Totally Awesome OPERA KID!

THIS KID IS AWESOME! Nine-year-old Aiden Sagerman loves opera and he wants to find other kids who love opera. He's not having much luck, though.

Most kids think of operas as long, boring plays that are in some language they don't know. Other kids think of operas as good chances to get some sleep. Still other kids think of operas as both. And then there are kids like me; kids who like opera, kids who understand the plot.

A lot of kids misunderstand opera. Once I told a friend the plot of "Die Walkure." I knew it was the kind of thing he might enjoy. As soon as I told him it was an opera, he stopped listening and tried to change the subject. That's what has happened with everyone else.

There are so many reasons why I like opera: the complex plots, the amazing music, the interesting characters, the battle scenes and just the stories themselves. I really don't understand why other kids don't like it. What idiot came up with the idea that operas were boring for children?

Reading his commentary is one thing, but you have to hear him deliver it for the full effect. Cripes, three-fourths of the adults out there couldn't deliver a short commentary with this much expression and feeling. Dang it, I think I see now why Aiden loves opera...

Good luck, kid! Eventually the opera lovers all find each other somehow.

"Opera Kid: Nine-year-old Aiden Sagerman likes opera, and he's not kidding." (KQED Radio)

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"We Used to Wait" by The Arcade Fire

This creative video of the song "We Used to Wait" by The Arcade Fire is awesome, but the song itself is even awesomer! (Is "awesomer" a word? I declare it to be a word.) At the official website of the video, you can apparently (using Google Chrome) interact in some ways with the video -- I haven't tried that yet. Watch the video regardless, and use full screen and as high a resolution as you can -- there are a lot of little things going on here. And if you don't yet have the latest CD called The Suburbs by The Arcade Fire, get it now!

Arcade Fire - We Used To Wait (The Wilderness Downtown full experiment - HD 1080p) (YouTube)

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h/t Joe Jervis

Dmitri Hvorostovsky - Largo al factotum

I found this terrific video of Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) this past week. I looked it up for my friend Danny, who couldn't recall having heard this before -- but he recognized it when he heard this! Hvorostovsky is great in this performance, and the video has fabulous sound as well. Enjoy!

Dmitri Hvorostovsky - Largo al factotum (Japan 2005) HD (YouTube)

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EAR PLUGS, LOUISE!!!

So we've all seen this, right?



Um-hmm. So what do I think?

You wanna know?

You REALLY wanna know?

At least she sounds better than Charlotte Church, but you can tell she’s been trained to do this like a trick – she can sing that one aria (and maybe a couple of others) because she’s listened to recordings and is imitating them. How can you tell? She sang two notes and I said, “Renée Fleming.” SHE’S JUST IMITATING RENÉE FLEMING’S RECORDINGS!!! Right down to some of the little things about Renée that some critics don’t like. Even Charlotte Church had better knowledge of the mechanics of how to sing (even though she couldn’t do it very well). And our 10-yr-old divette (can’t be bothered to remember her name) is gonna tear up her vocal cords before she’s twenty if she keeps singing things like “O mio babbino caro.” Heck, HANS BUCHHIERL knew more about singing than this girl does (and he did it far better, too). So I am unimpressed. Lil’ Miss Divette will have her fifteen minutes and when she turns 13 they’ll tart her up like they did with Charlotte Church after someone finally told her, “Honey, you ain’t no feckin’ Callas!” And we’ll all forget about her by the time she’s twenty, unless she implodes like Lindsay Lohan. I hope Lil’ Miss Divette’s stage mother is happy. Grump. I’m gonna go put on a Renée CD!

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P.S. Oh, Jackie darling, Renée Fleming called? She'd like her hair back.




Hans Buchhierl, best boy soprano ever. He could sing rings around Lil' Miss Divette. Freaking...RINGS!!!

Coming Soon!

My story "Flying Fox" will go up at The Piker Press on August 9!






The Arcade Fire has a new CD coming out on August 3, entitled The Suburbs.

Don't let any opera singers cover these tunes, okay?

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Hopeless

The Arcade Fire -- the real deal. Accept no substitutes.

Oh my FSM. This classical music blogger sums it up perfectly. A marvelous analysis of everything that is wrong with Renée Fleming’s new CD, Dark Hope.

The same mistakes are repeated all over the record – Band of Horses’ sparse ballad “No One’s Gonna Love You” is transformed into a half-hearted syrupy mess. Willy Mason’s naïve “Oxygen” becomes overworked with the addition of synthesized strings.

