Thanks to ACD...

...for his additional remarks on Wagner's counterpoint, Wagner at the Festspielhaus (which I intend to visit, though likely not for a few years), and Nilsson. A minor point of remaining disagreement would be that I have complete faith that Wagner wrote trills, however rarely, because he knew what he was doing. (I expect ACD does too.) To my ear it does make a difference when they're executed and executed well. I've heard Brünnhilde's trills executed on record by Frida Leider and live by Jane Eaglen; I hope to hear them again.

I love Baroque opera, but I spare myself most Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini, trills or not.

I'm afraid I can't agree to the criminality of Boulez; I consider his Ring among the best-conducted, but that's what makes horse races, and very likely it's one area we won't ever agree.

Meanwhile...

...I join everyone looking shocked that TT had never seen Kind Hearts and Coronets before this weekend. It's one of my very favorite films and a look at the cast list will tell you a few reasons why. My mother introduced me to Kind Hearts at the tender age of 10, which might explain a few things about me. Curiously, I have a copy at home right now because another friend of about my age and TT's has never seen it. I cannot imagine how your respective educations were so neglected.

Reason No. 16 Revisited

In comments to an earlier posting of mine, David Bratman, who may be read at San Francisco Classical Voice, mentioned in that he was exposed to classical music in elementary school, but it did nothing to interest him. I replied that for some, it'll take, for others, it won't.

At About Last Night, Terry Teachout tells us why he's one of the ones for whom it took: a great teacher, now departed, who taught him the violin. Thank you, Terry, for the heartfelt words of remembrance.

Roger Norrington

The other day, Alex Ross had a few choice words on the subject of Roger Norrington's recreation of Mendelssohn's revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. (Got that? Oh, good.) He's taken the posting down now on the grounds that it didn't make much sense. He's wrong about that - Norrington went over some kind of common-sense limit regarding the value of historical recreation - but I have a few choice words about Roger Norrington myself.

Norrington's had a long and distinguished career in early music, as you can read in his biography at the EMI Web site. His major fame in the United States certainly rests on his orchestral work with the London Classical Players, and more specifically on his Beethoven symphony recordings. I gather they were considered somewhat revolutionary at the time they were first published, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Beethoven symphonies were already available in one period-orchestra recording, that of Christopher Hogwood with the Academy of Ancient Music. But Norrington's aggressively fast tempos were something new and exciting.

I wonder if the excitment has worn off by now. I've heard a couple of those recordings, and they don't have very much going for them other than the unusual tempos and the period instruments. Those fast tempos are rigid and lacking in rubato, and I can't imagine that lack of rubato is a correct period practice. Sure, it's nice to hear Beethoven on period instruments - but there are excellent sets by John Eliot Gardiner and Franz Brueggen, who are both more interesting conductors.

There's one Norrington set that is still a revelation to hear, though, and that's the Wagner disc. I suspect his very fast tempos aren't any more correct than the Beethoven tempos, but the transparency of the orchestra and the bright, individual sounds of the mid-19th century instruments are a far cry from the homogenous, dense sound that so many consider the right sound for Wagner. That's a sound that is only produced by a modern orchestra.

Between that orchestral sound and the size and design of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, his ideal theater, you have to wonder what kind of voice Wagner really wanted. We know from the trills and decorations to be found in the Ring operas that he wanted flexible voices. Yes, Wagner singers have to have stamina, but less-than-immense voices wouldn't present any problems of audibility at Bayreuth with a period orchestra.

The most interesting moral of the Norrington story is very likely that you don't have to be a trumpeter like Flagstad or Nilsson to sing Wagner.

Updated January 31, 6:13 a.m.

ACD mostly agrees with with what I say above, for which thanks, but takes issue with a couple of my points. Herein some responses.

I think I will just have to disagree that with Wagner, the genius lies in the massing (not the details) and therefore it's wrong to play him transparently. There is much genius in the massing, and yet there's also genius in the counterpoint. I've frequently gasped or been brought to tears by the details of the inner line in Wagner. I love Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch, masters of massing, but also Bernstein and Boulez, masters of transparency. And perhaps it's not a coincidence that two great composers are the ones to most bring out that inner detail in Wagner. It's certainly revelatory to me to hear, as well see, those details.

