Compare and Contrast 6

Opinions on Graham Vick's new Tannhäuser production at San Francisco Opera:

• Joshua Kosman, in the Chronicle and on his blog


• The Standing Room


• Elsewhere on this blog


• Anthony Tommasini

Appomattox

Battle Hymn of a Divided Republic, October 8, 2007.

Hail and Farewell

News of two opera singer deaths, from opera-l -

• Gary Rideout, tenor, age 55. I haven't seen anything about the cause of death yet. He sang in SF quite a few times between 1989 and 2001, and I saw most of those appearances. I remember him best as Flavio in Norma one year (where he outsang the wretch attempting Pollione) and, more memorably, as Mime in Das Rheingold and Siegfried. He brought off the latter, a long and difficult role, with aplomb, again sounding far better than the ghastly Wolfgang Schmidt, who sang the title role.
• Giuseppe Valdengo, baritone, 93, best known for singing Falstaff on Toscanini's great recording of that great opera. I do not quite remember the circumstances, but he autographed postcards for a number of opera-l members some years ago, and I sent him a thank-you note in return.

Going South

Appomattox last night - watch SFCV for my review - and today I'm off to Santa Monica, where I will be working from my company's office there and covering the LA Philharmonic's Sibelius Festival. I will be blogging and emailing as usual.

As Long as We're Talking About Cellists....

Alex Ross has reported a couple of times on Jamie Foxx's cello lessons, and today Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll is talking about music lessons. He claims along the way that "Cello players frequently look suicidal."

He needs to go to the San Francisco Symphony more often, where Associate Principal Cellist Peter Weyrich always looks very happy to be playing the cello.

Available

Tickets are available in every section for the premiere tomorrow night of Appomattox.

San Francisco Opera has provided a tiny preview - the production photos are already posted.

New Yorker Podcast of Interest

Alex Ross talks about The Rest is Noise.

Compare and Contrast 5

Different strokes for different folks vis-a-vis Glass:

• Joshua Kosman's review in the Chronicle


• Janos Gereben in his SFCV Music News column (note the word "lullaby")


• My own SFCV review

A friend who wishes to remain anonymous makes the following contribution to the Glass debate:

Lullaby--Oh my!
Soporific is that guy!
To hear the same arpeggio
While down and down my eyelids grow
And DUH-duh rhythms thud and glug
Just makes me want to PULL THE PLUG!

Philip Glass at San Francisco Performances

Chambered Glass, Philip Glass, piano, Wendy Sutter, cello, Mick Rossi, percussion.

What to Do?

The Rest is Noise is short of its official publication date, but reviews are starting to arrive.

My policy as a concert reviewer is that I don't read read others' reviews until I file my own. I have a copy of Noise on order, and I will have lots to say, I presume, though no one is paying me to say it.

So, I will be collecting links to reviews in one place, the better to read them in one fell swoop after I'm done reading The Rest is Noise. Stay tuned!

Debut

Congratulations to Marin Alsop, who made history last week.

Something Going Around?

First Steve and Dr. L.P., now Terry and Hilary.

Congratulations, Terry, and much happiness!

Tannhäuser, San Francisco Opera

So I saw Tannhäuser at the opera last night.

You may not believe this, but before Saturday I'd never heard the damn thing from beginning to end. I don't own a recording, and it was last performed in San Francisco just before I went back to regular opera attendence. I know it only at the bleeding-chunks level, that is, the overture, hymn to love, hymn to the evening star, Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song. I'm sure I've heard her prayer and his Rome narrative, but not often enough to remember them.

Stupidest. Plot. Ever. Elisabeth: drippiest female character in an array of drippy Wagner women. It's very hard to have any sympathy at all for her. And you know that all the knights are only pissed at Tannhäuser because he got it on with the Goddess of Love and they didn't. Elisabeth is right to try to get him off the hook: he has surely learned a few good moves from the Goddess.

Also, we're burdened with what must be the stupidest production ever, well, maybe not, but good grief. If you have to launch the opera with a ballet, for God's sake don't have the dancers doing the hokey-pokey and bad 1980s aerobics-class routines. Don't have Wolfram breaking Elisabeth's neck after her prayer. We understand that the Bacchanal has something to do with sex, but you don't have to make it explicit. At least give Venus and Tannhäuser a BED if you must. Do you want to leave her back abraded??

