Eschenbach in Philadelphia

Read here about Christoph Eschenbach's troubles in Philadelphia. They don't like his taste for modern music, among other things. Mainly I think they don't like the fact that they were not consulted in his hiring. Musicians are funny about things like that. They play very well for him. His taste for modern cannot possibly exceed Michael Tilson Thomas', and San Francisco absolutely adores him.

There was a minnesinger called Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1160–1220), and this piece of trivia has probably been cluttering up my brain whenever I hear the name. Still, Christoph von Eschenbach does sound nice, don't you think?

Freezing in Dolores Park

I attended Opera in Dolores Park in San Francisco yesterday afternoon. The general director, David Gockley, appeared with his dog Foxy, who was exactly the size, color, shape and degree of shagginess of a red fox. His personality is distinctly dog-like. He [DG, not Foxy] assured us that he had gone to much difficulty to ascertain that Dolores Park would be warm and toasty even when everywhere else was freezing. This was meant as an apology, I’m sure, since it was windy and drizzling, a typical San Francisco summer day.

I told my story about doing Martha outdoors on a considerably warmer and less windy day than yesterday, and how all the cast became sick for the rest of the week. The audience can take it, but singing outdoors is always risky.

Susan Graham, who flew in from LA that morning after the end of her fantastic run in Lustige Witwe, sang “Non so piu cosa son,” apparently without rehearsal. I found this fascinating. Please don’t think I’m telling it to put anyone down. In the middle of the aria she forgot what came next, and more quickly and efficiently than you would have imagined, she and Donald Runnicles looked at one another, and he fed her the cue. All went on smoothly to the end. Runnicles did not shout out like the Met prompter—he just mouthed the words. God, I love show business.

I wimped out and didn’t last through the second half, but I was there long enough to hear Hope Briggs as Donna Anna, a woman with a gorgeous voice and beautiful phrasing.

Wayne Tigges and Claudia Mahnke sang “La ci darem la mano.” “Look at his shoes!” I whispered. He was wearing black and white wingtips. He also would sing a phrase and then hold his lips in the same position long after the phrase had ended. Perhaps he feels that Don Giovanni is a comedy, as I do. Now I am going to bitch. Imagine that this is Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing this seduction duet. Would they stand there never looking at one another? No. They would not. You would see the seduction happening, and when she sang “Andiam,” you would know exactly where they were going. This is not trivial. I don’t care if it is a concert, I want to see it.

They are all lovely young people.

Goerne

I went last night to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at Davies Hall in San Francisco, the same concert I tried to see a week ago in Davis. This time Matthias Goerne was there. The conductor was Christoph Eschenbach, or as I always think of him, Christoph von Eschenbach. As my concert neighbor said, the von is silent.

Goerne sang orchestrated Lieder by Schubert. The orchestrations were done by different people--Brahms, Reger and Webern--with varying amounts of success. I think I was least impressed by Webern's efforts. Too choppy and still idiomatically piano.

Goerne is a Lieder specialist and has brought a unique perspective to the genre. He has a growly, not particularly pretty baritone and a mysterious cello-like legato. He expresses with this legato, swooping and arching over the music. I had a completely different reaction to Goerne singing orchestrated Lieder than I had to Quastoff and von Otter. Here it seemed the right accompaniment for him, a more legato accompaniment to such a completely legato performance. He remains a miniaturist, not quite grasping the melodramatic requirements of an orchestra concert, blunting the climax of "Erlkoenig" when he most needed it. He's not doing drama. He's doing phrase. No one does it better. He did "Staendchen" as an encore. For me the tempo was too fast.

The Philadelphia played Brahms' Symphony #1 in the second half. It seemed a concerto for timpani to me for no reason I could explain. It starts with that fabulous timpani theme. I was fascinated watching the timpanist selecting and replacing his sticks as he stood high over the others. It was brilliantly played with especially beautiful shimmering strings.

