A quick note of apology to whoever googled "In Time which Made a Monkey of us All" perhaps looking for the full text of the story by Grace Paley, she whose literary garment I am not fit to kiss the hem of, and ended up here of all places. Does it make your flesh crawl just a bit that I can see what google threads lead to MFI? Well nevermind, it doesn't give me your phone number or anything.
A lovely lad we'll just call Boris gave me a Gala Barbiere di Siviglia (that is in fact a Barbier von Sevilla, geh weiss) after seeing me pick it up and put it down about a hundred and twenty times at Academy. I'm sure I've made my feelings on opera in translation clear--read: known to even the dead--but the cast got the better of me, as happens to all of us I'll wager*. I mean, it'd be silly to turn up one's nose at Wunderlich, Koth, and Prey (oh and Hotter!?!) just because things aren't sonically Mediterranean enough.
Ok, but let's step back for a moment into Maury's World of Negativity. Opera in translation always sounds to me like it's being put on for school children. I just had to say that, and if you agree, stomp your foot or something. And now I'm done with the hatin'. I guess I'll just listen and comment incoherently. If it were coherence you were after, you'd have stopped reading. Oh...hm.
Well this is fascinating to report: the annoying trick of upshifting straight into falsetto on the last "Figaro!" in everyone's favorite cartoon moment is apparently no newer than 1959, and forgivable here only because of the overall charm and suavity of Prey's singing. Note to all other baritones: if a measure of girly voice is the only fun trick in your bag of shtick, just shut up and sing. I wonder if I need an acronym for that, like Dan Savage and his DTMFA: SUAS.
He was a funny looking guy, that Hermann Prey. Seriously large forehead.
Minor note to...producer or someone: if you're doing a bonus track with Reri Grist, why pick a part of the opera that hardly has her in it? Well nevermind. We're not really concerned with Reri Grist here. So am I correct in thinking that Erika Koth's vibrato is so fast and intrusive that I'm the only person in the world capable of liking her voice? I think I'll feel better if someone else likes her, thought it's always fun feeling one's tastes are rarefied I suppose, in a teenage "nobody understands me" sort of way. That's actually a line in Onegin, by the way. Nikto menia ne ponimaet. And yet Tatiana doesn't come off as an unbearable ninny. Koth's ornaments, aright, are a little uber the top, but holy fuck, was that a G? My guitar thinks it was. I'd blow the pipe on her but I don't have one at present. I know, I know, what kind of opera queen...
Considering he's 30 years into a career of Wagner singing by this point, I'd say Hans Hotter makes...still something of a disburbing Rossinian.
[this is how boring the Oscars are: they're on, and I'm watching out of one eye as I listen to disc 2 and continue to write. This is fit treatment for Seventh Heaven but a sad standard for the big gold guy. ed.:and now you know I started this a few nights ago]
I think they left out Berta's aria. Probably she was sung by 75 year old Hildegard von Blutfliessendevondenohren and someone at Gala thought: maybe not. Also seemingly absent, the lesson aria, although perhaps what's missing is my ability to translate German track names into Italian via English. (One would end up with something out of "English as She is Spoke," the phrasebook that spawned phrases such as "to craunch a marmoset," which I encourage you to use when possible.) Oh wait. Best actor. I heart Ph. Seymour Hoffman but that was a boring damn speech.
Wunderlich is like puppies or something: so universally liked that it's just incredibly boring to say anything about him, because it's just going to amount to "yeah, me too." Would that have been funnier if instead of "puppies" I'd said "oral sex," do you suppose? That's one reliable thing about Maury, he always shows his work. For the record, Fritz sounds like he could have sung it standing on his Kopf. Juggling. Knives.
I cannot help but note that Keilberth does not blow in Rossini, a surprise after many years of hating his recordings of German rep. And having so noted, cannot help but wonder if reviews of random recordings are in the least entertaining. And on that note of insecurity I still my keyboard for now, though I just got a couple of other swell ones (and a DVD of Simionato et al in Aida, on the visual end of things.)
*and today what do I do? I go and stumble upon the absolutely rotten, absolutely wonderful fact that Mazeppa was recorded in the 50's at the Florence May Festival with Olivero, Christoff, and Bastiannini. My keen intuition tells me Olivero probably did not enroll in Berlitz for the pleasure of one memorable Mazurka with Chaikovsky.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
I just met a boy named Mazeppa
Mazeppa, Mazeppa, Mazeppa...say it once and there's music playing. Oh. There actually is music playing. Nevermind.
I have to really crank this out because I refuse to be beaten to the punchline on one hilarious moment in an otherwise pretty beautiful production of a rather riveting opera. See the thing is...did you listen to the opera quiz I guess it was last week? They were talking about names that got changed in for instance German productions of Butterfly, where apparently Pinkerton would be [if I'm reading between the lines correctly] like the equivalent of being named Benjamin Franklin "Penis" Wankerboy. And not that anyone ever puts on Mazeppa, because they're busy putting on crap like Forza instead, but if they did, I'd like to suggest they make up a title if possible, but eliminate from their Met Titles the word "hetman." It just gets funnier each time it pops up on that little screen. "I once was hetman," said one screen, calling to mind some kind of imaginary ex-straight ministry's rewriting of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
So anyway a New York audience gave a warm though not altogether rapturous reception to the Metropolitan Opera's premiere of Chaikovsky's Mazeppa, if you hadn't gathered already that was what I was going to write about. Bear in mind this was a Monday night performance without the courtesy of a 7:30 curtain and perhaps this accounts for the lack of hysteria.
I'm a tiny bit reluctant to judge voices from side orch "I have Friends Under 30 Who are Willing to Score me these Seats" seats, as one is in a sort of echo chamber. Naturally, the preceeding sentence is purely formulaic language, and I'm going to judge them all to hell and gone.
But first the production, which I hear got some boos from the schmancy seats. I think the thing about George Tsypin is he has this knockout combination of a dark, crazy, out of control side combined with a childlike sense of wonder. Now, bear in mind, there's nothing I find so distasteful and generally emetic as a childlike sense of wonder, except when you combine that with the other part, it all works out. The tableau at the end of the second act is for my betters to describe. All I can say is it was like you were playing a Ukrainian history themed pinball machine and you hit the ball in the little hole all the way up top and got 100,000 points.
It didn't hurt that in the foreground, Olga Guryakova was running around in circles with a severed head in her hands, while Larissa Diadkova fainted, stage left. Larissa Diadkova is a virtuoso fainter, and that's the truth. She's also, as you know if you saw her Azucena or Fricka, an all around fine actress with a voice that isn't quite luxuriant on its purely sonic merits, but is always wielded intelligently, sometimes daringly. It's strange to think what a cypher she was as Herodias, when everything else I've heard her sing has been uniformly top drawer. I wonder what that was about. Eh. Don't care.
Her Act II scena with Guryakova must surely have been the vocal highlight of the evening. Guryakova is an extremely game and appealing singer with a top that sounds to me like by no means a sure bet, but when it gets there, you know it. The vocal production is unabashedly Slavic, and I for one couldn't be happier about it. And I suspect she's Opera Khot, though I left my binocs back at the palazzo.
Oh wait but back to the production. Can I be king of the world for a minute and make a new rule where I get a dollar for every minute the fucking scrim is down? Generally, this is distracting. Here it was actually very actively a problem in places--you couldn't see, for instance, that Kochubei's head was covered in blood from a long day of torture until about fifteen minutes after Lyubov more or less had kittens about it. And you couldn't see her rather gorgeous opalescent purple dress until the curtain call. It's Kochubei, right? I keep wanting to type Kochujang, but that's actually a fermented red pepper paste indispensible in Korean cuisine. Delicious, seriously, but not relevant even by my standards.
The fantastic costumes were designed by one Tatiana Noginova, herself working a sort of Bettie Boop look, at her curtain call. At the Millo Pole, Dawn Fatale was heard to remark of Noginova's get-ups for the ballet in the first act how lovely it was that they got their costumes at Fredericks of Vladivostok. Why Dawn doesn't blog is a mystery to me, helpless as I always am rendered by her wit.
Wait, there were boys in this opera.
Putilin makes the logical first choice of subject; it's just that I haven't made up my mind about him. It's a long, tough sing and he poured himself into it, even doing an "Anything Karita Mattila can do, I can do lower" number where he sang, flat on his back, with his head hanging backward over a step, just like KM did in her Salome. Points were awarded. Still, there were mishaps, the voice losing its lustre at climactic moments and also in soft ones. It's not like I have a lot of Mazzep to compare him to, but I can hear, in that center of my brain that is assigned to "fantasy football" in straight guys, a baritone I'd like better. He sounds like the love child of Tita Ruffo and Pavel Lisitsian.
The venerable Paata Burchuladze, I had heard from reliable sources, is sounding sometimes lousy these days, but not here. You wouldn't mistake him for a young singer, but the goods are still there, which is a phrase I'm afraid I'm overusing lately. It is after all nice being a bass: the important part of your voice ages but generally doesn't break. Depending on your tolerance for wobble, your mileage may vary, but I didn't find myself lunging for the dramamine.
The only real weakness in this cast was Balashov as Andrei and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. (Did you have that book as a kid? That boy had nothing on our Andrei.) Balashov's strengths don't justify his weaknesses, I'm afraid: if the voice were one of those Galuzinoid monsters, we'd forgive the sliding up to pitch and the sliding almost up to pitch and such. It ain't/we don't.
Really I ought to say something about the score, since it's so unfamiliar to most of us, but for the most part I'd like to leave that to folks like Alex Ross, both Aleces in fact (it pluralizes like matrix, I'm assuming) who know what the hell they're talking about. All I can offer are vague impressions of surprise and delight that the composer whose operatic output I had imagined to be typified by Evgenii Onegin, a wonderful but relatively polite work, has a much darker range on his palette. Onegin is, yes, also a lot tighter, but Mazeppa succeeds on different territory altogether. It's tempting now to think of Chaikovski/Pushkin as one of those Mozart/DaPonte, Strauss/von Hoffmansthal pairings, albeit not a living collaboration. Hang on, though. I'm forgetting about Pikovaia Dama, whose libretto is a total abortion. Anyway the point is Chaikovsky's range of expression is perhaps equal to Pushkin's own.
So, yeah, this is pretty much another run-don't-walk though I think my companions were even more enthusiastic. I'm not kidding--I'm a deeply negative person, ask anyone. I'm just finding a lot to recommend this season.
Next up: actually I have no idea. You'll know when I know.
p.s. thanks to "linguitte3" who linked me on a NY Times discussion forum. Really, though, linguitte3, I am excited; I just have a way of talking, I'm afraid! I don't visibly lose my shit unless...well, cf. my Podles review.
I have to really crank this out because I refuse to be beaten to the punchline on one hilarious moment in an otherwise pretty beautiful production of a rather riveting opera. See the thing is...did you listen to the opera quiz I guess it was last week? They were talking about names that got changed in for instance German productions of Butterfly, where apparently Pinkerton would be [if I'm reading between the lines correctly] like the equivalent of being named Benjamin Franklin "Penis" Wankerboy. And not that anyone ever puts on Mazeppa, because they're busy putting on crap like Forza instead, but if they did, I'd like to suggest they make up a title if possible, but eliminate from their Met Titles the word "hetman." It just gets funnier each time it pops up on that little screen. "I once was hetman," said one screen, calling to mind some kind of imaginary ex-straight ministry's rewriting of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
So anyway a New York audience gave a warm though not altogether rapturous reception to the Metropolitan Opera's premiere of Chaikovsky's Mazeppa, if you hadn't gathered already that was what I was going to write about. Bear in mind this was a Monday night performance without the courtesy of a 7:30 curtain and perhaps this accounts for the lack of hysteria.
I'm a tiny bit reluctant to judge voices from side orch "I have Friends Under 30 Who are Willing to Score me these Seats" seats, as one is in a sort of echo chamber. Naturally, the preceeding sentence is purely formulaic language, and I'm going to judge them all to hell and gone.
But first the production, which I hear got some boos from the schmancy seats. I think the thing about George Tsypin is he has this knockout combination of a dark, crazy, out of control side combined with a childlike sense of wonder. Now, bear in mind, there's nothing I find so distasteful and generally emetic as a childlike sense of wonder, except when you combine that with the other part, it all works out. The tableau at the end of the second act is for my betters to describe. All I can say is it was like you were playing a Ukrainian history themed pinball machine and you hit the ball in the little hole all the way up top and got 100,000 points.
It didn't hurt that in the foreground, Olga Guryakova was running around in circles with a severed head in her hands, while Larissa Diadkova fainted, stage left. Larissa Diadkova is a virtuoso fainter, and that's the truth. She's also, as you know if you saw her Azucena or Fricka, an all around fine actress with a voice that isn't quite luxuriant on its purely sonic merits, but is always wielded intelligently, sometimes daringly. It's strange to think what a cypher she was as Herodias, when everything else I've heard her sing has been uniformly top drawer. I wonder what that was about. Eh. Don't care.
Her Act II scena with Guryakova must surely have been the vocal highlight of the evening. Guryakova is an extremely game and appealing singer with a top that sounds to me like by no means a sure bet, but when it gets there, you know it. The vocal production is unabashedly Slavic, and I for one couldn't be happier about it. And I suspect she's Opera Khot, though I left my binocs back at the palazzo.
Oh wait but back to the production. Can I be king of the world for a minute and make a new rule where I get a dollar for every minute the fucking scrim is down? Generally, this is distracting. Here it was actually very actively a problem in places--you couldn't see, for instance, that Kochubei's head was covered in blood from a long day of torture until about fifteen minutes after Lyubov more or less had kittens about it. And you couldn't see her rather gorgeous opalescent purple dress until the curtain call. It's Kochubei, right? I keep wanting to type Kochujang, but that's actually a fermented red pepper paste indispensible in Korean cuisine. Delicious, seriously, but not relevant even by my standards.
The fantastic costumes were designed by one Tatiana Noginova, herself working a sort of Bettie Boop look, at her curtain call. At the Millo Pole, Dawn Fatale was heard to remark of Noginova's get-ups for the ballet in the first act how lovely it was that they got their costumes at Fredericks of Vladivostok. Why Dawn doesn't blog is a mystery to me, helpless as I always am rendered by her wit.
Wait, there were boys in this opera.
Putilin makes the logical first choice of subject; it's just that I haven't made up my mind about him. It's a long, tough sing and he poured himself into it, even doing an "Anything Karita Mattila can do, I can do lower" number where he sang, flat on his back, with his head hanging backward over a step, just like KM did in her Salome. Points were awarded. Still, there were mishaps, the voice losing its lustre at climactic moments and also in soft ones. It's not like I have a lot of Mazzep to compare him to, but I can hear, in that center of my brain that is assigned to "fantasy football" in straight guys, a baritone I'd like better. He sounds like the love child of Tita Ruffo and Pavel Lisitsian.
The venerable Paata Burchuladze, I had heard from reliable sources, is sounding sometimes lousy these days, but not here. You wouldn't mistake him for a young singer, but the goods are still there, which is a phrase I'm afraid I'm overusing lately. It is after all nice being a bass: the important part of your voice ages but generally doesn't break. Depending on your tolerance for wobble, your mileage may vary, but I didn't find myself lunging for the dramamine.
The only real weakness in this cast was Balashov as Andrei and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. (Did you have that book as a kid? That boy had nothing on our Andrei.) Balashov's strengths don't justify his weaknesses, I'm afraid: if the voice were one of those Galuzinoid monsters, we'd forgive the sliding up to pitch and the sliding almost up to pitch and such. It ain't/we don't.
Really I ought to say something about the score, since it's so unfamiliar to most of us, but for the most part I'd like to leave that to folks like Alex Ross, both Aleces in fact (it pluralizes like matrix, I'm assuming) who know what the hell they're talking about. All I can offer are vague impressions of surprise and delight that the composer whose operatic output I had imagined to be typified by Evgenii Onegin, a wonderful but relatively polite work, has a much darker range on his palette. Onegin is, yes, also a lot tighter, but Mazeppa succeeds on different territory altogether. It's tempting now to think of Chaikovski/Pushkin as one of those Mozart/DaPonte, Strauss/von Hoffmansthal pairings, albeit not a living collaboration. Hang on, though. I'm forgetting about Pikovaia Dama, whose libretto is a total abortion. Anyway the point is Chaikovsky's range of expression is perhaps equal to Pushkin's own.
So, yeah, this is pretty much another run-don't-walk though I think my companions were even more enthusiastic. I'm not kidding--I'm a deeply negative person, ask anyone. I'm just finding a lot to recommend this season.
Next up: actually I have no idea. You'll know when I know.
p.s. thanks to "linguitte3" who linked me on a NY Times discussion forum. Really, though, linguitte3, I am excited; I just have a way of talking, I'm afraid! I don't visibly lose my shit unless...well, cf. my Podles review.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Market Correction
Hey, serious question for you: didn't Juan Pons suck for a while? Because he totally doesn't right now; quite the opposite. And that's the best news I have from last night's Forza.
