Dear devotees: As I noted at the conclusion of my last post, today’s target date has been subject to revision owing to other deadlines. Such revision has proved necessary, so today’s article has been postponed until Friday, October 15, when I’ll be reporting on Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the work selected to open the current Metropolitan Opera season. The subject intended for today’s post—a listen to a few young singers of excellent report—will be incorporated into a subsequent piece. 

With live performance at last underway, there will be more of immediate impact to consider, and I’ll endeavor to hold to a steady schedule, with my usual emphasis on our beleaguered canon, with all other matters seen in its perspective.

With best wishes to all,

CLO

Final notice here before the grand event: The culmination of my series of videos based on Part 1 of Opera as Opera, hosted by Bel Canto Boot Camp, will be the Book Club meeting on Sept. 26 at 3 PM. It will feature open Q and A, and will be moderated by Will Crutchfield, which guarantees expert guidance of the discussion. This event is hosted by Eventbrite, and you can register here.

Being American and a resident of New York City, my focus is naturally here, where we experience the European, auteuristic, Regietheater mentality more often in a drip-down form, rather than at full strength. And since I disagree with that way of thinking and doing not on a production-by-production, what’s-this-about basis, but on principle, at the most fundamental level, I don’t find it terribly edifying for myself or my readers to endure or write about it often. But with live performance here still a couple of posts away, and with several correspondents and friends expostulating to me about two fresh examples, I decided to make the virtual trip. The productions are from major European festivals, at Munich and Aix-en-Provence, and are of the same opera, Tristan und Isolde. Vidop is an eye-dominant medium. No matter how splendid your sound system or how high you crank the volume, your will be watching first, listening second. That is vidop’s sensory order, and it’s idle to pretend otherwise. So I am going to  consider the eye elements first, as they call for attention on our screens.

Among the cultural phenomena that have forced the masterworks of opera into concealment, I would identify three as most invidious: the intrusion of postmodern thought drawn from philosophy, litcrit, and artcrit into production conceptualization and performance preparation, with the auteur-director as medium; the only apparently contrary effort to popularize opera by reducing it to an entertainment genre, and then to pretend that this entertainment form, now adrift as merely one of many upon the popcult waters, can nevertheless occupy the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual spaces of the erstwhile artform; and the decline of acoustical singing, along with the collapse of critical standards for it. And it is rare to find all three of these in quite so swirling a confluence as we find them in the Münchner Festspiele 2021 Tristan. Festival Slogan: “Oper für Alle.”

The Munich Surround. It is actually the second of the three pressures, the popcult dragdown, that presents itself first. And I will testify, with right hand raised and the other on any text you deem sacred, that I knew nothing of the genial guy in the blinding blue threads with the hand-held mike who appeared unbidden as the evening’s MC, and that my first thought was that I’d stumbled onto a game show. Bingo!, as the host himself might once have said. He is soon identified as Thomas Gottschalk, and as a few minutes’ exploration on the net will confirm: he’s big! He is most famous as the longtime host of a show called “Wetten . . . dass?” (approximately, “Bet on that?”), on which celebrity guests bet against the house on someone performing a pointless feat—rather like David Letterman’s “Stupid Pet Tricks,” only with humans and wagering. But he also founded (so it’s claimed) Germany’s first hip-hop group, was ad spokesman for Haribo candies, won first prize on “Wer wird Millionär? ” for charity, owned a castle in Germany and a mansion in Malibu, acted in several films, and won numerous TV awards.

Dear devotees: deadline pressures have obliged me to postpone my next article to Friday, September 3. I haven’t set the topic in stone, but I have a hunch I’ll be taking a look at a couple of specimens of High Concept Europera (via video, of course), which I have not caught up with for a while. As always, the archive is available for browsing.

But meanwhile, some news items:

The video series I’ve been recording at the invitation of Bel Canto Boot Camp (13 episodes, with Q&A), based on the opening section of Opera as Opera, is now nearly complete, the series available here, and we’ve set the date and time of Sunday, September 26 at 3:00 PM for the culminating Book Club virtual event. It will be open to all, and to further questions. I hope many of you can join us.

The third printing of Opera as Opera has finally shipped, so the book will be back in stock within a few days. The Opera as Opera page on my website takes you directly to the ordering site.

