Sounds & Fury

We So Do Want To Believe This

The following is altogether quite unbelievable. It's so outrageously hilarious, however, that we're loath to question its veracity.

The Royal Danish Opera opened its season with a new production of Offenbach´s Contes d´Hoffmann. Just before curtain-up, General Director Kasper Bech Holten appeared onstage and made the following announcement:

Johnny Van Hal [the Hoffmann] unfortunately is ill, and his cover, Nikolai Schukoff, who is available for all other evenings is unfortunately not available this evening. After phoning all over Europe, a tenor, Timothy Richards, was found in Berlin who is capable of singing the role, and we asked him to come immediately. Then Scandinavian Airlines cancelled all flights from Berlin to Copenhagen. But at the last minute, Mr. Richards got on another flight and arrived in time for tonight's performance. After he arrived, however, it was discovered that the version of Hoffmann Mr. Richards can sing is not the version used in our production despite repeated assurances from his agent that it was. Consequently, some of what Mr. Richards will sing tonight will be in French, some in German, and what he can't sing at all will be sung instead by our conductor, Marc Soustrot.

Oh, please let that all be true!

For the outcome of all this, see this post.

Brava!

Here's an example of what happens when classical music institution managers, desperate to put butts — any butts whatsoever — in seats, cede their responsibilities, and permit marketing types a free hand:

The new radio ads for the SLSO [St. Louis Symphony Orchestra] feature a cheerful female voice talking up the weekend's offerings. [...] Then comes the tag line: "The St. Louis Symphony: It's not what you think."

Fortunately, St. Louis has at least one voice with a mainstream public pulpit to expose and properly skewer such perverse, pop-culture-inspired and –corrupted hucksterism. Writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's classical music critic, Sarah Bryan Miller, in response:

What's that supposed to mean?

I'm sure the idea is to fight any perceived elitist (oh, the horror!) images connected to the SLSO and its music. Unfortunately, the effect is not what they intend.

Here's what comes to mind when I think of the SLSO: It's one of the world's great orchestras, led by one of the world's great conductors, playing some of the world's greatest music — music that is beautiful, challenging, rich, complex, tragic, joyful, inspiring, intriguing, visceral, intellectual and more, thoughtfully arranged into well-balanced programs and given the best possible performance by all those involved. They perform in a beautiful hall, and the overall concert experience is usually satisfying on many levels.

Are they saying it's not all that?

Does the organization and its advertising agency think that people will bolt for the exits screaming "Run away!" (like the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) if they're presented with music more complicated than the average prefab pop song?

Do they imagine their audience to be the same crowd that's currently panting for "Hannah Montana" concert tickets?

Do they think everyone's afraid of encountering any artistic challenge whatever?

RTWT here.

Endnote

One of the several (predictable) eMail responses to my purposefully provocative snipe at Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in particular, and bel canto opera in general, in this post wherein I declared Lucia "[a] piece of typical bel canto trash which contains but a single scene in its entire three acts to recommend it," asked me whether I'd forgotten the famous Act II sextet. The answer is No, I hadn't forgotten it, nor is it likely I'd ever forget it. How could I? It was a notable — and unforgettable — part of my very first introduction to the genuinely tragic in drama when, as an impressionable eight-year-old, I sat riveted by the gut-wrenching Disney tale of The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

Oh, how I loved Willie (the name of the whale of the title), and hated the fame-and-fortune-seeking cretin: the opera impresario Tetti-Tatti who, convinced Willie has swallowed a great opera singer, sets out to harpoon Willie to rescue the unlucky singer and present him to the world. When he finally comes face to face (so to speak) with the opera-devoted Willie — who in the meantime has been alerted by his seagull buddy to Tetti-Tatti's search for him which search Willie imagines is for the purpose of Tetti-Tatti auditioning him to sing at the Met — Tetti-Tatti is in for a further shock: Willie can not only sing arias, but duets and trios as well — all by himself!

On hearing this, Tetti-Tatti is beside himself, for all Willie's prepared audition has convinced him of is that Willie has swallowed not one, but three opera singers, all of whom need rescuing to the greater glory and riches of the greedy and purblind Tetti-Tatti. Tetti-Tatti makes a mad dash for the harpoon gun, fires, and Willie sinks dead beneath the waves, his dream unfulfilled, his singing and the miracle of his gift silenced forever. (In true Disney fashion, at tragedy's close, we're assured that somewhere in whale heaven Willie continues to sing, and to sold-out houses.)

Oh, the pathos of the tale (NPI)! It haunts me still.

And just where does the Lucia sextet come in? The "duet" and "trio" sung by Willie are from the opening of that ensemble, the three male voices all sung by Nelson Eddy.

So, back to the question posed by my eMail correspondent, once again, no, I didn’t forget the Act II Lucia sextet.

Happy Fiftieth!

We ordinarily would have missed this entirely as it's well outside our regular Web surfing grounds (surfing grounds?). Happily, we picked up the link from a poster on one of the music forums in which we occasionally participate.

West Side Story at 50

Pauline Kael was the most respected film critic in America, but she had her off days. "I would guess that in a few decades," she wrote in 1963, "the dances in West Side Story will look as much like hilariously limited, dated period pieces as Busby Berkeley's 'Remember My Forgotten Man' number in Gold Diggers of 1933."

Guess again. West Side Story opened 50 years ago tonight - September 26th 1957 - at the Winter Garden on Broadway, and half-a-century on, when the Jets take off, in blue jeans and sneakers, thrusting up from the stage, arms stretching out to make their huge signature Ts in the air, audiences still thrill, in the theatre, at the ballet, and, pace Miss Kael, film and video audiences. West Side Story is the trick so many musicals since have never quite pulled off: great storytelling in American dance.

There then follows an authoritative, detailed, and fascinating piece that includes extended interviews with Hal Prince, the show's producer; Sid Ramin, one of the show's two orchestrators; and Arthur Laurents, the show's librettist (scriptwriter).

RTWT here.

A Brief Note On The Music Soundtrack of Ken Burns's The War

Like much of America, we've been glued to PBS for the past four nights with its airing of the first four episodes of the heavily promoted Ken Burns seven-episode film documentary, The War. What we've found dismaying is the utter stupidity of much of the music soundtrack so far. In fact, last night's Episode 4 was the first episode of this mammoth documentary with a music soundtrack that made sense all the way through. The first three episodes were notable for having a music soundtrack that was perfectly idiot for a large number of segments; namely, '40s-style-jazz music that was quite appropriate for the "at-home" segments used, sans irony, for the bloody and tragic "war-zone" segments as well. Simply moronic. And that has to be the doing of series music advisor and composer, Wynton Marsalis. What's most astonishing is that Burns let him get away with it — Burns, whose use of music in his magnum opus, The Civil War, was pitch-perfect from first to last.

Is a puzzlement.

Featured Past Post #45 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post ("Some Thoughts On Sweeney Todd") is now up on the right sidebar.

A Paradigm

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 3:40 PM Eastern on 26 Sep. See below.]

Devotees of the organ grinder rep really ought to read this detailed and incisive analysis of the Met's opening-night performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor by music journalist and blogger Vilaine Fille (Marion Lignana Rosenberg) of Vilaine Fille. On-target or not in its assessment, it's a paradigm of what all serious-minded music criticism ought to be even though we have difficulty imagining anyone but an inveterate TOF spending so much time on and devoting so many words to this piece of typical bel canto trash which contains but a single scene in its entire three acts to recommend it.

But then, de gustibus....

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Update (3:40 PM Eastern on 26 Sep): Oops. A bit of rather unfortunate wording in the above. Our, "...even though we have difficulty imagining anyone but an inveterate TOF spending so much time...," etc., made it sound as if we were suggesting that we consider Ms. Rosenberg a TOF. We intended no such suggestion as she's most clearly not one of that risible and annoying breed. What we had intended to express was our surprise that a non-TOF would spend so much time, etc. Our apologies to Ms. Rosenberg if our badly worded remark was construed in a way other than what we intended.

On Kierkegaard

Here's an incisive, informative, and beautifully written post on Kierkegaard by musicologist, composer, music critic, and blogger Kyle Gann of PostClassic. Makes us rather wish he confined himself to writing about philosophy and philosophers rather than "postclassic" music about which latter we can find no point of either interest or agreement.

It's Paradise, I Tell You!

It's enough to make a grown man salivate like a toothless infant while at the same time hallucinating a vision of having entered paradise — especially after a day-long fast.

Three friends and I wondered whether one of us should order fish [at New York's famed Peter Luger Steak House], just to try it.

"Do you go to Hawaii to ski?" the waiter huffed, letting us know that the only sensible decision was steak for four, along with creamed spinach, of course, and German potatoes, naturally.

What a steak it was. Even before I saw it I could smell it — the acrid top note of its char, the funky bottom note of properly aged beef. I could even hear it, still sizzling from its time in one of the high-temperature broilers.

It was already sliced, and the waiter buckled down to the familiar Luger ritual, putting some filet and some sirloin on each plate, then spooning the pooled juices over it. The beef had a subtle tang, an intense mineral quality, a crazy richness and a spectrum of textures: crunchy at the edges, tender at the bone. I had to keep reminding myself to take it easy, to slow down.

No other steakhouse serves a porterhouse so breathtaking.

Better than good sex, it is — at least when you've reached my age.

RTWT here (but, interestingly, it's more a critique than a rave).

Uh-oh

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 6:21 PM Eastern on 24 Sep. See below.]

We almost don't want to believe this, and quite frankly don't understand it. That notwithstanding, here's the nub of it:

A great-granddaughter of composer Richard Wagner is teaming with star German conductor Christian Thielemann to bid for the leadership of the Bayreuth festival, the pair announced in an interview published Saturday.

Katharina Wagner, 29, made her directorial debut at Bayreuth this year, producing a closely watched interpretation of "Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg" at the annual celebration of the German opera genius.

[...]

"We have decided to run as a leadership team," Katharina Wagner was quoted as saying in an interview with Thielemann, published by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

RTWT here.

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Update (11:11 AM Eastern on 23 Sep): Blogger Ms. Mostly Opera of Mostly Opera has provided an English translation of the full Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interview of Katharina Wagner and Christian Thielemann. We still don't quite know what to make of it yet (the interview and the announced partnership, not Ms. Mostly Opera's translation), but you can be certain that when we do, you'll read about it here. I mean, talk about an artistic odd couple! It all has a decided whiff of the political about it — more than a whiff, actually; it's perhaps not overstating the case to say it positively reeks of it — and that can't be good for the Festspiele artistically.

Update 2 (5:25 PM Eastern on 23 Sep): The plot thickens.

Update 3 (6:21 PM Eastern on 24 Sep): Ms. Mostly Opera has just posted a detailed and informative background survey of the whole Bayreuth succession soap opera for your delectation and education which she calls, "The Bayreuth Succession: A Docu-Soap". Good reading. Bookmark Mostly Opera for further updates fresh from the European press.

Mazeltov!

We yet once again take a momentary break from our instructive, etc., etc., to offer our warmest mazeltovs to Alex Ross on his new, long-awaited arrival. It was years aborning, but I've no doubt, worth the wait.

Mazeltov, Alex!

Two Items Of Note

We're still on an instructive blogging-break odyssey of discovery in another online domain (again, more on that here when it's completed), but here are two more items of note.

First, this it-was-inevitable article on the late Luciano Pavarotti by Philip Gossett for The New Republic:

How do you judge a life, especially a life played out so completely in the public eye? You begin, of course, by identifying what was so extraordinary about the figure, and in this case everyone is agreed: that voice, that sound, that ability to match syllables and notes. Unmistakable. Unbelievable. When Pavarotti first appeared on operatic stages during the 1960s, he seemed a revelation. There were other great tenors, to be sure, but this voice that joined the most sensitive lyricism with extraordinary power, this artistry in which word and tone were a single unit, this singer had a presence that seemed unique. Here was a tenor who could finally show us what Donizetti and Bellini had in mind.

[...]

And yet ... and yet ... This most beautiful tenor voice in living memory seemed gradually to lose its bearings. It was not just the circus show of the "Three Tenors"; it was not just the "Pavarotti & Friends" extravaganzas with pop stars and television personalities; it was not just the fluttering white handkerchief. Before his death, he said repeatedly that he wanted to be remembered as an opera singer, but that was the profession he seemed to have betrayed.

Ah yes. Quite so. All of it.

RTWT here.

And then there's this on his first-time reading of George Orwell's 1984 from off-off-Broadway theater director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis which gets our vote for Bon Mot Of (at least) The Month:

Jesus Christ, this thing was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual!

Isaac has further thoughts on 1984 here.

On The Queen Of La Scala

We take brief time out from our blogging-break odyssey of discovery in another online domain (more on that here when it's completed) to point out a remarkable blog post on Maria Callas by music journalist and blogger Ms. Vilaine Fille (Marion Lignana Rosenberg) of Vilaine Fille. It's knowledgeably written, unmarred by the usual TOF excesses pro and con, and worth reading for its lapidary prose alone.

In death as in life, Callas vexes and unnerves. Her voice could be wiry and sour, and her cancellations disruptive, but in hindsight, it seems that where Callas roused the greatest controversy was in testing the limits of tolerance for conspicuous female power. She was the girl who started with nothing and became the most celebrated musician on the planet — the heavy woman who willed herself into an Audrey Hepburn-like sylph — the artist who seemed to be able to sing any music written for the female voice. Fans and biographers claim that Callas wracked her voice when she (a) lost the weight and/or (b) dumped her dull but devoted husband for the rakish Onassis. How dare she? The Milanese public that crowned Callas queen of La Scala also, at the pinnacle of her greatness, smeared the outside of her home with feces. The chances she took and the heights she reached were apparently too much to bear.

RTWT here.

Featured Past Post #44 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post ("Isolde's Liebestod — Or Is It?") is now up on the right sidebar.

The Compleat Hatto

Everything you wanted to know (and some of what you thought you knew but didn't really) concerning the infamous Joyce Hatto affair can now be read in this comprehensive piece by Mark Singer for The New Yorker.

Helluva story.

Not A Stunt

On first hearing about, this would appear to be some imbecile, pop-culture-inspired, "all musics are equal" stunt. But, amazingly, it's not. It actually works musically. And beautifully, too.

(Our thanks to Felsenmusick for the link.)

Atque In Perpetuum, Luciano

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 5:44 PM Eastern on 6 Sep. See below.]

Luciano Pavarotti, perhaps the greatest tenor voice of the last half of the last century, and among the greatest tenor voices in all of history, is dead of pancreatic cancer at age 71. He died early this morning at his home in Modena, Italy.

Atque in perpetuum, Luciano. Ave atque vale.

A splendid obituary by Bernard Holland of The New York Times may be read here.

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Update (3:17 PM Eastern on 6 Sep): The New York Times chief music critic, Anthony Tommasini, we're pleased to say for a change, has written a first-rate piece: an assessment of Pavarotti's extraordinary vocal gifts, and of his genuinely stellar presence in the world of opera.

In the old days of the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts, a popular feature on the "Texaco Opera Quiz," as the intermission show used to be called, involved playing recordings of several artists singing the same well-known aria and asking the panelists to identify the singers. It was surprising how often even opera experts would confuse one great artist with another.

But no one ever mistook the voice of Luciano Pavarotti. There was the warm, enveloping sound: a classic Italian tenor voice, yes, but touched with a bit of husky baritonal darkness, which made Mr. Pavarotti’s flights into his gleaming upper range seem all the more miraculous.

And it wasn’t just the sound that was so recognizable. In Mr. Pavarotti’s artistry, language and voice were one. He had an idiomatic way of binding the rounded vowels and sputtering consonants of his native Italian to the tones and colorings of his voice. This practice is central to the Italian vocal heritage, and Mr. Pavarotti was one of its exemplars.

RTWT here.

