VERDI King of Italian Opera

Started by marvinbrown, April 20, 2007, 12:50:59 PM

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Tsaraslondon

Quote from: MDL on February 04, 2008, 04:46:05 AM
Sorry, but I just can't resist; wasn't it Pierre Boulez who dismissed all of Verdi's work as being nothing but rum-ti-tum?  ;D

(runs for cover)

Pierre Boulez made many pronouncements in his youth, of which he is probably a little ashamed now. I'm sure someone told me recently that he was even reconsidering the music of Tchaikovsky! Anyway, just because he is Pierre Boulez doesn't make him right. I know I'd far rather listen to Verdi's complete oeuvre non stop than just a few bars of Pli selon pli, or anything else by him for that matter.
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Haffner

Quote from: Wendell_E on February 04, 2008, 05:42:39 AM
Well, he did say Verdi was "stupid, stupid, stupid".  On the other hand, he also said all opera houses should be burned down.

He does seem to have gotten wiser as he gotten older, and doesn't make such pronouncents as frequently as he used to.  And of course, he's worked in a few opera houses without any mysterious fires occuring in them.



I wonder if we should lump Boulez's comments with Glenn Gould's hilarious denunciation of Mozart as catering to the "Any Publicity Is Good Publicity" realm.

knight66

How about this Boulez quote? "The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal."

It rather tries to speak for all musicians, many of whom would not agree. But of course it is an arguable point of view for his own music. He said some very odd things, contradicted by his subsequent behaviour. I do like this one though.

"Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous" This probably also holds good for musical revolutions.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

Haffner

Quote from: knight on February 05, 2008, 06:51:29 AM
How about this Boulez quote? "The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal."

It rather tries to speak for all musicians, many of whom would not agree. But of course it is an arguable point of view for his own music. He said some very odd things, contradicted by his subsequent behaviour. I do like this one though.

"Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous" This probably also holds good for musical revolutions.

Mike



Very cool.

Hector

Quote from: knight on February 05, 2008, 06:51:29 AM
How about this Boulez quote? "The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal."

It rather tries to speak for all musicians, many of whom would not agree. But of course it is an arguable point of view for his own music. He said some very odd things, contradicted by his subsequent behaviour. I do like this one though.

"Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous" This probably also holds good for musical revolutions.

Mike


Which probably explains why his Mahler is so devoid of emotion but beautifully played and very detailed and musical. But Mahler is nothing without the emotion and Boulez also lacks soul.

Was the revolutionary Boulez ever dangerous? He seems to be "celebrated" now.

I bet he voted for Sarkozy to continue 'Le Revolution.' :-\

Tsaraslondon

Quote from: Hector on February 06, 2008, 04:07:24 AM
Which probably explains why his Mahler is so devoid of emotion but beautifully played and very detailed and musical. But Mahler is nothing without the emotion and Boulez also lacks soul.


I always felt similarly about Sinopoli's Verdi. I remember once hearing him conduct the Requiem, in a very interesting performance. It was quite beautifully played, and I heard things in the score that I had never heard before, but the whole performance left me completely unmoved - something that had never before happened to me at a performance of this work.
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

(poco) Sforzando

Quote from: Tsaraslondon on February 04, 2008, 07:56:36 AM
Pierre Boulez made many pronouncements in his youth, of which he is probably a little ashamed now. I'm sure someone told me recently that he was even reconsidering the music of Tchaikovsky! Anyway, just because he is Pierre Boulez doesn't make him right. I know I'd far rather listen to Verdi's complete oeuvre non stop than just a few bars of Pli selon pli, or anything else by him for that matter.

Then you'd be missing some very beautiful music. A love for Verdi need not preclude a liking for Boulez or vice versa. Both Poulenc and Virgil Thomson, whose compositional idioms were greatly different from that of Boulez, admired his music greatly. As for the complaints about Boulez's conducting of Mahler, I would say his recent DG recordings are a bit bloodless, but in live performance he still can be thrilling, and there are recent airchecks of 2 and 3 to show it.
"I don't know what sforzando means, though it clearly means something."

