Copenhagen's "Ring": Why "Eurotrash" Isn't the Whole Story

Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Regietheater Bomb.

I’m always up for a Ring with Viking suits, if there are any left today. It works fine – better than fine – because it’s wholly consonant with the original choreographic and semantic nature of the cycle.

I sympathize with people who spend hundreds of bucks on tickets to a live performance and end up with a two-headed Wotan, an Alberich who’s a gaudy pimp or Supreme Court Justice Fricka. But consider this: you can stage these things in your mind, and I don’t just mean closing your eyes in the theater. We have the Ring as a permanent endowment. The theater of imagination in recordings or at the piano (if anyone still plays) can provide the traditional underpinnings that establish the work’s bona fides. At this point, I even see something sentimental and nostalgic in Viking helmets, but I don’t see anything regressive about desiring such a representation. The specific locus of the cycle in Northern European mythology has a deep importance for the work. Let that be said and never gainsaid. To rebut this is to rebut the place of art in history.

I once had a professor who taught Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, who wholly disputed the primacy of the relation between Arthurian legends and Tennyson’s contemporary world. Understanding that work as even primarily metaphorical does not allow us to disregard the garb the work wears. Such is the case with Wagner’s Ring. I surely don’t recommend reading the Icelandic saga Edda, or the risible Nibelungenlied with its Amazonian Krimhild (Brünnhilde) winning feats of strength. I don’t recommend that everyong go out and buy Wolfram von Eschenbach’s wierdly erotic medievalisms.

With apologies to Tolkien fans, that stuff is boring. Viking suits can become boring, too.

That’s why I love (or at least cheerfully tolerate) Eurotrash. My “personal Wagner” is impregnable, like some Pentecostalist’s “personal savior.”

Which brings us to the Copenhagen Ring, the so-called Feminist Ring production by Kasper Bech Holten. (Read about the production at the Royal Danish Theater’s website.)

Firstly, it’s a good sign that the Michael Schønwandt, conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra, is a musician of obvious discernment who cares about subtlety, nuance and real musical value. Schønwandt, known to me through an excellent set of DVDs of the Nielsen symphonies, has proven himself again with a thoughtful, vibrant, fresh and surely learned approach to these well-known if enormously complex scores. He doesn’t try to prove himself through irreverence, or chamber music textures, or grotesque exaggeration, or strangely self-identifying tempo extravagances. His magic fire music glitters and glows. Hagen’s watch glowers. The forest murmurs place you under a tree in your favorite park.

The smokin’ good Brünnhilde, (Iréne Theorin) was a new discovery to me. (Apparently she’s owned the Wagner soprano roles in Copenhagen for years, and her Bayreuth debut as Isolde opposite Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan took place this past summer.) Theorin’s Brünnhilde is not some cruel heridan when a Valkyrie. Neither is she some majestic sage-woman as a mortal; she’s simply a woman, sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate (in ways both sweet and profound), but always human and vital.

More importantly for collectors, Theorin handles Brünnhilde’s taxing role not just with aplomb but with an almost casual technical ease, allowing the listener to focus on what her character is and not whether she can handle this or that technical stretch. An exceptional artist, indeed. I don’t bandy these words lightly. For, although, Wagnerian tenors are as rare as cheap tickets to Bayreuth, good Brünnhildes are still a find. By the way, I wouldn’t normally comment on such a topic, but I will do so now to avoid confusion. In recent photos, such as some of the ones on the Copenhagen site, Theorin is thin. In this Ring DVD (from 2006) she is heavy. She’s lost considerably weight in the past couple of years.

The Rheingold Wotan (Johann Reuter) was appropriately cruel, with the facile callousness of youthful power. It’s amusing that Scene 4 devolved into a weird and grotesque simile of the Hostel movie franchise. (Chaining Alberich in a white subway-tiled room next to a tray or surgical instruments was not a good sign.) I like horror movies, I must admit, and although I’m staring at my toes, nervously shuffling my feet, I like Hostel. It pushes the envelope as horror movies have done since Jason and Freddie shredded their first teenagers. Does this belong in Wagner? Just read the libretto, you!

As Wotan in DieWalküre and Der Wanderer in Siegfried, the American bass-baritone James Johnson was often very moving, and always commanding. This, itself, is not unusual (there are many moving Wotans) but it seemed to stand out in the context of this cruel Ring. When he was onstage, the production never lost me.

