What is good? Great?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A word...or an interview?

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

All the colors...except the rainbow

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

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

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

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

Held my Post

I had written a discussion of Porgy and Bess, but I want to think about it before it goes out.    I did publish it for a few minutes, so if you received a copy, know I will revisit it when I have seen the production that is causing all the stir.    I was trying to bemore general but I fear I was less successful than I wanted to be.   So it will come back.    I'll post something in its place in a day or two.

Elation

      Well, if I'm going to complain about unadventurous musical things, I should praise something that was a huge risk which seems to be working out:  Stephen Sondheim's Follies (and James Goldman's book, of course, but NO ONE is going for his work.)    This is the giant show to end all giant shows.    Dozens of speaking /singing parts.    Huge score: 21 separate vocal numbers, a now famous opening instrumental prelude for the ghosts, a dance number not even written by Sondheim, and improvised background music that underscores most of the show.    And the 'big' numbers, written in the style of show music from the twenties to the forties, are sung (and occasionally danced) by older actors/singers, making it that much more difficult to cast.    And though it has humor, Follies is essentially a bleak view of the costs of aging on 'dreams'.   As almost anyone who is even remotedly familiar with the piece, the title has a double meaning.  
       The show was revived ten years ago to poor reviews, a huge loss of money, and a quick closing notice.    (I've seen a boot-leg copy shot from the balcony.    I was expecting a' miss' where things just didn't gel or were poorly directed or acted, etc.    To my shock, it was surprisingly well done.    No idea why the reviews were so mixed.)   So what's different now?
        Timing, for one thing.     Ten years ago, the country was on a high of conservatism.    This show is not family friendly: because it is about what happens when your family is grown or old or dead.    The Lion King is extremely family friendly.    It has a score people already know combined with great showmanship.   Nothing wrong with that.    The history of Broadway, hell, any performance-based art form, has been style and showmanship in tandem with smart writing.    Hooray for The Lion King!    But it is still style over (worthwhile) substance.    Follies is style alright, but combined with painful, thought-provoking, audacious, cynical, life-affirming while heart-breaking substance.    You leave feeling like you've seen one of the greatest works ever written.    Because you have.    Hamlet isn't happy either.   But in the Summer of 2001, no one wanted cynicism.     Cut to today.   Life is rife with cynicism.   People have been sitting for days in protest of Wall Street and what they believe it stands for.    Naturally, they are being used (more often in a hate-filled way) as a political sword, slashing away at the 'other' side, mostly ignoring what the protestors are actually saying.    The country is hurting, the bigots are out, and the large majority of us are frozen in fear or frustration.    So a show about reality crashing into your failed dreams seems like the news.     But with something humane at its center.    This aspect has been missed by (too) many critics of the piece, going all the way back to its original production.     It's easy to overlook: so much is happening and all through a fractured theatrical prism.  But 'life will go on' is the theme that lingers.    Life, imperfect though it may be,  has to.
     And casting.   Bernadette Peters is riding a wave of success from her amazing (I saw it) performance in A Little Night Music, the Sondheim show written just after Follies.    Believe me, if you didn't see it, you cannot fully understand why so many were telling people they would remember it for the rest of their lives.     The young opera singer sitting next to me said Peters' performance changed her life and how she would approach performing.    I doubt she was exaggerating.   And Peters had been in the original casts of Sunday In The Park With George and Into the Woods, classics now.   And she had sung the lead in a concert version of an early Sondhiem: Anyone Can Whistle.   And she gave a concert dedicated (mostly) to his music.   So Peters and another iconic Sondheim has its own appeal.   But the other three 'leads' are cast with great people, known and loved in New York.  
      And the production.     The producers have not skimped on the cast size or the orchestra or costumes or the other aspects that the production really needs.   It is not a carbon copy of some other production, but a fresh take on it.     The score really is as wonderful as any written.   Great number after great number.   Chances for good performers to show their stuff.   And this production seems to hit people the right way.    We may never witness its like again.    So go see it instead of the same old Boheme.    Or Lion King again.   Follies is a force for good--art that does not pander to the lowest common denominator.    So what that it will only be around until January?   That is enough.

Depression

 Back online after a long time of busy life and reflection on art-making in the "new" America--where neo-Nazis pose as 'concerned' citizens, real concerned citizens are denounced as 'un-American' by the same people (or their enablers), arts organizations drop like flies, funding vanishing, audiences vanishing, corporate funding for fewer and fewer (and almost always for things they know will be 'popular' not important--though this has always been the case for the most part), musuem-enbalmed 'musical performances' of the same repeating pattern: 75% war horses, 24% safe but under-played works, and 1% 'new' things, usually pale imitations of their betters.    Not that any of this is particularly new, but now it is almost all that is there.    Exceptions are indeed everywhere but they make up a dwindling minority, and even the 'new' is mostly older well-established musicians doing the same thing.    Yeah,yeah, yeah, I'm beating the same drum.    But I fear drums are banging in a ghetto chasm of re-runs.    And my heart just doesn't seem to be where it was.
         The Metropolitan Opera is a perfect storm of mediocrity right now.   The adventurous planning of a few years ago is back to business as usual.    The 'new' productions have little to offer, or like the Don Carlo, are left to dwindle into dullness.     Watching the televised presentation of last year's production, I felt a horrible sense of waste.    These were talented people walking through a masterpiece like automatons (I'd say zombies, but zombies would have been interesting.)   Any performance that makes Simon Keenleyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto look like amateurs has failed miserbly.    And the immediacy of the close-up view has been marred by poor choices.     I watched all the video productions and all of them had musically inept camera moves.     The sense of drama that was a hallmark of the first couple of seasons seems to have gone, vanished.    Well, it thrives in one or two cases, but mostly it's not there.     I watched some of the older ones to check to see if it was just my mood.   No, to a one that I own, the older were better.    How depressing!
       Sure, the Lucia with a one-of-a-kind Dessay was watchable, even with some really stupid filming, because Dessay--love her or hate her--will always be watchable.     How conventional Netrebko seems, comforting in her talented, 'tradtional' interpretation!    Yes, she is quite good, though the voice is getting harder, her notes are drooping into flatness, her 'emotional' treatments growing too predictable.    I still like her fine, but I don't love her.    Why?    There is much to enjoy, she never walks through anything like a robot, she sings with passion.     But it doesn't add up to gloriously wonderful to me.     I mean her no harm, nor disrespect.     She is a beautiful,talented woman.    But where is that spark of something different?    I haven't seen it.    Maybe that's what I miss.   And many of the reviewers vilified Dessay while over-comparing her to Netrebko.   No, Dessay is sui generis.    Netrebko is a very good, sometimes exciting musician.    And then there was Il Trovatore which was a debacle of enormous dimensions.
       At least Netrebko is offering something new with her Anna Bolena.    I think she will be a very good fit.    (I'll see.)    Otherwise, more of the same 'same''.     Does anyone really want to see Macbeth with those singers?   Or this Aida?    Or this Barbiere or Don Giovanni?   Nabucco?   Ernani?   (That seems particularly inapt right now.)   Sure, we have some great operas that are rarely done: Billy Budd, Makropulos Case, Khovanschina but James Morris is set to destroy Budd (God, someone shoot him so he will stop!), Makropulos is an ensemble work which have not been cast well lately, and Khovanshchina is loooong, cobbled together, flawed--though beautiful--work that is also an ensemble cast, but is tied to a weak libretto (maybe because it was never quite finished.)   And I fear for all of these.    If the Met can't make Don Carlo work, what chance does a Billy Budd have?     You need three amazing singer/actors and an inspired conductor.    The first half of these requirements is already not there.    And David Robertson is hit-or-miss.    Makropulos is here to showcase Mattila (which I'm all for) but it isn't a showcase kind of a role.    And the conductor is a mystery, so this could be great or awful.    At least there is some question.     You could not pay me to go sit through Aida.    Or Patricia Racette destroy Butterfly again to wildly idiotic ovations.     Why are people encouraging this once-fine singer to shriek her way through a role she never had any business singing?   Are they deaf?
      And the really terrible thing is: the Met is doing just fine as far as I know.    They have curtailed some 'big' productions to keep costs down, but other than that, all seems well.    With the New York City Opera all but dead, the smaller venues so far under the radar they might as well not be there (they might help themselves if they did more adventurous work) and the (wonderful) William Christie tours only here for very short periods, opera seems depressingly like it was.    I don't want like it was.   I want From the House of The Dead.    I want The Nose.    I want a marvelous Lulu not a polite, poorly cast one.   I want Renee Fleming to stop doing the same five roles.    I want a Henze opera, or a Birtwistle, or even a Gloriana to go with the Billy Budd.   I want something to transport me while the country falls apart around me.    I want art to remember.    And I'm only talking about opera in one particular house.    Beneath that?    Chaos.

