Principally Awful, Generally Fantastic: Lohengrin at the 2011 Munich Opera Festival

When Richard Jones’ Lohengrin premiered at the Bavarian State Opera two years ago (review here), I was torn between admiration and doubt, unsure whether the result was ‘good bad opera’ or ‘bad good opera’. I settled on “wonderful bad production”; the ambivalence stemming from excellent acting, singing, certain scenes working marvelously, small director’s touches being inspired… but a disagreement with the general overarching idea and what seemed like ironic distance.

Since then my opinion has changed considerably – even before I saw the revival for this years’ Munich Opera Festival. The memories of the production have gotten better with time, not only but also because every Lohengrin I have seen since—on DVD and stage—has been such a disappointment that Richard Jones’ ambitious, intelligent interpretation scores many extra credits on sheer creativity and imaginativeness. Where everything else (Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Baden-Baden and Peter Konwitschny’s Hamburg productions explicitly exempted) is just one tired variation or another on a swan-enhanced costume drama, Jones delves into the inner questions of Lohengrin, Elsa, and Wagner and unearths compelling dramatic aspects beyond the knight-in-shining-armor-meets-damsel-in-distress surface.


Lohengrin, the work that enchanted the sixteen-year-old King Ludwig II (who shed his first Wagner-tears listening to it in 1861), is a German revolutionary-nationalistic drama (something Konwitschny highlighted) – in the time’s spirit of unification, not the sense of hyper-nationalism that modern Germans hear emanating from the text. Lohengrin is also about the misunderstood genius-artist… and as such about Wagner (Lehnhoff’s focus). And it is a piece about loneliness and bourgeois, almost banal domestic ambitions, disappointment in women generally and Wagner’s own marriage specifically… all woven into the by now familiar story of the incompatibility of the supernatural and reality (Senta/Dutchman, Elisabeth/Venus). It is that aspect that Jones brings out forcefully, as he centers his Lohengrin around Elsa (who suffers from a pre-marital version of Empty Nest Syndrome), family struggle, and the changes of the Brabantian society who are—like Elsa—first liberated, then abandoned by Lohengrin.

Jones’ building of a house as a metaphor for the whole opera (or even the mass suicide of the Brabantians after the final chord) now convinces me as daring, inventive, poignant… even in the absence of the elements that I was most enchanted by at the premiere (unparalleled singing, acting, and the director’s superb craftsmanship). It turns out Jones’ is not a wonderful bad production, but simply a wonderful production, a perceptive one that makes sense of the music… a point ironically reinforced by the fact that it wasn’t well performed, this time.


It was the singing that nearly sank this performance. Not Martin Gantner’s – the well voiced and beautifully measured Herald of nuance. Nor Kristinn Sigmundsson’s old fashioned classy bass-belting, executed with routine, resonance, and reassurance (but not without betraying his age here and there). And certainly not Evgeny Nikitin’s… whose (initially) youthful, clear, and “R”-heavy Telramund came with splendid diction and fine pronunciation. He carried his character nicely all the way to a threadbare and distraught third act, losing sheen and security only when pushing his voice at peaks or when dramatically appropriate. It wasn’t a particularly musical performance, but a touchingly realistic one and his monologues felt as natural as if they had been spoken.

No, the problem laid with the principals, Elsa and Lohengrin. Emily Magee, in the unfortunate position to succeed Anja Harteros (who had out-sung and out-played Jonas Kaufman at the premiere) was hopelessly out of her depth as Elsa. Her hardened, permanently squeezed timbre, reedy, compressed, and dark, showed no ability to soar. The notes were not always on pitch, the navigation of the text smacked of last-minute understudy. Her acting was mostly earnest and later even impassioned, but it could not make one forget the vocal struggle.

In a way she was lucky to have veteran Peter Seiffert on her side, because his performance—at times comically painful to watch and hear—only made her look better. Seiffert started with a distressing swan-farewell, not enhanced by his natural, soft wobble. A brief improvement in act I was followed by anguished yelps at full force in act II and finally plain crudeness throughout act III where anything below mezzo-forte was sad and above it shrill. To follow dramatically in the footsteps of Jonas Kaufman only made matters worse; the portly sexagenarian in a role (and costumes) designed for youthful heroism and svelte athleticism added at best an element of the ridiculous, more often one of an overage, sleazy Lohengrin-cum-Guido, replete with wrinkled tan, died hair, and gaudy necklace underneath the liberally unbuttoned, untucked bulging shirt.


The presumed highlight was to be Waltraud Meier as Ortrud (superb in said Lenhoff production). Her continuously maturing voice is well suited to the role and her dramatic abilities well known. I, for one, owe her my most moving and indeed formative Wagner moments… I admire her. This performance, alas, did not add to the extant impressions. Her Ortrud started pale, alternatively drowned out in the first act by chorus and orchestra until she pulled a few extra stops (accompanied by a few extra steps to the stage’s edge) and broke through the wall of sound with very consciously placed vocal exclamation marks.

But even in the Ortrud-focused second act, Waltraud Meier looked like she feels she can wing it without bothering to adapt to any particular production (certainly not a Festival production where she didn’t create the character)… playing her (superb) standard Ortrud whether it fits the context or not… in this case in a pantsuit instead of a costume, but otherwise unchanged: Like a petulant child that refuses to play along because it knows it has too much talent to fail. Ortrud’s taking of the suicide-bound gun from Telramund, for example, was tender determination (loving almost!) at the premiere. Now it was an act of aggression with Meier angrily tearing the weapon away… and it considerably lessened the effect, bringing the Telramund-Ortrud relationship back to the usual cliché of Ortrud being solely hard and unfeeling, incapable of warmth even if only for the sake of manipulation. (This was but one of many subtle gestures that didn’t survive the transition to the new cast.)

Michaela Schuster’s curiously seductive Ortrud at the premiere was a dramatic, if not vocal highlight and one expects Waltraud Meier capable of improving any role… not inhibit the dramaturgy. Instead Meier’s Ortrud was limited to very effective affectedness, employed on isolated notes and in prominent moments. Her presence was still great; the voice frayed but employed with economy, most worth hearing in the more intimate, conversational moments when the sweet liquid poison flowed copiously, without any vibrato-impediment. Trying to get by by reputation and experience alone (see Mr. Seiffert), can still elicit standing ovations in memory-loyal places like Munich, but doesn’t make for satisfying art.

The chorus sang loud and enthusiastically but not together in act three. The excellent orchestra, too, had very occasional off moments, too (not even a full day after playing Messiaen’s Saint François d'Assise more than understandable), but Nagano’s direction, devoid of (unnecessary) sentimentality was to the point, dramatic, and expressive and could have been improved only by less fortissimo and more piano.

R.Wagner, Lohengrin, K.Nagano / Vienna SO K.F.Vogt, S.Kringelborn et al. Nikolaus Lehnhoff OpusArte DVD

R.Wagner, Lohengrin, K.Nagano / Bavarian State Opera J.Kaufmann, A.Harteros et al. Richard Jones Decca

R.Wagner, Lohengrin, S.Weigle / GTdLiceau J.Treleaven, E.Magee et al. Peter Konwitschny EuroArts DVD

All pictures (from the 2009 production) courtesy of the Bavarian State Opera, © Wilfried Hösl

Castleton: Shakespeare and Bohemia

See my review of two performances from the Castleton Festival at Washingtonian.com:

Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons Make Appearances at Castleton Festival (Washingtonian, June 30):

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Music Inspired by Shakespeare (Washington Post, July 1) Martin Morrow, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at BlackCreek: crowd-pleaser minus the crowd (Toronto Globe and Mail, July 1) Tim Smith, A captivating night with Shakespeare, Mirren, Irons, Maazel (Baltimore Sun, July 1) ---, Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival opens with an effective 'La Boheme' (Baltimore Sun, June 28) Anne Midgette, Castleton Festival opens with ‘La Boheme’ (Washington Post, June 26)

Top pick in my summer classical music round-up went to the Castleton Festival, the month of opera and concerts organized by conductor Lorin Maazel at his summer house in Rappahannock County. The event continues to grow in scope, as Maazel expands the facilities on his property and bring more performers into the program, which is an apprenticeship for young musicians. This year, the Castleton Festival Orchestra was composed of young members of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bilken University Orchestra (from Ankara, Turkey), London’s Royal College of Music Orchestra, and American conservatory programs. In a remarkable gesture of confidence in their abilities, Maazel took them on a mini-tour this year, to give gala concerts at the Blackcreek Summer Music Festival in Toronto and at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, heard last Thursday night.

The program was a challenging one, too, bringing together music inspired by two of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Two Hollywood stars, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons, were the obvious draw for the nearly sold-out crowd, but they appeared only on the second half, entering the hall to a warm ovation. On the model of previous Shakespeare-themed concerts by the Folger Consort -- The Fairy Queen in 2007 and The Tempest in 2010 -- the actors read texts from the play, interlaced with music inspired by it. The excerpts were woven together with a fairly prosaic narration by poet J. D. McClatchy, and both Mirren and Irons slipped between it and speeches by Shakespeare’s characters. Mirren was a regal Titania, but it was Irons who had the most fun, as a spiteful Oberon, playful Puck, and deep-voiced Bottom, complete with hilarious gestures and expressions. [Continue reading]

For Your Consideration: 'The Tree of Life'

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life has inspired critical raves -- not least, winning the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival -- and audience ire. The latter was enough of a concern that, when I saw it this past weekend, I experienced a first in my movie-going life: an employee of the theater announced, before the movie began, that the film had almost no dialogue and was "artsy" and that people should leave now if they wanted an exchange or a refund, and not after the film when they could not receive one. A few people in the theater did leave in the first hour or so, and the man next to me, obviously there because his girlfriend had chosen the movie, kept obsessively checking the time on his cell phone. The rapturous reviews of the film from some critics, claiming that the film is "a form of prayer" (Roger Ebert) or that Malick has taken us back to "a time when movies mattered" (Richard Corliss), are irresponsible in the sense that they do not take into account that this film, in spite of its considerable beauty, will annoy and frustrate many viewers. Rave and gush if you like, but at least make clear that you should not drag your boyfriend to it on date night.

Malick, a brilliant, intellectual man who studied philosophy and was a Rhodes Scholar, is the sort of filmmaker who makes difficult films. He apparently conceived this movie in the late 1970s but only began shooting it in the last decade, reportedly editing the film to a length of 3.5 hours and doing pre-screenings before deciding that he was unable to finish it in time for the 2010 Cannes Festival (some of the cut footage may be in this version of the trailer). As he completed it, at a length of 2.5 hours that feels much longer, it fails because it is essentially two movies. One is possibly autobiographical in some sense, about a boy growing up, as Malick did, in a rather strict Episcopalian household in Waco, Texas; the other is about the history of the universe, the conversation of characters in the film with the Creator, asking age-old human questions like, "Why did my brother have to die when he was only 19 years old?" There were even rumors that the cosmic story was originally planned as a completely separate film called The Voyage of Time: if true, Malick should have kept them separate.

The Texas part of the story is compelling because of the square-jawed, buzz-cut, unflinching performance of Brad Pitt as the father of the family of three boys. A failed classical musician -- at one point we see him playing Bach at the organ, and he regularly plays LPs during the family's dinners -- he now works for a plant in town, as an engineer, and is constantly in search of the next patent and a ticket to the wealth he covets around him. The character's failings as a father, as he terrorizes his sons for the least fault in their posture at the table, their yard work, their weakness, their failure to call him Sir, is uncomfortably recognizable to anyone who has been a father. He is strict and harsh because he believes that he is helping his children become strong, but he does not realize until it is too late how his overbearing insistence has damaged both his wife (the ethereal Jessica Chastain, whose feet metaphorically -- and, at least once, literally -- do not touch the ground) and his children, Jack (played for most of the film with ambivalent anger by Hunter McCracken), R.L. (a seraphic Laramie Eppler, who could easily be Brad Pitt's own son, so strong is the resemblance), and Steve (Tye Sheridan). Fiona Shaw and Sean Penn have largely inconsequential turns as the grandmother and adult version of Jack, respectively.

The problem is not the unusual narrative structure, with very little dialogue, lots of gorgeous but tangential imagery, and disembodied voice-overs. Malick used a similar process in The New World, and that movie had all of the narrative force that long sections of The Tree of Life lack. (The same cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, worked on both films.) The problem is that in including the story of cosmic history, in rather pretty but abstract imagery with ghostly music, in which corpuscles pulsing through veins become almost indistinguishable from strands of Hubble-imaged galaxies, Malick has shortchanged the human story. The first half-hour of the film was unbearable, as one could not get a handle on the Texas story and the camera strayed, beautifully and with expensive digital effects, through the story of creation and evolution, somehow mixed together, including the dinosaurs and their extinction. The middle part of the film was absolutely gripping, leading to a deadly final half-hour as the grief of the family -- one of the sons dies, in a not really explained way -- reaches an end steeped in metaphysical bathos on the shores of paradise.

Other Reviews: Roger Ebert | A. O. Scott | Los Angeles Times | Slate | Salon | The New Yorker TIME | Washington Post | Village Voice | Wall Street Journal | Movie Review Intelligence

According to critic Alex Ross, writer-director Terrence Malick is an "avid classical listener," and it shows in The Tree of Life. One of the most striking parts of his earlier film The New World was the use of the Rhine music from Wagner's Das Rheingold, and music has great import in this movie, too. The swirling Moldau music from Smetana's Ma Vlast makes a scene of happy children cavorting in a moment of light-hearted freedom; Couperin's Les Barricades Mistérieuses, a character piece from the 6e Ordre, runs through the film like a Leitmotif, played by the father at the piano and echoed by the middle son on the guitar; most of all, settings of the Requiem Mass (Berlioz's Grande messe des morts and Zbigniew Preisner's Lacrimosa, the latter composed for filmmaker and Preisner's collaborator Krzysztof Kieślowski), Holy Minimalist pieces by John Tavener and Henryk Górecki, and portions of Mahler's first symphony signify grief and the questioning of the great beyond. (See this complete list of the music used in the movie.)

In a sense Malick has created a film in the form of a transcendental symphony, following the model of Beethoven and Mahler. (My new favorite French film critic, Didier Péron, noted the same similarity in his review of The Tree of Life -- Malick, Symphonie n°5, May 17 -- for Libération.) The sprawling length, the gravity of tone, and the cosmic reach of the film all seem to recall it, but can it work in film format? One senses that the movie would not have nearly the same solemn scope without its score, and that even with it, it cannot quite grasp what it is reaching for. As Raymond Knapp put it, writing about another example of this kind of work, Carl Nielsen's Inextinguishable, "there is no evidence (so far) that the cosmos actually appreciates any of the symphonies that have been offered up to it."

NOI New Lights

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

What happens when young performers are asked what classical concerts will look like in fifty years? The University of Maryland School of Music’s National Orchestral Institute posed this exact question to its participants, all musicians between the ages of 18 and 28, and on last Thursday night, they presented some of their ideas. The technology-immersed musicians of my generation tend instinctively to think outside the box. The unfortunate fact is that this type of thinking often occurs despite our musical training: hyper-perfection and traditionalism continue to rule the conservatories.

