Opera and Kids, Version 20.11

First this breaking story: Yes! A breaking opera story! Who knew? And you read it here first!

Jacoba Barber-Rozema, a very young Toronto opera singer, whom I interviewed for this post, and hoped to be able to follow in her future performances, has just won the role of The Shepherd Boy, in Tosca, to be performed by the Canadian Opera Company early in 2012! This is so exciting! Can't wait to see her. Or should I say hear her! Keep reading this post to find my interview with her after her first outing on the COC stage this past spring.

And now back to our regular programming:

My plan has finally paid off! Choosing artful, beautiful opera performances to share with my kids, in order to let them be open to opera as a source of pleasure in life, has worked!

One of my kids has most willingly gone to the opera the last few times, but this summer my kid generated the idea of selecting something to see at the Rossini Opera Festival, which takes place in the town where we vacation. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum, literally. We chose Mosè in Egitto, for the story, showing at the decommissioned sports arena. The day after we bought tickets, it was revealed in the local paper that the young(ish) socialist, English, stage director, Graham Vick, had decided to use the opera as a metaphor for the displaced people and freedom fighters of our day, complete with land mines, and machine guns and burqas. Many people found the idea distasteful, we thought it might be frightening, and we heard later that it was not well-enjoyed by the audience, usually composed of long-time festival fans. Luckily we were allowed to change our tickets for something else. We had heard that the scenography of Adelaide di Borgogna, featured video, while the costumes and props were in period, so we thought it would be the right choice to engage a kid, and it was.


Adelaide, an opera based on a true story about a strong and influential woman of 1000 years ago (the wife of Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor), seen from an old-fashioned box, in a theatre built during his lifetime in Rossini's home town, was a smash hit, at least in our family! I always love the ROF for making it possible to see the lesser-known, if not unknown, Rossini works. The singers are often specialized in this beautiful bel canto repertoire and I have to say most of the performances were really thrilling. Especially fabulous was Daniela Barcellona as Ottone (Italian for Otto). She is beloved for pants roles in Rossini operas at the festival, and for good reason. And in this case, I have to leave the music comments at that, because it was director Pier'Alli's multiple video screen backdrop that made the whole thing notable. It was pretty fun, if not exactly perfect.

photo: Elio Crociani

There were endless raindrops falling in puddles, artful pathetic fallacy, but also giving a sense of the time of year and the life of a soldier in a camp in the plain of the Po River at the time (ie the year 950!)

photo: Elio Crociani

For much of the opera, the look was sort of Battleship Potemkin, maybe kind of an homage to Eisenstein?

photo: Elio Crociani

Strangely, at the end, we got into floating umbrellas alla Magritte and a royal coach, all early 20th century - rather awfully out of period - but as James Ehnes said when I (sort of) interviewed him for another post on this blog, art comes from commitment, and I certainly would rather see a failed reach for the stars than an easy sure thing, so I was good with the attempt.

The enthusiasm of my bigger kid left my littler kid saying "Isn't there an opera I can see?" and we had to say "Sorry, that was the last night of the festival! Next time."

I think this success was built on our other opera outing of the year,  the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Family Performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute this past spring. That was a wonderful evening. The tickets were at the right price to allow for a rustling and restless audience filled with children, and even to leave early if need be.

Of course, The Magic Flute is not only sensational musically, with quite a few parts familiar to many kids, but also has a brilliant story and the surtitles had everyone laughing at jokes we could not have understood otherwise.

photo courtesy of the Canadian Opera Company

As well, and here is the connection, it also benefited from great scenography and innovative rethinking of the staging, and fabulous costumes. I mean, punk-viking girls with glasses! Does it get any cooler? And the idea of a play being performed at a garden party within the opera, the small stage slowly taking over the larger, was really well executed.

