Hannigan as Lulu

Posted on November 13, 2012 by barczablog

I have been watching Barbara Hannigan’s one-of-a-kind interpretation of Lulu in Berg’s opera from a production at La Monnaie, streamed online.  As far as I can tell it will be available until the 28th of this month.  Enjoy it while you can.

Barbara Hannigan

Multi-talented Barbara Hannigan, shown here conducting (click for more)

Start with the role, one of the most challenging in the repertoire.  It’s harder to learn than a tonal role such as Gilda or Violetta.  Yet after mastering its quirky tonalities, one is rewarded by the knowledge that one can’t expect to do it nearly as often as of the Verdi heroines.

Hannigan does much more than merely sing the part.  I had to check her bio, wondering if she studied ballet at one time: because she spends a good portion of the role impersonating a dancer.

There are oddities to the production, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, sets & costumes designed by Malgorzata Szczesniak, video by Denis Guéguin and conducting by Paul Daniel.  The best analogy I can think of will sound curious, to be sure; but this Lulu reminds me of a modernist Opera Atelier: because of course OA put ballet into all sorts of places where we don’t expect it.

Warlikowski brings ballet into Berg’s dark tale, with mixed results.  The black swan that already hit us over the head in Darren Aronofsky’s film of the same name is back, pretentious as ever in this opera.  But the swan doesn’t really get in the way.

Hannigan in the title role assumes a physicality I’ve never seen in an opera before.  Have you ever tried to sing & move at the same time?  As a participant in a workshop a few years ago, where we tried to roll around, even tumble, while singing, I recognize how hard it is, even if you’re not also singing a really difficult role.  Barbara Hannigan seems to have such techniques at her disposal.  At times she’s rolling around the stage as if it were a porn movie, not an opera, all the while singing Berg’s torturous lines.  At other times she walks or struts or slouches or stumbles, her physicality sufficiently eloquent for a mime role.

You might be discouraged if you don’t know Berg’s opera, based on two plays by Frank Wedekind.  You can read more about the opera here.  The production updates aspects of the opera.  For example, the painter is now a photographer, Lulu’s portrait now a photograph.  The “dear John” letter Dr Schön writes to his fiancée, dictated by Lulu, is now an email through an iphone, dictated while Lulu has Dr Schön’s head firmly locked between her legs.  At no time was there any indication that all this physicality prevented Hannigan from sounding –and looking—amazing.

I know I am Mr Positive, who never reports a bad performance.  But I have to say that Barbara Hannigan’s performance is the single most impressive portrayal I’ve ever seen, when you include the point shoes, the several different stages she takes Lulu through, the vocalism, the physicality.  You really should have a look.

I came to this production with a question in my head, one that pales beside Hannigan’s heroics.  I was thinking about modernism, and whether it’s a style that can now be pronounced dead, with the passing of Hans Werne Henze and Elliot Carter in the same month.  I always found dissonance challenging, having a strong personal bias towards tonal music.  I am not saying I don’t like new music –far from it—but felt that the extreme exponents of the modernist style such as Henze were a bit too brave for me, taking the music beyond beauty into something else.  I find Berg stunningly beautiful.

It occurs to me that in every century with every style, that there are –pardon my choice of words—winners & losers.  Some composers fall by the wayside in each century while a few manage to keep our attention.  Perhaps we can say the same about modernist music, where the operas of Berg have been the strongest advocates for a style that at one time was the pre-eminent voice of serious music, the epitome of what one would learn in the conservatory & play in the concert halls & opera houses.

Wozzeck is regularly performed, and deserving of revival, currently newsworthy for a concert version, and one of the three operas James Levine wants to conduct next season when he’s back with the Metropolitan Opera.

Cerha

Thank you to composer Friedrich Cerha, perhaps best known for completing Alban Berg’s Lulu.

Lulu is also worth the effort, the music immortal, the subject matter so primal as to invite probing interpretations such as Warlikowski’s quirky reading.

There are several standout performances alongside Hannigan.  Pavlo Hunka, familiar to Toronto audiences, is solid as Schigolch, Natascha Petrinsky an especially vulnerable Countess Geschwitz, and Dietrich Henschel echoing Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with his beautiful baritone.

See it while you can. 

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TOC Fidelio

Posted on November 11, 2012 by barczablog

Toronto Opera Collaborative is an ensemble comprised of emerging artists.  As the pool of Canadian talent continues to grow, singers must either compete for the few available roles, or in groups such as TOC create their own opportunities to show us what they can do.  That they chose to present a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio—a work that can be daunting to cast— was a rewarding choice for the audience at Bloor St United Church last night.

As an accompanist with a singer in the family, I’ve always had a strong sense that opera is both a dramatic vehicle to be presented in the theatre, and a series of opportunities to display your skills.  When one has the specialized instrument that is the dramatic voice, it is particularly frustrating, when such works are presented so rarely.

Kristine Dandavino & Jason Lamont, who undertook the leads, are the two founders of TOC.  I can’t help thinking that in an opera world overflowing with Verdi & Puccini, their partnership begins with the mutual awareness of their special voices & the need to find special vehicles for them.

Kristine Dandavino

Soprano, and Toronto Opera Collaborative co-founder, Kristine Dandavino

While I understand that Dandavino assumed the role of Leonore on behalf of another singer, there was no sense of an understudy, considering the star power she brought to her portrayal.  Dandavino has a generous voice that she employed with a restrained subtlety to match her portrayal.  Taking us through a broad range of emotions, from the awkward comic love triangle, through her fears for her husband, the suspenseful rescue & their loving reconciliation, Dandavino gave one of the most convincing and accomplished realizations of a character I’ve ever seen in a concert performance.

Although Jason Lamont has a name that sounds more like that of an old-time Hollywood matinee idol than a heldentenor, he has the potential to be a genuine star.  Nothing exemplifies the duality between the vocal showcase & drama better than the aria with which Florestan opens Act II, namely “Gott! Welch dunkel hier!”  The moment is suspenseful as we wonder whether Florestan will be murdered either by his captors or by the musical demands.  Some singers duck the challenge by singing with such a light voice that they’re crooning their way through portions, to save their voice for the big moments.

Lamont

Tenor & TOC co-founder Jason Lamont

Lamont bravely brought so much voice that I was astonished that he had so much left, a dark & muscular sound.  Given the worldwide shortage of genuine heroic tenors in the world, I will be watching closely to see what roles he takes on next, whether through TOC or elsewhere.

The vocal excellence doesn’t end there.

Michael Robert-Broder continues to surprise with his remarkable voice & choices of repertoire.  In late September I raved about his stunning Hunding in Die Walküre yet – believe it or not not—he sang a very stylish  Pelléas in February 2011. Pizarro is a role that I’ve long wondered about,  that is, if it really is to be understood as a well-written creation.  In most productions Pizarro is a nasty blustering bully without subtlety or rationale, often loud & strident, and usually unpleasant to listen to.  Imagine my surprise, listening to Robert-Broder finding music in this role, singing phrases that I usually hear snarled or barked.  Robert-Broder has the smooth mellifluous baritone of a Gerald Finley or a Hermann Prey, used to great advantage last night.  At times I was reminded of such smiling tyrants we’ve seen in the world, such as Putin or Ahmadinejad.  It’s the most musical Pizarro I’ve ever heard, and revises my previous assessment (that the role is two-dimensional and melodramatic) and finds new depths in Beethoven’s creation.

The other standout portrayal was Marion Samuel-Steven as Marzelline.  Hers is a nuanced soubrette capable of power and gravitas.  Every phrase she sung, every moment on stage was in the moment, well thought out, and a significant contribution to the success of the evening.

Stephen Bell sang an attractive Jaquino, frustrated by Marzelline’s preferences. Grant Allert was a salt of the earth Rocco, contrasting Robert-Broder’s tyranny, and Kenneth Baker was a suitably stern Don Fernando, arriving in the nick of time.

There was an additional air of drama to the proceedings because the music director was unavailable at the last moment, requiring the capable Bill Shookhoff to step in as a substitute pianist.  His was a Mozartean reading that always respected the singers.

Although this production of Fidelio used no chorus, and summarized the action rather than included dialogue, we were propelled along through the magic of Beethoven.

I will be interested to see what TOC’s next offering will be.

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Campaign Catharsis

Posted on November 10, 2012 by barczablog

For months & months we’ve been inundated with American electoral discourse.

  • Conventions & nominations
  • Debates & speeches
  • Polls & statistics
  • Ads (sigh)
  • The ironic dissection of the GOP in social media (ah yes, this has been fun…!)

ObamacareThe drama of the Presidential election isn’t really over.  Not when the stalemate of the past four years looks to be repeated.  While the Democratic nominees—Barack Obama & Joe Biden—defeated the Republican nominees—Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan—there is every reason to believe that the Republican controlled House of Representatives will continue to be a place where Democrat initiatives go to die.

