Operatic Vengeance

Siegfried at LA Opera, October 17, 2009

2009-11-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

About ten years ago, after my first exposure to Wagner's work, I was complaining about the info-dumpiness of Kundry's role in Parsifal to one of my professors at the time, who is a great opera lover (and Wagnerian). He listened to me rant and then said, "You can't apply Fiction Workshop 101 rules to opera," and then went on to explain how Kundry's character is revealed as she tells the story of

The Mars Volta at the Palladium, August 30th, 2009

2009-09-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

The above video is from the Outside Lands Festival on Saturday. Incidentally for your edification, Cedric and Omar are wearing the exact same clothes there as they did at the Palladium. o_O Cedric also proved his geekiness by mentioning that it was appropriate that they were playing the Twin Peaks stage and then warned the audience not to drink the coffee because there’s fish in the percolator. I

The Dead Weather at the Wiltern, August 25th, 2009

2009-09-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I think they've even admitted that the Pope isn’t infallible, so I guess Jack White doesn't have to be either. I just find it odd that the man who was saying how he hates things that are fake and rehearsed somehow ended up in a band with one of the most rehearsed and affected people I've ever seen. I'm talking, of course, about Alison Mosshart, lead singer of the Kills and the Dead Weather.

Review of Octahedron by the Mars Volta

2009-09-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Last year when The Bedlam in Goliath came out, I lamented the fact that there weren't any "nearly acoustic beauties" like "Asilos Magdalena" on it. So now I have to wonder if I'm psychic or something, because the Mars Volta have described Octahedron as "acoustic" many a time, though they really should qualify it with "nearly", because Omar's guitar is more plugged in than Bender when he was

The Mars Volta at Somerset House, London, July 13, 2009

2009-09-16T13:02:00.001-07:00

Flying a quadrillion miles to see a concert by a band that I just saw last month within easy driving distance probably seems kind of silly, but I've done much stupider things and besides, it was totally worth it. They were on that night. I thought they were tremendous at the Greek in 2005, but they were even better last week. Also, Cedric finally got some lovely scaffolding he could climb around

Wilco at the Wiltern, June 23rd, 2009

2009-09-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Wilco opened with "Wilco (the song)", and it got me a little worried about the acoustics, because there was a ton of vibration up in the mezzanine, and I couldn't really hear Mr. Tweedy (on whose beard someone in the audience had a crush. o_O) very well. It seemed to get better later on, though, even if the guitars were a little overwhelming at times. I kind of get the feeling they were supposed

The Mars Volta, Ventura Theatre, June 9th, 2009

2009-09-16T12:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated this blog in ages and haven't written about or seen an opera in almost as long, so I thought I'd post some reviews of all the non-classical concerts I've been to this year. They'll probably make even less sense than the operatic reviews, so consider yourself warned!First off, let me say that I would like to be reincarnated as the invisible naked woman who's apparently attached

Good news, no one, it is now easily obtained without cursing love! Das Rheingold, LA Opera, 3/1/09

2009-03-09T10:43:00.001-07:00

I have two questions for Achim Freyer: 1. What does he have against dogs, and 2. When did he become the slightly less gullible man’s Robert Wilson? You get more bang for your buck with Freyer than with Wilson, who just drags out that one white man’s dress, that one maroon dress for the slutty character, a ton of electrical tape, and a bunch of kids dipped in Wite-out and flour (incidentally, what

The Why of the Fly

2008-11-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

If the primary element is The Fly and the secondary element is opera, but the result is not FlyOpera, what is the tertiary element? Probably a whole heap of bullshit! The best thing about FlyOperaShit is that at least it's not an operatic adaptation of David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. An aria about a trifurcate hoo-ha would've been a fridge too far, especially if it were entitled "Do you have the

The Love That Wouldn't Stop Speaking Its Name: Tristan und Isolde at LA Opera, 2/10/08

2008-02-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

Tristan und Isolde is like cilantro. No, not because fans of “California Cuisine” like to sprinkle it all over everything, but because some people just seem to be immune to its charms. Most people think that cilantro is delicious, while others can only taste a strange, soapy flavor when they eat it. Many opera-lovers think that Tristan und Isolde is the best opera of the 19th century, and

