So here come the reviews. Most are fair, one [correction, two or three once you pass the nationals and hit the Spectator and Musicweb] is monstrously unfair. As always, it's the story that puts most of 'em off, though I reckon I've seen worse.
Meanwhile, if anyone is wondering who the 'eminent German musicologist' was whom I mention in my programme notes, it is Prof Dr Jens Malte Fischer, a professor at the University of Munich who has written extensively on Mahler and Wagner.
Will add the write-ups as they come in. For starters, here are:
Ed Seckerson in The Independent: "...it succumbs to indulgence over narrative cohesion, and it does so at the same pitch of hysteria for much of its protracted duration. Even so, it's hard to resist the noise that it makes."
Neil Fisher in The Times: "Eighty years on, not just a necessary premiere: at best, an intoxicating one."
Alexander Campbell in Classicalsource.com: "Being greeted with an orchestral layout that includes a piano, organ, celesta and harmonium in addition to an array of percussion, one gets some idea as to the scale of the London Philharmonic’s undertaking to present the piece. No wonder stagings in opera-houses are extremely rare. The real stars of the evening were indeed the orchestral players under Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski."
And if you want a good laugh, Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph: "Ye Gods! In all the annals, can there be an opera containing more unmitigated codswallop than Erich Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane?"
UPDATE: Tim Ashley in The Guardian.
UPDATE: Intermezzo (hiya, glad you didn't leave at the interval!)
ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Clark in the Financial Times.
Dear Rupert, I feel exactly that way towards Bruckner's symphonies, the whole lot of them. Bruckner was the biggest pompous, empty, pontificating, boring, overblown windbag who ever set note to paper - but just because I don't like it, that is not going to stop anybody playing the blasted stuff. After twenty-five years of 'giving him a chance' I just vote with my feet and refuse to go. And I won't go to Berg any more, either, because a few months ago I suffered an actual panic attack in the Three Pieces for orchestra - an aural torture that I suspect the prisoners of Guantanamo are spared.
Critics have always hated Korngold, so this guy is just one more poor lost soul who's not eating enough apricots. What the heck. Our reviews may no longer wrap chips, but they do end up being recycled into loo roll, which is where many of them really belong.
Here are some more backstage pics from the other night.
Friday, November 23, 2007
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19 comments:
RC is one weird dude. Just the other day he put it in print that he often wants to smack Cecilia Bartoli (now, Rupert....). And this is where I get petty and small, but anyone who failed to be bowled over by John Tomlinson's Wotan/Wanderer is an unqualified nerraksgha (any possible present company excepted, of course).
I mean, it's not like unmitigated codswallop is something new to the world of opera (Gounod's and Thomas's Shakespeare, anyone?)
RC has also put in print that he thinks P.G. Wodehouse is irritating and that John Gielgud wasn't much of an actor. Does anyone care? Hindemith, I think it was, who wrote to a critic, "I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me."
Rupert Christiansen? Remember "critic" rhymes with "arthritic" which is symbolic of the thought processes and level of discernment.
BTW, Tim Ashley's review from The Guardian is here. It's not as harsh as Christiansen's, but it's not an unqualified rave either.
While I can understand why people here would hold Rupert Christiansen's extremely vitriolic review up to ridicule, guess what: at least he was honest about the fact that "he hated it, he hated it, he hated it" (the work, that is). Just remember that not long ago, we were all building up a head of expectation for John Foulds' World Requiem, only for the work to dash the anticipation of those waiting to hear it. Even though the criticism there wasn't nearly as snarky, turnabout is fair play. Sure, bad reviews are used to wrap tomorrow's fish at the market, but so are the good reviews. So it goes.
I realize that I say this as a detached observer and one who has not heard the work, except years ago on the Mauceri set that all acknowledge here is cut, unlike the LPO performance. I will have to wait to render judgment on the work itself if and when the CDs come my way.
