BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Wirth prize winner

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:55:18 +0000

The 2021/22 winner of the Wirth Vocal prize at McGill’s Schulich Schoolof Music is Innu soprano Elisabeth Saint-Gelais. She performed in the RBA at noon on Wednesday, accompanied by Louise Pelletier. It was impressive. She has power to burn and a rather lovely voice and, not so common among young dramatic sopranos, considerable control across her registers. She also displayed considerable linguistic skill in French, German and Czech though I’m completely unqualified to comment on the quality of her Anishinabe.

She started off with two songs from Berlioz’ Nuits d’été which were a good indicator of what was to come. She has a big, full, almost mezzo-ish sound. The Vier Lieder, Op 27 of Strauss followed. These often trip up young singers but Saint-Gelais navigated them extremely well with, for example, real heft in “Heimliche Aufforderung” and lyricism in “Morgen”, all without going squally in her upper register.

A sense that she is something of a stage animal came over in a nicely dramatic, and humorous, account of Barbara Assignaak’s “NMAKAAN’JIK KIKZOOTAADWAK” in which we were told that Saint Germain’s character, a crow, is counting out blueberries for her lover. Two pretty Duparc songs and a lovely rendering of Dvořák’s “Song to the Moon” closed out a highly satisfying recital.

Definitely one to watch!

Photo credits: Karen E. Reeves

Rebanks fellows

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:34:10 +0000

Last night at Mazzoleni Hall we were entertained by the Royal Conservatory’s Rebanks fellows. The programme was, to say the least, varied and very enjoyable. It began with a movement from Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor played by Isobel Howard – violin, Caleb Georges – viola, Joanne Yesol Choi – cello and Sejin Yoon – piano. It was a pleasant, if conventional, start to the evening. There were rather more fireworks in the “Allegro ma non troppo” from Strauss’ Violin Sonata in E flat major. There was some seriously virtuosic playing here from Aaaron Chan – violin and Ben Smith – piano.

from L to R: Michael Bridge, accordion; Caleb Georges, viola; Isobel Howard, violin; Sejin Yoon, piano; Hannah Crawford, soprano; Daniel Hamin Go, cello; Tim Beattie, guitar; Jonelle Sills, soprano; Aaron Chan, violin.

And so to the vocal part of the programme. The usually quite dramatic Hannah Crawford gave us two fairly lyrical arias; the Countess’ “Porgi amor” and Liu’s “Signors, ascolta”. They were well done and it was interesting to hear her in a more lyrical vein. By contrast, Jonelle Sills, who I think of as in more of a lyrical vein, gave extremely dramatic, indeed fierce accounts of her two arias; “Or sai chi l’onore” from Don Giovanni and “Stridono lassù” from Pagliacci. Hair raising stuff here. Trevor Chartrand accompanied in both cases.

After the interval we hit new heights of eclecticism. It started conventionally enough with a very virtuosic “Una limosna por el amor de dios” by Agustin Barrios played expertly on guitar by Timothy Beattie (how many fingers does he have??). Less conventionally he was joined by cellist Daniel Hamin Go for Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango”; another virtuoso piece inspired by, you guessed, the tango.

Go returned with accordionist (the first such to become a Rebanks fellow) Michael Bridge for an impressive arrangement of Fauré’s Élégie for Cello and Orchestra. Bridges then closed out the show with two solo accordion pieces; Granados’ Spanish dance no.5 “Andaluza” and Zampronha’s very complkex and slightly weird Trazo (Stroke). It’s rare (and very welcome) to hear such interesting use of less conventional instruments.

So, an enjoyable evening and a fitting showcase for the programme.

All photo credits Stuart Lowe. I’ve captioned the group photo. The participants in the others should be easily identifiable!

Yours, mine and ‘Hours’

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 14:00:29 +0000

The ten most-read stories for November 2022 are:

Unhappy ‘Hours’

Romantic hero

He plays the violin

We’ll always have Paris (or maybe not)

Last dance

Days of the diva

Good grief

Disorientation

Higher and higher

Color my world

Everyone’s an outlaw

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:00:30 +0000

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

On this day in 1951 Benjamin Britten‘s Billy Budd premiered in London

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

Broadway openings on this day:

In 1956 Leonard Bernstein‘s Candide.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXMxhMhYm4

In 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5MRGQP5e4

In 1968 Burt Bacharach–Hal David‘s Promises Promises.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=15S4M5EAG8Y

Born on this day metteur en scène (etc.) Tom Volf.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xmsGzhhDGE

World AIDS Day 2022.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UHYpQLeWaw

“Oh, thoughtless crew! Ye know not what ye do!”

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 20:19:56 +0000

In part 1 of this story, I examined the complex and often contradictory relationship between Arts Council England and the UK government. I suggested that Arts Council’s widely panned cuts to the classical music sector were partially enabled by this “arm’s-length” relationship and the ambiguities of control that it creates.

In part 2 of this story, I examine the implications of this leadership structure for the Arts Council’s treatment of the organizations that it funds, showing how the ambiguities of “arm’s-length” arts funding resulted in the latest brouhaha over opera audience statistics.

The Arts Council keeps the organizations that it funds in a near-permanent state of precarity.

In order to get funding, arts organizations apply to the Arts Council to become “National Portfolio Organizations” or NPOs.

Every arts organization in England must reapply for its National Portfolio status every three to five years. During this reapplication process, the Arts Council can cut or increase its funding or cut the organization from its National Portfolio altogether.

Thus, even England’s most treasured artistic institutions must apply over and over again to ensure their funding is maintained: neither Royal Opera House nor the National Theater are immune from losing National Portfolio status.

The November 4 announcement which heralded cuts to many of England’s most important classical music organizations came as the Arts Council revealed which arts organizations had been chosen as National Portfolio Organizations for the next three years and which ones had not.

The Arts Council views this precarity as a net positive. “You sometimes feel that people think that we’re actually there to fund certain organizations,” Claire Mera-Nelson, the Arts Council’s director of music, quips: “They have received public funding, and we [the Arts Council] have been the vehicle through which they’ve received it, for decades.”

Fixed-term funding provision allows the Arts Council to ensure that arts organizations who receive tax-payer money are operating at their best: “ultimately, our job is to safeguard public investment: we don’t want to keep putting money into an organization that is causing problems.”

The Arts Council likes to position itself as a “development agency.” They don’t see themselves as merely funding arts organizations; they also aim to nudge these organizations towards best industry practices through their funding decisions. Mera-Nelson cites, as an example, the Arts Council’s work in promoting environmental sustainability in the arts.

It is implicit in the way that the Arts Council operates that the constant state of financial precarity perpetuated by its NPO program allows the Arts Council to compel the organizations that it funds to comply with its developmental agenda.

An unfortunate side effect of the Art’s Council’s focus on “development” is its unique preoccupation with measuring the performance of the organizations that it funds. In an annual survey, National Portfolio Organizations must respond to a series of 147 metrics in order to demonstrate compliance with the Arts Council’s developmental goals.

Some of these metrics do seem like important data to monitor (number of tickets sold; diversity statistics). But others appear rather frivolous (i.e., whether or not an arts organization has a TikTok; whether the organization’s website has interactive games.)

One can only imagine the enormous amount of time that it must take for arts organizations to fill out these surveys and the vast infrastructure that must be constructed in order to collect this data.

And one also wonders whether an obsession with metrics and measurement has the potential to create arts organizations that are more preoccupied with finding systems that quickly and efficiently tick the Arts Council’s boxes than with creating meaningful, impactful art.

The main problem with these surveys is that they reduce art to a series of discrete, measurable components.

However, art is a complex and ephemeral cultural construction: it cannot be reduced to the number of bums on seats in an opera house or the number of social media followers an orchestra has. All the alchemy, the magic—indeed, the creativity—of art can so easily be lost when it is reduced to raw data.

The Centre for Cultural Value, a cultural policy think tank based at the University of Leeds, explicitly recommends against this quantitative approach to artistic evaluation. They argue that the evaluation of the cultural sector should “[prioritize] the learning (and learning what to do differently) over monitoring goals of evaluation” and should “explore why and how things happen, as well as what.”

This more qualitative approach makes sense: a life-changing performance that plays to just twenty people is infinitely more valuable than a completely forgettable performance that attracts hundreds of people from the Arts Council’s target demographics but leaves them bored and disinterested by the end.

Indeed, it is precisely the Arts Council’s reluctance to consider the human impact of art that has led to this debacle over opera funding. Opera means a great deal to a great many people. And opera fans are passionate—even fanatic—in their love for the artform.

The Arts Council has no way of accounting for this passion in its evaluative mechanisms. Its measurement systems—by design—value raw figures of participation over the individual experiences of audience members. Simply put, an overreliance on data and metrics risks tearing the heart and soul out of artistic engagement: how people actually think and feel about the art.

The Arts Council does measure artistic impact. But it has outsourced this job to a private company called Counting What Counts Ltd., seemingly run not by artistic experts, but by economists and consultants.

This company created an “impact and insight toolkit” that uses a series of audience surveys to measure arts organizations – again, against a set of discrete “quality metrics.” These metrics include such hazy categories as “inquisitiveness,” “growth,” “authenticity,” and “contribution.”

As any seasoned arts lover will tell you, these categories are so context-dependent as to be nonsensical. “Authenticity” means something completely different in concert performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo with a period orchestra than in a new promenade staging of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. Its meaning is culturally and aesthetically contingent.

When applied universally across all forms of art (even just across all forms of opera), these terms become so multivalent as to be completely ambiguous. I am skeptical that hazy terms like “growth” can be used to compare one performance to the next, let alone to compare one arts organization to another. If these terms mean different things to different people, how are they useful metrics?

The “impact and insight toolkit,” to me, seems like a crude attempt to turn something as deeply qualitative and subjective as personal reactions to art into quantitative data. It barely scratches the surface on the complexity of thought and feeling that constitutes aesthetic impact.

But there is a cruel twist on the Arts Council’s obsession with measurement and evaluation: NPOs can work hard to measure up to the Arts Council’s various metrics and it can still be denied funding in the next funding round.

This is precisely what happened to organizations like ENO.

In this most recent round of funding decisions, the Arts Council opted to ignore applicants’ previous evaluation history with the Arts Council—a policy the Arts Council calls “NPO sensitivity.”

According to the Arts Council, this meant that existing NPOs received limited-to-no feedback on their performance as they prepared their applications for the 2023-2026 portfolio. Where previously the Arts Council (in its “developmental” role) had met with NPOs who were reapplying for funding and reviewed their applications in light of previous performance, the Arts Council opted to maintain radio silence with the organizations it was already funding.

Mera-Nelson argues that “NPO sensitivity” makes the application process more equitable, citing the UK government’s Nolan Principles (which govern fairness and integrity in British public life) as legal underpinning for this: “We wanted everybody—no matter where they were starting from—to come into the conversation with the same level of advantage and disadvantage.”

However, this immediately poses the question: What is the relationship between the data that the Arts Council collects from the organizations that it funds and the Arts Council’s funding decisions? And if the Arts Council can choose to sideline its evaluation metrics when making funding allocations, what is the point of forcing NPOs to comply with these metrics in the first place?

The issue is made all the murkier by then Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, who stated prior to the NPO application process that she had “asked Arts Council to consider the track record of organizations in access closely when considering applications for funding.” The Arts Council’s “blank-slate” NPO sensitivity approach is surely directly in conflict with this directive.

And surely the main point of collecting so much data from NPOs is so that the Arts Council can help these organizations to improve their operations and become more competitive in future funding rounds? Surely the Arts Council, as a development agency, would want to do its utmost to ensure that the organizations that it funds tick all the boxes required to retain their funding?

But the goal of the Arts Council, with its pervasive culture of precarity, doesn’t seem to be ensuring sustained funding to England’s most treasured cultural institutions, but rather to remind their NPOs that their continued funding is never guaranteed.

