Monday
Sep302013
OperaNow! #200: Looks Like We Made It
Monday, September 30, 2013 at 7:54AM 
James Levine Returns To The Met...Opening Night Protest at The Met...Composers Look to Books And Movies For Material...The bell tolls for thee, New York City Opera...Dallas Opera Balances Budget Ahead Of Schedule...Weight Loss Film Shown At Opera House...Human Piano.
Oliver's Corner Finishes Up Eugene Onegin with the man himself and Prince Gremin.
All that plus an alternate universe where NYCO thrives and The Met Dives...what could have happened?
This week features Michael, The OC, Doug Dodson and Jenny Rivera. Plus, some old tyme podcasters.
Reader Comments (9)
Sorry folks, I was negligent in giving Michael links to the clips I used.
If you are curious:
Georg Ots singing the "Response" arioso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ae6SzWEnAc
Prince Gremin's aria
A section
http://www.amazon.com/Eugene-Onegin-1955-Digital-Remaster/dp/B000TE1F0G/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1380563674&sr=8-7&keywords=boris+christoff+onegin
B section
http://www.amazon.com/Eugene-Onegin-Op-24-vozrasti/dp/B009E2O5L0/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1380563572&sr=8-19&keywords=ghiaurov+onegin
A reprise
http://www.amazon.com/Lyubvi-vsye-vozrasti-pokorni/dp/B0093NUAKK/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1380563627&sr=8-21&keywords=ghiaurov+onegin
Hvorostovsky in Act 3 scene 1 arioso
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018NLY8U/ref=dm_dp_trk28?ie=UTF8&qid=1380563744&sr=8-2
Singing is a big deal in Estonia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution
Also, with regard to operas being based on films/books etc. - I feel like this can work (and obviously has worked many times in the past) but since, as Jenny pointed out, opera is having to compete with every other form of entertainment, I'm not sure I really see the point or the benefit of trying to imitate all those other forms. To me, what would make more sense would be if opera were to play to its strengths, i.e. showing how different and unique it is compared to pretty much every other artform, but also how it combines many different artforms. While film (and especially film music) has a great deal in common with opera, and indeed the former can be seen as a successor to the latter, they are very different media. For example, one of film's most obvious strengths is the ability to cut quickly between different scenes, or even to cross-cut between several simultaneous scenes, but this is not really possible in quite the same way on stage. There are a number of ways around this (the use of technology as in something like Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden, the use of lots of scene changes and intermezzi as in Wozzeck or Pelleas, or the use of lots of exposition to explain what has happened in the scenes that we cannot see as in something like the first act of Tristan), but in the end I think stage plays are much easier to turn into operas since they are also theatrical and use many of the same devices. Salome, Figaro, Otello, etc. Film just has a different grammar altogether. I think short stories (e.g. the original version of Brokeback Mountain) and classic tales/myths/legends which don't necessary have a definitive form and are thus very easy to adapt to different forms (e.g. Orpheus and Eurydice) also make a lot of sense. Also, when adapting things from one medium to another, I tend to think of someone like Hitchcock, who would often take really bad pulp fiction which was not particularly well-known as his source material, and then use the basic story as a frame on which he could hang lots of his own ideas - ideas which were more interesting than those in the source material and more suited to the medium he was adapting into. La bohème is extremely well-known, but how many people read the source material, Scènes de la vie de bohème? Anyway, I'm rambling on, and the more I do so, the less sure I am of what I'm saying, or that there are any hard and fast rules about adaptation...
Having said all that, I think Jurassic Park the opera would be amazing. Just imageine the "clever girl" death aria, the chorus of the velociraptors, a long recit section in which Jeff Goldblum gives a series of very detailed directions to Laura Dern, not to mention the possibilities for the orchestration...
Great episode! Can't wait for the next Slavic Oliver's corner!
The alternate universe opening was very creative, though the transcending space-time music loop was .....
Congrats on 200! You guys keep me relevant and up to date in the opera world, so thank you.
...Dope as shit?
Amazing, you guys are soooooooooo great !
Congratulations on #200, keep it going!
I've been listening to you guys for years, via podcast on my trusty ipod, sometimes on a bus bumping through Patagonia, sometimes sitting by a volcanic lake, now on a little island on the West Coast...When people ask me, how do you know so much about this opera - I say "Oliver's Corner"! Thanks to all of you for all the time and energy you put into the show. (And I have to say to Michael - the audio quality is great :-)
To the next 200...cheers!
Congratulations, you guys (and lady) and here's to many more!
I loved the Oliver's corner being consistent with what's going on at the Met. It made Saturday's viewing that much more enjoyable. It wouldn't make me upset if he kept that up!
Needless to say that Opera Now podcast is the best thing to come along in opera history in well, 200 episodes anyway. Congrats for persevering! And I'll add that the Oliver's Corner Onegin edition was infinitely more interesting than that very boring MET production. Are you guys going to discuss it on the next episode? The singing was very good overall, but the actual production felt like back-pedaling to me to a much more conservative era of opera staging. Is this what Gelb feels is the future?
And for Doug - what about One Man, Two Guvnors, the opera? Someone should do that.