Gettin’ Ligeti Wit It
When invited to participate in a discourse on artistic standards (hello, internet!), it’s easy — pleasurable, even — for an aesthete to bray about “the fall.” Where are the true heldentenors? Your kingdom for a Callas! (Or a Stratas, or a Rysanek!) And might the public, at long last, deserve a stable of directors who possess the good sense to avoid both the trope-y familiar as well as the ill-advised pathways of, ugh, the modern?
The argument over how nit-pickily critical an aficionado should be (hello, cher public!) misses the point, if slightly, since in every generation there will be a dearth of something or another. Yes, it’s all worth keeping track of and being smart about — and yet, each age also has its peculiar strengths, even if they’re not one’s preferred strengths. And so, mightn’t we admit, “sure, we may not be living in an era of big voices, but goddamn: isn’t there a gratifying amount of programming ingenuity coming from Lincoln Center right about now?”
Most everyone is, at this point, familiar with the Peter Gelb backlash, as well as the backlash to the backlash. But even Gelb’s boosters and detractors might agree on one point: composer diversity has fared well under his watch. Even in a down economic year, with the Corigliano opera canceled, he still provided us rare looks at Janacek and Shostakovich.
Across the plaza, George Steel has more to prove and less of a track record, though his first small City Opera season notched a proportional small success. His next run of offerings — boasting curiosities from the likes of Bernstein and Strauss, plus an evening of modernist monodramas — suggests that he understands something important about the proper scale of his company’s relationship to the house next door. The rivalry is only useful to New York’s musical life so long as it is engaged on the question of how best to go about being interesting, as opposed to questions of budget or glitz. Given last fall’s sexy, minimalist gloss on Don Giovanni (the premiere of which drew a sneaking-into-his-seat-at-the-last-second Mr. Gelb), it’s a competition Steel is showing he knows how to make compelling. Advantage: audiences.
And now Alan Gilbert is telling us he wants to be interesting in the field of opera, too. The musical director of the New York Philharmonic has programmed a bold first season by any definition: the likes of Ives and Beethoven—or Webern and Schumann—sit comfortably not only in the same subscription series, but in the same concerts. And now he’s somehow got it in his head that he can stage important local operatic premieres in Avery Fisher hall. Even five years ago, this may have seemed a ludicrous idea. But there’s now reason to believe that a full operatic meal might be served at Gilbert’s theater, even with an orchestra in full view. The recent renaissance of video projection as something other than a poor-cousin of traditional stagecraft is what makes this prospect more than a hope against hope.
Los Angeles Opera’s recent U.S. premiere of Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten reportedly was brought in for a “low six figures” in part because video projections conjured so much of the work’s complex, dreamlike world. The shots below show how easily (and quickly) director Ian Judge and lighting designer Daniel Ordower were able to change settings without even dropping a curtain. Video art provided audiences with an exterior view of Alviano’s Elysium, his indoor study stuffed with treasured canvases, and Carlotta’s studio in Genoa, with only a few pieces of furniture needed in the foreground for each scene. (Photos courtesy of Los Angeles Opera.)
In April, I entered the theater wondering how well this extensive reliance on video would play. I left hugely encouraged about a more cost-effective, less real-time labor-intensive way for companies to perform riskier repertoire.
Gilbert sees video as the critical ingredient that may allow for the Philharmonic’s ability to present staged operas, without needing to lean on the prefix apology of “semi-” in the brochure. The first opera he has programmed, Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, is close to a perfect test case for Gilbert’s hypothesis. It’s neither a grand opera nor a reduced-force “anti-opera,” a form with which some 20th century composers were much enamored. (Ligeti even called Macabre an “anti-anti-opera.”)
The orchestra required is sizable, but the scope of the piece is not: its sardonic, lyrically lewd narrative about the supposed end of the world is quite compact, running at just over 100 minutes without an intermission. (The Phil may have to take an intermission, due to union rules, though the night will still come in at the length of a regular concert.)
The punning qualities of the character names will offer a clue as to the work’s overall reliance on cheek. Nekrotzar, who believes himself to be death incarnate, rises from a grave in the run-down city of Breughelland one evening, and decides to kick off the apocalypse, with the help of a comet that can be seen barreling down upon the horizon. Aiding his quest is what Ligeti described as a “realistic Sancho Panza,” in the drunken character of Piet the Pot, who takes up with Nekrotzar on his journey. Their first stop is to the house of the court astrologer, Astradamors, who they discover is being mercilessly beaten by his sadomasochistic wife, Mescalina. Once Nekrotzar relieves Astradamors of his cross (by disposing of Mescalina, vampire-style), he has himself another trusty aide.
Scene from Le Grand Macabre, Budapest 1998
They progress to the offices of Prince Go-Go, a hapless ruler who must constantly mediate disputes between the ministers of the country’s two parties, White and Black. With an alarmed populace gathering outside his palace, Prince Go-Go admits his astrologer and his odd traveling companions. While proclaiming their unswerving devotion to Nekrotzar, the group secretly undermines him with wine, thus attempting to avert the world’s final end. The whole story takes place while a couple (described by Ligeti as if from “a Bottecelli painting”) fucks in the grave from whence Nekrotzar emerged in the first scene. The couple, a soprano and a mezzo in a pants-off role, emerges at the end to sing a harmonically unsettled passacaglia.
Scene from Le Grand Macabre, director Barrie Kosky
By the 1970’s (when the first version of Le Grand Macabre was composed), Ligeti’s music was firmly post-Darmstadt, in that it was less austere — more open to humor, generally speaking — than was the first wave of postwar, Eastern European serialism. After pieces such as his 1962 Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes, Ligeti had also developed a love for what he called “mechanical pieces” (somewhat Reich-like in “process”-oriented conception, if not sound). This compositional mood is featured in the “Up! Drink! Up!” scene in which Nektrotzar gets drunk.
But other flashes of Ligeti’s sound world are also present in Macabre. The harmonies shared by Amanda and Amando, in their passacaglia as well as Scene 1 finale “Melting snow is thy breast!” recall bits and pieces of “Lux Aeterna,” the Ligeti choral work appropriated by Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Trailer for Le Grand Macabre, La Fura dels Baus production
Dramatically, Macabre’s comedy is post-Marx Brothers. (The scene in which two bumbling politicos exhaust the alphabet to discover new and better insults for one another may remind some of Groucho’s “upstart” scene in Duck Soup). Just as ragtime gets appropriated here, or Beethoven gets remixed there, Ligeti’s libretto also tweaks the mid-century sonic arsonists who came to declare opera a dead form. (You could view the character of Nekrotzar — who promises to rid the earth of old forms, but overestimates his strength — as vaguely like a young Boulez.)
Several other compositional gestures may entertain specialists: a prelude for 12 car-horns that spoofs Monteverdi, a coloratura soprano role (for the chief of secret police, interestingly) that features a wide range and long-held high notes, and a bass role (to be sung by Eric Owens in New York) that includes arioso passages and a bit of falsetto work.
Given the work’s bizarre subject matter, its mix-and-match modernist style, and its lack of a natural constituency among the public, it’s not particularly surprising that the Gilbert performances will be the New York premiere of Macabre, despite its stature as something of a staple in Europe. (The Philharmonic claims it’s the “most-performed” contemporary opera outside the U.S., though your guess is as good as mine as to what their definition of that term might entail.)
To the extent that the piece doesn’t quite “fit” our other houses, the fact that it can at last be seen here is a welcome development. Only one recording of the composer’s 1997 revision is currently in print (and by in-print, I mean it’s available on-demand via ArchivMusic). On that Sony release, Esa-Pekka Salonen presides over the score’s many hairpin turns with precision, but in a way that perhaps underplays some of the piece’s humor. It will be interesting to see if Gilbert can find additional nuance in the score, especially since the Philharmonic plans to release a recording of Macabre via its iTunes season subscription pass.
The work’s staging history in the U.S. is not terribly extensive: a 2004 run of a Royal Danish Opera production in San Francisco is the only other time it’s been seen here. Even abroad, the opera has occasionally been tough to realize. Ligeti reportedly despised a 1997 Salzburg production mounted by Peter Sellars. This makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, even without seeing the production. For better or worse, Sellars is often trying to tell you something tres genuine about human relationships. The heart is always on a (neon) sleeve.
For the Philharmonic, Doug Fitch will direct and design Macabre. The YouTube preview above gives some sense of how the staging will be rendered in fully dramatic form: via a live-animation/puppetry combination that seems to suit Ligeti’s rambunctious and absurd creation.
The composer set his story, adapted from Michel de Ghelderode, in a world he called Breughelland, after the demonic world depicted in the Breughel’s late drawings. But Ligeti’s musical collage actually behaves more like a Robert Rauschenberg “combine” painting. That Fitch will have his production minions on-stage, manipulating the visual effects live, seems properly in the junkyard spirit of a work taking place in what the composer described as an “entirely run-down but nevertheless thriving principality.”
