Blogging

I must say I really love it here. London is such a great city. Maybe they will keep me on.

I'm not the person to review musicals. My taste is too sophisticated. It's all good, but I always want more. More, please. I would prefer Lion King as an opera. This is completely doable.

Since I have only one CD with me, I went to Piccadilly Circus to shop for records and came out with a marvelous assortment:

Susan Graham singing the Songs of Ned Rorem. I have trouble taking Ned Rorem seriously, but Susan may be just the woman for him. He's the guy that wrote the famous diary. Maybe my problem has to do with how Alice B. Toklas always wrote about him. To her he was just an annoying nobody.

The complete operas of Rachmaninov, which turns out to include Maria Guleghina, Anne Sofie von Otter, Sergei Leiferkus and Sergei Larin.

Duets and Arias with Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu. I need to see if they are as hot as they think they are.

I looked at what was available for Yvonne Kenny (Sarah, try not to get too excited), and it was all in English. I decided to pick something that actually is in English and am listening now to Make Believe, Classic Songs of Broadway. This is all songs from the Golden Age of Broadway. I'm from the golden age, too, so it's just the recording for me. Her vibrato is a tad too operatic, but her English is perfect, and emotionally she completely gets this style. I could picture this woman singing these songs, the greatest possible compliment as far as I am concerned. What is this style? American elegance, too good for Sarah Brightman, but naive and simple at the same time. I could listen to this.

I have nothing to play them on but this computer, so I went back to the office.

I almost flew to Salzburg because Cecilia is singing there, but there were no tickets and how silly do I really want to get? (Pretty silly, if the truth were told.)
#ad

The Lion King

You should definitely see this. It is based on a movie, but you know its transformation to the stage is magical. It isn't like anything I've ever seen before.

The key element is the imagining of the spirit of an animal. How does it look? How does it move? How does its voice sound? They never announce that the animals hovering around the lions are hyenas, but nevertheless, you know.

The only real problem with The Lion King is that it starts at the top and goes down from there. This is not the expected arc of a musical. In the beginning we experience the full array of animals crossing the stage. The grass is also a character in the drama. I mean that. There are actors playing grass. And in the opening is singing. The best number in the show is the opening song, sung by the best singer in the cast, a woman named Brown Lindiwe Mkhize from South Africa.

Elton John is channelling Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

It is the originality of vision, due primarily to the work of the designer and director, Julie Taymor, that makes this a real joy. The plot is silly.

Cher

It's time for a fantasy opera production. Why have I never seen or read about an opera produced like a Madonna or a Cher extravaganza? Aren't we long overdue for this?

It would have to be a full-blown Neapolitan Opera Seria. We need the heroine to appear on stage machinery descending from the ceiling or a long staircase ala Busby Berkeley, each time in a different outrageous outfit. If this sounds like Pamela's Alcina to you, I can only say she didn't go nearly far enough.

Alcina is the best choice for this concept, though. The enchanted men would be the hunky dancers that always dance with the star. The star would definitely need to attempt a few cursory dance moves. Cher and Madonna aren't really dancing either.

We need strobe lights. We need amplification, including a very loud amplified orchestra. Would we need electric oboes? I think so.

Ruggiero could possibly rival the heroine in outrageousness. Sort of a Mick Jagger type would be best. The other characters would be much less spectacular, of course. And at the end when all are liberated we would need a spectacular light show, with maybe Alcina seen floating off to heaven. Or wherever. If she's floating off, I guess it has to be to heaven.

Saturday Night

I promised to see shows and write about them here, to review the London theater scene. It's not clear yet that I am the person for this task.

They have made a musical out of the movie Saturday Night Fever. The music is by the Bee Gees who rescued their fading careers by writing music for this movie. The plus is that it is nice to go to a musical with so many familiar songs, including "Stayin' Alive," "You should be Dancing," "How deep is your love?" etc. The minus is that this stuff is all disco. In fact the whole show is simply about disco. How much interest can a person work up for disco?

The band appear to imagine themselves to be the most important part of the show and blast away as loud as they can. I told you I might not be the right person for this task. Really loud music makes me nauseous. The very miked and amplified singers didn't really manage to blast over the band.

This show is a vehicle for the leading man, in this case played by Adam Jon Fiorentino. It's a back breaker with almost non-stop singing and dancing. In a movie you get to rest between takes. Now John Travolta wasn't 19 either, but he managed to pass. This guy may have looked 19 when he started, but not any more. He looks at least 25 to me.

