Monday, October 10, 2011

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.

1 comment:

  1. Actually zombie opera might have some appeal--to the young especially. Could be the greatest thing since the Frankenstein monster's version of "Putting on the Ritz" in Young Frankenstein. And what better piece than "From the House of the Dead"? I'll call The Producers to have them back the show. Thanks for the idea.

    In all seriousness, I empathize. Enjoy what you have on DVD and CD, I suppose, and save yourself the money. You can even dress up for it, maybe go stand in a queue somewhere first if you like. Or make puppets, and have them "sing" along with the music. Imagine a Cookie Monster doll singing the role of Baron Jaroslav in Vec Makropulos. In these tough times, you have to improvise.

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