Thursday, October 13, 2005
Silliness
By writing a silly blog about opera I am trying to address what I see as its most serious problem--opera is regarded as much too serious. That's how we come to get all these heavy serious subjects like bombs and things. Opera is show business. Of all the modern operas I have seen lately I have most liked The Ghosts of Versailles, an opera that does not take itself quite so seriously.
Why doesn’t music stay the same?
Why doesn’t music stay the same?
A friend asked me this question recently. She wished that it did. The answer is simply that we don’t, so it doesn’t.
Should it stay the same as Mozart? Vienna today is just a rather old modern city with cars instead of carriages, with modern politicians instead of monarchs, with no wigs or fancy clothing such as Mozart wore. Mozart’s music accompanied Mozart’s life. It was formal and structured, and so was his music. It’s funny—his life was so different but his comedy is completely real to us now.
There are other reasons besides culture. There is also ego. Mozart was Mozart completely to perfection. What need would there be for me to compose like Mozart? I would certainly suffer by comparison. I would have a much better chance writing as myself, in my own style. If I composed like Mozart, I would be regarded by my composer colleagues as a freak.
Mozart composed for his customers, his paying customers, and I suppose the customers are really not so different. John Adams composed for his customer Pamela Rosenberg. She even imposed the subject. It was she who supposed that the invention of the atom bomb was a proper subject for an opera. I would have suggested he write an opera about love.
Our lives are chaotic and roiling, like our music. Our egos are huge, generally unjustifiably huge, and the music we create is loud and often incoherent, like us.
A friend asked me this question recently. She wished that it did. The answer is simply that we don’t, so it doesn’t.
Should it stay the same as Mozart? Vienna today is just a rather old modern city with cars instead of carriages, with modern politicians instead of monarchs, with no wigs or fancy clothing such as Mozart wore. Mozart’s music accompanied Mozart’s life. It was formal and structured, and so was his music. It’s funny—his life was so different but his comedy is completely real to us now.
There are other reasons besides culture. There is also ego. Mozart was Mozart completely to perfection. What need would there be for me to compose like Mozart? I would certainly suffer by comparison. I would have a much better chance writing as myself, in my own style. If I composed like Mozart, I would be regarded by my composer colleagues as a freak.
Mozart composed for his customers, his paying customers, and I suppose the customers are really not so different. John Adams composed for his customer Pamela Rosenberg. She even imposed the subject. It was she who supposed that the invention of the atom bomb was a proper subject for an opera. I would have suggested he write an opera about love.
Our lives are chaotic and roiling, like our music. Our egos are huge, generally unjustifiably huge, and the music we create is loud and often incoherent, like us.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Atomic Bomb
I want to apologize to John Adams and Peter Sellars for saying that their bomb looked nothing like the real bomb. Their bomb looked nothing like the ones dropped on Japanese cities--these were wrapped in smooth metal with no wires hanging out. I was watching a show on Einstein, and apparently the test bomb, the one detonated in New Mexico, looked exactly like theirs.
So now you can ask: does a precise reproduction of the bomb make a better opera?
So now you can ask: does a precise reproduction of the bomb make a better opera?
Friday, October 07, 2005
Cecilia in Berkeley
A Cecilia Bartoli concert is like nothing else on earth.
On Thursday night on the Cal Performances series in Berkeley she was breathtakingly gorgeous in an emerald gown with a long train, accessorized with her jeweled concert Rolex. Cecilia does not know how many Rolexes she owns. She is wearing her long hair up in a pony tail these days.
And a Cecilia Bartoli concert in Berkeley, California, is like nowhere else. The audience roars like at a football game, and does not ever want to go home. After three encores--1 Bononcini, 1 Handel and 1 Scarlatti--she made a small speech about next time, and still they yelled. She had a cold and wanted to stop. Then she came out and waved, and we all waved back. Then she was gone.
This is the "Opera proibita" tour, and most of the arias were from that album. Handel's "Chiudi chiudi" is not on the recording. I have already reviewed the album.
