Wolf Trap Opera

The 2012 Great Arts Blogger Challenge is on! Spring for Music has kicked off a contest designed to find the best arts blogger in the country. Over the next month, entrants (there are 42) will post entries on 4 assigned topics.

I’m not playing along officially (I shrink from competition, and I’m a little too busy in my day job to make a respectable showing…), but it is exciting to gather the blogging community and have many writers focus on the same topics. (There’s lots of sidebar discussion about whether or not this venture is useful/legit/functional, but I don’t think it matters, really.  Any attempt to get the national conversation going is a good one.)

This week’s question: “New York City has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?”

From an operatic perspective, New York is certainly a case study as well as a capital.

No one can touch the Met (for better or worse) and its budget of $325,000,000. (Yes, 325 million. Just had to see those zeroes.) Anyone who’s that far ahead of the rest of the pack financially is going to dominate the conversation, force setting of trends, and do things that no one else can afford to.

On the other end of the financial spectrum are the wonderful small companies where so many singers learn their trades – and these range from places doing shoestring traditional productions to companies on the cutting edge of 21st-century repertoire and aesthetics. And of course, most famously caught between a rock and a hard place that Odysseus wouldn’t envy is beloved New York City Opera – destined to play out the story of the precarious sliver where art and finance intersect in this new age.

Capital: a city regarded as being of special eminence in some field of activity. Yes, NYC still has special eminence due to quantity. Of companies, of money, of patrons. So it must be a capital.

Does it represent the best of what our industry has to offer? On a good night, yes. Does it hold a monopoly, or even an unchallenged advantage? No. Probably less so than all through the last century. And to say so doesn’t diminish what’s happening there; I just believe that there are other cities who host companies that excel in ways that have eluded New York. Do any of them usurp the throne yet? Probably not.

Check out the entrants (I haven’t read them yet but will), vote, and discuss!

Today, a follow-up to Tuesday’s post on Terms of Derision in Don Giovanni. This time, a survey of some of the threats of violence and fight-provoking language in Da Ponte’s libretto.

First, self-violence. In a fit of feigned masochism, Zerlina enumerates all of the painful things she invites her fiancé to do to her to prove that she’s really contrite about appearing to run off with another man…

• Ammazzami – kill me (specifically, “Vien qui, sfogati, ammazzami, fa tutto di me quel che ti piace” – Come here… get your anger out… kill me… do whatever you will with me!”)
• Cavarmi gli occhi – rip out my eyes!
• Straziarmi il crine – tear out my hair!

Elvira is determined to do violence to Giovanni. She swears to:

• Cavare il cor – tear out his heart
• Farne orrendo scempio – cause a horrendous slaughter

The top of Act II is testosterone gone wild. Masetto is on the prowl to punish Giovanni. The Don himself is in disguise as Leporello, provoking Masetto even further.

• Farlo in cento brani – cut him in a hundred pieces
• Ammazzarlo – murder him
• Trucidarlo – slaughter him
• Ferite – wound him
• Fracassargli le spalle – smash his shoulders
• Rompergli l’ossa – break his bones
• Accoppatelo – bump him off

And finally, in addition to constantly calling Leporello names, Giovanni obviously feels the need to threaten him:

• Nel petto ti metto questo acciar – I will put this sword in your chest
• Orsù, va là! O qui t’ammazzo, e poi ti seppellisco! – Get on with it, or I’ll kill you right here and bury you, too!

Phew.

And while we’ve had fun with this, rest assured that there is also comedy, wisdom, and love in this show. And amazingly, even all of this strong language comes across with a wealth of nuance and subtext when heard through the beautiful prism of Mozart’s music.

Next week (if we manage to finish all of our intern interviews!), a first stab at what I hope will be a short series on digging into the awesomeness that is W.H. Auden’s libretto for The Rake’s Progress.

