[This continues the previous posting.]
PBS also ran the operas themselves, on succeeding evenings. The only night I saw an opera from the very beginning was the first night (Das Rheingold), because I kept forgetting to tune in on time (see Note of April 15, 2012 for more on the failing memory). And I did not last the night with that one; I simply became too bored, pure and simple.
Indeed, I have to say I found all the operas much less enthralling than I did the documentary, "Wagner's Dream," on Monday evening. I guess I've discovered I am not a Wagner opera fan. Too long, too slow, too lugubrious, almost utterly lacking in the duets or rousing ensembles that I so enjoy in other operas. Instead it's a matter of individual singers singing their dialog at one another, no "songs" you can hum afterwards. On top of which I found the story of the Ring pretty stupid, and painfully slow to develop.
In the documentary we had been treated to some singing by some of the principal singers, e.g., Deborah Voigt, who was singing Brunhilde for the first time and was a little nervous about that. Alas, her big number, The Ride of the Valkyries, comes at the very beginning of the second opera (Die Walkure), so since I forgot to tune in on time, I missed that. I had thought that some of her singing in the documentary sounded a bit shrill, and apparently she came across in performance somewhat that way, too -- in the inevitable Comments that now accompany any news report on the Web numerous people said she sounded shrill, or just didn't sing as well since she'd lost so much weight. Couldn't speak to that, having never heard her when she was fat. But the singing she did in the last opera (Gotterdammerung) seemed more controlled and full-bodied.
I was also sorry to have missed the famous Valkyrie scene because this was one that had been featured in the documentary, with the poor Valkyries scared to death during rehearsals, each on her own separate board (horse) that would tilt back and forward as she "rode" it. I'm wondering if they looked more properly confident, like true maiden warriors, in performance.
In "Wagner's Dream" we'd also heard from the singer who was stepping in at the last minute -- as in four days before Opening Night -- to replace an ill Siegfried. I was delighted, and I admit astounded, to learn that this singer, the tenor Jay Hunter Morris, was from Texas. Knowing Texas as I do, I have to wonder how any young man growing up there could become enamored of and involved with opera; the culture simply does not encourage that sort of thing. Later, when I looked up Hunter Morris's biography online, I learned that he didn't really discover opera until he left Texas, that the music he had been involved with growing up was gospel, singing in the church choir, performing with a couple of garage bands, that sort of thing. Much more Texas-like. Listening to him talk in backstage interviews was amusing, because of his very pronounced good-ol-boy accent -- then he goes onstage and sings his heart out in German.
Indeed, the opera which he literally carries, since he is in virtually every scene (Siegfried) singing and singing and singing, is the one I watched the most of, simply because I was quite taken with him. He's very handsome -- in his make-up he looks amazingly like a blond John Barrymore, and in his acting is even a little hammy, like Barrymore could be -- and he can certainly sing. Not shrill at all. And I was impressed at the high energy level he had to maintain throughout, as well as the fact that he had so much to memorize!
Because the operas are full of villains, there were lots of guys with wonderful deep voices (just as heroes in operas have to be tenors, villains have to be basses). I especially liked Hans-Peter Konig, who sang the role of Hagen, the son of the evil dwarf, Alberich (and note that the latter was very black, while the former was very white. I continue to have trouble with this kind of color-blind casting. Aren't there other good black basses out there who could have played the son?) At any rate, Hagen illustrated one of the other problems I had with various characters: I didn't realize at first that he was a bad guy, actually found him quite sympathetic. Same was true of the dwarf Mime, who had reared Siegfried. Despite the apparent love and care of the dwarf, Siegfried openly despises and ridicules him. This initially made me look upon Siegfried as mean-spirited and selfish, until I (finally) learned that Mime had actually cared for Siegfried all these years, in hopes that he would help him (Mime) get hold of the Rhinemaidens' gold. This latter fact is an example of the absurdity of much of the story; the fact that I couldn't always tell who was a bad guy and who was good I'm inclined to fault Wagner for.
The last opera is ridiculously long -- five hours -- and I finally gave up after about two. My thought, as I stumbled off to bed was, well, I've finally seen, and heard, some of the famous Ring Cycle, but it's just not my kind of opera. Give me Carmen swishing around in her gypsy skirt and singing "Et si je t'aime, regarde toi" any day.
