The season opened with its usual ruffles and flourishes, and
the big story was the Metropolitan Opera—you’ve never
heard so much hype. Not in classical music. The Three Tenors
extravaganzas were sedate by comparison. Peter Gelb has
taken over the job of general manager from Joseph Volpe. The
latter ran the house from 1990 to this year. Gelb has come
from Sony Classical. The current line is that Volpe was
conservative, stodgy, and unimaginative, while Gelb is
fresh, daring, outside-the-boxy. Yeah, whatever.
Gelb canceled the gala that was scheduled to begin the
season, in favor of a production by Anthony Minghella of
Madama Butterfly, borrowed from the English National
Opera. Minghella is famous as a film director, responsible
for such movies as The English Patient, Cold Mountain,
and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Madama Butterfly is his
maiden opera. In an interview with The New York Times, he
said, “I don’t want to produce ‘grand opera,’ but the
opposite.” Well, swell. If the Met is going to cease being
the home of grand opera, it might as well close its doors.
The whole world produces the opposite of grand opera, in its
crappy little theaters; it does not need to capture the Met,
too.
Opening Night was preceded by a massive PR campaign. And on
the night itself, movie stars prowled the aisles, which was
nice. A little glam never hurt anyone.
And what of Minghella’s production? Parts of it are
beautiful and smart; other parts are gimmicky and
distracting. The Love Duet is accompanied by ooh-ah stage
effects, when Puccini’s music ought to have pride of place.
In fact, it is Puccini accompanying Minghella. The oddest
part of the show is Butterfly’s little boy, Sorrow, who is
not a little boy at all, but a puppet—and a
bizarre-looking one at that. From my seat, he/it looked like
Yoda, the creature from Star Wars. What’s more, the puppet
is carried around by a team of handlers—or whatever the
word is—draped in black, including masks.
Okay, that’s the production. And a performance—the
music-making—is more important than a production.
Unfortunately, Opening Night’s was bad. This was shocking,
because the Met’s music director, James Levine, was in the
pit. He did not conduct Butterfly like he cares for it
much. He was often cold, blunt, or indifferent, when the
score cries for beauty, sensitivity, rapture. Levine seemed
disengaged from the work, and often impatient with it. I
will repeat that this is shocking, for Levine can adapt to
anything. And he has certainly proven his worth as a Puccini
conductor: You will never hear a more arresting Tosca.
A Chilean soprano, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, had a hard time
singing Butterfly, although she acted well. And the
Pinkerton, Marcello Giordani, was in rough voice, straining
and sometimes bellowing. There was barely any tenderness or
bloom in the Love Duet at all. Giordani is a better tenor
than that. Maria Zifchak was adequate as Suzuki, and Dwayne
Croft was satisfactory as Sharpless. He always is, Croft—a
real reliable.
Subsequent evenings at the Met were just fine, even great.
Which was strange, because they were planned in the bad old
days, when no good happened, and dour conservatism reigned.
Across the Lincoln Center plaza at Avery Fisher Hall, Lorin
Maazel began his fifth season as music director of the New
York Philharmonic. His opening program offered staples:
Mozart and Beethoven. It began with the latter’s “Egmont”
Overture, which was bracingly good: taut, suspenseful,
powerful. When Maazel is on as a Beethoven conductor, watch
out.
Then came Mozart’s Concerto in E flat for Two Pianos, which
he wrote for two of his favorite pianists. I am speaking of
himself and his sister Nannerl. And, like a good brother, he
apportioned the parts equally. Playing with Maazel were two
famous pianists: Yefim Bronfman and Emanuel Ax. And, gosh,
were they bad; Maazel and the Philharmonic were no better.
All involved were stiff, severe, charmless. Absent was any
Mozartean wit or grace. It might have been a visit to the
dentist’s office.
Music is so strange, or rather, musical performance is.
After intermission, Maazel conducted the “Eroica” Symphony,
and it was willful, awkward—unsuccessful. Same composer as
the “Egmont,” and the same key, too. Vastly different
results.
In the ensuing weeks, Maazel was up and down, as expected.
But let’s consider some ups. Parts of a Firebird Suite
were thrilling. And a reading of Shostakovich’s Fifth
Symphony, while unconventional—Maazelian—
was
magnificent. At its end, you were drained, virtually
overcome. One of Maazel’s best concerts was an all-French
evening, which included Ravel’s short opera L’Enfant et les
sortilèges. Maazel is a celebrated conductor of this work,
having made a classic recording of it. In Avery Fisher Hall,
his understanding and élan were a joy to behold.
At about this time, Maazel also conducted Mahler’s Symphony
No. 4. This is that composer’s “Mozart symphony,” or
“Classical symphony,” and Maazel treated it with little
fuss. He injected no nonsense. The slow movement, in
particular, was beautifully shaped, and it deserved it:
Mahler himself thought that he had written nothing better.
The soprano in the fourth movement, outlining “a child’s
view of heaven,” was Heidi Grant Murphy—the soprano of
choice, in this work. It is no surprise that conductors
choose her. Her voice is pure, and her technique is solid.
Also, she is a smart musician. But the main thing is that a
radiant goodness exudes from her. And that’s what the music
has, too: radiant goodness.
Carnegie Hall opened with the Cleveland Orchestra, under its
music director, Franz Welser-Möst. They came in for three
concerts, the first of which was to have two soloists: the
bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff and the pianist Leif Ove
Andsnes. But, that morning, Quasthoff called in sick, and he
was replaced by Dorothea Röschmann, the soprano who was
singing Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Met. In the
Carnegie opener, she did well—if not her (supreme)
best—singing two arias from The Marriage of Figaro.
As for Andsnes, he, too, performed Mozart: the Piano
Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453. There is a world of
good about this pianist, and I have hailed it many times: He
is brainy, poised, and very, very clean. He has gobs of
technique, and, at the same time, he’s an enemy of excess.
Andsnes is an exemplary pianist, in many ways. But his K.
453 was maddening. It was terribly polite, terribly demure,
terribly correct—and really dull. I thought of a little
girl in a pink dress with poofy sleeves, pleasing teacher
(and not a very musical one at that).
Now, that image is ridiculously harsh, and excessive. A
critic, too, should be an enemy of excess! But Mozart’s
concerto has far more life, pleasure, and soul than Andsnes,
or Maestro Welser-Möst, was willing to bring out.
The conductor opened this concert with Franz von Suppé’s
Light Cavalry Overture, which was good to see programmed:
The light repertoire—meaning, the serious light
repertoire—has been slighted in recent years. It seems that
orchestras are embarrassed to avail themselves of this
literature, delightful and important as it is. When was the
last time you heard the Polka from Schwanda the Bagpiper,
or the Russian Easter Festival Overture, for that matter?
And Welser-Möst closed his concert with Strauss: not
Richard, but Johann Strauss, Jr. We heard a waltz, a polka
(speaking of those), and the Fledermaus overture. Not
every program need have a Bruckner symphony.
But the Cleveland Orchestra’s third concert at Carnegie did,
in fact, have a Bruckner symphony. It was one of his best,
and one of the greatest of all symphonies: the Fifth. But
first, Welser-Möst conducted a piece by Messiaen.
This was “Un sourire,” written for the two-hundredth
anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1991. We are now nearing
the end of the year that marks the two-hundred-fiftieth
anniversary of Mozart’s birth. You see how music is dogged
by anniversaryitis. The title of this Messiaen work—“A
Smile”—reflects the composer’s view of Mozart as always
smiling, no matter what. The piece doesn’t sound much like
Mozart, but it’s not supposed to, necessarily. It sounds
like Messiaen, with his bird calls, soft percussion, and so
on. The Cleveland Orchestra played “Un sourire” with
delicacy, transparency, and balance. Welser-Möst built the
piece interestingly. And a kind of tranquility descended on
Carnegie Hall—which, I feel sure, Messiaen would have
appreciated.
Then Thomas Quasthoff took the stage, to sing three concert
arias of Mozart. Yes, he was feeling better, Quasthoff was,
although he was not in his best voice (for whatever reason):
He was a little rough, and sloppier in his execution than he
normally is. I might say, too, that Italian is not his best
language: For one thing, the vowels were a little warm,
rounded, and Germanic. But, as you know, he has loads of
talent, and he gave the arias—particularly “Rivolgete a
lui lo sguardo”—great, Quasthoffian character.
Because the audience applauded ad infinitum, Quasthoff
provided an encore: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Quasthoff
loves spirituals, and makes great use of them, especially at
encore time. Moreover, he ends his latest CD—a compilation
of sacred arias—with “Swing Low …” On this night, he
tried to sing it with extra down-home flavor, and made a
hash of it: misjudging phrases, notes, and effects. But he
showed an enormous—enormous—vocal range, with a high A
at the top and a low D at the bottom. That, my friends, is
phenomenal. When he was through, of course, the audience
went nutso.
Let me tell you a quick story, which I’m 99 percent sure is
true. A famous singer was performing in Jerusalem, with the
Israel Philharmonic. She and the orchestra were out of
encores, so the conductor suggested, “Just go out and sing a
spiritual, unaccompanied.” She did—and, in front of that
Jerusalem audience, she intoned “Were You There When They
Crucified My Lord?” The applause, I understand, was a little
tepid and confused.
And how about Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5? Franz Welser-Möst
led a respectable account, if not a gripping or transcendent
one. The Cleveland Orchestra produced a wonderful sound,
most of the way through—its outpourings in the slow
movement were especially satisfying. There were many bobbles
in the orchestra, but not ruinous ones. Mainly, the Fifth
could have used more crispness, more spine, more rigor. In
the last movement particularly, Welser-Möst might have
applied more heart or drama. For me, there was too little
struggle in this Fifth, and too little exaltation. The
conductor was curiously relaxed, as if he were a California
surfer dude, instead of an Austrian maestro.
Since I mentioned sound, above, I might say a further, more
general word: In the space of a few days, the Cleveland
Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the Philadelphia
Orchestra appeared in Carnegie Hall. Was there a significant
difference—or any difference—in the sounds of these
bands? Specifically, does the “Philadelphia Sound” still
exist? I don’t believe so. Not really. With every passing
year, orchestras get less individual and more
international—even interchangeable. The top orchestras are,
in a sense, one now. If we desire the old variety, we’ll
have to turn to our LPs, or CDs, or whatever the latest
happens to be …
Back to the opera for a moment—not the Metropolitan Opera,
but New York City Opera, which opened with Handel’s
Semele. The stars of that show were the soprano Elizabeth
Futral and the mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, who is
Alaska-born. How exotic is that? What followed Semele was
a Carmen, starring Rinat Shaham, the Israeli mezzo. How
exotic is it to write “Israeli mezzo”? “Israeli violinist”
is natural, but “Israeli mezzo” is positively freaky—and
Miss Shaham is a marvelous performer, as I have noted
before. She made a delicious Carmen, in every way:
musically, theatrically, physically. If the Met doesn’t
schedule her, it is blind, deaf, or both.
In these first weeks, City Opera staged a gala, which was
introduced by Beverly Sills. The beloved soprano made her
career with this company, and she stuck up for it
vigorously. “City Opera,” she insisted, “is not the other
opera company at Lincoln Center.” That is the sort of thing
one ought to say at a gala. And Miss Sills is one of the
most splendid talkers in all of music, or American life. She
told several charming stories, one of which related that her
mother had made one of her first costumes. That was in the
days, Miss Sills pointed out, before union rules made such
things impossible. A lot of things were possible before
modern union rules: like recordings, radio broadcasts,
reasonable ticket prices …
A few highlights from this gala: Two veterans, the soprano
Carol Vaness and the tenor Vinson Cole, sang a duet from
Don Giovanni. Each was in fine form, with Vaness
imperious, characteristically. And who conducted this duet?
A real veteran, Julius Rudel, who worked for City Opera in
its very first year: 1943. It was a pleasure to see him, and
he acquitted himself well. City Opera music director George
Manahan conducted most of the concert, but Maestro Rudel
made two appearances (the other with Samuel Ramey).
It wouldn’t be a gala without the duet from The Pearl
Fishers, and City Opera presented two young singers in it:
the tenor James Valenti and the baritone Brian Mulligan.
They put over the duet adequately, if not with perfect
refinement. Neither would it be a gala without the Trio from
Der Rosenkavalier, which was sung by Pamela Armstrong,
Erin Morley, and Beth Clayton. The last two went on to sing
the opera’s closing duet, “Ist ein Traum.” All performed
ably. In a bow to Broadway, Judy Kaye came on to sing “Send
in the Clowns” (from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music).
She did so with admirable directness and dignity.
And Sam Ramey? He sang “Ecco il mondo” from an opera he
helped to make famous, really: Boito’s Mefistofele. Ramey,
though frayed, retains his authority, presence, and musical
ruggedness. The peak of the evening, probably, was Lauren
Flanigan’s “Una macchia è qui tuttora” from Macbeth. She
is simply a model singing actress, and she proved it even in
a gala concert: That was Lady Macbeth on the stage, without
question.
You may ask whether the gala ended with “Make Our Garden
Grow” from Bernstein’s Candide. That is an obvious ending
for a gala in an American house. No, it ended with a similar
ensemble: “The Promise of Living” from Copland’s Tender
Land. That’ll do, too.
I have said that Julius Rudel is a veteran conductor—born
1921—and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is of a similar vintage:
born 1923. The famed Polish conductor has had a rich career,
and he is best known in America for his leadership of the
Minnesota Orchestra, during the 1960s and ’70s.
Skrowaczewski is also a composer, as any musician worth his
salt had to be, once upon a time. In fact, Skrowaczewski
studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Someone, someday,
should draw up a list of people who did not study with Nadia
Boulanger.
The Juilliard School was wise to begin its performance
season with Skrowaczewski: He led the student orchestra in a
program of Brahms, Saint-Saëns, and … Skrowaczewski.
The man looks terrific, by the way, a classic handsome
Pole: wiry, craggy, a mane of pure white hair. He wears
prominent old-style glasses, as his colleague Otto Klemperer
used to sport. On the podium, he is spry and alert,
conducting from the shoulders.
The concert began with his Music at Night, adapted in 1960
from a ballet he wrote in 1949 (Ugo et Parisina). The work
is, indeed, night-like, now spooky, now stormy, now
alluring, now serene. The score seems to be telling us
something—relating a drama—but we can’t be sure what.
Skrowaczewski uses the whole orchestra—instruments both
central and fringe—and he uses it well. He was obviously
paying attention, under Madame Boulanger. And Skrowaczewski,
as conductor, was utterly engaged by the music, causing his
players to be engaged as well. But isn’t this the
conductor’s job? Don’t they all do that, especially when
conducting their own music? No, actually. Have you ever seen
clips of Richard Strauss?
Have one more veteran conductor, though not so veteran as
the previous two: Bernard Haitink, born in 1929. At Avery
Fisher Hall, he led the London Symphony Orchestra in
Beethoven symphonies—all nine of them, over five concerts.
I attended the concert
that included only one symphony: the
Ninth. Isn’t it amazing how, every time you hear it, the
piece still seems wonderfully strange? If it lives a
thousand years—and it will live as long as music—the
Ninth will never seem normal.
Haitink is in excellent shape, fighting trim, and at this
stage of the game he looks like Norman Podhoretz, the great
writer. These Beethoven concerts received near-universal raves.
But the Ninth was not so rave-worthy—an odd man out, maybe.
The first movement, to be sure, was superb. Haitink made it
taut, clear, and arresting. We were evidently in for a
memorable account. But the Scherzo was a surprise: sloppy,
hurried, and borderline indifferent. The intensity and sweep
of the first movement were gone. And the slow movement
should have been far warmer, more soulful, and more
yearning. Haitink did very little savoring, or even
enjoying. Again, he kind of hurried through. One reads that
the “period” people have influenced him, and it showed.
The last movement had its moments—its thrills—but it,
too, was sloppy and suspect. The vocal soloists were no
help. Gerald Finley—a fine baritone—had a miserable
outing, flatting all over the place. The tenor, John Mac
Master, was decent early on, but then struggled, and
flatted. The soprano, Twyla Robinson, was steady, but
sounded thin and shrill. And the mezzo-soprano? Well, one
can barely hear her in the Ninth. In fact, the mezzo in the
Ninth has one of the most thankless jobs in music—or one
of the best, depending: You get paid without really having
to deliver. (In any case, Haitink’s mezzo was Karen
Cargill.)
The London Symphony Chorus was a pleasure to hear—it
better have been, because London to New York is a long way
to go for fifteen minutes’ work. And Beethoven’s Ninth was a
pleasure to hear—all-conquering, as always.