Eschenbach conducts Beethoven's 9th

This is a live stream on medici.tv of Christoph Eschenbach's final concert as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Program

• Bright Sheng, Concerto for Orchestra, "Zodiac Tales"
• Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125

Soloists:
Leah Crocetto Soprano
J'Nai Bridges Mezzo-soprano
Joseph Kaiser Tenor
Soloman Howard Bass

We need Beethoven more than ever.  He was a great soul who told us to walk our paths with joy.  We send a kiss to the whole world.  It always gives me great joy.  Eschenbach is an excellent conductor.  I don't know if a replacement is announced.

The concert can be viewed in delay.

Three Iphigénies

I never feel an overwhelming desire to see 10 performances of a run of an opera. After all, after 40 times of the same Vogelhaendler, what would be the point?

But different productions in different houses with different conductors and different singers can be instructive. After two times of Iphigénie en Tauride with Patrick Summers and Susan Graham (SFO and the Met) I was curious to see the version at the Washington National Opera with William Lacey conducting and Patricia Racette as Iphigénie.

This production was amusing bordering on silly. There were metal rungs on either side of the stage, and every now and then someone would climb them for no reason--including Patricia and Placido Domingo as Oreste. Domingo was lively and strong compared to his Met appearance.

There was a ballet ensemble consisting of two couples and a man wearing springy legs like you see at the special Olympics. Both the men and the women danced en pointe, a curious sight.

Most of the action was inexplicable. At one point the two Greeks enter, lie down on the floor, and have their heads massaged by two of the priestesses.

I was most fascinated by the musical differences. With Patrick Summers and Susan Graham Iphigénie is a stately piece, with long arching phrases soaring in the really quite beautiful voice of Susan Grahem. The effect is somber and significant

But the English have their own unique perspective, and the English conductor William Lacey wants lighter, quicker, more lively tempos resulting in a shorter, more exciting opera.

Patricia Racette's voice is edgier, louder, more intensely dramatic. Between them they entirely altered what you are experiencing.

One more thing: I have been here before, but I don't remember the singers sounding so loud. Usually how loud they sound varies from one singer to another. Not last night. Amplification?

[See Kinderkuchen History 1760-80]

Constable

There is a tour of paintings by Constable that is currently in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. All of his giant paintings are there. Most of them come in two versions: one painted quickly at the location and one painted slowly in the studio. The quick paintings look like impressionism. They practically all have the same layout: big trees on the left, fields on the right, details in the middle.

He painted tiny pictures, too, and some are on display. He is considered the best English landscape painter.

Denyce Graves

I went last night to hear Denyce Graves in recital at Kennedy Center with accompanist Warren Jones. I liked it, but not enough to stay for the whole thing.

It's a long drive back to Frederick, though I seem to have finally discovered the route. There is a rule in Washington--if you don't know how to get there, we're not helping. This is a little like hiding Bolinas (obscure California reference.) In the south they don't want to help out all those lost northerners by actually giving them directions, so there are absolutely no signs that say "turn here for Kennedy Center," and the actual route is rather mystical. Ditto for getting back out. So far I have gone a different way driving home each time I've gone there, making the whole trip take about a half an hour longer.

Route to Kennedy Center: down the GW parkway to the Roosevelt bridge (that's Teddy, not Franklin), turn right at the very first opportunity and keep right. Sounds easy. So why no signs? If you miss the turn, you're sunk. You can circle the place for hours. Allow time for circling.

Route back: Exit going north and continue north along the river. Exit onto K, exit onto Key bridge, exit immediately onto GW parkway. The sign will say "to 495." It will never say George Washington Parkway, but what else could it be? If you miss any of these turns or exit the south side of the building, you are sunk. It's an IQ test. No dumm people are invited. Skip all this and go on the Metro, except you have to walk around in the dark, and it takes a lot longer to get home.

I usually take the scenic route home through the middle of DC with stops to ask directions and get home very cranky.

