Musical Stages

            Sometimes life seems to be feast or famine.   So if life lately hasn’t been a feast exactly, it’s been a good meal.   I’ve had an interesting couple of months ‘experiencing’ musical stage works.    Four pieces of the most diverse make-up: a live performance of musical ‘flop’ that keeps getting produced, a live performance of an operatic masterpiece that continues to divide audiences, an audio recording of a Grammy-winning opera of high quality, and a television production of the most successful stage work of all time (which is hated almost as much as it is loved.)

            The ‘flop’ is Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along.    Though they had written the award-winning Company, Merrily's original Broadway production lasted 16 performances.    Nothing seemed right about it.   Everyone—writers, director, designers, actors—were excoriated.   The unbelievably successful working relationship between Sondheim and the great director Hal Prince was severed.    But years later, James Lapine, who worked with Sondheim on three shows, believed it could be made better.   The authors believed in it enough to re-work it over a period of years until they arrived at the version I saw.    Both names are important here: as fantastic as the music / lyrics side of the piece may be, the book half is flawed, somewhat generic, though it certainly accommodates Sondheim’s powerful contribution.     The story shows the gradual dissolution of the friendship between Frank, a composer; Charlie, his book writer/lyrist; and Mary, a novelist, who futilely love’s Frank from afar.    The novelty of the show is that the story is told backwards.    It starts in 1980 and moves back to the first flight of Sputnik in 1957.   This is not the confusing jumble that some people have accused it of being.    The de-evolution of all the relationships in the show is so obvious, a child could follow it.    And much of the humor comes from the irony ‘discovered’ when the scene goes back a few years.    All the main characters have their moments of surprise, where you find they had done something in their ‘past’ that affects the ‘future’ in a way unsuspected.

            No, the issue isn’t the backward movement, it’s the weak character ‘development’.    The central issue involves the composer: he chooses the easy, shallow, greedy life of the Hollywood/Broadway bottom feeders—a life where true friendships have no room—instead of the tougher life of staying true to his belief in an ‘art’ that is original and meaningful.    Before the first (last) scene, where he is no longer composing but just producing blockbusters of dubious worth, Frank has spent his career writing things like, say, Mame, instead of something like, say, well, Company.   Eventually, Charlie can’t take it anymore and dissolves the partnership.     We certainly learn how it happened.    Like I said, a child could follow it.   Alas, Frank makes all these awful choices, but we’re supposed to feel for him despite it.   He always seems to be on the fence, conflicted, but makes the bad choice every time.   As written, he is a symbol not an actual ‘person.’    The only real depth comes from the music and lyrics.    And his uncertainty makes for a fuzzy, unsatisfying character.   Charlie, Mary, Beth (Frank’s first wife), Joe Josephson, the producer, and his wife, Gussie, are much more interesting, with more facets to their lines and their music.    And they just make Frank seem all that more one-dimensional.    Sondheim tries to give him some complication.    He succeeds only a little.   Everyone else just comes out so much more enticing.

            So why is it continually produced?   (I’ve seen it three times over the years, in three different versions.   It also has had three recordings.)   It’s often funny.   It has several great roles that showcase strong singing actors.    And the score is magnificent.    Not a song is weak.   Not a number is rote.   Everything defines character: conflicts arise between characters and within characters, hidden emotions rise to the surface, the reprise in the second half of songs we first hear in the first gives everyone a dimension the book fails to provide.     Charley has a one-of-a-kind drunken rant on national TV called “Franklyn Shepard, Inc.”   Believe me, nothing in any show is quite like this.  Sui generis, positively.    And a whole musical scene shows the development of the young trio as they attempt to learn how to become the artists they dream they will be.    It covers months of time in less than 10 minutes.   The one ‘hit’—Not a Day Goes By—is just another of many wonderful numbers.    (And it is wonderful.    Bernadette Peters is justly famous for her interpretation.)    In Act One, it’s Beth’s description of the conflicted love she will always feel for Frank, but adds the reasons why she has to leave.   (Frank is having an affair with Gussie.)   And its ‘return’ in Act Two appears as the song Frank and Beth sing as they are getting married, and in a painful counterpoint, what Mary sings when she admits she will always love him unremarked.   Brilliant.   With the knowledge of Act One, we realize he will betray the love of all the women in his life.     The final scene, which is where the three friends meet, is a heart-breaker, given all we know.     They sing of the lives they will lead, now that the world is on the brink of greatness, and they will be a part of it.     It’s beautifully portrayed optimism we know to be dead by the time they realize what life brings them.   So as an audience member, how do you approach something you know is flawed?   I just tried to enjoy it for what it had to offer, not for what I might think it should be.    With a good enough cast, it’s worth seeing.    (And the one I saw was just good enough.)   It’s imperfect.    But not enough to stop doing it.    Or if it hasn’t come your way yet, buy a recording of the music…at least that way, you have the best of it at your fingertips until it shows up.

The masterpiece that divides listeners so strongly is Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy For Young Lovers.    This biting, mercurial, painful, exquisite piece has a libretto written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, the authors of the priceless The Rake’s Progress for Igor Stravinsky.    In 1910, five characters orbit a famous poet, Gregor Mittenhofer, baritone, who is trying to find inspiration for this latest poem.   He’s a monster who devours anyone in his wake to achieve his ‘art.’   His ‘muse’ is Hilda Mack, coloratura soprano, a woman with ‘visions’, who has spent the last forty years (!) knitting a scarf while awaiting her husband, who was killed on the Hammerhorn on the first day of their honeymoon.    His mistress is a young woman, Elisabeth Zimmer, soprano, who is mesmerized by the famous man, though he is far too old for her, and hides his true, self-interested, hateful nature.   Carolina, Countess of Kirchstetten, contralto, is his patroness and much abused secretary, who devotes her life to the cause of ‘great art’ and the ‘great artist’ who produces it.    The poet’s physician, Doctor Wilhelm Reischmann, bass, is a quack who feeds his ego by being on call to such an ‘eminent’ man.    He has a son, Toni, tenor, who falls in love with Elisabeth, virtually at first sight.     By the end, Mittenhofer has destroyed everyone except Hilda, who becomes the only person to escape his heartless clutches.   He sends the young lovers to their deaths just to finish his latest poem, Elegy for Young Lovers.  

The changing positions of these six— the fights, apologies (usually disingenuous), raptures, despairs, mockeries, insights, and reversals make up the intricate, well-delineated, fascinating plot.    The quality of the words is, obviously, a given, knowing the talent and skill of the authors.   They do not disappoint.     It is highly literate, poetic, painful, and beautiful.   It would probably work as a straight play, though as a lesser thing.    From the beginning, most critics and audiences have praised the libretto (a rare thing in opera.)

With so much richness of character (and poetry), Henze created one of his earliest masterpieces, but one that the original critics did not always appreciate.    Half a century later, it has become an accepted part of the modern repertoire in Europe, if not America.    So getting to experience the work live on this side of the Atlantic was a rare treat.   All the singers were students of Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, and were excellent from top to bottom.     Voice types do ‘surround’ the poet, from the highest, Hilda, to the lowest, Doctor Reischmann.    And each character is assigned an instrument as an accompaniment / soloist, creating counterpoints that suggest unspoken emotions not allowed to surface.    Hilda has a flute, further connecting her to Lucia, Elisabeth has a violin, Toni has a viola, Carolina has an English horn, Doctor Reischmann has a bassoon or saxophone, and Mitterhofer has percussion.    Even on a first listen, the variety and uniqueness of the music for each individual character is obvious.    No one sounds anything like the other, except when they meet up, such as the elegiac scene where Elisabeth convinces Hilda to come back from her lunacy because her husband’s body has been found.   Their short duet, where Hilda repeats the words Elisabeth tells her, is sorrowful, lovely.   And of course, when the lovers sing together, their music is matched as well.

So the problem?     The music is through-composed, variations being abundant but with no literal repeats.    It is atonal and often quite complex, especially for Hilda Mack, whose madness is like Lucia di Lammermoor’s times ten.    (Henze said this ‘mad scene’ was his model.)  This role is perhaps the strongest of all, but it requires immense skill.   The range is wide, and the lines as apt to be angular as lyrical.     And they have to be both, yet sung with skill and warmth for her character to come across successfully.     Mittenhofer has seemingly inexhaustible traits, almost split personalities, that are made evident through his kaleidoscopic music.    It is complex as well, if not so extreme.    The scenes that make-up each act are rarely long, which is a curse/blessing.    The musical development passes rather quickly to register with just one hearing, so the three acts can seem disjointed to a casual listener.    (To be fair, it wasn’t written for ‘casual’ listeners.    It assumes a level of musical knowledge.)    And the score lasts just under three hours, so anyone trying to come to this with an ear listening for Puccini is in for a long haul.    So it’s never going to be the opera revived over and over to pay the bills.  But if you can follow it, the journey is a wondrous one.   What extraordinary originality is on every page!     An obvious sign of Henze’s talent is his ability to delineate each character aurally: not as static symbols, but complex beings, requiring complex music.     They all have a range of styles but never sound like anyone but themselves (with the exceptions noted above.)   Add to that, his skill at accommodating an English libretto with ease and inspiration, and you have a masterpiece.    But a tough one.    A third of the audience left during one of the intermissions at the performance I saw.    In some ways, I sympathize with them.   I’m sure they felt like they were watching a play in Russian without subtitles.     The musicians could not be faulted, in the pit or onstage.   They all brought out the many wonderful textures of the work.    And every singer had an impressive, well-trained, easily-produced voice.   Even the young woman singing Hilda seemed perfectly in control.    (And they were students!)    Their English was quite clear a majority of the time.   (A higher ratio than most singers can achieve in works of the standard rep.)    If they would only record it!     I understand why some left.   I’m just glad enough people can gauge its greatness so it lives on.   Now if someone would just produce The Bassarids, another collaboration between Henze and Auden and Kallman…and another masterpiece.

            The Grammy winner is composer, Robert Aldridge, and author, Herschel Garfein’s Elmer Gantry.   This is the ‘un-Henze’ in every way.   The chorus has a huge part of the action.    Set-pieces abound, are clear, direct, musically apt.   The musical language is mid-20^th Century American tonal.    The opening riff is an obvious nod to the beginning of Porgy and Bess, and the use of chorus singing ‘popular’ forms, including religious choruses, would seem to allude to it as well.   But the actual music is nothing like Gershwin’s.    It sings in lines akin to Copland and Barber, knows Carlisle Floyd, even the English Benjamin Britten.    It is often sensuously beautiful, though it isn’t afraid to use dissonance and complexity when they are appropriate.    The music for the main character, a baritone Elmer Gantry, is wide-ranging, driving, persuasive—the audience should fall for his overwhelming ability to sell anything to anyone, as well as forgive him his great lusts and blind selfishness.      He’s an anti-hero, to be sure, but a charismatic one.      He’s hard to resist: a Bible-school graduate with a sharp mind, a quick tongue, a taste for alcohol, and a healthy libido, he is an unselfconscious hypocrite—he views everyone, friend and foe alike, as a means to get what he wants.   And what he wants, he discovers, is power and money.    He finds them when he teams up with a ‘revivalist’ named Sister Sharon Falconer, mezzo, a true believer who has a huge following but is tired of traveling the country.   She wants to build a giant tabernacle as a permanent place for her congregation, and Gantry’s salesmanship helps get it for her.  She succumbs to his verbal abilities, protestations of love, and unswerving commitment.   Pushed to her limits, she betrays her own integrity to achieve her dream.   Like a sign from above, though, the church catches fire, killing Falconer and most of her ‘flock.’    Instead of being destroyed, however, Gantry just finds another ‘idea’ he can sell, as if nothing horrific had occurred.    His amorality destroys the lives of most of the other main characters, including a mistress, Lulu, soprano and her husband, Eddie, tenor.    Lulu was the college president’s daughter when she started her affair with Elmer, before eventually marrying Eddie—once Elmer’s friend, then a minister who falls for Lulu’s sexual advances and is made helpless by them.     He repents by dragging his wife forward to denounce Elmer, just to die in the blaze.  And Frank, tenor, Elmer’s college roommate, never fully believes, because no matter how hard he tries, he cannot give up the ‘sinful’ yearnings he has always felt.     The kindred spirit he first shared with Elmer, a love of alcohol and women, turns to pain, as his ‘friend’ has an obviously hypocritical success, while he self-destructs in the choking noose of small town morality.

