Peter Gelb for a Day

  
I've never met Peter Gelb. My name will mean nothing to him.
Peter Gelb is the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.
He's responsible for a half billion dollar company which for many reasons must maintain its status as the world's finest.

His job is to put together a top quality product for about 250 performances a year.
His bigger job is to put fannies in seats.
I'm being polite here.
The Met board is lacking in the old money because the old money is either dead or gone the way of Bernie Madoff.  I daresay most of the board members to whom Gelb must answer are or were financial mavens oriented to the bottom line. The old question, "Why do you need all those violins anyway?" is not a total joke. So it is that in this lousy economy, the sight of empty seats must mean trouble in the upstairs boardrooms.



Look folks, Gelb is having to balance musical and dramatic sophistication with an audience that wants to be entertained. Or a company controlled by those who want to be entertained. Few of this potential audience-the mass audience, reads Opera-L or patretrre box und so weiter. They pays their money and they don't want to take no chances.So Gelb has to come up with, if not sure fire winners, then flops that can be re- imagined for good copy.

I don't imagine the to-do over the Robert Lepage Ring staging is causing sleepless nights. This kind of argument is good publicity. What is not good publicity is looking like an idiot by silencing a magazine or a blog. Discussed elsewhere. 'Nuf said..

Could you do Peter Gelb's job for one week? Be the target boy for people who express genuine critical concerns over the product, or for those who bitch and don't attend, and for people who have more than a few screws loose, and for those in the middle, who enjoy finding things and people to hate. Then there are the parties to be satisfied and kept happy: Singers, chorus to Renee Fleming, orchestra, wardrobe, stage hands, lights, camera you name it. Any one group can shut down the show. Then there' s the board, needing to be stroked and petted for that extra five hundred thou Bernie didn't get. 

Never mind when Karita or Juan Diego or Riccardo decide not to show up, and Jimmy is sick and some idiot is moaning on line that the soprano in The Enchanted Isle (A Gelb hit in my opinion) smiled too much.You think its all limos, luxury apartments, gourmet on the grand tier and the directors box for Les troyens? For all the time a person has you might as well live across the street at the West Side YMCA and chew on a tuna fish sandwich. Hookers and blow would be nice if they were offered (I'm not saying they are) but not much fun if you're too aggravated or too fucking exhausted.



Gelb is probably not helping himself much with his cold demeanor. He comes across as forbidding and awkward. We don't need a teddy bear in this job, but a little of Rudolf Bing's timing and punchy humor would go a long way.



I have to love an impresario who gives us From the House of the Dead and The Nose; who engages a producer who understands that The Barber of Seville is meant to be funny. The HD presentations make the Met an international brand in the way radio broadcasts used to. We who don't in New York (and I grew up in upstairs standing room but saw my last Met performance in 2005) find ourselves invested in the Met and its repertoire, if not always its people, in our local movie theatres.

Peter Gelb. Want his job? I dare you.

Failures? Who liked the Tosca? I suspect we've seen the last of The First  Emperor. The Ring is the one-or four-productions the public loves to hate. It had a lot to do with machinery and very little with characterization. Peter Grimes, if they had opened one more freakin' window...But Gatti-Casazza had his failures too. Joseph Breil's The Legend was assigned to the young Rosa Ponselle. Sixty years later she told her biographer, "The girl had a feather sticking out of her somewhere" and reported she had burned the score. Who remembers Cleopatra's Night or La campagna sommersa-the latter a flop by Respighi which Elisabeth Rethberg and Martinelli couldn't save. And if you know who the hell is Gatti-Casazza, you need to get out more.

Catherine Russell

Catherine Russell

This goes under the category "Where have I been?"

A chance listen to Terry Gross's Fresh Air on NPR introduced me to singer Catherine Russell.
Now I can't get enough. Why should I?
It's a voice like honey-molasses. Bake it in a pie or eat it right out of the bottle.
This is wonderful, energetic and personal singing:




Oh my, I love me some Catherine Russell.

She has a great webiste: www.catherinerussell.com

Enjoy.

Not Seeing DFD

The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died, at 87.

His name was a footnote to me in my foolish youth, because he was not known for loud, florid Italian opera.
He was a lieder singer. German art songs. Very prissy. Stand there in tails and sing in German to an audience that didn't understand German but got together for one of his American concerts because, like castor oil, it was supposed to be good for you.

Isn't it great to be young and stupid?

I remember a time when I thought Hugo Wolf was boring (no tunes) Schoenberg was a fraud and the sun rose and set on Donizetti and Puccini. I still love Donizetti and Puccini. Hugo Wolf is now a god to me. Schoenberg?: Oh, well. I do love my Moses und Aron

Back to Dieskau. From him I began to understand the art of intimacy. It takes a lot of power to hold  people around your little finger. DFD could do that:





I used think that a concert with one singer and one pianist was a rip -off. I was with Anna Russell who said, 'The German lied has to be approached with great reverence and utter seruiosness'. she was only partly serious. There's a lot of room for charm, blood, sex, emotion and fire. Dietrich Fischer Dieskau did not have a rolling glorious  baritone voice. It was a good voice. But nobody ever told a story better than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. isn't that what singing is? Telling a story? Take a walk on a lovely spring day. Smell the flowers. Pay attention to the sky:





I saw him twice in concert. The first time at age 12. How and why I got there at that age is another story. I had been fit for glasses the week before. The glasses that I left at home that Sunday afternoon.
From the second balcony I recall the outline of a very tall, big man. He sand 'Dies schoene Muellerin.' I didn't know it. They didn't teach German in Sacred Heart parish. I remember nothing about what I heard, and remember I couldn't see either.