It’s Fairly Bursting with Adequatulence! Jenufa at LA Opera, 10/13/07

2007-10-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Let me start by warning that this review probably won’t be funny. Jenufa is partly about a murdered baby, there’s nothing funny about that. So, here’s a joke to make up for the lack of humor in the review: Q: What’s blue and taps on the ice? A: Jenufa’s baby!OK, that’s the only dead baby joke I know, so now it’s out of the way, let’s be serious (though not cat macro serious). I was having

Fidelio at Los Angeles Opera, 9/29/07

2007-10-02T22:09:00.000-07:00

Back in the day when Beethoven was just a little tyke with a tiny white-man ‘fro, his abusive, alcoholic daddy had high hopes of making his son into the next Mozart, i.e. he wanted to milk his son’s talent for bloody great wadges of cash. So Beethoven kind of lived in the shadow of Mozart the child prodigy. Then when he grew up to cranky adulthood and was a great composer in his own right, he

And now for something tangentially related...

2007-07-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I'd like Elliot Goldenthal to disappear, to pack up his composing toys and go home. Permanently. Yeah, I'm sure Julie Taymor and anyone in the market for a workmanlike yet predictable soundtrack for a movie will miss him, but the classical music world certainly won't.Here's my beef with Mr. Goldenthal: He sucks. OK, Grendel was like the curate's egg of operas--it was good in

Debooshy!

2007-07-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

This is almost certainly silly. But silliness never deterred me from posting something before, so here it goes--my treatise on why Pelléas et Mélisande reminded me of The Mighty Boosh, or why I'm not really crazy, honest.The first similarity I noticed was between Golaud and Howard Moon. Both have a tendency to be violent out of frustration. This isn't a particularly unique trait, and it's

The Power of Christ Compels You to See This Opera!

2007-06-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

So apparently the LA Opera 2008/09 season is going to open with the US premiere of an opera based on The Fly. Yes, the David Cronenberg movie. I hope they include the maggot dream sequence. Anyway, I got to thinking...what if there was an operatic version of my favorite horror movie, The Exorcist?Here's my ideal (or as close to ideal as possible; I stopped short of resurrecting the dead) cast for

Better late than never? Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera

2007-06-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

In Act IV of Pelléas et Mélisande, the pervy blind King is trying to cop a feel on his grandson's hot, crazy wife, Mélisande. Trying to finagle a kiss out of her, King Arkel tells her that "we have such a need for beauty beside death". If this is true, then I propose that director Stanislas Nordey and his "creative" team be kept on the brink of death permanently. Maybe then they'll produce

I like to rebut and I cannot lie.

2007-06-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

In lieu of sucking it up and writing my own review of Pelléas et Mélisande, for the moment, I’m just going to pick apart what "real" critics have written about it and say why they’re wrong, as well as totally ignorant. I saw this production three times (out of a six-performance run), while some of these chuckleheads don’t seem to have seen it even once, therefore my opinions are more right than

It's Toe-Tappingly Tragic! Gerald Finley Recital, 3/15/07

2007-03-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure how most singers decide what to sing in recital, but there usually seems to be a theme of some sort or at least a uniting element. Finley’s recital was in two distinct halves – Schumann’s Dichterliebe in the first half and a bizarre hodgepodge of songs by American composers in the second half that had nothing in common with one another except the nationality of their composers.

A Quick and (Very) Dirty Synopsis of Tannhaeuser

2007-03-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

When the opera begins, Tannhäuser is moping around Venus’s Mountain of Earthly Delights, plumb wore out from all the tail he’s been getting. He decides to leave Venus because he misses the sound of church bells, which leads me to believe that Venus wasn't providing much backdoor action. They fight, Tannhäuser says he has a hard-on for Jesus now (a spiritual hard-on), and Venus disappears as

Sex: The Worst Thing You Can Do--Tannhäuser at LA Opera

2007-03-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Michael Palin once said “All I ask of food is that it doesn’t harm me”, and I’m beginning to have the same view of LA Opera’s productions—all I ask is that they don’t chisel away little chunks of my soul until I’m an empty shell of a critic. Since there haven’t been any Robert Wilson productions this year, my soul is in fairly good shape so far. My boredom gland, on the other hand, has been

LA Opera, I hate so much about the things you choose to be.

