Tag: live performance

Jonathan Tetelman, tenor, singer, opera, classical, vocalist, music

Jonathan Tetelman: Controlling The Intensity

On June 19, 2024

In classical, interviews, music, opera, voice

Never mind how to get to Carnegie Hall; how do you get to The Met?

Jonathan Tetelman might give the traditional answer (practice) before adding that knowing how to work a crowd helps. The tenor, who spent time as a DJ in New York City’s busy club scene, was known for dropping beats before he dropped his turntables to devote himself to opera full-time. Critical acclaim, a multi-album deal with classical super-label Deutsche Grammophon, and oodles of love from besotted fans posting in opera groups on both sides of the Atlantic – Tetelman balances them all with flair, care, and a very clear nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic.

Born in Chile and raised in New Jersey, the tenor began his opera journey joining his grandparents on trips to numerous live cultural events in and around the Tri-state area. In 2011 he got his undergraduate degree at The Manhattan School of Music and began a graduate program at The New School of Music, Mannes College – believing he was a baritone. The move to New York nightlife at the time was the result of sheer frustration with having to move his vocal register up to where he was told it belonged. This past April Tetelman told AP’s Ronald Blum that telling people about his opera side was also a way of reminding himself it was still there. “I kept saying to people, ‘You know, I’m a DJ, but I’m actually an opera singer.’ And the more I said it, the more I was like: ’Am I really an opera singer?’”

The DJ work at a variety of celebrated NYC venues (including Webster Hall and the much-missed Pacha) taught him the all-important skill of taking an audience’s temperature at any given moment. Amidst the club mayhem, Tetelman gave himself six months to return to opera; it proved to be a wise choice. Cultivating his vocal technique as a tenor led to an opportunity to sing the role of Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème at Fujian Grand Theatre in China, a role he would come to become known for. A performance in the opera at English National Opera followed, and then a succession of engagements. He made his Covent Garden debut with both Puccini (as Rodolfo) and Verdi (Alfredo in La traviata). In Italy he performed as Cavaradossi in Tosca and Canio in Pagliacci with Teatro Regio Torino; in France, Puccini’s Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly with Opéra national de Montpellier and Cavaradossi with Opéra de Lille. Tetelman has also sung the lead in Massenet’s Werther with both the Gran Teatro Nacional de Lima (Peru) and Opera del Teatro Solis (Montevideo), and performed in Germany at the Komische Oper Berlin, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Dresden Semperoper. He sang lead in Verdi’s Stiffelio with Opéra national du Rhin in 2021, with Opera-Online’s Thibault Vicq noting that “(c)e n’est pas tous les jours qu’une telle sculpture de chant se devine et se dévoile en des émotions si justes, constructives et dévastatrices.” / “It’s not every day that such a sculpture of song is revealed and expressed in such accurate, constructive and devastating emotions.”

Tetelman’s concert appearances include performances in Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and, as well as giving a number of international recitals, has worked with celebrated conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas, Andris Nelsons, Dan Ettinger, and Speranza Scappucci. His first album, Arias (Deutsche Grammophon, 2022), showed the breadth of his talent in terms of Italian and French repertoire; it won the Oper Magazine Awards for Best Solo Album of the Year, 2023, the same year he was honoured with an Opus Klassik Award as Break-out Artist of the Year. Tetelman’s second album, The Great Puccini (Deutsche Grammophon, 2023) features selections from nine different Puccini works, with the Prague Philharmonie and conductor Carlo Rizzi also joined, on various tracks, by sopranos Federica Lombardi, Marina Monzó, and Vida Miknevičiūtė; mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb; baritone Theodore Platt; and bass Önay Köse. The album underlines Tetelman’s reputation as a singer of considerable intensity and lyricism. In her review for BBC’s Classical Music magazine, Puccini scholar Alexandra Wilson praises Tetelman’s “nuanced approach to characterisation”, singling out album opener “Donna non vidi mai” (from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut) as “ardent and expansive, vowels strikingly warm and open, strings effectively foregrounded.”

