In praise of English

The battle for translation versus original language and titles (or program notes) has long been thought to be settled--and translation pretty much lost.    Other than very small opera companies and The English National Opera (or the Chandos Opera in English series of recordings), the pro-native language advocates have all but given up.    Yet I still believe no amount of "help" with a language that you do not understand can ever compare to the direct involvement of one you do, essentially hearing with no "barriers".     The main reason that things are let "as is" has more to do with singers being able to sing anywhere just to pay the bills than any real concern for authenticity.    If you learn Cosi Fan Tutte in Italian, you can sing it anywhere in the world.     And any singer from any part of the world can sing it anywhere.    This makes a certain sense.     But it's no real excuse.    The Met does works in translation all the time: Don Carlos, for instance, a work written to a French text.    There are plenty of performers who have learned both the Italian version and the French version and have gone back and forth successfully.    Really, Verdi hated the Italian translation but realized he would get more performances if the Italian was available.    Yet the Met does it in Italian, even though virtually anyone who knows both can enumerate for you the myriad ways the French text is preferable.    But audiences have gotten used to ignoring words and concentrating their attention on the music (or more truthfully, the melody) because idiots have convinced them that the actual sounds of the various words are much more important than their communicative ability--that somehow Verdi would be denigrated to be heard in English.     Factor in that a house the size of the Met makes it very difficult to understand any language being sung, so why not have it be Russian or German or Czech?    No one can really understand it anyway.     This is all old news.    We, the advocates of understanding, have long since lost the battle.    

But I continue to fight it.    So over the years I have used translations for a great many classical pieces and audience response has always been positive.    Surprisingly so.    In fact, to continue to perform lesser-known works of a certain difficulty, I have had to create a few "singing" versions of pieces that have only prose translations or "literal" ones that were not meant to be sung.     This is a difficult, (usually) long, tedious process--I am forced to rely on other people's translations, a person or two who speaks the language in question, and dictionaries--but I have always sung better in English and feel the work has been worth it.    Part of the solution is to find works composed to English texts, which I do often.    That is a whole 'nuther can of worms which I may open later.    

So why am I talking about this now?     Because of a piece performed at our last concert, where poems by children of Terezin's ghetto who were killed were set to music by a fine composer, Lori Laitman.   They were in English and the audience was very moved by them.    They could not distance themselves so they had to hear the poems as "intended."    This led me to re-listen to a group of operas written by victims of the Holocaust which were recorded in the latter decade of the 20th Century by London Records.    The series was called Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) because that was the label the Nazis placed on any style of which they disapproved.     Because the Nazis were an extremely conservative group, they only approved of extremely conservative music, and banned anything that did not fit rigid models from the (usually German) past.    So many of the pieces that were recorded are of "difficult" music.     The period of the early 20th Century until the Second World War was one of experimentation, mixed methods, extended harmonies, conversational melodies, complication and simplicity (sometimes in the same piece), popular music invading "serious" music, etc.    Composers were looking for new ways to hear things--not necessarily to cater to the popular audience.     Yet, listening to some of these--chiefly Erwin Schulhoff's Flammen (Flames), Hans Krasa's Verloben im Traum (Betrothal in a Dream), and Pavel Haas' Sarlatan (Charlatan), all composers murdered by the Nazis by the way--I have come to a sad conclusion: these are all worthy pieces, but their various styles do not make for easy listening (or performance) and the language barrier is the final nail in the coffin.    Why would any group put so much money into a performance of a piece written in Czech by an all but unknown composer who writes in a somewhat difficult style, when they can spend that money on a premiere of a new work by a living composer with a libretto already in English, or a production of, say, Shostakovich's The Nose?    They wouldn't.   Not here, anyway.    If they performed some of these Entartete operas in English, would more people come?      Maybe, but the people who did come would,  I believe,  appreciate them more and be more willing to try to understand what the composer was after.     My proof?    A children's opera by Hans Krasa, Brundibar, which has been performed all over the English-speaking world in a marvelous translation by Tony Kushner.    Granted, it's only an hour long and the music is much simpler than Krasa's full-length one, but the correlation is fairly apt.    I would love to see any of these works, in any version, but I fear I am a very small minority.    Even the London recordings are out-of-print.    [Side note: another group, Music of Remembrance, has picked up the idea, but their budgets are smaller, and are comprised more of short pieces.   They did, however, record Brundibar, which is delightful.   And a few performers, like Anne-Sofie von Otter, have recorded some of the shorter vocal works.    But how long will they stay in print?     How many performers will learn these pieces?    Good question.    So buy these while you can!]   Yes, they were saved from extinction of one kind only to be all but destroyed by another: too few people want to have to "work" to appreciate music.    At least, not music that isn't "universally" accepted as "essential."   (Lulu, for instance.   Which I worship, so don't get me wrong.)    Not in an English-speaking country, anyway.    So they lie around in manuscript, unheard.    Even Los Angeles Opera, in an honorable bid to keep some of this music "alive", did a work that was so conservative musically, Lehar could have written it: The Birds, by Walter Braunfels.     They hedged their bets.     I believe the whole idea of performing in a language the audience does not understand will forever keep the more difficult of these (and many like) works dead in the water.     It's just one barrier too many.     I fight it on a small scale, but: English translation is dead.     Long live English translation.