Denyce Graves, a beautiful black woman with an interesting mezzo-soprano voice, changed the program from the original printing. She sang "O Del Mio Dolce Ardor" from Gluck's Paride ed Elena to open instead of "Sweeter than Roses" and added an aria, "Acerba volutta" from Cilea's Adriana Lecourveur. This was an odd experience for me--I have sung everything on the first half of her program except for "Heimliches Lieben" by Schubert. That means I have a really good idea of how she did. She subtitled her program "Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

She successfully took the low D at the end of Schubert's "Der Tod und das Maedchen," something I don't remember doing and have actually never heard before. Excellent.

I liked her best in the pair of arias: Cilea's "Acerba volutta" and Donizetti's "O mio Fernando" from La Favorita. These are dramatic mezzo arias for which she is very well equipped. I liked also very much her semi-dramatization of Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade." She has a big voice and a big vibrato which she needs to keep under control. It is a voice perhaps best suited to opera. Ms Graves is a DC native and had a very sympathetic audience.

Speaking of the audience--DC audience members seem to clap constantly. If the singer takes too deep a breath, they begin clapping, including a round of applause in the middle of "O mio Fernando." I think the aria makes a better effect if it runs its course.

I have to say a few words about Warren Jones. He put the music flat on the piano so he could always easily see Ms Graves. I couldn't tell if this meant they had not practiced that much together. Did I find him "the finest accompanist now working" as the blurb in the program says? He seemed to me to charge wildly ahead at every opportunity while Ms Graves held back. They often seemed not to be performing the same pieces. She always insisted on her own interpretation no matter what he did. This is the secret to getting your own tempo--just sing that tempo no matter what others around you are doing. Eventually they will submit. Think how much better it might be to agree on a tempo before hand!

But then, I know too much. I was always imagining my own expectations.

Sophie's Choice

I went last night to the Washington National Opera to see Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice. For such a new opera this one has an astounding production history, having already been produced at the Royal Opera (2002), in Berlin and in Vienna. (See here)

I have decided my three things, theater-music-singing, will work very well for evaluating this opera.

There needs to be a holocaust opera. Our souls require it. Maw has done an excellent job of adapting the novel by William Styron, perhaps a better job than the movie. We now know that the choice of the title is not her choice to die with the brilliant and obviously schizophrenic Nathan instead of live with Stingo. No. That isn't it. The choice, asked at the gate to Auschwitz, is the emotional heart of the opera: choose which of your two children shall live.

It is an opera about love--romantic love, the love of friendship, and the love for ones children. I have a friend with two small children, a boy and a girl, and in that moment the choice became her choosing between them. This is the right play for the holocaust.

The production is an expressionist bare scene with a screen of photographs of holocaust victims behind.

It worked as theater. How did it work as music and singing? The opera was conducted by Marin Alsop. I sat in the second row and could easily see into the orchestra pit. Both times Ms Alsop came out, the orchestra made rumbling sounds with their feet and stood as she mounted the podium, not waiting for her to ask them to rise. At first I thought they were going to play the national anthem again as they had done to begin the season. It is an accolade such as I have frankly never seen. Perhaps they always do this, and I never noticed.

Sophie's Choice is firmly in the tradition of opera as symphonic poem (see gorilla), in this case a firmly post-modern symphonic poem, with a somber atmosphere that did not challenge us intellectually. It was appropriate to the subject and quite beautiful.

Which brings us to the third thing: singing. All of the music for the singers resembled monody more than anything else. It was a kind of lengthened speaking with no ornaments or repetitions. There was no pointillism (big jumps from low to high notes), just droning speech. If Monteverdi is to be praised for breaking away from the theoretical monodists and providing true arias to attract our ears, cannot we criticize a modern composer for failing to do this? Wagner, the inventor of opera as symphonic poem, knew how to use his idea as a platform for dramatic singing, to achieve great melodies for his singers. Maw gives us only heightened speech. Maw, a professor of music at Peabody in Baltimore, knows how to use the instruments of the orchestra for effect, but I think there is no modern technique for how to write for singers.

All of these highly professional singers sounded hoarse and strained, as though they were required to push their voices to achieve dramatic effects when the notes were not in a comfortable tessitura. Someone writing for the voice properly would make sure that the dramatic effects and the appropriate tessitura were in synch. Also, it is much more comfortable to sing all over the voice, with plenty of high and low notes. They all seemed to be struggling with a restricted range, a range in which they all eventually tired.