It is easy to be consumed by the present -- frequently defined by dwindling audiences and funding crises -- but perhaps throwing caution to the wind and leaping far into the future is part of the solution. The NOI players focused on more recent composers, physical motion, and improvisation with a dash of mixed media and theatrical elements. While none of these ideas are particularly cutting-edge in theory, when put together, the concert that ensued was truly like nothing I had ever seen, and more along the lines of musical theater. It didn’t always come together, but the ideas and energy behind it were remarkable.

The program opened with the first movement of Charles Ives’s first string quartet (“From the Salvation Army”). The cellist sat alone in the middle of a dark stage, dramatically lit by a single spotlight -- it was pure theater! The piece began and the rest of the musicians entered the stage -- free of music, stands, or chairs. Their bodies moved with the music (while they played), choreographed in collaboration with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. The wonderful thing was that the choreography illuminated the musicians’ interpretation of the music. And though the playing certainly wasn’t polished, one didn’t care because the phrases swelled together in an organic way that seemed to stem from the musicians’ motion. This piece and the Allegro from Leoš Janáček’s chamber work Mladi (Youth) were the most illuminating in terms of this connection between music and movement. It was chamber music in motion.

Other works included String Quartet No. 4 (an homage to Carlo Gesualdo) by Matthias Pintscher, which was preceded by the literal shadow of a choir singing Sospirava Il Mio Core by Gesualdo. In an effort to bring greater engagement and knowledge to the audience, one of the performers said a few words about the connections between the two works. The concert closed with the sonically gorgeous Souvenir by the New York Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg. This work, for 18-piece orchestra, was illuminated by colored light changes and a large, projected digital score.

Perhaps the most admirable part of the evening was an attempted improvisation with eleven players, in which they cycled in and out, so that only a few were playing at a time. In an age when improvisation has largely left the sensibilities of classical musicians, except for early music specialists and a few others, these young players did their best to bring it back. The problem is that unseasoned improvisers tend to stay within a comfortable range that, in this case, consisted of very little in the way of key or tone change.

Each piece was like a skit, choreographed with movement, lighting changes, spoken word, and singing. In a way, this concert was a return to a time when classical music was popular music; when concerts were more of a happening or to-do; when the lines between music, entertainment, and theater were more blurry; and when the rules of audience etiquette were less fine-tuned and more laissez-faire. Most importantly, it was classical music, and it was fun.

In Brief: Palio Independence Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Scarlatti, Sonatas, A. Tharaud

  For your online listening this week, we recommend a recital by pianist Alexandre Tharaud from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, including some Scarlatti sonatas; a performance of Weber's Oberon, from the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse with Klaus Florian Vogt (streaming for only a few more days); an eclectic program of contemporary music and Monteverdi from the vocal group Ensemble 2e2m; songs from mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and pianist Emanuel Ax, plus the Berlin Philharmonic playing Stravinsky's Firebird; violinist Renaud Capuçon and the Orchestre National de France from the Festival de Saint-Denis; Magnus Lindberg's Kraft from the Festival Agora; a delightful program by baritone Christopher Maltman and the Nash Ensemble from the Musée d'Orsay; the Schola Heidelberg singing early Renaissance works and Xenakis; pianist Nicholas Angelich from the Wigmore Hall; and Leif Ove Andsnes with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Copenhagen. [France Musique]


• We have enjoyed (and envied) following Alex Ross's Italian sojourn, particularly the survey of musical sites of Venice, research for his next book, to be called Wagnerism. [The Rest Is Noise]


• Thanks to Brian for drawing our attention to the plans to make an Internet stream of the Bavarian State Opera's Calixto Bieito-directed production of Fidelio starring Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Kampe on July 8. You don't want to miss that. Or maybe you do, if you have a problem with bodily fluids. [Out West Arts]


• This sounds very promising indeed: an app for displaying IMSLP scores on your iPad. [Chant Cafe]


• In online video, try Rossini's Stabat Mater from the Festival de Saint-Denis, with soprano Patrizia Ciofi and mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. [ARTE Liveweb]


