Thomasina’s last waltz

Life Amplified to the power of three

The conversation at work the other day went something like this:

Th: Want to look at the Opera Australia brochure?
[Holds up the 2009 brochure]

[Harried Colleague looks blankly at it]
HC: Why would I want to look at that?

Th: It's next year's…

HC: Oh, is it next year's? It looks like this year's.

[Indeed it does]

[And rather like the one from the year before that]

I'm all for consistency of "branding" (dreadful word, but it's the technical term the marketers use), the template is a pretty one, and no one adores the "Life Amplified" slogan more than I do. I've never come across a better encapsulation of the essence of opera – it just seems so apt.

But when people who hang around in the realm of music mistake one year's brochure for another then something's wrong. Perhaps Opera Australia could take a leaf from the book of those who design magazine covers. (Keep a consistent masthead, sure, but stimulate the reader's desire for the new issue with a truly distinctive colour scheme and imagery.) Do they really want to give people the impression that it's the same-old same-old that they're "amplifying"? 

Perhaps in 2010 they can ask the designers to break out the cool tones? Emerald green, maybe? Or Chinese blue?

Orlando aries – a night at the opera

Tonight to the opera – opening night of Handel’s Orlando, or rather two hours and 35 minutes of it. Overall an enjoyable evening in the presence of great music, but also a demonstration of how even the brightest young director can fall victim to woolly thinking.

Perhaps Justin Way had read the same New Grove assessment I had, in which it’s mentioned that, although baroque shepherdesses were typically comic roles, Dorinda is not especially comic at all. And then, having read that, he decided to make her role as comical as possible with the addition of superficial humour. Enter the socks; and the sheep motif. At first the sheep (plural) seemed to be a clumsy expression of Dorinda’s pastoral associations, and as such puzzling but inoffensive. However, I got really cross during the minor-key siciliana that she sings, mourning her unrequited love for Medoro. Here, where the text and Handel’s music are telling us to feel a gentle sympathy of the “poor kid” variety, Way induced titters of laughter through the audience with a series of slowly descending life-size sheep, suspended from wires. What was he thinking? I hope this gesture disappears from the future performances.

As it is there are quite enough sheep elsewhere to fill the production – outnumbering the cast in fact – and plenty that hang from the fly tower, making me think of the old Golden Fleece logo. (Except that’s Jason, not Orlando.) At one point three of them were lined up  just like the flying ducks that used to adorn living room walls. At another point, at ground level, a winged ram mounted a ewe before levitating off, stage left. All we needed was a raddle for true agricultural authenticity. (At the final curtain Dorinda pointed a gun at this same winged ram – Amor run amok? – I wished she'd shot all of them before the opera began.)

Of course, if I’m honest, I’ll admit that I’m mocking the sheep not because I know how to throw one (really) but because I simply Didn’t Get It. Do they symbolise something? The program book sheds no light on this. I know baroque opera had its silly moments, but really.

Of course, there was much to admire and enjoy. First up, a marvellous, outrageously inventive opera by a master. This isn’t just any old Handel; some of his operas are well cut, but this one I’d happily have heard in a longer version. He takes the opportunity to show extremes of emotion and the descent into madness and plays with baroque conventions in astonishing ways. But aside from the central affective tour de force, there are other strokes of genius. Especially remarkable is the devastating torment of the sweetly sympathetic soprano duet that Angelica and Medoro inflict on Dorinda – they’re only thinking of her, of course. (Their careless cruelty later emerges in other gestures, such as when Angelica tells Medoro to meet her at Dorinda’s place. See what I mean, how on earth could Way have allowed us to laugh during her big sorrowful moment?)

The set was ingenious, re-injecting some necessary magic and whimsy given the vaguely WWII setting. Its transformations from normality to fractured insanity were delightful, especially  the metamorphosis of an oversized operations map into a bucolic forest . The resulting ‘trees’ reminded me a little of the poles  outside the Museum of Sydney on Bridge Street.

Most impressive was the echoing of a prop (a classic Bauhaus style desk lamp c.1930s) in the larger form of the set after interval. Its huge curved arm descended from above (a lot of things do that in this production, including Angelica perched on a warhead), the shade first hung ominously over Orlando then pivoted to point its light at the audience. And in a very nice touch, the inside of the shade had been coloured to look exactly like a lunar surface – we had a full moon gazing out at us. Now there’s a symbol for madness I do get.

