Don't be afraid, it's only opera

I love opera. There, I said it. I do not come from a musical family, nor were we wealthy – either or both of which would seem to be the qualifications for enjoying this unique art form.

I got hooked on it one Saturday morning when I happened to catch one of the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday matinee broadcasts (which they’ve been doing since 1931). I was unexpectedly blown away by the vocal and orchestral beauty coming out of the speaker. As I seem to do with anything that interests me, I immediately went to work finding out absolutely everything I could about it. I started at its beginnings, and worked my way down to the present day.

(Correction! I am reminded that there were two collections on multiple records in our house: a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan, and the Reader’s Digest Treasury of Great Operettas! So, from an early age, we kids would dance around singing Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” Weird? You bet. There was also Mario Lanza Sings Songs from The Student Prince. So I guess those were the gateway drugs.)

You may think of it as a dying discipline, but in fact more new operas are being written now than there have been in decades. Living composers include such names as Anthony Davis, Lori Laitman, William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Thomas Ades, Missy Mazzoli, Philip Glass, Mason Bates, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov. and Terence Blanchard.

For me, it’s the ultimate art form. It combines music, drama (and comedy), the artistry of the staging, even dance. Somehow all these elements are combined to create something that sweeps you off your feet, if you would just give yourself a chance to get into it.

Is it stuffy? Boring? Pretentious? No more so than any other art form. It has a bad rep, primarily because people are generally singing it in languages you don’t know. (Most opera houses now have electronic “intertitles” that allow you to follow along in English.) It can be tough to follow. It helps if you bone up on it a little bit before you go.

The absolute best introductory text to school you on opera is Denis Forman’s 1994 book A Night at the Opera. It is detailed, comprehensive, extremely subjective, and hilarious. He doesn’t take the art form too seriously, and it’s full of delicious details about his favorite operas that you really can’t find anywhere else. Other good books to check out are John W. Freeman’s The Metropolitan Opera’s Stories of the Great Operas, Milton Cross’ classic Complete Stories of the Great Operas, and David Pogue’s Opera for Dummies.

Once you’ve plowed through some introductory material, you can sit down and listen, really listen, to the works. Opera started out by thinking of itself as a re-creation of ancient Greek drama, complete with soliloquies (soon to be known as arias) and choruses. It was originally something you could only experience as a member of a royal court – but soon it caught on with regular folks. In fact, it was arguably the most popular art form of the 19^th century.

We usually only hear of the “big” operas, yet thousands of them have been written by hundreds of composers – many of them forgotten. I have my own extremely subjective list of faves, which I will detail for you here by composer, in rough chronological order.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) – The original operatic genius. His L’Orfeo is his most popular work, about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. My favorite, though, is his Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland). L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) is good too.

Opera developed, slowly. Soon there were opera houses, and paying crowds flocked to them. Of the Baroque-era composers, the most prolific was good old George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), who cranked out more than 40 of them. It was Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) who started moving opera forward stylistically, and you can still catch his Orfeo ed Eurydice.

It was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) who changed everything. He’s still #1 today! Try:

Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio)

Don Giovanni

Cosi fan tutte (Thus Do They All)

La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus)

Idomeneo, re di Creta (Idomeneo, King of Crete)

Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)(

Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute)

Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) – his Medee (Medea) is worth a listen!

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote only one opera, Fidelio, but it’s incredible.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) – Der Freischutz (The Freeshooter), about a deal with the Devil.

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) is an acquired taste. I like him. He put the “grand” in “grand opera,” penning immensely long operas that used all the stage resources available at the time, including roller skating and a bunch of dancing dead nuns. Though they go on and on, they are studded with good arias and interesting musical ideas.

Robert le diable (Robert the Devil)

Les Hugenots (The Hugenots)

Le Prophete (The Prophet)

L’Africane (The African)

Now we get into the heavy hitters. Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) was the king of bel canto (“beautiful singing"), an operatic style that flourished at the turn of the 19^th century. Between 1806 and 1829, only 23 years, he delivered an astonishing 39 operas, many of which hold up today. He then enjoyed a 40-year retirement. Among them are:

L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers)

Il turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) –his biggest hit

Otello (Othello) – most people prefer Verdi’s version, but this is pretty good

La Cenerentola (Cinderella)

Mose in Egitto (Moses in Egypt)

La donna del lago (The Lady of the Lake)

Semiramide

Guillaume Tell (William Tell) – a real push forward into new territory!

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) – another bel canto genius

Anna Bolena (Anne Boleyn)

La Favorita (The Favorite)

L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love)

Lucia di Lammermoor

Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart)

Roberto Devereux

Fromental Halevy (1799-1862) – another master of grand opera, his La Juive (The Jewish Girl) is excellent.

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) – the third of the three bel canto giants.

Il pirata (The Pirate)

Norma

I puritani (The Puritans)

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) – A genius who had a hard time getting his work produced. For me, the ultimate grand opera composer.

Les Troyens (The Trojans)

La damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust)

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) – Not a fan. Still, to be a completist, you should at least listen to:

Tannhauser

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs) – four operas about Nordic myth. LONG.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) – THE MASTER. I love practically everything he ever wrote. He really mastered the art of the narrative musical drama. I could listen to him all day.

Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar)

I Lombardi alla prima crociata (The Lombards in the First Crusade)

Ernani

Luisa Miller

Rigoletto

Il Trovatore (The Troubador)

La traviata (The Fallen Woman)

Les vespres siciliennes (The Sicilian Vespers)

Simon Boccanegra

Un ballo en maschera (A Masked Ball)

Macbeth

Don Carlos

La forza del destino (The Force of Destiiny)

Aida

Otello

Falstaff

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) -- Known initially for his comic, satirical operettas, he crafted the great Les contes d’Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffman), his final work.

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1891) – Samson et Delilah

Georges Bizet (1838-1875) – Carmen, of course – probably the most famous opera, and deservedly so.

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

Boris Goudonov

Khovanshchina

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) – The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya

Leos Janacek (1854-1928) – a big fave, much underestimated in my opinion.

Jenufa

The Excursions of Mr. Broucek

Kata Kabanova

The Cunning Little Vixen

The Makropoulos Case

From the House of the Dead

Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919) – I Pagliacci (Clowns)

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) – Vastly overrated, in my mind, but you have to love Tosca and La Boheme.

Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) – Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Der Rosenkavalier

Ariadne auf Naxos

Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow)

Now, please note that I have a special place in my heart for obscure 20^th century operas. Atonal? Bizarre? Experimental? Yes! Bring it on.

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) – Der Zwerg (The Dwarf)

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

The Rake’s Progress

Les Noces

Histoire du soldat

Those last two are technically not operas, but I find them indispensable.

Alban Berg (1885-1935)

Lulu

Wozzeck

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

The Gambler

The Fiery Angel

War and Peace

Douglas Moore (1893-1969) – The Ballad of Baby Doe

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) – Mathis der Mahler (Mathis the Painter)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) – Die Tote Stadt (The City of the Dead)

Hans Krasa (1899-1944) -- Brundibar

Kurt Weill (1900-1950)

The Threepenny Opera

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Der Silbersee (The Silverlake)

Street Scene

The Eternal Road

Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) – Jonny spielt auf (Jonny Strikes Up)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1981)

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

The Nose

The Gamblers

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) – Saint Francois d’Assise

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Billy Budd

Death in Venice

Peter Grimes

Gloriana

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Bernd Alois Zimmerman (1918-1970) – Die Soldaten (The Soldiers)

Carlisle Floyd (1926-2021) – Susannah

John Adams (1947-present)

Nixon in China

The Death of Klinghoffer

Doctor Atomic

El Nino

A Flowering Tree

Pop-era: Best opera parodies on film

Eddra Gale as Frau Fassbender in What's New, Pussycat?

OK, freaks – I mean, folks. To be an opera lover means having an excellent sense of humor about the whole thing. For every sincere aficionado of music drama, there is a horde of unbelievers who flinch at the sound of an aria, and which equates opera with a refined and expensive form of torture.

That’s not to say that opera doesn’t deserve a little elbow to the diaphragm at times. As a high-risk, complex, expensive synthesis of several arts forms, it’s tough to produce well . . . and like the girl with the curl, when it’s bad, it’s horrid. It’s also been typed as an affectation of the rich – which makes disdaining its challenges a populist nose-thumbing delight.

And why not? The proposition of a sung story enacted is on its face absurd – it takes time to get used to the conventions and suspend your disbelief as never before. Opera neither requires nor desires internal logic, verisimilitude, or even believability. We need the plot to hurry up and get the hell out of the way so we can go completely, decadently emotional. Don’t you feel a little silly sometimes? Honestly?

When you do, put a few of these on. Get it out of your system.

The list of audio-only operatic prankings is long, beginning as early as vaudeville, judging by Cal Stewart's Uncle Josh character in the "Opera at Punkin Center" recording of 1909, and Willie and Eugene Howard’s “After the Opera” sketch, first recorded in 1925. It’s also worth mentioning and diving into the long and hilarious discographies of Anna Russell, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Tom Lehrer, Victor Borge, and Peter Schickele for a start.

For Wagnerians, Charles Ludlam’s 1977 stage sendup Der Ring Gott Fablonjet is a priceless read, but a staging much less a recording is not on the horizon (though I’d love to). The cliche of the helmeted diva has been around almost since the Ring cycle was first performed, certainly because it’s easy and fun to mock. It can be found scattered across modern culture and media, morphing to fit the needs of ‘60s absurdism in Clive Donner’s 1965 What’s New, Pussycat? as well as the avant-garde sci-fi conceits of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element in 1997, when he hands ‘Il dolce suono mi colpi di sua voce’ from Lucia di Lammermoor to the giant blue Diva Plavalaguna.

So, here’s a nice selection of comic cadenzas from film and TV, ranging from the innocent and playful to the dark and NSFW.

A Night at the Opera/Dir: Sam Wood, Edmund Goulding/1935

Of course. The sendup of all things pompous in the opera world, culminating with Il Trovatore here, is merciless, a template for all future comic-disaster sequences in film.

Our Gang Follies of 1938/Dir: Gordon Douglas/1937

Alfalfa is “King of Crooners,” but he wants to be an opera star! “I’m the Barber of Seville, Figaro, Figaro!” he sings. Everyone hates him, and he ends up singing in the gutter as the snow cascades arund him. He relents. “I wanna croon!” he admits, before waking from his cautionary dream. Opera is clearly a ticket to the bottom.

Wonder Man/Dir: H. Bruce Humberstone/1945

Danny Kaye plays twins, one a shy scholar and the other a wacky nightclub entertainer. The comic witnesses a murder, gets killed himself, then inhabits his twin’s body as needed to solve said crime . . . and provide typical Danny Kaye bits. With me so far? At the climax, he must interweave testimony with an operatic duet.

Micro-Phonies/ Dir: Edward Bernds/1945

Squareheads of the Round Table/ Dir: Edward Bernds/1948

There are only two kinds of people in this world, so if you don’t like the Three Stooges, let your gaze lightly vault over this obnoxious entry. There now, for the rest of us what could be more fun than Curly impersonating the not-so-ravishing Senorita Cucaracha? The butchering of the Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor would be repeated with variation three years later in Squareheads.

Willie as Pagliacci.

The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met AKA Willie the Operatic Whale/Dir: Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske/from Make Mine Music, 1946

This is the 10^th and final sequence from the 1946 Disney anthology film Make Mine Music, one of a string of six short-subject collections the studio put out during the 1940s. This was in response to the loss of animators, and markets, to the war effort. This sequence is a wonderful little fantasy, with narration and voicings by Nelson Eddy (Disney uses multitrack recording here for one of the first times). It ends tragically, in line with operatic tradition – and I personally mark it as another soul-crushing moment in a long life of Disney-inspired trauma.

Show Business/Dir: Edward L. Marin/1945

If You Knew Susie/Dir: Gordon Douglas/1948

This takeoff on the Sextet from Lucia was first used in Show Business and repeated in Susie; Cantor and Davis had a comic affinity as well as an offscreen romance. Susie was Cantor’s last starring movie role.

Long-Haired Hare/Dir: Chuck Jones/1949

The Rabbit of Seville/Dir: Chuck Jones/1950

What’s Opera, Doc?/Dir. Chuck Jones/1957

Chuck Jones’ mastery of animated comedy was such that these are not only the funniest and most familiar opera parodies in our culture, but three of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons, period.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother/Dir: Gene Wilder/1975

I have no idea why Gene Wilder inserted a long parody of Un ballo in maschera here (it does forward the plot, much as in Wonder Man), but I’m awfully glad he did. Few actors could pull it off better than Dom DeLuise and Madeline Kahn. “Stop that, you’re such as tickle-tease/You know I’m super passionate . . .” Classic.

All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes/Dir: Kim Thompson/1992

It can be read either as a condemnation of opera’s bloody absurdities, or . . . no, actually, that’s the only way it can be read. However, the true aficionado will laugh wisely as the body count mounts.

The Abduction of Figaro/Dir: Peter Schickele/1998

Schickele’s comic alter ego P.D.Q. Bach has enjoyed recordings of his The Stoned Guest and A Little Nightmare Music previously, but The Abduction of Figaro is his “simply grand” masterpiece. Any opera that opens in “a town on the seacoast of Spain or Italy or somewhere” and includes the Dance of the Seven Pails is all right by me.

Television has played a lot with opera as well. The fastidious Felix Unger from The Odd Couple series was a notorious opera maven. Regular viewers of TV’s The Simpsons have been exposed to plenty of operatic put-downs. Sesame Street helped the operatic cause immensely by incorporating operatic visitors into its broadcasts, and performers such as Marilyn Horne and Samuel Ramey were happy to be silly for the sake of educating kids (not to mention the fabulous Placido Flamingo, the show’s muppet who sang for the Nestropolitan Opera!).

Here are some other highlights:

“Gallipacci”/”Caesar’s Hour”/Oct. 10, 1955, NBC

A worthy successor to the original Show of Shows, Caesar’s Hour had a great writing team and top-notch performers.

“The Producer”/”Gilligan’s Island”/Dir: George Cahan, Ida Lupino/Oct. 3, 1966

The most popular episode of the series guest-starred Phil Silvers as the scheming producer Harold Hecuba. The castaways perform a musical version of Hamlet, using tunes from Carmen and The Tales of Hoffmann (thank goodness someone brought records and a gramophone on that three-hour tour!).

“The O-U Song”/Written by Tom Lehrer, arranged by Joe Raposo/”The Electric Company” (1971-1977, PBS)

Tom Lehrer was a comedy sensation from 1953 through 1960. He left entertainment to pursue a distinguished career as a mathematics professor. Aside from a few pointed songs for the political satire show This Was the Week That Was and some nifty tunes, like this one, for educational TV.

“The Muppet Show”/Guest Beverly Sills/Nov. 8, 1979

Of course, Bubbles goes up against Miss Piggy in a mash-up of Traviata, Aida, and Wagner in something called, of course, Pigoletto.

“Kombat Opera Presents”/Created and composed by Richard Thomas/BBC, 2007

The most innovative and interesting use of opera in a non-opera context I’ve found. These five episodes, composed by Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer: The Opera) mock popular British TV shows of the time, contain very strong language and are NOT family-friendly or safe for work! However, they really leap forward in terms of marrying cinematic techniques to operatic structure . . . and are funny as hell.

Pop-era: modern songs lifted from operas – Part 2, The Interesting and Strange

Why? Why did these white doo-woppers cover four opera arias?

Here’s another project that’s snowballing into multiple parts, proving again that poking into obscure cultural corners is both a waste of one’s time and a provocation of delight.

In the first chapter of this investigation, I looked at hitsadapted from opera – “The Alabama Song,” “Mack the Knife,” “I Can’t HelpFalling in Love with You,” and “Stranger in Paradise.” In the commission of the first story, I found plenty of other examples of this syndrome. Here are 12. Interestingly, the bulk of these adaptations cropped up between the Big Band era and rock ‘n’ roll, when vocalists took center stage and “sweet singing” was the norm.

