Annals of British Criticism
"Ye Gods! In all the annals, can there be an opera containing more unmitigated codswallop than Erich Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane ('The Miracle of Heliane')?" Their Own Rupert Christiansen continues:Dreadfully overheated and over-loud, the prolix first act has a slavering and maudlin sensuality that gave me the creeps ....
[T]he rapturous sublimity that glows through the last 20 minutes struck me as profoundly bogus and cheap. Why Jurowski and the LPO should wish to waste their talents and time on this tosh beats me ....
I felt slightly sick when it was all over and had to lie down in a darkened room.
POSTED at
2:39 PM
67 Comments:
Why the British, who are at best taste-challenged, to put it mildly, are allowed to cast their dreary selves over so many American opera companies remains a mystery to me.
Interesting comment, anonymous, but please, please choose a name?
Come off it. Rupert Christiensen is a plonker, but so is Tony Tomassini.
Rupert wasn't the only one who hated it. But the other reviews I read weren't as colorful as his.
"Surely the bill could better have been filled by one of Holst's lovely operas-- better yet, by dear old Sir Edward's THE LIGHT OF LIFE or CARACTACUS."
"And why was an American soprano brought to this country for these concerts when we have such fine native artists as Glanville and Jeffers?"
Christiansen is a prat of the first water, but as has already been said, critical idiocy knows no geographical boundaries - neither does taste (or lack of it). Most of the Heliane reviews acknowledged that it is a flawed, but interesting work. The criticism which went through all the reviews was the inept decision to position the soloists on a platform at the back of the orchestra. As the orchestra numbered about 130, the singers were often barely audible - at least from where I was sitting.
There was almost unanimous praise for Patricia Racette as Heliane.
I feel sad at the anti British sentiment of some of the posters here. Opera is an international art though I would question though some of the American imports over here! Jean-Michelle Charbonneau was a truly appalliing soloist in the recent Fowldes Requiem earning unanimous audience and critical execration. Just back from the tacky ENO Aida. Severely overparted Jane Dutton as Amneris, vampimg it up like a gay parody of Joan Collins. And I can remember the blowsy comprimaria Mignon Dunn in her one and only Coven Garden appearance in this role....
I was at Heliane. Yes the libretto is tosh but a sumptuous score mastrefully conducted by Jurowski.
For those of you who haven't heard this sublime work, hear the complete recording from the early 90s on Decca with a radiant Tomowa-Sintow. This has been one of my favorite works for many years.
This truly saddens me. Heliane is actually one of my favorite operas. Yes, the first two acts are a bit "prolix," to use that idiot's own word, but the last act is sheer heaven.
Taste is so subjective. His comment about having to "lie down in a dark room" is how I felt about hearing Lulu for the first time (sorry La Cieca). But Lulu eventually grew on me. It takes a bit of an open mind sometimes...
...apparently close-mindedness and blinkered outlooks are not unique to the West.
Having taste and performing one's job as a critic (and everyone who ever posted here is highly critical) does not necessarily make one close minded. Masturbatory note spinning crap is masturbatory note spinning crap. There is a great truism: Forgotten masterpieces are usually forgotten for a reason.
and wasn't it sweet of him to stay to the end?
"...the blowsy comprimaria Mignon Dunn..."?! Quel'horreur!
Granted, there are no small roles, just small actors - but let's be more fairly precise. Certainly Klytämnestra, Ortrud, Azucena and the like on the Met stage merit higher ranking than comprimaria... blowsy though some of those may have been.
Yniold, who might with profit stick to sheep, said...
" Opera is an international art though I would question though some of the American imports over here!.... I can remember the blowsy comprimaria Mignon Dunn in her one and only Covent Garden appearance in this role...."
Yes, not a patch on Our Own Elizabeth Bainbridge!
And dear old Jo Veasey-- THAT was a Verdi mezzo to reckon with- such a fine, noble, *anonymous* tone. To say nothing of the Stignani of her day, Ameral Gunson, or that worthy successor to
Kirkby-Lunn, Sally Burgess.
Let's not forget Opera North 's splendid Amneris, Roz Plowright: she may have lost her top, but she found a friend-- JONATHAN Friend! There is certainly no WAY that a role like Humperdinck's Gertrude could be entrusted to a rank colonial!
British culture and criticism are usually beyond the comprehension of most Americans.
I agree that 'forgotten masterpieces are usually forgotten for a reason' and Korngold is 95% garbage. I found Violanta with Marton at the Salvation Army a while ago for 50 cents and after listening to it twice I think I was ripped off. Uninspiring, tedious and pretentious. Most of Korngold barely deserves a concert version let alone a staged production, and that's precisely why he rarely gets them. Die tote Stadt is getting a single one next year and that's it. His film scores, however, are a different matter all together.
Why has this performance of 'Heliane' become a cause celebre for the US Brit-baters? Korngold was Viennese and the piece was written before he moved to compose film music in Hollywood.
Christiansen is, indeed, overdoing it a bit, but fundamentally he isn't wrong and he wasn't Yank-bashing at any point. (I have to agree with Krunoslav about second-rate British talent, but you can't take it away from world-class figures like Margaret Price or, in her own way, Gwyneth Jones. And Rosalind Plowright has been transformed by her transition to the mezzo Fach. )
I was at 'Heliane' and - though a fan of bits of 'Die tote Stadt' and other pieces by Korngold, such as the violin concerto - was bored and disappointed for most of the piece. It is overblown and lacks contour. The main problem is the libretto, which is deeply icky and somehow feels vaguely Nazi.
In fact the worst singing on stage came from a German, not one of the two Americans. Racette made a brave attempt at the naked queen (Heliane, that is, not a a gay naturist in the audience), but why anyone cast her in the role is beyond me. She is not a Kaiserin or even a Salome. (Not sure if she's even a Butterfly, actually.)
Shame that neither Voigt nor Brewer (an American who captured British hearts first) were tied up in Chicago with FroSch, which sounds like a stunning show.
