Opera: Battleground of the arts; Ersatz opera
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- Transcript
In the year sixteen seventy eight sent every mon said Opera is a bizarre affair of poetry and music in which the poet and the musician each equally obstructed by the other give themselves no end of trouble to produce a wretched result. On the other hand one hundred years later Mozart said the best thing of all is when a good composer who understands the stage meets an able poet. In that case no fears need be entertained as to the applause even of the ignorant Riverside radio WRVA are in New York City presents opera or the battleground of the arts in this series of half hour programmes Borys called ASCII discusses some of the problems that beset operators and those who create and produce them. The programmes are produced in association with the gold of ski opera Institute for National Educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation. War is called ASCII is nationally known as an intermission commentator for broadcaster the Metropolitan Opera
and as an opera producer principally through the productions of The Gold ASCII Opera Theatre which have been presented in about 400 communities from coast to coast and now here is Mr. Gold of ski everyone who is fascinated by opera likes to talk about it and has opinions regarding it. These opinions can be classified as belonging to three general types. Personal reasoned and dogmatic. For instance I may tell you quite simply which are present I like and which I dislike or I can tell you why this is so. Give you my reasons for feeling the way I do. And then finally I can argue or even insist that what I like you superior or firstrate while what I reject is mediocre or even downright incompetent. Most everyone has strong personal preferences though not everyone bothers to discover why he has them. Operatic addiction develops rather slowly as a rule and personal opinions depend mostly
on very basic reactions and sensitivities. You may respond at first only to certain humans or to the beauty of certain voices. Some people like only certain styles of music and become very partial to certain composers. Some like Tony put Cheney or only Wagner. Devotion of this type can generate an aversion to music of other composers. Those who appreciate the harmonic subtleties of Tristan and farce of art are quite often very annoyed by the simple accompanying figures of certain Italian scores. Others who are charmed by the elegance and conciseness of French opera. I repelled by what they call the ponderous and exorbitant length of a new year in music dramas simple likes and dislikes can also be influenced by what happens to be fashionable in the 1920s when I was a teenager. It was proper to admire Wagner and Richard Strauss Mozart operas were considered a bit childish while Rossini and particularly
Dhoni ETI were not spoken off at all in proper musical circles. Their operas were so obviously inferior in every respect that it was bad taste even to be familiar with them. Nowadays almost the reverse is true for those whose they serve very narrow. One can recommend a simple remedy to try and familiarize themselves with the operas which at first they happen to dislike. In my own case I discovered that when I did not like certain works it was very often because I did not know them. My head was prejudiced against them simply because it seemed so much easier to reject these operas than to study them in the final analysis. No one likes everything but the average opera lover is you little nervous about his likes and dislikes. He wants to be reassured that his judgement is sound and that he has good taste. He wants to like the best. To find out what the experts think is the best.
And he also feels that it would be very useful to learn why the best is the best. This is where the expert comes into the picture. The expert's development is also gradual. He usually starts out by describing operas by analyzing their music and their stories. He collects interesting facts about the composers about their lives and the circumstances under which their operas were written. Like everyone else the expert also has his likes and dislikes. But being an expert he has a reason. He can explain why he dislikes certain types of stories or certain styles of composition and take me for instance. I dislike certain operas manhandle and certain modern works. Yes flaming angel for instance. I think I know why I dislike them. Handel's operas are too static and devoid of action and his harmonies are often much too bland for my taste. Handel does not give me enough harmonic contrast enough
chromaticism to me it is like eating food that has too little seasoning. If your claiming angel on the other hand is too highly spiced there is nothing but unrelieved dissonance. I thought at one time that by becoming more familiar with these two types of music I would learn to like them but they didn't quite work out this way. I did learn to love a few operas of Handel. This isn't Galatea for instance which I think is simply wonderful. I also grew very fond of certain operas of Procopio. He's due in the forest with most other operas of Handel and with the flaming angel it was no go. I listen to them occasionally but they still get on my nerves. I'm aware of course that there are many excellent people who do not feel the way I do. I'm surprised that they can enjoy these works. And perhaps I even envy them a little for their having pleasures where I feel lonely irritations. But I do not necessarily think that they are wrong to enjoy the things which I cannot learn to like.