Tetelman made his much-anticipated Metropolitan Opera debut this past spring, as Ruggero in La rondine (opposite soprano Angel Blue) and Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly (opposite soprano Asmik Grigorian), and more Puccini is in store next season, starting with Madame Butterfly at Los Angeles Opera. From there, Tetelman will be performing in a concert presentation of Tosca with the acclaimed Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Spring 2025 sees the tenor performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Music Director Kirill Petrenko; the orchestra’s annual residency at Baden Baden (followed by performances on home turf at the Philharmonie) sees Tetelman singing Pinkerton opposite soprano Eleonora Buratto’s Butterfly in a production by Davide Livermore. Next season also sees performances of works by Bizet, Mascagni, and Verdi, as well as the concert version of Werther at Deutsche Oper Berlin, with Tetelman in the title role opposite soprano Aigul Akhmetshina’s Charlotte.

When he spoke recently the tenor was taking a brief if deserved break. No divo this, he happily shared his thoughts on everything from future opera goals to his many past club-life lessons. The earthy combination of talent, confidence, intelligence, ambition, humility, humour, and obvious music love make Tetelman a figure worth watching. Of course he knows how to drop the beat – and raise the bar, at once, with great style.

Photo: Ben Wolf

What was the very first opera you attended?

I think it was Carmen, at the old New York City Opera. I also saw Porgy and Bess when I was very young, but Carmen was the first opera that inspired me to be a singer. I was maybe 10 years old. I used to see a lot of musicals too – my grandparents would take me all the time. We saw Guys and Dolls, Smokey Joe’s Café, Annie Get Your Gun, The Lion King, Annie – dozens of things.

What initially drew you to Puccini’s music?

I would say the initial draw was not that I necessarily liked Puccini, but that it was what I performed in my very first experience in singing a full-length opera as a professional tenor. Learning the role was the way I was hooked in – that’s what Puccini does if you pay a little bit of attention; he gives you such a lot to work with. I really think that it was luck that I had this opportunity. I actually didn’t really enjoy Puccini when I saw his operas at The Met in my younger days – I preferred Mozart. I think Puccini is really kind of a specialized type of opera; everything is happening quickly in many of his works, and you can grab onto the music easily but at the same time it’s not as flexible as other operas. I want to say also: I think the situations in his operas are very adult.

Carlo Rizzi was instrumental in expanding my own Puccini appreciation; have your colleagues provided similar “aha!” moments with his music?

Oh yes… I think probably countless times! I think every time I do his operas now, even revisiting them, I find something I missed before. You know, the opera industry now is so quick; you don’t have the time, like singers once did, to really find your way through a characterization, or to find the musical meaning that you want to put into the opera, at least until after you’re given the opportunity to do it a few times. We are on this kind of rush to everything these days, but Puccini really requires a lot of attention – and it’s not just about knowing your part, but really knowing the orchestration, the other characters, the other situations that are happening alongside your own situation. It takes a long time to develop the character, and then to develop a characterization vocally which supports that idea, and then to find the different vocal colours.

Moving Between Operas & Recitals

You noted in a past interview that vocal colour can’t be manufactured; what role do recitals play in your vocal development?

I was just talking to my wife about this the other day, and noting the difference between Jon the Recitalist versus Jon the Opera Singer, how the flexibility you have in a recital, whether with a pianist or orchestra, is really based upon what you’re doing with your voice and how you’re really transmitting the text. In a recital you don’t have a set, you don’t have costumes, you don’t have these other things; I feel like I can be so deeply connected to the music in that kind of space. Opera is about creating and exploring various situations, and to be honest, it’s a lot louder! There’s this very heavy-volume aspect of the opera versus the realities of a recital. Also, you’re really singing to the audience in a concert or recital, rather than in the opera, where you’re supposed to be singing to the ensemble because you’re telling a story and you’re projecting and conveying that particular story; you’re not singing specifically to the audience. That’s a big difference.

What kinds of things do you bring from one world to the other?

I think in opera, if you have a collaborative conductor who really knows the score and understands your interpretation and perspective, and respects your interpretation and wants to build that interpretation, then you have flexibility to bring things from your recital work. However, I don’t know if there’s so many of these types of maestros around; everybody has their own thoughts and approaches, and everyone has things that they want to get across. If you’re in a situation where you don’t have a lot of rehearsals or a lot of time to prepare with a specific conductor, then the experience is a sort of crapshoot, though a very highly calculated one. It takes time to really figure out the important parts that you really want to highlight in order to serve the characterization and the vocalization. Focus on those specific things in that moment.

Aside from Puccini you have also done (and will be doing more) Verdi – what’s the attraction for you?

