Archive

Matthew Gurewitsch's Blog

Lost and Found: Call Me Siegfried

News is not everything. Recently, a correspondent contacted me about an article of mine on the phenomenon of the heldentenor. Her particular interest was in a specimen of the breed named Siegfried Jerusalem, whom—unbeknownst to her—I had profiled years ago for the New York Times. Hoping to forward the article, I looked it up in the newspaper's electronic archive only to discover that it does not appear there. As a reality check, I fished out a hard copy dated March 8, 1992. The title as it appeared in the Times was "A Siegfried, Not In Name Only."Otherwise, what follows is a verbatim transcript.

When the Metropolitan Opera taped Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" for its 1990 telecast, one man who was in no hurry to see it was the Siegfried, Siegfried Jerusalem. "It's a nice thing for my children," the German tenor said in a conversation at the time, his shaggy blond curls and low-key manner making a gentler impression than his sturdy build and imposing height. "I'll take a look at it some day. But I'm very critical. The money isn't much. It's nice for the family and to be what they call famous. But what good it does you, you don't know."

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Mon, February 1, 2010 9:50 PM  |  Permalink

Nimble Fingers, Nimble Spirit: In the Wings with David Fray, Pianist

On December 3, 2009, the 28-year-old French pianist David Fray made his New York Philharmonic debut with a crystalline, poetic account of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G under the elegant baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Given his track record, the young firebrand with the slender frame, the tumbling locks, and the decisive stride was inevitably the object of more-than-routine curiosity. In 2008, BBC Music Magazine voted him Young Musician of the Year. Already, he has attracted the attention of filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon, auteur of award-winning documentaries on pianists including Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, Piotr Anderszweski, and Francesco Libetta; the Fray portrait, Swing, Sing and Think, is available on DVD from Virgin. His recent recordings, on Virgin, number highly individual yet never wayward CDs of Schubert and of Bach keyboard concertos, led by the pianist from the keyboard. On another provocative disc, he coupled Bach with the brainy Boulez. One reads of Mr. Fray's "antics" at the piano, which, combined with his interest in Bach, have put commentators in mind of Gould, but of eccentricity or mannerism, there was really no trace in his Ravel with the Philharmonic, and in every way, his was one of the sunniest debuts of recent New York concert seasons.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Fri, January 15, 2010 9:25 AM  |  Permalink

A Bridge of Two: In the Wings with Christian Camargo and Juliet Rylance

The Bridge Project, a three-way theatrical venture of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Old Vic, in London, and Neal Street Productions, based in the UK, is now in its second season. Once again, actors from the United States and the United Kingdom will be touring internationally with two plays, both directed by Sam Mendes. The repertory this time is all-Shakespeare: As You Like It (January 12-March 13) and The Tempest (February 14-March 13).

Two new faces in the current cry of players are causing a special buzz: the American Christian Camargo, 38, and the British Juliet Rylance, 30. In As You Like It as the lovers Orlando and Rosalind, and in The Tempest as the indentured spirit Ariel and as the wide-eyed Miranda, reared on a desert island, and now on the threshold of a brave, new world. Their assignments have changed since the season was originally announced, most notably in that they in As You Like It, they will be playing lovers. Is art imitating life or the other way around? Or is it better not to ask? Once inside that maze of mirrors, there's really no exit.

Mr. Camargo, a Juilliard graduate who broke out as Hamlet last spring with Theater for a New Audience, calls acting the family business, going back three generations. His pre-Hamlet résumé includes the title role of Shakespeare's Coriolanus in a previous TFANA season, supporting roles on Broadway (David Hare's Skylight, Arthur Miller's All My Sons) as well as in TV and film. In the inaugural season of Showtime's hit series Dexter, he enacted the serial-killer hero's long-lost brother, a serial killer in his own right. He has also done Shakespeare and other classic drama at the Globe Theater in London, an open-air replica of the Globe Theater as the Elizabethans knew it.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Tue, January 12, 2010 11:36 AM  |  Permalink

A Diva Remembered: Sandra Warfield (1921?-2009)

Born Florence Jean Bornstein in Kansas City, Missouri, Sandra Warfield enjoyed a long and wide-ranging career in opera, concert, and cabaret. The story of how we met is woven into the following reminiscences, delivered at a memorial tribute at the Lotos Club in Manhattan in late September. For readers outside the circle of family and friends, let me introduce two others mentioned in the text. Jimmy was the heroic tenor James McCracken, Sandra ' s husband and frequent stage partner, especially unforgettable as Verdi's Otello. Ahna is Sandra and Jimmy's daughter, a friend since we were children. Our contact had been regrettably sporadic for many years, but it was my great good fortune to have a reunion with Sandra shortly before her brief final illness, at lunch in a Greek diner around the corner from her Upper East Side apartment, where the staff treated her like a queen. Despite her frail physical condition, her joie de vivre, generosity, and curiosity were as infectious as ever. What was more, she looked like a million dollars — and decades younger than her actual age, whatever that was, exactly. (She never told.) Thanks to Ahna, her husband Peter Bogyo, and their son Jamey for the honor of sharing these recollections of a great friend and artist. On all counts, she was one of a kind.

