Operation Opera

The 2-minute Orphée

2012-02-05T07:13:00.001-05:00

Is it wrong to poke fun at a great opera? Well, if that's wrong, I don't wanna be right! It's time wreak havoc on Philip Glass's Orphée.

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Orphée, a poet who's a little past it.
Poet, another poet, which makes sense, considering his name. Logical career path. It'd be different if his name was "Pizza chef".
Cegeste, an up-and-coming poet, making this the only 3-poet opera in the repertoire. Woo-hoo!
Eurydice, Orphée's wife. She's preggers; got a poet in the oven, which means we very nearly had a quadruple-poet opera goin' on here. Shucks - one more scene would've done it!
Princess, a.k.a. Death Itself. And a real stunner with great legs.
Rod Serling, doing one of his inimitably creepy voice-overs.
Sam Waterston, appearing in his signature role as D.A. Jack McCoy.

Scene 1: a cafe in Paris. Orphée is sitting with Poet. Princess, a.k.a. Death Itself, is helping a very drunk Cegeste across the street.

PRINCESS
This is what I hate about poets: half a beer and you're bombed.

CEGESTE
You weel not spick to moi like zees or I weel KEEL you, Nescafe?

PRINCESS
First of all, you can't kill Death, moron. Second, I think you mean "n'est ces pas", not "Nescafe". Oh, and also: dude, that's the worst French accent I've ever heard in my life - er, death. What're you, a Pink Panther reject?

CEGESTE
Oh, lay off. I'm from Baltimore originally, and I just got hired for this role. I'm doing the best I can under very trying circumstances, cut me some slack.

PRINCESS
Whatever. (Suddenly two motorcycles appear out of nowhere and run down Cegeste in the street. He's extremely dead.)

CEGESTE
Hey! I was told this was a principal role! I'm dead after three lines? What the heck??

PRINCESS (to Orphée, who's standing around not writing poetry and feeling a little sorry for himself.)
YO! Rhyme-boy! Yes, you! Get your Orphic butt over here and help me with the dead dude.

ORPHÉE

Why would I want to do that? I have no idea who you are, who he is, or what's happening.

PRINCESS
Your name is Orphée. The title of the show is Orphée. Work with me here.

ORPHÉE

Fine. Hey, you know what they could have called this opera? "Dead Poet's Society". Like the movie, right? HA HA HA HA HA HA!!

PRINCESS
You're a riot. Shut up.

Scene 2: an eerie chalet out in the middle of nowhere. Princess, Orphée and "Dead Cegeste", who's beginning to smell a little ripe, are standing around. Well, not Cegeste - he's on the floor like a proper corpse.

ROD SERLING
A has-been poet and a babe with a shroud and a scythe, on a long limousine journey into.... "The Twilight Zone" (That "Twilight Zone" music, - you know, that "doo-doo-doo-doo" thing you do when something weird happens - starts cranking out from somewhere.)

PRINCESS
This is an opera, not a freaking TV show - cut the music!!

ROD SERLING
Sorry.

ORPHÉE

Can we get on with it, please? It's already scene two and I haven't sung an aria yet.

ROD SERLING
Aria?! Have you had a chance to look through the music? You don't actually have an aria in this opera. There aren't any arias. Just, you know, dialogue.

ORPHÉE

Are you freaking kidding me? No arias? Well, CRAP. You know, I turned down a production of Faust to be in this show. Geez, this is gonna be a longgggg evening.

PRINCESS
Cheer up - some of the special effects are cool; dig this. YO, Cegeste, ARISE! (Cegeste stands up and looks around.)

CEGESTE
Yay! More lines!

ORPHÉE

How long til the special effect?

PRINCESS
That was it. C'mon, that was cool! I brought a dead guy back to life.

ORPHÉE

Yeah, he stood up. Breath-taking. Again, this'll be a long night. Anyway, he's alive, huh?

PRINCESS
No, not really. He's still dead as a doornail. Just, you know, standing up and talking. A talking dead guy.

ORPHÉE

Ooo, like in Twilight? Is this a vampire opera? Can I be Edward?

PRINCESS
Wrong movie. I'd love to stick around and talk, but I've got to deliver this puppy to Hell. Ciao.

Scene 3: Orphée's house. He and his lovely wife Eurydice are sittin' around.

ORPHÉE
Cupcake?

EURYDICE
Yes, Sugar-lips?

ORPHÉE
How do you pronounce your name, anyway? Is it "You-RID-i-see", or "Yurr-i-DEE-chay" or
"Yurr-i-DEESE", or what?

EURYDICE
Let's just go with "Cupcake".

ORPHÉE
Cool.

EURYDICE
Is this where we sing a love duet?

ORPHÉE
Meh. Maybe later.

EURYDICE
Pfft. (Suddenly, she dies, then stands up, talks to the Princess, walks through a mirror and goes straight to Hades.)

ORPHÉE
Oy - such a DAY I'm having! But that special effect is starting to grow on me, I have to admit. Dead person standing up... creepy!

PRINCESS
Told you.

Scene 4. Hades. The Next World. The Hereafter. Limbo. Kind of like the Greyhound station in Richmond, Virginia if you've ever been stuck there waiting for a bus.

JUDGE
We will now hear testimony from the first witness. Princess, you're up.

SAM WATERSTON, APPEARING AS JACK McCOY.
Objection, your Honor!

JUDGE
Say what? What do you think you're doing here?

SAM WATERSTON, APPEARING AS JACK McCOY.
My show got cancelled and I've got a little free time. This seems to be some kind of trial or something and I could use the gig. Who are we prosecuting?

JUDGE
Scram.

Scene 5. Still "down there". The cast is waiting for the Judge to tell the verdict.

EURYDICE (to Orphée)
We've got a few minutes. Any chance you wanna work in a love duet about now?

ORPHÉE
I've got a headache. And I'm busy. See you.

EURYDICE
Where are you going, my heart's desire, my own true love, my dearest dear?

ORPHÉE
Going to suck face with the Princess. Have you seen her? She's totally HOT! I mean, you know, for being Death Itself...

EURYDICE
If we make it back to the living world, you are so sleeping on the couch. What a tool.

(Next-to-last scene. Yeah, we skipped a few scenes - it was running a bit long. Anyway, we're back at Orphée's house. He's already broken the Big Rule about "not looking at Eurydice" and thus sent her packing back to the Richmond Greyhound station. You know, Hell.)

ORPHÉE
OMG! That angry crowd outside, convinced that I killed Cegeste, just shot me! I'm dead!! (He falls to the floor, then stands up.) Okay, I've changed my mind: this is a totally SICK special effect! It's, like, RAD, dude! I just creeped myself out!! Look: I stood up!! Whoaaaa!

(Last scene. Hell, etc.)

PRINCESS (to Orphée)
Come here, you big hunk of dead human, you! Give Mama a big ol' kiss!

ORPHÉE
Although I'm really hot for you, Death Itself, I am a little concerned about this attraction. You reckon I can find a Necrophilia support group here in Hades?

PRINCESS
Totes. After all, we're all dead down here. It's a common problem. But I've got tough news: it's over. We're breaking up - I'm sending you back to your wife Yurr-i-DEESE in the living world.

ORPHÉE
So THAT'S how you say it!!!

THE END.

Glenn Winters' new book The Opera Zoo: Singers, Composers and Other Primates is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishing and only available by direct ordering from the publisher. Go to kendallhunt.com and enter "The Opera Zoo" in the search bar.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

2012-02-03T14:36:00.000-05:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog for an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! (You can tell it's very important because I just used bold-face, italics and all caps; THAT'S how important it is...)

My book, THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES, is now available for sale from Kendall Hunt Publishing. I'm an author, my opera-loving peeps!

Do not look for this little volume in your local Barnes & Noble or other neighborhood bookstore. I am not John Grisham, and bookstores across the nation will not be flooded with copies of The Opera Zoo. Getting a book published, as I've learned, is all about platform. Grisham and his best-selling ilk have global platforms. They come in all sizes, and mine is regional-ish.

This means that if you'd like a copy, you must order direct from the publisher, which you can do by clicking on this link, which will take you to my page on the Kendall Hunt catalogue. The cost is $30.00.

For those of you who are new to my blog, The Opera Zoo is based on earlier blog posts which are now only available in book form. The content for two-thirds of the book is similar to this season's posts; namely, a collection of ironic essays spoofing the opera world in what I've been told is a Garrison Keillor-type tone with a little Woody Allen mixed in for good measure. Opera parodies, opera analyses: you get the idea.

In addition, you'll find a journal I kept while a guest artist at the 2010 Operafestival di Roma in Italy, where I participated in a festival production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus, writing about the process of staging a production, as well as my impressions of the people, sights and (most importantly) food in one of the world's great cities.

We missed our original deadline of a Christmas release, but all's well that ends well. Please consider ordering a copy for yourself or an opera-loving friend.

And in just a couple of days we'll return to our normal postings, including this Sunday's libretto parody of Philip Glass's Orphée.

Of water drops, climaxes and elephants: Orphée

2012-01-29T18:03:00.002-05:00

Thoughts and reflections after having seen a staged performance of Philip Glass's opera Orphée:

I. WATER DROPS
Some composers' music - a Mahler symphony, say, or Beethoven's Ninth or Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen - is so vast and immense, with such a profusion of ideas and materials, that listening to it is like looking at the heavens through a telescope or like going on an epic journey. One has the impression of seeing the universe. With the music of Glass, in contrast, it's more like looking at a single drop of water under a microscope. The limitation of materials, with the application of nuanced changes in rhythm or pitch, is like focusing on the abundance of life, invisible to the naked eye, contained in a tiny drop.

II. THE NATURE OF MUSICAL DRAMA
There is a paradox at work in Orphée: the music is simultaneously undramatic and yet extremely dramatic. Glass's score points out how addicted Western music-lovers have become to the phenomenon of the musical climax. In the works of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner, Puccini - all your operatic buddies - musical numbers depend on creating growing tension culminating in a powerful climax and followed by the subsiding of energy. It's like listening to someone who really needs to sneeze but is having trouble producing one: "a... a... a... a... A... A... A... A... A.... A....... CHOOOOOOOOOO!!! *sighhhhhhh*"
Think of the unbearable tension built up in the long Act I love duet in Madama Butterfly; the ensuing mutual high notes accompanied with satisfyingly over-the-top cymbal crashes, and the slow denouement as the curtain falls.

To say nothing of the Liebesnacht and Liebestod in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

The fact is that virtually all Western music is predicated on this principle. Not only arias and ensembles in operas, but individual phrases in piano sonatas, symphonies, chamber music, art song: every musical thought is oriented towards tension/climax/release.

And we're addicted to it. Those climaxes produce a powerful "high" as much as any drug. Composers know it and are pleased to keep feeding our habit. Verdi and Puccini? They're like the neighborhood pushers.

And then there's Philip Glass. His mind doesn't work that way. Each scene in Orphée is erected over a base of a musical idea - a pattern, a melodic fragment or a chord progression - that captures the essential emotional affect of that scene. For example, the lively ambiance of the cafe in scene 1; the mystery and monotony of the long limousine ride in scene 2; the eeriness of the chalet in scene three; the agitation in Orphée's household in scene 4; and so on. Each musical idea is pitch-perfect in nailing the appropriate atmosphere which, given Glass's distinguished career as a film composer, shouldn't surprise us. That's pretty much the job description when composing a film score.

However, in each scene, that tension/climax/release paradigm so beloved of Western musicians is notably absent. The music trundles along, repeating the chosen pattern, until the scene ends, often as abruptly as if lifting a needle off a phonograph record. (You do remember phonograph records, right? No? Oh, never mind...)

A good example is observed in the love duet for Orphée and the Princess in Act II, scene iii. A deceptively simple chord progression of F major, A minor, B flat major and D flat major is repeated dozens of times over the course of nearly five minutes. The vocal phrases over these repetitions are sensuous, languid and extremely French. No Italian-style volcanic passion; no over-the-top histrionics.
Phrases follow one another in sonic waves; waves of blissful amorous ecstasy. These waves wash over the listener, bathing one in sonority rather than inducing the "buzz" of musical titillation.

It works.

And therein lies the secret to a different kind of opera. Remember, this work is adapted from a cinematic masterpiece, Cocteau's film of the same name. The screenplay is brilliant. The effect of Glass's minimalist musical treatment is to allow the drama to be the center of attention; the music, in effect, gets out of the way of the drama. It supports the drama by evincing the proper emotional atmosphere in each scene. What the music does not do is call attention to itself with musical gestures that overwhelm the libretto and dominate the audience's attention.

When Orphée enters the Princess's chalet with the battered corpse of the young poet Cegeste, he mumbles "I must be asleep" in his confusion. Any conventional operatic composer would have siezed this moment to insert a full-length aria in which Orphée muses lyrically on his feelings of foreboding and whether he is dreaming or awake. And maybe throw in a little romantic speculation on that super-hot babe, the Princess, ending (of course) with a climactic high C. Glass, however, has no interest in stealing the spotlight from Cocteau to indulge in that sort of interruption. Rather, he follows the screenplay exactly: Orphée murmurs his line, the Princess utters a curt response, and the drama continues with no loss of momentum. The dramatic tension is enhanced, even if conventional musical tension is sacrificed. Trust me, you won't miss it.

This is wonderful. This is a vital and effective version of "music drama". This just may be the closest we've seen to a modern-day realization of the ideals of the Florentine Camerata, those 16th-century artists who, in attempting to re-create ancient Greek drama, invented opera instead.

III. A word to all of you who think you hate the music of Philip Glass.
Aw, what's the matter, Pookie? Did you hear something you didn't like? A bit of minimalist fodder so loud and aggressive you found it obnoxious, like nails on a blackboard? Glass, especially in works from the 1960's, can be like that. There are moments in Einstein on the Beach that can set your teeth on edge. And scroll down through this blog a few weeks to read how Satyagraha almost caused a divorce in my household.

But Glass isn't like Handel or Beethoven; you can't get an idea of his body of work from a couple of examples. Listen to the Water Music; you have a good grasp of what Handel sounds like. Likewise, the Eroica Symphony is a fine exemplar of what makes Beethoven sound like Beethoven.

In contrast, Philip Glass reminds me of the story of the three blind men who came across an elephant one day.

The first blind man grasped the elephant's tusk and exclaimed, "An elephant is like a skeleton, made entirely of bone!"

The second blind man felt the animal's tail and remarked "An elephant is a small, skinny hairy thing!"

The third blind man wrapped his arms around one of the elephant's legs and said "An elephant is like the trunk of a mighty oak tree!"

As with elephants, so with the music of Philip Glass: if you only know one part, you know nothing. Ignore the works you find offensive; don't hold them against him. You're only depriving yourself of the opportunity to discover the riches that await you.

The 2012 presidential candidates debate -- opera!

2012-01-18T18:40:00.000-05:00

GLENN WINTERS
Good evening, America. Tonight I am proud to host and moderate an historic event which will be televised and, um, radioized all over the nation: a debate among the contenders for the Presidency of these United States of America. In a departure from tradition, we are joined not only by the field of Republican candidates, but also by the Democratic incumbent, President Barack Obama. Oh, one other thing: we're also including the GOP figures who have actually withdrawn from the race, namely Donald Trump, Representative Michelle Bachmann, Mr. Herman Cain, Governor Jon Huntsman, Governor Rick Perry and Representative Ron Paul.

RON PAUL
Uh, Glenn? Mr. Winters?

GLENN WINTERS
Yes, Mr. Paul?

RON PAUL
I haven't withdrawn. I'm still running.

MITT ROMNEY
*snicker* Yes, technically, that's true.

GLENN WINTERS
Now, now, Gov. Romney; let's not have any of that. I want a good, clean, respectful debate.

MITT ROMNEY
Sorry.

GLENN WINTERS
At any rate, let me introduce the rest of the debate panel joining me here at the Hardee's on Jefferson Avenue here in Newport News, Virginia: Governor Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Senator Rick Santorum. Welcome, everyone! Now as you know, tonight's focus will not be on foreign affairs, the economy, immigration reform, abortion, or homeland security. We've all heard you blather on and on about all that crud. No, tonight you will be asked your views on a subject crucial to America's future and of vital interest to Red States and Blue States alike: your knowledge of opera. I will ask each of you to make an opening statement in which you name your own personal favorite opera. Mr. President, let's begin with you.

BARACK OBAMA
Glenn, thanks very much for the opportunity to be with you on this historic evening. I think my choice is Beethoven's Fidelio. It's an inspiring story of a struggle for liberty by a valiant man and his devoted wife. It reminds me of my own fight in protecting freedom and liberty all over the globe, and I think my wife Michelle would look really hot disguised as a man if I needed her to do that. Oh - and if I may, let me also mention Wagner's Parsifal. The miraculous curing of Amfortas' suffering and pain is a great model for the kind affordable health care I want for all Americans.

DONALD TRUMP
With due respects, Mr. President, I think a better choice for you would be Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov: the story of a man who ascends to power under false pretenses--I still think there's something fishy about that "birth certificate" of yours.

GLENN WINTERS
Whoa, whoa, Mr. Trump; let's not revisit all that birther nonsense. Governor Romney, what's your choice?

MITT ROMNEY
As you know, Glenn, I've been a very successful businessman and I've helped many companies streamline their operations through greater efficiency. That's what I find appealing about Schoenberg's Erwartung: it's in one act, and has a cast of just one performer. That's an efficient operation there; no expensive chorus or supporting characters, and you save on scenery to boot. I would think that, in combination with raising ticket prices, any opera company would find it very profitable to perform nothing but Erwartung all season long. And the Germans are well-known for appealing melodies; I'm sure Erwartung is chock-full of wonderful tunes.