There is no longer a single conversation, but two separate monologues, each unable to connect with the other.  The Democrats speak of what needs to be done, the objectives and criteria of success entirely at odds with the counter-discourse, the Republican understanding of what’s wrong and how it needs to be fixed.

I had hoped for some release, after months of suspense, but the election failed to deliver.  I am worried we’re in the same bad place for another four years.

The CampaignTonight, I was ready for political therapy, and I found exactly what I needed.  It’s called The Campaign, a 2012 film starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis.   I’d seen the trailer before and to be honest, shivered at the thought.  The film shows a pair of candidates who seem to wage a really nasty negative fight for Congressman in North Carolina.  For someone suffering election overload it was the last thing I would want.

It’s a few days later.  I’d seen so many post-electoral gags and pictures, but honestly, something was missing.  I say that as someone who devoured everything out there, including that sentimental moment when Obama breaks down with his support staff.

Yet now, a few days after the election, what exactly happened to me?  I wonder, was I suffering withdrawal?

The film suddenly called to me the way second-hand tobacco smoke seduces the nose of someone trying –and failing –to quit smoking.

The Campaign gave me precisely what I had wanted from Obama & Biden, Romney & Ryan.  In this film I became engaged in another –fictitious—electoral battle, got involved with all the passions of a partisan, with a heavy layer of comedy.  Where the jokes in the trailer scared me off, tonight I was laughing uncontrollably, shell-shocked with electoral fatigue, my resistance broken.

The story reminds me somewhat of Trading Places, a film from the 80s that starred Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as a kind of anthropological test.  Two old millionaires –Ralph Bellamy & Don Ameche—make a bet to investigate whether the privileged son of the upper class (Aykroyd) deserves his advantages, or if a random derelict selected off of the street (Murphy) can do just as well.

This time Aykroyd–with John Lithgow—plays one of the rich guys.  The experiment isn’t quite so transparent, only evident in the moral choices made by the two candidates –Ferrell & Galifianakis—in the heat of their campaign.

Both of the comedians are alternatively ugly and silly, but fearless in their quest for comedic truth.  I came away from this film feeling finally free of the madness of the election year.  Next time I see it (probably tomorrow) I will likely have a totally different experience, knowing where the story is going.  Even so, it’s a healthy cure for the twin insanities, believing and doubting our electoral candidates.

I feel cleansed.

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Mish mash season

Posted on November 8, 2012 by barczablog

Maybe you can tell i am hungry.  I am thinking about comfort food as I write this.  Comfort food? Nothing effete or fancy, but food meant to satisfy:

  • Goulash or stew
  • Shepherd’s pie
  • All-day breakfasts
  • What farmers eat to keep up their energy
  • Unpretentious feasting, as in Oktoberfest

While I am thinking about opera, food is in my thoughts.  The notion of a mish mash is a metaphor I suppose, one that I saw recently in a review by John Terauds, writing about the recent Opera Atelier production of Der Freischütz.

Music theatre is often a strange brew, a bizarre mixture of elements.  It may sometimes be pretentious while at other times blatantly pragmatic in its appeal to simple tastes.  Some music theatre is a pastiche of music drawn from several sources, displaying the flamboyance of a smorgasbord.  Sometimes a single composer may emulate that flamboyance, seeking variety as though it were an end in itself.

I said “Mish mash season” after noticing how much variety can be found in the works being presented in Toronto his season:

  • Both Opera Atelier offerings this season are full of variety, namely
    • Der Freischütz—1821, which just concluded and
    • Die Zauberflöte aka The Magic Flute—(1791) coming in April 2013.
  • Wagner’s first masterpiece is being presented this month by Opéra du Montréal, a work that seems to be on a direct line from the two OA works, namely Der Fliegende Holländer aka Le Vaisseau fantöme (1843).
  • And this week, Toronto Opera Collaborative present Beethoven’s Fidelio, an opera that seems to belong in this group.

Perhaps I sound simplistic, as though the works constitute a genre.  I think there are some good reasons to think of them together.

The first three have dialogue and even melodrama.  In the third of these we see characteristics that could be called Wagnerian if we were speaking of animal evolution, and not the independent creations of different composers, writing decades apart.  All four employ a wide range of musical materials, taking their stories through surprising extremes, from sublime to the ridiculous.  What’s more, productions have sometimes missed or even suppressed the comic elements in the interest of honouring the sublime:

In The Magic Flute it’s done by underplaying Papageno & his comical plotline, while emphasizing Sarastro, Tamino & Pamina.  Ingmar Bergman’s film tinkers with the sequence of scenes.  In the original Papageno’s mock suicide follows the drama of Pamina (who almost does herself in), thereby undercutting and even mocking her serious story, but Bergman doesn’t allow that effect to undermine his serious purpose.

