Turning Off the Lights

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 11:30 PM | Link to this post

This class has truly been a pleasure for me to organize and teach, thanks to the hard work of this group of students. I will do some final cleaning up and reshuffling of the information we have put together here. After that, we will be shutting down as far as regular contributions to this blog go. Thanks to everyone for reading!

For more current information on opera around the world, go to Ionarts, where there is a list of posts on opera.

December 10: Round Table Discussion

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 10:34 PM | Link to this post

For our final class, we invited a panel of speakers for a Round Table Discussion on the topic "Opera in the 21st Century: The Business of Opera":

• Maurice Saylor, composer, and authority on American opera, and Head of the Catholic University Music Library
  
• Dr. Andrew Simpson, professor of composition and composer of the opera trilogy Oresteia, which had its first opera premiered in a fully staged production at Catholic University in 2003
  
• Dr. Elaine Walter, professor of musicology, former dean of the School of Music, and Founder and General Manager of the Summer Opera Theatre Company here in Washington, D.C.

Professor Simpson began with a presentation of the work he did on the first opera in his Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon. The idea of setting Aeschylus's Greek tragedies as one-act operas in English translation was suggested to him by his wife, a classicist. Agamemnon was presented first by the Opera Workshop at Catholic University, in 2001. The budget for this production was roughly $3000, and we watched an excerpt of the performance (from the reduced score). After that experience, Professor Simpson went on to spend a year revising and scoring the opera for full orchestra, while on sabbatical leave in Greece, for a fully staged production that premiered in Hartke Theater at Catholic University on April 25, 2003 (see Joseph McLellan's review for the Washington Post). I was happy to learn that you can watch video Webcasts of all three performances of the opera.

For the full premiere, there was a budget of $33,000, and Professor Simpson admitted that he served ultimately an infinite number of roles during the whole process: composer, proofreader (in which Maurice Saylor assisted), grant-writer, score copier, advertiser, fundraiser, educational and preconcert lecturer, auditioner, coach, rehearsal pianist. The second opera in the Oresteia trilogy, The Libation Bearers, was presented by the Catholic University Opera Workshop this past March, and you can also watch that on video Webcast. While that opera works its way toward a full production, Professor Simpson assured us that the third opera, The Furies, is also in progress.

Maurice Saylor mentioned that he has also composed an opera, Express: a bus ride in one act, from 1983. However, he spent more time describing his interest in the two works by Gian Carlo Menotti that were given their American television premieres by the Catholic University School of Music, The Saint of Bleecker Street and The Consul. In fact, as we later discussed, Catholic University took part in four television premieres for NBC. The films appear to have been lost, but Mr. Saylor does have sound recordings of all of them in the Music Library. He also suggested the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, as a resource for broadcasts of hard-to-find American operas. For example, at the museum you can watch the broadcast of Menotti's The Labyrinth, an opera that has only and, in fact, can only be produced in the medium of television, since Menotti effectively made it impossible to stage traditionally.

This led to my question later: what has happened to opera on television in the United States? As far as I can determine, there will be a grand total of one opera broadcast on PBS this season (Otto Schenk's Metropolitan Opera production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, scheduled for April 3, 2005, at 2 pm). I remember how impressed I was, as an undergraduate student working in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the summer of 1990, seeing the telecast of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle from the Met. I still have the set of low-quality videotapes I made that summer. This is not to mention the regular programs like "Hour of Opera" that used to air on NBC, before my time. Why don't we have that anymore? And when will I be able to get the European network Arte from my satellite provider? (Radio broadcasts are great and all, but come on.)

Kevin McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era (2001)

Professor Walter approached the topic from her vantage point as an impresario, the general manager of a small opera company. She described a book by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts, the Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), which by and large correctly predicted the trajectory of opera as a business in the latter part of the 20th century. This has been followed by another book by Kevin McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era, published by the Rand Corporation in 2001, which predicted—prior to the September 11 attacks, which have further devastated opera's funding base in the United States—that the wealthiest opera companies and the smallest-budget companies would probably survive but that most of the companies in between those extremes were likely to fail. This prediction appears to be coming true, according to data collected by the Opera America organization, she concluded, which shows that most opera companies are surviving only by running on deficit spending, paying off this year's bills by loans against what they expect to make the following season.

All in all, this was a lively and convivial discussion, followed by wonderful food prepared by the students. Thanks to everyone who was involved!

November 25: Thanksgiving Holiday

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 1:00 PM | Link to this post

Of course, we did not have class this week. I direct you to a post at Ionarts (The Phoenix, November 23) on the reopening of La Fenice opera theater in Venice. You will recall our discussion about the choice of opera for this event, Verdi's La Traviata, which I characterized as a missed opportunity. You can read more there. I have also posted some comments on other opera DVDs that you might find interesting (More Opera and Music on DVD, November 18).

November 19: Postmodern Opera

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 12:01 AM | Link to this post

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), Saint François d’Assise (premiered at the Opéra de Paris in 1983).

Available at Amazon: Olivier Messiaen, Saint François d’Assise (recorded in 1999)

This composer's only opera, subtitled "Scènes franciscaines en trois actes et huit tableaux," has a libretto by Messiaen, culled from his reading on the medieval vitae of Saint Francis.

Here are some short quotes from It's a Secret of Love, Jean-Christophe Marti's interview with Messiaen in January 1992, shortly before his death, about his reverence for this opera:

I'd like audiences to be as dazzled by it as I am. It contains virtually all of the bird calls that I've noted down in the course of my life, all the colors of my chords, all my harmonic procedures, and even some surprising innovations such as the superimposition of different tempos, allowing total independence of the different instruments within a non-aleatory, organized chaos under the conductor’s control. [...]

It's true that I don't like neoclassicism: this approach strikes me as absurd, but I am not attacking anyone by saying this. . . . I simply do not understand [Stravinsky's] neoclassical works: but for me, Stravinsky—the composer of The Rite of Spring and The Firebird—remains one of the greatest geniuses. If I were to offer a serious reason for the attacks on my music, it would be that certain people are annoyed that I believe in God. [...]

In short, you have a very new language made up of discoveries and advances, but without any intentional break with the basic, general assumptions of music such as tonality?

Well, here I have to say that for me tonality and modality are no more than words in a dictionary. They are of practical use but by no means indispensable. If you look at history, you'll see that after birdsong, which imitated rain, the oceans and the noise of storms, people began to sing in octaves and fifths, according to the natural distribution of voices; then came modes—pentatonic modes from China, diatonic ones from Greece, and chromatic ones from India. This modal language was used for centuries, because tonality as such didn't emerge until Bach's day, when it was merged with a highly modal and chromatic language. Before him, Monteverdi and Gesualdo were highly chromatic, just as Mozart was later. If you like, tonality proper has existed for only two centuries, and Beethoven strikes me as the only composer who is frankly tonal. With Chopin and even more with Debussy, this famous tonality becomes veiled once again. Beyond these concepts, the only phenomenon inherent to the world of sound and which composers have to take into account is resonance.

As for his approach to musical style, Messiaen had the following comments for 12-tone music:

Dodecaphony, serial music, atonal music, the result is the same: music without color, grey and black. Except to express a terrible feeling of fear and anxiety, I see no emotion in this language, which sought to abolish resonance. I'm afraid that a love of music is missing from such a world. For me, Debussy's lesson is irreplaceable. One could say that Ravel wrote more spicy harmonies, more colorful orchestrations, but he never achieved Debussy's absolute formal freedom. Debussy found an inspired way of blurring the edges of his structures. The term he used to describe it is untranslatable: un sens de flou—a sort of soft-focus effect. I still marvel at it and freely admit that I'd be incapable of imitating it. It was a work by Debussy that made me decide to become a composer, Pelléas et Mélisande. A humble teacher from Nantes, Jean de Gibon, had the inspired idea of giving me a copy of the score when I was not yet eleven years old. I have to say that for a long time I felt I was not sufficiently gifted to write an opera—in this, I'm no different from my contemporaries. I thought that there was no longer any way forward after Wozzeck.

