Salon.com > Stacey Kors

Call me Laurie

Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" has inspired artists from Orson Welles to Richard Serra. So it's not surprising that
multimedia performance artist Laurie Anderson, who once said that her work dealt with the
"declamation of language," should also be drawn to the power and majesty of Melville's
magnum opus.

One would be hard-pressed to come up with a more incongruous image than that of the
spiky-haired Anderson, with her digitally processed vocals and synthesized violin, sitting in on Melville Society meetings dissecting chapters of this behemoth of a book.
But tackling major themes is nothing new to the keenly intellectual Anderson, whose "adaptation," "Songs and Stories From Moby Dick," premiered in Dallas last spring and is now the featured show opening the Brooklyn Academy of Music's renowned Next Wave Festival. Only partway through its national run, it is already considered by many to be Anderson's most ambitious and accomplished project to date.

Still, Anderson says, two decades of creating incisive, experimental one-woman shows ("Home of the Brave," "United States Live," "Stories From the Nerve Bible") and collaborations with modern-day visionaries such as Philip Glass, Allen Ginsberg, Brian Eno and Wim Wenders didn't prepare her for Melville and his notorious great white whale.

Sharps & flats

Tue, 07 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Darkly mysterious in his long black cape, Bela Lugosi stands on the staircase and cocks his head slightly. "Listen to them -- the children of the night," he says with a smile playing on his lips. "What music they make!"

The trouble is that in the original "Dracula" those children don't make too much music. Released in 1931, the classic horror film coincided with the industry transition from silent pictures to talkies, which meant that it had to be available as both. As a consequence, the movie was never presented with a full score. When Universal decided to re-release "Dracula" on video, the studio approached avant-garde composer Philip Glass to write a new accompanying score. Glass is, of course, a sought-after composer for film. His work has appeared in several movies, including the Stephen Hawking documentary "A Brief History of Time" and Martin Scorsese's "Kundun." But in the past, the movies Glass has written for have been almost exclusively contemporary. "Dracula" is different because -- on paper, at least -- it places Glass' modern minimalist modulations against the high romanticism of an early black-and-white classic. After all, the tiny amount of music that managed to work its way into the original score -- "Swan Lake" and the overture to "Die Meistersinger" -- couldn't be more sweeping in orchestration.

Even more “Tales of the City”

Wed, 04 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

"Has there ever been a chamber piece written for a transsexual character?" wonders Armistead Maupin. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the gay author and activist boldly broached previously "taboo" subject matter in his beloved, bestselling "Tales of the City" series, a touching and humorous homage to San Francisco in its hedonistic heyday. Now Maupin braves new territory again with "Anna Madrigal Remembers," a classical composition based on "Tales" and featuring new text by Maupin and music by San Francisco Opera's composer-in-residence Jake Heggie. The work, which was written for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and the male a cappella choral ensemble Chanticleer, receives its world premiere in San Francisco on Aug. 6 and 7, with additional performances and a recording scheduled for later this year.

Maupin, who describes himself as being a "classical neophyte" with a "music hall sensibility," admits to having felt a bit of trepidation about writing text for a classical composition. "But Jake's music is extremely lyrical, and there's a great deal of heart in what he writes," he tells Salon Arts & Entertainment from his home in San Francisco. "So I thought we might be compatible. Some modern classical music is so atonal that I run screaming from the room; but Jake is not afraid of a tune."

“Monsters of Grace”

Wed, 21 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

"Monsters of Grace," the latest collaboration between minimalist composer Philip Glass and theater/opera director Robert Wilson, was hotly anticipated by performance artists and computer geeks alike well before its world premiere at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music last December. Back in 1976, the avant-garde giants changed the face of 20th century musical theater with "Einstein on the Beach," a landmark five-hour work with no intermission, no plot, no narrative and sung text that consisted only of numbers and solfhge syllables. Nearly 25 years later, "Monsters" seemed destined to break ground with the use of digital technology in the performing arts -- one of the last bastions of anti-digital Luddites.

Touted as a "digital opera in three dimensions," "Monsters," which toured the country through April and had a final showing last weekend at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, was a 73-minute-long work in 13 scenes, featuring poems by 13th century mystic Rumi set to music. As the Philip Glass Ensemble performed the score live with singers, the audience -- wearing special polarized lenses -- viewed large screen 70 mm 3-D computer-animated images created from Wilson sketches by a digital-effects company.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Wed, 06 Jan 1999 20:00:00 +0000

Well before "A Streetcar Named Desire" had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera September, it was evident that Andri Previn's first opera was in for a bumpy ride. In the months prior to its opening, more than a few critics grumbled about the idea of setting Tennessee Williams' renowned drama to music. No surprise, then, that the majority of those same critics reviled the work in their reviews -- the setting was unsuccessful, the music nothing new. And, of course, there were the countless comparisons to the Marlon Brando film, which is so ingrained in our cultural psyche. When the opera was broadcast on PBS and released on CD in December, the complaints resurfaced.

The most common criticisms were also the most unjustified, based on preconceived prejudices regarding the opera's concept more than its actual execution. Many thought it a mistake for librettist Philip Littell to use the text of the play almost verbatim, arguing that the musical setting couldn't possibly do justice to the power of Williams' words. Yet what would have been the reaction if Littell had actually altered those immortal words? And as for the music of "Streetcar" being derivative, does anyone really expect that, in this age of musical postmodernism, a contemporary opera will sound completely fresh and innovative? After all, Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" was labeled "derivative" when it premiered back in 1949.

Sharps & Flats

Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:00:00 +0000

While opera stars like Dawn Upshaw and Thomas Hampson have done much to revive interest in the American song, it is nonetheless rare to find American singers making albums of American opera arias. And who's to blame them? After all, most people would be hard-pressed to come up with enough repertory for an entire CD. But there are, in fact, some noteworthy set pieces out there just waiting to be heard; and who better to give voice to this long-neglected American music than soprano Renie Fleming, who has performed in the world premieres of American operas such as John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles," Conrad Susa's "Dangerous Liaisons" and, just a couple of weeks ago at the San Francisco Opera, Andri Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire."

"I Want Magic!" is a superbly sung collection of highly lyrical arias from mostly forgotten American works, including Bernard Herrmann's "Wuthering Heights," Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Medium," Samuel Barber's "Vanessa" and Carlisle Floyd's "Susannah," which Fleming will introduce at the Metropolitan Opera this spring. It also features, as its title track, the world-premiere recording of "I Want Magic!" -- Blanche Dubois' haunting aria from "Streetcar." If there's one disappointment on this CD, it's Fleming's rendition of "Glitter and Be Gay" from Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta "Candide." Though meant to be sung in an exaggerated manner, it is done so here to the point of embarrassment. But it seems a minor mistake in the context of this otherwise exquisite offering.

Closed On Account Of Rabies

Wed, 03 Dec 1997 09:57:00 +0000

"I am like a shark," Stephane Grappelli once said. "I won't stop. I will play
until the final curtain." Sadly, that curtain fell on Monday, when the
legendary French jazz violinist died in a Paris clinic from complications
following a hernia operation. Although 89 years old, Grappelli kept to his
word: He gave his last concert only a few months ago.

It may sound trite to refer to a popular artist as being "beloved" by his
fans. But if there were ever one genuinely deserving of such a description,
it was surely Grappelli, who was to the jazz violin what Vladimir Horowitz
was to the classical piano. With his lively, elegant swing style, his colorful
shirts and spirited smile and a youthful exuberance that lasted through
eight decades of live performance and an unparalleled 100-plus recordings,
Grappelli won the hearts of music lovers on both sides of the Atlantic.