And: also nearing completion is my contribution (a biographical and critical essay) to the Lawrence Tibbett project for Marston Records. This will be a multi-CD release comprising all of Tibbett’s RCA Victor recordings, plus a wealth of “live” broadcast material, much of it never previously released, and will be by far the most extensive collection of Tibbett recordings yet gathered in a single release. A release date will be determined shortly, and I’ll keep you informed.

Till September 3, be well.

CLO  

 A couple of preliminary notes: 1) We have experienced another delay in the Third Printing of Opera as Opera. Shipping is now projected for the last week in July, and we have learned to not consider such projections firm. However, our distributor will continue to receive any pre-orders, and have proven very efficient with fulfillment. Just click on “Opera as Opera” on the home page.

2) We are continuing with the series of podcast videos I’ve been doing at the invitation of Bel Canto Bootcamp, in each episode of which I read one of the brief essayettes on aspects of our artform from Part One of Opera as Opera, and respond to questions along the way. Number Six, called Creation and Interpretation and featuring excellent questions about the inner dialogue and craft choices involved in that topic, is probably up by the time you read this. So:

Here’s the link. 

Among the offerings scheduled for the hoped-for coming season of the Metropolitan, one of the more interesting in prospect is the presentation, for the first time in the history of the house, of the “original” (1869) version of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. My use of quotes is only to acknowledge the legacy of dispute over editions of this indispensable opera and the many claims of “original,” “virtually original,” “closer to original,” etc.—as numerous and as insubstantial as those for the authentic pizza of Ray or Patsy—that have followed it ever since the true original buffaloed the directorship of the Imperial Theatres of St. Petersburg, who demanded revision and expansion as the price of production there. But the Met’s 2021 presentation does promise to be of the original, seven scenes only, without any of the rewriting within the scenes undertaken for the first revision, and with Mussorgsky’s orchestration left to fend for itself.^(I) The physical production will not be new, simply selecting the relevant scenes of the previous one, whose staging Stephen Wadsworth was obliged to rescue when an agreement with the onetime enfant terrible Peter Stein fell apart. René Pape will sing Boris, as at the last revival, and Sebastian Weigle will conduct. The Met has also stated that its ur-Boris will be performed without intermission, which may concentrate our attention, but which also furthers the company’s ever-advancing No-Coming-Up-For-Air campaign.

I cannot tell you anything about the effect of an unamended 1869 performance, since I have never seen one. Probably our best crack at that locally was not at the Met at any point, but at the New York City Opera. The NYCO did produce a Boris in the 1960s, with a more-than-presentable cast headed by the formidable Norman Treigle. With a company that operated more as a singingacting ensemble and in at least a somewhat smaller venue than either Met, the odds on the success of 1869 (more reliant on its protagonist than any of the revisions) would, I think, have been shorter there than at the Met. But, striving to be always open to surprises, I shall consider the merits of the new effort when the time comes. What I do find intriguing meanwhile is a rearward glance at how Boris fared in its early guise at the Met, so different in all its assumptions from the awaited one. And those embers have been given a fresh stir by the recent (2019) restoration of the Met broadcast of Feb.13,1943, the second of only four performances in which Alexander Kipnis wrested the role of the Tsar from its presumptive possessor, Ezio Pinza. It was for Pinza that Boris had been revived late in the  1938-39 season, a decade after the last Chaliapin performances, and since the cast of that production remained remarkably stable over the next four years, it’s worth setting the table for Kipnis with a listen to Pinza, whose first of three broadcasts (Dec. 9, 1939) has circulated on Naxos CDs for over twenty years now.

The above-titled post will be published on MONDAY, JULY 12. In it, I’ll look forward to the Met’s first-ever presentation of the original (1869) edition of the work by looking back at very different performances as heard on the earliest Met broadcasts, starring Ezio Pinza and Alexander Kipnis, with some attention to the succession of orchestrations the house has since employed.

CLO

ANNOUNCEMENT # 1, to repeat the information on my minipost of June 6, for those who may have missed it: We have now launched my video series under the sponsorship of Bel Canto Boot Camp. These will be weekly episodes based on the Introduction and Part 1 of Opera as Opera, which consists of 14 essayettes on aspects of our artform. In each episode, I’ll be  reading the indicated essayette, then answering some excellent questions about it posed by the BCBC leadership. So the thoughts of the brief essays are elaborated, and I think there will be material of interest even for those who have read the book.