“NPO sensitivity”—that is to say, withholding feedback from NPOs about their performance and prospects for receiving sustained funding—may help to make the application process fairer for arts organizations who have never applied for public funding before, but it also seems like a grand betrayal of the Arts Council’s own development efforts.

So much money and effort is put into monitoring and improving the operations of the Arts Council’s NPOs, only for the Arts Council to suddenly decide that all this progress should not play a role in informing future funding.

Indeed, it seems to me that the Arts Council uses the data it collects from its NPOs very selectively: When making large-scale ideological changes to funding structures, the Arts Council easily brushes these metrics aside; but when trying to get arts organizations to conform to its developmental agenda, the Arts Council employs these metrics as both carrot and stick.

One could easily say that the Arts Council’s obsession with quantifiability essentially allows them to slash funding to any organization of their choosing based on arbitrary metrics, regardless of the organization’s artistic achievements. In other words, it gives them seemingly “objective” numbers to point to in order to shruggingly vindicate any act of artistic vandalism.

The Arts Council’s use of previous performance data to inform its funding decisions has been the cause of some controversy following its decision to defund the ENO. Stuart Murphy, chief executive of ENO, in an interview with the Guardian, claims that ENO had received “glowing” feedback from the Arts Council in the lead-up to the funding cuts, garnering praise for its audience-widening and diversity efforts.

Indeed, Murphy reports that the Arts Council told them that they were “on track” based on their ongoing performance and had expressed no concerns to ENO about their audience numbers. Based on this feedback, the announcement that ENO would have its funding pulled came as a shock to the organization (Murphy characterized the decision as “baffling”).

If this is true, it would not only suggest that the Arts Council had been inconsistent in the ways in which applied its “NPO sensitivity” policy (telling an arts organization that they are “on track” could certainly be seen as application feedback), but that the Arts Council may even have been duplicitous its treatment of NPOs in the lead-up to their funding decision.

Of course, without being privy to these communications, the general public may never know for sure. But one thing is certain: the ambiguity about the relationship between NPO monitoring and evaluation and the Arts Council’s funding decisions creates fertile ground for these kinds of misunderstandings.

At the center of this row over statistics is the Arts Council’s claim that they had seen “almost no growth in audience demand for traditionally staged ‘grand’ or large-scale opera.” Mera-Nelson framed this audience decline as inherent to the size and scale of opera companies like ENO: “My question would be, realistically, how many people, honestly, can have their first opera experience by coming to a ‘grand’ theater?”

(A so-called “grand” theater like the Coliseum, one might argue, is the ideal means of providing folks with their first operatic experience: There are plenty of seats for new-comers, the cheaper seats are often subsidized by more expensive ones, and the sheer scale of the spectacle is great for “hooking in” new opera-lovers.)

Murphy, however, suggests that the Arts Council’s statistics on audience decline are false, or at least misinterpreted: “It quickly became apparent that no audience analysis had been conducted. […] If the data exists, I would love to see it—or perhaps it was collected during the lockdowns of recent years?”

So, I looked at the Arts Council’s own data. I found it distinctly limited: the Arts Council only has publicly available data on the ENO for two seasons. In the 2018/19 season, ENO received 164,804 attendances over 95 performances with a total ticket capacity of 184,607. During the 2017/18 season (the last complete pre-Covid season), ENO received 127,641 attendances across 85 performances with a total ticket capacity of 181,008.

This limited data certainly doesn’t preclude the potential for audience growth at ENO. ENO grew its audiences from 70% capacity in the 2017/18 season (with an attendance ratio of 1502 attendances per performance) to 89% in the 2018/19 season (with an attendance ratio of 1735 attendances per performance).

I also looked at the broader audience trends for large music organizations in London, as published in the Arts Council’s data (an anonymized 17-organization sample that no doubt includes many organizations comparable to the ENO).

Their data shows that, between 2015 and 2018, these organizations increased their earned income (i.e., money from ticket sales) by 12%, even as public subsidy and private donations remained roughly the same. (whereas in 2015/16, earned income only constituted 53% of their total income, by 2017/18, earned income had risen to 56% of total income.)

During this same period, audience statistics fluctuated. The total number of attendances for these organizations dropped from 3.95 million to 2.61 million between the 2015/16 season and the 2016/17 season, but rose again to 3.61 million in the 2017/18 season. This broadly follows attendance trends across all Arts Council-funded organizations over the same period: there was a notable drop in attendance in the 2016/17 season across all NPOs (perhaps owing to economic insecurity surrounding the Brexit referendum and/or the general election?).

At the same time, the number of activities mounted by these organizations increased from 3,724 to 4,123 between the 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons, but fell to 4,054 in the 2017/18 season. But this only shows part of the picture. Over the same period, attendance at events for children and young people put on by these organizations increased by almost 23%.

And so, I looked at data for the Royal Opera House specifically for this period (if one can make any conclusions about the state of “grand” opera in London, it is surely by looking at this prestigious venue). Between 2015 and 2018, rates of attendance per performance rose at the ROH by 32%, even as the number of performances and net number of attendances fluctuated.

I also looked at statistics from other opera companies of a similar size around England for this pre-Covid period—which were widely varied. Glyndebourne’s touring operation, for example, decreased its number of performances during this period, but its net attendance remained rather constant and attendance rates for each performance actually increased by 10%.

Opera North’s net attendance, meanwhile, grew by 56% during this period, but it also nearly doubled its total number of performances, so attendance rates per performance fell somewhat. But because these are touring companies, fluctuations in attendance rates per performance can very easily be explained by changes in performance venues.

In other words, I could find little in the Arts Council’s publicly available data to suggest that there was “almost no growth in audience demand for traditionally staged ‘grand’ or large-scale opera.” The data is so fractured and piecemeal, with organizations dropping in and out of the Arts Council’s public data records, that it is hard to see any sweeping, long-term trends.

What I see in the open data is waves of growth and decline in large, London-based music organizations from year to year that don’t seem to be out of sync with broader trends. And with such dramatic political events rocking the English arts sector over the past six or seven years, it would be churlish to extrapolate any broad audience trends from this data.

One certainly wouldn’t make such blanket statements that there is “almost no growth” in audience demand for large-scale opera. I don’t know where the Arts Council drew this conclusion from, but it doesn’t seem to be from their own publicly-available data.

But I am not a statistician. But actual statisticians at the Times, provided with more complete data by the Arts Council, found that the biggest factors in slow audience growth for opera were Arts Council funding cuts.

Neil Fisher, the journalist who broke this story, describes the statistics as “dodgy,” built on a “self-fulfilling prophecy” whereby the Arts Council slashes opera funding, audience numbers decline as a result, and then the Arts Council uses that decline to justify further cuts.

He also revealed that the Arts Council had unfairly targeted the opera sector for cuts, misleading the public over its purported state of decline: audiences at non-operatic musical performances had, in fact, seen a much steeper drop in audience numbers.

But, in many ways, these statistics are beside the point. All this discussion on the relative merits of scale might prompt us to wonder whether a system in which small, newly founded arts organizations must compete with large, historied arts organizations for the same pot of arts funding can really ever be fair to anyone involved.

The system would seem unfair to those small, understaffed, emerging organizations who face disadvantage competing against well-staffed, established companies. But it is surely also unfair to these iconic, beloved cultural institutions who employ hundreds of creatives and play to thousands of people and yet are constantly at risk of losing long-standing funding to newcomers. Ultimately, no one winds up happy.

The Arts Council’s music portfolio includes such esteemed names as Glyndebourne, Wigmore Hall, the Hallé, and English Touring Opera. But these organizations are pitted against a range of smaller organizations, including arts education charities, local festivals, and (in one case) a commercial gym.

Naturally, all of these organizations are important to a vibrant arts ecology. But Arts Council England does little to vouchsafe the funding of either large opera companies like ENO and emerging groups like OperaUpClose, instead finding increasingly gladiatorial ways of making these (radically different) organizations battle it out for the same funding pool.

Thus, Arts Council England has created a bizarre system in which arts organizations of wildly varying sizes, with wildly varying agendas, and with wildly varying aesthetic, geographic, and financial scopes, to prove their relative worth. And so, the unfortunate situation arises in which the ENO is implicitly viewed as less valuable or less worthy of funding than smaller musical ventures with entirely different remits.

The Arts Council, however, seems to appreciate the flexibility of being able to defund large organizations in order to make way for smaller ones. Mera-

Julius Reubke

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 20:02:33 +0000

Frederich Julius Reubke (1834-58) is one of music’s saddest tales. Born in Hausneindorf, Germany, he was the son of an organ and piano builder. After the conclusion of his initial musical training, he moved to Berlin and the entered its conservatory. On the recommendation of conductor Hans von Bülow, Liszt agreed to teach the 21 year old student piano and composition. He moved to Weimar and lived in Liszt’s house. It was there that he composed his two major works, the Piano Sonata in B-flat minor, which he composed from December 1856 to March 1857, and the Sonata on the 94th Psalm in C minor, for organ which he finished a month later. He died from tuberculosis in June of 1857.

The piano sonata is rarely played despite its intrinsic musical worth. It is in three movements. It is a work of great promise unfilled by the scourge of the White Death.
1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante sostenuto
3. Allegro assai

The piece shows the great influence Liszt had on the very young composer. The great man was deeply affected by his pupil’s premature death. He wrote the following letter to the young man’s father.

Reubke was one of Liszt’s favourite pupils; after his death, Liszt wrote a letter of sympathy to Reubke’s father:

Truly no one could feel more deeply the loss which Art has suffered in your Julius, than the one who has followed with admiring sympathy his noble, constant, and successful strivings in these latter years, and who will ever bear his friendship faithfully in mind

Franz Liszt

Here is a recording of the sonata performed with great virtuosity by Till Fellner. Reubke Piano Sonata

The Sonata on the 94th Psalm in C minor for organ is regularly played and is considered one of the great pieces for solo organ of the Romantic repertoire. It was not performed until 1871 after it was prepared for publication by the composer’s brother who was also a pianist. It is in three movements with a Program. The Sonata is played by Richard Gowers on the organ of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Amazingly, considering the complexity of the piece given its many registration changes and combination settings, he played it from memory. A bravura performance. Sonata on the 94th Psalm in C minor

I. Grave – Larghetto – Allegro con fuoco – Grave
II. Adagio – Lento
III. Allegro – Più mosso – Allegro assai

The 94th Psalm

(Grave – Larghetto)
1 O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.
Herr Gott, des die Rache ist, erscheine.
2 Arise, thou Judge of the world: and reward the proud after their deserving.
Erhebe Dich, Du Richter der Welt: vergilt den Hoffärtigen, was sie verdienen.

(Allegro con fuoco)
3 Lord, how long shall the ungodly triumph?
Herr, wie lange sollen die Gottlosen prahlen?
6 They murder the widow, and the stranger: and put the fatherless to death.
Witwen und Fremdlinge erwürgen sie und töten die Weisen
7 And yet they say the Lord shall not see: neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.
und sagen: der Herr sieht es nicht an der Gott Jacobs achtet es nicht.

(Adagio)
17 If the Lord had not helped me: it had not failed but my soul had been put to silence.
Wo der Herr mir nicht hülfe, so läge meine Seele schier in der Stille.
19 In the multitude of sorrows that I had in my heart: thy comforts have refreshed my soul.
Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis in meinem Herzen, aber deine Tröstungen ergötzen meine Seele.

(Allegro)
22 But the Lord is my refuge: and my God is the strength of confidence.
Aber der Herr ist mein Hort und meine Zuversicht.
23 He shall recompense them their wickedness, and destroy them in their own malice.
Er wird ihnen Unrecht vergelten und sie um ihre Bosheit vertilgen.

The Golden Ring

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 13:35:58 +0000

Georg Solti’s recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle made between 1958 and 1966 has probably had more words written about it than any other classical recording. They are perhaps best. summed up by Gramophone Magazines comment that it is “The greatest of all the achievements in the history of the gramophone record”. It’s an amzing cast that no-one could afford to assemble for a studio recording today, it’s the Wiener Philharmoiker and, of course, Solti himself. But most opera lovers and certainly the audiophile ones will know all this. So why am I writing about it?