GLENN WINTERS
Uh huh. Right. Moving right along, how about you, Governor Perry?

RICK PERRY
I kinda like that there Turandot by that Puccini feller. I especially like those funny guys that sing the trio in Act II, those three ministers Ping, Pang and... uh... lemme see here, er, ...Ping, Pang.... and... and.... shoot. I don't know. Can't think of it. Oops.

GLENN WINTERS
Representative Bachmann, you're next.

MICHELLE BACHMANN
Thanks, Glenn. I do have a real favorite opera; it's Benjamin Britten's poignant romance Peter Grimes.

GLENN WINTERS
...uh, "poignant romance"? I don't understand.

MICHELLE BACHMANN
It's inspiring to me how the character of Ellen Orford, a fine Christian woman, reaches out to a misfit outcast like Grimes and clearly has the goal of marrying him and helping him lead a normal life. Yes, Fate intervenes to prevent their blessed union, but I really empathize with Ellen. I'm sure Mr. Britten was a wonderful husband to some lucky woman.

GLENN WINTERS
Benjamin Britten was gay.

MICHELLE BACHMANN
What? Are you sure?

GLENN WINTERS
Oh, yes.

MICHELLE BACHMANN
I have to leave. Good night.

GLENN WINTERS
Mr. Gingrich, we'll hear from you next.

NEWT GINGRICH
I have a lot of respect for Count Almaviva, the misunderstood hero of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Here's a guy I can relate to; he's married to the Countess, but she's getting older and frankly, she's just not young enough or pretty enough to be a Count's wife. He deserves to be with a real looker like that Susanna girl. And I also like how when he was caught in an adulterous situation - which was a total set-up by the way, absolute entrapment on his wife's part - he admitted his weakness and went on being a fabulous, intellectual leader. Like me.

GLENN WINTERS
Senator Santorum, let's hear your choice.

RICK SANTORUM
I have a Verdi opera I like a lot; it's his masterpiece I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata.

GLENN WINTERS
...because...

RICK SANTORUM
It's all about the Crusades, a subject near and dear to me. The Crusades? They're just my favorite war, that's all. All these bleeding hearts who feel sorry for the godless Muslims down there in our Holy Land; well BOO HOO HOO. I mean, what are we supposed to do, root against Christians? Everyone knows Christians have the best religion. And just as Verdi told his story to inspire Italians to fight against Austrian domination, I think if Americans studied I Lombardi we'd all understand we have to do the same against our foes.

GLENN WINTERS
Herman Cain, may we have your choice, please?

HERMANN CAIN
You'd think I'd pick some Italian opera since it's, you know, the home of pizza and everything, but I really go for Franz Lehar's operetta The Merry Widow. For one thing, I wouldn't mind spending a little quality time with a beautiful widow, --you know, offer her financial assistance if she needed it and so on. But what I really like is that solo Hannah sings about marriage where she sings in German, "Nein, nein, nein!" It's remarkable how that gal anticipated my economic recovery plan over a century ago. I'd like to remind you all of the details about this "999" formula of mine; it's based on...

GLENN WINTERS (interrupting)
No, thanks Mr. Cain, I think we've all heard about that. Representative Ron Paul, I think it's your turn.

RON PAUL
Glenn, I've been quoted as saying that the notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. That's why the opera I enjoy is Verdi's Don Carlo, with its inspiring hero, the Grand Inquisitor.

GLENN WINTERS
Did you say "hero", Mr. Paul? The Inquisitor is a ruthless tyrant.

RON PAUL
On the contrary, he leads the effort to make sure that government and the Church work together as a team to provide for the common good.

GLENN WINTERS
But... but... what about burning dissidents at the stake?

RON PAUL
War is hell, and that goes double for wars to prevent the silly separation of church and state.

GLENN WINTERS
Only two more candidates to hear from. Governor Huntsman, which opera is on your mind?

JON HUNTSMAN
As you know, I've received a lot of flak from my fellow Republicans for having served in the Obama administration in the diplomatic corps. Everyone gives me a hard time for teaming up with the enemy, so to speak.

BARACK OBAMA
HEY!

JON HUNTSMAN
No offence, Mr. President. Anyway, this situation is somewhat reflected in Gounod's Faust. I mean, look at Faust; he's a good man confronted with a situation in which he has the opportunity to team up with Mephistopheles, an individual with whom he has significant disagreements over policy and general world-view. But he's not afraid to work with him to achieve his goals.

BARACK OBAMA
I'm the devil now?!

GLENN WINTERS
He did say it was nothing personal, Mr. Prez. Chill. Gov. Huntsman, your interpretation of Faust is a little shaky, but frankly, we're running short on time and I still need to poll The Donald. Go, Mr. Trump!

DONALD TRUMP
Glenn, in the near future I'm going to make an announcement that will stun the world operatically speaking. I am putting together plans to create the greatest opera the world has ever seen. I'm talking with a fabulous composer, absolutely fabulous, and he's going to provide the best opera music available. Totally first-class. This opera is going to break all records for popularity, greatness, and importance. People are going to line up for miles to get tickets to see this work; the costumes, scenery, orchestra and conductor are all going to be incredible and impressive. The recordings and DVD's of my opera will break all records and go platinum in a matter of seconds. It's going to be...

GLENN WINTERS
Don? Donald?

DONALD TRUMP
Yeah?

GLENN WINTERS
Stop talking. Thanks. Sounds swell. Well, unfortunately we don't have time for rebuttals, but I think with what they've heard tonight my fellow citizens have some great information to think about when they step into those voting booths in November.

HERMANN CAIN
So they can still vote for me? Is that what you're saying?

GLENN WINTERS
Nein.

How Philip Glass saved my marriage

2012-01-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm familiar with three of Philip Glass's operas: Akhnaten, which I once accompanied at the piano for a concert performance in Richmond, VA; Satyagraha, which I recently caught in the live Met Hi-Def transmission at a movie theater; and Orphée, which is the upcoming production of Virginia Opera.

Of the three, I much prefer Orphée and am grateful that the suits who oversee artistic matters in Norfolk made that choice.

You see, I'm pretty sure that a production of
Satyagraha could have ended my marriage of 35 years. One performance almost did the trick.

What I find appealing in Orphée is that it has a plot, dialogue in a language that can be understood, interesting characters, and vocal lines that signify a basic understanding of how to write for the human voice.

Those are all helpful things in an opera...

I wanted to like Satyagraha, I really did. I had read a good bit about the piece and listened to a few audio excerpts. I'm not so tradition-bound that I insist all operas must have love duets, vengeful murder plots, tearful twenty-minute death scenes with multiple farewells to stuff and an illegitimate baby or two.

Heck, Orphée even coughs up a decent love duet.

The point is that my wife Ruth and I motored up to Richmond to see Satyagraha fully prepared to appreciate it for whatever it was and not condemn it for what it wasn't. We chose Richmond so we could see it in the comfort of one of those CineBistro joints where patrons watch films in comfortable chairs while noshing on $13.00 sandwiches.

The burger was really scrumptious - almost worth the price - and the production was colorful and engagingly performed. It was cool to see the composer interviewed by the broadcast host, bass Eric Owens. (Blog digression: my daughter Kathleen Winters once played in an orchestra seated next to Mr. Owens, who recently has gotten rave notices for his incarnation of Alberich in the Met's Robert LePage-directed Ring cycle. This happened at the Aspen Music Festival, where my daughter was a flute student and Owens was a conducting fellow. At Aspen, playing an orchestral instrument is a pre-requisite for being named a conducting fellow, and as it happens the guy has real chops on the oboe. So he and Kathleen wound up seated in adjacent chairs for a reading ensemble - that's an orchestra gathered for the purpose of reading through orchestral works for the benefit of aspiring maestros. That concludes this digression; you may now return to your regular blog, with enhanced respect for Eric Owens.)

Anyway, the repetitive nature of the musical episodes and the lack of traditional "Then What Happened?" narrative did not faze me. I've read books on meditation; I know about Glass's interest in Eastern thought and spirituality; I get it. I'm familiar with the phenomenon of some audience members experiencing a form of ecstasy as a result of the percieved sublimity of Glass's transcendental passages flowing over and over them like sonic waves. And in music like that, it's not vitally important that the language being sung is Sanskrit; it's not like they're telling jokes up there and we're going to miss the punchlines.

I totes get all that.

As the final credits scrolled down the screen while the Lincoln Center audience cheered and the CineBistro audience began shuffling to its feet in bemused silence, Ruth and I debated whether to stop for a coffee at Starbucks. Steaming cups soon in hand, we made our way to the car and began the 70-odd mile drive back to Newport News. (It's a really nice movie theater, people.)

That's when the trouble began.

Listen, after thirty-five years of marriage, the pressure of being a perfect date for one's lady-love or beau isn't as big a deal as it once was. Companionable silence is a valid option to witty, seductive banter, know what I mean? But there's no denying that both my wife and I were "in a mood".

First, there was the issue of finding our way back to Interstate 64. We'd never been to this theater before and had relied on Dolores (that's the name we've assigned to the female-ish voice on my Android Navigation App) to find the place. Now homeward-bound, there were testy discussions of whether I could re-trace our route without Dolores, a somewhat resentful agreement that I would turn on the Navigation again, and no small degree of impatience waiting for the damn phone to boot up and Dolores to pipe up.

While my memory isn't exact, the following is an approximation of the type of conversation that took place.

"Can't you find the address?"

"Yes, for Pete's sake, give me a minute!"

"Well why is it taking so long?"

"Oh good Lord, it has to find a signal and get our location. HANG ON!"

"Just stop and ask somebody. Roll down your window and ask those people over there!!"

"NO! The phone will work faster than chasing strangers through a mall!"

"We're never going to get out of here!!!!"

It got even stupider than that, before Dolores cheerily started barking out directions and forced us to retreat into sulky, bitter silence. Boy, was that a long ride home...

What in the world? Had we regressed to the age of eleven? We'd had a perfectly nice day: a road trip to Richmond, a performance from the Metropolitan Opera, two absolutely dee-lish hamburgers with that fancy Angus beef and bacon and stuff, and now we were interacting like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. What accounted for all this discord, for heaven's sake?

Later that evening, my wife, far wiser than I, figured out the source of the tension:

It was the vocal writing in Satyagraha.

To his credit, Philip Glass has since conceded that he's learned a lot about writing for voices since Satyagraha. Lemme tell ya, he had a lot to learn. Richard Croft in the title role had the best luck in this regard; many of Gandhi's lines lay nicely in the voice and had an appealing floating quality. Such was not the case for soprano Rachelle Durkin as Miss Schlesen and especially baritone Kim Josephson as Mr. Kallenbach.

These two artists were assigned roles which kept them squawking and barking at the top of their ranges on repeated notes that were sung over and over with no relief. They gave it their best shot, doing all that technical supporting-stuff singers learn in their formative years: soft palates raised so high they touched the cerebral cortex; breath management that would blow down any Little Pig's house of bricks; and (I'm guessing) lower body strength of ox-like power.

But no voice can make a pleasing effect when submitted to vocal writing as cruelly obtuse as that. Look, Beethoven has been panned for two centuries for his vocal writing in the Ninth Symphony and other works, but he was Richard Rogers next to Satyagraha. Looking back on the afternoon, Ruth and I realized that we became so tense while listening to this strained vocalism that we carried it out of the theater and all the way home, fussing and crabbing over nothing.

So it is with genuine pleasure and intense relief that I am able to report that the vocal writing in Orphée is as expertly handled as it was manhandled (in my humble opinion) in Satyagraha. The setting of the French text displays a complete facility with the language, with rhythms that effortlessly simulate the flow of native French speakers. And while challenging, the demands of the vocal lines are entirely conventional.

Divorce lawyers must look elsewhere than the Harrison Opera House to troll for new cases.

And now, a brief commercial message. Remember: my forthcoming book THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES is due out from Kendall Hunt Publishing in just a few days. It's not available in book stores, so to get a copy please email the publishers at cross@kendallhunt.com. My editor will contact you with all the details. Happy reading!

That "Child Prodigy Rant" post: followup and a plug for my book

2012-01-09T18:07:00.000-05:00

Holy crap!

Yesterday's blog post in which I ranted on about child prodigies has gone viral, with tens of thousands of hits in a matter of hours. If you're looking for it right now, just scroll down to the previous post and get caught up.

My head is spinning! And not like the little girl in The Exorcist, either - nope: in a good way.

I am truly grateful to all of you who not only took the time to read my thoughts but also posted comments and shared the site with your friends as well. I now have first-hand experience with the Fearsome Power Of The Internet. Whew!

Since Sunday's topic appears to have struck a chord with so many, here are some further thoughts, clarifications, and responses to some of the published reader comments. I'll end by letting you know that I've got a book coming out, naturally hoping that if you enjoy my writing and my humor, you might wish to order a copy. But back to prodigies:

For those who find it difficult to grasp the inherent stress imposed upon children when they are thrust upon a national stage (be it via live performance, television or a recording contract): allow me to refer you to Elaine Aron's magnificent book The Highly Sensitive Child. Clearly, children with precocious musical gifts are by definition highly sensitive. This book will bring you up to speed on the emotional and physiological differences between these children and others which the world would classify as "normal".
My blog post seems to have struck a nerve. Either in published comments or in messages on Facebook (feel free to friend me, by the way!), many of you expressed gratitude for my having articulated what you've always felt on the subject of child prodigies. Well, that's just me all over--with my pinky finger on the pulse of the nation... (har har har)
HOWEVER: a distinct minority raised mild objections. One reader, noting my claim that mature musical expression in prodigies is nothing more than mimicry of adult models, invoked the name of Music History's No. 1 prodigy of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I was asked, rhetorically (as if there could be no viable answer), who Mozart was imitating when he wrote his remarkable series of childhood symphonies, operas and keyboard works. Well actually, that's an easy one to answer, available from any standard Mozart biography: he was imitating the style of Johann Christian Bach. It is widely known that the galant style of J.C. Bach made a huge impression on the boy Mozart. A fine summary of their relationship is summarized in Adina Portowitz's article on the Bach-Mozart connection.
And in any case, the works of young Mozart do not reflect the emotional depth and maturity of his later masterworks; they are tidy little examples of technical proficiency and a good ear for graceful invention. That's all.
And, as other readers pointed out, Mozart's exploitation as a touring childhood virtuoso ultimately resulted in an adult with only intermittent professional success and a personal life filled with chaos, illness and general dysfunction.
Listen, my thousands of new friends, and listen well: I have nothing against talented children! I used to be one! Talented children should make music every day! My hope is that those kids whose talent is of prodigious dimensions, far above the norm, are protected--repeat--PROTECTED by those who are responsible for their well-being. It occurs to me that the most fortunate prodigies may be those born into wealthy homes, without the need or desire to turn young musicians into cash cows. When fame and money come first, tragedy and misery follow.

AND NOW: PLEASE KEEP READING!

I have a message for all of you who are new to this little blog through Facebook postings and other means:

If you liked that post, please know that I've got a book coming out in a matter of days which just might be up your alley as well.

The title is The Opera Zoo: Singers, Composers and Other Primates. It's a collection of now-deleted blog posts from the last couple of years in which I touch on a wide range of opera-related subjects, all with that somewhat irreverent humor that seems to be part of my DNA.

The publisher is Kendall Hunt Publishing and I expect to see the book available by the end of January if not before. NOTE: you will not find my book in your local Barnes & Noble or other bookstore. Listen, I'm not John Grisham, and a book of humorous-slash-insightful essays about the opera world is the textbook definition of a "niche genre". I'm Captain Niche. The Niche-Meister.

The way to get your hands on it is to contact my editor, a cool guy named Curtis Ross via email and order direct from the publisher; just click on his name. We've already nearly sold out the initial printing, but I think they'll be okay with printing more, don't you?

Too many essays and topics in The Opera Zoo to list, but examples include a day in the life of an apprentice opera singer on tour (OY!); a scene from a Mozart opera re-written as the teleplay for an episode of the sitcom Frasier; libretto parodies of Rigoletto, Carmen, Die Walkuere and Madama Butterfly, and lots more. The book concludes with a journal I kept while a guest artist at an international opera festival in Rome Italy a couple of years ago in which I record my impressions of the city, the food, the people, the food, life at an opera festival, the food, the gelato, the food....

I like food...

So please consider ponying up for my new book! And keep reading my blog! And... um... exercise daily, eat more vegetables and call your mother. (I'm full of good ideas...)

And thanks for all your comments and appreciation for yesterday's post!

About those child opera singers: here's the deal

2012-01-02T17:24:00.000-05:00

I'm going to let all you music-lovers in on a little secret: we professional musicians don't have much use for the phenomenon of the Child Prodigy. Six year old violinists playing Mendelssohn; ten year old pianists playing Rachmaninov; and especially *shudder* twelve year old girls belting out operatic arias... or country music... or whatever... on national television? Yeah, it's impressive. Sort of. You can keep 'em; I have no interest, especially when it comes to the miniature singers.

You know that NPR program "From The Top", featuring adolescent or pre-adolescent performers stunning us with their "maturity" and precocity?

I am not a devotee of that program.

If you are, that's swell for you. Enjoy. But most professionals in the classical music arena look askance at pint-sized virtuosi. So many reasons...

