“Opera as Opera” news: two more thorough and supportive reviews are in. One is by Nils-Goeran Olve in the March issue of the dear old The Record Collector, and the other by Paul–André Demierre in Crescendo Magazine (www.crescendo-magazine.be). It will be a few days before we get some pull quotes on the “Opera as Opera” page, and Mr. Demierre’s piece is in French. But in the meantime we’ll rest the case with his concluding line: ‘”Opera as Opera’: une bible!”

Is Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila a great opera? Bearing in mind that though any opera exists only in performance, and so the answer always depends on tonight’s realities, we still learn through experience of any given work that it does or does not have the possibility of being great tonight, and on that basis name it “great” or not. And in that sense most of us would say that if our standard of greatness is Otello or Tristan und Isolde or Don Giovanni, Samson falls short; it’s not a great opera. But it is a good one, which if well performed can be exciting, entertaining, even moving. That makes it a legitimate canonical repertory piece, and if our gauge isn’t the best of Verdi or Wagner or Mozart, but whichever we deem the best of the new operas the Met has brought us over the past half-century, Samson miraculously ascends to greatness. We’d have to go back to Peter Grimes to sensibly argue the relative merits. That’s why the canon is a canon, the repertory a repertory.

One of the things I love about Samson is its orchestral palette. Even those who condescend to Saint-Saëns have to concede his almost Rimsky-esque expertise as colorist. I suppose he can sometimes be accused of splashing color around to conceal an absence of musical substance, but in his best big work, like the Third Symphony and Samson, where the structures are firm and the melodic or thematic ideas consistently engaging, that isn’t at all the case, and from Samson’s brassy call to arms to the undulating breezes of the Valley of Sorek, the cracking of the storm, the groan of the mill wheel and the fizzy, tinselly tints of the Temple of Dagon, the theatrical descriptiveness of the score is consistently captivating.

Not on the night, however, specifically the night of March 13, and that’s where my complaints begin. (Yes, the production is new this season. Musical and vocal things first, however.) The conductor was Sir Mark Elder, about whom I’ve blown warm and cool, never hot or cold, over the years. My reservations about him have often centered around tempo, at times not merely slow, but lumbering. On this occasion, these seemed to me perfectly all right, or would have been if possessed of more inner animation and outer presence. But those were lacking (in basic sonic terms, the music was underplayed), and the color range never got beyond Easter Egg pastels. Then there’s this: though there is plenty in the way of upper-midrange interplay for the woodwinds, sorties for trumpet, plinks for xylophone, plonks and sweeps for the harp, and taps for the cymbal, much of Samson is built from the bottom. This is especially true in Act 1, which is with some reason considered the easiest to let die, and is as true of the extensive choral writing as of the orchestra. Low-string sonority, which Yannick Nezet-Séguin has promised to make a priority (see the Pelléas post, 2/12/19) is part of what’s involved here. The other part is attack. A few instances from Act 1: the entrance of the choral basses at “Nous avons vu nos cités renversées” (allegro non troppo, with strong accenting in the orchestra—the beginning of a section that stacks the choirs’ entrances in ascending order for what a long-ago colleague of mine, nose crinkling, called “Biblical Counterpoint”); the angular motive that introduces Abimélech and underpins the first part of his episode; the churning staccato figure, ff, pesante, that launches the High Priest’s “Maudite à jamais la race“; and, after the prelude to Act 2, the propulsive, low-to-high intro to Dalila’s recitative that precedes “Amour, viens aider.” All these had nothing like the needed presence and punch. Nor was there compensation for this dearth in the higher, lighter regions: the lilting Act 1 Dance of Dagon’s Priestesses, for example, which can have considerable charm, was given no lift or pulse. From beginning to end, Elder led as if considering the music of no dramatic significance, just a layer of frosting without the cake. So the orchestra coasted along, patting the music on its primped-up head. Unlike the pit orchestras of times gone by, this one won’t go to the dramatic gesture unless pushed to do so. It will also not return to its designated chairs in the pit until good and ready to do that—this was yet another evening in which the whole house above orchestra level was given the distraction of not a few players making their way unconcernedly back (from intermission downtime, not offstage assignments) after the music had started. It’s insulting.

