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.

1. 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.

2. Contra: I have no effective counter-argument.

3. Contra: The harmonies are exasperatingly simple. For three hours of music.

4. 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.

5. Contra: It ain’t an opera. It’s a ritual.

6. 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!

7. Contra: I thought tu quoque arguments were out of bounds!

8. Pro: It has social relevance.

9. Contra: Yeah, so? Does Cosi fan tutte have to justify itself with a better score than Le Nozze di Figaro?

10. 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.

11. Pro: I have to go to the bathroom.

12. 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).

13. 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.

14. 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!

15. Contra: That’s a weird argument. We’re not even talking about that stuff. And there is no “a Shakespeare”; there’s only one.

16. Pro: Let’s not get into that.

17. MODERATOR: Back to the topic, Gentlemen. This isn’t a political debate!

18. 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.

19. Pro: Who is opera for! What is it supposed to be! Do you want a return to Bel Canto! Give me a break.

20. Contra: Gladly. Which limb?

21. MODERATOR: Enough, Enough! Patricians and Populace, Peace I cry!

22. 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.

23. 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!

Greatest Tone Poem? Don't Forget to Consider Smetana's "From Bohemia's Woods and Valleys"

Smetana’s Ma Vlast (Read Wikipedia | Play recording) constitutes the greatest orchestral score between Berlioz and Brahms. I don’t raise an eyebrow if you would like to correct that to “between Beethoven and Mahler”. And the jewel in the crown is “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys”. (Czech: Z českých luhů a hájů)

Ma Vlast as a whole has more coherence than most symphonies; not only that, “The Moldau”, “Sarka”, and “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys” constitute miniature symphonies of their own; “The Moldau” is a four movement symphony, where the scherzo is the peasant wedding and the slow movement the wood nymphs…although I prefer to think of that exquisite A-flat major passage as amorous lovers floating by, probably because A-flat was Beethoven’s “amorous” key, and because Beethoven generally represents the standard against which other composers are measured…his conceptions have assumed a sort of central position. Consider for instance Mozart’s great c minor piano fantasy.  How often have you heard it described as “Beethovenian”, for instance? Anyway, leaving Beethoven aside, “Sarka” is a miniature five movement program symphony (ever notice how often program symphonies have five movements? “Pastoral”, “Fantastique”, etc.).

“From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys” is a symphony as well, but not as obvious a construction as “Moldau” and “Sarka”, although it is in fact more deeply motivically integrated. The awsome wall of sound representing mighty nature that engulfs the listener at the very beginning generates most of the material for the rest of the composition. Unlike “Moldau”, the movements in “Woods and Valleys” are not easily separable; Nature is constantly re-inventing itself, from terrible majesty to warm beauty to proliferative, burgeoning life to a great epiphany when nature collides with humankind. The shepherd girl’s pastoral piping echoes nature’s sounds; she is a sort of emanation of nature herself. As such, she doesn’t provide dramatic conflict. The institution of social, communal life of the people is necessary to provide dynamic contrast, the people being represently by a strangely fierce polka in nature’s key of g minor. And g minor is Smetana’s “intense” key, consider for instance his great requiem trio for his daughter Bedriska.  

The structure of the piece is essentially 1. Mighty nature 2. Nature in its benignant aspect, the Shepherdess. 3. Nature as a continual process of renewal; proliferative nature, represented as a fugue, which is both fitting and ironic. Fitting, because no musical strategy is as much about growth, variation, replication, and proliferativeness as the fugue, ironic becasue fugue is the most intellectual and learned musical device. Nature is many things, but it is not intellectual! Apropos this irony, I’d like to quote Arnold Schoenberg:  “The most beautiful birdsong is never music, but the simplest modulation, accomplished correctly, is already music.” 4. The intrusion of human institutions, represented by a polka, the musical symbol of the Czech people. 5. Humans and nature transcend their inherent limitations and spiritually unite in a oneness. Does my description sound “artsy-fartsy”? I assure you, the music is not.

The piece is sublime in both the scarifying real meaning of the word, and also in the casual meaning which loosely means transcendant. By the way, Ma Vlast isn’t so much six loosely connected masterpieces as it is one masterpiece in six necessary and dependant parts. Play the whole thing, in order, please.  

Listening

Smetana: Má Vlast

Supraphon

Rafael Kubelik’s triumphant return to the 1990 Prague Spring festival. This performance is briefly featured at the end of the Oscar-winning Czech film Kolya as the film’s protagonist resumes his rightful place in the cello section of the Czech phil.

Smetana and Deafness

Smetana went deaf in the early 1870s, his late 40s, around the time of the composition of his opera, “The Two Widows”. His deafness was the result of syphilitic infection. He composed his greatest work, the orchestral cycle Ma Vlast (Read Wikipedia | Play recording) while being stone deaf. I am frequently asked how a composer can compose when he is deaf.

It isn’t alchemy, it’s training.

Farting around at the piano until you find something appealing, and then writing it down is for amateurs. And by the way, the sort of person who proceeds in this method is likely to write it down inaccurately anyway, given that notation requires training as well. Idiot savants don’t exist in serious music. Leave that for “60 Minutes” segments. Authentic composers ‘hear music in their head”…not just “geniusses”; the good, the bad, and the ugly hear music in their head as well. This isn’t just opinion. It is possible to actually know some things in this world, and this is one of the things I know. I myself need recourse to a piano frequently, and there is no shame in that, although it is sometimes inconvenient.  String players often have better musical ears than pianists, because they have to make their own notes, whereas pianists have the notes ready made. 

I’m not saying that a sensitive and talented person might not come up with an attractive melody or even a song via trial and error at the piano, but on the other hand if a sensitive or talented person cares about his art, he tends to acquire professional skill. You occasionally hear that Pavarotti “couldn’t read notes”. I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. It is possible, however, that certain popular performers may cultivate an idiot savant persona as a kind of “schtick”. And I know very well that hearing music in one’s head is a talent that manifests itself in different degrees. There’s Mozart, for instance, and then there is everyone else. And of course composers often need a piano for verification or to work out troublesome passages. And a primarily textural composition, such as Ligeti’s Atmospheres, presents unique problems to the inner ear. A composer who can’t pick up the score of a Haydn quartet and hear it is unlikely to be the sort of composer who will compose rewarding music. Maybe this is a hard truth, but there it is.

But if one is born deaf, forget about being a composer, unless you cultivate a style that completely eschews pitch or renders it irrelevant. And there are such styles.  

Who was the philosopher who said, “The tragedy of the world is that the fool knows he is right, while the wise man has doubts”? One of my few memories of that most worthless of times in my life, high school, was an incident in biology class. We had a sour and vain teacher who didn’t care for his subject, or attempt to communicate it. He “phoned it in”, as they say. So I drifted into the habit of reading miniature scores during class, effectively concealing those lovely Eulenberg or Universal editions under cover of the textbook. Teacher caught me at it, and tried to humiliate me by telling the class that I couldn’t really hear it in my head, that I was putting people on. Wrong he was. But then, the fool knows he is right! And to this day I am largely ignorant of biology. So don’t apply to Holdekunst for advice about dissecting frogs. You can save the frog’s legs for me, however, in a parsley flavored butter sauce,  witha glass of cold sweet white wine.

Smetana’s Ma Vlast is not an appreciably different work than it would have been if he had retained his hearing. Except for biographical factors. And sadly, Smetana suffered terrible pain and vertigo from his hearing loss, and the composition of the piece did indeed proceed in fits and starts, because he had to rest frequently from the physical pain composing cost him.  

Two More Worthy Works of Smetana and Dvorak

I do not anticipate having time in class to discuss Smetana’s Trio in g minor or Dvorak’s late folk/fairy tale opera “The Devil and Kate” but I’d like to recommend these fine pieces to my class, and of course my general readership as well.