But that is because I am not a professional critic and I do not have to enshrine my dislikes. I do not review performances of new and old operas. I do not write critical essays about different styles of music. If I were a professional critic I would perhaps also become dogmatic for it seems very difficult to escape this fate. The critic feels an obligation to promote what is excellent and to chastise what is incompetent and vulgar. The influential critic doesn't just say I do not happen to like this particular style of music or this particular opera. He feels constrained to educate the listener or the reader to prove to him that certain works and perhaps certain procedures of composers are inferior and unworthy. Of course not everyone who writes about opera expresses himself in this dogmatic vein. There are books and articles that analyze and describe Barry's works without classifying them into good ones and that ones such writing makes it easier for the addict
to become even more widely addicted. There is such volumes as Ernest Newman's stories of the great uppers here are books that can be recommended without the slightest hesitation to anyone who wishes to increase his understanding and his enjoyment of opera. Then there is also another and very attractive type of expert opinion in which the author wants to share with the whole world his enormous admiration for a composer or for a certain work who know the same who know who composed Faust and Romeo and Juliet wrote a whole book about Mozart's don't you have on me a book in which every sentence is worshipful and where go no points out specific details in most opera which he particularly admires. This desire to share one's pleasures with others is very strong and is I think the main reason why I like to lecture and talk about opera. I want to be sure that people don't miss certain things when they listen to the operas which I happen to love very dearly.
Let me give you an example from this very same going Giovanni since I admire it no less than go when Don begins her vengeance Aria. I always wait for the phrase where she reminds do not Tabio the moment when they found the body of her father. Remember the wounded his lifeless body. She sings. I recall the blood stained ground the local melody is ravishingly beautiful. But I cannot help but concentrate on the strains played by the orchestral instruments particularly on the contra melodies in the violas and the bows. And the old. Mozart orchestra. At this point going on the sorrow and emotional anguish in a fashion that is almost one and then the way in which this phrase almost modulated to F minor.
And the way in which the ANA fights her tears and returns via the turbulent the mind. With a Vengeance demanding the Major. All this is something that I want every opera lover to experience as I react to it. There are also in certain operas particularly those of Mozart's and there are
details of great beauty which are so short lived and fleeting that unless the listener knows exactly what to expect them he can very easily miss them altogether. In Mozart's book the effect on those audio one hour Amaro said there are two notes played by the notes which belong in this class of jams that one must anticipate and catch on the wing as it were. That then his opening sentence is a company only by strings and the harmony of the second measure is quite straightforward and simple. When this phrase returns in the second stanza the accompaniment is intrusted to the wind instruments and here in the second measure it. Plays a descending chromatic embellishment. That I feel is absolutely stunning. Both in itself and in the way in which he describes the
hour amo Rosa if you will you must love which according to federal emanates from his beloved rabbit. This whole indescribable in chant and lasts no more than two or three seconds and one has to be on the alert not to miss it. Here is the way it goes with a string the company went in the first stanza. And here it is with the winds and the chanting No. It is quite obvious that there is no problem in praising operas for their
creators. It is different however when we find fault with composers or performers. And when we have to write or read about it here we are confronted with several very insidious influences. The magic of the printed unpublished word. The desire to appear very knowing and particularly the temptation to express oneself cleverly and entertaining whether appears in print seems enormously more authoritative than what is merely spoken. So much of what we believe to be true so much of what we learn in childhood and in school has come out of books that we tend to respect the printed word and rely on it as if it were always the gospel truth. There are many concertgoers and opera lovers who do not dare to form an opinion of their own and have to wait until they read next morning's paper until they can decide whether they have like it or disliked some work or its performance. They know of course that what they read is merely the opinion of one person. But the fact of publication
seems to give it an infinitely greater weight. There is perhaps the unconscious suspicion that publishers would not dare to print it if it weren't so. If on top of it the writer is witty and entertaining he can be very persuasive. What happens quite often is that the critic demonstrates to the reader directly or indirectly that the work he dislikes falls short of certain proven standards of excellence. These standards often are quite fictitious and amount to nothing more than preconceived notions. But once the premise is granted the logic of the argument seems irrefutable. Here for example is what the critique of a respected paper in Torino Italy. A certain cardinal but I have to say the morning after the World Premiere of Puccini's La bohème it hurts me very much to have to say it but frankly this poem is not an artistic success. There is much in the score that is empty and downright infant tile. The composer should
