptable, occasionally charming new production of Vincenzo Bellini's perfectly acceptable, occasionally charming opera La Sonnambula. Because the re-imagining of La Sonnambula as...uh, let me see if I can get this right...mostly stuff that happens backstage during rehearsals for a production of La Sonnambula, except when it isn't quite that, leads one into a number of scenes that don't make sense unless we're suddenly exploring the liminal spaces between performance and reality, which frankly I just don't think we are. But...
Here's the thing. La Sonnambula is, but really, nonsense, and your two main options if you are saddled with the task of reviving it are 1) run with it, whoop it up, let the sweetly nostalgically ludicrous parts as opposed to the just plain dumb ones happen where they happen, give the core audience for La S the Swiss Miss commercial they are craving, or 2) fuck with it a little because maybe you'll hit some of the right notes, though if you're not perceived as having hit enough of them, you'll get violently boo'ed. Like seriously the only time I've ever heard anything like it was when Djokovic told 4,000 people "you don't like me anyway because I'm not Andy Roddick."*
Anyway, that's how it went down, because one thing I guess Mary Zimmerman or Peter Gelb might have thought of is that people who really think La Sonnambula is great are not usually the ones saying "did you catch that nutty new Hedda Gabler with the dwarves at BAM?" They are, however, the ones who tonight were heard to yell (in what might have devolved into violence) "Go back to Greenwich Village" in an argument right after the abbreviated curtain calls. This is the funniest insult ever for reasons I hope are obvious.
Now you will possibly exhume the corpse of Callas, the better to beat me with, and say if it's so goddamn stupid, Maur Bear*, why was it the best thing that ever happened on earth when Callas sang it? Which I won't answer because I wasn't born then, but my guess is it was a beacon of Kalageroupoliciousness in a sea of drivel, but I don't really know because not only was I not there, but I don't listen to it much. Actually, it's slightly interesting to imagine Callas in this production (I started to say "the instant offense" but that's just habit) because it never would have worked. On the basis of recordings and my own personal Callas mythology which may not be yours, how she put stuff like Amina over was some combination of a somewhat profound lack of critical intelligence that let her take such a story fairly seriously and the explosive creative genius we all agree on that rested upon an ability to somehow make any character** mythical in stature.
This is kind of the opposite of Dessay. Dessay goes at a character in a calculated way, and when the character isn't as smart as she is, as Jonathan von Wellsung points out, she sometimes makes great sport of, y'know, mocking the character a little. She and Mary Zimmerman must have ganged up on Amina that way (btw Amina is a fictional character and has no feelings, so please don't start feeling sorry for her even if I do have some old couch cushions sitting in my apartment because I can't put them on the curb when it's snowing. It's diff.) because the very last scene change, for "Ah, non giunge!" is absolutely in the same spirit. In it, Ms. Zimmerman seems to say: look, I could have given you Natalie Dessay in a fucking dirndl doing everything but yodeling, but I thought that would be dumb. Don't you agree? Because in fact the vaguely deliniated rehearsal-within-an-opera is over and JDF slaps on some Lederhosen and they all look like a bunch of idiots. I think this is what pissed people off to the point of almost violence. Well, this and my very favorite detail, which is what Dessay writes on the chalkboard just before "Ah! Non credea" which I won't spoil, but it made people laugh. Come on now--you know I'm pissy about overly laughy audiences, but I thought it was a funny-sweet moment and absolutely unoffensive.
The thing is it's all so harmless. It's the most superficial makeover imaginable, basically an excuse for modern dress, which I found vastly refreshing to see on the Met's stage. The only noteworthy sin of the production is that, as I think I started to say, the rehearsal/real life conceit makes almost everything having to do with count Rodolfo tough to fish any sense out of without excessive use of situational quotation marks. But you know me, I have trouble with the plot of Mary Tyler Moore episodes sometimes, so maybe I'm not the person to ask.
Certainly there are some other misfires sprinkled throughout. The stock diva stuff at Dessay's entrance, this and that. But there were also scattered lovelinesses, like the small redemption granted to Lisa at the last minute. I guess what I heard people reacting to most was the production making light of the material, and again, if you really love the material, that's kind of a fair charge. I really don't.
Oh but Dessay, right. Really I think in healthier voice here than in either Lucia or Fille, much as I liked her in both. She's obviously not doing as much vocal tearing-it-up as in Lucia, and it leaves her some room to breathe. The 93-year-old gent who sat beside us and who didn't love the updating but managed not to get hysterical about it said: she's perfect in this. And I think in fact she has become very good in this, despite a voice that isn't quite right for it. "Ah! Non credea" was very fine-grained but the line was firm, and though she busted loose a little more with her high notes at the dress, there was nothing to complain about. The ornamentation was, to my ear, inventive but idiomatic, the trill realish and the scales and arpeggios clean and unhesitant. Less than before I had the sense of hearing a too reedy voice trying to fill out music that wanted something fatter.
Our 93-year-old friend went on to say that he didn't think Florez was quite right for Bellini, better in purely flashy things where the fluidity and the top are all he needs, probably alluding to his indisputable success in Barbiere. He was probably basically right about this, too, though the second act aria and cabaletta were awfully convincing. He didn't express his thoughts, our pal, on Jane Bunnell but I was kind of happy to see her given a role that suited her nicely and not made to wear some dowdy wig.
Honestly, the rest of the singing I don't have strong opinions about, but I'm sure someone else will. Same goes for the conducting, though I was a little surprised at the total lack of rowdiness at the conductor's call. I think people were doing Lamaze exercises in preparation for their response to the production team.
By the way, once in a while it's good to pretend you're not an opera fan, for perspective, I mean not a hardcore one, and think: how would I be responding to this if I were not funny in the head? We did this accidentally by talking to this totally cute fellow in front of us during the chorus of disapproval. "Who are those people?" he asked, and we explained that they were the production team. He started laughing and eventually shouted "may god strike them all dead!' Yeah, exactly.
So basically if you love Sonnambula you shouldn't go see this because you're going to get your feelings hurt, and if you hate Sonnambula, you maybe shouldn't see it either because the production doesn't do sufficient violence to the material. It's sold out anyway, so either way you're in luck.
Next up: can't remember. It's late.
oh hey p.s. it's the next morning and I'm trying to do the "Am I a Hypocrite" test which is almost always worth doing. The case in point being my kvetching about Mark Morris', uh, fanciful reimagining of Gluck's Orfeo. I didn't boo, because I don't, but I probably shouldn't call people oversensitive when I felt pretty enraged at an assault on a thing I hold dear. So yes, looks like this is me being a hypocrite. Welp, that's the internet for ya, a forum for the parts of ourselves we would, in a perfect world, keep to ourselves.
