No Wagner on Hitler's Birthday

This is interesting.  The Deutschen Oper Berlin was apparently going to present Wagner's Rienzi, purportedly Hitler's favorite opera, on April 20 this season, which just happens to be Hitler's birthday.  Too many people said, no, they would simply not do it, so the dates were changed with Jenufa.

Waldbuehne

If she sings like this, I will forgive her anything.  Her voice and her career are going here.

The Pinnacle of Singing – Jonas Kaufmann

[This is an interview before Jonas' recital at the Musikverein in Vienna, translated from here. Thanks to Emilio for his help in translating "ersungen".]

For several years he is one of the giants of the music scene. In February Jonas Kaufmann is to be a guest at the Musikverein with a Liederabend. In his luggage, the celebrated Verdi and Wagner tenor this time has a rather quiet program.

In the world of opera, there are many clichés. One of them says that only Italian tenors bring sufficient luster for the Italian repertory - maybe even the Spanish-Mexican-Argentine. A second is that in Milan, New York or Paris one could not present to the audience a German as a Latin Lover. A Teuton to succeed internationally as Alfredo (La traviata) and Cavaradossi (Tosca)? Until a few years ago it was unimaginable.

Jonas Kaufmann then entered the international arena. Based in Zurich, where the Munich-born was since the turn of the millennium contracted to sing, he had continuously enriched his audience through singing. 2007 was his solo CD "Romantic Arias" on the market, three more have since followed. There are now a "Fidelio" recording under Claudio Abbado with him, and various DVDs: a "Tosca" from Zurich, a "Werther" in Paris, a "Lohengrin" in Munich and a "Carmen" from London. Even a biography has been published.

That the 42-year-old is an outstanding singer and actor, critics and fans agree. Besides that he also looks good, at least not detrimental to the career. No wonder that a critic of the New York Times recently attested laconically of the singer that he is "currently the hottest tenor in opera". A glance at Kaufmann's diary confirms this: The November and December 2011, he spends at the New York Metropolitan Opera, sings the title role in a new production of "Faust," in January there is a new "Don Carlo" at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The advantage of the Munich engagement: Kaufmann can finally sleep in his own bed once again - he lives with his wife, singer Margaret Joswig, and their three children after years in Switzerland, now back on the Isar.  

On your program for the Musikverein are songs by Liszt, Mahler and Richard Strauss - and Henri Duparc (1848-1933), a friend of Camille Saint-Saens' and Ernest Chausson. Three well-known composers, and a relative unknown . What do you like about Duparc?

I think he's a very interesting but underrated composer who unfortunately has only written a few songs. The poems he set to music are, for the most part very expansive, very flowery, very dense atmosphere. And in combination with Duparc's music, these pieces seem so strong that one listening - or singing - believes that landscapes are to see and fragrances to smell. It is a very particular nature of Duparc, that after a few bars of a song, the specific atmosphere can feel almost palpable.  

Do you have among the four, a favorite composer?

Even if these four approach very differently the setting of texts, they are all masterpieces in the genre of song composition. In this respect I do not want to have to choose a favorite composer. For Mahler, it is certainly the increased emotionality that attracts me as a singer in particular. With Liszt the piano virtuoso is of course always in the foreground, so chamber music and songs are often too short. His songs are not nearly as well known as they deserve because of his mastery. In Strauss I can as a tenor "tuck in" more than with other composers, which frankly for me is a lot of fun. But he has also repeatedly phrases, where you can paint with very fine colors. These contrasts feel like a great challenge to me. I also like many Strauss songs for a sense of humor, even self-irony.

You will be accompanied by Helmut Deutsch - you both have a long-standing cooperation. Deutsch has made music with you when you were still a student at the Munich Academy of Music.

Yes, he was my professor in the subject Lied, so we know each other for over twenty years. From the teacher-pupil ratio is then over the years a partnership that I find very harmonious. He's still my mentor in terms of Lieder singing: He has an invaluable wealth of knowledge of singing and song repertoire, from which I have benefitted for years and is basically the foundation of our program design.

They celebrate triumphs on the operatic stage. Why are you still excited by the - perhaps even more difficult - Lied?