The opening numbers of Fidelio can be played for comic effect, although the story quickly becomes very serious when we discover Leonore’s intention of freeing her imprisoned husband.  I don’t claim to know what the right balance is, only that I wonder if we’ve yet seen this opera played right, given the distortions marring other operas of the 18th & 19th centuries.  An emphasis on gravitas and sublimity, and a quest for a wagnerian unity mars the delicacy of the work as written.

Der Freischütz too is a mix of high & low, comic & serious.  The balance in the Opera Atelier production pushed the comic side, while bringing an almost agnostic sensibility to bear on anything sublime or deep.  In fact I believe their staging of the Wolf’s Glen Scene was overly literal; there is no reason to show Samiel at all, let alone so early in the scene (and fully illuminated), unless one has no interest in creating suspense.  But even so I feel so completely invigorated by the freshness of their approach –particularly the subtleties of the musical performance — that i still welcome their explorations.

The Flying Dutchman is perhaps the most distorted of all, an opera that after all is seen with the benefit of hindsight, and therefore shoe-horned into the template of Gesamtkunstwerk.  I do not like the COC production that’s being presented in Montréal, one that I reviewed a few years ago, wishing someone (Opera Atelier?) might try to take us back to the original, where Daland, Senta’s father, is played for full comic effect, and where the chorus can be funny again.

Someday perhaps Opera Atelier will undertake both Fidelio and Fliegende Holländer.  In the meantime, this month you can find Alden’s production in Montreal’s Place des Arts (remounted by Marilyn Gronsdal) , or see/hear Toronto Opera Collaborative’s Fidelio this weekend, at Bloor St United Church.

vaisseau fantome

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Urban myths

Posted on November 6, 2012 by barczablog

For Halloween and All Saints I blogged some lists.  It may seem that I’m in a rut.  I love lists, don’t you?  No?

But I am only using a list as a kind of rhetorical smokescreen.  This time the list is presented without any preamble.  You’re invited to discern the common element in each example.

Chicago fire

Image from the Chicago fire of 1871

1) One of the great stories of Ancient Rome is the story of the Great Fire of AD 64.  It’s the fire when Nero supposedly fiddled: but of course there were no fiddles at the time.  Nero may indeed have played a musical instrument such as a lyre.  That legend concerns me less than the fact that fire could devastate a city.  London would later have a great fire in the 17th century, as would Chicago in the 19th Century.

2) There are worse things than pure cold or pure heat.  In 1998 parts of Ontario, Quebec and areas further east in the USA & Canada were subjected to an ongoing barrage of freezing rain followed by cold temperatures.  Large amounts of ice accumulated on wires carrying power, causing them to either break or the supporting structures to collapse.  While the events were hugely educational for utility professionals in the area, at the time it was an unprecedented disaster.

3) In 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the destructive storm surge over the protective levees led to enormous destruction & loss of life in the New Orleans area.

4) A tsunami in March 2011 was followed by what has come to be known as the “Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster”.  The flooding and destruction of earthquake & tsunami undermined the safety devices in the reactors, although in the end the disaster was not as extreme as Chernobyl.  The impact on Japan is not inconsiderable.

5) The news this past week on CNN is alternating between two big stories:

  • The American election
  • The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York, New Jersey & elsewhere.

And Sandy is really several stories, but I am especially intrigued by

  • The fragility of Manhattan, a place I love to visit.
  • Disruptions to the NYC transit & transportation infrastructure
  • The impact on the American economy, which at least partially understands New York City as an economic engine

Disasters are nothing new.  At different times, people have lived in precarious, unsustainable situations.  Are we making progress?  To anyone in New Orleans that may seem dubious.  Our civilizations are a series of promises.  From time to time we discover that the promises are empty: in a time of natural calamity.   Fire, power failure, flood, melt-down, it doesn’t really matter what circumstances expose the fragility of the underlying infrastructure.  We build to create safety, and then, we may become so self-assured about our progress that we come to take our safety & comfort for granted, assumptions that are shown to be foolish when nature assaults the city and its supporting networks.

If climate change means anything, it probably means an increase in the severity of weather events.  Cities hold out the promise of a kind of safety in the face of Nature’s fury.  But while our safety seems to increase with each generation, perhaps that is just a perception.  Such promises are never absolute.

