Greater performances?
Our sometime correspondent Seth Colter Walls sees in new PBS leadership a chance for a wider reach for “the splashiest happenings in America’s resurgent classical-music culture.” [Newsweek]
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You know? What might be even smarter would be for PBS not (or at least not only) to cover blockbusters that are already getting huge audiences and vast publicity but to broadcast something outstanding that was not already hyped to the max: say something great from Santa Fe or Glimmerglass or Wolf Trap or someplace even less conspicuous. THEN they would be doing a great service that no one else is likely to offer.
The only problem with broadcasting productions outside of New York is the cost of establishing a broadcast infrastructure in those other towns. PBS *used* to have such an infrastructure, but only before those localities started slashing their public arts/broadcasting budgets. Part of what has to happen is that folks need to devote time/energy/money towards advocating for the critical importance of publicly sponsored arts again. As wildly succesfful as the Met broadcasts have been, the limited lineup is a direct reflection of their reliance upon corporate/private sponsors who don’t want to be attached to anything thrilling, I mean “controversial.”
In an odd way, this is where we have to come to terms with our own conservatism as opera fans. We love the old classics, but bemoan the current slate of singers who can rarely fill out the threadbare plots with glorious vocalism. At the same time, we bemoan new and interesting productions not, as sponsors do, out of fear of a risky investment, but out of our own limited notion of what opera is/should be. When you have both forces working to direct what the public sees as opera, you get our current moment.
I had to treat this relatively quickly in the piece (since I only had one page to work with in next week’s magazine), but Kerger *does* intend to shoot stuff that’s happening outside New York.
To do so economically, at first these shoots might wind up being just for the web arts portal she’s developing. (I flicked at this in the line about “a constantly updated archive of performances from venues across the country.”) But Kerger also wants to see more of the country represented on the broadcast side, as well. The problem, as ever, comes down to money.
I also asked Kerger whether, for online-only shoots, PBS might use consumer-grade digital video just to get more stuff in the can. (I was thinking of those nice short videos the NY Phil made of certain scenes from the Macabre performances.) She said this was a possibility.
You make very good points that, from reading this blog anyway, really characterizes how we feel about opera productions today. Myself, I just want it to work. It would be interesting to know how Arte Live makes their decisions, since they seem to choose, for the most part, very interesting and well done productions whether or not they are traditional productions (Werther) or not-so-traditional (Platee).
Bravo Opinionated Neophyte! We know that there’s a hard core conservative audience that is only interested in the top 20 all the time, but opera devotés of the intelligence of those found here really should be more interested and involved in supporting new work. Yes, you’ll see a lot of flops. Ever wonder how many flops the La Scala audience saw for every Verdi success?
Looks like now they won’t be seeing anything for awhile if you’re reading opera chic’s on-the-spot coverage.
I’m going to cut to the chase here. Money talks, and distributors listen. If we want more progressive programming, we need to show up on Feb. 12th for the Met’s Nixon in China telecast, with as many open-minded friends in tow as we can muster. We’ve got our shot here, and we need to take it.
Christ SFGuy, my strident musings aside, the idea of actually going to Nixon and China fills me with dread. I know, hypocrisy much? Do you have any recommended recordings that sell the piece really well to a listener who, I admit, hasn’t even tried to listen to a moment of the score?
Opinionated–Any recordings I could recommend will probably cost more than the price of a ticket to the telecast. I actually like the piece quite a lot, based on the PBS showing of the original Houston production.
I suggest you pick an aisle seat and sneak out early if you don’t share my enthusiasm, knowing that your attendance has encouraged future progressive programming that may be more to your taste. C’mon, suck it up and take one for the team!
You might be able to find the recent Marin Alsop version at the library, and segments are also available for download. Like most of Adams, if you hear only every sixth bar, you’ve gotten it all.
It’s really very user-friendly, and follows familiar opera forms with arias, ensembles, a ballet better-integrated into the action than most. (Oddly, to me it very much resembles Goldmark’s Queen of Sheba. Don’t ask why.) Some would say that it lacks a love interest, but I would suggest that it is just that the love interest — power and fame — does not appear in tangible form.
