Reaching catharsis

By any account, sitting through a five hour long opera is a test of strength and determination, but it is all the more so an ordeal and a test of utter will when the opera is such an intensely dramatic and emotional event as the 1882 piece which German composer Richard Wagner (REE-kard VAG-nair) called a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" (festival play for the consecration of the stage), his opera Parsifal.

And yet, by sitting through the entire opera, by experiencing the totality of the pathos of the performers from begining to end, we journey with the performers and attain our own catharsis and spiritual redemption.

Thus we were enlightened Tuesday night when four of us soujourning knights ventured forth to the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to hear the Kirov Opera and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersberg, Russia, present Parsifal. Parsifal is a work loosely based on the Arthurian legend of the knight Percival and his quest for the Holy Grail, yet intermixed with both Christian and Buddhist allegory. Wagner's story focuses on the Knights of the Grail, who have in their possession the Holy Grail—the chalice used by the Christian god Jesus at His "Last Supper"—and who have recently lost to the forces of darkness the Holy Spear—the spear which had been used to pierce the side of Jesus following His crucifixion. Parsifal, an innocent, meets the knights and takes up the quest of finding and returning the Holy Spear.

Because of the length of the opera, there was an unusually early curtain time at 6 p.m. Audiences for these sorts of performances are unique; only the truly devoted operaphiles can brave the long, intense Wagnerian experience, so the "socialite" opera goers were nowhere to be seen. Since Svet and I had four tickets for the evening, we invited a couple of Wagner lovers to join us, a curator from the Library of Congress and a retired executive from the World Bank. To the left is a picture of us in the Grand Foyer, just outside the Opera House by the famous eight-feet-tall bust of Kennedy by sculptor Robert Berks.

One of the great challenges of experiencing Parsifal is making it through the over two hour-long first act. Wagner's operas are infamous for their lengthy periods of expository dialogue and the seemingly endless and emotionally draining orchestral interludes between vocal lines, and the first act of Parsifal is a sterling example of those problems. The rewards, though, come at the end of the act when the Knights of the Grail conduct their ceremony for the adoration of the Holy Grail and their almost pagan-like communion service. In the midst of a sparkling and dazzling contemporary set, some four dozen knights sang while an angelic (aside from a few bad notes in the soft, high sections) women's choir located somewhere in the rafters of the house, perhaps in some of the light booths, served as Greek chorus, providing an ethereal and spine-shivvering moral commentary to the action on stage.

The lengthy first act provided us with some interesting logistical problems, namely, how were we going to eat dinner when we were at the Opera House for nearly six hours. That long first act made a big meal prior to the show impractical. When I've gone to long Wagner performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, they've had an extended first intermission which allowed patrons to have a quick two course meal in one of the house restaurants and then return in the second intermission for the dessert course, but the Kennedy Center sticks with standard twenty-minute intermissions that barely allow people to get through the cocktail bar line before they start ringing the chimes. I solved the problem by smuggling food into the Kennedy Center. I fixed us four little box lunches with a croissant stuffed with spinach and feta cheese, some slices of Maytag blue cheese with sesame-garlic flatbread, sliced kiwi fruit, roasted cashews, and little miniature cannolis, plus little white damask cocktail napkins (I hate paper!), all stashed away in Svet's big black briefcase. As soon as we got out of the house, we went out onto the terrace overlooking the river for our clandestine little repast.

We saw lots of people we knew during the interval, including the rather bleary-eyed Austrian Ambassador. The monsignor pastor of my little Catholic parish by my house was there with some other priest friend of his, and when they came over to chat, I offerred and they split and ate my cannolo (I sure hope I didn't food poison anyone, since I never got to taste one!). There was also a funny moment as the chimes rang and a man who looked like a lamb being led to the slaughter was told by his wife, "Don't worry, honey. Things pick up in the second and third acts."

And pick up they did. The second act is a vocal tour de force, and soprano Larissa Gogolevskaya as Kundry was absolutely spectacular. Character bass Nikolai Putilin as Klingsor was striking in his white makeup, furred and billowing robe, and enormous, swooping, black and silver wig. One of the odd things about Wagner's writing is that the title role in this opera is a rather tame and restrained part; tenor Oleg Balashov nevertheless acquitted himself quite serviceably as Parsifal. And, in both the first and third acts, Gennady Bezzubenkov as Gurnemanz had such a resonant and deep "Russian bass" voice I could have sworn that when he was singing directly at me he was amplified.

