Tale of Two Sandy's

            With film of devastation still a regular part of the news in New York, The Arts feel less essential somehow, something to put off until life returns to a place of normalcy.   Actors and make-up and costumes won’t fix crunched homes, or restore electricity, or secure hot water for more than an hour every once in a while.    Not that they’re trying to.    That isn’t the job of art, necessarily.    I believe art is a requisite part of the human condition, so I’m not suggesting we should abandon it.   Far from it.    Surely Bread and Puppets has such a strong idea that it has survived for decades:  art is cheap, art is food, art is politics, art is for (and occasionally by) everyone.    So perhaps I'm just conflicted.    Still, Broadway is the wealthiest business in the city, (losses occurring for the majority of shows that open notwithstanding.)   Millions of dollars flow through the theater district every week, hurricane or no hurricane, though all the shows were closed for two days.    Millions.   And now, in sharp contrast to reality, Annie has come back around.    And her dog Sandy sprints out for the closing scene, as always, reassuring that pluck and determination will conquer everything, even the Depression…not to mention a washed-out lush of a villainess, that gets her comeuppance for daring to dislike little girls.  That they coincided—the storm and the show—is just coincidence, but the similarities seem prescient if harsh.    Annie is the ghost that haunts the wreckage of Sandy, as the wreckage is the ghost that haunts the musical.

            An admission: I have not seen the new production.   I would never pay to watch a show I find to be slightly repulsive in its overkill of optimism.    Sure, there’s a Depression, even a song about it from supposedly down and out people, but just as telling, a song of the joys of NYC refutes it.    (If you’re being taken care of by a millionaire.)     From reviews, I assume James Lapine has tried to darken the tone a bit, here and there, but he can’t get away from the urchin belting out Tomorrow…which is only a day away.   This is not a revisionist Annie.   Who would produce that?   No one has rewritten the book, all the songs are there, roughly in the same order, mostly sung by the same characters.    Miss Hannigan never has a chance.   Her plot is easily foiled.    Her nemesis’ glorious tomorrow still comes, just in time.   "Good old-fashioned family entertainment, just what’s needed in this economy."    Little Orphan Annie joins her male counterparts in Newsies, male urchins surviving a tough life (unrealistically softened for maximum consumption) on the ‘mean streets’ through pluck and determination.     They also bring down a straw puppet of a villain, dancing and singing their way to success and happiness.    Cartoons.     $150 cartoons.

As an aside, Forbidden Broadway really has their number.   The skewering for both of these shows is funny in a loving/mean/dismissive kind of way.    In fact, you laugh so hard, you might miss the pin puncturing the inflated rhetoric Broadway thrives on.    When Annie was just a painful, nay, awful memory to many theater lovers, FB had an aging adult in the red dress and the curly wig smoking a cigarette, sure that the show would return and she’d have a job again.   I didn’t think they would find a way to top it.    They did.   I won’t give it away.   To me, the rejuvenated Forbidden Broadway is the best new show in town.     Nothing is sacred.   But it’s all hilarious and lovingly lethal.    Yes, creator/writer Gerard Alessandrini truly loves the Broadway his show skewers.   But it takes no prisoners.   And it has the cast to pull it off.   And tickets are off-Broadway.    And often at TKTS.   Go if you are able.    Can’t wait for the new cast recording.

I’m not suggesting Broadway should be shut down.    No, it is an art form, bloated though it sometimes may be.    I saw a few shows (at vastly reduced prices) for my recent birthday celebrations.   I was not hurt by Sandy.    I was extremely lucky.   And I don't feel I need to eat beans and rice as solidarity.    But just how many of those people watching Annie or Newsies has given one dollar or one hour toward helping the real Annies, who have lost everything and have no illusions that a millionaire will jump in to save them before everything disintegrates in front of, and around, them?    If everyone in a seat gave even $1, think how much help that could bring?    To its credit, Broadway has a yearly donation drive to help those living with AIDS.    It has raised millions.    Completely worthy.   But the nationwide drive to help those Sandy victims still in bad need has not generated as much funds as are necessary.   Or enough of it hasn't trickled down to the person living in the tents or the dented houses.   Yes,so many people have given up so much to help these dispossessed families.    They will receive nothing from it beyond the knowledge they helped how they could.   Just yesterday, food trucks from all over NYC drove into destroyed neighborhoods and fed everyone who lined up.   Donations had paid for the food so these vendors could make the trek.   And they came in droves.   The sight couldn't help but bring a tear or two.     This was seeing how money helps directly.   This was New York helping its own.  Every one of these men and women deserve the World’s praise.     But help is still necessary.    We need a Daddy Warbucks.    (Trump and Bloomberg haven't stepped up to the plate as of yet.)