I have not yet been to Bayreuth, and it sounds as though ACD has been, so I am interested in hearing more about the "circle-squaring" aspects of achieving transparency in that theater. My experience is strictly with performances recorded there, in which, of course, transparency may be achieved by the clever placement of the microphones. (Boulez, though, has stated in writing that he wants to achieve transparency.)

I'm not saying Wagnerian voices shouldn't be big, beautiful, and expressive. I'd distinguish between "big" and "immense," especially when the hugest voices can't execute the ornaments or when they move with such difficulty that the music doesn't flow well. I love Varnay as an interpreter, but all that glue in her tone...!

Lastly, I'd have to take issue with "beautiful" as applied to Nilsson's voice. Again, I never heard her in the house - my loss - and everyone I know who really loves her heard her live. On record, even at her freshest, in her debut recordings from the late 1940s and on recordings up to at least her first Tristan, there's an awful lot of steel under not very much velvet. From the mid-60s forward, on record, her sound thinned out over time and records as if it's often just missing the core of the pitch, sometimes by different amounts during a phrase. The last time I put on Boehm's Tristan, this bugged me enough that I had to take it off.

Not everybody hears this in her, and I've had some rather sharp discussions with friends about her. But I think most will agree that she doesn't trill where Wagner wanted those trills, and she executes written-out ornaments (that one in the dawn duet, for example; yes, I can produce a measure number if you want one) without much grace. That also does Wagner a disservice.

Twang of Doom

Not about harps, although there is a harp in the score -

The most doom-laden twang I know is the last two notes, pizzicato low Gs in the cellos and double-basses, of the Tristan prelude - especially in the 1952 Furtwangler studio recording. You know the outcome of the opera long, long before Isolde's transfiguration.

Crisis: Reason 16

Today at ArtsJournal, Greg Sandow has a detailed, persuasive, and very troubling list of fifteen reasons there's a crisis in classical music.

I have a quibble with one; in no. 7, he refers to Nonesuch as "once an exclusively classical label." I'm not sure when exactly that was; the Nonesuch Explorer series of field recordings of musics from around the world started coming out in 1967, according to the Nonesuch Web site. So I think that this reason is not such a good one.

But there's a 16th reason he omitted completely. Here it is:

16. Public schools in the United States used to teach children about music. Kids learned the basics of reading music by about the third or fourth grade. Classical music groups came to perform in the schools. Free or very low-cost lessons on orchestral instruments were available, and instruments could be rented on a monthly basis. (I took clarinet in the fifth grade, which didn't take, and flute in the ninth, which did.) All of my elementary school teachers could play the piano, so there was daily exposure to singing and music. There were choruses, bands, and orchestras starting around junior high and sometimes before that.

Over the last 30 years, and especially since the tax-cutting mania that started with California's Proposition 13 and the drive for more hours spent on reading and math, it's been difficult for schools to keep art and music education in the public schools. This is to the detriment of classical music, all the way down the line: fewer kids with basic musical knowledge, fewer kids with basic skills, fewer kids studying instruments, fewer kids curious about the great composers means fewer young people and younger adults in the audience.

Basta, Baby, BASTA!

San Francisco Opera announced its 2005-06 season the other day. There are some significant highlights to the season:

• The on-stage debut of Christine Brewer, she of the glowing dramatic soprano voice. Yeah, it's in Fidelio, and I'd been hoping for Tristan, but I've never seen Fidelio live, so fine.
  


• La Forza del Destino, the last middle/late Verdi work I've never seen live


• The company premiere of Handel's Rodelina (alas, not with the glittering cast heard recently at the Met; alas, in a production described as "film noir," meaning more trench coats and fedoras)


• A rare staging of Tchaikowsky's The Maid of Orleans
  
  
• Best of all, the world premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic, based on the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and starring, among others, the great Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, not seen at SFO since 1998's L'incoronazione di Poppea
  

I expect I will snooze my way through The Italian Girl in Algiers, if I even bother to show up for it. (So sue me; I just don't like the Rossini comedies. Sit for three hours waiting for the mezzo to finally sing "Non piu mesta" or some other showpiece? Never again!)

I expect Catherine Nagelstad will be a good Norma, certainly miles better than Carol Vaness was in the opera's last outing. (I must admit to some concern for Nagelstad, who arrives, rehearses and performs Rodelinda, then rehearses and performs Norma. Yow!) Nozze is one of the few operas I will happily sit through in alternate years.

But there's also a very significant low point to the schedule: the return, in May and June, 2006, of Madama Butterfly, which will be seen in San Francisco for the sixth time in eleven years.

Yes, you read that right: the sixth time. Here is the recent performance history of the opera at SFO:

October, 1995 - 8 performances
December, 1995 - 4 performances
June, 1997 - 20 performances (with several rotating casts)
January, 1999 - 8 performances
June, 2002 - 9 performances
January, 2003 - 5 performances
May/June, 2006 - dates not announced, but there is only one cast; presumably 6 to 8 performances

Yes, it sells tickets; yes, it's cheap to put on, with only four leads (and who cares about Pinkerton and Sharpless, anyway? They have been weakly cast most years.); yes, everybody looooooooooves Puccini.

But good god. Give the cash cow a rest. PLEASE. It is just plain wrong (and BORING) to schedule this one opera so often. It is wrong to ask subscribers to pay to see the same opera SIX TIMES in eleven years. SFO seasons these days are nine operas long, and we've never had more than twelve; you can't bury a repeat the way the Met, with 25 productions per year, can bury its perennial Boheme performances.

It reeks of lack of trust in the audience, which is bizarre in a company willing to put on St. Francois and Le Grand Macabre, among other less-than-mainstream works, and productions such as the controversial Alcina of a couple of years back. Or maybe it reeks of sheer laziness: given the generally challenging nature of the repertory and productions during the Rosenberg years, this is one work that can be put on without much thought or energy, knowing few will object to it. But that doesn't make it right.

Whatever the reasons: basta, baby! BASTA!!

Against Interpretation?

There's a discussion going on among several bloggers that started with an emailed query from ACD to George Hunka about why live theater should survive as an art form, when "the theater today seems a total anachronism, anything treated there better treated as a film."

And in today's sounds & fury, ACD comes back with this:

Let me make myself clear about this, if I haven't up to this point (and I think I have), by stating the matter in the bluntest of terms. The above quoted declarations of humanist faith notwithstanding, the audience doesn't count. The actors don't count. The director doesn't count. Even the playwright himself doesn't count. Nothing counts but the created artwork: the play itself and its aesthetic realization; a realization determined -- determined exclusively -- by the requirements and dictates of the play's text alone in which is contained what's necessary for the achieving of the "aesthetic transcendence" George above speaks of if the play is worth the paper it's printed on.

I find all of this puzzling. A film gives its creator(s) full control over the finished product, which then won't vary in content, performance, or form once it's completed. But somehow, playwrights keep writing plays instead of looking for...the Platonic ideal of the realization of their works? Apparently they think there's some value in the director, the scenery, the different views that different directors and actors will have of the work, and, yes, the presence of the live audience, or they'd be in the business of making films instead.

If the created artwork is all that counts, then why bother with interpretation or performance of anything? Why not just read the plays? Why shouldn't I just sit at home with the score of Tristan und Isolde and let it take place in my mind, instead of attending a performance or listening to one of the dozen or so imperfect and compromised CD and DVD performances I've got?

ACD, is that what you mean? Are you arguing against interpretation and performance? Or are those two Stage vs. Film postings merely the best justification you can come up with for disliking live theater? It's fine with me if you don't like and aren't moved by live theater, but the justifications aren't making all that much sense to me.

Just how does the Times allot space?

Today's NY Times Arts section leads off with an interview with soprano Andrea Gruber - it's nearly identical in content, if not in length or glossiness, to the interview with her in January's Opera News. And if you dig around a bit in the print version of the Times, you'll find a half page devoted to Anthony Tommasini's review of Kurt Masur's New Year's Eve concert, which consisted of Beethoven's 9th symphony and "Auld Lang Syne."