Don't have half-naked children crawling out of the dirt you've strewn all over the stage. Don't put a full-sized concert harp on stage and then never have anyone play it. Don't crush someone under the harp, and if you do, don't have him revived by being passed through the trunk of a tree. Don't embarrass the Goddess of Love by making her dress in a towel, and do not have her open the towel so she can flash Tannhäuser (but not us).* Don't trap Venus and Tannhäuser inside a ring of fire for 15 minutes, leaving the audience worried that they're about to see a fine singer burnt to a crisp. We really do get that they have the hots for each other without the visual prompt. Don't put a tree on stage and then have it deteriorate in each act - what do you think it is, the World Ash? Wrong damn Wagner opera! And what's a tree doing in the Hall of Song anyway?

Don't have the Landgraf enter on a horse. Alloy is a beauty, but mostly a distraction, with everyone in the audience - and on stage - hoping his feeding schedule was properly arranged. Don't put the singers on the ground unless they're dead or dying. Don't decorate the pilgrims with HATE and other sins all spelled out for us. We get that they have some good reason for traveling to Rome. Don't have all the knights holding their swords by the blade: no real knight would risk getting cut or damaging his sword. And don't have pages driving swords into the ground to act as fence posts penning in the knights during the battle of the singers.

At least there were no fedoras or black trench coats to be seen. Still, if Graham Vick and the choreographer had taken the stage for bows, you bet I would have booed them lustily, and since I was in Row E of the orchestra, they would have heard me, too.

That said, I'm glad I went and sorry I can't go again, because musically, all was magnificence. Donald Runnicles was at his best, and he is never better than in Wagner; the orchestra played with their customary miraculous skill, some bumps at the beginning of the overture notwithstanding. Hats off to the harpist, especially, for many great moments. Runnicles insisted on the Paris version; I love the Tristanesque flavor of the Paris music but it makes for a musically incoherent text, alas. I can't overstate the magnificence of the chorus.

With the exception of James Rutherford's woolly-voiced Wolfram - and he was not unmusical - the casting could hardly have been better. Petra Lang was a sultry, red-haired Venus, sometimes a bit stretched at the top (for a crossover role, maybe this is better for a soprano with a solid low register rather than a mezzo with a solid top). Eric Halvorson's Landgraf was solidly sung, if with a remaining tinge of the wobble that marred his Gremin in the Mansouri years. Ji Young Yang made her SFO debut with a gorgeously-sung Shepherd.

Best of all were the Elisabeth of Petra Maria Schnitzer and Tannhäuser of Peter Seiffert. He's a wonderful singer with a voice that is not quite beautiful, though it may once have been. At 53, I can imagine there's some wear and tear on his voice, and it showed occasionally in a slight wobble on loud notes at the top of his register. In compensation, he is perfectly accurate and very musical, rare things in this punishing repertory and especially this monstrously difficult role. It is true that his singing was slanted to the stentorian and could have used more softness at times, but his utter security and musicality more than made up for that.

It's funny, I heard him on a Met broadcast of Tannhäuser a few years back and thought him wobbly and not very good. After hearing him live, I will chalk up my previous impression to the terrible engineering and microphone placement for the broadcasts.

Schnitzer has the perfect voice for Elisabeth, and also for Eva and Elsa; a beautiful, easily-produced, high-set lyric soprano with superb control and just enough volume for this role. She overdid the winsomeness and never seemed truly tragic, but it's hard to know how much of this to blame on Vick's direction. Those three roles, Freia, and Gutrune will be her limit in Wagner; she hasn't got the low register for Sieglinde, Isolde, and Brunnhilde. I think she must be stunning in Strauss.

Update: The Standing Room reminds me that I meant to say something above about taxidermy.

* The last time I saw this trick it was Rosemary Joshua as Semele, at ENO. She sang "Endless Pleasure" wrapped in the towel, then strolled offstage and calmly dropped the towel three steps from the wings. Joshua is a slim thing, and needless to say Ruth Ann Swenson, in the highly elaborate production seen here in 2000, did not follow suit.

Desperately Seeking

One ticket to Book of Longing at Stanford next month. It's the new Philip Glass/Leonard Cohen collaboration. The ticket is for my partner, not me. Let me know the price, etc.