What is Art?

Now that the cultural phenomenon that was The Metropolitan Museum Of Art's installation of Alexander McQueen's fashions, some questions come to mind, age old questions like: what is art and is it relevant and how many people seeing (or hearing or watching) something equals greatness?   No answers exist, of course--or more accurately, endless postulations exist with no final decisions possible, except person by person.   So this person asks them--and tries to give some answers.   (Which anyone can take or leave, naturally.)

To cheat a bit, art is anything someone considers art.   Hardly Earth-shattering.    And I am thrilled a museum considers clothing design art.    "Design" implies artistry.    No question, McQueen was an artist.    But is that why people liked his work?   Really, with no excuses, how many people went because the man was famous for putting clothes on rich, exciting, fabulous people who showed up at well documented events wearing something he put his name on?    I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing--but I fear it is not a particularly good one either.    Worth, skill, originality are not in the vocabulary of most of the people waiting hours in line.    They wanted to see up close what they've seen on TV.    They probably couldn't give a damn about anything else in the building.    The prevalent wisdom is that exposure to the other pieces that were on view to the hordes in line would somehow make them want to come back.    Right.    How many will that mean?    100?    Sure, it's good for the 100 but does it further any kind of knowledge about anything else than celebrity to the 99.99999% of the remaining viewers?    Isn't that what this is--the cult of the celebrity?    I guess it could be argued that seeing a Michelangelo sculpture is just a variation on the same.    Probably.   Still, it's depressing.    What if someone named Skidder had carved David?   Would we recognize its greatness?    My guess: no.   And what about all those artists who are no longer being taught in schools because they won't appear on any tests?    Is their art now lessened?    Since fewer and fewer people are learning who, I don't know,  Thomas Eakins was, will his work eventually disappear from the higher institutions?   And what about his 'nameless' contemporaries?     Sure, museums hang some of them, but for how long?    The Alexander McQueens of the world will always pull in bigger crowds.    With dwindling funds, fewer donors, fewer visitors, how long before smaller places only hang 'crowd pleasers' to pay the bills?    The Met will go on without the enormous crowds...they already get enormous crowds, even on days between exhibits.    But the past is becoming less and less a part of our education system.    People aren't encouraged to know, or care, about anything that is not disposable or popular on some electronic device.   I would guess most of my relatives have no idea who Thomas Eakins was.    This is tragic to me.   Eakins was an influential, talented man.    They would like his art, I have no doubt.   But fewer people in the world saw his work than Alexander McQueen's one summer in 2011, probably even if you counted all the people who went to all the museums where Eakins is displayed.     And saddest of all?   Just how many people cared?

