Quando Rapito in Twitter

So today, amid no furniture, I watched the re-broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor from the Met in HD series.  I think the Met in HD is a great idea still getting its legs.  This production was worlds better than the Boheme I saw with Gheorghiu and Vargas last year, but when we saw it in theatres my boyfriend and I were the only people with all of their original teeth.

What started as a few Tweets in reaction to seeing this production on the small screen and on our home turf turned into a full blown Live Tweet of the performance–a concept many opera, dance, and orchestral companies are considering implementing into their concert series.  This reminds me of Vancouver Opera’s recent Blogger Night at the Opera, allowing a live-feed but with less pressure to write longer posts.  In fact, the bite-sized comments, facts, thoughts, questions, praises, and critiques are the perfect medium to allow a continual flow during the performance without causing Tweeps to get too caught up in what to say.  Most of these tweets took me all of five seconds to hammer out.  More blog platforms (including WordPress, on which this blog is hosted) are also offering templates that allow for these Bridget Jones-like entries, which could be kept for posterity on the company website (and not clog up a ton of Twitter/Facebook feeds, which is exactly what I inflicted on my poor, unsuspecting friends and colleagues).

But what really would have been fun is to have gone head-to-head, tweet-to-tweet with a Met staffer who had worked on the piece, offering two sides of the coin.

The impressions from my side are below (read from the bottom up)…

• And we’re at curtain, concluding my live Tweeting of the Lucia broadcast. Which, if nothing else, clogged up everyone’s feeds quite nicely.
• I got nothing new to say for Tu Che a Dio; except that in the Who’s Afraid of Opera version, they do it first. (Thanks, Mom)
• These mourners totally remind me of Eleanor Rigby.
• Technically, it’s good. But Beczala is losing me in the final inning pathos-wise. Maybe Rolando > Piotr? http://tiny.cc/SVphO
• Finally, a high note!
• Sorry, Anna. You can never, ever top Dessay’s scream (@ 7:52 in this clip): http://tiny.cc/EGrYY
• Revisiting the sexual tension between Lucia & Enrico by having her imagine him as Edgardo. Love these little intricacies.
• Anthony, this one’s for you: Where’s the high E?
• But kind of amazing how I didn’t pick up on the missed notes in the mad scene the first time around.
• Seeing the mad scene again is making me think this isn’t Anna’s role. Or it isn’t her time for the role. But she’s such. A. Good. Actress.
• (Spoiler alert): With all this teetering on suicide from Lucia and Edgardo, why does L’s ghost need to help E shove the knife in @ the end?
• You could save that set for Rusalka and do a killer “Song to the Moon.”
• Raimondo totally knows that all hell is about to break loose. And then enter Lucia.
• Can someone explain the red dress to white dress switch? Were they doing an Asian wedding in 19th Century Scotland?
• There’s barely anything on the set but two amazing singers. Yes, that’s really all you need.
• Dear Mariusz Kwiecien (Part II): You can run me through with your conquering sword any time
• I’m tempted to make a Polish joke, but Beczala and Kwiecien going at it in the oft-cut scene is just too damn good.
• And, as always, thanks to Viewers Like You. I think that was one of my first sentences as a kid.
• And now a word from our sponsors: Thanks, Toll Brothers! Rock on Irene Diamond Fund! Go NEA! Love Vivian Milstein! Hats off to CPB!
• G-d, between that top note and the scrim that comes down at the end I could live in the Act 2 finale.
• I love this one chorus member who knows, because he’s behind Netrebs, he’ll probably be on camera and works it like he’s on ANTM.
• I’m so picky about Enrico’s “Rispondi,” and Beczala knocks it out of the park. (Wish the Yankees could do the same…)
• Oh, shut up, R, you totally want them to kill one another. That “lives by the sword” bit is irony at its finest.
• Still can’t decide how I feel about the sextet staging. But boy is it clever. Especially when Lucia PTFO’s.
• Enrico is such a shyster.
• Is the Raim./Luc. duet really necessary? I get that it adds to R’s profile as the orchestrator of the tragedy, but it’s not working for me.
• Aaaaand now Netrebs is singing from the floor. I forgot about this part–the gift that keeps on giving! (Seriously)
• This productions remains one of the best explorations of the character of Enrico. Wish they had given Raimondo the prominence he’s due.
• This Lucia/Enrico relationship borders on incestuous at times in that sort of Donna Tartt/”The Secret History” kind of way.
• Geez, some of these camera angles just scream “bad indie film.” And don’t do Netrebs and her baby weight any favors.
• Ha! I never noticed that ghostface killa makes an appearance in the background of the Act II opening as well.
• Oh, are we not doing intermission chats? Was that only if I paid $25 for a movie ticket and sat in a room full of septuagenarians?
• Still, I love me a full-throated tenor.
• Piotr Beczala > Rolando Villazon (maybe), but needs more pathos in the voice. What was that “Ah, Lucia” about?
• I guess I’m live-Tweeting this Lucia-cast (after seeing it in HD in Feb.): Anna Netrebko sees dead people.
• Dear Mariusz Kwiecien: I can’t decide on what I love more; your name or your sustained note at the end of Act I Scene i.
• My apartment may be nearly empty, but at least I have Lucia on PBS to fill the void.

Follow Friday Five: Juggernaut Brooklyn

It was the expired icing on the arsenic-laced cake when Brooklyn Phil cancelled its 09/10 season last week.  While the company hopes to (and most likely will–touch wood) get back on its feet, the Borough of Kings is still teeming with hipsters, opsters, and the like.  And the arts scene isn’t going anywhere (especially as it has gained momentum as a more affordable, more age-diverse cultural haven).

The first two in this week’s FFF happen to be textbook examples of social networking; BAM (above) with its kickass interaction on Twitter and other UGC-platforms (check out their rapid response to the victim of a recent ticket scam, which they also posted to their Twitter), and the Brooklyn Museum for its socially-networked museum membership (1stFans, which also has a killer iTunes component).

• @BAM_Brooklyn
• @brooklynmuseum
• @CelebrateBklyn
• @HeartofBklyn
• @brooklynhistory

Could New York’s cultural epicenter be moving, or sprouting up a Mini-Me?  Or has this arts mecca been surviving and thriving longer than we thought?

Only in Social Networking…

I love how connected opera companies can now be thanks to Twitter.  Dispelling the myth that companies don’t like to play nice with each other in the sandbox aside, little stuff like this can happen (and subsequently make my night):

Two Boheme Tweets from Two Companies within Two Minutes

Theme and Variations

Alex Ross may have the best idea in The Rest is Noise by encouraging his readers to draw their own conclusions on the YouTube Symphony performance at Carnegie Hall last week.  Which can easily be done here (and here):

Anthony Tommasini gives an objective and balanced review, echoing many of my thoughts watching from YouTube (in an increasingly empty pre-move apartment).  It was interesting to see conductor Edwin Outwater cite it as the good review while lumping Anne Midgette and Greg Sandow’s critiques in the bad column, when all reviews seemed to echo the same point: it was a fascinating concept, completely in tune (no pun intended) to the zeitgeist, but somewhere fell short on what it promised to deliver.  But, to be fair, it promised a lot.

From Tommasini’s review:

Subtlety? Well, that takes more rehearsal time. The orchestra basically had two days to work. On Monday it rehearsed from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. A conductor can do that when freed from union work rules with an ensemble of unpaid players.

But the idea was to bring together musicians from outside the professional orchestra loop, and in that sense the project was a breakthrough, or so it seemed from the video interviews with several players that were shown between pieces on the program.

From Midgette‘s:

The $64,000 Question is: What is the point? Actually, the question probably cost a lot more than that, although YouTube wouldn’t divulge how much it cost to fly more than 100 people to New York; put them up for four to five days; and to hire top-flight soloists such as Gil Shaham and Yuja Wang, a bevy of professional mentors to coach and play with the participants, and publicists to cope with the huge influx of media attention, since every country wanted coverage of its own performers.

…Another reason was the idea of building community and instilling some kind of excitement about classical music in a world in which — as so much of the media attention made clear — it is very much viewed as exotic and marginalized.

From Sandow‘s:

I wanted to like the YouTube Symphony, whose concert disappointed me. I really did want to like them. Their backstory is irresistible, obviously. Musicians from many countries audition by video, professionals pick finalists, the world votes to decide the winners, everybody (some barely able to believe that it’s real) come to Carnegie Hall, the Mecca of classical music, to play a concert.

And this is, in many ways, good for classical music. Press from many countries thronged the press conferences, interviewed musicians, came to rehearsals and the concerts. Major American TV shows featured the happenings. People who’d never go to classical concerts came to Carnegie Hall.

Is it a coincidence that all three reviews seem to blend together forming one cohesive whole…almost like three musicians in different parts of the world playing parts of a symphony that digitally meld together?

In retrospect, what this experiment reminds me of is the band The Postal Service, a band named for its method of creating its music: Jimmy Tamborello would send DATs of instrumental tracks to Ben Gibbard, who left his creative fingerprints on each piece (including vocals) and return them to Jimmy via…the Postal Service.  Without being concurrent, the duo’s 2003 CD “Give Up” was a beautiful, intimate testament to the power of musical dialogue (and, ironically, I hate the musicians’ work separate from the band).  Perhaps YouTube Symphony started out too grand.  This form of collaboration, on par with wikis (which now dominate the Net), could be the next big thing for classical musicians.  But it would be great to see them make it the next big small thing.

Decline and Fall

Overheard at a Lincoln Center restaurant:

Rolando Villazon: “I don’t know what’s wrong, every time I sing it hurts.  It feels like a lump in the throat.  The doctors say it’s fine, but it’s still there.  It’s my agent’s fault–theyve pushed me into everything.  I don’t know what to do.”

Reminds me of a Times article from last January on the stressed-out opera singer.  Is this a trend for new millenial singers?  Or, like the tenor’s career, is it a flash-in-the-pan?

