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?