Does anyone still wear an intermission feature?
As Leon Botstein never said, “But I digress.” La Cieca invites you too, cher public, to digress here in your weekly intermission feature.
As Leon Botstein never said, “But I digress.” La Cieca invites you too, cher public, to digress here in your weekly intermission feature.
I wonder where Erwin keeps HIS clothes…
http://tinyurl.com/blrhers
Toby Spence sighting for all you fangurls across the pond. He sang the tenor solo in Haydn’s “Nelson Mass” tonight with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Mostly Mozart Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall. Looked very healthy and rested and sounded fine in his limited chores. The tenor line is very limited in this mass and probably they didn’t need to fly in an international singer to do it. However, it is mainly an ensemble part with little exposed solo writing, so it is a good way to work your way back in. His biggest moment was his surprise and delight at the curtain call at being presented with a huge bouquet with red roses and sunflowers. All the soloists got bouquets. The most exposed role is the soprano part which was sung by Christiane Karg -- a Bavarian soprano. She is way better than Nerva’s favorite Zerlina, Skinny Minnie Erdmann. The tone has that rather Viennese/Mittel Europisch mix of silver and cream like Erna Berger or Rita Streich. Julie Boulianne was the other fine soloist. Bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams was sonorous in the bass part. Yannick is the real deal -- dynamic, alert and bringing out the best in everyone. He started the program with a really bouncy detailed Beethoven Symphony #2. Good evening all around.
Karg is excellent; have heard and enjoyed her several times in Mozart and Strauss.
Nerva didn’t jump on it (yet) but it does seem typical of Mostly Mozart these days to have an easily cast solo quartet with not one American… what do young Americav singers think when this happens?
Glad Spence is back out there in the field.
Kruno, Julie Boulianne is French-Canadian and therefore, semi-American or at least American Continent.
The first opera about Iraq?
http://tinyurl.com/cp6co2w
Perhaps the first opera about the American war in Iraq. Which opera would be the first set there? Provenzale’s “Ciro” of 1654?
Are you quite sure Provenzale called it Iraq?
Now, if there were an Arabic opera, say from the 10th century ….
Or I’d even buy a Sumerian opera about Uruk…
JUST back from the 90-minute Król Roger in Santa Fe. I’m rather speechless actually -- Mariusz Kwiecien was absolutely magnificent in this role. He and Evan Rogister received the biggest ovations. The production has problems; summing it up, I would say that the interpretation is too literal, being a symbolist work and all. I didn’t get a chance to read the program notes though so I will comment no further, except to say that some parts were unintentionally comical. Poor William Burden, he starts out looking like Daniel Boone and ends up looking like a man who had a little too much to drink at a party: horns, sheepskin chaps along with his untied tie and tuxedo shirt. I loved his voice though, and he sang beautifully if not really convincing as the charismatic shepherd. Erin Morley also sang well, though she wasn’t totally convincing either as the sensuous Roxana.
Kwiecien through everything he had at the role -- talk about your stage animals. He obviously loves the role very much, and we loved him performing it. I hope to go back and sit elsewhere since he spent a lot of time on the left side of the stage and I of course was far right.
Such a lovely piece of music, I do hope that someday we will have him on a DVD production that does justice to his dedication and ability to perform this role.
I do hope that someday we will have him on a DVD production that does justice to his dedication and ability to perform this role.
Louannd, take a look at the Pole/Pole (Warlikowski/Kwiecien) production for the Paris Opera. You can find the whole thing on Utube. It’s very controversial, of course, but quite worth while.
Thank you, I didn’t realize this was ever filmed -- how lucky to have Warlikowski though.
Happy Birthday to Gundula Janowitz who is 75.
She seems to have slipped under the radar in the birthday dept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOdc3j3FnA&feature=related
(Can’t embed as it’s an https, but worth clicking!)
Many happy returns Frau Janowitz! This stunning Schubert song comes from her first Salzburg recital, dedicated to him and Hüttenbrenner. Fabulous disc.
Perhaps because she was the first Ariadne I heard (on recording, of course), I’ve never forgotten her in that role. Somehow, no matter whom I have listened to since, and there have been many fine Ariadnes--Christa Ludwig being a great favorite-- I have never been able to get the sound of her voice out of my memory when listening to others’ live performances. There was a combination of purity, sweetness, and vulnerability that I found very moving. This doesn’t happen often to me, and seems to be testament to her penetratingly sweet and unique sounding voice, not to all tastes I am sure.
