Shakespeare's Plays: a ranking

Revived from the dead so I can cross post this with my Facebook page:

Tyler Cowen offers his ranking of Shakespeare plays.  I take the bait.  Not quite a ranking; there are a number of plays that I think are really interesting but not exactly "good."

 The canon

King Lear

“Your majesty, there is no second.”

Antony and Cleopatra

Vastly underrated, perhaps because it has no redeeming social value.  

But I never saw a good production.

The Henriad as a set.

Cowen got that one right.  Whole greater than the sum of its parts.  I learned that from Peter Saccio.

Hamlet 

Not a great play exactly, but a loose collection of a dozen or more heart-stopping scenes.  He tells us all he learned in the first half of his career.  Not his fault that other people made some of it into cliches.

Macbeth

Probably not as good as its reputation, but only because its reputation is so strong.  With which contrast:

Richard III

Early attempt at the same material.

Matched Set: One underrated, one over.

The Tempest 

The best single speech in the canon but uneven as a whole.

Winter’s Tale  

Drop dead wonderful poetry, in some ways better than The Tempest

Two that are weak only by comparison

Julius Caesar

Newcomers assume it’s about Caesar.  But no; it’s about Brutus.

Coriolanus

Can be wonderful in performance.

Charming

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The most unreservedly charming.

As You Like It

Second most unreservedly charming.

Much Ado About Nothing

Charming in its own way.  A personal favorite.  Can be wonderful in performance.

Comedy of Errors

Thin, but can be excellent in performance.

The Seductive Power of Overblown Poetry

Richard II

Romeo and Juliet

Loves Labour’s Lost

Shakespeare the playwright criticizes Shakespeare of the Sonnets

Interesting to think about, especially in the context of other Shakespeare plays

Measure for Measure

The fashionable play of the moment  Interesting, but flawed.

Twelfth Night

He’s trying to find his way.

Troilus and Cressida

Plenty to chew on here, but off-putting.

Pericles

Cymbeline

Watch Shakespeare experiment with the “romance” form (he’ll get it right elsewhere)

His material gets out of his control: 

Taming of the Shrew

Merchant of Venice

He needs cardboard stock characters, can’t bring himself to do it.

Timon of Athens

Perhaps better understood as a co-authorship.

Misunderstood

Merry Wives of Windsor

Treat it as poetry, it’s Meh.  Treat it as farce, it’s just fine.

Kind of Meh

King John

But I saw a pretty good performance once.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Ditto.

Two Gentleman of Verona

He’s a beginner, feeling his way.

Titus Andronicus

Ditto.

Henry VIII

He’s getting tired.

Did I overlook anything?

Update: yes, I overlooked Othello (HT Taxmom).  Perhaps because I can't figure out quite what to do with it. I used to love it, kind of lost interest in it lately.  Maybe because I later discovered the Verdi opera version, which is even better.

More Munich Opera: Logistics

Another fragment on Munich opera--this one I share with almost every American opera goer who ventures to Germany and keep his eyes open. The point is not the variety and the quality (both admirable) but the sheer fact that they so so much of it.   We say that "opera houses all over Germany" produce "an opera every night."  Inevitably, I don't know exactly what that means ("all over"?  "every night"?), but it's close enough to true that we can treat it as given: consider the number of not-quite-first-tier American cities who count themselves cultured if they can stage just one a year.    This has to mean a ton of taxpayer subsidy and yes, I can think of so many other, seemingly more appealing, causes to which the euros could be put.  But I'm impelled to offer three observations, all of them probably familiar to anyone who has actually thought about it.

One: I marvel at the opportunities for steady work among opera singers (and, I guess, pit musicians).  It must mean that there is a cadre of able music-makers--not superstar material, perhaps, but talented enough--who have the opportunity to polish their craft and get as much out of themselves as they have to offer. Or  maybe they superstars, just working off a long apprenticeship: Verdi himself wrote a dozen operas over a dozen years before he hit the trifecta with Rigoletto, Traviata and Trovatore (it's wandering but I guess you could say the same thing about Shakespeare--a dozen or more experiments--some quite good-- before he totally nails it with Midsummer Night's Dream).  Query, can anybody name a product of the German opera house system with a similar career trajectory?

