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www.funmaz...happy new year!!2017<br />www.shayarixyz.com<br />www.funmazalo.comlovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00609820609556385773noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-27218120309626672952015-07-12T20:26:25.187-07:002015-07-12T20:26:25.187-07:00Francois, thank you for being interested. I may wr...Francois, thank you for being interested. I may write a longer piece about Vickers. But I think he was one of the great opera singers in a generation remarkable for enormous talents. Remember, his was the era of Callas, Tebaldi, Rysanek, Crespin, Price, Vishnevskaya, Farrell, Warren, Merrill, MacNiel, Bastianini, Taddei, Hotter, Fischer-Dieskau, Frick, Crass, Simionato, Cossotto, Barbieri, Arkhipova, Bumbry, Verrett, Ludwig, Sutherland, Nilsson, Moedl, Varnay, Borkh. He sang with many of these. Contemporary tenors included Del Monaco, Di Stefano, Corelli, Tucker, King, Thomas, Windgassen, Wunderlich, Gedda, Kraus, Simoneau. And I have probably forgotten a few people. <br /><br />In that amazing context, he was unique, totally unforgettable, astonishing. He was an organic singer, his enormous voice was joined to profound, intense feeling, exceptional musicianship, high interpretive intelligence and the kind of charisma no one can command. He was magic. As with all unique artists of genius he had detractors and some roles were not a perfect fit. But most of the time in my experience he was astonishing as a presence with an amazing sound and a tangible suffering soul. There was no way to forget his Peter Grimes, Siegmund, Florestan, Parsifal, Tristan, Don Jose, Otello, Canio, Aeneas, Samson (Saint-Saëns and Handel) even his Don Alvaro, where he had problems but felt the character's heartbreak so keenly your eyes and ears were nailed to the stage when he was on it. You had to recover from his performances. His truth was so intense it burned you. You couldn't sit back and be comfortable. You understood that in the fate of so many of these characters there was no comfort, no resolution. He was what opera is supposed to be, a voice that is not the beginning or the end but the path to music and to truths beyond music. In that sense, he was an amazing medium. I hope you got to see him, at least a few times. There are some powerful performances captured one way or another. But being in the presence of that fire and fury was a profound experience.<br /><br />I will stop there and words will never do him sufficient credit. But thank you again for asking.Albert Innauratohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00372127500758892700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-90475999504817263502015-07-12T04:48:59.550-07:002015-07-12T04:48:59.550-07:00Dear Widder Claggart - please write something abou...Dear Widder Claggart - please write something about Jon Vickers.<br /><br />FrancoisFrancoishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08220640713189074855noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-80873608654971137272015-06-26T04:02:18.430-07:002015-06-26T04:02:18.430-07:00I don't know. I've always been a glass-ha...I don't know. I've always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy. I certainly hope I'm drastically wrong but I don't see much of a long-term future for any sort of classical music, particularly opera, grandiose Met-style, or smaller, experimental, high-tech style in the United States. The art form needs new works from new composers, perhaps appealing to a totally new audience, but so much is stacked against this. The chances of a significant European-style subsidy being granted by any governmental authority here is slim to none. It reeks of the dreaded "socialism" that our clown-car politicians decry and detest. Our entire government, now a "for hire" or bought-and-paid-for institution, is a lost cause, sinking deeper daily into the pockets of the K Street lobbyists, oligarchs and mysterious powers that be. Elections are maintained for show but the slates of allowable candidates and the outcomes seem to be predetermined, or manipulated/adjusted after the fact, as with Bush, Jr. in Florida. Furthermore the country itself has peaked on the timeline of Empire and we are on the inevitable downhill slide, pissing away what treasure we have left to keep the Military Industrial Complex contractors open and buzzing 24/7 with a war here, a war there, as infrastructure at home rusts, rots and collapses. Part of that rot is the massive and I believe deliberate underfunding of Education: a placid, ignorant, undereducated, financially-stressed, electorate is what is wanted by politicians. In the context of Music, Art, Opera, etc. this educational underfunding has a direct and highly negative effect on the viability of any long-term future audience. If the groundwork of music, art, etc. is not laid