Two reasons. First, it’s being re-released in a new high definition version and, second, the Das Rheingold was the first full opera I ever heard. So let’s tell that srory first. It would have been 1973 and I had just started studying for my A levels (Pure maths, applied maths and physics FWIW). The elderly gentleman who taught me applied maths had a fantastic, if eclectic, record collection (you have to be a bit obsessive to have the complete Dorati Haydn symphonies recordings!) and what was, for the 1970s, a state of the art stereo system. He’d invite me over to listen and drink more gin than a 16 year old ought to. I was blown away by the Wagner recording; both the amazing performance from an unbeatable cast and orchestra and the extraordinary effects that John Culshaw achieved with his “soundstage” technique. I don’t know if, but for that, I would ever have developed an interest in opera. As it was a year or two later one of my first live operas was The Rhinegold at ENO (in English of course).

So what about this new release? So far only a disc of excerpts (The Golden Ring) has been released with Das Rheingold to come in December and the other operas next year. It’s in hybrid SACD format and it’s a complete remaster from the original tapes sampled at 24bit/192kHz and then processed using the latest technology for removing tape hiss and other unwanted artefacts. It’s also been given a wider frequency and dynamic range than previous CD releases. There is no multi track version just a 2.8GHz/1 bit stereo mix which I think is the right thing to have done. UMG/Decca have the technology to create a surround mix. They have used it on a number of older DVD re-issues but stereo is what Culshaw was engineering for and I’m glad they have stayed with his vision. There is also a 16bit/44.1kHZ CD quality track if you want to play it in the car perhaps.

The result is spectacularly good. There’s a clarity and detail in the orchestral playing that is as good as I have heard, even on SACD. The “soundstage” effects are even more spectacular and are heard to great effect in the Gods entry into Valhalla, in the forging scene and in the final collapse of everything at the end. It’s actually quite startling to listen to. For comparison I played the Gods entry into Valhalla on my 1997 CD version; the second of two previous tart ups for CD. The difference is really noticeable, especially at the point where Thor whumps something with his hammer and the orchestra goes into a bassy fff climax. The old version sounds like a record, the new unlike any recording I’ve heard before. It should probably carry a health warning for headphone users.

There’s a booklet with the physical disk with a lot of useful information on the restoration process as well as synopses of the scenes (all 76 minutes of them) on the disk and some interesting historic photos. There is also a downloadable digital version in MP3 and FLAC but not, of course, SACD format (and there’s no digital booklet). The only merit I can see in that is that it’s cheap and might be worth having if you don’t have either SACD capability or an earlier version of the CDs.

I’m looking forward to getting my paws on the complete operas. This is really good stuff.

Co-conspirator

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 11:00:36 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=swdQrtzPI7U

Donal Henahan in The New York Times:

The evening offered the opportunity not so much for music drama as for a feast of voices, as any work in the bel canto tradition should. And opportunity was seized by a cast that while hardly ideal top to bottom, was capable of splendid bursts. Marilyn Horne, as the Assyrian commander Arsace, for whom Semiramide lusts until he is revealed as her lost son, drew the evening’s longest ovations. This was not, of course, the vocally astounding Horne of a couple of decades ago, but an artist whose tone quality is parched but who still has the technique to deal with Rossini’s florid extravagances.

As Assur, Semiramide’s paramour and co-conspirator, Samuel Ramey was perfect. His ably rich and nimble bass, of all the evening’s voices, met Rossini’s technical demands most consistently. Lella Cuberli, a Texan who has earned a major European reputation in recent years, made her Met debut in the title role. An attractive woman who moves gracefully and with dramatic purpose, she portrayed Assur’s partner in regicide as a feline seductress who might have learned her wiles from Shaw’s Cleopatra. Her agile soprano, while not especially large or velvety, threw off sparks in the coloratura portions of “Bel raggio lusinghier.”

Other newcomers were Chris Merritt, the onetime City Opera tenor who has also made a major European career in the bel canto repertory, and Young Ok Shin, a South Korean soprano. Mr. Merritt’s robust but clumsily used tenor did little to enliven the dramatically inert role of the Indian prince Idreno. His flights into the falsetto range into which Rossini pushes tenors were successful in a squeaky way.

Happy 80th birthday soprano Luana DeVol.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCb92XlY3Z8

On this day in 1885 Massenet’s Le Cid premiered in Paris.

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

Birthday anniversaries of composer Carl Loewe (1796) and conductor Walter Weller (1939)

Everything sacred

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 15:00:25 +0000

We’ll hear Bach’s B-Minor Mass with a typically deluxe Herbert von Karajan “cast” headed by Kathleen Battle and Agnes Baltsa, paired with Arleen Augér in the title role (!) of Mayr’s San Luigi Gonzaga.

While it’s possible that Battle and Baltsa may have sung the Bach Mass earlier in their careers, I doubt they ever sang it again after this starry Salzburg Festival outing.

Johann Simon Mayr, best known for his Medea in Corinto, composed his oratorio sacra nearly 75 years after Bach completed his Mass. Mayr, though born in Germany, spent most of his life in Italy and is sometimes better know as Giovanni Simone Mayr. This shortish work for three soloists and chorus offers a rare opportunity to hear Augér and her co-stars Trudeliese Schmidt and Bernd Weikl (as the saint’s parents) perform florid bel canto-era music.

J. S. Bach: B-minor Mass

Kathleen Battle
Agnes Baltsa
Gösta Winbergh
José van Dam

Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan

Salzburg Festival
27 August 1985

Mayr: San Luigi Gonzaga

San Luigi: Arleen Augér
Donna Marta: Trudeliese Schmidt
Don Ferrante: Bernd Weikl

Conductor: Günther Wich

Bavarian Radio
7 April 1974
Broadcast

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

After highlighting seventeen extraordinary divas this month, Chris’s Cache will take a needed short break.

Watch for a pair of all-Wagner installments next month.

Judith in disguise

Tragic carpet ride

Cold November

Days of the diva

The Conqueror

Rising with The Crossing

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 13:31:20 +0000

As I understand it the genesis of this recent CD from Philadelphia choir The Crossing and their conductor Donald Nally was members emailing each other clips of recordings from live concerts to keep their morale up during lockdown. I guess in that respect it’s got something in common with this show. No surprise then that the album is quite eclectic. There’s around seventy minutes of music with twelve tracks in all.

It’s all good stuff but certain tracks stood out for me. The first is David Lang’s protect yourself from infection which sets instructions from the Philadelphia authorities during the Spanish flu epidemic; “Avoid people who are coughing or sneezing” etc. This is set relatively low and straightforwardly with the names of the victims weaving over and under the main line. It’s a bit grim but very interesting.

Also by Lang are two excerpts from his the national anthems. This is a multi-part work setting the rather banal sentiments that seem to be common to national anthems (so no “sang impur”). Here the main text is sung by low voices with the higher voices weaving fragments over the line like a sort of descant. There’s instrumental accompaniment here from the International Contemporary Ensemble (string quartet plus bass).

There are two parts too of Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostra marking a rare foray into non contemporary rep. This sounds every bit as good as choirs that specialise in renaissance and baroque rep. Accompaniment here is by Quicksilver (string quartet, organ and theorbo).

I also liked Ērik Ešenvalds’ Earth Teach Me Quiet (with John Green on keyboards and Edward Babcock on marimba) which is, perhaps predictably, meditative and rather lovely and Santa Ratniece’s setting of Ainu prayers Horo Horo Hata Hata. It’s very weird and quite disturbing with what sound like animal noises.

The tracks were all recorded live at various venues in the Philadelphia area and they are all clear and detailed. The album is available as a physical CD or in MP3 or FLAC (CD quality and 24 bit). Il listened to the hi-res version. There’s a comprehensive booklet (paper and digital) with full texts etc.

If you want to check out some of these tracks, and a lot more, there’s a wealth of good stuff on the choir’s Youtube channel, often with rather cute graphics.

Catalogue number: New Focus Recordings FCR281.

Bring on the night

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 11:00:10 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dZnKiKqh6w

On this day in 1948 Verdi’s Otello was the first opera to be telecast from the Metropolitan Opera.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bEwti_TWfk

Happy 80th birthday baritone Philippe Huttenlocher.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNsi9JLuH7s

Happy 76th birthday soprano Carole Farley.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkW0pioD_xk

A game of 3-D chess

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:21:10 +0000

“English National Opera is actually a superb organization, but the bottom line is that the public investment going into that organization has not been good value for money for quite a long time.”

Claire Mera-Nelson, director of music at Arts Council England, is blunt about the Council’s recent decision to partially defund one of England’s largest opera companies. She doesn’t sugar-coat the “immense tragedy for the individuals who would be affected by a change of the magnitude we’re suggesting.” However, the straight-talking former conservatoire boss is steadfast in one belief: “Opera needs a reset. We think there needs to be a fundamental shift in the ecology.”

The decision to defund the ENO came as part of a shock announcement on November 4 that the Arts Council England had decided to shake up its classical music funding, resulting in devastating cuts across the sector.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4ABTAZ5c8

Glyndebourne is set to lose 51.8% of its previous funding; Welsh National Opera is having its funding slashed by 35.9%; the Royal Opera House is losing 11.7% of its funding; the London Sinfonietta was having its funding slashed by 41%; the London Symphony and the Philharmonia will each lose out by 12%; and the Britten Sinfonia and the Psappha Ensemble will both cease to receive funding.

Arts Council England Chair, Sir Nicholas Serota gushed of the announcement: “As well as continuing our commitment to our many established and renowned cultural organizations, I am deeply proud of the support we will be giving to those new organizations which will help ignite creativity across the country.” The council’s CEO, Darren Henley, proudly declared that: “This investment program is fairer in its distribution, richer in its variety, and more widespread in its reach than ever before.”

The British public don’t seem to share their sentiments.

Indeed, many believe that Arts Council England has shown little sign of “continuing its commitment” to the country’s world-renowned classical music industry through these sweeping funding cuts.

ENO received an outpouring of support from all corners of British public life: actor Hugh Laurie, historian Simon Schama, classicist Mary Beard, comedian Rosie Jones, among others have tweeted to decry the Arts Council’s cuts.

A number of MPs from both sides of the aisle, Harriet Harman, Sir Robert Neill, Dame Margaret Hodge and Dame Caroline Dinenage among them, have slammed the cuts in parliament. Florence Eshalomi, member for Vauxhall and former regional member of the Arts Council, described the cuts as a “real-terms cut to London’s cultural sector” and expressed concerns over the impact of these cuts on arts access for disadvantaged Londoners.

The British media has been just as critical of the decision. In a searing 10 minute rant, radio host James O’Brien branded the cuts an “absolute travesty” for an organization that has “done so much to make opera accessible to people who would never be able to afford it.” The Guardian slammed cuts to the ENO as “devastating,” “heartbreaking,” and “dangerous for the cultural landscape of the country.”

The Evening Standard labelled the decision “carnage for the ENO.” The Times branded the cuts “insane.” Prospect Magazine accused the Arts Council of “harming the organizations it should help.” Even the World Socialist Website decried the “assault on culture” perpetuated by the Arts Council’s strategy.

But some of the most impassioned criticism has (naturally) come from the classical music sector itself.

Composer Thomas Adès labelled the Arts Council “apparatchiks” comparing them to “dictators ‘reimagining’ opera according to their own whims” (“Yes, I am comparing you to Stalin,” Adès clarified). Meanwhile, Dame Sarah Connolly called the defunding of the ENO an “outrage” and a “cynical act of vandalism.” Susan Bullock was yet more blunt: “it’s totally f****d.”

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=quDY-p0EDUM

Countless opera companies have released statements in solidarity with those who have lost funding. Notably, the Metropolitan Opera (who has collaborated with English National Opera on a number of productions and whose new Ring Cycle is now under threat because of the cuts) called on Arts Council England to reinstate the organization’s funding.

