This Is Why I Love Opera

How many people can do this live without a serious sound engineer working overtime?

Karajan Reviled

I came across a rather startling article in the British publication The Independent. This weekend marks the centenary of Herbert von Karajan's birth, the Austrian conductor who dominated the symphonic and operatic scene in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In my home growing up, Karajan was the standard of excellence that every performance was measured against. He was considered the great modernizer, the passionate madman who brought true fire to every work he tackled. His tempos were faster or slower than others', his dynamics louder or softer. I've never read a true rebuke of his work such as this one. Norman Lebrecht, a prominent British cultural commentator, spares no words for the man he feels destroyed the classical music industry in the twentieth century:

"Whether Herbert von Karajan was a bad man or a good man is immaterial. He was a brilliant organiser with the gift of tuning an orchestra to his personal sound, an ability that he exploited to extreme ends. He inflicted his ego on the world of classical music in a way that crushed independence and creativity and damaged its image for future generations. It is not the bad man he was that we should deplore but the reactionary and exclusivist legacy which is being "celebrated". For music lovers, there is not much to celebrate. Once the centenary is over, we will drop the curtain once and for all on a discreditable life that yielded no fresh thought and upheld no worthwhile human value. Karajan is dead. Music is much better off without him."

Miracle at the Met

On Monday, I ventured across the Charles River to hear Peter Gelb speak at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Gelb was tapped in 2003 as the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and in the last season and a half he has proven to be the savior of that institution. The business of music is utterly fascinating to me and I took four pages of notes from his presentation, but here I'll just list the most interesting facts that help paint a picture of what he's been able to accomplish.

* In 2003, the average age of the Met patron was 65. Five years earlier, the average age had been 60. Hmm. Clearly, the audience was literally dying out.

* Box office sales were at 76% when Gelb took over in the 2005-2006 season. Today they are at 88%. Just as significant, patron donations have risen 40% from their 2005 levels.

*Gelb has doubled the number of new productions the Met offers each year. In choosing to open his first season with a new production of Madame Butterfly, directed by acclaimed film director Anthony Minghella (English Patient, Cold Mountain), Gelb offered the Met's first new production on an opening night in twenty years.

*New ticket programs have been initiated (100 tickets are available at $20 the night of the performance), rehearsals have been opened to the public, and performances have been broadcast into Times Square and Lincoln Center Plaza.

*An annual family production has been introduced. (Last year it was an abridged Magic Flute directed by Julie Taymor, this year it's been a production of Hansel & Gretel.)

*John Adams, the most respected contemporary opera composer in the U.S., has never had an opera produced at the Met. His Doctor Atomic is coming next season.

*In the spirit of Chagall and Hockney who had deep relationships with the Met in their eras, Gelb is reaching out to contemporary artists to create banners for publicity and to hang in front of the house. The gallery art space in the lobby of the house also features works inspired by the operas.

Gelb's most publicized change, of course, has been the introduction of live HD transmissions into movie theaters. This year, the transmissions are going out to 650 theaters in 14 countries, estimated to reach over 110,000 people. Fifty percent of box office revenues are currently coming from HD tickets! In a feat of arts management, each broadcast is easily covering the incremental $1 M it takes to distribute the film-- and generating profits!

The ingenuity of what Gelb is doing rests in the fact that he believes intensely in opera's role as "high art". He is trying to make opera connect with contemporary society, but he is not doing it at the expense of dumbing down -- or making "accessible"--the productions, the singers, or the overall quality. Instead, he is focusing on the distribution of the art form, and in this he is revolutionary.

At the end of the presentation, I had the opportunity to ask Gelb personally about the future of the HD broadcasts. After seeing Hansel & Gretel in January in the same week I saw Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, it occurred to me that it would be a nature next step for the Met to separate its production capabilities from the realm of the live performance and perhaps break off a separate film production arm. "The Metropolitan Opera Company presents... Electra, directed by Tim Burton." If Gelb is giving film directors the chance to direct live opera, why not meet them on their own playing field and have them direct opera for film? Few attempts have been made at this, most notably Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute, but with the global brand and excellence of the Met, it could become standard practice. Alas, Gelb agreed it was a good idea, but claimed he had no idea where the money would come from to pour into a production arm. Well, maybe in 10 years he'll hire me to be heading up that initiative....

MoTab Isn't for Everyone...

Last Saturday, I had a very interesting experience which fed my ever-growing curiosity about the psychology of music: how people can have such different aesthetic preferences, how the same music effects people differently, what role music plays in our social psyche, etc. I was asked to speak at a New England young single adult conference for my church, hosted in New Hampshire, and I chose to conduct a workshop on the difference between "Sacred" music (i.e. the genre, marketing label) and "sacred" music (meaning any music that is meaningful or inspirational to the individual listener).

First of all, my workshop went head to head with Roger Porter's (a Harvard prof who was economic advisor to Ford, Reagan and Bush I). Hmmm. Yes, people did still come to my class (although I probably would have chosen Porter's over my own!). My attendees were college-aged, and in preparing for the presentation I wanted to work with the fact that most people of this age group these days are steeped in commercial musical genres that are not part of the church's emphasis on the traditional, classical arts.

I divided the workshop into two themes:
1. Encourage participants to find the "sacred" in the popular music that they listen to everyday, and not feel limited to finding spirituality in the "Sacred" music genre.
2. Conversely, encourage participants to value "Sacred" music more and gain a deeper appreciation for the church's classical art tradition.

The first part was fascinating: I played 30 second clips from 12 songs that you all recommended and asked each participant to jot down silently whether or not the clip represented "sacred" music to them. Then, after I'd revealed what the songs were, we had a terrific discussion about what people responded to and why.

Here's the playlist of the 12 songs:
1. Crucifixus -- Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge (medieval church music)
2. Sweet Little Jesus Boy -- Jesse Norman (traditional Negro spiritual solo)
3. Hey Mama - Kanye West (current hip hop song)
4. Piano Sonata no 7, 3rd mvt - Prokofiev (example of no words)
5. Come Thou Glorious Day of Promise -- Mormon Tabernacle Choir (traditional choral hymn)
6. Jesu Me Kanaka Waiwai -- Gladys Knight and Saints Unified Choir (Hawaiian hymn)
7. Every Time I Feel The Spirit - Little Richard (traditional spiritual with Baptist choir)
8. Umbrella- Rihanna (Pop)
9. Down to the River to Pray -- Allison Krauss (Bluegrass)
10. I Will Follow You Into the Dark -- Death Cab for Cutie (Alternative rock)
11. Cast Thy Burden On the Lord -- Mendelssohn's Elijah (traditional oratorio)
12. Blessed Assurance -- Gladys Knight (traditional spiritual with choir)


Some of the responses:
"No way #1 is sacred cause it's clearly just a movie soundtrack"
"MoTab is way too bland to be sacred" vs. "Only reverent music is sacred so none of the Gospel music is sacred"
"Kanye West's message about loving his mother makes his song the most sacred on the list"
"Death Cab for Cutie's song is the most authentic, real, therefore the most sacred"
"Anything that sounds like opera totally drives the spirit away"
"That Elijah song could be good if it had a little rhythm behind it." (I have to say that was one of my favorite comments)

We also talked about the idea of how Mormon culture contributes to our responses (i.e. sacred = quiet), and how our own family culture contributes. Then we switched gears and talked about the response each of the participants has to the hymns. The general consensus seemed to be that the kids don't enjoy singing them at church on Sundays ("boring, no energy") but that they are the first thing they turn to when they need personal comfort or inspiration ("I read through the poems or sing them to myself"). We talked a lot about the hymns as an important cultural record of our church's history, why it's important to preserve that musical aesthetic, and our role in making Sunday singing more enjoyable.

After such an experience, it's hard for me to deny that music I consider to be universally appealing... well, isn't. On the other hand, I'm grateful that the generation after me continues to find spiritual meaning in the music of their own time.

Musical Diplomacy in North Korea

I guess it takes a visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea for classical music to make the front page. There's been no shortage of discussion about this week's visit: Alex Ross calls out several of the national music commentators who have weighed in on whether or not the Phil's visit is a good idea, or just a pandering to the North Korean PR machine. The discussion ranges from critiques on the light-weight program (Dvorak, Gershwin, Wagner's overture to Lohengrin) to a condemnation of the West's effort to civilize the barbarian regime with the elevating effects of classical music. Perhaps I'm naive about the art of diplomacy and the need for political statements through programming, but I do believe in symphonic music's ability to communicate our democratic values. Not in a preachy, proselytizing way, but in an open-hearted representation of what we find uplifting. Who knows, maybe there'll be some common ground there. Isn't that diplomacy in itself?

See my posting from Dec. 13, 2007 for additional thoughts. For photos of the audience and the performers and a liveblog description of the concert, visit Pete Matthew's blog.

Also: Update to my post on La Vie en Rose, the movie about Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for Best Actress. So I wasn't the only one moved by her performance!

Church Music for Today?

I'm going to be a bit sparse with my blogging for the next couple of months because I am now fully entrenched in my music class, The Future of Music, at the Harvard Extension School. But I couldn't resist writing about this fascinating article from this week's New Yorker magazine. Nico Muhly is a twenty-six year old composer who is primarily inspired by the Renaissance religious music and and by contemporary minimalism. His own compositions are receiving wide acclaim, as well as ample performance. He's got such powerhouses as Philip Glass and John Adams behind him, so watch out, he's here to stay.

Heaven Sounds Like Elgar

Last weekend for my birthday, E took me to the Boston Symphony Orchestra's performance of The Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar. Elgar, best known to me by his cello concerto and , composed the oratorio in 1900 to the poetic text of a Catholic cardinal. I was so clueless about the piece before going I thought it was titled something about Geronimo... Why a Brit would write about Geronimo was not something I even paused to think about, so you can see how much thought and research I put into the evening before the lights went down.

The piece requires an enormous orchestra, organ, full chorus and three soloists -- a huge ensemble as you can see from the picture taken at a 1964 rehearsal. E and I were very quickly entranced: the orchestration is lush and Wagnerian, and Ben Heppner was a revelation as a true Helden tenor. I especially enjoyed Gerald Finley as the baritone. By the end of the piece, I was convinced it was perhaps one of the most purely beautiful works I have ever heard. Truly what I imagine choirs of angels sound like. And a highlight was the incredible moment when Gerontius sees God - "for one moment" -- and in that moment all the instruments must "exert their fullest force". Wow.