*which was absolutely true, but not the sporting thing to point it out
**yeah, I grew a beard at the suggestion of my waistline
***except maybe Rosina. Ow. And that other Rossini role she recorded, Muffaletta or whatevs.
That's more or less my reaction to Mary Zimmerman's perfectly acceptable, occasionally charming new production of Vincenzo Bellini's perfectly acceptable, occasionally charming opera La Sonnambula. Because the re-imagining of La Sonnambula as...uh, let me see if I can get this right...mostly stuff that happens backstage during rehearsals for a production of La Sonnambula, except when it isn't quite that, leads one into a number of scenes that don't make sense unless we're suddenly exploring the liminal spaces between performance and reality, which frankly I just don't think we are. But...
Here's the thing. La Sonnambula is, but really, nonsense, and your two main options if you are saddled with the task of reviving it are 1) run with it, whoop it up, let the sweetly nostalgically ludicrous parts as opposed to the just plain dumb ones happen where they happen, give the core audience for La S the Swiss Miss commercial they are craving, or 2) fuck with it a little because maybe you'll hit some of the right notes, though if you're not perceived as having hit enough of them, you'll get violently boo'ed. Like seriously the only time I've ever heard anything like it was when Djokovic told 4,000 people "you don't like me anyway because I'm not Andy Roddick."*
Anyway, that's how it went down, because one thing I guess Mary Zimmerman or Peter Gelb might have thought of is that people who really think La Sonnambula is great are not usually the ones saying "did you catch that nutty new Hedda Gabler with the dwarves at BAM?" They are, however, the ones who tonight were heard to yell (in what might have devolved into violence) "Go back to Greenwich Village" in an argument right after the abbreviated curtain calls. This is the funniest insult ever for reasons I hope are obvious.
Now you will possibly exhume the corpse of Callas, the better to beat me with, and say if it's so goddamn stupid, Maur Bear*, why was it the best thing that ever happened on earth when Callas sang it? Which I won't answer because I wasn't born then, but my guess is it was a beacon of Kalageroupoliciousness in a sea of drivel, but I don't really know because not only was I not there, but I don't listen to it much. Actually, it's slightly interesting to imagine Callas in this production (I started to say "the instant offense" but that's just habit) because it never would have worked. On the basis of recordings and my own personal Callas mythology which may not be yours, how she put stuff like Amina over was some combination of a somewhat profound lack of critical intelligence that let her take such a story fairly seriously and the explosive creative genius we all agree on that rested upon an ability to somehow make any character** mythical in stature.
This is kind of the opposite of Dessay. Dessay goes at a character in a calculated way, and when the character isn't as smart as she is, as Jonathan von Wellsung points out, she sometimes makes great sport of, y'know, mocking the character a little. She and Mary Zimmerman must have ganged up on Amina that way (btw Amina is a fictional character and has no feelings, so please don't start feeling sorry for her even if I do have some old couch cushions sitting in my apartment because I can't put them on the curb when it's snowing. It's diff.) because the very last scene change, for "Ah, non giunge!" is absolutely in the same spirit. In it, Ms. Zimmerman seems to say: look, I could have given you Natalie Dessay in a fucking dirndl doing everything but yodeling, but I thought that would be dumb. Don't you agree? Because in fact the vaguely deliniated rehearsal-within-an-opera is over and JDF slaps on some Lederhosen and they all look like a bunch of idiots. I think this is what pissed people off to the point of almost violence. Well, this and my very favorite detail, which is what Dessay writes on the chalkboard just before "Ah! Non credea" which I won't spoil, but it made people laugh. Come on now--you know I'm pissy about overly laughy audiences, but I thought it was a funny-sweet moment and absolutely unoffensive.
The thing is it's all so harmless. It's the most superficial makeover imaginable, basically an excuse for modern dress, which I found vastly refreshing to see on the Met's stage. The only noteworthy sin of the production is that, as I think I started to say, the rehearsal/real life conceit makes almost everything having to do with count Rodolfo tough to fish any sense out of without excessive use of situational quotation marks. But you know me, I have trouble with the plot of Mary Tyler Moore episodes sometimes, so maybe I'm not the person to ask.
Certainly there are some other misfires sprinkled throughout. The stock diva stuff at Dessay's entrance, this and that. But there were also scattered lovelinesses, like the small redemption granted to Lisa at the last minute. I guess what I heard people reacting to most was the production making light of the material, and again, if you really love the material, that's kind of a fair charge. I really don't.
Oh but Dessay, right. Really I think in healthier voice here than in either Lucia or Fille, much as I liked her in both. She's obviously not doing as much vocal tearing-it-up as in Lucia, and it leaves her some room to breathe. The 93-year-old gent who sat beside us and who didn't love the updating but managed not to get hysterical about it said: she's perfect in this. And I think in fact she has become very good in this, despite a voice that isn't quite right for it. "Ah! Non credea" was very fine-grained but the line was firm, and though she busted loose a little more with her high notes at the dress, there was nothing to complain about. The ornamentation was, to my ear, inventive but idiomatic, the trill realish and the scales and arpeggios clean and unhesitant. Less than before I had the sense of hearing a too reedy voice trying to fill out music that wanted something fatter.
Our 93-year-old friend went on to say that he didn't think Florez was quite right for Bellini, better in purely flashy things where the fluidity and the top are all he needs, probably alluding to his indisputable success in Barbiere. He was probably basically right about this, too, though the second act aria and cabaletta were awfully convincing. He didn't express his thoughts, our pal, on Jane Bunnell but I was kind of happy to see her given a role that suited her nicely and not made to wear some dowdy wig.
Honestly, the rest of the singing I don't have strong opinions about, but I'm sure someone else will. Same goes for the conducting, though I was a little surprised at the total lack of rowdiness at the conductor's call. I think people were doing Lamaze exercises in preparation for their response to the production team.
By the way, once in a while it's good to pretend you're not an opera fan, for perspective, I mean not a hardcore one, and think: how would I be responding to this if I were not funny in the head? We did this accidentally by talking to this totally cute fellow in front of us during the chorus of disapproval. "Who are those people?" he asked, and we explained that they were the production team. He started laughing and eventually shouted "may god strike them all dead!' Yeah, exactly.
So basically if you love Sonnambula you shouldn't go see this because you're going to get your feelings hurt, and if you hate Sonnambula, you maybe shouldn't see it either because the production doesn't do sufficient violence to the material. It's sold out anyway, so either way you're in luck.
