Or, as Nick of Trrill remarks: Laś Węgaś much?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Catch-all
...as there are several things pawing to get out of my head.
Here's one:
I approach music that still gets called New Music, as I may have said, with a kind of hangdog "please just don't be too mean to me" expression on my, uh, soul or whatever. I try to like it, but I don't try very hard, and that's the truth. It's because part of the process of liking something is recognizing it, and though it's just the build of my own metaphorical ear, I know, I can't often find the voice or face or whatever half-apt concretization is least offensive here. This form of enjoyment is built partly on insecurity, no doubt: who wants to say "I love Medea Mei-Figner" when there's some possibility (admit it, there is) that at some later moment, a recording of Madame Mei-Figner will come on the jukebox and you'll go "what is this awful croaking" and someone will say "but I think you loooooved (with ironic iconic lengthening) Mei-Figner." I trust you have followed this imbecilic narrative and taken the point anyway: there has to be something to grab onto, some aural object permanence, or the music can't be your friend.
So I get especially happy when that does happen. There are two Bright Young Things that spring to mind whose voice I think I have happily made the tentative acquaintance, like that first coffee you have that's sort of an interview for a date. I posted a clip of Judd Greenstein some time back, because I found his "Hillula" interesting and knowable.
Now, because I am apparently the guy who is like "hey I just got an Atari have you heard of it?" I am introductorily onto the very talked-about Mr. Muhly. I felt like I should be is the honest truth of the matter. I had gotten past the slight resistance one sometimes has to causes-celebres and watched a clip on youtube which, yes, of course I'm about to make you watch, too.
Something of its mood was still with me when next I read his name, so I think we're off to a good start, me and his compositional oeuvre, and will maybe have a second date, traditionally an ethnic cuisine designed to show one's worldly appetites, ideally followed by one of the mints from by the cash register and then by making out. Except not as much when the talk is of music and not an actual second date.
Now that I've thoroughly worn out my welcome, I do think I should say a word or two about Rosenkavalier, but really, let's keep it brief, like a bad date where you sit in a cafe on Damen Avenue waiting enthusiastically for the rain to end so you can leave. Oh wait, you weren't there for that one. Fleming, as you have read elsewhere, has reined in a lot of the things about her Marschallin that are true of her Strauss-singing more generally and that have earned her a lot of fairly justifiable criticism. Gone is the fuss. Gone is the inscrutably-motivated constant dynamic change. This is all cause for celebration.
What is still lacking, for me, and I will say this is just not my favorite role for her, maybe especially in comparison to Rusalka which I've been addictively re-listening headphonically...what's still lacking is passion. I don't know why this never comes through, for me, in Fleming's reading, but it makes the opera tough to sit through, because there is enough about the Marschallin that's redolent of money and status that the unbegreiflich Herz that beats under the conventional persona must be glimpsed. Though I'm glad the cooing has gone AWOL (because in fact it never accomplished this, either) there remains a certain too-virginal quality in Fleming's Marschallin that seems to convey not passion contained by years of upscale socialization so much as passion contained as passion domesticated to the point of utter manageability, like flyaway hair happily responsive to conditioner. The moreso when her Oktavian is someone whose sense of poetry never makes it to my ear, either. In both cases, it almost feels like something [oh yeah, I'm gonna go there] that could be shaken up into something better with a production that wasn't so insistently traditional.
I'm not saying that's the only answer, but I do enthusiastically remember what seems to me to have been the greater sincerity of Fleming's body language in the more-or-less modern dress of Capriccio at last season's opener. There's just something so all-around corseted about these characters' interactions, at this moment, in this production, that feels stifling to me, and I feel almost certain it could be otherwise. Am I alone in this? Miah Persson, by the way, has exactly the right voice for Sophie, not too busy stretching toward a note to bloom, and aurally conveyable intelligence, to boot, but perhaps lacks that last degree of musical personality that would have rescued this for me and made it, ahem, a three-act Rosenkavalier rather than a two-acter. It was a good time, all in all, but it takes more than that nowadays to make me miss the last uptown express, some worknights, at least for an opera whose third act begins with several hours, experientially speaking, of tedium before twelve minutes of heaven. And a local train.
See, this is also where I could mention Regina Spektor at Radio City, but it's a bit much at this point. Suffice it to say I started to mention her above, because in some better world, pop singers, who often know how to connect bodily with their music, might be engaged to offer master classes in same at opera companies. It is, in some ways, a more powerful thing to watch someone perform her own compositions to a hall of people allowed to do more screaming than to watch people sing music with a lot of socioeonomically prescriptive baggage to a room with a lot of rules. There is more freedom, of course, and it's not fair to compare the two things. But watching what must have been a very emotional experience (play a huge, famous hall in your hometown, singing things you came up with to people shouting your fucking name!) it was impossible not to long for some transfusion of energy from this night of song to the other, in the opera house. Yes, well, and the ability to take one's alcoholic beverage into Radio City would not be such a terrible thing, either...
(On the topic of Perssons. Or Peoplle, I guess. Chain of association. Miah Persson->Nina Persson. Is everyone in Scandinavia blond and can I be Scandinavian next time?)
Here's one:
I approach music that still gets called New Music, as I may have said, with a kind of hangdog "please just don't be too mean to me" expression on my, uh, soul or whatever. I try to like it, but I don't try very hard, and that's the truth. It's because part of the process of liking something is recognizing it, and though it's just the build of my own metaphorical ear, I know, I can't often find the voice or face or whatever half-apt concretization is least offensive here. This form of enjoyment is built partly on insecurity, no doubt: who wants to say "I love Medea Mei-Figner" when there's some possibility (admit it, there is) that at some later moment, a recording of Madame Mei-Figner will come on the jukebox and you'll go "what is this awful croaking" and someone will say "but I think you loooooved (with ironic iconic lengthening) Mei-Figner." I trust you have followed this imbecilic narrative and taken the point anyway: there has to be something to grab onto, some aural object permanence, or the music can't be your friend.
So I get especially happy when that does happen. There are two Bright Young Things that spring to mind whose voice I think I have happily made the tentative acquaintance, like that first coffee you have that's sort of an interview for a date. I posted a clip of Judd Greenstein some time back, because I found his "Hillula" interesting and knowable.
Now, because I am apparently the guy who is like "hey I just got an Atari have you heard of it?" I am introductorily onto the very talked-about Mr. Muhly. I felt like I should be is the honest truth of the matter. I had gotten past the slight resistance one sometimes has to causes-celebres and watched a clip on youtube which, yes, of course I'm about to make you watch, too.
Something of its mood was still with me when next I read his name, so I think we're off to a good start, me and his compositional oeuvre, and will maybe have a second date, traditionally an ethnic cuisine designed to show one's worldly appetites, ideally followed by one of the mints from by the cash register and then by making out. Except not as much when the talk is of music and not an actual second date.
Now that I've thoroughly worn out my welcome, I do think I should say a word or two about Rosenkavalier, but really, let's keep it brief, like a bad date where you sit in a cafe on Damen Avenue waiting enthusiastically for the rain to end so you can leave. Oh wait, you weren't there for that one. Fleming, as you have read elsewhere, has reined in a lot of the things about her Marschallin that are true of her Strauss-singing more generally and that have earned her a lot of fairly justifiable criticism. Gone is the fuss. Gone is the inscrutably-motivated constant dynamic change. This is all cause for celebration.
What is still lacking, for me, and I will say this is just not my favorite role for her, maybe especially in comparison to Rusalka which I've been addictively re-listening headphonically...what's still lacking is passion. I don't know why this never comes through, for me, in Fleming's reading, but it makes the opera tough to sit through, because there is enough about the Marschallin that's redolent of money and status that the unbegreiflich Herz that beats under the conventional persona must be glimpsed. Though I'm glad the cooing has gone AWOL (because in fact it never accomplished this, either) there remains a certain too-virginal quality in Fleming's Marschallin that seems to convey not passion contained by years of upscale socialization so much as passion contained as passion domesticated to the point of utter manageability, like flyaway hair happily responsive to conditioner. The moreso when her Oktavian is someone whose sense of poetry never makes it to my ear, either. In both cases, it almost feels like something [oh yeah, I'm gonna go there] that could be shaken up into something better with a production that wasn't so insistently traditional.
