Our watchword for the day: Remember the Crams!
From the OBC recording session we're going to have a special little "Sunday Classics Do Re Mi suite," whose connection to our subject will, I hope, be clear. The suite will include this song that we heard Sunday:
STYNE-COMDEN-GREEN: Do Re Mi: "Take a job" (The Crams)
Nancy Walker and Phil Silvers (Kay and Hubie Cram), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
by Ken
As noted in the post title, in this, the "actual" post for this week, we are going to transact a bit more Das Rheingold business, continuing from Sunday's "tease" post, but maybe not so much as I was thinking when I posted that tease.
I might say that thanks to the stratagem of the tease post, and to your kind indulgence, once I had the tease posted I was able to salvage one out of the two movies I had tickets for today in the Museum of the Moving Image's current "Curators' Choice 2018" series, and better still, it was a humdinger: Paul Dano's first film as director, Wildlife, adapted from the Richard Ford novel by him and his partner, Zoe Kazan, who were both on hand for a post-screening discussion along with two actors from the terrific cast.
As I mentioned we're going to hear a little "suite" of Do Re Mi excerpts, which I think is relevant to our area of food-service inquiry. In addition, though, while I was at my clip-making, I did a couple of additional Do Re Mi numbers, written for a legit baritone. One of these numbers is quite famous; Wikipedia lists 23 performers who have also recorded it.
Act I, "I know about love" (John Henry Wheeler)
Act II, "Make someone happy" (John Henry Wheeler)
Mystery baritone (John Henry Wheeler), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
SO WHO IS OUR HAPPY-MAKING MYSTERY BARITONE?
His identity will be revealed in just a moment, for which we have to take a quick trip to Paris, to visit a shabby, chilly attic on Christmas Eve, whee three young men playing at being "artists" are huddled around a fire fueled by the voluminous manuscript pages of an endless play written by the "poet" in the group. Our man, a musician, should be arriving any moment.
PUCCINI: La Bohème: Act I, "Legna!" "Cigari!" "Bordò!"
Two porters come in, one carrying food, bottles of wine, and cigars; the other has a bundle of wood. At the sound, RODOLFO, MARCELLO, and COLLINE, in front of the fire, turn around and with shouts of amazement fall upon the provisions.
RODOLFO: Wood!
MARCELLO: Cigars!
COLLINE: Bordeaux!
RODOLFO: Wood!
MARCELLO: Bordeaux!
ALL THREE: Destiny provides us with a feast of plenty!
[The porters leave. SCHAUNARD enters triumphantly, throwing some coins on the floor.]
SCHAUNARD: The Bank of France has gone broke just for you.
SCHAUNARD: "Make someone happy!"
COLLINE [gathering up coins, with the others]: Pick them up!
MARCELLO: They must be made of tin!
SCHAUNARD: Are you deaf? or blind?
[Showing a crown] Who is this man?
RODOLFO: Louis Philippe! I bow to my king!
ALL: Louis Philippe is at our feet!
[SCHAUNARD wants to tell his adventure, but the others won't listen to him. They set the provisions on the table and put wood in the stove.]
SCHAUNARD: Now I'll tell you: this gold,
this silver, rather, has a noble history . . .
RODOLFO: Let's fire the stove!
COLLINE: It's had to endure so much cold!
SCHAUNARD: An Englishman . . . a gentleman . . .
a lord . . . was looking for a musician . . .
MARCELLO: Come! Let's set the table!
SCHAUNARD [overlapping]: And I? I flew to him . . .
RODOLFO: Where are the matches?
COLLINE: There.
MARCELLO: Here.
SCHAUNARD: . . . I introduce myself.
He hires me. I ask him.
COLLINE [overlapping]: Cold roast beeef.
MARCELLO [overlapping]: Sweet psstry.
SCHAUNARD: . . . When do the lessons begin?
I introduce myself. He hires me.
I ask: When do the lessons begin?
He replies: "Let's start . . . Look!"
And points to a parrot on the second floor.
Then adds: "You play until that bird dies!"
RODOLFO [overlapping]: The dining room's brilliant!
MARCELLO [overlapping]: Now the candles.
SCHAUNARD: And so it went.
I played for three long days.
Then I used my char, my handsome figure . . .
I won the serving girl over . . .
We poisoned a little parsley . . .
MARCELLO [overlapping]: Eat without a tablecloth?
RODOLFO [overlapping]: No! I've an idea!
[He takes a newspaper from his pocket.]
MARCELLO and COLLINE: The Constitutional!
RODOLFO [overlapping]: Excellent paper . . .
You eat and devour the news!
SCHAUNARD: Lorito spread his wings.
Lorito opened his beak, took a peck of parsley,
and died like Socrates!
COLLINE [to SCHAUNARD]: Who?
SCHAUNARD: Go to the devil, all of you . . .
Now what are you doing?
No! These delicacies are the provender
for the dark and gloomy days in the future.
Dine at home on Christmas Eve when the Latin Quarter
has decked its streets with eatables?
When the perfume of fritters
is wafted through the ancient streets?
There the girls sing happily . . .
ALL: It's Christmas Eve!
SCHAUNARD: And each has a student echoing her!
Have some religion, gentlemen.
We drink at home, but we dine out.
[They pour the wine. A knock at the door.]
-- English translation by William Fense Weaver
Jussi Bjoerling (t), Rodolfo; Robert Merrill (b), Marcello; Giorgio Tozzi (bs), Colline; John Reardon (b), Schaunard; RCA Victor Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. RCA-EMI, recorded in New York City, Mar.-Apr. 1956
WE'RE DONE WITH OUR MYSTERY BARITONE, BUT AS WE
RETURN TO DAS RHEINGOLD, REMEMBER THE CRAMS!
You may recall that we found Ms. Minton talking in a 1981 interview about the two Frickas: the younger woman of Das Rheingold and the considerably older one of Die Walküre. The interview took place in the fall, after she had completed an opening-night run of Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila and was about to move on to the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos. Interviewer Bruce Duffie asks about the differences between the two Frickas, and she mentions that she only recently finished recording the Walküre one in the ongoing Janowski-Dresden-Eurodisc Ring cycle, sessions that took place in August, following the recording of Rheingold the previous December.
That's the Rheingold recording from which we heard the pair of snippets we're about to hear again, and once again I want to set them up with this comment by Minton about the role: "It's very difficult to do very much with Rheingold. One just looks dignified, and you just really do what the text dictates because she never has more than two lines at a time. There are one or two really beautiful phrases, but they are very short."
I couldn't and can't say for sure that Minton had these particular snippets in mind, but I'd be really surprised if she wasn't thinking of at least the second one. I reviewed the recording when it was released, and I couldn't stop listening to his bit, which I found so arrestingly beautiful -- so youthful and vibrant, so lithe and pointed, so strikingly colored -- that it made hear these lines in a way I'd never heard them before, and me take note of the singer in a new way I never had. So let's hear them again, but this time as we listen, pay special attention to the musical figure formed by the first half-dozen notes of the second clip. It's going to be important.
Dearest sister, sweetest delight,
are you restored to me?
See how our pure one stands humiliated and ashamed:
her anguished look mutely pleads for release.
Wicked man, to ask this of a loved one!
Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980
It was my intention when I made these clips to make long versions that would put them in some musico-dramatic context. As often happens when I'm doing this kind of excerpting, though, the proposed clips kept growing. Having thought of possible start and finish points, I kept wanting to add just one more previous (or following) bit, and then another, and so on. Eventually the two clips and joined into a single one, which I rather liked, since it meant we would hear how the later one evolves from the earlier one. And while I was pretty ruthless about stopping the thing right at the end of the second snippet, I kept pushing the start point of the "master" clip back, eventually reaching all the way back to the musical bridge coming out of the first part of Scene 4 of Rheingold -- Wagner's musical dramatic transitions are so wonderful that I always love to include them. So --
LET'S HEAR OUR RHEINGOLD SNIPPETS IN CONTEXT
Again, we're picking up in Scene 4 right after the dramatic scene in which the Nibelung Alberich (the title character of The Ring of the Nibelung) has suffered as much as he can bear at the hands of Wotan and the wily Loge, who duped him, down in the bowels of Nibelheim, and brought him, in captivity, up to the gods' mountain perch, where he was forced to command his Nibelung vassals back in Nibelheim to haul his treasure hoard up to the mountaintop and finally was stripped of both his shape-shifting Tarnhelm and the all-powerful ring he had fashioned from the Rhinegold. Once Alberich established that he was finally free, he placed an emphatic curse on the ring.
One small note: Do you remember that little musical figure with which Fricka began that majestic second clip ("See how our pure one")? It's a motif we're going to hear a number of times, associated with Freia's shame, as the gods settle into the job of piling up the treasure hoard to block out the view of Freia: Wotan's "Hurry with the work" (which, you'll note at 6:14 of the Eurodisc clip, he himself isn't doing, physical labor apparently being beneath his godliness) and Froh's "Freia's shame I'll hasten to put to an end" at 6:22; then Wotan's still-entirely-hands-off "Deep in my heart burns my shame" (at 7:18; note that with Wotan it's always about Wotan) and finally Fricka's "See how our pure one" (7:22).
WAGNER: Das Rheingold: Scene 4, Loge, "Lauschtest du seinem Liebesgruss?" . . . Fricka, "Liebliche Schwester, süsseste Lust!" . . . Fricka, "Sie, wie in Scham, schmählich die Edle steht"
As our excerpt begins, ALBERICH vanishes into the cleft leading back down to Nibelheim. As the music changes, the thick mist in the foreground gradually clears away.
LOGE: Did you heed his fond farewell?
WOTAN [sunk in contemplation of the ring on his hand]: Let him give vent to his fury.
[It becomes continually brighter.]
LOGE [looking to the right of the scene]: Fasolt and Fafner are nearing from afar.
They're bringing Freia here.
[Through the dispersing mist DONNER, FROH, and FRICKA appear and hasten toward the foreground.]
FROH: They're coming back!
DONNER: Welcome, brother!
FRICKA [anxiously to WOTAN]: Do you bring good tidings?
LOGE [pointing to Alberich's hoard]:
By craft and force we carried out the task:
there lies what will free Freia.
DONNER: From the Giants' grasp our fair one approaches.
FROH: How lovely a breeze again blows on us;
a feeling of bliss fills our senses.
It would be gloomy for us all
to be forever separated from her
who gives us painless perpetual youth
and joyous delight.
[FASOLT and FAFNER enter, leading FREIA between them. FRICKA hastens joyfully toward her sister. The foreground has become bright again, and in the light the aspect of the gods regains its former freshness. The misty veil, however, still covers the background, so that the distant castle remains invisible.]
FRICKA: Dearest sister, sweetest delight,
are you restored to me?
FASOLT [restraining her]: Stop! Do not touch her!
She still belongs to us.
At Riesenheim's towering boundary
we stopped to rest; honorably
we tended the pledge for the pact.
Much as I regret it, I am returning her
for us brothers to be paid her ransom.
WOTAN: The ransom lies ready;
so let the amount of gold be properly measured.
FASOLT: Know that to do without the woman saddens us sorely:
if she is to be banished from my mind,
the hoard of treasure must be heaped so high
that it completely hides the lovely one from my sight!
WOTAN: Then Freia's form shall be the measure.
[The two GIANTS place FREIA in the middle. Then they stick their staffs in the ground in front of FREIA, so that they give the measure of her height and breadth.]
FAFNER: These poles we've planted to the measure of the pledge:
now fill the space full with the hoard.
WOTAN: Hurry with the work: it is repugnant to me.
LOGE: Help me, Froh!
FROH: Freia's shame I'll hasten to put to an end.