Any one of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's recordings of 'Die schoene Muellerin' would go with me to the desert island. (Aksel Schotz, too)





 I saw Dieskau again, also in Symphony Hall, ten years later. It was an all Mahler program. A lot of the Knaben Wunderhorn songs. By now I was starting to get it. What I remember most is that he made lieder conversational, and that he was singing only to me. The hall was of course sold out, but there I was, now with glasses on-and Dietrich Fischer -Dieskau had me laughing and crying and everything in between. To me his gift was making conversation in and with music. You didn't have to know a word of German to understand, his inflexion and musicianship were so striking.

Still, I regret being blind and deaf to Schubert's lovely mill maid. A great 'what if' for me, along with two others, Tito Gobbi as Scarpia and Cesare Siepi as Don Giovanni. I saw 'em. I was there but damned if I can remember . I'll tell you about them another time.

Carmen, October 15, 1979

A few weeks after I moved to New York in the fall of 1979,the big news on the streets was the impending New York City Opera debut of Victoria de los Angeles. The great lady had not sung a staged opera in New York for many years. Engaging her was thought to be both a coup and savvy publicity for Beverly Sills, new as General Manager of the Company.


  




There were two occasions I remember when the return of a beloved artist brought with it great love, great joy and unrealistic expectations. Mme de los Angeles return as Carmen was one of those times (the other was Carlo Bergonzi's Otello in Carnegie Hall in 2000).

But what did I know? I was 22! loved opera and (thought I) knew all about Victoria and Carmen. The City Opera was across the street and the tix were $4. (I always felt welcomed there) It was announced that Mme de los Angeles would sing several performances each of the Countess and Carmen

I  had already crossed Broadway a few times, for Faust and Tosca. Beverly Sills, red hair flaming to shame Lucille Ball, would sit in the first seat stage right of the first level. She was there that October night.

The place was sold out. Victoria de los Angeles had legions of fans, as she does today, a few years after her death. And people loved the City Opera's Carmen. Good cast: Ricardo Calleo (handsome) Robert Hale (dashing)  Gwenlynn Little-a lovely voice you could fall in love to. And one of the great names in opera in the title role. For four bucks.

Recently I found a CD rom of 18 performances of Carmen-beginning with Stignani and Gigli in 1949 (there's a mental image)  and very much including that October performance in New York. I was up there in the cheap seats. I remember VdLa's delayed entrance. At La voila! Voila la Carmencita! the men sang into  the wings...and waited...and then out she came, hands on hips. Deafening applause. A roar that went on and on.

Oh, dear.

Even from the cheap seats it was obvious this was an older lady. Victoria made her New York debut in1949 and her Met years were 1950-1962. What were we to expect in 1979? She began to sing and you felt the nerves in the audience. The color was there. Her voice was recognizable, but very thin, small and dry. She had trouble holding pitch. There were real flashes of the good ol' sound-like an orange rind-but the lady was working mighty hard! There was a fair amount of quasi parlando going on. And no, I don't remember the sound over thirty years ago.Charles Wendelken-Wilson* conducted. He really tried to help her. I remembered being disappointed in her looks, pig that I was. She didn't sound like her Beecham recording and that disappointed me.

 I left after the first act. It seemed more respectful not to stay.


She canceled all the other performances and left town.
What had been a coup for Sills (should she have known better?) turned out to be a flop.

But I'm listeningg to the performance now. Chorus, orchestra, supporting cast all first rate. Robert Hale is very sexy, even audio only. I like Calleo a lot. And de los Angeles has fine moments I didn't stay to hear.

I did see the lady again, 10 years later! in recital at Manhattan music. She had a thread of voice. A frayed thread. She sang Brahms, Falla and Granados in a small hall. She was enchanting. God bless her.

I've said it before. I will always love the city Opera.


   *I heard many of his NYCO performances. Years later he was conducting and broadcasting in Dayton. I could have driven forty five minutes and said hello. I didn't.

Vedem, Lori Laitman and The Lost Boys

Vedem (Czech: "In the Lead") was a magazine cobbled together by the teenage boys living in a "dorm" at the Terezin (Theresianstadt) concentration camps. It was thought by the Jewish elders of the camp that children would be better served if they could be distracted-even a little-from the horrors surrounding them.

Very few of the boys survived. The elderly gentleman in the clip are among them:.




 

Lori Laitman has written an oratorio called Vedem, using the actual texts these children wrote as they faced death. David Mason wrote the libretto. Mina Miller writes:

"Every Friday night for two years between 1942 and 1944, they read aloud their week's contributions...At age fourteen, Petr Ginz became Vedem's first and only editor-in-chief. At age sixteen he was sent to his death in Auschwitz.

The oratorio of Vedem is important because it's beautiful, and Lori Laitman's music returns and amplifies the humanity of these boys so prevalent in their writing.  The score is melodic, clear, simple and deeply moving. The words are set to be heard. The words in of themselves are not high poetry. But I'll say it again, they were written by children facing death.The work is scored for  boy's choir, clarinet, cello and piano.  

Vedem  was recorded by Naxos shortly after the 2010 premiere in Seattle.

Music from the holocaust (inspired by? devoted to? written during?) is not new. We've had cabaret songs, cantatas, art songs, oratorios. Composer Paul Krasna died at Auschwitz. His opera Brundibar was written for the children at Terezin to perform. Viktor Ullman is remembered today for his opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis in his death in the gas chambers. Contralto Ottilie Metzger perished, as did violinist Alma Rose, who was Mahler's niece. Tragically, on and on and on and on.

Vedem is simple and moving and let's the context of the words work their their magic.
Thank you, Lori Laitman. Boys, God bless you.

The boys of Terezin reunited in Seattle, 2010

Wagner's Dream

 
Here's what I liked most about Wagner's Dream: we got to see some vulnerability from Peter Gelb. He seemed human and reachable. His public facade up until now had been aloof and reptilian. He was channelling Rudolf Bing, who it was said had a very dry and active wit. Gelb looked worried and looked tense. It made me like him.