Two: the downside of all this is that they must not have time to rehearse.  Yes, yes, I'm sure there are offsite practice halls but it can't be (is unlikely to be) anywhere near the same as being in the real house, with the real echoes and the real timbre.  And there are also simple problems of logistics. I hear tell (I can't find the source right now) of a Carmen who came onstage and realized she couldn't find her tenor. "Où se trouve Don José?" she is said to have said. --"Suivez-moi, madame!" responded a gentlemanly super as he led her downstage.

And three: sets:  I know that the  Met prides itself on being able to change sets about as fast as the pit crew tightens wheel bolts on a NASCAR competitor.  But on a German schedule, you can't really make too many demands.  Couple tight schedules with the Germans' penchant for really loony staging and you are bound to have some train wreck results. Case in point, last week's Marriage of Figaro.* The curtain rises on the bare interior of a box, painted blinding white--so blinding that I kept wanted to shout "okay, I'll betray my loved ones--just stop making my eyes hurt!"  

But that's not all, folks. The later scene, though not a painful, was even sillier.  Mozart fans will recall that what we've got here is a lot of horseplay in the garden at night.  The very stuff of comedy, and how do you create the garden effect on an indoor stage?  Oh, I have it!  You drape the whole thing in cheesecloth (yes?) and let the singers tumble and stumble among the folds while they try to find their pitch!  So in addition to trying to keep track of who is who, and to check the supertitles in a language you don't understand anyway, there is the extra problem of repeatedly reminding yourself just why everyone is wandering around in an exploded laundry.
===
*A moment' perfunctory research informs me that this production is not new: actually old enough to drink beer in Munich.  So maybe my argument has nothing to do with anything. Whatever; I like it and I'm keeping it.

Met HD Rusalka

Mr. and Mrs. Buce share of a vivid memory of their first visit together to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.  It was 1990.  The show was Rusalka, with Renée Fleming.  It was coming on summer. We were way up in the balcony, and it was hot.

The trouble is, this memory has to be wrong in each critical respect.  The Met first sowed Rusalka in 1993.  And Fleming didn't play it there until 1997.  Must have been some other opera, or star, or year or whatever.

Give us this much, though: we have seen Rusalka more than once, more than twice in our long and varied career, and we know that it is Fleming's signature role.  Indeed while she did not play it in full at the Met until 1997, the showpiece aria-"Song to the Moon"--was her breakthrough performance as a competition piece at the Met back an 1988.   It has formed a sort of arc for her career.

Even if we didn't see her before, we did see her again yesterday in the Met HD.  It was a fascinating and rewarding performance.  With this kind of history, it was bound to be a Met crowd-pleaser.  It might even have been Fleming's choice--one gets the impression she has been able to dictate he choices of late. Still, I have to wonder how much she enjoyed it.  She was, granted, in good voice.  And while she's not my favorite Met superstar, I have to say I've always liked and admired her (or at least, ever since I read her fascinating memoir/briefing-book on how to build a career).  She's careful and disciplined and never phones anything in  Stll. when all is said and done, it is still an ingenue role: about a nymph and her sexual awakening.  Fleming is 55.  They had her up a tree--really.  You could see she was worrying about getting  her wig entangled in the branches.  Or worse, simply falling out.  You've got to think she is wondering whether, at this time of life, she should be looking for other uses for her talents.

It was nonetheless, as I say, a rewarding performance--much mores for us than it was 23 years ago (heh!) that first time.  I, at least, have a better sense of Czech culture--the folk tales arising out of the bogs and forests (I think also of the Pripet Marshes, not that far east, and of Carol Burnette, singing of "The Swamps of Home.)  I think I can understand Dvořák better--as an orchestral composer, even if he might not have had quite the knack for opera (I mean, what opera composer would let his Soprano go mute through the second act).  I think I can appreciate the kind of scoring that just couldn't have happened before Wagner (same for Verdi's Falstaff, almost exactly contemporaneous).

