Last night I sat in a movie theater and watched the HD broadcast of the Leonardo da Vinci in Milan exhibition from the National Gallery in London. It is better to see the paintings live, but it is already too late. The entire exhibition is sold out.
Included in the exhibition is a copy of the Last Supper by one of Leonardo's students. They explained how slowly Leonardo painted, thus providing the reason he didn't want to do fresco to paint the Last Supper. For fresco you have to paint very fast. You must finish the painting before the plaster dries.
Here is an interesting story. Anna Netrebko has cancelled her appearance at the Opera Ball in Vienna because her name appeared in a list.
She is in trouble for interfering in the affairs of another country. Because she's an Austrian citizen. Forgive me if my memory has failed me, but I remember that she agreed to become an Austrian citizen only if she was not required to renounce Russian citizenship. Maybe I've gone daft. If she's still a Russian citizen, shouldn't she get to have opinions about Russian politics?
When I'm watching, I always remember that the libretto was written backwards--Götterdämmerung first, Rheingold last--and then it was composed in the opposite order. This is why we have to listen to all those retellings of things we've already seen. In the original concept the other three operas didn't exist. It is also why we have to rehear every damn Leitmotiv that ever appeared. Yes, that's Nothung all right. And we know about the damned curse.
The Rhine maidens are still my favorite parts. Eric Owens as Alberich and his son Hans-Peter König as Hagen were the only members of the cast with voices to match the traditional quality for a Wagnerian. König received the ovation he deserved. He was simply magnificent.
Our hostess Patricia Racette introduced the "legendary Waltraud Meier" in the role of Waltraute. This was the best scene in the opera. She deserves her legendary status.
I enjoyed watching Jay Hunter Morris and Deborah Voigt. Debbie was suitably melodramatic, and it was nice to see at least an attempt to have her ride Grane into the funeral pyre. Jay is adorable, but sings the lightest Siegfried imaginable.
I keep remembering Placido Domingo saying, "Better too soon than too late." He was referring to the fact that he began singing Otello while still in his thirties. Deborah Voigt has been afraid of singing Brünnhilde, and has put it off into her 50's. Her voice has more and more of an edge. Let's just say I wouldn't want to sit and listen to an audio only version of this Ring, but the visual parts were quite pleasing. Her Brünnhilde blazes emotionally just as she should, but she will not erase the memory of Eva Marton in her prime.
Wire walking seems to have disappeared as a concept--good riddance. When she sets the pyre ablaze, we hear the music for "Loge her," but not the words.
This is a member of our audience getting into the mood for Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. They went down in style. For me personally it was too much sitting for someone whose back is going out from not enough exercise.
I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby once long ago, but I could not remember much of it. I remembered people riding around in cars and that the millionaire Jay Gatsby was carrying a torch for Daisy. This is considered the great American novel, and is a portrait of the beginning of modern life, with women in short skirts, cars, boozing, extra-marital affairs, and that great American pastime: driving around. Don't get the wrong idea: boozing is as old as America, but it's less dangerous if you go home on a horse. In 1922, the time of the story, booze was illegal.
The opera The Great Gatsby by John Harbison and presented by Ensemble Parallèle follows the plot of the novel pretty closely. Even the ubiquitous giant glasses with wandering eyes behind them are reminiscent of the cover of the novel, though the appearance of the word occultist instead of oculist is not explained.
Nick is the perspective. Tom and Daisy are married, have a child and live in West Egg. Wilson and Myrtle are married and live in Flushing. Tom is having an affair with Myrtle. Nick is dating Jordan, a professional golfer, and lives next door to the mysterious Gatsby who lives in a large house in East Egg, throws wonderful parties and dreams of Daisy. There are ten scenes in 2 acts in five locations.
The sets move smoothly from West Egg to Flushing, to Gatsby's house, to Nick's house, to Gatsby's, to the Plaza Hotel in New York City, etc. Plenty of interlude or driving music is provided to accomplish this. I thought the production for this complex opera was very successful. No cars appeared on stage, but they were discussed and described. The parties at Gatsby's house are fun. At one of the parties Charlie Chaplin in his tramp costume appears as a guest.
There is an on-stage band that plays jazz period music, in great contrast to the strictly modern music of the rest of the opera. Period music also comes from the radio. These two musical sources and styles are blended smoothly throughout the opera. Jacques Desjardins reorchestrated the opera to achieve this effect.
I missed the mysterious, exalted nature of Jay Gatsby. They work too hard trying to make him seem a fake, and they seem ridiculous complaining about the source of his income--illegal booze--while they are constantly drinking. The poor man, Wilson, kills the rich man, Gatsby. It's all a mistake.
Am I allowed to tirade here? Modern composers seem all to be part of the musicians fallacy. Musicians praise Placido Domingo and Janet Baker for being like them. In a modern classical orchestra everyone has to play precisely what is written on the page. Any alternative represents chaos. The same can be said for a chorus. The perceived absence of a singing style is regarded as a virtue, and elicits constant praise for the two above named singers. So when modern composers are composing for classical singers, they do not conceive or encourage a style for the singers to use when singing their music. Just reproduce the notes, and you're done. The only problem with this is that it is the style that makes you most want to listen to the music. Style is the parts that lie between the notes. Where do you want anyone to slide? If you don't know, who will?
So in most modern operas the singing is the least interesting part. A modern opera is driven by the plot and the orchestra. Susannah Biller who played Daisy was the most professional of the singers, but Erin Neff who played Myrtle showed the most style. One couldn't help feeling that the characters were cast mainly for their looks.
It was the last week of the Masters of Venice exhibition at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, so I hurried over to the city. These paintings are all from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. At one time in the 19th century the Hapsburgs were in charge of Venice, so we can easily imagine these were looted. The fact that there are fewer small paintings in Venice than are in this exhibition might lead one to believe this. In Venice are a lot of giant paintings that would be hard to cart off without someone noticing.
The painting shown, Susanna and the Elders by Tintoretto, is the only one I recognized. My hero Giorgione was well represented.
The 30th anniversary of the Alexander String Quartet in Herbst Theater brought us a very high class concert.
Joyce DiDonato and her accompanist Jake Heggie began the program with Venezia, a cycle of 6 songs in Venetian Dialect by Reynaldo Hahn. From the stage Joyce told us that these songs were originally performed in Venice in a gondola. The composer had a small piano put into a gondola and sang them floating around in the lagoon. You can possibly picture this. Joyce did not smoke or play the piano herself as Hahn would have done. This is completely charming and charmingly performed.
This was followed by the Debussy string quartet played by the Alexander String Quartet. We are so accustomed to this style of music that its effects are no longer remarkable.
Heggie was asked to compose a piece for the anniversary, and he replied that he was an opera composer. They responded not to worry--they intended to provide a singer, one Joyce DiDonato. This is a heavenly idea.
Executed like a work from heaven. The result of this collaboration is Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (2012), a work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano. I am pleased to have pulled myself together and made the trip to see it.
This is a remarkable work. First there is a sculpture--Camille Claudel was a sculptor.
Then there is a poem--"Rodin" in this case--written by Gene Scheer, who is also the librettist of Heggie's Moby-Dick and Picker's An American Tragedy. So the profession of librettist is not dead after all. Then there is a song, simultaneously sweet and dramatic to fit images.
"La Valse" "Take me one step closer one step back one step spins one step hovers Take me!"
"La Petite Châtelaine" we all cried.
The story has an unhappy ending. She began to destroy her sculptures and was subsequently confined to a mental hospital. The song cycle ends with Claudel as an old woman still in the asylum being visited by an old friend.
The words are lovely. Heggie is developing into a wonderful composer. His use of DiDonato's voice is skilled and sensitive. His writing for string quartet is lyrical and romantic. It is a very good sign that he calls himself an opera composer. It was truly a significant occasion.
The encore, "Morgen" by R. Strauss, used everyone in a charming arrangement.
Here is a short blog post from Jake Heggie about this concert.
The Caruso family successfully sued MGM over the contents of the movie The Great Caruso. I don't know enough to know what they would be suing about, but I do know that it's a charming movie.
Obviously Mario Lanza came into this life in order to make this film. He was born the same year Caruso died and died young like his mentor. He has a charming smile and manner, and he sings all the arias required for the role. The singing is very nice. His most frequent singing partner is played by soprano Dorothy Kirsten.
His death at 38 means he survived only the childhood of an opera singer. He did not handle fame well and is often paired with Karen Carpenter in the short list of great singers who died young.
I was very much interested in the portrayal of the great tenor Jean de Reszke (1850-1925) in this film. There was a small overlap in the New York careers of the two tenors, with de Reszke retiring in 1904 just as Caruso was beginning. In the movie they were made to seem rivals of sorts, whereas in reality Caruso sang almost exclusively Italian repertoire while de Reszke sang primarily Wagner, Gounod and Meyerbeer. Was he the last great Meyerbeer tenor? The disappearance of Mayerbeer from the repertoire is something that interests me. #ad
I have a copy of the 1924 edition of the Victrola Book of the Opera. From my American Operas list we see Natoma, first produced at the Metropolitan opera in 1911, and Madeleine, first performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1914, both by Victor Herbert, who wasn't born in America. These are as close as we get to American opera in that era. One owns such a book for the photographs of famous singers, such as Caruso and Geraldine Farrar who had her own private dressing room at the Met. There was a policy begun in 1900 to produce an American Opera every year at the Met, but none of them held the stage even briefly except these two. Horatio Parker's Mona, 1911, was also part of the Met's effort to produce American opera.
Carmen Balthrop in Treemonisha
Another place to research opera in America is in the book Opera in America by John Dizikes. This work focuses on the cultural life of opera rather than the compositions. The first opera to rate a chapter name is Scott Joplin's Treemonisha (1910). Dizikes' text is about African-American singers and musicians rather than the opera. Treemonisha is occasionally revived, and is definitely something to look in to.
Excerpts from the current Broadway production of Porgy and Bess. Don't you miss those opera voices.
The next operas to make it into chapter headings are Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) by Virgil Thompson and Porgy and Bess (1935), by George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess is the earliest opera by an American composer to stay in the repertoire. I think the political controversy that surrounds this opera actually enhances its power. In the past I have had my doubts, but the recent production at the San Francisco Opera has completely won me over.
Then comes the period of Gian Carlo Menotti, operas from 1938 to 1963, a native Italian whose works in English never quite lose their Italian quality. Carlisle Floyd's Susannah and Samuel Barber's Vanessa are practically all we see to interrupt Menotti's dominance. My viewing of Kiri Te Kanawa singing Vanessa left me with the feeling that this was an outstanding work that should be revived more often.
Lucy Schaufer singing "Must the winter come so soon" from Vanessa, audio only
The conclusion I have reached is that we are now living in the era of American opera. The German Hans Werner Henze, operas from 1948 to the present, provides the only competing center of opera composition in the post Einstein on the Beach, 1976, era. Today we have John Adams, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, Mark Adamo, Jake Heggie, Stewart Wallace and several others to compose operas for us.
Bits from The Ghosts of Versailles, a work we could see more of
In the next year and a half people in the San Francisco Bay Area will be treated to John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick, Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach, Nolan Gasser's The Secret Garden and Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Our cup runneth over.