Some of these songs are sweet and some insufferable, but most, I think, are worth a listen by the curious opera fan.

“Avalon,” sung by Al Jolson, written by Vincent Rose, with additional credit taken by Jolson and Buddy De Sylva, 1920; AKA a transposed version of “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca, Puccini, 1900

Here’s a case in which copping credit leads to downfall. Vincent Rose wrote the song, but it was common at the time for people with leverage to claim co-authorship of the song in order to gain a piece of its royalties. Jolson and De Sylva did. (The practice has stayed with us down the decades, unfortunately.) A year after the song emerged and became a hit, the publisher of composer Giacomo Puccini’s music sued, claiming that the song was based on the famous aria from Tosca, “E lucevan le stelle,” written 20 years before – only transposed from its original minor to a major key! They won the suit, and $25,000, and all future royalties from the song.

“Here,” sung by Tony Martin, written by Harold Grant, Dorcas Cochran, 1954; AKA “Caro nome” from Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

This decent little ditty rose to #7 on the charts, and was later covered by the Four Belles, the late Jimmy Young, and Robert Goulet.

“Don’t You Know,” sung by Della Reese, composed by Bobby Worth, 1959; AKA “Quando me’n vo’” from La Boheme, Puccini, 1896

The song that made Della Reese’s career. The up-and-coming singer had already charted with “And That Reminds Me” two years previously, but “Don’t You Know” earned her a Grammy nomination and a long contract performing in Las Vegas. (Songwriter Bobby Worth also co-wrote “Tonight We Love,” which borrows a theme from Tchaikovsky.)

“Carmen’s Boogie,” arranged by George Cates, lyrics by Mel Leven, 1952; AKA “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from Carmen, Bizet, 1875 – Andrews Sisters, Spade Cooley (both 1952), the Crew Cuts (1955)

The Mambo and You,” composer unknown, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA “La donna e mobile” from Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

“Need (aka The Urge),” composer unknown, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA the tenor line from “Bella figlia dell amore” quartet from Act 4 of Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

“Mostly Martha,” written by Ralph Sterling, Dorcas Cochran, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA “M’appari” from von Flotow, Martha, 1847 (who lifted it from an opera he wrote a year earlier)

The Crew Cuts are universally despised by music historians, as part of the huge wave of square white artists and groups who Caucasian-ized the bejeezus out of R & B hits during the 1950s, in a misbegotten effort to “translate” and make safe the transgressive energy of that music for white kids (who all preferred the originals anyway). The Crew Cuts’ biggest hit was a cover of The Chords’ “Sh-Boom” (their cringeworthy version of “Susie Q” bears little comparison to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s definitive 1968 cover.)

Now, here’s the remarkable thing. Their “Carmen’s Boogie” was originally written for the Andrews Sisters, then covered by Spade Cooley, but the Crew Cuts’ version was a hit. Somehow, this microniche of singing pop covers of opera led to their 1959 7-inch, four-song mini-LP, The Crew Cuts Go to the Opera, where they stick it to Verdi and Flotow as well¹. The result is one of the oddest crossover pop-culture artifacts ever.

“Night,” sung by Jackie Wilson, lyrics by Johnny Lehmann, 1960; AKA “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Delila, Saint-Saens, 1877

Could this guy sing anything? It seems so. “Mr. Excitement” had a four-octave range, and killed it performing R&B, doo-wop, and pop. This very mayonnaise-ish take on “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” is a noble effort, and Wilson sells it hard. There’s enough strain in it, though, to make him an unlikely successor to Mario Lanza.

“Like I Do,” sung by Nancy Sinatra, written by Bob Manning, 1962; AKA The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, Ponichelli, 1876: also Maureen Evans, 1962; The Peanuts, as “Lemon No Kiss,” 1962; Theresa Brewer, as “She’ll Never, Never Love You,” 1963

These all predate the most famous reincarnation of the Dance of the Hours melody, listed just below, and probably helped trigger it. Four equally excruciating covers of this terrifyingly vapid adaptation must have crowded the airwaves of the time and inspired Allan Sherman. If you can get through them all, put a warm washcloth on your head and eat some ice cream.

“Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp),” sung by Allan Sherman, written by Sherman and Lou Busch, 1963; AKA The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, Ponichelli, 1876

This song came out in August 1963, and was pretty much the last laugh America had before Kennedy’s assassination. Sherman’s fame was brief, and this was his big hit, but he inspired a few future satirists.

“Please Don’t Go,” sung by Donald Peers, arranged by Les Reed and Jackie Rae, 1969; AKA the Bacarolle from Les contes de Hoffmann, Offenbach, 1881

The trend of harnessing opera melodies to pop songs petered out in the 1960s. The few entries are lugubrious, if not lachrymose.

“And You Smiled,” sung by Matt Munro, composed by Trombey and Taggart, 1973; AKA “Eye Level” by the Simon Park Orchestra, 1972; AKA “Non piu andrai” from Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart, 1786

This is the trifecta, the hat trick of adaptations. “And You Smiled” has lyrics slapped on by Melvin David Taggart; its inspiration, “Eye Level,” was an instrumental hit performed by the Simon Park Orchestra, was the theme for a popular BBC-TV detective series Van der Valk. That theme, written by Jack Trombey, swipes the underpinnings of Mozart’s “Non piu andrai” and puts a new top line on it. A paradise of plagiaries (or, these days, should we say recycling?).

