Kathleen O'Connell

I'm not particularly concerned about Brokeback's having been a movie before it becomes an opera; what I *am* concerned about is whether the original story will be turned into a good libretto. (I agree with Helene that the story effers real possibilities for arias, ensembles, set peices and the like.) Writing a good libretto is hard, exhibit number one being Toni Morrison's libretto for Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner's story *should* have generated something genuinely "operatic" in the best, theatrical sense of that word; in Morrison's hands (the hands of a Nobel laureate, no less), it didn't. It came off like something from the Hallmark channel -- this with a plot that contains sexual violation, a lynching, a mother murdering her children, and a trial. It should have been vastly more shattering than it was. (I think Morrison's libretto was more at fault than Danielpour's score.) Anyway, if Puccini could write a cowboy opera (The Girl of the Golden West) I'm not going to deny Wourinen his. Bolcom has certainly demonstrated the ability to evoke the effects of the relevant popular or folk genres in his operas (not to mention his magnificent oratorio, Songs of Innocence and Experience, which you can get at a bargain price from Naxos, and which I heartily recommend), so it's been done. (Bolcom and Wuorinen are admittedly very different composers in style and approach.) I don't remember Brokeback's soundtrack at all; what I do remember is the scenery -- and of course the lack of scenery and sheer dreariness of the protagonists' surroundings when they have to leave the mountain. I'll be curious to see how the set designer and director handle staging this thing.

I like Wourinen's instrumental music a lot, but I didn't think Haroun displayed much facility with the human voice or an ear for setting text (it struck me as pretty awkward at the time, but then I only heard it once). Haroun and Brokeback are both pretty sentimental in their way, despite the patina of exoticism and otherness of their setting and subject matter, so Wourinen wouldn't have been the first composer to come to mind for either. I vote for William Bolcom.

Yes! I have two new favorites: Lauren King and Rachel Piskin -- they are like rays of pure sunshine. I just love to watch them dance.

Wednesday evening, May 14 DRB – I too almost left before Les Noces! I had an early meeting the next morning and thought “Well, I don’t really need to see this again” – and then at the last minute it occurred to me that I might not get another opportunity to hear it again, so I decided to stay. Andantino – Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz Agreeable Robbins filler. I can’t say that I’m particularly hankering to see it again, but I certainly enjoyed it while it was happening. I’m trying to enjoy De Luz – if for no other reason than the fact that he so frequently partners Megan Fairchild, whom I enjoy very much – but I can’t work up the full complement of enthusiasm that he probably deserves. To my eye, he doesn’t so much dance as dart from one pyrotechnic display to the next; for this reason I prefer Millepied or Hendrickson in the same roles even thought they don’t have his technical chops. Here’s an example of what’s bugging me: his performance of the long and difficult male solo in Le Baiser de la Fée a couple of seasons ago was notable for his getting through it with out the least appearance of strain, but I also found it notably inexpressive. Baiser is a weird little ballet: it starts out like it’s going to be Donizetti Variations but morphs into something odder and darker well before the end – but none of that really came through in De Luz’ performance. (Whereas I think Baiser is the standout best thing M. Fairchild has done yet; as far as I’m concerned she owns the role.) He treated the connecting material between the solo’s virtuoso episodes as little more than a mechanism to transport him from one launching pad to the next – as if it had no theatrical or expressive possibilities of its own or as if dancing comprised only the jumping and turning bits. (As Hübbe demonstrated in Watermill, it comprises the standing stone still in one place for five minutes entirely enveloped in a cloak bits, too.) I do believe that De Luz’ emphasis on the fireworks arises from a genuine desire to please his audience and not from the need to prove something to it – he’s generous in that regard and the audience responds warmly to him; I’m definitely in the minority. And for the record, there are roles in which I find him immensely likeable, too. I thought he was terrific in Fancy Free: he brought a sunny winsomeness to a role that can turn disagreeably brittle in the hands of someone determined to prove that he can jump higher faster than anyone else. I liked him as Pierrot in Harlequinade, too. But. Even though Andantino (finally, back to the program!) doesn’t present any of Baiser’s interpretive challenges, it certainly does have changes of mood and this is not something I see captured in De Luz’ dancing yet. I don’t find him to be successful as a partner, either; he’s just not big enough to frame Fairchild or Bouder (the two ballerinas I’ve seen him partner) in the way the choreography demands in the particular ballets they’ve been cast in. I can imagine De Luz being entirely successful in something Bournonville-ish, in which the man and woman move together exuberantly and at speed with closely paired steps, say. (De Luz had a less-than-lucky draw in being paired with Bouder in the Fall section of The Four Seasons, where she’s at her brassiest and most prone to dance at her partner rather than with him. To date, I think J. Stafford has been the most successful of Bouder’s partners; his physical size relative to hers and his apparent alertness to the theatrical possibilities of partnering tether her to the proceedings more effectively than attempts to match her in sheer prowess or vividness, I think. But I digress ...) While it’s not a great ballet, Andantino is nonetheless the kind of ballet that showcases M. Fairchild’s supple and subtle musicality – reminiscent of Miranda Weese’s – and the lovely, unmannered harmoniousness of her upper and lower body. Like Weese, Fairchild dances through a phrase, not inside it; and while she doesn’t have Weese’s uncanny ability to shapeshift from one moment of diamond clarity to another (and who does?) she can – with unforced delicacy – catch your eye with something that might otherwise flash by unnoticed. She doesn’t appear hell-bent on clubbing you over the head with bold effects, and that’s fine by me. Well, I see that if I keep moving at this pace, we’ll be well into the winter season before I wrap up 5/14/08 – especially if I keep going off on tangents – and I haven’t even gotten to the evening’s highlight, which was Gonzalo Garcia and Wendy Whelan in Opus 19 – totally unexpected and out of nowhere! More tomorrow, I hope …

