Il Viaggio a Reims

This production of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims is the appropriate pairing for L'amour de loin. In one the whole stage is covered with a 6 inch layer of water. In the other the water forms into a swimming lane at the back of the stage and a heated pool downstage. On the right of the stage is a massage table. There is also a portable bath tub that plays a crucial part. I don't know what Rossini thought was going on here, but in this production we are at a spa. At the beginning the conductor enters in a bathrobe which he takes off to step down into the imaginary swimming pool that is the orchestra pit.

This production is from Barcelona in 2003, with Mariola Cantarero, Elena de la Merced, María Bayo, Paula Rasmussen, Josef Bros, Kenneth Tarver, et al. Typical Rossini buffa music is the excuse for all this silliness. There is coloratura singing for every type of voice, some of it quite good.

When the opera begins, everyone has already arrived at the spa and made themselves at home. We don't see that they have all come as established pairs, but we do see a lot of flirting going on. These people are all away from home and very horny. There is quarrelling and making up. They're supposed to be on the way to a coronation but get stuck here instead. That's all we have for a plot. A lot of people seem to be striving to prove that plot is just not necessary.

One character thinks she has lost her hat and sings a glorious celebratory aria when it is found. There is a party. There are Victorian swimming suits. "God Save the Queen" is sung. The whole thing descends into a discussion of irrelevant modern politics. How did this happen?

It's true, I used to listen to Chailly's La Cenerentola for hours on end, to the point where I could sing along, but that doesn't seem to spread out onto all possible Rossini buffa music. I am constantly learning new things in this immersion into opera. I am learning about the difference between Rossini buffa and Rossini seria, for instance. I think my next opera film should be Semiramide.

Historical Footnote

Information I came on by accident says that Il Viaggio a Reims was written in 1825 and is also called L'albergo del giglio d'oro, since the whole thing takes place in a hotel.

According to Wikipedia "[Charles X] was crowned King of France in 1824 in the cathedral at Reims and reigned until the French Revolution of 1830 when he abdicated rather than become a constitutional monarch." This is important because he is the one they are all traveling to see crowned, and the opera ends in a long aria praising him. Maybe that's why the opera was lost. He was a notorious reprobate.

Here's another quote from the internet: "The story of Rossini's last Italian opera was well known for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: written for the coronation of Charles X and performed at the Parisian Théâtre royal italien on 19 June 1825, half of Rossini's pièce de circonstance was almost immediately cannibalized as Le Comte Ory, premiered at the Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra) three years later. But after 1825, as anything more than a point of historical reference, Il viaggio a Reims disappeared almost completely."

It was reconstructed by Janet Johnson and "formed the basis of a performance at the Pesaro Festival in 1984..."

Very interesting stuff, don't you think? The French had trouble deciding what kind of government they wanted in those days. I don't normally research anything I write about, but I was browsing through some old papers.

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New Operas

Friends have sent me an article about new operas from sfgate.

It makes me realize that I have been blogging about that subject quite a lot.

I started off with Streetcar which I don't seem to have liked. If anyone thinks I should give it another chance, let me know.

Then I bought the video of a European revival of Vanessa, a popular American opera. It is a prominent example of the obsessive love plot.

Then I start my unwatched videos with The Ghosts of Versailles. I definitely loved this.

I went on to Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons. I seem to have been pretty annoyed with it. For once I liked the theater but not the music.

Then I was bored by Doctor Atomic. I have always loved Nixon in China because of its very theatrical content and have wished Adams would produce something equally theatrical. If you wanted a meditation on annihilation, I guess it's fine.

Then I went mad for L'amour de Loin by a composer from Finland. I watched this because friends had seen it in Santa Fe and loved it.

I pointed out in a couple of places (here and here) that Sophie's Choice by a composer working at Peabody is being produced in Berlin and Vienna this year.

