Too Many Tristans

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "In The Mouth Of Madness"

2011-12-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

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MARIAH CAREY - MERRY CHRISTMAS II YOU
"So what's goin' on up there?"

"It's her again. Should I call the cops?"

"Don't bother. They think it's funny. She's been breaking into buildings all over the city and setting up bad Christmas displays on the roofs."

"Why?"

"Who knows? ... What's she doin' now?"

"It's weird. She's just sitting there like she's posing for a picture, but she's the only one up there..."

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "The Lonely Lads"

2011-12-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

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ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT
I hope those candles are enough to keep those kids warm. Imagine, locked in a church on Christmas Eve! Awful. Keep your wits, boys. You'll make it through this.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Next Time, Go With The Accordianist"

2011-12-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

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LADY ANTEBELLUM - A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
Okay, take a seat and spare me the attitude, Haircut. I hired you three to play my Christmas party and you show up with no instruments? You're not getting paid to sit there and pose. So give us Jingle Bells, maybe a little Deck The Halls, then get the hell out of here.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "The Chauffeur"

2011-12-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

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A TENORS CHRISTMAS
Just like in real life, they make Carreras drive.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Don't Forget The Ski Pants!"

2011-12-20T03:30:00.000-07:00

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MICHAEL MCDONALD - THROUGH THE MANY WINTERS
No, this isn't the cover of the latest Eddie Bauer catalog, but if you bring the CD cover in to your local Eddie Bauer, you'll receive 10 dollars off Gore-Tex mittons!

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Christmas at The Sands"

2011-12-19T03:30:00.000-07:00

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DEAN MARTIN - MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS
Awww, yeah. My kind of Christmas too, pal! Booze and broads and ring-a-ding-ding and sing-a-sing-sing! Bring Vegas right into your living room with this LP! Sounds exhausting. No thanks.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "A Paid Announcement"

2011-12-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

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STRAIGHT NO CHASER - CHRISTMAS CHEER
Join us as we celebrate our 10th anniversary. For attractive, well-designed and affordable web-design, look no further than Straight No Chaser. Utilizing the latest technology, we'll help you connect with your customers, increase your revenues, and, above all, announce to the world that your business is Ready For The Future.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "The Hinge of Fate"

2011-12-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

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CHRISTMAS - SING ALONG WITH MITCH
If even a grinch like satanist Anton LaVey can get into the spirit of the season, I'd say Christmas is in pretty good shape these days.

This is a turning point in the War On Christmas. The forces of the Desolate One, now pledging to celebrate Christ's birth, will join Christmas revellers and well-wishers in raining hellfire down on the heads of their enemies.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Calm Before The Storm"

2011-12-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

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CELTIC THUNDER - CHRISTMAS
The ghost of Rob Lowe's uncle haunts Gorky Park.

My great aunt from the UK came over last year and the combination of a pillow-sized bag of Piggy Puffs and her pre-existing gastric condition means that I've heard my fill of Celtic Thunder for quite a while, thanks.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "A Man's Gotta Eat"

2011-12-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

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TONY BENNETT - A SWINGIN' CHRISTMAS
Wouldn't it have been less work to actually get the guys around a table and snap a picture instead of taking a bunch of individual photos and photoshopping it together randomly? Really, there are random hands and heads scattered all over this thing.

This scene looks like it's about to get violent. There's at most 10 place settings represented and 15 hungry men. They're gonna tear that turkey apart like lions with roid rage.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Heads Up!"

2011-12-14T03:30:00.000-07:00

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BURL IVES - HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS
Nice. Someone's sent you the severed head of Burl Ives as a Christmas gift. Apparently, he tried to chew his way out of the box. Oh, well. It's better than Andy Williams' foot which you got last year.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Jingle HELL"

2011-12-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

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WILLIE KALIKIMAKA
After trashing all your decorations, Willie's now comin' after YOU. It's not "Wreck The Halls", Willie! It's not "A Rage In The Manger!" I don't know any Christmas carol called "Holly Brawly Christmas"! I've never heard of "God Belt You Merry Gentlemen"! If there's such a carol as "O Holy Fight", I've never heard it! "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth (After You Knocked Them Out)"?! As if!

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "Merry Christmas, Barry"

2011-12-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

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MICHAEL BUBLÉ - CHRISTMAS
Looks like Michael's waiting for his ne'er-do-well brother-in-law (who drunkenly groped Mother Bublé last Christmas then threw up in the punch bowl) to show up at the Bublé family festivities so he can give him his "gift" a little early. This year, it's gonna be an inch-thick piece of granite tile straight to the side of the head.

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER presents "An Unexpected Gift"

2011-12-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

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JAMES TAYLOR - AT CHRISTMAS
James, what are you doing here? I didn't expect to s... - what, for me? Uh, thanks. What, now? Okay. I didn't get you anything, ha ha.... Oh, what is that? Is that an - OH GOD, IT'S AN EYEBALL! NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOO!

Greatest Christmas CD Covers EVER

2011-12-10T10:40:00.001-07:00

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Wondering what to get your loved ones for Christmas? Use this handy gift guide and you'll know exactly which Christmas delights to avoid.

AN ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS
Judging from this creepy mask, an Orthodox Christmas celebration looks like the masked orgy scene from Eyes Wide Shut.

LIBERA - THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM
Once they secured control of their village, the Children of the Damned decided to cut a Christmas album. Good on 'em!

IL DIVO - THE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION
Looks like everyone's least favorite group is having a good laugh paying a struggling waitress to do a humiliating dance. I will simply count on karma to deliver its mysterious justice and will comment no further.

THE OAK RIDGE BOYS CHRISTMAS
If I charged out of bed on Christmas morning and found this scene in my living room, I'd declare Christmas officially ruined. God help us if the kids got there first. The deep-voiced guy would go "HO HO HO" and that's when the screaming would start.

KENNY CHESNEY - ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A REAL GOOD TAN
Maybe the terrorists are right.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU FROM PHIL SPECTOR
If I received a gift from Phil Spector, I'd be afraid to open it, quite frankly. And really, human beings as presents?! It just isn't done!

JUSTIN BIEBER - UNDER THE MISTLETOE
Give this one to your cranky elderly uncle who still unselfconsciously uses racist terms at the dinner table and watch what happens. See confusion turn to nausea turn to anger. It's what the holidays are all about!

JOHNNY MATHIS - MERRY CHRISTMAS
Looks like Johnny took his Christmas card photo at Sears. To save time, after this photo was taken, the Sears photographer unrolled the Old West background and the cover for the subsequent album "Johnny Sings American Classics" was also taken.

MERCYME - THE CHRISTMAS SESSIONS

The Christmas Intifada! How seasonal!

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 16

2009-11-27T12:12:00.003-07:00

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BEETHOVEN - PIANO CONCERTO No. 4 (RUBACKYTE/SHANGHAI STR Q./JAKAITIS)
You certainly are an intriguing case, Number Six. The previous Number Two underestimated you. I can assure you I won't repeat his mistake. He thought swapping your mind with that of a dog would break you. I think stronger medicine is required. The gentlemen behind me are going to play the first half of "Pop Goes The Weasel" over and over at an ever accelerating pace. You will be driven mad and you shall beg to tell me why you resigned.

BEETHOVEN - VIOLIN SONATAS (MACUTA/BLANCH)
Honey? How's the new teacher working out down there? I don't hear much playing!

GEORGE CRUMB - "BAD DOG!"
The one kids show my parents wouldn't let me watch. And looking at it now, it's no wonder. Crumb is foul-mouthed and cantakerous, and frequently wanders off screen. And that angry, blind, rabid dog of his is constantly barking and attacking his guests. When Crumb does remain onscreen, he usually just sits there muttering non-sequiturs. Trust me, it sounds better on paper.

HAYDN QUARTETS - AURYN QUARTET
The most generous interpretation of this cover is that the quartet is a group of ghosts who are haunting the fevered mind of Haydn. But the more likely one is that the cover designer wasn't experienced enough with the photo editing software. Or perhaps they were and decided dammit, there's no law that says two unrelated photos can't occupy the same space.

MAHLER - SYMPHONY NO. 4 (NÉZET-SÉGUIN)
The question "Why?" was never asked once during the design of this cover. The most iron-clad rule of great cover design. Great cover designers never ask why. And, really, I'm glad they didn't here. But when you decide to go the disembodied head route, you've got to be very careful. As we've seen, some prefer to just color it purple and call it day. Others prefer the more austere approach and think once you've got a detached head floating around in a void, adding anything would be gilding the lily. This cover goes all out and shows that HALF a severed head can be TWICE as good! And the crude caricature is pure gravy. Pure gravy on half a severed head.

MUSICA ORQUESTRAL I - MESTRES QUADRENY
J. Edgar Hoover splits solid stone with his head. "Why?" Uh uh uh! There's that question again!

MOZART - CLARINET QUINTET, STR. QUARTET 15 (BOUD, EDDING QUARTET)
An Elvis impersonator from the Year 3000 comes back to warn humanity about its errant ways. The cover's a lie - there's no music on this disc. Just a rambling monologue from a future man who, while still speaking English, is nearly impossible to understand. Idioms have changed A LOT in a thousand years. He keeps screaming about "giggle nerves" and "tustle bundles". I'd be tempted to write it off as gibberish, except that the last 15 minutes of the album is him reading the next 100 Super Bowl winners so the album's not a total write-off.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 15

2009-11-19T19:43:00.003-07:00

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RÉPERCUSSION - FANTAISIES CLASSIQUES
Believe me: jumping into a lake with a bunch of naked women isn't all it's cracked up to be. It starts fine. You're walking down a country path and you come upon this scene and the girls are all "Come on! The water's awesome." So you strip down and the girls are making like they're all excited. You make your way to the center of them and they gather around. Then they frickin' dunk your head under the water and all scramble out of the lake. By the time you resurface and get your bearings, they're out, they've grabbed their clothes and thrown yours on the fire! You get out of the lake and see that they've spraypainted "Ha ha! LOSER!" on a nearby station wagon that isn't even yours. So then you have to hitch a ride on the highway completely naked which is a whole other story I don't really want to get into.

DANIEL PERANTONI - DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN
This is probably the greatest cover of anything ever. Although it hardly looks like a lion's den. More like these two were hitchhiking and the lion got sick of the tuba guy cramping his style and finally told him to get lost.

STOKOWSKI - MUSIC FOR STRINGS
Wow, talk about bustin' a move! Yeah! Go Leo! Go Leo! No conductor did The Robot like Stokowski. Karajan was infamous for hating that move. He finally decided to take the Mad Moves crown for himself by busting out the moonwalk at the 1984 Salzburg Festival. The famous photo of Karajan falling off the stage headfirst into a tuba documents the result. It's one of those amazing photos you assume is a Photoshop but isn't.

MATS RONDIN - VOCALISE
This is why you periodically have to clear the photos off your digital camera. I'm sure the intention was to use one of the great shots a friend took of Mats in recital. Unfortunately, the camera also had about 150 backyard shots on it. Oh, well. Better this photo than the one of Mats sleeping in the hammock.

VERDI - RIGOLETTO (EHRLING)
Okay, where did the idea that Rigoletto is about a crazy puppet come from? This is like the 50th Rigoletto cover I've seen with puppets on it. They're all over the place! Fine, I give in. It's all about puppets. Ghost puppets. There. Happy now?

RACHMANINOFF FOR ROMANCE
So serial killers are designing album covers now. Horrific. I think this one's taken from the Green River Killer's sketchbook. The back cover is even worse. This thing belongs back in the evidence room and not anywhere near a CD shelf.

EIN LIEDERABEND MIT ANTON DERMOTA
Welcome! Welcome to our lovely home! We are so happy you could join us. We have a wonderful evening planned. Drinks and conversation and then we will enjoy the most wonderful supper you could imagine. After that, music! And much laughter too, I'm sure. I'm sure this will be an evening you'll never forget. Of course, now that you have entered our home, there is no possible way we could ever permit you to leave. FRITZ! THE SHACKLES!

Cantata Cantata Cantata

2009-11-16T21:08:00.005-07:00

Hänssler's Bach edition has been on my shelf for a few years now and I've listened to chunks of it, but not nearly enough of the cantatas. I hadn't heard about 90% of them. So in a flash of insanity inspired by the impending arrival of 4 BIS box sets of Masaaki Suzuki's Cantata cycle (more on that later) I decided I should listen to all of the cantatas before Christmas.