in the early formative years in elementary school and continued through high school (Orchestra, Band, Chorus, reading or at least listening to good music, etc.) the seed of adult music appreciation is permanently desiccated and never really flowers. Hell, little kids today don't even hear William Tell or Flying Dutchman as familiar background music in cartoons, which I did when I was little. There's no real base or connection to art and music unless the individual parents are extraordinary. I'm not sure modern avenues of technology (Internet, Cable, etc.) will be the savior of some sort of morphed opera/musical art for the younger generation since they are being deprived of any knowledge, appreciation or education of the original forms. Maybe a whole new art form will develop, appreciated by the young ones, who knows? I am doubtful there's some great, new Renaissance just waiting around the corner to dispel the darkness which seems to be descending over our times. Most of the 20-30-40-something people I work with either don't know or maybe just heard the name Beethoven or Mozart, but couldn't identify 2 measures of anything they wrote. Nor would they know who Giotto was, let alone his teacher Cimabue. But young Giotto astonished and ultimately surpassed Cimabue, blazing an entirely new trail, so perhaps there is hope.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10261519459208521321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-71888459332014793582015-06-25T09:02:22.167-07:002015-06-25T09:02:22.167-07:00Some of the most engaging and fun opera I ever saw...Some of the most engaging and fun opera I ever saw was at Long Beach Opera back in the 80s, when the Alden bros, still in knee pants, were redefining what going to the opera means. The LB Incoronazione di Poppea is still vivid, the crazy Ariadne (original version), a Hoffman, Orfeo, etc. They performed (mostly) in a 600-seat theater-in-the-round with the musicians tucked wherever they fit, and the singers — many of whom went on to Careers — were involved, committed, inspired. That can happen. We know it. And all the singers who get dealt out by the “big” houses for whatever reasons, and who can sing, and want to sing, who are dying to sing, they’re ready, aren’t they!? They’ll travel all over the fucking globe for a chance to sing a great role in a small house with a passionate audience and not much in the way of a fee. What we’re really talking about is creating, or lighting a new fire, under that passionate audience, and that’s where I think “new” media, streaming media, can do some of the heavy lifting, exposing people, creating a curiosity and then an appetite. We know that, it a certain sense, anything is possible. That doesn’t mean it will happen; but it is possible! Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. Thrill them. Blow their minds. They’ll be back.Larry Mellmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01989306159210947908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-83862430836348541342015-06-24T21:52:43.659-07:002015-06-24T21:52:43.659-07:00Larry, thank you. Of course I am old, so naturally...Larry, thank you. Of course I am old, so naturally can not imagine a future, save a very short term one. However I would suggest that a single artist who emerges in a time of turmoil against heavy odds, Giotto or Dante is not the same phenomenon as an ORGANIZATION that must by definition require numerous people even on a small scale, who of necessity must be highly skilled, who of course will demand to be paid if only to service their college loans. I have no doubt that great poetry, great novels, wonderful music for small forces or one instrument, or voice and accompanying instrument is being written in this country. But none of those things require a chorus, an oprchestras more than one soloist and a "crew" both technical and administrative. I think it is the communal nature of "big arts", opera, the spoken theater, the ballet, the symphony that is most in peril. They are not only communal because they demand a lot of people to make them happen, but they demand a community of supporters and in America donors. And I don't really think there is much of a fix for that.Albert Innauratohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00372127500758892700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-62700584620530480612015-06-24T21:15:47.010-07:002015-06-24T21:15:47.010-07:00Well, Widder Dearest, you may well be right. Part ...Well, Widder Dearest, you may well be right. Part I is absolutely spot on, and, of course, will never happen here because it's too socialistic and we can't even have a national health service (and that alone makes us barbarians in the eyes of the world at large). And yes, video opera would be very limited until it caught an audience if, in fact, it could. (OK, so I'm an idealist) But we live in a moment that is so technologically explosive I can't help but think I see light at the end of that tunnel. It always presents itself to me like this: how did it feel, in the twelfth century, with a war on every front, disease, greed, maniacs in power, little war lords acting big and big war lords acting little from Gibraltar to Cathay, each Pope more corrupt than the last ad nauseum. Dark is how it must have felt, and somewhat hopeless. Despite that, Giotto found a way to breath life into tempera in wet plaster, Palestrina teased sublime polyphony out of plainchant, and within a hundred years the lost works of Aristotle et al were re-introduced from the East while the brilliance of Avicenna and Averroes flooded western thought and the Renaissance kicked in (although I have to admit that I, like Ruskin, prefer Gothic to Renaissance art). So are we poised at the edge of an abyss? or are we trembling on the brink of something so rich and vast in scope that our puny little brains can barely imagine it. A renaissance to put the Renaissance to shame. Or somewhere else, somehwere in between? Despite Ted Cruz and David Koch et al, I want to be hopeful. I came of age in the sixties. I want to believe there is hope, the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. Hey, Fox fired Sarah Palin. It ain't all bad. And somehow I just have to think that the brilliant potential of our currently squandered media and technology can be realized in a real and life-affirming art rather than the art of making money, a new art teeming with old, revivals and premieres we can scarce conceptualize. Hey, I can't help it. That's why I'm so rich and everybody is fighting to publish my books. ;-) Anyway, thank you for thinking out loud, thank you for thinking, period, thank you for engaging in this dialog, thank you for giving me the opportunity to think out loud. Maybe we can figure something out. Who knows? Somebody's got to.Larry Mellmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01989306159210947908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-61850849948999535352015-06-24T20:09:14.678-07:002015-06-24T20:09:14.678-07:00PART 2: Yes, some of these shows are off beat but ...PART 2: Yes, some of these shows are off beat but others conform to the usual sitcom standards only with rougher language and no euphemisms. They have short runs, and most are disposable. So the money spent isn't either prohibitive and sometimes profits are turned one way or another. Like the independent movies of 1990-2003 the idea is that one has product for a small amount and that success does not require massive profits. And there is no need for a huge audience. <br /><br />When you mention pay cable like HBO and the others, they spend as much as the Networks with fewer opportunities for recovering their investments. They cancel shows right and left, censor them and reject "difficult" material (it seems more radical only by comparison). As long as their subscriber base remains high they have a budget, but they have to careful to lure as many subscribers as possible while alienating as few as possible. Basic Cable TV is not a paradise by any means (and despite the occasional lucky show such as "Mad Men" the shows run 7 to 10 episodes a season, are lousy, as cheap as possible and disappear quickly.<br /><br />One way or another large scale TV is always number intensive. So who would watch opera -- you are not talking about a 'Net show with a handful of characters or less, in an easily and cheaply rented studio, shot with a handheld camera. Opera even on a smaller scale will always require more people, more space, more money. It will take investors to afford to do, and enough viewers paying something (or advertisers drawn by the number of viewers) for those investors to continue.<br /><br />Anything is possible up to a point, chamber operas with one or two characters and a combo, done with no set and in street clothes could be affordable but I'd be skeptical that you'd get large numbers to watch it.<br /><br />I'm not sure what the future will bring. The Met is a hard model to sustain and may well go under eventually. Some regional companies that do less and have shorter seasons, as well as boosters with deep pockets might survive. But ultimately it's an art form that is foreign and bizarre to most Americans. I think European broadcasts that can be gotten either for a small fee or free on the 'Net, YouTube offerings of new productions, the occasional Blu-ray or DVD if one feels passionate enough about a particular opera or performer (and libraries lend them for the curious), university productions and local small companies are the future. But just my opinion. Opera, I believe, I guess, is a "low tech" phenomenon!!!!Albert Innauratohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00372127500758892700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-87418391673012566222015-06-24T19:45:09.108-07:002015-06-24T19:45:09.108-07:00Larry you raise interesting issues. If America wer...Larry you raise interesting issues. If America were Germany every major city (and there are many) would have arts subsidies even if there was a requirement that a % of operating costs be raised locally and through box office, an opera company, a symphony orchestra (probably outside NY, San Francisco, and Boston) doubling as the opera's orchestra, a ballet company with its own identity, which none the less worked in tandem with the opera company and a well-funded theater with two stages, a large one for more "commercial work" and a smaller "experimental" space.<br /><br />Moreover, there would be smaller subsidies for smaller presenters of opera, specialized orchestras (say for Baroque and late Rennaisence music) and a still more experimental theater or two.<br /><br />Subsidy means that employees of all these theaters would have living wages (varying of course), everybody would have health and dental coverage, "artists: extending to composers, playwrights, writers of fiction, choreographers, lower level conductors, directors, painters (who might do design work for opera, ballet, and theater) could apply for supplements to help with rent and living costs. No one would get rich, but there is a difference between dire poverty or the constant struggle to maintain some kind of life especially if one has dependents. <br /><br />The citizens of that city and of regions fairly close (who could commute in easily and inexpensively on public transportation) would be able to avail themselves of all these offerings, with only a small % of tickets scaled high.<br /><br />The various art entities would be organized into the school system, teaching and performing in schools, which in turn would prepare classes to see performances.<br /><br />These might still be "provincial" in the sense that the biggest stars on the circuit would rarely perform, and there might be compromises such as we see in our local companies here in the USA. There are wonderful American singers the Met will never hire, and there are capable but less memorable singers who can get the job done, as is true of actors, conductors, directors, dancers and choreographers,<br /><br />The first nights of the major companies in the country would be telecast as well as net streamed as well as broadcast, not only operas, but plays, and orchestral concerts. There would be programs on TV (probably at off hours but able to be recorded) where there would be trailers. discussions and excerpts performed from the major evenings in the season, and where also the controversial or interesting novels and non-fiction works would also be discussed.<br /><br />Audiences would be likely to see the arts as a part of life in general and civil life in particular, not as something exotic, bizarre, out of the question or irrelevant, as is now the case in the USA. Students would have arts training from the earliest grades, learning the basic conventions of different arts through making music or doing plays and through seeing them professionally mounted. None of this makes everyone a fan or even a big majority fans, but it means "ordinary" people who would much rather watch sports or monster movies or play video games are not desperately lost at a play, opera, ballet or concert and may even attend a few of those now and again. <br /><br />It seems to me that because American is slipping toward second world status, third world in some ways, the alternatives you propose are band-aids that will do little good. The discovery made by 'Net streaming services that do small scale original series is that there are an ENORMOUS number of gifted actors, directors and writers who don't work in America and who will work for very little, partially for the joy of it, and partially for the hope that it will lead somewhere with better pay. The tech equipment is smaller and cheaper than anyone imagined it would be even in 1990, so quality is good.Albert Innauratohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00372127500758892700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-76924580410621753422015-06-24T19:12:11.689-07:002015-06-24T19:12:11.689-07:00Thanks, Paul. I appreciate your reading. It ain...Thanks, Paul. I appreciate your reading. It ain't easy to get people to read these things. But it was my accountant (who knows nothing about opera) who advised me to put Callas in the title as what I'm told is called a "click magnet". It worked for a day until people caught on that it was about that most unmentionable subject after Cholly Handelman's body odor, NEW OPERAS and MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Albert Innauratohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00372127500758892700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-23420467678216584692015-06-24T16:35:48.197-07:002015-06-24T16:35:48.197-07:00Interesting proposal...perhaps opera for video mig...Interesting proposal...perhaps opera for video might also provide a way to use miked voices at their full potential without the limitations of present-day stage miking (which always looks a little awkward--those headpieces!)bgnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07110058388805605682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-21061277564369717152015-06-24T15:13:22.721-07:002015-06-24T15:13:22.721-07:00Thank you, darling. It’s always fun when you let ...Thank you, darling. It’s always fun when you let your mind unravel in long form. <br /><br />Opera of the moment is a vexed question indeed. Because I live in St. Paul I get the feed from MN Opera: The Handmaid’s Tale, Dream of Valentino, Doubt, Manchurian Candidate, and, up-coming, The Shining and Bolcom’s Dinner at Eight, etc etc. I always walk in with high hopes; I invariably leave disappointed. Much of it has to do with issues you discuss, but something else is going on. The music is rarely written for the voice, as a sung medium, interestingly, or the composers simply don’t have the juice for sung music, for vocal line.<br /><br />But there’s something else…<br /><br />I have to travel to see opera. When I lived abroad that was not a problem; now I rely on Youtube or fly somewhere. Maybe I have become provincial. But I’m beginning to wonder…<br /><br />Network television is appalling, Hollywood movies are execrable across the board, and everyone knows the best stuff now is made for non-network TV, HBO et al. The Sopranos opened an era. The Wire had the guts to be brilliantly written and acted, with a blistering point of view and ideas worth spending time with. IMHO the finale of season 3 of Orange is the New Black was transcendent— brilliant, original, life-affirming. <br /><br />The costs of mounting opera in big houses makes it unaffordable for the young, the “middle class,” students, the “poor.” Creative constraints are often more restrictive than Lady Bracknell’s corset. I don’t think “opera is dead” but I think the whole way we think about opera is. The brilliant stuff on tv is brilliant because it isn’t strangled in the crib and doesn’t require Star Wars budgets. It’s produced outside the Blockbuster-Superhero-Franchise-driven Hollywood Industrial model which suffocates art. But turn on Netflix and you can see something that you could never see in a theater created by brave and fiercely original artists.<br /><br />Why aren’t operas being written for streaming media, video operas, with the artists in control, doing whatever the fuck they want to make it as absolutely brilliant as they can within the limitations of a conceptually limitless medium?<br /><br />Nothing replaces the immediacy of the live performance. I know that. That’s why I’m paying next years pension to go to Bayreuth this summer. But more people see shit on the little screen than in all the world’s opera houses combined. I see more opera on Youtube than I care to admit, a lot it no more worth watching than reruns of “I Love Lucy” or “Mommy Dearest”. More people saw La Boheme in one night “live from the Met” than had seen it in all performances combined since the Maestro laid down his pen.<br /><br />So why don’t composers and librettists, artists and visionaries, seizing the digital free pass which, among writers, is known as self-publishing, and make streaming opera. Put it out there. Promote on social media. The rest follows. Netflix started as a clever delivery system for DVDs. They are now producing art as notable as “Orange is the New Black.”<br /><br />Forget big opera bean-counter death squads and midget-minded donors, or little theaters that can only do so much, or so little, and dare do something breathtaking, or cranky, or ironic, a chamber piece, or something so big it can only be done small. We possess the tools for a new renaissance.<br /><br />Carpe diem! Eh?Larry Mellmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01989306159210947908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704055254870121256.post-88632801819011903352015-06-22T16:03:55.079-07:002015-06-22T16:03:55.079-07:00Catchy title. Definitely caught my attention. Gl...Catchy title. Definitely caught my attention. Glad to see that from early this morning when I started reading before I left for work, to this evening when I finished, the gentleman in the picture morphed from Antonino Votto (definitely not) to Ignoto. Either way, both ladies look like they've stepped back a few paces after smelling a skunk. Or perhaps it's the other way around. As usual your analysis, explication, etc. is so detailed and knowledgeable. A pleasure to read and learn. The OSCAR portion in particular is very comprehensive. Thanks. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10261519459208521321noreply@blogger.com