Live, from 1973, it’s composer/arranger Edd Kalehoff hawking Schaefer beer with the unstoppable power of the Moog Modular. (Via.)



Kalehoff—still going strong in his sixties—crafted a ton of game-show music for Mark Goodson and Bill Todman; he’s best known for his work on The Price is Right. He’s also done plenty of backgrounds for news and sports programming, particularly for ABC. Click on the “Edd’s Classics Medley” on Kalehoff Productions’ website for an idea of how deeply his composing and orchestration work has imprinted itself onto your subconscious.

Verdi: La Traviata
Presented by Teatro Lirico d’Europa
Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston
Sunday, March 2, 2008

Teatro Lirico d’Europa’s La Traviata this past weekend was, like all their productions, thoroughly traditional and efficiently entertaining. With this opera, though, such an approach makes clear the primacy of Verdi’s contribution, the tipping of the scales to favor music over words. As a piece of drama, La Traviata isn’t exactly preposterous, but it’s hardly Shakespearian in its character development. Puccini’s for-all-practical-purposes remake Manon Lescaut is often cited for its striking, tableaux-based approach to storytelling, but Verdi’s original has its share of lacunae. Some of the most dramatic points of the plot—the consummation of Alfredo and Violetta’s romance, Alfredo’s duel with Baron Douphol—happen only in the audience’s imagination. The lovers spend more time expressing their love to the audience or to third parties than to each other. Parts of it seem almost to be missing a reel: everything important is either about to happen or has just happened. (The incongruities are heightened when the traditional act breaks are abandoned, as they were here: the curtain comes down on Violetta’s “Sempre libera” profession of hedonistic freedom, only to promptly come up again on her happy domestication in the country.)

Part of La Traviata‘s enduring popularity (the third-most performed opera in the United States, according to Opera America) has to be its aura of sheer fantasy. Dumas fils’ La Dame aux camélias had a requisite sheen of romantic longing, but was comparatively clear-eyed about its title character. Verdi and Piave, his librettist, took the novel (and play) and, in the course of jettisoning most of its dramatic logistics, burnished it into the mid-19th-century prototype of every Hollywood hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold scenario ever devised. A courtesan who immediately gives up her life of luxury for a stranger’s profession of love? Who goes through all five Kübler-Ross stages of grief when faced with the prospect of separation? Who—and this is crucial—sells her stuff to support her lover? It’s every man’s dream!

But really, La Traviata‘s music simply leaves traditional dramatic plotting in the dust. It’s the prime masterpiece of the period where Verdi went from a talented master of the Italian operatic tradition to a genius of reinvention: Verdi saw that the conventions of bel canto—the coloratura decoration, the steady build from recitative to cavatina to cabaletta, the diagetic justification for dance and popular music—had matured to the point that their mere presence could have dramatic content above and beyond the story. Violetta’s fioritura, Alfredo’s tenor ardency, his father’s baritonal sterness, the tripping flute thirds of the perennial parties and balls: all those familiar elements start to play off of each other, turning up at inappropriate moments with an ironic charge, standing in for dialogue and plot rather than simply advancing them.

And Verdi’s orchestration never fails to astonish with its paradoxical combination of daring and efficiency.Teatro Lirico’s usual musical director Krassmir Topolov led an orchestra that fared somewhat better than in last month’s Tosca, with fewer sour moments in the strings and a warm, rounded mix from winds and brass—the distant, funereal tattoo behind Violetta’s dying “Prendi, quest’è l’immagine” was particularly lovely, the highlight of an afternoon of dignified restraint. Giorgio Lalov’s less-is-more direction, too, was unobtrusive and solid: party scenes may have lacked diabolical whirl, but he let intimate conversations unfold with simple stillness. (The one unfortunate exception was the third-act deathbed scene, with Alfredo given a lot of impulsive but directionless stage crossing that only made him seem oddly afraid of his beloved Violetta.)

