Prima la musica, poi le parole

Un meme...ancora un meme

Apparently I'm in a meme sort of mood. I still think my answers to the meme of four would be too mindnumbingly boring to be posted; but I might have a shot at the libretto meme that's been started off chez Vissi d'Amore.

Firstly, four currently living, breathing people likely to produce interesting and stageable libretti. Now see this is difficult because I read almost nothing by living writers. Which is not (really) a pretentious stance I've taken, just the way things work out. During semester I'm an English student and I read works by outrageously talented dead men (plus the odd Brontë); come holiday time I read detective stories by similarly outrageously talented and equally dead women. However. Stephen Fry could create something magnificent I'm sure. In fact he's written the English translation of Zauberflöte for Kenneth Branagh's film of same. He writes the way he speaks, fiendishly intelligent, Wilde-ly witty, and with such elegance it almost hurts. Do not judge him by the Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music, which he did not write. In fact I adore the man so much (did you notice?) I plan to read his book about how to write poetry, not for the content so much as simply to relish the delicious sentences he constructs. Now to my second choice. I see nothing to indicate that I can't choose someone who has already produced a libretto, so my second nomination is fabulous New Zealand poet Anne French. Whom I happen to know, and who has been known on occasion to read this blog, so I'll save us both blushing any deeper and say only that she's marvellous and I'm certain cooks up a mean libretto. More praise could be lavished: but go here and here to read and be beguiled by a few of her poems. Incidentally, I'm really not a poetry person - but I have to admit defeat sometimes. Number three. Perhaps you'll think I'm slightly mad but I'd rather fancy a libretto of inspired lunacy NYC Opera Fanatic-style. Lords knows what my dear brother-in-Battle would produce but I know I'd certainly want to see it. One more. This is difficult. Alright. I wanted to be original but this is taking too long, so even though Brett has already picked him, I'll say Joss Whedon too. Because clearly the man is a genius. Or else Dolly Parton. (Oh come on. I'd go to Dolly's opera - wouldn't you?)

And the second part: four books which could be re-worked into, again, interesting and stageable libretti. Now this is (marginally) easier.

• Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market. In fact this has been set to music, albeit in Italian translation, by somebody terribly obscure, and as a cantata. But it screams to be staged, preferably in Pre-Raphaelite tableaux. It also - happy coincidence, this - has no male lead at all. Maybe a baritone or two among the goblins, then again maybe not, but all the real singing would be for Lizzie and Laura. Imagine the duets. *Sigh*.
• Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. Of course.
• Madame Bovary. When I read this, I kept thinking it ought to be an opera. Complete with interpolated scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. Not quite sure how one would stage the carriage scene. Maybe just a nice descriptive overture à la Rosenkavalier?
• Tintin. I mean it. Combine several stories or devise a new one. "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles" as a da capo aria for coloratura bass. Or if we stick to the original language, "Mille millions de mille sabords", which also has its appeal. And the title role to be sung, naturally, by a mezzo en travesti.
  

Now I suppose I have to tag somebody. No obligation, especially not this time of year, but I'd love to read Amanda's answers (unlike me, very definitely a poetry person, and eloquently so). Also MezzoGregory's.

(P.S. While I was writing this, 2006 arrived. Happy New Year everybody.)

Update: Obviously I should read more closely. My tag of MezzoGregory was pre-empted and he has in fact, already (and wonderfully) responded - read his answers here.

Opera Blog

Via a comment on my answers to the opera meme, I'm very happy to have discovered a new (to me) opera blog, very sensibly titled Opera Blog. (Now why did nobody else think of that?). Paul Siegel blogs from Denver, Colorado and wins about a billion bonus points from me because said comment includes praise for my darling Yvonne. Welcome to the blogroll!

Nothing for me to add

Yvonne reviews herself in Der Schauspieldirektor:

 

Opera meme

The other meme I could resist. This one, courtesy of Maury D'Annato, I just can't.

Name or Nom de Blogge: Sarah. (Sigh. Would that it were more exotic.)
Age: 21
Locale: Dunedin, New Zealand
Raison de blogre: Sharing is half the fun.
Intended tone of blog: Who knows? I don't. I think if I did, the whole venture would die pretty promptly.
Voice type (real): None. Sono senza voce.
Voice type (in yer dreams): Lyric mezzo.
Arias sung in the shower: I don't.
Arias of other gender sung in shower: See above.
First opera seen: Like Maury, a Magic Flute. It was staged by the University of Otago when I was
very little.
First opera to elicit madly queeny reaction of obsession and dedication to a lifetime at the opera: Actually if any one thing elicited that reaction it probably wasn't an opera but a Ruth Ann Swenson CD.
Uberdiva, living: Yvonne Kenny, natürlich.
Uberdiva of the past: Lucia Popp, my operatic mother.
Fave singer you never hear anyone else enthuse about: Yvonne!
Favorite line from a libretto: "Manchmal steh' ich auf mitten in der Nacht und lass die Uhren alle, alle stehn."
Opera you'd rather eat thumbtacks than sit through ever again: Strangely enough, not Il Signor Bruschino. If anything, Rusalka.  What am I thinking? Carmen, of course.
"Why won't the Met/my local company put on...": Anything. Anything!
"A perfect role assumption I have seen was...": Again, it's a very limited field but despite that - and even if it wasn't - Yvonne Kenny's 'Elle' in La voix humaine.
"If I had a time machine...": Prague, October 29, 1787. Or, a little closer to home, the 2002 New Zealand Festival of the Arts, which included a Rosenkavalier with Yvonne as the Marschallin. I tell you, I can scarcely think of the latter - and how close and yet far away I was - without physical pain.

Finally!

ACB.com has sound files. I think I'm in love...

2005

I'm resisting the now ubiquitous Meme of Four, only to jump on the other current blogging bandwagon with a little look back at the year that's been.

Back in January I was trying very hard to fall in love with Renée Fleming, partly on account of the adoration I saw her inspiring and I think partly just to see if I could. I couldn't. There are times I like her very much but the fact remains that I enjoyed her book, which is wonderful, a good deal more than just about any of her singing.

Also in January the Met broadcasts began on Concert FM, four weeks behind the US but still, better than not having them at all: and I finally heard a whole lot of operas from start to finish which I hadn't heard before. Among the most memorable: Katya Kabanova, which I listened to inside a car on a hot day outside a Nelson motor lodge, with the windows rolled up to appease the people across from us whom it was apparently driving crazy; and Die Walküre, which knocked me sideways.

In February I started counting down to the Lexus Song Quest and to the arrival on our shores of Grace Bumbry, to judge it. With Grace, as with Renée, I set out to fall for her: this time it worked, and by the time of the Song Quest, and Grace's masterclasses, I was a nervous trembling fan. But thankfully with just enough nerve (lord knows where that came from) to walk up to the great lady and tell her she was wonderful.

In March Mezzogregory and I encountered each other for the first time. The less said about that the better I think but it all turned out for the best: we're friends now (yes?), I discovered his wonderful blog as a result, and I was also inspired to get over myself a little with reference to countertenors: as a result of which I've moved in this year from occasionally venomous indifference to genuine appreciation. To such an extent that I'm looking like going to hear Andreas Scholl when I'm in Sydney in February - and looking forward to it rather a lot.

April was the month of the above mentioned Lexus Song Quest and Madeleine Pierard's triumph. Happily Madeleine's star continues to rise and rise, with a packed and rather glittering 2006 schedule. Allison Cormack, who came second (and was my personal favourite voice on the night) has since won the Wellington Aria Competition; and third-placed Jamie Frater's studies at the Royal College look to be going swimmingly. All excellent news.

May and June were mostly spent waiting and waiting and waiting for NZ Opera's Don Giovanni and Patricia Wright's Donna Anna. I bashed my way through the vocal score on piano countless times and listened again and again to Giulini's magisterial recording, not to mention immersed myself in La Patricia's regrettably small recorded oeuvre. Best of all, I heard her on radio singing Golijov's sublime Three Songs for soprano and orchestra, a cycle which I feel she must must must record. Don't talk to me about Dawn Upshaw, I don't want to know.

The Don Giovanni, which I saw twice in Wellington and once in Auckland, arrived in July and lived mostly up to my expectations. Jonathan Miller's workable but rather unremarkable production has admittedly come down in my estimation upon subsequent reflection, but the singing was for the most part excellent, and Donna Anna divine, confirming once again (or thrice again) her permanent place among my pantheon of singers.

August already! The Dunedin vocal competitions, if I'm honest, were slightly disappointing, with many cancellations due to illness and a somewhat underwhelming standard in the younger age group. Nevertheless there was some wonderful fun to be had, much of it the work of fabulous mezzo soprano Claire Barton, still absolutely my favourite Dunedin voice.

I turned 21 in September and celebrated with Ian Bostridge, Opera Proibita and a quick trip to Sydney. In October I live-blogged my rapture over Barbara Bonney and her disc of American and English songs, Call Me Barbara and spent a little too much time figuring out the casts for NZ Opera's 2006 season: most of which (along, sadly, with Parsifal) I'll probably end up missing anyway. But no matter: Canterbury Opera is doing Lucia di Lammermoor with the reportedly excellent Amanda Pabyan. Christchurch is much easier to reach and cheaper to stay in than Auckland or Wellington, and I'd much rather see Lucia than Faust anyway. October was also the month of the comically bizarre performance of 'Wachet auf' at Knox Church. In November I had exams, and more importantly, so did Dunedin's vocal students. I didn't invite them to mine, but I did get to sit in on theirs and enjoyed myself immensely: particularly that by Michael Gray which was by any standards - not just exam standards - a truly excellent recital. I also accidentally attended a First Church recital by gorgeous Australian mezzo Amanda Cole and the superlative Terence Dennis MNZM - and then accidentally missed the same mezzo's exam recital. Which brings us through to December, which there's no call to review.

But of course, despite all the above (and scrolling up, there's quite a lot of it) if you've been reading this blog for any length of time - and particularly if you've been reading it this month - then you know what the dominant feature of this year has been, and I apologise if I've bored you, which I feel, at times at least, I must have. Exactly a year ago today, I wrote:

"Oh dear. If I'm not careful this will turn into the Yvonne Kenny Admiration Society blog, and then everyone will get sick of it and I'll be left alone. So I'll try and get it out of my system now- as far as possible- and then go back to remembering that there are a few thousand other sopranos out there.

Well I guess I wasn't careful, and I didn't get it out of my system, and so here we are - or here I am, at least. There are few thousand other sopranos out there. I have remembered that, and there are many of them whom I love and adore. Yvonne, though, simply goes above and beyond all of that and I'm happily powerless to resist. I never saw it coming, but she has changed everything - and I wouldn't change it back for the world. My three weeks in Melbourne this month, seeing her in La voix humaine, have been the most beautiful and life-altering experience. But you probably picked up on that - again, please excuse my monotony, which as been out in full force this month especially. In any case, no music has defined or shaped this year more than hers. She's in my heart forever now, my diva for all the years to come. But 2005 will always be the year in which it all took shape and for that reason is, without a doubt, my year of Yvonne.

Presents, presents, presents

Adding to my store of backstage literature is William Murray's Fortissimo: Backstage at the Opera with Sacred Monsters & Young Singers. According to the blurb, "Murray follows twelve young singers in Lyric Opera of Chicago's training program, the prestigious Opera Center for American Artists, through the 2003-2004 season." And among those twelve is none other than la Canadienne.

However reading of course is only for squares; as a child of the twenty-first century I require my intellectual stimulation to come from fast-paced visual multimedia. Which statement you know is utterly false: but all the same, this Christmas I'm drowning in DVDs, and I ain't complaining.

So this afternoon was spent taking in all 294 minutes of James Levine's 25th Anniversary Gala. At least, the 294 minutes which made it to the DVD release of said gala; I gather this still isn't the complete concert. All the same, it's some party. There are singers here whom I've only ever heard and never seen in action: Deborah Voigt for one, and Ruth Ann Swenson (even though I flew all the way to New York for a recital by the latter) - both in fabulous form here. There's Gracie's velvety and dangerous "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix", Carlo Bergonzi's super-elegant 'Quando le sere al placido', Kiri's gorgeous, gorgeous Donna Elvira vamping it up with Bryn Terfel's Leporello and the show-stealing tribute to the maestro by the inimitable Birgit Nilsson. Not to mention fifty million other items.

