Contest - win a prize for your imput

Paul Ponders is starting a contest open to anyone who wants to enter: Thirty Dollars For Thirty Readers. To be entered to win a $30 Amazon gift card , you just have to follow some simple rules. 1) You have to read all the past and new posts from Paul Ponders. 2) You have to comment on each one. That's it. Your comments must be related to each post and be more than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it". Simple, right? One catch: thirty people have to enter before the prize is awarded. So get your friends to be a part of it. Convince music lovers or art lovers that it's worth their while. The posts are about music, mostly, but other arts are covered. They are (sometimes highly) opinionated and meant to provoke questions or discussions--that's why it's so important to get people reading. Anyone who follows a blog knows that half the fun is the reactions to each post. Don't let me down. Help me get my thirty people. Someone will get thirty dollars.   (Naturally, you don't have to comment on this post.)

Carmen again? Yes!

I love Carmen with as much passion as I usually dislike productions of it...or even audio recordings. For such a well-known and (supposedly) well-loved piece, making it work as a whole is too often like a dog chasing its tail: you know what they're after, but they never seem to get it. Why? Many complicated reasons, but first and probably foremost is the history of the title role. Carmen is complicated, mercurial, passionate, lustful, beautiful, willful, taciturn, and (finally) resigned. (She is not, however, a wounded animal...or any kind of animal other than human. Let's bury that stupid idea once and for all.) And she has to sing all these famous pieces that everyone assumes they "know" and expect to be sung a certain way. Getting someone who can be all those things and still sing the damn thing is extremely hard indeed, even without audience prejudice. Everyone knows the right voice for it, the right physique, the right costume. They compare each knew Carmen to the "right" way in their minds. At best, you usually get one or the other: the actor who can't really sing the notes well enough or the singer who has all the notes (or well enough) but can't act it. Carmen was conceived as a work with dialogue in it--strong acting was obviously expected. Even with the recits, the acting challenges do not go away. And it's a HUGE part. And it may be considered the mezzo role supreme, but there is less "mezzo" there than a full-range. High (quite often), low (less often) and everything in-between. Just because someone can "hit" the notes does not mean they should be singing this. The very smart Frederica Von Stade said early and often that she was not meant to sing Carmen. And she was right: she could have sung it beautifully and been completely wrong. (Another wonderful mezzo did not heed the warning and now it's on video forever.) And so many people who have sung it--including that wonderful mezzo--are just "wrong." Too shrill or too wobbly or two vocally forced (they most common pitfall, sad to say) or too polite or too hammy or too "fake" sexy or just too everything but what is required. Young singers should not flock to it, they should run! Unless they are the rare bird that can deliver all of it. And the MET found one. Elina Garanca. She sang it magnificently, beautifully, powerfully, even subtly when required. She has all the notes and at all the dynamics. The coloring of the voice is just right. And she is one of the most believable Carmens I have ever seen (and I've seen my share.) Not a moment seemed fake. And if that were not enough, she was singing with a Don Jose that was actually convincing as a (failed) lover driven mad. Hearing the recording of Roberto Alagna singing Jose, I expected the worst: vocal fatigue and over-acting. What a surprise he was onstage. Yes, the beauty that was once in his voice is mostly gone. But he had everything else--characterful singing, musicianship, dynamics, diction, variety--including convincing, emotional acting. For once, the fight was not an embarrassment. That alone is a triumph of sorts. Even his attempt at a pianissimo scale at the end of the Flower Song was emotionally right, even if it wasn't his best vocal moment. And I never worried that he might not make it to the end. (God, how many times have a cringed when the Fourth Act gets underway.) What a pair they made. And I only saw it on TV! I'm kicking myself for not grabbing a ticket.