Some comprimario and secondo roles were doubled up: Vladimir Hristov was both a George Clooney-suave Marchese d’Obigny and a bland Dr. Grenvil; Giorgio Dinev, previously seen enjoyably blustering as Tosca‘s Spoletta, doddered formulaically as Violetta’s servant, but had mischevious sparkle as Gastone—having introduced his friend Alfredo to Violetta, he worked the room, pointing out his handiwork to the other guests, a proud yenta.

Plamen Dmitrov was somewhat stiff and uncharismatic as Alfredo’s father Giorgio, but then again, the character is somewhat stiff and uncharismatic, so, intentional or not, it worked. Vocally, Dmitrov seemed to be fighting a cold, saving himself for high notes. Perhaps the bug had spread to Gabriel Gonzalez, singing Alfredo; despite some moments of real power, Gonzalez never got his voice “up and over”—there seemed to be no resonance in his head, the voice stuck in his throat, both intonation and tone frequently flat. (With his limited frequency range and a bleat in his vibrato, he often sounded uncannily like a 78 rpm recording.) As an actor, Gonzalez seemed the most reliant on stock gestures, signaling emotions rather than embodying them, but he did brood effectively.

But La Traviata can only rise on its fallen woman; the joy of this performance was Marina Viskvorkina’s excellent Violetta. Viskvorkina put her lovely, sapphire-polish lyric coloratura to unfailingly stylish use—not just a voice, but a real singer. She had the requisite fireworks for Violetta the pleasure-seeker, but also beautifully pared down her tone for the Act II duet “Dite alla giovine” and the high-wire finish of “Addio del passato” in Act III. And her acting was superb—if one never quite ascertained the attraction between Violetta and Alfredo, one got a palpable sense of both her love and the rebuke of her grief. As a character, Violetta is too good to be believe, but portraying her, Viskvorkina was more than good enough to be believable.

Bits and pieces…

Lots of composer portraits this week. Now it’s J. S. Bach—as played by Rod Steiger. (Daniel Wolf already expressed some mild skepticism as to the point of this exercise; this clumsy organist would probably have been more interested in reconstructions of the man’s feet.)

Feeling low? Wrong way up? Not as discreet as you’d like? Have your entire virtual life scored on a moment-to-moment basis by Brian Eno!

Philip Glass: cello sugar daddy.

And, this being a leap year it’s February 29th—Gioacchino Rossini turns 52, Jimmy Dorsey turns 26, Dinah Shore turns 23*, and Anne-Carolyn is still younger than her Knob Creek.

Update (2/29): I originally had all these ages a year off, having factored in the exception for years divisible by 100, but not the exception to the exception for years divisible by 400. Talk about metric modulation.

On January 24, 1927, Time magazine put the disembodied head of someone alleged to be Richard Strauss on its cover.


For comparison:


So the question is: who bamboozled Time‘s cover artist by claiming to be Richard Strauss? I vote for a time-traveling Ian Richardson.

I’m not usually much for musical anniversaries, but here’s one that would probably otherwise go comparatively unnoticed: today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Frankie Lymon, who overdosed on heroin at the age of 25. He was the lead singer of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, who debuted with a #1 Billboard R&B hit in 1956, the enduring classic “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” Here’s the group’s first TV appearance; the polytonal divergence with the accompaniment notwithstanding, it’s quite a first impression:



Lymon’s stage manner is astonishingly suave and polished for a 14-year-old. It puts him firmly in the category of old-time prodigies: young people doing what adults do as well or better than the adults themselves. Compared with somebody like Ricky Nelson, who, after all, was playing a teenager on his family’s sitcom, Lymon’s demeanor—closer to Louis Jordan than a high-school student—must have begun to erode his perceived “authenticity” as rock-and-roll gravitated towards the raw theatricality of Elvis or Chuck Berry. Trying to forge a solo career in the early 60s, Lymon was, perhaps, in the odd position of seeming old-fashioned to people his own age.

