Jordan vs. LeBron: Part 2 of the opera version

Last week, in a brazen and shameless ploy to pad the page-view stats for this site, I co-opted the current Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James debate by using it as a springboard to compare opera stars of the 1960's to those of today.

It's really not such a far-fetched transition, you know. Did you ever stop to consider how many prominent basketball coaches are of Italian descent? Jim Valvano, Dick Vitale, Rollie Massimino, John Calipari, Rick Pitino, and P. J. Carlissimo are just the ones that come to mind off the top of my head. And in football, we've got Vince Lombardi and Joe Paterno; Jo Pa, we're told, was a Puccini aficionado and listened to Turandot when off the field.

Versatile, those Italians: inventing music drama here, teaching a 2-3 zone defense there... Too bad they aren't much good at cooking. (Settle down; that's just a little joke.)

Anyway, we have unfinished business in the "Battle of the Opera Generations", namely: the male vocal artists. Having surveyed sopranos and mezzos last time, this week we turn to the "Guys Who Frequently Wear Tights" - tenors, baritones and basses.

Just like last time, we'll limit our menu of singers to a sampling of those on two Metropolitan Opera rosters fifty years apart, 1963 and 2013. And here we go! Let's start with the lover-boys.

Tenors, 1963                            Tenors, 2013
Luigi Alva                                  Roberto Alagna
Carlo Bergonzi                          Marcelo Alvarez
Franco Corelli                           Juan Diego Flórez
Nicolai Gedda                           Marcello Giordani
Flaviano Labò                           Jonas Kaufmann
Barry Morell                             Vittorio Grigolo
Jan Peerce                                  Matthew Polenzani
Richard Tucker                          Ramon Vargas
Jess Thomas                              Richard Leech
Jon Vickers                                Johan Botha
 
Tempting, though perhaps unwise, to match these artists by fach and repertoire for side-by-side comparisons. Even so, which '60's artist corresponds to Jonas Kaufmann? In vocal type and repertoire, probably Jon Vickers. Like Kaufmann, Vickers' sound was darker and more "baritonal" than a typical Italianate tenor, and he too sang both German roles (Wagner, Beethoven) and standard "star tenor" vehicles like Don Jose, and Cavaradossi. However, Kaufmann also puts me in mind of Corelli for female-scream-inducing good looks and sex appeal. Corelli's sound was also of a dark timbre with a similarly thrilling top register. However, Kaufmann sings with musicianship that leaves Corelli (at times rather slip-shod with accuracy) far behind. Vickers is a match for Kaufmann in over-all artistry. He was known for idiosyncratic interpretations that made him a bit controversial. One either loved or hated his singing. So: Corelli, for all his charisma, loses by a length and a half, but Kaufmann and Vickers? Photo finish, too close to call.

Flórez and Alva are another interesting pairing. Flórez has developed a huge following for his easy flair for comedy and a facile, flashy (if, at times, nasal) high register. Alva, to my ears, was no less a virtuoso in coloratura, an ideal Almaviva in Barber of Seville and an ideal Fenton in Falstaff; perhaps the best ever in the role. Elegant, assured, vocally secure. I prefer Alva, but there's that nasty nostalgic bias rearing its head again.

American tenor Richard Tucker

Speaking of valuable artists, it's hard to top the Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, who could handle bel canto and dramatic roles with equal aplomb. He sang a great deal of Mozart, Massenet and  Donizetti at the Met, which is similar to Polenzani's current repertoire. Both impressive vocalists, I find an intrinsic sweetness in Gedda's timbre that somewhat lifts him above Polenzani. Let's do a couple of audio clips and see what you think. Here is Gedda in "Dalla sua pace" by Mozart, and for comparison here is Polenzani in the same aria. Both acquit themselves well, but it remains to be seen if Polenzani will prove as capable of handling heavier roles as Gedda did with honor.

Tucker and Giordani are also a comparable pairing: reliable and effective in Italianate roles of Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo and the like. In my opinion, neither will go down as an historically great or subtle musician, but to my ears Tucker sounds more passionate and engaged by his characters. I give him the edge. Giordani = milk chocolate. Tucker = milk chocolate.... with sea salt!

Wrapping up this category:

• Bergonzi is superior to Alagna as home-made pizza is superior to Pizza Hut. And I've gotta tell you: Alagna's habit of singing with his eyes closed DRIVES ME CRAZY!
• Morell and Leech were both sturdy "house tenors"; the kind the Met can't do without, but who will never hear their names chanted by adoring throngs. A draw. (I heard Morell live at the Met as Puccini's Lt. Pinkerton. He was fine.)
• Jess Thomas and Johan Botha are another pairing in which I give the edge to 1963. They've both sung Walther von Stolzing, Fidelio and Radames at the Met. Thomas sang with far more freedom and poetry, and cut a more heroic figure on stage. Botha is a throwback to the era when an artist's appearance was considered irrelevant as a casting consideration.
• Peerce and Vargas? Tough call. I hear limitations in each tenor. Peerce, though he had a gorgeous voice and was one of Toscanini's favorite artists, had a dry, pinched top. Vargas is not immune to occasional tightness on the top, but his overall tone is very pleasing if not quite as rich as Peerce's. Both could turn in stylish Rossini and Mozart as reliably as Edgardo, Rodolfo or the Duke of Mantua. It's a draw.

Enough! Though Kaufmann really beefs up the current squad of tenors, my respect for Thomas, Bergonzi, Tucker and Alva leads me to declare

The winner in the tenor category: 1963

As for those dudes who hardly ever get the girl:

Baritones, 1963                                  Baritones, 2013
Anselmo Colzani                                   Dwayne Croft
Tito Gobbi                                               Nathan Gunn
Frank Guarrera                                    Thomas Hampson
George London                                    Dmitri Hvorotovsky
Cornell MacNeal                                   Simon Keenlyside
Robert Merrill                                       Željko Lučić             
Mario Sereni                                          Mariusz Kwiecien
Theodore Uppmann                             Bryn Terfel

All righty then, what've we got here? Theodore Uppmann and Nathan Gunn both excel as Papageno, Billy Budd and Escamillo. Gunn has a wider repertoire, willingly performing in contemporary pieces, but he has the advantage of a different era; in 1963 the Met's repertoire was more conservative than the Tea Party.

Thomas Hampson continues the tradition of "Great American Baritones" which has included Lawrence Tibbett, John Charles Thomas, Leonard Warren, Cornell MacNeil (BING! 1963), Robert Merrill (BING! 1963) Sherrill Milnes and others. Dwayne Croft joins Hampson as an American baritone, and he's a valuable artist; however, he does not belong in the line of succession listed above. As vocally secure and musical as he is, his singing lacks the gravitas to match Merrill or MacNeil. They were historically great Tonios in Pagliacci; Croft is a Silvio. He has no Rigoletto performances to his credit; he's more of a Sharpless in Butterfly.

There is no baritone on the current roster with the acting chops of Tito Gobbi, a real actor's actor as Falstaff and Scarpia. Hvorotovsky is historically great in Russian roles like Onegin.

George London and Bryn Terfel correspond in some respects; both have been noted for compelling performances as Don Giovanni, Scarpia and Wotan. That's some impressive range! London made a great Boris Gudonov, a role Terfel has not tackled to date, whereas London would not have made a comic figure such as Leporello, which Terfel has recently added. A total draw.

I cannot claim any obvious superiority on one side or another with Colzani and Lučić, Guarrera and Keenlyside, Sereni and Kwiecien. All are more than competent; in all cases, their careers are best described as "distinguished" rather than "immortal".

