Schaefer's Dichterliebe

I have owned this film for years.  After all, it comes with Pierrot Lunaire which I reviewed here.  Es heisst Theaterrealität. It is two things in one--a film of Schumann's Dichterliebe and a film of people filming Schumann's Dichterliebe--and it can be played either way.  I am showing the long version without subtitles for the full experience.

There is an extended bit filming Christine Schaefer's bare feet.  In another section she says "Ich liebe dich" into the camera over and over.  Unsuccessfully.  We do not feel loved.  The pianist Natasha Osterkorn takes a bath.

They are German, they smoke, they drink.  "Es ist leichter sich am Arsch zu kratzen als am Hertzen," she writes on a blackboard while singing "Ich grolle nicht."  Hoffentlich.

She is performing the songs in a moving railroad car with ragged furniture and dirt.  And a grand piano.  And an audience that appears and disappears.

One hears the words as never before.

I begin to feel that the truly modern exists only in Germany.  I begin to long for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
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Exquisite

I don't know about you, but I feel much better now. The YouTube comments slam the slow tempo and blame it all on Maazel, the conductor. My sense of this is that the tempo comes from Battle. Would her interpretation be so divine at the normal tempo? I think not. One should not sit in front of ones computer and imagine that the singer has nothing to say about the performance.

You might like this one, too, at the more normal tempo with Christine Schäfer.

Ten who didn't make the cut

These are ten excellent singers who didn't make the list of 14 for one reason or another. In the previous list all, with the exception of Cecilia, emphasize opera over all other styles of performance. Cecilia has invented an entirely different style of career from anyone we've seen before. She pretty much does whatever she wants and attracts audiences by virtue of her powerful musical personality. It was appropriate that Limelight chose her face for the cover.

• Roberto Alagna is really strictly an opera singer and never ventures out into other repertoire (this means other classical repertoire). He is that rare thing, a French tenor very much immersed in the Italian style. His career is enjoying a resurgence because he appears to be exactly what Peter Gelb is looking for as his leading man for French operas such as Carmen and Romeo et Juliette. He looks good in closeups but falls out of the top group because he occasionally sings out of tune.

• It is hard to understand why the tenor Marcello Giordani isn't more famous. After all, he is a true Italian tenor. We've seen him in Simon Boccanegra, Turandot, La damnation de Faust and Ernani where he has brought us fine performances, but our heart has not skipped any beats. His voice and his style are first class, but he misses only the divine inspiration. Perhaps he should try the Bjoerling trick where he pretends to be about to lose it, adding the element of danger.

• I'm quite fond of the dramatic soprano Maria Guleghina who is famous for performing the impossible roles of Turandot, Abigaille, and Lady Macbeth. Someone has to do it, and she manages this extremely heavy repertoire without showing any vocal stress. For me she delivers where others fail, but her style of heavy soprano is not in favor now.

• The coloratura mezzo Vivica Genaux is gorgeous and charming, has wonderful technique, looks good on the stage, but has no madness.  If one simply is not mad, where is one to find it?

• Matthias Goerne is a marvelous German baritone who has made his name in Lieder.  If he wishes to rise any further, he would need to excel in some opera repertoire.  I fall in and out of love with him.  Perhaps this is as far as he will rise.

• Susan Graham is wonderful but similarly lacking in madness. 

• Véronique Gens is a French soprano of the very French lyrical sort.  This can absolutely not be viewed as a criticism, but French singers are always at a disadvantage. 

• Lyric soprano Christine Schaefer is not lacking in madness.  I will make the wild guess that she is exactly where she wishes to be, admired for her creativity and musicianship and not for her ability to seem just like everyone else.  She has the most wide ranging career of any singer active today.

• Baritone Erwin Schrott is continuing to rise.  It is too soon to predict how far he will go.

• Dramatic soprano Nina Stemme has only just begun her rise.  Her Walküre Brünnhilde was marvelous, and there is no reason she will not become the outstanding Wagnerian of her generation.  She approaches Wagner from a new direction, a direction for our times, and will make him her own.
  

There are probably a lot of people who could go into a list like this, people whom we love to hear, but do not love quite enough.

Christine Schaefer has all the fun

On seeing again the short film "The Gallery Opening"

If there is any particular person whose career I might wish I had had it is Christine Schaefer. She does more cool things than just about anyone.

Can't find the cited film--I've seen it only on ARTS but there's this...

...one of the funnier scenes in a very funny Figaro.


Then there is this awesome film on Pierre Lunaire.

Food Fight

Hänsel..................Alice Coote
Gretel..................Christine Schäfer
Gertrud.................Rosalind Plowright
Peter...................Alan Held
Witch...................Philip Langridge
Sandman.................Sasha Cooke
Dew Fairy...............Lisette Oropesa

Conductor...............Vladimir Jurowski
Production..............Richard Jones

The Metropolitan Opera's New Years Day simulcast version of Hansel and Gretel, which I missed at the time, was on local TV last night. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be Pamela Rosenberg's food fight production. Unfortunately I slept during the entire Witch's role and awoke for the rescue scene at the end.

