We could fix up this old comment thread and make a post of it!

Would it be tiresome of me to take a thread from comments that I found interesting and write about it? It just seemed like there was more to say, on my part and perhaps on yours, if this thing is on.

The setup is that the Met had their open house, open dress, and some of us in the 'sphere went, and then some of us wrote about it. I wrote very little; others gave a more detailed report. Someone in comments gave me a thumbs up for not violating the unspoken rule that most of us know: you don't review a rehearsal. (Sort of like you don't boo a cover. I thought that bore repeating.) Our doyenne weighed in somewhat to the contrary, however, noting the difference between a review and a report. (Italics hers. She lent them to me.) La Cieca went on to say:

After all, if a company welcomes the public to a rehearsal, then surely it is expected that there will be talk afterward. If the Met really wants to keep a lid on a show, they have the option of closing the final dress...

And the point is well taken. I think one thing that's important and a little hard to put a finger on here is where blogging falls on the continuum between conversation and, not to be grandiose, journalism. The deal with reviewing a rehearsal, it would seem, is that you're critiquing something not yet fully on display because it's not fully finished, and if you do that between friends, it's just ungracious, whereas if you do that on a front page, it's really quite unfair, and if you have an audience closer to a crowd than a flock (as I do not), you could even affect whether people put the event on their calendar or stay home that night to touch up their highlights.

I mentioned, in comments, my own history with this: once upon a time, at an opera house moderately far away, I went to an open dress for a rather blood-and-guts piece starring a mezzo famed for shaking the walls. She marked almost the whole time, and her cover sang the big number, and not giving it much thought, I sniffed about it on another forum in a manner I'd now call petulant. I believe I specifically made reference to the spelling of the singer's name, said that the "c" was silent, and huffed that so were a good many other notes. Well. They like to ran me out of town, and not wholly without reason.

I think it was said to me that criticizing a free preview was like being invited to someone's house for dinner and mocking their fricasee. But what I felt back then, and still do to some extent, bolstered a little by what La C has said, is that the company in question invited a passel of folks to come hear, and by doing so, changed the nature of the event in a substantial way. The difference now is not between a closed part of the rehearsal process and a finished public spectacle but merely between a performance you were given free access to and one you had to pay for. And that makes it less clear whether you can, in good faith, be critical.

I did, that day, feel I was going to the opera. I took time out of my busy schedule of, well, frankly, sitting around wondering why I was in graduate school, but that's not the point. I think it's the norm now for a rehearsal to be more of a performance than a run-through, and because of this, yes, it's probably a little bit open to scrutiny. I wouldn't have gone to the above anonymized performance if I had known it was mostly for blocking and publicity photos. I'm not really interested in how Madame Silent C gets from point A to point B. I wouldn't have gone to Fille either, and I think the way the Met publicized their open house shows that they knew people were coming with some expectations.

Yes, there were differences...the intermission was extremely short; there were cameras swooping around, the audience was slightly chattier though generally still well-behaved. None of us minded that, I shouldn't think. And indeed, I do still err on the side, as I've said, of not pissing anyone off, because it doesn't seem important enough to make a big deal of. But in principle, I think the people who did write, insofar as they stayed within the bounds of giving a generalized sneak preview, did no disservice to anyone.

I'm interested to know if this is fair. Singers, in particular, I'd imagine might feel protective of the final dress. But that's my ten cents. (Now where's my dance?)

Female Offspring of the Military-Industrial Complex

Our spy at the Final Dress of Fille (hereinafter FDF, though this posting is going to be like two lines long so it's a short hereinafter), we'll call him Raury L'annato, knows better than to gab about a rehearsal, but figured it can't hurt to mention that all principals were in top form and sang out, Louise. It's been sold out for months and tickets are going for mortgage-like prices online, but anyway it seems likely to be the talk of the town, insofar as opera ever is.

Coming Attractions

Once in a while Events of Note are brought to my attention by people involved, and my first response is "you have clearly mistaken me for someone with a Vast Readership," and then once that's on the table, I check it out and see if it's something I'm actually intrigued by because it seems cheap to get up on this, my very low rooftop, and yell to the heavens (by which is meant internets) about something I wouldn't go to myself.

Well this one looks good, so here I am on the rooftop. B.A.M. (in the Borough Adjacent to Manhattan) is putting on something called David et Jonathas, and I'm not going to pretend I know heaps about it, humming it quietly on the subway, but it's by the same composer as the version of Medea in which the great LHL had one of her triumphs, and the production bids fair to be good theater rather than stand 'n sing. A little bird tells me it is "incredibly compact dramatically" and through-composed in the way of the Gluck-Wagner lineage.

American Opera Theater sounds to me a little like a D.C. version of Chicago's excellent Chicago Opera Theater, a company that does what City Opera did once upon a time before they became largely irrelevant. That is: rep the city's main opera company won't ever do in thoughtful, smaller-scaled productions.

Performances are May 9 and 10 at the BAM Opera House. You can find out significantly more than I'm able to tell you at the blog written by the company's director. The latest entry has to do with 17th c. France and teh ghey. What's not to love?

Quick, to the catafalque!

So, my cousin was in town and I was trying to explain my evening plans to someone with absolutely no interest in OONY or opera in general and I said: think "Star Trek convention" plus opera. Actually though, the other keynote besides internal preoccupation--what I noticed, given the privilege of not sitting in what we might term the Belfry, was women in their golden years laboring under the assumption that henna looks natural. It was like Russia that way.

This was only my second time at OONY, the first being that occasion when I heard one dragocious diva's culty fans, I kid you not, shoosh the bravos for another singer. The offering that evening was Fanciulla. Tonight we were given Edgar, which to my surprise turns out to be rather a lot of fun as long as you don't mind a libretto that uses words like "catafalque". Hey, spellcheck knew catafalque. Geh weiss. Spellcheck does not know "spellcheck." Order of Meta, table 2.

I understand OONY has like three minutes to stage things, which is part of their scruffy charm, but I have to say, I have never seen anything so funny as the "everything but voguing" war between Ms. Larmore as Tigrana and Latonia Moore as Fidelia (the character was named thusly by her parents after a viewing of Fidelio. They had a hunch she'd turn out a little bit boring.) It was, seriously, the kind of antics usually reserved for the Rossini cat duet. It might be noted that Madames Larmore and Moore were clothed in dramatic red and blue, respectively, giving the proceedings an air of political allegory.

Ms. Larmore, who is looking almost scarily svelte, changed at the interval to a fetching black number, with, uh, wavy things. What, I got the opera badge, not the fashion one. Without being one of those rotters who uses "inaudible beyond row K" as an all-purpose take-down, I will note that the role of Tigrana is a size large for JL, though the state of the voice is fresh and healthy. Her reception at the end struck me as a touch on the polite side, comparatively, which made one feel bad for her...I suspect the go-for-broke nature of her acting struck some as de trop around the edges, in a concert performance. I'm not sure--Tigrana isn't exactly the Marschallin.

As her love interest, Ms. Moore [well fine you caught me lying. It isn't about lesbians. I just thought it'd be kind of a hilarious love square if it were] was simply fantastic. She's got a metric shitload of voice, and a solid grasp of verismo style. I know I get overly enthusiastic sometimes, but I think and hope you will be hearing more of her. She graciously mouthed "thank you" over and over again at her extremely warm ovation. And, not for nothing, she seemed to be singing the role without a glance at the music stand, which is class.

Wait, there were men in this opera. I may have discounted Marcello Giordani in that count because he sang not like a man, but like a god! Uh-huh, I used an exclamation point. I have dissed Giordani as recently as Thursday, but I suppose it's a matter of rep. Let him never sing anything so early as early Verdi again, say I. All I had to compare him to, going in, was a recording of Bergonzi, I assume also from OONY and I assume past prime, but Giordani's reading was certainly the more persuasive. He was in big, ballsy voice and I'd say he knew it, and rode it.

The medium thankful role of Bert--it is my new habit to improvise when I can't remember--the brother of Fidelia, or some such, was taken by Stephen Gaertner, and his voice is substantial and responsive and I think I am developing a small crush on him so I'll just shut the hell up before I embarrass either of us. Wait, Frank, not Bert. They sound equally silly in an Italian sentence, so I say he's Bert.

Ms. Queler found every unsubtlety in the score, which is precisely what is called for.

Next up: I'm not sure. It was a long few days of constant opera-going.

Got yer what hurts?

Don't even try. This subject line brought to you by the fact that the title Satyagraha is resistant to punnish riffs, any I can think of, and I did sit around, earning my salary, thinking of words like "Minnehaha" and then emphatically discarding them as too much effort to work one's way around to.

This is going to be hard to write about. I'm not gonna lie to you. Funny thing is, all my snootoise New Music friends (I kid, they're all super down to earth, except not) for some reason have it in for Phillip Glass, and I, Mr. "Berg is the Very Edge of Music" think he's, uh, neat. I'm not willing to put this down to Glass being somehow middlebrow, though I think he's heard that way by a lot of people, through the filter of his ubiquity and prolific output. It may be that I like him a lot because the stuff I heard first was the cream of the crop, stuff like Songs from Liquid Days and Koyanisqaatsi that excuse some of what I'd later sit through like the Kafka opera, whatever that was called.

In any case he's got rather a loyal New York following if tonight was any evidence. The only thing to top the ovation for the production team was the one for Glass himself. And why not? It was, overall, an enthralling couple of hours.

The production itself, by the way, is fascinating from what I could see. Like the sentimental gal who keeps giving that good-for-nothing guy another shot, I can't quite get it through my head that most balcony box seats are for shit. Waldorf and I were in 5 and 6, the balcony of the balcony box, and the main aesthetic casualty was that, well, you heard the one where this opera is in Sanskrit? So and they projected translations on the back wall, which I can dig, but then I guess because there's a lot of singing things over and over and over and it would be awkward, Met-title-wise, they didn't have any Met titles. Leaving many of us with nothing to grasp onto at all, due to the angle. Jeez, if Gandhi heard that the masses who couldn't pay $80+ for a seat were denied subtitles, he would fucking go ballistic. Don't make me call him. So anyway you pressed the button on the little screen and were informed in blocky yellow letters that you might want to find other reading materials.

