Sounds & Fury

Conspiracy Theory

I don’t care what the Met program listing says, or what the broadcast announcer announced. The Met substituted a ringer on the podium for the second act of this afternoon’s broadcast of Die Walküre. I’ve not a shadow of a doubt that Lorin Maazel was on the podium for Acts I and III. His infuriating and willfully quirky fingerprints were all over both acts with predictably deleterious effect. But Act II, if not altogether perfect (much of the Todesverkündigung flirted perilously with the ponderous in attempting the required grave and solemn, and Wotan’s final exit lacked the fury the drama and the music demand), was conducted by a Wagner conductor who knows his business even if not quite a possessor of that rarest of rarities, the “Wagner Gene”. By contrast, Maazel screwed up Act I royally by sentimentalizing almost all of it, and by fracturing this most perfect single act in all the Ring, and among the most perfect in all of opera, into a series of mini-episodes with no sense whatever of the sweep of the musico-dramatic arc of the whole. And he did violence to Act III by taking liberties of tempi that were simply egregious, and by altering Wagner’s score to the extent of interjecting his own full-measure-rests for the entire orchestra into that seamless, heart- and gut-wrenchingly sublime 24-measure orchestral sequence — perhaps the most heart- and gut-wrenching passage in all of opera — that follows Wotan’s, “Denn einer nur freie die Braut, der freier als ich, der Gott!” (For only one shall win the bride, one freer than I, the god!), and by so doing destroyed utterly the sequence's overwhelming emotional impact.

What’s that? You think my claiming the substitution of a podium ringer for Act II makes me out to be a nut case conspiracy theorist?

Oh yeah? Well, then, you come up with a more plausible explanation. I can’t.

Brief Note On The BBC Proms Götterdämmerung

We listened to the BBC Radio 3 live webcast of the BBC Proms concert performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung today, and the conductor, Donald Runnicles, acquitted himself most splendidly for the most part as did the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, and BBC Symphony Chorus. While we're not ready to declare Mr. Runnicles a card-carrying member of that rarest of conductor breeds, a possessor of the "Wagner Gene" (we'd need to hear his readings of the rest of the Ring and of Tristan before we could even consider doing that), his showing today was most encouraging in that direction.

As for today's solo singers (see above link for the cast list), they were all, also for the most part, just competent — when they weren't being thoroughly dreadful, that is. Their best showing was seemingly reserved for Act III in which all the solo singers did their very best work of the day.

As we've here several times before noted, in those cases where the opera is a genuine example of opera as dramma per musica and therefore more than merely a showcase for songbirds, we just know there has to be a way to do opera without any solo singers whatsoever.

We're still working on it.

Opening Day

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 4:50 PM Eastern on 25 Jul. See below.]

Today is the opening day of the 2007 Bayreuther Festspiele with a new production of Die Meistersinger directed by Wagner great-granddaughter and potential heir to the directorship of the Festival, Katharina Wagner, kicking off the festivities. The audio of the performance will be streamed live on a number of outlets beginning at 9:55 AM EST. Click on the appropriate entry in our schedule on the right sidebar for full details.

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Update (12:46 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): Leave it to a pro like Alex Ross to find a really chock full of information and pics site relating to this.

Update 2 (3:07 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): Here's a revealing video of a rehearsal for this new production of Meistersinger; revealing even if one can't understand German. On the evidence of the video, the Konzept, from the little I can grasp of it from this brief fragment, appears not altogether ridiculous to me. Here are some stills.

Update 3 (4:50 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): And now for the obligatory critique of the performance musically.

«yawn»

Chorus wasn't bad, though, and Vogt as Walther, although his German tenor is too light and Italianate-sounding for the role, was pretty good. I trust Herr Weigle, however, has employment on the podium in other than Wagnerian venues. (Late Note (26 July, 3:41 AM Eastern): Alex Ross also has some postmortem thoughts on the performance musically in an update to this post.)

For press reports and reaction to the production, see here.

2007 Bayreuther Festspiele Live Webcasts (Administrative Note)

The schedule for the live webcasts of the opening week of the 2007 Bayreuther Festspiele is now up at the top of our right sidebar. Follow the links to see the available webcasts as well as the cast list for each opera.

Yeah, Right

We suspect the following somehow got its data packets reshuffled or rerouted somewhere in cyberspace, and what was supposed to show up online in the pages of The Onion instead got routed to The New York Times:

In an unusually blunt session [at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] today, several of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry’s decades-old system of paying what are called residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings.

