Top Five Items I'm Not Going To Blog About

1. New York Philharmonic Going to North Korea. Can they leave Maazel there?

2. New York City Opera Not Having a 2008-2009 Season While Renovation Takes Place at the State Theater. The problem isn't a "dark season." The San Francisco Opera managed to live through one.

3. Rumors that Anna Netrebko is Gay. The woman I saw her with the other night was not Lucy Diakovska.

4. MP3 vs. Hi Fi Audio. I'm still trying to get my Victrola to work.

5. The Gramophone and Typewriter Company's Unique Visitors Up for Third Straight Month!

Who's a Better Communist?

In The New Statesman, Andrew Hussey has an entertaining take on the memoir, just published, by France's leading post-structuralist novelist and intellectual, Philippe Sollers. One sentence amused me, when Hussey says that Sollers is "a vain, gossipy but undoubtedly talented novelist who is the epitome of snobbish, bourgeois, mondain Paris (Sollers's Maoist youth is only further proof of this pedigree)."

Follow that? Being a Maoist is merely "proof" that you're bourgeois. Get it? Because I don't.

My Take on "Happy Holidays"

I don't get this consternation over the use of the term "Happy Holidays." First off, it's not a slighting of Christmas. It's an acknowledgment that two holidays fall within a week of each other: Christmas and New Year's. It's faster than saying, "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" each time you greet someone.

Second, I'm a Jew, and we Jews say to each other "Good Yumtif" on our holidays. What does "Good Yumtif" mean? Well, yumtif is a Yiddishization of the Hebrew yom tov, which means "good day." So, yes, we're saying "Good Good Day," but in this case "good day" = "holiday." We're basically saying "Happy Holiday" to each other, whether it's the sacred and solemn fast of Yom Kippur or the minor festival of Hannukah. And I don't think I've ever encountered an offended co-religionist when I have greeted him or her with a "Good Yumtif." No one says, "How dare you say that! This is a war against Tisha B'av!"

Atonal Prose

Until this interview is translated from Hungarian, we'll have to suffice with the pullquote on Sign and Sight: Imre Kertesz, the Nobel Prize winner, on modern writing. I think he has a persuasive argument:

"Back then writing was unproblematic, because all of existence didn't hang in the balance and the stories literally gushed from these writers' pens. Mozart, too, was a well-spring of wondrous, joyful abundance. Today a contemporary composer can be happy if he makes it to his second symphony. Something has happened in the world that has made art unnatural. It's as if our natural powers were blocked at the source. Perhaps our linguistic reserves are depleted. We have been confronted with the fact that humans are capable of something unimaginable. That's how atonal prose came about. Atonal music appeared after World War I, when composers were confronted by the emptiness of the language they had used until then. I call the new prose atonal because it has to deal with the fact that the fundamental ethical and moral consensus – the keynote – is lacking. Today words mean something different in every mouth. Prose must also reflect this, but in doing so it loses its natural purpose: that I tell a story, while the audience listens in amazement. If you fail to express the essence of this turn of events, you're no longer a writer, and miss out on your own life and times."

He does not mention the other stylistic choice, irony, which also explodes the multivalence of language. Still, I think he is very much on to something here, but this is the kind of point of view that prevails more in continental Europe. We in the United States tend to look upon the 20th century as more of a triumphal story, and so I don't think we have much patience for this worldview. The fact that we Americans value "narrative" so much in both fiction and non- reflects this ideological gulf.

Another New Brunswick (Mezzo-)Soprano

The dea ex machina who descends from the rafters on tethers at the end of the Met's Iphigenie was sung by Michele Losier, who, like Measha Brueggergosman, hails from New Brunswick. She sounded good in the small role, but she really should be given a prize for intestinal fortitude--she was easily thirty feet above the stage as her descent began.

Netrebko

I haven't blogged on Anna Netrebko because I haven't wanted to enter the controversy--quite passionate, over at Opera-L--that has swirled around her. Opera fanatics being known for their extreme positions, you can well imagine that she has excited ardent devotion and animosity in equal measure. Is she a good singer? Is she a good actress? It seems to depend on whom you ask. She is either the reincarnation of Geraldine Farrar or the worst thing to hit opera since Andrea Bocelli.

Still, I can't deny the immeasurable thrill of seeing her in the audience at last night's Iphigenie--at one point she ran past me with a female companion and I was momentarily stunned. My feeling about her, as one who has seen her recently as well as way back when the Kirov came to New York to present Betrothal in a Monastery, is that in the right role she is about as good as it gets--she can sing beautifully when the part fits her, she is a game actress, and, yes, she is a ravishingly gorgeous woman. (As an example, check out her Susanna in the Salzburg Nozze di Figaro now on DVD.) She is bringing glamor back to opera, and that is only a good thing, and beyond that I will hold my peace.

Domingo: The Marvel

I first saw Placido Domingo at the Met on March 26, 1977--I actually didn't remember the date but used the Met's indispensable online Archives feature to look it up--in Andrea Chenier. I can't say he sang the role with the headlong abandon of some other interpreters, but his sound, with his distinctive baritonal timbre, exemplary legato and hall-embracing power was unforgettable. When I saw his Cyrano a few seasons back I marveled at how well preserved his instrument was and thought that this would no doubt be the last time I heard him live.

And now here it is, 2007, 30 years after I first saw him, and he's still singing, and I'm still getting a chance to hear him. I attended last night's Iphigenie en Tauride, and his voice, if not as supple, is still something of a wonder; he can still bring it when he needs to, he hasn't developed a beat or a wobble, and his musicianship is as strong as ever. So now I am not going to say this is the last time I'll get to hear him live--he will no doubt still be singing in five, ten, fifteen years!

Thank You, ANA Blog

The blog of the Analog Arts Ensemble posted a link to my Stockhausen post, so I want to thank them for their acknowledgment, and welcome any readers who have come from that web site.

Not Since George Szell's Cleveland Orchestra

So says the San Francisco Classical Voice critic of what sounds like an exciting concert by the San Francisco Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas programmed the rarely heard Lelio by Berlioz, a work that calls for enormous forces, three male singers, even an actor-narrator (here dropped). It was originally written as a kind of sequel to the Symphonie Fantastique. If that isn't enough to make me wish I had been there, there's this:

"The San Francisco Symphony is in wonderful shape these days, but what was so extraordinary was the level of unanimity of phrasing and dynamics. Everyone sounded in perfect sync with all their colleagues. The only other time I have heard an orchestra with that form of cohesion was from George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra in its heyday."

High praise indeed. The concert also included the Fantastique, which was recorded for eventual broadcast and/or DVD release. Unfortunately, it does not sound as though Lelio was similarly memorialized--a great loss, if true.

Le Pays in Tours

Alberic Magnard's close friend and devoted champion, Joseph-Guy Ropartz, wrote one opera, Le Pays. It's a grim tale of fishermen, one I am curious to hear. According to ResMusica, the Opera de Tours will be performing it next month; there is also, apparently, a recording on the Timpani label.

A Look at Mikrophonie

Musicareaction, mourning the death of a "giant," has posted a video made up of scenes from a rehearsal of Stockhausen's piece Mikrophonie, in which a tam-tam is subjected to various objects while a microphone captures the sounds produced. The video gives a sense of the preparation and precision needed to pull such a work off: the percussionists look like a team of surgeons operating on the tam-tam.