Now, Gruber's story, involving her recovery from years of drug problems, is certainly an interesting one, but it's dismaying that the Times interview is so similar to the one in Opera News. And why, oh, why, the two big photos of the Philharmonic concert, taking up more space than the text of Tommasini's review? Why bother to review the concert at all, when the performance doesn't sound particularly distinguished? ("Musically, the performance of the first two movements was disappointing......Still, the playing of the orchestra, though precise and sonorous, seemed expressively constricted.")

In the last three days, wasn't there some musical event in NYC, other than the umpty-umpth performance of Beethoven's 9th, that was worth sending the Times's principal classical music critic to??

Classical Radio? In the Bay Area?

If you're reading this blog from outside the San Francisco Bay Area, you might not know how desperate the classical radio situation is here.

Despite a significant audience for classical music and the existence of institutions such as the S. F. Symphony, S. F. Opera, Philharmonia Baroque, Santa Rosa Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, and dozens of smaller performing groups, there is one and only full-time classical music station, KDFC.

A decade ago, even five years ago, KDFC was a much different station from what it is now. It used to carry the Metropoolitan Opera broadcasts, but stopped because the Met does not allow time-shifting of the broadcasts, and KDFC felt that its core audience didn't want a multi-hour interruption of the usual programming. It used to have a marvelous show, Saturday Night at the Opera, that would play a complete recorded opera or focus on a particular singer or subject. Paul Thomason, whom you may have read in Opera News, was the regular host; I remember shows about basses, great Rossini recordings, a two-hour special devoted to great Mozart recordings, a special tribute to Leontyne Price on her 70th birthday.

KDFC used to play a much more varied repertory than now. I remember listenening to 20 minutes of selections from a particular CD of 17th century Spanish music; I owned the CD within 24 hours of hearing it.

It's hard to imagine that happening today. Over the last few years, KDFC has become a station dedicated to gimmicks and to providing a pleasant, homogenous, soothing experience to its listeners. Never mind that classical music is often provocative, exciting, disturbing, passionate. Turn on KDFC, and what you're most likely to hear is 18th, 19, or 20th century orchestral music, often doled out one movement at a time. (They must have frequent commercial breaks, you see.) If it's 20th century music, it will be tonal. You will hear Gerald Finzi and Ralph Vaughn Williams more often than, say, Schoenberg or Stravinsky or Britten. If it's 18th century, it's more likely to be Telemann than J. S. Bach, and more likely to be Vivaldi than either. There is no opera or Lieder and virtually no vocal music. (Right now, during their Christmas music marathon, you can hear some vocal music! And also most Sunday mornings for an hour at 9 a.m. or so.) A recent survey of its listeners by KDFC itself showed that one-third of its listeners wanted "no vocal music," so they were undecided about how to treat it. Apparently they missed the fact that this means 2/3 of their listeners want to hear the human voice on their local classical music station. I can't remember the last time I heard a string quartet, though there's plenty of crossover - I heard an announcer saying the other week that "...classical works composed by rock musicians are becoming more common," just before he played something very bad by someone I'd never heard of.

About the only exception to the general dumbing-down comes during the weekly San Francisco Symphony broadcasts. It's almost the only time you might hear nontonal 20th century music and music by living composers. They sometimes run ads for these and the station with SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas - I cringe when I heard them, for he surely knows how limited the repertory played by KDFC is, and how little they do to promote serious listening to classical music.

It's a sad situation. There is some classical programming on KCSM and KUSF (for example, "Classics Without Walls," by Mark Theodoropoulos). KPFA has a couple of classical shows. KMZT had a full schedule of classical music until recently and now has none. KQED has no music, period, and its classical recordings collection was destroyed some 20 years ago.

I doubt that anything can be done about KDFC. I've sent complaints on and off and been told that they play what their audience likes. (That's a sad, sad thought.) I know they got a barrage of complaints when they dropped the Met broadcasts.

I joined their mailing list just so I could participate in surveys and tilt the opinions they collect the tiniest bit toward more interesting and varied music. (You should see their "favorite composer" survey! I don't really have one, but I took pleasure in writing in Wagner anyway.)