Tsaraslondon

Quote from: Sforzando on February 07, 2008, 03:45:42 AM
Then you'd be missing some very beautiful music. A love for Verdi need not preclude a liking for Boulez or vice versa. Both Poulenc and Virgil Thomson, whose compositional idioms were greatly different from that of Boulez, admired his music greatly. As for the complaints about Boulez's conducting of Mahler, I would say his recent DG recordings are a bit bloodless, but in live performance he still can be thrilling, and there are recent airchecks of 2 and 3 to show it.

I don't have total antipathy for Boulez as a conductor. I have heard some wonderful performances of Debussy and Ravel down the years, though, even here, I occasionally feel that the music and the score can be held out for admiring display, sometimes at the expense of atmosphere. The results are frequently beautiful, but a little cold; not that that, in itself, negates his approach. There are others who will warm to it more than I do.

Much the same could be said about his own music. I have tried listeining to some of his works, (Pli sleon pli, 2nd Piano Sonata, le marteau sans maitre), but, I'm afraid that I find them unpenetrable. I feel much the same about a great deal of the New Viennese School. That is no doubt my loss, but with a finite amount of time alotted to oneself in this time, I choose to spend it listening to composers whose music I respond to more readily.
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Hector

Quote from: Sforzando on February 07, 2008, 03:45:42 AM
Then you'd be missing some very beautiful music. A love for Verdi need not preclude a liking for Boulez or vice versa. Both Poulenc and Virgil Thomson, whose compositional idioms were greatly different from that of Boulez, admired his music greatly. As for the complaints about Boulez's conducting of Mahler, I would say his recent DG recordings are a bit bloodless, but in live performance he still can be thrilling, and there are recent airchecks of 2 and 3 to show it.

Indeed, as one present at a Boulez performance at the Beeb's Maida Vale Studios I can attest to that.

A very strange experience, by the way. Everybody was quite casual and the mandolinist, once he had done his bit, Hugo D'Alton I think, gave the conductor a nod, which was reciprocated, and walked off.

I never did here the broadcast. The Beeb must have it on tape.

Hector

Quote from: Tsaraslondon on February 07, 2008, 05:16:13 AM
I don't have total antipathy for Boulez as a conductor. I have heard some wonderful performances of Debussy and Ravel down the years, though, even here, I occasionally feel that the music and the score can be held out for admiring display, sometimes at the expense of atmosphere. The results are frequently beautiful, but a little cold; not that that, in itself, negates his approach. There are others who will warm to it more than I do.

Much the same could be said about his own music. I have tried listeining to some of his works, (Pli sleon pli, 2nd Piano Sonata, le marteau sans maitre), but, I'm afraid that I find them unpenetrable. I feel much the same about a great deal of the New Viennese School. That is no doubt my loss, but with a finite amount of time alotted to oneself in this time, I choose to spend it listening to composers whose music I respond to more readily.


I think Boulez is the greatest living Ravel conductor.

He was once asked why his music had no tunes. He said that it had and went on to show where. Yeah, right, Pierre, nice try!









Tsaraslondon

Quote from: Hector on February 07, 2008, 05:43:09 AM
I think Boulez is the greatest living Ravel conductor.


I'm glad you said "living".
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

knight66

I sang in Mahler under both Sinopoli and Boulez. I did not enjoy either experience. However; I came across CDs of the Boulez and was amazed at the plasticity, the ebb and flow, the tension and the grandeur. It was a really passionate performance. That was about 30 years ago, when he was supposedly at his most hieratic. On the night it had felt as though he was merely keeping time and not communicating with us, but in reality, he produced a very dynamic performance.

Sinopoli produced a cold Mahler 2. Interesting, but not stirring. But in  other music I enjoyed him a great deal.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

Mozart

After months of searching, I found my Otello dvd! I watched the first hr today and loved it. I can't get the drinking chorus out of my head. Very funny because I ordered from Netflix Otello conducted by Karajan and its coming tomorrow, while I found my missing one today. Anyone know if this is a good performance?


