What is good? Great?

Fairly deep into the Met's season and I am contemplating the same thing I do every year: why do audiences so readily accept performance inadequacies in singers they would condemn in any other musical 'instrument'?     I have no answer--more than once I have found myself sitting there lock-jawed in disbelief at some yelps coming from the stage (or screen) while everyone around me screams in ecstasy.    I could list a book's worth of reasons to support my 'judgement' but such an act proves nothing and just makes me seem like a dickhead.   So I've decided to go the opposite directions: performers and / or performances that should make me cover my ears or grit my teeth, but which I have a fondness for (or a time or two, a love for) and think of them with wonderful satisfaction--or listen to them again and again.

Katia Ricciarelli would be no one's idea of a singer with flawless technique.    She had a noticeable wobble when she tried to sing loudly in the upper reaches, she pushed her tone into shrillness, she 'faked' her way through roles she had no business singing or recording, her diction was merely acceptable at best.   She was not a natural on the stage--not stiff, but hardly anyone's idea of a wonderful actress.    But...   She tried to sing with emotion.   Rarely did she just sing notes.    She understood the power of legato in Italian music of the 19th Century.     When she was 'faking' it, she offered something characterful in place of the actual 'requirements' asked by the composer.     And her voice could express sadness, melancholy, happiness, love.     She could make you forgive her faults if you could appreciate what she had to give.    Unashamed, I love her Un Ballo in Maschera with Placido Domingo.    I can't imagine anyone would think this is the best Ballo ever recorded.     Her faults are in evidence (but not as strongly as in some recordings) but so are her strengths.    Her character is scared, emotionally divided, eventually heartbroken.    Somehow, the vocal 'faults' add sympathy to this woman's plight rather than take away from it.    And she has some lovely singing in it.    It helps that Domingo is singing one of his greatest roles.     I have several recordings of her which I enjoy.    I even have a special fondness for what has to be the worst recording she ever made: Turandot.     She is obviously waaaaaay over her head.     She sounds strained.     Worst, she sounds like she won't make it to the end.     But Turandot suddenly becomes a young woman at her wit's end.    She is desperately horrified but all the murder yet frightened by the opposite possibility.     She has only a few lovely moments without strain or wobble, but for some reason, I find her take on the character--usually portrayed as a somewhat one-dimensional 'ice queen' thawed by true love--as something deeply human.    Truthfully, the inadequacies are myriad.    But despite all the problems, I still return to it.     The recordings that are this vocally problematic that I hear multiple times can be counted on my two hands, with fingers left over, so this is an aberration for me.   Still, I enjoy it.

Josephine Barstow has sung many of the same roles as Ricciarelli, but far less recorded (though I have some radio performances.)     She is the opposite of her Italian counterpoint: she is a great vocal actress.    Nothing she sings is just 'sung'.    She has colors, inflections, dynamics, 'emotions' that very few singers can manage.    Her Ballo is one-of-a-kind: no one has sung it with this much variety, save Maria Callas.   But like Callas, she has an peculiar basic tone (yes, Callas had an odd tone, live with it) and can put too much pressure on the voice so it can turn a bit shrill or wobble freely.     But listen to her third act aria.    The whole rang of what the woman is saying is there in the singing.    She is partnered with Domingo as well.    Maybe he has something to do with bringing out the best in his sopranos.    She has also sung 20th Century music--some important premieres, some important composers,some important recordings--and this is where she shines the most.    She premiered one of the strangest characters in all opera: Denise in The Knot Garden.    She is an angry, physically deformed, vengeful victim of torture.    The music is extreme at times.    But what a fascinating individual, and how well a young Barstow sings it!    Once heard, it is hard to forget, especially her grand scena where she interrupts the action to rail against (the loss of ) humanity.     And at the opposite end of her career, she sang and recorded Elizabeth I in Benjamin Britten's Gloriana.    Again, a woman with infinite variety.   Barstow does it justice.    Her heartbreak is ours.    Magnificent.   Vocally perfect?   Hardly.   Unforgettable?    Absolutely.