But, really, if you want good classical music on the radio, your best bet is those stations that stream to the Internet. There are dozens of these, from KUSC to WFMET to WQXR to many, many stations in Europe. A great collection, with details about the software required, can be found at Operacast. Yes, the focus is on stations that play opera, but....stations that play opera usually play lots of other classical music. So, play a visit to Operacast, and you can escape from KDFC's awful programming and the crumbs strewn by other Bay Area stations.

Eating My Words

Some time ago, toward the end of an article about attending the San Francisco Symphony, I suggested that maybe the audience looked very serious because the musicians looked very serious, and maybe the musicians could look cheerier.

Well, if you're following Drew McManus's blog Adaptistration, you'll understand why the musicians might not look very cheery. Read, especially, The Money Drug. Read the NY Times article from several years ago about the ergonomic viola and the risks orchestra musicians run. Lousy working conditions, lack of job satisfaction, feeling that they have no control over their professional lives, repetitive stress injuries - I expect I wouldn't be be very happy either. My experience of performing is strictly as a student and amateur: for the love of it and getting an enormous amount of satisfaction out of what I do.

It's not hard to read between the lines and figure out things symphonies and other performing organizations could do to improve working conditions and improve musicians' job satisfaction. Managers, what are you waiting for?

London Bach had a father.

'Oh well,' said Jack: and then, 'Did you ever meet Bach?'

'Which Bach?'

'London Bach.'

'Not I.'

'I did. He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man
copied them out fair. But they were lost years and years ago, so last time
I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young
man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library. We
searched through the papers -- such a disorder you would hardly credit,
and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees -- we searched
for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this:
Bach had a father.'

'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem
to have known other men in much the same case.'

'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles
and piles of musical scores in the pantry.'

'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees,
do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?'

'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and
cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great
Passion according to St. Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well,
and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some
for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age,
crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern taste, but I do
assure you, Stephen, there is meat in it. I have tried this partita in C a
good many times, and the argument goes so deep, so close and deep, that I
scarcely follow it yet, let alone make it sing. How I should love to hear
it played really well -- to hear Viotti dashing away.'

Stephen studied the 'cello suite in his hand, booming and humming sotto
voce. 'Tweedly-tweedly, tweedly tweedly, deedly deedly pom pom pom.
Oh, this would call for the delicate hand of the world,' he said. 'Otherwise
it would sound like boors dancing. Oh, the double-stopping...and how to
bow it?'

Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

The Best Advice I Ever Got

An article by Daniel J. Wakin in today's New York Times Arts & Leisure section follows up on Juilliard's class of 1994 and what they're doing today.

Of 44 instrumentalists who graduated that year, Wakin and the contributing reporters were able to trace 36. (The article didn't track pianists or singers.) Of those 36, about a dozen have dropped out of professional musical performance altogether. Eleven have full-time orchestral jobs and the remaining teach or free-lance or have full-time careers as soloists.

It's an excellent article, with much insight about the combination of talent, hard work, connections, business abilities, and just plain luck it takes to become a professional musician. And it reminded me that I feel pretty lucky that I didn't try to make it as a pro.

I am grateful beyond belief to Beverly Radin, my flute teacher in high school and a couple of summers in my college years. When I was in my senior year of high school and getting ready to apply to colleges, I seriously considered applying to conservatories. Beverly, a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, advised me to apply only to liberal-arts colleges. She felt that a conservatory degree wasn't necessary for a career in music, and she felt strongly that it was important to get a well-rounded education. Yes, she had some regrets about having gone to conservatory. She was encouraging about my abilities and musicianship, so I don't think her suggestion came out of a belief that I wouldn't make it as a flutist.

This really did turn out to be the best advice I ever got. My life would be pretty different if I'd gone to a conservatory, and it's hard to imagine that it would have been any better than it is now. By the time I left Brandeis, I'd realized that the solo flute repertory didn't interest me enough that I wanted to play it for the rest of my life, and I'd realized I was never going to be dedicated enough to practicing to be able to compete with the flutists coming out of music schools. But I'd gotten a great general education, and I wound up going to graduate school in musicology for a couple of years. Before I became a technical writer, I worked at a series of uninteresting jobs to support my jujitsu habit. (Technical writing still supports the jujitsu habit, just in somewhat better style than being an insurance underwriter.) I am just grateful that I got that general education and didn't spend several years in the conservatory hothouse aiming for the wrong career.

More Than A Couple of Corrections

The SFCV blogatorial got a few things wrong in addition to the unfortunate omission of Robert Gable.

A "moblog" is a mobile blog, not a group (mob) Weblog. A bad back-formation on my part, brought to my attention by The Standing Room.

The owner of The Fredösphere is Fred Himebaugh, not Himbaugh. Apologies, and I did mean something good by "sui generis."

Added on 10 December:

ACD points out that he "hopes Greenberg will resist musical pressures and continue to write in a tonal style," not 19th century style.

An Omission, An Apology

The Blogatorial was supposed to include Robert Gable's American music blog, aworks, where he's recently talked about Nancarrow, Cowell, Ziporyn, Ruggles, Glass and Barber.

I've asked SFCV to update the article with a line or two about aworks, and I'm so sorry about the omission.

Fellow Bløggers!

A plug for you all in San Francisco Classical Voice:

The Season Will Be Blogged

That URL will change next week from the generic SFCV home page to something more permanent.

An update on December 28:

The link above no longer works; I've posted the Blogatorial on my personal Web site. I'll update this if SFCV assigns a permanent link to the Blogatorial.

Opera Annals On Line

In what's sure to be a great boon to researchers, the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera are moving their annals on line.

San Francisco already has its Performance Archive up and running. It's a work in progress, announced as a beta version. You can search by opera name, cast member, date, composer, and just about any other term you can think of. The results come back fast, and with lots of clickable links for digging deeper. Still to come in the database are photos, records of the San Francisco Opera Center, Western Opera Theater, and the Merola and Adler programs. For now, give it a good workout, and send any comments to archive@sfopera.com.

The Met database isn't on line yet, but archivist Robert Tuggle has written about it in a series of informative postings to opera-l, the big opera mailing list. He's been working on this project for more than three years, and the results will be available to the public at the Met's Web site very soon - some time in December, he hopes.

To find his postings, go to the opera-l link above and click Search the archive. Type Tuggle in the box labeled The author's address is or contains. Type October 2004 in the box labeled Since. Click Submit.

And then keep an eye on the Met Web site.

Bruce Hungerford

The first classical piano recital I attended, age about 14 or 15, was by the Australian pianist Bruce Hungerford. It was held in a very small auditorium or the living room of a very large house. I attended with my father; I vaguely remember feeling as though we were very, very close to the piano.

All I remember about the makeup of the program is that it consistent entirely of several Beethoven piano sonatas. I played the flute and had had six months of piano lessons at that point, so I didn't know the music at all. I remember feeling awed by the complexity of the music and the intensity with which Hungerford played it.

And that was the last I heard of him, until earlier this year when I picked up a Hungerford CD at Berkshire Record Outlet (Vanguard Classics 08 6142 71) containing the "Waldstein," "Moonlight," and "Pathetique" sonatas.

Imagine my surprise, when I put this on for the first time (and second, and third) and discovered that I really did not like the playing very much. Technically, he's certainly able play the music: the notes are all there, cleanly played and at high speeds; he has good control of the pedal; he can play softly. But the playing is rigid to the point of being metronomic and he doesn't seem to me to have any special musical insights. Everything is correct; nothing is interesting. Every time I've tried to listen through, I take it off and put on a pianist I like better.

In Beethoven, and in no particular order, that would include Schnabel, Annie Fischer, Pollini, Heidsieck, Kovacevich, Richter, Gilels. I like dramatic, high-tension playing, and consequently Kovacevich gets the most air time.

So, tell me: should I look for other, more musicially impressive or representative Hungerford recordings? If so, what are they?

Differences of Opinion

parterre box's La Cieca and A.C. Douglas are miles apart on the subject of Jonathan Miller's retirement from directing opera. The source of their comments is an interview in the Guardian. It's a very entertaining article, and yet...

It's not so much fun to see an obviously intelligent person in such a bitter state and tossing off so many hilarious, yet weirdly indefensible, squibs. First, there's the little matter of Miller's off-the-cuff remark that only about 30 or 40 operas are worth "spending one's time on." In context, that appears to mean directing. I wonder if he also means worth performing or hearing.

On the face of it, that's a crazy remark. Thirty operas gets you through Mozart's half-dozen most-performed operas, half of Verdi, and most of Puccini. Add Wagner's mature operas and there you are at forty. Throw in commonly-performed bel canto works, and you're well over 50. We haven't even thought about Britten, Berg, Janacek. Add Handel, Rameau, Monteverdi, and Purcell, and....well, you see what I mean.

I'd like to see Miller list those 30 to 40 operas and then defend himself; I expect the list would say more about him and his tastes than it does about most of the operas he excludes. Maybe he doesn't like Handel, for example - so he wouldn't have been very interested in Semele and Alcina, which got brilliant, and very different, productions at SFO in the last few years, or Jephtha, which Philharmonia Baroque performed memorably a season or so ago, and which could be staged as easily as Semele. (Yes, indeed, the Alcina production per se was incomprehensible. But the singing was fabulous and the ensemble on stage was a marvel; I'll never forget Alice Coote's longing backward glance at Catherine Nagelstad at the very end of the opera.)

Then again, he names La forza del destino as an opera that makes no sense (and wouldn't be worth bothering with), but he's obviously proud of his Met Pelleas et Melisande. Perhaps he can explain to me some time what happens in Pelleas, an opera I certainly consider worth performing, but not because it makes a lot of sense. And I'll give him a hint: Forza is about...wait for it....fate, not about logic or sense. It's about what's predestined and unavoidable. It has lots of great music, but it's not a fashionable opera these days. Directors would rather stage Don Carlo, it seems, and deal with its psychological and political thickets rather than the illogic of Forza.

Let's go on to Miller's complaint about directing Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met, where he had a disagreement with Joe Volpe about which arias Cecilia Bartoli, singing Susannah, would perform. I'm not going to defend Volpe's alleged response. Miller doesn't say much - in this interview, at least - about why he didn't want the alternate arias, other than that they are "concert" arias.

That's not even the case. According to Anthony Tommasini, writing in the NY Times on November 9, 1998, Mozart wrote "Un moto di gioia" and "Al desio" as alternates for a Susannah who had less comic talent than Nancy Storace, who created the role. At the time of the Met performances, in 1998, there was quite a bit of controversy over Bartoli's insistence on singing them in some of the performances. There was controversy over Bartoli's interpretation of the role, in general - Tommasini, quoting other critics, described it as "comically over the top, attention-grabbing and at times hysterical." Just how much of that poorly-received stage demeanor was Miller responsible for, anyway?

The alternate arias, it must be said, aren't as good as those they replaced, "Venite inginocchiatevi" and "Deh vieni, non tardar." But they might have been better suited to Bartoli and her particular skills. It's hard to imagine her floating "Deh vieni," which really does want a silvery soprano sound. In the end, I was certainly happy to have the rare opportunity to hear the alternates - who knows when they'll next be performed in context?

It's interesting that Miller never says a word about James Levine, who conducted the production and must have been involved in making the decision about the arias. I rather suspect that ultimately what it came down to was that Cecilia Bartoli sells more tickets than Jonathan Miller. Is it possible that that's what's behind his general bitterness? That singers get more attention and sell more tickets - and hence are in more demand - than he?

Declaration of Equipment

My friend Mitch thinks anyone who says anything publicly about recordings should state what listening equipment they have.

My own is 12-year-old consumer-grade stuff: amplifier, turntable, and cassette deck from Onkyo, CD changer from Sony, speakers from Kef. Not Kef's audiophile line, though - they're the K-160s. My headphones, used at work, are Sennheisers.

Sometime soon, I'll be swapping the CD changer for an SACD player, as that format promises much better sound quality than CDs. And eventually I plan to upgrade everything else, but not in the near future.

As it heppens, when I discuss recordings, I'm usually not going to say much about the recording quality. Not only do I not have a top-notch system, there is too much variability in everyone else's equipment for what I say about sound to be very meaningful. And it's not normally my biggest concern, either. I care more about the musical quality of a performance than I do about the sound, except to the extent that the sound is so bad that it interferes with my ability to hear the rest of the performance. I'll notice when the sound seems great or the sound seems awful, but not necessarily the in-between variations. This is probably a flaw of some kind on my part, but you might as well know what I'm likely to hear and what I'm not.

