BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Choral Fantasy from Harmonia Mundi

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 22:06:00 +0000

Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.

Il trovatore

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:02:49 +0000

This classic telecast stars Éva Marton, Dolora Zajick, Luciano Pavarotti and Sherrill Milnes, conducted by James Levine. From October 15, 1988.

Seville unrest

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 12:00:34 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioJjzfkFA9k

Born on this day in 1860 composer Gustav Mahler.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf5fM1i3MGQ

Born on this day in 1911 composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kOqseElHqM

On this day in 1956 Douglas Moore‘s The Ballad of Baby Doe premiered in Central City, Colorado.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWZHO3DP-18

A Musical Reunion at Garsington Opera

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 08:02:56 +0000

The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.

La bohème

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 21:30:32 +0000

Streaming and discussion begin at 7:30 PM.

Yoncheva’s Mimì was an ethereal incarnation: paradoxical, difficult, and nuanced. More so than Angel Blue, who offered transparent warmth and gorgeous singing, Yoncheva’s Mimì perambulated through the opera’s imaginative field with sickly beauty—an angel of death, evincing not so much a febrile, passionate convulsion, as a methodical approach to some mysterious threshold. — Patrick Clement James

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Never can say goodbye

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:23:19 +0000

The disgraced former Met music director is conducting a concert at the Maggio Musicale in January.

“L’11, 13 e 16 gennaio verrà eseguita La damnation de Faust di Hector Berlioz in forma di concerto, con la straordinaria presenza sul podio di James Levine, direttore d’orchestra statunitense e tra i più celebri al mondo, per 41 anni alla guida dell’Orchestra della Metropolitan Opera di New York.”

Macbeth

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 15:30:59 +0000

Plácido Domingo, Anna Netrebko, Kwangchul Youn and Fabio Sartori are conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Youth comes to the fore

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 13:14:13 +0000

David Fox: This exchange between a Broadway producer (Adolphe Menjou) and a besotted playwright (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) comes from the 1933 movie Morning Glory, and concerns a young actress who has christened herself with the stage name of “Eva Lovelace.” She is played by Katharine Hepburn, in what was only her third film, and would win her the first of four Academy Awards. It might as easily be about Hepburn herself, who is already so utterly distinctive and brashly confident a presence as to divide public opinion. (She’s also at her most visually arresting—those cheekbones, when we first glimpse her pale face under a brimmed cloche hat!) Watching this movie, she even divided mine—sometimes I find her absolutely captivating, making something real of a flighty and very strangely written character. At other times, I think she misfires, and I would not say that fey or innocent sincerity are qualities naturally in her wheelhouse. But whatever KH is or isn’t—she’s riveting… and I sort of fell in love with Morning Glory, a preposterous piece of theatrical kitsch. (I was a goner the instant a conversation comes up about Katharine Cornell starring in a new Ferenc Molnar play at the Lyceum.)

Cameron Kelsall: We are jumping all over the place in our survey of Hepburn’s screen performances, but in a way, I’m glad to come back to this very early endeavor after getting a sense of what came later. In a way, the positive and negative traits I’ve come to associate with her style are already on display, even at the age of 26. As Eva Lovelace—who, we sense, might be more gifted at selling herself than she is possessed of any actual talent—Hepburn is cocksure and funny one moment, vulnerable and moving the next. She is also self-indulgent—and, to use a word often applied to Hepburn, in ways that may or may not be complimentary, very iconoclastic. The film itself is an amusing trifle, but her performance, even with some ham-fisted moments, lifts it to another level.

DF: Cameron, your comment about whether or not we’re to understand Eva Lovelace as brilliantly gifted or mostly driven really resonates with questions I kept asking as I watched Morning Glory. The movie is based on what was at that point an unproduced play by a quite celebrated writer, Zoë Akins, and in some ways it follows a pretty conventional theme: the wondrous, aspiring actress, embarking on a career. But Morning Glory is weirdly poised between arch comedy and bathos, and often I couldn’t figure out what we’re meant to make of Lovelace. Consider her first few minutes on the screen. Perpetually chattering to anyone who will listen, she’s logorrheic, pretentious, self-invented: “Mistah Easton is cahsting his new play… Eva Lovelace is my stage name… I’ve acted evah since I was a child. I’m from Franklin, Vehmont, to go into the loathsome details. (Later, eyeing another actress wearing a stole.) I don’t like anything cheap, pahticulahly fuhs.” Yet as the film progresses, I think we’re supposed to see her as truly extraordinary… but also scarily driven and nearly delusional. What gives?

CK: It’s a paradox—are we meant to see her as extraordinary, or do we see that because Hepburn herself is extraordinary? I’m still not sure. But I think the story takes on a much more intriguing dimension if Eva is actually steely and determined rather than preternaturally gifted.

DF: I agree that that is the more interesting (and less obvious) choice. But then I wonder what we are meant to make of Eva’s semi-drunken performance at a party where she sobers up enough to deliver a large portion of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech, followed by the famous passage of Juliet on the balcony? For the record, I think KH is a surprisingly effective Hamlet, but a pretty unlikely Juliet (far less effective than Katharine Cornell in her tiny fragment of the speech in Stage Door Canteen, a precious and virtually singular souvenir of this great actress). Again, it’s perplexing.

CK: I agree, but that entire sequence won me over in its unrepentant theatricality. The film packs a lot of story into a short reel—it only runs 73 minutes—and, spoiler alert, Eva’s star doesn’t truly ascend until the final moments, when she becomes an overnight success as an understudy.

DF: But we also learn the limits of that success. Another spoiler alert: the movie isn’t called Morning Glory because it’s about flowers.

CK: Before then, Howard J. Green’s script suggests that Eva experiences homelessness, sexual harassment and a string of bad gigs because she refuses to cheapen her art. Shouldn’t she seem a little self-deluded… to say nothing of self-destructive?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYOGfNdwuC0

DF: Your point about Eva’s dire circumstances underscores that Morning Glory comes out of the darkest days of the depression, a fact that’s acknowledged here—several characters say what a tough season it is on Broadway—but mostly sublimated to Eva’s personal story. While watching it, I kept thinking of Gold Diggers of 1933, which came out the same year and deals with a similar milieu (again, putting on a show), but with far more directness. In that context, there’s something especially off-putting about Eva’s self-created grandness, and the bubble in which she exists. I actually found myself routing for rival actresses in the film, played by Geneva Mitchell and Mary Duncan. Both characters are gauche and vulgar and fun and genuine. Duncan, who deserves to be better-known, is especially delicious in what would prove to be the final role of her six-year film career. (Note: her post-retirement life was a doozy!)

CK: Mitchell and Duncan are delicious indeed—Mitchell herself had a somewhat checkered life and career too, and was the lover of director Lowell Sherman, who died shortly after Morning Glory was released. In terms of memorable supporting performances, we should call out two others, on the opposite end of the camp spectrum. C. Aubrey Smith is wonderfully warm and dignified as an older actor who takes a fatherly shine to Hepburn’s Eva, and in just a few short minutes, Helen Ware nearly steals the picture as Nellie Navarre—a wardrobe mistress who, we learn, was once an overnight star herself.

DF: How has “Nellie Navarre”—the name and the persona—not become a Parterre sobriquet??

CK: Going forward, I might take it as my own!

DF: But while we’re on the subject of Hepburn’s supporting cast, let’s again note Adolphe Menjou, giving the performance he could have patented as a Broadway producer; and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who to me looked almost unrecognizably boyish and “aw-shucks appealing as the writer who is unrequitedly devoted to Eva. As for Don Alvaro in the tiny walk-on role of Pepi Velez, I can only say, “be still, mi corazón!”

CK: We could split any number of hairs, but at the end of the day, Morning Glory is a must for theater lovers and nostalgics alike. As I find myself missing live performance more and more each day, it was comforting to watch this unabashedly showbiz tale, where life seems to begin at half-hour and you can practically smell the greasepaint through the screen. If you forgot to start that Disney+ subscription this weekend, might I suggest Hepburn if you don’t have Hamilton?

Catching the Butterfly

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 12:00:58 +0000

Born on this day in 1910 soprano Dorothy Kirsten.

La donna del lago

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 21:23:24 +0000

Starring Joyce DiDonato, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, John Osborn and Oren Gradus; Conducted by Michele Mariotti. Transmitted live on March 14, 2015.

“Tragedy personified”

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 17:08:44 +0000

Born on this day in 1755 actress Sarah Siddons.