Of course, the harshest reality of all is that the people who most need some optimism, who should laugh for a couple of hours, smile at the kids, applaud the canine Sandy…are the ones sitting in shells of their former homes, despondent.   Their tomorrow has not come.   And having little food or necessities, dependent on charity to survive, cold and all but broken, they could never afford a ticket.

Loss of a Legend

         103 and composing until the end, iconic 20^th Century composer, Elliott Carter, has died, a week after Hans Werner Henze.   (Carter's work has been studied and analyzed and argued in many books, dissertations, articles.   Even Wikipedia has a nice overview with some of the major works discussed.   Try some other place than here to understand more fully who he was and what he wrote.)  They could not be more different.    Henze was beloved.    Carter was studied.     Most music history books discuss / dissect Carter and his atonal, non-serialized, complex multiplicity, most of it incomprehensible to even seasoned audiences.    But that was part of the appeal.    He was asking listeners to use every ounce of concentration they possessed, and to move forward with myriad quick changes, even while the last notes have had time to resonate.    He wrote what he found interesting in a way he found interesting.    You either followed as best you could or didn’t.     You had to learn how to listen.     You had to want to understand it.    For two generations, he was the apex of difficulty and super brilliance, even while the larger audiences moved back to a simpler, (mostly) tonal ‘eclecticism’…but the adventurous stayed with him.

            As a student, still learning my way around tonality, I was puzzled and frustrated by my lack of comprehension.    Most people would have given up, I suppose, but I was stubborn and refused to let it rest.     I found some his less complex pieces and slid in the back door that way.      The piano solo, Night Fantasies, a piece I love, was one.   The song cycle, A Mirror On Which To Dwell, a treasured piece, was another.     They were anything but simple, but eventually, I could follow them.    And then I slowly added the String Quartets, the Piano Concerto (a bitch of a piece), and finally, the most difficult piece of music I have ever heard, the monstrous Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two Chamber Orchestras.    With this last work, I was impressed rather than enthralled, and have remained so.     Other pieces of his that I have not heard may be more complex, but I can’t see (hear?) how.     But no one bats 1000.

But there are rewards beyond ‘following’ what he is doing.   (Or perhaps a path among many through his difficult mazes.)    Once you can comprehend his style, you derive a sense of pleasure, as your mind becomes engaged.     It’s similar to a video game in a sense: you have myriad possibilities to follow, and once you do, you have myriad more choices, until the level is finished.    But the more straight forward pieces, and he has several, require less work to negotiate and appreciate.    Many of these were written in his later decades.    He became more direct, less stratified.    His Clarinet Concerto is quite accessible…to his initiates.    His solo piano pieces are quite engaging.     As the recordings roll out, a more complete picture of his skills comes into focus.    He wrote many great pieces, even past the age of 100!     His music has travelled the world, major musicians have learned and championed it.   Some pieces have become standards, (if you measure by repeat performances), at least for now.    Everyone who has a wide knowledge of the entire spectrum of important Classical music has kept his music in front of audiences.    Much of it is so rewarding, the trouble it causes shrinks as you ‘learn’ it.    It bears multiple listens.

But…and I have one.    And it is the reason I have found it difficult to appraise him and the tardiness of this post.   To me, a fan, nothing by him is emotionally powerful.    Moody perhaps, but not sad, happy, heartbroken, angry, passionate.   Melancholy, yes, sometimes.    Ruminative—as in A Mirror—certainly.     Emotionally conflicted, you could make an argument for it.   But nothing that hits me on an emotional level.   Perhaps it is my short coming, but I am more drawn to music that engages my heart as well as my mind.   I don’t believe he was attempting to do any such thing.    I’m not sure he thought music did that.   He has his own rewards and they are not superficial.     I do not listen to his recordings regularly.   I have never heard any of his music live.    Until three years ago, I had not listened to anything by him for more than a decade.    Then I embarked on a Carter festival, and listened to several.   I was taken by what I heard.   In his honor, I will hear most of the big works I have on CD.     Just not all at once, or even one per day.    I gorged on Henze when he died.    I love Henze with, you’ll forgive me, a ‘passion.’    I admire and sometimes enjoy Carter.     Henze should find immortality sooner or later—his music is too rich and emotional to disappear.   I fear Carter will probably be heard until this generation has gone.     And then he will go as well.    Hopefully, a few pieces might stick around.    Night Fantasies seems a probability.    But the time and money and skill required to perform something like the Piano Concerto will make it obsolete.    I will be long gone before the world will discard or re-embrace him.   Who knows what will happen in 50 years.   But I believe my prophesies seem all too probable.    An important stopping point for anyone studying the music of the last century, unquestionably.    But not one of the present.