What do you think would happen if you tried to put these strings on one of Renée’s classical albums? How is it ok here? Is there a good reason to accept lower standards because it’s a rock record?

No, there is no good reason, and that’s what forms the glaring fault at the heart of this project. Compliments for Renée’s voice, but what the hell were they thinking with these arrangements? They’re timid and totally without character. As with any other cover of a song, the artist has to have a point in doing it in the first place – what are you trying to say that wasn’t said in the original? Somebody grabbed some indie tunes for Renée to sing and did nothing to make her versions count. Coming on the heels of what I consider one of Renée Fleming’s finest CDs (Verismo), Dark Hope is just embarrassing. The bright hope is that they won’t try this again.

“A hope in the dark: Renée Fleming’s rock album” (Proper Discord)

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Renée Fleming's Dark Hope

I finally found a chance to listen to Renée Fleming's new CD, Dark Hope. My opinion is divided. Renée's voice is perfect on this disc, both bluesy and beautiful in all the right ways and far surpassing her run at jazz and soft pop on her CD Haunted Heart, which wasn't bad at all. But she has found a better and more substantial voice for pop/rock music here. The Renée Fleming fan in me is very, very happy.

However, the arrangements of the songs on Dark Hope are a little too MOR for my taste -- the rock fan in me wants more energy and aggression. My keystone song on the CD is "Intervention," originally done by The Arcade Fire on their CD, Neon Bible. This is an angry song with huge operatic themes and emotions (see the video, which is well-accompanied by clips from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin). Ironically, in the hands of the greatest active operatic soprano, this arrangement of "Intervention" fails to reach those emotional heights.

Renée Fleming, with that perfect voice, would be better served with more aggressive arrangements of all of these songs -- her delivery of the Letter Scene in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin has more emotional heft to it. So, my feelings about this CD are mixed. A missed opportunity in many ways. Renée delivered, but perhaps the fears of the producers kept the balance of the songs' imprint a bit too tame. Damn, this CD had the potential to be great.



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I'm in Ravenclaw House Myself...

Congrats to my best friend for a gajillion years Claudia White, flute-player extraordinaire, who landed an awesome gig tonight playing for a whole host of celebrities and guests as part of an orchestra at the grand opening of the new Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios in Orlando. I understand author J.K. Rowling will be there along with the stars of the Harry Potter films, and the orchestra Claudia is playing in will be conducted by none other than John Williams! Woo!

The degree of separation between me and John Williams has now been reduced to one. This is exciting! I was a John Williams fan before anyone knew who he was. Seriously, do you know anyone who actually owned (I may still have it somewhere) the original soundtrack recording of The Towering Inferno? On LP?!? I credit Williams’ lush scores with introducing me to the world of great orchestral music, laying the groundwork for my later interest in classical music. A favorite JW score? Too many to mention, and he has had his ups and downs. But who of my generation can forget that day when we first sat down to watch some brand new space adventure flick called Star Wars, and Williams’ iconic theme tore out of the speakers and into our ears for the first time? You knew in two seconds this was going to be the best adventure of you life ‘til then. Currently, I’d have to rank JW’s score to Catch Me If You Can as one of his finest, mostly because the jazzy riffs were totally unexpected. One of my most enduring favorites by him has to be his score to Empire of the Sun, a very underrated classic from Steven Spielberg that introduced us to some kid named Christian Bale – wonder whatever became of him?

And J.K. Rowling herself? Don’t get me started. This is the woman who took fantastic tales that most people regard as children’s stories and made them respectable for everyone to read. Outside of the pleasures of the Harry Potter series itself, would we have Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book or China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun without HP’s success? The best writers have long known that if you want to write inventive stories with memorable characters, you write for young people – or the young-at-heart.

Anyway, congratulations once again to Claudia White, who has put up with more of my insanity than any reasonable person should. I toast thee with Maker's Mark!

Incidentally, there's a live web feed available here tonight and Friday morning.

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Renee Fleming rocks out on 'Dark Hope'

As the big day approaches, here's a great article about the genesis of Renée Fleming's new CD, Dark Hope, featuring songs by The Arcade Fire, Peter Gabriel, and others. What's it like to tone down the sheer vocal power of an operatic soprano?

Kahne too wasn't sure he could pull it off. When Fleming first arrived in the studio to sing with his demo tracks, he was overwhelmed. "It was like a Ferrari going through a school zone," he said. "You sense the power, and once it gets out of the school zone, it can zoom away."

