It wasn't Peabody Opera Theatre's shining hour, vocally speaking, but Thursday's performance of "Cosi" had its rewards (an alternate cast sings Friday and Sunday).
My review is posted elsewhere online; an abbreviated version will see the light of print on Sunday.
The long list of departed opera stars sadly grew again Friday with the death of Elisabeth Soderstrom in Stockholm at the age of 82, following a stroke.
The Swedish soprano, born in 1927, was an extraordinarily versatile, elegant musician who enjoyed a long, much-admired career that officially began in 1947. She sang at the world's greatest opera houses in repertoire ranging from Mozart and Donizetti to Berg and Janacek. She enriched the opera world wherever and whenever she performed.
Here are a few examples of Miss Soderstrom's artistry, singing one of Grieg's most beautiful songs, the lovely aria from Dvorak's "Rusalka," and the sublime trio from "Der Rosenkavalier":
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Gregor Piatigorsky, at 6'6'', was among the tallest of the musical giants from the good old days. The cellist's artistry towered impressively, too. He had superb taste, a formidabe technique and a warm personality that disarmed people onstage and off.
Piatigorsky, who died in 1976, left a mark on the cello world comparable to that left by Heifetz on the violin world. (I wonder how many of yesterday's musical greats would easily find a manager, let alone a record deal and major concert bookings, if they were facing today's classical scene, with its weakness for the fluffed and buffed, the mediocre-but-marketable.)
For this week's blast from the past, I thought we could use a reminder of Piatigorsky genuine, refined, richly communicative musicianship. Here's sample of him playing Bach, Chopin and Faure:
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Opera is the highest of the art forms -- some of us believe, at any rate -- because it combines music, acting, visuals (scenery and costumes) and sometimes dance. Opera performed only in concert form must be a lesser entity, right? Not if you do it up proper, the way Washington National Opera did with "Gotterdammerung." There are fully staged productions that would have a hard time measuring up to what I encountered last Sunday at the Kennedy Center. (I'm finally reporting on it now under the better-late-than-never assumption.)
This was the second of two performances the company gave as a way of making amends for the suspension of its first attempt at tackling all of Wagner's "Ring" Cycle. Budget constraints forced the postponement of what was to have been a staged "Gotterdammerung" this season, the last installment of WNO's intriguing take on the "Ring," one filled with American iconography.
WNO has promised to do that staged version of "Gotterdammerung" in the near future, together with the other three pieces of the cycle. (There was no repeat of that promise, however, in the program message from general director Placido Domingo, who wrote only that "these performances ... mark the conclusion of WNO's production of the 'Ring.' ")
The company delivered the concert-"dammerung" in the KC Opera House and kept the orchestra in the pit, as it would have been for a sets-and-all production. That was a huge
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As a commenter on my first Mercer salute pointed out, it would have been nice to include clips of the great lyricist singing.
Mercer had an unmistakable tone, with its Southern twang, and superb phrasing that was the equal of the best singers of his day. And, needless to say, when Mercer sang one of his songs, it was with the voice of authority.
Here are some examples, including a couple of his lesser-known songs:
Continue reading "Saluting Johnny Mercer on his centennial (part 2) " »
This is the day to salute Johnny Mercer, who was born 100 years ago, on Nov. 18, 1909.
He is credited with the lyrics for about 1,000 songs, including an exceptional number of what have long been recognized as standards of the great American songbook. Mercer's use of language could be just too "marvelous for words," as some of the past century's finest melody writers discovered.
I've always felt that the best popular songs, where text and tune are perfectly united, deserve to be ranked alongside the best classical art songs. Many of the works that bear the Mercer trademark certainly can be so ranked.
To celebrate his centennial, here are a few of my favorite Mercer songs, sung by some fabulous artists who make the most out of his lyrics -- and yes, as any of my devoted readers would expect, that means Streisand will be included:
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If you attend a lot of live performances -- of any kind -- you know well how the people around you can mar the experience. I think I must be some kind of magnet for misbehaving cretins, since they're always sitting near me -- the talkers, the page-turners, the candy-cravers, the ladies with 500 clanging bracelets crammed onto their arms so that they emit a chorus of "Jingle Bells" with every slight move.
Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center Opera House, while a really terrific concert version of "Gotterdammerung" was being performed by Washington National Opera, a couple of over-aged lovebirds in the row ahead kept up a nonstop series of distractions: kiss-kiss, head on shoulder for a few seconds, kiss-kiss, whisper, head back on shoulder, kiss kiss, whisper. I was amazed that they lasted through the five-hour event and, sure enough, they were the first on their feet to applaud when it was over -- had they actually heard anything of the performance?
And then there was the guy in one of the balconies who screamed out something near the end of the first act. I swear I thought I heard "Wotan!", but that was probably my imagination. My guess is that the man had fallen asleep and was dreaming; or maybe he had been dragged to the opera by a domineering spouse and was expressing his annoyance. Either way, not the sort of thing you want to hear during Wagner.
Oh yes, there was also the unfortunate
For quite a while now, there has been talk of Kiri Te Kanawa retiring, at least from the opera stage. But each time someone declares that she's heading for the exit door, she says (as she did to me in a phone interview the other day), "Hang on."
That happened again Saturday night when Te Kanawa (or Dame Kiri, as Her Majesty's subjects would say -- she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire 27 years ago) gave what was billed as her "farewell" DC recital, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center. The glamorous, decidedly youthful-looking 65-year-old soprano took a moment during the concert to say, in essence, "Hang on." She suggested that, since she had performed in Washington "on average every five years" since 1982, she could well be back. If she sounds half as good in 2014 as she did Saturday, I say, bring her on.
I don't want to overstate the situation in this recital. Te Kanawa did not
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Personally, I’d love to see more attention paid to the way the works of Mahler, for example, were performed during, or closer to, his own day. That might have added an extra dimension last week, when Marin Alsop led the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Fourth. But Alsop is taking quite an interesting spin on the authenticity approach with the BSO’s current program, devoted totally to Gershwin and showcasing the superb French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
As it turns out, this presentation raises vexing questions about the whole historic reclamation business. It’s one thing to return to the original scoring for Gershwin’s most celebrated instrumental piece, “Rhapsody in Blue.” But what about reviving an orchestration of the Concerto in F that Gershwin didn’t prepare or approve, but was written by the same guy who did that first version of the “Rhapsody”? Where’s an ethicist when you really need one?
The story of the “Rhapsody”
Maybe it's all the rain we've been having lately in dear old Baltimore, but I just had to hear something sunny for my weekly trip down Nostalgia Lane. And that made me think of the ever-sunny voice of Richard Tauber, the German-born tenor who had one of the sweetest, warmest tones ever documented on recording.
I could hear this guy sing anything -- and he sang just about anything, too, from lieder to Broadway. I'll start with some Schumann, sung by Tauber portraying a certain Herr SteigIer in one of his films. Then an example of the lighter fare he sang so charmingly. After much internal debate, I settled on "They Say It's Wonderful" from Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" -- not the first thing you might associate with Tauber. I think it's a gem of a performance, recorded in 1947, a year before the tenor's death.
Finally, since Tauber knew his way around a podium, I thought I'd include a non-vocal example of his artistry, too, conducting of the overture to Johann Strauss' "Die Fledermaus." Note the number of his idiosyncratic touches, especially the very slow tempo for the waltz (starting at 2:23 on the clip) and the deliciously gradual move into tempo for the Act 1 trio (at 4:51).
Here, then, three cloud-lifting blasts from the past:
