The Dressing

On May 21, 2009, the Dresser experienced Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, Washington National Opera's closing offering of their 2008-2009 season.

















She chooses the word experienced because Director Andrei Serban's popular production that originally premiered at London's Royal Opera House in 1984 and has been staged more than 50 times by opera companies around the world presents Puccini's last opera as a larger-than-life spectacle of colorful costumes, over-sized and face-fitting masks, dramatic props, an elegant red-bannered theater-within-a-theater set, Eastern-inspired movement (i.e. Kabuki, tai chi), and two sopranos--the powerful Maria Guleghina as Turandot and the subtle Sabina Cvilak as Liù --whose performances inspired rapt wonder for different reasons.

NO ONE SLEEPS UNTIL NAMES ARE NAMED

While Argentine tenor Dario Volonté as Calaf, the unknown prince who dares to answer all Turandot's riddles correctly while risking his head (she orders those who fail to fall under the blade of her executioner), provides a reasonable performance but not matching the power of of Maria Guleghina's performance, the Dresser found herself wondering what it would have been like to have heard the original Royal Opera House production when Plácido Domingo was Calaf. Thanks to the immediacy of the Internet and YouTube, one can hear and see Domingo and many other world-renown tenors such as Luciano Pavrotti singing the most beloved Turandot aria "Nessun Dorma" ("No One Shall Sleep").

The story boils down to this: Princess Turandot, based on the fate of a female ancestor, doesn't trust men. She says she will marry any man who solves her three riddles, but when a stranger comes to town and answers her riddles, she reneges. Because he is truly smitten, he offers that if she can produce his name, then she doesn't have to marry him. Meanwhile the stranger has been seen with a blind old man and his female servant Liù. Turandot's servants under death threat unless they discover the stranger's name tortures the female servant who protects her old master by saying only she knows. In fact, not only does she know the stranger's name (and the stranger is Prince Calaf, the son of her master, the deposed King Timur), but also she is in love with Calaf. Although Turandot has a happy ending because Princess Turandot falls in love with Calaf and agrees to marry him, the story has a dark side because the servant girl Liù commits suicide to protect Calaf and his name.

FINDING THE CHINESE IN AN ITALIAN OPERA

What the Dresser (and undoubtedly audience throughout the years) finds odd about Turandot is that here is an opera about Chinese people sung in Italian with three characters--Ping, Pang, and Pong--modeled on Commedia dell'Arte figures. The trio of jesters are the princess' ministers. Granted that Chinese opera has its buffoons and Tan Dun has shown us these kinds of characters in his contemporary opera The First Emperor, Turandot's clowns seem too Italian. As for the music, it proceeds like a Richard Wagner opera--with the music constantly flowing and accented by leitmotifs. Unlike other well-known Puccini operas inspired by real life stories, this one with libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni is based on an invented fairy tale by Venetian magician Carlo Gozzi.

So what to do? The Dresser decided she needed a deeper understanding of Turandot, conducted some research on the Internet and then learned about Zubin Mehta's Turandot Project. In 1997, Mehta decided he wanted to mount a new production of Puccini's opera that cut out the clichés about Chinese people and culture. To do this the maestro went out on a limb and enlisted China's most controversial film director Zhang Yimou, best known to Westerners for his film, Raise the Red Lantern and who had never directed an opera before. Zhang apprenticed to Mehta during the Florence premiere and then after long negotiations with the Chinese government (the films of Zhang were censored by the Chinese government), the pair staged a more spectacular version of Turandot in a courtyard within the Forbidden City of Beijing.

So the Dresser left her blue upholstered computer desk chair and drove to College Park, Maryland, where she visited the non-print media section of Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland where she could see Allan Miller II's 87-minute documentary film on how Mehta made this "more authentic" version of Turandot. The renowned conductor said, "I wanted a China the outside world had never seen before."

GETTING INTO THE SKIN OF THE MUSIC MAKERS

In viewing a scene of the film where Zhang Yimou sits directly behind Zubin Mehta in a Florence, Italy, opera house (he is studying the maestro's every move), the Dresser suddenly flashed on having had a similar experience. In maybe the fall of 2003 with her poet friend Hilary Tham, the Dresser attended a performance of The Barber of Seville at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze. Their seats were directly behind Mehta. They were literally breathing down his neck. Since the Dresser had always pictured herself as a conductor in some other life where she was not a poet, she found herself seeing the opera through the conductor's every gesture.

In October of 2001, the Dresser spent a week with Ms. Tham visiting the haunts of Giacomo Puccini, Ms. Tham's favorite opera composer. This included the house he was born in located in the walled city of Lucca and his house in Torre del Lago where he is buried with his wife (not in the ground of the property but inside the house). Ms. Tham, originally a Malaysian of Chinese descent, told me Turandot was her most favorite of all Puccini's operas, something the Dresser is just understanding having stumbled into Mehta's collaboration with Zhang because of seeing Serban's production which, though quite magnificent, raised more questions than it answered.

Continue reading "Finding the Chinese in Turandot" »

New classical music concerts, the forum where edge really cuts, are often hard to find. Universities with a mandate for teaching composition and the money to back up that imperative are where these concerts erupt with flair. The Dresser uses the word erupt meaning, "to emerge violently from restraint or limits," because not everyone, including regular concertgoers, supports the untamed refusing-to-be-put-in-a-box programming. Recently the Dresser heard two such concerts, one at Catholic University with spankingly new compositions set to silent films and another at the University of Maryland with an eye to the history of Minimalism.