Fasolt. Here he have the greatest Fasolt in DVD history. A man (giant) so consumed by the fires of love and jealousy and possessiveness and sentimentality. A crude, cruel man who doesn’t understand his own impulses of tenderness and violence, erotic malaise and grotesque pseudo masculinity. And ultimately, he generates genuine pathos. This was the greatest portrayal of Fasolt that I’ve ever heard; and, in fact, Stephan Milling has reinvented Fasolt as a major figure to be reckoned with for all future Rings. This revelatory performance sets the standard; incredibly moving and equally disturbing, Rheingold profoundly benefits from this unprecedented incursion of human pathos. Bravo!

This is billed as the Feminist Ring, for reasons that weren’t always obvious to me as I watched. I was full of questions: What kind of division (or possibly politics) separates a feminist Ring from another kind of Ring? How can one gender score at the expense of the other? Well, of course it cannot. Wagner knew this and it is impossible to disentangle the author’s gender bias from his work. It’s all fruitless surmise. But Brünnhilde with apologies to Siegmund, is the single positive figure in the Ring. And wanting justice isn’t the same as claiming unwarranted privilege.

As a partial answer, this Ring is depicted as a flashback from Brünnhilde’s point of view. Kasper Bech Holten (blog) believes that each of us “writes” a personal mythology, and it’s Brünnhilde’s personal mythology that he dramatizes in this Ring. Her mythology centers on freeing herself from what Bech (in the liner notes) describes as an Electra complex via her break from Wotan.

In this sense, the Copenhagen Ring is a tremendous success. The greatest and most human operas, by which I mean The Marriage of Figaro, Fidelio, and Die Walkure, abandon utterly the traditional male hegemony implicit in Teutonic culture, although all these works are, in fact, Teutonic. Wagner’s awareness of the plight of women and his gentleness in expressing essentially feminine problems extant in his society is an under-studied topic.

This Ring doesn’t pursue these issues in particularly coherent ways. On the contrary, it is full of knee-jerk, hysterical political talking points that sometimes detract from the potential of a feminist Ring. But it’s a step, if not in the right direction, or even one endorsed by Wagner, that points to an underrated part of what the Wagnerian ethos is. I’m fully aware that there are so-called scholarly works that attempt to portray Wagner as a feminine figure. But the reality in most Ring productions is that Siegfried and Wotan dominate except for the immolation. This flawed, peculiar, and often immature production takes a firm step in a promising direction.

Are Viking suits better than feminist deconstruction and the grisliness of Hostel? Of course. But I can always reconstruct the literal Ring in my mind as I listen to innumerable recordings or probe my past fixations. This Ring, often silly and rarely profound, offers the potential of newly exeriencing not just a well-worn favorite but probably the essential work of my musical life. And for that, I say “Bravo!”

The Copenhagen Ring: The Complete DVD Set starring Stig Andersen, Irenie Theorin, Gitta-Maria Sjoberg, Johan Reuter, Stephen Milling

Update

on 2013-06-19 20:19 by John Gibbons

Originally posted Mar 24, 2009. Reposted for the Ring Cycle class.

Holde Kunst Review: Robin Holloway's Essays And Diversions II

After thumbing through this (as originally published) expensive book at Borders, and choosing not to pay $50 for it, Essays and Diversions II has remained on my must-read-when-cheaper list. As Klingsor would say, die Zeit is da. 

Essays and Diversions (v. 2)
by Robin Holloway

A student of mine gave me a copy of The Girl with the Golden Tatto, describing it as “a can’t-putter-downer.” Well, I put it down (after reading it quickly in a day, and that book needs to be read quickly). Holloway’s book is also a can’t-putter-downer but one which doesn’t necessarily need to be read quickly. But classical music lovers are likely to read it quickly indeed. Most of this review is likely to be strikingly positive about Holloway’s intelligence, perception, and wonderful writing style. So, for convenience’s sake, I’d like to get the few caveats out of the way at once. 

Whenever describing his own music, Holloway is generous to the point of hubris. That’s OK! Some musicians, who are, perhaps, less enamored of his neo-tonal style, might sniffily find this a tad unseemly. Also, Holloway is obsessed with evaluating works in terms of their debts to other works. In terms of their lineage, so to speak. Well, that’s a neo-romantic’s occupational hazard.

