Casting From Hell

[papeetepatrick]

Secondly, Oktavian portrayed by an older man (and realistically he would be, given the age at which singers’ voices generally mature) would seem unbelievably cruel: it’s appropriate for the young Oktavian to leave the Marschallin for Sophie; it would be heartless for a man who at least looked to be the Marschallin’s age or older to do so.

So it's certainly appropriate to worry about whether the Marschallin is matched by a man that looks too old to 'leave her without unbelievable cruelty', but definitely not appropriate to expect her male lover to look like a male. Yes. It is much more 'sensitive' to let the boy have a voluptuous female figure, perhaps even in Spandex. I wonder how resistible the teen-aged Sophies would find this as well--most likely they'd opt out and think it fine to leave him with the Marschallin.

I see what Richard is talking about with the voice, of course, although I wouldn't think it would be entirely impossible. In a piece in which we're supposed to accept biological sports anyway, there's also the possibility that in the big world there will be just such a countertenor voice that might hit the spot. This sort of rare thing is possible, but I realize not something that would happen regularly. Very like the miraculous casting of D'Amboise that dirac and I were discussing yesterday: It would work that way only with him; after that, the steps would be sharper and clearer, because they wouldn't have been made to look exactly the way they appear with d'Amboise, and a younger dancer still in his prime could not imitate d'Amboise without looking absurd.

[Helene]

With Luders as the ballet's protagonist and Martins occupied elsewhere, it made sense to match Farrell with d'Amboise, I suppose, and the fact that he is older and can't do much more than partner her makes her dancing seem even more fleetly elusive and the pairing more poignant. (I'm going only by the video, never saw it live.)

d'Amboise's dancing in the video was very much like it was onstage. By the time the ballet was made, d'Amboise had already suffered a serious knee injury and had given up all of his virtuoso parts. I don't know how many other roles he danced at the time; I did see him in Meditation in 1981, but I can't think of any other role I saw him in.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Secondly, Oktavian portrayed by an older man (and realistically he would be, given the age at which singers’ voices generally mature) would seem unbelievably cruel: it’s appropriate for the young Oktavian to leave the Marschallin for Sophie; it would be heartless for a man who at least looked to be the Marschallin’s age or older to do so.

So it's certainly appropriate to worry about whether the Marschallin is matched by a man that looks too old to 'leave her without unbelievable cruelty', but definitely not appropriate to expect her male lover to look like a male. Yes. It is much more 'sensitive' to let the boy have a voluptuous female figure, perhaps even in Spandex. I wonder how resistible the teen-aged Sophies would find this as well--most likely they'd opt out and think it fine to leave him with the Marschallin.

Well, in this case, yes, although “sensitivity” isn’t the particular theatrical value I had in mind (and I certainly wasn't advocating a "voluptuous" Oktavian in spandex ). For Rosenkavalier to work, Oktavian’s choosing Sophie over the Marschallin has to be more than just “normal” or even "appropriate" as I earlier put it – it has to be innocent, which is possible only if Oktavian and Sophie are both very young. Perfect verisimilitude isn’t an option: given the idiom in which Strauss was working, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to write a major singing role for an actual 17 year old male. So what are the alternatives, and which of them is going to provide for the more convincing unfolding of the story at hand? Age-bending or gender-bending? Opera audiences are famously tolerant of casting that is completely out of whack with mere verisimilitude -- as a century of 200 pound, 47 year old Mimi’s has amply demonstrated -- but some choices will work better than others. Since there had already been a long tradition of trouser roles – Mozart’s Cherubino, Bellini’s Romeo, Verdi’s Oskar, Gounod’s Siebel, and Offenbach’s Nicklausse would have been more or less recent examples – writing Oktavian for a soprano was a ready alternative. Personally, I do find that -- onstage at least -- a 40 year-old woman can more convincingly emulate an adolescent male than a 40 year old man generally can, but not everyone agrees, obviously. I gather that what is discomfiting to some about Rosenkavalier is not so much that a teenage boy is being portrayed by a woman as it is that a teenage boy in an overtly sexual relationship is being portrayed by a woman. Of the examples I provided earlier, only Bellini's Romeo is equivalent to Oktavian in that regard, so perhaps Strauss was more groundbreaking than I’ve given him credit for.

Apologies for dragging this thread so far off topic!

[papeetepatrick]

I gather that what is discomfiting to some about Rosenkavalier is not so much that a teenage boy is being portrayed by a woman as it is that a teenage boy in an overtly sexual relationship is being portrayed by a woman. Of the examples I provided earlier, only Bellini's Romeo is equivalent to Oktavian in that regard, so perhaps Strauss was more groundbreaking than I’ve given him credit for.

