Apology

I have been blogging for a long time.  When I first started, I had a lot to say.  This was fun.  But time has passed and I have said a lot of things.  I no longer feel issues rising from within.  I am also having trouble commenting on opera that I am never live at the performance.  I am going to comfort myself by reviewing only things that I feel an inward desire to talk about.

I don't know how long this will last.

Blogging

For me the joy is in the new; new productions, new operas, new singers, and occasionally new conductors.  Seeing repeats of performances I saw when they were new doesn't excite me.  Perhaps this comes from too good a memory.  I have nothing new to say about these old performances.  I still hope you are enjoying them.

#MoD

I have introduced a new label:  #MoD.  This is short for Metropolitan Opera on Demand.  Please select it from the filters list to read reviews of HD transmissions from the Met.  Met on Demand has both audio and video files.  I have focused almost entirely on the video files.

Operas in Germany

This is the repertoire of my two seasons at the Ulmer Theater 1975-77.

Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro $Susanna
Rossini  La Cenerentola
Lortzing  Der Wildschütz   UT only
Flotow Martha $Martha    UT only

Gounod Faust $Marguerite

Verdi La forza del destino *

Smetana The Bartered Bride $Mařenka  (mama)

Strauss II Die Fledermaus $Rosalinde

Millöcker Gasparone $Carlotta  UT only

Tchaikovsky The Queen of Spades *  (Pauline)

Zeller Der Vogelhändler  $Electress   UT only

Humperdinck Hänsel und Gretel $Hänsel

Strauss Salome  (page)

Puccini La Fanciulla del West * [current Met production]
Kálmán Gräfin Mariza      UT only

Loewe My Fair Lady  (maid)
Honegger Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher [Joan of Arc at the stake]

*  directed by Giancarlo del Monaco

Six of these are works that I have never seen since then.  I truly loved Martha and think it should be performed more often.  All were performed in German except the arias in Figaro.

I wrote about my life there in A Day in the Life.  Some comments about our directors can be found here.  I also wrote a brief essay about a colleague from those days.  $ is for Ursula who was a lyric soprano, followed by the roles she performed.  In parentheses are the roles I performed.  She was the star.

Blogging

It has occurred to me that the annual KK awards need to include a best performance by a female and best performance by a male awards.  Or maybe soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone/bass would work.

My favorite news of the week is that Der Rosenkavalier live from the Met in HD made the top 10 on the international movie charts.  

Blogging

Between the ages of 13 and 38 I basically devoted my life to music.  From this effort I achieved three college degrees, including the Doctor of Music with distinction from Indiana University.

I never wanted to be a public school teacher, but worked for several years as an all subject substitute teacher.  I remember jogging around the track at Mcateer High School in San Francisco shouting at the students that they should not let me outrun them.  Adventures in substitute teaching.  That day I was a PE substitute.  I also remember a principal telling me I should be working 3rd street instead of substitute teaching.  I had to ask around to find out what this meant.  It meant I would be more suitable as a prostitute.  I was a complete stranger to him.

I wanted to make more money so I studied programming for 1 semester in a junior college and got a very prestigious job with the Bechtel Corporation.  I enjoyed designing software, which involved interviewing people about what they wanted the software to do and drawing boxes.  Part of the joy of working for Bechtel was that the office was in downtown San Francisco with wonderful scenery and countless restaurants.  Working meant I could afford to eat at them.  My software is still running and has had many thousands of users.

When I started programming, the biggest shock was that everyone treated me with respect--this means sort of cowboy respect from the cowboy corporation, but I was from Oklahoma and knew what it meant.  I obviously knew what I was doing and that was all that counted.  Programming is a gift that you have received from your parents or you haven't.  Perhaps music is, too.  My father was an engineer.