I said at the opening of Chaliapin/Part One that the release of this artist’s complete recorded output by Marston is the most significant event of the current opera season. And this may have struck some of my readers as odd and even self-contradictory, coming from someone who insists that opera as opera exists only in theatres, in the bringing-into-life of a work by in-the-flesh performers, in eye/ear simultaneity, in three dimensions, without cameras or mikes, and in real time. Secondary oralities, no matter how perfectly crafted, are not opera as opera, and neither is a document of any sort, for eye or ear. But I stand by both claims, and this is the reason: More than any other artists’ (all honor to Caruso, Callas, Lotte Lehmann—see the posts of Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2017—and many others), Chaliapin’s records bring to the mind’s eye and ear the ideal of the singingactor assoluto in a form that is still recognizable to us, even after the generational adaptations of the intervening decades. That ideal is the one for which the greatest operatic artists have always striven, and the fact that it is kept before us in its entirety and in freshly restored reproduction is—if we give it our attention—more important than any of the glimmerings that from time to time penetrate the light grey mist of the contemporary opera scene.

At the end of our last episode, we took leave of the mighty Feodor as he concluded his October, 1907 recording session in Milan. Next stop on the phonographic trail: Paris, in June of 1908. In the interim, though, came his first voyage to America and to the Metropolitan, and we should take some note of that, inasmuch as it constituted perhaps the bitterest episode of his career. He made his debut on the second night of the 1907-08 season^(I) as the Boito Mefistofele, with Farrar as Margarita and Riccardo Martin as Faust. He stayed at the Met until late February, adding the Gounod Méphistophélès (with Caruso and Farrar), the Rossini Don Basilio (with Sembrich, Bonci, and Campanari), and Leporello (under Mahler, with Scotti and Bonci, and possibly the most formidable female lineup in the house history of Don Giovanni: Emma Eames, Johanna Gadski, and Farrar). Throughout this run, he experienced audience enthusiasm but, despite rather grudging acknowledgement of his physical and vocal gifts, a general critical distaste, bordering on revulsion, at what was perceived as his rough, peasantish vulgarity and bodily exhibitionism. His defenders were for the most part not among the most powerful New York critics, and Victor Borovsky reports in his Chaliapin biography that for some reason, only the more negative reports were translated for him (he as yet knew no English). He hated the Met’s shabby production values and its undervaluation of acting and dramatic preparation, and, like many others, found New York a major culture shock. (And though he doesn’t mention it in his memoirs, except for Mahler he had only weak house conductors to work with.) He sailed for Europe with little other than contempt for America and its leading opera company, and was not to return for thirteen years.

This week, instead of leading with more news about Opera as Opera developments (it’s going well), I’d like to pass along a little nudge about Will Crutchfield’s ongoing series of superbly annotated ancient-vocal-recording posts, “Will’s Record of the Week.” He will now be developing a mailing list for those who would like to subscribe and receive notifications. I strongly recommend.  Here’s the link.  

The most important event, artistically speaking, of the 2018-19 opera season so far has been the release of Feodor Chaliapin/The Complete Recordings on the Marston label. The 13-CD box contains every side and cylinder, published and unpublished, that Chaliapin is known to have recorded. In terms of sound restoration and pitch verification, Ward Marston has met, if not transcended, his own loving and scrupulous example, and in terms of packaging, presentation, and documentation has outdone even the finest of the earlier CD and LP hommages to this mightiest of singingacting exemplars.

