Tag Archives: music

Reviews

Washington National Opera's 2008 Rigoletto

This past Monday night, Ligia and I went to see WNO’s 2008 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Our overall impression was positive. All of the elements: cast, direction, costumes, lighting, decor, music contributed to make it a great production. There were a few things that could have been improved, and I’ll mention them below.

The Kennedy Arts Center also has its act together when it comes to taking care of its public. Free shuttles are provided from the nearest metro station (Foggy Bottom) directly to the building’s entrance, there are plenty of ushers to check tickets and direct people to their seats, the bathrooms are kept clean, and there are many concession stands in the grand foyer outside the opera hall to keep people’s appetites in check. Very nice job there.

The costumes were just wonderful: rich, colorful, beautiful — perfect. The lighting was done right: not too much, not too little. The sets were somewhat sparse, but the pieces put on stage looked fairly realistic and well-proportioned. The only problematic piece was the long feast table in Act II, which was horribly bare, and its matte paint showed all of the performers’ footsteps. I would have expected a more ornate and better-made piece for the Duke’s dining table.

The standout roles were performed by great singers, which was as expected. Carlos Alvarez did an amazing job as Rigoletto. He carried the role very well, and his voice was in top shape throughout. Joseph Calleja was great as well. He struck an imposing figure as the Duke, and his physique suited the clothes of that period well. Let’s just say he filled them in nicely. His voice was clear, wonderful and commanding.

Andrea Silvestrelli, as Sparafucile, was my personal favorite. That mountain of a man has a bass voice that makes the hall boom. It literally fills the room and makes your intestines shiver. I kid you not. And what a great guy! At the end of the performance, he proved his sense of humor by trying to crawl under the curtain to get one more round of applause!

There were a couple of roles which could have been cast better, but I’d rather not mention those people directly by name, to spare them any embarrassment. I’ll refer to them by their stage roles. Count Monterone’s voice unfortunately just couldn’t get past the orchestra. Oh, he had an impressive stage presence, but when you put all your might into the role and the audience can barely hear you, perhaps it’s not the role for you.

I wouldn’t have been so annoyed with this except the father’s curse uttered by Monterone is key to this opera. If you can’t get someone with a truly booming voice to pronounce the curse, someone that can strike fear into the hearts of the audience and blast past the orchestra, then it’s a letdown for the spectator. It’s true, Monterone’s role is a small one, and you won’t be able to get big names for it, but you should still try to get someone with a big voice, right?

Gilda was another choice that didn’t quite work out for me. The singer was charismatic and had a good stage presence, but her voice barely carried past the orchestra unless she sang high notes, where her voice was particularly strong. The orchestra helped her a bit by playing softer when she sang, but it still wasn’t quite enough. By contrast, the orchestra didn’t help Monterone. The poor fellow sang at the top of his lungs and his voice kept bouncing off the orchestral sound wall. Things didn’t quite work out for him.

In Act III, during the thunderstorm, when Rigoletto, Gilda, Sparafucile and Maddalena sing together — that’s another scene where the orchestra played too loudly and we couldn’t hear the singers. Rigoletto and Sparafucile in particular had very powerful voices, yet I could barely hear them during that particular scene because of the thunder effects and the orchestra. Shouldn’t they have adjusted their playing to allow the players’ voices to come through? After all, this was an opera, not a concert.

In spite of my gripes, Ligia and I really enjoyed ourselves. It was a great performance with many talented singers, and it was well worth our time and money. If you have a chance to go before the performances run out, do it.

[Photos courtesy of the Washington National Opera]

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Lists

Condensed knowledge for 2008-03-19

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Thoughts

Score one for classical

I’m driving into work this morning. I turn on the radio.

On WASH, they’re talking about 80s funk music. Then the ads come on. On WRQX, a morning show aide (male) is yelling at the top of his voice about Alase pain-free hair removal. On WINC, traffic and ads. On WGTS, some dude is belting out a song with a really bad sonic wall accompaniment that makes it hard to even hear the words. On WMZQ, a woman is trying her rendition of some tortured country song, over the phone, and it’s too painful to listen. On WETA, a welcome flourish of wind instruments stretches out the furrows on my forehead and puts a smile on my face.

Thank you Handel for your Water Music suites! Score one for classical.

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Reviews

Why music doesn't sound great any more

Growing up, I listened to music on vinyl records. I had a huge stack of mostly classical music at home, and it was a real treat to put on a record, sit the needle on it, and hear music come out of the speakers. It was never tiring. It was always enjoyable, and I could listen to music while doing homework or reading.

As I got older and moved to CDs, and more recently, MP3s, I kept wondering why I couldn’t do the same. I kept getting headaches from listening to music for prolonged periods of time. Even while driving, too much music was stressful. I found that when I turned off the radio, it was as if I’d break down a wall of sound that would constantly barrage my ears. I put it down to changes in my personality and tastes in music, though I’d read some articles in the past that suggested music recording practices were changing.

It turns out those early grumblers were right. The Rolling Stones have a great article called “The Death of High Fidelity“, and it explains very well what’s going on. Now that I’m aware of these practices, I call them the bastardization of music as we know it, and I don’t think I’m mincing words.

It’s no wonder most music just plain stinks when we listen to it. And it’s also no wonder that certain recordings resonate with us if they’re done correctly. Norah Jones is one famous example. Another, more recent one, is Yael Naim. You may not know her name, but you’ve probably heard her song, “New Soul”, in the MacBook Air commercial.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to ask music producers to stop putting police sirens and telephone rings in songs. They hide these sounds behind the normal tracks, but they make them stand out just enough to be noticed. Seriously, it’s very disturbing to drive on a road minding your own business and hear a muted police siren, then freak out because you don’t know where the sound is coming from. I understand the reasoning behind it: jog the listener’s short attention span, get them to listen to the music, subconsciously trigger an emotional response, etc. The way I see it, it’s disingenuous, it’s manipulative, and it cheapens the song. Stop doing it, please.

Here’s hoping things get back to normal. Or if they don’t, that at the very least, recordings using preferable sound mastering methods are labeled accordingly, as some people suggest.

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Thoughts

Moved my ideas to ComeAcross

Until now, I housed the various ideas I published online at my personal site. I decided to move them here to my blog, and I did just that today. I could not have done it without the Import/Export functionality in WordPress, and even more importantly, without the Redirection plugin from Urban Giraffe. That plugin is one amazing piece of work! I just love it.

I imported my posts, assigned them to a new user so I could easily find them, and then I simply entered the corresponding URLs on each site into the Redirection plugin settings page, as seen below. Then I deleted the original posts at RaoulPop.com. Now every time someone tries to access the page for an idea at RaoulPop.com, they’ll get a 301 redirection to that same page here at ComeAcross. It couldn’t have been easier!

The Redirection plugin for WordPress

I got a chance to look at my ideas once more, and it was interesting to see that some of them have already come true. I’ll let you have a look at them as well. Can you tell which ones are already out there?

The thing to keep in mind as you go through these ideas is that I tried to match the publish time of each one with the exact time (to the minute, anyway), when I got the idea. So you’ll see publish times going back to 2005 or so for most of them. The gravitational propulsion-levitation idea doesn’t have an exact time. I do know that I started thinking about it back in 1997, and although it seems outlandish, I’m pretty confident that it can be done. We just don’t have all of the pieces of the that jigsaw puzzle yet.

This page will give you the background information on why I decided to publish my ideas on the web. I call it my great experiment in ethics. We’ll see how it turns out.

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