In comparison with another very fine collection of essays I recently read (Boulez’s Orientations), Holloway commits himself to no perceptible credo or vision of musical progress. Not everyone is a Boulez, obviously. But leaving Holloway aside, to this reader it is symptomatic of a malaise in contemporary composition wherein everthing is about the past — just like Hollywood makes new versions of The A Team, seemingly every comic book hero and, sadly, Gilligan’s Island.

The best thing about Holloway’s writing is its pithiness coupled with its wildly opinionated slant on things. He prefers Percy Grainger to Shostakovitch. I can’t imagine that four out of five dentists agree with this, but more power to him. He also endorses the canard that Viennese expressionism is wholly about angst and morbidity. It’s not, and I regret (for his sake) that he can’t find his way to this repertoire. But he has a refreshingly open mind, and recognizes its greatness although it’s not for him.

An amusing episode from the book concerns his judging a composition competition and regretting the poor quality of the neo-tonal compositions while endorsing neo-tonality as a mainstream style. “The long-forseen, nay, longed-for counterrevolution shouldn’t be like this!” he laments. 

The book has five parts. The first part, “Places,” is descriptions of cities and experiences mostly connected with premieres of Holloway’s works. Oddly (or perhaps to be expected) the weakest section is about his home turf in England. Generally, “Places” is the weakest part of the book.

Delightful is part two, “Composers in Brief.” Holloway wildly asserts that Glinka is not merely the fountainhead of Russian music, but is the fountainhead of a Franco-Russo style that, in his view, ultimately eclipses Teutonic hegemony. His enthusiam for little-known French operas gratifies my own heart, as I’ve often felt that French opera of the second half of the 19th century is a repository of some of the greatest and most underrated works of the romantic era. Bizet and Chausson are discussed, but had he known I was reading, he may have thrown Massenet in too!

Holloway’s association of Reger’s repugnant physiognomy with his turgid style is priceless:

For a start, he is surely the physically ugliest of all composers, surpassing even Prokofiev, or Zemlinsky, whose repulsiveness actually inspiired an opera libretto. Reger’s slobish face, plus pince-nez and thick, sulky lips, already anticipates the music’s mix of short-sighted with greedy grossness…

His lusty, love/hate relationship with the Entartete Musik composers, Korngold, Krenek, Schulhoff and especially Schreker among others, is a delight to read, although being quite familiar with this repertoire I disagree with almost everything he says. Or at least, with Holloway’s idea that the excessiveness and voluptuousness of much of this music is a kind of Chinese dinner that tastes great at the time only to leave you hungry afterwords. 

Part 3, “Composers at Length,” is more substantial but less interesting because these are articles for sober publications or liner notes and thus don’t have the off-the-cuff opinionating that the rest of the book has. The best of these is the article on Debussy’s Etudes.

The best and most remarkable part of the book is Part 4, “Charting the Twentieth Century.” What a delight to read such a musician, completely trashing the notion of historical progress and inevitable teleology. Holloway humanely understands that the value of a composer such as Rachmaninoff isn’t to change the world but to give us more musical pleasure. Amen to that! Holloway comments that Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances is contemporaneous with the early works of Boulez. And he knows that this situation isn’t wacky — it’s only the blinkered historians who perceive it as such. Holloway has the knack for exulting in (or at least, acknowledging) the validity of disparate styles without needing any given style to be accorded pre-eminance.

I myself has been frustrated with people who unimaginatively are puzzled by the fact that four of my favorite composers are Rachmaninoff and Puccini, Schoenberg and Boulez. But that’s a fact, Jack! I promise you. 

Delightful and, I think, necessary, is Holloway’s brutal put-down of the Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Music. Firstly, he outlines a vastly better way it could be done (concentrating on individual masterpieces, and especially unfamiliar ones) and then proceeds to excoriate that worst kind of academic writing: pseudo objective, pseudo-neutral listings of names dates, places, and isms. 