Michael Hendrick really wasn't bad at all. The problem is that his voice has little cutting edge and, like the other soloists, he was placed at the back in the choir stalls. A bad move in the Festival Hall's flat acoustic. Frankly, nearly all the singers could have done with a little 'enhancement'.
Yniold, in spite of your French name, I suspect you are actually an Anglo-Saxon. It's not Jean-Michelle Charbonneau, but Jeanne-Michelle Charbonnet.
Noblesse oblige ...
Whoops, slight correction required to one of my sentences:
"Shame that neither Voigt nor Brewer (an American who captured British hearts first) were tied up in Chicago with FroSch, which sounds like a stunning show."
... should read ...
"Shame that both Voigt and Brewer (an American who captured British hearts first) were tied up in Chicago with FroSch, which sounds like a stunning show.
The above exchanges have led me to examine the etymology of "codswallop":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codswallop
Ball-busting indeed! Hardly appropriate for "heliane" unless it is in reference to the tessitura of the tenor's role.
Anything approaching physical congress is related to the realms of the mystical afterlife in this work.
A little physical congress in the course of the piece might have perked things up a bit.
There wasn't room for any very creative positions on the exiguous platform provided for the singers, though.
:-)!!!
Seems to me Christine Brewer was a big star where she wanted to be-- St. Louis, her hometown, and Santa Fe, where she could summer with her kids-- before she launched herself into the international phase of her career. So stout British hearts did *not* discover her, though they are answerable for Paata Burchulaadze and the idea that Daniil Shtoda was to be a big star, and that Berlioz Didon that lasted about 5 minutes, and some other Great Discoveries.
But now they have given the world the GRAMOPHONE cover story Kate Royal ( whose lackluster album earned two stars out of five in the French opera monthly, about right)...
May I dare to posit that Brewer's rise to international star status (and that includes the US - I am delighted to hear that her Faerberin in Chicago is so superb) was partially triggered by her success in the UK - not least at lil'old Wigmore Hall.
Kate Royal is a gorgeous woman, makes a lovely sound and also made very little impression on me when she gave a recital at the Wigmore. There is something missing there, but Kiri Te Kanawa had something missing throughout her career and it never stopped her from being a huge success. Kate Royal needs some time. Whether she will get it is another matter. All the hype is already causing a gentle backlash for her, which she doesn't deserve. She is a serious artist, but not yet a distinctive or interesting one.
As for my general attitude to British singers, I am going to confess two terrible things right now: to me, Kathleen Ferrier always sounds like a modestly gifted amateur, while I have found Dame Janet Baker a painful singer to listen to since I started taking an active interest in singers - which is now 30 years ago.
Gladys
There is a song by Flanders and Swann which, if interpreted by Krunoslav and one or two other people in this blog would emerge as "The Yankees are best, the Yankees are best ... I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest". But you twice voted for that moron Bush.
Kathleen Ferrier has often been a bit of a sacred cow - her early death from cancer may have contributed to that. When she is doing her folk song bit, I am often reminded of Kenneth Williams in his role of Rambling Sid Rumpo.
The story of Ferrier's illness and death is, indeed, very moving and she was obviously a down-to-earth woman with a robust (just possibly slightly tiresome) sense of humour who didn't see herself as a sacred cow. I suspect she might have been quite amused by Rambling Sid Rumpo herself.
That being said,'Blow the wind southerly' certainly doesn't fill my sails.
May I just mention now that Patricia Racette, Jeanne-Michelle Charbonnet, Kathleen Ferrier and I have heard Dame Janet Baker are all lesbians, so give them some respect beeyotches - this is a queer opera site!!!
I know a few of them are British but they couldn't help that! Seriously, just saw "Nozze" last night with the fabulous Bryn Terfel and Sir Simon Keenlyside and they have put me in a pro-British mood. Don't forget such super singers as "their own" Alice Coote and Felicity Lott and the veteran Robert Lloyd and several more are brightening stages all over the world.
However there has been discussion over the years about the proliferation of British artistic administrators in international opera houses and their ties to British singer's agencies and managements. We always seem to get the best up and coming Covent Garden singers but rarely those from let's say the Teatro San Carlo or Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Certain groups of singers just aren't on the radar at the Met who seem to be doing superb work in Europe.
Rudolf Bing had Roberto Bauer and Dario Soria scouting Italy for the best new young Italian singers and he had excellent scouts in Germany as well. We only get those Italian singers after they have appeared on the Covent Garden stage. There are many fantastic singers out there who haven't sung in England. The Met (and I am Metcentric) seems to depend too much on Friend and his and his aunt's Joan Ingpen's friends and their clients over the years.
A big problem is that James Levine has limited artistic energy these days for new projects and doesn't seem all that worked up about most of the newer singers. He isn't inititiating big new projects like the "Rienzi" and "Guillaume Tell" that have been discussed - Levine said that the Met might do those operas but he might not be conducting. I don't trust Gelb's taste in singers or operas.
There are fantastic voices out there who somehow aren't getting where they need to go. The Brits are good at promoting their native talent. America is less good but still better than many other countries.
How does an opera libretto feel "vaguely Nazi"?
Korngold, like many German and Austrian artists of his time, emmigrated to flee the Nazis and landed with many of his musical colleagues in Hollywood where film work was plentiful.
That fact needn't sound like a sell-out career choice nor serve as an accurate gauge of his composing talent. He needed work and that's what was there.
It's surely possible to disagree about singers without getting into some kneejerk "all brits are gits" frame of reference. Plowright for some years was a good if flawed soprano (I heard her excellent as Desdemona, the Governess and Helene, pretty good as Amneris, not so hot as Donna Anna, and really poor as Senta). It's as unfair to lump her in some category as local rotten singer boosted by the British press as it would be for me to dump on Patricia Brooks or Diana Soviero as no talent singers boosted by the parochial NY press. Some perspective, please. Just because a singer hasn't made it in your particular international house, doesn't mean they're crap.
Well said Gualtier. All the recording happens in London, most of the major agencies have their offices in London. There definitely needs to be a couple of other channels for singers to make it to the attention of the Met.
