vilaine fille

Tempest in a teapot, or Così fan tutti

Darling Sarah, sister Sieglinde, and other beloved bloggatori (blogghisti ? R, tu che ne dici ?) have their panties in a pucker over Glyndebourne's plans to present a "hiphopera" version of Così fan tutte.

You know, it strikes me that such an undertaking could be analogous to, say, a death-row criminal on the lam defiling the hallowed works of Western letters with scatological language, scorched-earth allusions to contemporary politics, blasphemous perversions of Christian theology, and gruesome depictions of maiming and torture, all filtered through his own wilful and myopic erotic fixations.

Oh, wait, that would be brother Dante and his Commedia, the one his successors called "divine." What, precisely, makes Così more untouchable than Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan?

My pretties, do you propose organizing a bonfire of the vanities, à la Fra Girolamo Savanarola, upon which to immolate Manet's wicked "Olympia," that irreverent riff on Titian's "Venus of Urbino," that irreverent riff on Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus," that irreverent riff on some "Venus pudica" (or who-knows-what) going back into the mists of time? (There's a nice, crunchy essay on the geneaology of these works here.)

Così survived the censure of Beethoven and Wagner. I don't see how an updated treatment will damage it. What I've read about Glyndebourne's hip-hop Così makes it sound like Robert Lepage's splendid Busker's Opera, an adaptation of John Gay's Beggar's Opera via Brecht and Weill and so much else.

(Please, no lectures on "originality," that dumb-ass, laudanum-fuelled Romantic phantasm. A philologist by training, I believe that there is nothing new under the sun. Furthermore, I quote Umberto Eco: "Texts talk among themselves." It's our job to eavesdrop as lovingly as we can. How wonderful that one of the whispering texts in this instance is Così fan tutte!)

Now, all that said, I don't especially care for hip-hop. Mozart and da Ponte do quite nicely for me, thank you very much. But why all the outrage over something that (1) hasn't even happened yet; and (2) seems to fit squarely into the time-honored tradition of revision and misprision that we call art?

Do I think that School4Lovers (as the infamous venture is known) will draw new audiences to opera? I don't know. Why not give it a chance? If the organizers want to make things rich and interesting, they will set chunks of School4Lovers and Così side by side and invite viewers to probe their differences and common elements.

What do I think the chances are that School4Lovers will prove to be an earth-shattering work of enduring importance? Close to zero. But that's true of everything. Not so long ago, Così fan tutte itself was scorned and forgotten.

Finally, I don't recall anyone commenting on the truly offensive part of the Guardian article:

The transformed version of Mozart's masterpiece is part of an increasingly successful attempt to draw new, and particularly young, audiences to [Glyndebourne], which has a largely unfair but deep-rooted image of exclusivity and expense.

Yeah, right. A swanky opera festival with swanky ticket prices has a "largely unfair" image of exclusivity and expense.

Pensée du lundi 29 août

Come mi vuoi,
cosa mi dai,
dove mi porti tu ?
Mi piacerai… mi capirai…
sai come prendermi ?

Dammi un sandwich e un po' d'indecenza
e una musica turca anche lei,
metti forte che riempia la stanza
d'incantesimi, di spari e petardi.
Ehi, come mi vuoi ?
—Paolo Conte, "Come mi vuoi ?"

[How do you want me, what will you give me, where will you carry me off to? Will you please me… will you understand me… do you know how to take me? Give me a sandwich and a little indecency, and music that's Turkish, too. Play it loud, so that it fills the room with magic spells, shots, and fireworks. Hey, how do you want me?]

Decca Classic Recitals

Decca Classic Recitals is a lovely series of reissues: handsome digipacks showing the original cover art of beloved LPs from the 1950s through the 1980s. It was someone's sadistic idea of a joke, I guess, to reproduce the back cover notes in approximately quarter-point type; said notes are offered as images at the project website along with PDFs of liner notes, when available.

These retro morsels sell for about $12 a pop—a so-so price, given the absence of notes and the sometimes measly programs. (Some hover around 40 minutes in toto. Yeah, remember LPs?)

Nonetheless, several Decca Classic Recitals belong in the collection of everyone who loves great singing. From first note to last, Christmas with Leontyne Price is among the most mind-blowingly beautiful vocal recordings ever issued. Made in 1961, it captures her in radiant, sumptuous form. Though Christmas is not my holiday, Price's a cappella rendition of "Sweet li'l Jesus boy" always moves me to tears. Her faith and dignity and the sterling support of the Wiener Philharmoniker under Herbert von Karajan restore to fervent splendor hymns and carols that so many others have reduced to treacly slime.