Meanwhile, Sir Bryn Terfel set up a petition calling for the Arts Council to “fund the ENO to continue their vital contribution to London’s global cultural status.” The petition currently has over 47,000 signatures.

The ENO itself has purportedly experienced a swell in applications to its under-35s program as a result of the announcement as young Londoners flock to the company for affordable to tickets to what may be its final season in the capital.

And, on Monday, November 14, a group of protesters, including members of Equity, the Musicians’ Union, BECTU, and the Independent Society of Musicians, marched on the Arts Council’s London office to demand that the funding cuts be reversed. A second demonstration took place on Tuesday, November 22^nd.

The Arts Council, it seems, is losing its comms battle over their restructuring of classical music funding—a situation not helped by a series of tone-deaf press releases sent out by gaffe-prone CEO Darren Henley.

Henley first received flack for glibly remarking that “ENO’s future is in their hands”—mere days after the organization that he heads made the decision to axe the company’s funding. He then garnered further outrage for suggesting that it was better to hear opera “in carparks […], in pubs, […] and on tablets” than in an opera house. (In response to this statement, ENO noted that they had, in fact, mounted drive-in opera screenings in car parks during the pandemic).

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyuP4Q3G-iw

From an outsider’s perspective, it looks as if the relationship between the English classical music sector and its primary public funder have all but broken down at a time when many of the nation’s most treasured musical institutions are set to financially implode.

So how did it all come to this?

That’s a difficult question to answer—primarily because it requires grappling with the Arts Council’s (rather labyrinthine) administrative structure.

There are broadly two models for public funding for the arts: the “ministerial” model and the “arm’s-length” model.

Most mainland European nations (France, Germany, Belgium etc.) use the ministerial model: there is a minister for arts and culture who is part of the elected government, and who directly allocates funding to various cultural organizations.

The U.K. and its colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.) generally take an arm’s-length approach. A Keynesian invention, this involves the government allocating a set amount of money to an independent body—an arts council—who then independently decide how to divvy it up among cultural organizations. The money for arts and culture is essentially kept at “arm’s length” from the government by being given to an independent middleman to deal with.

There are pros and cons to each model. The great benefit of the arm’s-length model is that it supposedly keeps decisions about arts funding separate from party politics. The arts cannot be co-opted by the ruling party to suit their political agenda because they are being managed by a purportedly apolitical funding body.

The benefit of the ministerial model is that the people have direct democratic say over the funding of the arts: they can vote based on cultural policy and place public pressure on ministers if their policies affect the arts in a negative way (like, for example, defunding a number of high-profile classical music organizations).

Critics of the arm’s-length model argue that it is problematic precisely because it is insulated from the processes of democracy. It amounts, essentially, to the partial privatization of arts funding decisions: these judgements are delegated to an opaque third party who is more accountable to itself than to the public that it serves.

For example, Stephen Hetherington, who oversaw the construction of the Lowry theater complex in Manchester, holds up the Arts Council as an example of “laissez-faire” policy making, in which “the state keeps its subject at a distance, unwilling to accede to the demands of a persistent appellant.”

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5e2f5OsPI

As far back as 1979, the iconoclast Raymond Williams, who spent three years as a member of the Arts Council, foresaw major problems with the arm’s-length model. He characterizes the arm’s-length model as a means of deliberately obscuring “directly traceable control” over arts funding decisions and accused its members of having “no discernible representative status.”

For Williams, the administrative structure of the Arts Council stifles democratic debate over arts funding and encourages “consensus by co-option” among its members: the system, in other words, is designed to give an air of democratic process while pressuring members into falling in line with funding decisions already made by staff bureaucrats (often in conjunction with the government).

When I spoke to Claire Mera-Nelson, she painted a complex picture of the Arts Council’s relationship with government. “We are apolitical,” she asserted: “We are not delivering the government’s strategy: we are delivering an interpretation of some aspects of that (because we are in receipt of public money) but we are also responding to what we see and hear about the needs of the cultural sector.”

However, she also noted that the Arts Council’s overarching funding allocation strategy had to be “agreed on” with the government. So, even if the government does not interfere with individual funding choices, it still plays a key role in setting the terms on which the Arts Council makes those decisions.

Mera-Nelson often suggests that the Arts Council’s “forensic” bird’s eye view of the arts sector allows it to better allocate funding in accordance with the government’s priorities. She compared her job to sitting in a ship’s crow’s nest. “I’m not steering the ship; I’m not the captain; but my job is to know what is coming at all times from every direction.”

She was also quick to assert that there were some avenues through which the public could have a say over the Arts Council’s decision-making process, despite the Council remaining separate from democratically elected government.

“People write to us all the time,” she says: “Sometimes that takes the form of a complaint. Sometimes it takes the form of a suggestion. People also invite us to meet them.” She also suggested that concerned citizens could write to their MPs, who could then meet with the Council on their behalf.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrJ2BQUpRXM

Yet, to me, the process through which the Arts Council allocates funding still seemed rather “top-down.”

There is an actual “council,” as well as a series of regional councils (the chairs of which are salaried employees). But there’s also executive board, with a CEO, two deputy CEOs, a CFO, two EDs, and a COO—all earning over a hundred-thousand pounds. And under that executive board, there are various specialized directors (i.e., director of music, director of dance, director of diversity, director of music education, etc.)

Members of the council are appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (a position currently held by Michelle Donelan) every four years; the CEO is appointed by Department of Culture, Media and Sport seemingly for an indefinite tenure (the current CEO, Darren Henley, has been in the role for eight straight years; his predecessor, Alan Davey, for seven).

And all of these public servants play some role in funding decisions. After funding applications have been received, each specialized director produces a report which assesses the applicants from their particular lens (so, for example, the director of music reviews the funding applications for their overall impact on the music sector).

From these reports, the various directors get together with the executive board to put forward various competing propositions for what the overall distribution of funding might look like. In a protracted process known as “national balancing,” the board and directors debate and refine these various propositions until they have a distribution of funding that aligns with their overarching funding allocation strategy.

Once the board and directors agree on an optimal distribution of funding, they send this proposal forward to the national and regional councils. Then, based on this proposal, the regional councils rule on each individual application under a million pounds. Every application over a million pounds is decided on by the national council, who have the final say in the overall distribution of funding.

Mera-Nelson describes this entire process as “like a game of 3-D chess or a Rubik’s cube” in its complexity. The Arts Council generally believes that this sustained process of multi-layer review allows its team to bring to bear multiple different lenses and perspectives on funding allocation. Through iterative review, the Arts Council can strike a compromise in its funding priorities and ideally reach a distribution of funds that pleases everyone.

But it struck me that the Arts Council’s decision-making process seemed to primarily consist of bureaucrats talking to other bureaucrats behind closed doors. Indeed, for all that the Arts Council’s funding allocation procedures purport to balance various competing perspectives on the arts, the terms of this compromise are almost entirely set by an unelected cabal of civil servants.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrraO2gHXpE

And no matter how “plugged in” these civil servants may claim to be to the cultural sector, their decisions may not necessarily align with the needs and desires of arts organizations and their audiences. The vocal public reaction to the defunding of the ENO is evidence that the Arts Council’s insular, technocratic funding process does not always meet the cultural needs of the population.

Thus, the Arts Council’s approach to funding allocation often results in unelected bureaucrats making rather prescriptive decisions about what art should receive funding and what art should not.

In this respect, Thomas Adès is right to compare the Arts Council to a single-party dictator—holding both the public and the arts sector hostage to its own intransigent political agenda under the threat of completely withdrawing funding.

While the arm’s-length model insulates arts funding from party politics, it instead exposes funding allocation to the personal political agendas of whichever well-connected plutocrats are chosen to run the Arts Council.

It is a system ripe for cronyism (indeed, John Maynard Keynes used the early Arts Council to forward the goals of his mates in the Bloomsbury set). Because it is a “non-departmental public body” (i.e., not part of the government), the Arts Council can be opaque about its funding decisions when it wants to be, avoiding the kind of public accountability that usually comes with elected office.

The government’s ministers, too, can claim plausible deniability for its decisions. At the same time, the council fulfils public functions, receives public funds, and essentially functions in lieu of an English arts and culture policy. Indeed, Stuart Andrew, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, intentionally distanced his office from the cuts in a speech to parliament: “The individual decisions were taken by the Arts Council [….] The decisions are therefore for the Arts Council’s to comment on.”

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl0aEz34A4o

When I was young, I used to watch an old BBC sitcom called Yes Minister about a hapless British cabinet minister who struggles to take control of his own portfolio from a hostile and dictatorial civil service. The central conceit of the show was that government policy was not determined by elected MPs, but by the shady troupe of bureaucrats who staff their ministries.

The Arts Council often seems like a real-life manifestation of this sitcom: the tail seems to be wagging the dog on English cultural policy.

In part 2 of this three-part story, later this week I examine the mechanisms of control which underpin the Arts Council’s approach to funding allocation and unpack the controversy over audience statistics and organizational evaluation that has brewed over the Arts Council’s funding cuts.

The princess bride

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:42:47 +0000

On this day in 1942 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.

ALTROCK

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 12:24:44 +0000

Saturday night’s show in the West End Micro Music Festival continued the theme of combining chamber music with other influences. This time it was rock; specifically NYC 80’s rock. It was really varied, stimulating and, at times, bordering on sensory overload. Brad Cherwin riffed with pre-recorded clarinet and electronics on a version of Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint to open the show. Then came what might have been my favourite bit. It was a version of Julia Wolfe’s East Broadway for electronics and toy piano. Watching the usually soft spoken, even demure, Nahre Sol go completely manic and beat the crap out of a toy piano was a blast.

There was more Julia Wolfe (Blue Dress for drums and cello?) and a David Lang arrangement of Lou Reed’s Heroin with Cormac Culkeen on vocals and a fairly large ensemble and more vocals with a version of Laurie Anderson’s Let X=X and It Tango. The final number was a killer version of David Lang’s Killer with Hee-Soo Yoon playing mad distorted violin while kicking a bass drum.

So, again, WEMMF hit the spot with an intriguing and (over) stimulating blend of rock, classical technique, minimalism and, frankly, sheer lunacy of a kind surely not heard before at Redeemer Lutheran! Great fun much enhanced by Billy Wong’s evocative lighting and Dave Grenon’s sound work.

The final concert is next Friday, also at Redeemer Lutheran, QUARTET PLUS PAPER V2 will feature, inter alia, a new multimedia work for pianist, clarinetist/visual artist, video projection and electronics composed and performed by Nahre Sol and Brad Cherwin.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Hannukwanzmas

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 12:43:13 +0000

So what’s on as we move into the holiday season?

Closing out November there’s Opera Revue at Castro’s this afternoon at 3pm and a couple of concerts on Wednesday. At lunchtime Wirth Prize winner Elisabeth Saint-Gelais and collaborative pianist Louise Pelletier present an intriguing looking programme in the RBA then at 7.30pm at Mazzoleni Hall the RCM’s Rebanks fellows are performing. Both are free but the Mazzoleni concert is ticketed and may be sold out.

December kicks off with a Soundstreams concert; Indigenous Voices, on the 1st at 8pm at Heliconoan Hall. On the 2nd Tapestry present A Joke Before the Gallows at 918 Bathurst and WEMMF have their closing concert at Redeemer Lutheran.

At Hart House Theatre you can catch Emily Dix’ adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier’s The Birds. That runs until December 10th.

The first part of the RCM’s 21C festival starts on December 6th with three concerts featuring the Kronos Quartet.

On the 12th at 7.30pm at Heliconian Hall Confluence Concerts Young Artistic Associate, violist Ryan Davis, curates a varied programme with guests Kevin Ahfat, Daniel Go, Bora Kim, Jonelle Sills and Suba Sankaran.

