Watch Wagner’s Ring Cycle: A Complete 15-Hour Performance Is Now Free Online Thanks to the BBC

in Opera | February 15th, 2017

The word “Wag­ner­ian” as a syn­onym for oper­at­ic bom­bast may have fall­en out of favor in recent years, as has the rep­u­ta­tion of Ger­man com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er. He has been regard­ed as “the most repug­nant of musi­cal nation­al­ists,” writes David P. Gold­man at Tablet—a sen­ti­ment wide­ly shared giv­en Wagner’s per­ma­nent asso­ci­a­tion with Nazism. His music has long been banned in Israel, though “every so often a promi­nent musi­cian makes a point of sneak­ing Wag­n­er into a pub­lic con­cert.” And just as phi­los­o­phy depart­ments across the world have strug­gled with Mar­tin Heidegger’s Nazism, so the clas­si­cal music and opera worlds have wres­tled with Wag­n­er.

What’s odd, how­ev­er, in this case, is that Wag­n­er died in 1883. He tow­ered over 19th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man cul­ture, a con­tem­po­rary of Niet­zsche rather than Hitler, who claimed him after the composer’s death.

Yet those who know the sto­ry of Wag­n­er’s tur­bu­lent friend­ship with Niet­zsche know that the philoso­pher vio­lent­ly reject­ed his for­mer idol and father fig­ure in part because, as Robert Hol­ub argues, Niet­zsche “was unequiv­o­cal­ly antag­o­nis­tic toward what he under­stood as anti-Semi­tism and anti-Semi­tes.” Niet­zsche saw the writ­ing on the wall in views Wag­n­er expressed in essays like 1850’s “Judaism in Music.”

Wagner—musicologists and his­to­ri­ans would say—also saw the future, and helped design it through his unwit­ting posthu­mous influ­ence on Hitler. The com­poser’s famed the­o­ry and prac­tice of what he called Gesamtkunst­werk, the “total work of art,” antic­i­pate the mas­sive spec­ta­cles of 20th cen­tu­ry total­i­tar­i­an aes­thet­ics and the mytho­log­i­cal dimen­sions of 20th cen­tu­ry fas­cism. Wag­n­er called his work the “Music of the Future,” hap­pi­ly appro­pri­at­ing a term crit­ics used to deride his Roman­tic nation­al­ism. But Wagner’s cul­tur­al influ­ence is much, much broad­er than its most damn­ing asso­ci­a­tion, includ­ing his for­ma­tive influ­ence on Niet­zsche.

Wagner’s great­est achieve­ment, Der Ring des Nibelun­gen—referred to as the Ring Cycle—inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and scored the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene in Apoc­a­lypse Now. Loony Tunes’ “Kill the Wab­bit” spoofed the Ring Cycle, and became an entire generation’s “first, and often only expo­sure to opera,” as Ayun Hal­l­i­day not­ed here recent­ly. The Ring Cycle’s over­whelm­ing demon­stra­tion of the Gesamtkunst­werk is a thing to behold, and you can see it here per­formed in full, all four parts, “15 hours of epic opera” cour­tesy of BBC Arts and The Space. The film here, by Opera North, comes from live per­for­mances in Leeds in 2016. At the top, see Das Rhein­gold, below it Die Walküre, just above Siegfried, and below Göt­ter­däm­merung (“Twi­light of the Gods”).

So what should we make of Wagner’s music, giv­en its unavoid­able rela­tion­ship to wars of dom­i­na­tion (against even “Wab­bits”)? If we are to heed some of his crit­ics, we might think of him as a 19th cen­tu­ry Michael Bay. Mark Twain is rumored to have called Wagner’s music “bet­ter than it sounds”—though it turns out the quote actu­al­ly comes from humorist Edgar Wil­son. Twain did write that he enjoyed “the first act of every­thing Wag­n­er cre­at­ed,” but “after two acts I have gone away phys­i­cal­ly exhaust­ed.” Samuel Beck­ett, in a gem of a para­graph, called Wagner’s work “clouds on wheels.” But Wag­n­er is also incred­i­bly pow­er­ful and often sub­lime, and his music does inspire the kind of awe that Tolkien and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la drew on for their own awe-inspir­ing work.

