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Artist Apprezz: Claudio Monteverdi

11/25/2015

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Singers and orchestras give the music of the opera world substance and sound, but the hands that keep the stones and waters on their axis belong to a line of musical crazies that some call masters, others genii or gods, who are otherwise known as composers. Some of the greatest of these are Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Modest Mussorgsky, and Richard Wagner. If you're new or new-ish to opera, though, you're probably wondering what it sounded like wayyyyy back when it first started. Thankfully, I can give you an answer to that with a bit on the music of the first opera composer whose work has survived to be oft performed in the modern century. After plenty of words on some of the planet's best- loved classical music interpreters, please welcome the first music maker in Everyone's Opera's "Artist Apprezz" series, Claudio Monteverdi!

Survival of the Brilliant-est

So, there's not much of Monteverdi's work that made it out of the 1600s, but, lucky for us, what of it has is, according to just about all of the historical articles on him that you can Google, the best of everything he wrote. His madrigals (sung poetry, to put the word in the least helpful but most summary terms) and church music have been the focus of a few entitled classics men/women (musicologists) for their revolutionary style; it was pretty new over four hundred years ago, anyway. Yet it's his "L'Orfeo" on which sits three quarters of his fame's monumental rump, and for good reason, which I'll get to in a minute. "The Return of Ulysses" ("Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria"), the basis of which is obvious enough, and "The Coronation of Poppea" ("L'Incoronazione di Poppea"), based on the life and times of the royal Roman baddie, Emperor Nero, are pretty much legendary, too. You'd think that, like most computer games and cell phones, the first models of true-to-term opera music would be pretty heavy with prototype glitches that might make you want to drop them into the mouth of Mt. Etna from ten thousand feet in the air or repeatedly pound them with a volume of a useless, useless, useless and ridiculously expensive hardcopy encyclope... Okay, back to the point. Monteverdi's stuff was in no way underdeveloped, but it was he who gave music its first push into the Baroque Era, when Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel were One Republic, Sia, and Sean Mendes.

"L'Orfeo"


"L'Orfeo" is, as I've written, Monteverdi's big one, and the reason is very simple, really. It was only the first fully formed opera ever written. There were some operas composed before it, but they were more closely related to plays, the sounds of which several composers had decided to start playing with. Every play was peppered with what's called "incidental music," which is stuff that Shakespeare movie fans know all about. A piece of incidental music would be heard during specific sequences of action. I guess anyone who's ever encountered a soundtrack pretty much gets the idea. There was also the "intermedio," which was a piece of music or group of musical pieces, including songs, that was performed between Acts. Monteverdi did more than any other composer to advance the idea of his predecessors, who figured they could and should expand this material and have players sing their parts instead of just yelling them out, creating a more emotional art. "L'Orfeo," then, naturally, has a rather dramatic theme: the futile hope of a young lover for the return of his finer half from the land of the dead, and his quest to make that hope's reality happen. Of course, Monteverdi's opera doesn't sound as dramatic as late Classical, Bel Canto, and Romantic opera, but Gluck didn't show up until later to really start making music that could tell stories all by itself. We'll definitely be discussing him later.

Resurrection


Monteverdi was one of those composers that time just couldn't keep down. His music disappeared for awhile, but when it finally started receiving performances again in the 1800s, it became an important historical study. I know. It sounds boring, but in the 1960's, performers finally started giving the music all they had, getting the popular bunch of Handel and Mozart operas to bump elbows with "The Coronation of Poppea" in theatres across the planet. Now, the world's first major opera composer continues to bring houses down. They say The Beatles will live on forever, and their state of immortality has only just hit the fifty-five year mark. Let's see if they can make it to four hundred thirty-three.

Every one of the great artists of every genre has been made possible by the work of one master or another that, once upon the spark of a metaphorical light bulb, planted a seed with a pen. I hope you've enjoyed this little something on one of the greatest minds in the history of vocal music, my friends. Check out Everyone's Opera's Facebook page for the best of Claudio Monteverdi. Until next time, happy opera loving!

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Artist Apprezz: Angela Gheorghiu