Lieder singing to me is the pinnacle of singing. To make Lieder requires a high degree of technical skill and artistic sensibility, which in opera roles is not necessarily the case. As an operatic character one is part of a story; as a song singer, in one evening one tells about twenty different stories. It gives me immense pleasure to show in one evening so many different facets-linguistically, musically, stylistically and dramatically. The singer can work with much more subtle means, not least because the song focuses the attention of the audience to music and text.

On the opera stage, a singer working with a director and a conductor, he has also colleagues as supervisory body. How is this with the Lied? Do you have to fend for yourself?

Yes, as an opera singer, you are part of a larger whole, and you can make even a certain responsibility to the director or the conductor. As Lieder singer is one – together with the pianist - alone responsible. This is a much greater burden, but which, if everything goes well, will be rewarded with greater satisfaction. And what the "Supervisory Body" handles, recordings of rehearsals and concerts are always helpful for me.


Do you remember your debut in Vienna?

Of course! For me this was a great day. A "Fledermaus" at the Volksoper with Heinz Holecek as Frosch in 1997. I sang Alfred and was pretty excited because the Viennese audience is indeed, due to its professional knowledge and its strong interest in things artistic, by us singers equally loved and feared. My debut at the Staatsoper followed nine years later, on June 12, 2006, as Tamino in "Die Zauberflote".

Did you, like many students in Munich, in your study time go occasionally for concerts and operas to Vienna? Do you have memories of the Viennese musical life from the perspective of a spectator?


In my student days, it must have been in 1993, there was a special experience in Vienna, which has not been repeated in this way by luck. From Munich we went with the Bach Choir Fürstenfeldbruck to Vienna to give a performance of "St. John Passion." I should sing the Evangelist and the tenor arias. The whole ensemble took the bus there, and for some reason I took the night train. About an hour before the rehearsal I arrived in the morning at the West Bahnhof, took a taxi and said: "To Peter's Church, please!" Big question mark! The driver did not know Peter's Church, nor did his colleagues. In the days before GPS and cell phone of course we had no other choice than to constantly ask people and to follow some vague references. So we wandered through Vienna for some time, I got as it were a city tour of the most beautiful churches - Votive Church, St. Stephens Dom, etc. - until we finally found the Church of St. Peter. The rehearsal had already started, of course, all were sitting on pins and needles, waiting for me.

As a viewer I especially remember the Viennese New Year's concerts in the Musikverein. To watch television with the family, which belonged to us for New Year's Day just as the fir tree belongs to Christmas. And it was always a special experience: the magnificent hall, the Philharmonic, conductor like Boskovsky, Maazel, Karajan and Abbado, little extras like the gun shots in the Polka "On the Hunt", the beat of the music clapping audience at the "Radetzky March"- all had a very special character, and we children felt instinctively that classical music in Vienna has a stronger meaning than anywhere else in the world.

Does the coming song recital mark your debut at the Musikverein?

No, I have already sung concerts there, before my debut at the Staatsoper. But it's my first Liederabend at the Musikverein, and I am really looking forward to being allowed to sing Lieder in this room with the wonderful acoustic.

Does one dream of it sometimes as a student actually being allowed to sing one day in such historic rooms?

My daydreams as a singing student had relatively little to do with music, with even fewer career (laughs). But if I had asked a fairy godmother at the time in what houses I would like to sing, I would have named three magical places in the world of opera called La Scala, the Met and the Vienna State Opera.

I think I'm in Love

I think I fell in love today at the Live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD presentation of The Enchanted Island.  Maybe I fell in love with the ever more fascinating and spectacular Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax.  I was pleased to see she got top billing.

Or perhaps I fell in love with Danielle de Niese as the spectacular spirit Ariel. She got all the best arias and looked adorable in her costume.

It is even possible that I fell in love with David Daniels.  He is very serious in the role of Prospero, and perhaps that is what I needed.

I know I love madly Luca Pisaroni as Caliban.  He complained about having to shave his hair for the role, but he was successfully lovable and hideous all at the same time.

Perhaps I fell in love with Placido Domingo in his first role as a god.  How is that possible?  Hasn't he always been a god?  Today is his birthday. 

Probably I already loved the conductor William Christie, who did not conduct from the harpsichord.  I didn't love anything more than he did.