< Appre­ci­at­ing Wag­n­er may indeed be an endurance exer­cise. His boom­ing tales of dwarfs and giants, gods and riv­er-maid­ens, heroes and, yes, Valkyries, can seem to rum­ble along sev­er­al miles above us. The exer­cise is not for the faint of heart. How­ev­er, the tech­nol­o­gy of stream­ing video can save us from Twain’s fate—you can return here, or to the BBC’s site—as many times as you like with­out hav­ing to take in the mas­sive Der Ring des Nibelun­gen all in one sit­ting. And as is always help­ful in opera of any length, you can peruse summaries—like this one—when you feel a bit lost in the clouds. Or, for a tru­ly sur­re­al con­densed Wag­ner­ian expe­ri­ence, watch the video above of “four and a half hours of opera in one minute.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Alan Turing Gets Channeled in a New Opera: Hear Audio from The Life And Death(S) Of Alan Turing

in Computer Science, Music, Opera, Science | January 16th, 2017

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Steve Park­er

It can seem like a cru­el irony that some of the most cel­e­brat­ed peo­ple of our day did­n’t receive the same acclaim dur­ing their some­times trou­bled lives. Van Gogh may have been on the cusp of fame when he died despair­ing and broke, but few could have imag­ined then that he would be the uni­ver­sal­ly beloved and admired artist he became in the fol­low­ing decades. (A recent Doc­tor Who episode poignant­ly imag­ined Van Gogh trav­el­ing to our time to wit­ness his lega­cy.) In a more recent exam­ple in the sci­ences, the book—now film—Hid­den Fig­ures cel­e­brates three pre­vi­ous­ly unsung African-Amer­i­can women: math­e­mati­cians, or “human com­put­ers,” whose cal­cu­la­tions were instru­men­tal to NASA’s suc­cess but whose accom­plish­ments were obscured by prej­u­dice.

The same could not quite be said for Alan Tur­ing, anoth­er genius recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed in a mul­ti­ple-award-win­ning Hol­ly­wood film, award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, and spate of arti­cles, essays, and books. Tur­ing was vicious­ly per­se­cut­ed for his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by the state, and he has often been unfair­ly char­ac­ter­ized in many por­tray­als since.

In 1952, he was con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” for a rela­tion­ship with anoth­er man and giv­en the choice between prison and chem­i­cal cas­tra­tion. The bril­liant Eng­lish math­e­mati­cian, code­break­er, and father of mod­ern com­put­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence chose the lat­ter, and the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects were so demor­al­iz­ing that he took his own life two years later—perhaps grim­ly inspir­ing the Apple logo as he enact­ed his favorite scene from Snow White (a mat­ter in some dis­pute, it should be not­ed).

Tur­ing “left behind a last­ing lega­cy,” note the mak­ers of the docu-dra­ma Code­break­ers, “and lin­ger­ing ques­tions about what else he might have accom­plished if soci­ety had embraced his unique genius instead of reject­ing it.” It’s not fair to say that soci­ety reject­ed his genius—perhaps even more trag­i­cal­ly, it reject­ed his full human­i­ty. Turing’s genius, though cut short at 41, received its due, inspir­ing, since 1966, the high­est award in com­put­er sci­ence. His famed “Tur­ing test” became the stan­dard by which near­ly all attempts at arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence have been mea­sured. In addi­tion to those films, books, and essays, Tur­ing has been much laud­ed in musi­cal pro­duc­tions, name­ly the Pet Shop Boys “orches­tral pop biog­ra­phy” A Man From the Future and a 30-minute ora­to­rio by Adam Gop­nik and com­pos­er Nico Muh­ly called Sen­tences.