Really, after the last few things I've attended, I think it's fair play on the part of the universe to take it down a notch. And I knew what I was getting into...Forza is a show that finds me furiously reading the plot synopsis, looking for shortcuts. Plus I'd probably seen this clunker of a production on tv--wasn't this the one telecast with Sharon Sweet, or was that a uniquely boring nightmare I had?
Rataplan rataplan rataplan! See, it's no more charming or in fact bearable when I do it. I'd have to diagnose Ildiko Komlosi, who I'd be surprised if the Met is rataplanning to invite back much, as not conspicuously talented, perfectly adequate and rather pretty.
But ok, Voigt was in really nice form. I'm almost tired of praising her singing, and tempted instead to say: Deb, sugar, you are looking super. But I'll pull myself together and comment instead that the mildly shouty quality of last year's Ballo is gone, the messa di voce is working, and she connected with Verdi stylistically in a way I wouldn't have guessed she would from her Aidas. I don't think anyone will remember this as one of her great roles, but it's a feather in her cap nonetheless. And she looks hilarious as a boy. There is no denying this.
Delavan is a singer who (in Parsifal, in Chicago, for example) has knocked the wind out of me, but he didn't at all last night, for whatever reason. There was something hollow about the sound he was producing that I hope is not chronic.
I'm going to admit something. I'm having a rotten time writing about this goddamn Forza. I did get to watch a hilariously concise set of gestures from one box patron to another that managed to encapsulate with remarkable economy: 1) stop rustling that godforsaken paper 2) because it's getting in the way of me listening to this intensely boring opera so 3) sorry, not trying to be overly cunty, but 4) STOPIT STOPIT STOPIT. Oh and I hear someone had, to say the least, severe indigestion in Family Circle, about which: ew. But it's something to write about. Which the production itself isn't, nor is Licitra really. Pretty voice; nothing going on.
So with that, I throw in the towel or the cowl or something. Monday is Mazeppa and at the very least I can act all knowledgeable because I am with the speaking of the Russian.
Oh wait, though. I'd like to take a second to dedicate a song to Samuel Ramey, and that song is "I will Always Love You." Not the sweet, guileless Dolly Parton original, but rather the big hideous Whitney Houston cover, I think. He looks 90 if a day, but he's still an Artist.
In the Jinx Department: Alex von Wellsung delivers a more measured meh.
Really, after the last few things I've attended, I think it's fair play on the part of the universe to take it down a notch. And I knew what I was getting into...Forza is a show that finds me furiously reading the plot synopsis, looking for shortcuts. Plus I'd probably seen this clunker of a production on tv--wasn't this the one telecast with Sharon Sweet, or was that a uniquely boring nightmare I had?
Rataplan rataplan rataplan! See, it's no more charming or in fact bearable when I do it. I'd have to diagnose Ildiko Komlosi, who I'd be surprised if the Met is rataplanning to invite back much, as not conspicuously talented, perfectly adequate and rather pretty.
But ok, Voigt was in really nice form. I'm almost tired of praising her singing, and tempted instead to say: Deb, sugar, you are looking super. But I'll pull myself together and comment instead that the mildly shouty quality of last year's Ballo is gone, the messa di voce is working, and she connected with Verdi stylistically in a way I wouldn't have guessed she would from her Aidas. I don't think anyone will remember this as one of her great roles, but it's a feather in her cap nonetheless. And she looks hilarious as a boy. There is no denying this.
Delavan is a singer who (in Parsifal, in Chicago, for example) has knocked the wind out of me, but he didn't at all last night, for whatever reason. There was something hollow about the sound he was producing that I hope is not chronic.
I'm going to admit something. I'm having a rotten time writing about this goddamn Forza. I did get to watch a hilariously concise set of gestures from one box patron to another that managed to encapsulate with remarkable economy: 1) stop rustling that godforsaken paper 2) because it's getting in the way of me listening to this intensely boring opera so 3) sorry, not trying to be overly cunty, but 4) STOPIT STOPIT STOPIT. Oh and I hear someone had, to say the least, severe indigestion in Family Circle, about which: ew. But it's something to write about. Which the production itself isn't, nor is Licitra really. Pretty voice; nothing going on.
So with that, I throw in the towel or the cowl or something. Monday is Mazeppa and at the very least I can act all knowledgeable because I am with the speaking of the Russian.
Oh wait, though. I'd like to take a second to dedicate a song to Samuel Ramey, and that song is "I will Always Love You." Not the sweet, guileless Dolly Parton original, but rather the big hideous Whitney Houston cover, I think. He looks 90 if a day, but he's still an Artist.
In the Jinx Department: Alex von Wellsung delivers a more measured meh.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Omnia Vincit Ewa
Well the good news is most people either love Ewa Podles or think she's a big honking foghorn, so the gentle art of persuasion can rest unused in its tissue-stuffed crate for the length of this writing. And the other good news is that the former crowd was out in force on Sunday, not enough so to fill the upper reaches of Avery but you'd never know it by the noise. And the other good news is that, while i Podliani are not utterly unlike Millo fans in their creepy devotion, I think I'm being a tiny bit objective when I say she really earned each precious decibel. God knows she puts out about as many as she takes in over the course of an evening.
Madame Podles, you see, was the featured soloist at the Moscow Chamber Orchestra's matinee concert, though I think it is safe to say the majority of the crowd would have remained in their seats had a bad batch of borsch called for a last minute substition of the PS 153 marching band on backup. This is not to denigrate the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, except for the first violin section. It is to denigrate them just a little, as their pitch issues are something jarring in a world class ensemble, pretty solo playing of the concertmaster notwithstanding. But an opening band can tell when you're waiting for Led Zeppelin, I suspect. (yeah, no idea. I hate Led Zeppelin.)
Meanwhile, they played the Haydn "Pasione" symphony with great gusto and Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives [Rus.: Mimoletnosti] were marked by considerable nimbleness and wit. Shostakovich's chamber symphony was, if memory serves, and it usually doesn't around here, actually arranged for them from the 8th quartet, though I think it's safe to say none of those members are around any longer. And it had gravitas and soul, and we all just wanted Podles to get her besequined ass out there and yell at us some more.
Alright. "Yell" is not the best choice of words. But for the record, this was some exquisitely loud singing, and in the last of the Songs and Dances of Death, the middle register note on the word smert' (death) roughed me up as no note has done in recent memory. And, vulgarian though I may be for saying so, loud does go a long way with me. It's the rugby element of opera.
Meanwhile, there was everything else. Podles' first number was Rossini's Joan of Arc cantata for solo contralto. Podles is no longer 35 (try flipping the digits around a little and you'll get there...I actually only know this because Tommasini did his homework), and she does a crazy-looking sort of calisthenics to catch all the notes in this kind of music, but unless you require your soloists to look like Kiri te Kanawa or the Buddha at all times, it's worth it. Personally I find it kind of fun to watch. And the bravura, the sheer balls of the singing...I think most anyone who was there will tell you this was a unique moment of delirium in this season. In almost anyone else's concerts, you wait for the high notes. And there are good high notes in a Podles concert, but fewer than there used to be [and in the spirit of full disclosure, the high note in the second encore was a good save rather than an easy triumph]. But really you wait for the low notes. To some listeners, they're discordant with the rest of the voice. To these listeners I say: blow me. But in a jokey tone of voice, so we're all still friends.
EP acts her way through even concert pieces, which is also great fun. It's silent movie acting, but it's from the gut. And what's better still is the non-narrative physicality of her singing--some of it from effort, sure, but the majority I think from a brand of whole body engagement with the music I imagine Leider and Garden must have had. Certainly it finds a happy home in Mussorgsky's fairy tale told by a goth drama queen, Pesni i Pliaski Smerti. La P's Russian is a damn sight clearer than her Romance languages, which tend toward the Polynesian, ecole de Sutherland, which also helped out in her two encores, the Nevsky and Moscow Cantata pieces to be heard on her superb Russian disc. (I'm only sad she didn't sing Varvara's Limericks from Schedrin's "Not Only Love" with its slithery portamenti ending in a sort of queasy grunt. Good stuff.) These were followed by much stomping and European clapping-in-time, even, that went on until our game but weary soloist drew a finger dramatically across her throat, the bum's rush as an international gesture.
Would I love Podles as much in subtler material? Gluck's Orfeo can go either way: quiet nobility or gestures on the scale of Marie Falconetti, and hers is resoundingly the latter. I was meant to hear her in Das Lied the year she broke her arm and heard the lovely Susan Platts instead. I'm not sure how much it matters when there's great rep in her range that works the cinematic scale of her art. Certainly I'm beside myself waiting for this summer's Tancredi ([-subtle]...little notational joke for any linguists in the crowd. Thanks, I'll be here all week!) and can hardly type about the Toronto Klytamnestra without fainting, so I'd better sign off, since nothing's less attractive than me passed out at the keyboard.
Up next: Forza. Which is tonight. p.s. not to put too fine a point on it, but did anyone take home a sonic souvenir of this concert, not that any of us moral paragons would do such a thing?
Madame Podles, you see, was the featured soloist at the Moscow Chamber Orchestra's matinee concert, though I think it is safe to say the majority of the crowd would have remained in their seats had a bad batch of borsch called for a last minute substition of the PS 153 marching band on backup. This is not to denigrate the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, except for the first violin section. It is to denigrate them just a little, as their pitch issues are something jarring in a world class ensemble, pretty solo playing of the concertmaster notwithstanding. But an opening band can tell when you're waiting for Led Zeppelin, I suspect. (yeah, no idea. I hate Led Zeppelin.)
Meanwhile, they played the Haydn "Pasione" symphony with great gusto and Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives [Rus.: Mimoletnosti] were marked by considerable nimbleness and wit. Shostakovich's chamber symphony was, if memory serves, and it usually doesn't around here, actually arranged for them from the 8th quartet, though I think it's safe to say none of those members are around any longer. And it had gravitas and soul, and we all just wanted Podles to get her besequined ass out there and yell at us some more.
Alright. "Yell" is not the best choice of words. But for the record, this was some exquisitely loud singing, and in the last of the Songs and Dances of Death, the middle register note on the word smert' (death) roughed me up as no note has done in recent memory. And, vulgarian though I may be for saying so, loud does go a long way with me. It's the rugby element of opera.
Meanwhile, there was everything else. Podles' first number was Rossini's Joan of Arc cantata for solo contralto. Podles is no longer 35 (try flipping the digits around a little and you'll get there...I actually only know this because Tommasini did his homework), and she does a crazy-looking sort of calisthenics to catch all the notes in this kind of music, but unless you require your soloists to look like Kiri te Kanawa or the Buddha at all times, it's worth it. Personally I find it kind of fun to watch. And the bravura, the sheer balls of the singing...I think most anyone who was there will tell you this was a unique moment of delirium in this season. In almost anyone else's concerts, you wait for the high notes. And there are good high notes in a Podles concert, but fewer than there used to be [and in the spirit of full disclosure, the high note in the second encore was a good save rather than an easy triumph]. But really you wait for the low notes. To some listeners, they're discordant with the rest of the voice. To these listeners I say: blow me. But in a jokey tone of voice, so we're all still friends.
EP acts her way through even concert pieces, which is also great fun. It's silent movie acting, but it's from the gut. And what's better still is the non-narrative physicality of her singing--some of it from effort, sure, but the majority I think from a brand of whole body engagement with the music I imagine Leider and Garden must have had. Certainly it finds a happy home in Mussorgsky's fairy tale told by a goth drama queen, Pesni i Pliaski Smerti. La P's Russian is a damn sight clearer than her Romance languages, which tend toward the Polynesian, ecole de Sutherland, which also helped out in her two encores, the Nevsky and Moscow Cantata pieces to be heard on her superb Russian disc. (I'm only sad she didn't sing Varvara's Limericks from Schedrin's "Not Only Love" with its slithery portamenti ending in a sort of queasy grunt. Good stuff.) These were followed by much stomping and European clapping-in-time, even, that went on until our game but weary soloist drew a finger dramatically across her throat, the bum's rush as an international gesture.
Would I love Podles as much in subtler material? Gluck's Orfeo can go either way: quiet nobility or gestures on the scale of Marie Falconetti, and hers is resoundingly the latter. I was meant to hear her in Das Lied the year she broke her arm and heard the lovely Susan Platts instead. I'm not sure how much it matters when there's great rep in her range that works the cinematic scale of her art. Certainly I'm beside myself waiting for this summer's Tancredi ([-subtle]...little notational joke for any linguists in the crowd. Thanks, I'll be here all week!) and can hardly type about the Toronto Klytamnestra without fainting, so I'd better sign off, since nothing's less attractive than me passed out at the keyboard.
Up next: Forza. Which is tonight. p.s. not to put too fine a point on it, but did anyone take home a sonic souvenir of this concert, not that any of us moral paragons would do such a thing?
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Two Bits
It's time to pull my metaphorical dancing shoes out of the Ikea metaphorical-shoe-holder thingy and hit the streets. By which I mean, in my fashion, it's time to reiterate that this Met season which for some reason had certain dud-like qualities on paper, has instead been a source of consistent satisfaction, and mutter a quiet, quasi-religious word of thanks to the likes of Olga Borodina and Clifton Forbis, a pair anyone would be happy to hear again. And by "anyone" I mean me, but maybe you, too.
Hours away from going to hear my very favorite low-voiced lady sing at Avery, I must take a minute to eat some crow over my long-held indifference to Ms. Borodina. It's not that I didn't like her, but more that I kind of didn't entirely get it. I heard her first as Marina in a Boris I was standing for, and only ever again as Polina or Praskovija or Pippi or whatever the throwaway sister in Pikovaia Dama answers to. In fact I heard all but the last note of her Marina, as I was in upstairs standing, had never been to the quiz, and thought it would be sufficiently fun to merit bolting from the upper reaches as the act was ending. I thought she had a wonderful strength in her voice but not as much kunst as I was craving. I have resisted the horrible temptation to say "kraving" and you may thank me. And as Dalila, she sounded much as I recalled. Well, listeners are allowed to mature as well as singers, no? Borodina is in fact a bit like Podles in that her approach to roles is based on luxury of sound and grand gestures. Borodina, of course, does more of a Simionato thing, producing equally unshakeable sound up and down her range without the punchy contralto chest notes. Neither one radiates canny intellectual smarts (illusory though this may well be) the way say Lisa Saffer or, to give an obvious example, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson does. It is certainly enough, and maybe a matter of matching of talent. Dalila need not come off as particularly deep. The standardized scorecard for this opera requests a letter grade for the act-ending cry of "lache!" and I, red grading pen in hand, have given an A without much hesitation.
Clifton Forbis should have been a big name years ago and I hope he will be now, though I can't guess how well his voice took to the airwaves. You may recall his excellent turn in Wozzeck recently, and if you're from Texas (as am I and, it would seem, as is Jean Phillipe-Lafont, judging by the hook 'em horns element of his get-up in Samson...NYCOF will know what I'm talking about, if no-one else does: orange paint all over your face and a little white longhorn on your forehead? I mean c'mon, the season's over, I think. Football's the one with the horses and the swimming pool, right? Anyway pack up the tailgate party, Lafont.) you may also remember him in a gem of a Kat'a K with the riveting but vanished Elena Prokina. I'd like to think we're going to hear him in Wagner at the Met--beyond being compelling and having a basically pleasing sound, the voice is absolutely Met sized. I will say I was taken aback upon his opening lines, as he produces the least tenory sounding tenor I think I've ever heard. It's like the beginning of the Ozawa Gurrelieder when McCracken opens his mouth and Hans Hotter falls out.
Lafont, to my tastes, was a little dull and wooly, but not show-killingly so. I'm trying (very unstrenuously...I mean, the Met database is two clicks away) to remember who else has sung the high priest in this production. Surely someone could bring a bit more brio to the proceedings, you'd think. At least he kind of worked his costume, has some inner RuPaul going on. James Courtney as Abimelech looked for all the world like a fratboy in drag on a dare, trying feebly to work those humangous fingernails without ever tapping into their potential for campy gestures of slightly dandyish villainry. Nu, it would have been so hard to queue up The Crying Game on Netflix? (As in everything since Paradise Lost, if not before, though, it was pretty clear if you had to choose to spend next Saturday with the good guys or the bad guys, you'd probably already be on the b's on your speed dial. This despite some conducting, especially during the Bacchanale, that lacked Elvis, as I think we used to say during the Clinton years.) Yes, I'm commenting on his fingernail flicking skills, because really he does the same thing in this as in Rigoletto, turning out late career comprimario sounds that at least have a feel of being well earned.
Am I alone in basically admiring the look of this production but wishing the destruction of the temple looked a little less like a radical redecorating scheme and more like something going boom?
Podles shall be blogged later in the week.
