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Copland

This week's New Yorker features an excerpt from Alex Ross's upcoming book, The Art of Noise, that focuses on how Aaron Copland became something of a target in midcentury cold-war and musical politics. Many years ago, as a young editor at St. Martin's Press, I was asked to supervise the publication of Copland: Since 1943, the second volume of Copland's autobiography. That book owes its existence primarily to the heroic exertions of Vivian Perlis, whose long-standing devotion to new music is sincere and ardent. I never met the great man, who by that time was in declining physical and mental health, but the book's publication was the occasion of one of the most memorable evenings of my life: a New York Philharmonic all-Copland concert at Fisher Hall where in one fell swoop I met John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, and that evening's conductor, Leonard Bernstein--all thanks to the generosity of Vivian Perlis.

Clearly Ross relies on Copland: Since 1943 for some information, but he fills the story in beautifully, giving Copland's struggles during that era depth and context. It may just have been the way the piece was edited, but it omits a curious fact. Readers may be interested to know that, in a sign of the split personality that marked the cultural gyrations of that period, Life magazine, which had savagely attacked Copland as a Communist fellow traveler and dupe in 1949, published his late piano work, "Down a Country Lane," not 13 years later!

Kirsch on Shelley

Adam Kirsch has a perceptive review of Ann Wroe's new book Being Shelley--he manages to say a lot of shrewd things about Shelley while still leaving an appetite for the book itself (and for Shelley's poetry). Kirsch writes of Shelley's radical politics, which he held quite sincerely and which informs his poetry. I wonder if it was of Shelley that Alfred de Vigny was thinking when he said "The poet searches the stars for the route which shows us the finger of God."

Avenging Angel: Books: The New Yorker

Davis Returns

It's good to see Peter G. Davis back, and in top form, in the pages of The New York Times. Here's hoping we'll see his byline in those pages more often.

Mozart Operas - Salzburg Festival - DVDs - Music - New York Times

The Great Thill

Amazing what you can find on YouTube these days ... some fascinating footage of the great French tenor Georges Thill. First he's seen rehearsing an opera with Canteloube. It's not entirely clear which opera it is. The tessitura is high for him, given his lack of security above A-flat. Still, to catch a glimpse of him is amazing. He also is seen in a 1977 interview, describing (presumably) voice lessons with de Lucia, who advised him (if I'm following the French correctly) about how to open his mouth when he sang. Finally, a tantalizing snippet of Thill as Lohengrin.



YouTube - Georges Thill Rehearses With Canteloube

Ubu Roi

Those not acquainted with the riches of Ubu Web, the online archive of all things avant-garde, have a treat in store for them ... Wayne Koestenbaum has curated the summer edition of their "Featured Resources," and it includes some real gems. I would especially recommend Joseph Cornell's hypnotic film, Rose Hobart. (Also, readers should grab Wayne's new book, Hotel Theory, which uses the hotel as a locus for exploring its promise as a refuge and its reality as a soulless substitute for home, as well as themes of dualism and identity.) (And, needless to say, Wayne is a friend.)

U B U W E B

Catching Up with Sciarrino

Those who have heard about Salvatore Sciarrino but not had a chance to experience his music can catch up with BBC 3's "Hear and Now." The show includes generous selections of Sciarrino's music and an interview with the composer.

BBC - Radio 3 - Hear And Now

Salzburg Report

Not everyone in Europe is delighted with Regietheater. Renaud Machart is covering the Salzburg Festival for Le Monde, and he reviews what sound like atrocious productions of Haydn's Armida and Weber's Freischutz. (See link below.) Christof Loy's minimalist set for Haydn is a great wall of plywood. Markus Stenz places Weber's opera in a concrete basement. Peter Seiffert's Max and John Relyea's Kaspar are singled out for praise, but not much else is. Summing up, he says: "This is not enough in a music festival considered to be the world's most prestigious."

Le Monde.fr : Le théâtre s'en mêle à Salzbourg

Regietheater, Considered

Heather Mac Donald has an essay on Regietheater--producer's opera or "Eurotrash" or whatever you might want to call it--in the current issue of the conservative-leaning City Journal. (Link is below.) She makes some familiar points, as well as some familiar dodges. She praises Wieland Wagner's post-war Rings, for instance, but fails to mention that in their time they were every bit as controversial as the productions she is decrying now. Rather she makes Chereau's 1976 Bayreuth Ring the locus classicus of all that's gone wrong in European opera. Many would aver that Chereau's staging was quite ingenious, somewhat refreshingly true to the political aspect of Wagner's intentions (a la Shaw's Perfect Wagnerite), and, in comparison to today's most scandalous productions, rather tame.

In fact, Mac Donald seems to make rather the same argument that has been made about cutting-edge productions since Wieland Wagner's day. I remember in my youth the big villains were Goetz Friedrich and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who, no doubt, hardly look dangerous from today's vantage.

Beyond expressing outrage and shock, she does not try to understand what might be compelling these directors, beyond making the usual cynical suggestion that they are simply trying to court scandal. Clearly Europeans have an ambivalent relationship toward their cultural past; the extended 19th-century repertory is justly celebrated, but it also is part and parcel of the world that erupted in the devastations of the 20th century. Also, it is legitimate to question whether the expense of staging an opera justifies a merely conventional, or decorative, production that simply gratifies the audience's complacency. When so many operas also carry with them unfortunate overtones, such as racism or nationalism or other outmoded prejudices and ideologies, what is a director to do? Mac Donald refers to the ineffable Calixto Bieito's Abduction from the Seraglio but leaves out the fact that the opera trades in stereotypes and what can only be described as orientalism. Just because it is a masterpiece does not mean we need pretend its worldview is our own.

She also wants to claim that the Metropolitan is a bulwark of sense against the insanity of Regietheater, but she seems to have conveniently forgotten Francesca Zambello's disastrous Lucia or Graham Vick's idiotic Trovatore. The coming administration of Gerard Mortier across the Lincoln Center plaza, she thinks, heralds the advent of Regietheater on the New York scene, and Mac Donald worries that if Mortier is successful, then Peter Gelb at the Met will be forced to import these kinds of productions, too. I acknowledge that Gelb is shaking things up at the Met, but, if history is any guide, I doubt the Met will pay too close attention to what the New York City Opera does.

On a personal note, I, too am troubled by the reports I have read of these productions. My sense is that I would hate them every bit as much as Mac Donald does. But not having actually seen them, except for glimpses on the odd DVD, I would not want to make a rush to judgment. It seems to me that being open-minded to new work and new approaches is a prudent maxim.

It would be useful, and enlightening, if operatic commentary could go beyond merely being reactive, as this essay so frequently is.

The Abduction of Opera by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Summer 2007

Pedal-Pushing in Tristan?

If you take a close look at the orchestral score of the very beginning of the prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, you will notice that the English horn that plays that G-sharp in the third bar holds the note for the whole length of the measure. That is, the G-sharp is still sounding while the oboes have moved on to A for the last eighth-note of the measure. I have to say this dissonance is hard to hear in the orchestra. (It's eliminated in the piano score.) I wonder if Wagner was going after a pianistic pedal effect here. (The Schirmer edition of the piano reduction has no pedal markings.) Perhaps this suggests that pianists playing the prelude should use the pedal for this measure? (You can find a reproduction of the autograph score here, if you go to page 3.)