In the February issue of The Strad, I reflect on the plight of cello soloists whose agents try to make them play the same three concertos, year in, year out, regardless of creative atrophy.
There’s the Dvorak, the Schumann, the Elgar and if you’re
lucky, from time to time, the first Shostakovich or the sticky-sweet
Saint-Saens.
Of course, there’s also chamber music – but that’s not a
living. A patient agent will sit down with our Curtis or Academy award winner
and explain the facts of life. A concerto is a thirty-k date, fifty if you play
the yo-yo (did I overhear that right? maybe she said, play like Yo Yo).
Doing the Judas Mac variations or the Kodaly sonata at the Weill or the Wigmore
is three-k if you’re lucky, and don’t expect a limo.
So what’s to be done? Three or four young cellists I know are trying to break the mould, but what can be done to support them? All ideas and suggestions gratefully received.
In the February issue of The Strad, I reflect on the plight of cello soloists whose agents try to make them play the same three concertos, year in, year out, regardless of creative atrophy.
There’s the Dvorak, the Schumann, the Elgar and if you’re
lucky, from time to time, the first Shostakovich or the sticky-sweet
Saint-Saens.
Of course, there’s also chamber music – but that’s not a
living. A patient agent will sit down with our Curtis or Academy award winner
and explain the facts of life. A concerto is a thirty-k date, fifty if you play
the yo-yo (did I overhear that right? maybe she said, play like Yo Yo).
Doing the Judas Mac variations or the Kodaly sonata at the Weill or the Wigmore
is three-k if you’re lucky, and don’t expect a limo.
So what’s to be done? Three or four young cellists I know are trying to break the mould, but what can be done to support them? All ideas and suggestions gratefully received.
Fiona Maddocks in the Observer is the first critic to place Anna Nicole in its musical context, assessing it both in terms of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s previous two operas, Greek and The Silver Tassie, and with reference to its musical influences, detecting echoes of Puccini’s Gianni Schicci and, undetected by me, Mahler’s Death of Children Songs.
How did I miss that? Must have been distracted by a boob overload.
Mind you, I did see Fiona leaving the opera house with a score the size of Luxembourg tucked beneath her resourceful arm.
If you only read one review of Anna Nicole, hers is your reference point.
Fiona Maddocks in the Observer is the first critic to place Anna Nicole in its musical context, assessing it both in terms of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s previous two operas, Greek and The Silver Tassie, and with reference to its musical influences, detecting echoes of Puccini’s Gianni Schicci and, undetected by me, Mahler’s Death of Children Songs.
How did I miss that? Must have been distracted by a boob overload.
Mind you, I did see Fiona leaving the opera house with a score the size of Luxembourg tucked beneath her resourceful arm.
If you only read one review of Anna Nicole, hers is your reference point.
Claus Helmut Drese who led the Vienna opera through the second half of the 1980s and signed up Claudio Abbado as music director, has died at the age of 88. Cue for a flood of crocodile tears.
The Viennese media, forgetting that it was they who drove him out of town, are trotting out all the usual
platitudes of gratitude and lament, none more so than Die Presse, his chief tormentor. The
State Opera, from which he was effectively fired, has added its own polite tributes.
Drese inherited the mess of Lorin Maazel’s departure in 1984 (after a brief morbid, interregnum by Egon Seefehlner) and turned the house round quite effectively over four years before an interfering culture minister introduced him one bright day to his designated successors. He worked out his contract until 1991, the Mozart Year, at which point Abbado also walked out and Vienna entered an epoch of mediocrity.
Not that you will read that in the Viennese papers.
Claus Helmut Drese who led the Vienna opera through the second half of the 1980s and signed up Claudio Abbado as music director, has died at the age of 88. Cue for a flood of crocodile tears.
The Viennese media, forgetting that it was they who drove him out of town, are trotting out all the usual
platitudes of gratitude and lament, none more so than Die Presse, his chief tormentor. The
State Opera, from which he was effectively fired, has added its own polite tributes.
