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Stanley Stewart
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« on: 15:52:48, 01-11-2007 » |
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Seems pertinent that "From the House of the Dead" is being broadcast this afternoon.  |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #1 on: 16:23:56, 01-11-2007 » |
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Seems pertinent that "From the House of the Dead" is being broadcast this afternoon. Agh. I do hope someone's recording it!  |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #2 on: 17:16:43, 01-11-2007 » |
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Someone was. (Twice as it happens, FM and DAB.) From what I heard in the car, very special indeed....
(The Haydn played on the fortepiano at Esterházy was rather magnificent, too.)
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martle
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« Reply #3 on: 18:19:04, 01-11-2007 » |
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I heard a goodly chunk of FtHotD in the car as well this afternoon. (One of those 'I'll just wait till the end of this bit before turning off the engine and getting out' occasions, and I ended up making myself late for something!) What I heard was fabulous. Perfect balance, proportion, dramatic clarity - in both the work and its performance. Jaw-dropping moments, too...
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Green. Always green.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #4 on: 19:01:37, 01-11-2007 » |
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Having lived through Mackerras performances - to the point where I knew the piece so well that even though it's a good fifteen years since I heard the tape I could hear nearly all the English words still, what I found really interesting was the variety of colour and intonation that Boulez was going for in the orchestration, pushing further into the extremes of beauty and its opposite. Of course, it's that Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and they have paranormal abilities. Exceptional. Kleines has given a link to some more pics on the CMoR3 board: http://www.festival-aix.com/index.php?Page=phototheque&Lieux=spectacles&Dossier=Galerie_123 none of which duplicate what opi has already posted. (Worth following the retour button back to the galleries of other productions, too: there are some very handsome settings indeed.) |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #5 on: 19:03:03, 01-11-2007 » |
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I caught the second half of it, from the pantomimes onwards. All sounded excellent, but my doubts about a tenor Aljeja remain  The chorus were outstanding. |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #6 on: 19:25:14, 01-11-2007 » |
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Yep: he may look wonderful in the pictures, but I particularly missed his soaring phrase at the end (the last sung solo line). It just didn't register at that register , lost in the orchestration which is also mainly around the same pitch. Surely what was intended was one last brief burst of radiance before the shouted order and the lumpy monotony of the prisoner's march return the mood to the daily routine of hoplessness? It certainly works that way for me with the female voice... |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #7 on: 19:57:08, 01-11-2007 » |
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Yep: he may look wonderful in the pictures, but I particularly missed his soaring phrase at the end (the last sung solo line). It just didn't register at that register , lost in the orchestration which is also mainly around the same pitch. Surely what was intended was one last brief burst of radiance before the shouted order and the lumpy monotony of the prisoner's march return the mood to the daily routine of hoplessness? It certainly works that way for me with the female voice... I missed it too after the pantomime, and where there should have been a bloodcurdling scream when he's hit with [insert whatever you think the Short Prisoner uses] there was... nothing at all?? But yes, the end is quite compromised by the missing soprano/mezzo voice there... for me it's analagous with the end of HOFFMAN where he realises that the Mezzo is his Muse... because Goryanchikov is, after all, going back to St Petersburg to write FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, inspired and motivated to reveal what he has seen to the wider world. And on another level, Stosslova is inspiring Janacek to write the opera... even though she is "locked in a prison" and he knows he will almost certainly never see her again... |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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martle
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« Reply #8 on: 20:08:53, 01-11-2007 » |
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what I found really interesting was the variety of colour and intonation that Boulez was going for in the orchestration, pushing further into the extremes of beauty and its opposite. That's what hit me between the ears especially too, Ron. I have heard the work once before, on a recording, ages ago; but I can't remember it sounding so exceptionally vivid. I often find myself having that reaction to Boulez's readings of course - suddenly the fog and murk of previous hearings lift, and there is a super-intense clarity and incisiveness revealed; I don't know about the tenor/ female issue, but the voices all sounded exceptionally focussed and committed too. We're a bit off-topic, I think! |
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Green. Always green.
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #9 on: 22:04:34, 01-11-2007 » |
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A day of almost endless confusion which I attributed to my 'flu jab!