No-one is suggesting Korngold sold out when he went to Hollywood to escape the horrific consequences of the Anschluss (which an Austrian taxi driver, quite unprompted, once told me they never really wanted ...) He made a durable contribution to the world's culture with his movie scores.
As I said in my original post, parts of 'Die tote stadt' (certainly the two famous numbers) are touched with real genius and the violin concerto is gorgeous, with a distinctive harmonic and expressive voice. His real artistic home was, I would suggest, somewhere more gemuetlich than Heliane's grotesquely overblown and overbearing land without love.
How interesting to find the moron TKLogan agreeing with a fool with whacko in it's name.
'forgotten masterpieces are usually forgotten for a reason'
Really? The French Baroque was forgotten for three hundred years, Lully was disparaged by people who had never heard his music, Rameau and his marvelous text book was shrugged off.
Yet in the past thirty years the discoveries have been remarkable. Christie's account of Atys with original score, complete, in a sophisticated staging that none the less evoked Baroque practices was amazing. The Rameau revival has brought stunning realizations of masterworks like Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Indes Galantes and the delicious Platee among others. The Charpentier Medee is an amazing work, and even a 'lesser' light such as Mondonville came up with a masterwork such as Titon et l'Aurore. It is better than anything 'serious' by Donizetti more imaginative and individual, just as Platee overwhelms the good Donizetti of the comedies with it's immense invention.
And of course these morons have not only forgotten the French. Handel's opere serie were largely forgotten and completely dismissed -- but as with the Rameau revival, much of the best international opera of recent years have been fantastic realizations not only of Julio Cesare but of Tolomeo, Agrippino, Flavio and Tammerlano -- and if one defends a musical comedy style composer like Donizetti, as the cretin TKLogan does, by say, noting that he had good melodic skills (but Richard Rodgers had better), then Handel is an overwhelming presence -- notwithstanding the self borrowing and occasional theft of tunes. But Handel is hardly the whole story, an awareness of the genius of Kaiser is just starting, and the theater works of Telemann need investigation.
But what has the idiot TKLogan to say about Korngold? His film music is good. That means the endless sequences, the foolish added notes to pad tunes, the harmonic tricks to create fake substance -- that's good. So we know this is a fool without any sense of what it is hearing.
No mention or knowledge of the Suite for strings and piano left hand, one of the great works of the very late 20's -- so fascinating in it's harmonic invention that it offers a 'response' to Serialism, a plea that tonality isn't 'dead' nor need be repetitive and obvious -- the sheer ingenious modulatory movement through the work is fantastic, while Korngold's very strong melodic gift is at its freest.
There's no mention of the interesting symphony, the only one. It's in F sharp major, deliberately, a homage to Mahler and a meditation on the terrors of fate -- for the only other German symphony in that strange key is Mahler's 'tenth', unfinished (save for the Adagio and the Purgatorio) in Korngold's time. Korngold uses some of Mahler's themes in his counterpoint, which is fascinating. And again the 'battle' for a tonal center (though this is an enriched and individual tonality very far from Donizetti)is fought, movingly.
There is also the gigantic Sursum Corda, an amazing work for 1920. And finally there is the piano concerto for the left hand, in C sharp with wild modulations away from the home key, extraordinary figurations in the piano line, and surging melodies -- not falsely extended as in the film music but developed and varied with what I think is a genius' touch.
The Violin Concerto, based on the movie music, is weak tea in comparison.
I don't know that Korngold is a 'great' composer. As far as I can see he has many of the same weaknesses as Richard Strauss; and he is certainly not as astonishing as those other Mahler lovers, Schoenberg, Webern, and best of all Berg. But any one who loves art -- and this is where my contempt for TKLogan and its ilk comes from -- any one who loves art or god help us has tried to do art, is not going to dismiss Korngold in these stupid and childish terms, in complete ignorance of his entire oeuvre. All they are doing then, is admitting they are deaf.
Of course, fools on a queen's list like this do no damage -- as if TKLogan and Whacko mattered! But it is sad when a fool like Christiensen has some likely influence. Neither tosh nor codswallop are musical terms, and of course Christiansen knows none, as far as I am aware he has had NO musical training -- he wrote one derivative book about the Romantics and a more derivative one about 'divas' and is suddenly a 'music reviewer' -- probably hired by someone he blew during pop at school.
And for the idiot who knee jerk puts down Tomassini -- the one thing that can be said in his defense is that he is a very well educated musician (but I agree a bad reviewer and self betrayer --since I think he must know better).
Badate, La Cieca, or questa non picciol' lista diventera quasi una Opera-L, uno nido di stupidezza per i filistei!
I found the critical response very disappointing - several reviews spent half their words on irrelevant padding before passing unenthusiastic comment. Like a few of the others posing above, I went to the performance and was enormously pleased to get to hear a work that was premiered by Lotte Lehmann and Jan Kiepura.
I was horrified when I read the synopsis, and did indeed find the first act less than gripping. But the music and the singing built a heady momentum in the IInd and IIIrd Acts, and the playing of the LPO was outstanding (with superb violin solos and dashing elan from the Leader [Concertmaster] South African Pieter Schoeman). It was a sumptuously fascinating experience - much of the first quarter of the C20 drifted into and out of one's mind - Gurrelieder, Lied von der Erde, Turandot, Elektra - and of course Tristan. It's a long time since I had such a musically and intellectually stimulating evening in the concert hall. How very feeble to be unable to rise to the occasion.
The singing was a somewhat different story. Like many (everyone?) I was unable to explain why soli were placed behind a massive orchestra - only Willard White really had the heft to deal with it. It is really impossible to comment on the others' performances as they struggled to be heard (and Andreas Schmidt, as the Tyrant, made it still more difficult by singing into the back of his hand all night). Racette sounded lovely but everyone could have sounded voluptuous and torn with emotions if they had not been completely overwhelmed.
