parterre box

124 comments

• harry says:

  But Buster , Glenn Gould was a manic depressive and I suppose his critical attitudes and insights would also depend upon the non reliable momentum ‘of the pendulum swing’.

  on March 25, 2009 at 3:16 PM
• alexythymia says:

  @72 Yes, I’m almost sure it was Moore I was thinking of. Thank You.

  Callas’ “Tutte le torture” is, to me, perfectly reasonable in terms of its idiom.

  on March 25, 2009 at 3:19 PM
• Indiana Loiterer III says:

  Glenn Gould may have been manic-depressive, but he was always aesthetically & critically consistent, for better or worse.

  on March 25, 2009 at 3:50 PM
• slkinsey says:

  @mrsjohnclaggar1: I’m not sure I agree with your premise that, e.g., Fidelio is a more “great” operatic work than e.g., Ermione. I think this reflects an incomplete understanding of what Italinate opera in this stylistic category is all about. The goals of the composers were different. Ermione may fail according to the goals of Fidelio, but the opposite is also true.
  .
  And I absolutely disagree that an opera such as Fidelio represents a greater artistic challenge or accomplishment for the interpretive artists who perform it compared to those who sing an oepra such as Ermione. Quite the opposite, really. The interpretive and stylistic challenges, not to mention the intellectual and aesthetic decisionmaking that goes into performing these works, is far greater for operas such as Ermione than those such as Fidelio.
  .
  I’m also not convinced by the argument that pursuing many musical and/or dramatic styles, or the desire to pursue many musical and/or dramatic styles is characteristic of a “greater artist” or a “greater musician.” Is Neal Gaiman a “greater artist” than William Faulkner beause Gaiman explored a greater range of writing forms than Faulkner? Of course not, that would be a ridiculous argument to make. Similarly, one could argue that Alfredo Kraus was a “greater artist/musician/opera performer” than Dawn Upshaw is, despite the fact that Upshaw performs in a much broader range of musical styles, because his work in the relatively narrow range in which he performed was on a much higher and more refined level. Mozart’s osuvre is narrow compared to, say, Stravinsky’s. Does that make Igor the greater composer?

  on March 25, 2009 at 4:58 PM
• Indiana Loiterer III says:

  slkinsey: That isn’t Mrs. JC’s premise––she may well think that, but it wasn’t; in #79 she was comparing opera to instrumental music, And in any case, Ermione––an artistically ambitious and rather somber work which didn’t even succeed in Rossini’s lifetime––is not nearly as different from Fidelio in its goals as you claim. But even if you were talking about Semiramide rather than Ermione, I would not see Rossini’s goals in composing Semiramide as really so different as Beethoven’s in composing Fidelio. (They do differ insofar as a neoclassical tragedy differs from a bourgeois melodrama/proto-political thriller, but I doubt that’s the difference in goals you’re talking about.) It’s easy after hearing so much about the quasi-industrial aspects of Italian opera in the primo ottocento to believe that the goals of opera in Naples were radically different from those of opera in Vienna; but they weren’t.

  And Mozart’s oeuvre is not narrow; he composed in virtually all the genres and styles available to a composer of his time.

  on March 25, 2009 at 5:58 PM
• slkinsey says:

  @Indiana Loiterer III: What I refer to by “different goals” for the composers of Fidelio and Ermione is, for example, that the music in Ermione is designed partly but significantly as a framework for ornamentation and individualized expression executed by the performers. This was a substantial “goal” for the composition of this piece, and of course reflects a different musical-dramatic aesthetic than the operative aesthetic that informs Fidelio. In order to understand whether and to what extent Ermione (or other pieces in this style) is successful or worthy of some degree of artistic merit, one has to understand that aesthetic and the goals it created. Most people, I have found, don’t really understand this aesthetic and are “stuck” in an aesthetic that values naturalism and a non-collaborative view of the composer’s work. And, for sure, older works that are more amenable to a naturalistic interpretation and where the compositions are reasonably understandable minus the quasi-compositional participation of performers are those which may seem comparatively “better” from a modern viewpoint (notwithstanding historically misinformed practices such as delivering “Dove sono” or “Dalla sua pace” without copious ornamentation).
  .
  This is one of many differences, but it is an easy and clear example to make.
  .
  So, understanding the vastly different aesthetics at play, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to suggest that the compositional goals of an Italian opera seria written by an Italian composer in the Italian style for Italian singers in an Italian city were not the same compositional goals of a German opera written by a German composer in a German style for German singers in a German city. Looking back at these pieces today, it seems clear that the overall aesthetic and style of Fidelio that is more accessible to modern listeners regarding the work through a modern aesthetic. Works such as Ermione not only exist in an aesthetic that is further removed from the modern aesthetic, but due to this is less easily approached through the lens of a modern aesthetic (not to mention that it is much more difficult to find modern singers capable of executing the music). What I am suggesting is that when one looks at Ermione (or whatever) with an understanding of the aesthetic and goals of early 19th century Italian opera seria, it is not so easy to say that Fidelio (or whatever) viewed with an understanding of the aesthetic and goals of early 19th century German opera is “better” or “more artistic” or whatever. Mostly what one does in making these evaluations is deciding that the German aesthetic is more valuable than the Italian one. But to simply criticize the Italian opera for, example, having comparatively simple and unramified melodic and harmonic structure reflects a poor understanding of why this was so. I offer these remarks after having read comments above to the effect that these operas are “less interesting music than exists in the wide world” compared, presumably, to music composed under a different aesthetic and with different goals. Personally, I find the totality of something like Semiramide far more “interesting” and, in a sense, “greater” than something like Parsifal. But this is because I listen to Semiramide with different ears and with a different way of thinking about its artistic success compared to the way most fans of Parsifal would.

  on March 25, 2009 at 7:07 PM
• ariel says:

  Many people confuse a works’ value by who wrote it ,than
  if it succeeds on its own merit . A work by Chopin receives different attention than one by Beethoven mainly because
  of the history attached to it and often not by the content ..
  When Beethoven moves away from so called given sonata
  form (always after the fact) he is the giant exploring ever
  new ways of expression if Chopin writes in the same
  manner of exploration his sonata is “not quite there ” in
  other words his exploration must be like Beethovens
  with the usual comments ‘heaven stiorming ” shaking
  ones fist at the gods etc. and whatever other baloney
  one can attach to the work.History conditions us to
  accept works by Beethoven in a certain fashion,Chopin
  in another ,and of course Mozart who could only write
  masterpieces from dawn to dusk from the hand of god
  etc. you see how poor Schubert is treated;,or for
  that matter “papa Haydn ” who was the most inventive of
  all of them who treated music as the great painters
  treated art -as a craft for which you used all your resources
  to say what you had to say and no more ,which gives
  us Mozart. Yet I believe these composers all wrote in
  the same mind set -to say what they had to say as
  the craftsmen they were, with the least amount of bull.Then
  enter the scholars who ruin everything by deciding
  who is the best etc. the heaven storming and since they
  are “serious” out goes Rossini. not because he is less
  but we deal only in angst -a good solid laugh is out .
  Verdi went through all the angst and ended up with a
  good laugh -how many performances does that opera
  get him – go figure ……….

  on March 25, 2009 at 7:47 PM
• mrsjohnclaggar1 says:

  slkinsey, I have never mentioned Fidelio.

  It’s a less fully realized work than say, Semiramide, because Beethoven was writing in a time when expectations about opera were shifting unreliably. All theater work needs to ‘land’ with its audience. Rossini at his peak, in a city that adored him, working in his very best serious vein, with a cast of virtuosi able to fit their techniques to his expectations was in a very different situation than either Beethoven, struggling to get Leonore into what he thought might be a viable commercial shape, or Wagner who in Parsifal was trying to do something never done before, from the strange libretto with its odd marriage of Western and Eastern religious thought to the amazing score which is largely ‘experimental’ — he couldn’t have known he could bring off those sonorities before he heard it, just as he couldn’t have known how the bizarre chords and shocking (in his time) modulations of the Klingsor scene would play for his likely audience.