• The early odds on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature: will it be Cormac McCarthy's year? [The Literary Saloon]


• Pope Benedict XVI sent his first Tweet this week. On his iPad. Worlds collide. [Whispers in the Loggia]


• Bravo to the contrada of Oca (the Goose), whose horse, named Mississippi, won the Palio per la Madonna di Provenzano yesterday in Siena. Giovanni Atzeni, known as Tittia, was the jockey, and after some spectacular falls on the first lap (video embedded below) he led for most of the race. Lupa had a horse in the race but continues to reign as Nonna, or Grandma, the contrada to have gone the longest time without winning the Palio. The horse from Bruco, which lost its rider in a spectacular fall at the primo casato, came in second -- the worst possible outcome in the Palio. [Il Palio]

Classical Month in Washington (September)

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Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

September 4, 2011 (Sun)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra [FREE]
National Labor Day Concert
West Lawn, U.S. Capitol

September 8, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Season Preview Concert (with Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello)
Music Center at Strathmore

September 9, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Verdi, Attila (with John Relyea, Brenda Harris)
Washington Concert Opera
Lisner Auditorium

September 9, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Brahms, German Requiem
Washington National Cathedral

September 9, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Season Preview Concert (with Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 10, 2011 (Sat)
7 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 10, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Eric Owens, bass-baritone
Vocal Arts DC
Marvin Center Theater (GWU)

September 10, 2011 (Sat)
8:30 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Gala Concert (with Hilary Hahn, violin)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 11, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
World Doctors Orchestra
Mahler, Symphony No. 2
Music Center at Strathmore

September 11, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
University of Maryland Symphony and Concert Choir
Mozart, Requiem Mass
Clarice Smith Center

September 11, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Washington Korean Symphony Orchestra: Peace Concert
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

September 11, 2011 (Sun)
8 pm
For a Healing World
September 11 Memorial Concert
Washington National Cathedral

September 12, 2011 (Mon)
7 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 14, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 14, 2011 (Wed)
8 pm
JACK Quartet (music by Xenakis)
Mobtown Modern
2640 Space (Baltimore, Md.)

September 15, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Mahler, Symphony No. 2
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

September 16, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 16, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Mahler, Symphony No. 2
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

September 16, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Kronos Quartet with David Krakauer, clarinet
Clarice Smith Center

September 17, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Mahler, Symphony No. 2
Music Center at Strathmore

September 17, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra
With Karina Canellakis, violin
GMU Center for the Arts

September 18, 2011 (Sun)
2 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 18, 2011 (Sun)
5 pm
105 Voices of History: HBCU National Concert Choir
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

September 18, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
Keyboard Conversations with Jeffrey Siegel
A Beethoven Bonanza
GMU Center for the Arts

September 20, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 22, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
[Live Simulcast, free, of this performance to Nationals Park: Opera in the Outfield]

September 22, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Four Nations Ensemble [FREE]
With Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano
Freer Gallery of Art

September 23, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 23, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 24, 2011 (Sat)
7 pm
Puccini, Tosca
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 24, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Music Center at Strathmore

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Washington Bach Consort
Music by Bach, Scarlatti, Handel
National Presbyterian Church

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Rosemarie Ruiz Houghton (soprano), Anamer Castrello (mezzo-soprano), et al.
Ward Recital Hall, Catholic University

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
Harmonious Blacksmith [FREE]
With Ole Hass (tenor), Kate Vetter Cain (soprano)
National Gallery of Art

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra Season Opening Ball Concert
With Thomas Hampson and Joshua Bell
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

September 25, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Daedalus Quartet with Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

September 29, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (guest conductor)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

September 29, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
University of Maryland Wind Orchestra
Music from Prague
Clarice Smith Center

September 30, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (guest conductor)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

September 30, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Folger Consort and Cathedra
400th Anniversary of King James Bible
Folger Shakespeare Library

September 30, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
University of Maryland Symphony
With Left Bank String Quartet
Schoenberg, Concerto for String Quartet (also Sibelius, Ruggles)
Clarice Smith Center

For Your Consideration: 'Midnight in Paris'

Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, is enjoyable in the way that most of his films are: the vintage jazz, the beautiful cityscapes, the neurotic and dysfunctional relationships, the mumbling dialogue. A sort of remake of Manhattan, starring Paris instead of New York, it is a feast for the eyes from the opening montage, a series of glamor shots of the French capital in all times of day and varying degrees of rain (luscious cinematography by Darius Khondji). It is also, to a degree that is shocking even for Allen (the closest parallel is The Purple Rose of Cairo), an escapist fantasy, a condemnation of golden age nostalgia that is itself golden age nostalgia. Owen Wilson, standing in as a sort of surfer-dude Allen substitute as Gil Pender (Jeff Daniels also played a character named Gil in Purple Rose), is a hack screenwriter with dreams of becoming a serious novelist, on a trip to Paris with his fiancee (a gratingly emasculating Rachel McAdams) and her parents (TV actors Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy, just recognizable enough). Gil's romanticizing of Lost Generation Paris leads him into a world where dreams of the past can come true, as he rubs shoulders with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and many other artistic figures of the 1920s, through a conceit that I will try not to reveal.

As Allen spoke about in an interview with Le Figaro, the movie essentially rights a wrong in the writer-director's own life, when he spent several months in Paris in the 1960s, doing a rewrite of the script for What's New Pussycat?. Allen contemplated staying in Paris, did not, and lived with the regret, the situation that Gil faces but, to the contrary, he decides to stay in Paris. The irritating problem with the film is that even the present-day version of Paris where Wilson spends his days is not real. The Paris of Allen's film is an American tourist Paris, all Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, and the Moulin Rouge. This is the Paris of museums, fancy hotel dinners, all the favorite American spots (even the usual side trips to Giverny, Versailles, Mont St. Michel). In a way, this is fitting because Allen's dream is to recreate the fake Paris of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, a place where American writers hang out with other American writers and everyone speaks English. Hemingway's book is a fun read, and he knew the city very well, but his Anglocentric experience stands out when you have read French accounts of the same period, like Louis Aragon's Paysan de Paris and Guillaume Apollinaire's Le flâneur des deux rives (see my ongoing Paris Reading Project for more suggestions).

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Allen's film opened the Cannes Film Festival this past May, and critics in France, where Allen is generally beloved (as are other public figures criticized in the U.S. for sexual transgressions), were surprisingly uncritical, but that may be because most Parisians assume that all Americans have this fantasy view of their city. A smart review by Didier Péron and Philippe Azoury in Libération, however, nails the problem on the head (my translation):

Robert Guédiguian wondered what Allen thinks of when he looks at our beautiful country: "Does he think of the French working poor? The French unemployed?" One wants to respond that nothing has really changed after all, Paris today is getting the same postcard treatment as Manhattan in 1980. You will not see the Goutte-d'or here [the neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement], and even less the 9-3 [the northern suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis], but do our friends, the riff-raff, really need a good clarinet lick? Let's get serious, the subject of Midnight in Paris is not Paris and its geographic, social, or even less human reality. The City of Lights here is the territory of purely imagined dream, a sort of cave of time gone by that he examines as a nostalgic spelunker.

The saddest part of the failure of Midnight in Paris is that it could have been a much smarter, much better film. Paris is, of course, a magical city, the sort of place where one could catch a vintage cab ride back into the past, a place where the haunts of former literary legends are now laundromats, a place that has so much artistic vitality that it has erased more history than many other cities ever had. Some of the most vivid portraits of the city, like Aragon's or Jacques Yonnet's Rue des Maléfices: Chronique secrète d'une ville, which paints the city as the repository of mysterious, sometimes evil forces, and going back to the Middle Ages, show this side of the city. All of that history, however, is missing, in both Allen and Hemingway's accounts, because they are not Francophone. The signature scene in the movie, in one way, is one of Gil's few encounters with French people in the street: he tries to ask directions, but the couple wave him away because he does not speak French.

