Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay, I make the goddamn rules.

—Maria Callas

English: Enrico Caruso as Cavaradossi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We started tonight’s set with Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.  Puccini based the opera on an 1887 play by Victorien Sardou, and had Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa  write the libretto, a project that took four years due to the wordiness of the original French play.  It was premiered at the Teatro Costanzi on January 14, 1900.  The young tenor Enrico Caruso, then on the brink of fame, wanted to create the part of Cavaradossi, but was passed over for the more experienced Emilio De Marchi.  He eventually became a regular in the role at the Metropolitan Opera, as did Emmy Destinn, and later Maria Callas, in the role of Tosca.

Indeed, tonight’s recording is a 1953 recording that features Maria Callas, along with Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, and Franco Calabrese.  Victor De Sabata leads the Orchestra & Chorus Of La Scala Milan.

Our next piece is a rather popular piece by Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino, translated as “The Force of Destiny”.  It was based on an 1835 play by the Spanish playwright Ángel de Saavedra, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, and premiered on Nov 22^nd, 1862 in the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia.  It is a frequently performed piece, and the overture is also part of the standard repertoire for symphony orchestras.  Tonight’s recording features a large cast, led by Leontyne Price, Richard Tucker, Robert Merrill, Shirley Verrett, Giorgio Tozzi, Ezio Flagello, with the RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra and Chorus as conducted by Thomas Schippers.

Related articles

• WDBX Opera Overnight: 200 years of Verdi (wdbx.wordpress.com)

Sitting in the restaurant that has been a landmark dining establishment in Paris since 1784, Victor Hugo is told by his mistress of fifty years that she is dying.

Friends Baudelaire and Edouard Manet, both slightly drunk on absinthe, come to Véfour for lunch and nearly come to blows.

Colette is rescued from a fire in her apartment on Palais Royale, slightly up the street from the restaurant, by the proprietor/chef of Véfour, is carried to the safety of her regular table.

Emile Zola hosts an after theatre supper party at Véfour after a disastrous play opening, is comforted by Daudet and Flaubert.

Marc Chagall has birthday lunch with his twin granddaughters.

Gustave Mahler dines with his wife, Alma, and tells about his visit with Sigmund Freud in Leiden.

Jean Paul Sartre decides to refuse the Nobel Prize and with Simone de Beauvoir plans his announcement.

Sixteen chapters, each a different highly personal revelation of a person of great worth and merit involved in serious discussion.

The book is profusely illustrated with long ago menus, many photographs of the people involved and AUTHOR’S NOTES at the beginning of each chapter setting the context for the conversation

AT THE TABLE OF LE GRAND VÉFOUR

by Sandy Lesberg

For today, because it was La Divina’s birthday on Sunday, here is a recording of one of her masterclasses at Julliard from 1971-2. Here she demonstrates how to sing the great aria from Rigoletto, ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata’. Yes, she was quite old at this point. And yes, this is a baritone aria. But no, that does not stop her from sounding wonderful.

There’s no business like it!

It’s a big day for show business.

-          Today in 1863, circus man Charles Ringling was born (he was not an only child – Ringling Bros. – get it?). I love the circus and I fear no clowns, not even “Killer Klowns From Outer Space”!

-          Artist Georges Seurat was born today in 1859. Mr. Seurat is the “George” of Sunday in the Park With George. (sing) “Don’t worry that your vision isn’t new. Let others make that decision…they usually do.”

-          Star of The Belle of Amherst and Member of the Wedding, Julie Harris was born today in 1925.

-          Ultimate diva, Maria Callas likewise in 1923.

-          The words in a theatre program; “by Comden and Green”, is a pretty good indication that you’re about to have a charming night in the theatre. Adolphe Green was born today in 1914. (sing again) “Unless there’s love, the world’s an empty place and every town’s a lonely town.” (sniff).

-          Today in 1867, at Tremont Temple in Boston, Charles Dickens gave his first public reading in the United States.

-          Today in 1877, Camille Saint-Saens’ Samson et Dalila premiered in Weimar. I would have paid scalpers’ prices.

There are other things to celebrate.

-          Ford unveiled the Model A today in 1927.

-          New York City’s LaGuardia Airport opened today in 1939.