Is that important? Nah. If you love the Bee Gees and loud disco, you'll love this. It totally works as a musical.

Collecting Piero

One of my hobbies is collecting viewings of the paintings of Piero della Francesca. I have been on the Piero trail which starts in Arezzo and goes across the mountains to Urbino. It goes on to Rimini, but I have not made this part of the trip yet. Collecting is more fun when something is left undone.

In Arezzo is the cycle The Legend of the True Cross which follows the history of the cross from its birth as a tree onward. The first time I went to Arezzo the cycle was in restauro, with scaffolding filling the entire nave. To my great surprise it was possible to view the paintings while the work was going on. We climbed the scaffolding and stuck our noses within a foot of the paintings. It was very exciting, much more exciting than the next time I came and had to view from the floor with everyone else. Further up the hill in Arezzo in another church is Piero's painting of Mary Magdalene.

Then I drove on to San Sapulcro and Urbino. The Pregnant Madonna and the Resurrection are the most interesting in route paintings.

In Urbino are two paintings: a Madonna and the Flagellation, a small painting kept behind glass. They don't let you stay alone in the room with the paintings. I let my nose cross a hidden beam and set off an alarm. The man next to me said "Mani in alto" with mock seriousness. That's "hands up" in Italian.

In London at the National Gallery are three Pieros all in one room. The Baptism, the Nativity and a Saint Michael. I particularly like the nativity and was surprised to see that it gives a three dimensional effect when viewed in real life that you simply don't see in the books. A framed photo of the group of singing angels hangs on the wall in my house.

Piero has evidently only recently been considered interesting by the art world. The coolness of expression on the faces of the people in the paintings suits us very well, we like especially the idea of a cool, all-knowing angel, but was not at all to the taste of the Romantics.

I love it that people obsess over the Flagellation, a very odd painting with a flagellation scene on the left and three men in a circle on the right. There are two whole books, both of which I now own, where the authors obsess over who the people on the right of the picture are. Both provide supporting photographs of paintings of their choices, which are completely different. I love it when people are so fanatical about art.

There is also an excellent book in Italian called Alla ricerca di Piero della Francesca, In search of Piero, which describes what the cities along the Piero della Francesca trail looked like in Piero's time. If you can't read Italian, which is surprisingly easy, then look at the pictures.

Audition

I bought a very cool book at the shop of the Royal Opera called The Art of Auditioning. The author is English, but UK, US and continental competitions are listed, together with the upper age limits. The German and Swiss agents are listed. The author is Anthony Legge, Head of music at the English National Opera.

It's all here: what to bring, how to act, what to sing and how to prepare. There is interesting advice about checking the edition of the arias you are singing to make sure they are the same as the score. How would you ever think of that?

I totally had a 'tude about this sort of thing. I adored to perform in front of an audience and hated, loathed, despised, detested any kind of auditioning. I was wildly furious the entire time, ready to strangle the lot. I needed attitude adjustment training.

He talks about the cadenza books and says to use them. I'll explain. There are books with written out ornaments you can perform with the arias. He recommnds Ricci. Sometimes there are several versions for the same aria so you can choose cadenzas that suit your voice.

He has a Fach list of his own with roles. He says to be a "dramatic mezzo", as I now claim to have been, you need "striking physical beauty", so I guess I didn't really qualify.

If you feel absolutely clueless about this subject, this book might help.

The Bartered Bride

👍🏻
The Royal Opera has made the most that can be made of The Bartered Bride by Bedrich Smetana, even going so far as to hire Charles Mackerras to conduct it. It was a treat.

Bride is hard to place in the various currents of popular opera. I suppose you could call it a Spieloper, a semi-serious real opera of the type that succeeded the Singspiel. They are entirely sung with songs rather than arias for the soloists. Except Bride is Czech, here sung in English with the supertitles still showing. This means you can mumble your words. Some did. Some didn’t.

I see in Opera Now that there is a recording of this opera with Sir Charles conducting in the opera in English series.

While I was watching it, though, I thought it was most like Oklahoma of any show I have seen. All are family and friends, people you know.

The production took place in a single set, erected in the first act as a kind of communal barn raising. All are in their working clothes and project real happiness. I especially liked the presence of children on the stage. How can it really be a community without children?