With a new mission chosen, the next thing to do was to figure out which order should be used to go through the works: order by their use in the church calendar or by BWV number. I went with BWV number since it's basically random anyway and some randomization makes this entire scheme seem a little less OCD. Plus, I already had a ton of work ahead of me since I had a lot of ripping to iTunes to do so figuring out which cantata goes where was work I didn't need.

So the process began of ripping the disc, fixing all the track listings, saving those track titles to a text file so I can re-use them when the Suzuki set arrives, getting good quality cover art, updating the ripped files' metadata and THEN listening to it. The listening has been going well and as of today, I'm exactly halfway through the set - disc 30 of 60.

I've been able to get through them at a decent pace since I'm not even following along with the texts. A younger version of me with more free time would have insisted on sitting quietly with headphones with the text and score in front of me. If I insisted on that now, I'd get nowhere. So instead, I just listen on the way to work, at lunch and on the way home. I can get through a couple of discs a day that way.

I've been keeping track of which ones are particularly striking to me on this first pass and I'll revisit those first. I'm struck by how different each of these works from each other are but I shouldn't be surprised. In many other instances, Bach is concerned with finding every possible way of solving a compositional problem (cf. The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldbergs, Art of Fugue, etc.) Even the most dimwitted of commentators couldn't get away with saying that Bach wrote the same cantata 200 times (or more like 3- or 400 times given the appalling number of works by Bach that haven't survived). Michael Tanner said that the Bach cantatas were the largest set of great music no one knows. While certain cantatas (4, 78, 140) are famous, certainly dozens more aren't and need to be.

So the marathon continues with Volumes 31 and 32 today. At this rate, I should be done in early December. Then when I'm done I'll wrap myself in one of those foil blankets and drink lots of Gatorade.

A Very Special Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER - Friday

2009-11-13T05:00:00.003-07:00

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A CANADIAN BRASS CHRISTMAS
Okay, guys. One of you tell me what the hell you're doing in my house. Don't just sit there like statues. Wipe those creepy grins off your mugs and start talkin'. Fine, I'm callin' the cops. And why are you dressed like that? It's the middle of July.

DER FREISCHÜTZ
I had no idea Freischütz was a western. Judging from the grins, I'd say that the ranch was saved and the evil cattlerustler was sent packin'. But never underestimate Gottlob Frick. He didn't get to be the most powerful man in Sunshine Valley by giving up THAT easily. Something tells me that by morning, one of the happy pair will have a date with the hangman and the other will be sent back to the brothel. Gottlob just hasn't decided who goes where yet.

A Very Special Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER - Thursday

2009-11-12T05:00:00.008-07:00

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GRIEG - HAUGTUSSA (KRINGELBORN/MARTINEAU)
When I first saw this, I shrieked "what the hell? That water must be 3 degrees! Is this from some Nordic version of Jackass? She'll freeze to death!" Then I noticed how small the waves were compared to her. Then the horrible realization dawns on me. She must be 90 feet tall! An indestructible giantess! To think I feared for her! Turns out, it's MY life that's in danger!

PROTEUS 7 - BERNSTEIN TRIBUTE
Apparently Leonard Bernstein was a werewolf. Or maybe Proteus 7 were big fans of '80s teen werewolf comedies such as "Teen Wolf", "Werewolf Summer Camp" and "Werenerd". This isn't their first crazy cover, though. Their Aaron Copland tribute has the composer made up like Frankenstein.

A Very Special Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER - Wednesday

2009-11-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

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VAN DYK/JÄRVI - MUSIC DISCOVERY PROJECT
This looks like the craziest mixed martial arts pay-per-view ad ever. TONIGHT, IT'S SETTLED. CLASSICAL VS. ELECTRONIC. WHO WILL RULE THE SOLAR SYSTEM? Electronic may have youth on its side, but Classical is wily. Plus, if the power goes out, Electronic is DONE. This would be over in 30 seconds if eye gouges and lowblows were still allowed but since they aren't my prediction is that Classical makes Electronic tap out in the third round.

FÜR ELISE: LULLABIES FOR LIZ (YURI SEROV)
Okay, this cover was done in a booth at the mall. For 20 bucks, you get the CD cover plus baby's picture on a mug and on a small jigsaw puzzle. I'm a little worried about that disembodied hand. I hope it's still attached to one of baby's parents. If not, this cover has taken a macabre turn indeed.

A Very Special Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER - Tuesday

2009-11-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

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KLEIN/ROBBINS - SCHUMANN/DVORAK
The tragic sequel to yesterday's kidnapping cover. Klein is now in full Stockholm Syndrome mode and onboard with Robbins. Will Klein pull a Patty Hearst? Only time will tell. Hopefully, striking bizarre poses on album covers is the worst these two get up to. Seriously, I don't think there's anyone - man, woman or beast - that I'd feel comfortable enough with to pose for a picture like this.

HANSEL & GRETEL (OPERA FOR KIDS)
If your kids are sleeping a little too well these days, show them this cover. Apparently Hansel & Gretel is some kind of demented Woody Allen comedy where middle-aged couples dress up as kids. Makes sense. When I want needling of liberal Manhattanites' neuroses, I turn to Humperdinck. "There's so much ignorance and injustice in the world. It's all chaos out there and any fleeting happiness we find is either an illusion or a total accident. In the end we're all worm food anyway. And this candy cane is supposed to make me forget all that?" If my kids talked that way, I'd abandon them in the forest, too. This recording features Marshall McLuhan as the Witch.

A Very Special Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER - Monday

2009-11-09T19:03:00.001-07:00

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With the holiday season fast approaching, here is a week of twofers to sharpen the mind and gladden the heart. When I think of the holidays, I think of peace on earth, goodwill to men, and making fun of something someone else worked very hard on.

KLEIN & ROBBINS - REUNION IN MOSCOW
Clearly one guy is happier to be reunited than the other. The guy on the left is blinking out an SOS, I think. This photo was not taken in Moscow, but is rather a composite featuring an JPG background found with Google and a photo taken in the kidnapper's basement. Authorities will scuttle off to Moscow based on the photo, but the guy is being held in this very town! Diabolical.

BACH FOR BABIES
So if you play Bach for your baby, they will (a) collapse into unconsciousness, (b) improvise a tap dancing routine that puts to shame every damn thing in "That's Entertainment!" or (C) be mutated into an emotionless spazz who runs around in a makeshift diaper. Take your pick, folks - my kids are sticking with Beethoven.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 14

2009-11-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

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STRAVINSKY IN AMERICA (TILSON THOMAS)
The worst buddy comedy of the '80s. TT was game, but Stravinsky seemed determined to sink the venture from the start. He insisted in speaking Russian throughout the film ("No goddamned subtitles!" was the only thing he said in English on set). He also demanded frequent and nonsensical script changes (his character, a crotchety janitor helping TT's CIA agent break up a narcotics ring, turned into an emperor midway through the film with no explanation). And the use of some of Stravinsky's later, serial works as theme music hardly had the impact of say, the Ghostbusters theme. Avoid if you see it at Blockbuster.

RICHARD STRAUSS - ARABELLA
Hey! There's a party in the giant blow-up sex doll's hair and everyone's invited!

RIGOLETTO (SERAFIN)
"Yup. I've been a widower for 50 years... Yeah, two. Daughter. Married. Moved down to Phoenix. And a son that teaches in Peru or Paraguay or some damn place... Once in a while. Phone call at Christmas, usually... Oh, most days I'm here, drinking my bellywarmers I call 'em, heh heh heh... Bored? Oh, no no no. Between the game on TV here and going to the races, I'd say my plate is plenty full."

VILLA LOBOS: ALMA BRASILEIRA (TILSON THOMAS)
After the Tilson Thomas movie went nowhere, TT got a detective show. A kind of Baretta Meets Miami Vice. The gimmick was that the parrot would talk and give TT clues, but bafflingly, only TT could hear him speak which lead to many scenes of him conversing with the bird while others in the scene demanded "who are you talking to?" even though he was looking right at the bird. The parrot left after the third season due to a contract dispute. TT himself left early in the fourth and the show bizarrely carried on for 3 more episodes with neither of its stars. Critically acclaimed as a dadaist treatment of 80s decadence, it's worth checking out on DVD.

SEJONG PLAYS EWAZEN
Confusing. The words of the title could be in any random order and it would make equal sense to me. Not sure how well these guys play but their hotel room trashing exploits are legendary. They're banned worldwide from staying in a Holiday Inn after the guy on the left drove a Caddy into a swimming pool at one of their hotels in Kalamazoo. At one show, these guys were so worked up they just jumped up and down and cheered for 90 minutes and left the stage without playing a note.

TRIO CÉRÈS - FAURÉ/RAVEL/HERSANT PIANO TRIOS
Another rule of great cover design is if you're going to put a picture of yourself on the cover, make sure you project total contempt for all potential buyers. Two of 'em can hardly stand to look at ya and are all "if we just stay still and be quiet, maybe he'll go away" and the middle guy is totally "what do YOU want"? Look man, I'll just put the CD down. I've got enough static in my life and don't need any hassle from my CDs.

THE ONLY OPERA CD YOU'LL EVER NEED!
Is it too much to say that anyone who has this in their collection should be forcibly institutionalized indefinitely?

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 13

2009-10-28T23:31:00.002-06:00

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THE BEST OF JOSHUA BELL
This shot was taken from Bell's Gilmore Girls appearance. He was the sexually non-threatening fiddle playing boy who stole a kiss from Rory under the mulberry tree. Then a bunch of girls in the town went missing and the town blamed him. He was tarred and feathered and thrown in the river where he drowned. Then it turns out the girls were just on a school trip to a museum in Hartford.

DIANA DAMRAU - COLORATURAS
Diana is at the stage in her career where she needs dolled-up, Renée Fleming type CD covers. Not ones where she's dressed up like Rhoda's spazzy sister doing a grim parody of the freeze frame at the of the Mary Tyler Moore Show intro credits.

HAUSMUSIK
This looks like a screen capture from a bad real estate website. The web designer was obviously just throwing together random clip art. "Sylvia and David have been in the Rochester real estate market for a combined 27 years. Let their experience and expertise take all the stress out of your home buying experience. With their help, you can turn your new house into a HOME."

GUASTAVINO / CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go! Let me go! Bismillah! We will not let you go! Let me go! No no no no no no no! Oh mamma mia, mamma mia! Mamma mia, let me go! Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

MADARASZ - THE LAST WALTZ
Wow. This one takes me back! Mommy slipping me spiked tea while she dances with some blurry weirdo who isn't daddy. And my closet was a wonderful portal to some exotic magical land. Well, it was until we discovered the auto repair shop below us was leaking carbon monoxide into my room.

WITCHES' BREW
A generation of children were turned off classical music forever by this cover. An easily-entertained woman in baggy clothes cleans used instruments in boiling water, presumably with an eye to reselling them. This one follows one of the iron clad rules of great album cover design: a cover must give absolutely no indication of the album's contents. This could be a spooky sound effects record for all we know.

TITO GOBBI - THE GLASS MOUNTAIN
Nothing like a beloved singer made up to look like a hobo playing a broken down accordian. This is as distressing as seeing Placido Domingo in a Bum Fights video. Maybe Tito was doing a Lucille Ball Stone Pillow kinda deal with this. Or maybe it's from a Gunsmoke guest appearance with Walter Brennan. Just when you think you have the answer, this cover changes the question.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 12

2009-10-21T04:00:00.003-06:00

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PROKOFIEV - PETER AND THE WOLF
Lenny Henry?! Was Mrs. Slocombe busy? Not everyone who's famous in a country somewhere needs to have their own Peter And The Wolf. I eagerly await the new version in Klingon narrated by Brent Spiner.

MATT HAIMOVITZ - BACH CELLO SUITES
Okay, bringing the cello to the bush party sounded like a good idea. But man, if you're gonna wade through waist-deep winter run-off, man, BRING A CASE. Besides, once the goons start chugging beers, the girls aren't gonna care about your overgrown fiddle.

BRYN TERFEL - BAD BOYS
Looks like Bryn spent a little too long with the cheese platter and is suffering the consequences. The follow up album will feature him holding up a glass of prune juice with a profoundly relieved look on his face.

VOICES FROM HEAVEN
Apparently Deutsche Grammophon's definition of paradise is a little different than mine.

THE ELGAR EXPERIENCE
What nationality was Elgar again? I forget.

England's greatest composer? A dubious claim, but I'm not gonna argue with the giant woman about to smash that village to rubble. Between Elgar's ghost featured on previous covers and this giant madwoman, England has become a paranormal warzone.

STRAUSS - DER ROSENKAVALIER (KLEIBER)
If someone showed me this as a kind of Rorschach test I'd blurt out "My grade one teacher holding a Mini-Me version of Leopold Mozart! Naked! Naked nude! Peacock feathers! Bad boy! Nude naked!" Then I'd have to be sedated.

LETTER TO THE LATE SERGEI (SAKIMOTO/MINO)
When I feel the need to express bittersweet remembrances of someone who's passed, the first thing I reach for is my harmonica. The harmonica works if Roy Rogers needs to express worry that he may not get the cattle back from those pesky rustlers or if Gabby Hayes fell in the outhouse again. Anything more than that and you need to break out the serious weapons in the mourning arsenal: a banjo or a slide whistle.

Thanks to Doug Halfen for the cover suggestion.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 11

2009-10-14T04:00:00.004-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

AMIEI CHAMBER PLAYERS - ZOO OF DREAMS
The classical music industry's is getting bored with ghosts and has moved on to Greek gods. I get mocked enough in my regular life and don't need the decadent denizens of Olympus laughing down at me. "Zoo Of Dreams", huh? What's that quote? "Flies around God's head are like wayward boys." Something like that.

DANIEL HOPE - AIR. A BAROQUE JOURNEY
Yeesh. This smug pomo stuff is played out, dude. Yes, yes, we get that you've cleverly deconstructed the idea of an appropriate album cover photo. Pretty 1993, if you ask me.

A better idea would have been to have a guy in the sky standing on a cloud and singing. And then maybe he could have this cool electric guitar. Yeah, and it could be powered by a lightning bolt that's hitting it. And he could have a sword. And he's just thrown the sword and it gets this three-headed dragon right in the chest. Then put "DANIEL HOPE - AIR" at the top, dripping in blood and you're done.

GEORGE FLYNN - TRINITY
Talk about promising a lot! That piano's gonna have to make quite a lot of racket to be able to live up to the cover. Maybe they'll throw the piano down a flight of stairs. Or off the Empire State Building. Or shoot it into orbit and have it explode 100 miles above the surface somewhere over Siberia. The blast could then be heard all the way to Moscow. If I put this on and hear anything less than that, I'll be disappointed.

CARMEN (OPERA FOR CHILDREN)
Gah! Looks like Wednesday Addams didn't turn out so good. I'm not sure that portraying Carmen as a pasty, skeletal crypt keeper will turn any kids on to opera. Maybe those years in the cigarette factory turned her against cigarettes and she decided to do an anti-smoking ad before she died. "Whatever you do, don't smoke. Just don't smoke."

PETER AND THE WOLF (WEIRD AL YANKOVIC AND WENDY CARLOS)
I'm going to suggest that this isn't what Prokofiev had in mind. Weird Al has a glowing Frisbee and a lasso and he's being chased around Central Park by a wolf wearing Bruce Jenner's shorts who has roid rage. And Tweety Bird's great grandson twitters the whole scene using his iMac. Probably better to burn the score than subject it to this besmirchment.

VERDI - RIGOLETTO
Rigoletto rolls his own while an evil ventriloquist's dummy tells him what to do. There's no more chilling moment in opera than when Rigoletto thinks the Duke's dead and then he hears the dummy whisting "La donna è mobile" FROM INSIDE HIS TRUNK.

MENDELSSOHN SONGS
You can tell he's way more into her that she is into him. He's thinking about what color candles to put around the tub for the bath they'll take after their homemade pasta and wine meal he's been planning all week while she's plotting an exit strategy that may or may not involve cleaning out his bank account.

BONUS!

MEGAPUSS!

The Ruler of the Interwebs

2009-10-13T19:50:00.000-06:00

Know what happens if you enter "classical cd covers" into Google? You get this site as the #2 result. And into Bing? NUMBER ONE! USA! USA! So many of my visitors come here looking for covers and leave very frustrated.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 10

2009-10-07T05:57:00.002-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN - DAMRAU/PALEY
I hate these couples who dress up alike. You always see them truckin' down the mall wearing their matching windbreakers. Dressing alike is crazy - I fathered septuplets and you don't see me dressing them all up the same! These two will realize it isn't such a good idea anymore when they're riding home on the subway and everyone's snickering at them.

GARRETT/PLETNEV - VIOLIN CONCERTOS
Edward from Twilight is menaced by a robotic, self-aware cello while he tries to practice.

PETER EN DE WOLF
The classical music industry's undeclared war on children's psychological health continues. The drug-addled wolf with human eyes looks like he's about to start speaking and the kid looks like his mouth's about to open and keep opening until he swollows his own head. The bird is a messenger from Satan and the duck is an appalled, powerless onlooker. As are we all.

VERDI - SIMON BOCCANEGRA (ABBADO)
Another great choice for the Opera for Children. So it turns out the Doge is actually Santa Claus. Now the council scene makes a lot more sense. I was always confused why everyone was arguing about how to get all the toys done before December 25. I don't remember the opera ending with Boccanegra's head and shoulders being cut off and nailed to a door, though...

TIMOTHY BUZBEE - RAW EMOTIONS
Wine, a hot spring and one other guy was not what you were expecting when you signed up for the local polar bear club.

META 4 - HAYDN STRING QUARTETS
A good rule of thumb is never buy a disc of string quartet music which features a picture of the group on the cover. You guys wanna turn the scowling down a notch and ditch the crazy sneakers? We get it: you're bohemian. These guys are giving me the stink eye as though I just wandered into the coffee house they were playing in and ordered a Big Mac.

FLUTE AND HARPSICHORD SONATAS
Wow. Randy Bassoon Man looks like he can't wait for the recital to be over. Annie Hall Diane Keaton on cello is not looking forward to it. Maybe he'll get drunk and pass out in the cab and she can slip away and walk home.

Interesting choice to feature a bassoon and cello on an album of flute and harpsichord music. This kind of switcheroo isn't unprecedented, though:

Thanks to Dominy Clements and Kyra Davies for the cover suggestions.

Hammertime

2009-10-05T12:52:00.000-06:00

There are multiple YouTube videos of percussionists executing one of the hammer blows during the finale to Mahler's Sixth. This one sounds perfect to me.

Up For The Download

2009-10-01T20:11:00.001-06:00

Mahler 6 Mania continues. I've been listening to it repeatedly for the last week or so. I've finally gotten into buying music downloads as opposed to buying the music on CD and have been using iTunes exclusively. I got the Tilson Thomas and Fischer 6ths first, then a few days later got the Kubelik live performance and Zinman's (for $3.99!). I wanted to get some of the commonly-recommended versions and decided to give Pierre Boulez's version a try. Not finding it on iTunes, I went to the Universal Classics page and went to Deutsche Grammophon's webshop. I found the album there and made the purchase.

I then learned that I shouldn't complain too loudly about the iTunes store. Whatever problems it has, when you buy something, it downloads FAST. Trying to download the Boulez album from DG was a trial. I literally had to start and re-start the download 8 or 9 times (on two different machines) before I finally got the files. What takes a few minutes in iTunes took around an hour from the webshop.

I'm looking forward to being able to make purchases from passionato.com (it's currently UK-only) as they offer albums from the big 3 (Decca, DG, Philips) as well as other labels. So the download situation for classical is slowly getting better. Which is dangerous for my collectoritis. Before this Mahler binge, I don't think I ever bought multiple versions of the same work on the same day.

(The complete Dorati Haydn symphony cycle is on iTunes for $50 which makes it the steal of all centuries. Go there now.)

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 9

2009-09-30T04:00:00.042-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

THE NEW AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
Frankly, sir, you were misleading in your craiglist ad. I had no idea this was to be a romantic dinner. Now, I bid you adieu.

What's that? Why yes, I have lost a little lately. How did you guess? Thank you. Ha ha, you're right! I will need a new belt soon! Well, I guess I could stay for a coffee...

VIVALDI ADAGIOS
Come with me. On the canals we will embrace the mysteries of the night. The mask will come off and I will stand before you ready to - excuse me? Are you laughing? ... No, my shirt is not puffy. Please stop laughing. Madam? It is very rude. ... Okay, fine. On your way. Find your own way home.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (OPERA FOR CHILDREN)
Another horror show for kids. This one's looks like it could be about a two-headed beast who roams the countryside eating small children (I don't know Mozart that well).

APPLEBAUM/HAMELIN - SERIOUS FUN!
Yes, your wife is very fetching, sir, but I'm actually more interested in the tent trailer. Can't people say what they mean in these bloody craigslist ads?... No, I don't want any wine.

LOUIS LORTIE - MENDELSSOHN
"You see, Number 6, there really is no need for you to leave The Village. We have shops, restaurants and even a small cinema. So really, won't you give it up? Your every move is visible to us via closed-circuit television. Escape by land is hopeless and if you're foolish enough to make a swim for it, Rover will take care of you. You'll save us time and yourself a lot of trouble if you simply tell us why you resigned."

PHENOMENON - THE MUSIC OF DAVID GARNER
And now, ladies and gentlemen, using only the power of my mind, I shall make this bridge... DISAPPEAR!

PLACIDO DOMINGO - AMORE INFINITO
The ghost of JP2 is about to karate chop three cinder blocks while Placido watches the action on the Jumbotron. The classical music industry is obsessed with ghosts so their constant appearance on CD covers doesn't even phase me anymore. Although I must admit seeing EMI's latest cover for the Schwarzkopf Four Last Songs threw me for a loop...

Monday Update

2009-09-28T08:34:00.004-06:00

Getting hits from people looking for Barbara Bonney pictures. So here's one - give the people what they want, I always say!

Will probably post about it later, but I've been listening to Mahler's Sixth Symphony a lot lately. I sat down and listened with the score which I haven't done for years. I'd stopped using scores while I listened because I thought I was becoming too reliant on them when learning new pieces. Too much eye, not enough ear.

But using a score again was great. The end of the Sixth is merciless, even on paper. Prior to the final collapse, Mahler gives us one last build up, on E, surely this will resolve to A major - even the key signature is telling us A major. But no, we fall into A minor for the last time and the three sharps in the key signature are torn away. I've gotta move on to something a little more upbeat after this one.

The latest Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER will be posted on Wednesday which should be a regular thing. Especially since Wednesday is Comedy Day on the Internet since The Onion, The Laugh Palace and Scrofula's Toybox all post their updates then.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 8

2009-09-23T04:00:00.018-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

AMERICAN MUSIC FOR CELLO
The strange, alien device appeared over the lake four years ago. Since then, it's been hovering silently. Ol' Jeb said he heard it make a clicking sound six months ago. But I don't believe him.

ANDREI ESHPAI EDITION VOL. 1
A candid shot taken from the Kentucky Fried Chicken headquarters tour. A suit and tie is mandatory when viewing the Colonel's portait.

BORN TO BE MILD
Another trip to Walmart ruined by a trumpet-tooting biker. Is that he's sitting sidesaddle what makes him mild? Plus, since the W isn't actually struck out, I guess the name of this album is really BORN TO BE WMILD. Which is a far better title, actually.

CHESTNUT BRASS COMPANY
Another damn brass band. I've got enough on my hands dealing with the Canadian Brass and don't have time to deal with these jokers. The cover looks like a young Roger Dean tried to draw a still from Yellow Submarine. "Brazen Cartographies", huh? You know, I've used the dictionary to randomly put words together for song titles too. Know what I came up with? "Nefarious Pemmican."

BEETHOVEN - COMPLETE WORKS FOR CELLO AND PIANO
Beethoven apparently now dwells in the House On Haunted Hill. Sorry, Ludwig. The will clearly states that if I stay the night, the fortune is mine. I'M NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE.

VOICES - MUSIC BY HERBERT BIELAWA
I think I've figured out what's going on here. In the background, we have a shot of some Manson family members chatting with some of the crew who shot that "I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke" commercial in the '70s. Over top of that is a somewhat later picture of the Laurie Partridge Fan Club. Overseeing it all is a marble sculpture of the head of Hugh Downs' brother Darrel. Now that I see this written down, it does make a lot more sense.

BUZZED
Theme music from that awful game show where contestants wore shock collars and were "buzzed" with ever-increasing voltages every time they got an answer wrong. Think the Milgram Experiment was disturbing? Try it with a hooting studio audience! The final 18 minutes of the album is silence punctuated with occasional buzzes of increasing loudness. Ignoring every moral instinct, most audients will listen all the way through because the liner notes told them to.