• Messiaen's Opera at the Bastille (Ionarts, October 12, on this fall's production of the opera in Paris)
  
• Joshua Kosman, A heavenly premiere: S.F. Opera pulls off complex Messiaen masterpiece 'Saint Francois D'Assise' (San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2002), a review of the opera's U.S. premiere (2002)
  
• Tim Page 'St. Francois,' Worthy of A Pilgrimage (Washington Post, September 30, 2002)
  
• Steven Winn, A strange and transfixing opera: Impact of Messiaen's 'Saint Francois d'Assise' depends on the staging (San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 2002)

György Ligeti (b. 1923), Le Grand Macabre (Stockholm, April 12, 1978; revised in 1997)

Available at Amazon: György Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre (recorded in 1999)

Libretto by Michael Meschke and Ligeti, after the play La balade du grand macabre by Michel de Ghelderode. The story takes place in an imaginary country called Breughelland ("run down but nevertheless thriving and carefree"), in an "anytime century." The name of the country refers to the main character of Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, Death incarnate, depicted in Breughel’s The Triumph of Death (oil panel, c. 1562).

• Charles T. Downey, Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in San Francisco (Ionarts post on the American premiere of this opera, right now, in San Francisco)
  
• Photos of the San Francisco Opera production
  
• Richard Felciano, A Demoniacal Romp, a Great Extravaganza (San Francisco Opera)
  
• Thomas May, Viewpoint (San Francisco Opera)
  
• Gyorgy Ligeti -- Illusions and Allusions, Herman Sabbe's interview with Ligeti (October 23, 1978), Interface 8 (1979), pp. 11–34, translated by Josh Ronsen
  

Michael Nyman (b. 1944), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (premiered on October 27, 1986, at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London).

Available at Amazon: Michael Nyman, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (recorded in 1990)

The libretto by Christopher Rawlence is based on a case study by Dr. Oliver Sacks, on one of his actual patients. This is a chamber opera, with an orchestra of strings, harp, and piano, and only three characters, Dr. P, the patient (bass); Mrs. P, his wife (soprano); and Dr. S (tenor), who is the neurologist, Oliver Sacks (author of Awakenings, the basis for the movie of the same name, with Robin Williams).

Nyman read the case study in November 1985, and it formed into an opera in his mind. Dr. P suffers from visual agnosia, that is, he has difficulty recognizing objects by sight, because of Alzheimer’s; he thinks parking meters are people, for example. On the patient's first visit with Dr. S, when leaving, he reaches for his hat but confuses his wife's head with the hatstand (thus the title). However, his singing voice is still intact: in real life, he was a singer and knew Peter Pears. He sings songs from Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe to communicate. There are musical references in the opera to the song "Ich grolle nicht," which Dr. P sings in the couple's apartment, joined by Dr. S for part of it, and Britten's setting of "The Sick Rose," which is the couple's favorite piece, sung by Mrs. P and hummed by Dr. P.

There are sly self-references in this opera, not unlike in Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. During the first doctor-patient interview in the apartment, Mrs. P turns on the TV and sees Michael Nyman playing the piano on TV. Dr. P recognizes him, saying "That's Nyman. Can't mistake his body rhythm." The moves in the chess game the doctor plays with his patient are sung and could be used to reproduce the moves. Singing little songs is the only way Dr. P can find his way if he is jolted from his ritualized schedule. Music becomes Dr. S's prescription, and at the opera's conclusion we hear Dr. P humming to the final bars of the instrumental postlude, until it ends.

Nyman's most recent opera, Man and Boy: Dada was premiered this past summer at the Almeida Theatre in London, 2004. The libretto, by Michael Hastings, brings together, fictionally, the life of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the adolescent Michael Nyman (named only as Michael), who discover that they both collect bus tickets, for collage and collections, respectively. See this post at Ionarts, Opera and Collage, from August 9, for more information.

November 12: Opera in Russia

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 1:19 AM | Link to this post

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) composed more than ten operas, not all of them completed.

Ljubowk k trjom Apelsinam [The Love of Three Oranges] (Chicago, 1921), with libretto by the composer, after Gozzi.

War and Peace (composed 1941-1952) was begun after Prokofiev's return to the Soviet Union. The work was first premiered in an incomplete concert version (eight scenes of first version), on October 16, 1944, by the Ensemble of Soviet Opera of the All-Union Theatrical Society, conducted by Konstantin Popov with piano accompaniment. After a second incomplete concert performance (with nine scenes, on June 7, 1945, by the USSR State Symphony, conducted by Samuel Samosud), Prokofiev continued to revise the opera. After his death, the work was finally staged, in the finished revised version (March 31, 1955, at the Leningrad State Academy Maly Opera Theater, conducted by Eduard Grikurov) and in a restored 13-scene version (November 8, 1957, in the Stanislavsky Operat Theater, Moscow, conducted by Alexander Shaverdov).

Alex Ross, in his review (Prokofiev's War and Peace, The New Yorker, March 4, 2002) of the recent production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (a coproduction with the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, with some pictures available here), called it "the most visually compelling opera production that I have seen in New York in many years." That production was also reviewed by Anthony Tommasini ('War and Peace' Opens; Mishap Raises Concerns, February 16, 2002) for the New York Times.

• Music under Soviet Rule: Prokofiev
  
• The Serge Prokofiev Foundation
  
• James Fenton, Prokofiev and propaganda (The Guardian, February 22, 2003)
  
• Metropolitan Opera materials on War and Peace
  
• Robert Hilferty, A Knight at the Opera (New York Magazine, January 21, 2002), on billionaire Alberto Vilar, who financed the Met production
  
• Production of War and Peace at the Opéra de Paris, directed by Francesca Zambello (2000)

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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (premiered at the Leningrad Opera, January 22, 1934), with libretto by Dmitri Shostakovich and Alexander Preys.

• Thomas May, Katerina Ismailova and the huge, black waves of desire (San Francisco Opera)
  
• Music under Soviet Rule: Shostakovichiana
  
• Alex Ross, Ruined Choirs: Shostakovich (The New Yorker, March 20, 2000)
  
• Alex Ross, "Unauthorized" (The New Yorker, September 6, 2004)

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Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), Life with an Idiot (Amsterdam, 1992), first of three operas by this composer: Gesualdo (Vienna, 1995) and Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Hamburg, 1995).

• Review of Alexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke (Phaidon 20th Century Composers, 1996) in DSCH Journal 7 (Summer 1997)
  
• Russian composer Alfred Schnittke dies (BBC, August 3, 1998)

Making Opera Relevant

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 11:18 PM | Link to this post

Any of you students who saw the latest productions from the Washington National Opera—Il Trovatore and the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda—please feel free to post comments about the productions here. There are reviews of both productions at Ionarts (from October 25 and November 8, respectively).

One of the topics we have been discussing this semester is how opera lost its connection with larger audiences in the 20th century, as the idea of the rare "contemporary premiere"—usually of a work rarely, if ever, to be produced again—became the norm for new operas. Perhaps the opera world—composers, librettists, impressarios, singers, conductors, all of us—should take a lesson from music theater, as discussed in Sarah Crompton's recent article (Tune-and-toe: Musicals are still calling the tune, November 10) for The Telegraph (thanks to ArtsJournal for the tip):

If you stop to think about it, the survival of the musical as an art form is one of the miracles of the 21st century. Musicals are expensive, complicated and old-fashioned in their unreal mingling of song, dance and theatre. They are also incredibly hard to pull off successfully. Yet the form not only survives but thrives. Three of the major theatrical openings of the season - The Producers, which opened last night, Grand Hotel and Mary Poppins - are stage musicals based on films. A staggering 63 per cent of all West End tickets sold are for tune-and-toe shows of one sort or another. [...]

This, I suppose, shows the resilience of the form. Although its basic construction - sing a bit, dance a bit, talk a bit - has changed very little in the past 60 years, the subjects covered and the stories told have been transformed. The musical is now able to embrace everything from Stephen Sondheim's dark examinations of the state of America to shows such as Mamma Mia, which take their impetus from pop songs. In this respect, Grand Hotel, based on Vicki Baum's book which in turn prompted the famous 1932 film, makes an interesting case history. The show, which opens at the Donmar at the end of the month, was last seen in London in a production, directed by Tommy Tune, at the Dominion Theatre in 1992, after a long and successful Broadway run. Garlanded with Tony awards, this darkly glittering portrayal of the sad lives and soaring hopes of guests in a Berlin hotel in 1928 was loved by some - me included - but branded both too bleak and too sprawling by others. It closed after just four months.

Should opera librettists seek to have the same popular appeal? Some already have, as we have discussed in class. The WNO's choice of a zarzuela is an example of such an attempt, perhaps. An article (Houston opera speaking to the streets: Spanish work keeps company relevant, November 6) by William Littler for the Toronto Star speaks to a similar attempt, the premiere of a new work, in Spanish, at the Houston Grand Opera, Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes (libretto by Eliseo Alberto and Francisco Hinojosa):

It used to be said, in the corridors of Toronto's Opera Atelier, that if people can't pronounce the name of an opera, they won't buy tickets. Well, Salsipuedes may represent quite a mouthful in Toronto but not in Houston, which is not only America's fourth largest city but a metropolis destined to play host, in the not too distant future, to a Spanish-speaking majority. In Spanish, Salsipuedes apparently means "leave if you can." It's an amusing title to top the remarkable list of 31 works premiered by Houston Grand Opera in its half-century history.

Well aware of the demographic direction of his city, David Gockley, Houston Grand Opera's general director, some years ago turned to the Mexican composer Daniel Catán to provide his company with its first specially commissioned opera to be sung in Spanish. The result, premiered in 1996, was Florencia en el Amazonas, based on a tale by the Nobel Prize-winning Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Florencia portrayed a famous opera singer's attempt to return to her roots, sailing up the Amazon to the fabled Brazilian opera house in Manaos. Drenched in the seductive atmosphere of Magic Realism, it became a surprise hit which has not only been revived in Houston but staged as well in Los Angeles, Seattle, Mexico City and even Manaos itself. There is also a two-CD album of the score, taped live in Houston, available on the Albany label.

So when Gockley decided to commission a second Spanish language opera, it wasn't too hard for him to imagine the appropriate composer. Assisted by his two Mexican librettists, Catán has responded with what he calls a dramma giocoso, the very title used by Mozart to identify his Don Giovanni, a score which similarly represents a comedy with serious dramatic overtones. The subtitle for Salsipuedes identifies it as "a tale of love, war and anchovies." Set in 1943, the tale begins with a celebration of the marriage of two singer-musicians from a popular local band to a pair of amorously smitten sisters.

The final performances of this new opera are this Friday and Sunday. However, reviews have not been all that positive, for example, Charles Ward's article (Catán's 'Salsipuedes' sashays rather than struts: It's entertaining, but it doesn't have electricity, November 1) for the Houston Chronicle:

Despite the fervent hopes of Houston Grand Opera, there was no dancing in the aisles for Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes, a tale of Love, War and Anchovies. Instead, Friday's premiere of Catán's warmhearted comedy about ordinary people accidentally caught up in the machinations of a corrupt and delusional dictator evoked smiles, chuckles and good feelings. The ensemble cast sang with splendid enthusiasm and passion. Director James Robinson and set designer Allen Moyer provided a vigorous, colorful production that was perfectly outlandish in look and gesture. Conductor Guido Maria Guida confidently steered an imaginative, rhythmically tricky score using an orchestra without violins or violas. But never did the music provide the electric charge that seemed guaranteed by all the talk about an opera based on Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

One of the more interesting recent operas we will be studying, Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, is being performed right now at the San Francisco Opera: see the write-up at Ionarts. Here are some other posts at Ionarts that are also related to our subject:

• Dawn Upshaw in Carmélites (November 10)
  
• Kát'a Kabanová in Paris (November 9)
  
• This Sounds Like a Job For... (November 2), on a collection of Shostakovich materials looking for a new home
  
• Pelléas in Berlin (November 1)
  
• George Crumb Ensemble at the Library of Congress (November 1)
  
• Pentatonic Scale? So Gay! (October 26), on the new book mentioned in class, about the creation of an "American sound" by gay composers
  
• Opera by Film Directors (October 23)

Lastly, don't forget to tune in to WETA (90.9 FM) on November 20 at 1:30 pm, to hear the WNO production, from last year, of Andre Previn's opera A Streetcar Named Desire.

November 5: Opera and Minimalism

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 10:12 PM | Link to this post

Available at Amazon: Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach (recorded in 1993)

Philip Glass (b. 1937), Einstein on the Beach

The opera was premiered at the Avignon Festival in 1976, in a production by Robert Wilson (see also the Watermill Center). Wilson was born in Waco, Texas, and was trained principally in painting in architecture. His interest in drama, especially in creating productions of operas and other theatrical works dominated by light, led Eugene Ionesco to label him as "America’s most important dramatist." That production was brought from France and given two blockbuster, sold-out performances at the Met, which were praised by Andrew Porter in the New York Times. It brought Glass immense fame and was the first major exposure of the minimalist style to a broad audience.

Glass has often voiced his opposition to what he characterizes as a serialist clique among contemporary composers: "There was a time when there wasn't this tremendous distance between the popular audience and concert music, and I think we’re approaching that stage again. For a long while we had this very small band of practitioners of modern music who described themselves as mathematicians, doing theoretical work that would someday be understood. I don't think anyone takes that very seriously anymore."

The opera eventually became the first part of an opera trilogy about men who changed the world through their ideas, followed by Satyagraha, on the life of Gandhi (1980), and Akhnaten, about the ancient Egyptian religious leader (1983).

Other resources:

• Einstein on the Beach (GlassPages, with great images)
  
• Musical Themes in Einstein on the Beach (Nicolas Sceaux)
  
• Philip Glass in conversation with Thomas Moore (October 10, 1981, the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C.)
  
• 25 Years after 'Einstein On The Beach': Frank J. Oteri talks with Philip Glass (October 9, 2001)
  
• Portrait of Philip Glass at the piano (Annie Leibovitz)
  
• Kaleidoscope: Philip Glass talks to Michael Berkeley (September 22, 1986, BBC Radio 4)
  
• Profile of Philip Glass (BBC)
  
• Porter Anderson, Philip Glass: 'Be careful what you want' (June 4, 2001, CNN)
  
• T. J. Medrek, BU Fringe Fest presents cosmic 'Galileo' (Boston Herald, October 31, 2004): on a performance of Glass's opera on the life of Galileo Galilei, premiered in 2002

Available at Amazon: John Adams, Nixon in China (conducted by Edo de Waart)

John Adams (b. 1947), Nixon in China (Houston Grand Opera, 1987). The libretto was written by Alice Goodman, an American who lives in Cambridge, England, based on the actual events of President Nixon's visit to China, February 21 to 27, 1972, to meet with Mao Tse-Tung. Peter Sellars was involved as director/producer from the start and was the one who brought Adams and Goodman together. Adams wanted the libretto to be written in rhymed couplets; it was written in 1985 to 1986. Andrew Porter, reviewing the Houston premiere for The New Yorker, observed that almost all of the character's real-life counterparts could have attended the premiere (the Nixons, Dr. Kissinger, even Mrs. Mao, who was serving a prison sentence at the time, for her part in the Cultural Revolution).

Other resources:

• Elena Park, John Adams Speaks Out About Art in a Time of War (Andante)
  
• Intersections: John Adams and the Poetry of Music (NPR, January 12, 2004)
  
• Brian Wise, John Adams's 9/11 Work Wins 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music (WNYC)
  
• On the Transmigration of Souls, a New Work by John Adams (2002)

See also John Adams, Death of Klinghoffer (Brussels, 1991)

• Robert Gable's comments on this opera
  
• Ionarts review of Penny Woolcock's film version of the opera

The team of Adams, Goodman, and Sellars will premiere a new opera, Dr. Atomic, on the life of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, in September 2005 in San Francisco.

UPDATE:
There is a Web site devoted to Dr. Atomic and its upcoming premiere. Thanks to Lisa Hirsch at Iron Tongue of Midnight for the link.

October 29: Opera in America

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:34 PM | Link to this post

At Christopher Hapka's Web site, usopera.com, you can find lots of information on the history of opera in the United States. That history goes back farther and is more extensive than you might think, as you can see in Hapka's Timeline of American Opera, 1845–1995. For example, on September 27, 1855, George Frederick Bristow premiered his opera Rip Van Winkle at Niblo's Garden, in New York, "the first opera by an American composer on an American subject." In the same year, "the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull offers a prize of $1000 for the best original American opera on an American subject." At the time of his death in 1898, Bristow was at work on an opera on the life of Christopher Columbus.

Another major event, in 1893, was the Denver premiere of The Martyr, by Harry Lawrence Freeman, "the first known performance of an opera by an African-American composer." Scott Joplin's first ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor, was premiered in St. Louis in 1903, but it has been lost. Joplin's opera Treemonisha, which takes place on a plantation run by freed slaves, was completed around 1907, with a piano-vocal score published in 1911. In spite of Joplin's efforts, the opera was not staged until 1975, at the Houston Grand Opera.

There were some major commercial successes that died out in popularity. Dublin-born Victor Herbert (1859–1924), most famous for the dozens of operettas he composed, such as Naughty Marietta and Babes in Toyland, composed an American Indian opera called Natoma, premiered by the Philadelphia-Chicago Opera Company on February 25, 1911. Horatio Parker (1863–1919) won a $10,000 prize in a competition sponsored by the Met for his opera Mona. It was premiered on March 14, 1912, but received only four performances. Howard Hanson (1896–1981) premiered his neo-Romantic opera Merry Mount to stunning success at the Met, receiving 50 curtain calls at the premiere on February 10, 1934.

In the same year, Virgil Thomson (1896–1989) premiered a rather different opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, to celebrate the opening of the Avery Memorial wing of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, in Hartford, Conn. Working with the experimental expatriate author Gertrude Stein (see this excerpt of the libretto, Pigeons on the grass alas), Thomson completed the opera in Europe in 1928. An all-black cast premiered the opera, sponsored by a group called The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music, in a production choreographed by Frederick Ashton and directed by the painter Maurice Grosser, who was Thomson's partner. The American hymn tunes that pervade the opera were familiar to Thomson from his upbringing in a Baptist church in Kansas City, Missouri. See these reviews of the premiere:

• Stein Opera Sung by All-Negro Cast (New York Times, February 9, 1934)
  
• North Side: Gertrude Stein (Pittsburgh Press, April 15, 1934)

Thomson and Stein's intriguing second opera, The Mother of Us All, on the life of activist Susan B. Anthony, was premiered on May 7, 1947, at Columbia University. (A scene from this opera was performed at the recital by young singers from the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program, reviewed at Ionarts on October 11.) Thomson's final opera, on the life of controversial Romantic poet Lord Byron, had its planned premiere at the Met cancelled. It was ultimately first performed at the Juilliard School in New York.

Other resources:

• Virgil Thomson Foundation
  
• Paul Wittke, Virgil Thomson—Vignettes of His Life and Times (September 19, 1997)
  
• Virgil Thomson: The Composer in Conversation with Bruce Duffie
  
• Alice Neel, Portrait of Virgil Thomson (1971)
  
• Patricia Juliana Smith, Essay on Virgil Thomson (from glbtq.com)
  
• Virgil Thomson Papers (Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University)
  
• Four Saints in Three Acts (Theater Pro)
  
• Charles Ward, Four saints, three acts, one character: difficult composer Virgil Thomson (Houston Chronicle, July 16, 1997)
  
• Notes on the Robert Wilson production of Four Saints, Houston Grand Opera (1996)
  
• Jean E. Mills, Gertrude Stein, The Great Great Grand MF of Rap?: Four Saints in Three Acts and the Hip Hop/Rap/Spoken Word Aesthetic [Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900–present), Spring 2003, Volume 2, Issue 1]

October 22: Opera and Jazz

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 9:25 PM | Link to this post

Available at Amazon: Ernst Krenek, Jonny Spielt Auf, Lucia Popp, Evelyn Lear, Thomas Stewart, Vienna State Opera, conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser

Ernst Krenek (1900–1991), Jonny Spielt Auf
Premiered at the Leipzig Stadtheater on February 10, 1927. On New Year's Eve in 1925, Krenek saw an American negro review called "Chocolate Kiddies" in Frankfurt, with music by Duke Ellington. Krenek soon wrote the libretto himself for this early "jazz opera." By 1930, it had been shown in 70 different productions around Europe, making it the most often performed opera of the period. Jonny Spielt Auf made Krenek's name, and he lived off the royalties and repeated performances into the 1930s, when the Third Reich's opposition cut into his profits.

Due to Nazi opposition, the premiere of Krenek's later opera, Karl V, about the disintegration of the Austrian empire under Charles V, was canceled at the Vienna Staatsoper in 1934. At that point, Nazi pressure on conductor Clemens Krauss was at its peak. The Nazis hated the black content of Jonny Spielt Auf and called Krenek a Bolshevik and decadent composer in 1938, at the infamous Entartete Musik exhibit in Dusseldorf, along with Hindemith, Schoenberg, Berg, and many others. The opera received its Prague premiere in June 1938, the last opera performed there before German troops invaded.

Although it evokes the devil-may-care sexual attitude of the 1920s and appealed to mass audiences by incorporating jazz and other dance sounds, the opera was a flop at its New York premiere. That was the beginning of the decline, as more and more critics thought its musical style was more appropriate to an operetta. The Nazis seized Krenek's assets, as well as the rights to his royalties, so when he emigrated to the United States, he landed in New York with almost nothing. Krenek taught briefly at Vassar and in Minnesota, before ending up in California.

You can find more information available from the Ernst-Krenek-Institut-Privatstiftung in Krems, Austria.

Available at Amazon: George Gershwin (1898–1937), Porgy and Bess, Willard White, Cynthia Haymon, Glyndebourne Opera

George Gershwin, Porgy and Bess
Premiered at the Alvin Theater, New York City, on October 10, 1935. Libretto based on DuBose Heyward (1885–1940), Porgy (novel from 1925, Broadway play with Dorothy Heyward in 1927; read the hypertext edition of the novel, edited by Kendra Hamilton). Gershwin sketched the opera in 1934 and prepared the orchestral score from September 1934 to September 1935. (Gershwin had seen a performance of Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf in Vienna, part of the 1928 European trip on which he also met Alban Berg.)

Other resources:

• James Standifer, The Complicated Life of Porgy and Bess (Humanities, vol. 18, no. 6, November/December 1997)
  
• Wayne Shirley, The Operatic Gershwin, New York City Opera
  
• Official George and Ira Gershwin Web Site
  
• George and Ira Gershwin Education Fan Page
  
• Raymond A. White, The Gershwin Legacy: Library Celebrates Contributions of George and Ira, from the Library of Congress (September 1998)
  
• Porgy and Bess, from Imagination: American Treasures of the Library of Congress
  
• George Gershwin (Jewish Virtual Library, Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress)
  
• Robert Marx, American Icons, New York City Opera (on Porgy and Virgil Thomson's Mother of Us All)

Available at Amazon: Kurt Weill, Street Scene, English National Opera (1989)

Kurt Weill (1900–1950), Street Scene
Premiered at the Adelphi Theatre, New York, on January 9, 1947. The libretto was adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, produced in 1929, by New York-born Elmer Rice (1892-1967), with additional lyrics by Langston Hughes. The original production ran for 148 performances, leading Weill to remark, "Seventy-five years from now, Street Scene will be remembered as my major work." The opera was the first real successor to Porgy and Bess.

