NEA Opera Award Defunct

I don't remember hearing about this, but the National Endowment for the Arts opera honors list ceased after the 2011 award.  They awarded for only 4 years. 

2011 John Conklin
Speight Jenkins
Risë Stevens
Robert Ward

2010 Martina Arroyo
David DiChiera
Philip Glass
Eve Queler

2009 John Adams
Frank Corsaro
Marilyn Horne
Lotfi Mansouri
Julius Rudel

2008 Carlisle Floyd
Richard Gaddes
James Levine
Leontyne Price

Misc

There are now at least five women in the Wiener Philharmoniker.

Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig played Mahler 9 on Saturday to great effect. The maestro was very pleased.

I got back to my hotel after in time to see the final credits roll on Don Carlo on the ORF.

The seats in both houses of the Salzburger Festspiele are very uncomfortable, especially in long works like Meistersinger. 

Tried Kaiserschmarrn today and liked it. When in Austria, do as the Austrians do.

Lotfi Mansouri has died. He was formerly head of the San Francisco Opera.  His obituaries are saying he invented supertitles.  I didn't know that.

I no sooner said that Eva-Maria Westbroek was ready for something bigger than I found she is scheduled to do Isolde in Bayreuth in 2015.

True Tales

I am currently reading Lotfi Mansouri's memoir, True Tales from the Mad, Mad, Mad World of Opera.  Mansouri is shown above laughing with Donald Runnicles, probably from the days when they were the tag team running the San Francisco Opera.

Let's just say he names names.  One anecdote about a soprano whose mother comes to the house to tell her daughter of the evils of opera singing, isn't named.  But that's about it.  Jon Vickers, we are told, could and did recite long passages from the Bible when he was supposed to be rehearsing.  Renata Scotto didn't want anyone to stand within 20 feet of her.  Pavarotti liked cash donations.  Stuff like that.

When he gets to his chapter on opening nights at the San Francisco opera, I start having questions. He remembers the night when Otello started over 3 hours late, and how much the opera board members liked the time spent getting drunk waiting for the opera to start.  I would have thought, in fact always have thought, that serving booze at the opera was a money making idea.  I would have kept track of how much money each intermission generated and whether or not the money increased with the length of the intermission.  So exactly why is it that the number of intermissions keeps getting smaller?  Don't they like money?  And if overtime kicks in at midnight, why is it that the intermissions aren't timed to end the opera just before that?  One isn't allowed to ask these questions.

It used to be that things that went on behind the scenes at the opera made it into the newspapers.  Why doesn't that happen any more?  It is a fun book with lots of insider information.  I tend to find books annoying these days because they don't have a like button.  (Like)

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Mansouri

Pamela Rosenberg doesn’t fill me with rage the way Lotfi Mansouri often did. An acquaintance explained that he married money and that that was the explanation for him.

Early in his tenure there was a financial crisis which he resolved creatively—he hired someone to do all the productions very cheaply. The problem was that they were all the same dismal, abstract brown and very depressing. This did the trick—crisis over.

Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel calls for the nuns to strip off their clothing in a lunatic rage at the end. The heroine wore a body stocking, as I recall, but the other disrobing nuns were rumored to come from the local strip joint in the Tenderloin owned by the Mitchell brothers. (Their successful long-running partnership ended with one of them shooting the other.) Fine. What’s a little nudity here or there?

But other operas that season seemed suddenly populated with naked individuals. Finally a reason to bring binoculars to the opera, used to search all crowd scenes to find the nude ones. Oh, he could drive me into a rage.

He imported entire productions from the Kirov Opera. The Fiery Angel was one of these, as a matter of fact. Who could forget the incredible Ruslan and Lyudmila with Anna Netrebko in her spectacular American debut? Both productions were conducted by Valery Gergiev when we could still afford him.

One of the great scandals also took place during the tenure of Lotfi Mansouri. It is good to remember that Adler had to interest us entirely without benefit of supertitles. The only rule for supertitles is that the audience must never laugh at them. They can explain something funny on the stage, but must never themselves be the source of laughter. The drama is on the stage and not in the titles.

So perhaps some operas we are better off not knowing. La Gioconda is one of these. The plot and the action are ludicrous and the supertitles tell you just how ludicrous. Eva Marton in the role of La Gioconda simply stopped singing when the audience laughed and said, “It’s not funny.”

Adler simply wanted to be the best and nothing less would do.