In one of the essays included in the release’s handsome, copiously illustrated hardbound book, Michael Scott (in collated excerpts from his The Record of Singing) says: “Chaliapin ranks with Caruso and Maria Callas as one of the greatest singers and most potent and influential operatic artists of the twentieth century,” and he goes on to note that in one respect he surpassed the other two, for he achieved his dominance without the natural claim of higher-ranged voices on public attention and affection. Such evaluations are automatically open to dispute, and the accomplishments of these three artists (and of so many others–Ponselle? Melchior? Flagstad?, etc.) are so unalike in crucial ways as to foreclose any sensible comparison. Still, I might have picked Caruso and Callas for that purpose myself, at least with regard to influence, and I might have taken Scott’s observation one step further. Caruso was a very great singer, a musically instinctive and sophisticated interpreter, and an irresistible performing personality who eventually gained respect as an actor, but he was nothing like the pioneer of total singingacting transformation that Chaliapin became. Those two share common ground as contemporaries, as heroic, man-in-full males, and trailblazers in their respective vocalities. Callas, also heroic but two generations advanced into her art’s creative decline, was a trailblazer to the past. Her vocal prime, during which she was supreme in music of such different characteristics than the men’s, lasted less than a decade. Chaliapin’s endured for forty years, and ended only with his final illness.

My consideration of the Compleat Chaliapin will require two posts, and will proceed chronologically through the recorded oeuvre. Today’s will cover less of that ground than the next installment, because it will try to get some sort of handle on how Chaliapin became Chaliapin. That is perhaps the most remarkable of all the stories I know of the fulfillment of artistic potential. For although (such worthies as Thomas A. Edison and Malcolm Gladwell to the contrary notwithstanding) talent—and particularly talent at the exponential, “genius” level— is by no means overrated, it is also rare for any degree of talent to reach such full development, and against so formidable an array of obstacles as to make it appear that the obstacles were necessary to the development.

We have two new favorable reviews of Opera as Opera to tell you about. In The Boston Musical Intelligencer (https://www.classical-scene.com/2019/02/10/opera-cure), Ralph Locke has written an uncommonly thorough, thoughtful, and balanced piece, replete with helpful linked references. And in the Swedish Opera (not to be confused with the UK magazine in which Stephen Hastings reviewed the book), Nils-Göran Olve has contributed another very well-considered article. It’s in Swedish, but we hear that Mr. Olve will soon be heard on the topic in an English venue. After this long string of positive reviews, I must also report that we’ve received our first slam—not quite the “hatchet job” it was termed by a forewarning friend, but certainly negative. It comes in Opera News from Fred Cohn, a writer whose work I have generally enjoyed. He does concede a virtue or two (at least he credits me with “a great ear”), but the length and detail of several sections, which many reviewers and readers have greeted enthusiastically and some as a mixed blessing, Cohn finds “infuriating.” He also seems bothered by the book’s focus on problematics. His piece does contain a first, though: my writing has never before been called “reactionary.” And to today’s topic:

  Claude Debussy’s ever-beckoning Pelléas et Mélisande returned to the Met repertoire on January 15, in the production directed by Sir Jonathan Miller that was first mounted in 1995. This wasn’t, finally, an adequate representation of the work, but it had its positive aspects, and even held out one potentially promising prospect. To those elements first. Although Ferruccio Furlanetto’s bass occasionally turns unsteady on sustained upper notes these days, it is still a satisfyingly large, well-seated voice (I perked right up at “Je n’en dis rien“—the performance was underway!), and he is still a performer who commands the stage without jumping through any hoops to do so. He was that rare thing, a consistently interesting Arkel, and in Act V contributed stretches of shaded mezza-voce singing that constituted the evening’s most distinguished vocalism. After a dullish start, Kyle Ketelson gradually established himself as Golaud, his attractive bass-baritone rising to the challenges of the terrible later scenes. And though I much prefer a physically appropriate grown-up in the role of Yniold, for both vocal and dramatic reasons (the only really persuasive performance of the part I’ve seen was that of the young Teresa Stratas), A. Jesse Shopflocher, singing with clear tone and good intonation, was musically and linguistically on top of his assignment.