I must say I also got something out of those snippets of intermission interview that have become a staple of Met HDs.  I appreciated Piotr Beczala that he's not there to be a star; that he is part of a performance and he wants to make the whole thing work. I was greatly intrigued by Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the conductor, recounting how he tells his orchestra that they are there to perform "three Dvořák symphonies"--which nails both the virtue of the production and its limitation. And you've got to love Dolora Zajick as the witch--a role which, it says here, she also played in the Met's first outing back in 1997. She knows who she is and what she can do. And for what it is worth, turns out that she is only seven years older than the star.

Here's a treeless rendition of the "Song to the Moon" from the Proms in 2010:

Big Weekend for Music (And a Note on Accessibility)

A big weekend for the Buces on the music scene. Saturday we took in the Met HD Falstaff at the Palookaville multiplex: we had to buck the crowds for The Desolation of Smaug and  I must say they did tank up the (operatic) sound rather a lot--perhaps left over from the previous night's megalolapalooza but otherwise, I'd say it lived up to expectations: a rollicking good time, going as far as you can go to confirm Falstaff's somewhat shaky label as a "comedy."    It was fun also  to listen to James Levine, restored to mental vigor if not physical mobility, wax ecstatic over a comic tradition in which he brackets Falstaff alongside Marriage of Figaro and Meistersingers.  I'll certainly have to give him Figaro which can be falling-down funny (along with so much else).  I still don't get Wagner and Meistersingers in particular gets up my nose.   But it's true that these are three operas in which no virgins are sacrificed which may be enough to put them into a special class, however small.

Sunday we trekked on down to Davis to take in a lovely Messiah from  the American Bach Soloists.  It was all you could hope it could be--maybe not the most show-stopping soloists, but a carefully-thought-out, fully-integrated, coherent production.  It was heavy on the 18th-Century origins, which was fine and refreshingly different from the last full Messiah I saw, this at Royal Albert Hall in London, with double orchestra and double chorus.  I do wonder why the alto/countertenor had to rrrrol so many rrrrs, not just on rrrredeemer but even on rrresurection--but I suppose I should allow him a personal tic.  [Mrs. Buce adds: integration of words and music.  She says she finds it hard to remember any production in which the conductor seemed so completely to understand that there was a reason why particular phrases went with particular themes (she added that she particularly liked the scourging)].

But here's a pointless anomaly that offers me amusement, if  nothing and nobody else.  That is: one thing you have to say about Messiah is that it is just about the most accessible piece of good music ever presented.  Hard to think of a spectator with even the slightest musical literacy who cannot hum HA le lu ja, HA le lu ja.  People in my generation even "knew" that the tune was the same as "Yes. we have no bananas," though this trifle may have passed from the popular inventory.

Now turn to Falstaff.   Verdi's last opera here has many virtues but accessibility it not one of them.   It is, as many say, loaded with musical material. But it tends to come at you thick and fast, such that even the careful listener is left repeating "hey, wait a minute, what did he just say?"  You cold almost say that this torrent of thematic material is a vice except that, in a good performance, it is tried together by a unity of tone.

I've seen Falstaff a number of times now, and I think I have come to appreciate it, though I probably don't have the musical chops to appreciate its nuances (quaere whether I have yet heard it for the first time).  I am spurred to wonder, though, how, if Falstaff presents such challenges, then why was the current Met offering such a success?  I'm sure part of the answer lies in sheer musicianship.  You could see that Levine could barely contain himself as he enjoyed this reprieve opportunity to show that he still has it.  Ambrogio Maestri certainly has the title role down and cuffed to the doorknob; and that Stephanie Blythe woman is a wonder of nature.

But you'd also have to give some of the credit to showmanship.  Robert Carsen has put together a production that you can't help but enjoy, even if the music goes a bit over your head.  It is cheerful, energetic, warm-hearted, earthy enough to carry you over any number of rough spots.  Of course there might be a question of when all the stage hokum turns into a kind of betrayal, distracting attention from its real reason for being.  Could be: I  think this happens a lot with contemporary productions of Shakespeare.  Could be, but for Falstaff I'd say not yet.  There's enough going on underneath the glittery surface which the surface serves, I think, only to enhance.

