Thank You, Gert, Wherever You Are

G&T has seen a spike in visitors the past couple of days, thanks to a link on a blog that was hitherto unknown to me--Mad Musings of Me, written by one Gert who lives in the UK. My take on Placido Domingo's performance in Iphigenie was the attraction. So thank you, Gert, and welcome Mad Musings readers--hope you'll want to stick around here at G&T.

Where Did They Go?

Listening to a 1977 Met broadcast of Madama Butterfly last night on Sirius was somewhat nostalgic for me. The Sharpless was the American baritone Ryan Edwards. I had heard him the previous season when he sang Enrico to Beverly Sills's Lucia. He had a capacious instrument, strong and steady, and his Sharpless showed me that my memory wasn't playing tricks. He sang only 40-odd performances at the Met, mostly in the late '70s. I'm not sure what happened after that, although he maintains a web site that fills in some of the details.

Pinkerton was Giacomo Aragall, who had been singing at the Met for nearly a decade. He was in truly good voice. I never heard him in the house, but this performance really makes you wonder why he only sang 38 performances at the Met. His tenor was firm and elegant, although perhaps lacking somewhat in squillante and the kind of Italianate ring that some long for in these kinds of roles. Perhaps in the house it sounded washed out, although I'd find that hard to believe.

In those days, European opera houses, flooded with state subsidies, could offer singers more money than the Met, which was facing its own budgetary woes during a period when the United States was suffering through an economic downturn. Singers with big recording contracts needed the Met for promotional purposes, but a whole tier of excellent singers, like Aragall, may have felt that they could make more money in Europe.

As for the Butterfly, it was Renata Scotto in her justly famous portrayal. The wobble had started to creep into her singing, but overall her performance was heartbreaking, progressing from innocence to defiance and, finally, to tragic resolution. I missed some of these elements in Racette's recent characterization.

The only disappointing element was Giuseppe Patane's conducting. I always liked Patane--he never went for cheap effects and maintained good old-fashioned ensemble. In this performance he was perhaps a little too deferential to his singers; at times the momentum sagged to the point of stasis.

You never know what you're going to get in those '70s Met broadcasts--some performances were truly forgettable. Not this one.

Cuisine du Depression: Mock-Apple Pie

Back in 1975, Russell Baker wrote a now-legendary column in which he wryly commented on a multi-course banquet consumed by Craig Claiborne, then the Times's chief food writer, by disclosing his self-prepared gourmet meal, which featured such highlights as pate de fruites de nuts of Georgia, in which "A half-inch layer of creamy style peanut butter is trowled onto a graham cracker, then half a banana is crudely diced and pressed firmly into the peanut butter and cemented in place as it were by a second graham cracker."

Among the several main courses, "I prepared beans with bacon grease, a dish I perfected in 1937 while developing my cuisine du depression."

So it is in the spirit of cuisine du depression that I made a dessert that, as an avid reader of the backs of Ritz cracker boxes, I had long been curious about: Mock-Apple Pie.

There are indeed no apples of any kind in Mock-Apple Pie: the filling is a mixture of crushed Ritz crackers and sugar syrup. The recipe is straightforward and not particularly challenging.

As will be seen from the picture, the finished product does indeed come out looking very much like applie pie, with a filling that is the same consistency and color of the original. (The flaky crust is the Pet-Ritz frozen variety.)

It has a satisfying taste, over all, although I did not think it tasted particularly like apple pie. The lemon zest and juice that is added tends to become the dominant note, and I wonder if sneaking in a little apple juice wouldn't be more to the point. Still, it was enthusiastically received chez moi.

Catching up with "Hansel"

Just listened to the Met's broadcast of their new Hansel. I wonder if the children in the audience realized just how well sung this performance was. Alan Held (best Wozzeck I ever heard) was luxury casting as the father, and it was nice to hear the veteran Rosalind Plowright as the mother. Christine Schafer's and Alice Coote's voices blended ravishingly for their prayer. Lisette Oropesa, her sweet voice soaring, nearly stole the show as the Dew Fairy. And while I'm still not convinced that a tenor should sing the Witch, Philip Langridge did not camp it up; he sounded, as he should, ferocious and scary.

Vladimir Jurowski certainly showed why there's so much excitement swirling around him right now. The orchestra sounded lush, and their playing was excellent. Not everyone likes transparency in this kind of music, but I thought the clarity Jurowski brought to the score kept it from getting too schmaltzy--nonetheless, his reading was appropriately mellow and well proportioned. He found nice details in the score, accompanied his singers well, and gave the climactic moments the exact right touch. Most important of all, I had goose bumps continually throughout the afternoon.

Jurowski will lead the Russian National Orchestra in music of Shubert and Brahms at Avery Fisher Hall in February ... I am sure I will try to find a ticket.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Today is the birthday of the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, who died in 1990. She would have been 95 today. (The Australian Music Centre has informative space about her on their web site.)

Her music seems to have become largely forgotten, which is a pity. I've heard some of it--her opera The Transposed Heads (for which no less than Thomas Mann furnished the libretto) and a piece for tenor and chamber orchestra called Letters from Morocco (the letters are by Paul Bowles, her friend).

Letters from Morocco is one of my favorite pieces. I can think of no composition that sets English words more naturally or musically, following the inflection of the language and deriving its rhythms from the words, rather than trying to impose a musical structure upon them.

Her music on CD is hard to find. Letters from Morocco I own on an old LP from MGM's series of 20th century compositions, with MGM's orchestra conducted by Carlos Surinach; The Transposed Heads I borrowed from the Princeton Music Library twenty-some-odd years ago, a Louisville Sympony recording if I remember correctly. (You can sample her music by going to UbuWeb's collection of short films by Shirley Clarke--she wrote the score for the Unicef-funded "A Scary Time.")

Musicians, orchestras, opera companies: Please consider performing the music of this wonderful and unfairly neglected composer!

More on the Turkish March

David B. Levy, a music professor at Wake Forest, has another take on the "Turkish March," one that is based on a close reading of the words. His letter to the Times is worth reading, but here's the key part:

"In my book Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony, I argue that the so-called 'Turkish march' is the first step toward a rapprochement between West and East, the culmination of which is achieved in the finale’s second double fugue.

"A close reading of Schiller’s words reveals that the 'Turkish march' is a paraphrase of the portion of Psalm 19 that refers to a metaphorical wedding procession. The bride and groom are the Occident and the Orient. "

Here's the relevant passage from the King James version of Psalm 19 (courtesy of Bartleby):

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

The imagery suggests that the sun, representing the east (since that is where it rises), is akin to a bridegroom, or a champion about to run his course (in this case, its course through the heavens).

Levy's gloss certainly fits in with the spirit of Schiller's poem and Beethoven's music, to encompass polarities, break the bonds of custom, and proclaim a true brotherhood of man.

"Forgotten" Opera

In order to show that the phenomenon of "repressed memory" (or dissociative amnesia) is a figment of the modern imagination, as it were, a researcher at McLean Hospital offered a prize "to the first person to identify a case of dissociative amnesia in any work of fiction or nonfiction prior to 1800." The winner? A French opera from 1786, Nina, by Nicholas Dalayrac. This from a report in Harvard magazine. (via Arts & Letters Daily)

A Peek at Chausson

The other day, I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's recently unveiled 19th- and early 20th-century European painting galleries and came across this impressive and large canvas by Henry Lerolle, "The Organ Recital." Lerolle was Chausson's brother-in-law; his wife was the sister of Chausson's wife. In the painting, from the mid-1880s, Chausson's wife is the singer; Chausson himself is seated at the organ. It's hard to see, but the young man standing in profile at the extreme left is Debussy. It's worth a visit to the Met (museum) to see the actual painting.

Carmen Rides the IND

Jennifer Diamond is a young mezzo who is one of the members of the Resident Artists Program of the Opera Company of Brooklyn, the group for which I do development. She's just posted on YouTube a fun video in which she sings the "Habanera" from Carmen while riding New York's subways.

The Turkish March

A piece in today's Times Op-Ed page points out how Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" has been co-opted by governments and other organizations--including some tyrants--for their own purposes, making Beethoven's masterpiece into an "empty signifier." And there's this:

"In the middle of the movement, after we hear the main melody (the 'joy' theme) in three orchestral and three vocal variations, something unexpected happens that has bothered critics for the last 180 years: at Bar 331, the tone changes totally, and, instead of the solemn hymnic progression, the same 'joy' theme is repeated in the 'marcia turca' (or Turkish march) style, a conceit borrowed from military music for wind and percussion instruments that 18th-century European armies adopted from the Turkish janissaries.

"The mode then becomes one of a carnivalesque parade, a mocking spectacle — critics have even compared the sounds of the bassoons and bass drum that accompany the beginning of the marcia turca to flatulence. After this point, such critics feel, everything goes wrong, the simple solemn dignity of the first part of the movement is never recovered. "

I'm not sure which critics are being discussed here. There is no doubt that the Turkish March section stands in sharp contrast to what has come before. It lightens the air somewhat, and provides an almost satirical commentary on the whole piece. It may also attest to Beethoven's devilish sense of humor, which is present in many of his works, although not everyone chooses to hear it. The Turkish March quickly turns into a fiendish fugato, so this moment of misrule is brief.

Still, I'm not sure if it's wise to invest too much into the Turkish March section. It's good to keep in mind the words that it's set to:

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan,
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.

And the translation: "Joyously, as his suns speed/Through Heaven's glorious order,/Hasten, Brothers, on your way,/Exulting as a knight in victory." (Courtesy of Classical Music Pages.)

The Turkish March gives the sense of a small military band saluting the "knight [or hero] in victory." It's somewhat literal; I'm sure Beethoven heard bands of this style throughout his young life. It reminds me somewhat of the Salvation Army band that stalks the young lovers in Elgar's Cockaigne Overture--the semi-comical, seemingly inappropriate intrusion that introduces a crucial musical counterweight.

Let's never forget what Mahler said: "A symphony must be like the world. It must encompass everything." True for Beethoven's Ninth, too.