Today, while much of the world has its attention turned eastward toward China, I made a brief cultural excursion in the other direction, to Europe.
I’m talking about Salzburg, Austria, home of Mozart and of the tradition-filled Salzburg Festival that takes place every summer. No, I didn’t actually physically go Austria—like most of you reading this I’m in New York and likely won’t be heading to Europe until the dollar-to-euro exchange improves from its abysmal $1.49. I am experiencing Salzburg via recording, gorging on the delicacies offered on a new Mozart gala DVD of that city’s 250th-birthday celebrations from 2006, which were broadcast on PBS in September 2006 . Unlike New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival this year, many of whose thrills—like Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone—are not provided by Wolfgang Amadeus, Salzburg’s tribute two summers ago was Mozart, from start to finish. So I was looking forward to the ur-Mozart aspect of the event, and the fact that many great Mozart singers love to perform there. And I was not disappointed. But …
As the orchestra began the overture to Don Giovanni, something looked odd. I could not spot a single woman in the orchestra. read more
This year’s edition of Mostly Mozart, at Lincoln Center, includes the premiere of La Passion de Simone by Kaija Saariaho; the oratorio got glowing reviews when it premiered in Europe a few years ago, and its arrival in New York is a big deal. It is not a coincidence, however, that both Saariaho and Susanna Mälkki, who will conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the performances, are Finnish: Finland is a powerhouse on the classical-music scene. From conductors (Esa-Pekka Salonen being the best-known in the US) to singers (Karita Mattila, Matti Salminen) and composers (Saariaho, Aulis Sallinen, Magnus Lindberg), Finland keeps cranking out an awesome number of superlative musicians.
And this wealth of talent isn’t limited to the classical realm either: Finland has perfected the art of combining heavy metal with opera (Nightwish, Apocalyptica, Sonata Arctica), folk (Finntroll, Korpiklaani) and Krautrock (Circle), while its “freak folk” scene (Lau Nau, Avarus) is thriving. How did a country of 5.2 million people achieve such a preeminence? For that matter, the success of Mamma Mia! also reminds us that neighboring Sweden is a pop-music titan. How the heck did that happen?
As I write this, it’s just over a week until the start of the 2008 Olympics. Pianist Lang Lang is possibly in a position to become even more famous than he already is, according to David Remnick’s article in the August 4 issue of The New Yorker. Meanwhile, the official announcement just came in two days ago (more about that timing in a moment) of a major Beijing music event set to take place during the Olympics, called Divas in Beijing. read more
What is it with classical music’s neverending obsession with birthdays?
I am certainly not the first person in the world to point out the birthday problem, but it’s astonishing to think that this fetish continues, year after year. Each year starting around March and continuing through the summer, I cull through stacks of press releases from arts presenters, as birthdays of important composers and performers are announced with great fanfare for the upcoming season, and programs are constructed around them. This year’s birthdays include Puccini (150th birthday), Bernstein (90), Messiaen (100), Karajan (100), and Leroy Anderson (100). In 2009, we have Mendelssohn’s 200th to look forward to, and then there are the death anniversaries, like Haydn (1732-1909) and Handel (250 years dead). Even while I acknowledge that many of our best recognized and well-loved composers are dead, why must we constantly emphasize what year these people were born and died, their … deadness? read more
Well, death is easy in the arts. And it sure gives you a built-in advantage when it comes to critical consideration. Comedy, on the other hand, is not only hard to do, it’s hard to get cred for.
Let’s pretend, for instance, that the Oscars have any kind of relevance in terms of actual quality and wonder: When was the last time they rewarded a comedic role? I’d argue that Steve Carell is as good if not better in The 40-Year Old Virgin as Daniel Day-Lewis is in There Will Be Blood, but one actor has a statuette and the other doesn’t. (Actually DDD has two, having already scored with an eminently predetermined Oscarable part in My Left Foot.) And Hilary Swank, a two-time winner, could never dream of offering a performance as nuanced and unpredictable as Molly Shannon’s in last year’s tragically underrated Year of the Dog.
This train of thought was prompted by the prospect of this weekend’s broadcast: Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, a funny opera staged in a funny manner by Laurent Pelly, with funny performances by an ultra-game cast. Of course, many in New York found the production too broad, too over the top. read more
It is fascinating to think that Die Soldaten, a vast, experimental opera by the German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, was written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the same time during which the AMC’s popular hourlong television drama Mad Men is set. Mad Men is about the advertising world in New York just before America’s decorous lid got blown off with rock ‘n’ roll, be-ins, the Vietnam War, and all the rest. Zimmermann’s opera tried to blow the lid off of opera; his goal was “opera as total opera theater! In other words: architecture, sculpture, painting, musical theater, spoken theater, ballet, film, microphone, television, tape and sound techniques, electronic music, concrete music, circus, the musical and all forms of motion theater combined to form the phenomenon of pluralistic opera. In my Soldaten, I have attempted to take decisive steps in this direction.”
Die Soldaten was first performed in 1965 in Cologne, Germany, in a scaled-down production because it was considered “unperformable” the way Zimmermann had … read more
Pity the Rodolfo and Mimì pouring out their hearts this July in La Scala’s La Bohème. It’s possible that more people will be craning their necks to see 27-year-old Venezuelan conducting sensation Gustavo Dudamel in the pit, than either the Mimì (Italian soprano Carmela Remigio) or Rodolfo (American tenor James Valenti, who sang a televised Pinkerton this season at New York City Opera). Neither Valenti nor Remigio is a big name like Angela Gheorghiu, the Met’s Mimì this season, or Jonas Kaufmann, who sang Rodolfo in a Bohème conducted by Dudamel in February. But at least Remigio has lived through Dudamania before: she sang Donna Anna in a 2006 Don Giovanni he led in Milan.
Yes, Dudamania is in full swing. In Los Angeles, where Dudamel begins as the L.A. Philharmonic’s new music director in 2009-10, the orchestra welcomed its curly-haired superstar this spring with a lunch catered by none other than Pink’s hot dog stand, creating for the occasion a special “Dude dog”—guacamole, cheese, fajita mix, jalapenos, tortilla chips. (Dudamel is said to be fond of hot dogs.) read more
My introduction to Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Sunday, June 8, on Thirteen) came from watching Rabbit of Seville, a 1950 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, when I was a kid. Musical director Carl Stalling slightly tweaked Rossini’s overture to back up Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd’s frantic chases, and the juxtaposition couldn’t have felt more natural. It’s as if Rossini had scored the cartoon, instead of the cartoon having been set to preexisting music. Seven years later, Jones went back to the trough with What’s Opera, Doc?, in which he and arranger Milt Franklyn deconstructed the entire Wagner canon in under seven minutes. It’s hard to underestimate the influence this pair of cartoons had on at least a couple of generations of budding music lovers, as Richard Freedman wrote in an article for Andante. But this casual referencing of “high art” in a so-called low medium feels alien now, when film, TV and YouTube tend to refer other pop-cultural artifacts. Judging by its lack of pop spoofing, high art doesn’t exist anymore in America. read more
In the singing biz, they talk about money notes—the notes a singer hits that make your spine tingle, the ones that often get a singer hired in the first place. Are the first “money notes” you think of high notes? They’re pretty hard to ignore—this season at the Met, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez have been wowing audiences with their high-note pyrotechnics. For me, the first money notes I think of are probably from “Sempre libera” (soprano high E-flat) and “Nessun dorma” (tenor high B).
But let’s talk for a moment about rich, juicy, resonant low notes—these are the money notes for basses and contraltos (and the occasional mezzo or baritone). read more
In the opera universe, there’s wacky and weird—and then there’s Stefan Zucker. This living “world’s highest tenor” is so strange as to defy description—the closest I can come is that his speaking voice sounds like a Mike Myers impersonation in an Austin Powers movie, and his attachment to Italian opera divas of the past is almost pornographic. Many New York opera-lovers remember him from his WKCR radio show, which was discontinued in 1994. For the uninitiated, he can be viewed in a YouTube clip.
Zucker’s voice opens Jan Schmidt-Garre’s 1998 film, Opera Fanatic, just released in the U.S. on an Arthaus DVD, with a telephone message: “Oh hi, this is Stefan. I feel like shit with a touch of fever and a sore throat, but I will get on the plane… I have some little pimples on my face, and I would feel much more at my ease, much less self-conscious with makeup.” If this doesn’t give you the heeby-jeebies, I’m either not telling it right, or you’ve never heard Zucker’s voice before. read more
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