McEwan came to his post from the recording industry and stayed with his strengths.

Mansouri was eclectic and often crass, but carried the opera through some rough times. And he is an excellent stage director.

Rosenberg stays with her vision when all is collapsing around her. This is both her strength and her profound weakness. We’re not sure we share her vision, and we are certainly not willing to see the opera die because of it.

San Francisco Opera

I used to live in San Francisco and most of my experience of professional opera theater comes from there. They are currently experiencing a financial crisis which is to be accompanied by the resignation of the current manager, Pamela Rosenberg. I want to try to evaluate her tenure by writing an appreciation of the San Francisco Opera with a list of memorable performances in no particular order—or rather in the order of memory. Note to Jean—this is my list. You write your own.

• The first professional opera I attended was a performance of Bellini’s I Puritani in the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, a space more suitable for wrestling and the Ice Capades than opera. It starred Joan Sutherland and was memorable mainly for its sheer absurdity. There was a tiny set in the center of vast emptiness. Everyone seemed to move around Ms Sutherland while she stood in one place, as though she couldn't attend the rehearsals.

• And another with Joan Sutherland years later: Terry McEwan brought Joan and Marilyn back to do one more Norma. Awesome singing. One longs for this.

• Monserat Caballé and Marilyn Horne in Rossini’s Semiramide, dressed as decks of cards. They all looked so miserable. I sat next to a woman who loved Monserat Caballé as much as I loved Marilyn Horne. She would gasp during the soprano parts, while I gasped at the mezzo sections.

• Olga Borodina as Dalilah. She has said that this is her favorite role and her favorite music. I’ve seen the video of her performance at the Metropolitan, and ours was much better. Her singing was very mature and sophisticated, musically a step above anything I had heard. The acting was very sexy. The sets of the San Francisco production are much sexier than the Met’s, and Olga felt her way into her surroundings. Olga Borodina achieved true greatness in this role. I thought that the golden age had come again. She is a fabulous singer of the here and now.

• Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in Der Rosenkavalier. Life altering. She has said that her husband, Walter Legge, taught her to lift her performances beyond the ordinary.

• James Morris in Terry McEwan’s 1985 Ring cycle. Until then I didn’t think I could love Wagner.

• Messiaen's opera Saint Francois d'Assise. I adore Messiaen. I have heard people complain about the score, but the opera is five hours long and more people walk out during Tristan and Isolda. Willard White was towering. And who can forget the angel playing her heavenly harp? Messiaen achieved his spiritual aim in this gigantic work.

• This memory segues nicely into Glass’ Satyagraha, a work both numbing and deeply spiritual.

• Missing Margaret Price and seeing Leontyne Price in Aida instead. She was the unqualified master of this role.

• Anything with Marilyn Horne. Orlando Furioso.

• Kiri in Capriccio. I don’t want to forget this wonderful singer. The Versace production, not the one they filmed.

• Maria Ewing’s Salome. I went twice.

• Reri Grist’s Ariadne auf Naxos. She brought the opera to a complete standstill.

• Maria Collier’s Tosca. The curtain calls went on for hours. Well, maybe not hours. Nothing like that happens today. She wore a long red train and never stepped on it once. I hope I have remembered her name right.

• La piece de la resistance: Helga Dernesch as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus. I can see her now in her slender army uniform and cigarette holder. I laughed till I hurt. I smile thinking of it now.

Opera is food for the soul, and we judge an intendant by how nourished we feel. I have attended the opera during four different managers: Kurt Herbert Adler, Terrance McEwan, Lotfi Monsouri and Pamela Rosenberg. They are what I know of opera. The above list includes examples by each.

Adler made the San Francisco Opera the equal of any on earth, and his followers have not been able to match him. Adler made sure the best singers came here. His biggest blunder was with Maria Callas.

I complained bitterly about Lotfi Mansouri because of his commonness. He had three particularly notable seasons: one where all the sets were made from brown logs in different arrangements, one where strippers appeared in every opera, though only one called for them, and one in the civic auditorium where all the singers were miked like a broadway show. He was entertaining, but a bit crass.

Pamela is harder to evaluate. I once complained that we had gone from a first tier opera house to the equal of any medium-sized town in Germany. Pamela dares big and fails big. She is in the mainstream of German opera production, but sadly, we are not. She produced more empty seats than any of the others. From my list you should deduce that for me the singing is what really counts, and under Pamela Rosenberg the overall quality of the singing diminished.