Der Rosenkavalier, with a twist - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment back at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tomorrow (17/5) with Der Rosenkavalier, but with a twist. Not the opera but the film suite.  What film suite ? Richard Strauss wrote for the movies ? Yes !  In 1926, Robert Wiene, who had directed The Cabinett of Dr. Caligari , made a version of Der Rosenkavalier with the enthusiastic support of Richard Strauss himself.   Dr. Caligari  pioneered the Expressionist aesthetic.And   there was Richard Strauss, if not quite in the vanguard, certainly sympathetic.  This should come as no surprise, since he wrote Salomé. Elektra and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Nuts to the notion that Strauss was sugar and cream.  Wiene’s film was screened at the Dresden Opera House, where the original opera itself had premiered fifteen years before, underlining the connection between opera and the new art form of cinema.  Wiene's Der Rosenkavalier wasn't an "opera movie" in any modern sense of the word. It wasn't a film of the opera but a work of art in itself, with the opera as starting point.  Works of art exist for themselves : there's no law that they have to set originals as given, any more than that art should be history.  Please also see my article from 2012, Gay Salomé the 1923 silent movie based on the Salomé storyn that inspired not only Strauss but many others. 

The plot loosely follows the novel from which Hugo von Hofmannsthal  derived the libretto, with extra scenes like the battlefield on which the Feldmarschall rides to victory and an opera bouffe in a small theatre, where the principals watch their dilemma being acted out. Obviously, the music for the opera would not fit. In any case, what would be the point in a silent movie? Instead Strauss wrote a new soundtrack, based on an orchestra of 17 parts, which mixed extracts from the opera with snippets from  other works  including Arabella, Burleske, Till Eulenspeigel and  Also sprach Zarathustra. 

He  threw in bits of Wagner and Johann Strauss for further effect. Strauss himself conducted the blend live while the movie screened. How would today's opera snobs react?  They take themselves too seriously, methinks, because the Silent Rosenkavalier is a heady cocktail of good film and fun. It captures the savage satire while dressing it up with visuals so frothy they border on excess. This in itself is a dig at the materialistic culture that values frills, yet turns fresh young women into commodities in a cynical marriage marketplace. Swoon at the wigs and acres of lace, but this is no costume drama.

 

The technical film values are very high, as one would expect from the director of Dr Caligari (full download here) and Genuine the Vampire (more here). Scenes are carefully planned so they seem like tableaux in some elegant object of art, designed to distract from the grubbiness around it.  The Marschallin's boudoir suffocates in luxury: one imagines that any man kept like this would lose his masculinity. For all her wealth, the lady isn't happy. She sighs and uses exaggerated gestures and poses: Wiene is satirizing popular theatrical excess. Baron Ochs wears embroidered silks but is a boor. He somersaults, arms and legs akimbo like a broken puppet. Later, when Octavian challenges him to a duel, he collapses  though he's barely been scratched. The camera pans close up on his face and then his mouth, wide as a grotesque sculpture. We can almost hear the screaming.

The scenes where the Men of Property and their lawyers work out the marriage contract are brilliantly done. Backgrounds dissolve into darkness, so the rococco filigree of the costumes and wigs frame faces whose features twist in angular contortion. Outside, in the garden,
gigantic gryphons five metres high tower over the party goers. In contrast, the actress who plays Sophie expresses her personality with
great sensitivity. Sometimes she looks like a nine year old, too naive to take in what's happening. Her jutting chin and turned up nose indicate her petulance.The rich folk cram into a tiny theatre in the Mehlmarkt to watch a play about "the Proud Father and his humiliation",
narrated in rhyming folk poetry. The Marschallin plans a masked ball. Great crowd scenes. Mystery letters direct Octavian and the Field
Marshal (straight from the battle) to meet a woman in the grotto of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. The last reel of the film is missing but the
inconclusive ending isn't a problem. We know what's going to happen. The last frame shows the little black boy, with his plumed turban,
drawing a curtain and gesturing silence. 

 

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is conducted by Geoffrey Paterson with Thomas Kemp as arrtistic director and Charlotte Beament, who will be singing Strauss songs.   The South Bank has been doing silent movies with sound for decades (Think Carl Davis) but this time the music is autentic original and there's no film, as such.  Use your imagination or watch the silent movie, which has been screened several times in recent years.  I wrote my article Rosenkavalier bei Caligari in 2014. But the OAE performance should make us think, about Strauss, and his interests in the avant garde and the idea of film as art form.  Me ? I'll be at St John's Smith Square for  Charpentier Histoires sacrées with Ensemble Correspondances, directed by Sébastien Daucé and Vincent Huguet.

The Passions of Ralph Vaughan Williams

John Bridcut's film The Passions of Vaughan Williams is now available on DVD, marking the 60th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Understanding a composer as a human being  enriches our appreciation of his music. When this film was first shown on BBC TV it shocked some. So RVW liked women ? There are worse sins and no coercion seems to have  been involved.  When Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote her memoirs, she had to be circumspect.  But she outlived most of their circle and in later years was irrepressibly candid, and we should respect her.  Ten years on from the first broadcast, I think we're mature enough to be able to cope, if we genuinely love the music.

Bridcut's film is authoritative, based as it is on the testimony of those who knew the man and his music, amongst them Michael Kennedy and Richard Hickox, both now passed away.  Anthony Payne, fortunately, is still with us, and hopefully for a long time yet.  There's a beautiful shot in which Kennedy is seen listening to a recording of A Sea Symphony, his face at once alert and contemplative. There are clips of a live performance of the Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, with the "long, long reverberation time", in the words of Nicola Le Fanu, resonating into the vastness of Gloucester Cathedral , the camera panning on the huge stone pillars.  Archive film of Edwardian London are shown with clips of modern London to the sound of A London Symphony : RVW was an urbanite through and through.  The war years are evoked by photographs of the composer in uniform, and the strains of Symphony no 3, by no means "pastoral". 

If Vaughan Williams cut a Falstaffian figure (in the words of Robert Tear "like a sofa, with the stuffing coming out"), he was also an Ariel.   He needed youth and beauty.  Flos campi, says Michael Kennedy, quoting Ursula, was not "a mystical work but Ralph's most senuous sensual work", inspired in part by a young woman whom the composer encouraged, working himself up into passion but taking things no further.  He also had what might have been a flirtation with Fanny Farrar,  which seems to have ended in disappointment on her part.  Clips from RVW's Fourth Symphony and  Satan's Dance from Job, a Masque for Dancing  make one wonder whether the composer used more   negative things to generate his music. This film also includes  a taped interview, then hitherto unheard, in which Ursula describes the first kiss which led soon after to a full blown affair. Nonetheless, RVW and Adeline were close, to the extent that Ursula was jealous.  How Adeline felt about the situation, we shall never know, since we only have Ursula's point of view, which understandably, she might have sanitized. Adeline's family were less impressed.  But what choice did Adeline have, given her dependence ? Quite possibly she was more hurt than she let on.  Perhaps one day the story can be told giving Adeline more respect, for she, too, was a strong character, and had served the composer loyally. 

After Adeline's funeral, Vaughan Williams went into a rage, destroying her things, then moving back to London.  His final years were happy, creatively and personally.  We hear snatches of the Ninth Symphony and Tired, the most personal of the Four Last Songs.  John Bridcut has made many films, some somewhat uneven, but The Passions of Vaughan Williams  is one of his finest.  Biography is speculation, but it is also a search for truth.  Art itself is a search for truth, greater even than those who create it.  