The 2 hr film was more the story of Robert Lepage and his ExMachina Company in Quebec. The building and assembly of the controversial machine-the set for the new Ring Cycle at the Met-is certainly a story, but this film was more Robert's Dream than anyone else's. It's a PR tool for the Metropolitan. No harm there but how much blocking and staging was actually done. Why so little discussion of the characters? It was all mechanics and very little character.




That said, I know James Levine withdrew because if illness early on, but still. Where the hell was he? A few rehearsals shots were not enough. He is the artistic conscience of the company and has been for forty years. He deserves respect. If he was unavailable for an extensive interview he could have been acknowledged more. James Levine conducting the Met orchestra in Wagner is was one of the best experiences of my life.




The story of Jay Hunter Morris pinch hitting and making good is worth a separate film. A big, good looking bruiser from Paris Texas who can actually sing (yes, sing) Siegfried. What's not to love? He gave a brief interview during the HD Walkure a few months ago. The audience where I was fell in love with him.






We had a lot of Debbie Voigt-no bad thing. I would have liked more Bryn Terfel and Stephanie Blythe. Who wouldn't? And one thing was clear. Like it or not, I doubt anyone can work on the Lepage Ring without an engineering degree. I fear for all the expense and all the trouble, the 'mystery will be gone' and theRing in New York will no longer be a great event. It was that as recently as the mid nineties, in the Otto Schenk production that had held forth for years. And they didn't have the two big boys: Bryn 'n' Jay.

FALSTAFF at Ohio State

The School of Music at The Ohio State University presents Verdi's FALSTAFF in Mershon Auditorium, Friday May 4 at 8 pm and Sunday May 6 at 3. 

The production is staged by A. Scott Parry and conducted by Marshall Haddock. The costumes are by Christine Kearney.
Todd Thomas sings the title role, surrounded by a (wonderful) all student cast.

The Sunday performance is broadcast live on Classical 101.1 FM... on line at www.wosu.org/classical101
 

Falstaff by Gruzbeck

Falstaff! The final opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The composer was eighty years old at the opera's premiere at La Scala, Milan in 1893. He may have protested too much, crying "think to my age" when enticed by his librettist Arrigo Boito to end his career with comedy, and one of the composer's greatest loves, Shakespeare.

Verdi and Shakespeare were old friends. Macbeth was his first turn at the Bard, in 1847. The composer considered this opera a favorite child, revising it in 1865. To then end of Verdi's life there were hints at King Lear. In the past ten years scraps by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert  have been found. Who knows what lie in the attic and cellars at Sant'Agata, Verdi's estate outside Milan?

Otello came forty years after Macbeth. Verdi had settled into a peaceful retirement, so he said. His letters at the time say he was content and finished with the theater. I don't buy it. The composer of Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La Traviata, Don Carlo (written for Paris) La forza del Destino (written for Russia) and even I masnadieri (written for London and Jenny Lind, no less) can't have been happy sitting watching the flowers grow, lovely estate or not.

Verdi (R) with Boito at Sant'Agata

Verdi and Arrigo Boito had met years before-the esteemed composer, a world celebrity, and an angry young man making his way at the expense his betters. A hot and heavy affair with Eleonora Duse gave Boito some social cachet. Boito's  relationship with Verdi grew into friendship with Otello. Boito's Italian language libretto has been called superior to Shakespeare's play (I ain't goin' there). Verdi's music was sensational. The opening storm choruses hav the audience reaching for rain gear to this day. There is no love duet more deeply moving than that between Otello and Desdemona at the close of Act I. The haunting kiss motive will come back, haunting indeed, at the end of the opera.

"Opera needs laughter as well as tears" Verdi said. His one comedy was his second opera, Un giorno di Regno (King for a Day)  written during a time of deep personal tragedy, nearly fifty years earlier. It seems that killing 'em off was more lucrative.  But there was Verdi, fresh from Otello's triumph, in his cool, dark rooms in Milan-applause ringing in his ears-leafing through Shakespeare. It was Boito who came up with the idea for Falstaff, helping himself to The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV.

The French baritone Victor Maurel, Verdi's first Iago, put on the phony belly and took the title role at the premiere. Guess what? Maurel recorded Falstaff's little ditty from Act II, Falstaff's "seduction" of Alice 
Ford.

 When I was a pageboy to the Duke of Norfolk, I was so skinny, (sottile) I would slip through the ring on your finger!'

Here's Monsieur Maurel in 1907, six years after Verdi's death. He sing sit three times, being cheered on-and then once more, in French!



Here's more of that seduction. Silly Sir John has written the identical love letter to two ladies, Mrs. Ford and Mrs.Page.-the better to get more much needed pennies to finance his besotted lifestyle. The ladies get the joke and want revenge. Sir John ends up in a laundry basket thrown into the Thames



These clips are from the Metropolitan. Falstaff was first heard there with Victor Maurel, on February 4, 1895. W .J. Henderson in the New York Times:

Surely none left the auditorium without feeling that they had been in the presence of a masterwork, and one, too, little short of miraculous in its superb vitality, coming as it did, from the pen of a man who had passed the allotted three score and ten.

Falstaff has an adorable if naughty title character, the Merry Wives of Windsor, two young lovers, an angry husband and some creepy hangers-on. There's even kissing behind a screen, and a phony marriage in Windsor great park!

And all ends well. Verdi ends his operatic career with a magnificent fugue, as difficult to conduct as it is engaging to hear.Gone are the pyramids, and the hunchbacks, and the murderers and the tubercular heroines. Gone are the monarchs wanting to kill their sons and the sons wanting to sleep with their step mothers. What's left is 'Tutto nel mondo eburla"--All the world is a joke, wisdom is laughter:

Columbus Symphony and La belle epoque: It really IS all about sex.

(OK, it really isn't)


The Columbus Symphony concludes the 2011-2012 Classical Series this weekend with music by French composers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts,  with Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano and the Columbus Symphony Chorus.

