FAREWELL MET...IT WAS GREAT!

I did the second of my two annual Metropolitan Opera intermission feature gabfests this past weekend. The opera was Wagner's Lohengrin, in a controversial staging by Robert Wilson. There were no sets. The stage cyc was lit blue, white or -very briefly green. There were beams of light at right angles. Stage movements were stylized slo-mo. Costumes were plain, in blues, dark wine red for Ortrud, gray for the men. And I loved every minute of this. I found it very moving, focusing entirely on Wagner's magnificent music, with the light washes and movements filling in just enough to tell the story. I expect this was my last Met broadcast. The management is changing. The production team, my second, that invites me is being replaced. But what a twenty plus year ride I've had! I met great people and I heard performances from the best seats in the house I will never forget, and got lunch, yet! Some of these people made ME seem shy.

I got smashed at an RCA "do" in 1983 held to celebrate the Metropolitan Opera's 100th anniversary. RCA producer Richard Mohr was hovering near the bar. He had hired most of the famous, now elderly (most in heaven today) opera stars in the room. Richard had recently been named Producer of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. They had been on air since 1931. He said to me You look like you're under 100, do you want to be on the air? If you can speak I'll take you. At that point I nearly couldn't speak. I was fascinated by a well preserved diva, sixty if she was a day, in a red dress slit up to were you could count her...never mind. Anyway, I said yes and a few weeks later there I was.

The panel on that day (the opera was Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin') included of George Jellinek, President of WQXR in New York, author, teacher; and Alberta Masiello, a Met pianist and conductor who counted Maria Callas among her pupils.
Then there was me, who sold records at Barnes and Noble. And I went back every year.
My mother in Boston was hysterical. She kept calling my answering machine: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I had no idea what the hell you were talking about but it sounded wonderful I just wish those people would stop singing! Your Aunt Mary called me and said for chrissakes my kids barely speak English!" Ma heard one more broadcast and passed away.

Richard Mohr was a curmudgeonly type who liked his gin and tonic and who had spent fifty years as a record producer for RCA and felt that in his old age he could finally say whatever the hell he wanted to about any bloody artist living or dead, and did! I was asked to write an obit for him and the Met broadcast it a few years ago. It's somewhere on this blog. Richard's assistant was the great Miss Vinnie Volpe, a diminutive Italian lady from New Jersey who knew where all the bodies, fictional and real were buried. She weighed ninety pounds and was somewhere between seventy and ninety and feared no one. If you hadn't finished your lunch before the opera began she would wrap the leftovers in the the Met's best linen napkin and you could take your chicken hash right into the the center box, the best seats in the house. People like Leontyne Price, Cesare Valletti, Donald Trump and Rudi Giuliani would sit in those seats, along with Christopher who sold records at Barnes and Noble. God forbid you were in the wrong seats. She told the CEO of Texaco to move and he did. One day a large group of beefy men in Armani had the adjoining box. Miss Volpe said, Oh look there's John Gotti! He smiled and bowed to her.

I cried when Miss Volpe died. She would tell Richard to have me on a lot "because he can't afford good seats and he needs a meal." Nobody, but nobody else in my entire life has ever looked at me and said I needed a meal.

Richard would go on about his departed favorites, whose recordings he had produced: Stokowski, "the best ears in the business, ever".
Toscanini "A pussycat, he never gave me a bit of trouble" unlike that maestro's reputation for a Vesuvian temper. He got a kick out of soprano Zinka Milanov. "Zinka would go into this dive opposite the old Met on thirty ninth street just before a performance and she'd bark "Gimme a sviss cheeeeese on rye vit plenty moooostard!" and then damned if she wouldn't cross the street and sing an Aida to knock you out! "

Richard had flashcards which he waved at us during the-live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience broadcasts. They said, longer, shorter, five minutes, stretch and shut up. Period. You would look at these cards and try not to giggle. Once in a while he'd let me host the panel. His stage whispers on live radio were terrifying. "What an asshole this jerk is" he'd hiss at me between clenched teeth 10 inches from the mikes.



And the guests! I grew up with Miss Masiello, who shed tears on cue at any mention of Callas ("Onassis, he keeel her, he murder her") and who was a chain smoker and would light right up in her wheelchair and cough and growl away. She switched to Nicorette but it was too late and she died. Ma in Boston would complain, why did they let that man talk so much. I still miss Alberta. Father Owen Lee, August Professor of Classics at University of Tornoto was one of my favorites and what a privilege to know him! He'd laugh at my Boston Irish funeral stories
("Grammy was laid out for three days until the bootlegger called and said he couldn't make it! Grampy almost had a stroke") and he would explain Wagner, Nietzsche, Sophocles and basketball in a way that would have you enthralled and begging for more. Albert Innaurato, playwright and commentator shocked audiences by saying "Years ago the nuns in Philly told me, Oh dago boys don't go to college" Edward Downes would be gracious and polite to all and sip his light seven n seven and invited me to his home in the Dakota upstairs from Yoko Ono and dictate his memoirs. They are also on this blog!

Richard died. Vinnie died. Miss Masiello died. Mr. Jellinek retired. Edward died. Later on the broadcasts became more professional, more polished and not quite so warm or exciting. It was run by professionals who treated us all with class and respect. No gossip. No more gin at lunch. Sigh. I was cast as the brat and ran with it. Why not? I had enough good stuff to say that I got away with mistakes, like confusing a canon and a fugue, and this past weekend I went on about American Idol when clearly my co guests had no clue what I was talking about. That's okay. America knew.

If I never go to New York again, I have twenty years of memories of fantastic people
to keep me company. Miss Masiello found Callas in heaven. Edward Downes is talking to Wagner, in perfect German no doubt. Miss Volpe is telling God that her cloud is too damned crowded, and she's crying for joy at the sight of Renata Tebaldi singing in heaven. Richard Mohr is rolling his eyes and holding up his SHUT UP flashcard.

I heard tremendous performances: Leonie Rysanek as the Kostelnicka in Jenufa; Domingo and Voigt in Die Walkure, Pavarotti's final-ill advised-Radames in Aida-Renee Fleming as Violetta and Rodelinda. She made a believer outta me.
War and Peace. Christa Ludwig as Klytamnestra in Elektra, one of her last performances. Thomas Hampson and Susan Graham in Werther; Dimitrova in Turandot-whew! And I will never forget what a compliment from Miss Masiello or a hug from George Jellinek meant to me.

I began attending performances nearly thirty years ago, in standing room. Very top of the house. You could get vertigo but oh my you could hear. Standing room was $2 back in 1979. Today its $20. And last Saturday, after seeing this marvelous Lohengrin from the best seats in the house, seats I could never afford, I came back a few hours later for Tosca, not because I really needed to see Tosca but because I wanted to be closer to heaven to thank a lot of old ghosts, and to say goodbye...from standing room.

WE DID DICHTERLIEBE!!!!!

Ben and I performed Dichterliebe the other day in toto for the Ladies (capital L)
of the Worthington-Columbus Symphony Support Unit.
Our hostess, Mrs. Hamilton said to me, "I'm on the young side of this crowd, and I'm seventy-nine. The last time you spoke to us was it Liselotte's house. She died, you know. Went in with an aneurysm poor soul, they were working on her and she said Leave me alone! I'm ninety-two and I want to watch my soap operas. So they left her alone and she passed away watching The Young and The Restless in intensive care! Do you want another brownie?"

Ben and I went up there and did thw whole thing, soup to nuts.
The Ladies, over 30 of them in one living room! made cooing noises
and the terms "adorable" and "too fat" were muttered beneath the smiles.
Ben was adorable. I was...

Even with some adjustmeents for hearing aids and the plethora of Breck and
Alberto VO 5, it was a lovely morning.
Ben and I worked hard. My German wasn't awful, and if I didn't sound like Dieskau I still made music and told the story. Unrequited love and the war between our physical and spiritual natures. I came into my own telling The Ladies: "Listen for the words HERZ, SCHMERZ and GELIEBTER. There's the whole friggin' history of music right there!"

After this, how about the Hermit Songs or Fiancailles pour rire?
I'm bitchin' to go on, and The Ladies will always be with us,
even Liselotte --in heaven watching The Edge of Night.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 15

Ben and I are preparing for an actual performance next week for The Ladies, God bles them, well to do matrons who have supported the local symphony-indeed, founded it, for fifty years. There'll be a lovely suburban living room filled with spring suits,
VO-5 hairspry and great grandmother's cocktail time jewlry. There'll be plnenty of smiles, a few naps and a table filled with lime gren jello molds, french water biscuits and fresh fruit. Not a chocolate cake or pastrami sandwich in sight.

(Years ago I spoke to some such gruop and was offered a sherbert vegetable concoction and The Head Lady said, "For God's sake Helen, you can't give that to a MAN!" And out came a large greasy roast beef sandwich. I tried to demure, but no, the roomful gasped in delight as I wolfed down every bit of the thing ("God love him, they don't pay him mch and he probably never gets a real meal"...I weighed 220 lbs at the time!)

(And if you think I'm making fun of The Ladies I'm the first to tell you that without Ladies anywhere in this country there would be no performing atrs. Local societies always start there, and grow because of their generoisty and devotion and because wisely the husbands do as they're told)

Back to Dichterliebe: Ben and I have been preparing for this since last fall.
I never wanted to do an actual performance because I don't want to judged as a singer. As an amatuer in the best sense of that word: for love, yes-okay. The rehearsal process has been lively and instructive. It's been a special oasis for me in the midst of writing scripts, ducking managment, school work and watching too much TV. And again, the cycle is a gift as is all music. The more you hear the newer it all gets. Small things were not obvious to me. Holding notes for their full value, especially when they are set against dissonant chords. Making the words "shmerz" "Engel" "Rhein" "Blumen" "Herz"-words used so often by Heine- have a different meaning that matches the musical setting. Expressing the WHY even when there's nothing to sing, especially in the pauses between songs. Patrick Woliver, my patient and fantastic teacher reminds me: Remember you are the face of this work even when you have nothing to sing. There's no time off here until the cycle ends."

I don't regret not being a singer. I don't regret that finding an instrument to express what I know to be true of Dichterliebe, based on music and text-has taken so long. Music at its best is always a journey.

Onto The Ladies, then.

SARAH CALDWELL

It never occurred to me that Sarah Caldwell would die and I doubt it occurred to her either.

Die she did, last week at her home in Maine, age 82.