OK, I’ll bite since I saw the same program on Wednesday evening, May 14: I thought that Les Noces sounded great - it just blew me away! I’d never had a ready opportunity to hear the work live before and was very pleased with the both performance and (for once) with NYST acoustics; because the chorus, soloists, four pianos, and percussion were all on stage (with the chorus and soloists on steeply raked risers right in front of the backdrop) the sound carried out into the hall with more immediacy than it usually does there. And the piece is just terrific anyway. (I studied the score in a course on 20th century music; it struck me as being the kind of thing that is much harder to do than it sounds, so kudos to all the musicians involved.) I’d seen Les Noces during NYCB’s 1997(?) revival, done to a recording by a Russian folk music group, and thought it (Robbins’ ballet) was only OK. I liked the raw sound of the singers just fine, but it was perhaps a bit too “authentic” to be paired with Robbins’ choreography and the whole didn’t really do justice to Stravinsky’s score, IMO. Furthermore, the stage picture wasn’t really full enough without the musicians. (I don’t remember if the 97 revival used the current backdrop, which is very striking. Since it looks as if it was designed to fill in the space above the chorus, it might not have been usable without them.) I still don’t think Robbins’ Les Noces is a masterwork in and of itself, but the whole package on Wednesday evening was a pretty decent piece of theater. One of its (to me) significant drawbacks is that it’s difficult to figure out who’s who just from the stage action or from the steps the dancers have been given, which in turn makes it hard to sort out what’s going on, which in turn undercuts some of the emotional impact the ritual scenes might have. (And maybe this is as Robbins intended: he might have been aiming for a more removed, more distanced experience of the proceedings. But it felt a bit like “Postcards of a Painting of a Gathering.”). I knew who the matchmakers were, for instance, because I know what Scheller and Veyette look like, but I’m not sure if someone unfamiliar with the dancers could have sorted out the matchmakers and the bride and groom’s respective parents. Of the dancers, I thought Ana-Sophie Scheller was the most effective – just fierce, fierce, fierce in a role that’s more in the Gina Pazcougin line (who I think would be wonderful in it, by the way). Austin Laurent threw himself at the floor with rather alarming ferocity in one of the group dances for the men; I like him a lot, and while I appreciate the enthusiasm, I would prefer that he not actually break anything. Jonathan Stafford and Rebecca Krohn are lovely, elegant dancers, and I’m always happy to see their names on the program, but can we just say “least likely Russian peasants ever”? (Stafford is my current Prince Ivan of choice, however.) Anyway, I’d go again just to hear this terrific performance of Stravinsky's terrific music, but Robbins’ choreography at the very least “does no harm” and does have some genuinely effective moments. I'm in the process of typing up some thoughts about the rest of the program and will try to post them later.