The final section is apologetically call “Odds and Sods.” Holloway needn’t apologize! His 20 best orchestral recordings list, attack on boring music (including classical and romantic concertos by Haydn and Tchaikovsky and a baroque opera by Scarlatti) are wonderful. How many readers of this blog haven’t sat through works by the Masters that aren’t merely boring but soul-crushingly so, and been afraid to say so? Nobody will raise and eyebrow at an alert musician’s boredom at Carmina Burana, but  to take on the big boys is cool. Baroque opera is boring. There, I’ve said it. Since Holloway has gone after pieces by Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Scarlatti, let me e pater le bourgeoisie by nominating Beethoven’s violin concerto, almost all of Gershwin (which Holloway loves) and all of Faure (which Holloway also loves) as personal candidates for the snoozmobile. Holloway’s depiction of dental catastrophe augmented by a Best of Mozart tape is hilarious and all too familiar. 

I just wish that such an astute Englishman could explain to me what I need to be loving in the works of Elgar and Britten. He talks a lot about ‘em, as really great figures.They are fine composers, but let’s not get carried away. I think, alas, I’ll have to find out on my own. This book is extremely worth purchasing. And if I have made it seem comparatively lightweight, so many pages of enthusiastic music talk by such as Holloway makes an enduring and educational experience. 

The Rolls-Royce Treatment

I like boxes. You know, compendiums of classical music consisting of 30 or more cds, at prices averaging under $2/disc.  I don’t listen to ‘em, necessarily, but I pile them on the piano and look at them from time to time. There are amazing deals out there, incl. Bayreuth’s old Sawallisch (what a Lohengrin!) and Bohm (What a Tristan!) records…33 cds in a pretty box.  Or “Berlin Alexanderplatz”; a deluxe Criterion 7 disc set of the greatest film ever made, with a book included as well. And a very pretty box.

Nobody with any sense is gonna dispute the above purchases. You’re probably no longer reading this, because you’re madly scrambling to order these items for yourself. But now for the insane part of this narrative. Cue the ominous music, let’s say Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” or Weber’s Wolfglen music. Or on second thought, don’t bother. The facts are scary enough. Joining Bayreuth and Fassbinder on the piano is the 37-disc set of Karajan conducting the Berlin Phil. in complete editions of Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Tchaikovsky symphonies.

Why, oh why! Where have we failed you, Mr. Gibbons? Haven’t we introduced you to Bohm and Bernstein, Furtwangler and Kleiber, Kempe and Kletsky? Better conductors every one! What went wrong? Oh, the Humanity! (humanity doesn’t necessarily include Karajan) Why this megalomanical, homogenizing, racist Nazi pig! 

Get mad, it’s your good right. Alert the teabaggers so they can humiliate me at a town hall. Kick me in the shins. But to paraphrase Marquis de Sade, predictably (now that you know my secret vice) one of my heroes, if you want to burn me in effigy you’ll just have to do it, because I will never change. 

Just set yourself-all back all comfy-like, straddle a cracker barrel and light a cheroot, while I tuck  my thumbs in my suspenders and regale ya’ll with a yarn.

When I was a wee tyke at the Peabody conservatory my friends (don’t laugh) and I went to the record store.  I wanted the Mozart Requiem, God alone knows why (it’s a problematical and uneven piece, and I should’ve been looking for the c minor mass or something else, instead, as I didn’t yet have any sacred music by Mozart). Anyway, I wildly grabbed the Karajan/Vienna version and tucked it under my arm with the beaming countenance of smug sophistication, eagerly anticipating my friends to congratulate me on my connisseurhood.  Instead they looked at me with condescension and pity.  Gently, in hushed tones, they expressed their concern that I wasn’t buying, say, the Norrington version, with authentic oboes and everything. I stamped my foot, and with tears welling in my eyes and my face going the wrong shape, I bleated: ‘This one is too good! It’s the best and I love it more then anything and I hate you guys for ever!”  

And since then, I’ve been scarred for life, hence my recent purchase. And Norrington isn’t a conductor, he’s a butler. “Norrington, show these gentlemen to the study, where we will take our brandy.” That’s who Norrington is. 

Haydn is big and slow, with majestic minuets and finessy finales.  Mozart is moribund, Beethoven is treated like Brahms, who is treated really well, actually. Bruckner sounds like an organ, so does Schumann, and the Tchaik is mercifully sober. Ain’t heard the Mendelssohn yet, as I live in deadly fear that the  “Lobgesang” will get in my face. Geez, ain’t life short enough already? Oh, wait: the Lobgesang will make it seem that time is stopped… I get to live forever!

