Revealed: The 8 Operas That Changed the World
Audio: John Gibbons reveals (and defends) the operas to be covered in his next Graham School course, and discusses some of the works he cosidered, but didn't make the cut. 10-minute audio file.
Barring another epic blast of #Chiberia weather, an intrepid bunch of "Gleacher Creatures" will gather at Chicago's Graham School tomorrow (January 7) for "8 Operas That Changed the World." So, which operas made the elite eight? Some, I presume, will be obvious to opera buffs, and others may surprise you. In this ten-minute audio recording I discuss what drove the selections -- not every choice is a "greatest" opera, or even, necessarily, the favorite from each composer. I also mention some worthy contenders which, for various reasons, were omitted.
Comments are welcome - from students and blog readers equally!
No time to listen? The selected operas are:
- Claudio Monteverdi's last opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea) of 1642.
- Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata (The Marriage of Figaro, or The Day of Madness) of 1786
- Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto (1851)
- Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (1865)
- Modest Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov (1874)
- Georges Bizet, Carmen (1875)
- Richard Strauss, Salome (1905)
- Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925)
Musical Anniversary: A Florentine Tragedy
On this date in 1917, Alexander Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) was premiered in Stuttgart. It is the first of two operas that Zemlinsky (1871-1942) based upon the works of Oscar Wilde. Der Zwerk (The Dwarf) followed in 1922. Here is an excerpt featuring Diana Axentii and Chad Shelton:
Zemlinsky was right in the thick of things in Vienna in the decades before WWII. As a composer he studied with Bruckner and enjoyed the advocacy of such figures as Brahms and Mahler. As a conductor and teacher he, in turn, played a role in the careers of Viktor Ullmann (his assistant conductor), Hans Krasa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (composition students) and Arnold Schoenberg, who married Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde. In addition to conducting the world premiere of Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Zemlinsky holds the distinction of being the only teacher to give formal lessons (in counterpoint) to his otherwise self-taught brother-in-law.
Zemlinsky’s music evolved from a Brahmsian starting point to the kind of ravishing, post-Wagnerian style we hear in Strauss and Korngold. The “Wilde” operas are part of this mature stylistic world, at times opulent and at times brutally visceral. In the late 20s and 30s, Zemlinsky took a more objective turn, down the path taken by Hindemith and Weill despite his close personal association with the composers of the Second Viennese School.
A Florentine Tragedy (video above) is a one-act opera with only three characters: a merchant, his wife, and the aristocrat who cuckolds the husband. It features a shocking twist as this pretty routine society tragedy descends into a violent confrontation between the two men, and we learn which kind of power matters: brute strength or institutional power.
The Dwarf, based on Wilde’s story “The Birthday of the Infanta” is also a one-act, and the two works pair naturally, both musically and literarily. The Dwarf is in part a dramatization of the pain that Zemlinsky suffered when he lost Alma Schindler to Gustav Mahler. He was apparently considered unattractive, and he knew it. The Zemlinsky-Wilde Dwarf, however, doesn’t know it. He’s been led to believe, for the amusement of onlookers, that he’s a handsome prince, worthy of the love of the Infanta to whom he’s been given as a birthday gift.
Here is a video (for some reason, with piano only), of the scene in which the Dwarf sees his reflection for the first time. The eventual outcome: a new rule, whereby the Infanta is not be given any more living toys, because they break so easily.
There’s no finer advocate for Zemlinsky than James Conlon, whose recordings I recommend:
I haven’t seen the syllabus, but John may very well be discussing Zemlinsky in his upcoming spring class on Degenerate Music (Entartete Musik) — a study of composers who were affected by the Third Reich. As Jew, Zemlinsky had to leave Europe in 1938 and lived his final four years in obscurity in New York City.
Met Player - Enjoy Archival Performances Online
Last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Opera unveiled its latest new media strategy: the Met Player.