Fortunately for me, who listens to this music in a more diffuse way ("listen" and "diffuse" don't go that well together but you follow, right?) there's lots of interesting stuff in the program. Ok but I was talking about the production. Which s filled with inspired chimera, I'm pretty certain. Giant puppets, for one thing. During Butterfly, I'd begun to suspect that I had that thing about puppets that most people have about clowns, but I think that was because of the "uncanny valley", hat tip to Grrg, and these things fall happily on the fair side of that. They're less cloyingly whimsical than some of the stuff in Taymor and more damp with the dew of primary process. They're beautiful, but you might see them in a nightmare.

I have to take some small issue with the King section for trading in the commodified iconography of MLK in a way that verges on cheap or even a little reprehensible (showing the back of him at a lectern doesn't, in itself, dehistoricize and bleach his radicalism, but it makes reference to something that, in its use and overuse, does.) It is a minor misstep if it is one at all.

Kids, I can't tell you much about the singing. There was really nothing to associate singer with character, so other than Richard Bernstein who was identifiably blue and in robust voice, and Richard Croft who was M.G. himself. Croft sang with fervor and stamina, and his Sanskrit diction is perfection! Joking, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. I wanted to commend the singer in the white dress and fancy hat with the parasol for singing music in which it can be hard to find the emotion as if it were Mahler. I think it may have been newly minted Met Fave Maria Zifchak, but someone should correct me if I'm wrong. Someone always does! Waldorf wondered aloud if the original cast sang in such operatic voices or something more like the Phillip Glass Ensemble uses, but as the evening wore on it seemed to me this is about as close as Glass gets to Il Trovatore and I find it hard to imagine it sung without an operatic thrust and technique.

If I had other things to say, they'll surely come back to me tomorrow. Tomorrow's the eye of the operatic storm before Edgar on Sunday. Anyway, yeah, you know without me telling you whether you're going to the 'graha, but I will say it's a captivating spectacle.

ETA: and if you want a second opinion, here's a review-preview of someone who liked it even a notch better, I'd estimate, than I did.

What're you having?

...the bartender asked Mrs. Parker, who (apocryphally or not, one never knows, and it doesn't matter) muttered:



Yeah, that's my whiskey flask. I thought it'd be a nice inscription since I'm a bit of a downer, myself. As is [cue: relevance] the current run of Ernani at the Met, of which I saw approximately Erna this evening before giving up and hitting the subway. Not Erna Sack, mind you, or Erna Spoorenberg, or even Erna Schluter*, just the first two thirds of Ernani. I thought I'd explain that to death in case it was previously funny.

Ever your Closing Night Clara, I dropped in on a balmy Thursday night, found there were no rush tickets, and decided to leave. Except JSU all but double dog dared me to stay, and stay I did, until stay I didn't. It wasn't terrible or anything. It just wasn't much fun. The one trick I came up with is that, like iconography of the crucifixion, several entire acts of Ernani are more palatable if you pretend they are scenes where someone forgot the safe word. Some people like French maids; others like Spanish bandits. No, stop! The King I'm supposed to marry might hear us!

The rotten thing is I had been waiting I think 1.5 seasons (when was Cyrano?) to hear Radvanovsky. I've had stupid timing with her, and that's nobody's fault. All I've heard her do at the Met was Roxane, which isn't the best role ever, and once upon a time, the High Priestess (I wonder if Aida is ever tempted to say to her "girl, you high." ) which was mostly a promise of things to come, though truly I do know a number of people who heard it and said: this one's going to be a star.

Which she isn't, and I don't get it. Not here, anyway. She's a respected singer who gets here and there a starry assignment, which I have to think premiering Roxane opposite Domingo is, but then lately sort of this and that. B-cast for Trovatore, though some of us may think she's the A. Not to sniff at Leonora, but there's just something unspecial-feeling about this whole revival. Reverting to Fametracker Fame Audit terms, one is tempted to assess

Current approximate level of fame: Dorothea Roschmann
Deserved level of fame: Deborah Voigt

Because what is it she doesn't have? The voice is objectively Met sized, which is to say anywhere-she-wants-sized. It has "face" as they say, and while the C+ top is a little funny, it's there for party tricks, and the normal soprano range is absolutely reliable, including a no-worries though not cavernous bottom. I think it even has an unobtrusive character-giving flaw in that once in a while in a predictable place, she flats, but not enough to ruin things. She doesn't sing as if she were trying to preserve her voice for 50 years, she moves well on the stage, and she is, as Enzo Bordello was heard to term her, a handsome woman.

So while I'm not one to apostrophize the Met, get with it, Met.

As Leonora or Elvira or Jenny or whatever the heroine's name is, it must be admitted, she did not seem 100% cast to her strengths. Here and there her sound forcibly livened one's pulse, but...maybe I just don't love Ernani, in which case there's not a lot of sense reading this review. Or maybe it's that nobody was cast quite right.

Not that the audience agreed with me much, by the sound of it. Giordani, who I thought only lived up to some of his recent performances in the cabaletta at the second curtain, sung with a swagger and a lot of ping, was given the hero's welcome, and I won't be so condescending as to put it down entirely to the "oh look, a tenor!" effect. To me, it was 3/4 of a good performance**, unignorably weak in softer moments, with one or two small-scale wrecks. He's been sick, I guess, but really this is not the rep in which he's such an asset to the house. The volume is appreciated, as is the ardor, but it's music that gets mauled if you sing it a certain way, and some of the time, he's guilty of that.

The house was very warm as well to Furlanetto, who maybe had a touch more growl than I'd have wished for (isn't it Tozzi on the old RCA? Well nevermind that game, and anyway I just looked and it isn't) but bluster notwithstanding, it was certainly a vital and Italianate reading.

Listen, I'm trying not to be a dick about Hampson. If you haven't had your hands over your ears, you know he's not really my speed, but I guess this evening it was basically an appealing sound, and he didn't Shatner around too much (Jonathan von Wellsung still does a deadly imitation of the croon at the end of the big Boccanegra duet) and I guess I don't have anyone in mind who would have done it a lot better, and in the interest, aforementoned, of not being a dick, I'm not going to sit here and try to come up with a list. Just, even where the gestures were the right ones, or in the right direction, it wasn't lit from within, is all. Well, I loved him in Parsifal and am sure I'll love him in something again. But not in this.

Thus begins my lunatic weekend of opera-going. Tomorrow is Satyagraha (how could I passively resist?!) and Sunday is Edgar, which is an opera, not kidding.


*Stewball did I totally just steal your line? I'm pretty sure you joked about the Erna Trifecta. You should sue me, we can maybe have cocktails after.

**well fine, if you insist, 3/4 of 2/3 of a good performance, which is...well fuck, I haven't thought about fractions since the 80's.

Bearded Lady

For my fellow Podlesians, especially those who travel more than I do, Operabase has that great lady singing what I'd think is a role debut, Baba the Turk, in Madrid next January. Also of note: the following month she will sing Azucena (not a role debut, but something we'd have been lucky to hear earlier in the game) in Atlanta. No, seriously, Atlanta. Meanwhile the Met is offering her the comprimaria role of La Cieca, he sniffed, though with every intention of going often to hear it.

I'll get letters!

Please note, if you wish to contact me (though I'll warn you, things don't get any more coherent in email) that I'm ditching hotmail on account of it is lousy. Requests, opinions, and declarations of undying love may now be addressed to maurydannato...wait, this is one of those things where if I type it out I will get rather presumptuous emails regarding my anatomy, isn't it. Well, my name at yahoo. Not with a dot in the middle as it used to be at hotmail, no underscore, just my plain old fake name. If I'm being clear as mud, you may check the profile, which should display the address.

Phonautograph!

No, seriously, this is, in its tiny way, utterly thrilling, right? Despite the fact that as Gawker hilariously points out, it sounds "remarkably like Joanna Newsome"? Still, the idea of hearing something recorded in 1860 knocks me out.

Hold the mild, easy on the leise

It's the damndest thing, or at least I think it's a little strange, what happens to me at the beginning of a Wagner opera, and I'm wondering if it happens to anyone else. It's a lot like the feeling at the beginning of a long drive, and I suppose there's no other word for it than anxiety; the knowledge that, come good or come awful, one is more or less strapped in for the long haul. So even though I have come to think of Tristan as, under ideal circumstances, an opera without any dull patches, I have a moment of wanting to run for the exit. Fortunately I haven't, yet, and boy am I glad I didn't last night. Because the other impulse I had to rein in at last night's round of Tristan und Isolde, oder: Wer singt heute, und mit wem? was the occasional urge to applaud mid-act, mostly for Mr. Heppner though also for his colleagues.

A Heppner is a sometime thing, and I've lamented it before, and won't try to pretend I haven't. He gives me shpilkes waiting for the cracks. I will, however, forgive it (and there was exceptionally little to forgive last night, though I hear the microphones picked up flaws that weren't evident in house) and perhaps get his name tattooed on my ass when he brings the dementia. I'm not sure which conventionalized way of praising his singing to choose in fact. Hey, pick one:

a) like a god
b) like a real heldentenor*
b 1/2) like a hero
c) shut up Maury you are writing this column

You know what I'll say, and don't roll your eyes at me, is that as of last night I am slightly less mopey about the fact that I am not 90 and never heard you-know-who in the role. Truly, Heppner lacked nothing. I have heard the Hep produce fetching tone before, and I have heard him sing loud, and sometimes I have heard him sing with that inebriating wallop that almost nobody has just now. Now I have heard him sing like a fucking lunatic, sing like he would break if he did not. I am grateful to him and to the universe. For a better description of what he did, I refer you to my host and fellow astonished listener.**

By the way is it true that the Dane never sang it without cuts?

