Now it is your turn to wait
In honor of National Procrastination Week La Cieca has a challenge for you, the cher public. If you’re anything like your doyenne (and she thinks at least some of you are in most important ways) you possess opera-related media that have been sitting on a shelf or wherever it is you stow your opera-related media for days, weeks, months, even years without so much as a listen, or, for that matter, without even being freed from that constraining shrink-wrap.
So here’s the game. You find a CD, DVD, audio file or opera-related book you’ve been meaning to get to for while, and, well, get to it. Then post a quick account of the experience in the comments section below. Points will be won for length of the procrastination, the decision-making process that led you to choose one thing over another from the slush pile, and of course interesting critique.
Given that La Cieca didn’t get around to creating this competition until two days into National Procrastination Week, she’s going to cut you a little slack and say that comments will be accepted until midnight on Friday, March 12. The best procrastinator (which, ironically, in this case, will mean one who manages not to procrastinate) will receive a $100 gift card from amazon.com.
Just an addendum here, which is that a story of trying but failing to overcome procrastination just might win the prize if it is recounted in an amusing way.
“May you live long enough to enjoy Wagner” anon.
Is that a good enough reason to procrastinate?
Speaking of procrastination, why hasn’t the Met announced tonight’s cancellation(s) yet?
Maybe their webmaster is sick?
OK, this is funny.
Well, if Peter Gelb knew the first thing about webmasters, instead of being pre-occupied with photogenic singers, we wouldn’t be in this mess now, would we?
Peter Gelb, like most people nowadays, has no idea what even makes a good webmaster. Fact is, no present webmasters can even hold a candle to the webmasters of the 1950s – that was truly a golden age. I feel sorry for the people today who never got to experience the internet before it was put on computers.
Webpages in my time were quite another thing. Oh, for example, when Cafariello programmed that wonderful webpage, “La, la, la, la”.
Quanto, is that you?
And let’s not forget when Rudolph Bing famously fired his webmaster over that HTML incident!
Who is the Webmaster’s cover?
Barry Banks, anyone??!?!
Off-topic: today is Antonio Vivaldi’s birthday, for anyone who cares. I certainly never met a Vivaldi opera I didn’t dislkike, but I know some other Parterriani have.
Be converted:
http://wp.me/paCe2-AQ
Doesn’t he/she have a COVER?
Heck, I remember the internet back when it was a slip of paper lost somewhere in Lois Kirschenbaum’s vast purse.
Procrastination is the bane of my existence. It was so much easier when I lived in the Dominican Republic and TV was vomitrocious. I had promised myself to watch the Danish Ring and the Met’s last Summer in a Wagnerian orgy to make the Venusberg collapse faster than Klingsor’s castle. But there they are on the shelf with the hundrends of CD’s, dozens of DVD’s and my Proust in Spanish. I just can’t help it. Love opera, but love a rerun of “The Golden Girls” more at the end of an long day trying to teach.
I blame Golden Girls reruns as well.
Perhaps it’s time to read ‘The Wagnerian Drama: An Attempt to Inspire a Better Appreciation of Wagner as a Dramatic Poet’ by H. S. Chamberlain, bought in Blackwells, Oxford on 27 April 1974. The receipt is still inside and some of the pages are uncut. It was published in 1923 and had languished unregarded in Blackwells for the previous 51 years. On the other hand, since the author must be Houston Stewart Chamberlain who married Eva Wagner and whom Frederic Spotts describes as transforming ‘Bayreuth’s passive nationalism and racism into an aggressive, crusading force’, perhaps it should be avoided for at least another 87 years.
any word from the Met as to who is singing tonight? I am hoping it is Damrau and Brownlee. Nothing on their website but they aren’t exactly the fastest to update.
Don’t suppose there is a way to listen tonight? Other than being there? 2,000 miles too far from here. I want to hear those two also.
When I was offered early retirement at full pension, I took it because that could only mean total leisure: finally, I could devote my time and energy to all those CDs, DVDs, and books I had collected over the years.
What I didn’t expect was that I would get hooked up to the internet and discover operacast.com, with its round-the-clock opera webcasts. And then my computer-genius nephew installed a program for me called Audacity, which allows me to burn my own CDs after downloading these rare performances of opera from Europe. Vaccai’s La Sposa di Messina, anyone? And then I discovered all the opera clips on YouTube…and I could record the soundtracks of them and put them on my own homemade CDs. And it never occurred to me that something like SiriusXM would become available and I would be spending all day listening to things like the Tebaldi-Corelli Adriana Lecouvreur or the many Rysanek Frau ohne Schattens. If you’re going to be addicted to both SiriusXM and operacast.com at the same time (one is heroin, one is cocaine?), how can you be expected to do anything else?
Meanwhile, I discovered the joys of shopping on amazon.com, and I decided since income now exceeded expenses, I should be ordering every opera CD and DVD available. If someone in an operablog chat thread mentioned something, it was the easiest thing in the world to order it.
But now I have no room left on the shelves. This mention that people just “might maybe possibly” have items they haven’t even freed from the shrink-wrap truly hit close to home. I have an entire long shelf of DVDs awaiting their first viewings. But each time I think it’s finally time to watch one, I can’t decide. If I open Franchetti’s Germania with Carlo Ventre, then surely the others (Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, La Gazza Ladra with Cotrubas, The Maid of Orleans with Nina Rautio, Albeniz’ Merlin with Marton and Vaness) will be insanely jealous. If I pick one, I’m all but shouting at the others, “You’re not worthy!!! Maybe by 2016!!! I promise when I’m in the nursing home, I’ll finally enjoy you guys!!!!”
Who has time to unwrap CDs, much less listen to them? It’s not like I commute to work now and can listen to gorgeous treasures while stuck in a traffic jam. Thank you, Bellini, for all the times you calmed me down at the blocked intersection of Military Drive and Selfridge. Now, the only time I panic is when I lose the internet connection and fear that some rare Gomes opera is going to be webcast again.
So spurred by La Cieca’s challenge to actually open something, I went into the dusty be-cobwebbed storage cabinet of yet-to-be-savored opera CDs and discovered Herodiade with Bumbry, Py, Mitchell, and Mars. Why haven’t I listened to this yet? Because I should listen instead to Iris Vermillion sings Siegfried Wagner? I didn’t know I even owned Hadley and Hampson singing duets (I guess I wanted the one from Donizetti’s Belisario?). Pfitzner’s Der Arme Heinrich? Die Loreley by Fredrik Pacius? Not only did I not know that I owned it, I didn’t even know it existed. Gounod’s Polyeucte. Did I really buy it, or am I dreaming that it really exists? I believe a comment by mrsjohnclaggert inspired me to buy Gertrude Grob Prandl singing material I would rather hear Rysanek do, so I have yet to experience the voice of the much-worshipped GGP. What is Carlo Soliva’s Giulia e Sesto Pompeo and why do I have it? Amazon.com needs some kind of filter to prevent people like me from ordering Catalani’s La Falce and Mancinelli’s Paolo e Francesca.
Many years ago, I bought an LP that had obscure Italian intermezzi and overtures, one of which was the overture by Mancinelli to someone’s Cleopatra play. I loved this overture and actually listened to it repeatedly. I was therefore inspired to finally rip off the plastic and listen to a Mancinelli opera. But a few minutes into it, I realized SiriusXM was about to replay the Rysanek Frau ohne Schatten (April, 1978), and although I’ve heard it dozens of times (and own multiple copies on reel-to-reel, audio cassette, and homemade CDs), I had to stop the Mancinelli (wishing it were the Ambroise Thomas Francoise de Rimini instead), and rush over to hear Margaret J tell me again about Karl Boehm and the Divine Leonie (and maybe I should download it again since I might not be able to find one of my other copies if I need to listen to it some insomnia-ridden night). Perhaps tomorrow I will finish Paolo e Francesca, but I wouldn’t bet money on it.
There are a lot of CDs and DVDs that I never had seen or played. I own at least 2000 complete opera recordings, but with Sirius, we have 3 live performances and a lot of historic things and for me has been imposible to listen to all the performances I have recorded.
One day, you’re starring on parterre.com. Before you know it, you’re starring on Hoarders.
Try 7000 + CDs, a 1000 odd videos, 900 Dvds and 2000 mint vinyls plus crateloads of burnt CDs stacked here and there…..then you know you are in real trouble. Some version of something comes into your head….you know you have it (when found – a test of no loss of brain cells)….after, of course the scream went up …”WHERE (not- what!)T.F … IS IT”?
The most frightening thought about such a situation….will we actually get to hear some things for the first time, let alone use the total rest of it, ever again!
How did one reach this insane level of acqusition?
Being addicted to the motto ‘More is not enough’.
Don’t you just love it when you see those flimsy pieces of furniture -decorator pillars that hold perhaps 50 CDs? Some people live in la-la land.
The insidious problem some of us face : reminds me of that novel by Marcia Davenport ‘My Brother’s Keeper’…based on a true story about two recluse brothers. The denouement..when the man made tunnels of papers and artifacts throughout the house created by sheer piled up accumulation collapses, pinning and killing one brother. The other, then totally helpless in a wheel chair, starves to death. Yikes!
Regarding people complaining about suffering from short span attention with Wagner….what’s wrong? Were they brought up on a diet of a fast food hamburger & chocolate malted three times a day so it dod not interupt their continuous computor gaming. Hell, I have played The Ring from the start of Rhinegold to the end of Siegfried in one go.
What irks me going to the opera is all the waiting between two and three fucking intervals while people promenade and swan around: wishing to be seen. What good would it have been, to my ‘education’? In the same time at home, I can perhaps listen to two or three opera in the time it takes to get ready, go out and come home. No fuss, no bother and a guarantee that I am going to like the performances which I happen to already own! I can even if I wish, personally ‘indispose’ singers in the middle of it by changing over to another version of the opera. That’s power choices! Greater than any Gelb has at their disposal. ,By banishing some artist to the shelves into the void of silence, for any length of time we wish inside our little individual listening kingdoms .
Harry — could you start a sort of lending library? Could you donate to an elder facility? There are a lot of people out there that might appreciate hearing some of these recordings. I meann you can’t all the bloody buggers simultaneously, now can you?
Just a thought. Don’t get mad.
Camille: But then I wouldn’t have the capacity of comparing as many versions as I have, if I feel the need. The sheer mental exercise of what to keep and what to let go, would be too much.
If one goes to the local library and just as a matter of interest in passing, examines the actual state of material only recently obtained, one would not donate. Discs: filthty dirty with the hell scratched out of them, close to unplayablity. I would expect the same unappreciated fate for any, one might foolishly donate.
My collection is lovingly kept and the surfaces on CD and Vinyl -flawless. The same goes for the covers, books and boxes. Those having vast collections, I think are in fact acting in the role of curators in some way like the people in Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, perserving books.
We get a buzz when we see something we own, listed as out of print and generally unobtainable or listed at astronomical prices on the Web. It makes one shudder to think of material locked away, forgetton in record company vaults. Diminishing the reputation of past artists into the bargain. Each fan becomes that added ‘majority of one’ in keeping their efforts and memory alive.
Harry,
You got me with the Farenheit 451 reference.
I used to go to a library when young and impoverished. A sani-wipe has always handed to me along with the earphones. Now just try to imagine having first heard Parsifal in such a setting as that! No wonder I hated it!
You mention the quite lovely and worthy Francoise Pollet’s French arias album elsewhere. This was on Erato and is nowhere to be found now. Any suggestions?
You need to keep those recordings. It’s about love.
Hi Harry, Camille, May I join you? You’re into a subject that touches me deeply. We can view ourselves as protectors of a heritage, a la Bradbury, but in my case at least, what will happen to all my beautiful friends is that they will be bulldozed into a landfill. I can’t even GIVE some of my stuff away. I know! I’ve tried. And in that insane conviction that I’m going to live forever, I’m not quite ready to list the really good stuff on ebay. Operapiker later on in this thread is grappling with the same problem, in a way. Unlike him I have the equipment, the players, etc., but like him I’d rather see what’s happening on Parterre.com than transfer DNEIPER COSSACKS CROSS THE DON into digital format. Nobody within a hundred miles wants this stuff but me.
rysanekfreak: Not only was your post an enjoyable read but it also takes the prize for most obscure opera titles in a single post.
rysanekfreak – you ARE a piece of work! Bravo!
Rysanekfreak, I drove around all over town yesterday to hear My Beloved Leonie in that ’78 FRoSCH — I had yet to hear the mythical Schroeder-Feinen so I HAD to listen.
There is just no one like Leonie. I love her so.
What are we going to do about the problem called not Maria, but Mrs. John Claggart??!? I miss her SO! Should we leave a candle in the window and a ribbon tied tight around the tree, to bring her on home? Can we start a movement or a group, or harpoon a whale to drag her on home? What to do, what to do….
My blatant attempt to take the procrastination prize would be the EIGHT separate occasions on which I’ve watched the first twenty minutes of the Patti/Audra MAHAGONNY…
Looking at my CDs, I can’t remember ever having listened to the Sinopoli/Voigt/Dessay ARIADNE or the Solti/Behrens/Domingo FrOSch. And I’ve certainly never been near the Sutherland/Pav ERNANI.
My biggest regret isn’t procrastination though- it’s floorspace and technology. I’ve lugged my massive vinyl collection from flat to flat over the last ten years and it remains undisplayed and unlistened.
OK, AJ & rysanekfreak: Fess up. How long did it take for you to acquire these collections that contain never-listened items? I’m buying opera recordings at one a week and I can’t wait to tear into them once they arrive.
Cruz: I’m 36. I started buying opera recordings when I was 12. A boy has to sleep or eat sometime…
I’m envious. I’m 41, but I didn’t start collecting until I was 38. (Except for that Carmen at age 21.) I thought I went overboard with 3 Traviatas, 2 Lucias (both Callas),3 Carmens, and 3 Fanciullas. But I see I’m just an amateur.
Well, y’know, it’s all relative. You’re already 2 Lucias and 3 Fanciullas ahead of me.
That could be another thread, come to think of it- ‘What are the embarrassing gaps in your opera collection?’
I just made a bit of counting and found out that I had 20 Toscas (14 on Cd and 6 on dvds and VHS). Does this already count as an illness, or not yet?
AJ, I think you’ve hit on a fabulous contest for the next time La C has to unload an Amazon gift card.
Liana, I’d say you’ve got a healthy start, considering THIS group.
Thanks for cheering me up, Cruz. I was really worried, since I’m a hypochondriac
.
I think I shall have to take “Stars of the Wells” out of its wrapper to hear if the Gwen Catleys, Frank Mullingses and Anna Pollaks of the world are really as bad as the Vicar implies they are……I’ve never heard Victoria Elliott so it should be an education.
My father had a Gwen Catley album to commemorate the first opera he ever saw (‘Rigoletto’ at the Chiswick Empire in 1949 or so).
She’s a nice singer, but very tootly, in that 30s/40s way.
I think taht instead of getting aroudn to watching one of my DVDs that has sat on the shelf for two years, I’m just going to provide encouragement to others.
AJ: You really ought to listen to the Sinopoli Ariadne. It’s a great cast of course, and it’s so nice to hear Voigt/Dessay/Heppner when they were all in peak voice. But perhaps best of all is Sinopoli’s reading. He displays such a light touch with the commedia dell’arte sections that they become by favourite parts of the opera.
<> I’m not so embarrassed to say so, but I don’t have a single Aïda, Traviata, Lucia, or Tosca (not that I haven’t seen then all, more than once). But I do have a Cheryomushki by Shostakovich (still shrink-wrapped), a Maiden in the Tower by Sibelius, an Alfred by Arne, The Immortal Hour by Boughton, Ivanhoe by Sullivan, and everything by Smetana. And others….
–Atela
CruzSF, at least in my case there was an extreme
obsessive element to my collecting. I’m old enough to have started with LPs, supplemented by reel-to-reel tapes of pirates. Thousands of them.
They ended up filling up a dumpster when I remodeled my kitchen.
There was a pause and in the mid 90s, my collecting moved into high gear again with CDs. I finally realized I was in trouble when the UPS deliveryman who would drop off boxes several times a week asked me if I was running a radio station……
About 6 years ago I cut it off. Now I have thousands of cds packed in boxes, many were burned
to data discs blanks and probably will no longer play. But I absolutely will not buy any more. They fill the industrial steel shelves that formerly held the LPs.
With this kind of obsessive collecting, it’s pretty hard to actually listen or watch the stuff with any kind of degree of attention.
No! Pirates and pirates need to be loved!
I started at age 11 with Leontyne’s first Trovatore. My parents got me a reel-to-reel recorder and I started recording EVERY Met broadcast. Over the years, there were frequent trips to New York and San Francisco for opera, and also for raids on Tower Records, where it was necessary each time to fill up a shopping bag with CDs.
It’s been decades. I envy you young people because you have your decades ahead of you, and future waves of technology will allow you to have EVERY opera performance ever recorded implanted into your bodies with mini-microchipettes, and all you’ll have to do is intone “Callas, first Mexico City Aida,” and it will start playing for you in your brain. That way, you won’t need 5 storage units to hold your collections.
I’m with you on that FroSch, armer. One of my favourite operas, and Van Dam is one of my favourite singers — and Barak would be one of my dream roles if I were a singer, which I ain’t — but Sir Georg’s wham-bam approach to the bits I have heard, along with Hilde’s straining, has always put me off it.
I’ve got about 20 Frauen ohne Schatten on CD (Rysanek is in at least half of them, I think). I liked the Solti recording when I first heard it, but I haven’t returned to it much over the years. Van Dam is the one to hear, though Varady is nice too. An extremely good Nurse, as well. I am still most likely to play the Nilsson/Rysanek/King/Berry/Boehm performance, the Vinzing/Studer/Kollo/Sawallisch is excellent too (except for Vinzing).
Vinzing only got the part because she had an EMI contract for Elektra with Klaus Tennstedt and instead of buying her out when the Elektra was cancelled, they felt obliged to offer her the Faerberin in lieu. A big mistake, but that’s when the economics of the record industry were beginning to look very dodgy and those two Fraus came out more or less at the same time. Studer’s Kaiserin is on Sawallisch’s audio and Solti’s video recording. I want a new recording with Eva-Maria Westbroek as the Kaiserin, Christine Brewer as the Färberin, Waltraud Meier as the Nurse, Jonas Kaufmann as the Kaiser and René Pape or Bryn as Barak. Does anyone have other “ideal” Frau casts from among today’s singers?
It’s worth hearing for Varady – even though her text is iffy sometimes. Runkel’s Nurse is better than I expected and you get golden tone from Placido although he clearly doesn’t know what he’s singing about. But it’s the Emperor – a character made of wood until he turns to stone – Er ist ein Jäger und ein Verliebte, sonst ist er nichts! Marton sings the Faerberin better on the DVD but Thomas Moser is as stolid as the Kaiser can be. Alas
that FroSch cast sounds great. If Brewer were not available I would also take Herlitzius as Faerberin.
The cast, Met-style 2010: Dessay (Kaiserin), Damrau (Faerberin); Garanca (Amme); Florez (Kaiser); Gunn (Barak).
Regina, isn’t it ‘ein Jäger und ein Verliebter’? Good old German adjectival nouns …
Don’t be silly, Monty. The Met cast would be Susan Bullock as the Faerberin, Janice Watson as the Kaiserin, Felicity Palmer as Die Amme, Toby Spence as the Kaiser, Anthony Michaels-Moore as Barak and Rebecca Bottone as the Stimme des Falken.
Haven’t you been paying attention?
I sang Amme at the Garden with Sir Georg, Borkh , King and McIntyre No one even mentioned the Hillebrecht woman in the reviews.
I could sing the Sprit Messenger *tomorrow*. I just might in fact!
And would Susannah Glanville be the Hueter der Schwelle? Or maybe one of the handmaidens in the twittery bit where the Faerberin’s dream lover comes to her. Or maybe an Ungeborenes Kind.
armerjacquino, your mention of the Sutherland/Pav ERNANI reminded that I hadn’t listened to that since it first came out. I got it since I always loved Sutherland, and her early recording of the aria is terrific. You should listen to the aria on the complete version – the repeat of the cabaletta is interestingly decorated, though certainly not as thrilling as the 1959 version.
amerjacquino you what??!! Not yet listened, to the Solti fully uncut Strauss Frau… are you missing something! It is a masterstoke of superb engineering alone… just take the smooth entrance of Domingo into the finale . Brehens is less ‘irritating’ in this, as the Dyer’s wife, calling for less gear changes in her register. Then you have Van Dam, Varady and Jo. The alternative uncut one is the EMI Sawallisch and there you have Kollo…well who is passable!
Sure the Bohm Nilsson/Rysanek/King one is a gem although it is cut, but to not know the Solti is an unbeleivable act. Now play it or you will have be sent to your naughty spot!
That Ernani you mentioned ….I happily passed up purchasing it. The greatest filth of all by Sutherland though was her ‘piece de resistance’-that Cilea Adriana Lecouverer with Bergonzi. A release that did the fastest business I knew….of copies returned to factory/distributor…..by outlets either as unsold or more honestly -completely unsaleable. For once, I admired the consensus taste of buyers.
I had the dubiou experience of seeing a video of her in that role. It was a unforgetable scream to see big Joan S. wearing a huge Camelot type upturned ice cream cone hat, on her head.
Well, that didn’t work. Let’s try this:
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6215835
winner! genius!
If this doesn’t win not only this competition but also every competition in the world ever then there is no justice in the world.
Bravo!
Well collectors, we obviously all need a twelve-step program. We can all get license plate frames that say “friend of L.C.” When I read rysanekfreak’s sad confession to my SO, I said, “See, I’m not that bad.” She had hysterics.
ROFL.