Ballet or not ballet? That is the question

Hmmmm.    I'm letting you in on a guilty secret: I have been known to read gossip for fun.   Now, flinging around the internet (and most gossip columns and even some real news outlets) is the epic battle between the star and the director of Black Swan--that would be Natalie Portman of Oscar fame and Darren Aronovsky) and the star's dancing stand-in (that would be Sarah Lane.)    Lane is claiming she did most of the dancing with no real credit and is upset that people think someone could learn to be a ballerina in a year and a half.    She has been dancing for 22 years.     She went so far as claiming Portman couldn't even dance on pointe (on your toes, if anyone doesn't know.)

According to the always entertaining Ted Casablanca of E! News online's The Awful Truth:

Natalie's dancing partner (and now baby daddy fiancé) Benjamin Millepied took to her defense on the matter, claiming Nat did "85 percent" of the dancing.     Sarah Lane disputes this.

Director Aronofsky would like to take that one [too], as he tells E! News:
"Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that's 80 percent Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement. Even so, if we were judging by time over 90% would be Natalie Portman. And to be clear Natalie did dance on pointe in pointe shoes. If you look at the final shot of the opening prologue, which lasts 85 seconds, and was danced completely by Natalie, she exits the scene on pointe. That is completely her without any digital magic. I am responding to this to put this to rest and to defend my actor. Natalie sweated long and hard to deliver a great physical and emotional performance. And I don't want anyone to think that's not her they are watching. It is."   If you want to read more, follow the link to Casablanca's blog (I hope he doesn't mind my small borrowing.)

Read more: http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/the_awful_truth/b233315_black_swan_battle_heats_up_even_more.html#ixzz1HxfbE6qA

Lane is right, of course, you cannot turn yourself into a "real" ballet dancer in a year and a half.   But who actually thinks the dance sequences add up to a whole ballet?    Lane?     Who is she kidding?     With specific training to do a limited number of steps, moves, etc., a dedicated person with smarts and will power could very likely do enough to fool the audience into imagining her as a great ballerina.
  

But my interests lie elsewhere.    First, Lane's defense of the long hard work required to master ballet is admirable and completely true.    And who knows, maybe the film and all the discussion will get more people into the theater to watch an actual ballet.     I hope so.    If it is that simple to create a new audience, the dance world owes the film a debt of gratitude.    Ballet is a marvelous art form, and should be seen and enjoyed.    I saw Swan Lake for my last birthday, instead of an opera or a Broadway show, which I would normally choose.  It was glorious.    And the sad truth is, audiences for ballet are shrinking--noticeably.     Opera seems healthy in comparison.   If the controversy helps in any way, I'm glad for that,

But second, most of the people watching the film have to be thinking, who the hell cares?   If I want to believe Portman is a dancer, I will.    It's an acting role above and beyond everything else.   Personally, I don't care if she didn't do ANY of the steps.    It's an ACTING assignment.    And Lane cannot deny that Portman DID do some of it.    The counting of shots seems pretty conclusive to me.    He could easily be proved wrong if he is exaggerating.       Just like the dancing in Chicago a few years back, the question was did the actors do their own dancing?    Yes, they did.     They spent weeks learning them.    Most of them are shot in fragmentary form, so careful editing could eliminate false steps, mistakes, etc.    And the dancing did not make up a majority of the film.    The same holds true for Black Swan.    Are they any better or worse if the dancing is shared?    Or not?

