Ingridients

This weekend, ABC unveiled its piano 100. Last year, people had been asked to send in their favourite piece of piano music (one piano, no other instruments or voice, although two performers are allowed).

There are some obvious results: 1 is Beethoven's Moonlight sonata, 2 is Bach's Goldberg Variations, 3 is Debussy's Clair de Lune. There are some odd surprises: Chopsticks comes in at number 7.

John Cage's 4'33" (arguably a piano piece) came in at number 40. ABC staff obviously put it in the "odd surprise" category based on the very strange "tribute" to it they played.

Of course, I don't know why people voted for it, but from reading a bit about 4'33", I think what they broadcast was quite disrespectful. As I understand it, John Cage's point is that there is no silence, not when you actually listen and pay attention. And of course listening and paying attention is what you're expected to do at a concert. So 4'33" is about listening to sounds that have not been preplanned, as though they have been.

It's kind of zen, kind of a musing on what makes art art (like "found art" - ordinary objects that become art once they are on display in a gallery), and I think an attempt to open our awareness.

The weird stuff ABC played clearly wasn't about any of those things. And John Cage has said that a bad performance of 4'33" is no performance at all. I'm not quite sure how to breach that barrier - to get people to think about exactly why someone might compose a piece of music with no notes in it, and what might or might not be a performance of such a piece.

Alternatively, ABC is terrified of dead air time. Most radio stations are. I'm beginning to think that getting a radio station to broadcast nothing for a time would be an even more profound statement of what John Cage was trying to do than 4'33" is.

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It must be real

James auditioned for a graduate degree in voice at the Conservatorium last week. The audition went well, and he has been offered a place. But it's a bit more real tonight because he got all the paperwork in the mail, and now has to decide which subjects he's doing and all that.

James asked me on the weekend why I hadn't blogged about it. I still haven't figured out why he hasn't blogged about it.

I can see some things for me to be excited about. James has been having private lessons with the teacher he will be studying with, and she seems like a very good teacher, both technically, and with the psychological/self-confidence aspects.

On the other hand, I hope he doesn't end up too exhausted between full-time work and (hopefully part-time) grad-level study.

But mainly I'm excited for him.

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Opera: Albert Herring

So, last night was when I actually got to go along and see James perform in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring. I went along early to the conservatorium with James (so he could warm up and do some exercises with his teacher before the performance) and so I could meet up with people who'd bought tickets from James but hadn't picked them up yet. There were 22 of us, taking up all of row L. Lady Billows had clearly sold a bunch of tickets just behind us, and a bit further back was a Sid'n'Nancy cheer squad.

The plot of Albert Herring is pretty silly, in addition to being pretty short, as I have now come to expect from opera plots. Lady Billows, the richest and most influential citizen of Loxford, has decided, with the technical consent of the leaders of Loxford (the vicar, police superintendent, head teacher, and mayor - James) that the slide of Loxford into moral decay must be halted, and to that end, the most virtuous Loxford maid crowned May Queen. Unfortunately, none of the local girls meet the standards of Lady Billows.

The desperate committee plump on the idea of crowning Albert Herring, local greengrocer still under his mother's thumb, as May King. His mother is very pleased (particularly about the 25 gold sovereign prize) but Albert is very uncomfortable, since he's already been wondering if his friend Sid might not be right about Albert missing out on life.

Sid decides to help matters along, so at the May Day celebration, he spikes Albert's lemonade with rum. Armed with the money and dutch courage, Albert heads off into the night. The next day, a major search party is organised for the missing Albert, and of course Albert turns up, somewhat the worse for wear, just after the town's given him up for dead and sung a mourning threnody.

The "moral leadership" of the town demonstrate their hypocrisy by interrogating Albert for all the juicy details while beating their chests and being self-righteous. Albert, however, seems to finally have found some courage, and shuffles them out, leaving Sid and his girlfriend Nancy (also partners in real life), and the town's children, cheering for him.

