parterre box

11 comments

• Thackeray Gnomey says:

  Where’s Baba’s beard?

  I’d have the same expression on my face if anyone made me sit through the Rake. What a nasty, arch, tuneless little piece it is!

  on November 13, 2008 at 1:33 PM
• David Utterback says:

  Anne Sophie is used to playing men playing women, maybe she’s getting ready to cross over even more than she already has and do Lypsinka. One of my most enjoyable evenings in the theater was watching Lypsinka do her thing.

  on November 13, 2008 at 1:34 PM
• pavel says:

  Before I read the post I would have sworn that the one on the right was Katie Couric.

  on November 13, 2008 at 1:38 PM
• LVPO says:

  TG!!!

  I am VERY surprised at you! Shameful what you say. Now go wash your mouth with soap while I search for the perfect wire-hanger to wack some sense into you about THE RAKE’S PROGRESS!!

  on November 13, 2008 at 2:09 PM
• dobi says:

  The left looks like Joan Rivers at an early age trying to sell her jewelery on QVC.

  on November 13, 2008 at 3:13 PM
• Thackeray Gnomey says:

  LVPO – we often agree on things, but here we will have to differ.

  I find the Rake the most mean-spirited, self-conscious piece. The libretto in particular is a piece of onanism.

  And I’d rather be bored by real Mozart than pretend 20th century Mozart.

  Give me Wozzeck any day!

  on November 13, 2008 at 3:44 PM
• mrmyster says:

  I tip my fedora to Thackeray Gnomey on Rake; it is a dreary exercise in dust. I just finished listening – again – to Dr Atomic, and I tried very very hard, believe me I really worked at it, to hear some beauty, some passion, some ‘juice’ and some musical merit to Mr Adams’ score, and all I found was dry dead sand. Rake has a touch of musical elegance here and there (Truelove’s aria), and it does have at least a degree of dramtic pacing. I find exactly none of this or any other merit in the Atom opera. Nearest to zero I’ve ever heard. Hell, Wozzeck is Rosenkavalier compared to this!
  Best wishes from New Mexico

  on November 13, 2008 at 11:46 PM
• Doris Godunov says:

  Let me third the verdict on Rake’s Progress – I’ve always been bored to death when I’ve had to sit through it. Cardboard and sawdust, no living tissue to be discerned in miles. The odd aria in it is beguiling, but as a whole it cloys and drags so terribly. The more I hear Stravinsky I feel it’s a shame he became so dry and dust and pedantic – it’s light years away from the exuberance of his early Russian (the Russian-ness he tried to deny!) pieces.

  And Britten no less, thought the ‘Rake’ was a very irresponsible solution to the genre’s post-war problems………

  on November 13, 2008 at 11:55 PM
• Harry says:

  We all have individsual quirks. In my case, if I listen to an opera today, if the music ‘wants to haunt and bug me’, it is not tomorrow but the following day that ‘back it comes’ and I cannot get it out of my head, every time. Others I am sure have different mental responses.

  I find Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress such an opera, filled to the brim with musical moments. For some to argue that Stravinsky when writing it ,was lurching into a form of 18th Century classicism does not detact from its worthiness. So what it people want to take a cheap shot by calling it a 20th Century ‘imitation’. They miss the point. Its ‘in the style of’ reflects and compliments the Hogarth subject that inspired it. If someone today came up with a new Rosenkavalier, imagine the ridicule and shock if the composer decided to use 12 tone composition!

  Doris Godounov remarks that ‘the Rake’ was according to Britten ‘a a very irresponsible solution to the genre’s post-war problems’.Well I ask in return “was Britten ‘s answer that put him (Britten) on the composer’s map… that being Peter Grimes – was THAT the answer?”
  Though admitting I admire and enjoy it, many people have called it rightfully ‘warmed up let-over Puccini soup being served up in 1945!’ So what, does it make us like it any the less?

  Otherwise we could create an argument to blast Prokofiev’s 1st Symphony -the ‘Classical’ as regurgitated rubbish or Mahler’s final movement of his 7th Symphony as utter banality just because of what he was representing ‘via tongue in cheek’ using the classical style.It was his musical retort to critics that he wa being ‘anti-classical’.
  I do not believe that many if any here are about to attempt to write the next great masterpiece of Opera and face critical opinion because of it. To take the scholarly high ground is not our concern nor does it denote popularity or public acceptance.

  on November 14, 2008 at 2:13 AM
• Doris Godunov says:

  I think it confuses the issue by equating Britten’s remark as a denigration of Stravinsky’s relationship with the past. Stylistically they were very close at this point: ‘Rape of Lucretia’ and ‘Albert Herring’ both use a piano to function as eighteenth century continuo. I think the idea of musical ‘progress’ as continuing advancement of complexity is very last century – we now live in a much more polyglot age, and it’s easier for a composer to be ‘retro’ now that a certain bunch of fascist old ‘progressive’ critics have gone senile or dropped dead. No, I just don’t like the ‘Rake’! I feel I need oxygen after it, and I don’t think it has any deep message, it’s an essay in chic and style. I have huge reservations about Britten by the way, but at least he was trying to communicate something, I just feel that Igor was trying to be clever, waspish and score points.

  As for the Prokofiev and Mahler you mention: don’t care what language they use , they have ‘duende’ – spirit, vitality – compared to other Stravinsky works of the period – Symphony in 3 mvmts – Rake sounds tired.

  on November 14, 2008 at 3:05 AM