Silverlake Blvd.

A Merrily We Roll Along Thanksgiving Weekend

 

 

I can remember 1981—just cue up “Tainted Love” or “I Love a Man In Uniform” or Human League’s “Fascination” and I’m there. The music’s an infallible time machine.

 

For some people the music that brings back 1981 is Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. Until last weekend I knew nothing about it, but now, not only did we see a superb revival at the Wallis, but also the new documentary about the original production.

 

Lonny Price’s “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened” is a good place to start if you’re somebody who’s suspicious of musicals in general and ignorant about Sondheim, like me. We see and hear the original cast of Merrily tell their funny and awful stories in the present, and then—through the magic of lost and miraculously rediscovered archival footage—see and hear them as they were in 1981—the auditions, the rehearsals, the rewrites, interviews with everybody involved.

 

I knew nothing and was moved. Price’s documentary is a meditation on what can happens to dreams over time. The irony is that Sondheim’s musical is a meditation on exactly the same thing. What happens when the greatest opportunity of a lifetime turns out to be a disaster?

 

The revival at the Wallis was first-rate: efficient without being slick, visually interesting without glitz, a 100% committed cast. The problems were the the problems inherent to the work, i.e. the book. The contrast between the triteness of the dialogue and the wit of the lyrics was jarring.

 

But the songs keep coming. I’m more attuned to the satirical ones than the ballads: “The Blob,” and “Opening Doors,” and “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” and “That’s not a tune you can hum to”. The slow number that still haunts is Gussie’s “Nothing wrong with wanting me, … darling. / Also nothing wrong with … … not.” The words couldn't be plainer. But the music, the tortuous pause before the final word of each line, makes it an existential threat. Somehow Frank, and everyone else, survived.

Shakespeare400: the history plays

 

During the election I was tuning out the news and reading Shakespeare’s Histories. The Bastard’s comment (King John, 4.3) is a fair synopsis:

 

The life, the right, and truth of all this realm

Is fled to heaven, and England now is left

To tug and scramble, and to part by th’ teeth

The unowed interest of proud swelling state.

 

History as a succession of thefts, destructions and murders perpetrated by squabbles between aristocratic nincompoops, ham actors, lunatics, swindlers, …. The Tragedies present the dead-ends of the individual, the Histories present those of the community. Perhaps the solace—if any—is in the Comedies.

Pacifica Quartet @ Schoenberg Hall, UCLA

 

I think it might have actually helped to not be in the Clark Library’s fantastical neo-baroque music room, but rather a dumpy heavily-used classroom in Schoenberg Hall last Sunday. The leaks from the rain (rain?!) chased us out of the scheduled recital hall.

 

The Pacifica wasn’t fussed. If anything, their Bartók—with a Haydn chaser in-between—was laser-intense.

 

In Bartók's #2, the second movement has a headlong wildness that teeters on the verge of chaos. Then comes a long movement of introspection so absolute it’s neither insouciant nor grave. The Haydn third movement had the same violent slashing tutti chords, but the mood was entirely different: Pulcinello acting up.

 

Both Bartóks ended with heart-stopping quietness—a single note, a phrase cut off. Both went very far out, but found a way home.

 

It good to watch the players watch each other, and sit with an audience listening as intently as the playing.

Akhnaten @ Dorothy Chandler

 

We are not totally starved for Philip Glass in Southern California. It’s easy to think of memorable Glassian events, like L.A. Opera’s own Dracula at the Ace last year, the phenomenal marathon of Music in 12 Parts at Royce a few years ago, and Einstein on the Beach a bit before that.

 

I wish the powers that be would note how full the seats are with younger people when Glass is performed. (And I also wish during the year that every other musical city in the world is hosting a festival to celebrate Steve Reich’s 80^th birthday, L.A. would get with the program. But to return to Glass …)

 

We’re even in pretty good shape regarding his 1983 opera Akhnaten. There was a memorable performance of Selected Scenes in 2006 at Disney Hall, with countertenor Daniel Bubeck, attractive and unnerving in just the right measure. And in 2011 Long Beach Opera mounted a terrific production at the Terrace Theater. With the catch that LBO, as always, was operating on more enthusiasm than cash.

 

The new L.A. Opera/English National Opera co-production is definitely not done on a shoestring. It addressed the big challenge of the piece—the fact that nothing happens—with lavish visual spectacle. But it wasn’t empty spectacle, or gratuitous. Conductor Atthew Aucoin, Director Phelim McDermott, Set Designer Tom Pye and Costume designer Kevin Pollard took Glass’s eerie drama to heart, and created a moving dramatic spectacle. It was a perfect realization.

 

The first act was a triumph. It conveyed the weight of tradition and ritual that sets the drama in motion. It also conveyed how a Person is transformed—or replaced—by a Pharaoh. Anthony Roth Costanzo came out on stage naked, and was dressed by the Jugglers, doing nothing himself. It was mesmerizing and made the point.

 

The non-singing Jugglers were part of almost every scene. The juggling was artful and anxiety-provoking in a way that was completely appropriate. The looping and interlinked repetitive patterns also mirrored the music.

 

Among the many details that demonstrated the production's serious engagement with the work, was that they chose not to provide supertitle translation of the libretto: they realized that Akhnaten is a pageant, and the significance of the words is more symbolic than dramatic.

 

When listening to the recording, I always skip the parts with the narration, but Zachary James’s immense voice made The Scribe’s words compelling.

 

The only drawbacks were the limitiations of the work itself. It's really a cantata more than an opera, consisting of declamation and tableaux rather than action. For example, Akhnaten’s big solo, the hymn that ends Act Two, is extraordinary, but it decisively stops whatever dramatic momentum dead. L.A. Opera did it with extreme gravity, ... and I started to nod off.

 

And then there's the “Attack and Fall” scene in Act Three. This is the big test of a production of Akhnaten. How do you stage a violent revolution with music that’s refuses to acknowledge abrupt change? L.A. Opera did a good job, presenting tableaux of the coup d’etat. If the Chorus and all the Daughters had been up to the task, it would have been a triumph.

 

So what if it wasn't perfect? It was magnificent. The longeurs are just part of the ride, like the boring bits in Tristan. It’s worth it.

Musica Elettronica Viva @ RedCat

 

Last Wednesday, three of the original memembers of MEV—Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, and Alvin Curran—reunited.

 

Curran began the concert by stepping behind the backdrop to perform a plantive harmonica solo. He also played piano, shofar and inserted jarring electronic sound effects. Teitelbaum manned a laptop and electric keyboard. Rzewski played piano (I didn't know he was a virtuoso), and made occasional comments, and the honk with a duck call. He provided the ground: “Johnny comes marching home” and bits of other haunting folk songs kept unfolding majestically.

 

The tempo was slow and easy, but the textures and moods waxed and waned. Mostly it took the cue from Rzewski’s piano: plantive and elegaic.

 

About fifteen minutes into the performance, a white-haired old lady in the front row stood up and started dancing. Really dancing—doing slow, steady, repetitive gestures. Almost ordinary movements, nothing balletic or theatrically “expressive”. After a while, Rzewski introduced her as their oft-times collaborator of 50 years ago, Simone Forti.

 

My God, one of the heroines of post-modern dance. She danced 20 minutes, took a break, and then did some more. She was at times the embodiment of the music. Other times she was a critical listener. Sometimes she clowned with the performers, getting into their face. She crawled over the floor. She rolled around on the floor, over the cables and power strips. At one point she sang an Italian song—faintly, quaiveringly—but with ardor. It was astonishing, but it was also disturbing. An 81-year-old dancer, no matter how fit, is so outside the norm that it’s a struggle to see her as a dancer at all. I’m sure that was the point.

 

The concert was a salute to something created 50 years ago, but it also was its own creation, vividly alive, here and now. Even as the sirens at the Not My President demonstration happening around downtown filtered through MEV's music. A lesson in focus, dignity, perseverance: exactly what I needed.

SFMOMA & the De Young

 

I finally saw the new SFMOMA. The galleries are strangely cut-off from city, but a huge improvement over Botta’s dumpy box. It seemed straightforward to navigate, though afterwards I realized I had actually missed the pre-WWII galleries on the second floor.

 

The big surprise was what was on view: the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection. Blue-chip hedonism: room after room of Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, The Bechers, .... No complaints from me.

 

It was a good that the two special exhibitions provided a bit of grit.

 

It is certainly not true that Bruce Connor was “one of the foremost American artists of the postwar era.” His music videos (of the 70s and 80s) are his central work, after which come a handful of fine films. Beyond that he made a few nice collages in the style of Max Ernst, and did two series of intricate, druggy and mesmerizing ink drawings—the thick, Kusama-eque squiggles and the ink blots (early 1990s). The rest of his work is bohemian thrift store junk.