NOOOOOOOO!     Stop being stupid.   It's a movie!    It's not a filmed performance!      Lane, get over yourself!     You have made the wrong point.   You SHOULD have said that true ballet is a decades long pursuit and hopefully, the popularity of this film will allow more dancers to be seen live.    Go get back on the stage and prove your worth there.     Movies are not "real."    They are put together of parts.   Shot out of order.    Created by computers.    Edited to make actors look better.    Have a music score to manipulate your emotions.   Only idiots think movie are just an actor's medium, and they will not be buying a ticket to anything even near a staged ballet, now, or in the future.      We all applaud the defense of unheralded performers.     But art forms are not equal.    Live performances will always be more difficult to pull off with great skill.     Of course they are!   Natalie Portman did not claim to dance everything all at once in one take.    THAT is the only "reality" that needs to be pointed out.  Only the same idiots who think movies are real, think acting in them is as hard as acting in a play, musical, ballet, or opera.      The same goes for dancing in them or singing in them.   The idea is preposterous to anyone who loves both film and live shows.    I defend great movie acting.    Some things can only work on film.    (Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, for instance.    Hell, Natalie Portman in Black Swan.)    But Derek Jacobi or Ian McKellen in a live King Lear will always trump ANYONE'S on film.   Stop puny arguments that hurt The Arts.    Hate-mongers in government are already doing that.

Bad for the Arts?

Well, Spiderman the National joke is now in its umpteenth very public revision, but with a huge catch this time: the director / co-writer is (all but) out, while the musical team finally gets off its collective ass to work on the damn thing as new writer(s) and a new director have been rushed in to save the day (and this irony is not lost on too many people.)     Will it help?    Who knows?    History would suggest "No."     For my purposes, it won't matter.      I doubt I would be interested in seeing it anyway, certainly not at those prices.    My interest lies in the humiliated director, Julie Taymor.    If mid-America did not know she was the creative genius behind The Lion King, her infamy is now front page news (or at least, of the Arts section.)     Yes, she refused to admit vast problems were not being solved.   Yes, she had some poor ideas no one could (or would?) talk her out of.     No, even in a fantasy world, a chorus of spiders can NEVER be made to work.     She seemed destined to go down in flames--and destiny finally caught up with her.     She is now considered a foolish egomaniac that destroyed the great work that could have been Spiderman.     Never mind, she was not working in a vacuum.    Others were designing sets (with her input), costumes (ditto), flying stunts, etc.   Not to mention, writing the score.   Was she really such a control freak that she FORCED them all to bow to her foolish whims?    I have begun to doubt it.     The world needed an excuse why Bono could not be the next Elton John.    They needed a quick and handy scapegoat.   They found a large one, one they would have us believe was trapped in a web completely of her own devising.     Well, she was the director but the buck did not stop with her: it stopped with the producers.  They were not pushing for new songs, better scripts, more coherent plot lines.    Unless they were doing it without ANYONE saying anything about it.     With this much scrutiny?    Get real.   They gave the woman more than enough rope to hang herself (and half the cast while she was at it.)     And sat on their hands while Bono and The Edge went on tour and ignored what was happening in New York.      And no one likes their score any more than they like the script.    So why are they not "fired'?     Have they not failed as well?    Yes, they have.    But someone with some name recognition had to stay around or the show would close, losing $65, 000, 000.     So a ready made villain was found and banished.  

So where does this leave us?    With someone with imagination, vision, courage, intelligence, and faith thrown to the wolves and disgraced.     And the theater world will be a poorer place for it.     I have no doubt she created her own downfall, but the spite and hate and arrogance of the "critics" was hardly unbiased.    Would this have happened if a man had done the same, as some have claimed?    Who knows that either?     The chances are, the show would never have gotten as far as it has with someone else attached.     And she made a HUGE mistake.     And now the thud that is the biggest musical disaster in history will echo down her career even past her death.     Frankly, had none of this "drama" happened, the show would have closed months ago.    In an ironic twist, the show is mostly full every night with audience members wanting to experience "one of the worst (musicals ever)" as Ben Brantley so pithily opined.     This press had allowed time to make changes.     So change it!     Maybe the new people can take the basic ideas and salvage them.   But let's not be too quick to chop off Taymor's head.     Her creativity is good for theater, good for opera, good for the Arts, period.    But who will ever trust her again?     In the world of live performance, nothing is written in stone.    But I predict her time of influence is over.    And THAT, more than any one show, no matter how big a failure, is the real disgrace.     We do not have enough imaginative people working on Broadway or in opera houses these days.    And now we have one fewer.