And can an old lady pull off this music written by young people?

The album's most discordant selection may be Mason's "Oxygen," a political folk-rock anthem for kids whose parents told them about Bob Dylan over dinner. A one-two beat propels such lyrics as "Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy, makeup and hair to the truth behind every face." The song's naked earnestness makes sense when you learn Mason wrote "Oxygen" when he was 17 in high school.

Can a 51-year-old get away with singing a teenager's protest song about Ritalin, TV and war?

"This is not new to me," Fleming said. "I'm mostly singing roles of 16- to 23-year-olds in opera. So I'm used to imagining a young person's point of view. Frankly, as we age, we don't change our thinking about wishing things were different. We're just more resigned to it. So it's fun to reenact what it means to be super-charged-up about something."

You're only as old as you feel, right? The CD is released in the U.S. tomorrow. I can't wait! Although I'll have to because Amazon hasn't shipped the dang thing yet. Hmpf!

"Renee Fleming rocks out on 'Dark Hope'" (Los Angeles Times)

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Renée Fleming is Everywhere!

A double-barreled Renée Fleming update, with two articles that focus on her upcoming CD Dark Hope. The first article, from The Times Online, focuses on the diva herself and her life, loves, and fans -- one of whom is the President.

Turning 50 last year was like crossing some sort of invisible line for the American soprano Renée Fleming. The opera superstar, who is known as “the people’s diva” and sang at President Obama’s inauguration — he is a huge fan — says: “It was an amazing shift, somehow, and I didn’t expect that to happen. It’s such a relief. Now I feel very young for my age! I think it’s much better to be a young old person than to be an old young person.”

The second article, from The New York Times, goes into detail about the new CD and discusses the role of crossover projects in the classical music world. About recording the CD itself:

As she has explained in interviews, the project was not her idea. Metallica’s managers, Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch, had long wanted to pair a classically trained singer with rock songwriters. After listening to some of the songs, she was intrigued enough to speak with the producer David Kahne. “David is so thoughtful and articulate that I become even more fascinated by the prospect of exploring a completely different use of my voice,” she writes in her liner notes.

They settled on 11 songs, chosen for their suitability for her voice, the meaning of the lyrics and overall qualities of mystery and elusiveness that reminded her of classical works she loves — songs like “Intervention” by Arcade Fire, “With Twilight as My Guide” by the Mars Volta, and a few older pieces, like Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” and, in a bold move, the Jefferson Airplane ballad “Today.”

Adapting her voice to rock took hard work. She and Mr. Kahne realized that it was best for her to sing in the range of her speaking voice, which is sometimes two octaves lower. Any idea that she would discard technique and just jam was quashed by Mr. Kahne, who, Ms. Fleming writes, enforced “stringent stylistic rules,” including a softening of diction and rhythm, less overt drama and no dropping of the ends of the phrases.

Of course, every great diva has her detractors.

Ms. Fleming, for all her success, has drawn tough criticism from a segment of opera buffs who find her singing mannered and fussy. “Dark Hope” will surely rile them further.

La Cieca, we're looking at you.

Needless to say, I can't wait to hear Renée's new CD.

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"Bevo al Tuo Fresco Sorriso," from Puccini's La Rondine

This is quite simply one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard in my life, featuring the incomparable Renée Fleming and the marvelous (and terribly, terribly cute) Jonas Kaufmann. Crank it up, people!

"Bevo al Tuo Fresco Sorriso," from Puccini's La Rondine.

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P.S. This is the concluding track on Renée Fleming's latest CD, Verismo. It's all about love!

Furries Sing & Furries Dance!

Oooooo, looky! Furries singing and dancing in a music video! I've never heard of this band but I guess they like furries. Now if I can just find an opera production using furries. Don Giovanni as an anthrowolf? Tosca with Baron Scarpia as a weasel? Anything with Renée Fleming as a gorgeous vixen?


Speaking of vixens, let's not forget the one genuine furry opera, Leoš Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen!

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P.S. I just found this page with some very cool furry art done for a production of The Cunning Little Vixen in New Zealand. Enjoy!



UPDATE: Some furry reax to the video here, including words from a couple of the fursuiters in the video! Yay!

Jonas Kaufmann!

I recently acquired Jonas Kauffman's CD, Romantic Arias. Oh, my... He sounds more Italian on that CD than most Italians do! Now I must get his German CD (Beethoven, Wagner, et al.) to see if he can pull that off too. He's done some great work at the Metropolitan Opera this past season, one of the main reasons why I bought the CD. And he's not too hard on the eyes either, is he?

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P.S. Yes, that's him in the picture. I know, I know...

Valery Gergiev: The Maestro of Petersburg

For my money, Valery Gergiev is the best living conductor, period. This video shows him performing Stravinsky's Firebird with the New York Philharmonic. I have Gergiev's recording of the complete ballet Firebird with the Kirov Orchestra, and it is AWESOME! And I've watched his Metropolitan Opera DVD of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin so many times, I'm likely to wear the darned thing out. Gergiev has a very muscular style of conducting, which makes his tender moments all the more heartbreaking. Although it's a hoary cliché, his conducting feels very "Russian," and from what the critics and fans say, that's an apt description of Gergiev's art.

Watch the video to the end and see how long he holds the final note of the Firebird. Wind players, take a deep breath!

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Tenor Brownlee Shows Race No Hurdle To His Career

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee is rising fast in the opera world. He has a terrific voice and amazing technique. Here is a fascinating article about him, not least because of the gobstopping racism Brownlee has encountered during his career. Mind you, this didn't happen fifty years ago -- this nonsense is still going on today.

But [Brownlee] also recalls the racism that dogged him as he tried to build his career.

An agent told him that he'd never succeed "because you're short and you're black,'" the 5-foot-6 singer says with a wry smile. Then, when he hoped to be hired by a second-rate American opera company he won't name, "they said, 'We can't, because you're black.'" (The company changed its mind after La Scala offered him the same part.)

One critic wrote of a Boston production of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" that "the worst embarrassment was the tenor, Lawrence Brownlee. Now I don't demand that the tenor look like Brad Pitt, but he shouldn't look like Al Roker, the Today Show's weatherman, or even worse, Oprah Winfrey in drag!"

Seriously, WTF?!? Are these people still living in the nineteenth century? Oy vay.

This reminds me of something that happened here in Kansas City about twenty-five years ago. The New York City Opera came to town with Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. In this production, Figaro was performed by a bass-baritone who happened to be black. This bothered neither me nor my friend Claudia nor, as far as I could tell, anyone else in the audience. But the critic at the time for The Kansas City Star just couldn't get past having a black man playing a traditionally "white" role, and spent a couple of paragraphs of his review complaining about it. The Star received quite a few letters from opera patrons criticizing the reviewer's idiotic comments, but the best letter came from a representative of the managing agency in New York that was handling the New York City Opera's national tour. This gentleman succinctly discussed the suspension of disbelief required by many, many aspects of live theatre and particularly in opera, starting with age differences in the cast (he mentioned having often seen Le Nozze di Figaro done with a Figaro who was much older than the singer performing Marcellina, Figaro's mother) and moving on to travesti roles, which are male roles played by women. And then this gentleman totally pwned the reviewer by reminding him of one of opera's most famous travesti roles, Cherubino, in the very same opera where the reviewer couldn't quite get his head around a black Figaro.

The Kansas City Star, to its credit, let that reviewer go when his contract expired.

Anyway, check out the article about the talented Lawrence Brownlee and listen for him on the Sirius radio Met Opera broadcasts -- I have Armida on the radio right now!

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Of Sondheim and A-flat: In the Wings with Elaine Stritch

The irrepressible Elaine Stritch has a few words to say about nearly everything, but mostly about Sondheim and singing.

"No Sondheim song comes easy to me. You depend on Rodgers and Hart for that. Those songs have easy brilliance. Stephen Sondheim gives you complicated brilliance. But once you get him, you got him. He makes you think a little bit. But those hours in a rehearsal room learning a song—those hours are rough. After that, it's a joy. It's like having a baby, it's like with anything that's worthwhile."

I hope I'm still that sharp when I'm her age.

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Gelb from the Met

So I need an excuse to post a picture of Renée Fleming?

Catnip for us opera fans, Vanity Fair's profile of the Metropolitan Opera with general manager Peter Gelb at the helm is fascinating, fun, and a bit worrisome, financially speaking. I mean, c'mon; you young'uns who love great big emotional drama like football and The Lord of the Rings oughta eat this opera stuff up like crazy!

Inside the opera house, 13 cameras captured every detail in high definition; the feeds were relayed to us in the truck. We could see the Ukrainian soprano Maria Guleghina backstage, getting ready to play the sadistic Chinese princess—the title role. Up front, the ushers handed out programs and guided people to their seats. “Guys,” the video director said, speaking through a headset to his cameramen, “I need audience shots. Young people. Is there anyone under 40? Find young people!”

Generally I like what Gelb has done while at the Met, and I say that as someone who admires Joe Volpe for his very different helmsmanship of the company during his tenure. (So things went south after 9/11 -- how is that Joe Volpe's fault?) I especially like Gelb's unified marketing message, using a single theme to bring together a season's programs with one, recognizable image. (Since I don't live in NYC, I don't know how that's playing out right now, but the concept and previous execution are good, FWIW.) Perhaps Gelb has been too quick to abandon old, staple productions in favor of disasters like Luc Bondy's Tosca production earlier this season (though innovation is good in opera, maybe the Met isn't the house to take those chances), but I remain very interested by the future plans Gelb has in store. If nothing else, I'll be listening on Sirius Radio tomorrow night to the premiere of Rossini's Armida, and hoping it all goes well, especially for my darling Renée!

Fascinating article. Slip a Renée Fleming CD onto the stereo and enjoy!

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Sondheim = Shakespeare?

I buy it. The intelligent writing, the surprising rhythms, the music inherent in both writers, the astounding characters and challenging stories and often despairing outcomes. The actor Michael Ball takes a look at Stephen Sondheim and ponders his greatness.

Sondheim has never written typical musicals – the kind made famous in the US in the 1940s and 1950s – he writes about the human condition, with layer upon layer of depth. His is musical theatre – like plays with music – not musical comedy, and there's a big difference. It's also why his legacy is so important: Stephen Sondheim changed the face of the medium.

Will we be performing Sondheim in 500 years? Like Shakespeare, like Mozart, like Bach, I hate to think of a world where we weren't doing so.

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Renée Fleming: Diva goes to the dark side

Here's an outstanding interview with Renée Fleming, from The Guardian, about Renée's unusual new CD called Dark Hope, due out in June. Renée is covering several indie rock songs, including tracks originally done by The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." But the album is not what you might think -- this could be one of the most interesting releases of the year, and not just for us classical fans.

First off, I love this quote:

The artifice of operatic expression amuses and sometimes embarrasses her. "It's a kind of controlled screaming. Basically we holler – in an extremely cultivated way, of course!"

Also this comment, sure to be argued over (the writer’s comment, not necessarily Renée):

…comparing Fleming's covers with the originals, I can't help feeling that she has a musical finesse and an emotional authority to which those whiny juveniles could hardly aspire. Welsh singer Duffy gargles her scales in "Stepping Stone" while Fleming skips up the ladder with exhilarating exactitude. Songs about being crossed in love sound petulant and self-pitying when delivered by teenagers; the same words are given gravity by Fleming, who without resorting to operatic exaggeration can suggest adult disillusionment and heartbreak. "Well," she said, "what I have to contribute is life-experience, not all of it good!" She meant her divorce, and the equally painful realisation that her career makes any other permanent relationship unlikely: few men are willing to dwindle into a consort, smiling from the sidelines as the diva is mobbed by worshippers.

I think "whiny juveniles" is a bit much; thank goodness that's not Renée's attitude.

Renée Fleming hasn't abandoned opera by any means -- she's getting ready to do Rossini's Armida in May at the Met:

Characteristically, Fleming views Armida as a victim, demonised by male fears. "Sure, she manipulates men. I love it when she simpers, 'OK, now I'm just gonna go die', all in order to get her way. But it's kind of tragic: feminine wiles are all she has. She's traded back and forth, and she has to rely on the tricks that we still go on using today. She's almost a caricature of what a woman is – or what society demands that a woman should be."

I can't wait for the CD or the Rossini! And you know where I'll be come October 9!

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Pollini Plays Bach

Speaking of classical music favorites, here's my favorite pianist, Maurizio Pollini, playing my favorite composer, J.S. Bach. Another birthday gift, I just popped this on to celebrate Bach's birthday today, and it is gorgeous -- intricate and meditative, as The Well-Tempered Clavier should be.

Pollini's Chopin works (Etudes, Preludes, and Polonaises) were among the first classical albums I bought thirty years ago, when I first discovered the joys of classical music. I have loved Pollini's playing since then, and I've been waiting twenty years for this Bach CD -- it was that long ago when I first heard that Pollini was going to record it.

I'm already salivating for book 2 of the WTC. Beautiful, beautiful music.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BACH!!!

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