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5 for All Saints

Posted on November 2, 2012 by barczablog

Halloween (or “all hallows even”, on October 31st) is the day preceding All Saint’s Day (November 1st).  Depending on your faith background, the two days are understood as inter-connected celebrations.  I am no expert.

But this is the other half of what I posted for Halloween.  After offering five musical samples having to do with the mysterious and dark understandings arising from Oct 31st I would like to offer something as a kind of balance.  In fact these choices are as impulsive as the ones I made last night.  Please feel free to offer your own suggestions in reply, if you think we should be hearing or seeing something else at this time.

The Mission1)  Ennio Morricone is known for several celebrated filmscores.  While his chilling themes for the westerns of Sergio Leone are a big part of their success, an operatic celebration of violence, his karma is clean for what he brought to the big screen in collaboration with Roland Joffé in the late 1980s.  The Mission is a story juxtaposing the ideals of the spirit (as embodied in the Jesuits pushing the frontiers of their faith into South America) & the harsh reality of politics in the church of the time.  This segment is the last portion of a long and painful penance of a man of the sword, bearing his armour & weapons with him into the wilderness, a long painful struggle.  

2) A few years ago I had a kind of religious experience.  I was music-director on this particular Sunday.  The mezzo-soprano was singing the song that serves as the fourth movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, namely Urlicht (or “primal light”).  The song text tells a story that was very poignant & relevant to the composer, a Jew being kept from the path to success by an anti-semitic culture.  The poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn tells of an angel blocking the path, but affirms that I will not be denied.

Imagine my shock that I saw this story enacted.  The singer was herself partially disabled, standing at the lectern singing, while I accompanied her from below.  The path in the middle of the church is where the deacons collect the offering from the congregation, during the offertory, a pathway exactly like the one in the song.  Because she couldn’t comfortably occupy the space in the middle, she had no choice but to sing from a place, off to the side: a curious & ironic enactment of the text of the song.  The singer didn’t notice this; but I did.  Here’s the text & translation 

Viktor Ullmann

Composer Viktor Ullmann

3)      On All Saints Martin Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” is sung, according to what I read on Wikipedia .  It’s a hymn that i know in several versions, and about which  I wrote awhile ago . We’ve just passed the anniversary of the passing of Viktor Ullmann, who died Oct 18th 1944.  In recognition of his passing AND in recognition of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” I will play the last ten minutes of the opera The Emperor of Atlantis.  Let me explain why. First, Death –who had petulantly taken a holiday to protest against Emperor Uberall (a satire of Hitler) who was making Death far too busy.  Sure, Death had taken a holiday, but has been persuaded to come back.  For some people –such as those inhabiting a concentration camp—death might actually be a blessing; this clip begins with a wonderful piece of vocalism from Gerald Finley.  Five and a half minutes into this clip is Ullmann’s adaptation of Luther’s Reformation hymn, sung in triple time.  I imagine Ullmann’s thinking: that it was conceived as the ultimate appeal for an audience of Nazi commandants & soldiers, possibly like what we see in that moment in the film To Be or Not to Be: when the Jewish actor gets to play Shylock before the Nazis, to say those magical lines:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

…but the premiere was pre-empted when they figured out the joke and pulled the plug before that premiere.  Imagine, how you might feel, as a German Lutheran, standing with your machine gun, listening to this in the hypothetical performance that never was. If the singers seem to look haunted it’s because they’re at Terezin, aka Theriesenstadt, the place where Ullmann composed & rehearsed the opera before being deported to Auschwitz.

4)  Whew… I need something for a contrast, don’t you?  How about Louis Armstrong playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”

5)  For all the saints who from their labours rest
While I love to sing it or to hear it sung, instead I’m playing an organ version of this hymn, composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams, in mute recognition that this hymn celebrates those who aren’t here.    The saints who from their labours rest?  those who have died.  

We too will find our rest eventually.  For now, Happy All Saints Day.

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5 for Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2012 by barczablog

It’s October 31st, a date that, depending on your context, could mean

  • an occasion to dress up
  • an occasion to pig out
  • an occasion to be outrageous

Some people do that every day of the year, and I won’t deny that I am envious.

In the meantime (as I await the arrival of this year’s wild horde at the door), and in the spirit of the day, I present you with five samples that each in their way have something to say about the day and its attractions.

