We're back -- my wife Anne Midgette and I have finished our whirlwind three-day residency at the College of Music at Florida State University. Anne, as of course I've said here many times, is the chief classical music critic at the Washington Post. We had a terrific time. And then, as soon as I got back, I conferred intently with people from a notable music school, and then had a performance of my music. But more on those things later.What Anne and I (and in a couple of cases one of us separately) did at FSU:    • spoke to … [Read more...]

I was listening to Il giuramento, an opera by Mercadante, the top dog among 19th century Italian opera composers whose work hasn't survived in the repertoire. He writes smooth melodies, whips up at least the appearance of drama, and expertly handles every aspect of the 19th century Italian style. So what's missing? I'd put it this way -- his characters never grab you, singing (as a subtext to whatever their words are) "I am somebody!" (To borrow Jesse Jackson's phrase.) Listen, by contrast, to just about any Verdi aria. Verdi's characters are … [Read more...]

I loved the comments on my recent post on opera titles. They built a safety net under my limited Italian, provided wonderful examples of the things I was talking about, and took my ideas a lot further. And I want to sent a happy shout to Cori Ellison, who commented, who works professionally with titles, and provides a point of view that the rest of us don't have. It all makes me want to state, or restate, some general points.First, it strikes me that we tend to think of titles as purely explanatory, a neutral element in an opera performance. … [Read more...]

A New York Times story says today that the New York City Opera will lay off 11 full-time employees. That's 13% of their staff. The company, as quoted in the story, says it needs fewer staff members this year because, well, basically the company won't be giving any normal performances. And there's of course an economic factor, too. Says a spokesman, quoted by the Times, the company "believes that this reorganization will position the opera to deal with current economic conditions." This leads to a cascade of questions. Did the company need … [Read more...]

I have a piece on Berlioz's operas in the new issue of Opera News. You can read it online here. It was fun to write -- I didn't know Benvenuto Cellini well, and didn't know Béatrice et Bénédict at all. Was very surprised to find out that B&B is a dud, in spite of a ravishing duet at the end of the first act. (Which has nothing to do with the plot -- one sign of the things that make the opera a dud, at least for me.) Among the many delights I had was listening to the first Colin Davis recording of Cellini, which I think is one of the great … [Read more...]

From one of my wife Anne Midgette's terrific pieces on Christoph Eschenbach in the Washington Post: He has long ago discarded the standard tailsuit in favor of a crisp Nehru jacket; at the Orchestre de Paris, where he is music director...a fashion house was brought in to design an alternative to the players' traditional formal dress.So it can be done, unless the players and audience in Paris just hate what they're wearing now. Any word on that?(Anne's other Eschenbach piece is here.)Added later: I searched online in vain for photos of the … [Read more...]

Followup to my post about the language of Italian opera, and how it's never rendered properly in opera-house translations.I was listening again to Il Trovatore, and came to the moment when the baritone realizes that the gypsy he's captured is not only the woman who burned his infant brother alive, but is also his hated rival's mother. The rival is named Manrico, and, as I listened, I heard the baritone labelling the gypsy with these words: "Di Manrico genitrice."Which is very fancy, to the point of silliness. First, it's backwards poetic … [Read more...]

My Wall Street Journal piece about the Don Rosenberg fiasco ran today. The link will take you to it.I said that the Cleveland Orchestra is in a bad position. Many people think they instigated Don's demotion at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, because his reviews of their music director weren't favorable. Feeding that perception is what looks like a conflict of interest -- the Plain Dealer's publisher sits on their board. They've been denying involvement, even in comments on blog posts, but each time they deny it, they seem weaker and less … [Read more...]

I'll have a piece in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow -- Saturday -- about the mess in Cleveland. Most of us know about it, I'd think. Don Rosenberg, for 16 years the very good classical music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has been demoted, presumably because his reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra weren't favorable enough.Not that my piece breaks new ground. The New York Times wrote a story, after Tim Smith, classical critic of the Baltimore Sun, admirably broke the news in his blog. The comments he's gotten, many from Cleveland, are … [Read more...]

...one of the world's top opera singers sings La Gioconda at the Met, and gets just polite applause for her big killer aria. But that's what happened to Deborah Voigt last night. What went wrong?She's not a strong presence onstage. She keeps leaning forward, which makes her look weak. And she's not a diva. When she first comes onstage, you don't even notice her. In the old days, when a star Gioconda made her first entrance, not singing a note, a shockwave went through the opera house, and the crowd would go wild. Voigt might think she's an … [Read more...]

OK, I can't resist. Just a few notes about the very blah show onstage at the Met Opera opening.Renée Fleming. No heat onstage at all, either in her singing, or her presence. Occasionally an emphatic moment in her acting, but none of the acting was sustained. She doesn't (to my ear) act through her voice in crucial long legato passages, like "Dite alla giovane" in the big Traviata scene with Thomas Hampson. But above all -- no heat! If this is our reigning prima donna, than opera isn't what it used to be, or what I want it to be. And one vocal … [Read more...]

It's a new delight for me. I used to think fashion was frivolous, not anything (God help me!) serious people should care about.Then I started watching Project Runway. And got hooked. Of all reality shows (at least in my experience), it's the fairest. To viewers, I mean. You can see the fashions the contestants design, just as well as the judges on the show can. You can see who does well, and who does badly. You can develop your eye, as I did. You can learn to see how fashion can be art. You can hear the judges -- expereinced fashion people, … [Read more...]

I went to the Metropolitan Opera season opening last night, and didn't see much glamour, in the audience or on the stage. And since we've been talking about clothes here, let me stress something that hit me very strongly. A man in black tie doesn't look dressy any more, at least not to my eye, and certainly doesn't look fancy or glamorous. I saw a few men in tuxes, and the effect was blah, no more striking than a man in a business suit. And why? Because fashion has moved beyond that. Fashion designers -- along with plain old non-designer people … [Read more...]

I've said before that I don't love English titles onscreen or in the opera house when an opera is sung in English. (Scroll down to the section on Britten's Peter Grimes if you follow the link.) They seem geeky, to say the least, and only reinforce the notion that opera is -- by nature -- remote and unfathomable. (Even while they make it accessible. There's a paradox there.) Well, late in July, I saw Britten's Billy Budd in a quite good production at the Santa Fe Opera. Of course there were titles, but I was also able to understand most of the … [Read more...]

On the heels of Joan Tower's 70th birthday concert at Merkin Hall -- where Joan presented music written by some of the musicians who've played her own work -- comes another triumph of participation. On October 2, Bang on a Can's office staff will offer their own performances, at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY. They call their music, variously, nouveau-bluegrass, smarty-pants avant;skronk, neo-indie-classicism, baroque noir (I like that one), and boogie-down anachronism-funk, while happily telling us that "such ludicrous descriptive categories … [Read more...]