Viva La Cieca

Please, please read these memorial tributes to James Jorden—editrix (in his cyberdrag persona as La Cieca) of the notorious Parterre Box queer opera zine—by Zachary Woolfe in the Times and Ben Miller in Van.

Like me, Ben and Zach have risen with generations of opera queens who came of age reading James's proto-Gawkeresque mix of tawdry gossip and incisive criticism, and whose relationship to the art form was shaped by his insistence that the opera house could be more than an Apollonian temple of white marble, that the music drama at its heart it was a real, living thing, filthy and demented and campy and nasty and sexy and sublime.

Years ago, I was asked by the Opera News, the official Metropolitan Opera Guild magazine that James would ultimately—Liza Minnelli-like—outlive, to write about opera resources on the internet, and one of the reasons I'm now embarrassed by that article, as I am by literally everything I have ever written, is that in my brash and rebellious youth, I secretly believed that there was only ONE resource on the internet that mattered, and it was Parterre.com, and I didn't do a very good job of hiding it. 

James was endlessly supportive of the opera bloggers who came after him, including myself. He not only inspired me, he encouraged me, he published me, and he linked to me here and everywhere else I was writing. I can never repay him.

I'm so embarrassed by the way James and I drifted apart. Remember that viral video—was it in Vanity Fair?—in 2017, where a magazine asked their staff what they thought Hillary Clinton should do now that she'd lost the run for President, and one of them said she thought Hillary should take up knitting? James, who had been pro-Clinton in the primaries, fumed on Facebook that it was ageist and sexist and so forth, and I, a Bernie Bro, found it funny and really not all that offensive, and he blocked me, and we were both too proud and petty to re-friend each other again. I always felt stupid looking back on it, but never as stupid as I do now, writing this and crying a little—not for James, of course, who in the influence and inspiration he offered lives on forever, just as surely as he jolted opera back to life for so many of us, but for myself, at having let my old, old, old friend slip away from me forever.

So let's not dwell on that. I'd rather think of that night, years (and years and YEARS) ago, after the opening of an Ariadne revival at the Met (please don't read my stupid review of that, either), when James presided over a roundtable of (then-)young gay opera bloggers, including Zach and me, at that restaurant just off Lincoln Square, and told us, "Looking at you all, I think I know what it must feel like to have children," and I think he did, too. He was the mother of us all. 

Composerly Memes

laskdjfals;fjals;dfjsalfkj I have been SO LAZY lately, I scarcely blogged a blog all summer. My big excuse is that I finally wrote my first article for a glossy magazine and I've been stressing over that but really it's a short article and a pretty puny excuse. Also I helped my brother move to Texas! Scroll down the right-hand column to see the bitchin' lamp we got for his new office. But that is also a puny excuse since the whole time I was in the car I was revising that article.

By the way all of my interviewees for that piece were SO GREAT, I can't believe how much amazing material they gave me. It was pretty painful to distill pages of brilliant comments from James "La Cieca" Jorden and Zachary "Z-Wolf" Woolfe into the itty bitty handful of quotes I could actually shoehorn into the article. Which brings me the other thing I've written lately, this pair of reviews for La Cieca, of discs from the James Levine 40th Met anniversary boxsets: Berg's Lulu, Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. You'll want to click through; some great comments await. A sample:

So provocative! Clicky clicky.

Cieca's comments also got me to thinking again about the ways in which composers are and aren't oppressed by mainstream classical institutions. Apparently Caleb Burhans' string quartet for JACK was actually Boo'd, at Darmstadt? Which is on the one hand distressing (were they booing it on the grounds of style alone? or was the piece actually bad?? neither of those is a very happy possibility!) and on the other hand, forget it, JACK, it's Darmstadt-town. Somebody told me that the Kronos Quartet was boo'd there before they even sat down; after the performance, they shook the dirt off their tevas and never looked back. If that story's true, MORE POWER TO KRONOS. Y'all don't need those bitches. (I mean, can you IMAGINE booing someone BEFORE THEY PLAYED?)