Upon opening my Giovanni score (well-worn, now embarking on its 8th production), I was greeted by an old friend. During a 1995 production, my colleague Laurie Rogers created a wonderful document called “Terms of Derision and Threats of Violence in Don Giovanni” in which she outlined some 83 Italian insults and threats in the libretto.

Two things occur to me every time I see this list. (Which is about every 5-7 years, it seems:)) First, that this story is full of people who have no trouble being nasty. Second, that the English language pales next to its colorful Italian cousin, and we are particularly weak when it comes to vivid nouns.

Today, a review of some “Terms of Derision” in Da Ponte’s libretto.

How do the people in Giovanni’s life refer to him?

• Barbaro – a heartless, crude, savage, cruel man (used by Elvira and Leporello)
• Mostro, fellon, nido d’inganni – a monster, traitor, birthplace of deception and deceit (Elvira)
• Ingrato – a thankless, ungrateful man (um… Elvira again)
• Perfido – treacherous, traitorous, double-crossing man (Elvira, and almost everyone else at one time or another)
• Scellerato – wicked, abominable, depraved, degenerate man (Anna’s father)
• Uccisore – murderer (Ottavio, calling a spade a spade)
• Rèstati, barbaro! Nel lezzo immondo esempio orribile d’inquinità! – Stay here in your disgusting stench of horrible immorality, you crude and vulgar man. (Leporello, finally fed up. Why can we not curse like this and not get arrested?)

What names does Giovanni use to refer to them?

• Birbone – a lazy, cheating, lying, good-for-nothing (Leporello)
• Gran gonzo – a big chump, an easily fooled sap (Leporello again)
• Bestia – idiotic, foolish, animal-stupid (poor Leporello…)
• Bifolcaccio – a rude, clumsy, brutish, clumsy man (of Zerlina’s fiancé Masetto)
• Villano, mascalzon! Ceffo da cani! – villainous, thieving, dog-faced crook (Masetto again)
• Scioccone – big fool (and once again, Masetto)
• Sconsigliata – foolhardy, misguided woman (of Anna, when she foils his plan to force himself on her)

Zerlina’s fiancé Masetto uses pretty colorful language to refer to his bride-to-be…

• Bricconaccia, malandrina – cheating, lying, tramp
• Bricconcella – hussy… floozy… whore
• Strega – witch

The next time you need some powerful epithets that won’t get you fired or kicked out of the house, feel free to call on some of these. You’ll feel a great catharsis, and everyone will just think you’re a cultured polyglot :)

Next: Threats of violence! Stay tuned.

Thank you for allowing me to point you to a wonderful new place on the interwebs! My WTOC colleague Lee Anne Myslewski has launched a terrific new site called Indirect Routes: Stories from Creative Wayfarers. She’s been talking to all kinds of interesting people about their zig-zag paths to their current professions, and she’ll be sharing their stories. Her first profile is of a singer turned photographer.

In addition, she’ll be collecting and posting related resources, such as these links to articles about advantages that theatre majors bring to any career.

Check on Indirect Routes whenever you can, and follow her on Twitter to find out when new stories are posted!

This post in Anne Midgette’s Classical Beat blog (on the topic of this NY Times review) has stayed with me for several days, but I’ve had a difficult time deciding why. It is not my intention to take on the writer, for I have no definitive answers of my own. Yet there’s something here that won’t leave me alone.

I can be pretty clinical on the topic of “classical music,” and any arts professional who can’t summon up objectivity when it’s required is nothing but a dilettante. But statements like this send me reeling:  ”Classical music has a reputation of being something smart – indeed, its fans are often stereotyped as nerds and eggheads – but the way that people engage with it often seems to me anything but, as if it renders otherwise smart thinkers uncritical.”

“Smart” thinking about music should not be confined to the left brain. Perhaps that’s the proper birthplace for traditional criticism, but the history and the future of great art doesn’t depend exclusively – or even primarily – on linear, deductive and quantifiable factors. What sticks with me is that this kind of approach elevates the value of left-brain critical thinking and diminishes the response of our hearts.