11/11/2015

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On the tailwinds of her acclaimed performance in Puccini's "Tosca" earlier this month, I present this article in Everyone's Opera's Artist Appreciation series on pro screamer, Angela Gheorghiu. She's been flying at the speed of superstardom since 1990 and has made it very clear to opera crazies everywhere that her aim is Mick Jagger "modern legend" status, which, if she remains steadfast on her stunning musical way, just might end up on her long list of achievements.
Angela, Verdian
Verdian. It's a word I love. It's a reference to a music to which I am permanently bound, which sounds more poetic than it actually is. It's not that I'm trying to hide a secret Annie Wilkes kind of devotion to a dead guy (That would just be... you know... really gross), though I'm certainly not trying to say that I'm anything but a character in a kid's cereal commercial when it comes to all things Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi was 'it' in the Italian music circle back in the 1800's, and, well, he still pretty much is (Sorry, Battiato). He composed one ode after another to everything, from political issues to family problems to, in the case of "La Traviata," the difficulties one faces when trying to move on from one's past (all those club- swinging squares running around...). Gheorghiu has sung in that final category like a pro from the beginning of her career, when the conductor, Georg Solti, picked her to belt "Traviata's" heroine, Violetta Valery, in a fresh production at the Royal Opera House. She pets every phrase of "The Strayed One" like a cat's countess, with grace and a presence the size of life (maybe a little ironic considering the lung problems of the character, but you can't perform opera without singing it. I don't care what Patitucci says.). Maybe she doesn't always make the jump over the traditional high note at the end of the aria, "Ever Free," but it's okay, since Verdi didn't write it in anyway.
Every Composer's Champ
Callas being an inspiration to her (She's got an album to prove it), she is an advocate for the intentions of opera's composers. She may not, therefore, be a consistent favorite of designers and directors, but, nonetheless, the hands and whoop- whoops of her fans remain high and in flight at almost every performance she gives. Seeded in Romania under a state head who would have made the political minds behind Orwell's Big Brother proud, her vocalism backstage has occasionally been as electric as her appearances above the orchestra pit since her break from Communism's grip. She has proven time and again that talent's voice can touch every nerve, and that a soprano doesn't cross a director dedicated to Franco Zefirelli if she doesn't want an Oxford in her costume bustle. "The wig is going on, with or without you," were Joseph Volpe's words to her when she gave the blonde wig of the soprano character in Zefirelli's production of Bizet's "Carmen" an "I spit on you" look while repeating an emphatic and creative, "No." I'm sure that the soprano who wound up on stage in her stead was in no way dishonored by the opportunity that "No" presented her with. By critics, however, Gheorghiu has been acclaimed as an artist who is "sensitive to... the composers" (Martha Duffy) and, to paraphrase William V. Madison's review of her first Tosca, "unfazed" by even the music that pushes the voice to its limits. Whatever the intentions of the composer, she's game, and most don't require a blonde wig, whether or not the Misters and Misses-es Directors-es like it.
A Tenor's Complement
The greatest tenor/soprano duos of the twentieth century are still around thanks to the recording industry. Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano, Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli and Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti... These are some of the great equations in opera. In new algebra, we have the Anna Netrebko/Rolando Villazon combo, and the Roberto Alagna/Angela Gheorgiu. Sure, Gheorghiu and Alagna were married for a spell of more than ten years, but that's not what put the equals sign between the two. The key to all of opera's polynomials has always been emotional polyphony, and Gheorghiu is one of those sopranos who simply has what it takes to comprise a part of a complete success in collaboration, never pushing to overpower her partners in any way, though from her a listener can always expect a vocal right hook or two.
Autumn at the Metropolitan Opera is rarely as hot as it is when Gheorghiu pays American audiences a visit. "The world's most glamourous opera star," as bloggers and columnists have agreed she is, joined in the Elena Obraztsova ball at the Bolshoi Theatre yesterday, and is scheduled for a few more "Toscas" and a handful of "La Bohemes" this season. Check out Everyone's Opera's Facebook page for plenty of Gheorghiu video content. Until next time, my friends, happy opera loving!

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Artist Apprezz: Opera's Alias, Maria Callas

10/20/2015

 
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Nicknaming is a thing with every crowd, and while we the opera freaks can get a little flowery once in awhile with the ones we give our favorite artists, there are very good reasons behind them all. I don't think a classical singer has earned one more rightly than did the first subject of Everyone's Opera's artist appreciation series, Maria Callas, who for several decades has been on the top of the list of pro screamers that keep the "Vintage Goodies" sections of music stores open. Depending on the mood a particular performance of hers puts them in, most fans might think "La Divina" or "Sacred Monster," but this classics man, after many a proper Callas binge (Twenty discs minimum in a sitting) says it like she is, "Opera's Alias."

Starting with Some Sweat from the Mosh Pit...

Think you know intense because you've been to a Limp Bizkit concert? Maybe in the thirties and forties, the maintenance men of the opera scene tried hard to separate shock from awe, Edgar from Poe, Davy from Jones; but the decade of the fifties, while also society's obstetrician in the birth of Holly Housewife, was the thirteenth Apostle to a long buried Mommie Madhouse. Callas flipped the coffin lid to insure a smooth resurrection and achieved a following just about as fast as Iron Maiden, making admirers forget that they had Victorian grandmoms to please. Said gentlewomen were big on a kind of nonthreatening Evancho sound, and what handful of them were of sound enough body to catch a performance of opera's hardest rocker most likely thought of her even then legendary voice the way they thought of an average two-year-old: three cups of granulated sugar short of "hm... might take to it better if I were on opium." I imagine their spoken opinions contained phrases like "a butterfly being fan- swatted to death" and the like, but we, her constant crazies, wouldn't adore our "Monster" if she didn't beat a few bugs every now and then, the bugs being her contemporary Sarah Brightmans. She took a particular liking to black lipstick roles like Cherubini's Medea (Sit down, Tyler Perry.) Bellini's Norma, and Ponchielli's Giaconda, showing the goths and emos how it's done before they knew what they were. In the Golden Age of community barbecues and town picnics theatre patrons didn't only occasionally stagger away from their seats as if they'd just been smacked by Athena. Maria let us know a long time ago what a real post- extramarital- affair good time really was, complete with human sacrifice and burning temples. What can I say? A Druid will be a Druid, and I guess the daughter of the Greek god of fire has gotta do..

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A Few Daisies, a Little Lace...

Don't let me mislead you. Maria wasn't only about chaining up professed Margo Channings and dragging them along behind her as Eves. She hid some real prettiness behind her fire, and I'm not just talking about the figure she kept that has recently inspired the Barbie company with ideas. She often surprised with little tricks that put extra gold in the glow of the orchestra pit and a tear or two in the eyes of one of the theatre's Anton Egos. She could make anyone believe she was made for the wedding gowns and floral diadems of the title character in Bellini's "The Sleepwalker" ("La Sonnambula") or the Catholic veil of Verdi's more Shakespearean heroine, Leonora, from "The Troubadour" (Il Trovatore), though she didn't pretend to ever have her contagious pyromania completely under control, tapping an aria or two of even their sweetest robin- cheeping with a lit match. The emotion, the truly pitiable self- destruction, the lovability, the scrumptious insanity (We'll get into Lucia di Lammermoor later.) that Callas's voice colored in vivid shades took so much of the J. and W. Grimm blonde out of her Cinderella- syrupy characters' sound that some critics seemed to wonder if she left enough highlights to separate Bellini's Elvira from Cassandra Peterson's. However, the theater of La Scala, Milan, a potential slaughterhouse to any star of the opera world, praised her for what they perceived as expert indulgence of the ideals of old- century opera libretto writers, almost all of whom seemed to think that producing the ultimate dramatic masterpiece meant drawing a line between the need for love and the need for Lithium and, then, for a hundred pages or more, flinging a lilting woman back and forth over it by the hair. It was there that the "Divina" side of her found home.

And a Gold Cup to Put It All In

Ever heard the one about the mouse who ventured just a bit too far from his hole to toss cheese bits at the cats performing "The Magic Flute?" So... classical performers aren't into haters. Who is? However, when they, themselves, share an opinion of a Katy Perry fan, their adoring crowds are quick to defend. Callas mentally stamped the forehead of every Mozart portrait she ever saw with an all- capitals "boring," but we who all pray for the day Mattel comes out with a belting bobblehead counterfeit of opera's queen (M.C. Opera- Jammer? I should get a patent on this one.) don't boo her for it as we might if she hadn't had her hands on the bel canto throne while making that particular reference to said "musical god" (Tchaikovsky's words. Not mine.). She held it for almost twenty years until her abdication in favor of Freddy Mercury bestie Montserrat Caballe, and that means repeated pitch- perfect projection of a musical style that's to the voice what Edward's scissor fingers are to his cheeks. Bel Canto demands that its singers walk out onto a stage and show everyone what they've got by hollering a hundred notes in a minute at the top, bottom, middle, and cross- section of their lungs, sprinting, leaping, and somersaulting all the way to the end of a song. Maria was quite into all the athletics involved. She sculpted her voice box into a special kind of gymnast during her schooldays, a cross between Schwarzenegger and Mr. Fantastic, and with all that expertise under her belt, she didn't see the appeal in popping caffeine for a night in a major role of the Baroque or Classical Era. Instead, she spent her career running up and down every one of opera music's Annapurnas while making adrenaline syringes out of stuff that listeners of her time didn't know packed any potential for total crowd domination. She brought new meaning to the phrase, "doing it all," in opera.


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Oh, if only someone had gotten Callas, pro- screamer, into cryonics... Alas, there will never be another decade like her prime. Good thing for recording technology and the likes of Stephen Chen. Granted, not every listener will agree with my thoughts here upon a first hearing of the voice that has made me Dr. Frankenstein nuts over opera (Remember the Victorian grandmamas). I hope, though, that after this dip into the Lake of Legend a little bit of great music's many- colored waters will be stuck in your ears for awhile. To my fellow opera freaks both new and seasoned, I hope you'll keep coming back for more. Give Everyone's Opera's Facebook page a look for all the Callas audio content you can handle. Until next time, happy opera loving!

Images are protected under the creative commons license here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and are listed as follows: Gilbert A. Viciedo's "La Divina," Florien Stangl's "Darkest Era," and "Maria Callas Exhibition" by Truus, Bob & Jan too!
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    I am an opera freak living on a marvelous  downward spiral toward complete musical insanity, writer's burnout, and gigabytelessness.  

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