The Berlin boys don’t make many mistakes and Karajan knows the music cold, too cold.  This stuff is perfect, too perfect, like a TV anchorman’s hair.  But it is the Rolls-Royce treatment.

Is Tchaikovsky an 18th Century Composer?

From tchaikovsky-research.orgSome comments concerning my rereading of Richard Taruskin’s chapter “Tchaikovsky and the Human” from his book Defining Russia Musically. Taruskin’s contention is that Tchaikovsky’s explicit advocacy of autocratic rule and its social structure, coupled with his determination to provide musical entertainment rather than dragoon a listener into the creator’s private egotistical orbit makes Tchaikovsky’s agenda an 18th century one.

Taruskin’s claim that Tchaikovsky is essentially an 18th century composer needs to be taken seriously; not because of his (neoclassic) pastisches, not because of his adoration of Mozart, and certainly not because of some similarity of technical means or stylistic profile — but because Tchaikovsky’s explicit aims and vision of the prupose of art is so consonent with Mozart and his colleagues’ musical aims.

But what a composer wants to accomplish isn’t necessarily what he does accomplish. Mozart and Tchaikovsky wrote music that pleased contemporary audiences, for sure. But so did Brahms and especially Wagner (which Taruskin explicitly places outside the orbit of the popular or consumer-oriented music). My experience as a classical music teacher for the last 20 years leads me to suspect that among a construable general classical music public Tchaikovsky and Brahms are roughly equivalent in appeal and Wagner ultimately dwarfs them. How many complete DVDs of the Ring are available? How many CDs? I can’t walk across the street without arguing the merits of various Wagner conductors. And I think Taruskin want’s to lay at the doorstep of Brahms, Wagner and their modern heirs a kind of blame for what he perceives to be a disastrous course of 20th century music en generale.

Another thing that bothers me about Taruskin generally is his inability to take seriously the aesthetics of passionate and sincere minority viewpoints. I promise you, as much as I love Tchaikovsky, I love Schoenberg more (and, in fact, for similar reasons). I respond to the feverish hysteria, the fecund melodiousness, the kaleidescopic colors, and even the hysteria which is occasionally present in both composers. Taruskin makes what I think is a crucial and correct point that Tchaikovsky anticipates and probably influences Mahler. If Tchaikovsky anticipates and influences Mahler, he necessarily anticipates and influences composers in Mahler’s wake who exemplify the diastrous 20th century musically.

Also, Taruskin’s fixation with the musicological Teutonic hegemony appears to me to be professionally inspired and I can only sympathize wholeheartedly for the company he keeps in this regard. Right he is about the condescension and annoyingly jingoistic blather that has afflicted musicological discourse. Right he is, too, that the ghettoization of composers outside the Germanic mainstream has been pervasive and most likely carries racist and bullying overtones. Right he is that the so-called universal is a Teutonocentric fantasy.

Absolutely salutory are Taruskin’s perceptive comments on Tchaikovsky’s astounding technical prowess. Nobody needs to appreciate Tchaikovsky: but to deride his superlative competence in almost every meaningful area of musical technique is to reveal oneself as either bigoted or ignorant. And, in fact, the bigoted are nearly always ignorant though I don’t necessarily contentthat the ignorant are always bigoted.

By far, the most powerful and persuasive part of Taruskin’s essay is his brilliant examination of the sociological totems represented by Tchaikovsky’s use of the waltz and polonaise. I’m also quite persuaded by his analogy between Tchaikovsky’s and Mozart’s use of contradanse. Also, I find it totally refreshing that the homosexual element in Tchaikovsky is relegated to the personal sphere and not seen as some overpowering conditioning element of the music itself.

(I’ve never heard a gay note in my life, although, come to think of it, g-sharps are iffy. And Francophilia doesn’t imply a gay agenda. Goodness, it’s iconic that the French are the ménage à trois people!

Taruskin discusses an apparently dismal conference on Tchaikovsky in which the idea of “exemplary 19th century composer” is said to exist. Lemme tell ya about exemplary composers: Grieg is the exemplary composer of the snowflake-motifed, sweater-wearing, cosy domestic amateur tradition in Bergen, Norway. Wagner is the exemplary composer for the lengthy opera on mythological themes. Percy Grainger is the exemplary composer for the “my composer must be a curly-headed Scandinaviophile” audience. There is no such thing as an exemplary composer and it’s embarassing to try to find one.