Then it’s Messiah season so here’s a round up of the usual suspects:

The TSO presents a big orchestra, big choir version with Gustavo Gimeno conducting and soloists Lauren Fagan – soprano, Stephanie Wake-Edwards – mezzo-soprano, Michael Colvin – tenor and Elliot Madore – baritone. December 17th to 21st at Roy Thomson Hall.
Tafelmusik, of course has the HIP version with Ivars taurins conducting and soloists Karina Gauvin – soprano, Christopher Lowrey – countertenor, Valerio Contaldo – tenor and Brett Polegato – baritone. December 16th and 17th at Koerner Hall.
The there’s my favourite; Soundstream’s Electric Messiah. This is at Crow’s Theatre from December 22nd to 24th. the music director is Apson directs the stage action.dam Scime and Rob Kem. Soloists are Lindsay McIntyre – soprano, Elizabeth Shepherd – mezzo and Andrew Adridge – bass. This is Messiah like you have never heard it before; including previous iterations of EM.

And finally a New Year thing, more or less. Toronto Operetta Theatre are presenting Die Fledermaus at the St. Lawrence Centre on Dec 28th, 30th and 31st.

Comme un doux trésor

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:45:41 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=E62l9NxueUc

Richard Aldrich in The New York Times:

Miss Farrar comes back to her native land as one of the American singers who have made name and fame for themselves abroad. It is not always easy to establish the same success in this country, and it may be that all she does will not meet with quite so unqualified acceptance as it has abroad. But she went far upon that road in what she accomplished last evening. She made a most agreeable impression in her impersonation of Juliette; for she is full of excellent instincts making for the best things as a lyric actress. She has a charming personality, a graceful and winning one, and her stage presence is alluring and with much of the girlishness of Juliette.

It has been said that by the time an actress has learned the art of denoting the passion and the ecstatic emotion of Juliette she could rarely still be in possession of the juvenile charm that the part needs. But Miss Farrar has it, and has at the same time skill and resource in stage craft. She is a singer of remarkable gifts. Her voice is a full and rich soprano, lyric in its nature and flexibility, yet rather darkly colored and with not a little of the dramatic quality and with a power of dramatic nuance that she uses in the main skillfully. Her singing is generally free and spontaneous in delivery, well phrased and well enunciated, yet she is not a wholly finished vocalist, and there were matters in her singing that could net meet with entire approbation, as in the duet in the fourth act, where she sang with a certain constraint.

There will be more interesting and more important music of the exhibition of her artistic powers before the season is much further advanced, but here was ample cause in her Juliette of last evening for the high expectations that have been raised for her in the musical public of New York.

Happy 81st birthday mezzo-soprano Susanne Marsee.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyvlI_1chXQ

The Excitement of Soccer

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 19:58:50 +0000

The US soccer team held England to a scoreless tie in an —— (fill in your own adjective) game that held those fans still awake to the backs of their seats at a FIFA World Cup 2022 match. That the entire world save the USA is enthralled by the game is the full measure of American exceptionalism.

One of the distinguishing feature of humans that sets us so far above the skill level of every other species is the hand with its fine motor coordination. Compare it to the foot which is not much use other than for standing, walking, running, or kicking. The list of skills the hand can perform is almost limitless. Here are just a few painting, sculpture, writing, playing a musical instrument, sign language, boxing, swinging a bat, catching a ball, throwing a pass, giving someone the finger, applying lipstick, cutting hair, opening a wine bottle or a can of beer, driving a vehicle (well, the foot helps here too), leading an orchestra, firing a gun, wielding a sword, doing a rectal exam, lots of actions too disgusting to enumerate, and on and on.

So what’s the favorite game of almost all the world? A game in which it’s illegal to use a player’s hands – the goalie excepted. As long as futbol is the focus of only a handful of Americans, mostly soccer moms, America’s leading position in the world is safe, no matter how many stupid things we do and no matter how long it takes us to count ballots. The Simpsons take on the game is below.

La gazza ladra

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 16:00:07 +0000

Rossini’s comic opera, recorded November 16 at the Theater an der Wien.

One + 2

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 15:44:35 +0000

The second concert in the West End Micro Music Festival took place at Redeemer Lutheran last night. Continuing the idea of “concept” concerts of chamber music this one teamed up composer and keyboardist Nahre Sol with jazz bassist Ben Finley and John Lee on Korean percussion and flute. Violinist Amy Hillis also appeared on one number called, if I recall correctly, “Mountain Goat”.

The basic set up was to take a number of pieces written by Nahre for various combinations of instruments and rearrange them for this trio. It was intriguing. Various forms of minimalism(1) combined with the sonorities of jazz bass, the very unusual sound of the Korean flute and some “different” percussion was really quite thought provoking. There was also a jazzier piece written by Ben and a drum solo, plus a fairly extended improvisation. The whole thing came with an atmospheric lighting plot.

So, the whole thing was a bit of an experiment but for the most part a very successful one. WEMMF continues tonight at 7.30pm at the same venue with ALTROCK which promises a blend of chamber music and 1980s New York underground rock.

fn1: I need to find a new set of descriptors for the various kinds of “minimalism”. It seems to have come to mean everything and nothing. A bit like “freedom” perhaps?

A star is porn

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 17:17:05 +0000

Usually romantic heartbreak, losing your bearing due to a swelled head or bad advice, losing one’s old friends and/or family while descending into substance abuse are standard plot points. In the end the brokenhearted but now wiser ingenue chooses love and domesticity over the glitter of Broadway or Hollywood.

This is exactly the plot of the new Off-Off Broadway musical Shooting Star which opened in late October. It tells the story of Taylor Trent, aspiring actor turned porn superstar “TNT”, as he negotiates the world of all-male pornography. Tropes familiar from “A Star is Born” to “Boogie Nights” are touched upon scene by scene.

However, the huge porn industry (billions of dollars earned every year) is in many ways the dirty little sister of the Hollywood star machine. The two mirror each other although one may not always want to acknowledge or validate the other… So why shouldn’t a gay porn musical follow the same storyline and share the same tropes as one about mainstream show business?

Shooting Star is the brainchild of Bavarian-born Florian Klein, also known as “Hans Berlin” in all-male videos. A veteran of gay pornography but with a background in acting and theater, Klein brings a wealth of personal insight to his book for the musical. The story is one he personally experienced as an L.A. transplant, a perennially struggling actor and cater waiter who turned to porn because the porn studios at least would book him for gigs and pay him.

Taylor Trent (the chiseled and vocally gifted Coleman Cummings) is a small-town Midwestern boy who comes to Los Angeles hoping to become a star. He is sent to Pride Studios by his landlord who wants to get Taylor a job so he can pay that back rent. His gorgeous bod and epic posterior gain him instantaneous stardom as well as much needed work and easy money.

On the porn set he quickly befriends porn mama and director Mr. Sue (talented Zuri Washington playing a character clearly modeled on Pamela Dore aka Mr. Pam) and meets a motley assortment of porn performers.

The gay for pay Butch O’Neal (Juan Danner), druggy slutty bottom twink JR Andrews (Spencer Petro), old school veteran “daddy” on the way down James Grant (Craig Winberry in the Norman Maine role), Tiger Black (Grant Evan) a shifty player in front of and behind the camera and, most importantly, the unattainable, commitment-phobic star top Jesse Apollo (Grant Latus in his NY debut). This bunch of marginalized misfits become a porn family.

However, the slippery and corrupt Tiger introduces the susceptible Taylor to New York City porn mogul Martin Lords (a double role for Danner who is clearly channeling Russian-born porn czar Michael Lucas down to the duck-lipped pout).

Taylor becomes a Lords exclusive but must reject his former Los Angeles posse. Taylor longs for Jesse Apollo, a talented but frustrated pop singer, but Apollo has been burned by mixing porn work and private romance and will not reciprocate his affections. Personal loneliness and the abusive Lords weigh down on Taylor who is introduced to drugs by Tiger.

Act II brings us to the Cocky Awards (clearly an analogue for the GayVN Awards, the Oscars of gay porn) at the Black Rooster Club where all the shit goes down and Taylor Trent must face losing himself and all he has gained while winning multiple industry awards.

What happens? Will Taylor and Jesse find true love? Are Taylor’s dreams of mainstream acting success destroyed by his porn fame? Will gay porn devour our hero and leave him for roadkill along the highway of broken dreams? You will have to travel to East Williamsburg in deepest Brooklyn (Montrose Ave. on the L subway line!) to find out!

The denouement is delivered through narration, which I always feel is a cop out. We do not see genitalia although we do get a good nude rear view of Taylor/Coleman Cummings’ shapely buttocks. The actors (male and female) basically strip down to jocks or tight undies and halter tops/bras. As the action heats up on the porn set, the stage lights go out and we just hear moaning and groaning.

Klein emphasizes and re-emphasizes that porn is work, not play and you must always keep a cool head. It’s business, not pleasure for the performers. It also can be isolating. Taylor finds that even though he is having sex with a lot of people, real emotional connection is hard to find, and his fame makes him lonely. People see the porn image and not the person.

One aspect that is not explored is the parallel world of escorting/sex work which provides a steadier income for porn performers. Nor does Klein go into the subject of safe vs. bareback sex involving the use or disuse of condoms in porn. AIDS is not a plot point.

The older character of James Grant who emerged in the adult industry of the 1990’s discusses how the internet has changed the landscape of the porn industry. Most porn consumers find a plethora of erotica free online on tube sites whereas in his pre-internet “Golden Days” (Grant’s big solo) people had to pay for video tapes in order to see their favorites in action.

The exact location of this porn opus is the gay bar 3 Dollar Bill at 260 Meserole Street – not exactly Broadway or Off-Broadway but exactly the right seedy/fabulous venue for a show of this type.

The Black Rooster Club is a large backroom/cabaret black box space with a proscenium stage which includes a convenient runway for performers to interact with the audience. There are cabaret tables along the runway and folding seats in the back. Director Dennis Corsi provides an immersive staging that keeps the action lively using the entire space including the sides and back of the auditorium.

Composer Thomas Zaufke and lyricist Erik Ransom (Grindr, the Opera) have provided a tuneful, upbeat pop score strong on power ballads and duets that is excellently performed by a uniformly vocally strong cast. These performers not only look good in jockstraps and thongs but can SINGGGG!

Coleman Cummings (Roger in the RENT tour) as Taylor/TNT has a soaring pop tenor and glistening six-pack abs. His angelic face can morph from farm boy to porn idol in a millisecond. Grant Evan as Tiger has a fascinatingly silky androgynous voice, Zuri Washington brings sassy power belting to Mr. Sue and Grant Latus’ seductive rock voice evokes Jesse Apollo’s cool/hot allure.

Spencer Petro has androgynous sexiness and lost boy fragility as the self-destructive JR Andrews. Juan Danner nails the sexual ambiguity underneath Butch’s macho façade and is properly repellent as the abusive Martin Lords. Craig Winberry brings a strong legit baritone, rugged good looks and hauntingly broken machismo to the tragic Grant. Maya Santiago and Brennon Stylez in multi-tasking ensemble roles also have rich, vibrant voices, strong dancing skills and hot bods.

Shooting Star had a sold-out Los Angeles run three years ago. (The New York premiere was produced by Bruce Michael Harris.) Yet the quiet and slow death of Off-Broadway means that in New York City it has been relegated to the outer boroughs. Off-Broadway was a trial ground for up-and-coming songwriters, lyricists, directors and performers who later would graduate to Broadway.

In the golden era of musical theater in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, there were off-Broadway venues and clubs which would do revues using fresh young talent where the likes of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt and Jerry Herman tried out new material and actors like Barbra Streisand, Tammy Grimes or Carol Channing would make waves and graduate to Broadway stardom.

However, gentrification and rising rental and running costs have made Off-Broadway a historical artifact. It costs nearly as much as Broadway and earns much less. Meanwhile both Broadway and what is left of Off-Broadway go for safe corporate products that cater to tourist audiences. Creativity is lost and new voices go unheard.