And now, a new two-act opera, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Tur­ing, was pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic for the first time, in its entire­ty, on Jan­u­ary 12th at New York’s Amer­i­can Lyric The­ater (ALT). Com­mis­sioned in 2012, and writ­ten by com­pos­er Jus­tine Chen with a libret­to by David Sim­pati­co, the opera is “a his­toric-fan­ta­sia on Turing’s life” that does not obscure the man as it acknowl­edges his genius. Many crit­ics felt that 2014’s The Imi­ta­tion Game “obfus­cat­ed his sex­u­al­i­ty and desex­u­al­ized him in an attempt to make the sto­ry more main­stream,” remarks Shawn Milnes at The Dai­ly Beast. “He was not a sex­u­al crea­ture in this movie,” agrees Sim­pati­co. “He was in the clos­et.” That impres­sion of Tur­ing’s per­son­al life has almost become com­mon­place. And yet the truth “could­n’t be more oppo­site,” Sim­pati­co argues.

He was com­plete­ly out. He was out upon meet­ing peo­ple. He would say, ‘How are you doing? I’m a homo­sex­u­al. Will you have a prob­lem with that? No.’ He was out to every­body. The movie makes it feel like he had some­thing to hide.

Ful­ly acknowl­edg­ing all of the dimen­sions of Turing’s life allows the opera–The Life and Death(s) of Alan Tur­ing– to draw deeply mov­ing arias from his biog­ra­phy like “Cave of Won­ders,” above, in which Tur­ing express­es “his grief over the loss of his first love,” Christo­pher Mor­com, a fel­low grade school stu­dent who died young in 1930. Tur­ing was “open­ly dev­as­tat­ed” by the event, writes L.V. Ander­son at Slate, “and he sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Morcom’s fam­i­ly, going on vaca­tions with them and main­tain­ing a cor­re­spon­dence with Morcom’s moth­er for years. In The Imi­ta­tion Game, by con­trast, he “denies hav­ing known Christo­pher very well” in a flash­back scene.

The music of the opera’s Pro­logue, above, owes a debt to com­posers like Steve Reich and John Adams, with its puls­ing piano and cacoph­o­ny of voic­es, sim­u­lat­ing, per­haps, the rush of thought in Turing’s bril­liant mind. At the ALT site, you can hear a fur­ther excerpt from the opera, “The Social Con­tract,” which dra­ma­tizes the pres­sure Turing’s moth­er put on him to mar­ry, and his sub­se­quent con­sid­er­a­tion of a mar­riage of con­ve­nience to his col­league in cryp­to­analy­sis, Joan Clarke. In the opera, writes Milnes, Sim­pati­co had the idea of “fus­ing sex and intel­lect on stage” in order to bal­ance Turing’s por­tray­al and “see who the per­son was,” as he puts it. As Sim­pati­co says, the trag­i­cal­ly per­se­cut­ed genius “had no divi­sion between his sex­u­al, sen­su­al, phys­i­cal car­nal self and his intel­lec­tu­al, cere­bral, inte­ri­or self.” Only peo­ple who couldn’t take them both togeth­er seemed to have found it nec­es­sary to sep­a­rate the two, and thus do ter­ri­ble dam­age to the man as a whole.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books on Young Alan Turing’s Read­ing List: From Lewis Car­roll to Mod­ern Chro­mat­ics

Hear the First Record­ing of Com­put­er Music: Researchers Restore Three Melodies Pro­grammed on Alan Turing’s Com­put­er (1951)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Kill the Wabbit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bunny Cartoon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

in Animation, Music, Opera, Television | January 2nd, 2017

It comes as no sur­prise that many Amer­i­can children’s first, and often only expo­sure to opera comes com­pli­ments of Bugs Bun­ny. One of the ras­cal­ly rab­bit’s most endur­ing turns is as Brünnhilde oppo­site Elmer Fudd’s Siegfried in “What’s Opera, Doc?,” a 1957 car­toon spoof­ing Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen.