Some of the assembled Celts (Gaels?) last night were the same as before in this ever shifting cast (including Salminen, thank god) and sounded great as before. I do have my ear on Mr. Gaertner after hearing him twice decant a fine Merlot I mean Melot. Some were new, as was Richard Paul Fink, a wilder and woolier Kurwenal, and probably a notch louder than his also excellent counterpart.

And, as the little white slip of dread told us going in, Ms. Voigt had contracted a touch of sea sickness from all the crossing from Ireland to Cornwall and would not be with us. You may have heard Janice Baird the other night, but I had not, and was very well pleased. Comparing her with DV would be like comparing apples and some more hochdramatisch fruit. I'm glad to have witnessed both assumptions of the role and wouldn't willingly choose between them. Baird's voice is not as beautiful, and as many have noted, it has an overly broad vibrato at times, but it's steely and has a bit of a Nilsson bite without going over into Linda Watson territory, and fach-wise, it's yeah a little bit more convincing. And yes, if your entire evening hinges on a single F#, you'll want to know that it was in tune, though I don't see why you'd pay a bunch for a ticket rather than sitting at home with a tuning fork going "that's what I'm talkin' about!" In the parlance of the playground, I am tempted to ask if you are going to marry F# if you like it so much.

Baird sang the role as if hungry for the taste of the words, and as we know, that's not something DV always does--I hear she did during the moviecast, especially in the narrative/curse. This thing Baird was doing, it wasn't naturalistic acting, ecole de Mattila, but there was passion in it, and especially in this production, that'll do the trick. She's Seattle's new Brunnhilde, one reads, and the thought of her in the 'dammerung cannot help but interest us.

Really, I do think this is one of the Met's most successful productions. And am apparently the only one who does not find it funny when they drink the potion and everything goes Valentine red. I'm not used to being the sappy one but I just think it's pretty. Wait, we interrupt this regularly scheduled paragraph to inform you that Hans Lick (a Person who Knows Things) has mentioned in the Parterre Comment Mosh Pit that the last T/I will be Salminen's Met Farewell. Ach! Weh! Um, maybe I'll go again Friday.

If not, I'm due for an Ernani, so that's probably next up. Beyond that lies....Satyagraha!

*Yep, you've been Renee-rolled. Oh god, it's a long story. I believe it may have started here. (No, I promise I'm not Renee-rolling you again.)

**really one of the great luxuries of living here is the frequent opportunity to go to the opera with people who are there to love it, and at intermission to run into more of them. I don't mean uncritical people, as I hope is obvious. What I do mean may be another entry altogether, it occurs to me after typing and deleting seven times. But probably you know what I mean.

Lines you might as well not use at Marie's Crisis because, even there, you risk looking like one of THOSE queens

"I wouldn't worry too much about it. It happened to Martha Mödl."

Many years later and in another town Maury revisits a production from something like his youth

Ugh, Spring, you big dumb beast! Here I was, contentedly sub-clinically depressed, going to nothing because the couch and a stack of Little Debbies sounded infinitely more compelling*. And now it's a little lighter out, and I have crawled out from underneath the Star Crunches, and suddenly there's lots of things to be at. Like for instance how am I meant to creep in for standing at Ernani Friday when Saturday's the next in a line of what's turning out to be a hybrid of Tristan und Isolde and I Love Lucy, with the hijinx already...

Nonetheless, I did sneak out from under the still lifting veil of blah to take in City Opera's Falstaff. (Yeah, yeah, Maury at City Opera. Pretend you'd have been more surprised if I'd said Grant's Tomb. So well known is my indifference, it would seem, that I was not among those bloggers invited to take in Purcell vs. Mark Morris a few weeks back, sniff sniff. Well that's the grandiose take on things, the more realistic being that no-one's ever heard of me.)

Cue: Snows of Yesteryear. I saw this production take its first steps, so there was a certain amount of nostalgia at work. Not, alas, enough to mitigate the City Opera Effect. Honestly, I think the deal is this. Plenty goes right at NYCO, but somehow there's just not a critical mass, and it shows in the energy in the house. Maybe you'll hear a great singer, and maybe you won't know for sure what you're hearing due to what we are encouraged to call Sound Enhancement. The orchestra will never surprise you, for better or worse. It just so rarely comes together in an incendiary way there. Even the productions I haven't liked weren't bad in an outrageous way. Maybe the new regime will shake things up.

Anyway as Miss Golightly was saying when she so rudely interrupted herself, I saw this one when it was being fussed with in a high school gym, and I vividly remember how it fit on the stage of the Alice Busch Opera Theater, and how the sound of the low strings was enhanced by the night air when they opened up the sides, and everything. I remember Mark Delavan, who I think someone said had sung Ford to Milnes' Falstaff stepping up into the fat suit of greatness with gallons of voice and enough spite in his reading that nobody went into an insulin coma. Fenton and Nanetta were nicely and attractively cast from the Young Artist Program. The production fit well on the small stage, exactly as it doesn't in the State Theater, and there was a certain [pause to open the cliche cabinet] magic.

I've spent many less enjoyable nights at the opera, but there's not a lot of magic left in this one. It's a chicken or egg thing: is the audience actually laughing--and far be it from me to discount a good bond between audience and cast--at a production whose aesthetic hallmark is the spit take because that's what they're offered, or are they being offered it at this point because they laughed last time? Maybe I'm just a sourpuss and it's really hilarious the third time Quickly shakes her bazooms on on the /e/ in "Riverenza."

No matter, enough went right that we didn't leave or set fires or play gin rummy or anything drastic. This John Tessier, I'd like to hear him without a middle man. I think there's a kind of freshness and possibly gentle elegance there. Stephen Powell sounds as firm and take-serious-able now as in the first run, and that's plenty. Oh and Pamela Armstrong makes me quite upset with myself for having skipped the Capriccio. Someone tell me about it. I feel like she must have been just right, as she seems to have a good mix of instinct and raw materials. Alice is actually a part I have never once in my life found myself humming, it's that much of a blank for me, but she found the swells and ligaments to interest me in the character to some degree.

Jan Opalach as Sir John was harder to size up for me, not least because much of Falstaff's music makes me long for earlier Verdi. Sue me. As I have implied, he was directed in a way I found wearying--at intermission we amused ourselves shaking our hands up by our faces going "look at me!!! I'm funny!!!" and that was about the flavor of it. Certainly he seems to have the role worked into his voice, and within the parameters of a production that presents two guys trying to go through a door at the same time as an act-ending punchline--which, yes, I think is supposed to be funny like old cartoons, smile-funny, not puke from laughing funny, but it's just so unfresh--he goes about the inhabiting of Falstaff with gusto.

One very good thing: the company has thankfully abandoned the spell-it-out-for-you choreography that used to attend the fugue, and the opera probably ends better for it. Just...why have I said so many positive things in with the sniping and still am writing a review whose one word summary is "meh"?

Next up: Tristan, unless the whole cast trips and falls on things, or whatever else hasn't happened yet. Um, knock on wood when you read that, k?

*No, seriously, depression is measured on many scales, but at my house, it's the Little Debbie Scale.

Calgon, involami!

I did intend to be in the house this evening and write it up--though I have been known to refer to Hampson as the William Shatner of the operatic stage, I am always on board the Rad Van--life got in the way, and life>blog, so a review will have to come later. So far on Sirius it's sounding good or fine or maybe great. I came in a little late...currently MJ is interviewing the lovely Reri Grist, and it's actually fairly interesting, and MJ just called West Side Story "a musical about gang violence" which I suppose it is, but it struck me funny.

We hear...

...that Mr. Lehman is doing a fine job as Tristan and that Voigt pulled out (perhaps mid-act? Text messages, so peskily telegraphic!) to be replaced by her cover in the second act. We wish her a speedy recovery, and look forward to hearing more soon.

Voigt Smacks Met Crowd Around with Riding Crop, Says: You Are My Bitch. Met Crowd Concurs.

I believe the first order of business is this:

If, by any chance, you were one of the people booing John Mac Master at this evening’s Tristan, git. That’s right, get out of here. We don’t serve your kind in this here pub.* Mr. Mac Master stepped in for the generally acknowledged Tristan of choice on the world’s opera stages on what I believe was short notice. He had a rough night, with some moments of admirable ardor and, in a few climactic moments at high volume, good muscular sound. Yeah, some of it was disappointing, but most of us, not being heartless boors, let it go. If you had the bad taste to think your disapproval was really that important, my writing, however little or much it’s worth, is sullied by the passing over of your eyes. Stop reading My Favorite Intermissions, and don’t come back. Get lost.

Now. Tristan und Isolde. An opera. In German.

Hard as it is to imagine such associative looseness in these parts, I think it was a review of Einstein on the Beach where I went on about how different the Liebestod sounds when you’ve come through all of Tristan to get to it. When you have climbed Mount Everest, as it were, to get to the Valley of the Dolls. Now add to this effect a long career leading up to the role of Isolde and you will begin to imagine the splendor of midnight this evening as the Love Frog ended. It was not hard to predict this success. It was nonetheless gratifying to watch it happen. Moving, I would go so far as to say, in an extra-musical way.

I'm going mostly by the second act, by the way, when I commend the whole production to you. One of those perfect standalones that's almost an opera itself. This is not because I got there late, just...I'm no longer 20 but my sleep schedule thinks I am, and I had to practically pull nose hairs to stay awake through the first act. It's bewildering to think how much of our enjoyment of an event is based on our state of mind going in, no? But the second act of Triz+Iz is kind of where it's at anyhow. Everyone gets a star turn.