The Mariinsky Theater Orchestra was led by general director Valery Gergiev, a renowned conductor in Russia, and he certainly seemed to have his fans and cheering section here in Washington. He kept the orchestra together on a steady, even path to get through the music without allowing it to bog down and drag; he also did an excellent job in controlling the orchestra's playing volume so as not to cover up the singers while still having some thrilling, big brass fortissimos.

There is one remaining performance of Parsifal on Sunday afternoon. For the confirmed opera or Wagner devotee, this production is well worth a look.

Forgetting our medications

The excitement was bouncing off the walls Thursday night as singer-dancer Ben Vereen performed in the National Symphony Orchestra Pops Series at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Presenting a vocal tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr., the sixty-year-old stage veteran captivated his audience as he joked and chatted in between songs punctuated with his spontaneous high-energy choreography.

Vereen came out at the end of the first half of the concert to sing a medley of Frank Sinatra tunes. In the second half, he sang songs made famous by the late Sammy Davis, Jr., with whom Vereen had worked at the height of Davis's career.

David Loeb, Vereen's personal music director and conductor, led the National Symphony Orchestra from both the podium and the piano, supplemented by Vereen's guitarist, bassist, and drummer. Loeb, a tall, slender, handsome man with a mane of salt and pepper hair, was charmingly shy and nervous when speaking to the audience between numbers, fumbling with a sheet of written notes as he talked. His conducting patterns were very straightforward and without the flamboyance and potentially meaningless gyrations of so many conductors, yet the orchestra responded to him well. The orchestra sounded like they were having fun, and for some reason, they always sound better and stay together when they are being led by guest conductors.

One of the great mysteries of "lounge singers" like Mr. Vereen is how they can remain so incredibly engaging to the audience while taking such incredible liberties with the musical melodies that a trained musician might ask if the singers knew the music at all. A lot of the internal and even opening song melody was declamatorily "sung-spoke," while other parts were sung to melody lines never before conceived by the composers, and yet the overall effect was successful. Even with all this casual musical patter, Vereen still had the money notes and he was able to pull out big endings for each of his songs.

His energy and constant excitement, though, were so great I couldn't help but think he'd forgotten to take his lithium. Now, I haven't sung a show like this in five or six years (albeit without a full symphony backup), but he kept pulling me into a yearning desire for my own manic episode once again to take the stage, dance around, sing, and interact with the audience.

Vereen introduced a young black singer by the name of Johnny Manuel who came out to sing one song. Manuel has a lot of potential. He's still young and needs to learn to match his vocal registers from mid-range to head voice; he sang his song in the skitty-skatty jump-around embellished technique so often used these days by black female gospel singers.

In the first half of the concert, the orchestra opened with a medley of songs from West Side Story. Next they played the Scherzo from Grant Still's Symphony No. 1, "Afro-American," that contained the same blues melody as the contemporaneously composed "I've Got Rhythm" by George Gershwin.

You never saw so many white and silver septuagenarian and octagenarian heads bobbing and "rocking out" as when the orchestra played a medley of big band tunes by Duke Ellington!

When Vereen made his first act appearance, he came out in a white suit with a black satin shirt, tie, and scarf. For act two, he wore a black tail coat adorned with a large, jeweled brooch on the lapel and a white scarf around the neck (all of which came off after the first couple of songs), black vest, black satin shirt, black and white four-in-hand tie, and brilliant white spats over his black shoes. The orchestra, alas, had the men in white dinner jackets—don't they know it's not Memorial Day yet?—and Loeb wore a black tuxedo.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and entertaining evening. The only disappointment was that Vereen chatted so long between songs, he ran out the clock and to avoid putting the orchestra into overtime, he had to cut some scheduled songs such as Davis's famous "Candy Man." There was another performance last night, and the final performance is tonight at 8 p.m.

Tit for tat

I've been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

The Kirov Opera from St. Petersburg, Russia, is coming to the Kennedy Center next week to sing two performances of Richard Wagner's last and most controversial opera, Parsifal. Many of you may recall that last July I danced as a supernumerary with the Kirov Ballet at the Kennedy Center, so I'm excited to see the Marinsky Theater people come back. Anyway, I got a special opportunity this morning to acquire tickets at substantially less than the $200 per person retail price and I immediately pounced on the chance to get them. Then I promptly emailed my Russian friend Svet and told him that we were going to an opera opening on Tuesday night and that he was going to clear his schedule and go with me.