Another Toothless Blind Item: what opera photographer and bon vivant turns out to do a surprisingly riotous imitation of Licia Albanese clearing her throat?
Hours away from going to hear my very favorite low-voiced lady sing at Avery, I must take a minute to eat some crow over my long-held indifference to Ms. Borodina. It's not that I didn't like her, but more that I kind of didn't entirely get it. I heard her first as Marina in a Boris I was standing for, and only ever again as Polina or Praskovija or Pippi or whatever the throwaway sister in Pikovaia Dama answers to. In fact I heard all but the last note of her Marina, as I was in upstairs standing, had never been to the quiz, and thought it would be sufficiently fun to merit bolting from the upper reaches as the act was ending. I thought she had a wonderful strength in her voice but not as much kunst as I was craving. I have resisted the horrible temptation to say "kraving" and you may thank me. And as Dalila, she sounded much as I recalled. Well, listeners are allowed to mature as well as singers, no? Borodina is in fact a bit like Podles in that her approach to roles is based on luxury of sound and grand gestures. Borodina, of course, does more of a Simionato thing, producing equally unshakeable sound up and down her range without the punchy contralto chest notes. Neither one radiates canny intellectual smarts (illusory though this may well be) the way say Lisa Saffer or, to give an obvious example, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson does. It is certainly enough, and maybe a matter of matching of talent. Dalila need not come off as particularly deep. The standardized scorecard for this opera requests a letter grade for the act-ending cry of "lache!" and I, red grading pen in hand, have given an A without much hesitation.
Clifton Forbis should have been a big name years ago and I hope he will be now, though I can't guess how well his voice took to the airwaves. You may recall his excellent turn in Wozzeck recently, and if you're from Texas (as am I and, it would seem, as is Jean Phillipe-Lafont, judging by the hook 'em horns element of his get-up in Samson...NYCOF will know what I'm talking about, if no-one else does: orange paint all over your face and a little white longhorn on your forehead? I mean c'mon, the season's over, I think. Football's the one with the horses and the swimming pool, right? Anyway pack up the tailgate party, Lafont.) you may also remember him in a gem of a Kat'a K with the riveting but vanished Elena Prokina. I'd like to think we're going to hear him in Wagner at the Met--beyond being compelling and having a basically pleasing sound, the voice is absolutely Met sized. I will say I was taken aback upon his opening lines, as he produces the least tenory sounding tenor I think I've ever heard. It's like the beginning of the Ozawa Gurrelieder when McCracken opens his mouth and Hans Hotter falls out.
Lafont, to my tastes, was a little dull and wooly, but not show-killingly so. I'm trying (very unstrenuously...I mean, the Met database is two clicks away) to remember who else has sung the high priest in this production. Surely someone could bring a bit more brio to the proceedings, you'd think. At least he kind of worked his costume, has some inner RuPaul going on. James Courtney as Abimelech looked for all the world like a fratboy in drag on a dare, trying feebly to work those humangous fingernails without ever tapping into their potential for campy gestures of slightly dandyish villainry. Nu, it would have been so hard to queue up The Crying Game on Netflix? (As in everything since Paradise Lost, if not before, though, it was pretty clear if you had to choose to spend next Saturday with the good guys or the bad guys, you'd probably already be on the b's on your speed dial. This despite some conducting, especially during the Bacchanale, that lacked Elvis, as I think we used to say during the Clinton years.) Yes, I'm commenting on his fingernail flicking skills, because really he does the same thing in this as in Rigoletto, turning out late career comprimario sounds that at least have a feel of being well earned.
Am I alone in basically admiring the look of this production but wishing the destruction of the temple looked a little less like a radical redecorating scheme and more like something going boom?
Podles shall be blogged later in the week.
Another Toothless Blind Item: what opera photographer and bon vivant turns out to do a surprisingly riotous imitation of Licia Albanese clearing her throat?
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Faute de mieu
Latest purchase: (With What Money??)
1) I Troiani. That's right, not Les Troyens. Highlights disc, actually, but it has the parts one is curious to hear. I'm trying to remember my Mario del Monaco timeline and whether 1960 is after his car wreck/goiter/whatever but I would guess not. I mean he ditches the C in "inutiles regrets" and we all hate that, but the final B (?) is so long and fearless as to make up for it. The crowd agrees. Simionato as Didone isn't quite what I imagined...I think the grandeur of her big scena is all tied up in its Frenchness and even an artist of her caliber can't really make it sound right in translation. I'm trying to imagine Janet Baker doing it in English, which seems likely to have happened. It just doesn't make me want to rev up the time machine. I haven't given Nell Rankin's Cassandra a fair listen; cursorily I'd say the goods are there.
2) Cebotari Sings This and That in Really Good Sound. Can someone clear up for me whether she was or was not Hitler's little darling? I'd swear I read it somewhere but it's hard to wrap my head around since she's from Kishinev, ancestral home of the D'annato family and so many other shtetl Jews. Anyway if she was in fact the songbird of Sobibor maybe I'd actually rather not know it, because she made some irresistable records. While we're on her, che-bo-TA-ri? Because it's a semi-made up name anyway, from Cebutaru. And while I have no idea what a "c" represents in Romanian, it's not impossible she was aiming for something with more of an Italian ring to it like, y'know, Rossellini or Buccatini or, oh, Millo. Herein are featured excerpts from Puccini, Verdi, etc and Cebotari's second to none Es Gibt ein Reich, complete with Ferrieresque mythology that she knew she was dying when she sang it. It could be true.
Honestly, I haven't stopped going to the opera. I'm bound to go to Forza sooner or later, especially since I got an intriguing text message about it from JSU. Go click on his page until he's forced to review it. (Actually I haven't checked today--he may have done so already. All I've seen lately though was Walk the Line, which I secretly suspect was just the negatives from last year's Ray.
Over at The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross outlines a Ring set in an American high school, which made me laugh, in part because I have at times daydreamed about other operas set in high schools (they being the last place it is socially acceptable to indulge in high drama/operatically sized emotion all the livelong day.) Is the Duke of Mantua really just the captain of the football team? Is Der Komponist really just the faggiest kid in the drama club? Watch your back, Calixto Bieito--here I come!
1) I Troiani. That's right, not Les Troyens. Highlights disc, actually, but it has the parts one is curious to hear. I'm trying to remember my Mario del Monaco timeline and whether 1960 is after his car wreck/goiter/whatever but I would guess not. I mean he ditches the C in "inutiles regrets" and we all hate that, but the final B (?) is so long and fearless as to make up for it. The crowd agrees. Simionato as Didone isn't quite what I imagined...I think the grandeur of her big scena is all tied up in its Frenchness and even an artist of her caliber can't really make it sound right in translation. I'm trying to imagine Janet Baker doing it in English, which seems likely to have happened. It just doesn't make me want to rev up the time machine. I haven't given Nell Rankin's Cassandra a fair listen; cursorily I'd say the goods are there.
2) Cebotari Sings This and That in Really Good Sound. Can someone clear up for me whether she was or was not Hitler's little darling? I'd swear I read it somewhere but it's hard to wrap my head around since she's from Kishinev, ancestral home of the D'annato family and so many other shtetl Jews. Anyway if she was in fact the songbird of Sobibor maybe I'd actually rather not know it, because she made some irresistable records. While we're on her, che-bo-TA-ri? Because it's a semi-made up name anyway, from Cebutaru. And while I have no idea what a "c" represents in Romanian, it's not impossible she was aiming for something with more of an Italian ring to it like, y'know, Rossellini or Buccatini or, oh, Millo. Herein are featured excerpts from Puccini, Verdi, etc and Cebotari's second to none Es Gibt ein Reich, complete with Ferrieresque mythology that she knew she was dying when she sang it. It could be true.
Honestly, I haven't stopped going to the opera. I'm bound to go to Forza sooner or later, especially since I got an intriguing text message about it from JSU. Go click on his page until he's forced to review it. (Actually I haven't checked today--he may have done so already. All I've seen lately though was Walk the Line, which I secretly suspect was just the negatives from last year's Ray.
Over at The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross outlines a Ring set in an American high school, which made me laugh, in part because I have at times daydreamed about other operas set in high schools (they being the last place it is socially acceptable to indulge in high drama/operatically sized emotion all the livelong day.) Is the Duke of Mantua really just the captain of the football team? Is Der Komponist really just the faggiest kid in the drama club? Watch your back, Calixto Bieito--here I come!
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Abject Disclaimer of Any Objective Merit as a Review
When I was in college I had a t-shirt silk-screened with a page from Brahms' German Requiem on it. Someone once asked me, "can you play that?" and (thinking myself quite the wit) I responded, "No, I don't play the orchestra." Nobody plays the orchestra, get it, get it?
Alarm Will Sound gave a sort of mash-up themed concert at Zankel this evening, pairing "odd couples" of composers whose stories intersect in one way or another. Seriously, for once, I'm going to try to be brief, because I mean, I'm a Wagner-Strauss sort--I'm from Philadelphia*; we believe in God...** If things get any less instinctually graspable than Wozzeck, I have to fight not to fade into the rabble of middle American anti-intellectualism, turning into your Uncle Cletus who resorts to highly rigorous criticism of the form "my four year old coulda composed that aleatory and highly performative fantasia on sound and meaning." I do think I have a certain ear for virtuosity, but as AWS concerts go, a relatively small part of the evening was devoted to pieces that could stand on the staggering technique of ensemble alone. And I'm afraid I'm particularly out of water trying to wring the musical worth of things like Varese into words, though in fact Varese is by some random chance one of the post-Schoenberg composers I do get on some gut level. Integrales was given a showy staging that stood unafraid on the precipice whence artful looks down on silly. The placement of players in the theater can look like a stunt if you can't back it up with unfailing chops and unblinking conviction.
That said, with a ready hand on the delete key in case of impending cold feet, I'm going to say something a little critical of a concert given by a bunch of people I think highly of, some of whom I know personally: I just don't see how, as an audience member, one can not feel a little bit condescended to when 4'33" or its pal 0'0" is programmed. It amounts to an undergraduate lecture, an aural but non-aural conspiratorial wink, something I think works better as a historical event than a present one in the post-Sprockets age. But, as I've said so many times, I'm something of a half-wit, so more's my loss for not getting a seminal (the seminal?) piece of music after modernism. Maybe it's just harder to countenance now that we're all painfully aware now that those five minutes of cheeky neo-dada pile up to about fifteen bucks in the pocket of some Carnegie stagehand.
There, I'm done. Now back to the task of trying not to overuse the word "virtuosic." Go hear them next time and you'll see why this is an issue. Really the pieces that showed off the group at its best, according to me, were: Will Sound, commissioned for them from Wolfgang Rihm, not something written in language I can parse much but a swell platform for the always astonishing musical sense of conductor Alan Pierson; and...which one was it that featured Courtney Orlando adding the accordion to the long list of instruments she plays? I stand corrected on one thing. It seems very possible that Ms. Orlando plays the orchestra. (In case you didn't read your Chekhov, if there's a t-shirt in the first paragraph it has to go off in the fourth. Suddenly it seems I'm writing about burlesque.)
It becomes something of a nightmare to single out individuals for praise when everyone is so sure-footed, but for the hell of it I'm going to toss out random props to percussionist Dennis DeSantis, partly for his gripping John Cale arrangement, and percussionist Payton MacDonald and...Jesus, if you'd told me in high school orchestra that I would ever have anything nice to say about percussionists I'd have told you to light up another one. The Cale selections, from his music for Warhol's Kiss were performed with clips of that film projected behind/above the players, and of the pieces I've seen AWS do that call for a spatially motivated, quasi-theatrical staging, I think this one worked best.
Least informative review ever. I'll leave it for others to comment on such as Woma's Gyil Mambo which I enjoyed but not in any very specific way or Bermel's Three Rivers which I didn't enjoy, but not in any very specific way. [Conveniently, smarter listeners than I am have provided links to more informed opinions from those who really get this kind of music.] A small, heartbreaking note: those metal detectors that caused such a backup getting to the will call window? They're not permanent; just deemed necessary for a performance by the Israel Philharmonic. Once in a while one is reminded in a mundane way of the fact that, while monotheistic religions are clearly a big mistake in general, monotheistic religions with a concept of martyrdom really take the cake in the disaster bake sale.
*Not true.
**Even less true. I'm just making a movie reference for the amusement of exactly two people.
Alarm Will Sound gave a sort of mash-up themed concert at Zankel this evening, pairing "odd couples" of composers whose stories intersect in one way or another. Seriously, for once, I'm going to try to be brief, because I mean, I'm a Wagner-Strauss sort--I'm from Philadelphia*; we believe in God...** If things get any less instinctually graspable than Wozzeck, I have to fight not to fade into the rabble of middle American anti-intellectualism, turning into your Uncle Cletus who resorts to highly rigorous criticism of the form "my four year old coulda composed that aleatory and highly performative fantasia on sound and meaning." I do think I have a certain ear for virtuosity, but as AWS concerts go, a relatively small part of the evening was devoted to pieces that could stand on the staggering technique of ensemble alone. And I'm afraid I'm particularly out of water trying to wring the musical worth of things like Varese into words, though in fact Varese is by some random chance one of the post-Schoenberg composers I do get on some gut level. Integrales was given a showy staging that stood unafraid on the precipice whence artful looks down on silly. The placement of players in the theater can look like a stunt if you can't back it up with unfailing chops and unblinking conviction.
That said, with a ready hand on the delete key in case of impending cold feet, I'm going to say something a little critical of a concert given by a bunch of people I think highly of, some of whom I know personally: I just don't see how, as an audience member, one can not feel a little bit condescended to when 4'33" or its pal 0'0" is programmed. It amounts to an undergraduate lecture, an aural but non-aural conspiratorial wink, something I think works better as a historical event than a present one in the post-Sprockets age. But, as I've said so many times, I'm something of a half-wit, so more's my loss for not getting a seminal (the seminal?) piece of music after modernism. Maybe it's just harder to countenance now that we're all painfully aware now that those five minutes of cheeky neo-dada pile up to about fifteen bucks in the pocket of some Carnegie stagehand.
There, I'm done. Now back to the task of trying not to overuse the word "virtuosic." Go hear them next time and you'll see why this is an issue. Really the pieces that showed off the group at its best, according to me, were: Will Sound, commissioned for them from Wolfgang Rihm, not something written in language I can parse much but a swell platform for the always astonishing musical sense of conductor Alan Pierson; and...which one was it that featured Courtney Orlando adding the accordion to the long list of instruments she plays? I stand corrected on one thing. It seems very possible that Ms. Orlando plays the orchestra. (In case you didn't read your Chekhov, if there's a t-shirt in the first paragraph it has to go off in the fourth. Suddenly it seems I'm writing about burlesque.)
It becomes something of a nightmare to single out individuals for praise when everyone is so sure-footed, but for the hell of it I'm going to toss out random props to percussionist Dennis DeSantis, partly for his gripping John Cale arrangement, and percussionist Payton MacDonald and...Jesus, if you'd told me in high school orchestra that I would ever have anything nice to say about percussionists I'd have told you to light up another one. The Cale selections, from his music for Warhol's Kiss were performed with clips of that film projected behind/above the players, and of the pieces I've seen AWS do that call for a spatially motivated, quasi-theatrical staging, I think this one worked best.
Least informative review ever. I'll leave it for others to comment on such as Woma's Gyil Mambo which I enjoyed but not in any very specific way or Bermel's Three Rivers which I didn't enjoy, but not in any very specific way. [Conveniently, smarter listeners than I am have provided links to more informed opinions from those who really get this kind of music.] A small, heartbreaking note: those metal detectors that caused such a backup getting to the will call window? They're not permanent; just deemed necessary for a performance by the Israel Philharmonic. Once in a while one is reminded in a mundane way of the fact that, while monotheistic religions are clearly a big mistake in general, monotheistic religions with a concept of martyrdom really take the cake in the disaster bake sale.
*Not true.
**Even less true. I'm just making a movie reference for the amusement of exactly two people.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
And yeah, I'm kind of glad it's not Taymor
So now the questios is: what does anyone know about Robert Lepage. Right? Not sure what I'm blogging next. Probably Podles if the concert isn't called off.
A grus in der heim,
(which is Yiddish for Word to your Mother),
Chairman Mau
A grus in der heim,
(which is Yiddish for Word to your Mother),
Chairman Mau
Monday, February 13, 2006
Well, dog my cats!
DOGME 2006 Manifesto of Opera Blogging
1) I shall not describe voices in terms of food, unless in a spirit of blatant absurdism. "Ms. Mentzer's mezzo is a heady mix of starfruit and bliny, her top redolent of ham hocks and Big Red soda." Yeah, no idea why I picked Mentzer except in mentioning her name I get to think about her singing.
2) I shall not describe voices in terms of jewelry, precious metals, semi-precious stones. Nobody sounds like diamonds set in steel any more than she sounds like orthoclase set in ruthenium. It occurs to me I read "diamonds set in steel" somewhere recently so if it's yours, sorry for the potshot.
