On Stage (and walls) Melbourne: Rufus Wainwright's First Opera

July 10, 2009

Rufus Wainwright's First Opera

Prima Donna by Rufus Wainwright premieres at the Manchester Festival tonight. It will be performed in Melbourne and Toronto, that's official.

I've heard some snippets and have to say its not as bad as people made it out to be. It is set in Paris in 1970 and is to a French libretto. Wainwright has assimilated a mish-mash of post French sounding Ravel music into what I have heard, lots of jolly woodwind a la Poulenc and Ibert. Janis Kelly, as the Prima Donna Régine sounds very impressive too. Via You Tube Rufus in Paris in June sings an aria from Prima Donna (believe me Janis Kelly is much, much better)

Update: Reviews are in...

The Guardian 12 July "The score itself comes clothed as Strauss, Massenet and Puccini; Wainwright would seem to be on a mission to drag opera back into the late 19th century. But his gift as a melodist and an orchestrator are in no doubt, having been proved on a series of albums which are mini-operas in their own right."

The Independent "Musically Prima Donna is at best banal, at worst boring. The orchestral writing is lumpy, leaden and repetitive, so that the merest flash of inspiration – a dashing musical signature for example – is welcomed with relief as an original idea. Wainwright didn't need to pay homage to all those dead composers he adores by including so many fragments of their scores in his own opera."

Jonathan Summers (left) and some piece of totty in Prima Donna

Jonathan Summers appears to have the choice part as the "sleazy, bullying, Mephisto-type butler" (all in a days work when your bread and butter consists of Scarpia, Iago and nasty Verdi baritones).
The New York Times is very insightful and - shock horror! written by someone who knows something about music! (and who agrees with me about the Poulenc influences) "As a longtime admirer of his music, I wish I could report that “Prima Donna” fulfilled his ambitions for writing a fresh and personal new opera. He certainly brings deep talents and potential to the challenge."

The Manchester Confidential Not an insightful review but it gives the best synopsis of the opera and commentary on the illustrative nature of Rufus's music.

Bloomberg Hates it!

Pity Rufus is such a nong about the artform he claims to love so much. In the slurry of interviews and advance publicity for the opera he claims that "there's no opera about an opera singer ... It doesn't exist in the repertoire.”

Yes there are operas about opera singers, Tosca and The Makropulos Case have leading characters who are opera singers although the plots feature little about their actual professions as both Floria and Emilia are caught up some heavy personal stuff. What Rufus probably means is that there is no opera about being an opera singer.

Interested parties might like to add to the list of operas about or featuring characters who are singers that we can send to Rufus.

Dominic Argento - The Aspern Papers (Juliana Bordereau) clip at YouTube [Elisabeth *sigh* Soderstrom and Neil Rosenshein]
Dominic Argento - Postcard from Morocco (An Operetta Singer, A Foreign Singer, An
Operetta Singer)

Arthur Benjamin - The Prima Donna (Olympia & Fiammetta)
Robert Russell Bennett - Maria Malibran (Maria Malibran)

Daniel Catan - Florencia en el Amazonas (Florencia Grimaldi) also at Wikipedia

Katherine Davis - The Unmusical Impresario (Madame DaCapo, a failed opera singer)
Donizetti - Le Convenienze Ed Inconvenienze Teatrali or Viva la Momma! (Daria Garbinati, Luiga Castragatti, Guglielmo Antolstoinoff & Donna Agata Scanagalli, don't ya love those names!?)
Joseph Haydn - La Canterina (Gasparina)
Paul Hindemith - Cardillac (The Lady, a Prima Donna at the local opera)

Sydney Hodkinson - St Carmen of the Main (Carmen, a Country & Western singer)

Adriana Hölszky - Giuseppe e Sylvia (Giuseppina Strepponi)
Janáček - Věc Makropulos (Emila Marty) clip at YouTube [Raina Kabaivanska]
Leoncavallo - Zaza (Zaza, a cafe singer)
Siegfried Matthus - Farinelli or the Power of Singing (Farinelli)
Mozart - Der Schauspieldirektor (Madamoiselles Herz & Siberklang, Monsieur Vogelsang) clip at YouTube [Yvonne Kenny & Judith Howarth]
Michael Nyman - The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (Dr. P) youtube clip not from the original film
Offenbach - La Pericole (Pericole, a street singer [also featured in operas by Henri Busser and Lord Berners)