Thank you for the reviews roundup, saved me the trouble. :-)
I mean, it's not like unmitigated codswallop is something new to the world of opera (Gounod's and Thomas's Shakespeare, anyone?)
The entirety of bel canto (20 minute mad scenes anyone?), early Verdi, the aforementioned Thomas Hamlet where it ends with Hamlet and Ophelia married to great huzzahs, the list is large. Tsk, tsk, RC, engaging in a bit of hyperbole, I'd say.
What a bizzare review--I'd suggest getting some mental health professional involved with him, but it would be futile, I'd guess. As we'd say here in Los Angeles, "Wow, that dude has serious issues". :-)
Seems a bit bizarre that they had the singers behind the orchestra, maybe they wanted the separation for the recording?
the Mauceri set that all acknowledge here is cut, unlike the LPO performance
Wow, really? I'm really going to have to go to the Downtown library here and listen to the recording while reading through the piano/vocal score they have. I might even mark the cuts in pencil! :-)
Sounds like a great night all-round, I can't wait for the recording, even with the apparent problems that Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Hendrick had.
On to the ROH Die Tote Stadt in 2009!
Again, while it's easy to make fun of RC's review, I see it more as total honesty of what he felt. His "issues" are simple: he totally and unequivocally loathed the opera. At least he wasn't boring about it.
(And I agree with JD about Bruckner, even though I have a concert-going friend who love Bruckner symphonies. It says something that perhaps the one AB symphony I've heard live that I've enjoyed the most was an early one, #2. It helped perhaps that the conductor went for it full throttle and wasn't "churchy" about his interpretation. My friend and I agree to disagree on Bruckner.)
Some composers no matter how great, will just never get their due, Korngold and Nicolas Flagello and Arnold Bax being foremost among them. When one examines their styles this can be seen as no mere coincidence. At this late date we still have reactionaries guarding the imaginary gated entry into the equally mythical pantheon of "The Greats", said gates flung open only to those employing a polite modicum of romanticism.
There was a time when critics were formidably educated, which allowed one to grant validity to their opines negative or otherwise. That time is long past. While there are critics who can properly perceive the tremendous mechanical workings of a work like Heliane, they are few and far between and particularly absent in the UK.
BTW, it was Max Reger who coined the timeless riposte from his watercloset to a critic of his day.
Thought RC's was bad? Check out this one: http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2007/Jul-Dec07/korngold2111.htm
Thanks, WSF, but I don't think I can bear to look. JW, you are spot on.
Sorry, but I don't see what's wrong with Heliane! OK, the libretto isn't great, but compared to some of the bel canto junk and the efforts of the ridiculous, amateurish yet lauded-to-the-skies home-cooking of SIR Michael Tippett it's actually not so bad. The dramatic structure is sound and the message - "God actually approves of loving sexual relationships" - isn't so bad either. I think the music is absolutely glorious and all that upset the performance was a few logistical problems and a baritone having an off-night.
More importantly, I have more respect for Vladimir Jurowski than for all the critics put together, and if he thinks it's worth doing, then it is.
I think critics are scared of praising Korngold because if they do, they might expose too many home truths about everything they've always praised that is the opposite of it yet has turned audiences off going to hear contemporary music...it would show them up as twits. And they couldn't have that.
Probably the right decision, Jess. It's a blood-boiler, that one.
While we're on the topic of the libretto, there was one thing I found funny about my reaction to it. I didn't have a problem with the religious platitudes (embarrasing to me, but that's just me) projected up onto the surtitle screen for all to see; the sometimes erratic nature of the dialogue (some characters' replies seemed to bear little or no relation to what was previously directed at them)....what really bothered me were the references to Italy and India. It just spoiled the out-of-time, neverneverland quality of the piece which I dug so much.
WSF, that's a good point about Italy etc. My biggest problem with the words is that in Act I the Stranger says "God, I have never believed in you..." and then proceeds to spend the rest of the opera holding forth like an apostle, or similar.