Balanchine's Mourka (Balanchine's cat) or Nick (Jerome Robbins' dog)

Chris d'Amboise Kathleen or Margaret Tracey?

I hope canbelto will correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we supposed to choose from the last pair? Otherwise some pairings may end up ignored, which really isn't fair to s/he who posted. If you want to enter a This-ir-That but the last choice is not in your experience, you can either wait until we get something you can answer honestly, or just pick one arbitrarily! Looks to me like the last choice, from printscess, is Patricia McBride or Kay Mazzo. Please resume . . . Patricia McBride Diaghilev or Kerstein?

If anything, the lines are straighter and the wrists are less broken than they were 30 years ago! I've always assumed that if Balanchine had wanted straight lines, he would have gotten them. NYCB was the company that I first started watching with any real attention and intensity, and its the one I've seen the most over the past 30 years. I thought that that was what ballet was supposed to look like until the mid 90s or something like that. Several years ago I got a DVD of the Royal Ballet doing Swan Lake (the one with Makarova and Dowell) and at first thought that the disk HAD to be defective because it appeared that the music track was (ever so slightly) out of sync with the video -- until Makarova started dancing -- and then I realized, AHA! it's a style difference. I'm still not used to it, really.

I didn't see the opening night performance, but the Varese pieces were Integrales, Density 21.5, and Octandre. In 1986 Mr. Taylor rearranged the dance so that the original (1984) first section went to last, the second to first, and the third to middle. I wonder what the order is this season... You can still find the complete Anna Kisselgoff Times reviews for both versions by using Search at the NYTimes website, or, I'm sure, via Google. Many thanks!

A plea to anyone who attended on opening night: I appear to have misplaced my program -- can someone who did attend and still has their program supply the names of the Varese pieces used for Byzantium? I liked Byzantium a lot more than I remember liking it when it was new ...

And the vibe was kind of weird, too -- no sense of opening night buzz or enthusiasm. Granted the gala was a couple of nights later, but still ... there was a NY premiere on the program and the return of a genuinely intriguing work (Byzantium) after a too, too long absence. The audience finally woke up for Arden Court.

Whew! Last week, I shoehorned in an extra program that I otherwise couldn't have cared less about just to see Russian Seasons one more time (my fifth since the premiere). I mean, I love Russian Seasons, but I'm gonna need some fresh Ratmansky in the rotation soon. Middle Duet is fine, of course, but tearing open a season brochure to find just Middle Duet for the Ratmansky offering would be like finding just one sip of champagne left in the bottle.

When I first started attending regularly in the mid-to-late 70’s, NYCB definitely seemed like a company of glamazons at every rank. The principal women do currently trend short, although some – such as Somogyi (and the much-missed Weese, sigh) – punch above their weight, so to speak. (I never realized Somogyi wasn’t tall until I saw her standing next to Peter Boal. My jaw dropped when I saw Weese comfortably partnered by De Luz in the “Voices of Spring” section of Vienna Waltzes a season or two ago. I had always thought of her as at least a “medium.” I agree with Leigh's point about Ballo looking different when she danced it, but I somehow never chalked that difference up to height so much as to the special sparkling-crystal-on-lustrous-silk quality of her way of moving.) But there are a greater proportion of taller women amongst the soloists – Bar, Lowery, and Mearns for instance, and some up-and-coming taller men to partner them as well. Garnetta (fka Coco) Gonzalez seems a genuine throwback to the glamazon era -- I hope we see more of her soon. (I was lucky enough to catch her SAB workshop performance in Union Jack. Most. Glamorous. Wren. Ever.) And if K. Gilliland isnt' tall, her long, willowy limbs (and her nicely deployed rubato) certainly create the impression that she is.

* http://www.observer.com/2007/bloggerina Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that Kristin Sloan won't be coming back! I missed her. The last time I saw her was in Songs of the Auvergne a couple of seasons ago -- her dancing was lovely and luminous and I very much hoped to see more of her. But I am very glad that NYCB had the smarts to give her a media gig. IMO, her R+J webisodes were more engaging than the actual ballet. They need her.

Sigh ... You're probably right. I suspect that despite my wildest fantasies, most guys would probably look a bit too much like the goons in Prodigal Son. But closely cropped might work just fine ...

