papeetepatrick

I, too, love 'Oliver!' and we all know why it is so superior, although I also think Pauline Kael was all wrong to say that the Lionel Bart score is merely 'adequate.' The 'Who Will Buy?' sequence is so gorgeous alone it takes your breath away, but there are many good tunes. Some films have improved shows in some specific ways even if the whole is not greater than the original (in my experience it isn't usually, just as films are rarely better than the books they're based on.) I think this is the first Sondheim show except 'Little Night Music' to go to the screen (exluding 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy' with SS as lyricist). I definitely think 'Follies' would make a magnicent film if somebody really ambitious took it on.

Most extreme version of this I've seen is 'Roast Beef with Au Jus Sauce' in Westchester diner somewhere. Anthony, 'immanence' was never used in everyday speech as far as I know, but is still used as 'immanence' and 'immanent' in all major philosophical discussions, esp. of Deleuze, Spinoza, Adorno, many other philosophers. The cosmic force within instead of without things, etc.,One thing a friend says is 'land up' for 'end up.' That can't be correct, can it? I'd never dare ask her.

I must respectfully say that that is what we were doing. We were comparing works of Sondheim that we thought were strong with 'Sweeney Todd' in particular and other late ones that we also liked less.

I perhaps need to make clear, although I think it was understood, that I wasn't referring to Bart's use of the term 'insufficiently highbrow', which is actually as precise as possible to describe that attitude that he was referring to, and that I was also referring to. I don't think the attitude appears until things start getting into a mannerist stage. Anyway, I was writing rather hastily, but that might have been misunderstood. I'd appreciate knowing if that was the case. Thanks.

That's very interesting you heard someone say this, because someone recently said the same thing to me about Sondheim, and I hadn't really thought of it that way. While I think that would be somewhat inevitable if Sondheim wanted to commercially viable enough to even occasionally get things produced that would work with fans and tourists too, it's perhaps a little like the ongoing debate about what to do about NYCB, and those of us who remember the freshest early 70's Sondheim can never be happy with a lot of what has happened since. The 'insufficiently highbrow' is just the perfect kind of idiotic phrase some people would use for something that is beginning to show its decadence: That's why I mentioned 'Sunday in the park...' That flash into a New York art gallery opening is just awful, by 1984 it's like a hoary cobweb attempt to recapture what had been razor-sharp with Elaine Stritch in 'Company.' They're doing a big revival this season, but my personal feeling about 'Company,' (more than 'Follies') is that it so perfectly crystallized its Manhattan milieu of 1970 that it's one show that really was too perfect a period work to be able to revive well. Best example is 'Another Hundred People', which when I first heard Pamela Myers sing it in 1970 was like the most electric anthem for New York City right then at that moment that I was just spellbound. I still love to hear the record, but only that performance. To hear the song now is not to hear the song about the subways and the 'dusty fountains' and 'guarded parks', even if they are still there to the eye. The city itself has changed so that those images are placed into an entirely new context--and the life of 'look I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain' doesn't have any bite for today's New York. 'Follies' is somewhat different since it was already about something ghostly; but if you saw the original with Dorothy Collins and Alexis Smith and Yvonne DeCarlo (the last really is 'still here'), it itself takes on a ghostly secondary presence when you remember how gloriously Dorothy Collins sang in particular in 'Losing My Mind' and 'Too Many Mornings,' one of Sondheim's most beautiful songs, which she did with John McMartin. So that I think 'Follies' can be revived, but the previous attempts to do the same with 'Company' have had dismal results. I regret I didn't see 'Pacific Overtures', because I have heard praise for it over the years.

For me, it goes downhill after "A Little Priest." I don't like the show either! I love 'Company' as much as anything I've ever seen in the theater, and the original 'Follies' is marvelous. After that, I like bits and pieces of Sondheim, never the whole show, including 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I won't see the movie of it unless they cast it the way they won't.

But Roxie had been in the show, whether Gwen Verdon or Ann Reinking in the late 70's when I saw it, or Reinking in the 90's. I don't mean the character was a star, but rather this was the flashy role, or you don't start out with Verdon and end up with Reinking. I barely even remember the other characters. Since Reinking was truly the glamorous Broadway babe, and one of the best Fosse dancers ever, it was a real let-down to see someone so much plainer like Zellweger and who could not really dance. I didn't hear any real singing from any of them, including Ms. Zeta-Jones, who just seemed to be imitating a stereotyped chorine. They didn't use the Fosse choreography anyway, which was the only thing really worthwhile even about the original show, because the score is mediocre. The fuss about this movie stunned me, as if people had decided to go and see a musical film because it had brilliant editing. This was supposed to be a dance show.

