Recording for the Shakespeare Theatre

Last month, I was involved in making a set of short recordings that can be heard during the new production of Henry IV, Part 2 at the Shakespeare Theatre here in Washington (playing until May 16). Composer Adam Wernick had written four short pieces with Latin texts for male chorus, which I and three other guys recorded for the production. One Monday night, we met in the Shakespeare Theatre's administrative building, where there is a rehearsal stage and a sound room. This recording was unlike any I had ever done before, since there were only four singers and we each stood at an individual microphone and wore headphones to hear the playback and each other. In fact, for one of the pieces we recorded each part on an individual track, which is a disconcerting experience, and for another we double-tracked each part with singers recording a different part each time, to create the illusion of a larger chorus.

My understanding is that one of the pieces will be played during the funeral of King Henry IV, when the image of a large cross being raised up will be seen (see image at left). Another piece is to be heard during a battle sequence, and the remaining two pieces that we recorded may or may not be used at all. If a reader sees this production, please let me know how the music was heard. A family member is going to see the play but not until May.

Der Ring from New York, Part 2

This is a commentary on the second part of Wagner's Ring cycle, as heard in the live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera. See the review of Das Rheingold on March 25.

Last Saturday, April 3, I listened to Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the second opera of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. At five hours in length, including two intermissions, this involves a not insignificant commitment of time, but the quality of the performance made it worthwhile. This opera has some of the most exciting moments in the cycle, as well as some of those painfully dull half-hours. The good part about listening to the opera on the radio is that you can use those long narrative passages to work on a crossword puzzle or fix a sandwich.

The first scene of Act I has a rhythmic, driving introduction that leads into the spectacular love scene between Siegmund (Plácido Domingo) and Sieglinde (Deborah Voigt), the brother and sister who are reunited in the hut where Sieglinde lives with her husband, Hunding (listed as Hans Sotin but actually performed Saturday by Sergei Koptchak). As their eyes meet, the beautiful melody of a solo cello rises up from the orchestra to bind them together. Unfortunately, in the second scene, Wagner advances the story with one of those long dialogues, puncuated with less thrilling, long instrumental solos. (This is not only a confusing way to present the story, as Hunding and Siegmund gradually reveal who they are and how they are connected, but it could be presented in the space of a minute or so with a more traditional recitative.) In fact, in the third scene, some of Wagner's greatest successes are adaptations of the more or less traditional "aria," such as Sieglinde's "O merke wohl, was ich dir melde!" and, of course, the famous pieces sung by Siegmund and Sieglinde, "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond" and "Du bist der Lenz." All three singers received generous applause and cries of "Bravo" at the end of the act, with which I concur in my approval.

At the first intermission, Fr. M. Owen Lee, a retired professor of classics with a vast knowledge of opera, spoke about the importance of the classical Greek drama in Wagner's conception of the music drama (Wagner and the Greeks). When Wagner was a schoolboy, Greek was his favorite subject, and he even tried to continue his study of classical Greek and ancient tragedy when he was struggling in Paris. Fr. Lee traced the elements of the Ring cycle that Wagner took, not from Norse and German myth, but from the works of Aeschylus. I found his identification of the character of Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie of the title, with Athena to be particularly thought provoking. Fr. Lee's talk was followed by Cori Ellison, dramaturge of the New York City Opera, speaking on the role of the Valkyries in the Ring (Those Ill-Mannered Girls). The word in Old Norse means "chooser of the slain," and as they fly back and forth between their duties on the earth, hovering over Scandanavian battlefields, and those in Valhalla, where they serve drink to the gods, the reflection from their armor creates the aurora borealis.

At the opening of Act II, Wagner teases us with the excitement of the music for the Ride of the Valkyries, only to meander for the rest of the opera's longest act through interminable dialogues. In the first scene, Fricka chides Wotan into swearing not to protect his offspring, Siegmund. In the second scene, Wotan summarizes the entire story of Das Rheingold to Brünnhilde and orders her not to help Siegmund. In the third scene, Siegmund and Sieglinde try to discuss their troubles as they flee from Hunding's pursuit. In the fourth scene, Brünnhilde appears to Siegmund and tells him what's going to happen. Then, in the fifth scene, it finally happens: Wotan allows Siegmund to be killed but also kills Hunding, while Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan's orders and rides off with Sieglinde on her horse.