But: if we have decided to do an opera called Pelléas et Mélisande, it’s incumbent on us to have on hand a singing actor of the unusual sort who can hold our attention as Pelléas, and, even more importantly, another who can do the same as Mélisande. A general giftedness, a general kind of appeal, is not enough. Neither of these title roles is demanding in terms of compass or tessitura, which is why, although the parts are designated as tenor and soprano, it is sometimes practicable to cast a baritone as Pelléas and a mezzo-soprano as Mélisande. But what is absolutely necessary is that both voices be capable of sharp declamation in their lower ranges—”sharp” in actual verbal clarity, and in inflectional nuance as well. With a couple of relatively brief exceptions (Golaud’s jealous rage, then bits of his remorse; the lovers’ climactic ecstasy), the characters express themselves in emotionally restrained manner, registering their meanings in small but distinct inflections in the lower octaves of their ranges. While Pelléas is quite correctly cited as the most successful of all the operas yet written that have tried to derive their vocal settings directly from the rhythms, accents, and intervallic moves of its language as spoken, Debussy, responding to the psychological atmosphere of Maeterlinck’s play (see below), created not a web of “natural” or even highly imaginative line readings, but rather its musical analogue. Thus, many stretches of dialogue actually flatten out the expected rise and fall of the normal speech patterns, subtly displace their accents, and “unnaturally” regularize their rhythms, all in a range that is lower and narrower than the operatic custom, yet still a fifth to an octave above speaking range, and with the color span of the cultivated singing voice.

Keeping up with Opera as Opera news: I’m happy to report that the video of my appearance of last Sept. 28 at Opera America here in NYC (my talk about the book; my conversation with Marc Scorca, President of Opera America; and Q & A session with audience members) is at last up and running. Click on the Media page above. It’s on YouTube, too. We’ve received another lovely review from Dr. Geerd Heinsen at operalounge.de (Vienna), and several more are  imminent—details next time.

We have three items to add to the ever-breaking onslaught of Operaworld news. One: the Met has a new investiture of Francesco Cilèa’s Adriana Lecouvreur that is on the whole supportive in terms of production and that, on this occasion at least, proved enjoyable, if not transcendent,  in performance. Two: the occasion found its leading lady, Anna Netrebko, to be in both better voice and a more congenial role than was the case in last season’s scary Tosca (see the post of May 25, 2018, Two Voices, Two Journeys). And three: Anita Rachelishvili continues to cement her position as an authentic grand-opera singer. Perhaps because of the appetite-dulling aftertaste left by the company’s other recent excursions into verismo-era operas (Puccini’s Fanciulla del West and, especially, Il Trittico, q.v.), this often-disrespected score also seems to have climbed a notch or two in the general estimation. This may mean nothing more than a flood of gratitude for an evening of nice melodies nicely sung, but let’s not undervalue that.

Adriana is apparently slated for a fresh Met production every 56 years. That was the span from the first (1907—it totaled two performances) to the second (1963—with well-spaced revivals, it chalked up some seventy more), and now from the second to the third. Devotees with any historical interest will know of Edward Johnson’s refusal to mount the piece for Rosa Ponselle in the late ’30s^(I), and those of my age or not too much younger will recall the sinking-heart sensation of the 1963 performances, which coincided with Renata Tebaldi’s career-threatening vocal and personal crisis. I’m afraid I did not keep up with Adriana after its 1968 return (again with Tebaldi, partially restored but still struggling at some important moments), save for the revival of 1994, with Mirella Freni and Luis Lima in the leads, which did not make a strong case for the opera.

Latest Opera as Opera news: the book has received additional significant attention from UK, in the form of a fine thought piece by Richard Fairman in The Financial Times. (If you Google “Financial Times Opera as Opera Osborne” you’ll get to it; the print version should be out this weekend.) And we’ve gotten two new notable stateside reviews as well, by Kenneth Meltzer in Fanfare and by George Loomis in Musical America. While Fairman focuses primarily on the problem of new creation (i.e., repertory renewal), with frequent reference to the book’s arguments, Meltzer and Loomis present substantial overviews of the book as a whole. We’re expecting further additions to Opera as Opera‘s extraordinary critical response. To today’s post:

 There’s been a slight change of plan. I intended this post to be devoted primarily to the new production of Adriana Lecouvreur, starring La Netrebko, with some passing attention paid to Otello, whose revival did not seem to merit extended discussion. And as a performance, so it did not. But though I’d read and heard about this mounting when it was new, I had not anticipated that two of its aspects would strike me as representative enough of the circumambient wrongheadedness to be worth taking up in some depth. So rather than cheat Adriana, which proved worthy of note in a happier sense, I’ll save it for next time.