It just occurred to me that Ann-Margret would be the ultimate best choice for this--she's a real musical comedy gal, just recently did 2 years of 'Best Little Whorehouse...' all over the country, and knows how to be bawdy. Oh yeah, she's much better than any of these other ladies for this, but she never gets major roles any more even though she's not too old. She can do Brit-talk too, as demonstrated in 'Return of the Soldier.' I'm not going to go see it if they don't give her the role though.

Amazing dubbing was also done for Rosalind Russell in 'Gypsy' by Lisa Kirk. It's so close to Russell's speaking and singing voice you can't believe it, esp. since Russell does sing 'Mr. Goldstone' and half of 'Rose's Turn.' Of course, that's Hepburn in parts of 'Just You Wait' and 'Wouldn't It Be Loverly.' They tried to put her vocals back together again in 1993-4, but it didn't work; she wasn't made to sing bright, clear songs. When I first saw 'Umbrellas' I thought it had not been dubbed, because they had chosen very well there, too, and not tried to get something that would emphasize formality or professionalism. They found a voice perfectly suited for exquisite young Deneuve. I sure wish they'd dubbed Alyson Reed in 'Chorus Line.' 'What I Did for Love' sounded so tinny and shallow. There are comparatively so few musicals brought to the screen, that it would really be nice if they could get some of them to be artful. I'm not sure there is much you could do with 'Rent'; anyway, the originals sang, but few would have cared had they not. The 2003 Resnais 'Pas Sur la Bouche', an old 20s French operetta should have been released all over the country; people would have read subtitles for this one. It was shown here at the Walter Reade Theater in a French Film Festival and is by far the best screen musical I've seen since 'Hair.' Truly gorgeous, and may be on some French DVD. Anyway, we've all found some examples of very fine dubbing, and that's why they should hire Ms. Redgrave! However, she is so fierce, and is scheduled for B'way in 2007, so it's probably out. Ms. Streep would do a good job on this one.

Excellent points, and I should have thought of them myself. Where you see it in its most uncanny form is in 'Hello, Young Lovers.' This is the most exemplary dubbing/acting I know of. Of course, Kerr has more range as an actress than the other two as well. I do think, though, that Nixon's voice was richer at the time of 'The King and I', and also that Hepburn does manage to merge with Nixon at the very end of 'I Could Have Danced All Night.' Sometimes the lip-synching is even off when it's the same person: in that zany and wonderful opening to 'Hello, Dolly!', 'Just Leave Everything to Me,' Streisand doesn't match her filmed and singing mouths perfectly, although that hardly matters, since she is musically at her most fabulous in that movie, and that could be what she's never been forgiven for.

Thanks all for this info! I just ordered this, I have to see Ms. Sizova in some more things--'Corsaire' will be great. She's also in this other one just called Classic Kirov Performances, in something I never heard of 'Fountain of Bakchisari' (or something like that).

This is so unfortunate, as 'Chicago' proved with both singing and dancing: all the leads should have had both their singing and dancing dubbed even if we got weird filtered effects; I just can't forget Anne Reinking in 1977. They also let Melanie Griffith do it on B'way for awhile--desperate, I guess, but it's still running, although I don't think her gig had anything to do with it. Dubbing, as for Deborah Kerr by Marni Nixon, does sometimes work well. She was also very good, if not great, for Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn. Redgrave actually even needed to be dubbed when she was young, as in 'Camelot'. Mitzi Gaynor sang beautifully in 'South Pacific', but Rossano Brazzi was definitely worth bringing in Giorgio Tozzi's voice for; they were perfect, I thought. There are all sorts of examples, but the singing in 'Guys and Dolls' comes to mind as awful except for Sinatra.

Vanessa Redgrave would be better than either Close or Streep, and they could dub her singing. She's definitely still got the energy for it, as her continued stage rigours prove.

You are not mistaken. They let Glenn Close sing, but I've never understood why. Worst was that TV production of 'South Pacific', which she was way too old for on top of the rest. And Streep's also a far stronger actress, even if I don't usually get swept away by her. I wish Gena Rowlands wasn't too old and could sing, she'd be magnificent.

I like some dogs very much, but I see from this discussion that, although not all ballet dancers remind me of cats, I haven't ever thought even one reminded me of a dog--some other animals besides cats, but never dogs. What dancers own as pets is a celeb sort of thing, probably would interest me only if one owned something really exotic like a serval or terrible snake.

