Woody & Frankie’s Bullet for Adolf

Posted on April 20, 2011 by barczablog

There came a moment when I discovered just how sincere and authentic Woody Harrelson & Frankie Hyman are about their new play Bullet for Adolf.

bullet for adoft

Tonight was the first preview in Toronto at Hart House Theatre, and afterwards they held a talkback session with the actors and audience.  I asked a question, and in the process may have offended Frankie, although I didn’t see Woody’s response.

Woody & Frankie

Woody Harrelson & Frankie Hyman

I guess it sounds weird to call them by their first names.  Woody? You probably know him from his film & TV work.  I think I had one of my biggest life lessons, courtesy Woody Harrelson.  When I used to watch Cheers, I didn’t really differentiate between “Woody” the actor and “Woody” the role portrayed on Cheers.  In my defense I point to the names being the same, and the uncanny goofiness Woody brought to Woody.

Let’s just say I underestimated the man: profoundly.  Watching Natural Born Killers was the real eye opener, a role for which I think he should have won the oscar.

But excuse me, I digress.  I was saying that my question may have offended Frankie.

My question was meant in all innocence.  I first observed how authentic the writing seemed to my ear.  I was nervous so I didn’t really say what I meant to say, about how the black people sounded authentically black, and vice versa.  The question may have seemed racist, as I more or less asked who wrote what, and whether they achieved that authenticity by ensuring that the white guy wrote the white guy lines, and vice versa.

I saw Frankie wince, possibly embarrassed, before he more or less confirmed what I’d asserted, possibly feeling my question was a faux pas.  I felt bad that I had called attention to the divisions that exist in society when, in the course of the play, the writers had done such a marvellous job of erasing those divisions.

In the pre-show publicity, Harrelson made a big deal about choosing Toronto as the site for this premiere.  I wondered about that.  Is it because we’re multi-cultural, and likely to be very comfortable with the sensitivities in the script? Possibly.

But then again the talk back was like a love-in.  It had been a very successful preview, two and a quarter hours of steady laughs from an audience delighted by what they’d seen and heard.  Torontonians love to be flattered, love to be told how cosmopolitan we are; so perhaps it was a done deal that the show would go over well.  But by the same token, we may be easy but we’re not cheap (or the theatre-going equivalent).  The laughs were genuine.

I don’t want to give anything away –as a devout believer in the spoiler-free review—but let me just say that the title contains a kernel of poetic truth that elevates the material beyond mere laughs.  The comedy is at times very edgy, challenging the audience’s willingness to laugh.  I found that aspect the most exciting, that this genuinely felt like a work of art rather than a commercial vehicle, even if there’s the possibility of a big-time payoff at the box office.

Bullet for Adolf is set in the early 1980s.  The production magically teleports into that time through a regular use of video, by Christian Peterson & Jeremy Hutton.  Between scenes we’d watch combinations of images & music taking us back to the big hair, the moves & music of the time.  Occasionally, just to see if we were paying attention, some of the characters from the play would turn up in those little vignettes. But this is a very self-conscious bit of time-travel from Woody & Frankie, in a play that at times resembles a flashback.

When I put this in context with the last two plays I saw –by a pair of Brits named Martin Crimp & David Greig—I can’t miss the difference.  Crimp & Greig are doing what modern theatre does well: express alienation and pain for the usual theatre-goer.  I was ready for a play that leaves you feeling good afterwards, and Harrelson/Hyman delivered.   Whereas I can’t imagine addressing either of the famous playwrights by their first names, it goes without saying that Bullet for Adolf is unpretentious, a play bordering on guileless in its eagerness to have fun.

But by the same token, the play does have an edge.  There’s a great deal of abrasion in some of the exchanges, a fair amount of conflict, and suspense too.  I quibble with the play’s subtitle (“almost a comedy”), because to my eye/ear it’s very much a comedy.

The preview went very smoothly with no muffed lines that I could recognize and some tightly choregraphed fights & dance, the physicality coming as a very welcome release.

There were no weak links among the performers.  Brandon Coffey’s Zach & Ronnie Rowe’s Frankie were always persuasive, particularly in their first bristling encounters in their workplace;  their mastery of physical labour—shovelling and climbing scaffolds—made the early scenes at work very believable.  Meghan Swaby as Shareeta was a force to be reckoned with, and never less than fascinating.

Bullet for Adolf runs until May 7th at Hart House Theatre in Toronto.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Reviews | 5 Comments

Fortresses and tears

Posted on April 18, 2011 by barczablog
A hymn

Luthers hymn

Today in church we sang “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” a hymn that has powerful associations for me. I am going to speak of three incarnations of that tune.

FIRST?  The original version is Luther’s great hymn of the Reformation.  The hymn has a curious effect on me. I find i can never finish it because my voice breaks partway through.  I am especially devastated trying to sing the words to the last verse, which not only renders me tearful but yes, my voice totally gives way:

Let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also;
the body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still;
his kingdom is forever.

Don’t ask me why, but i haven’t successfully sung these words, the last half of the last verse in more than a decade.  Here’s a version entirely on organ + words. Why that way?  It’s the most understated version i could find. Other versions are so strong that you might think i am trying to PREACH.  This is just an attempt to share some music: music that has admittedly been a powerful text in my life.

SECOND?  Felix Mendelssohn, a man known as one of the great Christian composers in one century –the 19th– was rebranded as a Jewish composer by the Nazis, who attempted to remove him from history.  Please note: while in the 20th century the fanatics attempted to persuade the world that Mendelssohn was a Jew, he thought of himself as a Christian, and would not have understood the Nazis.  His perspective is a valuable one for anyone who wonders why so many Jews stayed in Germany rather than fleeing: because they did not even understand the madness about to descend upon them.

Mendelssohn composed a lot of music that moves me, including a wonderful Violin Concerto, his music for A Midsummernight’s Dream, his symphonies & piano music.  Mendelssohn wrote a symphony to commemorate the anniversary of the reformation, using Luther’s tune as the basis for a movement of that symphony.

Listen to how meekly the tune appears, as if it were an idea in someone’s head, an idea that grows as if it were a little bulb pushing forth leaves.  It’s a sweet gentle idea on a spring morning, not a hammering oppressive powerful dogma.  The tune becomes part of something quite dramatic and passionate, even while being complete abstract.

THIRD, i come to what is for me an adaptation of Luther’s tune.  Viktor Ullmann wrote Der Kaiser von Atlantis (in other words The Emperor of Atlantis) while living in the supposedly model work-camp at Theresienstadt.

There are two pre-existing melodies picked up by Ullmann in his opera.  The first is the Austrian hymn, which was the Nazi anthem.  In Ullmann’s version, it becomes a dirge sung in minor.

Ullmann’s tale was a very ironic story, aimed by a concentration camp inmate at his captors.  Death takes a holiday, because Death is overwhelmed by the demands made upon him by Emperor Uberall (“Uberall” = over all, and a satire on Hitler, given that the Austrian anthem was sung to the words “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles”: Germany over all).  By the end of the opera, Death ends his strike, after striking a deal with Emperor Uberall, resuming his job if the Emperor will agree to be the first to die.  He agrees. The opera ends with his farewell, followed by a madrigal version of Luther’s hymn, sung in 6/8 time rather than its usual quadruple time, and reharmonized.  Would the men holding their machine guns have been moved by this melody?  It was never tested, because the Nazis stopped Ullmann before he finished, shipping him to Auschwitz.

Here is the scene that ends Ullmann’s opera, complete with subtitles, and starring Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as the Emperor.  This video was shot on location in Theresienstadt, as if in homage to those who were dragged away to be killed, including Ullmann himself.  The madrigal passage adapting “A mighty fortress is our God” begins 5:30 into this clip, but it’s worth waiting for it in context.  If the singers seems a bit spooky and haunted, maybe that’s because the space seems haunted by the spirits of those who inhabited that camp.

Did Ullmann know the geneology of this tune: that it was the Reformation anthem, picked up by Mendelssohn (by now a forbidden composer, due to his Jewish blood), and possibly recognizable to the soldiers? One could wish that they would have been humanized by the tune had they heard it, the ultimate utopian reading of this place of death.

And speaking of tears, I find i always have tears watching this video.

Posted in Essays, Personal ruminations & essays, Spirituality & Religion | 4 Comments

David Greig’s Cosmonaut

Posted on April 17, 2011 by barczablog

Chances are that when a play has a fifteen word title, neither the work nor its review will be short.  David Greig’s The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union has been given its first Canadian production by Canadian Stage in Toronto.

David Greig, Scottish playwright

David Greig, Scottish playwright (Photograph: Murdo Macleod)

As I come to this, my second of three consecutive plays representing my first encounter with that playwright (after Martin Crimp, and before a collaboration between Woody
Harrelson & Frankie Hyman), I am wondering how one writes a spoiler-free review of a work unfamiliar to the reader.  Whatever Greig’s other works may be like, I can’t merely speak of the production and Jennifer Tarver’s direction, but need to somehow speak of Cosmonaut without giving it away.

Earlier this week I posted a link about Yuri Gagarin on Facebook… …. in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned flight into space, perhaps mindful that I’d be seeing this play.

There are a number of urban legends associated with the Soviet space program.  I remember hearing as a child that there was probably a dead cosmonaut in orbit, that Gagarin was the first one we heard about, after previous failures hushed up by the secretive USSR.

It’s interesting to compare the American & Soviet programs.

  • The Soviets started first, both with their sputnik and the first manned launch of Gagarin fifty years ago this past Tuesday
  • The Americans did everything in full view of the public, including their failures, while the Soviets were tight-lipped and only reported after-the-fact
  • Americans landed at sea, while Soviets landed on the land
  • Americans supposedly had better computing & science, while the Soviets had bigger and more powerful rockets.
Director Jennifer Tarver

Director Jennifer Tarver

I believe it’s a mistake to say that Greig’s play is based in reality, given that the plot only bears a passing resemblance to historical facts.  And does it matter?  I am not interested in assessing whether Tarver’s production for Canadian Stage does or does not properly replicate the conditions in orbit or for that matter on the earth.  It’s a work of art, and the cosmonaut characters are walking metaphors, the same as the earthbound personages populating the stage.

We encounter two cosmonauts who are marooned in space and apparently forgotten by their space program more than a decade later.  How they subsisted or even managed to breath is not explained, given that provisions or oxygen wouldn’t last; but as I said, let’s not quibble with a work of art.  At times we watch a spaceman hanging artificially above our heads, a stage convention that we willingly accept because we want the truth of the situation, and make a willing suspension(excuse the pun) of disbelief.  I was reminded at times of another legend that eventually proved true: of the lonely Japanese soldiers hiding in bunkers on various Pacific islands long after the end of the Second World War.  Impossible situations sometimes illuminate the human condition.

The Canstage presentation of Greig’s play is divided by an intermission.  I found the first half very different from the second.  In the first part, we watch a series of encounters that demonstrate the futility of attempting communication.

  • Cosmonauts attempt unsuccessfully to contact ground control
  • A man and his wife watch a television with bad reception; when the TV signal goes out, opening the possibility for some kind of conversation, they don’t seem able to connect, highlighting the uses of technologies such as the TV for evading human contact
  • Two men supposedly in similar types of bureaucracy struggle to converse in a bar; the one thing the absolutely can agree on is that anything secret they shared must be kept secret
  • A person with some sort of dementia struggles to grasp reality in the presence of a therapist; this touching little encounter, had it begun the act might have seemed like the logical beginning, yet it comes in the heart of other failed attempts at communication

The audience was often laughing even though the situations were extremely poignant with complex ironies that rarely led the entire audience to laugh at the same time.

In the second portion, we experience some redemptive moments in the quest for meaning, even as things unravel even further:

  • A wife struggles to decode the mysterious messages her husband left behind
  • A man obsesses about a woman
  • Another man obsesses about a recording of a woman
  • During these investigations, people draw their own conclusions, even if they don’t really “understand”.

It’s a substantial evening in the theatre, a remarkably theatrical presentation calling for each actor to undertake multiple characters.  Tarver’s direction never gets in the way of this complex work, so that the interpretation is transparent without obscuring Greig’s complexities.  I was especially impressed by Thomas Ryder Payne’s sound design, whereby six actors are given a kind of sensuous life due to the wealth of atmospheric sonic detailing that fills the stage.

This play with the long name, that I’ll simply call The Cosmonaut’s Last Message is currently previewing, opening this week, and running until May 14th at the Bluma Appel Theatre.  I would strongly recommend that you see it if you can.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Reviews | Leave a comment

opera-singer singing

Posted on April 16, 2011 by barczablog

The title must seem like a joke, strangely redundant.  How could that even be a question for study, you may wonder.

But singing is not just a vehicle, but also sometimes a primary concern of the opera.  Some operas take us backstage (as some plays do), while others simply insist that we notice that the characters onstage in the opera are singing.  And some, particularly the various incarnations of Orpheus, the immortal singer, are brilliant experiments with the form.

"Libiamo" says Alfredo (Jose Cura)

I’ve been conflicted about that from the first time I saw such a thing.  There we are in Act I of  La Traviata, when we have a drinking song.  But what precisely were they all doing before the drinking song?  Is it more realistic for an operatic personage such as Alfredo Germont to break into song, or less?  I can’t decide, but it’s a little bit like reminding you of your breathing; you may suddenly become self-conscious about a process that you didn’t notice before that.

When the transition isn’t quite so obvious, as in the Te Deum that concludes Act I of Tosca, the effect can be quite powerful; indeed, Puccini seems to anticipate the cinema in the power of this moment.

In film, scholars sometimes sub-divide the ways music is employed into two mutually-exclusive groups.  Observe the following example (click on it below, but FIRST read this synopsis):

  • Diegetic music originates  in the world of the action shown on the screen, as for instance when Dooley Wilson sings “As Time Goes By” in Rick’s Club American, in Casablanca.
  • Two minutes into this sample –when Rick comes storming in, to discover why the forbidden song is being played, and makes eye-contact with Ilsa—the first non-diegetic music since the beginning of the film suddenly begins.  Notice how the music from an invisible source completely changes the meaning of the scene, as if we’re now feeling what’s inside Rick’s head.

It’s not quite the same in live theatre, but even there we have a similar sort of dichotomy at work. When the singing is part of the artifice—as in almost all operas—we are more inclined to critique the skill of that portrayal, noticing the singer as a virtuoso.  Diegetic music has a different kind of reality.  Whether the singer performs skilfully or not, we must accept the legitimacy of the performance, as it is part of the world being portrayed.

Diegetic music occurs in opera as well.  Two of Wagner’s operas  — Tannhaüser  and Die Meistersinger –include  singing competitions, whereby performance onstage is deconstructed as a display of virtuosity.  We don’t listen with the same judgmental ear, because the singers are playing singers.

Perhaps the reason Orpheus has been portrayed in so many operas is because of this dynamic.  Two of the very first operas –Peri’s Euridice and Monteverdi’s Orfeo—bring us the story of the great mythological singer.

Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is considered a “reform opera,” which is another way of saying that Gluck broke away from the usual style of his time in search of something simpler and more eloquent.   Rightly or wrongly, I understood that Gluck and his librettist Calzabigi sought to go back to the very wellspring of opera, in reviving one of the original operatic figures, namely Orpheus.  By returning to this immortal theme, they signalled a new beginning, and a neoclassical purity.

You may know some of the famous music from this opera.  The Dance of the Blessed Spirits is the most well known orchestral passage, while Orfeo’s big aria “che faro senza Euridice” is probably the vocal highlight.

But for me the most powerful moment in the opera is the confrontation between Orfeo and the Furies, a moment that is breath-takingly new.  In the economical exchange between the pleading Orfeo and the implacable Furies, we hear a gradual softening, as music stills the savage breasts. 

Never had music been shown to be so powerful.  The furies become less furious and more musical, in spite of themselves (here’s a second slightly different take on the same scene).

I am looking forward to seeing what Robert Carsen does with Gluck’s opera at the upcoming production from the Canadian Opera Company, May 8 – 28 at the Four Seasons Centre.

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La Traviata in concert

Posted on April 9, 2011 by barczablog

There’s no better affirmation of the power of a particular opera score than to see it performed in concert: or maybe that should be “hear” rather than “see”.  The only impact a designer has on such a performance is the cut of a tuxedo or the style of an evening gown. The evening depends on the singing, the musicianship and the music itself.

Callas as Violetta

Tonight I attended the second of three presentations of La Traviata being undertaken by Bill Shookhoff’s company Opera by Request, a testimony not just to its popularity (given the good sized turnout) but its dramatic power as well.

Traviata has always felt modern to me in its bourgeois concerns, unlike Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, the other masterpieces Verdi composed  in the 1850s, with their royal personages and unlikely romantic plots.  Traviata is one of the earliest operas with such a contemporary focus, believable scenario (a courtesan dying of consumption) and has remained among the most popular.

A concert presentation is a mixed blessing.  Yes the voices are front and centre, especially in an intimate setting, but the singers must conjure the illusion without sets or costumes, without champagne or an actual deathbed.   In Opera by Request’s presentation we notice the biggest discrepancy in the two party scenes, whereas the more intimate scenes between two principals were far more successful.

Traviata sinks or swims with the soprano portraying Violetta, a role requiring the consummate singing actor, while—at least for me—the others only matter in their impact upon Violetta and her short life.

Soprano Jennifer Carter

Jennifer Carter achieved the most important of the requirements of any Violetta.  It has been said that over the course of the work, we require several different singers to encompass the drama and corresponding vocal writing Verdi entrusts to her.  From the moment she appeared, we believed Carter as a courtesan and bon vivant living under the shadow of her illness.  I was especially persuaded by Carter’s confrontation with the elder Germont in Act II and her final act duet with Alfredo & eventual death.

Paul Williamson as Alfredo was for me the vocal star of the evening, with a lovely voice, masterful top and exquisite musicianship, never straying off pitch.  Wayne Line’s Giorgio Germont transcended the usual stiff conservative; as a result, we saw a confrontation between two loving individuals in disagreement (Line’s Germont and Carter’s Violetta), giving their scene the weight of real tragedy.

Shookhoff was the usual note-perfect accompanist.

Opera By Request will offer their third and  final performance Wednesday April 13th at the New St James Presbyterian Church, London Ontario.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | 2 Comments

On a desert island…in Toronto.

Posted on April 1, 2011 by barczablog
painting shipwreck Shakespeare's The Tempest

Romney’s painting for the shipwreck in The Tempest

There you are on a desert island, the place where what-if questions are always posited.  One is asked impossible hypotheticals, such as “If you were on a desert island, and you could only take one book, one DVD, one beverage, one appliance… which one would you take.”

Okay, here’s another impossible question, one I am sure you’ve never heard.  If you were cast ashore on that desert island, what opera would you decide to set on your island, and then enact on the island?

It’s an odd question, yes.  But curiously enough, lots of operas are set on the proverbial desert island.

Two operas immediately popped into my head, because of current events, namely the two comparatively recent adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  One premiered in 2004, with music composed by Thomas Adès, and a libretto by Meredith Oakes adapted from Shakespeare; this Tempest will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2012-13 season in a production to be directed by Robert Lepage.  The other, with a libretto adapted from Shakespeare by Mark Shulgassser, was composed by Lee Hoiby, the American compsoer who passed away this week; Schirmer say it was composed in 1985.  I wonder if Hoiby is reading this from some paradisal setting, possibly at peace, possibly disgruntled that the wrong setting is coming to the Met.

One of the earliest operas we know of, is Monteverdi’s setting of the Ariadne story, L’Arianna.  Curiously the opera about the mythological castaway is itself as lost as if it were a ship wrecked at sea.  I find this very poignant, particularly because one tiny little bit of it survives, like a little chunk of wreckage found floating in the vast ocean.  We have not lost Ariadne’s lament “Lasciatemi morire” (or “let me die”), one of the earliest pieces I learned to play on the piano.  I learned it because it’s in that Schirmer anthology of Italian arias that everyone gets, but also because it’s easy to play.  This tiny little composition –on a single page in the Schirmer book– is a powerful little drama.  Hear it for yourself:

….how odd, you may think that a man sings this.  But the circumstances are not so different than a popular Broadway song, or a tune from a Hollywood film.  Youtube has versions of this song by Jewel (yes that one: the pop singer), Paul Robeson, as well as several wonderful recordings sung by women.  I chose to use Corelli because it corresponds to my own early experience of the work.  I first played the accompaniment while my brother sang it.

Of course this is just a roundabout way of introducing my favourite desert island opera, namely Ariadne auf Naxos. With libretto by Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, and music by Richard Strauss –after Giacomo Puccini, possibly the most successful opera composer of the last century, — this is a very sophisticated take on the story.

Dale Ferguson's design

Dale Ferguson’s design for Zerbinetta on the beach

The Canadian Opera Company are opening a new production of the Strauss opera in the next few weeks, and I can’t wait.  The designs, posted on the COC’s blog, elicited these ruminations.  I shared them to Facebook, where friends and I had a bit of an exchange that led me here.

Upon seeing that Zerbinetta has three costumes, including one outfit she puts on when she realizes that she’ll be on an exotic island, James Fretz said “It is so important to have the perfect island wear. It can’t be stressed too much.”

I replied “Seriously, if you could pick one opera character to travel with, wouldn’t Zerbinetta be close to the top of the list?”  …Because of course her happy demeanor is the opposite of sad Ariadne.

And so for awhile we wondered about operatic travel-companions.  Some of them are pretty dreary:

  • don’t get in a boat with Peter Grimes
  • ditto for The Flying Dutchman
  • Aschenbach (Death in Venice) will talk your ear off
  • don’t open the door to Jack the Ripper (Lulu)
  • and it’s hard to imagine enjoying a glass of zinfandel sitting in an outdoor café with either Alberich or Mime
  • you’d enjoy tagging along after Don Giovanni however

Yes, the questions are nerdy to the extreme.  I guess i need a vacation and it doesn’t have to involve a desert island.  In the meantime, we don’t have to travel any further than the opera house, where we’ll encounter a strange juxtaposition of characters, some fun, some serious.  The premise for Ariadne auf Naxos reminds me of the crazy mashups of ideas you’d see in a sketch from Second City.

If you missed the Battle of the PBS Stars, Julia Child boxes with Mr Rogers (the clip above).  Odd as this may seem, the combination of one template (battle of the stars)  with another (recognizable PBS celebrities) creates something new and completely absurd.

Ariadne auf Naxos is much the same.  A rich man’s entertainment is to include two contrasting entertainments:

  • a comic scene of commedia dell’arte
  • a serious operatic scene

Imagine if suddenly, due to time constraints, they were forced to play simultaneously.  That’s the bizarre premise for Strauss’s opera, as comedy and tragedy share the stage together.

For instance, in this little excerpt Harlequin sings a simple song in an attempt to lift Ariadne’s spirits, accompanied not only by his commedia cohort but also by Echo, one of the mythological nymphs on the island.  It’s a strange mix, which is why i invoked SCTV.  While I’m not sure it always works (some operas, in comparison, seem indestructible), when it does work the blend of sublime and ridiculous is pure theatre magic.

Ariadne auf Naxos, at the Four Seasons Centre, April 30-May 29

The designs, posted on the COC’s blog, elicited these ruminations.  I shared them to Facebook, where friends Joseph Fretz, Donald Arthur and I had a bit of an exchange that led me here.
Posted in Essays, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays | Leave a comment

Chopin at the Opera

Posted on March 30, 2011 by barczablog

There’s nothing quite like cinema to change your viewpoint.  Film has changed my perspective on Frederic Chopin more than once.

portrait of Chopin by Eugene Delacroix

Chopin by Delacroix

I’d grown up with his music around me, aware of him almost from the beginning.  Anyone learning how to play piano must reckon with a few titans of the keyboard.  One inevitably encounters them, particularly Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin.  Each one is a combination of pleasures and challenges, of requirements to be met and rewards offered in return.

I was dimly aware of the biographical details, a little bit of context.  Chopin is the most ethnic of the four keyboard giants, which is to say, the only non-German admitted to the pianistic pantheon.

And the complexities abound, for when we think of Chopin’s ethnicity, we are really examining two cultural milieu.  As a child Chopin lived in Poland, his Mother’s birthplace, the land of the Polonaise and Mazurka.

As a man Chopin came to Paris, his father’s homeland and the artistic capital of the world for most of the 19th Century, the home of sophistication, style, subtlety.

In my head I always saw two tendencies in conflict.  The Eastern European side, with which I identified as a Hungarian, seemed vulgar and clumsy compared to the restraint and elegance of Paris.  I assumed that the Polish youth would be awed by Paris.  Of course, that was a projection of my own insecurities, my own sense of being the cultural outsider in Toronto, even though I have no accent, nor any reason not to be fully assimilated.

Impromptu

Hugh Grant as Chopin, Judy Davis as George Sand

Then I saw Impromptu, a refreshingly unpretentious 1991 film that encouraged me to shake free of the pretentious views I’d held onto for so long.  It offered a new look at several artists –Chopin, and also Franz Liszt, George Sand, Eugene Delacroix—not as icons, but simply as people.  Whatever you may think of its merits, there are moments in the film that have a wonderful ring of truth.

I’ve had another such wake-up call with a recent film.  Chopin at the Opera is a difficult creation to classify, something in the borderline between documentary, concert and colloquium.  A series of experts across many disciplines talk about Chopin while we hear excerpts played and sung.

Their focus is wonderfully narrow, with a focus on a new series of ideas about Chopin.

In 1830 when Chopin was forced to emigrate at the age of 20, we know a few things from indirect evidence.  Chopin loved the opera.  This has a ring of truth to me as I picture a  recent arrival in Paris, perhaps not able to keep up with the sophisticated conversation of his new home;  what better refuge for the talented young pianist, than an artform practiced in foreign languages?  Whether he understood the operas in Italian or not, their Babel likely mirrored his own disorientation, a stranger in a strange land.

Chopin at the Opera

Chopin at the Opera looks at the mutual influence of opera upon Chopin, and  his own influence upon the culture of his time, especially singers such as Pauline Viardot who sang versions of Chopin’s piano music.  Did you know that Viardot made virtuoso vocalises from some of Chopin’s Mazurkas, achieving fame throughout Europe?

At the same time, the film also issues a series of wonderful provocations about Chopin’s music.  His melodies are at times like bel canto solos.  I find I am hearing Chopin in an entirely new way, and re-thinking Rossini, Bellini & Donizetti as well.

The film is a colloquium in multiple languages (German, French, English), reminding me again of what Chopin must have experienced in his brief life.  Piano & voice engage in dialogues, not placid concert performances, but intense discussions of how to perform, a study in how one discourse informs the other.  We spend much of the film channelling George Sand’s love of Chopin, both in a series of calm readings from her memoirs, and in the use of her home as the setting for the film.

I am mightily stimulated by this little film that tosses out so many provocative phrases:

“CHOPIN HAD NOTHING TO SAY… and that’s why it’s so brilliant”…And I think he’s right.  The speaker –in German—was contrasting Chopin to other composers who employ programmes or texts, and felt that—like Bach—Chopin created absolute music.

“It’s as if Chopin wanted the voice but to do away with language, disengage himself from words”….And another invoked Mendelssohn’s compositions answering “ohne worte”.

“In his time people wanted to associate titles, meanings, texts… but that wasn’t Chopin’s aesthetic at all.”  Again we’re thinking of absolute music, but this time they’d portray Chopin as a kind of anti-romantic holdout, refusing to be tainted by sentimentality or literal-minded readings of his music.

Last year was Chopin’s year.  2010 was the year to commemorate the bicentennial of his birth.  2011 is now Liszt’s bicentennial, also McLuhan’s centennial, so maybe I am a bit late.  Schmidt-Garre made Chopin at the Opera in 2010, presumably as part of the commemoration.  I shall have to spend a little longer with this material before I figure it out.  I am thoroughly stimulated, and suspect you would be as well.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Positive about “negative”

Posted on March 26, 2011 by barczablog

When i was in highschool, one of my teachers explained the conventional wisdom of advertising for my impressionable ears.  I still remember my surprise, listening to Mr Kearn tell me that Ford or GM or Chrysler would not ever say anything against one another, because at the same time they were selling their brand, they were also selling cars in general.

Mr Kearn said these companies created their ads in search of something called “market share.”  GM or Ford seek to enlarge their percentage of the total dollars spent on that product.  And by promoting the activity in general, all of the competing companies seek to enlarge the total amount spent on cars (compared to say, cola or Barbie dolls).  Everyone making a car ad sells the joys of driving, promoting the big product –cars– while also promoting their own brand as well.

Positive ads have at least two outcomes:
1) first by showing or speaking of an activity, you promote that activity in a non-specific way. If you show cars you’re selling the glamour or the fun of car ownership, the pleasures of driving, and so on.
2) and second, when you name a particular brand or product, you identify some smaller group within the larger class from #1, such as Ford, or Firestone tires.

Mac PC ads

a sophisticated negative ad

And so, we come to another phenomenon, namely the negative ad. Yes I was thinking of attack ads, made by one political party, drawing our attention to something the opposition has done, such as a false promise or an embarassing quotation.

Not all negative ads are political attack ads.  For example, I call your attention to the long campaign from Mac ridiculing PC.  Mac is cool, PC is businesslike, Mac is reliable, PC crashes.  And so on.  The fascinating thing about this series of ads is how gently they make their attack.  Even so, there’s no denying that this is still a species of negative ad.

As Canadians enter another election, I am thinking about the consequences of negative ads.  I wish our political ads were as sophisticated as the Mac-PC ads, which seem comparatively victimless, compared to the snarling tone of the usual political attack ad.

By the logic of Mr Kearn’s lesson on the positive ad (where we avoid negative language to avoid words backfiring against the product class), there are also possible unforeseen consequences for negative ads.  Or perhaps those consequences are clearly foreseen and even expected by the party planning gurus.

We can picture two different outcomes for the negative ads, just like the positive ads i mentioned above.

The first one is well documented.  When one political party says negative things about a particular politician, it encourages people to shun that person and not vote for the person attacked. That’s more or less the part we’re conscious of, when a politician is picked apart and thereby loses his “market share”, or in other words, loses popular support.

The second?  i don’t know that it’s properly recognized, but it’s equally important.   Just as the positive ad works both in support of a class of product as well as a specific product within that class, so too with the negative ad.  In addition to persuading voters not to vote for the targetted politician, there is an additional broader response to the broader product being sold, namely the political system and our elected representatives.

The negative ad encourages a sort of despair, because it proclaims that politicians need to be scrutinized carefully, that they sometimes are untruthful (haha: as if that were news), that politics is not a nice business, that politics is actually a revolting sad affair.  One loses enthusiasm, loses faith in the good in people, while sinking into a kind of negative expectation. One becomes cynical, as if they were broken-hearted.  Without faith in society & the process, people will not want to vote, and won’t show up.  When people become cynical about politicians, they stop caring about the outcome, and surrender their franchise.

So far I have not reached a state of despair. As we enter the Canadian federal election campaign, one of the by-products that some will aim for is a kind of fatigue, to persuade voters not to show up.  History shows that low turnouts support the incumbent, whereas high turnout indicates a desire for change.  Speaking as a voter who wants a change, i am fearful of the manipulative power of advertising that not only directly addresses the candidates, but may have the power to sap voters’ will to show up, to wear them down, break their hearts, and ultimately persuade them that democracy doesn’t work.  I hope that people show up–whoever wins–so that the outcome is a reflection of the will of the people, a passionate choice, not apathy and despair.

At the very least, elections give us wonderful opportunities for comedy (the following makes fun of both Liberals & Conservatives… i apologize to those from the other parties who might feel left out).

Posted in Essays | 5 Comments

The Nerds Shall Inherit the Earth

Posted on March 20, 2011 by barczablog

My friend Joseph So recently shared a link on Facebook that started a conversation about conductors.

Carlos Kleiber

Carlos Kleiber

“Carlos Kleiber has been named the greatest conductor of all time in the April issue of BBC Music Magazine…  In a poll, 100 conductors including Sir Colin Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev and Mariss Jansons were asked to vote for their favourite.”

Here are the conductors’ selections, lifedates & nationalities; boldface signifies conductors who are still living.

1. Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004) Austrian
2. Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) American
3. Claudio Abbado (b1933) Italian
4. Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) Austrian
5. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (b1929) Austrian
6. Sir Simon Rattle (b 1955) British
7. Wilhelm Furtwängler (1896-1954)
8. Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) Italian
9. Pierre Boulez (b1925) French
10. Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005) Italian
11. Sir John Eliot Gardiner (b1943) British
12. Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970) British
13. Terenc Fricsay (1914-1963) Hungarian
14. George Szell (1897-1970) Hungarian
15. Bernard Haitink (b1929) Dutch
16. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) French
17. Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988) Russian
18. Sir Colin Davis (b1927) British
19. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) British
20. Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) Australian

As much as I agree with many on the list, I couldn’t help wondering: about the few unexpected omissions such as James Levine or Otto Klemperer, and about what such a list tells us.  What is a conductor’s conductor?  Too bad nobody asked the conductors to spell out what they admire in their colleagues. Baton technique or fund-raising prowess? Masterful control of the orchestra or of reviewers & publicity? Clearly tastes are changing, as evidenced by the inclusion of Harnoncourt & Gardiner.

At some point you may begin wondering what any of this has to do with the title of the post: “The Nerds Shall Inherit the Earth.” The nerds of course have the patience to wait for me to get to the point; as usual, we have a lot to learn from the nerds.  I’ll get back to them in a moment.

Conductors at one time were a fearsome bunch.  Think of Leopold Stokowski, Gustav Mahler (yes he was a conductor, not just a composer), or Arturo Toscanini.  They unapologetically re-wrote scores, etching their own personal stamp on music from someone else; and for their audience this was never a problem.

If you think of the imposing shadow Stokowski casts –literally—in Fantasia, you almost have the sense that a composer was lucky to submit to the brilliance of such an artist.  But as I said earlier in reference to the BBC conductor poll, fashions change.  The world has had records (wax, vinyl, and assorted digital formats) for over a century, which means that the worldwide audience exhibits a growing sophistication.  When I recently watched Fantasia with my grand-daughter I found the tone a bit condescending, as if the maestro were so far above us as to be invisible in the clouds.  Conductors of the old school were absolute rulers, tyrants who commanded.

The world has changed of course.  Whether in the world of sports, in management, or the arts, tyranny is no longer acceptable in a leader (even if several countries still seem to put up with pompous asses…but excuse me for venturing off topic).  In its place, there appear to be a number of possible prototypes to replace the old one: if you can call anything “new” that has been emerging for quite awhile now.

One option is the composer-conductor, arguably the original role of the composer, if we recall that Richard Wagner & Hector Berlioz were among the first great orchestral conductors.  Among the Top Twenty we find Wilhelm Furtwangler, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez.  There are others such as André Previn & John Williams from the world of film music.  This signifies a new option only if the composer-conductor resists the temptation to re-write masterworks; that’s exactly the kind of textual fidelity we see with Bernstein & Boulez.

conductor David Fallis

Toronto Conductor & Scholar David Fallis

Another option is the scholar-conductor.  The scholars are perhaps the ones who have been quietly changing the musical landscape.  Charles Mackerras, Frans Bruggen, Roger Norrington, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, John Eliot Gardiner, René Jacobs all bring a different sort of authority to the podium: the authority of research.  In Toronto we have another such scholar, namely David Fallis of the Toronto Consort & Opera Atelier, whose careful exploration of the text makes him leader on merit, rather than by some sort of divine right of the podium.

Both composer & scholar have legitimacy as the leader of the ensemble.  The older model – of the virtuoso conductor—can also work of course.  Carlos Kleiber came up the usual way, as an instrumentalist, then a repetiteur, and then as a conductor.  James Levine, too, plays the piano with his singers, a talented musician who is a friendly leader rather than a fearsome ogre.

And so we’re seeing several competing prototypes on the podium.  Sometimes we get the slick matinee idol looks of the old powerful maestro, for example Riccardo Muti, Herbert von Karajan or Carlo Maria Giulini.  Alongside that image, we have a gentler sort of conductor, such as Fallis, Norrington, and Rattle.

I watched a movie today that I found online, namely The Schumann Encounter – Robert’s Rescue, starring Simon Callow & yes, Roger Norrington.

You may remember Simon Callow as the boisterous friend in Four Weddings & a Funeral, or Schikaneder in the film of Amadeus. Callow was in fact the original Mozart for the premiere of  Shaffer’s play in 1979.

Norrington –who is also credited with the idea for the film—is in some respects the most daring of the scholars.  Where Bruggen, Harnoncourt, Fallis & Jacobs have explored early music (admittedly a loaded term, and with very different application for some such as Fallis than for the others)  using instruments purporting to be authentic, Norrington fearlessly explores music previously left to the modern orchestra such as the symphonies of Brahms and even Mahler.  It also means that some of his experiments rub people the wrong way, if this critique is any indication.

The complete film is available—at least for the time being—through the link (below).  It’s a charming fantasy, exploring the mind and mythology of Robert Schumann, as exemplified in this little blurb from Schumann’s wikipedia entry:

Chopin’s work is discussed by imaginary characters created by Schumann himself: Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann’s passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy, introspective side)…. A third, Meister Raro, is called upon for his opinion. Raro may represent either the composer himself, Wieck’s daughter Clara, or the combination of the two (Clara + Robert).

In Schumann’s suite Carnaval, opus 9, both passionate Florestan & contemplative Eusebius get a musical self-portrait (“self-portrait” because they are aspects of Schumann’s mind).

Contemplative eusebius:

Passionate Florestan:

The film is heart-breaking in some respects.  Talk about a nerd project!  Here’s a film made for those so fascinated by Robert Schumann that they would enjoy a film exploring his internal demons.  That the film is available online for free suggests that perhaps there aren’t enough of us – Schumann nerds of the world—to have made the film profitable.  While it does have a few silly moments, its chief strength is the way it illuminates something of Schumann’s madness.  I don’t think it matters that at times it resembles a total flight of fantasy.  It’s no more fanciful nor any more inaccurate than the aforementioned commercial success, Amadeus. While Norrington may not be everyone’s cup of tea –as actor, film-maker or his chief strength as conductor—I really like this film.  If you’re a musical nerd maybe you’ll like it too.

The Schumann Encounter – Robert’s Rescue is available at least for the time being via the following address (the URL resists embedding):
http://www.classicaltv.com/v841/classical-music/the-schumann-encounter

Posted in Essays, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honeymoon Song

Posted on March 14, 2011 by barczablog

Composer Ernest Bloch & his children

Today I visited my Mother’s house after church.  I had stayed late  for a rehearsal of the big piece we’re performing in April, namely  Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service.

It’s funny how things sometimes seem to follow patterns, whether in reality or in our minds.

At church, our music director David Warrack is teaching us music sung in Hebrew.  For everyone at today’s rehearsal, that means we’re singing phonetically without much comprehension (except when we encounter hallelujah or amen).  We’re making music, trying to make sense of words that normally would be a foreign language.  The piece by Bloch becomes an inter-cultural bridge.  While that may seem odd, it’s how people learn oratorios, operas, songs written in other languages; part of the task is  to dig into the text, to properly learn what the text means, its context and how it is to be pronounced.  It’s a wonderfully seductive process, because one never gets to a point where one knows too much.  An Englishman learning Shakespeare or a German learning Bach will always have more they can learn, so you can imagine that newcomers will have that much more to discover.  In the meantime, a text such as Bloch’s score is a magic carpet, taking us into a  whole new world.

Need I mention that the intention of the organizers – who are bringing together choirs from different faith communities—is to encourage inter-faith encounter?  The conversation across faiths (where each faith represents a discursive community, a complex network of codes & symbols) is by definition a cross-cultural experience.

Later, at my Mom’s there i was, doing the same thing.  Now of course that may sound odd.  Isn’t a son from the same culture as his mother?  Yes and no.

A song my Mother heard recently on the radio moved her to reminisce about an experience from long ago, taking her back to her youth.  Songs are funny that way, instantly taking us into reveries & memories in the past.

My Mom suddenly remembered a song she heard on another radio, long ago in Budapest during the first days after the Russians arrived in Budapest.  She was wondering if I could help her to identify the tune.  She sang it for me in Hungarian, and i persuaded her to let me record her singing it (it sounded pretty good by the way!).  The song was a romantic Russian song being played in Budapest on the radio in 1944 or perhaps 1945.  I got the impression it was the equivalent of a “hit“ at the time.

But wait.  A Russian song embraced by the Hungarian populace? as a “hit”?  That seems unthinkable given that the words that usually pop into my head when I think of “Budapest” and “USSR,” are words such as “uprising”, “revolution” or “tanks”.

My mother told me a story that might explain.

During the worst part of the Second World War–when the Nazis and Soviets were fighting it out, often on the soil of other nations– people hid away, fearful, endangered.  Of  course  the way she described it was simply as a horror.

And then one fine day, the bombardments stopped.  Curious, my mom and her family & neighbours emerged from their bunkers & basement hiding places.

As they came to the  surface, the locals encountered men in clean white capes, who said

“Baratajim, ne feljetek, felszabitani jöttunk.  Nincs töb háború.”

Those are Hungarian words, spoken by Russians in unlikely clothes.  After a bombardment, starving people emerge from their bombed buildings to find reassuring men in beautiful white telling them exactly what they dreamt of hearing?  Talk about a theatrical moment!

What did these mysterious men in white say?

“Friends, be not afraid.  We came to liberate you.   There’s no more war.”

I can’t help remembering the arrival of the Martians on Earth in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. The translator device says “we come in peace” moments before a Martian fries the symbolic dove of peace with a raygun, first blow in a pre-emptive attack on humanity.

And just like the Martians, the Russians seemed to be saviours to the populace of Budapest, freeing them from the Nazi occupation.  In time this would change.  But in the first blush of liberation, the Soviets enjoyed a honeymoon period.

In time the honeymoon would end.  But at the beginning, if  there was to be a dialogue, if there was to be peace, every effort was made to understand one another.  Anything less is doomed  to failure.

The unlikely “hit” on Budapest radio began with the following lyrics:

Szol az egyik a másiknak
Ne busulj Tovarisch
Minden lány elfelejt rendesen
— mindent  el visz a viz

One soldier confides to another, pessimistic about love.  The populace of a demoralized city likely could relate to the heartbreak of  soldiers long separated from their sweethearts at home.

I found it astonishing to find that fourth line, which translates as
“the water takes everything away”.

In our service today, we read from Psalm 32  (whereas the phrase in the Russian song is completely serendipitous, the psalm was likely chosen because it resonates with what we’ve seen on TV and internet this week after the earthquake & tsunami in Japan) :

“Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.”

I will try to find a Russian song with similar lyrics to the one I quoted above.  I seek the one sung in Budapest back in the 40s, when everyone was ready to believe that they came in peace.  Just because the search for peace hasn’t yet been successful doesn’t mean we should stop looking.

I’ll let you know if i find it.

Posted in My mother, Personal ruminations & essays, Spirituality & Religion | 2 Comments