There was a rerun this afternoon. It was much messier in San Francisco with the witch spewing food all over the set. This version seemed messy enough. It's Hansel and Gretel for the modern child. Is it too late to point out that this is Regietheater at its finest?

Christine Schaefer as Gretel and Alice Coote as Hansel were perfect.

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Christmas Presents

No one should be without Maria with Cecilia Bartoli. I keep listening, and I like it more and more. And I liked it a lot to start with.


I highly recommend this recording of Strauss Lieder with Jonas Kaufmann.


Williard White's Porgy and Bess is now on DVD and in the stores. This is a great performance by everyone involved.


And this is the only Tristan und Isolde I have ever liked, with two spectacular performances. Ignore the dumb set.



And don't forget to give this spectacular Eugene Onegin with Fleming and Hvorostovsky. I'm buying this one myself. It's coming out on DVD December 17th. Have it sent directly for Christmas.


This may be controversial, but I liked Anna Netrebko's I Puritani quite a lot. This one is also coming out on DVD December 17th.


If you must have your Anna Netrebko with Rolando Villazon, you must have this one. It's available now.


Surprise someone with Christine Schaefer's Pierrot Lunaire. Tell them you were thinking of giving them a trip to New York City when you came across this film and decided to send it instead.

Happy holidays.

Sprechstimme

I have heard a bit of Sprechstimme by now--that's Schoenberg's invention of speaking set to music. I think if memory serves that it first appears in Gurrelieder (1901/11 [I think written around 1901 and orchestrated closer to 1911--He's supposed to have forgotten how to orchestrate in Mahler's style by then and had to revive a long abandoned technique.]), the orchestrated song cycle that Schoenberg wrote while he was still in his Mahler phase. In the performance of Gurrelieder I heard at the San Francisco Symphony Hans Hotter performed the Sprechstimme. His was very speech-like.

Sprechstimme is notated like normal vocal music, except where the note heads would normally appear are X's. This leaves the performer with a wide range of options, extending from normal speech set to music, sometimes called melodrama, to something that sounds a lot like singing. Hotter was like a magnificent old actor. His motivation in performing the part seemed rather like mine--voice is shot, but I can still do Sprechstimme. He was the best I've heard.

The main later examples are Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Moses und Aron (1930/32). My theory is that Schoenberg was as bored by Moses as we are listening to it, and this is why it was never finished. He turned out to be not as high minded as he thought he was. According to this article in Wikipedia there is Sprechstimme in Wozzeck and Lulu. So I missed that as a texture.

I think Pierrot Lunaire is the only one that is regularly performed by sopranos who seem to want to sing. The Christine Schaefer Pierrot Lunaire quite often sounds like out of tune singing. Deliberately out of tune--it's clear this isn't an accident. I would be curious to hear a female perform this in a more talky style. Maybe they are trying too hard to come close to the notated pitches. I think only the general contour is required.

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I have decided this article would be far better with a few examples.  First we have Hans Hotter's wonderful example from Gurrelieder.



Here is a very nice clip from Moses und Aron.  One sings, the other doesn't.  The two brothers alternate, thus giving a very clear idea of the difference between Sprechstimme and singing.



I openly admit to a mania for this film of Pierrot Lunaire with Christine Schaefer.



Anyway, that should give you the idea.

Christine Schaefer

I have a relationship to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. I decided years ago in my synthesizer phase that if my voice was gone I could still do Sprechstimme. I would record midi files of the songs and perform them to my own accompaniment. I got pretty far along with this project and thought they sounded good. I couldn't get the waltz to sound like a waltz, but I notice they don't either. This project was fun. Pierrot Lunaire sounded good on synthesizer.

This DVD is a film with Pierrot Lunaire as the sound track. The visuals are of New York City around Times Square. Christine walks down a hall in a seedy building; she shakes a doorknob and a lion roars; she goes to her apartment, and it's filled with giant cockroaches. I've been in New York apartments and this is not unrealistic. The real cockroaches are maybe not quite this big. She brushes one off her neck.

Christine is both subject and object in this film. She has a life and observes it at the same time. At one point she repeatedly pushes herself off the top of one of the tall buildings. This is completely wacko and I love it. Her rendition of the piece is fabulous. I am beginning to understand Christine. It's conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Here is the bit I saw on TV that led me to buy this.

I suppose a girl baritone would not be right in the part. Girls, if you are a lyric soprano with good German diction, it would not hurt your career prospects to try your hand at Pierrot Lunaire or Lulu.
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Lulu

Lulu:  Christine Schaefer (soprano)
Alwa, Dr. Schön’s Son, a composer:  David Kuebler (tenor)
Dr. Schön / Jack the Ripper:  Wolfgang Schone (baritone)


This is my third Lulu, the opera by Berg.