The material on Carlo Bergonzi: Operatic Recital, like Price's Christmas album, has been available on CD before. Still, that knee-buckling caress on "fra quegli estremi aneliti" in "Ah sì, ben mio" (which also boasts decent approximations of trills), the manly sensuality of Bergonzi's Puccini… I've joked elsewhere about "That's no musician; that's a tenor," but Bergonzi has it all: that ripe, burnished, grab-you-in-the-gut timbre and patrician artistry. This is another CD on which every track enthralls.

vilaine fille will put up with almost any amount of wobble to experience the fire and ecstasy of Dame Gwyneth's art, but Gwyneth Jones: Operatic Recital, recorded in 1966, imposes no such bargains. She is in blazing form: Her "Abscheulicher!" (Fidelio) is electrifying and utterly secure, one of the finest versions ever set down; her "Ah, perfido!"* combines fury, vulnerability, and allure in ideal proportion; her "D'amor sull'ali rosee" (Trovatore), while not rising to the level of Callas's, is lovingly shaded and glows with the dark flame of Verdi's drama. The Médée excerpt doesn't work for me, but Senta's ballad… Oh my! (*vilaine fille faints from rapture*)

*[Eva Marton—I kid you not—recorded a gorgeous "Ah, perfido!" with Tilson Thomas and the English Chamber Orchestra. Does anyone know if it is available on CD?]

Italian Opera Arias may not be canonical Régine Crespin—her smoldering Wagner and regal way with French repertoire rightly come to mind first—but what voluptuousness and glamour she brought to Italian music! Listen to the sample of Crespin in Boito's "L'altra notte" (Mefistofele) to hear what I mean.

Before there was Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, there was Kathleen Ferrier, whose 1952 Bach and Handel Recital is balm for the soul. (The mono-to-stereo kluge, however, is not a selling point for me.)

Luciano Pavarotti: Arias by Verdi and Donizetti, his 1968 début recital, reminds us that, yes, the Pav was once an artist and not just a clown. The selections are of a pensive cast (Rolando Villazón sings some of the same material on his début CD); the characterizations are not always sharply drawn; but Pavarotti's crackling enunciation, superb command of dynamics, and inimitable, reedy-shiny tone are marvels. His sweet melancholy in Donizetti has rarely been bettered.

Among the Classic Recitals I've listened to so far, I've met with only one clunker: Nilsson Sings Verdi. I have immense respect for Birgit Nilsson, but her sludgy, garbled Italian throughout this program is grotesque, and she sounds like a linebacker sent to do a ballerina's job. (On the other hand, if you enjoy monstrosities of the we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-fioritura variety, this disc might be right up your alley.)

Prochainement sur vos écrans : vilaine fille holds forth on the *best* Decca Classic Recital (so far). Stay tuned!

Make this a good weekend

Before vilaine fille steps away from the blog for a few days, she wishes to climb onto her virtual soapbox.

According to a Gothamist report from earlier this month, New York City animal shelters are terribly overcrowded. The feline of whom vilaine fille is blessed to be the biped came from a shelter. A former homeless unwed teenage welfare mother (malnourished, too), Khadra is now a proud and glamorous chatelaine and a loving, opinionated, and infinitely entertaining friend. (She is also—thank G-d, knock wood, and tocchiamo ferro—hale and blessedly low-maintenance.)

So why not visit your local Animal Care & Control center or shelter (search by zip code at the second site) and adopt a pet?

My fellow New Yorkers, do your part to make the Big Apple the first major metropolitan area in the U.S. to adopt a "no-kill" policy. And if you need the name of a fantastic and honest vet, just let me know.

Allergies, asthma? Mes poules, that's why HaShem gave us Flonase and Singulair.

Bon week-end à tous ! *smooch*

Weekend opera webcasts

vilaine fille is posting highlights of this weekend's opera webcasts very early, so pickings are relatively slim. Be sure to visit Operacast.com on Friday and Saturday for updates and full details. A few goodies to whet your appetite:

Two operas conducted by Pierre Boulez: the classic studio recording of Berg's Lulu; and from the 2005 Bayreuth Festival, Wagner's Parsifal.

Scarlatti's La santissima annunziata led by vilaine fille coqueluche Fabio Biondi, who is not to be confused with vilaine fille coqueluches Fabio Bidini and Fabio Luisi.

[By the way, did you hear Luisi's Forza from Munich? Now *that's* a Verdian!]

On KING, Wagner's Siegfried from Seattle, led by Robert Spano.

An intriguing double-bill of Ibert's Persée et Andromède and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle.

Erich Kleiber's wonderful studio recording of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with Cesare Siepi et al.

Buon ascolto ! *smooch*

Grrl power

 

vilaine fille welcomes to her extended blogger family two scribes whose work she has long admired: Anastasia Tsioulcas and Jessica Duchen.

Kathleen Watt is one of vilaine fille's favorite writers. Witty, stylish, and erudite, she invariably serves up deliciously crunchy food for thought. Kathleen has posted two not-to-be-missed essays relating to New York City Opera's 2005-06 season: Ladies' Man, about Richard Strauss and Capriccio; and This Old House, exploring the cultural and historical sources of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, seventeenth-century nun and woman of letters, is making headlines. Paul Anderson's Hunger's Brides: A Novel of the Baroque tells of a graduate student obsessed with Sor Juana and the mystery surrounding the nun's vow of silence. It's a hefty tome and, I hear, quite a toothsome read.

vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg offered some background information on Sor Juana in her Newsday review of The Pocket Opera Players' "Sor Juana Fest" at Symphony Space. A trio of gifted vocalists—mezzo Jennifer Roderer, soprano Heidi Schmidt-Martin, and tenor James Archie Worley—gave bold, passionate performances of works by John Eaton based on texts by Sor Juana. (Schmidt-Martin did heroic work with the mind-blowingly high tessitura of her role.) Eaton's sensuous, punning, echo-filled music has obvious affinities with baroque aesthetics.

By the way, there are at least two operas based on Sor Juana's life, including With Blood, with Ink and Juana.

The web teems with Sor Juana sites; here are a few for your surfing pleasure:

A fine introductory lecture from the University of Cambridge

Dartmouth's Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project

A Spanish-language Sor Juana portal, including images and a links page

The text of El Divino Narciso in PDF format

24 August update: A friend reminds me that there is a film based on Sor Juana's life, Marìa Luisa Bemberg's "Yo, la peor de todas."

Schubert and friends, or what I did last summer

Actually, summer's still not over, right? Well, for this psychrophile, summer never ends too soon.

vilaine fille is going to be frank: She's had a draining and dispiriting couple of months. Many days, only the debauched wisdom of il maestro and the captivating sounds of the super-fantastic-CD-that-only-she-has (for now—ha ha) kept her going.

That said, vilaine fille is well aware that with her luxury problems, she's better off than 99.99% of humanity. What's more, Dr. Brezsny promises that things are about to take a turn for the better, and who is vilaine fille to argue?

Besides, the woe probably made her more receptive to the music of Schubert—dear, crazed, rumbustious, the-abyss-is-staring-back-at-you brother Franz. Here's a handful of Schubert-related reviews by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg, starting with the Mostly Mozart program led by Osmo Vänskä on Friday night, and mid-July IKIF concerts by Fabio Bidini and Jerome Rose.

Bidini is an extraordinary artist I first heard at the 2004 IKIF. He looks something like Frodo Baggins in Prada and has a delightfully overwrought air about him. By the end of his programs, he is white as a sheet, with flushed cheeks and sunken, red-rimmed eyes like Violetta on her deathbed in La traviata. My companion at this year's IKIF concert hated Bidini's Wanderer-Fantasie; I found it extreme, teetering on the brink of incoherence, and enthralling. (My companion did opine that her label should consider recording Bidini's sublime Clementi, and I quite agree.)

There are sound clips at Bidini's website; the Chopin, Debussy, and Beethoven are lovely but even better in concert.

The Schubert of Maestro Jerome Rose was more sober but equally desolate and compelling. Medici Classics has released a two-CD set of Rose performing Schubert's three posthumous sonatas and the Wanderer-Fantasie. The playing is rigorous and beautiful throughout, and I warmly commend this recording to you. Time Out New York should be posting soon my article on Maestro Rose and the IKIF, and I'll be sure to link to it.

