What Is Going On?

The news from France (Le Monde, June 17) today is that an Algerian woman, writer and film director Assia Djebar, is the first person of that nationality ever to be elected to the Académie française. American readers may know her because she has taught French literature in the United States, in Baton Rouge and then in New York. It is often rumored that she is generally being considered to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As if that were not enough, an article by Pierre Gervasoni (Une Finlandaise à la tête de l'Ensemble Intercontemporain, June 16) for Le Monde relates that Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki has been awarded the directorship of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, succeeding British conductor Jonathan Nott. To do this, she needed to be the best in a long interview by a jury of musicians from the group, representatives from its executive council, and its founder, Pierre Boulez. Quite a daunting task. Her selection means the official offer of a term of three years as director, but Gervasoni quotes a rumor that she may have been asked to stay at least until 2011. So, who is she, you ask?

At present, the artistic director of the Stavanger Symfoniorkester in Norway, Susanna Mälkki proves again the efficacy of the Finnish school of conductors with this nomination, as unexpected as that of her compatriot Sakari Oramo, in 1988, who succeeded the British conductor Simon Rattle at the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when Rattle left to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. This nomination confirms France's taste for Scandanavian maestros: Jukka-Pekka Saraste is must appreciated by the orchestras of Radio-France, and Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of them that Gérard Mortier would like to see regularly at the Opéra de Paris.

Since France is feeling open right now about inviting foreign cultural representatives, I know one American musician/historian/culture blogger who would love to relocate to Paris. I speak French fairly well, believe strongly in l'exception française, and despise la mal bouffe. I'll be waiting by the phone, France.

Elgar Triumphans, O'Connor Entertains

Covering two world premieres in one night is exciting for Ionarts, and we have to thank Robert R. Reilly, music critic for CRISIS and author of the delectable Surprised by Beauty, who lent us his ears and time for the NSO's performance last evening and contributed this review.

Last night the National Symphony Orchestra, under Leonard Slatkin, performed a varied program well. It ended in triumph.

It was, however, an odd programming choice to put a classical pops piece like Mark O'Connor's Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra between two heavyweights like Hindemith's Mathis der Mahler and Elgar's Enigma Variations. Usually that place is reserved for some modern exercise in aridity that the audience cannot avoid if it wants to hear the next piece.

I am not sure if it was I who had not quite warmed up or the orchestra at the beginning of the Hindemith piece. However, Slatkin developed a nice combination of atmosphere and energy, delicacy and grip. He and the NSO showed how beautiful this music can be, found some unexpected moments of stillness in it, but perhaps missed some of the kind of hair-raising drama that other performances have delivered. I was surprised that I was not more taken with this music that I love. Wondering what it might have sounded like at Furtwangler's premiere, I thought he would have given it more of an interpretative edge.

The highly syncopated O'Connor piece made it hard to sit still and, apparently, for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg to stand still. The best parts of this concerto were the dueling violins, performed spot–on by both soloists, that sometimes transformed the concert hall into a musical celebration at a barn-raising in a John Ford movie. There is no sense in taking O'Connor's music for other than what it is: fun. However, there is a danger in taking popular musical idioms and trying to inflate them symphonically. The music usually cannot sustain the added weight. It's like playing salon music with a hundred strings. To O'Connor's credit, he largely avoided these dangers by concentrating on the musical pyrotechnics for the soloists.

Slatkin has a great reputation for his performances of the British repertory. From his traversal of the Enigma Variations last night, he deserves it. From the first note, it was the music speaking to you rather than being played. Seldom have I heard Elgar's music more bathed in emotional warmth and luminous beauty, without loss of passion and drama. Slatkin and the NSO caught the subtlest gradations within the larger sense of sweep. Woodwind and string solos could not have been more affecting. The Nimrod variation was captured in such a way as to almost make time stop before its radiant beauty. This performance was an expressive triumph for all concerned. It will be repeated for the next two evenings.

See also Tim Page, A Double Violin Concerto for Finely Tuned Ears (Washington Post, June 17).