The first was in 1965 in two acts and starred Evelyn Lear. She was a voracious tiger who ate men for lunch, and the ovation for her performance was as nothing I have ever seen--not applause but a sustained roar. I was away in 1971 when Anja Silja played her.

The second in 1989, San Francisco's first since the completion of the three act score in 1979, starred Ann Panagulias, a dark young woman barely out of Merola. Ann was passive in the extreme, and the whole action just washed over her. Ann was cast for her looks, but projected no emotions at all. It is curious to notice that in this production Evelyn Lear played the Countess.

My third is this DVD starring Christine Schaefer from Glyndebourne. She is somewhere between these extremes.

There are women who attract others like a magnet. We have all known one of them at one time or another. Lulu is such a woman. What is the secret? Pheromones? Body language? Looks?

That is the question: is Lulu doing it on purpose, or is she merely the object of the desires of others? Is she arranging signals for others to respond to? Or is she just following the wishes of others? Is she a leader or merely a follower? Men of all social classes swarm around her. Dr. Schoen's son Alwa, well played here by David Kuebler, says she might be a cunning whore, and she says she wishes she were. Is it to her credit that she constantly reminds him that she poisoned his mother and shot his father, or is this part of her attraction?

Christine hasn't the strength of voice to project the voraciousness of Evelyn Lear. Hers is a sweet lyric soprano, and her Lulu is a sweet woman who enjoys being loved. She accepts all gifts as though they were her due, including the Countess' gift of her own health, and does not question the source. Dr. Schoen whom she kills is the only one she loves in return. This Lulu is a woman who is enjoying her outfits, which change frequently. Alwa calls her "little Lulu" and Christine is small enough to fit this. Her natural hair color darkens as the opera goes along. (Behind the scenes there will be a lot of frantic dying and drying.)

In a slut plot, one of the mainstays of opera, the slut must get what she deserves. Carmen is stabbed. Semele is burned alive. Violetta dies of consumption. Lulu is killed by Jack the Ripper.

There are basically four textures: orchestra alone (including the accompaniment for the film in act ii), unaccompanied speaking, melodrama (speech with orchestra--I don't think it can be considered Sprechstimme) and singing with orchestra. The artists move smoothly from one texture to another. Christine's singing is quite pretty, but I'm not sure I can say that for the others.

In this production the music is made to seem not difficult, a spectacular achievement. The music is merely there like background music for a movie (which some of the time it is.) The transition from talking to singing is transparent and natural. It is by far the best of my three. For this movie would we have chosen this music? Definitely.

The same man, Wolfgang Schone here, must sing both Dr. Schoen and Jack the Ripper because of the dialog at the end. He is only her third trick, but she wants him to spend the night with her because she likes him. He reminds her of the only man she ever loved. Jack kills the Countess, too, who gets to declare her love for Lulu as she dies. The Countess is beautifully played by Kathryn Harries.

This is the first time I have been swept up in the drama. It is played for reality rather than intensity. I think you could see a more melodramatic Lulu, a more evil Lulu, but hardly a more sympathetic one. It is pathetic to see that three of her lovers--Alwa, the Countess and Schigolch, the father that isn't a father--make it all the way with her to complete degradation at the end.

Lulu is the ultimate slut plot, and I am not the first to wish to see Anna Netrebko sing it. Her portrayal would be closer to Evelyn Lear's, I think. Don't get me wrong--Christine is pretty fabulous.
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Blogging

My life has fallen into chaos. I moved all my possessions to Ohio, and then the sale of my house fell through. I am going on as if nothing is wrong, but I have a house I can't use.

I was going to Portland, Oregon, and then found the movie broadcasts from the Met were not showing anywhere in Portland. So I went to Sacramento instead.

So then I found the Magic Flute was completely sold out. Who would have thought? It is hard to think of this as a bad thing. I heard some of it on the radio and really liked the Queen of the Night, sung by Erika Miklósa. Her legato and sense of ease was very fine in this difficult music.

I had no trouble getting tickets to the other two and look forward to seeing them. A friend reminds me that while I am watching I Puritani in a movie theater, she will be in the orchestra at the Met. (Insert raspberry here.)

I was showing the Figaro from Salzburg 2006 to a friend and was struck again by how really unpleasant it is. The tempos are all very somber and draggy in addition to the dismally serious production. The kissing scene with Cherubino is amusing. Roeschmann and Schaefer in particular really get into it. Everything is Cupid's fault. He is spreading chaos.

In several places the players do synchronized movements. Why? Who knows? Except when Anna Netrebko does them they look like dance movements while everyone elses look crude. I'm sure part of Anna's attraction is how she moves. Like a dancer or a gymnast.

So now I find that I have lost my ticket to Semele in Zurich. I remembered my passport, but can't remember where I put the ticket. I am hoping to talk the opera there into issuing me another ticket. Otherwise I will stay home.

Chaos. Perhaps I am not cut out to be a gypsy.