This riveting pair were surrounded by a capable cast with no weak links (the Escamillo, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, was actually quite handsome and fit and sang with panache!) in a mostly traditional production that did many more things right than it did wrong. As in almost every production I have seen, the chorus was routinely handled (some of that is Bizet's fault) and the set was more functional than inspired (but certainly not distracting). Micaela is a one-note role, but Barbara Frittoli sang her one note well and didn't try to over-act to compensate. And last but certainly not least, Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted a performance to treasure. He gave the singers everything they needed but kept the tension going until the shattering end. You felt like he LOVED the music--all of it--and could translate that to the orchestra, the singers, and the house. The interludes were more than decoration for a change. The dances during two of them representing the battle between Carmen and Jose were a nice touch which helped. By all means, buy the DVD when it comes out. If anyone says it isn't wonderful, do NOT listen. Get it! And as for the hoopla that surrounded the production, with its "quittings" and "public announcements, all I have to say is: Gheorghiu who?

1984

I just managed to watch a video of Loren Maazel's magnum opus, 1984, which was recorded in 2005 at the premiere, was released in 2009 and finally made it to Netflix for me to watch. To start with a caveat, a video is not the same as a live performance, so one should not be mistaken for the other. But watching (and listening) to a recording of a new work can be beneficial in a different way from the live experience. First, you see the singers close up and in the case of Simon Keenlyside, whose acting is as wonderfully convincing as his singing, the camera's close proximity is no detriment. Second, you can hear the music more than once in a short period of time and replay parts to familiarize yourself with the work. And three, it costs a heap less money than flying to London to catch a performance.

I mention a specific work from a fairly recent premiere to make a larger point. 1984, like the vast majority of "successful" (well-attended and / or reviewed) or "unsuccessful" (not particularly well-attended or poorly reviewed) new operas suffers from the same repeating, damning, fatal flaw: competency. Nothing is worse than being merely proficient. Nothing so terrible as making no particular mistakes in composition or libretto. Nothing so tragic as being merely "good." Or worse, having "good" things in it. Because with something as complex as opera, anything less than "brilliant" is a failure, no matter how many people praise it or watch it...as Meyerbeer would tell you were he alive. Page after page of 1984 makes sense, has musical development, has interesting portions, differentiates between characters. The list of attributes could be extended. But nothing in it is wonderful. Nothing moves you, tests you, challenges you, or even teaches you something about how music works or succeeds. The production left nothing to be desired. The singing was (mostly) terrific. The DVD was made with skill and care and the elements of opera that make it such a pinnacle of musical expression, including melody, harmony, vocal writing, musical characterization, orchestration, etc. etc. were recorded with consummate skill. But what a disappointment. Who wants competency when you can hear genius at the touch of a button? Or at the very least, marvelous music?

Are there wonderful operas still being written? Yes. Thomas Ades' The Tempest is one. I was lucky enough to experience a production in Santa Fe that left me spellbound, moved, excited, quizzical, enchanted. A radio broadcast (now on CD) confirmed my every impression. This really IS great opera. But certainly anything but "easy" to hear or watch. It inhabits a weird oxymoron: complex simplicity. The music can be followed, enjoyed, "breathed in", experienced with pleasure in just one hearing as long as you let it take you where it needs to go. You have to listen with intelligence and alertness. "Humming" the tunes is not its goal in any way. It is not for opera fans who think Puccini was the last great composer (or ONLY great composer) and nothing is greater than La Boheme or Tosca. This Tempest makes demands. But if you rise to the "challenges" the rewards are bountiful. Perhaps most extraordinary of all is how much of the music is truly beautiful. And each encounter seems to reveal new layers you hadn't noticed before. By contrast, 1984 attempts beauty in the midst of ugliness (which befits the story and the characters maybe even this libretto) but only manages off-the-rack dissonance that stands in for the cruelty and pain of oppression, one-dimensional "passionate" passages that point at emotions rather than portray them, and an occasion "swelling" line that proves to be some lesser version of great music by someone else. You can't even HATE it. It isn't original or "difficult" or inept enough to elicit hatred. Like so much new music, nothing's exactly wrong with it. So everything is.