I do wish, though, that Richard Alexander's Zoroastro could have been equipped with more truly magical effects beyond the handful of flame that he carries. This is the downside of a ‘modern’ setting, in which an actual  magician must become merely a ‘mysterious figure’. Some of his staging – such as an aria early in Act II in which most of his action involved rearranging the set for the scenes to come – seemed intended to emphasise his role as manipulator of events, but overall the conception wanted more display of sheer, awesome power. (What would a baroque director have done with the technology we have now? The mind boggles at the possibilities!)

It was good to see (and hear) the small orchestra playing from a raised platform within the pit, which brought the sound nicely into the hall (I was sitting towards the front of the circle). Really, the Opera Theatre should be reserved for baroque and classical opera and everything else should move to the Capitol – forget the harbour views! As always the presence of some players experienced in the style (especially in the all-important continuo group) made a huge difference. Paul Goodwin was conducting. The overture was disappointing – not digging in enough to give the majesty of the opening dotted rhythms and skating a bit through the fast sections – and introduced some early feelings of apprehension, but once the opera was under way things improved a lot.

I enjoyed Sonia Prina’s Orlando (more so as the evening went on and the part became more consistently interesting) and I remain a huge fan of Toby Cole, who sang Medoro as enticingly and stylishly as you could wish, and gave some amusing impressions of an injured man. (The leg injury healed very quickly after a certain point – about the same time the horns and the recorder players headed off home, their pastoral music at an end for the night.)  Rachelle Durkin has all the vocal fireworks but, especially in the first act, she was often given staging curiously at odds with the text. When declaring Medoro the king of her heart and offering to take him back to her royal court she plays the flirt, as does Medoro (not quite what the music said to me); when determined to find in her fiance Orlando some glimmering of infidelity (in order to assuage her own feelings of guilt about Medoro) there’s a lot of random striding around the stage. And as you’ve probably worked out, I feel the greatest sympathy for Dorinda, who was given a sweet and convincing interpretation by Hye Seoung Kwon despite the peculiarities of the direction.

Exit, pursued by a sheep.

It's all relevant…

I owe this blog a "What I did on my holidays" spiel (although my two-week busman's holiday really only accounts for a tiny portion of the hiatus here). But I thought it better to get on with current stuff while it's fresh. It's been an eventful week, with colleagues to welcome and farewell (in style), a season brochure on the prowl and seemingly reluctant to be put to bed, a concert including one of my favourite pieces of music, and talks — to give and to hear.

I can't really comment on my own talks except to express relief that my 30-year-old memory of ballet mime didn't fail me as I'd feared it might. Tonight was the "night off" in the Master Series. Instead the conductor for the week, David Robertson, brought his marvellous intellect to the annual Challender lecture.

He confessed straight up to having chosen his title, "Is classical music relevant?", in a spirit of provocativeness, unaware that provocateur-extraordinaire Norman Lebrecht had given last year's lecture. In the end, and "preaching to the choir" as he was, he largely avoided the matter of relevance (in fact I don't think the question, or "relevance", was ever really defined). I do wish that he had been more provocative (from the choir's perspective).

He also apologised in advance for the presentation of his musical examples via an mp3 player. This was unfortunate and did spoil the flow considerably (surely at least an On-the-Go Playlist could have been assembled – the gadget in question appeared to be an iPod), but the audience was extremely tolerant despite the overplayed joke about Cage's most famous composition, the precise duration of which I always find difficult to recall.

Third in the introductory remarks was the gentlest of gibes about the playing of background music as the audience came in (Siegfried Idyll, which I missed, and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances). This turned out to be particularly pertinent given the points that he was about to make (and which he had already made in his article in The Australian), but it's also a big bug-bear of mine, for the same reasons. In a culture that encourages the "use" of music as a wallpaper (thereby discouraging the act of listening), the very last thing any concert-presenting organisation should be doing is using music (especially the repertoire that we perform) as background or mood or atmosphere. ’Nuff said.

Many of Robertson's points have been outlined here. And the aforemention article does summarise the spirit and content of what he had to say. But as Greg Sandow has demonstrated, there are many, many provocative and stimulating (sometimes infuriating) words to spill if one is to truly grapple with the matter of classical music's "relevance". An hour or an article is simply not up to the task.

All the same, he touched on some things that are indeed worth thinking about. Especially if you're in the choir. Such as: perhaps classical music isn't relevant (!) | why are there so few of us in the classical music camp? | the increasing uniqueness (yes, that's possible, don't be pedantic) of the classical concert format | how a live concert affects the way we listen | the nature of concert programming, at least from his perspective – every conductor is different | the classical score as a blueprint | classical music as a solitary and transforming experience | art versus "mere" entertainment (art can, of course, be entertaining as well but that's not the kind of entertainment he was talking about) | the nature of the modernist movement in music.

And yes, the mechanical reproduction of music. I was surprised that he didn't repeat the anecdote that he used in the Australian article:

When radio came in, someone said to Arnold Schoenberg, "This is wonderful, people can listen to music any time they want to." Schoenberg said: "I'm not so sure it's a good thing. They can also listen to music any time they don't want to."

This theme was at the heart of much that he had to say. In addition to live versus studio-produced music, it's connected with the idea of a consumer society regarding music of any kind as a commodity: simple to reproduce and to package, and easy to sell and to own. [In fact much music (not just Western classical) is not all that easy "to own" – it often requires work, attention, time and intellectual effort. If you like it, that's quite possibly why you like it.]

He made a lovely analogy (and I hope I'm remembering it correctly – as I try to articulate it now it seems confused) of the classical concert being like a library. This was in the sense that (unlike, say, searching the internet) you don't need pre-existing knowledge to find what you're looking for but can "browse".

Another analogy (from the studio versus live performance theme) was of the "classical recording as a memento (like an art museum postcard)" as compared to the commercial/pop recording, which increasingly represents the end product, often unreproduceable in live performance. However, Robertson didn't go into the question of why so many classical music lovers, including some of the most serious and committed ones, rarely attend concerts but get their fix from recordings, i.e. from what he would consider "mementos". That is a question every concert presenter needs to be thinking about. (Perhaps it's connected to the commodification of culture also.) All the same, to the extent that classical audiophiles may be aging just as rapidly as the concertgoers, perhaps it's still a small question in the bigger scheme of things.

Eventually he got on to the point about music-as-background, again tying into the mechanical reproduction of music. He observed that commercial pop recordings are heavily compressed, whereas classical recordings must embrace a much wider range of dynamics in order to give a faithful reproduction. Behind compression is a canny understanding that the Western commodification of music has effectively taught people not to listen, so any recording that will jump out at you with a sudden fortissimo will spoil the "washing over you effect" that belongs to most music with a beat and indeed (as he wrily pointed out) much baroque music.

Finally, the point that he'd made in his interview for the Sydney Morning Herald, and which I can therefore express more faithfully in his own words:

"This is why I think what we're doing, although it has an entertaining aspect, is the difference between art and entertainment: in entertainment you pay your money and you expect to come out of the experience essentially the same way as you went in. Something that professes to art is subtly working at changing you, and there's no way to predict what the change will be … Entertainment is not threatening. Art sometimes is."

I didn't ask a question – it always seems fairer at events like this to leave the questions to the "real" audience (unless there's an awkward pause). If I had, it might have been along these lines:

We're living in a culture that treats all music as a commodity and that values passive entertainment. Some orchestral concertgoers expect and want such "passive entertainment" (the others find the artistic experience to be actively entertaining). And you could also argue that, right now, most orchestral concerts aren't particularly entertaining in the conventional, passive sense. (When orchestras attempt to make them more overtly and superficially entertaining the results can be awfully lame.)

So...how do we – indeed, should we – promote orchestral concerts as entertainment in a consumer society? (And if we don't promote them as entertainment, what do we promote them as?)

PS. Relevance. So what about that? If relevance is strictly defined as "pertinency to important current issues" then you could argue that classical music is almost never relevant and that perhaps this is one of the reasons that those who love it do love it. But within a world of "hot-button issues", to use Robertson's phrase, there is space for the timeless, for deep human concerns, and, yes, for art that demands something of us and perhaps changes us. That's relevant.