For one thing, the great majority of child performers will eventually crash and burn attempting to make the transition from intuitive tot to analytical adult. There was once a centipede who was asked, "When you walk, in what order do you move your many legs?" The poor bastard had never thought about that, and became so self-conscious he never walked again. This syndrome is the norm for talented kiddies. Child pianists memorize intuitively, by ear; adult professionals memorize in the framework of an analytical system. Children who have been learning complicated masterworks without really knowing how they were doing it can fall into a similar state of paralysis.

Furthermore, that "unusual musical maturity" you think you detect in the oh-so-polished phrasing of a Chopin Nocturne or Paganini Etude is not organic maturity at all. It's apery; it's mimicry; it's the result of carefully imitating some adult's interpretation, be it from the teacher or some recording. Musical compositions which express profound insights about love, loss and life are beyond the ken of a nine year old and that's just how it is. Having a good ear is not the same thing as musical insight.

Another problem relating to emerging from the prodigy stage: child stars become accustomed to being the most successful performer wherever they are. They win the competitions; they receive the adulation; they are Number One, baby! They are able to play difficult compositions eighty percent perfectly with little effort. That in itself poses a problem: when such young musicians go on to major in their instrument at the college or conservatory level, they are too often content to continue achieving 80% perfection with 40% effort. It's not unusual that they find, to their bewilderment, that they are surpasssed by less gifted students who achieve 95% perfection with 110% effort. It's the old Hare-vs-Tortoise story applied to the piano. A few of you may remember a child prodigy of some twenty years ago, a Greek pianist named Dmitri Sgouros. He made a sensation performing on the "Tonight Show" and playing the Third Piano Concerto of Rachmaninov at age ten or eleven. My wife knew one of his teachers in America and was privy to the following anecdote: At age eleven, Sgouros played through the Brahms Piano Sonata in F Minor, a five-movement beast to play, at sight. He then played through it a second time and pronounced the piece memorized and ready for performance. Wow! Gee! Gasp! Why, he's another Franz Liszt!

It's now 2012 and Dmitri Sgouros is a musician in this thirties. Is he the greatest living pianist? Does he perform to sold-out houses in New York, Chicago and L.A.? Will he go down in history? And was his performance of the Brahms F Minor Sonata a performance for the ages?

No, no, no and no. He's got a website; plays in Greece and so forth--that's nice, I suppose. See, the reality is that for every Yehudi Menuhin (prodigy who became an all-time great artist), there are one hundred Dmitri Sgouros's whose bright flame dims with age. (I know that statistic is accurate because I just made it up.)

But as much disdain and eye-rolling weariness as I feel for instrumental prodigies (and I've actually taught a few in my teaching career), it's nothing compared to the scorn I feel for Children Who Sing Opera.

As Joan Rivers would say, can we talk? Let's get something straight: opera is to singing as neuro-surgery is to medicine. No pre-adolescent children should ever do it, and few teen-agers should do much of it. Yes, yes, I know all about Roberta Peters having made her Metropolitan Opera debut at age sixteen. Big whoop, don't care. Until their hormones have finished percolating, children should sing (duh) music written for children: in a children's choir, in school, in church, heck - even in an opera, providing it's a role written for a child. with a child's limitations in mind.

Let me explain. The best metaphor for allowing children to sing adult operatic literature is found in Little League baseball. A responsible Little League coach ensures that a ten-year-old pitcher will throw the ball easily, with a fluid, non-stressful pitching motion. Some specimens in the coaching community, however, can't resist the urge to teach kids to throw trick pitches: curve balls, sliders, screwballs, and so on.

The problem, of course, is that these pitches place a high degree of stress on bones, muscles and tendons. However, the muscular-skeletal system of a baseball player in middle school is still a work in progress and, as such, incapable of tolerating such stress without inducing inflammation at best and serious injury at worst.

It's the very same scenario with children singing opera. The fact is that many college-level voice majors are kept away from the music of Puccini, Verdi and such composers until they enter graduate school.

But here's the worst thing, the thing that really drives me NUTS: when I try to explain this to non-musicians, NO ONE EVER BELIEVES ME! ARRRRGGGGHHHH!! Here are the standard responses I can expect to hear:

"Really? Well, it sounded fine to me..."

"Oh, you and your doctorate. You just aren't accustomed to working with younger children, I expect."

"Well, I don't see any problem; he/she certainly seems to enjoy it."

"What's the matter, Glenn - feeling a little jealous?" (Oh yes, how perceptive of you: I'm eaten up with envy that I shall never appear on "America's Got Talent". *snort*)

"Well, I know the teacher, and that teacher is supposed to be really good. I'm sure it's okay in this case."

NO! No it isn't! Not for an eleven year old girl singing Musetta's Waltz or "O mio babbino caro"! Not okay, not okay! That teacher is either delusional or a hack! Stop singing opera! Stop singing opera! The vocal folds which produce musical tones are a highly delicate, extremely fragile, easily damaged organ. Adult opera singers are at risk of incurring injury from over-use; what chance do you think Shirley Temple Junior has? Think about it. That Tweenie girl singing opera is writing checks her body can't cash, even though, yes, it might sound perfectly lovely to YOUR amateur's ears. You don't get to hear her ten years later when her instrument has degraded to the point that a career in the opera field is no longer an option.

And my objections aren't limited to the vocal hazards. Putting a child on television to sing, be it a local, regional, or national audience, is no way to raise a kid. It's even worse when the TV program is in the format of a competition. You do understand that a child with an unusually mature voice still has a child's emotional maturity, don't you? A youngster who has been always been praised for her beautiful voice is swimming with sharks once a Career In Show Business has been launched. Regardless of how much cash is earned, regardless of the fan letters received or the pride felt by the pushy stage-parents, here's what the child faces:

Hurtful, snide criticism by the Simon Cowells of the world.
Losing; losing competitions, losing recording contracts if sales aren't up to snuff; and public rejection for everyone to see, perhaps with TV cameras trained on their faces as someone else's name is announced as the winner, following the trail of tears rolling down their cheeks. Losing an election for class president is a valuable experience; losing a damn singing contest on TV at a young age is traumatic.
Being regarded as a freak by other children their own age
The pressure of doing what they're doing so as not to disappoint the adults in their lives: ambitious parents, the teacher who may be fixated on the vicarious thrill of a student's success; adults with whom they spend most of their time interacting instead of with their chronological peers.

I know there are highly-educated, well-intended private voice teachers out there in your community who "specialize" in the vocal training of children and likely come with any number of glowing endorsements and recommendations. Here's my recommendation: if your ten year old daughter has a nice voice, do her a favor and let her take piano or guitar lessons. Then she'll have the solid musical foundation and musicianship skills that will pay dividends when she reaches the age Mother Nature intended for serious vocal study to begin. If that highly educated private teacher gives her simple songs to sing with a modest range, asking her to perform only in studio recitals, you may just scrape by without doing permanent damage.

I mean, what's your hurry, anyway? Children sing in church, home and school. Leave the stage and the recording studio to the big bad grownups. Thanks.

"The List": What's In and Out for 2012

2011-12-27T12:29:00.003-05:00

Since longer than I can remember, the Washington Post has had a New Year's tradition of publishing what it calls "The List", a pitiless compilation of what's considered hip, trendy and happening (that would be the "In" stuff), juxtaposed alongside what's tired, old-hat and tediously passé (the "Out" stuff). I've spent all morning (how's that for devotion and taking pains, huh?) seeing if I could create a similar-yet-opera-themed list. (Note: the annoying thing about writing an opera blog is that, you know, all one's essays have to be about, you know, opera. Oh well, beats writing about politics...)

The results of this hour's worth of intensive labor (hey, it's the holidays, cut me some slack here...) follow below, but first some explanations:

Some "out" entries reflect not so much lack of relevance as lack of, well, continuing to be alive.
Some entries are specific to Virginia Opera. You'd have to be familiar with us to fully appreciate those, perhaps.

And here we go: it's .... THE LIST.

IN: Philip Glass as dean of American opera composers
OUT: Carlisle Floyd as dean of American opera composers

IN: HD Met Opera Transmissions at your cineplex
OUT: PBS "Great Performances" of Met Opera performances on your TV

IN: Jonas Kaufmann
OUT: Juan Diego Florez

IN: Satyagraha
OUT: Ravi Shankar

IN: Wearing jeans to the opera
OUT: Wearing furs to the opera

IN: Fabio Luisi
OUT: James Levine

IN: Placido Domingo, baritone
OUT: Placido Domingo, tenor

IN: Giant tongues in Hansel and Gretel (Met style)
OUT: Gingerbread houses in Hansel and Gretel (Met style)

IN: Seedy carnivals in Hansel and Gretel (Virginia Opera)

OUT: Gingerbread houses in Hansel and Gretel (Virginia Opera)

IN: Follies

OUT: A Little Night Music

IN: Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest
OUT: Christopher Theofanidis' Heart of a Soldier

IN: Jackie Evancho

OUT: Charlotte Church

IN: Vittorio Grigolo

OUT: Andrea Bocelli

IN: Il Divo

OUT: The Three Tenors

IN: Drab, lifeless Met Opera productions directed by people who aren't opera directors

OUT: Lavish, colorful Met productions which are greeted with cheers instead of boos.

IN: Anna Netrebko

OUT: Apparently, all other sopranos. Sheesh.

IN: Successful $1 million challenge grant at Virginia Opera

OUT: Freezing all expenses and cutting per diem payments at Virginia Opera.

Gotta love that last one! It makes for a particularly...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

The 12 Days of Opera

2011-12-12T14:31:00.002-05:00

Ho ho ho, festive blog readers all! Virginia Opera recently asked me to come up with an opera-centric version of that fresh, new, completely unhackneyed song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (that was a little Yule Sarcasm there) to post on our Facebook page. The idea was that I would find some operatic significance for each number from one through twelve and convert that into a holly-jolly, pretty-witty parody-harody. (Oops, scratch that last part - got carried away.) These were duly posted one "day" at a time, and now I'm recapping the complete list, with added commentary afterwards to provide a bit of further explanation for each item. Just what we needed: a song parody requiring footnotes... <sigh> Not hard to spot someone with a doctorate, is it?!

And...... here it is! (Don't forget to check at the bottom for your "slightly irreverent" footnotes!) So put down that cup of wassail and join me in singing:

THE TWELVE DAYS OF OPERA

On the first day of Christmas, grand opera gave to me:
Just one character in Schoenberg's Erwartung. (a)

On the second day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Two different La Bohèmes (b)

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the third day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Three Chinese Riddles (c)

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Four gigantic operas (d)

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Five Faustian acts (e)

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the sixth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

A six-day engagement (f)

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the seventh day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Seven veils a-dropping (g)

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the eighth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Eight days in prison (h)

Seven veils a-dropping

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Nine high C’s (i)

Eight days in prison

Seven veils a-dropping

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the tenth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Ten youthful operas (j)

Nine high C’s

Eight days in prison

Seven veils a-dropping

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Eleven precocious years (k)

Ten youthful operas

Nine high C’s

Eight days in prison

Seven veils a-dropping

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Grand Opera gave to me:

Twelve chiming clock-chimes (l)

Eleven precocious years

Ten youthful operas

Nine high C’s

Eight days in prison

Seven veils a-dropping

A six-day engagement

Five Faustian acts

Four gigantic operas

Three Chinese Riddles

Two different La Bohèmes

And just one character in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.

a: A creepy Expressionist drama, Erwartung has a cast of exactly one soprano. Some feel it's one too many.

b: One by Puccini and one by his rival Leoncavallo. Awkward.

c: The title character in Puccini's Turandot will marry any prince who solves her threesome of riddles.
Although, if she and the other soprano, Liu, would be willing to get a little kinky, Calaf could've had an actual threesome. Woo-hoo!

d: Wagner's cycle Das Ring der Nibelungen. (Come on now, you figured that one out on your own, didn't you? I know you did!)

e: I refer to Gounod's five-act spectacle. I was really, really hoping that Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerl was in five acts so the line could've been: "Five gol-den cockerls!" No such luck.

f. In Donizetti's Elixir of Love, Adina promises to marry Sgt. Belcore in six days. That should give Nemorino just enough time to get drunk enough to propose to her.

g. Another fairly obvious one: the "Dance of the Seven Veils" from Richard Strauss's Salome, a scene producing titillation when done by sopranos under age 40 and weighing less than, say, 220. Otherwise, one goes to bed with visions of Immodium dancing in one's head. (Note the additional holiday reference there; no extra charge for that.)

h. In J. Strauss's Die Fledermaus, poor Eisenstein has been sentenced to eight days in the local Viennese pokey for some heinous crime, like failing to use mouthwash prior to singing.

i. If you already knew this reference was to Tonio's aria-cum-high-wire-act in Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment, you get an extra slice of fruitcake. Actually, you can have the whole damn thing - I'm allergic to nuts. Go ahead, take it.

j. Did you know that Gioacchino Rossini, in a burst of adolescent frenzy, had already written ten operas by the time he turned 21? What had you accomplished by that age, hmmm? Got your driver's license? Well, you rock! (Not.)

k. Little boy-wonder W. A. Mozart wrote Apollo and Hyacinthus (his opera, or sing-spiel, or miracle play, or off-Broadway musical, or whatever the heck it is) at age eleven. Again, what had you accomp--- (oh, forget it.)

l: We end with a reference to my personal, all-time favorite opera: Verdi's Falstaff. In the final scene, silly old Sir John appears at Herne's Oak dressed up in cloak and antlers (doubtless the 19th-century version of cloak and dagger) and freaks out when some unseen clock s.l.o.w.l.y bangs out twelve chimes, upon which he brilliantly remarks: "It's midnight." Sharp as a tack, that Falstaff...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Philip Glass: the Tim Tebow of opera?

2011-12-09T10:13:00.001-05:00

Those who follow sports know all about Tim Tebow; he's the flavor of the month in the National Football League. Those who follow performing arts know all about Philip Glass; he's been the flavor of the past forty-odd years, which beats the longevity of the flavor of Wrigley's Spearmint by a good bit.

But how many Americans know who both of them are? I've got to think it's a relatively small number. Boy, can I pick a demographic or what?! <sigh> But, undeterred, I shall plunge on doggedly with what I think is a valid-though-initially-far-fetched comparison.

Exactly how does the composer of Einstein On the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten and Orphée in any way resemble the rookie quarterback of the Denver Broncos? Let's see if you can make sense of my argument.

Tebow played his college ball at a big-name Mecca of football, the University of Florida. Philip Glass studied at the Juilliard School, a musical Mecca.

Once in the pros, Tebow sat on the bench in obscurity, deemed by the NFL Establishment as unfit to lead a pro team due to percieved poor skill-sets. Merrill Hoge, a former player with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears who is now an NFL analyst for ESPN, has characterized Tebow thusly:

"It's embarrassing to think the Broncos could win with Tebow! I just watched Tebow throw five out routes to a wide open wide receiver; he was 1-for-5!" Of those five, observed Hoge, two went into the dirt and two sailed into the stands. "You must possess a skill set to play", he ranted scornfully on Twitter; "Tebow struggles with accuracy!"

Let's compare the tone of these remarks (which were not uncommon in the football world), with the reception given Glass's early works by some prominent critics. Typical was Donal Henahan's assessment, writing in the New York Times: "[Glass's operas] stand to music as the sentence 'See Spot run' stands to literature. (Glass, by the way, also experienced the equivalent of sitting on the bench in obscurity; in his early years he drove a cab and worked as a plumber to pay his bills.)

Tebow and Glass have recorded similar reactions when the subject of their respective critics has been raised. When reporters asked Tebow to respond to team owner (and former star quarterback) John Elway's lack of confidence in him, the young man replied, "I honestly don't pay much attention, I don't try to focus on anything that doesn't affect me personally and how I go out there every single day. I'm just going to continue to work hard and focus on what I can control."

Along those lines, Glass summed up his views on criticism like this: "Don't tell me whether the review was good or bad, tell me how much space the paper gave to the event. Only a few people read reviews through, you know, and only a few of those people care what the reviewer thought."

Another point of commonality is found in the cult-like status that quickly formed around both athlete and musician by die-hard supporters in the early stages of their careers. In the late 60's and early 70's, performances by the Philip Glass Ensemble were first attended by miniscule audiences who paid nothing or gave small donations. But this following grew, and with it Glass's notoriety as a fresh and provocative musical voice, eventually leading to performances of his first opera Einstein on the Beach in Hamburg, Paris, Belgrade, Venice, Rotterdam, and even non-Met performances at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

As for Tebow, it is generally accepted that when Denver's starting quarterback Kyle Orton faltered in the first several games of the 2011 season, it was the overwhelming demand of the fan base which led the coaching staff to insert Tebow, actually the third-string player at the position, into the starting line-up.

Fans of both are passionate and vocal. Whenever the gods of sports-talk radio dare to criticize Tebow for his limitations, they are greeted with a deluge of emails, phone calls and text messages springing to his defense, whereas Glass's ensemble plays to sold-out halls for large fees, while his operas are the current darling of the Met.