            The music is quite accomplished, often quite marvelous (if conservative to listeners expecting the avant-garde).   The scenes move strongly from one to the other, each with its own ‘sound’ and musical ‘identity’.    Choruses underscore many scenes, highly evocatively.  Elmer seems to steal something from all the people around him, so his power and changeability is musical as well as literal.   Actually, all the main characters have their chances to shine, not always in obvious ways, a sign of talent and smarts on the part of author and composer.   Two notable selections: Eddie’s sermon/aria at the end of Act One is so unlike everything before or after it that it makes a lasting impression, even from a somewhat one-dimensional character.   And Frank has a tipsy midnight confession to Elmer, admitting that he does not believe and does not know how to start.    Sitting at a piano, he plays the hymn ‘What a Friend We Have In Jesus’ as a sad commentary on what he does not, and probably never will, possess.    Many scenes are full to overflowing with truly luscious music.     One of the best allows Elmer to move from puppy dog helper, to confessor of his love to Sharon, then persuader that she loves him too—it goes from comedy, to tender confession, then deeply conflicted feelings on both parts, probably the only time Elmer admits weakness.    Everything builds to a passionate, soaring love duet.   You can hear Sister Sharon capitulate to her human desires for the first time in her life.   But throughout Gantry, the strong, supple, rewarding vocal lines are sometimes difficult, though always within the skills of non-‘specialists’.     That all-important choral writing is exceptional, so rare in modern works.     And nothing wears out its welcome.   

            But…there’s usually a ‘but’, if a small one.    The words are more smartly functional than inspired.    They aren’t bad, just rarely exceptional.    We’ve heard music like this before, so expectations are high.   Aldridge certainly fulfills our expectations…most of the time.    This is emotional, moving music, and it rewards listening.   Conflicts are natural in their development, musically as well as literarily.    A couple of missteps here and there, but only one out-and-out- mistake.     A seduction scene where Lulu and Eddie try to get evidence of Elmer’s hypocrisy has unconvincing words and music.   The scene is set up well, it just doesn’t pay off.    But it isn’t long or lethal.    On the opposite scale, the last thirty minutes are absolutely electrifying.   The recording is from live performances, but with good, full sound, and a nice round projection of the voices.   Keith Phares is an Elmer of one’s dreams.    Beautiful, charismatic singing, dynamic declamation, ability to evoke humor through smart inflections, always characterful, great diction, not a hint of strain.   Patricia Risley as Sharon is his match (save a very few muddled phrases here or there which make her sound matronly).   Tenor Vale Rideout makes so much of his few scenes as Frank, he seems like he has more music than he does.   But no one is less than good, most are excellent.    I’ll continue to listen to Elmer Gantry, if only every few years.     I have too many to hear/see to give this time every year.    Now, if someone around here will do it.

            The most successful stage work ever is the beloved / loathed The Phantom of the Opera.  Andrew Lloyd Webber is the composer, in case you didn’t know.  After all the pros and cons, I felt it was time to come to grips with it.    Nothing will beat its record, certainly not in my lifetime.   The music is the thing here: the words are sophomoric, obvious, and repetitive to exasperation, as if the worst of those ridiculous operettas of the 1920’s were back from the dead.   Often, the rhymes could be completely different without changing the plot or characterization one iota.    (The love duet (That’s) All I Ask of You is one instance.    That’s All I’ll Ever Need  or Our Love Will Never Die—Love Never Dies is the name of the ‘sequel’ to the show—or My Heart Is In Your Hands…a dozen others would also work.)    The repetitive part is insurance that everyone, and I mean everyone, will follow what is happening at every second.    The same conversations, about Christine’s lessons with the Phantom being reality or ‘dream’, must come and go a dozen times.    The ‘libretto’ of the Phantom’s opera, which should be a masterpiece (since we are told he is a musical genius) is doggerel.     But it’s better than the words of the opera being performed when the Phantom first appears to the company.     It tries to reference Le Nozze di Figaro but proves embarrassing to anyone who knows the real masterpiece.    The attempts at humor fail every time.    Really, every time!   The actors are forced to overact grotesquely just to earn their (few) laughs.     But you have to give it to the faceless writer(s)—people do laugh at the ‘antics’.    (Some people.)

            Lloyd Webber is no dummy, though.   He has a great story to tell and he knows how to tell it.   Every word has a purpose, if just a way of getting from one big number over here to the next big number over there.    The story is visual as much a verbal, and L.W. makes the most of those opportunities, too.    The boat ride, through the sewers of Paris, is accompanied by the most bombastic, loud, repetitive music of the entire work.   Most listeners who love the piece would call the music ‘spooky’, ‘powerful’, even ‘mesmerising.’    After all, The Phantom has been hypnotizing Christine, to train her voice so she will be a great opera star.    We see it as well as hear it.    So all those conversations about ‘dream’ versus ‘reality’ are already explained before they happen.    See?   No confusion.    And the chandelier makes a physical as well as musical crash.     Even critics of the piece have to admit it’s a great moment.   Sudden appearances, discovered murder victims, echoing effects from the rafters show up just when attention might lull.    Some of these are actually surprising.    Most of them can be seen on their way long before they arrive.     But no one is supposed to be listening for anything but what is on the surface.

