10 Questions for Carol Baggott-Forte

Posted on October 23, 2012 by barczablog

Since 1977 Canadian voice teacher, Carol Baggott-Forte has taught singing based on vocal health and laryngeal function to many of Canada’s finest classical and music theatre singers. Her rational method of instruction is rooted in organic natural responses innate to all voices based on the vocal pedagogy of Cornelius L. Reid.

Recently she has expanded her teaching by invitation to include master class workshops in France (Paris & Lyon), Germany (Frankfurt, Duisburg & Düsseldorf), and the UK (Brighton).  A member of NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing), she has served on the voice faculty of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, taught at the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival (Canada’s most prestigious theatres) and has also presented workshops for the Ontario Music Educators’ Association.

Here’s how Baggott-Forte describes her own journey on her website

In 1976 I was introduced to the pedagogical writings of the famous and controversial teacher/author Cornelius Reid in New York City in the book The Free Voice. – Reid was, and still is considered ‘controversial’ because he did not teach the conventional methods of breathing and support or placement of the voice.  His pedagogical emphasis was on healthful use of the larynx, its associated muscle systems and the tonal qualities produced by the vocal registers.

The undertaking of functional voice training with Cornelius Reid and his courageous followers led me not only to vocal freedom, but allowed me to reclaim my youthful pursuit as a teacher, a profession for which I had trained.  It was a career choice that has brought me immeasurable fulfillment and an on-going future of work with new generations of aspiring singers. Cornelius Reid taught and encouraged me to become the kind of teacher I was looking for in 1974-75. — I now dismantle and rebuild the voices of talented singers damaged in career pursuit, many of whom should have had international careers themselves.  

What concerns me the most is the question: Why did these voices, including my own, require “fixing” in the first place?

I ask Carol Baggott-Forte 10 questions: five about herself and five about her practice as a Master of Functional Voice Training.

1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what s your nationality / ethnic background)? 

Carol

Carol Baggott-Forte, vocal pedagogue

I descend from seven generations of eccentric Canadian ‘mavericks’ and free thinkers.  I was born in St. Catharines, Ontario (5th generation) to English/Anglo Canadian parents. Raised and for the major part, educated in the USA.

When it comes to “looks” one could say I am half and half of both parents.  My intellectual curiosity is from my mother, the nurse – ever learning on a variety of subjects – health and alternative medicine, psychology, and mysteries of the universe. My father was a competitive, self-made businessman and engineer.  He was indifferent to music. One might say that my survival as an independent teacher came from his business savvy.

My musicality and passion for voices came from my maternal grandmother May Tait Coyne, whose vocal and musical potential was so evident that Ignacy Paderewski,  in political exile in Niagara on the Lake during WWI, offered her a scholarship to study opera in Italy after hearing her sing for his troops… Her in-laws recoiled at the thought of “a family member on the stage!” and quickly quashed the idea.  The rest of her life remained to some extent un-fulfilled despite her children, grandchildren, occasional concerts and as much music as she could listen to.

Amelita Galli-Curci

Amelita Galli-Curci

Her 1919 console Victrola remains in my home and plays the same 78rpm records as it did in her “parlour” 90 yrs ago. These singers: Amelita Galli-Curci, Maria Tetrazzini, Maria Jeritza were my idols – a full 2 generations before mine.  Many of those recordings are testimonials to what was considered the ‘GOLDEN AGE OF SINGING’ in the first half of the 20th century.  We rarely hear such technical, musical and vocal artistry at this time.

2) what is the BEST thing / worst thing about being a voice teacher?

The most rewarding aspect of being a voice teacher for me is coaxing singers to find their authentic voices, not manufactured ones.  This allows them to develop over time rather than to jump into advanced repertoire prematurely.

The worst thing is hearing a potentially great talent with a constricted voice in severe distress unable to effectively express his or her musical ideas.  These voices must be ‘deconstructed’, the registers separated and rebuilt.  This process is often emotionally painful for the singer.

3) what do you listen to or watch?  

This depends on my mood.  Baroque music if I need spirit – Bach, Handel, Purcell, Vivaldi, Telemann.  Otherwise, I might want Beethoven or Mendelssohn to stir me up.  Mozart’s brilliance always lifts me into a wonder-mode of thought, especially recalling that he practically ran home from his extended walks in the forest to write down the music he heard in his mind before he forgot it.  For a rush of blood pressure I might watch a thriller on TV.  For exercise, I play some 60s -80s rock!

As I age, I am more attracted to art song than opera – the drama has been washed out of me, I suppose. Aside from Renée Fleming and Ruth Ann Swenson, there are few current opera singers that catch my ear.  The recordings of Mariella Devia’s renditions of Bellini, Sutherland, Sills and a few others continue to interest me.  So many singers are out there performing opera that clearly do not know their proper fach (vocal category) and therefore the languages they sing in are stilted and poorly pronounced while they attempt to sing darker and louder as dramatic voices, rather than lyric. Some get talked into roles they would be better off not singing. —  I was deeply saddened when Rolando Villazon started having vocal problems as his early recordings were the ultimate in musicality – particularly the Verdi Arias CD. His vocal response to great repertoire should have ignited significant enthusiasm for listeners into his old-age.

4) what ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I neither excelled at sports nor dance.  Watching a figure skater, ballet dancer or graceful gymnast makes me want to respond with the same skill as it all looks so liberating.  I took dance lessons as a child and was so naturally un-coordinated that I could throw off the entire class ensemble!

5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favorite thing to do?

I love cooking with my Italian husband.  He taught me to make really great, simple meals with 100 % fresh ingredients and to safely use a sharp knife in their preparation.  I am also hooked on the internet and love the learning possibilities a Google search can provide.

Five more about being a voice pedagogue.

1)    How does your practice as a master functional singing teacher challenge you?

There is a lexicon of challenges connected to teaching “functional voice training.”
a.    Initially some singers and teachers find the concepts I offer as so much ‘hogwash’, when they are indeed practical.  Some religiously hang on to beliefs about the voice. – Ideas having to do with ‘diaphragmatic support’, ‘intercostal breathing’ and ‘placement’ among them, that often harm voices rather than help them.  – Those are merely symptoms of good singing, not the cause of it.  I once got very annoyed with a young singer during a master class in France who had lost the ability to sing in her mother-tongue’s Spanish vowels.  Her teacher had taught her to push her elbows into her rib cage… “to take pressure off the throat!”  The girl insisted and argued with me for several minutes. “I believe it helps me!”  My response was, “if you want a belief, go to the Eglise!” – It was a moment I now regret.
b.    Singers are often shocked when presented with the fact that the larynx is a digestive / respiratory organ whose normal muscular and organic activities are borrowed to make it into an instrument of musical expression. They are horrified that perhaps vocal training is not necessarily an exercise in aesthetics, but one of practical vocal mechanics.  It is far more conducive to better singing to come to an understanding of what sounds from the voice mean from a functional basis, rather than an aesthetic one.
c.    One or two singing lessons are useless, as the majority of singers will self-consciously hold back from ‘allowing’ unfamiliar qualities to emerge from their voices.  These singers continue to do what they already know. There is an old saying, “do it the same way every time and you will get the same result!”  This applies to singing too.

Vagus nerve

The vagus nerve (click for more information)

d.    The vagus nerve registers emotion directly in the glottis.  Therefore, constrictive elements in the mechanism, resulting from vocal abuse or poor vocal concepts, are difficult to eradicate due to kinaesthetic and emotional memory.  See my blog for more on the vagus nerve.
e.    How do I know when voices are constricted?: – The singer will have a limited range, (we all have the potential for 2 ½ to 3 octaves), cannot sing pure vowels on all tones nor sing a messa da voce without shifting the vowel quality. –  cannot sing high notes without pushing as the larynx is too deep and the vocal folds cannot approximate the higher frequencies by shortening and thinning out – which is their job.

I have often thought that singing teachers should take the     Hippocratic oath to “DO NO HARM”.

2) what do you love about helping singers with their vocal problems?

The moment that sounds begin to appear from the throats of singers who had never experienced simply hearing themselves do the job without hard physical work is truly exciting from my perspective. – Hearing singers I have helped perform a concert is more than gratifying, especially when they are better than they believed they could be.

3) do you have a highlight of your career, or a student you’ve helped of whom you’re especially proud?

There are many ‘highlights’:
a. Rescuing the wonderful voices of super talents.
(See my website:www.liberatedvoice.com )
b. Receiving international attention through a German Translation for my 2002 essay: “Could Maria Callas’ voice have been saved”.
c. The phone call in 2002 from Cornelius Reid, my teacher / mentor to say he had recommended that I take over his master classes in Germany.
d. Having pupils who have become fine teachers.

4) how do you relate to vocal pedagogy and the art of singing as a modern woman?

At almost 68, I am hardly a “modern woman”! I have been teaching singing for thirty-six years. One could say my attitude is youthful.  My eccentricities, intuition and desire for rational, truthful teaching pulled me like a magnet to ‘functional voice training’.

I recognise the potential for the voice to improve at any age.  It’s fun, self-revealing and healing all at once both to singer and teacher. Teaching singing allows me to have a generous relationship with others and to relate honestly to younger generations of singers… The human voice has remained anatomically the same for a few thousand years, so using it as an instrument through discipline and practical practice is not particularly out-dated, provided that both pupil and teacher are patient.  I have learned to apply the science of functional voice to all styles of music from opera to pop.   All my pupils must learn to use the voice legitimately before they sing stylistically.  Technique and style are not one in the same.  Technique is an acquired skill that ultimately should allow the singer to perform all styles.  While some stylistic vocal qualities may not be to my taste, the singer has the ultimate right to make that choice.

5) Is there anyone out there who you particularly admire, and who has influenced you?

I admire those who are self-assertive and who find their ways in this complicated world despite all odds and who remain generous with their colleagues throughout that process.

