vilaine fille

Auguri and reminders

Please accept vilaine fille's best wishes for health, joy, and love in 2005.

A New Year's present for you, courtesy of the Rosa Ponselle Charitable Foundation: Ponselle's 1926 recording of Francesco Paolo Tosti's delectable "'A vucchella" (English translation here). Update: Sound file no longer available. Please visit vilaine fille early and often! Ponselle's performance combines that peerless voice of "port wine, roses, pansies, velvet, [and] cream" with an irresistible warmth and authenticity. (The song was not twenty years old when Ponselle recorded it, and the lady had a superb command of southern Italian dialects.) More vilaine fille-approved New Year's music here.

As is her wont, vilaine fille will spend a quiet New Year's Eve at home with friends. Lentils will be on the menu—Italian lore holds that lentils on 31 December bring wealth in the new year—with marrons glacés for dessert. (The finest French marrons glacés come from… Italy. Surprise, surprise.)

We will resist the temptation to pull out the "Fantasticks" OCR: "Deep in December, it's nice to remember, without a hurt, the heart is hollow…" Jerry Orbach was a mensch, and we think that he would have wanted everyone to be glad on New Year's Eve. (Silly bean that she is, vilaine fille blubbered through "Law & Order" the other night.)*

*[If you're not a New Yorker, you probably won't understand.]

We'll give thanks for 2004's blessings (our Front Page Award most of all); set aside bitterness over the year's letdowns (the elections, the ALCS…); and resolve to meet 2005 with hope and grit. Hey, is obama.senate.gov up yet? Have you ordered your Jews for Jeter t-shirt?

Around midnight, we'll repair to the roof to watch what we can of the Times Square commotion. We'll also sing "G-d Damn Republicans," to the tune of "G-d Bless America":

G-d damn Republicans,
scum of the earth!
We will meet them, defeat them,
and win back the dear land of our birth!
From a-Wall Street comes a-Wilkie.
He's a silky S-O-B!
G-d damn Republicans,
the G-O-P!

There are other, more up-to-date verses, but that one should bring good mojo to Eliot Spitzer.

vilaine fille returns on 3 January. Again, all the best in 2005! *smooch*

Reminders:

1. New Year's Eve in Vienna on WHRB, tonight at 17h00 EST.
2. The Michael Tippett Centenary Celebration, also on WHRB, starting Sunday at noon EST.

Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle

I mourn Jerry Orbach's passing. He was a true-blue New Yorker and a mensch: Higher praise there cannot well be.

Read Jerry Orbach's Broadway: The American Musical bio and AP obit. Update: Excellent tribute from Gothamist.

Thanks for everything, Jerry, and G-d bless.

A certain tenor of life

Ben Heppner sings arias by Beethoven, Weber, and Wagner with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra under Julius Rudel on Saturday 29 January at NJPAC. Given Heppner's triumph in the Met's season-opening Otello (reprise to be broadcast on 8 January), we are totally there. Travel schedule permitting, of course…

Question: Why is this man smiling?

Answer: Find out for yourself on 25 January.

P.S. Is that a picture or what?

Sontag

2004 seems determined to go out on a ghastly note, wouldn't you say? Susan Sontag dies.

Read a review of Craig Seligman's wonderful Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me. From Newsday, an excerpt from one of Sontag's recent speeches.

Monday miscellany

1. I'm fiddling with dates so that the tsunamis post occupies the top spot chez vilaine fille through the end of the week.


2. WHRB's Orgy® period starts on Sunday, January 2. Winter 2005 brings major retrospectives of Tippett, Bartók, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, Korngold, and more. Full program listings are available here; WHRB streams worldwide at whrb.org and broadcasts at 95.3 FM in the Boston area.


3. Another fine college station, WKCR, offers its celebrated Bach festival through 31 December and is in the midst of a critical fundraising drive. Make your donation here. WKCR also streams worldwide and broadcasts at 89.9 FM in the New York area.


4. One of my personae offered her picks for 2004's best concerts and best CDs in Sunday's Newsday. Ionarts published a very thoughtful list of best CDs with links to other 2004 retrospectives. vilaine fille's Palmarès wraps up later this week. (See December archives, left, for earlier installments.)


5. I'll be tidying up, adding and updating links to other sites, over the next few days. Thanks to all who identified themselves as either "vilaines filles" or "mauvais garçons."

Happy 2005

Yes, I took down the Christmas music, as promised. I'm part of the International Jewish Conspiracy* fighting the war on Christmas, so what do you expect?

*[And a fag-loving Liberal bitch, too!]

Anyway, since it's almost 2005 in your calendar (the swingin' 5760s for us), it's time for Jewish music, the better to corrupt your besieged festivities. For those who prefer more conventional fare, I once again commend to you WHRB's excellent "New Year's Eve in Vienna," starting 31 December at 17h00 EST.

Schlag, however, wreaks havoc with our Heeb innards, so we turn to our confrères in deviancy, the French. We offer three selections by Jacques Offenbach (né Jakob Eberst). Update: MP3s no longer available. Please visit vilaine fille early and often! First, "Tu n'es pas beau" (also known as the "Couplets de l'aveu") from La Périchole, as set down by Maggie Teyte in 1932. Teyte was a pupil of Jean de Reske and a member of the Opéra-Comique; she studied the role of Mélisande under Debussy himself. These impeccable French credentials and Teyte's pert and wistful charm make her a delicious Périchole.