Listening Experiment

      Taking my last post as a jumping off point,  I listened to two very different pieces to see how my new reactions might differ from my original ones (though I never wrote the first ones down.  Sorry about that.)    I chose a piece I did not 'appreciate': Luciano Berio's Laborintus II and one I did: Nicholas Maw's Violin Concerto.    Yes, their styles are completely different, but that is the point of the thing: how does emotion and mental acuity play into (my) perceptions.     I listened to them only once, on the same day, with a sizable break between.    I will admit upfront I was surprised by my response.    I enjoyed the 'experiment' thoroughly.    What conclusions did I draw?    Well, let me tell you what I heard...this time.
     Berio's piece is an early one compared to the more famous, 'influential' ones.    It has a 'libretto' (no plot nor narrative drive is at play) by a Dante Scholar and poet Edoardo Sanguineti.    It is scored for tape, narrator, three female voices, a mixed choir of eight, and ensemble from which a jazz combo can be formed. It contains poems by Sanguineti, plus texts from Dante, the Bible, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.    They all have something to do with each other, but explanations are unnecessary, because the music neither  'explains' the texts nor 'enlightens' them.   Frankly, they could be any group of words.    It was commissioned by the French and Italian Radios to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth.  So the Dante connections make sense.    The rest?   Well, the Narrator does have to speak very quickly to get some of them in before his 'time' is up.     On my recording, Sanguineti is the narrator.     That must have helped.
     I am a true fan of Berio, but I find (to my irritation or impatience) that he has these pieces I call 'sketches'--works that seem to hold unperfected ideas that will find far more success in larger, better, more accomplished works.  ('Sketch' does not imply shorter length in his case...alas.)   Certainly half-formed ideas here will show up in Sinfonia and Coro, not to mention his operas that occupied him during the later years of his life.    For one thing, Sanguineti formed the performing texts for both of those following masterpieces using many of the same authors.    And the musical ideas--in particular, the overlapping, 'battle' of voices both sung and spoken; the deconstruction of words into morphemes, vowel sounds, even phonemes repeated in no particular order; the soloistic / virtuosic nature of the instrumental parts; the abrupt changes in musical style, especially the appearance of some form of pop music; the juxtaposition of two things that do not share any obvious qualities --will show up over and over throughout his career, sometimes more successfully, sometimes less.     The more of his work you know, the more likely you are to hear the connections and enjoy seeing where they came from.    But Laborintus II is roughly thirty-five minutes long.     It is episodic to a fault.    Ideas seem to either evaporate before you can grasp their make-up or drone on long after their pleasure has past.    Certainly, multiple sopranos will be used far more advantageously in later pieces like the two named and one of his great operas, Un Re In Ascolto (A King Listens).     Not that this piece has no merits--on the contrary, this is a major composer fleshing out important ideas he will use for decades.   The vocal music is for the most part masterly, if a bit disjointed at times.    The flashes of fragments of jazz poking out of the fabric of the first half comes to fruition in a delightful jazz combo fighting for its life amongst all the other things going on (it loses, by the way.)     The ideas that would soon lead to O King are here in miniature and can be beautiful, as they are in the later work (though not much later, a few years.)     But mostly, I still feel, this is a 'worksheet' on 'what to use later in my better pieces.'    Well.    I liked it more than I first did, certainly, but I am still not won over.   I'd rather listen to Sinfonia.
     Nicholas Maw wrote his Violin Concerto 'for' Joshua Bell, claiming he had finally heard someone who was in the grand Romantic line of violinists.    (Or so says Bruce Adolphe in the liner notes.   The conversation took place in Maw's kitchen while the composer carved a turkey.    I want to ask, "How many violinists were you listening to?"    I can name at least half a dozen who could lay more claim to the title back then.   And now, triple that. )    So the piece was premiered by the people who play on the recording: Joshua "Romantic" Bell,  the conductor Roger Norrington, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.   Bell plays wonderfully, actually, though I still wouldn't call him a "Romantic" violinist.    He seems to prefer a more "Classical" balance of things (for want of a more technical term) where nothing is too understated nor too overstated, the tone never too dark or coarse, nor, in fact, anything but lovely.     Sometimes this suits the music perfectly; sometimes, it does not help it through some of its weaker points, where someone less afraid to go too far might conceal weakness a bit better.    For the piece has some.   One: a huge mistake in my mind, a poor idea overextended.     It doesn't destroy the piece, but it blunts its impact.
     The work is in four movements: 1) Prelude 2) Scherzo 3) Romanza 4) Finale marked Allegro moderato e grazioso.     The style owes something to the mid-Twentieth Century Romantics, like Barber, but far more through-composed in form.  The movements have some ideas that bind them together very loosely: some melodic shapes that return, rhythmic motives, a recurring idea where the lower strings play a unison slow melody, usually forte, while the violin spins high free-flowing countermelodies.   A few others too technical to describe.    Most of the music is slow(-ish or not so -ish)--not all of it it, mind you, but more than half.    This tends to lessen the effect at times, but only for short durations.    The Prelude has one or two too many slow builds to a climax.   We'll skip the Scherzo and say the Romanza is lovely, probably the most successful of the four, and the Finale is a bit fragmented, luckily coming together with a welcome satisfaction at the end with some strong music.    But it does have a few awkward spots, meanders for a few short stretches, before finding its footing.    Not that I couldn't follow it, any of it.   It is most skillfully written.    Maw knows what he is doing as he should after writing music for forty years.  This is not abnormally complex music (nor too simple) but close concentration is needed for you not to drift off a bit on occasion.    Still, three of the four movements have mostly beautiful, memorable, enjoyable writing.    'Beautiful' often comes to mind while listening.    But there's that Scherzo.    Unfortunately.    It begins quite well: interesting fast movement of even note values, moving from small cells to larger, broader melodies...and then it gets highjacked by a big slow movement in the middle (!)    Why????    We've just had a slow movement to start (over ten minutes) and will have another at Scherzo's end.    And this is the least well-crafted of the lot.    And it seems to lose what momentum the movement had.    But Maw goes back to the original material and you shake your head but sigh relief that you're back on more solid ground.     And then he does it again.    Slower.    Thinner, mostly for long held chords with violin obbligato.    For more than just a passing instance.    Deadly.    Not ugly, just deadly.    Boring even.    A really poor idea that such an experienced composer should not use.    It all but ruins the effect of the beginning of the Romanza which begins like a second cousin to the chords in Britten's Billy Budd --the scene where Vere goes inside to tell Budd he has been sentenced to death.    If you know the opera, you know what I mean.   Isolated chords, in this case with small movements within them (just chords in the Britten.)    The piece moves into more lovely complexity, a fine chance for the violinist to play beautifully in all registers, which, of course, Bell does in spades.    The piece is a marvel of finely detailed work.    It would work perfectly well on its own.    If I could, I would cut the Scherzo right before it 'dies' and move directly into the true slow movement.    Maybe if this is how the piece went, the small weaknesses of the outer movements would pale.    Probably.    I was mostly happy with the Prelude.     The myriad ideas of the Finale might seem more germane if the piece hadn't been breaking into these slow reveries so often.    I found some flaws with it the first time I heard it.    I didn't like the Scherzo then either (from my recollection.)    I liked the outer movements more then (though I like them quite a lot now.)    I appreciate the Romanza more now.    Frankly, if a more risky, highly emotional soloist and conductor played it, they might help that big giant gaffe.   Say, Gil Shaham and Simon Rattle. Or maybe not.  In a few more years?

In the mood

     Like many people in The Arts (capitalized, naturally), I have bi-polar disorder.   Yes, me and Catherine Zeta-Jones.    Some people affected by this are stigmatized by ignorant people who either overreact or dismiss it, so often sufferers keep it hidden, from a real fear of mistreatment.   But public education is heightening awareness of this and thus, aiding responses.   Zeta-Jones should be commended.    Public perception is everything in Hollywood.   If a producer thinks she might hold up production even one day, they will most likely not use her.   Luckily, medicine helps me—others with the disorder are not so lucky.    But I am anything but “cured”.   I still experience symptoms, both elevated and depressed.  Due to this, though, I examine my emotional responses more than most people without it.    It is easy to overreact when I’ve done or said something unintentionally that may have bothered someone—and they let me know it in a blunt or cutting way.   This can make life a bit difficult, but who doesn’t have problems?    I’ve grown to live with it.    And it has its benefits.    When I experience a truly wonderful performance, or play, or piece of music, of work of art, I can feel it deeply.   That adrenaline rush can make even low emotions rise.    And I believe this helps me perform.    I think I can communicate emotions rather well since I am so aware of them.    Sometimes.   Let us not sugar coat things.   Some days, nothing gives relief.   But it passes, as long as I take my medicine, which I will take for the rest of my life.    This is a serious life-altering problem.   If you think you are experiencing some extreme emotional changes, seek help.   Go here to find out more information: http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/default.htm.    And see a doctor.    Please.    The sooner the better.   Symptoms can grow extreme without treatment.    For the people who love you, if not for yourself.