I'm not saying that's the only answer, but I do enthusiastically remember what seems to me to have been the greater sincerity of Fleming's body language in the more-or-less modern dress of Capriccio at last season's opener. There's just something so all-around corseted about these characters' interactions, at this moment, in this production, that feels stifling to me, and I feel almost certain it could be otherwise. Am I alone in this? Miah Persson, by the way, has exactly the right voice for Sophie, not too busy stretching toward a note to bloom, and aurally conveyable intelligence, to boot, but perhaps lacks that last degree of musical personality that would have rescued this for me and made it, ahem, a three-act Rosenkavalier rather than a two-acter. It was a good time, all in all, but it takes more than that nowadays to make me miss the last uptown express, some worknights, at least for an opera whose third act begins with several hours, experientially speaking, of tedium before twelve minutes of heaven. And a local train.
See, this is also where I could mention Regina Spektor at Radio City, but it's a bit much at this point. Suffice it to say I started to mention her above, because in some better world, pop singers, who often know how to connect bodily with their music, might be engaged to offer master classes in same at opera companies. It is, in some ways, a more powerful thing to watch someone perform her own compositions to a hall of people allowed to do more screaming than to watch people sing music with a lot of socioeonomically prescriptive baggage to a room with a lot of rules. There is more freedom, of course, and it's not fair to compare the two things. But watching what must have been a very emotional experience (play a huge, famous hall in your hometown, singing things you came up with to people shouting your fucking name!) it was impossible not to long for some transfusion of energy from this night of song to the other, in the opera house. Yes, well, and the ability to take one's alcoholic beverage into Radio City would not be such a terrible thing, either...
(On the topic of Perssons. Or Peoplle, I guess. Chain of association. Miah Persson->Nina Persson. Is everyone in Scandinavia blond and can I be Scandinavian next time?)
Friday, October 16, 2009
Oh great
Is it all this good? Am I going to have to go through something on the scale of my Gencerjahr, skulking about in the dark corners of record stores looking for her single pirated aircheck of Praskovija di Broad Channel? Oh, Raina, my as-of-eight-minutes-ago Bulgar enchantress!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The mark of the true fan...
...Ms. Baranski, is showing up not just for the red carpeted season opener, but for a Tuesday night Rosenkavalier prima!
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Wallace Shawn on Art and Politics, More or Less
Transcribed from introductory remarks at a signing/Q&A/screening of My Dinner with Andre at the Avon Theater in Stamford, Connecticut. Wallace Shawn, one of my intellectual heros (am I an asshole for using that phrase?), addresses the topic, more or less, of how his writing became political.
Well basically, and by the way, if you don’t care, I understand that. In other words, why should you, in a way, except for some reason you’ve chosen to come here and so the topic of me is, in a way, inevitable.
Basically after My Dinner With Andre...My Dinner With Andre was basically a success. A large number of people liked that movie, and I’d never done anything successful before and it was much more successful than anything I’ve done subsequently. So, I suppose the mere fact of having done something that was a little bit successful or well-liked maybe took a bit of the pressure off of me and led to the later thoughts that I had, in a certain way.
So I wrote a play* about five years later and it was being done in London. And the director was having a very hard time making the play work in rehearsal. And he basically said to me words to the effect that "I don’t think this is going to work. I think it’s going to be, well, terribly boring for the audience and basically unbearable." And I had a strange reaction to that.
I thought: hm. I guess I don’t have talent, but I wonder why I ever thought that I did. And I thought: well, I think that’s because my teachers in school always made a fuss over me. But if I had no special ability, why did they do that? Well, it must be because I went to a very nice private school and they were paid to flatter the students. And somehow that thought carried me down some kind of a path where I began questioning certain things about myself and my own cheerful complacency about life, and I had other thoughts about my childhood in my private school and the very privileged neighborhood that school was in.
And I realized that, well...I’d asked my parents when I’d seen a group of children in the park who weren’t dressed the way I was dressed, and they seemed dirty, and they looked sort of thin and blotchy. I sort of said who are those children? What’s their problem? What’s going on? And my parents said something to the effect of “well, I mean, they’re poor!” And I thought: oh, what is that, I wonder?
And I suppose that parents, if they are raising children in a privileged way and the child asks why are other children poor, I suppose the parent has to either say “well, it’s because the world is very, very unjust and people like us are unfairly advantaged, basically because, you know, our ancestors somehow managed to steal and we got to keep what they stole, and others are disadvantaged and oppressed,” or they can say, in effect, “well, some people are, you know, so terrific that they actually deserve a bit more and others have something a little bit wrong with them so they deserve a little bit less.” Because those are really the only two answers to that question, and of course most parents don’t want to go near it. And mine didn’t really answer me.
But the implicit answer was the second one, really. Because what else is a kid supposed to think? Unless he’s told that it’s a crime, and is unjust, he’s going to believe that probably he deserves it, and that must be because he’s a little bit superior and other people are a little bit inferior.
And now I don’t believe that anymore. And so I’ve gone in the direction of identifying with the people who are poor, crushed, less privileged. And I do think that the reason that I am privileged is basically because of theft, because I don’t really, I don’t actually believe in any of the justifications for inequality such as, you know, well, I worked harder.
Because I don’t say that I’ve never worked a day in my life, although some people could say that, in a way. Because writing and acting are quite enjoyable. But, I mean, compared to actual work, where you’re working in a coal mine or even in a bank...but, I know I don’t work any harder than somebody who does work in a coal mine and yet somehow it’s worked out so that I get paid more than the guy in the coal mine. And the people in the coal mines actually don’t think it’s fair. They might rebel, and so they’re kept in their place by force, violence, torture, what have you.
Anyway, this is the journey that I’ve taken that led me basically into writing my essays and those of you who belong to the tiny cult of people who follow theater, I also write plays, and some of my plays deal with these topics. And you can see weird roots of it in the movie. And Andre of course is encouraging me to, you know, not be so contented really.
*timing-wise, I'd say this would have to be Aunt Dan and Lemon which is from 1985.
Extra Credit: The internet has everything, as usual! Need a webpage listing scenes in movies where people eat soup? There's an app for that! Fortunately, no reference to the worst line in any opera libretto ever, which also involved soup. I guess HD moviecasts don't count. If you do can't guess how I got to this page, you are not a real Wallace Shawn fan and cannot be part of my fan club.
Well basically, and by the way, if you don’t care, I understand that. In other words, why should you, in a way, except for some reason you’ve chosen to come here and so the topic of me is, in a way, inevitable.
Basically after My Dinner With Andre...My Dinner With Andre was basically a success. A large number of people liked that movie, and I’d never done anything successful before and it was much more successful than anything I’ve done subsequently. So, I suppose the mere fact of having done something that was a little bit successful or well-liked maybe took a bit of the pressure off of me and led to the later thoughts that I had, in a certain way.
So I wrote a play* about five years later and it was being done in London. And the director was having a very hard time making the play work in rehearsal. And he basically said to me words to the effect that "I don’t think this is going to work. I think it’s going to be, well, terribly boring for the audience and basically unbearable." And I had a strange reaction to that.
I thought: hm. I guess I don’t have talent, but I wonder why I ever thought that I did. And I thought: well, I think that’s because my teachers in school always made a fuss over me. But if I had no special ability, why did they do that? Well, it must be because I went to a very nice private school and they were paid to flatter the students. And somehow that thought carried me down some kind of a path where I began questioning certain things about myself and my own cheerful complacency about life, and I had other thoughts about my childhood in my private school and the very privileged neighborhood that school was in.
And I realized that, well...I’d asked my parents when I’d seen a group of children in the park who weren’t dressed the way I was dressed, and they seemed dirty, and they looked sort of thin and blotchy. I sort of said who are those children? What’s their problem? What’s going on? And my parents said something to the effect of “well, I mean, they’re poor!” And I thought: oh, what is that, I wonder?
And I suppose that parents, if they are raising children in a privileged way and the child asks why are other children poor, I suppose the parent has to either say “well, it’s because the world is very, very unjust and people like us are unfairly advantaged, basically because, you know, our ancestors somehow managed to steal and we got to keep what they stole, and others are disadvantaged and oppressed,” or they can say, in effect, “well, some people are, you know, so terrific that they actually deserve a bit more and others have something a little bit wrong with them so they deserve a little bit less.” Because those are really the only two answers to that question, and of course most parents don’t want to go near it. And mine didn’t really answer me.
But the implicit answer was the second one, really. Because what else is a kid supposed to think? Unless he’s told that it’s a crime, and is unjust, he’s going to believe that probably he deserves it, and that must be because he’s a little bit superior and other people are a little bit inferior.
And now I don’t believe that anymore. And so I’ve gone in the direction of identifying with the people who are poor, crushed, less privileged. And I do think that the reason that I am privileged is basically because of theft, because I don’t really, I don’t actually believe in any of the justifications for inequality such as, you know, well, I worked harder.