If one has snoozed through the second act, it is impossible to remain asleep for the third act, which begins with that stirring ensemble number known as the "Ride of the Valkyries." Conductor James Levine began the act at a rather brisk tempo, which could not be maintained throughout the scene. In both this scene and the final scene of the second act, the anger with which Wotan chases after Brünnhilde and arrives in thunder and lightning to confront her is set to equally exciting music, with the immense brass sounds that Wagner excelled at creating. The opera's climax, the third scene of Act III, featured some of the best performances, including the aria ("Weil für dich im Auge") sung by Brünnhilde (the lustrous Jane Eaglen), and Wotan's farewell aria ("Leb' wohl, du kühnes"), sung superbly by James Morris. For all of Wagner's innovation, it is remarkable how he often relies on operatic traditions that had proven so effective, as a strong father-daughter (baritone-soprano) relationship can be in opera. It had certainly worked for Halevy (La Juive [1835]) and Verdi (Rigoletto [1851], Simon Boccanegra [1857], and, sort of, La Traviata [1853]), to name only a few examples.

Tune in for the rest of the Ring cycle broadcasts: Siegfried on April 17, and Götterdämmerung on April 23.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

This post is dedicated to Terry Teachout, who has professed an ambivalence (one might say hostility) toward all things Bloomsbury (from About Last Night, on February 10):

The Bloomsbury group bores me silly. Always has. All hat, no cattle—and that most definitely includes the only marginally readable Virginia Woolf. It's the highbrow counterpart of the Algonquin Round Table, with better gossip and fewer one-liners. Now they're all dead, and about time, too. The sooner they're forgotten, the better for British literature.

"Marginally readable"? I instantly became an admirer when I first read Virginia Woolf in high school: as someone who enjoyed reading Jacob's Room, The Waves, A Room of One's Own, To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, I am surprised that those words could be applied to her books.

And it is surprising that boredom can be a reaction to the people featured in movies like The Hours (2002) and, more salaciously, Carrington (1995), based on the racy biographical account of Bloomsbury by Michael Holroyd (Lytton Strachey [buy this book from Amazon], 1967–1968; to make The Literary Saloon like us more, we are trying to avoid using links to Amazon without identifying them as such). For heaven's sake, in the latter movie, Dora Carrington (the incomparable Emma Thompson) is shown with disarming frankness, as in the book, having a series of anonymous trysts. I can see a number of reactions to this group of people, but being bored silly is not one of them.

Not that I think I am able, or really even want, to change Terry's mind, but the latest news from the battleground to keep Bloomsbury's memory alive is the discovery of a portrait of Virginia Woolf, once thought lost, by her sister Vanessa Bell. In an article (Rediscovered portrait on display, April 5) in The Guardian, Maev Kennedy reports:

A long-lost portrait of a calm, cheerful and relatively short-nosed Virginia Woolf by her sister Vanessa Bell has been rediscovered after 70 years. It was painted in 1934, at the time when she turned down an official request from the National Portrait Gallery.

In a letter to her nephew Quentin Bell, she forecast the probable fate of any such portrait. "They keep the drawing in a cellar, and when I've been dead 10 years they have it out and say 'does anyone want to know what Mrs Woolf looked like?' 'No,' say all the others. Then it's torn up." In the end the National Portrait Gallery acquired 18 images of Woolf, and none has been torn up.

The story is also reported, with a much better image of the painting, by BBC News (Virginia Woolf portrait uncovered, April 5). In related news, the British Library has recently purchased a collection of manuscript documents written by Virginia Woolf with and for her two nephews, Julian and Quentin, in mock newspapers that show their "view of the Bloomsbury set, who were renowned for their Bohemian lifestyle. Outings, dinner parties and dances are all recounted and often illustrated."

To disappoint Terry further, here is a list (with images) of the portraits of Virginia Woolf in the National Portrait Gallery in London. You can make pilgrimages to Bloomsbury shrines like the country homes Monk's House and Charleston, in Lewes. The latter is where the rediscovered portrait will be on exhibit.

The Game of I

The new exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg, organized by Pascal Bonafoux, is on the theme of the self-portrait in the 20th century: Moi! Autoportraits du XXe siècle (Me! Self-portraits of the 20th century), through July 25. Annick Colonna-Césari has briefly reviewed the show in an article (Têtes de l'art [Art heads], March 29) in L'Express. Of the 540 self-portraits selected for the show, there is a short Jeu du je (Game of I), a set of nine paintings which I had great fun trying to identify. If you want to see more, there are over 150 images in the exhibit's Aperçu des Œuvres. Or you can buy Pascal Bonafoux's book, if you want to see all of the paintings without going all the way to Paris. I particularly like Victor Vasarely's Autoportrait (1945).

For other news coverage of this exhibit, see Éric Biétry-Rivierre, Les mille facettes des miroirs ardents (in Le Figaro, April 2); and Cécile Brisson, <<Moi! Autoportraits>>: les 101 visages de l'art du XXe siècle au musée du Luxembourg (in Le Nouvel Observateur, March 30).

Birthday Thoughts

We're always the last to learn everything. Happy birthday, Mark! Here's to simplicity!

"It takes a long time to become young."
— Pablo Picasso
How did this happen? A guy looks and feels (acts) 18 but one day turns 49? But what does that have to do with painting? Everything and nothing. One view is that I'm still making art after all these years, and secondly there's something to be said about maturity (in my painting).

Saying more with less and actually having a more informed opinion is a nice benifit of time. One of my favorite quotes is by a writer in a letter to a colleague and it goes something like "forgive me for writing such a long letter: I haven't the time to write a shorter one." My one birthday wish is to make that time.

Mark Barry (www.markbarryportfolio.com) is an artist working in Baltimore.

Museum in Toulouse Reopens

In an article (A Toulouse, la Fondation Bemberg rouvre, April 2) in Le Figaro, Philippe Motta reports on the reopening of a museum in Toulouse, the Fondation Bemberg, which was damaged in the terrible explosion at the AZF chemical factory there. (Because that explosion occurred on September 21, 2001, it received very little coverage here in the United States. Here are some pictures of the effects of the explosion.) According to the article:

The foundation saw in this disaster an opportunity to review the arrangement of its galleries, while at the same time expanding its existing collection. The museum is a Renaissance treasure tucked away in old Toulouse. Built for a rich pastel-maker in 1555, the Hôtel de Pierre d'Assézat left the hands of that illustrious family and disappeared from notice at the end of the 19th century. It was not until the end of the 20th that, little by little, a new benefactor revived it and revealed its splendor by decorating it with the jewels of a unique art collection. Erudite, lover of literature, pianist, and composer Georges Bemberg was familiar with the cosmopolitan destiny of an heir of a great European family. Without ever stopping his writing, he left his piano closed and undertook as his quest the work that is the domain of few men: a collection.

When Bemberg began to think about where his collection would go when he died, he searched around Europe. He admired the Hôtel d'Assézat and offered his artwork to the city of Toulouse, on the condition that the building would be refurbished as a museum for it. A look through the images available on their excellent Web site reveals a collection including works by Canaletto, Guardi, Van der Weyden, de Hooch, Jean Clouet, Cranach, Veronese, Tintoretto, Gauguin, Fantin-Latour, Picasso, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Especially impressive is the room full of paintings by Vuillard and Rouault, a nice Dérain (La clairière), Monet's Bateaux sur la plage à Etretat (Boats on the beach at Etretat), and a room full of paintings by Pierre Bonnard. The building itself is quite extraordinary (pictures shown here), which makes this little jewel of a museum (which I have not yet seen) well worth a visit, now that the damage done to it has been repaired.

Love for Sale: Tribute to Luciano Berio

In a post on January 24 (Renzo Piano on Luciano Berio), I wrote about the Paris premiere of Italian serial composer Luciano Berio's last piece, Stanze, completed two weeks before his death (May 28, 2003). The void left from Berio's death continues to be felt in experimental music circles: in London, Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Academy of Music (with support from the Italian Cultural Institute and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung) are jointly presenting a series of events as a tribute to Berio, called Omaggio, from April 15 to 30.

In a series of short interviews ('I wanted to murder him', April 2) in The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins presents commentary by several people who worked closely with Berio about their memories of him: composers John Woolrich, Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich, Will Gregory, and Martin Butler, conductor Semyon Bychkov, opera director Graham Vick, pianist Marielle Labèque, and architect Renzo Piano. Butler's comments on his personality are particularly amusing:

In 1982, I was one of 12 composers to spend two months studying with him at Tanglewood summer school in the US. He used to have amazing soirées where we would get together and perform all his favorite show tunes. He loved making a sleazy nightclub atmosphere: an excuse for expensive cigars and a lot of red wine. In fact his favorite song was Love for Sale, which he loved above Mozart and Beethoven.

Berio's great strength, according to Bychkov, is one that more modernist composers would do well to emulate: he composed music and changed the rules about how to do that, "without burning the bridges to the past—which makes him important to a wide spectrum of people. He could talk about music on the highest intellectual level without losing his audience: there was always a connection to life, and one never felt excluded."

That's Good Reading: Fully Credited Links

• John Perreault writes up the Whitney Biennial at Artopia (post on March 14):

  The bad news is that the biennial is too big; it sprawls all over Central Park, the 42nd Street Whitney branch, the Kitchen, and includes so many films, concerts, and video presentations that you would have to devote a major part of your life to seeing it all. Something for everyone is not always a good idea; more is not necessarily more. But, being charitable for once, perhaps this is an inevitable function of too many artists in too many cities working in too many media.
  
  The good news is that this show's intergenerational mix really works. The curators have even included the recently dead, I think a first. It is refreshing to see established artists along newcomers, and the reverse. For the art virgins, there has to be some transfer of prestige: What biennial were you in? Oh, you know, the one that had Robert Mangold, Kusama, David Hockney, Robert Longo, Alex Hay, Jack Goldstein (d. 2003), Richard Prince, and, in film, Stan Brakhage (d. 2003). Even Mel Bochner.

  His list of awards in many categories is not to be missed.
• Roberta at artblog posted yesterday and Libby posted on Sunday about Kara Walker's new installation (Fibbergibbet and Mumbo Jumbo: Kare E. Walker in Two Acts, through August 14) at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Neither of them was particularly impressed. Quoth Roberta:

  It's great the Fabric Workshop provides a space and support for artists to experiment and take risks. You can scratch your head at the results, as we're all doing here, but in the end, I'd rather have a new Kara Walker piece to mull over than a lot of other things.

  In support of this, Libby said: "I found myself waiting for the justification of using such loaded material, waiting for Walker to skewer it the way her visual work until now has consistently skewered the stereotypes of the past. It never happened."
• Alan Riding writes about the growing interest in Islamic art in western museums (Entr'acte: Islamic art as a bridge to understanding in West, March 31) in the International Herald Tribune:

  A case is being made for the benefits of promoting Islamic art in the West: the Islamic world would feel its heritage is admired in countries that increasingly link "Islam" with "terrorism," Westerners could look beyond today's turmoil to recognize one of the world's great civilizations, and alienated Muslim youths in Europe could identify with the glories of their Islamic roots.

  As Riding puts it, "all too often Islamic art has been hard to find in museums; invariably, it is treated as a poor relative of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities." This attitude is changing right now, he notes, with the newly created Department of Islamic Art (here are some highlights) at the Louvre moving to spiffy new digs (from its former location in the basement), which will be constructed over the next five years at a cost of $60 million. Second, a Saudi businessman has donated $9.7 million to build a new gallery for the Islamic collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; some of the museum's Islamic art will be displayed temporarily at the National Gallery of Art here in Washington (Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum, from July 18, 2004, to February 6, 2005). Third, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is also going to renovate its Islamic galleries, along with several other projects (see press release). Fourth, the new Benaki Museum of Islamic Art will open this summer in Athens, in time for the Olympic crowds. Fifth, I. M. Pei has designed the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, which will open in 2006.