Opera and the Arts Race

In an article (Gadhafi - the opera?, September 3) for the Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jill Lawless reports on some new operas with daring, contemporary libretti in London. (Thanks to ArtsJournal for the link.) This includes English National Opera's commission of an opera about Gadhafi, from a dance-hip-hop collective called Asian Dub Foundation, for February 2006 ("the work will focus on the idiosyncratic Libyan leader's journey from pariah to statesman, with a rapper playing Gadhafi and the chorus his all-female cohort of bodyguards"). Peter Sellars will direct. Two recent operas she also mentions are Alfie Thomas's workshop production of Microsoft: The Opera and Jerry Springer - the Opera. The latter work will open on Broadway in 2005. Although she mentions two older operas by John Adams, there is no reference to Doctor Atomic, his new work on the life of pioneering nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a commission from San Francisco Opera planned for October 2005. (A twelve-minute scene from the opera was performed by the BBC Symphony at the 49th concert of the Proms on August 22, in London. Andrew Clements's review from August 24, for The Guardian, is not enthusiastic.) See also my recent post on Michael Nyman's new opera, Man and Boy: Dada. The fact that Ms. Lawless could write about the state of contemporary opera, with the implicit claim that Jerry Springer is somehow relevant and Doctor Atomic is not, does not make me happy. Contrary to the impression her article gives, works with shocking material in their libretti are not the only new operas.

Finally, ArtsJournal also directed us to this report (Culture Minister: Society is commercial and kitschy, September 3) compiled by Beata Balogová for the English-language Slovak Spectator. Rudolf Chmel, Culture Minister of Slovakia, wants his government to triple its cultural budget by the year 2010. They currently spend 0.6 percent of their GDP on their ministry of culture:

According to the minister, cultural activities in Slovakia are "in a state of emergency, if not at an historical low. Ignorance of culture is colossal; society is commercial, consumer-oriented and kitschy, and it seems this trend cannot be stopped."

By the way, the GDP of the United States in 2003 was estimated at around $10.98 trillion, meaning that the estimated $1.25 billion spent by various departments of our federal government is nowhere near 0.6 percent of our GDP, which would be $65.88 billion. Slovakia is winning the arts race, people: see the Ionarts Proposal for how we can fight back.

All of My Help Comes from the Lord

Besides teaching, as you probably know if you've been reading this blog for a while, the other part of my working life is singing in the professional choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Between Assumption (August 15) and the Sunday after Labor Day, the choir is on annual hiatus. As I wrote last year around this time (I Sing Because I'm Happy, I Sing Because I'm Free, August 24, 2003), I take advantage of having Sunday mornings free by going to the 11 am Mass at my local parish on Capitol Hill, Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian (1357 East Capitol Street, just east of Lincoln Park). Kenneth Louis is the Minister of Music, and the excellent choir sings his music and arrangements of Gospel standards every Sunday. Anyone who lives here or who comes to visit and wants to hear how joyous and Spirit-filled the Catholic Mass can be should go to the 11 am Mass, when the choir sings. Be warned, however, if you are used to a staid, quiet, 1-hour Mass: you are going to hear some real preaching, people are going to be moved by the Spirit, and you will be in Church for two hours. It's absolutely incredible. I guarantee you that you will feel welcome, Catholic or not.

Each time that I go, I am amazed at how easily the Gospel music tradition can be grafted to the ancient rite of the Mass. The words of the responsorial psalm (the response today was "In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge") fit very comfortably with the vocal ethos of blues. The author of the psalms was familiar with oppression and persecution, both personal and national, and those ideas have real resonance with African Americans, in a way that they may not with other groups of Americans. In today's verses, when the psalmist cried, "Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!" it was deep with meaning. Last year, I wrote about Kirk Franklin's piece Why We Sing, and this week I was really moved by the choir's rendition of the traditional hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms (text by Eli­sha A. Hoff­man and music by An­tho­ny J. Sho­wal­ter, neither of whom was African American) and a more modern tune called "My Help," about which I can find no information (not even in the remarkably thorough Cyber Hymnal).