The Otello had its premiere last season, with the same cast of principals save for the title role (Aleksandrs Antonenko then, Stuart Skelton now). The main advance attraction this year was the house debut of Gustavo Dudamel, the still-young Venezuelan conductor with the appealing up-by-the-Sistema-bootstraps life story and the many plaudits accorded his energy and vision out in Los Angeles. I was also curious about Skelton, whose Siegmund I had heard on the Naxos Walküre recording (see the post of Feb. 23, 2018), and whose Tristan here I had heard spoken of respectfully.

Dudamel certainly put a charge into the opening Storm Scene—been a while since we’ve heard that kind of disciplined aggression—and he secured a high level of execution throughout. As the evening progressed, though, I didn’t detect a strong grip on scenic structure, or on the score’s overall dramatic arc. Big moments (the Act III finale the prime example) were impressive once they arrived, but there wasn’t enough definition or sustainment to the episodes in between to give these climaxes the sound of inevitability. I finally came away with the impression of a significant musical talent not yet plugged in to stage/pit dynamics, and not terribly familiar with Italian operatic style in general. Lacking the old European opera house training ground, we need a Sistema for opera.

Skelton had canceled the season premiere performance a few nights previously, and at the intermission, when it was already clear that he was in difficulty, it was announced that though suffering from a cold, he had agreed to finish the performance. Even allowing a reasonable illness discount, however, and factoring in the impression of his recorded Siegmund, this doesn’t sound like an Otello voice. It is moderate in size, lacking in a clear ring anywhere in the range, and consistently closed off above A at the top. In a cautiously sung Act 1 duet and at the beginning of “Dio mi potevi,” he made some nice effects at lower dynamics, and he never stopped trying to sustain the line. But the voice’s structure did not hold against the reach and stress of the role. His physical representation, too, did not reach out boldly and urgently. This was the second consecutive performance I’ve seen at the Met (following Marcelo Alvarez in Il Tabarro) wherein a leading tenor role has been painfully worked through by a singer evidently not well equipped for it and pronounced ill to boot, yet management has either not had an adequate cover prepared or has been reluctant to call on him.

Last year (see the posts of Jan. 12 and 27, 2018), I wrote a lookback article on La Forza del destino. It had to be a lookback piece because the production of Forza scheduled for the Met season of 2017-18 had been canceled. More recently (June 22 and July 6, 2018), my discussion of Don Giovanni had a Then-and-Now theme, but the Now aspect was represented not by live performance, but by audio and video recordings, which seemed to me more promising material for comparative discussion. Such choices are forced upon us with increasing frequency if we wish to find plausible representation for assessing the merits of opera’s canonical masterworks.

In the instance of Gounod’s Faust, the proximate excuse for writing about it at all is the release, on the Immortal Peformances label, of the 1937 Met broadcast of the work. This performance has had no previous circulation, and doesn’t even appear in Paul Jackson’s Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met, which has set the bar for inclusiveness—though more material keeps surfacing, as with the present issue. The ’37 Faust might appear redundant in prospect, since its three principals (Helen Jepson, Richard Crooks, Ezio Pinza) are also those of the broadcast of 1940, a mere three years along. But as I confirmed for myself in the Don Giovanni explorations, as splendid as Pinza was in 1942, he was more splendid yet in ’37, with just that extra touch of vibrancy and alacrity in this richest of Italian basso cantante voices. And I was willing to wager that the blandishing tenor of Crooks would sound that much fresher in ’37, as well.  So I had the Then of my Then-and-Now.

But after a half-hearted search through the descriptions (and a few clips) of recent CD and DVD performances, I realized that when it comes to Faust, there isn’t any Now now. It’s not in the Met’s repertory this season or rumored for the next, and I sometimes doubt that New York shall ever see it again—the Met’s record with it (an individual performance here and there aside) has been unrelievedly awful for nearly a half-century, and it’s beyond the resources of even the most intrepid and/or foolhardy of our many smaller enterprises. Its decline in popularity and critical standing has been the sharpest of any opera I can think of over the past century, particularly since WW2.^(I) Should we, then, I wondered, just let it slip quietly from view, as recent efforts and attitudes would indicate is the best course? No! Faust is a beautiful and powerful work, whose emotional charge (when adequately conveyed) keeps it relevant by definition, emotional experience being the first honest measure of operatic relevance. But in view of everything I’ve already written about Faust recordings^(II), I realized that in search of advocacy, I’d need to go backward, not forward, from 1937.