Rusalka

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 16:51:13 +0000

A 2018 production from Des Moines Opera featuring Sara Gartland, Jill Grove and Zachary James.

Cupcakes & Conversation with Fumi Kaneko | First Soloist | The Royal Ballet

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 07:26:00 +0000

Ballet News World Exclusive Illustration by Noemi Manalang, for 🧁 & Conversation What motivates you at 8am on a Monday morning ? Right now, it’s my new puppy keeping...

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Les Talens Lyriques announces 2020-21 season with first modern performances of Salieri's Armida

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 23:50:43 +0000

Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques announce their 2020-21 season championing heroines, with the first modern performances of Salieri's breakthrough success Armida, 250 years after the work's premiere. A recording of Armida to be made during the season is complemented by the release of Mozart's Betulia liberate on Aparté this autumn. In June 2021, Les Talens Lyriques join the centennial Mozartfest Würzburg with performances of Idomeneo.

Taking Risks with Barbara Hannigan

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 23:29:19 +0000

A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Don Pasquale

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 21:17:35 +0000

Beverly Sills‘ one and only Met telecast: Don Pasquale in the company of Alfredo Kraus, Håkan Hagegård and Gabriel Bacquier. Transmitted live on January 11, 1979.

Susannah

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 15:43:06 +0000

Soprano Patricia Racette stars in director Michael Cavanagh’s haunting vision of this uniquely American tragedy, with conducting from Karen Kamensek.

Wagner and Gobineau

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 12:57:52 +0000

(Article, ‘Gobineau, (Joseph) Arthur, Comte de,’ first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013))

Gobineau, (Joseph) Arthur, Comte de (b. Ville d’Avray, 14 July 1816; d. Turin, 13 Oct. 1882), novelist, diplomat, essayist, ethnologist. Protégé of Alexis de Tocqueville, who as Foreign Minister appointed Gobineau his Cabinet Head. Gobineau’s diplomatic career took in Germany, Persia, Brazil, and Sweden. In Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (The Inequality of Human Races, 1853-5), Gobineau made racial distinction – white (intelligent, courageous), black (sensual, brutal), and yellow (materialistic, feeble) – history’s guiding principle. The white race, whether Germanic, ancient Greek, or Indo-European (“Aryan”), enabled civilization. Apparent exceptions, such as China, were ascribed to white influence. Civilization partly depended upon miscegenation, interracial breeding, yet in that dilution lay its downfall. Gobineau was not anti-Semitic; he admired the effort of “white” Jews through Mosaic Law to maintain their “purity.” Tocqueville protested that Gobineau’s argument was probably wrong and certainly pernicious.

Palazzo Vendramin, Venice, 1870, photograph by Carlo Noya

The Wagners briefly met Gobineau in Rome in 1876. There is neither evidence nor likelihood that Wagner read Gobineau or learned of his ideas until after their 1880 meeting in Venice; Wagner makes no mention of Gobineau’s theories before 1880, nor does Cosima in her diaries. Thus, despite the claims of writers such as Robert Gutman (Richard Wagner: The Man, The Mind, and his Music, ch. 13), the possibility of influence upon Parsifal, whose poem was essentially completed in 1877, its “orchestral sketch” in 1879, tends towards zero. Gobineau visited Wahnfriedin 1881 (when Wagner presented his collected writings to “the Count”) and in 1882.

“Scientific” fatalism might appeal to Wagner as Schopenhauer’s disciple, though not as revolutionary. Gobineau presented not a political program, but an alleged scientific truth, echoing the Enlightenment project of discerning fundamental historical laws, akin to those of Newton – or, as later racists would prefer, Darwin. Gobineau believed in human degeneration; Wagner varied. Whereas Gobineau’s driving force was miscegenation, Wagner, in a late echo of Feuerbach, pointed to dietary change. Though Wagner seems to have come to attribute some importance to miscegenation, he introduced a gendered element and retained the prospect of regeneration or redemption through art and religion. Thus an 1881 Brown Book entry, possibly intended in part to correct Gobineau’s non-racial essay, La Renaissance: “In the mingling of races, the blood of the nobler males is ruined by the baser feminine element: the masculine element suffers, character founders, whilst the women gain as much as to take the men’s place. (Renaissance). The feminine thus remains owing deliverance: here art – as there in religion; the immaculate Virgin gives birth to the Savior.” (BB/E, 23 Oct 1881). Gobineau denied universality and founded morality upon ontology: Aryan deeds were good because they were performed by Aryans. Wagner, however, desired universal redemption, Jews included; morality should transform ontology.

Yet, as with Schopenhauer, Wagner found “confirmation” of previously held views, and “corrected” instances in which both writers erred. Cosima describes Wagner, during Gobineau’s 1881 visit, as “downright explosive in favor of Christian theories in contrast to racial ones” (Cosima Wagner's Diaries, 3 June 1881). Correspondence demonstrates mutual respect but both men standing their intellectual ground. Despite some writers’ claims, Gobineau’s influence on Wagner was minimal, differences more revealing than correspondences. However, the pan-Germanist Ludwig Schemann and other members of the Bayreuth Circle founded a Gobineau Association in 1894, transforming Gobineau’s pessimism into a racial and political opposition between Aryan and Jew. Cosima dissociated herself and the Festival.

Eugène, Eric (ed.), Richard et Cosima Wagner/Arthur Gobineau: Correspondance 1880-1882 (Saint-Genouph: Nizet, 2000).

Schemann, Ludwig, Gobineau. Eine Biographie, 2 vols. (Strasbourg: Triibner, 1913-16).

Wagner and the Dresden Uprising (May 1849)

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 12:28:15 +0000

(Article, 'Dresden Uprising (May 1849)', first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013))

Prussian and Saxon troops attack the revolutionary barricades in Dresden's Neumarkt
(Sächsische Landesbibliothek Abt. Deutsche Fotothek)

Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein:
Frederick Augustus II of Saxony (r.1836-54)

One of the final wave of revolts during the 1848-9 revolutions, parallel to uprisings in Baden and the Bavarian Palatinate, all quelled by Prussian armed intervention. Across Europe, the “springtime of peoples” had witnessed liberal, constitutional victories. Rhetorical liberty, however, proved just that: initial coalitions – revolutionary socialists such as Wagner and laissez-faire Rhenish industrialists; pan-Slavists such as Bakunin and völkisch German nationalists; monarchists and republicans, etc. – proved irreconcilable. Moreover, the old order proved stronger than either it or its opponents had believed – and for many bourgeois seemed less threatening. Representatives to the Frankfurt Vorparlament moved towards national unity, promulgating a German constitution (March 28) and offering the imperial crown to Prussia’s Frederick William IV. His refusal (April 3) to “pick up a crown from the gutter” threw them into disarray. Emboldened, Frederick Augustus II of Saxony rejected the constitution and dissolved the Saxon parliament (April 30), elected in January with a democratic majority. Unlike Prussia, Saxony had long been a constitutional monarchy, and a reform ministry had governed from March 1848 to February 1849. But the king’s appointment of a reactionary movement, headed by Friedrich von Beust, and rejection of the constitution, ultimately provoked democratic opponents into a hurried response. On May 3, the town council organized the Communal Guard into a defense committee. Loyalist troops opened fire. Early on May 4, king and government escaped to Königstein; townsmen formed a provisional government.

Provisional government

Even at the time, the extent of Wagner’s involvement was obscured. Eduard Devrient reports Minna visiting him in desperation for advice concerning her husband, implicated yet not directly involved (Diary entry for 17 May 1849). Devrient is clear that she has been deceived. Wagner would downplay his role further in Mein Leben, yet nevertheless admits considerable involvement. He had the printer of Röckel’s Volksblätter print appeals to the Saxon army: “Are you with us against foreign troops?” (My Life, English translation, 394). Wagner probably ordered hand-grenades; he certainly served on the barricades and acted as look-out, observing street-fighting from the Kreuzkirche tower, whilst engaging in animated politico-philosophical discussion. Prussians entered the Neustadt on April 6. “Immediately the troops, supported by several cannon, opened an attack on … the people’s forces on the new marketplace” (ML, 397). On April 7, miners from the Erzgebirge singing the Marseillaise arrived to reinforce the opposition. However, Prussian and loyalist troops outnumbered the rebels and were gaining ground, even though barricades meant that every street was hard fought. As the provisional government began an unsurprisingly abortive attempt to retreat to the Erzgebirge, to encourage revolt across Germany, Dresden’s streets, including the opera house were ablaze. In his Introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, Engels would bracket Dresden’s barricade heroism with that of Paris and Vienna, yet also pointed to the inevitable, once politics gave way to the “purely military standpoint.”