ETA: I begin to think the reason people read me in such, ehm, medium-sized numbers is to watch me be humorously wrong, sort of like why we watch the State of the Union Address only without the body count. The apologies here are due to Stephen Holden, and the phrase is "diamonds set in silver."
3) I shall not confuse an exacting, quasi-religious epistemology of fach for having something to say about a voice. One of you out there knows exactly what example I'm going to use in my theoretical non-DOGME-compliant review: "Norman should not have sung the role of Salome even on record, as she is not a jugendlich-dramatisch but quite obviously a Falcon."
Oh gosh, that's all I've come up with so far. Am I leaving out any clunkers? We've all seen the threads on opera-l about staging trends that must die--if memory serves, some deservedly popular choices were staging the overture, sopranos spinning around as they pop out a high note, and my own contribution: Big Tall Menacing Shadows. So I'm just saying there are some reviewing trends that make me a little nutsy. That's all. If anyone needs me, I'll be in my room.
Oh but before I go, have you checked out the little sister to Unnatural Acts of Opera? Our hostess sports yet another operanym I find awfully funny in its excess: Stella Maria Krazelberg von und zu Brabant, and the latest podcast is here. Meanwhile did you read Alex's rather gratifying tirade against the "let's dress it up as pop music and see if anyone comes" trend that looks likely to dominate the first years of the Gelb regime?
1) I shall not describe voices in terms of food, unless in a spirit of blatant absurdism. "Ms. Mentzer's mezzo is a heady mix of starfruit and bliny, her top redolent of ham hocks and Big Red soda." Yeah, no idea why I picked Mentzer except in mentioning her name I get to think about her singing.
2) I shall not describe voices in terms of jewelry, precious metals, semi-precious stones. Nobody sounds like diamonds set in steel any more than she sounds like orthoclase set in ruthenium. It occurs to me I read "diamonds set in steel" somewhere recently so if it's yours, sorry for the potshot.
ETA: I begin to think the reason people read me in such, ehm, medium-sized numbers is to watch me be humorously wrong, sort of like why we watch the State of the Union Address only without the body count. The apologies here are due to Stephen Holden, and the phrase is "diamonds set in silver."
3) I shall not confuse an exacting, quasi-religious epistemology of fach for having something to say about a voice. One of you out there knows exactly what example I'm going to use in my theoretical non-DOGME-compliant review: "Norman should not have sung the role of Salome even on record, as she is not a jugendlich-dramatisch but quite obviously a Falcon."
Oh gosh, that's all I've come up with so far. Am I leaving out any clunkers? We've all seen the threads on opera-l about staging trends that must die--if memory serves, some deservedly popular choices were staging the overture, sopranos spinning around as they pop out a high note, and my own contribution: Big Tall Menacing Shadows. So I'm just saying there are some reviewing trends that make me a little nutsy. That's all. If anyone needs me, I'll be in my room.
Oh but before I go, have you checked out the little sister to Unnatural Acts of Opera? Our hostess sports yet another operanym I find awfully funny in its excess: Stella Maria Krazelberg von und zu Brabant, and the latest podcast is here. Meanwhile did you read Alex's rather gratifying tirade against the "let's dress it up as pop music and see if anyone comes" trend that looks likely to dominate the first years of the Gelb regime?
Little bits of big news tossed in as afterthoughts
A Mattila Tosca, eh? Color me daft but I can't say I saw that pairing of singer and role coming down the pike. Think she'll play it barefoot?
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Talk about discouraging
After spending 20 years asleep, it seems possible, in a ring of fire, Terrence Malick has awakened to show us what happens when greatness goes unused. Right, in fact he made The Thin Red Line seven years ago, but I didn't see it so I can't very well write about it. And I'm not going to write much about The New World except to say that the three playings of the entire world-being-born-in-e-flat-major extravaganza from Rheingold are pretty much the only good things that happen. No, that's not fair. There are quite a few arresting images including one I would deem unforgettable, but somehow the man who gave us the soul-wringing narrative that runs behind each museum-worthy tableau of Days of Heaven has turned out an endless, tedious piece of dreck I have a hard time imagining anyone enjoying. The Wagner may be all that kept me in the theater, though the performances, one suspects, were good. It is hard to know--buried, as they were, in crap. Folks, this is the man who gave us the mean, lean Badlands. What the hell happened?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch: I keep hearing rumors of this Threepenny Opera with the potentially brilliant casting of Cyndi Lauper and Nellie McKay. I haven't gone mad, have I?* I've seen nothing official about it. In a way it's too bad because I have this little dream that Patti LuPone could get tired of doing Mrs. Lovett in the now long running do-it-yourself Sweeney Todd everyone's been so nutty about, and Ms. Lauper could somehow be persuaded to step in. You may or may not know this, but the woman has an impressive set of pipes. (I have been known to put "I'm Gonna be Strong" on opera mix cd's for reasons that one listening should explain with no room for back-talk.) It would involve some suspension of geographical disbelief, since I doubt that Queens honk is going anywhere, but then if the telecast with LuPone was any evidence, her British accent is sporadic to say the least.
All snowed in here at Palazzo D'Annato. Perhaps it's the ideal time to watch the rest of that old Elektra with Marton and Studer and just generally make things worse.
*"No, Maury," say the happy little voices. "You're as sane as...as...a really sane thing." It's so official it's got a website. And the translation is by Wallace Shawn, a man whose genius is largely unknown to the public due to the fact that he makes a really good visual punchline.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch: I keep hearing rumors of this Threepenny Opera with the potentially brilliant casting of Cyndi Lauper and Nellie McKay. I haven't gone mad, have I?* I've seen nothing official about it. In a way it's too bad because I have this little dream that Patti LuPone could get tired of doing Mrs. Lovett in the now long running do-it-yourself Sweeney Todd everyone's been so nutty about, and Ms. Lauper could somehow be persuaded to step in. You may or may not know this, but the woman has an impressive set of pipes. (I have been known to put "I'm Gonna be Strong" on opera mix cd's for reasons that one listening should explain with no room for back-talk.) It would involve some suspension of geographical disbelief, since I doubt that Queens honk is going anywhere, but then if the telecast with LuPone was any evidence, her British accent is sporadic to say the least.
All snowed in here at Palazzo D'Annato. Perhaps it's the ideal time to watch the rest of that old Elektra with Marton and Studer and just generally make things worse.
*"No, Maury," say the happy little voices. "You're as sane as...as...a really sane thing." It's so official it's got a website. And the translation is by Wallace Shawn, a man whose genius is largely unknown to the public due to the fact that he makes a really good visual punchline.
Friday, February 10, 2006
See, that's actually a hilarious idea for blogfodder. Presupposing some imaginary dreamland in which I'm not instantly creeped out by the idea of very liberally giving out my phone number, I publish it en blogge and then you all text message me reviews from whatever you're seeing. Whereupon I take inexcusable liberties with your words and publish them for all to see. All fourteen or so to see. Yes. So not gonna happen.
Maybe it's time to expand the blogroll a bit, as I've stumbled upon some amusing ones. Merely linking for now: the opera yenta tells us "How Internet Opera makes me a better Jew..."; the solidly written, rather serious and daringly named Opera Blog; and because anyone who likes Bruckner and Boulez must be, well...smarter than me, The Penitent Wagnerite. Enough for now. Click in good health.
Maybe it's time to expand the blogroll a bit, as I've stumbled upon some amusing ones. Merely linking for now: the opera yenta tells us "How Internet Opera makes me a better Jew..."; the solidly written, rather serious and daringly named Opera Blog; and because anyone who likes Bruckner and Boulez must be, well...smarter than me, The Penitent Wagnerite. Enough for now. Click in good health.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
More reviews from my vast network of cellular informants
A reader who dissed my last limerick
Informs me by means of Sony-Eric-
sson text message Gruber's
more "gruesome" than super
(though Olga is "awesome" wie immer) ick!
I really, really do not have the knack. In other news that I was given confidentially but now may disclose because it's more or less public (well, if you're a subscriber it is) Alexandrina Pendatchanska returns to City Opera next season as Elena in La Donna del Lago. Must shop for bells, on with which there to be.
Informs me by means of Sony-Eric-
sson text message Gruber's
more "gruesome" than super
(though Olga is "awesome" wie immer) ick!
I really, really do not have the knack. In other news that I was given confidentially but now may disclose because it's more or less public (well, if you're a subscriber it is) Alexandrina Pendatchanska returns to City Opera next season as Elena in La Donna del Lago. Must shop for bells, on with which there to be.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Hooker with a Voice of...well, you know
You know, it's a little difficult to get up the steam to write an opera review when this guy, by contrast, has used his blog to do a real and substantial service.
But I'm gonna anyway. You knew that.
All else aside, it's Traviata, probably the first opera I ever loved. If you'll pardon me while I vaseline the lens a little, Papa D'Annato used to load us in the jalopy and take us to Cincinnati Opera and I remember thinking during Manon Lescaut, at age 12 or something: please, please, please die already. That was what my reviews would have sounded like back then, yup. If we'd had blogs. "Um, so like this lady? She wouldn't stop singing?" etc. And then a few years later we went to Traviata, and it became immediately clear I would never, ever like football. One day I'll indulge my nostalgia and figure out if anyone in that cast was someone I heard later.
So the thing about an opera that plays that kind of role in your life is there's a good chance you'll listen to it way too much and not be able to hear it anymore, which is pretty precisely what I did. I'm always tempted to lunge for my undergraduate understanding of critical theory in discussing this because famed Russian mieskeit Roman Jakobson and his Ikettes, the Formalists, described this all very well: things become routinized, and good art must shock us out of our perceptual habits. I do think parts of La Traviata are lost to me forever. I can judge a good "Sempre Libera" but never again will it totally grab me by the balls, right?
Not entirely right.
I'm not about to crown Angela Gheorghiu the queen of the lyric stage, because that would be corny and premature. I will say, though, that I was very taken with her performance and at times very much moved, and there's not a long list of singers that really move me, whatever their other merits. See, Gheorghiu kind of does the Callas thing. Not a tic-by-tic phonetic masquerade ecole de Tiziana Fabbricini or Lucia Aliberti. Rather she has what I'm just going to go ahead and call a marvellous kind of negative capability. She doesn't flail about after gestures. She just has a good old school knack for physical and vocal melodrama. I never believed the stuff about Callas being Callas because she studied the scores word by word--singing is not geometry and critical intelligence is very, but very different from creative intelligence. What it means to be a creature of the stage is, for instance, to know as Gheorghiu does (instinctively, I suspect) when to slow your movements down and when to speed them up.
This is why, when she started condensing her gestures and walking so slowly as to fit in to a Robert Wilson production, it really launched her "Amami Alfredo" straight into my heart, or my gut, or somewhere signifying a happy reception of good singing. This and the fact that it was luscious. It should be mentioned, by the way, that some of us had misgivings at the beginning of the opera that her Violetta was going to be undervoiced. The first few minutes were remarkably quiet. In the final analysis, nobody would complain if the voice were a size larger, but I do tend to think kvetching about the size of voices is about half the time the last refuge of he who has nothing else to say.
A few weeks ago in this space I whined most gratingly about how the Met puts on Lucia but never Bolena or the other, far more enjoyable Donizetti. I didn't have any definite idea at the time about who should sing them, but now I do. It occurs to me that Gheorghiu put "Al dolce guidami" on her early recital album, the same one where you can hear her and Mr. Gheorghiu do a delightfully dreadful "Tonight!" from West Side Story. I liked it at the time and, lack of notes above C notwithstanding, I'd like to take my turn in the great tradition of Bloggers Futilely Adressing the Universe about Casting. Gheorghiu=Bolena.
Act III was dramatically dead on (except for maybe the "You can hear me but nobody else can!" spotlight...and come to think of it the entire physical production, not least the Dancing Cow Convention. That the headliners overcame this is much to their credit. Yes, I'm going to extend this parenthesis as long as I damn well please, and while I'm on the staging, is clapping-for-the-furniture making a slightly unwelcome comeback? I've heard it said that when the new house opened, people clapped for the chandeliers as they made their 7:59 ascent. We all like clapping, but let's be reasonable.) and the letter and [spoiler alert!!] death scene were riveting. And occasioned a stomping ovation which for some reason they quashed early on by means of the house lights.
Speaking of absolutely nothing, I swear there's a riff at the beginning of Act III that Philip Glass quotes in Koyanisqaatsi. I'm high, right?
Kaufman's success and equally enthusiastic reception was not a surprise to me. You know how a bunch of us heard Sondra Radvanovsky backstage singing The High and Highly Repetetive Priestess in Aida in what must have been 1998 and knew she was eventually going to knock everyone else aside for the spotlight? I think I had this same thing happen at the famously uneven Heppner Otellos in Chicago, thinking: who's that Cassio, and why on earth is he Cassio? It's a shock, but the good kind, to hear a voice with such a low center of gravity in this role. I find food metaphors irritating but red meat does kind of irresistibly spring to mind. And no, the C in the cabaletta didn't quite plug in, but my reaction a lot of the rest of the time was what a lot of you, apparently, experienced hearing Filianoti. That is to say gratitude that someone was making the right sounds and vocal gestures. I'm guessing Susan Graham was feeling some gratitude of her own, if she happened to take in any of these Traviatas, since Mr. Kaufmann has kindly displaced her in this season's Worst Wig competition. (Ms. G's wigs were much better, though I'll have to admit the act II one made me think of Alanis Morisette*. It's possible she'd look good in any wig. Not to belabor the obvious and much noted, but girlfriend is a knockout.)
ETA: an anonymous reader informs me that those ain't wigs. The problem with posting in a public forum is being publicly wrong. Anyway I'm hoping the Alfredo do is a styling choice by someone at the Met, because he does not need to be walking around the streets with that hair.
Anthony Michaels-Moore sang with admirable conviction, though if I had a magic wand he probably would have traded roles with John Hancock. Who may actually be younger than Gheorghiu but is also perhaps literally seven feet tall, so I think we can all feel comfortable calling him daddy.** Gallons of voice, from what I can tell having heard him in a couple of thankless roles. Germont's aria is another thing I've listened into a flavorless pulp, and even sung in the shower much to the horror of my soap I can only assume. It's almost an argument against listening to the likes of Tibbett, because I sort of casually assume nobody's going to do that ever again, which is not something a fair or sane person would hold against today's Germonts. But there it is, nonetheless, this little nagging voice in the mind's ear, and the sometimes clunky way Michaels-Moore's voice gets from one note to another did nothing to appease it, though I must reiterate that the role assumption was on balance a success.
You'll hear it Saturday, nu, and you'll tell me if I'm wrong.
*A year and a half later I removed the link to this picture where Alanis looks exactly like A.G. I kept getting hits from it and thinking "these people don't want to see my opera blog."
**It's moments like these when one is grateful there is little danger of the subject reading the review. To wit, statements of distaste or, well, compliments nobody's going to put in their press materials. "Maury D'Annato of blogspot.com says, 'this is one tenor I'd like to roll around in a vat of passionfruit Jello with, and his use of voix mixe is also tastefully stylistic.'"
p.s. as noted by Alex there does seem to be a February slump going around, as if there were some transcendental blog oversoul. Why we're all having crises of purpose at the same time is anyone's guess.
But I'm gonna anyway. You knew that.
All else aside, it's Traviata, probably the first opera I ever loved. If you'll pardon me while I vaseline the lens a little, Papa D'Annato used to load us in the jalopy and take us to Cincinnati Opera and I remember thinking during Manon Lescaut, at age 12 or something: please, please, please die already. That was what my reviews would have sounded like back then, yup. If we'd had blogs. "Um, so like this lady? She wouldn't stop singing?" etc. And then a few years later we went to Traviata, and it became immediately clear I would never, ever like football. One day I'll indulge my nostalgia and figure out if anyone in that cast was someone I heard later.
So the thing about an opera that plays that kind of role in your life is there's a good chance you'll listen to it way too much and not be able to hear it anymore, which is pretty precisely what I did. I'm always tempted to lunge for my undergraduate understanding of critical theory in discussing this because famed Russian mieskeit Roman Jakobson and his Ikettes, the Formalists, described this all very well: things become routinized, and good art must shock us out of our perceptual habits. I do think parts of La Traviata are lost to me forever. I can judge a good "Sempre Libera" but never again will it totally grab me by the balls, right?
Not entirely right.
I'm not about to crown Angela Gheorghiu the queen of the lyric stage, because that would be corny and premature. I will say, though, that I was very taken with her performance and at times very much moved, and there's not a long list of singers that really move me, whatever their other merits. See, Gheorghiu kind of does the Callas thing. Not a tic-by-tic phonetic masquerade ecole de Tiziana Fabbricini or Lucia Aliberti. Rather she has what I'm just going to go ahead and call a marvellous kind of negative capability. She doesn't flail about after gestures. She just has a good old school knack for physical and vocal melodrama. I never believed the stuff about Callas being Callas because she studied the scores word by word--singing is not geometry and critical intelligence is very, but very different from creative intelligence. What it means to be a creature of the stage is, for instance, to know as Gheorghiu does (instinctively, I suspect) when to slow your movements down and when to speed them up.