Shooting Star is a diverting evening full of fun new discoveries that deserves larger audiences and greater exposure. The story isn’t new but the youthful cast, vibrant voices and high energy performing (especially on a cold Monday night) keeps any hint of staleness at bay.

Shows continue through on December 18 so there’s still time to hop on that L train, grab a drink and catch some rising stars!

The Rake's Progress, Royal Academy of Music, 24 November 2022

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 16:53:02 +0000

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Tom Rakewell – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Anne Trulove – Cassandra Wright
Nick Shadow – Jacob Phillips
Father Trulove – Hovhannes Karapetyan
Sellem – Samuel Kibble
Baba the Turk – Rebecca Hart
Mother Goose – Georgia Mae Ellis
Keeper of the Madhouse – Duncan Stenhouse.

Frederic Wake-Walker (director)
Anna Jones (designs)
Charlotte Burton (lighting)
Ergo Phizmiz (collage, animation, AI image generation and illustration)
Lottie Bywater (illustration and animation)

Chorus
Royal Academy Sinfonia
Trevor Pinnock (conductor)

Blessed by varied approaches to its staging and performance, The Rake’s Progress seems to remain eternally itself (whatever that might mean, as a sometime Prince of Wales might have put it). Not unlike Stravinsky’s evergreen score, the cleverer and in many respects the more involving the more one knows it, everything may seem to come from somewhere else, and in a sense it does; but equally, in another sense, it does not. It makes for great theatre, almost no matter what, and Royal Academy Opera certainly achieved that, as indeed it did when I reviewed an earlier production here by John Ramster, seven years ago.

This new incarnation, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, relies heavily on eye-catching animation (Ergo Phizmiz) and images of present-day London from Downing Street to City towers to (presumably former) local authority buildings in their shadow. In one sense (yes, Janus-faced again), it was not always clear to me what it might all add up to. Another Rake placing London at its very heart, Simon McBurney’s as seen in Aix, for me penetrated deeper. For instance, with cardboard boxes—a very large one being Baba the Turk’s sedan chair—arriving alongside partygoers on Downing Street, I assumed we might have some sort of insight into more notorious parties still; yet instead, we headed somewhere else. The party had moved on—as, of course, so many Covid partygoers urged us to. Perhaps indeed that was the point, for earlier eighteenth-century costumes and Arcadia notwithstanding, this was a Rake for the age of Instagram, chorus members eager to snap pictures of Baba once she had emerged.

The odd thing was that Baba simply seemed to be a celebrity, with no evident reason for notoriety and certainly no beard: a sort of cross between Su Pollard and Lady Gaga. Again, perhaps that was the point. There were plenty of visual jokes, which kept a lively audience amused. And who is to say, after all, that one does not miss the point if one does not remain on the surface level? With boxes strewn across scenes, signs of transitory lives, and bubble wrap emerging ingeniously from them, that certainly did seem to be part, at least, of the point. The melancholy work of Bedlam inmates at the end, refashioning material that once had made up their party clothes, was an excellent touch.

Stravinsky points both ways, of course; so too, arguably, does Auden. Trevor Pinnock’s conducted a lively and generous account of the score, the Royal Academy Sinfonia sharp, pointed, yet far from inexpressive. Occasionally I missed greater numbers in the pit, but chamber forces had virtues of their own, not least in solo work, where reference to eighteenth-century music(s) in particular truly hit home. The orchestra contributed greatly to the gaiety of the occasion, but also to its poignancy, and not only in the final act. Lost moments of Cosi fan tutte, suspended in musical animation, made their fleeting point almost as strongly as the fatal games of the graveyard scene (for which special mention should go to the excellent harpsichordist Alexsander Ribeiro de Lara). The chorus, very much a collection of soloists, in gesture and musical line, who could yet come together as more than the sum of their parts, was not the least shining light of the evening’s entertainment.

Nor too were the young soloists, many of them doubtless heading towards careers in whatever remains of the opera business after our Downing Street masters and ‘Arts Council England’ have had their say. Like Stravinsky—Auden too—they may have to emigrate. Good luck to them, if so, if Brexit-Insel continues to treat them as seems likely. Ryan Vaughan Davies was a memorable Tom Rakewell, neglecting neither implied poignancy of situation nor irresistible allure of the moment. Whether one should sympathise or not is perhaps a moot point; it would, however, have been difficult to fail to do so.

Likewise, from other angles, the rest of the cast—who might, after all, on paper seem difficult to like, let alone to love. Cassandra Wright’s Anne combined cleanness and beauty of Mozartian line with the fleshed-out character of his heroines: a combination far from always achieved. Jacob Phillips’s dark and dangerous Nick Shadow involved us, like it or not. Hovhannes Karapetyan’s dark-voiced, seemingly generous-of-heart Father Trulove, Georgia Mae Ellis’s fun-loving yet formidable Mother Goose, and Rebecca Hart’s capricious yet, at the last, deeply human Baba the Turk all added novelty to their roles without departing unduly from what we (fancied we) already knew. Samuel Kibble’s lively Sellem and Duncan Stenhouse’s compassionate Keeper of the Madhouse rounded off a cast with no weak links and excellent interaction. Perhaps, indeed, that was the point.

The sense of dramatic thrust

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 16:27:42 +0000

In October, Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts had their strongest Giargiari vocal competition in memory. This month, they began their opera season with an Italian warhorse, La Traviata, which in the cast I saw showcased the first-place winner, Lydia Grindatto as Violetta. Operas to come this season are Don Pasquale (in February) and Don Giovanni (in April).

If the focus on such centrist Italian-language repertoire feels very conservative, it’s worth remembering that the primary goal of AVA is to prepare and polish young singers for careers in opera. On that level, Traviata proved a success.

Grindatto in particular confirmed the fine impression she had made at Giargiari with a charismatic, thoroughly inhabited performance that showed careful preparation in every aspect. All Violettas in my experience find their most natural fit in one of the opera’s three acts. For Grindatto, it’s Act II, where her high-octane emotionalism and shining upper-middle register come into focus.

In a bigger house, a bit more vocal heft might be needed, but she scaled the voice skillfully so that when it really opened up, one had the sense of dramatic thrust. In Act I, she negotiated the coloratura honorably—even gesturing at the trills in “Sempre libera” which too often go unmarked—but it lacked the ultimate sense of easy abandon; she was very touching in Act III, but I wanted more intimacy and fragility—we didn’t really get a true pianissimo (nor from virtually anyone else; more on that later).

On balance: this was a very significant achievement; I have every reason to think Grindatto will be a successful major-theater Violetta.

Luke Norvell (Alfredo) and Kevin Godínez (Giorgio) also confirmed the good impressions they made at Giargiari and in other AVA performances. Norvell, now a second-year, has made notable strides since I first heard him. His lambent juicy-lyric tenor has greater ease at the top now, and he seems more confident and relaxed on stage.

His upper-middle range, where much of this role (and many others) lies, is especially beautiful. His Italian diction and style could use more polish, but all signs are good. Germont père is probably a half-size too big for Godínez at this point, and it’s not a role that allows his exceptional stage charm to come through, but it was solidly and idiomatically sung.

In supporting roles, several singers stood out—Peter Barber as Douphol, Angel Raii Gomez (another Giargiari winner) as Gastone, and especially Alla Yarosh, who was vocally and dramatically an uncommonly effective Annina.

I wish all these performances had been better served by the production and conductor. Director Dorothy Danner faced the on-going challenge of AVA’s very small stage, but except for a few attractive tableaux, the production looked awkward and without any significant dramatic ideas. A pantomime that began the opera made no sense, and having Violetta undress in the middle of her living room was one gaucherie among several.

AVA’s veteran maestro Christofer Macatsoris is a lionized figure to many, but for me his conducting—which has always emphasized virility over lyricism—has grown alarmingly crude over time. Here, there were some limited payoffs in his brute force: the opening music for both party sequences had an exciting pulse.

But against this, the tempi were too often rushed and phrase endings blunted; I didn’t hear a true pianissimo note all evening. The orchestra—often quite good here—sounded off-form. AVA’s singers aspiring to major careers deserve better.

Photos: Morgan Horell

Trilogy

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 16:12:29 +0000

This year’s fall offering from UoT Opera is three short comic operas presented at the MacMillan Theatre in productions by Michael Patrick Albano. The first is Paul Hindemith’s Hin und Züruck; a twelve minute musical joke which manages to send up a lot of operatic conventions in a very short time. It’s a musical and dramatic palindrome. A man discovers his wife has a lover and shoots her. The paramedics arrive and attempt to revive her. In this staging this includes a giant syringe and no prizes for guessing where that goes. The remorseful husband shoots himself. An angel (Ben Done) appears and explains that the usual laws of physics don’t apply in opera and the entire plot and score is replayed backwards. It was played effectively deadpan by Cassandra Amorim and Lyndon Ladeur while Jordana Goddard, as the elderly deaf aunt, sat through the whole thing entirely oblivious. Good fun.

Offenbach’s Monsieur Choufleuri is longer and rather more vocally demanding. It too is a parody of opera, specifically Bellini. I’m sure I could hear echoes of I Puritani. Here Monsieur Choufleuri is a nouveau riche Parisien eager to make his mark on society by staging a musical soirée including the three greatest singers of the day. Unfortunately they all cancel so Choufleuri, his daughter and her poor, therefore unacceptable to papa, amour who happens to be both a bassoon player in the orchestra at L’Opéra and, fortuitously, a tenor, save the day by impersonating the three stars. Cue an exceedingly silly Italian aria in which the cruel father attempts to prevent his daughter marrying his enemy but has to concede in the end. So lots of flashy coloratura for the daughter, very well sung by Emily Rocha with highly effective support from Ben Done as the boyfriend and Jun Lam Hui as Choufleuri. The whole thing is held together by the butler who delivers an English narration created by Michael Patrick. He/she is very nicely played by Nathania-Rose Chan who gets off, in a suitably gender bending way, with George Sand at the end. Absolutely everybody is at this party my dears.

After the interval the stage is transformed into a 1950s TV set for Douglas Moore’s Gallantry; a satire on soap operas and their accompanying commercials. It’s brilliantly MC’d by Elita Gagner who does a really good line in cheesy ads for soap and floor wax. There’s a very funny dance ad for Billy Boy Wax, choreographed by Anna Theodosakis and wonderfully executed by Megan Jones, Rayleigh Becker, Dascha Tereschenko and Taline Yeremian. The main plot concerns a married surgeon who is making advances to his nurse. It gets complicated when their next patient turns out to be the nurse’s fiancé. There are lots of sight gags including a disturbing amount of intestine and some very funny acting and solid singing from Ayana Platt as the nurse, James Coole-Stevenson as the surgeon and Burak Yaman as the fiancé. It’s not as vocally flashy as the Offenbach but it;’s very enjoyable.

Sandra Horst conducted all three operas with the musicians of the UoT music faculty in the pit. The stage pit balance was excellent and everything stayed coherent even during the Feydeau like comings and goings in the Offenbach.

So UoT Opera has emerged from its COVID bunker with a bang. This show is lots of fun and just the thing on a cold, foggy November night. There are three more performances tonight through Sunday with tonight and Sunday having slightly different casts.

Photos courtesy of UoT Opera.

The lady came with an excellent reputation

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 07:10:22 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaiiCEtlZ8g

Henry E. Krehbiel in the Tribune:

Among the singers the interest centered chiefly in Fräulein Lehmann, who filled the title role. The lady came with an excellent reputation and sustained it in her acting as well as her singing. Her tall stature and almost military bearing were calculated to produce an effect of surprise which had to be overcome before the audience were ready to enter into the feeling which she infused into the part. To the eye she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy is tempted to paint as the ideal heroine of Bizet’s opera, and it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness which the public are inclined to associate with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this she deviated from Madame Hauk’s impersonation and came nearer to that of Madame Trebelli. In her musical performance, however, she surpassed both of these experienced and ripe artists. Her voice is true, flexible, and ringing, and of most telling quality. She sings with perfect ease and her high notes have a fairly electrifying timbre and power. She has the ability to fill it with the passionate expression and warmth of color which the music of the part often calls for, and utilizes this ability with rare judiciousness and taste. In every respect her Carmen is a unique creation and her art as exhibited in it realizes expectation to the full.