In sum, I’d argue that, even if you don’t much care for Ligeti, you ought to root for this production. Not for Gilbert’s sake, or the Philharmonic’s, but for your own. Gilbert has already planned his next stab at staged opera for next season: Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. But the extent to which they’re able continue producing inventive opera productions will surely depend audience support. So, if that means taking a flyer on something you’re not 100% sold on beforehand, then perhaps you can get worked up over the bigger, post-Ligeti picture.
Gilbert has already hinted to Opera News that if his first two operas come off well, he wants to program Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids in a coming season. I’m sure parterriani will have nominations, in the comments, for future Philharmonic productions. While we’ll always want the grandly stylized, madly cost-inefficient productions at the Met (and elsewhere), there’s no reason not to be excited about new ways to get a wider range of operatic repertoire in front of audiences.
Or, as the realist said to the arts administrator: “Hundert große Meister, die wir auf den Knien bewundern, haben ihre erste Aufführung mit noch ganz andern Opfern erkauft!”
Alan Gilbert conducts Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre May 27, 28 and 29 at Avery Fisher Hall.
Hmmm. Nice article but mixed feelings. I certainly applaud the idea of using video to reduce the cost of orchestras and opera houses putting on rarely performed operas. However, I have no interest in Ligeti’s opera nor in the Cunning Little Vixen nor in any of Henze’s operas.
While Eve Queler gets a lot of criticism for her conducting, at least some of her rarely heard 19th century operas are ones I want to hear and enjoy hearing.
To me, this is just another example of music directors shoving their pet 20th century music projects down the public’s throats. Each new composition gets waves of press from the critics who have swallowed the koolaid, they are well attended and then never heard from again–usually with good reason. Every time I go to one of these events, it takes about 20-30 minutes before I wish I were home cleaning my shower grout with a toothbrush. Fortunately, intermissions allow me to exit.
All of you who want to hear the Ligeti, and the future Henze project, please buy lots of tickets and take your friends. But include me out.
I find that the more things out there I can enjoy (or learn to enjoy), the happier a person I am.
But if you’re going to single out composers whose work is rapidly sinking into obscurity, you’d be ill-advised to select Janacek or Ligeti. And I rather suspect Henze’s operas will still be afloat in 50 years.
You can actually stay home and clean your shower grout. It’s almost as easy as bitching (thanks to La Cieca for a useful phrase).
To me, this is just another example of music directors shoving their pet 20th century music projects down the public’s throats
Right, as opposed to impresario’s shoving utter crap –and I mean utterly mediocre operas– like Attila and Stiffelio and all the other Verdi that only gets done because of his reputation or the acres of mediocre note spinning by Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini and their tedious ilk.
So glad you’ll stay away from the interesting stuff, that way I won’t have to hear you bitch on the way out that there’s no tunes or why is it so dissonant, why can’t it be pretty like Linda de Chamonix?
Well, good for you Nero! Go and buy season tickets for Queller’s shows and bring your friends. Nothing wrong with that. When you are done with your shower grout gimme a call, I would love to have you clean mine; specially if that is going to spare us the condescending tone.
Ever conductor, every orchestra and every performer SHOULD have a pet project. Thanks to pet projects, many operas and pieces get an opportunity to get a 2nd, 3rd or 4th hearing. Thanks to those pet projects, people who enjoy that kind of repertoire, whatever it is (just like you like those obscure XIXth cent. works) get to listen to them.
I do not know Janacek’s operas, been in Katya and that’s about it. The fact that his operas are stages pretty much everywhere in all sorts of languages, and that singers are willing to learn the roles in Czech is a clear indication they are worthy of being considered more than a “pet project.” I am sure I could go on naming many operas just like these.
Thanks to pet projects we have discovered rare masterpieces like Haydn’s Orfeo, most of Monteverdi’s works (pet projects still back 30-40 years ago), and works like Anna Bolenna (thanks to pet projects by Gencer and some 2nd rate soprano whose married name was Meneghini), Fille du Regiment (a pet project by some 2nd rate house called Covent Garden), Aroldo, Zaza, Dinorah (all Queller’s pet proyects) Esclarmonde, (pet projects of some Australian housefrau) and thanks to the pet project of said housefrau’s hubby, we now have the entire Mozart with ornamentation movement in full swing (that much maligned Giovanni opened the door 30 years before Mackerras even thought of the possibility).
so, you see? we all have pet projects.