Sarah was the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera (1975).
She was the founder and artistic director of the Opera Company of  Boston (1958-1990).
She had no theatre to call her own. She staged operas in hockey rinks, in a cyclorama building in a seedy part of Boston, she staged operas in an outdoor flower market, and later made do with an abandoned movie house with sticky floors and you don't want to know the rest.

Out of nothing, on a stage no more than thirty feet deep, with half the floorboards missing, Sarah staged-brilliantly-and conducted-poorly-the American stage premiere of Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens-an operatic retelling of the Trojan War deemed unperformable because of its length and scenic demands by Berlioz himself. Sarah did the whole thing, complete with Trojan horse. I was a teen aged chorister and one of several who popped out of the horse's rear end to cry 'Italie! Italie' and hurl myself onto a nest of Athenian maidens. Two of them had been classroom teachers in Lexington, Mass.,  so it got a little awkward. Sarah's production of War and Peace had you honest to God believing yourself in the grandest ballroom in St. Petersburg or the most desolate steppe in all Russia. Napoleon himself-the wonderful late Donald Gramm-strutted across the creaking stage, two cannon from the local army base museum following him. Sarah's producing of Don Quichotte came complete with windmill, which Don Quixote himself, a wonderful 7 foot basso called Noel Tyl, rode fearlessly.

Sarah gave the American premiere of Verdi's five act french version of Don Carlos, complete with-lamentable-ballet-and you weren't in a theater on the edge of Boston's combat zone, you were in Imperial Spain five hundred years ago, a dangerous place ruled by an unforgiving church.

How did she do all this? As to assembling the actual productions I don't know.
She only rehearsed at night, leaving off at around 6 a.m. She lived on coffee, donuts and burgers and had the 300 lb girth to show for it.

Her stage directions were simple and clear. Her rehearsal techniques were a disaster and her administrative gifts non existent. Boston Edison shut the power off before more than one opening night, but on would go the lights and somehow, magic happened. It really was a miracle.

Sarah never understood the word NO. Lack of funds, hurt feelings, ethics, whatever were little part of her. She would have found a way to stage 'strategic planning' to Berio or Shostakovitch but she'd make no other sense of such concepts. She was the show, hers was the vision and even today there are bodies for miles. But at least she HAD a vision, and everything she did as an artist came exactly from the score.
I'm glad I no longer have to work for her. I'm sorry the company self destructed and closed in 1990.
When it was great it was great.

Sarah 's up moving around the clouds in heaven and probably dodging her creditors, God bless her.

OPERA COMPANY X COLLAPSES

This is a rant.
I know you know I seldom rant. (Don't start).
But I want to get some sort of conversation going with top artists and
administrators about this:

Opera X was in its twenty fifth season, serving a community of just over 1 million, with three performances each of four operas per year. The venue had recently been changed from a centrally located 1920s movie house riot with no stage to a 1950s university campus municipal auditorium with no charm but at elast some sort of backstage.

Front of house there is no ambience.
Think 1956 high school auditorium. The campus neighborhood of bars, pizza places and tatoo parlors with or without pain offer little to the opera's rather well heeled core audience.

Strong marketing and development have never-except for a fabulous marketing director long departed-been in place. In recent years the comanpy was run by an administrator who chanelled Diaghilev, only Diaghilev didn't answer back. Lots of expensive trips, lots of money spent, lots of panache, nothing translated to quality of product on stage.

The company is now in the toilet. Maanger has left with a lot of nice trips and perks on the company tit which has gone down a number of cup sizes.
Now this is a football oriented community. If it doesn't fart and wear cleats
most people aren't inertested. OTOH, the community supports a fine full time sypmhony, wonderful theatre and ballet, fine schools of music and the arts and a 24/7 all classical radio network. There's a thriving gay community-good news for arts administrators of every stripe and if you haven't figured THAT out yet, go to your room.

What went wrong? The promise of operatic sophistication resulted in a move to a hall the audience hated. There was a fine production of Aida and a good Hansel and Gretel.
Threepenny Opera was done in by a horrible production, simulated fellatio and the F word crowed at every opportunity including on the projected titles. The core audience walked out and the young people on a campus of 50,000 stayed away because noone knew or cared how to market to them.

The board is made up of nice people who don't know Bellini from Blowjobs.
A production of Floyd's "Susannah" was discouraged because "We don't want that modern music". Board memebers liked the IDEA of supporting opera without understnading what opera is, or only if they could consider the product a decoration to their own social lives.. Most of them are generous, smart and charming. They bought into the argument that if you throw money at it, it will thrive. Look at your public schools. Levies are voted in all the time. Are your kids being better educated? Money has little to do with creative progrmaiming and opera production. Aside from paying the best people to do the work. Creativity and ingenuity coupled with financial need and lots of hard work can produce fantastic opera. I was raised by Sarah Caldwell. There was no one so fiscally impossible and so creative. Remind me to tell y'all about Prokofiev's War and Peace on a twenty foot stage that made the Kirov look like Ted Mack's amateur Hour.

But now, in this electronic age is the time to use music and drama, to use stories, as tools to reach people, to make them think about this crazy world, to offer them a look at sensitivity, beauty teach all of us the perils of violence and greed (The RING anyone?), let us laugh at ourselves, get a look at how people lived two centuries ago and prove that then and now we all laugh and cry at the same things (women, men, sex and money) La boheme, Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Aida, Carmelites, all of their messages resonate today. And they all offer bloody good tunes.

How to revive an opera company.

1. The current board moves to Florida and stays here.

2. The new board is formed because the need to prudce opera is in their blood, and they understand WHY they are doing it and what it will do for the community

3. Insist on toal creativvity. Encourage risk.

4. Cheap affects deos not equla creativity. The public ssees thorugh them and is turned off. Lose the sex acts and cursing.

5. MARKETING MARKETING MARKETING...Knowing how to SELL and understand completelty what the product is and WHY

6. Board meembers and paid staff not buying into this should stay home and watch Larry King Live.

7. Be preapred to talk to anyone who will listen of the importance of what the comany is trying to do. Speak in context of struggles, worldview, joys, sorrows, fun. And learn how to tell a dirty joke.

8. Insist on complete fidelity to the score and text. Mozart and Verdi don't need help.

End of rant.
Arts administrators need to motivate funding sources and beguile the public.
Humor and passion are important.
Passivity is not.

CP

still bummed about Anna Moffo.....

HOW NOT TO STAGE AN OPERA

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO AT THE MET or
WHO THE HELL SPIKED THE AMYL NITRATE!

I try to be as tolerant as the next guy and I realize I'm sitting here in Ohio and nobody is beating down the doors asking me to take over the veil of tears that is opera,but Jeez Louise when Leonora is dressed like Scralett O'Hara's first communion with seventy pounds of shmatte shlepping around when she is suposed to be eloping in secret and its SPAIN for chrissakes and presumably above 80 degrees F and then the tenor Licitra who is a nice young kid with a good voice comes strolling on like he's looking for a place to pee...you know you are in trouble.

The sets were large, brown, ugly and claustrophic.
And dear God, don't run the English titles...Io muioio! Giustio cielio! and all that shit doesn't translate. The audience Saturday afternoon was trying not to giggle and failing. Up in the box with Father Lee I stifled a belch from the prime rib lunch and death by chocolate and thought, why are all these people screaming. I especially loved Don Carlo or whoever the hell it was lurching around and taking his godammed time to die, thank you very much. What was he gonna do? Moon the audience? It would probably have been a better show, not that you would have seen anyone's golden globes because it was dark, dark, dark and dark! No sun in this Spain. It looked more like Manchester, New Hampshire. The ticket they gave me cost $320 that's WITHOUT lunch but you do get a semi private loo at least. And the whole thing was like watching the Marx Brothers. There was nothing moving or magisterial about it at all...singers wandered in and out like waiting for the bus. Nobody looked at any one else. It was Oh fuck WHERE is the next note going to come from. Even Ramey, who still has the vocal presence should let me cherish my memories!

Like I said kids, ain't nobody asking me. FORZA is the bad luck opera. Leonard Warren died in the midst of it. My buddy Albert Innaurato wrote hysterically of a Forza production at La Scala in 1997..look for it in Opera News, LA SCALA TEMPLE OF DOOM 1997...check the archives at the Opera News web site. Close your eyes and listen to Tebaldi and Del Monaco or Price and Beronzi and use the $320 for choclate or zoloft.

ANNA MOFFO

I don't usually weep for deceased opera singers but the death of Anna Moffo reminds me that nobody stays young forever.
Moffo will be remembered primarily I suspect as a very beautfiul woman, which indeed she was. Her death last week at age 73 came thirty years after the short lived prime of her voice. Her career began in Italy in the mid fifties, and there were still some good performances to be heard until around 1975. After that it was chancy at best and horrible at worst. Those of you born after 1975 would not have heard her at her best, but her many recordings still offer a lot of pleasure.

Traviata-Violetta was her signature role
La rondine
Madama Buttefly
Luisa Miller
Villa-Lobos, Canteloube, Rachmaninoff with Stokowski
Rigoletto
Marriage of Figaro
Falstaff

these recordings and many more are all available and have been catalogue favorites for forty years. There's a reason for that. She had a lovely voice with a lot of warm, sort of dark rose colored overtones. She was a terrific actress. She sang WITH the music, using text and notes to create character. (The old fashioned way!)
She meant what she sang.

Anna Moffo was born in Wayne, PA . She trained at Curtis, and made her mark first in
Italy. Her earliest recordings were with Karajan, Callas, Giulini, Schwarzkopf and Colin Davis. There are also a number of beautiful opera films with her: Lucia di Lammermoor, Daughter of the Regiment and Madama Butterfly among them. She had a brief "nudie" phase in Italain cinema in the early sixties, but by the mid seveties, though her voice was suffering she settled down to a long and happy marriage with RCA Chairman Robert Sarnoff. He died in 1997.

My own favorites would be the Rondine with the famous "Sogno di doretta" and the even more beautiful "Ore dolce e divine", Luisa Miller (Verdi) and Butterfly. I last saw her on stage as Violetta, in Providence RI in the late 70s and there were still some good notes left. I last saw her in person at Carnegie Hall last year, she was in the audience. I went up to say hello to her and got a hug, diamonds and all.

The collpase of her voice has never really been explained. She "owned" it and blamed it on exhaustion and too much work and she may have been right. But when it was good, it was splendid. Go find her recoridngs and films in the library. Enjoy, and say a prayer for her. In the era of Callas, Tebaldi, Milanov, Price, Corelli, Merrill and Siepi, Anna was a class act.

CROSSOVER: THE OTHER "WHITE MEAT?"

Opera magazines put Andrea Bocelli on the cover and reprimand complaining readers. The Metropolitan does a glitzy produciton of "The Merry Widow" an operetta they denied Joan Sutherland with two admired singers and casts it with young cuties when the stars depart. Peter Gelb, the new GM of the Metropolitan Opera makes no secret of his insistence on "singers who look the part" not singers who SOUND the part. The Columbus Symphony back in 2000 engages Charlotte Church for a benefit. I complain to the board. I call it musical kiddie porn on air and am reamed out for weeks. "She sold out the house in three hours" I'm told. I could go on and on. So could you.
Classical radio rejoices in musical sound bites, copy readers and visuals that look like the Halloween candy dispalys in a Wal Mart.

The point is that no one in a ticket buying data base for a classical concert for the past two years in the "target audience". Classical presenters, opera, symphony, dance, theater, radio have seen the future and its the people who used to kvell over a pre pubnescent Charlotte Church or a violinist in a wet T shirt or a baritone hunkmeister. Like titles in the theater twenty years ago, this trend is here to stay. Marketing Directors and Executive Directors who don't know Beethoven from Bocelli are making the important decisions around programming geared to the increasing dumbing down of the public. Cocnert halls and opera houses are now amplified. My fear is that clarinets, horns and violins will become irrelevant in the age of synthesizers and digital sound. This mechanization deadens the souls of people who deserve to hear a live performance, who deserve to know that all of arts are live and growing over time.

The potential new younger audience is large and it is time to tap into their energy. Bridging the gaps between people used to elcetronically processed sound, to video imagery, to "sound enhancement" towards people who can listen to voice and feel for the great stories is the new challenge. The schools, a point of entry for so many of us, drop music right and left. We are not primed to appreciate anything not offering immediate return. Old farts like me should still be tolerant of those who come to opera via Charlotte or Michael or Andrea. We don't have to buy it. But we should welcome and encourage those who do.

RICHARD TUCKER AND RENATA TEBALDI in 1970

I have a lot of broadcasts of Tucker and Tebaldi together; thrilling performances of Manon Lescaut, Andrea Chenier and Tosca among them.






I've been listening to a La boheme, broadcast from the Met in April, 1970.
This was towards the end of Tebaldi's career-she was done by 1973.
Tucker was always in prime voice. When he bothered to sing and not bellow he was wonderful. I remember hearing this broadcast as a kid. I taped it on a battery operated reel to reel tape recorder off of a transistor radio. The old tapes are probably still in my uncle's basement in Arlington, Mass.
And you know what kills me? Two days after this broadcast Tebaldi sang Mimi in Boston with my favorite tenor: Carlo Bergonzi. I could have gone. Good seats were $5!

Tebaldi finds a lot of Act III rough sledding by 1970-and she was younger than I am now-but for sometimes the years fall away and you can hear a lot of the old velvet. There are plenty of broadcasts of Tebaldi in her absolute prime (1950s) and this is not one of them, but this late performance I find very moving. I sometimes find Tucker hard to take, though his vocie never fails him for a second. What I love is how he really listens to Teblaldi and molds his singing to her so musically. I wish all young singers would listen to this and pay attention.

Tebaldi and Tucker may never have looked like starving Bohemians but together in 1970 they ARE music.

Richard tucker 1913-1974
Renata Tebaldi 1922-2004

It's nice to think of them both in heaven, sap that I am.

GETTING RENEE

I've never been a Renee Fleming fan, call me crazy, but I've always needed more bite from my sopranos.

It takes a lot these days to get this fat middle aged fella out of his barcolunger after 7 p.m. and away from reruns of Law and Order and my favorite pizza. Last night Miss Fleming was in town. Because I couldn't go and hear Renee with the Columbus Symphony last night I crashed the rehearsal on Wednesday.

"All I can say is WOW!"

What struck me on record as bland and pretty is in person intelligent and gorgeous.
You could die from this voice.
She did the Strauss 4 Last Songs and you wonder why the fuck he didn't write four more? (He wrote one more 'Malven' for Maria Jeritza, another hottie, but I digress)

Anyway, Fleming sat on stage with her bottle of water and let fly with some of the most gorgeous middle voice singing in "Beim schlafengehen" I've ever heard.
Then she does, get this! the trash arias from "Adriana Lecouvreur".
The musicians among you will say "What the fuck the Adriana Lecouvruer" but its actually "WHO the fuck is Adriana Lecouvreur" and if you have to ask...and no, Renee ain't Tebadli though she is as beautful, and she gets all chesty and intense at e finito and sings the low passages of the Strauss with a fully supported tone. No forcing. Always beautiful. I surrender I capitulate I'm done It's over at last I'm ready to board the Renee Express.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 13

If you're just tuning in, check the archives for Dichterliebe Diary 1, etc.
It's cheaper than Xanax.

Today Ben announced that we need to schedule an actual date to have at least a run through in front of an audience.

I said, who do we hate enough? He said it's only twenty minutes and I'll make a cake.
But its still a few weeks off thanks be to God.
At today's rehearsal we did the entire work straight through.
We'll need to do this several times per week, or at least I will--for the stamina.
Rule #1 don't jump a two foot wall before you can jump a one foot wall.
In my case, my tummy gets in the way of my looking at my feet so the height of the wall doesn't matter but you get my drift.
The gift of this cycle remains with me. Everytime I turn a page I'm astonished and thrilled all over again. Ben is good at micro details.
Hold that note three beats, as Schumann wrote. This is not the palce to get artsy.
I play a chord on the second beat dissonant with what you are doing and we have to bring that out. Stop putting umlauts on every vowel except the ones that have umlauts.

For myself, I notice that my German often has a faux French or Italain accent.
I was pretty shocked when stoped at the first word: "IM wunderschoenen monnat Mai...
since I was singing "EEM wunderschoenen..." Other great words like 'stumm' and 'fluss'get the same treatment. About the only accent I can't muster, besides German is Boston Irish, and you'd think at least that I'd get right.

I was looking for an experience from which to learn and grow and boy have I found one. An honest and lengthy study of the lied forces introspection and self examination, in addition to developing musicianship. Since I am often asked to help young singers I'm getting a real idea of what I ask them to do, how difficult and exhausting it is, and how they need to be loved a bit more.
The problem is still to do the music and text as written while being a musician, linguist, actor interpreter and techniian. Sometimes I can manage one or two together, but no more so far. It is an exhausting challenge, and I suspect even the greatest artists, when they finally felt they were getting it right, had sung themselves out!

But its a helluva great way to go!

TOUCHSTONE PERFORMANCES

My cyber buddy Steve up in Cleveland-never met him-trades CDs with me of favorite broadcast performances. Recently he sent me a 1937 broadcast of "Lohengrin" from the Met in New York, with Kirsten Flagstad and the Belgian tenor Rene Maison. We were both trying to come up with performances we heard live or on record that really stayed with us.

My love for opera was nurtured by the Met broadcasts, so my earliest memories were heard not seen. Chief among them was the Norma broadcast in 1970 with Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne and Carlo Bergonzi (my favorite tenor).
I have this on CD and need to be in the right mood, but thirty six years later I can still kvell to those voices. Yes, I'd like a firmer conductor, and yes I'd like a bit more bite in the attacks, but if you want it "like buttah" this is it.
I will never forget -at 13!-hearing this broadcast live and am grateful to still be able to enjoy it.

The March 30, 1940 broadcast of "Die Walkure", with Marjorie Lawrence, Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior was way even before my time, but to me the excitement leaps through the speakers two generations later. All of the artists are completly "into" their roles. Lehmann's ecstasy in Act I and her fear and hysteria throughout the opera are riveting...nearly X rated. Melchior sings the music with a wonderful, arrongant disdain for the composer's markings, but he is immensely moving in the Todesverkundingen scene. Marjorie Lawrence was 31 for this broadcast. A few months later she would contract polio and spend the rest of her life, she died in 1979 in a wheelchair. She is a fearless, radiant Valkyre.

I did hear a Rigoletto broadcast in 1968, with Robert Merrill, Carlo Bergonzi and Anna Moffo. This was my first Met broadcast. Bergonzi is the prince among tenors.
Merrill made me cry. Still does, God rest his soul.

Also broadcast, a Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Jess Thomas, back in 1971. My first Wagner.
The recent (2005) boradcat of Wozzeck was another high point for me. I listened to it on a five mile walk thorugh my neighborhood. Beethoven and Brhams strolled the Prater listneing to the birds. Me, I'm hoofing thorugh Columbus Ohio listening to Wozzeck. Go figure.

On stage, Sarah Caldwell's 1972 production of Prokofiev's War and Peace was a miracle; all of Russia on a postage stamp sized stage. Had there been a greater
orchestra and conductor it might have been too much to bear. Sarah is elderly and retired now. A book needs to be written about her astonishing productions. Beverly Sills as Violetta convinced you that this big hearty lady really was dying of consumption. Birgit Nilsson's Met comeback in 1979, all Wagner. I got the last standing room place. The guy took my $2(!) and slammed the box office window shut.
Nilsson began with Dich teure Halle-it twenty minutes for the audience to calm down BEFORE she began to sing-what is it A flat at 'du, teure HAL-le' faltered a bit then recovered and shook the walls.

Peter Sellars's moving production of Handel's Giulio Ceasare' set in the Beirut Hilton, with Casesar a Ronald Reagan lookalike.

I'm excited about where we are with opera today.
The recent successes of Margaret Garner-deliberatley written in a populist style,off putting to some-and An Ameicna Tragedy are comforting. Peter Lieberson is writing magnificent arts songs. So would you if you were married
to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and young tenor Juan Diego Florez has reminded us that singing should above all be a joyful act, for artists and audiences.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 12

Ben and I have begun working again, under the eye of a superb vocal technician who is taking us-me-through the twenty plus minute cylce note by note.
I'm not a micro detail oriented person at all, far from it.
I don't pick up socks, I leave underwear on the floor and drink out of the milk carton. Not good when you are trying to communicate the secret locked into music and German poetry. So being stopped every three notes is new to me. To my relief,I'm far from rattled by this. It seems a note by note approach is the way for me to go to embrace this work in a technical sense. "More space... Breathe lower.. Why are your larynx so high...you are getting too edgy..stop it...Oh your epiglottis is wrapped around your neck-I had look this one up...Then there's the b flats in the middle of the page. Piece cake note, right? Middle of the register, yes? No.
Get a good breath under those middle notes. Voices can be naturally weaker in the middle range and that is the heart and meat of any voice. Forget the high notes
(I don't have them anyway) and stop growling your low notes. Und so weiter.