            And it’s a polished surface.   I think of Phantom as the greatest McMusical ever written.   It is made entirely of things that are familiar.    All the pieces are uniform, easily digestible, tasty, and satisfying to millions.    This isn’t a seasoned porterhouse steak.    Or a chocolate soufflé.    Too many people might not like them.    Lloyd Webber has a menu of choices—but not too many, lest he write something that can’t be repeated multiple times within the two hour limit—and he mixes a bit of this with a bit of that, and recombines them in simple variation.     So a nugget with fries for this scene and a salad with a cheeseburger for another.   And then switch them.   But a very sweet soda goes with everything.   You can be sure before you sit down that all the melodies will show up with a huge orchestra bellowing them out, lots of strings, usually playing the melody in octaves, all the better to notice and remember.    Unlike most composers of musicals, L.W. does much of his own orchestrations.    And he approves of all the rest…you better believe he does.     To the chord.

So every note will be repeated, often literally—same melody, same harmony, same accompaniment figures, same orchestrations.    But wait!   Not always.   Just to confound his detractors, some repeats are ‘disguised’ by the music surrounding them, or by a different accompaniment or a few fleeting seconds of a ‘strange’ orchestration.     Every small moment only gives a chance for the audience to catch its breath before the next giant one.  And these ‘big’ numbers are repeated the most—of course they are—with the most overwhelming orchestrations, all the better to force you into submission.     L.W. plans for this.   The major numbers are always comprised of several shorter sections, allowing him to drop a chunk in here and there when he needs them at other times.   The smaller moments often show up in truncated form.    And the repeats are not just between numbers but within them.   Most numbers start with a few notes that are immediately repeated, no change or variation even in the harmony.     Variety will come on the ‘back side’ of the sections, rarely on the ‘front’, so the repeated music will survive in the mind through any differences by the time the first notes come back around.    And though I do not need to repeat it, they always come back around.    By Act Two, two thirds of what is heard will have come from somewhere else first.   This leaves the story to move swiftly toward the final showdown of opera singer and deadly muse…which, coincidently, is the one honestly moving section of the piece.    No musical bombardment necessary (though Lloyd Webber can’t help but add some.)

            Lloyd Webber is a good magpie.   He only steals things he knows he can manipulate.   Phantom is his Puccini opera.    Musical ‘ideas’ may come directly from the Italian’s works, but they are usually smashed into a nice, round musical patty, just right for easy consumption.    An opera lover is often shocked to hear a chunk of Madama Butterfly one minute or (infamously) La Fanciulla del West another.    (It makes up a very important phrase of The Music of the Night.)    And to prove he knows more than Puccini, our proud composer tries to show his ‘love’ for earlier Italian opera, like those by Mozart, by composing an ‘homage’ here and there for the scenes ‘onstage’ at the opera.   Fortunately, these are short.    I suspect he knows he’s not very good at it and too many people might not ‘like’ true opera anyway.    Besides, he’s saving all his good stuff for the times that are not supposed to be by someone else.    And the final ‘joke’?     None of this music is sophisticated enough to show up in any self-respecting  opera.    No, this is a musical, for better or worse; with a wider range to some of the parts, true, but still not too far from what might show up on a concert of Broadway tunes.    Who am I to complain?    He didn’t write this for opera lovers.    He wrote it for people who think they know what opera is.    It’s ‘Nessun dorma!’.    He’s telling them they’re right.    Confirmation may be the one truly genius ingredient in Sir Andrew’s impossibly popular recipe.

Spring Cleaning - Music

            One last ‘list’ blog.   Then I’ll be back to normal.   I know everyone says this, but I love music.    The actual notes on pages as well as the sound of someone performing it.    Some people who know me might say I’m obsessed with it.    I wouldn’t argue.    Music is a monstrously large part of my life, like my movies and my books.    Maybe even more.    Because I perform music, I feel an untethered kinship to it; it becomes a boundless form of personal expression—something that just isn’t true for anything else I own.     So I only shed one stack of cd’s I never listen to (some I have never listened to) because those I kept are prized (for whatever reason)—usually, because I consider them as emotional ‘food’ for me.     And just like meals, I don’t want to eat the same thing over and over.    So I have a wide variety of sound and printed music: a WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE one.   They are easily classified, perhaps, but harder to define.     But I’ll try.   (What else am I going to do?)    From least in number to greatest, these categories are on my shelves:

Popular music written in my lifetime, or roughly the last 50 years.    I have much more from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s than anything later.    Mostly because I think music has changed for the worse (but everyone older says that about the younger generation.    I just happen to be right.)    Motown, The Beatles, Streisand, Midler, Elton John, Queen, a tiny bit of Madonna, not much Country (because I just can’t stand the vocal production favored), no Rap, The B-52’s, Aerosmith, Whitney Houston, etc.     I listen to these the least of all my discs, and other than some Streisand and Midler, I have no printed music for it.    Still, sometimes I just want to hear Bohemian Rhapsody.   Or Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.   Or Rock Lobster.    They are a little like a higher plane of junk food: tasty, enjoyable, well-done, though hardly edifying.   All to the good.    All Bach and no Barbra makes Paul a listless boy.

Then popular music written before I was born, from the ‘20’s through the ‘50’s.   (Instrumental and vocal.) Porter, Berlin, (my beloved) Gershwin, Rodgers (with Hart and Hammerstein), Jule Styne, Harold Arlen, Ellington, the Dorsey’s, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.    Notice how many of these are Broadway composers.    That’s because I love Broadway, and it used to be where the ‘popular’ hits of the day came from.     But these are the pieces shed of their dramatic purpose just to be a ‘song’.    And the great players, many who played their own stuff—as you notice from the list.     The young Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, the essential Ella Fitzgerald (her Complete Songbook Collection is the single greatest box of pop music I own) Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Hartman, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Lena Horne.   And the ‘new’ interpreters like the young Barbra Streisand, Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald, Jane Monheit, Linda Ronstadt (who fits one paragraph up as well).    Notice how many of these are Broadway performers.    Notice how many of them are women.    Most men who sing these are either: dead, imitative (how many Frank Sinatras do we have now?)  a one-album wonder—usually a Broadway headliner getting his ‘album’—or fucking irritating.   (Someone needs to stop Michael Feinstein from singing.    I love the conservation work he does, but he’s like a jazz Howdy Doody.) 