I had read that she conducts the orchestra (La Scintilla from Zurich) while she sings. I had read that she did this even when there was a conductor present. They/she has done the sensible thing and disposed of the conductor altogether. I thought this worked most but not all of the time. In at least one aria the orchestra did not begin together.
She likes this. She likes moving her body with the music, and it becomes an element of her total immersion in the performance. This particular music, this glorious, exciting music, all of it from 1700-1710, requires a lot of rhythmic cohesion and coordination. Besides the beginnings of the sections, they most need conducting when Cecilia is singing to make sure the tempo is correct and synchronized with her very precise singing.
So there she stands in her vivid green dress with the musicians all around her, moving her arms and shoulders to show what she wants, sometimes sending her hand out to the side. It's like nothing else.
Some of us have been complaining that she doesn't do song recitals, or at least new programs for song recitals, any more. Last time in Berkeley she did a song recital, but it was all old material. This is because we love her song recitals. But what is important is how much she loves it. A Cecilia Bartoli concert is like no other because of the engulfing, sometimes overwhelming love that flows out in her singing. Those of us who love her would never wish to inhibit this flow--we want that she loves it this much.
Everything is subsumed in the musical-emotional interpretation. She does whatever she needs to do to make this music. She enters into the music so deeply that sometimes, "Lascia la spina" e.g., it takes her a few minutes to come back out of it.
And she sings like no one else on earth. People around me were crying at times. Handel's "Come nembo" which ended the first half was wildly ornamented in the da capo. I have been told that her ornaments can vary from one performance to another. They varied radically from the recording.
My son puts LOL into his emails, and we were speculating what this might mean. When Herb Caen wrote it, it stood for Little Old Lady, but I'm not prepared for that to be the meaning. Laughing Out Loud was suggested.
On Thursday night on the Cal Performances series in Berkeley she was breathtakingly gorgeous in an emerald gown with a long train, accessorized with her jeweled concert Rolex. Cecilia does not know how many Rolexes she owns. She is wearing her long hair up in a pony tail these days.
And a Cecilia Bartoli concert in Berkeley, California, is like nowhere else. The audience roars like at a football game, and does not ever want to go home. After three encores--1 Bononcini, 1 Handel and 1 Scarlatti--she made a small speech about next time, and still they yelled. She had a cold and wanted to stop. Then she came out and waved, and we all waved back. Then she was gone.
This is the "Opera proibita" tour, and most of the arias were from that album. Handel's "Chiudi chiudi" is not on the recording. I have already reviewed the album.
I had read that she conducts the orchestra (La Scintilla from Zurich) while she sings. I had read that she did this even when there was a conductor present. They/she has done the sensible thing and disposed of the conductor altogether. I thought this worked most but not all of the time. In at least one aria the orchestra did not begin together.
She likes this. She likes moving her body with the music, and it becomes an element of her total immersion in the performance. This particular music, this glorious, exciting music, all of it from 1700-1710, requires a lot of rhythmic cohesion and coordination. Besides the beginnings of the sections, they most need conducting when Cecilia is singing to make sure the tempo is correct and synchronized with her very precise singing.
So there she stands in her vivid green dress with the musicians all around her, moving her arms and shoulders to show what she wants, sometimes sending her hand out to the side. It's like nothing else.
Some of us have been complaining that she doesn't do song recitals, or at least new programs for song recitals, any more. Last time in Berkeley she did a song recital, but it was all old material. This is because we love her song recitals. But what is important is how much she loves it. A Cecilia Bartoli concert is like no other because of the engulfing, sometimes overwhelming love that flows out in her singing. Those of us who love her would never wish to inhibit this flow--we want that she loves it this much.
Everything is subsumed in the musical-emotional interpretation. She does whatever she needs to do to make this music. She enters into the music so deeply that sometimes, "Lascia la spina" e.g., it takes her a few minutes to come back out of it.
And she sings like no one else on earth. People around me were crying at times. Handel's "Come nembo" which ended the first half was wildly ornamented in the da capo. I have been told that her ornaments can vary from one performance to another. They varied radically from the recording.
