Well,
the Ring is over and we are on the drive back home. In
general, Seattle’s production was wonderful. I have my quibbles
with it, but then I know there can be no such thing as a perfect
Ring. Not that people aren’t looking for one; in fact, the
quest to see such a thing drives Wagnerians to productions all over
the world, but the quest is as illusive as chasing the pot of gold at
the end of a rainbow.
However,
as I mentioned last week, Seattle Opera has a wonderful opera
education program, which greatly enriches the immersive experience of
a Ring festival. While their education program in general is
multi-faceted, particularly focused on youth, it is their adult
education as I have experienced it at their Ring cycles that I
want to highlight. I cannot imagine that any opera house in the
world exceeds their standard. So now I am going to write a bit about their educators, and then provide a contrast with less effective educators.
Speight
Jenkins
Before
Speight Jenkins was General Director at Seattle Opera, he was first a
guest lecturer. His knowledge of and passion for Wagner so impressed
the Board of Directors of the Opera house that they asked him to
leave his post as the New York Post music critic to lead their
company. Among many other plans to improve Seattle Opera, his vision
was to create an opera education program that would inspire people to
really want to go to the opera because it sounded so damn wonderful
and fun (and would make some money to offset the venture at the same time). Speight provided these lectures on Wagner’s Ring early in his tenure, which were fun and folksy—his Texas twang helping that along—with captivating
descriptions of the cycle. While these talks are out now of circulation and are very expensive at Amazon, if
you are interested in hearing them, let me know and I can provide a
copy. This review hits the nail on the head.
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| Leslie took this photo of Speight at his "greeting spot" while I was passing by. |
Speight
has been at the helm of the Seattle Opera now for 30 years and has done a
great job in moving Seattle from a small, regional company to one of
international prominence, particularly via the most recent production
of the Ring cycle. He is retiring at the end of next season,
so this was his last hurrah, and he received a fitting send-off.
After the last opera of the last of the three cycles was over, the cast and creative team was cheered
strongly, with lots of the audience on their feet, but others, like
me, remained seated, preferring to hold standing ovations for those
rare and extraordinary moments when they feel compelled out of my seat.
When Speight was called to the stage, it was such a moment. The
entire audience erupted in a true, hearty and Wagnerian-length
standing ovation to honor the job that he has done. It was a lovely
tribute.1
“We
must start creating and sharing Art that gives people a glimpse of
God's Beauty and inspires people to live lives of Goodness and
Truth!” - Perry Lorenzo from a comment within his blog
“Only
Perry could make someone go from knowing nothing about opera, to not
only loving opera but loving WAGNER.” - Former student of Perry's (in a
eulogy)
 |
| The late, wonderful Perry Lorenzo |
Speight
lured Perry Lorenzo from his job as a well-regarded high school
teacher to take over the educational program at the Seattle Opera in 1992, and he served
as the head of the initiative—and chief lecturer—for 20 years
until his sad and untimely death of cancer at age of 51 in 2009. In this eulogy, Jenkins writes:
He
took a fledgling Education program at Seattle Opera and expanded it
exponentially, drawing to him a devoted core of speakers and
discussing opera in many forums. He worked with students in many
communities all over the state as well as in the Seattle area. At
Woodinville High School, for example, he was well known as the “Opera
Guy.”
Perry was a great speaker, and seemed like a really great guy. I raptly listened to his lectures when I first arrived in 2001 and, again in 2005, when I dragged Leslie and her parents along to see him speak. The lectures were three hours per opera, so along with the 15 hours2 of actually watching the Ring, I happily spent another 12 hours listening to Perry talk about the Ring. And we each paid $100 to do so.
From
all reports, he was an amazing man. Here is a typical online
memorial from one student about him:
I
have known Perry Lorenzo since 1990 when I became a member of the
debate team he coached and later a student in his Humanities class at
John F Kennedy Memorial High School in Burien. Words cannot describe
his quality as a teacher and a person, but those who experienced him
know how inspiring he was. He made the ordinary extraordinary and the
extraordinary sublime.
And
another:
Perry
had coached the debate team at Kennedy and I was a competing high
school debater from another Puget Sound high school. In a testament
to his remarkable humanity, even as a coach of a competing team he
reached out and supported me and my teammates over the years... Funny
thing, I'm sure at least a thousand people felt equally loved and
encouraged by Perry.
Perry Lorenzo is a legend. A man of remarkable depth: intellectual, spiritual, artistic and humane. May his memory live as a blessing and a challenge to all of us, in all of our dimensions, to strive for excellence, compassion, encouragement, love and artistic beauty.
Perry
was an intellectual, and his lectures drew from a vast knowledge of art
and literature. That said, there is nothing in them that is a
bit snobby or pretentious. He was also a devout Catholic, and though his
talks were inspired by his faith, there was nothing in them
that was off-putting to me, an atheist. His belief in God’s
divine presence in art was at the heart of his passion, and I found it
moving in spite of my lack of such faith. He wrote this blog to
explore his religious, artistic passions.
As
Perry explained in his blog, the starting point for his analysis of
art is: “The famous Analogy
of Being sings that all Being shares
four common aspects, characteristics, attributes--Unity, Truth,
Goodness, and Beauty.” In this post he gives an example of his process:
Take,
for example, the experience of the Beauty of a poem. We could enjoy
forever beholding that poem, being dazzled by its clarity, being
amazed by its structure and stricture, being healed and harmonized by
its balance and daring, its symmetry and sublime expression.
But then, we might venture further---how is the Beauty of the poem Good or True? How does the poem give us a glimpse of the way things really are? How does the poem ennoble human action? Does the poem inspire us? Inspire us to what?
And further, how does the poem draw us, almost by a kind of erotic attraction, to the Unity of things?
But then, we might venture further---how is the Beauty of the poem Good or True? How does the poem give us a glimpse of the way things really are? How does the poem ennoble human action? Does the poem inspire us? Inspire us to what?
And further, how does the poem draw us, almost by a kind of erotic attraction, to the Unity of things?
His
lectures, then, were informed by this approach: seeking and finding
the truth, goodness and beauty in Wagner, and ultimately the unity of
things within in it. At the same time, he also made clear that the
Ring could also be just great entertainment, a “swell time at the
theater,” he liked to say. But he was drawn to the work for reasons
much deeper, and he tries to pull people into his sublime experience through this more profound route.
While
his blog is, ultimately, too Catholic for my taste to explore in
depth, if you happen to be a Catholic who loves art, I absolutely
recommend it to you. Nonetheless, I do think his methods of
exploring issues of “truth, goodness and beauty” in art are
profoundly right. I don’t end up with God as he does, but I do
come equally to the unity of all things. And I believe the
importance he placed on art in getting to Truth (writ large) is
absolutely correct. While we might all differ somewhat on what the
ultimate truth is, in this quest, Perry, I and Wagner are one.
A
shorten version of his lectures, focusing on broad questions and
themes in the Ring, can be bought here.
There
is one final thing I want to say about Perry. In this obituary, the
Seattle Times writes:
Paul
Hearn of Seattle, Mr. Lorenzo's longtime companion, said they met
when Mr. Lorenzo gave a lecture at the University of Washington 13
years ago. Though Hearn was not Catholic, their first date was to St.
James, he said. Hearn said Mr. Lorenzo brought
him to the Catholic Church and broadened his appreciation of opera.
The two would pray together and do morning liturgies. "We were
monks in love," he said.
In
case that wasn’t clear: Perry was a chaste gay man, believing his
church’s teaching that homosexual sexual expression—though not
homosexual love—was a sin. There is a fascinating debate among
Catholics on this issue in terms of Perry on the internet. It starts
here with a blog post from a well-known Catholic blogger, Mark Shea, along with the follow-up comments. He said that he felt Perry was both a “gay man” and a “saint” led, which to a lot of fierce debate. Shea then followed-up with another post on the debate itself, here. I must note that Mark Shea absolutely is
against gay marriage, gay adoption, etc. So, we are not talking
about a left-leaning Catholic here, but instead a debate among
more conservative Catholics on issues of being gay.
I am so far from Catholic—and very far
from thinking of sex as a sin—that I find this weird on many
levels. That said, his abilities as an opera speaker had
everything to do with his intense passion which stemmed from his
belief in God and his church. So I love it, and respect it, at the
same time.
