“The year had its pratfalls, for sure, including an almost entirely lackluster fall at the Met. Still, some conflicts (like City Opera’s immediate survival) were resolved positively, and some arresting new faces and programs emerged. The economy made things a bit more DIY, yet there were amazingly few closures despite the drop in funding. Oh—and Alan Motherflipping Gilbert. We rest our case.”
Read more about mine and Steve Smith‘s best and worst of 2009 at Time Out New York. We made our Top 10 CDs lists independent of one another and coincide on exactly three points (it may have been four had I been less enthusiastic about a certain release that’ll remain unnamed and unranked). We were both wild about Magdalena Kozena’s Martinu CD, yet it was also an unfortunate casualty of war.
Separated at birth from Diane Kruger?
It was a pretty good year overall artistically. We had some amazing books in Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, the new Russian fiction collection Rasskazy and Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Angel’s Game. I was proud to work on Les Huguenots up at Bard and count it as one of the best performances I’ve seen (my impartial partner saw it twice, something he is not wont to do) and look forward to Strassberger’s return to Annandale-on-Hudson next summer with Schreker’s Die ferne Klang. My movie money was well spent on releases like quiet foreign flicks Paris and The Baader-Meinhoff Complex, blockbusters along the lines of Inglourious Basterds and Sherlock Holmes and such indie darlings as An Education. Onward to the next decade…
The sign at the end reads “See how you like opera?” Amazing that once you take it out of the opera house, slap on some plainclothes and make it fun how many people react well.
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.
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.
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.
(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.”
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.
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’sGame of Attrition, Lei Liang’s Verge, Marc-André Dalbavie’sMelodia and Arthur Kampela’s Macunaíma.
“The year had its pratfalls, for sure, including an almost entirely lackluster fall at the Met. Still, some conflicts (like City Opera’s immediate survival) were resolved positively, and some arresting new faces and programs emerged. The economy made things a bit more DIY, yet there were amazingly few closures despite the drop in funding. Oh—and Alan Motherflipping Gilbert. We rest our case.”
I love waking up to discover that the New Grove is in need of an update. Case in point: Lully‘s 1680 opera 
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, 