I cannot say there was any distinguished singing. It's not their fault. They weren't given anything to distinguish themselves with. Angelika Kirchschlager was significant and beautiful as Sophie. We did not get Rod Gilfry, but Scott Hendricks was fine, though he did much better with his fake southern accent than with his supposedly normal Brooklyn one.

Perhaps there should be a manual on how to compose for singers. Professor Maw came up for a bow at the end. His opera is performed for its moving atmosphere and for its relevance, a relevance of great necessity, but not for its singability.

WNO

I have gone suddenly from never having attended an opera season opener--in San Francisco this is a very posh affair--to having been to two in one week: New York City Opera and Washington National Opera.

WNO opened with a double bill of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. It is interesting to note that these two operas both premiered in 1918. There was a concern for continuity--both operas used the same huge spiral metal staircase (where are you going to put it?), the same chandalier, the same fluttering birds and the same images of ghosts. When Buoso dies at the start of Schicchi, his soul is seen ascending in an image that very much resembled the representation of Bluebeard's wives. The last piece of continuity is Sam Ramey who sang the title characters in both operas. He still sounds good, though I am hearing a wobble which he skillfully hides.

The presentation of Bluebeard was excellent, dark and mysterious. Bartók's music no longer sounds shocking. Judith, sung and acted marvelously by Denyce Graves, is a young woman consumed by curiosity. She cannot resist the impulse to find out if the rumors about Bluebeard are true. Once she discovers that they are, he strangles her.

A single large door represented the seven doors. My favorite was when the garden was revealed and it was part of a Rousseau painting. There is a Rousseau painting that could have worked for the moonlit landscape as well. Too bad they didn't think of it.

It was the best Bluebeard I've seen but not the best Gianni Schicchi. It has one good aria and a happy ending.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]

Symphony of a Thousand

Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulängliche,
Hier wird's Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist's getan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.

Everything transient
Is but a parable;
What lay beyond us,
Here is made visible;
The indescribable
Here becomes actual;
The eternally feminine
Draws us on high.

"Here" represents paradise.

Goethe is one of my personal idols. The title of my dissertation is "A comparison of various settings of poems from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjarhe". A poster of the famous painting "Goethe in Italien" hangs on the wall in my bedroom. I've owned it since I traveled to Germany to audition, many houses and years ago, and it's starting to get a little ragged.

It's the way the words feel when you speak them. German is suddenly beautiful. Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis. One feels inclined to worship someone who could perform this magical transformation. There is an almost erotic beauty to his poetry that is simply missing in the language generally.

I searched on the internet for a better translation than the one in the program last night at the Kennedy Center performance of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand by the National Symphony Orchestra and show the result above. The words are from Faust, Part II, not Act II as stated in the program. Part I (1808) is damnation; part II, published many years later in 1832, is salvation. Faust and Gretchen are reunited in paradise where she is his guide.

I went for rather more mundane reasons: Christine Brewer and Jane Eaglen appeared together on the same program. Who could resist this? The soloists stood in the back of the orchestra surrounded by chorus, which was a bit of a disappointment. One would wish to see the dueling sopranos up closer. In this context Christine Brewer must be declared the winner, since her Gretchen part is far more interesting than Jane's part as the woman who washed Jesus' feet.

The mezzo Stacey Rishoi as the Samaritan woman and tenor Donald Litaker as Doctor Marianus also impressed. Those in charge of casting went in the direction of heavy voices, a wise decision.

This is perhaps the greatest of the giant symphonies, a list that includes some pieces by Berlioz and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. The performance, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, was very satisfying.



If you don't know this piece, here is the best part. Ignore the guy singing along.

Daphne

I went to Kennedy Center last night, my first time on a week night. I stayed awake on the drive home by eating chocolate covered espresso beans, which probably explains why I am writing at four in the morning.

I ate in the very nice café. It was a beautiful evening, so I went strolling on the outside decks that surround the building, patios with very nice willow trees and fountains and a view of the Patomac. There seemed to be something resembling a dance company at work among the concert goers. They all seemed to be wearing red and black to make them look like they went together. There was a saxophone player dressed in jeans, a black jacket and red all stars who improvised. There was a woman in a black tutu who did ballet moves, more or less. The others were all in ordinary black and red clothes with soft shoes. One of them would be standing around and then suddenly form into an odd shape on the ground. I wanted to do it too, but my outfit was green and brown. I thought I could suddenly fall onto the pavement and writhe around, but maybe they would just call an ambulance.

I went to see Renée Fleming do Richard Strauss' Daphne with the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne. WDR stands for Westdeutschen Rundfunks, west German broadcasting. The piece was performed as though it were one of Strauss' tone poems with incidental singing, which means that the singers were either bellowing away (Apollo) or drowned out (Daphne). A little toning down would have gone a long way. Opera orchestras are used to this, but a regular symphony has to be told to cool it. Strauss was doing his part, thinning the orchestration when necessary, but they weren't helping enough.

This is the Ovid Metamorphosis with a character added to make it a love triangle. Daphne (sung by Renée) has a mortal suitor, Leukippos (sung by Roberto Sacca, a singer who has not managed to open up his voice) whom Apollo (sung by Jon Frederic West, a true Heldentenor) kills in a rage. It is difficult to imagine this staged, but perhaps it isn't intended to be.

I have heard Renée Fleming in a variety of venues--Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Opera, Zellerbach--and have not experienced her in this situation before. The part is clearly ideal for her voice, and the music from 1937 is very beautiful, though not progressed beyond Rosenkavalier, certainly. The hall has a cavernous look and the seating is cramped. There was a burst of applause for Anna Larsson, a contralto who sang Daphne's mother.

The work was conducted by Semyon Bychkov who conducted in his shirt sleeves. There was not sufficient love for me. It deserved greater passion.

Trilogy

In his prime I would buy tickets to see Placido Domingo and something would always go wrong. There would be an earthquake. His mother would die. Now these weren't reasons you could exactly complain about, but nonetheless, I was not getting to see him sing. Finally I got to hear him in Massenet's Herodiade with Renée Fleming, a not very interesting opera with a ridiculous plot and a not very significant tenor role. I had wished for Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

Until Sunday's Trilogy: Domingo and Friends in 3 Acts at the Washington National Opera. He looked and sang very well. Domingo has always been kind of a baritone with high notes, and as his voice ages this becomes more and more apparent. Amazingly, in his middle sixties he has no trace of a wobble, but there is a certain added gravitas.

Act I was Fedora Act II, with Sylvie Valayre as Fedora. This is the best act for the tenor with the hit aria, "Amor ti vieta," and the narrative of why he killed Fedora's fiance. There is a party. Amanda Squitieri, a Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist, as Olga was especially nice. Watch for her. I went with my neighbor and she liked this part the best.

Act II was Act IV of Otello. I never got to see Domingo sing the whole opera, but this is the best part anyway. What a treat! Barbara Frittoli is a fabulous Desdemona. She has voice, she has style, she has beauty, she has acting and she lies very quietly hanging off the bed for quite a long time without falling off.

Act III was Act III of The Merry Widow. This scene also has a party, and like the party in Fledermaus, it was used to insert added entertainments. Sylvie Valayre and Barbara Frittoli sang a duet from Cosi fan tutte, for instance. I've never cared for the lustige Witwe and was happy to be spared the whole operetta. Ending with a party was nice. There's a great bit where the soprano compares Parisian men to a fizzy alcoholic drink which I cannot remember the name of. Domingo sang his aria in German while everything else was in English.

It was a pleasing froth with a glorious, dramatic center.

Samson

Life is good. I went to the Saturday matinee of Samson and Delilah that closed the season of the Washington National Opera to see Olga Borodina’s Delilah once again. I have seen Olga’s performance in this role three times, three different productions, and it’s interesting that it changes. In New York it was subdued. In San Francisco it was intensely sexual and seductive. In Washington it was angry and evil. So how does that work? I can speculate that the passage of time gives her increased self-confidence and that if she continues in this direction she will dominate the action in a truly frightening way. Her voice and her physical presence are huge.

The tenor, Carl Tanner, was also quite nice. Someone came out between the second and third acts to tell us he had had an asthma attack. This lent an atmosphere of reality to his exhaustion in Act III.

And no, I haven’t been flying around after Olga, too. That is reserved for only one person. I lived in SF when I saw it there, and now I live near DC. New York was on video. After reading about Romeo et Juliette in LA with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, I could add people to the list.

I am accustomed to hearing opera in the San Francisco Opera house, a place with notoriously mediocre acoustics. Now when I am in other places, I start to wonder if I am hearing the effects of microphones. The singers have so much more presence than I am used to that everything begins to seem bogus. Perhaps it’s just me.

The production was by Giancarlo del Monaco, the son of Mario del Monaco. The first year I worked in the Ulmer Theater he was the Intendant. General manager. He was in his black period when all his productions were black on black. We did a black on black La Forza del Destino set in the Spanish civil war. Leonora wore a black nurse’s uniform with a huge white cross. The governing board warned him that if he did one more black on black production, he was out. So naturally, he did and he was. He went on to bigger and better things. He also went on to other colors. This Samson was full of beautiful blues, reds and browns.

He lived in a different dimension from the rest of us. He came and went with his red-haired wife and two miniature dogs. His flamboyant personality spilled out in every context. He was accustomed to opera in the first tier and was less than thrilled with the quality of the performers he was forced to direct in this third tier house. And he told us. He was multi-lingual and insulted each in his native tongue. I was told that I walked like someone crossing a barnyard. I don’t deny it.

One tenor stood calmly on the stage while Giancarlo ranted and wrote down everything he said. One phrase that has stuck in my memory is “ausgeleiende Stimmbaende.” (stretched out vocal cords). He wrote everything down and sued. When the case came to trial the following year, every insult was read out in court and reported in the newspapers. And read aloud in the cantina. Such fun! Giancarlo was forced to apologize, but paid no money. The judge felt that artists sometimes get carried away.

He works now in the environment that he sought. I have seen several of his productions since then, and they are workable and sensible. Faint praise.

So why not forget that Samson and Dalilah is Biblical and do it as a series of Klimt paintings? The sexiest painter and the sexiest opera.
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Salvatore Licitra

My stars must have been arranged perfectly today. I decided that today was the day I would finally go to the Washington National Opera. I knew they were doing Tosca, but I didn't know who would be singing. "Tosca is hard to completely mess up," I thought. "I should like it."

Quite by accident I was treated to Salvatore Licitra singing Cavaradossi. All I can say is this is what opera is supposed to be. It's a mature voice (he's about 37), a big voice, a voice that never needs to be pushed to make its full effect. The Sony standard biography points out that he has been working with Carlo Bergonzi. This is completely believable because he has the authentic Italian style, and where is there a better master of this style than Bergonzi? Opera is for giving you goose bumps, for making the hair stand up on the back of your neck, for making you cry. Today I had the true opera experience. He's a bit rough around the edges, but I'm not at all sure this isn't part of his charm.

There is something to be said for the idea of a singer managing an opera company. The Washington National Opera might also be called the Placido Domingo personal opera. People who donate belong to the Domingo Circle, for instance. Who better than Domingo to find the best singers from around the world? I noticed the performance was sold out.

Licitra was not perfectly matched with his Tosca, Ines Salazar, who possesses a voice that can only show power above the staff. The middle of her voice is somewhat soft, and when she and Licitra were singing together he overpowered her. The conductor, Leonard Slatkin, accompanied her voice with masterful discretion, keeping the orchestra consistently under control.

It seemed to me that the performance was well in tune with Salazar's limitations, emphasizing Tosca's sweetness and religious devotion over her dramatic actress qualities. In the second act she stabs Scarpia four times, washes her hands, and spends the long instrumental interval in prayer instead of the traditional silliness with the candles.

Juan Pons as Scarpia was his usual excellent self. He died a hard, very athletic death. Licitra also managed an expert somersault in the second act. There seems to have been a lot of physical business in this opera.

By the end of the opera you should have shouted at least once, preferably several times. When toward the end they proclaim how their souls will soar in light, you should weep for the cruelty of their fate. Ultimately you should have forgotten every other Tosca you have ever seen.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]