But just when I think I’ve sorted out my reaction, something happens to prove the opposite point. In the last couple of months, I’ve had two concert experiences that make me want to rail right along with Ms. Midgette.

In one, an astonishingly brilliant group of musicians played difficult material in a way that defied description – brilliant on all levels, technical, expressive, artistic and intuitive. I was taken aback when the audience responded positively but not effusively.

In the other, a talented but still green group of musicians played more “accessible” (gah… hate that word…) material with raw energy and great potential. The audience went wild, with an immediate standing ovation.

What’s the disconnect?  Is it that we are wont to measure an experience’s potency first by our immediate gut/emotional reaction, and in our society, that is increasingly the only measurement that’s valuable? Perhaps the general enthusiasm of applause, the number of views or shares on the internet, the buzz in the media – perhaps these things play so overwhelmingly to our right brains that critical discourse has to veer so far to the clinical in order to right the balance.

As I said, I simply don’t know. There may not be an answer here; perhaps it’s another exercise in learning to love the questions.

Enough philosophy for today; it’s time to work on the Don Giovanni cut list :)

I will never truly understand how people in our business make peace with their lives on the road. Had I not been fortunate enough to make a career staying essentially in one place, I’d probably be doing something else right now.

This week, our friend and colleague Louisa (a.k.a. Little Miss Bossy, a wonderful director who was the recipient of a WTOC directing fellowship early in her career) featured a conversation with WTOC alum Ryan McKinny in a blog post in her Home on the Road series. In it, Ryan talks about living the itinerant life of an opera singer and taking his amazing young family around the world with him.

For your enjoyment at left (for as long as the link is still good), Google’s homepage homage to Rossini’s 55th Leap Year birthday (February 29, 1792). Which makes Gioacchino the same age as me for a just a few months, and makes me smile :)

A post by Lee Anne Myslewski

I’ve been playing long-distance Jenga. My Studio Co-Manager Grant Loehnig and I have these twelve talented Studio artists that will be spending the summer at The Trap. They serve as chorus and sometimes sing small roles in the mainstage operas. They have an educational curriculum that they follow, that includes dance classes, master classes, work with language and music coaches, and a series of seminars on the business of singing.

This curriculum also includes Studio Spotlight: a scenes program where our Studio singers get to take center stage and strut their stuff as principal artists.

From a singer’s perspective, scenes programs are invaluable; they allow young singers to “try on” some of the roles that they may inhabit in their professional lives. The programs are most often done with piano so that growing voices don’t have to compete with hordes of strings and brass; and with some set and costume pieces that represent the characters and scenes without fully fleshing them out. The singer is then tasked with completing the picture: if they’re successful, they’ll fill in those visual blanks with beautiful singing, dramatic connection, and some world-class storytelling.

But, who plans these programs? <insert evil laugh> Well, Grant and I have spent the last two months at a kind of virtual musical dim sum. We have to keep the best interests of the singers at the forefront, and we actually poll the singers to see what roles they’ve been wanting or advised to tackle. But once we have a sense of where the singer is going? After that point we have free rein to choose from the entirety of all operatic repertoire. Now, granted, we’re not likely to choose Wagner or big heavy romantic works, but that’s only because our younger singers aren’t quite ready for the vocal demands…and, while they might be able to soar gloriously over the piano, if they couldn’t realistically sing “In questa reggia” over an orchestra, we’re not likely to program it. But most everything else is fair game. Mozart? Most definitely. Monteverdi? Sure! Musto? Why the heck not? (We’ve even picked a few scenes by composers whose last names don’t start with the letter M!)

We have fairly lusty musical appetites, and narrowing down the choices is truly an exercise in discipline. If we had kept every piece that we had originally tapped for this performance it would’ve been absolutely Wagnerian in length: over three hours without an intermission, and chock-full of fantastic excerpts. But we’ve reined ourselves in, and have created an evening of diverse scenes with a little something for everyone. Romance, drama, comedy, duets and sextets, tunes in English and French and German and Italian…even pared down, it’s still a smorgasbord!