May 1849 barricades (Sächsische Zeitung Archive)

Repression was brutal. Many leaders, participants, and sympathizers were killed or punished: Bakunin, Röckel, and even Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient were arraigned. By chance, and with Liszt’s help, Wagner escaped into Swiss exile, intending in the Ring, as he explained, to “make clear to the men of the Revolution the meaning of that Revolution, in its noblest sense” (Wagner, letter to Uhlig, 12 Nov. 1851).

Eduard Devrient, Aus seinen Tagebüchern, ed. Rolf Kabel (Weimar: Böhlau, 1964).

Frederick Engels, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, 3 vols. (Progress: Moscow, 1970), 1: 300-89.

Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851 (Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 1994).

Red, white and blue

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 12:00:23 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUK8fHFuLOg

Born on this day in 1826 composer Stephen Foster.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-drAf-BQaRc

Born on this day in 1925 mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCjr_X2Ldw

Happy 93rd birthday Gina Lollobrigida!

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2IiGicOai8

Happy 73rd(?) birthday to the truly indescribable Stefan Zucker.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsogcF775vQ

Don Giovanni

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 20:50:38 +0000

As an alternative to the Met’s abysmal production, let’s watch Peter Mattei and Malin Byström star in a socially distanced studio performance from 2020.

Two New Ballet Friday Premieres from the Royal Opera House

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 20:46:06 +0000

OurHouseToYourHouse Two New Ballet Friday Premieres from the ROH and highlights ofLive from Covent Garden on BBC Four The Royal Opera House is proud to continue its #OurHouseToYourHouse programme,...

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Cantilena

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 17:29:40 +0000

Cantilena is a CD of art songs by various composers arranged for soprano, harp and cello. It’s an interesting twist on music that one is likely to be fairly (sometimes very) familiar with in the usual voice and piano format. It’s a generous disk with nineteen songs in all. The composers featured are Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Massenet, Tosti, Tedeschi, Richard Strauss, Gregory and Villa-Lobos. The performers are soprano Gillian Zammit, harpist Britt Arend and cellist Frank Camilleri. Arend and Camilleri are principals with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.

The French and Italian material is pleasant enough but it was the Strauss that intrigued me. I have no idea how many times I have listened to Morgen; either for violin and piano or orchestra, but I can say it sounds entirely fresh when performed on harp and cello. Allerseelen feels different too. It’s hard to define what exactly is different. Perhaps they feel a bit more lyrical, a bit less dramatic than with the more percussive piano? I’m really not sure but I know I want to listen to all the Strauss pieces again; especially as, in fact, a couple of the songs are not that often performed or recorded. The performances are very good all around. The instrumentalists are excellent and Zammit is a sensitive singer with a rather bright tone that suits some of the songs better than others. Fortunately the music I found most interesting seems to be the best fit.

Another interesting piece on the disk is the three song cycle Tluq (Climb) by Alex Vella Gregory. This is the first art song in Maltese I’ve ever heard. It sets poetry by John Aquilena on the themes of loss of love, regret, loneliness, and eventual reconciliation. The music is tonal and quite beautiful asnd Maltese has a colour palette all of its own . It’s a very interesting piece and I’ll be going back to this one too.

The disk was recorded in October 2019 at Blagoje Bersa Concert Hall in Zagreb, Croatia. It’s clear and well balanced. The disk package includes texts, notes and bios.

All in all, an interesting, indeed quite intriguing disk.

Die Liebe der Danaë

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 16:00:47 +0000

The “unjustly neglected late opera by Richard Strauss” (but aren’t they all?) as performed by the American Symphony Orchestra.

With one look

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:00:26 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yjlaCcVSRI

Born on this day in 1854 composer Leos Janacek.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeQK27m79yk

Born on this day in 1878 composer and performer George M. Cohan.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIr-FoBW5Xw

Happy 81st birthday mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3KaheqrR0

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ebQ9y4u7c

BBC Proms Announce 2020 Programme

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 09:02:27 +0000

From Bernstein to Benedetti, Haitink to Hvorostovsky, Mackerras to Kanneh-Masons, musical greats, from the past and the present, will be brought together in one extraordinary Proms season, 17 July - 12 September 2020.

The Guardian Discovers that Syntax Can be Difficult

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 04:07:37 +0000

We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers... This declaration is from the online Guardian. Is the paper giving up on journalism? They seem to be saying so. They’re keeping the Guardian journalism free – ie, free of journalism. This confession confirms a suspicion that I’ve wondered about ever since they dropped Manchester from their title. English is a tricky language. Foot in mouth disease is hard to avoid when using it. I’ve got the scars to prove from my encounters with English word order and ambiguity. Perhaps the paper should have written “We decided to keep access to the Guardian free for all readers…”

Carmen

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 22:13:54 +0000

Streaming and discussion begin at 7:30 PM.

Her dark, throbbing mezzo-soprano, voluptuous hourglass figure, brunette glamour and magnetic stage presence tick off just about every box in the Carmen checklist. Her middle voice is a fascinating smoky color and her low notes have a tangy bite. Since her first performances of this role at the Met in 2011 and 2012, she has apparently revised her approach to top notes, which used to spread and turn flat. Now the high register rings out, true and vibrant. . . .

Even given the vacuum of dramatic energy around her, Ms. Rachvelishvili worked a little too hard. Unlike the “rebellious bird” she sings about in her first act “Habanera” aria, this Carmen isn’t one to ignore her admirers; instead, she’s right in their faces, shouting, “Look at me!” Her acting, too, could use a little restraint. Showing a little cleavage or crossing one’s legs can be seductive, but Ms. Rachvelishvili’s nonstop breast groping and leg spreading came across like blatant advertising for a clearance sale. — Observer

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Garsington Opera announces 2021 season

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 17:02:29 +0000

Next summer we return to celebrate our 10th Anniversary at Wormsley, in true Garsington style, using our distinctive indoor / outdoor theatre that offers so many opportunities for us to create wonderful performances in a safe environment for all.

UNMUTE: A Musical Reunion - Garsington Opera at Wormsley

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 16:49:18 +0000

Together with members of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Douglas Boyd conducts a programme of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Strauss with six soloists and readings by Samuel West.

Lucio Silla

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 16:00:19 +0000

“Echoing the twilight and melancholy pages of the score, director Tobias Kratzer draws on gothic and contemporary imagery from film and television.”

YAGP Has Announced the Winners of the 2020 Pas De Deux Virtual Competition

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:37:48 +0000

Last weekend, Youth America Grand Prix took to the internet, hosting its first virtual pas de deux competition. Over the course of three days, YAGP streamed videos from its regional events' highest-ranked competitors for a panel of esteemed judges. And, drum roll please... YAGP has just announced the winners, spanning three categories: Senior Classical, Junior Classical and Contemporary.

You can watch the full virtual awards ceremony, hosted by YAGP director of external affairs Sergey Gordeev, below, or scroll down for the list of winners. And if you're missing the thrill of competition, don't fear: Gordeev announced that registration for the 2021 season will open on July 10, with both in-person and virtual options available.

Congratulations to all!

Senior Classical Pas de Deux

1st Place (tie)

Margarita Fernandes (age 14) and Antonio Casalinho (age 16)

Conservatorio Internacional de Ballet e Dança Annarella Sanchez, Portugal

Michela Caprarulo (age 15) and Riccardo Umberto Bruttomeso (age 17)

Il Balletto, Italy

2nd Place

Alexis Workowski (age 15) and Josue Gomez (age 16)

Fort Lauderdale Youth Ballet, Florida

3rd Place

Catherine Rowland (age 15) and Paul Piner (age 18)

International Ballet Academy, North Carolina

Junior Classical Pas de Deux

1st Place

Ana Luisa Negrao (age 15) and Vitor Vaz (age 15)

ITEGO em Artes Basileu Franca, Brazil

2nd Place

Madison Brown (age 14) and Brady Farrar (age 14)

The Art of Classical Ballet, Lents Dance Company and Stars Dance Studio, Florida

3rd Place

Nina Miro Verger (age 9) and Asier Bautista (age 11)

Escola de Dansa d'Alaro and Jove Ballet de Catalunya, Spain

Contemporary Pas de Deux

1st Place

Emma VanDeWater (age 17) and Styles Dykes (age 19)

Odasz Dance Theatre, New York

2nd Place

Livia Childers (age 14) and Reed Henry (age 15)

Ballet CNJ, New Jersey

3rd Place (tie)

Farrah Hirsch (age 14) and Chase Vining (age 18)

Master Ballet Academy, Arizona

Natalie May Dixon (age 17) and Tyler Schellenberg (age 18)

Edge School, Canada

Do that slow drag

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:00:07 +0000

In my early teens I borrowed Joshua Rifkin’s entrancing LP of Joplin’s piano rags from the library and I was an immediate fan. Soon enough the rocketing posthumous fame of this mostly forgotten African-American composer exploded when his music was used in the wildly popular caper film The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Particularly winning was the infectious “The Entertainer,” arranged for the flick by Marvin Hamlisch.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsFGcPujqKE

Dragged by my parents to a theater to see it, I remember being bored by the labored criminal hijinks but the Joplin-flavored score provided a welcome distraction.