Then my treasured cast albums.   I worship Broadway music.   (Or movie scores written by Broadway composers.)   I always have.   I could sing Over The Rainbow before I went to school.   And this was before video tapes and we didn’t own any records.     I have the cast recording of (almost) every important Broadway show that has been recorded.    (I don’t have any Frank Wildhorn, and just four ‘monster hits’ of Lloyd Webber.    I could probably get rid of the recording of Cats a friend gave me.    I never listen to it.   But most of the other long-running shows.)    Name a musical, I probably have a recording, if it exists.   Early Jerome Kern to Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins and the luminous A Light in the Piazza, pun intended.)    All Rodgers and Hammerstein.   Many Rodgers and Hart.    All the Irving Berlin big hits.   Most of the Porter.    All the Gershwin that had been recorded ‘complete.’   Some rare-ish Harold Arlen shows like House of Flowers.    Frank Loesser’s hits and misses.     All Sondheim.    Many with multiple recordings.    Every note he has written that I could get my hands on.     I have dozens of printed scores from these, a shelf of collections of Broadway numbers, even single-song sheet music.   To me, great theatrical music is emotionally direct.    Surprising.   Intelligent.   Witty.    Moving.   What most pop music aspires to be, but isn’t.    Listen to ‘Your Daddy’s Son’ from Ragtime.    It tells a heart-breaking story—beginning, middle, end—in its packed four minutes, without a rote word or phrase.    The powerful interpretation of Audra McDonald doesn’t hurt.   Most of the music Reba McIntire sings, talented though she may be, can’t touch this.   Opera accomplishes the same but usually in different musical idioms.    But I love this music so much, a really smart tune and a catchy rhyme makes me happier than an entire shelf of The Rolling Stones or Madonna.     Here’s to a smart tune and a catchy rhyme! 

Then I move to a varied collection of classical music that isn’t opera or oratorio.   From Bach to Birtwistle, solo to symphony, every instrument of the Western tradition including voice, short sketches to hour-long wonders, every major form for the last thousand years—it’s represented among my recordings.    Yes, all the ‘great’ names are present.    All the major works of Beethoven, a shelf of Bach, Brahms (though not extensively…just isn’t a favorite), the Tchaikovsky symphonies and ballets, Dvorak large forms and small (I love his music), a fist full of Handel’s non-vocal pieces.    But I have so many composers who rival these (in my mind) that I cherish as much or more.   High representations of John Adams, Thomas Adès, Hector Berlioz, Harrison Birtwistle, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, William Byrd, Elliott Carter, Chopin piano music, Henri Dutilleux, Edward Elgar, Roberto Gerhard (he was a revelation when I discovered him), Hans Werner Henze (all his symphonies but one, and every other well-used form, plus a few distinct to him) Gustav Mahler (I think I have everything), Carl August Nielsen symphonies, Per Nørgård, Palestrina, a shelf of Sergei Prokofiev, all of Maurice Ravel, a ‘ton’ of Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss tone poems, Karol Szymanowski, Thomas Tallis, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams.    Okay, I’ll stop.  I left out many.     I listen to this music frequently.   Yesterday, I listened to Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.  I’ve loved that piece since I was an undergraduate.    I have hundreds of non-operatic scores of all kinds.   I’ll get more, I always do.

But the music I collect the most (on cassette, VCR, CD or DVD) is opera, which spans operettas and oratorios and some ‘musicals’ like Porgy and Bess or Street Scene.  Along with musicals, this is what I hear the most.   I have Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo from the beginning of the form and Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry from 2007.   I have all John Adams that I know of, all Bellini, all Berlioz, all but one Bizet, all Britten, all Henze (except his latest two-character chamber opera which I can’t track down) all Janacek, all Prokofiev, all Puccini, all Schoenberg’s vocal works, all Richard Strauss, all Tippett, all Verdi, all Wagner.    Both Berg operas in multiple recordings.  A good selection of Cavalli.  (Practically) all Busoni.   Many works of Birtwistle, Donizetti, Dvorak, Gluck, Handel, Lehar, Massanet, all the last great Mozart operas (many times over), not nearly enough Offenbach (!), a foot of a shelf of Rameau, many Rimsky-Korsakov, half a dozen by Rossini (not my favorite), all but the unrecorded Shostakovich, the important Tchaikovsky, the majority of Vaughan Williams, several Weill (if you count his musicals, then much).

If you don’t read anything else on this blog, read this: works by composers banned, dispersed, and / or killed by the Nazis: The Birds by Walter Braunfels; The Magnificent Cuckold, and Beatrice Cenci by Berthold Goldschmidt; The Charlatan by Pavel Haas; Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), Violanta, and Der Wunder (wonder or miracle) der Heliane by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Brundibar and Betrothal in a Dream by Hans Krasa  (Brundibar will break your heart); Jonny Spielt Auf and Karl V (the first completed 12-tone opera) by Ernest Krenek; Moses and Aron by Arnold Schoenberg; Der Ferne Klang (The Distant Sound), Irrelohe, and The Branded by Franz Schreker; Flammen (Flames) by Erwin Schulhoff; among Weill’s works, a special mention to Die Bürgschaft (The Guarantee), and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which really pissed off the Nazis; Zeus and Elida by Stefan Wolpe; The Dwarf, A Florentine Tragedy, and The Mermaid by Alexander Zemlinsky.  As I try to be a politically liberal-minded, historically-interested, caring, thinking, open, determined listener / musician, I have found it essential to my belief in Art—and its importance to humanity—to learn these (and other similar) works, in order to know our hidden history and shed light on it and its forgotten glories.    Most of these works are in a ‘difficult’ idiom: either highly chromatic, or atonal, or the more rigid 12-tone styles.    Some are traditionally tonal.    All of them are worth knowing.    Many I love.   Most were recorded as part of a series of releases from Decca called Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music).   Out-of-print for a while, many are resurfacing.   Arkivmusic has many.   ‘Killing off’ great pieces because they are too difficult or no longer popular is tragic to me.  (Politically motivated or not, though usually it has to do with money).   Some of these operas are being produced now.    Others only exist in these recordings.     Not all of them are masterpieces…but most are.    ‘Masterpiece’ does not denote popularity or ease of musical language.    You could ‘live’ without any of them.   Knowing about them, why would you want to?