realize that originality can be obtained perfectly well with the old established means without recourse to consecutive fifths in a disregard of good harmonic rules. But Wayne has not made a profound impression on the listeners and similarly it will not leave much of a trace in the history of the lyric stage. Mr Puccini will do wisely if he writes it off as a momentary mistake let him just consider the way I'm an accidental editor in his artistic career. It is fairly easy to reconstruct what must have happened early in the first act Mr Bures if you heard this passage. It's going to go to Canada since parallel fifths were
frowned upon by musical theorists of the time. The critic was annoyed by what seemed to him a deliberate and unnecessary breach of musical behavior. When the second act opened with trumpets blaring forth these very same parallel fifths Mr. Barry's it's you became even more irritated I was. And when the opening of the third act featured still another variety of the same impoliteness. Well then Mr. President you decided that Cheney was being inexcusably doing all this just for the pleasure of being offensive and that it was necessary to wrap his knock. Once a critic is in the throes of a strong reaction of this type he becomes for all practical
purposes blind and deaf. And instead of listening to the work in question spends all his time devising the cleverest and most biting wording with which to vent his spleen. Our habits past experiences and our lack of familiarity with the work may have a far greater influence on our judgment than we dare to admit. Furthermore if we like someone personally we tend to notice only his fine qualities while his defects even if we are aware of them do not bother us. Our favorite operas can be compared to friends we like to hear them over and over again and we forgive their weaknesses for the sake of our friendship with new and unfamiliar works it is very much as with people whom we meet for the first time. The immediate impression may be influenced by all sorts of accidents in the case of Mr. Barry's it's the OR and the first performance of it was very likely the irritation caused by those parallel fifths. What gives his review a special amusing twist of course is the can descending tone and the uninhibited
prophecy that Boeing would be promptly forgotten by the musical world. Such a blunder in prognostication is not the exception. Of course many clever people have misjudged the potential vitality of new works. Even as perceptive a music critic as George Bernard Shaw pulled an occasional boner in connection with Brahms as a requiem. Shaw pontificated as follows. Brahms Requiem is so extra crudely and ponderously dull that the very flattish to funerals would seem like a ballet after it and the studied cleverness of his phrasing make shows a glaring lack of perception doubly painful. But the fact that the work has survived the test of time and has been acclaimed by audiences for over half a century does not necessarily make it immune to critical assault especially if the critics preconceived notions are sufficiently potent. The worldwide popularity of Puccini's Tosca has not protected it against attacks which are usually based on some assumed grew out of the game the rules of which the composer
never heard and which he had no intention of obeying. In a very brilliant and highly regarded book written comparatively recently the author has very unflattering things to say about Puccini's Tosca because this opera does not fit with the author's idea of the correct relationship between music and drama. The author is a professor of music and one of our leading universities assures us that cover of Dorothy's last act Aria is Morkie Stoff because first solo is simpering that the last page of The Opera is pointless that the musical continued in general is coarse an arbitrary and that the musical picture of Tosca is consistently throughout of graphic music but ality frankly I see no purpose in all this and piling up these nasty adjectives. Certainly is not going to convince anyone that the drama and the music of Tosca is either pointless or arbitrary. Preconceived notions unfortunately come in a great variety of shapes and sizes and afflict the
best as well as the worst of us. One of the most sensitive and influential of all writers and music critic Edouard hand Slik had very strong feelings about the limits of what could properly be called beautiful of what was aesthetically permissible in the realm of music coarse and vulgar effects irritated beyond measure. And so when he heard his violin concerto he wrote as follows. Of its final movement the finale transfers ass to the brutal and rapture jollity of a Russian holiday. We hear curses and we smell of vodka. This violin concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear. Having a very sensitive musical ear Huntly can recognize the energy the colorful rowdiness and the earthy smell of this finale. But most music lovers will surely disagree with his conclusion that these qualities make it bad music and the country. These are precisely the ingredients that made this finale such an
exhilarating and exciting musical experience. Notice that where one slick wrote of music that stinks to the ear. I spoke of the earthy smell of this music. This shows you how relatively small nuances in verbal expression can make all the difference in the world. I mentioned earlier that all authors like to be
witty and entertaining. This is particularly true of critics who write for newspapers where they want to be read even by those who have little or no interest in music but who enjoy clever writing at the time when George Bernard Shaw wrote musical reviews for The Financial Times of London. He used to boast that he could make death stockbrokers read his two pages and music. Ernest Newman whose common objective volumes on the great operas I mentioned earlier could be extremists are cast again by King in his weekly report to the Musical Times of London reviewing Stravinsky's Symphony for wind instruments and noting that it was dedicated to the memory of the VC Neumann wrote. I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy so much as this if my own memories of a friend were as painful as Stravinsky's of Debussy. I would try to forget him. Such cleverness. Well very entertaining for the reader is very wounding for the victim of the remarks in his
biography of the composer. More this Tchaikovsky tells us that his brother was so greatly upset by Hans Blix review of his violin concerto that he remembered it to the end of his days and kept quoting it from memory. Word for word and this minute in spite of the fact that this concerto quite soon became very popular both with violinists and with audiences. I feel that composers and performers should develop a greater awareness of the insidious character of the printed word wiki remarks which the casual reader forgets in a matter of hours are remembered by the person against whose work they have been there ECT and can continue to fester and poison his mind for years to come. Artists have a natural and understandable curiosity to learn what the general public is reading about them. It is much wiser however to let these utterances be read by others and to receive only generalized reports as to whether they were favorable or not. Observe that none of the opinions I have quoted in today's programme have been held by a
stupid or insensitive people. On the contrary these were brilliant men men of superior musical judgment who occasionally have lived to regret their hasty utterances. For instance when Richard Strauss was a very young man he wrote the following to a friend of his. The grade was abominable. Not a trace of coherent melodies. It would kill a cat and would turn rocks into scrambled eggs from fear of these hideous discord. Many years later Strauss had to defend himself against this youthful indiscretion by writing. Couldn't this tomfoolery of a silly schoolboy be forgotten once and for all. Why I should hope that the seven performances of parcels that I recently conducted had by Roy it should earn me a perpetual absolution for these idiotic useful transgressions. All this demonstrates a basic unimportant fact namely that all of us are
limited in our understanding. He says you know our judgment slow to learn. Biased in favor of the few things which we like and with which we are familiar and instinctively hostile to everything that seems alien to us particularly when it threatens to become successful. We should also keep in mind other things which we admire today are not necessarily that much where the marring the most successful opera ever written or tomorrows a secret marriage. It made such an immense impression at its premier that it had to be encored in its entirety on the very day of its first performance. The news it is laughable. There was a league great success 100 years ago it was the only work that the Paris grand opera had to perform every single year for over 30 consecutive years. And yet neither of these operas have survived the test of time. And although they are by no means inferior works I imagine that not too many of our listeners have been fortunate enough to hear live performances of either one of them. Is this surprising. Furthermore
how often in the course of the years a biting remark boomerangs and bites the biter instead of the intended victim should be reviewed today for his remarkable perspicacity is known chiefly for his judged attacks and Richard Wagner. That's very cleverness has become his punishment and instead of admiring his wisdom most of us continue to be amused by such remarks as the pro-U to Tristan and Isolde. Reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly on wound from his body on a reel. I can think of no more fitting way to end today's program than to listen to the music which inspired Hans Blix the mortally intemperate statement. And. Noon.
Her. You've been listening to opera the battleground of the arts with Boris gold off the nationally known operatic commentator producer and scholar opera the battleground of the arts is produced in association with the Goldust gay opera Institute by a w r b r the noncommercial cultural and information station of the Riverside Church in New York City. Producer Walter Shepherd production assistance and technical operations Peter Feldman and Matthew Bieber held readers on this week's program were Robert Morris Walter Sheppard and Carl Schmidt. Next week for the final program in this series Mr. Gold on skees topic will be opera in our time and a grant from the National Home Library Foundation has made possible the production of this program for a national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
- Episode
- Ersatz opera
- Producing Organization
- WRVR (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
- Riverside Church (New York, N.Y.)
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-833n131f
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-833n131f).
- Description
- Episode Description
- This program focuses on some of the problems that beset operas and those who produce them.
- Series Description
- A discussion series, hosted by Boris Goldovsky, that examines the welding together of music and drama, two distinct arts, into opera.
- Date
- 1967-04-16
- Topics
- Performing Arts
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:29:48
- Credits
-
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Host: Goldovsky, Boris
Producing Organization: WRVR (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Producing Organization: Riverside Church (New York, N.Y.)
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-11-12 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:52
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Opera: Battleground of the arts; Ersatz opera,” 1967-04-16, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 7, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-833n131f.
- MLA: “Opera: Battleground of the arts; Ersatz opera.” 1967-04-16. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 7, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-833n131f>.
- APA: Opera: Battleground of the arts; Ersatz opera. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-833n131f