The pastiche was a success.  I enjoyed the English text enormously.  If English translations were always this good, we would argue for singing more operas in English.  Everyone sang it well.  The oddest selection for retexting was "Endless Pleasure, Endless Love" from Semele made into an ensemble.

The thing that was least like a real Baroque opera was the frequent use of ensemble numbers.  Real Baroque opera is just one da capo aria after another.  In this they represented I would say about half of the opera instead of the usual 80 percent.

I found it amusing that Ariel messes up and shipwrecks the wrong boat.  The odd plot was very well handled.  If you've seen The Fairy Queen, you know that this makes way more sense.

It was enchanting.
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Quantum Theory

I would like to propose a quantum theory of music.  The more you observe it, the closer you look and hear, the more you open your heart to it, the more you expand your experiences of it, the more it changes into something you've never heard before.

American Operas, a List

1897	The Scarlet Letter	Walter Damrosch
1910	The Pipe of Desire	Frederick S. Converse
1911	Natoma	Victor Herbert
1911	Mona	Horatio Parker
1913	Cyrano de Bergerac	Walter Damrosch
1914	Madeleine	Victor Herbert
1917	The Canterbury Pilgrims	Reginald de Koven
1917	Azora	Henry Hadley
1918	Shanewis	Charles Wakefield Cadman
1919	The Legend	Joseph Breil
1920	Rip Van Winkle	Reginald de Koven
1920	Cleopatra's Night	Henry Hadley
1926	The Witch of Salem	Charles Wakefield Cadman
1927	The King's Henchman	Deems Taylor
1931	Peter Ibbetson	Deems Taylor
1933	The Emperor Jones	Louis Gruenberg
1934	Merry Mount	Howard Hanson
1934	Four Saints in Three Acts	Virgil Thomson
1935	Porgy and Bess	George Gershwin
1935	In the Pasha's Garden	John Laurence Seymour
1937	The Man without a Country	Walter Damrosch
1938	Amelia Goes to the Ball	Gian Carlo Menotti
1939	The Devil and Daniel Webster	Douglas Moore
1939	The Old Maid and the Thief	Gian Carlo Menotti
1942	Ramuntcho	Deems Taylor
1942	The Island God	Gian Carlo Menotti
1946	The Medium	Gian Carlo Menotti
1947	The Mother of us All	Virgil Thomson
1947	The Warrior	Bernard Rogers
1947	The Telephone, or L'Amour à trois	Gian Carlo Menotti
1950	The Consul	Gian Carlo Menotti
1951	Amahl and the Night Visitors	Gian Carlo Menotti
1952	Trouble in Tahiti	Leonard Bernstein
1953	The Mighty Casey	William Schuman
1953	The Taming of the Shrew	Vittorio Giannini
1954	The Tender Land	Aaron Copland
1954	The Saint of Bleeker Street	Gian Carlo Menotti
1955	The Ruby	Norman Dello Joio
1956	The Ballad of Baby Doe	Douglas Moore
1956	Susannah	Carlisle Floyd
1956	Candide	Leonard Bernstein
1956	The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore	Gian Carlo Menotti
1957	A Game of Chance	Seymour Barab
1958	Vanessa	Samuel Barber
1959	A Hand of Bridge	Samuel Barber
1961	Sweet Betsy from Pike	Mark Bucci
1963	The Last Savage	Gian Carlo Menotti
1966	Antony and Cleopatra	Samuel Barber
1976	Einstein on the Beach	Philip Glass
1977	The Women in the Garden	Vivian Fine
1979	Sweeney Todd	Stephen Sondheim
1979	The Village Singer	Stephen Paulus
1981	Satyagraha	Philip Glass
1982	The Postman Always Rings Twice	Stephen Paulus
1984	Akhnaten	Philip Glass
1987	Nixon in China	John Adams
1991	The Death of Klinghoffer	John Adams
1991	The ghosts of Versailles	John Corigliano
1991	Orphée	Philip Glass
1992	McTeague	William Elden Bolcom
1994	The Dangerous Liaisons	Conrad Susa
1995	Harvey Milk	Stewart Wallace
1996	Rent	Jonathan Larson
1998	Little Women	Mark Adamo
1998	A Streetcar Named Desire	Andre Previn
1999	A View from the Bridge	William Elden Bolcom
1999	The Great Gatsby	John Harbison
2000	Dead Man Walking	Jake Heggie
2000	El Niño	John Adams
2005	An American Tragedy	Tobias Picker
2005	Doctor Atomic	John Adams
2005	Margaret Garner	Richard Danielpour
2005	Grendel	Elliot Goldenthal
2007	Appomattox	Philip Glass
2008	The Bonesetter’s Daughter	Stewart Wallace
2009	The Letter	Paul Moravec
2010	Moby-Dick	Jake Heggie
2011	Heart of a Soldier	Christopher Theofanidis
2011	Death and the Powers	Tod Machover
2011	Two boys	Nico Muhly
2012	Dog Days	David T. Little
2013	The Perfect American	Philip Glass
2013	The Secret Garden	Nolan Gasser
2013	Dolores Claiborne	Tobias Picker
2013	The Gospel of Mary Magdalene	Mark Adamo
2014	Brokeback Mountain	Charles Wuorinen
2014	27	Ricky Ian Gordon
2014	As One	Laura Kaminsky
2014	Usher House	Gordon Getty
2015	La Ciociara	Marco Tutino
2015	Cold Mountain	Jennifer Higdon
2015	Charlie Parker's Yardbird	Daniel Schnyder
2015	Great Scott	Jake Heggie
2015	Bel Canto	Jimmy López