Over 150 operas from the past 71 years are available for listening or viewing on your computer. The oldest is a 1937 Carmen with Rosa Ponselle, the newest are from the 2007-2008 high definition move theater broadcasts, including definitive performances of La Fille du Regiment (Dessay, Flores) and Eugene Onegin (Fleming, Hvorostovsky), and the Tristan und Isolde featuring Deborah Voight and Robert Dean Smith — flown in from Europe less than two days earlier to replace three ailing or injured colleagues.
Most performances are audio — those that were filmed for broadcast include video.
One of the best features of Met Player is its flexible payment terms. In addition to a 7-day free trial, you may choose to rent operas one by one or subscribe to the service:
| Web Access Anywhere | Unlimited Plays | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yearly Subscription A year for the price of 10 months |
Yes | Yes | $149.99 * | |
| Monthly Subscription | Yes | Yes | $14.99 * | |
| Opera Rental | Yes | Once you rent, you have 30 days to start watching or listening † | $3.99 | |
| Free Trial | Yes | 7-Day Free Trial More Details
You have 7 days to enjoy If you do not cancel your trial prior to the end of seven days, we will begin charging you $14.99 per month for a monthly subscription. |
Free ** |
Terms and Conditions | Special Pricing for Met Members
Sanskrit or English? Oddly, It Doesn't Much Matter-A Postscript to My Satyagraha Post
By any measure, the libretto for Satyagraha is extraordinary. For one thing, my printout is two pages long, for an opera that takes almost three hours to perform. For another thing, it completely disdains all theatrical and operatic conventions. It is also unrelentingly philosophical. The fact that it is adapted from the Bhagavad-Gita is perhaps somewhat less extraordinary-after all, Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, and the Bible have been adapted operatically.
The Met’s study guide asked the reader to consider Glass’s decision to set the original Sanskrit, rather than an English translation. I think it is a sound decision, despite the fact that it would appear to be motivated by essentially the same factors which prompted Stravinsky to set Oedipus Rex in Latin. Latin, not Greek!
I am somewhat sympathetic to the argument that operatic libretti are at the very least, less important than the music, and even sometimes close to irrelevant. But I’d like to make two caveats: firstly, irrelevant or not, the listener better know what the words mean, because despite the patent lack of literary interest in most libretti, the words do motivate the type of music a composer writes, usually. There are some exceptions; and when I say motivate, I’m not excluding the possibility of ironic or counter-intuitive settings…magnificent operas such as L’Incornazione di Poppea and The Rake’s Progress indulge in considerable irony, for instance. And, secondly, a minority of operas do really elevate the libretto to a similar status to the music. No, not Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff…again I’m thinking of Monteverdi.
Even if the language an opera is sung in is the listener’s own, this doesn’t mean the words are going to be comprehensible! So why value comprehensibility at all? Why not take if off the table entirely, as in Satyagraha, and allow the listener to absorb the full impact of words and music in their pure state? Of course you can’t have a really dramatic piece this way, although the burning of the registration cards was sufficiently dramatic for me. Glass’s opera gives you time to meditate on the words; in fact, the opera felt like an accompaniment to the listener’s spiritual or philosophical meditation, which is provoked by the meaning of the words. So Sanskrit is the better choice of language, the lines of meditation and music are not crossed.
The use of text in Satyagraha may be unusual in the opera house, but it is de rigeur in sacred music; have you ever noticed how much music and how few words in the second half of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis? Nevertheless, Satyagraha is an opera, not an oratorio. Please do not underestimate the importance of the pantomimic dimension; like the music itself, this guides and focusses the listener’s meditation.
Satyagraha-Pro and Contra
For the first time in my life I listened today, carefully, with full and undivided attention, to Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, in an admirable performance from the Met on its weekly Saturday broadcast. I read carefully the Met’s quite helpful materials published on its website, and followed the libretto from beginning to end. I neither had nor needed a score, because the musical matter per se was eminently graspable without the notes in front of me.
My point of view is likely to be less valuable than that of a Glass aficionado, since love is a prerequisite for understanding. Furthermore, my comments may either seem like a betrayal to those who agree with my customary aesthetic agendae, or insufficiently laudatory to those who already esteem this work. This post is likely to please no one, more’s the pity. I have found it convenient to alter the order of the pro and contra positions depending on the issue addressed.