Anne

Quote from: Mozart on April 11, 2008, 04:25:48 PM
After months of searching, I found my Otello dvd! I watched the first hr today and loved it. I can't get the drinking chorus out of my head. Very funny because I ordered from Netflix Otello conducted by Karajan and its coming tomorrow, while I found my missing one today. Anyone know if this is a good performance?



I saw that DVD and thought it was very good.  It was nice to see an Otello that was not Domingo for a change.  Vickers was very good.

Mozart

I had no idea it was an opera flick. Seems to me that making the tempo of otello slow enough for an opera film would make the music boring. I'll try to watch it tomorrow.

Brünnhilde forever

You mean there is no separate thread purely for the review of certain Verdi operas? I didn't find any, so I start this one!

As a long-standing Richard Wagner follower, I listened to, watched, and attended Verdi operas as an antidote, fully accept another Wagner disciple's classification of Verdi's as 'Organ Grinder Music'. I have lived in Italy long enough to know this to be the most commonly heard melodies. Nothing wrong with it. It's Italian!!

Over the years of collecting I have been searching for THE most acceptable Rigoletto. Found some good ones, rejected some rather bad ones, but I am almost afraid to say it: I might have found the acceptable outstanding one! When I saw the advertisement of a new ArtHaus Music DVD from a 2006 performance at the Zürich Opera House I didn't jump for joy because only the name Nello Santi meant something to me, probably the best Verdian conductor alive. And there is Leo Nucci in the title role.

As the opera progressed in my music room, gnawing back in my mind was the fear I found another organ grinder candidate. Don't get me wrong, all the singers are very good Verdian interpreters, good looking tenor, not too hefty around the waist, soprano young but trying her very best, mind-bogling elaborate customs, and the usual standing and delivering - except in the third act the Duke, delivering his hit of the century, perched on a Washington State Park picnic table. But that was already after I had slid forward in my chair in the second act, mouth agape, fighting to regain my breath, when Leo Nucci delivered his plea to the courtiers to let him see his daughter.

It was heartrending, it was indescribably moving and beautiful more than six minutes of despair, sorrow - and best acting-singing I remember in a Verdi opera. Nucci finished on his knees at the edge of the stage, the house came down with thundering applause and bravos, and the camera swung to Nello Santi standing on the podium applauding and applauding. Finally Nucci raised his head, looked at Santi and the two applauded each other, with Nucci gesturing to the musicians in the pit. I was too involved to even check how long the ovation lasted, but believe, it was one of the longest ever.

Leo Nucci has sung Rigoletto over 400 times, the booklet says, he is now in his early sixties, Nello Santi owns Rigoletto beyond a doubt. I also read that Santi is a trained tenor and used to sing from the podium rescuing tenors in trouble!

I think this one finally is my keeper! See if I am wrong!  ;)

T-C

#196
Quote from: Brünnhilde forever on December 13, 2008, 07:20:25 PM
As a long-standing Richard Wagner follower, I listened to, watched, and attended Verdi operas as an antidote, fully accept another Wagner disciple's classification of Verdi's as 'Organ Grinder Music'.

'Another Wagner disciple' – ACD, I presume?

He definitely has a very deep percipience and knowledge of Verdi's music, especially the last masterpieces like Don Carlos, Othello or Falstaff calling them 'Organ Grinder Music'. But never mind, Verdi is in much better situation than every other Italian opera composer I know. ACD refers to them collectively as 'crap'...

I have nothing in common with this arrogant and rude man primarily because of the way he treats others in various forums who don't share his opinions. Even with regard to his saint Wagner I have quite a few disagreements...

Now returning to the topic, unfortunately Rigoletto is not blessed with many good DVD versions. For my taste too, this Zurich production is currently one of the best there is.



knight66

I have often had problems on CD with Nucci, finding his tone dry and grey. I wonder whether his acting provides a visual addition that distracts from the vocalisation; or whether he can actually pull out great singing on occasion? I have heard him in Traviata, boring, he was in the Decca Pavarotti Otello, underpowered, Abbado's Aida....uninteresting.

I have been surprised that he clearly gets masses of good engagements and indeed has appeared in some high profile recordings. I think we are unlikely to ever see a recital disc, if we do, it will be remaindered.

But then, I have not seen the performance you describe Lis and he clearly makes an impression in it.

It would be good to get this thread going beyond this discussion on Rigoletto, or at least its performers. I don't have a DVD of the opera, several CD and LP versions have passed through my hands and I have seen it live several times.

It is a very economical opera, tight in its structure and as with a lot of Verdi, it contrasts private and large public scenes. It was one of the first operas that captured me, mainly for Caro Nome then the whole final scene from the quartet to the end. The actual end seems brutally short, Rigoletto discoveres his daughter in a sack, she expires, he exclaims, curtain down.

My first set was by Molinari-Pradelli with Renato Capecci? I cannot track it down now. I loved that set and not any since has pleased as much. I last heard it over 30 years ago, so I have little doubt that my memories are heavily rose tinted.

This is middle period Verdi, as with Un Ballo Verdi had lots of problems with censorship. The Hugo play on which Rigoletto is based was set in France depicting corruption in the court of Francis I. The play was banned in France for about 50 years and Verdi only got the piece onto the stage by moving the story to a non-historic Italian setting. It is interesting that Verdi did keep pushing at what was then controversial subjects. Now we would not bat an eyelid at it, but the politics of the time, around 1850, were still preoccupied in France with the fact of a rather uncomfortable restoration of their monarchy, so any discussion of the institution had to take account of the sensitivities of the time. Quite why Verdi sitting in Italy and ruled from Austria was to be affected by the vagaries of the French royal family I am not too clear. But I guess, discussion of any royal setup is a delicate matter where there are other royals in the vicinity.

We don't tend much to see Verdi the political animal, but in fact he was quite involved in Italian politics and his opinions certainly fed into his work. He was more than a writer of entertainments. He was writing about the human condition.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

Brünnhilde forever

Interesting response, thank you, Luv, but remember I am watching operas, whether on DVD or in person, for the experience of seeing a total performance, being carried into another world by the work of a composer and then materialised by the best efforts of performers, singers, musicians and stage hands.

If Leo Nucci's voice is dry, is nothing I concentrate on. I can hear a clunker by a tenor, hear if the soprano is looking for her note at her kneecap, or if the baritone is two beats behind the conductor. But I am a member of the audience, not a voice coach; the technicalities of a voice will - I hope! - never intrude into my enjoyment and involvement into the performance.  ;D

Tsaraslondon

I've only once seen Nucci live, in La Traviata at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, when Angel Gheorghiu was making her debut as Violetta. It might be argued that Germont was a bit of a dry old stick, but I found his acting wooden in the extreme, and his singing not much better. Mind you Solti's four square conducting couldn't have helped, though it hindered Gheorghiu less. Hers was, and still is by all accounts, an appreciable Violetta. I have not seen the Nucci Rigoletto on DVD, so cannot comment on it, but I have heard him on quite a few CDs and have to say it is not a voice I enjoy.

However this topic is called Verdi's Veranda, and it saddens me to see that it has attracted so few postings, as opposed to the pages of Wagner's Valhalla. Are there so few Verdi fans on this board? For me, Verdi is one of the greatest of all composers, on a par with Shakespeare in the breadth of his understanding of humanity and the human condition.

I have recently been acquiring the early operas, most of which were recorded by Philips, in the 1970s, featuring such eminent singers as Montserrat Caballe, Jessye Norman, Katia Ricciarelli, Placido Domingo, Carlo Bergonzi, Jose Carreras, Piero Cappuccilli and Ruggero Raimondi, excellenct conducted by Lamberto Gardelli. The biggest surprise of all was Verdi's early comedy Un Giorno di Regno, which, though suffering from a rather confused libretto, is an absolute delight, and at least the equal of many a Donizetti comic opera of the time. It would be perfect for Glyndebourne. But all these early operas have something to commend them, though admittedly none of them is quite on a level with Rigoletto, with which Verdi reached his full potential.

\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas