The Best Pitch I Have Ever Seen in My Life

Go here. Right now. And then pledge a couple of bucks, or more if you can afford it.

Okay. I Admit That Wasn't Fair.

Here's what prompted the previous posting: I saw The Tender Land Friday night at Berkeley Opera. And it is one big long snooze. The plot has almost no drama in it; the plot point with the most dramatic potential turns out to be a big McGuffin. It should have been milked for everything, but is not. Instead, it just evaporates and you see that it was a distraction, and never very important.

Those two young people described as "suddenly falling in love" in the synopsis? Ohman. There's a way to make that kind of magic happen - see the first act of Boheme starting where Mimi knocks on the door of Rodolfo's garrett - but Copland, no Puccini he, doesn't.

I admit that the surprisingly slack conducting from Philip Kuttner did not help. The orchestra played at something around mezzo-forte the whole way through, and the tempos ranged from andante to moderato. There just was not enough variation, and I can't believe that there isn't more contrast in the score.

Maybe it was my seat or maybe it was Berkeley Opera's excellent new digs at El Cerrito High, where I can complain about the weird seats and the carpeting that hides the steps in the theater, but that's it. Sightlines and acoustics appear excellent; the stage is spacious; they can finally fly in scenery, and there are real wings.

The singing was perfectly fine, and young Amy Foote, who sang Laurie, has a lovely voice with an excellent high register. The staging was straightforward and reasonably effective. I'm just sorry the cast didn't have a better opera to work with.

Aaron Copland is the Most Overrated Composer of the 20th Century

That is all.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (H/T DeLong)

So, the NY Times runs a front-page article on Americans who identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party. The reporters quote all sorts of factually dubious things the Tea Party supporters say, but they do not include in the article the actual facts.

Let's try the claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Well, no. He is a believing Christian and has been since his 20s.

Let's try the claim that Barack Obama is a Socialist. I roll on the floor laughing. He's a moderate all the way. I mean, just look at his version of health care reform: instead of socializing the health care system or putting a single-payer plan into effect, he threw about a trillion dollars a year to the insurance companies by requiring everyone to have insurance, whether purchased individually or through an employer.

Let's try "I want a smaller government! They should cut waste! But let me keep my Social Security / Medicare / veterans' benefits."

PEOPLE. There's waste in every system, whether private, public, large, small. It's often hard to locate and usually costs as much to monitor and cut as you're wasting. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, you know?

More to the point, here's what the federal government spends money on. First, nondiscretionary spending, mostly on entitlements, and thank you, Wikipedia:

Mandatory spending: $1.89 trillion (+6.2%)

• $944 billion - Social Security
• $408 billion - Medicare
• $224 billion - Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
• $360 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
• $260 billion - Interest on National Debt

So, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and SCHIP take up most of that. Well, I'm sure the Tea Partiers want to ditch Medicaid and SCHIP, which benefit primarily poor people.

And here's so-called discretionary spending. Note that nearly half of this goes to the Department of Defense. I'm all in favor of spending less on the military and especially that giant amount labeled "Global War on Terror" (does that mean Afghan and Iraq Wars??) but IT AIN'T HAPPENING IN MY LIFETIME. Anyone want to give up the judiciary? I thought not.