The Smetana trio is one of a distinguished number of works that is an instrumental requiem; the Berg violin concerto being perhaps the best known exemplar of this category of works. In the case of the Smetana trio, the requiem is for his daughter Bedriska. The work also appears to be intended as therapy for Smetana himself. G minor is a special key for Smetana; consider his early sonata for piano and the later “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys”.  Effective but not particularly uncommon is the yoking of scherzo and slow movement in the middle movement. Striking is the similarity of some of the music in the second subject area of the first movement to the beginning of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und Leben“… but please let me point out the relevant words in the finale of that great cycle: “Now for the first time you have given me pain… [by dying]”…and in the Schumann the theme comes back as an epilogue. Am I saying this is not merely co-incidental?

I ain’t sayin’, I’m jus’ sayin’.

Piano Trios, Naxos. Buy CD at: ArkivMusic

Smetana knew and loved Schumann’s music, by the way. There is a great deal of Schumannesque rhetoric in the piece. Uncanny in Smetana generally is that when he writes in reasonably conventional instrumental forms, it sounds fresh and new, as if he just invented the forms. Also, the mastery of the idiom is striking. All three parts are given music of considerable weight, complexity, lyricism and drama. And it is delightful to see a piano part that doesn’t look like accompaniment textures, but like a fully realized soloistic role, and the strings aren’t compromised by this, they are enhanced. The turn to the major at the end is not convincing, and not intended to be. It is not an affirmation that life goes one, but a try-out to see if life can go on. The works ends in an emotionally speculative vein, if I can put it thus. The famous Kuebler-Ross stages of death are very apparent in this often desperately sad, sometimes violent work.

Special note to a certain somebody: What the heck is wrong with Chamisso’s poetry for Schumann’s Frauenliebe? I reread all eight poems and found them moving. In both English and German, just for you. I ain’t afraid to be a weepy sentimentalist. But then, I like the prose styles of Franz Liszt and George Sand! 

Dvorak’s “Devil and Kate” is just like Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale operas, especially “May Night”, but with the exception that the characters come to life in Dvorak; they’re human. Especially human are the devils Marbuel, the gatekeeper and Lucifer. Rimsky struggled bringing his characters to life. A significant flaw in his operas, but I think the only flaw. Rimsky is one of my heroes. In fact, I only have three portraits of composers in my workroom, Liszt, Wagner, and Rimsky. I did have Franz Lehar, but the cat ate it.  Kate herself is a delight-a pretty plump chatterbox who gives the devils what for. The agreeable strains of various dance styles permeate this delightful score, the orchestration is sumptuous, the lyricism is fresh and eloquent, and it’s under 2 hours long. The Supraphon recording from 1993 is a winner. You should hear this piece, it’ll put a smile on your face.

Dvorak: Kate and the Devil (Cert a Kácal) - ArkivMusic

Smetana: Date Revisions and Slight change for Wk. 1

The Dates I would like to use for Smetana Wk. 1 should be as follows: Macbeth and the Witches, 1859, Brandenburgers in Bohemia, 1864, Bartered Bride, 1866, Rev. 1869, Dalibor, 1867, Libuse, 1872. I lazily asked Bonnie to put in dates for Smetana, and I think she found first performance and or revision dates. I will change it in the on-line syllabus, but the handouts tomorrow will need to be adjusted. Printing materials for use in class may prove problematical for a while, there have been significant protocol changes in the Graham School hand-out printing operations, to which I’ll need to adjust, so online materials could very well be more up to date than actual handouts. Macbeth and the Wiches as well as Brandenburgers in Bohemia will be included tomorrow. That stuff is too good to lose!

Michael Tilson Thomas - "Keeping Score" Web Site

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Screenshot: Eroica in cultural/historical context

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Screenshot: As MTT conducts, see details of the score in real time. Each color represents a key change.

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Screenshot: the building blocks of Eroica’s first theme

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Screenshot: MTT connects four parts of Tchaikovsky’s biography to the 4 movements of his 4th symphony

Just a quick post today to recommend the San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score website.

