One-eyed king
Which recently disgraced genius is tingling with excitement at an offer to help a fellow artist achieve redemption?
Cher Public
- MrGuy1804: You are right on the money. I was not terribly impressed with any of the singing. There were a few... 12:29 AM
- Camille: That was fun, thanks! I had completely forgotten Eastern Airlines, the Wings of Man. With a name like... 12:22 AM
- Henry Holland: Thanks! Too bad they didn’t do Der Zwerg instead of the (wonderful) Puccini. The LA Opera... 12:09 AM
- Camille: Thanks Blue, for the review. Lord, what are “earthy colorings”? 12:06 AM
- Gualtier M: Here is Carmelita Pope in the actual 70′s era Pam commercial at 2:36 in: httpv://www.you... 12:03 AM
- CruzSF: kashania, please tell us more about these performances. Who? How presented? And don’t neglect the... 12:03 AM
- bluecabochon: Lucky you, Bob! I;d see it again if I could. Here’s TT’s New York Times review:... 11:53 PM
- kashania: HH: I thought of you tonight while watching the COC’s double of Florentine Tragedy and Gianni... 11:28 PM
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Is someone somewhere doing a production of Oedipus Rex and has asked Julie T to be a consultant (based on her previous experience)?
hi, manou,
It’s always good to see you here
i don’t think brits are useless. my guess would be julie t helping out lepage.
OT: I see the Aida soon. can you tell me something a out the dress rehearsal? also what do you know about the fidelio production?
Hello Sarah,
Are you coming to London? I do hope you have booked for the Alagna performances – he was very impressive at the dress rehearsal. I am going to see the performance tomorrow, with the Carosi replacement. If you have not seen the production before, you will gather that it has rather polarized opinion. I found it much more interesting this time around – maybe they adjusted some details, or maybe I am mellowing. It is of course always worth seeing Borodina and she did not disappoint me.
The Fidelio is the Jürgen Flimm Met production, which you may have seen before. The cast is very good indeed : Stemme, Wottrich, Rydl and Willard White. Kirill Petrenko conducts.
If you are over here, do try to see Clybourne Park – very provocative and funny play and an excellent production.
Have fun!
I am here already, Manou. I saw the Parsifal and loved it. And I do have a ticket for one of the Alagna performances. i am going to read the Holden book as well. Mozart is my favorite or should I say favourite?
It would be lovely to meet for a coffee – if you would like to do that. Perhaps Cafe Paul?
Sarah – how long are you here for? I am expecting a Scottish invasion (grandchildren) this weekend, so I am quite frantically busy.
Manou — I am here until 30 March. If you have any time and would like to have a chat that is not virtual, please email me:
Hope it’s OK to do this????
london012001@gmail.com
Have fun this weekend!
Sarah – I shall be in touch!
If you are staying here that long, you may discover that many Brits are indeed useless – a secret we try very hard to keep from other nations…
Oh My WORD, I want to see that Fidelio, I knew nothing about it.
*mortgage*
actually Manou – I have lived here. And already discovered it but was trying to be diplomatic! But I became a Brit anyway….. I mean legally!
hope to see you soon!
OT, Happy Birthday Emanuele Conegliano, aka Lorenzo da Ponte! Long may your work be treasured.
. . . appropos watched Amadeus on Blu-ray last night. Amazing.
Also born today is composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)
For those who care: I just saw, at Tully Hall the other day, a flyer for an upcming Honegger’s'Jeanne d’Arc. Call Tylly Hall-don’t know no mo’.
Poor poor Honegger, he wrote the most hideous, bombastic and deadening music ever to penetrate one’s ears. Urgh..
Ah, yes that bombastic, hideous Honegger:
But seriously, Mr. Papopera, you should give Honegger’s Comic opera Les Aventures du Roi Pausole a try. The story is from the naughty/sexy Pierre Louÿs, the fellow who provided Debussy with the erotic Bilitis.
The samba of the seven birds will gladden the heart of even the surliest of curmudgeons.
Here are the only two clips from Roi Pausole available on youtube, presented faut de mieux.
Honegger’s symphonies are marvelous works and were once staples of the symphonic repertoire (along with Roussel’s). They deserve wider audiences. I can also highly recommend the string quartets, particularly the 2nd.
Yes, there was a time when Honegger was very popular, then deserved obscurity. Je connais Pausole, non merci mon cher.
Honegger’s Roi Pausole has just been re-released by Brilliant Classic. Buy it for a song while you can!