Teachers whose guidance and knowledge showed me what I did not know about myself have most positively influenced me.  Lucky for me there have been four in my life: Roger Johnson (College of Emporia), Dr.Joseph Barone & Kathryna Blum Barone (http://www.brynmawrconservatoryofmusic.com/) and my longest mentor/ teacher/ Cornelius Reid (http://www.corneliuslreid.com/) with whom I studied for 30+ yrs.  These were individuals who embraced singing, its legacy and its perpetuation through teaching.   I hope to inspire others in the future to preserve and teach the concepts of healthy, beautiful and functional singing as those teachers did for me.  They gave me the keys to a wonderfully, productive life.

 ~~~~~~~

For further information go to http://liberatedvoice.wordpress.com/

Posted in Interviews | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Gustav vs Alma

Posted on October 22, 2012 by barczablog

I’ve been listening to Julie Boulianne’s 2011 CD Mahler Lieder, in the aftermath of a week contemplating the works of Frida Kahlo at the AGO.  The show reminds us of the changing role for women in the creative world of art; as a result I can’t help asking related questions about the Mahlers and their interpreters.

Alma Mahler’s place in her husband’s life makes an interesting companion study to that of Kahlo’s life with Diego Rivera, a painter who was more famous than his wife at the time of their deaths in the 1950s; it’s only in the past few decades that Kahlo has emerged from the shadow of her more famous husband to become the more celebrated artist in their family.  While Alma Mahler will never displace her husband, it’s worth noting that she was an accomplished composer (even if she only finished a few songs, plus a few fragments) who gave up composition when she married Gustav, at his request.  That imposition was likely a factor in their eventual estrangement.  Nor was it helpful that Gustav composed the Kindertotenlieder (songs to texts composed by Ruckert after the deaths of two of his children), over Alma’s objections.  She saw this as tempting fate, a sentiment that came to a kind of fruition with the death of their daughter Maria just a few years later.

Mahler CDBoulianne’s CD seems to trace the pathway of the Mahler drama.  We begin with Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in Arnold Schönberg’s orchestration, then on to the Kindertotenlieder in Reinbert de Leeuw’s orchestration, both featuring Ensemble Orford conducted by Jean-Frainçois Rivest.  Finally Boulianne sings five songs of Alma Mahler accompanied by pianist Marc Bourdeau.  It’s as if Boulianne takes us into the heart of the Mahler drama.

The CD begins with the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, a cycle concerning heart-break that I encountered as accompanist to a baritone, while always avoiding versions sung by a woman even though the text is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for it.  Speaking as someone who usually embraces alternative readings & paraphrases –not just Schönberg’s orchestration but anything like this that might give me a better perspective on a work—I am embarrassed to admit my own prejudice, one I didn’t realize I even had.  I realize in all the decades I’ve been hearing (or playing) these songs, this is my first time to allow a woman to sing it for me.  In context with Frida & Diego, I think I am ready for a new voice.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that there are reasons for this preference, even if they sound like weak rationalizations.  Female voices substituted for male in almost any song cycle –especially one with orchestra rather than piano—bring two or three natural advantages.

1)      a higher voice usually carries better (especially in a big space), and so is less likely to be drowned out by a big ensemble

2)      a higher voice is easier to accompany as a composer because so many voices of an orchestra lie within the normal tessitura of a male singer, making it harder to avoid redundancy with a male singer.

3)      [not so sure about this one] I get the impression that all things being equal, women can undertake almost any text or subject, and audiences will accept it, whereas the same doesn’t seem to work in reverse.

And so, when one hears that early autobiographical set sung by a man, it seems to fit well with the voice, in ways that don’t quite work for me when I hear a woman sing it.  Or am I just so unaccustomed to the female voice that I need to give it (and them) the chance to win me over?

I know that Boulianne sounds marvellous, indeed almost too good.  When a man sings those last notes of the final song they may sound almost as though the voice is breaking, on that low A.  It’s not a place to show off your good low notes, but that’s what I thought Boulianne was doing.  She sang it perfectly, notes that I’ve heard sung without so much assurance from men.  But then again, this too is an interpretive option that’s valid.

While we’re speaking of voices, the work sounds very new in Arnold Schönberg’s orchestration.  There’s a quality to the music that has a distinctly klezmer flavour I’ve never encountered in the music before, possibly because in this small ensemble we get clarinets with the voice, a playful quality that’s erased by the big orchestra.

The next part of the CD is the Kindertotenlieder, and while we’re talking about prejudices, I have to admit I have never allowed these pieces into my life.  I don’t really share Alma’s misgivings –that the subject tempts fate—so much as a deeper sense that the subject is wrong.  Perhaps Ruckert needed to write these poems, which is one thing –the intimacy of writing about your loss—but to make something to be performed?  I simply find the works inappropriate & troubling.  I looked at Frida Kahlo’s paintings of her suffering, and felt she had the right to proclaim her authentic suffering.  But to sing of such things? They’ve seemed like a series of strange and even bizarre responses to such powerful experiences.

But i am open to persuasion.

And so, again, here’s a woman, the walking analog to Alma the bereft mother, singing these songs.  Odd as Gustav was to write these songs, if anyone has the right to sing them this time, in context with the other cycle (that I experienced as something of an appropriation): it would have to be Boulianne.  She is my first, even though I know there have been so many others.  I find her voice pushing buttons for me, reminding me often of Janet Baker (my favourite voice in “Der Abschied” with Bernard Haitinck), with that beautiful colour that goes right through me.  This cycle is also recorded in a chamber version.  I find it less over-powering than the versions with orchestra, which as I mentioned, I have never yet embraced in my life.  I have to be honest this way, because, beautiful as the performances are, I am suspect.  I love Mahler but don’t know this music.  I have a Dover piano score of three Mahler song cycles (namely the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde) that has never really been cracked for those middle pages.  And so, take my recommendation with a grain of salt because obviously I don’t know this music.  But it’s as though what won me over to the Kindertotenlieder was Boulianne’s reading of the earlier cycle.

No wait, that’s not true.  Come to think of it I only really listened to her Kindertotenlieder after shuddering, and jumping to the last part of the CD.  That’s really the clincher for me that led me to double back, playing the whole thing.  Because in the third part of the CD we finally hear Alma Mahler, the thwarted composer who gave up her career before it began to appease her husband.  When she began to be estranged from him –eventually having a love affair—the older composer repented and helped her publish a few songs.

I’d known she wrote songs, but didn’t expect to like them so much.

Of the five songs, one seems particularly intriguing as a feminist meditation upon the world of music, namely “In meines Vaters Garten”, or “in my Father’s garden”.  The song and any other music from Alma Mahler would be like a foray into a male place, such as her father’s garden.  In the text, a king has three daughters, each of whom dreams about a world of the achievements of men. This startlingly beautiful melody seems to situate us in a vicarious world, where everything achievable is male, while the females only observe and dream of what the men will do.   I can’t help but think that for Alma Mahler, this song was a hugely ironic commentary upon the entire enterprise, and perhaps the trap (at least partly of her own making) in which she found herself.  Did Gustav get it, I wonder? This performance (by another artist) gives you some idea of what a great song Alma composed, and indeed, what might have been if she’d not abandoned composition.

After hearing Boulianne’s authoritative readings of Alma’s songs I doubled back to hear the Kindertotenlieder, and now have made my peace with the cycle.  In purely therapeutic terms I am grateful, that i’ve now opened my heart to these songs.  All three cycles on the CD are in some respect new territory for me, speaking as someone overcoming prejudices.  The combination of repertoire moved me very much, particularly the meta-drama I’ve alluded to.

I recommend the recording without reservation.

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Latent Frida

Posted on October 20, 2012 by barczablog

logoI’m wrestling with a few related concepts after being immersed in the wonderful show at the Art Gallery of Ontario Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting.  They revolve around the degree to which Frida Kahlo was in some respects hidden or latent.  There seems to be some sort of powerful parallel between the hidden aspects of her life and her emerging reputation, coming out of the shadows (after being forgotten at her death in the 1950s), as though one reinforces the other.

Kahlo’s recognition over the last few decades came about at least partly because of changing attitudes.  In the 1950s women weren’t understood the way they are now, nor was there a fascination with aboriginal images interfacing with or blended into high art.

At least some of that dynamic can be attributed to the travesty of disability, and excuse me if that phrase is cryptic; I’ll have to unpack it somewhat.  We live in a world that expects and assumes competence.  When a person can’t cope they are slotted into other categories.   Competence is at least part of this.  If I can’t walk as well as the average person, I have a few options:

  • Limp visibly, and perhaps suffer whatever looks, attitudes and comments are elicited by my behaviour
  • Obtain aids such as crutch, cane, wheelchair, again, suffering whatever looks, attitudes and comments are elicited by my behaviour
  • Avoid human contact to avoid those looks or comments, in order to be accepted as “normal”
  • Fake a normal walk, to avoid those looks or comments, in order to be accepted as “normal”

Travesty is a word that I invoke to encompass the various ways a person may invoke another category, with varying degrees of success.  I wrote a lengthy and rambling piece about this at the time of Amy Winehouse’s death.  I was struck at the time by the ways some experiences challenge our understanding.  Atypical people may be stigmatized, forcing them to either seek out a subculture where they’d feel more welcome or simply to sequester themselves indoors.  I believe one reason we have so many marvellous self-portraits from Frida Kahlo is because she was often indoors, living with her pain.

I am making a huge set of assumptions of course, not having more to go on than the paintings & Julie Taymor’s film.

I am haunted by the experience of standing in front of Henry Ford Hospital, particularly the moment when I watched a woman look and shudder visibly, as recognition hit her bodily.

Ford Hospital