I haven’t done many Verdi roles, but the ones that I’ve done, what I like is that you’re not really confined to a moment in time; you’re kind of suspending that moment with the voice. It’s a very different approach than with someone like Puccini where everything is moving forwards. Verdi is much more letting the music kind of propel the things that happen dramatically, even as his music digs into character a little deeper. I like that.

How does that love of character inform your recital work, and what kind of repertoire are you exploring – especially composers whose works you may want to do on the opera stage?

That’s a very good question! I’m in search of answers for that right now; I certainly would like to do something like Schubert’s Winterreise, as well as works by various German romantic composers, including some Brahms songs. Right now I think I have a very substantial volume to my voice, so for me to hold back is actually harder than to give more. Right now I’m figuring out how – and this is actually for Verdi too – how to control the intensity that I have naturally. I think with time and a little bit more experience those (composers) will definitely become possible.

Big Beats, Big Broadcasts

That awareness of pacing is important and I wonder how much your work as a DJ helped to develop it…

Whether DJing or in recitals you’re making setlists and figuring out whether the crowd is into you or not – you’re listening for which tracks are the hot tracks; what introductory things you can offer to set a mood; what gets people going or cools them off. There are things that I have to do – and I know that – so in a recital, I sing some hits, and along with those I offer a few things most of the crowd may not have heard. Then I also show the progression in my own skills, and try to present things that I hope are coming in the future. There are certainly a lot of similarities (between DJing and recitals), because they’re both performance-based; one of them is just your voice and that’s a little more challenging! Singing is definitely harder than doing DJ work, but at the end of the day… the point is that you want to move people, and you want people to come out of the hall feeling something, whether they liked it or not. You want them to have some sort of emotional reaction to what you’re doing.

The Met Live in HD series brings a different kind of a challenge there; you can’t see audience reaction at all. What’s your view?

Doing these HD things, I really don’t even think about it as, like, a performance for broadcast. I’m an opera singer: I’m going to sing for the theatre; I’m going to act for the theatre. If you want to capture it on video and critique the video part of the opera, then you’re missing the point of what opera really is. Opera is really for the people that bought a ticket and sat in that seat and came for that expression on that day. There are things about The Met Live In HD that are positive, of course, but overall I think that if you want to hear an opera, you have to go to the opera house, end of story. That’s the only way that opera is going to retain its value as a live art form. Otherwise, we could just call Netflix and say, “Hey, you know, can we get some studio time for Madame Butterfly?” I mean, yeah, right – but in that case you’re not doing an opera anymore; you’re doing a movie. People don’t necessarily have to pick a lane here, but you have to know which lane is more important than the other, especially as an artist.

The Future(s)?

Jonathan Tetelman, tenor, singer, opera, classical, vocalist, music, seaside

Photo: Ben Wolf

You have named various Strauss roles as roles you’d like to do in future; why Strauss?

I think Strauss would suit my voice very well. The writing for the tenor is an extreme challenge – it’s very demanding – but I think that my voice has a lot of the positive intensity in the tessitura that Strauss writes for. Puccini is wonderful, but I think Puccini is a lot of conversational singing. It’s a lot of “Let’s get through this and then finally there’s an aria.”

My mother used to say just that!

It’s true! There’s a lot of conversation with Puccini. With Strauss, some of the roles I’d like to do – like Apollo (from Strauss’s Daphne), I mean that’s a very intense role; you really have to be on for it. That’s just the kind of music I really like to do and hope to do. I don’t want to waste my voice; I want to be out there in the sweet vocal spot the whole time, and (Apollo) is a role that I’m really looking forward to doing, hopefully sooner than later.

I keep hearing you as The Tenor in Rosenkavalier as well…

That’s a good one too!

Returning to theatre: I’m curious what you think live art, including opera, can offer people in 2024, a moment in time when so many are staring at little screens.

Opera is really a safe haven for your mind, I think. You might be stuck in this difficult world facing really difficult things, and you can go to an opera or a symphony, and just listen and escape it all for a while, and then find your own world inside the music. That’s what’s so wonderful about going to live music and theatre: you fall into a world that doesn’t exist, but one that can exist in your mind. I think the whole experience is special.