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The Man Behind the Curtain
Last week I watched the most fabulous show on PBS's Great Performances. It was a documentary about what it took for the Metropolitan Opera to put together new productions of all four operas in Wagner's Ring Cycle, for their 2010 - 2011 season. The emphasis was on the technical problems involved in creating and manipulating the very elaborate set that was used for all four plays.
I love shows that take you backstage, whether we're talking movies, plays or operas, which are of course singing plays. I love seeing what it takes to produce the magic we then see "out front." And this program served to remind me just how very important the technical crew is to any kind of production. I first learned this during my one semester as a drama major at the University of Texas. All acting majors were required to work on tech. crew for at least one production a year, which is an excellent idea, as it keeps those future "stars" from thinking they're the only important part of a play. I pretty much sucked at everything I had to do, during my stint on the backstage crew for Somerset Maugham's play "The Constant Wife," everything from painting flats, to helping to move the heavy sons-of-bitches from place to place, to pounding nails into them to connect one to another; but I had my eyes opened to the important role played by all the backstage folk, from lowly stage crew like me, to the people on lights, to the people on sound, to the poor assistant director who had to try to keep everybody happy and doing their jobs (the director just told people what to do).
On the Ring productions the technical crew was especially important, because of that behemoth of a set that was basically a bunch of boards side-by-side -- one reviewer said they looked like a line of piano keys; they made me think of a bunch of ice cream sticks -- that could be tilted at any angle from completely horizontal to completely vertical. So you would have part of them lying at the horizontal, serving as a raft on which Siegfried and his horse were traveling, while the boards to either side, at a tilt, and with the help of fabulous lighting, became the water. And shortly thereafter became the walls of Gunter's magnificent house. Moving those piano keys up and down -- as we learned on the documentary "Wagner's Dream" -- took a lot of unseen manpower, all wearing black from head-to-toe. And long before there were any performances the work done by these unsung backstage heroes was of enormous importance in getting the production stage-ready.
One thing that delighted me was seeing all these big, burly guys in black t-shirts and blue jeans working on an opera. And this is what these guys do for a living. They use their muscle, and mechanical know-how, not to put up a high-rise, but to put works of high art on display.
The Machine, as everybody was calling it, was incredibly complicated and expensive to produce. For one thing, it was developed and built in Quebec, then had to be transported to New York. Then they had to shore up the floors of the opera house's wings, because they couldn't handle the weight. And as I've mentioned, it took a lot of people to make it do what it was supposed to do, all of whom had to be paid. After seeing it in action in the actual performances, which were shown on successive evenings, and which I'll discuss next posting, I couldn't help agreeing with a number of first nighters -- and professional reviewers -- that The Machine was basically much ado about not very much. If nothing else, moving it from one position to another was a painfully slow process. In the documentary you saw that the singers were frequently fearful, working on it, especially when it was tilted (which it frequently was). Even in performance, they often looked clumsy as they tried to navigate on it.
In his interviews the director, Robert LePage, said he was interested in combining elements of the cinema with the usual spectacle of opera. I can't help wondering why. He also made the telling comment that "they," meaning the Met big-wigs, had naturally been wanting a different kind of take on the new productions from him, something that hadn't been done before. Well, they got it, but I for one question whether it was worth the expense, the labor-intensive effort (combined with the huge technological investment), the effect on the performers and the performances themselves. I give it a thumbs down.
But the documentary about it was splendid!
I love shows that take you backstage, whether we're talking movies, plays or operas, which are of course singing plays. I love seeing what it takes to produce the magic we then see "out front." And this program served to remind me just how very important the technical crew is to any kind of production. I first learned this during my one semester as a drama major at the University of Texas. All acting majors were required to work on tech. crew for at least one production a year, which is an excellent idea, as it keeps those future "stars" from thinking they're the only important part of a play. I pretty much sucked at everything I had to do, during my stint on the backstage crew for Somerset Maugham's play "The Constant Wife," everything from painting flats, to helping to move the heavy sons-of-bitches from place to place, to pounding nails into them to connect one to another; but I had my eyes opened to the important role played by all the backstage folk, from lowly stage crew like me, to the people on lights, to the people on sound, to the poor assistant director who had to try to keep everybody happy and doing their jobs (the director just told people what to do).