A friend writes this morning with the reminder that critic RC is the editor of the recent much-praised edition of 'Traditional Anglian Hymns'. No wonder he couldn't cope with 'Heliane'.
In reference to your comment about The Stranger in Das Wunder der Heliane saying in Act I, "God, I have never believed in you. . ." and then thereafter sounding like an Apostle, I have something to add. While I admittedly have never read the libretto to the opera and might be off base because context is everything, nonetheless the Stranger's comment and actions thereafter that you have described do not seem strange or out of place at all to me. Rather, it sounds like the building of a good dramatic arc for the character. After all, if you are going to dramatize the evils of prostitution, corrupt a virgin, not a whore. Similarly, if you are going to dramatize a story that ends in a resurrection, then resurrect an atheist or agnostic, not a Believer.
At least he wasn't boring about it
Fine, he loathed the opera, but why all the clutching of pearls, the putting of the back of the hand on the forehead whilst declaiming "Oh God, why hast foresaken me" and so on? Theatrics like that are fine for a Christmas panto, but for a supposedly serious music critic [adopts haughty, sniffy tone] it's all a bit, well, unseemly. [/haught, sniffy tone]
At this late date we still have reactionaries guarding the imaginary gated entry into the equally mythical pantheon of "The Greats", said gates flung open only to those employing a polite modicum of romanticism
Well put. See also: Scriabin, Szymanowski and my favorite opera composer, Schreker.
OK, the libretto isn't great, but compared to some of the bel canto junk and the efforts of the ridiculous, amateurish yet lauded-to-the-skies home-cooking of SIR Michael Tippett it's actually not so bad
His music has fallen off the face of the earth since his death, hasn't it? And yes, the librettos to The Knot Garden and The Ice Break are utterly embarrassing.
I think critics are scared of praising Korngold because if they do, they might expose too many home truths about everything they've always praised that is the opposite of it yet has turned audiences off going to hear contemporary music...
There's the same dynamic going on in pop music criticism. There's some Untouchables: U2, Radiohead, Elvis Costello, here in America, Bruce Springsteen. Even if they issue an album with only 3 good songs on it, there's all sorts of excuse making and outright lying about the quality because they're the anointed ones, The Bands/Performers That All Others Are Measured Against. Meanwhile, King Crimson could wipe the floor with the lot of 'em, and they're sneered at, dismissed out of hand, no matter how good the music might be.
For the anti-Brucknerians here, for me the equivalents are Haydn and Brahms.
Think you've seen it all? Just try Michael Tanner in The Spectator. He slams the work with terms that the Third Reich would have approved. How any serious (?) music critic in 2007 can deem 'degenerate' a fitting concept by which to judge a piece of music is utterly beyond me. Of course, he left after Act II. What did I tell you about critics who didn't stay for Act III?
(I left two comments on the review, but only the second one got through; consequently it reads like nonsense.)
If 'Heliane', with its warmth, humanity and message about the transcendent power of sexual love is 'degenerate', where does that leave Britten's miserable tales that glorify older men maltreating or lusting after small boys? Or aren't we allowed to ask?
Sorry Jessica, but did you really have to lash out at Tippett and Britten? I don't see how Britten glorifies any of those characters. Ian Bostridge got it right, I feel, in a recent interview wherein he spoke of Britten's ambivalent approach: http://www.musicalcriticism.com/interviews/bostridge-1107.shtml
As for Sir Michael's literary efforts; the glory of the music notwithstanding The Midsummer Marriage makes me giggle (lines like the proper care for a dancer's trained body have me falling off the sofa) but I do think that the libretto for King Priam is a serious piece of work and the opera is Tippett's masterpiece.
Thanks, WSF, you have just proved exactly the point I wanted to prove!! :-)
On Britten and Tippett, I think Ken Russell got them exactly right in his excellent documentary survey "Ken Russell's ABC of British Music". Essential viewing!
Um....if you say so. :s
I do!
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