CREATING A RUCKUS

What the Dresser loves about the programs that are presented at Catholic University is that professors like Andrew Simpson take wild and whacky chances with newly conceived work. On March 11, 2009, the Dresser attended "Silent Explosions, Invisible Jumps: Music, Dance, and Film Create a Ruckus--A Multimedia Performance Event Inspired by Early Silent Films of Georges Méliès." This program, one of many during CUA's President's Festival of the Arts March 9 through March 22, explored silent film and live dance through an exercise of new musical composition. In fact, Simpson, a composer himself, instigated the commissioning of seven new scores that were to take inspiration from seven short films by Georges Méliès (1861-1938), a French filmmaker known for his early innovations in filmmaking. One of those seven, "The Luny Musician" is Simpson's composition--here's a professor who leads by example.

The set up for this exercise and ensuing program was fairly complex despite the inspiration being based on silent films ranging in duration from slightly over a minute to slightly over four minutes. The composers' assignment was to view the film and then create music that "supports the on-screen action of the film" (Simpson's description from the "Program Notes"). The music was then handed over to three choreographers to create dance from the music alone. The choreographers and dancers were not allowed to see the films until the evening of the performance. Because the films each had some element of dance, the idea was to see how much commonality blossomed between dance and film as translated by the music, but more so to see how the process of creation unfolds.

One additional layer was the music was played twice (once with the film and once with the dancers) by the talented Snark Ensemble, an instrumental chamber group dedicated to the creation and performance of new original scores for silent film. Two of the three Snark Ensemble members--Andrew Simpson (keyboards) and Maurice Saylor (woodwinds)--made up two of the seven commissioned composers. Perhaps, you, Dear Reader, are now shaking your head and wagging a finger at what seems to be an incestuous opportunity for CUA faculty (and there was a third commissioned faculty member Steven Strunk). Mais, au contraire, the Dresser counters. Given that all the composers only had four to six weeks to write the music and that the senior composers were willing to share the stage with the newbies as well as play all of the compositions, the Dresser sees the project as a freeing and joyful experiment in collaboration.

Of the seven musical compositions, the Dresser liked Steven Strunk's "Silly Music" the best. "Silly Music," an edgy and busy piece for the clarinet, was inspired by Méliès' 1901 film "L'antre des esprits" ("The Magician's Cavern"). The two-minute-55-second film shows the antics of a magician who animates such objects as a skeleton, which not only moves but dances. Dancer Elton Pittman and choreographer Shannan Quinn interpreted Strunk's music as a man bedeviled by some kind of flying thing that manifests in an active hand that zigzags around the dancer's head and pretty soon has him diving into break dance gyrations on the floor.

The Dresser was also impressed with the choreography of Shawn Short and associated dancers for John Maggi's composition "The Ballet Master's Dream" danced by Nicolette Jenkins and Dedrick Makle and for Simpson's "The Luny Musician" danced by Tisa D. Herbert and Prentice Whitlow. The Dresser felt the choreographer had a charming sense of the absurd and made good use of the limited time to show the prowess of his dancers.

While the Dresser did not hear any profound outpouring of the soul in the seven musical compositions, she believes that the sum effect, particularly with the added elements of the Snark musicianship and the live dance, will continue to ripple out in the universe to positive creative effect. Simpson's teaching methods in the field of new classical music deserve hearty recognition.

BANGING ON A CAN

What drew the Dresser on March 29, 2009, to the University of Maryland's Bang on a Can Marathon that included percussionist Glenn Kotche with two of five pieces inspired by Steve Reich was an appearance and performance by Terry Riley, creator of "In C" (1964) and, with that composition, the composer at the foundation of the Minimalist movement in music. He takes credit for influencing Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. While the Dresser remarked to her seatmate composer Janet Peachey that what they were hearing Riley perform (selections from his Autodreamographical Tales) reminded her of work The Kronos Quartet would present, the Dresser had failed to link together that she heard Kronos perform Riley's The Cusp of Magic last year and that she had recorded that Riley has had a long-standing relationship with David Harrington, the founding member of The Kronos Quartet, a group that first piqued the Dresser's interest in new music with their rendition of songs like Jimi Hendrix "Purple Haze." Of course seeing Riley perform, versus seeing another legendary group perform his music, creates an indelible impression.



Photo by Stuart Brinin

Continue reading "In the Realm of Silent Film and Dreams--Snark Ensemble, Terry Riley" »

Since June 2008 when she was in Paris, the Dresser has had the profound good fortune to see many exquisite collections of French and French-held art. Her stay in the City of Light included a full day at the Louvre and shorter visits to Musée de l'Orangerie des Tuileries, Musée d'Orsay, Musée Picasso, Musée Rodin, Musée du Luxembourg, and Centre Georges Pompidou.

ALONG THE CÔTE D'AZUR

Recently, the Dresser saw "Henri Matisse and Modern Art on the French Rivera" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition, curated by Michael Taylor and running through November 1, 2009, brings together the Museum's Matisse collection from his Nice period--said to be the largest group of his works from this period outside of France--and work from Matisse's contemporaries who were all attracted to the breath-taking coastline bounded by Marseilles across to Menton.


Raoul Dufy (French, 1877 - 1953), Window on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1938. Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 15 1/16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1967

Of the 40 paintings and sculptures drawn from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and two private collections, the Dresser was particularly impressed to see Matisse's brightly depicted odalisques in the company of works by familiar and not so known artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, André Derain, William H. Johnson, Raoul Dufy, Pierre Bonnard, Max Weber, Alexander Archipenko, Chaim Soutine, and others.

FAUVISM, CUBISM, AND EXPRESSIONISM

Besides her usual interest in the artists that surrounded Gertrude Stein, the Dresser was particularly set up for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Matisse and Modern Art on the French Riviera exhibition by seeing at the Luxembourg Museum a short-term exhibition of intensely colorful paintings revealing the underbelly of society by Fauvist Maurice de Vlaminck. Fauvism was a brief flash on the painterly landscape that evolved between 1900 to 1910 from Impressionism and Pointillism, particularly influenced by the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Georges-Pierre Seurat. Besides the emphasis on extreme color, Fauvism was characteristically two dimensional, primitive, and often influenced by African sculpture and masks. The leaders of Fauvism were Henri Matisse and André Derain. From 1905 to 1907, there were three exhibitions of Fauvist works. Other Fauvist painters of note (Les Fauves--what the painters of Fauvism were called--means The Wild Beasts) included Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault, and Georges Braque.

André Derain (French, 1880 - 1954), Portrait of Henri Matisse, c. 1905. Oil on canvas, 13 x 16 1/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1952

After Fauvism, came Cubism (formative years were 1907-1911) that evolved from the dimensional experimentation of Picasso and Bracque. One other artistic grouping of note around this period was Expressionism, which might be characterized by the artist's tendency to distort reality and result in a profound emotional reaction. Because the reach of Expressionism seems to have no clear boundaries in historical time (some scholars say El Greco and Edvard Munk are forerunners) and was not defined as a movement like Fauvism or Cubism, Expressionism is far harder to pin down in simple terms. The reason the Dresser brings up Fauvism, Cubism, and Expressionism is that all of three of these artistic categories arise in "Matisse and Modern Art on the French Rivera" exhibition.

While curator Michael Taylor threaded the exhibit based on geography, that is, the French Riviera, the juxtaposition of the individual works of art create a dialectic about artistic approaches and social issues that start perhaps with the decorative female figures by Matisse--the Moroccan-inspired odalisques--but evolve to Cubism (seen in this exhibition with works by Bracque, Weber, and Louis Marcoussis) and then move on to Expressionism (seen in the work of Chaim Soutine and William H. Johnson). As to social issues, what brought an end to the artistic life on the French Riviera was World War II. What's an interesting surprise is the discussion about anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution that crops up in the presentation of the portrait of Moise Kisling by Soutine. Another point of surprise was seeing Pierre Bonnard's "Homage to Maillol" which is a still life that includes Aristide Maillol's sculpture "Bather with Chignon" and on the gallery floor stands the actual Maillol sculpture.

FINDING UNEXPECTED JEWELS

The Dresser enjoyed seeing the work by Matisse, including the "Still Life (Histoire Juive)", but her two golden nuggets were "Leda and the Swan" by Marie Laurencin and "Cagnes-sur-Mer" by William H. Johnson. Although the Dresser (also known as the Steiny Road Poet) had included Marie Laurencin in her opera Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, she had never focused on Laurencin's paintings until she saw five of them up close at the Orangerie in June where they hang together in their own little gallery. Laurencin, who was the girl friend of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and one of Picasso's inner circle of friends, remains little known and to find her painting in Philadelphia of the lushily pink-lipped Leda in a transparent gown with a blue feather in hair petting a swan with both hands was a rare pleasure.

Continue reading "Exploring the Côte D'azur with Henri Matisse and Friends" »

Because the Dresser wears many hats, her reach is larger than the average critic in the following way. On February 13, 2009 as president of The Word Works, she was in Chicago at the Associated Writing Programs convention where she expected to hear composer Elizabeth Swados speak on the panel "Page to Stage: How Fiction, Non-Fiction, or Poetry Becomes Theater." Moderator Susan Terris commented that Ms. Swados was absent because her new opera was going into previews much sooner than expected and had remained in New York.

SNEAKING IN THE POET

In 1985, the Dresser merely known in those days as an undercover poet working for the Federal Department of Justice (yes, she had those credentials that she could flip open like an F.B. I. agent) attended the New Playwrights Theater (a DC theater company now defunct) production of Swados' music theater piece The Beautiful Lady, which focused on the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Despite never opening in New York, The Beautiful Lady won Swados a Helen Hayes Award. The undercover poet loved Swados' music and the whole ambiance of the Stray Dog Café where that story unfolds. Someone the poet was close to in those days (he is now dead) made a bad bootlegged recording of the live show. The Dresser wonders whatever happened to those cassettes, but knows they should have never been made in the first place. Now the Dresser notices that Swados does not mention this work on her website. Swados has clearly had much bigger successes with other work such as her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways.

Officially opening February 28, Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling's Opera concerns a wild child found on the streets of Nuremburg, Germany in 1828. The Dresser saw this high energy and emotionally loaded show February 19 in spite of the fact that producers and directors do not usually allow journalists into a show in previews. But then, on the other hand, the Dresser is not your ordinary opinion maker and had come to New York that weekend to promote Gertrude Stein's and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts.

In The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser, the author wrote that Americans fear poetry because it puts the reader in touch with his or her emotions and often leads to disclosure. Rukeyser also says poetry contains so much truth and encourages so much communication that people cannot handle the power of poetry. This is exactly the level at which Elizabeth Swados works.

DICKENS' ENGLAND OR HITLER'S GERMANY?

When the Dresser entered The Flea to find an empty seat, she had to walk across the staging area and close to Preston Martin already in role as the chained up teenager Kaspar Hauser. Kaspar was rolling a toy horse on wheels back and forth. Because Kaspar had been kept alone in a dungeon, the boy had not learned to speak.

Informed up front, the audience knew that Kaspar was stolen from his mother immediately after his birth. The mother was told he died and the audience sees her grieving throughout the play. Eliza Poehlman as Kaspar's bereaved mom makes a sympathetic performance in this role, but the Dresser wanted to get out of her seat and take the beautiful longhaired woman by the hand and put her face-to-face with Kaspar after he was released from his dungeon into public view.

The focus of Swados' opera, which has a libretto co-written by playwright Erin Courtney, is on communication, particularly as it affects truth. Throughout the opera, the people of the town where Kaspar emerges into the world are swayed by inflammatory gossip about the boy even to the degree that the crowd psychology made the Dresser think of Nazi Germany. Given the town is Nuremburg, site in the twentieth century of the trials for the prosecution of Hitler's leading government and military officials, the leap seems just as likely as thinking the setting with an unfortunate foundling could be Charles Dickens' London.

SWADOS' MUSIC: A FULL BODY WORKOUT

The power of Swados' music in Kaspar Hauser translates as a complete body experience, particularly when the cast known as The Bats belt out and move in a choral number. (The Bats make up the young resident company whose members get selected competitively and who perform in long runs of demanding classics and new plays at The Flea.) Even if the floor of The Flea were more rigidly stable, the vibration from the emotionally charged music and words would be enough to shake up everyone seated or standing in the house. In a couple of the mob scenes, the Dresser thinks Swados has created a scary rave where the crowd alternately looks like they are dancing in strobe lights or are raucously pounding the floor with their feet. Maybe like Elizabeth Swados, who had a difficult childhood, the Dresser is susceptible to stories where children are abused. Nonetheless, something more than child abuse happens in this work.

Continue reading "Kaspar Hauser: Opera for the Full Body" »

At this time, the Dresser would like to talk about scandals--as in trap, stumbling block, temptation.

TRAPPED IN CHINATOWN

Scandal #1, starting backwards in time on Saturday, February 7 at 11:15 a.m., the Dresser encountered three chicly dressed Caucasian teenage girls in a bus station in Philadelphia's Chinatown. As the Dresser entered the waiting room, one of the teens said anxiously, "Are you going to DC?" When the Dresser answered yes, the girl replied, "Good! At least there will be one other white person on this bus."

SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

Scandal #2 on Friday, February 6, 8 p.m., the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Dresser attended the world premiere of A Scandal in Bohemia, a new chamber opera
by composer Thomas Whitman with a libretto by poet Nathalie Anderson loosely based on Arthur Conan Doyle's short story by the same name. More about this full-length opera shortly.

WHICH HEAD--CRITIC, PUBLISHER, OR POET?

Scandal #3 concerns the connection the Dresser has to one of the co-creators of A Scandal in Bohemia. In 1998, The Word Works, a nonprofit literary organization of which the Dresser is president, awarded Nathalie Anderson its Washington Prize for her poetry manuscript Following Fred Astaire. The Prize included a handsome monetary purse, book publication, and distribution of said book to all contest entrants. Why is this a scandal? By itself, it is clearly an honor and a coveted résumé builder for any poet. However, in combination with a Dressing review of A Scandal in Bohemia, many purists would cover their eyes and ears, saying this is not comme il faut.

In the world of poetry and new opera, the reality is eventually everyone becomes friends or enemies. Unlike the anxious teenager on an outing away from her white neighborhood, the Dresser belongs to the artistic community she writes about and always is in a state of mental Rorschach--opera critic, poetry publisher, or poet writing opera? Who is the Dresser? The Dresser is the perpetual student interested in process and scandal. She believes she can add value by writing about Anderson's and Whitman's Scandal, especially because she collected inside information.

TAKING OUT THE MAGNIFYING GLASS

First, the Dresser will provide an executive summary. Running just over two hours and presented concert style with four principle singers playing seven characters, this opera is organized in two acts with a number of orchestral interludes. The story concerns British detective Sherlock Holmes, who is outwitted by an opera singer named Irene Adler. Scandal features one soprano and numerous baritones, including a base baritone. There are surprisingly no tenors, not even in the all male chorus.