Last Night's Tosca

2009-09-22T07:40:00.001-06:00

A stupid technical problem means I missed recording almost all of the first act of last night's Met Tosca. I did get the rest. The production is controversial - if you're going to finish the second act with no cross and no candles, expect people to get ornery (which they did last night). Here's the NY Times review.

I hate when I screw up recordings like this. It happened last year with one of Mattila's Salomes. I wrote to the Met channel on Sirius asking about replays and they basically said they replay one live presentation from each production during the off-season and maybe that performance will be the one selected. As it turns out, they did replay the one I missed. There are more Tosca broadcasts to come (and the HD simulcast to movie theatres) so I should really calm down.

More Krazy Kovers tomorrow....

Tosca TONITE

2009-09-21T07:44:00.003-06:00

The Met's season kicks off tonight with Karita Mattila in Tosca. You can listen for free here. The show starts at 6:30 ET (6:00 on Sirius). Anything Mattila is in is mandatory listening. I'd buy a CD of her warming up. Or yelling at a metermaid, even.

I Blame American Idol

2009-09-20T14:39:00.003-06:00

There's something to be said about having the courage to go out and perform in public. It's not an easy thing. I should know: my one attempt was an ill-fated junior high streaking stunt that resulted in 3 years of military school.

But if you are going to get up there, you owe it to your audience to be somewhat prepared. Take a look at this video where the spirit of Florence Foster Jenkins possesses a poor singer and turns a Mozart aria into a freakout hellride. While the voice will disturb, the arm gestures will inspire.

Weekend Reading

2009-09-18T21:09:00.000-06:00

A nice find online today: a large archive of opera reviews by Michael Tanner. Dipped into a number of them just now and came away with something good from pretty much each one of them.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part 7

2009-09-17T10:52:00.004-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN
A gazelle urinating on a naked pregnant woman. If you know the opera, you know that this isn't as crazy as it sounds.

CLASSICS FOR CHILDREN
Check out the space-age jacket! Time traveller Arthur Fiedler steps out of the Time Tunnel from the year 2512 to instruct the world's youth in classical music before it's too late. This is like Star Trek IV when Spock had to rescue those singing whales from the Klingons.

PETER AND THE WOLF
Dominy, a kind reader, reminded me of this one. Jonathan's really gotta grow a pair. Being scared of a pantomime wolf! I would not run if one of those came prancing after me. I'd smack his mask around and jump him. These pantomime guys are all talk. Trust me.

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS - THE COLLECTORS' EDITION
At least when Elgar haunted the countryside, things didn't get out of hand. A few spooky noises, sure, but nothing to get upset about. Certainly no overturned barns or floating beds or anything. Unlike RVW who's been tearing it up out there like its Poltergeist 2. I admit I was one of those who demanded the Ghostbusters be run out of town when they made me uncomfortable. But now we need them! They're heroes to this city. I'm sorry for everything! Save us! Come back! COME BACK!

PFITZNER - VON DEUTSCHER SEELE
Hands down the most badass composer ever. What aspect of this cover isn't terrifying? And a look through his works catalog reveals what a menace this guy was. The Punch Your Face Cantata, Op. 120? "The Future Is Pain" Variations? The "Kick Your Ass Down The Stairs" Lieder? Sheesh. And what about the ad campaign for his last cd where he was punching that hanging cow carcass? Better to just buy this CD and stay out of his way.

VLADISLAV KAZENIN
This looks like a picture torn from a 1970s photo album. "Oh, and here's Uncle Vladislav. He was odd. He'd sit at that piano at every family gathering and become furious if anyone asked him to play. I honestly don't know if he actually could play the piano or not...."

AIDA
What a horror show. Missing arms, bandaged stumps and a man's severed genitalia flying by. And this is a series of opera for children! I admit that shielding your kids too much isn't good, but their playschool doesn't have to be the Grand Guignol.

Reissued at last

2009-09-17T08:27:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to buy Brendel's digital cycle of the Beethoven sonatas ever since it was completed but the price always put me off. At the time, it was nearly $200 and there were a lot of other disc purchases happening then. But now, at long last, it comes out next month at budget price.

In a Gramophone review from December, 1996, Rob Cowan says of Op. 109:
"Since it is the critic's job to pontificate what does one do when a performance is so satisfying that after it even a single well-honed sentence seems an irrelevance? Retire, possibly, and devote oneself to a more useful and benign trade such as growing vegetables." A critic who knows his place.

More Classical Covers on the way

2009-09-17T08:26:00.002-06:00

Someone on Twitter has twitterized me and Tim Smith at the Baltimore Sun have been sending people my way. Thank you and brace yourselves for the latest edition of It's A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Crazy Classical Cover which should be appearing later today.

Shredding

2009-09-16T06:00:00.001-06:00

With the arrival of shredding, the Internet is at long last being put to good use. Shredding is the process of taking footage of a musical performance and replacing it with different, newly created music. Here's a brilliant example using a performance by KISS.

Classical performances are also being shredded. And is there one more deserving of shredding than the fake performance from Obama's inauguration? This one has it all - great performances, hilarious reaction shots and crowd noise and brilliant use of silence. Watch the whole thing (the clarinet player seems to completely forget how to play by the end of it).

Save some shelf space

2009-09-15T20:03:00.002-06:00

The Gramophone has made its complete run of back issues available online.

The first issue I ever bought was from September 1991. I'd experienced the Ring for the first time the previous year (Solti's Rheingold from the library and the complete Met cycle on 4 consecutive nights on PBS in June) and was mainly a reader of Classic CD. I switched to the Gramophone a few years before they finally went under and was glad to see them go. They'd done a format change where they were trying to be everything to everybody (I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in world music reviews) and they were employing sub-par reviewers. I still remember my rage upon reading a reviewer complain about a recording of Beethoven's 9th which didn't feature an exposition repeat in the first movement. Since Beethoven DOESN'T CALL FOR ONE, I doubt the fool HAD EVER HEARD A RECORDING THAT DID DO THE NONEXISTENT REPEAT. (I'm still angry about it).

It is weird to look back a few decades, especially the ads. Check out this one from the June 1973 issue. It's for the latest release in Haitink's Concertgebouw Bruckner cycle which in its current incarnation is sitting on my CD shelf behind me.

I wonder what someone back then would have thought if he could see the classical listener of today.

1973 Man: So you're from the future? Tell me, did Bernard Haitink finish his Bruckner cycle?

2009 Man: Why yes he did. As a matter of fact, I have it here in my rucksack. It's on these shiny discs. See how they're smaller than a 45 RPM record?

1973 Man: So you still use discs? Aren't you from 36 years in the future?

2009 Man: Well, I have this. It's called an iPod. There's over 1000 hours of music on it.

1973 Man: Well, that's interesting. It may be a good idea to have it on some kind of tiny chip which maybe you could plug into your arm or something.

2009 Man: Yeah, we don't have that yet.

1973 Man: Well, in any event, I'm sure it's useful for when you're flying to the moon on a vacation.

2009 Man: Uh, we don't do that.

1973 Man: Why not? The moonbase up there is for scientific use only? Must be a lot of military guys up there too.

2009 Man: No, actually, we haven't been back since 1972.

1973 Man: But cancer's cured, right?

2009 Man: Well, no. But we're getting there.

1973 Man: Flying cars? Jet packs? No?...... GIMME THAT IPOD.

2009 Man: No, let me go!

(they scuffle. 2009 Man is knocked unconscious to the ground.)

1973 Man: Know something, little gadget. You're going to make me MILLIONS.

And that's how the iPod was invented.

Keine Besucher

2008-04-16T11:28:00.003-06:00

An amusing article from 2003 about one man's quest to track down KlingKlang, Kraftwerk's famously mysterious recording studio. Wikipedia seems to have a picture and the address...

Backlog

2008-04-14T13:05:00.002-06:00

Howard Stern's on vacation this week so I have some extra listening time. I decided to start dealing with my major backlog of Met broadcasts recorded off SIRIUS's Met Opera channel. So every day this week will be at least one opera. I've already finished today's: last Saturday's The Gambler. Tomorrow will be a Billy Budd from 1997, Wednesday an Il trovatore from 1989, Thursday a Siegfried from 2004 and Friday a Der Rosenkavalier from 1946.

Thinking about Prokofiev lead me to wonder why we don't keep the Russian names for the operas. We know the operas as The Gambler, War and Peace, Betrothal in a Monastery, etc. Why not the transliterated Russian equivalent? Then I discovered what The Gambler in Russian ends up as when transliterated: Igrok. Let's stick with the English...

Met Spring

2008-03-31T16:39:00.006-06:00

Once this season of Met HD broadcasts to movie theatres wraps up, they will have shown 14 operas. PBS is showing them all this spring, one a week. Below is the list with the dates indicating during which week the opera will be shown. Operas in bold are ones for which a DVD release has not yet been announced. I'm sure the Met will release practically all of them at some point. Tristan may be the exception here since this production has already seen a DVD release (with Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen and without the Brady Bunch plays Tetris effects). I'm looking forward to seeing these since I've only been able to get to one so far this season. The Anna Netrebko Roméo is next and soon after that is the Karita Mattila Manon Lescaut so you can be sure I'll have my Betamax fired up all spring long.

Hansel and Gretel - March 26
Roméo et Juliette - April 6
Macbeth - April 13
The Magic Flute - April 20
Manon Lescaut - April 27
I Puritani - May 4
The First Emperor - May 11
Peter Grimes - May 18
Eugene Onegin - May 25
Tristan und Isolde - June 1
The Barber of Seville - June 8
La Bohème - June 15
Il Trittico - June 22
La Fille du Règiment - June 29

Naked Rheinmaidens

2008-03-27T12:54:00.002-06:00

An extract from a 2005 ROH performance. (Not sure why it says "Bayreuth".) The most offensive thing in this clip is that frickin' rowboat.

Met HD 2008-09

2008-03-26T14:14:00.003-06:00

Someone on the Opera-L list posted the list of next year's Met HD movie theatre broadcasts. Nothing official has been announced yet. If this list is true, it sure gets off to a good start.

Saturday, October 11, 2008, 1:00 pm
Salome
Franck; Mattila, Komlósi, Begley, Kaiser, Uusitalo

Saturday, November 8, 2008, 1:00 pm
Dr. Atomic
Gilbert; Cooke, Arwady, Finley, Fink, Owens

Saturday, November 22, 2008, 1:00 pm
Le Damnation de Faust
Levine; Graham, Giordani, Relyea

Saturday, December 20, 2008, 12:00 pm
Thais
López-Cobos; Fleming, Schade, Hampson

Saturday, January 10, 2009, 1:00 pm
La Rondine
Armiliato; Gheorghiu, Oropesa, Alagna, Brenciu, Ramey

Saturday, January 24, 2009, 1:00 pm
Orfeo
Levine; de Niese, Murphy, Blythe

Saturday, February 7, 2009, 1:00 pm
Lucia di Lammermoor
Armiliato; Netrebko, Villazón, Kwiecien, Abdrazakov

Saturday, March 7, 2009, 1:00 pm
Madama Butterfly
Summers; Gallardo-Domâs , Zifchak, Giordani, Croft

Saturday, March 21, 2009, 1:00 pm
La Sonnambula
Pidò; Dessay, Flórez, Pertusi

Saturday, May 9, 2009
La Cenerentola
Benini; Garanca, Brownlee, Alberghini, Corbelli, Relyea

Two things that make me suspicious. Why the big gap before the final opera? And there's no way in hell March 7 is a Saturday.

I'll probably skip Dr. Atomic. Minimally, I'd like to see Salome, Thais, Rondine, Lucia, and Sonnambula. Barring any new babies next year, this much should be do-able.

Update 2008-Mar-26: Okay, so April is an all-Ring month which explains the big gap. March 7 being a Saturday is still very dubious.

Here's the story

2008-03-25T13:00:00.005-06:00

Went to see Tristan at the northside Cineplex on Saturday. Between 50-60 people there, I'd say and I was the youngest there. The audience was pretty well behaved and probably patient to a fault: it's pretty clear that no one from the theatre is keeping an eye on the show so we had lots of houselights not coming up or not going down in time. We really should have rioted when the lights were still up as the Act III prelude started.