I can't see why Rupert Christiensen went off on a stupid rant. Perhaps he had some quarrel with Korngold's father (according to the programme the principal Austrian critic of the time who built up a massive bloc of enemies for his son by lambasting anyone or any work by a composer who didn't say Eric was the best thing ever.)
Anonymous said...
Gladys
"There is a song by Flanders and Swann which, if interpreted by Krunoslav and one or two other people in this blog would emerge as "The Yankees are best, the Yankees are best ... I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest". But you twice voted for that moron Bush."
...................
I don't know if you're Anonymous or Gladys, but my point is not that all Yankees -- and certainly not the horrendous Bush- are good, but that many second and third and fourth-rate British and Commnwealth singers have been forced down our throats, far more than have genuinely bad Americans been foisted on Britain-- though of course that has happened too.
I have spent much time in Britain over the last 40 years and am well aware of the many excellent singers and just good singers it can boast. Bring on your Keenysides and Cootes, Felicities Palmer and Lott.
That still does not mean that Jonathan Peter Kenney and Ashley Hollard and the execrable Philip Joll and Susannah Glanville and Robin Leggate and Paul Whelan ( NZ) and Jonathan Lemalu and Peter Coleman-Wright ( Aust) and Paul Charles Clarke and Claire Powell-- an UTTER non-entity whom The Billnghurst Woman imported to San Francisco for Maddalena-- should be plying thir trade on US or other world stages.
What a shame that this one review is the one that got highlighted here. I checked out several others of the performance and they all came to the right conclusion: "Heliane" has a ridiculous plot but is musically very much worth hearing. Korngold gets knocked for writing derivative music, but to my ear he has a style and a voice that are all his own. No other composer that I know was so successful at fusing the overwhelming sound of a Wagnerian size orchestra with memorable, hummable melodies like Puccini. I greatly prefer this engaging synthesis of brilliant orchestration and brilliant melody to the melodically barren works of Berg and Schoenberg. "Heliane" probably shouldn't be in the standard rep, but like all of Korngold's operas other than "Die Tote Stadt" (which should be standard rep in my opinion), it certainly merits revival from time to time.
mrs John Claggart you must be one hateful puppy to take my comments that seriously. And irrelevant, just like the music you listen to. Korngold operas are INDEED 95% garbage and that's why they're rarely produced. The public doesn't care about them and neither do most critics. I never said his scores are great compositions either cutie, just that they're not forgotten like his operas, the reason being they're embedded in the many classic films for eternity. Get some treatment, will you?
TKLogan,
Everyone's entitled to a few silly opinions--yours being that Korngold is 95% garbage. Based on what, exactly? What is it specifically that you find so detestable about his music. And as for your argument that neither public nor critics cares about his operas, I'll grant you that there are many critics who are still under the sway of modernism and so harbor a grudge against Korngold and other composers like him whose work is tuneful and not atonal. These I believe are the same critics referred to in the discussion in the other post about Vanessa who denigrated Barber for his romanticism. If you hate romanticism in music, that's fine, but say so, but don't please don't claim to speak for the public.
The public's response to Korngold's operas when they have been produced has generally been extremely receptive in recent years. I was at "Die Tote Stadt" at NYCO last year and the response was overwhelming. Even with a sup-par production, it was clear that the audience was deeply moved by the story and music. Many people around where I were sitting were in tears as the final curtain fell. Having seen first hand the power of Korngold's music to move people's emotions, I simply have to disagree with your quick dismissal of his work.
I think I read that "Die Tode Stadt" is going to get a new production at Covent Garden next year or the year after.
TK, Mrs JC, ladies and gentlemen: just a quick request from La Cieca that we do try to keep the discourse civil. You girls are all pretty, and all of you have interesting things to say, even if all of us don't agree with everything (and how dull that would be!) So let's try to keep the personal digs to a minimum, shall we?
Now, in the immortal words of Celeste Holm, "Do you know what that bitch Lillian Gish told me?"
The production of "Die tote Stadt" which will be seen at Covent Garden in 2009 is the Salzburg production, which has also travelled to Amsterdam, Barcelona and elsewhere - is it coming to San Francisco? One negative feature is that in joining Acts 1 and 2, they cut off the end of Act 1 and the whole of the brilliant prelude to Act 2.
Avoiding the argument over the quality of the score (and I can see why it, and much of Korngold can inspire both adoration and nausea...) Andreas Schmidt's singing as the Ruler was the single worst vocal performance I have heard in London in years! He was either very ill, or someone made a huge blunder in casting this, as he simply could not sing it. The part is nearly all declamatory tyrant-style invocations and there wasn't a single note he hit dead on pitch or at the required volume instead of leaning into them and then crescendoing. And he did indeed sing with his hand raised as if he might need to cough into it at any moment. Truly odd, and just embarrassing. Hendrick is no heldentenor, but made a good stab at a horribly difficult role, and Racette made beautiful sounds, but was just two sizes too small for the part. And then to put these underpowered singers at the back of that huge orchestra - how this was supposed to make a case for a neglected work I have no idea. A real disappointment. The night was almost entirely saved by the orchestra - the London Philharmonic played astoundingly well for such a complex score - and one they had presumably never encountered before - with some fabulously central-European string tone.
Mrs John Claggart
Your little aside regarding Opera-L is so true.
Let's never descend to that provincial level.
I agree - Rupert Christiansen is a pompous plonker.
Did anyone catch Plowright's Fricka at Covent Garden? I think she did a great job - she is a very good lookiing lady with a great stage presence.I thought she sang the role extremely well with a great deal of intelligence. I saw her in Rheingold last season with Bryn Terfyl but by the time I'd taken out a second mortgage to catch Die Walkure from an almost decent seat, Terfyl had gone home to change nappies and had morphed into Tomlinson.
Now how many of us remember when Rosalind Plowright was slated to be the next great Verdi spinto soprano? I think the Senta at Covent Garden (was she pregnant at the time?) was her Waterloo - it was all downhill after that. I think she disappeared completely for about a decade or more. But before that she was supposed to sing Violetta I think for Karajan?!? She did record the "Trovatore" Leonora for Giulini and the "Forza" Leonora for Sinopoli. She ain't Leontyne or Zinka but she ain't Suliotis either, Brit-bashing beeyotches!
I happened to see her Met debut which was as the Kostelnicka in "Jenufa" - she was the cover for Deborah Polaski (another lesbian, show reverence!). She sounded like a dry but imposing older soprano but she had very strong stage presence and acting - better than Polaski dramatically I thought and close to her equal vocally (definitely had the range and punch but lacked richness and breadth). Both could kiss Leonie Rysanek's ass, however both dramatically and vocally. Anja Silja's ass in the acting department as well. Plowright later repeated the Kostelnicka in Paris to very great acclaim. I think she is a credible candidate for the Modlrollen. Mere Marie or Mme. de Croissy in "Dialogues of the Carmelites" would be a good vehicle for her as well. I wouldn't write her off as tired old filth.
However, as Gertrude in "Hansel" the Met casting dept. should remember that young children usually have young parents - casting a weatherbeaten old veteran is maybe a questionable practice. However it does make the usually too mature-looking kiddies seem younger to have an old bag as their mother.
My first exposure to Kathleen Ferrier was her extraordinary recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with Bruno Walter. She deserves her sacred cow status for that recording alone!
Gualtier Malde: Well if the game of the day is "you know what singer you guys all like that I don't fucking get?", which it does seem to be, I'd have to say "competent" is about the nicest adjective I could come up with if asked to describe the singing of Felicity Lott. I remember buying a Mozart album in the 90's, having looked at the cover and said to myself, "she's certainly plain--I'll be she makes up for it with lovely, expressive singing." Well, maybe she's a really terrific writer, or awfully good with animals...
Yniold, isn't it sad? I like the list owner of Opera-L who had much to put up with me in the daze following my beloved John's vicious murder when I was an angry, name calling, judgmental cunt (none of those qualities are evident now, I trust). But I look in there and am shocked by how far it has descended toward sheer continual idiocy. It's not a question of disagreeing with the sentiments of obviously intelligent posters, or having a different point of view, it's reading proud confessions such as one last night that "I don't know any music, and nobody else on this list does either" that stun and alarm. I really dislike stupidity and willful narrowness of compass -- sadly a few little mice have crept through the small eye hole here -- but there it is epidemic.
Maury D'Annato, Velocity Clit, as she is known to the profession is actually a charming and enterprising recitalist and quite a good actress. It is a second tier voice but not a bad one, in my opinion, and has lasted fairly well. There are always such, better they have the touch of distinction she does, than the blandness that is more often the case.
I must admit that the late Giulini, sitting backstage after a Bruckner 8, which he had conducted without score, and without beating time (he more or less danced it), with Chicago playing like angels, was in a good mood and talked about trying to teach La Plowright Violetta, he was dying to make a commercial recording. He said he had many the session with her -- "troppo Inglese, senza una cuore" he said -- however even after the OK Trovatore I suspect she was more like senza una voce. Anyway, Giulini said he had recorded a lot of the opera with her and Domingo and Bruson and was under the impression that DG would pull recording fakery and release it.
I know that Sinopoli and his engineers had her singing VERY far from the mikes in that cursed Forza and buried her in artificial resonance in the hopes that the wobble wouldn't be so pronounced and her sound would have a little juice.
I helped him smuggle a Greek antiquity through Italian customs, pretending (in terror) I had no idea what they were talking about when they asked for papers and getting the evil eye from someone who had obviously trained with the Camorra and figured I had stolen the piece -- but I got away from it.
Over coffee Sinopoli told me he begged DG to cast anybody, a chorister even over fair Rosalind, but she had a three role, pay or play deal with them (which meant she got paid for the Violetta).
Dame Flott is a singer I also find both tonally and expressively pallid ... Quite why the French get so excited about her French -- which is well-schooled, but hardly vivid or voluptuous -- I'll never know. Maybe it's just that she tries hard with their language, which they always appreciate.
What will get me beaten up on here, though, is that I find that Karita Mattila sounds like Dame Flott on steroids: more tone, of course, but often too chalky in colour and texture, lacking the deeper overtones that give a dramatic voice real impact. As for diction, she would do well to learn a thing or two from Dame Flott. Her words can be shamefully mushy. She did Duparc to open a recital in London a couple of years ago and did herself no favours at all.
At the time Plowright was recording for DG she had a publicist who also happened to be Giulini's right-hand man. He was deeply manipulative and not to be trusted further than one could throw him - which wasn't far, since he was a big, well-padded man. He certainly exercised extraordinary influence over DG 's head of A&R. No-one was exactly sure why and how ...
Everyone considered Giulini himself to be a saintly figure, though a touch of the devil might have livened up his funereal recordings from that period. His Faure Requiem in particular was intolerably slow. But then, I find his legendary EMI Don Carlo lacking in balls, the quality of the cast (especially Verrett and excepting Raimondi) notwithstanding.
Caro Signor Malde--
I don't think of Mere Marie as a Moedlrole, and I certainly don't want to hear la Plowright letting loose on what one thinks of as the "Gorr/Quivar" high B.
I think there is probably some utility in the voice but aren't there American dramatic sopranos getting on in years who could sing a better Gertrude? Let each nation take care of its Soulioti, or even demi-Soulioti.
Cheers!
Plowright was or could be really good in the theatre. The top was a bit scary (I disgagree with MrsJT, in that she was always firm, not wobbly, but the top really hardened) and support was a bit lacking (lots of breaths, and some pitch problems ) in the runs in Non mi dir. And that might be why the distant microphone placing was used. But, warmth down below, and a quality I found quite apealing. But why the Verdi roles? A friend saw her as Else in an Abbado led Lohengrin and was most impressed. Maybe if she'd stayed with the slightly lower tessituraand fewer climactic high notes of that sort of part she would have lasted longer. Because there really was the core of a good voice with an individual dark timbre there. Good luck with the mezzo parts.
Not to pile on to TKLogan but...ah, fuck it, I'm going to anyway.
Die tote Stadt is getting a single one next year and that's it
Don't let facts get in the way of your rant. 30 seconds at Operabase reveals 3 productions of Die Tote Stadt in the 2007/08 season alone, but since they're in non-212 places like Bonn and Hagen and that little provincial backwater called Vienna, I guess that doesn't count. It usually gets about 3-5 productions a season, that's the standard rep as far as I'm concerned.
Mrs. John Claggart is right about that stupid cliche "It's forgotten for a reason"; I have zero interest in the French Baroque or Handel, but like with Lully and Rameu, sometimes The General Repertoire gets it all fucking wrong.
By 1920, Frank Schreker's operas were performed more than Strauss' in German speaking Europe: the Strauss of Salome, Elektra, Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Rosenkavalier and Frau ohne Schatten no less. By the "logic" of the "it's forgotten etc." crowd, German opera audiences ca. 1920 didn't know jack about opera.
Sometimes great or interesting music is forgotten for extra-musical reasons, such as changing tastes or political reasons or the fact that a composer has a champion (like James Levine and Charles Wuorinen) and when that person moves on, so do performances of that composer's work. Here in Los Angeles, now that Esa-Pekka Salonen is leaving, I seriously doubt that Gustavo Dudamel is going to program much Saariaho, Lindberg and other Finns; I suspect an enormous increase in performances of Chavez, Rueveltas and so on when he takes over. So it goes.
What galls about that Rupert C. review is the presumption that we shouldn't even hear a piece to make up our own minds, we should take his word for it.
Heliane has problems as a piece, but so what? To rip on it for the libretto is hilarious--Verdi set dumber librettos by far, as did a bunch of other composers. The Met is doing Thomas' Hamlet in 2009/10 with Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay. I hope they do the original version where Hamlet lives and stabs the King and claims the crown. Even the revised version has him committing suicide. I can't wait for the reviews of *that* travesty libretto writing.
If opera companies only did nearly flawless operas, there'd only be a handful of operas ever performed. I'll gladly sit through the dull bits of something if the good bits are really good, as I think they are in Heliane.
Yniold: the blowsy comprimaria Mignon Dunn in her one and only Coven Garden appearance in this role....
Yyniold better watch out, them's fightin' words.
Dunn was a dramatic, committed performer of the old school, and while she occasionally passed the bounds of the ... tasteful she also did some very great work. Livening up some met broadcasts most ably. She tended to ease too far into camp in the Italian rep but was awesome in German (and Russian). I remember great broadcast performances as Marina, Amme and Ortrud.
My favorite memory was a met broadcast Walkuere Fricka in the 70's (I wanna say 77 but that's probably off a year or two) where she just blazed, easily my favorite performance of that role ever.
I think this thread will sadden a lot of people. Some of the views expressed here have been, at best, perjorative. British singing has not been at the forefront of international opera over the past 50 years (Britain is a small country with a limited native operatic culture - Purcell, the naturalised Handel and Britten - that has tended to import its opera singers); but from Simms Reeves onward, we have managed to produce a small number of high quality singers. Post war, a partial list would include Joan Carlyle, Rita Hunter, Gwynneth Jones, Lillian Watson, Margaret Price, Isobel Baillie, Linda Finnie, Jo Veasey, Arthur Davies, Kenneth Collins, Stuart Burrows, Tom Allen, Peter Glossop, Simon Keenleyside, Bryn Terfel, Bob Lloyd, Geraint Evans and Jon Tomlinson). I have been lucky enough to spend my entire life in this industry, on familiar terms with some of the best singers of our time, and so know that the generally held opinion of the singers I listed is high. Domingo, for example, considered Glossop one of the greatest singers he had ever worked with.
So Britain has not produced a huge number of great singers. But to say that Britain is 'at best taste-challenged' is unfair.
With regard to Rupet Christiensen, his style is often arch and petulant; but he at times displays great insight.
With regard to second rate British singers being cast in US houses; there are a lot of second-rate singers cast in houses worldwide, be it in Europe or America - through chance, perversity or personal relationships between agents and houses. These singers are of differing nationalities. Some of them are even American.
Wow this post has drifted from one absurdity to another- first the Brits getting called tasteless by the people who gave us Las Vegas and then someone calling Korngold's music junk.
All I know is Britain ruled the world when America was dirt tracks (and God is British) and I love some tastlessness and a lot of Korngold (and posts by Mrs JC).
Yes, IO, but once again, there are *far* fewer second rate Americans in UK houses than there are second rate and worse Brit/Commonwealth singers in US houses, and that is directly attributable to the influence of American-dwelling British/Commonwealth administrators and their Old Boy/Girl network. There has been the occasional US administrator at a British house but it is very rare.
There are British directors working in the US who insist on employing compatriots as much as they can. I did not spy the name Mary Lloyd-Davies in your list ( generally admirable, but Domingo's collegial pleasntry or not, the idea of the bullish Glossop as anything other than a second-rater is *fort discutable*) yet there she was in San Francisco, alongside the decent enough but not worth importing Sara Fulgoni and the fraudlulent, worth *not* importing Catrin Wyn-Davies in the Jones HAENSEL. Why? Does anyone seriously think that North America could not have provided a better Haensel, Gretel and Gertrud? ( Once again, someone individual and truly gifted like Alice Coote, who did the show at LOC and will do so at the Met, I have no problem with).
This happens again and again and again on US stages, o a degree I suspect even informed UK opera lovers do not comprehend. Sometimes reviewers come from the UK and heap praise on their compatriots, so that the closed circle is complete-- as did OPERA NEWS' Simon Williams on the ghastly, dull Santa Fe FLUTE last year, poorly led by William Lacey-- who merits no US career at all and has an active one-- and poorly directed by Tim Albery, whose work is sometimes indeed quite fine. Williams thought it the highlight of the festival. A similar thing happened when one of OPERA's senior critics had a nostalgia fit and proclaimed Dame Anne Evans' wan , "decent" New Prioress at Glimmerglass 2002 the best thing there all that summer. Doubtless he remembered her in a Guildhall Opera BOHEMIAN GIRL years before and had gloried in her progression from student to international Bruennhilde-with-the voice-of-Gutrune, and he was moved. Her work in that CARMELITES was musical and tasteful but that is about it and she was there 100 percent due to a British administrator who revered her.