This is why, when she started condensing her gestures and walking so slowly as to fit in to a Robert Wilson production, it really launched her "Amami Alfredo" straight into my heart, or my gut, or somewhere signifying a happy reception of good singing. This and the fact that it was luscious. It should be mentioned, by the way, that some of us had misgivings at the beginning of the opera that her Violetta was going to be undervoiced. The first few minutes were remarkably quiet. In the final analysis, nobody would complain if the voice were a size larger, but I do tend to think kvetching about the size of voices is about half the time the last refuge of he who has nothing else to say.
A few weeks ago in this space I whined most gratingly about how the Met puts on Lucia but never Bolena or the other, far more enjoyable Donizetti. I didn't have any definite idea at the time about who should sing them, but now I do. It occurs to me that Gheorghiu put "Al dolce guidami" on her early recital album, the same one where you can hear her and Mr. Gheorghiu do a delightfully dreadful "Tonight!" from West Side Story. I liked it at the time and, lack of notes above C notwithstanding, I'd like to take my turn in the great tradition of Bloggers Futilely Adressing the Universe about Casting. Gheorghiu=Bolena.
Act III was dramatically dead on (except for maybe the "You can hear me but nobody else can!" spotlight...and come to think of it the entire physical production, not least the Dancing Cow Convention. That the headliners overcame this is much to their credit. Yes, I'm going to extend this parenthesis as long as I damn well please, and while I'm on the staging, is clapping-for-the-furniture making a slightly unwelcome comeback? I've heard it said that when the new house opened, people clapped for the chandeliers as they made their 7:59 ascent. We all like clapping, but let's be reasonable.) and the letter and [spoiler alert!!] death scene were riveting. And occasioned a stomping ovation which for some reason they quashed early on by means of the house lights.
Speaking of absolutely nothing, I swear there's a riff at the beginning of Act III that Philip Glass quotes in Koyanisqaatsi. I'm high, right?
Kaufman's success and equally enthusiastic reception was not a surprise to me. You know how a bunch of us heard Sondra Radvanovsky backstage singing The High and Highly Repetetive Priestess in Aida in what must have been 1998 and knew she was eventually going to knock everyone else aside for the spotlight? I think I had this same thing happen at the famously uneven Heppner Otellos in Chicago, thinking: who's that Cassio, and why on earth is he Cassio? It's a shock, but the good kind, to hear a voice with such a low center of gravity in this role. I find food metaphors irritating but red meat does kind of irresistibly spring to mind. And no, the C in the cabaletta didn't quite plug in, but my reaction a lot of the rest of the time was what a lot of you, apparently, experienced hearing Filianoti. That is to say gratitude that someone was making the right sounds and vocal gestures. I'm guessing Susan Graham was feeling some gratitude of her own, if she happened to take in any of these Traviatas, since Mr. Kaufmann has kindly displaced her in this season's Worst Wig competition. (Ms. G's wigs were much better, though I'll have to admit the act II one made me think of Alanis Morisette*. It's possible she'd look good in any wig. Not to belabor the obvious and much noted, but girlfriend is a knockout.)
ETA: an anonymous reader informs me that those ain't wigs. The problem with posting in a public forum is being publicly wrong. Anyway I'm hoping the Alfredo do is a styling choice by someone at the Met, because he does not need to be walking around the streets with that hair.
Anthony Michaels-Moore sang with admirable conviction, though if I had a magic wand he probably would have traded roles with John Hancock. Who may actually be younger than Gheorghiu but is also perhaps literally seven feet tall, so I think we can all feel comfortable calling him daddy.** Gallons of voice, from what I can tell having heard him in a couple of thankless roles. Germont's aria is another thing I've listened into a flavorless pulp, and even sung in the shower much to the horror of my soap I can only assume. It's almost an argument against listening to the likes of Tibbett, because I sort of casually assume nobody's going to do that ever again, which is not something a fair or sane person would hold against today's Germonts. But there it is, nonetheless, this little nagging voice in the mind's ear, and the sometimes clunky way Michaels-Moore's voice gets from one note to another did nothing to appease it, though I must reiterate that the role assumption was on balance a success.
You'll hear it Saturday, nu, and you'll tell me if I'm wrong.
*A year and a half later I removed the link to this picture where Alanis looks exactly like A.G. I kept getting hits from it and thinking "these people don't want to see my opera blog."
**It's moments like these when one is grateful there is little danger of the subject reading the review. To wit, statements of distaste or, well, compliments nobody's going to put in their press materials. "Maury D'Annato of blogspot.com says, 'this is one tenor I'd like to roll around in a vat of passionfruit Jello with, and his use of voix mixe is also tastefully stylistic.'"
p.s. as noted by Alex there does seem to be a February slump going around, as if there were some transcendental blog oversoul. Why we're all having crises of purpose at the same time is anyone's guess.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
The Truth about Cats and Dogs
Groucho Marx is said to have reviewed a performance by tenor Guido Nazzo saying "Guido Nazzo is nazzo guido." You don't get a chance like that in every lifetime, folks. So I was sort of hoping a few of you would be drunk and not notice if I tried to pawn off "Barasorda is sorda bad-a" on you, but as things turned out, I don't have to, because he was perfectly alright, and got a nice ovation for surviving the world's meanest sentence in a review.*
I mean, it's a shopworn voice, apparently the worse for many years of use, and did I think wistfully about Domingo, a singer I hold in high esteem but do not dote on? Of course I did. I'd like to hear him do it and am the more curious whether he'll get on his pogo stick and hop to it for the broadcast. If not, I've promised to start nasty rumors about vocal crisis among those half-wits on opera-l and usenet who start salivating at the mention of his name, cutting and pasting old posts about how he's never sung a C in his career. Where was I? Barasorda was not Domingo and that's that. I'm not disappointed I heard and saw his take on the role, though it wasn't world class.
Meanwhile, on the same stage, Sondra Radvanovsky made a case for the immediate Fedexing of Joe Volpe's soul to hell for putting her only in three performances of this and then that high school musical about the birds and the bees and the Viennese, and as far as I can tell from the Met Futures page, nothing next season, or was there an Ernani or something? Let's pause a moment for moral outrage. If there were an Oscar for best high note, she could go ahead and thank the academy because that baby was out of the ballpark. (And the Oscar for most egregiously mixed metaphor...) This being only the olive in the martini, really: I won't pretend to know the role at all but I'm having a hard time imagining a better run through it. If I got to design voices, there would be lots like hers, and the thing that knocked me out in the last act is that it's so present down around where you'd think it might fade from hearing.
I'd have a hard time going into much detail about the other singers, who were all dressed as Burger King. It was a little confusing. The set, though, I rather liked. Yes, it falls into that sort of watery category of not entirely traditional but not particularly daring. I just found it thoughtful and consistent and so I suppose stopped worrying about where to file it.
And the work itself? Delightful, conspicuously so: it's a mystery to me why it's not done more often, really. Well paced, imaginative though conservative in its language, maybe better written for the orchestra than the voice. But I had a short, frank talk with Mr. Gelb and any time someone suggests putting on, say, Tales of Hoffman he has been instructed to program this instead.
And then Maury woke up and it had all been a dream.
*"For with all respect, no one wanted him there." and yes, there's more positive context there but I'd still hate to read that about myself. And no, I'm not really jumping into the Tomassini Wars; I read his reviews, find them more or less helpful, and am not really in any position to correct him on things, being something of a dullard.
p.s. I thought so, but I had to google it after I got home: there is a certain adolescent humor in having a character named DeGuiche prancing around your opera, because in America a guiche is also the name of a body piercing in a pretty hilarious/agonizing place.
I mean, it's a shopworn voice, apparently the worse for many years of use, and did I think wistfully about Domingo, a singer I hold in high esteem but do not dote on? Of course I did. I'd like to hear him do it and am the more curious whether he'll get on his pogo stick and hop to it for the broadcast. If not, I've promised to start nasty rumors about vocal crisis among those half-wits on opera-l and usenet who start salivating at the mention of his name, cutting and pasting old posts about how he's never sung a C in his career. Where was I? Barasorda was not Domingo and that's that. I'm not disappointed I heard and saw his take on the role, though it wasn't world class.
Meanwhile, on the same stage, Sondra Radvanovsky made a case for the immediate Fedexing of Joe Volpe's soul to hell for putting her only in three performances of this and then that high school musical about the birds and the bees and the Viennese, and as far as I can tell from the Met Futures page, nothing next season, or was there an Ernani or something? Let's pause a moment for moral outrage. If there were an Oscar for best high note, she could go ahead and thank the academy because that baby was out of the ballpark. (And the Oscar for most egregiously mixed metaphor...) This being only the olive in the martini, really: I won't pretend to know the role at all but I'm having a hard time imagining a better run through it. If I got to design voices, there would be lots like hers, and the thing that knocked me out in the last act is that it's so present down around where you'd think it might fade from hearing.
I'd have a hard time going into much detail about the other singers, who were all dressed as Burger King. It was a little confusing. The set, though, I rather liked. Yes, it falls into that sort of watery category of not entirely traditional but not particularly daring. I just found it thoughtful and consistent and so I suppose stopped worrying about where to file it.
And the work itself? Delightful, conspicuously so: it's a mystery to me why it's not done more often, really. Well paced, imaginative though conservative in its language, maybe better written for the orchestra than the voice. But I had a short, frank talk with Mr. Gelb and any time someone suggests putting on, say, Tales of Hoffman he has been instructed to program this instead.
And then Maury woke up and it had all been a dream.
*"For with all respect, no one wanted him there." and yes, there's more positive context there but I'd still hate to read that about myself. And no, I'm not really jumping into the Tomassini Wars; I read his reviews, find them more or less helpful, and am not really in any position to correct him on things, being something of a dullard.
p.s. I thought so, but I had to google it after I got home: there is a certain adolescent humor in having a character named DeGuiche prancing around your opera, because in America a guiche is also the name of a body piercing in a pretty hilarious/agonizing place.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Ou sont les juifs d'antan?
Incidentally, speaking of Charlotte Rae, nee Lubotsky, why have the numbers of yids in the operatic ranks thinned so, I wonder idly. Gone are the days of Silverman, Ticker, Peterman, and so many more. The only name that springs easily to mind is Richard Bernstein, a singer I think very highly of but who seems only to be getting supporting roles. (I'd have been happy to hear him step in for Gunn in AmTrag, even if he doesn't have the same Shikse Goddess thing going on. He ain't chopped liver, either...he's just more the yeshivah bokher next door than the boy next door.)
Sunday, January 29, 2006
An Afterthought
So I'm wondering if anyone of my approximate age and viewing habits experienced a certain deja vu when Tsypin's Flute sets spun around to reveal what I could only take as a visual tribute to Twin Peaks: a checkerboard floor by a red curtain that looked for all the world like the Black Lodge. I realize David Lynch and opera are not fandoms with a massive overlap. (Okay and tribute implies that Mr. Tsypin' has seen Twin Peaks which is probably not all that likely.)
Current and unexpectedly delightful listening: Anny Felbermayer and Alfred Poell with the Vienna State Opera Orch under Prohaska in songs of Mahler, the Ruckert Lieder and "Songs of Youth."
Current and unexpectedly delightful listening: Anny Felbermayer and Alfred Poell with the Vienna State Opera Orch under Prohaska in songs of Mahler, the Ruckert Lieder and "Songs of Youth."
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tootie Voigt IS Tosca
Well, then, I've checked "hear Deborah Voigt sing the Facts of Life theme song (albeit under her breath)" off my list of things to do in life, so if you need me, I'll be dead. Only I guess I'd better stick around this mortal coil in case Podles doesn't cancel so there, I'm alive again. She did, though, and then said she always liked the kid in roller skates. Should I back up? I should back up.
Deborah Voigt sang a program of American music theater music (theater. music. theater.) for a rather unattractive looking crowd at the Allen Room this evening. It's not the kind of thing I know how to review very satisfactorily, so I'll keep my remarks brief*, but I will stick my neck out and call it an enormous success. Selections ran the gamut from inspired/unexpected (Bali Ha'i...yeah, I know, total standard but for DV? A bit out of left field, I thought) to deservedly obscure (Children of the Wind, from Rags which is not a good thing to name a musical, unless it happens to suck.)
As fags go, I'm not deeply literate in this rep, so many numbers that may in fact be old hat were fresh enough to my ears. I do suspect, though, that Cole Porter's "Come to the Supermarket (in Old Peking)" has not stood the test of time with its mortifying plinky plonky "me Chinese, me play joke" aesthetic, though it gave Voigt the opportunity to quip, "that thing's as wordy as the second act of Tristan." Freeze there for a second. That's not really a hilarious joke. Unless you've got a certain comic swagger, in which case it's pretty funny after all, and that's why it's sort of a tragedy that large-voiced lyrics spend their careers singing long-suffering ladies and goddesses and a lot of you may never get to see Deborah Voigt do something she does with real flair, except maybe in the comic song her accompanist wrote for her about how a lot of you may never get to see etc.
My friend JC used to practically spit when he talked about Eileen Farrell's jazz recordings. Inevitably he would compare them to Dorothy Kirsten's, and most often he'd end up wondering why Farrell had to condescend to the music, in his words. Now, I've heard Kirsten's jazz albums and they're pretty swell, but I've never heard Farrell's, beloved though they are of many. So, though I suspect there's some awkward parallel to be made here between those two and Fleming/Voigt in this kind of song, I've essentially wasted billions of your neurons on a paragraph that isn't going anywhere conclusive. Hate mail should be addressed to my hotmail account.
What I can say, what I did discover that maybe you knew, is that this kind of recital lives or dies by body language, almost more than by voice. It's possible it requires more theatrical skill than opera, or maybe it's just you can get away with much worse in opera because there's scenery and no microphones and besides, the bar has not been set very high when you think about what passes for acting. (Well that was just downright gratuitous, that link was. I'm surely going to hell.)
Voigt made a self deprecating remark that she was singing "outside her comfort zone," which I just have to label a big honking lie. Some gent in the elevator afterward commented specifically on how comfortable she seemed, and I couldn't agree more, and it floated a bunch of numbers I don't know that I'd go out of my way to hear again, including an oh so ribald number by Marc Blizstein called "A Modest Maid." Um, not to spoil it for you, but the punchline is she likes cock. It was premiered by Charlotte Rae**, which led to the patter about The Facts of Life. Which in turn culminated in DV, not to be confused with Diana Vreeland, promising to make "Tootie Voigt" her new stage name.
It's kind of a huge drag that Voigt probably puts more personality into this stuff than her usual fare, but I guess if she's Kunst over here and Stimm over there, we'll all find ways to enjoy both of her on the merits of each of her. She livened up some really rather staid tunes with such delight in accents and inflection and the occasional well placed belt...but in any case, having heard her intone (in "Paree" from Home Abroad) "Toujours l'amour!" I think we can put to rest aeons of opera-l speculation as to who'd get cast as La Comtesse de Lave were The Women ever set to music.
Encores, since I know you were wondering, were a piece Sondheim wrote for one of my favorite movies, Reds, and a relaxed, spontaneous "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man."
Incidentally, the Allen Room is a peach of a venue. The theater is small and the seats are pricey, but it's hard to beat the view of Columbus Circle and Central Park South. (I started to type "Prospect Park South." You can take the boy out of Brooklyn...and for god's sake I wish you would.)
*total lie, as always
**in case you didn't know, I'm the wholly unreligious and yet weirdly curatorial yid who annoyingly must know everyone's business, and yes, if you were wondering: Charlotte Rae Lubotsky. IMDB is indispensible.
Deborah Voigt sang a program of American music theater music (theater. music. theater.) for a rather unattractive looking crowd at the Allen Room this evening. It's not the kind of thing I know how to review very satisfactorily, so I'll keep my remarks brief*, but I will stick my neck out and call it an enormous success. Selections ran the gamut from inspired/unexpected (Bali Ha'i...yeah, I know, total standard but for DV? A bit out of left field, I thought) to deservedly obscure (Children of the Wind, from Rags which is not a good thing to name a musical, unless it happens to suck.)
As fags go, I'm not deeply literate in this rep, so many numbers that may in fact be old hat were fresh enough to my ears. I do suspect, though, that Cole Porter's "Come to the Supermarket (in Old Peking)" has not stood the test of time with its mortifying plinky plonky "me Chinese, me play joke" aesthetic, though it gave Voigt the opportunity to quip, "that thing's as wordy as the second act of Tristan." Freeze there for a second. That's not really a hilarious joke. Unless you've got a certain comic swagger, in which case it's pretty funny after all, and that's why it's sort of a tragedy that large-voiced lyrics spend their careers singing long-suffering ladies and goddesses and a lot of you may never get to see Deborah Voigt do something she does with real flair, except maybe in the comic song her accompanist wrote for her about how a lot of you may never get to see etc.