Well, he said yes.

Then he announced that we were going ice skating tonight. My stomach immediately knotted. I reminded him that I didn't know how to ice skate (or roller blade) and that I am totally non-athletic, but he insisted. After just obligating him to a five and a half hour long opera in one of the few European languages he doesn't speak (German), I couldn't very well refuse to do what he wanted to do. :-(

Pornographic Must-See TV

NBC is becoming positively pornographic!

This morning on Today, Matt Lauer was bantering with Harry Connick, Jr., and Harry's co-star in a new Broadway musical that's opening, and in the process of the co-stars puffing how wonderful the other is, the woman was talking about Harry's dancing skills in the show, saying "He whips it out all over the place." Lauer then took that and ran with it in a prurient way to both co-stars' embarrassment.....

Last week on Today, actor James Wood was promoting his appearance that night as the medical professor with ALS on E.R. and Katie Couric, who's met Wood's mother, asked about his mother. Wood said his mother was so excited about his appearance on the Today show, she said, "Oh, you're going to do Katie!" Wood said, "Well, I'm not going to do Katie....." Couric interrupted to say, "Alright, now..." and quickly changed the subject, but that did not disguise the thunderclouds in her eyes. LOL

We've all heard the news about NBC's cancellation of the scandalous(ly true and funny) series The Book of Daniel about the pain killer-addicted Episcopal priest who "talks" with a hippie-type Jesus, as NBC executives showed their gutless caving-in to the whines of an evangelical Christian lobby that had never even seen the show. The Evangelicals decided they didn't like it because, while they never really figured in the plot, the priest had a gay son, his wife had a lesbian sister, and his straight adopted teenaged Asian son was sexually active with a wealthy white parishioner's daughter. Duh. Like all of that doesn't happen in the Baptist church, too, except with the Baptists, it's not gay sons, it's gay senior pastors and Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee members.

And, even more fun, as Will and Grace winds down to a series finale this spring, rumors are already rampant about a still-unwritten show in which the Evangelicals allege guest star Brittany Spears is going to play an evangelical Christian broadcaster who works with Jack on a variety show food segment called "Cruci-fixin's," and now the Evangelicals want to organize a boycott against NBC and its advertisers. You know, years ago I think I remember seeing some church ladies' group selling a cookbook of their church potluck recipes called Crucifixin's. Must not be politically correct any more.

So, it's time for all of the hypocritical and holier-than-thou Evangelicals to launch a total boycott of NBC and the cable companies which program the network on their cable lineups, and for the rest of us to start watching more and more NBC. Since NBC "depicted" Jesus in a show, maybe the Evangelicals should emulate the Muslims who are protesting and burning Danish embassies over a silly editorial cartoon and start burning NBC studios and stations all over the country. Self-righteous fanaticism is always such a good thing.

Latino mass gets world premiere

World premiere of Missa Latina

The National Symphony Orchestra's 75th anniversary season celebration continued tonight with the world premiere of Missa Latina "Pro Pax" by Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra in the Concert Hall at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Sierra's work set the Latin translation of the Roman Catholic Mass to music for soprano and baritone soloists, full chorus, and full orchestra supplemented with marimba, maracas, Cuban timbales and other Caribbean instruments. The composer said he infused the work with a "Latino" character and "Caribbean gestures." His end result supplemented the usual five mass movements with an introit and an offertory in a work that is more an orchestral showcase than a functional mass which can be used in a liturgical setting.

The mass opened with a solo soprano singing a very soft "Da pacem, Domine" with minimal accompaniment. As the Introitus developed, a woodwind chorus came in, though it was ever so slightly out of tune and not together. As the orchestra and chorus got more involved, there were lush, sweeping moments which were often reminiscent of motion picture scores. The "Latino" feel and sound did not seem to be in this movement; in fact, there were moments of embellishment which often sounded more like 1001 Arabian Nights than anything Latino. The Kyrie following seemed loud and almost violent—much more like a Dies Irae than a plea for mercy. The baritone soloist began to sing in this movement, sometimes alone, sometimes in duet with the soprano.

The Gloria sounded very Bernsteinesque, an interesting flashback to Leonard Bernstein's Mass, which premiered in this very hall for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Much of the orchestration was busy, even frenetic, and often times the orchestra completely covered the two soloists, who appeared to be singing their hearts out. In a brief moment around the time of the "laudamus" section, there was a bit of Latin rhythm in the percussion section, yet it seemed inconsequential, and it could easily have been replaced with more standard rhythms to match the crisply contemporary orchestration.

More pianissimo solo work punctuated with loud percussion outbursts opened the extraordinarily lengthy Credo movement. Some of the best choral music of the evening was in the beginning portion of the Credo, with the choir sounding at times ethereal, at times mystical. As the development proceeded, the orchestration became loud with virtuosic swells. Unfortunately, the Credo pushed forward with constantly changing and evolving music that never seemed to present itself as a cohesive whole, and this was a common problem with the entire mass. It would be old fashioned to insist upon a modern composer putting movements in a traditional A-B-A format, but here it was more like the composer was writing A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J, and nothing tied this long, long movement together.

The Offertorium began with a loud, bombastic orchestral introduction, followed by some nice solo moments for the baritone. This was the first movement which had any substantial Latin rhythm or feel to the choral music, though that was short-lived.

After a fairly traditional opening to the Sanctus, a sudden, almost disconcerting switch at the "pleni sunt coeli" section thrust the musicians into a calypso-type dance. The Sanctus segued into a fairly quiet Agnus Dei. The composer supplemented the traditional words of the Agnus Dei with the phrase "My peace I leave you: my peace I give you, saith the Lord. Alleluia." The alleluia section broke into a calypso feel, and, rather than following in the tradition of modern American Catholic music with its soft, non-challenging, saccharine blandness, Sierra chose to close his work with a very Evangelical megachurch "big ending," including a theatrical jump up a fifth on the final alleluia.

The eighty minute performance was well-received by the audience, most of whom provided the composer with a standing ovation during the curtain calls.

On the whole Sierra's mass was an interesting work, but it did not seem religious or inspirational, and it probably will require a second hearing to truly appreciate it. The vast majority of the piece was stereotypically contemporary music with the occasional melodical Hollywood swell, and other than a couple of brief moments, the Latin American feel was lacking. The composer most assuredly was not kind to the soloists; while he has written choral works in the past, one would think this was his first experiment for voice, as he demanded high pianissimos and low fortissimos from his soloists, and that is just the opposite of the way the human voice works. The chorus was also relegated to the role of providing a vocal accompaniment to the soloists, with only limited passages allowing them to shine.

The orchestra had some interestingly challenging music to perform tonight, and for the most part, acquitted itself well. However, as has been typical with the NSO the past year, they seem not to play well for their musical director Leonard Slatkin, and there were several moments when the precise alignment between orchestra sections was just not there. And, once again, with the men of the orchestra nattily attired in white tie and tail coats, Maestro Slatkin appeared on the podium in a rumpled tuxedo with a black bow tie. Perhaps one of the NSO's many donors can contribute some proper clothing for the maestro.

Assisting the orchestra was the Choral Arts Society of Washington, a large group of about 170 singers. The women provided a particularly vivid backdrop with their royal blue, three-piece suits with long skirts. The chorus sang well, when they could be heard through the often-too loud orchestral accompaniment, and given the fact that this is an unusually large chorus, the audibility issue is the fault not of the chorus but of the conductor.

Soprano soloist Heidi Grant Murphy appeared in a hideous, faded looking, ice blue dress with a shawl neckline, fitted waist, and a long, ruffled skirt that looked ever so much like a bad prom dress. Perhaps the five big ruffle layers on the dress were an attempt to salute the costumes at Carnival in Rio de Janiero, but it just was not a success. Unfortunately, her singing did not distract the audience from her gown. She often could not be heard, even in moments of minimal accompaniment, and her voice tended to appear weak and as though she were swallowing her sound.

The tall, slender Nathaniel Webster served as baritone soloist. He is still a young man, and at times his singing tended to be a little too tight and strangled, especially in his upper register, but he had a full, rich sound in the middle and lower baritone ranges. He also managed to be heard over the soprano in duets, something which is usually not the case. Both of the soloists could stand to improve the crispness of their diction, as much of the text was unintelligible.

The National Symphony Orchestra performs this concert program again tomorrow and Saturday nights at the Kennedy Center.