Grice said.
July 19, 2010
Die Meistersinger at die Proms
Prom 2: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (concert staging) - Royal Albert Hall, 17 July 2010
"I''m not sure why the BBC went for an English title seeing as this performance was sung in the original German. Perhaps they were worried people might pronounce Die Meistersinger as in "die, Mr Bond"."
---
"With no props and only a narrow strip of empty stage, the scope for acting was limited."
"The soloists were probably glad to sport the same democratic all-black uniform as the orchestra just inches behind them."
"Their heavy stage costumes would have been torture in the sweltering (as usual) Royal Albert Hall."
"The revelation that without their cunning disguises nearly all the cast were the same age is testament to WNO's wig and makeup artistry in the earlier staged shows."
"Shorn of Richard Jones's superb production (and of supertitles), this version threw the focus squarely on the music."
-------******* AS GRICE WOULD SAY: No implicatures about it!
"Orchestral and choral forces were somewhat undersized - more noticeable in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall than in the Birmingham Hippodrome - and the big moments fell short of tsunami power. But detail was not overlooked - they even pulled in a special harp for Beckmesser's plinky-plunk lute solos (the smaller instrument to the right of the harpist in the photo below)."
----- Adding to the 'for children' effect.
"Without the distractions of choreography and scenery, Lothar Koenigs' gear changes were more obvious, but he has a keen dramatic sense and timed his luftpausen to perfection. The WNO orchestra must now know this opera as well as Koenigs (who mouthed every word) does, and a few split notes aside produced little to quibble with.:
"The singing in general was more notable for its interpretive craft than its technical perfection. Only David Soar, in the small but exposed part of Nightwatchman, sang with real beauty (good to see he's finally getting his ROH debut soon, in Adriana Lecouvreur)."
--------- sang with real "ACOUSTIC" rather than visual beauty.
"As Magdalene, Anna Burford's firm, well-projected tone suited the demanding acoustic. But the Royal Albert Hall has a peculiar way of exaggerating vibrato that flattered few of the others, Terfel included. At some times he sounded suitably world-weary and resigned, at others just tired and overheated. (I loved the way he built his brow-mopping into his characterisation). Dramatically, he has Hans Sachs in the bag. He understands the text"
-- it is FOR children.
"and shapes it to perfection, but the voice just wasn't quite there on this particular occasion."
As implicating that perhaps it was on ANOTHER occasion?
"Christopher Purves was more solid vocally. His Beckmesser is far from the usual comic caricature - not evil, not even bad, just an ordinary man with a thick skin and all his foibles to the fore."
Still for children.
"And why not? Purves craftily squeezed in a few bits of physical comedy that had the audience eating out his hand."
"Amanda Roocroft's Eva seemed to survive the acoustic better than Andrew Tortise's wobbly David and Raymond Very's even wobblier Walther, but I'd be interested to hear how the broadcast version sounds (the whole thing is on the iPlayer for the next few days, with Stephen Fry as guide). I swapped seats at the intervals, moving from the back gradually round to the front, and it was both fascinating and disturbing to note just how much the sound differed from each position - not just the predictable balance issues, but the quality of individual instruments and voices."
----
Oddly, other people swaped seats moving from the front to the back, and leaving before the thing was done!
---- JL, 'a child at heart'.
---
"Grice dismissed "Die meistersinger" as 'for children'" knowing he wasn't one."
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Wagner composed musick for Walt Disney a century before Disneyland opened. Nietzsche thought something like that.
ReplyDeleteSome of his music's sublime--like Tristan and Isolde. But much is just schlock, or boring. The 25% great does not redeem the 75% banal. The situation holds for many if not most composers, really, even the greats (not to say for the pop/rock scenesters). They write a few sublime sections, puff it out, and add the cheap thrills--as with Beethoven's 3rd. Chopin in the same boat...some great sublime musick, along with schlock (at least Chopin's pieces tend to be short, so you can endure a few trite pieces and wait for the sublime and shimmering ones, unlike The Ring, where you sit for an hour of...boredom and get 5 minutes of something nearly interesting). Debussy like Chopin in that regard as well (La Mer an intense piece of muzak tho).
Verdi seems like that as well: a few sections of like Otello and Macbeth entertain me (at least he rips off a decent writer), but on the whole...mundane, though musically speaking Verdi at least plagiarized people (like Mozart) better than Wagner did.
There's one wild opera I enjoy (music and words): Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, which is rarely performed. Apocalypse doesn't sell too many tickets.
Opera in a nutshell.
Excellent. I'm flabbergasted, pleasantly, that you agree with Grice and I [hypercorrection, there, it should be 'me', but in these grand topics like opera, it's best to use, allways, "I"] that der Wagner 'Die Meistersinger von Nurenberg' is 'fuer die Kinder' (or 'for children', or childurn, as Grice preferred).
ReplyDeleteYes, a lot of opera is just silly. I lead a club, which we call "A tenor all singers above" and only study the tenor parts. This shortens the operas quite a bit. Take "Macbeth" -- at least we have MacDuff, "Ah, la paterna mano", which is a nice piece of thing.
---- In general, as you write, operas are too long, too.
Nietzsche somewhere hints that Wagner, the legendary anti-semite (and Der Fuhrer's fave jingleheimer)... was...jewish. His schnozzle looks a bit...kosher. He was a great hack. Schubert the twisted village idiot had a better sense of melody and more heart than Wagner (and superior to about any 19th century muzak, tho' a few romantic virtuosos may have out-virtuoso'ed him).
ReplyDeleteWell, Verdi called Wagner the eardrum-breaker (in italian), and I agree!
ReplyDeleteOddly, Wagner meant the end of Italian opera as we knew it at Covent Garden. There used to be this posth "Italian Opera Company" led by Queen Victoria. When Wagner refused copyrights to translate his long things into Italian, instead of disallowing Wagner at the Covent Garden, they disallowed the "Italian Opera Company" -- whose last season was in 1892. Ah well.
Richardson is not clear if Grice dismissed ALL Wagner, or just Die Meistersinger as 'for children'. Should re-read the thing, which is in the Grice club.
ReplyDelete------ In any case, yes, Wagner is possibly overrated. Apparently, you have to be a German to understand him. I mean, if you ARE a German, you are bound to like him. There's a lot of nationalism in music that I wonder if it's innate or something. I mean, I hope it isn't. But having brought up in a milieu where everyone worships Wagner is bound to have an effect on your likings.
And as Twain said, there's something about Wagner's _music_ that does not sound well enough.
When I was in Amsterdam, I went to a coffee bar in the Central Station area, called "Der fliegende hollander", expecting to find a sophistated crowd. Insteading, they were flying indeed, the dutch, but on pot.
Mark Twain made a few funny cracks about Wagner: "it sounds better than it is"' or something. I suspect Sam aka MT was on to the ...Wehrmacht potential.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that many modern germans admire Wagner, or the classics. Sort of their grandfathers' musick. Academics, and rich executives may, but not the kids. When I travelled through the Rhineland a few years ago most of the music in urban areas was...jazz (tho' many pop, disco clubs as well). A few churches featured concertos which tended to be baroque, Bach, etc.
One sunday in an Altstadt near Koblenz I believe a big brass band oom pah pah'd away, people swilling brew--beer-barrel polka stuff, not...Kill Da Wabbit .