In my article on the Met’s revival of the Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen Die Meistersinger (see the post of 11/12/21), I promised a consideration of the current season’s second high-density extravaganza of several decades’ standing, the Turandot originally designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1987. Since there is little of artistic importance to report about the evening (of Nov. 2), and most of that consists of sketching its vocal shortcomings, it has seemed to me more productive to share some thoughts about how we think of these roles (shortcomings by what standard?), and how we feel about this opera (what’s that queasy sensation?) when not swept away by its thrill potential. A brief evaluation of the present revival can be found at the end of today’s article.

In search of a standard.

For operagoers of my generation, the measure of the work’s effectiveness was taken by the protagonist pairing of the Met’s 1961 production, Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. The sheer visceral excitement and aesthetic entrancement generated by those two justified the opera’s continuance for the next decade, and became the remembrance to which successors were compared. In the first seasons of that production, Nilsson remained a fixture except on the rare occasion, while Corelli had plausible alternates in Richard Tucker, Sándor Kónya, and Flaviano Labò. Also early on, the third principal character, Liù, was sung by Anna Moffo, Lucine Amara, Teresa Stratas, Licia Albanese, and, on just a couple of  memorable occasions, Leontyne Price. Those were the voices that reinstated this opera in the Met’s repertory after the company’s first production of it had worn out its welcome thirty-one years earlier.

Puccini’s stated choices for the three principal roles in Turandot were: Turandot: Maria Jeritza; Calaf: Beniamino Gigli; Liù: Gilda dalla Rizza. But the singers eventually contracted for the parts  were, respectively, Rosa Raisa, Miguel Fleta, and Maria Zamboni, the last-named a late substitution for Edith Mason. (By the time of the premiere—4/25/26, at La Scala—Puccini had been dead for nearly a year and a half, and Toscanini was very much in charge of the artistic decisions. But he was aware of Puccini’s preferences, which had evidently included the eventual “creators” as credible substitutions.) With later casting selections in our ears, several of these can seem surprising to us. So a glance at them should be of interest.

Jeritza/Raisa: Two quite different singers, neither of them Italian. But then, Italy was not really rich in dramatic sopranos at that time (the most tonally and technically complete of them, Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, was just emerging from her contralto beginnings, and not yet established as a dramatic soprano); Gina Cigna, who later sang the role on the opera’s first complete recording, was just getting started, too. The most logical native candidate would have been Bianca Scacciati, who did go on to “create” the role for both Rome and London shortly after the world premiere. She had a big, cutting voice, intensely vibrated and prevailingly bright, that certainly encompassed the part’s range, and her recording of “In questa reggia” is persuasive. But Puccini knew what he wanted, namely, the hot temperament, theatricality, emotionality, and sheer glamor of Jeritza, whom he’d seen often in Strauss, Wagner, and his own operas, above all Tosca. That she was not particularly Italianate in either vocal method or pronuncia, and could be wayward musically, was obviously of secondary importance to him. (He was also  a fervent admirer of Jeritza’s frequent colleague/competitor Lotte Lehmann, another emotionally open singer who could be musically adrift at times. He knew what the priorities must be for his music and characters.) Jeritza’s was another essentially bright voice, its vibrato not nearly as prominent as Scacciati’s, its calibre of the Jugendlich variety as then defined (i. e., stronger than the singers we hear in such roles now), its tone capable of purity when not being flung about. The Polish soprano Raisa I have always found difficult to pin down from her records. Her voice is often enough described as voluminous to establish that as one of its components. Even allowing for the change from acoustical to electric recording technology, her singing seems to have undergone more than the normal timbral and technical alteration over the duration of her career—taut and sometimes brittle early on, more loosely held and not as firmly centered toward the top later. Very impressive passages are followed by unfocused ones. Clearly not as glamorous or demonstrative as Jeritza, she nevertheless apparently had true prima donna presence, and the vocal calibre and range for the part. Toscanini had thought highly of her since leading her in the premiere of Boito’s Nerone in May of 1924, and her performance in Turandot was considered nearly ideal by musicians and critics. Both these sopranos left significant American trails in this role, Jeritza for the entire four-season run of the Met’s first production, and Raisa in Chicago, where she was for many years the reigning dramatic soprano. Though they also left extensive discographies, neither recorded anything from Turandot.