Jonas Kaufmann Tenor for the Ages the Hagiography

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One giant selfie ! Jonas Kaufman Tenor for the Ages, hagiography not documentary. The Curse of Celebrity.  It's not JK's fault.  When marketing hype takes over, the artist becomes Commercial Product, his art incidental by-product.  Kaufmann truly is one of the greats. "A singer who thinks" as Antonio Pappano "with matinee idol presence". Absolutely. We're incredibly lucky to have JK, he's more than just a singer.  But this film, by John Bridcut, is  embarrassing, catering to a market that thrives on hype.  So, love JK, don't love the promo video.
True fans love the artist, and love the art. They don't bitch if he cancels even if they lose money because they understand voice and don't expect singers to deliver like machines.  They aren't obsessives who push themselves above all else,  it's not good for  mental health.  JK is so charismatic that his personality is magnetic, which is something to celebrate.  Nothing wrong with being sexy, either.  But knicker throwing is daft, and the media types who play it up are cynical manipulators, who care more for clicks than quality.
It was good to see the dressing rooms at the Royal Opera House again and recall the buzz that goes into making a production.  Antonio
Pappano's enthusiasm is always fun. And it was good to hear the clips of the Vienna Tosca where things might not have gone to plan.  JK is a genuine artists whose love for repertoire spurs him on to new challenges.  Taking JK to Aldeburgh struck me more as a thing than a serious attempt on JK's part to take on Peter Grimes. But who knows ? JK has the intelligence to realize that it's always prima the repertoire, and how it can be explored. Sadly not many get that  Please read my piece on  JK's Mahler Das Lied von der Erde. No-one is so expert that they know everything and don't need to learn.  But a lot of the script seemed geared towards the mantra that art can't be taken seriously.. 

 Thank goodness that the show was followed by real opera,  Verdi Otello at the Royal Opera House, good enough to convert anyone to the genre if they care enough to listen and pay attention.  Here is a link to the thoughtful review in Opera Today of the live performance. Please read and enjoy. The range lies low, so it suits JK well : If his interpretation wasn't macho, so what ?  Otello's a much more complex figure than macho man. Delicious singing !

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Oxford Lieder Festival - a Different Rosenkavalier

As part of the Oxford Lieder Festival's 2017 season, focusing on Mahler and his contemporaries, a very different Der Rosenkavalier, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenmnt, conducted by Thomas Kemp. Not Der Rosenkavalier the opera, as we know it, but a screening of the 1926 film by Robert Wiene, the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1921) and Genuine the Vampire (1920)  Tickets still, available, book here.

The film was made with the enthusiastic support of Richard Strauss himself, who appreciated the power of the new medium of cinema. The film was  first screened at the Dresden Opera House, where the opera itself had premiered fifteen years previously.  It wasn't an "opera movie" in any modern sense of the word, because it was made when movies were silent. In those days, films were accompanied by live performance, with music adapted to the action on screen. Obviously, the music for the opera would not fit. In any case, what would be the point in a silent movie?  Instead Strauss wrote a new soundtrack, based on an orchestra of 17 parts, which mixed extracts from the opera with snippets from other works  including Arabella, Burleske, Till Eulenspeigel and  Also sprach Zarathustra. He  threw in bits of Wagner and Johann Strauss for further effect. Strauss himself conducted the blend live while the movie screened.

The plot follows the novel from which Hugo von Hofmannsthal  derived the libretto, with extra scenes like the battlefield on which the Feldmarschall rides to victory and an opera bouffe in a small theatre, where the principals watch their dilemma being acted out.live while the movie is screened. How will today's opera snobs react?  Methinks they take themselves too seriously, because the "silent" Rosenkavalier is a heady cocktail of good film and fun. It captures the savage satire while dressing it up with visuals so frothy they border on excess. This in itself is a dig at the materialistic culture that values frills, yet turns fresh young women into commodities in a cynical marriage marketplace. Swoon at the wigs and acres of lace, but this is no costume drama.

The technical film values are very high, as one would expect from the director of Dr Caligari (full download here) and Genuine the Vampire (more here). Scenes are carefully planned so they seem like tableaux in some elegant object of art, designed to distract from the grubbiness around it.  The Marschallin's boudoir suffocates in luxury: one imagines that any man kept like this would lose his masculinity. For all her wealth, the lady isn't happy. She sighs and uses exaggerated gestures and poses: Wiene is satirizing popular theatrical excess. Baron Ochs wears embroidered silks but is a boor. He somersaults, arms and legs akimbo like a broken puppet. Later, when Octavian challenges him to a duel, he collapses  though he's barely been scratched. The camera pans closeup on his face and then his mouth, wide as a grotesque sculpture. We can almost hear the screaming.  

Lots more about this Rosenkavalier some years ago, and also, about Robert Wiene, other Weimar films and music, and of course Mahler and his contemporaries, who are my main thing. This is one of the most comprehensive sites on the internet -I am frequently borrowed from, to put it delicately. So check here first for many things.

Peer Gynt - naked Charlton Heston, aged 17

Long before Ben Hur, Charlton Heston as Peer Gynt ! Charlton Heston, aged 17, in the surprisingly sensitive film based on Ibsen and Grieg's Peer Gynt.  The film was made in the summer of 1941 as a school project  at New Trier High School in Willamette, where Heston was a student.  It was filmed in the woods in Illinois and Wisconsin, where thousands of Norwegian immigrated during bthe 19th and 20th century.  At one time, there were more Norwegian newspapers in that part of America than there were in Norway.  So the film doesn't need much in the way of sets, using the landscape as it was.  Real mountains, valleys and forests and rivers that can pass for fjords.

The actors were students, most of whom can't act, but look healthy and enthusiastic.  Kids then didn't do dope, TV or computers.  Their faces are so fresh, they don't look like they've ever worn makeup. Although the film is clumsily made, that very naivety suits the story much better than something more sophisticated.

It's also good that the film was shot without spoken dialogue.  The actors' mouths move, without sound, like in a silent movie. Even this is a plus, because it adds to the sense that the story exists in a strange, eternal world  outside time and place, where trolls live, and from which Peer can escape predicaments as if by magic.  The sound track, a recording of Grieg, was added after filming.  The recording quality is horrible, but I quite like the clumsiness because it fits the gaucheness of the film and the primeval nature of the story.  I have watched with the sound off, while playing a CD, but that doesn't work.

Enjoy the village wedding, and the march of the trolls, with their crude costumes and lumpy dancing.  The Bøygen though, was made for the movies. A disembodied head appears ,wobbling in front of dark curtains. He speaks - with an American accent !  Heston is, unquestionably, the star. After all, Peer Gynt lives only for himself ! The camera lingers lovingly on his face and body. He's often seen with his chest oiled up, his features lit so he resembles a  Greek God.  He's so beautiful that you can see why Peer is so much in love with himself. (Heston has a slight , ironic smile, he knows it's only a movie).  The crew were amateurs, too, though the director, who also wielded a camera, David Bradley went on to a proper career in Hollywood.  He was also one the cameramen : maybe we can tell, since some angles and frames are very inventive, while others are shot without much imagination.