Current Events

I was amazed to see in the BBC Music magazine for April the name of Christine Brewer in the list of The 20 Greatest Sopranos of all Time. Where was I when that happened? Naturally, Fleming, Netrebko and Gheorghiu didn't make the list. Brewer is number 17, thankfully below Nilsson (5) and Flagstad (9). Jane Eaglen does not appear. If you listen to clips of Brewer on Amazon, her style is sometimes a bit quirky. YouTube has nothing. I had seen her in DC last year in Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand.

I think this is a one event ranking: she makes the top 20 for her recording with Donald Runnicles of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. I thought I should become better informed, so I immediately hopped in my car [my horoscope said I should obey any whims I had that day] and drove to Berkeley [the closest place to buy anything interesting in the classical CD department] to see what I could find. I found it.

Her voice is big, full and beautiful, possibly more beautiful than her higher ranking competitors.

In a way Schwarzkopf (11) is also a one event star--without her Der Rosenkavalier performance would we idolize her the way we do?

In the same magazine is an article about the Joyce Hatto scandal. Wikipedia has the complete story uncovered by Gramophone magazine. It is bizarre. She was born, played the piano, was reviewed, even made recordings which were not incredible. She stopped playing in public 1976 but lived on to 2006. Then after her death, her husband released a bunch of recordings, claiming they were her playing. She instantly became famous. The only problem is they exactly match certain other well-known recordings. I would think an exact rhythmic match alone would prove plagiarism.

On Saturday I drove to Davis to see if I could get a ticket to see the Philadelphia Orchestra with Matthias Goerne. It was sold out, and I drove back home without attending. Now I read in Playbill that he flew back to Germany for family reasons and did not appear. He is scheduled for San Francisco this weekend.

All this driving around can mean only one thing: intense boredom.

THIRD TENOR BECOMES SOPRANO!!

No, we're not talking about a transgender operation, we're at the Waldbuehne in Berlin in 2006 for the current version of the three tenors World Cup Concert. I hope Placido Domingo, Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko all made a lot of money out of this because it's at least as much fun as when all three were tenors.

Placido is a tenor in this concert. The love duet from Otello is lovely. I will have to lay off of him, I guess. For a man my age he sounds damn good. Who can resist this duet from Les pêcheurs de perles with Rolando? It's ravishing.

Tip for other sopranos: Anna always looks like she loves every man she sings to. This is a tremendous gift. So work on it. Learn to love them or learn to fake it a lot better. Anna may not be faking it, you know.

Can I ever get enough of "Meine Lippen, sie kuessen so heiss" [my lips they kiss so hot] when Anna sings it? Unlike those in the audience, I can hear it again, and do. She sings it as if it were her own life she were describing, and perhaps it is.

The encores are fabulous. In the concert our Mexican tenors can't resist doing a lot of semi-popular Spanish songs, but as an encore Rolando sings Rossini's "La danza." Viva!

Anna's encore is Musetta's Waltz. The first verse she sings clutching the microphone like a pop singer, but in the second verse she walks away from the mike and belts it out unamplified. She has a big voice--she should flaunt it.

I confess it can't be too corny for me. At the end all are standing and shouting, including the orchestra. It is what it is to the absolute nth degree. If you were there, you would tell your grandchildren. If you weren't there, you can buy the DVD which is finally available in America.
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Janis Martin

2006 was the 50th anniversary of the Sac State Little Theater, called little because a big theater was planned to go next to it that never came to be. They added an orchestra pit to the little theater and called it a day. It's called something else now.

My own career at Sac State was very close to the beginning of these 50 years. What a rude awakening. My first year there was also the year of Janis Martin. The next year she decided that the academic route was not the path for her and went on to other things. Even then she was an out-sized individual, someone whose talents far exceeded the ordinary.

The college produced The King and I that year, and Janis played Lady Thiang, the head wife who sings "Something Wonderful." There was a crisis in the performances I attended--the woman who played Anna had severe laryngitis. The show went on with Mrs. Larson, the director's wife, reading the dialog from the pit, and Janis singing her songs while continuing to play her own part.