1)From Marschner’s Der Vampyr 

2) From Weber’s Der Freischütz, excitementbuilding gradually to the end 

3) From Bernard Herrmann’s music from Psycho

4) From Bernard Herrmann’s music at the beginning of The Day The Earth Stood Still 

5) Mysterious masquerade during Eyes Wide Shut

Marschner

Composer Heinrich Marschner

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WTF?

Posted on October 30, 2012 by barczablog

WTF: What’s the Fach?

Okay, okay, I admit I’m having fun with headlines.  I’m still convalescing, while the continent convulses (or as my friend Trevor said “earthquakes to the west of me, hurricanes to the east, here I am, stuck in the middle with you”), hoping the electricity doesn’t go off.   I also considered calling this “anti-gravitas”, and a few others even less funny than that. I am expanding upon a review i wrote Thursday night

While I did not see opening night of Freischütz (who needs the machinations of an evil huntsman such as Samiel, when there are flu viruses to possess you?), I have been thinking through my experience.  Critics are often the easiest people to freak out, disoriented because we have expectations and assumptions built upon academic classifications.

Alastair Fowler, writing in Kinds of Literature, said “in reality genre is much less of a pigeonhole than a pigeon.”  This is a very fertile image when we’re talking about revisiting Der Freischütz, an opera hinging upon the moment a marksman shoots a dove.  Dove or pigeon? Aha, there’s another question of class.

Even more important to me –and fundamental—than the question of genre—is the question of “Fach”.  Don’t be afraid of this word (one that young opera singers usually embrace with special glee, enjoying the way it freaks their parents out), a Fach is simply a vocal classification, and the equivalent of a pigeonhole.

With genre and Fach, we’re faced with a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem (sorry I can’t seem to get my mind off of birds & poultry…I suppose that after being sick my brain is still scrambled… oh no a bad yoke… oh no, I cracked another one.  OM-letting you down again and again, sigh…).

But as I was saying, we wonder which comes first, and how do we know one without the other…?  Do I know music-drama, such as Strauss & Wagner wrote, from the requirements he places upon the voices –the heldentenors, dramatische sopranos, and so forth—OR is it the other way around: that we define the voices by saying they are the kind of voices used in music-drama?

The problem is, however, that’s exactly what does happen.  It’s circular to say the least, and pays no heed to history.

Or maybe we have to look at the question another way, using a four-dimensional model, that sees the fach as evolving over time.  Any or all of these factors play into the changing ways singers approach their careers & their roles:

  • Changes in repertoire
  • shared learning / pedagogy
  • changes in the business such as
    • specialization, more standard sound, less local/regional voice, more international uniformity
    • the many enormous opera houses in parts of the world that required big massive voices; has this trend changed? (ie Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, instead of Sony Centre)
    • TV,  DVDs & high definition broadcasts changing the rules (does physical beauty trump vocal prowess?)
  • conventional wisdom (for better or worse) about how to sing, how to run an opera company

There are reasons to question the fach system of voices.  If Leonore in Fidelio is now understood to be a dramatic soprano –which is to say, a role sung by the same sort of singer as would undertake Elektra, Turandot or Brunnhilde—how did the role fare in those years when it was effectively the only role of its kind?  The question can probably be answered by looking closely at the lives of key singers and the roles they undertook.

Anne Milder

Anne Milder, the first Leonore

Wikipedia tells me that a soprano named Anna Milder was the first Leonore in Fidelio, both in its early version (1805) and in its later revision as Fidelio (1814), a year after Wagner was born, but long before either Puccini or Strauss arrived on the scene.

With no Turandots or Elektras or Isoldes or Brunnhildes, Milder was not at a loss.  She was famous for singing the title role in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, a role Susan Graham sang last year here in Toronto. Graham is a mezzo-soprano, known for roles such as Marguérite in La Damnation de Faust or Didon in Les Troyens.

I put that out there to suggest that we approach this subject with caution.  Our assumptions are influenced by what we’ve heard, by what we understand as the “right” way to create a particular style of music.  An operatic genre is intimately connected to such assumptions which include performance conventions.

One of the things I love –and when I say love, think of pink cherubs grinning when I say this —is the way period performance scrambles our usual understanding.  I don’t care if the music doesn’t sound “right”.  I love the sense of the new & the unknown, and am profoundly sceptical of any orthodoxy.  I was enthralled listening to a new approach to Bizet’s Carmen in its 2005 film adaptation U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, incorporating South African music, and a happy disregard of operatic convention.