2007-01-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

Well, Los Angeles Opera has announced its 2007-08 season, and it's a decidedly mixed bag. They're performing several operas that I've never seen before, plus some rarely performed ones by composers whose work was long-suppressed by the Nazis. This last bit is due to James Conlon's influence, and it's very commendable. Performing Don Giovanni, La Bohème, and Tosca again is NOT. I love Don

Your Music Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad! – The 2006 Phlegming Awards

2007-01-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

Ah, now this is the fun part for me, because I’m all about tearing down. I’m like Shiva or something. Also, it allows me to crack open a bottle of tasty, tasty Schadenfreude. Mmm…more shameful joy and less filling.Worst Performance by a Male Singer in a Supporting Role: Lado Ataneli as Rodrigo in LA Opera’s Don Carlo. Yeah, he didn’t hit any bad notes or anything,

The Operatic Vengeance Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence

2007-01-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

I was planning to do a Top Ten of 2006 sort of list, but I realized midway through that I had seen so few productions that my lists were going to overlap. Since I'm nothing if not a sheep though, I've decided to steal from the Academy and give out my own meaningless awards! Also, because I'm also nothing if not negative and critical, there will be a "Worst of" Award. I'm a negative sheep!

Nero Fiddles (with himself) While Rome Burns - L'Incoronazione di Poppea at LA Opera

2006-12-18T00:09:00.000-08:00

I love Baroque music. I love Baroque opera. If Baroque opera were a dessert, it would be pie, because I love it just that much. But you know how some crazy motherfuckers put a slice of cheddar cheese on their pie? And you know how that ruins the pie and makes it a foul thing? Well, it's the same with Baroque opera and people putting crap on it. I mean, yeah, if you scrape the cheese off the pie,

Fun for the whole family...except those with black, dead hearts.

2006-12-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

We went to see Hansel & Gretel on Wednesday. It sucked. I'd kind of decided to write a review for every opera I see, but Hansel & Gretel was just kind of a non-event. They were obviously pandering to the kiddie crowd, everything was magical! and wondrous!, etc. The opera was performed in English too, instead of German, so the kids who haven't learned to read yet could follow along. I hate most

Reach at that arrogance which needs thy harm...

2006-11-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

In honor of Veteran's Day, I compared and contrasted two recordings of Britten's War Requiem, one with Simon Keenlyside, Ian Bostridge, and Susan B. Anthony, and the other with Gerald Finley, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Christine Brewer.Orchestra: I can't remember what orchestra played on the Keenlyside version or who the conductor was, and it was just a radio recording, so the recording dynamics

Vagina Junction, What's Your Function? - Manon at LA Opera

2006-10-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

According to the Futurama episode “I Dated A Robot”, all civilization is just an effort to impress the opposite sex. Yes, fire was discovered, the Great Pyramids were built, the light bulb was invented, all in the neverending quest for poon. Not the Parthenon, though, or the Pythagorean Theorem, or any of that good Greek stuff that forms the cornerstone of Western civilization, since all that

I like to drink lots of Fresca! Coraggio!* - Don Carlo at LA Opera

2006-09-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

*Opera's version of "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."If I ever got the urge to write cliché, fake-profound fanfic about Verdi’s opera Don Carlo, I’d definitely include a scene in which Rodrigo, Marquis di Posa, is banging Princess Eboli, all the while weeping fat emo-boy tears and calling out Carlo’s name. Not that I’d ever write such a thing, of course (*furtively taps delete key*), but such

It turns out it's Man. [scary dramatic music] - Grendel at LA Opera

2006-06-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

One of the main problems that I have with most modern operas is that they seem to be written so specifically to one particular voice or are too closely interwoven with a particular set design. (The other problem I have with them is that they almost always suck.) The voice problem really isn't anything new, of course; most of the great composers wrote roles especially for certain singers, and in

Nothing on earth can come between us...except your TB - La Traviata

2006-06-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

Well, what have we learned about nepotism, LA Opera? Apparently nothing, since they keep hiring Marta Domingo to design and direct (with her stupid right hand) productions of La Traviata. In 1999 and 2001, they performed her production that was set in Verdi’s time, as he intended it, and then Marta Domingo insisted in the program notes that Traviata shouldn’t be updated but should be allowed to

Andreas Scholl Recital, San Francisco

2006-05-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

Seeing Andreas Scholl in recital for the first time so soon after seeing him three times in a fully staged opera was an odd experience. Coming at it purely from my hero-worshipping point of view, he was godlike in Rodelinda, then profoundly normal backstage, so in recital, it's like the two had to reconcile somehow...or maybe just I had to reconcile them. In recital, he looks like a regular,

Double Shot of Wagner: Now less than 50% crap by volume!

2006-05-25T23:24:00.000-07:00

I never wrote much about Lohengrin and Parsifal either. Darn. I'm not going to write full reviews of them, because honestly I slept through most of Lohengrin and I rather liked Parsifal and so have very little complain about.Lohengrin was the Robert Wilson production, so basically it was exactly the same as the LA Parsifal. I swear, even Ortrud's dress was exactly the same as Kundry's in LA.

Rodelinda, Metropolitan Opera, New York City

2006-05-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

Can there be a happy medium between too experimental and too traditional? Or, better yet, one between too stupid and too, well, boring? If there is, the Met certainly hasn’t been able to find it. Unlike companies like San Francisco (Doctor Atomic) and Los Angeles (Grendel), most of the new operas that the Met has premiered have been more traditional, late 19th-early 20th century stories like

La vérité, la vérité... - Pelléas et Mélisande at the Salzburg Easter Festival

2006-04-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in supertitles in which the supertitles aren’t direct translations of what the singers are singing but are instead changed to read something completely different, often in the hopes of being funny or of making more sense with whatever crackheaded “updating” the director has decided to do. This disturbs and annoys me, because the words are extremely important in

...into something rich and strange... - The Tempest at the LA Philharmonic

2006-02-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

Seeing the same program three times in three days probably seems pretty silly, and normally I wouldn't have done it. Now though, I wonder if it wouldn't actually be beneficial to go multiple times whenever possible. The music and the performance changes so much from night to night in the way it is played, but it also changes in the way that it is heard. New nuances and details peek through, while

Dmitri Hvorostovsky Recital, or I am a xenophobic asshole

2006-01-18T22:42:00.000-08:00

I was going to post a review of the Dmirti Hvorostovsky recital I went to on Sunday afternoon, but all the the reviews I started seemed to revolve around how much Russian people suck. Which is incredibly mean and unfair, particularly because I don't actually know any Russian people personally. Americans tend to be very xenophobic, so I guess I'm not that different. When Americans are rude in

The Suckiest Pile of Suck That Ever Sucked - Parsifal at Los Angeles Opera

2005-12-05T22:27:00.000-08:00

Richard Wagner and Robert Wilson would seem to be a perfect artistic match—they both have no sense of humor, they...um...have the same initials, they both have a stutter (in Wilson’s case, literally and figuratively; with Wagner, only figuratively), and they both want to deny their participation in their chosen artform by acting as if they are somehow above it. This, of course, means that they

Roswell That Ends Well - Doctor Atomic at San Francisco Opera

2005-10-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

“Los Alamos That Ends Well” just didn’t have the same ring to it.Here’s what I learned from John Adams’s new opera, Doctor Atomic, which I saw in San Francisco this weekend:1. Atomic bombs don’t make good chandeliers.2. Don’t leave your baby alone with an atomic bomb. As soon as you leave the room, it’ll come down from its spot as the light fixture (see #1) and menace your baby. (Also, don’t

No Night Is Too Long? I Beg to Differ... Der Rosenkavalier at Los Angeles Opera

2005-06-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

Another LA Opera season is gone. It started off with a...well, I actually can’t remember how it started, but it definitely ended with a whimper. Maybe it’s a problem with me and not with the performances, but I couldn’t muster up anything other than ambivalence for Falstaff two weeks ago and Der Rosenkavalier this past weekend. It’s hard to feel anything better than ambivalence toward anything

“It’s very easy to criticize.” “Fun too!”: Giulio Cesare in Copenhagen

2005-03-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

I will never understand why writing a positive review is so much more difficult than writing a negative one, and I somehow doubt that I will ever stop being surprised by it either. Why should it be easier to criticize than to praise? Is it because we hold things we find beautiful closer to our hearts that makes them so much more difficult to quantify as words? Ask me about something I don’t like,

O nuit kind of divine... Roméo et Juliette at Los Angeles Opera

2005-02-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

If Charles Gounod were alive today, I think he would either be a filmmaker or a soundtrack composer. There is something quite cinematic about his operas and his music; I get a feeling of shallowness in it—there is certainly often beauty in the music, but there aren’t any other ideas at play, and the music can often become bombastic or too sugary. Gounod’s main aim, it seems, was to accompany the

Somebody Was as High as an Elephant's Eye! Aïda at LA Opera

2005-01-31T21:39:00.000-08:00

Well, add Aïda to the list of operas I never want to see again. I guess I would go see it if someone really good was going to be in it and it was close by, but other than that, if I get bitten by an Aïda bug, I’ll just stay home and listen to my recording. That probably won’t happen though, since it’s really not one of my favorites.I can’t say why though. Maybe the problem is that I’ve never seen

Menage à Bohème, Los Angeles Opera

2004-12-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

I saw La Bohème on Friday night with Roberto Alagna and his wife. He was very good, except for a little problem with the high C in “Che Gelida Manina”. He didn’t crack or miss the note; it just came out kind of thin. It didn’t even seem quite like a note, and it wasn’t particularly ugly or at all beautiful; it was just a sound. Alagna’s a good actor, and he’s incredibly good-looking, but it’s a

Escamillo, I Challenge You to Claw-Plach! snapsnapsnapsnap

2004-10-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

I think I will be able to live the rest of my life happily without ever seeing Carmen again. I mean, musically, it’s fine, a little hackneyed now, of course, but fine. Crowd-pleasing, but a bit long unless the acting is really good. But I’ve seen it three times live now, and I'm thoroughly sick of it. Maybe it's because I’ve run the gamut of possible Carmen-seeing experiences now. The first time

Idomeneo, Los Angeles Opera

2004-09-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

The opera season finally started in LA. We saw Idomeneo on Friday night. It was OK; I didn’t not like it. The clusterfuck reviewer for the LA Times said that the set looked like the cover of a 1960 Joseph Campbell paperback, but I thought it was pretty good, in that it was simple and not filled with supernumeraries wearing papier-mâché heads. The only kind of stupid staging choice was the ballet

Lucia di Lammermoor, Los Angeles Opera

2003-12-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

I went to see Lucia di Lammermoor on Sunday. It was OK. I find I don’t like bel canto operas very much. Not sure why. I also feel that they blew most of their budget to get Anna Netrebko, who is apparently the new “It” girl in the opera world, and had to use a bunch of pretty third-rate talent for the rest of the cast. Anna Netrebko was good, but she wasn’t amazing. It seems like she’s made more

Je l'ai trouvée! Pelléas et Mélisande, Boston Symphony Orchestra

2003-10-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Pelléas et Mélisande. I’d only seen part of it before, and that was the later, tenor version. I didn’t like the idea of Pelléas squalling like a tenor all the time, and the production was kind of hampered by an anvilicious set. In Act 3, when Pelléas is supposed to wrap himself in Mélisande’s unbound hair, which has overflowed from her window and down the

La Damnation de Crappy Eurotrash Stagecraft

2003-09-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

I went to see La Damnation de Faust last night. Berlioz is an unconventional composer; for the most part, his operas do not fit the typical mold of a Romantic opera, and La Damnation de Faust is no different. Perhaps some of this strangeness is what made the artistic staff of the Los Angeles Opera think that La Damnation de Faust would be good fodder for director Achim Freyer, but unfortunately,

Don Carlo, June 2003, Cleveland Orchestra

2003-06-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

The reason we went to Cleveland was to see the Cleveland Orchestra perform a concert version of Verdi’s Don Carlo, with Simon Keenlyside singing his first Rodrigo. The concerts were at Severance Hall, which is a very pretty hall. The lobbies are rust-colored and rosy marble, and the main lobby has paintings in the style of Egyptian friezes, representing different visual arts. The hall itself has

Duke Bluebeard's Castle & Gianni Schicchi, June 2002

2002-06-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is my first-ever post in my shiny new opera blog, but I've been writing reviews for about four and a half years now (intermittently). So I'm going to post those here as well. Enjoy! I might add pictures later, if I can figure out how to do it in a non-blindingly ugly way.L.A. Opera ended the season this year with a weird double bill of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. It