This year, we haven't managed to get over to the opera yet (though we will be going for my birthday in March). But thanks to our wonderful friend Barbara, we were able to sneak into two dress rehearsals. For me, this has been to experience a dream come true. Years back, I worked on TDK's social contributions activities (Part of my job was into translate their "TDK Times" company magazine for all stakeholders in the company). TDK really did some great things. Some favorites were their tree-planting activities, which involved the recovery of an entire forest with all employees from the CEO down to the janitors taking part to plant, fertilize and tend the forest over many years) and their sponsorship of student attendance at opera and symphony rehearsals.
Ever since then I had always wanted to experience a rehearsal. At LA Opera, the final dress rehearsal is a run through. You don't get to experience the "music making process" since by the time we get in, it is already perfect. But, the seats--OMG! Best seats in the house. And it's fun to watch all the people working below on laptops, and photographers everywhere, taking stills. I love being there--no I PREFER-being there at rehearsals for what it lacks in the magic of the big audience it makes up for in personality and fun.
The first rehearsal we went to was Kosky's “The Magic Flute.” We had already seen it in 2016 and LOVED the projected artwork, which was like silent film or Berlin or Berlin Babylon. I love Kosky, though the staging for me overwhelmed the singing--not the orchestra though.
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Last night we got to see Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice.
COMPOSER / CONDUCTOR
Matthew Aucoin
LIBRETTIST
Sarah Ruhl
DIRECTOR
Mary Zimmerman
EURYDICE
Danielle de Niese
FATHER
Rod Gilfry
ORPHEUS
Joshua Hopkins
ORPHEUS'S DOUBLE
John Holiday
HADES
Barry Banks
Last night we got to see Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice. Was so disappointed not to get to hear Danielle de Niese, as I have always wanted to hear her sing live. Three items of note in this one for me:
1) This was a first to be at a world debut with the composer conducting. You could imagine how exciting it would be back in Mozart's day--with him up there conducting and fretting.... with the inclusion of popular "tunes" to delight the audience. It was VERY EXCITING. Aucoin is so young.... born in 1990--one year after our daughter! There were moments reminiscent of Glass' Ahknaten--my favorite modern opera. But Aucoin is not creating repeating soundscapes. By the end, while his music had gorgeous moments, I never felt that it became a real opera. I felt the music to be subordinate to the drama--almost like film music, albeit better than any film music I know of--but it never rose beyond the play.
See this NYTimes review for the way the music followed the play.
2) I love Ruhl's play. She created it after her father died. I was very moved by everything. How many times, since my own dad died, have I wished I could ask him something or share some news with him. I know just how she felt... to dream of being reunited with her father again. And, she gives a fresh take on the myth--never look back. When I left Japan, many of my friends--for some reason it was my fellow translators-- urged me to reconsider. Maybe they knew how impossible it would be for a woman in mid-life with no work experience in the US to reinvent herself. When I finally did take the leap, Jeremy said, "Whatever you do, once you make the leap, never look back again. Not ever." His words puzzled me...
Ruhl describes watching a performance of Eurydice in Germany. She couldn't understand a word and the staging was so strange--but she said, she could understand every word because the actor spoke with wonderful rhythm... she followed everything. And she recalled something Virginia Woolf had written to Vita Sackville West, that "Style is a very simple matter. It is all rhythm." And this from an interview in the New Yorker: One night, at the Lincoln Center production of “The Clean House”—a tale about an unhappy Brazilian maid looking for the perfect joke in the midst of her employer’s family ructions—Ruhl sat unrecognized behind an elderly couple. “I didn’t not like it,” the woman said after the houselights came up. “I didn’t not like it,” her gentleman friend chimed in. “They turned to me,” Ruhl recalled, and asked, “ ‘What did you think?’ I said, ‘I didn’t not like it, either.’ ”
3) A new counter-tenor. Brooks really helped walked me through the recent history of the counter-tenor voice. I fell in love with it when I heard it for my first time in Aix a few years ago--and then this year, for us, was really the year of the counter-tenor, since we got to attend Bartoli's Whitsun festival in Salzburg this year which was dedicated to the music of the counter-tenor. I wrote this at 3 Quarks: Gender-Bending Rock Stars: Counter-Tenors, Castrati And The Wild And Crazy Baroque. We were so excited to hear Jarousky again, as well as the amazing Max Emanuel Cencic (OMG!). Brooks told me that Bejun Mehta (her fav) is coming to LA in 2021! Anyway, last night we heard acclaimed American counter-tenor John Holiday. Not my preferred voice and I didn't feel it worked well with the baritone. As those were the main duets, wasn't bowled over... but also happy to hear something so unique and rare.
LA Times Review: It talks almost nothing about the music itself Aucoin’s orchestra roils, and he here conducts with a new sense of graceful authority. Instruments are used with imagination. The percussion section is large, active and striking when it needs to be. Sonic effects keep up the interest and variety. There’s a little something for everyone in the score, from intimations of Vivaldi, to Puccini, to Philip Glass and particularly John Adams, to Gregorian chant, to a glimpse of rock and the sound of radio static."
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