This world premiere of Treemonisha was orchestrated by T J Anderson and thus differs from the Gunther Schuller arrangement that was soon after taken up by the Houston Grand Opera for its tour and recording. The 1972 performance was directed by choreographer Katherine Dunham and of course featured an all-black cast.

Like any good opera-pirate devote, I knew Floyd’s name long before I heard this recording of Treemonisha. She had appeared at Carnegie Hall two years earlier in a rare performance of Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba in the title role with the American Opera Society. That concert which co-starred Teresa Kubiak and Arley Reece was issued on LP on the legendary MRF label which was beloved for disseminating the most obscure operas.

Today’s broadcast of Joplin’s ambitious opera preceded The Sting by a year and set the stage for Treemonisha to soon be mounted on Broadway and then recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. That cast was led by Carmen Balthrop in the title role; as many know, her understudy was the young pre-Met Kathleen Battle. Joplin’s opera, for which he wrote his own libretto, won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgWU6JCZkg

I had the opportunity to attend a concert version of Treemonisha when it was performed at the 1988 Cincinnati May Festival starring a radiant Marvis Martin and with Schuller returning to conduct the Cincinnati Symphony, the orchestra he had joined as first hornist over 40 years earlier.

Its rousing charms were embraced by the packed audience at Music Hall but I’ve never run across it again in live performance. California audiences were to have had the chance to experience it anew this April and May when Treemonisha was scheduled for performances at Stanford and in Berkeley. These had to be canceled, which was especially unfortunate as Joplin’s masterpiece was being reconceived with the collaboration of five African-American women who were providing a revised libretto and new orchestrions in addition to choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the legendary founder of Urban Bush Women. One hopes that this exciting project will soon get the chance to bring Treemonisha to life again!

Joplin: Treemonisha

Atlanta
29 January 1972
Broadcast

Treemonisha – Alpha Floyd
Monisha – Louise Parker
Lucy – Laura English
Ned – Simon Estes
Remus – Seth McCoy
Andy – Harding Epps
Zozatric – Harold Henderson
Parson Altop – Ozie Brown

Afro-American Music Workshop Chorus
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Conductor – Robert Shaw

Treemonisha can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a square with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

In addition, nearly 300 other podcast tracks are always available from Apple Podcasts and iTunes for free, or via any RSS reader.

The archive listing every “Trove Thursday” offering since September 2015 in alphabetical order by composer was updated recently.

Tap roots

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 12:00:14 +0000

On this day in 1929 impresario Florenz Ziegfeld presented a youngster named Ruby Keeler in the title role of the Gershwins’ musical Show Girl.

The Nose

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 21:30:58 +0000

Starring Andrey Popov, Alexander Lewis and Paulo Szot; conducted by Pavel Smelkov. Transmitted live on October 26, 2013.

Going the distance

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 18:21:45 +0000

“Every move onstage has been carefully calculated to keep soloists two metres apart. Members of the 56-piece orchestra wear masks when possible and sit 1.5 metres from each other, with plastic panels in front of the woodwind section. Artists have been asked to arrive much earlier than normal for the 27 performances, their entrances staggered to avoid any crowding and to allow them to have their temperature taken.” [The Guardian]

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_x1uZlRNEY

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKxBNWrl41E

Lucia di Lammermoor

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 16:00:57 +0000

Lisette Oropesa, Javier Camarena and Artur Rucinski star in this performance from the Teatro Real, Madrid.

Defining and Refining Musicality: How to Tune In and Develop Your Artistic Voice

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 15:29:28 +0000

Ask a hundred people what musicality is, and you're likely to get a hundred different answers. "Musicality is where an artist's personality shines brightest," says Smuin Contemporary Ballet member Ben Needham-Wood. For American Ballet Theatre soloist Skylar Brandt, "it's what distinguishes one dancer from another. It helps me express myself more vividly and emotionally."

Teachers encourage it, directors seek it out and dancers who possess it bring choreography to life in compelling ways. But what exactly is musicality, and how can dancers get more of it?

Putting Musicality Into Words

Musicality could be loosely described as a dancer's unique emotional and intellectual relationship to a piece of music, as expressed in their execution of choreography. "I connect musicality to rhythm, phrasing, tonality and mood—all these elements that allow the body to inhabit music from the inside out," says Atlanta Ballet choreographer in residence Claudia Schreier.

Comparing two dancers in the same role can help make it clearer, says David Morse, a Cincinnati Ballet soloist, choreographer and class accompanist. He cites Royal Ballet principals Natalia Osipova and Marianela Nuñez in the Black Swan variation as a good example. "Natalia has this punch behind everything," he says. "When she goes from Point A to Point B, there's power on the front end and then a suspend. With Marianela, there is an airiness in arriving at the next position, more like a sustain across the beat. They could not be more different, in large part due to those small increases and decreases in speed."

Most of those choices are made in rehearsal, but sometimes they reflect a dancer's spontaneity. Miami City Ballet principal soloist Lauren Fadeley remembers feeling caught off guard when MCB's orchestra played unexpectedly slowly during Balanchine's La Valse. "But our rehearsal pianist came up to me afterward and said, 'That was one of the most musical performances of that ballet I've ever seen,'" says Fadeley. "You have to listen to the music and just dance. And enjoy it—that's what will really shine through."

These examples demonstrate a deeply personal element that each dancer can find within themselves. "The dancers we look up to are the ones who bring their true selves to every step through their musicality," says Schreier. "What we really get drawn to is that freedom. And that comes from exploring their relationship to the music and falling in love with it in their own way."

The Building Blocks

Paradoxically, dancers reach that level of musical freedom through deliberate, dedicated practice. "It has to start from barre," says Brandt, who describes herself as "rigid" about doing combinations at the ballet master's prescribed tempos because "it trains your body to handle the demands of a faster dégagé than you're used to, or a slower adagio, when you get onstage." Having so much command over her musicality, she says, "makes me feel like I can get lost in what I'm doing—like I can be an embodiment of the music, versus the music being a separate entity." On the other hand, deliberately playing with the rhythms and patterns at barre can lead to equally important insights, says Brandt.

A basic understanding of music can be an inroad into greater self-expression. Fadeley, for instance, grew up playing piano and flute. Her ability to read music and quickly grasp time signatures has been critical to mastering the Balanchine oeuvre. "You can have a Stravinsky score that is so hard to count—there's a 13 and a 9 and an 11," she says, referring to the complex time signatures found in many Balanchine works. "Even in the 'Waltz of the Snowflakes' in The Nutcracker, there's a part where we would count a 12 or a 13 after counting 8s."

Take advantage of free online resources, like MusicTheory.net, Signals Music Studio's YouTube demos and WikiHow.com's section on reading music, to familiarize yourself with time signatures, concepts like tempo and phrasing, and forms like sonata and minuet. Along with entry points into the score a choreographer has chosen, that understanding can provide anchors for your interpretation of their choreography. "You might have your counts on 1 and 2 and 3," says Needham-Wood, "but how you play with all those little 'ands' is how your musicality comes out."

As empowering as those building blocks are, the most compelling artists infuse their musical knowledge and technical mastery with something innate and, yes, undefinable. "When musicality is really in your body, you're not thinking about it. It just happens because you are letting yourself move," says Schreier.

Be Your Own Maestro

Dancing at home is ideal for exploring your own sense of musicality and artistic voice, because you can turn off the Zoom camera and take some risks, free of any feedback but your own sense of what feels authentic. "This is not about proving anything to anyone. This is about taking an opportunity to discover what you're able to do," says Needham-Wood.

