A meme (of sorts)

I just can't resist a questionnaire. Memes, quizzes... even the census gets me excited. So I couldn't help but participate in the Ever Changing meme when it showed up chez Mezzogregory. I'm cheating though. The rules require that, having answered Gregory's five questions to me, I offer in turn to pose five questions to anyone else who wants to be interviewed. But honestly I don't feel creative enough for that - I just want the form-filling-in fun and frivolity. So Gregory's questions and my answers follow, but no attempt at meme propagation. (Unless you're truly desperate to be interviewed, in which case I could probably come up with something. )

1. You are the recipient of a Gift from an Unknown Benefactor. You have two options:
a.) You may break ground on a smaller opera house in your little corner of New Zealand. Once the check has passed hands, you relinquish artistic control. The house will mount eight operas, three shows each per season. Funding is limited, so casting may be less than stellar, but the administration promises to do everything in its power to bring in the best artists it can.
Or,
b.) You may use your money to mount one opera per season of your choice with your dream cast in the house of your choice for one show per year. You control as much artistically as you care to. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to attend any other live operas in the entire year, and only one recital, also of your choice. Which do you choose?

Option A. For a start it's a rather more generous choice to make, not as selfish as B. New Zealand deserves such an opera company. Besides, I don't think I really could be trusted with Option B - I'd take the easy option, produce endless Mozart & Handel operas with the same 10 or 15 sopranos and never try anything new. And I'd probably never get around to ordering up any Wagner at all, and wouldn't know who to cast if I did! No, let them do it for me. And I'd go to all 24 nights and absorb and absorb. Eventually they'd have to go beyond Butterfly and Carmen, surely. And as as for casting, this really wouldn't be the direst country imaginable as far as local talent goes...

2.) A UFO emitting strange micro-waves passes over your house ruining everything in your media collection (CD's,.mp3 files, DVD's)except two pieces. The first is something that you simply can't live without. The other is an unusual survivor that says something about your past or your subconscious. What are they?

Let's deal with the unusual survivor first. I could embarrass myself here, I know. After all, I do actually own the one and only CD released by True Bliss. But I'll let the UFO ruin that one. Instead I think I'll choose my video of High Tor. Bing Crosby as Van Van Dorn, the man who loves a mountain more than his girlfriend. Julie Andrews as the Dutch ghost Lise who shows him the way to happiness. Telecast in 1956 - Julie was just about to become huge on Broadway as Eliza Doolittle - as a Ford Star Jubilee presentation. Quite possibly the first ever made-for-TV movie. Very odd indeed. And why is this significant? Well, because before there was opera - There Was Julie. I spent two years and a great deal of money devoting my life to Julie Andrews before finally seeing the operatic light, and High Tor was one of my early eBay triumphs.

For the one I couldn't live without, I choose Yvonne Kenny's Mozart Arias. This is really just a practical decision. It's a given that the CD/DVD I can't live without will be Yvonne's. And this is the only one which I couldn't easily replace, because it more or less doesn't exist. It's not in the discography on her official site. I've never seen it online or secondhand anywhere except the eBay auction in which I bought it. I've barely even seen it mentioned online - a few Google searches bring up almost nothing at all. It was released by Sony in 1992 and discontinued a few years ago. No doubt there are hundreds of Good Australians who have it on their shelves but as I say, if I wanted to buy a new copy, I don't think I could, or at least not without serious difficulty. But apart from being somewhat irreplaceable, it's also a simply breathtakingly beautiful CD. Yvonne's 'Per pietà' from Così is achingly gorgeous. It always amazes me that I make it past the recitative, because that on its own is something else - for once not a mere anticipation of the aria to come, but its inspiration. It's a moment where you could almost forget that things such as the composer or the music on the page exist because what you hear seems to come directly from the woman herself. And when she finally gets to 'tradimento' and goes into the aria itself - it hurts. And that's just taking one track as an example, because each aria on this CD is (for me at least) straight from heaven.

3.) In a past life regression, you discover that you were someone (pardon the pun) instrumental in opera's history; i.e, singer, composer, librettist, etc. Who were you? Were you someone whom we would expect, or are you working out some bad music karma this time around?

I have to say Richard Strauss. So much of Strauss I'd swear was written with my own future happiness specifically in mind. I don't only feel love, I feel gratitude - I think, thank god somebody made sure this music was written - and for soprano! And Rosenkavalier is, I'm certain, the Opera I Would Write. Two soprano parts - both perfectly suited to exactly the sopranos I tend to fall for, and a mezzo en travesti, again written for just my kind of mezzo (cara Cecilia excepted of course). All got up in eighteenth century costumes and singing the most gorgeous music - what more could I ask for?

4.) Your high frequency hearing is lost. The soprano in alt no longer rings your eardrums. The only exciting voices you can hear are male, i.e., basso profundo, baritone, and tenor (with the exception of Judy Garland in her tenor years of the late 1960's). On what music will you survive?

Ian Bostridge, Ian Bostridge, Ian Bostridge. Kurt Moll and Matti Salminen in anything they choose to sing. Tannhäuser with Wolfgang Windgassen (I've only heard the tiniest excerpt, from my Grace Bumbry 3 CD set, but I love him) or Mr Lucia Popp, Peter Seiffert. Paul Agnew and Stephen Loges on this recording of Beethoven's arrangements of Scottish & Irish songs. Don Giovanni. Within New Zealand, Roger Wilson, Conal Coad, Jonathan Lemalu. Among the Dunedin/ex-Dunedin singers, Nick Madden, Ken Ryan and Michael Gray. Absolutely NO Samuel Ramey. And if I'm allowed to move outside of opera - all the boys from Union Station. Oh, did I mention Ian Bostridge? And that's just boys I already like - I'm sure that without sopranos to distract me, I'd make some new discoveries too.

5.) Like Faust, you are granted your heart's desire, namely a place at Your Beloved Yvonne's right hand. You are to enjoy a season of pleasure in her company. Perhaps a few years. You are as close as any two people may be. When she sings, you know that she sings only for you. Ms. Kenny comes to you to try out her newest pieces, longing for the approval that you cannot deny her. You have happiness that you've never known. But the happiness is tainted, because you know that the bill for this will one day come due. In exchange for this, you must purposefully end the friendship/relationship very badly. So much so that your name may not be spoken in her presence. She will sing all her rage arias with your name aching to burst from her tongue. Do you take what precious bit of joy that you can, only to give it up, or do you live forever wondering what it must be like to be her confidante?

Oh this is such an easy decision. The life of wondering of course. Otherwise it wouldn't simply be tainted happiness, it would be nothing but pain and suffering - how could one enjoy a moment of such a life, knowing of the hideousness to come? And how could I choose any path which would lead to any kind of negative experience for my diva? Seems to me that in either scenario, all I end up with, sooner or later, is the Voice itself to keep me going  - but how could I ever enjoy the singing of one who hated me? No, I wouldn't deprive myself of that one sustaining pleasure, not for anything.

Comments

[mezzogregory]

Absolutely wonderful. A delight to read.

[Sam]

I'm glad you've learned to like Tannhäuser- I remember how awed you were at the Met's Tannäuser last year. Peter Seiffert, in my opinion, sings a much better Tannhäuser than Windgassen, though like you, I have only heard sections. You should, no, you must, make it a point to buy a recording of Tannhäuser- it's one of Wagner's best operas. I would recommend the Barenboim recording from 2001. It won a Grammy in '02 (for what that is worth), and it really is a delight.

A great read though. Makes you appreciate your ability to hear Ms. Kenney, doesn't it?

[Rozzie]

Sarah, you closet True Bliss groupie!

I wonder if somewhere in there lurks the soul of a devoted "Creed" fan too...!

I assume you are enjoying Jo Cotton's tenure as the spokeswoman of Leggos pasta?

"almeno Leggos e authentico!"

The man in the muscle apron looks like Simon O'Neill.

[Sarah]

No, no Creed I'm afraid. And I don't know where my True Bliss CD actually is these days...no really.

And it took me a very long time to realise that that was her on the Leggo's ad. I kept wondering why they hadn't bothered somebody actually Italian to do the ad - and then finally clicked that it was (hah) a celebrity. She's better than the food-throwing Dolmio puppets anyway.