Plus some favorites like Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (which is coming to The Met next year); Samuel Barber’s Vanessa; Marc-Antione Charpentier’s Médée; L’Etoile by Emmanuel Chabrier; Ulisse and The Prisoner by Luigi Dallapiccola; Oedipe by Georges Enesco; The Duenna by Roberto Gerhard; Porgy and Bess (of course!) by George Gershwin; The Great Gatsby (a great opera) by John Harbison; Croesus by Reinhard Keiser; A Dream Play by Ingvar Lidholm; Le Grand Macabre by Gyorgy Ligeti; Le Vin Herbé by Frank Martin (I actually have many of his vocal works, all beautiful if challenging.   This one is the story of Tristan and Isolde!); Maskerade and Saul and David by Carl Nielsen; both Ravel’s but especially L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Sorceries); Blood Wedding by Sandor Szokolay.   Some greats I haven’t mentioned like Debussy’s Pellèas et Mèlisande or The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi.  And many, many more.   (Aren’t you glad I didn’t mention all the individual operas of, say, Verdi or Strauss?)

I have shelves and shelves of opera scores, though certainly paltry compared to the recordings.    Only four I have no recordings for, all by forgotten composers of whom I have yet to see a single work recorded.   But I never say never.

Before I stop listing: a few performers—Claudio Arrau, Janet Baker, Maria Callas (duh), Placido Domingo, Jacqueline Du Pré, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Thomas Hamson, Byron Janis, Philip Langridge, Birgit Nilsson, David Oistrakh, Peter Pears, Rosa Ronselle, Mtslav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Gil Shaham, Dawn Upshaw, Anne Sofie von Otter.   And a few conductors: Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, René Jacobs, Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Antonio Pappano, Simon Rattle, Sir Georg Solti.    I have left out hundreds.

Does any of this mean anything?   Well, to me, I see a wide range of times, places, styles, formats, ‘movements’, geniuses, talents, very old to very new.    I am NOT the “I know what I like” kind of person.    I don’t know if I like it until I hear it.    My words to live by.   May they never change.

So... no more lists.    I hope interests were piqued enough to sample some of these works (movies, books, music) or perhaps, show a bit of where my twisting, probing mind might roam.

Spring Cleaning - Books

              A word of warning: if you don't like lists, read something else and come back to me later.

                I have been a voracious reader since young childhood.    My parents were happy to encourage me…especially if it kept me quiet.     (With five kids, who could blame them?)     They did make me go outside during the summer, but when it was cold, they allowed me all the time I wanted.   So for hours, I escaped into the pages of somewhere I had never been, meeting some people I did not know.     No one ever told me such-and-such book was too difficult for me to read.      I think they just assumed I would get bored with something beyond my grasp and move on to something else.    And they were correct.   So I learned a lexicon of new vocabulary, new ideas, new styles without pressure to ‘achieve’ something with it all.     Well, one person tried to suggest that a book on the shelf I couldn’t reach was ‘too old’ for me.    (I had climbed the shelves to retrieve it.  No lie.)     Luckily, I had a tiger for a second grade teacher.     She took the librarian into the library office—and (metaphorically) bit off all her limbs.    The bleeding woman came out to me, apologized (!) but told me to ask for help if the shelf was too high.   And I did.

                So I’ve been reading every imaginable kind of book since I could read.    Both fiction and non-fiction.    Biographies, autobiographies, histories, self-help were all on my list.    I read the entire Bible, which led to being called in front of the Elders of my church to tell me to stop preaching heresy.    (Like: who are the other people that Cain was worried about?)    I spent a year reading the entire set of the World Book Encyclopedia.     I didn’t understand or remember 99% of it, but I gave it a shot.    I still remember some things like your Eustachian tubes.    The two Brownings.     (I’m not sure why they stuck in my head.   But when I saw The Barretts of Wimpole Street some years later, I made the connection.)     Opera and its history.    (When I saw Don Giovanni on television years later, I remembered the picture.)   The parts of the body.    (There were these wonderful transparencies where you could lift one to find a lower level of parts: skin, then musculature, then the digestive system, then circulatory system, then the skeletal structure.)    Terms like zephyr.    (How could you forget a weird word like that?)   Influenza as the name of the real disease.     Quite a bit about cancer.     (I’m still scared to death of it.)   The Coliseum.     Ballet.     And a million other little things buried somewhere in my brain to be pulled out later.    So, no surprise, I have encyclopedic books on my shelves, some of which I have read from cover to cover.    Getting lost in short articles of numberless items, thoughts, opinions is a joy.   (Well, it’s a joy for me.)    Of course, I have read fiction of every stripe, especially plays.    I have loved reading plays.    Any play.   I still do.   Maybe that is why I have continued to write them.     I still have a few books from my childhood: most of them have been lost through numerous moves through colleges, cities, housing.     Still, I have some books I have kept for decades.     I will keep them for decades longer.