And to end, one of the most polarizing singers, well, ever: Peter Pears.    He is no conventional Romantic tenor.   His tone lacks the dark tones expected of the heroic Italian tradition.   And he does not express youthful, love-sick, innocent feelings well.    And odd tone is an understatement.    No one sounds like him.     And as almost any opera lover knows, he was the life partner of Benjamin Britten, who wrote great piece after great piece with Pears' particular strengths in his ears.    And some (frankly, far too many) opera lovers dismiss him because of this, but I think they miss the artistry, the point of his singing.    Britten (and others like Michael Tippett, William Walton, and Hans Werner Henze) would not have written for him if he were a sub-par singer.   He is anything but.   His technique is rock solid.   He has no pitch problems, no great strain, no wobble.    He is quite expressive, if not in the Italian tradition.     AND NO ONE MATCHES HIS PETER GRIMES!!!!!     I emphasize this because for many years, people have named one singer after another who are (supposedly) superior in their interpretations.    Bullshit.    Jon Vickers has much to offer, true, but he is no closet poet, which is a great part of Grimes' downfall.    He tries, but is somewhat unconvincing in those scenes, too much the wild fisherman.    He sounds (and looks) like he wouldn't need a helper to fish.   So the ambiguity built into the role is lacking something, including the final scene (and what a great scene it is.)   Pears finds ever nuance.   And not just on record.   His video, made late in life, is illuminating.    Compare it to Vickers', (who has vocal problems galore, by the way.)    The details show how perfect Pears was in the role.    Vickers is merely good.   And all the way through until the final great role, Aschenbach in Death In Venice.   I don't give a damn if his tone isn't 'tradtional'.   This is great singing, even in just aural form.    Wow.     What a marvelous work!    And Pears' only real competition is Philip Langridge, a singer who has also a peculiar tone, but who also had a strong technique.

And on they go.   Deborah Polaski at the Met in Elektra.    (One of the greatest performances I have ever been lucky enough to experience.)      On video, Anna Evans in Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth.    (So vulnerable, human.)    Anna Caterina Antonacci in Les Troyens.   (So full of great interpretive insights.)    Heinz Zednik in most of his recordings, including the Met video of Siegfried.   What a fascinating Mime.   (Ugly, nontraditional, forced at times, but never boring.    Never.)

But mostly, bad technique leads to bad singing and great displeasure for me.   (So, technically, Pears has nothing to complain about)    But even I have to admit, sometimes, perfection isn't everything.

A word...or an interview?

Billy Crystal will be a good host.   He's funny, dependable, uncontroversial.    He will not help the sagging ratings, though.    That's why the Academy went with someone who they thought would be outrageous, 'relevant', hip (if not younger, but you can't have everything.)    They need more 18 to 35 males.     So they hired Eddie Murphy and his friend as producer.     That would be Brett  Ratner, he of the (now infamous) big offensive mouth.    But the headlines have become misleading.    He was not pushed to resign because of his off-handed homophobic slur "Rehearsal is for fags."    The Academy was willing to forgive him for that (!)     He apologized and the Academy went a well-worded version of 'he shouldn't have done that, we don't condone that, he said he was sorry, and you know how guys can be.'    The interview where he talked about sexual prowess, veneral disease, and Lindsey Lohan was the final straw.    (Closer to a bale of straw.)   Eddie Murphy 'resigned' closely thereafter, though no offical reason was given.    Most people I have read assume it's because he didn't want to be the host without his friend.    That seems to have been a requirement for his acceptance.    I suspect he didn't want the scrutiny.    All guesses, though.    Nothing offical.    The truth on that will proably never be told.    So Ratner is out, Murphy is out, Crystal is in, and a completely safe producer is in place to keep things in line.   (I'll leave him nameless, out of sympathy.    He will have a completely ungrateful, unfair job to do.)    It's easy to just say it was the slur to gay men that brought down the 'savior' of The Oscars.    It makes for a better headline.    And that does have some worth: he should have been fired for that.    Alas, he was not.    Had he not given the later interview, he would still have his job.    That, dear folks, is (still) show biz.

All the colors...except the rainbow

Odd how things happen simultaneously, but in the midst of the (admittedly tame) 'dialogue' about Porgy and Bess, the television show Blue Bloods has shown the most offensive, ignorant, racist hour I have seen on Network TV in decades.    The main (conservative / saint) character--the Police Commissioner of New York City--is played by one of the most vocally conservative actors working: Tom Selleck.    He is always right (pun intended) always fair, always infallible.    His last name is Reagan.   And here I thought CSI:NY was the top right-wing propaganda disguised as a crime procedural.    Sorry, C-Y, you have been upstaged.    Tom Selleck proves to the world that racism does not exist in the NYPD: he says so, so it must be true.   He's tired of people (guess which group) attacking 'his' city's police force which is now completely integrated with all races and both sexes, leaving out gays and lesbians, of course, because obviously, they do not belong with the rest of the good people of the NYPD.    Worse, there is a giant conspiracy of black men claiming to be Christians (not kidding), led by a popular minister (of course it's not based on life), who attack two innocent white cops then claim it was the other way around--just to create fake publicity to garner enough political power to have Selleck replaced(!)     (He's the only thing standing in the way of their evil agenda.)  This 'Reverand' always finds his face in front of a camera, is always screaming racism, but has to be corrupt, lest the audience question anything that is actually happening in New York today.    The new Mayor is also black, but of mixed race (one guess who he resembles), and also a smooth politician rather than a 'true' defender of the good like Selleck.    No use calling him 'Reagan'.   (Unless it's to compare the current political ideas to the President's.)     It's Selleck / conservative / GOP speak, so let's label it correctly.    No one says African-American.    That's too p. c.    It's not 'real'.  These are tough, tell-it-like-it-is patriots.    'Black' and 'white' is good enough for them.    (It was good enough for Grandpa?)    I'll go along with that: black and white is how they see everything, because they know their target fan base.