Though the double-CD set with Mario Venzago contains a good bit of the dialogue, which I enjoy having. I loaned my copy several years back to a friend whose musical diet at that time consisted of Reich, Ligeti and Wuorinen. He liked it so much, I never got it back…
I see too that various cycles of the symphonies can be had quiet cheaply. Strongly recommended for those who don’t know them. Not a dog in the bunch.
To be honest, Honegger’s music is not my favorite – but I was pole-axed by the impact of a production of ‘Jeanne d’Arc au bucher’ when I saw it – from Montpellier, directed by Jean-Paul Scarpitta, with Sylvie Testud as Jeanne. Again, recitation and music doesn’t mix too well for me, but the piece unfolded in a single breath and was shattering in its power. I was really surprised.
It notched up 100′s of performances at the Paris Opera, and it still crops up regularly in Europe – so I don’t think the work’s appeal is a secret.
This is interesting: I didn’t think Honegger would be viewed with so much antipathy and indifference nowadays. I find his most serious music worked out in detail, with lots of unusual rhythmic twists and a very rich harmonic palette. He wrote some of the greatest sypmhonies and chamber music of the 2nd quarter of the 20th century. Most days of the week, I’d rather listen to him than Hindemith.
What music do you like exactly, papopera?
Wagner, Verdi, Massenet, G Charpentier, Fauré, Schreker, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Montemezzi, Krenek, Berlioz, Alfano, Mahler, Respighi, R Strauss, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, Berg, Giordano, Spontini, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Weill, Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven, Ullman, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovky, Bruneau, Mascagni, Haas, Sibelius, Lalo, Ives, Bax, Meyerbeer, Delius, Debussy, Holst, Thomson, Vaughan Williams, Gretchaninov, Satie, Glazunov, Paderewsky……….
-d’you want some more, please sir ?
All Krenek? Really?
It is a treasure trove!
He had a grocery store in–where?–Manhattan or Brooklyn–for a while after he emigrated and ended up at Columbia University here in la Grande Mela, teaching and/or founding the Italian department. What a guy!! There must be a couple interesting biographies out there, no? Auguri, genio si geniale!
Camille – I much enjoyed this :
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Wrote-Mozart-Extraordinary/dp/075382180X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299771695&sr=1-1-catcorr
light reading and lots of fun.
I’ll second the recommendation. Fun read. Very, very interesting life.
Merci, madame manou–all that I would have time for at present and I will recommend to my husband who is currently working on an assignment which involves da Ponte.
My husband is a great admirer of your bon mots, I would further have you know.
Camille – I like to think of your husband as our very own l’Arlésienne, absent yet very present on Parterre. Furthermore, he seems to be simultaneously uxorious but also a bit… shall we say strict towards you. A conflicted character, it seems
But I am in dire need of admirers, so I send him a warm greeting from the other side of the pond.
manou, fear not, you have admirers this side of the étang too.
…sono commossa…
Manou: admiration provided upon request.
And more in stock, to be delivered if required
I am overwhelmed – I am banking all this for emergency supplies (for the next time I get abused).
Cue abuse in 5, 4, 3, 2 …..
I am ducking……!
(Actually – I am off to Aida)
Aida, an ideal role for manou! Why did ROH Covent Garden spend all that money to bring over la Monastyrska when they have the real diva residing in their own patria mia!
Manou, though I’m late to join the bandwagon, count yet another staunch admirer here. Give us a full report on that Aida, if you will.
manou, I hope you remember I’m in your corner. Big fan on the West Coast.
Manou, don’t let the abuse get you down. Count me as another of your fans.
Chere Camille, Rodney Bolt’s “The Librettist of Venice” is a lively and fascinating take on this enterprising man who befriended Casanova, was always one step ahead of the law, and indeed created the Italian language department at Columbia. Definitely worth reading.
Grazie, bella Donn’Anna.
Could you please, just between us girls, whisper in my ear the truth about you and Don Giuvanni–did you, or didn’t you??? I have always been so curious to know the truth, if truth to tell, there really is one to tell…it has never seemed black or white a situation to me but a sort of greige….
Did da Ponte establish Casa Italiana at Columbia University? I remember going there when I was in college to see Bianca Berini sing a recital in a small library room at la Casa. Many, many years later (after the building had been renovated) I went to see Tucci & Albanese get some commenorative award. It was in the early days of popular Botox usage; everyone gasped in wonderment when the two of them came into the room at how these 80+ dames looked so young!
– It’s sad that da Ponte, like Mozart, died in poverty. And we think we are living in dog-eat-dog cutthroat partisan times!
