One of my favorite Easter memories is of when I came downstairs and found a couple of Vivaldi LPs next to my basket. Now, Vivaldi isn’t even remotely my favorite composer, but I thought that was just the greatest thing ever. I listened to those records with every bit as much pleasure as I experienced when I devoured my chocolate rabbit (and of course they’ve lasted a great deal longer).
That’s the kind of thoughtful gesture my mom would make. She always started with something nice and then took it to the next level. Mom was fond of Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D. We weren’t a “classical music” family – I was the first to fall under the spell – but Mom caught on fast. She liked Vivaldi and Bach and jogged to Sousa marches.
That’s not to say she didn’t always have an appreciation for it. She took me to plenty of piano and chamber recitals after she realized I had been bitten by the bug, and we attended every Gilbert & Sullivan production in the area. She encouraged me in my record collecting. I wonder if she ever thought, “My god, what have I done?”
In her last few years, Mom became interested in learning more about opera, after I had gotten her a nice compilation of arias for a gift. I could see she was a little puzzled by it at first, though Mom being Mom, she never would have expressed anything other than gratitude. But she actually grew to really enjoy it.
A number of years earlier, she had attended part of a dress rehearsal for “The Marriage of Figaro” I had assistant stage managed with what was then the Opera Company of Philadelphia. It made her proud to see me in the wings with my headset, doing something I enjoyed (which was mostly cueing singers when it was time for them to go on and signaling stage hands when to smash flower pots). There was a lot of funny business on stage, though no supertitles until the actual performances. But it was pure farce, with powdered wigs flying around and people diving under furniture. I think she probably was already interested in seeing a complete opera then. I don’t know why my parents couldn’t make that one – they lived only about an hour and a half away – since that would have been pretty much ideal.
Instead, I wound up taking her to a threadbare production of Boito’s “Mefistofele” at the New York City Opera. It was essentially the same production Norman Treigle had triumphed in, in the early 1970s, but 20 years later it was looking kind of shabby – which surprised me, since everything I had seen at City Opera up until that point (Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt,” Busoni’s “Doktor Faust,” Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler,” Tippett’s “The Midsummer Marriage”) had been so good. I should have just taken her across the plaza to the Met for a buffo romp. It’s one of my regrets that I did not. Hopefully they’ve got “Figaro” in heaven.
Our last concert together featured the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in Mozart’s final three symphonies.
On Mondays, I deliver and sort fruits and vegetables from a nearby farm at the local wildlife rescue center. This gives me some substantial time in the car (I tend to pile on a lot of other errands), so I am always grabbing random CDs from my library to keep me company on the road. This week, I happened to espy a boxed set of Max Bruch’s symphonies sitting in the middle of a stack, waiting to be shelved, so on an impulse I grabbed it.
Too often, I gravitate toward the later Romantics or 20th century music. Then when I do radio, I’ll look back to the 18th century to provide contrast. So the middle-Romantics, those of the Mendelssohn-Schumann era, often fall through the cracks – even though, when I do listen to them, their works often provide me with much pleasure. It’s just that when I’m programming, in leaping back and forth from Franz Schreker to Johann Friedrich Fasch, I tend to forget all about them.
But when the temperatures rise, it’s an agreeable time to enjoy the modest charms of the 19th century, before seething angst became such an overriding force.
Max Bruch is a very interesting character, in that he was born in 1838, making him a contemporary of Johannes Brahms, yet his music often impresses me as old-fashioned, even when compared to that of his traditional-minded friend. Then Bruch went and outlived Brahms by nearly a quarter century. So this guy who wrote these anodyne, at times Mendelssohnian, symphonies, died in 1920. It’s hard to imagine Bruch in the era of “The Rite of Spring.” Debussy died two years before he did!
Not that everything he wrote sounds like it was composed in 1830. The two oratorios of his I am familiar with (“Odysseus” and “Moses”) push a little more into the future. If I ever want to knock anyone back on their heels, I will play his Suite No. 3 for Organ and Orchestra – written in 1904! – for Good Friday. (Bruch reworked material from the piece into his Concerto for Two Pianos in 1912.) And of course the Violin Concerto No. 1, composed in 1866, is timeless.
