Forgot, in my earlier posts about opera acting, to mention Carlo Bergonzi, one of my dearest, most loved opera actors. Which is interesting, because on stage he was more or less a lump. I remember seeing him late in his career in Ballo at the Met. When he first entered, you'd be forgiven if you wondered if he even knew he was on stage. Or supposed to be acting.Then he started to sing, and (especially if you knew the opera) you'd be mesmerized. Such truth, such revelation, such honesty, and such moment-to-moment acting detail in his … [Read more...]
Gerald Klickstein: Music education and entrepreneurship
“To be a musician in the service of music is not a job; it is a way of life.” –Isaac Stern, violinist (The Musician’s Way, p. 299) The music education community is swirling with talk about how best to prepare university-level students for modern-day careers. And for good reasons. The music business is undergoing economic and technological upheaval, and many musicians and colleges are struggling to adapt. Actually, some musicians appear to be thriving – those with entrepreneurial mindsets. Entrepreneurial Musicians Entrepreneurial … [Read more...]
Support for pop culture
Silly title for a blog post. Since, after all, the whole world swims in popular culture. It's only in the arts that people seem to have trouble with it. So, following on my post about art (and art-making) spreading into popular culture, and in fact into our whole society, here are endorsements of more or less that concept, from prominents arts people. Michael Kaiser, who of course runs the Kennedy Center (and is maybe the most prominent arts administrator in the US) said in his blog that the arts can't compete with popular culture, … [Read more...]
Four keys to the future
Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who write about classical music, for whom the last point might be rejiggered as "write vividly." But enough introduction. Here's my manifesto: We’re in a new era. To adapt to it, and build a new audience, here are four things you should do: Understand and respect the culture outside classical … [Read more...]
Erica Sipes: Words before Winterreise
[From Greg: A followup to Erica's guest post yesterday, about the performance of Winterreise she did in a small town. Here she tells us what she said before the performance, to introduce the piece to an audience that doesn't know classical music. This may be the best introductions to a classical piece I've ever seen, including all that I've made. An inspiration, in my view, for us all.] Ed and I are so glad that you have joined us here today. I’ve had the opportunity to perform this incredible set of songs before but I was struck today, as my … [Read more...]
Democratic pop
When -- at the Southwestern University symposium I've blogged about -- I said what I outlined in my last post, I got some pushback. One academic on stage with me said, rather pointedly, I thought (and she had every right to speak pointedly, if she wanted to), that it wasn't a good idea to equate artistic worth with popularity. Is that what I got because I said good things about popular culture? There's an ingrained belief among some reasonably large number of arts people that popular culture is, basically, defined by commercial success. … [Read more...]
What art is
Here's something I said at the Brown Symposium at Southwestern University, a gathering I raved about in my last post. What I said wasn't a formal presentation, since there weren't any, in the conversations I was part of. But it's what I wanted to add to the discussion. Our moderator, for the symposium on "Ethics, the Arts, and Public Policy" posed some questions we might want to address. (He was Paul Gaffney, Professor of Theater at Southwestern, and dean of their Sarofim School of Fine Arts. And also quite a fine actor, to judge from how … [Read more...]
Participation
Last week I had a lovely time at Southwestern University, in Georgetown, TX, near Austin. I'd mentioned earlier that I was taking part in their annual Brown Symposium, and judging a composition contest that was part of it. And now it's over. This was the 33d Brown Symposium, titled "Think -- Converse -- Act: The Salon and Its Histories." Three days of concerts, lectures, and discussions, plus a gallery show. The lectures, three of them, were about the history of salons, fascinating stuff, delivered by expert academics. My role, apart … [Read more...]
Age of the audience
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read more...]
Opera acting finale
OK -- my last post for now (most likely) on opera acting.First, I come to this subject with some experience. I've sung major opera roles, directed opera, conducted opera, and had productions of operas that I've written. Plus I've written incidental music for theater productions, and worked closely with stage actors. One of my operas was premiered with stage actors in all the roles. All this happened in the '60s, '70s and '80s, but still -- I did all these things. Stage acting varies. It's taught in different ways, and how it's done and … [Read more...]
Pushback
I'm grateful for the pushback I've gotten in comments here, about my post on opera acting. It helps me clarify my ideas and my presentation of them, and also clarifies some points about the future of classical music.One thing to note: when my wife, Anne Midgette, talked about problems with opera acting in the piece of hers I linked to, she wasn't just stating her own critique of how opera singers act (which I share). She was quoting opera singers who'd had a chance to act in films or on Broadway, learned some very basic things about acting … [Read more...]
Not acting
"Or [as my wife Anne Midgette wrote in her blog] yet another episode in my ongoing campaign to raise awareness of the lamentable fact t'hat opera is generally held to a lower dramatic standard than other forms of acting." She was talking about a piece she'd written in her capacity as classical music critic for the Washington Post, about a film in which an opera singer was cast in a starring acting role (with no singing involved). What emerged, as she talked to this singer (and to other opera singers who've found themselves acting outside … [Read more...]
The art of not listening
Yesterday I sat for a while watching the Met Opera DVD of Rossini's Armida, starring Renee Fleming (who mugs and gesticulates far more than she should, but I digress) This, I thought, was a perfect example of a piece written for -- and suited for -- a time when most of the audience didn't listen attentively. Or at least not to most of the performance. Please don't get me wrong -- I love Rossini. But this isn't top-drawer Rossini, or at least most of the first act isn't. (And the first act was the part I watched. I'm perfectly open to watch … [Read more...]
Detroit priorities
I haven't said anything here about the Detroit Symphony mess, even though it's the leading conversation topic these days among people involved with orchestras. Or at least it is in my experience. It's the one topic someone's sure to bring up.What's happening is a mess, of course, because it might finish the orchestra. The institution was reeling, financially, which i'm sure shouldn't be a surprise, because it's in Detroit, a city that's in such ghastly trouble that nearly one-third of it has been abandoned. Hard to write those words and … [Read more...]
Written in fire
Over the years, I've heard prominent people in classical music talk privately about the trouble classical music is in. I've sometimes heard things that go beyond -- even far beyond -- what these people would say in public. But now I've seen something presented in public that matches things I've heard privately. It's a blog post that Tony Woodcock wrote last week. Tony used to run the Minnesota Orchestra, and now runs the New England Conservatory. So his credentials -- and his inside knowledge of the classical music field -- are … [Read more...]