In some respects, what seems like systematic institutional discrimination is really just built in to the institutions—the perennial complaint, for instance, that only "academic" composers are recognized by academia; well, duh!—and there's no way around that tautology except to wait for that battleship, whether it's The University or The Symphony or The Festival Scene, to slowly turn your way. (Okay actually there is one way, and fortunately a lot of people are doing it nowadays, which is to get your friends together and pilot your own sleek little dinghy into those uncharted waters you've got your eye on.) And sometimes you will actually, personally be kept down by composers who find your music ideologically unacceptable, such as in (PDF) this article John Halle wrote about what a jerk Mario Davidovsky was to him. He makes a pretty convincing case!  Mario Davidovsky:  jerk.

A combination of the above factors has produced a surprising number of bitter, bitter boomers and post-boomers. What's great though is that those people's students, having been told that there are no stylistic Wrong Answers, are increasingly setting out in fleets of those metaphorical dinghies. Look at Corey Dargel! I know I keep harping on him, but that's just because he's one of my super duper favoritest composers in the world right now. Or in other words, if he would like a pull-quote for his press materials: Each new song from Corey Dargel only reinforces my sense that he is one of the most compelling and important composers emerging from the New York scene. I'm still kicking myself for having missed the reading from his new opera (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), The Three Christs, this past Monday, and someone should probably kick ME for having totally failed to review his new record yet despite its having come out like last year or something. (I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL REVIEW IT, I'VE JUST BEEN… BUSY.)

But one interesting thing about his success is how few of the conventional trappings have surrounded it. Yes, he has written for starry new-music institutions like the American Composers Orchestra and the newer but no less starry International ICE Ensemble, but mostly he's been putting on concerts in nightclubs, by himself or with a handful of friends, and putting out largely D.I.Y. records on independent labels. He basically embodies the notion that you young composers don't need to chase the DMA, the prizes, and the professorship in order to be able to make the music they want to make.

(Lest we romanticize the situation over here, let us also note that for many composers, while "making the music they want to make" might be very important, things like "comprehensive dental insurance" might also be very important, and it's pretty nasty to have to trade that stability for the opportunity to make meaningful art.)

And so while I am totally OVER hearing established, middle-aged composers with tenure or glamorous commissions or whatever complain about what victims they are because they got one bad review someplace (I'm not even going to name names here; you can fill in the blank), I do have to cringe whenever I hear America's most Dargelicious composer picking up their old refrain, with tweets like this about the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's open commissioning thingie, Project 440:

Because FIRST of all, isn't that kind of a mean thing to say about the composers who made the finals? Actually, now that I look at it, the rhetoric he's using borrows a lot from the old modernist bullies—the finalists are "mundane," not "innovative" enough.

On the face of it, this would seem to be the "tautological" complaint. Why isn't Orpheus (most famous for recording, like, Handel's Water Music and the Mozart wind concerti) commissioning more out-there music? Well, they're not a new-music ensemble; they really don't hang out on the cutting edge. But have they really chosen such boring composers? If I could pick four winners out of the final 12, here's who I'd probably go with. This decision is totally subjective and shockingly non-binding:

1. Timothy Andres, composer/pianist, bright young star on Nonesuch Records.
Facile comparison: John Adams.
I'll admit I've never been shocked by Andres's music, but it seems like a good fit for Orpheus, and frankly, it's incredibly well put-together. Listen to this stuff, both of these pieces are really kinda moving:

2. Tyondai Braxton, rock star, plays with BATTLES on Warp Records.
Facile comparison: Frank Zappa.
I was never a huge fan of the BATTLES LP, but I have to admit Braxton's style meshes incredibly well with the sound of a chamber orchestra in these clips. Exuberant to the brink of kitsch; maybe even (dare I say!) subversive?

3. Alexandre Lunsqui, Brazilian awesome person.
Facile comparison: Dude, I don't know. Somebody from Europe?
Okay now HERE are some unfamiliar orchestral effects. This is crazy! What's even going on here! This is very exciting! Alexandre Lunsqui should be famous!

4. Andrew Norman, Modestonian pianist/composer.
Facile comparison: STOP IT, LEAVE ME ALONE, I DON'T KNOW
I am IN THE TANK for Norman, having admired his music immensely since I was a young 'un (btw I'm sorry this list is All Male and includes not one but Two pianists from Yale), and he's such an intensely self-critical and publicity-shy composer that it causes me a spasm of physical pain to hear someone gripe that he isn't enough of an "innovator" to deserve his little bit of success, but all the same, I hope you'll agree that it's not just me, that his music is quite well-wrought, lively, and satisfying to the ear:


I mean, right?? These are all good composers! Everyone one the list whom I DIDN'T name is a really good composer! They would all write something awesome for Orpheus! Let's just relax, everybody. Young composers, I want to see a little bit less of this

and a whole lot more of this:

Right?

Discuss.

The Ring in 300 Words

Attention, everyone: THIS is how you review an opera for the newspaper. The Post's James Jorden gives us the plot (one sentence), a critique of the production (two sentences), an evaluation of the conductor (one sentence), and an assessment of the various singers' musical and dramatic performances (most of the review). And of course, along the way, a Child's Garden of Zingers:

Director Otto Schenk's widely admired production follows the stage directions literally, achieving the elaborate but unconvincing realism of a theme park. Instead of pondering moral issues, the audience marvels that styrofoam can be made to look so much like granite. ... Half a century on the operatic stage has hardly dimmed [the legendary Placido Domingo's] lustrous tenor; unfortunately, neither has it refined his gibberish German.

and for the win:

World-class bass René Pape (Fasolt/Hunding) sounded tentative, even timid. The "Ring" is no place for sissies.

Side note: Is anyone else weirded out by how terrific Domingo's Wagner singing is at the age of 68? There are dudes literally half his age who would sell their souls to sound this good. Here he is in L.A., via Tim Mangan:I can't help but wonder if, gathering dust in an attic somewhere, there is a painting of him in increasingly awful voice.

NSFW Opera Update

I know it was a week ago now, but La Cieca did post, along with a tasteful is-that-a-shadow-or-is-that-your-scrotum nude photo of barihunk David Okulitch, the rumored 2009-2010 season of the New York City Opera, George Steel Edition, and I know you've all been holding your breath until I weigh in with my opinion—seeing as I've already put my money on Maestro Steel as opera impresario. (Oh look, and the Times confirmed those rumors today. "I'm hopeful we'll return to our right size," says George Steel, which if you're reading this, John Ashbery, please use that line in a sonnet.) Well, I'm going to keep my thumb in the Up position, for the time being. This is a nice, short season—five operas, 33 performances—and it's exactly the stuff that you want to see the City Opera doing. It's their niche: Okulitch sings Don Giovanni in a new staging, we blow the dust off Charbrier's adorable L'Etoile, we get our Puccini fix with Butterfly, we get Handel's Partenope because City Opera did Handel before it was cool, and we get Lauren Flanigan singing the title role in Hugo Weisgall's Esther because Lauren Flanigan IS CITY OPERA. Wait hold on did you just say Hugo Weisgall's Esther? YES I DID. Well the reason I ask is, how often do you think about Hugo Weisgall's Esther and here it's come up in conversation like three times for me already in 2009. First I thought of it when chatting about The Death of Klinghoffer with the Straussmonster, apropos of this conversation—she I had both read Robert Fink's intriguing article on Klinghoffer's reception (PDF here because Robert Fink is not afraid to share—AWESOME), and he uses Esther as a sort of control subject for the public and critical reception of Jewishly-themed operas. Then for the Timeses "Talk to the Newsroom" feature, somebody asked Anthony Tommasini what opera did he most want to see produced in New York, and he was all, "I wanna see Hugo Weisgall's craggy, atonal Esther!" And now here it is getting produced. I'd say that he must be in Hog Heaven but clearly he will not be in Hog Heaven until they finally produce Wuorinen's Brokeback Mountain, an opera that promises to be craggy, atonal AND strapping. Speaking of which, I've saved the best news for last. Someone seems to have uploaded footage of either the Met's gripping new production of Trovatore or the earlier, identical production at Chicago; it's a short clip, and the sound doesn't quite synch up, but it's worth a peek for anyone who didn't get to see Tony T's new favorite "Anvil Chorus" live. UPDATE: Some have complained that the embedding didn't work; link here.

SLAG RAG BAGS ZINE QUEEN

Wait, what?? Parterre Box editor James Jorden is writing opera reviews for the New York Post?? The bad news: The word-count seems smaller than at JJ's gig with the Gay City News. And now all discerning opera lovers will have to [shudder] patronize the Post. The good news: JJ's prose is, I say, more potent in small doses. His GCN reviews were never anywhere near as flabby as those Times scribes', but if you've read the blog, you know that he was born to deliver a single devastating line and walk away—and somehow, maybe I'm getting a little romantic here, his sordid, old-New York sensibility fits in marvelously with the sort of thing the Post always wished it was. They need somebody classy, for God's sake, now that Liz Smith's given her notice, and maybe JJ can show that sack of shit Sean Delonas that not all gay people are a bunch of stubbly, cross-dressing weirdos. Oh, wait. Well, anyway, the New York opera scene is better off with a bona fide expert covering it for one of the city's most-read papers. And that damned paper is better off for having landed one of the world's finest opera journalists. So, everybody wins. Bravo, JJ!

Four Text Messages

1. Last night, out of the blue, Maury D'Annato:

Did your hits just go way up?

What? Why do you ask? Did—WHOA, I just got my first-ever link from La Cieca, the world's greatest opera blogger! This is, dears, the classical music blogging equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. I'm still a little dizzy. Did La Cieca just compare me to Alex frickin' Ross? And yes, for a hot minute my hit counter went through the damn roof. 2. Night before last, I got this message from one of my Gregs, who's caught Eighth Blackbird on their tour of the West Coast, reading simply:

OMG bearinettist = dreamboat.

Y'see people?? I do not lie. Now okay, that right there speaks for itself, but later Greg also shared some very interesting thoughts on the Reich and Rzewski pieces we discussed earlier, so remind me to tell you all about it. 3. & 4. Did you hear that Glenn Branca was one of two electric guitarists to win $25,000 grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts? Well the other electric guitarist was this Mick Barr guy, who is from around here! So I txt msg'd my friend Kyle, the lead singer of Mick Barr's old band, for comment:

Haha! Knowing Mick, he'll spend it on Danzig bootlegs.

A minute later:

Or a deluxe ant farm.

He's kidding, people, he's kidding! He loves the Mick Barr! And his music. Although, weirdly, when I listen to Barr's records, they kind of sound like they'd be made by somebody who could manage spend $25,000 on either Danzig bootlegs or a deluxe ant farm. Or maybe somebody who could tell Philip Glass that Two Pages (for Steve Reich) needs a little more focus.

Nico vs. Cieca?

Have I mentioned how very much I love Parterre dot com? Well I do, I have read it religiously for years, and frankly it's taught me more about the world of opera than any other single resource I've come across. That's probably a bad thing. But I don't have much to add to moderatrix La Cieca's two cents on Nico's forthcoming theatrical project except to point out the in my not so humble opinion Uncanny resemblance between playwright cum librettist Craig Lucas and Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne. Who's with me, here? Anybody? Anybody? Okay never mind. At any rate, I was charmed to meet Lucas at Nico's Merkin shindig a while back, especially since he introduced himself as a fan of my blog! Then I ran away from him, fast, because frankly, from what I've read in my comments section, all of you people are completely insane. So he didn't get a chance to introduce himself, and I probably owe him an apology. Well, two apologies, now. And I was going to end this post right there, but then this afternoon I was chatting with a friend of mine and Nico's who seemed genuinely upset by the drubbing N got over at Parterre. Understandable. Look again, though. Of course the comments section is going to be a Haters' Ball, that's what comments are for. I have said nasty, nasty things under various pseudonyms. What's impressive is that many of the opera queens have leapt to the defense of what, on the face of it, seems like the least operatic project ever: teenagers staring at computer screens. Recently our doyenne has fretted over whether her Parterre Box has become an echo chamber; I think she can rest easy. (Nico himself responds here.) That said. Can we please squelch the kvetching, right this instant, over whether this opera will be, like, Bad for the Gays? Even if it turns out to be a piece of crap, and (in my again not so humble but highly biased opinion) I don't think it will since I like what I'm hearing about it from the Muhly Camp, I don't think that gay composers writing gay opera in the year 2008 really need to be worrying about the burden of representation. The pendulum has swung far enough, by now, in the direction of insipid Will & Grace shiny happy nonsense that I don't think we need to hesitate before we set down depictions of gay life—for the, let's face it, 60% gay, 40% gay-friendly new opera audience—that are ugly, disturbing, and yes, tragic. Also, this comment made me titter and hee. Thank you that is all.