Susan said...
A cogent piece in the New York Times about new operas, or, at least, excerpts thereof. Tommasini does an interesting analysis of the snippets' musical impression/content, which is always interesting since the music is all new, and thus the critic's first hearing. Furthermore, the commentary has much to say about the medium, and the state of the medium, of opera today.
Empiricus has some thoughts on this, too. Or so he would have me believe.
Sampling of New Dishes, Some Still Being Seasoned
Though the struggling New York City Opera has been mostly absent this season, it was in the center of things over the weekend. On Friday night and Saturday afternoon it presented Vox 2009, its 10th annual showcase of excerpts from new operas performed in concert by City Opera singers and the City Opera orchestra. The operas are typically works in progress or completed works awaiting proper productions.
It's good to see the City Opera's dedication to new works does not flag in the face of its struggles.
For the free showcases on Saturday afternoon, the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University was packed.
Also very encouraging.
Four of the five works presented on this occasion represented deliberate attempts by their composers to push the boundaries of the opera genre, for better or worse.
I'm a bit confused; did the composers express the desire to push the boundaries "for better or for worse," or is that the assessment of the situation by the critic? Let's find out!
In video interviews that preceded each performance, and in program notes, opera was described as the ultimate medium for musical exploration, and conservative gatekeepers were deplored.
"The Deploration of Conservative Gatekeepers" would make an interesting name for...something. But what?
So the upstart composers want to challenge the ultimate medium, possibly to the chagrin of the aforementioned Gatekeepers. How'd that work out? What are the criteria? What, properly, is opera (besides, possibly, the "ultimate medium")?
Of course, if opera tells stories through words and music, there is only so far you can push it before it becomes something else.
Hm. That's a large conditional. Is opera about stories? I'll concede the words (or, at least, singers) and music, for now. What are stories about? This is thick and sticky stuff.
Take “Invisible Cities,” with music and libretto by Christopher Cerrone, adapted from the novel by Italo Calvino. The opera tells of the emperor Kublai Khan, who, fearing that he is losing hold of his vast kingdom, listens to reports from the young explorer Marco Polo, who has traveled its remote and fantastical regions.
That sounds opera-y enough for an opera plot. Lots of potential subtext, issues to explore and all that. Imperialism, Empire, Death, Loss, Culture, Hegemony. Good stuff.
Also, not for nothing, potentially cool sets. Costumes. Characters, more or less well-known. Sort of a story, with words and music.
All of our lives lead to decay, Mr. Cerrone said in the video interview. His opera, he added, is about “finding a certain joy in that.”
Whoah. Check out Composer Bringdown over here. But still...
In his orchestral score Mr. Cerrone uses a prepared piano and electronic instruments to evoke exotic sounds and an ethereal atmosphere.
Hmm. For all of the potential topics, this smacks a little of Orientalism.
Figure 2: You make Edward Said Sad
But either way, why am I "taking" this example to support the opening of the article? About new opera?
But in the 30-minute excerpt, the dramatic pacing was static and the vocal writing cumbersome.
That sounds like a problem regardless of genre. Or, more particularly, illustrates that "experimentation [is] no excuse for poor craftmanship," so I see, or rather, read. Technical issues can foul one up in any medium.
When the text is sung, the vocal lines are almost continually slow, sustained and ponderous. When things pick up, the words are almost always either spoken or chanted in monotones.
This sounds like a stylistic critique; however, if the vocal writing impedes the delivery and/or comprehension, it is also a technical one. Also: ouch!
The composer Anne LeBaron approached text-setting much the same way in an excerpt from her opera “Crescent City,” with a libretto by Douglas Kearney.
That does not bode well, by these criteria...
In the story an imagined city (a metaphorical stand-in for New Orleans) is trying to recover from a devastating hurricane. The characters include ghost cops and a voodoo queen.
Again, potentially opera-y, no?
Strange things happen.
Like a statue coming to life and inviting you to dinner?
Ms. LeBaron, who salutes renegade composers like Meredith Monk and John Cage,
Okay.
who upended the opera genre, seems to think that by using electronic gadgets and drawing from vernacular pop genres she can make her score automatically experimental.
Yikes.
But the vocal writing is like a cliché of pompous contemporary opera excess,
Perhaps it's a stylistic parody? Camp? Deliberate cliché?
with lines full of sustained chanting and pointlessly complicated leaps.
Hm. I'm not sure whether this is a stylistic or technical complaint; sounds like both.
Like Mr. Cerrone, Ms. LeBaron resorts to patter or speech when the text needs to be gotten through quickly.
So...didn't really like it, eh? What else?
Jonathan Dawe’s “Armide,” with a libretto by Heather Raffo, was inspired by Lully’s French Baroque opera of the same title. In fact, Mr. Dawe refashions stretches of Lully’s score with modern music twists in this work, which sets the story in postwar Iraq, in 2019. Mr. Dawe describes his opera as “Baroque music on steroids.”
That seems...unnecessary, but it's hard to say. What was it like?
But when transforming old music into something new, it is not enough to rewrite the original with a lot of wrong notes, extraneous harmonies and wandering inner voices, then throw in some orchestral craziness.
Double yikes. Someone brought their critic's pen today.
The last work showcased was by far the best.
What was different? Was it a story with words, and music, too? Less inept, more conservative, or both?
“A Bird in Your Ear” by the composer David Bruce and the librettist Alasdair Middleton is a fairy-tale opera about a nightingale and a privileged young boy, Ivan, who yearns to know what the birds are saying. After saving some baby birds from a severe storm, Ivan is granted his wish by their magical mother.
Sounds like an Oscar Wilde short story for some reason. And potentially loaded with fairy-tale opera conventions...
Mr. Bruce found a model for this work, he said, in Stravinsky’s dance cantata “Les Noces.”
Figure 3: Before fonts had been standardized, chaos reigned
In what way?
The story is told through short scenes with connecting narration.
Oh.
The music, rich with imagined folk tunes, undulant accompaniment patterns and vibrant choral writing, is delicate, tartly tonal and lucidly orchestrated.
That sounds positive, if possibly less musically challenging. Hm, competent, fairy-tale opera, lucid, "tartly tonal" (?).
The characters are enchanting, and the vocal writing mostly effective,
In light of the other works reviewed, "mostly effective" is high praise indeed.
except for Mr. Bruce’s often flawed prosody,
Oops.
the art of setting words to music in a way that conveys the natural patterns of speech.
Yes, that.
It may not have been the best decision to have the narrative sung, for the most part, by a trio of women. The words are sometimes garbled by elaborate three-part harmonies.
A small technical critique.
In context on this long afternoon of excerpts, “A Bird in Your Ear” offered an object lesson: it is better for an opera to be skillfully written and imaginative, however conventional, than to be experimental and inept.
It "is" better, especially if you're a young (relatively) unknown composer getting reviewed in the Times. Ineptitude cannot open new doors easily. The price for being unconventional, though, is sometimes clumsiness with new ideas or materials.
Perhaps that's what some of what opera "is", or has come to be. Chamber music concerts, their audiences, venues, and culture, seem to be generally more forgiving than the opera culture. It's not easy to get opera commissions if your name's not already on the lips of the Board of Directors; it's much easier to get chamber music heard.
Opera is more than the sum of words, music, and stories, skillfully wrought. It carries cultural, economic, and artistic baggage that's difficult to contend with, especially for new works.
Something Empiricus and I have been discussing came to light in Kyle MacMillan's article on the Colorado Symphony:
If they were not told, most concertgoers would probably have no idea that the tough economy forced the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to make significant alterations to its originally planned lineup for 2009-10.
The article goes on to describe how the artistic director has gone through great lengths to preserve a high-quality and full season for the orchestra despite budget cuts.
However,
If they were not told...
...it also shows how The Arts are perceived as somehow automatic, or beyond the reach of mundane economic considerations. Having not been told (we are told), the public would assume that everything is hunky dory.
The following is an excerpt from an interview with renowned critic-scholar Fast Eddie at an undisclosed location.
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[Empiricus] Some say the symphonic organizations are being hit very hard by this econom...
[Fast Eddie] Yeah, yeah. The economy this and the economy that, profit margins, season ticket subscriptions, local business donations, dwindling audiences, dying patrons, and on and on...
You knows what? I got your problems fixed, sure as folded pizza. If ya listen to what I gotta say, you’ll make all the moolah you can eat. Ready?
First, that’ll be five bucks. [At this point Empiricus asks for change for a twenty-dollar bill. Fast Eddie waives his fee]
Okay. Bottom line, what cha gotta do is this—really simple: Ya gotta have fait[h] that the customer is always right. Don’t try to be smart—that’s for those Ivy League know-it-alls who’ve got nothin betta t’do than analyze stuff all day. If ya simply give ‘em what they ask for, and not what you think they might want, then you’re on your way to cabbage heaven. Stick to whacha know’ll work, the warhorses. Your 70-somethin customers’ll love ya. Just don’t surprise ‘em; the more surprisin you are, the worse odds you’re getting on your dough.
One catch: Ya gotta lower your overhead, see. Instead of a 100 person orchestra, how ‘bout a 50 person orchestra? Presto! That way you don’t have to give ‘em the world, just what you can afford. The suckers’ll lap it up. Sure, they’ll miss the Mahler, the Berlioz, the Strauss, for a while. But they’ll still love ya for the Mozart and ya don’t have to lower the prices, see.
[Empiricus] But there’ll be those who say that Mahler is a core part of the repertoire. Can we really set it aside, like you propose?
[Fast Eddie] Listen, this economy bull-puckey is just a self-correction. Got it? We were livin beyond our means. That goes for symphonies, too. I mean, look at the whole shebang: three-thousand seats, statues, gold railings, thirty ushers, guest solists, commissions, what have ya. And all for a puny two hours of 50 string players waiving horse hair across cat gut? Holy friggin cannoli, ya got 180 people on the payroll, right. How much does that cost? Way too much. Ya just can’t keep it goin. That’s like Imelda Marcos and shoes. If ya cut half the shoes out of the picture, bingo, you make more than you spend!
[Empiricus] I see. Has anyone taken your advice, Mr. Eddie?
[Fast Eddie] Glad you asked. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra recently purchased my patented advice; they even got a 20 percent discount, being they’re the first and all—I need t’get my brand out there, see.
Bang, they were going about their plan, throwing greenbacks at three Mahler Symphonies per season, right. Well, they took my award-winning wisdom and now they’re playin a bunch of Beethoven instead. Win-win, badda-bing.
They even got Scott Cantrell to hype it up as if nothin strange was happenin.
Instead of the planned performances of Mahler's Third, Fourth and Eighth symphonies, the FWSO will offer the ultimate in core repertory: Beethoven.
“Ultimate”: now that’s a winnin salesman!
The FWSO didn’t change the concert’s title, too.
The "Great Performances Festival," Aug. 28-30, will include Beethoven's Third, Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the first two piano concertos and the Violin Concerto.
They’re gonna play the safest—and most profitable—music in the encyclopedia.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will be performed during the FWSO's 2009-10 symphonic series...
But most strategic of all, they’re listenin to the suckers.
Most other programs include at least one work chosen by patrons in an audience survey.
Sure, they got some work to do still.
[Another] program will include the world premiere of a work by Peruvian composer Jimmy López. Jennifer Higdon, the orchestra's 2009-10 composer-in-residence, will be represented by four works on two different programs.
Guest conductors will be baroque-music specialist Nicholas McGegan, for music of Vivaldi, Haydn and Mozart; Giancarlo Guerrero, music director of the Nashville Symphony; and Mei-Ann Chen, assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony.
Soloists will include pianist Horacio Gutiérrez and violinists Midori, Sarah Chang and Jennifer Koh.
But there’s still time to cut more spending.
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As you’ve more than likely guessed, we’re not too up to date with our dance. And! (exclamation point)...this is why today’s post might yield some funny results.
Spectacle has been a big part of ballet from the beginning. Ballet, opera and pageant blended at the French royal court, from the horse ballets of Catherine de Medici’s day to outdoor re-enactments of sea battles in lakes built just for shows under Louis XIV.
Neat. In fact, I like to understand a little about what’s at hand. Historicism is often lost in the 700-800 word review. Thank you, Tom.
Even in more modest, indoor shows, the costumes of some grotesque or allegorical characters resembled parade floats.
This, I cannot attest for, but rest assured, I’m not surprised, but intrigued.
Virtuoso dance values became more important in the 19th century, but spectacle remained a staple of the art. Even the great innovator and choreographer Marius Petipa celebrated spectacle during his long, influential reign at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. "The Sleeping Beauty," from 1890, is among his most notable spectacle ballets and an icon of the art. It typically features dozens of elaborate, bejeweled costumes, enormous sets, lots of stage machinery and a huge cast.
How does a company such as the Milwaukee Ballet, with 25 full-time dancers and a lean budget, take on such a monster? MBC will stage its "Sleeping Beauty" from Thursday through next Sunday.
Michael Pink, the company's artistic director had the answers in an interview.
What? Yeah. I know. I’m copying and pasting the entire review. So what? Wanna fight about it?
"We bought the costumes from Ballet International, a company in Indianapolis that is now defunct," he said. "They were really rather well made. International got them from the Maryinsky."
On the cheap and cheap; nothing wrong with that, especially today.
Fig. 1 Dust Bowl
The Ballet International set, Pink said, comprised three tired-looking painted drops. He thought about renting the Houston Ballet's production, but it is so big that it wouldn't fit the Uihlein Hall stage at the Marcus Center. It also would have cost $80,000. So Pink had to get creative.
This is the economy, I guess. Whatever—fine.
"I thought that if I could put 'Sleeping Beauty' in a neutral setting, I could eliminate set changes and move the story along," he said. "I thought that would be better than some threadbare, poor-relation production we could have afforded to rent."
Bottom-line is important to a degree. Sounds average, but I’m still all ears.
Pink conceived and sketched out a "Sleeping Beauty" of his own.
Tom?! Hello?! Not gonna rail this? (Like I said, dance is a bit foreign to me, so set us straight, if you got the time.)
A white, open set trimmed with hundreds of white silk roses is a lighting designer's dream, as it can take on any hue when bathed in theatrical light. Pink worked closely on the design with lighting wizard David Grill. He also worked with music director and conductor Andrews Sill.
How’d that work out? (Wow. I’m constantly amazed at my ability to sarcastically bait the next statement. Fun, nonetheless.)
They trimmed Tchaikovsky's score from 3½ hours to two hours. [It. mine]
(Not surprised) Mmmm-hmmm.
We’re idealists, to a point. But. WTF?!!!? They just cut ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by one and a half hours? Because of money?
Shame.
Shame.
"There are yards and yards of repeats," Pink said.
Fuck repeats! In fact. FUCK repeat performances!!! They cost too much money!
"We have omitted many of them. I doubt that anyone will complain about that."
I haven’t given them my Visa number yet, so...
He’s got me there.
He's also eliminated yards and yards of processions, the point of which was to allow parading of yards and yards of expensive fabric formed into lavish costumes. That sort of thing doesn't play well these days, and it slows down the storytelling.
Like I said, I don’t know about that. So...
Really?!? Pink is gonna cut 40% of the music? Maybe this is a music-centric conceit, but isn’t ‘Sleeping Beauty’ largely a product of the music? There’s an orchestral suite, right? Might that be a reason for its success?
To Pink, the story counts.
Oh. (Again, amazed at my ability for sarcasm.)
To move the story along and to intensify and clarify motivation, he has tinkered with Charles Perrault's fairy tale and the Petipa/Tchaikovsky scenario.
..and Hamlet doesn’t die in the end.
Princess Aurora no longer falls into a yearlong slumber because she pricks her finger when encountering an old woman at a spinning wheel. Rather, she pricks it on the thorn of a red, red rose, the only item of color in her white world.
“A red, red rose?”
"It's full of dancing," Pink said of his "Sleeping Beauty."
As ballets ought to be, with music and its rhythmic-movement coincidences. “A symbiosis, my young padawan.”
"It's not just a cut-down version of a classic. It has its own integrity."
Tchaikovsky. Cut by one and a half hours; the time it takes to drive from Islamabad to Peshawar.
Watered-down booze if you ask me.
Tom?!!!?? Was it good? Does it irk you? Maybe I just don't get dance.
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This has got to be one of the best titles ever.
Department of “D’oh”: American orchestras spend more than they earn
Get it? D’oh? Dough? Money? Stupid? Quotation marks? Department?
Regardless of the silly title, this column, by David Stabler of the Oregonian, is quite informative. You should read it. It details a study that inquired about U.S. orchestra spending versus revenue.
Did the free market kill the symphony?
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Before I get going, I need to apologize for two things. One, I try to make it a policy to only go after music critics who write reviews (or, as in the previous post, critics who make “liberal” use of the word review)—those who write for major daily newspapers. Unfortunately, I stumbled across this clunker, which is from an opinion blog associated with the L.A. Times. However, its author, Tim Cavanaugh, is widely respected for his political blog and opinions; so I don’t feel that bad. And this time, he says some strange things about music. Second, I don’t like going after the blogs of bloggers. But, I can’t resist. So I’m forgoing ethics, just this once, hopefully. Sorry.
I’m sure that it goes without saying that music, especially “classical” music, is not terribly profitable, which forces or, more likely, directs composers to seek financial stability in academia. Tim Cavanaugh has a problem with this, as I do. But not for the same reasons.
Sound of money: free-market economies and long-hair music
Longhair does not need to be hyphenated. But I don’t care about that, this time. What’s important is that we’re going to discuss the free-market. Is it good for “classical” music? Is it bad? Something along those lines, anyway.
KUSC ran a richest-classical-composer feature a few days ago, which drew its top-10 list from a 2005 survey by a U.K. radio station.
There’s a link to this in Tim’s blog. In it, the survey adjusts composers’ salaries and commissions for inflation. Its purpose, to simply compare financial success among composers across different eras. And to Tim’s surprise some names were absent.
It's unlikely the numbers — which were apparently calculated in adjusted currencies — have changed much since then, so here's the list:
1. George Gershwin
2. Johann Strauss II
3. Giuseppe Verdi
4. Gioachino Rossini
5. George Frideric Handel
6. Joseph Haydn
7. Sergei Rachmaninoff
8. Giacomo Puccini
9. Niccolò Paganini
10. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Why is this interesting (to me at any rate)? Because longhair music is pretty much universally recognized as an art form that can't compete in an open market and must be supported through royal or (these days) public patronage. Yet this list is remarkable for the lack of patronage its members enjoyed.
A thesis! Financially successful composers were antithetical to general economic knowledge.
All but two of the composers on the list date to the industrial revolution or afterward, and the two who came earlier than that — Haydn and Handel — did plenty of lucrative for-profit work in Britain, which boasted the most liberal economy in Europe. Verdi, Rossini and Puccini were all piece-work producers who were less interested in pleasing the royal ear than in filling up the house with paying customers. Paganini and "Waltz King" Strauss were expert self-promoters and brand builders, Rachmaninoff made much of his fortune on recordings and performances, and Gershwin made it to the top of the list strictly by producing music for a large popular audience. I'm not sure he ever got a dime of public support.
For the most part, I agree with the above analysis. Those composers were, and still are, financially successful. These guys filled seats; in some cases, to do so, they pandered.
By comparison, Richard Wagner, another 19th-century rock star with a long list of patrons and supporters including a king who built the composer his own mansion and theme-park/mini-city, didn't make the list. That's a special irony given how massively popular Wagner was and still is, not just in opera houses but throughout the popular culture.
He is still popular, to a degree. What are we supposed to learn from this?
You could counter that money earned is no indication of musical achievement,
Yes. I could counter with that. But, then again, we weren’t talking about musical achievement. We were talking about how financially successful composers did not require patronage, thus bucking common knowledge off its horse.
and that wastrels like Wolfgang Mozart and Franz Schubert, or humble workers like J.S. Bach, would top a list of actual composing value.
They would. (I think “wastrel” is a little archaic. Don’t you?) So give some counterpoint, buddy boy.
True enough, but hardship and poverty are the default positions of human existence.
Like Jeb and his comatose brother.
It's success that's the unusual thing,
“Financial” success, not success, which we already knew, and agreed upon.
and the numbers here indicate [financial] success becomes a little more likely in a profit-centered environment.
In other words, in order to make a lot of money, i.e. be “financially” successful, you should focus on making a profit. Those words of wisdom would moisten Benjamin Graham’s eyes.
Interestingly, Gershwin and Rachmaninoff, who both died before the middle of the 20th century, are the most recent names on the list. Audience indifference has since encouraged classical composers to avoid the uncertainty of the marketplace;
There have always been only a few composers who wee able to make a living solely by composing—the lucky ones, like John Adams. Hell, even Beethoven taught piano lessons.
but maybe all those composers with academic sits would have been better off trying to make a bigger buck.
Again, his point: if you want to make a bigger buck, try to make a bigger buck. Foolproof! How come no one ever thought of this before?
What I find funny, though, is that many of the composers on the list wouldn’t necessarily be financially successful today, much less “in the canon,” without the exploitation of their music in commercials, television shows or movies.
So, I’d like to try an experiment. Guess the piece that I have linked with the composer. Are you correct? Have you it heard before? If so, where?
1. George Gershwin
2. Johann Strauss II
3. Guiseppe Verdi
4. Gioachino Rossini
5. George Frideric Handel
6. Joseph Haydn
7. Sergei Rachmaninoff
8. Giacomo Puccini
9. Niccolò Paganini
10. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Were you right? Okay, I admit that the Haydn is tough, and I could have found a better Rachmaninoff (but Shine crossed your mind, didn’t it?). Either way, can you think of a second melody by these guys? In some cases, I’m very hard pressed to do so. Now how about Beethoven, the financially crippled piano teacher? Of course you can.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying, except that the free-market influences the canon. And one hit wonders like Rachmaninoff, Leoncavallo and Pachabell benefit.
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