[LOGE and FROH hastily heap up the treasure between the poles.]
FAFNER: Not so light and loosely packed!
[He roughly presses the treasure together.]
Fill the measure firm and close!
[He stoops down to look for crevices.]
I can still see through it here:
stop up these chinks!
LOGE: Stand back, clod!
FAFNER: Here!
LOGE: Keep your hands off!
FAFNER: Here! Close these crevices!
WOTAN [turning away moodily]: Deep in my heart burns my disgrace.
FRICKA: See how our pure one stands humiliated and ashamed:
her anguished look mutely pleads for release.
Wicked man, to ask this of a loved one!
-- English translation mostly by Lionel Salter
["Liebliche Schwester" at 3:10; "Sieh, wie in Scham" at 7:23] Peter Schreier (t), Loge; Theo Adam (bs-b), Wotan; Eberhard Büchner (t), Froh; Karl-Heinz Stryczek (b), Donner; Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Roland Bracht (bs), Fasolt; Matti Salminen (bs), Fafner; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980
["Liebliche Schwester" at 3:18; "Sieh, wie in Scham" at 7:34] Gerhard Stolze (t), Loge; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Wotan; Donald Grobe (t), Froh; Robert Kerns (b), Donner; Josephine Veasey (ms), Fricka; Martti Talvela (bs), Fasolt; Karl Ridderbusch (bs), Fafner; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded December 1967
["Liebliche Schwester" at 3:21; "Sieh, wie in Scham" at 7:33] Set Svanholm (t), Loge; George London (bs-b), Wotan; Waldemar Kmentt (t), Froh; Eberhard Wächter (b), Donner; Kirsten Flagstad (s), Fricka; Walter Kreppel (bs), Fasolt; Kurt Böhme (bs), Fafner; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1958
ABOUT THE OTHER PERFORMANCES
As the Rheingold clips were taking shape in my head, I decided that even though we were ostensibly sampling the art of Yvonne Minton, we needed to have a fuller experience of the extracts we extracted from the opera, and that was going to require multiple performances, as will also be the case when we get to the Walküre Fricka. For both operas I thought first of the relevant installments in Herbert von Karajan's DG Ring cycle. First off, that would give us an interesting pairing of both-opera Frickas, in this case of similar voice types; at Covent Garden Minton had naturally slid into a repertory generally similar to that of Josephine Veasey, a singer I've enjoyed a lot, and like Minton a lighter-weight rather than dramatic-weight mezzo, which one would more naturally think of for the Rheingold than the Walküre Fricka, which as befits the character's more advanced age and experience is written lower, heavier, and darker. Veasey, in working with Karajan, who chose to start off with the more obviously crowd-pleasing and also intention-revealing Walküre, then go back to Rheingold, had had the experience of starting with the role less obviously suited to her voice, the older and vocally heavier Walküre Fricka, and she made quite a good thing of it, as we'll hear when we get there.
The Karajan Rheingold also gives us some stronger casting in some (though not all) of the opera's other roles: the vividly etched Loge of Gerhard Stolze (which we were just talking about a couple of weeks ago!) and also a strong pair of Giants. We have to remember that at the time Karajan was recording and staging Rheingold, Talvela was the more established singer, and it probably seemed quite reasonable to cast him as the more sympathetic Fasolt, who can make use of every bit of tonal plangency the singer can bring to him. I've long wished that the casting had been flipflopped, since Ridderbusch in his vocal prime had such a beautiful voice (as heard to such memorable effect as Daland in the Böhm-DG Bayreuth Flying Dutchman and as King Heinrich in the Kubelik-DG studio Lohengrin), which would have been all to the good for Fasolt, while Talvela might have brought more toughness to the tougher Fafner. In our little extract, however, where Fasolt does most of the talking (Fafner usually takes over when tough talk is required), I have to say that Talvela seems to me altogether terrific.