Pro: The tripartite organization of the work in (relative to Gandhi’s era) legendary past, present, and future, coupled with associations of morning, noon, and night is elegant and dramatically effective, and gives a certain welcome narrative dimension to a work which is otherwise patently static.
Contra: I have no effective counter-argument.
Contra: The harmonies are exasperatingly simple. For three hours of music.
Pro: They have to be. It is well known that the more piquaint the spice, the more sparingly it must be used. The sequence of tonic, V/III, VI, and V presented at the beginning of the work, for instance, justifies Sam Lipman’s complaint that the harmony is the sort one learns in first year harmony, but, given the textural and durational conception of the piece, which involves lengthy non-dramatic meditations on essential philosphical themes, delievered via arpeggio and ostinato, anything fancy would quickly become unendurable. Rice, bread or beans can be taken every day. It is basic sustenance, consonant with the communal message of the piece as well as Gandhi’s specific character.
Contra: It ain’t an opera. It’s a ritual.
Pro: Alright. Tell me your objections to Mozart’s Magic Flute, your beloved Smetana’s Libuse, Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage, or even the outer acts of Wagner’s Parsifal!
Contra: I thought tu quoque arguments were out of bounds!
Pro: It has social relevance.
Contra: Yeah, so? Does Cosi fan tutte have to justify itself with a better score than Le Nozze di Figaro?
Contra: There are way too many arpeggios, and the orchestral schemes are all too similar, scene to scene. It wouldn’t hurt to have some vertical organization time to time, or to utilize the registral dimension, which is strangely absent from a work that, for better or worse, is “process” or “permutation” or “additive” music; which technique leaves the field open for registral variation, of which there is nowhere near enough. And don’t invoke the merits of “homogeneity of style”; You can achieve that while providing variety.
Pro: I have to go to the bathroom.
Pro: I’m back. And I really did have to go to the bathroom, you! What a relief it is not to have chunks of recitative, or stupid filler, or contrived arias to show off this or that singer, or a patently meaningless plot. This opera invites mediation on essential issues. And the libretto, what there is of it, is first rate. (the libretto is derived from the Bhagavad-Gita).
Contra: No opera has ever survived in the long run on the strength of its libretto, and plenty of great musical operas have survived despite, to put it charitably, defective libretti.
Pro: But this isn’t a traditional opera! That’s the whole point! Dimensions that aren’t strictly musical assume considerable importance! And compare the status of this work within its operatic orbit with certain works in the legitimate theatre. Shaw, Ibsen, and Brecht, for instance, survive nicely although none of these writers have the poetry of a Shakespeare!
Contra: That’s a weird argument. We’re not even talking about that stuff. And there is no “a Shakespeare”; there’s only one.
Pro: Let’s not get into that.
MODERATOR: Back to the topic, Gentlemen. This isn’t a political debate!
Contra: The individual parts aren’t terribly interesting; neither the singers nor the orchestral players have enough to engage them in terms of purely musical nuance, and this may mean that the finest singers, at least, (orchestral players do what they’re told, most of the time) will eschew these roles.
Pro: Who is opera for! What is it supposed to be! Do you want a return to Bel Canto! Give me a break.
Contra: Gladly. Which limb?
MODERATOR: Enough, Enough! Patricians and Populace, Peace I cry!
Pro: The “printing press” sequence is physically exhiliarating; the Phrgian scales Gandhi sings at the end, whether because of text, music, or established context, is quite moving. Unforgettable, in fact.
Contra: I agree, for today. Will I be exhiliarated and moved the next time I hear the piece? Will there be a next time? Time will tell. And let me tell you, this thing requires a lot of time!
Four Nights, Three Tristans
Every winter it seems like “something’s going around at work” but this is ridiculous! Six singers have made unscheduled Met debuts in the past two weeks, and one, the American tenor Robert Dean Smith, offered a Tristan that ought to go down as one of those “Were you there?” moments.
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!!!