                I have a bad habit of keeping books I have enjoyed just to be collecting them.    Especially popular fiction.    But am I really going to re-read that murder mystery?    Or The Godfather?          Best Short Stories of 1989?     Or non-fiction book on baseball that is twenty years out of date?  Topical essays by Gore Vidal?    (Actually, the answer is ‘yes’ to that one.    He’s a complete ass, but an interesting one.    Nothing like them.)      Every novel I own by Saul Bellow?    (No, but I’ve kept my favorites.)     I used to look to these as a personal history of times and places of my life.     But I have begun to forget where and when I have read them.     And I know I will not read them again.    So this year, before I turn fifty, I have decided to let them go.     I have taken them from place to place.     My shelves are two and three books deep.      Time to whittle them down to two books deep.   On some shelves, one book.     I took down over two hundred things.

                But what have I kept?    The three types: fiction, non-fiction…and plays.   (Yes, I consider it a form all its own.)    Every book about a composer, like, say, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz which is roaringly funny…and heartbreaking.    And as perfect companions: his book on orchestration and David Cairn’s two-volume biography.     Auto- (and just) biographies from Hildegard von Bingen to Hans Werner Henze.   George Perle’s books on Wozzeck and Lulu, respectively, which are not to be missed by serious musicians—they are so detailed and brilliant (certainly, if you love those works as I do.)     Some of those encyclopedia works.    I have a book of operas, Kobbé’s Opera Book, that I know I have read three times through, at the very least,  and certain entries, ten times or more.     I love the collected articles of the music critic Andrew Porter.    They comprise five books of reviews he had written for The New Yorker, from 1973 to 1986.    I have discovered dozens of composers of every age from reading his take on their music.     I return to them over and over again.   Howard Pollack’s biography : George Gershwin—His Life and Work…also detailed and brilliant, treating him as a major composer of the Twentieth Century, which he was.   (Don’t even try to argue with me.    You will end up like that librarian.)    Benjamin Britten’s Collected Letters.     Catherine Cessac’s major exploration of the life and works of Marc-Antione Charpentier.    Rimsky-Korsakov’s book on orchestration.     (Great to compare the many other books on orchestration I own, not just the Berlioz, which is my favorite.)    Plus dozens and dozens more.    A giant bookcase filled to overflow.   

Every important biography or autobiography of people in the theater or politics or movies or history I have managed to buy (as opposed to the numerous one’s I’ve checked out of the library.)   A tiny smapling:     Half a big shelf of books by or about Stephen Sondheim, whose music I worship as much as any ‘Classical’ composer’s.     His latest books, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat—which are not just a compilation of his lyrics—are wonderful.     And probably not what you think he would be like.    I re-read a treasurable seven-volume set of the history of the Broadway musical by Ethan Mordden.    I disagree with him on some major works, but he is always informative…and funny.   Galina Vishnevskaya’s harrowing autobiography.    Believe me: no matter how bad you think your life is, unless you’re dead, your life is not that bad.    The autobiography of the dancer / choreographer Paul Taylor called Private Domain.    Uta Hagen’s ubiquitous (though sometimes risible) book on acting: Respect for Actors.   (And disrespect for everyone else.)    If she had been in one of my plays, I would have slapped her silly.    There were probably more good reasons than she admitted why she taught much more than she acted.   The New Book of Forms, no longer ‘new’, which is a useful, fascinating book about the myriad forms of poetry, from the first examples to ‘automatic writing’.     Three books by Gore Vidal.    (The question above was a trick question.)     John Boswell’s pioneering book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality.    (It’s still controversial.    I have heard many, admittedly straight, people discredit it.    All the more reason for me to keep it.)     A lovely book about the director Jean Renoir—yes, son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir—by André Bazin.    A gift from my college days.    A biography of the last year of an ‘non-famous’ man who dies of AIDS, told by his lover, the writer Paul Monette: On Borrowed Time.     It celebrates life, though it chronicles death.    An essential book on the subject.     The two books by the writers of The Daily Show: America, the Book, and Earth, the Book.     I can open them to just about any page and get a good laugh.      I have collections of The Far Side cartoons.     Same as the aforementioned books.    Laugh and laugh.    A book on NASA.   Two on Titanic.     A shelf of travel books on all the places I want to go.    I have no books on television (though I watch it.)    And hundreds of others.    I should get more on dance.

A shelf of poetry, with Shelley and Byron and Whitman next to Ginsburg and Eliot and James Merrill.    (Go read him, if you don’t know who he is.)    Plus collections from the far past to the nearer past to a few years ago past.    Two shelves of art books: Greek and Roman, Renaissance, Romantic, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Expressionists, Post-Expressionists, whatever-the-fuck-you-want-ists, many historical (sometimes hysterical) books detailing centuries of people, places, works…like: a book bigger than many shelves can hold: The Great Book of French Impressionism.     A gift from my great friend, Dana Pitts.   Believe it or not, I have read all 400 plus pages, but since it’s three times bigger than most books, that averages out to be about 800 or more.     The Illiad and The Odyssey.    The Divine Comedy.    But not The Aeneid.    I need to get that.

Fiction?    Well, if the expected action of growing older is to become more conservative, more prone to watch fewer movies, listen to fewer composers, read fewer books by fewer authors—I do not fit the mold.     I have found more writers I want to explore every year that passes by.     (I’ll talk about music later.)   My books of fiction are as varied as the songs on most young people’s IPhones.    I have so many, I have not made my way through many of them, though I know I will.    Most are anything but ‘popular’ fiction.    A monster-book called Women and Men by James McElroy has sat on my shelves for many, many years.   It’s an undertaking akin to reading Ulysses…but longer.     I will read it, though.    Even if I re-read Ulysses first.   (I was far too young the first time.)     And JR by William Gaddis, though I have read A Frolic of His Own.    It has to do with litigations of several kinds, including one over a terrible script…which is written for you in the middle of the book!    Gaddis makes great demands on the reader, true, but they pay off.    Besides, someone who treasures James Patterson will never try to read them.       I have read much of Don DeLillo, but I still have an armful, like Mao II.   He’s written a lot.    I will never give up my copy of Underworld, one of the greatest novels ever written.    Truly.    I may not ever read its 800 pages again, but I am proud to own it, happy I have read this masterpiece.    And by some miracle, it was a bestseller!    I wonder how many of the people who bought it actually read it?    I have read the novels of John Cheever, but not all of his short stories.    I have read many, but not all.    The collection of them sits in an honored place.     No, he isn’t ‘difficult’ like Gaddis, just skilled.    And probably forgotten by most people.     I have two novels by Umberto Eco that I have not opened, since his work is also a major undertaking, one that is (usually) pleasurably mind-boggling in discursive details.     These are just interesting (to me) representatives of the hundreds I have kept.   And just to be odd, I have to mention two books I bought on a whim because they seemed intriguing, by two people no one seems to know: The Feast of Fools, by John David Morley and The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk.    I have read some pages from each.    I’ll get back to them.    Who wouldn’t want to read a book called The Pope’s Rhinoceros?

The bulk of the shelves hold “Classics” ranging from Candide to Schiller to Tolstoy to Faulkner and Steinbeck.   I have many books by great ‘established’ writers of more recent vintage, besides those already mentioned, such as Saul Bellow, Walker Percy, William Kennedy, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Pat Barker (she wrote a thoughtful, tragic trilogy of ‘non-fiction’ fiction about World War I, with real characters and events from their histories ‘imagined’ as well as told), Wally Lamb, Margaret Atwood, who has a library-worth of titles to her name, even Ken Follett who writes good strong historical novels between pop thrillers.   If I name any more, I’ll get hate mail.    I have finally divested myself of all the ‘popular’ books I have read, even enjoyed, but will not come back to read again.     No mysteries left.    No Agatha Christie.   No Dick Francis.   I can always go to a library if I want to read them.

But, oh no, you groan, the plays!    Well, every kind of play, including much of what you’d think you would find.    All of Shakespeare.    All of Christopher Marlowe, his predecessor.    Most of Eugene O’Neill.    Many of Tennessee Williams, though I’ve read all of them, even some which were not printed until after his death.      Multiple translations of the major Chekhov plays.    (I’ve seen them performed.   Translation affects them immensely.)    Greek tragedies.   Also multiple translations.     Grab Robert Lowell’s version of The Oresteia.    Marvelous.    Go on.   I’ll wait.    Faust.    She Stoops To Conquer.   The Duchess of Malfi.     (I loved the gruesomeness, in sixth grade.    Alas, I have never seen it live.)      Some Neil Simon (I say with no shame.    They aren’t masterworks, but they can be very funny.)    Added later: Tom Stoppard (I think I have read everything he has printed.)    Arcadia breaks my heart.    Another of the most original voices of the Late Twentieth Century: Peter Barnes.    I discovered him in graduate school when a friend put on one of his shorter plays.    Go read The Bewitched.    I read it every five or six years.    He’s a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of playwright.    I’m one of the ‘love its’.    It ends with a giant baby being born, breaking through the placenta (!) with a head shaped like an elephant.     Many plays by Edward Albee.    Seascape has to be the oddest stage work in the American lexicon.     Not the most avant-garde…just the oddest.    I’ve seen it done.    I love it, but it isn’t for all tastes.    All the late works of August Strindberg, like A Dream Play, a favorite since junior high.     (Yes, I was a weird child.)    Pieces by Noel Coward, whose plays have a bite to them people don’t always notice.     He wrote about the lazy, selfish, shallow people he knew.     He rarely sugar-coated them.   The characters think highly of themselves, over-emote, ‘break down’.    We are not always meant to.     All of George Bernard Shaw.    But he wrote soooo many plays, I haven’t made it through the book.     Lots of them, but I still have a treasure-trove to explore.     And I am never bored when I choose one.     Never.    Everything by Tony Kushner, our greatest living American playwright.    Yes, he is.    (See note about librarian.)    The Collected Works of Arthur Miller.    The ‘books’ to a hundred or so musicals.    (Not counting the ones that come with recordings.)    The plays of Shelley.   Yes, he wrote plays.   They aren’t particularly good.     Like I said, every kind of play.  

I left out several hundred playwrights.    I have one whole giant bookshelf and half another filled with single and collected plays.    Many, many collections.   They represent the history of writing for the theater, Greeks onward, including Asian works like No plays.   I have the entire series of Best American Plays, which has the full scripts of hundreds of works from about 1900 to 1985.    They represent every major American playwright…and some who were just popular.    Yes, I’ve read all the later ones and most of the earlier ones.   I have affection for a completely forgotten writer of the 20’s through the 50’s,  Maxwell Anderson.     He wrote verse plays.    One of them has a dump truck as a major set piece.   Weird kid, remember?   

So I’ve bombarded you with a sampling of what I’ve kept.    Why?    Because these have changed how I think, how I view the world, how I live in it.    Why I laugh.   Why I cry.    Why I act how I do.    Sure, I have read the ‘lower brow’ mysteries, historical novels, thrillers, and other pulp things—and enjoyed them.    But I come back to the ones still taking space on my shelves.   The ones with ideas people don’t always like.    The ones that keep you on your toes.    The tough ones.    The ones with poetry, even the novels.   The Grapes of Wrath is poetry disguised as fiction.    Works that are beautiful, crushing, hopeful, wise, foolish.     That is what life is to me.     That is what my life has been for me.    I am often too difficult for my own good.    I don’t always think like others.     My world has sadness and glory.    Yet I find myself, idealized, in these pages.    They evoke so much feeling, even the works you would not think that about.    And I hope you’re intrigued enough to pick one or two up to read it.   I know that  all the words ever written could never capture every aspect of life, all the details, all the emotions.     Yet people will continue to try.   And I’ll keep reading.   And as my lighter but still bowing shelves prove, at least to me, great works can hit on a fucking lot of it.    Now go read The Bewitched.   Or at the very least, Robert Lowell’s Oresteia.    I’ve become subversive in my ‘advanced’ age.   I’m converting the world to play readers, one play at a time.    And if you get through Women and Men before I do…don’t tell me what happens.