At the time I decided to retire something new came into existence:  the blog.  I saw this as an opportunity to use some of the information accumulated from all those years of studying music.  The only problem I have is that I'm not tough.  If someone decided to start attacking the things I write here, I would undoubtedly just stop writing them.  My opinions do not come from heaven.  They are just my opinions.  If you have different ones, good for you.  Just know this:  I am perfectly well qualified to hold the musical opinions I hold.  Are you?  I am also fully qualified to give opinions about software without having to provide elaborate justifications.  The web pages provided by many opera companies are atrocious.

I want to thank all of you for your kindness.  I don't have as much to say as I used to and may soon run out altogether.  I have loved doing this.  It has transformed the art form of opera for me.

Logo

Perhaps I could also use a logo.  I kind of like this.  It might even be singing.

The meaning of the title of this blog refers to the fact that I once played the role of a child who had been turned into a cookie in Hansel and Gretel.  So this isn't exactly German.  In German it means cookies for children and not children who are cookies.  A cop is as close to FBI as I could find.

IMDB reports these movie titles:  I was a Communist for the FBI, I was a Zombie for the FBI.  No movie titled I was a Cookie for the FBI.

Blogging

I've been blogging for 9 years now, and I feel I must pause to consider.

I have a new friend who has an opera website called Classical Searchlight.  It isn't really a blog.  His point of view is very much the viewpoint of my contemporaries.  He catalogs and evaluates primarily recordings, most of them from my youth.

I find that I own only about 30 CDs of complete operas while owning about 175 opera videos, tape and DVD.  Callas recorded a lot of complete operas, while I own only 4 of them.  There was a sale.  I don't believe there are any films of complete operas with Callas, but there are some individual scenes.  Second act of Tosca.  I don't own any CDs of Sutherland or Caballe.  I do have a video of Caballe's Semiramide with Horne and Ramey.  This is quite spectacular.

I was collecting Bartoli, of course, and have 6 of her opera CDs.  In contrast I have 11 videos of her in complete operas.  The oddest thing in my opera CD collection is 2 complete Tristan and Isolde recordings--Stemme and Brewer.  One was a gift, you may guess which one.  The only T&I I really like is Nilsson.  You knew that.

I'm not trying to get it to stop in my brain.  I'm not trying to find perfection.  In fact what I am doing is almost the opposite.  I want to see what these new ones are going to make of our art form.  

A nameless singer told me recently she never learns from recordings.  And I say that is simply not possible.  If you listen to them, you learn from them.  It is your ears that build the music in your brain.  I know what she meant though.

We each of us have our own music.  This is part of the great joy that it brings to us.  I want my brain to go on to hear new things, even new things in the same old recordings.  I don't still like things I loved before.  I used to listen all the time to the Four Last Songs in the Schwarzkopf recording.  Now I love best Jessye, I think, but also Lucia and Renée.

The Verdi year has for me transformed Verdi into a German.  Perhaps the young singers should find some nice Italians to listen to.  

I was happier when I thought no one read it.  It was just me thinking out loud.

Blogging

Disclaimer:  I never read what the director says is supposed to be going on in the production.  I like it to unfold while I am watching and listening.  I want to allow for the possibility of surprise.  I assume that whatever I am seeing is what is intended for me to see.  If I have to read things to understand the production, something is wrong.  The purpose of the production is to explain the opera to me. I consider it the director's responsibility to communicate to me what the production means by putting the meaning in the production.

Now that it's over, I have read a lot of commentary about what was supposed to be going on in Faust.  Perhaps they were confused and I was not because they read the director's explanation.

I want to know what in the visual elements of this production would have led one to believe this was another Doctor Atomic, and that he sold his soul, not for a young woman as seems so obvious, but for the atomic bomb?  I read that that's what this production was supposed to mean.  I do not read what besides the fact that they all wore lab coats would have meant that?  I insist that if you can't see it, easily and clearly see it, it isn't there.

I don't memorize leitmotivs or tone rows either.

Blogging

Since I have recently discovered that my largest concentration of readers is in fact in Sacramento, I have decided to add a Performance Calendar page.  This is entirely slanted toward what I would want to see, and thus emphasizes singing.  It's actually impossible to find all of this information in one place.