The Dresser who spoke briefly to the composer said his musical influences are (and they can be heard in Scandal) Benjamin Britten, George Crumb, Gustav Mahler, and Guiseppe Verde. Additionally, the Dresser noticed that Whitman has a well-established investment in gamelan music, which was manifest in Scandal by the use of harp, xylophone, vibraphone, and marimba. In fact, Whitman's music for Scandal had many dramatic flourishes accented by percussion, but also by standout parts for the brass instruments and for the winds, especially the bassoon. While the opening bars of this opera are dark sounds by the strings, the prelude to Act II was bright and lively and fully engaged the ear and the body with its vibration. Celebrating its 20th anniversary season, Orchestra 2001, conducted by James Freeman, produced a satisfying concert attendant to the composer's emphasis on sometimes surprising texture created by percussion instruments. Orchestra 2001 Executive Director Ronald Vigue

Many comic moments expressed in the music (as well as the words and story) of the opera bring the necessary lightness and counter balance to the heaviness of the male voices. Markus Beam as Holmes vocally delivered the authority necessary for the great detective, but he was also effective in giving way to his emotions as the detective falls in love with the soprano he is suppose to be investigating for his client the King of Bohemia. Playing the King, a stuttering minister, and the narrator (known as The Reader), base baritone Julian Rodescu, gave visceral punch to his fine delivery. David Kravitz as Watson (the sidekick of Sherlock Holmes) and Godfrey Norton (the man Irene Adler marries in a mock wedding ceremony, a ploy to confound her former lover--the King of Bohemia) effectively plays the two male roles each in the shadow of a dominant character.

An important musical passage found on the Internet and taken from Irene Adler's mock wedding provides an excellent example of how the composer mixes the sacred sound of bells (gamelan-like sounds) with the mostly male voices. In this passage, the baritone voice of the detective (he is in disguise spying on Irene Adler), the comic base-baritone voice of the stuttering minister, the love-struck Godfrey Norton who really wants to marry the singer, and the anxious singer who seems to have something besides marriage on her mind come together with a giddy emotional load.

THE MASTERY OF THE MATRIARCH

Without question though, the star of this production was Laura Heimes as Irene Adler. Heimes has the vocal sureness necessary to be the only female voice among so many baritones. Perhaps this is unfair to note, but Ms. Heimes who was eight and a half months pregnant at the performance immediately drew the audience's attention. When she sat down on a chair in a scene where she, as the opera singer Irene Adler, was practicing the solfège syllables "ma me mo mu," the Dresser couldn't help noticing that those syllables elicited the primal maternal call and, not to mention, the gasp from a woman sitting behind the Dresser who was worried that the soprano was about to deliver more than an aria about the problems of being intimate with the Bohemian King. While the Dresser heard that Heimes held back in the dress rehearsal to protect her voice, in the premiere she demonstrated vocal control of an experienced professional at various sound levels. Most impressive was at the end of the opera when Heimes brought the level of sound down and had the audience attentively leaning in to hear her.

Continue reading "A Scandal in Bohemia, Chinatown & Elsewhere" »

Herewith the Dresser proclaims that the following is merely talkback to the informative review on the 18th century opera Le Déserteur her good friend and able colleague Charles Downey wrote for The Washington Post. In case you are wondering, Dear Reader, the Dresser saw Opera Lafayette's production of this comic opera by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny with libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine in the company of musicologist Downey on January 29, 2009, at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. But furthermore, the Dresser had no intention of writing a review herself because she is overbooked with travel, talks to present, and her own libretto which needs to be finalized for her collaborating composer.

THE BLAH BLAH AND JUMPS-IN-PLACE

So the talkback is this--while Dresser agrees that Le Déserteur is a minor work with mostly historic value, Opera Lafayette's production, done in concert style but with costumes, dance, and small props, gave the Dresser breath and serenity in her sea of overbusy. Briefly the story concerns a mean trick pulled on the young soldier Alexis who is in love with Louise. A local Duchess decrees that to test Alexis, Louise must mock-marry her daffy cousin Bertrand. In despair, Alexis tries to desert from his army post but gets sentenced to death.

Photo by Julie Lemberger

The Dresser disagrees with her venerable friend that the dancing and narrative assistance by Caroline Copeland was "perhaps superfluous." Au contraire, Copeland's mix of 18th century dance form with more modern ballet movement (and oh, how the Dresser loved the dancer's prim punctuating jumps-in-place) gave energy to what was mostly static stage presence of the singers. Another activity of the dancer was to present the titles (in English) of the scenes. She did this by placing large white placards on an easel. This was in lieu of projected surtitles and enhanced the French text and translation printed in the Kennedy Center Playbill.

HELAS--WHO CAN READ, WHO CAN SING?

One final action of this production was having the chorus (and yes, the Dresser noticed that Claire Kuttler who appeared prominently in John Musto's opera Later the Same Evening was the only female singer in the choral lineup) hold up the words for an audience sing-along. The Dresser realized that in trying to do her part by singing that Monsigny's music wasn't so easy produced from an unfamiliar tongue. Great respect and a doff of the Dresser's beret sweeps low to Dominique LaBelle as Louise and William Sharp as Alexis. And the Dresser must say she loved the charming number between David Newman as the young Montauciel and Tony Boutté as Bertrand, the simple cousin of Louise. One other thing not lost on the Dresser is the sub-text about how Montauciel who is the opera's narrator (the role is done by actor John Lescault and the singer David Newman) can just barely read.