Top photo: Ben Wolf

Brindley Sherratt, bass, English, album, Fear No More, voice, singer, opera, song, Benjamin Ealovega, Delphian

Brindley Sherratt: “There’s A Great Intimacy When It’s Just Me And A Piano”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On June 7, 2024

In classical, interviews, opera, piano, teaching, voice

The classical world continues to be in a state of transformation since the shutdowns forced by the coronavirus pandemic, with varied forms of transformation rippling through an array of houses, companies, and, perhaps most especially, people. I last spoke with English bass Brindley Sherratt in August 2020, when he and English tenor John Daszak were busy rehearsing an unusual, socially-distanced production of Boris Godunov directed by Barrie Kosky in Zürich. “You want to shout, ‘Opera’s not dead!‘” Sherratt commented, a needed buoy amidst the near-universal opera world gloom at the time.

Since then, Sherratt has applied that brand of encouragement to his own work. The bass’s first album of art songs, Fear No More, was released by Delphian Records in April. Recorded in 2023 at Henry Wood Hall in London, the album takes its title from a song by 20th century composer Gerald Finzi, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”, part of the composer’s Shakespeare-connected song cycle Let Us Garlands Bring (1929-1942) and itself based on lines from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Along with Finzi and fellow British composers John Ireland, Ivor Gurney, Michael Head, and Peter Warlock the album also features the music of Schubert, Strauss, and Mussorgsky. Booklet writer John Fallas notes in his album text that “not many singers record their first recital album two decades into a successful international career” – but one listen reveals a wealth of vocal riches underlining Sherratt’s deep musical intelligence and his innate understanding of text.

In a review of Fear No More for BBC Music magazine, writer Ashutosh Khandekar notes that “Sherratt possesses that rare gift – a genuine bass voice that carries its lyrical, expressive clarity from its ringing high notes right down to a full-toned basso profundo delivered without a trace of muddiness.” Indeed, Sherratt brings light, colour, texture, and a positively operatic splendour to the album’s smart lineup. Fear No More opens with six songs by Franz Schubert, all, with the exception of the famous “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”) written for a bass voice; Sherratt’s crisp diction, oaken tone, and colourful phrasing poetically illuminate the composer’s thoughtful vocal writing. Richard Strauss’s early 20th century song “Im Spätboot” follows and is given particularly a delicious reading. Songs and Dances of Death, Mussorgsky’s mesmerizingly macabre song cycle, is performed with a touching mix of terror and humanism. Sherratt especially soars in the English-language songs; John Ireland’s 1913 song “Sea-Fever” shows Sherratt’s careful modulation and colouration of the words of poet John Masefield, offering a masterclass in the art of storytelling through song.

That instinct for storytelling has also found expression in recitals, with the singer’s former reluctance around them replaced by something approaching glee. In addition to performances at Oxford Lieder Festival and Temple Music Foundation in 2022, Sherratt made his Wigmore Hall debut this past February, and more recitals are indeed in the works. There’s also a busy 2024-2025 opera season ahead, with performances of Billy Budd in Vienna, new productions of Semele in Paris and London, and a revival of Der Rosenkavalier in Munich. Sooner than that, Sherratt is set to perform in a BBC Proms presentation this August of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Czech Philharmonic led by incoming Royal Opera House Music Director Jakub Hrůša; he will be singing alongside soprano Corinne Winters, mezzo soprano Bella Adimova, and tenor David Butt Philip.

A conversation with Sherratt is always a true pleasure, his easy mix of intelligence, passion, and kindness creating a natural, good-humoured exchange of ideas and experiences.

Brindley Sherratt, Julius Drake, singer, piano, voice, recording, Henry Wood Hall, singing, Fear No More, performing arts, opera, classical, song

Brindley Sherratt recording Fear No More with pianist Julius Drake. Photo: foxbrush.co.uk

How did you choose the works on the album? You’d mentioned your love of text in a recent interview, and I wonder if that played a role.

It was indeed that love of text, but a lot of other things as well. I felt it was an incredibly risky thing to do an album at my age, with my voice – some of that feeling was in my own mind, but there were other fears related to there not being many basses doing recordings of lieder. Also there aren’t many basses my age, with an entire operatic career, suddenly switching to song. I met Julius Drake after a performance at Covent Garden and he said, “Why don’t you come around to my house on a Saturday morning and we’ll play around with a few pieces?” I said, “I don’t know what to sing!” He said, “Come around; we’ll work through some repertoire – let’s have a go.” So we did. We spent about three hours exploring this and that.