As for Osmo Vänskä, he led the most eccentric reading of Schubert's Ninth Symphony I have ever heard, and I write that in the most admiring possible way. An accomplished chamber musician, he has a keen ear for inner voices and instrumental textures. No other conductor has made me more aware of how Schubert shreds those textures and breaks down those musical structures, of how he sings with the devilishness of Berlioz and the tortured irony of Mahler.

For all his supposed modesty, Vänskä has an annoyingly pedantic platform manner. (That got cut from my Newsday review.) But if he keeps serving up performances like the one I heard on Friday, he can dance the jitterbug and I'll sit through it.

vilaine fille was more taken with Marc-André Hamelin's performance of Schubert's Sonata, D. 664 than brother Jens at ionarts. Two or three of the Godowsky studies go a *long* way for her ("too many notes"), and she welcomed the chance to hear the mild-looking montréalais playing less flashy music.

The IKIF, by the way, is New York City's finest summer music event. The performances are consistently superb, and up close and personal (and in the company of passionate listeners) is really the only way to hear piano music.

Pensée du lundi 22 août

Have you ever felt that you were a slave to your habits?
I travel frequently in order to overcome the temptation of habits. Habits shorten time; change lengthens it. There is a story by Pirandello, "Il treno ha fischiato" ("The train whistled"), in which a clerk realizes that he has lived only an instant because he did the same things for so many years that he didn't realize he was alive. Creatures of habit know the feeling of eternity. But eternity, like death, is fleeting. Contingency, on the other hand, is jagged, motley, and tremendously long.
—Dacia Maraini and Gioconda Marinelli, entry for "habit" ("abitudine"), Dizionarietto quotidiano

My review of The Silent Duchess, the English translation of Maraini's remarkable novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa, was one of the first big pieces I published in English. It came to mind when I decided to use the Dizionarietto quote as this week's pensée.

The fourth wedding anniversary of two cherished friends fell last week. That and posting an article from 1999 got me thinking. Being a member of my friends' wedding party has been one of the great joys of my life so far. They chose the best and most festive wedding music ever—"Già il sole dal Gange" and "Caro mio ben" (two of you-know-who's greatest hits) for the processional, and "O mio babbino caro" for the recessional. Our rehearsal dinner was held at a frozen-in-time restaurant established by Italian immigrants in the early twentieth century. An accordionist serenaded us, and we sang "That's amore!" and other corny songs at the top of our lungs.

The thing is, the 9/11 atrocities took place a few weeks later. While I remember August 2001 and spring 1999, they seem to belong to someone else's life. (By contrast, 8:15 or so the morning of 9/11—when I was blithely striding down Sixth Avenue after casting my primary vote under a cloudless, almost-fall sky—feels like yesterday.) It's a long way from Maraini's quote to that thought (an example of change lengthening time?), but there you have it.

I've never seen the film of La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa. Is it as bad as they say?

Weekend opera webcasts

Please visit Operacast.com for full details on these and other opera webcasts. Here are a few offerings that intrigue vilaine fille:

Two from the Proms: Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, led by Mark Elder; and Sofia Gubaidulina's "The Light of the End," a 2003 work for orchestra.

Massenet's Le Roi de Lahore conducted by the late Marcello Viotti—what was, by all accounts, an inspired performance.

From the Bastille, a superb cast (Keenlyside, Delunsch, van Dam, Furlanetto) in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, under the baton of Sylvain Cambreling.

Two operas led by Paul McCreesh: the recent studio recording of Gluck's Paride ed Elena, and a repeat of Handel's Alcina from the Festival de Beaune.

Another repeat: Verdi's La forza del destino from Munich, conducted by vilaine fille coqueluche Fabio Luisi.

On KING, Robert Spano leading Wagner's Die Walküre.

A classic studio recording of Giordano's Andrea Chénier (Scotto, Domingo).

Buon ascolto ! *smooch*

Catching up

Time Out New York is updating its archives, and several articles by vilaine fille alter ego Marion Lignana Rosenberg are newly available on line. Hop on over to mondo marion for links to features on Mirella Freni and Sondra Radvanovsky, and reviews of CDs by Paolo Conte, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Alexandra Montano, Rolando Villazón, Angela Gheorghiu, and Isabel Bayrakdarian. The Conte review is my favorite of the lot.

Il maestro è nell'anima,
e dentro all'anima per sempre resterà !