That's Good Reading: Fully Credited Links

Will the Scottish Opera's incredible revival decay into self-destruction? Bill Jamieson, in his article (Scottish Arts: Turning a drama into a crisis, August 20) for The Scotsman, offers some thoughts on that question, in the context of the general arts crisis in Scotland these days. (The coverage of the Scottish Opera at The Scotsman has been so thorough, they have a separate page to list all the articles.)

Color me jealous: Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes has been to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. He has news.

According to Michael Dirda's review (Madame Bovary, August 29) in our own Washington Post of Margaret Mauldon's new English translation, Flaubert's classic is the answer to the question, "World, which is the most perfect novel ever written?" Also, it is "the most controlled and beautifully articulated formal masterpiece in the history of fiction." (Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the link.) I didn't see anything offensive about the article, so I was a little surprised to see Stirling Newberry at Symphony X come out swinging (Michael Dirda gets diarrhea of the keyboard, August 30) with phrases like "fascism of print," "vomiting on the reader," and several others that aren't appropriate for a family blog.

Operas on Netflix

Richard Wagner, Siegfried, conducted by Pierre Boulez at the Bayreuth Festival (1980)

If you are like me and you a) like opera and b) subscribe to Netflix, you will be happy to learn, as I did recently, that you can put opera DVDs into your Netflix queue. Unfortunately, for an obsessive person like me, this has led inevitably to my spending lots of hours watching opera DVDs and, to make things worse, making suggestions to Netflix about more opera DVDs they need to acquire, so that I can spend more time watching opera DVDs. Is there a program out there for me?

Library Fire in Weimar

In an article (Dégâts considérables à la bibliothèque Anna-Amalia de Weimar, September 3) for Le Monde, Georges Marion reports the terrible news of a devastating fire at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, which holds the largest collection of Goethe documents in the world, as well as numerous other precious things. The blaze broke out on Thursday (September 2) at 8:30 pm and burned out of control for two hours, when 180 firefighters and another hundred volunteers associated with the library put it out. According to official estimates, as many as 5,000 books have been destroyed and another 30,000 damaged by fire or water.

On Friday morning it was still impossible to say if the collection of editions of Goethe's Faust, which with its 13,000 volumes is a unique resource, had been affected. The first assessments were supposed to take place today. Conflicting reports made on Friday morning in the German press concerned the destruction of a remarkable collection of Bibles: a Bible of Luther's dating from 1543 was supposedly saved.

The library was founded in 1761 by Duchess Anna Amalia, wife of the Duke of Saxony, Weimar Eisenach, patron and friend of the renowned German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At the time, around 30,000 books were moved into the Grüne Schloss (Green Castle), one of the ducal residences constructed two centuries previously by Renaissance master Nicol Gromann, which was given over to house the library. It is that building, very close to the Goethe house in the center of Weimar, which burned on Thursday. The collection, specialized in the history of literature and art between 1750 and 1850, contains today 900,000 volumes, including a large collection of original editions of the works of Shakespeare, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland. Today, the books are separated into several different areas. One of those was under construction, intended to house the rarest collections, which were still kept in the Rococo hall of the castle. It was to be completed in 2005.

According to police, the fire started in the building's upper floor, consider a world cultural treasure by Unesco. That upper floor has been completely destroyed. A part of the roof collapsed into the famous oval hall, called the Rococo hall, where just previously friends of the library had entered and formed a human chain to save the most precious books. One of the library's staff members admitted that the building had no fire protection.

For the story in English, see Fire at famed Weimar library destroys 30,000 priceless volumes from Expatica and Thousands of rare books ruined from News 24, with a photograph that will make bibliophiles want to cry.