The symphonies are often pleasant enough, and I have programmed them occasionally, especially during those years when I was looking to fill time during my six-hour morning air shifts, but none of them are truly memorable. It’s hard to believe it’s the same composer who wrote the violin concertos, the “Scottish Fantasy,” and “Kol Nidrei.” Minus the inherent drama between solo instrument and orchestra, the intensity and inspiration lose their focus. That’s not to say these aren’t enjoyable works, but they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, neglected masterpieces. I would rather look to somebody like Schubert contemporary Franz Berwald for underplayed, truly rewarding symphonies of the 1840s.
I would probably have returned to the pile by now if not for the scherzo of the Symphony No. 1, which is a true earworm. Yes, there’s lots of Mendelssohn fairy music in it, but I’ll sell my mother for a case of rum if, once it gets rolling (starting at around 1:30), it doesn’t sound like it could have been written for a classic pirate movie. How much more enjoyable the Jack Sparrow movies might have been had they been scored in this fashion!
Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra play this repertoire as to the manner born, about as idiomatically as one could expect, but some recorded competitors (there aren’t many) are said to apply a lighter touch. I don’t know. I’m happy with what I’ve got. Masur conducts my set of the complete works for violin and orchestra as well, and he does a fabulous job.
Here, despite the competency of the performances, and the fact that Bruch hit the target square several times during the course of his long career, I sincerely doubt there is any more treasure to be trawled from the Davy Jones’ locker of the composer’s symphonies. That scherzo from the First makes me want to grab my saber, though!
——
Haha! I see Bruch composed some actual pirate music, “Seeräuberlied” – “Song of the Pirates” – as the first of his “Three New Male Choruses,” Op. 68. Alas, if it’s been recorded, it doesn’t appear to have been posted on YouTube.
Following the Sunday matinee of Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”) at the Metropolitan Opera, the composer and some of the principals joined general manager Peter Gelb onstage for a post-performance conversation.
Seeing Frank in the flesh set me thinking: how many Pulitzer Prize winners (for music) have I encountered in person? Alphabetically, I think this is a comprehensive list: William Bolcom, George Crumb, David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Wynton Marsalis, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Moravec, Bernard Rands, Shulamit Ran, Ned Rorem, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, Melinda Wagner, George Walker, Richard Wernick, Julia Wolfe.
Some of these composers I saw more than once, a few were chance encounters, some I basically said hello to or had a quick exchange with, some of them I interviewed, a few I had actual, candid conversations with.
Those of you who are a little older or who had more mobility than I did as a teenager may have interacted with more of the legends I would have loved to have seen. Sadly, for all my precocity, I was somewhat of a provincial child and not very proactive about figuring out how to buy concert tickets and climb on a bus to New York or Philadelphia.
I would be delighted to read about any of your Pulitzer-winner encounters, if you care to share them in the comments below!
——
PHOTO (left-to-right): librettist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz, Pulitzer Prize winning 0composer Gabriela Lena Frank, countertenor Nils Wanderer (Leonardo), baritone Carlos Álvarez (Diego Rivera), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Frida Kahlo), general director Peter Gelb.
Gabriella Reyes (Catrina, Keeper of the Dead) was already backstage – Gelb explained that it takes an hour for her to remove her costume and make-up – and Yannick Nézet-Séguin was off to Germany to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.
Since I was taken ill a few weeks ago, when I was hoping to get in to the Metropolitan Opera for a Saturday matinee of “Eugene Onegin,” my ticket was exchanged for a new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank, longtime composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose stock has since skyrocketed, as she was recently awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. I had intended to catch “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” anyway, at the movies, as part of the Met Live in HD series (on May 30 or June 3). That said, how lucky I was to actually experience it in the house!
The opera, a postscript to the tempestuous real-life love story of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is ingeniously set during El Día del Los Muertos – the Day of the Dead. Kahlo’s spirit returns in a kind of reverse Orpheus and Eurydice story to guide Rivera to the afterlife. A great many operas can be summed up in a line or two, but any such synopsis cannot do justice to the Met’s production design (by Jon Bausor) and choreography (by director Deborah Colker). Predictably, some of Kahlo’s most iconic paintings are recreated, and Diego perches on a scaffold before one of his murals in its early stages, but the eyepopping supernatural element brings a whole other element of interest.
As with this season’s immigrant experience/proto-superhero comic book “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” another Met debut, I was set to wondering how well the work succeeds as an opera, as opposed to a functional score elevated by all the superlative stagecraft. As I remarked about “Kavalier & Clay,” I’m not sure if the music in itself fits the bill, but I am unshakeable in my conviction that it’s one hell of a show. Frankly, comparing the two is kind of like comparing a corned beef sandwich and a tamale. Anyway, even a fabulous score can misalign on the opera stage, where words and music, conflict and emotion need to strike a perfect balance. There are plenty of great composers who have been unable to stick the landing.