            But with all this self-reflection, I have come to ask myself some interesting questions involving my reactions to artistic experiences (and other’s as well.)   So often people watching, listening to, or looking at a work declare they do not like it, with the caveat “maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood.”   How often is this really true?    I’ve said it myself, but I mean it.   Really.   I rarely just drop the matter.  When I think that, I try to revisit it later to prove my hypothesis.    Was I truly in the wrong mood?    Sometimes, I truly was.    And the opposite can also be true: sometimes I’m in such a great mood, a piece can seem better than it probably is—using my own personal scale, naturally.   One man or woman’s masterpiece is another’s misfire.   [Which leads me to repeat one of my basic tenets of taste.  Only morons think there are intrinsic values that everyone shares.    No, Mozart’s works are not necessarily better than Britten’s .    Their music has very little in common.    I adore both of them.   Avocados and pears have pits.    Is one intrinsically better than the other?    Frankly, Mozart’s music is less complex—if you use that as a criteria, Britten is a better musician(!)    And nothing Verdi wrote remotely suggests he could write something on the scale of Berg’s Lulu, which proves neither one’s superiority nor inferiority.   And I’ve only mentioned operas.    The same goes for all the arts.    Time to get rid of the prejudices.    And to all who will continue to make the comparisons and find everyone other than the same “standard” artists wanting: maybe you’re just too lazy or too ignorant or even, maybe, you’re just too stupid to get what other artists are doing…ever thought of that?   At least one New York Times reviewer I’d like to say that to, because he seems to be a little of all of three.]

            So, my mood almost always dictates my reaction: but not just the first hearing, sometimes the second or fourth.    And many things I have heard, watched, seen more times than that.    This is where I find things get interesting.    In a sentimental mood, I just can’t make my way through a Elliott Carter piece.     His music isn’t sentimental.    It’s brilliant, and often wonderful (I am a big fan of his piano concerto and his vocal piece A Mirror On Which To Dwell) but requires different needs.    When I am in a clear-headed, probing mind-set, I can follow him to some far out places and get much excitement from the journey.    Usually, I love Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, truly love it, but not always.    Sometimes it just seems too overly familiar and perhaps a bit dull.    I can listen to the same performance a month later and feel completely different about it.    How many listener’s out there are feeling the same?     No one I know ever says that (s)he never appreciated, say, Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy until heard the second (or, gasp! the third) time.    But I know people who can listen to the same few pieces by Bach over and over and never be bored.   (I have to ask…How?)   

And what about those people who seem to dismiss anything not immediately ingratiating as useless, since “life is too short to listen to bad (useless, dull, ugly, complicated, ‘atonal’, modern, strange, new) things.”   Are they actually trying to like these new works?    Do they take into consideration their true feelings before they experienced them?     Do they also mean it when they say “maybe I was just in the wrong mood”?    Do they go back to give it a second chance?  Don’t get me wrong: if I think a work is “junk”, it is usually “junk” when (or if) I hear it again.    Lloyd Webber’s Cats is not Stravinky’s Requiem Canticles.    (And, yes, I did give Cats another hearing.   I’ve seen it.    It is utter junk.    I just needed to know a little more music before I could appreciate the Stravinsky.)

Well, life isn’t that short.    And ingratiating is overrated.    Cover your ears if your squeemish, but what the fuck does “ingratiating” even mean?     Every piece and composer I have mentioned so far can be ingratiating heard in the right way.   Yes, even Birtwistle.    “People listen to what they know” doesn’t explain it all.    I think mind-frame is a more accurate determiner.    Case in point: an audience consisting mostly of older opera fans watched a 90 minute German piece written in odd atonal beauties mixed with violent musical ‘attacks’ for lack of a better word.    The people in this audience were probably the same people who go to see Le Nozze di Figaro.   But they came ready to hear what they could get from it.    And the place was silent but for a couple of coughs.    (And I do mean a couple.)    The piece was Henze’s Phaedra.    The loud ovation at the end was genuine.    I was one of them—quite moved by its strange sonorities.    I have a recording off the radio, so I was somewhat familiar with it, but the first listen, I did not come away with much.    A second time, I was enraptured by it, and the third (the live performance) I was sure I was experiencing a masterpiece.    But had I gone on my first impression, I would most likely have stayed at home.    By the same token, the first time I heard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town, I thought it a gem.   But further listens have always left me somewhat cold.    It has its pleasures, still.   But as a whole?    I think I was just in a really good mood, so anything with some skill and some wit seemed brilliant.     Sometimes, being happy can just give you the wrong impression.    But I’ll keep listening ever so often.    Just in case, it was just my mood.

Freedom

The 4th of July is a big day for musicians (and other performers) so I celebrate the day not just for the country but for the men and women in it who are still able to do what they love and live by doing it.   With so much fighting over every penny, The Arts are the easiest things to cut.   For every win, like Gay Marriage in New York, we have a loss, like NEA dismantling.  Yes, gay marriage is an appropriate topic for this blog, because the number of free lance performers that will get benefits from it is a large one.    So celebrate who we are, all of us.   And yes, that is hard, especially when people go on TV and lie, distort, demonize to keep power (or gain it.)    Just don't listen to 1812 Overture!    You fools, it's written by a Russian about a war between Russia and France...as in War and Peace.   Why are you using Russian music to celebrate American Independence?    Play some Gershwin instead.    Or Berlin, or Bernstein, or Sondheim or Porter or Barber or Ives or ANYBODY other than Tchaikovsky.    (Play him any other day.)

Back from vacation

I just 'returned' from a stay-at-home vacation where many loved ones came to us, taking in hours of museums, theater, and music, while they were here.   Does everyone know The New York Public Library is celebrating it's 100th year?    Go to the main branch (if you haven't already.)    The exhibit there of just a tiny, tiny fraction of the holdings of the library will take your breath away...like an early draft of The Declaration of Independence written in Jefferson's hand.   Or sketches of a Beethoven work in his wild calligraphic scrawl.  And the free book of 100 people choosing their 'favorites' is a treat.    Don't forget to show your kids the actual stuffed animals that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.    Greatest of all?   The knowledge that anyone in the world can look at anything the library owns for free.    Always has been that way, always will be.

Now, to that wild few weeks of gorging on theater and opera--still reeling from it.    People being far from perfect, and art being created by people, not everything was without flaw, but all was filled with joys to be had for those willing to accept them.    Of the five live events that I wrote of last time, we had one masterpiece of a play with a woefully miscast character, one musical that was two thirds great with fine performances onstage along with the not-so, one divisive work with a towering performance, one masterpiece of operatic literature given an all-but-perfect performance / production...and one of the single most shattering, extraordinary nights in the theater it has ever been my privilege to experience.  In order of mention:

Arcadia is the masterpiece of theater writing with the serious casting flaw.    Set in the same house in two different time frames, 100 years apart, this is Tom Stoppard at his best, meaning as good as it gets.    I have loved reading the work over the years but have never been to a production and feel happy to have seen one filled with great actors.   Alas, the young woman playing the precocious young woman in the 'past' was abominable.   Sorry to be so cruel to a fellow performer, but damn, she was dreadful.  This is a serious disaster for a work about love where the said youngster finds her first blush leads to her demise.   In many ways, Thomasina finds the most 'growth' in the play, so the screeching, obnoxious, shallow characterization was a 'tragedy' not in the script.   Still, to see and hear this beloved product of Stoppard's brain was still enjoyable.   The rest of the cast could not be faulted, including the understudy who went on for one of the other major characters.    His name was John Cutmore Scott: he was superb.   Pity we did not see the understudy for the young woman.