Alongside the Levine gala was something a little more subdued, which I haven't yet watched but which promises to be excellent: from EMI's Classic Archive series, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in the Act I Rosenkavalier finale, alongside Strauss and Mahler Lieder from Irmgard Seefried and some Schubert from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Worth it for Elisabeth's Monologue alone I should think.

So those are the two DVDs which came in pretty packaging and proper plastic cases. I also received four DVDs very plainly packaged in white envelopes. Not much to look at, but, well...

Fanfare for Queen Elizabeth. Gwyneth Jones, Yvonne Kenny, Jessye Norman, Lucia Popp, Anne Murray, Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo; Solti. London 1986.
Australia Day Concert. Jose Carreras, Joan Carden, Yvonne Kenny, Suzanne Johnston, Jonathan Summers; Mackerras. London 1993.
Der Schauspieldirektor. Howarth, Kenny, Banks, Best; Davis. London 1991.
Cosi fan tutte. Kenny, Janes, Illing, Hobson, Black, Pringle; Robinson. Melbourne 1990.

Now I sense a common thread in there somewhere. What can it be? Oh, yes, there it is: knee-weakening beauty. I don't think you'll be in the least surprised when I say I was awake until 5 am this morning. No choice, you see, because I knew I wouldn't sleep if any of the above were lying about unwatched. In Fanfare she and Ann Murray sing the Presentation of the Rose, in costume. For the Australia Day concert, she sings 'Tornami a vagheggiar', 'Lippen schweigen' with Jose Carreras, 'Dôme épais' (!!) with Suzanne Johnston and then 'Libiamo' with everybody. In Der Schauspieldirektor she is impossibly beautiful and fabulously bitchy. In Cosi she transcends an ugly set and some seriously unflattering costumes and is a complex, spellbinding and exquisitely lovely Fiordiligi. Santa Claus, I love you.

Season's greetings

(And yes, that is my diva dressed as a pixie atop an ostrich.)

The obligatory Christmas music post

Why does everybody hate "The Little Drummer Boy" so vehemently? Am I the only person on this earth who truly likes it?  I can still remember learning it in primary school. Enjoyed it then, enjoy it now. I even have a recording of it in German translation by none other than Marlene Dietrich. (Yes, it's as bizarre as you'd imagine, but still not as bizarre as her rendition - also in German - of 'Surrey With A Fringe On Top'.) Lately, of course, the version in my ears is the one included on Yvonne's A Christmas Gift. This one comes complete with Middle East-style flutes and percussion. And a children's chorus. Yes, I know, it's can be tormentingly catchy, but it doesn't torment me. Still, it's not my favourite Christmas song. "Snoopy's Christmas" comes close. People don't seem to like that one either. I don't know.

"Silent Night" on the other hand rarely stirs me. Perhaps it's the memory of primary school choir (myself included) droning it tunelessly every year. However again, we return to Yvonne's Christmas Gift, where it's presented with Daniel Kantor's "Night of Silence", sung simultaneously with the carol to exquisite effect. Still, it's the Kantor rather than "Silent Night" which makes that just about my favourite track on the disc. Just about. I couldn't pick a favourite, it's a devastatingly beautiful CD. 'Minuit, Chrétiens' and 'O divin Rédempteur' sung in French so beguiling it's a struggle to remember she's singing about, you know, the baby Jesus, and not something slightly more secular. "Away in a Manger" (another carol I've never loved) with just her voice, a viola and a harp is enchanting. My guilty pleasure is her rendition of "When a Child is Born", surely the only time I've adored every moment of a track which opens with an 'aah'-ing children's chorus: the warm, relaxed, un-operatic style of singing which would she'd show off a couple of years on Make Believe is in glorious evidence here. Then, of course, there are William G. James' Australian Christmas carols. Which I mocked mercilessly a year ago when my cousin's community choir sang them. "Across the plains one Christmas night / Three drovers riding blythe and gay / Looked up and saw a starry light / More radiant than the Milky Way." That sort of thing. And lots of birds and dusty paddocks and so on. Really, Yvonne, you have no business making these songs so impossibly pretty. The tunes still sound like Soviet hymns, the words are still (I'm sorry) very silly, but the diva works her magic and...when that same community choir sang on of them at this year's Christmas concert, I was very nearly a tear-sodden wreck. As you'd imagine, I've been listening to A Christmas Gift regularly ever since I bought it in April; but it's nice to have a seasonal excuse for it now.

Also this year, without setting out to do so, I've gone and got myself a Messiah: my very first, if you can believe that. I am a testament to the power of marketing. I was shopping aimlessly in JB HiFi on Monday and all of a sudden there it was, William Christie's recording with Les Arts Florissants of Messiah. About 30 seconds into Mark Padmore's 'Comfort ye, my people' I realised I was going to have trouble leaving the shop unless I bought the thing: so I did. While I haven't had time to listen to more than the first disc yet, I'm already very very happy with my purchase. After all, it had to be a promising sign (considering the gender discrimination I'm so good at when it comes to singing) that I bought it on the basis of a tenor and a chorus. The soprano, Sandrine Piau (whose name I've been seeing everywhere lately and thus as a result have been wary of) is excellent too; Andreas Scholl is so gorgeous that I'm afraid I can't say anything even kiddingly snarky about countertenors stealing Messiah from mezzo-sopranos - and am seriously considering seeing him in recital while I'm in Sydney in February. Already, though, this is more comment than I can rightly go into without having listened to the whole recording properly but, well, it's William Christie, and I like William Christie a lot always. I also love hearing Messiah sounding recognisably baroque and Handelian. I do prefer it this way.

The other CD I ought to be listening to, and will if I can find it, is of course Kathy's Grace. Which isn't specifically a Christmas CD but, like that other American's sacred song recording, might as well be. While I search for it, I can only hope that my dear brother-in-Battle is listening to it on my behalf.

And a final beauty which I can't finish this post without mentioning: my adored Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". Utterly gorgeous. And terribly upsetting of course, especially if you've seen it in context in Meet Me in St. Louis. But perfect. There's nobody like Judy.

(Is this the moment to mention that I know all the words to "What'll I get for Christmas for 'er indoors", the Minder Christmas song? No. It probably isn't.)

Blog power

There's been a good deal of discussion lately concerning the wisdom or otherwise of blogs by opera singers: how frank is too frank, and so forth. Many intelligent observations have been made - along with a few slightly over-the-top ones - and I won't add to all of that. However, if I may, allow me to be a little more commercially minded about the issue, and say this: they're an awfully good marketing tool. Or at least, they are to someone as easily swayed as myself. You sing, you start a blog, I read it: I want to hear you. And it's not just my curiosity you win: provided your blog entries do you credit (which is the case for the vast majority of the singers' blogs I've seen so far) you also win my good opinion. If and when I do hear you, I'll want from the very beginning to like you. We can all be as high-minded as we like but singing, and the love of certain singers, is a deeply personal matter, and personality - of both listener and singer - counts for a lot. Which is in my view is exactly as it should be. I've never claimed to be objective; and if I did you wouldn't believe me.

None of this is my point, however. This is: reading La Belle Canadienne's blog has made me long to hear her sing. I haven't so far (I did consider staying up until 6am for a Così webcast but didn't manage to last the distance.) But, degrees of separation and all that: in Melbourne I ran across a copy of Elina Garanča's Mozart Arias. Elina Garanča! I thought. She was Dorabella to Canadienne's Fiordiligi! Alright, I'll buy that then. Simple as that. No, perhaps not quite that simple: I also thought, what fabulous blue eyes. She must be an equally fabulous mezzo soprano.

My terribly superficial decision-making process has been vindicated. Evidently she makes a magnificent Dorabella, if her 'Smanie implacabili' here is anything to go by; and the eyes do not lie: her voice is just as beautiful as those eyes told my shallow self it would be. I've rarely heard a more arresting beginning to a recital disc than her commanding 'Chi sa, chi sa, qual sia': the sort of introduction after which one simply wouldn't dare not listen to the rest. In 'Deh, se piacer mi vuoi' she is an incandescent Vitella; and 'Misero pargoletto' is a fourteen minute vocal tour de force.

Impulse buys haven't always panned out wonderfully for me. This one, however, is looking increasingly like a winner. Playing it now, as I write, I'm discovering ever more to like: it all augurs well. A delicious discovery.