ABS Magnificat

Last night I went to Davis to see the American Bach Soloists, an excellent Baroque ensemble.

Sacramento Philharmonic And Opera Receives Donation

According to CBS news yesterday, the Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra received a half million dollar donation from the Raley family.  The whole article says:

It’s music to their ears. The Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra will play on. They were on the brink of collapse until someone stepped in with a big gift just in time. The donor’s identity has been a secret, until now.

The stage was set for a tragic ending.

“Theatrics in the bank account we don’t want. Theatrics on the stage we want…we were cutting it very tight,” said Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra CEO Rob Tannenbaum. Tannenbaum was planning on asking the city for a subsidy. “And my CFO comes into the room and she looked a bit dumbfounded,” said Tannenbaum.

A gift of a half-million dollars came in the mail. “There was a moment of what, what, until she put the checks on the table. And there was $250,000 for the opera and $250,000 for the philharmonic,” said Tannenbaum.

The two checks came from the family behind Raley’s supermarket, headquartered in West Sacramento. Of course the surprise left Tannenbaum singing their high praises.

He immediate responded to the Joyce and Jim Teel Family Foundation. “I called Joyce to thank her for this gift and it’s in memory of her mother, E. Claire Raley,” said Tannenbaum. Tannenbaum says changes are needed to keep arts alive in Sacramento. “Talking about how can we change the organization so that it has the power to move and talk to people from 2014 and beyond,” said. This half-million-dollar surprise has the CEO singing a whole new song.

2014 Classical Grammy Nominations

Classical Field

Best Orchestral Performance

Atterberg: Orchestral Works Vol. 1 - Neeme Järvi, conductor (Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra)

Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 1 - Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Los Angeles Philharmonic)

Schumann: Symphony No. 2; Overtures Manfred & Genoveva - Claudio Abbado, conductor (Orchestra Mozart)

Winner:  Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 - Osmo Vänskä, conductor (Minnesota Orchestra)  This is the disappearing Minnesota Orchestra.

Stravinsky: Le Sacre Du Printemps - Simon Rattle, conductor (Berliner Philharmoniker)

The Minotaur

Someone persuaded me to take an interest in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.  Someone at the New York Times liked it.  So I bought a DVD.

The Minotaur (Asterios):  John Tomlinson, bass
Theseus:  Johan Reuter, baritone
Ariadne:  Christine Rice, mezzo-soprano
Snake Priestess:  Andrew Watts, countertenor
Innocents:  Rebecca Bottone, Pumeza Matshikiza, Wendy Dawn Thompson, Christopher Ainslie, Tim Mead
Hiereus:  Philip Langridge, tenor
Ker (death spirit, sister of the fates, in this production vulture):  Amanda Echalaz, soprano

The plot is the incidents that took place just before Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.  The Minotaur is in the labyrinth, and his half sister Ariadne looks out for him, makes sure people sent to Crete to provide dinner for the Minotaur find their way into the labyrinth.  The Minotaur doesn't care for bread.

We are 45 minutes into the opera before Asterios appears and 57 minutes in before he sings anything.  If you like opera as orchestral tone poem with only incidental singing, then you will like this.  If, like me, for you opera is about the singing and you don't really care what is going on at the same time, you will hate it.

The Minotaur groans as he kills his victims in full view of the audience.  The vultures come in afterward to eat what remains of them, screeching hideously.

Sorry.  No singing, no opera.  Think how much better we might enjoy this if a troupe of comedia del arte performers came in after say 20 minutes.

I do wish to comment on the orchestral part of the opera, though.  Modernism, the music of Bartok, Stravinsky and those guys, has died here.  We in America, represented by Glass, Adams, Heggie, have gone on to minimalism and other less harsh styles.  In Europe modernism appears to be alive and ....  I was going to say well, but, you know....  Birtwistle and Ades, and perhaps even Saariaho are very much modernists.  Our paths have forked.  I would need to conduct research to discover which path is the more successful.  The New York Times critics evaluate the fork by ignoring our half.  If it doesn't sound like late Stravinsky, it isn't classical music, apparently. 
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Cross-Dressing in the Movies

Often in the movies a character of one gender dresses up as the other, such as here where we see Marlene Dietrich in Morocco.  Her character in the movie is female.  In this disguise she kisses one of the women in the audience.