 

Do you believe in The Arts or not?

         As in all elections, reasons for voting one way or another complicate a final decision.   But if you are in The Arts, the choice is simple: President Obama supports funding for them and Mitt Romney does not.    Silencing PBS for the pittance of money spent on it is an act of repression and aggression.    Minority opinions are expressed in some of its programs and suppressing them is an act of despotism, however cloaked the reasons for doing so may be.   He doesn't approve of minority voices.    Listen to his speeches, it's there in black and white.   Artists are minorities.   And lest we forget, the Eastern Seaboard would be financially decimated if Romney's policies were enacted: until Sandy, he publicly stated his belief that the city or state of a disaster area should be held responsible for its costs.    How many lives are worth 'creating new jobs'?    Should they come from people who are no longer around to do them?    (A joke, but not so far from his 'message' as you might think.     Shipping Mexicans back to their original country to 'open up' jobs is not so far from it.    And it's preposterous and untrue.)    So if anyone who has yet to decide reads this, vote for the man who has supported minority voices, lives, freedom.    (He's a minority himself of course)   Though I am not the first to say, I believe it to be true: a culture--and a country--is only as strong as its art.

Back from hibernation - in memoriam Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze, one of the great composers of the Twentieth Century, has died at the age of 86.    The New York Times has a fairly good biography.    He wrote an autobiography as well: Bohemian Fifths.    The only statement that need to be made concerning either is that his involvement in left-wing politics was more philosophy than practice.    He tried to support what he considered to be worthy causes, but he never saw them in black or white, and he viewed his work as an attempt at making art not politics.   He thought the student revolts of the ‘60’s to be a sign that change was happening, but he never pretended to know how or why or when.     He wrote some overzealous articles about the problems of the ‘bourgeoisie’, though his view of it and others view of were (often) radically different.     Mostly, he just hated the idea of rote acceptance of social behavior, destructive though the ideas may be to the very people holding them.    And as any belief ‘system’ will prove, truth can be found in them, just not the whole truth.   To state simplistically complex beliefs: in the ‘left-wing’ ideas of the time, society was three-fold: the upper classes, (i.e. the leaders of the Nazi Party) who held power through wealth and ‘position’ and rhetoric; the bourgeoisie, (i.e. the German ‘middle’ class) who blindly followed them, who looked the other way while atrocities were accelerating all around them, and accepted without question any long-held beliefs that corresponded to the safety and structure of the status quo; and the poor,(i.e. the actual soldiers) who had no power and were continually squashed down and forced to fight and starve and die.    He had lived through the Nazis.    He had witnessed the death of millions of people, mostly poor.    He had real reasons to view blind allegiance as violation of humanity.    He believed that the World could not sustain this paradigm and a ‘revolution’ would take place to relieve the suffering of the disenfranchised.     Reading his autobiography spells this out quite clearly.    Alas, many people who seemed to agree with him at first would turn out to be as despotic as the power brokers he despised.     He was often broken by these betrayals.   But you don’t have to agree with his complex view of politics to understand his work.     Verdi himself supported a rebellion against what he and many others viewed as tyranny (famously, in Nabucco.)     And Wagner was, among other things, a white supremacist, though far more complex in his work than any beliefs that simplistic.