The program on Saturday May 5 at 8 PM is broadcast live on Classical 101 FM and streamed on the web www.wosu.org/classical 101.

Pre-concert talks this Friday and Saturday at 7 pm. Just because you read this doesn't excuse you!

Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Faure:     Pavane
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, suite 2
Chausson: Poem of Love and the Sea
Durufle: Requiem

Much of this music is all about color- what do I mean 'all about color?' Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were less concerned about the element of music most accessible: melody. There are tunes a- plenty, but these composers, and their contemporary Ernest Chausson, were coming of age in the era of the impressionist painters. Monet, Manet and especially Matisse used color to create what they wanted to see rather than what was literally before them. Oversimplification? Yes. But the texture and the light of many of these paintings mirrors (there's a word the impressionists loved) the sound collages you'll hear tonight.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) followed Wagner in experimenting with tonality and rhythm. The downward chromatic figure that begins Prelude a l'apres midi d'une faune told the public in 1894 not to get too comfortable. The bar line rhythms of Mozart were giving way to an opaque texture filled with suggestion. You can hear the Faun scampering about on a hot summer afternoon, chasing nymphs-and this brief piece has an orchestral climax Wagner would have loved. Although this music flows, it doesn't 'land' where the ear expects. Debussy's music happens rather than being played.

Debussy and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) were too good for Serge Diaghilev to resit. The Russian born impresario of the Ballets Russes, with top hat, tails and rakish mustache, with his public and hedonistic affairs with Vaclav Nijinsky Michel Fokine and Leonard Massine WAS Parisian culture just before World War I. . Debussy and Ravel were well established world celebrities by 1912 but Diaghilev gave them the best kind of notoriety, the: success de scandale. The great Nijinsky choreographed and danced the faun to Debussy's music. The performance titillated, shocked and goaded the Parisian audiences with its heat and self-love.



Ravel didn't really want to work with Diaghilev. He knew that any success would be Diaghilev's and any failure would be Ravel's. Daphnis and Chloe was danced by the Ballets Russes in 1912. The idea came from choreographer Michel Fokine-and he caused Ravel  lot of consternation:

 " I must tell you I just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night, work until 3 a.m. What complicated things is that  Fokine doesn't know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian. In spite of the interpreters, you can imagine the savour of these meetings."




If the Greek legend of children raised by foster parents who fall in love and are separated and then reunited is a tad obvious, you can hear the Ravel provided music is anything but fey-indeed it has a lusciousness and sensuality primed for (splendid) dancers. Ravel's score long outlived the Ballet Russes. He later adapted  Daphnis and Chloe into three suites for orchestra,of which we'll hear Suite 2. There's a spectacular sunrise, pirate ships, an abduction and a steamy reunion. Daphis et Chloe is Ravel's longest and largest scaled work-but no miniaturist he. (Last time I heard this work the friend who joined me remarked, 'At last, a composer who can make love without slobbering!')
 

Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) died a fascinating death. He crashed his bicycle. This somewhat overshadows his life at the center of a Parisian salon attractive to Debussy, Faure, Albeniz, Turgenev and Monet. He was an attorney with a respectable profession and an attractive wife-and he had the Wagner bug as well, encouraged by Cesar Franck.

Who knows how Chausson would have developed had he lived longer? I'll bet he would have discovered jazz and gone running after Schoenberg and twelve-tone music..for a bit.

The Poeme de l'amour et de la mer for voice and orchestra took eight years to complete, 1882-1890. Chausson had already produced a terrific opera,  Le roi d'Arthus and another 'Poeme' for violin and orchestra.

The Poem of Love and the Sea sets two poems by Maurice Bouchor-and the sea imagery is made for the play on light and the chimera of the impressionists

"The wind has changed, the skies are sullen/and no more shall we run and gather/the lilac in bloom and lovely roses/the springtime is sad and cannot bloom"




Chausson doesn't tell us if the voice is more important than the orchestra or vice versa? The fabric is pretty tight. The voice rises from the orchestra (as if from the seas?)  This is music in which to wallow.

Very different is the sublime Requiem by Maurice Durufle Durufle (1902-1986). Just as sonority-how the orchestra sounded was paramount to Debussy, so generations later Durufle gave us an other sonority, based on Gregorian Chant.




Durufle became devoted to chant as practised at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes. He came by this love naturally. for fifty-seven years, from 1929 until his death 1986, Maurice Durufle was organist at the Parisian church of  Ste.-Etienne-du Mont. There he prepared the first performance of his Requiem, a lament for post-occupation France, in 1947.  Durufle was one of the great church organists of Paris-a city where the king of instruments is taken very seriously to this day.  Not for Durufle the eroticism of Debussy, Chausson and Ravel. As well crafted as those scores are, Durufle is restrained, careful, dignified and emphatic. You don't mess with Durufle.

What a program for our final Columbus Symphony concerts this season! The sensuality and heavy breathing, the colors of Debussy, Ravel and Chausson, and the piety mixed with gorgeousness of Durufle's Requiem. We'll hear our splendid Columbus Symphony chorus directed by Ronald Jenkins, and a fantastic mezzo-soprano, Jennifer Rivera. .Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts. What's not to love?