Because I don’t say that I’ve never worked a day in my life, although some people could say that, in a way. Because writing and acting are quite enjoyable. But, I mean, compared to actual work, where you’re working in a coal mine or even in a bank...but, I know I don’t work any harder than somebody who does work in a coal mine and yet somehow it’s worked out so that I get paid more than the guy in the coal mine. And the people in the coal mines actually don’t think it’s fair. They might rebel, and so they’re kept in their place by force, violence, torture, what have you.
Anyway, this is the journey that I’ve taken that led me basically into writing my essays and those of you who belong to the tiny cult of people who follow theater, I also write plays, and some of my plays deal with these topics. And you can see weird roots of it in the movie. And Andre of course is encouraging me to, you know, not be so contented really.
*timing-wise, I'd say this would have to be Aunt Dan and Lemon which is from 1985.
Extra Credit: The internet has everything, as usual! Need a webpage listing scenes in movies where people eat soup? There's an app for that! Fortunately, no reference to the worst line in any opera libretto ever, which also involved soup. I guess HD moviecasts don't count. If you do can't guess how I got to this page, you are not a real Wallace Shawn fan and cannot be part of my fan club.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Myths of the Traditionalists, or: Being Offended Does Not Make You Right (A musical huff in five parts)
1) Directors reënvisioning canonical works do not do so because they think the work isn't good enough to hold our interest. I'm particularly weary of the "what, Figaro isn't good enough for you?" cavil. It's either disingenuous or intellectually lazy.
2) Art that we don't fully understand is not meant to belittle us. I have never been able to make much sense of what's going on in that one bit of Act II of Nixon in China but I'm pretty sure Peter Sellars and Alice Goodman are not sitting in a bar somewhere laughing about me. Actually Alice Goodman is now a priest or something so maybe she is not allowed to drink in the first place. I don't really know the rules.
3) It is possible to have good ideas for directing opera without having a musicologist's understanding of the score or decades of experience in opera. Purely subjective example here, but Mark Morris is musically literate enough that he has conducted an orchestra, and if you ask me, his Orfeo shows no evidence of an aesthetic connection with the work outside of the dance sections and no evident feel for coherent stage pictures on the level of place as opposed to person. Whereas I don't believe Anthony Minghella was even a musician, and I'm fairly certain Butterfly was his first opera, and it remains the finest production perhaps of the decade, certainly of the Gelb era so far.
4) It is not a slippery slope from doing a radical restaging to rewriting your beloved opera. That is really not likely to happen. I'm sure someone did it somewhere, sometime...like gerbilling! That does not mean you need to hide at home lest someone sneak up on you with a rodent/a version of Andrea Chenier where the text has been replaced by Dadaist found poetry from the C section of the Pittsburgh phone book.
and of course
5) That old production you are so fond of is not the embodiment of the composer's wishes. Nothing is, and nothing should be. I have already bitched about this but I'll say a few words more: performed art is dynamic and involves interpretation. That old production of La Gioconda you love loses none of its creaky charm and will be fondly remembered even if someone decides maybe there are other ways Gioconda might look.
I get that this probably sounds preachy. If you feel preached at and are thus turned off and the more entrenched in your traditionalism, then this was a stupid thing to write. Fortunately, the seven people who read this tend to agree with me on this kind of thing, so I think no harm is done.
2) Art that we don't fully understand is not meant to belittle us. I have never been able to make much sense of what's going on in that one bit of Act II of Nixon in China but I'm pretty sure Peter Sellars and Alice Goodman are not sitting in a bar somewhere laughing about me. Actually Alice Goodman is now a priest or something so maybe she is not allowed to drink in the first place. I don't really know the rules.
3) It is possible to have good ideas for directing opera without having a musicologist's understanding of the score or decades of experience in opera. Purely subjective example here, but Mark Morris is musically literate enough that he has conducted an orchestra, and if you ask me, his Orfeo shows no evidence of an aesthetic connection with the work outside of the dance sections and no evident feel for coherent stage pictures on the level of place as opposed to person. Whereas I don't believe Anthony Minghella was even a musician, and I'm fairly certain Butterfly was his first opera, and it remains the finest production perhaps of the decade, certainly of the Gelb era so far.
4) It is not a slippery slope from doing a radical restaging to rewriting your beloved opera. That is really not likely to happen. I'm sure someone did it somewhere, sometime...like gerbilling! That does not mean you need to hide at home lest someone sneak up on you with a rodent/a version of Andrea Chenier where the text has been replaced by Dadaist found poetry from the C section of the Pittsburgh phone book.
and of course
5) That old production you are so fond of is not the embodiment of the composer's wishes. Nothing is, and nothing should be. I have already bitched about this but I'll say a few words more: performed art is dynamic and involves interpretation. That old production of La Gioconda you love loses none of its creaky charm and will be fondly remembered even if someone decides maybe there are other ways Gioconda might look.
I get that this probably sounds preachy. If you feel preached at and are thus turned off and the more entrenched in your traditionalism, then this was a stupid thing to write. Fortunately, the seven people who read this tend to agree with me on this kind of thing, so I think no harm is done.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Candle shtick
The thing is it's always a mistake not to dump everything out of the, uh, vast basin of my brain immediately upon returning to my palazzo, because the next day it's sort of like "right, so there were a few famous people and then everyone got vocally upset for reasons I don't wholly understand. The End." But here goes.
Remember that time the Met put on a not particularly reverent production of an Italian opera heartily beloved by the kind of opera fans who refer to 19th century art song singers by their first name and expect you to know who they're talking about and this production was recieved as shocking and insulting instead of what it actually was which was inept more than anything and the opera fans a few clauses back got up in the production team's grill insofar as that is possible from a great distance which basically meant howling their disapproval like somewhat less masculine football fans?
Because that happened again. But much, much louder, and earlier in onset. We knew there was trouble a-brewin' when there was scattered howling after Act II. Um, there was also scattered howling in Act II. More on that. But here I am going to be the worst opera blogger ever and, am I going to be this tiresome? I am. I'm gonna quote myself. Because things happen first at Parterre, naturally, and one of these was an exhaustive, or at least exahusting, discussion of whether or not it is kosher for directors to get all "oh yes I did" about what I'm going to go ahead and label "authorial intent" and then tilt my head in such a way that you know I am not a finger-quotes kind of gal but distancing myself from the idea nonetheless. Also in such a way that you can see my new haircut. Thanks, yeah, just some pomade. No, I like Mad Men ok but I'm not trying to look like him. Much.
See the problem here is that Tosca, like many operas, has some traditions you are not allowed to fuck with*. Don't fuck with the candles and don't fuck with the jump would be two good rules for not getting pelted with verbal tomatos when you're putting on Tosca. Luc Bondy fucked with both of these, as you have almost doubtless read. And a few more things, besides, but I think these were what you'd call the "top charge" if your day job involved reading people's rap sheets. Anyway I'm pretty sure these are the two that got him in trouble.
So how Act II ends is...actually, wait, how Act II begins is Scarpia is helling it up with some pretty hilarious silent-character hookers, and this part is lame in a dozen ways and could stand to be rethunk and edited out. They're part of the "a little from this era; a little from that era" aesthetic that even I find hard to make much sense of. I think they're wearing leg-warmers. Then the usual stuff happens--and I really do think it's worth noting the difference between taking liberties with details and taking liberties with substance, though I'd probably be fine with the latter in some cases. But it's a distinction that's jettisoned in this conversation quite often and it bugs me.
For instance how Act II ends is that Tosca, having dispatched Scarpia and yelled the name of a minor opera blogger, fails to engage in century-old candle schtick because there are no candles onstage (to judge by the other stuff onstage, this may be because Ikea wasn't making candlesticks that season.) Instead she goes to the window, visibly considers taking a header an act early and heading back to the hotel for some delicious Finnish food made with herring and umlauts, and once she's decided against that, she picks up Attavanti's fan and slowly fans herself in a rather "oh shit" manner. That's it. That's where it all turned into a giant slap in the face for some.
A sensible objection I heard voiced is that she should be getting the hell out of there since she just murdered the big guy, but I'm pretty sure the point of the entire way the scene is played is to give us a Tosca who is really derailed by what she's just done and not thinking straight, which is valid. It's not the standard read of the scene, of course. But here's where I start feeling like this is all a bunch of inchoate indignation, anger at this production standing in for other woes, well familiar now from the tempest in a teapot we put up our umbrellas for every few years. To those who find this Tosca wrong by virtue of being so radical I want to say:
[begin recycling text from tl;dr comments section argument!] It’s just such an obvious fallacy that there’s this platonic ideal of exactly how everything should go in a production that matches the composer’s infitely detailed intentions. Like it or not, we know some of what a composer intended and not the rest. Music and text tell us a good deal and also leave a good deal up to others to interpret. The rest of what people espouse when they get hot under the collar about authorial intent is largely a projection of what they want to see.