But I finish these session with a stronger feeling throught. What I still can't do consistently is support the tone enough to give off a long line of decent sound.
It's usually "Aus meined tran--WHEEZE--nen SPREEsen-gapsp--etc.
Not away to sing of the flow of one's tears to the beloved.

I never had a flippant attitude when Ben and I took on this project last fall. (
(See the archives). But if you spend your time listening to recordings it all sounds much much easier than it ever is. They should publish Wunderlich's rehearsal tapes (they probably sound fantastic, sigh) I have not a natural vocie but a manufactured one, note by f----ing note. Thank God I don't really have talent as a singer, and that the passion for musick has an outlet in radio, writing, comedy and pre concert talks, or all of the above.

Stay tuned.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 11

One of the reasons I haven't posted here in a month is that until last week I hadn't opened the score of Dichterliebe since pre Christmas. If you don't know what I'm rambling about, go seach the archives. I'm too beat and others too bored to go over it again. Ben and I did manage a rehearsal last week...I had no balance with the piano at all. By the fourth song I was either shouting or croaking. In voice lessons I'm taken up to High C, and you know what? A lot of it has ring, and juice and squillo! It's like there's a real vocie there.
My life as a singer, though, is firmly anchored in fanatasy-land. I can picture myself as Vickers or Domingo or Tamgano onstage as Otello but I open my eyes and there I am sweating like a pig on my new elliptical machine, reading sweaty back issues of Opera News. I tried to listen to cds. Do not do this. I nearly nodded off during a Parsifal...

Back to Dichterlibe. You know, this is music I respect and admire but do not love.
It's a bit like kissing your sister.
But if I had several weeks to do nothing else but dig into this score, and sing chunks of it every day, no doubt I'd be happier with it and making better progress.
Ben and I really have to work on balance. I have to apply the new techincal points I am learnig. A good sound is possible. But God, what you have to do to make music...I know exactly what the music is telling me but getting it outta my throat is a real struggle.

No one said it would be asy. Lieder ain't for wimps.

KLEMPERER JOKE

The post on Otto Klemperer brings this note from Bob Gartside, melodie-ist and singer extraordinaire. And a sweet guy.

Fischer-Dieskau was doing one of the Bach Passions with Klemperer and was dying at the slowness of the tempo, he aked the maestro if they could go faster. "Vell Fieskau" growls Klemperer, who always said 'Fieskau', "ve'll tink about it." Dieskau comes back the next day and says, "Maestro I had a dream that I met Bach and he agreed the tempi are too slow." "Oh", replied Klemperer, "Ve vill tink about it a little more." The next day at rehearsal, Klemperer calls Dieskau over and says, "Fieskau, I too dreamed I met Bach. He said he never heard of you!"

BIRGIT NILSSON

Sad news that soprano Birgit Nilsson has died at 87.
She was buried earlier today near her home in Sweden.
Without question, hers was the loudest and most impressive voice I ever heard close up.

Nilsson had left the US in the 1970s after a dispute with the IRS.
She returned in 1979.
I was a grad student then, living across from Lincoln Center, in the West Side Y!
I was on my way to a statistics study group on a Sunday morning when I saw the line snaking down Columbus Avenue. They were waiting for standing room tickets for Nilsson's "comeback" concert at the Met that evening, with Levine conducting. I got on line only because some of my buddies were there. The study went to hell. I got the very last standing room place. When the box office guy handed me my ticket, ($2!) he slammed the window down and left about 100 pissed off people behind me.

That night, from the third rail of standing room, I heard Nilsson.
The applause at her entrance was incredible. She was crying.
Levine was crying. The orchestra was crying. I was crying.
The first piece, "Dich teure Halle" did not go well, the A wobbled and she backed off. But it was wonderful when she opened her arms at the lines 'du, teure Halle!" (You, beloved hall!)She pulled herself together-and she was in her early sixties then-and went on. The inhalation Scene. Saloon finale. Brunnhilde's Battle Cry. All was well. It was a mighty wave of sound; a tsunami, hitting you right between the eyes. I actually felt my bones shaking. The applause lasted longer than the program. The lady was back.

I saw her again, as Elektra and the Farberin in 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'.
There wasn't much tone left by then, but there were volume and musicianship.
All the power was there, and there was plenty to enjoy.
Her recordings and broadcasts give a hint what hearing that voice 'live' was like,
that huge silver knife of a voice, that she could whittle down to a piano in the Liebesnacht, or as Lady Macbeth.

Even at the end, she was somethin'
I'll never forget her.
God rest her soul.

COLUMBUS SYMPHONY MOZART ARTICLE

You'll find the article on this blog in the September, 2005 archive.
Scroll on down.
Problems with access?
Let me know.
Thanks!
CP

MOZART AND OTTO KLEMPERER

Recordings of the Mozart-da Ponte operas recently crossed my desk; two of them are long out of print and the remaining, Don Giovanni, is hard to find. These were recorded in London in the early 1970s, toward the end of the extraordinary life and career of their conductor, Otto Klemperer. Today they are considered old hat, unfashionable. I doubt these operas would be sung today in performance as Klemperer conducts these recordings. Why unfashionable? We'll get to that. First things first.

Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) was a German with a self destructive streak fueled by
bi polar disorder. In his manic moods he would take off, wander the earth, set himself on fire, sleep around, alienate musicians on and off the stage and generally be uncontrollable. His condition worsened after surgery for a brain tumor left half of his face paralyzed. He was quite the ladies man: his elopement with the married prima donna Elisabeth Schumann scandalized Germany eighty years ago. He had a long suffering wife and two children: His son Werner became famous as Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes"-there was a lot more to Werner Klemperer than that, but I spent some time with him about ten years ago and he always spoke of "HH" with affection. Klemperer's daughter Lotte spent her life taking care of Papa; without her he might have been institutionalized, much less been able to work.

Werner and Lotte have since died. (Klemperer also founded the Kroll opera, one of Europe's most important companies, in Berlin in the 1920s: here he introduced new operas by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Weill and Janacek. Put me in a time machine and take me back there; I would have loved to have experienced the Kroll opera.)

Klemperer came into a golden period in the early days of stereo, when he made a large number of recordings with the magnificent Philharmonia Orchestra, in London. Most of these are now available on CD; everything from Bach's B minor mass to symphonies of Bruckner and orchestral works of Richard Strauss. Klemperer's style is large, just short of ponderous, and intensely dramatic. His Bach and Mozart can sound overwhelming and too, well, too too...to today's ears. Repeated listening will reveal as much orchestral detail as today's historically informed peformances. Mozart and Bach as played today give us the lighter textures and greater clarity we think the composers intended. Certainly we have performances of great beauty-and most importantly-great energy from conductors like Jacobs, Herreweghe,Rifkin, Hogwood and John Eliot Gardiner. Klemperer can be thought simply....slow. Even Werner Klemperer told me "Father's Cosi fan Tutte really is very slow."

Yes, maybe it is. The fizz and wit in all of Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan Tutte are harder to find in Klemperer's recordings. Some think with today's ears he has loved the music into stasis. I just obtained these recordings and cannot stop listening to them. Finding a balance between joy and sorrow is a terrible burden, and is critical, especially in Cosi fan Tutte. I expect Klemperer did not understand casual listening. He was working for audiences who listened over and over, who paid attention, and who allowed his performances to really get under the skin. The Cosi fan Tutte has an exquisite cast: the soprano Margaret Price (Fiordiligi) sings with a warmth and a glow recalling Eleanor Steber
(you voice students should know Steber) Teresa Berganza, Lucia Popp, and the wonderful tenore di grazia Luigi Alva, and Geraint Evans-too little recorded-all sing for the beauty of their own voices and they allow Klemperer's loving approach to the music to tell the story. This is a case of "just sing" but what singing!
This Cosi sounds to me both romantic and sad, but never slow.

The "Figaro" is on the heavy side even for me; but after all not much of this show should be played strictly for laughs. The irony and yes, some of the cruelty is more forward in this approach. I can still marvel at the simple beauty of the finale ("Contessa, perdono") but for the first time we get the hint that all will not end well(and it doesn't). Another great cast, especially one of my favorite artists, the soprano Elisabeth Soederstroem (Countess--voice students write that name down) Geraint Evans (Figaro) Reri Grist (Susanna) and Gabriel Bacquier (Conte).
There's a lovely story told about these recording sessions. The first scene, with Susanna and Figaro had just been recorded. Klemperer lit is pipe and was content. The recording producer, Suvi Raj Grubb asked that the scene be repeated. Klemperer was surprised. "Vy repeat?!...Miss Grist, are you satisfied?" "Yes, maestro" replied Reri Grist. "And Mr.Evans, are you pleased?" "I am maestro." Klemperer then turned to the orchestra and said "I too am pleased, but since Mr. Grubb is not pleased, we will do it again."

I haven't heard the Don Giovanni yet, but stay tuned.
These recordings have been a joy with which to launch this Mozart year.

And let's all read up on the Kroll Opera. REALLY stay tuned!

2005: MUSIC HAS LOST

It must be the Boston Irish in me, but my first view of any newspaper in any city is The Irish Sports Page, so called by my mother and grandmother. You know it as The Obituaries. Sadly, and with respect and gratitude, we have lost:

VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES, age 82, the magnificent Spanish soprano whose repertoire embraced Provencal Chanson and Xavier Montsalvage and everything in between. Her many opera recordings will have you in tears: Don't miss her Madama Butterfly and Carmen; and of course in Spanish song she was peerless.

PIERO CAPPUCCILLI aged 76; Roman baritone, a smooth and elegant artist,he was made for the big baritone roles of Verdi which he sang beautifully.
Simon Boccanegra is a must have.

GHENA DIMITROVA, Bulgarian soprano, 63; A huge voice, memorable as Santuzza, Gioconda, Turandot. She was HOT when she came to the States just over 20 years ago. A huge American career didn't happen for her-but she was hardly unemployed. I saw her most recently as Eboli, in Pittsburgh a few years ago.

DOROTHY DOW- 85, American soprano. Sang premieres by Virgil Thomson and dramatic roles at La Scala. Made a wonderful recording of Schoenberg's ERWARTUNG with
Dimitri Mitropoulos over fifty years ago. She's still hard to beat.

CARLO MARIA GIULINI, 91; Italian conductor, He conducted Callas at La Scala, I think of him as a Mozartean for his superb recordings of Figaro and Don Giovanni and for his Brahms Symphonies, recorded in LA when he was music director there. Reinvented the use of cantabile for instrumentalists. One of the greats.