That being said, there is much to enjoy, beginning with the performances of so many actors in bit parts, playing historical personages: Yves Heck as a suave Cole Porter, Alison Pill as a fizzy, zany Zelda Fitzgerald, Tom Hiddleston as an urbane, trusting F. Scott Fitzgerald, the beautiful Rwandan-born Sonia Rolland as Josephine Baker. Corey Stoll is charmingly cartoonish as a caricature of Ernest Hemingway, picking fights and speaking in deadpan, clipped sentences parodied from his books. Carla Bruni, the First Lady of France, has a turn as a tour guide in the Musée Rodin, a participation that was fraught with scandal, most of which Allen has denied elsewhere. Adrien Brody is a dead ringer for Salvador Dalí -- especially when he bugs out his eyes -- in a rather ridiculous encounter with Gil, part of a series of interactions with the surrealists, including Man Ray and Luis Buñuel. Kathy Bates has a lot of fun as Gertrude Stein, although little about her performance really seemed to evoke the Stein one knows from her writing.

Much of the reason why Gil so wants to get away from his present is his fiancee's infatuation with an old flame, Paul, now a college professor who turns up in Paris giving a lecture at the Sorbonne. Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, and a hilarious set of appearances as the insufferable prig Wesley in 30 Rock) plays this role to the hilt, a smug casse-pieds who is a parody of all of the pseudo-intellectual poseurs Allen has ever skewered, boring and self-important, rasoir all the way up to la barbe. Sadly, Sheen does not have much to play with, given the general prosaic quality of this script: if you don't believe me, see the master at work in the Marshall McLuhan scene in Annie Hall ("What I wouldn't give for a large sock!") or the Alan Alda send-up in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Of course, is Gil any better in his wild fantasies? In the fantasy he is instantly befriended by Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein adores his book. In a sense, the two women who incarnate Gil's transparent wish fulfillment are just as flimsy and self-serving: Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose, Inception, Un long dimanche de fiançailles) is wasted as a smiling, wispy sylph from the 1920s, who herself longs for an earlier era, and Léa Seydoux, the beautiful princess of French movie business royalty, is an even less substantial nostalgia stand salesgirl. Both are gorgeous, alluring ciphers, but ciphers nonetheless.

Listening to a Sunset

See my preview of an unusual performance later this month at Washingtonian.com:

Watch the Sunset to Classical Music (Washingtonian, June 30):

Watching a sunset is a favorite summer activity, letting the palette of pink and orange ooze and flow across the sky as you drift in and out of a snooze. Now imagine watching a sunset with a group of people you have never met, and you are all listening to a new musical work composed to accompany such a sunset. That is exactly what will happen during the performance of a new piece by young Seattle composer Nat Evans, called Assemblage, in Washington next month. Evans will make a download of the recorded score available on his Web site a couple weeks before the event. Anyone interested in participating is instructed to download the music onto a portable listening device before July 24. Listeners should arrive at the site of the “performance,” Constitution Gardens, by 8:10 p.m. on July 24. At ten minutes before sunset (8:17 p.m., with sunset estimated at 8:27 p.m.) there will be a cue to press play, and everyone gathered for the performance will listen to the recording simultaneously.

On the phone earlier this week, Evans explained how he created the recorded score, beginning with live musicians on strings, trombone, and various percussion instruments playing sections of music he wrote. In the final process, he put those tracks together, layering them upon each other and combining them with field recordings of other sounds he made (wind, water, birds, random noises). “I have spent a lot of time observing the pacing of light, and the music is built around that idea of pacing, trying to capture the way that the rhythm of the light changes at sunset. Everyone will hear the music differently, and the subjectivity is the exciting thing because you don’t have a lot of control over how the light will play out.” [Continue reading]