The series will culminate in the fall with a live, interactive Book Club event, in which questions will be welcomed from viewers in real time. The first video is up on the BCBC website now (links below), and the episodes will remain on the site, in front of the paywall, for the duration of the series and beyond. All three links will get you there, but I do recommend that you explore the BCBC site, and learn about this enterprising organization’s exciting activities in the education and hands-on training of a new generation of classical singers. 

The links: 

To the BCBC website 

Directly to the CLO page

And on youtube

Announcement # 2: After delays and frustrations occasioned by the shocking bankruptcy of our printer followed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have at last gotten underway with the third printing of Opera as Opera. Inasmuch as we have sold out the second printing more quickly than expected, there will be a slight delay until the availability of the new printing. (Shipping is currently expected for July 6.) However, pre-orders are being taken, and the steps for ordering remain unchanged; just click on Opera as Opera on the home page.

Finally, I must record with sadness the death of Joel Friedlander. Joel was a highly regarded consultant and designer in the field of self-publishing, with a long track record of successful projects, and with books and articles turned to by many for information and advice. As a beginner in self-publishing, I turned to Joel first for much-needed consultation, then contracted with him for the interior design of Opera as Opera. His work was superb, and his collaboration through the editing process unfailingly warm, friendly, and supportive. I, and the field to which he contributed so much, will miss him.

And to the topic of the day: 

 There are stirrings, signs of a re-awakening from our suspended animation to the possibility of something resembling opera in its natural state. Overseas, this has already happened in certain places with certain restrictions. Here in New York, the stirrings are muffled owing to the persistence of serious labor disputes at the Metropolitan Opera, and the announced plans for a full 2021-2022 season (to say nothing of the company’s long-term prospects) have a wobbly-in-the-knees look. Nonetheless, we have reason to hope that by the turn of the year opera in full, opera whole, will be back before us. People of high professional standing will sing from a stage and play from a pit, and we will gather to see and hear them.

Today, June 6th, marks the launch of my video series under the sponsorship of Bel Canto Boot Camp. These will be weekly episodes based on the Introduction and Part 1 of Opera as Opera, which consists of 14 essayettes on aspects of our artform. In each episode, I’ll be  reading the the indicated essayette, then answering some excellent questions about it posed by the BCBC leadership. So the thoughts of the brief essays are elaborated, and I think there will be material of interest even for those who have read the book.

The series will culminate in the fall with a live, interactive Book Club event, in which questions will be welcomed from viewers in real time. The first video is up on the BCBC website now (links below), and the episodes will remain on the site, in front of the paywall, for the duration of the series and beyond. All three links will get you there, but I do recommend that you explore the BCBC site, and learn about this enterprising organization’s exciting activities in the education and hands-on training of a new generation of classical singers. 

The links: 

To the BCBC website:  

Directly to the CLO series page:

And on youtube:

Some seventy to seventy-five years ago, in the late-mono, early-stereo LP time, we wrestled to the mat the problem of making effective opera recordings under expanded studio conditions. We didn’t always keep the beast pinned, of course, and there were several different approaches embraced by the commercial recording labels that we could contrast and argue over. But on a fair number of occasions, we did more or less figure out how to get a recognizable result. Then the economic support for that enterprise fell away, and the industry came to a close-to-dead halt. Now, it seems, we’ve forgotten what we once knew. Sony’s Otello, recorded in Rome in 2019 and released some ten months ago, is an ugly example of this loss.

As I noted with respect to Meistersinger (see the post of 1/17/21), it’s so rare these days to see high-level operatic forces committed to the recording of a 19th-Century canonical work that one is almost compelled to give heed. The ostensible selling points for this version of Verdi’s great tragedy would be the conductor, Antonio Pappano, and the tenor, Jonas Kaufmann. But I was also interested by the fact that this was not a recording drawn from a live production, like the Meistersinger, but an old-fashioned summoning of the vassals to a series of recording sessions, and with the present-day model of the forces that produced one of the first LP Otellos back in 1954, Rome’s Accademia di Santa Cecilia. After one listening, I’ve kept it in lead position here strictly on a current-interest basis, but won’t be trying your patience with extended performance analysis. This is not so much because I think the performance is terrible, but because the recording itself is so unmoored from operatic reality that I can’t tell.

