Opera's Weepiest Endings: No. 10, "Madame Butterfly"

 

Recently I wrote up a list of Opera Endings Guaranteed To Make You Weep. I wrote it because I was thinking of sending it to this list site called Listverse.

Listverse pays you $100 or something for lists. Not a lot of money however I like to do what I can to help people appreciate opera. It really bothers me, the idea of someone going through life never knowing Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” I also like writing about opera because I do not make fun of it. Opera is such a big slow target if you want to make fun of it, and you shouldn’t. I mean, you can laugh about it. There are lots of funny operas — as a matter of fact, a few on my list of operas with the weepiest endings are comedies. But I think it is important to treat opera with respect.

Hence I got busy, writing my list.

I kept each writeup short and entertaining, as Listverse asked you to. Ultimately however I never sent it in. What stopped me was that I read in the fine print that if your list is accepted, you surrender all your rights to it. I am a professional writer and I am past the stage in my life when I would accept terms like that, especially for just $100.

So … seeing that I own my list, let’s start going through it! Here is Opera No. 10: Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiw12ZnpjBo

Listverse asked that I name a source for info on the story: https://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synopses/Madama-Butterfly/

The music of “Madame Butterfly” is full of glorious Japanese flair. However the story, which takes place around the year 1900, is a shocker. Butterfly is a young Japanese girl who forsakes her family and culture to marry an American officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton. She doesn’t realize that Pinkerton sees her as a toy.

After the wedding, he leaves her, promising he will return. A few years pass and she never gives up hope, waiting with their young son, and scanning the horizon every day. In the last act, Pinkerton does finally return – with an American wife, Kate. Butterfly caresses and then blindfolds their son and commits suicide, bringing this tragedy to a heartbreaking close. As one commenter wrote on YouTube: “Who’s cutting the onions?”

Continuing in my non-Listverse voice: Puccini is a great “starter composer” if you are new to opera. I worked at The Buffalo News with a reporter named Agnes Palazetti who loved opera. And she said to me, “What opera do you give to people who have never heard opera before? There is only one answer. Puccini.”

“There is only one answer. Puccini.” I always remember that.

So there we are, my No. 10, “Madame Butterfly.” I will follow it shortly with No. 9. If you are an opera fan maybe you should secretly make your own list and see how it lines up with mine. That is one reason to present the operas one by one.

Another reason is, when I had the list of all of them together, it’s just overkill. We need a little while to watch the video of the ending — I tried to find videos with translations — and maybe study up on the opera a little. Maybe track down a few more videos, listen to some records if you are a vinyl fan the way I am. Maybe just to think about things. Too many operas all at one time is overkill, it’s not right.

Operas need time and space. That is one reason it is an acquired taste. I have acquired it. I hope other people do, too!

See you soon with No. 9!

 

 

 

 

Opera-tunity knocks: This week at the Met

"Don Giovanni" at the Met this week.

I want to go back to watching the MetOpera's opera stream.

Remember, I was going great guns with it back in April, when we were in the depths of the lockdown. I quickly fell behind with it because I got hooked on Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" and began watching it over and looking for different versions. Then there was Wagner week and I caught a few of the Wagner operas as I recall. And then .... and then ...

And then I guess what happened to me was like what happened to everyone else as we went through the Coronavirus craziness. The weeks began passing faster and faster and running into each other and now suddenly it is months later and I have not watched one single other Metropolitan Opera opera.

But now I do believe I will start again. I was just looking at what is coming up.

In the next week -- the week beginning August 2 we are talking -- they have two Mozart operas coming up, "The Magic Flute" and "Don Giovanni." There is also a "Madame Butterfly" with Roberto Alagna and a "Parsifal" with Siegfried Jerusalem.

"Parsifal" is a little heavy for me though Leonard Pennario liked it a lot. I might watch it to try to see what he saw.

There is an illustrated synopsis for "The Magic Flute." Cute!

There is also an interesting essay about "Don Giovanni" which I have been enjoying picking over. There is a trend these days, say I, to see Don Giovanni as not a bad man but as a rather attractive rebel, a man who insists on his own happiness. I am saying it is a trend because when I saw the opera in Toronto a few years ago, they took that tack.

I admire this essay for acknowledging the Catholic background to the opera, and the literal nature of hell. The director, Michael Grandage, suggests that literal interpretation is something quaint, something the public in general might have trouble understanding. I do not have that trouble, I will tell you that. I believe hell exists. But Grandage has a point, I do not think a lot of people would agree with me. It is nice that he would even explore this topic because Mozart's Catholicism informs so much of his work and few musicologists acknowledge that.