Update 2 (5:44 PM Eastern on 6 Sep): And then there's this bit of (on-target) poetry from Alex Ross:

The finest singers not only hit the notes but erase the difference between notes and words. Singing is most thrilling when it becomes a kind of heightened talking. That’s what happens in Pavarotti's “Che gelida manina” or “E lucevan le stelle” or "Una furtiva lagrima": the beauty of the sound envelops you, but you’re not conscious of the artifice of art. It’s as if someone were making conversation in a dialect of dreams.

RTWT here.

Sing It, Cowboy!

We're not exactly fans of C&W music, but that doesn't preclude our recognizing a winning song when we hear it. Like this one, for instance (for those of you with tender sensibilities, a caution: repeated use of the F word ahead if you click on the Play button):

Why I Love Russians II: Telling It Like It Is

Here's superstar diva Anna Netrebko again, and once again being very, very Russian and telling it like it is:

As the lunatic heroine of Bellini's Puritani, she [Netrebko] lay prostrate and let her head with its cascade of black hair droop upside down into the orchestra pit as she sang some of the most dementedly difficult music ever written. She looked like an Ophelia about to drown herself in a river of sound.

"Was crazy, no?" she said, remembering this stunt. "But felt good. Yes, was my idea. I agree to sing this opera, then open score and don't like, it's crap, I want to cancel. And Met production was so dull, stage director no help. I had to do something, so I get on floor. Is fun to be a mad person; you are free, you do what you like. Physically was easy for me, I was acrobat for five years."

Right on!, dear lady.

RTWT here.

A Dream Of A Salad

I'm one of those who almost never remembers the details of his dreams which is either a blessing or a curse depending, I guess, on what one has dreamt. The dream I had last night — or, rather, early this morning — was different. It was most vivid, and I remember everything about it right down to the smallest detail.

I was working at the front of a large woodtop worktable in the center of a kitchen unknown to me, and preparing, of all things, a salad; one made up of numerous ingredients. This was in itself quite odd as I almost never make salad or eat greens of any sort whatsoever. But there I was, dreaming of myself doing both, and thoroughly enjoying the experience.

When I awoke remembering the dream in all its detail, it struck me that what provoked the dream was my purchasing on Friday in behalf of a friend a sealed bag of Dole cut, washed, and premixed salad greens containing a mixture of iceberg and romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, radicchio, and endive; a sealed bag that was still resident in the chiller drawer of my refrigerator. When I later checked my refrigerator further, I discovered that every other ingredient of my dream salad was in residence there as well.

Clearly, my dream was a personal command direct from God himself. No way my friend is ever going to see that bag of Dole salad greens.

Dream Salad
(serves 1)

1 sealed bag of Dole prepared salad greens; a mix called by Dole, "European"
2 large button mushrooms
1 breast of Perdue Rock Cornish Game Hen
8 grams of Pepperidge Farm Seasoned Croutons
1 hardboiled egg
Wedge of genuine Parmigiano Reggiano
Hellmann's Whole Egg Mayonnaise
Heinz Ketchup
Gold's Cocktail Sauce
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Slice the mushrooms thinly, and set aside on a plate in the fridge. Dice the hen breast small, and add to the plate of sliced mushrooms in the fridge. Place the croutons in a plastic bag, crush fine with a hammer (but not too fine), and set aside. Slice the hardboiled egg using an egg slicer, and add to the plate in the fridge with the mushrooms and diced hen breast. Prepare dressing by mixing the mayonnaise, ketchup, and cocktail sauce in proportions according to taste, and salt and pepper the resulting dressing to taste.

Onto a large chilled plate, lay out as much of the Dole salad greens as you can eat at one sitting. Add the mushrooms, diced hen breast, and sliced egg. Salt and pepper all to taste. Scatter the crushed croutons over all, and using your hands, quickly and lightly toss the salad.* Rough-grate the Parmigiano Reggiano over all to taste. Quickly and lightly toss the salad once more.* Add dressing to taste. Serve with wine of your choice.

Dreamy!

* If you're serving to someone, and you want the salad to look pretty when served at table, don't toss. Let the person you're serving do the tossing when he or she digs in.