This category is the murkiest in which to find a clear advantage. There is not really a weak sister amongst the 2013 baritones, but the older generation boasts four genuine immortals in Gobbi, MacNeil, Merrill and London. I don't see Hampson being viewed in the same way fifty years from now. So, by a whisker,

The winner in the baritone category: 1963

I'm going to dispense with a dissection of the bass category for this reason: great basses are found in every generation in equal profusion. Perhaps the most natural voice type in men, there are immortal basses aplenty in every era. When we can mention Cesare Siepi, Jerome Hines, Otto Edelman, Fernando Corena (greatest buffo!) and Ezio Flagello in 1963 but then counter with Ferruccio Furlanetto, Rene Pape, Samuel Ramey, Eric Owens (young but very great) and Hans-Peter Koenig in 2013, we can just sit back, relax and bask in the knowledge that we will never lack for truly great bassos. It's a draw.

SO: two columns and hundreds of words later, what have I proved, exactly?

Nothing.

Look, this has been the shallowest survey of famous singers in the history of music. My suspicion that my obvious preference for the 1963 roster is tainted by nostalgia remains even after all the rationalizations I've duly submitted.

Bottom line: I'm old. My oldness informs my biases. I like Jordan over LeBron, too. Oh, and don't get me started about the state of pop music today! Now there's a rant just begging to be ranted!

Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James: the opera version

Hey, baby-boomers: want to feel even older? Well, chew on this, my graying contemporaries:

Michael Jordan just turned fifty.

Yep, the big five-oh. The gateway to his senior years. Those images of him flying through the air towards the hoop like that asteroid that blew out half the windows in Russia are just a memory.

This particular birthday has been major fuel for the furnace of idle conversation that is sports-talk radio. ESPN, Dan Patrick, Jim Rome and all the pundits of the jock universe have been consumed by one topic for the past week: who's the best basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? This inconsequential question has spawned furious arguments equal in passion to the debates over gun control and the federal budget.  "Jordan has six championship rings!" "LeBron is bigger, faster and stronger!" "Jordan was more clutch!" "LeBron is more versatile!" Like that.

This got me thinking about the opera world. (I know, big shock, right?) Just as there are sports nuts who insist that basketball was at its best in past generations, clinging to memories of Jordan, Ewing, Malone, Bird, Magic and other heroes, there are opera fans who believe that the "Golden Age of Opera Singing" dates to when they were young, experiencing the "first, fine, careless rapture" of discovering the art form..

Leontyne Price

I have to say, I struggle with this. If I'm honest, I have to admit that I tend to place singers of the 1960's, when I was a kid, on a pedestal. I always have the vague sense that today's artists don't measure up. I also sense that this attitude is almost certainly irrational and indefensible, which doesn't seem to alter my perceptions one bit.

So what's the reality? Figuring this out will be like nailing the proverbial Jell-O to the proverbial wall and there can never be a definitive answer. But let's try!! I've gone to the Metropolitan Opera website where complete rosters for any season are available with a couple of mouse-clicks. For convenience, let's compare representative singers in two seasons fifty years apart: 1963 (right in the heart of my so-called "Golden Era") and 2013. For brevity's sake, let's consider only the most representative and celebrated artists in each standard vocal category: soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone and bass. Hmmm... that's too long for a single blog post, so this week we'll limit ourselves to the females. Are my choices a bit arbitrary? Have I omitted prominent artists who are on their respective rosters? Yes, I have. Hey, this is a blog here, not a book. Sue me.

SOPRANOS, 1963                           SOPRANOS, 2013
Leonie Rysanek                                 Diana Damrau
Zinka Milanov                                   Natalie Dessay
Birgit Nilsson                                     Anna Netrebko
Leontyne Price                                  Renee Fleming
Renata Tebaldi                                  Deborah Voigt
Joan Sutherland                                 Sondra Radvanovsky
Teresa Stratas                                    Patricia Racette

My comments (feel free to leave yours in the comment area below): Teresa Stratas and Natalie Dessay correspond to one another, more or less, in that they are noted as much for acting chops as for vocal gifts. Each has been a featured Violetta at the Met. I'll call this a dead heat. Moving on to the Wagnerian fach, and with due respects to Ms. Voigt, I think Nilsson was a goddess of super-human capabilities. Actually, Eileen Farrell, whom I did not list but was also on the '63 roster, perhaps corresponds better to Voigt. And is there any coloratura on the current roster, or indeed of any roster of the past several years, who matches Joan Sutherland? That would be a "no". Diana Damrau is singing a first-rate Gilda at the Met these days, and she's splendid. But she was not the coloratura who forever set the bar in mind-boggling agility and sheer tonal perfection. Yes, Sutherland's diction was iffy, but she's still goddess material.