In Some Like it Hot two guys, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, are pretending to be women.  Everyone in the audience knows they are not really women, and part of the joke is deciding how well or badly they have managed it.

In Tootsie Dustin Hoffman pretends to be a woman.  We know that he is actually a man.  A common motive for cross-dressing is to get a job.  The general consensus was that he was badly disguised.

That is also Julie Andrews' motive in Victor Victoria.  We didn't buy her either.

Tom Hanks did it in Bosom Buddies to get a room in a women only hotel.  For some reason we believed this.

But if you didn't read about it in advance, you might not have known that the male character Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously was played by a woman, Linda Hunt, currently of NCIS Los Angeles.  I suppose this is the only case I can think of that parallels operatic cross-dressing.  The singer in an opera is supposed to be the other gender and not just pretending to be.

I especially loved this movie because of the scene where the older man (Linda) introduces the younger man (Mel Gibson) to the joys of the Strauss Four Last Songs.  I believe if memory serves, that the version was Kiri te Kanawa.

 

The Crying Game was a special case.   Everyone I knew did a fabulous job of keeping the secret that Dil was actually a guy.  If you knew, it spoiled the joke.  He takes a man home with him and we get to find out together with the man on the screen that his plumbing is not really female.

This is based on an item in Entertainment Weekly.  I used different pictures, but the idea is the same.  No one thinks anything of cross-dressing when it's a joke.

Cecilia's Ory

Some of us keep wishing for a DVD of this, Le Comte Ory in Vienna last year.  We're falling way behind.  I don't need videos of concerts, but a nice Giulio Cesare, or Ory, or Otello would be nice.  This weekend she opens in Zurich in Alcina.  Of course.

Interview with Giovanni Antonini

[I found this interesting interview here in the Aargauer Zeitung.  It corresponds to the opening of Alcina at the Zurich Opera.]

The Milanese Giovanni Antonini became world famous as a flutist and conductor of the Baroque ensemble "Il giardino armonico".  Today he conducts operas in Salzburg and Zurich.  In this interview he talks about divas and his native Italy. by Christian Berzins

Only a few days after the interview at the Opera House Zurich it becomes clear why Giovanni Antonini said three times in the music room in an hour, "There is no right or wrong, it remains a matter of taste." Though convinced that he is doing the "right thing", the Milanese knows that it is not without controversy.

He can live with that because his style of conducting is well received by both opera star Cecilia Bartoli, with whom he works a lot, as well as the Basel Chamber Orchestra, with whom he plays a Beethoven cycle.  And last but not least by most critics.  In the interview he talks enthusiastically about Bartoli, sighingly over his native Italy, and positively about Alexander Pereira's chances in Milan.

Giovanni Antonini, in 2009 you performed Handel's "Alcina" with the German Anja Harteros in Milan, and in ten days with the Italian Cecilia Bartoli in Zurich. What will be different about this for you?

Giovanni Antonini: An opera performance always depends on the artist.  Here in Zurich are both the production as well as the singer quite different. My view of this music, however, remains more or less the same.  Anja Harteros and Cecilia Bartoli are worlds apart.  I've been working a lot lately with Bartoli, in this work one realizes a development, the way to a common language.

Both singers are divas. Is that difficult for the conductor?

To only be a diva is not enough for an opera by Handel. Whether one likes one or the other singer better is one thing.  But Bartoli has studied this musical language for many years, has her own unique way of singing this music.  Thus, this Zurich production is much more interesting for me.  Although the work was beautiful with the Scala orchestra, I met in Zurich an orchestra that is used to playing Baroque operas.  Here the orchestra is playing on gut strings, with baroque bows and baroque brass instruments.  We start on another level!  As with the singers: It's not about good or bad but to understand the language of music.

Who is this singer, this diva?

Cecilia Bartoli embodies a rare combination of skills. Two tones from Bartoli - and you know who sings. It is the mix of technique, originality, uniqueness of her voice - and she has a musical instinct:  If something does not work, then she notices it.  Bartoli is a typical Italian woman, she can formally smell situations.  She manages to sing so that everyone in the audience thinks she'll do it for him alone. She has many admirers, but kindles at the same time discussions about her person.  This is quite normal .

A few evenings after Bartoli, Agneta Eichenholz sings.  Do you change your conducting?