The executives stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and shows are released on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, they want to pool such revenue and recover their costs before sharing any of the profit with the talent.

Yeah, right. When pigs fly maybe.

RTWT here.

Promise Of The Right Kind Of Future

What most promises that the domain of classical music can look forward to a bright future entirely on its own terms despite repeated squawking by legions of Chicken Littles to the contrary, and not to the corrupt, pop-culture-denatured future envisioned for it by the perverse, pop-culture-contaminated imaginings of some music pundits?

Peter Gelb's innovations at the Met? Glowing anecdotal accounts of success by well-intentioned, warm 'n fuzzy but ineluctably effete Take A Friend To A Concert type campaigns? The widespread downloading of classical music from the Web?

None of the above. It's this. If you've never heard it, or heard of it, it's time you did. It can be heard on WQXR at 7 o'clock EST every Saturday evening at wqxr.com, or on your local NPR outlet in many areas of the country. It's easily one of the most encouraging and most delightful hours in the world of classical music today.

I promise you.

An Embarrassment Of Riches

Not only is she the most phenomenally gifted fiddler to appear on the solo concert scene since Heifetz and Milstein, she's intelligent, charming, beautiful, and a first-rate and knowledgeable musician. We're speaking, of course, of Anne-Sophie Mutter whose fiddle playing is a whole order of magnitude beyond her formidably gifted fellow concert fiddlers of which there's perhaps more in number today than at any time in the past century, and most of them female (What's up with that?).

The above remarks are occasioned by our stumbling upon a recording of an excellent half-hour interview with Ms. Mutter by WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon this past March which can be heard here (Windows Media Player or RealPlayer required).

Well worth your time.

Lesson Du Jour

For those symphony orchestras finally getting the message that in order to supplement their too often threadbare coffers they have to take into their own hands the production, distribution, and marketing of their own recordings (first proposed by us in January of 2004), a word of advice: do not — repeat, do not — offer for sale the CDs or MP3 files of those recordings through any outlet or service that insists on labeling the individual tracks of those CDs or MP3s a "song". Doing so makes you part of the problem, not the solution.

Thus endeth today's lesson.

A Quick Note On The 2006 Bayreuth Götterdämmerung

I'm going to run through this as swiftly as possible, and I post it only because, given my three previous Quick Note On entries for this Ring webcast, I suspect it would be more conspicuous by its absence.

The Prologue and first act of this Götterdämmerung were unqualified train wrecks musically (and therefore dramatically as well). I'm not talking subtleties here. I'm talking things as rudimentary as off-pitch singing, and singing — or rather bellowing — wrong notes at top volume. I'm talking confused ensemble and clams to spare from the orchestra, and orchestra and singers going their separate ways. Everyone was implicated; no-one absolved. There were no innocent parties here — except, perhaps, the put-upon audience, that is.

Act II brought back a measure of sanity and professionalism and a seemingly different opera company, and things went mostly OK for the duration, the only standout being the glorious singing of the Bayreuth chorus (but when has the Bayreuth chorus not sung gloriously?). My expectation concerning the Siegfried — the young American tenor, Stephen Gould — alas, fell short of fulfillment. While he wasn't defeated by the role as he was by the Siegfried Siegfried, he was nevertheless unable to rise to the first-rate realization I'd expected of him of this far less demanding character. As for Act III, it went pretty much OK as well, and sported three vocally lithesome Rheintöchter as added graces.

And that's all the detail, and all I have to say about this Götterdämmerung. Had I been obliged, however, to sit myself on those hard wooden seats in a 85-degree Festspielhaus for almost five hours — and that after having to wait almost 10 years for tickets — you can bet I'd probably have lots more to say about it.

Will Wonders Never Cease: 2006 Bayreuth Götterdämmerung

More small and fuzzy photos, this time from the 2006 Bayreuther Festspiele Tankred Dorst production of Götterdämmerung, and I'm becoming just a bit suspicious vis-à-vis the Eurotrash question. We non-German-speakers who can't read the German press' descriptions of the production will just have to wait for Anthony Tommasini's New York Times review of the entire cycle to make more clear what it is that's shown here. As always, our apologies to the Bayreuther Festspiele for snitching these photos from its website.

