A new opera item for a new century, and a new Music conference!

13 responses total.

   (((  Classicalmusic #73  <--->  Music 17  )))

whoa.

i don't like opera :(

 One of the things I miss from Michigan is going to the opera.
 My sister Sheila and I used to buy season tickets to Opera
 Grand Rapids and go every year.  It's not a company with a
 national reputation and I have no basis for comparison to say
 whether they were "good" or "bad" but I almost always enjoyed
 their productions, which counts as success by the only metric
 I'm qualified to judge.  One nice thing is that during the
 seasons we were subscribers they covered a good portion of
 the opera canon, doing productions of La Boheme, Aida, Carmen,
 Turandot, Madame Butterfly, Pagliacci & Cavalleria Rusticana,
 etc..  Since both Sheila and I were opera neophytes this was
 an advantage for us -- had we been more experienced opera-goers
 it might've been a drawback, always seeing "opera's greatest
 hits."

 I never did attend any performances of the Seattle Opera while
 I was living there, which I should have..  I'm told they're
 one of the best companies in the country for Wagner and they
 started a new Ring Cycle while I was living there.  I never
 could find anyone to go with me, though, and somehow never felt
 like going alone..

The Metropolitan Opera's "moviecast" of Mozart's opera "The Magic 
Flute," which aired live in movie theaters on December 30, has been
announced for a replay on Tuesday January 23.  I think the nearest
theater to Ann Arbor is Livonia.

Ah, AMC Livonia 20.  And those who have home theater setups 
might just want to wait, as PBS is supposed to show the program
for free on the next night, January 24.

Another Metropolitan Opera "moviecast" repeat:  The Michigan Theater
in Ann Arbor will show a recording of Tan Dun's 2006/7 opera THE
FIRST EMPEROR on Jan 28.  This is an opera about Chinese history 
and it stars Placido Domingo.  It aired live on January 13.
 
I can't get back to the article right now, but a Toronto paper 
had a story that the "opera moviecast" series has been a success, 
with sellouts in many theaters.  The global audience for the live
broadcast of THE FIRST EMPEROR was 32,000, roughly ten times
the capacity of the Metropolitan Opera's theater.

Hi-I'm-sort-of-new-don't-hate-me - - -

Item: Opera (as in German, English, American, Russian, per that...mmm 
Rossetti, Donizetti?? fine, if it's so important to you to flirt with 
Soap Opera risk [full BLOWn Italian]) ...resuming: opera companies are 
not unheard of in cities the size of Ann Arbor. 

(Speaking as a former trombonist playing with the Minnesota Opera Co.; 
been to Bayreuth with bone [how big is Bayreuth?] for the full 4 Ring 
nights   5 other Wagner operas in 1976 [Boulez / Chereau / Die-hard 
Bavarians up-in-arms loudly almost starting a Stravinsky premiere "le 
Sacre du Printemps" riot (because surrealist-modern settings) behind me 
in my front row balcony free! seat by dint of my associated-school-
participant status], certain other yadda yadda)...

I am seriously considering moving to Ann Arbor from Albany, NY, so that 
I can participate 'regulah' in the GrexWalk. N.B.: For existential 
reasons, I am kindly not inviting any [any = 0 = null set] negative 
comments about same. (See John Cage stories in "Indeterminacy" -- if 
you like -- the one about the woman who asked a train station clerk 
something like where would you go if you 'went'.

Why not start an opera workshop now or when I get there. Pursuant to 
goal of an Ann Arbor Opera [with a recording contract (we go for the 
avant-garde composers with new operas from all over, for one tactic, 
see? -- note huge success of Saint Louis Symphony/Leonard Slatkin)], 
eventually with its own Grex-UNIX Concert Theatre (we'll program some 
translation something-something device into the seats in front of our 
honored subscribers, the name rings, in my opinion -- find some excuse 
to use it as is...)?

YUP, it's do-able, send out feelers... start with musicians' union "A 
To Be Famous One Day Letter Requesting An Audience With The AAMA" and a 
few of you go around the music store or stores that the serious art 
concert musicians frequent and "be overheard" in pre-scripted casual 
chat about "some important fund-raising impresario having written a 
C   program that "decided" the next great opera company/house would 
grow in Ann Arbor... I can prep these people...

Ya... make it... good to go... The next problem is...?

Amarz:  Most of the opera activity in Ann Arbor is centered 
around the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theater and Dance,
which mounts two fully-staged productions each year and some number 
of more workshoppy-type things.  The other opera company in town
that I'm aware of is Arbor Opera Theater, which has been putting
on an annual opera in June for each of the last three (?) years.
 
The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra has done concert 
presentations of several operas; I can probably dig for details
if desired.

And, in near-opera ventures, there is the Comic Opera Guild -- respected
enough to be recording turn-of-the-century operettas in concert form 
for the US Library of Congress -- and the Gilbert & Sullivan society.

/* Arbor Opera Theater, which has been putting on an annual opera in 
June for each of the last three years... */

I am hoping to be moved into Ann Arbor by next June. If you have any 
inside contacts, by happy-instance, I would love to be found hanging 
around a rehearsal or two (quiet as a mouse). 