I include things in Sacramento (Sacramento Opera, Mondavi Center), things in the San Francisco Bay Area (Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco Opera, Cal Performances, etc.), and outstanding performances much further away.  When this is possible, I link to the appropriate web page.  You can use these links to guide you to other performances that might interest you.  For the Met in HD performances, please consult your local movie listings.

The performances in distant locations are more or less a wish list.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Joyce Didonato at La Scala, Milan, in La Donna del Lago.  And I do intend to travel to see Cecilia Bartoli at least once this year, perhaps in conjunction with the Jonas Kaufmann Gala in Zurich in May.  I'll have to pull myself together and buy some tickets.

When a review shows up here, you will know that I was there.

Resolutions Revisited

In January of 2006 I made a few resolutions. I want to see how I'm doing with them.

1. I will retire from my job. As soon as I stop enjoying it. Honestly. I've been resolving to do this for quite a while, and some people are tired of hearing about it. Being sent to London is making this harder.

---I retired in May of 2006 and haven't regretted it for a minute.

2. I will make an attempt to find at least one falsettist I like. I won't work too hard at this.

---I must say this took until 2010, but I find I do like Philippe Jaroussky, whom I first heard at Salle Pleyel in Giulio Cesare in Egitto. He is quite pleasant to listen to.

3. I will decide where I am going to live after I am retired. This is also difficult.

---I ended up in Sacramento. I like my apartment, but I'm not sure this was the greatest decision.

4. I will try to weigh less at the end of the year than I do now. I should try to find out how much that is.

---I do weigh about 15 pounds less than when I was working.

5. I will go to at least five opera houses I have never been to before. There are two in London, so that should make a nice start. I will also try to get to Munich this year. There are at least three there.

---I have done quite well with this one. Besides the two in London, I have been to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA, the Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, the Arena di Verona, the Baths of Caracalla, Munich Opera, Palais Garnier, and Opera Bastille. I could do better.

6. I will spend more money than I make. This is not a goal you have to set for yourself, but in my case I am a terrible cheapskate.

---I seem to have been successful in 2008 and the years since them. I'm way behind this year.

7. I will try to change my opinion about at least three things.

---Does everybody that ever appeared on American Idol count? No, I suppose not. Joyce DiDonato. She continues to move rapidly up my list. I made it all the way through Tristan and now rather like it, but not as a favorite. I liked Domingo's Cyrano a lot more in San Francisco than I had in London. It's iffy that I have done much in this category. After all, I like an awful lot of stuff.

8. I will have a new favorite opera.

---This was a silly resolution. How could you possibly prefer anything to Der Rosenkavalier?

9. I will try to fall in love. This gets harder to do as you get older. I think it's hormones. I will assume that opera infatuations also count.

---I have been successful here. It was after this that I began chasing around to see Jonas Kaufmann. It is nice to see that others are doing this, too.

It is surprising to have so much success in the resolution game. I think you have to pick the right resolutions.

Blogging

I’ve been blogging for over six years. When I began, I think the main purpose of my writing was to exorcise my musical demons, of which I have many. I flung advice around left and right to anyone lying in my path.

It couldn’t be helped. I feel reading these entries only slightly embarrassed. The worst was my repeated cracks about Susan Graham’s French. I learn things every day as a result of this new musical obsession, and one result of this learning is that I can no longer hear what I was worrying about with Susan. So I was a jerk. As I said, it can’t be helped.

I really do try to give only good advice. I feel the appearance of the opera Anna Nicole was a direct result of my advice that opera is a chick flick.

Blogging appears to be working. Insecurities and resentments are replaced by a passion to consume everything musical. I passionately try to find the next big thing, for instance. My track record is pretty good in that regard.

My demons are at least at bay. As I become more familiar with the lives of professional singers, I realize more than just my physical inadequacies as a singer. I see more vividly every day how little I could have stood such a life. For one thing you have to stand quietly while everyone tells you what to do. If there is one single thing I could never do, this has to be it. I was far better suited to an environment where I threw tantrums until I got what I wanted. And no, I don't know why I wasn't fired. I attribute this to the fact that I made decisions when no one else wanted to.