That’s what he said. And done!
What do y’all think of 1984? Has anyone seen it?
The love interest may not appear in tangible form, but the pig does. How can you pass up seeing Pat Nixon cast admiring glances at the prize bovine of a Chinese collective?
Ooooooohhhhh, Charlotte Emily, the prize Guernsey of the Bobolink herd, judged Miss Udders three years running, instructs me to inform you — bovine = cattle; porcine = pigs. Also divine = gods; magazine = magas; supine = dinner plates.
BABS–I’m a hopeless city boy, what can I say? I bow to your erudtion.
Try and search out Mme Mao’s aria ‘I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung’. That’s the score’s most thrilling section and is very well sung on the premiere recording.
Wow. This is great!! Chilling, in it’s own way…
Stevey. Contact me : ditzbobble@gmail.com
To OpNeo (4.1.1.3 – damn those silly numbers). I saw 1984, and only remember Keenlyside. The rest is lost to me, and I hope to many more people.
Thanks so much, that was legit awesome. I do agree with the comment above about how its possible to “get it” within a few bars. The first scene was also on youtube and it was visually cool, and musically was interesting, but more because of the little asides of the assistant. It was compelling to hear operatic sounds combined with diplomatic formalities, but I can’t say I was blown away. I’m convinced enough though to go see the HD broadcast.
Nixon is an opera that is as much about spectacle as music; in other words, you can get only so much sense of the whole from even a good recording.
Take it from elderly La Cieca, one of these days you will realize that all your regrets will be for things you didn’t go to see. Would you believe that La Cieca had the chance to see the Broadway production of Carrie, for example — she would only have had to walk three blocks to the TKTS booth — but she didn’t, for whatever reason. Or, more to the point, Renata Scotto in Anna Bolena — just didn’t think it was worth the trip.
There have been some wasted moments in there: a day-trip in a compact car to DC to hear a Parsifal mediocre in every way, and then the trip home, and not a meal the entire time. But that’s the tradeoff: if you say no too often you’re going to miss something wonderful.
I agree with this whole-heartedly. Just yesterday, I had lunch with a friend who told me he traveled to L.A. for that Freyer “Ring” and he loved it. I’m sure it won’t travel and I doubt it’s been taped and now I wished I’d experienced it.
Your point is well taken. For me its all about location(small town), priorities(graduate degree) and budget(see priorities) at this point in my life, though I know that many a poorer queen has found their way to standing room only when the need arose. But that all means that things like the HD telecasts should be savored, not scorned and this past season I certainly allowed a turned up my nose to avoid seeing certain productions that I now regret. The Mattila Tosca for example, not that it was apparently all that great, but as you said, these things become woven into our personal tapestry. Hard to say that’s not for the overall good.
And on the subject of opportunities, was anyone else…blessed to see Renee trot out her contemp music pumps on ABC last night to sing for the President? *Awkward* The band had rhythm, the people clapped, Michelle smiled, everything was fine and then she croaked out the wierdest attempt at a lower pop register ever heard. For major sections of the performance you got the sense that someone at a family gathering had made the mistake of keeping the karaoke machine on long enough for your Aunt Alice to get the (liquid) courage up to break out with a few tunes.
For all of us, there will always be regrets of the past, of what we have missed…………..and of things we wish we could forget we had ever attended, but DID. Call it Music’s own Law of Personalized Selective Relativity.
But it’s PBS we’re talking about, not the HD broadcasts in theaters. My local affiliate won’t even air “Boheme” or “Barbiere:” all the airtime is taken up with Lawrence Welk reruns and do-wop reunions.
messa--Well, it sounds from the Newsweek article that Paula Kerger is open to improving the situation, and demonstrating that there is widespread public support for things like Nixon in China will give her ammunition. If the opera-going public won’t attend, why should PBS change its ways? Dealing with local PBS affiliates can be frustrating, but buying a ticket for Nixon is easy.
