It’s the Plural of Opus

Every January I used to host a Super Bowl party. My mother, brothers, and a few friends (mostly lesbians) would be upstairs screaming at the television and having a riotous time; I’d be downstairs in the kitchen refreshing their drinks, making tacos and other party food. I told everyone I was listening to opera so they wouldn’t bother me.

I must now confess that was a lie. I don’t own any opera recordings. Well, I have The Threepenny Opera and Sweeney Todd, neither of which has any dialogue, so I guess it really depends on what your definition of “opera” is. I have been to only one true opera in my life — opening night at the Washington Opera’s production of La Bohème — and that was only because I won free tickets. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but the few operas I’ve watched on television have bored me, and I haven’t made it all the way through.

Which makes it all the odder that I would dedicate an entire day to opera music. I promise you, though, that these won’t be hard to listen to. In fact, they’re now such mainstream pieces that you’ll probably be bored to hear them again. But at least one of them will be a fun surprise.

La Wally is a four-act opera written by Alfredo Catalani in 1892. The opera is best known for its aria “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana,” sung when Wally decides to leave her home forever. It was featured prominently in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s film Diva.

The opera also features one of the most memorable operatic deaths: the heroine throws herself into a passing avalanche.

Louie the Opera Dog likes La Wally too. At least, I think he likes it:

“The Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’s opera Lakmé is best known for its use in British Airways commercials and in such shows as The L Word, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, The Hunger, and (ahem) Lara Croft Tomb Raider.The story is set in the late nineteenth century British Raj in India, when many Hindus have been forced by the British to practice their religion in secret. Like many other French operas of the late 19th century, Lakmé captures the ambience of the East that was in vogue during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its complex melodies are Delibes’ signature.

The famous part starts about 1:20 into the video.

“Nessun Dorma” is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot. (“Turandot” is a Persian word meaning “the daughter of Turan,” a region of Central Asia that used to be part of the Persian Empire.) The story of Turandot was taken from the Persian collection of stories called The Book of One Thousand and One Days, not to be confused with its sister work The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

A mysterious and handsome prince appears in the kingdom. The emotionally distant Princess Turandot has proclaimed that everyone in her kingdom will go without sleep that night unless she learns the name of this unknown prince. He in turn challenges her that, if his name cannot be discovered by morning, the Princess will marry him. “Nessun Dorma,” which means “None Shall Sleep,” is a boast that their efforts to discover his name will be in vain.

It was the signature aria of the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and was sung at his final performance, the finale of the Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. The largest curtain ever built was opened to reveal him on the stage, wearing a black cape embroidered with silver Olympic rings. The aria ends with the victorious line, “At dawn, I shall win!” The tenor’s performance received the longest and loudest ovation of the evening.

Here’s Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” in Paris in 1998:

Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) is an 1863 opera in three acts by Georges Bizet. While not nearly as popular as his more famous Carmen, it contains a wealth of attractive music and has found some popularity despite its exotic libretto. The tenor-baritone duet “Au Fond du Temple Saint” is the most famous piece from the opera; in a poll in which Australians voted for “the one moment in opera they could not live without,” it was at the top of the list.

The scene is the coast of Ceylon. Zurga, the newly elected leader of the little world of Cingalese fishermen, has scarcely been inaugurated when Nadir, a long-lost friend of his youth, appears. After greeting one another with affection, the two men sing rapturously about falling in love at first sight with a beautiful priestess of Brahman as she was revealed to them for an instant in the dim, incense-clouded temple. For each it was an almost mystical experience.

Once again, the best part starts about 1:40 into the vid:

One last treat: the only Bugs Bunny short in the National Film Registry. It’s “What’s Opera, Doc?” — master animator Chuck Jones’s tribute to Wagnerian opera in the context of a classic Bugs-Elmer conflict. In 1994, the piece was voted #1 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by 1000 members of the animation field.

Four Beauties

We’re down to our last five posts. Today and tomorrow will be some classical favorites; then a couple of surprises just for Indigo; and two exquisite days of Broadway (Sondheim and Bernstein).