Loss

The part of the Oscars that recognizes those in the movie business that have died within the last year has me thinking of one of the people I have loved since I was young: Lena Horne.    I watched her in any film I could find, even as a child, because I found her beauty, style, and voice enchanting.    She could make you laugh, she could make you cry, she could make you love-sick, but she was rarely given a chance to display her talents in the ways they should have been.     She was a victim of the racist views of her time--a story many people know.    This is a tragedy, but I am still grateful for the indelible images she did leave behind.     I will never forget her singing Stormy Weather, a favorite song by a favorite singer.  Nor will the power of her one-woman show leave me (until everything has and I am at a loss for my own name.)    If you see on TCM that one of her films is being shown, do yourself a favor and watch it.   Even if her part is but a song, she makes it memorable.    Miss Horne, I will miss knowing you are in the world but I am happy you still live in some way, if just in image and sound.

Change of heart?

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A popular theater critic in New York (who I won’t name because he names himself enough for three people) recently bragged that he never changed any reviews (and by suggestion, any opinions) and that he has a sort of “bad list”: anyone on it never gets off.    His fury is currently aimed at Julie Taymor and Spiderman: the Disastrical.     She and the show are easy--and obvious--targets, but that has never stopped him.    I only mention this in the context of a review I put on another site (also in no need of my help) where I realized I had written a poor review in a few paragraphs which did not quite give an accurate picture of my thoughts.    So I changed it.     The only reviewer I can remember changing his opinion, and then publishing it, was Andrew Porter.    He is one of my idols.     For decades he wrote for The New Yorker and went out of his way to learn something about a piece of music before he made judgments about it.    Of course, that is not always possible, but it was more often than you would think.    And he was not afraid to say negative things about famous performers who (he felt) were not giving the highest levels of musicianship.    However, he did champion young singers and instrumentalists long before others.    You can read many of his scholarly reviews--last century’s blogs--in book form.    If you are very serious about classical music of all kinds, he is worth a read.    If nothing else, you might learn about some composers you’ve never heard of.   I did.   And the review I changed?    It was about John Adams’ Doctor Atomic.    Now, mind you, I didn’t really change how I felt as much as reconsider what my feelings meant.     But if or when I do change my mind about anything I’ve written here, expect me to say so.    But not about Julie Taymor whose work I find can be fascinating...or horrible.    (And why mention her any more than I already have?   Her ego’s big enough as well.)    Well...Ben Brantley does occasionally change his tune, but he always blames someone or something else for the first impressions (Just wrong the first time? Never!)    So he doesn't count.

Back from the (almost) dead

F.R.E.D went through some tough times.    Of course, the entire country went through (is going through?) tough times, so this is not news.     But we weathered the storm and we're still here.    (I'm Still Here was already taken.)


So...first highly opinionated post of the year.   2010 saw the loss of many great classical artists and all were duly eulogized (some more than others.)    Which brings me to:
Joan Sutherland died.    Perhaps the greatest technique of any singer in her lifetime (I'd go back father, but then we'd have to explain and get sidetracked.)     Very few people would disagree.    (And they would be idiots, if they did.)     Her recordings are marvels of control, color, phrasing, security, and dependability.     What they rarely had were multifaceted characters, true excitement, insight, or genuine surprise.    You know what you get and you love it or you don't.    Good for her.

Charles Mackerras also died.    One of the greatest conductors of his lifetime.     He tried many different ideas, championed great composers, championed great singers, believed in studying original manuscripts to garner ideas, played the Classical composers with smaller numbers, fleeter tempos, appoggiaturas in the historically correct places with Mozart as well as Donizetti and the other Italian Romantics, fostered music sung in native language of the people when possible, built up performing groups like The Welsh National Opera, etc, etc, etc.   Classical music is different because he lived.     If for no other reason than because of him,  Janacek has been added to the repertoire of most opera houses--right where he belongs--and seems to be popular, even loved (what's not to love?)

My gripe?    Sutherland had pages and pages of meaningless drivel in her obituary in The New York Times.     Mackerras had one page.    Read it again.    The New York Times, the internationally known paper for one of the great centers for classical music, gave Charles Mackerras one page.    One.    Granted he was British, yet he performed often in America and recorded many American singers--including Beverly Sills.     If fact, he conducted thousands of performances around the world.    Sutherland is also NOT from America.     And she sang thousands of performances around the world.    He changed music as we hear it, even WHAT we hear.   She made recordings.     I'm just saying.  
Alas, conductors will never be as popular (Bernstein and Toscanini the exceptions, perhaps) as singers.   This is the TRUE story of classical music.    The vast majority of listeners have no idea how important a conductor is.     They only know singers.     Or violinists (for a short time, anyway.)    Or pianists (also mostly fleeting love affairs.)      Often by how young they are and what they wear.    Lang Lang?     An over-emotive (at least, in physical action), musical mediocrity if ever there was one, but he has (the same) following so he gets gigs.    But for how long?

Do I think singers should not be revered?   Of course not!    I am a singer myself, and I treasure the performances I have seen at the Met (and other places) by singing actors of every stripe, in every dramatic musical form.    Yes, even Broadway singers can be riveting and well-trained.     With a slightly different projection style, Christine Ebersole could sing opera.    A Light In The Piazza, with Victoria Clark and Kelli O'Hara practically WAS opera.   Audra McDonald sang "Summertime" and "My Man's Gone Now" better than most of the people I have heard sing them.   And Bernadette Peters, (nothing even remotely like an opera singer) in A Little Night Music was one of the unmissable performances of my lifetime for anyone who loves good singing actors.    If you didn't go, why didn't you?     Will many people argue the merits of, say, country music over jazz or Broadway or opera?   Yes.     Will (fewer, alas!) people argue the merits of, say, Renee Fleming over Deborah Voigt?   Yes.     Will they argue the merits of Charles Mackerras over Kurt Masur?   Very few.    By the way: jazz and opera and Broadway over country, but some country singers can actually sing very well.    Renee Fleming...anyone who chooses Voigt?     Who are you kidding?    And, as expected, because I set it up this way, the late lamented Charles Mackerras, a kind man I met for five minutes in person and many hours on record and in the house.     The King is dead.   Long live the King.    Sutherland probably won't need my help.

Oddities

First, some of my old posts are "acting up."   Words (especially in italics) have been roaming around appearing in odd spots that they did not start in.     Mostly, they attach themselves to other words in italics.    And the weirdest part?    They don't do it at the same time.    Once I discovered it, I read through all of them and corrected the ones I saw.    Then another one appeared.    I'm not kidding and I'm not crazy.    WTF?

Second, has anyone noticed that more famous, popular, successful and / or working classical composers have names that begin with  the letter "B"?  [My criteria is they have had or have now recordings of their music or are still performed regularly somewhere in the world.   In fact, I have performed or have recordings of all but three of them.]  Milton Babbitt, J. S. Bach, C.P. E. Bach, (and assorted brothers and sons), Leonardo Balada, Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev, Michael William Balfe, Samuel Barber, Bela Bartok, Arnold Bax, Amy Beach, Jack Beeson, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincenzo Bellini, Georg Benda, Alban Berg, Luciano Berio, Arthur Benjamin, George Benjamin, Richard Rodney Bennett, Arthur Berger, Erik Bergman, Lennox Berkeley, Michael Berkeley, Hector Berlioz, Leonard Bernstein, Franz Berwald, Franz von Biber, William Billings, Gilles Binchois, Harrison Birtwistle, Georges Bizet, Boris Blacher, Howard Blake, Arthur Bliss, Marc Blitzstein, Ernest Bloch, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, John Blow, Luigi Boccherini, Adrien Boieldieu, Arrigo Boito, William Bolcom, Alexander Borodin, Pierre Boulez, Rutland Boughton, Paul Bowles, William Boyce, Johannes Brahms, Walter Braunfels, Tomas Breton, Havergal Brian, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Max Bruch, Anton Bruckner, Willy Burkhard, Ferruccio Busoni, George Butterworth, Dietrich Buxtehude, William Byrd...have I forgotten any?   

As an "oh by the way", Walter Braunfels was a  victim of the Holocaust: his work is just being "re-discovered."    More and more recordings are appearing and his music is getting more and more performances.    He wrote beautiful music and he is worth investigating, as are many composers killed or displaced by the Holocaust.     A whole generation was "lost" and we should preserve and perform this music, 1)  because it is worthwhile and 2) it shines as a testament to survival in the face of human evil, even if only the music has survived.     Try to keep it alive by supporting the artists who are performing and recording it.    (Anne-Sophie von Otter is one.)  To start, go on Amazon and type in "Entartete Musik" and a wonderful series of recordings will pop up.    This is good (sometimes great) music...truly.