Fine line between opera and porn

[whipped guy]

I am thinking about seeing Tell or Tristan and Isolde.

Well no matter which you decide to see it will be a very long evening of Wagnerian length! Wagner told Rossini that with William Tell he had anticipated some of his own bold ideas regarding the future of opera. I wonder if that included length?!?!

 

Incidentally I chose Tell because even though I have heard it twice in concert performance this will be the first time the MET will have staged in in over 80 years. So it is definitely bucket list material!

[Phil_musc]

I'm curious: how does one musically depict fellatio as mentioned above in TruHart's post? Is it an instrumental thing where the woodwinds all blow orgiastically on some high note? Might this be an opportunity to revisit the "Scriabin Mystic chord?" Or do the singers moan their way through the lyrics a la Donna Summer's immortal "Love to Love You, Baby?" Or does the tenor lead (it's always about the tenor lead) utter/sing some sort of Jeff Stryker-like lines such as, "Go all the way down on it." I can see why the Met might have some reservations about presenting a work like this for the Saturday afternoon radio broadcast.

[+ WilliamM]

Well no matter which you decide to see it will be a very long evening of Wagnerian length! Wagner told Rossini that with William Tell he had anticipated some of his own bold ideas regarding the future of opera. I wonder if that included length?!?!

 

Until today, I did not know exactly when the two operas were scheduled in the fall. For better or worse, the best day for me is a Saturday matinee performance of Tristan in October. I am so glad we discussed the Met now because that performance is almost sold out.

[+ bigjoey]

I'm curious: how does one musically depict fellatio as mentioned above in TruHart's post? Is it an instrumental thing where the woodwinds all blow orgiastically on some high note? Might this be an opportunity to revisit the "Scriabin Mystic chord?" Or do the singers moan their way through the lyrics a la Donna Summer's immortal "Love to Love You, Baby?" Or does the tenor lead (it's always about the tenor lead) utter/sing some sort of Jeff Stryker-like lines such as, "Go all the way down on it." I can see why the Met might have some reservations about presenting a work like this for the Saturday afternoon radio broadcast.

 

The MET recently has a fellatio scene in Tosca with Scarpia being the lucky recipient. They are not so shy in such staging.

 

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/arts/music/27mcgr.html

[+ WilliamM]

The MET recently has a fellatio scene in Tosca with Scarpia being the lucky recipient. They are not so shy in such staging.

 

I am far more concerned with "fixing" "Death in Venice." In the Btitten opera, Tadzio is a dancer who never sings or speaks. A decade ago a Germany dance company presented an all dancing version of Thomas Mann's masterwork at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The dancer who player Tadzio was two or three years older than in either the Mann novella or the Britten opera. Tadzio was written as a bit of a flirt. the older Tadzio in the dancing version was even more of a flirt.

 

Scarpia's sexual experience on-stage does not damage the story; an older Tazio changes "Death in Venice" in major ways.

 

Any comments?

[whipped guy]

I am far more concerned with "fixing" "Death in Venice." In the Btitten opera, Tadzio is a dancer who never sings or speaks. A decade ago a Germany dance company presented an all dancing version of Thomas Mann's masterwork at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The dancer who player Tadzio was two or three years older than in either the Mann novella or the Britten opera. Tadzio was written as a bit of a flirt. the older Tadzio in the dancing version was even more of a flirt.

 

Scarpia's sexual experience on-stage does not damage the story; an older Tazio changes "Death in Venice" in major ways.

 

Any comments?

The Scarpia blowjob fits in. If the Tazio is only a few years older that should not really make a difference. Aschenbach is supposedly in his early fifties and Tadzio about 14 and is on vacation with his family. At the age of 50 or so any attractive younger guy could easily probably become a fascination. Heck have we not all followed a hot guy around a bit when we have seen them when on vacation at the beach or poolside?!? As such I'm not sure it would make much of a difference other than that is not what Mann intended. Plus if Tazio is too old he might not be believably on vacation with his family. Worse things have happened at the opera or the theatre by egotistical stage directors who want to put their official stamp on works of art.

 

From my personal point of view a more muscled and older Tadzio would make more sense because that's what would turn me on personally. However, my name is not Aschenbach and I'm not into jail bait.

[Phil_musc]

I'm with you on that one, WG. But I still want to know how a composer (as differentiated from a stage director) musically depicts a blow job. I get how the stage director does it - that's easy.

[+ honcho]

A long time ago, there was a thread about having met anybody famous, and at the time he wasn't.

 

I was also concerned about invading the fellows privacy and him being annoyed if it ever got back to him

that mention of him was made on this site, but since somebody else now has, I can tell my story.

 

One warmish fall day about two years ago, after a late afternoon music lesson, I was hungry enough

to eat the paint of the wall and wandered over to the Cove cafe on Castro.

 

So, sitting at the next table over was a handsome guy with every one of his jet-black hairs in place, blue eyes, wearing a tank top, listening to an iPod, looking like he had been a college gymnast and had come straight from

the gym, and had it stopped there I would have assumed mindless Weh0 transplant . . .

 

except that he was studying a hugely thick score ...

So, I struck up a conversation, and ask if he was also a musician ...

 

said he was studying voice; so I mentioned having heard the call late and having gone back to pursue

a degree in music myself; he looked young enough so I asked him if he was a master's student at the conservatory ...

 

No, he said, he was in the Merola opera program.

 

--- gulp --- I stammered, "Well, now I feel totally outclassed" with a smile on my face

 

he quickly replied, "don't be ... we are all lifelong students". He went on to ask what instrument I played

oboe, and said that he himself had been a double major between voice and instrumental music and played

oboe himself and asked if I had a "Cor". Didn't register because of his rather thick New Zealand accent

and my now being even more cowed.

 

"Cor Anglais", (English horn - or tenor oboe), which I indeed had with me at the time in a double case.

 

I don't remember the rest of the conversation except that we said which didn't last too much longer before I begged off and let him finish his dinner in relative peace. He seemed totally unaffected, down-to-earth,

and did offer his name in exchange for mine ... Hadleigh Adams. First guy pictured in this thread

 

(At the time he was totally clean-shaven. Weho types usually are, although I must say I think the beard does suit him well).

[whipped guy]

I'm with you on that one, WG. But I still want to know how a composer (as differentiated from a stage director) musically depicts a blow job. I get how the stage director does it - that's easy.

Well the final orchestral moments of the first Act of Wagner's Die Walküre supposedly depict the orgasm that brings the hero Siegfried into this world... That's the closest I can come and cum to think of it the old MET production did have Siegmund right on top of Sieglinde in a missionary position with that orgasmic motive cuming as the curtain falls.

 

Oh, Siegmund and Sieglinde are brother and sister by the way, not that there's anything wrong with that! Well, not in opera... LOL!!!! Of course Wagner was always waaaaay a head of his time!!!!!

[+ WilliamM]

The Scarpia blowjob fits in. If the Tazio is only a few years older that should not really make a difference. Aschenbach is supposedly in his early fifties and Tadzio about 14 and is on vacation with his family. At the age of 50 or so any attractive younger guy could easily probably become a fascination. Heck have we not all followed a hot guy around a bit when we have seen them when on vacation at the beach or poolside?!? As such I'm not sure it would make much of a difference other than that is not what Mann intended. Worse things have happened at the opera or the theatre by egotistical stage directors who want to put their official stamp works of art.

 

From my personal point of view a more muscled and older Tadzio would make more sense because that's what would turn me on personally. However, my name is not Aschenbach and I'm not into jail bait.

 

We know now from Mann's Diaries that he was attracted to one of his young sons. Just guessing, but I believe Mann wrote "Death of Venice" before any of his six children were born, but he had flirtations with young men already, not sure about actual sex (only because I am too lazy to look it up). And we are not discussing just an average writer, Mann was Germany's best known 20th century author; he won the Novel Prize for Literature in Stockholm for all of his works, but mainly for "The Magic Mountain," a long novel set in pre-World War l Davos, Switzerland.

 

Adding a few years to Tadzio completely changes the story. Tadzio is aware that he is being noticed by Aschenbach. He likes the attention, and flirts a bit with the older man. In the Germany Ballet I saw at BAM, Tadzio was not a freshman in high school, but a junior or senior.

 

Yes, worse things may have happened in staging operas. And, to some degree, I feel more strongly about Mann than most people because of his anti-National Socialism (Nazi) positions, his exile in the U.S. (where he helped other European refugees financially) and his lecture tours before and after the war. Mann could have sat the war out and just write in his Pacific Palisades home over looking the Pacific Ocean. Instead he used his Nobel Prize as platform to speak against Hitler time and time again. Like Dietrich, Mann was not the most popular person in post-war Germany.

[whipped guy]

We know now from Mann's Diaries that he was attracted to one of his young sons. Just guessing, but I believe Mann wrote "Death of Venice" before any of his six children were born, but he had flirtations with young men already, not sure about actual sex (only because I am too lazy to look it up). And we are not discussing just an average writer, Mann was Germany's best know 20th century author; he won the Novel Prize for Literature in Stockholm for all of his works, but mainly for "The Magic Mountain," a long novel set in pre-World War l Davos, Switzerland.

 

Adding a few years to Tadzio completely changes the story. Tadzio is aware that he is being noticed by Aschenbach. He likes the attention, and flirts a bit with the older man. In the Germany Ballet I saw at BAM, Tadzio was not a freshman in high school, but a junior or senior.

 

Yes, worse things may have happened in staging operas. And, to some degree, I feel more strongly about Mann than most people because of his anti-National Socialism (Nazi) positions, his exile in the U.S. (where he helped other European refugees financially) and his lecture tours before and after the war. Mann could have sat the war out and just write in his Pacific Palisades home over looking the Pacific Ocean. Instead he used his Nobel Prize as platform to speak against Hitler time and time again. Like Dietrich, Mann was not the most popular person in post-war Germany.

 

I think that it is more a function of finding an accomplished dancer to play the role. This guy hardly looks 14.

 

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03349/deathinvenicetwo_3349478b.jpg

 

However this youngster does...

 

http://i0.wp.com/farm4.static.flickr.com/3537/3458185711_b7ce9d5db4.jpg?resize=425%2C412

 

 

If memory serves me I don't recall the Tadzio in the MET's original production looking 14. Of course in opera age is not something that always need concern us. Do we really want Butterfly and Gilda to be teenagers or would we rather have Mirella Freni and Joan Sutherland?!?!? Mann might not approve of an older Tadzio, but in a production whereby the concept calls for a more experienced dancer as in the first photo it might be better to use an older and more experienced individual.

[whipped guy]

One more thought regarding opera. While it is always a plus to have a singer who can look, act, and sing a given role, a singer's age and appearance should not be the determining factor. Years ago I saw the hefty Montserrat Caballé as Elizabetta in Verdi's Don Carlo. She hardly looked the part, but sang like an angel. The last time I saw the piece the singer looked the part to perfection but sang like a comprimario understudy who was out of her element. I know what I would prefer.

[+ WilliamM]

@whipped guy, here is a review about the Garsington Opera production that you indirectly mentioned by posting a photo of Tadzio and Aschenbach:

 

"Paul Curran’s staging, unfussily designed by Kevin Knight, was in most respects excellent, particularly in its adroit handling of the ebb and flow of the Venetian scene. But Celestin Boutin’s Tadzio was presented too knowingly, without untouchable hauteur or unfathomable enigma, and the attempt to balleticise his family was misjudged, if not ludicrous."

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/11685751/Death-in-Venice-Garsington-Opera-review-perfectly-measured.html

 

 

The Tadzio in the Met production did look 14-years old. Britten was still alive at the time.

 

The ballet at BAM was a production of the Stuttgarter Ballett. The company next presents the ballet "Death in Venice" in July, 2007

[whipped guy]

@whipped guy, here is a review about the Garsington Opera production that you indirectly mentioned by posting a photo of Tadzio and Aschenbach:

 

"Paul Curran’s staging, unfussily designed by Kevin Knight, was in most respects excellent, particularly in its adroit handling of the ebb and flow of the Venetian scene. But Celestin Boutin’s Tadzio was presented too knowingly, without untouchable hauteur or unfathomable enigma, and the attempt to balleticise his family was misjudged, if not ludicrous."

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/11685751/Death-in-Venice-Garsington-Opera-review-perfectly-measured.html

 

The Tadzio in the original Met production did look 14-years old. Britten was still alive at the time.

I knew Britten was still alive, but I guess my memory did not serve me well.

 

However, please note that I did specifically mention that if the directors concept called for something different an older more experienced artist might be the way to go. Heaven knows having a relative who was (fortunately now past tense!) a ballet dancer I had to sit through too many recitals by 14 year old dancers and it was not exactly a pretty sight!! So perhaps my life experiences have overly influenced my opinion in this matter. Plus, having gown up when the fat lady often really sang I have learned to overlook such things.

[+ WilliamM]

@whipped guy, we have a very good relationship. Could we agree to disagree?

[whipped guy]

I knew Britten was still alive, but I guess my memory did not serve me well.

 

However, please note that I did specifically mention that if the directors concept called for something different an older more experienced artist might be the way to go. Heaven knows having a relative who was (fortunately now past tense!) a ballet dancer I had to sit through too many recitals by 14 year old dancers and it was not exactly a pretty sight!! So perhaps my life experiences have overly influenced ny opinion in this matter. Plus, having gown up when the fat lady often really sang I have learned to overlook such things.

PS: To the above... If Tadzio's entire family were indeed depicted in the Garsington production as a ballet troop visiting Venice that indeed would be a bit ludicrous!

 

@whipped guy, we have a very good relationship. Could we agree to disagree?

I don't think that we really disagree at all. It's just that in reading about various productions over the years (I have never see it in the theatre) all the Tadzio's usually look older than 14 and just like accepting Renata Tebaldi as Butterly it seemed natural.

 

By the way kudos to @WilliamM for figuring out that the production came from Garsington. Not many know about that festival in England which is considered to be a junior Glyndebourne festival and often offers adventurous productions (for better or worse) to boot!

[+ WilliamM]

[whipped guy]

http://65.media.tumblr.com/f72f9c5187d4e9888cce92842efa8da6/tumblr_mq4rvpSR7Z1szor52o1_1280.jpg

[Guest]

Well, this is what the SF Chronicle's Joshua Kosman had to say about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/West-Edge-s-Powder-is-a-brash-erotic-8994667.php?campaignID=186953&patronID=483309145&linkNum=2&memberID=35aee59794c1eb211deceb40e561efe4#photo-10681985

 

That’s not to say, of course, that “Powder” will be for all tastes. The pornographic strains in the piece are pronounced, and made even more so (possibly to excess) in director Elkhanah Pulitzer’s unbridled production. The dramaturgy is often cartoonish, the vocal writing grueling and the overall cast of the work pitiless in the extreme.

 

Yet it’s impossible to resist the exuberant spirit of inventiveness that suffuses Adès’ writing, or the alacrity with which all the artists in this production respond to it. Everyone here is game for anything, and the opening performance seemed to soar on the strength of that energy.

[TruHart1]

But, but! Isn't Tadzio in both the novella and the opera symbolic for Aschenbach's lost youth and his obsessive sexual fantasy (for that reason?) Also, Mann based the character (age, flirtatiousness and attitude) on his own attraction to an actual boy he happened to see in Venice on a trip he took in 1911! I could see an older, more capable dancer (say, in his early 20's) giving a fine interpretation of Tadzio, but it would then not be the same dynamic Mann imagined when he wrote the novella, in that he also meant for Aschenbach to suffer humiliation for his open attraction/obsession to such a young boy.

 

Well the final orchestral moments of the first Act of Wagner's Die Walküre supposedly depict the orgasm that brings the hero Siegfried into this world... That's the closest I can come and cum to think of it the old MET production did have Siegmund right on top of Sieglinde in a missionary position with that orgasmic motive cuming as the curtain falls.

 

Oh, Siegmund and Sieglinde are brother and sister by the way, not that there's anything wrong with that! Well, not in opera... LOL!!!! Of course Wagner was always waaaaay a head of his time!!!!!

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde also depicts a sexual act musically. Most of the second act (Liebesnacht) is the long foreplay and "coitus interruptus," precipitously ended by Isolde's husband, King Marke, returning home unexpectedly and finding the couple "in flagrante delicto!" If you listen to the entire duet (nearly 40 minutes long!) you can hear the different stages in sexual love-making; the excitement of finally getting together alone after longing for each other, the slow beginning (foreplay) and building to full-blown sex as the music increases in tempo and notes mount higher and higher, until the interruption just before the climax (sexually and musically) by King Marke's untimely arrival!!!

 

Gustav Mahler (a great composer in his own right) conducted at the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 through 1910 and it was noted at that time that observers could see that Mahler always became sexually excited (I always interpreted that to mean he got a hard-on!) whenever he conducted the second act of Tristan und Isolde! Since sex was never actually depicted on stage in those days, I always imagine Mahler was "turned on" by the power of Wagner's music and words!

 

TruHart1

[whipped guy]

Gustav Mahler (a great composer in his own right) conducted at the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 through 1910 and it was noted at that time that observers could see that Mahler always became sexually excited (I always interpreted that to mean he got a hard-on!) whenever he conducted the second act of Tristan und Isolde! Since sex was never actually depicted on stage in those days, I always imagine Mahler was "turned on" by the power of Wagner's music and words!

 

TruHart1

Well that Mahler story is really a hoot! I wonder if Alma Mahler accompanied him to NYC to take advantage of the situation!?!

[Phil_musc]

Well, Alma was no fool so I'd guess she was probably there, waiting (im)patiently.

[TruHart1]

Well that Mahler story is really a hoot! I wonder if Alma Mahler accompanied him to NYC to take advantage of the situation!?!

Oh yes...Alma travelled with him on his journeys to New York. I have a feeling that Gustav was happy to accommodate her in bed, though he was so busy conducting so often, she had an affair about which Mahler consulted Sigmund Freud!!! Freud advised Mahler to quit trying to squelch her compositional aspirations and encourage her to write more music, which he did. She, in turn, agreed to stay married to him and end the affair but later went back to secretly seeing her lover on the sly!

 

TruHart1

[whipped guy]

Oh yes...Alma travelled with him on his journeys to New York. I have a feeling that Gustav was happy to accommodate her in bed, though he was so busy conducting so often, she had an affair about which Mahler consulted Sigmund Freud!!! Freud advised Mahler to quit trying to squelch her compositional aspirations and encourage her to write more music, which he did. She, in turn, agreed to stay married to him and end the affair but later went back to secretly seeing her lover on the sly!

 

TruHart1

Yes Alma got around! She married her lover after Gustav met his early demise. Of course Alma was almost twenty years younger than Gustav so she probably had a hand in killing him as Mahler had a heart condition. As I recall the second marriage with the lover lasted only a few years as she found another lover to whom eventually she was married. That lasted longer, but he had a weak heart and she probably killed him as well.

[MscleLovr]

If there's any justice in this world, this thread will win the "Best Title of the Year Award".