Robert Dean Smith sang Tristan, replacing the still-indisposed Ben Heppner. His Tristan and Michelle DeYoung's Brangäne were very strong. Going in, I'd heard that they were going to be experimenting with split screen effects. Predictably, they didn't work. The Act I confrontation between Tristan and Brangäne played like the beginning of the Brady Bunch with the two of them looking at each other from different boxes on the screen. When you're in the middle of the Act II duet or Tristan's delirium or the Liebestod, you don't need the screen looking like Tetris. Some people on the Opera-L mailing list are in an uproar over it with one vowing never to attend another movie theatre presentation unless he has assurances from the Met that the experiment won't be repeated. See for yourself when PBS airs it sometime in the next few months.

Speaking of which, the telecasts of this year's HD shows starts this week with Hansel und Gretel.

Tonight's Tristan will be broadcast on the Met Opera channel on Sirius. Ben Heppner is apparently going to be there tonight and on Friday for the final performance of this run.

Back at it

2008-03-12T15:43:00.000-06:00

The Met has announced their 2008-09 season. Barenboim makes his Met debut conducting Tristan, Renée Fleming in Thaïs, and the final hurrah for the Otto Schenk Ring (Good lord - the video of that production is nearly 20 years old) are among the highlights. They're also doing a 125th anniversary gala where they'll be recreating scenes from famous past productions. Some of the featured productions include the unauthorized 1903 production of Parsifal, the 1910 world premiere of La Fanciulla del West and from the Met's 1883 opening night, Faust. And 10 HD movie theatre broadcasts.

Went on a bit of a spree and bought a bunch of opera DVDs including the Anna Netrebko Puritani and Fleming Onegin from last year's movie theatre broadcasts and the Bayreuth Barenboim Meistersinger (from 1999?). Also picked up the Anna Netrebko DVD The Woman, The Voice. I hear she's in this month's Playboy (interview only, you alley cats).

And the Kirchner/Rosalie Bayreuth Götterdämmerung rounded out the shopping trip. We've watched the first two acts so far. I'll post more about it later but for now all I say is every time I listen to Götterdämmerung, it never fails to astound. I love it more each time. Greatest thing ever.

Googled

2008-02-14T14:09:00.003-07:00

Many of the visitors to Too Many Tristans arrive here via links from Google. Here are this week's top 10 search terms that lead people here:

1. anna netrebko naked
2. anna netrebko sex tape
3. anna netrebko naked sex on tape
4. classical cd covers
5. what's happening 70s sitcom
6. john anderson 1980 campaign
7. wwe slash
8. turkey trot
9. gary coleman marriage
10. lice home remedy

What's in this month's Gramophone?

2008-02-12T19:19:00.002-07:00

From the March, 2008 issue...

In the editorial, James Inverne laments Arts Council England's budget cuts. Live by the state funding sword, die by the state funding sword I always say. "State funding calls for enlightened decisions, not bullish balance-sheets. Yet private funding, as happens in America, is also vulnerable - not least to the tastes of the donors." Leaving aside the childish need for assurance - what in life isn't "vulnerable"? - notice the implicit authoritarian approach to art. The Enlightened Ones need to be in charge. Can you imagine if regular people (the donors) had their say?
Well, that was a weak editorial. How about the Letters section? John Baker of Folkestone speculates that Karajan may have cried more than twice in his life. A bold claim, but I won't challenge it.
The Taking Note section quotes from an Independent article about a Barbie at the Symphony concert in Glasgow (little girls dress up and go to listen to Nutcracker and Swan Lake excerpts.) The predictable cheap cynicism about Barbie is there but check out how the blurb ends: "At least two in the audience in Glasgow were not impressed: 'cheesy' and 'weird' according to Micaela, 10 and her eight-year-old sister Cosima." Macaela? Cosima?! Yeah, these kids were picked totally at random. (I'm sure the next issue will report kids going to a Wagner concert and being blown away - "totally cool!" reports 9 year-old Isolde. Her younger brothers, Siegfried and Lohengrin, nod in agreement.)
Simon Rattle: "With Wagner I chose not to know [about his life] because I find the more I know about him as a human being, the harder it is to conduct his astonishing music. With Mahler I really chose to know because I find that it enlightens. And Wagner's music is transcendentally beautiful and very often deeply benevolent and good and I don't think any of those phrases could be used about him as a person. That's really a mystery, whereas Mahler as a personality is so completely tied up with his music that I find it helpful." I get my back up every time I read an evaluation of Wagner's character because they're usually so facile, but his larger point here is true. Is Mahler's character being so much in the music something inherent or could it be we've made it that way as part of the re-evaluation of his music that started in the 1960's? The question's not rhetorical - I don't know enough about pre-1960s Mahler reception to know if words like "neurotic" were thrown around to describe both the man and the music. (And anyone who uses words like "transcendent" and "astonishing" when talking about Wagner's music obviously is on to something.)
A review of a La Scala Barbiere with Callas arouses perverse curiosity: "Rossi-Lemeni['s]... appallingly hammed-up performance is followed by a near riot as the anti-Callas claque gives him the kind of tumultuous reception Callas had signally failed to receive after 'Una voce poco fa'. In the singing lesson in Act 2, Callas sings a cut-down version of Rossini's own 'Contro un cor', a tone up in E. It is not well done. Dr. Bartolo's response 'Bella voce!' is asking for trouble from the gallery. The singer, Melchiorre Luise, attempts a rebuttal by spitting out his next line 'Certo, bella voce': a riposte which is met with further jeers from the gallery. ... Giulini, an unwilling conscript, appears to have neither the will nor the ability to control a performance where the singers are playing fast and loose with the corrupt and foreshortened text that in Milan in 1956 passed for an "edition". Profil's reissue is almost as inept....." Put this one on the Christmas list, friends.

Shut up with your damn coughing

2008-02-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Legendary tenor (and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan's own) Jon Vickers, trying to sing Tristan in Dallas, finally has enough...

(More crazy opera clips here.)

Some Strauss Things

2008-02-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

Bryan Gilliam, one of the kingpins of modern Strauss scholarship, is working on a book entitled Rounding Wagner's Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera. According to the publications list at his Duke University homepage, it's due to be published sometime this year.

Interesting NY Times article from 1986 about the "problem" of Capriccio. The Met introduced surtitles (actually, back-of-the-seat titles) in 1995 and Capriccio had its Met premiere in 1998.

Wolfgang Sawallisch's recording of Elektra is being reissued by EMI. Along with the Solti, it's one of the few absolutely complete recordings.

The latest rumour about the still-unreleased on DVD Met Salome with Karita Mattila from 2004 is that it will likely never come out since the production will be revived next season with Mattila (and be featured in the movie theatre broadcasts then issued on DVD?).

Complete Callas

2008-02-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

Young Alex is starting to settle now so we've been having some free time in the evenings. We've been spending it plowing through the complete Extras box set as well as about 86 episodes of Property Ladder we have on the PVR. I also found some time to finally dig into a Christmas gift from generous in-laws: the 70 CD Maria Callas The Complete Studio Recordings boxed set.

I've ripped the first few discs to the iPod: the First Recital and La Giaconda. Listened to the first act a couple of nights ago. For a long time, it was an opera that was on my list of ones I should eventually get to (but after I do the ones I'm excited about). Yet again, I was a dimwit - as I started looking at it, two things struck me right away. First, frickin' Boito wrote the libretto and second it's from 1876 - i.e. post-Aida, post-Italian premiere of Lohengrin so kind of an interesting period for Italian opera. So why hadn't I listened to this before? The first act was great. I really need to revisit my "yeah, yeah, I'll get to it" list...

I haven't listened to the First Recital yet. Interestingly, the very first track in the Callas set is Wagner - the Liebestod from Tristan. Of course, it isn't Mild und leise but Dolce e calmo.

Here are the contents of the box. The remastering dates are from 1997 except where indicated.

The First Recital (1949, remastered 2007)
La Gioconda (1952, remastered 2007)
Lucia di Lammermoor (1953, remastered 2004)
I puritani (1953)
Cavalleria Rusticana (1953)
Tosca (1953, remastered 2002)
La traviata (1953, remastered 2007)
Norma (1954, remastered 2003)
Pagliacci (1954)
La forza del destino (1954)
Il turco in Italia (1954)
Puccini arias (1954)
Lyric and Coloratura arias (1954)
Callas at La Scala (1955)
Madama Butterfly (1955)
Aida (1955)
Rigoletto (1955)
Il trovatore (1956)
La bohème (1956)
Un ballo in maschera (1956)
Il barbiere di Siviglia (1957, remastered 2007)
La Sonambula (1957)
Turandot (1957)
Manon Lescaut (1957)
Medea (1957)
Verdi Arias I (1958)
Mad Scenes (1958)
Lucia di Lammermoor (1959)
La Gioconda (1959)
Norma (1960)
Callas à Paris I (1961)
Callas à Paris II (1963)
Mozart, Beethoven and Weber (1964)
Verdi Arias II (1964)
Rossini and Donizetti Arias (1963)
Carmen (1964)
Tosca (1964-5)
Verdi Arias III (1964-5/69)
The EMI Rarities (1953-1961)
The EMI Rarities (1962-1969)

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part VI

2008-02-01T12:35:00.001-07:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

PATRICK SHERIDAN - BON BONS
Another nightmare from another psychotic brass player. I'd never go to one of this guy's recitals. Right after he comes onstage, I'd have to lean over to the stranger beside me and mutter "Isn't that the guy who was streaking in the parking lot?"

LE CARNAVAL DES ANIMAUX
Now this I have to buy. It's the first album made by Lion Head since he left the Beaux Arts Trio. I'm a little skeptical about his forming a band with Rabbit Head and Dogalope Head given their past indiscretions. And Rooster Head Jr. may be great shakes in the jazz world but does he have the discipline for classical? But the advance buzz is great and this is likely a dark horse for this year's Gramophone awards.

SHOSTAKOVICH/KHACHATRYAN/FRANCK VIOLIN SONATAS
These two arthouse types are so blasé about everything they don't even notice their fancy coffee house table is on fire! Serves those pomo snobs right. I can tell you that's never happened to me at Tim Hortons.

POWER YOUR MIND TO AVOID MENSTRUAL CRAMPS
This came up on a search for opera cd covers. I'm not going to question Google. I'm making an unqualified recommendation for this cd. If you like the late Beethoven quartets, you'll love this disc.

PAVAROTTI'S OPERA MADE EASY - MY FAVORITE OPERA FOR CHILDREN
Is this a compilation? Doesn't sound like it from the title. So is the singular referred-to opera Hansel and Gretel? Can't be because Pavarotti never heard a German opera in his life. My own pick for favorite opera for children is Dialogue of the Carmelites.

NIKOLAI MASSENKOFF SINGS WITH BALALAIKA ORCHESTRA
This guy swung through my town a few summers ago. Unfortunately it was the hottest one in memory. He came trucking out on stage wearing about 50 pounds of fur. He was flat on his back onstage screaming for water before he finished the second number. He lost the crowd and most people filed out at that point which is too bad. He stripped down to his boxers and finished his set like a pro. I never heard one balalaika all night.

PATRICK SHERIDAN - LOLLIPOPS
I'm starting to wonder if this guy actually plays tuba or if he's some kind of Gallagher-type prop comic. Or maybe he's a clown act. He probably comes out, makes like he's going to play something, then giggles like a maniac while throwing candy into the audience. I could get into it if it was Kaufmanesque performance art but as it stands, NO SALE.

Anna wants to be naked

2008-01-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a Times article from a couple of weeks ago in which Anna Netrebko declares

There is only one opera when you have to get naked, as far as I know: Salome. I want to do Salome, but it may be the last day of my career. It’s very big... I want to get naked on the stage!

Permit me to make a couple of suggestions. First, don't make it your last role. Bump it up 50 or 60 spots. Second, I think a full 2 1/2 hours of nudity while singing the Countess in Capriccio would probably fit her voice better.

Earlier in the article comes this:

In November, she sang for Martin Scorsese at the White House.

I had no idea Martin Scorsese was president. I've got to pay more attention: cable news has really given me the runaround on this one.

Update 2008-Jan-31 8:15AM - The nudity in the Dance in Salome isn't specifically called for - I think it's a relatively recent performing convention. Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane, however, does specifically call for nudity. I can't think of any others off hand.

Throw out your old harpsichords

2008-01-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

At this year's NAMM show, Roland has announced their latest digital harpsichord. Throw in one of their new V-Accordions and you'll have the makings for a pretty cool band.

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part V

2008-01-11T12:10:00.001-07:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

WIZARDS! WORKS!
All the people in your office you hate the most have gotten together to record an album.

THE 2 CONTRAS
Cover design by Hans and Franz.

BACH AND BASSOON
Fusilli Jerry plays Bach.

THE BASSOON BROTHERS - CAPTURED!
"The use of excessive force in the apprehension of the Bassoon Brothers has been approved."

WIZARDS! FANTASY FOR WIZARDS!
Double-reed disco music!

KNAUB/WOODS - SOUND WAVES
This cover is missing something - the Napoleon hat and the hand slipped in the vest. His previous album featured a close up of him in a straight jacket with his eyes crossed. He's like the classical Ray Stevens.

DENIS MATSUEV - UNKNOWN RACHMANINOFF
Straighten up, 6079 Matsuev D! Rachmaninoff is watching you on the telescreen.

WILLIAM MATHIAS - THE THREE STRING QUARTETS
"So what have you got for covers for the new Mathias CD? Talk to me."

"We were thinking of going with the disembodied head concept."

"Classic. Great. I love it."

"I'm not done! We've come up with something that'll really put it over the top."

"What's that?"

"He's purple."

"RUN WITH IT!"

Kna Tease

2008-01-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

An all too brief clip of Knappertsbusch conducting Parsifal in Bayreuth. With bonus backstage Flowermaiden footage!

Stunning News

2008-01-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

Least surprising news ever: Carreras says Pavarotti won't be replaced in the Three Tenors. Someone on the Opera-L mailing list had a good response to the news. He has it on good authority that there won't be any new Marx Brothers movies either.

What I'm not clear on, though, is whether there will be any future Pavarotti/Bryan Adams collaborations...

This I gotta read

2008-01-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a book containing the full history of David Gilmour's black Stratocaster. "A whole book about the life of one guitar?!" you shriek? I agree -- how did they get it all into only one book? Also check here for an extremely detailed account of Gilmour's setups throughout the years.

Now how the same treatment for Steve Howe's Gibson ES-175 or one of Pete Townshend's numbered Les Pauls?

Lisztomania

2007-12-31T09:34:00.001-07:00

Check out Mike Nelson's year-end top 10 Lizst...

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part IV

2007-12-20T11:19:00.003-07:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Kurt Masur - Weill/Berg
Looks like Kurt wrote a cheque his ass couldn't cash. "Maestro, are you sure you don't want makeup?" "JUST TAKE THE DAMN PICTURE."

Tanguy - Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
This looks like a still from a snuff film. Or maybe from Abel Ferrera's Driller Killer. Either way, I'm calling the cops.

The Canadian Brass - SWINGTIME!
This is like the end of The Shining where Jack Nicholson appears in the picture from the 1920s. His evil spirit has always been part of the hotel. Just like the Canadian Brass.

Alfred Brendel - Beethoven Piano Sonatas Opp. 13, 14, 22
"These hands! Have killed again! AH HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!"

Roger Bobo - Rainbo-bo
If I ever make an album, I'm also going to use shots of me taken on vacation. An alternate cover for this disc features Roger "holding up" the leaning tower of Pisa.

Roger Bobo - Tuba Libera
Another vacation snap of Roger. I can't make out the sign he's pointing to. I think it says "DANGER - CHOLERA OUTBREAK."

Psophos Quartet - Bacri Quartets Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6
Wait you'rrre shurrre real pretty NO I'm not drunk can I one of your numbersh?

More on the way

2007-12-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome therestisnoise.com visitors. The classical cd covers are accessible by clicking the link in the right-hand column. The fourth batch is on the way...

What's Happening!!

2007-12-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've been off work for the last week (see threebrightstars.com for details and baby pictures) and while not helping look after our new baby, I've been catching up on TV. I managed to catch two episodes of legendary 70s sitcom What's Happening!! It was quite an experience. I watched this show all the time when I was young and it was good seeing it again. The tale of the show is told in its ever-changing opening credits...

Season One

That "BOWMMM BOWMMM" bass synth that starts the show off has been imprinted in my brain ever since I first heard it. The show obviously thought it was crucial and subjected it to various interpretations in future seasons. If they'd only just done the show opening and left it at that, the show would be hailed as one of the greatest of all time.

Seeing Ernest Thomas's Raj character again confirmed to me that there hasn't been a more thoroughly dislikable character in TV history. His arrogant swagger coming out of the door captures it perfectly. He's emotionally distant, completely condescending, and probably sociopathic. His malevolence comes out all the more when he's onscreen with Dwayne or Rerun - two of TV's most lovable characters.

It's probably been 30 years since I've seen the opening credits, so I can be forgiven for screaming for a split second when Haywood Nelson falls off his skateboard and very much looking like he's fractured his hip. He was okay, though.

And there's no more iconic 70s TV imagery than Raj and Dwayne giving each other five under Fred Berry's benevolent gaze. Every single time I see this, what he has in his hands always registers - butter bun and Coke.

Season Two

The "BOWMMM BOWMMM" is lower in the mix this time. Not good. No wonder the second season did a lot worse than the first.

SHIRLEY HEMPHILL! Her dismissive gesture pretty much says it all for me. I'm glad they cut out the Rerun abuse to add footage of Shirley. And there's Dee, Raj's sister. God help me, I actually laughed for real at a couple of her lines in one of the episodes I saw this week. And there's Mabel King's fearsome Mama character. I never liked her. She was always either scolding the boys or going to work. Her and her no-good son Raj are a couple of bad apples. If they'd booted those two off and have a show about Dee, Dwayne, Rerun and Shirley... wow.

No, wait! They're taking off on Rerun again! Some friends!

Season Three

Wow! The "BOWMMM BOWMMM" makes a triumphant comeback. And the cheesy solo in the middle is even cheesier! And check out the punchy bass underneath it. Like punches to the solar plexus.

The actor playing the vile Raj is now bafflingly billed as "Ernest Lee Thomas". And are we to understand that something has happened to Mama and Shirley Hemphill lives in the house?! Raj and Rerun are roomies at college. Dwayne's still in the picture. I think since all Mama ever did was say "I'm going to work", the producers just decided to have the character at work permenantly and show Mabel King the door.

Apparently, Fred Berry was a nightmare on the set and during the third season he and the other two started acting up. Their unprofessional behavior (missing rehearsals, demands for money) led to the show being closed down! Nice work, boys!

Unfortunately, the story didn't end there.

WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW!!

I'm welling up even as I write this. The "BOWMM BOWMM" is gone and in its place is the most banal of banal 80s backing tracks.

No basketball inside, Raj. Even you have to play by the rules. And God knows why he's back to being billed as "Ernest Thomas". He's shaking his head at the typewriter because IT'S THE 80s AND WE HAVE COMPUTERS NOW.

Tell me that's not Haywood Nelson. The 80s makeover is a total disaster. His pushed up sleeves, loose tie, the haircut.. it's like they've taken his soul. He's a Stepford Wife now. Oh God, the tan
sweater is a stab in the heart.

There's dignity for you - Rerun in a crazy genie get-up and then he's drooling over an oversized phallic hoagie. Why bring the show back only to cover it in mud?

At least Shirley's still here. The bastards never managed to break her spirit. There's Raj's foxy wife Anne-Marie Johnson. It's not enough. I don't see Dee but see some Dee clone in her place. I'm too numb to care now.

Some half-hearted violence from Raj's wife. Pitiful.

What's Happening Now?! A mean-spirited desecration if you ask me.

Now I'm upset. I knew I should have done a run-down of which court shows are best instead...

Sponsor Beethoven

2007-10-18T14:46:00.000-06:00

Beethoven-Haus is raising money to purchase the autograph of the Diabelli Variations. You can sponsor a measure or just a single note...

Big Red Books

2007-09-15T21:04:00.000-06:00

Here's an article about musicologist Helen Greenwald finishing up work on the critical edition of Rossini's Zelmira and embarking on Verdi's Attila.

I got a pleasant surprise checking the University of Chicago Press's site - the next opera in the Verdi series has been announced: Giovanna d'Arco. The publication date is listed as Spring 2008, but if past volumes are any indication, the date's gonna slide a bit. The latest release in the series is Roberta Marvin's edition of Inno popolare and Inno delle nazioni.

They're really filling in the lesser-known works of Verdi. Giovanna d'Arco will be joining previously issued editions of works like Alzira, Il corsaro and I masnadieri. I'm thinking that overall they must have fewer textual issues than a lot of the later operas and are thus "easier" to produce. That's not to say that some tricky cases haven't been tackled yet -- David Lawton's edition of both the 1847 and 1865 versions of Macbeth came out in 2006. I can't wait to see the edition(s) of Don Carlos -- it'll probably be four of those big red books and weigh 50 pounds.

The Verdi scores are great, but the long introductions make the most wildly impractical bedtime reading. It's like trying to read a book of carpet samples.

Bring a Halls At Least

2007-09-06T12:44:00.000-06:00

Listened to the classic Gardelli Nabucco then started in on a Nabucco from 1960 (Schippers at the Met). Good performance, but Jesus, I think there was a typhoid or whooping cough epidemic in New York in 1960. Literally constant coughing during the quiet moments. No one's even trying to hold back. So that put in me in a foul mood. Then after Leonie Rysanek's Act II aria, vigorous applause starts just a fraction of a second too early and you can hear one Rysanek fan bellowing "BRAVA!" I hate these fanatical fans. They're nuts about one singer and hate all the others. Yeah, thanks, Mr. Discernment. Without your advocacy, I wouldn't have known that Rysanek is a good singer. So, two tips: 1. if you're coughing, go to your basement and stay there and 2. if you can't wait for the aria to be over so you can start clapping, grab your coat, leave the theater and walk in front of the nearest cab.

Getting feedback from the Krazy Kovers feature. Mostly positive and with a few useful suggestions. I've started working on the next batch and it should be up early next week. (It won't be a Pavarotti edition.)

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part III (Pagliacci Edition)

2007-09-01T09:19:00.004-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Cavalleria Rusticana / Pagliacci
Pavarotti looks more like a mime here. I'm sure his performance of "Vesti la giubba" while walking against the wind killed on stage, I'm sure it doesn't work on CD. And the end, when the invisible box Pavorotti's in keeps getting smaller and smaller until he expires? It's definitely an argument for the superiority of DVD over CD for opera in the home.

Pavarotti's Greatest Hits
Maybe he's supposed to be dressed up as Canio. But his face isn't painted. I'm forced to conclude that Pavorotti is wearing his street clothes in this photo. Hey man, it's the 21st century: do your own thing.

Pagliacci (Cellini)
This cover screams "clowns" to me. "Why yes, I do work with Eliot Ness. What's that? Al Capone's on the streets again? Well, we'll see about that!"

Legendary Performances of Franco Corelli
Opera stars are allowed to have personal lives, you know. And if Corelli wants to go to Star Trek conventions dressed as Spock, it's well within his rights. Who are you to call him a nerd? It looks like he's ready to reenact Spock's freakout scene from "Amok Time".

Der Bajazzo (Stein)
Covers to Pagliacci should give you an idea of the tragic story the opera tells. They aren't supposed to make you shout "oh, boo hoo hoo! Be a man, for God's sake!" at the opera set you have in your hands in the middle of the CD store and you're escorted out by security because this has happened twice already and please don't come again, sir, until you can control yourself.

Elgar - An Anniversary Portrait
I'm afraid the exorcism didn't work, Father Damian. The spectre of Elgar will forever haunt this cursed isle. Perhaps we should venture to safety on the continent. Or perhaps west. Across the sea...

Pagliacci
I didn't know Pagliacci was about hippies having indiscriminate sex with each other. This is i am curious (clowns).

Cav & Pag
Frickin' Regietheater. Cav & Pag done as if it was that Star Trek episode where the guys with the black and white faces discriminated against the guy with the white and black face. We all learned a lesson from that one - if you're all gonna paint your faces, do it together so you make sure you're coordinated.

Normally, I think imposing ideas that have nothing to do with the opera is foolish, but I gotta admit that the effect of Canio beaming on and off stage was stunning. Surely this is Trek conventioneer Corelli's favorite performance. Hopefully he got his copy autographed by William Shatner at the convention in Burbank.

Pagliacci
Jesus! Tito Wayne Gacy. Disgusting. I can't imagine the horrors when they dug up the basement of Gobbi's suburban bungalow. And he sold CDs of his singing from prison! What kind of sick person would buy those?

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Needed a break

2007-08-31T20:37:00.000-06:00

Nothing like a link from Alex Ross to get you posting again. I've been off studying for a certification exam I don't really want to write. And Howard Stern's off again this week and Wife and Son are both sick so the daily schedule has been a chaotic wreck with strobe lights.