The Solti-Decca Rheingold, beyond its enormous historic significance in Ring recording history, remains a vital performance, with again some interesting casting, notably Eberhard Wächter, with that beautiful baritone, for Donner. Waldemar Kmentt, always an unpredictable singer, doesn't make quite the same impact, though you'd think he could have knocked Froh out of the park. Our chunk includes the first of Froh's potentially gorgeous little ariettas, at 2:25 of the Decca clip, and it's certainly not bad -- just not what one might have hoped.( Remind me that at some point we need to do some remedial Froh-ing.)
The Decca also brings us a very different sort of Fricka, and we might think of the great Kirsten Flagstad, who learned the role for the recording, as an instance of a voice that's the reverse of Minton's and Veasey's, more naturally suited to the Walküre than the Rheingold Fricka. Of course Flagstad had never been either, though we know that in her final years, at the instigation of Decca producer John Culshaw, she was assiduously preparing the Walküre Fricka, which Culshaw planned to record with her to store in the vault until such time as he was authorized to proceed with a complete Walküre recording -- a day he knew might never come -- in which Flagstad's Fricka could then be inserted. Flagstad seems to have been enthusiastic about the project, which also gave her a substantial way to harness her physical and mental energy as she fought the sharp physical decline she was experiencing. The tragedy is that she was never physically able to do any actual recording sessions. It would have meant a lot to her to be able to do so, and it might have meant a lot to us as well -- who wouldn't like to have been able to hear what she might have been able to do with the role?
I'm glad we do have the Rheingold Fricka, which was also Culshaw's idea, if only as a late memento of a treasured singer. But I can't say it gives me much satisfaction as a performance of the role; the voice just doesn't seem to wrap very effectively around this vocally nimbler writing.
As for the Wotans, Eurodisc's veteran Theo Adam is now reduced pretty much to a wheeze. DG's Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, experimenting with the role, sensibly didn't continue the experiment. He gets off some quite nice phrases but elsewhere shows why the experiment was such an unwise idea. Our most authentic Wotan is clearly Decca's George London.
NOW WE'VE GOT OUR LITTLE DO RE MI SUITE
In the following quick trip into Act I of Do Re Me, the bits of synopsis are adapted from the liner note on the original Original Broadway Cast LP. Now, I don't say that the parallels are exact, but do Kay and Hubie Cram remind you of anyone?
STYNE-COMDEN-GREEN: Do Re Mi: Overture
The time: now. The place: New York City.
OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
Act I, "Waiting, waiting" (Kay Cram)
You are at the Casacabana, where lowlifes lead their high life. It is a noisy, overcrowded opening night. Kay Cram sits alone at the worst table in the room. Why alone? She tells you.
Nancy Walker (Kay Cram), vocal; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
Act I, "Take a job" (Kay and Hubie Cram)
Hubie Cram finally arrived. He lives at the top of his unfulfilled hopes, behind his determined grin, just around the corner from his one big break. Tonight he ran into this jukebox deal. If he only had . . . At the club, at ringside, Kay pointed out a sharp young tycoon.: John Henry Wheeler -- "Number One man in the entire jukebox and record game." Hubie fumed as he asked himself, "If he, why not me?"
Later, at home, undressing, Hube and Kay discuss their situation. Kay makes a startling and daring suggestion.
Nancy Walker and Phil Silvers (Kay and Hubie Cram), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
Act I, "It's legitimate" (Hubie Cram and "partners")
A spark flied out of the fire of Hubie's passion and ignited his imagination. Those great old slot machine hoodlums he used to work for in the old days! Who better to run jukeboxes? Fatso O'Rear and Skin Demopoulos and Brains Berman. Where were they now? Find out! Hubie was off. Again.
He lures the three out of tired and wrinkled retirement by selling them his plan.
Phil Silvers (Hubie Cram), George Givot (Skin Demopoulos), George Mathews (Fatso O'Rear), David Burns (Brains Berman), and ensemble (the Loaders), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961
UP NEXT: WE STILL HAVE TO GET TO WALKÜRE, DON'T WE?
#
No comments:
Post a Comment