Where your hard-earned donations to NYCO go, part who knows I’ve lost track
“The New York City Opera, which just reported a $19.9 million deficit in 2008-09, paid Gerard Mortier $400,000 for his stint as part-time general-manager in-waiting.” [Bloomberg News]
I, of course, would be quite willing to see your uncut Don Carlos starting at 5 PM. Including the ballet.
DCF, would you be willing to explain the pros and cons of the French vs. the Italian Don Carlos? The ballet music is indeed wonderful and considering that Verdi was not particularly fond of ballet he sure got himself together to write something worthy of the rest of the opera.
Pros: Verdi composed it to a French text; he revised it to a French text; it’s easier to sing in French and the word-setting is much better; unless you’re Italian you might as well not understand it in the original language;-)
Cons: How many people do we know who sing well in French? The Italians rarely do, it’s not an easy language for native English speakers and there are hardly any French singers worth hearing anyway, let alone for this piece (unfair but with an element of truth…). We won’t mention the Russians…
Also, the French text is clearer and more strongly political than the gnarled and bowderlized Italian translation. It would be possible to revised the standard Italian translation to bring it closer in meaning and syntax to the original French, but good luck trying to get singers to learn those new words!
La version originale française de DON CARLOS est de haute noblesse, un texte absolument magnifique. Il faut des chanteurs français, belges ou canadiens mais, hélas, ils n’existent pas. Nah.
Dommage de gâcher un paragraphe élégant en le terminant par Nah! Roberto Alagna (il y a plusieurs années, c’est vrai) a été très applaudi dans le Don Carlos de Luc Bondy. Il y a aussi Ludovic Tézier, qui serait sûrement un excellent Posa. Il ne faut pas renier en bloc tous les chanteurs francophones.
Et Beatrice Uria-Monzon sera une très acceptable Eboli, Laurant Naouri en Philippe II? Pourquoi pas? Kaufmann chante bien francais, aussi. Difficile, peut-être, impossible, pas du tout!
Thanks for the observations. I never paid much attention to the text and didn’t realize the differences.
LOL.
I was responding to LaC’s remark about the “more strongly political” French text. I actually can hear the difference between French and Italian, unless sung by .. ( fill in the blank)
Oh, I thought you were saying that the words just get in the way. I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I did have a good laugh (very welcome after a looong day)
No apology needed! It would be hard to beat “the spider didn’t disappoint”, so I’m happy a “serious” remark provided a laugh!
DonCarloFanatic, most delightful of creatures, I know you meant that in the most innocent of ways, but it is truly the most gleeful of postings. I’ve started taking extra naps just for those recurring dreams of Uncut Don Carlos, sometimes with two ballets. O, hit me again, you naughty infante, you.
Does the uncut Don Carlos have a Prince Albert?
Would rather see an u/c Lohengrin (so rare) or Parsifal, and not in smegmatic productions, either.
Best riff on the Don Carlos ballet is Balanchine’s “Ballo della regina”, which uses ballet music Verdi composed for Don C. Fortunately there is a DVD that includes the ballet, hopefully with Merrill Ashley and Ricky Weiss, who Balanchine set the ballet on. I’ll find out when it arrives.
A man after my own heart. I heart Ballo della regina. I’ve seen it a million times.
It’s one of Balanchine’s most lyrical pieces, Peter. The SF Ballet did a very creditable job some years ago. Of course, Helgi was at NYCB when the piece premiered. I have no idea which of Balanchine’s heirs owns the rights to the ballet.
After Balanchine’s death, the various heirs worked cooperatively to form The George Balancbine Trust, which handles all aspects of licensing his ballets. (A totally diffeent scenario unfolded at the Martha Graham Dance Company, where litigation tied up many pieces for a decade om more.)
Ballo has been in and out of SF Ballet’s repertory for years; it’s a favorite of mine too, and they always do an excellent job with it--I particularly remember a lovely outdoor performance at Stern Grove one summer, where even the sun cooperated for once.
The ballo della regina is named La peregrina after the fabulous diamond which Philip II gave to Mary Tudor and obviously must have taken back after Mary’s death. Eventually it wound up for sale and Richard Burton bought it for Elizabeth Taylor, I think.
Sorry -- that should read fabulous pearl -- not diamond!