Oh no! I was so startled by Radetsky's deltoids that I completely missed the tatoo! I voted "love 'em" by the way, because I do. I suppose I would find it a little disconcerting if Odette emerged from the wings with tattoos from wrist to shoulder, but at the end of the day I probably wouldn't find them as irritating and distracting as those feather earmuffs she always seems to sport. They make everyone look 50. And speaking of making everyone look 50, I wish male dancers could ditch those shellacked back quasi-pompadours that I gather are de rigeur. Yeah, I know it gets their hair out of their eyes, but nobody looks good in them, whereas everyone looks great in bed-head hair, even Prince Siegfried and especially Apollo. And if it's thinning a bit more on top than one would ideally like, just shave it off and be done with it. It's fiercely sexy in a way that a comb-over just never will be and is less distracting than wondering if the carefully arranged remnant of a formerly glorious head of hair is going to fly out of place with the next tour de basque. And can we have some facial hair too, please, while we're updating everyone's look -- De Luz looked great in his R+J goatee (fake or not) and I kind of hoped he could keep it for the rest of the season. The older I get the younger I want everyone else to look.

That's pretty standard for opera criticism: It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth. (It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth in the 1950's.) You needed to hear Corelli live. Back in the day, the Met had Bjoerling, Tucker, Bergonzi, etc. etc. every night vs. the No Tenors of today. Of course the version you heard was terribly inauthentic, with cuts, the wrong instrumentation, etc. That high note she sang was not only in the worst taste, but it was flat as well. Critics, professional and otherwise, constantly tell us how stupid we are for liking anything. There is so much more information to know in opera. Not only have commercial recordings been around and extensive for over a century -- you mean you can't discuss in detail the differences between the 1952 and 1953 Keilberth Rings? -- the number of pirated recordings that are readily available is astonishing. (Don't even open your mouth if you haven't True indeed. A colleague once asked a mutual acquaintance if a particular recording of an opera featuring some well-known stars was worth getting. "Oh, I suppose it's a good enough version for a beginner" was the reply. The withering scorn opera fanatics can heap upon those with insufficient respect for a long-dead, cherished diva or the temerity to prefer a living one with a major recording contract and a crossover album does give one pause. Ballet has at least escaped the curse of having to explain why Andrea Boccelli shouldn't sing Werther -- I don't think ballet has anything quite equivalent to him. Still, I think the nuances of ballet may be harder to explain than the nuances of opera, which may make it seem like coded smoke and mirrors.

Yes, my point exactly. I think it takes a certain level of interest and expertise to grok all the hand wringing about the Balanchine legacy. (It’s bitching at a very high level, if I may steal from Mr. Gorey ) It must be very disheartening to someone who was enthralled by their first performance of Jewels to read that what they saw was trash and that they’re really going to have to go to Miami or St Petersburg to see the genuine article. And yeah, the hand wringing over how no one’s been able to sing a note since 1966 can get pretty tedious too, but somehow it sounds more like our grandparents harkening back to their salad days in the old country than snobbery per se. In any event, a Callas - Tebaldi throwdown doesn't necessary challenge the validity of one's enjoyment of last night's HD simulcast from the Met -- you can just bring some popcorn and watch the fur fly. "There were never any good old days There is today, there is tomorrow It’s a stupid thing we say Cursing tomorrow with sorrow" Gogol Bordello

Exactly. It's the inside baseballerishness that makes us both laugh and cringe in self-recognition when we read the The Lavender Leotard. What opera is clad in is fanatacism. Two guys duking it out over Maria Callas forty years after her death is entertaining; two crtics squabbling over who dances Balanchine better twenty years after his undoubtedly looks pointlessly arcane to the unitiated.

I attended the 10/21/07 performance of Program Two – for those of you who may be keeping track, Sterling Hyltin replaced Ashley Bouder in the program opener, Morphoses. No white slip in the program, and no announcement before the curtain either. I found this odd, since Wheeldon came out and spoke briefly before the program began and presumably could have mentioned the casting change then. In any event, Hyltin was a more than able substitute and a lovely, lively presence -- I for one was pleased to get a chance to see her in this role.