Happy 77th birthday baritone Håkan Hagegård.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lBXTWSKBIA

Happy 72nd birthday soprano Yvonne Kenny.

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

Birthday anniversary of librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni (1824); sopranos Adelaide Saraceni (1895) and Adele Kern (1901); composer Virgil Thomson (1896) and conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire (1940).

When my ship comes in

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 16:58:06 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPYWOd5pJLs

On this day in 1938 tenor Jussi Bjoerling made his Met debut as Rodolfo. Mafalda Favero also made her debut as Mimi.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OajZ9SCQO8

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXY3IoMWPfw

Happy 83rd birthday soprano Maria Chiara.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzngA1_hj0w

Birthday anniversaries of soprano Lilli Lehmann (1848). composer Scott Joplin (1868), baritone Marcos Redondo (1893), tenor René Maison (1895) and bass Norman Walker (1907).

Happy Thanksgiving to US members of the cher public!

Gerstein - Busoni and Liszt, 23 November 2022

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 16:37:57 +0000

Wigmore Hall

Busoni: Elegien, BV 249: ‘Nach der Wendung’; Sonatina seconda, BV 259; Berceuse, BV 252; Sonatina no.6 super Carmen, BV 284; Toccata, BV 287
Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante, S 139

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

This was a fascinating first instalment to Kirill Gerstein’s three-artist ‘Busoni and his World’ Wigmore Hall residence. Gerstein more than earned his fee, with a full first half of works by Busoni, gently and intelligently introduced from the platform, followed by all twelve of Liszt’s Transcendental Studies. He offered us much to ponder, much to be thrilled by, and much to look forward to later in the season.

‘Nach der Wendung’, first of the Elegies, takes its leave, as you might expect, from late Liszt. A questing—it is almost impossible not to say ‘Faustian’—piece, it received a duly questing performance. Some writing is more tonal than other; Gerstein clearly communicated harmony and its implications. The quiet radicalism of its passage was conveyed with acute intelligence, whether it wandered into the clouds or down into the rumbling bass. Its introverted vision paved the way nicely for the Sonatina seconda. ‘Tonal oder Atonal?’ as Schoenberg would ask in the first of his Three Satires. Yes, no, or maybe, should probably have been the answer. Its opening bass line here strongly took a cue from Liszt, dissolving into the performing air, floating, resolidifying, and so on. Hearing material that would later find its way into Doktor Faust without the opera’s formal classicism is a fascinating experience. One senses a logic, even if one cannot define it.

The Berceuse, published separately, is the final Elegie. Gerstein took it a little faster than often one hears it: rather, I think, to its advantage. Built and moulded to considerable emotional effect, it emerged more richly ambiguous than ever. The Carmen-Fantasy, another so-called sonatina, brought virtuosity, even hyper-virtuosity, more strongly to the fore. Layers of music, perhaps of meta-music too, were revealed and corroded, all within the Lisztian model of the paraphrase. Gerstein captured extremely well the piece’s ruminative quality: the composer, post-opera, extemporising on its themes. It was a turbulent, even violent necromancy we heard in the Toccata, its ‘advanced’ language no bar to high Lisztian grandiloquence. One gained an impression of multiple prisms, through music one could never quite pin down. The music from—or ‘to’?—Doktor Faust(related to the strange character, if one may call her that, of the Duchess of Parma) sounded as darkly elegiac and as dangerously sulphuric as I can recall.

Brighter primary colours were to be heard from the off in Liszt himself. The opening Prelude seemed to strip away a gauze curtain we had not realised was there. Its virtuosic thrills provided quite the curtain-raiser. ‘Paysage’ offered seductive contrast, phrases beautifully leaned into. A Chopinesque—especially in the cadenzas—‘Mazeppa’ well illustrated Gerstein’s fine command of Lisztian rhetoric: foreign to our more cynical age in many ways, and yet relished for what it is. That quality of big-heartedness took us through pieces such as the ‘Vision’ and ‘Eroica’, vividly brought to life in themselves, yet also part of a greater trajectory. So eager can we sometimes be to defend Liszt against his cultivated despisers, we can forget how fine a thing it is simply, or even not so simply, to love his music. Not that there was anything sentimental to this performance; we loved the music through Gerstein’s intellectual as well as technical command. His turning of corners, as if revealing new vistas, occasionally brought Mahler to mind. Gerstein could charm too, as in ‘Ricordanza’. A bravura tenth study brought us to the flower-like harmonic blooming of ‘Harmonies du soir’, whose darker currents and sheer strangeness—surely attractive to Busoni—were certainly not undersold. The final study, ‘Chasse-neige’ was finely etched, seemingly according to a palette created before our ears.

The encore was Bach-Busoni: ‘Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein’. Busoni marks it ‘Molto scorrevole, ma distintamente’. That is unquestionably what we heard.

Homage to Viardot

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 15:24:00 +0000

Yesterday the Ensemble Studio put on a really nicely curated tribute to Pauline Viardot. Viardot was a singer, pianist, composer and muse who was enormously influential in music circles in paris in the middle years of the 19th century. She came from a famous musical family and was the younger sister of Maria Malibran. Her own work is little performed today although the Royal Conservatory did her Cendrillon in 2016.

Yesterday’s programme consisted of songs, and a piano piece by Viardot interspersed with works by composers she influenced; Rossini, Gounod and Gluck (by way of Berlioz). The Viardot songs are pleasant enough and the “Habanera” from the 6 Mélodies et une havanaise gave Ariane Cossette and Midori Marsh a chance to do some pretty duetting. There were more Viardot songs from Alex Halliday, Jonah Spungin, Alex hetherington and Ariane again as well as some virtuosic work on the piano from Brian Cho. Queen Hezumuryango also gave us a dramatic aria from Gounod’s little performed opera Sapho.

Perhaps ironically though the most interesting parts of the show were from Viardot’s repertoire as a singer. Midori Marsh was really quite spectacular (if maybe a bit over the top) in “Una voce poco fa”. Better still, Alex Hetherington resurrected Viardot’s role in Berlioz’ reworking of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurdiice. Specifically she sang “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” with the ornaments etc as marked in Viardot’s own score. There’s a tendency nowadays to play down ornamentation, cadenzas etc and it’s good to hear how the music was probably originally done. Odd how the “composer’s original intention” crowd don’t seem to care about it!

All of this was linked together by an informative and witty commentary from Alex and Queen and polished off with the last few moments of Cendrillon staged by Anna Theodakis with Midori as La Fée and Ariane as Cenfrillon.

Photo credits: Karen E. Reeves

Andsnes - Vustin, Janáček, Silvestrov, Beethoven, and Dvořak, 21 November 2022

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 12:00:23 +0000

Wigmore Hall

Aleksandr Vustin: Lamento
Janáček: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’
Valentin Silvestrov: Bagatelle, op.1 no.3
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.31 in A-flat major, op.110
Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

Leif Ove Andsnes’s performances are always very well worth hearing; this programme, mixing the familiar and unfamiliar was no exception. The first half offered short pieces by Russian and Ukrainian composers, either side of Janáček’s tribute to František Pavlík, a worker killed demonstrating for a Czech university in Brno, followed by Beethoven’s penultimate sonata: however one considers it, and however clichéd this may sound, a sublime song from and to the human spirit and what it might yet achieve.

Aleksandr Vustin, invited by Andsnes in 2019 to his Rosendal Chamber Festival, in what was only Vustin’s second journey outside Russia, died the following year, an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic. His Lamento, itself inspired by the funeral of a friend and its sounds, is tonal, yet moves in often surprising ways. Opening two-part left-hand writing soon has a right-hand melody soar above—a recollection, I learned later, of a bird that began to sing at the funeral and would not stop. It made for an interesting prelude to Janáček’s Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’, its first movement in Andsnes’s performance both precise and suggestive: like work and composer, one might say. Proudly turbulent in its post-Romanticism, passages of its music seemed almost to acquire proto-filmic character, perhaps in slow motion, in remembrance. The composer’s profound national pride sang forth still more directly in the second movement, the stubbornness of his writing, not least in sheer persistence of figures, transmuted once more into a declaration of spirit, made with a fine sense of musical drama.

One of Valentin Silvestrov’s Bagatellesoffered cool contrast, behaving (at least I fancied) not entirely unlike Vustin’s piece. The quiet dignity of Andsnes’s performance again made for an interesting prelude to a sonata, this time Beethoven’s in A-flat major, op.110. Its first movement sang with a simplicity both fragile and strong. Welcome, one might say, to late Beethoven. Fractures were often only implied; this was not the most modernist of accounts, nor was there any reason it should be. Yet implied they were. The turn to the minor was communicated with ineffable sadness, yet never mawkishness. Again, this was Beethoven. The scherzo’s gruff humour did not attempt to conceal the difficulties of the trio. The overriding impression was of shocking concision. Mournful dignity characterised Beethoven’s ‘Klagender Gesang’ in the finale, the fugue first offering release andintensification, its voicing to die for: beautiful, no doubt, yet above all truthful. Contrast and complement of material registered and developed throughout, the inverted fugue enabling yet in no sense guaranteeing ultimate triumph. There was, rightly, no easy path.

The second half was given to Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85: new, I confess to me, and quite a discovery. Andsnes had explored them during lockdown, welcoming the discovery of ‘life-affirming music of the greatest invention and imagination’. Dvořák can occasionally pale alongside Janáček, but not here. This work emerged as a Schumannesque collection, played with affection, characterisation, and acute understanding. Indeed, the scene-setting of its first piece, ‘Night journey’ immediately brought Schumann to mind: not that it sounded ‘like’ Schumann, but in terms of the role it played in introduction, and its vein of fantasy. Andsnes’s communication of the charm and Romantic snares of this night was finely judged indeed. A wonderful procession of characters, scenes, sketches in a strong sense ensued: not unlike a good novel, or perhaps better, a collection of short stories. ‘At the old castle’ haunted. A vigorous ‘Furiant’ put Andsnes’s fingers duly through their paces. Dances of all kinds, goblins and all, invited us in—not always without danger. Exuberance and introspection informed one another across more elevated canvases and earthier songs. Andsnes’s cantabile in the ‘Serenade’ was just the thing, as was his Lisztian grandiloquence in ‘At a hero’s grave’. Fascinating—and nourishing.

Persian Melodies – not really a review

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 20:31:30 +0000

I’ve been enjoying some of the fusions of classical Western and Persian music created by people like Afarin Mansouri so I took advantage of a free concert at the Four Seasons Centre to take in some actual Persian classical music. It was a mixed bag of traditional, composed and improvised music and included both songs and instrumentals. It was interesting and enjoyable.

There were three musicians, all relatively recent newcomers to Canada and largely trained in Iran. Padideh Ahrarnejad played the tar; which is a plucked string instrument somewhat like a lute. Academic and musician Ali Massoudi accompanied on tombak which is a drum played with the fingers and capable of a rather remarkable range of sounds. The vocal numbers were sung by Mahnaz Raad.

I am, of course, no expert on this music. To be honest I can’t even tell whether the songs were sung in classical Persian or Farsi (I suspect some of each). I do though have a bit of a background in the traditional folk music of Great Britain and t seems to me that there are parallels especially in the vocals. The voice is not “supported” and seems to be quite free in how it can play with pitch and rhythm. The tar too is not limited to strict semi-tone intervals with some use of quarter tones. There’s kind of a weird sonic consonance between the sung language (or at least one of them) with Scots Gaelic. Any readers fluent in both Classical Persian and Gaelic please feel free to comment!

There wasn’t much in the way of introduction and though a set list was provided most of the time several numbers were run together so it was really hard to figure out where one was in the programme so I can’t really comment on individual pieces.