It's interesting as well to note the almost reluctant embrace given both men by analysts and critics. Writers tend to get a bit mystical when attempting to describe Tebow's success. In his recent op-ed piece for the NY Times, Frank Bruni flounders about, searching for vocabulary words to nail the essence of Tebow-osity. He comes up with "tendencies", "inclinations", and "optimism" which "radiates from Tebow" and "fires up" his teammates. It's all about intangible qualities that can't really be quantified or defined. As for Glass, now that he's graduated from the status of enfant terrible to that of Grand Master, the critical Establishment attempts to capture similar intangibles in music which, on paper, would appear lacking in inspiration. Robert Palmer wrote:

"One listens to the music and, somehow, without quite knowing it, one crosses the line from being puzzled or irritated to being absolutely bewitched. The experience is inexplicable..."

Yup. Just as inexplicable as a pro quarterback who, week after week, rallies his team from deficits in the waning minutes to save yet another game.

NOTE: before some of you musical sophisticates get all indignant with me (and I hate it when people get indignant with me), let me freely acknowledge a distinction between Glass and Tebow which seriously weakens the elaborate analogy I just constructed.

Tebow does have serious technical deficiencies. His throwing motion is flawed and his accuracy is highly erratic. The intangibles of optimism permit him to succeed in spite of his technical flaws.

Glass is a highly skilled, rigorously trained, complete musician with no technical flaws whatsoever. The simplicity of many of his works is a choice, not evidence of lack of ability. Tebow doesn't choose to throw his passes into the dirt; Glass does choose to repeat scale patterns for pages on end.

But they do remind me of one another... just a tad...

Photo of Tim Tebow by Jeffrey Beall. Photo of Philip Glass by WNYC New York Public Radio.

Things I've learned while writing a book

2011-12-06T11:48:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had the experience of writing a book and getting it published? Well, I have. As I mentioned some weeks ago in another blog post, my first book is due out from Kendall Hunt Publishing in January, 2012. The title is The Opera Zoo: Singers, Composers and Other Primates. And there's one thing I can definitely state about the process of getting a book into print:

It's educational.

That's actually a good thing. One thing I truly appreciate about my job (and this book project is related to my position with Virginia Opera) is that it's like a perpetual post-graduate course. Re-studying familiar operas; learning new operas; continual reading and research; let's face it: there are worse gigs for sure. And learning about what it takes to get a book published is another aspect of that scenario.

Here's just one example of the speedbumps I encountered on my publishing highway: No one really knows who wrote the theme music to the Superman television show.

For those of you who belong to "Gen X" or later, I refer to the cheesily awful-yet-wonderful vintage show starring George Reeves. I cited the Superman theme song in an essay about Wagner's Die Walkuere, along with the themes from two films: Christopher Reeve's update of Superman, and Indiana Jones. In the end, I was advised by my editor to abandon the actual musical examples and simply describe the themes instead. Music published prior to 1923 is in the public domain, but all three of those themes, of course, date from long after that; securing permission to reproduce in a small-scale publication venture like mine is impractical. But here's the thing: I held out hope that I might still use the TV music since, it turns out, no one knows who composed it! From the liner notes to a CD recording of the original soundtrack I gleaned the following information:

The credited composer of the Superman TV theme is Leon Klatzkin. Frankly, the credit is troublesome. Klatzkin's job on Superman was to select Mutel tracks and tell the editors where to place them. According to David Chudnow, ... "Leon was working as a music cutter for television. He'd look at a show, pick the cues off my turntable, and write out an order. Then he'd give me the cue sheet. That's all he did." (Note: I find something wonderfully John Cage-ish about this approach to "composition". But to continue:)

This much is known: the "Superman Theme" was orchestrated and recorded in New York by Jack Shaindlin in 1952. ...If Klatzkin wrote it, he clearly based it on {material previously written by Shaindlin}. Some feel it may have been prewritten by one of Shaindlin's ghost writers. The truth, it seems, has been borne away by time and lost in the darkness and distance.

Now, put yourself in my place: if you wanted to quote the first phrases of said theme (doot-de-DOOO, doodle-ty DOOO, doot-de doo doo doo doodle-ty DOO), knowing that "the truth" of its origin "has been borne away by time and lost in the darkness and distance", would you have felt you were placing yourself in legal jeopardy? I sure didn't when I displayed a jpeg image of the theme on the version of my essay which appeared in blog form months ago.

I pled my case. I lost. No musical examples of superheroes shall grace the pages of The Opera Zoo. Heaven help me if a worthy publishing company ended up being brought to ruin by vengeful, gold-digging descendents of the Klatzkin or Shaindlin tribes.

By the way, if you were planning on ordering your very own copy of my book, don't let this development deter you in any way. It's still a pretty good book. Even my wife says so.

Orphée: Philip Glass's "Midnight in Paris"

2011-12-03T12:23:00.001-05:00

Woody Allen and Philip Glass.

Turns out they're soul mates. Who knew?

When Allen picks up his clarinet, he generally emits mello jazz rather than esoteric minimalism (sorry, Mr. Glass; I'm aware you're not fond of that term). Nevertheless, as I study the score for Glass's Orphée, I have to say I am strongly put in mind of the most recent Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris.

Did you see the movie? If you're the type to be reading a blog about opera, the odds are good that you did: clearly, you're all sophisticated and everything. Owen Wilson, you'll recall, played the principal role of Gil, a guy who I see as an avatar not only of the filmmaker who created him, but of Philip Glass as well.

Gil falls head over heels in love with Paris, but not so much with the present-day city as with its storied past. He's a junkie for the glamour of the Lost Generation, that eclectic band of artists, writers and musicians who consorted, partied, fought, copulated and (most of all) created together in the cafés and studios of Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. You know the names: Stravinsky, Picasso, Satie, Hemingway, Fitzgerald (Scott and Zelda), Dali, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Gertrude Stein (hmmm... not sure why I felt you wouldn't recognize her without her given name...), and so on and so forth. Oh, let's add one more: Jean Cocteau, the mercurial creator of the film Orphée (the screenplay for which provides Glass with his libretto) as well as poet, novelist, designer and playwright, among other pursuits.

Wow. I can't say I blame Gil. Go to Paris today; it's just a bunch of French people. When it comes to intellectualism and sheer artistic brilliance, that bygone Paris scene was da BOMB. We may never see its like again - these days, if you want to start a new movement or cause a cultural shift in aesthetics, you can just sit at your laptop all by yourself and git 'er done.

But it's becoming clear to me that it's not just Gil who's crushing on that savory broth of poetry, dance, painting and music; Philip Glass is clearly enamored of it as well.

The opera Orphée opens with a jazzy pattern meant to depict the milieu of Cocteau's opening scene: students gathered in a café while a combo plays some mellow tunes. The first time I heard Glass's evocation, I immediately thought: "Milhaud. This music sounds like Darius Milhaud." In time, I identified the exact piece of Milhaud I had in mind; it was the opening of his ballet Le boeuf sur le toit. Certain passages in that opening "Animé" have the same carefree, irreverent jauntiness of Glass's café music. And yes, Glass's version of "jazz" certainly contains some of his characteristic musical DNA: the repetitiveness, the odd chord progressions, and so on. But considering the surreal atmosphere of the scene as Cocteau wrote it, the music is completely appropriate. We're in a dream-state; Puccini-like chord progressions would be wrong. Pretty, but wrong.

This resemblance of Glass to Milhaud, general though it may be, becomes highly suggestive when placed in the context of these facts:

1) Milhaud's title came from a bar he used to frequent during his years in Brazil; he translated it to French from the Portuguese (the English meaning is "The Ox on the Roof").

2) Sometime after his return to Paris, a certain tavern there was re-named for Milhaud's ballet; it's said that he and Artur Rubenstein used to play the score in a four-hand keyboard version for the patrons.

3) This bar, "Le boeuf sur le toit", is the very bar in which Cocteau and his circle used to hang out during their salad days.

In Richard Kostelanetz's anthology Writings on Glass, Glass (who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger in the 1960's) recounts his interaction with the elderly Darius Milhaud in Aspen, Colorado:

"I was mostly interested in the people he knew in Paris in the '20s and '30s. I had been to Paris myself one year. I think it was 1954. I spent the summer in Paris studying French. I was interested in Paris, and I asked him about what it was like then and he talked about it. He reminisced a little bit, I liked the stories."

So like Woody Allen's Gil, wouldn't you say?

So now, when I hear the opening strains of Glass's Cocteau opera, I hear a tip of the cap to the composer who christened that temple of wine and spirits in which the filmmaker caroused with his fellow-artistes. I hear an homage to Darius Milhaud. I perceive a Francophile American composer immersing himself in an era he never experienced, yet for which he feels strong nostalgia. This opera, this Orphée, is his labor of love.

(Photo of Woody Allen by Colin Swan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/cswan/87743338/) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The 2-minute Hansel and Gretel

2011-11-26T21:36:00.001-05:00

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Hansel, a boy who doesn't care for three-bean salad

Gretel, a girl who struggles to remember folk songs and has a dark side

Father, a very pushy salesman

Mother, a woman with anger issues

Witch, an old woman who used to be Orkin's best customer

A bunch of cookies shaped like children which eventually are turned into real children, thereby blatantly ripping off the Pinocchio story. Except I think Hansel and Gretel came first, so I guess Pinocchio is a blatant rip-off of the cookie children. Whatever. Either way, I smell a lawsuit.

(Act I: a cozy little cottage on the edge of the forest. Gretel is doing girl-stuff, e.g. sewing or needlepoint or watching "Real Housewives of the Enchanted Woods" or something. Hansel is making brooms and wishing he could change the channel to the the Bears-Packers game.)

GRETEL (attempting to sing a merry German folk song as she works)

"Susie, little Susie, come give me your knee!

The goose fell in the butter, my dog has a flea!"

HANSEL

That's not how that goes. There's something wrong with you.

GRETEL

I'm starving. It's affecting my memory. Hey, I know what! Let's have a dancing lesson! Dance with me, brother!! (She starts to sing again)
"With your foot you whap whap whap!

With your other foot snap whack chap!

Chap-stik HERE, butt-cheeks THERE...."

HANSEL (interrupting)

Seriously, there's something bad wrong with you. Get away from me. (The mother enters.)

MOTHER

WHAT?! You haven't done your CHORES?!?!? #$^&*#$@! Wait til your Father comes home, you good-for-nothing little #($*#&$^!

HANSEL

You've been cutting your anger-management classes again, haven't you?

MOTHER

Don't you talk back to ME, you little #$#&=*%*&^#$! Now both of you #($*%&^# go into the #$&(*% woods and pick some #$(=*&#%&T^ strawberries! NOW!!!!!!! (They leave. A minute later, the Father comes in with sacks of groceries.)

FATHER
HONEY, I'm HOME!

MOTHER

How was your day, dear?

FATHER

Super-fabulous! I sold me a BROOM! Look, I went to the store!

MOTHER (looking in his grocery sacks)

That's wonderful! Wow, you've brought eggs and bread and sausages and cheese and wine and beer and milk and sugar and apples and.... (she stops short) From one broom? Dag, baby, how much are you charging for these brooms?

FATHER

It's not the broom, it's the extended service contract on the broom. That's where the real money is.

MOTHER

I'm so proud of you.

FATHER

Let's eat! Where are the kids?

MOTHER
I sent them to their rooms for a time-out.

FATHER

Uh - this is a one-room cottage. They don't have rooms.

MOTHER
Right. But they were annoying me, so I sent them into the woods.

FATHER
The same woods with wolves, bears and cannibalistic old witches?

MOTHER

Well, there's only one woods, so I guess so.

FATHER

Have you been going to your anger-management classes? You know what the judge told you.

MOTHER

HOLY GEEZ! Will everyone please get off my BACK about that!!!! #$(=*&%&#^$!!!!

(Act II: the woods.)

GRETEL

Time for another merry German folk song!

HANSEL

Uh, that's okay, I'm good...

GRETEL (starts to sing anyway)

There was a little dude who was in a thing.

The little dude said "Lo - I am in a thing.

Who's the dude, who can he be?

It's a freakin' mystery..."

HANSEL (interrupting)

Stop it. Stop singing. Stop now. Do us all a favor and learn the words.

GRETEL

Time to go home. Did you mark the way back like I told you?

HANSEL

Yes: I cleverly used handfuls of Purina Forest Bird Chow.

GRETEL

Moron. We're lost. Now what? Should I sing another merry German fo-

HANSEL

NO!!! NO SINGING! Let's look for a house made of Gingerbread.

GRETEL

A what made of what?

HANSEL

Just go with it, okay? (They suddenly espy an edible house, right on cue.)

GRETEL (sniffing the front door)

It smells kinda weird. I thought it was supposed to be gingerbread; this smells like fish. (The witch comes out.)

WITCH

It's sushi. I was having insect problems with the cake and candy materials. You know how sugar draws ants. Besides, who doesn't love sushi?

HANSEL

No baked goods of any kind? A little Melba toast maybe?

WITCH

You're not listening: they just call ants. Let me see what else I can offer you. (She opens her refrigerator and surveys the contents.) Okay, I've got some dill pickles... a little prune juice... some leftover three-bean salad... you kids like three-bean salad?

GRETEL

Gross. Ew.

HANSEL
Pass.

WITCH

Well, crap - I can't eat y'all like this; you're skin and bones. I like me some fat kid-meat.

HANSEL

Gosh, look at the time! Gotta book - them brooms ain't gonna make themselves.

WITCH

Nice try. Well, you'll probably be lower in cholesterol; that's a plus. And as luck would have it, I was watching Paula Deen yesterday and she devoted her entire show to recipes for children.

GRETEL

I caught that show. I think she meant stuff to feed to children.

WITCH

Are you sure? I could have sworn... oh well: a few pounds of bacon, butter and cream in the pot with you and you guys'll taste fine. Everything tastes better with bacon, am I right?

HANSEL

Hold up; there's something I don't get. Why do you want to eat us?

WITCH.

I'm hungry. Duh.

HANSEL

You live in a house made of food. And you've got all that three-bean salad. There is no reason whatsoever for you to be hungry.

WITCH

You know, I can't deny that you make a compelling argument there. Okay, tell you what: I'll heat up some three-bean salad. Gretel, give me a hand here with the roaring fire in this oven.

GRETEL (suddenly pushing the Witch into the oven and slamming the door while screams of agony emanate from within)

Like THIS? BWAH-HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! (She begins capering around the room, singing in an eerie, high-pitched voice)

WITH YOUR FOOT YOU WHAP WHAP WHAP...

HANSEL (staring at her in horror)

When we get home I'm telling Mom and Dad what you did.

GRETEL (grabbing him by the throat)

I wouldn't do that if I were you. Remember, I've killed now. They say it gets easier and easier after the first kill, so watch your step. Now I think we should turn all those cookie children out behind the house back into real children.

HANSEL

Cookies? COOKIES??! I knew she was holding out on me!!! YAY! COOKIES! (As the curtain comes down, Gretel struggles to restrain her brother and prevent him from eating their classmates at school. It would be nice to think he didn't.)

THE END. (sushi photo by de:Benutzer:Beyer)

Hansel and Gretel and famine in Europe

2011-11-17T11:01:00.001-05:00

"Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children", begins the Grimm brothers' tale of Hansel and Gretel. "He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread."

You know what follows, unless your parents locked you in a closet at bedtime and never read you any stories. But I want to linger on these opening sentences for a moment. Quite a few fairy tales seem to involve people overcoming poverty to achieve wealth and ease. (Side note: Humperdinck's opera glosses over the episode in Grimm following the cookie-fication of the Witch in which the kids find the old cannibal's storehouse of "pearls and jewels" and take them home to their Father.) This storyline never gets old; we're still obsessed with it today. It's hard to deny that part of the charm of the Harry Potter novels is the personal success story of J. K. Rowling.

I've got a theory I'm going to launch out into the blogosphere with this post. I wouldn't bet your life savings on the accuracy of this theory if I were you, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, either.

I think I know, within a handful of years, exactly how old the story of Hansel and Gretel is. (Side note #2: you are aware, aren't you, that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn't invent their tales? You understand that they were the first to put them into written form following innumerable generations of existing as a purely oral tradition of folklore, right? You are permitted to lie when responding if that will help you save face. I didn't really want to put you on the spot here...)

I believe that Hansel and Gretel dates from the fourteenth century; possibly ca. 1325 or so. And why is that? It seems to me stories about starvation and famine are based on embellished recountings of actual events. Think about the stories you tell from your own personal history; your favorite personal anecdotes. Aren't a number of them about disasters you experienced? The time you overslept and missed an exam in college; the time you were stranded in your car in a blizzard; the time you got lost for hours in a strange city; that sort of thing. My own repertoire includes the wild tale of the time I unwisely picked up two wholesome-looking hitch-hikers while driving from Bloomington, Indiana to Chicago and they turned out to be Charles Manson admirers with, it developed, designs on car-jacking my vehicle and possibly abducting me. (Great story - I'd tell it now, except it contains no opera music.)

Be that as it may, it seems logical that the tale of starving children, starving parents and a witch whose sins amount to her extreme dietary choices likely arose from a time of mass famine. A quick surfing of the Internet yielded details of the Great Famine of 1315-1322 which caused massive death from starvation in Northern European countries: the British Isles, northern France, Scandinavian countries, Poland, and Germany.

Catastrophic weather, among other factors, caused crop failure; no vegetables to consume, no grain to feed livestock. The population of game animals and birds deteriorated. During this period, average life-expectancy dropped by some five years. It is estimated that, in these regions, up to 25% of the population perished. (The image accompanying this post is a vision of the Apocalypse depicting this famine created during the period.) It was a perfect storm of horrific conditions encompassing anarchy, disease, misery, and widespread death. It was also a time when infanticide and cannibalism were observed.