I'd set my MD recorder on DAB before the phone rang and missed the intro to "From The House of the Dead" due to this. I'd seen the opera at The Coli, in the 80s and was also aware of Ron Dough's involvement in the production. Fine. I sat down to listen after the first 5 or 10 mins and was totally bemused by the plot. I had a clear image of John Mitchinson and Anne Evans and it took a further 5 mins before I realised that I was, in fact, in a mindset of 15th century Prague; Smetana's "Dalibor" also in the ENO repertoire in those years. Took a few minutes to return to the Siberian prison camp and monitor any further possible confusion with "Fidelio".
I've played my recording again. this evening, to gain equilibrium and to remind myself that this was only one of the highlights in the Mackerras era. Quite magnificent.
Farcical proceedings returned when I went to post my comments only to find that I had also started a new thread in my memory tremors! Straight for the Glenlivet. And yes, Ron, it was a sensible move. Don't know about the twitching head. however I'd been to the wrong opera and perhaps I now understand the plot of Patrick Hamilton's "Gaslight" From the House of the Dotty!
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #10 on: 22:19:41, 01-11-2007 » |
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Ah yes, Dalibor, Stanley; I didn't do that one but I did see the dress since I was theoretically covering the part of the invisible friend (a sort of prototype fiddler on the roof, complete with mimed violin). My main memory is of Malcolm Rivers as Budivoj, looking rather like Ghenghis Khan in his top-knot. I didn't get to know him then, though later I covered him as Molokov in Chess , and replaced him frequently for weeks on end when he was given leave to do opera productions, and memorably three-quarters of the way through a show at the Alhambra in Bradford after he fainted in the wings apparently due to food poisoning from having eaten in the front-of-house bar. It all happened without any FOH announcement, so what the audience must have made of the already complex plot with a new character who'd already been somebody else suddenly walking in, I can't imagine. Later on he was to cast and direct me as Dr Bartolo, too.
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opilec
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« Reply #11 on: 18:17:14, 03-11-2007 » |
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what I found really interesting was the variety of colour and intonation that Boulez was going for in the orchestration, pushing further into the extremes of beauty and its opposite. That's what hit me between the ears especially too, Ron. I have heard the work once before, on a recording, ages ago; but I can't remember it sounding so exceptionally vivid. I often find myself having that reaction to Boulez's readings of course - suddenly the fog and murk of previous hearings lift Actually I occasionally missed some of the edge that Mackerras gives the work -- not just texturally but in terms of tempo too. But it was still a remarkable reading, and with many new perspectives brought to light. The Amsterdam broadcast was (IIRC) a bit tighter in terms of ensemble in a few places. |
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #12 on: 18:51:17, 03-11-2007 » |
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In some places Boulez was faster than Mackerras. It did seem to me that he was using the orchestra in a radically different way to Mackerras, too. In some ways CM uses it as a provider of a soundtrack: the sonic framework on which the voices sit, just as happens with most opera; whereas Boulez seemed to be using it in a far more Wagnerian manner, where what the orchestra was doing - and the way that instrumentalists were phrasing - was much more influenced by the psychological and dramatical needs of the moment, to the point where they even overrode pure musicality, a condition which I don't think Mackerras would ever allow.
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opilec
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« Reply #13 on: 19:12:04, 03-11-2007 » |
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Boulez seemed to be using it in a far more Wagnerian manner, where what the orchestra was doing - and the way that instrumentalists were phrasing - was much more influenced by the psychological and dramatical needs of the moment, to the point where they even overrode pure musicality, a condition which I don't think Mackerras would ever allow.
Ron, I agree with that last observation, and will have to sit down at some point and do a more detailed comparison. From what Boulez was saying after the Vienna performance, he was particularly concerned with such (comparatively) mundane matters as metronome marks, something which I think Mackerras has views on but is able to put into perspective, having the fortune of a lifetime's experience of conducting this music. |
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MT Wessel
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« Reply #14 on: 01:31:59, 04-11-2007 » |
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I like it.  |
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« Last Edit: 10:41:53, 04-11-2007 by MT Wessel »
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lignum crucis arbour scientiae
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