  Semiramide is a ‘numbers’ opera by one of the greatest composers in Western history. As such operas went out of fashion intellectually, recovering its essential seriousness became harder, and I think it’s rarer for people to be moved by it as Rossini surely intended. Its musical and theatrical vocabulary is no longer immediately accessible to a nonspecialist listener, just as we can never recover the shock and terror Ibsen created with Ghosts or A Doll’s House — themes and events never before even mentioned on a professional stage have now been done to death, and Ghosts in particular can easily slide into seeming quite funny. Ibsen is still a very great figure as a writer but ironically, the form he rejected as impractical may have yielded his greatest work — Peer Gynt. That hasn’t aged, it’s still spooky, hard-edged and very moving.

  I think most of the responses to what I wrote about ‘greatness’ in a performer have brought out the defensiveness in people. I adored Alfredo Kraus but he never subjected himself to the challenges Upshaw has willingly faced from the start of her career. He never tried to learn anything as remotely difficult as most of her rep, he did no new work, so he had nothing to do with helping create a new expressive vocabulary or aiding a creator in refining that vocabulary, Upshaw has done that brilliantly and often, sometimes to remarkable effect.

  There simply is no similarity between someone who takes a job performing very old works in the tradition of many before him (and does more or less well) and someone who walks the tightrope with the basic unit of art, the creator. However much skill many opera singers have, those who do old works need less, and manifest less musical initiative than those who in some manner ‘co-create’. But even if one simply sticks with Kraus, he too never used his massive skills to explore the huge existing rep that he could have done wonderfully from Duparc to Britten, from Rameau to the florid Rossini roles. In opera he may have had to depend on what opera companies were doing, but as a recitalist he was famous enough to sing a huge rep and he didn’t. Someone like Patzak or Tauber did far more in that regard, and I would argue that both are greater musicians, and that Tauber in particular was remarkable for his interpretive and musical range (from learning Bacchus on the train to singing Begin the Beguine to composing a fair number of enjoyable operettas and a large number of songs to singing German folksongs so that they are heartbreaking in their nostalgia and sense of innocence lost, to infusing the selection from Winterreise he was able to record with a superb musical insight along with profound emotion to recording dozens of operettas irresistibly to the point of making Lehar almost seem like good music and on and on).

  It shifts the discussion and the nature of this site to argue ‘creative talent’. I’m not especially fond of the horse race mentality that so and so writer/composer/painter is better than so and so because…

  I think Gaiman is an enviable writer, with a strong voice and a very wide range. One can enjoy him and also Faulkner, they were after different things, as Bellini and Chopin were after different things. I don’t know that much more can be said — Shakespeare (whoever that was) was certainly
  a greater writer than anyone who has written since in English in any form but that does not diminish a slew of remarkable talents who have created fiction, poetry and plays in English.

  However, Tom Cruise who accepts the roles that come along that will pay him the best, is a lesser actor than say Ian McKellen who has literally done it all (and done all sort of men).

  On this note I must go, I am wasting too much time here. Ta.

  on March 25, 2009 at 8:07 PM
• Cocky Kurwenal says:

  Mrs John Claggart, your definition of what makes a great musician is your personal definition. Others may share it with you, and of course it goes without saying that it is a valid one. However, it is not the only one. My opinion that Callas was a great musician is based on her performances of the scores she actually sang, and I don’t see what is wrong with that.

  on March 26, 2009 at 6:34 AM
• Fame Whore says:

  Fame Whore has done Mozart and Prokofiev and she is being exploring Erwin who probes her in the new ways every night.

  on March 26, 2009 at 9:03 AM