A Quick Note On The 2006 Bayreuth Siegfried

Just finished listening to the delayed webcast of Siegfried (once again the live webcast was impossibly bad), and with this work conductor Christian Thielemann — who previously turned in a meaningfully flawed reading of Das Rheingold (see this post), and a merely solid reading of Die Walküre ("merely solid" because it's Christian Thielemann from whom one — or at least this one — expects something more) — finally hit his full stride as a Wagner conductor in this Festival, and what a prodigious and glorious stride it was. I've never heard a reading of this score quite as powerful and simultaneously quite as lovely. Thielemann drew from the Bayreuth orchestra a richly detailed and nuanced performance, musically and dramatically, that in my experience was positively nonpareil. From the intricate weaving of the most delicate threads to the massing of the most massive climaxes, everything was right there right where it ought to have been, and all perfectly proportioned each to the other and all to the whole. This was Wagner conducting of the most sterling sort, with a Wagner orchestra to match (and I single out for special mention the brave hornist who did the second-act horn calls which were done spectacularly well and clam-free).

Of the singers, I suppose I should say something of the young American tenor, Stephen Gould, who made his debut in the role of Siegfried with this production. He certainly has a fine, big voice, but, alas, this impossible role defeated him ultimately as it has so many others before him. I expect, however, he will make a first-rate Götterdämmerung Siegfried, and I look forward to his performance in that work on 31 July. I should also single out the sweetly dulcet Stimme des Waldvogels (voice of the Forest Bird), Robin Johannsen, and the bravura performance of Gerhard Siegel as Alberich's brother, Mime, all in all one of the very best performances of this very tricky role in my experience.

Finally, an administrative note of sorts: I've posted no production photos of the 2006 Bayreuth Siegfried as I have of the first two music-dramas of this new production of the Ring. The reason is that the quasi-thumbnail production photos of Siegfried available to me are utterly indecipherable in their quasi-thumbnail form, and so posting them would be pointless. I do, however, leave you tonight with one photo from this production for your delectation: that of Gerhard Siegel as Mime.

Pleasant dreams.

A Quick Note On The 2006 Bayreuth Walküre

Before this morning, I'd never heard of Adrianne Pieczonka, much less who she might be. After this morning, I'll never forget. From the instant she sang her first several lines as Sieglinde in Act I of the new Bayreuther Festspiele Tankred Dorst production of Die Walküre, I knew we had a contender for the Sieglinde of the century. Possessing a true so-called jügendlich dramatic soprano — not a pumped-up lyric on steroids — the texture of her voice puts one in mind of nothing so much as sweetly-flowing warm honey, but with a power and intensity that, when required, can at the very same time suggest the steel of a Nilsson. And that's just the beginning. Her German diction and declamation are perfect, but more importantly, her voice has a capacity for exquisite musical and dramatic nuance that seems limitless, and in its realization, perfectly natural and effortless; in short, a genuine singer-actor who by her voice alone can make a role come rivetingly and persuasively alive. I feel lucky to have heard her today notwithstanding my well-known (by regular readers of this blog) and somewhat notorious disinterest in, even antipathy for, opera singers generally.

What's that I hear you saying? Probably another operatic fat lady whose physical presence destroys any illusion her voice may bring to a role?

Oh ye of little faith!

Ms. Pieczonka's website is located here.

Will Wonders Never Cease: 2006 Bayreuth Die Walküre

More small and fuzzy photos, this time from the 2006 Bayreuther Festspiele Tankred Dorst production of Die Walküre, and once more, not a hint of Eurotrash to be discerned. Bless you, again!, Herr Dorst. As before, our apologies to the Bayreuther Festspiele for snitching these photos from its website.

A Quick Note On The 2006 Bayreuth Rheingold

Finally got to hear this late this afternoon by delayed webcast (the streaming audio of the live webcast was impossibly bad), and I just want to note here a few reactions concerning Christian Thielemann's conducting as he's, for me, the central draw of this Ring. I've never heard his reading of any part of the tetralogy before, and had huge expectations given my experience of his stellar Wagner conducting with other of Wagner's works.

To start at the beginning (as good a place as any), while listening to Scene 1, I became convinced Thielemann had gone ill, and been replaced on the podium. This critical scene (critical for the entire tetralogy) was played out both on stage and in the pit bereft of all dramatic nuance. Smooth as a sheet of glass it was, and just as flat. Quite mind-numbing, actually. Things got a bit better with Scene 2, but didn't hit full Wagnerian stride until the trip down to Nibelheim. Things went nicely (but not outstandingly) after that until the Erda episode — easily the most profound moment in Das Rheingold, and one of the most profound of the entire tetralogy — where, for reasons unfathomable, Thielemann picked up the tempo, and fairly ran through Erda's entire doom laden monologue, blunting the episode's dramatic and mythic sense in addition to contradicting Wagner's score which notates this episode, Langsam (slow). Thielemann botched the tempo of the work's climax — the so-called "Entrance of the gods into Walhall" — as well, downshifting (without any warrant in the score) to a tempo so slow one feared the gods would never make it across the Rainbow Bridge before the start of Die Walküre.