Internet Symphony

YouTube Orchestra’s “Internet Symphony” is now up as a mash-up:

Twoops

This particular company on Twitter is actually ahead of the curve and catching on rather nicely.  However, this just goes to show that you can misspell a ton of things on the Interwebs, but you may want to double check names.  140 characters needs spell-checking just as much as 1400 words.

All (Russian) Dolled Up

My love of all things Cyrillic is no secret; I got into Russian opera long before bel canto rang my bell or verismo made me virile.  Moscow was the first foreign city I visited if you don’t count Canada (which you shouldn’t).  My potato allergy is by far the most depressing of my (ridiculously many) intolerances.  I spent the summer of ’06 getting blank stares from people as I rode the 1 train engrossed in the Garnett translation of War and Peace.  You get the idea.

Blow Gabriel, Blow

So it was really cool to see that Gabriel Prokofiev (the grandson of Sergei) debuted his brainchild, Nonclassical, at Le Poisson Rouge earlier last month.  Greg Sandow for the Wall Street Journal reviewed the Elysian Quartet’s performance of Prokofiev the younger’s String Quartet No. 2, writing:

“This is a piece that jounces, slides and sings, and is also very sagely written, getting lots of mileage from dancing little shreds of music, which are changed, replayed and combined in just the right way.”

Gabriel (who is probably best known in the mainstream as the composer behind a textbook-standard ad for Stoli) is famous not only for his familial line, but also for composing so-called classical music and then remixing it as a DJ.  His compatriots also get in on the action for the CD releases (which are available on iTunes and may have been some of the best money I’ve thrown to that website).  Sandow went on to say that the entire three-hour evening

“was strong and savvy, and much of it was purely classical, inhabiting indie pop territory in its DNA without showing any signs of that externally.”

The New York Times’s Steve Smith was also living it up with the opsters, but what caught my attention was his review’s headline (For That Prokofiev-Loving, Beer Swilling Crowd).  My travel article for Russia in last July’s Draft Magazine (linked to in the first paragraph) argues that beer is slowly becoming the new vodka in the land where the odorless, flavorless liquid was once king.  Or Tzar.  While my old-timer friend Grisha still makes his own lemongrass vodkas that’ll go down like little birdies, my younger (re: my age) drugs and podrugas in Moscow and St. Pete’s are grabbing a Baltika or Tinkoff on their way home from the office or in a cafe.  While it may seem like a stretch, there are comparisons between classical music and the wine/beer/spirits culture.  Here in the States, microbrews are having their day and it seems like there’s a new American city every five minutes boasting the best hops, smallest output, and biggest cult following.

Beer’s not just for the Homer Simpson set anymore, it’s becoming classy, quirky, hipster-fied.  While opera and classical music are coming from the other side of the spectrum, there’s a meeting point (one that is demonstratedly already being fleshed out) where they can appeal to their old faithfuls and their new mop-top-haircut-coiffing, bug-eye-sunglass-donning, Kerouac and Economist-reading devotees.

Oh, yes, and shame on me for not noting that New Amsterdam Records, the hot-spot for opsters, co-hosted Prokofiev’s recent event.  But they’re a whole ‘nother post entirely.

140 Minutes in 140 Characters

Ed Note: I’ve committed the cardinal sin of blogging, namely that I blamed my lapse in posts for the past week on real life: article deadlines and prepping our apartment to vacate by the end of the month so that my partner and I can move back to that epicenter of all things classical, New York.  I’m the first person to bitch and moan about companies–artistically inclined and otherwise–that slack off in their blog, but just goes to show that it can happen to anyone.  And the person calling the kettle black is, 9 times out of 10* the pot.

I’m going to be better at posting over the rest of April, but posts may not be as frequent as some days.  If anyone is really going to be mad over this (which I highly doubt), I’ll buy you a Recession Special at Gray’s.

*Based on totally scientific data.  Totally.

While working on a few articles for Classical Singer magazine this weekend, I became caught up in the Twit-suck.  Like MySpace and Facebook before it, Twitter has now become a procrastinator’s (or at least this procrastinator’s) Shan-Gri-La.  Especially when users (particularly users called @missmussel) set up contests for tweeting an entire opera plot.  That means one whole opera in 140 characters.  Less since you have to tag each post with #operaplot for it to show up in the tag search (love the categorical system on this website, it’s so helpful with making new friends).

What was amazing wasn’t how good the contributions were, or how many were posted, but how many people connected with each other as a result.  AND how much attention that it got: both Anne Midgette’s Washington Post blog (rock on, fellow WashPost scribe!) and Charlotte Higgins’s culture blog for the Guardian.  Okay, so both ladies quoted my tweets and I happened to win this contest (which, halfway thru, started carrying a prize of an Arkiv gift certificate, which is pretty sweet since I’ve been jonesing for a full recording of Mignon).  But I would have had tonnes of fun regardless because I met interesting people, killed a lot of time that I probably needed, and I got to see first-hand how easily a one-off tweet can make international news.  Catch the viral marketing, people.

The guest judge proclaimed (again, in a pot/kettle way) that all entrants were a bunch of geeks.  But I still prefer the term opster.

And, as a few other people mentioned, the contest totally reminded me of this short film: