Van Dyck’s Palermo Madonna and Child

On Christmas Eve two days ago I posted (link) a photo of the beautiful Caravaggio painting of the Nativity that was stolen from a Palermo oratory in 1960.  Christmastide has me thinking of another Palermo oratory I had the pleasure of visiting a few years ago. 

Oratories are small, Roman Catholic chapels for private worship.  Palermo, Sicily, has three of which I am aware, built by confraternities -- private altruistic organizations of men bound by a trade or specific object of religious devotion.  In walking distance of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, in which now hangs a reproduction of Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, one can find the Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico.  This chapel sits behind Palermo’s great Dominican basilica of San Domenico (which unfortunately was closed both times the missus and I tried to visit in the spring of 2016). 

The Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico is stunning.  Bathed in white with gold accents, the space is full of three-dimensional ladies, knights, and playful putti.  The magnificent altarpiece is the large painting Madonna of the Rosary with St. Dominic and the Patroness of Palermo, executed by Anthony van Dyck in 1628. 

Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico in Palermo, Sicily

Van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who achieved great success in England, in the Netherlands, and in Italy, where he spent six of his 42 years studying and painting.  His Wikipedia entry states that for him Titian’s “use of colour and subtle modeling of form would prove transformational, offering a new stylistic language that would enrich the compositional lessons learned from Rubens.”  Van Dyck spent time in Palermo, about 20 years after Caravaggio passed through Sicily, and left behind in the Dominican community a stunning painting to be especially enjoyed this Christmas season. 

R Balsamo

Caravaggio’s Nativity

Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence is a warm scene of dramatic moment composed with his typical striking use of light and shadow. 

Caravaggio was born Michelangelo Merisi in Milan and came of age in the nearby town of the name by which he became famous.  Pugnacious and temperamental, he spent a fair amount of his all-too-short life on the lam, running from the jailer or the assassin.  He spent some time in Sicily late in his short life of 38 years, and it was probably there in 1609 that he composed The Nativity .  The painting found its way to a confraternity hall in Palermo, the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, where it was on display until 1969 when it was stolen by the mafia, according to all evidence.  It has never resurfaced, and is said to have been destroyed.  Recently, a faithful reproduction of the painting was created and is now on display where the original hung. 

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The Lufthansa Heist at 40

Today is the 40th anniversary of the incredibly-successful, infamous Lufthansa heist by New York City mobsters.  It paradoxically led, through greed and stupidity, to the destruction of many, if not most, of the men who pulled it off.  Moral of the story — be careful what you wish for.  Martin Scorsese, though, got a great movie out of it, Goodfellas, and he may be one of the few who really profited from it all.

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Cendrillon at the Lyric Opera

The Lyric offered up a solid production of Cendrillon, French composer Massenet’s version of the Cinderella story.  This is the opera’s first showing at the Lyric in its 64 seasons, although it has offered up Rossini’s variation on the theme, La Cenerentola, no less than six times.  Massenet’s version is half comedy (awfully slapstick in this production) and half drama, and he gives Cinderella’s father a sizeable role.  Although the story line for the most part is an operatic version of a chick flick, there are a few worthwhile moments.  Particularly of interest, and the highlight for me, is the serious, touching Act III scene between Cinderella and her father, as she despairs of ever again seeing her magical love Prince Charming. 

In popularity Cendrillon does not rank with Massenet’s main four – Manon and Werther, followed by Don Quichotte and Thais.  The Prince is a “trouser” role, written for a contralto and featuring a mezzo in this production; for me, the opera would be more appealing if the part were transposed for a tenor.  

Soprano Siobhan Stagg was terrific in the title role in her American debut, and I also particularly enjoyed bass-baritone Derek Welton as her meek but gentle and caring father.  Sets consisted of various moving panels with writing on them – inexpensive, minimalist, and very uninteresting.  I know opera companies are struggling with cost control, but this was a pretty lame effort.  The show was almost a concert version in costume.  The blame for the set, though, gets spread around to many other opera companies, so the Lyric is mostly off the hook.  Hell, even the Met used it.

I’m happy to have seen Cendrillon, though I don’t think I would go out of my way to see it again.  If an opera company is going through the expense of putting on a show, there are a lot more appealing choices on the list before you come to Cendrillon.  The set was available, sure, but sets abound.  And it’s not as if a packaged cast, already rehearsed, was readily available, for only Alice Coote as Prince Charming was a carry-over from last spring’s production at the Met.  So here are two picks, for example, that jump to mind long before Cendrillon – Puccini’s sleeper Manon Lescaut, last seen on the Lyric stage 13 years ago and just that once since 1977, and even Massenet’s own take on that story, Manon, regarded by some as his best opera and last seen at the Lyric in 1983 – 35 years ago.

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Opera’s Shrinking Audience

Earlier this Fall, the Lyric Opera of Chicago suffered through a short musicians’ strike that caused the cancellation of a few performances, but a quick resolution was reached and productions are back on.  However, the cause of the strike was proposed reduced employee compensation that the Lyric said was necessitated by the fewer performances and reduced revenue as a consequence of its shrinking audience.

I've been wondering about this development and why it is so.  Multiple factors seem at play.  Certainly the wide availability of high-fidelity opera CDs and DVDs has made an impact.  Perhaps even more importantly, opera seems generally much less familiar to most people than it was decades ago.  The general dumbing-down of our popular culture has had an impact – rarely do opera stars appear in general entertainment and public venues as they did in the past.  For example, years ago opera stars could be seen on widely-watched TV variety shows and Johnny Carson-like late shows, but programs like that are no longer common, and the late-night shows have degenerated into junk time hosted by smug, smirking, and sarcastic personalities offering sophomoric entertainment to pseudo-adults stuck in perpetual adolescence. 

So what can opera companies do in the face of these secular trends?  By themselves, unfortunately perhaps not much.  But they can redouble efforts to promote opera and their performers in the broader culture and in the media.  Add perhaps some programming shifts.  How about adding a few evenings of great scenes from a number of operas?  Tosca Act 1, La Traviata Act 2 Scene 1, and La Boheme Act 3, for example, with narrative introductions that explain each scene.  Solo concerts are fine, but they lack the beautiful mixture of voices in duets and trios and scenes, and lack as well the costumes and the sets that make opera such a wonderful visual experience. 

What about being more aggressive in offering smartly-edited performances of operas that perhaps don’t get shown because they’re too long or too complicated.  The Lyric’s recent complete staging of Bizet’s The Trojans (Les Troyens) was wonderful, but it is very long; some opera companies eliminate the first two acts which are frankly not the more musically-pleasing parts and are severable plot-wise.  Although I like having an opera produced in its entirety, if length and cost prevent its production an opera is much better being trimmed than never being seen.  Rossini’s William Tell is another candidate.  Ballet sequences, where they exist in some operas, are now often omitted in the interest of time, so the precedent of editing operas is already established.

Finally, I wonder if opera selection has been a factor in recent years.  The current Lyric management seems to have a tilt toward German, Russian, and modern operas.  Of course those operas have their fans, but I have known few casual opera lovers to pine for a German or Russian opera, or hum a tune from an atonal modern show.  In the professional opera world and among the intelligentsia that may be true, but for many of us in the hoi polloi German and Russian operas remain better in theory than they sound in practice.  A good example of the recent selection tilt is the 2016-2017 Lyric season, which featured two German operas and one Russian among the eight produced, and, remarkably, no Verdi or Puccini.  Don’t get me wrong – it featured some wonderful productions – Norma, Carmen, and a premier of Berlioz’s masterpiece The Trojans.  But no Verdi or even Puccini? 

I realize that some in the high-brow set love to love not-very-popular operas, and I am certainly not arguing for Boheme, Butterfly, Tosca, and Traviata every year or two, but can the Lyric find room for more Italian classics?  In its 64 seasons, including the current one, the Lyric has put on Puccini’s beautiful Manon Lescaut just four times, just once since 1977 and not since 2005-2006.  What about Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, put on just three times over 30 years ago, or his Luisa Miller, done just once in 1982.  How about more Bellini, whose version of the Romeo and Juliet story, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, has appeared just twice.  And never on the menu in 64 years are such notables as Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers and I Lombardi, Bellini’s Il Pirata, and Rossini’s William Tell.

My ideas might not help the Lyric and other opera companies much, and even then perhaps only at the margins.  Opera as an art form is swimming against the cultural current for the first time in its history, and it’s a tough slog.

R Balsamo

Il Trovatore at the Lyric Opera

Il Trovatore is an operatic treat, musically and visually, and the missus and I were delighted to take it all in the other day at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  We last saw it four years ago to the month at the Lyric, and it was just as fresh and wonderful this time around.  Its music to me is as beautiful as any Verdi wrote.  After its world premiere in Rome in 1853, according to The Lyric Opera Companion, a music critic wrote:  “The music transported us to heaven ... because this is, without exaggeration, heavenly music.  The public listened to every number in religious silence and broke into applause at every interval.” 

As remarkable as Trovatore is, given the wealth of the Verdi repertory it is only the fourth most-shown Verdi in the Lyric’s 64 seasons, appearing nine times, after Traviata, Rigoletto, Un Ballo, in that order, and tied with Aida.  The first production was in 1955 with none other than tenor Jussi Bjorling and soprano Maria Callas.  How’s that for casting?  In fact, in November of 1955 alone, when the Lyric’s season was very short and very, very sweet, opera lovers had not only Callas (in three operas) and Bjorling (in five!), but also Giuseppe Di Stefano, Renata Tebaldi, Tito Gobbi, and Carlo Bergonzi, plus Chicago (Melrose Park) native Carol Laraia, stage name Carol Lawrence, in no less than six productions.

Trovatore has not been everyone’s cup of tea, puzzlingly.  Highbrow critics slam it for its allegedly confusing libretto, but, assuming the knock is even true, few opera lovers have read the libretto, and the plot seems straightforward to me, and with supertitles at a performance the narrative is quite understandable.  Those same critics also look down their noses at Verdi’s supposed retreat in Trovatore from the musical “advances” of Rigoletto (which premiered two years earlier) toward the ideal – loved by the cognoscenti – of the Wagner-like “numberless” opera – in other words, music that’s better than it sounds, as Twain supposedly phrased it. 

Il Trovatore is a wonderful opera, and the Lyric put on a great show.  Highlights of the performance were soprano Tamara Wilson as Leonora, mezzo Jamie Barton as Azucena, baritone Artur Rucinski as Count di Luna, and Roberto Tagliavini as Ferrando.  On tenor Russell Thomas I plead the 5th.  The choruses were terrific, as usual at the Lyric.  And the sets were visually arresting and appropriate to the storyline, and a welcome step up from the less-expensive offerings (however understandable) that occasionally pop up.  Costuming was fine enough for the leads, but the Lyric seemingly ran out of gypsy costumes, for most of the gypsies in the Anvil Chorus gypsy camp scene, set in 15th century rural, northeastern Iberia, were dressed in relatively-dressy 17^th century clothing, including some in top hats; well, there always has to be some transgressive functionary who likes to poke the audience in the eye, highlighting the need for constant adult supervision.

Stephanie von Buchau writes in The Lyric Opera Companion that “Il Trovatore is the quintessential Italian opera, its drama propelled by the human voice.”  In fact, it is so quintessential that it was chosen as the opera backdrop for the zany antics of the anarchist Marx Brothers in their film masterpiece A Night at the Opera.  High praise indeed.

R Balsamo

A post on the 2014 Trovatore at the Lyric:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/il-trovatore-at-lyric-opera.html

One Hundred Years After the Armistice That Paused the Carnage

This day marks the one hundredth anniversary of the armistice that paused, for about twenty years, the senseless slaughter of World War One.  It was called “the War to End All Wars,” and would that only to have been true, it might have been worth it all – but it did not and so it was not.  The most prosperous culture in the world, one that certainly should have known better, descended into madness and almost destroyed itself in quick time.  Scores of millions died, all over the world, in the two-part war that only ended in 1945 and whose effects are very much with us today.

As I wrote last year, in the primitive film of 1914 we can clearly see the pompous, murderously-incompetent, half-decrepit generals and the effete, smarmy, oily politicos all parading about in herky-jerky motion, full of themselves, festooned like peacocks with their gaudy European plumes and sashes, leading the world into war for their own petty, obscure, and erratic purposes.  It was all so absurd, so comical if not so unspeakably sad, so utterly infuriating, so unimaginably tragic.

When the war began in 1914, certainly few, if any, however foolish they might have been, could have imagined the horrific carnage that was about to come.  But soon they suffered full well the harsh reality of it all and no doubt most, if they could go back in time, would have none of it.  Yet after almost three years of this madness, revealed to the world in newspapers, in film, in photographs, and in letters, in June of 1917 the Americans crossed an ocean to join in.  They disembarked in France to cheering crowds, smiling while shouting back, it is said, “Lafayette we are here.”  Then over one hundred thousand of them died, and to this day we don’t really know why.

For years afterward mothers and fathers roamed battlefields looking for sons who never returned.  Nonpareil writer Jan Morris evokes the profound sadness of inconsolable loss: 

In one of the lonely cemeteries in which, buried where they died, the Anzacs lay lost among the Gallipoli ravines, the parents of one young soldier wrote their own epitaph to their son, killed so far away, so bravely we need not doubt, in so obscure a purpose: “God Took Our Norman, It Was His Will, Forget Him, No, We Never Will.”

Canadian physician John McCrae, serving as a front-line field surgeon in France, wrote a short poem after the burial of one of his friends killed in battle.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row, [....]
We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

McCrae never returned home either, dying himself later in the war.  He was buried near where he fell.

Western culture paused in the slow suicide it had begun just a few years earlier, one hundred years ago today, and we still bring out the poppies to pretend it all stopped just then.

R Balsamo

Singer/Songwriter Steve Goodman at 70 – You Better Get It While You Can

Today would have been the 70th birthday of the late, great Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman.  For anyone who saw him perform, it was impossible to imagine that a man with such youthful energy and bounding joy could ever grow old.  Sadly, he did not, passing away in 1984 at age 36 from the leukemia that plagued him throughout his too-few years among us.

His performances were full of energy and sparkle and good humor.  Much of what he sang were his own compositions, and his style was certainly eclectic, ranging from folk to country & western to oldies, from soft ballads to comedy to satire to jazzed-up foot-stompers.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing him live, especially in a small club on a warm summer night, can only wonder why he did not become a bigger star. 

I saw Steve Goodman perform many times in Chicago, in small folk-houses and in large halls (like the Park West on Armitage Avenue).  Most of the venues are long-gone.  I first saw him in the mid-1970s at the Earl of Old Town saloon with the great Chicago blues band Martin, Bogan & Armstrong, and I will never forget their exhilarating rendition of Mamma Don’t Allow It, which no one there, especially the musicians, seemingly wanted to ever end.  A couple years later I returned to the Earl to see Goodman once again, and smiled as, early in his act, he pulled an audience member up to play with him.  They played for hours, and seeing Steve Goodman and John Prine do an impromptu three-hour riff was a thrill I still remember.  In his middle career years he was joined in concerts, and on recordings, by county music legend Jethro Burns.  I once drove alone from Chicago to Rockford, almost a hundred miles from where I started on the South Side, in a light snow storm (I was very young then) to see the two of them play; consummate musicians they were, Goodman on his guitar and Burns on his mandolin.  (I had the pleasure of conversing with Jethro Burns for a couple of minutes during a break while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the small, two-man men’s room – a most pleasant fellow).  A few years before his death, Goodman moved, with his wife and children, to Southern California, hoping for more success from the connections he could make there.    

His breakout hit was City of New Orleans after it was recorded by Arlo Guthrie.  He had great range in his many compositions – from Would You Like To Learn To Dance, a soft, gentle invitation to take a chance at love, to Banana Republics, a ballad about disaffected American expatriates south of the border.  Some were intensely personal, filled with bittersweet emotion, notably My Old Man in which he mourns and reconciles with his long-passed father, and Old Smoothies, about the joy his loving grandparents experienced watching an old couple ice skating together.

Goodman had a great sense of humor, and what a treat it was to see as well as hear him do Talking Backwards, The Auctioneer, Vegematic, This Hotel Room, or of course The Broken String Song (which always seemed like he was making it up on the spot when he actually took time to repair a broken string in the middle of a set).  He could fill up half an evening, if he wanted to, with just these fun, and funny, songs.     

North-sider that he was, Goodman was a big, and long-suffering, fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and composed two tunes still often played today – Go Cubs Go and A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request (featuring the now inoperative lyric, funny then – “the doormat of the National League”).

Along with life-long friend John Prine (fellow Chicagoan and fellow former US postal worker), Goodman wrote Souvenirs, a favorite of mine, and the “perfect” country song You Never Even Call Me By My Name.  He also popularized songs of other composers, notably Michael Smith, who wrote The Dutchman, Roving Cowboy, Crazy Mary, and Spoon River – all soft ballads that became big Goodman fan favorites.  Goodman was a leading figure among the Chicago singer/songwriters and folksingers in a now-bygone era, along with others such as Prine, Bonnie Koloc, Ed and Fred Holstein, and Tom Dundee.  

Although not well-known by his fans during his lifetime, illness and mortality were always on Goodman’s near horizon, perhaps explaining in part the energized emotion and bittersweet tenderness of so many of the songs he sang.  His You Better Get It While You Can was more poignant than many of us realized at the time (“from the cradle to the crypt is a might short trip, so you better get it while you can”).  Steve Goodman passed away in late September 1984, just days before his beloved Cubs finally entered post-season play for the first time since before he was born.

Although I enjoy a great deal of popular music I don’t go to concerts much, preferring mostly to listen to music in a comfortable arm chair with a subtle pinot at hand.  But Steve Goodman had to be seen in person, to share in his warmth and energy, and so I have seen Steve Goodman far more than any other performer, and he is still sorely missed, after all these years.

R Balsamo

Related Posts:
John Prine at 65
Folkie Tom Paxton at 75
Laura Nyro in My Head

Faust at the Lyric Opera

Chicago’s Lyric Opera has a striking new production of Faust, Gounod’s most popular opera whose story is loosely based on Goethe’s most famous play.  The Wikipedia entry for the latter asserts that it “is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.”  The basic story is well-known – a disenchanted, aging philosopher named Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for his earthly transformation into a dashing and attractive young man, especially, but not exclusively, so he can pursue the beautiful young maiden Marguerite.  Many suffer tragic consequences. 

Faust debuted in Paris in 1859 and has become a world-wide favorite.  Created in the French grand opera tradition, like many others of its kind it is so long that many productions scale it back.  Thankfully, the ballet is often omitted entirely.  Faust offers some wonderful music in addition to its thought-provoking story line.  But although there is beautiful, flowing music in this opera, little of it seems to show up in compilations of favorite opera selections.  The tenor aria “Salut, demeure chaste et pure” is the only one I’ve frequently encountered.  

The Lyric production featured terrific singing from the leads and the usual great vocals from the chorus.   French tenor Benjamin Bernheim played Faust in his American debut, Ana Maria Martinez played Marguerite in her one appearance in this role (Ailyn Perez sang the role in the other performances), Christian Van Horne played Mephistopheles, and Edward Parks was Marguerite’s brother Valentin.  The sets, although somewhat abstract in parts, were for the most part interesting and relievedly period-appropriate.  Taking in the Lyric production in sight and sound was a delightful way to spend a few hours.

Faust has evoked some strong feelings.  Despite being French and spending time studying in Italy, Gounod fell under the spell of Wagner.  In the Lyric Opera Companion, Dale Harris writes that after the appearance of Faust “accusations of ‘Wagnerism’ were leveled against [Gounod].”  Harris quotes one British critic who “accused [Gounod] of being to all intents and purposes a German composer ... and too much after the manner of Wagner to please the lovers of unadulterated music.”   Joseph Wechsberg writes in his masterful The Opera that “Gounod’s Faust remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, but compared to Carmen it is second-rate salon music...  The critics hate Faust and the public loves it.” 

Many music lovers take a different view.  The Lyric offers that “the score ... simply bursts with memorable music. Marguerite’s Jewel Song, the Soldiers’ Chorus, the spectacular final trio — these and much more make Faust a sublime experience.”  And the public does love it.  At the Lyric, in the last 50 years Faust has been the tenth most frequently-produced opera in the Italian and French repertory, with its six productions second only to Carmen of those by French composers.  Boito’s treatment of the same story in his opera Mephistopheles seems well-regarded, if not more regarded, by critics but has not been as popular with the public, as illustrated by its only two Lyric productions in the past 50 years – both in the 1990s. 

The moral of the Faust story is immortal.  Although the notion of literally selling one’s soul to the devil may strike a great many today as fanciful, selling out one’s principles and honor for some temporal advantage is not, so the story has lasting relevance.  Such folly is all the more tragic when committed by someone old enough to know better, for truly there’s no fool like an old fool.

R Balsamo

Lincoln's Birthday

Today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1809, of Abraham Lincoln.  My small collection of books specifically on his life include the first edition of the one-volume edition of Carl Sandburg’s monumental six-volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years;  Stephen B. Oates With Malice Toward None – A Life of Abraham Lincoln; the Library of America’s two-volume Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings; James McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution; Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg; and Jan Morris’s Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest.  Some of these I’ve read fully, and some in part. 

Interestingly, the only one I’ve hardly touched is perhaps the most famous of all – Sandburg’s biography.  I have a general bias toward more recent scholarship, and I’ve always been suspicious, unfairly no doubt, that Sandburg was too close in time to the actual man, and did not have the benefit of more fulsome scholarship and basic research yet to come.  But it’s on my long get-to list!

Among his many qualities was his sometimes-droll great sense of humor.  One example I enjoy, from Anthony Gross’s The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: 

While walking along a dusty road in Illinois in his circuit days, Lincoln was overtaken by a stranger driving to town.  “Will you have the goodness to take my overcoat to town for me?” asked Lincoln.  “With pleasure, but how will you get it again?” came the response.  Lincoln promptly replied “Oh, very readily.  I intend to remain in it.”

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