Entertainment

I’ve been delinquent in updating the links to reviews — some of which can be hard to find on our website. Here, without further ado, is what’s been happening on Washington’s concert stages over the last week-plus.
The pianist Jeremy Denk, who performed in Washington on Saturday. (Photo by Dennis Callahan) (Courtesy of Opus 3 Artists) (Dennis Callahan - Dennis Callahan)

I reviewed the pianist Jeremy Denk in one of his distinctive recitals. I’ve called him the quintessential 20th-century pianist; I may switch that epithet to “The Charles Rosen of the 21st century.” Very different presentation, but same blend of smart writing about music and actually making it.

I went to the Washington Chorus’s “Essential Wagner” concert, expecting disaster, and really enjoyed myself. I mean, really, what chorus singer wouldn’t want to be part of an army of female Valkyries? I think some director may want to check out this concept. And the tenor Issachah Savage was, simply, amazing.

I heard Nelson Freire in a belated NSO debut, giving a sensitive performance of the Brahms Second Concerto under a slightly finicky Andreas Delfs.

And I went to the Washington Concert Opera’s Samson et Dalila.

In what turned out to be a Web exclusive, Stephen Brookes reviewed — and raved about — the pianist Vanessa Perez at the Venezuelan Embassy.

After the Metropolitan Opera debacle yesterday, I thought twice about running the mini-series I planned this week on responses to the company’s HD broadcasts. However, the Met has seen the light, and some of yesterday’s comments readers about the negativity of professional critics made me particularly inclined to bring a few more opinions into the mix. There follow, therefore, two responses — one a letter, one a very funny essay/review — to the “La traviata” broadcast originally aired in April. (I did not review this production myself, though the New York Times certainly did; the New York Post also reviewed it, but with a different singer.)

Below is a brief video excerpt of Natalie Dessay singing “Sempre libera,” with Matthew Polenzani.

Horrible “La traviata”

by William Grote

Whoever is responsible for the horrible “La traviata” I saw last night at the Regal Cinema in Ballston and whoever allowed it on the stage should be fired!

Opera lovers expect to experience “La Traviata” with a Violetta who is a courtesan with beautiful clothes and well-coiffed hair in a ballroom, not a slutty woman who doesn’t brush her hair and who runs around what looks like a gas chamber in her underwear. We don’t expect to see singing dancers peering down from a hole in the ceiling.

UPDATE: At 4:01 PM, the Metropolitan Opera sent out a press release saying that, in view of the reaction to the news, the Met had decided that Opera News will, in fact, be allowed to continue to review Metropolitan Opera productions.

A couple of weeks ago, I started a long blog post about the fact that Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, had gone after a freelance blogger for WQXR and managed to get the station to take down a blog post she wrote that was critical of him. I’m annoyed that I didn’t post my piece -- somehow I was prevented from finishing it to my satisfaction -- because it focused on two topics I thought were relevant to the story. One is the state of journalism in today’s media climate: the institution that hosted the blog clearly didn’t understand the nature of journalistic responsibility (including the fact that once something is published, you can distance yourself from it by plastering it with editors’ notes, but taking it down is not kosher). The other is the way that people who get criticized respond to criticism in an age when you can answer anything, immediately, on-line.

Now, those topics are somewhat dwarfed by a more immediate piece of news: Peter Gelb has gone on the rampage again. The New York Times has reported (on Page One) that he’s set his sights on Opera News, the leading opera magazine in America and a publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and is forcing them to stop writing reviews of the Met. You could say that this is still a story about arts journalism, and/or the way people respond to criticism; but the takeaway now seems to me to be that Gelb is losing his mind.
The Devil in a white suit (image from Des McAnuff’s production of “Faust” at the English National Opera, a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera); is Peter Gelb trying to bend the universe to his command? (Photo by Catherine Ashmore) (Catherine Ashmore)

I’m not sure what Gelb thinks he’s gaining by going so publically after the voices that annoy him. The Met has just spent millions of dollars on a new Ring production that not very many people like; Gelb gambled big and lost, perhaps for the first time, since his other biggest gamble at the Met, the HD broadcasts, has been a stunning success. Now, he seems to be lashing out in bitter denial, though his ability to act effectively is somewhat limited. He can’t, for instance, go after Alex Ross, who recently wrote a review in the New Yorker that was probably more blistering, and more widely read, than either the WQXR blog post (though that’s gotten far more readers since he had it taken down than it probably would have had he ignored it) or Brian Kellow’s strong and thoughtful editorial in Opera News, evidently one of the triggers for this Opera News fiasco.

Two obituaries from this weekend’s papers. For some, it is profane to link these two men in a single headline.

Herbert Breslin, Pavarotti’s brash and profane manager, dies at 87.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, master singer of German art songs, dies at 86.
Backstage after the opening of Visconti’s production of “Falstaff” at the Vienna State Opera, 1966. From left to right: Luchino Visconti, the mezzo Regina Resnik, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Leonard Bernstein, who conducted. Fischer-Dieskau concluded his stage career after singing “Falstaff” in 1992; he died May 18 in Germany. (ddp images/AP Photo) Foto: ddp images/AP/AP (ddp images/AP - DDP IMAGES)

I didn’t get to hear Fischer-Dieskau live very often, but one occasion I remember was a concert performance of Wagner’s “Parsifal” in Munich in the late 1980s, when he, toward the end of his career, was singing Amfortas. With the arrogant ignorance of youth, blissfully unaware of Fischer-Dieskau’s extensive operatic experience in Germany, I wondered what a Lieder singer was doing taking on Wagner, and found him hard to hear, but was duly impressed, and gradually won over, by the total serious commitment and subtlety he brought to the performance. Little did I in my ignorance know what a phenomenal opera singer he was in his prime. Today, a quick look at YouTube provides ample evidence of his importance in this realm. It says a lot about his power as a Lied singer that he was good enough at anything else to overshadow — at least for American listeners — his operatic achievement.

Lied is a specialized taste for some, and excellence in Lied is a nuanced and delicate commodity. It took me years of listening fully to appreciate Fischer-Dieskau’s phenomenal artistry. And if other singers, like Gerard Souzay, more completely captured my heard, Fischer-Dieskau remains, undeniably, the benchmark.

Above: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1966 sings “Gute Nacht” from Schubert’s “Winterreise,” with Joerg Demus accompanying.

My friend and coauthor Herbert Breslin, who managed Luciano Pavarotti’s career for 36 years, died on Thursday in Nice of a heart attack at the age of 87.

Herbert was one of the more controversial figures in a field that sees its share of controversy. Reviewing our book, The King and I, in Opera News, Brian Kellow said something along the lines of, “I’d always thought of Herbert Breslin as a foul-mouthed, money-hungry old windbag. Now that I’ve read “The King and I,” I think he’s a lovable, foul-mouthed, money-hungry old windbag.” Leave off the “lovable" part and you have a good idea of how most of the field felt about a man who routinely screamed expletives into the telephone before slamming it down, cut various financial corners, and made gleeful use of his star client’s fame to manipulate journalists and other artists. When in 2002 an offer to write a book with this character fell into my lap and I began sounding out people in the business about it, I started to get the impression that he was universally hated.

But there was a lot more to Herbert’s story than that.