 

It was also a good to catch the Anthony Hernandez retrospective. It’s easy to see why this L.A. photographer’s retrospective is not appearing anywhere in L.A.: his work is the most negative portrait of Los Angeles on record. His unknockable best are the various series from the late 1970s and early 1980s: Public Transit Areas, Automotive Landscapes, Public Use Areas, Public Fishing Areas. What in the world is that image with the woman sunbathing, the man fishing and the two trees poking out of the water? The woman struggling to relax and read in the uncomfortable angle of the office building landscaping! Landscapes for the homeless, #18 (1988) is the indelible drywall chair. I acknowledge the irony of the pains taken to produce fantastically detailed images, and then to print lushly colored, heroic scale prints … of nastiness that most people would rather ignore. Discarded things, garbage, salvaged by the desperate. The irony is the central thing. The possibility of apprehending beauty in conditions that are unpromising to say the least. It is also about keeping your mind open, along with your eyes. Looking even when you don't want to.

 

I’m glad I saw the Danny Lyon show—at the De Young—but it was one of those retrospectives that make you doubt your enthusiasm. His engagement with the civil rights movement, bikers, the destruction of Lower Manhattan, prison inmates, etc. … produced some indelible images. But I didn’t get the sense that it went any deeper than that. Photo essays? Not really. His goal was never getting at the truth of what was happening; his goal was adventure. I could be completely mistaken. I think I need to study his books.

 

It was interesting to see the Frank Stella retrospective again. The De Young’s was much smaller than the Whitney’s version—most of the big, craggy silver pieces were omitted. And it was displayed in the underground galleries. It’s not that Stella’s work is frail, but the absence of natural light made everything a bit flatter than it really was. At any rate, it was instructive to see the show again, after 10 months of thinking and reading about it. This version really made the case for the continuity between all the work:

• Everything, from the stripe paintings to the latest sculptures are assemblages.
• All his works employ negative shapes, cut-out shapes, left-over shapes.
• Colors, for him, are always things, embodied in things. Colors aren’t ideas, they are properties of specific, concrete things.

 

And then lunch, at the De Young’s terrific café.

Chopin & Bruckner in San Francisco

 

Davies Symphony Hall is a terrific venue. Why have I never been before? The crowd seemed more posh and less diverse than the usual Disney Hall crew, but they kept quiet.

 

Chopin seems simple—what could be clearer?—but he never is. The Concerto #2 is a house party novel. The first movement is the arrival of the dramatis personae. It’s grand but a bit stiff; only the piano sounds human. The next movement is the morning after—a clandestine meeting before all the others are awake. The last movement is a busy Saturday—kids, visits, duties, uproar in which something important is happening. But what? Who knows. Yuja Wang was superb. She pretends to be a thoughtless chica in a sexy dress in order to surprise with her eddies of introspection.

 

Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFO made Bruckner’s 7^th lush and opulent. The Adagio is sumptuous, melting, rapture and MTT kept nudging it towards ecstasy. At times it seemed to reach it. But Bruckner’s fatal garrulousness—or, call it his insistence on giving the audience their money’s worth—undermines the experience a bit. 

Bay Area sites

Wright's Berger House in San Anselmo

The teahouse on the grounds of Wright's Buehler house in Orinda

Charles Warren Callister's 1958 Flowers house in Berkeley

Wright's Marin civic center

Maybeck's First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley

Maybeck's  Guy Hyde Chick House in Oakland Hills, featuring a jaw-dropping installation of John de Andrea's 1960 Pygmalion

Thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy for organizing these fantastic tours!

Nosferatu @ The Ace

 

 

What made this an L.A. Opera event was the live music by Mathew Aucoin, the current Artist in Residence. Like traditional silent movie music, it included lots of recycled material. I caught the bits of Pierrot Lunaire, Verklärte Nacht, and Tristan, but not Schubert’s Gretchen, or the Zemlinsky. Aucoin’s collaging was clever, but I almost prefered his solo piano vamping.

 

Liv Redpath provided vocals throughout, switching from Pierrot to Gretchen to Isolde without breaking a sweat. Phenomenal.

 

It wasn’t the most immaculate print—they didn’t identify what it was. Am I sounding like a fussy old classicist, whose first question is not What do you think of it? but Which edition are you reading? Unfortunately with movies in general and silents above all, it’s a valid question.

 

It’s great that there were all these people at the Ace who who had never seen an opera, but many of them seem not have to have ever sat through a silent movie before. Yes, there are campy moments in Nosferatu, but too much laugher was distressing. Ellen glancing out at a street filled with undertakers carrying away coffins, her confused mix of disgust and fascination—it’s not quaint or irrelevant.