Repin in a Brewbaker World Premiere

With Yuri Temirkanov still stuck in St. Petersburg due to a back injury that prevents him from travel, James Judd stepped in to conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in a program that featured Vadim Repin—arguably the finest violinist today—in two concertos. Daniel Brewbaker's Playing and Being Played (the ink barely dry) got its world premiere and was preceded by Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, a work that Repin has proven to excel in. (His recording with Gergiev is by far my favorite among modern traversals.) Reshpigi's Pines of Rome concluded the evening.

P. Tchaikovsky, N. Myaskovsky, Violin Concertos, Repin/Gergiev

Repin has a burnished, rich, chisled, and at the same time extremely agile tone, which was notable from the first notes in the Tchaikovsky. Much has been made of the ‘critical’ reception of the concerto after its premiere. Frustrating as it was for Tchaikovsky, it delights us now to read such erudite boneheadedness as Hanslick's verdict. And wrong though he was, this undisputed master of catchy word imagery left us with the delightful sound-bite that op. 35 for the first time raised the possibility that music might stink to the ears. Nowadays, audiences smell nothing other than perhaps a lightly perfumed air it seems to exude. The performance was a bit heavy in the first movement Allegro moderato and remained insistently earthbound. It had a fierce and furious finale but not the compelling drive that can, for example, be found in the vintage account of Milstein with Steinberg. The middle movement, Canzonetta: Andante, cannot but delight, but Repin and his orchestral partner really took off only in the Finale: Allegro vivacissimo. Though Repin cannot be credited with an exceedingly big tone, his 1708 "Ruby" Stradivarius allowed him to sound delectable (perhaps with a touch of viola-like dark hues) in any position. The impressive fleetness he showcased was all his doing. The BSO under Judd responded with the right amount of brooding, Russian peasant-like thump in the earthy sections, and virtuosic enthusiasm in the quicksilver passages. Not a ‘great’ performance, but an eminently enjoyable one. (Repin, as it were, could play jet-lagged, borderline routine, and still put most other violinists to shame.)

With the score of Brewbaker's violin concerto in front of me (my acquaintance had snatched it from the hands of the composer, just before it started), I got to read the Rumi poem that served as its inspiration:

There are no words to explain,
no tounge,
how when that player touches
the strings, it is me playing
and being played,
how existence turns
around this music, how stories
grow from the trunk,
how cup and mouth
swallow each other with the wine,
how a garnet
stone come from nowhere is puzzled
by these miners,
how even if you look for us
hair's breadth by hair's breadth, you'll
not find anything. We're inside
the hair
How last night a spear struck, how
the lion drips red, how someone pulls
at my robe of tattered patches.
"It’s all I have?
Where are your clothes?"
How shams of Tabriz
lives outside time, how what happens
to me happens there

RUMI (1207-1275)

Winds, especially oboes, are enveloped in a give and take with the violin, taking the concerto through hauntingly beautiful melodies. Marimba accentuated, the listener is lead into a percussion clockwork that tip-toes along with us. Rich in contrasts, easy to listen to (and easy to read), the concerto establishes early on that it is a crowd-pleasing and rather excellent addition to the repertoire. Though it has many diverse elements – light Shostakovich and Mahler effects in the orchestration with Bernstein liberally sprinkled in – it never sounds like a soupy hodge-podge of disjointed ideas but rather like a novel (if not very ‘modern’) delicacy. It happily embraces tonality that is increasingly welcomed by contemporary composers. With new works like this being composed, audiences need not fear the modern anymore – if "fear" is indeed what kept them from accepting works that had so often been gratuitously difficult.

The BSO played diligently and with great effect and very few missed entries – probably spurred on by the presence of the composer and because they, presumably, liked the pleasant work, too. There was a time when calling a work unoffensive was the damnation of the most devastating kind... No longer. Exploring the very high registers of the violin at length but balancing that with serene as well as furiously fast sections (towards the end mostly in ¾ over 32nd notes gives us a rich palette of the violin's and its player's abilities. With someone like Repin championing it, it shines brightly and ought to make its way into the repertoire. Although it lasts roughly twenty minutes, it seemed about half as long – compliment enough itself. Composer and players were received with unanimous standing ovations. Music with a pulse as it delights Ionarts.