Drese inherited the mess of Lorin Maazel’s departure in 1984 (after a brief morbid, interregnum by Egon Seefehlner) and turned the house round quite effectively over four years before an interfering culture minister introduced him one bright day to his designated successors. He worked out his contract until 1991, the Mozart Year, at which point Abbado also walked out and Vienna entered an epoch of mediocrity.
Not that you will read that in the Viennese papers.
The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was not in sedate or solemn mood when it commissioned Richard Thomas and Mark-Anthony Turnage to turn soap into opera.
The theme was the life on
Anna Nicole Smith, a small-town bimbo who had a boob job, became Playmate of the Year, married a dying billionaire and died, at 39, of an apparent drugs overdose. Thomas has previously written Jerry Springer – The Opera, a National Theatre show that pictured the Saviour in diapers and, when shown on TV, drew more complaints than any broadcast in BBC history. Turnage has written about squatters, drug death and other squalidness. The outcome was never going to be shy or pretty.
So it was no surprise to find Anna Nicole’s head eclipsing the Queen’s above the stage, or her initials projected onto the bottom corners of the curtain. Shoals of C-list celebrities, every TV presenter you cannot name, were imported for the opening night and the atmosphere in the great auditorium was closer to Big Brother than Royal Opera House.
Anna Nicole is an opera of two halves, the first hour hubris, the second nemesis. Thomas scatterguns us with boob jokes and nudge-winks. ‘That’s the metaphor/we’re going for,’ he quips in one of the early scenes, adding that this is ‘an absurdist story of woe.’ Post-modern irony has much to answer for. ‘I wanna blow you all…’ declares Anna Nicole, ‘… a kiss.’ There is an aria to small breasts and another to Jimmy Choos.
All good, dirty fun. Turnage, the most gifted British composer of his generation, does not have much to do in the first act except maintain a pounding rhythm. In the second, he writes some marvellous elegiac stretches for the orchestra, summoning our sympathy for the heroine’s decline, but character is drawn so thin and irony laid on so thick that good music goes to waste. I did not see a wet eye in the house.
Anna Nicole is bumptiously played by the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek who is hardly off-stage for a minute and dies, as the heroine lived, in a mob of camera lenses. Gerald Finley is the sleazebag lawyer Stern (who has recently been sprung on appeal and cannot therefore be a sleazebag in the eyes of the law). Ala Oke is tremor-perfect as the octogenarian billionaire, while Susan Bickley sings just a tad too beautifully as the heroine’s grim mother. Richard Jones directs with his usual penchant for shlock and shell-suits and Antonio Pappano had little more to do in the put than keep beating. Emotion was nowhere to be felt.
This was, nevertheless, a great night at the opera and when we emerged into a lobby jammed with television crews demanding our opinion it felt as if life had overwhelmed art. We fled into the night, pondering the purpose of it all.
And that’s where the health warning kicks in. Anna Nicole the opera makes a mockery of all it touches and takes nothing seriously, except one persistent theme. The opera is relentlessly, mindlessly anti-American, spouting all the common Euro cliches about the vapidity of American life. It may pretend to be anti-ugly American, but the prejudice runs right through its arteries. ‘I’m going to rape that American dream,’ is one of its slogans. ‘America, you dirty whore/I gave you everything, you wanted more,’ is the heroine’s swansong.
So that’s all right, then. It enables us Brits to leave the opera house feeling that tiny bit superior to what we had just seen. This will not play well in Poughkeepsie. I doubt it will reach New York. What begins as a romp turns into a rant. Like all rants, eventually it palls.
At the end, Anna Nicole is exactly where she wanted to be: right in your face. The opera is, quite literally, sensational. It is an overnight hit that, like its heroine, will soon fade to blank.
photo: Laurie Lewis/Lebrecht Music & Arts
The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was not in sedate or solemn mood when it commissioned Richard Thomas and Mark-Anthony Turnage to turn soap into opera.
The theme was the life on
Anna Nicole Smith, a small-town bimbo who had a boob job, became Playmate of the Year, married a dying billionaire and died, at 39, of an apparent drugs overdose. Thomas has previously written Jerry Springer – The Opera, a National Theatre show that pictured the Saviour in diapers and, when shown on TV, drew more complaints than any broadcast in BBC history. Turnage has written about squatters, drug death and other squalidness. The outcome was never going to be shy or pretty.