Gnaedige Frau Janowitz and the great James King in the final section of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, from 1976, with Karl Boehm conducting.
Born on this day in 1908 conductor Kurt Eichhorn
Born on this day in 1910 composer William Schuman
Born on this day in 1927 tenor Jess Thomas
Born on this day in 1930 opera director Götz Friedrich
Happy 83rd birthday soprano Gabriella Tucci
Early warning for Chicago area PBS viewers- Trebs’ Met Manon on the air Sunday afternoon @ 2:00 pm CST
Now, In trutina is what I call a guilty pleasure for all sorts of reasons. No-one sings it like Popp — and no-one could do the slowly lowered eyelids thing like she could, either.
You mean THIS version isn’t your favourite, monty?
*cackle*
Barbra always screws up when she’s intent on showing us what good taste she has. Personally, I’ve always liked her line from The Owl and the Pussycat: “If I wasn’t a lady, I’d knock the shit outta ya!”
You know who loved Barbra’s classical album? GLENN GOULD. He wished she’d record an album of Bach cantatas.
I mean.
She could have done number 51 with Miles Davis.
Wh are they rebroadcasting Manon?
Article in the Guardian calling on the Bayreuth festival to be taken out of the control of the Wagner family:
“the continuing association of the festival with the Wagner dynasty only serves to strengthen the suspicion that Bayreuth is less a festival than a family shrine. Wagner himself realised better than any that art must constantly move forward if it is retain its power and meaning. He was right. If we want Wagner back, we need the Wagners to move aside.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/04/wagner-family-bayreuth-festival
I have long thought it very odd that after more than a hundred years artistic leadership of the Bayreuth festival is still treated as a hereditary monarchy.
Lousy, intellectually sloppy article.
It is easily argued, of course, that the antisemitism which Wagner expressed so virulently in his writings, and arguably in his operas, would have led to the composer finding sympathy with Hitler’s policies for the purification of the Reich.
I hate weasely writing like that.
Wagner and many others believed that Jews, whether assimilated or not, could have no interest in contributing to the economic and cultural health of the nation.
As Woody Allen or Jackie Mason might say, it would entirely depend on the rate of interest.
Bit naughty of you to chop the next sentence, which is:
‘But Wagner’s antisemitism, though despicable, was of a different epoch and order to that of the Nazis.’
But Wagner’s antisemitism, though despicable, was of a different epoch and order to that of the Nazis.
Indeed. And the neo-Nazi anti-semitism that is booming today in Russia and Eastern-Europe, as well as the leftist revisionist anti-semitism that is slowly but surely becoming mainstream in Western Europe, are ALSO of a different epoch and order to that of the Nazis.
Actually, anti-semitism is and has ALWAYS been epoch-specific and country/region-specific: in the countries where Jews have lived, attitudes towards them have always been the conscience and the self-reflection of those countries’ cultures.
Thus, referring to the new Russian extreme right as “neo-Nazi” is a misnomer: these people’s extremism/anti-semitism (or rather, anti-jewishness) is “modern” and home grown, it has little to do with Nazi Germany. This is why it can be embraced without hesitation in a country which has suffered enormously because of the Nazis.
It’s still weasely writing, dripping with passive voice. “It is easily argued… arguably…” suggests that this writer lives in a universe dreamed up by Maeterlinck, where agency is utterly unknown and poor puny humans are utterly at the mercy of some impersonal meme-generating Other.
What would be wrong with saying, “Many notable thinkers, including X, have argued that…. Y, going even further says, ‘[Direct quote]‘.”
At least put put a face next to those vague assumptions.
But there’s no need for chapter and verse when talking about common assumptions/opinions, surely?
The sense of that paragraph is “it’s easy to say, given Wagner’s anti-semitism, that he would have approved of the Nazis- but actually, his was anti-semitism of a different kind’.
I think for such a simple, general idea it would be prissy and pedantic to cite examples.
My last sentence is too categorical. I should have said it would risk prissiness and pedantry.
You put it simply and elegantly in far fewer words, and without that weasely “arguably.”
Weaseley: Writing on the Wall:
Born this day in 1960, the divine La Voigt (did I actually beat Windy City Opera Man?):
Beautiful voice..Just passed away….CH
Sorry..the name did not come out…Nan Merriman..Rest in Peace.