Cerco, cerco

Through the trackless byways of cyberspace, what leads people to this particular blog?  Well, a number of kindred spirits searching for "opera obsession."  But many land on this page with more specific goals in mind; in honor of these opera obsessions, I thought I'd share some juicy tidbits on the singers who are most often sought after.

Son la Gioconda!

William Berger, in his entertaining Puccini Without Excuses, quipped that "there seem to be more exclamation points in the libretto of La Gioconda than in all other libretti combined."  Hyperbole, but he has a point: many of the exchanges in this fraught drama appear to consist almost entirely of impassioned outbursts.  (Exclamation-ridden libretto (by Arrigo Boito, no less!) here, Wikipedia synopsis of the wild plot here.)  The friend whom I met in the Rush Tickets line is currently singing Enzo, so with his inspiration and with his help finding recordings and a full score, I've spent some time working on connecting with and appreciating this work.  And as a reward, I got to hear performances with the New York Opera Forum.  (There is a lot of opera lurking around this city!  That may become the topic of a post at some point.)  Not insignificantly, I think, the liner notes for the remastered first full recording lament that "it is easy, though mistaken, to regard it as a less than excellent opera."  Based on my own experience, I would say that it can be easy, and may well be mistaken.  But it has certainly moved me to think about what I expect of opera conventions, and what the merits of lavishing loving investigation on not-quite-masterpieces may be.

And now, on with the opera...

Let joy be un-confined!  Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor!  I decided it was high time I saw the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera."  I have to say I prefer Chaplin's comedy to that of the famous trio, but I tried to give it an open-minded go.  There is of course the famous stateroom scene, but more interesting is to me is this one, where impossible capers of all kinds are introduced into a performance of "Trovatore," unsettling the well-heeled audience and the musicians alike.  I must confess, though, that I never really settled into enjoying this example of the genre of slapstick comedy/MGM musical.  Probably this says more about me than the film; I was unable to switch off whatever trained listening had me reacting to the introduction of operatic fragments as though they were supposed to illustrate the plot.  No: a fragment of "Vesti la giubba" is sung in high spirits (!) and the "Miserere" from Trovatore, after apparently concluding the opera (!) was encored as a triumphant love duet at the end.  That was painful.  Also, important and persistent questions--the nature of 'high' and 'low' culture/art, the relation of profit to the creation of opera, reputation to talent in the forging of careers--kept being introduced into the plot and then just left there to be dealt with by means of, well, slapstick comedy.

The second installment in my exploration of "opera in film" was much more successful: Fellini's "E la nave va."  Now, this, I loved!  Not only does it include musical extracts in an illustrative way, it sometimes gives them alternate texts (unfortunately for my inadequate Italian, they weren't subtitled, but I still found it fascinating.)  The "normal" proceedings of the film often erupt into choruses at significant moments.  And not only opera, but dreamy piano pieces, lively folk music, and even complex water-glass playing (!) contribute to the aural landscape of the film.  Extravagant and enigmatic characters inhabit the artificial, luxurious, threatened environment of a cruise ship, bound in 1914 to scatter the ashes of a diva off a Greek island.  Moral and immoral decisions are made.  Love blossoms and love is betrayed.  And it's all gorgeous, and a great deal of fun, as well as poignant.

En elle tout séduit

The next time I desert this blog for a fortnight, Gentle Readers, I will try to give warning.  Half of this time I have spent working, and the other half emphatically not working, with a bevy of friends in a lake house far from the haunts of men (or at least the haunts of the internet); an idyllic retreat which had me humming "En fermant les yeux":

Admittedly, I often hum it in German, thanks to Fritz Wunderlich. But in either language, I find this irresistibly beautiful: the strings not only like wind and stream beside the little cottage, but like Des Grieux holding his beloved Manon in his arms.  Sigh.

Folge mir, Frau...

The Ring sets are here!  The New York Times has the story.  Frankly, reading about hydraulic machinery, steel girders, and a brand new room to house thirty-two (!) computers causes me a shiver of pragmatic worry about finances.  Zerbinetta over at Likely Impossibilities has voiced reasoned doubts about other aspects of the production as well.  But if this comes off... it would be so exciting.  My only exposure to Robert Lepage so far has been through his Damnation de Faust at the Met last autumn, which left me, on the whole, favorably impressed.  A fine instinct for theatrical spectacle and striking, stylized imagery will, of course, get one a great deal further with Berlioz' Faust than with the Ring.  Lepage himself has been quoted (repeatedly) in Met programs describing the Ring, enthusiastically, as containing its own universe.  One is tempted to snap back, "Of course it does, Mr. Lepage!  What are you going to do about it?"

Cara ed amabile

I should be hoarding my stipend and beefing up lecture notes in these last weeks of summer... but the Mostly Mozart festival has begun, and I could not resist its siren call!  As always in the wake of these reckless concert-related decisions, I'm inexpressibly glad I went; surely lecture notes will be the better for my brain and heart having absorbed some Mozart beforehand?   The program notes were unusually lively, as well as informative, maybe stretching a little too far in its attempts to convince us that all the evening's music shared a uniting theme both natural and profound, but still good.  Jane Moss, the festival's director, claims in the program booklet that it is hard to imagine "a more sublime and rewarding way to experience summer in New York than celebrating the genius and inspiration of Mozart," a sentiment which, while perhaps overly fulsome, I find hard to argue with.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy

A week of blog silence, and what do I have to show for it?  Well, a revised syllabus for a course I'm teaching in the autumn, for one thing.  But of course hours spent debating the merits of potential reading assignments don't have to take place in silence.  Cecilia Bartoli, (who, I am tempted to believe, can do no wrong) has a record of Mozart arias which, to me, is the aural equivalent of a really, really good cappuccino, at once soothing and stimulating (effortless vocal acrobatics like perfectly steamed milk?  Maybe that simile shouldn't be stretched too far.)

Last Sunday, I was given a real treat: not only did I get to see the exciting 1970 Karl Böhm Fidelio for the first time, but I got to do it in the company of a friend who was at least as excited about it as I was.  The extreme closeups of the television filming I found occasionally jarring (possibly in part because of Marzelline's anachronistic eye makeup?) but it was a moving performance.  Josef Greindl's Rocco, here, I found much more vivid and engaging than in the 1963 video I mentioned earlier.  My heart still belongs to Christa Ludwig, but Gwyneth Jones' Leonore was fresh of voice and firm of purpose (go here for her "Abscheulicher!")  James King's Florestan was, I thought, of irresistible vocal beauty.  The chorus wowed me: they were lump-in-the-throat expressive as well as impressively precise, and not only that, but the prisoners' pathos survived the camera close-up with flying colors.  Böhm's orchestra seemed to be an expression of the characters' heartbeats, their most private thoughts translated into sweeps of sound.  A few of the spoken dialogs were omitted, and I missed them (I like my Singspiel!) but the entire thing had a breathless emotional urgency which I loved.