All in all, and not to put too fine a point on it, we were not amused.

Will Wonders Never Cease: 2006 Bayreuth Das Rheingold

Here are some photos, small and fuzzy though they may be, of the 2006 Bayreuther Festspiele Tankred Dorst production of Das Rheingold, and — mirabile dictu! — it all looks just splendid! Not a hint of Eurotrash anywhere to be discerned. Bless you!, Herr Dorst. (Well, maybe just a wee Eurotrashy hint: What's Loge up to wearing a 21st-century leather overcoat?) And our thanks to reader Earl for giving us the key to securing these quasi-thumbnail photos from the Bayreuther Festspiele website, and our apologies to the Bayreuther Festspiele for snitching them.

Bayreuther Festspiele Opening Day

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 3:29 PM Eastern on 25 Jul. See below.]

Today is opening day at the Bayreuther Festspiele. The Festival opens with a production of Der Fliegende Holländer conceived and directed by Claus Guth that had its premier at Bayreuth in 2003. Marc Albrecht conducts. Link to the live webcast, which begins at 11:55 AM Eastern, is on our right sidebar.

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Update (3:29 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): The presentation of Der Fliegende Holländer has concluded. For dates and times of the live webcasts of the rest of the Festival, check the links on our right sidebar.

Bayreuth Festival 2006 Listing (Administrative Note)

The links to the listings of live webcasts have now been added to our Bayreuth 2006 listing on the right-hand sidebar.

Ambitious Project

Beginning tonight, at about 9:00 PM Eastern, La Cieca of Parterre Box podcasts an historical recording of Das Rheingold, the first music-drama of Wagner's tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen. This is to be the first installment of a podcast of the entire Ring cycle via historical recordings which will be presented serially, one music-drama per week, over the next three weeks with one of the three acts of each music-drama — each act using a different historical recording — podcast on each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week (Das Rheingold will be presented tonight as a single podcast of a single historical recording).

Give a listen. I certainly will.

Podcasts can be accessed here.

Bayreuth Festival 2006

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:07 PM Eastern on 19 Jul. See below.]

We've added to the top of our right-hand sidebar the schedule for the opening performances of the 2006 Bayreuth Festival. As is the custom, these opening performances will all be webcast live, and as that fine website Operacast makes available the sources for those webcasts, each entry in the list will be linked accordingly.

This year's Festival looks to be a genuinely exciting one as it will for the first time mount a new staging of the Ring by director Tankred Dorst (we're keeping fingers crossed here that it will not be yet another Eurotrash outrage), and perhaps even more exciting, the cycle is to be conducted by that most gifted of present-day Wagner conductors, Christian Thielemann.

Stay tuned.

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Update (2:07 PM Eastern on 19 Jul): The links to the listings of live webcasts have now been added to our Bayreuth 2006 listing on the right-hand sidebar.

My Thoughts Exactly

In anticipation of two major British Wagner events this coming Monday — the opening of the Royal Opera House production of Götterdämmerung, and the nonstop broadcast and simultaneous Webcast on BBC Radio 3 of the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen — several worth-reading articles have appeared over the past few days in the Brit press (here, here, and here — can you imagine such in this era's American press?). I especially liked this, excerpted from the last linked of the foregoing trio:

Few artists, certainly no other composers, inspire the passionate feelings of hatred and revulsion that Wagner can provoke. But ... the strength of anti-Wagner feeling proves what his detractors cannot deny — the immense power of his music.

And music is where any encounter with Wagner should begin and end. His mature works have a power to move that no opera written before ever had. While previous operas can enchant, divert, charm, make you think, amuse and, at their best, hint at the sublime, Wagner’s work comes bounding off the stage, wrenches at your heart and tries to make a prisoner of your soul.

For many people a music that sets out so powerfully to seduce is just too much to take. When that music is written, as Wagner’s was, by a sexually manipulative and egomaniac anti-Semite, then resisting it seems almost a moral duty. But if you turn away from Wagner you’re turning your back on the chance to experience some of the most complete, and deepest, experiences you can have with your clothes on.

Yes indeed. My thoughts exactly.