I'm not sure Victor Herbert counts. He was born in Germany and brought the style of German operetta to America. He was very influential here.  Menotti is our only composer to emphasize opera.  Nothing before Porgy and Bess remains in the repertoire.

I have to say this is a truly pathetic list.

David Daniels, Cocker Spaniels

Or Susan Graham at Zellerbach in Berkeley.  Susan has her own song called "I am a sexy lady" which ended her program.  In it she complains that she is always required to play dudes and kiss other women at the opera, but she is a real woman.  Somehow David Daniels and the obvious rhyme Cocker Spaniels came up.  We're not sure how.  She loves this song.

It was an excellent program.  I liked best the Berlioz La Mort d'Ophélie. She has a great feeling for Berlioz. I am always looking for the feeling.

She did a group based on the Mignon songs of Goethe ending with the great Hugo Wolf "Kennst du das Land."  My doctoral document was on settings of Goethe, so I always enjoy hearing examples of these.  I honestly didn't know that Duparc did a translation of "Kennst du das Land?"  I should have.  The group also included the Tchaikovsky song on "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt."  In the intermission I complained that she had left out "Connais-tu le pays?" from Thomas's Mignon.  I was wrong again!!  She sang it as an encore.  This was particularly lovely. 

Susan Graham excels at a kind of light lyricism, especially of the French variety, and the concert was rich in examples that were well suited to her voice and style.  Malcolm Martineau was her excellent pianist.

Visualize...

Today is the last performance in Zurich of Rossini's Le Comte Ory with Cecilia Bartoli as the Countess. I could not make it due to health problems. So I want you to help me Visualize a DVD for Le comte Ory, Zurich version. This is the version with the new critical edition of the score.

(This idea came from seeing a bumper sticker that said, "Visualize yourself using your turn signal."  This in turn is a parody of the classic Berkeley bumper sticker, "Visualize world peace.")

Child Singers

Here is an interesting discussion of children singing opera.  He's against.  The article is attracting a lot of comments.  This is all brought on by Jackie Evancho, a product of the competition program America's Got Talent.

People have asked me about her.  She sings stuff like "O mio babbino caro."  She's a kid.  People like to see children doing things, imitating grownups.  She scoops and slides only slightly more than the woman I was complaining about. It bothers me that she tries to sound like an adult singer with the vibrato and lowered larynx.  I think that's what anyone is complaining about.  No one seems to complain about English boy sopranos, but they never sound like this.



I prefer this aria like this.  I like the pictures of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence because she sings that if she cannot marry her beloved she will throw herself off of it



So what about this little girl with a far more grownup voice than Jackie?  This kid actually does give me goosebumps.