In this time of diminishing reading and now, Dear Reader, have you noticed that not only has The Washington Post cut out arts reviews in their Sunday edition of the paper but they have also deep-sixed the Book World section? So here we are, people will say this is a problem caused by the success of the Internet, but we all know deep down there are many people in our current day world, like Montauciel, who just don't have good reading skills.

The Dresser leaves the talkback with Margaret Ingraham's poem "Satiety" from her new Finishing Line Press book Proper Words for Birds that has many poems about song. This one, however, ponders the question of the great beyond and whether we as humans have any control over our lives.

SATIETY

The shore birds
eat their fill
and yet still
never give themselves
over to the question
how tide decides
what to take,
what to leave.

Margaret B. Ingraham
from Proper Words for Birds

Copyright © 2009 Margaret B. Ingraham

Leading up to our 44th president's inauguration came Georgetown University's and American Opera Theater's production of Hydrogen Jukebox by Philip Glass based on a libretto of poems by Allen Ginsberg. On January 16, 2009, the Dresser had the pleasure of experiencing this Washington premier to a sold-out house in the University's Gonda Theatre at the Davis Performing Arts Center.

THE EYEBALL KICK

This song cycle, often called a chamber opera, made its fully staged premier in 1990 at the Spoleto Music Festival, which had also commissioned the work. The title Hydrogen Jukebox comes from Ginsberg's long poem Howl and the phrase is what Ginsberg called an "Eyeball Kick" --two unlikely things put together that might represent something weak with something strong, a mix of high versus low culture, a juxtapositioning of sacred versus profane. The collection of songs presents a portrait of America from the 1950s through the late 1980s and deals with such social issues as the anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, drugs, eastern philosophy, and matters of the environment. If another production gets mounted, do not bring young impressionable children because Ginsberg lets it all hang out in his colorful language.

What struck the Dresser immediately was how contemporary the piece seemed with its mention of Bush (albeit Bush Daddy and not the Decider son who has thankfully retreated back to his Texas ranch), Allah versus Jaweh, violence, drugs, same sex love songs (e.g. "The Green Automobile"), and the yearning for a natural landscape in the midst of a huge city. What also hit the Dresser foursquare was how accessible Philip Glass's music is in this 90-minute piece. The music actually seemed less repetitious than what is Glass's usual approach.

OF SLOW LIGHTNING AND COWBELLS

What the Dresser adored about the music was its whimsical soprano sax and often droll percussive sounds--lots of woodblock and cowbell taps. And yes, Glass does love percussion in spite of no percussion in his Gandhi opera Satyagraha. And the Dresser was indeed reminded of the music of Satyagraha in the opening number of American Opera Theater's (AOT) production of Hydrogen Jukebox:

Continue reading "Playing the Hydrogen Jukebox" »

So the Dresser, being bored with the music selection during a big dance party at a fabulous house in DC's Rock Creek Park this holiday season, asked her friend Victoria, what was the elephant deal? OK, here's what the two of them knew going in--the University of Maryland commissioned 500 Clown to do a new work. The work would be developed with selected students during a 500 Clown residency at the University. On December 14, the last day of 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal, the Dresser and her friend Victoria showed up at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kogod Theatre and in an effort to stay out of the action of the play, the Dresser carefully selected seats, knowing from having seen 500 Clown Macbeth not to sit up front or on the aisle.

NEW OR OLD?

In the director's note of the playbill, Leslie Buxbaum Danzig confesses that back in 2006, her group started working with composer/lyricist John Fournier on an idea to adapt Bertolt Brecht's play Mann Ist Mann (A Man's a Man) during a three-year residency at University of Chicago and this is how 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal at the University of Maryland got started. In Brecht's play, one of the characters asks, what is an elephant compared to a man?

Now, what about the elephant deal? OK, the Dresser isn't there yet, just like she wasn't one with the Cajun/zydeco selections at the holiday party. Here is what she knows about A Man's a Man. This comic play about a naïve man who is made into a killing machine premiered in 1926, but between 1924 and 1938, Brecht rewrote the piece at least ten times. One part of the play became a one-act surreal farce called The Elephant Calf. In The Elephant Calf, the naïve man whose name is Gayly Gay is a baby elephant accused of murdering his mother.

LOOKING FOR A PATSY

Are we there yet--the elephant deal? And why didn't the Dresser ask the hosts of the dance party to play more swing which is what she prefers? Dance etiquette says a dancer needs to shut up and follow; therefore she enjoyed the art on the walls and the pick-up live jamming of folk tunes being done in a backroom of the house. Now here's a sketch of what took place on December 14. Like 500 Clown Macbeth, the first order of business was for the players to interact with the audience and make late-arrivers to 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal part of the show. And this was pretty intimidating because the three players starting the show were dressed in army fatigues and like the opening of A Man's a Man, the soldiers were looking for a patsy.

MORE BUST PLEASE

The next scene (and mind you, all of this show is fluid with no intermission, no set changes, and no pause between scenes) brought Madam Barker (played by 500 Clown Molly Brennan) climbing into the audience from the back of the house (this happened in 500 Clown Macbeth too). She set up the play and acted as a middleman between the soldiers and the musicians who were at the back of the staging area. The setting is East Berlin, this is her cabaret, and she confesses to having done "some terrible things."