I do not know how far Casa Italiana darws back, only that it is a wonderful resource.
Does anyone REALLY know how old Albanese is!???? Could she be over 100 and trying to look 95? One thing I admired of Doreothy Kirsten is the fact she lied about her age to the day she died. I remember all the pearl-clutching that went on when it was discovered she was actually 7 years older than what she claimed. Good for Dorothy, a really savvy lady, who could not only manage The Girl, but sing Kern, Porter and hold her own with FRANKIE! That’s'a diva.
Well spoken Camille! … yes, I recollect Kirsten, but I was very young when I saw her (in Montemezzi’s l’Amore dei Tre Re at War Memorial).
– Actually all I can clearly remember is (1) how VERY VERY beautiful the score is: and (2) they had a set that looked like a medieval castle… Kirsten wore a long blue dress with a dark maroon cape draped over it and when she ran up and down the stairs going up to the castle ramparts to see if one her lovers was returning yet, she would throw that cape in all directions like a toreador in the bull ring or a bullwrestler at one of the rodeos back home. I was always somewhat taken aback (I couldn’t afford any pearls to clutch in those days) by Kirsten’s and Regina Resnik’s choice of footwear onstage. I couldn’t figure out how either of them (who both portrayed characters in operas set during the middle ages) got a hold of those glamorous 1960′s high heels to trounce around in those old castles & dungeons.
– Really I appreciated Kirsten most later on. A friend of mine was a big fan of hers and he would play her Fanciulla broadcast from the Met over and over until I was mesmerized by her.
Speaking of divas in their late 90′s, does anyone happen to know if Risë Stevens is still doing well? A colleague of mine is writing an article about her, and wants to call her to interview her, but does not want to disturb her if she is not up to it.
And even though it is true camp, loved her in Great Caruso with Lanza. Why no Region 1 DVD yet is beyond me.
thanks WIndyCityMan for the Dorothy tribute. Just catching up now.
My first diva and I knew from the moment I saw her, coughing as Mimi, that THAT was a diva. It was only years later I discovered all her pop singing and that she was as good at that as she was as Mimi, Butterly, and The Girl.
phoenix, is there not a picture of Dorothy on the lower concourse level of the War Memorial? Down where the infirmary and bathrooms and coffee bar and tables are all mixed up together? I seem to recall a picture of her in that part.
Well, thanks for the memories. A wonderful lady, whom I’ll always be grateful to for my first glimpse of glamour on the opera stage.
I remember that tacky 1960′s painting of Kirsten (that loooked like a morphed foto), that grand diva wearing a conervative bubble hairdo on her head, downstairs in the basement lobby. Kisten doesn’t belong in the basement by any means, but the painting was just awful. At War Memorial’s lower lobby, all I remember from the old days were BEAUTIFUL greyscape B&W portrait fotos on the medieval pillars. Camille, ashamed to admit that the last time I was at War Memorial was to see Zajick as Marfa in Khovanschina and that was a long time ago. Reason why I haven’t been back: when I walked up that short flight of stairs and into the main lobby, I could hardly recognize the place. They had done extensive “renovations” that “modernized” the place but destroyed the grandeur & mystique of the main lobby. Even worse, they were hawking chachkas all over the place like it was operaqueens’ fleamarket. This I KNEW I could blame on the invaders the east & midwest! The ONLY chachka hawking that was indulged in during the 1960′s that I remember was a very astute, elegant & very endearing old Jewish man selling “complete” season programs for that specific year (on the right side of the lobby as you walked in).
– In 1990, I was so turned off by the crassness of that lobby … can you imagine me getting turned off by the crassness of anything, as vulgar as I am ??? so you know how hard i took it.
– In my younger years, the downstairs bar was always my favorite place in War Memorial. They used to have a beautiful picture of Regine (as Elisabeth in Tannhauser… I believe, but don’t quote me on it) on one of those medieval pillars scattered around the bar. I don’t specifcally remember a portrait foto of Kirsten, though. That downstairs place had a magic about it… and it wasn’t just the drinks. So in 1990, after seeing what they had done to the “main” lobby, I was too scared to go downstairs to see how they ruined that beautiful place, thus I went directly to my seat in the parterre boxes (of course!) and stayed on that level for the rest of the performance, with my nose up in the air!