A quiet little plug for two “pet projects,” one of which is ongoing. Kudos to James Conlon and his ‘Forbidden Music’ series in Los Angeles. Not opera, but I will always be grateful to Bruno Walter who never gave up on Mahler, later yielding the torch to Leonard Bernstein. I’ve had worse things shoved down my throat.
That forbidden music project yielded an opera discovery in LA last season or the season before with the staging on an opera by a Jewish composer as part of the series. it was reviewed by Opera news and i think it had Mary Dunleavy in the cast and was staged as if it was Las Meninas (i think)
Other pet projects include:
The Salieri, Vivaldi and Malibran albums by Bartoli. These have yielded several concerts and opera exhumations; as well as other singers exploring more Vivaldi in solo album (Kocena and Genaux just last year)
The Farinelli Album by Vivica Genaux. A Fabulous recording that should be in every opera lover’s catalog.
Mahler, Wagner, Sondheim = the holy trinity. Wonder what else has been shoved down BAB’s throat (aside from Mahler, that is)?
I must have misread Betsy’s comment. I thought she meant Bernstein’s had been shoved down her throat.
It couldn’t have been Mahler’s because (a) Alma got there first and (b) he was gone at least 60 years before BAB arrived.
You guys are so nasty. That’s why I love you.
Now, all these talk about shoving down someone’s throat? are you guys complaining, jealous or is it wishful thinking?
LindoroAlmaviva, I think we are just relishing our respective head starts.
Lindoro, ALWAYS “wishful thinking” when I read of Betsy’s exploits, ALFM.
Holy shit, Jay, you flatter me. Not the good kind of flatter, but the “Get Real, Man” kind of flatter. I missed Mahler by less than thirty years.
well, I habve been known to have a thing or 2 shoved down my throat, and I have even more experience doing the shoving.
Like the time I told my friend Ronizetti that the next time Dialoges of the carmelites is revived we are buying tickets and there will not be any complaining.
Or the time I told him we were going to see Thais and that was the end of it.
Or the time I told him we were traveling to NYC the weekend of the Satyagraha broadcast because I needed to experience the opera live and he graciously agreed and went shopping while I cried my way through Satyagraha.
Or that time at the bar when I met Johnny the architect. But that is a story best shared in a different type of blog.
BAB, when it comes to age, better to lowball than go too high. LindoroAlmaviva, I hope your architect friend was wearing a hard hat.
The Tristan concert projections a years ago totally sucked. However, projections are used very successfully in Sondheim on Sondheim; in fact, the interviews with Sondheim projected onto cubes sometimes rearranged are the best part of a mostly inane show.
As others are noting we’re going to see a lot more of this, esp. with shared productions, because while the initial programming costs may be expensive, shipping costs are miniscule.
Virtual scenery. Then maybe virtual orchestras? If this happpens, I’ll virtually stop going to the opera.
Jay, I hate to tell you this but virtual orchestras have been around for a while. I auditioned for, and was hired by, Operaworks here in NYC, back in the late 90′s. I saw Ariadne and Maria Stuarda there, both with virtual orchestra. But the tech predates that, as seen in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Orchestra
I should also mention that with Finale, I programed the entire first movement of the Trout Quintet, with a mouse no less. Using Finale and Cubase, I can produce rehearsal tracks for musicians, so that, for instance, a violinist learning the Trout could rehearse with the other 4 musicians, even when live musicians aren’t available. I hate canned music for performances such as for a lot of Broadway shows, where reduced orchestras are used and supplemented with synthesizers.
Stanford, I’ve experienced canned music at dance performances (where it’s long used for a long time) and musical theatre shows (ugh!)but so far have been spared such at live opera performances.
I’d rather hear a live violinist stray off pitch than canned perfection. However, given the dire economic situation many performing arts groups are coping with, there may be ever more canned music. If and when this happens, I’ll be home watching DVDs, or whatever.
“. But even Gelb’s boosters and detractors might agree on one point: composer diversity has fared well under his watch. Even in a down economic year, with the Corigliano opera canceled, he still provided us rare [sic] looks at Janacek and Shostakovich.”
Um, big deal. Joe Volpe gave us the Met premieres of MAKROPULOS CASE, LADY MACBETH OF MTENSK, THE GAMBLER, WAR AND PEACE and MAZEPPA, plus NPs of JENUFA and QUEEN OF SPADES. And that’s just in teh Slavic winge
Very good article, I just bought a ticket online as a result of reading it. As for Nero Wolfe’s predilection for 19th century opera and shower grouting: “chacun a son goo.”
Good for you, and not to top your quip, but La Cieca is an editor after all: to Nero Wolfe surely you should say “Chacun a son grout.”
And a very good editor too! Parterre Box has become a fascinating and unique online magazine that bears La Cieca’s individual stamp as confidently and courageously as those mimeographed first issues. Bravo!
You didn’t like the earliest version on clay tablets?
I also loved those early issues of PB. Utterly delectable.
With or without projections, there are many operas that are not repertoire-viable but deserve a live performance every generation or so. For example, I’d love to see the Met perform in concert all the Verdi operas not already in its repertoire. Perhaps two a season, three performances each with a broadcast. The Met already has the orchestra and chorus, building, name recognition, and (hopefully) access to suitable singers.
The same with the rarely-if-ever-performed operas by Wagner, Strauss, Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Gounod, et al, and don’t forget the Verismo operas. AND yes, more contemporary works.
It seems to me that this would not be an inordinatedly expensive proposition. There could be some added revenues from official recordings of the broadcast, for example. And it should be easier to find benefactors for these endeavours than for full productions. (No sets and costumes to pay for. No extensive staging rehearsals.)
well, isn’t Carammor just done with a project like that? Didn’t they perform every single Verdi opera in the order of composition and if there were multiple versions, they were treated as individual operas?
Now, I wish those recordings could be released, even if it was only on iTunes.
It wasn’t Caramoor (although Will Crutchfield has revived a lot of bel canto rarities). It was Vincent La Selva at Summerstage in Central Park.
Nero Wolfe sure got a lot of flack for expressing an honest opinion regarding what performances he chooses to spend his money on. Truthfully, I fully agree with him in that he is entitled to his opinions and to what music he enjoys. Of course, choosing to “clean his shower grout” is something very Parterre Box, so everybody takes umbrage. Big Deal… I saw the SF Symphony with Lorraine Hunt Liberson do Mahler’s 2nd. It was gorgeous! But I still don’t want to sit through another Mahler symphony. I heard enough Ligeti and Henz when I was a student in NYC. I loathe opera directors who presume to make Wagner or Mozart more “accessible,” and I love the old Met Ring with all that Otto Schenk and Schneider-Siemssen kitch that LC scoffs at. “They came from all over the world, as if seeking to experience The Ring in its pristine purity – just the music and the drama and the myth’s universal themes of timeless value; and please, skip the ideology and the sociology!” – FanFair.com
well, i don’t think he got flack for expressing his opinion, but for being so condescending in the process.
I for once will never pay or be dragged to another performance of The Devils of Loudon. That does not mean that I should be condescending and say it is crap and suggest that the whole world agrees with me.
Same thing with Calling Janacek a pet project, specially in the light of how many of his operas are revived every year all over the world. One thing is not to like a composer, I have a friend who can not stand Mozart, but an entirely different matter is to call something crap in the face of evidence that might speak to the contrary; or of people that might disagree.
I used to despise anything XXth century until I had to face Rake’s Progress and Wozzek. After that, I try not to knock it until I have heard it.
“The Devils of Loudon”
Honey, I wish.
OK queens, off to the Armida encore. i missed it the 1st time around. Wish me luck
Lindoro, you too?! I’m going in a few hours because of a foolish promise I made. Good luck to us both.
What a hoot! Love Loudon, love the song and now I’m wondering if she ever sang “The Ladies Who Lunch”. Can’t find it on YouTube. However, Loudon’s medly of “Losing My Mind” and “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” and “Losing My Mind” and it’s online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQcUdSwHD_w
Only a truly sad person would go through this page and pick up a random selection of misspellings such as flak, Caramoor, Loudun, Dialogues, Linda di Chamounix, Queler, hausfrau, Henze. I would never do that.
Any idea where we could find someone who would?
LOL
Sorry. That should read, “Eny idae wear wee could fined sumwun hoo wood?”
Betsy, are you part Welsh?
Only around the rabbit.
This is a serious discussion about weighty issues of great importance and no laughing matter. I fear levity is not appropriate here.
Uh-oh. Here come the laugh police.
It was a titter, officer, I swear. Those are allowed. Look! Look! SQIAC. Titter
That’s very funny – and so not allowed.
But it WASN’T aloud, that’s what I’m telling you.
Luckily, no one else seems to be around now – so let’s chuckle, giggle, snigger, heck guffaw, even!
(Snort) Manou said ‘snigger.’ (snarg)
Cackle.
Frigate.
Ridi Pagliaccio