I hope you find this as amusing as I did. Conductor Georges Prêtre, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, doesn’t waste a gesture, in this selection from Bizet’s “Carmen” (with Maria Callas).
Tag: Opera
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Wild Things Opera Knussen Birthday on WWFM
“We’ll eat you up, we love you so!”
Who could make Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” into an opera? Why Oliver Knussen, of course. Here’s a clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyU9E6hbsf4
Tune in to The Classical Network on this, Knussen’s birthday, to hear his “Music for a Puppet Court,” composed as a kind of break between his Sendak operas, “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” We’ll also mark the birthdays of Polish composer Alexandre Tansman and fusion pianist Chick Corea.
Let the wild rumpus start, between 4 and 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Water Spirits in Music Rusalka Week
There have been innumerable pieces of music written about water spirits – sirens, naiads, lorelei, undines, mermaids and melusinas. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll sample just a couple of these for Rusalka Week.
In Slavic mythology, a rusalka is a spirit that dwells at the bottom of a river or lake. She lures unsuspecting men with her song, invariably resulting in a watery doom. Rusalki are never more dangerous than in early June, when the spirits roam free.
Rusalka Week plays a role in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, “May Night,” drawn from Gogol’s collection, “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.” Alexander Dargomizhsky’s opera, “Rusalka,” is based on a dramatic poem by Pushkin. And the best known of the bunch, Dvorak’s “Rusalka,” was inspired by Czech fairy tales of Karel Jaromir Erben and Bozena Nemcova.
Of course, we won’t be listening to any of these. (We’ve treated Rimsky and Dargomizhsky in the past.) Instead, we’ll have a flute sonata from 1882, by Carl Reinecke, which bears the subtitle “Undine,” an allusion to a novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, which was very popular among the Romantics. Fouqué’s “Undine” tells the tale of a water spirit who marries a knight in order to gain a soul.
Then we’ll hear the complete ballet, “Les Sirènes,” from 1946, by Lord Berners. Berners, notorious for his sense of the absurd (a horse was a regular guest at his indoor tea parties) was a talented composer, writer and painter. “Les Sirènes,” after a scenario by Frederick Ashton, features mermaids combing their hair and singing on rocks at a seaside resort, where sirens of another sort behave coquettishly on shore.
I hope you’ll join me – you shouldn’t be out wandering during Rusalka Week anyway – for “Come on in, the Water’s Fine,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
I notice Dargomizhky’s “Rusalka” will be performed at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, as part of a Russian Opera Workshop, August 1-3. More information here:
http://www.russianoperaworkshop.com/
(Painting by Anna Vinogradova)
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Wagner A Love-Hate Birthday Serenade
“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, … and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound – not excepting railway whistles – as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”
– John Ruskin on “Die Meistersinger”
“For me Wagner is impossible… he talks without ever stopping. One just can’t talk all the time.”
– Robert Schumann
“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”
– Gioachino Rossini
“I love Wagner. But the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”
– Charles Baudelaire
“I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner’s art is diseased.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.”
– Woody Allen
“I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything whichWagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
– Mark Twain
“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
– Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye
Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Tune in today to make what you will of his art, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Samuel Ramey Celebrates 75 Years!
Oh my! I just realized that today is the 75th birthday of Samuel Ramey! 75? How can that be?
Ramey as Verdi’s “Attila”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqZZdQkXZt8
As Boito’s “Mefistofele”:
As Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”:
As “L” Toreador:
Happy birthday, “Red Daddy.”*
*Coined by Ramey’s son, not me.
http://www.npr.org/2009/05/14/103854868/samuel-ramey-bad-guy-bass-of-opera
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