• Discretionary spending: $1.21 trillion (+4.9%)
  • $515.4 billion - United States Department of Defense
  • $145.2 billion(2008*) - Global War on Terror
  • $70.4 billion - United States Department of Health and Human Services
  • $68.2 billion - United States Department of Transportation
  • $45.4 billion - United States Department of Education
  • $44.8 billion - United States Department of Veterans Affairs
  • $38.5 billion - United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • $38.3 billion - State and Other International Programs
  • $37.6 billion - United States Department of Homeland Security
  • $25.0 billion - United States Department of Energy
  • $20.8 billion - United States Department of Agriculture
  • $20.3 billion - United States Department of Justice
  • $17.6 billion - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • $12.5 billion - United States Department of the Treasury
  • $10.6 billion - United States Department of the Interior
  • $10.5 billion - United States Department of Labor
  • $8.4 billion - Social Security Administration
  • $7.1 billion - United States Environmental Protection Agency
  • $6.9 billion - National Science Foundation
  • $6.3 billion - Judicial branch (United States federal courts)
  • $4.7 billion - Legislative branch (United States Congress)
  • $4.7 billion - United States Army Corps of Engineers
  • $0.4 billion - Executive Office of the President
  • $0.7 billion - Small Business Administration
  • $7.2 billion - Other agencies
  • $39.0 billion(2008*) - Other Off-budget Discretionary Spending
  
  

Sarah Cahill Sunday, Varese Monday

I can't get to these programs, but maybe you can.

Sarah Cahill at Old First, April 18

Pianist Sarah Cahill has a great program of recent music coming up this Sunday, including works by Annie Gosfield, Eve Beglarian, Terry Riley, Tania Leon, Larry Polansky, Guy Klucevsek, and Mamoru Fujieda, plus arrangements of Balinese music by Colin McPhee and Evan Ziporyn.

Old First Concerts

Old First Church

1751 Sacramento at Van Ness, San Francisco

4 p.m., April 18, 2010

$17/$14

(This series has some of the best music and is definitely the best buy in town.)

Edgard Varese: The One All Alone, Monday, April 19

A film about Varese, the U.S. premier, shown as a benefit for Other Minds. Limited seating!

7:30pm
Q & A with Chou Wen-chung and director Frank Scheffer to follow
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post Street, San Francisco
Complete info • Tickets $20

Dear Arts Administrators and Fellow Ink-Stained Wretches:

I pay for my tickets to almost every performance I attend that I'm not reviewing for SFCV. Along the way, I have the same experiences, good, bad, or indifferent, that typical arts patrons have.

It occurs to me that if you're a reviewer for a daily paper or other publication, or if you're an arts administrator above a certain level, you're not paying for tickets often and you're not having to deal with limited box office hours and recalcitrant web sites. I mean, does David Gockley have to call anyone other than Peter Gelb to get a seat at the Met? Does MTT sit in Balcony Rear at SF Opera or the Met or Avery Fisher Hall? They do not. And when Anthony Tommasini comes West for a long weekend, he calls the press office at the opera, not the box office.

I'd like to suggest that each and every reviewer and arts administrator go through the exercise of ordering tickets from an arts organization or three, just to see what it's like. In fact, if you're an administrator, make sure you try ordering a single ticket, a subscription, and a large number of single tickets - three different orders - from your own organization.

I have not very fond memories of ordering a pair of tickets to ten San Francisco Symphony concerts a year or two back. This involved a ridiculous amount of clicking, because of the particular design and purchase path of the SFS web site, to the point that I nearly timed out my session. I just went through something similar, only worse, while buying tickets to the LA Opera; in this case, the problems were an even longer purchase path and the problem that their ticket-buying system does not show you all available seats. You have to compare the ticket you're assigned with a PDF, and if you don't like it, try again, but in a different section. It's pretty tedious.

I have to think that if arts administrators were going through this, their organizations' web sites would be better designed. I have to think that reviewers might publicly complain if they had to buy their own tickets and had these sorts of hassles.

So, in the interests of improving the user experience - no, let's call this "making it easier to buy tickets" - I strongly, strongly encourage you to try out your own web sites and see how well they work.

Well-Considered

A.C. Douglas thinks that the Times ought to have been "more circumspect" about publishing Anthony Tommasini's article looking at the situation the Met and the BSO find themselves in because of James Levine's health issues.

Au contraire: is the Times supposed to ignore the fact that Peter Gelb and Mark Volpe - Levine's bosses - are both making "candid statements about the need to have serious talks with Mr. Levine to assess what he can realistically commit to," according to Tommasini's article?