I've seen Adamo's Little Women in a workshop production which I reviewed for SFCV. It's easy enough for a workshop. And I saw Dead Man Walking at its premier in San Francisco. This is one of the most dramatically powerful operas I've ever seen and is being revived in Dresden, of all places.

Recently I wrote about modern operas crossing the Atlantic.

Opera is a long way from dead on this side of the Atlantic. Everyone wants to write operas, everyone wants to sing operas. Over here we have nothing but opera everywhere you look. Opera in America is thriving like perhaps no other artistic medium. There are always the financial problems--professional opera is very expensive--but the medium is alive and well, led by the regional operas, including NYC, Houston, Santa Fe, Boston, St. Louis, and of course San Francisco.

Twentieth century opera

We think of opera as stopping with Puccini and Strauss, and the rest of the twentieth century is just a vast wasteland. The September issue of Opera News had a complete list of operas that will be produced around the world this season, and twentieth century revivals are well represented.

Wozzeck and Lulu by Berg are still holding the stage, especially in Germany and Austria, but the numbers are low. One surprise is how much Benjamin Britten is being done all around the globe. I think it is time to say that he has crossed over to standard repertoire status. I have previously declared the arrival of Leos Janáček, but now Britten also rates. And he’s no one hit wonder: Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, Albert Herring, Death in Venice, The Rape of Lucretia--he’s everywhere. His plots are powerful and moving, and the music is worth hearing again.

I was interested in seeing of the rest of the revivals, how many have crossed the Atlantic in either direction. Kurt Weill lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic and can’t really be said to cross over. He shows up in Lyon, Berlin and Dresden as well as St. Louis and Arizona.

Dead Man Walking is being produced in Dresden. Sophie’s Choice by a guy named Nicholas Maw is on for Berlin and Vienna. He is a teacher at Peabody in Baltimore. The English also like him, but I’ve never heard of him. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the subject matter is particularly European.

Surprisingly, musicals are the most common American theater to make the crossing. This year they are doing The Sound of Music in Vienna. What, not in Salzburg?

Crossing the Atlantic in the other direction is Englishman Thomas Ades’ The Tempest which is being produced in Santa Fe and Denmark. This opera is unusual because it is a relatively successful setting of Shakespeare in English. I guess this work is new and doesn’t really count. The Mines of Sulphur by Richard Rodney Bennett has been in existence for 40 years, but is just now making the crossing to the New York City opera.

Firmly in the standard repertoire on this side of the Atlantic are The dialogues of the Carmelites and La Voix Humane, both by Francis Poulenc. These operas can be seen in Texas, Vancouver and Melbourne.

The flow of material is much stronger from east to west than the other way around.

Crooning Puccini

I was in my friendly neighborhood Borders looking for items to order on Netflix ("Il bacio di Tosca"), and suddenly someone was crooning "Recondit armonia" from Tosca. I gave an involuntary shudder, and wondered who it might be. I thought, after reading Alex Ross, what if we had no idea how Caruso sang this, or Pavarotti, or even Salvatore Licitra? Would we be ok with the idea that someone sang "Tosca, sei tu" as though he were Dean Martin? Or someone from your high school?

In the past styles of singing changed, and since no one knew what they had been before, they thought nothing of it. There is even a theory that Rossini gave up composing because he simply couldn't stand that pushed up tenor sound that suddenly became popular. He liked a lighter sound.

What about a Tosca production with Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, with mikes and the whole nine yards? Would we old timers give up opera forever?

Alex Ross

It was Alex Ross (09/26/05) who called Rolando Villazon "Domingo's heir apparent in the Italian tenor repertory...." That's where I read it. Why would he want to curse him in this way? I went to the New Yorker website and printed out a few of Ross' columns so I could get a feeling for his writing, and right away I'm annoyed. Villazon is a real lyric tenor with a dark color. Domingo is a pushed up baritone. You leave my boy alone!!