More Art in Europe

An article (What's on at Europe's Museums, August 16) from Deutsche Welle (in English) gives a short blurb on a show called Kunst der Weimarer Republik (Art in the Weimar Republic), at the Neues Museum Weimar, in Germany (until October 24). The selection of works includes examples of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Natel, and the one who caught my attention, Otto Dix.

More recently, the same column (What's on at Europe's Museums, August 23) mentioned a show called Animals and Art, at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterloo, the Netherlands (from September 4, 2004, to January 16, 2005):

an eclectic mix of work showing artists' relationships with animals over the past five centuries. Whilst Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) saw animals as God's creations and drew them as close to nature as possible, Odilon Redon depicted them as imaginary creatures and Carel Visser made collages from animal materials. The exhibition includes seven graphics from the famous series "Los Caprichos" by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and cows in traditional Dutch landscapes by Wouter van Troostwijk (1782-1810).

There are also works by Joseph Teixeira de Mattos, but sadly there's next to nothing on the museum's Web site. Also of interest is Nine Points of the Law, a group exhibition from the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (New Society for Visual Art) gallery in Berlin (until October 3).

In an article (Unique Roman collection to be restored to view, September 2) for The Guardian, John Hooper reports on news in the Italian press, that the Torlonia marbles may be coming out of private storage. The Torlonia family has kept the 600 classical Roman statues and tombs, including some 100 portraits of imperial family members, in a basement in Rome for 40 years. The Minister of Culture has stated that the family has signed a deal with a bank to bring the collection to public display on the Via del Corso:

It was not clear whether the foundation had agreed to buy the collection or fund its exhibition under a more complex deal. But any deal would represent the biggest victory so far in a campaign by Silvio Berlusconi's government to secure greater private sector involvement in the arts. The re-emergence of the Torlonia marbles would also end decades of exasperation for students and lovers of art. Many efforts have been made to get the collection put back on display, but without success. The latest attempt was reported to involve Mr Berlusconi himself. The prime minister, who is Italy's richest man, was said to have offered €130m (£88m) to return it to public view. The marbles once filled what a distinguished critic, the late Federico Zeri, called "the most important private museum of ancient sculpture in the world." The collection was begun in 1810 by Giovanni Torlonia and expanded by his son Alessandro.

Many of the works were unearthed on the family's estates. More than 50 were found around what is now the Leonardo da Vinci international airport at Fiumicino. The Torlonia's treasures disappeared from public view in the early 1960s when the family turned the exhibition building into a block of flats. Many of the works ended up in the basement. Others were sent to Torlonia-owned properties around Rome. Connoisseurs were appalled, and became more so when the family was reported to have demanded huge sums to part with the hidden masterpieces. In the late 70s a critic called for the marbles to be confiscated by the state. By the early 90s the family was ready to hand them over, but only in as part of a deal which included building an underground car park in a beautiful area of central Rome, a scheme blocked by environmentalists.

Here is one of the marble reliefs from the Torlonia collection. Bruce Johnston's article (Roman statues back on show, September 2) in The Telegraph says the new museum will be in the Palazzo Sciarra. The only reason that the works have not been sold off one by one at auction was a law passed by the Italian government, declaring that the collection was part of the Italian cultural patrimony.

Orchestre de Paris, 2004–2005

It's the time for season previews (see the Ionarts preview of the Opera Season, 2004–2005, and Alex Ross's Fall Opera Preview, Fall Concert Preview, and New Music Preview at The Rest Is Noise), so here's another one. In an article (Les piliers de la sagesse, August 28) for Le Figaro, Jacques Doucelin looks at the new season of the Orchestre de Paris, directed by Christoph Eschenbach. The orchestra will perform this season at the Théâtre Mogador, before moving to its new digs in the restored Salle Pleyel (see my post on August 27) in late 2006:

The symphonic and chamber music programs—at the Musée d'Orsay and the Sorbonne, in particular—are centered on a complete Beethoven series [all nine Beethoven symphonies, played from Jonathan Del Mar's new critical editions published by Bärenreiter], a Mendelssohn cycle, a Brahms festival [February–March 2005, the four symphonies, the concertos, and the German Requiem], and contemporary music with two world premieres and three French premieres as well as a tribute to André Jolivet for his 100th birthday. Several conductors will make their debuts at the podium of the Parisian phalanx: Valery Gergiev, Roberto Abbado, Marc Minkowski, Richard Hickox, Alexander Briger, Christian Orosanu, and Fayçal Karoui. The financial crisis that has stricken the orchestra since its move means drastic budget reductions requiring the suppression of the posts of composer-in-residence and assistant conductor.

The Orchestre de Paris has just appeared at Royal Albert Hall in the 57th concert of the Proms, playing its program of Berio's Stanze and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (see my post on January 24).

Music at the Seat of God

In an article (L'abbaye gothique à l'heure baroque, August 28) for Le Figaro, Jacques Doucelin reports on the 38th installment of the Festival de Musique de la Chaise-Dieu, which began on August 18 and continues until September 5. This festival was created to feature performances of French religious music (pianist Georges Cziffra organized the first concerts to draw attention to his campaign to save the organ in the abbey's church), but in recent years it has become dominated more and more by Baroque music. Under its new director, Jean-Michel Mathé, there are about 40 concerts per season, and the venue has been opened up beyond the Chaise-Dieu to other locations.

Besides special youth prices for tickets, the Festival has opted for geographic decentralization. Thus, it's organizing a week of concerts at Puy-en-Velay. Another concert took place, Wednesday night [August 25], in the sumptuous Romanesque basilica of Brioude, on the 17th cententary of the martyrdom of Saint Julien, evangelizer of the Auvergne, in the presence of the Minister of Culture. The latter was supposed to be present, the following day, at one of the three concerts directed by Martin Gester in homage to Marc-Antoine Charpentier in the abbey church of the Chaise-Dieu. Before going to Puy, the Minister also visited, from top to bottom, the jewel of the French patrimony that is the abbey, with its choir stalls, its 16th-century tapestries, and its Danse Macabre.

(There are also some concerts at Chamalières-sur-Loire.) The Benedictine Abbey of the Chaise-Dieu was founded in the 11th century by Robert de Turlande, but it was put on the map when a monk who had been a novice in the abbey became Pope Clement VI in 1342. He built up the abbey into something extraordinary, and he is buried in the choir. Some of the big musical events:

• August 19: Krzysztof Penderecki conducting his own Credo (1997)
  
• August 20: Paul McCreesh, The Gabrieli Consort and Players, played J. S. Bach's sublime Mass in B minor, BWV 232
  
• August 25: Reinhard Goebel, Musica Antiqua Köln, with music of Telemann, Biber, and Handel
  
• August 25: Franck-Emmanuel Comte, Concert de l'Hostel-Dieu, with the Corsican vocal group Tavagna
  
• August 26: Martin Gester, Parlement de musique, with the singers of the Maîtrise de Bretagne, playing a Charpentier program including the Leçons de ténèbres and the Te Deum
  
• August 27: Mass for the Consecration of Napoleon, reconstructed by Jean Mongrédien (who discovered the scores used in 1804, forgotten in the Conservatoire), for the 200th anniversary of that event; there were a Mass and Te Deum by Giovanni Paisiello and other music by Jean-François Le Sueur and Nicolas Roze, all part of a carefully planned scenic event (the soundtrack, as it were, to the memorable painting by Jacques-Louis David)
  
• September 2: Andrew Manze, The English Concert, performing Biber's Missa Christi Resurgensis, a work not performed since it was composed for the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg in the 1670s

If you want to sit in the famous choir stalls for these concerts, you will have to pay as much as 80€ ($96.62), but there are also usually seats in the transepts for only 10€ ($12.08). That's the right way to do things.