Perry
Lorenzo: A great man, a great speaker, and gone much too young.
Sue
Elliot was hired in 2010 to follow in Lorenzo’s huge footsteps. We
once again paid to see the three-hour-a-day lecture series, trusting
that Seattle would hire someone worthy of the position. I can now
report that without doubt she is no Perry Lorenzo; she is completely
Sue Elliot, utterly delightful and completely following her own path.
A gotta tell you, of all the people I have met who work at Seattle
Opera, she has catapulted to the top as my favorite. I even like her
better than Myrna Mishmash, the gal who used to get money out of me
for Seattle Opera.
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| Leslie took this photo as Sue was leaving the Opera House |
Where
Perry’s lectures were very organized, with broad themes and points
to be made, Sue’s are down-to-earth, much more scattershot, and very
interesting and fun. She spent a good amount of time on deconstruction of small
sections of the Ring, to show the ways in which Wagner made his
musical effects which “broke all the rules” of the time. She
geared the lecture to non-musicians like myself, working on ways for
us to grasp musical concepts easily, trying to find effective
analogies. I am not going to explain how she worked this into the
lecture:
But
anyone who manages to find a logical way to include Endora in a
lecture gets an A from me. (To make her musical point, she was
actually showing the clip to use Uncle Arthur for the analogy, but I am a big fan of Agnes Moorehead who played Endora.)
Sue
also gave a lot of insider information about the staging. So, for
instance, we learned that to train Grane—Brunnhilde’s horse; they
use a real live one—they first start by blasting Wagner’s music in
its stall weeks before the performance. Lucky horse! (Oh, that
reminds me of something my brother Russ wanted me to mention about
his alma mater, Cal Tech. This is a little loosely related trivia.
Did you know that every final’s week each morning at 7 AM sharp, the "Ride of the Valkyries" is blasted through the sound system as a
kind of reveille? Now you do! You can read about that tradition here.)
Sue
also touched on many other aspects of the Ring, such as its broad
themes, instrumentation, Wagner’s composition history, and so forth.
Like I said, a little scattershot, but very effective.
Next
time they do a Ring cycle, I might not pay to go to the opera, but I
would still pay to listen to her lectures. Actually “lectures”
seems too regimented a term for her presentations. “Guiding
thoughts for your own exploration” might be a better, if too-long,
description.
Also,
I gotta admit that I would be pretty shocked if Sue has a religious
blog out there (not that she might not be religious, but that is a different thing), while I wasn’t at all surprised that Perry did.
And though I know absolutely nothing about her private life, I would
also be surprised if she is in love with someone but yet a long-term
celibate. Point being: as much as I liked and respected Perry, Sue
seems to be more of my kind of "normal" person.
Good
hire, Speight.
Jonathan
Dean
Jonathan
is yet another one of Seattle Opera's talented stable, though he is no longer
one of their speakers. (I did hear him speak in the past, however, and he was also outstanding.) He has another job with Seattle Opera
now, but he was very involved with the Ring in that he wrote the excellent
subtitles.
So you can trust their speakers to be good, is the point I am trying to make. Yes, they charge you. Go ahead and pay for it; it’s worth it.
So you can trust their speakers to be good, is the point I am trying to make. Yes, they charge you. Go ahead and pay for it; it’s worth it.
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| Leslie snapped a shot of me saying hi to Jonathan |
In
Contrast
Most
opera houses do not make you pay for pre-opera talks, and their
quality ranges greatly. My experience is that, in general, San
Francisco’s opera talks are very poor. The people who do them are
often academics, but not the talented ones! I go to them because
they are free and I always hope for a good one, but it is pretty
rare.
The Los
Angeles Opera, on the other hand, has had very good speakers in their free
pre-opera talks. For example, their Ring was lousy, but the
conductor, the hyper James Conlon, did the talks and I really enjoyed
him. On other occasions when I have been there, it has been similar.
That said, they aren’t on the Seattle level, keeping the talks too
brief for any deep insight. I'd rather pay the $10 for a pre-opera talk that Seattle charges then go to the free ones that other opera houses offer.