Resphigi's Pines of Rome can be quipped to be "trite and true" – but it served its function extremely well, its calm and low, relaxed state (even in fff) during the first three movements being the perfect antidote to the high-pitched frenzy of the Brewbaker finale. Pines of the Appian Way (its last movement) is stunning to hear live, every time. The concert was easily one of the best orchestral presentations I have heard this season (DSCH 11, Mahler 9, Elgar 2 to mention a few other highlights), and it was surprising to see so many empty seats given the combination of stellar artist, popular works, and world premiere. It ought to be heard – and the chance to do so exists tonight at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm and at Strathmore on Saturday at 8 pm.

More Opera in the Summer

There were some things I left off my Opera in the Summer 2005 post. I'm adding them to it, but I also wanted to draw attention to them separately. First, I have mentioned the Lincoln Center Festival, because that nutty puppet opera by Respighi, is going there from Spoleto (performances on July 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, when I may get a chance to see it, but I'm not sure). Also, the other opera is the United States premiere of Brian Ferneyhough's "thought opera" on the life of Walter Benjamin. Unfortunately, there are only two performances, July 21 and 22, when I will be in Santa Fe.

A little article (Coup d'envoi d'Opéras en plein air pour 2005, June 14) from France 2 Cultural News revealed that I had somehow missed the Opéras en Plein Air Festival, which opens its Parisian series of outdoor opera performances from June 20 to 26 in one of my favorite places in the whole world, the gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg. They have already presented this year's opera, Verdi's La Traviata, in Normandy (Evreux and Rouen on June 10 and 11). They will give performances in a number of French and Belgian cities all summer long. It's not a particularly exciting opera, but it will probably reach a lot of opera newbies, with a double cast of mostly younger singers. Neat idea.

Another article (Lully ouvre le Festival baroque de Vendée, June 14) describes a production with a lot more interest for me. A rare full concert performance of Lully's Isis will open the Musique Baroque en Vendée festival, on July 6, with La Simphonie de Marais and their conductor, Hugo Reyne. France Musiques will record the performance, because naturally you want to play it on the radio (are you reading, NPR? PBS?). Isis will be performed again this fall, on November 22, in the Opéra royal de Versailles (which is, I can tell you, a great place to hear music). Later this summer, the same festival will host La Simphonie du Marais again, on August 11 and 12, for a staged production of Les Femmes vengées, a comic opera by François-André Danican, dit Philidor, directed by Yves Coudray in the courtyard of the Logis de la Chabotterie.

In fact, there are so many music festivals in the summer now, you need the Fédération Française des Festivals Internationaux de Musique to help you sort it all out.

Summer Opera: Massenet's Cendrillon

Other Reviews: Cecelia Porter, 'Cendrillon': The Slipper Fits Just Fine (Washington Post, June 14) T. L. Ponick, Cinderella story delivers on charm (Washington Times, June 15)

Continuing with our series Opera in the Summer 2005, we stay right here in Washington for the first of two productions by Washington's own Summer Opera Theatre Company, a nice rendition of Cendrillon by Jules Massenet. What started in the late 1970s as a dream, to start a small local opera company, has become a reliable part of an unexpected niche market. This company has been able to do extraordinary things with surprisingly few resources, and as we heard from General Manager Deanne Giarraputo before the performance, the company's meager budget, although not running in the red, is in need of supplemental funds. Students can buy tickets for $25, and anyone can stand in line and buy a rush ticket for $25, which are sold starting a half-hour before curtain. I think if you live in Washington, you should go and here's why.

Although completed as early as 1896, Massenet's Cendrillon was not premiered at the Opéra-Comique until 1899. If you think about it, that is only three years—but three significant years—before Debussy brought Pelléas et Mélisande, which is a different kind of fairytale altogether, to the same theater. Massenet had become fascinated with the coloratura voice in the previous decade when he met American soprano Sibyl Sanderson, who sang the Queen of the Night's arias at a dinner party. He composed his remarkable but mostly forgotten opera Esclarmonde (which I reviewed at the Washington Concert Opera in April) in 1889 and Thaïs (1894) specifically for her. Although Sanderson did not appear in Cendrillon, Massenet was probably still by that point obsessed with her sound because what other voice part could we expect to sing the part of La Fée (Fairy Godmother) but a coloratura? That she may be the real starring role of the opera can be inferred, I think, from the poster of the first production, which is mostly a depiction of La Fée.