Next, the (in)famous griserie ("Ah, quel dîner") from Périchole, sung in Russian by Claudia Novikova. As far as I know, this recording also dates from 1932. I hope that the spirits on your New Year's Eve table are as good as what she was drinking.

Finally, from La belle Hélène, as recorded in 1948 (? very unsure), Louis Arnoult's performance of Pâris' "Je suis gai ! Soyez gais !" That seems to me the best possible advice for this or any new year.

Wishing you many gay and effervescent pleasures, now and in days to come! *smooch*

Soave sia il vento

Did you catch George Jellinek's final "Vocal Scene" on Thursday evening? It was a classy leave-taking, I thought, deservedly tinged with a sense of accomplishment and pride.

The crackle of the LPs really brought back memories for me. As a culture-starved Jersey kid, I used to listen devotedly. Mr. Jellinek introduced me to my (pre-Callas, pre-Flórez) holy trinity of Rosa Ponselle, Tito Schipa, and Giuseppe DeLuca, fostering my lifelong tendency towards archaicizing melancholy and snobbishness. Be sure to read Janet Malcolm's superb New Yorker profile of Mr. Jellinek.

My friend Rebecca Paller, one of New York's finest writers and a brilliant curator, has organized the tribute to Mr. Jellinek at The Museum of Television & Radio on January 18, 2005 from 18h00 to 19h30. WQXR's Robert Sherman hosts, and special guests will include the ever-glamorous Patrice Munsel. For additional information, visit this page. vilaine fille will see you there!

Merry Christmas

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953.

Image: "Pasay City Jail, Manila, Philippines." © Peter "Hopper" Stone / stonefoto.com. All rights reserved.

Buy blue

I almost went to art school instead of university, and the first object I remember making as a child bore the slogan "Make love, not war." It still seems to me a sensible approach to life. This handsome logo was designed by a student from Poland named Mateusz; check out his merchandise at Cafepress.

Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle writes about the buy blue movement and the Buy Blue and Choose the Blue Web sites. Did you know, for example, that 60% of Amazon.com's corporate political contributions went to Republicans, while 98% of Barnes & Noble's went to Democrats? Or that *100%* of Starbucks' corporate contributions went to Democrats? (I now hate Starbucks slightly less. Slightly. Even though more than 150 of them clutter and cheapen Manhattan's 23 square miles…)

According to Choose the Blue:

If each American who voted Blue in 2004 spends $100 in 2005 on products of a corporation that by reason of its employees' or connected political action committees' political contributions supported Blue over Red, $5 billion in revenues would be shifted to Blue-supporting corporations. This will be noticed.

Typepad (the service that hosts vilaine fille) has an arrangement with Amazon.com, so my Coqueluches list will remain linked to Amazon. But I will ask Typepad to reconsider their affiliation with Amazon, and from now on offer Barnes & Noble links to other recordings recommended here.

Blasphemy and stuff

Would you like a Gmail invite? If so, please visit my About page and e-mail me. (I don't check my Gmail every day, so you may not hear back from me immediately.)

In Dante's Inferno, the blistering sand of hell's seventh circle is home to both blasphemers and sodomites. That's a comforting thought for an irreverent old hag like me, about to profess high operatic impiety: my general indifference to the death, life, and art of Renata Tebaldi.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against Tebaldi and wish her blissful repose in the bosom of Abraham (to borrow a phrase from Dante). And it's not some vedova callasiana thing, either. I've listened to lots of Tebaldi over the years; of late, I've read eloquent tributes by the likes of Patrick Giles and William Fregosi; and I just don't hear what they hear.

Yes, that entrancing timbre somehow suggests velvet and sunlight and the glint of fine steel all at once. Yes, Tebaldi can be a vivid and passionate vocal actress: her Tosca, for me, ranks a none-too-shabby third behind those of Callas and Price. (Of Callas and Price, let's not discuss which I might prefer, because there's only so much blasphemy one can cram into a single day.) But there is often a smoothness-at-any-cost quality to Tebaldi's singing, a blandness and lack of rhythmic incisiveness, that I just can't get past. Her "expressiveness," too, sometimes feels laden *upon* the music rather than sprung of necessity from *within* it—as one senses from, say, Dame Janet Baker or Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. (I will not use Callas as a stick with which to beat Tebaldi. Not now, anyway.)

Another thing: Marvelous Mike Richter posted a clip of Tebaldi singing the "Ave Maria" from Verdi's Otello. A graceful, beautiful woman spinning a gorgeous vocal line… and, heaven help me, I kept expecting her to pull out an emery board and start filing her nails. Where is the sense of doom hanging over Desdemona's head, her sadness, her shocked disbelief? I'm no great admirer of Renée Fleming as Desdemona, but even she moves me far more deeply than Tebaldi.

Just the same, my sympathy to all bereaved Tebaldiani. In many ways, I wish I could fully understand and share your grief.

One last tidbit: I finally found a copy of Marzio Pieri's Verdi: L'immaginario dell'Ottocento at a price I could hack. (It's a long-out-of-print, lavishly illustrated art book with impossibly erudite prose: Pieri is a marinista, so you can imagine.) I'll try to share some images and translate the odd comprehensible passage from time to time.

Sogni d'oro ! *Smooch.*