The two thirds great musical was Billy Elliott.   Anything but toned down from the gritty movie, the tale of a spirited youth pursuing the improbable dream of being a ballet dancer in the midst of a miners strike during the Thatcher years is filled with pain, anger, hope, happiness, sadness, humor--and the twin results of loss for the miners as Billy moves on to his success far from his troubled home.    If only they had stuck to their guns and given us the grittiness and the fantasy without the assured-audience-approving Broadway excess, even contradictions, for the sake of a good number.   And those cloying kids playing 'cute'!    Yikes!    Thomasina times a dozen.   Several times, I wished for a gun, either to kill myself or the brats onstage overacting with hideous grins on their faces .    And the 'curtain call' was a complete negation of the story in front of it!   The miners 'lose' I wanted to shout!    Billy went on to be a major force in ballet, not a grinning tap dancer.    Why are all these desperate, forgotten men and women wearing tutus?    That is the authors' idea of humor?   Yes, seeing this young man tap after so much exertion the previous three hours had its own rewards--up to a point--but more along the lines of 'wow, the kid has unlimited energy' than 'wow, what a great ending'.    But the mindless throngs in the seats seemed to eat it up.    Not all of them, but most.    Give them what they want, I guess.    But 'I' did not.    Will commend the Billy.  He could sing, dance and act very well indeed (no small feet for a pre-teenager) and never fell into the trap of 'Gee, look Ma! I'm dancin' trap.   Well, other than the number with his cross-dancing friend and the end.    Luckily, the former had dancing dresses (don't ask) to steal your attention away from the kids being cutesy, and the end...finally ended.    But not before a giant sign lit up spelling Billy! Give me the gun.

The divisive play with the truly legendary performance was Jerusalem.    The jaw-dropping acting came from the unbelievably impressive Mark Rylance.    He was 'never forget it' good.     The play I could take or leave.  Yes, it had plenty of humor (I laughed often if a bit loudly for a few people around me) but a fair share of pretension, assuming the 'meaning' had something to do with the last vestiges of paganism being destroyed by modern technology and inhumanity.    (Just once, I'd like to see a play where the 'old ways' are the foolish ones, and the 'modern technological' world is a salvation from mindless adherence to destructive, knee-jerk religious fervor.   But I dream...)   But half the audience left without even agreeing on a 'meaning'--or if one needed to be present.    This is fine.   The rather ham-fisted metaphors were not, for me anyway.    The minute the Rylance character looked into the eyes of another and she shook from his magical powers, I began to silently groan.    Even before then, the 'message' seemed to me a little too telegraphed for comfort.    But, hey, many people who enjoyed it didn't think it meant anything more than a character study of one man's dissolution.    More power to them.

The operatic masterpiece given the beautifully successful production in Philadelphia is Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra.   Modern, allusive, literary (death knells to some), the piece is also filled with lyricism throughout to set the violence, both physical and emotional, in high relief.    Truly, despite its lack of tonality (though it has its own strange suggestion of it) the beauties pile up.    And what a fantastic--both meanings apply--production.    Superb singing throughout its small cast, a few strained notes from the women excepted, in a simple, direct, emotional, highly theatrical staging.    It was beautiful, too, just like the music.    I was only sad I could not see it more than once.     The brochure for next year's program promises a new production of one of my favorite Henze operas, Elegy For Young Lovers.    With a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman who gave us the words of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, it has long been known by smart music lovers as a(nother) masterpiece.    I'll be there, even if I have to shoot an overacting child actor to do it.

And that perfect night was, of course, Derek Jacobi in King Lear.    Words really cannot give the true impression.    Staged simply but soooooooo effectively.    Shattering.    Has to be repeated: shattering!!   Played so memorably by everyone.    Original, even with centuries of performances.     (Who will ever forget the storm scene?)     And Jacobi is unparalleled.   I mean it.   What a fantastic actor he is!    One-of-a-kind.    Unforgettable.   So arrogant in his foolish pride.   So pitiable in his madness.   So crushing in the final realization of his own failure.     A Lear for the ages.    What a masterpiece Lear is!    (My second favorite Shakespeare, Hamlet being my ultimate.)    In fact, what masterpieces I saw.   (Oh, and a pretty good musical and a so-so play made cherishable by its star.)

June

     Next month, I will have the extreme pleasure of fulfilling three decades long, unwavering dreams: see a marvelous play by a beloved playwright, witness a beloved actor take on the challenge of one of history's greatest roles, and experience a live performance of a wonderful opera by a beloved composer.   I have never had such a mind-boggling abundance of riches happening in such a short time.     Imagine...three things I have desired with a passion bordering on lunacy coming my way, all within a few weeks.    Funny what life pushes at you.    Dreams do occasionally come true.    The greater North East corner of The United States--naturally centered around New York--is home to places teeming with great art.   So here is an ode to the living example of 'good things come to those who wait.'
     The marvelous play is Arcadia by Tom Stoppard.   Like most of his oeuvre (he would appreciate the word), this was seen on Broadway shortly following its successful premiere in London.    Alas, I did not live here, so I missed out on the play the first time around.    And few regional theaters are willing to risk it.   First, the cast is large for all but the bigger groups.    The play is long.    And it requires many talented, skilled (no, they are not the same thing), experienced actors who are well versed in sophisticated language--and sophisticated humor--filled with technical jargon, philosophy, discussions about art and scholarship, and signs of higher education.    Yet they must bring out the feelings and conflicts with which these characters deal, for this is a highly emotional play for all its unfamiliar words.   So I found no locals to take on the challenge.    I was pacified by reading the text and hearing it only in my mind.   But what words!     The play is a peak of higher speech, even for Stoppard, certainly one of the most erudite writers of the past century.    Yet what humanity is there.   True, he assumes you will follow the action, even if you do not understand every word.    This requires an audience who is willing to watch and listen carefully, but the ride, if you take it, is a glorious one.    The new production has received mixed reviews, but I do not care: just to have it unfold before me is reward enough.    In my mind--a Stoppard junkie--this is the greatest play by a man who has produced quite a few of those during his (still busy) lifetime.    Count me in.
     The beloved performer in the historic masterpiece is Sir Derek Jacobi in King Lear.    Ever since I watched Jacobi play Hamlet (title role of my favorite Shakespearean work; King Lear is my second favorite) on a no-frills BBC production, I have been entranced.    Movies, television movies, taped plays, even sitcoms--he won an Emmy playing a very untalented Shakespearean actor in a priceless episode of Frasier--have come and gone over the years, but I have only managed to witness him in his medium, the stage, once in my life.    The play was Uncle Vanya and he was unforgettable.   I can think of no higher praise than to bear witness to the seemingly impossible: even his silences were riveting.    But Lear is the other role of a lifetime, and I have waited for most of mine to watch him do it.    He has the rare gift of finding new life in old phrases.   Even in that cheap, nay cheesy, BBC Hamlet, he makes you feel the pain, the frustration, the anger, and finally the resignation that makes the performance one-of-a-kind.    How rich the work proves, how heartbreaking.   Get the DVD, check for yourself.   The fine cast around him helps, included a surprisingly good Horatio, but he is the key to its success.    (As far as taped versions, only Olivier compares, in a vastly truncated text.    Richard Burton is not bad.    The rest?    Forgettable.)    And now Lear!    One of the regrettable losses coming from my living in Texas for so long is my missed opportunities of seeing him create so many cherishable characters onstage.    Video will have to do for most.    (If you come across him in Cyrano de Bergerac, buy it.   Immediately.)   I may cry before it starts.
     And the wondrous opera by the beloved composer is Phaedra by Hans Werner Henze.    I could not have been more than 20 when I stumbled across a recording of a black comedy called Der Junge Lord, an opera about, among other things, a singing monkey.    I thought, 'What an odd, difficult, beautiful, funny piece it was (and is.)'    Writing his own very personal variations on every 20th Century 'movement', he will place Neo-classicism next to 12-tone rows (of rather free implementation) next to a highly personal brand of tonality, mixed in his own inimitable way.    For the uninitiated, Henze is a God among composers for goodly sum of classical music lovers world wide.    (Don't believe me?    He had a major success translating one of his operas into Japanese.)    America has had many orchestras (New York Phil especially), opera companies (Santa Fe especially), chamber music groups, and soloists (two sets of guitar pieces written for Julian Bream) perform his works...but I have missed most of them.    Either I was not where they were, or I was not able to be there when they were where I was.    But now--an opera, his pinnacle of forms, even with such skill shown in most of the others.    As much as I treasure the recordings of so much of his concert music, nothing quite compares to the operas.    Phaedra is a recent one with a strange history.    He wrote the second act after awakening from a coma from which no one expected him to emerge.    He says it changed him, and the music that came after seems to prove he is right.    Myths have always fascinated him, and this work moves from a  fairly straightforward setting of the ancient tale to a second act of dreamlike, mercurial ruminations on the possible meanings inherent in it.    The music is brooding, angular, discordant one minute and lyrical, flowing, beautiful the next.    The melodies (yes, they are there) may sound difficult at times, but they are rewarding for the singers, always enabling them to create such human characters despite his abstraction.    I've sung some Henze, so I can attest to this fact.   He is a master of pace, variety, emotions--he exploits all his skills in this remarkable piece written in the remarkable Indian summer of life.    Though not a lengthy piece, it is a full one.    This is a peak in my experience with classical music.
     So June will bring in three great evenings.    I am nervous with anticipation.   Yet I do not fear disappointment.   The works are the things, even if in flawed in interpretation and / or execution.   May I have many more months like this one.

Life Upon the Wicked Stage...or in the Living Room

        Performers can be schizophrenic: they want to feel good about what they do yet want the audience to appreciate their work as well.   Most craved approbation when they were attracted to performing, and it does not always leave.   They want their fellow performers to be comfortable, the give and take to be easy and productive.   At best, they feel equal partners, each adding their skills to create art they are proud to present.  At worst, they can feel like a perpetual host, caring for the feelings of others, becoming leery of confrontation and failing to comfortably negotiate differences of opinion.   (Of course, there are some people who only care what they think about themselves, screw anyone who does not agree with their success.   I’ve been stuck with some of these.   They are usually horrible to work with, especially if you are the kind of person who wants to please and be pleased.    They think only of themselves, rarely consider another’s point of view, are myopic and blunt.    They do not know the true meaning of ‘collaborate.’   They can be quite good at what they do and become popular with audiences.    I still don’t want to work with them.   I have rarely experienced great ‘art’ with such people.   Most things require more than one person.   The only one of universal practice I can think of should be confined to the privacy of your own home.)  

Sometimes this Janus face spills over into their offstage lives as well.    They want to please, make the others in the group comfortable or laughing, ease tensions, so they begin to ‘perform’; to these people, parties, nights out, performances by others, etc. can be extremely good times…or extremely bad.    Not all personalities mesh, so ‘pleasers’ can come across as too vehement, self-centered, ignorant, or just plain bizarre.    When a sense of humor is shared, all will usually go swimmingly.   When it is not, time can crawl—through emotional cut glass.    Or if the two or three conversationalists are not on the same page, the effect will not always equal happy days.   And sometimes the person next to them is a non-performing egotist.    Some people, no matter what line of work, are just shitheads.   Who hasn’t been stuck at a table with them?   With time and experience, the performer might minimize the distress this might cause, chock it up to being infallible.   Alas, I have never learned to STOP trying to please which leads me to…

            I met some new people at an event recently and to prove how interested I was in what was being said, I engaged in banter, asked stories about their lives, told (probably too many) stories about my own, but egregiously misunderstood one of the stories being told to me.   What I thought was a ludicrous tall tale told as exaggerated black humor ended up being an almost unbelievably bizarre truth.   Naturally my ‘dark’ puns came across as a terribly insensitive view of a poor woman’s horrific plight.    I tried to tell humorous, touching stories to ease out of it, but I began to overcompensate because the harm was done.    I am sure my point of view was not understood.   I felt sick about it.   The teller never said an unkind word, but that was not necessary: I said plenty to myself.   But really, I meant no harm.    Sometimes things just don't work out like you think they will.   Why bring it up?

            Performances, like new meetings, are tricky things.   An audience may be able to follow you to anywhere you take them, enjoy the ride, and everyone comes out happy, mentally and /or emotionally stimulated.   Or some of the audience can follow you and love your work, and some not so much.    Or a couple of people can enjoy what they are seeing and hearing while the vast majority does not.    Or no one likes it.    Sometimes this happens because the performers are having an off day.   Even the greatest performers on Earth are not always great.   Sometimes the wrong audience shows up for the type of art you are giving them, so no, or mis-, communication occurs.   And sometimes you just get a roomful of shitheads.    An unappreciated performance can be a living hell.   Let me emphasize that: living hell!   Performers (and party guests) are human, no matter the skill or intention    Even if what they are presenting is not to your liking—or they screw up royally—try keeping this is mind.    The ‘pleasers’ are already doing that.    If you are not one, perhaps you might attempt seeing things from their point of view occasionally.   It might be refreshing.   Sometimes, great things come from it.    Like art.  And if you are simply incapable of empathy or just cannot refrain from judging the person next to you, or in front of you, as inferior to yourself—stay home and watch Doctor Who.