In Search of Mozart

I got email about the film In Search of Mozart on Sept. 19, and should have blogged it before now. I am booked for the weekend and can't get there, but maybe you can.

The film sounds extremely interesting. Try to ignore the awful first paragraph of the blurb at the web site of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I have already complained about it, you betcha.

A Bargain

Some years ago, I asked Alex Stepanov what his favorite Ring was, and to my surprise, he named Marek Janowski's. I had heard this performance in the early/mid 1980s because one of my housemates owned it, but I was not any kind of judge of singing or Wagner performances then.

Alex's recommendation stuck in my head, and when the Janowski was re-released by RCA a couple of years back I picked up a copy, for all of $80. It seemed a bargain to me; among other things, I paid only $20 more than I would have paid for a single opera in the outrageously-priced Testament set conducted by Keilberth.

It took some time for me to listen through the Janowski, and I'm sorry I didn't blog it at the time. The cycle gets off to a slowish start; with a comparatively anonymous Rheingold and a Walkuere first act that needs more impetuousness. (That said, it's still one of the best-sung recorded versions of Act I, with Jerusalem, Moll, and Norman.) Then it picks up, and it's a really fine performance up to the very end. The biggest problem is Theo Adam's barky, scrawny Wotan, and that is certainly a big problem. Everyone else sings well, some much better than that. Jeanine Altmeyer is a terrific Bruennhilde; no, she doesn't have the Nilsson trumpet in her throat, but she has a beautiful voice and is one of the most interesting and expressive Valkyries on record. Peter Schreier's Mime has to be heard, as well.

I found out today that Berkshire Record Outlet has the Janowski for all of $42. Get yourself a copy; you won't regret it.

Curious

Some readers of this blog know that I am something of a public health geek. Yesterday, for example, I got to tell Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map, that John Snow has been a household god of mine and Dr. Strega's for a long time. Yes, it helps that I live with a partner who holds a Doctorate of Public Health degree, but this interest of mine didn't start with her.

So you could say that I'm curious about the person who visits this blog from the Centers for Disease Control. I would welcome private email if you're willing to identify yourself.

Happy Birthday

Nineteen fifty-seven was a very good year, and part of the evidence is that Peter Sellars turns fifty today, about midway between Jonathan Bellman's birthday and mine. This is as good a moment as any to mention my first encounter with the Sellars genius, at a now-legendary production.

He was at Harvard when I was at Brandeis. In May September of 1979, a friend found a review of a condensed Ring performance being staged, improbably, at Harvard's Loeb Theater. The review said something about puppets. The friend suggested we go, and a bunch of us got tickets.

We walked in and found that the Loeb was in its theater-in-the-round configuration, but with only three-quarters of the seats in place. No orchestra was in sight. The lights went down, a trap in floor opened, and in the dark we heard the Rheingold prelude emanating from speakers. Spotlit sheets of mylar, manipulated by the fully-visible stage crew, rippled below floor level.

It was pure magic: the perspective was right, the music was Solti.

The prelude reached the entry of the Rheintochterin.

"Weia! Waga!" sang the bright green muppet puppet playing Woglinde. "Woge, du Welle,walle zur Wiege! Wagala weia! Wallala, weiala weia!"

That nicely punctured the reverent mood. The rest of the production was marked by just that balance of cheekiness and affection for the Ring. The giants were macrame, and you could see them only from the hips down, hung from the flies on the proscenium stage. The galloping Valkyries were children's hobby-horses, the magic provided by the best use of a disco ball I've ever seen in my life.

It was a great introduction to the Ring on stage. I wish I could see it again, or that I could find a more complete description of the proceedings.

Thank you for that, Peter, and other productions since and to come.

UPDATED: The Puppet Ring was in September, not May. And a contemporaneous review makes it clear that the giants were made of potato sacks, not macrame. H/T Alex Ross for publishing a copy of the program and sending me a link to the review.

On Order

Saariaho: Château De L'âme, Etc / Salonen
Grisey: Les Espaces Acoustiques / Stefan
Lindberg: Clarinet Concerto, Gran Duo /
Saariaho: L'amour De Loin / Finley, Upshaw
Saariaho: Du Cristal, ...à La Fumé
Glass: Satyagraha / Keene, Reeve, Perry,

Name That Tune!

A game played in many places, including The Well, where I've had an account for many years.