Kurt Weill (born in Dessau, Germany) started a theater revolution with his collaboration with Bertold Brecht on Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), premiered at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, in Berlin, on August 31, 1928. It was an updating of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1720), which had just been given a modern staging in London in 1920, to huge success. Die Dreigroschenoper cannot really be called an opera: it was staged but in a small theater, not an opera house; no member of the original cast was a professional opera singer (the roles are not designed for that sort of voice, and the cast were mostly theater actors who could sing); the instrumentalists were not pit musicians, and most belonged to dance hall bands (2 saxophones, 2 trumpets, trombone, banjo, timpani, harmonium). Weill said at the time that the work "presented us with the opportunity to make 'opera' the subject matter for an evening in the theater." He also said it was "the most consistent reaction to Wagner" and a positive step toward operatic reform. It is important to realize that this premiere took place less than three years after that of Berg's Wozzeck.

Weill then premiered a similar work, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), on March 9, 1930, in Leipzig. However, in March 1933, Weill fled Germany with his wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, who had sung important roles in both of the works just mentioned. They spent some time in Paris, where Weill completed his Second Symphony and renewed briefly his collaboration with Brecht for Die sieben Todsünden, a "ballet with singing" for George Balanchine's troupe "Les Ballets 1933." In September 1935, Weill went to America with Lenya (although they later divorced), to oversee Max Reinhardt's production of Franz Werfel's biblical epic Der Weg der Verheissung, for which Weill had written an extensive oratorio-like score. After many delays, the work was finally staged in 1937 but in truncated form as The Eternal Road. Weill's first hit in the U.S. was Lady in the Dark, a musical play about psychoanalysis by Moss Hart, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, his return to the theater after his brother's death in 1937. Marc Blitzstein made an English translation of The Threepenny Opera that had great success. Weill had a huge influence through his Broadway musicals and became the most challenging figure on that scene before Sondheim (he worked with Lerner and Ira Gershwin).

Other resources:

• Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, in New York (founded by Lotte Lenya)
  
• The World of Kurt Weill
  
• Kurt Weill Fest (Kurt-Weill-Zentrum, in Dessau, Germany)
  
• The Papers of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University
  
• Street Scene and Urban Space in 20th-Century Music Theater The City as Heterotopia—The City as Transition Space Interdisciplinary Symposium (conference planned for March 4 to 6, 2005) at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany
  
• Kim H. Kowalke, Kurt Weill and His American Identity, American Composers Orchestra

Related Posts:

• Phil Carluzzo, Hot Jazz in Jonny Spielt Auf
  
• Lindsay Heller, "Street Scene:" Sources and Libretto
  
• Grace Cho, Kurt Weil's Musical Style in The American Opera, Street Scene
  
• Kyoung-Hee Jung, Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin
  
• Lindsay Heller, Gershwin's Orchestra for Porgy and Bess

ionarts: 20th-Century Opera

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:49 AM | Link to this post

I draw your attention to the following posts related to our subject at ionarts:

• Remembering the Second Viennese School, October 18
  
• Fiat Lux, Stockhausen Dixit, October 16 (on the completion of Stockhausen's seven-opera cycle, Licht)
  
• Opera Is Back in Toulouse, October 16 (premiere of Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa in the newly renovated Capitole in Toulouse)
  
• Music in Nazi Germany, October 11, and More on Music in Nazi Germany, October 16
  
• Messiaen's Opera at the Bastille, October 12 (on Saint François d'Assise production in Paris)
  
• American Opera at the Renwick Gallery, October 11 (review of recital of American opera presented by singers from the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program)
  
• Blogwatch/Operawatch, October 2 (on productions of Richard Strauss's Daphne)
  
• The Greek Passion in London, October 1 (on the opera, by Bohuslav Martinů, finally produced at the Royal Opera House, at Covent Garden, in London)
  
• Hanjo in Brussels, September 28 (on production of Toshio Hosokawa's Hanjo, at the Théâtre de La Monnaie [De Munt] in Brussels)
  
• Pelléas in Paris, September 21 (Sylvain Cambreling conducts Debussy's opera, designed by Robert Wilson, at the Bastille)

I have quoted or linked to earlier posts in my posts here on Bartók and Janáček.

John Corigliano Speaks

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 9:38 PM | Link to this post

After our work on John Corigliano's opera The Ghosts of Versailles in class (see October 8: The Ghosts of Versailles and the posts after it), we were able to attend a lecture given by the composer at Catholic University's Benjamin T. Rome School of Music on October 15, after a composition master class he gave there. After having gone through hell and high water to locate a copy of the Met's production of Ghosts for the students to watch, I was quite happy to hear Mr. Corigliano say first that he had made a DVD copy of the Met production, which he was donating to our music library. His plan for his lecture was to introduce the opera, have us watch some excerpts from the DVD, and then take some questions.

Corigliano described how he told James Levine that he wanted to write an opera buffa. When Levine said that an opera buffa wouldn't work at the Met, Corigliano revised his plan for Ghosts, which would be a "grand opera buffa." He said rightly that the production recorded on DVD had performances from "the best singers in the world at the time," and he mentioned Teresa Stratas (Marie-Antoinette), Håkan Hagegård (Beaumarchais), Marilyn Horne (Samira), and Renée Fleming (first Met role as Rosina). What suited Corigliano's interests in the libretto was "the chance to time travel back to the 18th century," allowing him to shift the style back and forth between neoclassical and modern idioms, not to be bound to one style as Stravinsky was in The Rake's Progress. He likened the quotations from Mozart and Rossini, which are heard in the "world of deranged classicism" of the ghosts, to "subliminal flashes."

As for the music of the ghosts, Corigliano said that it was associated in his mind as he composed it with "clouds, smoke, wisps," and that it was based on a tone row. As different instruments take up the row, the color changes, creating a sort of Klangfarbenmelodie. Aside from the range of styles in the opera, Corigliano said that he believed the opera's success was due to the fact that, in his opera, "the singers are given the music for their voices," meaning not only that he wrote for operatic voices, in general, but also that he adapted the opera for these specific singers. We watched Marie-Antoinette's Act I scene, "Once there was a golden bird," which ends with an extremely high note. Although Corigliano notated the note simply as "highest note possible," Teresa Stratas wanted him to change the score to reflect the fact that she hit a high E at this point in the production. It's a dramatic moment on the video version.

There was not time for many questions. In response to the question on many people's minds, Corigliano responded that, no, he and William Hoffman have no plans to create another opera. The Ghosts of Versailles has had several incredibly successful productions (see notes on the productions in my previous post), all completely sold out. At the Met premiere, Corigliano said, "even Jackie Kennedy couldn't get tickets," although she did eventually see it. In spite of the opera's success, he insisted, he is not going to go through the anguish of creating another opera until Ghosts is produced more often and with more regularity. Houston Grand Opera, he says, thinks of Ghosts as "the Met's opera" and refuse to produce it, although they have expressed interest in a new opera from Corigliano. Plácido Domingo, at the Washington National Opera, likes the opera but will not commit to producing it here. Why should composers labor to produce new operas that will only get one or a few productions? John Corigliano may have a point.

Turandot Synopsis

Posted by Timothy M. Ballard at 12:11 PM | Link to this post

Turandot Giacomo Puccini
ACT I: Peking, legendary times. In a quarter swarming with people near the Forbidden City, a Mandarin reads an edict: any prince seeking to marry Princess Turandot must answer three riddles - and if he fails, he will die. Her latest suitor, the Prince of Persia, is to be executed at the rise of the moon. Bloodthirsty citizens urge the executioner on, and in the tumult a slave girl, Liù, calls out for help when her aged master is pushed to the ground. A handsome youth recognizes him as his long-lost father, Timur, vanquished king of Tartary. When the old man tells his son, Prince Calàf, that only Liù has remained faithful to him, the youth asks her why. She replies it is because once, long ago, Calàf smiled on her. The mob again cries for blood, but the moon emerges, and all fall into sudden, fearful silence. The doomed suitor passes on the way to execution, moving the onlookers to call upon Turandot to spare his life. Turandot appears and, with a contemptuous gesture, bids the execution proceed. The crowd hears a death cry in the distance. Calàf, smitten with the princess' beauty, determines to win her as his bride, striding to the gong that proclaims the arrival of a new suitor. Turandot's ministers Ping, Pang and Pong try to discourage the youth, their warnings supplemented by the entreaties of Timur and the tearful Liù. Despite their pleas, Calàf strikes the fatal gong and calls out Turandot's name. ACT II: In their quarters, Ping, Pang and Pong lament Turandot's bloody reign, praying that love will conquer her icy heart so peace can return. As the populace gathers to hear Turandot question the new challenger, the ministers are called back to harsh reality. The aged Emperor Altoum, seated on a high throne in the Imperial Palace, asks Calàf to give up his quest, but in vain. Turandot enters and tells the story of her ancestor Princess Lou-Ling, brutally slain by a conquering prince; in revenge Turandot has turned against all men, determining that none shall ever possess her. She poses her first question: what is born each night and dies each dawn? "Hope," Calàf answers correctly. Unnerved, Turandot continues: what flickers red and warm like a flame, yet is not fire? "Blood," replies Calàf after a moment's pause. Shaken, Turandot delivers her third riddle: what is like ice but burns? A tense silence prevails until Calàf triumphantly cries "Turandot!" While the crowd gives thanks, the princess begs her father not to abandon her to a stranger, but to no avail. Calàf generously offers Turandot a riddle of his own: if she can learn his name by dawn, he will forfeit his life. ACT III: In a palace garden, Calàf hears a proclamation: on pain of death, no one in Peking shall sleep until Turandot learns the stranger's name. The prince muses on his impending joy; but Ping, Pang and Pong try unsuccessfully to bribe him to withdraw. As the fearful mob threatens Calàf with drawn daggers to learn his name, soldiers drag in Liù and Timur. Horrified, Calàf tries to convince the mob that neither knows his secret. When Turandot appears, commanding the dazed Timur to speak, Liù cries out that she alone knows the stranger's identity. Though tortured, she remains silent. Impressed by such endurance, Turandot asks Liù's secret; "Love," the girl replies. When the princess signals the soldiers to intensify the torture, Liù snatches a dagger from one of them and kills herself. The grieving Timur and the crowd follow her body as it is carried away. Turandot remains alone to confront Calàf, who at length takes her in his arms, forcing her to kiss him. Knowing physical passion for the first time, Turandot weeps. The prince, now sure of his victory, tells her his name. As the people hail the emperor, Turandot approaches his throne, announcing that the stranger's name is - Love.

Unfinished Masterpiece

Posted by Timothy M. Ballard at 12:08 PM | Link to this post

Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's last masterpiece before his death, Turandot, the opera that salutes the power of love.

Giacomo Puccini was born in 1858, the son of the musical director of the Cathedral of S. Martino in Lucca. Though Puccini might have been inclined toward music as a profession through his own discretion, there was never a thought that he would do otherwise as it was assumed he would carry on family tradition. Though Puccini received training in various areas of music, including chamber music and organ, his true love was the opera. He is remembered as a master of operatic realism.


Puccini's first operas were true to 19th Century Italian harmonies with drama that portrayed balance of action. Puccini's operas were strong in emotional appeal and conflict, but they also contained gentler segments of repose and reflection. An example of such balance is suggested by Puccini's "farewell" and "death" arias that are marked with passionate lyrical melodies contrasted against underlying tones of morbidity.


Toward the end of his career, Puccini was influenced by the compositions of Rimsky-Korsakov, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, early forerunners of the Impressionistic Music Era. As Impressionistic music diverged from traditional harmonies, Puccini endeavored to assimilate a more contemporary style into the writing of "Turandot," an opera based on Italian dramatist's Carlo Gozzi's play by that name. Puccini's "Turandot" is by far his most grand opera, replete with climaxes, choruses, and full pageantry.


Princess Turandot, according to the fable that served as Gozzi's inspiration, lived in the City of Peking. She was destined to marry but had pledged to thwart any attempts of suitors because of an ancestor's abduction by a prince and resultant death. With each suitor, Turandot posed three riddles. If the suitor answered all three riddles correctly, he won the hand of the princess. If he failed, he lost his head.


Act I opens as the Prince of Persia, who has failed to answer Turandot's riddles, is being escorted to the execution block. Calaf, a handsome prince in his own right, notices a slave girl who is attending to her fallen master. When Calaf approaches the scene, he recognizes his father whom he has not seen in many years. After a sentimental reunion, the threesome turn their attention to the execution, joining others in the crowd who are calling for Princess Turandot's reprieve of execution for the Prince of Persia. The princess does appear; however, there is no reprieve. She orders the execution to proceed.


In Act II, Calaf believes that Turandot's heart can be conquered by love, and against the objections of his newly found father, he presents himself as a suitor. Having successfully answered the Princess's questions, Calaf turns the tide and becomes the author of his own challenge: if Turandot can learn his true identity by dawn, he will forfeit his life. Turandot is enraged and in Act III issues a proclamation to the city, prohibiting the sleep of anyone until she can discover the name of the young prince. Frightened by their princess's obvious rage, some of the people of Peking surround Calaf and draw daggers to intimidate him. Others race to find the old man with whom he had been seen earlier. Soon they have brought his father and the slave girl who serves him to the scene. Princess Turandot herself appears and orders that the girl be tortured. Though the torture is intense, the young girl will not give up Calaf's name. Turandot is impressed by the girl's endurance and asks her secret. The girl replies, "It is love." Calaf tears Turandot's veil from her face and kisses her. The princess gives way to tears and Calaf knows he has broken through the barrier that has kept her heart shut from all emotion. The chorus applauds the power of love.


Puccini was suffering from cancer of the throat as he endeavored to complete his Turandot masterpiece. He lacked the composition of a final duet between Calaf and Turandot when he died post-surgery in Brussels. Puccini's colleague, Franco Alfano, completed the duet as well as a finale, using Puccini's notes and sketches. The opera was first performed in 1926, two years after Puccini's death.








Written by Elaine Schneider
Copyright 2002 by PageWise, Inc

October 15: The End of Opera?

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:58 PM | Link to this post

The two operas we will examine this week were premiered within a few months of one another in 1925 to 1926, both conducted by legendary conductors. One represents the end of traditional Italian opera, and the other is sometimes regarded as the perfect modernist opera, combining atonal techniques with a disturbing psychological analysis of its characters. Was this the one-two punch that was the beginning of the decline of opera?

Available at Amazon: Giacomo Puccini, Turandot, Joan Sutherland, London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), Turandot
Premiered on April 25, 1926, at La Scala in Milan, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Libretto (in Italian only): Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, after a play by Carlo Gozzi, Re Turandot (1762) or actually after Friedrich Schiller's German adaptation of Gozzi, Turandot, Prinzessin von China, from 1802). Suites of incidental music for performances of the play were composed by Carl Maria von Weber and Ferrucio Busoni. Operas on the same story were also composed by Antonio Bazzini in 1867, and by Busoni in 1917

As for the "Chinese" sound of the opera, the closest Puccini got to China was listening to the Chinese musicbox owned by his friend Baron Fassini, who had been to China. Puccini supposedly derived some of the opera's main themes from this musicbox. His reading on Chinese culture and ritual was extensive, including a book by J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai, 1884).

The opera was left incomplete (ending in the middle of the third act, after the death of Liù) at the composer's death in 1924; finished by Franco Alfano, in consultation with Toscanini.

Turandot will be broadcast live on radio from the Met, on January 29, 2005.

Other resources:

• Materials on Turandot (Met Opera Radio Broadcasts)
  
• From The Metropolitan Opera Archives: Notes on Turandot (information on the American premiere of the opera, at the Met, on November 16, 1926)
  
• Giacomo Puccini and Turandot (Pucciniana!)
  