I’m doing better at sticking to things I actually know about instead of giving advice to composers. I only got off onto that track because there seems to be no one else doing it. I’ll use this opportunity to summarize: opera should be fun. Write an opera that’s fun. That’s why people like Nixon. It’s a lot of fun.

I argue a lot for phrasing the music. That was my problem with the recent Bach concert. It was plainly obvious that far more time was spent in rehearsal making sure the singers used proper German pronunciation of Latin--in a piece that was probably never performed in Bach's lifetime and therefore included no pronouncing of Latin whatsoever--than was spent finding the musical phrasing of the pieces. In fact to all appearances no time was spent on phrasing at all.

But I'm not going to decide for you how to do it. You won't get from me that this way is right and this other one is not. Find it in your own heart and soul, but find it.

So the demons are conquered through the knowledge that writing about music is probably where I fit best in the scheme of things, and in particular writing about music in a context where no editor comes along to fix me up, round off my rough edges and make me like everyone else. I remember when I was a freshman in college, an English teacher advised me to become a writer about music. And so I have.

Blogging

It's true that I have posted 20 different YouTube films of Cecilia Bartoli since I began blogging 6 years ago. In my own defense I have also posted films of over 100 different singers. This includes 10 of Netrebko and 9 of Kaufmann.

This list includes 40 entries of singers who may be considered old-timers:

Agnes Baltsa, mezzo
Anja Silja, dramatic soprano
Barbara Bonney, light lyric
Beniamino Gigli, tenor
Beverly Sills, coloratura
Birgit Nilsson, dramatic soprano
Boris Christoff, bass
Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo
Christa Ludwig, mezzo
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone [no one is more shocked than I]
Eileen Farrell, dramatic soprano
Elisabeth Schumann, soprano
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano
Fritz Wunderlich, tenor
Grace Bumbry, mezzo
Gwyneth Jones, soprano
Hans Hotter, bass
Janet Baker, mezzo
Jessye Norman, soprano
Joan Sutherland, coloratura
Judith Blegen, light lyric
Jussi Bjorling, tenor
Kathleen Battle, light lyric
Kathleen Ferrier, mezzo
Kiri Te Kanawa, lyric soprano
Kirsten Flagstad, dramatic soprano
Leonard Warren, baritone
Leontyne Price, soprano
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo
Lotte Lehmann, soprano
Lucia Popp, lyric
Luciano Pavarotti, tenor
Maria Callas, soprano
Marian Anderson, contralto
Marilyn Horne, coloratura mezzo
Mario Del Monaco, tenor
Mario Lanza, tenor
Maureen Forrester, mezzo
Mirella Freni, soprano
Montserrat Caballe, coloratura
Peter Hoffmann, tenor
Regina Resnik, mezzo
Regine Crespin, soprano
Renata Tebaldi, soprano
Richard Tucker, tenor
Rise Stevens, mezzo
Rosa Ponselle, soprano
Sena Jurinac, soprano
Shirley Verrett, mezzo
Tatiana Troyanos, mezzo
Victoria de los Angeles, soprano

This includes everyone I listened to in my youth and some I didn't.

There are also 10 mostly American pop singers:

Barbra Streisand
Christine Ebersole
David Cook
Doris Day
Gisela May
Jennifer Hudson
Josephine Baker
Judy Garland
Mahalia Jackson
Nina Simone

I notice there is no Alison Krauss, Linda Ronstadt or Dolly Parton. The biggest mental stretch for me has been learning to like Jennifer Hudson. Nobody sang like that when I was young. I had never heard of Josephine Baker when I was young.

What I did for a living

We did at least 40 performances in one season.

Blogging

The whole time I have been writing this blog I have been doing a kind of self commentary on what and how I'm doing.  Should I change this now that I know people are actually reading this?