I thought it was a good production, very impressive for student singers. To start with, I was a bit distracted by "hey! James on stage!" but by the end I was just watching and enjoying an opera, and "hey! That's right, I know a cast member!". I thought the casting and acting was good, each character being consistent and easily-distinguishable from others. The super had been slicked down, with a big fake moustache, in a complete stereotype of 1900 police, and the singer acted accordingly, coming across quite Monty Pythonesque. James made a great pompous mayor, sticking his chest out and leading with his beard, which fortunately managed to grow long enough the last six weeks to make a great prop.

I was also very impressed with the quality of the singing. Albert is quite a demanding role, he's almost a solo character, counterbalanced against the rest of the show as an ensemble, particularly the four "leaders" chasing Lady Billows around. James doesn't project as strongly as some others in the cast (yet?) but he fitted in well, and it was really hard to believe, given the cast balance, that he was a last-minute stand in.

The production also had quite a lot of visual play and innuendo, missing from the score (which I read when James first brought it home). The most unfortunate thing about that is the surtitles, which were almost not needed, are kind of distracting sometimes and I (and others nearby mentioned the same thing) found myself fixated on the text when fun things were happening on stage. I guess this is my own fault for being a textslut.

After the production, which was final night, I got to go to the cast party. It's always a bit weird seeing people "for real" whom you've previously only seen on stage, many of them playing much older characters than they themselves. And Sid to Tim was a complete transformation, as Tim had hated the facial hair and took it off immediately the final curtain went down. I also got to meet members of the alternate cast, and it was interesting imagining what the other version must have been like. The other mayor is much older and would certainly have been more of an "old and distinguished" character, and the other superintendent is just a touch on the tall side (6'8").

I mainly chatted with the designer, Christopher Smith, about red petticoats. You see, Albert's mum, the sober widow keeping her boy out of anything remotely resembling trouble, has a bright red petticoat under her black skirt. It turns out that in Victorian times, good proper decent folk wore underwear made of red flannel, and Mrs Herring is meant to be a bit of a throwback to then. Of course, most people in the audience would be unaware of that, and he said that given a bit more time, or a more theatre production, he'd have worked out some backstory with the singer about the significance of the flashes of red.

The cast was thrown out around midnight, and the party continued at the home of one of the cast members in New Farm. I felt a bit out of place, finding myself chatting with a number of drunk around-20-year-old music students, but it turns out that cats are a safe topic almost anywhere, and as long as I continue to keep my eye on biological sex trivia, I should be fine for keeping up my end of conversations with random strangers.

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Concert: Winterreise

I got a phone call from James at about 3.30 pm, asking me if I wanted to hear Schubert's Die Winterreise at 6 pm. Mark and D'arne had a couple of comps, D'arne couldn't make it, James wanted to go, and they thought they could get a third ticket.

It turns out the performance was part of the Queensland Music Festival, so I feel all culturally connected now. The singer was Phillip Abbis, accompanied by Emily Hamper. They're here from Montreal, and apparently doing three lieder concerts in total.

I think it was a very good performance. I can't really say anything about Abbis' voice, but that's in the good sense of no irritating idiosyncracies or flaws I could detect. Oh, I did notice he was getting a bit tired near the end, but I'd be surprised if anyone could sing continuously for 75 minutes and not get a bit tired. I also think Hamper was well in touch with Abbis and they coordinated well dynamically.

There was one level on which I wasn't totally thrilled, but I think that might be a cultural disconnect between Schubert and me. I felt the music didn't cover the emotional landscape the words were suggesting, but I could believe that if I'd been around in Schubert's time I would have thought it all matched up just fine.

Curiously, my favourite part was the final song, Der Leiermann. According to James, originally it was the second last song, and Die Nebensonnen used to finish it off. He thought the original was more balanced and the new order rather stressful and poignant. I thought Der Leiermann rounded out the whole cycle and gave it a nice meaning and grounding. I have a feeling I'm not interpreting it how it was originally written, but as a cunning self-referential finish, somewhat like <potential spoiler alert> the end of Life, A User's Manual.

