Dell’universo immemore…
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking may be the next “documentary” character to take operatic life on the stage of the Met. According to Le Devoir, director Robert Lepage, composer Osvaldo Golijov and librettist Alberto Manguel are rumored to be collaborating on an opera for the Met’s 2015-16 season based on Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
YEAY!!! CAMILLE IS SO HAPPY! She just played herself as Athena at the Areopagus , casting the last vote for the Appassionata on the WQXR showdow.org of Beethoven piano sonatas.
Tomorrow is Beethoven’s 240th birthday, people, so get those Fidelio discs out and shined up for the festivities!!!
Sometimes, ONE VOTE does make all the difference. Happy Birthday Ludwig, Darling!
Its a little known fact that Hawking based ‘A Brief History of Time’ on Beethoven’s ‘alla Tedesca’ piano movements.
Happy Birthday Ludwig!
For me the INCOMPARABLE Beethoven recordings are the following :
I (My own funeral music)
II.
I had meant to post the penultimate movement + finale but they had taken it down…
Yes, CerquettiFarrell, we had best go to our corners now, first having asked pardon from Mamma Cieca Grizzly for our egregious off topic-ing. Tomorrow will come in just eleven more hours.
Thanks for posting the Hammerklavier but it’s is so so sad…even too sad for a funeral! I’m always planning my funeral music, too, but I constantly change. Right now there is a Chopin piece, forgotten which number, but I will probably change again. And you are too too young to be programming funereal music for yourself!
Don’t be so sure! NOT having quite a good year over here.
Anyway, I think that the Brahms 1st sextet, 2nd movement (remember Les Amants?) might work very well too!
I’ve always wanted the Prelude to the last act of Traviata played at my funeral.
“V” in Osvaldo….
Wasn’t there a Stephen Hawking character in Philip Glass’ The Voyage?
Like Faust, Orpheus, Aeneas or Don Juan, he’s one of those characters who reappears from time to time.
Aha. And since Camille’s post was so obviously OT, I’ll jump on the train and post this example of a different sort of Divadom. Just because I’d like to share. Not only for Spanish speakers
I sang in the second half of this concert. In the televised excerpts I went to sit in the audience (actually I can be glimpsed in one of the audience shots) and I cried myself to death, without understanding a word.
What an impressive artist, CF, and I had never even heard of her!
BM, they also performed the eternal tear-jerker Balada para un loco, with the original poet Horacio Ferrer, a small charming man, performing the narration himself. The bandeonist, guitarist and conductor wept when he started the first sentence -- “Las tardecitas de Buenos Aires…” I’ll never forget it.
Stephen Hawking as a subject can inspire all kinds of atmospheric “spacey” music which would suit Golijov well.
Actually, I had somewhat the opposite reaction. I find Golijov’s music to be wonderfully concrete and specific in emotion and character. The subject matter here seems a bit abstract for Golijov, especially when the human subject is both physically immobilized and (in real life) speaks through a computer’s voice. I can understand how the topic would be a natural for Robert Lepage. But Alberto Manguel strikes me as somebody who could take the material and work it up in a fashion that Golijov would have something to respond to. This seems like it will be a stretch for Golijov, but it could well be a salutary one.
I must admit only a passing acquaintance with Golijov’s work. I was thinking of Ainadamar which struck me as very atmospheric.
It made the cut in Opera News’ list of best “modern” operas.
m. croche beat me to it — yes, Hawking in his chair took off from the stage of the MET and was wafted into the cosmos at the beginning of The Voyage in the person of Douglas Perry.
Perry created the dual role of the Scientest/First mate in the 1992 performances (I saw the last performance of that run, on Haloween night); however, Phillip Creech sang the role(s) in the 1996 revival under Dennis Russel Davies.
I know that Creech is controversial, and he was not on best form as the scientest, but to his credit, he was much better in the second act as the mate on Columbus’ ship.
subject matter and production team actually sound quite exciting.
The story of a genius confined to a wheelchair, trapped with his own thoughts, finally able to unleash his imagination on the world, enjoys worldwide fame (which has everybody wanting a piece of him), only to end up with a wife/caretaker who abuses him -- might make for some good themes to explore.
Merge that with the fantastic visuals “A Brief History of Time” could invoke, perhaps intermingle the two stories together, and that could be interesting. Use excerpts from Brief History as metaphors for parts of Hawking’s life. The triumphant and tragic, the personal and the universal, etc.
The story of a crippled genius trapped within his own soundworld is also the story of Beethoven, so maybe bringing up Beethoven wasn’t so terribly off-topic. Please forgive me, La Cieca, for jumping the gun by a day.
If this is to be our Beethoven birthday thread, I will offer this one—Leonie in Fidelio.
…and Caballé in Ah Perfido:
More sublime Beethoven (Stoyanova and Garanca superb, Schade very good, Selig not so much):
Shame they had to cut the intro.
BM the Missa from Dresden had been posted in its entirety on Utube, I think I posted a few excerpts a couple of months ago. We share the same opinion regarding the soloists, although Stoyanova tired by the end of the Sanctus, quite understandable. Garanca was simply staggering in every way. The perfect concert mezzo (not meant in a derogative way).
I have my issues with Thielemann. Everything was near-perfectly executed. But I was strangely unmoved. And by the Missa of all works. I find him cold, calculating, a master indeed but always lacking a humane quality. After a few minutes of his Walkuere from Bayreth I had to push the stop button. Souless.
On the other hand, Luisi’s televised performance with the same orchestra and choir, different and lesser soloists, was more than a bit ragged but a real spiritual experience. Not to mention the old Concertgebouw Bernstein, or even more so, the old CBS Bernstein with Farrell.
I adore that Missa with our shared fave Eileen. Best ever!
I’m starting to think the same. Spectacular recording, and what a shame we don’t have a new remastering what with all the repackaging going about chez Sony.
I also adore the Toscanini with Lois Marshall, the Klemperer (though Hoengen is awful) and -- yeah I know you’ll hate me for this -- the Gardiner version. Ha ha!
The Bernstein has a few glitches -- a ragged cutoff here and there, and at one point in the Benedictus somebody clacks a violin bow or something against a music stand -- but it doesn’t matter a bit.
Sony did reissue it on CD -- I have it -- so maybe there’s hope they’ll bring it back.
Yeah the old remastering on the Prince Charles edition was FILTHY. The original LP pressing was LOADS better (I have the set). And Farrell -- well, that’s the right voice at the right time, if you get me.
Not Elisabeth Höngen, but Marga Höffgen.
I just love Missa Solemnis.
And Thielleman is superb on the podium
ANOTHER OT * ANOTHER OT * ANOTHER OT *
NEWSFLASH ** NEWSFLASH ** NEWSFLASH
This might be one of the filthiest thing I have ever heard coming from a supposedly serious artist
Courtesy of a dear friend.
Enjoy.
Increasingly, Bartoli sounds like she’s singing underwater. Grotesque.
because that’s what she DOES, with all that phlegm.
Diving bel canto. (I posted that on the wrong thread a little earlier!)
una zanzara fastidiosa
can i use that Camilly???
Most certainly may, especially if it makes you happy
!!!
Beyond belief. Who are the people that accept that noise as singing and who allows her to go on like that?
I’ve been tooling about YouTube today trying to find something for the birthday bash tomorrow, and I found one thing I really like and a few that are perhaps of interest. At least I hope so.
That Hammerklavier part 3 of 3 was just exquisite.
Hope you feel better, C+F. I don’t like to think of you having hard times.
Well, not easy, but music helps…
Esepcially this -- the best performance EVER. Sheer magic.
On Utube you can also choose the HD version. I just get lost in those pizzicatos starting around 5:50
Sublime, C+F.
Thank you so very much for having posted that. I guess I’ll have to throw my Takacs Quartett version on the funeral pyre now, it so totally put it in the shade.
You are so sweet. Thank you so much.
I know. I have so many complete sets : Budapest, Melos, Alban Berg (yuck), Emerson, Juilliard, Guarneri (2nd), Takacs, Cleveland, Italiano, Vegh, Endellion, the early instruments Smithson (Op.18) and virtually everything the Busch quartet have recorded, but IMO the Talich are supreme in this music. A desert island box if ever there was one.
This is wonderful, CF. Outdoes even my beloved. lamented Quartetto Italiano.
At first I thought this was some kind of joke (especially the chuckling “dunque io son” sounding coloratura), but this is actually FOR REAL.
How is it that she sang Norma in concert this past summer and it was so under the radar?! I guess the hall she sang it in would have to have been the size of a large living room, so perhaps not that many people actually heard it, since you’d think an event such as this would garner at least some reviews in major publications!
At first I thought this was some kind of joke (especially the chuckling “dunque io son” sounding coloratura), but this is actually FOR REAL.
How is it that she sang Norma in concert this past summer and it was so under the radar?! I guess the hall she sang it in would have to have been the size of a large living room, so perhaps not that many people actually heard it, since you’d think an event such as this would garner at least some reviews in major publications!
Well -- here is the FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7604ba5e-8916-11df-8ecd-00144feab49a.html#axzz18ESXd9MU
there are also six or seven German reviews -- could post links if anyone wants to read them.
aha!….that would explain why they didn’t come up in my search, although I still would have expected more.
What I don’t get is why Bartoli is so fixated on Norma lately? She’s gone from singing obscure music to one of the most iconic roles in the entire repertoire, but one that doesn’t suit her at all. If she wants to put her unique stamp on a familiar work, why Norma?
Back in the day when she was relatively fresh and still focussed on appearing in staged opera, she spoke of this hope that warhorses in the repertoire could be reassessed, stripped of their baggage in terms of tradition and 20th Century performance history, and presented back the way they would have been when they were new. The most frequently cited example by her was Carmen, which she seemed to seriously think she could get the Met to mount for her in a tiny theatre somewhere in New York. And to be fair to her, the Bartoli of 10 or 15 years ago would probably have been a brilliant Carmen in a small space and Opera Comique style.
Anyway, back to the present day, and obviously she’s realised that concerts are the best outlets for her talents given the lack of money to actually stage opera in small spaces and still pay her the fees she’s used to. But I think stuff like this Norma probably comes from the same spirit and intention that prompted her to express those wishes about Carmen -- the whole point seems to be that she is deliberately going for an iconic role to show us all that there is another way.