There were little details throughout the hour which would make an actual thinking New Yorker stare in disbelief.     The 'bad' blacks are very dark skinned.    The only (partially) 'good' black is light-skinned.    (I've already suggested who he looks like.)   The crotchety grandfather keeps spouting ludicrous lines about how unfair this 'Reverand' is ('he sure doesn't act like our good Catholic priests' are the implied lines) and how everything he says can't be trusted, etc.  "When I was Commissioner... "    I had the distinct feeling he said something about "our Negroes" in an earlier draft.     And then he tops them all at Sunday dinner, when he says (I'm paraphrasing--I couldn't bear to watch it again) "White, black, brown or purple, we're all blue."   'White' seems to mean the truly good people like the Reagans.    ' Black' must mean those people who do not question anything that's happening in New York--or American society--and thus, see everything like the Reagans.    'Brown'  must mean Hispanics, though they were never shown or involved.   And purple?  Well, all I can think of is Barney.    He is so discriminated against.   I don't have to tell you that 'blue' means the police force, but I'd say he named the wrong color--the red states are the target areas, the desired fan base.   Even the 'let's try to see both sides of the argument' conversations around the dinner table of the first season have been replaced with 'let's talk about the one, true, right side of every issue' conversations instead.     On the surface, everything was completely 'fair.'     Much double-talk was offered to clearly state that these were just some black people.    And, of course, having the Mayor be black justifies everything.    Having him be a slick, self-serving politician, gives the fan base what it thinks it already knows.     And naturally, none of the white people have any kind of prejudice, well, except maybe toward faggots, but the writers/producers/actors take the 'love that dare not speak its name' literally.   As I've mentioned, the 'fags' are never heard and never shown,  so that issue never has to be raised.    Along the way, no one confronts the reason(s) why those crowds of black people screaming for justice are so easily duped...because  they are the true bigots?   They only watch the news or read a newspaper when the 'Reverend' is on it, in it?    They're just too stupid?    They were the only people who showed up for casting?

Maybe if the last decade had not seen so many racially divisive, police-caused deaths (all ending in favor of the police) the show would just be ridiculous.    But anyone living in New York during that time-- or is aware of what has been happening in New York--can only be appalled at such a despicable program passing itself off as a righteous one.     The Commissioner even delineates a 'decade' as the time it took New York to miraculously become diversified.     You half expect him to land on an aircraft carrier and declare, "The race war is over!    Time for the 'real' Americans to take back popular entertainment."     (No one gives a fuck about the 'higher arts.')    Maybe they should have had a disclaimer before it started: "anyone resembling actual people who are not one-sidedly conservative is strictly unintentional."     Yeah, I know, it makes up for aaaaaaaaaaalllll those horribly incorrect 'liberal' shows that flood the airways.    

So, Suzan-Lori Parks, hurry up and 'fix'  (if you haven't already) Porgy and Bess for all those 'good' people who would be offended by all those 'destructive stereotypes' perpetrated by two Jews and a white man in 1935.     Because a large portion of America no longer sees other races as stereotypes: they have become the definition of 'enemy'.     Any of them who do not fall in line.    Even on innocuous TV.     The sixties are with us again, it seems, full force.    We're trying--and failing--to occupy Wall Street.     A man named Cain is walking around in blackface.    'Segregation' has become a topic again.    Really.   'Homosexuals', and their agenda, are destroying our families...when they aren't destroying our military.   (A constitutional amendment is desperately needed to decisively defeat them once and for all.)     Illegal intruders are bringing the pestilence of drugs, not to mention the destruction of the work force and decimation of our tax money.    Please, Ms. Parks--come back to your own work.     We need you now more than ever.