Henze was a singular force, never following one ‘school’ or another, making his way through a difficult time for Classical Music, where musical seriousness and exploration degraded into pandering to the lowest common denominator.     Like many of his age, he resisted both the (mostly useless) complexity of the post-Schoenberg total serialists, and the derivative ‘homespun’ tonality, with its easy solutions to age-old musical questions.     In fact, he would use his personal brand of serialism and his own version of tonality, straddling the two without falling into either camp.    He had several ideas, or sounds, that he worked with, in various forms, from piece to piece.    He explored a dark lyricism, similar to Mahler and (especially) Berg, long-limbed, beautiful music that could disturb, hurt.     He had a sharp satirical side, often tipping his hat at Stravinsky, where just below the surface, the music was edgy and castigating.  Pushed a bit farther, it degenerated into the grotesque, a useful tool when most of your libretti are far more poetic than realistic.     He loved Italian opera of the Nineteenth Century, and used some of its ideas in his own work.     Particularly, he found fruitful use of the older idea of ‘coloratura’, which he plied with various degrees of importance, even in his non-vocal work.     He would use short quotes from some of his favorite works from the past: some obvious, some unrecognizable without the score.    He would then transform them into his own ideas.   And he could unleash a violent streak: cruel, jagged, harsh, giving his listeners a dose of battering ugliness.     With these rich ingredients, no two pieces were alike: the ratio of one musical idea to the others always changed, especially noticeable in the longer works, in particular his operas.     Much of this was accompanied by a strong political / sociological conviction—frequently stated in some personal testament written for premieres—which often led to those endless complications and misunderstandings.     Truthfully, despite some of his written opinions, his concerns were for humanity and its struggles, not politics.   If you knew nothing about him, his work would still be valid, powerful, apposite.   If nothing else (and there is plenty else) he should be counted as a major creator of opera in the last century, though he continued to write them well into the present one.

            He looked for poets—past and present—for texts for all his vocal works.     His friendship with Ingeborg Bachmann produced many masterworks, even masterpieces.    (The operas The Prince of Homburg and The Young Lord are two.)     He never quite recovered from her suicide at a young age.    The only writers to compare, and exceed in many eyes, were W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, primarily known for the libretto of The Rake’s Progress of Stravinsky.     They wrote two libretti for him, and the operas produced are unquestionably masterpieces: Elegy For Young Lovers and The Bassarids.     They have been produced over and over since their premieres in the ‘60’s.   A small sampling: The Bassarids saw several productions in the mid-2000’s.   (One during a strike in Paris.)   A live performance of Elegy For Young Lovers was recorded and released as a CD in 2000.  English National Opera produced a very well-received production of Elegy in 2010.    Into the ‘70’s and beyond, he tried to find some writers who could give him words to which he could express deep emotions with his heavy arsenal of musical gifts.   Edward Bond gave him two very overtly political texts, We Come To The River and The English Cat, which were less successful than their predecessors.    In fact, the former has a poor libretto and produced his weakest opera musically, and the latter ‘comedy’ has some poor rhymes, a weak ending, and an overall lack of wit.    He seemed to want something along the lines of The Young Lord.    He didn’t get it.   After these, he chose German poets of lesser fame (but not lesser talent) to return to a more abstractly humanistic work.    And he wrote one of his own, a masterpiece as well: L’Upupa or the triumph of filial love.    The video of its premiere is an essential for anyone trying to know his work.   He wrote 17 operas (18, if you count the almost total reworking of Konig Hirsch into Il re cervo), all of value and craft, most wonderful…but none that make for easy listening.    (Or ‘difficult’ listening for someone who could follow, say, Lulu.)    

He has many fans the World over.   Dozens of his works have been recorded, some more than once.    He wrote for every ‘classical’ form, including: 10 symphonies which are highly regarded (as they should be); three violin concerti; two piano concerti; several ballets (including the great Undine, written for Margot Fonteyn); instrumental tone poems such as the recent, beautiful Sebastian im Traum, The New York Philharmonic one of its commissioners (though it was not the first piece played by them); chamber music of every stripe; vocal music, from oratorios for huge forces down to songs for voice and piano.    He prized the voice particularly.    He wrote in his biography that even his instrumental music sounded like wordless voices in his head.

Personally, he was an ‘ideal’ 20^th Century composer, like Stravinsky or Britten, who never stopped composing, never grew tired of trying to find that ‘something new’, ever curious, ever striving for something more than that which he had composed before.     My shelves are filled with recordings of his work.    My head, too, complex though his music can be.   I have performed some.   I am sad that no new pieces will spill from his pen.     I am happy that I know many that did.    May his work live forever.

 

When Is Write Right?

The recent(ish) decision of The Pulitzer Prize committee to award no fiction prize, I have thought about my own past experiences with writing creatively.    So many things come into consideration when someone decides to put something down on paper (or computer.)   How do you get from idea to page?    What does 'idea' mean?    What comes first?     Does it always follow the same pattern?    How do details get added?     How many, when?    How much revision occurs, and where along the process?    How much is enough, how much is too much?    How are characters developed?    What does 'finished' mean?    Is it similar for everything?   What influences can be detected and are they conscious decisions?      I'm sure everyone who writes has a different path to completion.   But here is mine, to compare.
      