What I especially admire about the Opera Atelier Freischütz is the way it problematizes so many of our assumptions.  David Fallis’s conducting & music-direction boldly refused to do the usual things with this opera, and instead boldly linked it back towards its implicit forebears.  As a result it suggests new pathways for exploration:

  • is Max perhaps not quite as helden as we’ve assumed? Can we be so sure, then about Florestan, Leonore’s counterpart & consort in precedence?  A transitional role such as Erik in Fliegende Holländer –with its echoes of Max—may also be lighter if the orchestra is handled as gently as Fallis handled Tafelmusik on this occasion.  Kresimir Spicer’s Max also takes me back to Mozart; his Tito is at times very dramatic, a role that I believe is heavier than other Mozart roles.
  • Is Agathe, then maybe also lighter? It makes me want to question our understanding of such roles as Donna Anna (which Meghan Lindsay sang wonderfully in Opera Atelier’s Don Giovanni last year), and of course Leonore: a role that one would approach differently if the orchestra were played lighter as well.
  • The genre question?  I wish it were a question but to my knowledge no one seems concerned –yet—that our assumptions may be off the mark.  I was struck by a phrase John Terauds used in his positive review of Freischütz;  which he called “a riotous mishmash.”  I think the same could be said of Mozart’s Magic Flute and Beethoven’s Fidelio.  All three mix high and low, incorporate dialogue & melodrama, and I think we’ve especially lost our way in surrendering to Wagner’s influence.  Wagner never told us how to watch these operas, but his own essays & later works argue for something called Gesamtkunstwerk, or the “total art work”.  Wagner came along at a time when it was still a new concept to unify all elements towards a single goal.  Theatrical works with variety that call attention to their mechanisms are anti-wagnerian by definition.  I share Terauds’ taste for a good mishmash, but doubt there will ever be a pigeonhole with that charming word above it.

I am reminded of the instructions women receive during labour, to resist the urge to push, until the very end.  Pushing at the wrong time is not good for the baby, nor the mother.  Is something similar at work with the Wolf’s Glen Scene?  Opera is orchestra plus singers in a theatre.  One can seek to make the orchestra as loud & scary as possible, and then challenge the singers to somehow be heard; or one scales it back, and engages the imagination of the audience.  I believe that once one has heard such a scene done without restraint –possibly in a style remote from the composer’s time—it’s hard to turn back the clock to a more authentic & restrained approach.  Once we surrender to the physical impulse to push—which may be unhealthy both for the voices & our appreciation of the work—it’s hard to stop.  Commercial pressures, competition between performers, and experimentation all have in various ways goaded performers, as if a coach were shouting in the singers’ collective ears: “Push! Push!  PUSH!”

And we know that’s not healthy.

In the message from the Opera Atelier co-artistic directors, we read the following bold statement (after speaking of their first period performance of Magic Flute 20 years ago: the first period performance of Magic Flute in North America).

This evening we are taking what is perhaps an even more thrilling leap into uncharted territory.  Our production of the first Romantic opera—Weber’s Der Freischütz –boldly redefines the very parameters of what constitutes period performance.  We are not merely drawing a line in the sand; we are stepping past the line in saying all periods are fair game to be reinterpreted in historically informed productions.  Our hearts are still firmly grounded in Baroque repertoire, and this will be reflected in our programming in the years to come, but we also look forward to the potential of re-examining masterpieces by composers such as Debussy, Bizet and even Wagner.

How apt that the chosen metaphor is of a step being taken.  Whatever it looks like or sounds like, however well it coheres or fragments, I welcome their provocative and courageous experiments.  I look forward to the ensuing chapters of this story, even if one could also say ”the subsequent acts of this ballet”.

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

R Murray Schafer: My Life on Earth and Elsewhere

Posted on October 28, 2012 by barczablog

a handicap, if not too severe, gives one an advantage in life because it forces the handicapped to work harder.

I understand autobiography as a medium associated with fame.  Books about stars sell well, whether they’re readable or not.

RMS's book

The cover of R Murray Schafer’s My Life on Earth & Elsewhere

I feel i need to apologize for such cynical thinking, but those are among my first thoughts coming to My Life on Earth and Elsewhere, the memoir of R Murray Schafer, Canadian composer & artist, a book that deserves to be read by more than the narrow Canadian new music fraternity. This beautiful book is bound in lovely paper, decorated on the cover and inside with copious examples of RMS’s art.  I am reminded of why books matter, the sort of cultural issue that likely wasn’t far from Schafer’s awareness while crafting his memoir.