Nice dressing up games in the Desert scenes, shot on a beach, the women in bikinis, the "Arabs" playing home made instruments.  No sound, of course, leave that to Grieg.  When sound does again intrude, it happens when Peer grows old and hears Solveig's Song (badly sung, in English).  Please also see my other pieces on Grieg and on Peer Gynt . HERE is a link to my description of the two main recordings of the incidental music with added text. Ole-Kristian Ruud and Guillaume Tournaire. Time for a new one, I hope.

X rated Mahler Wunderhorn Barbican

X rated Mahler on Wednesday  15/4  at the Barbican, London! Because there are scenes of nudity, it comes with an 18 plus advisory. And why not ?  Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim's Des Knaben Wumderhorn wasn't written for kids. This new Wunderhorn (not Des Knaben Wunderhorn) is creative re-imagining, in which live performance is blended into a film by Clara Pons who "visualizes Mahler’s melancholy and humanism, relating a story of love in times of war, and of a paradise forever lost",   Dietrich Henschel will be singing 15 of Mahler's originals, plus nine  orchestrated by Detlev Glanert which are well worth hearing. Nearly 20 years ago, Glanert wrote Mahler-Skizze, a skit, on Mahler's style, based on cartoons of Mahler conducting. It's a short piece but full of joy and energy. Glanert has a taste for the macabre, but also for satire and fun, which is very much Mahler. Alexander Vedernikov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Below,  the trailer, which suggests that this might be an acted film rather than just a series of projections behind the stage. Thankfully, it's not literal  Soldiers exchange meaningful glances while we hear Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredight, which ostensibly depicts an inebriated saint preaching to fish, who start fighting each other the moment St Anthony is done. Rather pointed when you consider how the sermon might apply in a militaristic society. Hopefully, the film will capture the charm and wit behind the poems.  Wunderhorn is fifth generation down from the folk tales collected in the field, transcribed by aristocratic intellectuals, influencing a late 19th century composer, who would go on to create a whole body of work inspired by the ideas generated from the collection. The river of creative invention flows, even for listeners who engage with sounds and meaning.

Brentano and von Arnim's Des Knaben Wunderhorn was a huge success in 1819 because it captured the spirit of the times. German-speaking countries had been ravaged during the Napoleonic wars. Germany then was a disconnected mass of over around 300 states, pitted against one another by which side their leaders took. It represented a way of finding an identity based on an idealized, but very lively version of a simpler past. The original is quite hefty, with long ballads and pieces of prose. Mahler set a lot more poems than are in the DKW set, but even then he didn't cover the entire collection. A good friend used to get us to instantly translate pages, unseen, with hilarious results, especially after a few glasses of wine.
 
Mahler discovered Des Knaben Wunderhorn some sixty years later, when the book had gone out of fashion.  Having been brought up in a small garrison town, he would have understood the tales of soldiers far from home, the spectacle of marching uniforms and the macabre reality of death. Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen - to teach bad children to be good, in the sense that all who dream and wonder are children at heart. .

Opera HD - myths and facts

Audiences for opera broadcasts in the cinema are old. That's news? The survey has gone viral. But here's where genuine local knowledge comes in. The survey  was done by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Excellent music and drama students but not necessarily sophisticated pollsters. It was commissioned by English Touring Opera. ETO is a wonderful, innovative company but its business is touring, reaching places outside London, where people might not otherwise experience live opera at all. The ETO is unique, and serves an important public purpose.  But one can understand why they'd be interested in the impact of HD, when anyone can watch the Met, ROH, Salzburg and Munich. Personally I think ETO has a special place !

The story, however, has gone international, raising a lot of questions that don't have much to do with the survey at all. Some have even blamed the  Met's problems on HD. So it's a good time to separate fact from fabrication.  Opera has been filmed almost as early as the technology has been available. In the 1970's Rolf Liebermann at Hamburg pioneered the idea of opera created for film, which resulted in works of genius like Wozzeck and Die Freischütz which combined musical astuteness with visual imagination. Opera films were often broadcast on TV, some even written for TV, like Britten's Owen Wingrave. So why should HD be any different?

Watching live streams is fun, but fundamentally not all that different from watching a DVD. The art itself does not change. Directing an opera is completely different from directing a film: the skills are not usually compatible.  An opera director works through character and motivations: a film director chooses angles which best bring out the intention behind the production. In a good production live, there's often so much to take in at once that it's often easier to watch something through the eyes of a film director. Real opera devotees often catch both the live and filmed broadcast, because the slight shift of perspective adds to knowledge and thus to enjoyment.

Millions of people can watch filmed opera in cinemas and online, who might never otherwise be able to attend in person. What's so wrong with that? People get old and immobile but they should not be written off as human beings. Millions grew up with audio recordings and DVDs. Of course their experience counts, every bit as much as those lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Being in a house is exciting, even when you attend many times a week, but the primary aim is opera as music and as art, not the frills, the popcorn or fancy new stilettos. As I've said many times before, there are numerous different audiences, each with different interests. So there's a case for tolerance and inclusivity.

Filming opera is expensive, so it's not a universal panacea, however tempting it might seem. Some smaller houses have been burned. However,the reality is that the potential market for opera is infinitely bigger than house capacity. The Royal Opera House enjoys 95% occupancy, so there's little room for growth in those terms.  Film is an essential part of the business model. In 2013, 675,000 people watched 415 performances in house. Since 2012, over three million have watched a much smaller number of operas in cinemas and online. Go figure. Glyndebourne is a much smaller house - usually packed out - but it's so good that it can do deals with newspapers to broadcast online.  Statistically it just doesn't add up that film bleeds live. Online audiences may not rush out for live tickets, but so what? They are paying attention.

The game changes all over again with digital broadcasting. On 20 May the ROH broadcast La Traviata live on its own youtube channel.  In cost terms, this is more effective than sharing profits with a cinema chain. In Europe, there are online channels that broadcast recent productions as well as old. Siemens pioneered digital screening technology and paid for 3 years of screenings from  Bayreuth.  How do companies make money? Some charge, which is fair enough. If we care for the arts we should be mature enough to realize you can't expect good things for free. But the returns are simply the amount raised by subscription.  The size of the online market shows that the demand for opera is greater than seat sales alone.  There's a huge potential audience out there who are interested enough to care and to learn. Much better such audiences than the kind of boors who think they "know" opera because they can shell out for pricey tickets. Gimmicks like fast food eateries don't help sales,. The South Bank shows how artistic purpose is lost when artistic vision is compromised.  Online and HD grow the audience through education.  When  the Berliner Philharmoniker began its digital concert hall, it became the world's "home" orchestra,. Competition can be good or bad, but raising standards is good for everyone.

LOTS more on film and opera on this site, please explore

Papageno in silhouette Reiniger 1935

More Weimar silhouettes from Lotte Reiniger, this time a ten-minute fantasy on Papageno, made in 1935 as part of her projected series "Silhouetten Opernhaus", the first of which was Zehn Minuten Mozart (1930). described by her as a "Schattenspile zu Meisterwerken der Tonkunst", animations that illustrated music.  Zehn Minuten Mozart brings together snippets from different works by Mozart to form a coy narrative which delights a Romantic imagination. Papageno is much more sophisticated, concentrating on Papageno and his relationship to nature.


