Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Mozart

Glück: Opera, Reform, and Lasting Influence

In German, the word for happiness and good fortune is the same: Glück.

These qualities also happen to characterize the composer who bears that name (albeit without the umlaut).

Christoph Willibald Gluck has come down to us as one the great operatic reformers. Yet, of his own operas (about 35 survive), he’s pretty much remembered for but a single work, “Orfeo ed Euridice” – especially the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits.”

Gluck’s own blessed spirit lives on primarily through his influence on others – Mozart, Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner.

One can certainly hear anticipations of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” not only in Gluck’s ballet “Don Juan,” but also in his overture to the opera “Iphigénie en Tauride.” Furthermore, there’s no way Mozart did not know Gluck’s “Don Juan” fandango when he himself came to include one in “The Marriage of Figaro.”

More broadly, for Gluck, words and music were to bear equal weight. No more, the florid, showy arias of yore, ornamented beyond recognition by star castrati. Beautiful singing was to remain, of course, but DRAMA was to be of foremost importance.

It was musical theater’s good fortune to attract Christoph Willibald Gluck. Happy birthday to a man who made his own luck. Zum Geburtstag viel Glück!

Otto Klemperer conducts Wagner’s arrangement of the overture to Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride”

The ballet “Don Juan”

Gluck’s “Fandango” staged

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAqT7MY-Dc

Mozart’s “Fandango” staged

“Dance of the Furies, from “Don Juan” (later reused in “Orfeo”)

Documentary “Gluck the Reformer,” with John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and others

July 2, 2023
Ingrid Haebler Acclaimed Pianist Dies at 93

Ingrid Haebler has died. A pianist who excelled especially in the core repertoire of the Classical and early Romantic Eras, Haebler recorded all of the Mozart piano concertos, his piano sonatas, and with Henryk Szeryng, his sonatas for piano and violin. She also recorded the sonatas of Franz Schubert.

A little more off the beaten path, Haebler blazed a trail for Johann Christian Bach, recording his concertos on a fortepiano at a time when performances on period instruments were far from the norm.

Never a flashy pianist, she was widely respected for her exquisite musicianship. She was at her best, arguably, as a collaborative pianist. By herself, she risked fading into her own humility.

Philips Records acknowledged her greatness by including her recordings in its Great Pianists of the 20th Century Series.

Haebler died yesterday at the age of 93. R.I.P.

J.C. Bach

Schubert

Mozart with Szeryng

May 16, 2023
Birds in Music From Mozart to Eighth Blackbird

This one goes out to all the red-winged blackbirds, grackles, starlings, and cowbirds that have been swarming my feeders for the past week.

Jennifer Higdon’s “On a Wire,” named for the familiar sight of birds, well, hanging out on a wire, was composed for the contemporary music sextet eighth blackbird (which markets itself all in the lower-case). Interestingly the piano part includes passages that have adjacent musicians bow the strings inside the instrument. The technique is called (wait for it) “bowed piano.” You can identify the members of eighth blackbird by their instruments: flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello.

eighth blackbird is named for Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a poem that’s been set by many composers. Lukas Foss’ response is one of the more frequently encountered.

Starlings aren’t always an annoyance. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was so charmed by one during a visit to a Viennese pet shop that he brought him home to his family. From the evidence of one of the composer’s diary entries, we know that a theme used in his Piano Concerto No. 17 was inspired by a song that his fine feathered friend had sung to him. Admittedly, Mozart tidied it up a bit first. (Originally, there had been an out-of-place G-sharp.)

I understand that everyone needs to eat, and I don’t begrudge a handful of any of these birds, but when it becomes a winged mob in leather jackets with chains, then I’m compelled to throw up the sash and trumpet through an old wrapping-paper tube.

Gentle birds, be reasonable! Eat well, but then, please – go in peace!

More about Mozart’s starling here

https://interlude.hk/mozart-inspired-pet-starling/

BONUS: From “Where’s Charley?” “My darling, my darling, I’ve fluttered and fled like a starling…”

February 22, 2023
Star Trek Opera Mozart’s Abduction

In 2016, Pacific Opera Project boldly went where no opera company went before. But since I’ve been caught in a wormhole, I guess, I am only just now catching up with POP’s bridge-rocking spin on Mozart’s comic singspiel “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” presented “Star Trek” style.

In Mozart’s original, Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, attempts to rescue his beloved from the seraglio of Pasha Selim, a scenario that would have capitalized on the 18th century European fascination with orientalism, with the added savor of salaciousness in setting the piece in a harem.

Now, Belmonte is reimagined as Captain Kirk (replete with Shatnerisms), his servant Pedrillo is Mr. Spock, Constanze is Lt. Uhura, and Blonde is the iconic Star Trek “green girl.” The Ottomans? They’re all Klingons. There’s even an appearance by the Gorn!

Mozart is given an assist on a couple of occasions by Alexander Courage, whose music was featured prominently in the original television series (along with that of Fred Steiner, Gerald Fried, and George Duning, among others).

Unusually for opera, the singers are all miked, but I assume it’s more for documentary purposes than for amplification, since there’s another performance posted on YouTube with the same cast without the mikes, and it’s very difficult to make out the dialogue.

I imagine this would have been a gas to see live. On video, you have to make the extra leap of imagining yourself in the house.

Mozart and “Star Trek?” Salieri would have been so envious.

February 13, 2023
Mozart’s *Leck mich im Arsch* at the DMV

I was at the Motor Vehicle Commission a few days ago, and this was my ticket. Of course, I thought immediately of Mozart’s K. 231. This canon in B-flat major was composed in Vienna in 1782. One of Mozart’s most scatological creations, it’s identified in the Köchel catalogue as “Leck mich im Arsch” (literally, “Lick Me in the ***”). Here’s the jolly text:

Lick my *** nicely,
lick it nice and clean,
nice and clean, lick my ***.
That’s a greasy desire,
nicely buttered,
like the licking of roast meat, my daily activity.
Three will lick more than two,
come on, just try it,
and lick, lick, lick.
Everybody lick their *** for themselves.

I didn’t sing it at the MVC, but it was definitely running through my head.

Happy birthday, Mozart.

January 27, 2023

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS