No cure for the common scold
Every time La Cieca says she’s through once and for all reading Norman Lebrecht, that middlebrow minstrel of the maestro myth soars to new heights of noisomeness. This time (yet again) it’s about how utterly callous those silly opera singers are for canceling (imagine!) when they’re too sick to sing.
Besides creating out of whole cloth the notion that Rolando Villazon was supposed to sing a Strauss opera earlier this summer, Lebrecht manages to insult Joyce DiDonato by implying that her current success is based not so much on talent but simply her willingness to show up on time, broken leg or no. (“That is why she is now every opera house’s mezzo of choice, taking the prime roles that were once Cecilia Bartoli‘s.”) You will not be surprised to hear that along the way he takes a detour to piss on Luciano Pavarotti‘s grave. [The Telegraph]
Bernstein outing someone else was certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Lebrecht on di Donato: “Here was one of the world’s great singers stepping in to cover her own understudy, and still happy to spend half the afternoon honouring a commitment to public broadcasting, when lesser artists would insist on complete rest in a darkened room.
“It was a humbling moment, a glimpse of the kind of total commitment delivered by some artists, a dedication usually confined to the vocations of medicine and divinity. It is artists like these who set the gold standard in classical music, both in performance and in personal conduct. They are the real heroes.”
Some how, I am at a loss to find a slam against Joyce di Donato in so much as a word of the above.
Amen, Amen, Amen!
Tim
I’m with you on that one Will. Other than he got the details of the replacement wrong. Kate Aldrich was scheduled to sing with Lawrence Brownlee in the “second cast”. Rather than have the understudy do it Joyce di Donato very kindly stepped in and did many of Aldrich’s performances. This meant that on several occasions she sang Rosina two nights in a row.
I really don’t see where he dissed JDD or for that matter pissed on Pav’s grave. Or for that matter said anything worse than some of the comments we put up on here.
A little grandiose there? Not to denigrate PB or its denizens, but this is a bulletin board on a blog, not a column in a leading metropolitan newspaper. I think it’s safe to say that Lebrecht’s writing should reflect a higher standard of responsibility, fairness and insight than the postings here.
I think it’s demeaning to use an artist’s behavior, however praiseworthy, as a club to beat other artists. What if DiDonato had been in so much pain from the broken leg that she needed to take strong painkiller? What if the night before her PBS interview been kept awake by street noise outside her hotel room? It’s perfectly plausible then that she would have canceled a) the Covent Garden performance or b) the jump-in La Scala performance, or even that most important of all her commitments, the Lebrecht interview. And then where would she be on Lebrecht’s “gold standard?” Right down there with Gheorghiu and “Big Lucy,” that’s where.
Or, to approach the argument another way: suppose Villazon had been in slightly better vocal form going into the Tivoli performances, and when the voice started going south, he managed to soldier on through the whole program, winning an ovation from his public. Should not then Lebrecht heap upon him the praise he reserved for “grandmotherly pianist Maria Joao Pires” and Paul Lewis of the sore arm?
What I find insulting here is that he defines what tha “gold standard” is, then he massages the facts of DiDonato’s life history so they serve as examples of The Lebrecht Way. As such, the implication is that DiDonato’s success is not a function of talent or intelligence, but rather because she hews to the rules N-rm-n inscribed on the Sinai tablets.
Again this is Lebschlecht massaging his own ego – the man who drops into Pires’s dressing-room to kiss her swollen fingers, or who hobnobs with Paul Lewis. My, what an honour – for Lewis and Pires, of course.
I’m under the impression that Rolando sang only the first three songs (approximately seven minutes) and then called it quits.
My Bad! I misread LaCieca and didn’t notice the “suppose”
Timoteo
The mystifying thing is his implication that DiDonato has somehow taken contracts away from Bartoli, when a good 10 years at least seem to have passed since Bartoli was last focussed on building a traditional operatic career in the world’s great opera houses.
The ROH were pretty frank about Bartoli’s debut there happening so long after she first became well-known, saying they had struggled to find some appropriate repertoire for her. It ended up being Haydn’s L’annima del filosofo, and I think the only thing she has been back for since was Il Turco In Italia, with which she did admittedly have a great success. But when was she last at the Met, Paris, La Scala, Munich or Vienna? There is enough Rossini going on in great houses to keep DiDonato, Geneaux and Bartoli busy if they all so desire – it is plain that Bartoli’s decision to focus on concerts with a few choice operatic appearances in Zurich is deliberate.