The four beauties I’ve chosen for today are related only in their extraordinary lyricism. I’ve arranged them chronologically.

French composer Gabriel Fauré’s “Pavane in F-sharp minor” was written in 1887 for orchestra (chorus optional). Obtaining its rhythm from the slow processional Spanish court dance of the same name, the Pavane ebbs and flows from a series of harmonic and melodic climaxes, conjuring a cool, somewhat haunting, Belle Époque elegance. The piece is scored for only modest orchestral forces consisting of strings and one pair each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns, but it is found in many different arrangements (for piano, for guitar, for woodwinds, etc.)

When Fauré began work on the Pavane, he envisioned a purely orchestral work to be played at a series of light summer concerts. After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Countess Élisabeth Greffulhe, he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers).

A “straight” version from the Berlin Philharmonic:

A fun and interesting take on it from Jethro Tull:

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” was published in 1912 and was the last of his Fourteen Songs. Written for voice (soprano or tenor) with piano accompaniment, it contains no words, and is usually sung entirely to the vowel “ah.”

The popularity of “Vocalise” is so great that it has been arranged for many different instrument combinations: orchestra; solo soprano with orchestral accompaniment; choir and orchestra; solo piano; two pianos; solo violin and piano; solo cello and piano; solo double-bass and piano; solo flute and orchestra; saxophone; trumpet; trombone and piano; electronic instruments; theremin; clarinet, violin, and piano; and solo accordion.

Here is famed lyric soprano Renée Fleming performing “Vocalise” (such a shame that the video is just a series of slides instead of a filmed performance):

Another “ah” song. The Bachianas Brasileiras are nine suites by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, written for various combinations of instruments and voices between 1930 and 1945. Each represents a fusion between Brazilian folk and popular music and the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. Most of the movements in each suite have two titles: one “Bachian” (Prelúdio, Fuga, etc.), the other Brazilian (Embolada, O Canto da Nossa Terra, etc.). His most famous of these is No. 5 for soprano and 8 cellos (1938/45), the Aria / Cantilena (or “little song”).

Here are Amel Brahim-Djelloul (soprano), Gautier Capuçon (cello), and the Orchestre du Violon sur le Sable conducted by Jerome Pillement:

Finally, American composer Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” his most popular piece, began as part of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, composed in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent the piece to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, and Barber was annoyed and avoided the conductor. Later Toscanini sent word through a friend that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it. Toscanini premiered the work later that year in New York. Barber also did a vocal setting of the piece, which he called “Agnus Dei.”

In 2004, Barber’s masterpiece was voted the “saddest classical” work ever written by listeners of the BBC’s Today programme, ahead of “Dido’s Lament” from Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and the “Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony. It is frequently played on television during times of national tragedy; it has, for example, become associated with the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath of Katrina. It can also be heard in films such as Platoon, The Elephant Man, El Norte, Amélie, Lorenzo’s Oil, and Reconstruction. Because of this it is used in several episodes of The Simpsons in scenes lampooning sadness and destruction (“Strong Arms of the Ma” and “Marge Gamer”).

I like it anyway.

I didn’t care for any of the videos, so here is the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, performing the “Agnus Dei” setting to film clips and animations of various nebulas and comets and such:

Best of Breed

Bobby McFerrin’s collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma was wonderful, and he did a great video with Robin Williams and the brilliant actor and clown Bill Irwin, but for my money, this song is one of his best:

I adore a cappella music. There’s something about the human voice, naked and unadorned, or at least unaccompanied, that is terribly moving. My first exposure to it was Barbershop music and Doo-Wop. The King’s Singers are credited with promoting interest in small-group a cappella performances in the 1960s. The Swingle Singers took the lead in pop music.

In the ’70s and ’80s, I started singing Renaissance music (Josquin des Prez, Palestrina, John Dowland, Orlando di Lasso) and madrigals (we recreated the court of Henry VIII for a banquet in college; I was Henry, and had all six of my wives alive and at table with me at the same time).

A cappella music attained renewed prominence from the late 1980s onward, spurred by the success of Top 40 recordings by artists such as The Manhattan Transfer, Huey Lewis and the News, All 4 One, The Nylons, and Boyz II Men. Then came Rockapella. Their popular success was primarily due to having done several catchy commercial jingles (Folger’s, Almond Joy) and children’s shows, like PBS’s excellent “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”:

However, this is perhaps a fairer representation of their style, if you can overlook the late 1980s clothing and hair styles:

The Bobs are, for me, the best of the breed (that’s also how they got their name: the BOBs, a term derived from dog competitions). The original members met while employed as deliverers of singing telegrams. The group is known for humorous original songs and avant-garde arrangement techniques. Instead of covering more traditional doo-wop songs, The Bobs started out with songs like “Helter Skelter” (The Beatles) and “Psycho Killer” (Talking Heads).

Here’s the song that started it all:

Although two of their albums are dominated by covers, the overwhelming majority of their repertoire is original, with songs discussing diverse subjects like lunar cattle farming, sleepy bus drivers, bumper stickers, laundry, hurricane-related flooding, graffiti, Oliver North, shopping-mall security guards, celebrity autographs, synaesthesia, post office violence, heart transplants, Heaven’s Gate, spontaneous human combustion, turtles, rebellious footwear, tattoos, nicknames for genitalia, and felines intent on ruling the world.

Members of the group are always credited with “Bob” as their middle name.

Here they sing everyone’s favorite rock classic, “White Room” by Cream:

From the Bobs website:

Another notable avenue of expression for the Bobs have been in collaboration with dance companies. Their first was the commissioning of a series of songs, “The Laundry Cycle” for the Oberlin Dance Collective. Later that year (1987) after returning from their first European tour they met the dance troupe named Momix, who later changed their name to ISO. Improvising with them was the source of creation for a show. Their continued work with ISO for a number of years was noticed sufficiently that they relieved a commission from Lincoln Center, a one-hour presentation on PBS and a spot in the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History! That’s quite an honor for the only New Wave a cappella group in history. It’s also a testimonial to just how important the Bobs have been to the flourishing world of contemporary a cappella music. They are among the elite handful of totally original creators who blaze the path which so many others follow it becomes a freeway.

You certainly can’t get more original than this Bobs classic, “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens”:

“Yo, Yo-Yo Ma, My Man!”

There were three truly great cellists in the 20th century: Pablo Casals, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Yo-Yo Ma. Only one is left.

Yo-Yo Ma is my age. He was born seventeen days ahead of me.

Born in France, 馬友友 (in Pinyin: Mǎ Yǒuyǒu) had a musical upbringing. His mother was a singer and his father was a conductor and composer. His family moved to New York when he was seven years old.

Ma began studying violin, and later viola, before taking up the cello in 1960 at age four. The child prodigy began performing before audiences at age five. When he was seven, he appeared on American television in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein (unfortunately, the ower of this and the next three videos don’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to double click them to watch them on YouTube):

By fifteen, Ma had graduated from high school and appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. He studied at Juilliard and attended Columbia before enrolling at Harvard. He questioned whether he should continue his studies — until he heard Pablo Casals perform. That was all the inspiration he needed.

Ma has been referred to as “omnivorous” by critics. Besides the standard classical repertoire, he’s recorded Baroque pieces using period instruments; American bluegrass music; traditional Chinese melodies (including the soundtrack to the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon); as noted yesterday, the tangos of Argentinian composer Ástor Piazzolla; the music of modern minimalist Philip Glass in such works as Naqoyqatsi; and an eclectic and unusual collaboration with Bobby McFerrin, where Ma admits to being terrified of the improvisation McFerrin pushes him toward:

Here he is in an appearance on Sesame Street:

Ma was the first performer on September 11, 2002, at the site of the World Trade Center, while the first of the names of the dead were read in remembrance on the first anniversary of the attack on the WTC. He played the Sarabande movement from Bach’s Suite in C minor (#5). Here he plays the same piece in performance at the Tôdai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan:

A 2002 article in Time Magazine wrote about Ma’s Silk Road Project:

[It's] an organization he founded to explore the musical currents and cultural interdependence of countries along the ancient Central Asian trade routes. The group commissions works by composers representing 10 countries (including China, Turkey and Uzbekistan) and oversees performances of this new repertoire by a comparably international ensemble of traditional and classical musicians. This month the orchestra plans to make its first concert tour of Central Asia.