My son puts LOL into his emails, and we were speculating what this might mean. When Herb Caen wrote it, it stood for Little Old Lady, but I'm not prepared for that to be the meaning. Laughing Out Loud was suggested.
This is also a Cecilia Bartoli only phenomenon. The angel's aria "Open, o gates of hell" from Handel's La Resurrezione is so wildly ornamented, with the instruments ornamenting in parallel with Cecilia, with all the rhythmic drive of a freight train going through your living room, it is LOL, Laughing Out Loud joyful.
Doctor Atomic
Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera is part of Pamela Rosenberg's Faust project. The Faust project included a fully staged Damnation of Faust, Berlioz' insufficiently theatrical opera. For me it was very successful, bringing coherence where it had not been before.
The Faust project also included Busoni's Doktor Faust which I loathed. It was set in what appeared to be a factory. Or was it a power plant? Faust's significance seemed to be indistinguishable from Homer Simpson's job at the power plant. People came and went for no apparent reason. There was an ending, but who knows what it meant? I expect the production to explain the opera to me, but this one explained nothing.
Faust is always a well-educated man who wants to experience more than ordinary human experience allows. J. Robert Oppenheimer wants to experience the creation of a nuclear explosion, an activity previously outside human experience. Has he sold his soul to accomplish this? Has this process shown him that he has a soul?
I said that I would review this work as opera and not as politics. In order to do this I would first need to convince myself that it existed apart from politics. Adams' libretti are not really operas and I think this one is the worst offender. Is there drama here at all? The bomb is ready to go off, and everyone is fretting over it. We are transitioning from a world without nuclear explosions to one with them. The wife, Kitty, sung by Kristine Jepson, who is entirely outside the project, thinks we should aggressively pursue peace. One of the scientists, Robert Wilson, ably played by the Adler Fellow Thomas Glenn, is worried about the morality of the proposed bombing of Japan, which they all seem to know about.
The supposed bomb, looking nothing like the actual atomic bomb which was not particularly interesting looking, hangs from the ceiling throughout the opera, reminding us constantly of what the subject is.
For me this simply did not work. There were sufficient events to fill the first act, but the second act is empty. There is ticking to indicate a count down, but there is no number to tell us where we are, no sense of progress toward the end. The lighting changes. The people stand or lie on the stage. The colors change--I'm told each of these colors is assigned a particular significance, but do I care? What little tension there may have been entirely dissipates by the end. Nothing happens except the lights go out, the chorus stands and the lights come back up. This entire act created no tension for me at all, and I'm told that the ending was changed from the opening on October 1 to be even less eventful.
John Adams' music is the best part of this. There is homage to Verese, someone I enjoy, in the mechanical sounds that make up the overture and parts of Act II. It's minimalism in every sense. Adams is less minimal than Glass by quite a lot, but there is lots of harmonic, thematic and rhythmic repetition. Minimalism is based firmly in the concept that less is more. Less complexity brings greater comprehension and appreciation, and after Schoenberg, this is welcomed. But less theatrical arc does not yield more theatrical satisfaction. I need something going on. I'm sorry to say it, but this opera is just plain boring.
The texts all appear to be borrowed. There are frequent elements that could have been formed into a plot. The scientists could have actively fought over the ethics of bombing a Japanese city with no warning instead of just doing monologues. There was singing, movement, people, lighting, music. For me all that was missing was the opera.
The Faust project also included Busoni's Doktor Faust which I loathed. It was set in what appeared to be a factory. Or was it a power plant? Faust's significance seemed to be indistinguishable from Homer Simpson's job at the power plant. People came and went for no apparent reason. There was an ending, but who knows what it meant? I expect the production to explain the opera to me, but this one explained nothing.
Faust is always a well-educated man who wants to experience more than ordinary human experience allows. J. Robert Oppenheimer wants to experience the creation of a nuclear explosion, an activity previously outside human experience. Has he sold his soul to accomplish this? Has this process shown him that he has a soul?
I said that I would review this work as opera and not as politics. In order to do this I would first need to convince myself that it existed apart from politics. Adams' libretti are not really operas and I think this one is the worst offender. Is there drama here at all? The bomb is ready to go off, and everyone is fretting over it. We are transitioning from a world without nuclear explosions to one with them. The wife, Kitty, sung by Kristine Jepson, who is entirely outside the project, thinks we should aggressively pursue peace. One of the scientists, Robert Wilson, ably played by the Adler Fellow Thomas Glenn, is worried about the morality of the proposed bombing of Japan, which they all seem to know about.
The supposed bomb, looking nothing like the actual atomic bomb which was not particularly interesting looking, hangs from the ceiling throughout the opera, reminding us constantly of what the subject is.
For me this simply did not work. There were sufficient events to fill the first act, but the second act is empty. There is ticking to indicate a count down, but there is no number to tell us where we are, no sense of progress toward the end. The lighting changes. The people stand or lie on the stage. The colors change--I'm told each of these colors is assigned a particular significance, but do I care? What little tension there may have been entirely dissipates by the end. Nothing happens except the lights go out, the chorus stands and the lights come back up. This entire act created no tension for me at all, and I'm told that the ending was changed from the opening on October 1 to be even less eventful.
John Adams' music is the best part of this. There is homage to Verese, someone I enjoy, in the mechanical sounds that make up the overture and parts of Act II. It's minimalism in every sense. Adams is less minimal than Glass by quite a lot, but there is lots of harmonic, thematic and rhythmic repetition. Minimalism is based firmly in the concept that less is more. Less complexity brings greater comprehension and appreciation, and after Schoenberg, this is welcomed. But less theatrical arc does not yield more theatrical satisfaction. I need something going on. I'm sorry to say it, but this opera is just plain boring.
The texts all appear to be borrowed. There are frequent elements that could have been formed into a plot. The scientists could have actively fought over the ethics of bombing a Japanese city with no warning instead of just doing monologues. There was singing, movement, people, lighting, music. For me all that was missing was the opera.
Quicksand
In Sir Walter Scott's novel "The Bride of Lammermoor" after the death of Lucy, the hero and his horse suddenly disappear into a bog of quicksand. One minute he's here, and the next he isn't. I am fatally attracted to quicksand and become all happy when it creeps into a story. For instance, Peter Wimsey almost sinks forever into quicksand in "Clouds of Witness".
They didn't try to put quicksand into Lucia di Lammermoor, but if the heroine in Kat'a Kabanova can jump into a river, why not into quicksand?
Today, 10/04/05, the New York Times includes an item on what quicksand really is. I love this. Except, according to the article a horse and rider couldn't suddenly disappear into it. I liked thinking they could.
They didn't try to put quicksand into Lucia di Lammermoor, but if the heroine in Kat'a Kabanova can jump into a river, why not into quicksand?
Today, 10/04/05, the New York Times includes an item on what quicksand really is. I love this. Except, according to the article a horse and rider couldn't suddenly disappear into it. I liked thinking they could.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Gimmick
I used to collect pictures of people who had found their gimmick. My collection started with a guy called Grimes Poznikov, the automatic human jukebox. He sat inside a phone-booth shaped cloth cage with his repertoire of songs painted on the sides and a slot to insert money. You would put in the money, say what song you wanted and he would play it on the trumpet. Badly. He set up shop near Ghirardeli Square and was frequently arrested at the behest of shop owners in the area. A week later he would be back. He was a man who had found his gimmick.
Usually the finders of gimmicks are trapped in them and never move on to something else. My collection included a picture of Tiny Tim, the man who sang with a high pitched flutter, played the ukulele and got married on the Tonight Show.
One picture had Lily Tomlin and Julia Child together. They had met at Macy's, I think. Perhaps they both loved their gimmicks and did not want to move on.
One was a photo of a guy named Demming who did corporate motivation. He had this box of red and white beads and this incomprehensible illustration of why everything is management's fault. I could not help associating his with Hesse's The Glass Bead Game and wondered if he had read it.