I wanted to choose things for the album that A/ I like, and B/ I think suit my voice. As a bass, and I’ve said this before, songs and recitals are like wearing your sibling’s hand-me-downs: you have to transpose down and adjust everything. I knew from the get-go that I wanted to include Schubert. As for Strauss: there are three or four songs that wrote specifically for the guy who first sang them (Paul Knüpfer), a bass who went on to be a famous Baron Ochs in Rosenkavalier, so I thought “Im Spätboot” was a good start. I’d already done some other Strauss songs with an orchestra – and I do love his writing so much.

Likewise the Mussorgsky cycle; I’d done Songs and Dances of Death with an orchestra two or three times, and I thought, gosh I’d love to do this with piano. Julius said, “Why don’t we just put them on the record?” I also thought I would like to do something in my own language and then it became a case of finding things I like.

There’s something extra special about the English songs – why these ones in particular?

When I was a student decades ago and had just started to sing – I was a trumpet player and switched to singing – I remember learning a few songs, and thinking, well, I’m a singer so of course I should sing songs. One of them was Finzi’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” – I loved it ever since, but never had the chance to sing it because I’ve never done recitals. There’s something about this work, after all these years, that I still connect with, so I knew I had to include it on the album. For other songs, I had help: Sarah Connolly introduced me to “By A Bierside” (Ivor Gurney) – she said she thought it would suit me because it’s quite dramatic; Roderick Williams was a very big help also. He really knows his repertoire! I said to him, “Please help me out? Give me pointers as to what would suit me since you know my voice.” He’s been a very big source of information with the English song material. It’s like the TV show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” with contestants using a lifeline to call a friend and help them with a question – I phoned a friend, or rather several friends, who had done this repertoire and said “Hey, hello!”

On Being Pushed

Tell me more about your creative connection with Julius Drake – to what extent was he pianist, coach, mentor, critic… ?

He played all of those roles at some point – all of them. He kept saying, “Brin, you can do this” throughout. I would say, “Oh, I can’t sing this stuff, It’s too this, it’s too that.” And he said, “Come on, let’s keep going.” He would literally push me through the songs and offer ideas for others, and I would look at them and say, “Nah, don’t want that, it’s too boring” or “Maybe?” – and he was there to urge me on.

Brindley Sherratt recording Fear No More with collaborative pianist Julius Drake. Photo: foxbrush.co.uk

Did this form of coaching happen with your recitals as well?

Oh yes! Having not done a recital for 20-something years or more, there I was suddenly doing two recitals on two consecutive nights. Whilst we were preparing Julius would say things like “Not like that, we need more colour here.” I’d try something else and say, “Is that right?” And he’d say, “Nah, not right. Try something else.” We’d try this and that, and in that process I discovered a whole softer colour to my sound, one I didn’t know I could do. I was able to play around a lot more as a result, and Julius would push me: “Bring that sound”, “We need to bring this text out here”, “That was too slow”, “That was too fast”,“That was close to being chamber music!” The process was new to me.

With opera, it’s just such a huge scale, and sometimes you’ll have a conductor who will coach, like Tony Pappano – he gives loads of notes like “Just sing this way”, “Try it that way” and I love that approach – but opera is still this big long process. You’re on stage, you have other things and people to add and interact with. Also, I might have said this already in another interview: I prefer my audiences in the dark about 80 feet away with a symphony orchestra in-between. The kind of intimacy chamber music demands was the thing that I feared most, especially in terms of doing recitals; it also became the thing I enjoyed the most. There’s a great intimacy when it’s just me and a piano. This whole process has been a revelation.

Does that include your recital work?

Initially I was worried about those. I thought, “What if nobody comes?” Well, I went out and there were big crowds who gave big cheers and I thought, “Oh, this is great!” At Wigmore Hall in February the place was heaving with people. All the students I worked with were there along with every bass in the country, including John Tomlinson. I found it overwhelming, though it also made me think that maybe I’m okay at this stuff; I need to trust that feeling.

Do you think recitals and art songs have made you a better opera singer?

I think so, yes. I was doing Rocco in Fidelio (in Munich) this year, and Gurnemanz a year or more ago, and I found I used a lot of soft colours which I would have not have used before. Those softer colours are really important, especially to basses, as you know. I feel much more rounded as a singer, and the songs (on the album) were great for that kind of work.

Keeping The Voice “As Fresh As Possible”

What have you learned about your voice through the last decade or so?

There was a stage I went through actually about eight or ten years ago where I wanted to make a big noise. At one point I thought, “I don’t think I’m singing healthily.” Going back to Gurnemanz, when I was first learning that part years back I was listening to Gottlob Frick, who is my favourite German bassist of all. He was 68 when he recorded Parsifal; he came out of retirement to do it. Having had a long career singing the heaviest roles, the Hagens and the Hundings, over and over and over again, here he is at 68 – when really the voice should be starting to wear a bit – and my God, he sounds so good, so vulnerable – it’s just sublime, beautiful singing. When I heard it I thought: I want to be able to do that.

It was while I was singing I was singing Ochs at Glyndebourne (2018) that I found a much more, what’s the word, a more contained and less fat kind of sound; I purposely took my voice down a little bit and worked. That moment was the foundation, as it were, because when I started to learn and sing songs, I realized that I want to be able to sing “Some Enchanted Evening” and have it be beautiful – that, or Winterreise, or Finzi’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”. I want people to say, “That’s a beautiful voice” and not “That’s a ragged old voice.” So I think the combination of songs and opera is important to keep the voice as fresh as possible at my age.

What role does teaching play?

I coach a lot of young basses, bass baritones too, and for so many of them the pressure is on in their 20s in terms of making a career, and so they all want to sound as loud as possible. What happens is they go into a young artists program and they’re on stage with guys who really know what they’re doing, but they have to match it, or feel like they do, so they try to make their voice big before it’s kind of found its way. There are so few roles for young low voices – it’s a lot of Second Old Man or Third Gatekeeper – but young artists feel forced to make big sounds so early on, and I’m always saying to them now, “Learn songs, sing songs; learn a few cycles; learn Handel, and more Handel; listen to various artists.” I think you need to have that balance, and the confidence too – we definitely need to have that!

Photo: Benjamin Ealovega

A second album?

Which songs might be in the future for you, on record or live in recital?

I think everyone wants to sing Winterreise, and I admit to being one of them! It’s an incredibly intimidating cycle but I find it so enchanting; I love listening to it and I love singing it. I’d want to do it in recital a few times before I went anywhere even near a recording studio. So that’s a possibility. I’ve also been thinking I would like to do a disc of songs in my mother tongue, and at the moment I’m leaning towards an album of English song; I asked Ryan Wigglesworth if he would write me something, and he’s up for that. Robert Lloyd said to me many years ago, “Make sure you do a song recital once a year; It’s so easy to just bellow” – it’s so true.

I was amazed in the recitals to note that after I’d sung a few phrases that are quiet and soft, I could sense everyone leaning in and really listening – it was just lovely! I never would have thought of having that kind of closeness with an audience, but it’s been amazing, and I definitely look forward to more moments like that.

Top photo: Benjamin Ealovega

tulips, flowers, spring, orange, colour, petals, vibrant

Reading List: Movies, Music, Media, & … Butchers?

By Catherine Kustanczy

On April 18, 2024

In announcement, classical, music, theatre, writing

Another university term has wrapped and I am still busy, largely with self-initiated things including interviews, chases, planning, and (as ever) copious amounts of study. Herein, a few things that have caught the attention, inflamed the imagination, cocked my head and furrowed my brow; I may have smiled once or twice also. Voila, news, views, musings, questions, reprimands, and previews… April showers bring what? We shall see.

This week: A series called “Opera and Democracy” has been unfolding in an assortment of locales throughout Manhattan. Presented by The Thomas Mann House and musicologist Kai Hinrich Müller (also a 2023 Fellow of the organization), the series hopes to explore “how the opera can contribute to diverse and inclusive societies” and uses Berlin’s Krolloper as a symbol of both art and politics. (Built in 1844, the facility became an opera house in 1851 and eventually served as the assembly hall of the Reichstag from 1933 to 1942; it was demolished in 1951.) The topics of the series, according to the website, include “aspects of the democratization of opera, to questions of power and representation, new formats, casting and programming policies, audience expectations as well as to academic challenges and opera’s ability to amplify the voices of silenced or persecuted artists.” The series has already hosted themed conversations in Los Angeles and Munich. Its next events happen next month in Dresden, with June’s week-long online series exploring involving the Black Opera Research Network (BORN). I’ve put out a request to speak with Müller about this – fingers and toes crossed for a future feature on a timely topic.

