This was the question running through Trobador’s mind as he, along with a certain number of other European spectators, tuned in to an unusual television program last Friday on the Franco-German channel Arte. It transmitted the “première” of a legendary film, Metropolis (1927) of director Fritz Lang, restored to its original two-and-a-half hours. This was shown before a live audience, with a full, well-rehearsed orchestra performing from the original Gottfried Huppertz (1887-1937) score, edited by the German conductor-musicologist, Bernd Heller. Given the short run of the original film with its original score, in 1927,  more people have probably heard the music this week than at any time since its composition (although I am told on good authority that the score can be heard on two-year-old DVD produced by the Murnau Stifftung.)

The much-awaited projection of the restored Lang film was, to this correspondent, at least as important for its music-historical significance as for its cinematic impact. For, if all the histories of film will tell you that, during the glory days of the “silents,” entire orchestras would be engaged to perform for major showings of important films, the opportunities to actually witness such a thing are virtually nonexistent nowadays. What happened on February 12 in Berlin was, therefore, unique in our own time and, in its own way, thrilling.

Fascinating and exciting and informative the event certainly was. However, while your writer would like to report that he witnessed the resurrection of a lost treasure, he cannot. To begin with the score, practically continuous with the film, with only a few seconds of silence here and there, is anything but an independent masterpiece. Resolutely tonal in a 19th century Teutonic way, with only a few allusions here and there to “modernist” sensibility (the foxtrots of the cabaret scenes, oddly evocative of Kurt Weill), Huppertz’ score manages to evoke Mendelssohn, Weber, Brahms, and other Romantic luminaries without ever making an independent statement of its own.  This dependence on musical vocabulary developed by others is, of course, hardly remarkable in the history of movie music. In fact, it’s par for the course. Think, for instance, of how John Williams pastiches and paraphrases the techniques of early to mid 20th century composers in his wildly successful Hollywood scores.

On the other hand, the Huppertz score is of real interest because of its symbiotic relationship with Metropolis-the-film, and, along with the recently restored portions of the original filmography, because of the light it sheds on the whole..According to an online biography of Gottfried Huppertz (http://www.fimumu.com/huppertz/), the composer was an intimate friend of Lang and Lang’s then-wife and scenarist, Thea von Harbou. The musical score was conceived alongside the film scenario, and

this close collaboration continued during the filming of Metropolis where Huppertz was constantly on the set, a thing very unusual for the time. Huppertz used to play the piano during filming, as one of the things Lang liked was to time the action of the actors using numbers, and the background music was to be used as tempo.

Furthermore, Huppertz’ neo-Romantic music, experienced simultaneously with the film, inflects the viewer’s understanding of  what Metropolis actually is. Longtime considered as a seminal work of the modernist ethos, the movie is, actually, a product of decadent, kitschy German postromanticism, its justly celebrated “futuristic” aspects notwithstanding. It is, perhaps, the most important bad movie ever made. There is about a half-hour of iconic, unforgettable imagery and movement in the film—the futuristic city, the inhuman machines, the hordes of oppressed,  robotized workers in their underground tunnels, the human sacrifices to evil gods—in fact,  many of the bits many of us already know from the various recompositions and re-edits of the original—along with lots that is much less good: crepuscular, neo-Wagnerian slog, pseudo-religiosity, and offensive,  paternalistic political ideology. No wonder that H. G. Wells, in a 1927 review for the New York Times, called it a “dreary series of strained events.” No wonder it was a commercial flop, and no wonder that it was shortened and re-edited to the point of near-incoherence soon after its initial release. Even Lang himself, in a late-life interview shown on Arte Friday evening after the Festival screening, said he hadn’t liked the final result. Only now, with a restored print and the original score, do we get an adequate understanding of the original:  flashes of genius, inane scenario, and all. Given the cult status and the influence of Metropolis—its brilliant parts, at any rate—the restoration project was a noble enterprise, despite the limitations of the underlying work.

But hey, music and film, what a great idea! No wonder, post-Lang/Huppertz, that Prokofiev and Eisentein took the idea to extraordinary heights (Alexander Nevsky,  Ivan the Terrible). No wonder Phil Glass, more recently, attempted a posthumous collaboration with Jean Cocteau (La Belle et la Bête). Who is going to be next?