Hope You Didn't Miss This
prokofiev-photo.jpg
Several comments on yesterday’s Met Opera broadcast of Prokofiev’s War and Peace:
For those who don’t know the opera, it consists of an epigraph and thirteen reasonably lengthy scenes divided into two gargantuan segments, “peace”, and then “war” based on Tolstoy’s novel. The “peace” segment vitally draws the personalities and ambitions and situations of the principal characters with consummate skill and sympathy, thus making their various fates in the “war” segment deeply involving for the listener. The piece is patriotic, but movingly so; neither obnoxious in the Soviet style nor witlessly jingoistic. Stylistically, the piece inhabits a similar world as the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the music for the film (also turned into a cantata) Alexander Nevsky. In fact, if you don’t know the opera, you might imagine a sort of cross between those works; eloquent dance elements as well as massive and powerful episodes..and like those works, a serious mein, but leavened with considerable humor. And the libretto, by Prokofiev and his wife, Mira, is a winner…combining grandeur and intimacy. Also, the piece is consistently inspired from beginning to end, there are no longeurs…to yesterday’s broadcast:
1. The conductor Valery Gergiev proves once again how important the conductor is…his mastery of the score is immediately evident, and his (relatively) quick pacing and control of tempo, the breadth and unity of conception, the precision of the colors evoked by this onamonapoetic score, and the immense variety of his articulations serve the work well, to say the least.
2. But why the cuts? Oh, I know that everybody but Rostropovich in that Erato record of his makes cuts, and as far as it goes, several performances I’ve heard cut a lot more. But I have the score, and as I followed the performance I can assure you that the music left on the table is not just perfectly viable, but as inspired as the rest. And I’ve heard it uncut, and liked it that way. But Gergiev knows what he’s doing, obviously…there are probably sufficient reasons for the cuts, which in any case were not particularly heavy…You know, I feel the same way about cuts in Frau Ohne Schatten; it’s just about always cut, and when I heard Solti do it from Salzburg uncut, I liked it that way. Guess I just don’t like cuts, I almost always feel cheated. Erich Leinsdorf in one of his books completely dismisses objections to cuts, and claims they are absolutely necessary in many works to make the piece stronger. I just can’t think of any cuts I like in any works I like. Cut away in pieces I don’t like, however; be my guest!
2. If the Met had made this one of their big whoop-de-doos at movie theatres, it would have sold out everywhere and been one of the events of the year. Why didn’t they?
3. Alexej Markov as Andrei and Maria Poplovskaya as Natasha were superlative; especially because their acting and vocal characterizations were so convincing. And it’s nice to have such an Andrei, powerful and charismatic; makes the lyrical stuff all the more moving. The outstanding Kim Begley was wonderful as Pierre, but you might not notice it, ‘cause Pierre is such a difficult role. Sam Ramey as Kutuzov has a beautiful voice and plenty of power, but the wobbling continues to be a significant distraction. A friend I listened with thought it wrecked his passages. I thought so too, but am not saying so because I’ll get yelled at! But Ramey’s place as a great singer of our time is secure, he’s done so many good things.
4. This greatest of Prokofiev’s works contains his single greatest passage, the desperately sad death scene of Andrei… his farewell to the beloved walls of the Kremlin and his hallucinatory reunion with Natasha will shock you with its poignancy… how can this beautiful world continue to exist without Andrei to see it? “The world ends when you die.” This is haunting.
Dove Sono?
Anyway, I got to thinking: What operatic characters get lost in their operas? Maybe I should send the question to the Metropolitan Opera Quiz, and win their super-duper prize package, but such is my loyalty to Holdekunst readers that I offer it here first, gratis.