Oth­er well known names, includ­ing Mar­i­lyn Horne and Placido Domin­go have assayed these parts over the years, but thanks to the mir­a­cle of syn­di­ca­tion, Bugs and Elmer are the ones who tru­ly own them, as a cel­e­brat­ed part of their reper­toire for six decades and count­ing.

The law of aver­ages dic­tates that a percentage—a very small percentage—of their bil­lions of child view­ers would grow up to become opera pro­fes­sion­als.

The Wall Street Jour­nal recent­ly con­firmed that for sev­er­al promi­nent Wag­ne­r­i­ans, includ­ing the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s Lin­de­mann Young Artist Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, “What’s Opera, Doc?” and an ear­li­er work, 1949’s “Rab­bit of Seville,” had a pro­found impact.

And no dis­re­spect to direc­tor Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, who deployed Ride of the Valkyries so mem­o­rably in Apoc­a­lypse Now, but no one will ever use it to greater effect than the cartoon’s writer, Michael Mal­tese, author of the immor­tal lyrics:

Kiww the wab­bit! Kiww the wab­bit!

It’s a phrase even the least opera-inclined child can remem­ber and sing, well into adult­hood.

Read the com­plete Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

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Hear VALIS, an Opera Based on Philip K. Dick’s Metaphysical Novel

in MIT, Opera, Sci Fi | August 8th, 2016

PKD

Image by Pete Wesch, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Philip K. Dick died in 1982. His dis­tinc­tive, some say vision­ary brand of psy­cho­log­i­cal sci-fi lit­er­a­ture, how­ev­er, has lived on, prov­ing its endurance in part by tak­ing new forms. Blade Run­ner, Rid­ley Scot­t’s huge­ly influ­en­tial adap­ta­tion of Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, pre­miered just three months after the author’s depar­ture. More films fol­lowed over the years, includ­ing Paul Ver­ho­even’s Total Recall (an adap­ta­tion of “We Can Remem­ber It for You Whole­sale”), Steven Spiel­berg’s Minor­i­ty Report, Richard Lin­klater’s A Scan­ner Dark­ly, and many oth­ers.

Dick­’s work has also pro­vid­ed the basis for radio dra­mas, tele­vi­sion shows (most recent­ly Net­flix’s The Man in the High Cas­tle, with an ambi­tious anthol­o­gy series com­ing to Chan­nel 4 this spring), and stage pro­duc­tions.

Typ­i­cal­ly, these adap­ta­tions use the sto­ries and nov­els in which Dick wrote the set­ting, plot, and char­ac­ters with rel­a­tive straight­for­ward­ness. Oth­er, lat­er works found him plung­ing as deep into phi­los­o­phy and auto­bi­og­ra­phy as into sci­ence fic­tion. The change hap­pened around the time he saw a mys­te­ri­ous pink light and met God in 1974, or claimed to, and it pro­duced a final set of nov­els known as the VALIS tril­o­gy.

The frac­tured tale of an autho­r­i­al alter-ego named Horselover Fat, VALIS (short for “Vast Active Liv­ing Intel­li­gence Sys­tem”), the first book in the tril­o­gy, involves an alien space probe, Water­gate, the Mes­si­ah, lasers, and a range of ref­er­ences to reli­gions like Chris­tian­i­ty, Gnos­ti­cism, Bud­dhism, Gnos­ti­cism, Zoroas­tri­an­ism, and the Red Cross Broth­er­hood; phi­los­o­phy from the ancient Greeks to Pla­to, Pas­cal, and Schopen­hauer; and cul­tur­al fig­ures like Han­del, Wag­n­er, Goethe, and Frank Zap­pa. It would take an ambi­tious mind indeed to adapt such a thing: specif­i­cal­ly, it took the mind of Tod Machover, com­pos­er and direc­tor of MIT’s Media Lab, who turned it into an opera in 1987.