Today I am pleased to present an article by my longtime colleague and friend Will Crutchfield on the lack of new operas of sufficient appeal to refresh our repertory on a more than one-and-gone basis. Since my own focus here is first and foremost our operatic canon and its performance, this is a topic I only occasionally engage with, and then generally with small satisfactions. Will explains below how his piece has made its way here, but I very much hope that its life will extend well beyond this posting, because although of course our tastes and opinions are not identical, I think it packs more sharp, independent analysis and supporting evidence into concise form than anything I have seen on the subject—and as always, his writing is clear, pithy, and engaging. A price we pay for Will’s valuable work as Artistic Director of Teatro Nuovo, as conductor and coach, is the loss—except for infrequent forays like this one—of Will as critic, at a time when bold, knowledgeable criticism is badly needed. With that, I’ll turn this space over to him.

Will’s note – Several years ago an editor asked me for a “new-opera” essay, the idea being to combine general reflection on 21st-century challenges with some commentary on the novelties that were then current or recent. I wrote most of the piece, but then begged off from the assignment when it had already exceeded usable length and was still unfinished.

By now it’s significantly out of date, but discussion with CLO of some still newer operas prompted me to dig out the draft for his amusement, and he saw some merit in it. In case any of his readers might like to see it too, I’ve put together a few unfinished paragraphs (the discussion of “plan B”) from notes sketched at the time – but haven’t updated the body of the piece, which still reflects the scene as it appeared then.

The new-opera problem (Nov. 2017)

Let’s skip the introductory recitation of woe and start with a question out of left field: what if there is no such problem? How can concern about opera’s health even come up as a topic? The hottest ticket in New York – the most economically productive cultural enterprise currently underway here, the Talk of the Town – is a new opera. It plays to capacity houses every night; people wait months to get seats. Where’s the crisis?

Anyone rash enough to say why Hamilton is not an opera is welcome to try. Actually, let me save you the trouble:

• Because it’s in a different musical idiom? Pretty weak; if “opera” can encompass idioms as diverse as Vivaldi’s and Mussorgsky’s, Miranda’s is not even a stretch.
• Because it is aimed at widely-shared tastes in the expectation of monetary return? Goodbye Mozart, Verdi, Puccini.
• Because it doesn’t have a full symphony orchestra in the pit? Write off the whole Baroque repertory then, along with The Turn of the Screw, unless we can acknowledge the category of “operas with a smaller band.”
• Because the singers are miked? But the contracts for Nixon in China stipulate that its singers must be miked, and meanwhile the original singers of Kiss Me Kate, South Pacific, Show Boat, and Lost in the Stars were not miked. So, those are all operas, but Nixon and Hamilton aren’t?

All these distinctions are non-starters. One older argument, which used to natter on about spoken dialogue vs. through-composed music (and used to collapse over Die Zauberflöte, Fidelio and Carmen), doesn’t even raise a whimper here: Hamilton, like Sweeney Todd and a growing list of others, has through-composed music from curtain to curtain. New opera, by any reasonable definition – by any defensible amalgamation of the definitions commonly put forward over the years – is thriving.

1: REMINDER: This Sunday, Dec. 12, at 3:00 PM, EST, we will offer a second video forum as a final followup to the series produced by Bel Canto Boot Camp, based on the opening section of my book, Opera as Opera. The previous forum left many viewer queries and comments unanswered—we will pick up on some of those (with more invited), with a focus on what I’ve termed The New Vocality and its implications for the future of our artform. As before, the forum will be moderated by Will Crutchfield and hosted by Eventbrite. There’s no fee for registration. The most direct route is to the BCBC home page, here. I hope you’ll join us.

2: At dermerker.com, the fine opera blog written and curated by my colleague Thomas Prochazka, a current post is: About Singing, Or: Conrad L. Osborne and Others on Chest Voice. This article is available both in German and in English translation. You’ll find many other items of interest on Der Merker’s home page, and Thomas’s site is always a great way to keep track of doings in Vienna and around the region, always from a vocally informed viewpoint.

3: ANOTHER REMINDER: Next week, on Fri., Dec. 17, I’ll be presenting a guest column by Will Crutchfield on the topic of “the New Opera problem.” Is there one, and if so why, and what can we do about it? It’s the pithiest exploration of those questions I’ve seen, all contained in a single blog post. Don’t miss it.

FINALLY: Since the release of Opera as Opera onto wider distribution, a couple of readers, here and on the Continent, have written to tell me that orders sent through Amazon are sometimes greeted with a “temporarily unavailable” notice. I am assured that these are only re-stocking incidents, and that the book is indeed obtainable through Amazon and other sanctioned vendors. However, if there’s too much of a delay, the book can always be ordered at this site, by clicking on the Opera as Opera page, or by going to the fulfillment center’s site here .

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Before getting to today’s topic (the Met’s revival of Die Meistersinger and two recent recordings featuring some of its principals), one announcement and one recommendation. The announcement: with the third printing of Opera as Opera, I have entered into a broader distribution agreement, a business move delayed by the bankruptcy of our original printer and distributor, and then by revenue uncertainties attendant upon the pandemic. This will make the book available to the libraries and retail outlets who are contractually bound to order only through designated suppliers, and will release it to online sales through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al. It will also improve accessibility for overseas customers by reducing the exorbitant shipping costs for them. Individuals can of course continue to order directly from this site, but will now have other options as well. 

And the recommendation, for all readers ready to reach a bit beyond our mainstream opera concerns into closely related musical and cultural realms:  My longtime colleague Joseph Horowitz has just published a fascinating exploration of what he perceives as the swerve in American cultural history that has separated us from the roots—including African-American and Indigenous musics—that might have nourished a more vital American musical language, and has led to the divorce of our “popular” and “classical” genres. Of course the thesis will arouse debate, but I believe Horowitz, building on his several previous books on American musical history, has made a persuasive case, grounded in literature and the fine arts as well as music. The book’s called Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, and it’s published by W. W. Norton & Co.

With the special circumstances of what we hopefully designate as our first post-pandemic opening behind us, we have a season of repertory opera underway at the Met. Aside from that first production, which I wrote about last time, I’ve been to two performances of well-aged revivals—a Turandot (about which I’ll offer some thoughts in a future post) and a Die Meistersinger, which I’ll write about here. This is a time of stringent testing for the EuroAngloAmerican canon, and for the presentation of its works in a repertory system. Such a system relies on a body of repeatable, renewable works, and in the case of these productions, “renewable” means “capable of revivification by the performers,” not by auteuristic conceptualization or revisionist counterargument, and unaided by the spurts of attention that accompany a new production or a work’s premiere.  The season-to-season churn of core repertory works, fed by the attractions of repeat appearances by favored performers along with anticipated arrivals of new ones, is what finally determines the viability of an institution like the Met.

And we are at a juncture where both demand (from audiences) and supply (of high-functioning performers) are in serious question. On the demand side, we wonder whether the already tenuous hold our artform has had of late on the habit of attendance (or the inculcation of that habit in new prospects) may have suffered an economically fatal rupture from the pandemic and the complex of social, political, and environmental crises it has set into such bold relief. While I feel reasonably certain that the blocs of empty seats observed in the upper regions of the house at these performances (and reported on at others) are primarily due to the caution we all feel about returning to public events and the steep drop-off in tourism, the longterm effects of these disruptions will take time to assess. And over on the supply side, we suffer not so much from the factory-to-warehouse-to-consumer blockages that afflict so many sectors of the economy as from a simple lack of supply at the source. At the opera-singer warehouse, there’s not enough of quality and durability, ready for shipment, to keep us in stock.