The vision for the Silk Road Project grows out of the time-honored notion of music as a universal language. If a Chinese musician understands that his erhu (Chinese fiddle) is a descendant of the Arab oud, Ma believes, maybe he’ll be able to more readily embrace his connection to another culture. In an increasingly globalized world, we have information about one another, Ma says, “but how can we actually feel that, yeah I know you, I feel like we’ve met before?” Playing the music of other cultures is as enriching as travel, says Ma: “Every time I go away from something that I grew up with, I come back practicing more because my ears are cleaner. After Brazilian rhythms, I suddenly go back to Haydn and think, I can get a groove there and I’ve never thought about it. I’ve rushed through this part for the 30 years I’ve played this piece.”

Here’s Yo-Yo Ma performing with Cyro Baptista in a live version of “Afro,” from the album Obrigado Brazil:

Now for thirty-six seconds of unbridled joy: Ma and McFerrin’s duet of “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Ástor and the Brothels of Buenos Aires

Forget “Hernando’s Hideaway.” Forget “Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets).” If you want to hear some serious tango music, you’ve got to go to Argentina.

It was, of course, where the tango originated. Well, Buenos Aires, specifically. The dance originated with the African community in Buenos Aires during the 19th century; it was based on ancient African dance forms, and the word “tango” comes from the Niger Congo. Most historians say the tango really took hold in the brothels of Buenos Aires. Certainly the overtly sexual energy of the dance tends to lend credence to the idea.

Tango music is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, a piano, a double bass, and two bandoneons (handheld accordions). Vocalists are optional.

It was Rudolph Valentino who brought the tango to new audiences, especially in the United States, with his sensual depictions of the dance on film. At the same time, tango was moving out of the brothels in Argentina and becoming a more respectable form of music and dance.

A second revolution came in the 1950s with the work of Ástor Piazzolla, who incorporated elements from jazz and classical music, morphing the traditional tango into a new style called Tango Nuevo. He is widely considered the most important tango composer of the latter half of the twentieth century. A formidable bandoneonist, he continuously performed his own compositions with different ensembles. He is known in Argentina as “El Gran Ástor” (“The Great Astor”).

You might be interested in seeing just a bit of this BBC documentary on Piazzolla:

In 1974 Piazzolla did an album called Libertango, featuring the song by the same name. In 1999 the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma did an album called Soul of the Tango, and this video is the result of their collaboration:

Tango music continues to evolve. Recent trends might be described as “electro tango” or “tango fusion,” where the electronic influences are available in multiple ranges, from very subtle to rather dominant. One of the most prominent groups who work in this genre is the Paris-based Gotan Project, and their most popular album is probably La Revancha del Tango (2001). Their sound features electronic elements like samples, beats, and sounds on top of a tango groove:

In 2001 Indigo Bunting, her wonderful husband Tim, and I traveled nearly an hour to a theater showing the Baz Luhrmann jukebox musical film Moulin Rouge! I absolutely hated that movie. If I recall correctly, Tim rather liked it, and Indigo was somewhat perplexed by it. The only piece I liked somewhat was Sting’s “Roxanne,” retitled “El Tango de Roxanne” in the film:

Finally, pop culture has begun to embrace Argentine Tango in earnest. On this past season of So You Think You Can Dance, a television dance competition, one young couple — he’s a ballet dancer, she’s a breakdancer — did an amazing tango to (of all songs) “Whatever Lola Wants.” For me it was the highlight of the season:

By the way, the first judge you see at the end of the clip is Adam Shankman, the director/choreographer of this summer’s wonderfully fun movie musical Hairspray. Fun factoid: He officiated at the wedding of Freddie Prinze, Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar, with whom he worked while choreographing Buffy the Vampire Slayer.