Getting a Grip on Rossini

Chez Buce has enjoyed the viewing of two Rossini operas in the last couple of weeks, with  lot on common. One, we'd never really heard of either. Two, they both showcase Juan Diego Flórez who (among other achievements) is on the shortlist of Mrs. B's operatic heartthrobs.  And three, they both come from the Rossini Festival at Pesaro, Rossini's  birthplace, on the east coast of Italy, downhill from Urbino and south of Ravenna.    Mr. and Mrs. Buce have never set foot in Pesaro.  I guess I've breezed by at 55 mph but without so much as a how d'ya do.  

But our inattention doesn't seem to have impeded them in any particular way.  Seems like they have established themselves as a major-league summer festival venue, with three theaters, a comfy state subsidy, and the mandate to keep alive--or better, to revivify-- some of the overlooked items among the 40-odd entries in Rossini's operatic catalogue.

The two new entries in our consciousness are Matilde de Shabran, #32 (1821)  if my count is correct,  and Zelmira, #33,  a year later in in 1822.  Zelmira gets a place in the larger constellation because it was the next-to-the last Rossini opera to open in Italy, and also the first to introduce him to a more general European audience (months later, in Vienna).

This makes about a dozen Rossini operas we've seen live or on disk.  We've perhaps as many Verdis, so we've reached a point where it is possible to put these individual items in a more general framework. Let me see what I can do.

One, it's increasingly clear how much Rossini must have dominated the Italian scene in his own time.   Stendhal brackets him with Mozart although the compliment verges on the back-handed:

I have bracketed [Mozart and Rossini]  together for, under the combined influence of distance, of he difficulty experienced in reading Mozart's scores, and of the average Italian's utter scorn for any artist of foreign origin, it ma legitimately be claimed that Mozart and Rossini made their début simultaneously in the year 1812.

So Stendhal, Life of Rossini 125 (Richard N. Coe trans. 1970).  It's actually not entirely clear what Stendhal has in mind here: of Mozart's juvenilia were produced at La Scala in the 1770s, and the Rossini catalog assigns five operas to the year 1812.  But the drift is right: Italians don't seem quite to have got the point of Mozart, at least in the 19th Century.  And at him, so it is said, even Donizetti and Bellini,  worked in Rossini's shadow (though poor Bellini, who died so young, scarcely had a chance).  

But the other side of the coin is to marvel at the things Verdi learned how to do that his predecessors, even at their best, simply didn't know how to do.   You can see the point on full display in Matilde di Shabran.  It brims over with wonderful ensemble work--even a love-duet with two active onlookers, all four participating in the music.  There's some glorious music here but almost invariably, what you see each character assigned to a role and then permitted to interweave their vocal lines without  breaking type.  This is precisely the sort of thing that Verdi figured how not to behave, as he learned to fill is characters with more nuanced and more nuanced destinies.

Remarkably, you see just a hint of what you might call Verdian character development in Matilde di Shabran--specifically in Flórez role as Corradino, the lord of the manor.   The plot point is that Corradino has the public face of a monster but we learn in the first act that he's actually a pussycat.  The upshot is that Flórez, for one, is able to put some nuance and variety into his character in  way that it nobody really found again until Verdi smoked it out 40 years later.

Fun fact:  if I read the notes right, this is Flórez' third appearance in this role in this place--and that his first one came classic storybook opera fashion in 1996, when he got his great breakthrough by stepping in (at age 23) for a more established talent who was taken sick.  The other singer was Bruce Ford who had a respectable run in the Bel Canto repertoire, although a skim of his webpage suggests that  he may be out of action.

Here's a good review of Matilde di Shabran.  Here's an enthusiastic appreciation of Zelmira.

An Old Man's Challenge

Verdi's Otello opened at La Scala on February 5, 1887. Verdi would have been 73. It was the capstone of a great career. Many Verdians would have endorsed it as his greatest achievement.