Au contraire: Jeremy Eichler report on this issue a couple of weeks ago in the Globe.

Of course there's concern all over, and of course everyone wants Levine well and able to conduct, but given his position as a public figure and the leader of two major musical institution, the possibility that he'll have to limit his workload or even step down from one post or otherwise have a restricted role needs to be out in the open.

Does Mark Volpe Have Any Hair Left?

On top of James Levine's withdrawal from a bunch of concerts at the BSO, Seiji Ozawa has withdrawn from his upcoming Tanglewood appearances, which were scheduled for July 24 and 25. Ozawa is recovering from surgery and other treatment for esophageal cancer, and he has cancelled his conducting engagements through August.

Earlier this week, Levine withdrew from his Cincinnati Opera appearances, where he was going to conduct Die Meistersinger and a gala, all scheduled for June 23 to 26. His first scheduled Tanglewood appearance is opening night, July 9.

Waiting for the sound of shoes dropping and hair being torn out.

Cher Publique, Tell Me Your Tales of Woe

I'm collecting stories of ticket-ordering frustration, concerning musical and theater organizations of all sizes, from your local chorus to the major symphony and opera companies, in any country. You can post anonymous or attributed comments or email me. Let me know if I can quote you in a blog posting or possible article; again, I can quote you anonymously or with attribution.

2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music to Jennifer Higdon

For her violin concerto. Congratulations!

(Their server crashed before I could find out the other music finalists, heh.)

P. S. to the LA Opera

You're going to charge me an $8 (eight dollar) per ticket fee?? You're really trying to discourage people from buying single tickets over the web, I see. I mean, someone purchasing a pair of $40 tickets winds up paying $16, a 20% fee, at that rate. We call this usury where I come from. Other companies change a per order fee of around $8 or $9.

Honestly, people. Try making it easier for people to buy tickets, not harder and more expensive!

Ticket Purchase FAIL: LA Opera Edition

If you want to sell tickets on the web, make sure your web site works, and if it can't tolerate a particular browser - I know that Chrome is a big mystery to many even though it's been out for 18 months and comes from a well-known Internet company - don't bury that that information three web pages deep. Put it right on the page where people register or order tickets.

Mind you, I have no idea whether my browser is the reason I failed miserably in trying to order tickets from the LA Opera for Die Gezeichneten and Goetterdaemmerung. Here's what happened:

1. Went to the calendar, picked the date I want to attend Gezeichneten.

2. Attempted to register.

3. Was told my email address was in use already. Let's just say I know this is wrong in some way. I last bought tickets from LAO in 1999, for Don Giovanni, which was five years before Gmail existed.

4. I called and found out that a Dr. Lisa Hirsch - maybe I should look for her on Facebook - gave them my email address. No, sorry, Doc. It's my email address, not yours. The nice person I spoke to told me their web site does throw errors pretty often. He sounded as though this is the norm, too.

5. Tried to register again using an old, but still active, address.

6. Got message "There was an error in processing your request."

7. Gave up for now.

One irony in this: the LA Opera press department knows and uses my email address. I get all their press releases, without fail. (Thank you!)

You're probably wondering why I didn't just order tickets from the nice person who answered the phone. Well, I like 128 bit encryption, that's why. Not that it makes anyone invulnerable to all of the bad things that can happen on the Internet and elsewhere - my credit card number has been stolen twice, once along with a few hundred thousand others at an online CD store, the next...well, I don't know where, but my bank called to ask me if I'd ordered a couple of thousand dollars' worth of stuff from Apple, and no, I had not. (At home, I have the world's oldest running Dell and I plan to keep it that way for a while.)

I'll try for the tickets again, from another browser or another machine or at a different time of day. But it's 2010, and if you run a big opera company - a big opera company that really needs money - you should be doing appropriate QA on your web site. I mean, my couple of hundred for two tickets won't make a big dent in that $14 million loan, but it's something.