Yes, that's exactly it, and why I just wish it would be the Costume Designers, not so much the countertenors, who would address this better than I've seen them do. They don't even use men's haircuts a lot of the time. I thought of some of the possibilities in other realms and this made me a bit giddy, given the modern day, as it were. I imagined a gay male romantic opera or play in which one of the men was played by a woman, and it just somehow didn't seem like it was going to do.

Apologies for dragging this thread so far off topic!

Well, I'm so glad you did, and I appreciated this tremendously, especially since I don't know well enough several of the operas you mentioned and one of them not at all (the Bellini).

I'd still like to know if Farrell's role in 'Vienna Waltzes' has since been subjected to any Casting from Hell, and also if they've managed to get 'Mozartiana' to work sometimes.

[Mashinka]

Well, Mashinka, tell us what your reactions were to the 2 different sexes in the same role.

Well, believe it or not I actually preferred the lady as Cesare. When I returned to the production last year I went with a Wagnerite with little love of opera seria in the hope of converting him, but his response was “too many counter tenors”. As there were actually three in the opera whereas the year before there had only been two, I realized he had a valid point.

Sarah Connelly was a very convincing Cesare and had been well coached to actually move like a man; so long as I didn’t use my opera glasses I could suspend disbelief sufficiently to imagine she really was a bloke. On the other hand David Daniels was vocally superior in the role which seemed to push Connelly to the limit, she was far more at home as a brilliant Agrippina at the Coliseum a couple of weeks ago with the more dramatic role suiting her better than the very demanding Cesare.

I think the opera was originally sung by Senesino, Handel’s favourite castrato so it figures that purists would prefer a female voice these days. The greatest Cesare I ever heard was the divine Janet Baker and luckily her performance in the role is recorded for posterity.

Regarding a counter tenor singing Octavian, I can think of only one I would be eager to hear in the role and that is Andreas Scholl as his voice is perhaps the purest and the most beautiful I’ve ever heard in the c-t range, in fact I can remember him commenting in an interview of how he had been advertised at a concert in Italy as “the man who sings like a woman”. The fact remains that Strauss wrote strictly for a woman and that glorious trio at the end, for me one of the loveliest moments in opera, should generally remain as written, however if Scholl could be persuaded to sing the role I could be persuaded to listen.

BTW, that wonderful Glyndebourne production of Guilio Cesare of 2005 is available on DVD with Danielle de Niese’s Cleopatra stealing the show. A special treat for balletgoers is Christophe Dumaux’s Tolemeo kitted out in the costume of the Golden Slave from Scheherazade in the scene where he attempts to seduce Pompey’s widow. When he stepped on stage in that outfit I was convulsed with laughter and I’m smiling still at the memory of him as I write this. The DVD has the most fulsome buyers reviews I’ve ever read on the Amazon site and I wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion of one reviewer that David McVicar should be knighted.

Returning to the subject of ballet:

I saw an interview with Ninette di Valois where she was quite firm in her opinion that Raymonda should be danced by short, petite ballerinas. Today, audiences applaud Lopatkina and Zakharova's Raymondas. Unacceptable? Maybe, but, as Mr. B said, "Just do the steps, dear."

I’ve a feeling that de Valois was actually referring to some of the variations rather than the leading role in Raymonda. In the years I’ve been going to the ballet I’ve watched dancers getting taller and taller and previously fast variations getting slower and slower whilst intricacies of technique have all but disappeared over the decades. Some ballet masters are aware this poses problems and I remember a conversation I once had with Sergei Vikharev when he reminded me that Mathilda Kschessinskaya was under five foot tall and how taller dancers are going to give a completely different look to a work (we were discussing his revival of La Bayadere).

It appears to me that there is a policy of favouring taller girls at the Kirov at the expense of smaller girls; compare those currently in favour to those that are neglected and those allowed to depart. Those former Vaganova graduates that don’t get into the company and that can be seen elsewhere also tend to be shorter than the new Kirov average height.

As for Sarafanov and Somova, he is a wonderful dancer dancing all the wrong things whereas Somova would be better suited to a career other than classical ballet and I agree with every word of Cygnet’s post, particularly the reference to RDB as with different training Sarafanov could have become a dancer of similar calibre to Niels Kehlet. Sarafanov is actually quite brilliant but with the poor guidance he seems to get from the Kirov management he will continue to disappoint those that look for more than a display of pyrotechnics.