My friend JC used to practically spit when he talked about Eileen Farrell's jazz recordings. Inevitably he would compare them to Dorothy Kirsten's, and most often he'd end up wondering why Farrell had to condescend to the music, in his words. Now, I've heard Kirsten's jazz albums and they're pretty swell, but I've never heard Farrell's, beloved though they are of many. So, though I suspect there's some awkward parallel to be made here between those two and Fleming/Voigt in this kind of song, I've essentially wasted billions of your neurons on a paragraph that isn't going anywhere conclusive. Hate mail should be addressed to my hotmail account.
What I can say, what I did discover that maybe you knew, is that this kind of recital lives or dies by body language, almost more than by voice. It's possible it requires more theatrical skill than opera, or maybe it's just you can get away with much worse in opera because there's scenery and no microphones and besides, the bar has not been set very high when you think about what passes for acting. (Well that was just downright gratuitous, that link was. I'm surely going to hell.)
Voigt made a self deprecating remark that she was singing "outside her comfort zone," which I just have to label a big honking lie. Some gent in the elevator afterward commented specifically on how comfortable she seemed, and I couldn't agree more, and it floated a bunch of numbers I don't know that I'd go out of my way to hear again, including an oh so ribald number by Marc Blizstein called "A Modest Maid." Um, not to spoil it for you, but the punchline is she likes cock. It was premiered by Charlotte Rae**, which led to the patter about The Facts of Life. Which in turn culminated in DV, not to be confused with Diana Vreeland, promising to make "Tootie Voigt" her new stage name.
It's kind of a huge drag that Voigt probably puts more personality into this stuff than her usual fare, but I guess if she's Kunst over here and Stimm over there, we'll all find ways to enjoy both of her on the merits of each of her. She livened up some really rather staid tunes with such delight in accents and inflection and the occasional well placed belt...but in any case, having heard her intone (in "Paree" from Home Abroad) "Toujours l'amour!" I think we can put to rest aeons of opera-l speculation as to who'd get cast as La Comtesse de Lave were The Women ever set to music.
Encores, since I know you were wondering, were a piece Sondheim wrote for one of my favorite movies, Reds, and a relaxed, spontaneous "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man."
Incidentally, the Allen Room is a peach of a venue. The theater is small and the seats are pricey, but it's hard to beat the view of Columbus Circle and Central Park South. (I started to type "Prospect Park South." You can take the boy out of Brooklyn...and for god's sake I wish you would.)
*total lie, as always
**in case you didn't know, I'm the wholly unreligious and yet weirdly curatorial yid who annoyingly must know everyone's business, and yes, if you were wondering: Charlotte Rae Lubotsky. IMDB is indispensible.
Everything but a basketball hoop
Here I am typing at 12:30 a.m. on a weeknight. What on earth compels me to such behavior? Pardon me for a moment while I cut off my hands and avoid further troubles of this nature.
There, all better. No more pesky hands. Anyway.
Not fair, but something drove me to wonder:
If I spoke no German (which is almost true), and weren't reading my Met titles (which is utterly true), and didn't know The Magic Flute (which is regrettably false) what would I think this was about? I am rotten to the core for thinking it, because there are many fine productions that don't go in for, oh, y'know, representational schemes of action. But just for fun I tried it.
And I'm pretty sure after the first act, I would think it was about this goth kid who got abducted by aliens who took him to the fanciest store in the mall during a Star Trek convention.
I think any review of this Magic Flute is just bound to be production-centered, because for better or for worse, the production is absolutely overwhelming. I'm about 30/70 on the for better or for worse question. It seemed to me a production concieved with an audience in mind who didn't find The Magic Flute very interesting and needed a shitload of (extremely imaginative) distractions. And then I thought this over and decided it couldn't be right because of course I don't find The Magic Flute very interesting and the kitchen-sinkiness of things gave me a little bit of a headache so clearly I wasn't the target demo. Perhaps it's for people who don't find opera in general all that interesting? I don't mean to be needlessly negative here. I could be way off base. It's just that at several points I found myself suddenly unaware of the singing because there was so much other mishegoss, ranging from cutesy mishegoss to awe-inspiring mishegoss, to digest.
I suspect this possibility occured to me right around the time the gi-normous bears, which were a perfectly bewitching bit of stagecraft, roared in some unpleasantly amplified fashion. Almost as bewitching were they, I think, as the is-it-set or is-it-costume? winglike dealios wielded by the Sternflammende Konigin [here translated because someone finally got a clue as "Star-shimmering queen." I mean, you just can't get away with "flaming" and "queen" together at the opera without everyone getting a horrible case of the giggles.] So you see, there was much, much I liked in this Magic Flute, only it just was excessive in a way that made me want to stomp on my eyes after a while. There were enough visual chimera for four operas, including I hope one or two I like.
Of everyone, Nathan Gunn looked most comfortable in these surroundings. I'm really not in love with his singing (though for god's sake, the man is still handsome dressed as a flingin' flangin' parakeet) but I don't think he's bad either. Just a little undervoiced, especially in this solid cast, and somewhat bland as a stage presence, but very pleasant if not inspired, and in this ungepotchket* landscape, sort of cute and funny.
Who was not undervoiced is Eric Cutler, that's who. We all know the Met is rolling in excellent lyric mezzos, but I think we can maybe add Mozart tenors now to the category of voices we're not running low on. This instrument doesn't round the bends as fleetly as Polenzani's, but it has this confounding quality of undiminished softness across its considerable dynamic range. Dramatically, he looked a bit lost, but then it's possible he assumed from his costume he was making his role debut as Nanki-Poo, so anyone would be confused.
I'd like to say nicer things about Mary Dunleavy. I feel like I've heard she's reliable and hardworking and other things we like. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of voice in Pamina. A little unruly in what apparently is a deceptively grueling role--does anyone remember the Opera News interview in which Cheryl Studer and some other sopranos said they'd rather sing any number of Der Holle Raches than a single run through the g minor aria?--and not of the youthful color that makes me excuse the gal for being such a bore.
Morris Robinson has by virtue of the glorious color and presence of his voice stepped permanently into the spotlight, no? The very bottom isn't booming, but the solidity makes for pure aural gratification. And Erika Miklosa might call for a second spotlight if everything she sings is as good as her Astrafiammante. The last note of O Zittre Nicht was iffy; the rest was perfection. The measures leading up to the not so secure F (high note experts? F? F#?), the ones that make it clear Mozart was high or joking, included every single cotton-pickin' note, and the triplets in the vengeance aria were equally jaw-dropping.
You know, back in September I looked at this season as announced and thought, "What a dud!" And I'm happy to say I was wrong. It hasn't been wall to wall excitement, but it's been studded with here and there the extremely winning performance and many strong ones in between.
As a parting shot and call to arms, where is the mighty cult of Podles, and why was I able to pick, by letter, the row of my tickets with her Avery Fisher concert a month away? Come forth, you admirers of Ewa, and make this thing not get cancelled, y'hear?
*ask your bubbe what it means, and if you don't got one, ask your friend with the name what ends in -stein.
There, all better. No more pesky hands. Anyway.
Not fair, but something drove me to wonder:
If I spoke no German (which is almost true), and weren't reading my Met titles (which is utterly true), and didn't know The Magic Flute (which is regrettably false) what would I think this was about? I am rotten to the core for thinking it, because there are many fine productions that don't go in for, oh, y'know, representational schemes of action. But just for fun I tried it.
And I'm pretty sure after the first act, I would think it was about this goth kid who got abducted by aliens who took him to the fanciest store in the mall during a Star Trek convention.
I think any review of this Magic Flute is just bound to be production-centered, because for better or for worse, the production is absolutely overwhelming. I'm about 30/70 on the for better or for worse question. It seemed to me a production concieved with an audience in mind who didn't find The Magic Flute very interesting and needed a shitload of (extremely imaginative) distractions. And then I thought this over and decided it couldn't be right because of course I don't find The Magic Flute very interesting and the kitchen-sinkiness of things gave me a little bit of a headache so clearly I wasn't the target demo. Perhaps it's for people who don't find opera in general all that interesting? I don't mean to be needlessly negative here. I could be way off base. It's just that at several points I found myself suddenly unaware of the singing because there was so much other mishegoss, ranging from cutesy mishegoss to awe-inspiring mishegoss, to digest.
I suspect this possibility occured to me right around the time the gi-normous bears, which were a perfectly bewitching bit of stagecraft, roared in some unpleasantly amplified fashion. Almost as bewitching were they, I think, as the is-it-set or is-it-costume? winglike dealios wielded by the Sternflammende Konigin [here translated because someone finally got a clue as "Star-shimmering queen." I mean, you just can't get away with "flaming" and "queen" together at the opera without everyone getting a horrible case of the giggles.] So you see, there was much, much I liked in this Magic Flute, only it just was excessive in a way that made me want to stomp on my eyes after a while. There were enough visual chimera for four operas, including I hope one or two I like.
Of everyone, Nathan Gunn looked most comfortable in these surroundings. I'm really not in love with his singing (though for god's sake, the man is still handsome dressed as a flingin' flangin' parakeet) but I don't think he's bad either. Just a little undervoiced, especially in this solid cast, and somewhat bland as a stage presence, but very pleasant if not inspired, and in this ungepotchket* landscape, sort of cute and funny.
Who was not undervoiced is Eric Cutler, that's who. We all know the Met is rolling in excellent lyric mezzos, but I think we can maybe add Mozart tenors now to the category of voices we're not running low on. This instrument doesn't round the bends as fleetly as Polenzani's, but it has this confounding quality of undiminished softness across its considerable dynamic range. Dramatically, he looked a bit lost, but then it's possible he assumed from his costume he was making his role debut as Nanki-Poo, so anyone would be confused.
I'd like to say nicer things about Mary Dunleavy. I feel like I've heard she's reliable and hardworking and other things we like. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of voice in Pamina. A little unruly in what apparently is a deceptively grueling role--does anyone remember the Opera News interview in which Cheryl Studer and some other sopranos said they'd rather sing any number of Der Holle Raches than a single run through the g minor aria?--and not of the youthful color that makes me excuse the gal for being such a bore.
Morris Robinson has by virtue of the glorious color and presence of his voice stepped permanently into the spotlight, no? The very bottom isn't booming, but the solidity makes for pure aural gratification. And Erika Miklosa might call for a second spotlight if everything she sings is as good as her Astrafiammante. The last note of O Zittre Nicht was iffy; the rest was perfection. The measures leading up to the not so secure F (high note experts? F? F#?), the ones that make it clear Mozart was high or joking, included every single cotton-pickin' note, and the triplets in the vengeance aria were equally jaw-dropping.
You know, back in September I looked at this season as announced and thought, "What a dud!" And I'm happy to say I was wrong. It hasn't been wall to wall excitement, but it's been studded with here and there the extremely winning performance and many strong ones in between.
As a parting shot and call to arms, where is the mighty cult of Podles, and why was I able to pick, by letter, the row of my tickets with her Avery Fisher concert a month away? Come forth, you admirers of Ewa, and make this thing not get cancelled, y'hear?
*ask your bubbe what it means, and if you don't got one, ask your friend with the name what ends in -stein.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
PG-13
An attentive reader brings the following items from the Times' corrections column to our notice:
Is this the kind of thing Gelb has in mind to bring in younger audiences, do you suppose?
In another department....With a tip of my hat to Victor Borge, whose account of Wagner's early attempts at theater rendered me absolutely helpless with laughter when I was 17 (ou sont les neiges indeed) I am leaving the world of toy department, title-wise.
Meanwhile in the world of limericks we have been asked to contribute our limping wit to the following:
A young man from Bashkortostan
Whose wife was a Mezzosopran...
how about:
A young man from Bashkortostan
Whose wife was a Mezzosopran
Worked mostly when she did-
She was the more feted-
So he may never sing Gurneman(z)
Um, because she's not likely to sing Kundry. Get it? Well, I gave it a shot. The comments section is open and the bar has not been set very high if you're feeling in the spirit for a little lyric cage match.
A film review in Weekend on Friday about "Le Pont des Arts" misspelled a word in the title of a Monteverdi madrigal that a character sings on a recording. It is "Lamento della ninfa," not "ninja."
Is this the kind of thing Gelb has in mind to bring in younger audiences, do you suppose?
In another department....With a tip of my hat to Victor Borge, whose account of Wagner's early attempts at theater rendered me absolutely helpless with laughter when I was 17 (ou sont les neiges indeed) I am leaving the world of toy department, title-wise.
Meanwhile in the world of limericks we have been asked to contribute our limping wit to the following:
A young man from Bashkortostan
Whose wife was a Mezzosopran...
how about:
A young man from Bashkortostan
Whose wife was a Mezzosopran
Worked mostly when she did-
She was the more feted-
So he may never sing Gurneman(z)
Um, because she's not likely to sing Kundry. Get it? Well, I gave it a shot. The comments section is open and the bar has not been set very high if you're feeling in the spirit for a little lyric cage match.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
An earnest kvetch: I want my Spem TV!
< andyrooney> Have you noticed how if something is under 10 minutes you can buy it for 99 cents on itunes and if it's over, it's album only? This is sort of reasonable, I guess, except it starts seemig weird when for instance recordings of Spem in Alium range from 9:46 to 12:19 (which is a little shocking in itself) and the 9 minute one (The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, only here perhaps they are The Forty or does that sound too much like malt liquor?) is 99 cents, which is fine if you like it best, and not fine if the one with the most compelling snippet belongs to Chapelle du Roi under Alistair Dixon which clocks in at 10:07 and therefore carries a "view album" tag, like the "seasonal price" line in a menu that tells us, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." View album isn't a price, it's a command, one would say if one talked to software. Isn't there a way, one would say if one pleaded with software, for me to buy the extra 8 seconds that put this bad boy over the top? Again, this is understandable: if a track takes up a quarter of an album, they're losing money to sell it for a buck. But, eh, why not sell it for two bucks maybe? There are limited instances in which you can buy works within cd's, but mostly if they're a set of short tracks and one longer one that's not for individual sale I think, like the "vier letzte Lieder" (retail value: $4.46! I feel like Bob Barker.) But in the case of Spem in Alium and I suspect many other things, you're on your own. I WANT SPEM and if you go quoting me around town on that, please type carefully. < /andyrooney, only I guess he wasn't so much with the sperm jokes>
Saturday, January 21, 2006
In which Maury is kind of a stick in the mud
Cannot listen to Met b'cast because I'm going to Zauberfloete on Tuesday and I have so little liking for the opera itself I'll be sick of it if I listen today. Plus it'll ruin the fun element of surprise with a cast full of people I've never heard/not heard much of. They say this Miklosa is top drawer. So hey it looked like someone was re-casting that Schreker thing I liked so much a few weeks ago and that, after I run out for cheap luncheon resources, is probably what I shall listen to today. If anyone reading is listening, feel free to drop comments about how it is so I'll know whether to be half-heartedly excited or wearily resigned.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Brand Name Recognition
I'm feeling a little guilty about the number of searches I see that lead someone to this tarty little blog that clearly was looking for a Fisher Price toy. So I think I may change the title, though I remain ever yours,
Maury
That wasn't me actually signing off. It just started sounding like the closing of a letter is all. In any case I came up with the name of the blog in thirty seconds because I was on a park bench with my laptop bumming someone's wireless. It's a long story involving Vermont, Medicaid fraud, and Romance languages. Yeah.
Someone who statively prefers to remain nameless played me the most soul-wrenching thing last night in the form of an Arabella conducted by Kraus and of course given voice by the stupefyingly awful Viorica Ursuleac. She's long enough dead I'm not softening that one up. So anyway you get a kind of aesthetic whiplash listening to it because she sounds about 80 though she was 46 when she recorded it, but behind her is the most nuanced, emotionally fraught orchestra playing courtesy of Kraus. The kind of playing that suddenly makes other readings sound black and white. We must have listened to four recordings of the duet, really the only part of the opera it requires no special effort to love.
Meanwhile for any of you that are on itunes, they still have that whole Guiglelmo Tell w/ Pav and Freni on sale for $9.99. I read about this courtesy of Mr. Chalkenteros in the comments section over at Wellsung, and couldn't resist. Surely someone will notice, so rush over there if you want it. I'm not a card carrying LP fan but he sure as hell shines in the big last act scena.
Maury
That wasn't me actually signing off. It just started sounding like the closing of a letter is all. In any case I came up with the name of the blog in thirty seconds because I was on a park bench with my laptop bumming someone's wireless. It's a long story involving Vermont, Medicaid fraud, and Romance languages. Yeah.