Among the starriest was that of...Matti Salminen. He's the one who isn't dead, right? We used to have a terrible time trying to keep the names of the Dead Finnish Bass and the Living Finnish Bass straight. Yes, Salminen, heard here as Koenig Marke, a role that separates the royalty from the grown men got up in Burger King crowns. This I learned watching Tomlinson sing it in Chicago, surrounded by very capable Wagner singers. It wasn't that any of them were doing it wrong; it's just that he was doing it righter. Likewise I don't think I need to tell you that there is nary a whiff of onion rings about Matt Salminen, who is vocal royalty, no further questions. It's something about the ability to, well, hang on.

There's this delightful essay in last week's New Yorker about perfume, by John Lanchester. Discussing the language we use to describe sensory experience, he writes

The language of taste has, therefore, reached something of an impasse. On the one hand, we have the Romantic route, in which you are free to compare a taste to the last unicorn or the sensation you had when you were told that you failed your driving test—and others are free to have no idea what you are talking about. On the other, we have the scientific route, which comes down to numbers, and risks missing the fundamental truth of all smells and tastes, which is that they are, by definition, experiences.

And, not to say sound and smell work much the same, I've always (or at least since I started blarghing about sounds) thought the balance there should be a slightly conservative one, edging away from "her high notes are all peachy pearls and violet confit." But there's something about Tristan that makes me edge just a little the other way, and want to fling descriptors at Salminen such as "tarry" and "midnight black" and maybe even edge into the ridiculous things they call housepaints. [Uh huh, I'm trying to decide on an "accent wall" at the moment. Did you know they had a term for that?] Because in the pitch of his voice there is, verily, night. And Tristan, insofar as I can bring myself to watch the words go by during the second act--aren't they kind of wearying?--seems to be fixated with day/night.

I should say more about Voigt but mostly I'm just kind of happy for her. As one gentleman said, at intermission, "we're all rooting for her." And I would have written polite things if it had been a polite success, but it wasn't. Some of the Italian stuff has been. Isolde is exactly the right role at exactly the right time in her life. Isn't it? Did anyone else think so? Also, I think, a very good staging for someone who, while not immobile as the creatrix in this production, is not in a profound sense a stage animal.

And a very good staging for us out in the dark, too. As I am wont to say, none but the most Amelia Bedelia literal could object. I suppose I have my hesitations about the little castles and soldiers that pop up out of the ground in the last act, and yes, I'm a sucker for a big blank wall that keeps changing colors, but mostly what it does, this production, is stay out of the way and allow for some stillness without going too far into Robert Wilson territory for the "How Dare You" crowd. It sets things up well for a Liebestod whose base note, beneath the rapture, is stillness. As it should be, and as it was last night, at the end of five goddamn hours. Sorry I'm not posting this last night, by the way. It was a combination of the whole "five hours long" extravaganza and my computer being, in tribute to Tristan, on death's door.

Support was all-around pro stuff. Stephen Gaertner and Eike Wilm Schulte in particular sang it like it mattered and like they wanted people on Long Island to know it, by which I mean nobody had any audibility issues. Levine, of course, has this score tattooed on the inside of his eyelids, and received his usual hero's welcome, not least from the orchestra who stayed 'til the house lights came on, always a sign of an electric evening. Michelle DeYoung remains a voice that doesn't quite fit into my ear, but let's blame that on my ear. The Watchtower scene lacked nothing I could put my finger on.

This is pretty sold out, ladies and gents, but a lot of people apparently jumped ship last night when Mr. Heppner's fluish condition was leaked, so you might still go. Me, I may go again. It's a hard decision because, well, I'm not a Rockefeller, and also, as I once heard a lady in a laundromat say about Dulcolax, Tristan don't play. Which is to say it's not just a jaunt to the opera; it's serious business.

Intermission review: the ham & brie sandwiches at the bars are totally recommended for those moments when you realize the other sandwich shop across broadway is closed and the gongs done gung and you have four minutes to eat something. They're not only delicious, but sort of shaped for gluttony, long and thin and devourable. Oh and the crowd last night? Kind of dishy. Note to clutch of well dressed French boys in lobby: call me! Overheard at intermish: a cute young couple or possibly fag+hag discussing, with great relish, Parterre's coverage of the OONY benefit review scandale!


*By now I figure if you're down here reading the asterisk, you know to expect something irrelevant not only to opera, but to everything else as well. I just felt like pointing out that in parts of the South, maybe only Kentucky, "this here" is pronounced with a /sh/ sound in the middle, which is really weird because it looks almost like a spelling rule affecting phonetics across a word boundary, which can't happen. Anyway "right here" is pronounced "right cheer" which makes the whole thing make even less sense. Isn't that nuts?

M6

One exciting possibility for this evening: the new ensemble M6 (featuring your congenial host at The Standing Room) is performing the music of Meredith Monk at Symphony Space. My experience of Monk's music is limited: I listened to Book of Days in college and caught part of the mammoth Monkathon at Zankel a year or two ago. What I can say, in particular from the perspective of an opera fan, is that her vocal music might be especially intriguing to our kind because of the way it limns the potential of the voice in areas mainstream classical singing basically leaves alone. Pieces like Dolmen Music, as I experience them, are the theater of sub-semantic utterance. In some way, it explores what we experience in the most primal way in what people say or sing to us. I don't think of it even so much as a tour of the instrumental possibilities of the voice, like some of George Crumb, so much as a lovely experiment about what happens on a psychological level when we hear or are spoken to (actually like other of George Crumb, come to think of it.) Also I said hi to her on the subway once and she was totally nice and did not mace me.

As this post explains, M6 is a group dedicated serving as the next link in the oral tradition of Monk's music. Concert's tonight at 7:30.

Oversold

Well of course the moment I go and get all gossipy about the jaw-dropping final tableau of John Doyle's Peter Grimes to a couple of bloggers at ACB's successful and enjoyable* birthday event, it seems they have edited it out. In comments and elsewhere I have had a few conversations to the effect of "what are you talking about" with an implied "and what are you smoking?" So in case you're seeing it now, I will ruin the surprise that isn't there anymore. As originally staged on opening night, the big wooden set that had been shifting around all night like a teenager in a tux finally, in the last moments of the opera, flung wide. And what did it reveal? This sort of...scaffolding, I guess, with people in modern dress striking various voguish poses, as if the whole thing had been some really long ad for herring-scented cologne. And on dit (though this is fourth-hand, one of those hands is that of La Cieca so I think we can assume it's as trustworthy as the World Almanac) that it had something, for real, to do with the LGBT youth of today, and (I'm using the word "and" a lot here, because the hilarity is just kind of endless) the little kid A.D. Griffey was all but mopping the floor with is up there too, because I guess Peter Grimes gayed him. I believe the word you're looking for is "WHAT?", or I hope it is. So anyway that's gone and now what is revealed when the Fish Palace swings away is just the radiant white light of heaven, and though there may still be some fags and dykes there, they're off watching Project Runway. I'm actually kind of sorry nobody else gets to see it.


*not to comment on a charity event, as that doesn't seem sporting, but did we remember from whatever year's auditions that John Michael Moore was quite that good (even in the dreadful soliloquy from Carousel) or that he was, well, quite that hot? We did not.

Peter Grimes! Neely O'Hara!

The critic Ivanov said of Dostoevskii: he threatens me, but I am not frightened. Oh, put your pen down, I know he didn't. Someone said it about someone, and they were both Russian, and I've googled it six ways to St. Petersburg and I can't for the life of me come up with it. Anyway this isn't that kind of review. I just wanted to win a little preemptive cred by paraphrasing famous people in expressing my failure to get Britten. For, surely, we are all grown-ups and can acknowledge that the things we don't like are not diminished by our disdain. That said, Britten makes me want to throw things.

It's not that I can't find any good in it. You'd have to be passionately wedded to the traditional not to be chilled at the quartet that ends the #th Act. (My new approach: vagueness trumps incorrectness). My god, and the orchestral interludes. These are the very point of 20th Century Music. And yet they're always so deeply encrusted in quarter hours of pallid, restless nattering that it saps the whole thing of any emotional impact, as far as I'm concerned. I am not frightened, and it's ostensibly a pretty frightening tale.

But I went, knowing this already and as productions of things I don't much care for go, it was (musically) a winner. I know, the unrestrained enthusiasm of that sentence is blowing out your laptop. Really, though, I think if you like the work, you'll be very pleased by this. Maybe especially as a broadcast, I'm half sorry to say. But the nice half of what I mean by that is that Anthony Dean Griffey, while occasionally not a fluid physical actor, is vocally very sure of what he's doing. It's a sonic portrayal with no real compromises. Powerful, well-articulated, and from the gut. Now I'd love to hear him sing something I give a fuck about.

Pausing for a moment to note the smaller roles, I am out of luck, because the color pallet of the costume designer ran the gamut from kelp to mud, and it became difficult to know who anyone was. I'm pretty certain Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who I regret to inform you was very fully clothed, let out some luxuriant tones. Honestly I had begun to assume he was a pin-up, but the truth is he's got the goods.

Racette, well, what's not to like these days? Really if the administration has any sense of what's right, they'll give her an opening night one of these next few seasons of Gelbdom to acknowledge her solidity and reliable inspiration, which must be very valuable to have on hand. But again: something's lost when you slap her into a drab and (Embroidery Aria aside) rather thankless role, and in a production like this one...

Oh yes, you knew I was going to wax catty about the production eventually. I foreshadowed it with that crack at the costumes! I think you're going to hear a lot about the production, both the physical and the regie, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say much of what you hear is going to be negative. It's not a disaster, and in fact parts of it are dramatically rather keen, but overall, you'd never know this was the director who managed to make audiences rethink a musical (Sweeney Todd) with one of the most known and beloved original productions of all. The spatial konzept invites endless jokes (advent calendar? Let's Make a Deal? One wit was heard to compared it to Laugh-In) and flattens out what drama there is in this drab music.

And you know what, rather than comment directly on how crowd scenes were staged, I'd like to let Mercury Opera Rochester comment for me, kinetically:



It's not actually like that but it's about that well thought out. For much of the opera they simply stand and look out at the audience as if to say: is there a stage director in the house?

Oddly, though, the scenes in which Grimes tosses the kid around were rather terrifying. I found myself worried for the little lad, and you know how I feel about children, Whitney Houston. (As Rebecca Pigeon says in her fortunately inimitable way in State and Main: I never really saw the point of them.) So again, a mixed bag, although I feel duty-bound to warn you that the final tableau is a jaw-dropping mistake on the order of the Famous Dead Folks Chorale from last season's Orfeo. If I had to guess, I'd call it a loose visual quotation of the Cell Block Tango in the film of Chicago but one is still left to ask why.

[ETA after a few moments' consideration: I'm not kidding about this one. This was not a choice I didn't agree with; it was simply baffling. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on what the hell it could possibly have meant.]

Ok but you know what? You should still go. And only partly so the Met administration won't program solid seasons of Aida thinking nobody likes any diversity in programming. It's true, though: lots of visible velvet in the house. Go fill it, I say. You're bound to like the production more than I did, because you're probably going in with a better attitude. And you really should hear the bloom on Racette's upper register lately, because it's grand. Also Felicity Palmer is not getting any younger.

I knew someone once who wrote his musicology dissertation entitled Britten and Pears: Who was the Top? A Schenkerian Investigation. Well, you can't prove I didn't.

Four Day Forecast

Don't forget that this weekend is Anne-Carolyn Bird's recital, Sunday afternoon.

And tonight is the prima of Peter Grimes. I called the Met to see if they couldn't be persuaded at the last moment to put on Daphne or something, but you wouldn't believe it, they staunchly refused to put me through to Gelb. "Gelb," I was fixing to say, "I'm all for diversifying the rep and all, but couldn't you pick something less dreary and redolent of fish?" But no go, so I shall be grumping about Britten in the middle of the night, if I know me.

Actually what I just decided should happen is the lights should dim halfway at 7:30 and Gelb should step out in front of the gold show curtain, and we should all gasp or groan or whatever, and then he should say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm sorry to inform you that the opera Peter Grimes is indisposed this evening. We hope you will accept Lakme in its stead."

The Concert with the Long Name

Spring is here, Spring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year
Is the spring! I do - Don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me...

...and that is not, Mr. Lehrer, poisoning pidgeons in the park, but rather the Met Council Final Auditions Concert Gala How Many More Words Are There in the Title of This Event? Actually it doesn't feel like Spring yet, but the Finals do help when it is damp, drizzly February in my soul and it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off. Or just excessively quoting actual writers instead of putting words of my own on the page.

I don't wish to go singer-by-singer this year, I don't think. There was nothing shabby going on up there, lots of fine craft such as you'd be glad to hear. I will pause for a moment to note my surprise that Carolina Castells was not among the winners, not so much on the basis of her "Klange der Heimat" which I can't imagine anyone making anything other than a bore, as her elegant, perfectly met-sized bel canto in "Ah, quante volte!"

Mostly, though, I'd just like to express my excitement at the young but not green talent that is baritone Edward Parks. Mr. Parks chose a big scena from The Pearl Fishers, or perhaps more accurately it was chosen for him, but nobody could argue it wasn't a fine choice, sure as he was of style and solid as he was of tone. In the second half, he sang "Mein Sehnen, Mein Wahnen" from Die Tote Scrim to a wildly enthusiastic ovation, of which I was an ovator. More than anything else we heard, this was star material. It wasn't about the diction or the high notes, both of which passed muster quite securely, but more generally about budding artistry. And jesus, he's probably like 23, as there was only one person over 25 on the whole program. Someone who sat nearer can confirm, but I think he might also be kind of dishy.

No huge surprises in rep. We got to hear "No Word from Tom," and "A woman is a sometime thing," along with the requisite "Ah, mes high C" and "Parto, parto" (go already! alright, I'll admit it, I am developing partopartophobia...though in this instance the obstacle course part of the aria was sung with much flair) oh and yes there was one nutty selection, which was "O pretres de Baal!" (punctuation possibly mine, not sure) from Meyerbeer's Le Prophète. Well also I suppose it is unusual to hear "Amour, viens aidez ma faiblesse" in the original Polish, as we were given it by Ms. DeYoung, if I may be so rotten. In "Du bist der Lenz," she sounded swell.

It might be fun to go back to the first year I went to this event and see what those folks are doing. I believe my favorite was Lisette Oropesa, who's doing quite well for herself. I hope Sundays young'uns are similarly on top in a few years' time. Best of luck to all of them.

For ACB

Teresa Berganza: Seguidilla Murciana

So that's what Lulu's problem was

As an aesthetic experience, this is about the most schrecklich thing I could inflict upon you, and I'm only doing it because if you watch through the first few song clips, I think you'll see a surprising name on the list of, er, "performers." Were we aware of this affiliation?

Bitter, bitter hat tip to the Straussmonster.

To Craunch a Marmoset

Hat tip to B.A.D.

I won't translate it because...well, yes I will. Oh hey or I'll teach you Russian the way graduate programs do: through reading.

VOCAB LIST

Анна--------Anna
Нетребко---Trebs
собираться--to be collected
замужем----behind a man
и------------and
ждать-------to wait
ребенок-----a child, the child, the idea of a child

Bear in mind that замужем doesn't properly function like any known part of speech, you'd never guess the conjugation of ждать by looking at it, even if you squint, and the o in ребенок is fleeting in oblique cases because of the fall of the jers. And now you know, in record time, why that method of language pedagogy is a colossal misjudgment.

Srsly?

Was anyone else surprised to see this on for Carnegie next this seez?

I hope it's great and not Sunset Boulevard. I loved Pleasures of their Company in high school. But it's been a long time and lots of blood under the bridge since

Une humble retraite

Don't you think the Met needs to open a little bar, maybe where the gallery on the southeast corner is? Just a little lounge of sorts for the people who aren't quite ready to rush out the door and go home? Much more informal than the restaurant, you understand, just somewhere dim you could sidle up to a Campari or something comparably suggestive of banter and commiserate or revel as appropriate? Thing is, once you're out the door it's either the 1 train or the $25 pizza at Fiorello's, it feels like, especially during these drear months. Oh hey maybe there could be horrible theme drinks like milk punch after Butterfly. Oh dear, maybe not. I'll just have the whiskey.

2nd Anniversary=Paper, more specifically Kleenex

Did you know the Latin root of the chemical name for aspirin is the same as that for "O salce, salce, salce?" That's because aspirin is derived from willow...bark, I think. I'm not going anywhere snippy with that, though I suppose I do sometimes feel like I need an aspirin or seven to deal with the Verdian orthodoxy that later Verdi is more worthwhile, Verdi for cognoscenti. Well and actually I find Iago's drinking song to be something of a musical hangover, so there's that. Mostly though you're just suffering through this preemptive diversion because we used to play the Latin Prefix Game in the D'Annato household while the other kids were playing basketball, which goes a long way to explain my figure and my popularity with the gents, I guess. Where was I?

I was where I always am: in a balcony box. Funny balance up there, works out alright for Mozart but not highly recommended for louder things. Mostly all you hear is orchestra, even when you (finally) have a tenor who doesn't sound like the music is going to break him. It's funny--if you'd asked me, sitting there in our box, to name the places Heppner used to make me stand up and scream something about Amy Winehouse calling and wanting her crack back, I couldn't have told you exactly. But I knew it in my gut, and when those places came around, I tensed up. For naught, my friends, or for naught much anyway. Act III saw something a bit like a shout, but the tenor-killer near the beginning of Act II was apparently not a big deal for Botha. Always audible, frequently sensitive in his phrasing...say, who gives a handkerchief as a romantic present anyway? What do you get on the second date, gym socks?

A propos de rien, is it maybe time to cut it out with the blackface in Otello? Not that you can reverse these things but they didn't put Madame Price in Bulgarian-face in Forza so she'd pass for Ghiaurov's daughter. No but my real point, insofar as I ever, ever have one is that it's explicit in the libretto, the audience knows the deal, and it looks stupid, not to speak of the awkward cultural baggage. It's one of those places I'd just as soon let my imagination do the work.

Getting back to the sonic side of things (keep it on the sonic side, always on the sonic side...< /carterfamily>) I sat and waited where Fleming was concerned, too, but not for cracks. I'm like a broken record about Fleming and Desdemona: best role ever, cuts down on her futzerei for whatever reason, yada yada, cut and paste. I feel vindicated, though, by my Fleming-skeptical (fleptical?) boxmate's agreement that yes, this is a far finer thing than much of what we've witnessed in recent years, and wait though I did, not once did I notice her slipping into the premeditated cooing we have come to dread. Moments where she really lets go, like the climax of the Aspirin Song, both legitimize her status and excuse her hype. All of Act III is unimpeachable craftsmanship.

Guelfi had some living down of his own to do, i.e. a lousy Rigoletto a couple seasons back, and he more or less did. "Neither brilliant nor offensive" was my verdict early on, not the very best balance for Iago. But the credo was convincing in musical terms (less so, dramatic ones) and he held up his end of the bluster in "si, pel ciel." Wendy White was a fine Emilia with some terror and urgency at the end; Garret Sorenson reminded me that for some reason we often get a little luxury in Cassio--my last Cassio was Jonas Kaufmann. Sorenson may well follow a similarly fruitful career trajectory.

Semyon Bychkov (oh thank GOD someone tugged on someone's sleeve about the avoidance of false cognates in Russian transliteration) led a reading that was maybe a little four-square in places but made up for it with blood and guts where required. Among the Met's stodgy productions, this one ranks with Aida among the winners.