Other Side of the Coin

Just in case you thought I never say anything about what I love, here is a (partial) list of what makes musical life rewarding, thrilling, challenging, irreplaceable (in no particular order):

I love to discover a new piece that surprises me, thrills me, moves me, engages me, tickles me and / or takes me on an enthralling musical trip.    I hope I never stop finding new operas, concerti, symphonies, quartets, vocal works, orchestral works, musicals, jazz tunes, pop tunes, and things that fit none of these categories.    And I love to share works I love with someone who hasn't heard them yet.   So if you're looking for suggestions...

I love to revisit a piece of music I have not heard in years to "rediscover" its pleasures.   If I hear it live, all the better.    I have so many recordings of so many wonderful compositions, I could do this every day and not repeat for a decade--easily, with some leftover.    But I'm including short pieces as well, in various musical forms other than "classical" including jazz, Broadway musicals, movie scores, and even some "pop" (though not any recent because the radio stations mostly play shit...unless it's "Country", which does have some talented people doing talented things, I just don't like it.)

I love to see a wonderful singing actors give performances that stay with you forever.    And again, I do not just mean classical performers, but certainly many of those, too.   Placido Domingo performing Idomeneo and Die Walkure, Deborah Polaski in Elektra, Renee Fleming singing La Traviata and Eugene Onegin (and others), Natalie Dessay in Ariadne auf Naxos and Lucia di Lammermoor (and others), Thomas Hampson in Das Lied von der Erde and Tannhauser, Victoria Clark in The Light in the Piazza, Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens, Bernadette Peters in Gypsy and A Little Night Music, Leo Norbert Butz in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (yes, I know it was a light comedy, but he was priceless), etc. etc....really, a full list would be dull, so I'll stop now.

Seeing a stage production that is so right in (most) every detail as to be as close to perfect as you will get: Private Lives with Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman, Grey Gardens with Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson giving the performances of their lives, The Light in the Piazza with Victoria Clark and Kelli O'Hara, South Pacific also with O'Hara and Paulo Szot, Nine with Antonio Banderas (I didn't expect him to be great either but I was wrong) and Chita Rivera but everyone was memorable including Tony winner Jane Krakowski, at at the Met: Elektra, Moses und Aron, Lulu, From the House of the Dead, Eugene Onegin, War and Peace.  (I have been unlucky when it comes to the more "standard" rep: some poor performances or bad staging or weak conducting--or all of these, alas.  I have yet to see anything that did not have some elements that were at least good and quite often great, still...one of these days.)

A live performance by an instrumentalist that is seared in my memory (here are a few): Jorge Bolet in recital, B.B. King playing Lucille at an impromptu midnight jam session with Bobby "Blue" Bland, Gil Shaham playing the Brahms concerto like a matador slaying a bull, Emmanuel Ax in recital, Mose Allison becoming a musical madman while the audience expecting your "normal" jazz set just smiled blankly in his direction, Christopher Parkening playing exquisite miniatures, Javier Oviedo and Carla McElheny at Weill Hall (a true collaboration), and the greatest single performance of my life: to celebrate his 75th year on Earth, Mstislav Rostropovich playing a new work and Dvorak concerto.    (He is one of my favorite musicians who ever recorded and I was finally lucky enough to hear him "live" playing the Dvorak like no one else can.    I was not alone in my tears.) 

Videos of operas or shows that I was not lucky enough to see live but still "come through" as great events (not always true of performances on video as opposed to "films"): Hamlet with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart, original company of Sunday in the Park With George, Cyrano de Bergerac also with Jacobi, Les Troyens in Paris for Berlioz' Bi-centennial, original company of Into the Woods (though I have a few quibbles about the show) original company of Passion, War and Peace also in Paris, Bernadette Peters in concert in London, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake with the original cast (I did see it later after he revised it...which only lessened its impact), Peter Pears in Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, then Philip Langridge in the same two operas, Birtwistle's The Minotaur, Henze's Der Junge Lord, Ian McKellen in King Lear, From the House of the Dead--same production that came to the Met, etc.    I actually enjoy many videos of stage performances, so I just named some I am particularly fond of.

Brilliant, special, beloved audio recordings: 100's.   Really good recordings: 1000's.   One (wonderful) choice from "each" type: cast album City of Angels, Ella Fitzgerald Song Books (I know, I cheated: this boxed set has 13 discs.   I love all of them.) Simon Rattle conducting Mahler's 2nd Symphony, Rostropovich playing Bach Suites, Henze's The Bassarids, Queen's Greatest Hits, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.

Talking with someone who actually knows and loves classical music that is beyond the standard rep.   Even better if they know some of my own favorites that are really beyond the standard rep, like Birtwistle, Henze, Norgard, Rihm, Busoni, Schulhoff, Krasa, Cavalli, Chabrier, Lidholm, Rimsky-Korsakov operas, Ades, Creston, Gerhard, Dutilleux, Dvorak operas other than Rusalka, Goldschmidt, most of Britten, Szmanowski, Schreker, Bernstein classical pieces, probably a few I'm just not thinking of at the moment, many others that I quite enjoy but do not love and pieces by the well-played composers that are less well known.   (That list would be book length.)    These talks have been some of the most delightful hours I have spent.    Their rarity makes them all the more treasurable.

And last for now: experiencing music with someone you love.  In any form.  Nothing as sweet.  May I have a lifetime more of these precious moments.

P.S. Yes, I know I included some non-musical things but they were connected in spirit.

Prejudices

I believe everyone has some sort of prejudice about something, and I am no exception.     My prejudices are almost all musical.     I've mentioned a few before.    Confession is supposed to be good for something so here is a list of things, actions, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors that make me want to scream at people or inform them of the fact that they are small-minded lazy idiots.   In case you've missed them.    In no particular order:

I loathe Wagnerites.    Mind you, I'm not talking about people who love Wagner's music even though they can hear it's excesses and redundancies, notice the flawed libretti, the uncomfortable political overtones, the all-but-impossible demands on singers requiring even the most tolerant listener to accept some really ugly sounds roaring across the the orchestra pit.    You know, smart, knowledgeable music lovers who accept Wagner as one of the greats and add him to their collection of performances, recordings, DVD's, etc.    Notice how I said one of the greats.    One of many.

These are not Wagnerites.     They would be the people who cannot be bothered to listen, view, learn, discuss, ponder anyone other than Wagner.   Who see every performance they can get into of every production of every one of his works and nothing else.   Nothing else.    Who know every cast of every minute of music ever played at Bayreuth.    Who are horrified if they are ever done in translation.     Who believe his music is the pinnacle so why would you ever listen to anything else?     Those people.   They flock to every work of his when it appears at the Met.   You can find them at Walkure if you go.     They will be the jerks pontificating during the intermissions.     Shame it's against the law to just walk up and slap them.     Or scream "pull your heads out of your asses...there is a whole millennium of music being played and it's wonderful, too.     And some of it is not even opera!"