The Madam also asked the audience to invoke their imaginations to provide what might be missing, like the chair she planned to sit on. So while she went on about the missing chair, the soldiers scrambled in the darkened theater and plunked down a chair to the great "surprise" of Mme Barker who thanked the audience for their powers of imagination that had "moved matter" and then the madame pulled on the bodice of her blouse and said, "Now do my tits." (Bada bing! Ah, the burlesque!)

ALL THE ROADS TAKEN

A series of songs, some of them smooth jazz, some of them tango, some of them rock, ensued from this point including one that is about an elephant deal. Name-dropping--Myrna Loy, Oscar Wilde, Mack the Knife--happens. Quotations from known literary works occur--for example, from Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" came the line "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." And most importantly a patsy though not really a Gayly Gay (played by 500 clown Adrian Danzig) is found in the audience and his girl friend is dragged into the action of the play.

Eventually the music morphed from delicious original to stolen (shh, don't tell anyone!)--there are riffs on the samba song "Brazil" and "Jumping Jack Flash" (remind the Dresser some time to tell you how in Prague through her bedroom window, the Rolling Stones serenaded her with this song). The Dresser also was reminded of game playing by Cocky and Sir in The Roar of Grease Paint, the Smell of the Crowd--why? Because the rules of the game changed or a new game was called when the alpha male started to lose.

Continue reading "500 Clown Makes an Elephant Deal" »

This past fall, the Dresser entered the Living Room of Randy Hostetler where a tenth anniversary concert of experimental music played. Not without regret the event receded into the past before the Dresser could apply her fingers to her keyboard to make note of the October 13, 2008, program held at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. (Yes, this is the school where President-elect Obama is sending his daughters.) What has brought The Randy Hostetler Living Room Music Project concert back into view was a Library of Congress concert in tribute to Elliott Carter on the occasion of his 100th birthday December 11, 2008.
A number of people who either participated in or attended the Living Room concert also were seen at the Carter tribute concert reminding the Dresser of the earlier concert. Furthermore, one does not have to search very hard to see that concerts including the music of the wunderkind Randy Hostetler, who died at the age of 32, invariably showcase the music by the esteemed centenarian Elliott Carter. After all, experimental classical music commands a small but rarefied audience.

CARTER'S ONE HUNDREDTH

First the Dresser will talk about the more recent concert which was one of many mounted around the world in honor of Carter. Carter was in New York on his birthday at a tribute concert there. The Library of Congress program was spearheaded by composers Steve Antosca and Judith Shatin both of whom were premiering compositions inspired by Carter's thematic interests in time and wind. The McKim Fund of the Library of Congress commissioned both Antosca's and Shatin's new works. Antosca, as Artistic Director of the accomplished Verge Ensemble (all the musicians who played at the Carter concert were Verge members), was also the concert's co-producer with the Library of Congress.

TIME OUTSIDE OF TIME

Antosca's piece "kairos - time outside of time for violin, harpsichord, and computer" opened the tribute. The Dresser felt transported beyond Earth into space. But since the Dresser just read in John Adams's memoir Hallelujah Junction that there is "no music in outer space because there is no air to transport the vibrations," the Dresser must be influenced by György Ligeti's music in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A space Odyssey. Antosca's composition seems to be about texture and color, but the underpinnings are complex rhythms. Violinist Lina Bahn and harpsichordist Lura Johnson responded brightly to the computerized sounds manipulated by Antosca from the rear of the Coolidge Auditorium.

WRITING IN THE WIND

Next on the program were three separate compositions by Carter: "Scrivo in Vento for solo flute" played by Carole Bean, two movement from Eight Pieces for Four Timpani executed by percussionist William Richards, and "Enchanted Preludes for flute and cello played by Bean and Tobias Warner on cello. Of these three compositions, the Dresser enjoyed best the solo flute number that featured a fluid and seductive melody with odd bursts of tooting. "Scrivo" is based on Francesco Petrarca's (Petrarch in English) lyric sonnet and the Dresser understands the touting to be the wind interrupting the poet's writing.

Shatin's four-movement work Tower of the Eight Winds for violin and piano opened the second half of the program. For the Dresser, this was the pièce de résistance and she would like to hear this again. While Shatin is known for her electronic music, the instrumentation was solely acoustic. The Dresser characterizes the four movements of Tower (all named for specific winds) as follows: "Taku" (a gusty October through March Juneau, Alaska wind): intense, very emotionally engaging; "Barber" (a wind carrying freezing spray): delicate; "Caver" (a gentle breeze of the Hebrides): lyric, especially played by the agile Lina Bahn on violin; and "Williwaw" (a sudden blast of wind originating in the snow and ice covered mountains and moving forcefully through the Aleutian Islands and Straits of Magellan): soulful and strong.

The program concluded with work by Carter--two more movements from Eight Pieces for Four Timpani and A Mirror on Which to Dwell for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra. The latter composition is based on six poems by Elizabeth Bishop. The Dresser liked the setting of the fourth poem "Insomnia" and the fifth poem "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress." What appealed to the Dresser's ear in both of these settings was the musical texture. Particularly appealing in poem 5 was the voice of the clarinet. The Dresser thinks soprano Kathryn Hearden gave a reasonably good performance of particularly difficult music.

RANDY'S WAKE

By comparison, the Carter tribute seemed conservative in the wake of the Living Room concert where an empty armchair sat on the stage for Randy Hostetler. Here's a quick scan of what was presented with each composition's date of premier, composer, performing musicians and a short comment.