For my second Met excursion in a row (see my last post, Noir and Noh), comment has been heard from the peanut gallery, where I’m usually to be found. At Marnie, it took the form of falsetto mockery, and came after the curtain calls. This time (Dec. 5), it came midperformance, as poor Sister Angelica, having just learned of the death of the little son of whom she’d heard nothing in her seven years at the convent, stretched out a supplicating arm toward her implacable aunt, and sang “È morto? Ah . . .” Now, I could almost swear I did hear something there, albeit it did nothing to disrupt the unnatural calm of the proceedings. But from three or four rows back came the comment: “What?” The voice was firm and clear, neither youthful nor elderly. The tone was not of ill-intentioned disruption, but of genuine inquiry, as in “Is anything going on down there? If so, would you care to share?” Later, the same voice registered another reaction, but I didn’t quite catch it, which put it in the same category as many of the remarks being entered by the evening’s performers.

After my Marnie post, in which I yet again had occasion to note the low level of vocal energy coming off the stage, I heard from the highly regarded coach and co-Artistic Director of The New York Festival of Song, Steven Blier. Emphasizing that “I’m just reporting—others heard it, too,”  he wrote as follows:

“The night I went to Marnie I was in the standing room section, and it seemed to me that not much sound was coming off the stage. If you can’t hear the singers and chorus under that overhang, something is wrong. It’s a very voice-friendly, orchestra-muffling spot. Ten minutes into the first act a strange thing happened. A guy came storming up the aisle and confronted the usher, loudly. ‘I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! I’M IN ROW T AND I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING!’

“‘Sir, there is nothing I can do about it . . .’

“This continued, with the usher asking questions like ‘What row are you in?’—’ROW T! ROW T!’ After a few rounds of this I turned to them and said, ‘Guys, could you take your fight outside? You’re disturbing me.’ Row-T guy: ‘WHAT?’ Me (in Callas-like stage whisper): ‘I am trying to hear an opera and you are making a lot of noise and disturbing me.’ Row-T guy: ‘Who are you? Are you a subscriber?’ [Strange question, since I am in standing room.] Then he turned back to the usher and said something along the lines of, ‘I AM IN ROW T AND I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!’ The usher answered something like, ‘I can make a phone call, but I don’t think it will help.’ At this point they both seemed to disappear—I wasn’t sure what happened because I was trying to concentrate on Marnie. It was odd.

“Odder still: about seven minutes later, during the scene with Tony Griffey [in the role of Mr. Strutt—CLO] and the chorus when they are telling him he’s been ripped off by Isabel Leonard [Marnie], the volume from the stage jumped by at least fifty percent. Just like that. Boom. At intermission I asked people I ran into if they noticed it, and they all said they had. But no one else suggested the thing I was wondering: did someone turn on the mikes or the amplification or SOMETHING? Could Row T guy have been a technician? Or someone who’d already seen Marnie and was expecting the same vocal impact? It struck me later that he may have been asking for something very specific: the sound enhancement isn’t working, let the tech people know. I don’t know the answers to any of this, but it was one of the most notable things about the whole evening.”

As promised last week, I append below a list of errata found in the first printing of “Opera as Opera.” I have omitted a few simple misspellings and typos, including only the errata that interfere with meaning and/or are misleading. The most important are those from P. 305 to P. 403, where incorrect endnote and footnote numbers are confusing. I suggest that owners of the first printing print this out and retain it for reference. All discovered errata have been corrected in the second printing, now available.

Several correspondents have been kind enough to call these to my attention. I particularly wish to thank Jon Alan Conrad and “Der Merker,” Vienna (http://www.dermerker.com), for their alertness and promptness in conveying these corrections. 