As an aside I’ve found Tarusking comment that in Fidelio Beethoven had discovered a limitation in himself (i.e. that he was not an opera composer). I agree. But the irony is that Fidelio is a great as any Mozart opera and Mozart’s operas are every bit as great as they are made out to be. But that’s Fidelio.  Underailed by a clumsy theatrical modus operandi, Fidelio shows a dimension beyond the merely practical. As all great music does. Here I find a strain in Taruskin’s writings to be problematical: the exaltation of general (and thereby inevitably visceral) popular appeal as an endorsement of the art in question.

To make an irony I’d like to suggest that Tchaikovsky was no more an 18th century than a 19th century composer. His suites, ballets, and serenades, etc. are hardly negligible in his output in quantity or quality. And his yoking of the Mozartian with the Gothic in The Queen of Spades is a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire. But here, naturally, I’m being impartial. The fact that The Queen of Spades is my favorite Russian opera altogether has no role in my completely objective evaluation.

As for the 19th century, you can hardly discount the influence of Berlioz and Liszt in works such as Francesca da rimini and the Manfred symphony. For that matter, you can find a Mendelssohnian strain in Tchaikovsky — look at the Scherzo of the 1st Symphony. You can find Chopin and Schumann as wall (and not just because they’re specifically invoked) in his Op. 72 piano works. In fact, the spirit of Schumann seems to hover over Tchaikovsky frequently.

Like all truly great artists, Tchaikovsky is ultimately irreducible. Taruskin provides a welcome corrective but he also notices, for instance, an “underrated skill at grotesquerie” in Tchaikovsky (hardly a Mozartian trait) and he is perfectly willing to invoke patent Russianism is the music when it suits his purpose to refute the likes of Cesar Cui and patent Germanisms (i.e. the beginning of the Finale of the 2nd Symphony) to refute the ghettoizing judgments of David Brown, etc.

By the way, David Brown’s Tchaikovsky article in the New Grove may not be a disgrace, but it’ll do till the disgrace gets here. Poznansky’s book Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man is reasonable, meticulous, sober and exceptionally well documented. But I couldn’t possibly justify it as the text for my class because it wholly excludes musical analysis and concentrates for 600 pages on issues related to Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. This is too much. The impression from Poznansky is problematical although perfectly fair. This book is perhaps a necessary refutation of previous biographies of Tchaikovsky but frankly, the overall assessment of Tchaikovsky’s character could be suitably condensed into a much smaller span. An unexpurgated collection of Tchaikovsky’s letters (which I understand Poznansky has been working to achieve) could conceivably replace his biography.

Periodically in my reading of the Poznansky I found it necessary to set the book aside and listen to the waltz from the Serenade for Strings, the final scene of Mazeppa, or Sleeping Beauty to remind me of why I was reading the book in the first place.

Defining Russia Musically by Richard Taruskin

Beethoven's "Missa"-Perched Between the Baroque and the Romantic Neo-Baroque

I can affirm most wholeheartedly that Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis absolutely succeeds outdoors on a balmy June evening, as proved last night by the Chicago Grant Park festival and its capable conductor, Carlos Kalmar. I’m too lazy to look it up, but was it not so long ago that outdoors summer festivals avoided pieces like the Missa? In any case, any and all times and places are right for this engrossing and highly accessible work; if you actually listen, this piece, dense and profound as it obviously is, can connect like nothing else. It is Beethoven’s greatest single achievement, even if sacred music isn’t Beethoven’s greatest or most characteristic genre (which are piano sonata and string quartet).

This work is indebted to the Baroque, and not just Bach, but nevertheless is fundamentally High Classical in conception; it forms a continuous narrative, as the Bach B minor Mass, which is a collection of sympathetic but heterogeneous pieces, does not. You couldn’t omit or transpose anything from Beethoven’s Mass and retain structural integrity, which is both dramatic and tonal. But one could excerpt a chorus or aria from the sacred works of Bach or Mozart with profit. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it is a coincidence, or due primarily to biographical factors, that Mozart’s two greatest sacred works, the C minor Mass and Requiem, were left incomplete-there appears to be, in these awesomely beautiful works, an ultimate lack of total identity between style and content. Neither are the Baroque and earlier styles (Gregorian chant for instance) employed in the Missa felt as stylistic anachronisms except where intended to be felt as such by Beethoven. This seems to me to be an absolutely vital point, and one that cannot be made for Mozart or Schubert, or even Haydn.

Dramatically the Mass’s structure feels as if it were in two mammoth and complementary parts separated and articulated by the Credo, which looks both backward and forward. The Kyrie and Gloria easily are the sections most obviously reconcilable with Baroque antecedents, but nevertheless have an intrinsic momentum which is undoubtedly Classical, and contain some disconcerting touches, like the very first intonation of the word “kyrie” on a weak beat, or the simultaneous unfolding of the two parts of the fugal subject at the beginning of the “Christe eleison”, which one could take to be a reference to the dual nature of Christ, but which requires intense focus on the part of the listener to perceive adequately. This mass of fugal entries at this place is one of the great glories of the piece.

It is well known that the opening E-flat salvo in the overall B-flat tonality of the “Credo” inaugurates a massive plagal cadence over the course of the movement. I’d like to speculate further that the idea of a piece in D with subsidiary regions in two flats connects this piece to the Ninth Symphony, written at essentially the same time. Elegantly, the Mass has D major giving way to G minor in the achingly moving “Agnus Dei”, and the symphony has D minor giving way to B flat, as a major structural conceit. Consider it speculated!

I noticed that the “et incarnatus est” was sung by the tenor section rather than the soloist. Maybe I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to this detail in the past, because I was confused, since my score indicated solo. I had an opportunity to ask Maestro Kalmar about it afterwards, and he said that there is absolutely no doubt it should be chorus, that he called the Grand Poohbas at Henle edition in Munich who indicated that they always get that question, and that an errant copyist was responsible for the mistaken indication of “solo”. Mr. Kalmar further commented that the context made the sectional rendition clear. My wife chimed in that it ought to be sung by the chorus, because tenor soloist James Taylor’s clarion entrance on the concluding phrase “et homo factus est” (and was made man) was exceptionally dramatic. To this the Maestro enthusiastically agreed. It is true that the other soloists enter subsequent to the “incarnatus”, and that Christ was, corporally speaking, one man and not many, but whether or not it is politic to agree with Munich editors and fine conductors, it is always politic to agree with one’s wife. Actually, I have no idea what Beethoven wrote, so it was good to learn the truth of the matter from a pro who does know, who has done the necessary research. This is not a trivial point, it is one of the most important places in the score. In fact, one could say that the “Incarnatus” is the foundation of all Christianity. Maestro said my score must be old, not reflecting current research. I wonder how many other mistakes I accept as true…I have a lot of old scores!

I am indebted to Mr. Ray Frick, generous underwriter of the concert, for introducing me to the very fine soloists and Mr. Kalmar. I’m certainly appreciative of the opportunity. It’s amazing what one can learn.

And the very fine soloists? Erin Wall (soprano), Anita Krause (mezzo), James Taylor (tenor) and Nathan Berg (bass). The solo parts in Missa Solemnis are uncommonly challenging without being overtly virtuosic, and require exceptional musicality and sensitivity to ensemble concerns. All these soloists delivered. I should mention here that the Grant Park chorus, singing some exceptionally difficult music themselves, was flat-out great. Chorus director Christopher Bell took a well-deserved bow with his ensemble.

An interesting feature of the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei is how few words there are and how much music. Beethoven has deflected the emotional weight of the mass to the final third of the text. This is consonant with Beethoven’s fundamentally humane and humanistic conception. “Lamb of God, forgive us our sins” and “Grant us Peace” are given the greatest attention of all lines in the mass. It is moving to think of Beethoven writing, “Grant us inner and outer peace” at the allegretto. Or is my score in error! It is too well known to mention here the ominous military music Beethoven places in the “dona nobis pacem” very near the end; will Beethoven’s not-so-subtle reminder, or warning, never cease to be relevant?

There are a great many fine sacred pieces from the Romantic era, this is conceded. But the absorption of Baroque methods anachronistically by such composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt are in a sense disappointing when one considers that Beethoven’s achievement was to remake sacred style wholly in his most advanced, personal, and au courant manner. Greatest Romantic composer of sacred music? Let’s call a spade a spade and nominate Hector Berlioz. There are moments in his Requiem and L’Enfance du Christ that recall with fierce immediacy the sincerity and personal committment on display in Beethoven’s finest work.