What else is on tap this week? Handel's "Agrippina." They keep giving us this Handel in modern dress and pointing out political parallels to modern times ....

...  I don't know, not to use the language of Don Giovanni but are people seduced by this? Have these operas drawn audiences and gained fans? They seem to me tough to swallow.

But anyway ....

A lot to look forward to this week, if I get back into the opera saddle!

My 'Onegin' experience

The duel in "Eugene Onegin" as imagined in 1901 by the great Russian painter Ilya Repin.

My relationship with the Met and its free opera streaming continues rocky. Like an opera itself, it is!

It is complicated. The opera streams until a certain time the next day, but at some point you lose the subtitles, is my experirence. That is why Howard and I had to watch a different "La Boheme."

And I watched "Eugene Onegin" half and half. Half was the Met production, and half was another.

"Eugene Onegin" took me by surprise. I had not actually intended to watch it. But when they aired it I peeked at it, and then to my surprise something happened. I could not look away.

Howard was laughing at me because I was toting my tablet around and he found me in the bathroom brushing my teeth and watching it!

Then I had to put it away for a bit. I may be in lockdown but I am still busy. I work from home anyway and I have a ton of work to do. When I went back to it later, it pulled the subtitle thing on me, and then it froze up completely.

By that time I was totally hooked. I knew more or less how things worked out because I did see the opera live once.. But I think when I saw it some years ago my mind was addled up over something or other and I could not give Tchaikovsky the attention he deserved. I had to see this drama play out. So I found a different one on YouTube, from Glyndebourne.



I missed Dmitri Hvorovstovsky who had been starring in the Met production. He is so handsome and icy! But this new Onegin grew on me. He is a Polish singer and I cannot begin to spell his name (I can however spell Hvorovstovsky off the top of my head). Let me cut and paste: Wojtek Drabowicz. He is very good too -- he projects the look of a misfit, a definite plus in this situation.

The duel scene got to me. Lensky in the Glyndebourne production is a beautiful man and you just cannot stand it. I actually had not recalled the duel even happening. This seems a good time to admit, I do not like prepping for operas by reading the synopsis. I like being surprised. Before you know it, you will know the opera inside out, and there is a different joy to that. But the first couple times you see an opera, I do not see any reason to read up on it. Enjoy the suspense!

That gets me to one more point: Everyone thinks opera is an acquired taste and they cannot possibly appreciate it. Just sit down and watch "Onegin." Find one with subtitles and sit down with it. Easy.

Anyway.

Tatiana in the Glyndebourne production is not as human as Renee Fleming, who can be wrenching as no one else can. That scene where Tatiana is scorned, Fleming just breaks your heart. She is very bold when it comes to this kind of thing, I mean putting herself into a part.

Tchaikovsky has a kind of Wagnerian thing going on in "Onegin," at least from where I sit, in that the opera is about you. I identify strongly with Tatiana. I was very naive and romantic and sheltered the way she is. So the famous letter scene gets me and so does that terrible scene where Onegin scorns her and lectures her. "I had to listen meekly to your sermon," she tells him later.

That scene later is very satisfying to me, coming from where I am coming from. Tatiana has married a handsome older man, a military hero, and she is a princess. And she has the mental fortitude to stick with her husband. To tell Onegin no.

I found myself talking to the screen. "Tell him to get lost." "Walk away."

Hahahahahaha!

When the opera was over I found myself dipping into different productions of "Onegin." Such as this excellent one, in German, starring Hermann Prey. Prey is terrific in this part, which is high praise. He is handsome and has that bedeviled look and that intensity. Speaking of intensity, a young Brigitte Fassbaender is Olga. And ... get this ... Fritz Wunderlich is Lensky.

Let me say that again: Fritz Wunderlich!!


 

Interesting thing about this production, the ending is different. After Onegin exits in anguish, Tatiana has a bittersweet interlude to herself. She pulls out the letter she wrote to Onegin, and she reflects on what has happened.

All this has been a great learning experience for me. On the minus side, I have not gotten around to much of the Wagner. Here I was looking forward to the Met's Wagner week and all I have watched is the first act of "Tristan und Isolde" which, now it is too late to finish that. I do have some comments but they can wait.

This Coronavirus lockdown different-opera-every-night thing is great but it is like traveling on a whirlwind tour -- you know, 10 cities in 10 days.

Sometimes it is better to spend a week in a city and get to know it! That is my situation with "Eugene Onegin." I fell behind. I could not help it.  I do know the Wagner operas much better but this was new territory for me, and I had to linger a little longer.

Plus, "Tristan," I just could not clear the time in my life. These Wagner operas mean a lot to me and you cannot watch them just anytime. You have to have time when you can concentrate, when you can give them space and attention. You have to treat them with respect.

It is like when you turn on the car radio as you are running errands and they are playing Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony or Beethoven's Ninth, you have to change the station. Masterpieces need space and attention.

I am glad I did right by "Eugene Onegin."

It is a masterpiece!

Losing it with "La Boheme"

So the other night -- Wednesday, this was -- I watched "La Boheme." Howard watched it with me -- I said something about Date Night and guilted him into it.

End result as we say in Buffalo ... I cried buckets.

I was astonished at myself. I did not think "La Boheme" would get me like that. I mean, I knew it was sad, but not in the way some other operas are sad, operas that hold a higher place in my lexicon. You forget how good this opera is, how good Puccini was.

That last scene!

I should mention this was not the Met production. I am having a rocky relationship with these Met free streams. I want to watch them but my timing is off. I end up looking for them too late and in this situation what happened was, I had it ready to go, and I could watch it, but there were no subtitles. I think after the allotted time they cut out the subtitles.

Which, maybe I could deal with that, but Howard could not. So I worked fast and said prayers to St. Anthony -- please, St. Anthony, find me a good "La Boheme" -- and I found this.



It stars Anna Netrebko. I  believe it was a little abridged, but that was fine for my purposes.

It was more than fine actually. Peeking at the Met production earlier that day, when it had subtitles, I was a little dismayed at how slowly the first act moved, with Rudolfo burning his play. I had no problems with it, but I worried Howard would.

You have to watch out for opera newbies! They are fragile creatures.

And so we watched this. At first I worried it was kind of broad, kind of jerky. But as the opera went on we both fell into it. That winter scene was beautifully filmed. My brother George, I always think of him when I see this, I have to tell him that. Once we were watching "La Boheme" at the Canadian Opera Company he said he loved how that part rang true to him, about how the couple is about to break up but they decide to stick together until the spring.

That is true to life! George is right.

Put it off! Kick that can down the road.

Anyway. That scene is beautiful, with the snow drifting down, and Anna Netrebko and Rollando Villazon, they're both so beautiful, you can't stand it. The snow is in their hair. That music. It's all so glorious.

Then you get the last act. I was broadsided by it. What gets me isn't really that Mimi is dying. It's how the other bohemians behave, standing around helplessly, doing what they can The one sells his coat, and Musetta sells her jewels -- I started getting tears in my eyes and I was desperately trying to blink them back. I totally lost it when Musetta began praying to Our Lady. Dear Musetta is such a toughie, and to see her humbling herself like that -- I was trying so hard not to cry I was gasping.

Finally I said something to Howard to try to explain myself and then I was actually sobbing. I could not stop.

Howard tried to reassure me. He said: "The software --"

Meaning that the software Puccini put in place still works.

The word "the software" is code with us for that. I have probably written about it. In this case it did not make me laugh. I only cried harder. But that only proved Howard was right.

This software, it still works!

Our Wagnerian quarantine

Such dramatic times we are living in! And next week, the Metropolitan Opera is celebrating that. That is all I can think.

It is Wagner week!

There are different Wagner operas being streamed every night. Or every afternoon, or whenever you feel like watching them. I watched "Carmen" a few days ago mostly in the morning. Opera in the morning, it's weird, but nobody knows what day it is any more, and things like this have less and less relevance. Opera goes with morning coffee as well as it goes with evening wine, as long as you do not have any other commitments that you cannot ignore, cancel, or postpone.

The Wagner schedule is this (click on the link above for more info):

Monday: Tristan
Tuesday: Rheingold
Wednesday: Walkure
Thursday: Siegfried
Friday: Gotterdaemmerung
Saturday: Meistersinger
Sunday: Tannhauser

Can you beat that? I had been looking forward to The Flying Dutchman, which unfortunately had to be scrubbed because of the Coronavirus, the Wuhan Virus, the China Virus, COVID-19 ... never has a virus had so many names, you know?

But much as I was looking forward to the Dutchman this little schedule is a dandy consolation prize. I am especially anticipating "Die Meistersinger." That is a picture of it up above, complete with a hefty Walther von Stolzing. If Walther does not look like a biker something is wrong!

I wonder if anyone is planning on watching every single Wagner opera next week. Including the "Ring" cycle, right in the middle.

I think I will!

5 operas with English subtitles you can watch free on YouTube

Opera in the time of Coronavirus! I love that the Metropolitan Opera has its free stream going on, a different opera every night. Imagine if you watched all of them. I just might.

I respect the Met for the idea, which I share, that we cannot get through a crisis like this without opera. We need it as much as we need hand sanitizer and toilet paper. We require it.

All this being said, my initial attempts to access "Carmen," the opera promised to start off the series, were unsuccessful. I was having trouble accessing the site. Opera fans across the country must be mobbing it. With which, as a public service, I thought I would list a few operas you can watch free on YouTube, operas that have English subtitles.

Here is the "Carmen" the Met promised us but the video keeps stopping. I will look for another one. But I am not going to forget about this one. The Carmen is Elina Garanca who seems to me to strike just the right tone. She looks perfect, too. There she is in the picture up above.

Onward, damn the torpedoes! Here is an old survivor, a '60s production of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" starring Wolfgang Windgassen and conducted by Thomas Schippers. Unfortunately it is only Act III, Scene 1, which is all that exists. But... better than nothing! And... it has subtitles!!
Here is Wagner's "Lohengrin" with subtitles. From Bayreuth. This looks like a must-watch to me.




This looks like a pretty decent "La Boheme," and it has subtitles as well. Just from the couple of minutes I have watched the voices sound wonderful.

Here is a hipster "La Boheme," also with subtitles.



Karajan conducts Wagner's "Das Rheingold"! This fine vintage cast includes Thomas Stewart as Wotan. He is a terrific actor as well as a great singer.



Here is Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier starring Renee Fleming. I have already watched this in its entirety a couple of times. It is from Baden Baden in Germany. My father's family came from Baden Baden. Watch this one if you watch nothing else. It can occupy you for a few evenings.

So many operas.

So little time.

Mirella Freni and one unforgettable opera evening

When I read today that Mirella Freni had died, all I could do was picture her as Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro." I watched it when it was on TV. I was 14. I'm sure I have written about that here. I will never forget that opera as long as I live.


The production was made for TV and the singers were all good actors. I have seen parts of it here and there over the years on YouTube and such and unlike many movies that I loved in that era, this has held up.

Mirella Freni was so lovely. That last act! My dad came into the family room where I was camped in front of the TV, had been camped for hours. He loved classical music but he did not quite understand my obsession with Mozart. That was why I was watching the opera, I loved Mozart. I did not know a thing about opera but I loved Mozart.

"Isn't it over yet?" my dad asked me. It was about midnight or something.

I said, "No! There's still one more act."

He shook his head in disbelief and went up to bed.

Here is part of that last act. Beautiful Mirella Freni.



Her voice was so glorious. Her makeup and everything are so of that era. That was sort of a golden era of television, you know? The look everyone had.

That opera, that one evening, I never got over it. It made such an impression on me. You had Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count and -- already the future music critic, LOL -- I remember when I first heard him and I said, "Who's that?" He was just this giant and I could tell.  I have always known quality when I heard it. I was starstruck and I wrote to him and we had a little correspondence and he sent me two signed pictures of himself. What a nice man.

And I remember overhearing my dad telling my mom, "He'll never write to her." Ha, ha! Dad and I never stopped laughing about that. My father was the greatest. I wish he were still alive. I wish everyone were still alive, you know?

Looking at this production more recently I saw a funny thing I could not have known at the time. Hermann Prey was Figaro and he was always kind of second fiddle to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, I mean as far as their careers went. It was nobody's fault, not Prey's, not Fischer-Dieskau's, it was just the way the cookie crumbled. And in that opera, these two great singers, they worked that. There is one scene where Fischer-Dieskau blows smoke in Prey's face. Fischer-Dieskau was always a smoker, as I understand it. His Count smoked and he blew that smoke in Figaro's face and it is chilling to see.

I will have to find that scene and post it. I have other thoughts on that Figaro and Susanna / Count and Countess situation that I will also have to post. It has been on my mind.

But for now, Mirella Freni. That last scene, so magical. For years I never quite saw that last act the way I see it now. I was too taken up with the first act, with these characters jumping out at you, each scene more magical than the last. I loved Cherubino, who doesn't? In this production Cherubino was Maria Ewing. The singing, the staging, I was just entranced.

However then there is that last act, when Mozart comes up with all these overwhelmingly beautiful melodies and shoots them off one after another like a fireworks display. I wrote that in the paper once because that was how I felt it. It was like a fireworks finale, each creation more gorgeous than the last, and you just sit there with your mouth open, you don't know what to do.

What an opera. What singers I saw, that night when I was 14. Since I have gotten more into my Catholic faith I have been remembering not just to mourn the dead, but to pray for them. Dear God, have mercy on the soul of Mirella Freni. Welcome her into Your kingdom.

Ask her to sing Susanna!

Giacomo Rossini -- the software still works

To be honest I never quite realized Rossini's greatness until my tablet popped this commercial up at me the other day.

It's that aria from "The Barber of Seville" that you hear all the time. Well, being into classical music I have heard it all the time. But I heard it differently, watching this ad.

That software still works!

That is my husband's expression. It means that what worked in 1820 still works now. Watching that commercial, I was absolutely charmed. That music is pure fun. It's masterful. It pulls you in and keeps you there. It makes you laugh out loud.

Just when you think it's over, it goes into overdrive.

I know other people would be charmed and sure enough. Looking on YouTube at the comments, I read, "I came here for this song." And: "Who sings this song?"

Someone wrote: "Very nice song. Which is this language how can I get songs like this."

I still do not know exactly what the ad is selling.

But whatever it is, I'm buying!

8 reasons I want to see the Met's "Carmen"

I am thinking of going to the upcoming encore simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera's current "Carmen." My friend Meghan suggested it this morning and I said yes and later I was extra glad I did.

That was because driving around running errands, I caught the last act on the radio. It sounded great!

And now I am psyched. Here are a few reasons why.

1. As long as you get out of its way and do not screw anything up, "Carmen" will sound great. Georges Bizet wired it just right. You can pretty much go with confidence.

2. The last act is short but I love how right at the beginning of it, the music slams you into the heat of action. Listening to that bullfight music Bizet came up with, the music that you hear at the start of the overture, you can just visualize the excitement. I think in that respect it is just as good on the radio as it is if you are watching the opera. You just get this splendid spectacle in your head!

3. You also get this splendid spectacle in your head of Johannes Brahms watching "Carmen," which I understand he did over and over. I love watching an opera that Brahms loved to watch.

4. Roberto Alagna is singing Don Jose. It's a part he has sung forever and I would like to see him sing it.

5. Mantilla alert: On the radio hey were describing the singers as they took their bows. Carmen appeared wearing a black lace mantilla. At church I wear a black lace mantilla! That is my style.

6. Those great tunes. I personally love the Seguidilla, when Carmen starts singing about Lillas Pastia's inn and how they are going to go there.

That song is where the wheels come off!

The wheels sure come off in this Met production starring Alagna and Elina Garanca. Garanca is a live wire! I saw her singing Octavian in "Der Rosenkavalier" and she was marvelous in that but this is like seeing a completely different person. She really becomes Carmen. She takes it to the wall!



This production has a different Carmen, Clementine Margain. She has a tough act to follow! She will have to take it to the wall too. She has no choice.

Which brings us to ....

8. The character of Carmen herself ... as the country song goes, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Poor Michaela, singing to Don Jose about his mother, never stands a chance.

That is the moral of "Carmen" in case you were wondering. That is the takeaway. If you want to get the guy, do not sing to him about his mother.

Everything you need to learn in life, opera teaches you!

Pope Francis speaks of Wagner opera

Alex Ross over at the New Yorker is working on a book about Wagner and his effect on culture, and he wrote something very cool about Pope Francis and his knowledge of Wagner opera.

Mr. Ross put a link on Twitter which, it is great when something good comes out of Twitter, you know?

He writes in his story that His Holiness especially liked the conductors Wilhelm Furtwangler and Hans Knappertsbusch. Fu and Kna -- remember?

"He mentions the Furtwängler La Scala Ring and the 1962 Knappertsbusch Parsifal as prized recordings. He is known to be a Furtwängler enthusiast; earlier this year, Angela Merkel presented him with a Furtwängler box set. But he also makes a broader point about intellectual rigidification and self-deception, using Wagner's works as points of reference: “When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself. The deceived thought can be depicted as Ulysses encountering the song of the Siren, or as Tannhäuser in an orgy surrounded by satyrs and bacchantes, or as Parsifal, in the second act of Wagner’s opera, in the palace of Klingsor. The thinking of the church must recover genius and better understand how human beings understand themselves today, in order to develop and deepen the church’s teaching.”

Pope Francis, talking about Parsifal in the palace of Klingsor! And he has favorite Wagner conductors!

This is Francis we are talking about, not my man Benedict XVI!

They are the same generation though. Gentlemen of that era knew about music and the finer things.

Read the whole column. It's not long, and it's free.

By the way I agree with Pope Francis: the church must recover genius.

Let's start by getting rid of all the folk guitars.

Opera's most harrowing scene

Last night I went to see Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites" performed by Buffalo's Opera Sacra. That is Poulenc up above with his puppy dog. I do like picturing composers with their pets.

 I have written about "Dialogues of the Carmelites," here and there. I had never seen it. Years ago I remember my father telling me about it, about how it was about this group of nuns who went to the guillotine in the French Revolution. He told me how they died singing the "Salve Regina," how each time you hear the guillotine there is one fewer voice.

After seeing that last scene last night I wrote about it but it did not get it out of my system. You keep thinking, this happened! And the music makes it so intense. The first time the blade comes down, the chant stops as the sisters falter. And then it starts up again in a higher key.

I read that the nuns saw their martyrdom as a sacrifice to offer up in atonement for the sins of France and to ask God for an end to the Reign of Terror. Ten days after they died, the Reign of Terror did come to an unexpected stop.

The nuns are saints, known as the Martyrs of Compiegne, and their feast day is July 17.

There are a few stunning videos of this scene up on YouTube. There is a beautiful moment near the end when the last sister in line to die, the country girl Sister Constance, suddenly sees Sister Blanche, who was frightened and had deserted the order. That is one reason this opera gets me, I identify with Blanche, I am nervous, I am a worrier. Anyway, Blanche steps forward from the crowd and for a moment everything seems to stop.

Earlier in the opera you see that Constance is this chatterbox who annoys Blanche. It makes what happens between them at the end so touching. There are a number of ways you can play this final scene, imagining the characters various ways.

In this Metropolitan Opera performance from the 1980s, Blanche is the great Maria Ewing and her reappearance takes a different turn. Jessye Norman as the Mother Superior makes me cry. I think most people would view this performance as one of the greats.




The nun with the cane! One of the nuns in real life was 78 years old and could hardly walk. Apparently a guard knocked her down and she told him calmly that she forgave him and would pray for him. Another sister who gets to me in this Met staging is the one who starts losing her nerve and raises her hands over her head.

Another detail to watch for: the guy in the mob who surreptitiously makes the sign of the cross. In real life the normally jeering crowd did fall silent as the sisters died.

Here is another staging. Someone wrote this comes from the Canadian Opera Company -- like the Met up above, some years ago. I love the beautiful, very French-looking Mother Superior. Sister Constance is Harolyn Blackwell. I cannot describe this so I will just post it. The sound is low quality but watch it anyway.




It is described by many as the most harrowing, horrifying scene in any stage drama -- opera or play.

But how beautiful, too. What a tribute Poulenc created to this group of saints.

Martyrs of Compeigne, pray for us!

Classical gas

Saturday afternoon, and I am listening to "Tannhauser" on the radio from Bayreuth, and getting work done in the kitchen, as my father used to before me. My dad always used to listen to the Saturday afternoon opera and bake cookies, even before he was married and my brothers and sisters and I came along.

Anyway, I am enjoying "Tannhauser." And then the first act ends, and the announcer comes on. They talk about how this production, by Sebastian Baumgarten, is in its fourth and final go-round at Bayreuth. The announcer goes: "It ever really jelled with the public, set as it is in a bio gas factory."

In a bio gas factory??

I guess this is better heard than seen!

Because as I am listening I am seeing the production pictured above (as I did, once, in San Diego).

Instead of this (the Baumgarten production):

Kind of funny, come to think of it, making the Wartburg a corporation. That seems to be what they are doing, anyway.

But you get the idea you have seen all this before. Everyone wants to do something to be different, you know? A lot of the time with Wagner this seems to me like a mistake. Wagner meant these operas, such as "Tannhauser," in a medieval context. Take them out of the Middle Ages and you waste them.

Plus, someone has to say it:

Big yawn.

The Strauss Frau

Yesterday as we brooded over the story of Richard and Pauline Strauss, I was curious to find more pictures of Pauline de Ahna Strauss. This extraordinary woman, in the words of liner note author extraordinaire Robert Jones.

Let us devote to her a photo page.

Above is Pauline in Richard Strauss' now obscure early opera "Guntram." They met when she played this role, which was Freihild. This opera sounds like a Wagner knockoff. We will have to explore it.

It would be nice to find a picture that gave her a less severe look at her face. Oh, man. Look at this. Richard and Pauline, around the time that they met! Look at that baby face on Strauss. It gives you a whole new image of his personality.

This came from this Web log Interlude. It has an interesting account with the byline of Georg Predota of the romance between the Strausses. The author writes:  "When Richard composed his autobiographical tone poem “Ein Heldenleben”, the Hero’s companion is clearly modeled after Pauline. Strauss writes, “It’s my wife I wanted to portray. She is very complex, very much a woman, a little depraved, something of a flirt, never twice alike, every minute different to what she was the minute before."

By all accounts they really did love each other, you know?

A painting of Pauline.

A pretty picture.

Mr. and Mrs. Strauss.

They do seem to have loved each other, you know?

No explaining the heart!

An opera that is better heard than seen

Today while I was running dumb but necessary errands I caught the end of the San Francisco Opera's production of Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman."

That last scene!

It made me think of that time I was driving and had to pull over to hear the end of "Die Walkure." I turned off the car in the parking lot of PetSmart and I gave myself over to this last scene. I had not really listened to this opera in years. But I used to love it as a teenager. And I was surprised at how vividly the lines came back to me. I started saying them to myself before the singers sang them.

The Dutchman: "Segal auf!" Calling for the sail, then the anchor.

"Sag Lebewohl zum Ewigkeit den Landen!" I don't know if I have my endings and whatnot right but it is chilling: "Say farewell forever to land!"

And the orchestra, rising and crashing like the waves. Imagine it. Imagine the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship. Catching bits and pieces of the opera beforehand it was as if I could see it. Imagine being the Norwegian sailors, you have heard about the Flying Dutchman, it's this legend, and all of a sudden ... it appears one night. No, it can't be. Yes, it is. It is.

This terrible ghostly gray ship!

I love those choruses, the sailors trying to act as if everything is all right. But it is not! This is a very good ghost story, you know. It is really frightening. I will have to link to this essay I read about how Wagner was in a shipwreck, how he learned what it was like. He put that all into that music.



 Then at the end, Senta the captain's daughter, giving herself up to save the Dutchman. I had never seen the opera when I was a teenager. But I saw it in my head and it was better than any production. The daughter, this beautiful young woman, standing at the edge of the sea, in a white gown, her hair blowing. Like something out of Charlotte Bronte.

"Preis seinen Engel und sein Gebot!" Again I apologize if my endings are wrong, but it means "Praise your angel and his pronouncement!" And she says: "Here I am, true until death!" And she jumps.

What a scene! What a situation! You love it as a teenager. And as I listened to it today I saw it as I saw it then. It is all over in a flash then and the Dutchman is redeemed and you hear that ghostly call of the ship and then the music changes, it becomes magical and tender. You hear that music at the end of the overture too.. You see the sky clearing, the curse of the Dutchman evaporating, the mists rising, the stars coming out. The angels looking down. That is how I saw it as a kid and I saw it that way today too.

I am sure whatever the San Francisco Opera came up with was not as good as what was in my head. Let me check and see.

Sure enough, judging from this picture of Greer Grimsley as the Dutchman, nope, it wasn't.

He looks like a guy in a biker bar at closing time! Ha, ha!

But in all fairness, in the opera pantheon, "The Flying Dutchman" is a tough one to get right.

How can it live up to your imagination?

Los Angeles and "The Magic Flute"

I was listening to the Los Angeles Opera's "The Magic Flute" just now on WNED. The staging seemed kind of boneheaded, from what I could make out. Just for one thing, they had the Queen of the Night as a spider. The Queen of the Night isn't supposed to be a spider.

The magic touches are real fun as you can see in this video.



You can get creative with "The Magic Flute." I am not being a grinch and saying you can't. You can do a million things with it. Artists including Maurice Sendak, whose work appears up above, have had a great time with it. If this production could have let go of that silly '20s look they were trying to get, it would have been magic.

But you have to keep the basics. It is a fairy tale opera and when you start making Tamino not look like a prince and Papageno not look like a bird catcher, you are losing something. And about the Queen of the Night, she is supposed to be beautiful and cool and fun to look at and eventually you figure out who and what she is. Her appearances are supposed to be show stoppers, and they usually are.

Another thing about the Los Angeles Opera production, I give the thumbs down to the snips they gave you here and there of Mozart's piano fantasies. You cut and paste this music like that, it shows your superficial "shuffle" relationship with it.

However.

That opera's ending always gets me!

Maybe it's the triumph of good over evil. In the Catholic Church we are taught that good wins out in the end, that God will triumph over the forces of darkness, that the battle is already won. "The Magic Flute" is set in ancient Egypt so they are singing about Isis and Osiris. Anyway, good over evil, the sun coming out, everyone happy, the battle is won.

So it was with the Los Angeles Opera. At the end you just hear that chorus and you forgive everything. Maybe that was the point, who knows.

In this Metropolitan Opera clip the chorus in question starts at 3:39. That is Kathleen Battle as Pamina and she does a kind of neat feisty skip when she joins Tamino for their walk up to where Sarastro is waiting. Sarastro is Kurt Moll -- kind of handsome, I never knew what he looked like. This is several years ago and they don't have the L.A. Opera's special effects but it is simple and good. And the Queen of the Night is the Queen of the Night.



One of these days we will compare closing choruses of "The Magic Flute" in how it looks in various productions. Meanwhile, because this is a tough Monday and we need the oomph, here is an audio clip that gives you some translations.  This just has the music but I like what the poster wrote: "Turn up the volume more and more while listening."

Do it!

 

Bizet meets Buffalo

On The Buffalo News' Gusto Blog today I wrote about the "Carmen" coming up in the Metropolitan Opera's High-Definition Summer Encore series.

Thinking about "Carmen" makes me think of my friend Gary.

Last summer, or maybe it was the summer before that, Gary joined a construction crew working on Grant Street on Buffalo's Lower West Side.

He saw the advantages to working on the crew. He said, "Now I can ogle girls freely."

Not only that but he was working near this business where every day the girls came out on break and sat around smoking, just as they did in "Carmen."

It was "Carmen" come to life! I braced myself for the worst. But luckily everyone came through that summer OK. They only narrowly did! There were some close calls as I remember.

I read somewhere that one of the biggest fans of "Carmen," when it first came out, was Johannes Brahms. He went to see it multiple times. I love that, the idea of Brahms going to "Carmen."

I can see what he liked about it! It is a first-rate drama.

Viva la diva

Only I could make Chicken Tetrazzini ... and then realize it was the death anniversary of Luisa Tetrazzini, the diva the dish was named after.

Seems like fate! A most fitting thing when it comes to opera.

See, she died April 28. I checked the calendar and sure enough.

Here is Luisa Tetrazzini singing with a recording of Caruso.



There is something so moving about that clip. Seeing her listening to Caruso singing ... then all of sudden makes up her mind to jump in.

She is said to have said in her later years: "I am old and fat but I am still Tetrazzini."

That is the spirit of a diva!

She lives on through her recordings, through her legend, and through Turkey Tetrazzini, or, in m case, Chicken Tetrazzini.

Try it and drink a toast to her.

Bedroom community

 Ben Heppner singing the Italian Singer's Aria from "Der Rosenkavalier" ... that is so last week.

This week it is Jonas Kaufmann.

Howard and I were laughing yesterday at how Jonas handles the part. He behaves so Italian! He kind of swaggers good-naturedly in and is all smiles and charm.

The old guys watching the score are completely believable.

This clip comes from Baden-Baden, Germany, where part of my family is from. The costumes are kind of creative. They are modern era but somehow fit in among the wigs and breeches of the footmen. I always enjoy this scene, where the Marschallin is receiving petitioners in her bedroom. Imagine that, you hold court in your bedchamber for this parade of people who are bowing and scraping.

One thing bugs me, though. I am not impressed with the bed. This big, sloppy, lumpy bed, it looks like the futon in my old apartment.

But the singing, no problem with that. Kaufmann always sounds like a baritone to me. Something mysterious is going on there. He brings a lot of power to the aria and also I like his sense of fun.

Bravo!

Sir Tristan meets his match

Love this story about the Tristan monument in Cornwall, England, being moved to make way for a bus stop.

He apparently fought Lancelot (see picture above) but now he must fight the transit system!

It sounds totally like something that would happen in Buffalo.

The story is not as bad as it sounds considering that the stone has already been moved at least once. Isn't it the whole point of a gravestone that you can stand there and think whose body lies there? So that was already lost, if what I am reading is true.

Meanwhile, I am watching that post-Apocalyptic looking clip they put with the story. Whoever staged that "Tristan" production did not break the bank on it, that is for sure. What is that in the middle, a chair with a sheet over it?

I like that entire site, "The Wagnerian." I had never seen it before. It seems to be run from England. I just might have to subscribe to it to keep up to date on all my Wagner news.

This got me laughing:

The Wagnerian is published by S.M. Moran. Educated at Eaton and then Oxford,  Seb has had a long career in a range of professions, but specializing in public relations. While, much of that career has been spent in the UK, he has also spent  brief periods  in the Middle East, India, Africa, the Himalayas and Switzerland. Now retired, Seb spends much of his time divided between Wagner, sports and his club in London. 

Bravo, Roberto!

Gounod's "Faust" has been on my mind thanks to a production this weekend by Buffalo Opera Unlimited that I went to last night.

While studying up on the opera I fell in love with the performance above by Roberto Alagna.

Every once in a while you see something that just makes you think, "That's how it's done."

Alagna steps into that role of the young Faust so beautifully. His lovestruck smiles, the joy and wonder in his voice ... he really makes you love that character and wish the best for him.

He is so natural, so unhurried. Plus, just the quality of his voice, how controlled he is, the subtleties of his dynamics, the smooth bel canto tone.

Then at the end of the aria, how he puts on his top hat and strikes that pose, and the crowd goes wild.

Tremendous.