Elgar Newman Dream of Gerontius

The Blessed John  Henry Newman, now, as John Cardinal Newman is beatified by Pope Benedict. Everyone's trying to second guess why, but it's irrelevant. The real big deal is that Newman is not a typical saint, but a person whose life is an example for the future.

Newman was a man of conscience. He had integrity, and turned his back on family, status and glory. As a Catholic, his career wasn't successful.
He suffered.doubts, conflicts and possibly clinical depression.  He wasn't even that keen on papal infallibility. Yet what got him through was idealism and integrity. 

 No human society has ever existed without spiritual or moral beliefs. So what's wrong if some choose one way or another? Quite possibly being fully human means respecting others' rights. What does militant atheist evangelism prove?

We're all going to die. Even if there's nothing on the other side the fact of mortality affects how we live and feel. Perhaps Cardinal Newman's real miracle is that through The Dream of Gerontius, he's helped millions to face loss and death, and in the process discover the beauty of life.

Elgar's music starts in the world, elegiac, recurrent crescendi full of portent. Gerontius knows he's dying. The violins stir like the fluttering of giant wings. "This strange innermost abandonment", Already, the concerns of the world are eclipsed. Gerontius isn't alone, he's surrounded by a host of immortal presences, all praying support.  Wild surging trumpets, evoking "that sense of ruin which is worse than pain". The man's terrified, hearing "hideous wings" but remembers that this is a journey many have taken before. Huge outburst of choir and orchestra. "Go Forth!" The baritone is the tenor's stronger alter-ego. pulling him onwards. Fairly straightforward piety, so far.

But then something really amazing happens. The transition starts with a beautiful, humble theme which we'll recognize as "the heart subduing melody" the man hears as he's lifted upwards. "I went to sleep", he sings in a matter of fact way, but gradually feels lightness and freedom. "How still it is! I hear no more the busy beat of time" The marvel is that he's safe, cradled by an angel.

It's Gerontius's Guardian Angel, who has taken care of him invisibly since he was born.  "My work is over" she sings, now that she's handing him back to God.  Gerontius's soul wonders why he now feels no fear. "It is because then, thou didst fear...and so for thee the bitterness of death is passed".  To put it plainly, if you have no conscience in life, you'll pay for it in the next world.

Sure enough, they pass the Demons who claim those who've been bad on earth. Wild frenzied, ostinato stabs of brass and percussion. The choir of demons scream. "How sour and uncouth such a dissonance" sings Gerontius's soul. This is Newman being ascetic, and Elgar showing a  sense of humour. What demonic, violently expressive music! Isn't it deliciously manic when the demons snarl "Haha! Haha!"  

As they cross into the Hall of Judgment, the soul hears  "a grand mysterious harmony. It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound of many waters"  Angelic choir, and then peace reigns as the Soul enters the presence of God. The baritone who sang the priestly figure now sings the Angel of Agony, a tougher version of the Guardian Angel. He makes a direct connection between the sufferings of Jesus condemned on the cross.

"Alleluia" sings the soprano piercingly, at the top of her range, and the orchestra follows with a vivid, penetrating fanfare. Now the soul enters purgatory, visualized as "penal waters" of a lake. it's a cosmic lullaby, for while the soul lies in these depths it will be protected by angels and the memories of those left behind on earth.

"Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow" sings the Guardian Angel, "Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial,, and  I will wake thee on the morrow" (meaning the end of time).  Heavenly coda, strings and harp, a sense of uplift.

Hell exists in most cultures. In reality, most evil people get away scot-free. Yet a belief in the Afterlife implies that there are higher powers, divine justice that can't be bought or manipulated. The bad don't get away with it though they think they can. This has implications for how we live. Not that heaven or hell is any deterrent for those who really don't care. But it is hope for those who do.

Explicitly, the Angel of Agony sings of  "Souls, who are in prison, calm and patient, wait for Thee",  In life, we're all in a kind of prison and suffer. We have a responsibility to do good, but sometimes evil overwhelms.  What the Angel means is that faith and  patience give us strength to endure horrible things. Hate isn't the only way. If that's not a relevant message for today, what is?

In 2007, the Dream of Gerontius at Gloucester Cathedral. was fully sold out, but at the last minute I was unexpectedly given tickets. So I took a friend who'd been through months of trauma.  Then the music started and she felt a sudden rush of inexplicable but intense peace. Then she remembered how her father, who had died a few months before, had loved Elgar and may have heard it in Gloucester when he lived nearby in his youth. (He was Catholic and didn't normally do C of E). There's no point rationalizing such things. Emotionally they feel true, and if they bring such comfort, who can complain? She's not the first, nor will be the last, to be affected by the Dream of Gerontius. Perhaps that's the kind of miracle a self-effacing man like Cardinal Newman would have liked - simple, but profoundly helpful.


Please forward this on to anyone you think it might help.  There is lots more on this site on Elgar, Three Choirs, Messiaen, war, social issues etc.