P. 129, n. 11: “the same author’s” should read “Jon Alan Conrad’s.” The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Records should read The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Recordings.

P. 270, line 6: “mid-Sixties” should read “1959.”

305, 2nd footnote: “n. 28” should read “n. 2.”

314, 1st footnote: “n. 29” should read “n. 3.”

330: “(see n. 36)” should read “(see n. 10).”

P. 359, last line of text: “discrete” should read “discreet.”

359, footnote: “n. 51” should read “n. 28.”

362: “(see n. 49)” should read “(see n. 24).”

386, line 4: “n. 70⁴⁵” should read “n. 45.”

413, n. 14, line 1: “1952” should read “1962.”

P. 447, line 6: “Act III” should read “Act II, Scene 2.”

CLO

NEXT FULL POST: Friday, Dec. 14: Puccini’s Il Trittico: WHAT?

“Opera as Opera” news: At last, after a frustrating delay since the quick sellout of the first printing, the second one is ready for shipment as of Dec. 4! Those who have pre-ordered should be receiving their copies within days of that date (at least for domestic orders), and fulfillment of new orders should be prompt. Thanks to all for your patience. P.S.: see note at the end of today’s post.

Further: I recently did an interview with host Lawrence Pugliese of Radio Free Brooklyn for its far-ranging cultural program “Troubadours and Raconteurs,” in which we discussed aspects of “Opera as Opera” and related topics. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. After broadcast airings in several markets in the Northeast, it’s taking its eternal place as featured segment in “T & R”‘s Episode 294, reachable at www.radiofreebrooklyn.org. We’ll also be posting it on a media page soon, along with my interview with Christopher Purdy of Station WSOU (Columbus, O.) and the video of my talk, conversation with Marc Scorca, and Q & A at Opera America. We’ve been lagging slightly on this front, but will be catching up. To today’s ruminations:

As with Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel (see the post of Dec. 12, 2017, Extermination, Salvation, Frustration), the plot-and-character conformation of Marnie owes its nebulous presence in our cultural atmosphere to the half-life of a movie by a famous director, though in this case the composer and librettist (Nico Muhly and Nicholas Wright, respectively) tell us they have worked primarily from the movie’s novelistic source, by Winston Graham. Movies are starting to take the position relative to opera occupied first by classical myth and legend, and later by plays (and, less frequently, novels) as items of cultural literacy that audiences could be depended upon to at least know about, if not know directly, and thus to establish a certain level of advance validation for the work in question. Whether or not this is a viable idea (movies, and for that matter novels, being conceived and structured along other than stage lines, and very few of them having attained the numinous weight of myth) is a larger question than I’m going to tackle today, except to repeat that in such cases, if I’m unfamiliar with the source materials beforehand, I prefer to remain so until after I’ve determined whether or not the opera works for me on its own recognizance. (I still vaguely mean to catch up with Buñuel’s Angel someday, but since I think Hitchcock a wildly overrated artist by any grown-up standard, I’ll probably not even feint in the direction of Marnie, The Movie.)

The thrice-told tale, as disclosed by the opera, goes thus: Marnie, a chic young woman who easily attracts unwanted male attention, is haunted by a repressed-memory sense that she may have killed her baby brother. She acts out her resulting “need to transgress” by stealing money from office safes in her places of employment, then moving on with a changed identity. But in the instance shown, the man who interviews her for her next change of job turns out to be the same one, a certain Mark, who had indicated some interest in her in the old one. He  recognizes her, but hires her anyway and keeps her secret until she tries to steal from his firm, whereupon he forces her into marriage as the condition of keeping quiet. After a crisis or three, including Marnie’s suicide attempt when Mark tries to consummate the marriage and the death of her beloved horse in a hunting accident (with Marnie in the saddle), she hits the office after hours and cracks the safe one more time, only to find herself constrained by nascent feelings of affection for Mark. Then, following her mother’s death, she’s told by her neighbor that it was the mother, not Marnie herself, who was responsible for the infant’s demise. As she turns herself in to the police for her serial transgressions, she declares herself free. There are other characters, incidents, and subplots, but those are the basics of the story.