Health Care Reform Analysis from The Votemaster

The Votemaster at electoral-vote.com had an excellent analysis of lessons from the health-care reform process a couple of weeks ago.

More on Levine and the BSO

Via Tom DePlonty, a Boston Globe article about the status of James Levine at the Boston Symphony. This time, questions are raised about whether he can continue, whether the BSO is starting a new music director search, and, if I'm reading this right, whether he currently have a contract.

Alan Gilbert & the NYPO at Carnegie Hall, 2/14/10

I saw three of Alan Gilbert's guest appearance with the San Francisco Symphony, over a period of several years. I liked what he did with the recent music (Ades, Chamber Symphony; Adams, Naive & Sentimental Music) and a Nielsen symphony but thought his Mozart and Beethoven okay, not great. I was, to put it mildly, a little skeptical when the New York Philharmonic appointed him music director.

Well.

I saw him with the NYPO at Carnegie Hall in February, and I am no longer a skeptic. In fact, I sent friends email immediately after the program with the subject line "Give that man a 20-year contract."

Here's what they played:

Wagner, Rienzi Overture
Magnus Lindberg, Clarinet Concerto
Sibelius, Second Symphony

This program must have hit his exact sweet spot, because, I tell you, every note, every phrase, was absolutely RIGHT. I had no expectations about the Rienzi Overture, that overfamiliar chestnut, and it was great. Beautiful phrasing in the slow sections, with plenty of flexibility and lift, and exactly perfect tempo choices in the rest.

The Lindberg has been recorded, and I have the recording, but this was its American premier, with the clarinetist for whom it was written, Kari Kriikku. He is an unbelievable player; I cannot believe the sounds he gets out of that instrument. The concerto's a great piece, a free fantasy in which the soloist has material that sounds like a cross between space music and Messiaen on LSD, with plenty of backbone. The clarinet has to imitate I don't know how many different birds; my companion for the evening, who knows birds better than I do, said it was easy to recognize them. Kriikku and the orchestra played the hell out of it and it got an enormous ovation from the audience, the best receptions I have ever heard for a new piece.

I'm running out of superlatives here, so I'll just say that the Sibelius was magnificent in both detail and in overall conception. Gilbert's phrasing, his control of dynamics, of the architecture of the piece, absolutely grand and great. That was some Sibelius! Putting it another way, it was better than what I heard from Esa-Pekka Salonen and LAPO two years ago.

This was also the first time I'd heard an orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and they sounded like a million dollars. Surely part of the effect was the venue itself, the sound of which has a marvelous combination of warmth and transparency, and a great ability to disperse the sound without the room being overwhelmed, but that silky and gorgeous string tone? The awesome brass? Wow.

My friend told me that they sound like a different orchestra from under Maazel. Where he hears the difference, especially, is in the soft sections, where he says it always sounded as though Maazel was pressing them down or tamping them down. Gilbert's dynamics all sound completely organic and natural and beautiful, throughout the range.

More on Levine

The Times has an article on James Levine's health, the canceled performances, and the impact of the cancelations on the Met. (Oh...maybe I forgot to blog this: he is out of the remaining Tosca and all of the Lulu performances, Fabio Luisi is in.) Can't say I'm thrilled with Peter Gelb's comment that Levine keeps Lulu in the Met repertory, given that it's one of the great monuments of 20th c. opera. But the implication is that only Levine's interest keeps it alive at the Met - really? There's no one else who conducts there would is interested in Lulu? Esa-Pekka Salonen?

From the House of the Dead on DVD

Last fall, I was greatly disappointed not to be able to go to the Metropolitan Opera to take in the Chereau production, from Aix-en-Provence, of Janacek's From the House of the Dead. From everything I've read about the performances, which were conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the run was one of the big hits of the season, and a great artistic triumph for all involved. I listened to the radio broadcast a few weeks ago and loved the music - not a surprise, as I'm a big fan of Janacek, such a great and idiosyncratic composer. But without a libretto in front of me, even after reading the synopsis, I had no idea what was actually going on.

Patrick rescued me, lending me the DVD of the original production. I'm home sick with a cold and was able to watch it yesterday. I must say that it is the longest 100 minute opera I have ever seen, and I'm not sure why that was - the intensity of the music, the vignette-oriented narrative? I don't mean that in a bad way, either; the opera just seems larger and longer than it actually is.

Janacek extracted the libretto himself from Dostaevsky's "The House of the Dead." The opera is very much a slice of life, a glimpse into the world of the prison, rather than recounting specific story about a specific group of people. There isn't the type of narrative arc you find in a Verdi or Wagner or Puccini opera. While some of the vignettes resolve at the end of the opera - the wounded eagle of Act I is released to freedom, a character's true identity is revealed as he dies, a prisoner leaves the prison - you also know that life in the prison will go on in much the way we've seen it.

And, like other Janacek operas, while there are long soliloquies that could theoretically be excerpted, and while they have quite brilliant dramatic pacing, they're not arias in the conventional sense. the opera is extremely conversational, very much about minute to minute interactions at the same time that there isn't a big narrative arc. The cast is quite large, which, besides the bleakness of the libretto, is surely the major reason this great masterpiece is so rarely performed.

The physical production is simple and stark, using a modified unit set representing the gray concrete walls of the prison. For one scene, seats on risers are added; for another, bunk beds. The prisoners are dressed in comparatively modern motley; not rags, not 19th century clothing but not uniforms, either. More like, the clothes on their backs when they were arrested.

"From the House of the Dead" is very much an ensemble piece, with many characters on stage at all times. Chereau's direction is detailed and always apropos without seeming too busy - at least as filmed by Stephan Metge, who does a brilliant and highly cinematic job of capturing the energy and detail. His filming is far superior to anything I've seen come out of the Met high-def broadcasts, for contrast. I wish they'd just put him in charge.

I have previously seen only two of the singers who were in the Aix-en-Provence production, the tenors John Mark Ainsley and Stefan Margita. I liked Ainsley's most recent SFO appearance, a decade ago in Semele, just fine, but his Skuratov is really towering by comparison. Margita's Loge stole the show in the 2008 SF Rheingold, a great portrayal, and his Luka/Filka is in that class. You can't keep your eyes off him when he's front and center.

New to me and especially memorable in a great cast were Gerd Grochowsky as Siskov and Eric Stoklossa as Aljeja.

Oh, and - as far as I can tell, from a position of having heard the opera once, Boulez and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra are also great.

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium...

...and an as-yet-unnamed new element, discovered by a team of Russian and American scientists.

Dear Apple, Part II

Looking at my Google Analytics account for this blog yesterday, I found an immense (for this blog) spike in hits this past Monday, when I complained about certain MacBook Pro design issues. Upon investigation, I discovered that a web site devoted to all things Apple had linked to me and was the major referrer.

I'll have to complain about the Mac more often! It's amazing to run into the famous Macintosh partisanship.

But for anyone referred by MacSurfer who is reading this posting, I blog primarily about classical music and opera, with frequent forays into leftist politics. If you're interested in those things, I hope you'll continue to read.

Still Not Getting It

Amazing NY Times article today: it's Good Friday, and the Pope's own priest, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, likens current criticism of the Pope and the Church over child abuse (mostly, but not exclusively, sexual) to the persecution of the Jews.

Let's try this again: the preacher of the papal household - that's Rev. Cantalamessa's title - equated criticism of the Church for criminal acts committed by its priests to the persecution of a religious group that saw some 6 million of its members murdered in a short period during the last century.

Let's try once more: criticism is being equated with murder.

And once more again: criticism of the church hierarchy for very specific acts is being equated with systematic persecution of a whole people.

