Original

I never quite got the concept of original instruments. After all, the main thing that changed about modern instruments is they play better in tune. A modern flute plays much better in tune than old ones did. Brasses with valves play in much better tune than old ones without them. So why am I supposed to like people playing out of tune?

There is actually a bit more to it than that. They play with a gentler, more intimate sound. Violins had shorter bridges which created a less penetrating tone. Flutes were wooden and mellower. The players had to work harder to keep the intonation working, and this was easier to do without the blasting sound of a modern orchestra. If it's easier to keep in tune, it's easier to amass larger and larger orchestras, as happened throughout the nineteenth century. Wagner is not possible without modern orchestral instruments.

Orchestras with original instruments are smaller.

The original instrument movement is creating a different approach to performance of music from the Baroque. I grew up on Handel by the Huddersfield Choral Society which was scaled about the same as the Morman Tabernacle Choir. Big choruses, big orchestras, loud, unornamented singing was what we heard then.

Thinking about Harnancourt's Matthew Passion and Cecilia's Proibita album tells me things are changing. The lighter weight opens the door for lighter, more authentic, more florid singing. The modern vogue for the Baroque is in many ways a journey into the past, an attempt to find out what all the excitement was about. There is wonderful passion in the music of the Baroque that we are blessed to begin to hear anew.

Harnancourt and Bartoli are leaders in this movement, but they are certainly not alone. Marc Minkowski is another name that comes to mind. It's a way of hearing music that in my youth we didn't know.

Nightmares

There is an art exhibit at the Tate Britain now called "Gothic Nightmares". The main painters are Henry Fuseli and William Blake, and the theme painting is Fuseli's "The Nightmare" picturing a beautiful blond woman dressed in a white nightgown and lying in the dead Desdemona pose with her head and arm dangling off the side of the bed. When she wakes up, she will have a terrible kink in her neck. It is definitely not Desdemona because she has a large gargoyle sitting on her chest.

This school combines Romantic beauty with the grotesque, and according to the exhibit was by far the most popular style of art of its period, from c. 1770 - c. 1820. Satan is a prominent figure, shown always as extremely beautiful, often nude.

I couldn't help thinking this is obviously the artistic context for Goethe's Faust (1808). The grotesquely beautiful Satan, the violated innocence of Gretchen, the witches sabbath, all of it is there. Why have I never seen a production of Faust as William Blake?

Love

In a contest between Angela Gheorghiu and Anna Netrebko who wins? So much goes into making a great singer, but the fact is that I adore the sound of Anna's voice and love Angela only for her art, which is considerable. I love Anna also for the sincerity of her emotion which puts her head and shoulders over Angela in my book. If Anna continues to grow, she may hope to surpass Angela in art, too.

Petite Messe Solennelle

Since my friend D. is visiting from California my luck with food seems to have changed. The restaurant at the National Gallery has an excellent selection of English cheeses served with wonderful bread. Then we had great luck at the Cafe Fish near Picadilly Circus. Mushy peas were available here as a side dish.

Last night we picked just any bar in the Temple area--this one advertising tapas--and struck gold. All the dishes were quite nice.

We were on our way to the Temple Church to hear the London Lawyer's Chorus present Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle . The price was attractive: 8 pounds (including program.) We were attracted by the idea that lawyers spent their free time singing, and by the presentation of this late (1864), rarely performed work by Rossini.

We wandered through the familiar looking Inner Temple in the dark and the rain, looking into the lawyer's offices which look like the sets from Rumpole of the Bailey. We like to think that Rumpole could have had a drink at the pub we chose. The only change was the large computers on practically every desk.

Rossini stays with the antique forms with separate movements for choruses and arias, and with the antique style which does not know Berlioz and Chopin. It's an odd little piece with inexplicable twinkling on the piano. Rossini cannot surpress the tendency to write buffo.

The work is composed for piano and harmonium, chorus and a quartet of soloists, and it was a problem that the harmonium and piano players could not see one another.

The solo singing was at least as good as the ENO. The contralto solo in the last movement, sung by Charlotte Collier, made an effective dramatic climax. It won't do to overly criticize a group of lawyers getting together for fun, so I will only say that they could raise their aspirations.

We got there early enough to wander around the historic church, consecrated in 1185, with its tombs of Knights Templar. This is one of the locales for The Da Vinci Code.

All around it was a fine evening.

Angela

I read in the schedule for the Royal Opera that Angela Gheorghiu will sing Tosca here in June. I begin to think of myself as a Londoner even as I begin to prepare to return home. It would be wonderful to see this. I have bought her album "Live from Covent Garden" and am enchanted.

Angela has a unique, recognizable voice and an extremely emotional personal style. Her "Casta diva" is especially beautiful.

Sir John in Love

One cannot help speculating. Is it the existence of an opera by Verdi on the same subject that prevents the performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love, first performed in 1929, last professionally mounted in 1958, and now at the English National Opera? Or is it due to the antique post romantic idiom? Is it because the composer is English? Or is it the sometimes overwhelming sweetness of the music that is for my ears the sweetest music for an opera I've ever heard? For a sample listen to Serenade to music by this composer, a man of great skill whose music is often like a warm bath.