It is important for people to realize that it is considered unethical for professional voice teachers to teach little children to sing like adults.  This is what the argument is all about.  16 is the generally accepted age for beginning serious lessons, which means after puberty.

Beverly Sills and Roberta Peters trained as children.  This sample of 8 year old Sills will help you define the problem.  This is what a child's voice sounds like.

News about Violins

One of the big stories going around the internet is the one about the eBay customer who may or may not have smashed a valuable antique violin.  Apparently this is Paypal policy.  If you want to get your money back, you have to smash the item.

Claims "Erica," the seller: "The buyer was proud of himself, so he sent me a photo of the destroyed violin."

Andrew Hooker, an antique violin dealer and former auctioneer at Sotheby's, said that "only an imbecile" would buy a precious instrument without playing it first.  Which would kind of leave eBay out, I would think.

My own opinion would be that if it requires an expert to authenticate it, it should similarly require an expert to unauthenticate it.  Advice:  neither buy nor sell your Guarneri on eBay.

Aretha Franklin Is Looking For The Next Great Star ... Of Opera

I don't know what to think about this story about Aretha Franklin auditioning opera singers 18 - 40.  Television contests with people singing opera makes me think of Paul Potts. The age range sounds good. Opera auditions normally stop at 30 while opera singing doesn't really hit its stride until about 40.

Buon Matrimonio

Forgive me if that's bad Italian.  My Italian cannot be relied upon.  It turned out to be true.  The exact date remains a secret, but according to the Forum and the Zurich Opera, Cecilia Bartoli is married.  Never say never.

I must admit it seemed to me they were acting married.  Do you know what I mean?

Domingo's Favorite Roles

Part of the recent pledging activity on PBS included a film about Placido Domingo's favorite roles. There are some expected things and some surprises. I am posting some films, but they aren't necessarily the same ones as are in the film.  He was the opera singer of my generation.

Carmen by Bizet

Was there ever an opera singer like Don Placido?  I think it is the almost magical combination of manly beauty and emotional intensity that sets him apart, quite in addition to the voice that sings anything.  He sings all those roles because he can.  The intensity of his Don Jose is unsurpassed, not even by Alagna.

La Gioconda by Ponchielli

Luisa Miller by Verdi

At this point in the program came an interview with Deborah Voigt who sang Sieglinda to his Siegmund.  "He lives in the moment."

La Fanciulla del West by Puccini

I have a copy of his Fanciulla in my video collection.  I liked very much Licitra in this role, but he could not compare to Domingo who raised this opera to greatness.

Andrea Chenier by Giordano


 I think this recording is a fragment.  See here for the whole thing.

For his Tosca by Puccini we include two recordings.  First is "Recondita Armonia."



This is "E Lucevan le Stelle."

This glorious film made in Rome in the real places of the opera's setting is also in my video collection.  It is pleasing to see him talking about the filming.  The orchestra was in another part of town.

After Tosca came an  interview with Erwin Schrott.

Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach

You'd have to show the whole opera, which I'm not prepared to do.  I always understood Hoffmann to be Domingo's favorite.

Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saens


This film is just a fragment, but it gives you the idea.

I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo
This is a film by Franco Zeffirelli, also in my collection. With the YouTube film comes this comment, "When I really want to hear an especially great voice (as I often do) perhaps I won't choose his. But... if I want to have a complete theatrical experience — with tears and laughter — perhaps how the composers themselves would have like to see, I have not yet found another tenor that puts everything together to breath life into an opera like Placido Domingo. Without him, I dare say operatic standards would not be where they are, today." This comment is also how I feel about him. I wouldn't sit and listen to him on my iPod, but for the full operatic experience, no one tops him.

After this was an interview with Anna Netrebko.  She talks about sneaking in to see him sing Otello in St Petersberg.

Otello Verdi


The best comments from Domingo come here.  "Better too early than too late."  :-)

He talks at length about his voice in this role.  "You have to live so intensely; you have to have the stamina; you have to be convincing as a Shakespeare actor; you have to have the high notes; you have to have the low part; you have to have the metal to pass over the orchestra; you have to have the velvet to sing the love duet."  He, of course, had it all.

He has led us to know that more is possible. Perhaps opera today is what he has made it.

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