It occurs to me for no reason that Desdemona is one of rather few Verdi heroines not asked to sing a trill. One of you will doubtless know that Alzira or Shakira or someone also does not. Suddenly I think Aida doesn't either. Maybe nevermind. Actually speaking of Maury D' stupidism of the day, on the 1 train platform after it all wrapped up, we were discussing whether anyone had ever written an Anne Frank opera (other than Neutral Milk Hotel's somewhat abstract Anne Frank opera that is In the Aeroplane Over the Sea that is.) I have an odd reason to know that someone did, as one or two of you may know, but the Gracie Allen moment came when I specified that the only one I knew of was a 20th century work. Say good night, Maury.

Tarkington on Gelb and others, perhaps

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent. Both middle-aged people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers; young people will not come to see such a play, because, for them, middle-aged lovers are a joke--not a very funny one. Therefore, to bring both the middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the manager makes his romance as young as he can. Youth will indeed be served, and its profound instinct is to be not only scornfully amused but vaguely angered by middle-age romance.

The Magnificent Ambersons

Einstein on the Stove

Isn't it true that Einstein said a minute sitting by a hot stove is like an eternity while a minute sitting on a pretty girl is like an instant? You know, I think I have my prepositions backward. But he said something like that. (Anyway, if you're the sort who would find it funny, imagine some lovely lass shrieking at Einstein "for fuck's sake get off my lap--you're a fully grown physicist!") I couldn't help but think about it tonight.

Why? Well Wagner, of course. I find it interesting that people tend to agree on the idea that Furtwangler can play things slow and still have them hang together better than other conductors (name your whipping boy--Barenboim?) who also play them slow. I agree, too, and yet I don't think it's one of those things you should just say and not think about what it means. On the face of it, it's pretty nonsensical. Could it be something we just say because we cathect to Furt and not to Bohm and once we've settled on an opinion, we become overly identified with it? I don't think it is, but I invite you to tell me how this works. Is it about proportion, perhaps, in subtle ways that can't be formulated? One friend of mine always speaks of Furtwangler in terms of an overarching architectural conception but you know how I hate metaphors. They are a poisoned arrow flying through the heart of a melancholic aardvark. I mean it.

Whatever the reason, tonight's date with Lorin Maazel was like five hours with a pretty girl sitting ON MY TRACHEA. It could hardly have gone by slower--matched, in fact, the visuals of Herr Schenk bore for bore. I left after the second act, feeling like I'd gotten way more for my money than I intended. Even the thunderous prelude felt leaden. Oddly enough this had one pleasant result: with nothing else to do, I really sat with James Morris' interpretation and found it, on such a backdrop, more profound than it had sounded before. Yes, I still flashed forward to a future hypothetical Pape-Wotan, but not with bitterness. The regret, the fear, the plain old age: all felt organic to the character, and necessary, highlighted somehow by the tedium in the pit.

I'm pretty tired of hearing myself talk about Voigt, moreso since so many reports of her have turned into a predictable "State of the Voice" address, but could only be nostalgic, hearing her Sieglinde, for a very long trip I made to hear it in another century. Her partner then was Domingo, who I heard as Siegmund twice, about ten years apart. Each time was a marvel, but I think I've heard his better in the role. Clifton Forbis should be singing every role at the Met that requires serious lungpower, which is not to say that's all he has. Nothing like it. Next year may call for a trip to Chicago to hear what bids fair to be the bona fide Tristan of, well, right now. Tonight was his last in this run and he looked triumphant at his "my character is dead and I'm going to Fiorello's" curtain call, as he should have. Beyond volume, there's a matter of authority in this kind of singing, and that's what was so wonderful to hear.

Harder to comment on Gasteen because the role opens with an iconic moment she objectively cannot deliver, which colors one's experience...ok and because I didn't hear half of her role. There's good heft to the instrument, and generosity or openness of spirit in the performance that stops short of fiery inspiration in the mode of Leider, but I'll have to hear her again before I really know what the deal is.

I'm in the vast minority here, but for my shekels, Michelle DeYoung is really a work in progress. People talk a lot about line in bel canto, but there's a Wagnerian sense of line one must have as well (think of Jon Tomlinson's King Mark for a great example) and I don't hear it in her singing. Certainly it's a fine voice, and I'm glad to hear the warm reception she gets.

***

On another topic altogether, the New Yorker article on Nico Muhly by Rebecca Mead quotes one of our own. It's rather an engrossing article, at least if you come in knowing zippo about Muhly. It does appear I'm going to need to familiarize myself with "Speaks Volumes" if I'm to continue thinking of myself as a snooty music fag, and in any case, the article makes mention of an upcoming commission at the You-Know-Where. (Rhymes with retro collagen.)

Happy Holidays!

Hey I just noticed on the street: it's Schmutz Wendesday! This is, insofar as I've been able to understand, the day when Jesus rises from the dead and goes, "oh hey, you've got some schmutz on your head" and wipes it off for you. He's like an amalgam of a zombie and some great aunt that way. Presumably then he goes back to being dead, but I'm not sure. Religion is confusing! Anyway it doesn't seem to be incredibly popular and I'm just wondering if they should branch out on the color scheme a little. Note to Our Lord and Savior: Black does not go with every outfit.

I have a hunch I make this joke every year. Let's just call it a holiday tradition.

Who did I hear?

A recent discussion of Carmen found me googling Graciela von Gyldenfeldt. She seems to have existed also as Graciela de Gyldenfeldt. She's who I heard sing Carmen in Cincinnati in what the intertubes confirm was 1991, and she's the first person I ever heard have a full-on vocal crisis right in front of me. Maybe she didn't think she was having one, as she stayed on 'til the bitter, bitter end, but even my untrained ears and the healthily not hypercritical ears of my father recognized that when the bottom half sounds like a truck on a steep incline and the top half sounds like a Vespa, all is not well.

I love this kind of archeology. I've gone on about it before. One day I'll find out if the woman who sang now dimly recalled songs in German, one with a lyric about a traveler on a path at night, about whom some sophisticate at intermission was heard to say "she goes around the world singing Frauleinliebe und Leben was indeed Troyanos. This would be at the Singletary Center in Lexington, Kentucky in the late 80's or possibly 1990 but I don't think so. If you know, you're welcome to burst my bubble or make my day. And one day perhaps my father will unearth his programs and I'll know if it was Callas he heard in Dallas, as a kid.

Further searching this evening confirmed that it was Richard Leech we heard the night we raised our eyebrows at each other about some Verdi opera we'd never heard of called A Masked Ball. I thought it might have been Millo, too, and that would have been funny, but it wasn't. Who was in my first opera, and yours? Cinci doesn't seem to be one of those companies with an exhaustive history on their website, that I've found, but anyway I'm enjoying the mystery and the possibility I heard names I know now and love or turn up my nose at. It wasn't until years later I would keep track, because the names didn't mean anything to me and I had nothing to compare to.

I'll never be able to say, like so many New Yorkers I now know, it was Tucker, and it was a matinee, though I suppose when I'm 70 I can fudge and say it was Bartoli, and it was Houston, and it was 1992 or 3. That was sort of the first time I went on purpose and chose who to hear...

In other news, I have a Birth Opera after all. It was La Cieca's idea to rescue us Leos by looking to the Salzburg Festival. Here's what happened on my date of birth, and I'm most pleased with it:

COSÌ FAN TUTTE

ossia La scuola degli amanti
Dramma giocoso in two acts K. 588
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte

Sung in Italian

Revival

Karl Böhm, Conductor
Günther Rennert, Stage director
Ita Maximowna, Stage sets
Ita Maximowna, Costumes
Walter Hagen-Groll, Chorus master


Gundula Janowitz, Fiordiligi
Brigitte Fassbaender, Dorabella
Reri Grist, Despina
Peter Schreier, Ferrando
Hermann Prey, Guglielmo
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Don Alfonso
Walter Taussig, Cembalo
Chor der Wiener Staatsoper
Vienna Philharmonic

Venue:
Kleines Festspielhaus

Saturday, 11 August 1973, 7.30 p.m.

'Moor is Less

Here's what they're doing at Caramoor this summer. There's no press release to be found on the site but I assume that's a full account of what's being offered. It's...maybe a little disappointing. I mean, Barbiere has not exactly been underrepresented in town, though it is always pleasant to see it (or whatever else) in the country. Some of the singers are unknown to me, which might draw me out of my lair into the wilds--Ms. Di Giacomo was a pleasant surprise last year--but for Forza I'm content to stay home. That's just my peccadillo, but no, I refuse ever to be in the same room or outdoor space with Preziosilla again, no matter who plays her. Yes, even if it were You-Know-Whodles, who does not seem to be up for car alarms and mosquito bites this summer, tant pis. Maybe the Vivica Genaux recital of Falla and the like will be this season's enticement off the happy island.

It may be like this around here for a little while

The first stroke of rhetorical genius in this season's campaigns is a musical one.

Heldenpixie

I've always insisted it was practically opera. Sometimes, in fact, when people are all "hey, make me a CD to convince me I should like opera" and I'm not in the mood to say "who says you should like opera?" I will slip this in between, oh, Kathleen Battle and Jussi Bjorling. It's as close as you're going to hear to a dramatic soprano in pop music, which gives me a perverse thrill. Please ignore the cheezoid visuals and enjoy, and if you're not up to here with me for posting it in the first place, make sure to watch the end, where the real Inge Borkhing happens.



Oh and since I've recently been taken to task for not identifying what I'm posting, this is Blue Angel performing "I'm gonna be strong" by...I dunno, Pergolesi. You know the girl with the pipes as Cyndi Lauper.

More J-tube

The opera blogosphere is a little bit of a La DiDo lovefest right now and...I'm kind of fine with that. Listen, if you like this following clip and it comes out on DVD, please do the right thing, Spike Lee, and buy it. Because folks gotta make a living, and youtube is great but shouldn't stop that from happening. Anyway, without further ado, here is Joyce DiDonato managing to look happy and tiara-worthy while petting NIGHTMARISH GIANT HUMANOID MICE in a costume the word "shmatte" was invented for. Wait, one piece of further ado: if the timing on this is such as I understand it to be, she's singing this through a nasty sore throat. I mean jeez.