Here we get to the main distinction of this production, that is, what Summer Opera has done to Massenet's story (derived from the least threatening of the versions of this famous tale, Charles Perrault's 1697 story Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre—the stepsisters are not hacking off their toes or heels to try to force their bloody stump feet into the glass slipper). The characters and scene have been updated to a family of French diplomats posted to Washington, D.C. (near the present time, as the presence of a vacuum cleaner in the opening scene indicates). The king President of the United States is trying to force the Prince his son to marry. Lisette, our heroine, is forced by her wicked stepmother (whom her father, Pandolfe, married out of ambition to rise in the diplomatic corps), to stay at home and do nothing but chores, and they call her "ash-girl" (Cendrillon). After having to endure her stepsisters' preparations for a ball at the White House, her fairy godmother appears and... you get the picture.

This is cute (we had to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner before the opening curtain, to make sure we got the point), but it is not really convincing. Why do the presumably American servants bow and curtsy? Why do they keep calling the president's son le prince? Some details garnered a few modest chuckles in the audience, like the female chorus costumed as joggers, complete with a baby jogging stroller, in the final scene, or Cendrillon's costumes at home, a roomy Washington Nationals sweatshirt and jeans at one point and pajamas and a teddy bear at another. Still, enough of the story was not or could not be updated that the concept struck me as mostly a distraction (fortunately, not enough of one to be an impediment to enjoying the opera). Now, if La Fée had been a high-powered feminist lawyer or lobbyist ("I can make your dreams come true, and here is my fee") and her fairies an overeager team of summer interns... but to go any further would be to destroy the very point of a fairytale setting, that it both exists as a comprehensible idea ("Once upon a time, there was...") and can have no possibility of being mistaken for real ("...and they lived happily ever after.")

As La Fée, Hilary Ryon seemed sometimes (very rarely) to be slightly outclassed by the vocal demands of her part. She has great agility and a remarkable range, which mean that her voice will likely mature into something extraordinary as she gains power (Massenet did consider the role appropriate to a soprano léger, after all). My quibbling about vocal details was more than made up for by her acting ability: she was a floating, flighty wisp of a golden vision, enhanced by the fun lighting of Donald Edmund Thomas. Soprano Maureen Francis, who was an undergraduate student in these parts, was a beautiful Cendrillon, vocally and physically. Her voice has become quite rich in tone but has retained a youthful lightness that was very pleasing. There were no shortcomings to notice, although this role is much less demanding vocally than La Fée.

Tenor Rolando-Michael Sanz, whom I knew when he was (also) an undergraduate here, has received good instruction and training in terms of projection and especially diction. He was the only singer on the stage (Ms. Francis being almost in the same category) who sang French clearly enough that I did not have to consult the supertitles. In terms of French pronunciation, it was difficult to understand all the other singers, with the supernumerary who gave the speech as the prince's envoy in the fourth act definitively at the bottom, because of his incomprehensible diction. Jennifer Jellings and Kristin Green stole the show as the ludicrous stepsisters, although their antics sometimes made them hard to hear and, a definite no-no, detracted from other parts of the opera, such as one of the prince's tender arias. Eugene Galvin, who also teaches voice in the area, was an endearing Pandolfe, and gutsy mezzo-soprano Laura Zuiderveen was a perfect foil as the wicked stepmother.

Remaining performances of Summer Opera's Cendrillon, at the Hartke Theatre, will take place on Friday (June 17 at 7:30 pm) and Sunday (June 19 at 2:30 pm).

Bloomin' Idjet

As I wrote last year, for the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday (June 16, 1904), here is how you should begin your day this morning:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.

That Latin phrase (I will go in to God's altar, adapted from Psalm 42:4) is the first part of the versicle a priest says privately when beginning Mass, with the response Ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam (To God, who gives joy to my youth). (As it happens, the first part is also found on the gateway into the chancel at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, through which I pass at least once a week as a member of the choir.) The whole versicle is paraphrased, with a perverse and blasphemous twist, by the two priests in the Circe episode:

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN Introibo ad altare diaboli. [I will go in to the devil's altar.]

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

Go take part in the orgy of language and pick up Ulysses. Read it to your friends. Read it to your cellmate at the office. Just read it.

Keep the Music in Museums

From Ionarts daily read ArtsJournal, I learned of an article by Mark Swed (Silence at LACMA would be a sour note for everyone, June 15) in the Los Angeles Times. Apparently, this spring the Los Angeles County Museum of Art cancelled or cut back its famous concert series, which have won the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming six times in recent years. The motivations that are putatively behind this wrongheaded decision are particularly odious:

Money doesn't seem to be the overriding concern. The museum's music programming has always been done on the cheap. Many of the series have underwriting. The Rosalinde Gilbert Concerts, which is the chamber series, was begun nine years ago by board member Arthur Gilbert in memory of his wife and is supported by the Gilbert estate. The Aaron Copland Fund and the radio station K-Mozart chip in for the Monday Evening Concerts, as do private benefactors. The museum's expenditure for music this past season was $250,000, which is approximately one-half of 1% of its $48.5-million budget. And given that some Monday Evening Concert patrons are threatening to withhold all future support for LACMA if the concerts go (and some have pretty impressive art collections), the savings will be all but negligible, especially if you factor in the loss of prestige.

Although bean counters might argue that a quarter million here, a quarter million there adds up, what the museum is really saying is that these concerts no longer fit the image of the museum as LACMA-land. The people who come to the concerts aren't $30-a-head King Tutters. They are not necessarily well-off yuppies who see the museum as a classy pickup joint and whom LACMA is clearly courting with its print and television advertisements. The concerts are $5 for students, who tend to be scruffy and serious. Few BMWs can be found in the parking lot on Monday nights.

Are museums anywhere else giving up music programs? I don't know of any, but I feel the nervous urge to check the Web sites of all the museums where I love to go to hear music. Is LACMA going the way of NPR and PBS?

Les Transphotographiques

Claire Guillot has reviewed an interesting new photography exhibit in an article (Territoire et paysage en creux aux Transphotographiques, June 16) for Le Monde. Well, new to me anyway, since this is the fifth year for Les Transphotographiques (it opened on May 25 and continues until June 25). A new curator is selected each year, and this year photography historian Anne de Mondenard, has brought together thirteen photographers for the official show (with many more in an ancillary "Off" exhibit) on the theme Hors circuits (meaning, more or less, Off the beaten path). The works are shown in large format, outdoors, at various locations in Lille and other towns in northeastern France, with an outpost in Courtrai, Belgium. The show has been extensively reviewed in the press.

Across from the Lens Town Hall, outdoors, on large PVC panels, there are a dozen photographs of old cars loaded with junk. These are Thomas Mailaender's Voitures cathédrales (Car cathedrals), presented as part of the Transphotographiques festival. The term, invented by dockworkers in Marseille, indicates the cars used by immigrants to go back to North Africa in the summer. The prices on the ferry are high, so owners attempt to construct, on the roof of their old R20 or Peugeot Break 304, teetering piles of stuff that climb toward the sky, where we can see plastic chairs, a sink, a refrigerator. The young photographer has taken these cars' portraits, from behind or in profile, removing the background, to isolate them in the frame. Evoking sculpture, these cars say a lot about the voyage to come, especially about the disconnect between two worlds. For these old piled-up objects, without value to European eyes, are treasure to others. Thus the artist creates a negative image of two worlds that are ignorant of one another, without ever really showing either of them, on both sides of the Mediterranean.

There is an image of one of these photographs here. For your perusal, there are write-ups and images of the artists in the official exhibit and the Off exhibit. The big names, according to Claire Guillot, are Raymond Depardon ("undertaking a documentary work on the land of France," written up a few days ago in an article for Le Monde) Sophie Ristelhueber, and Paolo Roversi ("ghostly shots taken in his studio, on the margin of his own fashion photography").