Keeping Score is a program by Michael Tilson Thomas that combines live performances, DVDs, PBS programs and a multimedia website to focus in depth on a few pieces and why they are important. This is an ideal resource for John’s “What to Listen for in Classical Music” and “Intro to Music Literacy” students, but this former music grad student enjoyed playing with it too.

The mini-sites offer historical context, lots of pictures, videos of MTT discussing the music, and the opportunity to watch him conduct passages while watching a musical score with helpful annotations. For example, you can watch the key modulations in the exposition of the Eroica on a  color-coded circle of fifths.

So far, the  program has covered:

• Beethoven’s Eroica symphony

• Copland and the American Sound

• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

• Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony

• “Primal Moves” - an introduction to what might be called the underlying “connective tissue” of music.

Because of the technology used on the website, you need the latest edition of Flash. (The page should prompt you to install it easily.) You also must allow popups to enter the various subject area sites.

Preview the Keeping Score shows »

Episode 1: Beethoven’s Eroica »

Episode 2: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring »

Episode 3: Copland and the American Sound » 

Buy this item at Powells Books

A Note on Smetana's Macbeth

The orchestral version of “Macbeth and the Witches’ is, according to Brian Large, made by somebody named Otakar Jeremias. David’s research is correct, unsurprisingly! The orchestration is brilliant in the extreme. Nevertheless, the novelty of the piece is not primarily due to the orchestration. The quirky form of the piece and the exceedingly daring harmonic and textural idiom is attested to in Large’s book, and his musical illustrations are illuminating in this regard. Oddly, Liszt’s First Mephisto Waltz comes from 1859 as well, although Smetana almost certainly didn’t know it! The original title is simply “Macbeth”.

Is it patronizing of me to be surprised as the ferocity of this piece when Liszt had already done things even more experimental and daring well prior to Smetana’s effort? I don’t believe so, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the era of Liszt’s (and Berlioz’s and Chopin’s) heyday was marked by extraordinary radicalism, a radicalism that was essentially foreign to the age of Brahms, on the whole. Also, the status of Czech music itself in Smetana’s time was only just being established, and I know of no Czech predessessors doing anything like it. And Smetana was a conscious Nationalist, whose music frequently reflects a certain national pride occasionally bordering on jingoism. Smetana himself supposedly argued with a friend who tried to assert the international character of music, disagreeing vehemently.

Smetana set this poem, as “The Song of Freedom” in 1848:

“War! War! does the flag fly?

Rise up ye Czechs, for God is with us!

Stand firmly for your rights.

Guard your country and the glory of the Czechs!

The clamour that fills the air is

The sound of Zizka and of Tabor!

Whosoever is Czech must wield a sword!

Let there be blood and slaughter.

Let there be anger and terror.

Let there be cruel Hussite deeds!

Awake, take up your weapons you Czech lions!

God commands you to the Holy War!”

Given the conflicts of today’s world, this makes uncomfortable reading… 

A Splendid CD

Smetana: Macbeth and the Witches; Dvorak: Prelude to Spectre’s Bride, The Water Goblin, and The Hussites, Prague Symp.With Smetacek, Czech Phil with Chalarala, on Urania.

I can’t promise that these magnificently virile performances are still available, of course Arkiv has so much, maybe they have it.  

If you don’t know the Smetana poem (1859), run don’t walk to hear it. It has a terrifying grandeur and a thrilling  visceral impact. It is also strangely “modern” sounding; It is easily on the level of Ma Vlast; in fact, a little more daring, so to speak.  The Dvorak “Water Goblin” is attractive and scintillatingly colorful, it is, however exceedingly repetitive. If you don’t hate the water goblin for being an infanticide, you may hate him for smearing his theme all over the score with such greediness for attention. “The Hussites” concert overture (1883) ought to please those who are aficionados of Smetana’s “Tabor” and “Blanik”. It is indeed similar: Dvorak wrote it for the rebuilding of the Czech National Theatre in Prague, after a disastrous fire. Compare what Smetana was doing half a generation before Dvorak’s overture. As I’ve said again and again, musical progress doesn’t follow a straight line from the less “modern” to the more “modern”…

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!!!