I've always imagined that pair of descending 2 octave runs to be a real terror.

A commenter on another clip says "Pero canta de p*** madre" (right before using the crazyhead vosotros form...it's like if "y'all" had its own separate verb forms) which means, literally, well nevermind, but it's a compliment even though it doesn't sound like one.

Hat tip to Coloraturafan for posting this.

Moar! or: if loving Leyla is wrong, I don't want to be right!

Here's another review (including a travel-piquing rumor of Mattila-Isolde) and a hint of one, and meanwhile, I, myself, got a review in comments at Parterre I can't help but be amused, maybe even pleased by: "I don't think Maury is right, ever." Well, marks for consistency, no demipygon I.

Did you hear the one about the cell phone in the desert?

I think I'd like to have triplets so I could name them Sola, Perduta, and Abandonnata (Donna for short.) That's the thing, though. It seems like naming kids is the fun part and that lasts about a minute and then the rest of your life is basically terror and debt, so maybe I won't, after all.

Yes, I have gone back to the opera. A thousand times, yes. That must be my longest absence since, well, just summer I suppose, nothing all that dramatic. It was a fine welcome home, though, as long as one was willing to be a flexible listener.

I mean, golly, can you imagine trying to cast Puccini from the roster of stars currently on the boards in New York? We have some stellar talent, I don't need to say, but there are gaps, and the second biggest one is shaped like a Puccini soprano. The funny thing is Netrebko might have made something of it (hat/broach/pterodactyl) but the problem would have been in the last act: simultaneously portraying terrible weakness and yet somehow coming up with the strength for a twenty yard dash to the orchestra pit to dangle her locks in it. Wouldn't have been logical and god knows Manon Lescaut is a work of sobering rationality. Okay, or not.

I think actually there was no choice but Karita Mattila, despite the fact that she possesses almost objectively the wrong instrument for the job. Am I making any sense if I say it's not malleable enough? And in the climaxes, it cuts where it should billow? Certainly viable, but not ideal. But then on the other hand what else can you do when you need someone who can both give a physical suggestion of exposure and dehydration and perform a sarcastic minuet? Furthermore who else has the instinct in the second act to circumvent the irredeemable and fully unlikeable powder-my-wig-some-more banality of the character by going in for full-on camp? Also, though she surprisingly didn't demonstrate this as Salome, it appears she can do splits. Why was this in there? Why not. I am tempted to use the word kooky to describe her Act II Manon. You think I am knocking her, but I'm not.

I'd actually kind of like to know what the crowd that constantly bewails the golden age think about the Divine Miss M, Nordic edition. The thing is she's never done anything shabby, though it's hard to love her equally in everything. As far as I'm concerned, since she made an exit, quite expectedly, stark naked (in Salome) she's been a star, a true star, and never will be anything less. Yes, that's partly an excuse to paraphrase All About Eve (what isn't? you would be excused for asking), but it's also partly the truth. I'd never been at an operatic event where that kind of expectation hung in the air. That doesn't happen unless you're legit, by virtue of cords or by presence or both.

And though I've focused on her presence, it's not that the big numbers were wanting, through a vocal lense. "Sola, perduta" was rather wild, and sister, her chest voice is from the wrong side of the tracks. I guess I didn't love "In quelle trine morbide" but life's like that. On the whole, let's say, sometimes it wasn't great Puccini but it was every minute great opera. Very good opera, at least.

When KM was singing with Signor Giordani, it was a curious blend, but mostly in a good way. I've never heard Giordani sound quite so much in his element. There was some warming up that got done in front of us, but by "Tu, tu, piccolo iddio oh wait I'm in the wrong opera I mean amore, tu?" the rehearsal was over and he was taking it out and chopping it up. Slancio. Squillo. Oh I just thought I'd say those words because I'm talking about an Italian tenor and it's required by the laws of the universe. Did you think you were on opera-l for a minute? No, but they also happen to be appropriate, those words. Marcello Giordani is, how can I put this, what Franco Farina would sound like if he weren't awful. The top kicks your ass, and the rest at least slaps you around a little, or anyway calls you mean names. It's 1 am, you wanted normal compliments? Anyway, in this rep, in particular, there are moments of grandeur, and (thank you, jesus) abandon.

Croft, too, pleased me more than in recent memory. The hollow tone that sometimes haunts him at this stage of his career was not in evidence, nor was the line-breaking syllabic punch that, for me, makes his Germont like a ride with someone new to driving stick. Dale Travis was fine in the thankless role of Geronte, and debutant Sean Panikkar, though stylistically a little green, has a lot to work with and probably, down the road, a lot to offer.

If I can be a total killjoy for a minute, I'm actually getting a little tired of the lovefest that greets Levine at his first entrance to the pit--not because it's not deserved, you understand, but save some for the end, right? It starts to look like the reflexive standing O that happens at everything I ever go to on Broadway. think for a moment of future generations of Sirius broadcast listeners, folks. They're going to think audiences in the early 00's were coming to the theater drunk or something, which is actually my plan for Peter Grimes, but that's another story. I guess what I'm trying to speak of here is a cheapening effect. It's not the end of the world but it's just not my favorite audience phenomenon.

So yeah, of course, I'm going back Friday. I don't know that I'll have anything new to say then, but my season is back in gear. Wednesday week I'm at Die, Walkurie, Die!

Bonus: Carnegie Hall '08-'09. Upon cursory review, I can report that they're doing all the Mahler symphonies!! Probably not including the 10th because, um, he didn't write it. Featured in this morass of Mahler: bunch of Quasthoff and Roschmann!!! Hm, what else for voice fiends, Damnation of Faust with Kozena and Quast, Mentzer in L'enfant et les Sortileges, Measha Bruggergossman does Wesendoncks. Exciting in a "never gonna happen" way, non-vocal, Martha Argerich is scheduled to cancel the Prokofiev and Shostakovich concertos. JSU points out also a show in which Madame DiDonato will lose her marbles over and over again for our listening pleasure. Collecting her marbles and giving them back to her between numbers, presumably, will be Les Talens Lyriques. Anyway, this is not exhaustive. Check it out.

Figlio impuro

Not even a hint of relevance, but I do love a good hatchet job and I know some of you do, too. If you haven't already heard about it, you absolutely have to read the NYT endorsement of McCain, not for anything having to do with McCain (because who cares, Edith) but for the deeply satisfying thrashing of Giuliani in the middle. I guess if everything must relate to you-know-what, you're welcome to imagine it translated into Italian and delivered by the great Gencer. The clause "then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign" would contain a high D and at least three glottal attacks.

In another moment of local relevance to Met audiences, John Edwards, who is working the "little old me from the country" angle so hard we will not be surprised to see him on Tim Russert wearing a straw hat, has in some ill-thought-out misprisal* of disdain for things urban for progressive class politics, made Masa Takayama his unlikely Sistah Souljah.

If it wasn't obvious, the coveted endorsement of MFI goes to Senator Obama.

Hi to anyone who made his unlikely way here from the mention in the NYRB, about which I am unseemlily** amused. This is usually about opera.

*almost certainly not a word
**even more certainly not a word

By the way, I return to the 'politan next week and should resume writing about that mysterious art form I once upon a time used to write about, the one where people don wigs and speak on pitches.

Chicago

...has announced for 2008-2009.

I find the tone of the article a little gloomy...there are at least three things on there that sound like must-sees, Trebs or no Trebs.

Oh, here's the press release from the horse's mouth, as a pdf.

almost inexhaustibly amusing

I keep looking back at this line from the notes to the Price/Bergonzi/Merrill/Verrett/Grist Ballo and laughing:

"The large crowd of citizens already there is in a state of considerable excitement, for the sorceress is expecting an immediate call from her good friend the Devil."

That is among the funnier sentences ever written.

Also why did I not know there was a Ballo with such a perfect cast until it made a lunge for my wallet at Academy?

JD-Tube

Ok, I did hesitate to link to this clip...it's not 100% clear what the source is, but there seems to be no commercial release. So, crossing my fingers and hoping it isn't dripping with bad karma, I thank the original youtube poster, er, hotazzoperastud, and present to you some formidable music-making, courtesy of Joyce DiDonato and Eric Cutler. p.s. not to be a boring high note queen but check out the B at the end. Srsly.

Pronounce it "Lou-a-vul" please

Picture your host as a young man, driving around on a Saturday with a broadcast of Rosenkavalier (with, like, Mechtild Gessendorf) on the radio of his 1983 Tercel, and you must perforce picture Kentucky, where this took place. Well, picturing it is better than growing up there, but it's hard to find an unkind word about Louisville, the state's smartest and most progressive corner. Home to the Humana Festival, the elegant Seelbach (mentioned in passing, under a nom de plume in The Great Gatsby), and my high school friend Michelle who probably had a personality disorder but was very funny, Louisville is the faint praise that damns the rest of the state. Wait, that came out all wrong. Seriously a lovely town. And here's what they're seeing next season at the opera.

What's left?

So mostly now one is curious about Houston and Chicago. (This is not to slight the many fine houses not yet mentioned.) Anyone heard rumblings thereof, therefrom? Me, I also keep clicking on Caramoor's site because I think they announced pretty early last year and of course they have been something of a Podles Festspielhaus the last couple of years. Also, even with the indispensible augury of the Met Futures Page, surely the official reveal from the Big House will have a casting surprise or two.

News from the North

...or: When it Rains, it Snows

Here's what they'll be seeing in the land of socialized medicine and a suspiciously forward placement of the /o/ vowel. P'chonkadonk is now officially sneaking up on ubiquity, is it not so? From my limited experience of her vocalism, that could be a welcome development.