My journalistic model is Entertainment Weekly. I admit I write about actual subjects way more than anything you will see in EW. But the annual sexiest opera singers list is a definite attempt to set the emphasis on entertainment.

I am a trained musician whose education did not emphasize opera. While I have gone to the opera throughout my adult life, actually knowing anything about opera is an ongoing process for me. For instance, I am far more knowledgeable about Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms than about The Rake's Progress. So my mind wanders off topic a lot.

Topics I actively pursue:

1. Stories about my obsessions. Do I have to say what they are?
2. Stories about the operas and other music I am seeing.
3. News and gossip. Hopefully more news than gossip.
4. Annual sexiest opera singers list.
5. Phrasing. Currently percolating tirade on this topic. Look people--without phrasing it isn't music! $%&&%#
6. Translations of interviews in German. Germany is the center of the classical music world, and I actually enjoy this. I could try to expand my sources.
7. Photography. It would help if I were a better photographer. I actually like it if the pictures look a little funny. There's the "looks like" game, for instance. Seeing similarities is something that happens to your brain when you get old.
8. My technique series which is almost finished.
9. Modern operas
10. New singers. I am still very proud of spotting Jonas Kaufmann in Zurich before he became a household word.

These last two items are the actual interior purpose of this blog. It helps keep my brain young.

Cancer

What's On Stage reports the following paragraph:

[Erwin] Schrott decided it was a sign he had too much free time and ought to get busy doing something more useful. And so he resolved to “never google again, not log in, nothing”. I mentioned something the tenor Marcelo Alvarez said in a recent interview, “Blogs are the cancer of our operatic world.” Schrott approves. “So there are two things that you don’t have to do - to smoke and to read blogs!”

Since I am paranoid, I naturally think they are talking about me. But on the other hand, I don't suppose any working artist should pay that much attention to other people's opinions.

Yes, I actually do exist

I found my name on the internet. I was in the world premier production of Vivian Fine's opera The Women in the Garden. It says so right here. It was enormously fun to play Gertrude Stein.

I was compiling a personal list of operas and had completely forgotten this one. It puts my list of performed operas up to 22 and seen to 217.

Blogging

People want me to write about them. This may be difficult to explain, but I am not trying to succeed at this. I never pay any attention to how many people are reading me, and prefer to assume that no one is. Paul, Chris, Sarah, and four other people. People who are googled about someone in particular that I have written about. I was sort of shocked when my visit to see Jonas in Lohengrin did not google.

I get email. While I was at jury duty, I got a phone call--that was a first.

I just go to things because I want to and think I might enjoy them. Lately I have been remarkably successful at selecting events that I will enjoy. I don't write about everything I go to. I am very susceptible to stress and don't want to add any to my life. I am just trying to have fun.

However, my funds are limited, so if you have FREE TICKETS, by all means let me know.

Conversation

Walking back to the car after Il Trovatore:
What's the name of your blog?
Kinderkuchen for the FBI.
Oh, I've read that. It's pretty weird.

Blogging

My door to classical music came through Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Mahler, and not through opera. As an opera blogger, I am somewhat bogus. I enjoy the opera, but am just as happy to see a Messiaen organ concert or Lieder recital. My supply of adjectives is inadequate. I have said something was "nice" 135 times. This is versus 125 "wonderful" and 28 "exciting." I have called something "boring" 30 times.

In my life I have been a true fan of only one singer: Cecilia B*rtoli. I still love her, but find it discouraging to love a public figure this much. I added the * so it wouldn't google. Jonas K*ufmann and Anna N*trebko are pleasures and enthusiasms, but I don't love them.

Perhaps I am bored with blogging. To be any good at it I would have to work much harder. I started up Facebook and am having fun with that. One is never required to be intelligent there. Perhaps one isn't anyway. It might provide a better outlet for my meanderings off topic.

I notice the people who are most successful at opera blogging generally emphasize style over substance. This is not to be construed as a criticism. It may be that I haven't sufficient style. I am a nerd very deep down and am unlikely ever to change.