Look, performed arts are collaborative, and there’s no way around it. If you’re unable to cope with the idea of consuming art that is not one person’s unadulterated vision, go to a gallery or read a book (and try to forget that some ambiguity creeps in even there, because you may not percieve the work as the author intended it.)
The traditionalists here frame this in terms of right and wrong, which leads to the conclusion that, choosing an example already discussed, the crowds that sell out a house to see the once-reviled Wilson Lohengrin are wrong in what they like and want. This would be insulting if it weren’t so flimsily argued.
If I were to take issue with some of the productions of recent years, it might be that their vision is too much of a compromise. The Wilson Lohengrin succeeds because it has an unmistakeable point of view and the strength of its convictions. The Bondy Tosca is not wrong for being radical; it’s flawed (with some strenghts as well) for not having “face”–it could be a traditional production with stronger personregie or a more thorough rethinking that didn’t basically cleave to audience expectations. Either would be better, though it’s not awful as it is. [end recycling]
And in fact, on this viewing (having gone to the open rehearsal as well), I find the lack of vision more troubling than I did before. There isn't a lot going on here beyond one or two memorable tableaux. The changes that are made are either insubstantial or, in a couple of cases, clumsy and uninteresting (the problem with having Scarpia get to second base with the Virgin Mary isn't that it might shock good churchgoing folk. It's that it's king of an obvious idea and hard to stage in a way that isn't humorous.)
There isn't a lot of insight on display and one doesn't feel the singers were steered toward a good deal of psychological detail beyond their own instincts...Mattila is doing her usual thing that you either love or hate, Gagnidze puts a lot into his sung characterization and gamely goes through some formulaic "Scarpia's real gross" motions that bring nothing new, and Alvarez is a tenor. Maybe these deficiencies would be highlighted less on the familiar old comfy couch that is Zef's production instead of the mostly drab canvas of Bondy's physical setting. Me, I'm alright with it, if not enthusiastic. I'm preemptively bemused that, like last time with Sonnambula, this will make me look like the passionate champion of this production. Anyway, I liked a few of the bold gestures that were there and can live with the rest as long as the singing is good?
Say, Maury. Was the singing good?
The singing was good. In some cases it was extra special good. Starting with the most provisionally good...
There is no way around the fact that Tosca is not now and probably was never truly Mattila's role. The voice isn't shaped right, and all her intense musicality in the things she's great in just doesn't seem to translate into a genuine feel for how to shape a phrase of Italian opera. It's not a disaster on that count, but it's not a major achievement. And the chalky thing that goes on in the top few notes of her voice just does not work out in this material, even though it's only a real problem a couple of times. It's a piece of bad luck, I guess, but one of those times is the central vocal moment of the opera, the last phrase of "Vissi d'darte." You can scream the C in the cantata, and you can scream the C after Mario gets dragged off, and you can kind of scream the whatever-that-note-is when she's regaling Mario with the one about the time she killed Scarpia, but it is a big drag if you have to shout the end of the aria. By force of will, she made the notes happen, but they were not enjoyable listening. All that said, she made a certain amount of the role her own, chested the hell out of the chest parts, and created a coherent and distinctive character, by no stretch the generalized diva you often get. I have to score it as an interesting mistake with moments of real success in it.
It didn't help her that she was singing with/against Marcelo Alvarez, who suddenly deserves to be the house's go-to guy for Puccini. I don't remember being wholly convinced by his Manrico, though I liked it, but after a nervous start with some chopping away at the phrases of "Recondita armonia," Alvarez did pretty much everything right, including some sobbing tenorizing I have missed in recent years, but more prominently just a lot of punch in his phrasing and a big league large-lyric-or-hell-maybe-spinto sound. I guess I'm a German-opera queen at heart, because "E lucevan" tends to find me mentally alphabetizing the valkyries and things like that, but last night after a couple of phrases I was practically humming along. Like those people we wish would die in a fire.
George Gagnidze was, ok, actually my favorite. And not just because he was a humble cover, called upon to step into the deeply inadequate shoes of Juha Uusitalo, who withdrew on account of why did they hire him in the first place. Sitting in Fam Circ box because I'm just not that fancy, it was sometimes hard to hear him because of the orch/singer balance up there, but another balance was more felicitous, that of musical line and vocal characterization. Scarpia is tough on that count, right? You have to get it across that you're everything along the spectrum from morally irredeemable to icky without turning the role into Wozzeck on one hand or Benoît on the other. Gagnidze was, first of all, game for all the OTT chazzerei Bondy demanded of him as a physical actor, and at the same time conveyed the character's squickogenic nature with vocal shadings but without resorting to the barking you do sometimes hear. I hope he's signed up for more at the Met, and not just covering, as I'd love to hear him again. (I'm not terrifically optimistic about this, thinking about some covers who have seriously saved the Met's bacon in stuff like Tristan and Agyptische Helena and not exactly been handed the keys to the city.)
Levine continues to get a hero's welcome from the minute he steps out of that dark, mysterious hallway that turns out to come out somewhere near the cafeteria, so much for mystery. As well he should, having made the Met's orchestra what it is. But for the sake of nuance, it is worth admitting that there's stuff that doesn't constitute his A game, and I'd include Tosca on that list of stuff. The first act is, what...saggy, I'd say. The second is driven and rather dramatic, and the third is just too much of too much. This music is already pretty fromageous and Levine just draws it out to the point that that one really hot cellist has to play that one solo in a way that is rather shameless. A sense of restraint is sometimes the perfect garnish for schmaltz. One begins to want to sneak into James Levine's bathroom and add to the list of affirmations on his mirror, "Not Everything Is Parsifal."
Oh, by the way, as long as I'm somehow miraculously still typing, Bondy fucked with the jump, and I totally forgot to say that. Instead of singing her big diva line and hitting the road, Mattila got to hang around on the staircase for a bit, almost coquettishly taunting the Keystone Cops (srsly, what is up with having Spoletta keep falling on his ass?) before making the production's one real reference to Hitchcock, semi-diagetically, running into the turret dealio where (I am told) one of the go go girls from Act II, done up in her wig, got launched out halfway into space, presumably on some kind of harness for a brief freeze frame, rather arresting in my book but I guess appalling if you like your Tosca old-school. The rest of the act was left alone, I guess, normal e lucevan, normal mock-mock** execution, maybe a little extra crazy for Tosca while she's giving Cav the recap.
Next up: Barbiere w/ Banks + DiDonato, may or may not blog it.
A propos de rien, it is weirdly tempting to post a picture of me leaning against the ballustrade of the central staircase, trying like hell to look posh, because about 12% less of me went to the opera this season than last and I am feeling vain about it and you'd all, those of you who have not died of old age reading this far, be more or less obligated to make noises to the effect of "Lookin' good, Maur!" because you're nice people, well raised, and presumably competent liars when the need arises. Curse that wretched veil of secrecy!
CELEBRITY ADDENDUM: Not a highly starry year, it seemed to me. Martha Stewart was there as usual, looking swell as always, and gave some nice quotes about opera to the press. Albanese made an appearance and was cheered, which I like even though I can't listen to her recordings. Fleming, of course. Harvey Feirstein, yay. Leelee Sobieski,I have read, though I didn't see her. This woman got photographed a lot and I'm curious who she is but guessing only people ten years younger than me know. [eta: Chanel Iman, a model. eta again: nope, Joy Bryant.] I'm not sure who else, actually.
*unless you are. Let's say you're a frumpy soprano who is believed to carry on THE SACRED FLAME OF ITALIAN SINGING. In that case, you are allowed to ad lib all this unwritten "mea culpa" stuff in the same scene and are not ridiculed, except occasionally by me.
**Who's there?
Remember that time the Met put on a not particularly reverent production of an Italian opera heartily beloved by the kind of opera fans who refer to 19th century art song singers by their first name and expect you to know who they're talking about and this production was recieved as shocking and insulting instead of what it actually was which was inept more than anything and the opera fans a few clauses back got up in the production team's grill insofar as that is possible from a great distance which basically meant howling their disapproval like somewhat less masculine football fans?
