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Every kind of love,
or at least my kind of love,
must be an imaginary love to start with,
guess that can explain the rain,
waiting walking game,
Schubert bust my brain to start with…
—Rufus Wainwright, "Imaginary Love"
P.S. Don't miss "The Greeting," Bill Viola's mesmerizing riff on Pontormo. (More on "The Greeting" from SFMOMA.)
I wish you "a sandwich, and a touch of indecency"—in fact, as many sandwiches as you like, and as much indecency as you can handle. See you next week.
Dearest J, a special treat in honour of your birthday: biscuit aux antipodes.
I love you and wish you infinite good health, joy, abundance, and success! *tosses confetti*
[Translation: Women in train stations—women, there's always someone waiting for them. And when the train arrives, he's already there, waving his hand. And they go off together, and they already seem different… And they don't look back, they don't look back…]
GMT plays the Montréal Jazz Festival on 3 July.
Today's Wall Street Journal features an article by Robert W. Wilson, "a retired money manager" who "was chairman of the New York City Opera in the 1980s," entitled "The Slow Death of Grand Opera." (The article is password-protected, so I can't offer a link.)
It's your basic doom-and-gloom piece, centered on the premise: "Presenters should insist that composers write melodic operas." Uh-huh. The article would not be especially noteworthy but for an unusually high concentration of truisms and misstatements of fact. In no particular order:
The article cites "young Stravinsky's atonal concert piece 'Rite of Spring.'" Last I checked, Rite of Spring was (1) a ballet score and (2) not atonal.
According to Mr. Wilson, "all post-'Turandot' operas performed more than a dozen times" at the Met are: Arabella, Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Porgy, Rake's Progress, Lulu, and Mahagonny. I spent three minutes at the Met Opera Database and also came up with Dialogues of the Carmelites, Vanessa, Death in Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ghosts of Versailles, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. (There are probably others.) The Voyage, Moses und Aron,* and The Great Gatsby come in at an even dozen; Mourning Becomes Electra scores eleven.
* [Visit this site and read carefully. Boy, are those ticket-buyers in for a surprise!]
"The reason why more-contemporary operas have been so unsuccessful is that virtually all of them are anti-tonal—i.e. without a melody." Okay, a general-interest newspaper is not a music journal, but "anti-tonal" and "without a melody" are not equivalent, and to suggest that they are is irresponsible.
"Almost all major opera companies commission new works at great expense that the managements know full well will not sell beyond their first season. No other arts presenter, or indeed business enterprise, could get away with this." In fact, arts organizations and other businesses routinely take short-term losses to further long-term goals: in this case, the goals of fostering audiences for new opera and of fostering new operas for audiences. (Furthermore, pardon my cynicism, but I can't imagine that this "retired money manager" gets hot under the collar when payouts worth millions are doled out to executives who have run businesses into the ground and caused thousands to lose their jobs.)
Mr. Wilson laments the shrinking presence of opera on terrestrial radio. Look, I love radio more than most, but more and more I ask myself: Just how relevant *is* terrestrial radio? According to what friends in the industry tell me, younger people do not listen to music on the radio, period—even though there is plenty of best-selling pop on the air. Besides, today opera lovers of all ages can go to Operacast and choose from a range of operatic offerings unmatched in the "good old days" of terrestrial radio. (Sirius and XM look to have some enticing shows, too.)
Mr. Wilson asks how opera can be declining "at a time when other arts or near-art activities are managing much better." I don't know about you, but I would pay real money to learn what this exquisite distinction is between "arts" and "near-art" activities.
The article posits that Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande was "the first widely acclaimed unmelodious opera." Pelléas, unmelodious? Do we laugh or cry?
"Opera audiences have been so numbed by the fusillade of unmelodious works thrown at them for so long that they are circling the wagons: They are resisting anything unfamiliar or remotely atonal." Good G-d, look at this, and this, and this, and this. Is it any wonder that in major cities across the United States, opera lovers wander the streets, rending their clothes and keening, begging for Carter's Variations for Orchestra or something, anything hummable and melodious? (Give Lyric Opera credit for doing the fifty-year-old Tippett, by the way.)
Maybe leadership is part of the problem. I wonder how the people at City Opera feel that Mr. Wilson, a former chairman, found it necessary to dump on Wuorinen's Haroun and Adamo's Little Women, especially in a paper read by so many potential big-time donors. (Mr. Wilson does praise next season's "melodic" Little Prince.)
And how does such a shoddy article serve the cause of opera, tonal or anti-tonal, melodic or unmelodious?
[In Tarot, the Three of Swords traditionally foretells "regret, painful knowledge, gossip, stormy times, uncertainty, cleansing that may be good but painful."]
From today's Newsday, a review by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Cyrano de Bergerac:
"Panache" is the last word uttered by Cyrano de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand's play and Franco Alfano's opera. Usually understood as "verve" or "theatricality," it derives from terms denoting both a writer's quill and the plumes on a cavalier's hat, hinting at the self-referential sophistication of the tale of the long-nosed swordsman and poet.