Quite. The conductor and his orchestra have to breathe with the singers . And at a Einspringerin or understudy I need to understand their breathing. But the times are now situations that exist in the theater. It exerts an opera over many weeks, and on opening night you have to re-adjust to the situation. Suddenly something happened : A change of pace , a forgotten word , something falls down ! Since the conductor must be ready. There are singers who are completely detached from the orchestra : "Follow me , I am the diva."  The Bartoli is the opposite: She's a diva who practices, experiments, and discusses a lot with the conductor.

You quite often work with singers.   Do you love them?

I love singers who want to work together to evolve and have a vision of their role.  I do not like simply to accompany a singer.  But I respect every singer because singing is something quite different to master from an instrument like a violin.  A singer is naked on stage.  How badly we sometimes judge the voices and hit the people!  While talking about voices we have to be careful not to destroy the people.

You have not only conducted Handel with Cecilia Bartoli, but Vincenzo Bellini's "Norma", a major work of the 19th Century.  And now you present a Beethoven cycle with the Basel Chamber Orchestra.  Is this a normal step for the baroque specialist Antonini?

Each was an adventure.  There are standards on how to conduct Bellini's music.  But this tradition, I do not know, so we said:  let's see what is really in this score, we let go of everything that Maria Callas had shown us!  My musical roots are in the 18th Century, I drew this Bellini closer to Mozart than to Verdi.  So I went also at the Beethoven symphonies .

Handel, Beethoven, Bellini - now follow Verdi and Puccini?

I'm not sure if the world of opera should be my center.  My nature corresponds to the more symphonic and my flute playing with chamber orchestra.  There are ideas, projects, but better not to make any greater steps than the leg allows, as we Italians say. The 18th Century remains my world.  I have conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and other world-famous orchestras , but when I conduct Il Giardino Armonico, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg or a comparable orchestra, I meet a familiar community that is trusts me and is congenial.  Also here in Zurich it seems to me that it's on the musical and human plateau.

You, the Milanese, since 2009 have directed no more operas in Milan or anywhere else in Italy, the "Land of Music," but trade it for headlines in Salzburg.  Is not that strange ?

Italy is now a very strange land (hesitates).  I told you how I want to work - the emphasis is on "work".  That's no longer possible in Italy today.

There are so many great Italian musicians! Do men gather together for anything to happen in Italy? Why is there no Baroque Festival in Florence in the historical halls - where the opera had its origins?

The politics has not yet understood that the cultural offering can make a major contribution to the economic development of a country.  Salzburg is for example a small town, but the international success of the festival is a benefit for the whole of Austria, culturally and economically. In Italy there are many talented, creative people with great ideas, who call festivals to life.  But they are not supported, which makes it impossible for them to plan long term.  Sitting together is not an Italian strength. The sense of the Country or the sense of community can be seen, despite unification in the 19 Century less and less. We let Pompeii disintegrate, we do not care. It has so many other works of art ... Soon one has some less ( sighs) ... Nevertheless, I love this country .

At La Scala there is now the ex - "Zuricher", the Austrian Alexander Pereira. Will this go well?

I think so, he knows the Italians.  Pereira will understand the system.  In Milan a lot is expected from him, but also there is a lot of confidence in him.

Giovanni Antonini was born in 1965 in Milan.  While still a student the flutist founded the specialist ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, with whom he performed all over the world and he leads alone since 1989.  The encounter with Cecilia Bartoli was 2000 when the famous Vivaldi album came out. He has conducted, among others, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. His recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Basel Chamber Orchestra is nearing completion. Giovanni Antonini conducts at the Zurich Opera House on 26 January Handel's "Alcina".

[Dr B.  I like very much at the beginning where the question of right and wrong is discussed.  He says it's a matter of taste.  Whether or not something is correct means nothing to me.  All I care about is does it live in the soul of the artist?  In Antonini's case that seems to be true.]

 

Death of Claudio Abbado (26 June 1933 – 20 January 2014)

Norman Lebrecht has the best remembrances of Maestro Abbado here and here.  Some are translated from Italian, I presume.  Here's another.

Things you can buy in Germany

This is an advanced sale.

But not here.

The ones I want are Winterreise and Don Carlo.

Titter / Twitter

You may remember this quote.  I said, "if [Jonas] really didn't want to be a sex symbol, he would cut his hair differently." Well, this picture made me laugh out loud and caused a stir on Twitter.  So was I right?