They say that one of the governing principles for a respectable old age is to leave the party before you hear the sirens. But one more project lured Verdi on after Otello: by 1890, in his 77th year, we find him at work on what would in fact be his last opera—Falstaff—in collaboration with his indispensable librettist, Arrigo Boito.

The decision to go forward was not automatic. “Did you never think of the enormous number of my years?” Verdi wrote to his collaborator. “Suppose I couldn't stand the strain? And failed to finish it? You would then have wasted your time and trouble to no purpose.”

Boito's response is a model of subtle persuasion:

The fact is that I never think of your age either when I'm talking to you or when I'm writing to you or when I'm working with you.

The fault is yours.

I know that Otello is little more than two years old, and that even as I am writing to you it is being appreciated as it should by Shakespeare's compatriots. But there is a stronger argument than that of age, and it's this: it's been said of you after Otello: "It's impossible to finish better."This is a great truth and it enshrines a great and very rare tribute. It is the only weighty argument.

Weighty for the present generation, but not for history, which aims first and foremost to judge men by their essential merits. Nevertheless it is indeed rare to see a lifetime of artistic endeavour concludes with a worldly triumph. Otello is such a triumph. All the other arguments—age, strength, hard work for me, hard work for you, etc., etc.—are not valid and place no obstacle in the way of a new work. Since you oblige me to talk about myself I shall say that notwithstanding the commitment I should be taking on with Falstaff I shall be able to finish my work within the term promised. I'm sure of that.

I don't think that writing a comedy should tire you out. A tragedy causes its author genuinely to suffer; one's thoughts undergo a suggestion of sadness which renders the nerves morbidly sensitive. The jokes and laughter of comedy exhilarate mind and body. ... 

You have a great desire to work, and this is an indubitable proof of health and strength. "Ave Marias" are not enough. Something else is needed.

All your life you've wanted a good subject for a comic opera, and that is a sign that the vein of an art that is both joyous and noble is virtually in existence in your brain; instinct is a wise counsellor. There's only one way to finish better than with Otello and that's to finish triumphantly with Falstaff.

After having sounded all the shrieks and groans of the human heart, to finish with a mighty burst of laughter—that is to astonish the world.

So you see, dear Maestro, it's worth thinking about the subject I've sketched; see whether you can feel in it the germ of the new masterpiece. If the germ is there, the miracle is accomplished.

And Verdi:

Amen, so be it!

We'll write Falstaff then! We won't think for the moment of obstacles or age or illness! ...

Falstaff opened on February 9, 1890, just a few months shy of Verdi's 80th birthday.   It was to be his last opera, although he continued to compose until as late as 1897.  He died in 1901, at 87.

Update:  Apologies for neglecting to credit this. It's almost entirely a ripoff from  the indispensable Operas of Verdi by Julian Budder, vol. III 424-6 (1984).

Verdi v. Verdi (and the Role of the Orchestra)

European opera managers must smile with contempt at their American counterparts for giving away programs.  It's almost as silly as an airline letting you board luggage for free.  But we might as well enjoy it while we can; it gives us stuff like this:

For a poet as complex as Shakespeare, the musical language of the first half of the nineteenth century was not really adequate.  There are wonderful things in Rossini's Otello of 1816 (which is based on a French eighteenth-century translation, far from the original Shakespearean text), in I Capuleti e I Montechi of Bellini (which has very little to do with Shakespeare) and Verdi's Macbeth of 1847 and 1865, but the language of the period did not permit the composers and the librettists to enter fully into the thoughts of the English writer.  Rather, their aim was to transform the drama into a series of closed numbers, arias, duets, etc., of the kind that Verdi was writing and the public expected in 1847.

So musicologist Philip Gossett in "Giuseppe Verdi and Falstaff," in the (free) program for the current San Francisco opera season.  I suppose one way to grasp his point would be to listen to a (pretty good) early Verdi like, say, Nabucco, or an (excellent) Rossini like The Barber of Seville and reflect on the range and variety of devices available to the Verdi of Falstaff that simply wouldn't have been on offer for his earlier self.

Part of it, surely, is the influence of Verdi on Wagner--a complicated topic by any measure, but on even the narrowest reading, the influence is there.  Mrs. B points out wrinkle: the role of the orchestra as a virtual character in the opera itself.  Wagner is partly responsible here, but Mrs. B points also to Puccini, with a notable wrinkle.  That is, in Puccini, the orchestra can be downright obtrusive, whacking you over the head with its own interpretations, leaving nothing to imagination or chance.  The orchestra in Falstaff is a vivid presence, but here I'd say it is not a hindrance.  Rather, you really need the orchestra to keep you on track among the torrent of vocal possibilities under exploration on stage.

Terfel's Falstaff

You know I'm not a serious opera fan because I've seen only one performance of Bryn Terfel in Verdi's Fallstaff.  Not the three, or five, or ten, or 100, which may be the gold standard for the real fans.  I am thus unable to confirm that the new version at the San Francisco Opera (which we saw last night) is, as represented, more somber and correspondingly less comical than some of its predecessors.  I'm sorry I haven't, though.  Terfel is an appealing, engaging, accessible singer by any standard and if last night's performance is any evidence (and it probably is) then a whole catalog of Terfel Falstaffs would be great fun indeed.

A couple of other loose ends about Falstaff: One, it occurs to me that maybe this is an opera more fun for the singers than the audience.  Or at best, it needs an audience with pretty strong musical chops.  I guess I've written before that it was, ironically, the first opera I ever saw--and I was told I probably wouldn't get it and I didn't get it.  I've seen it several times since and I've come to enjoy it and I think I have some sense of what it is about. But my own musicianship never gets above the sing-in-the-shower level and I suspect that there is stuff I will  never appreciate as well as someone who, say, sings every day for money, and once in a while gets a chance really to blow it out with this masterwork.

Related point: I think there is a sense on which Verdi's Falstaff bears comparison with Shakespeare's Hamlet.  No, no, bear with me for a moment.  In Hamlet, Shakespeare tells us everything he knows about theatre, everything he has learned in his entire career.  So with Falstaff and Verdi and opera.  The notable difference is, of course, that Shakespeare was in his 40s when he wrote Hamlet; he'd been in the game for a dozen year to so and had perhaps a dozen more to go (is that all?  Yes!).  Verdi, of course, was in his 80s, with his entire life to look back on.

And one more: people always talk about Falstaff as a comedy.  I suppose it is as a sense: it is also, at best, rather mean-spirited, unkind.  And has anybody noticed that it is a "comedy" mocking as a foolish old man, written by, yes, another old man?

Teammates

Here's a new one on me.  In his remarkable introduction to Beowulf, R. W. Chambers discusses the case of Hrethric and Hrothulf, Scandinavian princes.  Chambers says:

Hrethric is then almost certainly an actual historic prince ... Of Hrothmund, his brother, Scandinavian authorities seem to know nothing. He is very likely a poetical fiction, a duplicate of Hrethric.

You'd been wondering, right?  But what is interesting here is not just Chambers conclusion; rather, it is his argument:

 For it is very natural that in story the princes whose lives are threatened by powerful usurpers should go in pairs. Hrethric and Hrothmund go together like Malcolm and Donalbain. Their helplessness is thus emphasized over against the one mighty figure, Rolf or Macbeth, threatening them.

A footnote expands on the point:

 Compare the remark of Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, as to the necessity of there being both a Rosencrantz and a Guildenstern (Apprenticeship, Book V, chap. v). 

Chambers, R. W. (Raymond Wilson) (2011-03-30). Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn (Kindle Locations 649-54 and 8229-8230).  Kindle Edition.   The referenced passage from Wilhelm Meister is:

“Why not compress them into one?” said Serlo. “This abbreviation will not cost you much.”

“Heaven keep me from all such curtailments!” answered Wilhelm, “they destroy at once the sense and the effect. What these two persons are and do, it is impossible to represent by one. In such small matters we discover Shakespeare’s greatness. These soft approaches, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity,—how can they be expressed by a single man? There ought to be at least a dozen of these people, if they could be had: for it is only in society that they are anything; they are society itself; and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them. Besides, I need them as a couple that may be contrasted with the single, noble, excellent Horatio.”