Four Cranks with Opinions

My other blog, a moblog with friends: Four Cranks with Opinions. Various reviews and commentary will go there. At the moment, all of the content has come from Mitch Kaufman, but keep an eye out for more.

Appearances

I've been fiddling with the appearance of the blog a bit - I added a Recent Postings section - and there is more to come. Not so happy with how the sidebar looks; definitely need to re-style Recent Postings; wrestling with the template.

Signs of Being a Music Theory Geek

Emailed to me by a friend, and to be found all over the net. Read it via this URL and try not to die laughing:

Are You a Music Theory Geek?



Edited on December 4, 2004, to remove apparently incorrect attribution.

The Rest of the World versus Nimbus

The Standing Room has some advice on choosing Lawrence Tibbett transfers, but he doesn't give a lot of detail about why:

As for the Tibbetts, if you ever find yourself in the unlikely position of having to choose between the RCA Victor Vocal Series album and the Nimbus Prima Voce "Tibbett in Opera", go with the RCA. There's about 85% overlap -- not just repertoire, actually the same recordings -- and the RCA remastering (produced by John Pfeiffer) is just better.

It's probably not that unlikely a position to be in (and there are also good Tibbett transfers on Delos). Nimbus's transfers are easy to find and they're usually inexpensive. I remember seeing them a decade ago for $12 when other historic-singer CDs were going for $15, or even $18, for Romophone.

But The Standing Room is right: avoid those Nimbus CDs like the plague. Their transfer technique is bizarre, to start with. They hang a microphone in a room, then play the 78 on a gramophone fitted with a giant horn. (Everyone else uses modern equipment, the more the merrier, because well-regulated modern styluses do less damage to the old recordings than period equipment.) The resulting transfer is awash in reverberation. At least it's not artificial, but the singers' voices are dulled and obscured by the sheer quantity of reverb.

I must here confess that when I started collecting, I thought the Nimbus transfers were great. That was because the reverb does successfully mute the surface noise found on a majority of old recordings - and it's true that, say, a Pathé hill-and-dale 78 is pretty darned noisy. Nimbus also has decent documentation, nicely-produced booklets, and an imaginative touch in choosing tracks for a compilation. But eventually I started hearing better transfers, and eventually I learned to listen past and through whatever surface noise other transfers don't conceal. Eventually I bought the noisiest records of them all, the Mapleson cylinders, and after that nothing seemed too noisy. Over time, I've replaced most or all of my Nimbus transfers.

If you're thinking of buying historical recordings, you have plenty of choices. There are good transfers of vocal and instrumental music on Naxos, Romophone, Marston, Pearl, and a number of other labels. Read rec.music.classical.recordings and other forums where knowledgable people post, and see what they think of specific transfers - engineers vary in their ability and style, and it won't take too long for you to find out who is good. But leave those Nimbus transfers at the store.

The Maestro's Birthday Party - What's on the Menu?

Donald Runnicles, music director of the San Francisco Opera, turns 50 and celebrates tonight with a gala all-Wagner concert. The artist list includes Christine Brewer, Willard, White, and three of the leads in the current production of The Flying Dutchman - Juha Uusitalo, Christopher Ventris, and the marvelous Nina Stemme. It's not difficult to hallucinate what they might be singing. Some Tristan from Brewer; maybe Isolde's Narrative and Curse, maybe her Transfiguration. White is a natural for the "Leb'wohl" from Die Walkuere or "O du mein holder Abendstern" from Tannhäuser. For Stemme and Uusitalo, the Act II Dutchman/Senta duet.

But there are two unexpected singers on the roster - Carol Vaness and the great Frederica von Stade. What on earth are they singing? Vaness sings dramatic parts but ought not; perhaps it's Elsa or Eva for her. As for Flicka, there's not a lot of work in Wagner for a lyric mezzo, even a high lyric mezzo. Maybe Magadalena in the Meistersinger quintet? Or the Wesendonck Lieder??