RMS has had a very interesting & colourful life, one he shares generously throughout.  If one only wanted to get lost in excellent prose & ruminations about the meaning of life, the memoir is rewarding enough.  Autobiography is a kind of portraiture, a glimpse if not an objective view of the person.  I recognize this is naïve and perhaps wishful thinking, but even so I rather like the R Murray Schafer of the memoir.  The person portrayed in the book –real or otherwise—is fascinating: not a wild extrovert, but always keeping his eye on the future, never letting anything get him down, a fellow with a special gift for meeting strangers, particularly women.  I realized somewhere past page 50 that I am loving this book even though I don’t think I’ve seen nearly as much as I expected to see pertaining to music, so far.

But it does come up.

The story of Son of Heldenleben with the Montreal Symphony brings context to a piece I remember from a later performance by Toronto Symphony.  Too bad the piece was presented in the usual pompous seriousness by the TSO when I sensed (but repressed my awareness of) its parodic-deconstructive nature.  RMS tells several colourful tales of the background politics with the MSO.  I must surrender to the impulse to quote RMS. I want to share.

Then one day I got the summons to come to Montreal to meet Maestro Franz Paul Decker, one of those majestic foreigners to whom we have entrusted all our major orchestras.  …Everywhere Decker went he was followed by two stooges who punctuated all his statements with ‘C’est juste’ or ‘c’est ça’.  ‘You know, Mr Schafer, only last veek ve are performing  ze rrrreal Heldenleben! Now zis…foolish joke vill not reflect vell on us, not at all.’   ‘C’est juste.’ etc. ‘First I vould ask you to consider changing ze title.’  ‘No.’  ‘But zis is impossible title!’  ‘Impossible, impossible” echo the two stooges.   

For a time at least, Canadian music was a second class citizen in our country.

RMS

R Murray Schafer

A commission from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra followed that from the MSO a year or so later.  The contract read: ‘It is agreed that the work shall have a minimum duration of approximately seven(7) minutes and no longer than ten (10) minutes.’  That is, the work was to be what Canadian composers call a ‘piece de garage’, intended for performance while the patrons were parking their cars. 

The gradual change in the book’s tone parallels RMS’s changing sense of self.  Just as I’d like to think that we’ve shaken off the colonial chains holding us back, the nervous apologies and perpetual measuring against European standards, so too for the composer.  In due course, Schafer tells the story of many of his most celebrated compositions (even as their more detailed discussion is to be found elsewhere), both as logistical challenges and as creative opportunities, without holding back on the ironic wit.

I haven’t finished reading the memoir yet.  But I’m grateful to be under the weather today, cocooned with Schafer and his remarkable book.

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U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

Posted on October 28, 2012 by barczablog

Last weekend I was fortunate to see U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a 2005 adaptation of Bizet’s opera Carmen.

The score is a mix of Bizet & South African music, which is only natural considering that the adaptation is set in a South African township (Khayelitsha) in modern day.

DVD

Link to soundtrack CD.   Amazon also has the DVD

At one time in the 1980s it seemed that Carmen was being adapted by everyone, from Carlos Saura’s flamenco version, to rival skating versions from American Debi Thomas and East German Katarina Witt, so I shouldn’t be surprised to happily encounter this version on one of our wonderful French language TV channels in the Toronto area.

The main story is still there, the love of policeman Jongikhaya (rather han Don José) for Carmen the cigarette girl.  Instead of being involved with smugglers, Carmen involves Jongikhaya in drug trafficking.  Instead of a love triangle with Escamillo the bullfighter, the other man is Lulamile Nkomo, a singer. The language is African (one of them… no idea which) rather than French, although the broadcast on the French channel had subtitles in French.

Mark Dornford-May directed it. One of the ways in which this adaptation is modernized is the level of violence, and not just at the end.  Be prepared, because while this makes the film seem real, it can be shocking to see.

The performances are not operatic in the slightest.  By that, I mean they’re good, cinematic and gripping in all the right ways.  None of the performers had ever done this kind of thing before, which is why they’re all so convincing.  I am reminded of Debussy’s admonition to his cast for the opening of the first Pelléas et Mélisande, when he asked them to forget they were singers. And so this film is not operatic in the usual ways: which is good!. Instead of forgetting, they simply don’t know the usual procedures  The singing is often out of tune, but has wonderful commitment from the performers.  On the basis of seeing U-Carmen eKhayelitsha I believe this is a much better way to proceed, considering how often opera singers can’t sing in tune either.  At least this time they create something genuinely dramatic.

I like it!

Here’s a look at the end  (be advised that the last note is missing from this clip)

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments