Musical America Blogs

Two New York nights, back to back. Two examples of the continuous search for the enchantment, the profoundity, the glory of art.

Who is an artist? How do you earn the title? Whether you work with an iPad, a pencil, a brush, a chisel, a baton, a clarinet, your voice or your body, you first go to some school or work with a master to learn the tools of your craft. Then, and most important, you find that inner voice, unique to you, that wants to communicate, to say something.

A long time ago, I sat in an empty dark auditorium not far from the judges in the Naumburg Piano Competition. There were ten finalists. The first walked onstage and played music with such astonishing mastery I worried that the others would just pack up and go home. But no, the second one did appear and had the same awesome virtuosity and flawless technique. It was soon clear then that all the finalists were keyboard masters. For me, and likely the panel, the question now was whether any of the them wanted to say something special about Schumann or Liszt.

On November 30, Alan Gilbert was on the podium at Avery Fisher Hall. Now in his forth year as the New York Philharmonic’s music director, the rapport between he and the musicians was evident. The first part of the program was the East Coast debut of Steven Stucky’s Symphony. Gilbert, introducing the composer, asked him a few questions about the work and then he and his orchestra performed the interesting 20 minute work with that easy brilliance and musicality that New Yorkers take for granted but, when they tour, music lovers form long lines to experience.

Next was the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto (Opus 14) in the new critical edition. One of its special advocates, the violinist Gil Shaham, gave it a play that was definitive, passionate and made the case that this little-performed concerto was one of the finest by any American composer. It immediately sent me searching for a recording. The artistic soul of Barber is easily evident in this masterwork, who began working on this piece in his thirties. You can already hear his distinctive musical voice, something that Steven Stucky is still finalizing.

I was uncomfortable approaching the second half of the program, the Symphonic Dances (Opus 45) of Sergei Rachmaninoff. There was a vague feeling that this work was unworthy of inclusion in a regular series. Was there an “establishment” agreement that this work, also rarely performed, was lightweight, more suitable for outdoor concerts in the summer? Gilbert, subbing in the violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra, had played it many years ago and wanted to show us how he valued the work and it indeed emerged as a powerful, major work with little of the musical noodling you often find in Rachmaninoff’s concertos. I walked into the cold night with a warm glow from two hours of discovery with these three composers, thanks to maestro Gilbert. New experiences like these do not arrive every day and are always very welcome.

The next day, it was the turn of the Metropolitan Opera to show off their art and it was far from the happy time the day before. Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito was resurrected (and I use that term deliberately) for this season and the Saturday performance was being broadcast throughout the world. The production, however, is 32 years old and the stage director (Jean-Pierre Ponnelle) has been dead for 24 years. Somebody named Peter McClintock was in charge of moving the singers about. The smell of formaldehyde was omnipresent.

The single set onstage, while baroquely handsome, framed singers making formal entrances and exits and, with the antique, extravagant costumes, the action was achingly stiff. It was clearly a recreation of the original staging and there was no clear effort to address the drama of the libretto. The recitatives were declaimed loudly but without a drop of added meaning. It was like a concert performance with costumes and a backdrop.

Conductor Harry Bicket was brought in to help the Met orchestra get closer to the performance practices of the “historically informed” musical crowd. The orchestra’s Mozart sounded vaguely different than that we hear from traditional conductors like Boehm, von Karajan or James Levine but still far from the crisp clarity that other opera houses manage around the world.

Who makes the decisions about Met casting? There are some “advisors” with substantial European credits listed in the program, but the choice of tenor Giuseppe Filianoti as Tito was odd since he has little ear for Mozart and Barbara Frittoli, at this point in her career, is well past the demands of Vitellia. Star mezzo Elina Garanca, as Sesto, dazzled but she is not particularly well known for introspection or sensitivity. Since the audience is accustomed to “names” the Met staff apparently has not the artistic license to look among the rich list of young talent that could do more justice to the Mozartian canvas.

Is the Met auditorium part of the Mozart problem? It has eight or ten times the capacity of any theater Mozart would have known, is three times larger than the average hall in most European cities and some 1300 seats more than the largest opera house in Europe (Paris Opera’s Bastille at 2700). It is certainly too vast for an effective realization of operas from Mozart’s time or earlier. Paris, for example, routinely uses the smaller Palais Garnier for Mozart and the baroque.

Is there a disconnect between my European opera experiences and what I see at the Met? So much here seems to be locked in the routine and missing fresh artistic vision and leadership. Peter Gelb gets around to European houses and has been making efforts to import some European creative energy. He has had some successes and some notable failures. A marketing wiz, he would be concerned to hear chuckles from the European cinema audiences over the kitsch staging of the Aida currently on the boards.

He did finally give work to New York-born stage director David Alden with the new Simon Boccanegra. But Alden, now 63, has been an acclaimed figure in the opera world for decades and his long absence from the Met is only another example of the conservative artistic values that are still a drag on the house and act to form their convention-loving audience. Even New York music critics seem disconnected with the larger opera world and uniformly welcomed this Clemenza. I doubt that either the singing or the production would have the same reception in Europe.

The La Clemenza di Tito production of the Paris Opera by Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann, from 2007, has been uploaded recently in its entirety to YouTube and is also available commercially. It is a serious effort to explain the artistic relevance of this opus. It is not just another opera museum exhibit.