What a wondrous way Balanchine follows the ‘text’ without acknowledging any such thing. There is a fisherman who takes three solo ballerinas and fuses them into La Peregrina (Ashley) who is honored with a stirring processional. Similarly in ‘Walpurgisnacht’ (Faust)
he presented Helen of Troy (Heather Watts) and Cleopatra (Farrell) and left it to those savvy few to figure out. During an interview, in what was probably a ‘weak’ moment, he went so far as to acknowledge that ‘Ballo’
was about pearls.
It’s really unbelievable! With all the problems in Italian opera houses now La Scala is going to let Bondy poison more of TOSCA and Sher do his pathetic Romeo production. Sickening.
You know that productions are planned years in advance, particularly co-productions. What would you suggest: that La Scala simply write off their financial contributions to these productions (of which the bulk was spent long ago) and then either try to pull together more new productions or cancel the performances? Where’s the fiscal responsibility in that?
I have nothing against co-productions but it does seem somewhat disingenuous to advertise the Wernicke Rosenkavalier as a “new staging” when Wernicke died in 2002 (and a revival staging director is clearly credited).
It does seem like there needs to be some more exact terminology for a production that is new to a given theater but is in fact a revival of something that was originally produced elsewhere. There are some lovely things about the Wernicke Rosenkavalier but I find something creepy and depressing about a “new production” by a dead man.
Exhumation? Zombie production?
I think it’s great if a good production gets a new audience, it enables opera houses to present works they might not produce otherwise, and I have nothing against opera houses that want to save money. But it’s dishonest to suggest it’s something new. And I sense the reality is that these imports often get less rehearsal than a real new production would and often they aren’t overseen by the original director (even if he or she is alive).
The SF Opera’s season brochure says either “Production new to San Francisco” or “New Production.” No ambiguity there--Gockley believes in truth in advertising.
Zombieaufführung
The new La Scala season has one tie-in to this thread:
They’re doing Death in Venice in Deborah Warner’s staging, with Bostridge, Coleman-Wright and Davies, Garner conducting. It’s an incredible production that I saw at ENO with the same forces and it’s one of the best nights I’ve ever had in an opera house.
It was going to be one of the productions in Mortier’s first season, I was going to move to New York for a week so I could see as many performances as possible.
Alas, I have not yet encountered the Don Carlos ballet. It does not appear to be in my copy of Kultur’s Chatelet Don Carlos with Alagna, which I have played many times. I’m sure I would have noticed people bouncing around in the nearly altogether, doing plies and other absurdities.
En fait, I am a mere virgin in opera compared to you all. It’s a true pleasure for me to encounter so many people with far more opera knowledge than my own. And you are all so naughty. Every time I visit this blog, I find myself laughing like a crazy woman. Lovely.
DonCarloFanatic, re: the Don Carlos ballet see 11.3 post about “Ballo della Regina”. Though the costumes are of the modern era, in its way “Ballo della Regina” is true to the spirit of Verdi’s opera,
I’m pretty sure the ballet was excised in the Bondy production. I’ve only seen it staged twice -- in the ubiquitous “Eboli’s Dream” staging by Konwitschny and in a David Pountney production for ENO which had Rosalind Plowright in her brief glory days as Elisabeth. She should have stayed at ENO for a few more years and learnt her craft more thoroughly.
Re: the ballet in Don Carlos. The Balanchine work is indeed lovely and does justice to the music.
Actually Verdi worked closely with the two most prominent French choreographers of the time to create the ballet in Don Carlos, and there is a lot of instruction and commentary by him that isn’t in the body of the libretto, but is part of the body of work for the opera that survives in his hand.
And interesting history of Verdi’s ballets and his involvement with them was written for a doctoral thesis at the University of Copenhagen a number of years ago. It is quite amusing to see Verdi’s own ballet notation consisting of little dots ( dancers) and arrows indicating direction of movement. He was certainly a man of the theater.
You may be referring to what eventually became a beautiful book by Knud Arne Jürgensen entitled THE VERDI BALLETS (398 pages) -- published by the Istituto Nazional de Studi Verdiani, Parma, 1995 -- now difficult to find, but the ISBN is 88-85065-12-0
Correction: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani
Yes, that’s the one. It won the “Premio Internazionale” of the Rotary Club di Parma “Giuseppe Verdi”. Puts a whole no spin on Rotary Club.
Quanto -- thanks for the tip! . I’d never heard of it. I just put in an order to Abe Books.