NEXT TIME: Best opera spoofs, audio and video

Note for #1: This was one of the 45-rpm records in my childhood home; we memorized it as kids and sang it constantly. In its own bizarre way, it may have been the gateway drug that led to my love of opera. The lyrics of “Carmen’s Boogie” are worth recounting here.

Hate the opera, it’s too highbrow

But there’s one number I can dig right now

Just like shifting without a clutch,

I ride the boogie with the Carmen touch

You ain’t livin’ if you have missed

The long-hair music with the Crew Cut twist

Don’t love often and don’t love much

But love that boogie with the Carmen touch

It rips up floors, it knocks down walls

They tell me it’s the reason that Niagara Falls

It even made Gibraltar rock

It’s not the kind of thing a mockingbird can mock

The day it hit in old Bombay

A Hindu couldn’t charm a snake away

They say in French, in Greek and Dutch

The boogie wasn’t boogie ‘til it got the Carmen touch!

I can’t reveal

The way I feel

I love so much

The Carmen touch

Knew a fellow, a cat named Red

Played fine piano but they shot him dead

Red deserved it, the such and such

He bluffed off boogie with the Carmen touch

What brings saucers around from Mars?

And what makes Masons keep their Mason jars?

What makes babies cry out so much?

They want their boogie with the Carmen touch

Pop-era: songs lifted from opera – Part 1, The Hits

Elvis getting ready to sing a song written in 1784.

“So many of the melodies of well-known popular songs were actually written by the Great Masters,” intones actor John Williams (best known as the “second Mr. French” on the sitcom Family Affair) in the long-running 1971 TV ad flogging a cut-rate Columbia House collection of classical excerpts, “120 Music Masterpieces.” He cited such tunes as “Our Love,” “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” and “Tonight We Love.” None of which are particularly remembered today.

What’s so bad about being popular? Nothing, nothing really. Opera is often derided for being antiquated, irrelevant, and economically inaccessible – but I notice a lot of it in car commercials. In fact, there are about a dozen arias that need time-outs right now¹.

Sometimes operas inspire reworkings. Rent is La Boheme, Elton John and Tim Rice wrote a new Aida in 1998, and a substantial part of the legacy of Andrew Lloyd Webber is recycled. Smokey Robinson’s lyrics for the 1970 hit “Tears of a Clown” mine the content of “Vesti la giubba,” but the music is original. Likewise, the standard “Poor Butterfly,” composed in 1916 by Raymond Hubbell and John Golden, outlines the plot of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, but doesn’t use its music save for a few bars in the instrumental bridge.

Few of the most familiar tunes from opera have been appropriated for modern songs. Of those few, fewer still ever cracked the charts. Here are four top pop-eratic numbers:

“Alabama Song,” Hauptmann/Weill, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1925/1930

 “(The Ballad of) Mack the Knife,” Brecht/Weill, AKA “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” The Threepenny Opera, 1928

The only opera songs to ever make the U.S. charts without substantial change were written by Kurt Weill, who could produce avant-garde work with one hand and pop hits (“September Song,” “Speak Low”) with the other. Elisabeth Hauptmann wrote the lyrics for “Alabama” for Bertolt Brecht, in English, in 1925; Brecht incorporated it into his Mahagonny five years later without crediting her. That the grim, sardonic lyrics appealed to post-WWII American listeners is surprising.

Both songs have accumulated lots of covers. The tragic and cynical “Alabama Song” received scorching interpretations by the Doors and David Bowie; the best version, very hard to find, is sung by Joe Frazier on the Chad Mitchell Trio’s 1964 Slightly Irreverent album.

The success of “Mack the Knife” is attributable to American composer Marc Blitzstein, who translated and staged Threepenny Opera in New York in 1954, a production which ran for years in the West Village. Weill’s wife Lottie Lenya covered it with Louis Armstrong in 1956, and so did many others. Bobby Darin’s 1959 hit version is modeled closely on Armstrong’s. The song is so popular it was hijacked for commercial purposes by McDonald’s in the 1980s.

“Can’t Help Falling in Love,” sung by Elvis Presley, written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, George David Weiss, 1961; AKA “Plaisir d’amour,” Jean-Paul-Egide Martini, 1784

The tune (not from an opera, but by an operatic composer) is so appealing that it was covered by many artists before the King of Rock and Roll came along.

“Stranger in Paradise,” written by Robert Wright, George Forrest, 1953; AKA “The Gliding Dance of the Maidens” from the Polovtsian Dances, Prince Igor, Borodin, 1890

This song is from the hit 1953 musical Kismet, the songs of which are largely Borodin. Nonetheless, this song was a huge hit, covered most memorably by Tony Bennett – and even as a surf-rock instrumental by The Ventures, both as “The Stranger” and “Ten Seconds to Heaven.”

NEXT TIME: Al Jolson, Della Reese, Nancy Sinatra, Jackie Wilson . . . and the mystery of the Crew-Cuts

1.      FOOTNOTE: We need to give the following a rest – “Nessun dorma” from Turandot, “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, “La donne e mobile” from Rigoletto, “Un bel di” from Madama Butterfly, the Habanera AND the Toreador Song from Carmen, the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Valkyrie, the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, “Vesti la giubba” from I pagliacci, “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro, “Der Holle Rache” from Die Zauberflote, and the Flower Duet from Lakme. Of course, that they are easily remembered is all to the good – the goal is to be memorable, after all (if you’re scoring at home, Puccini wins with three mentions, and Verdi, Bizet, and Mozart tie for second). But we need to be strong and turn these off, go for the deep cuts.

Opera Colorado’s ‘Scarlet Letter’ the start of something big

Laura Claycomb as Hester Prynne in Opera Colorado's "The Scarlet Letter" [Photo by Matthew Staver/Courtesy Opera Colorado]

If you like being a part of history, you should get down to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House tonight, or Sunday afternoon. There you will see the world premiere of composer Lori Laitman and librettist David Mason’s “The Scarlet Letter,” the operatic adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1850 of Puritan guilt and shame.

Reviews are written for many reasons. Most readers just want to know: should I go or not? Yes, you should. Moving on. Most of the time the creatives involved in a project would just like some pull-quote-worthy praise for promotional purposes. (Hey, behind all this art, people need to sell tickets!)

Well, this “Scarlet Letter” is a great, thought-provoking work – but it’s not perfect. Which is why you should see it right now. More later. Moving on–

The story hews faithfully to the original. Hester Prynne, newborn child in arms, is publicly scorned by the close-minded Pilgrims of her town, and is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” for adultery for life. She stubbornly will not reveal the child’s father, the community’s pastor, Dimmesdale. Hester’s long-lost husband shows up, pretends to be someone else named Chillingworth, moves in with Dimmesdale, and tries to get him to confess. For years. Finally, Dimmesdale and Hester decide to leave town and start over together, but then for some reason Dimmesdale confesses publicly, reveals a scarlet “A” on his own chest, and dies. (Leaving Hester holding the bag, mind you . . . oh these sensitive men!)

Laitman is a past master at writing for the voice, and is completely up to the task here. If she has any musical or thematic predecessors in sight, they might be the vernacular mid-century American opera composers such as Carlisle Floyd or Douglas Moore, or the Britten of “Peter Grimes.” She has her own distinct voice, however, using beautiful flowing lines over complex harmonics, using a broad orchestral palette, but not for its own sake.

Hawthorne’s novel seems devilishly difficult to adapt; the grip of repression hangs heavy over all the characters, the opposite of opera’s usual emotional extremes. Poet David Mason boils Hawthorne down to fit the stage’s needs, in beautiful, simple, straightforward language. He fills out the characters and lets them voice observations, motivations, and attitudes that push them into three-dimensionality. In rhyme. This is quite a feat, and runs the risk of sounding too “June-spoon-moon” to the casual ear. But it works.

Several passages still stand out for me – the opening chorus, Hester’s lullaby to her illegitimate child and Dimmesdale’s nightmare in Act I, the forest duet in Act II, and of course Dimmesdale’s killer finish, as it were, at the opera’s end. But there are languors; some of the transitions between scenes are muddy, and Act 1 seems to peter out.

The piece also seemed to lose some energy and focus due to the sheer size of the stage and house. The cast is less than two dozen strong and sometimes seem to be swallowed up on a sterile field. The distances between characters seems vast at times, with awkward crossovers. Some movements were tentative or oblique, blocking expressions.

Stage designer Erhard Rom uses two curving, Serra-like monoliths that swivel, part, and fragment to define the space, backed with ramps, curtain, and scrim, which Greenberg uses to silhouette figures, hauntingly. Topher Blair’s projections are a huge contributing factor as well, manifesting a green forest glade, snow, stars, clouds – nesting the harshness of men inside a pervasive, affirming natural world. Beth Greenberg’s direction, Rom, and Blair work together closely to overcome the staging problems, with mixed results. But – I think that shrinking the stage picture, putting it on in a more intimate house the size of a Glyndebourne, would increase the work’s power tenfold.

Laura Claycomb plays Hester; Dominic Armstrong plays Dimmesdale, and Malcom MacKenzie plays Chillingworth. Of the three, Armstrong stands out as delivering a definitive performance here. He goes full throttle, vocally and emotionally, giving us a portrait of a man living in hell. To be fair, he also has the clearest motivation and the strongest emotional line in the opera. Chillingworth is an ambiguous figure, alternately friendly and menacing; Hester is an aloof figure, not really blowing open until the climactic forest duet. (Claycomb seemed to have a little breath trouble the night I saw the show.) The opera demands more emotional intensity.

So – it’s a tad raggedy. All newborns are. There’s something very vital and worthy here, though. Dimmesdale dies at the end, splayed out in a Pieta in the lap of Hester. And the crowd turns to the sky, and sings about the limits of human law and understanding as stars wheel above them, and it all comes together and that shivery feeling of transcendence takes place.

The audience completes the process. Take it from someone from the other side of the lights – how you clap, how you laugh, how you listen is keenly felt. It informs what the creatives are up to, gives them guidance, and helps them understand their work. The work doesn’t mean jack squat in a drawer.

As director Greenberg said last week, “People have misconceptions about going to the opera. They ask me, ‘What should I read? How should I prepare?’ Hey – you don’t have to prepare. If it’s done well, you will get it. Be on time, and buckle your seat belt.”

And here you have a little miracle. All these people and elements have finally come together and made this brilliant collaboration come alive. (Fortunately, Naxos is recording the shows and we will end up with a release in the fall of 2017.) Is “The Scarlet Letter” a classic? Will it join the repertoire? I have no idea. It’s taking shape right now, in front of the audience’s eyes. Criticism is nothing unless it spurs you to join in the process. Go, and see what you think.

Opera Colorado presents the world premiere production of Lori Laitman’s The Scarlet Letter on May 13, and 15 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 1385 Curtis Street. For tickets and information please visit operacolorado.org.

Super Mario: America’s greatest tenor and the seductions of schmaltz

By BRAD WEISMANN

“ . . . the house had been hit in a raid, and among the losses was my record collection, all save one, which I still have . . . I daren’t play it much; it creates such vivid memories. I have to go for a walk; even then it’s about three hours before I can settle down again.” Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall

Sitting in my head for decades is a root musical memory of the vinyl disc RCA Victor LM-1837. It’s got the ungainly title of “Mario Lanza sings the hit songs from The Student Prince and other musical comedies.” On the album’s cover there floats Mario’s big, ripe, grinning head, cut out and set against a blood-red background. Inside, a flood tide of rich phrasing and incredible vocal pyrotechnics. My father, an operetta aficionado, played it all the time. My mother, normally allergic to this kind of thing, shared an affection for it with him. They had been carting it around all their married life. By the time we kids got to it the vinyl was scratched and pitted with affectionate use.

Why was Lanza so important to both of them? What did he mean to them?

Between 1945 and 1955, you couldn’t buy a beat in pop music. Somewhere between swing music and rock and roll, a great wave of sentimental balladry took hold in America. As soldiers came home from World War II and inaugurated the Baby Boomer generation, big bands faded and singing stars – Perry Como, Vaughn Monroe, Vic Damone, Frankie Laine, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Patti Page, Nat “King” Cole, Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher, Jo Stafford, Andy Williams, the Chordettes, the Ames Brothers, the McGuire Sisters – took over the airwaves and jukeboxes. The county was awash in violins and vibrato.

Now, in 1940, big bands were riding high. The Swing Era was inaugurated by Benny Goodman’s breakthrough concert in Los Angeles’s Palomar Ballroom in 1935. Ten years later, it was over. Many factors contributed – the drafting of many musicians in World War II, the crippling ASCAP strike of 1942-1944, and most importantly the phenomenal explosion of interest in Frank Sinatra, who went from being one of Tommy Dorsey’s juvenile singers to a number-one sensation. Suddenly, instead of a vocalist serving as one component in the ensemble, he or she was pushed into the spotlight. Song choices and musical arrangements were now shaped around a vocalist’s range and persona.

Into this setting stepped the ambitious 26-year-old Lanza. His slowly developing career took off after his performance at the Hollywood Bowl on August 28, 1947. The 4,000 in attendance included many people from the film industry, including MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer. Mayer quickly signed Lanza to a contract. Three films later – “That Midnight Kiss,” “The Toast of New Orleans,” and “The Great Caruso” – he was the first to sell a million copies of an operatic recording, 1951’s “Great Caruso” soundtrack, one that has never gone out of print.

 Then he eased out of the onerous pressures of Hollywood, trained himself to an exemplary degree, and became a long-lived and beloved opera star, the greatest tenor of the 20^th century.

Of course, this did not happen. In fact, this is precisely the opposite of what happened, and that flicked the switch on the tragic nimbus that still hovers behind Lanza’s memory. The singer, the only child of a passive, shell-shocked WWI veteran and a domineering, frustrated-musician mother, was spoiled as a child. His lack of discipline and impulse control as an adult, mated to childish willfulness, led to a lifetime of self-destructive behavior.

Lanza seemed bipolar, swinging abruptly between extravagant spending, womanizing, and boasts that he was greater than Caruso, and long periods of crippling stage fright, depression, isolation, paranoia, and compulsive bouts of eating and drinking. (He repeatedly went on sometimes-successful crash diets to reduce his weight for filming – yo-yoing between 180 and nearly 300 pounds.) He would sabotage his voice by singing loudly all night before a concert – then cancel the concert due to a sore throat. (Like Pavarotti, he was famously called out for lip-synching in public; his sloppy erotic divertissements with Judy Garland and others are on record.) In the end, he stormed and strutted like the stereotype of the preening Italian tenor.

MGM announced that Mario Lanza would play the lead in Sigmund Romberg’s “The Student Prince” in 1951. However, this marked the point at which Lanza’s diva-esque behavior would drive the studio to suspend him, cancel the film, and sue him for damages. After pre-recording his songs for the film shortly before his conflicts with the studio became unworkable, Lanza found himself frozen out of the production. Finally, Lanza submitted to the ultimate insult – his vocal tracks would be lip-synched by a slimmer and more cooperative actor, Edward Purdom. The authorities finally divorced Lanza's wonderful voice from his troublesome self.

The movie was released two years after Lanza’s recording sessions. By that time, he had made one more film in the U.S., “Serenade,” and would be off to Italy, from where he would not return alive.

Lanza was possessed of the finest natural tenor voice many have ever heard. It is full, ringing, clear and expressive. When Lanza was focused and disciplined, his breath control, diction, tone, interpretive skill, and sense of dynamics was unsurpassed. However, when in distress or out of shape, these abilities would lapse and audiences would hear some of the qualities complained about by many critics – a forced, metallic quality, pushing for effect, poor breath support, and an impulse to constantly go for “toppers” – stunning bursts of  volume and flashy high notes, whether the material warranted it or not.

Being an overnight sensation meant that Lanza was pushed into recording lots of forgettable pop. However, while his health permitted his versatility and sensitivity to the material meant that he recorded many fine interpretations of ballads. Too, his renditions of many romantic and lyrical canzone Napoletana (Neapolitan songs) are considered definitive.

Lanza’s voice is so compelling and penetrating, he sings with such commitment and intensity, that it is difficult to be unmoved. Tied in with the conventions of the day – heavily orchestrated accompaniment, echo, stereo reprocessing – the result is super-extravagant schmaltz of the highest pitch. It’s a collision of the high-art operatic and the lowbrow, sentimental mush of the time.

Success destroyed Lanza. The money, fame, and adulation sudden film stardom brought were just as addictive as the women he chased and the booze he poured into himself. To his handlers, Lanza was a machine that printed money. Very few of the people who did business with or for him had any regard for his sanity or long-term career. Studio heads, music producers, managers, agents, lawyers – he quickly grew a protective carapace around himself -- one that required massive amounts of income to sustain. It was in no one’s interest to say no to him.

So, if Lanza’s life was a tragedy, whose fault was it? It depends on which biographer you read. Six different biographies range in their depictions of Lanza from a suffering saint to a contemptible cur. Some are clearly written for gain, retailing Lanza’s flaws to sell books. These include books in which the authors felt no compunction about making up reams of imaginary dialogue, as well as the inner thoughts of its subject and everyone around him.

Another pushes the myth that the Mafia killed Lanza. In fact, Lanza’s self-indulgent lifestyle weakened his heart considerably and contributed to the phlebitis that killed when a blood clot left his leg and migrated to his heart, causing a fatal heart attack.

One reliable source is Armando Cesari’s “Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy,” which includes a painstaking list of his recordings, films, concert, and radio appearances as well as a Cesari-curated CD of rare live and home-recorded tracks that bolster his extensive, solid analyses of the singer’s changing voice.

Roland L. Bessette’s “Mario Lanza: Tenor in Exile” is its equal. Bessette is painfully honest about many embarrassing incidents in Lanza’s life, but balances them with equally affecting stories of his kindness and his bouts of professionalism. At book’s end, Bessette speculates that Lanza’s inherent character flaws would have prevented him from having other than the life he did. “He had . . . the best career he could have had.” All who examine his life declare his voice a natural talent so immense that it crushed the man who had to bear it.

This is where my parents come in. My father, raised in a comfortable middle-class household, was heir to a taste for light classical music and operetta, from Gilbert and Sullivan through Herbert, Friml, Lehar, and the rest of those composers of tuneful pleasantry from the turn of last century. My mother, out on the farm, had no such musical pretensions, and grew up on country music and white (aka unswinging) gospel. But she was quite imaginative, well-read and had a flair for the dramatic – thanks to her, we had a well-stocked assortment of musical comedy soundtracks.

Somehow, Lanza hit the sweet spot for both of them. It served as a sort of soundtrack to their courtship. Later, it became a humorous and affectionate reference for them. Much later, it became something no one wanted to hear around the house. It had become an unbearable reminder of a romance that played out into a marriage overwhelmed by alienation and despair.

“The Student Prince” is powered by a classic romance plot: he’s a student prince, she’s a barmaid . . . complications ensue.

We kids played Side One over and over, crooning and swooping about the house, making melodramatic gestures of cross-eyed devotion in jerry-built costumes we thought mimicked the elegant finery of the principals. There was nothing more exhilarating than to imagine that I might one day be as captivating as Mario, with a magnetic voice that no one woman could resist!

“Overhead, the moon is beaming

White as blossoms on the bough

Nothing is heard but the song of a bird

Filling all the air with dreaming

Could this beauty last forever?

I would ask for nothing more, believe me

Let this night but live forever, forever and ever more!”

Lanza’s sound penetrates the thick, warm orchestrations, creating a kind of gem-scattered brilliance on a velvety background.  It’s not hard to see how Lanza and his music became a metaphor for the world of unattainable, disturbing fantasy the protagonists of Peter Jackson’s film “Heavenly Creatures” seek. For a while, it was our fantasy world as well.

Likewise, after years of contemplating my parents’ emotional dynamic, and sometimes overcoming its shadow on my own relationships, I have to come to a conclusion parallel to Bessette’s concerning Lanza  – they had the best marriage they could have had.

As for me, to the extent that I grew up thinking that love was supposed to be one long operatic epiphany . . . well, life took care of that. I spent many years chasing that addictive love high. Complications ensued. Now on much more solid ground, I can finally detach myself from all the regretful associations and really hear that voice for what it is.

And there, distilled in those romantic melodies, is still a kernel of what drew my parents together. Whether it was illusory, or never meant to last, those songs embody a majestic passion that must have consumed them, once. It’s comforting to know that.

SOURCES

Mario Lanza: Tenor in Exile

Roland L. Bessette

Amadeus Press

Portland OR

1999

Amore: The Story of Italian American Song

Mark Rotella

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

New York

2010

Lanza, His Tragic Life

Raymond Strait & Terry Robinson

Prentice-Hall

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

1980

Mario Lanza: Singing to the Gods

Derek Mannering

University Press of Mississippi

Jackson, MS

2005

Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy

Armando Cesari

Baskerville Publishers

Fort Worth, TX

2004

The Mario Lanza Story

Constantine Callinicos

Coward-McCann

New York

1960

Mario Lanza

Matt Bernard

Macfadden-Bartell Corp.

New York

1971