I'm also claiming "no contest" with any current soprano versus Leontyne Price, another all-time immortal. Disagree with me, do you? You're wrong. Now, Renata Tebaldi compares with Sondra Radvanovsky as being a prominent and capable full lyric with spinto capabilities, each a valued interpreter of Verdi. Radvanovsky's fans can point to a slightly wider repertoire which ventures beyond the Puccini at which Tebaldi also excelled to include Mozart, Donizetti, Dvorak, Tchikovsky and a smattering of contemporary works. On the other hand, Tebaldi was more of a glamorous global celebrity, whose feuds with Maria Callas (not at the Met in 1963, by the way), love affairs and other doings made headlines of near Kate Windsor proportions. Somehow, with artists like Tebaldi and Callas, opera seemed to matter more, know what I mean?

I find an interesting comparison with Renee Fleming and Leonie Rysanek, each of whom specialized in the music of Mozart and Richard Strauss. In addition, each has been a celebrated Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. Fleming, to boot, has become a personality of considerable charm, making her a useful asset as host of several HD Met broadcasts. That charm is just as potent onstage in her incarnations of the Marschallin or Donna Anna. Vocally, Rysanek bests her in vocal resources, with ample power to make her mark in more dramatic territory: Turandot, Aida and Salome. Vocally, the edge is Rysanek's, but with all factors considered I'll call it a draw.

Finally, a bit of bias on my part: I don't get the big deal about Ms. Netrebko. Her voice is one of quality, but for my taste it tends to be monochromatic. I simply don't respond to it. My theory: Peter Gelb, with a Master Plan to bring Met performances into movie theaters, was looking for a soprano with plenty of sex appeal to dispel ancient stereotypes of bovine female singers. He saw Netrebko at soda fountain counter in Hollywood (or the modern operatic equivalent) and said "Sweetie, I'm gonna make you a STAR!", and has cast her over and over. I'll take Milanov, thanks. Both Racette and Damrau are far more valuable performers, for that matter. Even so, here's my verdict:

THE WINNER IN THE SOPRANO CATEGORY: 1963

Now let's move on to our friends the mezzo-sopranos.

MEZZOS, 1963                               MEZZOS, 2013
Blanche Thebom                              Stephanie Blythe
Margaret Harshaw                           Dolora Zajick
Rosalind Elias                                   Susan Graham
Rita Gorr                                            Joyce DiDonato
Mignon Dunn                                   Elina Garanča

My frustration here is that in 1963 there were a host of legendary mezzo-sopranos singing all over the world, who had been active at the Met but for one reason or another were not on the Met roster in 1963. These include Giuletta Simionato, Fedora Barbieri, Grace Bumbry, Christa Ludwig, Shirley Verrett, and others. NO FAIR! This is seriously going to skew the verdict toward 2013, but it's only fair to play by the rules I set up, so let us proceed!

With heavy hitters like Simionato, Bumbry and the others missing, I will concede that the 2013 Met roster is impressive. DiDonato is one of the greatest lyric mezzos ever, of any era. Marilyn Horne, another luminary in that fach, did not make her debut until 1964, but again: rules are rules. Zajick is a force of nature and an immortal Amneris in Aida. Graham is a resplendant Straussian, ideal as Octavian and the Composer. She has also made indelible impressions in Berlioz, Mozart, and contemporary opera. And Stephanie Blythe is fully the equal of any dramatic mezzo I could name, a worthy match for Margaret Harshaw in both Italianate and Wagnerian roles. So here's the thing: if I could include all the missing famous mezzos listed above, I would still vote for the '60's generation. But to be fair, going by the Met roster choices available, the outcome is clear.

THE WINNER IN THE MEZZO-SOPRANO CATEGORY: 2013

See there? I'm not a prisoner of the past! I can be objective. (Sort of...)

Next week we'll continue this fol-de-rol with a survey of the menfolk. Kaufmann or Corelli? Hampson or Merrill? We'll figure it out!

Oh, and on the basketball thing? LeBron is a greater athlete, but Michael Jordan is the greatest champion. There: wasn't that easy? Stick with me folks - I know stuff.

My book THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES is available from Kendall Hunt Publishing. Order online or by phone from customer service: 1-800-344-9034, ext. 3020. Also available at www.amazon.com

"Streetcar" and Previn: a smorgasbord of musical references

Most new operas encounter a wide range of critical assessments. Heck even Mozart was told by Emperor Josef II that his latest stage work had "too many notes". So it's understandable that André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire has been both praised and scorned in published reviews since premiering at the San Fransisco Opera in 1998.

Giacomo Puccini

One gripe amongst detractors has been the perceived lack of a unified musical style. Katharina Kierig, in her seminar paper "Tennessee Williams' Play 'A Streetcar Named Desire' - An Opera Missing The Music?" sums up this point of view: "It is impossible to discover one coherent musical style in (Previn's) music...". She admits that her paper is based solely on listening to a recording, without benefit of seeing a live staged perfomance, placing her on dubious ground to be rendering a credible critical opinion.

Those who are attending Virginia Opera's upcoming production of the opera may agree or disagree with Kierig, but Your Humble Blogger would like to weigh in with his considered opinion. (Disclaimer: I also have yet to see a live staged performance. Hey, I've lived my entire life on dubious ground - nothing new here, heh heh heh.)

I've learned one thing when it comes to judging new music: when a composer does something I don't  understand, I ask myself a crucial question:

Howcome-why he do that?

Aaron Copland

Seriously, when you start questioning a composer's choices rather than merely reacting to them, you're likely to gain more perspective. So I ask: why would a highly experienced and gifted musician like André Previn compose an opera lacking a unified style? Did he forget how to be talented? Well, that seems unlikely, doesn't it, now?

There are two possibilities here:

1) The array of contrasting musical styles is a deliberate choice; a device, as it were, meaning that the composer is in control of his materials. OR,

2) The composer was unaware of the disparate nature of his stylistic elements, meaning that he is not in control of his materials; in short, that he has no compositional craft. No technique. No chops.

You can't say Previn is one of our most gifted American musicians and still allow for the possibility of Number Two. So let me make a case for Number One. 

First, let's do a quick survey of the types of contrasting styles present in the Streetcar score. Then I'll posit a theoretical method to the composer's stylistic madness. What styles have I identified?

• Puccini. Stella's aria in Act I, Scene 1, "I can hardly stand it", is suavely lyrical and tonal, clearly in the key of B minor. However, note this particular passage:

In performance, this section is so similar in tone, texture, vocal writing and harmony as to be a "kissing cousin" from Liu's solo "Tanto amore" in Act III of Puccini's Turandot:

Is Previn simply incapable of composing an opera aria without channeling Puccini? Clearly not, since this style is isolated to this aria. Therefore, I conclude that it is intended as an homage for reasons I'll sum up below. Here's another musical reference:

•  Aaron Copland. In the orchestral introduction to Act II, scene 2, Previn needs to strike the right tone of rough-edged masculine energy to herald the first appearance of Stanley Kowalski. As a veteran orchestral conductor, Previn realizes that when it comes to rough-edged masculine energy, one can do no better than a tip of the cap to Aaron Copland: the Copland of Rodeo and Billy the Kid. Accordingly, he adopts the brusque rhythms and open sonorities of Copland at his Coplandiest:

And what do you know? My next example consists of:

•  More Puccini! In Act II of Streetcar, Mitch's ill-advised courtship of Blanche is highlighted with a structural oddity seldom found in opera: two consecutive arias which are not separated by dialogue or recitative. Mitch provides Blanche (and us) with his back story in his solo "I'm not a boy, she says", and after a nice applause-inducing final chord, Blanche dives right in with a soliloquy of her own, "He was a boy". Quick, opera buddies: what's the only other opera you can think of in which a tenor and soprano under the spell of mutual attraction sing autobiographical solos in succession with no intervening material? If you said La bohème, why, you're just as smart as I suspected you were! Of course, in Act I of Bohème, Rodolfo and Mimi introduce themselved to one another in just the same format. In the case of Mitch and Blanche, we might refer to them as "Bizarro Rodolfo" and "Bizarro Mimi", since the content of the arias is almost perversely in contrast to Puccini's. Far from being an ambitious poet, Mitch turns out to be a pathetic "Mama's boy", whereas in Blanche's case we are "treated" to a dismal recounting of the suicide of Alan Grey, her homosexual husband of years ago. Granted, this is more a literary reference to Puccini as opposed to any element of musical style, but it counts!

• And finally, Richard Strauss receives an acknowledgement as well. In an essay written for the Virginia Opera blog, we pointed out the similarity of Williams' depiction of Blanche's final descent into madness to that of Salome in Oscar Wilde's drama. Each woman loses touch with reality following an act of traumatic violence: the beheading of John the Baptist for one, a sexual assault for the other. In my opinion, Previn, seemingly quite aware of this connection, reinforces it by assigning Blanche a rapturously blissful final solo totally in keeping with the super-romanticized outpouring of Salome's final utterance. Imagining herself about to embark on a cruise at sea, Blanche rhapsodizes about dying on the ocean:

The sumptuous tertian sonorities, soaring string crescendo (very Straussian!) and dominant-tonic motion in the bass stand in stark, almost shocking contrast to the brittle chromaticism that characterizes much of the music of Streetcar, just as there is something shocking in the contrast of Salome's dabauched sexuality and the intense sweetness of her final moments.

Conclusion: in the blog post referenced above, we pointed out that Tennessee Williams, in the script to his play, piled literary allusion upon literary allusion - Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Gone With the Wind and Salome. Why, then, should André Previn not feel licensed to help himself to a series of allusions to musical sources as well? Sauce for the goose-author, sauce for the gander-composer, right? This is my theory as to the widely-ranging styles appearing throughout the music of Stretcar: they constitute a parallel gesture to the various homages of the dramatist whose play inspired him to take up the craft of opera. It's André Previn making choices; being in control of his materials. The opera sounds as he wished and intended it to sound, which is, perhaps, the only meaningful definition of a successful composition. Will you like it? Will you endorse his choices? Come catch a show and find out!

My book THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES is available from Kendall Hunt Publishing. Order online or by phone from customer service: 1-800-344-9034, ext. 3020. Also available at www.amazon.com

Blanche DuBois: a mind, a life and a vocal style spinning out of control

So, what's the function - the Job #1 - of music in an opera, anyway? Is it just to provide the audience with "ear candy", or beautiful tunes to hum on our way home from the opera house? Why sing the words, anyway?

There are many, many self-proclaimed opera lovers who really (if they are honest) only value music for its ear-candy qualities. I'll never forget the time a student in one of my opera appreciation classes, an educated, dignified man of mature years, came ambling up after class and placidly explained to me, "Glenn, you're a fine instructor, but you know what? When I go to the opera, I don't read the super-titles or the plot synopsis or any of that. I just lean back in my seat, close my eyes, and I soak up the beautiful voices and the lovely melodies."

He was probably puzzled by the expression on my face after this speech...

Granted, I get what he was trying to express: it's true and perfectly valid that the visceral experience of hearing the sound of a trained operatic voice is in fact one of the portals of entry into the world of opera and its pleasures. One of them, mind.

What I had clearly failed to impress upon that gentleman is that the best operatic music has a literary function over and above its value as pure, abstract music. It's the job of the opera composer to use music as a story-telling tool: to define and reveal character, establish point of view, and reflect a host of narrative literary devices. Symbolism, foreshadowing, --in short, everything you remember from high school literature classes. That's when operatic music takes on deeper levels of interest and intrigue.

With all this in  mind, let's consider the nature of the vocal writing for Blanche DuBois in André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire. While Previn does assign Blanche some arias rich in soaring, , tonal, suavely melodic ear-candy such as "I want magic!" and "I can smell the sea air", a large portion of the role consists of dialogue passages that my eye-closing, leaning-back student would find tough listening. Many vocal lines appear to be instrumentally conceived, and are highly chromatic to boot.

We first meet Blanche - musically, anyway - before we ever see her. The orchestral introduction to Act 1, scene 1 contains a vivid portrait of her in twenty-two bars. Bluesy chords to represent her sexual dissolution are followed by aimless, wandering woodwind solos depicting Blanche's odyssey from her family home of Belle Reve to a disreputable hotel and finally to her sister's home in New Orleans. And then, at bar 14, comes a fragmented solo line for trumpet:

This, I believe, is Blanche herself. Note the contour - the shape - of the trumpet line. It gradually ascends the treble staff in erratic zig-zag fashion, ending with a sort of brassy scream above the staff. It sounds neurotic and anxious; it seems to spin crazily out of control. It puts me in mind of a nervous potter losing control of the clay on his potter's wheel, watching in dismay as it splatters crazily into pieces.

Voila Blanche:  a woman whose battle to retain control of her life and her mental stability is also spinning out of control. A survey of the vocal lines given to Blanche throughout the opera reveals continual use of this contour, but only for particular types of dialogue: lines in which we observe Blanche exhibiting neurotic awareness of her precarious mental and emotional state.

Appropriately, the zig-zag contour informs Blanche's very first line, the first vocal line in the opera. This is surely a moment of neurotic insecurity for Blanche, having arrived alone by train in a large, unfamiliar city, making her way via public transportation and confusing directions that have left her in a neighborhood unlike the high-toned area she expected.





After Stella arrives, she and Blanche have a lengthy scene of dialogue in which Blanche tells lie after lie, bravely  presenting the facade of respectability to which she is clinging. But here and there, her angst and mental anguish crack through that facade in vocal lines betraying how close to the edge of sanity she is. When Stella asks where Blanche plans to stay while in town, her answer shows us her dread of being alone; again, via the contour of the line:

Soon after, Blanche is put on the defensive when Stella reacts badly to the news that the family plantation has been lost. She launches into a tirade about all the adversity she endured in Mississippi, including the horrific memory of witnessing the slow deaths of family members:

In case you're wondering, the zig-zag contour is present only in Blanche's music. Stella, Stanley, Mitch and the minor roles may feature instrumentally-conceived lines at times, and there is certainly a great deal of chromaticism for all involved; but only Blanche sings in lines that careen crazily up to concluding high notes. It is a deliberate device used to capture a facet of her psychosis. It is, at times, employed with some subtlety.

For example, in the first of the major confrontations with Stanley Kowalsky, Blanche attempts to deflect Stanley's interrogation regarding the loss of Belle Reve with the weapon she always uses to manipulate men: her sexuality. She tries every trick in her arsenal: asking him to button up her dress; teasing him about his "big fingers", flirtatiously and repeatedly asking him how she looks. Trouble is, Stanley doesn't fall for her act like the high school boys back in Laurel did. When he gives a cursory answer, Blanche responds:

Now, ask yourself: why is the zig-zag contour used for this bantering remark? Because Stanley's refusal to reassure Blanche that she is an attractive woman is stirring up her neurotic insecurities. For Blanche, her advancing age and declining looks represent her personal failures and the approaching doom she sees ahead. Fishing for a compliment? Hardly; rather, she's begging for the affirmation that she's still loveable; that she need not hide in the shadows of life, fearful of being exposed by the harsh glare of light.

Rather than bemoan the "anti ear-candy" harshness in the setting of Blanche's dialogue, we should salute Previn in providing his protagonist with a vocal style perfectly suited to her psychology.

My book THE OPERA ZOO: SINGERS, COMPOSERS AND OTHER PRIMATES is available from Kendall Hunt Publishing. Order online or by phone from customer service: 1-800-344-9034, ext. 3020. Also available at www.amazon.com