A friend posted the following question on Facebook:
“What is the most famous piece of classical music?”
Most of the answers seemed to be an attempt to find a piece of classical music (for some value of “classical”) that was well known as itself. That surprised and puzzled me a bit but it did cause me to ask the question:
“What makes a piece of classical music famous?”
Ejector seats for serial coughers are next on the list…
I was riding my bike in the Don Valley this morning and, as I passed underneath the Bloor Street Viaduct, a thought struck me. Maybe Against the Grain Theatre’s next Toronto-centric opera adaptation coud be Dialogues des Carmélites. The last scene could be staged with the nuns jumping, one by one, from the viaduct. I don’t know whether enough people have read In the Skin of a Lion to get the reference but what could be more Toronto than Ondaatje?
I seem to be in the middle of a run of operas full of dodgy theology. First it was the Met’s Parsifal where Wagner à la Girard dished up a puzzling mixture of misogyny, sacred wounds, centuries long curses, bastardization of the Eucharist and weird holy weapons. There’s a really good conversation about this over at Likely Impossibilities. Today I was at Opera in Concert’s semi-staged production of Massenet’s Thaïs. (My review of this should be in the summer edition of Opera Canada). So today was more misogyny, hairshirts, lots of penance and the idea that the road to sainthood is to be a tart until one’s looks start to go and then torture oneself to death in an appropriately aesthetic manner. Also, showing empathy for anyone not exactly like oneself leads to doubts, expulsion and damnation. Coming up soon, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, in which salvation is achieved by rejecting anything to do with the Enlightenment and being guillotined. There’s a Salome in there too somewhere though I’m not sure there’s anything that could be called coherent theology at all in that.
Blessed are the cheesemakers… Really.
Later this month I’ll be attending a double bill of Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos. The latter, for those who don’t know the play, is the one with the famous line “L’Enfer; c’est les autres”. I posted the details earlier. Anyway, this led me on a train of thought that ended with the idea of Nihilist Night at the Opera; a sort of antidote to Rossini. Ideally Nihilist Night would feature a double or triple bill of unrelievedly depressing operas and should leave the audience with no hope at all for humanity.
What might qualify? Wozzeck coupled with Moses und Aron seems just about ideal. Want something more contemporary? How about Turnage’s Greek coupled with Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy?
The lines are open.
It’s not often someone takes the piss out of one of my favourite operas and leaves me laughing like a drain but Chris Gillett has done it with his synopsis of a recently discovered Britten opera Tyco the Vegan.
This may inspire me to go further with describing the late Puccini “masterpiece” Lorenzo d’Arabia featuring belly dancers, dodgy Arabs, stiff upper lipped Brits, sheep’s eyeballs, a trio by Ali, Abdul and Achmet and a touching final scene where the beautiful princess Salima sings desperately of her abandonment by Lorenzo while buried up to the neck in sand. Of course she dies. Horribly.
With a month or so to go before the Canadian Opera Company officially announces its 2013/14 season it’s surely time for some uninformed speculation.
There are three big anniversaries in 2013; the bicentenaries of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Benjamin Britten. One would think all would be represented but maybe not. We know Verdi will be. Gerald Finley announced at the Rubies that he would make his role debut in the title role in Falstaff at COC in 2013/14 so we can ink that one in. Britten seems probable. There’s a Houston/COC co-pro of Peter Grimes, directed by Neil Armfield that is due to to come to Toronto. I think we can pencil that one in. No idea on casting but I would love to see Stuart Skelton myself. Wagner, I’m not so sure. Maybe February’s run of Tristan und Isolde will be COC’s sole nod to Wagner. Certainly the next most likely candidate; the Lyon/Met/COC Parsifal is, apparently, not expected before 2015.
Opera Five’s Youtube channel is an irreverent look at the very, very serious world of opera. Here’s a sample:
Until very recently one of the few good restaurant options within easy walking distance of the COC offices and the Kitten Kondo (since only a couple of hundred metres separate them) was a pretty decent locavore resto called Veritas. I’ve seen COC General director Alexander Neef in there more than once. Alas Veritas is no more. It has been replaced by what looks to be a hideously trendy and overpriced bar called the Pacific Junction Hotel. What’s a bit disturbing though is that this doubles the number of eateries in the ‘hood with Stiegl on tap (the other being the rather good, but also overly trendy , breakfast/brunch spot Le Petit Dejeuner. Stiegl is, par excellence, the beer of Regie. If beer features in a production by a controversial European director one can pretty much guarantee it will be Stiegl. Is this an omen? The 2012/13 COC season has Atom Egoyan, Peter Sellars, Robert Carsen and the Alden brothers directing 6 of 7 productions (surely enough to induce apoplexy in the National Post‘s Kaptainis). Are the hop leaves predicting a further shift away from the Lotfi Mansouri aesthetic? With this much Stiegl around can Herheim or Bieito be far behind?
operaramblings 