Hence my theory.

Did you really think Hansel and Gretel was just a fuzzy, cuddly bedtime story about adorable children, a trail of bread crumbs and a house made of sugar and cake?

This story happened. It's actually Humperdinck's opera which produces much of our softened image of the story, changing the evil, murderous step-mother (who dies) into a biological mother who is merely depressed and stressed-out and adding the glow of guardian angels and hymns of thanks to the Lord. (A future blog post will address that aspect of the opera.)
-
How can we doubt that survivors of the Great Famine told and re-told anecdotes of suffering and cruelty? Put yourself in the place of the Witch: you're an elderly woman, driven mad by solitude and starvation. One day, two abandoned children, obviously unloved and unwanted, nothing more to their parents than two mouths competing for non-existent food, come stumbling up to your hut. The real "Hansel" and "Gretel" were probably half-dead, with emaciated bodies.

No wonder so much of the witch's music sounds dance-like and celebratory: she's overjoyed: at last, something to EAT! Cannibalism is real; consider that film Alive, about a notorious plane crash in the Andes mountains. The will to live dominates all other human instincts.

Yes, in the telling and re-telling as decades piled up into centuries, the details became picturesque. The house made of good things to eat; the predatory old crone became a supernatural creature with magical powers; and so on. The libretto for Humperdinck's version is overloaded with such embellishments: the kindly Sandman; the Dew Fairy; the tableau of angels; the cookie children brought back to life. But strip away all of this, examine the core essentials of the plot, and a certain starkness remains, based on memories of catastrophe.

Humperdinck's sweet little children's opera very well may spring from an unseemly reality, perhaps recalling the gruesome years of 1315-1322 when unspeakable conditions brought out the worst of human nature

Penn State, Sandusky and Hansel and Gretel

2011-11-10T16:47:00.001-05:00

The arts function as society's mirror. Since this is an opera blog, we'll use opera to illustrate this truth. Opera explains humankind to itself. Opera reveals our foibles, our foolishness, our vanity, our weaknesses. It also reminds us of our redeeming traits of faith, integrity, courage, self-awareness and the hope for our better natures to prevail.

The great operas also provide continuous commentary on the current events of any generation; any time period - including today.

Look at the headlines in today's paper; opera knows all about them.

Case in point: Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel has lessons to teach us about the tragic sex-scandal debacle taking place at Penn State University.

Let's consider the witch. She's bad. Terrible, in fact. She's a cannibal. Does she have any good qualities? She does not. Is there anything inside her wrinkled witchy self to respect at all? Nope. Her cannibalism sort of puts the kibosh on that subject.

And that's how we like our villains, isn't it? 100% awful. Villains should revel in creating havoc; their eyes should roll crazily in their sockets while they drool, cackle and shriek. They get extra points if, when really provoked, they can turn into fire-breathing dragons, a la Maleficent from Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty.

Maleficent has a counterpart in the opera world: Iago from Verdi's Otello. The moment when Iago gets in touch with his rottenness is a deliciously over-the-top bit of bluster and snarling animus: the famous "Credo". Once we hear the opening notes, no super-titles are needed; THIS is one bad dude.

However... even Iago didn't eat little children! So Humperdinck's witch is worse, right? Absolutely! A monster, a lunatic, a demon, a..... okay, you get it.

It follows, then, that the music assigned to this apparition will be grotesque, doesn't it? It will surely be creepy and traumatizing. It should send small children to bed with nightmares; it should put the elderly in peril of heart failure; it should be enough to raise Rod Serling from the dead shouting "OH GOD, MAKE IT STOP!!"

So arm yourself with prozac and prepare for hair-raising horror with this typical utterance of Madam Witch.

Feeling a bit disappointed? I can't say as I blame you; it's -- what's the word? -- ordinary. Kind of jolly. Not scary at all. And here's the thing: that's all you get, witch-wise, from Humperdinck. The witch's lines range from grandmotherly to gleeful. She doesn't glower or snarl. The hocus-pocus spell she lays on Gretel shows a momentary promise of creepiness, but it flickers out into another bit of prosaic tunefulness.

Her music is banal. And therein lies the composer's brilliance. You know who else was banal? Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt's book chronicling his war-crimes trial was entitled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It appears that, if you didn't know what Eichmann did for a living during his years as Hitler's henchman, you would have liked him; if he lived next door, you might have asked him to water your plants while you were on vacation. You might have invited him over for dinner.

This is an observation that leads directly us directly to the topic of conversation at every breakfast table during the second week of November in 2011: a piece of human filth named Jerry Sandusky, who victimized children in a scandal of rampant pedophilia that may yet bring a great university to the brink of ruin.

Hansel and Gretel knows all about Sandusky and his ilk; it knows that those who prey upon children are in fact always ordinary in appearance; always normal in their initial human interactions. Just as the witch lured Hansel and Gretel with the temptation of a house made of gingerbread and sweets, Sandusky lured his victims with the cover of a charitable foundation established to help troubled "lost" children. Predators establish a bond with those they intend to abuse, whether in an oven or in a shower stall.

Hmmm... I guess Eichmann had some experience with ovens as well, didn't he?

Somehow we expect monsters to look like dragons. It would be easier for children to avoid them if they foamed at the mouth and roared and had, oh, fangs maybe. Instead, they look like grandma.

Or like a stand-up, church-going straight-arrow football coach.

Don't be disappointed with the blandness of the witch's music in this wonderful opera; it's among the most psychologically astute characterizations you'll encounter in the pantheon of great opera evil-doers. And it explains a great deal about the downfall of Joe Paterno and the disgrace of officials who should have known better.

"I hate to leave, I have to, though"

2011-11-07T09:37:00.000-05:00

The woods. Lots of trees, of course. What else?

Wolves
Owls
Bears
Possibly Dick Cheney hunting birds again with that damn gun
And, of course, cannibalistic old witches

Oh, one other thing: in the words of Stephen Sondheim (who also provided the title for today's post), "the thing that makes it worth the journeying".

What's that?

It's different for each of us, but in the end it's the same for all of us.

For George VI, it was learning how to be King of England when he had no inclination to be anybody's king. During a world war. With a speech impediment. He couldn't hide and escape; he had to cope and deal; learn to "talk real good" so he could inspire the homeland over the airwaves. That's deep in the woods.

For a long-time stay-at-home mother suddenly without a child to raise after the last one is married and gone, it's realizing that if she's going to be hired by anyone for any position she'll have to enroll at the community college and gain some computer skills.

For a seventh-grader whose dad just got transferred from New Jersey to Arizona, it's summoning the guts to walk up the steps to the entrance of her new middle school; a school where the kids have all grown up together; where nobody knows her; where nobody has her kind of accent; where, she knows, she'll have to endure the blatant staring of the entire student body. And she woke up with a zit.

So: maybe public speaking skills, maybe computer skills, maybe the guts to make friends.

How about with our little forest denizens Hansel and Gretel? For the answers, I have turned to an amazing book: The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim. I will paraphrase his interpretation of this highly symbolic story.

When you reached a certain stage of your childhood, you arrived at a shockingly distressing epiphany about your mom:

She isn't always going to give you what you want.

When you were an infant in your crib, all you had to do was cry, and who came running? Mama. Did she ever say "no"? As if! "What do you want? Do you need a bottle? A clean diaper? To be rocked? Tell mama!"

Then suddenly she's all "No, you can't have a cookie. No, you can't watch TV. No, you can't go with me." Mama has become Isis - remember her from last month's Aida blog posts? Here's the thing about Isis: she had two characteristic aspects: benevolent, nurturing mother of the gods, and avenging punisher.

And when you first encounter your mother's dark aspect, we can be sure of one thing:

You will really, really, - no, really - wish things could go back to the way they used to be, when Mama was the source of constant gratification of all your wants and desires with no exceptions. You've probably seen how a five-year-old child behaves when a new baby suddenly appears in the household. He's crawling on hands and knees, talking baby-talk and probably stuffing a pacifier in his mouth. This is the outward manifestation of a deep-seated urge to regress to infancy.

And some of us hang on to vestiges of this urge for the rest of our lives.

Bettelheim describes what he sees as the twin themes of Hansel and Gretel: 1) separation anxiety as children begin to face the world without being able to hide behind mother's skirts; and 2) the need to overcome "a primitive orality", or what is sometimes called an oral fixation.

The urge to suck at the nipple is so intrinsic to a child's nature that the need to achieve gratification via the mouth is powerful indeed. Consider our fairy-tale heroes:

At the top of Act II in Humperdinck's opera, the children are doing a half-assed job of completing their latest chore; namely, picking strawberries to share with their parents for a meager dinner. Yet they can't control themselves and snarf down the entire pailful.
When they encounter the notorious gingerbread house (in every production except Virginia Opera's!), do they knock on the door, introduce themselves, explain their difficulty and politely ask to nosh on a windowpane? They do not. Again: no self-control, giving new meaning to the stock phrase "eating one out of house and home".

Thus, they resemble every 18-year-old college student who returns home for the holidays with the "freshman 15", or the pounds amassed by eating a diet of Skittles and pizza. Oh, and beer. (Note: beer and skittles turn out to be an acceptable marriage of flavors...)

They resemble Denny McLain, who in 1968 became the last major league pitcher to win 30 games in one season. McLain was fueled in part by his habit of drinking thirty Pepsi-Colas every day.

They resemble any schmo with a five pack a day habit, or who bites his fingernails. (That one is my personal bugaboo...)

Did it ever occur to you that, traditional casting choices aside, the Mother and the Witch, are one and the same figure? Nurturing mother and abusive witch: the two sides of Isis. Bettelheim says the children need to emerge from the woods with mature, integrated personalities so they can recognize mother as the complex singer person she is in actuality.

Bottom line: we must embrace the symbolism of the tale and understand that the children have not literally killed a witch; rather, they have killed their childish urge to regress to a state of infancy, when life consisted of gratification and little else.

In Grimm, the children discover the witch's horde of treasure and take it back home. See what happened there? They are no longer baby birds with their gaping open mouths waiting for the mother bird to provide the worms; they are earners, contributing to the household finances and wealth.

They're "out of the woods - and home before dark!" (More Sondheim - it really is a good musical...)

The 2-minute Aida

2011-11-03T09:24:00.000-04:00

A tradition unlike any other (except for the Master's tournament): my lame libretto parodies. THEY'RE BAAAAAACK!! I now present my desecration of AIDA.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Aida, the Princess of Ethiopia (shhh... don’t tell anyone - it’s a secret)
Amneris, the Princess of Egypt and heiress to a nasal-spray fortune. (Wait - that’s Omneris. Never mind)
Radames, an Egyptian soldier with a thing for Ethiopian chicks
Pharoah, Amneris’s Dad and the inventor of a kick-butt nasal spray. (Whoops - forgot. Never mind again.)
Amonasro, Aida's Dad and, being king of Ethiopia, a guy with his finger on the pulse of the hot pretzel business. (This will be explained later in the parody. Keep reading.)

Act I: somewhere in Ancient Egypt sometime between 73 and 5,000 years ago Radames is dreaming of his future plans.

RADAMES:
I knew it was the right thing to do to be in ROTC! My dream is to be Commander in Chief of the Egyptian army! Gee whiz, I sure wish there was some way I could curry favor with Pharoah so he would give me this job I want so much... (Enter Amneris)

AMNERIS:
Hi there, handsome. Wanna come over to my place tonight and have some crock-pot camel with me and my royal daddy?

RADAMES.
Nah. Rain check. Some other time. (to himself:) Think, think, THINK: there MUST be some way to get in good with Pharoah. This is IMPORTANT!

AMNERIS:
Cute but dumb - man, can I pick ‘em? (Aida comes in, looking particularly Ethiopian)

RADAMES:
(meaningfully) How you doin? May I say, you’re looking particularly Ethiopian today... in a good way.

AIDA:
Ix-nay on the irting-flay - the incess-pray is atching-way.

RADAMES:
Ethiopian is a weird language - talk Egyptian!

AIDA:
Man, you really are cute but dumb! (Enter Pharoah with a bunch of priests and other hangers-on.)

PHAROAH:
I have an important message from Isis.

RADAMES:
Italian? What flavor?

PHAROAH:
I beg your pardon?

RADAMES:
I LOVE Italian ices! Especially mango!

PHAROAH:
Not the frozen treat, camel-brain, the goddess: “Isis”

RADAMES:
Sire, I think you’re mispronouncing that: I believe it’s pronounced “EE-sis”

PHAROAH:
Nope; it’s “EYE-sis”

RADAMES:
I’m pretty sure I’m right about this: “EE-sis” When Sarastro sings about her in “ “Magic Flute”, he always goes “oh EE-sis UND oh-ZEE-ris”

PHAROAH:
Do you want to be Commander in Chief of the Egyptian army or not?

RADAMES:
It’s my dream.

PHAROAH:
Fine. Done. Go kill some Ethiopians.

BIG CROWD:
Go, Radames! Go, Radames! Kill them Ethiopians!!!

AIDA:
(momentarily over-reacting to her boyfriend’s good fortune) YEAH! KILL THEM ETHIOPIANS!! BOMB ‘EM BACK TO THE STONE AGE! (which, actually, was not all that long ago now that I think about it) BLOOD! BLOOD! KILL ‘EM! KILL --- (she stops to think through her position) Oopsie. Um.... I’d like to request that you all disregard my previous comments. I apologize for any confusion I may have created.

Act II: Omneris’s apartment. DOH’ - pardon, I meant Amneris’s apartment. The two princesses (but remember: Aida’s princess-osity is a deep dark secret, so keep your mouth shut) are having some girl-talk.

AMNERIS:
So, girl-friend, you can tell your bestie: you’re a little sweet on Radames, aren’t you?

AIDA:
Who?

AMNERIS:
Oh, you! C’mon, ‘fess up - dish the dirt, gurl!! You & him got a little thing going don’t you?

AIDA:
I have no idea who you’re talking about. Really..

AMNERIS:
Tell me, tell me, tell me! Is he a good kisser? All us Egyptian girls wanna know!

AIDA:
Seriously - nothing to tell.

AMNERIS:
Well, it’s just as well, since, you know, he’s dead.

AIDA:
WHAT?!?!?! NOOOOOOOOO!!!! WAAH! WAAH! WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! OH GOD! OH GOD! AUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!!

AMNERIS:
Wait - did I say “dead”? Dear me, I told a teensy white fib: he’s just as big and juicy and alive and hunky as ever, baby! Whatchoo think ‘bout dat?

AIDA:
um... again, I don’t believe I’m acquainted with this - this -“Roodemas”, was it?

AMNERIS:
Nice try. Bitch.

Act III. Night time. The banks of the Nile. The banks are closed, of course, but Aida enters with her ATM card. Get it? Get it? “Banks of the Nile”? Heh heh heh heh.....

AIDA:
Well, my country lost the war, my Dad the king was taken prisoner, and Radames is marrying that Princess of Poo, Omneris. And yes, I know what her real name is, I just like calling her that. *sigh* Geez, it sure sucks to be me lately. Wish I was home again - Ethiopia is WAY better than Egypt. They have those little sidewalk carts that sell those incredible hot pretzels with the salt and the mustard... I’m tired of eating crock-pot camel... And on top of everything, I can't remember my PIN. DARN!! (Amonasro enters)

AMONASRO:
Hi, daughter!

AIDA:
Daddy! Did you bring me a pretzel?

AMONASRO:
What? No... Listen, I need a favor.

AIDA:
Your little girl will do anything for her Daddy-Waddy.

AMONASRO:
Great. I need you to go on one final hot date with Roodemas or whatever his name is...

AIDA:
I was just playing dumb when I said "Roodemas"...

AMONASRO:
Whatever. Get him all worked up & horny, do a little heavy petting, let him get to first base...

AIDA:
(interrupting) I’m confused. How is this a favor for you, exactly - you like to watch? EW, DADDY!

AMONASRO:
...and then get him to betray his country and his code of honor by telling you military secrets so my guys can kick his camel-eating ass.

AIDA:
I don’t wanna.

AMONASRO:
Okay, but if you “wanna” go down as the Idi Amin of Ethiopia, that’s your call. Plus, I’m SO cutting you out of my will, and I was going to leave you my royal supply of pretzel carts.

AIDA:
Okay, okay, okay. Here comes Radames. Go hide. (Radames enters, carrying a pack of Trojans and a tube of that K-Y stuff.)

RADAMES:
Hey, cute-stuff!

AIDA:
Um, Radames? Sweety? Do you like hot pretzels with mustard, by any chance?

RADAMES:
DO I?! Boy-howdy, YES! Hey - I know what: let’s ditch Egypt and run off to Ethiopia together to start a new life in the land of delicious, yummy pretzels! (He proceeds to tell her a bunch of military secrets.)

AIDA:
Well, that was easy. Did anyone ever tell you you’re cute but dumb?

RADAMES:
I get that a lot, actually.

Act IV. In a subterranean tomb underneath the Temple of Vulcan.

RADAMES:
Wow, this has been a fascinating tour - that tour guide was most informative. I LOVE seeing ancient Egyptian stuff! Hmmm... I seem to have gotten separated from the group - I'd better catch up. Let’s see, I think the exit was over here somewhere.... (He pushes against the huge boulder blocking the way out, but it won’t budge.) Well, CRAP. Looks like I’m in trouble this time. Shoot, I should never have betrayed my country and my code of honor. I mean, once I was the new Pharoah I could have sent out for pretzels, right? I’m pretty sure they deliver...

AIDA:
(emerging from a corner of the tomb) Actually, they don’t deliver to Egypt. Enemies, you know.

RADAMES:
Right, right, I should’ve thought of ….. HEY! What are YOU doing here, baby?!

AIDA:
My dad’s dead, Omneris gets her way, my country couldn’t beat the Miami Dolphins in a war if you spotted them three touchdowns and four camels, and you’re about to suffocate in your own tomb. My life sucks lemons and I’m cashing in my Ethiopian chips.

RADAMES:
Well, I’m sure glad to see you. We belong together, you know. Geez, it’s stuffy in here. Is something wrong with the air-conditioning? Nothing’s coming through the vents. Wait... there AREN’T any vents. Holy Eesis, they better fix that before the next tour group comes down here.

AIDA:
Cute. Dumb. Man, can I pick ‘em?

THE END.

Hansel and Gretel: Media Darlings

2011-11-02T08:54:00.000-04:00

Virginia Opera’s first production of Hansel and Gretel in 31 years opens in Norfolk in a couple of weeks, and maybe you’ve noticed:

Them Grimm boys are “in”. They’re trendy... hip... hot... happenin’...

Item: NBC just premiered a new prime-time drama called simply Grimm. It's described by the network as “inspired by the classic Grimm’s fairy tales". A homicide detective finds out he’s descended from a race of beings who are fated to protect Earth from ogres, witches, yada yada.

Oh, and vampires. You want ratings, you gotta have vampires, everyone knows that. Duh.

Item: ABC just premiered a new prime-time drama called Once Upon a Time. Executive Producer Adam Horowitz says "We kept circling back to the idea of fairytales. ...They're full of magic and heroics and fear and joy. But we also found fairytales are full of all these unanswered questions. Like why is Grumpy grumpy? ...And did the Evil Queen really try to kill Snow white simply because of vanity? With Once Upon A Time we set out to explore those questions..."

So: Snow White in modern-day Manhattan. Will there be vampires? I don't know, but geez - there must be a way to work a couple of 'em in somewhere.

Guess what? To the surprise of the more cynical TV critics, both new shows did pretty well in the ratings - better than Pan Am or that fiasco about the Playboy mansion.

And don't forget Sondheim's wonderful musical Into The Woods.

And then there's *ahem* ME!! GLENN WINTERS!! In 2008 I was commissioned by Virginia Opera's Education Department to compose a new touring opera for our Spectrum apprentice artists to perform around the state: Tales From The Brothers Grimm.

I'M TRENDY!! I'M TRENDY!!!

Let me tell you, it was no small feat to provide, as stipulated in the commission, three little mini-operas adapted from Grimm which would be age-appropriate for grades K-5. Have you read these stories?

In a word, they are gruesome. Torture! Death! Birds pecking out people's eyes! OMG!! What nut-case ever thought these would make for nice cuddly bed-time stories for three-year-olds?

Here's my favorite. It's short, and the tone is characteristic of a large number of the Grimm's oeuvre. It's called The Willful Child and I now quote it in its entirety.

"Once upon a time there was a child who was willful, and would not do what her mother wished. For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed. When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread over her, all at once her arm came out again, and stretched upwards, and when they had put it in and spread fresh earth over it, it was all to no purpose, for the arm always came out again. Then the mother herself was obliged to go to the grave, and strike the arm with a rod, and when she had done that, it was drawn in, and then at last the child had rest beneath the ground.

HOLY CRUD! all-RIGHTY then!

So now you’re wondering if I used that one in my opera. Well, of course not, silly. Although since last week’s post in which I revealed that I ruined Christmas for a bunch of innocent children, let’s just say that I can see why you might not have complete confidence in my judgement.

But really - why were stories like The Willful Child ever told in the first place? Who makes up a tale like that? For what purpose?

One can imagine that the original narrator may have been a frustrated parent faced with an obnoxious brat afflicted with what in our enlightened age is called “Oppositional Defiant Disorder”. You’ve seen frazzled mothers in the produce section of the supermarket, dragging along a screaming, tyranical tot. It's not a stretch to imagine Mom saying “Go right on with this behavior and see what happens, why don’t you! You know what happens to disobediant little kids like you? Well once there was a child who....” It’s a more elaborate version of the stock line “If you keep making that face, you’re face is going to freeze that way!”

So are Grimm’s stories cautionary tales? Is that their purpose?

Hansel and Gretel go into the woods, and almost get eaten by a cannibalistic witch. Red Riding Hood went into the woods as well. How’d that work out for her? Yep - eaten by a wolf. Not good!

So: should we conclude that these woodsy stories are warning us about the dangers of the woods? “HEY! FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE - STAY OUTTA THE WOODS!”

Um, no. In fact, Grimm’s stories tell us quite the opposite. As a matter of fact, the lesson of Hansel and Gretel is that we all have to go into the woods. If we want to become competent, independent, problem-solving adults, we have no choice but to go in the woods.

The next few blog posts will examine this concept, with the aid of a remarkable and classic book, Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment.

Last one in the woods is a rotten vampire!

My epic-fail adventure in early childhood education

2011-10-30T09:03:00.000-04:00

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this story. It doesn’t exactly show me in my most favorable light. And it’s my blog, you know? I should be going with the favorable-light thing as a general rule.

You’d think.

But here we go. This will make a decent blog post, even though there is a 100% chance that your opinion of my common sense will have been sharply downgraded by the time you reach the end.

So, to quote Deborah Kerr in Tea and Sympathy: “When you speak of this - and you will - be kind”.

I joined the professional opera world in the summer of 2004 in my present position as “guy-who-explains-opera-to-ordinary-people” for Virginia Opera. And when I say “people”, I mean actual people (i.e. adults) as opposed to theoretical people (i.e. little kids).

That sounded condescending, didn’t it? Look, I have nothing against little kids. I used to be one, and my wife (who was also a little kid once; I know, I’ve seen photos) and I raised our own. I’m just not paid to explain opera to them.

Virginia Opera has an extensive opera education program for K-12 with a long and distinguished history, reaching tens of thousands of little miniature Virginians each season. I’ve composed operas for that program, but my lecturing and teaching is limited to grown-ups. Little children, we’ve found, only control the family finances when it comes to deciding which breakfast cereal to buy, not whether or not to spring for opera tickets.

There was one glaring and unfortunate exception.

Right away, in my first season just weeks after being hired, I got a request: would I please go to the Ghent Montessori School right across the street from our home base at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk and tell the students about our opening production of Puccini’s Turandot?

“It’ll just be this one time”, I was told, “they ask us for a program every year, and you’re the only person available to do it this time. Just give a short talk that won’t be over the children’s heads. Make it age-appropriate.”

Well, you know how it is - you’re new on the job, wanting to prove what an Ideal Employee and Team Player and Asset To The Company you are, so you say: “Sure. No problem. Happy to help out.”

Thus it was that on a sunny weekday morning in late August I strolled with purpose across Llewellyn Avenue to the inviting, brightly-decorated interior of this temple of early childhood education, this Montessori school, with a mass of eager young opera-starved faces staring up at me.

I wasn’t worried. After all, what is Turandot if not a fairy tale, am I right? You’ve got your handsome prince, you’ve got your beautiful princess, you’ve got your riddles; kids eat this stuff up. They LOVE it. Nice easy gig.

And I thought I was knocking the ball out of the park! It was going so great. They were listening attentively. I was playing up the entertaining aspects of the story, right down to the three clown-like masques Ping Pang and Pong. (Kids like clowns.)

Then I got to the kiss.

If you don’t know the story, Princess Turandot hates men and takes sadistic pleasure in beheading all of them who can’t answer her riddles. Prince Calaf is the only guy who is smart enough to answer them correctly, which really fries her panties. She’s all huffy and everything untiil Calaf goes for a grandstand play and plants The Most Romantic Kiss In The History Of Kisses on her icy, man-hating lips. Suddenly, she melts into his arms and realizes, “Men are the coolest thing ever!! I LOVE men!!!”

No, I didn’t put it that way to my room full of cherubs. I had been trying hard to express all plot points in terms they could understand. So when I got to the the big kiss, I said this:

“You see, kids, when Calaf kissed the princess, it turned her world upside down. It made her realize everything she thought she knew was totally wrong.” Searching for the right way to “nail” my explanation and drive the point home, I continued: “It was like... it was like... it was like when you found out there was no Santa Claus!”

Yes, friends, I - Glenn Winters - told a roomful of little Montessori students that there is no Santa Claus.

Even in that moment, the awful depths of my blunder did not register. I thought my talk rocked! I’m REALLY GOOD AT THIS, I thought.

When the talk was over, the principal stalked up to me like an avenging angel, her face so frozen in mortified shock that I’m fairly certain actual icicles were forming on her ears and eyelids.

“I. just. want. you. to. know.” she said in a staccato stutter of barely-controlled outrage, “that. the. parents. of. these. children. are. going. to. call. me. tomorrow. and. ask. me. who. explained. to. their. sons. and. daughters. that. there’s. NO SANTA CLAUS.”

I don’t really remember what happened after that. It’s all kind of a blur. But two things I can confirm with absolute certainty:
1) Ghent Montessori has not asked me to return in the seven years since that day; and
2) I’ve stuck to adults since then. I’m really good at talking to them, by the way. Aces, in fact.

Remember: you promised to be kind...

A moment to savor: the perfect comeback

2011-10-23T22:44:00.001-04:00

I think I’m safe in publishing this blog essay as I’m 99.36% certain that my subject is not likely to visit these pages.

We’ve all found ourselves in that situation in which we’re involved in a verbal confrontation with a know-it-all. Too often, we end up gnashing our teeth in frustration for the rest of the day because the perfect retort only occurred to us afterwards, when Smarty-pants had departed in smug triumph and it was too late.

That’s why, fully one week later, I’m still enjoying a moment of triumph of my own at last Sunday’s matinee performance of Aida by Virginia Opera.

The scene: the company was on its Northern Virginia tour, taking the production to the Performing Arts Center at George Mason University in Fairfax. Fairfax being a suburb of Washington D.C., this tour always draws a good crowd; the region is a hot-bed of knowledgeable, sophisticated music-lovers. I had long since delivered my usual pre-curtain lecture to a packed hall.

Now generally, once the talk is complete I don’t stick around, but hop back onto I-95 back home to Newport News on the Virginia Peninsula, cruising along with a football game on the radio.

Today, however, I stuck around until the single intermission to do a little business: I’ve got a book to sell. (I’ve posted about this before - it’s my soon-to-be-published collection of spoofs and parodies I call The Opera Zoo: Singers, Composers and Other Primates, available in December from Kendall Hunt Publishing. If you want a copy, email me at glenn.winters@vaopera.org)

So I set up shop at a table in the main lobby and was gratified to find a steady stream of my pre-curtain-lecture groupies coming by to turn in their order forms.

And then ---- SHE appeared.

Ageless (but at least 68 I’d say), stout, dressed in a dreary gray suit and resembling Agatha Christie’s doppelganger, a woman with a business-like air and a thundercloud face began to hold court.

“I have a complaint”, she intoned in much the same manner I’m betting Queen Victoria used for her “We are not amused” line.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I said smoothly (I’m Mr. Smooth in these situations, you know.) “What seems to be the problem?” My charm factor was at about a 9 out of 10.

“Who was in charge of this production?”, she continued with ram-rod straight bearing, apparently impervious to 9.0 charm. Might have to crank it up that last notch. “Your grasp of history is AWFUL. You have them praying to the goddess Isis in the first scene, but then the last scene is in the temple of Vulcan.” Both her chins began to tremble in sheer indignation. “Isis and Vulcan date from completely different eras of Egyptian history. They could not have both been worshipped by these people.” Then, leaning in to drive home her argument: “Don’t you KNOW THAT?!?!?!?” (Ah, light dawns. You’re a retired professor of antiquities at this fine university. And if you’re not retired, you should seriously give it some consideration.)

With the charm-mill operating at full tilt, I gave her what I hoped was a George Clooney smile of beatific friendliness and, without missing a beat, blandly replied:

“Well, you see, we didn’t have much choice there. You’d have to take this up with the composer Verdi, because [wait for it] - it’s in the libretto.”

Three beats of silence. Her eyes bugged out. Her jaw dropped. She was stymied. Khadaffi was chased out of hiding. Mubarek was on the outs. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Victory.

“.....Really?...”

“That’s right.”

“Well, ..I... that’s... er...”

And with that, she turned on her heel and slunk off in defeat. I turned to young Katie, our P.R. Director who was sitting next to me selling subscriptions. She was smiling.

Am I petty to relate this story? Is it small of me? Is it wrong to take such pleasure in humbling another human being? Should I, you know, get over it?

Well, sure. And I will.

Any day now.

The moment when Aida's old man begins to snore...

2011-10-16T19:53:00.000-04:00

Are there two operas with less in common than Mozart's Così fan tutte and Verdi's Aida?

One is a sexy romp full of double-entendres and witty banter, with a serious subtext so hidden between the lines that some music-lovers never detect it.

The other is a historical robes-and-sandals epic with not even a fleeting trace of humor. Them-there Egyptian folks and Ethiopian folks are a grim bunch of codgers...

One is the emblem of Viennese Classicism; the other is the apotheosis of Italian lyricism.

How odd that they're bound together by a child's playground song!

There's a certain playground anthem that most of us sang back in the day. The basic tune consists of this sequence of pitches: sol-mi, sol-mi, sol-sol-mi-la-sol-mi. The most common words are:

It turns out that this ditty has a long and involved history. Musicologists have identified versions of it from every culture on earth. Americans sing a variety of words to it, ranging from the inevitable "Nanny-nanny boo-boo" to more mean-spirited expressions like "Bobby is a loser".

But in France, children sing "Nananananère, pouette pouette camembert!" Mexican children know it as "Lero lero candilero". A little research will reveal similar little masterpieces from Russia, Sweden... you name it.

As far back in history as music goes.

Impressed? I am! Apparently, pre-adolescent human beings are hard-wired to produce this tune when at play.

What's interesting is how it can turn up in works by Classical composers.

Last year, during Virginia Opera's run of Così performances, I posted an essay on this blog noting the use of the tune in the opening trio of Act I. Whether deliberate or intuitive, Mozart's choice of the "It's raining, it's pouring" motive was spot-on in suggesting the immature, juvenile attitude towards love held by soldier-boys Ferrando and Guglielmo.

As for Aida, the tune appears as the concluding theme in her great soliloquy "Ritorna vincitor" in Act I, scene i. No one has ever equaled Giuseppe Verdi in the ability to craft mesmerizing musical streams of consciousness as his characters process kaleidoscopic emotions and psychological states while we in the audience are held rapt in front of the naked truth of human emotion. Aida is famously conflicted about the coming battle between her Egyptian captors and her Ethiopian kinsmen. Desperately in love with Radames, she cannot wish for his military success; yet if her father Amonasro is the victor, it will be at the cost of her lover's life. All possible outcomes to this war will cause her anguish and grief.

Confronted with a problem of such complexity and confusion that she is unable to resolve it herself, Aida ends her musings by doing what all religious folk are taught to do in similar circumstances: she prays. "Gods, have pity; have pity on my suffering."

Now, Verdi could have set these words in any of a number of ways. After all, Aida is an aristocrat; she is royalty; the Princess of her homeland. She might have invoked her gods in a demanding tone. She might have let years of repressed anger erupt in an angry torrent.

Instead, astonishingly, breath-takingly, we get the Universal Refrain of Childhood:

Just as many in the Judeo-Christian tradition often speak of "God the Father", Aida's prayer motive reveals that she finds herself in a child-like state of helplessness. The haughty princess has been humbled by captivity, shame and now conflicted loyalties; it has made her a child again. Ferrando and Guglielmo were caught being child-ish; Aida is child-like.

And it's the music that gives us this perception of her, not the words.

When an opera house is "the place to be"

2011-10-09T20:52:00.002-04:00

People who know me really well know that I have sort of a "thing" about being at "the place to be". You know what I mean by that, right? It's the victory party when the guy you voted for won; it's the senior prom when your date is the homecoming Queen (not that I would have any first-hand knowledge in that area); it's being at the Super Bowl (one of the good ones, not a crappy one with just field goals); it's the theater district when you've scored primo tickets to "The Book of Mormon" or whatever SRO smash has the town agog; it's.....

You get the concept.

I still remember a melancholy Fourth of July holiday here on the Virginia Peninsula about twenty years ago when my wife and I went to the banks of the James River to watch our city's fireworks show. It was a fine show, but I had a problem: from our vantage point, you could see distant fireworks displays from neighboring communities going on at the same time. Over to the left, there was Yorktown's show; on the right, fireworks from Norfolk. And of course, there would be other fireworks shows within a 30-minute drive here in this area, in Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth...

All at once, I grew moody and restless. Was my local fireworks show "the place to be"? There were certainly lots of people there who believed it was, but then again the people in Yorktown believed they were at the place to be, and the people in Norfolk believed they were, and so on.

I couldn't enjoy myself. What if *gulp* none of them were the place to be???? All at once, the world seemed bleak - lonely - futile... (Why yes, I am a little nuts, actually. Thanks for asking.)

And what does all of this hypersensitive psychosis have to do with the opera world, you may well ask? Quite a bit.

I can assert with confidence that today, October 9, 2011, I, Glenn Winters, was definitely at "the place to be": the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, Virginia, for a matinee performance of Aida. If you were not there, then I pity you because there is no possibility that you were at "the place to be".

We connoisseurs of "place-to-be-ness" understand that it takes a perfect storm of various factors to produce this status. It's the goal of the opera company, of course, that each and every performance of the season attain "place to be-ness", but I can't say that it happens every time.

If you have an obscure opera being performed on a drab week-night with miserable weather outside and a paltry crowd of a few hundred die-hards, then you may achieve musical artistry, but sorry, pal: wherever the "place to be" is, it ain't there...

Today was different. The opera? A spectacular masterpiece with a lot of buzz around town. The cast? No wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-outta-graduate-school apprentices in the cast; nope, these are all seasoned, accomplished, veteran artists. It definitely adds to the ambiance when that's the case.

And the crowd... oh my, the crowd! There's a young single mom in the area who's a Facebook friend of mine. She wanted to attend today but is strapped for cash. I seldom use the comp tickets I get for each production (a perk of working for the company), so I gallantly offered to leave one at the will-call window in her name.

In the end, I had to disappoint her. For the first time I can remember in some time, there were no seats remaining. None. Zero. Even the dreaded obstructed-view seats had been sold. When I entered the grand lobby on the mezzanine for my pre-curtain lecture, there was a teeming mass of humanity taking up every inch of space in the place. Children? Check. Young professionals? Check. Married couples? Check. Seniors? Check. Racial diversity? Check. Every demographic you could imagine? Well, I didn't actually ask people if they belonged to the Tea Party or supported the Wall Street protests, but I'm guessing both were present. I'm telling you, there was electricity in the air. It felt like being at the Academy Awards or something.

WHEEEEE! That was a fun lecture! There was so much ambient noise coming from every corner of the building that, despite a powerful sound system to amplify my voice, I had to fairly shout to be heard.

Once the performance began, they had to set up a large-screen plasma TV in the lobby downstairs to accommodate overflow customers.

I've never been to the World Series or the Kentucky Derby, but on this afternoon the world was my oyster because:

THE OPERA WAS THE PLACE TO BEEEEEEE!!

Aida in Kansas. Or the West Side. Or Tennessee.

2011-10-02T17:55:00.000-04:00

When asked why he chose the title "Songs Without Words" for his piano pieces, Felix Mendelssohn replied, "What music expresses is not too vague for words, but rather too precise." He had a point, but even so, there are words and situations which consistently seem to inspire a certain type of melodic line in composers of music drama.

One of those situations would be that of an individual, often but not necessarily at the point of death, who yearns for another world; another life; another plane of being.

The archetype for this scenario was established by Charles Dickens in his novel A Tale of Two Cities, when unlikely hero Sydney Carton famously speaks of that "far, far better place I go than I have ever been" on his way to the guillotine. Sydney has had a chance to express himself operatically thanks to an obscure opera by Arthur Benjamin briefly heard in the 1950's; I have no idea what the music sounds like.

But I can make an educated guess.

A dozen years after Dickens' novel, Verdi set the musical archetype for this "far, far better place" schtick in the final scene of his Aida, in which Radames and his Ethiopian soul mate die together in a subterranean tomb. Verdi had lost patience with the work of Ghislanzoni, his glorified-stenographer of a librettist, and ended up using his own poetry for the duet "O terra addio". The words, entirely serviceable for his dramatic purposes, clearly convey the lovers' acceptance that earth has no longer has a place for them and their expectation that death will be the portal to a new and better existence. And the vocal line is a true inspiration. Mirroring the characters' yearning for heaven, the melody stretches upward a major seventh, then with a final grasping lunge completes the octave as if struggling to reach the new life to come:

With admirable restraint, music of genuine spirituality contributes to an unusually compelling finale, free of bombast and melodrama. An especially picturesque touch is the repetition of the theme in the strings after Radames and Aida can no longer sing; rising to the upper reaches of the violins, the theme becomes thinner and thinner in timbre like the last wisps of oxygen dissipating in the darkness. One "hears" the air disappear...

Now, if Verdi had come up with these Italian words: C'è un posto per noi, he would have duplicated Stephen Sondheim's "There's a place for us" in West Side Story. Tony and Maria are a pair of lovers just as devoted and doomed as Verdi's Egyptians, and Bernstein's musical setting has the same gesture of a rising seventh, depicting the sense of the lyrics "Hold my hand and we're almost there":

Another prominent American composer for the stage, Carlisle Floyd, was faced with a character who may not be facing imminent death, but will certainly be doomed to an existence of unfulfilled promises, trapped on a Tennessee mountainside. The "better place" for which Susannah pines in the opera bearing her name may feature city streets and romance rather than clouds and harps, but her desire to leave the mountain is clearly signaled by the first phrase of her famous solo:

Does the fact that her ascending major seventh fails to complete the octave mean that, unlike Radames and Aida, she will never achieve her dreams of a better life in a better place? That's doubtless being a bit too literal, but in any event the relationship to Verdi's theme is unmistakable. Is it deliberate? Well, though I did get to meet and interview Mr. Floyd, as charming a Southern gentleman as you'd ever want to encounter, I didn't think to ask him that. Susannah's plight, by the way, is very similar to that of Ariel, the underwater heroine of the Disney film The Little Mermaid. However, composer Alan Menken seems not to have gotten the memo regarding upward-leaping sevenths and octaves; her song "Part of your world", otherwise a clone of "Ain't it a pretty night", avoids the device. In fact, the dominance of descending motion in the vocal line could (if you want to over-think it, and I do,) foreshadow her eventual fate of returning to the sea as bubbles of foam.

And then there's Dorothy. Auntie Em doesn't "get" her, and the mean old lady hates her dog; Kansas, to put it bluntly, stinks. Do we know where her "better place" is? You betcha we do. Is it Verdian in contour? Come on - you know the answer to that one, right?

If there's an Olympic event in the category of "better-place song writing", Harold Arlen takes home the gold: Dorothy, with a full head of musical steam, clears the octave on her first try. Quite the athlete!

But remember, children: as beloved and iconic as the music of Bernstein, Floyd and Arlen may be...

....Verdi did it first. Hats off.

Egypt and Ethiopia: "Everything Old is New Again"

2011-09-25T16:01:00.004-04:00

We're focusing on Verdi's Aida lately, as Virginia Opera's first-ever production is fast approaching. Like all dramas, the storyline to Aida is formed by conflict. The conflicts explored include

the conflict between duty and personal happiness;
the conflict between father and daughter (always of interest to Verdi);
the conflict between two women in love with the same man; and
a conflict between two nations, Egypt and Ethiopia, during the time of the Pharoahs thousands of years ago.

That last one is the bloodiest of the group. These two nations really had no use for each other. Think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel. Think Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins. Think Harry Potter and that dude with the weird nose thing going on.

So I got to wondering: what's the current state of Egyptian-Ethiopian relations? Has the modern era brought a cessation of hostilities? To the internet, at once!

It didn't take long to get my answer. I found a fairly innocuous and apparently benign press release from some nameless bureaucrat in the hierarchy of pre-revolutionary Egyptian government, when Mubarek was still shakily warding off his inevitable fate early in 2011. It's a model of sterile officious good cheer and bland neutrality. Let me quote it here:

"Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation expresses its hopes for new relations with Ethiopia while seeking clarification on the possible effects of the Millennium Dam project.

"(The Ministry) announced today that it wishes to open a new page in Egyptian-Ethiopian relations based on good will and the intention of improving cooperation around mutually advantageous developmental projects.

"...Egypt, in line with accepted legal practice, has officially requested from the Ethiopians all information related to the proposed 'Millennium Dam' on the Blue Nile so that Egypt can study its effects on the nature of the Nile and downstream countries.

"...Egypt's final position on the dam will be determined by its effect on Egypt's water quota. ...Egypt hopes Ethiopia will prove receptive to its initiative for buiding new relations based on transparency."

Well now, isn't that nice? Downright neighborly, I'd say. Then I kept reading.

You know how it is on the Internet; material is posted, and then readers can post their comments below. My eye was drawn to a comment from an Ethiopian citizen. Would he join Egypt in adding his blessings to this optomistic expression of "transparency"?

Oh no. No, indeed. Let me quote from his somewhat rabid diatribe. Just for effect, to simulate what I sense was his (or her) tone, I will type in in bold-face, all caps. The grammar is the writer's own; I have not corrected it.

"THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DETERMINE OR TO ACCEPT OR REJECT OR TO QUALIFY OR TO DISQUALIFY THE PROJECT! IF THEY ARE COMING WITH THIS ATTITUDE THEY BETTER STAY IN EGYPT!

"ETHIOPIA MUST NEVER NEGOTIATE ON THIS MATTER. WHO HAS GIVEN THEM THE QUOTA? WE DID NOT GIVE THEM. THEY HAVE NO QUOTA ACCORDING TO ETHIOPIA.

"THE LEADERSHIP IN ETHIOPIA MUST STAND FIRM. THIS NICETY OF EGYPT WANTS NEW RELATIONSHIP IS FAKE AND FALSE. THEY ARE THE SAME PEOPLE. THEY ARE TRYING TO SMILE WHILE THEY ARE NOT SMILING!!! THEY ARE TRYING TO CONFUSE OUR PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hoo-boy. (Okay, I confess I added a few exclamation marks to convey the writer's indignation as potently as I could... call it "blog-etic license"...)

5000 years later, and what's changed?

Nothin', honey...

Oh, Radames... you're such a male.

2011-09-18T10:37:00.000-04:00

In Verdi's pre-Cecil B. DeMille epic Aida, the music given to Radames is more interesting than he himself is as a dramatic character. Take his opening aria "Celeste Aida", and the preceding recitative, "Se quel guerriero": it's a simple piece in good old ABA form, just like any hit tune by, say, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. In contrast, all other solo set pieces in the opera are monologues of Shakespearean grandeur, with evolving emotional and mental states and subtle psychology.

But Radames is a wading pool next to the oceanic depths of Amneris and Aida. Basically, he has two things and only two things on his mind, as the recitative makes clear:

1) Making love to Aida five and possibly six times a day, and
2) Slaughtering as many yucky Ethiopians as possible.

That's it! He has a two-track, testosterone-infused mind. To make this observation is in no way an attempt to denigrate Aida, which is a genuine masterpiece; it's just stating the obvious. In Hitchcockian terms, Radames is the "MacGuffin" of the libretto; the "object" desired by both principal females, thus driving all the action.

But there's one aspect of his character which, as simple as he is, puzzled me. Here's what I couldn't figure out about Radames:

GIVEN that he is extremely ambitious, with the career goal of becoming Commander In Chief of the Egyptian armed forces; and

GIVEN that currying favor with the Pharoah is an excellent tool towards achieving that goal, and

GIVEN that Pharoah has a beautiful unmarried daughter (Amneris) who just so happens to be crazy in love with Radames;

THEREFORE: wouldn't the smart play be to woo Amneris and end up as Pharoah's son-in-law, paving the way for a successful and richly-rewarded lifestyle? Isn't this the no-brainer of all no-brainers, halleluia, amen? YES! So here's the puzzle:

How come he rejects Amneris and moons over the Ethiopian-prisoner-turned-humble-slave-girl Aida? I mean, she's pretty and all, but so is Amneris. I don't get it. Remember: he is not aware (until it's too late) that Aida is royalty herself; that's a deep, dark secret. I sought professional help from an authority to explain Radames' psyche in terms I could understand.

Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Duana Welch. Duana has a Ph.D in Developmental Psychology and teaches psychology in Austin, Texas. She also has a very popular online blog called Love Science which is fun to read and highly recommended. Basically, it's an advice column for folks with problems in the area of romance, relationships, and even sexual issues. Instead of merely "good ol' common sense" (in which she's not lacking), Duana's advice is based on the body of scientific research at her disposal.

So I asked Duana (which, she wants you to know, is pronounced DWAY-nuh) to psycho-analyze Radames and dish about his total lack of savvy in choosing a woman. Why, I asked, is he oblivious to Aida's lack of standing in society? Here's her answer, in her typically breezy style:

"Radames need not be concerned about Aida's connections~ evolutionarily, he need only be concerned that she is young, beautiful (read: fertile), and hard-to-get (read: faithful). If she's got that going on, then he's already got what he needs. True, it would be politically correct for him to marry Pharoah's daughter and have an affair with Aida on the side, but...maybe Ramades is too classy for that!"

Light dawns. Radames is not thinking with his brain, but with..... *ahem* This is a PG-rated blog. Never mind. To put it more delicately, our hero has a biological imperative to perpetuate the species. Men, I guess, are just not hard-wired to consider little things like education, social class and other trivialities in deciding who's attractive. Wide hips and a full bosom go a long way, even in ancient Egypt.

Men - we're such pigs!! Can I get an "amen", ladies? And thanks, Duana!

Big giant Haiku: the art of the plot summary

2011-09-11T15:13:00.002-04:00

If you enjoy opera, reflect for a moment on how many times in your life you've read through the plot synopsis to an opera, be it in a program book at the theater, a reference book or the libretto that comes with a recording. For some of you, this would amount to hundreds of times. Plot summaries are a genre of writing that can easily be taken for granted. What's the big deal? Describe the events which occur onstage, do it simply and concisely. Any high-school English student with at least a B average should be able to nail it, right?

Ha! Try it sometime. It's a path to instant frustration and, at times, a test of ingenuity. Believe it or not, the fact that the story has already been written nothwithstanding, summarizing an opera libretto can call for real creativity and problem-solving skills. I've learned all about it first-hand in recent weeks, as somehow it fell on my less-than-broad shoulders to write the plot synopses appearing on the Virginia Opera website for the current season, a season consisting of Aida, Hansel and Gretel, Orphée, and The Mikado.

At some point over the summer I saw that synopses were missing from the website and mentioned it to our Director of Communications. My "helpful" observation was "rewarded" with being assigned the task of doing it myself. (Note to self: keep yer big mouth shut in future...) I don't know who provided these to the company in the past, but that was clearly then and this was clearly now. Fine - no problem. I guess it would be on shaky legal ground to, you know, copy and paste the synopses from the Metropolitan Opera, right? Yeah - that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Could get nasty. Okay, let's do this thing. Should only take a few minutes!

Here's what I learned: the problems presented in summarizing an opera plot are related to the problems faced by a composer of music, believe it or not. Teaching music composition basically amounts to dictating a set of limitations to the student. Professors of composition don't say "Write something really beautiful and moving"; instead the assignment will be along the lines of "Write a three-movement work for two flutes using secundal counterpoint." Immediately the student has three major limitations. The challenge and discipline of working within limitations is the nature of composition, which is to say the nature of true creativity. Every piece of music ever composed arose from limitations, usually self-imposed by the composer.

In writing a plot synopsis, the limitation is obviously that of limited space. A typical specimen will average between five hundred to seven hundred words. If that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that many operas are epic in scope, with events spanning many years; others are full of intrigue, with a profusion of conspiracies and counter-conspiracies spawning a multitude of evolving psychological states among the principal characters. Oy. You know where you can find a good model for minimalist writing to narrate complex events?

The Bible.

Read any familiar Bible story you remember from Sunday school and you will find a masterful example of the "less is more" school of story-telling. Take the story of Abraham being commanded by God to make a sacrifice of his son Isaac, which by general consensus is considered to have been written by Moses. This tale is among the most dramatic scenes in the entire Old Testament; an obedient servant of God is commanded to prove his faith by killing his beloved son as a human sacrifice to the deity. The story is found in chapter twenty-two of Genesis. Once Abraham receives his marching orders from The Big Guy, we are told in verse three that "...Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him." Well and good. But in the very next verse, here's what we get: "Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off."

Huh? Say what? Hold on here - back up the truck, Clyde! What do you mean, jumping willy-nilly to the third day?

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THOSE THREE DAYS?!?!? Did little Isaac bug Abraham by constantly asking "Are we there yet"? Did they stop at inns on the way? Did Abraham have trouble getting to sleep at night? Did he wonder if he could go through with it? Did Isaac notice his dad was tense about something?

Moses leaves it to us to fill in a whole lot.

If you ever have to supply a plot synopsis for, say, Aida, it might be well to bear this in mind. The painful part of this job is deciding what to leave out, because you have to leave out a lot and it all seems important as you're counting words and realizing you're running out of them. To illustrate, let me summarize a scene from Aida the way one might wish to narrate it if one could; then I'll counter the "before" version with the bare-bones "after" that made it to the website.

BEFORE: Having been condemned to death by the tribunal of priests, Radames has been locked in the darkness of a tomb below the temple of Vulcan while above him, priests and priestesses perform sacred dances associated with his punishment. Believing himself alone, Radames reflects upon his fate with stoic resignation. He wonders what became of Aida, hoping she managed to find freedom and happiness. A sudden stirring from within the tomb startles him. With horror he realizes he is not alone; Aida, having surreptitiously entered before him, reveals her presence. Radames' is distraught to see his lover facing certain death, but his grieving is cut short as Aida assures him that her place is with him and that the joys of heaven await them both. In frustration, Radames attempts to dislodge the mighty stone sealing the tomb's entrance as, above them, priestesses begin chanting for his soul. Aida draws him to her side as, now fully resigned to the death that is mere moments away, they bid farewell to the sadness of earthly life and welcome eternity. As their lungs begin to struggle for the vanishing air and life begins to ebb, a remorseful Amneris appears on the temple floor above, weeping and quietly praying to Isis for peace. The curtain falls.

It's nice, but it's two hundred eleven words, or about 40% of my allottment for the entire story! Let's try this:

AFTER: Entombed beneath the temple of Vulcan, Radames is shocked to find Aida waiting to share his fate with him. They bid the world farewell in each other’s arms, while above them, a grieving Amneris mourns and prays for peace.

Thirty nine words. There you go - Moses would be proud. Verily. "And it came to pass that Glenn completed his writing. And the webmaster saw the writing, that it was good. And the synopsis was posted on the sixth day. And on the seventh day, Glenn watched some TV."

Glenn wrote a book. Wanna buy it?

2011-09-04T21:12:00.001-04:00

If the Internet really is the “information highway”, as little Anna Paquin promised us in those TV commercials back in 1994 (seems more like 1944 from the vantage point of this post-Steve Jobs era), then this blog has been parked at the side of the road for a couple of weeks. Did you miss me? (Don’t answer that…)

No, I didn’t run out of topics or ideas; no I wasn’t frolicking on a nude beach in the south of France or climbing the Apennine Mountains in Italy. And for those of you who know me better than to suspect any of those: no, I didn’t sit in an armchair for two weeks drinking diet lemonade and watching marathon reruns of Law and Order.

I wrote a book.

And how did you spend your summer vacation, hmmm?

Okay, to be more exact, I spent a good portion of the summer converting two separate blogs into a book manuscript and securing a publisher. These past two weeks I subjected that manuscript to an intense process of continual re-writing, revision, proofing, correcting and polishing until … well, until the sight of my own writing made me want to barf into a trash can, if you must know.

The result, sometime later this autumn, will be my first book. The title is THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES. The publisher is Kendall Hunt, a firm in Dubuque Iowa that customarily publishes textbooks written by college professors.

My book is no textbook; I think it’ll be fun for casual and serious opera fans alike. I actually began blogging as a method for getting a book written in dribs and drabs, a little at a time. The first blog consisted of a journal I kept while being part of a summer opera festival in Rome, Italy. Recording impressions of the sights, sounds, people and food in one of the world’s great cities, I also take the reader behind the scenes of a production of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus to see how an operetta is staged from the first rehearsals through the final performances.

The rest of the book consists of selected posts from this very blog which you, dearest reader, are now perusing. I tend to have a somewhat irreverent sense of humor, and this colors my perceptions of the opera world. I describe the essays making up the rest of THE OPERA ZOO as what you might expect if Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen and Dave Barry decided to collaborate on a book about the opera world.

This whole getting-a-book-published deal has been an educational experience in itself. Ever try it? It’s a trip. I wrote this book mainly to sell at my speaking gigs, which is how I earn my living as a full-time employee of Virginia Opera. In the state-wide adult education program I've conducted since 2004 (you can read about at one of the links at the top of the page), I give between 150 and 175 talks each season from September through April, to retirement communities, civic groups, lifelong learning programs, corporations, colleges, women’s and men’s clubs, church groups – you name it; any place where curious adults gather.

I also give pre-curtain lectures prior to each of the Opera’s thirty-two performances each year, in Norfolk, Richmond and Fairfax, Virginia. That’s in addition to broadcasts and podcasts on public radio stations in those three communities. Altogether, the total audience provides a platform which convinced the publisher I could sell enough books to make THE OPERA ZOO a relatively save investment.

I’ve learned all about the importance of a “platform”, which turns out to be 99% of the ball game in getting published.

Question: why do you suppose fledgling authors’ books get rejected? Because they lack talent? Because their writing is trite, derivative or dull? Guess again, poopsie – it’s because they have no platform; no notoriety in their field; no reputation which will draw readers to the bookstore with MasterCard or Visa at the ready.

And why do you supposed functionally illiterate movie stars and athletes who have probably read three books in their lives get fat contracts to “write” their memoirs with the “help” of a ghost writer? Because they enter the game with a platform of millions of admirers who will buy the book even if it’s three hundred pages of drivel with pretty photographs.

There are degrees of “platformicity” (my spell-check didn’t like that word much; I don’t blame it…); global, national, regional and local.

Me? I’m a local yokel with a platform of forty-five thousand or so. If ten percent of my audience buys the book, I’ll be thrilled. If five percent, I’ll be happy. If one percent, no one will have lost any money. And hey- I can say I’m a “published author”, a status befitting my essential dignity and distinguished mien, wouldn’t you agree? Sure you would; I can tell.

You can help.

Mama Kendall and Mama Hunt raised no fools; THE OPERA ZOO will not receive a printing of thousands of copies flooding Barnes & Noble outlets in every mall in America. This is what publishers call a “niche genre”. Wisely hedging their bets, Kendall Hunt will base the printing on the number of advance orders I, Glenn Winters, can collect between now and the end of October. (Why then? Because by then the first production of Virginia Opera’s 2011-2012 season, Verdi’s Aida, will have been put to bed and I’ll have hawked the book to most of my available audience, providing Kendall Hunt with some hard numbers of pre-orders.)

The projected price is around $30. Want to buy my book? Email me at this link; I’ll add your contact information to the spreadsheet of pre-orders and you’ll be notified when THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES is released. There is no pre-payment to pony up; just tell me you'd like a copy. "Will you sign it?" you ask? Hell, I'll put on lipstick and make juicy red lip prints on it if that's what you want... It’s projected to be ready in time for the holidays.

It would make a really sweet, thoughtful gift… just sayin’…

Trovatore's atheism: when the light in the darkness goes out

2011-08-09T13:48:00.068-04:00

Last week's essay examined two arias from Verdi's Il Trovatore as manifestations of what I called "musical DNA", or the use of melodic structure as a clue to the blood relation of two brothers separated at birth.

One of my Facebook friends wrote me to ask if I had any similar insights to share about the character of Leonora, the woman for whose affections Manrico and Count di Luna come to blows.

Well, funny you should ask...

When I consider Leonora, I cannot help but feel that Trovatore is one of the darkest, bleakest operas ever written, an expression (conscious or not) of the composer's own spiritual crisis and rejection of religion; indeed, of the very existence of God. In a real sense, Il Trovatore is perhaps the first great opera with a pronounced atheistic outlook.

If you are even casually acquainted with Verdi's life story, his attitude towards God and religion will not come as a shock. Early in his career, Verdi seemed blessed by domestic happiness, marrying his childhood sweetheart Margherita and quickly producing a son and daughter. All this happened as he achieved his first professional success as a Maestro di musica with published compositions.

Yet, by age 26, his dreams had turned to ashes, losing both children and his wife to illness. Crushing depression followed, marked by a protracted period of catatonic inactivity. It is a testament to Verdi's personal strength and integrity of character that, long before the days of psycho-therapy and anti-depressants, he was able to climb out of this black hole and resume his compositional career.

But a residue of bitterness remained, even as he found a new woman to love in Giuseppina Strepponi. Traces of his trauma are well-documented in his long series of operatic masterworks, notably in the survivor's guilt depicted in the gallery of tortured father-figures such as Rigoletto, Amonasro, Miller, Boccanegra and many others.

Il Trovatore dates from 1853-1854, when Verdi's views on life were still in a highly depressed state. When the public found the opera to be overly dark in tone, Verdi remarked in a letter to the Countess Maffei, "People say the opera is too sad and there are too many deaths in it. But after all, death is all there is in life. What else is there?" This is the lesson Verdi had learned to date; he had learned it well.

But here's my take on Trovatore: it's not the body-count that makes it "sad" or (as I'm contending) atheistic. Death is not the worst thing one can imagine; it's said that joy in life could be observed among the prisoners at Auschwitz and Dachau. The truly depressing aspect of the opera is the clear absence of God on every page..

Read the libretto without the music playing sometime, as you would read a play by Shakespeare. You may observe what I observed:

1) Virtually all of the scenes take place at night; in darkness.
2) There are poetic references to light, most of them describing aspects of Leonora - just as one finds in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
3) Thus, Leonora represents the presence of God, just as a lit candle traditionally represents the presence of God in a church.
3) As one finds in many vintage Italian operatic librettos, there are many generic references to God. The characters inhabit a world in which prayers are addressed to God.
4) At the final curtain, all prayers prove to be unanswered and, with the death of Leonora, the light is extinguished. Ergo, God is dead.

Now let's examine the scenes in a little detail:

Act I scene i takes place at night, with Ferrando spinning tales to keep guardsmen awake; tales of horrific crimes which also took place under cover of darkness at night.
Act I scene ii is also set at night. Leonora sings of the night she first saw Manrico in "Tacea la notte"
Upon her exit, the Count enters, noting "Tace la notte" (the night is silent), before remarking that Leonora must be awake since he sees "the flickering of [her] lamp".
When Manrico's serenade is heard, Leonora mistakes the Count for her lover, causing her to exclaim "Ah, in the darkness I have made a terrible blunder".
Romantic love is routinely described as a "fire" or "flame" by all three characters: another "light in the darkness". In other words, the hope of true love is the only reason to live in a world marked by cruelty and sadness.
Act II begins in darkness, "before daybreak". The gypsies, who have a naturally happy approach to life, sing "The endless sky casts off her somber nightly garb, like a widow who lays aside at last her sad black veils of mourning."
In Act II scene ii, back in the milieu of tortured nobles, we read: "It is night" - big surprise. Now comes di Luna's famous aria, a love-song to Leonora. The title? "Il balen del suo sorriso" (The light of her smile). Romeo's fair Juliet may be "the light that through yonder window breaks"; she may "teach the torches to burn bright", but she's got nothing on a 100-watt bulb named Leonora.
When Leonora prepares to enter a convent for a life of penance to God, declaring that she will turn to "Him who is the sole comfort of the sorrowful", di Luna abducts her. In a line so rich in ironic significance for Verdi's life that he surely must have taken note of it, the Count tells his captive lady that "not even a god can take you away from me."
When Manrico shows up to snatch her from the Count's clutches, he confidently asserts that "God confounds the sinful".
In Act III, when Azucena receives rough treatment from the Count and his henchmen, she screams out to God: "O Dio! O Dio!"
In the second scene, we learn that Act III also takes place at night; Manrico, about to wed Leonora at a chapel, informs her "At dawn we shall be attacked". Leonora, most pathetic of brides, "How sad the light which shines on our wedding." Light, love and Leonora are still all bound together in the opera's imagery -- but the light is dimming now.
Instead of a traditional love duet, the wedding couple sing a chaste innocent paean to their love accompanied by organ; they savor the "holy sound".
This isolated moment of contentment is interruped by reality; the news of Azucena's peril. The bride is abandoned for the mother.
Act IV begins with these stage instructions: "It is a very dark night." Leonora, cloaked to obscure her identity and, metaphorically, to "hide her candle under a bushel", enters to be near Manrico. She sings "In this dark night ... I am near you, though you do not know."
Monks pray for the condemned Manrico's soul. Oddly, Leonora (the near-nun) finds no comfort in them: "This hymn, these solemn mournful prayers oppress the air with terror."
In the final scene, the stage directions tell us "A dim light hangs from the ceiling" in Manrico and Azucena's prison cell. Light is dying; the end is near.
Manrico bids Azucena sleep, saying "Rest, O Mother, while I lie here in silent prayer to God."
The door opens. Manrico exclaims "Heavens - can it be? In this pale light?" We should now be catching on to the coded meaning of this reference to light: yes, it's Leonora, bringing with her the hope of the presence of God; the hope of answered prayers.
But Leonora, in a Christ-like gesture of self-sacrifice (um, you remember Christ? "The Light of the World"?), has taken poison so that Manrico might gain his freedom. Have Manrico's prayers been answered by the light of Leonora's love and God's protection?
You know the rest. They all die. All of them - the mother, the son, the lover. Di Luna is still breathing as the curtain falls, but with the breaking news he receives from dying Azucena ("You murdered your own brother!!"), I believe he surely takes his own life not long after. With Leonora dead and his familial honor corrupted, he will have nothing to live for.

And the light is out. And, for Giuseppe Verdi, still decades away from the sunny, sweet reconciliation of Falstaff, the universe is a cruel, dark, empty and godless wasteland where unanswered prayers echo in the void.

J. K. Rowling, Verdi and "Trovatore"'s musical DNA

2011-08-07T20:06:00.000-04:00

I'm now going to explain what's so great about the great operas:

They're like the Harry Potter books.

(Hmmm... we're a little short on words for a quality blog post here. I shall explain further.)

Ask any of the obssessed devotees of the Potter series (all thirty-seven trillion of them) why they love it so much and they will answer as one. Because the stories are well-plotted? Nope. Because Harry is so cute? Because we all identify with the characters? Because we all want good to triumph over evil? Because Quidditch is a super-fun game? No, no, no and no.

As any good Muggle will tell you, it's because J. K. Rowling's achievement in Harry Potter is this: she has created a virtual reality. Out of pure imagination she constructed a world so detailed, so self-sufficient and logical, so completely believable in its presentation of a complex society, that this world becomes irresistably fascinating.

I have always maintained that Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Mozart did the exact same thing; they created virtual reality in musical terms. When a composer (and it's he who deserves the credit, not the librettist) manages to create musical virtual reality, he has given us the gift of a world we want to visit time and time again. The intrigue of a self-sufficient universe to explore is far more long-lived than the appeal of an aria. Melodies can pall with over-familiarity, whereas characters which exist in musical virtual reality become friends: friends that seem as real as anyone; friends with whom we wish to remain in touch through the years.

But what is "musical virtual reality"?

You're probably expecting me to launch into a lengthy treatise on Wagner and his leitmotifs at this point. And there's little doubt that our favorite blowhard genius took the virtual-reality football and ran with it in his Ring tetrology, where even the subtexts have subtexts. But I'm not going there; I'm turning to an unlikely source of musical realism: Verdi's Il Trovatore.

Of all of Verdian operas in the standard repertoire, Trovatore is considered to have the weakest libretto. "Weakest"? Try "laughably imbecilic". I have grave doubts that Salvatore Cammarano (the librettist) could have written a coherent synopsis of this thing without getting confused himself. We put up with this pompous nonsense because Verdi's white-hot music somehow manages to convince us we're observing a facsimile of genuine human nature in Manrico and his cohorts.

And herein lies a really cool example of musical virtual reality.

The plot, you'll recall, centers around Manrico and the Count di Luna, a couple of men who are unaware that they are brothers separated at birth (yes: very cheesy). Naturally, they grow up to be sworn enemies and rivals for the love of the same woman (more cheese). Each in turn is assigned a romantic aria in which to obsess about their mutual crush, one Leonora: Il balen del suo sorriso for the Count and Ah, sì ben mio for Manrico.

At some point it occured to me that if my theory about virtual reality in opera is correct, then there should be some musical evidence that the two characters are related; our sole source of knowledge shouldn't be simply the libretto. Something in the score should confirm their kinship.

And I found it: musical DNA. This will blow your mind.

At first the arias seem to have little in common, other than being about Leonora. Il balen is a glowing ballad in common time; the key is a mellow B flat major; the text is an ode to the light of her smile. Ah, sì ben mio, on the other hand, is darker in tone owing to the brooding key of F minor and a restless 3/4 meter. The words are a grim prophecy of Manrico's actual fate; his thoughts turning to Leonora as he dies at the hands of the enemy.

But look more closely, and an amazing picture unfolds: these arias are closely linked in melodic structure and materials. Here is the opening phrase of di Luna's vocal line:

The phrase begins on the fifth step of the B flat scale, descends to the third, then leaps up to the tonic B flat by way of the fifth before settling back down where it began. The basic contour is 5 to 3 to 5 to 1 to 5.

Now compare with the opening of Manrico's solo:

While the rhythms are different and we're in a different key, the contour is the same. Once again, the vocal line begins on the dominant, moves down a third, skips up by consecutive thirds and back down again: 5-3-5-1-5. But similarities do not end with the opening notes. At measure 18 of Il balen, the orchestra breaks into a lilting waltz pattern as di Luna begins a new, rhapsodic subject on the words "Ah, l'amor, l'amor ond'ardo", reaching a climax with this chromatically descending phrase at bar 20:

The sensuous slide down by half-steps begins on the dominant. Now, leap to a line occuring at bar 24 of Manrico's aria soon after the modulation to D flat major.

Look familiar? It should; it's the same musical idea, sliding down chromatically from the dominant. And there you have it; two brothers who are genetically programmed to express romantic feelings in the same style, with the same phrase structure. Musical DNA proven.

I forgive you if you're skeptical. Perhaps by now you're thinking, "Glenn, Glenn, Glenn... even if Verdi intended these similarities to mean what you say they mean, who cares? When Trovatore had its world premiere performance, that opening-night audience hardly had the opportunity to study the score with a magnifying glass. What are the odds that any significant percentage of them - heck, even one of them - noticed those similarities and came to these conclusions? Doubtful, dude... very doubtful."

But that's how it is with virtual reality, just as it is in what we call the "real world", which is full of amazing little miracles most people never notice. Think of a nice grassy lawn, a lawn you might walk across every day. Ever think about what you might find under your feet? Ants, spiders, caterpillers - a galaxy of life forms, burrowing and hunting and fighting and feeding and reproducing... ewww! Creepy, huh? And you might never get down on your knees to look for them.

But that doesn't mean they aren't there!

So it is with operatic masterpieces. I myself have sung three different roles in three different productions of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and I've accompanied its arias and studied recordings of it for decades now.

I'm still finding that, upon re-acquaintance, new details of virtual reality continue to reveal themselves to me.

I don't expect this phenomenon to run dry anytime before my own reality (read "life") comes to an end.

And that, muggles, is what's so great about the great operas.