From a vault in Paris: The sound of opera in 1907

International Herald Tribune ^ | February 16, 2009 | Alan Riding

[saganite]

Well, I was drunk the day my Mom got outta prison.
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train.

[Maceman]

You would be astonished as to how many music lovers there are here at FR. But how can that be ? I thought we were gun toting, Bible holding, tobacco chewing, pickup truck driving.. philistine hicks.

[texmexis best]

“You would be astonished as to how many music lovers there are here at FR.”

The only thing better than bad Opera is good Opera.

[Borges]

Bruckner died in 1896 so it’s hard to say he was a 20th century composer. :-) The 1870s is too modern for you? That’s when Bruckner was already writing his great work.

[Borges]

I met Ross at a lecture and he signed a copy of that book for me. His next book is apparently a study of how Wagner influenced pop culture. Everything from ‘Lord of the Rings’ to Heavy Metal.

[Darkwolf377]

That sounds interesting. Wagner truly is a huge influence on pop culture, his idea of an all-encompassing artform sure is appealing to a lot of filmmakers who can’t achieve that.

[Darkwolf377]

BTW, what did you think of the book?

[Borges]

Loved it. The chapters on Pierre Boulez were fascinating since he's currently the Conductor Emeritus of the Chicago Symphony and see him conduct every year. Might see him in a couple of weeks. He's 83 years old now and still refuses to conduct a large chunk of the repertoire he doesn't think is worthwhile (Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovitch).

[libh8er]

Bruckner died in 1896 so it’s hard to say he was a 20th century composer. :-)

Let's say Bruckner's music was advanced for his time :) .. like Beethoven's late quartets were for their's.

[Darkwolf377]

That reminds me of what Orson Welles (I’ve been studying him lately, have read a dozen books about him in the last two months) said about directing and other arts, how youth and old age are when the best works are created. He pointed to conductors—Stokowski, and a couple others—who were in their prime in their late 70’s and 80’s.

[keepitreal]

This will be very interesting to hear.

I think what will surprise a lot of modern opera listeners will be the size of the voices. We have grown so accustomed to every role being sung by powerhouse voices - I think we will hear a much different type of voice at the turn of the last century.

[Borges]

It was. Do you dislike Wagner and Mussorgsky who were also proto Modernists?

[Borges]

There’s a collection of vintage recordings that actually have Tchaikovsky’s voice on it. I never knew he had been recorded.

[Borges]

And Wagner’s music was the primary influences on film scoring.

[Darkwolf377]

Yeah, with the influx of European composers around WW2, you heard a lot of that Wagnerian leitmotif stuff.

[Darkwolf377]

Am a huge film music fan, btw.

[keepitreal]

That would be interesting to hear!

I actually love old opera recordings - Mary Garden and the like.

[MeekMom]

Thanks for the pink sitetest. :)

[Borges]

Aaron Copland was always perplexed that composers chose the leitmotiv system for film scoring. He claimed it only made sense in the opera house where people sitting in the balcony could be told by a theme which character is walking on stage if they couldn't see her. But in a film you could have a close up. He thought film music should be more abstract and his was like that.

[Darkwolf377]

Jerry Goldsmith once said he didn’t use that method because he didn’t think the audience could absorb that many themes while watching a movie. He chose the “theme and variations” approach. While I enjoy much of Williams’ output, Goldsmith has always been my favorite. His scores have a cohesion that is startling, and then when you examine what he’s doing, he’s taking ONE theme and putting it through these variations you “get” but don’t really understand unless you think about it. (The love theme in his score for FIRST KNIGHT, for example, is the main theme played in a different key and tempo.)