The
Great Courses - Wagner series
Even
when I don’t care for the talk from an opera, I rarely get mad at
the speaker. They just sometimes have dry speakers who have very little of
interest to say. But now I want to move on to the the Great Courses
series on Richard Wagner featuring Robert Greenberg, which was put
out this year to celebrate Wagner's bicentennial. It sucks on virtually
all levels.
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| Robert Greenberg |
Before
getting into the depth of its dreadfulness, I want to point out the
Greenberg is the person the The Great Courses use for their
musical series. I had picked up his How to Listen and Understand
Great Music course for
$5 at a garage sale, and it was generally fine. He makes
not-very-funny jokes, but beyond that, I enjoyed them. Thus, when
they put out the Wagner series for a fairly low price, I thought it would
be a perfect thing to listen to while we were doing this Wagner trip
to Seattle.
The
problem is that Greenberg has no in-depth understanding of Wagner or
his music dramas or his prose writings, and has little understanding
or sympathy for the works. The whole enterprise has a first-year
college level feel to it, clearly “crammed” and completely
lacking in nuance; it has the feel of "cutting and pasting" from a very limited
variety of second-hand sources.
If you have read a lot about Wagner as I have, you soon learn
that nothing written about him should be taken on face-value unless
you do the homework and go to the original source. This Greenberg clearly
did not do. I know far more about Wagner
than he does, and I find it pathetic that the Great Courses would put
out such a course given his paucity of knowledge.
You
know this saying? A
man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is
never quite sure. Greenburg is a man with one watch and it looks
like this:
His
principal source for his biographical material and analysis is pretty
much plucked whole from the one-dimensional and twisted biography, Wagner: the Man, His Mind and His Music by Robert Gutman. This is the “distorted
watch” Greenberg rests his course upon. Essentially, it is “junk in,
junk out.” (Read here to see the failures of Gutman’s biography.)
Both
Wagner the man, and the works themselves, are consistently described
by Greenberg in a sneering, sarcastic and mocking manner. Any musical
analysis—why and how Wagner is so effective at writing music of
emotional depth; his use of the orchestra, harmonics, melody, rhythm,
silence, and time —is almost completely absent. His excerpt
choices are often bizarre, ignoring much that is a “must hear” selection and instead using minor passages. While he repeatedly says that the music is the
most important part of the music dramas—a point that is universally
acknowledged, including by Wagner himself—he then spends an
inordinate amount of time reading libretto text, often without any
point being made.
Greenberg
often repeats biographical myths or half-truths, and does so in a way
that a listener who does not know the biographical material is led
astray. He states as FACT (his emphasis) things that are not facts,
but conjectures. He consistently exaggerates his material. His
understanding of Wagner’s beliefs are often completely wrong. His
libretto analysis is generally crude and often without any basis in
text or music.
I
would love it if there were a full course on Wagner on CD. But this
is certainly not it. If you are interested in learning about Wagner,
it is far more beneficial to go to one of the available Ring
lectures, like Perry’s or Speight’s, as I linked above. Another
excellent source is here, where you can download the excellent John Culshaw lecture series about the
Ring (probably my favorite of all the Ring analyses) and also a
3-part program about the Ring from the New York Met.
If
you want a more general analysis of Wagner and his musical effects on
a podcast, I would like to link you again to the wonderful, incisive
talk by Nicholas Spice here. (You can also download it as a podcast.)
End Notes
1.
I don’t want to give a too-rosy picture. There were people very
critical of Speight’s tenure. And through my many short
conversations with him over the years, he showed lots of signs that
he was, perhaps, not completely a warm and fuzzy guy. Whatever. I
do think he has done a great job, hired great people, and the house
is in good artistic shape for the future. It, like all opera
houses, has had its financial struggles. Some—like this
guy—lay those problems at his feet, due to what they feel are his
too-grandiose visions for a small company. Obviously, Wagnerians
don’t tend to be too critical of grandiosity.
2 The
time for a Ring actually can vary widely. The fastest recorded Ring
is about 1 ½ hours shorter then the longest recorded Ring. I
don’t have the timings of these with me on this trip, but if
anyone wants to know more about this, drop me a note and I will send
the information once I am home.