I don't see the tumbrils coming for the Pope and the College of Cardinals. I don't see any gas chambers waiting for them. Here's the worst I've seen:

• Criticism of the cover-ups
• Criticism of the church's preference for transferring priests known to be abusers over, say, reporting criminal acts to the authorities
• Criticism of denial that anything abusive was going on
• Criticism of various pronouncements by the Pope and other Catholic clergy

Criticism isn't the same as murder. No institution is immune to criticism, and given the 60-year history of cover-ups, more than a little criticism is in order. The Catholic hierarchy concealed criminal acts against children by individuals under its supervision; sexual abuse by priests and, from what I've read, various kind of emotional and physical abuse by nuns and priests, especially in Ireland.

What we're seeing now is more of what we've been seeing: the Catholic hierarchy is protecting its own, rather than repenting, contemplating sin and redemption, and seeking healing for the victims of these crimes. At the same time that the Vatican backpedaled mighty fast about Rev. Cantalamessa's speech, saying "it's his personal opinion," it published his sermon in the official Vatican newspaper.

Guys, you don't just get it. You might try listening to what the chief rabbi of Rome had to say:

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who was host to Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in the traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”

Updated NYC AMS Symposium Information

Addendum: If you're attending the symposium in honor of Maynard Solomon, please RSVP to Richard Kramer (rkramer@gc.cuny.edu) and let him know if you'd like lunch.

"For Personal Reasons"

A cast-change advisory from the Met tells me that Leonard Slatkin is withdrawing from the remaining performances of La Traviata "for personal reasons." He'll be replaced by Marco Armiliato (one performance), Steven White (one performance), Yves Abel (four performances), and TBD (one performance).

Personal reasons. Uh-huh. See Anthony Tommasini's review and reports about Slatkin's preparation (well, lack thereof) at parterre box.

Tsk-tsk

The New York Times article on "The Rising Stars of Gossip Blogs" omitted our own La Cieca, star of parterre.com. This can mean only that she is the highest star in the firmament.

Mattila Out of Several Met Tosca Performances...

....but they found one classy replacement: Patricia Racette!

She'll be singing Floria Tosca in the April 14, 17, 20, and 24 performances.

A Tribute to Maynard Solomon

The Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society is having a symposium in honor of Maynard Solomon's 80th birthday. From the notice to the AMS announcement mailing list; it looks great:

On Saturday, May 8th, the AMSGNY will host a tribute to Maynard Solomon in honor of his 80th birthday at the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center. In addition to presentations by noted scholars, there will be a special exhibit of items from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection.

A SYMPOSIUM FOR MAYNARD SOLOMON
THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL
SATURDAY, 8 MAY 2010

9:30 Welcoming remarks. Joseph Polisi, President, The Juilliard School

Joseph Kerman. A Puccini Pastoral. To be distributed in written form with the program

9:45 Robert Marshall. Bach at Mid-Life: The Christmas Oratorio and the Search for New Paths
10:30 James Webster. Did Haydn Have a 'Late' Style?
11:15 Robert Winter. WoO 83 and the Classical Performing Tradition
12:00 Lewis Lockwood. Beethoven as Sir Davison: Another Look at his Relationship to the Archduke Rudolph

LUNCH

1:45 Richard Kramer. Anagnorisis: Euripides, Gluck and the Theater of Recognition
2:30 Elaine Sisman. Sunrise, Sunset: Music of Darkness and Light
3:15 Kristina Muxfeldt. Liberty in the Theater, or the Emancipation of Words:
Mozart, Beethoven, Tieck, Schubert
4:00 Leo Treitler. Why We Need 'The Image in Form' Today

(I here note that I made it about 8 pages into his Beethoven bio before throwing it against the wall. Why? Beethoven's mother, married to an abusive alcoholic, advised a young woman not to get married. The bio attributed this to hating men or something equally silly. Everybody else loves this book, so maybe I ought to try it again, but let's just say that the quality of that first analysis didn't make me look forward to the rest.)