• Puccini's "Turandot" turns Lebanese palace into Chinese imperial court (Living Portals News, July 5, 2004, about a production of the opera in Lebanon this summer)
  
• Giacomo Puccini's Turandot in the Forbidden City: An Introduction (production of the opera in Beijing in 1998)
  
• Enrique Subercaseaux, The Ultimate Turandot (Asia Week, September 25, 1998) (also about the production described above)
  
• Frank Johnson, Puccini scores—analysis of aria 'Nessun Dorma' (National Review, July 23, 1990)
  
• Jonathan Christian Petty and Marshall Tuttle, Tonal Psychology in Puccini's Turandot (Center for Korean Studies, Berkeley, and Langston University)
  
• Eric Teo, Trembling over China: Italian opera Turandot reveals unchanging Western prejudices about a 'paradise lost' (Channel News Asia, November 20, 2003)
  
• Robert Hilferty, Puccini/Berio: Turandot, Act III (Andante, 2002) (Luciano Berio's completion of Puccini's opera was premiered in 2002 in the Canary Islands, but has not been recorded, as far as I know)

Available at Amazon: Alban Berg, Wozzeck, Hildegard Behrens, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado (recorded live at the Vienna Staatsoper, 1987)

Alban Berg (1885–1935), Wozzeck
Premiered at the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin, December 14, 1925, conducted by Erich Kleiber.

Libretto (in German only): by the composer, based on a play by Georg Büchner (1813–1837), Woyzeck (completed in 1837, published in 1879, first performed in 1913 in Munich). The play is derived from real events in Leipzig, in 1821, when Johann Christian Woyzeck, a barber and former soldier, had murdered his mistress, Frau Woost. His lawyer's defense of insanity was rejected by the court, and Woyzeck was hanged publicly in Leipzig's market square in 1824. The case was written up in a medical journal, to which Büchner's father, a doctor, subscribed.

Berg saw the first performance of the play in Vienna in 1914 and immediately began sketching out plans for the opera. World War I delayed his plans. The full score was completed in 1922, the cost of which was underwritten by Alma Mahler, to whom the work was dedicated.

Messiaen remarked that he hesitated to compose an opera, because he thought that nothing was possible after Wozzeck, which was typical of many at the time.

Other resources:

• Mark Morris, Berg's Wozzeck (essays on the works of Alban Berg)
  
• Maria F. Rich, Alban Berg and the Vienna of His Time (Opera Quarterly 3, no. 3 [Autumn 1985]: 38–67)
  
• Composer Profile: Alban Berg (BBC Music)
  
• Alban Berg's Lecture on Wozzeck (1929)
  
• Willem Pijper, Obituary: Alban Berg 1885–1935 (Musical Times, May 1936, translated by Herbert Antcliffe)
  
• Information on Alban Berg (Met Opera Radio Broadcast, including information on Lulu)
  
• Hildegard Behrens as Marie in Wozzeck
  
• Joseph L. Lockett, "As Good A Murder As You'd Ever Want To See": Human Reduction in Georg Büchner's Woyzeck (December 20, 1989)

Related Posts:

• Grace Cho, Chinese Melody, Mo-Li-Hua, in Turandot
  
• Phil Carluzzo, Traditional Forms in Wozzeck
  
• Lindsay Heller, Buchner's "Woyzeck" and "Wozzeck" as the Anti-hero
  
• Tim Ballard, Unfinished Masterpiece
  
• Tim Ballard, Turandot Synopsis
  
• Kyoung-Hee Jung, Berg, Wozzeck: Overview

October 8: The Ghosts of Versailles

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 12:10 AM | Link to this post

The Ghosts of Versailles was premiered in 1991 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and revived there in 1994. It was then produced in 1995 at the Chicago Lyric Opera, with its European premiere in 1999 for the opening of the new Niedersächsische Staatsoper in Hannover, Germany. The work was never recorded for CD, and the videotape and laserdisc versions of the Met premiere are now out of print.

Music: John Corigliano (b. 1938), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music, for his Symphony No. 2, and an Oscar in 2000, for his score to the film The Red Violin (by the director who made the extraordinary Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould)

Libretto: William M. Hoffman, after Beaumarchais's La Mère Coupable (1792)

John Simon's article, Other People’s Music: Corigliano at the Met in The New Criterion (vol. 10, no. 6, February 1992), written a few months after the 1991 premiere gives the following perspective:

Long in gestation and long in duration, The Ghosts of Versailles has arrived at the Metropolitan Opera as one of the most sumptuous productions I have seen on any operatic stage. With music by John Corigliano and a libretto by William M. Hoffman, it is the first new opera commissioned by the Met in a quarter century, or since Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra and Marvin David Levy's much worse Mourning Becomes Electra proved failures. It was twelve years ago, in 1979, that James Levine suggested to Corigliano at a dinner party that he write an opera for the Met's centenary season, 1983–84; the three-hour work did not get written and produced till December 17, 1991, amid considerable hoopla and fanfare. (It had become, along the way, a joint commission with the Chicago Lyric Opera, where it will be seen during the 1995–96 season.) Was it worth the effort, the wait, and the reported four-million-dollar cost? [...]

Applauded, too—perhaps above all—were John Conklin's ostentatious sets and costumes. The scenery was not exactly uncluttered, but, opulent and versatile, it achieved kaleidoscopic effects. One could see where those millions of dollars went—or, rather, sashayed, capered, tripped, and thronged. Surely, what was being applauded was trappings and tumult.

According to Simon, Hoffman himself admitted the parallels of his libretto to the Strauss-Hofmannsthal Ariadne auf Naxos, in which the story also involves the staging of an opera. For Simon, the failure of the opera lies in the lack of sympathy we feel for the love between Beaumarchais and Marie Antoinette:

This is the weakest aspect of a weak libretto and music: neither verbally nor musically are we made to believe in and care for this love story. But if we don't believe and care, how are we to buy what Hoffman calls the "philosophical basis of the opera," that it is "a spiritual reconciliation between the legitimate desire to improve things, which represents the revolution [i.e., is represented by the revolution], and the spirit of the ancien régime. So my marriage between the two is after death, in the afterworld, between the two leading proponents of both [i.e., the leading proponents of each]." What disingenuous nonsense! If this were "the motivation for the whole thing," as Hoffman also says, the piece would not be flagrant camp, and the two main characters would be more complex and more real.

Other resources:

• Michael Begg, Interview with John Corigliano, for Twentieth Century Ltd.
  
• William M. Hoffman, "Confessions of a Librettist: How Rossini's Barbiere Influenced The Ghosts of Versailles," Opera News, 59, no. 15 (April 15, 1995): 8.
  
• William M. Hoffman, The Barber of Seville: The Real Figaro, from New York City Opera
  
• William M. Hoffman, What's Passed is Passed On, from New York City Opera
  
• Greg Sandow, On Contemporary Opera (material on Corigliano)
  
• Benjamin Ivry, Pulitzer winner breaks boundaries (Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 2001), on Corigliano

Related Posts

• Lindsay Heller, Sequel to Rossini & Mozart? Darius Milhaud, "La mere coupable"
  
• Grace Cho, Beaumarchais' Character in the Ghost of Versailles
  
• Dr. Downey, John Corigliano Speaks
  
• Kyoung-Hee Jung, The Ghosts of Versailles: Act I

Janáček, Kát'a Kabanová

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:37 PM | Link to this post

From ionarts (Leoš Janáček, August 2):

Here is an interesting article (Back to the old country, July 26) by John Tusa in The Guardian, in which the author goes back to the country where he was born, Czechoslovakia, on the trail of composer Leoš Janáček, whose 150th birthday we celebrate this year. Janáček—whom Tusa describes as "the musical puzzle, the composer who came from nowhere, who left no school, yet who strides the international opera scene to this day"—may be the greatest opera composer of the 20th century in the minds of many people, myself included. On his first night in Brno, Janáček's professional base, Tusa witnessed a performance I would love to have heard:

On the first evening, the Janacek Opera of the Brno National Theatre were performing Katya Kabanova. Part of a fortnight's anniversary festival including all of Janacek's stage works, it was a turbulent evening. Janacek sung in Czech by Czechs has a special impact; this is not surprising, given Janacek's obsession with the way the spoken language sounds and the way in which it influences composed music. But it was the theatrical brutality of the piece that took me aback. The speed with which Janacek disposes of the action, culminating in Katya's suicide, is breathtaking, yet achieved without skimping. The emotional impact is huge, because the economy and concentration of the music are so intense. That is the paradox. That is his genius.