Oh, and the first thing James said when he rang me was "I got it!". He's performing in the Con opera, six weeks from now, as the Mayor in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring. He's filling in for someone who's unwell, and has a bit of catching up to do as the rest of the cast already have their parts memorised. I think he'll make a splendid mayor, I can picture him in the top hat already.

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Pavarotti vs Domingo

James is doing a lot of work on his singing at the moment, and one of the things he's done is buy CDs of famous tenors to listen to, to soak up the sound, get familiar with the repetoire, etc.

So I've been listening to a lot of tenor arias in the car recently.

My first observation is that I think I like (or may grow to like) opera a lot more than I used to. I used to find opera ridiculous, with over-dramatic characters and implausible plots that were entirely too short and simple to account for having to spend an entire evening at the theatre to get through them.

But I think I get it now. You can't really hear the words, even when it's being sung in a language you understand, so everything has to be conveyed by the music and the tone of voice. Music and tone of voice are pretty good at emotion, but lousy at rationality or complex argument. On the off chance that the audience will catch the odd word, you'd better repeat the important words a lot.

So what happens to a story, if you have to tell it in three hours, remove rationality or any complex plot twists, focus on the emotions of the characters, and spend quite a long time at any given point in the plot, to make sure the audience has the right idea, before moving on to the next point?

You get something that, to a rational and together teenager or young adult, sounds like over-emotional teenage melodrama. No wonder I didn't care for opera. I was either surrounded by, or grateful to have recently escaped, the real-life version.

Now, I have the proper distance. I can enjoy opera as an alternate reality where everyone behaves like hormonal and stupid teenagers, but it's not my reality. It's exactly the same way I enjoy Jane Austen, but start to cringe when I think about the fact that she's describing a female social situation that was real in her time. It's the (specific) same way that Romeo and Juliet makes perfect sense once you realise that, yes, Juliet is only 13, and Romeo is probably a few years older.

It's the same way I enjoy speculative fiction, when I do: I let the creator set up a particular reality, and I'll go with the flow within what I see as the consequences of that premise. I'll only tend to be annoyed if the premise isn't followed through, or if stupidity, independent of any initial stupidity, is committed. See my recent review of Minority Report for a good example.

[Speculative fiction covers science fiction, fantasy, quite a lot of horror, alternate history, and all that weird stuff that falls between those categories, or contains some of several.]

I'm not quite sure how my reaction to Minority Report comes to be making a point about understanding opera, but that's my brain for you. This also reminds me that I have to explain some day why Jane Austen is a speculative fiction writer, but that can wait.

Basically, I'll willingly suspend disbelief for almost any premises, if the consequences are followed through. And I have very high hopes that opera, with the starting premise that all the characters are emotionally immature, will follow through - the fact that everything has to be told through music more or less guarantees that.

My second observation, which gave rise to this post, is that I much prefer the singing of Placido Domingo to Luciano Pavarotti. And I nevertheless understand why Pavarotti is admired so much. He is technically magnificent. He does everything expected of the perfect tenor. And yet.

I like my art when the personality and the preferences of the artist show through. Domingo might not be quite as technically brilliant, but I can tell that he'll sing some things because he cares about them, and he thinks we should care about them too. I get the impression that Pavarotti selects repetoire, and how to perform it, based on What The Great Tenors Sing, and noting from audience feedback what's gone down well.

I guess it isn't Pavarotti's fault that he's got a great voice, but no particular personal taste. But I guess it's not my fault either that I want something else in my singers.

I also admit, on rational examination, I have no clue how I manage to make assessments about a singer's personal taste based on how he sings "Nessun dorma" and "Che gelida manina", but that's apparently what I'm doing.

Music criticism, here I come.

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