La Boheme

It has been more than a week since I went to Opera Theatre of St. Louis to see this year's production of La Boheme and I'm still somewhat in shock. This is at least the fifth production of Boheme that I've seen. It might be the sixth but I'm not sure. And that doesn't count watching PBS productions.

It is hard not to do a decent production of Boheme. First, it has a simple but moving story. Mimi, a seamstress, lives in Paris supporting herself with her needle. In the same building live four men living the Bohemian lifestyle of artists. They have not much money but they are happy. The writer, Rudolfo, meets Mimi when her candle has gone out and she comes by their place for a light. They fall in love. Lots of beautiful love songs ensue. They are happy. Lots of joyous cafe music ensues. But Mimi is ill (tuberculosis) and of course eventually dies. Lots of beautiful sad death music ensues. The story is easy to follow, the music is gorgeous. How can any production go wrong.

I've been a season ticket holder at Opera Theatre since 1986. I've seen some fabulous productions (the La Traviata done a few years ago comes to mind; Billy Budd in 1993 was magnificent). I've seen only a few dogs (Under the Double Moon is the standard for dogs.). And I've seen good solid productions. I'm seldom disappointed. There is almost always something good I can say about the production (except Under the Double Moon which was horrible in all respects). I walked out of Christopher Alden's production of Marriage of Figaro because I didn't like the staging (I've seen Figaro a million times and I've never seen it staged where the count holds a knife to the throat of the countess, one of only a number of problems with that production) but I did think that the singing was beautiful.

But.

I am at a loss to find anything nice to say about this year's La Boheme. The biggest problem was the voices. Through all these years I've sat in the same seats except when I've occasionally had to switch tickets. They are on the side in a theater with a thrust stage . I'm well aware that the sound is not as good as the sound for those that sit center. But I've always found that this is a good way to figure out just how far the singer is going to go. If they can sound fabulous to me in my seats - they are going places. If they can sound merely good that means they are fine singers. But sitting where I sit also shows up every flaw of technique and diction and I can tell when a singer needs work.

Derek Taylor as Rudolfo simply did not have a big enough voice for this production. Perhaps in a smaller production with a smaller orchestra he would have been fine. Perhaps he was having allergy problems. Perhaps I caught him on a bad night. Whatever. It was very difficult to hear him over the orchestra from my seats and that was a HUGE problem during moments when his arias are supposed to soar.

Alyson Cambridge (who was wonderful in Carmen a few years ago) was definitely having allergy problems the night I heard her. She has a lovely voice, but it was just not at its best that night. Amanda Majeski as Musetta got all the notes right and that's about all I can say for her. Timothy Mix as Marcello was actually fine when he sang alone. Unfortunately Marcello doesn't sing alone all that often. And that was the biggest problem. Whenever there was a duet or trio or quartet, the singers just did not seem to be together. Their cutoffs were sloppy, their voices did not blend. I blame the conductor.

What a disappointment. But it might have been mitigated by good acting or brilliant staging. The acting was pedestrian. There was no chemistry that I could see between Mimi and Rudolfo. And Majeski's portrayal of Musetta was so annoying that I wondered why anyone would have been attracted to her. The production is supposed to be a revival of the 2001 production. I saw the 2001 production and thought it was magical. Somehow the magic was lost in this production. The cafe scene especially just seemed ... crowded.

At the first intermission I turned to the people I was with and said I really wasn't liking it much. One of my friends, in relief, said she thought it had just been her, that she was just not in the right mood, but she thought it was a mess. At the second intermission we all decided to leave. We decided it was the worst La Boheme we'd seen and there was no reason to stay. We'd all seen it enough times; why leave a bad taste in our mouths?

But what a disappointment. I've never come out of a production of La Boheme ever before that I wasn't humming and excited and upbeat despite the sad ending. Not until last week.

Here's a nice version of O Soave Fanciulla I found to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Niche Books?

Booking Through Thursday asks:

There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.)

But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that.

What niche books do YOU read?

Books on North American French Colonial History. Mostly.

I also read travel books by women writers.

Is Steven Harper reading The Gift?

A story on Quill and Quire reminded me of something I've known for a while. Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi has been sending books to the Prime Minister of Canada for the last two years. He has chronicled his gifts (and the lack of response from the Prime Minister) on What is Steven Harper Reading? I came across the website last year and thought the whole idea was interesting, but then I forgot about it.

The Quill and Quire story was about the fact that after almost two years of silence Martel started, in April, receiving acknowledgement letters from one of the Harper's staff members. He doesn't know why and the letters don't indicate that Harper has actually read the books.

What caught my eye was that one of the most recent books that Martel sent to Harper was Lewis Hyde's The Gift which I blogged about extensively last fall. Martel writes a cover letter with each book explaining why he chose it. He also inscribes the book. He then publishes the inscription and letter on the website. I was interested in what he wrote to Harper about The Gift so I went and looked.

He wrote (among other things):

Art is at the heart of The Gift. Hyde sees every aspect of art as a gift: creativity is received as a gift by the artist, art is made as a gift and then, rather awkwardly in our current economic system, art is traded as a gift. That certainly rings true with me. I have never thought of my creativity in monetary terms. I write now as I did when I started, for nothing. And yet the artist must live. How then to quantify the value of one’s art? How do we correlate a poem’s worth with a monetary value? I use the word again: it’s awkward. If Hyde favours the spirit of gift-giving over that of commercial exchange, it’s not because he’s a doctrinaire idealist. He’s not. But it’s clear what he thinks: we’ve forgotten the spirit of the gift in our commodity-driven society and the cost of that has been the parching of our souls.

He ends his letter with the most appropriate sentiment:

One last point, made in the spirit of Hyde’s book. I have now sent you fifty-five books of all types, and there will be more to come, as long as you are Prime Minister. I imagine these books are lying on a shelf somewhere in your offices. But they won’t be there forever. One day you will leave office and you’ll take with you the extensive paper trail that a prime minister creates. That trail will be placed in hundreds of cardboard boxes that will end up at the National Archives of Canada, where in time they will be opened and the contents parsed by scholars. I would feel sad if that were the fate of the books I have given you. Novels and poems and plays are not meant to live in cardboard boxes. Like all gifts, they should be shared. So may I suggest that you share what I have shared with you. One by one, or all together, as you wish, give the books away, with only two conditions: first, that they not be kept permanently by each recipient but rather passed on in a timely fashion, after they’ve been read, and, second, that they never be sold. That would keep the gift-giving spirit of our book club alive.

I wonder if Harper has read any of the books Martel has sent him. What a joy it would be for some of us to receive books chosen by a novelist by Martel. And yet through most of this period Harper has not even had a staff member acknowledge the gifts. This one was acknowledged:

May 22nd, 2009

Dear Mr. Martel,

On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent correspondence.

Thank you for writing to share your views with the Prime Minister. You may be assured that your comments have been carefully noted. For more information on the Government’s initiatives, you may wish to visit the Prime Minister’s Web site, at www.pm.gc.ca.

Your sincerely,

L.A. Lavell

Executive Correspondence Office

How sad.

So, you've always wanted to be an artist ...

The brain is an amazing organ.  49 year old Alan Brown had a stroke.   Here's what happened:

...Brown was still recovering from his surgery when he realized that his doodles, once limited to stick men, had become strikingly more realistic.  Brain surgery can cause significant changes in behavior and abilities. Luckily for Brown, his change was for the better. He began painting (examples of his work can be seen here) and eventually quit his day job to open a gallery, where he displays and sells his art.

His art is dark.  But definitely not stick figures.  Click that link and see.