And I loathe people who only know the "war horses" and rarely if ever venture far afield of them.    Who know some Bach, but only the orchestral stuff (and they're not quite sure of the names); all the Mozart that's on the Amadeus soundtrack (their favorite classical cd); Beethoven's popular symphonies, a few piano sonatas, maybe some quartets (but maybe not); Brahms' violin concerto, his 1st Symphony, maybe The German Requiem (or maybe not); Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, sixth symphony, Romeo and Juliet, 1812, (but Eugene Onegin? certainly not;) Dvorak's cello concerto and The New World Symphony; Schubert's unfinished, maybe one or two more symphonies, the Trout (song and quintet); and a whole slew of one-offs by big names like Schumann, Handel, Haydn, and even Saint-Saens (Carnival of the Animals, it's soooo charming.)     They are the reason we have fourteen thousand recordings of Beethoven's Fifth.     They are the people who tell you how wonderful the "classics" are when they find out you are a classical musician but stare at you when you answer their question about what you are working on at the moment.    They rave "don't you just love Lang Lang?"   Or explain why they no longer buy season tickets.      They should be locked in their houses with their 22 cd's of the Brahms' violin concerto whenever any hall is playing anything worth hearing.  Not that any classical music would be filling their homes.     They probably don't listen to any  anymore.    Too many programs on TV.     "Don't you just love Glee?"

And I want to shoot every person who brings up in conversation how they "hate" new music...but then can't name any of it.   Because they have no idea what's being written.    They still think Schoenberg is new.   They might venture out every decade or so to hear something people have been "raving" about, but they won't like it that much.    No matter what it sounds like.     It could be as popular in style as The Rhapsody in Blue but they won't like it and will add it to the (non-existent) list of reasons why they hate new music.    Well, new music hates you back!

And then we have the "I only listen to..."symphonies, or opera, or chamber music, or solo piano, or vocalists singing favorites, or "crossover", or Bach, or Beethoven, etc.   But unlike Wagnerites, they do not have everything memorized down to the note.    In fact, they stopped listening to classical music "as much as they used to" because their lives got too hectic or their work changed or they got HBO.   And "yeah, we should go to a concert again.     Let us know when you're performing!"    "Sure, I'll leave those seats empty in your honor."

Of course, there's the house favorite: "I know what I like."    (Yes, I'm talking to you.)    No...you like what you know ...as of whatever you knew when you stopped trying to learn anything.    Therefore, anything that sounds like what you know is good.    Anything that does not sound like what you know is not.     Why would you want to bother learning how to appreciate anything different [read: more difficult] when you have all these favorites at your fingertips?    I have yet to met anyone who says this and means Stockhausen and Babbitt or Birtwistle and Carter.    In fact, I'm not sure I've met anyone who has said that cliche who would even know anything about those four.     Probably not even all of their first names.     (An admission:  I think Stockhausen and Babbitt are overrated but I have heard and studied their music, quite a bit actually, and formed my opinion afterward.    I'm not saying I don't understand their music.    I think I have a pretty good grasp of it.   And I actually do like some of Stockhausen, parts of his operas in particular.   But he had a buttload of really bad ideas and had no shame in sharing them.    I like exactly one piece by Babbitt.    It's short and for guitar.     A guitar can make anything tolerable.)

And then there is the brother of the above: "Oh, I just don't like [fill in the blank.]     I've tried to appreciate him, but his music just doesn't speak to me."  Right.   Except they can't really describe any of it, or remember when they last heard any of it, or what exactly the aspects are that they don't like.   And it's never Bach or Mozart or Brahms but someone like Berlioz or Schoenberg or Stravinsky.    Because no one would dare admit they don't like Mozart.     Well, I would be more impressed if they said Mozart but loved Schoenberg.     Fat chance.

Or the sister of the above: "I don't like much 20th Century music."    Or more than a couple of hours worth, total, unless you mean Puccini.   Schoenberg, Strauss, Prokofiev, Ravel, Berg, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Milhaud, Webern, Janacek, Bartok, Poulenc, Copland, Britten, Shostakovich,  Barber, Messiaen, Henze, Carter, Crumb, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Adams, and Ades are all interchangeably uninteresting (assuming they have even heard music by all of these people.)    And this is to ignore the dozens of others they have never heard...and never will.    "Certainly none of these people can compare to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven."  Well, those people can't compare with each other.    You can't really compare different musics as far as worth.    It's a useless waste of time, and personal taste is the only real arbiter.   All of these people have written wonderful music.   Also some of those people you've never heard.     The world is richer for having the B minor Mass and the War Requiem just to randomly pick two works.

Of course, I meet the tiny minority of music students (usually composition majors) who only like 20th Century music, especially the most complex...or the most simple.    Hopefully, they will come in contact with Monteverdi or Handel or Berlioz in a sizzling performance and expand their range.   If not, we have the happy knowledge that we won't be listening to too much of their music either, so the history of music wins this cosmic battle.     No one without appreciation of the past makes any kind of lasting impression on the present--my reinterpretation of an old saying.

Or the "I love opera!" people who mean they love opera singers.     And mostly retired and / or dead ones.   They can name every Callas recording.    Have shelves filled with Caruso and Flagstad and Bjorling and Nilsson and Corelli and Sutherland and Caballe plus a few favorites that are not necessarily as well-known so they can claim superiority over the mere casual fan (Magda Olivero is a big one.)    Yet they bash any singer today who has any measure of acclaim unless they are wildly popular yet thoroughly mediocre--then they hear some direct connection to one of the stars above.    Sort of an Emperor's New Clothes...only they, and their truly gifted counterparts, can see and hear why so-and-so is so fabulous.    And the (truly) greatest singers of the present age are not.    Naturally, they know everything by Bellini and Verdi but can't name more than three operas written after Puccini they that are completely familiar with.   But they keep buying their season tickets and priding themselves on their knowledge of the horrible decline in singing.    My response to them is "expletive deleted you, too."

And last (for today) are the snobs who will never admit someone who can write great "popular" music can be any good at "classical".     How Gershwin songs are wonderful, but An American in Paris is for people who don't know real classical music.   Or Bernstein's West Side Story is great, but A Quiet Place (if they even know it) is second rate.     If they don't know that one, they are sure to know one of his symphonies or Mass or Arias and Barcarolles to hold up as inferior.     Or Aaron Copland could only write simple "folk-like" music...everything else is sub-par.    ("What is it with that piano concerto?")   Or Sondheim's Passion or Sweeney Todd do not belong in an opera house, being "mere" musicals.    In fact, they don't understand why all these classically trained singers are wasting their time with them.    Or Weill only wrote those cabaret tunes for Communist musicals, didn't he?    God, who would want to hear an opera by him?  And so forth.    I just smile at these imbeciles.    They are missing out on glorious, difficult, memorable pieces that make quite a bit of "classical" music written by "classical" composers sound paltry.    Fine.   More seats for me.    And by the way, Weill wrote some wonderful operas.