UNAPPETIZING

posted by James Reel

    I just pulled for use later today a Johann Strauss CD called Wiener Bonbons. Yes, I know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but the title always makes me think of chocolate-covered Vienna sausages. Ick. Which reminds me that my theme-dinner group once collaborated on an "upscale white trash" meal. One friend, cultured enough to run a mail-order classical CD service, brought the hors d'oeuvres, which involved Ritz crackers, Velveeta, Vienna sausages and caviar. Needless to say, there were leftovers.

WELCOME TO THE BLOGOSPHERE

posted by James Reel

    KUAT/KUAZ newsman Robert Rappaport has started his own personal blog, which I suggest you encourage him to develop.

OMNIPRESENT

posted by James Reel

    Yesterday afternoon I did a telephone interview with 18-year-old violinist Caitlin Tulley, of whom I'd frankly never heard until the editor of Strings magazine asked me to write about her a few days ago. (Her Celtic first name is prounounced "KAT-lin," by the way.) She's very smart and down-to-earth and, from what I've read, exceptionally talented and musical. Two hours later I was in the Tucson Symphony office talking to George Hanson and orchestra administrators about the coming season, and there on the schedule was Caitlin Tully. I nearly gave myself whiplash from the double-take.
    Mel Gibson once said that early in his career he was "served like coffee"--brought out freely and easily into every available film project and TV talk show, getting tremendous (perhaps excessive) exposure and thereby becoming as common and familiar as morning java. If my coincidental double exposure to Caitlin Tulley in a single afternoon is any indication, she's classical music's freshly brewed pot of coffee. Let's hope that when she's finally served up in Tucson, she's not just another cup of decaf.

THE GAME'S AFOOT

posted by James Reel

    Arizona Theatre Company continues its lightest-ever season with a Sherlock Holmes adaptation:

After a criminally bungled attempt to purloin the works of PG Wodehouse and pass them off as theater (Over the Moon), playwright Steven Dietz and director David Ira Goldstein have masterminded a far more successful act of literary thievery, Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. The play is receiving its premiere from Arizona Theatre Company, and if it's no intellectual match for the famous English detective, it is, at least, a fine stage caper.

CRANK CALLS

posted by James Reel

    John Massaro spent seven years as chorus master and assistant conductor at Arizona Opera, mostly working for general director David Speers, but he quit indignantly after one year under the company’s new head, Joel Revzen. To say the least, Massaro is a bitter man; when he left at the end of 2004, he circulated his resignation letter among members of the press, and ever since then he has periodically sent out e-mails mocking Revzen (once in verse, to be sung to a tune from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado) and suggesting without much evidence that Revzen overstates his achievements. Massaro has maintained, for example, that Revzen misleadingly counts himself as a Grammy winner even though the Grammy in question was really intended for singer Arleen Auger, whom Revzen “merely” accompanied. I am in no position to take sides in the Massaro-Revzen conflict, but the triviality and mockery in Massaro’s e-mails make Massaro’s attacks seem less like whistle-blowing than petty manifestations of personal enmity.
    Last week, Massaro announced the formation of a new company in Phoenix, which he’s calling AZ Opera, and he seems to have enlisted Speers in the project. Several recipients of Massaro’s bulk e-mail announcement, employing the “reply to all” function, have responded, in effect, that there’s obviously something shifty about using a name so similar to Arizona Opera’s, and they are condemning Massaro’s project. One objector mentioned that she’d enjoyed many high-quality Arizona Opera productions over the years, and Massaro asserted in reply that she’d also claimed to have seen UFOs in the past.
    While there’s certainly room in Phoenix, and perhaps in Tucson, for a second professional company doing things that Arizona Opera doesn’t, the petulant Massaro seems motivated by revenge rather than service to the community. If he expects to be taken seriously, he needs to revise his rhetoric—and find a new name for his company that is not deliberately confusing. If he doesn’t, I’d expect Revzen and Arizona Opera to take him to court very soon. In which case Massaro would surely file briefs to be sung to tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury.

TIMELY RETIREMENT

posted by James Reel

    Upon the announcement Friday that soprano Anna Moffo had died at age 73, affectionate tributes began to appear in print and cyberspace, but most had to mention that Moffo went into serious vocal decline by her 40s. I’ve enjoyed many of Moffo’s recordings from the 1950s and ’60s, but unfortunately my only experience of her “live” was a negative one. Around 1980 or so, during the George Trautwein years, the Tucson Symphony engaged her to sing … I can’t remember exactly what. Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer? Some of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne? All I recall is that her voice was in poor shape, with a big wobble and a tendency to scoop into notes. It’s a pity that despite all the fine work she’d done earlier, that’s my strongest memory of her.
    A few musicians seem to be able to perform well forever; tenors Alfredo Kraus and Hugues Cuénod sang admirably, well beyond the time the Social Security checks should have started rolling in, and Earl Wild is still a tremendously effective pianist at age 90. Of course, instrumentalists tend to last longer than singers, but even they have their limits. Child prodigy Yehudi Menuhin began to lose control of his bow arm early, but gave concerts and recorded for another 30 years anyway. Isaac Stern kept it together much longer than Menuhin, but even he was in serious decline when he last played in Tucson in the early to mid 1990s. What is it that drives musicians to keep performing even when it’s clear they shouldn’t? Vanity, or a belief that idiot audiences can’t tell the difference? When Glynn Ross took over Arizona Opera in the 1980s, he figured he could boost ticket sales with a bit of star power, and hired some of his old friends, with the emphasis on “old.” What pleasure did anyone take in hearing James McCracken bark his way through a role, or Mary Costa deliver such an embarrassing Merry Widow that she had to be replaced by her understudy after opening night?
    Beverly Sills and Jascha Heifetz had the good sense to withdraw from performance while they were still near their peak, and aside from the occasional off night, they left the public with nothing but positive memories. If only more artists would follow suit. Worse things could be said toward the end of an artist’s life than “Whatever happened to Soprano X? She was so wonderful!”