I've also been needing a break from the steady diet of Beethoven, Strauss and Wagner I've been on. I swerved hard in Verdi's direction and I've been going through Nabucco. It's the 21st century - there should be no guilt on the part of a German music lover who partakes of the sunnier delights from south of the Alps. Right? (And I did listen to the first 25 numbers of the St. Matthew Passion before bed last night so I've redeemed myself.)

I had been planning on doing a post on a comment I heard on TV from a soprano back in the 90s. It must have been during a Met telecast. During an intermission, she said that the role of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro was longer than Brünnhilde's in the Ring. I'd thought since then that that must be wrong. Reading Michael Kennedy's Master Musicians series book on Strauss last week really motivated me because he claimed that Och's role was the second only to Susanna's in length. That was it - I was going to find out how many bars we're talking about here.

I dug out the Figaro score and got to work. I'd decided to count every measure in which a note for Susanna appears - i.e. including pick-ups. The recitatives didn't contribute as much as I thought they would. But that Act II finale really is a monster. Something like 650 measures for her in that one. My grand total ended up being roughly 1680. I then turned to Walküre and started counting.

The task was pretty tedious by this point and I realized that my supposition is that whoever first asserted this couldn't count. (Or maybe it was that I was the first person dumb enough to sit down and count these things out.) I couldn't face finishing the Ring, let alone plouging through Rosenkavalier. I gave up. For now, I'm content to let the assertion stand. Susanna is the longest opera role ever in the world.

Part III of Album Cover Follies is coming this weekend. I thought it was going to be a one-time deal, but it turns out you can pretty much make fun of any album cover...

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER, Part II

2007-08-22T06:55:00.004-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...)

Carmen
Now THIS is a production of Carmen I'd like to see! A totally nude beauty gets pawed by Mumenschantz? Leave the kids at home when you go to play this CD! Oooh Nellie!

Annette Dasch - Armida
This looks like the cover of a CD you get along with the free sample of Fructis that comes in the mail. I don't know how her voice is but I'm sure her hair smells great.

Elgar - The Collector's Edition
I'm never going to England again. Not while the ghost of Elgar haunts the English countryside. I'll bet this is some spooky-ass music. Hopefully all of Elgar's pieces for theremin are included in this collection.

Lang Lang - Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1 & 4
Looks like Lang just spent the afternoon shopping and is pissed because he just realized he forgot all his shopping bags on the subway. Tough luck there, Mr. Metrosexual. I hope he didn't forget his iPhone as well.

Max Emanuel Cencic - Rossini: Opera Arias & Overtures
God, this guy is funny on those Ricky Gervais podcasts. The thing about the bee having the heart attack? When he gets angry about that poisonous frog? Classic stuff. I didn't know he could sing.

Artemis Quartet - Schumann and Brahms Quintets
These hipsters sure are proud of their glowing cupboard doors. If you look at their legs, they're spelling out something, kinda like the Village People spelling out "YMCA". I think these guys are spelling out "YOINT".

Leonard Bernstein - West Side Story
What the hell's so goddamn funny, Len? You make a 20th century update to a beloved love story and you do nothing but giggle? Well I hope nothing bad ever happens to you, sir.

Strauss - Complete Works for Wind Ensemble
This picture is a mindbending paradox. Old Strauss is conducting Young Strauss in heaven while Young Strauss himself conducts? If you buy this, you'll just stare at the cover, get more and more violently confused and pretty soon you're shaking and the CD self-destructs like a Mission: Impossible cassette and you won't even get to listen to it.

Mozart - Cosi
You didn't know Cosi fan tutte was a dystopian nightmare? The best part of the opera is when THX-1138 and RMK-5930 exchange their unisex jumpsuits and totally confuse their assigned breeding partners and it's the time of the month where they are allowed to engage in the reproductive act with the females so there are hijinx galore. In the end, everyone, even the cynical cyborg UNI-MOPH, learns a little something about life.

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Another Masterclass

2007-08-21T08:26:00.001-06:00

Liz and I watched another masterclass from the Barenboim on Beethoven set. This time it was the first movement of the Appassionata with Lang Lang. After Lang plays, and Barenboim gets the requisite compliments out of the way, the constructive criticism starts. Barenboim says he'd like to hear a better grasp of the structure of the piece from Lang. Now, the classes are taped before an audience and they're always in the background. A few of them brought scores with them, the nerds. One of the nerds can be seen scribbling this piece of advice down. What did he write? "Grasp of structure = good"? "Lang doesn't know what he's doing"? Good thing he brought the notepad.

In another class, Barenboim (who plays all the sonatas from memory) has a question about one of Beethoven's performance markings and asks to take a look at one of the nerd's scores. Of course, they've brought some jive, unreliable edition instead of a proper urtext edition. Barenboim notes it but doesn't wipe his butt with the score which is what he should have done.

One of the best parts of the class was Barenboim's advice about one note. He said that Lang should create the illusion of a crescendo on the note and then played the passage in question. Sure enough, the effect was there. One of the audience members asked how he did it. Barenboim said that if he told it wouldn't be an illusion anymore. He then told an anecdote about meeting Horowitz who gave him a memorable piece of performance advice: "You must have will." Barenboim then apologized for not fully answering the question but that sure sounds like the full answer to me. Hope the nerds got that one down.

(Why the hostility to the nerds? Self-revulsion because I identify with them? NO. LEAVE ME ALONE.)

New Verdi Letter

2007-08-20T11:15:00.000-06:00

Courtesy Opera Chic comes news of a newly discovered letter written by Verdi. The contents are somewhat disappointing - he doesn't call the recipient a horse's ass or a jackanape or anything. (I always assume everyone else's correspondence is just like mine.)

Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER?

2007-08-15T19:46:00.005-06:00

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Every once in a while, I'll come across a classical CD whose cover will burn itself into my memory forever. Here are a few...

Mendelssohn - Elijah
I remember cracking up the first time I saw this cover. He's supposed to look like he's imploring a higher power but instead looks dubious about a lighting rig used during the photo shoot. Actually, it looks more like he's trying to work out a square root in his head. Plus, the stage beard looks good at 50 or 100 feet but looks pretty weak this close up. I will not be purchasing this recording.

Rossini - Il barbiere di Siviglia
Domingo looks like a total spaz here. I'd dump a chamber pot on a goon like this if he came around to senerenade me with a look like that on his puss. I may purchase this recording if it is reissued with a different cover. It should not feature Domingo cutting hair.

Johann Strauss - Famous Works
I'm sure this is a wonderful Johann Strauss DVD. Only have one misgiving about it: they've slapped a picture of RICHARD Strauss on the cover. It inspires confidence. Close enough, guys. God knows what you'd get if you actually played this thing. Episodes of McMillan & Wife? An instructional video for your new LG washing machine? There's literally no way to know.

Richard Wagner - Parsifal: An Orchestral Quest
Robert Mapplethorpe is apparently a Wagnerian. I'm glad this isn't the cover of a recording I'd have the slightest interest in. I'd feel real uncomfortable with this cover nestling next to my other Parsifals.

RICHARD Strauss - Salome
I wouldn't feel too comfortable having this cover sniffing around my collection either. It looks like the funniest outtake from the photo session that got out and is passed around in the underground opera scene. Don't even think about the number of people that had to be involved in putting the cover together and that none of them raised the red flag. I know of someone who ordered in a copy of this recording and paid more to get the previous cover.

Placido Domingo - Granada: The Greatest Hits (aka "THE HAT")Wow. I'm thinking when some assistant pulled that mother out of the tickle trunk that that would have been the time to put your foot down, Placido. You wouldn't see Daniel Barenboim in a crazy hat like that!

Bruckner - Symphonies
Aw, Christ.

Lara St. John - Bach - Works for Violin Solo
I was all ready to make jokes about how inappropriate this cover was. What, with her state of undress and apparent age 'n all. "So you want to take a picture of a topless 12 year-old and slap it on the cover? Run with it!" But after some quick research, I found that St. John herself wrote a reply to a review in the Edmonton Journal of all things in which she states she was 24 when the picture was taken. She only looks 12. So it's okay then.

RICHARD Strauss - Zarathustra/Don Joan/Rosenkavalier Suite (Maazel)
This is the greatest cover of anything ever. I want gloves to make my hands look like Space Hands like that. There's no way an orchestra would miss a downbeat if Maazel had mitts like that. But surely the only misstep in this cover is the space hands, right?

RICHARD Strauss - Zarathustra/Don Joan/Rosenkavalier Suite (Maazel)
Wrong! If anything, this one is even more distressing. Why are his hands doing that? We notice even more the psychotic look on his face. Physical assault looks like one of his more benign intentions.

I love how someone at the record company realized how crazy the Space Hands were and reissued the recording without them. But now instead of looking like Timothy Leary, Maazel looks like Charles Manson.

Click here for the complete (ongoing) series...

Edmonton Opera

2007-08-14T11:56:00.000-06:00

For whatever reason, my memory of events in the mid-90s can be patchy. A few months ago, like a bolt from the blue, I remembered that Kathleen Battle had a recital here. It took me a bit to decide if it really happened or if it was a dream. I'd attended the performance, so why didn't I remember it? I can't tell you a single thing she sang. I decided to check Google and searched for any record of an Edmonton recital. I was kind of surprised by what I found.

The Edmonton Opera has a history page with a number of interesting items:

Not only was Kathleen Battle here in the 90s, but so was Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kenawa and Cecilia Bartoli. What was I doing when Dame Kiri came to town that I didn't go? Playing with pogs?
Marilyn Horne, Jose Carreras, and Anna Moffo all sang here.
Beverly Sills sang here three different times.
1976 Bohème with Teresa Stratas?!?!

Something obviously happened around 1980 because these superstar bookings stopped (excepting the recital series mentioned above). I went to a number of productions in the 90s and things have actually gone even further downhill since then. I actually saw works like Britten's Rape of Lucretia or Strauss's Ariadne here and I'm thinking that would never happen now. (I guess they lost a ton of money in the 90s.) Liz and I had been subscribers for a few years recently, but after a brutally bad Barber of Seville, I think that's it for subscriptions. Especially with the Met HD broadcasts at movie theatres. After the Edmonton fiasco, we went and saw Bartlett Sher's Met production of Barber in the theatre and it was fantastic. With 8 Met presentations in the theatre next season, it's no contest.

To be fair, I did enjoy one Edmonton production - the Turandot from a few years ago, the highlight of which was Sally Dibblee's Liu. It was the best singing I've ever heard here... Except for Kathleen Battle, of course, if I could remember it.

Strauss on Sirius III: The Voyage Home

2007-08-12T07:11:00.000-06:00

Listened to the 1994 Elektra from the Met with Hildegard Behrens and Deborah Voigt. Great singing from all the principals. Hopefully a DVD reissue of this isn't too far off.

I was looking at the booklet that came with the Böhm recording. There's a note in it in which he claims the cuts he uses were sanctioned by the composer. Not surprised that he claims this since it's the only possible justification for making cuts. It could be that Strauss said something to Böhm but it could also simply be Strauss's refusal to go to war over cuts being taken as a sanction. (I doubt he approved of the butchery that Die Frau ohne Schatten was/is subjected to and he did make that famous dry comment about a conductor forgetting to make a couple more cuts to Act III of Rosenkavalier - the concluding Trio and Duet.) Böhm also says that Strauss conducted the work with cuts in the last 20 years of his life. In the 30s Strauss suddenly decided that Elektra had too much fat and needed some trimming? In any case, he made no changes to the published score which for me is a definitive gesture. He didn't, so to me, the cuts still = bad.

Classical Downloads

2007-08-10T10:52:00.001-06:00

Got an email from Naxos today that had a link to the Classics Online site. Apparently all of the Naxos catalog is available there as well as those of other labels. They're DRM-free, but seem kind of on the pricey side. Hänssler is another label available and you can get their entire Bach Edition for about 10 bucks a CD. This would work out to about $1700 for the whole thing. But the whole thing is available on CD for something over $1300 at ArkivMusic. Shouldn't downloads be way cheaper than CDs?

Mission Accomplished

2007-08-09T16:45:00.000-06:00

The study score for Strauss's Friedenstag arrived today. As you can see, it is the proper, full-size study score and not the pocket score I was worrying about. Boosey & Hawkes is indeed selling the scores from the Complete Stage Works set separately. It is identical to the Friedenstag score I took out of the library. I'm extremely happy about this. I'll be able to pick up the 4 remaining Strauss opera study scores without resorting to getting the 18 volume Complete set and figuring out what to do with all the duplicates. The soul-scarring, futile attempts to get this and the other 4 scores through Inter-Library Loans are now a distant, bitter memory.

