Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Opera

Smetana’s Operas Rediscovered & Pop Culture Cameos

Can you believe I’ve got all eight operas composed by Bedřich Smetana? (Actually nine, if you count the fragment “Viola.”) I remember picking most of them up off a clearance rack at the late, lamented Tower Records Classical Annex at 6th & South Streets in Philadelphia. That had to be a good quarter-century ago. Maybe 30 years. I thought I was missing a few, but I see I mopped up “The Kiss” and one or two others at Princeton Record Exchange in 2012.

“The Kiss” (which I only finally just got around to listening to this week) often gets painted with the same brush as “The Bartered Bride,” but every one of Smetana’s operas is actually quite different. When he’s not busy folk-dancing, the composer is clearly besotted with Wagner. He, in turn, influenced others – not only Dvořák (also a Wagnerite), but also Leoš Janáček, who must have heard “Libuše,” and Richard Strauss, who wanted to hear “The Two Widows” whenever he visited Prague.

“The Devil’s Wall” trades village weddings for a cosmic struggle between God and Satan. But don’t worry, it’s a comedy too. You’ve got to hand it to Smetana, he was stone deaf, but he kept right on composing.

Is it true, a portion of this work was used in “Spider-Man: Far from Home?” Bizarre. Now Google tells me “Dalibor” was used in an episode of “Gotham” (which employs characters from the Batman mythos). I guess the Prague connection to comic book entertainment extends well beyond “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” A few artsy young ex-pats must have spent their gap year over there enjoying the cheap beer.

Smetana established a Czech national sound in music. The 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth falls this Saturday. Although there were many aspects of his life that were actually quite miserable, even by “great composers” standards, I’ll be honoring him on KWAX with some of his lighter music on “Sweetness and Light” (Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST).

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Okay, I just watched the Spider-Man clip, and it’s basically a bunch of kids rolling their eyes about having to go to the opera. Even at their age, I would have so been there. Come on, it’s “THE DEVIL’S WALL.” What teen wouldn’t be eager to check out anything with a title like that?

Honestly, the actual music, as heard in the movie, is so brief, I don’t know how anyone unfamiliar with the work would have been able to identify it. I guess superhero movies have trained people to sit through the end credits. What happened to the overture, I wonder? It just starts with people singing. I suppose the filmmakers wanted to convey that this is OPERA.

I concede there’s every possibility the kids’ antipathy is intended to be humorous, a depiction of what a stereotypical young person’s reaction might be to the prospect of having to sit through a four-hour opera (more like three-and-a-half, allowing for two 30-minute intermissions), as the rest of the city is partying in the streets for Carnival. But more likely it’s Hollywood pandering to the shot-and-beer crowd.

Anyway, there goes my brief, belated curiosity about “Spider-Man: Far from Home.” I would love to see a mainstream movie in which young people attend a cultural event and find themselves opening up to it, or even actually enjoying it. Opera is not just for stuffed shirts and serial killers. Personally, I’d much rather see “The Devil’s Wall” than attend Carnival.

But maybe I’m just weird.

“The Devil’s Wall” as heard in “Spider-Man: Far from Home.” Is it just me, or is Peter Parker getting younger and younger? I mean, I know he’s supposed to be a teenager, but surely these kids are in elementary school?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkcDJLjig_s

The selection from “Dalibor” used in “Gotham” (probably to underscore a serial killer)

February 28, 2024
Radical Opera or Handel’s Genius?

So many modern opera productions of the classics are radically, even provocatively, reimagined, ill-considered, half-baked, and just plain tiresome. I don’t want to pay big bucks to go to an opera house to have my eyes assaulted by a bunch of grotesque imagery calculated to undermine the glorious music. If I want to feel grim and depressed, it’s much less expensive to go to the movies. It’s the composers’ genius that has kept opera alive all these years, not the desperate antics of flash-in-the-pan directors.

That said, every once in a while, a bold swing for the fences thrillingly connects. Fresh approaches to Baroque opera, in particular, seem to have yielded their share of unexpected delights, perhaps because the old ways often pretty much reflected what Peter Schaffer’s Mozart complained about, in his earthy fashion, when he characterized the kind of opera peopled with classical and historical heroes as being moribund, the characters so lofty that they sound as if they defecate marble.

In some respects, I suppose, I am a product of my time, so I don’t mind a little flash now and again, to keep things lively, even if it is a concession to the eye more than to the ear. I was delighted by David McVicar’s take on George Frideric Handel’s “Agrippina,” for instance, with, in one manic aria, mad Nero cutting cocaine with a credit card.

Now, for Handel’s birthday, here’s one to set aside for the weekend. A traditional production of “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” (“Julius Caesar in Egypt”) opens in 48 B.C. This one, however, is built on the premise of a Howard Carter-like figure uncovering an Egyptian tomb in the 1920s – only to have the contents spring to life. The approach was conceived by George Petrou, artistic director of the International Handel Festival Göttingen.

The production opens with a quote from Carl Jung, rendered in the style of a silent movie intertitle: “Where love reigns, there is no will to power, and where power takes precedence, love is absent. One is the shadow of the other.” Cleopatra emerges from a sarcophagus, the priests are all dressed like Anubis, canine-headed Egyptian lord of the underworld, and there are mummies all over the place. Nireno’s aria that opens Act II is given ‘20s-style jazz inflections. Furthermore, on this occasion, it is sung from the wings while lip-synched and pantomimed by the production’s assistant director, because the scheduled singer was under the weather!

Handel was 39 when he wrote the music. Is the production in line with what the composer imagined? Well, not exactly, but it looks like it could be inventive and fun, in an escapist kind of way. I look forward to sitting down and watching the whole thing. Nothing screams Handel like hot sand, jodhpurs, and pith helmets.

Happy birthday, Handel!

February 23, 2024
Mary Garden Opera’s Scandalous Diva at 150

Mary Garden, “the Sarah Bernhardt of opera,” was born 150 years ago today.

The Scottish-American lyric soprano (later mezzo-soprano) lived in France for many years, where she became the leading soprano at the Opéra-Comique. There, she worked with many successful composers and participated in several world premieres, including that of Claude Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” in 1902. She also collaborated with Jules Massenet, who wrote his Cherubino opera, “Chérubin,” specifically for her.

In 1901, she entered into an affair with André Messager, who had conducted her in Gustave Charpentier’s “Louise,” the work in which she made her unscheduled debut, stepping in for an ailing Marthe Rioton. When the Opéra-Comique director Albert Carré asked her to marry him, she graciously declined, coyly admitting there was someone else in her life.

She created a sensation when she performed the French version of Richard Strauss’ “Salome,” a role she eventually brought with her to America. Though she executed the Dance of the Seven Veils in a bodystocking, audiences were scandalized when she languorously kissed the severed head of John the Baptist.

It was Oscar Hammerstein who lured her back to the United States, where she joined the Manhattan Opera House in 1907. She scored further successes in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. She sang the world premiere of Victor Herbert’s “Natoma” in Philadelphia in 1911. In 1912, she joined Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera to raise funds for survivors of the Titanic.

In 1921, she became director of the Chicago Grand Opera Company. There, she directed the world premiere of Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges.” The company went bankrupt in 1922, but as always, Garden landed on her feet. She became director of the Chicago Civic Opera, with which she sang until 1931.

Long a household name, she also appeared in two silent films for Samuel Goldwyn: “Thaïs” (1917), one of her signature operatic roles, and “The Splendid Sinner” (1918). After retiring from opera in 1934, she became a talent scout for MGM. Later, when Orson Welles described to composer Bernard Herrmann the kind of opera he envisioned for the painful Susan Alexander montage in “Citizen Kane,” he characterized it as a Mary Garden vehicle.

Garden’s firsthand experiences with Debussy and his music provided ample material for her later lectures and recitals. In 1951, she retired to Scotland, where she lived her last 30 years, and published an autobiography, “Mary Garden’s Story.”

By all accounts, she was a force to be reckoned with, the archetypal diva, who engaged in epic feuds and forbidden love affairs. Invariably, she got what she wanted and emerged the stronger for it. She lived a flamboyant lifestyle and was a relentless self-promoter.

In a 1954 interview, she declared, “I was never a singer. You go to hear Caruso. You go to hear Melba. But you come to SEE me.”

She died in Aberdeen in 1967, at the age of 92.

Garden singing Mélisande with Debussy at the piano in 1904, and a selection from a Garden interview about the composer:

INTERVIEWER: “Is it true that Debussy was in love with you?”

GARDEN: “Oh, no. Never. He may have been in love with my work, but I never was in love with anybody with whom I created. No, no. Not in the musical world. They’re all crazy.”

Radio interviews from 1937 to 1961 – beginning with Bing Crosby! Interesting content aside, the advance in technology over 24 years is striking.

Garden as “Thaïs”

“Depuis le jour” from Charpentier’s “Louise”

Allegedly, the only one of Garden’s recordings she could bear to listen to

Bernard Herrmann’s Garden-influenced pastiche opera for “Citizen Kane”

Clip 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFAq27TK9l8

Clip 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmSoDkXJ2aw

I posted a good deal more about the segment in August of 2020

February 20, 2024
Wilhelmenia Fernandez Diva Soprano Dies

Philadelphia-born soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez has died. Fernandez attained international recognition as the obsessive center of the French post-New Wave thriller, “Diva.” In the film, her character captivates an opera-loving courier, whose penchant for bootleg recording places him in the crosshairs of Parisian hitmen.

If you’ve ever seen “Diva,” I’m sure your memory needs no refreshing. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a fatally cool, colorful, “Cinéma du Look” chase movie, featuring Ray-Ban wearing gangsters, impossibly chic lofts in which tenants dreamily roller skate around bathtubs, and Fernandez, adorned like a Greek goddess, singing the big aria from Alfredo Catalani’s “La Wally.” It also happened to be essential ‘80s arthouse cinema.

Worlds away from hipster-punk Paris, Fernandez grew up in Philadelphia at 23rd and Dickinson Streets. Her promise was detected early, at the age of 5, and she was invited to join the choir of Tasker Street Baptist Church. Later, she enrolled at the Settlement School, where she studied voice with Tillie Barmach. From there, she entered the Academy of Vocal Arts. This was followed by a scholarship to the Juilliard School.

Her operatic debut was in “Porgy and Bess” at Houston Grand Opera, a production that toured both the U.S. and Europe. She first appeared in Paris, opposite Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, as Musetta in “La bohème.”

She passed up “Luisa Miller” at the Met for “Carmen Jones” on London’s West End. Her performance was recognized with an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1992. Surely another career highlight was a production of “Aida” staged at the pyramids.

It was during her Paris run that Fernandez was approached with the offer to appear in “Diva.”

In the film, she breathed new life into the aria “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from Catalani’s “La Wally.” Previously a favorite of Renata Tebaldi, it became Fernandez’s signature for 25 years. The opera itself is seldom performed, probably in large part because it concludes with an avalanche!

I remember reading an effusive review of “Diva” in David Denby’s column in New York Magazine as a teenager and wanting to see it so very badly. I figured I never would, since (1) it was French, (2) it was 1981, and (3) I was 15 and living in the Lehigh Valley. There was no internet at the time and home video availability in those days, I’m sure you’ll recall, was spotty at best. Even if I could find it, the purchase of a foreign film would have been prohibitively expensive.

O me of little faith! I hadn’t banked on the Allentown art house, the 19th Street Theatre (now the Civic Theatre of Allentown). 19th Street was where I could see films like “El Norte,” “Fitzcarraldo,” and “My Brilliant Career,” when, living in a small town, one couldn’t expect to see them anywhere else – unless they happened to turn up later at one of the local universities. It was at 19th Street that I first saw “Diva.”

Then, what do you know, in the mid-‘80s, it became a favorite on WHYY, Philadelphia’s public television station, so I was able to watch it again and again. In the interim, I saw it on the big screen a second time in college and then at Philadelphia’s late lamented Theater of the Living Arts (TLA) on South Street, back in the days when it was still the city’s best movie house. Sadly, it’s now just another concert venue. I used to hit that theater three times a week. $2.50 admission with student I.D.

On weekdays, the double features were changed every other day, with the biggest draws, the cult favorites and crowd-pleasing classics, saved for the three-day weekend.

“Diva” was one fun, sharp-looking movie – a foreign film for people who think they don’t like foreign films. Kind of to the early ‘80s what “Run, Lola, Run” was to the late 90s. I should have known something was up in when I was able to locate the soundtrack at the local mall!

Fernandez held additional degrees in voice and education from the University of Kentucky and Georgetown College. She made Lexington her home, at first shepherding young singers, but becoming disillusioned with their lack of application; so she turned to elementary special education instead, working with children with autism and A.D.D., a pursuit she found deeply rewarding. She directed a children’s choir at Lexington’s Main Street Baptist Church, where she also continued to sing.

Fernandez died in Lexington on February 2 at the age of 75. By coincidence, the director of “Diva,” Jean-Jacques Beineix, was also 75 at the time of his death in 2022.

R.I.P.

Fernandez sings “La Wally”

The film’s trailer

In conversation with Bruce Duffie

https://www.bruceduffie.com/fernandez.html

February 7, 2024
Maria Callas 100th: Incendiary Performances

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maria Callas. If you’re an opera buff, it’s possible you may already be suffering from Callas fatigue, with the voluminous coverage in print and hosannas on the radio and a major motion picture on the way starring Angelina Jolie.

Even so, I’ve taken a little time the past couple of days to pull together some links to a few of her incendiary performances. Some of them smolder. Some of them flare. Some are like a volcanic eruption. It’s easy to forget how thrilling a great performance can be until you’re suddenly confronted by the real thing.

The consensus seems to be that her voice was at its best in the 1950s; but in whatever era, Callas’ absorption and her total commitment to the drama of the moment can be stunning.

Yes, she was flawed. She could be difficult. Controversial, even. She certainly had a sense of her own worth. But it’s not for nothing that she’s been dubbed the Soprano of the Century.

Much of the proof is right there in the audio. It’s too late for us to be there in the house for a Callas performance. But listen to the near-hysteria of her audiences, in the “Aida” and “Anna Bolena” clips especially, to get an idea of what an electric night in the theater an evening with Callas must have been.

Happy centenary, La Divina.

Immortal “Tosca”

“Vissi d’arte,” Paris 1958

“Casta Diva,” Paris Opera debut 1958; Callas wearing a million dollars in jewelry!

“Suicidio!” from Ponchielli’s “Gioconda”

“O don fatale,” Verdi’s “Don Carlo”

“Aida;” the audience explodes!

“Carmen” Habanera

I hope you find this as amusing as I do. Georges Prêtre doesn’t waste a gesture conducting this selection from Bizet’s “Carmen,” Covent Garden, 1962

La Scala 1957, the mad scene from Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena.” The audience, at the 9:14 mark, sounds like they’re going to take the place apart.

If Callas oversaturation is your thing, here’s 7 and a half hours of arias!

December 2, 2023

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