Next up: can't remember. It's late.
oh hey p.s. it's the next morning and I'm trying to do the "Am I a Hypocrite" test which is almost always worth doing. The case in point being my kvetching about Mark Morris', uh, fanciful reimagining of Gluck's Orfeo. I didn't boo, because I don't, but I probably shouldn't call people oversensitive when I felt pretty enraged at an assault on a thing I hold dear. So yes, looks like this is me being a hypocrite. Welp, that's the internet for ya, a forum for the parts of ourselves we would, in a perfect world, keep to ourselves.
*which was absolutely true, but not the sporting thing to point it out
**yeah, I grew a beard at the suggestion of my waistline
***except maybe Rosina. Ow. And that other Rossini role she recorded, Muffaletta or whatevs.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Hooray! (You want witty headlines? Try The Onion.)
I don't know quite where to start in gabbing about how much I liked last night's Trovatore, and yes, that's your shot across the bow in case you listened (was it broadcast?), hated it, and are going to get the vapors if someone gets enthusiastic about it.
In fact, that's all that is, because I know exactly where to start: Sondra Radvanovsky! Who received quite an outpouring of audience love after D'amor, the only possible response to such an exquisite traversal. There are valid quibbles I don't happen to think were truly significant, yeah. The voice is utterly American; not Italian. It's lean, not Tebaldi plush. There is also the fact that her expression in phrasing tends more toward plain sincerity than abandon: on the Joan Scale she's further toward Fontaine than Crawford.* Some people need more thrashing about in their Verdi, so caveat auditor.
But to balance these, she's...just fucking great in this music is what she is, I daresay exciting. We all heard the run was going to be split with Fleming. Whatever she might have done in the role, her voice is about half the size of Radvanovsky's and her high notes, these days, not as secure, so that's a win. Ukh, the high notes. They're just massive, but also with a fancy fil-di-voce option, and not overused at that. And she did, if I'm not wrong, two verses of "di tale amor" as well as a passionate "tu vedrai," and some very game physical acting if Anna Netrebko hasn't completely worn us out on Jeritza-and-beyond singing in non-traditional positions.
The thing to remember is that for years, it almost hasn't mattered who sang Leonora, because whoever they were, they were going to get upstaged by the Azucena. I saw this happen with Diadkova and...I'm not certain who, and that's not a rhetorical forgetting. Timing-wise it may have been Crider. So take it as a sincere doffing of the cap to Radvanovsky when I say in no way was she sung off the stage by Zajick. Right, the Zajick who is an absolute monster (in the best way) in roles typified by Azucena.
Also the Zajick who is aging a little, but as with so many things, this has its advantages in with the bargain. For one thing, I think singing a wider variety of roles like Tammy Faye in American Tragedy has broadened what is generally an essentially nonexistent philosophy of acting. Zajick has found intermittent pathos here, viz: Ai nostri monti, utterly affecting with Mr. Alvarez. Meanwhile, she can tear you a new one with guttural lines like the almost George Crumb-ish dare to a mezzo that pops up twice in "Deh! rallentate, o barbari." An unwritten maybe C had to be rescued, but rescued it was. [ETA: well...salvaged. It didn't squeak to a stop and it didn't crack, but you couldn't say it was a good note.] The rest of the role she kinda stands there and sings like it's no fucking big deal. I have never been Zajick's #1 fan but in shit like this, c'mon.
Alvarez was not triumphant but, I think, successful. Not so much in convincing us he's a spinto now as in convincing us he can pull off a spinto role with some aplomb and no vocal mishaps. "Ah, si" was, sure, a touch cautious. Like any lyric flirting with spintery, he ain't got no trill, substituting an ornate little figure out of Couperin (with some very particular notation that looks like a fishing fly for catching trout) and the rest of the aria was similarly a little bit on eggshells, but then he went on to fare quite well in the barn-burner that follows, dropping out where it's traditional to do so and returning with a long, loud C with two syllables (even if they had the same vowel: al agua! I'm sure there is something deep in the psychic underworld of the libretto to explain his sudden urge to go swimming, if not his sudden change of nationality from libretto-Italian story-Spanish to Spanish through and through.) Okay or B if it was transposed. I'm not the person to ask. I think later in the run his often stylish way with a phrase is going to triumph over nerves. I hope to be there to find out. Also, whether you feel he's filling spinto shoes or not, he doesn't sound like he's beating his voice up, so at worst, we don't have to listen to him croaking stuff in five years he was booked for now.
Hvorostovsky needs little approval from me, house favorite that he is, and truth to tell, I had just slightly less approval to give than the rest of the house did. Obviously there were no major faults, because the man's a machine. He doesn't fuck up, or come close. Maybe here it was a matter of personality, too much Oneginly hautuer? Il Balen just didn't kill me, nevermind that I always think it's about whales. (Cetology joke, yo! What, I'm reading Moby Dick right now.)
Oh, you wanted to hear about the production? Well sure, I can do that, after a fashion. It's good news, lads and ladies. Neither radical nor ploddingly literal, it does what it needs to do. Makes some spatial sense of the world's least convincing case of mistaken identity, e.g. (It's so dark I thought you were a tenor! D'oh!) It, uh, needs a good healthy greasing of the loudly crunchy stage turntable, but then who doesn't love a production on a turntable? One thing the turntable does that I'm fond of is allow us to watch characters and supers whose act has ended exist for a moment more, giving something of a cinematic fade instead of curtain up, curtain down.
And yes, there's a fair amount of "I am grabbing your arm! Look in the other direction" bustling about, but certain crowd scenes work out well. As Will Berger's thoughtful essay-interview in the program points out, the production makes no foolish effort to pretend the anvil chorus is a naturalistic scene of great subtlety. It's the goddamn anvil chorus, so it's played for big, with wonderfully loud anvils whacked away at by some unapologetically cast slabs of man with all the stately grace of Olivia Newton John's video for "Physical." This is as it should be.
Shit, I almost left out Kwangchul Youn, because that aria always feels like, forgive me, the plot before the porn, but here as in Tristan, he's stylish and solid.
Seems like there was something else to say but if so I'll come back and edit. That's how I roll.
*For the record, 1 is Joan Sutherland and 10 is Joan of Arc as portrayed by Falconetti
Up next: Adriana, then the auditions.
In fact, that's all that is, because I know exactly where to start: Sondra Radvanovsky! Who received quite an outpouring of audience love after D'amor, the only possible response to such an exquisite traversal. There are valid quibbles I don't happen to think were truly significant, yeah. The voice is utterly American; not Italian. It's lean, not Tebaldi plush. There is also the fact that her expression in phrasing tends more toward plain sincerity than abandon: on the Joan Scale she's further toward Fontaine than Crawford.* Some people need more thrashing about in their Verdi, so caveat auditor.
But to balance these, she's...just fucking great in this music is what she is, I daresay exciting. We all heard the run was going to be split with Fleming. Whatever she might have done in the role, her voice is about half the size of Radvanovsky's and her high notes, these days, not as secure, so that's a win. Ukh, the high notes. They're just massive, but also with a fancy fil-di-voce option, and not overused at that. And she did, if I'm not wrong, two verses of "di tale amor" as well as a passionate "tu vedrai," and some very game physical acting if Anna Netrebko hasn't completely worn us out on Jeritza-and-beyond singing in non-traditional positions.
The thing to remember is that for years, it almost hasn't mattered who sang Leonora, because whoever they were, they were going to get upstaged by the Azucena. I saw this happen with Diadkova and...I'm not certain who, and that's not a rhetorical forgetting. Timing-wise it may have been Crider. So take it as a sincere doffing of the cap to Radvanovsky when I say in no way was she sung off the stage by Zajick. Right, the Zajick who is an absolute monster (in the best way) in roles typified by Azucena.
Also the Zajick who is aging a little, but as with so many things, this has its advantages in with the bargain. For one thing, I think singing a wider variety of roles like Tammy Faye in American Tragedy has broadened what is generally an essentially nonexistent philosophy of acting. Zajick has found intermittent pathos here, viz: Ai nostri monti, utterly affecting with Mr. Alvarez. Meanwhile, she can tear you a new one with guttural lines like the almost George Crumb-ish dare to a mezzo that pops up twice in "Deh! rallentate, o barbari." An unwritten maybe C had to be rescued, but rescued it was. [ETA: well...salvaged. It didn't squeak to a stop and it didn't crack, but you couldn't say it was a good note.] The rest of the role she kinda stands there and sings like it's no fucking big deal. I have never been Zajick's #1 fan but in shit like this, c'mon.
Alvarez was not triumphant but, I think, successful. Not so much in convincing us he's a spinto now as in convincing us he can pull off a spinto role with some aplomb and no vocal mishaps. "Ah, si" was, sure, a touch cautious. Like any lyric flirting with spintery, he ain't got no trill, substituting an ornate little figure out of Couperin (with some very particular notation that looks like a fishing fly for catching trout) and the rest of the aria was similarly a little bit on eggshells, but then he went on to fare quite well in the barn-burner that follows, dropping out where it's traditional to do so and returning with a long, loud C with two syllables (even if they had the same vowel: al agua! I'm sure there is something deep in the psychic underworld of the libretto to explain his sudden urge to go swimming, if not his sudden change of nationality from libretto-Italian story-Spanish to Spanish through and through.) Okay or B if it was transposed. I'm not the person to ask. I think later in the run his often stylish way with a phrase is going to triumph over nerves. I hope to be there to find out. Also, whether you feel he's filling spinto shoes or not, he doesn't sound like he's beating his voice up, so at worst, we don't have to listen to him croaking stuff in five years he was booked for now.
Hvorostovsky needs little approval from me, house favorite that he is, and truth to tell, I had just slightly less approval to give than the rest of the house did. Obviously there were no major faults, because the man's a machine. He doesn't fuck up, or come close. Maybe here it was a matter of personality, too much Oneginly hautuer? Il Balen just didn't kill me, nevermind that I always think it's about whales. (Cetology joke, yo! What, I'm reading Moby Dick right now.)
Oh, you wanted to hear about the production? Well sure, I can do that, after a fashion. It's good news, lads and ladies. Neither radical nor ploddingly literal, it does what it needs to do. Makes some spatial sense of the world's least convincing case of mistaken identity, e.g. (It's so dark I thought you were a tenor! D'oh!) It, uh, needs a good healthy greasing of the loudly crunchy stage turntable, but then who doesn't love a production on a turntable? One thing the turntable does that I'm fond of is allow us to watch characters and supers whose act has ended exist for a moment more, giving something of a cinematic fade instead of curtain up, curtain down.
And yes, there's a fair amount of "I am grabbing your arm! Look in the other direction" bustling about, but certain crowd scenes work out well. As Will Berger's thoughtful essay-interview in the program points out, the production makes no foolish effort to pretend the anvil chorus is a naturalistic scene of great subtlety. It's the goddamn anvil chorus, so it's played for big, with wonderfully loud anvils whacked away at by some unapologetically cast slabs of man with all the stately grace of Olivia Newton John's video for "Physical." This is as it should be.
Shit, I almost left out Kwangchul Youn, because that aria always feels like, forgive me, the plot before the porn, but here as in Tristan, he's stylish and solid.
Seems like there was something else to say but if so I'll come back and edit. That's how I roll.
*For the record, 1 is Joan Sutherland and 10 is Joan of Arc as portrayed by Falconetti
Up next: Adriana, then the auditions.
Monday, February 16, 2009
One More Reason I Want to Gay Marry Regina Spektor
...which is complicated, I realize.
To be watched with a handkerchief in one hand (for theatrically dabbing the tears) and a molotov cocktail in the other (fuck petitions!)
To be watched with a handkerchief in one hand (for theatrically dabbing the tears) and a molotov cocktail in the other (fuck petitions!)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Not a rhetorical question, though you'll quicky wish it had been
I don't think I typed about Onegin, but the main thing I wanted to do in any case was clone about 100 of me and have us stand arranged so that if you saw us from above, it spelled WTF. Not about Hampson, who had good moments and bad (the Russian displays a positively Puerto Rican relationship with the consonant kingdom, but he basically gets the character), nor certainly about Mattila, who sang the letter precisely as it is meant to be sung. Oh, not Beczala, either. Fine showing. I thought he sounded strained in Lucia last year but am beginning to suspect he's the Next Big Tenor Thing.
No, ladies and germs, my WTF is reserved for Mr. Richard Bernstein, the evening's Zaretzky, and tucked into its what-the-fuckish abbreviationality, it carries the condensed message: why on earth are you singing tiny roles, man?! This can only be an "I wanted my weekends free" raise-the-kids kind of lifestyle choice, it seems to me, because the voice is objectively of such fine quality. Also he looks like a Jewish fratboy all growed up, but in a good way. (I lived across the street from the SAM house in college. Only time I've ever had a fond thought about basketball, or, say, used binoculars to watch it.)
