parterre box

124 comments

• iltenoredigrazia says:

  Mrs. Claggart, please come to live with me. I don’t necessarily share some of your concepts but I find them very interesting and stimulating. I can imagine a long evening with you and some wine studying the different facets of many of these questions.

  I suspect that you didn’t quite mean: “They have the ‘opera’ gene, which can be hard to reconcile with a love of music.” It seems to me that you have them both. As for me, if I don’t have the opera gene, I must certainly have caught the opera virus in my youth and have not been able to get rid of it ever since. But I also love music in my own uneducated way. I go into trance listening to a Bethoven or Schubert sonata just as I do listening to some operatic music.

  It would be very unfortunate if we all didn’t have several “genes.” For example, I am a scientist but I also love classical theatre. I enjoy reading Plato as much as I enjoy reading Austen. Totally different experiences to satisfy different needs.

  There’s also the difference between the creator and the interpreter. Two different talents. They need to understand each other, but they are separate activities. The proverbial apples and oranges. Kraus, or Callas, or Kissin, or Toscanini, or Olivier, or Sinatra, or (fill in the blank) have/had the ability to communicate what some composers created in a way that it means/t something to some listeners. An enviable talent indeed. But different from the talent of Chopin, or Shakespeare, or Bellini, or Mahler, or Hemingway, or Porter, or (fill in the blank) who created the works. Enviable talent too, but different.

  In opera we also have the set designers, who create images, and then we have those who actually come up with ways to build and light the sets so that they convey what they perceived to be the intention of the designer. Neither one is necessarily more “talented” than the other one. N’est-ce pas?

  on March 26, 2009 at 9:32 AM
• ariel says:

  kurwenal -you may base your opinion on the “scores”
  she sang but if you were to base your opinion on the
  notes she sang in those scores,you might come up with
  another opinion-while she did at least have an octive
  in which she didn’t scream and screech ,she did make some gutteral sounds when not changing register every few notes .
  Since the violin is taken to be close to human voice -you
  could imagine what a short career the fiddler would have had
  if he played the way Callas sang. The first comment would have been”that he is often out of tune ” and as for her famous wobble it would have been “very unsteady bow arm”
  and “technique was poor ” and so down the line . And so
  the orchestra player looking up can only shake his head in
  amusement at the goings on of her fans.I remember one
  from the old met who on Callas nights would comment
  “the cuckoo birds are out to-night”. So we took it all in fun
  and for real singing went to hear other performers .She was
  a poor misguided soul who came to a sad Paris end having
  lost out to another .She did and still does have a following
  for that matter so did Florence Foster Jenkins who was
  every bit as sincere in her belief that she was a singer .

  on March 26, 2009 at 10:32 AM
• mrsjohnclaggar1 says:

  Tenore, though I don’t know that you will see this we disagree only in the sense that while many of course can walk and chew gum at the same time, many can’t.

  I mean some are open to a wide variety of aesthetic experiences and can enjoy fun Joan Crawford as well as Kurosawa as well as some hot porn, get a kick out of Olivero singing not so wonderful music out of tune but with massive gumption, and thrill to one of the great Elliot Carter works, read a ‘page turner’ one day and turn to Nietzsche in German the next, hugging themselves with delight at his wicked wit, ending the week with the most arcane Rilke and so on.

  The ‘problem’ is those whose opera gene or ‘virus’ is all they have. They become self indulgent, onanistic ‘opera queens’ with little sense of the vast world of music out there (even within the history of opera). They worship divas, with no thought or discernment. So while I think Ariel is being very hard on MaryAnn Kalogeropoulos, I understand being tired of the uncritical and hysterical worship accorded her and others.

  These ‘opera fanatics’ very often have the same response to baseball as they do to opera and a good many are idiots in art. [redacted to remove axe-grinding. Mrs. JC will know what I mean. - LC]

  Not only is there more to opera than that, and more to art, there is more to life.

  on March 26, 2009 at 2:36 PM
• ariel says:

  123 Mrsjohnclaggart -you hit it right on baby !
  I am not too hard on her – in fact very fair considering
  what spews forth from here if you don’t see things through
  fanatics eyes. When the great Teresa Stratas came back to the met after washing corpses in the house of the dead in India
  she was asked before going on stage –what’s it like being back ? she gave a dismissive wave of the hand and said
  something to the effect that after the house of the dead this house ..and came the dismissive wave … that is why
  Ms. Stratas ends her days as a honoured and respected
  “lady” and poor Callas ends up as a sad figure – the
  idol of all wanabes ….you’re right -there is more to life .

  on March 26, 2009 at 3:21 PM