– Now, dear, I spent most of my life as a standee, so when I went back home to SF (I lived there for 7 years in my youth, so it is one of my home[s]) I always splurged. But to the see the magisterial interior of that operahouse messed up like that, I just couldn’t go back, so I haven’t. You wouldn’t believe what an influence that operahouse & lobby had on the rest of my life. The lobby was extremely wideopen and spacious, no clutter anywhere. In fact, until just last year when my health started failing rapidly, I never would allow furniture in my home except for a small table. I slept on the floor like I always with just open carpeting, no curtains, but with large almost floor to ceiling windows… All’aperto!.
the painting of Kirsten I remember hung in the basement lobby of the Met, not War Memorial
Camille, kennst du Duets with the Dames, the CD of Frank’s radio-show pairings with various famous and infamous ladies? She and Frank get the giggles during “(Let’s take) An Old Fashioned walk”. Adorable (also great on that CD, Frank and a sober (?) Judy Garland trading barbs, probably scripted but once in a while one gets a zinger in that sounds like a zinger) and Pearl Bailey who is utterly hilarious.
I enjoyed Dottie a lot, saw her often and she never marked or saved or walked through anything even as an old lady (by the standards of that century). She also kept working on her Italian, since after a while she was mostly doing Minnie and Tosca, where good parlando is crucial, as well as Mimi and Violetta (not the best but not the worst I’ve seen, Pop Tart might qualify as among the worst along with Loukianetz, Jaho, Fabbricini though she was a lot of fun to watch and the sounds she made –!!!!! — and at La Scala she TREMBLED through the whole thing, Muti had locked the Loggione so she wouldn’t be booed but still she was in fear of her life, “I made her work with an ACTRESS”, Mo. Muti told me after the dress, beaming, I thought but did not say he should have gotten her to work with a ventriloquist who could have sung in the wings, but that had Alagna when he was an adorable bon bon and a great production, Cavani, so who could hate?, Todeschi, Vassileva and of course that abomination, Sills) and Manon Lescaut.
She may have been the Oldest Butterfly in history but who can forget that Tosca, her 30th anniversary with the Met, with Gobbi and Corena and Harvaut all toward the end. They tried to get Corelli (it was 75 but I know he sang with the Met in Asia) but it ended being the fine but not Franco John Alexander, a very good singer however.
She wasn’t as much fun as Licia who had that true Garlic shamelessness about her (Dottie was a WASP from New Jersey who probably had swung a bit as a ghel, she was very pretty and the sewing circle seemed to know her quite well, while I tend to think Licia had a hands off view of the cave of Icarus including I bet her own) and a more ringing top, but did indeed save and sing speak all the time at least in my experience (most extreme: she and Tagliavini as quite elderly Mimi and Poet talking through about half of Boheme).
However, Dottie never needed to do that, nor would she have run around like a rat who’s just eaten poison during a Thanksgiving Turandot with Franco and Birgit (Licia grabbed Franco’s leg, when not running around, whenever she could, he’d kick her off, she’d run around and grab it again and even tried a run in act two until Birgit flung her cape over her with a look of such fierce hatred that even Licia got the message).
I lost some respect for Licia when she screamed about how GREAT Miss Cherry Cola was in Luisa Miller. She turned around and screamed this at ME. It’s true I had met her often through my life, but I didn’t like her and was doing nothing at all (perhaps I had said to my trick er companion, ‘she is horrific beyond words’ in the most dulcet bedroom whisper but that is all).
But then I never had much respect for Licia, though I grew up being told I had missed her great days (yup, not as fer as ah kin tell).
But Dottie, sort of like Mary Costa, another wonderful singer who oddly, was penalized because she was so pretty (now SHE was a very good Violetta, even vocally if not quite Toni Starr in volume or Woppish abandon but her tuning was better. Toni and Maria Sereni got way off in their act two duet and Gildo di Nunzio, the prompter began singing with them to try to get them right, alas to no effect. There was some booing but not from such as I was with since we LURVED Toni and even Maria Sereni who was molto gentile. Perfection, we understood, does not abide often amongst human kind).
o dear LORD! All we like sheep have gone astray! That is, Camille, who had such good intention to get her packing done has spent the last hour with Anton Walbrook on her lap. Or, rather I should say on her spouse’s laptop — watching that superb film of Pique Dame. A jewel in every respect, from the actiing of Walbrook, Evans et al., to the Oliver Messel costumes and the fine Georges Auric score, ingeniously utilizing Gluck’s Orpheus, either Wiener or Pariser Fassung — ich weiss das nit’!
Oh, go watch it, youse guys, at it so MUCH better than the sloppy seconds served at the Met last night.