Well you know where I'm going? I'm marching straight over to his website to see if maybe he takes a bunch of gigs in some other city or something. Won't you come with? Oh, uh huh. See? This season it looks like he has covered a bunch of stuff, for one thing. I hear you can make a living that way and potentially never have to put a wig on. And then he did a shitload of Raimondos at Central City, which is almost certainly in one of those states with more outdoors than indoors where people choose to spend their summers even if they're not singing Raimondo, which most people aren't.
Well, as that great opera fan Chernyshevsky once asked, what's to be done? Either he sings tertiary roles at the Met because he wants to or he sings tertiary roles at the Met because someone's an idiot. I'm not in a position to change anyone's mind and god knows I get no say in the world's idiot count, though I have been accused of adding to it. And that, as the bard wrote, cleans up the matter.
No, ladies and germs, my WTF is reserved for Mr. Richard Bernstein, the evening's Zaretzky, and tucked into its what-the-fuckish abbreviationality, it carries the condensed message: why on earth are you singing tiny roles, man?! This can only be an "I wanted my weekends free" raise-the-kids kind of lifestyle choice, it seems to me, because the voice is objectively of such fine quality. Also he looks like a Jewish fratboy all growed up, but in a good way. (I lived across the street from the SAM house in college. Only time I've ever had a fond thought about basketball, or, say, used binoculars to watch it.)
Well you know where I'm going? I'm marching straight over to his website to see if maybe he takes a bunch of gigs in some other city or something. Won't you come with? Oh, uh huh. See? This season it looks like he has covered a bunch of stuff, for one thing. I hear you can make a living that way and potentially never have to put a wig on. And then he did a shitload of Raimondos at Central City, which is almost certainly in one of those states with more outdoors than indoors where people choose to spend their summers even if they're not singing Raimondo, which most people aren't.
Well, as that great opera fan Chernyshevsky once asked, what's to be done? Either he sings tertiary roles at the Met because he wants to or he sings tertiary roles at the Met because someone's an idiot. I'm not in a position to change anyone's mind and god knows I get no say in the world's idiot count, though I have been accused of adding to it. And that, as the bard wrote, cleans up the matter.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Okay so there is ONE surprise
At least I'm surprised, and as much as I tell myself it'd be more fun to learn of the new season all at once (as in olden days) I can't stop myself from looking into the crystal ball over the course of the season. What the crystal ball failed to mention that is faintly amusing is that next year will apparently be...your chance to hear Kiri te Kanawa bellow "he's on the BOBSLED TEAM!" I don't mean to be critical but she's not known for her irrepressible way with a punchline, is she?
You've read about the season elsewhere already. It sounds pretty good without being vastly exciting, right?
You've read about the season elsewhere already. It sounds pretty good without being vastly exciting, right?
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Also: This
If I'd known earlier that this existed as a visual document, I might have led a happier and more productive life:
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Eric the half-a-concert
Awful to find oneself riffing on Monty Python when, in one's high school days, one associated Monty Python mostly with mortifying attempts to cobble together enough English accent to get through the parrot skit and, consequently, with bitter weariness. But I couldn't help it. It was just such an odd joy to plunk down $10 for a lousy seat in a hall where (aurally) there really are not lousy seats and strike a deal with oneself to go to the first 50 minutes of a concert and the guiltlessly go home. The second half (Strauss tone poem whatsitcalled) was most probably fab, but then so is getting home at ten to my blissfully overheated apartment.
Not a lot to say, enjoyed Ligeti's Atmospheres though I'll never quite have a place to tuck Ligeti away in my brain, i.e. don't wholly know what's special about him. For sure there are gripping effects in Atmospheres, but also...the section where all the string players are just doing layers and layers of harmonics? That is a bold, bracing musical gesture that not one person in the history of Suzuki lessons who realized how to play harmonics has not thought "oh hey what if a room full of people were doing this?" I'm not making the argument from "my third grader could paint a Jackson Pollack," because that's the oldest trick in the anti-intellectual's playbook, just saying when you watch the bass section sliding heir hands up and down the giant fingerboard, you might have a moment of wondering what separates originality from doodling, iconoclasm from mere fancy. Insofar as I can judge the performance of the avant-garde, it was crisply and convincingly laid out. People laughed at the part where the brass players blow notelessly through their instruments, but it seemed more like a "wow, that's diff" laugh than a nervous WTF giggle, so fine.
Predictably, I went mostly out of curiosity about Measha Brueggergosman, who has some interesting hype online, some good press in general, and a few worthwhile vids on youtube. It's a very pretty voice, and there seems to be plenty going on verbally, but I'm a little sorry to report that she had about half the vocal presence she needed to pull of the Wesendonck Lieder. Now listen, I'm not one of those. "I couldn't hear her in Row K," is the mating call of idiots on opera-L, almost invariably the sign of someone who has an axe to grind and a wit somewhat duller than the unground axe. But, c'mon. Wagner, Max. Why pick this when you're young and fresh but not fat of voice? Carnegie is very acoustically kind, and only in places did the voice strike its proper proportion with the orchestral environs. I do not think this is the conductor's fault. I look forward to hearing MB in something else. It seems certain she will be a delight.
Can't think what's next. Possibly Adriana?
Not a lot to say, enjoyed Ligeti's Atmospheres though I'll never quite have a place to tuck Ligeti away in my brain, i.e. don't wholly know what's special about him. For sure there are gripping effects in Atmospheres, but also...the section where all the string players are just doing layers and layers of harmonics? That is a bold, bracing musical gesture that not one person in the history of Suzuki lessons who realized how to play harmonics has not thought "oh hey what if a room full of people were doing this?" I'm not making the argument from "my third grader could paint a Jackson Pollack," because that's the oldest trick in the anti-intellectual's playbook, just saying when you watch the bass section sliding heir hands up and down the giant fingerboard, you might have a moment of wondering what separates originality from doodling, iconoclasm from mere fancy. Insofar as I can judge the performance of the avant-garde, it was crisply and convincingly laid out. People laughed at the part where the brass players blow notelessly through their instruments, but it seemed more like a "wow, that's diff" laugh than a nervous WTF giggle, so fine.
Predictably, I went mostly out of curiosity about Measha Brueggergosman, who has some interesting hype online, some good press in general, and a few worthwhile vids on youtube. It's a very pretty voice, and there seems to be plenty going on verbally, but I'm a little sorry to report that she had about half the vocal presence she needed to pull of the Wesendonck Lieder. Now listen, I'm not one of those. "I couldn't hear her in Row K," is the mating call of idiots on opera-L, almost invariably the sign of someone who has an axe to grind and a wit somewhat duller than the unground axe. But, c'mon. Wagner, Max. Why pick this when you're young and fresh but not fat of voice? Carnegie is very acoustically kind, and only in places did the voice strike its proper proportion with the orchestral environs. I do not think this is the conductor's fault. I look forward to hearing MB in something else. It seems certain she will be a delight.
Can't think what's next. Possibly Adriana?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A little bit of Youtube perfection
As friends of mine used to say with reference to the Nilsson Salome LP cover, that's my kinda woman.
Second-hand News
Very briefly noted: I was pretty sure I was hearing the end of Villazon's career last night. Act I he kind of barfed out the first big high note, futzed around with vowels some, left out the last high, and I think maybe took a note or two down. At the end of Act II he strangled horribly on the tenor's big note before the big concertato finish (am I using that right?) and actually stopped singing. He cleared his throat loudly, paused an unbearable couple of seconds, and tried it again, without improvement. It was just simply awful. The act finished. We were told his cover was going on (you know who you are!) and left. Well I'm told by a reliable source he not only went back on, but was "spectacular."
Trebs and Lucia, in my book, not a great match. She was a very gracious colleague to VR and she popped out some nice high notes, but it was largely just a mess in the ways you'd predict. Pitchy, not stylistically idiomatic (and yes, that's a range, but I don't think her singing fell within it), not enough there to be rescued by her presence alone. Kwiecen and Abdrazakov admirably solid. Another good Arturo in Colin Lee.
Trebs and Lucia, in my book, not a great match. She was a very gracious colleague to VR and she popped out some nice high notes, but it was largely just a mess in the ways you'd predict. Pitchy, not stylistically idiomatic (and yes, that's a range, but I don't think her singing fell within it), not enough there to be rescued by her presence alone. Kwiecen and Abdrazakov admirably solid. Another good Arturo in Colin Lee.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Also
I'm not sure if reception line stories are considered entertainment. In any case, this is mine, which should be prefaced by the fact that I become rather mumbly and verbally inept in such situations, which is kind of embarrassing. But it went something like this.
MD: [in a prepared speech] That was intense!
JDiD: You're telling me!
MD: Oh, er, yes. Well. Good point. It must have been even worse for you.
[MD quietly internally hangs self for word choice, since "worse" connotes, well, "bad"]
MD: Oh, so I thought it would be minorly hilarious if you were to sign it to "Maury" which is my blog name.
Oh wait. Brief backtrack. Did I tell you the one where I was finding the italic font on YankeeDiva a bit eye-stomping in combination with the color scheme? And then I wrote a note to the author of same saying so? I think I was really tired or something, and my "Who the hell do you think you are?" filter was off, and the Yankee Diva not only did not go all Patti LuPwn on me, but actually changed the font. She mentioned that it had been a girlish caprice, the italic font, at which point I joined the ranks of those who crush the dreams of others, but she was not only gracious but (apparently characteristically) funny and nice about it. Aright, you're all caught up. Except for the part where I email her wondering if Dejanira is a cognate for "le dejeuner" and she has been touring around in the role of Breakfast. Upshot: my doddering incoherence was announced aforehand. Any singer at this point would be forgiven for saying "ah, uh-huh...To Maury, with all wishes for a speedy recovery from whatever it is that afflicts you." Instead
JDiD: [Complimentary things about blog!]
MD: Ahem, yes, well. Your singing is wonderful. More obviously. [Hangs self again.]
JDiD: Thanks, Maury! [Which is actually only the second time I've ever been called that aloud, in case I am seeming like the loser kid who goes by "D'Artagnan" in French class and then wants everyone to keep calling him that. I am that loser, too, but not in this instance.]
SCENE.
I have half a mind to scan in the CD insert because the inscription is pretty funny. After she wrote it, she said "I'm actually not sure what that means," which makes it all the better.
MD: [in a prepared speech] That was intense!
JDiD: You're telling me!
MD: Oh, er, yes. Well. Good point. It must have been even worse for you.
[MD quietly internally hangs self for word choice, since "worse" connotes, well, "bad"]
MD: Oh, so I thought it would be minorly hilarious if you were to sign it to "Maury" which is my blog name.
Oh wait. Brief backtrack. Did I tell you the one where I was finding the italic font on YankeeDiva a bit eye-stomping in combination with the color scheme? And then I wrote a note to the author of same saying so? I think I was really tired or something, and my "Who the hell do you think you are?" filter was off, and the Yankee Diva not only did not go all Patti LuPwn on me, but actually changed the font. She mentioned that it had been a girlish caprice, the italic font, at which point I joined the ranks of those who crush the dreams of others, but she was not only gracious but (apparently characteristically) funny and nice about it. Aright, you're all caught up. Except for the part where I email her wondering if Dejanira is a cognate for "le dejeuner" and she has been touring around in the role of Breakfast. Upshot: my doddering incoherence was announced aforehand. Any singer at this point would be forgiven for saying "ah, uh-huh...To Maury, with all wishes for a speedy recovery from whatever it is that afflicts you." Instead
JDiD: [Complimentary things about blog!]
MD: Ahem, yes, well. Your singing is wonderful. More obviously. [Hangs self again.]
JDiD: Thanks, Maury! [Which is actually only the second time I've ever been called that aloud, in case I am seeming like the loser kid who goes by "D'Artagnan" in French class and then wants everyone to keep calling him that. I am that loser, too, but not in this instance.]
SCENE.
I have half a mind to scan in the CD insert because the inscription is pretty funny. After she wrote it, she said "I'm actually not sure what that means," which makes it all the better.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The internet, in its wisdom...
has provided me at last with a response to Mark Morris' Orfeo production.
I did figure out a strategy for making lemonade (there is no such beverage as crapade so I'm not sure what you are supposed to do when life, or the Met, hands you etc.) which was to try to locate Burger King in the Standing Room of the Dead bleachers. He must be in there somewhere. Everyone is. A cleverer observer pointed out to me the kind of hilarious fact that all the dead people I could name standing up there (on what looks like this one scene from one of the Star Trek movies*) are not, in point of fact dead, at the time Orfeo is tooling around Thrace, on account of not having been born. Abe Lincoln, for instance: not dead back then.