Henry Ford Hospital

This is a picture not just of a woman, but of a kind of travesty.  Kahlo had a miscarriage in Detroit, perhaps at this hospital (I am not sure, but suspect it’s so).  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she invokes the name of the inventor of the assembly line process that’s used in car assembly, that the hospital bed is shown with other factories on the horizon, because this bed is more factory than organic site of birth.  Kahlo was unable to conceive, had been through multiple operations after her bus accident (aha, another automotive connection that just occurs to me), including the accidental piercing of her body by a metal pole, and later procedures involving spinal fusion with a metal rod.  In a real sense, she must have felt that her humanity was conflated with machines.  Had she known the modern word “cyborg” – the hybrid of human and machine as in science fiction—she might well have applied it.  The picture shows her bed as a kind of assembly line, that the various images at the ends of the series of umbilical cords vary between an organic foetus and something obviously mechanical, as if she were giving birth to machines, or her organic process were actually more like an assembly line.  Kahlo went through over 30 different surgical procedures in her life, eventually losing part of her right leg via amputation due to gangrene.

At times Kahlo holds up a very harsh mirror to herself.  Kahlo had intended to become a physician, which is likely part of the background for her fascination with anatomy and the workings of the human body.  A woman whose life was one of pain & suffering left a very different sort of testimony in her work.  Most of her paintings celebrate life & nature, even if she must have felt that she lived at the boundary between life and death.

I suppose that I am not alone, that the reason Kahlo’s works have been noticed and re-evaluated is precisely because the latent element is hidden but manifest.  A powerful spirit couldn’t be contained or held back just as these sites of oppression have emerged from obscurity to be understood and even appreciated.

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays | 2 Comments

Solti Centennial

Posted on October 19, 2012 by barczablog
George Solti

Georg Solti by Allan Warren, 1975

The centennial of Hungarian conductor Georg Solti arrives on October 21st.  As a Hungarian I always found it irritating that he called himself “Georg” rather than “György”.  But of course whenever I say that name aloud –and unless you’re Magyar you shouldn’t try it because you might dislocate your tongue—I immediately understand.  Georg is easy, György is difficult, in the same ways that Bernie Schwarz couldn’t match the name Tony Curtis or Norma Jean Mortensen is a forgettable handle compared to Marilyn Monroe.

Solti had many great moments in his career, and perhaps a few not so high.  I am simply going to list the things I remember him for, and you can decide whether they’re noteworthy or not.  There are four acts to our relationship.

Act One: Aida

As a child I’d encountered a few recordings of Verdi’s Aida in my home.  I was young, so of course I wasn’t the purchaser, just the passive listener.  We had a few different recordings in the house, and if I recall correctly this one was a present to me.  Leontyne Price was the voice of the title role, still unequalled in my mind, even as I recognize that we always invest our first version of anything we encounter with a special glamour.  Jon Vickers was no Jussi Björling –a singer whose special place in my household has been explained in at least one other post—but was a voice that grew on me.  At this early age I’d never seen anything good onstage, so voice was everything (a view that has changed substantially over the years).  I was particularly taken with the Act IV scene i  duet between Vickers’ Rhadames and Rita Gorr’s Amneris, a reading of surprising vulnerability on both sides.  When we get to Amneris’ final denunciation of the priests and hysterical exit music –a passage that has always sounded to me a lot like music from a monster movie—Solti gave it an especially brazen sound, as though to make Amneris’ agony manifest before us.  The recording had astonishing sound, miles ahead of its time, and still so vivid that it’s one of the best ones out there.  Listen to this sample from the moment Amonasro (Robert Merrill sounding glorious) begins making his dramatic appeal to his captors in the triumphal scene, and you hear something fresh and new.  The chorus and orchestra had never been given so much prominence on a recording that I’d ever heard.   

Act Two: The Ring

When we come to the Ring Cycle we arrive at one of the achievements most closely linked to Solti, and a reason for his fame: the first recording of a complete Ring Cycle, or at least the first one popularly available in North America.  Telling the story of my changing relationship with this version of the cycle is perhaps the best way to put it in context.

The family already owned the Soria Series Die Walküre, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, a recording that was listened to a great deal by family members.

I obtained the Solti Das Rheingold, the only one available at this time.  Although I found the voice of Kirsten Flagstad somewhat unpleasant sounding as Fricka, a singer cast for her fame rather than her great voice, that’s perhaps the one weak link in this recording.  The vinyl discs came with a booklet that included a table of Leit-motivs, and –amazing!—a marginal gloss throughout the libretto showing you wherever a particular motiv came up.   That’s where my Wagner nerd life begins, with that table and the fun of following along.

This brief illustration is one i still use in my film music course to illustrate Wagner’s importance, using Solti’s recording.  At this moment in Das Rheingold, with the help of Donner’s hammer, Wagner shows us the magic of unifying the words, the music and the mise-en-scene. At the precise instant when Donner’s hammer strikes, we get a flash of lightning in the music and the lighting.  No recording is more vivid than Solti with Eberhard Wächter singing the part of Donner, and producer John Culshaw’s sound effects. 

I bought the Solti Walküre next, which when I look back on it seems odd, given that we had the Soria one already.  But I guess I wanted one for myself.  This recording was much more a matter of pluses and minues. While I was intrigued by James King as Siegmund –and not yet so infatuated with Jon Vickers’ acting to appreciate his special contribution to the Soria recording—I was mystified by the Wotan of Hans Hotter, which simply didn’t measure up to everyone else.

At Christmas I received Solti’s Siegfried, and the voyage continued.  For my this is the most successful of the set, with Gerhard Stolze’s Mime opposite Wolfgang Windgassen’s Siegfried, and incandescent work from Birgit Nilsson in Act III.  Hotter sounds quite lovely in this set, or perhaps I was getting accustomed to his wobbly sound.  I know I must sound horribly judgmental with what I’ve said about Hotter & Flagstad, singers I admire because of their reputations and from other recordings.

Even so, I had some doubts.  I heard some of the new von Karajan set, which was dismissed by one of the narrow-minded critics in the press (I recall his quote claiming that the first highlight of the entire cycle was the appearance of Waltraute in the first act of Götterdämmerung).  But I bought the von Karajan set, never buying a vinyl version of the Solti Götterdämmerung, never completing my set.  I found it two dimensional with its use of Gottlob Frick as Hagen, when compared to the subtleties of Karl Ridderbusch. My understanding of the Ring was changing.  Karajan would do a series of subtle studio recordings that seemed to be companion pieces to the work of Glenn Gould, re-inventing opera as a cool medium for at-home consumption, the gentlest Wagner i have ever encountered.  While Wagner himself might be shocked, how could i ignore such an original approach?    I only bought my first Solti Götterdämmerung a few weeks ago at a used CD store, as part of a complete Solti Ring for $84.

Act Three: Immortal Beloved

Georg Solti is prominently credited as Music Director for Bernard Rose’s 1994 film Immortal Beloved, a biography of Ludwig van Beethoven.  Every recording we hear is in that old-fashioned style, the one being challenged or even replaced by recordings employing original instruments & historically informed performance practices.  The one exception –the single authentic moment—comes when Giulietta Guicciardi plays a passage badly on a fortepiano.  I recall John Harkness –the late critic for Toronto’s Now Magazine– noticing the same thing I noticed, and asking: why were the performances all in that old style? why indeed.

I think the answer is, Solti.  Sound-track recordings were a revenue stream, and so the producers must have come to Solti seeking a way to make money from the film.  I realize now it wasn’t Solti’s fault, although at the time i stupidly held it against him.  But at the time it was, for me, the one tiny thing marring a film that I still passionately adore.  Even so it’s an amazing movie.  Here’s one of the highlights for me, a scene that i’m mindful of today, after seeing Frida Kahlo yesterday.  If the connection seems odd i will explore it at some point soon (…i hope).

Act Four: Mahler’s 9th

Solti died in 1997.  But a few years ago I came across Solti’s recording of Mahler’s 9th Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  I vaguely recalled that this recording won a Grammy back in the day.  So when I had the chance to buy the double CD for $10 CAD (surely a steal), how could I resist?

It was amazing, original, a revelation.  I realized then and realize now that I know very little of Solti, that his opera recordings –edgy and dramatic—which are sometimes ideal, sometimes not, are only part of his output, part of his personality.  I am curious about the rest, belatedly.  I recall that his Beethoven performances in the film –even if they are not HIP—are all enjoyable.   I have gone through several stages with Solti.  My views have changed before and probably will again.

October 21st is Georg Solti’s one hundredth birthday.  He may be gone but he’s left an enormous recorded legacy that can still be enjoyed.

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Media Release from Tafelmusik: Jeanne Lamon to step down

Posted on October 17, 2012 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

Jeanne Lamon to step down as Tafelmusik’s Music Director in 2014

Tafelmusik’s Board of Directors applauds Lamon’s three remarkable decades of leadership; will launch international search for successor

Jeanne Lamon, Music Director of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir since 1981, announced today that she plans to step down from that role in 2014, ending what will be a remarkable 33-year tenure at the helm of one of Canada’s most successful international performing arts organizations. Lamon will assume the role of Music Director Emerita and will continue to work on the creation of the Tafelmusik International Baroque Academy.

“Jeanne Lamon is a national treasure; she is a talented leader who has touched millions of people throughout Canada and the world. We all feel very privileged to work with such a gifted artist, leader and friend. Her generous spirit and warmth has touched us all so deeply, and she is choosing to leave Tafelmusik on a high note. We’re thrilled that she will continue to inspire the next generation of talented young musicians involved in Tafelmusik’s growing artist training programmes. She has set the bar high, and we have no doubt that we will be choosing her successor from among the best in the world,” said Andy Kenins, Chair of Tafelmusik’s Board of Directors.

Under Lamon’s artistic direction, Tafelmusik has achieved an enviable international stature and is considered “one of the world’s top baroque orchestras” (Gramophone Magazine). During Lamon’s tenure, Tafelmusik has grown from its modest beginnings to the world-renowned, cutting-edge period ensemble it is today, reaching millions of people through extensive touring, critically-acclaimed recordings, broadcasts, new media, and artistic/community partnerships.

“After more than three terrific and musically memorable decades at Tafelmusik, I have decided to step down as full-time Music Director in 2014. It has been an honour and a privilege to have served in this role these past 30-plus years, and to work with such a fabulous orchestra and choir. There is such talent, commitment and integrity throughout Tafelmusik. I continue to be inspired by the amazing musicians around me and am proud of what we have achieved together,” said Jeanne Lamon.

“There is still a lot we wish to accomplish over the next few years, including acoustical and audience comfort improvements to our beloved home venue, more new recordings and films on our Tafelmusik Media label, and some very exciting national and international tours. I am especially excited about creating the new Tafelmusik International Baroque Academy for the training of talented young musicians in period performance.”

Described as “a toweringly influential figure in the musical life of Canada” by the Canada Council for the Arts, Jeanne Lamon began to specialize in baroque violin in the early 1970s, during her studies in Amsterdam with Sigiswald Kuijken. From 1972 to 1981 she was engaged as concertmaster of many period orchestras, both European and North American, including Il Complesso Barocco, Boston Baroque, Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, and The Smithsonian Chamber Players of Washington, among others. In 1980, Lamon was invited to Toronto by Tafelmusik’s founders, Kenneth Solway and Susan Graves, and was appointed Music Director in 1981.

In 2000, Lamon was named to the Order of Canada. She has won numerous other awards and distinctions, including honorary degrees from York University and Mount Saint Vincent University, the Muriel Sherrin Award, the Prix Alliance, the Joan Chalmers Award, the Canada Council’s Molson Prize, the Toronto Musicians’ Association’s Musician of the Year Award, the Roy Thomson Hall Award of Recognition, and the Betty Webster Award for Musical Leadership. She is also a renowned soloist in her own right: “Lamon is a true virtuoso – there are few better Baroque violinists in the world today … ” (Continuo Magazine)

The Jeanne Lamon Instrument Bank was created by the orchestra in honour of her 25th anniversary at Tafelmusik in 2006. Last season Lamon marked her 30th anniversary season as Tafelmusik’s Music Director by leading a semi-staged production of Handel’s opera Hercules featuring Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir. Hercules included stage direction and choreography Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, the Co‐Artistic Directors of Toronto’s renowned Opera Atelier, with whom Tafelmusik has celebrated a 27-year artistic partnership.

In addition to her duties at the helm of Tafelmusik, Lamon is a passionate educator and is on the faculty of the Glenn Gould School at The Royal Conservatory and the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. National and international masterclass and teaching engagements have taken her to universities and conservatories around the world, from Stanford University to the Central Conservatory of Beijing.

Lamon’s dedication to music education and that of her colleagues Charlotte Nediger and Ivars Taurins is reflected in Tafelmusik’s education, outreach and artist training initiatives such as the

Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, and the orchestra’s appointment as Baroque Orchestra-in-Residence at the University of Toronto.

Lamon is in demand as a guest director/conductor in Canada and abroad, and has appeared with, among others, Symphony Nova Scotia, Victoria Symphony, Orchestra London, Calgary Philharmonic, Edmonton Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Windsor Symphony, Orchestre Metropolitain, Les Violons du Roy, Arion Baroque Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, and Le Jeune Orchestre Atlantique (France).

Over the course of its 33 year history, Tafelmusik has achieved a remarkable number of accomplishments: the orchestra has enjoyed a prolific reign on the world stage with regular invitations to perform in the most prestigious concert halls on many continents, including Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Maison Symphonique in Montréal, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing and City Recital Hall Angel Place in Sydney. Remarkable programmes such as Alison Mackay’s The Galileo Project and House of Dreams have taken Tafelmusik around the world.

Tafelmusik appears at many respected international festivals such as the Klang und Raum Festival in Germany, where for 19 years Tafelmusik was Orchestra-in-Residence under Artistic Director Bruno Weil. Other festivals include the New Zealand International Arts Festival, the Beijing Music Festival and Shanghai International Arts Festival in China, the Aspen and Ravinia festivals in the USA, the BBC Proms Festival in Britain, and the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir have created a discography of more than 80 recordings on such labels as SONY, CBC Records, BMG, and Analekta. In January 2012, Tafelmusik celebrated a successful international launch of its own multi-platform record label, Tafelmusik Media.

“Jeanne will be leaving at a high point, when Tafelmusik is looking towards a future that couldn’t be more promising. Nothing would make her happier than to see Tafelmusik continue to succeed well into the future – that is the nature of Jeanne. She is a person of great honour and integrity. Jeanne is an absolute joy to work with, and I know this sentiment was shared by former Managing Director Ottie Lockey and her team. Jeanne has created an environment at Tafelmusik where many brilliant and diverse talents thrive. There has always been strength throughout the organization with robust artistic, management and board leadership and this tradition will continue. We all are grateful for Jeanne’s genuine warmth, friendship, partnership, frankness and wisdom, not to mention her terrific sense of humour,” said Managing Director Tricia Baldwin.

Andy Kenins also announced today that Tafelmusik will immediately form a search committee and engage a search consultant to begin the process of appointing the Tafelmusik’s next Music Director.

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Frida and Diego @ the AGO

Posted on October 17, 2012 by barczablog

AGOIf you only read one sentence please read this one.  The new exhibit Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting at the Art Gallery of Ontario is the best art exhibit I’ve ever experienced.

How so?  Nothing (including my statement) can mean anything without a framework.  Jokes are only funny in a context.  Art—whether political, spiritual or personal –decodes with some reference to the magic moments in time from whence they arise.  Whether you’re talking about Bach or the Beatles, Gaugin or Gatsby, our experience is enriched by placing creations within the background of a cultural time & place.  I am grateful for the vision of Dot Tuer, OCAD University professor and cultural historian who guest-curated the show for AGO, bringing me into intimate contact with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  After going through the exhibit, I feel as though I am on a first-name basis with these two extraordinary individuals.

AGOWalking into AGO’s spacious display of over 80 works accompanied by over 60 photographs of the artists, you encounter this fascinating pair, first separately then gradually more and more closely intertwined and inter-connected.  You see pictures of them and their influences, and can’t help noticing where they come from creatively, and perhaps how they might influence or react to one another.  As anyone who’s seen the film Frida (2002) noticed, this was a tumultuous relationship, a marriage full of drama.  How could it be otherwise with these two giants?

I think it’s worth repeating that at the time of their passing in the 1950s, it was Diego Rivera rather than Frida Kahlo who was the famous artist of the couple.  Whether it is due to sexism (that old assumption that the man is more important) or Kahlo’s frequent confinement to home due to her health issues (keeping her out of the public eye), or the slowness of the recognition of her unique voice (encompassing concepts new to the artworld, such as sexual & gender politics and the reappraisal of aboriginal and folk elements in her work previously dismissed by chauvinistic first world criticism), Rivera was recognized throughout his life, whereas the appreciation of Kahlo’s work has only begun in the past few decades, reversing the previous understanding of this couple.

The meteoric rise of Kahlo’s stock in the past few decades coincides with a colossal series of shifts in our own culture, each connected to this rare woman and her husband.  In addition to the two I mentioned already (sexual & gender politics, and aboriginal vs first world cultures: if I dare reduce such colossal conversations to only “two”), I’d add at least three more:

  • Fertility, disability and travesty
  • Socialism & the worker’s utopia
  • Their original voice, encompassing (Diego) symbolism, cubism, social realism, (Frida) surrealism & magic realism

These categories are not to be thought of as distinct, not when so many profound issues swirl in any one painting of either artist.  There will be commentaries from art critics far more accomplished than I who’ll remark upon the significance of their work as artists.  I’m more interested in their roles as revolutionary provocateurs, stirring up new and dangerous ideas in those encountering their work.  I invite you to see these works in the context of Tuer’s marvellous exhibit, immersing you in their milieu and their preoccupations.

I will only add a few additional thoughts, mostly concerning Kahlo; but first a bit about Rivera.

Coming through the show, Rivera put me in mind of Hanns Eisler, the composer of the East German national anthem.  I am a Hungarian, so please spare me your cynicism.  Some communists –like Eisler, like Imre Nagy, like Rivera–believed in something more than thuggery and authoritarianism, a beautiful ideal, even if the sun has set on that dream.  Some of Rivera’s works invoke a kind of workers utopia that seems especially poignant now that the official story is that the USSR’s demise proves that socialism & Marxism are wrong, that workers only work when they have bosses and capital involved.  We’ve come a long way from the world these two artists departed in mid-century, when class-struggle was central to the lives of many people, at least in the Soviet-Communist sphere of influence.  I was struck by echoes of much older influences.  For example a painting such as The Cabbage Seller gives us the same iconic image of a faceless worker as in Millet’s The Gleaners. You’ll see an echo of the Soviet social-realist style of inspirational poster in Rivera’s posters, but also in smaller works such as the lithograph Fruits of Labor, a work of great dignity.

We see Rivera move through a series of stages, from neo-classical portraits before the First World War, through flirtations with symbolism (a word I use very carefully, to invoke European influences such as Gaugin & van Gogh) and cubism (especially in his Parisian encounter with Picasso, a fellow Hispanic after all), to a mature didactic style mostly void of stylization (except the sort dignifying the human form as in Fruits of Labor), likely in the interest of clarity of expression.