MET HD: Zachary Woolfe

Zachary Woolfe, -a marvelous writer on music-is discussing the Metropolitan opera's HD transmissions in the New York Times. The first installment in today's paper and if I knew how to post a link I would bloody well do it. Go to www.nytimes.com Part 2 next week. MEANWHILE, a few favorites from past seasons:

Nice Photos: They've Earned Their Rest

Dame Joan Sutherland's grave, in Clarens, Switzerland

HMMM. Here are a few more. The Irish in me: Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931) Lilydale, Australia

Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) Baltimore

Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) Reggio Emilia, Italy

Franco Corelli (1921-2003) Cimitero Monumentale, Milan

Ezio Pinza (1892-1957) Greenwich, Connecticut

Beverly Sills (1929-2007) Valhalla, New York

Lotte Lehmann (1888-1976) Central Friedhof, Vienna

Salvatore Licitra (1968-2011) Lombadia, Italy

Anna Moffo (1932-2006) Valhalla, New York

Let's talk about opera

THIS JUST IN OPERA/FILM SERIES AT UPPER ARLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARY: Sundays, 3 PM JUNE 3 Salome JUNE 24 La fille du regiment JULY 22 La traviata AUG 19 MADAMA BUTTERFLY

I hope a lot of folks will come here to talk about opwra: News, opinions, gossip, the works. Hearhear was kind enough to make this suggestion. HH also makes several wonderful points about the impact of the Met's HD series on local opera companies. The familiar mantra is , "Yes, but nothing beats a live performance seen in the theater." True. Best seats at he Met average $400.00. I grew up in standing room. $2 in my day. I loved it all. I may be too old to stand now, and I don't have $400. The HDs give me a perspective better than I was used to, but what we see in the cinema is not the same as what is seen (and heard!) in the opera house. What we see is largely up to the cameras and director. Still, I've often been impressed by reading the faces of the singers (especially the chorus) and noting their involvement in the drama. No faking that I could see. Especially in the Macbeth several seasons ago, with Maria Guleghina and Zeljko Lucic. A lot was done with the eyes. Does it hurt local opera?Maybe. It implies a false standard in that no regional company can compete with the Met'sopulene at its best. The public gets spoiled (I am) But if the Met is well experienced in HD, local opera gives a real sense of community that HD doesn't provide. People alive, together in one room, watching often young and spirited artists. The scenery may be sparse and the orchestra may be small, but again, I go to opera for commitment, the synthesis of words and music. Opera as theater. I want to laugh and cry at Marriage of Figaro, and be frightened at Scarpia's entrance. (TheMet's HD Tosca--awful. Scarpia dry humping statues of the Virgin Mary. Nuts) Let's find away to use the Met's HD presentations to stimulate audiences for local opera, rather than accepting to easily that the gawe is up for community-based performances. What do you

think?

Don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining

Judge Judy has a wonderful saying. "Don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining."



I thought of that while watching the recent Met Traviata in HD.




I liked Natalie Dessay's passion and commitment. I think she is an important, honest artist. I like Matthew Polenzani's singing. Why he had to be made up to look like a woman beats me. Hvorostovsky, my God that's a beautiful voice, magnificent, but a little emotion or connection to the story would have been nice. Hvorstovsky is peerless in Russian art song, and as Onegin and Yeletsky. He'd be a splendid Figaro in Barbiere, Count in Nozze di Figaro-maybe even Golaud. But he lacks the sheer vocal mass to be a Verdi baritone. He is the Met's go-to boychik these days for Verdi-as Marcello Giordani is for the tenors. Nice, ringing, loud enough but coarse and no personality.

Is there anything worse than old farts like me bitching about how everything was better in days gone by? Look, I think opera is healthier now. We are getting a lot of new works and they are being given a chance. Dessay is one of several artists who dig into the music. But only a few revel in singing-in the musical line. Only a few base their performances of the music ON the music. Florez, Lawrence Brownlee (we need more of him) Joyce DiDonato, Gerard Finley, Terfel. And yes there are magnificent voices today: Stephanie Blythe, Bryn Terfel, Rene Pape, Eric Owens, Morris Robinson (more! more!) Diana Damrau.

But the stagings are dull. My God, did the France of Manon have to look so dreary? Piotr Beczala is one of my favorites and he didn't disappoint. Netrebko was sexy and glamorous but if you look into her eyes on the big screen there's not much going on. (Go to youtube and watch Beverly Sills sing 'Adieu, notre petite table) Anna Bolena's Tudor London looked overcast-Anna looked great but did it rain every day in May of 1536? Why not open up the stage like a flower with light!



(Damned if I know why there was a bed in church)

When you stage the Ring with a machine having little to do with the story, and said machine gets all the publicity, well...




I'm basing my remarks on HD presentations. It might be sunshine city in the house. I don't know. But it feels like the HD audience is what the Met is aiming at these days.

Stop putting on these empty staged productions and saying they are 'new modern retelling.' They are done to save drachmas. I don't care if it's Salzburg, New York or Columbus,  Ohio. You can't fool the public. I like pretty people as much as the next guy. A lot of our pretty singers sing very well indeed. But they are not the great voiced monstres sacrees who could burn the stage down with their voices. Thomas Hampson is a great artist but as Macbeth? Iago? Roberto Alagna is wonderful in French opera, but Radames? C'mon. And why did Violeta Urmana squall her way through all those Aidas with Latonia Moore as her cover. It should be the other way around thank you very much. At least the current Aida has a damned sphinx.

I'm waiting for the Rat pack Rigoletto-60s Vegas is probably cheaper than 15th century Mantua. Photos show the Rigoletto and Ballo costumes are interchangeable. Dry cleaning bills must be less than separate costumes.

And another thing! What's with the short careers? Think-who is still singing well today that you first heard in 1980?

I heard Maria Callas in Boston, February 27, 1974

I was seventeen when I heard Maria Callas in Boston's Symphony Hall, on February 27, 1974. She appeared on the American 'leg' of a world concert tour she undertook with tenor Giuseppe DiStefano and pianist Robert Sutherland.



Callas had not sung in public for eight years when the tour began, in Germany, in the fall of 1973. She remained a potent figure in opera. Her on again off again liaison with Aristotle Onassis, begun in 1959, was fodder to the press before and after that gentleman's marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy.

Early reports of the European concerts weren't promising. Callas and DiStefano had each been in
glorious voice twenty years earlier. They sang and recorded together in Chicago, Milan, Rome, Mexico City and throughout Europe. Di Stefano was a very handsome man with an open, thrilling voice-and no discipline. Callas was highly disciplined with a voice that began to slip away early. Nerves? Weight loss? Burn out? I don't think we'll ever know. By 1965 she was acting up a storm and singing carefully (and rarely), DiStefano continued to appear, but the tone and ring of his voice were gone.

What did people expect in 1973? It must have been daunting, having to compete only with your younger self. By the time the duo came to the States, there had been months of rows, cancellations, aborted performances and cheers, cheers, cheers. The first Carnegie Hall concert was cancelled at the last minute. The crowd had jammed into the Carnegie lobby and spilled out onto 57th St.

Then came Boston.

Tickets went on sale just after Christmas. I cut school that day and took the Mass. Ave bus to Symphony Hall to be there when the box office opened at 9 a.m. I got there around 8.30. There were no mobs of eager ticket buyers. People stood outside for four days to get standing room for Callas' last Tosca at the Met in 1965. Not any more. I was probably tenth in line and I was on my way before 10 a.m. (Did I go back to school? Are you kidding?)

The top ticket price was $25.00. You won't believe it today but in 1974 that was unheard of. The best seats in Lincoln Center were $17.50. NOBODY paid $25.00 for a Boston Symphony concert, great as they were. (If you got $5 for cutting a neighbor's lawn, you were rich.)

The weeks went by with my tickets burring into my bureau. (I got a week's detention for cutting school and spent it reading George Jellinek's biography of Callas. Maria never became my friend but many years later George Jellinek did) The press said DiStefano was screaming or crooning like a pig and that Callas was terrified, unsure and had no voice.

On February 27 I got to Symphony Hall early. I told the lady next to me I had been sick to my stomach from nerves all week. She had too! And people around us were nodding in agreement! Callas was nervous and her audience was petrified in anticipation.

The announcement came that while Callas was in the Hall and would perform, DiStefano was not and would not. No one cared. ("Callas said later, 'he abandoned me in Kennedy country')

A Greek pianist called Vasso Devitzi would play some Chopin and Schumann between Maria's arias. Then the lights went down and she came out.



Okay its not Boston but you get the idea.
She began to speak to the audience, apologizing for being nervous. "I hope everything will go well." She said, 'Can you hear me?'

NO! People yelled back, but applause and shouts of encouragement went out again and again. She had a large, radiant smile that lit up her eyes. "You are a marvelous audience. Thank you."

She began with 'Suicidio' from La Gioconda, the opera of her first break in 1947. After the first four notes there was a buzz in the Hall. All of the color was there. The timbre was there. What had made Callas was still Callas. The aria had been transposed down but in this piece it didn't matter. She growled, she cried, she sang and the excitement was incredible.

She gave us 'Vissi d'arte'. Not so good. 'Voi lo sapete". Better. It became apparent that Callas had retained low notes and even some above the staff. But from I'd day the G above middle C to the D above-the fifth-there as no voice at all. The voice had separated and the middle was gone. Exactly where most of the repertoire lies.

She sang 'Tu che le vanita' from Don Carlo. She held the words on note cards. The print was so large you could read it from the cheap seats.

The final encore was O mio babbino caro



(Okay, that wasn't Boston either)

The applause longer than the concert. One man stood on his seat and yelled 'Noi t'amo!'
(We love you). She thought he had said 'Puritani' and she said, "Not this year. Next year."

I was seventeen. I didn't know you shouldn't bother the artists. I was with some friends from NEC, and we went to the stage door. It was mobbed. Cops were pushing people away. We went for pizza on Huntington Avenue, reasoning that eventually the crowds would leave and then Callas would come out.

The pizza was good. And we were right. Post-pizza, Gainsborough St. was quiet but the stage door was still open. We went up the stairs and there in front of us was Maria Callas. Thee were maids, poodles, agents and Vasso Devitizi. but there was Callas, reaching for her coat. We were kids and pushed our way in. "Hello!" she said. "Hello-we loved your concert and yadda yadda yadda". Up close she looked drained and pale, but we got a tired smile, autographs and 'God bless you.' What would you say to Maria callas? All of us were trying not to wet our pants.

And then we left and she left and went on to tour the States and Japan. DiStefano was here today not here tomorrow.

The last concert was in Sapporo in late 1974.

Then Onassis died. Callas withdrew.

Richard Dyer put it best in his respectful and honest review of the Boston concert. "She asked us for something she had never needed before. Our love."

She got it.

Maria Callas died in Paris in September 16, 1977.
I thought with gratitude of the great night she gave three years earlier.
I still think of it, gratefully and sadly, nearly forty years later.

PS. In fairness, here is Maria Callas in her prime:

The Columbus Symphony: Satirists,Philosophers: Donald Harris, R. Strauss...and Mozart

The Columbus Symphony presents 'The Satirist and the Philosopher', music by Mozart, Donald Harris and Richard Strauss, this weekend, 8 pm in the Ohio Theater. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts.

I think we are generally wired to tonality, to musical consonance. Listen to the German romantics, Schumann and Brahms-go back to Mozart (live with Mozart.) The journey is sublime. The destination is almost predictable for those steeped in this music.

Donald Harris's music is different. The process-playing the notes-is the journey. Not only because his music-alas-is not better known and many of us are hearing it for the first time. Donald used the 12 tone method early in his career. Music depending on patterns and repetition, as does all Western music, becomes more challenging through dissonances and especially since we have no way to predict where this music is going.

NEWS FLASH: I just heard this symphony in rehearsal. It is a knockout and a wow.


Wagner got there first with Tristan und Isolde. (Gesualdo and Monteverdi were writing unpredictable music four hundred years earlier.) Wagner set the sex act to music in Tristan, (yes he did) and only at the end of a four hour opera is there a tragic and magnificent....arrival. Relief.

This weekend the Columbus Symphony presents the world premiere of Donald Harris' Second Symphony. Thus I haven't heard it and neither have you. He tells me the work can be astringent, but as a composer, Harris values creativity, and a 'spark' above all else. This is a composer who "caressed every note, and he felt liberated to compose freely in a style of his own choosing after an unremarkable start with Nadia Boulanger."

Donald Harris' Second Symphony has its world premiere this weekend. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts the Columbus Symphony in the Ohio Theater.

The concert on Saturday April 14 is broadcast live on Classical 101 FM or www.wosu.org/classical101. 8 PM. Dr. Harris will be on hand for pre-concert talks and for intermission commentary.

Meanwhile, here's the intro to a wonderful film about Donald Harris' many journeys as a composer. The centerpiece is an early work of his, the Piano Sonata 2, as performed by David Belivasky





Donald Harris is Emeritus Professor of Music at The Ohio State University. He lived in Paris form 1954 to 1968. On return to the States he taught and and served as an administrator at the New England Conservatory and the Hartt College of Music. He remains a vigorous composer, and a beloved teacher, mentor and friend.

The Harris symphony is part of a program called 'The Satirist and the Philosopher.

Take your pick:

Mozart Overture to The Magic Flute
Harris Symphony 2 (world premiere)

R. Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra

Here's conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni




The Strauss is best known today for its first ninety seconds, as used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: Space Odyssey. Many of us of a certain age 'zoned out' to this opening fanfare back in the day. Did you? Do they still?







Also sprach Zarathustra was first performed on November 27,1896 in Frankfurt. Strauss conducted.

Richard Strauss was an early devotee of Wagner, to his father's chagrin. Papa Strauss was a horn player in the Munich court orchestra. He would make it a point to turn his chair around and present his back to the audience whenever Wagner was invited to conduct.

The younger Strauss was wise in his rebellion. He continued Wagner's adventuresome tonality and epic use of the orchestra in his tone poems. These are one movement orchestral works with a program. Wagner inspired the young Strauss to absorb Nietzche-the ideal of the Uebermensch and man's dependence on nothing but himself. Of his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra (Sarastro in Mozart's Magic Flute) Nietzche tells us

"Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of god and evil as the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause and end it itself, is his work. ..Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. His doctrine...posits truth as the highest virtue: this means the opposite of the idealist who flees from realty....The self-overcoming of morality, out of truth; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite--into me--that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth."

PHEW!

I always thought of Strauss as a rather placid man, writing his music and counting his money. Even Strauss admitted the impossibility of expressing philosophy in music, but he did provide us with a mighty tone poem, filled with drama and variety. It has its bombastic moments, but never at the expense of the invitation to savor and exult, if not exactly ponder.

P.S., As to who is the satirist and who the philosopher....guess. Or not.

Columbus Symphony: Spotted Snakes and Summer Nights

The Columbus Symphony performs the incidental music to a A Midsummer Night's Dream, Berlioz song cycle Les Nuits d'ete and his three choruses, Tristia March 30 and 31 at 8 and Sunday, April 1 at 3-Southern Theater.

Saturday night's performance is broadcast live over Classical 101. FM, on line www.wosu.org/classical101

Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Alisa Jordheim, soprano and Michele Losier, mezzo-soprano

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

I first heard the Berlioz six songs for voice and orchestra, Les Nuits d'ete about 175 years ago during my college years. One fast song, four slow ones and a fast finale. Complicated French poetry. One voice. no chorus, no blood, no splash and dash. I was unimpressed.

Oh to be young and stupid! Oh to be (much) older and less stupid! The Berlioz cycle has become an obsession in recent weeks. I welcome the chance to hear it live--again.

Berlioz was in his thirties when he prepared these songs for voice and piano. The orchestration followed in 1856. Jose van Dam made a fine recording of the set with pianist Jean-Phillipe Collard. I'd like to hear these sung by Bryn Terfel or Juan Diego Florez or Jonas Kaufman. But the women have truly owned the cycle. Odd, since Berlioz initially wanted at least four different singers and voice types to share the wealth.

Theophile Gautier's poetry is rich, hedonistic, suggestive and more than a little perfumed. Literally. The second song Le spectre de la rose is a narrative by the ghost of the rose "you wore last night at the ball." Said rose so rich, so glorious, good enough only to adorn "her".

Upon the alabaster where I rest
A poet has written with a kiss:
Here lies all rose
Which kings could envy




In the final song, L'Ile inconnu, The Unknown Island-she (the eternal she?) is offered a boat with sails of pure silk, to sail to Java, or the coast of Norway, or the Baltic, or the Pacific, or to the coast of love-a coast still unknown



Berlioz liked it big. He was no minimalist, not even in his many melodies. (Zaide is practically a mad scene.) The combination of Berlioz' grandeur and Gautier's sensuality is, well...let's just say its a borderline healthy obsession I'm having with these songs, and if you think Le spectre de la rose is about a flower, think again.

We have the bonus this weekend of hearing the three choruses making up Tristia (sadness is not suggested). Berlioz published this collection in 1852. The three were written separately, between 1831 and 1844. There's a wordless song inspired by the final scene of Hamlet, a setting of Gertrude's lament for the drowned Ophelia, and the opening Meditation religeuse to poetry by Tom Moore. Why don't we hear Tristia more often? Especially the Mort Ophelie with its long melodic lines and dark harmony, this music doesn't try to be grand and operatic, but simple, direct and heartfelt.




Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Mendelssohn's name was made by his Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream written at age 17 when the young man was well into his career as a pianist, conductor and composer. Eventually the young man landed a prestigious gig as musikdirektor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. He came to the attention of the King of Prussia, who loved music and Shakespeare. The Bard had already infiltrated the opera house with Bellini and several lesser lights-Verdi was to come, so was the young Wagner (Die Feen) and more Berlioz. His Majesty wanted music for a production of Shakespeare's Sommernachtstraum to be staged at his palace.

