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About operaman
Name
Stephen LlewellynBio
Stephen Llewellyn worked with Portland Opera for nearly four years and still produces this blog on a weekly basis. You may see him manning the Portland Opera table at the Metropolitan Opera High Definition transmissions where he enjoys chatting with like-minded Saturday morning opera fans. Do stop by and say 'hello'. He has been a barrister in Hong Kong, a professional folk singer and classically-trained tenor. He makes a mean zabaglione, and cries easily and frequently at opera performances.
Opera and Other Links
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross of the New Yorker
What I Am Reading
In Patagonia (Bruce Chatwin)
Memoirs (Da Ponte)
The Librettist of Venice (Bolt)
Ship Fever (Andrea Barrett)
Le Grand Meaulnes (Alain-Fournier)
Beethoven. Letters, Journals and Conversations
What I am listening to as I write this week's post...
Magnum Mysterium (Lauridsen)
Nixon in China (new recording)
Vanessa (Barber)
John Martyn
Leon Redbone Christmas Album
Christmas With The Yours (Elio)
Mozart Requiem (arr. for String Quartet)
Tosca (Callas)
Till Eulenspiegel (Strauss)
Welcome back, Maestro!
Legendary director, Tito Capobianco arrived back in town over the weekend. Once more he is here as the Jeannine Cowles Distinguished Professor of Opera. He is here to direct this year's Portland State production of Franz Lehar's operetta The Merry Widow. Last night we dined together at the home of a dear friend of mine, Goldyne Rubin, and I did my best to catch up on his activities over the last year. It would seem that one of the high points of his year was visiting St Petersburg to judge a vocal competition. He told us that the breadth and depth of the talent he saw there outstripped almost anything he had experienced before. Unfortunately, the singers apparently lack good vocal technique. But, as I pointed out, you can teach technique, you can't teach talent (or, as basketball coaches would have it, you can't teach tall)!
Sig Capobianco will direct his first rehearsal of Merry Widow tonight. He has asked that I attend, as he seems to think I may be of some use to him. As this production is being sung in English he suggested that I might help with diction issues. I shall do whatever I can for him, naturally, and will report to you as the production goes along. The picture above is of Tito and I, taken last year - while I still had the beard!
Romeo and Juliet
Over the course of the last four hundred or so years, Romeo and Juliet, a story of doomed love, has seen many and varied iterations: Shakespeare's play, of course, a ballet set to the music of Prokofiev and an opera by French composer Charles Gounod are among the many forms the work has taken. Inevitably, the basic story has been amended from time to time. The first production of the ballet was intended to have a happy ending. That idea, at least, was sensibly nixed. (Sidebar: Ambroise Thomas' opera Hamlet, currently in production at the Met and also to be performed at Washington National Opera in May, began its life with a 'happy ending', the name role not dying as we have come to expect.) San Diego Opera is currently producing Gounod's Romeo and Juliet. I asked my friend Ed Wilensky, Director of Media Relations with that company, whether they would be having a happy ending in this production. He assured me that in this show, the people who should die, do die! Then he sent me the link to this clip and I laughed and laughed.
And you thought the glass armonica was a weird musical instrument!
Last week I received an email from an opera-obsessed telling me that the library at Reed College is currently playing host to a theremin. This instrument is unique in that notes are produced without the player having any tactile connection with the instrument whatever. Rather than try to explain to you how this instrument works, a task I am not sure I could actually accomplish, I would suggest you read this article from Wikipedia. Then watch Clara Rockmoe, one of the very few virtuosi on this instrument, play The Swan from Saint-Saens' The Carnival of The Animals.
Eerie, and yet strangely attractive, don't you think? Lea has invited me to go to Reed and play the theremin there. I shall go and let you know if I am able to produce any reasonable sound.
The beauty of the un-amplified human voice...
...is one of the things people go to an opera performance to experience. Very occasionally, an opera will call for the use of microphones to achieve a particular effect. For instance, John Adams specifically called for mics in some places in his opera Nixon in China. Sometimes, though, directors try to sneak one by us, using microphones hidden about the person of the singer and trying to pretend there is in fact no amplification. Sound systems being what they are, things can go wrong, leading to the chicanery being exposed (ask Milli Vanilli or Ashlee Simpson). Here's what happened at a recent performance of Andrea Chenier in Madrid. For those of you whose Spanish is not fluent or you cannot make out what is going on on this audio, you may want to get up to speed by reading this account.
Ouch!
Portland Youth
Philharmonic
Philharmonic
I attended the PYP Winter Concert on Saturday night. I am not going to review the performances here, but will leave it to James McQuillen to tell you how it was, in his right-on piece in the Oregonian. All I want to say is that the concert was every bit as thrilling as I had hoped, and that I am increasingly in awe of these wonderful young musicians and what Maestro David Hattner is able to bring forth from them. Bravi tutti!
Have a happy and productive week!
Enjoyed your interesting item
Enjoyed your interesting item about the theremin. My grandfather, father and mother were all in the private radio business here on Prince Edward Island and would certainly have understood the technical side of this amazing instrument. Looking forward to hearing about your hands-off attempt to play one.