~~~~~

The Broken Column

The Broken Column

Kahlo speaks to me as a fellow traveller on the lonely road of disability.  A painting such as The Broken Column is much more than just a self-portrait, verging on a kind of declaration.  Even if one didn’t know about the bus accident in her youth that left her partially crippled, followed by several surgeries, the painting is one of a kind, a testimony to her suffering.  The painting suggests her self-image as a kind of cyborg (a combination of a human and machine, such as what we see in Terminator), decades before anyone had coined the word.  But unlike the film images with heroes such as Arnold Schwarzanegger, there’s nothing especially powerful or heroic in the image, which is closer to an invocation of the suffering of a holy martyr, complete with nails penetrating the skin.

Ford Hospital

Henry Ford Hospital

Kahlo’s frequent use of mechanical imagery –and what is Henry Ford Hospital if not a kind of declaration of her mechanical- human symbiosis—is more than just ironic or alienating.  She is in the foreground with the factory on the horizon, as if her bed were another assembly line, a body another place to produce products – for she was sadly unable to reproduce—like factory widgets floating above on the end of umbilical cords.  I started to cry in front of this painting, especially when I watched a fellow traveler wince at the sight as if she’d been struck a body-blow.

I suppose she had. I read that Kahlo had one of her miscarriages in Detroit, so the personal mythology underlying this painting must have been extremely deep for her.  This is only one of several images suggesting a fascination with the clinical & the anatomical, even if her use of gory reds are as likely to invoke terror & fear as compassion and empathy.

Let that scary interface between human and machine, between flesh and metal, be the departure point for Kahlo’s preoccupation with the organic & the living.  The Portrait of Luther Burbank for example—every bit as utopian as Rivera’s images of workers & the Mexican peasantry—posits a continuum of life, a realm of polytheistic possibilities.  Against the backdrop of bleakly ironic works such as Henry Ford Hospital or A Few Small Nips, Kahlo offers many more affirmations than negations, more encouraging pats on our collective back than body blows like the one I alluded to above.

Many discursive streams seem to originate or at least encompass Kahlo.  Magic realism and surrealism seem to be naturally connected to her sensibility.  Hers is a sophisticated art invoking simplicity without being simplistic.  One doesn’t have to know the life-story to feel the complexities, the encoded pain & longing, the dream imagery.

If nothing else you have the opportunity to come face to face with The Face.  Frida Kahlo’s face is often her subject in several self-portraits.  Many of the best known are here.  It’s quite extraordinary to stand before one of these iconic works, looking into her eyes.

The paintings, alongside so many photos and other artefacts of this exhibit lure you very deeply into the world of Kahlo and Rivera.  Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting will be on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario from October 20th until January 20th 2013.

See it.

Self portrait with Monkeys

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Esprit Tunes the World

Posted on October 15, 2012 by barczablog

Tonight Esprit Orchestra, led by Conductor & Music Director Alex Pauk, marked the beginning of their 30th season with a program celebrating the excellence of Canadian music, a concert titled “The Tuning of the World”.  Of the five items presented by EO, two were world premieres of works commissioned for the occasion, with the three living composers present to accept the audience’s grateful applause.

wolf-manIf commitment is the measure of an orchestra, Esprit are the finest ensemble in Toronto.  Every moment of performance was urgent and intense, sometimes leavened with humour, and spiced with an affectionate rapport between the players and their public.

Koerner Hall was already energized by the launch of R Murray Schafer’s autobiography My Life on Earth & Elsewhere before the concert began.  The centrepiece of the evening was the premiere of Schafer’s Wolf Returns, a composition lending a sense of occasion to Esprit’s celebration.

Wolf Returns brought some of Schafer’s site-specific energy into Koerner Hall, with five sections:

  1. Wolf Chant
  2. Chant for the Spirits of Hunted Animals
  3. Mosquito Chant
  4. Healing Chant
  5. Rain Chant

Each chant was supplied from the upper rear of the auditorium by a chorus often chanting unaccompanied.  While Schafer has sometimes written edgy dissonant music, that’s not what you get with Wolf Returns, a composition feeling like a happy valedictory from a mature composer.  The first few minutes are like a powerful toccata for full orchestra, tonal but syncopated.  The voices from the back came and went throughout, deconstructing the formality of our concert experience, making the performance feel like a happening.  While it may seem like an irrelevant consideration, I can’t help but think that Schafer’s fun and boisterous composition deserves to be heard and played by orchestras all over the world.  I would think the aboriginal overtones of the chants and the frequent pentatonic sound make this a wonderfully accessible piece, especially congenial for an American audience, although I’d think the piece would be welcome anywhere.  I hope to hear it again.

The most reflective composition of the evening came from Pauk’s partner Alexina Louie, namely O Magnum Mysterium: In Memoriam Glenn Gould, a 1982 composition presented in a 1999 re-orchestration.  Originally conceived as a work for 44 soloists, I couldn’t help thinking of a similar piece, namely Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen.  Like Strauss’s work, Louie’s composition is powerfully inter-textual, pushing our buttons with poignant quotes from other compositions.  I may have been especially softened up, sitting 5 feet away from Louie, watching her face for much of the performance; I didn’t know the piece, so when it’s tranquil but profound ending snuck up on me, I was moved to tears, amplified by her reactions.

When I first read the program for the concert, the thing that won me over most emphatically was seeing Colin McPhee on the program.  Sandy Thorburn posted a whimsical question on Facebook a year or two ago, asking us to nominate the greatest Canadian composer.  After a few people posted some of the famous composer names I said Mychael Danna (nobody had posted a film music composer and HELLO Mr Danna isn’t just alive, he’s a colossal success). Then i posted McPhee, who may be relatively unknown but he’s my personal favourite.

McPhee is perhaps the most under-rated Canadian composer, known to have influenced Benjamin Britten’s composition of Death in Venice.  He seems like a missing link in mid-century connecting Debussy (known to have been influenced by hearing Javanese gamelan music) and Glass, even if an unknown unheard composer can’t really be much of an influence, can he…(?)

This is my first time hearing Tabuh-Tabuhan in person, a piece i love to pieces.  And maybe i am not the only one, as EO took up this score with visible delight.  I always treasure moments when you see players’ heads bobbing or smiling; I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many such moments as I did tonight.  I couldn’t help thinking that Pauk gave us this bon bon as a special treat: one of the sweetest pieces I’ve ever heard, and by that I mean, phrases as cute as bunnies or kittens frolicking, endlessly curling arabesques of cuteness.  EO played every note lovingly as if sprinkling us in icing sugar.

I don’t want to ignore the first two items on the program, although they were good rather than the ecstatic level I experienced in the last three items presented.

Icarus

Icarus

We began with John Rea’s marvellous Ikaros agog…Daidalos on edge, a work that is more symbolist than impressionist, taking us to the heart of some fascinating images.  Daidalos is the great constructor who sadly lost his son when he flew too close to the sun, a kind of early Faustian bargain involving science.  Speaking as one who is sometimes infatuated with technology, I believe I understand what Rea was hinting at in his program note and in his composition, that began with organic phrases in the strings resembling wind or breathing (both the outer and inner world at once) overcome more and more with mechanical rhythms and clockwork sounds.  This understated work does feel like a cautionary tale, one that is contemporary yet universal.

Xenakis’ brief For the Whales followed, a wonderful etude for the strings, sounding very similar to the organic parts of Rea’s composition and therefore a logical work to follow it on the program.

Esprit’s season at a glance | My interview with Alex Pauk

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Second At Bat

Posted on October 13, 2012 by barczablog

I raved about the new Canadian Opera Company Die Fledermaus when it opened last week.  Tonight I had the privilege of another look with a slightly different cast.

Some things inevitably work best the first time.  A joke with a surprise can’t get the same response if you know that it’s coming.

Opening night of Christopher Alden’s production felt edgy, a combination of fin-de-siècle hedonism, the psychology of wish-fulfilment with a dark authoritarian side to it and Strauss’s original froth.  From where I sat I was particularly captivated by the two women wearing the same clothes, namely Rosalinde and her maid Adele.

James Westman (seated) as Frank, Jan Pohl as Frosch and Mireille Asselin as Adele (Photo: Michael Cooper)

Tonight I felt quite a bit different.  Mireille Asselin assumed the role of Adele on a night I attended in the company of my wife.  I wonder if my more conservative take on the piece might be owing to the unconscious context I had brought with me…(?)

Where opening night I saw Adele as a site for class-warfare, and pondered the empowerment of women as I watched, Asselin’s Adele was less the revolutionary, and more the charming imposter at a party (in other words, more or less the way the role is written).  Did I see less edge because I was caught up in the most bourgeois elements of the story this time?  I was watching how Eisenstein & Rosalinde played out, noticing how they went opposite directions in the so-called reconciliation at the end of the operetta (when it’s all blamed on champagne).

If I were to contrast Braid & Asselin, it’s to acknowledge that each has a particular strength that is the lynch-pin of their performance, influencing how everyone else comes across.  I think Asselin is more operatic than Braid, tossing off her coloratura perfectly, the high notes like dots of whipped cream arcing through the air.  Braid’s focus is more dramatic, her facial expresssions and delivery more extreme, and her reading more intense than Asselin’s, changing her relationship to Eisenstein (her boss) and the drama around her.  I was surprised at how different they felt, and how viable each one is.  The show with Ambur Braid has more instances of dark truth, while Asselin’s is lilting Viennese operetta, light and frothy in the usual ways without any genuine threat.  I think the fan of operetta coming to Fledermaus might be more comfortable with Asselin and her stunning vocalism.  I think the COC brass chose Braid for opening night because the charisma of her performance is electrifying.

Hm, or is the difference me, sitting alone opening night (and totally smitten by the parallel tales of gorgeous women and their empowerment?) vs sitting with my wife tonight (and so, caught up in the sad story of a failed marriage rather than the parallel stories of women)…? I don’t know. But isn’t it wonderful to have two wonderful performers each taking the role & the operetta in a different direction as a result.

Tonight I must again credit the COC Chorus as the other ‘star’ of this production, particularly once they’re decorated by Constance Hoffman’s costumes.  Their energy levels tell us what Alden is trying to do, whether he’s seeking the mad joys of hedonism, the pathos of travesty or world-weary sadness.  His Fledermausketeers sound & look marvellous.

Tamara Wilson sounded quite good in spite of having announced a cold via Facebook.  The one tiny bit of evidence was her brief visit to the high note at the end of her Csardas (held longer last week); otherwise she again sounded magnificent, with a big powerful sound, a fluid line, and an uncanny ability to play comedy.  My biggest laugh tonight was over one of her lines, which I won’t give away (stealing that from you if you might see the show), except it’s a brilliant exchange with Asselin in the first part of the work, when Adele is still in maid’s attire.

I have to mention three other performers.

James Westman is a pleasure to watch and to hear in a role that I’ve hardly noticed in the past.  Singing the part of Frank, it must have been a shock to be told he’d have to cross-dress for part of the role.  While I’ve superficially given away a bit of a gag, it doesn’t in any way prepare you for Westman’s subtle performance, excellent delivery of his lines, and superb chemistry with everyone else on stage.

Michael Schade (Eisenstein) and Laura Tucker (Prince Orlofsky) plus bat girls. (Photo: Michael Cooper)

Speaking of travesty, I want to speak a bit more about Laura Tucker as Prince Orlofsky.  Tucker raised her comic intensity much higher tonight from the comparative subtlety of opening night.   I have to wonder if this is simply a matter of getting comfortable in a role, finding her way and discovering new nuances, but Tucker was always fascinating to watch and quite lovely to hear.

Similarly Michael Schade is also getting comfortable with his Eisenstein, a role that’s not terribly flattering in this production, and lacking the conventional closure of a happily ever after.  Schade makes Eisenstein genuinely three-dimensional, a fascinating & quirky beast who’s a likable scoundrel, even as he’s caught red-handed by his wife.  That intangible aura he brings –making us LIKE Eisenstein–is essential (although again, with the feminist reading i brought to opening night perhaps i wasn’t so sympathetic); otherwise we won’t care about the couple, won’t worry about their possible reconciliation at the end.

Hm, tonight’s show was a gentler comedy. While husband and wife do not kiss and arrive at happily ever after (if that’s a spoiler i gave it away already), curiously this configuration (with Asselin as Adele) makes eventual reconciliation feel possible, whereas the other cast with its edgier humour and in-your-face politics (the women but also Jan Pohl’s quirky Frosch) aren’t just funny, but have serious undertones as well (as noted in a pair of earlier reviews of the first cast: Fledermaus: just like our century | The bat came back ).

Die Fledermaus continues until November 3rd at the Four Seasons Centre.

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10 Questions for David Fallis

Posted on October 12, 2012 by barczablog

David Fallis is surely one of the most important musical minds in Canada.  He is Music Director for Opera Atelier, a long-time member and Artistic Director of the Toronto Consort, and director of Choir 21 (a choir specializing in 21st century compositions).

Fallis teaches in the Graduate Department of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto.  On the one hand Fallis is an important scholar-conductor, leading Opera Atelier’s productions of Lully’s Armide (including its tour to Versailles and later, Glimmerglass this past summer), and historically informed Mozart operas encompassing Die Entführung aus dem Serail, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and La Clemenza di Tito.  But Fallis has also commissioned contemporary composers with the Toronto Consort,  led Christopher Butterfield’s Contes pour enfants pas sages this past spring, and leads R Murray Schafer’s The Love that Moves the Universe with Soundstreams tonight in Toronto (a concert I’m sorry to miss). And Fallis is also the historical music producer for the TV series “The Tudors” and for “The Borgias”

The occasion for this interview might be the most interesting operatic project in the Toronto area this season, namely the Opera Atelier production of Weber‘s Der Freischütz.

I ask Fallis ten questions: five about himself and five about his role in preparing the Opera Atelier production of Der Freischütz.

1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what s your nationality / ethnic background)?

David Fallis

Conductor David Fallis

A bit of both, really. People say they see my Dad in me, but they’ll see my Mum’s brothers in me too. A bit of a mix – mostly Irish, some English. Way back, a little bit of German.

2) What is the BEST thing / worst thing about being a music-director?

Best: Chance to work with great musicians – great singers and players – and to do great
music!

Worst: Sometimes you have to make decisions that won’t keep everyone happy.

It’s a good life.

3) Who do you listen to or watch?  

Wow. Well, I don’t have much time for watching TV as much as I’d like to get into these series. Listening to relax all together – I love the Jazz bassist Ron Carter, a great player. I like going to live concerts. I don’t listen around the house. If I have time off, I’ll go to a live concert. If I really need calming down, I listen to Bach organ music.

4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

Oh, well. One always wishes you could have even better ears – people talk about having perfect pitch, which is a nuisance really. I’d love to be able to hear music even better. You stand in awe of people who can understand music perfectly. It’s a good exercise to try to write a piece, for any musician, because you really understand how difficult it is.

5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favorite thing to do?

In the summertime, my favourite thing is to get outside. Even as simple as getting out to the garden, or out of the city. I love tramping around ponds and all sorts of places. In the wintertime, I’m not a great winter camper, so I do enjoy going to live theatre – straight theatre. Since there’s so much musical theater in my business, I like to go see straight theatre a lot.

Five more about being the music-director for the upcoming period production of Weber’s Der Freischütz with Opera Atelier.

1) How does preparing & conducting an opera in period performance (particularly of an opera you’re performing for the first time) challenge you?

Of course you really have to know it from the inside. I spend a lot of time with the text – with the words – so I get to know exactly what’s going on.  I’ve done this many times; I go to a native speaker because they can catch innuendo or implications I miss.  In Italian or German operas there are a lot of Dante or Biblical references that are lost in translation. If you don’t know the original it doesn’t pop out at you. You don’t always get it as a non-native speaker.  Passages have a variety of meaning.

This is a bigger orchestral piece and you have to know how all the parts are going to fit together. All the tricky connecting points where you go from one tempo to another or one mood to another. And there is a lot of this in this piece.

The Wolf’s Glen scene has a lot of short bits and the singers actually speak over music at this point.  Usually the orchestra stops when there is spoken dialogue. They call this melodrama; where the orchestra plays through the spoken passages. The music has to synchronize with the talking.

Here’s an example of the melodrama from an old recording.

I also listened to Weber’s other operas Euryanthe and Oberon. I listened to them years ago but didn’t know them very well, so I listen to them and some of his contemporaries too. You like to have context for the piece. I spent quite a bit of time reading about 19th century performance practice – e.g. how they handled trills and how they handled the staccato marks. There’s quite a bit of change in this period. And of course, this is something Tafelmusik is interested in too. We want to make it sound plausible from the 19th century point of view. In the so-called early music movement, we started out by spending quite a bit of time on the Baroque. It was so far away that nobody knew what it was like at the time.

But now, people are saying that about the 19th century. Just because it’s closer to us in time doesn’t mean we know more about the performance practice. We can’t assume that the way we play it is what they had in mind. Even the size of the orchestra. The size in Dresden (where Weber worked) is a bit smaller than some other Romantic orchestras of the time so it worked out for us.

2) What do you love about historically informed performance?

