Opera

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Miller Theater, Opera

Lost in Translation?

Since it’s opera week here at Sequenza 21 and there’s a lot of chatter in the comments about transplanting operas between cultures and Galen has raised the topic of fugues in the invisible YouTube video below, it seems somehow fitting to mention that  Miller Theater and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music are presenting tonight and tomorrow night the U.S. premiere of Lost Highway by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, a multimedia opera based on the weird and wacky David Lynch film of the same name.  Film buffs will recall that Lynch’s film involves sex, murder and a character named Fred Madison who mysteriously becomes Pete Dayton through a mental disturbance known as “psychogenic fugue.”  Can you dig it? 

Timothy Weiss conducts the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and an all-student cast.  Anybody going?  Write us a review.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Opera

Man (or Woman) Overboard! Tobias Picker’s Back in Town

Speaking of great American operas, Tobias Picker has written two of them; Emmeline, which is an unqualified masterpiece, and An American Tragedy, which I think history will regard more dearly than its contemporary reviews might suggest.  Between those two landmarks, Picker wrote a kind of “forgotten” opera called Thérèse Raquin, an epic based on the Zola novel which, like Tragedy, involves an unwanted lover being chucked overboard in favor of a more attractive alternative.  Picker’s psychiatrist, if he has one, could probably make something of that.

Thérèse Raquin premiered at The Dallas Opera in 2001 and is now having its New York premiere run, in a revised chamber version prepared by Picker, from Dicapo Opera Theatre.

The opera has three more performances this coming weekend: Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 25, at 4 p.m. Dicapo Opera Theatre is located at 184 East 76th Street in Manhattan, just off Lexington Avenue and directly underneath St. Jean-Baptiste Church. 

I haven’t seen Thérèse Raquin yet and don’t have any critical guidance to offer but Picker is one of the very best American opera composers and his music is never less than compelling.  Get on down to Dicapo this weekend.

Here’s a message from Rama Gottfried:

//

at last!  here it is. tomorrow night::

::envelopes for orchestra::
5 minutes of mercury wobbling in space for a 57 piece orchestra
+ and a stacked concert of works by my extremely talented friends at
the manhattan school of music

friday, 2.23.07 –  7:30p
borden auditorium, manhattan school of music
122nd/Broadway (take 1 train to 116(downhill walk) or 125(uphill))

it will be good, you should come.

*** don’t forget to sit in the balcony, it sounds best from there.
the stairs are just as you enter the hall on both sides.

\\

high 5s to all,

 


rama

 

 

 

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Opera

Is Grapes of Wrath the Great American Opera?

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I don’t know Ricky Ian Gordon personally but he e-mails me frequently with updates on his projects, never neglecting to sign off with “xxxooo” which I find endearing although I’m sure he does the same for all the guys.  I know and like his music mainly from Audra McDonald and a wonderful recording of his songs called Bright-Eyed Joy but nothing I’ve heard or read prepared me for the universal praise for the Minnesota Opera’s production of Gordon’s (with libretto by Michael Korie) The Grapes of Wrath.  What we have here, apparently, is a real contender for the title of the Great American Opera. 

Listen to the often cranky Mark Swed: “As far as I was concerned — and this is a minority opinion — the nearly four-hour opera was too short. Had Gordon and Korie been allowed to follow their original bliss and create a two-night or more American “Ring” cycle, I would have gladly returned for more.”

Or Variety:  “Gordon and Korie have produced a bit of a conundrum: a very long show about suffering and endurance that leaves the viewer enlivened. The intelligence and compassion of their work, combined with the evident vitality and belief of the cast in this opera’s merit, supply high emotion with depth and compassion. This is not a happy story, but its telling is nothing short of incandescent.”

St. Paul Pioneer Press:   “Ten years and $2 million in the making, the Minnesota Opera’s world premiere of “The Grapes of Wrath” turns out to be well worth the time and expense: It’s a grand, sprawling, politically astute and musically compelling affair that amply and accessibly answers the rhetorical question:  ‘An opera about Okies?'”

Bernard Holland?  Well, Bernie’s been sour grapes (not to mention irrelevant) for some time now.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Opera

Opera for the PlayStation generation

The big news in London this weekend is a £1 million (almost $2m) tie-up between English National Opera and Sony PlayStation to put games consoles into the foyer of the hallowed London Coliseum. This is an opera house renown for its shock tactics, as the production shot from their Don Giovanni here shows. Of course, anything to reach a new audience must be praiseworthy. Or must it? On An Overgrown Path isn’t so sure, and also has the full story. 

by Pliable
Classical Music, Los Angeles, Opera

Last Night in L.A.: “What to Wear”

“What to Wear” ended its all-too-short run yesterday.  When you find out its schedule for performance in New York, get your tickets right away.  Better yet, get tickets for two dates (or more), because you’ll want more than one evening.  As reported and commented on last week, this is the opera with music by Michael Gordon and libretto, design, direction, and occasional voice-overs by Richard Foreman.  Gordon’s music is a pleasure to hear and feel.  (I wouldn’t have minded a few fewer decibels.)  David Rosenboom, one of whose sidelights is being dean of the CalArts School of Music, was music director and he led a pulsing, vibrant performance.  An ensemble of seven musicians (two keyboards, two violins, bass, electric guitar, percussion), all superior talents.

The opera reaches an emotional and philosophical climax in the scene that contemplates and presents the inevitable results when a duck enters a fine restaurant.  Following this catharsis, the heroine’s wondering whether or not she is still beautiful and her realization that golf can still be part of her life gave closure to those of us in the audience.  Foreman’s text and direction allows for some individual interpretations by the audience.  For example, one reviewer believes that the four heroines (two sopranos, alto, and tenor) are sisters, while I feel they are merely different aspects of the same physical person.  The four soloists and the six women of the singing chorus gave excellent performances, as did the eleven gender-free members of the movement ensemble. Thank you, CalArts and REDCAT.

Watch for news, and go see this.  See it twice.  It’s great fun.

by JerryZ
Classical Music, Music Events, Opera

Jihadists 1, Mozart 0

Deutsche Oper said it will scrap planned showings of Mozart’s Idomeneo because of warnings by Berlin security officials that a scene in the current production depicting the head of the Prophet Mohammed (along with the heads of Jesus and the Buddha)  present an “incalculable security risk.”  Actually, they said references to “world religions” but we know which one is the problem.

This is the kind of infuriating capitulation that can push otherwise rational people at least temporarily into the nuke ’em back to the Stone Age camp. 

But, we need to remember that Death of Klinghoffer and the American premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Silver Tassie suffered similar fates in this country in the wake of 9/11.  As always, perspective depends upon whose ox is being gored.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Opera, Piano, Rock Opera

What to Wear is Boffo in La La Land

Mark Swed, who is (perhaps wisely) ignoring our attempts to stir up trouble over his incoherent Jefferson Friedman review last week, is wild about the Michael Gordon/Richard Foreman opera What to Wear which is now playing a limited run at REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in beautiful downtown L.A..  A couple of snippets:

“What to Wear” — with dazzling, hard-hitting music by Michael Gordon and words, staging, design and equally hard-hitting and dazzling zaniness by Richard Foreman — is being called a rock opera.

It’s not. If it were, rock opera could, after the premiere of this arresting new hour of music theater at REDCAT on Wednesday night, be acknowledged as having finally come of age. 

And:

What to Wear” is scheduled for nine more performances. Ten times that number would be more like it.

Good piece in the Times this morning about the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero who is said to be almost singlehandedly reviving the lost art of improvisation–at least in a classical framework.  Montero, who has never studied or played jazz, can apparently take any song she knows suggested at random and immediately turn it into a Bach or Mozart or Antonio Carlos Jobim improvisation, including the other night at Joe’s Pub a blistering take on Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem “I Will Survive.”

There are some samples on her web site but I can’t get the registration thing to work.  Looks like a job for our ace webmaster Super Jeff.

And yes, Andrea, I am showing off my newfound restraint and maturity.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Opera

What to Wear in LA

Michael Gordon’s new post-rock opera What To Wear opens tonight at the Redcat Theater in downtown LA.   Richard Foreman wrote the libretto and directs the stage production.

According to our sources (Michael, who “guarantees a good time will be had by all”), What to Wear is a raucous and bitingly funny work about fashion. There are 4 main characters (all called Madeline X) and 2 ducks,
a small one and a big one. There are ten singers, ten actors and 7 musicians all under the musical direction of David Rosenboom.

“What to Wear postulates a world in which military tanks and nightmare toy ducks take turns threatening  would-be fashion models, who are trying to escape reality by dressing in bizarre outfits that semi-disguise them as lost children who never found out how to be lovable,” Gordon explains, helpfully.  “They inhabit a large red room, dominated by four giant images of colorful abstract demons, suggesting that whatever one does finally wear, worse nightmares will eventually turn even the most riotous party inside out. They sing again and again, ‘I am Madeline X, beautifully dressed’. But as everyone on-stage turns less and less beautiful– something more ecstatic than beauty slowly reveals its awesome 21st century face.”

Whatever.

The Recat Theater is CalArts’ downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts and is located in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.   What To Wear runs through October 1

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Metropolitan Opera, Opera, Washington National Opera

Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

Reader Bill Westfall passes along this link to a story about a new research study that reports more than one quarter of classical music fans use cannabis and 12.3 per cent of opera buffs have tried magic mushrooms.  This, I suppose, is as opposed to the 100 per cent of Grateful Dead fans who do and have. 

The finding suggests an interesting topic:  Great Composers Who Were Stoners.  Discuss.

And speaking of discussion, get on over to the new, spiffed up Composers Forum page and weigh in on Rob Deemer’s question about how important a web presence is for an active composer’s career.

Meant to mention this a couple of days ago but the WaPo has a profile of William Friedkin, director of Sorcerer, indisputedly the worst movie ever made, who is directing Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the Washington National Opera.

I am told by a reliable source that new Met manager Peter Gelb was once punched on the grounds of Tanglewood by Michael Steinberg, who was then the Boston Symphny’s program book annotator.  Anybody got details?  Pictures?

by Jerry Bowles
Metropolitan Opera, Opera

Flash: Cio-Cio San Now Working in Times Square

Gelb.jpgIf there were ever any doubt that Peter Gelb, the new director of the Metropolitan Opera, had big plans to turn the venerable company into a glitzier, more populist experience, there isn’t any more. 

The New York Times reports this morning that the Met will simulcast the opening night “Madama Butterfly” gala on September 25 on the Panasonic jumbo screen in Times Square. Traffic will be closed between Broadway between 42nd and 45th Streets to make room for 650 cushioned seats and standing room for the performance, which will be blared to the large tin can that is Times Square on giant speakers.  Goodbye amplification purists; hello power chords.

The Met also plans to broadcast the performance on a large screen in the Lincoln Center Plaza. Tickets are free but you will need one.  You’ll also get a look at another Gelb innovation–the celebrity red carpet where news personality Daljit Dhaliwal will conduct Joan Rivers-style interviews with such well-known opera lovers as Goldie Hawn, Sean Connery, Al Roker, the formerly fat weather man from the Today show, and Tony Soprano.   

The news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that the Met will begin broadcasting live performances into movie theaters across the United States, Canada and Europe.

Gelb calls these initiatives “building bridges to the broader public.”  Color me skeptical but (snarky tone aside) I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  The folks in the family circle (myself included) are beginning to look a little long in the tooth.

by Jerry Bowles