On the Ring productions the technical crew was especially important, because of that behemoth of a set that was basically a bunch of boards side-by-side -- one reviewer said they looked like a line of piano keys; they made me think of a bunch of ice cream sticks -- that could be tilted at any angle from completely horizontal to completely vertical. So you would have part of them lying at the horizontal, serving as a raft on which Siegfried and his horse were traveling, while the boards to either side, at a tilt, and with the help of fabulous lighting, became the water. And shortly thereafter became the walls of Gunter's magnificent house. Moving those piano keys up and down -- as we learned on the documentary "Wagner's Dream" -- took a lot of unseen manpower, all wearing black from head-to-toe. And long before there were any performances the work done by these unsung backstage heroes was of enormous importance in getting the production stage-ready.
One thing that delighted me was seeing all these big, burly guys in black t-shirts and blue jeans working on an opera. And this is what these guys do for a living. They use their muscle, and mechanical know-how, not to put up a high-rise, but to put works of high art on display.
The Machine, as everybody was calling it, was incredibly complicated and expensive to produce. For one thing, it was developed and built in Quebec, then had to be transported to New York. Then they had to shore up the floors of the opera house's wings, because they couldn't handle the weight. And as I've mentioned, it took a lot of people to make it do what it was supposed to do, all of whom had to be paid. After seeing it in action in the actual performances, which were shown on successive evenings, and which I'll discuss next posting, I couldn't help agreeing with a number of first nighters -- and professional reviewers -- that The Machine was basically much ado about not very much. If nothing else, moving it from one position to another was a painfully slow process. In the documentary you saw that the singers were frequently fearful, working on it, especially when it was tilted (which it frequently was). Even in performance, they often looked clumsy as they tried to navigate on it.
In his interviews the director, Robert LePage, said he was interested in combining elements of the cinema with the usual spectacle of opera. I can't help wondering why. He also made the telling comment that "they," meaning the Met big-wigs, had naturally been wanting a different kind of take on the new productions from him, something that hadn't been done before. Well, they got it, but I for one question whether it was worth the expense, the labor-intensive effort (combined with the huge technological investment), the effect on the performers and the performances themselves. I give it a thumbs down.
But the documentary about it was splendid!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
May the best voice win
The other night I watched the most wonderful show on PBS. Called "The Audition," it was a documentary that followed a group of aspiring young opera singers as they prepared to compete in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera's National Council competition. Five winners are ultimately selected, out of about 1500 hopefuls across the country. What we the audience were treated to were the excitment, the musings, the practice sessions, of the approximately-20 semi-finalists who had made it to the New York audition. Filming took place during the week preceding their final performances, which would determine the winners.
Absolutely fascinating. I love behind-the-scenes theatrical films anyway, and this one had the added benefit of all this splendid singing. Every one of those young people had a beautiful, beautifully trained voice. It was also interesting meeting the different personalities. There were three young women who were the traditional operatically-hefty -- one of them commented to the camera that she knew there was more of an emphasis these days on physically attractive singers, but she hoped the judges would be concentrating on singing ability, and not on "the weight issue" -- whereas one of the young woman who was very slender indeed, admitted that she had a problem getting the fullness of sound that some parts demanded. The oldest in the group (at 30), was a black man from Houston who had had to take time out from his training for several years because his financial situation became so desperate the sheriff was knocking on his door. Initially I was least impressed with his performance, but as the week went on, thanks to various work-shops they had for the contestants, his self-confidence seemed to increase, and his performance improved.
The contestant we saw the most of was easily the most neurotically bent on winning; his ambition was palpable and his paranoia that "politics" would interfere with honest judging rather sad. When the five winners were announced at the end, his name was the last to be called, and there was a lengthy pause before it was -- indeed, some-one in the group still waiting in the wings muttered "Is that all?" -- and when his name was called you had to breath a sigh of relief, as he gave a great cry of exultation, and strode onto the stage. For my goodness, if he hadn't won, what would he have done?
In an earlier Note (Oct. 24, 2009) I had wondered aloud what made some men want to sing for a living. You really have to wonder that about men who want to be opera singers. If nothing else, how many boys are even exposed to opera? One of the Metropolitan Opera people who gave a pep talk to the contestants mentioned the fact that a recent survey had shown that the average age of opera goers was 65. "Twenty years ago it was 45," he said. "Our audience is aging on us." In your typical American family opera is just not part of the musical scene, to the extent that there is a musical scene. So the pool of opera lovers -- people who would expose their children to opera -- is very small. And from that small pool come this group of boys who like it enough, and like singing that way, to try to make a career of it. To me, amazing.
I was so pleased at the end, when we were told where the winners and the other finalists were one year on. One of the hefty women, Amber Wagner, had signed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Angela Meade, the hefty, but actually quite beautiful, woman who had been con-cerned that her weight would be held against her, had stepped in as understudy at the Metropolitan itself. Our rabidly driven Michael Fabiano, had appeared at Teatro alla Scala, more commonly referred to as La Scala. You can actually catch Fabiano singing on YouTube (I tried to insert a link here but had no luck -- but an Internet search under his name will bring up several videos of him singing.) He really has a fabulous voice, and when he won in 2007 was only 22 years old, which both his fellow contestants and the judges commented on with disbelieving admiration.
The news that made me happiest was that Ryan Smith, he of all the financial woes, had had his debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
And then, I was devastated by the dedication at the close of the program -- to Ryan Smith, who died of lymphatic cancer in Nov. 2008. No question that Fate has a twisted sense of the ironic. The only thing you can feel good about is that at least Smith had his 15 minutes of glory. He was on top of the world, the world he had chosen, for only a moment. But for a moment.
Absolutely fascinating. I love behind-the-scenes theatrical films anyway, and this one had the added benefit of all this splendid singing. Every one of those young people had a beautiful, beautifully trained voice. It was also interesting meeting the different personalities. There were three young women who were the traditional operatically-hefty -- one of them commented to the camera that she knew there was more of an emphasis these days on physically attractive singers, but she hoped the judges would be concentrating on singing ability, and not on "the weight issue" -- whereas one of the young woman who was very slender indeed, admitted that she had a problem getting the fullness of sound that some parts demanded. The oldest in the group (at 30), was a black man from Houston who had had to take time out from his training for several years because his financial situation became so desperate the sheriff was knocking on his door. Initially I was least impressed with his performance, but as the week went on, thanks to various work-shops they had for the contestants, his self-confidence seemed to increase, and his performance improved.
The contestant we saw the most of was easily the most neurotically bent on winning; his ambition was palpable and his paranoia that "politics" would interfere with honest judging rather sad. When the five winners were announced at the end, his name was the last to be called, and there was a lengthy pause before it was -- indeed, some-one in the group still waiting in the wings muttered "Is that all?" -- and when his name was called you had to breath a sigh of relief, as he gave a great cry of exultation, and strode onto the stage. For my goodness, if he hadn't won, what would he have done?
In an earlier Note (Oct. 24, 2009) I had wondered aloud what made some men want to sing for a living. You really have to wonder that about men who want to be opera singers. If nothing else, how many boys are even exposed to opera? One of the Metropolitan Opera people who gave a pep talk to the contestants mentioned the fact that a recent survey had shown that the average age of opera goers was 65. "Twenty years ago it was 45," he said. "Our audience is aging on us." In your typical American family opera is just not part of the musical scene, to the extent that there is a musical scene. So the pool of opera lovers -- people who would expose their children to opera -- is very small. And from that small pool come this group of boys who like it enough, and like singing that way, to try to make a career of it. To me, amazing.
I was so pleased at the end, when we were told where the winners and the other finalists were one year on. One of the hefty women, Amber Wagner, had signed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Angela Meade, the hefty, but actually quite beautiful, woman who had been con-cerned that her weight would be held against her, had stepped in as understudy at the Metropolitan itself. Our rabidly driven Michael Fabiano, had appeared at Teatro alla Scala, more commonly referred to as La Scala. You can actually catch Fabiano singing on YouTube (I tried to insert a link here but had no luck -- but an Internet search under his name will bring up several videos of him singing.) He really has a fabulous voice, and when he won in 2007 was only 22 years old, which both his fellow contestants and the judges commented on with disbelieving admiration.
The news that made me happiest was that Ryan Smith, he of all the financial woes, had had his debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
And then, I was devastated by the dedication at the close of the program -- to Ryan Smith, who died of lymphatic cancer in Nov. 2008. No question that Fate has a twisted sense of the ironic. The only thing you can feel good about is that at least Smith had his 15 minutes of glory. He was on top of the world, the world he had chosen, for only a moment. But for a moment.
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