Rumor has it that they are a hardbitten bunch,  the players in the orchestra pit of the Paris Opera.  And Trobador can vouch,  from his couple of seasons of gigging  around in France with Paris-Conservatory-trained instrumentalists, that the men and women of that milieu are a no-nonsense crowd. They like things on the job to go quickly and efficiently,  and according to Hoyle.

Nonetheless there was an element of surprise in the news, first made public January 18,  that Emmanuelle Haim, a rising star in the French baroque music scene,  had walked away from the Paris Opera’s production of Mozart’s Idomeneo,  for which she had been engaged as musical director,  to be replaced for the final rehearsals and the public run by the little-known Philippe Hui.

There is currently, in the Paris press,  a war of dueling communiqués as to how this state of affairs came about. Ms. Haim, who performs  and records with her own ensemble,  Le Concert d’Astrée, put the blame on a recalcitrant, establishmentarian institution: “The attempt to lead the [modern-instruments] orchestra towards another [early-music] aesthetic has failed,” her press release ran. “ The challenge was great, but the orchestra did not wish to  undergo this experience.”

The response/rebuttal from the orchestra committee was made public four days later, on January 22. Their indictment of the conductor on professional grounds was severe: “With Madame Haim, the disappointment was great, before a lack  of precision both in musical concept and [conducting] gesture.”

Disaccord between an orchestra and its leader is nothing new in the annals of modern performance; at home, one is reminded of more than one such conflict in the recent history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as in some smaller local ensembles. Perhaps there is something in the very concept, hierarchical and authoritarian,  of the 19^th century orchestra that encourages or tends towards conflict in our time. And then, as baroquenik conductors are invited to direct modern instrument ensembles,  one has to deal with the potential quarrel of the ancients and the moderns,  with those in the early music camp generally defending different notions of line, phrasing,  bowing, articulation, and tone than those taught and practiced in the modern orchestra milieu.  Still, early-instrument conductors like Nicholas Harnoncourt,   Mark Minkowski,  Ton Koopman and others, have managed to put their stamp on modern bands with a reasonable degree of success and little blood shed.

So what’s going on here? Trobador’s last encounter with Ms. Haim’s musicianship dates at least a dozen years back,  when she was the flamboyant continuo player for Minkowski’s Les Musiciens du Louvre.  Motivated to learn more about the quarrel,  he has attempted to play catchup with her career,  to a certain degree,  via video clips on Youtube.

What he finds on those videos is evidence of a strong yet eccentric talent. Ms. Haim has  a vision of how she wants her music to sound, and she has succeeded in surrounding herself, with Le Concert d’Astrée, with a young and highly motivated ensemble that willingly follows her intentions. In the parallel-to-mainstream world of nonstandard music ensembles, the leader’s ability to gather a good group of players and/or singers together, around the leader’s personality and ideas,  is key to success.

The very youth of Le Concert d’Astrée is a big plus; the members of the band are visibly interested in the music and the project at hand,  and wish to make an artistic statement.  This was the overall tone of the early music movement a generation ago, but also of other nonstandard enterprises such as Boston’s Emmanuel Music under the late Craig Smith.  The sense of routine that invades many larger institutions, and also the psyches of many individually gifted musicians as they approach middle age, is an obstacle to real distinction.  Genuine, this-is-really-important motivation has a great deal to do,  arguments about “authenticity” aside,  with the success of the early music movement in finding audiences.

Furthermore Ms. Haim, for her opera and oratorio recordings, has been offered by her recording company (Virgin) the luxury of working with highpriced,  mainstream singers such as Nathalie Dessay and Ian Bostridge. Whatever one may think of the result of these collaborations on artistic grounds (and,  frankly, judging from what he hears in the clips, Trobador is not much of a fan), the vocal soloists seem to enjoy their experience,  and respond with intensity and commitment to their director’s coaching.

Now come the “howevers.” The private code that can grow up within these nonstandard ensembles can be a hindrance when one moves to the outside.  Ms. Haim has a very personal way of communicating her wishes. Her body language is passionate, she moves her hands and her torso,  her face exteriorizes the affects she wishes the music to convey.  Thanks to her personal engagement, a  sense of great intensity reigns over the rehearsals and recording takes.  The singers, too, respond with ample gesture and movement,  even excessively so, as I read the comments of some Youtube viewers. These visual elements translate well onto film and digital tape – an important consideration in our day. It is no hindrance, from a marketing perspective,  that Ms. Haim is attractive, that she frequently conducts in sleeveless dresses,  and that she has great hair.

But, marketing and fashion considerations aside,  Ms. Haim is unquestionably a strong leader.  She has succeeded in communicating her wishes to her own circle/community of musicians. Where the rubber hits the road is when this unconventional personality needs to confront the conventions of the symphonic world.  Watching her videos, Trobador attempts to position himself,  in imagination,  as a working stiff within the orchestra,  and he becomes troubled.  She’s not like most conductors he has played under,  and does not seem to follow the usual rules. He has a terrible time responding to Ms. Haim’s beat.  Conductors are supposed to prepare the next musical event. But with Ms. Haim,  almost  everything in her gestural language seems to come a microsecond late, and appears to happen just after the music has already sounded.  WTF is going on?  he asks of his imaginary stand mate. I’m getting a headache. Was that a cadence that just went by? When is the next break?

Along these lines, I hereby translate the comment of a blogger (on operaforum.pro.fr) who, while stating his admiration for Ms. Haim’s talent,  characterizes the orchestra’s rebellion as “healthy”:

“[Her] ambitions go beyond the ability of this very good musician, whose gestural language as a conductor is limited to expressing the pleasure she undergoes while miming a musical phrase, rather than her capacity to do what is necessary to obtain the result.”

Would the Paris Orchestra pit band have been more docile,  and changed its bowings,  more easily with a different baroquenik than Ms. Haim? The question is open. Meanwhile, the scandal has at least partially passed, orchestra manager John Cohen (no relation to other Cohens who may or may not be in the room) has declared that there will be no further comment from that quarter, and the production of  Idomeneo has opened at the Paris Opera, running until February 13, with several cast changes, and minus its previously-announced conductor, to generalized yawns.

]]> http://classical-scene.com/2010/01/30/divorce-paris-opera-style-a-conductor-leaves-the-podium/feed/ 1 http://classical-scene.com/2010/01/25/report-from-paris-les-arts-florissants%e2%80%99-the-fairy-queen/ http://classical-scene.com/2010/01/25/report-from-paris-les-arts-florissants%e2%80%99-the-fairy-queen/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:55:50 +0000 Trobador http://classical-scene.com/?p=2528 Paris, Opéra Comique, 24 January 2010- Special report Your far-flung Intelligencer correspondents are forever on the alert for interesting musical events with some Boston tie-in, no matter how seemingly remote. This “Fairy Queen” of Purcell, put on by Les Arts Florissants, with William Christie at the helm on most nights, is the third such production in personal memory, and the best and most fun. Furthermore, it’s coming to the States in a few weeks, via the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Trobador urges his readers to take a trip to New York to take it all in. This kind of baroque opera-spectacle, to be entirely successful and satisfying, needs to be musical, intelligent, and sumptuous. In Boston, and in the States in general, we have musicality and intelligence galore, but we come up short on the sumptuous side. The money just isn’t there. This coproduction among the Paris Opéra Comique, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Theátre de Caen, and BAM, has it all, as the generous state subsidies in Europe, France in particular, make possible the requisitely lavish scale such spectacle requires. Here’s a more relaxed approach to the re-creation of a classic work: neither fastidiously historical nor polemically counter-historical. [Click title for full review.]]]> Paris, Opéra Comique, 24 January 2010- Special report

Your far-flung Intelligencer correspondents are forever on the alert for interesting musical events with some Boston tie-in, no matter how seemingly remote. This delicious production of the Purcell score with (most) of the Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream included will recall to veteran Bostonians a not-entirely-dissimilar production by the American Repertory Theater and a skilled crew of our own musical baroqueniks, back in the early 1980’s.  A few years later, in 1989, the present writer also witnessed a Purcell-Shakespeare show at the Aix-en-Provence music festival, under the musical direction of William Christie. This “Fairy Queen,” put on by Les Arts Florissants, with Christie at the helm on most nights, is the third such production in personal memory, and the best and most fun. Furthermore, it’s coming to the States in a few weeks, via the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Trobador urges his readers to take a trip to New York to take it all in.

This kind of baroque opera-spectacle, to be entirely successful and satisfying, needs to be musical, intelligent, and sumptuous. In Boston, and in the States in general, we have musicality and intelligence galore, but we come up short on the sumptuous side. The money just isn’t there. (Concerning the chronic underfunding of the arts in Boston……well, don’t get Trobador started on this sensitive subject.) This coproduction among the Paris Opéra Comique, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Theátre de Caen, and BAM, has it all, as the generous state subsidies in Europe, France in particular, make possible the requisitely lavish scale such spectacle requires.

The Opéra Comique show presents, if memory serves correctly, the entire Purcell score and the major part of the Shakespeare play, cumulating all and all, with an intermission, a runtime of just under four hours. The time passes easily, and the capacity French crowd at the Salle Favart sat through a couple of hours of music-less, English language text with apparent pleasure (there were, so the story goes, supertitles, invisible from your correspondent’s less-than-ideal seat in a loge.)

To be honest, the Purcell score, however fabulous it may be, is incidental music to a play; no matter how fine the musical interpretation, a less-than-excellent theater experience will guarantee a measure of disappointment, as your veteran correspondent recalls was the case during the ART run all those years back. In this current production, the intrigue and the text are trimmed a little, but most of the famous bits are still there (an exception being Puck’s wonderful closing lines, and they were missed—but Purcell and his 1692 collaborators evidently wished otherwise). For continuity’s sake, there are also a few lines interpolated here and there, evidently from that later rewrite of Shakespeare by an anonymous hand. The British actors are mainly first-rate, and they can handle Shakespeare’s language convincingly—something that comes a little harder to many American actors, even good pros like those at the ART back then. Only the Oberon here, oddly rigid and monochromatic, was somewhat disappointing. Sally Dexter was an electric Titania, and Desmond Barrit, who played Bottom (and sang the Drunken Poet as well) drew the loudest applause of anyone, musician or actor, at the final curtain call.

The music was mostly just fine, with music director Jonathan Cohen’s brisk and expeditious tempi moving everything along well in the best traditions of good show business. A couple of his tempi struck this writer as almost too fast, but a couple of cast members whispered to me that they preferred the quick pacing to William Christie’s supposedly more leisurely measure. While Les Arts Flo retains many veteran players from the 70’s and 80’s in the pit, the cast onstage is young and even, at moments, a bit green. The countertenor solo parts were taken, haute-contre style, by high tenors, to uneven effect. On the other hand, bass Andrew Foster-Williams took on the variously challenging roles of Cordidon, Winter, Hymen, and Sleep with great aplomb, and was an audience favorite. Diminutive soprano Emmanuelle de Negri sang “The Plaint” as though her life depended on it and, aided by intelligent staging, made that number one of the rare moments in the show that spoke directly to the heart (one other was a danced evocation of sleep and its erotic fantasms, choreographed by Kim Brandstrup). The orchestra, of course, is one of the best baroque bands in the business, and if blend was sometimes hard to achieve in the overly dry acoustic of the Salle Favart, there was plenty of drive and flair in the playing.

The staging by Jonathan Kent, is, shall we say, sex-positive. And constantly inventive, drawing on a heterogeneous mix of stylistic approaches from “authentic” 17^th-century decor and costuming to Gustave Doré (the black winged fairies) to Busby-Berkeley-style Art Deco and beyond. The choreography is supple and seductive. For much of the show the chorus and dancers, in sleek basic black outfits, resemble fashionable clients of a Paris disco (only with wings). Here’s a more relaxed approach to the re-creation of a classic work: neither fastidiously historical nor polemically counter-historical. As T.S. Eliot said in another context (this quote from memory): “There is no method. The only method is to be very intelligent.” The riotous pre-intermission finale is a brilliant success, as a stageful of white Easter Bunnies engages in a joyful, collective bonk,… guiltless and somehow innocent for all that, and prefiguring the dressed-all-in-white double marriage of the finale. I only wish Titania had figured more prominently at the very end. For, if the title is to be believed, the show is about her….

Trobador desires anonymity