But other than the bleachers full of pre-deadniks, Mr. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the opera? I'm glad you asked. Because I didn't enjoy it all that much, but this is not Stephanie Blythe's fault. She, indeed, gave the perfect Stimmdiva performance with gilded edges of Kunst (where does extremely well-judged ornamentation fall on that spectrum?) with the single exception of those few moments when Levine was busy proving you can be very, very good at some things and not have a clue about others. His pacing throughout was waterlogged, but "Che faro" was I guess the musical equiv of him taking a tire iron to Ms. Blythe's kneecaps. An assault, I think I mean. There was really nothing she could do. He frog-marched her through it at a vicious clip and all pathos was flattened underfoot. Elsewhen, however, she really lived up to the things people say about her that I have never 100% been on board with. No way to judge her physical performance from fam circ, and her saddled with a guitar and a gimmicky look to boot, but vocally it left nothing to be desire. Her chesty lows? A visceral pleasure.
Can't quite make up my mind about Heidi Grant Murphy, who for the better didn't sing Amore with bleached early music seriousness, but there's probably a happy medium I'd have liked better. I'm speaking of the vocal mannerisms, since the shtick is part of the production, and probably my very least favorite part at that. And without the lovely "Cet asile aimable et tranquille"--why this version of Orfeo, o Met???--I am finding myself without a very convicted opinion of De Niese, though it's a pretty voice.
Next up: Lucia, and then possibly the intriguing Measha Brueggergosman singing the Wesendoncks w/ Cleveland.
*Here is why blogging is bad. I have spent actual, non-figurative hours googling around to find this so I could insert a picture. All I have to show for my effort is he knowledge that the woman who played the whale scientist in what youtube reveals to be the horribly campy Star Trek IV went on to be the mom on Seventh Heaven, a swirling vortex of Bush era televisionary wholesomeness that...nevermind, I'm not going to finish that sentence. I'm going to take a minute to revel in the use of "Bush era" as a thing past and complete.
I did figure out a strategy for making lemonade (there is no such beverage as crapade so I'm not sure what you are supposed to do when life, or the Met, hands you etc.) which was to try to locate Burger King in the Standing Room of the Dead bleachers. He must be in there somewhere. Everyone is. A cleverer observer pointed out to me the kind of hilarious fact that all the dead people I could name standing up there (on what looks like this one scene from one of the Star Trek movies*) are not, in point of fact dead, at the time Orfeo is tooling around Thrace, on account of not having been born. Abe Lincoln, for instance: not dead back then.
But other than the bleachers full of pre-deadniks, Mr. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the opera? I'm glad you asked. Because I didn't enjoy it all that much, but this is not Stephanie Blythe's fault. She, indeed, gave the perfect Stimmdiva performance with gilded edges of Kunst (where does extremely well-judged ornamentation fall on that spectrum?) with the single exception of those few moments when Levine was busy proving you can be very, very good at some things and not have a clue about others. His pacing throughout was waterlogged, but "Che faro" was I guess the musical equiv of him taking a tire iron to Ms. Blythe's kneecaps. An assault, I think I mean. There was really nothing she could do. He frog-marched her through it at a vicious clip and all pathos was flattened underfoot. Elsewhen, however, she really lived up to the things people say about her that I have never 100% been on board with. No way to judge her physical performance from fam circ, and her saddled with a guitar and a gimmicky look to boot, but vocally it left nothing to be desire. Her chesty lows? A visceral pleasure.
Can't quite make up my mind about Heidi Grant Murphy, who for the better didn't sing Amore with bleached early music seriousness, but there's probably a happy medium I'd have liked better. I'm speaking of the vocal mannerisms, since the shtick is part of the production, and probably my very least favorite part at that. And without the lovely "Cet asile aimable et tranquille"--why this version of Orfeo, o Met???--I am finding myself without a very convicted opinion of De Niese, though it's a pretty voice.
Next up: Lucia, and then possibly the intriguing Measha Brueggergosman singing the Wesendoncks w/ Cleveland.
*Here is why blogging is bad. I have spent actual, non-figurative hours googling around to find this so I could insert a picture. All I have to show for my effort is he knowledge that the woman who played the whale scientist in what youtube reveals to be the horribly campy Star Trek IV went on to be the mom on Seventh Heaven, a swirling vortex of Bush era televisionary wholesomeness that...nevermind, I'm not going to finish that sentence. I'm going to take a minute to revel in the use of "Bush era" as a thing past and complete.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Alas a fanboi, I
Yeah, it's true, the danger of blogging about someone like Joyce DiDonato after a recital such as she gave at Zankel just now is that you run the risk of sounding like a blithering fanboi. But hey, at this point that's a label I'm comfortable with. Part of the problem is that JDD has a blogospheric presence that's so fan-friendly that I'm pretty sure we all have a sort of "our Joyce" feeling about her to begin with, so you're starting at level of admiration that may require insulin to read about, and then if the singing is good, forget about it...
Speaking generally for a second about the love of singing, here is what's confusing: unless I'm overgeneralizing my own experience, you start out as an opera fan loving the beautiful voices (Kathleen Battle's Pleasures of Their Company hung the moon for me), and then after a few years you discover the appeal of flawed voices, and at some point this becomes a dichotomy. You suppose that the prettiest voices rest on their laurels and that the monstrous ones just work the harder and are the more to be entrusted with the work of serious artistry.
But so unless I'm devising an imaginary dichotomy here, JDD doesn't have the innate tragedy in her voice, the tonal sob of, to pick the most obvious example, Troyanos. It is a sunny-colored voice that goes with the face (ok, fine, as long as I'm having a mock-heterosexual moment, it's probably worth noting that the lady, in photographs possessed of an agreeable Midwestern prettiness, is in person fairly dazzling.) So I suppose she must work very hard indeed, because here is art, no doubt about it. No, let's make use of the shift key. Here is Art.
It doesn't look like work. I overheard a gentleman at intermission saying "she'd better not keep singing like that--balls out all the time," and it was sweet of him, I thought, to be concerned for a singer he likes (well and obviously we do all like to play If I Were a Vocal Coach once in a while), but I'm pretty sure he's wrong. The strain of a hard sing is not in evidence; in this selection of tortured scenes from Handel what is heard is not that the sounds pain the singer, but rather that the sentiment does. If La DiDo were singing recklessly, the second encore, the lyrical and un-furious "Dopo Notte," could not have sounded so, well, bouncy.
That's actually the best word I can think of for how you have to sing it for the the repetitive figures in that piece to sound like anything but a repeated poke in the ear--LHL knew this, too, as evidenced on record. And in fact, between vocal passages, the singer bounced on her feet perceptibly to the music. Hey remember that time I was in Zankel for four or six hours of Meredith Monk? And Bjork sang and I was all "whatever, Bjork" until she got out there and, hang on, gotta self-google here...sang Gotham Lullaby "in the kind of tightly coiled, in-the-moment performance I'd like to see more on opera stages, wringing her hands and pacing with a little dance in her step--pacing not from lack of things to do, but apparently from inner reaction to the music that required kinetic expression."
Right, that. The physical engagement in the scenes from Teseo was gratifying, the braced-for-battle stance somehow not impeding but perhaps somehow aiding the lengthy roulades. In the justly famous "Joyce DiDonato decompensates in front of you" scene from Hercules, it was what I can only happily call harrowing. I wonder if this is all about trusting that a curl of the lip that may not be seen even in a small hall may still be heard, and so doing it regardless of whether it is seen.
What I'm getting at is the gestures were generally not large. Which of course means that the ones that were something ferocious. So, for instance much of the "I'm fixin' to fall out" vibe of "Where shall I fly?" (apparently first performed at Carnegie by no less than the Heink--big shoes to fill, and you know what they say about a Contralto with big shoes, don't you? Neither do I) was put across by means of a mix of gestures small and large. By the time she ever so slightly messed up her hair, something chameleonic had occurred, and for a moment you might have felt she was standing up there looking a fright instead of still working a dashingly bazoomatic red frock.*
If I were better able to access the emotion in Handel, I assume my head would have exploded at some point, and then once I'd put it back together, I'd have more useful commentary for you. To my mostly post-baroque ear, in any case, this was a real Sternstunde, and certainly (with the exception of the two gentlemen in good seats who almost started whapping each other with programs over something or other...one is curious but will never know) the mistake of putting a concert that could have filled Stern in tiny Zankel did pay off in terms of its friendly, intimate feel. If you want to judge for yourself, there is, you know, a CD with a notably similar program.
Next up, probably a few sour words about the Orfeo production and a few happy ones about Blythe, this already seen and heard at the time of final mouseclick.
*Right, Parterre is the one where they coherently describe clothing. MFI: colors are about as detailed a description as you're going to get.
Speaking generally for a second about the love of singing, here is what's confusing: unless I'm overgeneralizing my own experience, you start out as an opera fan loving the beautiful voices (Kathleen Battle's Pleasures of Their Company hung the moon for me), and then after a few years you discover the appeal of flawed voices, and at some point this becomes a dichotomy. You suppose that the prettiest voices rest on their laurels and that the monstrous ones just work the harder and are the more to be entrusted with the work of serious artistry.
But so unless I'm devising an imaginary dichotomy here, JDD doesn't have the innate tragedy in her voice, the tonal sob of, to pick the most obvious example, Troyanos. It is a sunny-colored voice that goes with the face (ok, fine, as long as I'm having a mock-heterosexual moment, it's probably worth noting that the lady, in photographs possessed of an agreeable Midwestern prettiness, is in person fairly dazzling.) So I suppose she must work very hard indeed, because here is art, no doubt about it. No, let's make use of the shift key. Here is Art.
It doesn't look like work. I overheard a gentleman at intermission saying "she'd better not keep singing like that--balls out all the time," and it was sweet of him, I thought, to be concerned for a singer he likes (well and obviously we do all like to play If I Were a Vocal Coach once in a while), but I'm pretty sure he's wrong. The strain of a hard sing is not in evidence; in this selection of tortured scenes from Handel what is heard is not that the sounds pain the singer, but rather that the sentiment does. If La DiDo were singing recklessly, the second encore, the lyrical and un-furious "Dopo Notte," could not have sounded so, well, bouncy.
That's actually the best word I can think of for how you have to sing it for the the repetitive figures in that piece to sound like anything but a repeated poke in the ear--LHL knew this, too, as evidenced on record. And in fact, between vocal passages, the singer bounced on her feet perceptibly to the music. Hey remember that time I was in Zankel for four or six hours of Meredith Monk? And Bjork sang and I was all "whatever, Bjork" until she got out there and, hang on, gotta self-google here...sang Gotham Lullaby "in the kind of tightly coiled, in-the-moment performance I'd like to see more on opera stages, wringing her hands and pacing with a little dance in her step--pacing not from lack of things to do, but apparently from inner reaction to the music that required kinetic expression."
Right, that. The physical engagement in the scenes from Teseo was gratifying, the braced-for-battle stance somehow not impeding but perhaps somehow aiding the lengthy roulades. In the justly famous "Joyce DiDonato decompensates in front of you" scene from Hercules, it was what I can only happily call harrowing. I wonder if this is all about trusting that a curl of the lip that may not be seen even in a small hall may still be heard, and so doing it regardless of whether it is seen.
What I'm getting at is the gestures were generally not large. Which of course means that the ones that were something ferocious. So, for instance much of the "I'm fixin' to fall out" vibe of "Where shall I fly?" (apparently first performed at Carnegie by no less than the Heink--big shoes to fill, and you know what they say about a Contralto with big shoes, don't you? Neither do I) was put across by means of a mix of gestures small and large. By the time she ever so slightly messed up her hair, something chameleonic had occurred, and for a moment you might have felt she was standing up there looking a fright instead of still working a dashingly bazoomatic red frock.*
If I were better able to access the emotion in Handel, I assume my head would have exploded at some point, and then once I'd put it back together, I'd have more useful commentary for you. To my mostly post-baroque ear, in any case, this was a real Sternstunde, and certainly (with the exception of the two gentlemen in good seats who almost started whapping each other with programs over something or other...one is curious but will never know) the mistake of putting a concert that could have filled Stern in tiny Zankel did pay off in terms of its friendly, intimate feel. If you want to judge for yourself, there is, you know, a CD with a notably similar program.
Next up, probably a few sour words about the Orfeo production and a few happy ones about Blythe, this already seen and heard at the time of final mouseclick.
*Right, Parterre is the one where they coherently describe clothing. MFI: colors are about as detailed a description as you're going to get.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Broken News
Tbe news done broke and we here at MFI played absolutely no role in breaking it: George Steel is the new director at City Opera. Mazel tov to The Little Opera Company that Occasionally Could, and we hope this works out well. It should, right? One has the impression it's like getting Mortier with much, much less baggage. You have to think they're probably feeling pretty sour in Dallas, though.
I go back to the opera, um, the day after tomorrow, and then some more after that. Despite my quite nearly violent dislike of Mark Morris' production of Orfeo, and my rather staid approval of Stephanie Blythe, the Sirius b'cast of opening night made me think this is going to be maybe something special.
I go back to the opera, um, the day after tomorrow, and then some more after that. Despite my quite nearly violent dislike of Mark Morris' production of Orfeo, and my rather staid approval of Stephanie Blythe, the Sirius b'cast of opening night made me think this is going to be maybe something special.
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