So it was no surprise to find Anna Nicole’s head eclipsing the Queen’s above the stage, or her initials projected onto the bottom corners of the curtain. Shoals of C-list celebrities, every TV presenter you cannot name, were imported for the opening night and the atmosphere in the great auditorium was closer to Big Brother than Royal Opera House.
Anna Nicole is an opera of two halves, the first hour hubris, the second nemesis. Thomas scatterguns us with boob jokes and nudge-winks. ‘That’s the metaphor/we’re going for,’ he quips in one of the early scenes, adding that this is ‘an absurdist story of woe.’ Post-modern irony has much to answer for. ‘I wanna blow you all…’ declares Anna Nicole, ‘… a kiss.’ There is an aria to small breasts and another to Jimmy Choos.
All good, dirty fun. Turnage, the most gifted British composer of his generation, does not have much to do in the first act except maintain a pounding rhythm. In the second, he writes some marvellous elegiac stretches for the orchestra, summoning our sympathy for the heroine’s decline, but character is drawn so thin and irony laid on so thick that good music goes to waste. I did not see a wet eye in the house.
Anna Nicole is bumptiously played by the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek who is hardly off-stage for a minute and dies, as the heroine lived, in a mob of camera lenses. Gerald Finley is the sleazebag lawyer Stern (who has recently been sprung on appeal and cannot therefore be a sleazebag in the eyes of the law). Ala Oke is tremor-perfect as the octogenarian billionaire, while Susan Bickley sings just a tad too beautifully as the heroine’s grim mother. Richard Jones directs with his usual penchant for shlock and shell-suits and Antonio Pappano had little more to do in the put than keep beating. Emotion was nowhere to be felt.
This was, nevertheless, a great night at the opera and when we emerged into a lobby jammed with television crews demanding our opinion it felt as if life had overwhelmed art. We fled into the night, pondering the purpose of it all.
And that’s where the health warning kicks in. Anna Nicole the opera makes a mockery of all it touches and takes nothing seriously, except one persistent theme. The opera is relentlessly, mindlessly anti-American, spouting all the common Euro cliches about the vapidity of American life. It may pretend to be anti-ugly American, but the prejudice runs right through its arteries. ‘I’m going to rape that American dream,’ is one of its slogans. ‘America, you dirty whore/I gave you everything, you wanted more,’ is the heroine’s swansong.
So that’s all right, then. It enables us Brits to leave the opera house feeling that tiny bit superior to what we had just seen. This will not play well in Poughkeepsie. I doubt it will reach New York. What begins as a romp turns into a rant. Like all rants, eventually it palls.
At the end, Anna Nicole is exactly where she wanted to be: right in your face. The opera is, quite literally, sensational. It is an overnight hit that, like its heroine, will soon fade to blank.
photo: Laurie Lewis/Lebrecht Music & Arts
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which learned earlier today that its chief conductor Vasily Petrenko its taking a second job in Oslo, has been hit by a 20 percent funding cut from the city council. That’s on top of whatever chunk Arts Councol England carves out of these budget.
Taken together, these twin tidings spell disaster for Britain’s most improved orchestra. There will be a good deal of local lobbying and protests before the council edict is confirmed, but I would urge anyone with influence in one of the world’s great musical cities to think long and hard before they risk jettisoning its reputation.
Press release follows:
Photo: Liverpool Daily Post
Liverpool Philharmonic
News Release
EMBARGOED until
1800hrs Thursday, 17 February 2011
Vasily Petrenko and Liverpool Philharmonic Responds to Liverpool City Council’s Draft Budget Proposals
Liverpool Philharmonic responded today following the publication of Liverpool City Council’s draft budget proposals which propose a 20% cut to its revenue grant for 2011/12.
The music organisation, often referred to as the jewel in Liverpool’s cultural crown, at the centre of which is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, faces a reduction in funding of £284,000 on its current revenue grant of £1.42 million pounds from Liverpool City Council.
In October 2010, Arts Council England announ
ced a cut of 6.9% to its rev
enue funded organisations for 2011/12, which in real terms for Liverpool Philharmonic represents a loss of grant of £166,000. With the proposed 20% cut in revenue from Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Philharmonic faces a reduction in revenue of £450,000 in 2011/12, with further cuts likely from other local authorities.
Responding to the budget proposals, Vasily Petrenko, Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra said:
“We are grateful for the confidence and investment that Liverpool City Council gives to this organisation. It has enabled us to deliver great music to thousands of people every year here in Liverpool, across the UK and internationally. We have achieved a huge amount together and there is still a lot more we can achieve for ourselves and for the City and people of Liverpool, but all this could be lost very quickly with a reduction in funding of this scale. The most successful orchestras in the world are those which have artistic ambition fully backed by their local City. It is only with this backing that we can continue to achieve world class standards and give Liverpool the economic and artistic benefit we have been providing in recent years.”
Michael Eakin, Chief Executive of Liverpool Philharmonic added:
“We understand the difficulty of the task that Liverpool City Council faces and fully accept that we must share the pain of cuts along with others in the culture sector and indeed, every other area of Council services. However, despite that fact that we generate two thirds of our own income through our own activities, a cut of this magnitude threatens to undermine all that this organisation has achieved in recent years, supported by the City’s investment. It jeopardises our ability to stay on track and sustain a world-class professional symphony orchestra in Liverpool.
“Liverpool Philharmonic is delivering music-making of the highest quality through its symphony orchestra led by Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko, one of the most sought after classical music artists in the world today; through Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, one of the UK’s premiere venues and through a Learning programme that is using the unique power of music to improve health and well-being, aid educational attainment and contribute to community transformation and regeneration.
“Liverpool Philharmonic has led on behalf of the City the bid now under consideration to be nominated as a UNESCO City of Music and our artistic success has enabled us to secure significant sponsorship and private philanthropy and deliver further investment directly into the City. In the last three years, we have successfully bid for and won £730,000 over three years to deliver the Department for Education’s In Harmony music programme in West Everton; secured over half a million pounds of ERDF funding to develop the former Friary church in West Everton into a second rehearsal, recording and education venue, also used by In Harmony and the West Everton Children’s Orchestra; and with other cultural partners in the City, secured £2.4 million to deliver the Find Your Talent scheme for young people. These and a number of our other initiatives are having positive impacts across the City’s cultural, social, education, health, regeneration and economic agendas.”
Ends
Further information from
Jayne Garrity
Head of Communications
Liverpool Philharmonic
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Hope Street
Liverpool
L1 9BP
www.liverpoolphil.com
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which learned earlier today that its chief conductor Vasily Petrenko its taking a second job in Oslo, has been hit by a 20 percent funding cut from the city council. That’s on top of whatever chunk Arts Councol England carves out of these budget.
Taken together, these twin tidings spell disaster for Britain’s most improved orchestra. There will be a good deal of local lobbying and protests before the council edict is confirmed, but I would urge anyone with influence in one of the world’s great musical cities to think long and hard before they risk jettisoning its reputation.
Press release follows:
Photo: Liverpool Daily Post
Liverpool Philharmonic
News Release
EMBARGOED until
1800hrs Thursday, 17 February 2011
Vasily Petrenko and Liverpool Philharmonic Responds to Liverpool City Council’s Draft Budget Proposals
Liverpool Philharmonic responded today following the publication of Liverpool City Council’s draft budget proposals which propose a 20% cut to its revenue grant for 2011/12.
The music organisation, often referred to as the jewel in Liverpool’s cultural crown, at the centre of which is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, faces a reduction in funding of £284,000 on its current revenue grant of £1.42 million pounds from Liverpool City Council.
In October 2010, Arts Council England announ
ced a cut of 6.9% to its rev
enue funded organisations for 2011/12, which in real terms for Liverpool Philharmonic represents a loss of grant of £166,000. With the proposed 20% cut in revenue from Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Philharmonic faces a reduction in revenue of £450,000 in 2011/12, with further cuts likely from other local authorities.
Responding to the budget proposals, Vasily Petrenko, Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra said:
“We are grateful for the confidence and investment that Liverpool City Council gives to this organisation. It has enabled us to deliver great music to thousands of people every year here in Liverpool, across the UK and internationally. We have achieved a huge amount together and there is still a lot more we can achieve for ourselves and for the City and people of Liverpool, but all this could be lost very quickly with a reduction in funding of this scale. The most successful orchestras in the world are those which have artistic ambition fully backed by their local City. It is only with this backing that we can continue to achieve world class standards and give Liverpool the economic and artistic benefit we have been providing in recent years.”
Michael Eakin, Chief Executive of Liverpool Philharmonic added:
“We understand the difficulty of the task that Liverpool City Council faces and fully accept that we must share the pain of cuts along with others in the culture sector and indeed, every other area of Council services. However, despite that fact that we generate two thirds of our own income through our own activities, a cut of this magnitude threatens to undermine all that this organisation has achieved in recent years, supported by the City’s investment. It jeopardises our ability to stay on track and sustain a world-class professional symphony orchestra in Liverpool.
“Liverpool Philharmonic is delivering music-making of the highest quality through its symphony orchestra led by Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko, one of the most sought after classical music artists in the world today; through Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, one of the UK’s premiere venues and through a Learning programme that is using the unique power of music to improve health and well-being, aid educational attainment and contribute to community transformation and regeneration.
“Liverpool Philharmonic has led on behalf of the City the bid now under consideration to be nominated as a UNESCO City of Music and our artistic success has enabled us to secure significant sponsorship and private philanthropy and deliver further investment directly into the City. In the last three years, we have successfully bid for and won £730,000 over three years to deliver the Department for Education’s In Harmony music programme in West Everton; secured over half a million pounds of ERDF funding to develop the former Friary church in West Everton into a second rehearsal, recording and education venue, also used by In Harmony and the West Everton Children’s Orchestra; and with other cultural partners in the City, secured £2.4 million to deliver the Find Your Talent scheme for young people. These and a number of our other initiatives are having positive impacts across the City’s cultural, social, education, health, regeneration and economic agendas.”
Ends
Further information from
Jayne Garrity
Head of Communications
Liverpool Philharmonic
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Hope Street
Liverpool
L1 9BP
www.liverpoolphil.com
An innocent tweet as to what one should wear to tonight’s operatic premiere has provoked much hilarity and a certain amount of serious contemplation.
The opera in question is Anna Nicole, Mark-Antony Turnage’s new work on the life of the Playboy centrefold bimbo who had a boob job, married a billionaire and died a celebrity death.
Everyone expects the Royal Opera House show to be way over the top. Attire suggestions range from bare-butt, to lipstick and Jimmy Choos, to a double-breasted (law) suit and tie. I have an hour left to decide.
But what’s made the exercise so much fun is that it reflects the ROH’s success in banishing the usual stuffiness and turning a bold-type world premiere into something more like the singalong Sound of Music where patrons turn up as Nazis or nuns.
I want to see more of that in opera. More audience gypsies in Carmen, more geisha girls in Butterfly, more Nazis in the Ring. Further suggestions gleefully received.
I expect to review the opera overnight and will be talking about it on Sky News in the morning.
Should be fun.
An innocent tweet as to what one should wear to tonight’s operatic premiere has provoked much hilarity and a certain amount of serious contemplation.
The opera in question is Anna Nicole, Mark-Antony Turnage’s new work on the life of the Playboy centrefold bimbo who had a boob job, married a billionaire and died a celebrity death.
Everyone expects the Royal Opera House show to be way over the top. Attire suggestions range from bare-butt, to lipstick and Jimmy Choos, to a double-breasted (law) suit and tie. I have an hour left to decide.
But what’s made the exercise so much fun is that it reflects the ROH’s success in banishing the usual stuffiness and turning a bold-type world premiere into something more like the singalong Sound of Music where patrons turn up as Nazis or nuns.
I want to see more of that in opera. More audience gypsies in Carmen, more geisha girls in Butterfly, more Nazis in the Ring. Further suggestions gleefully received.
I expect to review the opera overnight and will be talking about it on Sky News in the morning.
Should be fun.