The whole effort absolutely showed the comedic sense of pre-romantic opera, rather than the tragic of the romantic and post-romantic tradition. (I want to say baroque rather than pre-romantic, but I don't want to get into another argument about it. I am still working on a post on my own theory as to what should constitute the end of the baroque period, and why the "classical" period is really just transition from baroque to romantic, and doesn't deserve to be considered a separate period, and that Mozart actually bridged over the end of the baroque into the "classical", crossing paths with Beethoven who took up "classical" and pushed it into romantic and...wait...take a deep breath...I'm supposed to be saving this idea and my research for another post.)

photo of Nicola Smith, First Spirit; Emily Brown Gibson, Second Spirit; and
Jacoba Barber-Rozema, Third Spirit;  photo courtesy of Jacoba Barber-Rozema

In any case, the killer feature of The Magic Flute for us was that a girl from my kids' school had a big role, as the Third Spirit. Her performance was SENSATIONAL and we will be hoping to follow her career as the first members of her fan club. She managed to dig up for me a picture of the spirits crossing the stage, pedaling slowly, but traveling very VERY slowly on their enormous tricycles, while singing ethereally. The effect was amazing, and audience members of all ages loved it. The spirits are really major, spending quite a bit of time onstage through-out the opera, so it really went a long way towards the overall success of the performance that they were so effective and so effectively staged. The kids I was with found it incredible that a schoolmate was such a star.

And...it's not every day that you can ask a very young opera singer what they are all about, so I found a mutual friend who helped me ask her some questions, and I got back some very interesting answers.

Nervous Marigold: Do you want to be an opera singer, or is this a way of rounding out your experience, or testing opera as a future career? Or other?

Jacoba Barber-Rozema: I saw my first and "fell in love" (I guess you could say) with opera when I was 8, and knew I wanted to be an opera singer since I was 10. Being in Flute and seeing more and more of what the professional life is like, makes me want to do it even more. But it's definitely not the easiest career! You said you saw the Ensemble show? Unfortunately, I didn't spend very much time with that cast, which I would have loved to do. It gave me a more realistic look at first cracking into the business and it was a completely different energy - much more excited. I'm fifteen now and my dream still hasn't changed, but who knows what the future holds.

NM: Was it weird doing a pants role? Do you sing in your adult voice, or is that still to change? Are you a soprano now, and what will you be in the future if it is different?

J B-R: You know, doing a pants role was actually a lot of fun! At the very beginning, at the audition, there was kind of a competition to see who can look the most like a boy, but I'm very good friends with the other girls who were chosen, so that soon faded. The lovely Isabel Bayrakdarian, who sang Pamina, once called us "bearded ladies", which we found very funny. I am a mezzo, but I sang the third spirit in flute. I think my voice is still yet to change, yes, but probably not too drastically from what it is now.

NM: What is your favourite opera (and maybe why)?

J B-R: My favourite opera is Madama Butterfly. I got to see it at the Met a few years ago and it moved me to tears. I love the contrast of Puccini's light music in an opera with such dark themes. [It was my first opera, too. - ed.]

NM: What is your favourite current song? (Do you have Bieber fever, like Emily [our mutual friend - ed.])? OK - this is a bit banal, but it's so fun to know.

J B-R: That's too hard! I think I may have Beatles fever, if there is such a thing. I know every song, so that and other sixties music is mainly what I listen to. As for contemporary music, some of my current favourites are Regina Spektor and Ingrid Michaelson. It's been SO strange not rehearsing or hearing music from The Magic Flute, so I've been listening to a lot of that lately. I ate, slept and breathed Flute for almost a year and suddenly it's completely gone. Sometimes I have dreams about it - the pre-show adrenaline, listening to the overture while watching from backstage and waiting for the curtain to come up. I hope my future opera experiences are even half as amazing as The Magic Flute was.


What a clever and interesting person, in addition to being a gifted performer! How rare! How inspiring! What a great role model for arty kids!

La Clemenza di Tito, photo: Opera Atelier

Finally, and related, although not thru the kid connection, this spring I saw my beloved Opera Atelier with no kids, (thank-you, Diana!) as usual doing their utmost to specialize in the obscure, performing La Clemenza di Tito, an opera seria by Mozart. I noticed that I had seen the cast before in Idomeneo in 2008, that is, fabulous soprano Measha Brueggergosman and exotic male soprano Michael Maniaci and the amazing tenor Krešimir Špicer and others. And in fact, at the performance I learned that, very delightfully, OA had promised this cast to bring them back for Tito.

Idomeneo is considered Mozart's most successful opera seria (a HIGH BAROQUE form - notice this, James Ehnes - most often used to praise or flatter a monarch or noble). I really loved it when I saw it, and here is my review from that performance.

