Get into the Elevator with Webern

What We Hate Now, apparently, and some fairly dodgy assertions as to why:



One could say a lot about the fundamental assumptions underlying this study, but for now let's just say that if they're going to do studies like this, they really need to do them in Sociology Departments that actually know something about music.

Questionable notions resulting in the conflation of "folk" (whatever that is) and "country" (whenever that is) aside, one thing orchestra marketing departments might learn from this odd little exercise is to ditch this absurd idea that classical music can and should be marketed as "relaxing". Market it as what it is -- complex and awesome and all over the map -- and maybe you'll still have an audience in thirty years.

Reckoning

So the other day I was on a long lunch buying a new, say, widget and, after a detailed discussion on current trends in widget design, fell to talking about Widget Guy's nefarious past as a Physical Anthropology undergraduate on a Romano-Dacian tomb excavation in Serbia back in probably the 80's. How we got on that subject I have no idea, but it led in turn to a discussion of the now-defunct Classics program at the uni we both attended, and the fact that, although we both work in jobs that -- on paper -- have little to do with what we studied as Humanities undergrads, we still actually value the work we did there. More to the point, and an exponentially more important point it is, neither of us consider our education to have ended just because at some stage we got handed nicely printed sheets of vellum. Then other customers came in, and he had to get back to work and I had to get back to the Borg Cube.

The Borg Cube is an interesting case study in that it is filled with people who are either Accountants by training or they are not. Those who are not fall generally into two categories: those who have college degrees in something interesting and those who have none. Of the three other people in my immediate pod, two are high school graduates and one has degrees in Economics and Public Administration. Over the wall is someone with a degree in Piano Performance. There's a bass player down the aisle, and in the aisle nearest
 the windows is an honest-to-God self-confessed English Major. (Over beyond the atrium is a guy who has the Opera News cover with Ambrogio Maestri pinned up on his wall -- I haven't figured out his deal yet.)

They don't teach Platonic solids in Accounting either.

Then there's my buddy, we'll call him K. He's got an Accounting degree, and he's a news junkie. We spend what our bosses probably think is an inordinate amount of time talking politics, and those conversations are fun and interesting and wide-ranging. So when I got back to the Cube, I told him about this conversation I had with Widget Guy. Interestingly, the thing that I found cool -- the fact that this conversation about archaeological excavations had cropped up in such an unexpected place at an unexpected time -- was what he thought was funny. As in "Hahahaha! a guy who majored in Anthropology is selling widgets! How pathetic! Isn't that hilarious and totally justifies every [lame-assed] notion ever floated in the mainstream press about 'useless degrees'!" Of course, attendant on this is a subtextual "Yay me for being smart enough to choose Accounting! At least I'm not that guy!"

Except, K, you are that guy. Which is to say not Widget Guy, but the Mythical Creature that looms so huge and pale in your imagination, standing in a corner with a sign around its neck that says Widget Guy: Humanities Major. Let's examine:

Widget Guy has two lives: one where he has started, grown, and maintained a successful business for at least the last decade, and one where he's kept up with developments in Physical Anthropology (and there have been a lot since he walked off the podium with a sheepskin, so this isn't just reading the latest outdated Missing Link Discovery! Weekly Report on Yahoo News).

K, on the other hand, has one life, comprised almost entirely of work and family. And much of what he experiences with family he grouses about later at work. We can only hope he grouses about work to family on the flip side, because fair is fair.

Conclusion: K, you don't get out enough.

Widget Guy is naturally gregarious, which is a benefit when working in retail, particularly in an independent business where the owner is doing most of the customer service and all of the business networking.

K is also naturally gregarious, which is not a benefit when you're supposed to be hunkered down in your Borg subcube doing Borg subwork.

Conclusion: K, you are trapped in a tiny cube.

Widget Guy has kids. One is in an Architecture program at a major tech school. The other is looking at Classics programs at the dreaded Expensive Liberal Arts Colleges. Widget Guy doesn't seem worried about them. He says that Classics Department chairs have made a point of asking him, the parent, if he supports his kid's interest in majoring in Classics. Of course he does. Why? Because in his other life he is not Widget Guy but Romano-Dacian Tomb Excavation Guy.

K also has kids. K worries a lot about them. They're out of college, struggling as kids in their twenties usually do. He's not sure they've chosen wisely or well in their college careers, and he wonders how long he will have to support them.

Conclusion: K, not only are you trapped in a cube, but you have convinced yourself you cannot afford to leave. Ever.

So while we allow the public discourse on higher education to make bogus and weirdly manichaean divisions between the Marketable and the Non-marketable, maybe we should also recognize that we are tending to confuse the concept of Education with the concept of Training. Education is about developing habits of mind. Training is about learning how to do a job. K's inherent assumption, the thing that made him laugh, is as common to the Borg Cube as it is elsewhere: that Humanities people are losers who wasted their college education in frivolous pursuit of useless knowledge, while the smart ones had the foresight to dedicate their undergraduate careers to something perceived to be useful, practical, lucrative (maybe), and...finite.

What's the bottom line, then? Consider the examples above, then extrapolate. If the educational agenda you promote results in the collective habit of mind being able to reckon only in terms of Profit and Loss, what more does that create than a culture of impoverishment?

St Jerome sez: Whatever you do, it will surely end in Hell, so smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Texts Concerning the Quantitative & Qualitative Valuation of Art

ETF: Trying to figure out whether to go see Salome. Good seats are pricey. Edge seats $60-75. Wed the 20th is Balkan Beat Box tho, which is only $20.

WTF: I bet BBB doesnt suck face with a prophets severed head tho

ETF: Tru

WTF: You get what you pay for

ftƿ!

It is reported by an anonymous source within the campaign that Romney's speech in London will address the "special relationship" between the Geats and the Spear-Danes, and at the planned fundraiser among US bankers in London, there will be a giving out of many rings, and the drinking of muchel mead in the golden hall, with a session of vaunting to follow. After that they will all be eaten by Grendel.

flogging

I wasn't going to post about this, in hopes that it would go away, but then the ante was upped.

Syntax is everything, editors:

"NEW YORK, July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- EMI Classics has released 50 Shades of Classical Music, a digital compilation containing 50 pieces of classical music inspired by the bestselling 'Fifty Shades of Grey' novels..."
 
What pieces would those be, one wonders?

Read the rest here, and do visit the website, it's all about the Dark Side of Classical Music™. Evidently. Which is to say, a lot of baroque standards (= evil) and not every opera aria cliché imaginable, but certainly the ones ad agencies love the most.

And yes, apparently O mio babbino caro is the Dark Side. In your face, Rob Zombie.

Oh but wait, now you'll have to take my word for it, because some force of Market or the Law (50 Shades of ©) is at work, like the Nothing, making it all vanish before our eyes. Oh well. It was fun watching Thomas Tallis, that Monster of the Id, shoot up the charts.

echt versus ersatz

Vesselina Kasarova relates to the Associated Press the trials and tribulations of an honest-to-god opera career, while over at The Telegraph, Steve Silverman suggests Katherine Jenkins stop claiming she has one...or will have one...whatever. Normally this would go without saying, but just having seen Susan Boyle described elsewhere in the mainstream media as an "opera singer" -- a claim I doubt Susan Boyle herself would make -- well...you know.

What Would George Eliot Do?

The "I could've told them that for fifty bucks" Quote of the Day:

Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.

So much for sola fide, we must now be Justified through Science. And don't get me wrong, I like science, and I have no problem with spending huge amounts of cash to develop complex narratives about all sorts of things.  But so driven by Wall Street Mentality are we that it seems we now have to prove scientifically the market value of every bit of cultural activity we have been actively devaluing for decades. By the way, singing is now good for you.

Nevertheless, speaking as a tiresome pedant myself, let me point out that the deal with Casaubon is not that he's a tiresome pedant ("Ma'am, step away from the Cliff Notes."), but that he has so heroically dedicated his life to reinventing the wheel.

Redefining the Omelet: Don Giovanni @ OperaMall Millionplex 11.16.11

First allow me to disqualify myself from any valid opinions about Don Giovanni by confessing that I really liked Francisco Negrin's 2003 Glimmerglass production.  It was ugly and depressive.  The Catalogue Aria was a case study in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder illustrated by a tour through the Collected Underwear.  The revenant Commendatore was a ruse conceived by Don Ottavio to push a psychologically unstable Don Giovanni over the edge, and his manifestation in the penultimate scene was a marching, sign-waving, anti-Giovanni Occupy Seville.  As the orchestra ratcheted up the tension, our anti-hero, standing in a coffin, slashed his wrists in both defiance and despair. None of it was pretty.  Everybody hated it.

I was with an opera neophyte. I had a lot of explaining to do.

Last night, by chance, I was sitting next to another opera neophyte. I could tell she was new to all this, not just because she was telling her friend she'd never been to the opera, but because she spent the whole second act munching popcorn. People who have been to the opera, I find, generally skip the popcorn at the HDs.  Or at least they'll be likely to put it aside for the duration of Il mio tesoro. No such luck here, alas.  But she seemed nice, so while we were waiting at the end to exit our row, I turned to her and said "Did you enjoy the performance?"   "Oh yes!" she said, with genuine enthusiasm. "But are they all that long?" (Two for two! If someone says it again at Siegfried, I reserve the right to yell "Bingo!" in a crowded theater.)

Here is Michael Grandage's ideal audience member, as stated in what passes for his directorial manifesto vis a vis this production.  She's never seen it before. She had a good time. She didn't need anything explained. Win. On her right was her friend, from what I could gather also a neophyte. She also had a good time. She also didn't need anything explained. Win. On her left was some thirty years of opera experience. I've done a lot of explaining to neophytes. Here I didn't have to explain anything to anyone. Win.

 I've seen stagings that were luminous and performances that were brilliant.  I've seen workmanlike stagings and performances both.  I've seen things that were perplexing, and things that were wrong-headed and infuriating.  I've seen things that were openly disrespectful of the material they were supposed to be presenting (Mark Lamos, I'm talking to you). Like everyone else who's parked themselves in an opera house with any regularity, I've done a lot of armchair directing in my time.  Apart from a weak Commendatore -- and Commendatores are weak nine times out of ten -- and a Donna Anna who wasn't in nearly as much of a twist as she should have been, I didn't have the impulse to do any here. That was kind of refreshing. Win.

Michael Grandage hasn't, in Deborah Warner's parlance, smashed the Fabergé. That isn't what he does.  To the best of my knowledge, it has never been what he does.  Neither, in the fashion of Regietheater, has he taken the piece and used it to his own ends, plastering a concept onto it with complete disengagement from authorial intent.  As he has said elsewhere, "I'm not the kind of director who enjoys immediately looking at a time and a place set by a writer and then going 'Let's not do that.'... It's always been of interest to me to use their starting point as my starting point." Not the manifesto of a theatrical radical. Unless, of course, the scene is already full of theatrical radicals.

Grandage's modus operandi has tended to favor interiority. Not that he's only ever worked in tiny spaces but most of his work in the past ten years (Frost/Nixon, Red, Hamlet, King Lear, Luise Miller, et cetera) has been at London's Donmar Warehouse, the directorship of which he took over from Sam Mendes in 2002.  Unlike the Met's slightly-shy-of-4000-seat enormity, Donmar Warehouse is 250 seats. Its stage could fit comfortably inside the Rad Cave and still leave room for the bar.  Interiority is a luxury it can afford.  The Met, not so much.  So what's he doing there?

By now we've all read James Jorden's piece, here, where

a) he lauds Peter Gelb for innovations like the HD series, but then
b) takes him to task for enabling the dumbing down of productions by hiring directors for the sparkly shiny that the words Tony Award Winner attaches to their name.  Then he
c) gives Grandage a shelling for suggesting that there might be a preponderance of Met audience members who have never seen Don Giovanni. And of course Mr. Jorden is right...for the actual Met audience inside the actual Met building, that would be a rare demographic indeed.

But here's the thing, the same is not necessarily true of a 250 seat theater at the OperaMall Millionplex. Which brings us back to Neophyte A, and her having a really good time, and all she needed was lots of close-ups from cameras way closer to the singers than even the first row of the orchestra. Close enough to see that those were military oak leaves on the Commendatore's greatcoat, not his zombie-like exposed ribcage. Close enough to see the expressions on people's faces and the looks in their eyes and the minute gestures that will never read from the foie gras seats, let alone the chicken seats.

And this is really where Peter Gelb either is or is not a fucking genius, to use the tags of JJ's alter ego, because Grandage of the 250 seat theater plays great to 250 seat theaters full of opera neophytes, who get their opera on Hollywood terms, sung well-amplified by the thin and attractive, with popcorn and Twizzlers and half-gallon Cokes.  Who's the Met audience now?

can't win for losing

So, since it was Take a History-Loving Opera Newbie to OperaMall Night, we did.  I hate to tell you this, O Camera-Ready Opera Stars and the Marketing Departments That Love Them, but History Buff thought everybody on stage looked fat.  Even Keith Miller's abs and Tamara Mumford's wafer-thinness did not escape calumny.  So my advice to the opera world is keep doing the elliptical, yes, it's good for you. But don't kill your voice for the sake of the camera, because people will see what they are expecting to see no matter what you do.  Moreover, O Marketing Departments, a sylph and a sixpack aren't likely to sell the product if Donizetti himself can't. Unless we're talking a literal sixpack. And then it would probably need to be more than one.  (And for the record, I have seen this strategy work for dorm parties and Scandinavian folk music workshops.)

give the people what they want

BBC World Service interviews tenor Joseph Calleja -- whose former repertoire, it turns out, once included Iron Maiden and Metallica -- about opera and elitism, and that there is no difference between Thailand and Krumville unless you're talking about everything written in the last ten years. Interviewer Tom Service mentions Michael Bolton (whose opera album, let us remember, emerged from the nether regions of Sony Classical during the reign of Peter Gelb), Hayley Westenra and Bruce Dickinson in the same breath.  To the best of my knowledge, Bruce Dickinson never made a crossover opera album, but if he had... 

On the other hand, as Superconductor has already reported, Metallica is getting into Wedekind, so can the 2nd Vienna Skool be far behind, cuz, y'know, Berg, he shreds \m/

daze of yore

A. O. Scott writes in the NYT about the cultural legacy of Margaret Thatcher.  (Will history prove that, in tandem with Ronald Reagan, she created a bubble in the music industry the Post-Thatcherite world could never sustain, and thus contributed to the downfall of major label domination?)  A biopic is due in December, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who brought us the most recent stage iteration (in the anglophone joint) of Schiller's Maria Stuart.

"Police hunting the individuals who have threatened to kill Mrs. Thatcher say that their investigations are making good progress, and that 47,000,000 people are helping them with their inquiries." - Not the Nine O'Clock News

A/X-Fest, BoneFest, HellFest

After today's Traviata @ Aix vs Così @ Lyon videocast smackdown, ARTE Live Web's back in business again tomorrow with this and this.  So is this like Festival Deathmatch?  Like Aix won this round, they go head to head against Beaune tomorrow, and the winner goes on to face Apocalyptica @ Hellfest?  My money's on the Hallenberg show, cuz Les Talens Lyriques is \m/  \m/, totally.

Update: Like I said.