Crying at the opera

Today I was listening in the car to Wotan's Farewell in "Die Walkure" and it got me thinking of all the times I have cried at the opera.

That is funny because I have not been to the opera that many times in my life. We do not have an opera company in Buffalo. We are working on it though! It would be funny if at the same time opera companies are folding in other cities we get one in Buffalo. Could happen!

But I digress. I have been lucky enough to go to a bunch of operas up at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto and at the Metropolitan Opera a few times and a dozen or so operas at Chautauqua. And I have also been to operas in Vienna and Munich.

Twice I have seen "Tosca" and twice I cried during "Vissi d'arte." There is something about that aria that gets me. This woman backed into a corner. What do you do, where do you go, you thought you did everything right and now this.

We have all been there, in one way or another!

That part where she talks about bringing the flowers to the altar and bringing jewels to the mantle of the Virgin. That kills me.

So that is one opera I have cried in, "Tosca." Then there was "Tannhauser" at the San Diego Opera which I went to with Leonard Pennario when I was with him for those months in California. The reason I cried in "Tannhauser" was not all because of the opera, it was because of a whole lot of stuff, most of which will have to wait for the book. I was about to go home. That was one thing. Also Leonard was sitting next to me, and for months we had been talking about going together to this opera, and now here we were.

The part where she sings, "Dich, teure Halle." It felt as if we had reached the end of this long road. Here is a picture of the production.


The biggest cry I ever had at an opera was during "Die Walkure." I went to Toronto to see it, with my sister. We cried and cried. I have probably written about this.

All through Wotan's Farewell we were thinking about our own dad whom we had lost in an accident some years before. You know how you have complicated relationships with your parents. That is what that opera is about. It is what Father Owen Lee, who used to do those opera commentaries, wrote. Those Ring operas are not about gods and dragons, they are about us.

Would we have cried watching this recent "Star Wars"-like production by the Los Angeles Opera? I cannot be sure!

Well, the Canadian Opera Company production was not exactly attractive either. They had ladders and construction materials and stuff lying around everywhere on stage. I mean, I could have designed something better. But still. As Wotan put Brunnhilde to sleep with the Magic Fire Music, my sister Katie and I cried and cried. Sitting there passing this soggy Kleenex back and forth. When the opera ended we could not get up. We were just huddled there exhausted and devastated. I think we were the last people to leave the Hummingbird Centre. Finally we pulled ourselves together and went and got a glass of wine and something to eat.

And Wotan and Brunnhilde were eating at the next table! I will never forget that. They were eating Buffalo wings, too. Wow, that was funny. We went and talked to them.

What a night to remember!

I wonder if Katie and I are the only ones who cry at operas.

I somehow doubt it.

Hear the castrato sing

One of my Twitter buddies is a pianist named Chris Foley who is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. He has this blog called the Collaborative Piano Blog that I am going to link to as soon as I figure out how to do links. But yesterday he veered from the business of piano and he posted a recording of the world's last castrato.

The world's last castrato was Alessandro Moreschi whom you can read about here, thank you Wikipedia. He was born in 1858 and he lived long enough to be captured on recordings.

Here is a picture of Moreschi at 22.


The clip Foley posted was of Moreschi singing Schubert's "Ave Maria." As Foley buzzed me just now, it is fascinating how mannered it sounds by today's standards. I like corresponding with a pedagogue at Toronto's Royal Conservatory! I am getting to like my virtual self.

I am not crazy about Moreschi's sound, though from what I read on the Internet, he was past his prime by the time those recordings were made. But then I am also not crazy about modern countertenors either. I admire them as artists and some of them are hip and good-looking but I just cannot warm up to their sound. To me there is just something weird about it, a man singing in a high voice.

But I find it fascinating to hear Moreschi. It is a glimpse of a vanished era!

Other clips of Moreschi are also on YouTube. Here he is at the Sistine Chapel and here he is singing Rossini's "Crucifixus."

Whatever you do, do not look at the comments! They are scary! A lot of fear and loathing and stupidity and anti-Catholic ranting.

Admittedly the concept of castratos does seem barbaric to us now, like Chinese foot-binding or slavery or public hangings in the square. But once upon a time at least in certain parts of the world those things were a fact of life, and smart and respectable people accepted them. As a Catholic in the 1700s, Mozart was used to castratos, or castrati, to use the correct plural. He is not on record as saying they were weird. I remember reading how he knew a castrato named Del Prato. Mozart would crack this joke and refer to him as "mio molto amato castrato Del Prato."

Which means "my dearly beloved castrato Del Prato." Dear Mozart. You had to love him!

Mozart also witnessed several hangings and floggings in the square, as long as we are talking about this kind of stuff. Judging from his letters the flogging bothered him more than the hangings. Maybe it was just the mood he was in. I will tell you one thing, if I saw just two seconds of one of those things, I would pass out.

How styles change, as Mr. Foley points out.

And how times change, too.

Collectors' edition

I love it when people collect music. For instance I collect recordings of Schubert's "Die Schoene Muellerin." I am not organized, so I am not sure how many I have. They are scattered throughout the house and in my car and in my desk drawers at work.

You never know when you will feel the need to listen to "Die Schoene Muellerin" and you have to be prepared! That is my reasoning.

My big regret is that I had a "Schoene Muellerin" sung by Peter Schreier with a guitar, and I traded it in a moment of weakness to my friend Peter in exchange for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing the complete Schumann lieder, on vinyl. I love vinyl and I love Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. But I miss the Schreier-with-guitar CD and I will have to give in and buy it on Amazon.

I should not have let Peter bully me into that.

But that is a matter for another day. My point is, I collect "Schoene Muellerins." I have maybe 30 of them.

And every once in a while, I realize that is nothing.

The other day I heard from this medical doctor and professor, this stranger. He wrote to me because I am working on this book about Leonard Pennario. I get questions about Pennario all the time, big questions, small questions. I delight in them! Anyway, this man wrote:

I am a huge fan of Leonard Pennario and have many of his old LPs. I have since digitized them and put them on CD where they sound great.I am a collector of recordings of the Liszt sonata and currently have over 460 different recordings of this work. Leonard Pennario made two recordings of the Liszt sonata, one in 1951 which was recently re-issued on commercial CD and the other in 1959 (Capitol LP P8457). I have both recordings but my 1959 LP is not too good. While I can work wonders on the computer cleaning up old LPs, this one is difficult as there is a huge gouge in the LP. I have always been looking for a better copy of the 1959 recording and hope that...

The note continued but I heard a roaring in my ears.

This guy had 460 different recordings of the Liszt sonata!

I am wondering how many collectors like him there are out there. Organized, driven, passionate. God love 'em!

Here is Pennario's first recording of the Liszt Sonata which my friend Larry helpfully posted on YouTube. That is an alluring picture of Liszt at the top of this post. I could not resist running it, in honor of my new professor friend, the Lisztoholic.

And look! I just found a bit of that Schreier-with-guitar "Schoene Muellerin." The one my collection is missing. Here it is.

Neat, huh?

Magic in a Mozart mass

This being May it might be fun to explore, off and on, some music devoted to Mary. There is so much of it and it is so glorious!

Here is something to start with. I have always found it interesting that Mozart's "Coronation" Mass was written for the crowning of Mary and not for the crowning of a king. The whole "Coronation" Mass is exquisite. But there is one particular part of it that kills me.

That is in the concluding "Agnus Dei."

A crash course in Latin in case you are new to this: The words to the prayer are "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis": "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us." At first, Mozart has the soprano sing it straight, without pause, to a melody of rapturous beauty.

But then when it repeats comes this weird moment. The singer is singing "Qui tollis peccata" -- "Who takes away the sins" -- and right then Mozart makes a surprise stop and the orchestra echoes the melody. Since I was a teenager that has given me shivers. It is as if there is something invisible in the room with you!

So you hold your breath. And time stands still. And then he lets the phrase finish.. "Peccata mundi."

"The sins of the world."

Ah.

That happens in this video at 3:42.

Then at 4:25 there is another magical moment where the music melts into the "Dona nobis pacem."

And at 5:10 all the voices start blending and building into the great triumphant fanfare that bursts forth at .. let's see ... 5:43. That is thrilling, almost like Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Such faith, such power!

Admittedly I have an overactive imagination. But I see faith in that shivery moment at 3:42. It makes you stop and think about what the words mean. Mozart might not have thought that out consciously but that is the effect it has. He stops the prayer and you feel something and you are not sure what it is.

It gives you pause.

That is a nice video, I have to say. Herbert von Karajan is conducting and Kathleen Battle is the soloist and throughout that vast quiet melody, they both look as if they are in a trance. It is touching to see Karajan mouthing the words. And this is not just a performance. It seems to be an actual Mass.

At the end they all look as if they are coming out of a dream.

What a beautiful way to pray!

Liszt and self-indulgence

Today on my Pennario Web log I found myself talking about a walk I took yesterday to the beach. I was listening to Jorge Bolet, pictured above, playing Liszt's arrangement of the overture to Wagner's "Tannhauser."

They were playing that on the Historic Pianists podcast out of Aspen Public Radio. The host, Andrew Todd, advised us not to try this at home. Ha, ha!

When I got home I found the Bolet recording on YouTube. It is here!

The second part of it is here.

There is no Great Pianists of the 20th Century CD set devoted to Leonard Pennario. Grrrrr. Boooooooooooo! Well, one day that will surely change.

I have a confession to make. I love these overblown Liszt treatments.

Once I asked my piano teacher, Stephen Manes, if I could play the Liszt arrangement of the Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde." Stephen said oh, Mary, that is so self-indulgent.

I went running to Earl Wild. I told him what Stephen had said. OK, full disclosure: I was calling Earl Wild to interview him for the paper. But I could not resist phrasing it the way I did. Because it was not long after I had that conversation, about "Tristan."

Earl Wild thought Stephen was out of line.

He said: "What's wrong with being self-indulgent?"

What a great philosophy to have!

Stephen gave me the Berg sonata to play instead and I have to say, it was a satisfactory substitute. I grew to love that strip tease of a piece, I will say that.

But I still would like to play "Tristan."

What's wrong with being self-indulgent? Wild is right.

Here is the man himself playing Liszt.

Susan Boyle and Sarah Chang

There is this British story flying around about Susan Boyle. Remember, the woman who sang that song from "Les Mis" and became a big celebrity last week on a show called "Britain's Got Talent." I had never heard of that show before!

And I have not thought of Susan Boyle much since.

But now along comes this story and I am thinking about her again. I guess the general public is still scratching its collective head over the idea that a woman who does not look great can sing great.

The Independent asks the question of has classical music gone too far in expecting its artists to look good. The paper interviews the glamorous 28-year-old violinist Sarah Chang. I interviewed her once! Sarah Chang, pictured above, is talking about how she chooses what she wears. "When I need a dress for the Brahms Concerto it must be substantial and robust, but if I'm doing a big Carmen concert the dress can be red and hot and fun."

That is funny. I could argue about the business of Brahms being "substantial and robust." I think Brahms...


... deserves a more romantic image. Also I do not think Sarah Chang ever wore a substantial and robust, whatever that means, dress in her entire short life.

But I don't feel like arguing about any of that now. I am sitting here drinking coffee and listening to the mourning doves and now turning my attention to that Brahms link above.

One thing, though, and I am sure I am right about this.

The Independent is wrong to blame the classical music world for this good-looks business. This is clearly a pop music world problem. The pop music world is the one that made news by sitting up and noticing Susan Boyle. The light bulb went on all these pop listeners' heads that said you know what? Every singer is not going to look like Beyonce.

The classical music world has always known this!

Besides which, complete lost in the shuffle is the fact that Susan Boyle did not sing a classical piece. She sang a song from "Les Mis." She is not even necessarily one of ours.

Why are our hands getting slapped?

Why is this British "tsk, tsk" directed at me as a classical music listener?

Haven't they ever heard the old joke "it ain't over till the fat lady sings"?

I guess not!

Books and old boyfriends

I am beginning to feel about the music journalist Norman Lebrecht the way I used to feel about old boyfriends. You would run across this guy after a couple of years, and he would seem so cute and nice, and you would say to yourself: "Why did I throw him back? I must have been wrong. Look at him. He is so smart and funny."

Then you agree to go out to dinner with him. And you have fun. And you go out to dinner again.

And then something happens, and you start to remember why you had those second thoughts. He's angry, maybe. Or he has issues. That is a phrase I love! Or he exhausts you. What I am getting at is, there is always something.

That is the way I am getting about Norman Lebrecht. I have his book "The Life and Death of Classical Music." And it kicks around my house. And every once in a while this book and I, we bump into each other.

And I read a few pages. And I think: This Norman Lebrecht, he is so cute and funny. There is so much in his brain that he cannot ever get to it all. And he knows everyone and he has all the dirt. That is a picture of Norman Lebrecht at the top of this post. He looks like a great guy to go out and have a beer with, I have to say that.

So I wonder: Why did I walk away from this book? And I pick it up again. And I might even -- shhh! -- go to bed with it. I am drawn in by all these stories Lebrecht is telling about which conductor threw which other conductor under the bus, and what record label exploited what performer, and this and that artist who looked nice but was really a nasty underneath.

But then it starts creeping up on me, why I let it go last time. It's angry, it's exhausting, it has issues. Plus I do not believe that classical music is dead. Last time I checked, which was five minutes ago, it was not.

I have to believe Lebrecht loves music but it does not come through in this book. I get a kick out of his blog especially this recent post he did on Bob Dylan. That is a great post!

Wow, you cannot say such things about Dylan in Buffalo, I have to say that. I wrote a review of a Dylan concert in Buffalo once where I brought up a few of the same issues Lebrecht did. I thought I was going to get killed. The Buffalo News got so many nasty letters they devoted a whole page to them.

So I like Lebrecht sometimes, for running his mouth. I guess I like him in small doses.

Like an old boyfriend.