Any details (you were so kind to offer to dig), that you might have the 
time to get for me, if it isn't too much trouble, might most usefully 
orbit about how/where do I buy a ticket or two; also, so I can Google 
map this -where- do the performances occur for '08. (So far, I know the 
little island parking lot where GrexWalks start -- but that's it... 
[from space, Ann Arbor looks like a remarkably beautiful standard for 
The American medium-sized City.])

Thanks, krj!  You have no idea how strongly my instincts to get "the 
bloody hell out of" Albany, NY are. Your response has lifted my spirits 
in a very very dark and clearly politically-ethically sick place.

I could give you details on that, and will if asked, but it is not 
possible for anyone to suspend disbelief as regards what is happening 
here (politically-ethically). Maybe some day a person could use this 
American moral catastrophe as the seed of a new opera.  One bar at a 
time, of course.     

The last two seasons, I think, Arbor Opera Theater used the Lydia
Mendelssohn Theater, which is part of the Michigan League building on
the University of Michigan campus.  Google-map for "michigan league ann
arbor" and that will find it for you, and here's a blurb about the
theater itself:

http://www.music.umich.edu/about/facilities/central_campus/mendelssohn/in
dex.htm

The Lydia Mendelssohn is also used for one of the U.Michigan School of
Music Etc. opera productions each year; the more modern and larger Power
Center stage is used for the other.

Arbor Opera Theater has their own web page:
http://www.arboropera.com/

From Ann Arbor, it's only a 45 minute drive to the Detroit Opera House,
home of the Michigan Opera Theater, which does about five productions a
year.  There's another ongoing opera company in Grand Rapids which I
know little about.   If you can manage the time and money, the real gem
is Chicago Lyric Opera, about five hours away on the freeways.   Around
1999 when I had vacation time to burn, my wife and I did about a
half-dozen trips to Chicago Lyric.

-----

The non-musical subjects should probably go into another conference,
maybe the "aaypsi" conference or the catchall "agora" conference.  But
if you are thinking of relocating to Ann Arbor or other parts of
Michigan, you should be aware of what the economic situation is here. 
Michigan as a whole is hurting badly as the US auto industry is ground
down; Ann Arbor is also hurting because the Pfizer drug company, the
largest private employer in town, is pulling out.  

I know quite a lot about the world-topping musical excellence offered 
in Chicago (though never have heard the Lyric Opera, yet). I used to 
get on a bus in Saint Paul, a 20 hours round trip, for an hour 
(trombone) lesson with its tubist Arnold Jacobs --when I could get an 
appointment. People who make music driven by breath control: flautists, 
even singers, sought him ought from all over the world. Mostly brass 
players, of course. His office on Michigan Avenue looked like a medical 
research lab. My teacher for four years, of Minnesota Orchestra fame, 
Steven Zellmer, was brought to superb musical performance and teaching 
prowess in that environment.  

The Berlin Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony's conductor (at the same 
time) was Georg Solti, as you will know. Solti said something to the 
effect that when he conducted the CSO he had to be very careful to 
underplay and adjust his conducting gestures because the players 
naturally (by their practiced nonpareil adept) caused in them reactions 
of such super-sensitively heightened or magnified moment to his 
conducting it was astonishing "que diligence", (if we pardon my pun).

The financial thing regarding Ann Arbor doesn't mean much to me; this 
is endemic in the country, as you know. Where is there an American city 
that is thriving in this (internet side effect global village making) 
zeitgeist? Thank God for music, poetry and visual art! A sufferer might 
-- especially at least one thoughtful person in Albany -- be put in 
mind of Alban Berg's Wozzeck. For example, yesterday I had a close call 
with a pharmacist. "Her [sic] Hauptmann" tried to find a clearly 
[political terrorism] lame reason not to fill my perscrition!, as I am 
white, male, and heterosexual. Sturm und Drang, ha! Try Scum in Drag on 
meth made of pure misguided mad power politics via any moral 
displacement as price. 

Thank you very much for the information on Post #11. I'm looking into 
this material like the CSO lower brass reacting to Solti's baton. Yes, 
I am very seriously thinking of moving to Ann Arbor -- more at: away 
from Xanalby (you can't understand its sedition if you're not here). A 
one time nice little 1609-settled Dutch village made into 1933 Berlin 
Regimerland with a very slightly different demog definition of "Jew". 
For whom the bell tolls? The Fall of The House of Usher by Philip Glass 
would be an opera to hear, sonetine (rather than live in, that is). 
"Madman!, I tell you she is outside the door!"

Here's an article on the 25th anniversary of opera "supertitles," the
projection of a translation of lyrics to accompany a live performance.

The scheme was introduced by the Canadian Opera Company of Toronto.
When I started paying attention to opera in 1988, titling was only
five years old and it was still controversial among professionals.
Audiences loved titles immediately and they swept the field.  Now
title systems are used essentially everywhere in North America -- 
the only productions I have seen 
without them in the last decade were by underfunded local opera
companies who could not afford them.

(I did see one untitled production, Wagner's SIEGFRIED, at the 
Met in 1990, before that theater installed its system.)

"So That's What The Fat Lady Sang"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/arts/music/06tomm.html

-----

And while I'm here:  Emerging Pictures and La Scala have a link or two
up which indicate that there will be a 2008-2009 series of their
opera-movies.  No details yet on what they will be showing.   The box
office for the La Scala series was reported to be so weak that I was
not sure they would continue.

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