Merry Christmas Eve
…Or, as Margo Channing would say: Merry Christmas, Eve.
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Tags: bob dylan, all about eve, margo channing, christmas, christmas eve, must be santa
Opera No. 35
Ovid count…still 9 because Lully’s Amadis (the 35th opera on an endless list…) is based on a historical, non-mythological tale. This is indeed a first. And it’s somewhat serendipitous that I should get to Proserpine late; for all its guns-blazing-lock-stock-and-two-smoking-barrels Lully, this is somewhat more calming, as especially evidenced in the hit single “Bois épais, redouble ton ombre”
Hugo Reyne conducts this with an almost Handelian touch, reminding me of “Verdi allori” from Orlando (which, as I once said, was what made me finally “get” Handel…could Lully be too far behind?).
Thinking about the use of historical, political figures and the audiences at Versailles, however, had me thinking about events a little more current. Over at Arts Journal, Greg Sandow has been searching for the emperor’s clothes on this lost lamb of a statistic:
From time to time, people have mentioned in comments here a French government study that supposedly shows that the French classical music audience is very young, with a median age of 38.
I’ve never been able to find the source for this number. From some of what’s been said, I get the idea that it’s on a flyer handed out at concerts.
Greg goes on to reveal that, through the French Ministry of Culture, the median age of the French audiences (today, that is, not during the 17th Century) is about 55, with a full 50% of audiences over that age. Exactement comme ca. Shortly after, Greg posted an e-mail correspondence with Parisian conductor/composer Gary Brain, who is convinced that French audiences are getting younger. “We even see 12 year olds with their parents. Quietly enjoying the performance,” he writes. Though that’s true of most cities. I was quietly (or unquietly at times) enjoying performances with my mother by 4. I may as well have been an old opera queen when I hit tweendom. Lincoln Center is continually crawling with kids, parents in tow, for the warhorses and family friendly productions–the Bohemes, the Carmens, the Hansels (and Gretels). Sure, they’re probably not going to see a French opera by a French-Italian composer based on a Spanish breakthrough novel (De Montalvo’s Amadis de Gaula, for those keeping score). But they’re there.
Perhaps Americans can’t compete with the arts funding that the French (and greater European) school systems get (to once again quote Brain: “They mostly agreed on the education department as they spend massive money on touring artists into schools and I daresay they wanted to see if this had any spinoff effects from their investment. I know that’s how I was hooked onto classical orchestral music. I believe these students will not just come once but will become part of their lives.”) I also question some of Brain’s comparisons: at once he writes that France has always been fully-equipped with “a thriving culture with a massive following for the arts not for the rich but for the people” (I guess we’re ignoring Versailles and the year 1789 here), but then also describes his standing as a conductor as “godlike,” and the 20 euro tickets sold to students as “a real effort for them which is not just handed to them on a plate.”
To further clarify Greg’s original post, I’m going back to when I originally heard this chestnut, which was when Norman Lebrecht interviewed Michael Kaiser for BBC3 this past summer. Lebrecht, a fellow Arts Journaler, also discussed the number (at 32, six years younger in his book than Greg’s) in June. In one graf, he writes:
Instead of politicians and media projecting an image of serious music as elitist and expensive, in France they present it as both aspirational and enjoyable – a good way to spend an evening and an environment where young people are likely to meet people they like.
To this I’m inclined to agree. And I wonder, now with a pop-culture First Family the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Kennedys (even sax-wielding Bill couldn’t compete with Barack and Michelle) if the climate may begin to change here. Even people with one foot on both shores, like Opera Chic, find American audiences younger. And perhaps the shift in French populist attitudes toward opera began here, with Jean-Baptiste, writing about a baroque Brangelina: King Perión of Gaul and Elisena of England (and their illegitimate child).
PS: I can’t help but throw in this extra “Bois épais.” Merry Chrismukkah.
Filed under: culture and communications, multimedia, opera project, opsters | 1 Comment
Tags: amadis, bois epais, enrico caruso, gary brain, greg sandow, handel, hugo reyne, lully, michael kaiser, normal lebrecht, opera chic, proserpine, versailles
Thanks to La Cieca for serving up this dish of “tween Rufus playing Scarpia” (plus a teaser for the making-of doc of Prima Donna which aired on Sundance Channel 12/21 at 9pm ET/PT and 12/22 at 3:15am ET/PT and will air again on 12/27 at 2:30pm ET/PT). And thanks to fellow opster Rufus for proving that I wasn’t the only one who enlisted poor unsuspecting cousins, neighbors and classmates into participating in my reduced operas. Though I was more of an…erm…prima donna than a villain (as my aunt is quick to point out, I was fond of saying “Send Mephistopheles to the moon with Dr. Bartolo.”) Says so much about our respective selves…Though the photo below the embedded YouTube proves I can channel my inner bass when necessary.
Age 3
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Tags: la cieca, opsters, parterre, prima donna, rufus wainwright, sundance channel
I love waking up to discover that the New Grove is in need of an update. Case in point: Lully’s 1680 opera Proserpine. And thanks to the gent who sent me an e-copy of the full album by Hervé Niquet (pictured) and Le Concert Spirituel Orchestra. It’s as good a wake-me-up as a venti iced skim gingerbread latte (which, being in the burbs of New England for the holidays, I’m fruitlessly craving so the diversion is most appreciated).
When I first when to Paris, I took a red-eye into Frankfurt and then an AirFrance puddle-jumper into Charles de Gaulle. It was my first time going solo internationally, and I wasn’t exactly clasping my hands in joy when I found out that my connecting flight was cancelled. Fortunately, they got me on an earlier flight and I made it to Paris and to my shuttle on time. Unhappily, that time was about 11:30 am. Jet-lagged, I fought tooth and nail to keep my eyes open in the shuttle that snaked through the city up to Montmartre. It was like being back in school trying to keep awake during class, and I felt just as guilty. Perhaps even a bit more since I was only in France for a long weekend and wanted to soak in as much as possible.
There’s a trace of that feeling when I listen to Lully. Guilt certainly at the feeling of “slogging through” one of the most important figures in opera’s nascence (if not its history in general). I e-mailed the head of an opera company specializing in French baroque asking the bold question “What makes Lully so great?” in hopes of sparking a dialogue or at the very least getting a little enlightenment (in anticipation of the big Enlightenment of the next century). Perhaps unsurprisingly I’ve yet to receive a response. But this balls-to-the-wall recording of Proserpine helps. Quite a bit. Especially in the first few tracks like “Soûpirz, triste Paix, malheureuse captive,” “Bruit de trompettes” and “Orgueilleuse Victoire” which feel alive rather than preserved. Unable though I may be to articulate with full conviction what makes Lully so great, I can at least point to some concrete examples.
It’s a concrete example for Maestro Niquet himself, who in an interview targeted around the release of Proserpine describes the opera as “a typical French tragédie en musique, complete with a mythological story: it became the model for other composers for more than 60-70 years….the most important thing for such audiences was to be at the opera house and to feel the mood and the magical atmosphere created by the incredible machinery, music, singers, choreography.”
Food for thought as I work through the next six or seven decades.
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Tags: gingerbread latte, herve niquet, le concert spirituel, lully, opster project, please someone get me some coffee, proserpine
Nonclassical…or is it?
(An early Christmas present from my editor to me, and now from me to you…)
“If Gogol Bordello’s goal, as the mustachioed Hütz has often said, is to create a cultural revolution, they could do worse than uniting seemingly disparate cultures through a musical common denominator. “Music makes it possible to make the contradictions of life sound harmonious, at least for the duration of a song,” the band’s Facebook page proclaims. Its breakthrough album, Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike (2005), was a high-octane homage to Romany tunes, borrowing the moves and sounds of everyone from Goran Bregovic to Bela Bartók. The 2007 follow-up, Super Taranta!, tangoed with Neapolitan jams, reggae and ska.”
More over at Time Out.
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Tags: eugene hutz, gogol bordello, gypsy punks, nonclassical, super taranta, webster hall
Compleat Female Stage Venus
Writing about Lully’s equal-opportunity bed-hopping last go reminded me of Ned Kynaston’s character in the film Stage Beauty (or the play Compleat Female Stage Beauty). And, as Playbill Arts’s own E.I.C. Matthew Westphal writes of Blow’s Venus and Adonis–considered by most (including New Grove) to be the first English opera written–composer John Blow wrote it for private performances at the English court of King Charles II (also featured prominently in Stage Beauty) with Charles II’s infamous mistress Moll Davis as Venus and their love-child playing Cupid. It’s about as royally effed as some of the crossed wires in Richard Eyre’s film (further to the coincidences, I corresponded recently with Sir Richard for another article I’m writing).
Then there are the meta-stages, including the attribution of Aphra Behn to the libretto of this work. This would have made her one of the first female librettists in opera (following near the footsteps of Francesca Caccini). The writing credit was gravy to Behn, who had a heavy literary career (a career even leveraged to support the Tory party), a spy for Charles II and a debtor’s prisoner. Not bad for a 17th Century woman. That present evidence suggests the librettist to be Anne Finch is heartening–a fellow female in that Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin, let’s just get one of ‘em in office sort of way–though Finch had a much less colorful life.
At least we have the backstory to Blow’s job.
The recent 12/14 anniversary of Behn’s baptism (her exact date of birth is unknown) prompted my Twitter buddy Michael Steger to post about her in Varia. Venus and Adonis is a short opera, so there’s less room for textual analysis. However, when I read lines from the opera’s libretto such as this:
No, my shepherd, haste away,
Absence kindles new desire,
I would not have my lover tire …
My shepherd, will you know the art
By which I keep a conquer’d heart?
I seldom vex a lover’s ears
With business or with jealous fears.
I give him freely all delights
With pleasant days and easy nights.
And read lines from Behn’s texts like this:
When you Love, or speak of it,
Make no serious matter on’t,
‘Twill make but subject for her wit
And gain her scorn in lieu of Grant.
Sneeking, whining, dull Grimasses
Pale the Appetite, they’d move;
Only Boys and formal Asses
Thus are Ridicul’d by Love.
While you make a Mystery
Of your Love and awful flame;
Young and tender Hearts will fly,
Frighted at the very name;
Always brisk and gayly court
Make Love your pleasure not your pain,
‘Tis by wanton play and sport
Heedless Virgins you will gain.
I can’t help but think she at least had SOME influence on the piece. Directly or indirectly.
Filed under: opera project | 1 Comment
Tags: anne finch, aphra behn, charles ii, francesca caccini, hillary clinton, john blow, matthew westphal, moll davis, ned kynaston, richard eyre, sarah palin, stage beauty, the opster project, venus and adonis
Time In
Five weeks ago today I started a new job as Time Out New York’s Contributing Editor for the Classical & Opera section, working directly under my buddy and comrade-in-blog, Steve Smith. As I crawl back out of the centre of the earth, a round-up of what I’ve done in the past month-and-change:
Chutzpah reigned supreme with Leif Ove Andsnes’s Pictures Reframed, in which the song of Norway dared to pair his playing with video installation AND drown a Steinway piano all in one go.
The Brooklyn Philharmonic, in the midst of a dark year, kicked off its Music Off the Walls series at the Brooklyn Museum on the 15th. As with New York City Opera’s brief appearances in their dark year, it’s good to see something over nothing (and it was a pretty good something).
Indefatiguable maestro James Bagwell took over the Collegiate Chorale earlier this year, and made an unforgettable debut with them at Carnegie Hall.
My take on the workshop of Herschel Garfein’s opera-in-progress, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, was met with more comments than any other Classical post on The Volume, including one from Garfein himself. Proof that two people can see two very different operas. Horse races.
A chance first meeting with French cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton turned out to be one of the best performances I’ve seen all year, and the absolute best CD I’ve heard all year.
For the mag’s end, a live preview of the 21c Liederabend, a rhapsody of modern/post/alt/new classical. Still trying to come up with a be-all-end-all name for this new wave.
Riccardo Muti, a somewhat prodigal son, heated up the first blusteringly cold weekend of the year with Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, a work I will forever associate with Gary Oldman slapping Valeria Golino’s hand.
Carnegie Hall canceled two shows in one day: the Hilliard Ensemble’s debut with the Arditti Quartet for Wolfgang Rihm’s “Et Lux,” and Dorothea Röschmann’s Schumann, Mahler and Wolf recital (which will be postponed til April).
Another highlight of the fall season, the dashing Russian violinist Mikhail Simonyan in his Lincoln Center debut was a welcome alarm clock on a Sunday morning (and made up for a depressing concert that shall not be named but took place later that same day).
A wolf in sheep’s couture, Isaac Mizrahi narrated Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf at the Guggenheim earlier this month. We talked to him about classical music, crying and Ed Koch.
Plotz-worthy John Adams led an equally plotz-worthy line-up (including Dawn Upshaw and Eric Owens) in El Niño at Carnegie Hall a week ago, marking the decade-old cantata as a tradition equal in vitality as John Malkovich reading “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
In a daring move from the New York Philharmonic, I was on-hand at Symphony Space to live-blog the world premiere of the four new works comprising the inaugural run of Contact!: Arlene Sierra’s Game of Attrition, Lei Liang’s Verge, Marc-André Dalbavie’s Melodia and Arthur Kampela’s Macunaíma.
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Tags: 21c liederabend, arlene sierra, arthur kampela, brooklyn philharmonic, contact, dawn upshaw, dorothea roschmann, el nino, eric owens, herschel garfein, hilliard ensemble, isaac mizrahi, john adams, john malkovich, lei liang, marc-andre dalbavie, mikhail simonyan, new york philharmonic, riccardo muti, rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, sonia wieder-atherton, steve smith, time out new york
Castrati Hottie
As the Opster Project moves closer towards the age of the castrati, it’s all-too-appropriate that Cecilia Bartoli’s latest CD should be all about the boys of the bris. By means of an extra-curricular study, I’ll listen to Sacrificium when I break into the 1700s (any day now…). In the meantime, this week’s cure to the Mondays seems to be an evening at (Le) Poisson Rouge with all of the other opsters, watching a film of Bartoli singing selections from her CD in a crazy, baroque ‘n roll Neapolitan castle. The notoriously aviophobic mezzo won’t be coming stateside this year, so this is the best way to catch her. And nothing makes castration go down so well as a glass of LPR’s house cabernet.
In the meantime, my boyfriend is crossing his legs.
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Tags: bartoli, castrati, cecilia bartoli, le poisson rouge, opsters, sacrificium, the opster project
Sun(day), Bloody Sun(day)
Lully’s Phaëton is an interesting animal. But first, a setting:
I’ve been working with Brooklyn Academy of Music for the past six weeks. It’s a 45-minute commute from my alcove in Queens, but it’s a straight shot on the N line thru Manhattan and into the Borough of Kings. It’s great for me because it’s a good time to commune with myself; I read, I crank up myPod, and I always have a seat because I get on so early in the line. I’ve been averaging a (healthily-sized) book a week. And this past week, I’ve decided to turn back to the Minkowski Phaëton.
At one point, the train goes above ground as it crosses the East River after Canal Street and before Atlantic/Pacific. You see the Brooklyn Bridge, the buildings of the Financial District, and the construction off in the distance. With last week so chilly yet sunny, there was something glorious about alighting at that point and seeing the sun coming up for the day. It works. It’s a good thing. It’s the pumpkin oatmeal of multiple-sensory experiences on the MTA. This opera (burned courtesy of the New York Public Library’s performing arts branch) may be a regular on the pod for a while.
That being said, I’m really coming ’round to Jean-Baptiste. And it’s an appropriate moment to start getting him, since Phaëton may be his most personal opera. It may also strike a personal chord with me. While I was by no means the offspring of an impoverished family of Florentines (though I do have some ancestral routes in Firenze) with a pronounced lack of education (I’ve also never done a tap routine with royalty–French or otherwise, nor have I given myself a fatal case of gangrene), I feel the same ambition and drive that steered Lully’s career from the minute someone detected his musical talents. And sometimes I feel myself flying too close to the sun. I’m at a point where I’m easily working 80 hour weeks–last week I got up at 4:30am, worked til 7:00, got ready to be at BAM by 9:30, left at 5:00, went to the library to work on the NEA Opera Honors til 7:00, and then got home and worked some more until 10:00. This week, I read an old article in New York Magazine on burnout and felt more exhausted than ever. Fortunately, I know myself well enough to keep from crashing and burning.
Lully, not so much. He died in one of the more hardcore ways–stabbing himself in the foot with his boom rhythm stick during a concert (ironically, to honor Louis XIV’s recovery from illness), developing gangrene, refusing (presumably out of pride) to have it amputated, and dying less than two months later. Think of the blow an amputation would have done to his ambition as a musician and dancer. Talk about a guy who goes down with the ship. Or chariot in the case of this opera’s title character, who–in an effort to prove himself–flies a chariot too close to the sun.
Of course, Phaëton is also brought down by his affairs of the heart as much as his affairs of the ego, a situation with which Lully himself was all-too familiar.
(PS: Ovid count? 9. This could turn into a drinking game.)
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Tags: boom stick, brooklyn, brooklyn academy of music, le roi danse, louis xiv, lully, mta, new york public library, opster project, phaeton, queens
Perfidious Poppea
After Danielle de Niese’s recent (Le) Poisson Rouge concert, I decided to let one Angeleno meet another and brought my boyfriend, Lawson, around to the autograph table. Ok, the egotist in me also wanted her autograph on the full-page interview I did of her for TONY, but that’s neither her nor there…nor is it in a frame on the wall behind my desk….
At the table, they’d set up her new Mozart CD among some other fanfare, including the new DVD of the Glyndebourne L’incoronazione di Poppea, something I wish had been out when I’d gotten to Poppea on the Opera Project and rocked out with the 90s-fabulous Rene Jacobs DVD.
“Oh, they finally put it out on DVD,” I casually mentioned to Lawson, turning the case over to inspect the back.
“No dear,” some altacaker behind me said, snatching the DVD from my hand. “That’s not the same as what you just saw tonight.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that,” I said. If she only knew how intimately aware I was of that.
“No, you just don’t understand…none of you understand…you just don’t get it…Harry, tell them how they don’t get it.”
Before Harry could respond, we began to slowly inch away.
Filed under: hot aria, opera project | 1 Comment
Tags: danielle de niese, l'incoronazione di poppea, le poisson rouge, monteverdi, mozart
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