Felix Mendelssohn obliged with music that almost-I said almost-eclipses Shakespeare in its humor and seductiveness. Mendelssohn added the overture he had written fifteen years earlier and his success was complete. The strings and high winds prance for Puck and his cohorts-and we all know the sumptuous march at the heart of the score:




Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts these concerts, with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Ronald Jenkins, conductor)

Steal this Book. BUY this Book: Liebestod, Opera Buffa with Leib Goldkorn, by Leslie Epstein

What do George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Lili Lehmann, the Satmar rebbe, Carmen Miranda, and James Levine have in common? Give up? All are featured in Leslie's Epstein's new continuation of the saga of Leib Goldkorn, "Graduate, Akademie Institut der Musik, member of the Steinway Quartet, principal in the National Biscuit Company Orchestra, A. Toscanini, conductor". Und so weiter.

At 104, Leib Goldkorn is recalled to his hometown of Jihvala (Iglau) to be feted as the town's oldest holocaust survivor. Leib decides he is the abandoned son of one Gustav Mahler. Papa conducts Tristan at the Hofoper in Vienna with Lili Lehmann in blonde tresses bewitching the young Mahler Jr., along with a pasty young man in a checkered suit with pockets supplied with candy and pants with the unspeakable. (Think who said young man might be) And this is early the book.

Welcome to a zany world that makes perfect sense to the title character. We climax, if that's the word, at the Metropolitan Opera house at "A. Lincoln Center", where our Leib conducts the world premiere of Papa's abandoned opera-starring Renee Fleming. She of the intoxicating voice and presence who proves her devotion to elder Mahler-Goldkorn, along with Luciano Pavarotti as the Prince and Placido Domingo as the head turnip. Or whatever. All ends not well.
Leib's cousins turn out to be...oh, never mind.

This book is worth reading if only to imagine dubbyah the opera. Sitting down front, yet. It's even more worth reading for the plot twists and broken diction of Mr. Goldkorn and his enjoyment in his own reality, if that's the word. I read this novel in one sitting and then read it again. The more you read, the more you enjoy.

Leslie Epstein comes by his creativity honestly, as the son and nephew of Hollywood royalty-screenwriters for Casablanca-among others. Mr. Epstein has for many years chaired the program in creative witting at Boston University. There must be something great in the air on Bay State Road. Read this book, then go find Ice Fire Water, King of the Jews and San Remo Drive. Epstein gives us a magic carpet ride through one man's enviable mania.

Yesterday was Bach's birthday

Thee I was browsing through the murder mysteries and trash novels for the gym at my local library yesterday, when an older lady in running gear, lean and not mean-approached. "It's Bach's birthday! Why didn't you play more Bach on the radio today?"

I don't know-I suspect there was plenty of Bach sent out across the Central Ohio airwaves, and worldwide on the web-but for many people one can't have too much Bach. Since recordings became widely available beginning 100 years ago-you can hear any of Bach's works sliced, diced, played by saxophones and synthesizers, or by historically informed performers attempting to recreate Bach's music as Bach they say intended,. It's all good.

I reiterate: Lucky the music loving kid growing up in Boston. You could take the streetcar to Back Bay of a Sunday morning and hear Craig Smith and his peerless choir at Emmanuel Church perform the Bach cantata appropriate fort that day. This Bach cycle went on for years. RIP: Craig Smith.

One must revere Bach. Who was more astonishing as he practically re invented the canon of Western music after my beloved Monteverdi? Revere but not always love. For me, the lack of blood and guts, poison, murder and freewheeling nookie is sometimes a problem. I like raunch in music. That said, I've heard Bach's violin partitas described as 'pure music'. I can only agree:



My own introduction to Bach was the 4th cantata, appropriate for this time of year, Christ lag in Todesbanden



A good high school choir. No xylophones here. I think Bach attracts wide re instrumentation because as a composer he offers everything-including spirituality and challenges hard to resist.

I love the fact of 2 wives and all those children-and the fact that JS himself spent a weekend in the hoosegow fro drunken brawling-then went home to write the St. Matthew Passion. What's not to love?

Latonia Moore

A high profile opportunity for a fine young American singer is always good news.

Latonia Moore makes her Metropolitan Opera debut tomorrow at 1 PM, as Verdi's Aida. The performance is broadcast internationally. It's my understanding this debut comes at short notice.

Latonia Moore is hardly unknown. She's appeared throughout Europe: Hamburg, Trieste, London, and in the States--Philadelphia, New York, Dallas, etc. Still, a Met debut on a broadcast in Verdi's most arduous role is a Very Big Deal. Ms. Moore is barely thirty. The voice is the real deal, big, rich, gleaming. This girl is ready:




I'll be listening tomorrow and so will anyone who loves great opera. Ms. Moore's colleagues for Aida are Stephanie Blythe and Marcello Giordani, conducted by Marco Armiliato.
The singing will be great and the applause loud and long.

Be there!

Davy Jones

I readily admit to being a big fan of the Monkees when I was ten years old.



Rest in Peace, Davy Jones.

Nicholas McGegan Invites Composers to Dinner

Nicholas McGegan is in town this weekend to conduct music by Rameau, Mozart, Haydn and J.C. Bach with the Columbus Symphony.

Beverly Sills used to say, "I don't share praise, I don't share blame and I don't share deserts."
I don't often share my pre-concert talks. BUT McGegan is irresistible. When he was here a few years ago, he took over, and loud was the laughter! So this weekend he'll be joining me, one hour before concert time.

Come early. Seriously.

During an interview yesterday, McGegan offered these bon mots:

"Were I to invite a group of composers to dinner at the same time, there would be guests you absolutely do not want. Wagner would have been awful. He'd have only talked about himself. Bruckner would have prayed a lot, no harm in that, but not great dinner conversation. Mozart would have been nice. He probably would have thrown bread rolls at pretty girls, but that would have been okay. Mendelssohn would have been wonderful, he would have answered your questions in any language. But Haydn would be the ultimate guest. Handel of course
would have eaten your food as well as his own, and Bach would have wanted more beer."

See what I mean?