Haglund's -- almost exactly my response, although I did stay for Fool's Paradise (which I did mostly like and parts of which I loved -- more later today or tomorrow). "Get them in the air!" I wanted to shout, "Move their feet!" It was hard for me to tell if my frustration was a function of the choreography, poor programing choices, or the limitations of the hall. The steep rake of the rings combined with their being way too close to the stage puts everything in an oddly foreshortened perspective, no matter where one sits. (The steep rake does nothing to improve the sightlines: I was in row B of the grand tier and had my view partly obstructed by the head of the rather petite woman sitting in front of me.) So, I couldn't tell if the choreography seemed earthbound because it was or because of my angle of view. Based on Slingerland and Dance of the Hours -- where the dancers actually did move their feet -- I'm inclined to think the former, but dreary City Center didn't help. If Wheeldon has any fundraising mojo at all, he needs to use it to extract a better venue from someone pronto. Look, I like Wheeldon's choreography well enough and appreciate the scale of the show he's managed to pull together in a relatively short time, but the evening was hardly a grand eclat. There was a lot of the same-old same old and nothing suggested that Wheeldon needed to start Morphoses to put on the program that he did. (And in fairness, these initial evenings may be more about just getting the damn thing up and running to create the growing medium for what is to come next.) My big take-aways from the evening: 1) this isn't Cunningham, Cage, Rauschenberg and six dancers in a VW bus taking challenging art to the heartland and 2) ballet in Wheeldon's hands really isn't particularly sexy, although it can be very tender when he gets more than two dancers on the stage, and that's a pretty special thing. More later. I'm going again Sunday and a second look may help me see more.

An aside: Actually, the audience for opera is growing, is growing in the younger age brackets especially, and new works are increasing in popularity. From the Opera America website: “OPERA America serves the field of professional opera and related organizations. In the United States, it counts 116 professional companies in 44 states in its membership. It also serves 19 professional companies in 5 provinces in Canada, which are members of Opera.ca. Over half of these companies were established after 1970, and one quarter of the total were established since 1980, making the growth of opera throughout North America a relatively new phenomenon.” “Opera attendance rose steadily from 1982 to 2002. The U.S. opera audience grew by 35% between 1982 and 1992. This trend continued through 2002, when the opera audience grew by an additional 8.2%, representing the largest increase of all performing arts disciplines. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)” “In 2002, 25.3% of the U.S. opera audience was under the age of 35 years old. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)” And, while the familiar old warhorses (e.g., Carmen, La Boheme, Nozze di Figaro, etc) remain the most popular (or at least the most frequently staged) operas in US theaters, newly commissioned and composed operas are hardly rare events: “In 2006-07, North American opera companies will produce 10 world premieres. Since 1990, almost 200 new operatic works have been produced by professional opera companies in North America.” A quote from Marc Scorca, president of Opera America: "What is unique about the years since 1990 is the ubiquity of new works across the country at companies large and small. New works have become a part of the way we do business. It's wonderful these days to go to a new work and stand in the lobby at intermission and hear informed comparative discussion about other new American works." (From a Detroit Free Press article around the time of Margaret Garner's premiere there in 2005. Margaret Garner was composed by Richard Danielpour to a libretto by Toni Morrison.) New York City Opera generally mounts a NY or US premiere each year – this year’s Margaret Garner being an example – and they usually sell out. Mark Adamo, John Adams, William Bolcom, Richard Danielpour, Anthony Davis, Deborah Drattel, John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Peter Lieberson, Tobias Picker, Charles Wuorinen have all seen at least one newly-composed opera staged within the last decade. Philip Glass is currently composing ”The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five” with a libretto by Doris Lessing based on her novel. (good timing, given yesterday’s Nobel announcement!) Even Stuart Copeland (yes, the Police drummer) has composed an opera. My guess is that if NYCO had simulcast its season-operning performance of Margaret Garner on a big screen, Lincoln Center Plaza would have been full just as it was for the Met’s Butterfly last year and Lucia this year.

From the first I thought she looked like what you'd get if you atom smashed a ballerina with Myrna Loy, Irene Dunn and the Barbara Stanwyck of "All About Eve" -- "knowing" is exactly it, but maybe not "tough" ...

Didn't Balanchine himself observe that "You have to make the bad ballets to make the good ballets"? And of course, he also said "slower is faster"! Both apply in this case, I think -- Wheeldon will need a fund of patience as well as money.