Here is the image, from Sebastiano Serlio's Secondo Libro di Perspectiva (1545), that I think is an ancestor of the Met's handsome streetscape.
A few links for your surfing pleasure:
The complete text of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, a much better play than I had remembered
A site on the historic Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac
From Playbill Arts, a Met Cyrano photo gallery
When I interviewed Mirella Freni, she stated categorically that Sunday's Gala would not be her Met farewell. Having attended the Gala, I suspect that she told a fib, intended to hold at bay the great emotion of the occasion.
Consider the selections she sang, all of a valedictory nature: "Adieu, notre petite table" from Massenet's Manon (an opera she never sang in New York, so a gutsy choice); Adriana Lecouvreur's "Io son l'umile ancella," an artist's acknowledgment of humility and evanescence; Johanna's farewell to the forests from Tchaikovsky's Orleanskaya deva; and Tatyana and Onegin's leave-taking from Yevgeny Onegin. And that encore: "Non ti scordar di me." Yes, opera teems with farewells, but this is stacking the deck, wouldn't you say?
Before turning to the concert itself, vilaine fille begs to differ with sister Sieglinde's characterization of Freni's artistry and career: "understated delicacy," "relatively placid." Tutti i gusti son gusti, of course, but listen to Freni's Nile Scene duet with Piero Cappuccilli from the Karajan Aida, and name a soprano who more powerfully conveys Aida's anguish. Watch Freni's shattering film of Madama Butterfly. Check out her Manon Lescaut with Domingo and Sinopoli, a performance that oozes sex and despair. Sample Act IV of Muti's Ernani (not widely loved, but a vilaine fille desert-island set) and thrill to the ferocity of Freni's Elvira, a fiery daughter of Aragon to the last!
There are many varieties of intensity in opera, and not all of them involve doing a lap dance on stage, behaving like a harpie off stage, or leaving a smear of filth in one's wake. Indeed, vilaine fille is an old-fashioned girl—a radical, in fact—who invites readers to go back to opera's roots, the preface to Jacopo Peri's Euridice. Peri posits that opera's recitar cantando ("to act/recite by means of singing") is cosa mezzana ("an in-between thing"), flanked by parlare ordinario ("ordinary speech") and melodia del cantare ("sung melody").
I find that Freni approaches this ideal of recitar cantando in her repertoire. She doesn't gurgle and coo, or carry on like a chipmunk on crystal meth, or peck at texts, or warble on in bovine indifference to words, or enact kitschy parodies of old-time divas.* Freni acts by means of song, her gestures stylized and essential, her words clear and brimming with emotion, her vocal line flowing and meaningfully shaped. "I like everything to be natural when I sing," she told me, bringing to mind another great Renaissance ideal: sprezzatura.
* [To those who prize the aesthetics of calamity, vilaine fille says: Whatever gets you through the night. But we hew to the simple pleasures of old-time Florence: ancient letters, assassination, butt-f*cking.]
Freni gave the most intense and fully realized operatic portrayal that vilaine fille has ever witnessed, in Eugene Onegin. I saw her Tatyana in both New York and San Francisco, and her Letter Scene always brought on waves upon waves of goosebumps: for the sheer beauty of her sound, for its enveloping warmth, and for the way she made the very air in the theatre quiver with the intoxicating force of Tatyana's passion.
Twice, during Freni's 1992 Met Onegins under Seiji Ozawa, I nearly blacked out, because I dared not breathe when she sang the great melody:
Kto ti: moi angel li khranitel,
Ili kovarni iskusitel…
There was a presence in the theatre: the love welling up from Tatyana's soul, in which everything in the house seemed suspended. (Freni's lovely recording of Onegin under James Levine captures some of this magic.) And the way she ended the scene, spinning around with her arms outstretched, as if Tatyana were willing her body to feel the same vertiginous enchantment as her soul. It was simple, without gimmickry, and truer than truth. I have never been more moved, before or since.
Anyway, on to the Gala. I generally find these "official" occasions lackluster in musical terms, but this Gala was a happy exception. Once again Maestro Levine led the Met Orchestra in The Bartered Bride overture, and once again his magnificent band stunned with their virtuosic articulation. (The Smetana is getting stale, though. Hint: Ruslan, baby. Ruslan!)
After the roaring ovation that greeted her, Freni was choked up for the Manon aria, but she made the small scale of the performance work, with velvety phrases aplenty to go along with others that were raspy with emotion. I loved Frederica von Stade's "Connais-tu le pays?" There is now a slight quaver to her tone, and you have to listen more closely to hear that lit-from-within quality, but she spun prodigiously long, graceful, and tapered lines. (I believe she was wearing the very gown that you see in the photo.)
Though he had some trouble getting to his high notes, Salvatore Licitra was in ringing, juicy voice and on very good behavior for the "Improvviso" from Andrea Chénier. What a curiously inconsistent singer he is: I found him slovenly and unsteady in Tosca, but on Sunday he sounded like he had the chops to become the finest tenor of his era.
The Mefistofele prologue is an all-time vilaine fille favorite, and it was the thrill of a lifetime to hear Maestro Levine's spacious and majestic reading of it. (Honestly, why no encore?) This has been a fabulous year for the Met Children's Chorus under Elena Doria: They alone redeemed a ghastly Carmen that I attended, and they vied for honors in the magnificent Otello that opened the season. They were beyond superb in the tricky harmonies, sudden dynamic shifts, and rapid, patter-like verses that Boito wrote for his cherubim, and they stood proud and still like seasoned pros. Bravissimi!
Given the leathery barking with which he has regaled us of late, James Morris's relatively fresh tone and handsomely sculpted phrases came as a pleasant surprise, though he made a sexless, charmless Adversary. (Next time: d'Arcangelo, Pape, or Relyea, s'il vous plaît.) Sadly, the adult ladies of the chorus sound just as bad in the house as they do over the air.
"Cielo e mar": Heaven help me, if James Levine were conducting, I would listen to La Gioconda (not a vilaine fille favorite) every day of the year. And no one today looks better in a tux than Marcello Giordani. His support tends to collapse when he shifts downward, and the "refashioned" top notes are tight, but the rest of his voice is gorgeous, and his pianissimo phrases are pure poetry. For this I adore him.
The two Adriana Lecouvreur excerpts were, for me, the weakest part of the program. Freni still had a big lump in her throat and broke some phrases awkwardly, and there seemed to be zero chemistry between her and Licitra.
Part II: Tchaikovsky. Freni turned in a stronger performance of "Prostite vi" from Orleanskaya deva when I heard her in Washington, doubtless because she was swept up in the excitement of a fully staged show. Still, her singing during the Gala was impassioned, grand in scale, and secure. She did not sound like a singer ready to retire.
The program closed with Act III of Yevgeny Onegin, another one of vilaine fille's favorite operas, starring three singers for whom she has near-unconditional admiration: Freni, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Robert Lloyd. Hvorostovsky was not in his best voice—the big climactic phrases seemed to cost him an excruciating amount of effort—but for brooding glamour no one can touch him. Lloyd sang Prince Gremin's aria stupendously well, with his final note (a low E-flat, is it?) firm, resonant, and prolonged. He received a huge ovation.
And Freni—now I'm crying again, because I will miss her so—was, as ever, an utterly lovable Tatyana, stern in her appeal to Onegin's pride and honor, heartbreakingly honest in her avowal of love for the cad, and wrenching in her determination to stay with the good and decent man she has married. Freni transposed down the very last note but was otherwise in effulgent form. Through the wonder of art, she and Hvorostovsky, whose combined age is well over 100, became the 26-year-old Onegin and the still younger Tatyana.
Marcello Giordani sang a rapturously tender and elegant introduction to "Non ti scordar di me," and Freni sang the refrain. It sits in the middle of the voice, and Freni's radiant tone, melting legato, and heart overflowing with love made her sound like a singer in the flush of youth. But Mr. Volpe made his speech and presentation, and the curtain came down, probably for the last time on Mirella Freni in New York.
Cara Mirella, c'è sempre un nido nel nostro cuor per te ! E grazie.
vilaine fille held it together until the encore—"Non ti scordar di me" ("Forget me not"—as if!) by Ernesto de Curtis. And then the tears came. And they're coming still!
It was a glorious evening of music all around. If you are in New York and could have attended, but didn't, kindly commence kicking yourself now.
Non ti scordar di me…
la vita mia legata è a te !
Io t'amo sempre più,
nel sogno mio rimani tu.
Non ti scordar di me…
la vita mia legata è a te !
C'è sempre un nido
nel mio cuor per te…
[Translation: Forget me not: My life is bound to you! I love you ever more, and you remain in my dreams. Forget me not: My life is bound to you! There will always be a nest in my heart for you…]
Full report anon.
Io ogni mattina quando parto
lascio aperta la mia porta
se qualcuno verrà
e poi metto polvere di gesso
sul pavimento di casa
per i passi che farà
perché quando c'è una porta aperta
di sicuro, prima o dopo, si sa… *
—Gianmaria Testa, "Polvere di gesso"
Image © Filippo of Filippo foto blog, whose beautiful work you should check out. Used with his kind permission.
The song "Polvere di gesso" is from Gianmaria Testa's album Lampo, which you can download from iTunes. He tours the U.S. (New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, possibly other cities) in November 2005. More on GMT here; other tour dates (Montréal in July!) here.
vilaine fille is taking the weekend off, hence the early posting. Happy listening!
* [Translation: Every morning when I leave, I leave my door open, in case someone comes. Then I put chalk dust on the floor for the steps that they'll take. Because when there's an open door, surely, sooner or later, you know…]
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