This is a fascinating game and applies in any context. Try it.
I want to give Bob Dylan credit--no matter how tempting it might have been to stay in his rut of success, he always transcended his gimmick and looked for new music to make.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Trilogy
In his prime I would buy tickets to see Placido Domingo and something would always go wrong. There would be an earthquake. His mother would die. Now these weren't reasons you could exactly complain about, but nonetheless, I was not getting to see him sing. Finally I got to hear him in Massenet's Herodiade with Renée Fleming, a not very interesting opera with a ridiculous plot and a not very significant tenor role. I had wished for Les Contes d'Hoffmann.
Until Sunday's Trilogy: Domingo and Friends in 3 Acts at the Washington National Opera. He looked and sang very well. Domingo has always been kind of a baritone with high notes, and as his voice ages this becomes more and more apparent. Amazingly, in his middle sixties he has no trace of a wobble, but there is a certain added gravitas.
Act I was Fedora Act II, with Sylvie Valayre as Fedora. This is the best act for the tenor with the hit aria, "Amor ti vieta," and the narrative of why he killed Fedora's fiance. There is a party. Amanda Squitieri, a Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist, as Olga was especially nice. Watch for her. I went with my neighbor and she liked this part the best.
Act II was Act IV of Otello. I never got to see Domingo sing the whole opera, but this is the best part anyway. What a treat! Barbara Frittoli is a fabulous Desdemona. She has voice, she has style, she has beauty, she has acting and she lies very quietly hanging off the bed for quite a long time without falling off.
Act III was Act III of The Merry Widow. This scene also has a party, and like the party in Fledermaus, it was used to insert added entertainments. Sylvie Valayre and Barbara Frittoli sang a duet from Cosi fan tutte, for instance. I've never cared for the lustige Witwe and was happy to be spared the whole operetta. Ending with a party was nice. There's a great bit where the soprano compares Parisian men to a fizzy alcoholic drink which I cannot remember the name of. Domingo sang his aria in German while everything else was in English.
It was a pleasing froth with a glorious, dramatic center.
Until Sunday's Trilogy: Domingo and Friends in 3 Acts at the Washington National Opera. He looked and sang very well. Domingo has always been kind of a baritone with high notes, and as his voice ages this becomes more and more apparent. Amazingly, in his middle sixties he has no trace of a wobble, but there is a certain added gravitas.
Act I was Fedora Act II, with Sylvie Valayre as Fedora. This is the best act for the tenor with the hit aria, "Amor ti vieta," and the narrative of why he killed Fedora's fiance. There is a party. Amanda Squitieri, a Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist, as Olga was especially nice. Watch for her. I went with my neighbor and she liked this part the best.
Act II was Act IV of Otello. I never got to see Domingo sing the whole opera, but this is the best part anyway. What a treat! Barbara Frittoli is a fabulous Desdemona. She has voice, she has style, she has beauty, she has acting and she lies very quietly hanging off the bed for quite a long time without falling off.
Act III was Act III of The Merry Widow. This scene also has a party, and like the party in Fledermaus, it was used to insert added entertainments. Sylvie Valayre and Barbara Frittoli sang a duet from Cosi fan tutte, for instance. I've never cared for the lustige Witwe and was happy to be spared the whole operetta. Ending with a party was nice. There's a great bit where the soprano compares Parisian men to a fizzy alcoholic drink which I cannot remember the name of. Domingo sang his aria in German while everything else was in English.
It was a pleasing froth with a glorious, dramatic center.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Doctor Atomic
I am travelling this week to see Doctor Atomic in San Francisco. It hasn't appeared yet and already it is controversial. Read here about how the plot is anti-semitic. I will review it as opera and not as politics. I loved Nixon in China but was not impressed with The Death of Klinghoffer. None of them are about love. View my complete review here.
Of course, I am also going to hear Cecilia who did not appear in Toronto. Let's hope she is feeling better.
Of course, I am also going to hear Cecilia who did not appear in Toronto. Let's hope she is feeling better.
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