The post scheduled for today, Nov. 19, will be published on Monday, Nov. 22. It will deal with the Met revival of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, whose cast includes a new Eva (Lise Davidsen) and Pogner (Georg Zeppenfeld), with Michael Volle as Hans Sachs, conducted by Antonio Pappano. I will also take a look at a couple of recent related recordings—Pentatone’s Fidelio under Marek Janowski (with Davidsen as Leonore and Zeppenfeld as Rocco), and Davidsen’s latest operatic recital disc for Decca. Plus thoughts on the work, on singing, and on opera’s efforts to recover and move on. Thanks for your patience.

CLO     

After nearly nineteen months of silence, the Metropolitan Opera Company returned to live performance on September 27. The opera was a new one, a revised and expanded version of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which had its premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019. The music is by Terence Blanchard, a jazz-oriented composer noted for his work in film, and the libretto is by Kasi Lemmons, based on a memoir by Charles M. Blow, a columnist for The New York Times. I attended the second performance, on October 1. Since this opera is the first by African-American creators to be produced by the Met, and since it was leapfrogged forward in the schedule to become the season opener under the extreme social pressures of the past year-and-a-half, it bears a burden of emotionally charged expectations, as well as a confusion of celebration and resistance as a signifier of the ongoing diversity offensive. Neither of these has any bearing on the artistic merit of the opera, so I’ll try to set them aside, and evaluate the piece and its presentation on the basis of my experience with it, with some words on the social and artistic implications of the occasion as afterword.

Perhaps it was not wise to introduce the work with words that at once leaned on ancient religio-cultural resonances and suggested impending provocation. As the fully-masked, vaxx-credentialed audience took its place (a rather subdued vibe in the hall), the Biblical quote that is the source of the opera’s (and memoir’s) title greeted us from the forecurtain. Our lesson of the evening was drawn from Chapter 20, Verse 9 of the distressing Book of Jeremiah, wherein the Lord threatens the visiting of all conceivable punishments upon the Israelites for their disobediences and false prophecies, then delivers them into the hand of King Nebucadnezzar for the years of the Babylonian Captivity. Derided for speaking aloud the word of the Lord, Jeremiah protests: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and cannot.” This entire lamentation, Verses Seven through Eighteen, which careens among fears of persecution, assurances of the Lord’s protection, cries for vengeance, praise for the Lord’s deliverances, and curses on the day the prophet was born, is of the utmost unhinged eloquence. Settling into my seat, I prepared for a challenge flung in my face, a disturbance and an outcry—a Jeremiad. Another heavy expectation.

But Fire creates no such effect. For the most part it plays as a low-key, domesticated coming-of -age drama, not unpleasant but neutral in tone, with a happy ending in a sort of apotheosis of self-identification. It recounts the story of Charles (Will Liverman), a child “of peculiar grace”; his mother Billie (Latonia Moore), trying to hold the poverty-level household together while handling the no-good pater familias, Spinner; the sexual abuse of Charles by an older cousin, Chester; and Charles’ eventual victory in coming to grips with his rage and accepting his nature for what it is. Along the way, there’s a scene in a chicken-processing plant, a confrontation in a dive, an evangelical baptism, tentative searchings for heterosexual love, and a fraternity hazing. All this plays in a more or less naturalistic manner, but is framed by the presence of two allegorical figures, Destiny and Loneliness, rather as in Baroque opera, who hang around the course of the action. These are both sung by Angel Blue, who also, perplexingly, takes on the love interest character, Greta, who is a direct participant in the plot—the levels of reality wobble here, for anyone paying attention to such matters. Which I reckon we’re not supposed to do.

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.