JAMES KING, 80; American tenor. Memorable as Siegmund, Walther, Lohengrin and Parsifal. Later taught at Indiana University. He was also a superb Florestan.

THEODORE UPPMAN, 85; American baritone. Created Billy Budd for Benjamin Britten. It's on recording. Get it. Uppman was also a superb Pelleas and Papageno, and did lot for American song. He was part of the great generation of American born singers that included Eleanor Steber, Robert Merrill, Richard Cassilly, and Phyllis Curtin. Upppman was an American original.

MARCELLO VIOTTI, 50, Italian conductor, collapsed in performance in Zurich. Much too young.

BEVERLY WOLFF American mezzo, 77; A leading artist of the New York City Opera, she was Sesto in the famous production of Giulio Cesare, with Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle. She created Douglas Moore's Carrie Nation-she had been a fine trumpet player before she took up singing!

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 10

Ben and I got to rehearse today for the first time in weeks, and I hadn't opened the score since our last meeting. (I know, I know). I came away a tad discouraged.
One of the purposes of this blog is to work out for myself , in writing, what I hope to accomplish by studying Dichterliebe. I told Ben that we had been working long and well, except for this hiatus, but we had been doing parallel play.
Now, I said, we have to sit down over coffee, away from the piano and really decide how we are going to perform. In rehearsal the piano is loud and the choir room very live. I can't keep up vocally and there's a lot of banging going on. We have workshopped the music and the text. Both of know what is going on here. But now we have to bring it together. I said I have to match with what limited voice I have the tone you are using on the piano. (I'll say it again. For lieder you have to listen more than you have to sing) If our attacks are going to be forceful, or tentative, or shaded let's decide that so I can color the words to match what you are doing. We'll go over the words carefully, but yikes! that's difficult here. The songs are each quite short. What moods Schumann casts don't last very long and the shifts between the bitter, the elegiac and the emphatic are quick, sudden . Very little time to prepare. And just the physical action of throwing out the text correctly is a challenge.

Ein jungling liebt ein Maedchen

The tune here recalls an Ultrabrite toothpaste commercial from the 60s.
Or vice versa, of course.
You scamper along, telling of the maiden who marries the first guy to come along-the boy is upset but it still flows until a complete shift in the last lines

Und wenn sie just passieret
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei

(It's an old story
but remains new
And he to whom it happens
It breaks his heart in two)

and you finish off with this heavy, Beethoven-esque declaration on 'Herz entzwei'
changing key in two phrases. Just the technique needed to go from Schumann to , God!, Spontini! in two phrases is formidable.

All you can do is keep workin'!
Stay tuned!

EDWARD DOWNES: METROPOLITAN OPERA , 1927

Critic, teacher, broadcaster and mentor Edward Downes is speaking to me in his living room in 1995:


I suppose the earliest great memory I have of the Metropolitan New York was Rosa Ponselle singing in the 1927 revival of Norma. I was lucky in being able to attend the dress rehearsal. People who have her recordings know that Ponselle was a very great Norma, but that dress rehearsal, the first time anyone heard that splendid voice in Bellini's opera, was was unique. I knew I would not hear the like of it again, and I tried to attend every performance of Norma that season. I knew absolutely from the Casta diva, which she sang in F instead of G, that this was extraordinary singing.. At the end of the first part of Casta diva, in the descending chromatic scale coming down an octave and a half, every note was perfectly articulated and had a sense of flow of this gorgeous sounding voice. It was the kind of sound that just hits you in the midriff.

Rosa Ponselle remained a great favorite of mine, as did Feodor Chaliapin.
He was fabulous. In some cases he took great liberties with the score, but his interpretations were so powerful that this scarcely mattered. Like Ponselle, the sheer natural sound of Chaliapin's voice was very beautiful. I remember hearing him at the Met and thinking at the time, who else has such a beautiful voice?
There was a good deal of ranting and raving in Boris Godunov. But when he sang for beauty of tone he had it, not only in the middle range where it was beautifully controlled, but even in the high pianissimi which are not easy for a bass. With all the emphasis I can summon I can say that Chaliapin's was among the most beautiful voices I ever heard live. I heard him in two roles. Boris and Massenet's Don Quichotte. This last was written for Chaliapin and characterized by critic Lawrence Gilman as " piece of junk" and I'm quoting him charitably. But Chaliapin had you in tears at Quichotte's death. He was also an extraordinary make up artist, extending not only to his character of the spindly, aged Quixote, but to the skinny old horse, Rosinate. I remember my father telling me about Chaliapin as Rossini's Don Basilio in Barber of Seville, blowing his nose through his fingers and mopping his face with a filthy old handkerchief which trailed out of his costume. Chaliapin on stage tried to do things to deliberately grab the audience, and he succeeded!

EDWARD DOWNES: Wm. Schumann, Hindemith, Hanson

Edward Downes reviewing Boston Symphony concerts in The Boston Evening Transcript

WILLIAM SCHUMAN
November 18, 1939

Frigidly, politely and firmly, a Boston Symphony audience revolted yesterday afternoon at the begining of the regular Friday matinee symphony concert. All through the opening number, "An American Overture" by 29 year old William Schumann, there had been dubious shaking of heads. But when Dr. Koussevitsky finished his exhilarating performance of the overture on a particularly strong discord, a shudder of disapproval ran through the hall, and the applause that followed was so weak that it constituted a negative demonstration. One felt that only impeccable manners and a certain instinctive restraint stood in the way of more positive expressions of annoyances.

HINDEMITH
February 24, 1940

The Hindemith of 'Mathis der Maler' is not the musical enfant terrible of yore. He has sowed his artistic wild oats in an earlier period of near atonalism and sensational radicalism. What remained was a quickened sense of harmonic values, and an intensely emotional basis for this music. Or so it seemed yesterday, for Mathis is of exalted feeling both in contemplation and action. There is no question of the composer's ability to express clearly and forcefully whatever his mind and emotions prompt, and thus with this symphony one as the feeling of listening to a classic work.

HOWARD HANSON
March 22, 1940

Mr. Hanson's third symphony had been heard at these concerts earlier this season under the baton of the composer, with only moderate success. First and second hearings made the impression of a definite, derivative work, Sibelius being the most generous contributor...Dr. Koussevitsky has been more than generous in his support of this new American score. It has been given its chance. Is there any reason we should hear it again?

EDWARD DOWNES: LOTTE LEHMANN IN RECITAL...DIE WALKURE...THE BIRTH OF OPERA

Edward wrote these pieces for The Boston Evening Transcript.

LOTTE LEHMANN IN RECITAL
October 30, 1939

It is only artists of the stature of Lehmann who are able to supply that something new we demand simply by giving a great performance of a simple composition. And she does it, not by making poor defenseless Schubert stand on his head, nor by doing something startling and sensational with Brahms. She does it by penetrating to the very core of the composer's thought. What stands reveled to us then is not a clever idea that Lehmann had, but Schubert or Brahms himself in all the freshness of primal inspiration.

___________________________________________________________________________

EDWARD DOWNES ON LOTTE LEHMANN AND RICHARD STRAUSS, speaking to CP in 1995:

The first thing that comes to mind about Lehmann is that she was the only singer I ever met who seemed to be exactly the same off stage as she was on stage. She always sounded spontaneous on stage, whether it was "Abseulicher!" or some casual remark or action, it always sounded totally echt...there...present...spontaneous. As if somehow it just happens that way at this moment. And that was very powerful. It was powerful enough so that it extended to her physical actions aside from singing. Particularly in Tannhauser, one quite short moment was the very end of Elisabeth's role, after 'allmeagtige jungfrau', when Wolfram comes on and says "May I escort you back to the castle" or whatever. She doesn't answer with words but is supposed to gesture that the place she is going is not "over there" but "up there". It's a somewhat pretentious stage direction. But there are only a few bars from that to her exit, and a relatively short distance backstage, where you saw her in profile, she made an exit in a diagonal, not singing, no gestures, just walking,
and it was one of the most vivid moments I remember in opera. This moment was always magical. You never know how much is an accumulation of what went on in
the opera before, and how much is the gift of the artist, but she always had that.

Very close to the end of her career, when I was briefly a music critic for the Boston Transcript, Lehmann came to Boston to give a recital. It must have been one of the morning musicales. I hadn't seen her in quite a long time. Sine it had been a morning concert, I did not need to rush to write my piece, and I knew her somewhat, not well, but I knew her well enough that I had been to her house for lunch. She was a warm and gracious woman. I decided to go and see her after the performance. I knew it was long enough that she would probably not remember me, but I had dined with her and her family a few times at the Salzburg Festival, and in New York I knew her well enough so that she asked me one time why I thought the Met didn't give her more performances. My only answer was that they have this idea that for Italian operas it should be Italian singers and so on. I didn't really know the answer. In any case I knew her well enough for her to have asked my opinion. But many years had gone by. Now in Boston after the recital she was sitting at a table chatting with people and shaking hands and autographing things and she saw me come in, and somehow I knew she recognized me, but as not sure from where. But she gestured and half got out of her seat and said to me "Sie hab nicht ewig lange gesehen!" which was very tactful and friendly, but it was even with the little social fib implied, still a spontaneous and honest reaction. I think she was characteristic of everything she died. Lehmann herself mentioned in a talk she gave that when speaking to Richard Strauss he complimented her and she replied, you are too kind, Aber Herr Meister, ich schwimme...meaning I'm 'swimming' or cheating in your music. Strauss according to her replied, Ja, aber sie schwimme so schoen! Apparently she knew him quite well--she was after all the first Composer in the revised Ariadne and the first Farberin in Die Frau ohne Schatten. She said to me, "I sang that opera quite a lot for ten years and I never figured out what as gong on!"

Richard struass was a very fine conductor. His third act of Tristan was the greatest I ever heard. heard him conduct it in Munich, in 1931. He conducted the first two acts well enough, but in the third act he took fire. You entered a different world with him. Quite extraordinary. Everything had an intensity that was tremendously focused, but it had a kind of feverish quality to it, which is part of the score. Tristan here is supposed to verge on madness, delirium, and it all combined of course with Strauss's style of conducting, which was very small. Small beats, small gestures. Very contained. It grabbed you by the throat. Strauss was a great conductor in everything. I remember being told that to hear his Cosi fan tutte in the Cuivillies Theatre was out of this world. Fidelio, French opera, Italian opera, Tristan. He was superlative in an astonishingly wide repertoire.