Ready to get started? These exercises can help you discover insights and artistry that you'll bring back to the studio and the stage.

Reorchestrate the barre: Barre is a great place to experiment with your musicality, says Brandt. "Play with your phrasing, play with your accent. Hold your fifth position a millisecond longer than you would have. Really differentiate your tendus that are accent out from tendus that are accent in. We should all be doing that anyway, so that by the time we arrive at rehearsal or a performance, we have musicality in our bodies."

Push the boundaries: "Make up a piece of choreography, and dance it to the same music three times," says Schreier. "Try to do it exactly on the music, then just behind the music, and then just ahead. How does that change your physicality? How does it change your relationship to the music? Which one feels best for you? What can you pull out of the silences?"

Bust a new move: "If you only expose yourself to one approach to musicality, you're limiting your potential to express yourself," says Needham-Wood, who also teaches hip hop. Try tap, Broadway, or popping and locking. "Ballet is often about the melody, while contemporary brings in more percussive sound, and hip hop has a sense of weight to it. The more you allow yourself to get outside of your comfort zone, the more your comfort zone will grow."

Experiment with time signatures: A time signature is a notation used in Western music to indicate the number of rhythmic beats in a measure of music—the ones most familiar to dancers are 4/4 (think of the steady 1-2-3-4 of tendus en croix) and 3/4, which is waltz time. Composers use time signatures to create effects in their music, from strident tension to a cascading sense of joy—if you're dancing to agitated music by Stravinsky, for example, you might encounter 3/32, 4/16, 11/4, while in a pop ballet set to the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" you'll find 11/8, 4/4 and 7/8.

A great way to build a sense of time signatures is to experience them for yourself. ABT principal conductor Charles Barker suggests listening to the nationalistic dances in Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake, and hearing the time signatures of the mazurka, polonaise and waltz. "Listen to it, then move to it and feel how all the phrases are not all the same tempo." Try the third movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 3, which is in 3/8 time, or the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, in 5/4. "Tchaikovsky has lots of music in 5/4. Play with it! He was playing with it, so we should as well."

Prodigal sun

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 14:00:58 +0000

Your top ten most viewed posts for the month:

Akhnaten

Anna, Yusif and the Escorial

Met postpones opening to December 31

La forza del destino

Dark and darker

Samson et Dalila

Makes you blind

From a distance

Lohengrin

The climax of Mildred’s life

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 12:00:46 +0000

Born on this day in 1892 author James M. Cain.

Get Ready for World Ballet School Day, Streaming July 7

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 21:19:07 +0000

Mark your calendars!

This Tuesday, July 7, join pre-professional dancers across the globe in an inaugural live-stream event celebrating World Ballet School Day 2020. Made "by students for students," the event aims to bring young generations of dancers together in an international recognition of the unifying power of ballet, dance and the art world at large. The program, featuring dancers from a dozen internationally renowned ballet academies and organizations, will be broadcasted online on the WBSD website at 7 am EDT and will be available for viewers on-demand for one month following the premiere.

Students around the world will participate in discussions and showcase their training on this online platform, with special attention given to the effect of COVID-19 shutdown on young artists. The event will also feature performance footage, including the premiere of a new work choreographed by Didy Veldman focusing on physical restriction—a familiar sensation for dancers worldwide during the pandemic. Students from The Royal Ballet School, San Francisco Ballet School, Canada's National Ballet School, Paris Opéra Ballet School, The Royal Danish Ballet School and the Dutch National Ballet Academy worked together with Veldman over Zoom to create the new work. She and UK–based company BalletBoyz then compiled each dancer's video into the finished product for the upcoming broadcast.

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The WBSD collaboration, conceived by English National Ballet School director Viviana Durante, has a wide reach, featuring 12 schools and institutions from three different continents. Participating organizations include:

The Australian Ballet School
Boston Ballet School
Dutch National Ballet Academy
English National Ballet School
Canada's National Ballet School
Palucca University of Dance Dresden
Paris Opéra Ballet School
Prix de Lausanne
Royal Ballet School
Royal Danish Ballet School
San Francisco Ballet School
New Zealand School of Dance

"World Ballet School Day provides students from across the globe the opportunity to connect and unite through the common language of dance," says Boston Ballet School director Margaret Tracey. "Their passion and commitment to training brings together the next generation of artists who will lead us into a more hopeful future." For more information, visit the WBSD website, and share your experience on social media with #WorldBalletSchoolDay.

Die Walküre

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 20:57:11 +0000

Starring Hildegard Behrens, Jessye Norman, Christa Ludwig, Gary Lakes, James Morris and Kurt Moll; conducted by James Levine. From April 8, 1989 at the Metropolitan Opera.

Sydney Dolan Takes Center Stage at Pennsylvania Ballet

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 19:51:10 +0000

Just days before the world shuttered under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic, and the curtain came down indefinitely on dance companies everywhere, Pennsylvania Ballet soloist Sydney Dolan debuted Gamzatti in La Bayadère with captivating ease. Her jumps soared, her technique was sound, and her cheeky smile paired with exquisite port de bras was beguiling. Though she didn't know the company would soon cancel the remainder of its season, her beautiful performance acted as a kind of send-off into the unknown.

Dolan's career could be described in one word: charmed. At just 19 years old, she's flown through the ranks at PAB, debuted a long list of roles, won a Princess Grace Award and been named one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch." Yet it's her challenges that have shaped not only her training but her outlook, giving her a solid foundation for becoming one of Pennsylvania Ballet's rising stars.

An Unconventional Education

Dolan began dancing at age 3 at Burke Civic Ballet in Northern Virginia. A few years later her family moved to Cary, North Carolina, where she picked up her training more earnestly at International Ballet Academy. There she met teacher Miguel Campaneria, who would eventually become her sole coach and mentor. "As soon as I saw her dance for the first time, I knew she was special," says Campaneria. "She had a light about her."

At 12, after a fallout between Campaneria and IBA was magnified by a subsequent noncompete contract, Dolan had to choose between a traditional conservatory dance education and a somewhat nomadic training experience with her beloved teacher. "I chose to go with Miguel," says Dolan. "I trusted him. He could see things in me that other teachers couldn't."

The next two years proved challenging. In order to abide by the noncompete, Dolan had to travel 25 miles to take class from Campaneria in rented studio space. Though 10 others initially joined their venture, the setup proved difficult for many of them, and by the end it was just Dolan, Campaneria and one other student. The training schedule also required her to transition to online schooling.

"We had a two-hour-long class in the morning, followed by solo rehearsal, and then we'd return at night to do the same thing over again," says Dolan.

She had few performance opportunities, so they focused on competitions. "Those two-minute variations at three competitions per year were really the only stage experience I had," says Dolan. What's more, this unusual training structure strained her family's time and finances. "It was a sacrifice for my family that I'm not sure many would make."

On the other hand, Dolan says, "I learned independence. If I didn't have that intensive one-on-one time, I don't think I would have progressed the way that I did." Once the two-year noncompete contract was up, Dolan's parents helped her teacher open the Campaneria Ballet School in Cary, where Dolan spent her next year of formal training, and met her eventual boyfriend, Austin Eyler.

An Unexpected Career Start

In the summer of 2016, Dolan and Eyler attended Pennsylvania Ballet's Company Experience week, an intensive taught by artistic director Angel Corella. After the first day, Corella pulled them into his office and offered them trainee positions, with the promise of a second company contract by that January. "I was struck by her technique," Corella says. "She has beautiful lines, she has excellent turns, she is very professional. I knew I wanted her in the company."

Then Corella asked for their ages—he thought Dolan, then 15, was older. Though her age presented hurdles—in terms of finishing her education, finding proper housing, and complying with child employment laws—Corella decided she was worth it. Dolan herself was less sure. She had made great progress with Campaneria and didn't know how her parents would feel. Then, one week before PAB's season started, Corella let Dolan know that two second company contracts were immediately available for her and Eyler—allowing them to bypass the trainee level entirely.

Campaneria was concerned. "I have seen dancers get everything at a young age, and it's too much too soon," he says. But, Dolan says, "I just felt strongly it was the right choice." Following her gut instinct, she accepted.

Second Company Life

Dolan's first company rehearsal with PBII was for Nutcracker, and it was like drinking water through a fire hose. Outside of a few videos, it was her first time seeing George Balanchine's choreography, let alone dancing it. "I had to pick my jaw up off the floor," Dolan says. "It was the most basic choreography, but I couldn't stop bumping into people." Suddenly, she was going from one-on-one coaching to dancing in the corps every day. "I lacked experience working with other people. It took a while to get used to."

Throughout the year she developed crucial skills for corps work, such as communicating constructively and developing spatial awareness. "I learned what it was like to be in a company rehearsal and proper etiquette," Dolan says. She also got the stage experience she'd lacked. "We were in every main company performance," she says.

She struggled to fit in, however, and often felt the need to earn the respect of her fellow dancers. She was a sophomore in high school, taking online classes and living with relatives in the area, while her PBII colleagues were over 18. "In the back of my head there has always been a voice asking me if I deserve to be where I am at this age."

Rising Through the Ranks

In 2017, one year after joining PBII, Dolan became an apprentice. Corella, noting her nerves of steel, started pushing her instantly. By the time she finished the season, she'd performed Lilac Fairy in The Sleeping Beauty, Dewdrop in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, the pas de trois in Swan Lake and the soloist in Balanchine's "Rubies." She joined the corps de ballet in 2018, rising to demi-soloist for the 2019–20 season. Then in October, after her debut as a Flower Girl in Don Quixote, Corella promoted her to soloist. "Her dancing in Don Quixote was something we had never seen before—I had to promote her," Corella says.

Despite her success, Dolan admits to having her fair share of insecurities. One, her turnout, stems from a comment she overheard about herself at a competition years ago. "To this day I work tirelessly on it." Yet she doesn't let those anxieties keep her down for long. "I try to tell myself that there isn't a single dancer out there who isn't insecure about something."

"It's clear to everyone in the company that she is where she is because of her technique, artistry and commitment to the company," says Corella. "If anything, she can take it easy sometimes."

Looking Ahead

Outside of ballet, Dolan is a self-proclaimed homebody who loves knitting and reading. She developed a love of cooking from her father, a chef. "For me, it's all or nothing," she says. "If I cook, I have to make something extravagant." She also enjoys writing, a passion she says she inherited from her mother, and keeps up with a blog (balletprose.com) she started when she was 16.

Eyler also plays a starring role in her story. After meeting at ballet school, a friendship blossomed. "Over time our connection grew and we started dating," Dolan says of the corps dancer; they now live together. "We're such bunheads—if I'm struggling with something, he has an eye that I trust." Beyond dancing, the two love to explore Philadelphia's restaurant scene.

As for Dolan's future at PAB, Corella doesn't beat around the bush. "I, of course, hope she will be a principal dancer. She is very special, and it would be hard not to acknowledge that."

Dolan tries to stay grounded: "I know I can't skip out on those extra 10 minutes of practice just because I made it in a magazine," she says. "I don't want to stay stagnant." Still, the accomplishments come with pressure. "But it's good pressure. Constructive pressure."

The NY Times is Still the Best

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 19:46:05 +0000

For those of you who are new to this site or just visit sporadically, we have a parrot, Groucho, who has been with us for 39 years. Several moons ago we got him a much larger cage. It’s so large, that in human terms it would be a three bedroom apartment. The cage resembles that shown in the picture below, save that it has a grill set about six inches above the paper.

The grill allows Groucho to walk around the bottom of the cage, which he really likes to do. The waste and other detritus falls through the spaces of the grill into a well that is filled with paper. The bird cage liner shown above sells for $59.77 at Amazon. You get 100 precut sheets. As Groucho likes to throw anything he can move, the bottom of the cage can rapidly get pretty messy. At almost 60 bucks a box, keeping Groucho in paper got very pricey. Especially as the bottom of his cage is much bigger than the illustration above. So we looked for an alternative.

The obvious substitute is a newspaper. The ink is not a problem as Groucho never comes in contact with the paper saving us the need to iron the pages before inserting them into the cage. Our local newspaper, the fantastically name Avalanche Journal, has too few pages in its daily issue. Lubbock is so flat that you can see Chicago perched atop a tuna fish can. Hence an avalanche here is less likely than return of the passenger pigeon. The Sunday paper is thicker, but at $1.50 a copy it’s not cost effective. We’d have to use about eight of them just to fill the bottom of the cage one time.

We next tried the Sunday Dallas Morning News. It’s $4 a toss. We could likely get by using four. But $16 a cage change was too much. Then we hit on the New York Times. It’s Sunday edition was so weighty that we could get four cage changes out of one copy. And at $6 an issue it was easily the most economical alternative.

Until recently we had a cat. The Sunday Times was also perfect as a liner for its litter box. Doubtless there are other similar household, or even work related, uses you can think of. You could even read it. The multiple functions of the paper has obviously spread across the fruited plain. This “All the news that’s fit to poop” use of the venerable journal is reflected in its stock price. Its more than threefold increase suggests there are a lot of bird lovers and cat fanciers in the Times’ demographic. See chart below.

Of course, somethings are too good to last. Lately, the Times has gotten smaller – ie, there are fewer pages. We now only get three changes from one Sunday paper. I haven’t done a cost estimate of the Times vs the bird cage liner sold by Amazon. But my impression is that the paper still beats the liner as an effective filler for the bottom of Groucho’s cage.

You may have wondered who the we mentioned above are. I must confess that we mostly means my wife who both buys the paper every month or so and then applies it to the bird’s cage. I’ve even caught her reading the fashion section once or twice.

Wild horses

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 18:42:42 +0000

After our look-in on Robert Wilson’s Verdi, let’s move on to Verona and Franco Zeffirelli, who’s been staging his signature showpieces in the Roman Arena since 1995, when he started with Carmen. (His productions ballooned to such Rose Parade proportions the Arena is the only place left where they’d fit.)

Aida followed in 2002, Madama Butterfly in 2004 (the umbrella twirling in Butterfly’s entrance was like a Ziegfeld number), Turandot in 2010, Don Giovanni in 2015 and this Trovatore originated in 2001. Its seventh revival could hardly have been considered an event had it not also heralded the Arena debut of our beloved Anna Netrebko.

Our Anna has been singing the hapless Leonora of Aragon since 2013 when she premiered the role in Berlin under Daniel Barenboim in a particularly odd staging by Philipp Stölzlen that’s perhaps best forgotten. She’s since been televised in the part from the Salzburg Festival and the Met. Now we have this souvenir for our shelves and I have to say it’s sensational for all the right and wrong reasons simultaneously..

Oddly, the performance starts before the sun has set and the Ferrando, the strapping Riccardo Fassi, has to tell the dark tale of the crazy child-stealing witch in twilight even when the bells in the orchestra toll a much later hour. Mr. Fassi sings with an accuracy and vigor that belie his old age makeup and gray streaked wig. It’s a fiendishly difficult thing to warm up on and he and his retinue prowl the stage until it’s time for the entrance of our diva assoluta. At the scene’s conclusion he and the rabble charge off the stage in full medieval dudgeon, fists raging at the heavens. There’s a lot of that in this production.

A moment on the set: Three massive turrets with the central in the rear the largest and two enormous knights in armor bookending each side. Zeffirelli’s usual portable walls of shields and spears roll in and out to mask the scene changes and a very detailed floor with multiple playing levels.

Those side panels now roll back to reveal La Netrebko hands raised in supplication against that great central turret. She turns and then proceeds to sing her opening recitative so purposefully and with so much amplitude of tone I immediately assume that the humid night air was causing our goddess consternation and she was having trouble getting the voice placed and moving.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyUmyKsyNkI

Once she starts “Tacea la notte” proper you realize she’s just getting warmed up and this is the opulence you’re going to be enjoying all evening. It’s not lost on our girl that she’s got 20,000 seat theater to fill and she’s determined to win it. I’d say she was oversinging if at any time she weren’t able to pull back to a piano or pianissimo with ease… and does so repeatedly. She sings tirelessly all evening long and almost literally destroys the role. All the coloratura is perfectly placed, the staccatos, the trills, and all the repeats. She even sings both verses of “Tu vedrai.” She’s a titan. You can practically hear the Italians weeping from joy.

Sadly you can also hear the faint accompaniment of every bird in Verona singing the sun to sleep. The aviary finally quiets down half way through the cavatina when the flock realize that it’s useless trying to compete.

Our Count di Luna enters in the personaggio of Luca Salsi who’s a double-barrelled baritone if ever there was one. It’s a big, big, voice, medium rich but he’s a tad wayward of pitch at times. Vocally and dramatically he’s about as subtle as a rhinoceros. By now I’ve come to the understanding that it’s going to be one of those evening’s that dear old Anna Russell used to call, “Anything you can sing I can sing louder”.