Lymon’s air of uncanny maturity probably helped spark his fame, but even being an actual teenager would have been something of an act for Lymon, who, according to some stories, had been hustling prostitutes at age 10, and, by his own admission, first took heroin at age 15, given to him by a woman twice his age—Lymon was never interested in teenaged girls, regarding them as inexperienced. Lymon never managed to kick either habit. The drugs that killed him were apparently in celebration of a new record contract; his marrying three different women without bothering to divorce any of them left his estate embroiled in a legal maze.

While other rock-and-rollers died young—Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran—Lymon was the first to act out the traditional prodigy’s cautionary tale in the rock arena. 40 years on, though, we’re just left with the music, the performances of a terrific singer and a supreme showman. At a perspective rather longer than his eighteen months at the top, Frankie Lymon was significantly more than a flash in the pan. One only wishes he had hung on long enough to realize it.

February 26, 1962: Luciano Berio visits the set of Radio Milan, the madcap Richard Lester-helmed film biography of the composer, starring Peter Sellers.

Just in case you missed it, not too long ago, media mogul, gazillionaire, and all-around Doctor Who supervillain Rupert Murdoch bought Dow Jones & Co., publishers of the Wall Street Journal, among other things. One of the conditions of the sale was that the Dow Jones board include a member of the Bancroft family, who had previously controlled the company since 1902. After much Bancroft family dithering, Murdoch ended up selecting 27-year-old Natalie Bancroft, who was repeatedly described in press reports as—hence her appearance on this blog—an opera singer. Business types dismissed the appointment. But can the girl sing? As prima blogger assoluta La Cieca pointed out, nobody knows.

Well, Condé Nast Portfolio magazine scored an interview with young Ms. Bancroft (if she’s younger than me, she’s young, OK?). Can she sing? Nobody knows, with the exception of reporter Sophia Banay, who was treated to a parking-lot rendition of Rachmaninoff’s op. 4, no. 3 (here’s Jussi Bjoerling’s version). Can she plausibly sit on the Dow Jones board? Nobody knows. The article seems to be going out of its way to paint her as an unblinking naïf:

Ticking off her qualifications to serve on the News Corp. board, [Bancroft] points out that she grew up in Europe, has a flexible schedule (she commutes to Milan for voice classes every few weeks), and sleeps only three to five hours a night. She also says she is multilingual and routinely reads foreign-language newspapers. Instead of being intimidated by the accomplished men who will be her colleagues, she says the prospect thrills her: “I have a much easier time understanding men. I was a tomboy. I love camping. I love sailing. I love doing boy stuff.”

Is she planning to get an M.B.A. to help prepare for the position? “In journalism?” she asks.

Nevertheless, Bancroft is the only woman on the board, which, honesty forces me to admit, automatically makes her the smartest one there. A year from now, Bancroft and former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar will be acting out scenes from Born Yesterday while Murdoch wonders what the hell happened to his company.

By the way, the Portfolio article mentioned Parterre Box in passing, calling it “an opera website run by a drag queen,” which is rather like calling 2001: A Space Odyssey “vacation home movies.” Show some respect!

Next Tuesday, the New York Philharmonic will perform in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater in North Korea. It’s a concert that has spurred loud, predictable consternation that the Philharmonic is, in essence, handing an undeserved public relations victory to Kim Jong-Il and the repressive North Korean regime. Most criticism has regarded the mere fact of the trip as unconscionable. Some critics, though, took a more interesting tack, criticizing the Philharmonic for their choice of repertoire: Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, Wagner’s Act III Prelude from Lohengrin, and Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal:

How might the Philharmonic emerge from this misbegotten venture with its honor intact? The answer came from the musician who accompanied me to last Friday’s concert. In the hush that followed the rage and anguish of the first movement of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, she leaned over to me and whispered, “Forget Gershwin—this is what they ought to play in North Korea.” And so they should. Instead of handing out musical bonbons to Kim Jong Il, Mr. Maazel and the Philharmonic could pay tribute to his innocent victims by performing a piece that speaks with shattering eloquence of the devastation wrought on an equally innocent people by an equally vicious tyrant.