All that said, and much not said, I think that I came away with some kind of feel for the sound world of this music and for the considerable skills of the performers. I would be more than willing to listen to more.

Photo Credit: Karen E. Reeves

Unhappy ‘Hours’

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 17:16:25 +0000

A while back when I first heard that the Met had commissioned an opera based on The Hours, I was surprised. In the early 1990s I began bearing about Michael Cunningham, but I hadn’t read anything of his until I picked up Flesh and Blood, I raced through the gay potboiler unimpressed and soon after met him and his partner at a small dinner party.

Soon after, he was being talked about by everyone, thanks to The Hours. I checked the novel out of the library and remember disliking the Virginia Woolf sections but they worked well enough with the other two threads. I never understood though what all the fuss (Pulitzer Prize, PEN/Faulkner Award) was about.

My Meryl Streep allergy persuaded me to skip the 2002 Stephen Daldry film although I love Julianne Moore and respect Nicole Kidman. I finally watched it on DVD 10 days ago, and my confusion about The Hours becoming an opera increased, especially as it is explicitly based on both the novel and the film.

I recalled that the book worked rather well as it featured a compelling thematic link between its three threads: Virginia Woolf struggles with the composition of her novel Mrs. Dalloway as intimations of her later suicide invade her world; Laura Brown reads Mrs. Dalloway while struggling with her dissatisfaction as a housewife and mother and briefly considers suicide: Clarissa Vaughan mirrors Woolf’s Mrs. (Clarissa) Dalloway by planning a party, one to celebrate her friend Richard’s literary prize though he, ill with AIDS, kills himself before the party.

The film failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s breathlessly awaited, star-diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.

During its over three-hour running time, I often thought that The Hours might have worked much better as a smaller one that focused more intently on the three women and how their stories intersected. The Met’s commission clearly pushed Puts and Pierce to create an opera with 20 singing roles and a large anonymous chorus.

In expanding an intimate book into something BIG AND IMPORTANT, their work ended up feeling both dishonest (for example, its egregiously sentimental let’s-all-hold-hands final trio which admittedly was quite beautiful) and bloated.

The biggest problem with both the film and the opera is Clarissa, their very dull protagonist. Though both Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato are superstars, the Met’s The Hours felt very much like Renée Fleming’s opera and Clarissa its most important focus. Unfortunately, her character’s journey, embodied by the returning Fleming at her blankest/blandest, proved utterly uninvolving. Clarissa’s all-consuming codependent relationship with Richard appears to be based on a very brief summer affair more than 30 years earlier.

Why a gay woman (shown living with her partner, played by Denyce Graves) has remained obsessed with a gay man (whose ex-lover Louis appears briefly, winningly incarnated by William Burden) is never made clear. One advance over the film devised by Pierce though was to create a flashback to that magic summer giving Fleming, Burden and Kyle Ketelsen as the dying poet an ecstatic trio of reminiscence.

In the second act, Puts’s lovely duets and trios did much to transform the evening. The long first act contains scads of plodding exposition that occasioned most of my watch-consulting. While Puts doesn’t do much to evoke Woolf’s 1920s or Clarissa’s late 1990s, he goes full 1950s Hollywood with Laura’s entrance, a welcome change of pace from Clarissa and Virginia’s dreary monologues which were largely incomprehensible due to Fleming and DiDonato’s cloudy diction.

O’Hara, despite her role’s high tessitura, proved a miracle of verbal clarity which did a lot to make her Laura the most moving of the three central characters.

DiDonato’s Virginia emerged as a bundle of frustrating contractions. She sought to convey Woolf’s mental illness by odd looks and jerky physical moment, yet she alone injected a bit of humor into the generally grim proceedings. Given that the leading roles were expressly written for the three divas, it was surprising that the mezzo so often sounded strained with many high notes veering very sharp. That said, DiDonato exceled in her duets with O’Hara, particularly in the ravishing sequence with female chorus that opens the second act.

https://

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRu4KaOAFxk

On the other hand, nearly-64-years-old-but-still-in-pretty-good-voice Fleming, once she warmed up, shone in writing that sounded exactly what you’d expect for music written for nearly-64-years-old-but-still-in-pretty-good-voice Fleming. Not that it wasn’t sometimes challenging as there were moments that clearly pushed her to her limits including that “summer memories” trio.

Given the opera’s extravagantly explicit prima donna provenance, anyone else in the large cast was hard-pressed to make much of a mark, particularly was their roles are so insubstantial. Brandon Cedel’s handsome, hearty husband to O’Hara stood out, but the usually forthright Sean Panikkar sounded distressingly curdled.

That John Holiday made any impression at all in his glancing roles as Man Under the Bridge and Hotel Clerk was a testament to his glowing countertenor. Kathleen Kim returned, shrill as ever as Barbara the flirty florist and Mrs. Latch. A lushly expressive Stacy D’Eramo made much of the underwritten role of Kitty, but her brief reappearance as Vanessa Bell went for nothing.

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//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOawl9-TQg

The marvelous Ketelsen has been cruelly underused by the Met. While it was good to see him again, Richard’s two brief appearances (with the bass-baritone looking far too healthy) gave him little to work with and the scene leading to his suicide was so poorly directed that both he and Fleming made a regrettably muted impact.

Phellem McDermott may have had his hands full just keeping three cluttered stories on track, however, the revelation that Laura is the dead Richard’s mother was handled especially poorly. The banal production design appeared off-puttingly cheap, despite its likely hefty price tag. Tom Pye’s five or six slight rooms occupied just the bottom third of the stage picture, while the rest consisted of flowing white sheers apparently from Target. Choreography by Annie-B Parson in her Met debut stood out mostly as completely unnecessary, just another stab at filling up the stage.

And what of Yannick Nézét-Seguin, just now making his first appearance at the Met a full two months into the season? He successfully kept his large and varied forces together and didn’t drown out his stellar trio of ladies. Otherwise, he didn’t put much of a personal stamp on the score, though he clearly reveled in the lush ensembles that occasionally dot the attenuated score.

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//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaZzsS-THRo

It happens rarely these days, but the Met was filled to capacity last night with a buzzing, snazzy crowd that greeted the new work with both rapt attention and rousing ovations. A very similar audience came for and cheered Nico Muhly’s Marnie, which fizzled and sank. I did wonder how a less psyched-up, publicity-blitzed audience—especially one that hasn’t done a lot of homework beforehand—will welcome these long, unsatisfying Hours as they tick by through mid-December and on an HD transmission on December 10.

Photos: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

Marchons, marchons!

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 14:41:18 +0000

On this day in 1940 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with La Fille du Régiment, starring Lily Pons and featuring the “Casablanca” finale!

The Hours

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 22:00:58 +0000

The world premiere of Kevin Puts‘ new opera opens at the Met tonight.

Figures of Fate: Ernani at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 20:44:54 +0000

Verdi – Ernani

Ernani – Francesco Meli
Don Carlo – Roberto Frontali
Don Ruy Gomez de Silva – Vitalij Kowlajow
Elvira – María José Siri
Giovanna – Xenia Tziouvaras
Don Riccardo – Joseph Dahdah
Jago – Davide Piva

Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino / James Conlon.
Stage director – Leo Muscato.

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro del Maggio, Florence, Italy. Sunday, November 20th, 2022.

This new production of Ernani formed the central point of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino’s fall season, dedicated to Verdi. While the theatre of the Maggio is currently being remodelled – to open next month with Don Carlo – the performances of Ernani took place in the Sala Zubin Mehta, part of the handsome complex of the Maggio. The Sala Mehta is a symphonic hall, though still equipped with a pit, which does limit the technical capacities of the production team.

That said, Leo Muscato and his team have given us an extremely vivid and technically proficient staging, which provided us with an evening that had clearly been conceived as a coherent whole, from start to finish. The sets, by Federica Parolini, consist of a series of wood panel walls that can be pushed around into a number of flexible formations, in order to provide us with differing views on the action. They also contain a number of doors, through which the chorus was able to emerge in simultaneous formation. Throughout the evening, shadowy hooded figures were present. They provided both the ability to manipulate the walls by pushing and pulling them into formation, but also gave us a clue of what was to happen. Indeed, the significance of these figures became apparent as Silva reappeared at the end, Commendatore-like, surrounded by these figures of fate. This was a significant strength of Muscato’s staging in that he gave us a coherent theatrical argument from start to finish.

The plot of Ernani can certainly be confusing to first-times, with mortal enemies becoming friends, and then back again. It’s a shame, then, that my neighbours in the row behind me didn’t stop talking throughout the show, disturbing everyone around them, despite the clarity of Muscato’s storytelling. Personenregie did contain a considerable amount of standing and delivering, not inappropriate for a bodice-ripping romp such as this. Yet there was a fluency to Muscato’s direction that worked. The costumes (Silvia Aymonino) initially looked somewhat California gold rush, but later were more traditional nineteenth-century operatic garb. As a result, this was an efficient framework for the action that had clearly been thought through and was well rehearsed.

Musically, this evening reflected the excellent standards one has come to expect from this house. The performance was led by James Conlon, one of the most experienced operatic conductors around, and that experience was evident in his superb support of the singers and the flexible elasticity he brought to his tempi. The cast also added some attractive embellishments to the line as we progressed through the evening. Conlon’s tempi were founded on that ideal combination of rhythmic propulsion embedded under long, flowing lines. In the terrifically immediate acoustic of the Sala Mehta, the effect was visceral, overtaking the senses and pulling the listener in – which is why I was so exasperated with the chatty neighbours. The Maggio orchestra was on tremendous form – the quality of the playing outstanding, absolutely unanimous in sharp attack. The same goes for the Maggio chorus, prepared by Lorenzo Fratini. The tenors and basses sang with irresistible lustiness, the energy the communicated was utterly contagious – I was quite tempted to join in with their opening drinking chorus. It’s a bit of a shame they didn’t encore ‘Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia’, though, I’d have gladly listened to it a few times over. The sopranos, mezzos and contraltos, also sang with warm tone and good blend.

The cast of principals looked extremely promising on paper. This was my second time hearing Francesco Meli in the title role, having heard him at the Scala a few years ago. When I saw Meli in Ballo a few months ago, also at the Scala, it struck me that his tone was a lot more solid than on the previous occasions that I had heard him. Overall, today I had a more positive impression of his singing than previously, reinforcing what I heard back in May this year. Meli did take a little while to warm up, however. Initially the vibrations were rather loose and he ducked out of a few unwritten acuti one might have expected him to go for. As the evening progressed, however, he rallied and sang with much more security and firmness of tone, combined with admirable clarity of diction.

María José Siri was making her role debut as Elvira with this run. Hers is a soprano of plush velvet, somewhat soft-grained, but well-schooled and with an admirable technique. Indeed, she get to really show off her technique in her opening scena, dispatching the intricacies of ‘Tutto sprezzo che d’Ernani’ with studied ease, relishing in the florid sequences, if perhaps without a genuine trill. She capped the ensembles with uninhibited generosity, blazing out over the choral and orchestral forces. Siri also had recourse to a full and juicy chestiness, but there was rather an obtrusive break as she passed through the registers. Still, with her dignified stage presence and generosity of vocalism, there was much to enjoy here.

Roberto Frontali brought his nobility of line to Don Carlo, giving us a masterclass in long, legato phrasing. He also used the text fully, spitting out ‘Tu se’ Ernani’ with venomous determination as he recognized his opponent. The voice does unfortunately tend to greyness at lower dynamics, but Frontali’s ability to spin those long phrases gave so much pleasure. As indeed did Vitalij Kowaljow as Silva. He was a massive stage presence, his bass endowed with powerful resonance and a warm, complex tone. The voice is huge, filling the house with ease, with tone that is both rich and absolutely solid. In the remainder of the cast, I was particularly impressive by Joseph Dahdah as Don Riccardo. He revealed a very well-schooled tenor, handsome in tone, with an elegant line. Undoubtedly a name to watch.

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