My impression of “Frida y Diego,” on first hearing, is that the music is on an entirely different level than Mason Bates’ for “Kavalier & Clay,” perhaps less overtly melodic (“K&C” was almost like a movie in sound and execution), yet ultimately having greater resonance. The piece is marvelously orchestrated (although I can’t say I could really make out some of the more novel touches, such as when one of the percussionists ran bows along the keys of a marimba). But not all operas are driven by melody. It’s not that “Frida y Diego” is not “melodic” (it’s definitely tonal), it just doesn’t really have any big tunes. So don’t go into it expecting to luxuriate in bel canto.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have arias and even some showstopping moments. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, as always, is excellent as Frida – and my, did the make-up people transform her into the spitting image of Kahlo – even when she was called upon to lie down or execute certain pieces of choreography.
However, soprano Gabriella Reyes brought it big time as Catrina, Keeper of the Dead, transcending, rather than being swallowed up by, her incredible skull-and-bones costume. She positively owned the role.
It says something for countertenor Nils Wanderer that up against such a powerhouse that he would make such a strong impression as Leonardo, a Greta Garbo impersonator(!) dressed as Queen Christina. It’s hard to explain this element, but just go with it. It’s oddly moving, and it works. Also, watch “Queen Christina.” It’s a great movie.
It was good to see baritone Carlos Álvarez back on the Met stage, but especially in the scene where he’s standing on the scaffold, the acoustic did his voice no favors. It’s not that he sounded bad – he did not – it’s just that he didn’t carry as well as did his higher-voiced colleagues. With six levels and close to 4,000 seats, the Met is an enormous house. Speaking of enormous, I do hope that the costumers gave him a padded suit to play Rivera. I would hate to think that he let himself go to the point that he now has the physique of Fred Mertz. Since Rivera generally looked like Darius Milhaud on a bad day, I would think that it was an artistic transformation.
The skeletal dancers busted some very impressive moves. Some of them would not have been out of place in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Even more astonishing was the ability of the dancers to stay in sync with one another in situations where they were either in cumbersome-looking, sight-obstructing masks or otherwise blocked from one another’s view.
Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin was in the pit. In his other role, as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he’s had a wealth of experience conducting Frank’s music. He didn’t conduct with quite the brio he can sometimes bring, whether you want it or not, but here that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Really, it’s a more atmospheric piece. There was plenty of energy onstage, and Frank’s sound-world kept the ear engaged, with the character of Leonardo getting the most sensuous music. I confess, there were times, given the subject matter, that I wondered if I might be watching a dry run for Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” set to make its Met debut next season.
Whether or not Frank’s opera will endure, no one can predict with any certainty, but experiencing it now at the Met is definitely worthwhile. You won’t leave the house (or the movie theater) whistling any of the tunes, but it is an absorbing magical realism experiment, and I think it works. I wouldn’t mind catching it again. Perhaps I will, at the movie theater.
Incredibly, it turned out to be a two-opera weekend for me, as Friday evening I drove down to Wilmington for OperaDelaware’s concluding performance of Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier.” This was a more traditional, blood-and-thunder operatic experience, composed during the height of the verismo craze (the libretto is by frequent Puccini collaborator Luigi Illica), though set during the French Revolution.
The work was sung with great passion by soprano Toni Marie Palmertree, tenor Dane Suarez, and baritone Gerald Moon. (Palmertree went for broke as Tosca at last year’s Princeton Festival; she’ll return to Princeton next month as Madama Butterfly – a role she sang this year at the Met!) Contralto Daryl Freedman deserves special mention for her poignant, showstopping aria as Madelon, a blind woman nearing the end of her days, who commits her grandson, the last of her line, to the cause of the Revolution.
The opera was presented with minimal props, a few tables and chairs, and some bleachers in the courtroom scene. Singers were in period costume. Stylized, bisected windows formed the backdrop throughout, but the mood was varied, in no small part through skillful lighting, whether supporting a garish party of willfully oblivious aristocrats or doomed lovers languishing in a prison cell. Most effective was a silhouetted guillotine, an imaginative touch toward the end, its blade dropping with shattering finality at the curtain. The chorus sang lustily, lending the performance a sense of grandeur and scope.