Well, I’m curious I guess, really, about how things might have sounded. I should say it doesn’t mean that’s the only way to play it. You stand in awe of the genius of the great composers, so naturally you wonder what was in their minds. And of course, Mozart didn’t have in mind a modern piano. They had in their mind’s ear the instruments and sounds of their period. I want to see if I can get inside the mind of the composer, so understanding what was available at the time and how the instruments sounded and all those kinds of things are important in understanding what the composers wanted to say.

3) Do you have a favourite work that you’ve conducted?

I got asked once at a Q&A at the end of a lecture what my favourite piece was. And I said, “I try and love the one I’m with.” I have a list of favourite composers and a list of favourite pieces, but I wouldn’t want to have to choose one.

4) How do you relate to period performance as a modern man?

Well again, it arises out of curiosity. If you travel geographically around the world and you hear music from India or Egypt or Mali and you think, “Wow, this is incredible music” and it’s wonderful to be taken into this other world. With this, you’re having fun travelling to another world chronologically. And, if you’re interested in music you’re interested in different kinds of music, and there are lost of different kinds across the globe and across the ages. And you start to notice differences and similarities. Chinese opera sounds

J E Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner

quite different from German opera.

5) Is there anyone out there who you particularly admire, and who has influenced you?

I’m not sure I would think of anyone particularly. I love to hear great singers, great pianists,… in terms of this repertoire: John Elliot Gardiner has done a lot of recording of this type of period.

My first piano teacher was a man named Court Stone and I had a choral instructor Lloyd Bradshaw – they both had a lot to do with why I went in to music at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David Fallis leads Opera Atelier’s new period production of Der Freischütz in Toronto at the Elgin Theatre opening October 27th, running until November 3rd.

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Dichterliebe

Posted on October 11, 2012 by barczablog
rebuilding Regent Park

A picture from the ground-breaking for the Regent Park Project

Are you seeing Dichterliebe from Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (CLC) at the Citadel this week?  It’s a multi-media collaboration, and excuse me if that description is so common that it’s almost unintelligible; I’ll decode it in a moment.

But you notice I said “see” and not “hear”? if you’re going to see Dichterliebe the best preparation you can make is to first hear Schumann’s song cycle.  That’s because Dichterliebe  is an adaptation of the song cycle using a dancer, and at times asking both the singer and even the pianist to move.  Employing a different choreographer for each of the sixteen songs, I interpret this piece as a kind of celebration of the new space created on Parliament Street adjacent to Regent Park, a neighbourhood struggling to be reborn.

Baritone Alex Dobson

Baritone Alex Dobson

Schumann’s Dichterliebe (a title that translates as “A Poet’s Love”) based on poems of Heinrich Heine, is a high-water mark in the genre of the song cycle.  The words tell a story in a series of static snapshots, progressing from anticipation and new love through a kind of satisfaction & bliss through a period of disappointment, heartbreak, traumatic struggle, and eventual recovery.  The unity of words & music were unprecedented, the composition pointing to the imminent invention by Wagner in the next decade of the Gesamtkunstwerk: the total artwork unified across multiple disciplines.  We take it for granted that the set & costumes, direction, text & music should all pursue the same strategic objectives –and by the way, this translates to most modern media such as films or computer games .  In Wagner’s time this was a new ambition that hadn’t been put into words.  How much stranger –and more brilliant—Schumann’s achievement, that he took the words of this series of poems and gave them musical settings that describe a perfect emotional arc to match.  Wagner’s ideal for opera that he articulated in the 1850s was already there in Schumann’s 1840 cycle.

It’s already a bit radical to imagine Dichterliebe turned into a dance piece, where –in the Wagnerian tradition—you get a single vision from a choreographer imposing their ideas on everyone else, who then function as the puppets under that domination (and maybe you can see why Hitler was so attracted to Wagner).  But why hand the choreography of the sixteen songs to a group of choreographers, rather than one man or woman?  why turn this unified song cycle into something else?

Because CLC sought to celebrate the building of the new space as a microcosm of the new Regent Park.  Here’s what I read about the Citadel on the CLC website:

The Citadel has been chosen by Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux as a place to research, create, learn and welcome dancers from around the world. A former dispensary of the Salvation Army, located in the middle of Regent Park in Toronto, The Citadel has been carefully renovated by CLC to create an inspiring work environment for the choreographers of the company and the dance community. The Citadel is also home to the The YogaBeat, an initiative offering pay-what-you-can yoga classes to the community.

The production embodies the Regent Park ideal in miniature, where instead of one boss, everyone shares the leadership roles.  Among the sixteen choreographers, they used the new building’s Project Manager & its Architect, a student from First Nations School, a playwright, a theatre director, and a pair of fashion designers, to go with a series of dancers & choreographers.  Some of the names are well-known, lending lustre to the proceedings.

  • Alex Poch-Goldin
  • Ken Gass
  • James Kudelka
  • David Earle

But the stars work as equals alongside those who are not so well-known.

Forgive me if a parse the message in such obvious terms, but it’s quite lovely and deserving to spread much further than this small neighbourhood in the process of being re-built and re-imagined.  The sharing of disparate visions in collaboration is a kind of enactment of community at work rather than one where a solitary vision is imposed upon everyone.  This implies a tolerance of diversity.  Everyone works together even though the roles bring different skills and perspectives to the table.    And yes, it’s a multi-media piece because it’s part-dance, part-drama, part-song cycle.  That Dichterliebe works so well may be an indication that this adaptation is a brilliant idea.  I made the earlier suggestion about coming with the music echoing inside your head because there’s so much to look at.

There’s baritone Alex Dobson, singing most delicately in this small space, but occasionally popping out full-sized notes that take one by surprise.  Dobson is note perfect, mostly gentle & ultra-refined with a gorgeous rich tone that I’ve missed.  I last heard him in The Midnight Court by Ana Sokolovic, although I understand he’s been singing a lot in Montreal.  But his operatic sound is something different; this is a chamber sound, modulated to match the accompaniment and the intimacy of the space.

Pianist Jeanie Chung more than held her own in this unorthodox version of the Schumann cycle that challenges the pianist in a few of the songs.  Her usual role was complicated by the need to supply music not just for a singer but for dance as well.

Laurence Lemieux

Laurence Lemieux, co-artistic director and co-founder of Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (click image for more)

I mention Laurence Lemieux third only because of my own prejudices, coming to Dichterliebe as a lifelong accompanist of baritones (there’s one in my family) and as a pianist.  Her contribution in collaboration with the assembly of choreographic talent is perhaps the most remarkable part of the work, something genuinely new.

I found myself thinking of François Girard’s 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, or Wallace Steven’s poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

There’s so much going on at times –given that one could watch the piano player, the singer or the dancer—that I regret that I couldn’t take in the most physical, the most genuinely new part of the performance.  Meaning no disrespect to either Chung or Dobson, but what they did in Dichterliebe is not so very different from what they would likely do in a “normal” presentation of the cycle.  Lemieux’s part is so much newer, yet i couldn’t help regularly watching piano and singer.

I suppose that’s normal, but it means I am not competent to do more than ohh and ahh over the fascinating combinations, the variegated surface of this multi-faceted jewel.  Sometimes I felt pathos, other times exhilaration, and a few times, I laughed out loud.

There’s a kind of inter-disciplinary thing I thought I saw, when at one point Lemieux sneered “singers!”, ironically dissing the oh so serious Dobson.  She was coming from a modern place of commentary & in effect creating a gloss on the older piano-vocal text.  The audience –listeners and watchers alike—were surely divided, because often we didn’t know whether to watch or listen, and in the end we tried to do both.  Considering that there are three performers, the piece is astonishingly rich.

The program, to be repeated Thursday Oct 11th through Saturday Oct 13th, also includes Dobson’s presentation of some of the songs from Schubert’s Schwanengesang (literally “Swan Song”) accompanied by Chung, and Chung playing solo in the soulful last movement from Schumann’s C major Fantasy as a kind of overture.  The work bears repeated watching.  I know I’d have a better appreciation if I saw it again.

http://www.colemanlemieux.com/ for more info about the artists & a link to buy tickets.

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