I need to take a minute on the costumes here because this was when I literally had to adjust the brilliance and sharpness down on my television. Designer Raimonda Gaetani obviously learned her trade at the feet of the Master because to say these costumes are opulent is an understatement. I remember when they wore single colored caftans at the Arena just so the audience could tell the singers apart at such a great distance.

These ensembles are like the Warner Bros. film version of Camelot, only more so. Anna must have been wearing pounds of velvet and brocade to match her lovely jeweled snood. Our Di Luna has a tunic so fiercely encrusted in bugle beading my monitor was flickering and needed adjustment. Every chorister could be a soloist the detail is so extraordinary. It’s all too, too, much and I love it.

Yusif Eyvazov makes his entrance as Manrico at this point and he does a fine job but next to these two cannons he comes off as decidedly lyric. The scene ends with actual crossed swords and I’m not going to apologize. It’s exciting.

Then hundreds of gypsies swarm the stage (hundreds, honest, hundreds) carrying the awnings left over from Zefferelli’s Carmen production. We even get a single movement from the ballet and a little dance (I recognized it!) while they’re setting up their honest-to-goodness anvils.

By this point I was in such a state of operatic overwhelm I had forgotten who was singing Azucena and, Holy Mother of Fedora Barbieri, it’s Dolora Zajick! When I reviewed the last DVD from the Met of Trovatore on these pages I accused her of being somewhat timid. Apparently all she needed was a football arena to feel comfortable in because I’ve never seen her emote this much or sing with this much relish in a long time.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not suddenly Meryl Streep but she’s definitely more engaged than I recall. She’s 67 years old here and doing a victory lap in the year of her retirement. The voice? The bottom is so large it sounds like she’s singing into a bullhorn at times. You can see the choristers near her flinch. She’s not Azucena, she’s crowd control. She also sings with real delicacy when required and it’s a voice lesson all the way through.

I’m going to cut to the end of Act II because this is where it really gets good. After a fairly stentorian “Il balen” our baritone and his noble henchman retire to the sidelines at the sound of the nuns chorus. Every available nun in the Veneto then processes out onto the stage all holding those enormous battery operated candles.

We also get the full glory of a pack of monks in blood red capirote shouldering the statues of the saints in procession. But before the glory of any of this has made its full impact the central turret at the back of the set opens wide like a book to reveal the interior of a gothic church all ablaze with light. Beloveds, I thought I was having a religious conversion on my couch!

Then Mr. Eyvazov charges onto the stage on a white horse to save his beloved. Luckily he brought a horse for Anna too. She mounts her horse, sings her final,”Sei tu dal ciel…” from the saddle (!) and rides off stage still singing during the stretta finale. Before the music ends the two warring factions charge on each other as the men shout battle cries and you hear the clash of swords. It suddenly dawns on me that this is what Trovatore should have always looked like. I bow low.

The remaining acts go exactly as you’d expect and Mr. Eyvazov does offer a fiery “Di quella pira” up to pitch. We get another Million Monk March during the “Miserere,” which Anna fights her way through, singing all the way.

I do have quite a few videos from the Arena (mostly because I think I’m waiting for a good one) and they’re finally using those robotic cameras like the Met has that give you those gorgeous tracking shots. It makes an enormous difference and you really feel involved in the action. Sound and picture were flawless on the Blu-ray I watched. PCM or DTS-HD sound options and subtitles in five languages so you can sing along in Korean.

Strangely enough both recent Trovatore releases were helmed by the same video director, Tiziano Mancini and it’s a testament to his skill that he captures both from a completely different perspective that suits both productions perfectly.

That said this is one of the few times I’ve seen the chorus of the Arena fully involved in a performance as well and that makes a huge difference. On most of the videos I’ve seen when the director pulls in for a medium shot on the populace you see a lot of people checked out with their mouths hanging open.

Oh and there’s a conductor! My hat comes off to Pier Giorgio Morandi for his most excellent stewardship in the pit and keeping this football game completely coordinated and moving in the right direction. I can’t imagine the challenges.

So two wildly different experiences with the same opera and frankly I don’t think I could do without either in my library. The French version is so unique and well performed and Dynamic also released it via audio only CD which may be preferred if you’re not a fan of Mr. Wilson’s work. The Arena performance has a real gala feel about it and if you’re a fan of La Netrebko it’s a must.

Plus: Horses! What more could you want?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWByjmIhTqo

NYCB Soloist Daniel Applebaum Shares the Importance of “What’s the Tea?,” a New YouTube Series Interviewing Ballet Dancers of Asian Descent

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 16:51:38 +0000

Sitting in my living room last month being interviewed for the YouTube series "What's the Tea?," I talked about my subconscious desire to "pass" as Caucasian, a truth I'd never wanted to admit to myself. I was surprised by how easy it was to be honest with New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, which produced the series. Founded in 2017, FBY is an organization committed to ending offensive stereotypes of Asians in ballet. With "What's the Tea?," Pazcoguin and FBY co-founder Phil Chan celebrated May's Asian Pacific Heritage Month by interviewing 31 ballet dancers of Asian descent. Though Pazcoguin and I have been close colleagues at NYCB for many years, we'd never dug deeply into our shared experiences before. As she gently pushed me to discuss navigating tense work situations and my love of Japanese cooking, I unwittingly began the difficult but essential process of unpacking what it means to be Asian; not only in ballet, but in every aspect of my life.

My realization that I had spent much of my early career hoping to be "white enough to succeed" coincided with the greatest civil rights movement of my generation, the worldwide outrage and public protests against systemic racial injustice. While I bristle when confronting my own shortcomings in processing what it means to be a gay, Asian man, I am also aware that much more urgent conversations on Black lives and police brutality are front and center. My desire to pass is an act of complicity in a system that prizes whiteness. I saw being Asian as a liability. Wanting people to misidentify my race speaks directly to a privilege most BIPOC do not have. Chan realizes the debt FBY owes to Black civil rights activists, reminding me that "we wouldn't be having this conversation [about Asian representation in ballet] without Black advocacy. Without Arthur Mitchell, people wouldn't be paying attention to us or taking us seriously," he says. Pazcoguin pointed out that "there is intersectionality to [FBY's] work. We are a small tile in the greater mosaic of change.

I am the son of a first-generation Japanese woman, and was raised to be proud of my heritage. My mother and father (who is white) instilled in me a deep respect for Japanese culture that I unquestioningly cherished until early adolescence. It was around then, as I was getting more serious about ballet, that I realized I didn't see any Cavaliers that looked like me. Growing up outside of Washington, D.C., I was fortunate enough to see ballet companies from around the world on tour. For all this variety there seemed to be little diversity (save for the years when Dance Theatre of Harlem came to perform). Later, critiquing New York City Ballet performances with my friends at the School of American Ballet, it became increasingly clear that dreaming about future roles was a more limited affair for dancers of color. My white peers were comfortable telling Asian or Black dancers that they would never perform a role because of how they looked.

Watching, "What's the Tea?", commonalities begin to emerge: Asian dancers being conditioned to brush off microaggressions and remain quiet; an implicit understanding that our adjacency to whiteness gets us in the room, but not a seat at the table; thinking that positive change could be achieved by working harder. "I have been made to feel, on so many occasions, like I was drumming up more drama than was necessary," Pazcoguin recalls, "and I realized, hearing Noelani [Noelani Pantsastico of Pacific Northwest Ballet] and Lia [Lia Cirio of Boston Ballet] share verbatim things said to them that were also said to me, that there's a pattern here." While these stories and experiences didn't surprise me, I wondered why these acts of aggression, big and small, have gone largely unaddressed. "My biggest takeaway is that the Asian experience in ballet is mostly invisible," says Chan.

By confronting our traumas and realizing that they are, in fact, shared, "What's the Tea?" has given dancers of Asian descent something that has never existed before: a sense of community. As an asian teenanger joining the corps de ballet at NYCB, I was lucky to have former company member Allen Peiffer as a friend and colleague. Allen was the first person in the ballet world who talked to me about his obachan (Japanese grandmother), and experiences shopping at Asian grocery stores. Later on, Anthony Huxley, who is Filipino, joined NYCB and we became close. Going for bubble tea or dim sum were simple activities that allowed for an unspoken understanding of our shared experience. As I look at all the wonderful artists that participated in "What's the Tea," I see brothers and sisters. I see dancers in companies all across America and abroad that have had to advocate for their brilliant artistry in order to forge a path that had not been laid out for us.