The experience was enhanced by the charmingly intimate and historic 1,140-seat Wilmington Grand Opera House. With its frescos and muraled ceilings, tiered wooden seats, and wraparound stalls and balcony, the theater embodies a kind of 19th century craftsmanship one rarely encounters these days. It’s practically a toy theater compared to the Met, more in line with what I imagine would have been the norm with many European houses, back in the day. Ingmar Bergman would have loved this place. Perhaps Wes Anderson too. What a great venue!
The orchestra played well, if not impeccably. The fact that it did play so well made the (very) occasional cracked note in the pit serve as a reminder that this was, after all, live music-making, not karaoke, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The dramatic sweep of the performance was authentic and all the more compelling for it. How many freelance musicians and singers are out there, playing regional houses, and making music of this quality?
Conductor Anthony Barrese directed a flowing, emotionally immediate performance. He generously offered the baton to an assistant for the opera’s eventful second act, citing the fact that he himself was only able to learn on the job and opportunities to do so in opera are scant. In the event – to my ears, anyway – the assistant acquitted himself beautifully. Barrese also provided one of the program booklet’s informative historical notes. He and outgoing general director Brendan Cooke, who share a rich history spanning decades and several opera companies, exchanged some poignant words before the evening’s performance. So not all the tears were on the stage!
I should mention that the stage director, Octavio Cardenas, also contributed to the booklet. His thought-provoking introduction brings into focus the dangerous – and innately human – factors that contributed to the tragedy and violence of a political movement that turned into one of history’s most horrific bloodbaths. (Keep in mind, the opera was written scarcely a hundred years after the period in which it is set.)
“This production of ‘Andrea Chénier’ is driven by a central question: what happens when idealism stops being a guiding principle and becomes a form of blindness? Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the opera is not presented as a celebration of political awakening, but as an examination of how moral certainty can harden into cruelty. The Revolution in this reading is not simply an historical force, but a mirror of human nature itself, capable of both aspiration and destruction, often at the same time.”
And later…
“Ultimately the production emphasizes that human nature resists purity. Even the most noble ideas are filtered through fear, desire, and self-preservation. The opera’s final moments do not offer resolution in a political sense, but instead reveal a more intimate truth: that love and cruelty, clarity and blindness, idealism and violence can coexist in the same human heart.”
Bravo. And God help us all.
——–
Gabriella Reyes raises the dead as Catrina in “El último sueño de Frida y Diego”
Isabel Leonard as Frida
Skeletons in rehearsal
Five more performances of “Frida y Diego,” through June 5
Can’t make it to New York? The Met Live in HD will bring it to select movie theaters, May 30 & June 3 (search by clicking the red bar beneath the banner, at the right of the screen)
I am saddened to learn of the death of Dame Felicity Lott.
I never saw the English soprano live, and yet somehow from her recordings, performance videos, and vivacious interviews, I came to adore her. She seemed like a genuinely nice person and an inextinguishable spirit. Now, only days after revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis, she is gone.
“Flott,” as she was known to her colleagues and fans, earned her BA in French and Latin from Royal Holloway, University of London. During the course of her studies, she spent a year in France – and she certainly put it to good use, as she was always very much at home in French chansons.
She also excelled in Britten and Richard Strauss, in opera and recital, in drama and comedy. It seemed there was nothing she could not do well. Often, she performed in tandem with Graham Johnson, her accompanist since her student years.
Lott died on Friday at the age of 79. Only a few days before, she gave an interview on BBC Four, exuding her usual warmth, candor, humor and grace, in which she shared her terminal status. She said she had known about it for nearly a year.
“I’m just so happy at the moment,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to be sad, because I’m having a ball. I can’t understand it, because I’m not very well.
“I’ve known about being ill for almost a year and, my goodness, it was a shock. But here I am for a bit longer, and I’ve had time to look back and think, “Golly, you lucky thing… you’ve met all these wonderful people and had a wonderful life. You’ve been all over the world!”
Time and again, critics and admirers have cited the beauty and humanity of her characterization of the Marschallin in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier.”
Of her many recordings I have broadcast over the years, this is one of my favorites. Ernest Chausson’s “Poèmes de l’amour et de la mer” (“Poems of Love and the Sea”) incorporates two texts by Maurice Bouchor. The poems, “The Flowers of the Waters” and “The Death of Love,” are separated by a brief orchestral interlude.