Tito had everything in place - but somehow was less of a thrill, just as historical critical opinion would have it. Luckily we were told in artistic director Marshall Pynkoski's usual on-stage opening remarks about the personal commitment of the performers to doing the opera. I think it gave everyone a warm fuzzy open-ness to the production. He explained that that the story was well known to audience's of Mozart's period. The program illustrated the point on the cover, using this quotation from Racine's play Berenice, instead of a picture: Pity my rank. Lord of the world, I guide its destiny. I can make kings and unsceptre them, yet I cannot give my heart to whom I choose. WOW! The opera tells the true story of the Roman emperor Titus. He was renowned for both his love for his Judaean mistress Berenice, whom he sent away, realizing he could never allow himself to marry her, and his clemency toward a couple of traitors, refusing to have them executed, and in fact sharing an inspection with them at the arena. It is marvelous to think of things that were once so well-known and admired, that are now so completely gone from culture.  I know, I know, like "opera", right?

On the other hand, although the music was lovely, and the performance was fine (despite a funny scene-changing error, requiring a hot two-girl kiss scene to be repeated while they finally made the change), but somehow no thrill. Won't stop me from going to Don Giovanni, which they are remounting this fall. [ed. note: just about now] The 2004 performance of Don Giovanni was my introduction to Opera Atelier, and I have had a crush on the company ever since.

Don Giovanni, photo: Opera Atelier

As to the idea of everything connecting...well...I guess within opera everything does connect somehow, but...

To start with, Tito was written by Mozart as a commission for the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold II and Mozart wrote it at the same time as he was working on The Magic Flute.  Cool. More interestingly still, (to me) is that Adelaide in Borgogna felt like opera seria to me, about pair of monarchs of high honour and personal bravery. When I was looking for a connection, I saw that Rossini was called "the little German" because of his admiration of Mozart. He was born in 1792, a year after Mozart's death, and apparently he attempted to revive the baroque-leaning opera seria style. But for whom? During this period he worked for an Italian princess, for Charles X of France, and for Charles's father- or grandfather-in-law Ferdinand IV of Naples. Although it seems he wrote Adelaide for one of the commercial opera houses of Rome, Charles and the Ferdinands were important Bourbons with the royal family's strength based in Burgundy. I wonder if it was just on his mind, or if it was a hopeful attempt to flatter? I wonder if the truth is out there?


Now the marigold is wondering nervously if it is possible not to kill this fragile bud of kid-interest with over-enthusiastic adult encouragement. Perhaps I should start discouraging interest in the opera, to get them really going? Or is that too much of a game? Plus, why are there so many editorial comments in this piece? Who is that nosy editor, anyway?

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture

Sorry this has been  so long coming - you'll see why as you read on.

I was so pleased and surprised, and yet not so surprised either, that my two besties (as I like to think of them) James Ehnes and Tom Allen, both wrote me back courteous letters in answer to my questions! Two things are in play, I guess: I often think that they are both wonderful examples of Canadian nice-ness; and the public personalities that you FEEL might be sympatico ARE sympatico. James Ehnes, especially, who kindly wrote twice, gave me some real food for thought. I have provided a link to Ehnes's home page under Music Links and Allen's twitter feed under...uh...Twitter Feeds. You can check them out for yourself.

Also surprisingly, or not, as I was engaged in this correspondence and thinking, I realized I had arbitrarily chosen a couple of books to read lately that involve violin history, which was quite fun:

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, is a new book, for young adults, with a little time travel back to the French revolution as a way of approaching homework. The main character is a high school senior with issues and talent and family wealth, yet the story is surprisingly un-clichéd.








 
Fabrizio's Return, a remarkably adept book by Ottawa writer Mark Frutkin. His Italian is good and the setting feels very natural to me, and in accordance with my experience of a medium-sized Italian city. One of his characters is Niccoló (by implication Stradivarius), a violin-maker in Cremona, historic home of the violin.







Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music.
 And credit where credit is due - I could not resist this book, which I leaf through...well you know where...and it had a nice couple of pages on the mystery and history of Stradivarius, along with entries like: Bagpiper's Fungus and Twelve Recordings that Changed Music and Odd Homemade Instruments and 16 Random Lists About Frank Sinatra and...you get the picture.