-          It’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ birthday. Mr. Rodgers was born in 1983.

Drink 4cast 4 2day

Today in 1908, Child Emperor Pu Yi ascended the Chinese throne at the age of two. Obviously there were no child labor laws in China at that time. We’ll toast the event anyway with an;

Emperor Punch Cocktail

1 cup Water

½ cup plus 3 tbsp Sugar

1 bottle Dry White Wine

¾ cup Ron Diaz Dark Rum

1 Lemon Juice

Heat the water and sugar together, stirring all the time.

Add the wine and rum and heat through again, but do not boil.

Ignite the punch with a match and burn off the alcohol. (good grief!)

Add the lemon juice to the punch and stir.

Serve in an Irish Coffee Cup.

A couple of those and you might not make the age of three. Be careful out there folks!

Cheers!

Roger

12/2/12.

How do you pick the best aria to celebrate Maria Callas’ birthday? You just pick pretty much whichever one you want. This clip of “Casta Diva” can’t be embedded, but it’s well worth the click.

Here’s a right turn musically. Happy bday, Nelly Furtado.

And finally, before Ray Walston became My Favorite Martian, he did a bang-up Old Scratch in Damn Yankees. He’s the best thing in the movie after Verdon’s dancing and Fosse’s choreography.

Maria Callas was born in December 2,1923 .Her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her “The Bible of opera” Opera News magazine wrote of her: “Nearly thirty years after her death, she’s still the definition of the diva as artist”

She was a true artist,a genuine primadonna with artistic skills never seen before in opera and with a astonishing voice. range.Her work was often mixed with her personal life, or with her neurotic pains,causing scandals and performance cancellations,by that was Callas,a servant of art not of the public’s desires.

In her own words:

‘‘Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddamn rules!”

”Some say I have a beautiful voice, some say I have not. It is a matter of opinion. All I can say, those who don’t like it shouldn’t come to hear me.”

”I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.”

” You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.”

” I don’t know what happens to me on stage. Something else seems to take over.”

The composer Alan Hovhaness
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Glen Gould, New York 1955
© Gordon Parks

Maria Callas as “Norma”, Metropolitan Opera, New York 1956
© Gordon Parks

Maria Callas as “Norma” at the Metropolitan Opera, New York 1956
© Gordon Parks

Maria Callas as “Norma” at the Metropolitan Opera, New York 1956
© Gordon Parks

Maria Callas with her husband Giovanni Meneghini, back stage, Metropolitan Opera, New York 1956
© Gordon Parks

Bernstein, LIFE Magazine, May 1956
© Gordon Parks

Leonard Bernstein, LIFE Magazine, May 1956
© Gordon Parks

More info on Gordon Parks: The Gordon Parks Foundation

Maria Callas

Why I can place a video in one post and not another is somewhat fustrating!

George M. Cohan, “All in the Wearing”

The Yankee Doodle Dandy may or may not have been an opera fan, but his lyric has time and again proved to be as applicable to musical performance as it is to fashion.

Maria Callas as Norma

Here’s an example: a number of years ago I saw Jane Eaglen sing “Norma” at the Met. You’ll recall that for a while at least the lady was pure “go to” for all the leading Wagner soprano roles. But she had another idea, as many dramatic sopranos often do, and became infatuated with one Vincenzo Bellini. Well, suffice it to say that Norma sure deserved better that night—Ms. Eaglen had absolutely no sense of line, the Number One prerequisite for singing this composer. It sounds odd, but matters were actually made worse by her Adalgisa, Daniela Barcellona, whose tremendous bel canto style blew Eaglen’s Norma right off the stage. The capper came at intermission when I dropped by the Lincoln Center gift shop. There the staff was bitchily lovingly playing Maria Callas, in all her glory, singing “Casta Diva.” Ouch. You’d have to be unconscious not to hear the difference between a mistress of the genre and one who had absolutely no idea how to sing this type of music.

This happens more often in performance than you’d think, though fortunately not as disastrously as the night Vincenzo was done wrong. Baroque opera is of course very popular these days, but while many singers are called, few are chosen. It demands excellent musicianship and a certain style. As an illustration, one of my favorite opera recordings, Handel’s “Ariodante”, conducted by Alan Curtis, features a roster of singers who know precisely how baroque should be performed. They seem to ride the music the same way a surfer rides a wave. It’s exhilarating. Although other singers can sing the notes, they lack the sense of rhythm and phrase that Handel demands.