Offenbach - Les Contes d' Hoffmann (Stella)
Offenbach - Monsieur Choufleuri restera chez lui - (Henriette Sontag, Giovanni Battista Rubini & Antonio Tamburini are impersonated)
Offenbach - La Leçon de chant électromagnétique (Jean Matois, a tenor whose voice is created by the elctro-magnetic method of the singing teacher Pacifico Toccato)
Thomas Pasatieri - Frau Margot (Margot)

Inspired by the story of Helene Berg's attempt to keep the third act of her husband's incompleted opera Lulu under wraps, Frau Margot is the widow of a famous composer and was a famous singer herself.

Laurent Petitgirard - Joseph Merrick dit Elephant Man (La Colorature, Celena [this role reputedly supplants Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos as the most difficult and high flying role for a coloratura soprano])
Ponchielli - La Gioconda (Gioconda)
Jonathan Sheffer - The Mistake (Ariel)

Set during the interval of a vocal recital, the soprano Ariel is upset over having made a mistake during the first part of her recital. She is trying to work out how and why she went wrong, is reassured by her friends and vocal coach, has an agrument with her boyfriend, Sandy, regains her composure and resturns for the second half of her concert.

Puccini - Tosca (Floria Tosca)
Antonio Salieri - Prima la musica e poi le parole (Eleonora & Tonina)
Domenico Scarlatti - La Dirindina (Dirindina & Liscione)

Comic intermezzo along the lines of Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona. An old music master, Don Carissimo, overhears the soprano Dirindina and the castrato Liscione as they rehearse a love scene from an opera Didone Abbandonata. He misunderstands the situation and thinks they have actually made love, interrupts them and, thinking Dirindina will become pregnant, tries to make them agree to marriage for the sake of the child. In the closing trio he sings "Give me your hand, Liscione, give me yours Dirindina, for your little child will be legitimate. " Liscione and Dirindina respond "Stop -- I'm a capon! Stop -- I'm a hen! A pair like that doesn't get together and never lays an egg."

Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos (Prima Donna)
Richard Strauss - Intermezzo (Christine Storch, based on Strauss's singer wife Pauline)
Richard Strauss - Intermezzo (a singer)
Richard Strauss - Capriccio (two Italian singers)
Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier (an Italian singer) clip at YouTube [Piotr Beczala]

2 comments:

Dan Vo said...: Oh Michael, you always have the answer!

I read that quote on another website and it bugged me too and I couldn't come up with the titles until started reading your list and only then did Ariadne, Tosca and The Impresario all started flashing in my head like neon lights!; July 11, 2009 3:35 AM
Michael Magnusson said...: You'd think someone would have told him. He also made the same statement in a BBC interview, so he's not been corrected in between interviews or (perhaps) people are fabricating newspapers stories by using existing interview material.; July 11, 2009 9:52 AM

Post a Comment

Q: What is the future of arts criticism, in your view?A: Blogs.
Anne Midgette, critic for The New York Times (The Washington Post as of February 2008)

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: They know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan

A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
George Bernard Shaw

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out of yourself; in reviewing you take it out of other people.
George Bernard Shaw

To a professional critic theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
George Bernard Shaw

Nothing makes me angrier than critics imputing motives to artists when they cannot know what those motives are. A critic's job is to be interesting about why he or she likes or dislikes something.
Peter Hall

A dramatic critic ought to have an eye for detail. If he has no eye for detail, he will never make a dramatic historian, for it is the detail that gives life. If he cannot distinguish the significant detail from the insignificant, he will be only a gossip-writer. But if he can recreate on the page what he has seen and heard on stage, and at the same time convey the emotional impression it has made on him, he will, in my opinion, be discharging his functions in a just and honourable manner.
Harold Hobson

One of the most characteristic sounds of the English Sunday morning is Harold Hobson barking up the wrong tree.
Penelope Gilliatt

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Kenneth Tynan

No theatre could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
Kenneth Tynan

The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.
Kenneth Tynan

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
Kenneth Tynan

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan

Western man, especially the Western critic, still finds it very hard to go into print and say: 'I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection'.
Kenneth Tynan

The critic ... has done his job if he evokes, precisely and with his prejudices clearly charted, the state of his mind after the performance has impinged on it ... He will find readers if, and only if, he writes clearly and gaily and truly; if he regards himself as a specially treated mirror recording a unique and unrepeatable event.
Kenneth Tynan

Has anyone ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P G Wodehouse

You cannot have critics with standards; you can only have music with standards which critics may observe.
Alan Walker An Anatomy of Musical Criticism (1968)

Although he never read them, Gustav Mahler used the word 'superiors' when referring to critics.

I try to keep an open mind, even when viewing the dreariest efforts, that the people involved are not criminals ... Even an IBM machine blows a gasket now and then.
John McClain

I don’t think a critic needs to have written a play or to have acted. I do think he should appreciate the niceties of theatrical technique, the dramatist’s, the actor’s, the producer’s. He should be able, during any performance, to separate the strands of which it is made.
J C Trewin

To appreciate, in the best sense, is harder, more rewarding. Enjoy yourself, said C E Montague. “To make people like a thing you must delight in it first.” But (some argue) should not the critic be the ‘Keep Out’ notice, the growling dog, the speck of ratsbane? I feel that any writer perpetually cynical, perpetually displeased, should find work more congenial. It is possible to keep standards high, to be selective, to do the reader service without being ashamed of decent courtesy (‘softness’ is, I fear the cant phrase) or regretting that a notice has not been inscribed upon asbestos.
J C Trewin

When an impecunious music critic died in Vienna, his colleagues made a round of local musicians to raise money for the funeral."How much is my share?" asked one of them."Thirty kronen," was the reply."Here's sixty kronen," said the musician, "bury two music critics."
Quoted by Nicolas Slonimsky in A Thing or Two about Music (1948)

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men. Asking a working writer what he thinks of critics is like asking a lampost what it feels about dogs.
John Osborne

For the most part men without intellect, perception, sensitivity, or background, they pander to the tastes of the empty-headed, the bored, the insensitive, the complacent, who constitute the bulk of the agency trade and supply the golden stream upon which the Broadway theatre feeds.
Elmer Rice

There are two types of criticism, subjective criticism and bad criticism.
George Jean Nathan

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.
George Jean Nathan

No chronically happy man is a trustworthy critic.
George Jean Nathan

The dramatic critic who is without prejudice is on a plane with the general who does not believe in taking human life.
George Jean Nathan

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
Dustin Hoffman

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.
Max Reger, responding to a music critic

I do not wish to suggest that Australians are not natural theatregoers, merely that they look curiously relieved once on their way back to to their cars.
Sheridan Morley

I would as soon have the opinion of a stagehand as to the likelihood of a play's success as that of the drama's ablest observer.
Arthur Hopkins

The critic leaves at curtain fall
To find, in starting to review it,
He scarcely saw the play at all
For watching his reaction to it.
E B White

Sing a lament for the plays that fail -A dirge for the shows that fold.
A tear on the bier of the flops of the year
And the tickets that couldn't be sold.
Requiem sound for the overly ribald -The "ball in the air" that was faultily dribbled - And the play that had little to say.
Wringing of hands for the major fiascos,
The Saturday sundown of would-be Belascos
And the scenery carted away.
Sing a lament.
Sing for the actors who practiced in vain
Lines that were labeled inept and inane.
Sing for the orchestras down in the pits
Playing the numbers that sounded like hits.
Sing for the authors who wrote in the dawn,
The 'doctors" who came when the patient was gone.
Sing for the backers who put up the dough -One for backer and the two for the show.
Sing with your faces way down on the floor
The dancers, directors, the deans of decor.
Sing a lament.
Sing a lament for the plays that will fail
For Sullivan and McBride
But make it a wake for the critics' mistake -The Beautiful One that died.
Howard Dietz

...if one gives a concert that costs, say, 1000 marks, then one finds, some days later, according to the usual procedure, the 'review'. It usually runs as follows: "Herr X or Fräulein Y played Chopin in a very gifted fashion. Yet the final refinement of touch was lacking. A talent capable of development, which one would like to encounter more often."
Hanns Eisler On the Bourgeois Concert Business