Grant and I are pretty pleased with the program, but we’re going to sleep on it in our respective Texan and Virginian homes for another night or two to make sure that it’s perfect. Only then will we let the singers in on the secret.

The program will be performed twice, on July 6 (8pm) and July 8 (3pm) at The Barns. It will be directed by Nathan Troup. And it’s an invitation-only performance: no tickets needed, but you need to be a Wolf Trap member to get on the guest list. Click here or write to us at wtoc@wolftrap.org to find out more.  We hope to see you in July for these delicious bite-sized operatic excerpts!

I’m a data geek. I collect far too much of it. To me, an hour romping in survey results is like heaven.

At the end of each season, our artists are encouraged to respond to a survey so that they can really tell us what they think about the summer that just ended. It’s anonymous, so they can whine and complain with impunity. And we do learn things. Some of their survey answers are predictable, outlining a problem that we knew existed, or an aspect of our program that we are refining but haven’t quite nailed yet. Others come out of the blue – insight into important issues that no one ever told me about, even in their one-on-one exit interviews.

Today’s trip through the 2011 data netted a predictable range of information, most of which we will take into account while refining the 2012 program. The part of the data that I often ignore comes at the end of the survey, when folks have the opportunity to submit comments on their general WTOC experience. Why do I ignore it? Well, it’s kind of embarrassing to read it.

I don’t do well with compliments, although as an occasional performing musician I have learned the (rare but important) skill of graciously accepting them. And I can usually sniff out insincere gushing. But these untraceable positive comments on the survey? I guess there’s no way to account for them except to accept that many of them may be true. Sincere. Without ulterior motive.

I give you some of these remarks here; not to pat myself on the back, but because so many of this blog’s readers are, well, for lack of a better word, WTOC’s stakeholders. (It’s a useful term but always feels pretty clinical. And always makes me thinking of someone holding a sharp stick and threatening me with it :))  You are the ones who keep us going, in so many ways, and I thought you might appreciate a nice bloggy dose of positive feedback. So here goes.

• Wolf Trap shows the highest level of care for their artists, and creates a wonderful atmosphere for creating music.
• I felt very free to explore new artistic territory this summer.
• I felt very challenged artistically and yet very appreciated at the same time.
• I learned most about letting more of my artistic instinct take charge of my rehearsal and performances.
• I appreciate working in an educational environment, but where I feel like there is freedom.
• Risks were taken and that’s one reason why Wolf Trap is so successful!
• It is a professional experience of the highest caliber in the most wonderful and supportive environment possible.
• Wolf Trap is by far the top summer program for young professional singers.
• There was so much positive reinforcement and artistic freedom.
• Many opportunities to get on stage working with great people doing different types of performances = the best possible education!
• Wolf Trap Opera is the crown jewel for young artists in the U.S.

Phew. I’m kinda blushing.

But if you support us by coming to our shows, offering your resources or following us from afar; or if you are a family member, friend or mentor of a young opera singer; or if you’re just feeling cranky and despondent about all of the bad news out there in the arts these days, take heart.

A great link popped up in my RSS feed over the weekend, rocking my world with the clashing of two of my favorite things: Freakonomics and Opera!

In short, the writer is a believer in comparative advantage* in economics (and baseball:)) but has realized that its benefits do not extend to opera.  He had just seen a show in which illness forced a division of labor, with one performer acting the role onstage and another singing from the wings. “Opera is both acting and singing, and it was absurd and disconcerting to separate them.  The production function for opera requires one person doing both—division of labor makes no sense in this case,” he writes.

Possibly my favorite quote comes from the comments section of the post, though (for full context, see the last paragraph in this comment…

“The glory of the opera isn’t really the singing: it’s that so many things that can go wrong don’t…”

Ain’t that the truth?

*Comparative Advantage: A situation in which a country, individual, company or region can produce a good at a lower opportunity cost than a competitor.