My friend Mike Walsh put together a particularly fiendish round of Name That Tune recently. Here's what he said about it:

The three clips are about 40 seconds each, and I'm confident everyone [reading this on the Well] can name the tunes. There are two meta-questions:

1. What do all three clips have in common?
2. What distinguishes each clip from the other two?

So, what are the tunes, and what are the answers to the questions about? The clips are here, in MP3 format. I wish there were a way to hide blog comments from view.

Tales of Hoffmann

SFCV review: Tales of Hoffmann at San Francisco Lyric Opera.

MacArthur Fellow

Dawn Upshaw has won a MacArthur Fellowship. Congratulations!

Readings for a New Opera 5

Appomattox in the press this weekend:

• If Grant Had Been Singing at Appomattox, by Steve Smith.


• Philip Glass' 'Appomattox' to have world premiere in San Francisco by Jesse Hamlin. Gosh, I hate that headline style.


• Best of Glass on CD, by Joshua Kosman.

Saint Francois d'Assise

Alex reports that Gerard Mortier plans to stage Messiaen's opera Saint Francois d'Assise. (Read the whole New York Sun interview here.)

I saw the American premiere of Saint Francois at San Francisco Opera five years ago. I caught only one performance, and note the following:

• I'm a Messiaen fan. I love Turangalila, Quator pour la fin du temps, and almost everything else I have heard by him.


• Saint Francois was the closest thing to torture I have ever experienced in the opera house or concert hall. I stumbled out of the second act thinking it had lasted three hours and was shocked to find it had only been 90 minutes.


• I was sufficiently traumatized by the "Sermon to the Birds" - and the preparatory discussion of the birds - that I flinched months later at the birdsong in Kata Kabanova.


• The night I saw St. Francois, I told a friend in instant messages that "St. Francois makes Parsifal look like Die Fledermaus."

Nonetheless, I will have to try again, as I have regretted for five years the fact that I only saw one performance. My working theory about my response is that I was suffering from the same problem some entrenched fans of Italian opera have when they see a Wagner opera for the first time: they are so used to the time scale of Verdi and Puccini that they are utterly defeated by the vast reaches of Wagner. I suspect that St. Francois is to Tristan as Tristan is to Il Trovatore.

Readings for a New Opera 4

I bought a ticket to the opening night of Appomattox as soon as San Francisco Opera started accepted single-ticket orders. The fall opera reviews had not yet been assigned by SFCV, and I wanted to see the opening regardless. By the time the assignments rolled around, I had plans to attend the Sibelius Festival in Los Angeles, and it looked as though I'd be heading south on October 6, the day after the premiere, so I took Appomattox off my list of operas I'd like to review.

As things have turned out, I inherited the Appomattox assignment from the original writer. I will use the reviewer's ticket and my partner will use the ticket I purchased. (For some reason, SFO is giving reviewers a single seat. I understand this when it's Music@Menlo, which performs in venues seating 200 and 350, but War Memorial Opera House, with its 3200 seats, is an order of magnitude bigger. Color me puzzled.)

I have not studied American history in any organized fashion since I was in high school, a shocking number of years ago, so you can guess the state of my knowledge of the Civil War. I asked around and cruised the downtown San Francisco Borders Books, then purchased these at Cody's in Berkeley:

• The Civil War, by Bruce Catton. I've now finished this concise and extremely readable history of the war. The length makes the tale it tells no less moving, and perhaps even heightens the intensity. I liked it very much, and yet I'm all too aware that it was published in 1960 and is thus nearly 50 years behind current research into the turmoil.


• Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson. Unlike Catton, McPherson is a professional historian, and brings all of the historian's tools to bear in this 900-page 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner. He spends 50 pages just providing an overview of the economic and social state of the United States in mid-century; the footnotes could provide me with years of reading. (A vast survey of the 19th century transportation revolution: just my thing.) I'm only 20 pages in, but loving it so far.


• Memoirs, by Ulysses S. Grant. A friend reminded me that I could read very directly about one important participant's experience of the war and Appomattox. I plan to at least skim this before the day.


• The Civil War, by Ken Burns. Okay, not a reading. I missed this in its PBS incarnation; thank goodness for Netflix.

I'll still be at the Sibelius Festival, by the way - but I'll be filing my Appomattox review from Santa Monica.