Once I start thinking about similarities, I think about whether there exists a category, so I thought up some other works in the category of violin-history:

like the silly film The Red Violin,

and the remarkably beautiful book  Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa, currently only available in Italian, winner of the Strega prize for literature in Italy. (The word means witch, and it is the name of a absinthe-style liqueur and the prize seems to be awarded to witchy, absinthe-style books - dark and tragic). Stabat Mater is the heart-rending story of an orphan girl under the tutelage of Vivaldi.

Of course that sounds like Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery, from the Beethoven Lives Upstairs CD Series, also about an orphan, who rather happily turns out to be the daughter of the duke of Cremona, who also plays a violin for Vivaldi. I had to make a new tag for my catalog on LibraryThing.




So anyway, I was kind of bogged down, with too much to think about and no way to pull it together into a post. As you all know by now: I think everything is connected and long to uncover and understand all the connections. Then I agonized, but AGONIZED, about how to edit a long interview to be more punchy, until my friends said to me "If it's all interesting, and it needs to be complete, just post it all. We'll get through it. Duh!" And then, I must tell you that since Jimmy E (as I like to think of him) had mentioned the old saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture I thought, well, why don't I just finish up and post that video of myself dancing about architecture that I've been working on, as there seems to be some demand for it, but then I thought, no...I'll just finish up writing about music, so here it all is.


Really, the comments made by both Ehnes and Allen pushed me to think about what I thought - hmmmm - does that work? - and learn from them what I did not understand previously, and defend my ideas more robustly where I was too casual in my assumptions.

I decided that what you would find interesting is some of the back and forth. This first post is about playing an old instrument in the current style, which I was finding puzzling as a choice, and about playing Mozart. In a future post I'll cover some ideas on what defines the Baroque period.

Here is the note sent to me by Tom Allen:

If I understand your question, I think you're asking when violin playing progressed past what we now call baroque playing - is that right?

The question is more one of when did people start considering that the old way of doing things might have some merit.  Violin playing went through a huge surge in development around 1700, and then again in the early 1800s. Bows and bowing changed to produce a louder, harsher sound and techniques with it, but it wasn't until Mendelssohn began looking into JS Bach's music in 1829 that anyone really thought there would be any benefit in looking back.  Music was about progress, and the only music worth hearing was new music. Without recording, people simply didn't hear pieces more than one or two times and didn't think that unusual.(My emphasis, NM) Interest in older music, beginning with Bach, slowly increased through the 1800s, but even as late as 1949 it wouldn't have occurred to people to investigate how Bach's music would have sounded in Bach's time.  That only started in the early sixties, gaining major popularity through the 70's.

Allen has made a couple great points. I knew that playing period style on period instruments was a relatively modern idea, but I was overlooking the fact that in all the arts there is a strong drive toward the "NEW" which keeps things going forward, especially among the premiere practitioners or virtuosi. I should have been able to think of that.  Also - the very idea of recording the performance for multiple listenings! That is a terrific example of technology actually driving art, one of my special sub-interests in the category of all artistic achievement, and I completely overlooked the impact of recording on playing style and choices.

Ehnes gave his own reason for his playing style:  

 














When I perform a piece of music, my goal is to be completely, 100% convinced of my interpretation. Only then do I feel there is any chance of convincing my listeners. Naturally, I am influenced by the playing I hear around me, and my experiences as a listener inform my sense of taste and style. The playing I enjoy as a listener is playing that I consider to be musically committed.

So I wrote back to him:

I was thinking about what you said, and although I did not get it immediately, overnight I had a kind of epiphany: the sound and expression you consider meaningful you create when you address music of any period, with your current technique, played on a piece of technology in which an old box, with some re-engineering and modern parts (like strings), makes a beautiful sound, loud enough to fill a large modern concert hall, work with a modern-size orchestra, and reach an audience which responds emotionally or even passionately to the performance. I get it, now, I think.

I am always interested in how technology both drives and constrains art, and I just couldn't fit the pieces together quite right for the violin. The technology can be used in any way to support the art in any way. Not everyone will agree with or find pleasure in every choice, but who cares? I too believe commitment makes art. (Can't seem to get this the right size - sorry. NM)

I scored this response:

I think you get exactly what I mean!

Phew! I could do a dance-video about this, too, perhaps. Maybe I'll get to work on that, later. 


I can't say what a thrill it is to get information like this directly from the artist. It makes sitting in an audience of thousands feel so personal. 

 

I will even feel that we are having a personal exchange on the subject when I watch my friend's copy of the Ehnes DVD Homage with her, on which he plays: "...on 12 of the greatest instruments ever made. The Fulton Collection is perhaps the most important private collection in the world and contains many examples of the legendary names Stradivari, Guarneri, da Salo and Guadagnini. 

Ehnes performs 21 selections in a carefully planned recital programme specially chosen to suit each instrument and to work on its own terms. It finishes with a section comparing each instrument in an excerpt of the same piece, a unique opportunity to contrast the sound qualities of these spectacular instruments."


Yeah, baby!

Then, to begin the second part of our "interview", here is picture of the opening of the score of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 In A Major K.219 in Mozart's own hand, just for the beauty and awe of it.

I love to see the "hand of the artist", so much less common for the composer than the performer. But in order to also see a special part of the hand of the performer-artist at work, I asked Ehnes about his approach to the pieces I saw him play, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K.218 and Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K.219 "Turkish".

When we were listening to your cadenzas, they sounded very similar to each other and with enough fast fingering (like Paganini, which I have also seen you play) and discord to sound very modern. I understand that it is the tradition that the soloist improvises or composes the cadenza. On the other hand, the program notes for the concert indicated that Mozart was one of the first composers to score the cadenzas in his concerti. As you have gathered, I am no expert on music or the violin, (although I am an ardent learner) so I am of course wondering whether you or Mozart or some combination is responsible for those musical moments which were the most interesting of the performance.

And got this very personal answer:

Cadenzas – while Mozart did notate some cadenzas for some (though not all) of his piano concertos, there are no surviving cadenzas for his violin concertos, and it is doubtful that he ever wrote any down. The cadenzas you heard were all mine; when coming up with them I took into account the form and length of the surviving cadenzas for his piano concertos of the similar, early period (there are a few from the 8^th piano concerto, I think? Maybe 9^th – can’t remember), and tried to take into account the types of figuration he wrote in his piano works as well as the kind of virtuoso violin playing that would have been popular around that time. Not Paganini, it is a bit early for that, but some of his predecessors, like Viotti, Locatelli, etc. Even late-Vivaldi. I’m glad you found them interesting! 



Says me, "Some listening homework to do, here."

As a further exercise in comparing modern and period playing of a Baroque composition, I dug out my Nigel Kennedy version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and added it to my iPod. Kennedy is a punky-looking and -playing genius who specifically wrote in the notes for his all-time best-selling Four Seasons CD (1989) that he did not want to be beholden to tradition or period in his performance.
 

I already had Il Giardino Armonico's Four Seasons CD (1994) in there. They were about the first period chamber orchestra in Italy. I think I can safely say that the period performance movement started in Great Britain, and remains strongest there, and Il Giardino was radical for Italy at the time. I first heard this performance on my beloved CBC Radio 2 (or CBC FM as it was those many years ago.) I have loved this recording and memorized it with so many listenings, relegating Nige to the shelf. It's great to have him out again, and I have been playing them side-by-side as I walk, and drive, and listening carefully. They are actually both just awesome, and I keep coming up with new questions. 

Sadly, IT APPEARS THAT THERE ARE NO EHNES RECORDINGS OF VIVALDI AVAILABLE! I checked for music on iTunes, CDs and even had a look at the DVD. Oh man! How is this possible? I would really have loved to put an Ehnes version beside the other two icons, too.

Right now the marigold is wondering, not-so-nervously, about why Vivaldi chose the keys he did for each season. It is a delightful little chromatic grouping, and each of the three sections of the seasons is written in the same key:
Spring - E major
Summer - G minor
Fall - F major
Winter - F minor
Why? Answers or suspicions welcomed.

more on baroque music, played on a baroque instrument (originally) but in the modern (read: romantic) style

My friend K and I went to the family night, Canadian Opera Company's ensemble version of Mozart's The Magic Flute together. Then K wrote this to me: I was thinking about plays I've seen- versions of Shakespeare for example and how directors so often change the settings of their plays to suit their interpretations.  The words are the same but so much else is changed to be more original and current.  Wasn't the Magic Flute this time much different with costumes, setting etc than the one you saw before?  Isn't that maybe why violinists play Mozart with a more modern technique?  The notes are the same but much is changed.

This is my answer:
I have never seen The Magic Flute before, but you are right - there are lots of reasons to change the "look". I thought this was very successful, and that ol Moz' would have enjoyed the playfulness of this production. I don't always, or even usually, like much updating, but of course it is a tradition of western culture in every art form. Must also say that the audience filled with children was absolutely as well-behaved as any audience, and the kids we were with all enjoyed themselves. I consider it a perfect success for the COC.

On the other hand, music...romantic style playing of baroque music on instruments that are (or at least were) baroque...it feels like not the same to me, and it is not updated to a "current" style so to speak, so it is like updating from one past paradigm to another, so it's maybe like a contemporary artist, painting a biblical scene in renaissance costume. Or using egg tempera to do campbell soup cans. (Actually, that would work as a joke or piece of conceptual art, but not as the way it's done.) Does my idea come through? It is neither historically accurate nor contemporary. That's what I get from the violin practice. (I guess that's why a lot of stage updates kind of bug me too - Rossini played in the Fascist period is quite common, even banal, and so nowhere.)



K recommends YouTube videos of the differences between baroque and modern violins, and here is a great video on the hardware from Baroque Band. It makes me wonder if the longer modern bow is the reason for more vibrato.





Now here is video of someone playing a baroque violin which is for sale with no vibrato at all,




and here is a video of Kyun Sun playing Vivaldi on a baroque violin with plenty.


Still not sure where this is going. Who has the answers? Writing to James and Tom now. (My homies, obviously.)

The marigold wonders nervously: Is there an actual answer to this? Am I going to find someone who is able to help me figure it out? Will I have to lie awake night after night puzzling it out?

My Month of Mozart

Mozart was marketed heavily in the 250th anniversary of his birth. The Mozart Project was launched - a huge meta-website with so much traffic in its first few days that it crashed their servers. Opera and symphony seasons were planned around Mozart. Radio stations ran "your favourite Mozart piece" contests. In my group of friends we chose his Requiem as our favourite. (Actually, I collect requia, because I love sad music. Mozart's is one my favourites among these, too.)

Now, Mozart's birthday was January 27th, 1756.  He just passed 255. There seems to be an upwelling around him again. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra spent a week or so honouring Mozart. One of their guests was the brilliant and adorable violinist James Ehnes. (I have added a link to his home page.)

I heard from Julie Nesrallah, who does the morning classical show on CBC Radio 2, (I have added a link to her Twitter feed), that Ehnes and Mozart HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY! Meaningful? I kind of hope so.  I got to see the concert because my friend K, the violinist, got us tickets. It was an amazing performance.


A door has opened for me with this friend. I have been doing pretty well on opera. I have always been a piano aficionado. The violin - I know nothing. In listening to the two Mozart concerti played together by same violinist, we recognized what I looked up to be the "cadenza" a part in a concerto where the soloist may improvise. The way Ehnes played the two cadenzas sounded similar and quite modern, with discord and superfast fingering. (Ehnes also famously plays Paganini - one of the first guys reputed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical ability.) On the other hand, when I started to look into it a bit, it seems that Mozart, who wrote all his violin concerti in the early part of his career, when he emphasized the violin rather than the keyboard as his own performance instrument, is one of the first composers to have written out the cadenza parts, rather than leaving them to the violinist. Hmmm, A mystery that needs more work. Maybe I should send an email and ask Ehnes himself? And maybe I should check with the also-adorable Tom Allen, the host of the afternoon classical program on CBC Radio 2. He knows everything. I'll do that later. (I have also added a link to his Twitter feed.) Oh! And I'll ask some music teachers.

There is another mystery here, too. I love the sound of a baroque orchestra. I have always mentally located the different sound of the instruments in the strings, and some of it is the gut stringing.

But, as Wikipedia says: A baroque violin is, in common usage, any violin whose neck, fingerboard, bridge, and tailpiece are of the type used during the baroque period. Such an instrument may be an original built during the baroque and never changed to modern form; or a modern replica built as a baroque violin; or an older instrument which has been converted (or re-converted) to baroque form [my emphasis - modernized and then unmodernized]. And there is also this, from the History of the Violin on Wikipedia: the fingerboard was made a little longer to be able to play even the highest notes; the fingerboard was tilted a little more, to produce even more volume as larger and larger orchestras became popular: nearly all old instruments were modified, including lengthening of the neck by one centimeter, in response to the raising of pitch that occurred in the 19th century. (In the photo the modern is on the right - you can see it is longer, with a longer throat.)



However, my friend also instructed me that the playing technique favoured now also varies from the technique favoured during the baroque. For one thing, more bow pressure also produces louder sounds - and the corollary is that part of the popularity of baroque music is that it still falls within humanist dimensions - smaller number of instruments, less dynamic range, less pitch or tonal range. There is a great chart that shows the human voice as the standard range against which all other instruments are compared that shows this beautifully. You can see the baroque instruments lined up under the top line in the middle, which is the human voice.

Modern technology pushes all of these out past the limit of the human body to produce or even appreciate. There have also been changes in bowing technique - in particular the addition of vibrato. I learned this between the two concerti, and I realized in watching the second one that in every longer note, all the violins and violas (and possibly the other strings too, but I couldn't see them as clearly) used vibrato. Here Wikipedia says: Vibrato is a technique of the left hand and arm in which the pitch of a note varies in a pulsating rhythm. While various parts of the hand or arm may be involved in the motion, the end result is a movement of the fingertip bringing about a slight change in vibrating string length. Some violinists oscillate backwards, or lower in pitch from the actual note when using vibrato, since it is believed that perception favors the highest pitch in a varying sound.  I have not yet figured out the when where why and who of vibrato. I'm going to have to dig deeper to understand it.

What I really don't get is that here is Ehnes, who uses a Stradivarius violin from 1715, playing baroque music written between 1770 and 1780, in the modern way - ie with a baroque instrument converted to the modern style and favouring (I imagine, among other modern techniques) vibrato. (Just to be sure it's clear: Mozart is considered to be a composer who came out of the baroque and pushed music into the "classical" period. By comparison, Beethoven came out of the "classical" period and pushed music into the romantic. Beethoven actually studied for a while with Mozart. )

How did it get to be that the received way to play this music on this instrument is with modern updates in technology and technique? How did these qualities acquire their value to the extent that they pushed out the original intentions of the creator? This will come up again in a couple of paragraphs, if you can stand it.

 Now, on with Mozart. I always go on and on about kids and opera, and I was really interested when I saw that the Canadian Opera Company was offering a family performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute this month. It is performed by the ensemble instead of the company, the seats are super-cheap, and the entire audience will be filled with rustling and wriggling kids. What a great way to let them start to see opera! I have often thought of trying this opera with my kids, but as a regular performance it seemed a bit challenging.

Once again, I give props (insert hand gesture here) to the Classical Kids CD series (of Beethoven Lives Upstairs fame). They give Mozart two different stories on CD, and one is Mozart's Magic Fantasy, focusing on the music and story of the magic flute. It is completely delightful, and a perfect intro. In fact thanks to Mozart's Magic Fantasy, the first time I ever checked out YouTube was on a rainy Sunday, stuck at home. I sat with my kids and we looked up different performances of the Queen of the Night, from The Magic Flute, and compared them. From there we went on to the Commendatore scene from Mozart's Don Giovanni. Fantastic or what?

Staying with the idea of Mozart, the first baroque opera I ever saw was a performance of Don Giovanni by Opera Atelier - Toronto's specialist baroque opera company. They took pains to inform the audience that they would perform it baroque style, not romantic. Cool! Faster and lighter in every way. I fell in love with Opera Atelier then and there. It is a theory of mine that we are still using the "romantic" paradigm for the arts, and I guess that I am saying that very thing about the Ehnes performance - the orchestration was romantic, because that sounds "right" to modern listeners, even thought the music was created for something different.

AND...to finalize this month of Mozart, I was able to get tickets for Opera Atelier's upcoming performance of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito. No kids for this one. I know nothing about it. Must look up story.  Must look up music.

I have seen Measha Brueggergosman and Michael Maniaci together in OA's Idomeneo a couple of years ago. He is about the world's only male soprano (a true voice) and I can't wait to see them again. (You can find a post about it under my tag "opera".)

PS What better way to spend a snow day than listening to, thinking about and writing to my friends about music!

Now the marigold is wondering nervously: Have I written too much? Should I have also included what I learned about Rondo form? Should I have included the link to Vladimir Ahskenazy playing Mozart's darkish Rondo in A Minor? What about Rondo alla Turca? What about the general Turkish/Masonic connections of Mozart that show in all kinds of Mozart music, including The Magic Flute? Should I do a separate post on that? What do you think?

Opera Manga - Awesome updates

Well...here's a cool thing. The Vancouver Opera publishes on-line manga mini-versions of their opera season! I was so thrilled to see La Boheme in their line-up because my kids watched the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast version last spring. I can't wait to put it in their hands, but not before I read it over.

The mangas can be found on the delightful Vancouver Opera blog: the link is at the top of my music links list. Go to "read" and look at the bottom of the roll-out links. The blog itself is fun and loose with lots of manga and other pop culture references. Where opera absolutely can and must go to stay with us in our time. The blogger sent me a note to say that they will soon be publishing their opera mangas in a collection, and I am already lining up to get it.

From the Vancouver Opera blog I was led to the Opera Chic blog, which pretty much says it all. (It's the next item on the music links list.) There is a current way to talk about opera, and to position it. It's just that very few opera companies are very agile with it. Not to mention that everything costs money. The Catch-22 is that you have raise money to develop these media to generate revenue to attract people in order raise money and pay for the media you are developing to attract people...

I gave up searching bookstores for P Craig Russell's The Magic Flute and finally ordered it. It is way cool, too. Not only is interesting to me, but my kids pick it up and riffle through the pages looking for the parts that they recognize. They don't really know that opera is meant to be old-fashioned and uncool. They know it to be contemporary and fun.

It's amazingly satisfying to have a place to muse and wonder and have answers generated through the ether in such a direct way.

The marigold wonders nervously:
Is it actually magic?

Opera-Manga Lives! It Lives!

A comment left for my first post about Shakespeare-manga, from someone at Classical Comics (see link), has led to a conversation, and she led me further to someone who is actually doing graphic versions of operas! Hurray!

It is P. Craig Russell. I am adding a link to him too. None of the operas I was thinking of, like La Traviata and La Boheme, but instead he has produced versions of The Magic Flute and The Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal and Pelleas and Melisande.

The cool thing here is that my children know The Magic Flute quite well, in part because it features in Mozart's Magic Fantasy, one of the Classical Kids' series that started with Beethoven Lives Upstairs, that they have been falling asleep to for years. I cannot recommend these disks highly enough. They do correspond with known biographical facts about the composers, they work around short excerpts from many of a composer's pieces and they contextualize these composers in their times, while entertaining with a story. I feel they can be forgiven for the odd anachronism, or language slip, as the value in laying down a ground of really good music is so high.

In a related note, something we look to You-Tube for is opera arias. We once spent a couple of hours on a rainy Sunday judging the merits of various performances of the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute and Il Commendatore from Don Giovanni. WAY cooler than Hannah Montana. I don't think that even the most disinterested person could fail to be reached by these two arias. (Mozart's awesome Requiem does not stand up so well on You-Tube - better to just close your eyes and listen to a recording. Except for the Princess Tutu video, q.v..)

And The Magic Flute is also part of the Metropolitan Opera's offerings that we hope to find on DVD.

It seems like a no-brainer that my kids will want to peek into a graphic version of The Magic Flute. And, if they don't, who cares? I will.

Incidentally, about a year ago, I bought a Wagner's The Best of The Ring CD-set from Philips, and the book Wagner Without Fear by William Berger. I felt like it was ignorant to know nothing (duh!) and be afraid. In fact, Wagner writes the most lush romantic music possible. I often amuse myself when listening to the radio by trying to work out the composer, and I figured out that if I am saying to myself, "Beethoven? No. Tchaikovsky? No. Beethoven? No. Tchaikovsky? No." it is actually Wagner. Not at all threatening, really! Time to try The Ring of the Nibelung, graphic version.

Back to P Craig: even I had heard of Hellboy, one of his major creations. He has also worked with Neil Gaiman on some Sandman stories. I'll have a check at the couple of volumes of Sandman I have, and if I am missing P Craig's, I'll get them.

Now I have to get to a bookstore and get out my wallet for:
Classical Comics Macbeth at least, and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their Frankenstein, too;
and The Magic Flute, and The Ring of the Nibelung, for starters, illustrated by P Craig Russell;
and any Gaiman/Russell that I do not have.

The marigold asks nervously:
It is one thing to be able to buy or borrow all the books that are interesting, but will I have enough time to read them? And listen to the music? And share?