Monday
Jul142014
OperaNow! #218: So Long, Kid
Monday, July 14, 2014 at 1:05PM 
Arts Council puts the squeeze on ENO (they lost weight in preparation)...Eric Owens puts his money where his mouth is...Some revalations on how The Met chorus is paid.
In Oliver's Corner, seven tenors-you-should-know show you how to talk to a lady, how to scare the audience, and how to vocally demonstrate wood.
Plus Guess Who Died? The Man, The Maestro, The Maazel.
This week features Michael, The OC and Mike Mayes and Tim Myers (with special guest stars at the end.)
Reader Comments (8)
who's there...
interrupting Mazer...
interrupting Mazer wh---
YEEEEHAAAAWWWW!!!!
O_o
Basically ENO have a couple of problems. One - they carry on singing in godawful English translations even though surtitles have made this redundant, while at the same time neglecting repertoire that was actually *written* in English, and two - they programmed operas during a recession as if it were boom time - lots of experimental stagings, lots of unusual repertoire, lots of expensive new sets, etc. They do good work sometimes though - new operas like Thebans, appealing to younger audiences by putting an a Damon Albarn opera, getting Terry Gilliam (!) to direct Berlioz productions, and so on. They even do G&S sometimes... Now they're branching out into musicals (because apparently London doesn't have any of those?), but I'm not sure its really going to work. They quite literally cannot give tickets away at the moment.
You really can go to the opera in London for four quid/pounds/squiggly lines/monopoly money.... so long as you're a student and you sit up in the gods. I did this once, but never again - all the action in the piece happened in the one corner of the stage that I couldn't see. Big canonical works are still expensive, but you can see less obvious works for very reasonable prices - the past three things I've been to have all been about £20. I'm actually paying more for a ticket to see Moses und Aron at the ROH than to see Joyce Joyce DiDonato in Alcina at the Barbican later this year... so it really varies.
I only recognised Corelli. I feel bad. I don't pay enough attention to the names...
Michael Mayes's interview on the Denver Westworld website was also really interesting. Hopefully Dead Man Walking will appear on this side of the Atlantic at some point...
Finally, Oliver - I have a suggestion/request! Would you consider doing an Oliver Corner on a Gluck opera before the end of the year? Its his 300th anniversary and I think he needs some more love. I'm not sure if you've covered him before, or what operas. Feel free to ignore this request though.
As for your tenors OC...boy, I now really know I'm much more of a soprano fan than a tenor fan...I think I recognized the first two: Kaufmann and Carreras but after that, I'm really not sure. I guess Domingo and Alagna were there due to your clues, but I actually didn't recognize their voices!
Your general comments and ideas about how the music works are correct, Oliver. The way the key changes work are directly related to the A min - C maj - F maj chord sequence in the coda. The idea is that by holding a common tone between chords (or keys) you get not only common relationships like relative keys (D flat major to B flat minor), but also much more dreamy and exotic sounding relationships as well (F major to D flat major).
Here a run down:
measures 1-8: D flat major
Common tone D flat becomes C sharp to make
9-12 A major
C sharp returns to D flat
13-16 D flat major
17-20 B flat minor
This next key change is less obvious, and the orchestra dropping out for 2 beats lets it not sound strange.
21-23 A flat major (that D flat minor chord is interesting)
You are absolutely right that it sounds like the A flat major should continue. But the melody ascends to C instead of descending to A flat in 24, and the C is held onto while the upper instruments play scales in F major to make
24-31 F major with lots of chromatic chords
The next modulation is a version of keeping a common tone F, but in 29-30 there are interesting harmonic shifts between F major and C half diminished seventh chords. I expect the F major chord to come back in 32, but F in the bass becomes the third of a D flat major chord and sets up a cadence in 33-34 to confirm
32-end D flat major
All of this combined common-tone with chromatic change creates the lovely shifting atmosphere that you describe so well in the podcast.
That analysis should be published somewhere.
If it were, you would have saved me a full hour of staring at that calculus problem of a score.
I was about to offer a harmonic analysis of The Flower Song, but I see another David beat me to it, and by a few years. I would only add that the trick Bizet relies on is that he modulates via the voice-leading; ie, F major to D-flat is accomplished by holding onto the F, flattening the A to A-flat, and lifting the C to D-flat... and voila, you're there. The trick is to make it sound seamless, not jarring. But I would question if these are "real" modulations with convincing, arriving cadences at all? Or is Bizet meandering around through unexpected harmonic centers to make a dramatic point with the music? Compare Bizet here to Mozart, in the Act 2 sextet in Don Giovanni, where Mozart "jumps" from B-flat (Elvira, Leporello) right to D-major (Anna,Ottavio) without warning, when Anna and Ottavio enter the scene. There are dramatic reasons for these moments.
This is not a criticism, but an observation. Everything Oliver pointed out in his deconstruction of the aria is true and accurate, but listening to it, it seemed to me that the analysis failed to see the forest through the trees. Why is this aria placed right dead-center in the opera, without structure, form, reliable harmonic progressions, regular phrases? Compared to "common practice" composition, this aria is a mess, strikingly different from anything we've heard up to this moment, but Bizet is deliberate about it, so what point is he making? It's not that D-flat is the key of the rose, or F major is brighter than D-flat, or A major is shiny and clear. Those are the tools, but they are not the reason. The music breaks conventions and loses form and structure and convention, because that's where Don Jose is psychologically - disintegrating, about to come apart at the seams. Don Jose, like his aria, is a mess, about to come unglued - which we'll see when Morales enters a moment later. Even Joe's vocal line ends without unresolution; Bizet waits to resolve it finally in the orchestral coda, not with Jose's sung words. Bizet is giving us a harmonic view of Don Jose's personality at this point - he's all over the place emotionally and just barely holding it together.