Update: Liz couldn't resist commenting on this.

Boxes

2007-08-08T16:20:00.000-06:00

Next month is the 30th anniversary of Maria Callas's death. EMI is releasing her complete studio recordings (newly remastered) in a 70 CD box. Places are already listing it.

And while you're waiting for that, check out the 50 CD set of Schubert works for $80. Or what about the 22 CD set of Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky for $43?

Hear the clarity and definition!

2007-08-08T11:27:00.000-06:00

I'm not an audiophile. I can't see spending orders of magnitude more money for incremental improvements in sound ("I'm glad I spent the extra 10K - I really hear the improved transparency in the midrange!") Found this article (via the Opera-L list) that really goes overboard in trying to make the case on the importance of sound quality.

But what is the price of inferior audio quality? Can poor audio touch the heart as deeply as better sound? John Meyer, who designs and builds some of the world's best speakers at his Meyer Sound Labs in Berkeley, doesn't think so.

Um, of course a hawker of overpriced speakers is going to think this. But really - we can't respond as strongly to a mono recording as to a stereo one? I think Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Strauss's Four Last Songs would turn me into a blubbering wreck regardless if I'm listening on a $50K system or on my iPod, stereo or mono.

Seems to me that when we listen to poorer-fidelity music, we make the adjustment pretty quickly and don't really notice the sound quality after a few minutes. The range of acceptable sound quality is pretty wide.

Plus, weren't these same types complaining when CDs came out and how the compromise in sound quality was unacceptable there, too?

Today's Anna Netrebko Picture

2007-08-07T16:11:00.000-06:00

Anna gets some practice in at a St. Petersburg firing range. Found this photo (clipped from this one) and another photo on her official site.

I was not at all surprised to see that John Derbyshire was all over this a few months ago...

(At no point was this post going to be called "Anna Get Your Gun.")

What's a word stronger than "asinine"?

2007-08-07T14:36:00.000-06:00

Found an article on Wagner via Arts & Letters Daily. It's a fairly standard checklist of the various banalities that get trotted out whenever someone gets the notion to write about Wagner. But a sentence at the end is astounding:

And as that devout Wagnerian Michael Portillo pertinently asked in a New Statesman article a couple of years ago, why is it that a love of Wagner is so often taken to signal right-wing, antisemitic tendencies when a love of Richard Strauss, at least on occasion a Nazi sympathiser, signals only the height of good taste?

I'm thinking this has to be satire of some kind. If the comment about right-wing, antisemitic tendencies "signals" anything, its that this "devout Wagnerian" needs to start hanging around with smarter people. I'm really not sure what this question is asking. Every one of its assumptions is wrong. First of all, as soon as the term "right-wing" comes out when dealing with Wagner, you know you're dealing with an ignoramus. The revolutionaries of 1848-9 were "right-wing"? Wagner agreed with Proudhon and was running buddies with Bakunin for God's sake. The claim that people who love Wagner have to defend themselves from charges of antisemitism "often" is ludicrous.

The part of the question about Strauss is the stupidest thing I've read in the last 14 months. The single biggest feature of the history of Strauss reception is the attempt by fellow composers, critics and academics "of good taste" to write off most if not all of his works as kitsch (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Joseph Kerman in Opera as Drama, etc. etc. etc.). There is no other composer who is accused of bad taste as often as Strauss.

I'm sure Stephen Pettitt meant to get us thinking when he quoted a "provocative" question posed by a "devout Wagnerian" but instead has presented us with a funhouse mirror of stupidity. Every angle reveals something new.

I'm off to put my head in ice water.

During Lunch

2007-08-07T13:18:00.000-06:00

Went for a walk around the Leg. grounds at lunch. Walked by a guy who was wearing rubber boots with his jeans tucked in them. I don't think there's a simpler, more pure way to look crazy than to do that on a +26 C summer day. I'm going to try it tomorrow.

Plus, I saw a guy who had a mullet that was humbling in its magnificence.

Back to Rutherford

2007-08-04T14:17:00.000-06:00

Went to Rutherford this morning to take out some scores. No wacky misadventures this time, but once again, someone's sitting in the music section doing something non-music related. Some girl was sitting there reading a map. I don't think it was a treasure map. There was also a fishy looking guy with a hat. I kept my eye on him.

I ended up taking out a volume from the Neue Bach Ausgabe (the one with the Johannisfest cantatas) and Bruckner's Fifth Symphony (the edition edited by Nowak).

Would Sobeys Have Vöslauer?

2007-08-04T08:55:00.000-06:00

I'm surprised I haven't posted a video or picture of Anna Netrebko yet... Here she is singing the Flower Duet from Lakmé with Elina Garanca.

And here's one of her Vöslauer Mineral Water commercials.

The iPod Decision

2007-08-02T10:09:00.001-06:00

Did some cleaning out of the iPod. It was getting full and I had to make some decisions. The collection isn't even half ripped yet and what I do have won't fit on an iPod. The solution to the problem actually solved another problem as well.

I was finding that making a decision about what to listen to was getting more difficult as more and more stuff appeared on the iPod. I finally realized that I could make a few decisions to focus what was on there a little better. I can have everything ripped and stored in one place at home and walk around with a subset of that. Do I need all the Haydn symphonies and string quartets at the same time? During the day, are the chances I'll listen to a given work all equal? These kinds of questions made me realize that limiting my choice would help diversify the listening as well as save space. So only Symphonies 1-8 and the Op. 20 quartets are on the iPod today. Only one recording of Parsifal (the 1951 Knappertsbusch), only a few volumes of the Beethoven edition, one Don Carlos, only the live King Crimson stuff from 1972-74, only the 1963-68 stuff by Miles Davis, etc.

This has helped. My July listening has been a little more diverse with me hearing a few things for the first time. This kind of approach is probably pretty obvious to a normal person but to a mildly obsessive completist it's a revelation.

(Okay, fine, there are 7 Rings currently on the iPod - most of them were downloaded from the Yahoo opera share group. So sue me. What, I have to have only one of every single thing? Who made you boss of my iPod?)

Strauss scores update

2007-07-26T15:55:00.001-06:00

So I heard back from Boosey & Hawkes. Their very helpful reply indicated that Helena, Feuersnot, Guntram, Friedenstag and Die Liebe der Danae were indeed available individually as study scores. But the email referred to them as "pocket scores". But the listing for Helena I saw elsewhere only said "study score", not "pocket", so I don't know what the devil's going on here.

I ordered Friedenstag to see exactly what these things are and got an email today notifying me that it's been shipped. Now we enter End Game...

Booed after all

2007-07-26T11:26:00.000-06:00

Katharina did get her boos. And here's a video of a rehearsal.

Meistersinger -LIVE (end of Act III)

2007-07-25T14:38:00.001-06:00

Cheated! After the opera ended, there were a lot more boos than after Act II but it wasn't dominant. Some I'm sure were saving it for Katharina herself but Bavarian Radio lowered the volume of the feed and the announcer came back on! Foiled! Then the Polish guy came back and he's talking over the Bavarian. I can barely hear the Bayreuth feed - no Katharina yet - then they fade it out completely. Serves me right.

Tannhäuser's tomorrow, but I'll think I'll catch the rest of the festival as it's uploaded to the opera group.

Meistersinger - LIVE (Act III)

2007-07-25T14:08:00.000-06:00

I've only listened to a couple of sections of Act III (Beckmesser's pantomime and I've just joined back in to hear a huge version of "Wacht auf".) On my walk at lunch I got in a foul mood over the proceedings and decided that if all I wanted to hear in Act III was the booing for Katharina Wagner, then that was just negative, life's too short and besides Howard Stern has The World's Strongest Naked Woman contest today and I should be listening to that instead. (My lunchtime walks usually start with me yelling randomly at passing cars for 20 minutes and end with some self-psychotherapy.)

A member of the Opera Share group has promised that he'll be uploading his recordings of the Bayreuth 2007 broadcasts as they're aired (I think he's recording straight off Bavarian Radio with his digital radio setup) so I wasn't as concerned about hearing every note today.

But I got curious to hear how Act III was going so I jumped in at Beckmesser's pantomime, listened for a bit and went back to the Howard Stern on the iPod, and now I've picked up again at Sachs' entrance in the meadow. Beckmesser's currently doing his version of the Prize Song and that means Ted McGinley's up soon.

Meistersinger LIVE - end of Act II

2007-07-25T11:34:00.001-06:00

Act II's over. Some booing this time. I'm recording it as I'm listening but I'm thinking I won't be coming back to this one too often. Hearing that idiotic typewriter will just make me angry. Time for the festival to be run by someone other than a Wagner.

Meistersinger LIVE - Act II (Doch, diese Meister)

2007-07-25T11:01:00.000-06:00

Correction - I'm not coming around to Vogt's Walther. Take your tiny-ass voice to Broadway, Ted.

Meistersinger LIVE - Act II (Eva's entrance)

2007-07-25T10:49:00.000-06:00

WHY AM I HEARING A TYPEWRITER?

Meistersinger LIVE - Act II

2007-07-25T10:35:00.000-06:00

Act II's underway. Here's a link to Bavarian Radio's page on the Bayreuth Festival. In the middle of the page is a link to a photo gallery from the new Meistersinger. It looks pretty foolish. It's 2007 - making opera characters businessmen in boardrooms is officially boring now. And the Walther looks a little too much like Ted McGinley.

Meistersinger LIVE - end of Act I

2007-07-25T09:30:00.001-06:00

Act I's over. Strongly positive reaction in the theatre. Sounded pretty good at this end. Klaus Florian Vogt's Walther is pretty light (too light?) but it's lyrical and I'm coming around to it. Sebastian Weigle's conducting is an interesting mix of brisk and flexible, expressive tempi. Here's something to read during the 1 hour intermission - another article on the succession drama that contains a description of at least part of Katharina Wagner's production.

Meistersinger LIVE

2007-07-25T08:09:00.000-06:00

Listening to the Meistersinger from Bayreuth via a Polish radio station's Internet stream. They're rebroadcasting the feed from Bavarian Radio. The Polish announcer talked over the German/English/French intro and after that the Bavarian announcer came on and announced that there'd be a brief delay. As soon as the announcement was done the Prelude started. It's going well so far...

The Gathering Storm?

2007-07-24T15:22:00.001-06:00

The 2007 Bayreuth Festival kicks off tomorrow with Katharina Wagner's new production of Die Meistersinger (her first production for Bayreuth). Kathrina is the 29 year-old great-granddaughter of the composer and daughter of current festival chief Wolfgang. She is Wolfgang's controversial choice to succeed him and is a big fan of Regietheater so tomorrow should be interesting. Read more here and here. Will it be a triumph that will change public opinion and make her a popular choice to run the festival? Or will it be a fiasco with loads of booing and the punching and the biting? Listen live tomorrow to find out!

What the devil?

2007-07-19T09:05:00.000-06:00

So that was weird. Listened to Act I of Tristan from Furtwängler's recording last night. Did not enjoy it. This is bothering me. The Prelude was good, but the rest... I dunno. Didn't seem to have enough forward momentum. Could have been my mood. I'll go through Acts II and III this weekend then straight into another performance - maybe the 1952 Bayreuth recording with Karajan. I did like the Furtwängler on previous listens so I'm not ready to say I don't like it. More data is needed.

Met HD on DVD

2007-07-18T14:46:00.000-06:00

The Met issued a press release today announcing the upcoming release of some of their live HD performances that will be broadcast to movie theatres next season. Hansel and Gretel (in English), Macbeth, Peter Grimes, Manon Lescaut (with Karita Mattila), and La Bohème will be released by EMI. Tristan, Roméo et Juliette (with Anna Netrebko), and La Fille du Régiment are the ones next season not currently on the list but it sounds like they'll come out one way or another.

I hope they're able to release the broadcasts from this past season. Liz and I were able to go to all of them except The Magic Flute (abidged and in English? No thanks) and The First Emperor. I recorded them all but Magic Flute on the PVR as they were shown on PBS so it looks like the effort to move them to computer will be worthwhile since proper release could be months or years away. Frickin' Shaw disables the USB ports on the PVR boxes so I'll have to plug the PVR into my Hauppauge TV tuner card which has flaky software and blah blah blah.