Next, Tusa goes deeper into the countryside to find Janáček's house and tries to understand how folk music had such an influence on the composer:

Two evenings later, we were in Janacek's home village of Hukvaldy, surrounded by the wooded hills he loved so much, the 500-year-old lime trees, the old castle on the hilltop about which he lyricised, clean air and bright sunshine that seemed to give him creative energy. We were in the pub Janacek used, Pod Hradem, below the castle. Then, as now, musicians played folk music, violin and dulcimer, perhaps even the one the composer listened to. They sang while they played. In Janacek's time, the musicians were local farmers and peasants, the music preserved and transmitted through the oral tradition. That evening the two performers were computer programmers by day but had learned folk music at the hands of local musicians.

It's a long article, full of information, and definitely worth reading.

Available at Amazon: Leoš Janáček, Kát'a Kabanová, with Nancy Gustafson at the Glyndebourne Festival

Kát'a Kabanová opens with the clerk, Van'a, admiring the waters of the Volga River, where the action will end tragically. This opera revolves around an adulterous love triangle: Tichon (tenor), a weak man dominated by his horrible, bitter mother, Kabanicha (contralto); his wife, Kát'a; and her lover, Boris (tenor). Kát'a's sexual repression in the first act is as frenetic as that of the governess in Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw (1954). At the opening, she pines for her life before it was stifled by her marriage, when she as free as a bird. She used to love going to church, where she had ecstatic visions of angels in the rising incense. Kát'a obsessively dreads (fantasizes about?) the "terrible sin" she knows she is going to commit ("on the edge of an abyss," she confides to herself that she is "thinking of someone"). She begs her spineless husband not to go on the trip her mother-in-law forces him to take, to no avail.

With Tichon away, Kabanicha continues her malicious attacks on Kát'a in Act II. Varvara, the family's foster daughter, tempts Kát'a toward her dreaded sin, by offering her the key to the garden, where she could meet her lover that night. Kát'a wonders what she can safely allow herself to do: look at Boris? speak to Boris? see Boris? If we had any doubt about the sexual nature of Kát'a's religious mysticism, Boris, waiting for her in the garden, tells his friend, "when she prays, she is beautiful." In the third act, everyone is brought together in a cave during the terrible storm (whence the title of the source play), and Kát'a rashly confesses her sin. Distraught over this confession, Kát'a sings an incredible monologue of insanity, in which she obsesses over her guilt, insisting that she should be punished and thrown in the river. The orchestra, which from the somber opening introduction has provided the music of the characters' inner turmoil (especially Kát'a's), is joined in this final scene by the "funeral chanting" of an offstage chorus. Before she jumps into the Volga, Kát'a sings of how "birds will sing over my grave and flowers will blossom." The rotten elders of the opera say equally heartless things when villagers bring the dead body to the cave: Boris's uncle Dikoj says to Tichon, "There's your Kát'a"; Kabanicha says coldly to the villagers, "Good people, I thank you for your kindness." Only the faceless chorus laments the suicide.

Janáček's dramatic economy in this opera is nothing short of remarkable. George Martin observes that this opera's three acts take 15 fewer minutes to perform than Strauss's one-act Elektra. There is nothing vocally or orchestrally that is not absolutely necessary. He relentlessly pursues a sparse vocal style that is sharp and effective. What is surprising to realize about Janáček's operas is that, although the composer died in 1928 at the age of 74, his operas were largely unknown outside of Czechoslovakia for so long. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle, from 1918, was not premiered in the English-speaking world until 1946 and more widely in the 1950s, and Kát'a Kabanová, from 1921, was also premiered in England and the U.S. in the 1950s. Some of Janáček's other operas took even longer, like the wonderful Cunning Little Vixen (1924 vs. the 1960s), The Makropulos Affair (1926 vs. the 1960s) The Excursions of Mr. Brouček (1920 vs. the 1970s/80s), and the postumously premiered From the House of the Dead (1930), based on the Dostoevsky novel Memoirs from the House of the Dead, which was not staged in the United States until 1990.

The Love Triangle in Billy Budd

Posted by Timothy M. Ballard at 9:07 AM | Link to this post

Beauty – Handsomeness – Goodness



So much has been written about the “interview Chords” in Billy Budd and although one is loath to revisit such an apparently dead horse. For this topic the meaning of those chords must be assumed to be love, a love that leads to a tragic fate. However, the love that Vere and Billy share I believe transcends the earthly or eros (erotic) type of love and is a love on a higher plane above the mundane. It is this very love that frustrates Claggart so, for he cannot understand it. In that very sense Claggart, Vere and Billy step into the spiritual roles of God the father, (Vere) Christ (Billy) and Satan/Lucifer (Claggart). Billy is the light that Claggart cannot comprehend, and thus seeks to destroy.

I believe that an argument can be made for a triangle of a Spiritual, Sexual and Social Trinity with in this opera.

Spiritually

Billy is a type of Christ (although referred to as an Angel – Christ appeared as an Angel in Christophonic form). He is a “foundling” so in his lack of parentage is Christ-like and also would tie him to the King of Salem, Melchizedek, mentioned in Hebrews. (Heb. 5:6 NKJV).

Billy’s death can be seen as Christ-like. Although Billy cries out for Vere to save him or spare him (much like Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane), Billy resigns him self to his death as what is best for Vere.

Billy’s only imperfection, his stutter, is that which reveals the inner nature of a faultless man.

Socially

The contradictions of the opera are best seen in Vere. He is the only character that is shown as capable of intelligent thought (besides Claggart – of course). Vere is neither victim or criminal, yet he is led by his perceptions of the crew. The crew is “sheep-like” in its wavering devotion to Vere. In one scene they sing “Bless You” of the Captain and in another they “rumble” with mutiny!

Vere’s heart and emotion is perhaps best portrayed in his Prologue and Epilogue – the pathos of his music and the passion of his words are interestingly juxtaposed to his calmness in his music inside his memory of Billy.

Sexually

The sexuality of Billy Budd is deliberately ambiguous. Britten spent quite some time estranged from Crozier (the librettist) over Claggart’s aria. Crozier and Forster wanted the aria much more passionate and overt in its homosexual nature. Britten wrote the work with subdued passions and foreboding.

Does Vere feel the same attraction to Billy that Claggart does? Vere echoes Claggart’s words “O beauty, o handsomeness o goodness!” I think there is definitely and very deep love and respect between Vere and Billy. Consequently, the way that Britten writes the scenes between the two the “love that dare not speak its name,” is told in the music.

Billy is the quasi-spiritual visitor who because of his beauty and goodness – threatens to destroy Claggart’s world. Although the question of homosexuality should not be approached in respect to its explicitness, it is a consideration that might be implied by the opera but never realized!

Zambello’s production that begins on what seems initially to be a stark minimal set, I think, explores the psychology of Melville, Crozier and Forster, and Britten equally well. Certainly the homoerotic nature of an all male cast on a ship is explored. Equally done is the conflict that Vere still feels as an old man and his assimilation of those past events into his ultimate salvation. Dewayne Croft was as stunning as Billy, as Ramey was a purely evil Claggart.

The set appears quite stark initially, basically a raked set that represents the bow of a ship. By utilizing lighting effects Zambello dispenses with the usually scene changes and Britten’s music for these changes seems all the more powerful and realistic.