First PHOENIX — Thank you very much for giving all this information regarding the old War Memorial as I have only known it from 1984 on. I saw Khovanschina there in 1984–and I ran from the House in HORROR at the burning of the Old Believers, swearing NIEMALS would I see it again. Well, I am going to have to swear off as Olga will be putting in an appearnace as Marfa, maybe, so I’ll go for that one.
I am really QUITE certain I saw our Dorothy (should we start a society called “Friends of Dorothy”?) in her guise as “FIORA” on that lower level of the War Memorial just this last summer. I always go to Les Bains down there, as the pictures are so beautiful and lovingly rendered — capturing so many wonderful artists in some of their best roles. The one of Tebaldi as Maddalena, e.g., is everything that is fresh, young, and beautiful and golden in this world and the next. Marvelous photos. Dorothy Kirsten used to have a defiantly triumphant looking TOSCA picture down on the concourse level at the MET, I know it well, as I used always go to view her and say “good for you for keeping your mouth shut and still singing Tosca at age 65, Girl!”, well silently, and a little moment of thanks. What I loved about the photo was that she was actually 65 years old at the time and she had successfully defied Zeit und Ewigkeit, gravity and Mother Nature, and that was long, long, long before the age of botox.
Now, for the main course, Egregia Signora CLAGGART!
1. Was Fabbricini really that BAAAAD or just weirdly timbred and sorta quarter-toned outta tuning? I always intend to cuddle down with that recording, specially cause Alagna was still cute at the time — but I just never found the time to do so. And what ACTRESS did Mo. Muti have her study with? MAGDA? Garbo? Charles Busch?
2. Is there ANY CHANCE that Mo. Muti will conduct his scheduled concerts in Carnegie Hall next month? I really doubt he will be able to, but if, through your Omniscience, you hear some word, could you let us know? I wanted to hear the Lelio, as well, as I do so love crazy old Hector so much, much to my shame, but I did know him in my mad youth.
3. Is Licia Albanese actually Albanian (she comes from Bari, no?)
I was once in line, to congratulate Freni on her Fedora, when a great commotion and stirring occurred and out came this angry little strega
– I could practically see the smoke emitting from her fierce aura — it was Albanese!
I was so frightened of that woman, scowling, and obviously having just placed il mal’occhio upon Freni for attempting something she was ill-equipped to do properly, that I just shrank into the corner and got outta her pathway. I have never met anyone so little and so potent. Well, ‘cept maybe La Scottissima, when I ran into her buying orange juice at a deli, and she turned out to be delightful.
4. As far as I am concerned, there should be a course taught at the Lindemann Young Artists Thingamajig entitled “SHAMELESS GARLIC ABANDON” THE SAUCE IS ONLY GOOD IF YOU STICK IN ABOUT SIX HEADS OF GARLIC” — By a strange siciliano sorcery, the sweeter the sauce becomes as you put in more garlic.
5. Mrs. John, I don’t sew. I am a bad girl that flings her clothes down at a dry cleaner’s and shouts “QUANTO?, Il PREZZO!”.
So, I know nothing of sewing circles. I DO KNOW THIS: if what you refer to is what I think you are, one must place the blame entirely upon the craven, ambitiously scheming shoulders of one Monsieur Jules Massenet, who, to keep his Sybil a slave to his creations, and to prevent her from marrying a rich Cuban man – Antonio Terry somebody – plotted with a Mata Hari type to enslave Sybil to the sapphic side. Well, it worked and it didn’t work. Sybil still married the man. The marriage was a tragic failure which I don’t care to visit right at this moment, but, anyhoo, “The Line”—as Aprile was found of invoking–descended thus: Sybil—to Mary (who made off with her- Manon Cours de la Reine baton and those infernal Thais perles–to Miss Grace Moore, (whom I think had a funny nose and didn’t photograph all that well)—to our dear Dottie. At least, that is how little ol’ Camille, now in her dotage, understands it. Last year, when Camille was in S.F., she lived across the street from the house of the great Yehudi Menuhin, an adorable Victorian painted lavender, and a short ride from where Sybil had lived in S.F., after Daddy had prospered enough to get’em outta Sacramento (too hot in the summers, I guess), at approximately Sacramento and California Streets. There, Camille would always say her prayers for that beautiful and tragic creature. A hundred performances of Esclarmonde in one year, with all them fuckin’ Eiffel Tower sols in alt, is enough, along with a tragic miscarriage, to drive anyone crazier than a Christmas fruitcake.
Alas, beauty! Most treacherous of gifts! O don si fatal! Je te maudis!
And lastly, I don’t know who Cherry Cola is, and I can probaby guess, but don’t really care. Mary Costa was a beautiful lady and a wonderful Sleeping Beauty (oh that sounds really bad) in the Disney movie. An ex-boyfriend of Camille’s used to study with her teacher and saw her in the studio and told me she was quite stunning. She was made by, someone who was rich enough to carry her to fame and stardom, to put it politely. For some funny reason, perhaps because he was the Germont on my Traviata album with Vicky D, I am inordinately fond of Signor Mario Sereni. I’m always pleased to hear him again on Sirius.
And Frankie! Well that old reprobate Jonathan Schwartz on whatever station in NYC but now the Seriously Sinatra station, has converted me, in my dotage, to be a true believer and really love the forties Frankie, when he had his voice. Whenever flies away to her next destination, she has always got Frankie on a CD, singing, “Come fly with me—and pack a small bag”. Yes, I’ve heard the Kirsten duets, but only a couple times, and must go back to visit them again.\
“I’VE BEEN A POET, A PUPPET, A PAUPER, A PIRATE—-
A PAWN AND A KING!”
Bonne nuit a tous! Il faut partir, maintenant
Avec mes plus sinceres regards,
Camille,
la fille mal-gardee
I have been to the War Memorial Opera House in SF maybe fifteen times but only since 2007. It looks beautiful to me, the lobby is quite stunning in my opinion, I love that ceiling. It is way my favourite opera house in the US as a building, the others I have been to are the Met, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA and the Kennedy Centre. I have also been to quite a few opera houses in Europe but the War Memorial is the only opera house I have ever noticed a room labelled INFIRMARY with a nurse sitting there.
What are “chachkas”?
War Memorial can’t be destroyed (except by earthquake & fire) because it is an historical monument. All that nonsensical “applied art” renovation & chachka hawking was probably just a period they were going through.
– Chachkas are souvenirs, cheap gifts, and nowadays might be CD’s & DVD’s nobody has heard not wants. It is an an old ashkenazi yiddish word.
I thought that was the Baronessa Zerilli-Maramo.
Camille, the NYRB Classics imprint published an English translation of Da Ponte’s memoirs years ago. I’m not sure whether it’s still in print. Had a nice forward by Charles Rosen. The original would be available for free downloading via googlebooks.
merci monsieur croche. my husband is an avid admirer of mr. rosen, so i will duly inform him of same.
i am glad someone remembered da ponte today, as he has bequeathed us so much, and as someone has mentioned, died poverty-stricken. the poet’s lot, i suppose.
merci.
Camille, while I am a little surprised at your love of a crock of shit, I guess we all vary about what makes us hold our noses. I say flush it and hurry, you say hold it up to heaven and dance for joy. Vive la difference!
I thought the crock’s discussion of Salome so … limited … I had to laugh and really am too busy to suggest looking at Strauss’ harmonic language for clues about what he made of different characters (Phoenix, who seems adagietic to coin a word, a least just gives opinions, though to be taken in by the press releases turned into a quasi cogent narrative by Time, posted of course by Manooze, causes one to wonder —
– it was that very tactic of EVERYTHING about Levine being controlled by CAMI including things put in quotes (by him or others) that led the diminishing number of serious arts journalists that could get into print (who realized they were a dying breed writing for an audience that very likely was already dead) to express as much skepticism about ‘the truth’ behind Levine as they dared, and to attack his lack of vision.
And indeed as I believe L’Chaim=La Cieca indicated, though not precisely in this way, that once Levine had led others to ax Dexter, the Met became an amazingly unenterprising derrière garde place — it was Dexter who thought to do Carmelites in English, no less, and did it on the very cheap, Lulu, both in torso and ‘completed’ form, Mahogany, the marvelous Satie, Ravel, Poulenc evening and the Stravinsky evening.
He also thought to revisit old rep productions in interesting ways — shocking the Board with some of his choices in Forza for example (and even when a new production of his was very odd, the Egyptoid Aida for example, with a park and bark cast, all of the them past their best and clearly hostile to what they’d been asked to do, it was still a fascinating effort to ‘do’ something immediate and provocative — the fundamental requirements of all art beyond Two and a Half Men — with a hugely dated and over familiar Festival work with the usual authenticity of emotion one associates with Verdi only occasionally in evidence.
Aida is L’africaine without Meyerbeer’s orchestral genius, wild imagination and actual daring and of course Aida owes much to Herr Beer (and the Queler cuts, though obviously practical, deform the work, literally, in making Meyerbeer’s control and use of form irrelevant).