Someone who statively prefers to remain nameless played me the most soul-wrenching thing last night in the form of an Arabella conducted by Kraus and of course given voice by the stupefyingly awful Viorica Ursuleac. She's long enough dead I'm not softening that one up. So anyway you get a kind of aesthetic whiplash listening to it because she sounds about 80 though she was 46 when she recorded it, but behind her is the most nuanced, emotionally fraught orchestra playing courtesy of Kraus. The kind of playing that suddenly makes other readings sound black and white. We must have listened to four recordings of the duet, really the only part of the opera it requires no special effort to love.
Meanwhile for any of you that are on itunes, they still have that whole Guiglelmo Tell w/ Pav and Freni on sale for $9.99. I read about this courtesy of Mr. Chalkenteros in the comments section over at Wellsung, and couldn't resist. Surely someone will notice, so rush over there if you want it. I'm not a card carrying LP fan but he sure as hell shines in the big last act scena.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
textual healing, or: There's More than One Opera Fan with a Cell Phone in the Greater Seattle Area
Our intrepid correspondent in Seattle [who is NOT the person whose words you will find if you follow this link] says, using only his thumbs, in 90 characters or less:
Time passes.
If we did not have ultimate faith in our intrepid correspondent, we would be checking his arms for track marks right about now, especially after his earlier reports that her Ortrud was genuinely frightening.
Shock!Shock!Shock! Eaglen is geuinely funny in fledermaus! Yes really.
Time passes.
Ok. So we had heard that she would interpolate the liebestod into act 2 - i guess that was only opening night, because it didn't happen. Blessing or curse?
If we did not have ultimate faith in our intrepid correspondent, we would be checking his arms for track marks right about now, especially after his earlier reports that her Ortrud was genuinely frightening.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Addendum
L.A. has posted as well, but other than Manon starring Villatrebazonko, it's nothing to blog home about.
Now what about Houston, I wonder?
Now what about Houston, I wonder?
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
As threatened
I think maybe it'll be more entertaining if I do this from memory, because I am sort of famously un-detail-oriented and I'll get all kinds of things wrong and you'll be all "but Maury, you moronic fuck, Voigt is not either singing her first Papageno," and we'll all have a good laugh.
So. Things I want to see in the coming season after all these mouth-watering press releases of the last week or so only I probably won't because in the words of Hedwig, travel exhausts me, plus anyway who's got the greenbacks?
[Please note, two of the links are to pdf files, so if that crashes your browser or anything...]
Book I
Reasons to go to Chicago:
1) Voigt disproving my assertion that on August 4, 2001 (DV's birthday; hoped everyone would spontaneously burst into "Happy Birthday" during curtain calls but my vision was apparently not shared) I was hearing her one and only Salome. She sings it in Chicago, lookin' all fit, in a staged production with the often enjoyably gutsy Judith Forst as mumsy and Alan Held as pops. Zambello and Tsypin ought to dream up something worthy of the occasion. Seriously, you know what the great thing about Voigt and Salome is, as evidenced by her readings of the final scene in concert more than her somewhat nervous semi-staged role performance? For once she's not playing wronged nobility, and I think she's gonna run with it.
2) Mark Delavan and Paul Groves addressing the bear community's charges that Iphegenie has too often been cast with twinks. [um, link is not especially worksafe.]
3) Oh hey wouldn't it be great if major companies would stage challenging works of subtle, subversive beauty like Die Fledermaus?
4) Lyric has an excellent young artist program, so when LHL cancels her Mere Marie, you'll probably get someone really good as a cover. (I kid because I love.) Meanwhile, Isabel Bayrakdarian and the ageless although surely at this point rather aged Felicity Palmer light up the marquee pretty well themselves. p.s. It's a Robert Carsen production, which in my limited experience is cause for rejoicing. p.p.s. yeah I'm not doing this from memory anymore.
5) You've read her blog, now hear what I'm thinking is her big role mainstage debut in this house. "Thinking wrongly," he edited, "very wrongly indeed, as she has sung the little tiny comprimaria roles of Donna Anna, Pamina, and Marguerite." Jeez, D'Annato, do your homework.
6) Galuzin belts Calaf. Me, I like that kind of thing.
Book II
Reasons to go to Seattle:
1) Well you've got to be curious how Vaness is sounding these days. (Customary snark mitigator: the acting is bound to be sure-footed, and besides, we're still kind of laughing with-not-at her after that weird interview in Opera News many years ago in which, out of left field, she vehemently but not hatefully denied all those rumors of lesbianism we have to admit we'd never heard in the first place. Good times.)
2) Dana Beth Miller in Don Giovanni. It's been long enough since I vaguely knew her that I think I can fairly say I'm not shilling when I describe her as a young singer to look out for. Plush, purdy voice.
3) Podles is Giulio Cesare. Man, this is almost enough to get plane-averse MD' to cross the country. Sets by Paul Steinberg. [ok, minor shout out. forgive me.]
Book III
Reasons to go to San Francisco:
1) The press materials about "San Francisco Opera Unveils New Visual Identity" are kind of hilariously overstated. Wonder Twin powers, activate! Form of: an opera company!
2) Admit it, you kind of want to do David Gockley. Oh, that's just me? Hey it's really quiet in here.
3) "Hey, I heard they're doing Die Fledermaus in Chicago but I'm stuck on the west coast. Fuck! How am I ever going to hear this neglected masterpiece?!?!"
4) Ok, ok. I'll stop picking on San Francisco. The City by the Baaaaay. Um, Rosenkavalier cast could work out pretty well. Yeah, I was 100% perplexed by Isokoski's mess of a Marguerite, but am hanging on to the idea that her glorious 4 last recording means there's good Strauss in there.
5) More Carsen, more Iphegenie. Rigoletto costumes by Constance Hoffman. Really good sushi. I don't know, don't ask me--I don't go that far west...
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Heaven is a place on earth
Belinda Carlisle isn't gonna sue me for the subject line, do you think?
I am speaking, if it need be said, of Academy Records. Have just continued my streak of buying delightful operatic feed for the ipod at less than the cost of the two piece meal at Popeye's. You have to get up on one of those undignified stepladders and take a few gambles, but I'm not kidding, there are some finds to be fund up in that shit.
Exhibit A: Zurab Sotkilava Wears Funny Hats. [not actual title] [Actual Title: Zurab Sotkilava Glares Suspiciously At You While Sitting on What Appear to be the Palace Curtains] Now, this one was a total crapshoot, and the main thing that made me buy it was the Marina-Dmitri scene with none other than Makvala Kasrashvili. She's singing in the "Stars of the Bolshoi" evening at Carnegie next week that I probably won't go to, so for some reason that seemed like a really good reason to buy the cd. Also her name is really fun to say. Georgian is stress-initial, if you want to try it at home.
I've actually listened to less of this one, but my meaningless snap judgment review is that once you get past the Iolanta aria that constitutes the first track and is unhappily nasal in tone, the man sings better than he has much right to at 60, which is what I reckon he was when the thing was recorded. Lenski's aria has a real authenticity about it; though he's Georgian, and I think I just heard a little Georgian-specific phonetic mistake, the style is right. He also sings a few Russian folk songs including one called "Oh Nastasia" that I am really nervous will turn out to be a Russian translation of Rufus Wainwright's "Oh Natasha." Whatever, it's goin' on the pod. That's, like, as close as I have to a Ebert/Guy-Who-Isn't-Siskel thumb system.
Goin' on the pod. Not goin' on the pod. As if I dropped my participial g's.
Exhibit B: Ok, Alexandrina Pendatchanska's agent really should have told her to change her name to something that doesn't have nine syllables, something that trips more easily off western tongues, like "Whitney Houston." So much is true. Meanwhile, oh my god. Personal to B: you called this one. So, I've decided when they outlaw everything but going to church in this country, I'm packing my bags and moving to Bulgaria. I know, I know. Not everyone there is Ghena Dimitrova or, um, Whitney Houston, but they do have a lovely musical culture, or did at some point. I hope it hasn't gone the way of many folk musical cultures. Anyway.
Super high quality voice, very bright but chesty where it needs to be, and this was recorded when she was 24. That's just nuts. She's got some tricks down a lot of singers don't learn 'til a lot later, if at all. I listened to part of it last night at like 2:45 am but I'm pretty sure I heard a good trill, and the florid technique in the Traviata scena gives me no cause to doubt it. The e flat is there, and it's cake. So for the real test now I'm revving up "Ah non credea" and taking it for a drive. Trill: check. Gooey Bellinian Legato: check. Cabaletta: Check (!), although what is the conductor smoking (?) because I do not believe these are in fact dotted rhythms in Ah, non Giunge, are they? What the ending is reminding me of as much as anything is the the ending of "Oh Luce di Quest'anima!" on that first Naxos recital Organosova put out before kind of vanishing; in particular, the joyous shout of a trill at the end. A triumphant dash of singerly brio. So here's hoping Whitney will return to our shores and still sounds this good, and that's all I have to say on the matter.
Next up: in want of anything to review, Maury shoots the shit about all these season announcements. Expect little of substance!
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Time, which made a monkey of us all
[Entry hesitantly reinstated. I get neurotic about whether things are worth saying.]
Where to file, emotionally speaking, the death of an artist who never truly made you weep or laugh or gasp for breath?
One is sad of course because any death is sad, and maybe also because there's such a weight of belovedness around a singer like Nilsson that one can't help and mourn along a little, and hope it's not somehow a cheap or hypocritical thing to be feeling. When I read the news I felt deeply moved and then immediately like a fraud because, well, she wasn't mine to mourn.
I loved her Brunnhilde, especially in the dawn duet, and admired much of her other singing, but never felt that bond of boy and diva. It is a mark of adulthood to be able to appreciate what you don't especially like, isn't it? Her voice, as recorded, never got under my skin, though I got that it was unique, important, a sort of treasure. And yet...maybe it's that she seemed like such a good sport, a game gal, coming out of retirement for a few moments in her 80's to sing a brief salute to James Levine nobody has forgotten. And in The Ring Resounding, my recollection is that she comes off as someone you'd like to know.
And a certain age of singing, without engaging in too much breast-beating about it, is indisputably closing with each year, and that's a little hard to take even if you love this age, too. Other than that one war cry at 80-something, I could never have heard her in house (was young, lived in the wrong places), and now that she's gone, I think even more of the day when current loves will retire and die and I'll say to some young opera queenlet, if they're still making them, "I heard her Didon," and know that no-one who wasn't there can know what I heard (as I was always told of Nilsson.)
I'm sorry this is a little ponderous (and maybe, around the edges, just a little purple.) My thoughts, however briefly, and however little it means, are with those she left and those who never knew her, and loved her.
Where to file, emotionally speaking, the death of an artist who never truly made you weep or laugh or gasp for breath?
One is sad of course because any death is sad, and maybe also because there's such a weight of belovedness around a singer like Nilsson that one can't help and mourn along a little, and hope it's not somehow a cheap or hypocritical thing to be feeling. When I read the news I felt deeply moved and then immediately like a fraud because, well, she wasn't mine to mourn.
I loved her Brunnhilde, especially in the dawn duet, and admired much of her other singing, but never felt that bond of boy and diva. It is a mark of adulthood to be able to appreciate what you don't especially like, isn't it? Her voice, as recorded, never got under my skin, though I got that it was unique, important, a sort of treasure. And yet...maybe it's that she seemed like such a good sport, a game gal, coming out of retirement for a few moments in her 80's to sing a brief salute to James Levine nobody has forgotten. And in The Ring Resounding, my recollection is that she comes off as someone you'd like to know.
And a certain age of singing, without engaging in too much breast-beating about it, is indisputably closing with each year, and that's a little hard to take even if you love this age, too. Other than that one war cry at 80-something, I could never have heard her in house (was young, lived in the wrong places), and now that she's gone, I think even more of the day when current loves will retire and die and I'll say to some young opera queenlet, if they're still making them, "I heard her Didon," and know that no-one who wasn't there can know what I heard (as I was always told of Nilsson.)
I'm sorry this is a little ponderous (and maybe, around the edges, just a little purple.) My thoughts, however briefly, and however little it means, are with those she left and those who never knew her, and loved her.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Firsthand account
From the diaries of Dawn Powell, a true New Yorker though born in the midwest:
This would have been a performance the afternoon before with Rene Maison, Ludwig Hofman, and Emanuel List, conducted by Bodanzky. It was broadcast, in fact, though I have no idea if it's extant/hard to find or simply lost to history. Not something I'd move mountains to find, but I was a little enchanted by the mention of it anyway. It's like the glimpse of Christine Nilsson in Faust at the beginning of House of Mirth: a trusted voice reviving an otherwise irretrievable moment in music.
Interestingly B.H. Haggin in the Brooklyn Eagle wrote:
p.s. Sorry, I have no idea what's going on with the font.
March 8: [1936] Flagstad in Fidelio. What difference is there between a good voice and a magic voice? Sometimes no difference in tone, placing, or quality, but Flagstad's simple great voice flowers, soars, fills the ascending tiers--one voice enough to charm and fill with joy 10,000 hearts. It rose and grew (the great hall was not big enough), flowed through the orderly rows of light-struck EXIT signs, roamed the halls, consorted with old echoes in shadowed corners, visited the old caged attendat in the Ladies Check Room, floated kindly over her proud book of autographs--Sembrich, Schuman-Heink, Tetrazzini, Caruso, Jeritza, Adelina Patti--and was reined in again by silence, a splendid echno left warm and unforgotten on the air.
This would have been a performance the afternoon before with Rene Maison, Ludwig Hofman, and Emanuel List, conducted by Bodanzky. It was broadcast, in fact, though I have no idea if it's extant/hard to find or simply lost to history. Not something I'd move mountains to find, but I was a little enchanted by the mention of it anyway. It's like the glimpse of Christine Nilsson in Faust at the beginning of House of Mirth: a trusted voice reviving an otherwise irretrievable moment in music.
Interestingly B.H. Haggin in the Brooklyn Eagle wrote:
There were one or two minor accidents in stage business, there was a major accident in Kirsten Flagstad's lapse of memory in the Allegro portion of her first act aria-only a momentary lapse, but one that left her insecure and tentative in the climax that called for the utmost assurance and intensity. Until then, however, she had sung with characteristic loveliness of tone and richness of feeling; and once she had recovered from the accident her singing rose to breathtaking heights of tonal splendor.p.s. Sorry, I have no idea what's going on with the font.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Much Flap over Fairly Little
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is what were her encores? Which is the quickest answer of all because there weren't any. No Summertime, not even a paltry two minute Zueignung. So there, that's out of the way.*
The next thing you might want to know would be stuff about her gown, a sparkly purple something or other thingy in the form of a, uh, dress. The forces of gayness apparently determined that I didn't need the fashion gene to complement my overdeveloped opera gene, so I can't tell you a damn thing. Besides which I was in the second worst seat in the house. Truly. I am reasonably certain she was clothed, but I may have been looking at the concertmeister.
I'm sounding grumpy, I think. It's just I hemmed and hawed over this, decided not to buy a balcony seat from a kind reader, was about 34th in line for 30 cheap seats, and eventually said yeah, what the hell, I'll wait around for the rest of the afternoon and blow a few hours' wages on a return in row Q (and that's not a fanciful bit of hyperbole) in the balcony. Three guesses, all you alphabet afficionados out there, how far the rows in Carnegie go.
And this for a concert I feel safe in calling an instant non-classic. Now let's get oriented for a moment. I was a big Fleming fan in the early 90's, and over the last few years have become something a good deal more ambivalent. I recently spoke of her Desdemona as one of a very few perfect role readings I've had the pleasure to witness, and Arabella in 1998 wasn't too far off that mark. But then there's Manon, and Irma or Shirley or whatever the name of the heroin in the one about the pirates is.
How does the nursery rhyme go?
There once was a girl
With a strawberry curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad, it was usually in some revival of 19th century crap we didn't really give a good goddamn about anyway, but increasingly it was also in Strauss which is not ok.
You had your nursery rhymes; I had mine. The point is I'm not in the business of trashing her for kicks.
Actually, i don't know...I think this was more mixed than truly disappointing, and so in fact disappointing from an artist of often high and consistent caliber. Tatiana's letter was pretty but underpowered. I posted earlier this year that her Manon sounded a little small-voiced compared to my last memory of her singing...is this fair? Her Russian is correct but not terribly clear, which is to say if you knew the text, it was quite comprehensible and I think also idiomatic on a phrase level, and she didn't make any of the phonetic mistakes you'd expect other than a dropped palatalization here or there. I think this shows a passion for detail that is not a minor deal. I can't entirely decide if she's going to be a good Tatiana--the voice and the manner speak more of the glamour of the post-Queer-Eye Tatiana of the last scene than the bookish girl who falls for the bad boy, and the big teen drama that closes the opera is louder stuff than the letter.
I'm sort of kicking myself for not having known the Altenberg lieder even slightly, both because they're sort of riveting and because it's hard to judge a performance of a work you're not familiar with. She made some very excellent sounds, but otherwise I'm not sure what to think. I have a hunch this was the highlight of the concert but I'm not going to bullshit you.
The Capriccio scene was hardest to file. It wasn't outrageously swoopy in the style of her Manon, say, and the high notes were stunning even in Row Q, but, eh. Overall, not a thought-provoking reading. Me, I was a little thrown by the fact that they billed Julien Robbins then skipped directly from the Mondscheinmusick to "Morgen mittag um elf!" Someone, presumably Robbins, did sing the Haushofmeister's single line at the end of the scene, so what? Was he in the bathroom? If anyone figures out what was up with that, I'd love to know. Anyway maybe the main point, if there is one, is that this music is not what I want she seems to do better than anyone anymore. I still harbor these peculiar fantasies of hearing her in a lot more Italian rep. Well, excepting Il Pirata.
Maybe what's bothering me is just that Fleming concerts are approaching OONY in terms of the number of people you see talking to themselves, rocking gently back and forth, and generally betraying a level of internal preoccupation that makes me wonder if I'm hanging with the right crowd. Maybe it wasn't Fleming at all, but my seat and the expense and the whole air of head injury ward field trip. This isn't an entirely fair review, I fear.
Incidentally, always your Closing Night Clara, I did show up for the very last Fledermaus. I actually went the other night as well, on the kind invitation of a charming fellow in turn invited by a cast member, which is why I did't blog it--reviewing something you're attending as a gift strikes me as bad karma indeed, even if the inviter turned out to be perhaps the strongest link of the cast (or I thought so, but to each his own. Well fuck me, I couldn't stop myself from throwing in a little hint.) So anyway there's not a hell of a lot to tell about this production except maybe could we just assume everyone knows the story or doesn't care and skip the dialogue? It's not a piece I find ideal for siizing up singers, at least not beyond their capacity for zany hijinks. I'm still profoundly and immediately delighted by the very sound of Radvanovsky's voice, though I'm a little worried by the weird way her very top notes don't hold a vibrato very well, or didn't Friday.
p.s. yeah, there was orchestral stuff. This is an opera blog. Rest assured you would't want to read the words I could muster to describe an orchestral performance.
And now I really, honestly don't think I'm going to anything for two weeks or so. The Met is dark, and just for laughs I have decided to see what happens when I spend my money on food and shelter. Because the single drawback of the Metropolitan is that they won't let you sleep there, and the restaurant is only open for dinner.
*Yeah yeah don't yell at me. Encores are a privilege, not a right.
The next thing you might want to know would be stuff about her gown, a sparkly purple something or other thingy in the form of a, uh, dress. The forces of gayness apparently determined that I didn't need the fashion gene to complement my overdeveloped opera gene, so I can't tell you a damn thing. Besides which I was in the second worst seat in the house. Truly. I am reasonably certain she was clothed, but I may have been looking at the concertmeister.
I'm sounding grumpy, I think. It's just I hemmed and hawed over this, decided not to buy a balcony seat from a kind reader, was about 34th in line for 30 cheap seats, and eventually said yeah, what the hell, I'll wait around for the rest of the afternoon and blow a few hours' wages on a return in row Q (and that's not a fanciful bit of hyperbole) in the balcony. Three guesses, all you alphabet afficionados out there, how far the rows in Carnegie go.
And this for a concert I feel safe in calling an instant non-classic. Now let's get oriented for a moment. I was a big Fleming fan in the early 90's, and over the last few years have become something a good deal more ambivalent. I recently spoke of her Desdemona as one of a very few perfect role readings I've had the pleasure to witness, and Arabella in 1998 wasn't too far off that mark. But then there's Manon, and Irma or Shirley or whatever the name of the heroin in the one about the pirates is.
How does the nursery rhyme go?
There once was a girl
With a strawberry curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad, it was usually in some revival of 19th century crap we didn't really give a good goddamn about anyway, but increasingly it was also in Strauss which is not ok.
You had your nursery rhymes; I had mine. The point is I'm not in the business of trashing her for kicks.
Actually, i don't know...I think this was more mixed than truly disappointing, and so in fact disappointing from an artist of often high and consistent caliber. Tatiana's letter was pretty but underpowered. I posted earlier this year that her Manon sounded a little small-voiced compared to my last memory of her singing...is this fair? Her Russian is correct but not terribly clear, which is to say if you knew the text, it was quite comprehensible and I think also idiomatic on a phrase level, and she didn't make any of the phonetic mistakes you'd expect other than a dropped palatalization here or there. I think this shows a passion for detail that is not a minor deal. I can't entirely decide if she's going to be a good Tatiana--the voice and the manner speak more of the glamour of the post-Queer-Eye Tatiana of the last scene than the bookish girl who falls for the bad boy, and the big teen drama that closes the opera is louder stuff than the letter.
I'm sort of kicking myself for not having known the Altenberg lieder even slightly, both because they're sort of riveting and because it's hard to judge a performance of a work you're not familiar with. She made some very excellent sounds, but otherwise I'm not sure what to think. I have a hunch this was the highlight of the concert but I'm not going to bullshit you.
The Capriccio scene was hardest to file. It wasn't outrageously swoopy in the style of her Manon, say, and the high notes were stunning even in Row Q, but, eh. Overall, not a thought-provoking reading. Me, I was a little thrown by the fact that they billed Julien Robbins then skipped directly from the Mondscheinmusick to "Morgen mittag um elf!" Someone, presumably Robbins, did sing the Haushofmeister's single line at the end of the scene, so what? Was he in the bathroom? If anyone figures out what was up with that, I'd love to know. Anyway maybe the main point, if there is one, is that this music is not what I want she seems to do better than anyone anymore. I still harbor these peculiar fantasies of hearing her in a lot more Italian rep. Well, excepting Il Pirata.
Maybe what's bothering me is just that Fleming concerts are approaching OONY in terms of the number of people you see talking to themselves, rocking gently back and forth, and generally betraying a level of internal preoccupation that makes me wonder if I'm hanging with the right crowd. Maybe it wasn't Fleming at all, but my seat and the expense and the whole air of head injury ward field trip. This isn't an entirely fair review, I fear.
Incidentally, always your Closing Night Clara, I did show up for the very last Fledermaus. I actually went the other night as well, on the kind invitation of a charming fellow in turn invited by a cast member, which is why I did't blog it--reviewing something you're attending as a gift strikes me as bad karma indeed, even if the inviter turned out to be perhaps the strongest link of the cast (or I thought so, but to each his own. Well fuck me, I couldn't stop myself from throwing in a little hint.) So anyway there's not a hell of a lot to tell about this production except maybe could we just assume everyone knows the story or doesn't care and skip the dialogue? It's not a piece I find ideal for siizing up singers, at least not beyond their capacity for zany hijinks. I'm still profoundly and immediately delighted by the very sound of Radvanovsky's voice, though I'm a little worried by the weird way her very top notes don't hold a vibrato very well, or didn't Friday.
p.s. yeah, there was orchestral stuff. This is an opera blog. Rest assured you would't want to read the words I could muster to describe an orchestral performance.
And now I really, honestly don't think I'm going to anything for two weeks or so. The Met is dark, and just for laughs I have decided to see what happens when I spend my money on food and shelter. Because the single drawback of the Metropolitan is that they won't let you sleep there, and the restaurant is only open for dinner.
*Yeah yeah don't yell at me. Encores are a privilege, not a right.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Minutes from the Jews for Wagner Society's first (and only) meeting
Quel week.
One day I'll learn my lesson and go to the prima if I'm going to write things up, but as far as Wozzeck is concerned, I'm afraid I went to the ultima and can only basically stand around pointing enthusiastically at my betters and yelping, "what (s)he said, and then some!" I mean for instance it's certainly what the French call de trop at this point to let you in on the secret that Levine conducts Berg like a master, or even to add my recollection early in the evening of Strauss' demand that Elektra be played (as this score was) "like fairy music." So perhaps I should forego holding my hands out sooooo wide and waggling my eyebrows around a lot and just confine my critique to the words "holy shit!" and claim my rightful place beside Shaw in the annals of music writing. Perhaps there's one too many n's in that.
And, you know, the Wellsungs have already done a bang-up job of knocking the physical production, and I can only add my delight in knowing that Ikea has a branch in purgatory, should I ever be stuck there with a little time for shopping.
I'm almost as stymied by the overall excellence of last night's Wozzeck as I was by the middlebrowishness of the Lucia, you know what I mean? Can I get an amen? Well that's alright, I didn't really want one anyway. It could be asked that Dalayman sing this stuff a little more fear and lust, and I did find myself wondering what Steber (in English, alas) sounded like, but in the interest of not being one of those operatic necrophiliacs that would sleep with the corpse of Mary Garden if they could find a shovel and a big plastic bag, I'd like to move on with my life and applaud her for a rock solid Marie that has no reason not to become something more.
By the same token, though Wozzeck's monologue in the first scene has probably been ruined for me forever by Matthias Goerne's recording of it (detailed in a way some singers save for Mahler) I can't see letting that fact deflate my appreciation of Alan Held's urgent, thoroughly shattered but vocally quite refined Wozzeck. The physicality of his realization was, in the estimation of one of my companions, overdone perhaps to the point of parody, but I think I'm comfortable with that in this rep as long as there's something motivated and specific about it, as there was.
Oh. Before I go on. (This is structurally a propos, it is not lost on me.) There’s something richly cinematic about bluntly dropping the scrim between each scene, but if I were king, they’d fucking stop it right now anyway. Because as we all kow without reading Pavlov, when you drop a curtain, a scrim or a hat, audiences immediately contract galloping bronchitis, recall a sudden need to tell Aunt Rivka they like her dress, and generally go about the business of stomping mercilessly on any dramatic tension that may have built up like so many grapes in an I Love Lucy episode. I’m sure I’m turing into a regular librarian about things, but unless the interruption is an Italianate eruption of audience approval or ire, I’d just as soon eliminate the ringing bell that brings it on. (Now, the decision to play the thing without intermission is, on the other hand, very welcome.)
I'm not sure what those links were about. You must forgive me. Sometimes I just get giggly about Emma Goldman.
Graham Clark is of course a genius and you don't need me to tell you so. Even if there were a dozen tenors specializing in the "ew! ew! must take shower!" subfach, I think we'd all have to pinch ourselves occasionally for joy that someone does it so forcefully and with such precision. How excellent, then, to have found his bass clef counterpart in the meticulous pitchblende-voiced Walter Fink, whose doctor tipped the needle on the creep-o-meter to a reading of "Dick Cheney."
Time to change gears if I'm going to listen to the broacast of that opera about the sleeping potion. What's that you say? It's a love potion? I guess I always assumed otherwise for obvious reasons.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Nein! (see also under: Ja!)
Somehow this Met Orchestra thing slipped in under my radar, and now it looks to be sold out. Curses! In the end, probably a good thing for me, financially speaking.
On a more felicitous note, another blogger and I (he didn't say whether he'd care to be named so I'll go with no and let him post otherwise) were pleased to find audio selections linked by the proprietress of The Concert, and more pleased yet when the Grossmachtige Prinzessin--naturally what we lunged at first--turned out to be most enjoyable indeed. Props to the owner and caretaker of a fine and distinctive voice.
On a more felicitous note, another blogger and I (he didn't say whether he'd care to be named so I'll go with no and let him post otherwise) were pleased to find audio selections linked by the proprietress of The Concert, and more pleased yet when the Grossmachtige Prinzessin--naturally what we lunged at first--turned out to be most enjoyable indeed. Props to the owner and caretaker of a fine and distinctive voice.
Monday, January 02, 2006
I feel-ya-not (i), take II
So did you ever have that thing happen where you leave after Act II of Lucia too dispirited to even attempt a wee hatchet job on all those implicated? I guess that's rather specific. If you ever had that happen, we are kindred spirits indeed.
Anyway I still don't want to write one of those wretched tantrum-y postings, but I thought it right to be a bit less...oblique, having made my basic pouty disdain relatively clear. What's the opposite of oblique, anyway? In drafting, it's isometric. So here's my isometric take on Lucia:
Dissing a "silver cast" production is a little like dissing a cover. It just seems like bad sportsmanship. So please understand that I am absolutely sincere in saying that Youngok Shin must have had a rather delicious voice once. Sunny in coloration, not at all small for its type. I'm not saying it just to set up the "but." But...it sounds as if it were held together with scotch tape and pipe cleaners at this point. A wand'ring minstrel, she (a thing of shreds and patches.) Phrases worked. They did. Yes, I put my head down on the ol' standing room railing in anticipation of the high notes she seemed to have no intention of dodging.
But you know what, here's how I'll cut her some slack: Lucia is perhaps the first opera recording I ever listened to. Callas, Karajan, you know the rest. It was on one of those cd's where you have to listen one time through with the left speaker on and then again with the right one. I listened to it fairly obsessively, unaware that this dread opera thing wasn't going to be a phase. I think the reason I now basically hate Lucia, other than that it sucks [when did the Met, please, last put on any of the unoverstatably superior Three Queens operas?] and that I listened it into some kind of structuralist paradigm of rote aesthetic experience is that it's only an interesting role if the soprano has absolutely everything.
It helps if the tenor has a lot going on, of course. And this is why I went, having heard that he did. And by gum, I'm not writing a review of the form I Am Right And Everyone Else is a Tin-Eared Lowbrow. Y'know, the ones on opera-l that either end with the statement "The emperor has no clothes!" or a simple cry of "vergogna!" (Coincidentally, both end with me shooting myself.) But, yeah, I'm pretty baffled. What I heard, moi-meme, was a pedestrian performance from a tenor of average quality with a couple of grating tics. And a few let's call them Tuckerisms that (and again, this is just me, just little Maury) I think come off a lot better if you're actually Richard Tucker or something very like. Sobs and growls, in my book, are something you get to do once you've got everything else solidly nailed into place. Else you risk being called, by me, Guelfi on 45 rpm. And god knows nobody would voluntarily endure the slings and arrows that are my formulaic insults. I will certainly give him another shot, but in contrast to howevermany years ago when I left a Swenson/Vargas Lucia at second intermission out of sheer exhaustion, I just don't have heap many regrets about having missed the mad scene or the big tenor scena.
And so, on with the second half of the season say I. Up next at the plate: Katarina Dalayman and Alan Held in Berg's mean little masterpiece.
Anyway I still don't want to write one of those wretched tantrum-y postings, but I thought it right to be a bit less...oblique, having made my basic pouty disdain relatively clear. What's the opposite of oblique, anyway? In drafting, it's isometric. So here's my isometric take on Lucia:
Dissing a "silver cast" production is a little like dissing a cover. It just seems like bad sportsmanship. So please understand that I am absolutely sincere in saying that Youngok Shin must have had a rather delicious voice once. Sunny in coloration, not at all small for its type. I'm not saying it just to set up the "but." But...it sounds as if it were held together with scotch tape and pipe cleaners at this point. A wand'ring minstrel, she (a thing of shreds and patches.) Phrases worked. They did. Yes, I put my head down on the ol' standing room railing in anticipation of the high notes she seemed to have no intention of dodging.
But you know what, here's how I'll cut her some slack: Lucia is perhaps the first opera recording I ever listened to. Callas, Karajan, you know the rest. It was on one of those cd's where you have to listen one time through with the left speaker on and then again with the right one. I listened to it fairly obsessively, unaware that this dread opera thing wasn't going to be a phase. I think the reason I now basically hate Lucia, other than that it sucks [when did the Met, please, last put on any of the unoverstatably superior Three Queens operas?] and that I listened it into some kind of structuralist paradigm of rote aesthetic experience is that it's only an interesting role if the soprano has absolutely everything.
It helps if the tenor has a lot going on, of course. And this is why I went, having heard that he did. And by gum, I'm not writing a review of the form I Am Right And Everyone Else is a Tin-Eared Lowbrow. Y'know, the ones on opera-l that either end with the statement "The emperor has no clothes!" or a simple cry of "vergogna!" (Coincidentally, both end with me shooting myself.) But, yeah, I'm pretty baffled. What I heard, moi-meme, was a pedestrian performance from a tenor of average quality with a couple of grating tics. And a few let's call them Tuckerisms that (and again, this is just me, just little Maury) I think come off a lot better if you're actually Richard Tucker or something very like. Sobs and growls, in my book, are something you get to do once you've got everything else solidly nailed into place. Else you risk being called, by me, Guelfi on 45 rpm. And god knows nobody would voluntarily endure the slings and arrows that are my formulaic insults. I will certainly give him another shot, but in contrast to howevermany years ago when I left a Swenson/Vargas Lucia at second intermission out of sheer exhaustion, I just don't have heap many regrets about having missed the mad scene or the big tenor scena.
And so, on with the second half of the season say I. Up next at the plate: Katarina Dalayman and Alan Held in Berg's mean little masterpiece.
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