______________________________________________________________________________

OPERA
February 3, 1940

Opera was founded on a mistake. A group of Florentine noblemen and dilettantes got together to revive the classical Greek tragedy. They were extremely proud of their success of their revival, but what they actually had done was to invent the modern opera. The first prophesies of the death of opera followed quickly after its birth, when composers began to use rousing tunes for their own sake. The reason: rousing tunes had never been used by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides! And thereafter regularly, every time of opera superseded each other, with the Baroque, the Rococo, the Classical, the romantic, the realistic, the impressionistic opera, every time there was a change, somebody wrote that opera died.

DIE WALKURE
April 1, 1940

Our mind still ringing with the magic of Wagner's "Magic Fire Music", and our heart full of thanksgiving to Erich Leinsdorf for having given us an integral and uncut Walkure, we were progressing slowly towards an exit of the Boston Opera House last Saturday afternoon when a loud and obviously bored voice exclaimed behind us to her matinee companion: "Did you EVER hear such a long opera in your LIFE? Really, you know I don't mind so much at night, but in the afternoon it all seems to take so much TIME!" Which of course IS pretty dreadful, ISN'T it? Unfortunately, Die Walkure just is long, and even if we were to slash it as mercilessly as does the Paris Opera, the good lady would still have to miss her tea.

__________________

NOTE FROM CP:

Edward is being mean spirited here, nothing like himself in person, but this sells newspapers.

The Walkure performance that seemed so long was broadcast. I have it on CD.
It is thrilling. I'm no Wagnerian but I wouldn't miss a note.
The cast on that April afternoon in Boston:

Brunnhilde Marjorie Lawrence
Sieglinde Lotte Lehmann
Siegmund Lauritz Melchior
Wotan Julius Huehn
Hunding Emmanuel List
Fricka Kerstin Thorborg

Erich Leinsdorf conducts

EDWARD DOWNES: Flagstad and Nelson Eddy

Edward gave me several large scrapbooks of articles he wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript from 1937-1941. Edward left the paper in 41 to join the war effort at what later became the CIA! But here are two of his pieces, and part of another of the conversations I had with him in 1995. Edward died at ninety on Christmas Day, 2001.


KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD AS ISOLDE
Boston Evening Transcript
April 2, 1940

If rumor is true and the performance of "Tristan und Isolde" which the Metropolitan Opera Company gave last night in the Boston Opera House is the last one in which Bostonians will have the privilege of seeing and hearing Kirsten Flagstad's impersonation of the Irish princess, it will have been a worthy performance to remember her by and one which will go down in the musical annals as a historical event. It was the greatest impersonation of Isolde we have seen Flagstad give, and the miraculous thing about it was the way in which her conception of the part has increased in depth and subtlety.

Two years ago, Flagstad's Isolde, thought the finest then to be seen on the operatic stage, was still lacking in the passionate bitterness, the vitiating irony and sovereign contempt which are part of isolates emotions in the first act. At that time Flagstad still appeared too fundamentally sweet and amiable a character ever to be able to master and express the wild storms of destructive rage or the intense inward suffering which Wagner makes his heroine hide behind a mask of icy scorn.

One thing,however, has always remained true of Flagstad: her art continued to grow. You see her do the same role two years in succession invariably has meant being witness to a fascinating development,end of dramatic instinct and musical intuition. And today she has accomplished what to many spectator's seemed impossible a few years ago. As always, since she has been at the Metropolitan, Flagstad has been the greatest Wagnerian soprano to be heard since the World War, but now her acting, too, equals the greatest acting of Isolde that has been seen there in the same period.


NELSON EDDY
Boston Evening Transcript
April 3, 1940


Nelson Eddy, famous all American baritone of the stage, screen and ether waves, gave a recital last night in Symphony Hall which began with Albert Hay Lamotte's setting of Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark", and ended with "The Lord's Prayer" set to music by the same intrepid composer. The program informed us "Of all vocal compositions, Maltese setting of The Lord's Prayer is requested most often, a significant indication of the reverence of a people who know how to turn to God." This last confused us considerably. Does it mean he real way to turn to God is to write a fan letter to Nelson Eddy asking him to sing "The Lord's Prayer"? Or does it mean that the number of requests Mr. Eddy receives for this kind of vocal composition is a kind of barometer of the devoutness of the American public?


ON CRITICISM
talking to CP i New York, October, 1995

I can remember only one or two occasions when father
(New York Times critic Olin Downes)helped. One was the very first criticism I wrote for a newspaper. This was a song recital, a debut recital, imagine sending a kid to review a debut! It was for the New York Post. I came on as (Samuel) Chotzinoff's assistant. No critic went to the office at the Post.. You went home and late a at night a messenger came over to pick up your copy. I cam home and my father must have asked me what it was I had to write about. And he made this suggestion: If you can find something which is of legitimate interest about the songs, which throws some light, or gives some detail which is relevant, use it to add to whatever your personal opinion is...

I read my father's stuff regularly, and I remember my mother pointing out to me that one of the important things in a news story, in a reporting sense, is to get the facts straight: What, when, why, where and how?!

My first review turned out well, and the young man who gave the recital wrote a letter to the Post. I remember the boss reading this letter and saying, "Friend of yours?" which would have been bad but I was able to convince him I didn't know the man from Adam.

Writing criticism was comfortable but I wouldn't say I felt any great sense of mission. In Boston I reviewed Johanna Gadski, appearing on a vaudeville bill. I had heard her as Isolde, and she had to pay her bills. To appear at kit's orphan on a vaudeville bill, I wrote a review of this for myself...I remember writing about the ignorant audience that was giggling when they should have been listening respectfully-I was twelve at this time!-but poor Gadski looked like a caricature of a diva out of the New Yorker. She could still sing, she sang Brahms Wiegenlied and
Brunnhilde's Battle Cry, but naturally the audience at Keith's thought it was a joke. I remember my indignation was aroused that she was reduced to this."

NOTES FROM CP

KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD went home to Nazi occupied Norway in 1941. At the end of the war, her husband was arrested for collaborating with the Quisling government. He died in prison awaiting trial in 1946. Flagstad lived under house arrest until 1947 when she was allowed to resume her career in Europe and America. Her appearances in the US were often picketed, she was reviled in the papers as a Nazi and did not return to the Metropolitan until 1950. Flagstad was never formally charged of any crimes and nothing was ever proved against her. She died, in Norway, in 1962.

NELSON EDDY (1900-1967) Popular American baritone, known for his films with JEanette MacDonald. Edwat is being rather patronizing here. Eddy had a significant operatic and concert career. He sang the Ameircan premiere of Berg's Wozzeck with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1935. Oter opera roles included Germont, Rigoletto and Amonasro, and his recital programs always included Schubert and Brahms. He died onstage during a recital in 1967.

JOANNA GADSKI (1972-1932) Distinguished soprano, often partnered Caruso in Aida. A huge voice with a large repertoire. Her recordings are well worth seeking out. Her career was daamaged when German opera was banned World War I. She made tours singing in English until 1930. Died in a car crash, 1932.

EDWARD DOWNES: THE RING CYCLE IN 1925

These are excerpts from my notes taken during extensive conversations with broadcaster/teacher/critic Edward Downes (1911-2001) at his New York apartment in 1995. Edward was the son of New York Times critic Olin Downes and was himself a celebrated critic for The Boston Evening Transcript. From 1956-1999 Edward served as host of (Texaco) Opera Quiz over the Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network. He was a faculty member at Queens College and The Juilliard School. These are verbatim transcripts, little editing attempted unless you see (CP: )

Edward Downes talking to me in 1995:

I heard my first Ring cycle at the Metropolitan in 1925. The Brunnhilde was the Swedish soprano Nanny Larsen-Todsen. She had a wobble in her voice which bothered a lot of people more than it bothered me. I thought she was a great singer, marvelous in the Ring and as Isolde. She had a lot of dramatic power, and I suspect she represented the end of the Wagner tradition which had been insisted upon by cosine Wagner. There were the big gestures, which often looked foolish. Larsen-Todsen was very effective in Goetterdaemmerung at the end of the prologue where they ring out the high Cs and Siegfried goes off. There's a certain point where Siegfried plays his horn and the orchestra comes in with a great sweep of violins. At this point, Larsen-Todsen gave the impression, from way in the back of the Metropolitan, that she had just caught sight of Siegfried. She made a large gesture just as the curtain came down, but the thought behind it, the impulse, was very moving.

In Siegfried, at Brunnhilde's awakening, Larsen-Todsen was likewise wonderful. The stage directions are just awful. She greets the light. She greets the sun. But Larsen-Todsen managed to do it just right. Big gestures complete concepts with a lot of feeling behind them. It was very powerful. Larsen-Todsen understood Wagner's text on a very subtle level and this came across in the slight colorations and little bits of rubato. Her voice was wobbly but very dramatic and it had something even Flagstad lacked. While Flagstad had the most gorgeous voice in these roles, she tended to sound a bit matronly. Larsen-Todsen had a strong visceral quality in her voice, similar to Lotte Lehmann. She was not the actress Lehmann was, but she was close.

There were no great tenors for Wagner before Lauritz Melchior arrived in '26. In fact, they were all horrible. There was one tenor willing to attempt Tristan in the 1920. His name was Kurt Taucher. He had been quite famous in Vienna, but by the time I heard him he made an awful sound!

_____________________________________

NOTES from CP:

Nanny Larsen-Todsen (1884-1982)
Swedish soprano
debut in 1906 as Agathe in Der Fresichutz
Three seasons in new York: 1925-1928

Kurt Taucher, 109 performances in New York between 1922 and 1927

Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) Norwegian dramatic soprano. Her career and box office success rescued the Metropolitan Opera during the depression. She was unknown here and her debut in 1935 was broadcast. During the first intermission, radio commentator Geraldine Farrar, herself a great singer, threw her script away and told the public: "You have just heard the most exciting thing than can happen in any theater. The birth of a new star."
For power and beauty of voice, Flagstad is to this day hard to beat.

Lauritz Melchior (1890-1973) Danish heldentenor. Unmatched in all of the Wagner operas. There has been no one approaching him since he retired form opera in 1950. He worked another ten years in Films and in Vegas! Often partnered Flagstad-reportedly they disliked each other. If you have never heard his many recordings and broadcasts, then you have never really heard Wagner!


P.S. Edward lived in the Dakota, the grand building at 72nd Street and Central Park West, notorious for the filming of Rosemary's Baby and the murder of John Lennon in 1980. Edward had lived in the building since he was ten and died there at ninety in 2001. Yoko lived just below him. Leonard Bernstein's apartment had a three storey living room. Lauren Bacall, Al Pacino, and Gilda Radner were among Edward's neighbors.