This was nowhere more evident than yesterday afternoon at Carnegie Hall when Joyce DiDonato took the stage to present her “Drama Queens” program with Il Complesso Barocco. Notice I said “with” and not “accompanied by” when referring to this wonderful group of musicians. This was a total collaboration between singer and orchestra, led by violinist Dmitry Sinkovsky. The concert, featuring arias from DiDonato’s new CD, began somewhat slowly—too many lamentations by too many bereaved ladies—but the last selection on the first half, a wickedly a tempo aria by Orlandini, found Joyce in terrific form and busting some moves during the orchestral sections. (Baroque is irresistible for dancing—it swings. My friends and I used to do the Jerk to Handel in junior high music appreciation class when Mr. Asprey wasn’t looking). The second half of the concert was pure magic, featuring back-to-back Cleopatra arias by Hasse and Handel. For those like myself who grew up on Beverly Sills, DiDonato’s “Piangerò la sorte mia” is a revelation. Her singing of the sicilliana, “Madre diletta,” from Giovanni Porta’s “Ifigenia in Aulide,” seemed to suspend time. What a musician. And for the fashionistas who may be reading this, she wore the above red dress, which was accessorized by a matching shawl, a short jacket, a bustle and epaulets (for Cleopatra) at various points during the concert. And speaking of style, the men of the orchestra wore red socks to match—a lovely touch indeed.

It’s not just opera or classical music that requires this type of skill. The other day I listened to the original Broadway cast album of “1776″ featuring one of my favorite actors, William Daniels, as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson and a very young Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson. Check out Betty’s version of “He Plays the Violin.” No one has ever done it better. Yes, she’s helped by that suggestive violin spiccato, but her phrasing, her sense of going with the music, the way she colors certain words—that’s an artist who can sing not just the notes but who can create the musical experience the way it should be heard. The “way it should be worn.”

Here is a special posting, a review-essay written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT 88.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the MadisonEarly Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.

By John W. Barker

It was just after I filed my review last week for Isthmus on the University Opera’s production of Luigi Cherubini‘s 1797 opera “Medea” that I recognized some startling implications for our time in the popular story of the formidable mythic sorceress.

Here is a link to that review:

http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=38262

Even if I had thought of them before finishing the reviews, there would have been no space for such thoughts.

But perhaps The Ear can find a little niche for them now.

Most people have some inkling of the most famous part of Medea’s story.  You know, spurned by her husband Jason, she destroyed his new bride and murdered her own children in revenge.  (Sorcery scenes; blood and gore; escape in a fiery chariot — that sort of thing.)

But the full mythological story of Medea (below, depicted in a historical painting) was, in fact, a very complicated and multi-faceted one. It survives to us piecemeal in ancient Greek sources, and is embodied essentially in four phases. First, when the heroic Argonauts, led by Jason, came to her homeland (Colchis, in the Caucasus), Princess Medea fell in love with him, defied her father to help Jason steal the fabled Golden Fleece, and killed her own brother in escaping with Jason.

Upon their arrival in Thessaly to claim his reward, recovery of his throne, Jason was cheated out of it by his uncle, whom Medea promptly killed through her magic wiles.

Fleeing, Jason and Medea took refuge in Corinth for 10 years, where she bore him two sons. Corinth provided the scene of the second phase. Tiring of his forceful wife, Jason renounced her, winning the daughter of Corinth’s king, Creon, as a bride. In revenge, the discarded Medea used her magic to destroy both the king and his daughter, completing her revenge by the calculated murder of both of her sons.

In her vengeance, Medea had come to an agreement with the aged King Aegeus of Athens to take refuge with him. In this third phase of the story, Medea married Aegeus and bore him a son, Medus, but lost out in competition for power with her stepson, Theseus, and had to flee with Medus.

For the fourth and final phase of Medea’s story, she and her son returned to Colchis, where she defeated her hostile relatives and installed Medus as king.