And while I’m stick on the subject, here’s another section of Nixon; the pig arrives at about 4:30:
Listen, I love the Lennon Sisters as much as the next guy, but really, who is watching Lawrence Welk? His show was already square when it was on originally….when I was a kid!
That is so true! I mean, I enjoy a little ironic “Bobby and Cissy” watching as much as anyone, but a little irony goes a very long way. Lawrence Welk is too dated and cheesy for my parents – and they are 80 and 72. I would be very surprised if there is anyone still alive (and capable of figuring out how to use the remote) who would choose to watch it. I suspect the only TV sets turned to it are in nursing homes, where the staff misguidedly think their charges are enjoying it – but in fact the patients are simply unable to express their loathing.
I will now do ‘a Vicar of Wakefield’……Lawrence Welk? Mitch Miller, Andy Williams or the Ray Coniff Singers were better.
and Cranford, Cranford, Cranford!
Well considering I couldn’t find a ticket to Armida two months before the broadcast in a town with 3 theaters showing it, I’m not too worried.
What a ‘Nixon’ opera without having Oliver Stone as its librettist? What;s the World coming to?
I want to see Pat having ‘ a drop of the good stuff’ behind closed doors. And the surtitles screaming “SHE DRINKS!”
Spiders were available for this performance but were not hired. Gelb must go.
Whatever happened to Trudy Ellen Crane, the Madame Mao of the world premiere and telecast from which the above clip is taken? This role is all I know about her. Did anyone here ever see her in another performance?
Arianna–The last name is Craney; as far as I can tell, Nixon was her big moment, though she’s continued to sing contemporary music on a lower profile.
By chance I actually saw her give one of those “great arias” with a trumpet concerts in a Rome church in June 1984. She was quite impressive in those acoustics.
Adams needs a course in instrumentation, his score is so thin, sounds like a two-bit amateur orchestra.
Chacun a son gout.
I’m astounded to hear you say that. Of all the music professionals I know who don’t like his music (and they are numerous), one thing you hear over and over is that the man is a master of orchestration. Hmm.
“Of all the music professionals I know who don’t like his music (and they are numerous)”
Your comment, and others’ on this thread, bring up an important –and vast– issue.
Composing opera as a popular genre pretty much died almost a century ago; all bridges back were severed by Berg and Schoenberg and any “serious” opera composer in activity today is likely aware of this reality.
Adams and Glass come about as close as one can get to solving this dilemma: creating “serious” opera for the masses. This point is controversial: I have heard music professionals (composers) qualify this music as “crap”, because they feel it succumbs to commercialism.
At the same time, many knowledgeable, dedicated opera lovers — such as many of those contributing to this site– seem apprehensive to even attend an HD performance of “Nixon in China”, I suppose for fear of finding it too “modern”, too difficult to understand. There seems to exist out there an insurmountable divide between contemporary composers and even the most dedicated opera audiences, never mind the public at large. This is a relatively new situation, very different from the inevitable flops that occurred in Verdi’s time, or in any other “classical” period for that matter.
As one poster wrote, TV and other media are reluctant to show “La Bohème”, etc., presumably because of the widespread assumption that ANY opera is too remote or obscure for most consumers. At the same time, many professional luminaries (opera managements, stage directors, critics, artists, you name it), as well as opera lovers, seem to agree that opera needs a larger, younger public and that this new public will be swayed by novelty, freshness and relevance to their own lives and issues. Something has got to give!
Here is a sadly ironic little anecdote that I think illustrates rather well the current situation: a very active and opinionated participant on a European opera blog, who tends to consider any production that is not innovative, meaning-laden Regie as an example of backward, reactionary conservatism, was asked if he had seen a certain production of a recently composed opera; he replied that he had listened to a couple of minutes of it on the radio and found the music hard to deal with, so he did not go to see it.
Composing opera as a popular genre pretty much died almost a century ago; all bridges back were severed by Berg and Schoenberg and any “serious” opera composer in activity today is likely aware of this reality
No, that’s YOUR reality, full stop. To blame Berg, composer of a grand total of two operas, one of which (Lulu) wasn’t premiered until *1937* or even performed regularly until the *1950′s* and even then in truncated form; and Schoenberg, whose early efforts (Die Gluckliche Hand, Erwartung and Von Heute auf Morgen) were completely unknown outside of Viennese avant-garde circles –if you can pull up a playbill of the Met or La Scala or Covent Garden doing them as a triple bill as they were done in Leipzig a few years ago, go for it– and whose other opera, Moses und Aron, wasn’t heard in public until *1951* (the Golden Calf scene only) and on stage until *1954*, if you’re blaming them for some “break”, then that’s absurd. It completely ignores the fact that, as much as people like Kyle Gann want you to believe, not everyone became a 12-tone composer after 1928. Shocking, I know, but it’s true! Honest!
You know why opera declined in popularity in the early part of the 20th century? Movies (and especially when sound came in) and radio. Not two Viennese composers that a vast majority of people never heard a note of their music, let alone heard OF them, it was the fact that you could get the same entertainment opera provided (spectacle, romance, out-sized emotions) for 40 cents (back then) at your local cinema in Cedar Rapids, it didn’t require a trip to a big city anymore, *that* had more to do with it’s decline in to a niche performing art like ballet than the fact that Lulu existed. It cracks me up that some segment of the opera going public just can’t accept that their beloved art form got supplanted as popular entertainment (which was a short period of its history anyway).
At the same time, many knowledgeable, dedicated opera lovers — such as many of those contributing to this site– seem apprehensive to even attend an HD performance of “Nixon in China”, I suppose for fear of finding it too “modern”, too difficult to understand
That’s THEIR fault, not the composers, it’s 100% THEIR FAULT because they pine for some new opera to sound like dreary old Donizetti in 2010. Tonal operas have never gone out of fashion, even in Germany. Britten’s entire ouvre is tonal, even tuneful (I listened to Gloriana the other day, it’s got some killer tunes in it) and it’s popular. As popular as Verdi? Duh, of course not, but there is an audience that isn’t freaked out by the fact that it doesn’t sound like an Italian opera written ca. 1826.
I saw this at the Iron Tongue of Midnight the other day and it points out the utter conservativism of most opera fans, who want to be spoonfed pretty tunes (yes, I get it, her correspondent could have a wrong take on the woman’s comment):
Overheard by my office-mate at yesterday’s San Francisco Opera performance of La Fanciulla del West, said by a woman who evidently didn’t care for what she was hearing:
An opera has to have beautiful melodies to make an impression on me
Just to emphasize: this was at a performance of an opera by Puccini. It has plenty of beautiful melodies; they just don’t come in the form of discrete arias
Take that in: Puccini ISN’T TUNEFUL ENOUGH for that scabby old rat bag (tm Monty Python). How is that mentality Birtwistle or Reimann or Henze’s fault?
he replied that he had listened to a couple of minutes of it on the radio and found the music hard to deal with, so he did not go to see it.
And that’s the composer’s fault how? He/she didn’t freeze his compositional style at the death of Brahms and Verdi so he/she gets what he deserves? Or is it that Mr. Listener is a total fucking idiot and bailed after a few minutes without bothering to see if the score got any better to his ears?
Henry Holland, I love you.
God DAMN this stupid commenting system and its shitty reply system.
Thank you M.
MOST PEOPLE DON’T, AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM! (And I don’t consider them idiots and I don’t blame them for their tastes.)
I never wrote or implied that they were idiots or lacking in taste, just that it’s simply THEIR fault, not the composers, for that state of affairs. I loathe bel canto opera, but that’s MY problem, not Bellini’s compositions.
Those composers you list communicate with people, some of them in quite large numbers (Berg and Messiaen), so they’re obviously doing *something* right.
It is not a question of 12 tones or tonal, it is a question of the nature of modernism and its self-imposed inaccessibility.
It’s not until Boulez that you got composers who didn’t give a fuck about what the audience thought. There’s a bunch of quotes from Schoenberg were he thought that the 12-tone system was going to be popular because it was simply an extension of Tristan-esque chromatic harmony taking to the next level. Berg very much cared about audience response, he traveled all around Europe supervising productions of Wozzeck so that they were the best they could be.
I guarantee you, Aribert Reimann is grateful that Lear has become a rep staple in Germany and he was quite pleased that his new Medea opera got such a great response in Vienna.
Etc. etc.
“self-imposed inaccessiblity”? What does *that* even mean? That composers didn’t stop innovating and instead should have been content to sound like Verdi and Brahms in 1930? Yes, it’s a shame that the mass audience didn’t really move beyond compositional styles ca. 1890, but oh well.
I don’t find Birtwislte inaccessible at all, he’s a direct descendant of Le Sacre du Printemps, again if someone like that San Francisco Opera lady finds his music “inaccessible”, it’s HER fault, not the composers.
Tell me, what were composers supposed to do in the 1920′s, just stop going forward? That seems to be what you’re implying.
Even lighter stuff like Adams is considered inaccessible by some!
Wait for it: not Adams fault.
I don’t see what cinema has to do with the birth of modernist opera, or with the 20th century composers embracing modernist styles and the public’s resistance to this music.
Of course you don’t see it, because you don’t understand why I wrote that. You claimed “Composing opera as a popular genre pretty much died almost a century ago; all bridges back were severed by Berg and Schoenberg”. I’m saying that opera’s popularity was in decline long before Moses und Aron went out in to the world to terrorize people with its frightening modernity, that other forms of entertainment supplanted opera as a mass-audience entertainment (if it ever was that to begin with outside of Germany and Italy).
And again, your thesis ignores the fact that from at the very least Die Tote Stadt (1920) onwards, tuneful, tonal operas have never stopped being written, never stopped being produced, never stopped being successful (i.e. Britten). You write as if modernity totally dominated composition from that point and that’s simply not true. Maybe Boulez saying nasty things about Barber’s music hurt Barber’s feelings but it sure didn’t stop him from writing his gorgeous, lush music.
My point in a nutshell: I think opera, for its survival, is badly in need of a new love affair between new works and a new public, something similar to what has been happening in the last 10-15 years to contemporary art
No, don’t agree with that at all. Opera can, and will, continue to exist as a museum art, with the same Top 40, mostly Italian, operas being 95% of the repertory. It’s what the majority of the opera audience has repeatedly shown it wants, it doesn’t WANT innovation or strange sounds or stuff that’s not hummable on the way out the door, it wants big stars singing Verdi properly. Fair enough, I only care because it makes hearing the stuff I *do* care about difficult.
If by “survival” you mean as “a living art relevant to now”, then that horse left the barn 90 or so years ago and it ain’t coming back.
Okay, about the commenting system. Somewhere I have to draw the line of where the subpoints of subpoints stop, or else there will be comments numbered things like 7.2.1.3.14.3.9 that will be half an inch wide. I made the choice of four levels of comments because most conversations don’t get any deeper than that, and the width of the fourth indented level is only just enough to contain a YouTube embed without it spilling into the right column.
If a comment doesn’t have a “Reply” link at the end of it, please scroll up until you find one that does. The new reply will end up in the correct thread if not necessarily directly underneath the comment you’re responding to. If you’re really concerned about making sure people know to which comment you’re referring, you can always say something like “In response to 7.3.12.1…” or you can quote a bit of the text of the referred comment to provide continuity.
La Cieca aims to please.
Incidentally, should La Cieca be up for any feedback to the commenting system which may potentially lead to changing it, I preferred the old system where, if we were responding to a previous comment, we simply said ‘re #24′ or whichever number we were responding to at the beginning of our post.
This isn’t because of any frustrations with decimal points, but because it is easier to find any follow-ups. I can just remember I got as far as comment #89 and read from there on next time I log in, rather than try to remember if I was on page 2 or 3 of a 6 page thread and go back through everything else to check if somebody has called me an idiot who knows nothing about opera. I know I could request email notifications but I get way too many emails as it is.
Just my 2pence worth.
Those of us that catch up with the activity on Parterre mostly on the weekends, actually appreciate the current commenting system, because it allows us to see a full discussion on one subject in one place, instead of reading random comments and trying to remember (or having to scroll up all the time) the initial comment that it pertains to. It seems more logical this way, particularly if you are interested in everything that is discussed here, but are reading it a little late from the initial posting.
Adams is the master of arch ‘internationalo’ pretentiousness dealing with isolated abstract aspects of it… Big big ‘hit you over the head’ plot themes, singers exclaiming their angst filled lungs out, over nothing much? The effect is ‘everything’….till the cultured bowel motion noise, actually stops. Reminds me a bit, of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘kitshy’ Requiem.
Could you imagine a group of people wanting to listen to music and a bright spark uttering the words ” Well let’s put on, some John Adams”.
Expect to hear the slamming of doors as the guests hurriedly depart.
Harry–Hard as this may be for you to believe, I know quite a few folks who would prefer Gnarly Buttons or The Chairman Dances to Bellini or Wagner. There’s just no accounting for taste, I guess…
It’s not that he doesn’t know orchestration; it’s that he does so in a style that doesn’t suit your taste. It isn’t that far from Copland’s style in Fanfare For THe COmmon Man to Shaker Loops
What Adams truly sucks at is setting text. I don’t know if this has changed in the meantime, but I clearly remember reading a few interviews with him around the time of Nixon in China and he was quite clear, he didn’t *like* opera, he didn’t *know* opera at all. Sure, there’s other genre’s to learn how to set text with, but if you’re writing operas, shouldn’t you at least like the art form, and not just the royalty checks that writing them brings in?
Henry Holland:
I did not mean to blame anybody for anything. I happen to love Berg and Schoenberg (and Messiaen, Ligeti, Eotvos, Nono and a few others), but MOST PEOPLE DON’T, AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM! (And I don’t consider them idiots and I don’t blame them for their tastes.) It is not a question of 12 tones or tonal, it is a question of the nature of modernism and its self-imposed inaccessibility. Even lighter stuff like Adams is considered inaccessible by some!
I don’t see what cinema has to do with the birth of modernist opera, or with the 20th century composers embacing modernist styles and the public’s resistance to this music.
My point in a nutshell: I think opera, for its survival, is badly in need of a new love affair between new works and a new public, something similar to what has been happening in the last 10-15 years to contemporary art.
One thing I found very strange and sad is an Opera News article when Adams said that he never had any training in writing for voices. I’m not blaming him. I was just stunned that one can get a degree in composition and not have a single course in vocal writing. In that ON article, Adams said that he’s basically learned how to write for the voice through years of experience, not because of any preparation in his training.
Well, the PBS audience gets what they pay for, namely Celtic Women (now featuring Hayley Westenra), Eye Over -insert country here-, and TCM-lite on Saturdays. PBS started losing its luster sometime around the the time that Cable started gaining luster. The Arts Channel, Ovation, and the late lamented VOOM HD network, which broadcast complete performances from all over the world (including a gorgeous Hoffman from Bilbao) on Gallery HD, gorgeous tours of gardens all over the world, and complete fashio shows furing every Fashion Week. Because its publicly funded, it has to cater to the audience which contributes to CPB.
When the Voom networks left the US I was heartbroken. The fashion week coverage was superb, Opera & an Omelette was my weekend Opera fix & so many great travel shows. Waaaahhh i’m still missing it a ton.
I was so happy that the Met decided (was convinced?) to broadcast Nixon in China. When the Met season was first announced, becuase Nixon in China was not in the Live in HD series, I decided that it was one performance I didn’t want to miss and organised my first trip to NY and the Met to see it. So excited to see an opera I will never have the opportunity to see here in Sydney!!
Henry Holland: If by “survival” you mean as “a living art relevant to now”
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. Thank you for the definition. I should have started out by defining the (starry eyed?) thing I was referring to.