A glimpse of Grendel
Through her usual impeccable and top-secret sources, La Cieca has managed to obtain some obviously bootlegged but fascinating video of the opera Grendel, as performed at the Lincoln Center Festival earlier this week. The video quality is only fair, but clip does depict some of the masterful puppet design by Julie Taymor.
funny. reeeeeeeeeeeealy funny.
well, I went to Grendel last Friday night. The work by Taymor is up to her usual snuff. However, the music left some to be desired. AGAIN, a modern comoposer who can do wonderful things with the orchestra but doesn’t do squat with the vocal line. Don’t nobody write tunes for the voice any more?
Certainly a show worth seeing but one that sends you out whistling the sets and costumes. The dancing was superior but sometimes left me wondering just where they fit in the scheme of things.
I left Whistling Eric Owens. And Laura Claycomb. And Richard Croft. Not so much Denyce Graves. (Can anyone tell me if there were any casting changes from LA to New York?)
Those 4 were all singing — and in excellent voice — on opening night at least. Yeah, I thought the performers were stellar, too. Not sure I’d describe Owens’ music as hummable, but he inhabited the character wonderfully. Ditto Denyce Graves. Both Claycomb’s and Croft’s music, I felt, provided haunting, elegant vocal lines. I do remember wondering during the performance, however, whether this is an opera that would ever receive a new staging from a new director or whether the music is inextricably tied to the sets and costumes.
PS
Denyce Graves’ music may not have been hummable, but “Seek gold, not my gold, and sit on it,” has already become a pretty stock response around this household for a myriad of situations. As I’ve made clear in a previous post, I loved the performance and believe Owens deserved the thunderous ovation he seemed a little startled to receive. But as a writer/English teacher, I’ve got to give credit to McClatchey (sp?), too. How many times do you walk out, saying “Great libretto”? I felt the same about his translation of the Magic Flute — one strong argument for supertitles. I’d literally look away from the German on the stage to enjoy his words.
Goldenthal, like so many modern composers, writes film scores — and his operas demonstrate this. They are background music. In the foreground, the drama is not musicalized at all — if something important must be said, then the music stops and a word or a sentence is spoken. This is a result of the renunciation of melody as an expressive tool.
“Grendel” would not succeed at all without a production as wild and crazy as this one — I enjoyed the production very much. McClatchy’s libretto took most of its phrasing (in English) from John Gardner’s delightful if collegiate novel. The Anglo-Saxon (everyone but Grendel and the Dragon) I presume came from the original.
Hey, I still enjoyed it more than any contemporary opera at the Met since Death in Venice, and it’s MUCH better than the recent movie of a Hollywoodization of the story. (i.e. Add girl and stir.)
Hans lick-
while I agree with you for the most part, and it’s a great analysis of the work, in your point about the renunciation of melody, you do not give credit to the beautiful melodies he gives to the Shaper and the Queen. I really loved how Goldenthall writes these beautiful melodies, and he sets them to these horrible lies. And the only other lyrical moment is when Grendel dies. I think it’s absolutly beautiful.