There is, too, an epilogue, in which we are told that the devastated Jason wandered the beaches by the ruins of his famous vessel, the Argonaut. One of its timbers fell off, striking him with a fatal blow.

Now, there is lots of meat in all these episodes. Over the centuries, dramatists of varying stripe have picked over it all. The fourth and final phase has tended to be ignored, but the medium of opera has witnessed treatments of the first three, some going back to the very earliest years of lyric theater.

The episode of Jason and Medea in Colchis had its first operatic treatment (a comic one) by Francesco Cavalli in 1649, and many followed thereafter for three centuries. The third phase, of Medea in Athens, has been given far fewer presentations in opera, the most important being Handel’s “Teseo” (1713).

It has been, however, the second phase, that of Medea in Corinth, which has by far inspired stage versions, making us particularly familiar with that part of Medea’s story.

That emphasis was first laid down by the classical Greek dramatist, Euripides (480-406 B.C), in his play “Medea.” On his model, the Roman writer Seneca (he of Monteverdi’s opera “The Coronation of Poppea”) wrote a simplified drama on the story in Latin, and this was what future centuries knew best of the dread sorceress. French dramatists were particularly influenced by Seneca’s version, and one of them a younger member of the famous Corneille family, wrote the libretto for one of the earliest operatic settings, Marc-Antoine Charpentier‘s “Médée” (1693). (Belwo is Medea from the film by Pasolini.)

That remains one of the best of all such, though that of a century later, Cherubini’s opera–which was the UW Opera presented–does stand out among close to 30 other treatments, their number still growing down to the present.  (Below, in a photo of the University Opera production by Brent Nicastro, is Also Perrelli, Shannon Prickett as Medea, and the UW Madrigal Singers in the back.)

What survives to some extent in our various operas is still best set forth at the outset by Euripides. An “issue” dramatist, Euripides liked to provoke his Athenian audiences with challenging and unconventional perspectives.

And in the personality of Medea, Euripides found issues that resound through the centuries, and are more than ever relevant today.

Consider. Yes, Medea is branded as a sorceress — all that nasty magic, bad stuff, we all know, disruptive to nature and to the normal order of things. She had a hair-trigger temper, and her revenge could be simply horrible when she was thwarted.  Bizarre character, you know. Someone you might think twice about becoming involved with, and certainly about crossing. (Below is the celebrated opera diva Maria Callas as Medea.)

But what makes Medea so perennially fascinating is the mix of those “negative” characteristics with other elements.  She was a wronged woman: betraying her family and abandoning her homeland for love of her man, she is in turn betrayed by Jason when he finds a more advantageous marriage with a young woman. 

Complicating her plight are two factors.  First, she is a woman in an utterly male-dominated society.  Second, in a smugly xenophobic society, she is an outsider, an alien, a “barbarian”, to be scored as something “other”.  (Might we say she was the “illegal immigrant” par excellence among the Greeks?)  Against both prejudices, she fought bravely, even desperately. Her resources were limited, but what she had she pushed to the extreme.  And, until the final phase of her story, she was constantly defeated or on the defensive.

Right now, in our American setting, the rights and opportunities of women are still in question.  Breaking through the “glass ceiling” remains a problem for women in the men’s world of business. So-called “women’s issues” are under attack up to the moment: politicians prattle about rape, propose outrageously intrusive gynecology, oppose contraception and sex education, politicize abortion, deny plans for maternity leaves, and assault women’s health care.

Here we have had an election that produced for the first time a total of five women in the U.S. Senate. Not that voting for female candidates must be based solely on gender, but certainly their access to public offices needs strengthening. And how much chance was U.S. Rep Tammy Baldwin  (below) first given against for Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson?

In sum, the situation of women touches on problems whose formulation can be seen as far back as Euripides. Have we learned anything? Perhaps the most provocative anti-war tract ever written was Euripides’ play “The Trojan Women.” And perhaps the best challenge to thinking about the place for women in our world is no less than the same dramatist’s Medea.

And, Euripides might share some credit with the operas, too.  I was set to thinking about all this by Cherubini’s “Medea,” in its now “standard” Italian form, as presented by the University Opera’s wonderful student singers.

Overcoming the absolutely silly visual handicaps of set and costumes in William Farlow’s staging, these brave singers succeeded in bringing to vocal and dramatic life so much of what this complex heroine’s powerful story is really all about. (Below, in a photo by Brent Nicastro, is the UW production with, from left) Ariana Douglas, Erik Larson and Aldo Perrelli with the UW Madrigal singers in the background.)

So opera-goers, and everyone else: listen and enjoy, but think.

Inventing Elsa Maxwell

By Sam Staggs

St. Martin’s, 340 pages, $29.99

Elsa Maxwell knew everyone, specializing in royalty and achievers—Cole Porter, Duff and Diana Cooper, Elsie de Wolfe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Gary Cooper, Mussolini, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Maria Callas. Elsa (1881-1963) was everywhere, from Venice to Hollywood. And she did everything: She played the piano, published (“Elsa Maxwell’s Etiquette Book”), took on public relations assignments, ran a gossip column for the Hearst press, appeared in films, introduced wealthy unknowns to society, served as a television talk-show guest and was Seen in the right Places.

Above all, she threw parties: come-as-you-are parties, come-as-your-opposite parties (Fanny Brice showed up as Tosca), gambling parties, cooking parties, scavenger-hunt parties. For the last 30 years of her life, Elsa was one of the best known women in the world, yet, among the millions who recognized her name, very few could have told you what it was that she did. She wasn’t famous for being famous, however. She was famous for being Elsa Maxwell.

In Sam Staggs’s lively biography, Elsa emerges as someone who rose above dreary beginnings with a vague determination to . . . well, rise above dreary beginnings. Born in Iowa to a middle-class family and originally named Elsie, she was raised in San Francisco. She moved to New York in 1907, but in truth she never really “moved,” because for most of her life she scarcely put down roots. Her life was like an old adventure play, the kind Broadway produced before movies came along, with a pile of episodes incoherently bonded.

via Book Review: Inventing Elsa Maxwell – WSJ.com.

Related articles

• Shirley Maclaine & Christopher Plummer to star in Elsa & Fred remake
• The Legend of the Skipjack Elsa Jones: A Waterman’s Story (Part 1)
• Elsa Dray Farges II
• Elsa Schiaparelli
• William Klein + Daido Moriyama
• Sunday Reading: “Marilyn In Fashion” The Enduring Influence of Marilyn Monroe

RR Autograph Auction Maria Callas

Glossy 8 x 10 close-up photo, signed and inscribed in black felt tip “To Kenneth Douglas, Sincerely, Maria Callas, 1971.” Light scattered creases and crazing to the emulsion, and moderate surface spotting, otherwise fine condition. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.

http://www.rrauction.com/bidtracker_detail.cfm?IN=709

Like most explorations of music, your ear is the best place to start.  By listening to a wide variety of types, and eras, and performers, you can start to develop your own sense of what you enjoy the most.

Here are a few selections from operas that I find immensely enjoyable.  They stand well alone and can be a stepping stone to finding out more about the particular works.  I’ve chosen arias sung by females (and no, they’re not at all fat) and will address their male counterparts in another post.

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

1. “Song to the Moon” – from Dvorak’s “Rusalka”.  Performed by Renee Fleming at the BBC Proms in Royal Albert Hall. First performed in 1901 in Prague.
2. “O Mio Babbino Caro” – from “Gianni Schicchi” by Puccini.  Performed by Kiri te Kanawa.  A comic one-act opera composed in 1918.  This piece highlights Kiri’s beautiful voice extremely well.
3. “Ombra Mai Fu” from Handel’s “Xerxes” (“Serse” in the original Italian.) as sung by Cecilia Bartoli.  It is difficult to describe how beautiful this is and even more difficult to describe how good Bartoli is with this aria.  I love the stage setting of the video also. For me, this would rank among the best arias I have ever heard.
4. “Quando Me’n Vo’” – from “La Boheme” by Puccini.  Song by Anna Netrebko at a recital celebrating thee 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.  A beautiful piece of music also known as “Musetta’s Waltz”.
5. “Regnava nel silenzio” – by Donizetti from the opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” composed in 1835.  Sung by the late, great Maria Callas (1923 – 1977).  This aria is a prime example of the power and range of Callas’ magnificent voice.

Videos