Because that happened again. But much, much louder, and earlier in onset. We knew there was trouble a-brewin' when there was scattered howling after Act II. Um, there was also scattered howling in Act II. More on that. But here I am going to be the worst opera blogger ever and, am I going to be this tiresome? I am. I'm gonna quote myself. Because things happen first at Parterre, naturally, and one of these was an exhaustive, or at least exahusting, discussion of whether or not it is kosher for directors to get all "oh yes I did" about what I'm going to go ahead and label "authorial intent" and then tilt my head in such a way that you know I am not a finger-quotes kind of gal but distancing myself from the idea nonetheless. Also in such a way that you can see my new haircut. Thanks, yeah, just some pomade. No, I like Mad Men ok but I'm not trying to look like him. Much.
See the problem here is that Tosca, like many operas, has some traditions you are not allowed to fuck with*. Don't fuck with the candles and don't fuck with the jump would be two good rules for not getting pelted with verbal tomatos when you're putting on Tosca. Luc Bondy fucked with both of these, as you have almost doubtless read. And a few more things, besides, but I think these were what you'd call the "top charge" if your day job involved reading people's rap sheets. Anyway I'm pretty sure these are the two that got him in trouble.
So how Act II ends is...actually, wait, how Act II begins is Scarpia is helling it up with some pretty hilarious silent-character hookers, and this part is lame in a dozen ways and could stand to be rethunk and edited out. They're part of the "a little from this era; a little from that era" aesthetic that even I find hard to make much sense of. I think they're wearing leg-warmers. Then the usual stuff happens--and I really do think it's worth noting the difference between taking liberties with details and taking liberties with substance, though I'd probably be fine with the latter in some cases. But it's a distinction that's jettisoned in this conversation quite often and it bugs me.
For instance how Act II ends is that Tosca, having dispatched Scarpia and yelled the name of a minor opera blogger, fails to engage in century-old candle schtick because there are no candles onstage (to judge by the other stuff onstage, this may be because Ikea wasn't making candlesticks that season.) Instead she goes to the window, visibly considers taking a header an act early and heading back to the hotel for some delicious Finnish food made with herring and umlauts, and once she's decided against that, she picks up Attavanti's fan and slowly fans herself in a rather "oh shit" manner. That's it. That's where it all turned into a giant slap in the face for some.
A sensible objection I heard voiced is that she should be getting the hell out of there since she just murdered the big guy, but I'm pretty sure the point of the entire way the scene is played is to give us a Tosca who is really derailed by what she's just done and not thinking straight, which is valid. It's not the standard read of the scene, of course. But here's where I start feeling like this is all a bunch of inchoate indignation, anger at this production standing in for other woes, well familiar now from the tempest in a teapot we put up our umbrellas for every few years. To those who find this Tosca wrong by virtue of being so radical I want to say:
[begin recycling text from tl;dr comments section argument!] It’s just such an obvious fallacy that there’s this platonic ideal of exactly how everything should go in a production that matches the composer’s infitely detailed intentions. Like it or not, we know some of what a composer intended and not the rest. Music and text tell us a good deal and also leave a good deal up to others to interpret. The rest of what people espouse when they get hot under the collar about authorial intent is largely a projection of what they want to see.
Look, performed arts are collaborative, and there’s no way around it. If you’re unable to cope with the idea of consuming art that is not one person’s unadulterated vision, go to a gallery or read a book (and try to forget that some ambiguity creeps in even there, because you may not percieve the work as the author intended it.)
The traditionalists here frame this in terms of right and wrong, which leads to the conclusion that, choosing an example already discussed, the crowds that sell out a house to see the once-reviled Wilson Lohengrin are wrong in what they like and want. This would be insulting if it weren’t so flimsily argued.
If I were to take issue with some of the productions of recent years, it might be that their vision is too much of a compromise. The Wilson Lohengrin succeeds because it has an unmistakeable point of view and the strength of its convictions. The Bondy Tosca is not wrong for being radical; it’s flawed (with some strenghts as well) for not having “face”–it could be a traditional production with stronger personregie or a more thorough rethinking that didn’t basically cleave to audience expectations. Either would be better, though it’s not awful as it is. [end recycling]
And in fact, on this viewing (having gone to the open rehearsal as well), I find the lack of vision more troubling than I did before. There isn't a lot going on here beyond one or two memorable tableaux. The changes that are made are either insubstantial or, in a couple of cases, clumsy and uninteresting (the problem with having Scarpia get to second base with the Virgin Mary isn't that it might shock good churchgoing folk. It's that it's king of an obvious idea and hard to stage in a way that isn't humorous.)
There isn't a lot of insight on display and one doesn't feel the singers were steered toward a good deal of psychological detail beyond their own instincts...Mattila is doing her usual thing that you either love or hate, Gagnidze puts a lot into his sung characterization and gamely goes through some formulaic "Scarpia's real gross" motions that bring nothing new, and Alvarez is a tenor. Maybe these deficiencies would be highlighted less on the familiar old comfy couch that is Zef's production instead of the mostly drab canvas of Bondy's physical setting. Me, I'm alright with it, if not enthusiastic. I'm preemptively bemused that, like last time with Sonnambula, this will make me look like the passionate champion of this production. Anyway, I liked a few of the bold gestures that were there and can live with the rest as long as the singing is good?
Say, Maury. Was the singing good?
The singing was good. In some cases it was extra special good. Starting with the most provisionally good...
There is no way around the fact that Tosca is not now and probably was never truly Mattila's role. The voice isn't shaped right, and all her intense musicality in the things she's great in just doesn't seem to translate into a genuine feel for how to shape a phrase of Italian opera. It's not a disaster on that count, but it's not a major achievement. And the chalky thing that goes on in the top few notes of her voice just does not work out in this material, even though it's only a real problem a couple of times. It's a piece of bad luck, I guess, but one of those times is the central vocal moment of the opera, the last phrase of "Vissi d'darte." You can scream the C in the cantata, and you can scream the C after Mario gets dragged off, and you can kind of scream the whatever-that-note-is when she's regaling Mario with the one about the time she killed Scarpia, but it is a big drag if you have to shout the end of the aria. By force of will, she made the notes happen, but they were not enjoyable listening. All that said, she made a certain amount of the role her own, chested the hell out of the chest parts, and created a coherent and distinctive character, by no stretch the generalized diva you often get. I have to score it as an interesting mistake with moments of real success in it.
It didn't help her that she was singing with/against Marcelo Alvarez, who suddenly deserves to be the house's go-to guy for Puccini. I don't remember being wholly convinced by his Manrico, though I liked it, but after a nervous start with some chopping away at the phrases of "Recondita armonia," Alvarez did pretty much everything right, including some sobbing tenorizing I have missed in recent years, but more prominently just a lot of punch in his phrasing and a big league large-lyric-or-hell-maybe-spinto sound. I guess I'm a German-opera queen at heart, because "E lucevan" tends to find me mentally alphabetizing the valkyries and things like that, but last night after a couple of phrases I was practically humming along. Like those people we wish would die in a fire.
George Gagnidze was, ok, actually my favorite. And not just because he was a humble cover, called upon to step into the deeply inadequate shoes of Juha Uusitalo, who withdrew on account of why did they hire him in the first place. Sitting in Fam Circ box because I'm just not that fancy, it was sometimes hard to hear him because of the orch/singer balance up there, but another balance was more felicitous, that of musical line and vocal characterization. Scarpia is tough on that count, right? You have to get it across that you're everything along the spectrum from morally irredeemable to icky without turning the role into Wozzeck on one hand or Benoît on the other. Gagnidze was, first of all, game for all the OTT chazzerei Bondy demanded of him as a physical actor, and at the same time conveyed the character's squickogenic nature with vocal shadings but without resorting to the barking you do sometimes hear. I hope he's signed up for more at the Met, and not just covering, as I'd love to hear him again. (I'm not terrifically optimistic about this, thinking about some covers who have seriously saved the Met's bacon in stuff like Tristan and Agyptische Helena and not exactly been handed the keys to the city.)
Levine continues to get a hero's welcome from the minute he steps out of that dark, mysterious hallway that turns out to come out somewhere near the cafeteria, so much for mystery. As well he should, having made the Met's orchestra what it is. But for the sake of nuance, it is worth admitting that there's stuff that doesn't constitute his A game, and I'd include Tosca on that list of stuff. The first act is, what...saggy, I'd say. The second is driven and rather dramatic, and the third is just too much of too much. This music is already pretty fromageous and Levine just draws it out to the point that that one really hot cellist has to play that one solo in a way that is rather shameless. A sense of restraint is sometimes the perfect garnish for schmaltz. One begins to want to sneak into James Levine's bathroom and add to the list of affirmations on his mirror, "Not Everything Is Parsifal."
Oh, by the way, as long as I'm somehow miraculously still typing, Bondy fucked with the jump, and I totally forgot to say that. Instead of singing her big diva line and hitting the road, Mattila got to hang around on the staircase for a bit, almost coquettishly taunting the Keystone Cops (srsly, what is up with having Spoletta keep falling on his ass?) before making the production's one real reference to Hitchcock, semi-diagetically, running into the turret dealio where (I am told) one of the go go girls from Act II, done up in her wig, got launched out halfway into space, presumably on some kind of harness for a brief freeze frame, rather arresting in my book but I guess appalling if you like your Tosca old-school. The rest of the act was left alone, I guess, normal e lucevan, normal mock-mock** execution, maybe a little extra crazy for Tosca while she's giving Cav the recap.
Next up: Barbiere w/ Banks + DiDonato, may or may not blog it.
A propos de rien, it is weirdly tempting to post a picture of me leaning against the ballustrade of the central staircase, trying like hell to look posh, because about 12% less of me went to the opera this season than last and I am feeling vain about it and you'd all, those of you who have not died of old age reading this far, be more or less obligated to make noises to the effect of "Lookin' good, Maur!" because you're nice people, well raised, and presumably competent liars when the need arises. Curse that wretched veil of secrecy!
CELEBRITY ADDENDUM: Not a highly starry year, it seemed to me. Martha Stewart was there as usual, looking swell as always, and gave some nice quotes about opera to the press. Albanese made an appearance and was cheered, which I like even though I can't listen to her recordings. Fleming, of course. Harvey Feirstein, yay. Leelee Sobieski,I have read, though I didn't see her. This woman got photographed a lot and I'm curious who she is but guessing only people ten years younger than me know. [eta: Chanel Iman, a model. eta again: nope, Joy Bryant.] I'm not sure who else, actually.
*unless you are. Let's say you're a frumpy soprano who is believed to carry on THE SACRED FLAME OF ITALIAN SINGING. In that case, you are allowed to ad lib all this unwritten "mea culpa" stuff in the same scene and are not ridiculed, except occasionally by me.
**Who's there?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Another show
Perhaps a bit of liveblogging now that I'm an iPhone douchebag. This will depend on how much like dialup the network is acting. So far, one has only the sense things are scaled back a bit from last year.
5:53 have already heard the name Zinka Milanov invoked. Here we go with all this.
Ok liveblogging did not so much happen. More tomorrow. The headline is of course an audience reaction that
makes last year's Sonnambula snit look like a chorus of "Hello, Dolly!"
5:53 have already heard the name Zinka Milanov invoked. Here we go with all this.
Ok liveblogging did not so much happen. More tomorrow. The headline is of course an audience reaction that
makes last year's Sonnambula snit look like a chorus of "Hello, Dolly!"
Monday, September 14, 2009
Last to get the joke
Probably a billion people already said this but I finally realized what this
reminds me of.
reminds me of.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Autocorrect Fail!
My text message to Jonathan von Wellsung, hat tip to the programmers of iPhone autocorrect:
It is Latoya Mattila's birthday!
Pure fail, and yet pure win...
It is Latoya Mattila's birthday!
Pure fail, and yet pure win...
Friday, September 04, 2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
One for the "why not here?!" files
Elizabeth Connell in the Siegfried finale. MFI seal of enthusiastic approval goes here.
ETA: that's kind of the rhetorical "why" in the subject line, you will have gathered. She's not what you'd be forced, these days, to call "cinematic." On the other hand, Wagner sells out no matter what, or anyway the Ring and Tristan do, so it's not like any particular campaign need be waged to lure the young and unsuspecting into the opera house with the promise of great hair and abs...
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Asked and answered
I don't know, is it considered bad blogging to quote comments from elsewhere if they were totally excellent and I want everyone to read them?
So it starts with a revealing post with complex implications at Parterre about the fellow who is funding I guess the overhaul of the State Theater, who turns out to be a teabag toting wingnut. (Me, I've always said I'd go libertarian if I weren't so darn fond of roads, hospitals, public schools and universities, the post office &c. &c. &c. I've also been known to say libertarianism is just anarchism with so much hedging you can't even get a decent punk album out of it. That's my libertarianism set. I'll be here all week.)
Anylez...people quickly get up in arms because die Heilige Kunst shouldn't be sullied by mean, dirty politics, and I guess someone with the nom de blogge of javier said "Anyway, opera and politics don't mix," because Will, who we suppose to be Will of Designer Blog who also comments here knocked it out of the park, and I'm gonna make you read it:
Well, it doesn't get much more thorough than that.
It is a mess of a topic. Should we just be grateful of any money thrown at our pet art regardless of the source? I mean I don't think I'm on board with the commenter who said "NYC Opera and Ballet will not be getting a cent of my money," though I respect his conviction. It's worth talking about precisely because it's not straightforward, and precisely because there is some broad impulse not to talk about it. And yes, I also find it interesting to see the wingnuts coming out of the woodwork when something like this comes up. You assume that art broadens people. You are, it would seem, mistaken.
So it starts with a revealing post with complex implications at Parterre about the fellow who is funding I guess the overhaul of the State Theater, who turns out to be a teabag toting wingnut. (Me, I've always said I'd go libertarian if I weren't so darn fond of roads, hospitals, public schools and universities, the post office &c. &c. &c. I've also been known to say libertarianism is just anarchism with so much hedging you can't even get a decent punk album out of it. That's my libertarianism set. I'll be here all week.)
Anylez...people quickly get up in arms because die Heilige Kunst shouldn't be sullied by mean, dirty politics, and I guess someone with the nom de blogge of javier said "Anyway, opera and politics don't mix," because Will, who we suppose to be Will of Designer Blog who also comments here knocked it out of the park, and I'm gonna make you read it:
When you get to heaven, javier, look up Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Kurt Weill, and Daniel Francois Esprit Auber, among many others, and mention your little fantasy to them.
Be prepared for gales of laughter.
Mozart deliberately conspired with da Ponte to put a play that had been banned in Paris the day after its premiere for its political content onto the opera stage in Vienna. Play and opera are both inflamatory political/social statements.
Verdi’s Risorgimento operas from early in his career ignited demonstrations and riots and were filled with coded references to the Austrian occupation of northern Italy. If you go to Atilla at the MET next season, listen for Ezio’s line “Avrai tu l’universo; resti l’Italia a me! which set off pandemonium in the theaters.
Wagner was an immensely political composer on and off stage–and I am NOT referring to what was done with his operas long after his death by Hitler and his gang. OK, with Weill I AM referring to Hitler and his gang, via Weill’s social and political protest in so many of his works.
And Auber, composer of what is arguably the first of the great French Grand Operas–what could possibly be political in his tale of a mute girl in love? Only that its run in Brussels caused riots that brought down the Belgian monarchy.
It’s amazing that people still insist that politics must NEVER be mixed with art, particularly “high and refined” arts like opera as if it pollutes them. All the arts are steeped in politics and have been. That’s why when Dictators seize countries, the arts are amont the first things they clamp down on.
Well, it doesn't get much more thorough than that.
It is a mess of a topic. Should we just be grateful of any money thrown at our pet art regardless of the source? I mean I don't think I'm on board with the commenter who said "NYC Opera and Ballet will not be getting a cent of my money," though I respect his conviction. It's worth talking about precisely because it's not straightforward, and precisely because there is some broad impulse not to talk about it. And yes, I also find it interesting to see the wingnuts coming out of the woodwork when something like this comes up. You assume that art broadens people. You are, it would seem, mistaken.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
FWIW
The increasingly afterthoughtish-feeling Glimmerglass Opera (of the neato performance space, physical environs out of a fucking 19th c. painting, palpable lack of relevance) has announced 2010. You're probably sitting down because you're at a computer, but you don't really need to be.
It can be a fun parlour game* to make up swell Glimmerglass seasons because there's something of a formula: 1 Baroque, 1 20th C. usually in English, 1 warhorse, and a wild card, maybe Mozart or a musical. (There should be a Maybe Mozart festival. You show up and they're like "Nah, we weren't in the mood for L'Oca del Cairo after all. Tonight's Harry Partch. I think they're doing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik across town at Partially Partch if you've got cab fare.")
One thing you can count on in recent years, due to unfortunate economic realities, is a production that can be staffed wholly with the pack of hungry young things that make up the Young American Artist Program. This year, that will be The Tender Land, which I guess was written for young singers, so that's convenient and all. I have to say I've never met anyone who lamented the infrequency with which The Tender Land pops up at opera companies but maybe it's just so musically satisfying it only has to be done once in a while. You never know.
