Summer Reading for Opera Lovers

As the prospects for opera diminish (at least anywhere near Santa Barbara), one's mind naturally turns to summer reading. For the start of the extracurricular reading season, I cannot recommend Daniel Handler's Watch Your Mouth enthusiastically enough.

Watch Your Mouth is a novel in which the narrator, Joe, relates the plot of his life as an opera. The tragi-comedy of his relationship with Cyn (a.k.a. Cynthia) after his junoir year in college is followed by his description of the 12-step program that he adopts to free himself from the damage. Both Joe's experience as the lead tenor in a darkly comic tragedy and his efforts to move through the 12-step recovery process are uproariously funny and thick with references to literary, operatic, and personal growth traditions.

Handler's prose is scintillating. He manages to weave seamlessly the self-consciousness of operatic drama with the self-consciousness of the narrator's search for escape from his theatrical fate. This skillful storytelling even includes directions for the orchestra and vocalists, choreography, stage design and direction, and leitmotifs. It will warm the hearts of opera lovers, and it shows us that opera itself is a wonderful vehicle for depicting the trials of a dysfunctinal family (which we probably knew anyway--thank you, Wagner).

Give Handler a try, although beware, Gentle Reader--it is opera with the taboo sex and not just the suggestion of it.

Tosca in L.A. or Hello Dolly in Rome

I attended Tosca at the Los Angeles Opera on Sunday, June 8. Adrianne Pieczonka did a lovely job with Tosca, and Juan Pons played supremely evil Scarpia well. In this opera, I find Cavaradossi to be a bit uninteresting, and while Neil Shicoff did a nice job, I thought Scarpia and Tosca were the emotional center of the piece.

Unfortunately, the staging of the work did not live up to the fine singing. The set and costumes were distinctly American, sort of Hello Dolly meets Early Whorehouse in Rome. The costumes were early 20th century or late 19th, and the visual theme was carried by the red floor, which seemed out of place in the church and at the prison (Acts I and III). I suppose it was supposed to be highly associated with Scarpia and convey his menace, but its turn-of-the-century American flavor made it unthreatening. In addition, the failure to follow Puccini's stage direction ended up confusing the moral quality of the action. Tosca did not seek to absolve her sin by washing her hands after the murder, and her change from a white costume to the a black costume for the killing was heavy handed and blunted the emotional complexity of her character. In the final act, she did not jump off the parapet (or otherwise off herself), and the opera ended with her going out the back door of the prison yard. In the end, she came off frivolous rather than wrecked.

There was an unusual amount of furtive eating out of cellophane bags and chatting during Acts II and III. I was sitting in the gods, and this may be the norm up there on a Sunday afternoon. It's not my usual spot. This was my last Los Angeles Opera for the season, and I look forward to Wagner especially next season.

Dudamel Conducting Berlioz Now on iTunes

Gustavo Dudamel's recording of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" can now be downloaded from iTunes. It is amazing! Even the recording will make your heart beat faster. He is so wonderful. Every nuance of this symphony comes alive--love, joy, tenderness, despair, shame, dread, terror--it's all there. The whole orchestra is so articulate here, and the soloists shine in perfect balance. This is a really really super conductor. Holy cow! I love this guy!


I submit this post in poor imitation of Score Desk. Only she could possibly do justice to how great this guy is.

Weird Folk

Last night's performance at the L.A. Philharmonic included several of Debussy's "Preludes," Stravinky's "Les Noces," and Salonen's "Piano Concerto." The highlight of the performance was the Stravinsky work re-arranged to replace the four pianos with a full orchestra. The work adapts some peasant poems that address mundane wedding rituals, and while the text was impossible to discern amid the clang and clatter of the Asian-influenced music, the voices and orchestra did evoke the sense of loss and excitement surrounding the event. Moreover, it brought to life the warm, jangling sound of Russian church bells, which if you haven't heard them, are an exciting and exotic relief from the long, pure peals of the Western variety. Susan Narucki, the soprano soloist, did a fine job; her clear and rather piercing voice punched through the orchestral sound well. It was very difficult to hear Kelley O'Connor (mezzo) and the male soloists, Gordon Gietz (tenor) and Kyle Ketelson (bass-baritone).

Debussy's musical impressions had the usual (at least for me) brief moments of sublimity, and Salonen's self-proclaimed piece for cybernetic organisms was unintelligible. For example, in the second movement, a violist stands for some virtuoso playing. The sea of computer inspired noise, however, made it impossible to hear her. I had been watching the percussionists, and all of a sudden, I realized that the violist was standing and playing enthusiastically. I thought, "Wow, how exciting! What's going on with that?" But, I never could figure it out.

Stravinsky developed his work from folk sources, and Salonen claims that his piece is a folk work for a post-biological future (to which I have to say: there won't be any music then--so isn't this a sort of pseudo-contextualization of a non-event?). Folk? Well, it's not my bag, so my lukewarm response should not deter you if you really feel up to the challenge.

For another review of this performance, check out Out West Arts' more sympathetic take on Salonen.