Weekend at Bernie's 2

Bernard Holland of The New York Times attended(?) Saturday night's all-Schubert program at Carnegie Hall, featuring Ian Bostridge, Thomas Quasthoff and Dorothea Röschmann accompanied by Julius Drake. Holland's review ran 468 words, of which barely 100 addressed the performance. Here's La Cieca's analysis.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

"Directed by Francesca Zambello, this Little Mermaid burdens its performers with ungainly guess-what-I-am costumes (by Tatiana Noginova) and a distracting set (by George Tsypin) awash in pastels gone sour and unidentifiable giant tchotchkes that suggest a Luau Lounge whipped up by an acid-head heiress in the 1960s. The whole enterprise is soaked in that sparkly garishness that only a very young child — or possibly a tackiness-worshiping drag queen — might find pretty.

"....Ms. Zambello, best known as an adventurous director of operas, rarely lets jokes, songs or set pieces register clearly. And the impression is often of costumed employees from the Magic Kingdom of Disney World, wandering around and occasionally singing to entertain visiting children." -- Ben Brantley, New York Times

In related news, the family of Roger Bart send their condolences.

Wanderjahr

La Cieca has obtained exclusive video footage of a presentation by Susan L. Baker, chairwoman of the New York City Opera, announcing plans for the company's 2008-2009 "season."


NYCO's announcement, dumped into the scarcely-read Saturday Times, would seem to indicate that our speculation of the past couple of weeks was, in fact, accurate.

Legends of the fall

When a monumental 20th century masterpiece is revived at the Met, who better to review it than Anthony Tommasini? Today the Times published TT's critique of War and Peace, a compact screed of exactly 799 words. And how, you may ask, were those words distributed? Well almost half the review (351 words) was given over to a rehash of the incident five years ago when the super fell off the set into the pit. Here's how Tony's wordage stacks up in chart form:

Larger and more fun

"... Netrebko is the larger presence. She has an earthiness and impishness — a daredeviltry — that may prevent her from ever attaining the kind of rarefied, disembodied sainthood that has been awarded, for example, to the American sopranos Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw but that also makes her more fun to watch." Charles McGrath writes a gazillion words or so about "A New Kind of Diva" in this weekend's Sunday Times magazine.

In other news, Renée Fleming is still not singing Norma.

Who's the missing star?

La Cieca was just wondering about something yesterday on opera-l, and doggone if Anne Midgette wasn't wondering about the same thing today in the New York Times. (That woman haunts my dreams, I tell you. It's like she's inside my head. Now, where was I? Oh, yes...) The point that dear Anne and I (among others) have mulling is this:

There was a time when Norma was considered a rarity or at least an opera that could be revived only when a very special prima donna was available and willing. The first Met Norma, for example, was Lilli Lehmann, the house's biggest female star of that era. Even given Lehmann's réclame, her appearance as Norma was considered by at least one critic (W. J. Henderson in Times) to be a sort of stunt:

The opera was chosen by Fräu Lehmann for her benefit, and from a financial point of view her selection was a very wise one . . . . From an artistic point of view the choice does not seem to be so commendable. There is no artistic reason why Lilli Lehmann should present herself to the New York public as a colorature singer. She may have been actuated by a not unnatural desire to display her versatility, but to get up a performance of Bellini's "Norma" for her benefit savors rather of self-esteem than of a strong devotion to honest art . . . . She demonstrated that her voice possessed far more flexibility and that she had a greater command of the pure ornamentation of signing that anyone suspected ... It must be said, however, that Fräu Lehmann took many of the elaborate ornamental passages at a very moderate tempo and sang them with very evident labor, thus depriving them of much of that brilliancy which the smooth, mellow, pliable Italian voices impart to them. Fiorituri without brilliancy have no "raison d' étre," and no Italian diva of standing would have received half the applause that Fräu Lehmann did for singing these passages as she did. The audience was excited by astonishment at the fact that she could do it at all.

Well, that was a longer pullquote than La Cieca originally intended to use, but, goodness, that is such excellent critical writing, isn't it? Anyway, back to the argument. Lehmann, Rosa Ponselle, Gina Cigna, Zinka Milanov and of course Maria Callas were all big established stars when they took on Norma at the Met. So were Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé. If Shirley Verrett, Renata Scotto and Jane Eaglen received mixed reviews for their Met performances of the opera, it wasn't because of lack of star power or clout -- they were all extremely important names on the Met roster at the time of their casting.

Then there are performances from the likes of Adelaide Negri and Marisa Galvany -- (covers who had to go on) and Rita Hunter, one of the many jumpers-in for Caballé. The presence of Hasmik Papian at the beginning of this year's run of Norma should be understood in the same spirit, i.e., a late-in-the-game substitution.

Papian is going on for Maria Guleghina, who was pulled out of the beginning of the Norma run to perform the new production of Macbeth. So the question is, who ever dreamed up the notion of Guleghina singing Norma at the Met? True, she won a big popular success here with Abigaille back in 2001 and she more or less owned the role of Tosca at the house for about five years. But nothing in those performances (or, to be frank, her few attempts at the Bellini opera elsewhere) really shouts "this woman must do Norma at the Met." So why would a revival of Norma be put in the pipeline five years ago for a singer who neither then nor now promises to display anything special in the role?