BBC Proms 2010 post mortem

It's less than a week since the Last Night of the Proms 2010, but already plans are in hand for next year and the next. Organizing a festival on this gargantuan scale takes organization. Now the post-prandial snooze is over, thoughts for the future.

Fabulous programming this year. A spectacular beginning with 3 blockbusters - Mahler 8, Meistersinger and Simon Boccanegra. How will they top that?

An almost equally spectacular ending. Glyndebourne, and  two Rattle Proms with the Berliner-Philharmoniker, arguably the best orchestra in the world .(They also exist in disguise as the Lucerne Festival Orchestra).  I loved their Mahler 1 in Berlin, the Proms version being more relaxed, and loved their second Prom with the Uber-Sinfonie, combining Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. This was a masterstroke, and beautifully, intelligently performed. Rattle gets a lot of flak because he's successful. It's nothing to do with performances, which naturally vary, but the simple fact remains that the Berliners love him and they know a bit more about music than the average troll.

The emphasis this year on Sir Henry Wood and real Proms tradition was good too, because it dispels some holy myths. Wood was an idealist: not for him the redneck bigotry some seem to expect these days. Since when were the British really "British" anyway? "Tradition" means nothing in itself, especially when there's no substance to it.

Where are the Yeomen of England was, in 1910, "new music", premiered only 7 years before. One of the regular readers on this site has done a lot of work on Edward German and the singers of his time, which I'll post about soon.

New music has always been part of the Proms. Unexpected highlight was Ilan Volkov's Prom with Cage, Feldmann and Cornelius Cardew's Bun, whose title had all intrigued though it wasn't  a patch on the wonderful Cage and Feldmann pieces.  Favourites for me were Simon Holt's a table of noises, Hans Abrahamsen's Wald and  Luke Bedford's Outblaze The Sky.  And Ferneyhough, always in a league of his own.

This proves "popular" does not have to mean "populist". If the General Public wants ITV or West End pap, that's where they go. If they come to the Proms they expect it to be different. Fortunately, Roger Wright's stemmed the dumbing down trend somewhat.

Perhaps he's also trying to raise the standard of presenters, Presenting is more difficult than it looks, because a presenter has to talk without thinking,. That's how the job works. The secret is to get a presenter who actually knows what they're doing, so their comments come from mind not mouth.  Last year some of the presenting was outright shameful. This year slightly better. though the BBC is still seduced by "experts".  Last year Tom Service wrote an article declaring that Mahler shouldn't be played in the Royal Albert Hall. Maybe they've taken him at his word because this year fortunately he didn't present Mahler as far as I know (I use mute a lot).

Mahler Year worries me because it's become a pig trough, everyone after a piece of the action whether or not they have anything to contribute. Proms 2010 brought one exceptionally good Mahler 7, Metzmacher,  very intelligently planned. This was  one of the highlights of the whole season, surprisingly overlooked because people either don't appreciate Metzmacher as a Mahlerian (he's good) or expect too much syrup in their Schreker and Korngold.

Bělohlávek's Mahler 8th got more flak than he deserved. perhaps because people were expecting miracles. Fact is, this symphony easily falls apart inn the wrong hands. At the Royal Albert Hall in 2006, Daniele Gatti lost control. Don't even think about Gergiev at St Paul's. Bělohlávek's not a natural Mahler man but at least he can run a team. Pity there wasn't more of the repertoire he does to perfection, like Dvořák, Suk and Janáček.

Robert Schumann's image was reshaped by Proms 2010. Vassily Petrenko's Manfred  and Thomas Dausgaard were exceptional. Even Knussen's oddball Schumann was a treat because it reached levels of Schumann few appreciate. Schumann's misunderstood because he isn't Wagner and isn't Beethoven but, like Mendelssohn and Weber, inhabits territory that hasn't been fashionable or much understood. Until now, I hope,

Impossible any Proms season without Beethoven. Some excellent performances this year, Paul Lewis for example, and Paavo Jarvi, because I like the period instrument approach. A few duds, but that's to be expected.

More European orchestras, please! They are extremely good, do interesting repertoire and have distinctive individuality.  One "tradition" we don't need is the dominance of US orchestras. They're good but should stand on their own merits, not simply because they're famous.

Every year, without fail, someone asks me: "Do you listen to the Proms?" Then they blanch when I say "around 60". But anyone can listen, even more than that. It's free. In fact anyone who cares about music at all should listen because there's so much variety to be heard, so much to discover and to rethink.  No-one jumps from the womb knowing everything, though many think they do. "Experience" someone said to me this season.  Perhaps that's iconoclastic in this age of instant expertise, but with the Proms, there's no excuse for not trying.

Pre Raphaelites and Italy - Oxford Ashmolean

Special exhibition The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and runs until December.  Everyone knows the famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings of blowsy women, medieval and biblical myth. This exhibition, however, shows how they came to be "pre-Raphaelite" in the first place. They wanted to be "Pre-Raphael", going back before the baroque.

Romantics went to Italy to imbibe Classical antiquity and discovered sunshine. The Pre-Raphaelites, though, differed from Goethe and Turner in that they made their art for middle class Victorian society. Craft as much as High Art. This exhibition places them firmly in a stream of idealistic 19th century thought.

Just like Goethe, John Ruskin went to Italy to study. He recorded what he saw as literally as possible.The minute detail shows his craftsmanship. Ruskin didn't do people or have real relationships, not even with men, but he inspired others who were better artists. Hence the Pre-Raphaelite thing for fancy furnishings and perfect detail. Photography's killed that kind of art. When rich hippies discovered the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1960's what drew them was the way the exaggerated reality of these painting becomes psychedlic and unreal.

But back to Italy: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, though British in many ways, identified with Dante Alighieri.  Hence numerous paintings, pen and wash sketches and writings on the theme of Dante and Beatrice. In fact,  his relationships with women were an extension of this. Rossetti liked unattainable women, apart from Fanny Cornforth, the hooker whose portrait screams out of the wall where other Pre-Raphaelite goddesses hang.

Above is Rossetti's Dante painting Angels, where the poet is seen as obsessively drawing angels that remind him of Beatrice. His friends try to distract him. Perhaps the woman is telling the priest that Dante's "got issues". Meanwhile, outside the cramped studio, nature, growth, freedom. The studio is not all that dissimilar from cramped Victorian morality.

Don't go to this exhibition expecting the usual army of famous, luminous paintings, which you can see anywhere, like on postcards and CD covers. Instead, go to the Ashmolean because this show is thoughtful and scholarly. Many pictures aren't normally on display, like the etchings and line drawings. This is your chance! Some are borrowed from Tate Britain and Italy, and some from private collections.

Oxford was a Pre-Rahaelite hotspot. Ruskin went to college here, accompanied, significantly, by his mother. Janey, the raven-haired muse Rossetti loved and William Morris married, grew up in a hovel in the narrow alley that leads to the 12th century Turf Tavern, which leads onto Holywell Street. Oxford's gargoyles and medieval corners are a part of the Pre-Raphaelite ethos.

So it's even more interesting that the Asmholean presents the Pre-Raphaelites in a wider, European context. One important group were the "Etruscans" who painted wide angled horizons, imaginging a world as people-free as an Etruscan dream. Their leader was Giovanni Costa, an Italian patriot who hung out with Garibaldi and influenced Frederick, later Lord Leighton, whose elaborately-decorated house is now a London museum.

This exhibition was curated by the Ashmolean for display in Italy, hence the Italian Connection. But here were other European art movements inspired bty Italy, too, such as the German Nazarenes, one of whose followers was Wilhelm Henschel, husband of Fanny Mendelssohn. European art was not insular. Decades before the Pre-Raphaelites, the Nazarenes were doing their thing in Rome, Berlin and beyond. Now there's another theme for an exhibition.

Don Pasquale ROH - 1904 copied!

"One can’t help feeling that things should either be more frothy or more revelatory. As it is, it’s hard to care about these marionettes in their artificial bubble." says Claire Seymour in Opera Today on Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House.

Compare the 2010 production shots (on the link) with this one from 1904/5 La Scala. Almost identical to small details! Paolo Gavenelli is wigged and robed so he's unrecognizable. Imbrailo painted up like a doll. One also wonders what the acting was like in 1904, if these old poses are anything to go by.  Please also see an interview with Jacques Imbrailo on his interpretation of Dr Malatesta.

Horenstein conducts Korngold Violanta

Thanks to Brendan Carroll, Korngold's biographer: "An unreleased and unknown test recording of the climactic love duet Reine Liebe (Pure Love) from Korngold's early and highly precocious opera VIOLANTA . It features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein."

"The recording presents the orchestra alone (no voices) and was made on June 2, 1965 at the Kingsway Hall, London. This gorgeous music is one of the most remarkable examples of Korngold's prodigious gifts, a sumptuously erotic duet by a teenage composer (he was not quite 17) who had barely experienced his first kiss, let alone the passion depicted here."

"The Prelude and Carnival music (from the same sessions) was briefly available on an LP from Quintessence in the early 1980s, but this unique performance of Reine Liebe was not included."

In the Penal Colony Glass Kafka

Impossible to relax after experiencing Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony at the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House, (Music Theatre Wales production). This isn't an opera anyone could "like" but anyone who can't be moved, disturbed or unsettled isn't fully human.

A Visitor arrives in a remote penal colony. He's completely neutral, insisting his opinions don't count because he's not involved. But he's asked to witness an execution, where words are drilled into a prisoner's body. Much too horrific to describe here. Read the Kafka story. It's just completely insane.

The Visitor tries to avoid emotional engagement or any form of moral responsibility. The condemned man is so conditioned to brutality that he accepts his fate mindlessly, like an animal. The Officer is so obsessed with the former Camp Commandant that he thinks of the execution machine as semi-religious duty. Crimes and non-crimes are irrelevant, the only reality is the killing machine.

Glass's music whirls,unearthly sounds projected over a string quintet, mechanical merging with live music, as precisely as cogs in a machine. The endless repetitions fit the plot as tightly as a straitjacket. "Efficient, quiet, anonymous", as the Visitor explained he'd like to be. You're half-hypnotized by this strange semi-trance music, just as the protagonists are numbed into accepting their circumstances.

Yet the repetitions move with a crazy logic, sometimes up a notch, sometimes disintegrating into cacophony (such as when the Officer thinks of his homeland - a last glimpse of the man he once was). Pay close attention to the subtle gradations. Like good film music they affect emotions subliminally. You understand how people in the penal colony become machines.

Omar Ebrahim, who sings The Officer is extremely experienced in contemporary music theatre. His vocal range is prodigious, though not used here where the monotony of the music is part of the plot. Nonetheless,Ebrahim brings surprising lyricism to the part. Some passages shimmer with the fervour of Bach. The Officer's dedication to his old Commander and to the machine demands total sacrifice. Blasphemy, perhaps, but in the insane world of the penal colony, there's crazy logic to the idea that the Officer should offer himself to the machine as it falls apart.

It would be so easy to lean back and say, it's Glass, it's gloomy, therefore no need to bother. No need to get engaged with the ideas here because they're too bizarre. Nod off and think about something  twee. But that's how barbarities like those in the Penal Colony happen. People don't get involved, don't take responsibility. Once you trivialize emotion, you lose your humanity.You end up like the Officer who thinks that because he's got status, he doesn't have to think. And because he's lost the ability to think and feel, he loses himself. Scarily, the Prisoner is well on the way down that route, too.

Get to Into the Penal Colony while it lasts. The short run ends Sunday and you'll have to brave the Papal crowds to get there. You won't enjoy it, I guarantee. But if you're not moved and disturbed, or confronted mentally and emotionally, I just don't know. I spent years researching war crimes and thought nothing would scare me. But this does, because the implications are that we're all in Penal Colonies if we don't question or act. Formal, "proper" review HERE with more detail on the music .

Photo : Music Theatre Wales, Philip Glass : In the Penal Colony, Omar Ebrahim, The Officer, credit Clive Barda (copyright, used with permission, please do not copy)

Wolf Spanisches Liederbuch Bostridge Kirchschlager

It's Hugo Wolf's anniversary too this year but, unlike Mahler, he hasn't been cursed. No cheap dumbing down. The Wigmore Hall started the Wolf season with the thorny, demanding Hugo Wolf Spanisches Liederbuch. Forty-four songs of darkness and complexity guaranteed to scare off tacky and downmarket.

Surprisingly there are very few good Hugo Wolf interpreters, as his idiom is much quirkier than most realize. Lots of good singers approach Wolf and produce decent results, but true Wolf specialists are elusive. 

Here we had Angelika Kirchschlager and Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake. Kirchschlager cancelled  a concert two days earlier due to illness. This shows her comittment to Wolf. Wolf's masterpiece is such a pinnacle that you can't pull in a last-minute substitute, no matter how experienced. Praise to her for soldiering on even though she was quite obviously unwell. I was sitting close enough to see her chest muscles move and her throat tighten. Yet, on she went, an act of heroism.

Kirchschlager knows how the cycle unfolds. One of the really big numbers is In dem Schatten meiner Locken, which some consider one of the finest songs of all time.  She conserved her resources beforehand, so she could do it justice, knowing that all the Wolfites would be paying close attention. The look of joy she had when she completed it!  The next big number, Bedeckt mich mit Blumen didn't come off, but it didn't matter. She did very well considering, and it was appreciated.

It also did not help that Julius Drake was in freight train mode, pounding away regardless, rather than observing the score and what the singers were doing. Part of  a song pianist's job is to work with the singers, not against them. No pauses between songs, lessening their impact and juxtaposition against each other. Wolf isn't hurdy-gurdy. Nuance matters. Kirchschlager and Bostridge were forced to bounce up and down in quicktime, without breathing space. At one point, Julius rushed into the next song before Kirchschlager could move to her seat. Gracefully, she pretended it was part of the plan, smiling at Bostridge, who'd jumped up  alertly, taking over without notice.

Bostridge is used to Drake's ways and manages to get straight into a song without build-up. But Drake must have realized that Kirchschlager was ill and needed more support. Drake's probably the best player of the regular UK song pianists but he needs to remember he's not a soloist. His job is to work with the singers, not against them.  The interval was longer than usual, and afterwards, Drake did allow the singers to breathe and focus on their singing rather than having to keep up with his relentless pace. Unfortunately this lasted only through a few songs and he was back on high speed rail.

Ian Bostridge can be unpredictable, but this time he must have realized that someone had to save the day, so he rose to the occasion. Bostridge accesses levels of Wolf many just don't understand. With Wolf, quirky, esoteric, fervid, magical, but never, ever, bland and safe.

The Geistliche Lieder are, as  my friend commented, as crazy as the Spanish baroque, extremes of dark and light, emotionally so intense that martyrdom and religious ecstasy seem quite rational.  Hence the El Greco painting right. El Greco stretches his figures unnaturally, intensifying the surreal sensibility. Being so tall, Bostridge looks the part. This was one of the nights when he excelled himself, singing with sharpness and passionate clarity.

All the more to be respected as these songs are usually baritone territory, not tenor. They lie very low for Bostridge, but his voice has matured well, revealing greater depth and richness.  Much as I adore Goerne in this cycle, Bostridge has convinced me that higher timbre illuminates these songs in a positive way. (Incidentally I think Bostridge had the beginnings of Kirchschlager's cold.)

Wolf was drawn to Heyse's poetry because it was exotic, allowing Wolf to think in alien mode, into  characters outside mainstream sensibility. Wolf's Austria was polyglot. He wasn't Viennese, growing up in  what is now Slovenia.  His mother had Italian ancestry and played the guitar. Maybe he needed this exoticism to release his creative imagination, just as he turned to Mörike's fairy fantasies and Eichendorff's personalities. Conformist just isn't in Wolf's mental makeup, which is why performance practice is so demanding.
For more on Hugo Wolf, there's LOTS on this site

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House must have been playing safe, staging Jonathan Miller's (not necessarily Mozart's)  Così fan tutte to start the 2010/11 season. Maybe they needed something bland because the performance was broadcast live to cinemas all round the world, and mass audiences like that do not want anything demanding. Most of the senior people at ROH are off in Japan, where ROH is being welcomed enthusiastically. So maybe the season will come alive later.

Thomas Allen's a surefire crowd puller and Don Alfonso is a role he can do almost on autopilot. Suave, detached, golf swing, laidback, all part of the character. Rebecca Evans is brilliant though, fantastically vivid! Even with a mask over her face she can sing better than the rest of the cast put together, As a friend commented, Evans reminded her of Rita Streich. Serious praise, completely deserved. But Despina alone doesn't make the opera.

Jonathan Miller's set is a caricature, the sort of thing that gives modern opera a bad name. Minimalist sets aren't in themselves evil, if they're filled by intelligent drama. This one's an empty hole in the absence of focused direction. The less experienced the cast, the more important it is to treat each revival as if it were a new production.

This was great on cutesy jokes, but had nil to offer in terms of real wit and pacing. Miller was wildly applauded, which made me wonder - is this what people really want of Mozart and da Ponte? I suspect it was infinitely tighter on film.

Best thing about the evening - apart from the wonderful Rebecca Evans - was the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock.  Based in Freiburg, he's been involved with some of the liveliest baroque ensembles, who prove that historically informed performance ius perfectly adaptable to modern staging. He conducts Niobe, Regina di Tebe next week, a work he passionately believes in.

Please read the full review in Opera Today, with photos.

Dream of Gerontius

Elgar's Dream of Gerontius was based on the poem  by John Henry Cardinal Newman who's being beatified this weekend by the Pope. Lots of negative flak about Catholicism these days but Newman is a reminder that goodness can exist in a compromised world. 

PLEASE SEE my meditation on Newman, Elgar and the Dream of Gerontius HERE.

Newman was a priest at the University Church in Oxford, the heart of the Establishment, massive status. Yet he gave it up to serve in a working class  parish in Oxford.  His talents were soon used elsewhere, but it was a radical step. Catholics were outsiders, then, the faith only recently having had severe legal restrictions removed from it. Victorians equated Religion with Society, the Queen Head of the Church. Conversion was almost treason.

Newman was a rational, self effacing guy so flashy miracles like raising the dead weren't his style.  He had courage and integrity, searching his conscience for what he could believe in. That kind of genuine humility is something anyone can respect, religious or not.

Newman had a gentleman friend with whom he wanted to be buried so they'd see each other at the Final Judgement when the dead are supposed to be raised intact. When the Church wanted to exhume him there was controversy. But when they opened the tomb it was empty. Nothing to move, nothing to bury. End of dilemma. A kind of gentle miracle in its own way, saving face for everyone.

From the Elgar Birthplace Museum in Worcester :

"To coincide with the 2010 Papal Visit and the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman the Museum is holding a special exhibition on the Dream of Gerontius from 11th September to 23rd December 2010 (inclusive). The exhibition will include original manuscripts, letters and period photographs revealing all about the composition of this great work and its performance. On display will be Alice Elgar’s personal copy of the poem complete with the 'Gordon Markings', her copies of the markings of particular sections of the poem made by General Gordon of Khartoum in his own copy of the poem "
PLEASE NOTE  I've written a lot on Elgar, Catholicism and 3 Choirs, so please explore this site. 

Jacques Imbrailo in Don Pasquale

Jacques Imbrailo sings Dr Malatesta in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House. Don't assume that  Dr Malatesta must be as old as Don Pasquale. How would he be able to fool the old man that Norina is his sister?  Don Pasquale's gullible but not that dumb. Donizetti sparkles, but beneath the lightness there's sharp wit. Just don't expect Verdi.

In this Don Pasquale, director Jonathan Milller aims for lyrical realism. “Not too flowery, he tells us”. says Imbrailo, “Naturalness is good even though it’s bel canto. The focus is on acting as well as on vocal display".

Jacques Imbrailo was a wonderful Billy Budd at Glyndebourne this summer.  The production projected the opera as a love triangle . Britten would have been surprised, for to him the moral dilemma was far more significant. Captain Vere's struggling with  fundamental concepts of good, evil  not lust.. Fortunately, Imbrailo's Billy Budd transcended the production. Imbrailo's "Beauty" wasn't a passive "Baby" but a force of exuberant life.

Billy is pure because he doesn't play games. Dr Malatesta is a chancer who can't stop trying to pull strings. "He’s an opportunist who likes to give things a nudge, then sit back and see how things unfold." says Imbrailo. "He’ll push events towards an outcome that suits him. The only one who really gets hurt is Don Pasquale, but he’s saved from a much worse fate. Dr Malatesta’s intentions are good, though he thinks the ends justify the means”.

All actors (and singers) need to develop roles from within, thinking into character. Sometimes you wonder where some people find extreme evil ! But art is art, not reality. Donizetti's wit is clear but not malicious. Dr Malatesta could be anyone, there but for fortune. It's easier to scam, and some folk have no qualms about being dishonest if that gets results. Integrity, though, takes more courage. It's better to be a Billy. Please read the full interview in Opera Today HERE

There's a video clip of Imbrailo as boy soprano HERE and a link to Billy Budd HERE.

photo credit : Suzy Bernstein

Bizet est Mauricien

Carmen in the Mauritius ! Please see the review here.
"Même lorsque la musique nous rapproche des Pyrénées Atlantiques, la fin du deuxième acte ou dans le troisième, même si nous pensions qu'elle chaussait des sabots auvergnats, la mise en scène, interactive nous fait voir les visages multiples de la cigarière (la scène de la fabrique) : ceux de notre pays! "

Last Night of the Proms 2010

Renée Fleming, Prom Queen! Complete with helmet and flag! The BBC Proms are the biggest block party in the whole world, as well as the Biggest Music Festival, and the Last Night of the Proms is the biggest party of the whole season.

Imagine, 86,000 tickets issued for the various events, Hyde Park and other free open air venues and concert halls in the UK completely packed out. Millions more listening at home or with friends (where you safely quaff champagne). All over the world, online too. By tomorrow the repeat broadcast will be available on the BBC Site, and also more clips on youtube both official and pirated.

La Renée gave us a Rule Britannia with genuine baroque flourish: nice change! She knows how not to take herself too seriously, though, which is a saving grace. In any case, no-one comes to the Last Night for High Art. That's why I loved Sergei Leiferkus singing Edward German's Who were the Yeomen of England? with heavy Russian accent at the 1910 Proms Last Night reconstruction last Sunday. (There is a special clip of this on the BBC listen again site)  This should become a classic!

No English singer could sing German without Heavy Irony. When a Russian sings it, it's hysterically funny. As a historian friend told me apropos this Prom, that London in 1910 was full of exiles, Russians, Polish, Jewish and Indian. Good point! One thing the British should be proud of is that London was a world city, even then, a haven for progressive thinkers. This is one aspect of Britishness that's worth remembering, which right-wing bigots forget.

At the Last Night of the Proms in 1946, my mother was in the arena, a penniless refugee, recently liberated from a camp, in England for the first time. To her, Land of Hope and Glory really meant something. Flag waviing is fine, jingoism isn't. A few years ago showing off got out of hand, and some people were more interested in hogging attention than the musical spirit of the Proms. Thank goodness BBCTV crews don't focus on these types anymore, but linger on ordinary members of the audience. Ban vuvuzuelas, someone! They're intrusive and fascist, the sonic equivalent of a fart.

One of the pleasures of the Proms is the "ordinary people". Wonderful to spot friends in the audience, having fun, not playing up for TV. And watch around 48 minutes into part 2. There's a celebrity in the crowd, but the cameraman doesn't notice, so it's a fuzzy group shot. He's completely unassuming, no airs. The people around him probably didn't realize he's a star. Bet HE sang nicely.

Jiří Bĕlohlávek was lovable, because he. too, is unpretentious. His English is odd ("Gent-lemen") but it's much better to have a conductor who expresses himself through music than through showmanship. The speech is one tradition we could do without. It's unnatural, as it creates unnecessary stress on a conductor who isn't that way inclined. Most of them haven't the guts to say, let me do music not clown. Bĕlohlávek's genial, and you can see his nerves, and the relief on his face when he starts to do what he's much better at.

Post mortem on the 2010 Proms season is now up.  It's been wonderful, extremelty well planned and balanced, spectaular flourishes, many good moments and only a few duds.

Remembering 9/11 Wuorinen

The moment everyone heard about 9/11 is branded on our memories. The most powerful memory for me was hearing the victims phoning out messages of love. Not hate, not hysteria. For a while, I hoped that this might be a turning point in history, where we created a world where people don't need to resort to hate to resolve things. Ten years on, we're all in a much more paranoid place, psychosis affecting all aspects of our lives. The plotters won becauase they infected our minds like a poison that can't stop replicating.

In a very different world from what we have now, when things seemed optimistic, a major financial publisher commissioned Charles Wuorinen's Cyclops. The name is a play on Cyclops of ancient myth, who had one giant eye and could only see straight ahead. Hence, it’s written on a single constant metre. The real drama, though, comes from what Cyclops does with his single eye, or rather what Wuorinen does, within the constraints of the metre. The music proceeds in fits and starts, jerking from side to side, switching from rapid tempo to moments of still contemplation. Textures vary: sometimes soloists pulling out from the ensemble, sometimes duetting and exchanging partners in further duets. This gives the piece a strong sense of movement, even though it rises from a simple, single line. There's a recording with the London Sinfonietta, where Oliver Knussen drawstogether the disparate figures, so the piece moves forward like a quirky, joyous procession, all elements moving in relation to each other, always headed towards a goal.

The publishing house whose boss commissioned Cyclops had offices in the Twin Towers, many of their staff were killed.  Everyone knows someone who knew someone, so we can identify personally with Twin Towers more easily than with  the millions far away who've died since. So what I want to think of is the messages of love, which might have meant a turning point in another way.

Fritz Lang Metropolis (1927) restored

Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis has been restored with 25 minutes of new footage and extra intertitles, and original soundtrack (once played live by an orchestra in the cinema). This is big news because it reveals a tighter, tougher vision behind the film than the neutered version currently available.  Lang's Metropolis is not science fiction, it's a parable on modern society.How amazing those opening shots are! They're painted, sophisticated mega-cartoon, at a time when Disney was producing  primitive stuff. It's Futurist, high art like so much else at the time. Bauhaus in the movies.

The Metropolis exists as a multi dimensional, self contained world where vehicles travel in the space between art deco towers that rise endlessly upwards. The Tower of Babel, as the movie makes explicit. This glory comes at a cost. The workers who make the whole thing function are dehumanized, reduced to regimented automatons. Look for the amazing scene where naked bodies are thrown into a fiery abyss in the mouth of a gigantic Moloch. And the immortal scene where the worker has to keep turning the hands of a clock, so the whole edifice doesn't blow up.

 
One "new" scene shows the paradise the young men enjoy - quite deliberately Venusberg, where men paint black lipstick on pretty women. In this restoration, we get more of the male-female power politics that meant so much to Thea von Harbou. Now at last I understand why Peter Gay denounced the film in his seminal Weimar Culture (1968). Gay was disturbed about the feminization of the hero, who throws himself on the bosom of the Eternal Feminine, named Maria, (wehat else?), instead of being a "man".  It says more about him than was apparent to us 40 years ago. For that was von Harbou's whole point. Fredersen's son rejects his father's ways because they aren't right.  The dialectic of this film contrasts "male" power which has created militaristic, mechanized systems with "Female" power which replaced the machine with something more nurturing and positive. The theme "Between the Hand and Brain there must be the Heart" recurs throughout the film.

It's clear: uncontrolled capitalism and industrialization is not good unless it's tempered by something softer and more humane. Much has been made of Maria's depiction as a prophet in the catacombs, preaching goodness to the workers. She's not a Virgin Mary, rather a throwback to the holy mystics of the ancient European past. Lang reinforces this with images of medieval sculpture, Death surrounded by the Seven Deadly Sins.  This isn't a Christian parable by any means, it's much more complex. It's international, too. The red light district in the Metropolis is called Yoshiwara. In the mindset of the time, oriental meant dangerous and exotic. Similarly there are references to Eygptian slaves building pyramids. Metropolis is all places at all times.

One of the new scenes shows the paradise garden where the Sons (of the rich) cavort. It's Venusberg or should I say, Venusburg, another kind of factory where the women are dehumanized like the workers below, though they're more decorative.  Later the Robot Woman cavorts in the nightclub, taunting the Elegant Gentlemen.  Venusberg again, the men automatons though they wear monocles and tuxedos.  Wonderful new shots of the Robot Woman, and her disintegration.

The actresss who plays Maria is Brigitte Helm, a girl who was approached in a street in Berlin, who didn't set out bto be a starlet. In fact, after Metropolis she became typecast as a dangerous, unemotional temptress, which was far dfrom herv reeal personality. At the height of her career she suddenly quit and became a Hausfrau in Switzerland and refused ever to speak of the movies again. In her life, Helm was re-enacting an image of Womanhood from Metropolis. Spooky.

The mad scientist, Rotwang, lives in a primitive hut surrounded by Fredersen's Metropolis, another connect to a medieval past. The hut has no windows but opens onto the ancient catacombs beneath the city.  Rotwang is a strange interface between Head, Hands and Heart, an amazing character to interpret. Luckily this restoration gives us more to go on. The actor, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was immortalized  as The Gambler and the Testament of Dr Mabuse, one of my top movies of all time. Dr Mabuse uses mind control, shaping others to his will.  The film  was made in 1933. Go figure.
Metropolis explores ideas of mass manipulation,  unquestioning obedience and mob behaviour  Though Fredersen controls the Metropolis, the workers are complicit because they mindlessly follow. Individual workers are depicted, like G11811 but they're like cogs in a machine.  Maria is a charismatic leader with pseudo-religious powers to hypnotise the workers. Thus Fredersen and Rotwang try to harness her image to control the masses. Metropolis shows how appearances can be twisted, and people easily fooled.

Freudians might find something in the fact that Fredersen's son is called Freder, a rather effeminate wimp, whose Goth makeup is extreme. The other male actors didn't need it and  by 1927 film techniques had improved so it wasn't strictly necessary any more. These hints of bi-sexuality may have bothered Peter Gay. Nowadays that's no longer an issue, so Metropolis is prophetic on one issue at least.
The deeper you go into Metropolis the weirder it gets.  Thea von Harbou was married to Klein Rogge but divorced him for Fritz Lang yet they happily worked together. Von Harbou was a feminist and ultra modernist, yet became a Nazi as soon as Hitler came to power. The film represented everything the Nazis hated, because it was so avant garde. Yet some of its themes fitted their values.The Brown Shirts were "national socialist" after all, resentful of anyone more cultivated and upper class than themselves. The triumph of the will, the power of the mob. Totalitarianism, both Left and Right. Order versus disorder. Oddly, the film with its Tower of Babel imagery, was made in Babelsburg studios  The vision isn't coherent but still powerfully evocative, asking questions, noit giving answers.  Metropolis could be interpreted in many different ways, both as commentary on its time and on ours. That's what makes it so intriguing. We still haven't sorted the dilemmas of modern society.
PLEASE see my piece on Fritz Lang and von Harbou's Die Nibelungen There is a LOT on this site about Fritz Lang, Weimar, early movies, social issues, etc and many FULL DOWNLOADS
This is also one of the few sites about early Chinese film in English. Full downloads, too.

Mahler for Morons ?

Currently circulating round is a website that is legit but looks like a spoof.  This Mahler anniversary is becoming a pigs trough.. Everyone wants to make money, to set up their stall. But many ventures are like GUM department stores in the former USSR.  Imposing furnishings, nothing on the shelves.

This latest project is called "The People's Edition" where people vote for recordings that go into a boxed set. Who are "the people" ?  Can't be seasoned Mahler fans because they already have the better known recordings.  Besides, real fans can't limit themselves to any one "best". That's how trolls think, real people don't. In any case, can quality ever  be measured in this way by a self-referential self-appointed sample ?  Or by any vote ?

There's an inherent artificality in this, a sort of Hit Parade mentality. Or Eurovision Song Contest.  Or Fantasy Football.  So what if X hundred people think one performance is the best ? X hundred others might  think quite differently. Nothing wrong with boxed sets per se, but there has to be a musical rationale behind each one.

You can't compare different symphonies by different performers at different times. There are just too many variables. The more you listen, the less the idea of some interchangeable mean makes sense.

Ultimately there's no Instant Fix to Mahler. Much better that someone coming to the composer fresh listens bit by bit, absorbing each work in whatever order they come. Learning only comes by experience, by hearing enough to learn to make judgements based on what you've absorbed.  Get to know each symphony, by many performers, gradually building up. Superficiality sets you back. Focus on the longer term. The Big Picture doesn't emerge until you've learned the idiom, in your own way, in your own time. No need to be an Instant Expert.

What worries me is that this sort of thing narrows the range. Human beings play safe, naturally going with the mass rather than on their own.  If "popularity" legitimizes taste, rather than variety or quality or experience  it narrows the gene pool. It's a sterile exercise leading nowhere.  "Readers Digest" sets always sell to folks too scared of making their own choices So someone will benefit. But not Mahler.

Someone mailed me to say that this Mahler People's Edition is  OK "because it will only sell to newbies". I'm sorry but that shows utter cynical callousness not only to the cvomposer but also to the many who are coming this year to Mahker for the first time. These are thge very peiople who deserve respect and good qaulity advice. But instead what they're getting is shameless exploitation. An ordinary box set is fine, because it only represents one persons's taste but the idea of a "People's Edition" is spurious and unethical because it implies that somehow it's the result of majority opinion. Nonsense, anyone could "vote" in this poll and as many times as they wanted. Moreover, "voting" like this means nothing as there's no basis for comparison - or for evaluating what any voter's credentials might be. No point discussing the merits or otherwise of the choices (quite odd)  because the whole premis of the project is nonsense. The premise is a con designed to give apparent legitimacy to what is lunatic logic. Newcomers to Mahker don't deserve this cynical treatment. DG  should be  ashamed. Newcomers to Mahler, be warned.