Four Nights, Three Tristans

It’s a recruiter’s nightmare: a last-minute and mission critical job opening, a non-negotiable deadline, and just ten qualified temps to choose from — worldwide. It happened at the Metropolitan Opera last week: as the clock ticked toward a live broadcast of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde to cinemas around the world, the leading tenor and two understudies had called in sick.

For most operas, replacement tenors would still be plentiful in New York. But the role of Tristan calls for an atypical genre (or “fach”) of tenor voice, plus a level of stamina that’s hard to convey to Wagner newbies. That’s just to survive the “sing.” An effective performance requires vocal beauty, emotional presence and gravitas. “Ten men in the world can do this — and I know exactly where each guy is right now,” said the Met casting director in an intermission interview.

But thanks to some logistical heroics, the American tenor Robert Dean Smith was in town to introduce a vast, new audience to the Tristan that German audiences have savored for years.

Robert Dean Smith as Tristan. Photo: Marty Sohl

How the Met Went Through Every Tristan in the Western Hemisphere

This Tristan run was intended as the long-awaited pairing of Canadian tenor Ben Heppner with American soprano Deborah Voight’s Isolde. John Mac Master (backup Tristan #1) opened for an ailing Heppner, but not entirely successfully, as he, too, was announced as ill. Gary Lehmann (Backup Tristan #2) got good reviews for the second night, but Voight fled the stage with a stomach ailment during the Act 2 love duet. Janice Baird finished the performance as Isolde after a 15-minute delay. To add injury to illness, Lehman fell into the prompter’s box during the next performance, stopping the show again while doctors checked him over.

Two Weeks. Six Surprise Met Debuts. One Great Case for the Flu Shot.

The jinx wasn't limited to Tristan. In the same fortnight, newly minted National Council Auditions winner Angela Meade made an unscheduled Met debut in Ernani — her very first professional performance on any stage. (The casualty in that case: Sondra Rodvanovsky.) Meanwhile, Ruth Ann Swenson was replaced by Ermonela Jaho as Violetta in La Traviata. The final roster changes: six surprise Met debuts in thirteen days.

Where Have They Been Hiding This Tenor?

In Europe, basically. The American tenor is based in Switzerland. Smith flew on Thursday to New York from Berlin (where he's currently preparing the Berlin Tannhauser), leaving him only Friday to learn the staging. Onstage Saturday, he gave every appearance of knowing the production intimately – though he could be seen reviewing blocking backstage during intermission, and was spared the distraction of backstage interview.

Smith’s voice is youthful and flexible, and his delivery has that combination of dignity and emotional presence that this genre of Wagner roles needs. His poignant singing and expressive face he had me in his corner from the beginning, and his final “Isolde!” had my eyes unexpectedly wet. At this point, Smith gave every impression that he had enough juice left in him, after completing one of opera’s most lengthy and demanding roles under these difficult circumstances, to have sung a Liebestod of his own.

Surely that stamina came in handy on next day’s return flight to Germany to resume the other formidable Wagner tenor role he was already doing.

 “It Makes the Love Scenes Interesting”

When the curtain closed on Saturday, Deborah Voight had sung four performances with three Tristans -- none of whom she’d been able to rehearse with, and two of whom she’d never even met. “It makes the love scenes interesting,” she noted during a backstage interview confirming these details. Up close, I was struck with her commanding presence, but it never detracted from the vulnerability that I’ve always enjoyed about her. Based on this Tristan and the Chicago Frau  (in which Smith played her husband just a few months ago) and Salome, I agree with the critics who notice that her voice has become brighter recently.

Update

On Friday, March 28, the Met’s “Dream Team” Tristan run came to its scheduled conclusion with the “dream team” of Ben Heppner and Deborah Voight taking the stage together for the first time. Voight had again called in sick for the fifth performance (three days after her broadcast with Robert Dean Smith). So here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the run:

• Performance 1: Deborah Voight and John Mac Master

• Performance 2: Deborah Voight (replaced midway with Janice Baird) and Gary Lehman

• Performance 3: Deborah Voight and Gary Lehman (who fell into the prompter’s box but completed the performance)

• Performance 4: Deborah Voight and Robert Dean Smith

• Performance 5: Janice Baird and Ben Heppner

• Performance 6: At last! Deborah Voight and Ben Heppner!!!