Which is why La Cieca poses the question: was this revival of Norma originally planned for a different singer? And if so, who? Deborah Voigt? Violeta Urmana? Renée Fleming?

Hollanderizing

La Cieca is nothing if she is not open-minded. So can someone please explain (or at least excuse) the following statement from Bernard Holland in today's NYT?

Verdi has a way of testing his singers at the opening curtain. (See also "La Traviata," Act I, Scene 1.)

Hedge fund

Congratulations to NYT writer Michael Kimmelman, whose post-mortem on Katharina Wagner's Bayreuth Meistersinger contains a sentence that beats all world's records for running, standing and equivocation:

The approach is not, in the abstract, without merit, Beckmesser having always seemed a proto-Jew to Wagner, awaiting modern redemption; the opera’s end comes across as the screed it always seemed.

La Cieca leaves it to her cher public to debate whatever ideas might be teased from this morass of weak passive voice; she'll get the ball rolling by asking, "What exactly is a 'proto-Jew' and what qualities of the character of Beckmesser would tend to make him "seem" proto-Jewish?"

(More on Kimmelman's column over at Sounds & Fury.)

Ruth's no stranger to friction

DRAMA on the front page of today's NYT Arts section! Ruth Ann Swenson comes out swinging at the Met for "snubbing" her in favor of younger and less zaftig artists. Her current run of Cleopatras in Giulio Cesare is her final contact with the Met*, apparently the end to a 20-season career there spanning over 225 performances.

And now La Cieca is going to throw this one open to discussion from the floor!

CORRECTION: Swenson is also contracted to sing Violetta during the Met's 2007-2008 season.

Typography as destiny

Don't get La Cieca wrong: the whole "Opera and Technology" panel last Friday was fascinating. But probably the most interesting bit of information shared all night was done after the formalities were ended. Anne Midgette got to talking with JJ and a few others about the layout style of the New York Times Arts section, and La Cieca has to admit she never realized just how intricate the whole thing is.

Basically there are two kinds of pieces that run in the Arts section: reporting and opinion. "Opinion" includes both reviews and what back in my sob sister days we used to call "think" pieces. It turns out the Times style decrees a number of differences in how these two types of writing are set up.

"Reporting" pieces (like the one on the left, below) have a plain serif headline, a traditional byline directly below the hed, then a series of paragraphs with an even right margin. "Opinion" pieces (right) feature an italic headline, an inset byline without the word "by" and subhead "Music Review." Paragraphs have a ragged right margin.


The meaning of all this? Maybe the Times is saying, "This review is only someone's opinion, so it doesn't need justification."

Semi-ubiquitous

Our editor JJ's busy week included a review of the Met's Aegyptische Helena in Gay City News, and that panel La Cieca has been yammering about all week. As his presentation on the topic "Opera and Technology," JJ introduced this little documentary about your own La Cieca.

Mary Dunleavy joins in the fun

La Cieca has just been informed that soprano Mary Dunleavy will participate in tonight's panel discussion "Opera and Technology" at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. No word on whether La Dunleavy replaces or supplements the previously announced Lucy Shelton. Our own JJ will be there of course, along with a veritable constellation of opera pundits: Elena Park, Editorial and Creative Content, The Metropolitan Opera; Beth Greenberg, stage director, New York City Opera; Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and writer; and Anne Midgette, critic, The New York Times. That's tonight at 7:30 PM, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (between 116th and 118th Streets), second floor.

Hello, Mister Wilson!

The most startling news from tomorrow's press conference at the Met (as released early to the New York Times) -- in 2011, a new production of Bellini's Norma, starring Renee Fleming and directed by Robert Wilson. The casting of Cecilia Bartoli as Adaligisa is La Cieca's own whimsy, but, hey, stranger things have happened. (For example, a Wilson/Fleming Norma...)

UPDATE: The role of Adalgisa in the Fleming/Wilson Norma scheduled for 2011 will not, as La Cieca puckishly suggested, be sung by Cecilia Bartoli. In fact she has just been informed by one of her most impeccable sources that the part will go to Elīna Garanča.

And in other exclusive Decca recording artist/avant-garde legend related news, the Schwartz gallery at the Met is awaiting installation of a Robert Wilson "video portrait" of La Fleming. La Cieca will inform you when the Wilson film makes it on to YouTube.

Lost weekend

A quarter of a century elapses between the prologue and first act of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. By a bizarre coincidence, that's exactly the same length of time since Bernard Holland has had anything remotely relevant or intelligent to say in print. His latest "efforts" are in today's NY Times, but I'm not going to bother to link. After all, La Cieca is pretty sure that you all know the plot outlines of Simon Boccanegra and The Grapes of Wrath. Even though Holland was supposed to review actual live performances of these two operas (the latter a world premiere), he didn't quite get around to writing anything you might call a "critique." Instead, he cribbed a few lines from Cliff's Notes, then slumped back into his usual banana-eared stupor.