Rains/pours

Tipped off by Henry Holland, I can report that San Fran has announced.

Scooped!

Wow, the Opera Tattler has all the dirt on next season.

Of particular interest there, Seattle's '08-'09, including Joyce Castle in Figaro. I assume she's playing Cherubino. Well I don't assume that of course but it's fun to try and picture. Blythe's first (?) Amneris: intriguing. Also, is LePage's Erwartung the one with crazy wall=floor tricks we saw in Cincinnati maybe five years ago?

ETA: Burns, who gets some sort of lifetime achievement award for correcting my incorrectnesses, points out that Ms. Blythe will first sing Amneris closer to home (well, my home)--in Baltimore, I'm assuming. Baltimore has in fact posted the titles of their next season with no casting information I can find, but anyway: Aida, Norma, Barbiere, Porgy & Bess.

More hat tips to Jessica, this time for pointing us to the details for Baltimore.. I know at least one person who is likely to faint from joy at the prospect of a lyric rather than a mezzo singing the 'gisa.

Pleasant, unpleasant surprise

Cynthia Lawrence is, I understand, a stalwart cover at the 'politan. I've heard her once, only, as Rosalinde, so all I really knew about her was that she wasn't proficient at delivering treacly shtick. Imagine my surprise, then, to tune in last night and hear her sing, no, not a perfect Lady M. but in any case rings around the (relatively) name brand star given the prima and the HD movie-cast. A lot of what you'd want was there, if the microphones were fair: unabashed chest voice, at least on air an ample and solid sound, acuti that were here serviceable, there good (as opposed to the other singer's weird half-air sound of song in collapse...and do bear in mind, again, I loved her in Tabarro, just, please folks, don't sing what you can't sing) and even a certain degree of abandon that puts the lady's delicious malevolence over. Was she convincingly beastly onstage, can anyone tell me? La luce, usually a better test than the thorny gauntlet of the letter scene, hit the nail on the head.

I note this partly because the good performance of a cover is a special thing and should not go untrumpeted. But also it's enough to entice me back into the hall to hear it again, mixed-to-negative feelings about the production notwithstanding. I should look to see if she's in the last performances where Alvarez will presumably ease painful memories of Ataneli's pitch problems, and though I found Pittas more committed and stylish than earlier, far more worthy of the roar that greeted him at curtain, I'm positively mad to hear Calleja sing it. And Pape, well, it is boring to heap garlands on those who are already a greenhouse, but...

Incidentally, I meant to write up something about Fiona Shaw as the Fonze at BAM, but it seemed not to want to be written, so just: yeah, go.

Oh, look! Actual content!

Here's an article about Washington's next season. As per the Facts of Life theme song, we have Radvanovsky as the B-cast Lucrezia Borgia (though SR is nobody's second fiddle) and Guleghina singing Turandot, otherwise known as "the role wherein 50% of the notes are ones she can't sing."

Oh, hey, it's January! What other news can we dig up?

Dallas is fulfilling a lot of people's dream by putting on Roberto Devereux. The linked article doesn't provide casting info, though the photo suggests local favorite/local source of virulent backlash skepticism Stephen Costello will be on hand. Other good news: Dallas' last season at the Fairgrounds Music Hall.

And it gets better: they've already announced 2009-2010 (that's a PDF, btw, if it's going to crash your browser or tie things up) in the new house. There's an opera of Moby Dick by Jake Heggie starring Ben Heppner, which is exciting if you look at it from a certain angle. Then if you scroll down you get more casting info on both seasons, for instance promising young tenor James Valenti is in the Boheme, and Manuela Custer about whom I heard excited rumblings a year or two back is in Italiana. Also Hasmik "Will Travel" Papian is Elisabetta or Cunegonde or Flosshilde or whatever the lead in Roberto Devereux is. The way I function, as usual, the main character in Roberto Devereux is Beverly Sills.

There's a little info here about L.A. They're getting Wilson's Butterfly, which aren't you a little bit curious at least?

More news as it breaks. Probably after everyone else has already reported it, but you get what you pay for.

Are you there, god? It's me, Maurgret

Dear god,

Yeah, I know, I have a lot of nerve addressing a blog entry to you, all things considered.

But, say, listen, big guy. Here's my bargain basement version of Pascal's Wager: I pretend you exist just in case; you maybe do me a favor. After that, seriously, other than Mike Huckabee not winning the election, I'll never ask you for another you-damn thing.

What I'd like, god, old buddy, old pal, is for Patricia Racette to expand her Puccini rep and cover for Karita Mattila in February, and for KM to have a cold or something not particularly unpleasant but momentarily incapacitating like that, because then Racette would go on instead and in addition to the pleasure of hearing her sing it, I could use the subject line "Manon Lesbo" for my review. In a loving way, you understand. Because it's 2008* and we can kid each other about that kind of thing. I think.

Ok, I'm gonna let you go in case you're busy coming up with more fascinating tokens of your affection like AIDS and famine and, not to reuse a punchline, but Mike Huckabee, in your infinite benevolence. But consider it, alright?

Fondly as ever,
Maurizio Q. D'Annato

***

Yes, eventually I'm going back to the opera so I can stop posting crap like this. Promise.

*Thanks, Gert. You win the "Maury is a Simpleton" award for this week.

...and a happy Sweet 16 (or thereabouts) to B.

God(s) I've missed Wagner

Just tuned in halfway through "Du bist der Lenz...nein, nein, du bist der Lenz, Nein, wirklich, DU bist der Lenz, ich insistiere." I think Upstate Julie Brown is liveblogging, so maybe I will, too. So far I'm just really pleased with Adrienne Pieczonka, who has a pretty solid sound with some vulnerability to it, and who also just did the Rysanek scream at the, er, unsheathing. Forbis, while lacking some of the suavity we've gotten used to with Domingo has a very gratifying virility. This is going well. More as it unfolds.

...and the crowd misses Wagner, too. I've heard the end of the act sound a bit more ecstatic but [he added later] some of the melancholic stuff with Brunnhilde & Pops is rewardingly rich and pensive.

I'm not going to go on about James Morris, I guess, because that wouldn't be sporting.

Gasteen is a singer I enjoyed immensely as Elektra, with the caveat that the top is a mess. It's still a mess, though starting with hojotoho is nobody's idea of a good time. So far, I'd still rather hear her than Eaglen, for the reason that probably goes without saying: she's singing a role, not notes.

Excellent role for Blythe, who is very word-attentive. Ok, more in a bit.

Oh, sorry. It appears people are reading and commenting and I'm half nodding despite a terrific performance, including (who always admits when he's wrong? Maury does) some very committed, if woolly, sounds from Morris. It's just, as I was saying not three minutes ago, "act ii of walkuere is interminable, like a cheap uruguayan pinot noir." I know, that doesn't make ANY sense at all, but in context, it did, as much as anything I say.

Longeurs: a word invented for Wotan's monologues. And I can't say Morris was thrilling there, but it's wordy stuff, in the worst way. Yeah, Wagner, gift horse, whatever, the outer acts are much more thrilling, aren't they? Or am I just missing something? I bought the Andrew Porter translation to listen along with sometime because I figure a singing translation (while sometimes embarrassing) at least removes the dilemma of which kind of mediation you want, to some extent: read the German and understand not enough, or read the English and it doesn't fit. Anyway the great thing about Wagner as librettist is that enough of it is WTF-inducing that you can sort of indulge in willing suspension of serious-taking, and just say "either this bit sucked in the original or it is translated in a clumsy way, and I shall never know."

A Furtwangler-mad friend of mine used to grow positively livid about Levine's Wagner, referring to his style as "curatorial," but whatever you may think of that, he's certainly made this an orchestra that plays Wagner as if it were the Haydn "Surprise!" Symphony. (Exclamation point, mine, and ironic. It's actually not that surprising.) Some gratitude is due to the universe for that. Ok, back to active listening. It gets exciting again here I think.

Ok wow, I didn't know it was Margaret Juntwait DDS, but she is sure as hell pulling teeth in this interview. This lady is doubtless wonderful at her job, but I think at the point that we were reduced to her critiquing MJ's pronunciation of the Valkyries' names, perhaps they could have yanked someone out of the audience. p.s. operas she'd like to hear more? Die Freschutz, huh? Yeah, wow that would be terrific, call me when that happens. I'll be picking out what magazines to bring and possibly programming playlists on my ipod. See now at this point Die Freischutz always turns out to be someone's favorite and I feel like a cad, but...I'm having a hard time believing Die Freischutz is anyone's favorite opera.

Did I mention I like the outer acts much, much better than Act II? Probably. Did I also mention Satan or someone made me stay up 'ti 2 watching Valley of the Dolls which I don't even really love? So I'm actually going to bed after a little bit of this act. But it looks a bit like you guys went to bed, too, so it's probably alright.

The Lark of the Border

I've heard several epithets applied to Tejano songstress Lydia Mendoza, who died just a few days ago at 91, among them "the lark of the border" and "la reina de la musica ranchera"--the kind of intentionally iconic labels people attach to a certain, bewitching kind of art, in this instance music that sounds as lost the past to us now (and which therefore of course draws us in the more) as the Carter Family or McCormack singing old sentimental songs on a '78. Nobody could write (or perform, I think) a new Lydia Mendoza song idiomatically in the present any more than they could write a new Mozart symphony. In both cases, not a matter just of a stilled voice, but a language with no native speakers left. Here is the song I think of as iconic.

[Note: I read somewhere today that she took the plotwise pulpy words for Mal Hombre from a story printed on candy wrappers! I can't help but find them poetic just the same: "tan ruin es tu alma que no tiene nombre"!]

Cat

Hey does anyone want a very adorable orange tabby I found wandering on 35th Street on New Year's Eve? I named him Nellie before I realized he had the wrong parts. Off chance here, but I don't want to take him to animal control and there ain't room in these parts for two cats. Very friendly, about six months old.