The American rich who are on the boards of opera companies ( private ventures here) tend to be in awe of British accents-- ANY British accents, the sense of cultural inferiority is so strong that it makes no class or regional distinctions-- and there are many highly placed Brits in the US in a position to hire people. SOME of them are highly capable. Some of them take the advice of their Oxbridge buddies back home and hire the likes of Susannah Glanville for the First Lady ( awful) and Musetta (fired at the dress rehearsal). Granted the ROH has had an American Musetta or two ( Marilyn Zschau for one), would any British company hire an American for the FLUTE First Lady? And, with a wealth of American, Canadian and Mexican baritones from whom to choose, why did San Fran hire Philip Joll-- who wasn't any good 20 years ago- to do Sharpless? The same kind of thing happened in Munich under the Jonas regime when the past-sell-date Christopher Robson got dragged out again and again.
There are many very fine British singers, on recordings of the past and on stages at present. No one has a problem with that: it is in many ways an admirable operatic performance culture But Sally Burgess as Carmen, and .Paul Charles Clarke as Pinkerton and Romeo at the Metropolitan? Claire Powell imported to do Maddalena-- and, an astonishing bit of nerve on Billinghurst's part, ***Heather Begg*** brought to do Verdi's ***Annina***-- at San Francisco? Thanks, no.
Give Heather Begg a break ,please. She did good company work in the nurse and companion roles in London abot 25 years ago and has been long retired. No one ever claimed she was a Stignani or a Cossoto.
What's more she was devastatingly amusing in G & S, and some of her wit and style would be of great benefit in some of the postings here.
Those who wonder why this has descended into cheap shots based on nationality might want to consider the title of the original post.
As for the controversy over singers- these people have livings to earn, I'm not sure they should be in the firing line of these posts. I agree that it's absurd for a visiting singer to be cast as the Flute first lady or as Annina, but what would you have had Glanville and Begg do- turn it down because it wasn't 'fair'?
Krunoslav - I think perhaps you are making something out of nothing. There may well be casting decisions at houses in the US (and in Europe) that you don't agree with; but to say that this is the result of some British kabal that looms over opera is just not balanced.
Casting Directors make mistakes. They are often, of course, auditioning an artist some years before they are to appear in their house, a precarious practice; but in my experience, NO American house would take an artist just because they are British and are in thrall to their accent. Some of our best singers, a glaring example being Sarah Fox, have rarely appeared in the US. She has the support of just about every British conductor and director working - but, with the exception of Cincinnati, she's never appeared on a major US house cast list.
Yes, British houses do use American singers extensively. Katie van Kooten has been singing in Britain for several years. She is one of quite a large number of US singers used by ENO and Covent Garden this season. Cynthia Lawrence sang Musetta at Covent Garden, as did Angela Maria Blasi. Cynthia Lawrence and Paula Deligatti will appear in London in January.
And I think that anyone who saw Glossop in his prime would agree that he was bloody marvellous and nowhere near second rate!
It's just struck me how ironic this all is, in light of who was singing the female lead in 'Heliane', and where.
Agreed. In fact, the tenor was American as well....
Yniold said...
"Give Heather Begg a break ,please. She did good company work in the nurse and companion roles in London abot 25 years ago and has been long retired. No one ever claimed she was a Stignani or a Cossoto. What's more she was devastatingly amusing in G & S"
I rest my case: provinciality is provinciality.
Maybe she was the best Curra ever seen at the "Wells", but does that justify flying her in to sing Annina ( and Marthe another year, as I recall) in SAN FRANCISCO?
Whoever called Mignon Dunn a comprimaria started this. She may have been that when she began her Met career-- many Uk and US singers have gone that route, as the somewhat parallel career of "Jo" Veasey shows-- but by the time she came to London she had sung scores of leading performances at the Met, and also sang leads at Berlin, the Deutsche Opera am Rhein, Orange, Barcelona and Paris. Like her or not, Dunn was a leading artist on international stages, which Heather Begg, worthy as her Croydon Town Hall Marcellinas may have been, never was.
Yes, of course, Jacquino, my beef is not with the hard working singers but with the administrators who hire them, not due to "mistakes": but due to cronyism and national favoritism.
Interested Observer-- I never said UK houses didn't use Americans. It's a question of relative proportion and stature. Blasi is an international singer based in Munich-- I would hardly call her second rate. Van Kooten seems very good- she has been trained in Britain, just as Matthew Rose trained in Philadelphia before returning to the ROH young artists program. No problem with that at all.
You can deride the idea of a "cabal"-- no one is saying this is a plot, or that they get together and listen to records of Heddle Nash over glasses of shandy---- but it is a FACT that there is an astonishingly high proportion of British administrators in American opera houses, and a fact that Ingpen, Billinghurst and Friend have dominated casting at the Met for 35 years, that Ian Campbell at San Diego over the years has brought in many subpar Aussues and Kiwis...
Can anyone *seriously* deny this, or that his affected the hiring not only of singers but of conductors and producers in American opera houses in a major way?
Krunoslav - You do not dignify your argument by the rather antique and casual racist comments with which you pepper your posts. It would perhaps also be better if you read other posters' comments carefully before you respond - you have twisted my words quite considerably.
Firstly, there are far fewer houses in the UK for a start (6 of any appreciable size). With the exception of Covent Garden and Glyndebourne, not many can afford to match US fees. In addition, the cost of living in the UK is high and this eats into a singer's profit margins, discouraging them from seeking work in the UK.
Second, it would perhaps be best if you looked a little more closely into how the arts in Britain work. You have made some very offensive comments in your last two answers that did not even have the redemption of humour. There is not an Establishment, as you believe, of Oxford and Cambridge graduates who all dole out jobs to one another.