When Bartoli was younger she seemed to think that she could change the world and get the Met to rent a tiny theatre in which she could do her C18th rep and Carmen, which in a way would have been wonderful I’m sure, but the economics of the opera world just don’t work like that these days, it never came to pass, and I think she displayed impressive self-awareness when she shifted the emphasis of her career, and has, as a result, done some very interesting work and found the best possible outlet for her extraordinary talents and small scale voice. But back in the day when she was doing Susanna at the Met etc, most of us had probably never even heard of DiDonato.
The above is the detailed, articulate version of what I meant to say.
I’m not quite sure she’s done anything at the Met in the last decade, by the way. I imagine this is a combination of things: the demise of the Concord jet, some rocky relations over suitcase arias in Figaro that can’t have endeared her to the administration, and yeah, the fact that she sings only a few roles in the mainstream rep. I guess if she were a big Met star, she could ask them to put on Nina o sia la pazza per Amore or whatever oddity she’s dusted off lately. But for whatever combination of the reasons above and her voice size–not inaudible at the Met as the sour old queens will say once they’re done masturbating over signed photos of Cossotto, but not big enough to leave her a lot of good options for things to sing in a big house–she isn’t and so she never did.
And yeah, I think JdD was a talented young artist in Houston when Bartoli was having more of an American career. So little overlap it’s hard to imagine much of a Cuzzoni/Bordoni thing going on…
La Cieca is not talking out of school here (she was invited to the press conference after all) when she says that when Peter Gelb was asked to name a singer he has tried and thus far failed to attract to the Met, he immediately nominated Cecilia Bartoli. So the impression I get is that if Bartoli wanted to sing at any given opera house, the management there would be more than willing to talk or even to do a lot of bending, but she’s not interested. Apparently this point she prefers performing concerts to staged opera, and that when she does want to do opera, the intimate theater at Zurich is her go-to house. (The high fees and low taxes there are not exactly a discouragement either.)
Also to be considered: Anyone who has read the book “CINDERELLA AND COMPANY: Backstage at the Opera with Cecilia Bartoli”, by Manuela Hoelterhoff, would be aware of the fact that La Bartoli has a sheer terror of flying. She is described as taking a limo from Miami to her next concert in New Orleans, to avoid the fear of getting on a plane.
Frankly, I don’t think phobias are anything to be dismissed lightly — admit it, most of us have at least one.
Why get on a plane to America, when the fees and conditions for performing are more inviting in Europe? I wouldn’t.
I admire Bartoli, but she’s really not in competion with dear Joyce — there’s plenty of work (and glory) to go around for talent at such level.
Lebrecht seems to have developed a new “talent” — the ability to defecate through his mouth.
I sincerely hope my bluntness does not offend our beloved doyenne!
She strikes me nowadays as a musicologist who happens to be a very successful recording star. I’m not being snide or catty, but she’s evidently found something that interests her much more than spending several weeks on the side of the Atlantic that holds little interest for her.
Well to go along with LC’s comment from Gelb, I recall going back a year or two (maybe more) in the everchanging incarnations of Met Futures, there briefly appeared a listing for a Met revival of Julius Caesar with Bartoli listed as Cleopatra in the period of 2009-2011 (roughly). I don’t recall any other information and the item only lasted through one change. And unless you are VERY thorough and make your own copy of each set of revisions, the information can be fleeting, when it’s been dropped, it’s gone.
So I don’t remember any more details about this but it did hint that the Met had been in discussions with Bartoli to return to staged opera in NYC. And this seems to go along with Gelb’s comments at the press conference LC attended.
Yes, exactly, it’s a personal choice on Bartoli’s part.
Many years ago I took a back-stage tour at the Met which was ( still is?) by the Guild. The “tour guide” was from the Guild and seemed knowledgeable (everything she said that I knew something about checked out)
The guide said that soloists “audition” ( not her word) by singing on the stage and having a “judge” standing in the Family Circle to hear how well the singer projects. The guide was asked if anyone famous had “flunked” and she mentioned Bartoli. Hearsay, perhaps, but I could imagine that a singer would not want to appear in a place where their voice is not heard to best advantage.
Lebrecht draws an invidiously gendered distinction between effeminate opera singers (“Lucy,” “prima donna,” etc.) who get all fainty and cancelly when they feel ill (or irrational, or hysterical), and True Artists who are “heroic” and “brave”… and tend to be pianists. Maria Joao Pires is described as “grandmotherly,” but only to highlight how much of a man she was to play with a swollen finger. When JdD goes on in place of the second-cast singer, she shows “a dedication usually confined to the vocations of medicine and divinity,” that is, a dedication associated with overwhelmingly male professions. It’s no wonder the Lebrecht’s comparison of JdD and Bartoli makes no reference to vocal or musical abilities, as he clearly has no love for the operatic voice.
What an asshole.
Well said!
Apparently the only excusable cancellation this year was the late Sir Charles Mackerras, “who had courageously committed to two concerts as his cancer clock ticked away. Legends are made of such gritty determination.”
He died, in other words, with his boots on. Had Sir Charles withdrawn from those concerts due to his terminal illness, Lebrecht would presumably have faulted him for being a weak sister just like Luciano.
This rings so true.
Now that I think of his book on the Covent Garden (yes, I read it, don’t ask… the supply of gossip was extraordinary), the singers tended to figure as unreliable airheads and the conductors as rock-solid geniuses.
With only one exception. In several places he hints that Richard Bonynge would have no conducting career were it not for his wife. According to NL, when Sutherland became big, she permanently inserted the RB clause in her contracts. No RB, no JS. This according to NL.
Although… I can see how Bonynge could be demoted to the lesser creatures in this worldview even though he was a conductor. He lost his Promethean IT factor, usually found in conductors, by — marrying a singer.
But Sutherland doesn’t come out well either. “If I don’t have Richard conducting, he’ll leave me,” the frightened young JS is supposed to have said this to somebody in the Covent Garden administration, according to NL.
Has anybody else flipped through that book, perchance?
The Sutherland-Bonynge partnership was clearly a relationship that “worked” for them both personally and professionally. It’s hardly a secret – and wasn’t when Lebrecht wrote his book – that Bonynge piggy-backed on Sutherland’s career, but it is also clear that Sutherland not only got him jobs in the big opera houses, but was also willing to sing in less illustrious places – the old Stadschouwburg in Amsterdam, for example – because Bonynge liked working in the city. There is no doubt that Sutherland believed that Bonynge had discovered her bel canto potential and helped her to realise it when he was conducting. If she felt more secure being conducted by Bonynge than anyone else, and gave better performances as a result, I’m sure few of her fans complained. I didn’t hear the glory days, but the Lucias in the mid-1980s at Covent Garden were still pretty spectacular. Bonynge is actually a very fine conductor of ballet music, especially the neglected French repertoire. Is Friedrich Haider – Mr Gruberova – a better conductor of bel canto operas?
Read – if you must – Lebrecht’s book on Covent Garden and you won’t fail to notice the scarcely disguised homophobia that surrounds his descriptions of known homosexuals – the general director David Webster, Rudolf Nureyev – who flit through his narrative. Well, at least the dead ones. Anti-semitism is bad in the Lebrecht Weltanschauung but homophobia is okay.
I don’t care for Norman Leschmuckt, but iI did see Bartoli sing Ah non credea and Ah non giunge on the Classic Arts Showcase on TV.
The aria was sung pretty slowly, and la Bartoli tried to get evey drop of emotion from the aria–she seemed as if she were trying rather hard to squeeze water from a damp dish rag.
The cabaletta was a camp and a party piece!
Well, what Norman doesn’t seem to realize is that singing over inflamed vocal cords can result in permanent damage. A head cold can be sung over if a singer has good technique. Otherwise it is better to cancel.
What does seem to be true these days is that there are a rather small group of real operatic superstars. Many of the superstars are inclined to cancel – for a variety of reasons. Villazon and Dessay due to real vocal problems. Others like Terfel and Gheorghiu have more questionable rationales. But each singer and each cancellation is an individual case. You can’t make sweeping generalizations about them.
I was told however that at CAMI they were very upset about the high ratio of major fee-earning, commission-paying clients who had canceled the Met last season. There was a whole meeting about the lost income and how to make these artists honor their contracts. Similar things are happening on Broadway. People are comparing old-time stars like Merman whose understudy never went on to Matthew Cavenaugh and Karen Olivo in the “West Side Story” revival who were missing several performances a week. Donna Murphy was excoriated for her cancellation record in the “Wonderful Town” revival. Every time you go to a show – usually a musical – the program is full of little white slips.
Lebrecht DOES realize that performing when ill or injured (whether a singer with inflamed chords or a pianist with a torn arm muscle) can cause permanent damage, but in his hyper-romantic world you have to be prepared to die for your Art—like Mackerras, he practically says.
I think the last couple years, especially at the Met, fostered a short-lived craze for canceling, because Gelb said some things about it making opera exciting, going-out-there-a-nobody-and-coming-back-a-star, etc., but I don’t think they’ll put up with it for much longer. If a slightly indisposed singer wants very badly to sing, perhaps that’s just what she should do.
Though to be fair, Gualtier, Merman herself admits in her autobiography that the stories about her “never” canceling were so much hooey. For example, she missed almost a month of performances of Dubarry Was a Lady (perhaps due to complications of a botched abortion?) with Gypsy Rose Lee deputizing. Merman also famously missed a couple of weeks of Gypsy when she injured her vocal cords, and when she returned to the show, she insisted that the keys be lowered on several of her songs.
True, Merman wasn’t the type to call in sick just because she was feeling a little out of sorts, and she did indeed have a mighty work ethic, just like Mary Martin. But part of that “ethic” surely was that in later career at least these ladies had a financial interest in their shows, earning a percentage of the gross and (sometimes) providing a big chunk of the backing. So if Merman canceled, it cost Merman money, which is not the same situation Donna Murphy was in.
And opera singers do cancel: even those we think of as total workhorses like Birgit Nilsson and Beverly Sills did cancel from time to time.
One reason for Merman’s reputation for never canceling is the marvelous routine that Elaine S. does about understudying for La M.
As you can see, I started typing my reply and was distracted (by work, of all things!) while you posted yours.
This reminds me of Elaine Strich’s one-woman show where she frantically describes running off to her other gig while she was covering for Merman. Each night, she had to check in to make sure that Merman was going on before doing a mad dash to the other theatre.
An artists’ manager once told me: “All singers are sick most of the time. That’s just part of the business. The singers who have careers are the ones who have figured out how to sing when they’re sick.”
So the issue here is more organic than moral.
“Honey, I sang my whole career with a cold.”
–Marilyn Horne
Excuse the strange comparison, but Lebrecht reminds me a bit of Dr. Joy Schlessinger. Every once in a while, he realises that he hasn’t been the topic of discussion and makes some inflamatory remarks to make himself “relevant” again.
True kashania. I only have to think of one Lebrecht article I read. First, he was storming of ‘how classical recording was dead’, according to him. The very next sentence he was attacking a western government for their treatment, sending back illegal immigrants, who had paid money to boat smugglers. Lebrecht: ‘ a tool – missing a few screws of its own, in order to even fake the job it is attempting.’.
There should be an opportunity to check the Villazon vocal estate on September 6, when his forthcoming Bohème in Vienna will be transmitted live
http://roi.orf.at/programm/254842
….if he does not cancel.
The conductor is FWM……….
I hope that broadcast is on labor day; it would be the funnest chat ever!
…and, yes, it is labor day! Woo Hoot! I hope there is a chat.
I want to hear this voice people talk about so much.
I WAS going to spend Labor Day weekend in Maine drinking gin and eating blueberry pie, as usual, but the broadband is more reliable here. So I’ll have to go without pie…
its like that brilliant simpsons episode where the billboards / advertisements come to life and the only way to kill them, is to ignore them. Maybe if we ignore Lebrecht and Zeffirelli and Miller, they will go softly into that good night… or start focusing on broadway
Stormin’ Norman’s up-close-and-personal interview with JDD was just broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He was all over her, but she is a very delightful (and savvy) interviewee, and certainly no walkover. She was saying that she would maybe like to try Carmen one day at the Opéra Comique with a fantastic director and conductor … and Norman suggested a contender for Don José — JDF. Don’t give up the day job(s) to become a casting director, Norman. (He also doesn’t understand that ‘Rossini’ and ‘Rosina’ are not pronounced with the same sibilant).
Joyce and Edita in ‘Norma’ at Salzburg last week …
Ouch. Were they singing in the same key?
..and here is the link to the BBC iPlayer to listen to the interview :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t74vr/The_Lebrecht_Interview_Joyce_DiDonato/