I have it in writing from Sandra Warfield. I was her worst critic. She underscored the adjective, twice.

Opera got its hooks into me when I discovered the Victrola in the musty basement apartment of my grandparents' summer home in the Adirondacks and started cranking it up to listen to Caruso, Chaliapin, and Galli-Curci. A few years later, my family moved to Zurich, where I discovered opera on stage. And the living singer who was soon to make the most indelible impression on me was Sandra.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Sun, December 20, 2009 8:50 AM  |  Permalink

Follow me! (Learning to Love Twitter)

Over the past six months, to go back no further, several experiences got me thinking about matters I wanted to share with the world at large. Conflicting editorial obligations in the twilight zone of print left no time to follow through, so here I sit with a long list of notes for projects unfinished for the cogent reason that they were never set in motion.

A case in point. Early July brought a jaunt north of the Arctic Circle for the International Festival of Chamber Music, held on a remote Norwegian archipelago of breath-taking beauty (http://lofotenfestival.com). To hear Bach or Mendelssohn under the midnight sun, free of the biting insects that are the plague of the Far North, as shadows of brass chandeliers stole across the walls of historic churches—this was as close as it gets to bliss.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Wed, December 2, 2009 2:15 PM  |  Permalink

Soul of Memphis: In the Wings with Chad Kimball

The venerable Shubert Theatre, with its Venetian façade, 90-plus-year history of classic musicals that includes Pal Joey, Kiss Me, Kate, Can-Can, A Little Night Music, A Chorus Line (the Big One, with 6.137 performances), and Spamalot, has audiences cheering the new show Memphis. Here's a company synopsis of the story, said to be based on true events:

He's a young, white radio DJ named Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball), whose love of music transcends race lines and airwaves. She's a black singer named Felicia Farrell (Montego Glover), whose career is on the rise, but who can't break out of segregated clubs. When the two collaborate, her soulful music reaches radio audiences everywhere, and the Golden Era of early rock 'n' roll takes flight. But as things start to heat up, whether the world is really ready for their music - or their love - is put to the test.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Fri, November 27, 2009 4:15 PM  |  Permalink

New York City Opera, Rising from the Ashes?

Determined as New Yorkers seem to be to pretend otherwise, the rebirth of the New York City Opera in November offered little cause for celebration. After a year in the dark, the company's always precarious finances are decimated. Of five productions this season, four are revivals, none is cast with name talent, yet the cost per performance hovers almost exactly at an astronomical $1 million. An apples-to-apples comparison with the City Opera's mighty next-door neighbor the Metropolitan may not be possible. Yet consider this. The Met presents world-class singers and conductors, charges higher prices, and has a capacity of over 1,000 more seats. Making no allowance at all for the expense of producing nearly 150 audio and video broadcasts per season, the Met spends well below $800,000 per live performance. In the circumstances, the City Opera's old label of "the people's opera" seems peculiarly delusional.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Tue, November 17, 2009 7:45 AM  |  Permalink

Blue Man Siegfried

"Wer stört mir den Schlaf?" (Who troubles my sleep?) Awakened by the Wanderer's calls, the unseen Fafner refuses to budge from his cave, but at the sound of basso Eric Halfvarson's voice, the entire auditorium takes on a sunset glow. In the mind's eye, he looms like a mountain. But when at last he bounces into view, the dragon we see—on strings, like a puppet, in a gold top hat, puffing a plutocrat's cigar—is no larger than a baby crocodile: a new toy for Siegfried, who falls to his knees in boyish delight. Siegfried, for his part, is part Tarzan, part Little Prince. He ties his yellow hair in tufts that stand straight up. He wears shaggy trousers of teddybear skin. His face is chalk white, with pencilled eyebrows arched high in permanent amazement. His bare blue torso rivals California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Thu, October 1, 2009 2:22 PM  |  Permalink

Salzburg Festival - Motherhood and Red Apple Pie

Luigi Nono's Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore

In tones of empathy and tenderness, Luigi Nono's sprawling oratorio Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore celebrates the brave women, historical and imaginary, who have dedicated their lives to the cause of Communism or perished in the struggle. Any performance is an occasion, and the Salzburg premiere last night was no exception. But if Nono's attitude of nostalgia seemed quixotic in 1975, when the piece was new, it seems positively perverse today.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Mon, August 3, 2009 1:57 PM  |  Permalink

A Suit Called Maximilian

Form, function, fashion: armor of the "Maximilian" type fuses all three in perfect harmony. An instant modernist icon four-plus centuries avant la lettre, the Maximilian is as wickedly sleek, harmonious and self-sufficient as the museum-worthy Juicy Salif, Philippe Starck's lemon squeezer for Alessi, which it nearly resembles. The only apparently decorative touch is the fluting on the closed helmet, torso, arms (complete with metal mittens), and legs to just below the knee. It is thought that this detailing was meant to evoke the pleats which were then the height of fashion.

Continue to full text of posting...

By Matthew Gurewitsch  |  Tue, July 28, 2009 11:30 AM  |  Permalink