For all of the series's virtues, Chan and Pazcoguin realize that this iteration of "What's the Tea?" has its failings. "I don't think we got the diversity of Asian experiences that we would have liked," Chan states. "We did not get any South Asian voices. There seems to be less representation of South Asians in ballet in America, but we should have done better." Pazcoguin adds that, "we want to be able to give those voices a platform because they're part of this massive umbrella that is Asianness."

Watching the interviews, I was struck by how different everyone looks; not just in terms of facial features, but in terms of energy and physicality. We're not all the same. Every man isn't a tiny virtuoso, and every woman isn't a wilting flower. I hope for a future where this variety can exist within a single company alongside a diverse representation of dancers from all backgrounds. Pazcoguin hopes this platform, "gives [young Asian dancers] a plethora of options from which to choose a role model, and see that they are welcome into the world of ballet." Now is the time for the ballet community to let us know we are all welcome.

From Student To Star : Marco Masciari | The Royal Ballet

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 15:04:45 +0000

From Student to Star is a Ballet News exclusive interview series featuring graduates from vocational ballet schools around the world, as they begin their professional careers. Ballet News World...

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Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 13:48:28 +0000

‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’

Doras 2020

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 13:10:42 +0000

The Dora winners were announced last night. I don’t think there were any big surprises in the opera category. The COC’s Rusalka scooped most awards with four including Outstanding Production. The other three were Outstanding Direction (David McVicar), Outstanding Musical Direction (Johannes Debus) and Outstanding Achievement in Design (Lighting) (David Finn). It was probably the best thing overall the COC has done in a long time so not shocked.

Yvette Nolan and Dean Burry won the Outstanding New Opera category for Shanawdithit. I’m delighted about this one as I had rather more personal emotional investment in this project than most things I see and it was an important project in so many ways. Marnie Breckenridge received the Dora for Outstanding Performance by an Individual for her performance in Jacqueline. Also well deserved and a wee but surprising as there was every reason to give this one to Sondra Radvanovsky and usually that kind of name recognition wins out. In any event two big wins for Tapestry (and a nod to Opera on the Avalon for being a smaller regional company prepared to invest in something relevant).

Finally, Soundstreams presentation of Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállábártnit won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble. In this case Nicole Joy-Fraser, Karen
Weigold, Vania Chan, Deantha Edmunds, Jennifer Taverner, Rebecca Cuddy, Bó Bárdos, Michelle Lafferty, Jonathan MacArthur, Mitchell Pady, Evan Korbut, Bryan Martin and Neil Aronof. This was another fascinating show that deserved some recognition.

So, yes, the eight hundred pound gorilla came out on top but hardly by a knock out.

Wagner and Morality

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 12:17:47 +0000

(Article on 'Morality' first published in the Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Luise Reuss-Belce as Fricka

Historians often adopt a tone of prurient hypocrisy with figures of whom they disapprove. The Russian Empress Catherine the Great long endured persistent references to her “scandalous” love life: that is, she was a successful female ruler with the temerity to take lovers. It has become the practice for moral custodians, Frickas de nos jours, to berate Wagner for his easy way with other men’s money and women. Understanding both as property is instructive, betokening a narrow conception of “morality,” typical of the public opinion and commercial Press by which Wagner not unreasonably considered himself hounded. Wagner believed consistently that private property distorted every relationship between man and man, likewise man and woman. Shortly before his death, he lauded Wilhelm Heinse for having depicted in his novel, Ardinghello(1787), a society in which institution of property had never been permitted (Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, 30 Sep 1882).

Gustave Courbet: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon et ses enfants en 1853 (1865)

French socialism, directly and through intermediaries such as Heinrich Laube, August Röckel, and Mikhail Bakunin, was a pervading influence. As early as Das Liebesverbot, Wagner tells us, “all I cared about was to uncover the sinfulness of hypocrisy and the artificiality of the judicial attitude toward morality” (My Life, English translation, 83). Friedrich, prudishly shocked by popular licentiousness, employs state power to enforce an unnatural moral code, whilst transgressing it himself. Röckel, during their Dresdendiscussions provided theoretical ballast: “On the basis of the socialist theories of Proudhon and others … he constructed a whole new moral order of things to which … he little by little converted me … I began to rebuild upon it my hopes for the realization of my artistic ideals.” Wagner questioned Röckel about his desire “to do away completely with the institution of marriage as we knew it,” and was “particularly struck” by the claim that, only after eradication of coercion by money, rank, and family prejudice, would sexual morality be possible (My Life, 373-4). He returned in his final essay “Über das Weibliche” to the subject. Marriage – to Cosima, at least? – raised man and his moral faculties far above the animal world, yet he was dragged far beneath it by “conventional marriage” (Konventionsheiraten), an “abuse” (Mißbrauch) founded upon property (Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, 12:343-4).

Self-justification? Perhaps, for instance when Wagner tells us that Minna “became increasingly perplexed at my seemingly incomprehensible conception of art and its relative importance,” and at his “higher delicacy in regard to moral questions,” being “unable to understand and approve my freedom of thought in such matters” (My Life, 130-1). Only up to a point, though, for the contrast between Minna’s need for financial stability and the moral purpose Wagner sought in art is real enough. That they were ultimately unsuited need not send one scurrying for blame. There is, moreover, no mistaking Wagner’s moral outrage at his perception of modern art as “industry, its moral purpose the acquisition of money, its aesthetic purpose the entertainment of the bored” (SSD, 3: 18).

Under the influence of Young German and Young Hegelian ideas, most likely including Max Stirner’s anarchistic manifesto, The Ego and its Own (1844), Wagner created in the Ringan artwork that dramatizes alternative moral possibilities. Fricka, Wagner writes, represents custom (Sitte), (Letter to Uhlig, 12 Nov. 1851). Her marriage to Wotan is fruitless; his children are sired outside wedlock. One of them, Sieglinde, experiences both brutal treatment as chattel by her husband Hunding, and passionate convention-flouting fulfillment with her twin brother, Siegmund. Fricka is outraged: “My heart trembles, my mind reels: bridal embrace between brother and sister! When was it ever heard of that siblings were lovers?” (Walküre, II/i). As the gods’ – religion’s – hold on society falters, moral prohibitions dependent upon their power are insisted upon ever more stridently. The gods would go to ruin, Fricka insists, were her moral law not to be obeyed; they already have. Wagner echoes Stirner and prefigures Nietzsche, providing a crucial link in the inversion of Hegel’s elevation of customary over individual morality: “Note how a ‘moral man’ behaves, who today often thinks he is through with God .… a customary-moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one’s being allowed to touch his sister also as a woman.… Because he believes in those moral commandments” (Stirner, 45); and “They have rid themselves of the Christian God, and thus believe that they must cling all the more firmly to Christian morality … one must, in response to the smallest emancipation from theology, reassert one’s position in awe-inspiring fashion as a moral fanatic” (Nietzsche, 80).

Mathilde Wesendonck by
Karl Ferdinand Sohn (1850)

What, then, of the pre-eminent “affair,” with Mathilde Wesendonck? One can deplore Wagner’s ingratitude towards her husband, Otto, who had offered considerable financial support, only to find himself cuckolded – at least metaphysically. Wagner opposed marriage as legal setting in stone or ring. Moreover, Wagner’s insistence that the world owed him a living – why should someone be favored because he dealt in silks instead of composing the Ring? – is borne out even in capitalist terms by the industry he created for and bequeathed that world. It has done incalculably better from him than vice versa.

One might also consider it significant that, when Wagner condensed the action of Tristan und Isoldeinto a few words for Mathilde Wesendonck, he did not even mention King Marke’s forgiveness. Were the sacrifices of men such as Wesendonck and Hans von Bülow as naught to such a monstrous ego? Yet Wagner sees the “custom of the time” leading to the sin of marriage for politics’ sake. The action of Tristan is not, moreover, really of this phenomenal world at all, but metaphysical. By now (1859), Wagner had partially converted to a morality founded upon Schopenhauer’s teaching. Though immediately taken by Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, “the moral principles” of The World as Will and Representation had been more difficult initially to accept, “for here the annihilation of the Will and complete self-abnegation are represented as the only true means of redemption from the constricting bonds of individuality in its dealings with the world” (My Life, 509). Either way – in practice, both – Wagner rejected the dictates of bourgeois morality.