To someone-or-other's credit, the world's most photographed production of Tosca is not being pulled out of the retirement one assumes it has, by default, kinda entered as the buzzards circle around City Opera, twittering at one another "Possible free meal in the west 60's #carrion." A new one will take its place, and it actually is intriguing to wonder what they'll do casting-wise there.
During the aforementioned Tosca, they hired a pretty, petite, young singer as Tosca, and everyone in the company did kind of a two-month long version of the old Soprano joke (Q: How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb? A: One to change it and one to say "really it was too high for her," should she fall off the ladder) except in this case all they could do was talk about how she was going to break her medium-sized voice on Tosca. It's possible she did, actually...she was booked for some stuff like Salome and more Toscas and then for not much. She really put a lot into the performance, though, so it's always felt sort of sad to me. Anyway then they got this tall, menacing-looking Italian without so very much voice for Scarpia and a tenor with an absolute monster of a sound (one vocal agent present noted that the fellow was louder than Heppner, and indeed when he busted out his "Vittoria!" in early rehearsals, astonished glances flew about the high school auditorium as the walls very nearly shook), and all of it added up to something pretty compelling, but none of them sings a lot that I've seen, so whatever. Einmal ist nicht keinmal, and I still think back on it fondly.
Figaro is the third one up next year, and what is there to say about that? Figaro is always cause for some happiness and rarely cause for much.
Tolomeo rounds things off. Handel is just the kind of thing that works best at Glimmerglass, the kind of opera it's actually a shame to see in a larger house, and most houses are that. Countertenors don't have to push and on nights when they throw open the sides of the theater to the night air, there's an undeniable enchantment in the delicate intimacy in those arias, sung with the finesse the space affords. One wonders if the house style of Handel productions is still in full swing, for better and sometimes worse, full of imagery that puts a few toes across the border between whimsical and dumb.
*and yet I don't feel like doing it just now. Feel free to play along at home.
p.s. things I have bailed on this summer include Semiramide (it turned out they were doing the full Ramide and between that and the weather forecast, I envisioned a soggy slog through a few too many roulades) and Les Huguenots, which fell from my schedule due to concerns of distance and tedium.
p.p.s. Hey do you need some salt? Because here's a grain: I do think Glimmerglass is not very interesting these days, but I'd be an ass to write something overwhelmingly sour like this and not acknowledge that I had professional dealings there many years ago and met probably four of the top five worst people I've ever met anywhere in terms of, oh, everything (though I met some lovelies, too...it's just that they weren't running the company/in a position to sap my life force.) So while I'll, on the other hand, always have a certain misty remembrances you don't get to hear about, I can never be quite fair to Glimmerglass, the Little Company that Occasionally Could.
It can be a fun parlour game* to make up swell Glimmerglass seasons because there's something of a formula: 1 Baroque, 1 20th C. usually in English, 1 warhorse, and a wild card, maybe Mozart or a musical. (There should be a Maybe Mozart festival. You show up and they're like "Nah, we weren't in the mood for L'Oca del Cairo after all. Tonight's Harry Partch. I think they're doing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik across town at Partially Partch if you've got cab fare.")
One thing you can count on in recent years, due to unfortunate economic realities, is a production that can be staffed wholly with the pack of hungry young things that make up the Young American Artist Program. This year, that will be The Tender Land, which I guess was written for young singers, so that's convenient and all. I have to say I've never met anyone who lamented the infrequency with which The Tender Land pops up at opera companies but maybe it's just so musically satisfying it only has to be done once in a while. You never know.
To someone-or-other's credit, the world's most photographed production of Tosca is not being pulled out of the retirement one assumes it has, by default, kinda entered as the buzzards circle around City Opera, twittering at one another "Possible free meal in the west 60's #carrion." A new one will take its place, and it actually is intriguing to wonder what they'll do casting-wise there.
During the aforementioned Tosca, they hired a pretty, petite, young singer as Tosca, and everyone in the company did kind of a two-month long version of the old Soprano joke (Q: How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb? A: One to change it and one to say "really it was too high for her," should she fall off the ladder) except in this case all they could do was talk about how she was going to break her medium-sized voice on Tosca. It's possible she did, actually...she was booked for some stuff like Salome and more Toscas and then for not much. She really put a lot into the performance, though, so it's always felt sort of sad to me. Anyway then they got this tall, menacing-looking Italian without so very much voice for Scarpia and a tenor with an absolute monster of a sound (one vocal agent present noted that the fellow was louder than Heppner, and indeed when he busted out his "Vittoria!" in early rehearsals, astonished glances flew about the high school auditorium as the walls very nearly shook), and all of it added up to something pretty compelling, but none of them sings a lot that I've seen, so whatever. Einmal ist nicht keinmal, and I still think back on it fondly.
Figaro is the third one up next year, and what is there to say about that? Figaro is always cause for some happiness and rarely cause for much.
Tolomeo rounds things off. Handel is just the kind of thing that works best at Glimmerglass, the kind of opera it's actually a shame to see in a larger house, and most houses are that. Countertenors don't have to push and on nights when they throw open the sides of the theater to the night air, there's an undeniable enchantment in the delicate intimacy in those arias, sung with the finesse the space affords. One wonders if the house style of Handel productions is still in full swing, for better and sometimes worse, full of imagery that puts a few toes across the border between whimsical and dumb.
*and yet I don't feel like doing it just now. Feel free to play along at home.
p.s. things I have bailed on this summer include Semiramide (it turned out they were doing the full Ramide and between that and the weather forecast, I envisioned a soggy slog through a few too many roulades) and Les Huguenots, which fell from my schedule due to concerns of distance and tedium.
p.p.s. Hey do you need some salt? Because here's a grain: I do think Glimmerglass is not very interesting these days, but I'd be an ass to write something overwhelmingly sour like this and not acknowledge that I had professional dealings there many years ago and met probably four of the top five worst people I've ever met anywhere in terms of, oh, everything (though I met some lovelies, too...it's just that they weren't running the company/in a position to sap my life force.) So while I'll, on the other hand, always have a certain misty remembrances you don't get to hear about, I can never be quite fair to Glimmerglass, the Little Company that Occasionally Could.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
frank martin--->lulz
Maury: poulenc + strauss/2=martin?
Maury: i think i mean mahler, not strauss
DSJ: maybe more Berg?
Maury: right on.
DSJ: he sprinkles his elegant neoclassicism with tone-rows.
Maury: it feels more immediately listener-friendly than berg
DSJ: yeah definitely
Maury: sorry, i actually really hate the game of "one hears echoes of puccini in the score." i am always turned off by reviews that do that.
DSJ: Well, you know, he's Swiss, so half French and half Austrian is about right
Maury: genau
Maury: great, i put "vin" and "herbe" in the search window and carla fucking bruni comes up
DSJ: Carla fucking Bruni fucking Sarkozy!
Maury: or vice versa
Maury: argh, it turns out i like her cover of "you belong to me." I am not sure how I feel about this.
DSJ: I wonder if... was it Nathan Gunn's??? Tom Waits cover is on YouTube
DSJ: lol HORRIBLE
Maury: what is this from?!
DSJ: his CROSSOVER ALBUM.
Maury: oh right
Maury: pass
DSJ: omgomgomg
DSJ: http://www.frankmartin.org/eng_s/eng_s_gastboek.html
DSJ: (WHAT?????)
Maury: hee hee hee hee hee
DSJ: DEAR MADAME MARTIN
Maury: “Please don't ask questions to which the answers can be found on this site.”
Maury: [redacted]: not on the site.
DSJ: SERIOUSLY
Maury: oh nevermind, it's under "concise biography"
DSJ: how can I not send obscene mail to Mme Martin
Maury: oh nevermind again, that says 12 tone
Maury: i think i mean mahler, not strauss
DSJ: maybe more Berg?
Maury: right on.
DSJ: he sprinkles his elegant neoclassicism with tone-rows.
Maury: it feels more immediately listener-friendly than berg
DSJ: yeah definitely
Maury: sorry, i actually really hate the game of "one hears echoes of puccini in the score." i am always turned off by reviews that do that.
DSJ: Well, you know, he's Swiss, so half French and half Austrian is about right
Maury: genau
Maury: great, i put "vin" and "herbe" in the search window and carla fucking bruni comes up
DSJ: Carla fucking Bruni fucking Sarkozy!
Maury: or vice versa
Maury: argh, it turns out i like her cover of "you belong to me." I am not sure how I feel about this.
DSJ: I wonder if... was it Nathan Gunn's??? Tom Waits cover is on YouTube
DSJ: lol HORRIBLE
Maury: what is this from?!