It was Dexter’s ‘genius’ and passionate and rather selfless love of music that vivified the Met in those brief years where vocal glamor was falling off, never to return in a big way and it was unmatched by Levine who was given ‘convincing’ lines to spout about ‘opera as drama’ (convincing to fools) but who was only interested in opera as road to power.
Naturally, once in Levine’s control, the Met offered the heinous Zeffirelli and Schenk years — at best slick but mindless — like the empty virtuosity of so much of the music making (and the sheer awfulness of the conductors regularly engaged at Levine’s orders). But Phoenix and the others can go on with their encomiums.
As for Rosen, I am always astounded to read and re-read those books. Though he covers a vast spectrum of music, to be relevant to this box, no one else that I’m aware of, has ever seen to make the connection between prima ottocento writing and the musical world of which it was a part (in other words, to understand that Bellini and Donizetti and even Mercadante lived and created in the same world, as international artists, as Berlioz, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, Weber and — importantly — Mendelssohn, being aware of his presenting the then easily forgotten Mozart.)
And seeing that their creations, read in manuscript, before all the mistakes and cuts and distortions up to and including the horrifically unmusical and destructive Sills deformations, show them wrestling with similar problems of form, harmony and ‘the new’ orchestration. (In this context a visit to the amazing Mackerras Lucia on Sony is warranted, one of the few truly revelatory performances of a usually ‘diva driven’ staple).
But no, let us go back to Crotch and Shit style (Stunk and Trite?) for the otiose, Parterre’s own Harridan the Librarian, of just listing people it knows little or nothing of (the generalizations about Honegger, Roussel or more recently Murail that any impaired pouty hermaphrodite might make to impress the slow class in fourth grade, as a kind example).
“But no, let us go back to Crotch and Shit style (Stunk and Trite?) for the otiose, Parterre’s own Harridan the Librarian…”
I’m supposing from the context that this last was intended as some sort of insult. I for my part consider librarianship to be an honorable profession; I’m not one, but nearly every librarian I’ve met has been a terrific person.
Mrs. John Claggart, I enjoyed reading this a great deal. Due to the great span of years your narrative covered, in addition to being as adagietic as I am, I had to read it 3 times to grasp it all, but I finally think I correlated your info with my memory of those days … it took awhile.
– I have to ask you a favor. Can I “steal” your comment to be used, along with the “Levine on a pedestal” Time article, as the second lecture in my proposed course offering entitled “Die Leiden von Jungen (alten) Levine” at our local German-American club?
He’s also buried near La Guardia airport.
Things are not quite that grim. Da Ponte is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, which is actually closer to the Lincoln Center ( as the crow flies) than to La Guardia airport.
You mean the Calvary Cemetary in Woodside? I didn’t know da Ponte was there.
– When I lived in Elmhurst “in my extreme youth [sic]” there was a bar on the LIRR line called “Scanlon’s Railway Bar”. I was informed by another customer that was was named after a pre-vaudeville actor/singer/composer named Scanlon who is buried in Calvary Cemetary. So one afternoon (when I was on unemployment) we went on a toot and decided to over to Calvary & attempt to find Scanlon’s grave. We never found poor Scanlon, but we came across Nita Naldi (real name was Nonna Dooley) and a certain Texas Guinan, whom I knew was famous for something but I didn’t know what for. So just now I looked up the Calvary Cemetary Wikipedia entry and sure enough there she is, listed as “saloon keeper and actress”; I clicked on the link to her biography and there was one for the ages. If you want some interesting biographical escapist reading, look up Texas’ biography entry.
– The visit to Calvary ended sadly for me because we came across too may infants & childrens tombstones with all the grief of their parents hewn in stone.
Thank you very much indeed for that information as I know where that cemetery is and I will go to lay flowers at his grave or monument when next I am in NYC.
I know, many of you may as well, that Lola Montez (as Eliza Gilbert, her Christian given name) is buried in Brooklyn — I wonder if close to Lenny, whom I believe is also there? Information please?
Actually, I think Da Ponte was a grocer in Philadelphia then went on to NYC and Columbia.
Oh, I think that is more like it — I could not recall where the grocery store was exactly, so makes sense.
How about James Levine? He comes as close as anyone to having been recently disgraced, and he’s scheduled to conduct the one-eyed king. Perhaps some conductor will share duties with JL conducting the Ring. That way JL’s load is eased somewhat and there’s a cover available at all times. That would avoid JL having to cancel the whole thing and achieve some sort or redemption?
That, digrazia, is a very logical guess.
How was Levin “recently disgraced?
By some of us bitches here on parterre, Magda!
Remember that Julia Taymor…by word association… is also attached to The Lion KING!
Jeepers! Imagine if she gets the chance to get Le Page to try out some redemption of her Spiderman stunts with the girls in Die Walkure, during their Ride. The audiences will each need a crash helmet on, as well. There could be more indispositions than just those…unable to sing.
And we have had people talking about ‘inspecting disasters’ to happen with the Ring. From miscasting perhaps, certainly not the Taymor type, though!
Is that why Julie Taymor was walking into the Met around 115pm yesterday? I saw her and thought ‘shouldn’t she be dealing with that mess on 42nd street’? and then saw 5 hours later that she was no longer dealing with that mess on 42nd street
I can imagine someone thinking that this Ring might need more of certain things, but is puppets really one of them?
I saw Spider Man, actually, back in January, and she really should take a vacation before throwing herself at something else right now. Not only didn’t it work, it seemed a product of exhaustion.
I have stayed away from the thing they call Spider-Man (stayed away from most bway this season- and stay away from arcadia, but thats a different complaint altogether)… but my boredom at Rheingold was with the direction (and people like Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren actually loudly proclaim that she is a good director), and the costumes did look rather cheap (for 45 million…) maybe her fresh eyes will enliven ‘the machine’… I’m just prepared for being disappointed at Walkure on a number of levels… sigh
Lepage and Taymor have similar interests – bunraku and shadow puppetry for example. They even have the same puppet designer, Michael Curry. Lepage is more extreme and inhabits the world of theatrical genius.
However the gap between ‘Juan Darien’ and ‘Spiderman’ is easily matched by the chasm between ‘Nightingale and Other Short Fables’ and ‘Rheingold’.
Perhaps, given the vagaries of the chemistry of opera production, Taymor could be an asset.
Jack Jikes, your argument is quite interesting and now makes me think that this partnership might be more than a blind item- La Cieca, we love your BI’s
Just curiously, who else was in the mix for this Ring? I know there was discussion of a Lucasfilm ring (but that also happened in LA and nothing occurred from it)… Am I correct in that the director of the Met’s Die Frau (who died soon after) was a strong candidate? Never really seen much ‘who will do the new ring’ discussion here
She was ‘boned’ as they crudely say (out the door)…..by Bono?
Has Spiderman closed?
Really OT (look how far this entry’s morphed!) but has there been any mention of who might be singing at the royal wedding in April?
OH THAT’S SOOOOOOO EASY — it’s GOTTA be Miss KATE ROYAl!!! La Nouvelle Kiwi!
But she’s debuting at the Met on the same day. She’s also said that she “never received any call” regarding it.
Sadly, Camille, you are probably right. Kate Royal, the poor man’s Susan Chilcott.
Royal has a more gorgeous voice than Chilcott had, but there is something dramatically inert about it, no matter how hard she tries.
MN, as you are 98 per cent of the time, spot on.
I just was listening to her album recently, a nice varied programme –
I especially admired her choice of Spanish songs — but, somehow it never quite caught fire, and I was so hoping it would.
Well, give her some time. Maybe when the looks fade she’ll dig in and find something more to give. Pretty voice, though.
And who might Susan Chilcott be, and I do not want to start a Vicar flamewar by asking, either….?
Let’s have Christine Rice with “Land of Hope and Glory”!
Can ANYONE identify the lady in that thumb picture above? Is it Julianne Moore? Is it Sharon Stone? Is it their love-child???
I have been going cross-eyed trying to figure out her identity.
I want to get back to HENRY HOLLAND to discuss his tour and to thank him, but I must arm myself to go out into the horrible peasoup weather we have so it is
Ciao for now–
Camille
[img]http://thecia.com.au/reviews/b/images/blindness-poster-2.jpg[/img]
Have you heard that Julianne is tapped to play
Sarah Palin in an HBO series based on the book Game Change?
Oh, and I thought it was a photoshopped Anne Sophie von Otter…
thanks, cieca. eyes now uncrossed.
Among the interesting things at the Comte Ory talk yesterday was Peter Gelb asking the panel (JDF, JDD, Damrau, and Sher) if anything was changed for HD. Apparently Gelb is sensitive to criticism and wanted to make clear that productions definitely are not modified for the cameras, or designed with cameras in mind, as the cast and directed attested.
The cast did say that they know they have to be focused at all times during HD productions as it’s quite possible they’ll be caught on camera when they don’t expect it.
Julie Taymor made an appearance on Saturday Night Live last night to talk about Spiderman and her upcoming projects.
I won’t try to embed the video, but you can find it here:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-julie-taymor/1313775/