Anna in the spotlight lip-synched her role, and only if you thought to look would you see Janis kneeling at the back of the stage and singing. How they managed Anna's extended "your servant" monologue, part sung, part spoken, I cannot even imagine. The entire performance was seamless and completely believable.

This was a predictor of things to come for Janis who was always very self-assured and aware. In her Adler Fellow (of course they were not called that since Adler himself was still the Impresario) years at San Francisco she notably filled in as Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco on about 24 hour's notice.

Later that year at Sac State we appeared together in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Janis as Dido and myself as the spirit who appears to Aeneas to tell him he must leave Carthage. She performed the role of prompter when the baritone forgot his "Tonight," all to no avail since he still didn't sing it. Oh well. I went on without him.

She was a heavy mezzo then with a beautiful heavy tone. Later when she lived in Germany she became a dramatic soprano and sang Tosca, the Countess, Sieglinde and those types of roles. For me her radio broadcast from the Met as Sieglinde was her most beautiful performance. Janis missed only the emotional / musical spark of genius to become a truly great singer. You may count this as bitchy if you want.

While she was part of the company in Berlin in the 70's, I went to visit Janis in her dressing room. I was making the audition rounds, and she advised me that I should have come sooner, that the really good times for foreign singers had passed. Still, it was fun seeing her. Next to her on the dressing table she had a stack of 20DM notes to hand out to the dressers. She enjoyed the attention from the backstage staff in German theaters and let them know.

Flagstad

The most wonderful things I have ever found on YouTube are just audio: two versions of Kirsten Flagstad singing the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.

One is a recording of her Covent Garden debut in the role of Isolde in 1936, Reiner conducting.


The other is a studio recording also at Covent Garden in 1952, Furtwaengler conducting.


Both are obviously Flagstad. No one sounds like Flagstad. No one does that wonderful Flagstad slide.

I have always loved the story, retrieved from the Met archives if I recall correctly, that when the Met had contracted her to sing Wagner, she had never sung him. They sent her off to Hungary (?) to coach with the young Solti. He said she would do fine. This is my all time favorite understatement.

The extreme delicacy of the early recording is fascinating. She is fully halfway into it before she begins to bring any power into it.

The Flagstad I have known and adored is the woman in her fifties. Her voice sounds fine to me, though I do recall hearing that the recorded high notes were by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.

Why is Flagstad the most respected of all the Wagnerian sopranos? She captures the long phrase. Her interpretive eyes remain on the horizon. She can crescendo a phrase longer than you thought possible. In her voice Wagner grows into the giant we know. She lives in the realm of forever.

Reading blogs

Angela Gheorghiu reads the blogs. She was probably tired of people linking to that damn "La vie en rose" and had it removed. I am determined to find something she will like.



How about this "Habanera?" Very chesty and adorable.


I even rather like this "Casta Diva," though it seems rather oddly romantic.


And what's not to like about this "Pace, pace"? I think she wishes her voice was heavier than it is, but I enjoy the results anyway.

The comments are fun to read. Actually in the opera house Leontyne Price was not that loud either.

Adler fellows do Carmen in Davis

Names to watch out for:

Noah Stewart, a tall, gorgeous black man with a beautiful lyric tenor voice. He sang Don Jose.

Kendall Gladen has a dark, rich mezzo-soprano sound you may encounter again. She was Carmen.

Jeremy Galyon was sometimes fabulous, sometime not. He sang Escamillo.

Lorraine at Wigmore

I wasn't a fan of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, but this was due to ignorance rather than hostility.

In the liner notes for this Wigmore Hall recital recording from 1998 is this brief conversation:

"You have one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard. Who are you?"
"I'm a violist."

One hears the violist in her voice and her music. What one wishes from a singer is to feel that if one merely reached out, one would touch her soul. Lorraine does this on virtually every note.

There is a way she draws back on the tempo, relaxes into that dark mysterious pool that is her voice and reaches heaven.
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