DSJ: his CROSSOVER ALBUM.
Maury: oh right
Maury: pass
DSJ: omgomgomg
DSJ: http://www.frankmartin.org/eng_s/eng_s_gastboek.html
DSJ: (WHAT?????)
Maury: hee hee hee hee hee
DSJ: DEAR MADAME MARTIN
Maury: “Please don't ask questions to which the answers can be found on this site.”
Maury: [redacted]: not on the site.
DSJ: SERIOUSLY
Maury: oh nevermind, it's under "concise biography"
DSJ: how can I not send obscene mail to Mme Martin
Maury: oh nevermind again, that says 12 tone
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
On not bothering to bring the mountain to Mohammed
Fragment of a comment from "Pelleas", chez Parterre, regarding Rufus Wainwright's "bringing opera to people who normally wouldn’t consider listening to it,"
There's something not just correct but, I think, significant in this sentiment, and as soon as I work out what it is, you'll know. This is me thinking out loud.
Say, do other people known by their friends for being an opera fan get the question "what should I listen to if I want to get into opera?" a lot? Because I do. And, not wholly for the sake of being an asshole, what I sometimes say is, "if you're not into opera, there may be a very good reason." Which is to say: it's not for everyone.
What I'm questioning, I guess, is the very idea of "bringing audiences to opera"--whether it happens at all, and whether it's worth all the pontification that goes on around whether Rufus Wainwright/Andrea Bocelli/the Muppets/&c. &c. &c. will get people to like opera. I'm not sure it ever happens that way. From time to time some appealing face of opera pops up in broader culture, but it seems to be a self-contained thing.
If you liked the blue diva in The Fifth Element, chances are really not that awfully great that you'd be excited by the rest of Lucia. If you were inspired by Paul Potts singing "Nessun dorma," I might speculate while firmly refusing to discuss the merits of his performance that what you liked was largely backstory and novelty and, sure, you might love opera, but chances are good you wouldn't, and Paul Potts is not a good weathervane.
Think of the scene in The Last Picture Show where all an earnest teacher's love of Keats means nothing to his students, because the other parts of their lives aren't fertile soil for a love of poetry. Except take some of the condescension out of that, because a love of opera, like the love of poetry, does not make you a better person. Operaphilia in addition to the love of, say, Gene Autrey does make you a broader, more interesting person, but that's a two-way street, a clap that takes two hands.
None of this has much to do with RW's day-in-the-life-of-a-diva opera, on which I can't comment because I've only heard the excerpt played on Parterre. I didn't love or hate it, though I find Wainwright's crooning a little uncomfortable to witness when it's not in music written with croon in the blueprints (how can I hate on "Poses" when I listened to it obsessively for a year?) but then I'm thinking of his youtube-documented Berlioz, and not his opera, which may very well have built-in croon.
Oh but ok, so take the Berlioz. Someone hears those, thinks "what Rufus likes, I may like," and buys Steber's ravishing trip through those songs with Mitropoulos. Yet again, I think that's not going anywhere. It's just that music is not always a continuum of listener-suitability. Opera is really specific. Opera is discrete. (That does not mean it refuses to send its picture, certain gheis.)
All that's left to do, then, is for me to suggest how new audiences are to be found so opera doesn't die if Sheryl Crow singing "La ci darem la mano" with Pavarotti* (count the problems!) isn't going to do the trick. Obviously, I have no fucking clue.
But if the answer is that opera is on its way out, I'm not going to leap out the window, just hope it outlasts me. I read this book once, okay I read a chapter, about language death, and for anyone who loves languages and appreciates that each has things it can express that no other can (though this can never be more than a hunch), the idea of a language disappearing forever is really to dab your eyes about. But it's also completely inevitable and a part of the backdrop against which the languages that hang on, for now, live out their own interesting lives. Nothing is immortal and few things last very long at all.
Sorry, I'm totally killing time 'til I can get on a train for a long weekend, so it's getting a bit purple in here. (I never work blue. Except a few paragraphs up, for a second, and then only light blue.) But I think I'm not wrong about all of this. Please feel welcome to disagree politely, as it cheers a blogger up to see comments.
*awful but not reprehensible. This is an important distinction. Also, please admit there is a loveable screwball comedy in the part where...well this one friend of mine told me about a recital in High School where she couldn't remember the words to one of the "24 Rather Moldy Italian Art Songs" and had to start making up Italian words. I always wondered what that would look like, and now, to my delight, I know.
P.S. (!) while one is momentarily asserting one's presence in the blogosphere, one really ought to take a moment to congratulate La Cieca on being quite the It Girl, everywhere but the goddamn cover of Time lately!
...except that I don’t believe his audience is going to listen to any opera other than his. He’s made no secret of his operaphilia over the years, and it’s made no difference so far, in much the way that his Judy concert didn’t really make Garland fans out of people who weren’t in the first place.
There's something not just correct but, I think, significant in this sentiment, and as soon as I work out what it is, you'll know. This is me thinking out loud.
Say, do other people known by their friends for being an opera fan get the question "what should I listen to if I want to get into opera?" a lot? Because I do. And, not wholly for the sake of being an asshole, what I sometimes say is, "if you're not into opera, there may be a very good reason." Which is to say: it's not for everyone.
What I'm questioning, I guess, is the very idea of "bringing audiences to opera"--whether it happens at all, and whether it's worth all the pontification that goes on around whether Rufus Wainwright/Andrea Bocelli/the Muppets/&c. &c. &c. will get people to like opera. I'm not sure it ever happens that way. From time to time some appealing face of opera pops up in broader culture, but it seems to be a self-contained thing.
If you liked the blue diva in The Fifth Element, chances are really not that awfully great that you'd be excited by the rest of Lucia. If you were inspired by Paul Potts singing "Nessun dorma," I might speculate while firmly refusing to discuss the merits of his performance that what you liked was largely backstory and novelty and, sure, you might love opera, but chances are good you wouldn't, and Paul Potts is not a good weathervane.
Think of the scene in The Last Picture Show where all an earnest teacher's love of Keats means nothing to his students, because the other parts of their lives aren't fertile soil for a love of poetry. Except take some of the condescension out of that, because a love of opera, like the love of poetry, does not make you a better person. Operaphilia in addition to the love of, say, Gene Autrey does make you a broader, more interesting person, but that's a two-way street, a clap that takes two hands.
None of this has much to do with RW's day-in-the-life-of-a-diva opera, on which I can't comment because I've only heard the excerpt played on Parterre. I didn't love or hate it, though I find Wainwright's crooning a little uncomfortable to witness when it's not in music written with croon in the blueprints (how can I hate on "Poses" when I listened to it obsessively for a year?) but then I'm thinking of his youtube-documented Berlioz, and not his opera, which may very well have built-in croon.
Oh but ok, so take the Berlioz. Someone hears those, thinks "what Rufus likes, I may like," and buys Steber's ravishing trip through those songs with Mitropoulos. Yet again, I think that's not going anywhere. It's just that music is not always a continuum of listener-suitability. Opera is really specific. Opera is discrete. (That does not mean it refuses to send its picture, certain gheis.)
All that's left to do, then, is for me to suggest how new audiences are to be found so opera doesn't die if Sheryl Crow singing "La ci darem la mano" with Pavarotti* (count the problems!) isn't going to do the trick. Obviously, I have no fucking clue.
But if the answer is that opera is on its way out, I'm not going to leap out the window, just hope it outlasts me. I read this book once, okay I read a chapter, about language death, and for anyone who loves languages and appreciates that each has things it can express that no other can (though this can never be more than a hunch), the idea of a language disappearing forever is really to dab your eyes about. But it's also completely inevitable and a part of the backdrop against which the languages that hang on, for now, live out their own interesting lives. Nothing is immortal and few things last very long at all.
Sorry, I'm totally killing time 'til I can get on a train for a long weekend, so it's getting a bit purple in here. (I never work blue. Except a few paragraphs up, for a second, and then only light blue.) But I think I'm not wrong about all of this. Please feel welcome to disagree politely, as it cheers a blogger up to see comments.
*awful but not reprehensible. This is an important distinction. Also, please admit there is a loveable screwball comedy in the part where...well this one friend of mine told me about a recital in High School where she couldn't remember the words to one of the "24 Rather Moldy Italian Art Songs" and had to start making up Italian words. I always wondered what that would look like, and now, to my delight, I know.
P.S. (!) while one is momentarily asserting one's presence in the blogosphere, one really ought to take a moment to congratulate La Cieca on being quite the It Girl, everywhere but the goddamn cover of Time lately!
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