I liked very much the column (06/06/05) about the effect of recordings on classical music. This is a topic to be considered. Right away I start to think about musack. I'm sure there is a recording of every Baroque concerto ever written, all done in that lifeless, cookie-cutter style that is the essence of anti-music. His comments are good. He puts in a lot of facts.

Fat lady sings

Read here how Singing Might Cause Obesity. It's the deep breathing.

L'amour

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When I wrote that opera was about love, it was just an observation. I made a list from a few opera plot books and picked out the ones that form the basis for opera theater repertoire throughout the world. And there it was. They are all about love with not one single exception.

With L'Amour de Loin ("Love from afar," Music by Kaija Saariaho and Libretto (in French) by Amin Maalouf) we have a new opera about love, and in its five years of existence it has already been presented in Salzburg, Santa Fe and Finland. The subject is longing, longing for someone else, for somewhere else, for an existence outside oneself. This is the opera for me.

It is a DVD from 2005 at the Finnish National Opera, so I am not required to see it all at once as I would in the opera house.

The opera has three characters:

• Jaufré Rudel, a troubadour living in a tower in Aquitaine has had many lovers and longs for love at a distance, for the far away, unattainable lover of ideals and dreams. He is sung by Gerald Finley, baritone.

• Clémence, countess of Tripoli, living in a tower in Lebanon, left Toulouse when she was five and has longed to return ever since. She is sung by Dawn Upshaw, soprano.

• The pilgrim longs to see the east, especially the holy land; sung by Monica Groop, mezzo-soprano.

There is also a chorus who take on the character of Rudel’s friends, his dubious friends, and other characters in the drama. The chorus is also part of the orchestration, much as it would have been in the writing of Debussy. There are two harps, also like Debussy.

All long for what they do not have. The pilgrim travels back and forth between them and is the cause of all that happens. Without the pilgrim they would sit in their towers alone and discontented.

This production is simple. The towers are represented by metal winding staircases. The pilgrim’s boat is small and white in the center. The stage is covered with a thin layer of water in which the boat sails and the pilgrim walks.

Rudel expresses his desire for a distant love, and he is overheard by the pilgrim, who relates a brief story about a woman in Tripoli that he saw one day. She was, “beautiful without the arrogance of beauty, noble without the arrogance of nobility, pious without the arrogance of piety." The hero is fatally fascinated and describes a complete imaginary woman.

Oh my.

Part II

The camera shows briefly the orchestra pit, and it contains what appears to be a standard opera orchestra. Modern pits allow for the possibility of players sitting under the stage.

This cryptic sentence:
4(2pic,afl).3(ca).3(bcl).3(cbn)/4231/timp.4perc/pf(kbd)/str
describes the instrumentation.
woodwinds/brass/percussion/piano/strings

kbd next to pf means it is an electronic keyboard, perhaps a synthesizer. All we see is strings, two harps and maybe some woodwinds on the other side. It could be a piece by Berlioz or Debussy they are about to play. The list above from G. Schirmer seems to have missed the harps.

I am worrying about this because this ordinary, only somewhat large orchestra, these ordinary opera singers and the hidden chorus are making music with no obvious link to the music of Papa Haydn who first formalized the makeup of an orchestra. Once the ordinary looking conductor with his ordinary baton gives the downbeat, we don't see the orchestra any more. The singing is relatively ordinary, too, without too much irrational leaping about, a common feature of modern opera. There are even occasional trills and small ornaments such as an opera singer might do.

There is throughout the work no apparent meter. Instruments, themes, melodies sneak mysteriously into the stream of sound, play for a while and just as mysteriously depart. It is a sea of sound rather more like the ocean than Haydn. Or perhaps more like the Mediterranean Sea where the action takes place.

Part III

We come to opera for the ecstasy. Now I begin to fear that our hero who has stepped into the boat and is making his crossing to Tripoli will find at the other side that the love from afar is the only one that will sustain the ecstasy forever, that the reality of a real lover will pale beside it.

What is opera without passion? Has the fear of annihilation any chance beside it?

L'amour de loin is uncompromisingly modern and in spite of that may well be a masterpiece. Only its extreme difficulty would prevent it from becoming standard repertoire.

The visual images in this dvd are haunting. Perhaps I will buy it after all.
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L'amour I

I found out that you can rent operas on Netflix. Who would have thought? I also found that they come in insignificant paper wrappers. I wouldn't have thought that either.

I wanted to hear L'Amour de Loin without buying it. This title means love from afar, or the desire for a distant lover. Sort of like Beethoven's "ferne Geliebte." I have always specialized in this and wonder that anyone would think they wanted it instead of the close up kind.

But then it is the distant loves that lead one to write poetry and music, so perhaps there is some kind of practical value. But what if you're not a poet or composer? In my case I have taken up blogging. Is there a blogger muse, do you suppose?

In my case I think I should just get a cat.

Villazon

Somewhere in my reading I came across a sentence that said Rolando Villazon would be expected to step into Placido Domingo's shoes. He may feel free to step into the favorite son Mexican tenor shoes, but vocally they are quite different. Placido is a dramatic tenor as evidenced by his successful portrayal of Otello throughout his operatic career. Rolando is a lyric tenor, closer to Jose Carreras whose shoes he may feel free to step into. Don't be fooled by its dark color into thinking that his voice is heavier than it really is. Or even more important, let's hope he isn't fooled by this.

It's a sad fact that I don't like his original Italian Opera arias cd as much as the French one. His "Una furtiva lagrima" is quite nice, but in general it seems he has the right amount of expressive freedom for French but not enough for Italian opera. This is a problem he can overcome.

[S], this is all your fault

There are always articles on the internet about Cecilia Bartoli’s vocal technique. I even wrote a book about it. I have never believed she is a mezzo and said so. I wrote the things I wrote because I was worried and it provided an outlet.

Cecilia’s technique is quite different from what other people are doing. I was concerned that she was pushing her voice down in order to perform contralto repertoire instead of letting her voice find its natural tessitura. When she said she would never sing the main Mozart heroines, that she was only recording them for fun, I said this was nonsense, that these were exactly the roles she should be singing.

When she moved up into these areas, I was pleased. When I heard her Cleopatra in the spring, there was no hint that it was too high for her. She has the notes for Queen of the Night, but that certainly doesn’t provide a reason why she should sing her. I agree with the assessment that she is a lyric soprano with coloratura facility. That doesn’t make her Queen of the night. I have no sense that she needs to continue moving up.

There are two things: technique and style. Most of the people saying this are wishing that she would perform the bel canto repertoire. I have to admit that her “bel raggio” recording is something I still find stunning. But people always say that Rossini composed his heroines for a mezzo. What they really mean is that Bellini and Donizetti extended the range and tessitura of the coloratura soprano upward from the range expected by Rossini.

Instead Cecilia is moving in the opposite direction and singing music from the Baroque. Do I ever get the feeling that Cecilia would rather be singing bel canto? My writing came from concern, not from wishes and dreams. I don’t tell her what to do any more. It didn’t turn out to be any fun.

The distinctiveness of her technique is part of the distinctiveness of her overall performance. And it is her distinctiveness that makes her stand out from the field and makes her the phenomenon she is. The other significant element of what makes Cecilia Cecilia is the fact that she can perform all kinds of music from her chosen period with so much vigor and excitement without any trace of corniness. She understands this music and brings her unique insight to it. Can we in our viewing from on high claim that she would understand bel canto this well? She is more and more immersed in the early early music movement with Harnancourt and Minkowski.

Her technique determines her path. She would have to want a different path to want to change this, and I don’t see the signs. Her path also determines her technique. In Washington I had my first experience of the “Cecilia’s voice is tiny” phenomenon. I didn’t try to write about it. I was too shocked.

Another relevant question: does the appearance of Anna Netrebko on the scene make this question moot? Anna does not hesitate or hang back.