The tighter focus allows Reiniger to create exceptionally elaborate silhouettes - look at  tracery of ferns and vines, which bring out  the delicate intricacy of the music perhaps in a way no staged performance can. Look at Papageno's bells at right . It's hard to believe they were crafted form cardboard. And enjoy the birds as they move and sing. Papageno is teaching them how to sing his name. When Papageno and Papagena sing of their future offspring, a stork pierces eggs and little children dressed as birds pop out.

Reiniger's silhouettes grew out of the old German tradition of Scherenschnitte. The figures could be photographed frame by frame so they could seem to dance on film.  Truly unique and magical, uniting ancient and modern. This is a film which echoes the designs of the 1930's yet feels true to Mozart and feels immortal. Becaause it was made with sound, we also get authentic period performance as soundtrack.

I've written about Lotte Reiniger before (see my piece Weimar animation on Reiniger's The Star of Bethlehem which gives links to the British Film Institute archive. Reiniger knew just about everyone in avant garde film circles, many of whom I've written about on this site (see Ruttman : Berlin, DieSinfonie der Grossstadt) Even when she had to stay out of Nazi Germany, she hung out with the likes of Renoir and Cocteau. Interestingly, the assistant she uses on this film is Arthur Neher. Any relation to Caspar Neher, whom she must have known from Brecht/Eisler circles?

RARE historic broadcast Britten War Requiem BBC TV 4

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was such an important event that thousands listened to the broadcast of its premiere on 30th May 1962 : it's hard to imagine modern audiences so drawn to new, classical music today. For many who listened, it was life-changing. A friend of mine recalls tuning in, not expecting anything special, and was wonder struck. Just as everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news of John F Kennedy's assassination - also on 22nd November - Britten's 50th birthday - classical music people remember first hearing Britten's War Requiem. For my review of the fantastic BBC Prom War Requiem (Nelsons, CBSO) see here.
 
Now we have a chance to see the rare film of the first BBC TV broadcast, first transmitted in August 1964, from the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Britten himself conducts the small ensemble, the Melos Ensemble.  The BBC Symphony Orchestra is conducted by someone who looks like John Barbirolli but is Meredith Davies. The soloists are Heather Harper, Peter Pears and Thomas Helmsley. Simon Preston plays the  RAH organ. Also featured are the BBC Chorus and Choral Society, Boys from Emanuel School, the  London Philharmonic Choir.. Kennedy's assassination must have been fresh in the minds of the performers and the audience : the world seemed a smaller, more Anglophone place then. This time, Londoners filled the Royal Albert Hall : their experience of the Blitz was more prolonged and more damaging than in Coventry.

Watching this film, I'm struck by how formal the performers appear. "Stiff upper lip", and cut-glass accents which would seem unnatural today. Watch Peter Pears' body language though. His face turns red with intensity, his chin jutting forwards, his mouth snapping as if he were firing ammunition. He came from a military family : his older brother was a POW in Hong Kong. For a man of that background, it took courage and serious conviction to become a conscientious objector. When he sings the "Strange Friend" sequence, he sings with powerful dignity.

Watch Britten's conducting style - understated and minimal, while the other conductor leaps and waves his arms. Evidence yet again, of the significance of the chamber orchestra and the fundamental duality that runs through so much of Britten's music. Miss these subtle contradictions, and miss the true heart, I think, of Britten. As Pears and Helmsley sing "Let us sleep" Britten shapes the music around it as delicately as if it were a bizarre lullaby.  The boys choir rings up from the gallery, uniting with the two soloists. Only then do the main choirs and orchestra and Harper join in.

The filming is definitely "old school" point and shoot. Fixed position cameras, with relatively limited angles. At times the camera will linger on musicians who haven't started tom play: the cameraman has been told where to film, when rather than follow the music.  At the end, the camera above Door 12 does a panorama of the stage and its hundreds of performers: quite magnificent, even in low resolution black and white. The camera over Door 9 pans briefly on the audience in the arena, some of whom are wearing ties in the heat of August.

This filming feels antique: things have certainly changed for the better! The BBC was in the forefront of the whole new approach to the art of filming music. The BBC and Britten were made for each other. I'll write more later about the BBC's radio broadcasts this week, but for now, look at the other TV offerings :

Britten's Endgame (Reviewed HERE)
Britten's Violin Concerto, one of the best Proms in 2013 reviewed HERE
Billy Budd from Glyndebourne (reviewed here) 
 Britten and Pears - private folksong recital, filmed 1964.  Good performance but the spoken introductions are sexist!
 Benjamin Britten on Camera - this is much more important documentary than you'd expect as it deals with the relationship between Britten and the BBC and shows how each influenced the other

I've also written a lot about Britten's War Requiem:
Jurowski, LPO, Bostridge, Goerne
Pappano, Accademia di St Cecilia, Rome, Bostridge, Hampson, Netrebko
Bychkov Royal Albert Hall
Nelsons CBSO BBC Prom 2014

Britten Gloriana - Politics as Theatre

Before tonight's premiere of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana at the Royal Opera House, some thoughts on the opera and the politics of performance. ( My review is HERE). The odds were stacked against Gloriana even before its premiere. This was an exceptionally high profile commission, the biggest in British opera history. A new Queen was being crowned, and a new era of hope was dawning. And the commission went to Benjamin Britten then still under 40, and a relative outsider in British music circles. If even Peter Pears wasn't keen on taking second place to a soprano, what were the chances that the opera would be appreciated for what it was? Politics plagued the original production just as it plagued Elizabeth I.

The famous Opera North production, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is intriguing because it 's not a straight film of the opera but presents it as a film about the making of performance.  It's absolutely valid as an interpretation of the opera. Politics is an extreme form of theatre, where image  means power. Elizabeth puts her personal feelings aside to protect her role as Queen.  This film is a work of art built around a work of art.

It's an important contribution to our understanding of Gloriana and the politics that went on about its reception.  I reviewed the DVD in 2007 for Opera Today. 

 "In the first scene, the Earl of Essex sings about a “chess game” in which the goal is to win the queen. This Queen has to keep ahead of the game, constantly, through stratagem and the illusion of invulnerability. Thus the stage action is woven with scenes from “behind the scenes”, creating the effect of illusion within illusion. Like the Queen herself, Barstow the actress is under pressure to perform. In the opening scene, where she looks wearily into the mirror in her dressing room, while listening to the overture. It’s very moving. Not all singers make good actresses. Barstow, though, is exceptionally good. She’s so convincing that you forget, for a moment, that this, too, is illusion and stagecraft. Her whole performance is a masterclass in opera characterization, and worth studying for its own sake. This Elizabeth is no fool, but watchful and tense, like a coiled spring. Hence the sharp delivery and attack, and the bristling, sharp edge to the voice. When the Queen steals her rival’s dress and dances in it, Barstow spits out her lines savagely, bringing out the menace that underpins the elaborate party games at Court."

"Film creates special new opportunities. For example, in the “Mortua”, when the Queen finally faces her mortality, there are long silences which would not work on stage or recording. Here though, the camera dwells on Barstow’s face which registers intense emotion. Sound, as such, is unnecessary. When she does sing, weakly, the song she and Essex had playfully sung long ago, she sing so quietly and tenderly that the impact would otherwise be lost. Similarly when she’d earlier explained her love for her nation, the camera pans the balconies in the opera house, backstage attendants and so on, as if all the world were listening to those noble, ringing words"

"Just as the film draws out the effort the Queen makes to remain in control, the film shows how much work goes on behind the scenes of a production. Recordings alone can sometimes break the link between listener and performer, so sometimes people focus on recording values rather than on artistic creation. This film is an excellent reminder that it is people who make opera and that it isn’t easy work !"

Nocturne Britten Tony Palmer new film

Nocturne is a new film about Benjamin Britten from Tony Palmer. Britten's archives are so extensive that it's difficult to mine anything new. So the way ahead is interpretation. Hence  Paul Kildea's sensationalist biography which states that Britten died from syphilis, against all other evidence, including medical opinion. Tony Palmer's angle focuses on Britten's pacifism, which is perfectly valid.

"I believe", says Britten, "that the artist must consciously be a human being. He is part of society and he should not lock himself up in an ivory tower". Palmer traces the origins of Britten's political views to a his childhood. Britten was a strange, singular child,  even then aware of unknown "dark forces"  of foreboding, according to his cousin. Beneath Britten's genteel surface lay complexities  In his last years he was wracked by illnesses, many of which might have been psychosomatic. Someone suggested that he see a psychiatrist. Britten was furious. "Do you expect me to ruin my gift!" he shouted. "I'll never be able to write music again!".

 Britten's relocation to America is often held against him by those who don't understand that there are many ways of fighting fascism. He was making an attempt to connect with wider horizons than Europe. Yet he suffered an illness. There is no proof that this was anything to do with venereal disease, as Kildea suggests. It seems to have been a kind of personal and creative watershed. He resolved it by rushing back to England, to Aldeburgh and the true beginnings of his career. It would be interesting if someone would study this period in depth. It's more than an interlude but has implications on the way Britten's music developed. In 1945, Britten was one of the first  outsiders to enter Belsen. In comparison the bombing of Coventry Cathedral seems minor, but the War Requiem stems from very deep sources.

The general gist of Palmer's film is good, with judicious use of archive footage. On the other hand, the film runs over 130 minutes, and there's a lot of padding. Some of this is music,  well chosen and well presented, but some is rather less relevant. On the other hand, in any film documentary, "talking heads" aren't visually absorbing : we need illustration. The footage of Belsen - in colour - is particularly powerful. One wonders what Ken Russell would have made of this material. In the past,  I've often disliked Tony Palmer's work, but Nocturne is good, and a genuine contribution to Britten's centenary.Recommended ! It's being screened at festivals all round the country this year, and is available on DVD.

.Please also see Britten's Endgame by John Bridcut which focuses on Britten's often misunderstood last works and last years. It's a much better film than Nocturne, and more detailed.

Kathleen Ferrier - new film by Diane Perelsztejn

A new film about Kathleen Ferrier exploring her life and her music is now out.  Diane Perelsztejn's film moves briskly through Ferrier's early life to the triumphs of her career, which will be familiar, but are presented in a fresh way.  There are new things too, dealt with for the first time, and new, analytical material. Read the full review by Claire Seymour HERE in Opera Today :

"The final stages of the film deal with Ferrier’s personal relationships, and we learn about her relationship with Rick Davies — the significance of which has not been previously well known due to the media’s respect for the singer’s privacy and Winifred restricting access to the diaries — and with her father. Her fatal illness is sensitively depicted, revealing the humour and courage (she continued to perform despite the pain caused by her breast cancer) with which she bore discomfort and adversity."

"Contralto Natalie Stutzmann insightfully analyses the strengths and appeal of Ferrier’s voice, remarking its ambiguous combination of “the colour of the chest voice usually found in the male voice with the clarity of the female voice”, and the beauty and length of her breath. But, whatever her technical strengths, it was the way her relaxed, earthy contralto communication so naturally that struck her devotees, for whom she was the ‘girl-next-door’, bringing classical music to an entirely new audience.

Music as space : Philharmonic 360 New York

Music as spatial experience: Philharmonic 360 with Alan Gilbert and members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. "Philharmonic 360", because the musicians were embedding the music 360 degrees round the whole performance space. Conceptually, it was brilliant, a reminder that music isn't confined to 19th century concert halls. Sound came from different parts of the auditorium, audience and musicans integrated, not artifically segregated. Lit in neon pink and sapphire, people loomed out of the darkness. At the centre, Alan Gilbert stood alone, under a single white light. Obviously they had the sightlines right, and Gilbert was clearly communicating with his players, but the effect must have been quite magical. Great theatre!

Philharmonic 360 started with Giovanni Gabrieli's Canzon XVI. A fanfare of three sets of five brass players, calling out to each other across space. Sixteenth century music was often heard 360, in the round. Although this isn't opera as we know it, the quintets function as voices, communicating with each other. Alan Gilbert is no fool. He was preparing the audience for two monumental pillars of modern repertoire,  by connecting them to music history. Even audiences who aren't familiar with new music can appreciate it in this context.

Gilbert was wise, too, to choose Pierre Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna as the centrepiece of the programme. Like Gabrieli, Maderna was a Venetian, and grew up aware of the function of music in society. It's significant, too, that Luigi Nono, who also pioneered music with spatial dimensions, was also Venetian. Gilbert's choice of programme was an inspired reflection on the interrelationships behind the piece, and also on the intricate connections within the piece.

Boulez's Rituel commemorates Maderna on many different levels. On an obvious level, it's a ritual procession. The orchestra is divided into eight unequal parts, moving at different paces and in different ways, just as mourners follow a cortege, seemingly disparate but with common purpose. Solemn percussion, often hollow, evoke the image of a funeral, but also serve to measure time and its inevitable passing. This percussion functions like a heartbeat, so the sudden interruptions, changes of direction and pauses feel organic. Boulez's Rituel has been heard as a commentary on Maderna's own music and his place in music history, yet it's also psychologically intense, as if through the formality of the structure, Boulez is coping with extreme emotion. Maderna was like a father figure to Boulez, and was instrumental in persuading him to conduct as well as compose. Anyone who still swallows the myth that Boulez is cold and clinical needs to listen to Rituel. Significantly, solo clarinet functions prominently, weaving past the regulatory percussion, like a lone mourner wailing. I've often imagined Rituel as if it were a chorus in a Greek tragedy, for it sounds primeval. Superbly disciplined playing from the orchestra, so the complexities in Boulez's score are clear, as they should be, throwing its deeply-felt spirit into high relief.

The picture above shows Boulez (seated) with Bruno Maderna and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen in 1955, around the time Stockhausen's Gruppen was wriiten. It's such a classic that it's hard to believe how advanced it was for the time. Three orchestras functioning as independent units, the music as much in the convergences and breakings away as in the separate parts. On this occasion, Gilbert was joined by Magnus Lindberg, no less, formidably important, and by Matthias Pintscher, less famous perhaps now, but still young . (lots about him on this site). Pintscher is moving heavily into conducting, so again, Gilbert is ahead of the game, picking Pintscher to work with.  What a constellation. Sorry, I couldn't resist that dig at Stockhausen's later preoccupations, which distract from the visionary innovation in his work.

Stockhausen's Gruppen is powerful, conceptually and musically. It was written to work in conjunction with the performance space where it happens. At the Royal Albert Hall in 2008 (read more here) it was an overwhelming experience, almost cosmic, "beyond" mere music. A close friend was at the London premiere in 1967, also at the Royal Albert Hall, listening from up in the gallery. Perhaps the Park Avenue Armory in New York doesn't do it justice, for this performance didn't come over nearly as well as Boulez's Rituel. 

Sandwiched between Boulez and Stockhausen was Mozart! This was the real test for the audience. Would they figure out why? Choosing the ballroom scene that ends Act One of Don Giovanni was a stroke of genius on Alan Gilbert's part. No gorgeous extended arias, but instead, tightly crafted ensembles. The three groups of protagonists converge upon one another, some hidden behind masks, others pretending to be what they are not. Mozart defines the parallel groups with three seperate small ocrhestras, each operating as a unit, but together creating a coherent logic. Mozart's writing Gruppen 200 years before Stockhausen!

It would be a complete mistake to judge this bit of Don Giovanni in conventional opera terms, because it wasn't being presented as opera as such, but as an example of spatial music. The stylized, witty staging was sending out signals. It didn't matter that the singing was so basic. What we were supposed to be listening for was the orchestra, and how deftly Mozart constructed the music.

Philharmonic 360 ended with Charles Ives The Unanswered Question. The question is answered in the programme! The Unanswered Question is an 8 minute study in disparate parallells, three orchestras and  flute quartet. Ives's Fourth Symphony might make the point better, but it's too long and ambitious to fit into a programme like this. And it aso shows Alan Gilbert's sense of humour, for it's a companion piece to Ives's Central Park in the Dark. Both were titled "Contemplations", of Nothing Serious and Serious, in Ives's wry irony. Some in the audience at the Armory in Central Park must have known! How wonderful to emerge into the night, hearing the diverse sounds of the city.

Any conductor can throw together a programme but very few indeed do it with Alan Gilbert's erudition and wit. Any conductor can keep an orchestra (or multiple orchestras) from falling apart, but it's a rare gift to have a conductor who can communicate like this and develop the audience. Often, as an outsider reading the NYC press, I wonder at what poiltical battles are happening behind the scenes, and why the negativity toward change. NY needs Alan Gilbert. If they don't appreciate him, it's their loss. Watch this programme streamed on medici.tv. The filming is done by a crew who know what to focus on, without losing the big picture. Which is what Philharmonic 360 was all about.

ENO chief claims opera screenings don't work?

"ENO Chief claims opera screenings don't attract new audiences" screams a headline. ENO Artistic Director John Berry is quoted as saying "It is of no interest to me....“My time is consumed with making sure the performance is absolutely as good as it can be, and getting that right on the stage, that is hard enough, and that is my focus, on live work." 

Berry is responding to a claim by Sky Arts that its partnership with ENO between 2003 and 2009 had not generated one production for broadcast, and that "organisations like ENO are often fearful that to screen their work on TV would “cannibalise” their audience."  Let's look closer into the story.  ENO's heritage is theatre. It's strange that a stage magazine doesn't comprehend this.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about how the MET HD broadcasts are making mega-millions for that house. Read my analysis of that here.  (also many, many other posts on film and music). But why should that mean everyone else has to do as the Met does? There's no market sense in a flood of broadcasts for the sake of broadcast, even if film maximizes audiences and brings in money. Not every opera house is the same. The Met and the ENO don't compare. It's the Royal Opera House and the Opéra de Paris that are the Met's real competition. And things can be done differently from the Met, whose house style is expensive but downmarket..

What the ENO does best is adventurous, quirky and risk-taking : once it was the "powerhouse". The ENO doesn't have the budget for top rank European singers, so it focuses on stagecraft. Sometimes, that's been a disaster, with directors who don't understand music, but in principle, what the ENO does well is live theatre. There's no reason why it can't do film, but that's not a top priority.

The rationale on which the ENO was founded was that it would bring opera "to the people" in their own language. While Lord Harewood was around, that was sancrosanct. Maybe the English language gives the ENO a unique selling point, but nowadays when most people know core repertoire in Italian, German or French, it's more of a handicap. You won't get top singers bothering to learn a part all over again for less pay than they'd get in a big house. Even John Tomlinson has said he has to catch himself to sing in English instead of following his musical instincts. Though it's good for up and coming English singers, it does mean we get stuck sometimes with "lesser luminaries" whose main achievement is that they speak English.

But what is relevant about the ENO's heritage is the idea that opera should be direct and immediate, appealing to ordinary audiences who don't compare it to La Scala, Vienna or whatever, but enjoy themselves regardless. The ENO's natural allies are houses like Amsterdam, Theatre an der Wien, Aix, Lyon, possibly Frankfurt and Berlin, even Helsinki. Good productions, whatever their language, speak to people.

And most damning of all, filming opera isn't the same as watching opera, or even directing. It involves a whole new set oif technical skills which stage directors don't know because that's not their job. A good film director not only needs to know how to make a good film but also to understand bthe production he's working with and the music behind the opera. Absolutely, this isn't a skill that just anyone can pick up. It also doesn't come cheap. A house would need a whole new set of technicians and processing staff. Even if they don't do it in house it will cost big money to outsource. And even if they find good partners, that doesn't  mean good quality control or even "opera focus". Furthermore, cinema audiences by their very nature aren't as interested in art so much as in entertainment.  We could end up with the tail wagging the dog. That's fine for Megabucks Met, whose values may suit the hinterland but it's a dangerous gamble for smaller, more innovative houses.

Last year Sky Arts and the ENO did a joint venture around Mike Figgis's production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. There were lots of reasons why that wasn't a success. As a film buff, I enjoyed it as an experimental hybrid of film and theatre, with the opera encased within. But most people aren't film buffs and want to see opera as opera as opera, not as experiment. Good opera, yes, but opera that just happens to be translated on film, nothing more esoteric.

Marta Eggerth is 100 and still singing

Marta Eggerth is 100 years old today and still singing. We need to know because she's a living relic, or as the Japanese say "A living National Treasure".  Born in Hungary before the First World War, she was a megastar in 1930's operetta. She appeared in Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán's Czardasfurstin, or Die Herzogin von Chicago  (read my review here). Plus just about all major operettas, musicals and movies she could be signed for. In 1926, she married the tenor Jan Kiepura and together they went on to even greater success. Kiepura and Eggerth are also important to us now because they were artists who moved  freely between genres. No viciousness then about "crossover". Today they'd be pilloried  by media trolls.

Please read two articles, this one from the Washington Post, which is good on her life in New York. "I live in the present", which mentions a new recording by her son with Kiepura, whose name is Marjan (get it?) and the piece I wrote in February with the very rare clip of Eggerth  and Kiepura singing together in 1958 in Kraków . (two music clips). They were a sensation especially because conditions in post-war Poland were harsh. Kiepura and Eggerth were a reminder of how glamorous things were before the war and the Iron Curtain. No wonder their appearance had such an impact!

Below two more clips of Marta Eggerth, one from Kálmán's Czardasfurstin, and two  from a 1933 movie "Unfinished Symphony" about Schubert . Alas that kitsch image of the composer persists today. Below, she sings Ständchen . In the background peasant girls are singing Der Lindenbaum and Heidenröslein. "It's from Goethe" she tells Schubert, who knew already. Both songs were often sung by amateurs and entered the popular imagination as "folk song", which they weren't, originally. The movie sounds like a scream. "Without rhythm, music would be unthinkable" says Schubert. I'll write more later about the film.

Forbidden Music - Richard Tauber and Jimmy Durante

Richard Tauber and Jimmy Durante? In Forbidden Music (The Land without Music) they join forces to capture the popular market. Crossover sinners and singers have always been with us. Paganini was the Lang Lang of his time. Maria Malibran was a sensation at 16, dead at 26, before most singers even begin these days. The modern obsesssion with hating crossover stars says more about bigotry than about music. No one is forced to read the Daily Mail or watch Britain's Got Talent. That Tauber could really sing only makes his participation in commercial kitsch even more  pointed. But those who find fufilment in hate need to sniff out targets to prove how superior they are. Genuinely secure people aren't threatened by others, so why the frenzy?  It's bullying, mob violence by media. Significantly Forbidden Music was written in 1936. "It could never happen in America" cries Jimmy Durante. Oh yes it could.

The principality of Lucca is bankrupt because the natives spend all their time making music, not money. So Austria threatens to invade. (that Austria is mentioned by name is significant too on other levels). So Lucca goes for Lucre and music is banned. Lucca's Economic Miracle attracts International Attention, so a reporter from New York arrives. Jimmy Durante's trademark proboscis looks even funnier when he's wearing early 18th costume. "My giant trunk!" he says, meaning his luggage. Durante's character "Whistler" (pun) pronounces Lucca as "Luck-AH" and mangles local names. But he's no buffoon. He's incensed by repression and supports the locals who want music, even though he's not a musician himself.

Richard Tauber is opera singer Mario Carlini, Lucca's Greatest Export, feted in Vienna. But when he comes home, he's threatened with prison. So concerts have to be organized in secret, through the underground. "There's Revolution in the air!" Even the military are upset. "How can we march without marches?". So Tauber heads a procession of trumpeters, fiddlers and singers who march on the palace. "Let's make music a national industry!" So the Princess (played by Tauber's wife, Diana Napier) reverses the anti-music decree. As if it were so easy in real life. The little opera house opens again and Tauber sings an aria. It's in English, but the sound's so bad and his diction is kaput, so you can't make out the words, but who cares? He does it with a flourish.

Forbidden Music is pretty hammy, certainly not "great art" and no-one had illusions. But as a parable it's a lot sharper than it seems.  It was directed by Walter Forde with music by Oscar Straus (one "s"). Enjoy it here:

Gay Salomé, 1923 film at the South Bank

The 1923 silent film Salomé is being screened at the Purcell Room, South Bank, tomorrow, with a sound  track by Charlie Barber.  Music, for a film that was conceived as silent? Perhaps it's an indication of how lazy audiences have become that they can't pay attention unless there's noise in the background. Weeks ago, audiences walked out of The Artist, a modern  film which is partly silent, which is about silent film. So why go? (read more here). Salomé was created as a visual adventure, as a direct hommage to Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of the story. It's not about the Salomé story per se, nothing to do with Strauss Salomé, for example. The idea is that Beardsley's pictures are coming "alive".

Most involved in the film were gay, which is also an important context, given that it was 1923 and homosexuality was illegal. So it's a very bold statement indeed. Moreover, the director and brains behind Salomé was a woman, Alla Nazimova, at a time when relatively few women did projects like that. All this and art nouveau, too? The film was suppressed at the time, but now it's box office bankable. Hence the "revival" with sound.

But first and above all, Nazimova's Salomé 1923 is a work of visual art which should be appreciated for what it is and how it translates one=dimensional sketches into moving, human film. Beardsley's art faithfully adapted to "real" situations. Nothing is straight in this movie, whatever the orientation of those involved. Nazimova's film uses Beardsley's stylization to create a deliberately anti-naturalistic aesthetic that reflects the unnatural nature of the plot. Arch surtitles - "Thou wert" and "Thou rejectedest me". They reflect Beardsley's own words which twist and curl as if in feverish delirium.. The sets are spartan, lots of white space, in the manner of Beardsley's etchings, which seemed shockingly alien to a world used to over-stuffed Victorian excess. Beardsley's aesthetic is  far from Alma-Tadema's hyper-realistic orientalism, which cloaked outright prurience with a veil of fake academicism. Beardsley doesn't do veils.

At the heart of this story is Herod's unclean lust for his own daughter, Salomé. Secondary dynamic is the relationship between Herod and Herodias, his long-term wife whom he treats like dirt. The Herodias in this film is much meatier than the Herodias in Beardsley - she has hair like a lion's mane and wears a leopardskin jumpsuit. Tina Turner, but 60 years too early. Female sexuality as opposed to Herod's leering infantilism. She looks at Herod with disgust. Because the set looks so neat it makes the fundamental perversion feel even more unclean.

Interestingly, Jokanaan looks exactly like Beardsley himself, only more repellent, hawk-like features and a skeletal ribcage that looks like Christ on the Cross in Spanish art. This adds a piquant twinge to the proceedings, as Jokanaan can't stop denouncing "The Whore of Babylon", as if all the sins of the world were caused by women, not men. It's pretty significant yet strange that lesbian Nazimova really makes a point of sexual attraction between this man and this woman. "All other men were hateful to me". Before she dies, she looks like she's having an orgasm. "The mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death".

Wonderful minor figures - Black executioners, little black kids in headresses as tall as they are, strangely louche male attendants (nipple rings like targets). One lusts for Salomé while the other lusts for him. Attendants dressed in crazy turbans, and in the dance, women dressed as screens, surrounding Salomé as she switches from boyish androgyny to female demon (white hair cut in angles).  The Dance is magnificently choreographed - fast forward to 44 minutes. You can see the influence of Diaghilev and Nijinsky, whom Nazimova, a Russian, would have known of, even if she hadn't seen them in action. Salomé as The Afternoon of a Faun.

While the stylization is fundamental to the whole concept of this film, it makes for semaphore acting. In 1923, this wasn't such a big deal, since moving pictures were still a novelty. But we've become used to Hollywood ultra-fast action, so we need to switch off the autopilot assumption that drama has to be fast and butch. Much like we've lost the art of appreciating music that's not raucous and exaggerated. And, pertinently, we've lost the ability to appreciate a work of art on its own terms, without extras. Music was played in silent cinemas, but rarely composed for the film itself. However good the new soundtrack may be, it's a distraction from what is essentially a "silent", contemplative experience. You could spraycan the Mona Lisa and claim rights to the image.  Maybe it's "art" of a form, but it's not Leonardo. Salomé is a commercial winner, though profits won't go to Nazimova.  But it's just not the same thing, no matter how good the music might be, or what the audience might demand. View the full movie free with sound turned OFF HERE

Jurowski 's case for Prokofiev proved?

In this Prokofiev - man of the people? season at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski has been examining Prokofiev's career after his return to the Soviet Union, placing his later music in context. On 28/1/12,  he presented two rarities, one a premiere,  focussing on Prokofiev as dramatist.  It was a winner. Thrilling music, but also an indication of what the composer might have meant about reaching the people.

Popular art need not be populist. Film was a revolutionary art form because it reached the masses, even those who didn't realize that what they were watching was "art". Eisenstein was an artist, but used mass media to get his messages across. What better way for a man like Prokofiev to use his art to reach millions who might never enter a formal concert hall? In the west, people are perplexed that anyone should leave "freedom" for Communism, but at the time, many intellectuals were idealistic. Stalin was the price they had to pay. Similarly, many Chinese intellectuals returned to China when the country was in need. It was moral imperative, and then the Cultural Revolution.. Maybe it's just not a concept everyone for themselves societies can grasp, but it's not without honour.

"I serve Russia, not myself" to paraphrase Ivan the Terrible in Eisenstein's masterpiece, with score by Prokofiev.  The Tsar's primary duty is to serve the people, even if he's bloodthisrty and immoral. Although Soviet censors may have balked at Ivan the Terrible Part II, it doesn't show the tsar as villain so much as an individual motivated by ideals, although he's become twisted with power and intrigue. Curiously, Ivan is an artist, a "man of the people" in his own way.

The world premiere tonight was Levon Atomyan's 1961 version of Prokofiev's score for Ivan The Terrible , condensed into less than an hour.  It was approved by the Union of Soviet Composers (one judge being Shostakovich), but Atomyan had a stroke and the work remained in his archive.  Although there is another arrangement, by the conductor Abram Stasevich, who recorded the original sound track, Atomyan was a close friend of Prokofiev and influenced his return to Russia.

Atomyan's arragement doesn't follow the narrative in the film, but reshapes the soundtrack in symphonic form in seven movements. While we hear the magnificence which represenst Russian glory, what comes over more prominently is a gentler. more human Ivan.. After the belligerance of the first section, there's a folk song about a beaver who is hunted down for his pelt. Folk melody, perhaps, but brutal. Prokofiev wanted the singer,to sound  "as senile as possible, as though holding a cigarette between the lips, as though  through a comb", I wouldn't say that was what Ewa Podleś sounded like, for at 60, her voice is still naturally warm and rich,  It's the song Yefrovsinya, the Tsar's aunt later sings to her own son,  as she plots the Tsar's downfall.

The song of the Oprichniks, the Oprichnina appears in full in the seond part of the film, but  its savage pulsating staccato occurs throughout the soundtrack, In this arrangement it's the third segment, enmphasing the primitive power of Ivan's terrifying hitmen.  Andrey Breus sang the baritone part, supported by the male voices of the London Philharmonic Choir. One should feel fear and revulsion. but the music is so infectious, you're almost drawn into it, which is rather worrying. But then, that's what mobs are like.

The 4th and 5th movements describe Ivan's marraige to Anastasia, the "swan", whose beauty and purity stand in contrast to the intrigue around them. Would he have turned out differently if she hadn't been murdered? The film links the poisoning of Anastasia to the murder of Ivan's mother, which made the young boy determined to be strong.  Atomyan adds Ocean Song for contralto and orchestra, which doesn't appear in the film, but fits the story well, and connects to the song Yefrosinya sings to her son. A vivid depiection of the attack on Kazan, complete with cannons, and the chorus singing a hymn to Russian glory. The gory elements in the film are played down, the orchestration emphasizing quirky good humour.  Eisenstein, Prokofiev and Stalin were all dead by 1958, when Ivan the Terrible Part II was unbanned, but the ideas were still dangerous. Atomyan's finale, the Magnifcation for chorus and orchestra, is straightforward glory on Russian themes. It's a watering down of the original for practical/political reasons, but is rousing and entertaining. Populism rather than art.

Atomyan's mediocrity makes one all the more appreciate the courage and artistic integrity of Eisenstein and Prokofiev.  Fabulously lively playing from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Jurowski made his point, with glory!

Simon Callow and Miranda Richardson narrated Prokofiev's Incidental Music to Egyptian Nights. This was an experimental theatre project, directed by Alexander Tairov in 1934, before Prokofiev made his final committment to return to the Soviet Union. Tairov mixed passages from Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and Pushkin to create a story that covered Cleopatra's life from youth to death. Prokofiev's score runs to 44 numbers, played with verve by the LPO. But all attention was on Callow, who created one figure after another - Julius Caesar as old rake, Caesar as ruler and betrayer, Mark Antony and the Irish-accented fig seller who brings Cleopatra the asp.  Callow was wonderful - no stilted RADAisms that some actors might use, but warm, natural, imposing and funny by turns. The script's clunky,  but Callow saved it. Richardson's Cleopatra was fun too, though her part's more safe. Although the piece runs for exactly the same time as Ivan The Terrible, the strange hybrid form tends to drag and confuse. But the point is that Prokofiev realized it was "experimental" even as Stalin's purges were kicking in.

Excellent booklet notes. I wish I'd beem to more in this Prokofiev - man of the people? series. Can't wait til Simon Morrison's book on Lina Prokofiev is published later this year. Lina was the one who really sacrificed herself for Russia. Please see my other posts on early art  film, music for film, political film, suppressed composers etc.

How to hate Mozart

A season of Mozart's Da Ponte operas at the Royal Opera House started with Don Giovanni. Two casts : Finley, Karnéus, Regazzo or Schrott, Donose, and Esposito (my prefered, I think). For fun, I've been watching the rarely seen Mozart movie, Whom the Gods Love (Basil Dean, 1936).Mozart (played by Stephen Haggard of the Rider Haggard clan) is chatting with a bunch of brain dead bimbos (the Weber family and conveniently, Schikaneder), when they spot a "queer fish". "He looks like a marionette!" squeals Constanze. "Allow me to introduce myself" says the gaunt figure. "I'm Lorenzo da Ponte".

In the next scene Haydn tells Joseph II that Mozart's good. "In that case we shall have him write an opera". The script is based on Constanze's memoirs, coloured as they were by time and vanity. Also, the film was meant as a vehicle for the director's wife, Victoria Hopper. So the emphasis is on Constanze's charms and maipulativeness. One wonders about relationships in the Dean household. Mozart's pretty much in the background, portrayed as an effeminate, stupid child.  Mozart was odd, but this film doesn't go into that. When his mother dies he flaps about and postures "Is this Death?", hand raised to his forehead, the frame shot in diagonal, like a parody of art movie. Needless to say, the scenes about the Requiem and the Magic Flute are high camp.

The film isn't very good and isn't commercially available, but it's significant from an educational point of view, and needs to be known. Just as Miloš Forman's Amadeus transformed Mozart and Salieri's public image, many would have taken this earlier film at face value. And it's much better than the portrait of Schubert in Lilac Time, which even Tauber, who appeared in it, thought a joke. That's the nature of movies about composers. They're fiction, not fact. Only the very greatest lift the genre, when they're perceptive about the music and the artistic persona behind it. But many more people see movies than go deeper into the subject.  Shallowness sticks. This soundtrack uses clips from Beecham's Mozart and elaborate costumes to give it credibility (especially with 1930's British audiences). But Mozart, it ain't. The answer? Always keep listening, keep learning. Composers, like all human beings, are infinitely complex. Watch the film HERE, it's a public service.

Lots more on this site about music on film, music in movies, documentaries and art film. Some are genuine art, others like The Flying Dutchman meets Carmen and naked Ava Gardner.

Lt. Kijé 1934 full download

http://www.archive.org/details/LieutenantKizhe1934Restored

Lieutenant Kizhe (Kijé) aka The Tsar wants to sleep. This is the full movie, directed by Alexander Faintzimmer in 1934, with a score by Sergei Prokofiev. To get English subtitles, press on the tiny CC icon on the right of the screen. Don't worry too much as most of the gags are visual. As long as you know the gist of the story, it's fun. I didn't realize that I was following it in Russian until half way. Note how the dialogue and music are sparsely applied, more like European art film at the time, not like Hollywood scores where the music sometimes overwhelms the action.