I always start with a very basic premise: who are the major characters and what are they doing.    Secondary characters rarely appear in this part of the process.     But it's not just an event: I work out a basic outline of conflict and resolution.   This might change, but rarely.    The details of these few participants in the drama may morph but their motivations don't.     But I rarely write it down more than a few sentences to remind me, lest I forget completely.     Then I leave it.    Sometimes, it shoves its way to the foreground of my thoughts, but mostly, my mind works on it without my trying to force the issue.    Sometimes this process can be a few weeks.    Sometimes, I have a thought about something for years.    (I had envisioned a play that I did not write for a decade.)     I'm in good company: Janacek would write a complete libretto, set it, sometimes completely, leave it in a drawer, allow it to work itself out in the back of his mind, throw the first draft out, and compose another, sometimes with very little moving from one to the other.    I don't write a whole play or story or screenplay then throw it out, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm ahead in the game.


More anon...

No fiction worth celebrating?

By now, most people who are interesting in important prizes have discovered no Pulitzer prize was given for fiction this year.     The last time that happened was in 1977.    Despite how it may seem, hundreds of American authors publish books every year.    Take this link for a succinct description of the process of choosing, written by one of the people who gave the committee the three possibilities.  (I think the URL is longer than the article.)   http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pulitzers-no-decision-in-fiction-exposes-flaws-in-the-process/2012/04/18/gIQAXJooRT_story.html?wprss=rss_style    I haven't read the three 'offerings' so I can't verify their worthiness...or lack of worthiness.    All I can do is question how no novels or short story collections could be worthy of this prize.   None.    The curt, ambiguous answer is 'no consensus could be reached.'    So why couldn't it?   If a small group of talented, knowledgeable, discerning readers can whittle a list of 300 or so down to three, how could the actual committee fail to choose one of them?    The Washington Post article posits some half-assed reasons that have been bandied about--to the fury of the woman who helped whittle the list. 

I suspect something more mundane is at work, based on my knowledge of the awards in past years: none of the three were 'high-profile' enough to be selected.    Think I'm off?    Look at the list: how many have you heard about or read?    How many authors are unknown to you?    If you read American fiction even moderately, the answer to the first will be a high number and the second, a low.    And though two of the authors on this year's short list are known, respected authors, these particular works did not arrive with the necessary hoopla--and in the case of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, negative press.    As the article explains, he didn't finish it.   He died in 2008.   Someone put his fragments together into the form that was published.    That kind of thing is never going to win.    It can be the greatest work of fiction in the last twenty years, no way does it get picked.     (I doubt it is.)    And it certainly didn't burn up the bestseller lists.    Neither did the other two.

The much discussed 'problems' of the selection process lie with the committee voters.    They are not specialists.    Nor really experts.    Their conservatism is obvious.    They choose what will make them look 'important', politically 'aware', 'relavant'.    Worth seems to be incidental,  though I have only read two winning novels of recent vintage I thought mediocre, and by that I mean, neither terrible nor wonderful: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike and American Pastoral by Philip Roth.   The latter was particularly disappointing when it won over a singularly American masterpiece: Don DeLillo's Underworld.  (I have to admit, the winners were certainly 'popular'.)    My list of mediocre plays is longer, alas.    And the prize for music has become a place to name someone who hasn't won before but writes in a style that everyone has heard before, namely, tonal.   Many of these pieces are good, a few are great, but none in the last twenty-five years would challenge a season ticket holder to The New York Phil, or any other conservative symphonic body (save maybe L.A. or San Francisco) or most Chamber Music Societies in the country.    I heard early works by this years winner, Kevin Puts.   He was young.   I'm sure a decade has garnered him needed experience, so he has had the chance to polish his skills where they were lacking.   (The pieces I heard were rather 'unfinished', though his talent was never in question.)    I would bet money, piece unheard, he did not get less conservative.   And with the 'new rules' allowing any kind of music at all, the conservative factor will only go up.    I'm not against tonal music.    Tonality is still a viable means of communication.    Jennifer Higdon knows how to use it well.    (She won in 2010 for her Violin Concerto.)     It just shouldn't be the criteria.     And there is absolutely no reason why the fiction prize went unawarded this year--no good one, anyway.    

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.