Later this month: Dame Felicity Lott will be performing at London’s Institut Français on April 30th as part of a screening of Jean Cocteau’s first film, the 1930 avant-garde work The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d’un poète). Considered a masterpiece by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, the film is the first installment in The Orphic Trilogy (subsequently followed by Orphée in 1950 and Testament of Orpheus in 1960), which explores themes of identity, creativity, fame, and the unconscious. Lott’s performance (happening after the screening) will be accompanied by composer Jason Carr, with whom she has worked extensively; the appearance is part of the Institut’s broader series celebrating the work of French composer Georges Auric (1899-1983). Cocteau’s film includes a rather perfect line for classical watchers: “Those who smash statues should beware of becoming one.”

Next month: If you don’t know the music of Maria Herz (1878-1950), you might – soon. Born in Köln to a music-loving family, Herz and her family eventually moved to England in 1901 because of the rising tide of antisemitism in her homeland, though they would return in 1914 and be forced to stay. After her husband’s premature death in 1920, she would use his first name in her compositions, in order to, as website Music And The Holocaust puts it, “gain a foothold in her male-dominated profession.” By 1934 she had produced over 30 works, though only five of her songs (as well as her arrangement of a Bach Chaconne) were published during her lifetime. She died in New York City at the age of 72. Much of her music sat forgotten in drawers until grandson Albert Herz’s heroic efforts in Switzerland; he would go on to donate it to the Zurich Central Library. In 2015 Herz’s music became a permanent part of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich’s music department. As publisher Boosey & Hawkes recently announced, a new recording is on the horizon. Set for release in May via Capriccio Records, the album will feature Herz’s Concerto for cello and orchestra Op. 10 (soloist Konstanze von Gutzeit), Concerto for piano and orchestra op. 4 (soloist Oliver Triendl) and various orchestral works, all performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under the baton of Christiane Silber.

Carving up space

London’s Southbank Centre recently announced a new festival based on Kate Molleson’s book Sound Within Sound (Faber & Faber, 2022). I interviewed Molleson not long after the book’s release with relation to a feature I was writing for The Globe & Mail on changing ideas of the classical canon. The festival, named after the book, runs 4 to 7 July and places its spotlight on the ten composers Molleson identifies in her book, ten artists whose work has, for various reasons, flown well under the radar – until now. The festival will include concerts, installations, stories, DJ sets, and recitals, including pianist Siwan Rhys performing Galina Ustvolskaya’s harrowing and extremely timely Piano Sonata No. 4 in 4 parts (1957), Piano Sonata No. 5 in 10 movements (1986), and Piano Sonata No.6 in 1 part (1988). You might feel yourself walking out of the Purcell Room in pieces following the performance, but then, it’s up to you to put them back together again in a way that makes sense with every other musical morsel – and maybe that’s the whole point of the festival.

Speaking of pieces and morsels: butchers have been on my mind, thanks to a thoughtful essay at Longreads. Along with a fascinating history, author Olivia Potts gets meaty (pun intended) input from a variety of people in the industry, many of whom left careers in other areas. This element has a special personal significance – I considered this very path over a decade ago; my opera-loving mother said I would probably make a good butcher indeed but for my small stature, not – as the author points out – that this is an entirely insurmountable thing. The feature immediately brought to mind other industries, ones with overwhelmingly male leadership and/or overwhelmingly clubby, insular attitudes. (I’ve mused on this theme frequently in the past, most recently in last month’s reading list.) Among the many brilliant observations and direct quotes, one section particularly stands out to me:

“It feels axiomatic to say that those who come from outside an established or “validated community of knowers” will find it significantly harder to both acquire knowledge and have that knowledge recognized than someone whose path is a well-trodden one. One of the most common ways of excluding non-traditional entrants to an industry is to be dismissive of them. This idea of being “taken seriously”—often those exact words—comes up again and again in the butchers I speak to about women in the trade.” (“The Women at the Cutting Edge of Butchery“, Olivia Potts, Longreads, 15 February 2024)