Sir John in Love is the same plot as Shakespeare's and Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as Verdi's Falstaff. Sir John (sung by Andrew Shore) decides that two respectable married women of his acquaintance have been admiring his robust figure. If one of them gazes down at his feet, it's to lust after the beauty of his calf. He sends Mistress Ford (Jean Rigby) and Mistress Page (Marie McLaughlin) the identical love letter.

The subplot about Miss Anne Page (sung by Sarah Fox) and her three suitors is very strong in this version. Hers is the best music for solo voice, and hers is also the best voice by an embarassing margin. The opera is famous for incorporating the melody and text of "Greensleeves," and giving it to Mistress Ford to sing.

The English go with their strengths which are acting and ensemble. In this opera are a good number of minor roles and chorus, all very well acted.

Our Sir John is a comb-over in spats with a waist that is two yards around. The final scene in the forest is lovely, with a large ensemble to frighten the would be lover in antlers. It is simply the sweetest opera I have ever seen.

Now I get it

Ok, now I get it. Rolando Villazon actually sounds like Placido Domingo sometimes. In certain heavy Italian repertoire their voices sound very similar. This is a trap he must not fall into.

Guys and Dolls

I went to Guys and Dolls yesterday. For some reason I seem to know all the songs and can sing along with "I'll know," "Guys and Dolls," "Luck be a Lady," "More I cannot wish you," "Sue me" and all the other songs, though I was never in it and have not owned a recording. It must have something do with the fact that I was young the first time I saw it.

The plot of G&D has to do with compulsive gamblers and people trying to save their souls. Nathan Detroit provides the crap game: the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.

How can you resist a musical with an honest to god fugue? It completely works. There are wonderful songs you can never forget. There is romance--two of them, in fact. There is a woman with a permanent head cold who must sing through her nose. There is dancing and wonderful masculine energy everywhere you look. And at the end there is redemption.

We will ignore that maybe Nathan Detroit, played by Nigel Lindsay who looks great in a fedora, and Sky Masterson are a bit whipped at the end. As a woman am I supposed to not notice these things? Sky will have to break out from drum beating, but Nathan might be happy as a steel worker.

Of the musicals I have seen in London, I enjoyed this best. The pace from number to number works brilliantly, and the amplification was at least under control. I'm more comfortable with the idea of miking performers who are required to both sing and dance. In this production everyone dances. They dance in Havana, they dance in the sewer, and best of all, they dance while Nicely Nicely is advising us to sit down and stop rocking the boat. The production was conservative with nothing to distinguish it from a revival (in opera parlance that means remounting an old production--in musical parlance you would have wondered what I could be talking about.)

This production was originally mounted to showcase the talents of Ewan McGregor who has now passed on to other things. I guess Nigel Harman as Sky Masterson was a bit edgier. Jenna Russell as Sarah Brown was marvellous. She danced, she sang, she acted her Major Barbara-like character to perfection.

Twins

I have bought the latest recording by the blessed twins, Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, or at least the highlights part of the live performance of La Traviata from the Wienerstaatsoper.

Rolando is all over the magazines, including the cover stories of Opera Now and Gramophone, where he is constantly being compared to Domingo. Anna is compared to Maria. Can't we just love them for themselves? Anna does not have Maria's edge to her tone, but can this be considered a drawback? She has a very elegant style that is completely suitable to her voice. And Rolando is a lyric tenor. I said this before. Maybe in his forties he can take on heavier repertoire.

This Traviata is very nice, a pleasure to hear. I wish it was a film. In a live performance both of them bring excitement to a role through their acting and star quality. The photos of Anna in the party scene are amazing.

News

I was sucked in to reading an article in the Daily Telegraph this morning by this headline: "Karaoke crooners hijack classical music." I was fooled into thinking it was a complaint about the recent phenomenon of Boccelli, Groban and an unknown number of other singers who croon opera arias. This is brought on by the overwhelming success of Pavarotti's rendition of "Nessun dorma" in the Three Tenors concerts. Now everyone wants to sing it, imagining themselves capable of achieving Luciano's heights of expression. 

But no. It turns out to be a diatribe against crossover in general. Soon the distinction between classical and pop will be so blurry we won't be able to tell the difference at all. Hand wringing! Viewing with alarm! So guess what it turns out he is actually writing on and on for paragraph after paragraph about? . . . . . 

 

Osvaldo Golijov. If you guessed this, you get three points. Some of the singers, though certainly not all, in the passion concert could be mistaken for karaoke singers. Only the coloratura soprano had a classical technique. 

I will give one of my lectures here. The fundamental difference between classical and pop music is that classical arose in a hierarchical society where one preferred sharp distinctions between the upper and lower classes, while pop is a democratic art form. Read how hard Mozart worked to make sure that his wardrobe reflected the class of people he wanted to associate with. He wasn't poor, he was just not as rich as the members of the upper class who paid his bills. With the passage of time the desire to form into rigid social classes is fading.

Golijov is classical only in the complexity of his music. The Buena Vista Social Club is not this dissonant. If classical means difficult while pop means easy, he's classical. In his list of influences, a long list including virtually all of world music, he doesn't include Mozart or Beethoven.