On the Gelb debacle and in defense of the Met's Ring

For the record, while I found elements of the entire cycle lacking, with Die Walkure in particular to be woefully misunderstood by director Robert Lepage, on the whole I seem to be one of the few people bloggers who found much to enjoy in the Met's Ring, as it was presented in the HD broadcasts over the last year and a half. Was it perfect? Of course not. What Ring cycle has been? Even the Chereau centennial has its flat spots, though from the productions I've seen in the house and on DVD, his and the Freyer Ring come closest to being as good as it gets (so far). The Met's new cycle is certainly far superior than that crap Gergiev and the Maarinsky took on tour around the world.

Below are links to my original posts on the screenings.

Das Rheingold
Die Walkure
Siegfried
Gotterdammerung

Two things come to mind in revisiting them. The first being that when properly executed, a Ring Cycle should create excitement with each successive opera.  While the Met wasn't wholly successful in this regard because of Die Walkure, on the whole they pulled it off,  delivering the best Siegfried I've ever seen (yes, in no small part due to the rags to riches tale of Jay Hunter Morris in the lead role), which really set the stage for Gotterdammerung. When Gott ended, I felt that overall, the cycle did get better, and more cohesive, with each opera.

The second thing, which oddly nobody seems to care about, at least amid all the other noise being shouted about Gelb, Lepage, and the Machine, is that this Ring Cycle delivered some amazing vocal performances, including two that will no doubt be regarded as legendary in the annals of Wagner performances from the Met: Eric Owens' Alberich and Jay Hunter Morris' Siegfried. The performances of these two singers were game-changers for their individual careers and set a new standard for future interpretations. If that weren't enough (though it is) there was also Gerhard Siegel's Mime, Stephanie Blythe's Fricka, Hans-Peter Konig's Hagen and Hunding, Jonas Kaufmann's drooling Siegmund, Deborah Voigt's Brunnhilde, Bryn Terfel's Wanderer and a slew of exceptionally well-sung performances in smaller roles including those of Heidi Melton and Franz-Josef Selig. That's a lot of great singing.

And one more thing- Lepage's Ring, for all it flaws (and there are many) is better than Schenk's tired museum piece. It's biggest failure is that it took too few risks. In fact, take the Machine out of it, and it took none. The big question is, does that failure rest at Peter Gelb's feet? That's a fair question, but not an easy one.

Now, as far Gelb's behavior and the whole Opera News/WXQR/whining-about-the-press and-bloggers debacle goes, Gelb's response was a bizarre case of shooting one's own foot in public. It made him look thin-skinned,  and more importantly, like a weak, insecure manager, as did his earlier op-ed in the NY Times defending the Ring. A man in Gelb's position should remain as above the fray as possible, and if he couldn't resist the urge to strike back he should have handed the job to one of his minions. But he really should have just shut up and let the show speak for itself. Now he has people doubting his sanity and clamoring for his head. His decision to have Lepage direct the company's premiere of Messiaen's St. Francis, which should have been embraced by anyone familiar with the opera and has seen Lepage's brilliant production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, has been met with scorn.  The Met's Board is now  faced with making a decision to now consider if he is fit to lead, which when everything else is taken into consideration, is a ridiculous situation because Gelb's tenure has so far been a success. As to why he decided to undermine himself in this potentially fatal way, who knows- maybe he can ask John Edwards for a referral to a good therapist who specializes in hubris and self-sabotage.

But who cares if Opera News reviews the performances at the Met? Opera News is the People magazine of the opera world- its lightweight, often banal coverage is part of the very reason bloggers exist in the first place. Who takes it seriously? Certainly not most of the people writing about what just happened. But this is America, and two things we do take seriously are censoring the press and abuses of power- and that's why this is a big deal. The whole episode now seems like its own opera, does it not?

If you're coming late to this story, NPR's Deceptive Cadence blog has a concise summary of the whole she-bang here. Also check out Anne Midgette, Brian and Lisa's blogs.

The Intermezzo Kerfuffle

For those of you who don't follow these things, the Royal Opera House recently threatened the blog Intermezzo with legal threats and a ban on attending opera there because of some pictures which appeared on the blog. Intermezzo published the letters from ROH and pulled all the posts containing the offending photos. This drew a vociferous response from the public and suddenly the ROH had a public relations disaster of their own creation.

As the uproar grew louder over the past 24 hours, ROH suddenly changed its tune and issued a public apology to the blog and its writer. All the bloggers are cheering about this new twist and it's been quite fun to observe now that it's turned out this way. It's all especially ridiculous because Intermezzo is a prime booster of the company with a very wide readership.

I once worried about some similar kind retaliation when I was ranting about how David Gockley (here and here) was destroying a perfectly fine company here in SF and I though they might bar me from the house because I could see SFO's ISP address constantly looking at those posts, probably waiting for comments which never showed up. I've given up ranting about him for now, since he's obviously not going anywhere, but with Intermezzo's triumph, I feel kind of inspired today.

And what perfect timing! The dullest season ever seen is getting underway tonight at the War Memorial Opera House.

No sex please, we're British...

A Beast in a Jungle has received a huge number of hits today for "A Serbian Film" and now I know why- the film was to be screened this weekend at the U.K. FrightFest, but has now been pulled from the schedule, which would have been the only screening of the film in the U.K..

British censors demanded almost four minutes of the film be cut because of  its "juxtaposition of images of children with sexual and sexually violent material." Festival organizer Alan Jones responded, “Film4 FrightFest has decided not to show "A Serbian Film" in a heavily cut version because, as a festival with a global integrity, we think a film of this nature should be shown in its entirety as per the director’s intention."

I'm still doubtful an unedited version would ever be released in the U.S. on dvd for the same reasons cited by the Brits, but at least it's been shown at two festivals.

The Top Ten and a sad state of affairs

Tim Mangan, a classical music critic for the Orange County Register, has been assigned to cover a new beat- celebrities. That's a damn shame because there's already so much of that kind of content in papers, magazines and online, while art music coverage is moving more and more to blogs. Newspaper critics who write about the arts provide value to a community. I obviously don't think they should be the only voices heard when discussing or reviewing a performance, but I do think it's important for a community to have a "voice" in print providing consistent coverage of the arts scene and local companies. Bloggers often can't rely on the pr departments of organizations for free tickets, so we often end up writing about things we really want to see or hear and besides, almost all of us have day jobs which can interrupt the length and  frequency of what we write about, not to mention the quality.

His re-assignment to fluff material is dismaying, but it seems we Americans have a never-ending appetite for junk news that doesn't really change or impact our own lives in anyway. We also like movies and pop art much more than we do things that may require a little bit more effort or knowledge to appreciate. This is true of this blog as well- posts on non-classical or opera performances or topics often have a much greater hit count than those subjects which compelled me to start blogging in the first place.

Below are the top ten posts which have drawn the most traffic to this site. Most of them are not about performances, which makes sense because performances capture a particular moment and aren't something you can get on Netflix, at a store, or the next tour. Interest in them has a brief and fleeting shelf life except for obsessives like me who love to read old reviews of works or performers I may not have yet experienced in person.

A Serbian Film is a Horrific Masterpiece (far and away the most read post, especially since it's only been on about 6 weeks)

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Corrected

KISS, Rock and Roll Madeleines All Night

Carie Delmar Punks the Huffington Post

James Brown Lives, but Record Stores are the Living Dead

Review of the Lepage "Damnation of Faust" at the Met

The T.A.M.I Show!

What Happened to the Ghost Writer's Mole?

Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void"

tied:

Merola Grand Finale 2009

Nostalgia Trip

As you can see, for an opera and classical music oriented blog (usually), those subjects are covered in only three of the eleven posts listed above. Still, you won't be reading about Tiger, LiLo or a Kardashian here any time soon. I am however, really looking forward to upcoming concerts by Shakira and Lady Gaga when they make their way to the Bay Area. You'll be able to read all about it right here.

"Merely kinky"? How about stunningly outrageous?

It's taken me weeks to make my way through what has to be the longest article ever published in the New Yorker- Janet Malcolm's Iphigenia in Forest Hills, from the May 3rd, 2010 issue. At 28 pages, minus cartoons, it's mammoth even by New Yorker standards. However, what kept me reading was the expectation of a twist eventually making its way into the narrative. The twist never comes, but I kept reading to the conclusion because of the sheer weirdness of the murder-for-hire trial it documents.

Shortly into it I thought to myself, this must be the most poorly-written piece I've ever encountered in this magazine. Now for me, the thought of finding anything poorly written in the NYer is a surprise, even though some of the "Shouts and Murmers" columns often fail to amuse me. But that's humor, and humor is a fickle thing. The writing in the NYer is almost uniformly excellent, though once in awhile (rarely, actually) I do find a sentence of dubious grammar. The poor quality of the writing in Malcolm's piece kept nagging at me though, with it's neither third nor first person narrative, detours into a collective omniscience and its 20 chapter length. There is just something off about it.

Then came the shocker, which made me want to go back to every issue since and check if anyone had commented on a sentence which appears in the article. The sentence stunned me. I read it twice. I read it a third time. And then I wondered how the hell it made it into print and that in the two months since the publication of this article I haven't heard nor read a single word about it.

What is the sentence?

It's surrounded by a loaded question and a distinctly presumptuous conclusion. Read this, which appears on page 55:

Here we come to another of the questions about Borukhova that blur her portrait
and give it its strange tinge. Why did she keep harping on the sexual abuse? If Daniel's "grave misconduct directed at the vagina of his young daughter" (or what Fass [Borukhova's attorney] called "inappropriate touching") actually occurred, it surely wasn't the cause of the child's fear of him - it was merely kinky. It would have served Borukhova better - it would have been rational and logical - to connect Michelle's fearful, clinging behavior during the visits to scary scenes of domestic violence.

The story is about the murder trial of Marina Borukhova, who was found guilty of conspiracy to have her husband murdered when she lost custody of her young daughter during divorce proceedings. Now yes, I have been super busy these past couple of months and way behind all the news and 2nd tier stories, but how has this comment not prompted any outrage? Have I missed it? Did it not happen? The Western world almost collapsed when one line from the long sermon of a fiery preacher was taken out context, creating a media maelstrom that almost derailed an entire presidential campaign. Yet here is one of the most respected magazines in the country, indeed my very favorite magazine, tacitly stating that the sexual abuse of a child wouldn't cause the child to fear an adult- it's "merely kinky"?

God damn America, what the hell is going on? And what the hell is going on with my formatting for this post? Sorry, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I hate Blogger sometimes.

The photo from the court room is by James Messerschmidt/Polaris.

In the Ring, with the Times

The coverage of LA Opera's Ring at the LA times has really been exceptional. Not only has classical music/opera critic Mark Swed been a highly visible presence online, but the Times has also sent theater and pop music critics to cover it from a different perspective. As someone who appreciates pop and rock as well as opera, classical and other forms of music, I have been impressed by the postings of Ann Powers, who usually writes the Pop and Hiss blog (part of the larger Culture Monster blog found on the Times' website). She gets it- and articulates it very well, even if I sometimes disagree with her choice of analogies.

I'm linking to all four of her reviews of the second cycle. The third one is about to begin- again, if you can, I urge you to take a trip to LA and see at least a part of it if not the entire thing. It's phenomenal and last time I looked you could get tickets for individual performances on Goldstar, which is sad for the company but great for the average Joe or Josephine. In the meantime, take a look at these:

Das Rheingold: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-music-critic-takes-on-wagners-ring-cycle-das-rheingold.html

Die Walkure: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-takes-on-the-ring-of-valkyries-and-vocal-magnificence.html

Siegfried: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-takes-on-the-ring-siegfried-at-los-angeles-opera.html

Gotterdammerung: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-reviews-the-ring-gotterdammerung-at-la-opera.html

Also Ring Festival LA has a pretty robust page happening on Facebook that keeps one apprised of what's going on about town. It only makes me wish I was there. The third and last cycle starts tomorrow night with Das Rheingold.