I like the thoughts, but could never see Alla Sizova as anything but the most beautiful cat in the Sleeping Beauty film--not the aloof sort of cat,though;rather one who could live with a lovely big poodle or maybe, as here, M. Soloviev, who is more akin to your golden retriever to me. But I'm a cat person, thinking they are the most beautiful things in the world, if not always the nicest. Mlle. Sizova is perhaps the prettiest ballerina I've ever laid eyes on, quite apart from the beauty of her dancing--I mean I can easily see her in spring collections at Givenchy or something--and so I have no choice but to see that delicate smile as catlike. She is just a bloody knockout. I find Nureyev as well as much more catlike than doglike, and this has to do with the sly movement that he can do even though he's got that generous look, too. Anyway, not that much like either one, more horselike. Makarova very catlike of the tough-charmer sort that would win prizes at Madison Square Garden Cat Show. McBride also very catlike of the sweetest sort of feline.

How necessary is for a dancer to "understand" a score in order to be able to perform it effectively? Or is it sufficient to be able to feel the music, do the counts, and follow choreographic instructions? This is Stravinsky speaking, so one stops in rapt attention as with any demigod. It should nevertheless be taken with a grain of salt and refers to something that he then describes as almost a professional level. I think it is an absurd requirement for anyone who is not a professional musician to be called a 'good listener' only if such rigours are observed. In fact everyone, including musicians, first has to be able to hear like a duck--and it's even important not to forget to hear like a duck (a little like the id hearing maybe). Naturally, the more deeply one goes into any art the 'better' listener one becomes, but you have to start somewhere and just keep going. Years before I discovered Ballet Talk and Gretchen Ward Warner, I went to the ballet without knowing exactly what balances and bourrees were. I knew what rondes de jambe and grand jetes were (somewhat) from playing ballet classes, even though I didn't pay much attention and was just doing it for the money. I like knowing about these facts and techniques more and more, and think it makes me appreciate ballet much more and go on to higher levels. But I know that in going to NYCB and other companies for 25 years before I was still already a good ballet audience member: That is the way I came to love it, by immersing myself in it for the sensation and easily accessible beauty of it, not by starting intellectually. So that this sort of quote is an unforturnate kind of thing I've read among various great artists insofar as it can be misleading and discouraging. It is sometimes probably meant just to keep the field protected, but is off-putting to a lot of people who would go on to discover and explore more if not told something so severe. You can hear this sort of pronouncement in Balanchine's entirely subjective opinions of great composers and which had more to do with his own personal needs for music as a choreographer than anything otherwise profound. You hear Elliott Carter say that a composer must always be able to explain clearly what it is he is doing, when it is not something I imagine Duke Ellington always did (nor do I think he ever needed to explain) when he wrote music that was less formal but that I certainly prefer. Pierre Boulez will give all sorts of reasons why even the highest 'other listeners' such as Stockhausen and John Cage are more or less nowhere because they don't write like he does, are 'underfunded' or 'refreshing, but not very bright', respectively. Writers like Mailer and Updike take it upon themselves to instruct Tom Wolfe, saying he only wrote 'entertainment, not literature', in 'a Man in Full.' (I haven't read that book, but prefer 'Bonfire of the Vanities' to anything Updike has recently written, especially 'Brazil' and 'In the Beauty of the Lilies', both of which I thought were a lot of hot air.) What's really important for one's culture is to go ahead and dive in and do it and not pay so much attention to remarks by the masters, who often make these off-the-cuff remarks in moments of levity and, although they don't think of such remarks as Gospel, other 'groundlings' get hold of them and begin to decipher them like they were the Unpanishads. I know, because I've been through that stage myself. One of the most interesting things about the 'master-directive' or quote is that it is often also made with the legitimate concern of preventing over-familiarity by fans who would sometimes like to get too personal without having any real business with their object of adoration. How many times does one hear a great dancer, musician or writer refuse to get involved in any emotional talk and always force any discussion onto the brass-tacks matters of discipline and hard work, 'there's always something you can practice,' getting to bed early, writing every day on a set schedule, keeping appointments--that's how they've earned the positions their talent has allowed them to inhabit, and they are right not to let people in to their immediate world without paying their dues. But you can tell when you've paid your dues when you don't ask the masters for anything but specific things that only they can know and not for general directions about how you should approach whole systems of thinking and understanding art. If you do, then you really do not ever enter into any art on terms that should, at least for that purpose, be essentially your own. With many complex scores as in the NYCB repertoire, it's obvious the dancers become more and more conscious of what makes the scores work, even if we don't know in what fashion and in what detail. Otherwise, they could not be described as musical. At that level, it's difficult to imagine that many dancers would not voluntarily do a good bit of study on the composers, just as many of us ballet fans start doing research and study on ballet to enhance our understanding. However, I think there is a great deal to be said about the 'feeling one's way into a score' that a dancer must do as far more important than formal study (for one thing, every dancer has to do this anyway, even the ones who can't.) You could still be a musical dancer without knowing much or even anything about Baroque music development, for example, but you couldn't if you just kind of got out there and counted from one phrase to the next without imbuing yourself in the sensation the music offers. Artists don't like to talk about sensations much, but they know as much as anyone that that's what people are interested in. I think the feeling of the music must come first, therefore, for a dancer, long before he becomes Stravinsky's 'good listener', and even with both approaches there will be some dancers who are not musical. But there could be many musical dancers who didn't study the Grout survey (and there are many musicians who did not like having to use it in Music History classes.) As for Music Theory, that's usually taught rather mechanically and drily, as if excised from the business of actually making music. a musician needs some Harmony and Counterpoint; a dancer would never need this unless he was personally interested to do it.

drb you have Made My Day with those pics. I think I know how I just can relax and act like myself at the ballet now...

I think he desires to appear anti-elitist, but that the bad grammar is not deliberate, because it sounds too effortless: to consciously develop a personal dialect (which is close to what he's got) is a lot of trouble when it gets to the sentence stage. And of course he does successfully appear anti-elitist insofar as the Fine Arts go, since he has no apparent interest. Even on trips to China, etc., when there's time to tour, he prefers something a little less demanding.

I just watched gorgeous Margot Fonteyn the other night as 'Ondine,' Ashton's wild thing. I thoroughly loved it, and also it was my first time to see her when that young. She was just sensational, and maybe there were some creepy elements, I'm not sure. She used that beautiful smile to wonderfully extreme effect throughout, but it was Berta's early costume--like Julie Andrews or something--that was really creepy.

I guess I have to put 'La Valse' since others have put it as a 'creepy ballet' and also because it's one of my all-time favourite ballets. I can't really say I find it creepy at all myself, though. I tend to think of 'creepy ballets' as ballets that are not favourites, like MacMillan's 'Mayerling,' which is 'creepy' for me, including how boring it is. Also find 'Glass Pieces' creepy, but I also dislike it. 'Friandises' is creepy in a contemporary sterilized way.

I agree, and I just hate this and as well, am totally shocked. I'll never forget her the one time I saw her (and I went there not even knowing she was dancing that night) in the one act 'Swan Lake', which is one of the five or so greatest performances by a ballerina I've ever seen. I was friendly at the time with one of the top young modern dance choreographers of the day (and continues) and he went on and on about how Melissa Hayden was 'such a great dancer.'

But I already wrote this below. If I said she was 'tragically wrong,' it is not then applicable that 'admiring someone because her beliefs are authentic and not 'fake' is dangeous.' 'Tragically wrong' already indicates quite explicitly something I wouldn't know how to admire. If you admire something that is in fact wrong, you don't also believe it's wrong. I still therefore can admire her for her authenticity, because as dirac points out, her gifts were so extraordinary that she 'exposes them [the Nazi leaders] while glorifying them,' and Hitler can hardly have preferred that an artist be incapable of not introducing vision not specifically ordered up for serving.

(First, I have to re-quote your last night's post, just so we have it here:) The first question is easily answered, as I was responding only to GWTW's question about 'moral superiority.' My admiration for Riefenstahl's strengths may be largely personal--I know how guilty she was in many ways, but still she wasn't a fake. I didn't mean that that excuses everything she did, but that being almost a caricature of 'Nazi superwoman' herself--amazing athlete, dancer, movie star, filmmaker, writer, photographer--that's at least as understandable that she would identify herself with the tiny elite of superhuman strength and health that Nazism aggrandized, at least as understandable as Schwarzkopf's prosaic and rather commonplace desire to be careerist is. I don't think it matters if 'she paid more willingly', but rather that she had to pay. Schwarzkopf would have been a better person if she'd had to pay more and get away with singing less German schmaltz. 'And how can we separate her art from the damage it did?' That's why I had to requote from your previous comment, because you probably feel that there are degrees and there may well be. But clearly, Riefenstahl and other Nazis were not supporting Hitler because they were foreseeing the death camps, but rather because they thought the absurd 'will to power' was salutary. She said in 'the Wonderful, Horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl' that she wished the film ('Triumph of the Will") had never been made. She may well have felt that it wasn't worth it for many people, including herself. In any case, all of Sontag's essays on Riefenstahl are some of her truly fine work (and I like very little of her work.) Anyway, since you wrote both these somewhat contradictory ideas about separation and non-separation, some of this part may be for you to clarify. If one loves Schwarzkopf's singing, of course there is not really any way to compare Riefenstahl's propaganda films to the excitement an aficionado will feel. But it's also true that the films were made when the movement was alive, and the 'formal values' are not only most of what's left, but all that even could be left. They are nevertheless, because highly skilled, among the greatest documents made and their value in that respect can hardly be overestimated, even if they were made for other reasons at the time. That's a good question about the authenticity, and much of one aspect of what has interested me here devolves about that: I'd say that yes, I find her far more authentic. She did what she believed in and, even if this is tragically wrong, it impresses me in a certain way despite its tragedy (and Riefenstahl is indeed a tragedy) that petty career opportunism like Schwarzkopf's does not. My opinion of Schwarzkopf's singing is not all that low. It's just that I became aware, as we all developed this discussion, that my feeling about her Marschallin has changed. It may have been influenced by what AnthonyNYC pointed out, in that I began to realize that I had secretly liked all that time what I had definitely really thought of as pure artifice. But again, in another sense, I think she was perfect in this role even if I hate it, because I hate that artificial Nazi-kitsch opera. But the voice itself is not beautiful enough to make me overlook her 'perfection of artificiality.' TeKanawa may be ironically 'inauthentic' by comparison, because she is not ever really capable of full insincerity, which can be a viable mode--but I can live with her half-Maori singing a Nazi part somehow. Either is interesting, and neither very important to me, as I'd much rather hear Kiri in almost anything else. My objection to Schwarzkopf's particular case, with the 'denial,' as several have pointed out. The idea that this denial was about 'something that once was, but is no more' just struck me as giving wrong special privileges to an artist one loves. Some special privileges are understandable and should be extended, but not nearly all. On this point, I think I am in agreement with canbelto (although she may not think so.) So you bring up some good things, but it's complex. I'm with Toscanini on Strauss in general, even if I don't like 'Rosenkavalier.' And it's true, Wagner's anti-Semitism does not ever even occur to me when I hear and see his operas, some of which I prefer to all others. So some of my lack of enthusiasm for Ms. Schwarzkopf may have derived from a realization I had after certain ideas that made me re-evaluate what I felt about her, but I think it is really that I don't care for her style, first; secondly, since this is a topical matter, I wasn't very interested in the ideas that Ms. Schwarzkopf's denial was something other than just that. It's possible if Wagner, Jung and others with anti-Semitic and racist attitudes were current, I'd feel the same way. Finally, I don't think my opinion of Schwarzkopf as an artist depends on her politics even if I find her personally loathsome, because I don't think those who do love her work should be affected by it--they should love it as if the politics never existed if they're able. I was just talking about the politics itself/ themselves: the matter of making her denial of such things different from those of lesser stature I find quite as I've already said. So that some of this has to do with this particular moment (her death) in which it's all more on people's minds than some of the others. As I've mentioned elsewhere, many people can't see Griffith as the great filmmaker I find him to be because they don't see anything but the KKK.

Riefenstahl perhaps superior only insofar as she did admit, not only with her work, but later that she had never spoken out or resisted the Nazi Party. Obviously, 'Triumph of the Will' was real propaganda, even if film scholars and Susan Sontag think it was 'great propaganda.' Same with 'Olympiad,' of course. But she paid heavily for her 'looking the other way.' Maybe I just think she was more of who she really seemed to be, and not deceitful about it, more honest (I'm convinced of this, but am certainly open to another point of view.) Obviously, she was, as you say, an 'ideological Nazi' and does 'bear some responsibility for propagating Nazi ideology. She later became fully aware of what had happened at Auschwitz, and was horrified but, as I mentioned, did pay a very heavy price for her decisions. Schwarzkopf paid little and gives the impression she wanted to pay less and less. She was interested in her pristine rococo image, and her Marschallin sounds precisely as vapid as that kind of thinking would produce--in fact, a legitimate interpretation in a totally sterilized opera by another Nazi, so it was really a marriage made somewhere or other. That I don't like it as well as a full-bodied woman singing it is of no importance to anyone else. Edited to add: I just found this that is appropriate to this and some other discussions in Wikipedia, re: Strauss's own politics: 'among them the conductor Arturo Toscanini, who famously said, "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."