Jens Laurson and George Pieler came up with the same idea in the Washington Times (a paper which, it is far from inappropriate to point out, is funded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon):

The Dvorak and Gershwin are considered classic Americana, both premiered by the NYPO. It’s nice music that should be attractive to those having a first-time experience with Western classics. But in these circumstances, it risks being an inoffensive sham of a program, offering timid Amerikanisch repertoire while avoiding both serious American music, and serious American civic content…. [T]he orchestra’s administration should have accepted on condition their repertoire be Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third — “Eroica” — Symphony, followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony.

Provocative choices, although the continuing beatification of Shostakovich as a patron saint of speaking truth to power is, I think, a far too one-dimensional assessment of that complex composer. And I can’t help imagining that such suggested programming would be less for Korean consumption and more for back-home reassurance—we may be going to Pyongyang, but we’re going on our terms. Besides, the Philharmonic, wittingly or not, has already programmed a piece that, in its own way, speaks directly to the Korean situation: George Gershwin’s An American in Paris.

Gershwin’s sparkling surface is just that: a surface. Even from the start, An American in Paris is more emotionally complicated than casual listening lets on. The opening theme, the jaunty stroll that critic W. James Henderson called “without doubt the sassiest orchestral theme of the century,” is nonetheless curiously disjunct and unbalanced. The opening takes a simple so-la-ti from the scale and distends the first note into another octave (I’m ignoring the grace note, which doesn’t always appear in other statements of the theme):

The result—a downward seventh followed by an upward step—still leaves a gap of a sixth, hanging on the leading tone of the scale. Unusually for Gershwin, the rest of the theme never fills in that gap. (Compare the slow section of Rhapsody in Blue, where each octave leap is patched with stepwise motion.) The melody, quite literally, has a hole in its heart. By two-thirds of the way through the first musical paragraph, the cadence of the opening theme—

—has been stretched into a gaping augmented octave, A to A-flat:

The entire opening section is one of Gershwin’s most dizzying portrayals of modern life, the disorienting pace and chaos of the city—shifting through keys in a whirl, often by half-step; pushing the accent all over the beat; frequently answering a melody with a sped-up version of itself. (Although originally conceived on a brief stay in Paris, Gershwin actually sketched much of the piece in Manhattan, prior to the longer trip it supposedly commemorates.) And the famous “Tempo Blues” theme at the center of the work, the ex-pat’s melancholy (Gershwin indicated “Drunk” on one draft), echoes the opening; the keening long note gives way to another series of disjunct intervals, a tumbling of sixths and sevenths:

For all its joie de vivre, An American in Paris is, at its core, music of displacement and homesickness—two of the defining conditions of post-1948 Korean life.

One of the most famous natural landmarks in Korea is Mount Kumgang (Kumgangsan), which falls north of the DMZ. In 1998, the South Korean firm Hyundai agreed to pay $945 million over six years to the North Korean government in exchange for the right to bring South Korean tourists to Kumgangsan. Hyundai lost money on the deal—yet last year, Kumgangsan saw its one millionth visitor from the South. For all the enmity between the two Korean republics, the line between them is so historically and geographically illogical that a full two percent of the South Korean population has been willing to fund the North Korean regime in order to temporarily erase it.

Indeed, only the carving up of the Middle East after World War I can rival the post-WWII partition of Korea for irrationality. Arbitrarily placed at the 38th parallel by two American army officers who had no knowledge of the country (Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, future Cold Warriors both), the division was added to General Order Number One—for the administration of postwar Japan. It would not be the last time Korean policy was an American afterthought. The line, hardened by war into the DMZ, split the government, the symbiotic economy, and the society: families still remain divided by geography and wartime kidnappings. (That so many promised family reunions have come to nought is indicative of how poorly, on the whole, both sets of leaders—not just the tyrants in the North—have served the Korean people.)

Koreans themselves have long recognized that only reunification can provide lasting stability on the peninsula—the contest between North and South has always been over the terms of reunification, not its desirability. The American government, though, has consistently viewed divided Korea, if at all, through the lens of whatever ideological struggle happens to be occupying American mindspace at the time, be it the Cold War or the War of Terrorism. The recent cautious optimism in North-South relations has been spurred by pragmatic South Korean leaders, leaders who might have come to power years ago, except for U.S.-condoned repression. Despite nominal command over the South Korean army, U.S. officials stood idly by through two South Korean military coups and years of authoritarian rule, culminating in the 1980 killing of pro-democracy protestors in Kwangju; until 1987, the country had enjoyed only two years of democracy since 1948.

Encouraging the ROK to quash liberal dissent, pushing the DPRK into increasing miltarism and isolation, the U.S.—and its troop presence, which continues, 29,000 strong—exacerbated the divide. American lip service towards a unified Korea has long since grown stale to both northern and southern ears. (Kim Il-Sung once cynically admitted to a fellow dictator that one of the main reasons North Korea continued to make diplomatic feints towards reunification was that it was an easy way to make the U.S. look hypocritical.) This isn’t meant to be a litany of guilt, or a suggestion that the ongoing sins of the North Korean regime are somehow neutralized by past American mistakes, but a reminder why American moralizing doesn’t carry as much weight on either side of the DMZ as we might like to think.

The problem is not that the Philharmonic’s visit will provide PR fodder for Kim Jong-Il; it’s that American policy towards Korea has long been so ad hoc, so tone-deaf to the situation of the Korean people that it almost invariably plays into the North’s hands, no matter what we do or don’t do. The most comparatively productive period in U.S.-DPRK relations, in the late 1990s, was nevertheless—sound familiar?—a reaction to a Pyongyang-triggered crisis over nuclear ambitions. Time and again, the North’s totalitarian leaders have turned outside attention, good and bad, to domestic gain; no doubt, the Bush administrations’s “Axis of Evil” rhetorical belligerence has been at least as propagandistically valuable to Kim Jong-Il as a visiting orchestra.

Perhaps the time has come to stop worrying about “legitimizing” a regime that’s outlasted ten U.S. presidents and come up with a substantive strategy to get them to open their society, empty their prisons, and feed their people—because isolation isn’t doing it. But instead we get the customary incoherence. Even the top U.S. negotiator on the North Korean nuclear question, Christopher Hill—who has been admirably pushing the current, fragile framework for disarmament (in which the Philharmonic visit is almost certainly playing a part)—has had to put up with neocon backbiting from his own administration.

Given such history, I’m pretty pessimistic about the diplomatic prospects for this concert. I’d love to believe that the Philharmonic’s visit will lead to something lasting, but I rather suspect that it will just be a particularly grand entry in the ledger of ill-coordinated signals and gestures that have long constituted American policy in Korea. Most likely, Koreans in the North will continue to starve, Koreans in the South will continue to wait, and the majority of divided Korean families will remain sadly divided—and when reunification does finally happen, it will probably be in spite of the United States, not because of us. Those Koreans able to hear the concert will hear neither a satisfying scold nor a new hope. But if they listen carefully to Gershwin’s deceptive insouciance, they might hear something even more rare: a hint that, somewhere along the line, at least some Americans have had at least some small idea of what it’s like to be Korean.

What strange times we are living in! We are surrounded by ugliness on every side. We allow horrible buses to disfigure the streets of Paris without protest, and our houses are the ugliest possible…. Yet, there is not a young girl going into town with her mother who does not carry on herself a whole museum: her ring is signed Such-and-Such, her tooled-leather book cover is signed So-and-So, her belt is signed This-and-That, etc.

Our time will have a style of its own when people attach less importance to signatures; then even buses will be graceful. I recognize, however, that there is more than a mere promise in the general effort of our artists to endow us with a style. We may, infact, have a style… “without knowing it,” the way Molière’s M. Jourdain spoke prose.

—Guillaume Apollinaire, in L’Intransigeant,
March 8, 1910; translated by Susan Suleiman