I hope we can all agree that an opera should take place in a shared space, in which all its elements are heard and seen in constant relation to one another, and that as the performance goes forward in this space, the dynamic range of its sounds is sufficiently proportional to ensure a continuity of musical and dramatic expression. Without those basic conditions, we don’t really have an opera, and simply having one must precede any evaluation of its merits or report on its impact. This recording fails to establish those basic conditions. It does not sound as if its elements share a space or are in constant relation to one another. Rather, its sounds seem to emanate from a number of sources (as distinct from the “locations” of staging or of musical origin, which in any case are minimal), each designed to enhance its assigned fragment, which is then strategically positioned in a mix, as I imagine many rock albums are constructed. (My knowledge of rock albums is extremely limited.) The puzzling aspect of this is that while the Santa Cecilia’s present home, the auditorium in the Parco della Musica, may not be one of the world’s great acoustic treasures, it’s not half bad—no reason I can think of that a good recording couldn’t be done there. And with respect to a proportionality of dynamics, the recording is beyond the bounds of what would enable an ease of continuous ear-contact, a sense of presence, and keep us in touch with the progression of the drama. Sometimes this is hard to disentangle from the fetishizing of the soft end that has been epidemic among conductors and orchestras for some time now; but whether or not that’s the case here, the recording’s width of dynamic range (which we would normally count as an asset) is too extreme for settled listening.

The post scheduled for today, Friday, May 14th (subject matter above) will be published on Monday, May 16th. Thanks for your indulgence.

CLO

Some Opera as Opera news: the inventory of the book’s second printing is down to single digits, but after considerable travail (long story), we have been able to get underway with a third printing. It is possible that, given the required lead press time, there will be a brief interim with inventory at zero. Pre-orders will be taken, however, and fulfilled as quickly as inventory is restored. I will keep you posted here. Thanks.

Louise popped back into my consciousness while I was writing my last post, on Mascagni’s Iris. It’s not that these two operas are all that much alike (for starters, Louise is lovable, Iris not, except in a perverse sort of way), but apart from my general mind-drift through the subject of verismo, there was something in the atmosphere of the Act 3 prelude in Iris (the descent into the underworld of the sewer) that put me in mind of the interlude at the start of Act 2 of Louise, “Paris Awakes,” which introduces us to the street life at the foot of Montmartre at daybreak. And Louise is true verismo, both in subject matter and musical style—the only French example of that genre to achieve a lasting success. Its composer, Gustave Charpentier, called it a “musical novel,” and it does suggest both a Zola-esque naturalism and a Balzacian ambition, the latter particularly when we think of its stillborn successor, Julien, which sought to carry its protagonists forward into other adventures with other characters. Here in New York, it is one of five operas that had been fairly regularly in the repertory of the Metropolitan through the 1940s but vanished abruptly as of 1950, never since to return. (The others: Mignon, Lakmé, The Golden Cockerel—but sung in French, as Le Coq d’or—and L’Amore dei tre re.) All five were given some life support by the New York City Opera at one point or another, with Louise and Golden Cockerel (with the Sills/Treigle team) getting the best response, and the San Francisco Opera staged Louise for Renée Fleming as recently as 1999. But Louise is now no more than an antique curiosity for American operagoers, and not much more than that even in France. Which is a shame.

Looking back over some of my Louise recordings and materials, I re-read, I believe for the first time since its publication, my High Fidelity review of the 1977 Columbia recording, conducted by George Prêtre.^(I) I was interested to find that, already aware that Louise was fading from our ken and thinking in the context of socially committed theatre like ours of the 1930s, I was concerned to locate points of connection between the work and contemporaneous audiences. And now, in this time of Mandatory Relevance and much confusion as to just what “relevance” is, I cannot do better than to cite myself on the aboutness of Louise: “[it] is in part about the lot of the urban workingman; in part about a young woman’s difficulty in establishing an identity vis-à-vis restrictive parents or a dominant lover; in part about the overwhelming nature of the modern city, whose powers of magnetism and alienation seem so tightly knit together; in part about the qualities of what we now call the nuclear family and the patterns of tyranny and rebellion we so often see as native to it; and in part about the very perplexing question of just what does constitute personal ‘freedom.'” I later speculate on what may become of Louise now that she has fled her home for the final time under wrenching circumstances, and I note that Julien (himself immature and self-centered, I’d now add) seems only the catalyst to this action—Louise has fled to the city itself, the “Paris tout en fête” in which she will now have to make her way, “en fête” or not.