The plot of Bride is devious. Mashenka’s parents have arranged through a marriage broker for her to marry Vasek, the son of Toby Micha, while she is in love with Jenik and has promised to marry only him. And besides, Vasek is an idiot.

There is an extended scene where the marriage broker persuades Jenik to give up Machenka in exchange for 10,000 crowns so she can marry “Toby Micha’s son.” I guess I can give away the ending—boy friend is also “Toby Micha’s son” and they all live happily ever after.

There is a not too shabby circus in the third act—maybe not on a par with Cirque de Soliel but fun, with a stilt walker who juggles fire sticks, a contortionist and Esmeralda, a tight rope walker. Vasek runs off with her. I don’t know if a soprano tight rope walker is ever anyone’s break-through role, but you never know.

This is as much as The Bartered Bride can ever be. I didn’t see any children in the audience.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1850-70]

Why Mozart

Mozart was in at the beginning. He was born just after the sudden death of counterpoint, into the world of the sons of Bach who were busy creating a new, much simpler musical world. These were the original minimalists.

Mozart’s childhood pieces were based on composers like Domenico Alberti (around 1710 – 1740), a long forgotten composer of pieces using the Alberti bass, made up of broken triads.

The horizontal movement of voices had completely lost its attraction, to be replaced by a complete preoccupation with the chordal aspects of tonality. I wrote in a previous blog that in the early Baroque there were no chord progressions. Well, in Mozart’s childhood there were chord progressions and very little else. Tonality was everything.

Mozart’s childhood offered other advantages as well. As a touring prodigy, he was exposed to all the musical styles of the cities he visited. In Paris he wrote Parisian symphonies. In Mannheim he absorbed the Mannheim style. And in Italy he composed true Italian opera exactly as dictated by the style of the time. Have you noticed how much this goes with the concepts in the book Music, the Brain and Ecstasy? That book says everyone's musical tastes are formed by mid-adolescence. By mid-adolescence Mozart had seen, heard and composed samples of all the music of his time.

What makes him Mozart is that he took these miscellaneous varied styles and molded them into his own individual style. When you hear Mozart, you know immediately that it isn’t Italian or one of the Bachs or even Haydn. Mozart’s mature music can only have been written by Mozart himself. He adds up all this knowledge and creates music which contains it all and more. He is definitely more than the sum of the parts.

In most of his mature style there is no equivalent composer. You can never say “Mozart wrote this, and so did X,” except perhaps Haydn in the symphonic area. In particular his operas are completely unique, combining the vocal style of the Italians with the symphonic style of the Vienese.

Beethoven sneered at Haydn and refused to study with him after Mozart died. In Wikipedia there is a portrait of Mozart at 35 that I have never seen before. He looks much older and in bad health. He lived his life very fast.

Today our lives are completely different. Mozart was able to absorb many different but similar styles while we can simply not avoid being overwhelmed by the much more diverse and constantly intruding music of our time.

Voigt as Salome

We are keeping track of the thinner, sexier Deborah Voigt and want to take notice of the fact that she will sing her first Salome in Chicago next season. I have yet to see a Salome that is both well sung and well acted. Go for it.

London

The ride over was amazing. The project paid for business class, so I got to experience the British Airways sleeping arrangements. You get into an area that is about the size of a bath tub with paper walls to shield you from the other passengers. There are buttons. Lots of buttons. Large modern automobiles have these kinds of buttons which make the seat go up and down and change shapes. You just keep pushing them until you are comfortable. I fell asleep immediately.

Then there was a lovely breakfast with grapefruit juice, fruit, coffee and hot croissants. I must remember to heat my croissants at home. There was a little more hiking through airports than I was prepared for, but at the end was someone with my name on a card to drive me to my hotel. This was a first. We discussed shows, what is good, how far away they are, how easy they are to get tickets to.

I don't usually write about my work, but I am here to design and implement a computer interface between my purchasing system and SAP accounting. On the SAP side is a cast of thousands who will all attack me simultaneously. On my side there is me. The major goal will be to keep my blood pressure from getting too high.

I have already found a very nice coffee shop called Nero. They don't make the cappuccino right either. I think Cecilia is doomed. Perhaps she should open a competing chain that makes it correctly. It could be called "real cappuccino." Or "cappuccino the way it should be." Or something more Italian: "cappuccino puro." My Italian is not good enough to make up names in it. If you wanted to be openly provocative, call it "Cappuccino Italiano."