WINIFRED WAGNER, A reminiscence

Edward Downes was a teacher and critic and the long time host of "Opera Quiz" on the (then) Texaco Metropolitan Opera Radio Network. I have the honor of considering him a mentor. He died in 2002 at 89. In the mid 1990s he dictated about thirty hours of memoirs to me in his apartment in the Dakota in New York, just upstairs from Yoko Ono. I went back through some of my notes recently while reading the new book, "Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Center of Hitler's Bayreuth" by Brigitte Haman. Bayreuth is a town in Central Germany where Richard Wagner established a theatre to perform his works in 1876. The Bayreuth Festival remains today the world's most prestigious, some would say the world's most notorious. Winifred Williams was a British born orphan of 18 when she married Siegfried Wagner, who was over thirty years her senior, in 1915. Siegfried, the only son of Richard Wagner, died in 1930. Four children were born of this marriage. Friedelind escaped to New York during World War II and made anti Nazi propaganda broadcasts. Wieland became one of the most renowned stage directors of the 20th century. Wolfgang, now 87, runs the festival to this day.

Winfred Wagner's devotion to Hitler and the Third Reich is unquestioned, least of all by herself. Here are some of Edward's reminiscences of Bayreuth, and the Wagner family. Edward's father was Olin Downes, critic of the New York Times.

We are in Edward's living room in 1995. He is speaking of 1930:

I got to Bayreuth in 1930. It wasn't difficult to smuggle myself in, because there was a time when all the orchestral players streamed in, but one day I made the mistake of asking where Frau Winifred Wagner was. Then it was clear I did not know her by sight. I was quickly booted out. I found Frau Wagner drinking coffee in the Bayreuth restaurant. This was the year Siegfried died, leaving her a widow with four children. She was English and had been orphaned, and was raised in Germany by acquaintances of her family. She became thoroughly German. She was very gracious to me. My father had given me a letter of introduction to her. She wrote on a slip of paper, "Admit to any rehearsal." I still have the slip. (CP: And he did. He showed it to me. Creepy)

After the war she was in disgrace. She took the whole Nazi era in her stride. I got a message the first year I went back, around 1958, that Frau Wagner knew I was in Bayreuth and would like to see me. Friedelind's book was out (note: Friedelind Wagner, youngest child of Winifred and Siegfried had written "Heritage of Fire" detailing her mother's close ties to the Nazis) And I thought, Oh, Christ, what do I do now? I had never seen Winifred since that day in 1930. And now thirty years later here she was. I sent back the answer, that it was very nice of Frau Wagner, and we only met once thirty years ago, and she couldn't possibly remember me. Back came a message. Oh, no, she remembers you very well and she knows just who you are, and she would like to see you, so I went to Friedelind and said What do I do now?

Friedelind, cool as a cucumber said, Mama receives on performance days. I'll take you over tomorrow.

Frau Wagner came to the door and she and Friedelind kissed and cooed. Then she turned to me: "What do you think of our Wieland's productions? I think he does it just to be different, don't you?"

I tried to be as neutral as possible but I thought his productions were just marvelous..

Frau Wagner was very chirp and urbane and seemed at peace with her life. In a long TV documentary made shortly before her death (1980) she said, "Yes, I was Hitler's friend, certainly. We were very fond of one another. If he came knocking at the door today I would get up to greet him as an old friend." She made these absolutely flat statements that Hitler never knew anything at all about the horrors that went on. And I sat there thinking, does she think I'm really stupid or is she pretending an ignorance she can't have? She seemed a very bright woman. She was playing a role right up to the hilt. I never heard her apologize or repudiate Hitler in any way, and this went on until her death in 1980."

---

The book is Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Center of Hitlerism Bayreuth by
Brigitte Hamann. It's a devatstating cultural history.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF (INCARCERATED) BABES

Ohio Arts Alive is a one hour arts/news/magazine program I produce, showcasing a wide spectrum of arts programs throughout the state. Of special interest are those people and programs who work with grievously underserved communities. Last year we did a program from the Lebanon Correctional Facility near Cincinnati, of a men's choir -UMOJA- and its remarkable conductor, Dr. Catherine Roma. Now, we look at kids.

The Madison Correctional Facility is about 40 minutes west of Columbus in London, Ohio. Inmates are young men aged 14-21, all of whom have been convicted of crimes as adults and serving adult sentences. At 21 these guys will be shipped off to adult prisons. My colleagues and I will be going out there next week to sit in on a creative dramatics and bull session. Again, these are-to me, anyway-kids. And the authorities made it very clear: the crimes range from possession to murder.
Yeah, they look like choirboys, but these are (or were) some scary people.
Our auspices for this visit is ArtSafe Ohio, an organization dedicated to bringing educational opportunities to the incarcerated, and to young school children who have next to nothing.

Preparing for next week, I have learned:

85 % of these kids in prison come from broken homes
at least 75% were themsevles abused, from rape to other forms of physical abuse. Neglect and parental indifference means getting off lightly.

The guys at Madison have published a book called Inside Looking Out: It's a collection of writing and art work done by these guys, some of whom will never get out of prison.

Here are a few samples:

In this cell, I always think about my future and my past.
For in this cell, you just don't know how long you can last. (Antwan)


It's crazy here, but you have to do the time.
Do not let the time do you.
I have never been to a youth center or juvenile jail.
It was my first time committing a felony crime.
Now, I am in the pen for something I could have avoided.

This place is hell. You sit and stare out the windows all night
and you are never happy. You think about all the fun you had.
You will be be mad because the holidays come and you cannot spend that day with your family. If you have the chance to change your ways, do it, because jail is no place
to be, and that's "the real" (Vernon)


Now I have to go back to my soul being my best friend.
My soul and I must remain in hell-this 6' by 9' prison cell.
Thoughts of the past constantly run through my mind.
I only hear the devil's voice telling me to die in sin.
Instead of God's telling me to live again. (Steve)



But I can tell you this...the next time your Grandma or Mom kisses you and leaves lipstick on your cheek, don't wipe it off. You might regret it in years to come. (Marcus)

_______________________

Inside Looking Out is available from ArtSafe: Arts for a Child's Safe America Foundation, 614-237-9077. See www.artsafe.org

COMPOSER'S CHILDREN

I've been working on some notes and a pre concert talk for Stravinsky's
Symphony in C. The composer writes that this was written in the early 1930s, during a terrible period of his life. His wife Catherine had been hospitalized for many years with tuberculosis. She died, as did their daughter, of the same illness.
It got me to thinking about the children (and spouses) of famous composers. There don't seem to be a lot of happy families in the history of western music. Is every unhappy family really unhappy in its own way? Verdi, Puccini, Mahler and Richard Strauss were artists and businessmen, and these roles overlapped. Why no large families? Would Verdi have written Aida if he had been raising a houseful of kids?

Here's a list I've made in my head. No reference material used, so bear with me:

Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750

Two wives. Twenty children. Yikes! Those were cold and long nights in Leipzig. Several of Bach's sons followed him in music: Johann Christian, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Phillip Emmanuel. His daughter Anna Magdalena was immortalized by a book of keyboard exercises dedicated to her.

George Friedrich Handel 1685-1759

Never married, no children. Died old and rich.

Franz Joseph Haydn 1732-1809.

Long and unhappy marriage. No children.

W.A. Mozart 1756-1791

Of the six children born to Mozart and his wife, Constanze Weber, between 1784 and 1791 only one, Franz Xaver, born shortly before his father's death, outlived the composer.

Beethoven 1770-1827

Never married. Several miserable love affairs. No children.

Gioacchino Rossini 1792-1868

Two marriages, the first to contralto Isabella Colbran (divorced) then to his long time mistress, Olympe Pellesier. No children.

Franz Schubert 1797-1828

Never married, no children.

Robert Schumann 1810-1856

Six children born to Clara Wieck Schumann. By all accounts this was a boisterous and happy family until Robert went mad, probably from tertiary syphilis. After several attempts at drowning himself, he was institutionalized, and starved himself to death.

Johannes Brahms 1833-1897

Never married, no children

Richard Wagner 1813-1883

Two marriages, the first to Minna Planner. Began a liaison with Cosima von Bulow, the daughter of Franz Liszt and the wife of Wagner's protege, conductor Hans von Bulow. Three children were born to Wagner and Cosima while she was still married to von Bulow. Cosima and Wagner did eventually marry. The dynastic miseries of the Wagner family are well documented, and on going.

Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901

Two children born from his marriage to Margherita Barezzi. Mother and babies all died duirng a typhus epidemic 1839-1841. By 1842 Verdi was livving with the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi. She had several children by previous lovers, all of whom were raised in orphanages from birth. No children with Verdi. The two did not marry until 1859 and remianed together until Strepponi's death nearly forty years later.

Gustav Mahler 1860-1911

Married Alma Schindler in 1900. Two daughters, Anna (1902-1907) and Maria Anna, who died in 1988.

Giacomo Puccini 1858-1924

Unhappy marriage with Elvira Casazza, who left her husband when she became pregnant with Puccini's only child, Tonio.


Richard Strauss 1865-1949

Long and stormy marriage to Pauline de Ahna. She was a general's daughter who swore all her long life that she had married beneath herself, and that her husband should write commercial music, like Gilbert and Sullivan. Strauss reportedly adored her. One son.

Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971

Four children from his first marriage, to Catherine. All but Milenka lived long lives. Took up with painter Vera Soudeikeine while Catherine was hospitalized, married her after Catherine's death. A long and devoted marriage. Stravinsky seemed an absent minded father. Late in his life one of his granddaughters bore a child out of wedlock, which, according to biographer Lillian Libman, the composer "could not understand"

_________

Well, I can't imagine a slew of Father's Day cards for any of these guys. Only Bach and Schumann seemed to have had a happy family life.
You can hear this in a lot of Schumann's music, especially the lieder and the piano works he wrote for Clara. We don't seem to have any drunks or wife beaters in the bunch, and public health being what it wasn't years ago, one can hardly hold a touch of syphilis now and then against them.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 9

Two days ago Ben and I were supposed to perform at First Church. We postponed several weeks ago, but in fact a few people did show up. I'm sorry they were inconvenienced, but hey, at least people are interested. Which may or may not be a good thing. We did another rehearsal yesterday.
It's becoming physically easier for me, less of a workout. I'm more pumped when finished than exhausted. What to my ears sounds too light, too bright and over focused still doesn't carry all that well against the piano in a rehearsal hall. In the sanctuary, we'll see (hear).