3)It is the nature of this business that if a conductor, director or casting director enjoys working with an artist, then they will use them again. In this regard, it is only natural to assume that a British conductor might, on occasion, use a British singer, as his career would have started in Britain. In just the same way, conductors and directors of other nationalities have brought singers to other contries. Including Americans!
4) There are a LOT of American singers working across Europe (which has no clearly defined borders with regard to work) ranging in quality from very good to terrible.
And just to clear up a few points. I never called Angela Basi a second rate singer. I know the woman. And she lives in New York State, not Germany. BTW Croydon Town Hall is an important venue, it is one of the main recording venues for the B
OK, this is getting too silly. Racist? Do you mean the reference to Croydon?? First name that popped into my head, I might as well have said Hammersmith or Camden or anything. When did race come into it? I am of British descent, if you feel are claiming that (obviously deliberately anachronistic) references to Heddle Nash and shandy are denigrating the British "race", if that;'s what we be.
Or is "Aussie" , or "Kiwi" , now considered racist? How about "Yank"?
This seems a desperate strategy on your part. IO. And it was you who had twisted my words.
We are not talking about unnecessary UK imports "sometimes", we are talking "often", and often with no artistic justification. The purpose of a casting director is not to surround a producer with cronies if they are not the best people for their jobs.
You have yet to explain to me why American opera houses and festivals-- or, for that matter, their equivalents in Germany or Italy-- should be hiring inadequate, or "just adeguate" UK singers for Musetta, Sharpless and Annina under any circumstances whatsoever.
Interesting as all of the above is, please leave out the Brit-bashing and let those who were at the concert add their critique.
I had looked forward to this concert for weeks which, luckily for me, fell on a night off from my own performing schedule.
The concert was deplorable although I hasten to add I left at the end of the 1st Act. The singers were placed behind the orchestra in the choir stalls which disadvantaged anybody sitting in the stalls (colleagues in the balcony assure me that they could in fact hear the soloists). What I could hear of Patricia was lovely and seemed to ride over the orchestra. However, the tenor was all but inaudible and clearly struggling with the music and Andreas Schmidt should have been announced indisposed; he DID hold his hand up to his mouth quite a lot as if to hold his chin on and was in some of the most extreme vocal difficulty I have ever encountered.
At the interval I spoke to the box office, ascertained the name of the Customer Relations Manager and dispatched a complaint letter which was responded to very efficiently and I have received a full refund for the ticket value.
This hall is still undergoing sound problems, particularly with voice projection. In the reopening week I attended a performance of Strauss 4 last songs which the orchestra would have been best advised to not bother hiring a soloist in the 1st place as I couldn't hear her 5 rows directly in front of her. Tomorrow I hope to go to Mahler 4 and check out if the problem with the acoustics is as bad as I believe.
ps I'm thrilled we're doing Die Tote Stadt at Covent Garden and can't wait to be part of it, despite some negative comments regarding the performing edition!
The point I am trying to make Kuroslav, is that you have very particularly taken an anti-British standpoint, rather than understanding that this is a trend that happens worldwide. People tend to work witht he people that they know. It's as simple as that.
Nonsense. It is not simple. Maybe a Peter Sellars comes with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and David Daniels in tow ( for which no apologies) or a David Alden with a Malfitano in tow ( for which some apologies, but Mr. Epstein forced her down the Chicago audience's ears too) but most American conductors or producers working in the UK or anywhere else do not bring their Gertruds, their set designers, their First Ladies along.
As I said, British casting directors and artistic administrators are all over the States. ( The reverse is not the case in the UK, or anywhere.) So you are saying that, fine, let them hire whomever they are used to working with or went to school with, quality and expense and providing work for native talent be damned?
Why should an American or German audiences be paying to hear a mediocre Gretel when many fine Gretels are on hand down the street at the conservatory?
It would be nice to hear some from others on these issues.
This line of comments seems to have gotten totally out of control. As someone who in general is a great admirer of British musicians and all other things British, I would suggest that the source of the problem is that British critics too often lose their sense of balance when writing about British singers, and refuse to acknowledge the faults of such singers. A perfect example from a number of years ago: when Stafford Dean sang Mozart's Figaro at the Met, he was totally undistinguished and often inaudible. Yet the review in Opera (the British magazine) referred only briefly to that performance. Instead, the reviewer praised Dean in general, and spent two-thirds of the review castigating the Met as a vast barn in which no singer could possibly sound good, and which demonstrated the general American lack of taste. Several other reviews in Opera Magazine of British singers made similar comments about the Met. No such comments were made in that magazine's reviews of Met performances by non-British singers.
There is a definite, cozy and subtle anti-American attitude in Gramophone now and again. Although aggressively trying to court the American market with special features and articles, I recall (for one of several examples) that readers were warned that the first Larmore English-language Hansel & Gretel, recorded in the US, may annoy listeners with "its singers' American accents." (Wha?)
A big reason, in my view, for the seeming ubiquity of British singers is that the recording industry became more centered in England after vocal recordings in Italy tapered off. Accordingly, we heard singers on record such as Helen Watts, Robert Tear, Heather Harper, et alia, who were rarely cast in the US widely. Naturally, there was justifiable pride in the British press about these singers gaining international exposure. When Judy Blegen recorded Musetta for Solti and the Mahler 4 for Levine, she was, I think, unknown internationally--but a fixture at the MET for years. Many of us in the US sense that the recording industry in concert with the British press have really pushed some Brit singers down our throats--but the situation on the other side is probably similar. I don't think the Brits really understood the fuss over Sills, for example. Although British music criticism tends to admire greatly the technical finesse of American orchestras and the polymath training of American singers, there's a frequent sniff at "efficiency" and lack of tradition and true artistic probity, implying we're too slick. Frankly, the lionizing of some British institutions gets up my nose as well--such as any recording Legge produced and those provincial outside-of-London recordings (not to mention those endless, interminable "authentic instrument" bands in the 80s, that used many of the same players under different orchestras).
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