Shut your (my) filthy (rich) mouth…

Still in the non-conformist (or is it?) category: Theatre writer Lyn Gardner has written a chewy column for The Stage explores the rise of self-censorship in both organizational and individual aspects. I long for something to be added here around the normalization of false equivalence – how and why some views are given equal weight when they are not clearly not equal – and on the proliferation of hate speech, particularly within the realm Gardner points at as being the most problematic (social media), and how that proliferation has leaked into current cultural discourse. She does touch on an important aspect to all of this – money – and the role of funding bodies, but I wonder to what extent so-called “cancel culture” (whose popularization has made a tiny handful of tech people very rich) actually informs real programming decisions. After all, the moral authority to which she alludes doesn’t come cheap, and it largely flies out the window to keep the money rolling in; ever has it been thus. That tendency is more pronounced now that revenue sources are becoming increasingly scarce. Gardner’s mention of her students not knowing about Britain’s history of theatre censorship is somehow both depressing and unsurprising. (“Self-censorship doesn’t only silence voices but erodes moral authority“, Lyn Gardner, The Stage, 8 April 2024)

… but do speak up

The GVL (Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten) is conducting a survey on the state of the German music industry. The survey is intended for artists who are either self-employed or active in the music industry and based in the country. Responses are due by no later than 19 May 2024. Co-founded in 1959 by the German Orchestra Association and the German wing of the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), the GVL represents the interests of both producers and performing artists related to audio recordings, as well as ancillary rights through different forms of media. Machen Sie mit!

Hallo Medien

Amidst recent German media speculations regarding the current situation at Bayerische Staatsoper, its multi-award-winning in-house record label (BSOrec) is not mentioned once. Am I the only one who finds this strange? The label, founded in 2021, has so far released ten acclaimed audio and visual works, the most recent being last autumn’s recording of Mendelssohn’s Elias led by former company leader Wolfgang Sawallisch and captured live in 1984. Does media (local and international, equally) not consider BSOrec part of the musical ecosystem of the house (or city)? The exclusion is particularly galling if one considers the excitement such releases tend to generate globally; as well as being good for ears and eyes, they further the branding of the organization, and, more broadly, that of Bavaria overall – something Markus Blume must surely be aware of (we hope). Furthermore: why is the label’s work so under-promoted by the house? Why are there no related online updates – ones that might impress Herr Blume and demonstrate an interest in engaging with the wider public? Does Guido Gärtner need to come back from Bremen?

Lebeswohl, Scheiße

Writer Anne Midgette has penned an open letter to the musicians and administrators of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Curtis Institute, and what she terms “other classical music organizations and orchestra musicians’ collectives.” The letter is a response to their posted expressions of solidarity with relation to an article by Sammy Sussman in New York Magazine detailing the 2010 rape of New York Philharmonic horn player Cara Kizer by two fellow musicians and its horrific aftermath; since the article’s publishing, the two are, as of 16 April, are no longer rehearsing or performing with the orchestra. Midgette takes aim at the statements of support posted by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Curtis Institute (along with those unnamed others) for their rampant hypocrisy, something I’m not sure she would have been able to do with such clarity in her former position as classical critic with The Washington Post. Along with the force of her prose, Midgette provides stellar links and digital trails. I have met many people who intensely dislike Midgettes reporting, the #MeToo movement, what they feel she represents and supports – dislike these things as much as you wish, but you cannot deny Midgette excels at bringing the damn receipts.

Coming soon:

This weekend you can read my recent conversation with New Zealand Opera General Director Brad Cohen. The company’s first-ever New Opera Forum takes place next week (22-26 April) with composer Jonathan Dove, librettist Alasdair Middleton, and baritone Kawiti Waetford. The company recently opened their production of Dove’s 2011 chamber opera Mansfield Park – the work’s libretto is by Middleton and based on the 1814 novel of the same name by Jane Austen. Cohen and I had a fulsome discussion in which he offered thoughts on what opera can and should be in 2024, for artists as much as for audiences.

This sense of possibility is one of the things I’ll be exploring in an upcoming exchange with Renaud Doucet and André Barbe. The busy director-designer duo have two productions on the go right now, in Liège (Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande) and Toronto (Donizetti’s Don Pasquale); their 2019 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflote in Glyndebourne (which I previewed in Opera Canada magazine) incorporated aspects of real-life hotelier Anna Sacher into its dramaturgy. The last time was at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when the pair had made a dramatic escape from Venice; this time will (we hope) be a bit less dramatic.

In the meantime, remember the c-word– and use it. 🙂