Link.  I admit I had never thought of this before, and I'm wondering how far it can be pursued.  Should we include the case of Brutus and Cassius, for example, conspiring to accomplish the death of Caesar?  Or Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome (though it may be Romulus who killed his brother)?  The Infante Don Carlos and his companion, the Marquis of Posa, in Verdi's Don Carlos?  I thought of one other dandy example when this matter first came to my attention last night, though I'm not bringing it up just now.* There most be others?

*Oh, right: Hengist and Horsa.

Ashland Cymbeline

When I was a junior in high school, Mr,. McAllister, the orchestra leader, came to Donald Mothes and (who?) and me and said: "Now boys, we are going to the opera.  It's not an ideal opera, not the one that should be your introduction to opera, but it is the one I have tickets to and we will do what we can."

And we did.  Mr. M drove us to into Boston and back (pre-expressway, a real grind).  I have no idea who paid for dinner but I'm pretty sure it wasn't I.  And we went to the opera: Verdi's Falstaff.  

All thanks to Mr. M but I didn't see another opera for about 20 years, and I think he was probably right about first-time introductions.  I've since grown to love Falstaff but it is absolutely not one I would put at the head of the list of candidates for first-timers.  Carmen for sure.   I suppose La Bohème.  Maybe even Rigoletto but Falstaff is just way too inaccessible to anyone who doesn't have a pretty good sense of what he might listen for.

I suppose I'd say the same sort of thing about Shakespeare's Cymbeline.  I don't want to torture the comparison: Falstaff still is, at the end of the day, a much better piece of work.   And Verdi was in his 80s when he wrote; Shakespeare, not yet 50.  But it was Verdi's last work and  for Shakespeare, at least one of the last (the evidence is equivocal).  They have common virtues in that each represents a kind of summing up, something on the order of autumnal wisdom.  And a common vice: in each the artist tries to cram in too much.  In both cases you find yourself thinking--hey wait a minute; what did he just say (or sing)?  And the action has moved on without you.  Ideas--in music, or in verse, often good ideas, just come flying too thick and fast.  And in Cymbeline, at least, I just can't get control of the plot. I've seen it three times in my life (that I remember) and in each case I find myself saying--um, just how did we get to Wales, and why are we here?

All of which is by way of background for a pleasant surprise: faced with these obstacles, I think Ashland this year is doing a superb job with it.  They've worked hard to make it accessible and intelligible--I wonder if, in general, they are getting better at the verse?  And as to the generally refractory structure, they've decided mostly to go with the flow.  Or rather, more than the flow: somebody obviously decided that they can't really conquer all the clutter and distraction without doing violence to the essence.  So let it all pile in and in addition, pile on some more (this is, for example, the first Cymbeline  I ever saw with a Disney subtext, and it doesn't hurt).

The result is a Cymbeline in which, for all the play's natural frustrations, you really are able to discern a distinctive tang, a flavor consistent and memorable and not quite like anything else Shakespeare ever did.

Flash Music

So my cousin Dave shipped me this lovely bit of flash music from the Plaça de Sant Roc in Barcelona.  It's wonderful in its own right and it brought back happy memories of the day just a couple of years ago when Mrs. B and I trooped through the same square with a couple of adolescents: we elders had to yield up assorted articles of clothing so the nubile 18-year-old could pass the modesty and decency test for entry into the old church.

Mrs. B shipped Dave's clip off to the other adolescent who was with us in Barcelona; he graciously responded with a favorite of his own.  I  guess I have said before, I am totally in the tank for flash music, particularly flash opera.  Duly prompted I went looking for more exemplars to share back.

I did find some, but I also picked up a bit of unintended education.  Some takeaways: one, there are a lot of flash-whatevers: the number is growing, rapidly if perhaps not quite exponentially.  Two, they vary: some really wonderful, a few kind of bad and most--well, most pretty much you would expect "most" to be. And three, sad to say I think I can descry the viper of commercialism.  There seems to be an ad agency somewhere that can produce you a flash performance that looks just like Disney, or  maybe it is Disney (I choose not to link).

