Alex Ross's Blog, page 155

Georg Friedrich Haas as New Yorker

Darkness Visible. The New Yorker, Nov. 11, 2013.

Nielsen, Bernstein

Happy Halloween

Previously: Dark Harvest Song, Fanfare for the Royal Wedding

Night Mail

Britten, Auden, and the GPO Film Unit, 1936. The classic bit begins at 19:12.

Anniversary creep

With centennials and bicentennials cluttering the schedule, are we really to be inundated by one hundred fiftieth anniversaries as well? What about one hundred thirty-fifth and two hundred twenty-second anniversaries? I, for one, am ignoring this one. Richard Strauss is doing just fine without the extra hoopla.

The Gergiev case

Imperious. The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2013.

For Lou Reed

The remarkable Mr. Reed died today at the age of seventy-one. His influence on modern rock and pop was, of course, vast, and remains so; he also had a substantial and mutually beneficial relationship with the world of classical composition. Not many other pop musicians have had their albums played in full at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. Follow Steve Smith on Twitter for some excellent links and memories. Heartfelt condolences to Laurie Anderson.

Previously: Satyagraha protest.

Regie: the early days

“I said
to Frau Cosima that I could not see that the stage trappings at Bayreuth or anywhere else were anything
like the visions [Wagner's] music conjured up. And I think I remember her saying ‘And
what pictures do you see, Mr. Craig?’ And I described something like the wild
pampas of South America, the rushing of the wind, perhaps a prairie fire, and
so on. When I looked at Frau Wagner I could hardly see her face, because she
had turned the same colour as the table-cloth, into which she seemed to be
vanishing.”

— Edward Gordon Craig, Index to the Story of My Days

Old gods awaken

Photo: Metropolitan Opera.

Angela Meade and Jamie Barton both delivered tremendous performances in last night's Norma at the Met, causing some old-school pandemonium in the house. Meade sang with a degree of dramatic involvement that I hadn't yet seen from this greatly gifted soprano. It was a considerable advance on her Caramoor Norma, which was already very fine. I suspect that she will be even stronger on Monday, her only other night in this run; in "Casta diva," she seemed a little on edge and short of breath. Soon enough, she settled in, and by the end she had taken full, fiery command of the stage. As for Barton, she is a fresh wonder of the opera world, possessing a voice of preternatural beauty and power. She has a remarkable ability to keep the vocal line afloat amid pauses for breath; she'd swell on a note, take a breath, and then resume at even greater volume, tricking the ear into thinking that the phrase had never been broken. To see these young artists reveling together in their voices makes you believe unswervingly in the future of the art.

More: The Met has posted audio of the big Norma-Adalgisa duet, “Sì, fino all’ore estreme."

And: Zachary Woolfe has a review in the Times.

Thank-you note of the century

Photo: Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos / Library of Congress.

Jacqueline Kennedy to Leonard Bernstein, June 9, 1968, at 4AM, following Robert F. Kennedy's funeral: "When your Mahler started to fill (but that is the wrong word — because it was more this sensitive trembling) the Cathedral today — I thought it the most beautiful music I had ever heard. I am so glad I didn't know it — it was this strange music of all the gods who were crying.... Will you tell your noble orchestra, drowning in heat and cables when I passed them — that so many people all this day have said: how beautiful you were...." (From The Leonard Bernstein Letters.)

She says many other moving things in this remarkable letter, but what strikes me most is this: as she walks down the aisle of St. Patrick's Cathedral, at the funeral of the murdered brother of her murdered husband, she thinks about how hot the players must be under the lights.