Top Ten Lost Opera Characters
Today at the grocery store a poor young lady had accidentally gotten separated from her mom and was in tears at the camera counter, while a sympathetic clerk called again and again for her mom to retrieve her. As the girl was still there a half hour later, I began to feel uneasy on her behalf. Fortunately, by the time I left, she had been reunited with her mother, who proceeded to berate the pathetically relieved young lady in no uncertain terms, and unfairly, I thought, because the girl’s lifeline, that indispensable icon of our age, the cellphone, was malfunctioning or out of power. I think kindness is the noblest human virtue, especially since we may share it with superior creatures like dogs and dolphins; nobler than love, or charity, or faith, pace St. Paul. Anyway, I got to thinking: What operatic characters get lost in their operas? Maybe I should send the question to the Metropolitan Opera Quiz, and win their super-duper prize package, but such is my loyalty to Holdekunst readers that I offer it here first, gratis.
1. Obviously and of course, Humperdinck’s immortal Hansel and Gretel. I certainly hope there isn’t anyone left who doesn’t know enough to take this very great opera seriously. It’s sort of like Siegfried, except all fairy tale and no polemics. The pantomime of the fourteen angels can leave even the jaded listener in tears, even if he isn’t anxiously waiting for his mom at the camera counter.
2. Golaud and Melisande. The most delicate of metaphors, to the most delicate of musics, the first scene of Debussy’s greatest work is melancholy magic.
3. The protagonist of Erwartung, again, like the previous two exemplars, lost in a metaphorical forest. Only this time, we are plunged into the nightmare hysteria of Dr. Caligari.
4. Siegfried, in the first scene of the third act of Gotterdammerung. And who does he run into, but those not-so-agreeable substitutes for a Greek Chorus, the Rhine maidens. And thus, after he spills the beans, Brunnhilde has a chance to know everything, which endows her with truly awesome grandeur in opera’s greatest scene, her immolation. Certain uncharitable wives of mine might refer to the Rhine maidens as the Rhine “———s”. I don’t say yea or nay to that.
5. Keeping with the Wagnerian theme, Parsifal. He’s lost for the duration of his opera, basically. Could anyone be that stupid? At least the music is good. (talk about damning with faint praise)… Nietzsche thought Klingsor the only human character in the piece. As is so often the case, The Weimar Zarathustra hits the nail on the head.
6. Can we count Tom Rakewell and his fellow madmen? Adonis and Venus…being lost in the thickets of madness is perhaps the cruelest way to be lost. Stravinsky finally proves that he’s human after all with Anne’s exquisitely sad lullaby. Take the rest of Stravinsky, please, but let me have Rake’s Progress. Now and then let me borrow Petrushka, however!
7. Manon and Des Grieux in the last act of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. I know it’s a commonplace to joke about the Louisiana “desert” but doesn’t this passage refer to the “Louisiana Purchase”? …I’m way too lazy to dig up an American history textbook to do some fact checking, so you, my humble reader, are hereby commissioned to do this for me.
8. Dido and Aeneas in the “Royal Hunt and Storm” music from Berlioz’s Les Troyens. If your coupling doesn’t result in the founding of a great empire, you just ain’t trying hard enough.
9. How about Michel, in Martinu’s wonderful Juliette, ou la Cle des Songes (Juliet, or the Key of Dreams)…like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, he spends the whole work in a dream.
10. If I am allowed a sentimental metaphor, who is more lost than the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro? Dove sono…where are they? Those beautiful moments, those days of pleasure…maybe the agitated young lady from the grocery store will grow up to be an opera singer, and will have special insight into what John Berryman called “the epistemology of loss”…
"A Bridge Across the Abyss" -Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten (at Chicago Lyric Opera, the dress rehearsal was this afternoon)
The most poetic line of Hofmannsthal’s libretto for Strauss’s opera (premiered 1919) is sung by a small chorus of night watchmen at the end of act one; they adjure the town’s husbands and wifes to “love one another more than your life, and know this; not for your life’s sake alone is the seed of life given to you, but is solely for the sake of your love…you husbands and wives, who lie in one another’s loving arms, you are the bridge across the abyss over which the dead come back to life. Blessed is your work of love!”
Can art be “a bridge across the abyss”? And are we in fact poised above an abyss, en general? Or does an artist manufacture the concept of “an abyss” to make his work appear to be redemptive? I don’t know, but the piece worked for me, from beginning to end. The theme of the wounding of the falcon, which became a love motif throughout the course of the piece, uniting the Mozartian couples Pamina and Tamino and Papageno and ..I mean, Emperor and Empress, Dyer and wife, was especially memorable; it better have been, because Strauss repeated it a zillion times in a zillion ways, but he had the courage of his convictions, and it paid off; the leitmotivic organization was splendidly cogent.
Strauss may have been a bourgeois, and this passage may appear to be the grossest of bourgeois sentiments, couched in Teutonic sonic gargantua, but I was there today, in the theatre, (albeit the dress rehearsal) and moving it was, and how. The opera started at one and ended at five; that’s four hours! Four great hours. The acts get progressively better, as well. And I’m an opera lover born, but I can lose the thread, time to time, opera is demanding. Not today. And the plot is the most recondite imaginable. This is an encomium, if you like.
If you live in Chicago you ought to go. In the past I’ve been rebuked (getting rebuked is a super fun habit of mine) for not being sufficiently positive about the Lyric Opera; it’s a pleasure to be able to wholeheartedly and absolutely without reservation recommend this splendid effort. Everyone knows how great Deborah Voigt (the Empress) is. And lots of guys know the fine talents of Jill Grove (nurse), Franz Hawlata (Barak the Dyer — WFMT listeners also heard his wonderful Hans Sachs last week) and Christine Brewer (Dyer’s wife); but the tenor who sang the Emperor, an unknown quantity to me, Robert Dean Smith, was equally splendid. And tenors have a tough time making their way in Strauss. Not Mr. Smith, whose scene with the falcon in act two was memorably beautiful. Memorably beautiful. I use words lightly all too often, but not here. Memorably beautiful.
The production is a (reasonably conservative) winner, by Paul Curran, and Sir Andrew Davis and the orchestra were really, really wonderful… and I know I’ve had my criticisms of both orchestra and conductor in the past… this was first rate. The Lyric made my day. Bravi.
The Levine 1997 Gotterdammerung -A "Holde-Review" -With a Few Comments Pertaining to Same
Many readers got a chuckle out of the Holde-Quiz and the Holde-Interview, so I plan on having those types of essays as occasionally recurring features. Sober and prudent readers should just skip ‘em, as they cause the risk of a specific birth defect. Also, those with certain types of kidney disease should probably give ‘em a pass as well, just to be on the safe side. Below is the first Holde-Review.
Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, conducted by James Levine at the 1997 Bayreuth Festival, with Deborah Polaski as Brunnhilde, Wolfgang Schmidt as Siegfried, Eric Halfarson as Hagen, and Hanna Schwartz as Waltraute. Staged by Alfred Kirchner, with sets and costume design by Rosalie. (what the heck is this one name pretentiousness all about? Perhaps it’s an incognito, as the sets were not a factor and the costumes were laughable). On DVD.
(The YouTube video above shows most of the Immolation Scene, and provides a taste of the “Costumes by Rosalie. The subtitles are in Spanish.)
Almost every review I read, in “Opera News”, “BBC Music Magazine”, NY Times, etc. is functionally at least somewhat useful, but deadly boring as literature. Some critics (Alex Ross, Charles Rosen, Michael Steinberg, the crew at Opera News) know music, and know how to write. Many do not. With occasional exceptions, you will learn nothing from customer reviews on Amazon, or from most newspapers, whose reviewers were apparently assigned to the Classical Music beat when they were deemed inadequate to cover seventh grade soccer scrimmages. Here in Chicago, we have a reasonably intelligent and affable critic who just guesses at what the performance was like. He has absolutely no clue, so he guesses, and is right every now and then, purely by accident. Still, he constitutes an improvement on the totally ignorant and vilely venomous Claudia Cassidy, who besmirched the reputation of critics everywhere, and who flaunted a total lack of integrity, and indeed, decency. You can’t put a trained musician with a professional point of view on the review page nowadays; he might be tempted to tell the truth. (which, actually, much of the time would mean that he is more laudatory then condemnatory; he would sympathise with the special difficulties horn players face, he would understand why singers can’t sing properly when the tempo is too slow, etc.)
My Solemn Vow: Never will you hear about “silky legato” or “pearly tones” here; I will attempt to write in English, not Newsparperese.
8 Comments on the disc:
1. The modestly “Regietheatre” orientation of the production neither adds nor detracts from the totality of the experience. There are no egregious violations of decency standards, but there are no original thoughts about the piece, either. Apparently Kirchner saw the effectiveness of lighting effects in Wieland Wagner’s productions and the (disputable) effectiveness of totemic symbolic props in Wolfgang Wagner’s productions, and designed a production in which the rich Bavarian beer of the Wagner brothers has been magically transformed into a can of O’Douls. Close your eyes, keep em’ open, dealer’s choice.
2. Levine’s conducting turns one of the richest, most complex and dramatic orchestrations in history into a work of absorbing tragedy, and beyond tragedy, of unnerving sadness. The sounds coming from the pit are acutely poignant. Levine’s knowledge of the score is stupendous; stuff like accent marks in a second clarinet are treated with the respect they deserve. There is absolutely no playing to the galleries, as some might accuse Solti of doing, so to speak, on his uncommonly dramatic recording, or of disengagement and superficiality, as some might accuse Boulez of purveying. And the orchestra plays at an inestimably higher level then on the great recordings of Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch, Krauss or Bohm.
3. Technically the DVD is great, both visually and aurally. And it’s a steal, retailing for 40 bucks, and easy to find even cheaper. Opera DVDs are incredible values; for less than the price of a single ticket, you can have the piece forever, in a reasonably reliable format.
4. Deborah Polaski underplays (but doesn’t undersing) Brunnhilde. A real woman, a grown up with her eyes open, caught in the inexorability of a tragedy she cannot control, this portrayal projects an inward awareness that is hugely moving.
5. Wolfgang Schmidt’s Siegfried is merely adequate. He certainly doesn’t mar the work like John Treleaven or Reiner Goldberg do, for instance. But he has neither the power of a Windgassen nor the eloquence of a Siegfried Jerusalem, and he doesn’t have the tonal beauty of a Rene Kollo, either. He is overhadowed by Brunnhilde, which actually makes considerable plot sense.
6. The Bayreuth Chorus? Do you have to even ask?
7. The star of the show is Eric Halferson. Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau famously called Gotterdammerung a “family tragedy”; whose family tragedy? Sieg. and Brunn’s, and by extension, Wotan’s, of course. Gunther and Gutrune’s? Yes, of course. But how about Alberich and Hagen? It is about time that “Schwarz-Alberich”, the anti-Wotan, and Hagen, the anti-Siegfried get their just due not as the villains of the piece, but as complementary heroes to Siegfried et al. Hagen’s watch is known to be dark, depressing, and frightening music, as well as beautiful music. But what kind of beautiful is it? Maybe its beauty has a noble, despairing, piquaint sadness. Halfvarson and Levine seem to think so. This passage was uncanny.
8. The greatest single feature of this performance is that while nothing was minimized or attenuated, The work’s tragic grandiosity was complemented by a desperately sad inwardness.
A brief comment on an unrelated topic: Many people have asked me why, as a pianist, none of these essays (so far) has been about piano music, and why there are so many essays on opera. Firstly, I anticipate that there will be many essays on the piano repertory, but for the most part I write about things that are new discoveries of mine, or about things which are topical for my classes. So for instance, despite learning and performing the large opus Davidsbundlertanze for my Romanticism course, I didn’t write about this magnificent score on these pages. The reason being that I have little to add to Charles Rosen’s magisterial comments in his The Romantic Generation, except technically. Rosen adequately discusses the structure, rhetoric, and rhythmical profiles of the work. Of course, I could recapitulate his ideas for these pages, or look in depth at the individual pieces, or compare the work to others. All of which would have been useful, but I didn’t feel like it. As for opera? Opera is like golf; those who like it at all are obsessed by it. Oh my, there will be more essays on opera.