Monday
Sep092013
OperaNow! #198: How Many Crossroads Can There Be?
Monday, September 9, 2013 at 9:28AM 
NYCO at yet another crossroads (and not the good one with Ralph Macchio)...Debora Voigt says to turn out the lights, the party's over...Gerard Mortier undergoes cancer treatment...Courting the young tech community in Silicon Valley.
This week in Oliver's Corner, we begin a three-part series on Eugene Onegin just in time for the Met season premiere with the music of Lensky performed by Neil Shicoff, Nicolai Gedda, and two mystery tenors.
Plus Guess Who Died?
This week features Michael, The OC, Doug Dodson and Jenny Rivera
@operanowpodcast, @theoperaqcompany, @dougdodsonenews, @jjennymr
Reader Comments (3)
I really enjoyed the show this week. Lots of good stories, a nice Oliver's Corner, plus Jenny (I really like it when she joins in with the proceedings).
I think you were thinking of this French and Saunders sketch.
Listening from the UK, I couldn't help but notice certain parallels between New York City Opera and English National Opera. Both are sort of the "other" opera house in their respective cities, both tackle quite a wide range of interesting repertoire, and both have been encountering some financial difficulties of late.
IWith regard to Eugene Onegin, I just have a few quick comments that I wanted to make. Firstly, I really like Russian as a language for singing. I'm not a singer so I have no idea if it's full of tricky diphthongs or whatever, but as a listener, I've always really enjoyed it, and never found it intimidating. To me it has all the fluidity of French, without any of the nasal qualities. Plus it always sounds slightly plaintive and resigned, for some reason. Nevertheless, it was really interesting to hear Wunderlich singing it in German - I've read quite a lot about Mahler, and he gave the German premiere of the work, which prompted Tchaikovsky to say of him "the conductor here is not some second-rate fellow, but positively a genius". As you probably know, it was common practice to translate the text into the local language, so it was interesting to see that the emotional heft of the work was still very present even when rendered into German. I think a "name party" is an Eastern European tradition - instead of having birthdays, you celebrate your name day (based on the calendar of saints' days) instead. Whenever I hear "Kuda, kuda", I always end up thinking of this similarly titled 2012 Eurovision song. I think what Oliver said about Lensky being an pure Enlightenment figure vs. Onegin being a bit more complicated makes a lot of sense. I think Onegin is a much more Romantic, and specifically Byronic hero. And given that Tchaikovsky wrote a whole opera inspired by Byron, I don't think that's too much of a stretch. The comments about the Italian/bel canto/classical influence also make sense to me, since Tchaikovsky worshipped Mozart (literally - he called him a "musical Christ"), particularly Don Giovanni, which I believe was the first opera he ever saw, and one of the works which really turned him on to music. And of course he was a great admirer of bel canto operas and Verdi, although he did have time for certain Wagner operas, particularly Tannhauser and Lohengrin. I've not listened to any of Mussorgskys operas (no libretti :-( ), but I'm surprised that Oliver doesn't like Shostakovich - I've always thought of him as being fairly accessible. I saw the prologue from Orango earlier this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though it's incomplete. Lady Macbeth is AMAZING too.
I liked "fading into the afterlife". Such a laboured euphemism.
P.S. Jenny was right, I have never heard of Pacific Heights.
I forgot to mention - I actually found Eugene Onegin quite underwhelming the first time I heard it, but I saw it recently at the cinema in a live ROH broadcast and although I had some slightly quibbles with the production, I enjoyed it a lot more when I saw it for a second time. One more thing - THANK YOU FOR USING THE BYCHKOV RECORDING, IT IS TERRIFIC. Rupert Christiansen seems to think that Bychkov is a likely successor to Antonio Pappano, but who knows. Some people didn't seem particularly impressed with his recent Tristan at the Proms.
Yes, Pacific Heights is the correct name and an entertaining movie, although I don't recall Mr Lofty (Lofti ?) being one of the victims in the house. Since I am now in my late 60s, I suppose any number of your viewers were still watching cartoons when it was out.
I didn't phone because I was afraid of waking the baby and having you catch shit for encouraging that.
Happy Anniversary, you two. Also, since Oliver hasn't started on Cosi, does that mean that you will be soon going for #300?
Mark