Kalimba (2005) by Karlheinz Essl, played by Jenny Lin on toy piano with CD playback. The Dresser was both fascinated and annoyed with this piece. It was hard to tell where all the sounds were coming from. At first the Dresser wondered if the pianist was playing accompaniment to a recording. Some of the exotic sounds seemed like those from a gamelan ensemble. In one passage, annoying ascending and descending scales seemed like a waterfall. In another passage, the sound produced was like a loudly ticking mantel clock.

Electric blue pantsuit (2007) by Alexandra Gardner, played by Jennifer Choi on violin and Gardner on computer. The Dresser found this piece satisfyingly textured with the violin and computer engaging in conversation that included minimalist riffs.

Short Talks, for Piano and Drum (2008) by Greg Sandow, played by Jenny Lin. Although the Dresser found this piece gimmicky--the pianist plays the keys with one hand while the other taps what looks to be a homemade drum that sits in her lap--the piano line was graceful and the drum accents appealing.

Continue reading "Celebrating Elliott Carter and Randy Hostetler" »

Before the Dresser can make any cogent remarks about Studio Theatre of Washington, DC's production of the Tony award-winning musical Grey Gardens with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, she needs to reconstruct why she wanted to see this documentary-turned-Broadway-hit.

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

Reason number one: she is favorably familiar with some of the operatic libretti by Michael Korie and most recently The Grapes of Wrath.

Reason number two: every political family in the public limelight has their back rooms of relatives who embarrass them. This was the case for the former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy whose aunt and cousin are the eccentric protagonists of Grey Gardens. As the United States moves closer to the day when President-elect Barack Obama moves into the White House, the issue of a problematic relative (a Kenyan aunt in trouble with the U.S. Immigration Service) has already surfaced. So understanding one political family's scandal often informs another's.

Reason number three: The show got ten Tony nominations, including Best Musical. The story has a life of its own. Besides being based on the film documentary, there are also two plays inspired by the story--Little Edie & the Marble Faun and A Few Small Repairs--as well as a film made for HBO by the same name. Furthermore, fans who saw the Broadway production multiple times were known to dress up in odd costumes.

NOT EXACTLY MOMMY DEAREST

Like the oddball film Running with Scissors, the story of Grey Gardens involves a would-be artist (poet in Scissors; singer in Gardens) who creates problems for her child. In both Scissors and Gardens, the man of the house quickly steps out of the picture. Both works are based on the lives of real people. The antics of real people are often more puzzling than fictitious characters and the Dresser likes to think about the complexity of puzzling characters.

The two-act musical with a prologue is set at the East Hampton estate known as Grey Gardens. The prologue and second act take place in 1973 and the first act, in 1941. The hinging event is an engagement party for Little Edie Beale and her fiancé Joseph Kennedy, Jr., the older brother of the U.S. president-to-be John F. Kennedy. At the party is prepubescent Jacqueline Bouvier and her younger sister Lee. The party is spoiled by the big Edie's intention to use the party guests as an audience for her singing performance, but worse occurs when Edie scares off Joe Kennedy either as a way to protect her daughter from Joe's chauvinism or because she (the mother) is jealous of her daughter's good fortune. The second act reveals an aged mother and daughter living together with an uncounted but impossibly large population of cats and raccoons among the ruins of the once splendid estate.

IS THE MUSIC CONTAGIOUS OR JUST THE COSTUMES?

The music like any popular Broadway musical is catchy and even infectious, but in that old way of musicals of the 1930s and '40s. Especially songs like "The Revolutionary Costume." By act II, Little Edie has morphed from a debutante sought by the most powerful men in the United States (other suitors were Howard Hughes and J. Paul Getty) to a whacky over-the-hill spinster who thinks wearing her skirts upside down (waistband at the knees, if you please, with the hem gathered up and tied at the waist) is a trendsetting revolution in fashion. The lyrics compliment the perky song. Here's a small snatch of Little Edie's fashion philosophy from this song: "The best kind of clothes for a protest pose is this ensemble of pantyhose, pulled over the shorts, worn under the skirt that doubles as a cape." Part of this number involves spoken dialogue such as this repartee about East Hampton, "They can get you for wearing red shoes on a Thursday. It's a mean, nasty Republican town." But hey! Although Jackie and Lee came back in real life to save their relatives from being thrown out of their house (Jackie put $25,000 into the house for repairs) for health code violations, the democratic relatives were more concerned about political embarrassment than the well being of their aunt and cousin. (And the Bouvier sisters were not seen or spoken about in Act II.)

THEN THERE IS THE MATTER OF DOUBLES

Barbara Walsh who plays Little Edie in the Prologue and the second act, but takes the role of big Edie in Act I, carries the show as the actress must in this play. She is convincing as the debutante's annoying mother who is trying to steal the attention away from her blonde daughter (played by Jenna Sokolowski). In short, Walsh covers the craziest roles with convincing equanimity. To someone like the Dresser whose mother for many decades could wear the Dresser's clothes and look good in them, having the same actress play the younger mother and later play the ageing daughter presented that torturous nightmare that elicits from the Dresser--Oh, my God, don't let me turn into my mother!

Continue reading "The Mysteries of Grey Gardens" »