Another point, really a new-to-me insight: some  items lend themselves to flash better than others.  The "Ode to Joy," supra, works nicely.  It seems a particular favorite is Orff's Carmina Burana and I guess I can see why: big chorus, lots of noise and drama. Here's an  an appealing rendition, from the Westbahnhof in Vienna. Here's another, this from Indianapolis (seems de rigeur for the location shot to show the crowds going about their business all innocent before the music pops).

The opera standards are popular.  There's plenty of Mozart, including this from Aix.  Also Verdi; here's a bit from SFO under the name of "pop-up opera," which seems right for the occasion.  Carmen, of course; here's a gratifyingly underproduced version from the grand old Spanish city of, um, Edinburgh.  Here's another, this from Grenoble, mostly a one-person performance but I'd say the girl is good.

Indeed all good stuff, although for a real flash mob, I'd have to admit it is best to have something more, like, flash.  So it just may be the grand prize ought to go to this one from the Cape Cod Stop 'n Shop (and a tip o' the cornet mute to  my sister Sally, who sent it to me from next door in South Harwich).

Update:  And here is a more general introduction to flashmob culture.

Cultural Notes from All Over

First:

[Winston] Churchill evidently knew Byron's lengthy "Childe Harold" by heart and later recited it to his daughter Sarah in the eighty-five mile drive from Saki airfield to Yalta in February 1945.  Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry 78 (New York: Dodd Mead 1967)

--Jean Edward Smith, FDR 547 (Random House paperback, 2008)

And second: my friend Elizabeth tells me how she, as a small child, was left in the care of an old lady who served her lemon bars and champagne. Her minder also played her highlights from Verdi's Requiem, and declared that she hoped this music would accompany her as she entered into heaven.

David Discovers the Coolest Thing Ever

David writes:

So there's this term Fach (plural Fachen): system is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices. It is used world wide, but primarily in Europe, especially in German-speaking countries and by repertory opera houses (link).

They are sorted by range, and I recently worked out my range. The article gives some roles associated with each Fach. Here are some of mine (cites lifted from Wiki):

(Range: From about the E below low C to the F above middle C (E to f'))

Basso cantante/Lyric bass-bariton/High lyric bass

• • Don Pizarro, Fidelio (Ludwig van Beethoven)
  • Don Alfonso, Così fan tutte (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Leporello, Don Giovanni, 
  • Don Giovanni (WolfgangAmadeus Mozart)
  • Figaro, Le nozze di Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Boris, Boris Godunov (Modest Mussorgsky)
  • Don Basilio Il barbiere di Siviglia (Gioachino Rossini)
  • Silva, Ernani (Giuseppe Verdi) 
  • Philip II, Don Carlos (Giuseppe Verdi)
  • Count Walter, Luisa Miller (Giuseppe Verdi)
  • Zaccaria, Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi)

Hoher Bass/Dramatic bass-baritone/High drama bass

• • Wotan Der Ring des Nibelungen (Richard Wagner)
  • Caspar, Der Freischütz (Carl Maria von Weber)
  • Philip II, Don Carlo (Giuseppe Verdi)

[Jugendlicher Bass 

Leporello, Masetto, Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

• • Figaro, Le nozze di Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Colline, La bohème (Giacomo Puccini)

Spielbass/Bassbuffo/Lyric buffo

• • Don Alfonso, Così fan tutte (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Don Bartolo, Il barbiere di Siviglia (Gioachino Rossini)
  • Don Alfonso, Così fan tutte (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Leporello, Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Orgon Pernelle, Tartuffe (Kirke Mechem)
  • The Sacristan Tosca (Giacomo Puccini)

So there you go.
 --
Comment: I can see David as Leporello or Figaro but Phillip II would be a stretch.   I'm tempted to pursue this inquiry for myself except that my own range is about three notes.  Still, I would really love to sing Germond in Traviata.  As in

Don't you understand, sweetie?
My daughter is a respectable woman.
And you are a whore.
So I'm sorry, but you'll just have to go.