“We live in a world that is becom­ing in fact more and more frag­ment­ed, more and more com­plex,” says Machover on the rel­e­vance of VALIS at an inter­view at the Philip K. Dick Fan Site. “You don’t have to have a pink light expe­ri­ence to real­ize that there is too much infor­ma­tion to not only be aware of but to make any kind of sense out of.” He describes this “incred­i­ble feel­ing of the world being not only too com­plex for any one per­son to make sense out of but also dan­ger­ous­ly com­plex, to the point where peo­ple will not only not under­stand each oth­er but end up hat­ing each oth­er and being absolute­ly crushed under the bur­den of just try­ing to make sense with how much there is to know.”

In his VALIS opera, which pre­miered at Paris’ Cen­tre Georges Pom­pi­dou with instal­la­tions cre­at­ed by video artist Cather­ine Ikam, Machover tried to get that feel­ing artis­ti­cal­ly across, and you can hear it free on Spo­ti­fy. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, you can down­load it here. There’s a Youtube ver­sion right above.) Back then in the 80s, he says, it “seemed like through our media and com­mu­ni­ca­tions there’d be a kind of facile way of con­nect­ing peo­ple, a sort of pas­siv­i­ty and turn­ing on your cable TV and see­ing what’s going on today in Tokyo or in Europe and you sort of feel like you can take all this stuff in. But in fact I think what we’re see­ing now is exact­ly what Dick pre­dict­ed, which is that it ain’t that easy.” And it sure has­n’t got any eas­i­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Hear 6 Clas­sic Philip K. Dick Sto­ries Adapt­ed as Vin­tage Radio Plays

Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Pre­dic­tions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Virus­es & More (1981)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stephen King’s The Shining Is Now an Opera, and The Tickets Are All Sold Out

in Books, Opera | May 25th, 2016

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As a sto­ry, The Shin­ing cer­tain­ly pass­es the test of adapt­abil­i­ty: we’ve fea­tured not just the anno­tat­ed copy of Stephen King’s orig­i­nal nov­el that Stan­ley Kubrick used to make his well-known film adap­ta­tion, but its Simp­sons par­o­dy, its reimag­ined feel-good Hol­ly­wood trail­er, its remake in minia­ture as a long-form Aesop Rock music video, and even a board game based on the book. Now The Shin­ing has tak­en its lat­est form live on stage as a pro­duc­tion of the Min­neso­ta Opera, whose dig­i­tal pro­gram you can read above.

“I can’t recall an opera in which the vil­lain is a build­ing,” writes Ron Hub­bard in a review for the St. Paul Pio­neer Press, “but that’s the case with The Shin­ing, an adap­ta­tion of Stephen King’s nov­el about a haunt­ed hotel and a fam­i­ly that win­ters with­in it. While ghosts play a promi­nent role in many operas, the spir­its occu­py­ing the remote Rocky Moun­tain hotel in The Shin­ing are ser­vants to one pow­er­ful, malev­o­lent mas­ter: the build­ing itself.” Hub­bard high­lights the elab­o­rate design that recre­ates the for­bid­ding Over­look Hotel with a “state­ly set,” “swirling, spooky pro­jec­tions,” and build­ing ele­ments that “roll in and out behind screens swirling with pat­terns, cre­at­ing an unset­tling, kalei­do­scop­ic effect.”

As every opera enthu­si­ast soon finds out, no pro­duc­tion can sur­vive by design alone. But The Shin­ing, accord­ing to Hub­bard, earns full marks in oth­er areas as well, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to its “score full of dis­com­fit­ing themes that clash and col­lide to strong­ly sung and dis­arm­ing­ly believ­able por­tray­als of char­ac­ters alive and oth­er­wise.” He also empha­sizes that the source mate­r­i­al comes not from Kubrick­’s film, but King’s nov­el: “Stan­ley Kubrick took great lib­er­ties with the sto­ry, going so far as to change how the con­flict plays out and resolves. I actu­al­ly found this oper­at­ic ver­sion con­sid­er­ably creepi­er, in large part because we get to know the ghosts bet­ter.”

“The nov­el and the movie are vast­ly dif­fer­ent,” says libret­tist Mark Camp­bell in the video above, though they and they opera all tell “the sto­ry of Jack Tor­rance, who, because of eco­nom­ic rea­sons, accepts a job as the win­ter care­tak­er for a hotel in remote west­ern Col­orado.” And before long, as we know whether we’ve read the book or seen the movie, Jack “sub­mits to a num­ber of his demons” before the eyes of his ter­ri­fied and increas­ing­ly endan­gered fam­i­ly. But it remains, Camp­bell says, “the sto­ry of a man who wants to do good — he just did­n’t choose the right job, and end­ed up in a sit­u­a­tion that did every­thing it could to tear him apart.”

The Shin­ing the opera comes com­mis­sioned by Min­neso­ta Oper­a’s New Works Ini­tia­tive, “designed to invig­o­rate the oper­at­ic art form with an infu­sion of con­tem­po­rary works.” Giv­en its com­plete­ly sold-out suc­cess in St. Paul, where it pre­miered, we can safe­ly say that this pro­duc­tion has accom­plished the mis­sion of draw­ing vig­or from a per­haps unex­pect­ed source, and even that it stands a chance of bring­ing its chill­ing artistry (not to men­tion its promis­ing­ly warned-about “strong lan­guage, gun­shots, sim­u­lat­ed nudi­ty, the­atri­cal haze, and strobe light­ing”) to a city near you, prefer­ably in the dead of win­ter to best suit the sto­ry — a time that, in Min­neso­ta, already counts as for­bid­ding enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Watch a Shot-by-Shot Remake of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, a 48-Minute Music Video Accom­pa­ny­ing the New Album by Aesop Rock

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free: Download 500+ Rare Music Manuscripts by Mozart, Bach, Chopin & Other Composers from the Morgan Library

in Creativity, Museums, Music, Opera | March 14th, 2016

mozart 1

When my son first start­ed play­ing the piano, I lost sev­er­al evenings chas­ing the holy grail of free online sheet music. Sad­ly, most of what we were inter­est­ed in down­load­ing wasn’t real­ly free… just the first page.

It’s hard to ratio­nal­ize drop­ping five bucks on one song, when the New York Pub­lic Library for the Per­form­ing Arts is a short sub­way ride away. The prob­lem is, I’m not much of a musi­cian, and while there are scores and scores of scores upon their shelves, I rarely under­stood what it was I was check­ing out. Often I’d come home with the sought after piece, only to real­ize that I’d inad­ver­tent­ly checked out a vocal selec­tion, or the chord-rich equiv­a­lent of a cock­tail pianist’s fake book.

With the Mor­gan Library’s Music Man­u­scripts Online project, there’s no guar­an­tee my son or I will be able to play it, but I do know exact­ly what I’m get­ting.

The hand­writ­ten man­u­script of Mozart’s com­ic singspiel, Der Schaus­pieldirek­tor,  above, for instance, auto­graphed by the com­pos­er him­self. 84 pages worth, not count­ing cov­ers and end­pa­pers, all free for the down­load­ing!

Put that on your iPad, Mr. Salieri!

The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly offers dig­i­tized ver­sions of upwards of 500 musi­cal man­u­scripts, with more to come as the review­ing process con­tin­ues.

It’s search­able by com­pos­er, and big names abound.

bach 2

Per­haps you’d like to warm up the Wurl­tiz­er with Bach’s Toc­ca­ta and Fugue for Organ, BWV 538, in D minor…

puccini

Or let all your opera singing, bal­let danc­ing friends know you’re avail­able to accom­pa­ny them with Puccini’s auto­graphed man­u­script for Le Vil­li…

chopin

Or cir­cum­nav­i­gate the scrib­bled out boo boos, while attempt­ing Chopin’s Polon­ais­es, Piano, Op. 26. Chopin’s John Han­cock is the reward.

The hits just keep com­ing: Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Fau­ré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Schu­bert, Schu­mann…

Mendelssohn

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, female com­posers are gross­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed, but there are a few gems, such as Mendelssohn’s sis­ter Fan­ny Hensel’s auto­graphed man­u­script of the song Sel­mar und Sel­ma, dec­o­rat­ed with a pret­ty pen­cil and wash draw­ing by her hus­band

The Mor­gan has plans to add essays about the man­u­scripts by lead­ing schol­ars. In the mean­time, pick a piece and start prac­tic­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch Classic Performances from Maria Callas’ Wondrous and Tragically-Short Opera Career

in Music, Opera | February 18th, 2016

“Histri­on­ic” is not a word we often hear used as a com­pli­ment, describ­ing as it does over­wrought, the­atri­cal, melo­dra­mat­ic behav­ior we tend to frown on in every­day life. In the opera world, how­ev­er, one can right­ly praise a diva like the late Maria Callas for her “histri­on­ic pow­er.” Jason Vic­tor Ser­i­nus uses the phrase in an arti­cle on Callas for San Fran­cis­co Clas­si­cal Voice, and also writes of Callas’ “col­oratu­ra agili­ty,” “styl­is­tic authen­tic­i­ty,” “mes­mer­iz­ing stage pres­ence” and “increas­ing­ly scan­dalous behav­ior.”

That last descrip­tion refers in part to a break in Callas’ life and career in 1959 when she left her hus­band and man­ag­er Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Menegh­i­ni and took up with Aris­to­tle Onas­sis. That rela­tion­ship end­ed in heart­break, and after sev­er­al attempts to reclaim her for­mer glo­ry in the sev­en­ties, Callas’ own heart final­ly gave out: in 1977, she died of what may have been a drug-induced heart attack in Paris, her last years, writes Ser­i­nus, “a real tragedy of oper­at­ic pro­por­tions.”

We also, of course, think of anoth­er break in Callas’ life—with opera itself, which she left behind as her wide­ly-praised vocal abil­i­ty dimin­ished rather dra­mat­i­cal­ly in her 40s, an effect, per­haps, of rapid weight loss ear­ly in her career or—as crit­ic and voice teacher Con­rad Osborne spec­u­lates in an NPR pro­file—of a “lack of prop­er tech­nique to sus­tain her ambi­tious reper­toire.” And yet, writes NPR, it was Callas’ “imper­fec­tions” that “set her apart,” along with “her abil­i­ty to find the emo­tion­al mean­ing in a role.” But as much as Callas has been laud­ed for her “sen­sa­tion­al voice,” she has as often been derid­ed in pro­por­tion­ate­ly unflat­ter­ing terms.

Crit­ic Ter­ry Tea­chout describes Callas’ voice as one of “ugly beau­ty,” tak­ing a phrase from Thelo­nious Monk. The con­trast express­es the range of opin­ions crit­ics and audi­ences have held about Callas. While “much of what is writ­ten about her,” Tea­chout observes, “is the work of ador­ing fans whose wor­ship­ful prose is apt to make cool­er heads a bit queasy,” those cool­er heads have always found sub­tle and not so sub­tle ways of insult­ing her dis­tinc­tive voice or strik­ing looks. (“She con­trived through sheer force of will to per­suade audi­ences that she was a great beau­ty,” sneers Tea­chout, “with an even greater voice.”) Callas, in oth­er words, inspires devo­tion and vituperation—but no one sees her per­form and remains unmoved.

Was Maria Callas’ rise to fame a “con job,” as Tea­chout provoca­tive­ly alleges? Isn’t all great per­for­mance some­thing of a con? In any case, I doubt any­one could fool so many devot­ed opera fans into believ­ing in char­ac­ters as whole­heart­ed­ly as mil­lions have believed in Callas’ Rosi­na from Rossini’s Bar­ber of Seville (top from 1958), or in her Nor­ma from Bellini’s chal­leng­ing bel can­to opera (below it, from the same year). Were audi­ences unable to see through the range of her stun­ning per­for­mances in the two Ham­burg con­certs from 1959 and 1962 (fur­ther down)? Could no one dis­cern how flawed her Covent Gar­den per­for­mance, above, or her bravu­ra turn in the title role of Bizet’s Car­men, below, both from 1962?

Of course they heard the flaws. They were part of her appeal. NPR quotes Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia pro­fes­sor Tim Page, who points to Callas’ “feroc­i­ty” and “inten­si­ty” in the role of Car­men. Before Callas, singers “would con­cen­trate only on nice melodies, pret­ti­ly sung. Callas’ Car­men was not nec­es­sar­i­ly very pret­ty, but it was thrilling.” At the height of her pow­ers, Callas brought a robust strength and per­son­al­i­ty to the opera that had been miss­ing from the form, and recov­ered, writes Ser­i­nus, “a host of bel can­to rar­i­ties that had ced­ed from the stage because of a decline in vocal tech­nique among then-liv­ing singers.”

Though Callas’ own tech­nique comes in for much critique—deservedly or not, I can’t say—no one can ever accuse her of timid­i­ty or con­ser­vatism in an are­na that demands courage and flam­boy­ance, that demands, in a word, “histri­on­ics.” The his­to­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry opera, Ser­i­nus writes, can right­ly be divid­ed “with the terms B.C. and A.C.—Before Callas and After Callas…. [Her] ascen­dance put an end to the era of bird­song col­orat­uras who chirped their way through florid mad-scenes with lit­tle regard for their emo­tion­al import.” If a cer­tain rough brava­do and self-con­scious self-fash­ion­ing is what it took to restore to so many roles their depth and grav­i­ty, so be it. Callas paid a price for her out­sized voice and life, and you can hear it in her weak­ened farewell per­for­mance, above, from 1973. But her ador­ing fans will for­ev­er be grate­ful to her for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Video Cap­tures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarot­ti in One of His Ear­li­est Record­ed Per­for­mances (1964)

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Rare Video Captures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarotti in One of His Earliest Recorded Performances (1964)

in Music, Opera | January 28th, 2016

Some­times it’s hard to believe that cer­tain enter­tain­ers did not arrive ful­ly formed with their famous look already part of the act. It’s still weird to me, for exam­ple, to see very ear­ly George Car­lin, look­ing like a nephew to the but­ton-down com­e­dy of Bob Newhart. You might get the same shock see­ing this very early—possibly the first, but not verified—televised appear­ance of mas­ter tenor Luciano Pavarot­ti.

In this archived clip from Sovi­et tele­vi­sion, the future opera super­star looks more like come­di­an Jack­ie Glea­son than the beard­ed, icon­ic fig­ure he would become. Those eye­brows are work­ing over­time, though.

The year is 1964, only three years after his pro­fes­sion­al debut in a region­al Ital­ian opera house, where he played the lead, Rodol­fo, in a pro­duc­tion of La Boheme. It was also a year after his first major accom­plish­ment, sup­port­ing and singing with Joan Suther­land on an Aus­tralian tour. He was yet to have an Amer­i­can pre­miere, and was still try­ing to make a name for him­self.

This above clip, a jaun­ty and con­fi­dent take on Verdi’s “La Don­na e Mobile” from Rigo­let­to, shows all the youth­ful promise in his 29-year-old voice. Com­pare and con­trast below his 1982 ver­sion from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film ver­sion of the opera. It’s sweet­er and Pavarot­ti has less to prove, firm­ly estab­lished in the fir­ma­ment of singing stars. The song remains the same, but this ear­ly glimpse into Pavarotti’s career shows he knew he was going places, but just need­ed that chance to prove it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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