Like all important works of art, Dichterliebe continues to feed anyone who really wants to dig into it and discover what's there. You can't be bored, and you are never, but never, finished. Just when I think I've caught the right tone of irony, or joy, or anger, the mood in the piano contradicts what I have going on.
The irony of a lot of major keys and bright colors, and of mood changes, the protagonist happy and bitter (not defeated, bitter) in the same verse, maybe with ten or eleven notes of separation, is overwhelming. I wonder if Schumann or any of our composers expected their work to provoke so much study years after their deaths. Mozart wrote often on spec, and once a work was performed he was onto the next one, for money. Did he think people would be writing books about the Jupiter Symphony in 2005? They are. Did Bach, who had to produce a slew of music for each Sunday of the liturgical year, think his cantatas would be sung in churches and concert halls and recording studios two hundred and fifty years after his death? I wonder if Mozart or Bach would have cared. Bach was a salaried employee for many years. Mozart wanted to be, and never in his best years could attracting enough patronage.

Sometimes the larger orchestral works and the big operas overwhelm a listener in their complexity, and in their size. With lieder, its two people, voice and piano. So there should be more transparency; easier for the listener to really hear what is going on. You'd think, wouldn't you? Forget it. A one page Wolf song is as confounding as all of the Goldberg variations. I love what Janet Baker says: The preparation is the best part. Sometimes the audience gets in the way! (Not really)

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 8, the good news is...

The good news is we are not canceling, which might not be good news to the many.
We are postponing. What might be mediocre and a bit of a stunt could be serious music making and fun if we do it after the holidays. Not that Ben, bless him, has any problems. But me, at 200 plus pounds and nearing a certain age, well...
(Bob Gartside who I love dearly just e mailed me " You're still young!") I have the German and the intent but not yet the stamina and materials to do this justice. So we practice and work and we wait. You know, the gift of a piece like this is that every time you finish a one or two page song, and turn the page, it's like receiving a present! The next page is always something that looks small, but is large and miraculous. All that emotion and beauty in a few notes and a few German words. It's very humbling. And I suspect neither Ben nor myself want to interrupt a rehearsal process that is affording us both, he at the key board, me not at the keyboard, a lot of growth.

So we wait!
Diary continues, though.

I just wish the wretched thing were in Italian. If I were living in Milan 100
years ago it would be easy to study L'amore di poeta!

MARILYN HORNE AT OBERLIN

Marilyn Horne gave a master class at Oberlin College on Oct 16, packing the large college chapel to the walls. Five students were selected to perform. Their ages ranged from 19 to 24. All were very talented, and all sounded dramatically better after Miss Horne was through with them.

To a young woman singing the Habanera from Carmen:

Ok, I can't see you breathe. Show me how you breathe. I'll say it again, I'm
all about support. Look, Carmen knows she functions as the entertainment for the girls in the factory and the fellas out in the square. So it's important that she establish a sense of fun with this piece, but also menace. Now, don't be too pretty here. And use your arms and hands! How old are you? Twenty-one? Sweetheart, it's fun to work on this but don't go near Carmen until you're twenty nine or thirty.
Carmen has to do so many things in character, the shouting, the dancing, things that are easy to lose control of, a young voice can be hurt. I know many ladies, fine singers, sopranos and mezzos who came to grief in Carmen. Now about that fun thing. Do you know Regina Resnik? She was a fantastic Carmen. She'd come out tossing an orange and catching it with one hand, very blase. In the old days it was the hands on hips and the rose in the teeth. We can't do that anymore. Now forward, honey. Put the sound higher, between the eyes. Don't growl. Sing those low notes with lots of support. Prends garde a toi! Be careful she says! That's a great line, you really need to balance the fun with a sense of menace.

To a young man singing Questo amor from Edgar-Puccini

I notice you are not observing the markings in the score. Now with Puccini you can be sure the markings are his. With Mozart, Schubert, even my Rossini, not so sure...I want you to take the 'ah' vowel high...place it up!
No, you are singing with your chin. Stop using your chin! Now, when you drop your jaw like that, so low you are throwing the sound to the back of your throat. Keep doing that and you will be in serious trouble in a few years. Do not throw your voice back. You are trying to manufacture a bigger and darker sound because you are young. Don't do it. Sing this with your voice. Okay, truthfully this piece requires more sound than you can summon at your age....I keep telling you to place the sound higher, but you don't believe me do you?? Look, just try it, just get it out of your throat.

To a young woman singing Come scoglio-Cosi fan Tutte-Mozart

You have a very beautiful voice. Wonderful. What is your comfortable top note? Can you sing an E flat? You can sing an F? Honey, then this is not for you. This is a dramatic soprano aria. It is not what I would have chosen for you now.
Good for you for wanting to work on it, but you need to sing lighter stuff, like Blondchen and Susanna very well first. This piece is a killer..You're a talented girl and I want you to do well.

Miss Horne and the audience seemed most taken with the final singer, a tall young baritone who sang Ah per semper! from Bellini's I Puritani. The sound was huge, too loud, unfocused and out of tune. But it was a wonderful sound even so! When she was finished this boy sounded like Titta Ruffo. She continued her mantras with this kid: "Support! Keep the sound out of the back of the throat! Focus!" He began to try her suggestions and suddenly all his pitch problems vanished. Horne would turn to the audience whenever a student did really well and say, "Am I right?"

"You don['t like the way I'm having you sound, do you?"
"Uh, no. It sounds very nasal to me."

"Good!" That's fine! Don't worry about it. It's a better sound out here, warmer, focused, large and honey, in tune!"

It was a great afternoon with a lady who, in the few bits she sang herself, showed she still got it. She was exacting, professional and warm to all.
I took some OSU students with me. On the drive home I played them some of her CDs. They had loved the classes but were too young to have
heard the lady herself. It was a WOW! for them.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 7 -LOTTE LEHMANN

OK, so I've spent the whole week keeping my throat open. Damned near gagged with a bulldozer, but finally I know how to squeeze out more sound from the abdominal muscles and use compressed air-the power-through the cords. I'm not saying the sound is pretty, or particularly expressive, or even nice, but there is a sound just past this side of a steam whistle.

Today I got some minute word by word coaching on the German. I'm the macro type myself, but this type of work is crucial, and to me was invaluable. One needs to breathe whether it makes sense musically, and usually-that will be where it makes sense in the words, an afterthought, a qualifying sentence, etc.

Yesterday I was asked to substitute teach a class on Dichterliebe for undergrads.
It's a song lit. class, taught by a first class teacher and artist. He took the day off to sing Yom Kippur services. I told these young people, if you are going to sing this music, then aside from technique and language you must have courage. Don't be afraid to be overtly emotional in your approach. Move your bodies, move your faces, be aware that your eyes are also important points of contact for the audience
(And don't ignore American song; nothing like singing in your own language).
The reason the song business is dying is that you have nice people getting up and singing in German. They don't speak German. Their audience doesn't speak German. But here we are doing two hours of German. So you obviously have to integrate yourselves into the language so completely that you could tell the story blind folded (or gagged!) That's what you are up there for. To tell a story. If it's about love, well what do you know about love? About loss? , pain, unrequited love (the worst) Song literature is chocked full of this.

I knew they would not know Lott Lehman and they didn't. I showed a DVD of one of her master classes. I said, This old lady was the greatest exponent of German song. She had an imperfect technique, and by the time she came to the States her voice was past its best. How did she manage to pack concert halls here for years? Because she believed every word she sang. She gave something of herself to every two minute song. She was unafraid. So must you be.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 6

OPEN YOUR THROAT!
I had a voice teacher say this to me last week. I've been hearing that a lot lately.
I heard it as well in college over twenty five years ago. I even heard Maria Callas say it to a terrified young soprano in her Juilliard master classes thirty years ago. For the record, it was the only time I heard Callas be anything besides kind and supportive.

You can't sing with your mouth closed. It is possible to open up wide and have the back of your throat sealed up tight. That's what I've been doing. Thus the sound is breathy, unsupported and has no vibrato. It might be pitched speaking but singing it ain't. And I'll say it again...Dichterliebe is-nearly literally-a ball buster.
The physical mechanisms have to be in first class shape to get through this. So today, after a weekend of practicing the "beginning of the yawn" without gagging, I went to rehearsal with Ben and opened my throat, and for about five minutes the sound was big, rich, focused and terrific. After five minutes it was breathy, constricted, tight and horrible. But hell, I got those five minutes I never had before. The great tenor Mario del Monaco used to shove a spoon down his pupil's throats getting to the 'gola aperto'. Gives whole new meaning to "Gag me with a spoon".

Many artists consider 'Ich grolle nicht' to be the emotional heart of the cycle

I won't complain
Even if my heart is breaking
Love lost forever, I won't complain

Even though you gleam with the glory of diamonds
(Wie du auch strahlst in Diamantenspracht, say THAT three times fast!)
No gleam falls into the night of your heart.

I can't sing this. I know the notes, the words and the mood with it's too low, it's too high, it's a killer and I'm all over the place. It is song 7, with 9 to go.
I can't really sing song 6 either, ain't that a kick? The exhortation of the Rhine, "with its great Cathedral of the holy city of Cologne' so far requires more support and gut strength than I can muster without passing gas. But I'm working on it. The singing, I mean.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 5

Well, here's another problem.
How to sing the entire cycle straight through without losing your voice?
I'm croaking a bit anyway, but hell, at least most of the time there's some tone there, some spin and some warmth. I said to Ben today, Let's do the whole thing start to finish, no stopping. We stopped a few times, pushing and shoving our ways through the sea wall of this thick and shifting tonality. I remember when we first discussed doing this, I thought I knew enough about German, so I could learn to do this well. I'm a pretty good musician. I've been listening to Dichterliebe since I was fifteen. How hard could this be?

After one hour of rehearsal I'm done. I need a week in intensive care. Just the
concentration required, the ability to listen and to express what's going on between the bars is an enormous challenge. Noody should throw away their Fritz Wuderlich albums, but this is a wonderful mental and spiritual excerise and I'm gratedul for the opportunity.

So -
Never mind there are two pieces back to back I can't sing because they are too bleeding low. And forget that there's a top G in the first line of the first song that doesn't exist for me. And Ben, bless his heart, says, "Now, on this page where its triple forte and high, just open up." I opened up and my bowels fell on the floor. Why torment an audience, not to mention Schumann? Didn't he have enough trouble beinb crazy?

But I'll tell you, every time I turn the page and see the next song I 'm glad to be working on this.

As my buddy Paul Cote used to say, "Who needs to be over the rainbow when you've been under the ferris wheel?" (Don't ask.)