Happy 200th birthday, Signor Verdi!

Today's the big day for Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest of the Italian operatic masters, who was born in the village of Le Roncole, in the duchy of Parma, on Oct. 10, 1813.

He took the line of Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti to its greatest heights, to be followed by Puccini. In his long and successful career, Verdi wrote (and usually directed) dozens of operas -- Nabucco, MacBeth (one of his favorite sources was Shakespeare), Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata (the last three, among his greatest works, premiered over just two years), Un Ballo en Maschera, my personal favorite Aida, then at the end of his career Otello and the comedy Falstaff. He also composed a masterful Requiem and other choral works. And those are just his greatest hits!

Verdi never gave up the tradition of "set pieces" -- aria, recitative, duet, quartet, chorus, etc. -- but he worked closely with his librettists to turn his operas into continuous, compelling music dramas.

He almost gave up writing music early in his career, after the deaths of his wife of only four years and their two infant children. But the inspiration never quit, and his first work after those devastating events was Nabucco, whose tale of an oppressed people struck a chord with his fellow Italians and across 19th century Europe.

Because of his many "political" subjects, Verdi always had trouble with the censors. In Un Ballo en Maschera, about the assassination of a Swedish king, he had to change the setting in its early performances to the American colonies of the 1600s, where the major characters took such names as Tom and Sam.

Verdi supported the cause of Italian reunification, and after that was achieved in 1861, he served briefly in the Italian Parliament, although he was never much interested in politics. Some of his fellow compatriots furthered their cause by using the popular Verdi's name in the cry "Viva Verdi" as an acronym for Vittorio Emanuel, Re D'Italia," referring to King Victor Emmanuel II.

Verdi lived to be 87 years old. He died Jan. 27, 1901, in Milan. His funeral was attended by some 200,000, who heard a large orchestra and chorus composed of musicians from throughout Italy, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, perform appropriate selections from his works, including the well-known chorus "Va Pensiero!" from his first big success, Nabucco.

A friend of mine once remarked about how classical composers often have what are, to us out here in the sticks, strange-sounding names: Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc. Nary a Smith or Jones among them. I pointed out that one of the great composers of 19th century opera was a fellow named Joe Green.

And Joe Green did as much as anyone to move the genre of opera away from just a string of songs to a unified and powerful drama. On his 200th birthday, hats off to the Italian Maestro -- Giuseppe Verdi!

The Steel Curtain Falls on NYCO

The sad news was announced last week that the New York City Opera is canceling its 2013-14 season and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Or, I guess I should say, what was left of one of this country's great opera companies.

The demise of any arts organization, especially one as feisty but esteemed as the NYCO, is a loss for all of us. And Lord knows we've had too many such losses over the last few years.

Long known as New York's antidote to the staid Metropolitan Opera, NYCO was always a champion of American works and young American artists. At the same time, it offered fresh takes on the old standards.

Perhaps the company's greatest legacy to the world of opera is the use of supertitles. When introduced with the strong endorsement of its general director, Beverly Sills, in 1983, supertitles -- projecting a translation above the stage of the text being sung -- were a controversial novelty. Now, there is almost no opera house in the world that doesn't use them in some form. And they can largely be credited with the resurgence in opera's popularity after their debut.

The many problems that plagued New York City Opera, leading to last week's announcement, were to a great extent the result of a string of bungled efforts by its top management to keep the company afloat.

In 2006, the NYCO board hired Gerard Mortier, who ran the Salzburg Festival and the Paris Opera, to be general manager and artistic director. Here was a guy who was very comfortable using Europe's generous government funding to mount radical modern operas or the kind of nonsensical versions of standard works that more sensible operagoers might call "Eurotrash."

And now he was in charge of a company that always had to run on a shoestring. As the financial crisis hit, the board pared its promise of $60 million to mount a 2009-10 season of all-20th century works down to $36 million. So he quit.

The NYCO then turned to a dark horse -- a fellow who had just taken his first job running an opera company a few weeks earlier -- to lead the company, with the economy in almost full collapse. The dark horse was George Steel, who was at the time general director of the Dallas Opera.

In his brief tenure in Dallas, Steel managed to piss off just about every constituency that could have made him a success -- the board, major donors, the artists and musicians, the staff -- so no one was actually sad to see him go, and so quickly!

By all accounts, Steel apparently took the same tack in New York. He put his well-honed arrogance to use alienating everyone involved in this storied institution. And, having no clue how to keep a struggling New York City Opera afloat in tough times, he began to dismantle it, ensuring the company's doom. It was the one thing George Steel was singularly capable of doing.

And so, tragically ...

"La commedia è finita!"

World-class music in Dallas

The 2013-14 arts season, at least for me, got off to a rousing start this past weekend with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's opening round of classical concerts.

Under the baton of maestro Jaap van Zweden, the concert opened with a Berlioz song cycle, Les nuits d'ete, or "Summer Nights," with mezzo-soprano Annalisa Stroppa. I was not familiar with this work but found it enjoyable, although I'm unlikely to rush to the iTunes Store to download it.

The second half of the program was devoted to the ever-popular Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony. Leave it to Jaap and the DSO to give this chestnut a performance like you've never heard before! The goal of any great conductor (which Jaap is) and great orchestra (which the DSO is) playing great music (which this is) is to show you nuances that you had never noticed before. Which they did. Whether it's the contrasts of dynamics, tempos and emotions throughout the work, the beautiful French horn solo at the beginning of the second movement (performed flawlessly by the DSO's new principal horn David Cooper), the lilting waltz of the third movement, or the brilliant climax of the finale, this group performs like a world-class ensemble.

And make no mistake about it, the DSO under Jaap van Zweden in just a few years has turned very nearly into a world-class orchestra, if they're not already there. I'm frankly amazed and dismayed to look around and see ANY empty seats in the Meyerson Symphony Center when they perform. They should be selling out every concert. And their marketing arm is certainly doing their best to try to reel 'em in.

Somehow it is not sinking in to Dallas' fairly extensive classical music audience that you can go hear some of the best performances you'll ever experience with a short trip to Dallas' Arts District. Maybe if you're fabulously wealthy and can jet off to New York or Vienna, but even then you aren't guaranteed the consistency of great playing that you'll hear by staying in town.

Let me assure you that I'm not compensated in any way for this shamelessly glowing endorsement. Jaap and the DSO are just that good.

See you there!

Return of the Titan

Back in May, I spent a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon listening via satellite radio to a live concert from Carnegie Hall featuring the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. This hot-shot "pit band" turns into a world-class symphony orchestra when its members go up onstage, as they do two or three times a year.

But this was a particularly momentous occasion, because for the first time in two years, the Met's esteemed music director, James Levine, took the podium to conduct the marvelous ensemble that he's polished and perfected during his 40-plus years at the Met.

Levine has been plagued with back problems that required extensive surgery and left him unable to conduct -- until now. He used a motorized wheelchair and a platform, built by the Met's incredible backstage crew, that raised him up to where he could see and be seen by the entire orchestra.

And to open this much-anticipated concert marking his triumphant return, Levine chose the Prelude to Wagner's Lohengrin, a captivating piece that was singularly appropriate for the weekend before the bicentenary of the composer's birth. I wrote earlier about this piece after the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under Jaap van Zweden, performed it in an all-Wagner concert the same weekend as the Met Orchestra's concert.

On hearing this performance, there should be no doubt that Levine's physical problems haven't cost him anything musically. Those who suggested he should resign as the Met's music director when he had to stop conducting should now feel free to hang their heads in shame. It was his back that went out -- not the musical genius that's kept on giving to appreciative audiences for over four decades.

Levine's friend Evgeny Kissin joined him for a brilliant performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, and the concert concluded with one of my favorite symphonies, Schubert's Ninth. The Met Orchestra under Levine was as you would expect -- sensational.

The Met's radio announcer, Margaret Juntwait, even helped by not falling into a trap that's bugged me for years about the Schubert symphony's nickname, the "Great." People who should know better -- classical radio announcers, even the web page for Carnegie Hall -- almost invariably refer to the Schubert Ninth as "the Great symphony," inferring the common English meaning of that word as "of high quality" rather than the original intent of the German "große," meaning "large." His publisher dubbed it "the Great C Major Symphony" to distinguish it from his Sixth Symphony, the "Little C Major." There's no doubt that it's "great" music, but "Great" was used for the distinction because of the Ninth's length (almost as long as Beethoven's Ninth) and the size of the orchestra required to play it. 

Next month, Maestro Levine will undergo the real test of his recovery when he returns to the pit at the Met to conduct a run of Mozart's Così fan tutte, followed by a new production of Verdi's Falstaff around the holidays, and Berg's Wozzeck along with Così again in the spring. Plus three more Carnegie Hall concerts with the Met Orchestra.

Welcome back, Jimmy!

Happy Fourth of July!

It's Independence Day! We can have a picnic lunch, shoot off some fireworks (if legal in your location), go to a baseball game, watch fireworks, listen to patriotic music!

If you're in Boston, you can go to the Esplanade along the Charles River and listen to the venerable Boston Pops Orchestra play such thoroughly American tunes as the "Stars and Stripes Forever," "America the Beautiful" and -- the 1812 Overture!

The what?

Yes, the 1812 Overture! Because nothing is more patriotically American than a song written by a patriotic Russian celebrating the military defeat of one of America's longest-standing allies that also includes a glorious tribute to one of the more despotic lines of European royalty!

Remember the American Revolutionary War? The one that cropped up right after we issued a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776? Oh, yeah, kind of the whole point was to prove that we could exist independently of despotic European (in this case British) kings. But we blithely accept the 1812 Overture's use of the Czarist Anthem in our celebrations of independence.

And yes, the French army over whose defeat the overture gloats with a rather sardonic quotation of "La Marseillaise" was led by Napoleon Bonaparte, a revolutionary despot with whom the U.S. had something of an on-again, off-again relationship.

But I've always been bemused by American orchestras' adoption of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as an American patriotic piece. Much of that phenomenon may have to do with Arthur Fiedler's inclusion of the work in the Pops' annual Fourth of July concerts on the Esplanade, complete with cannons, bells and fireworks. He did that to bolster sagging attendance -- and it worked! That event is widely seen as the premier Fourth of July celebration in the U.S.

Tchaikovsky himself didn't particularly like the overture. He wrote it because there was a very nice commission involved. He knew it was raucous and didn't have much artistic merit.

It's also an interesting side note that neither "La Marseillaise" nor the Czarist Anthem, the themes in the overture representing the opposing armies in France's ill-fated invasion of Russia, would have been heard by either side in 1812. Napoleon had banned "La Marseillaise," which came out of the French Revolution, and the Czarist Anthem wasn't written til a good 20 years later.

But today, enjoy the freedom to grill you some hot dogs, quaff some good American beer, whistle the Trio from "Stars and Stripes Forever" -- and leave Russia to the Russians.

A religious experience

Last month, on the weekend before Richard Wagner's 200th birthday, the Dallas Symphony gave a concert devoted entirely to the 19th-century German master's music. 

Music director Jaap van Zweden has turned the DSO into a truly top-shelf orchestra, and lucky for people like me, Wagner is right in his -- and their -- wheelhouse. This group thrilled sophisticated audiences in Europe this spring in concerts that included the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. 

And these musicians were no less thrilling that Friday night when they opened their all-Wagner concert at the Meyerson with three of his preludes, and concluded with a sensational concert performance of the first act of  his music-drama Die Walküre. 

The first half of the program -- the preludes to the first and third acts of Lohengrin, and the prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg -- showed the wide range of emotions and drama in Wagner's music, and the wide range of the DSO's capabilities.

The ethereal spirituality of the opening bars of the Lohengrin prelude immediately prove that Wagner is not all about blaring brass and screaming sopranos and "kill da wabbit!" The opening is scored for four solo violins and the rest of the violins divided into four parts, and they build the instantly mesmerizing theme from a breathtaking pianissimo.

This is where Wagner perfected an orchestral technique that he used several more times, most notably in the prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The music starts very softly and slowly builds, with the melodies moving from section to section. Just over two-thirds of the way through, the music reaches its peak, with brass now blaring and (almost) the entire orchestra accompanying. From there, the music begins to fade, until at the end, it falls back to its pianissimo beginnings with just the divided violins. 

I find it fascinating (and this is probably the key reason I keep coming back to this and other great music) that even though you may have heard a piece dozens, maybe hundreds of times, there's always something new to discover in it. When Jaap and the DSO got to that climax two-thirds of the way through the Lohengrin prelude, just as they hit that dramatic, blaring, fortissimo chord, I saw that the strings stopped playing! So what you get for a couple of bars is a straight wind band sound before the strings re-enter. Later, when I thought about what that little passage would have sounded like with full strings added in, I knew that Wagner of course was right. The brassy, forceful wind sound is perfect, but I had never noticed that little trick before. 

The prelude to Act III of Lohengrin is the opposite of the first act prelude. It is loud and raucous. Wagner intended for this music to represent the wedding feast after the marriage of Lohengrin and Elsa, and you can tell that there's plenty of swigging of steins of good German beer, along with dancing, carousing and what-have-you. It's great fun.

In the opera, this prelude goes straight into the most famous music Wagner ever wrote -- the Bridal Chorus, or what everybody calls "Here Comes the Bride." It includes a chorus of villagers accompanying the happy couple to their wedding chamber, and it's got some nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics to go along with it. Apparently, Wagner was either appalled or amused (history is not sure which) when he heard that it had been used as the processional in a church wedding -- possibly the one between Princess Victoria of Britain (daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia in 1857. The lyrics, the dramatic origins of the piece, and the fact that Elsa and Lohengrin's marriage doesn't last 20 minutes (a blink of an eye in a Wagner opera) are why many churches frown on or even ban its use as a wedding march. But they'll let you use it in Vegas.

The Act III prelude, as performed by the DSO, stops just before the Bridal Chorus begins, while we're still at the party. Why spoil the fun?

The Prelude to Meistersinger is the closest thing to a traditional opera overture that Wagner wrote in the latter part of his career. It contains all of the opera's major musical themes masterfully woven together. It's interesting to note that, unlike almost any other opera overture by any composer, Wagner wrote this before he composed the opera itself. Amazingly, the themes survive intact over the course of the opera.

The end of this prelude uses the same music that ends the opera, and the last voices you'd hear in the opera during this very recognizable music are the chorus', singing the praises of the popular and avuncular Meistersinger Hans Sachs: "Heil, Sachs! Nürnbergs taurem Sachs!" (Hail to Sachs! Nuremberg's beloved Sachs!) As I listened to that part of the Prelude, at the point where the chorus would make this affectionate gesture in the opera, it occurred to me that the Meyerson audience that night could have easily stood up and sung: "Heil! Jaap! Dallas' taurem Jaap!"

Almost a year ago, I wrote on this blog about one of my favorite scenes in all of opera, Act I of Die Walküre. By the time he wrote this in the mid-1800s, Wagner had pretty much perfected his technique of using the orchestra to help tell the story being played out on the stage. The orchestra leads the drama's steady buildup from beginning to end. And using leitmotifs as themes, he develops the music much as a symphony composer would. That, plus its use of only three singers and no chorus, is why this work is perfectly suited for a concert performance.

With Wagner's expanded orchestra squarely on display, we can really see and hear how all the parts work together. And to top it off, the DSO brought in three top-notch singers:

• Clifton Forbis as Siegmund, the misunderstood young man (he's actually the son of the god Wotan, although he doesn't know it), fleeing his enemies, who stumbles into a hut in a forest to escape a raging storm. Forbis has been around awhile, and has earned his reputation as an accomplished opera singer, including many Wagner roles. He did a remarkable job last year as Tristan with the Dallas Opera.
• Heidi Melton as Sieglinde, who's been forced into a loveless marriage and helps the stranger who's stumbled into her home. Melton is an up-and-coming dramatic soprano who has the chops to make it in the demanding world of Wagner opera. I saw her just two weeks before this, singing one of the three Norns in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Götterdämmerung, the last part of the Ring of the Nibelung.
• Eric Owens as Hunding, Sieglinde's brute of a hubby, who returns from battle only to find his enemy being sheltered by his wife. Owens is knockin' 'em dead around the world, not only in Wagner but in new works, as well. He turned in a masterful performance as the evil Alberich in that same Met production of the Ring.

I'm a little too unschooled in the fine points of vocal artistry to play the critic, but I can say that all three lived up to their reputations in this DSO performance.

The orchestra also was in top form, including all the "extra" instruments that Wagner employed to fill his musical palette, like the bass trumpet and of course the Wagner tubas, played by members of the DSO's French horn section along with some fine extra musicians.

At one point late in this hour-long piece, I got a chuckle from the reaction of this mostly symphony-going audience, many of whom apparently had not read the program notes and did not know the story. Aided by supertitles, it became obvious that the young couple onstage who were falling desperately in love, despite her unhappy marriage, were also realizing that they were long-lost twin brother and sister, which seemed only to fuel their ardor! At this realization, a murmur ran through the Meyerson crowd. So even after almost 150 years, Wagner continues to shock his audiences with his strange but captivating story.

It's hard to describe how all these great musicians made everything come together so spectacularly, except to say that the entire evening, at least for me, was nothing less than a religious experience!

'Das ende, das ende!'

I've heard that the most difficult scene to stage in all of opera is the end of Götterdämmerung, which concludes Wagner's monumental Ring of the Nibelung, because so many things have to happen in a very short span.

In 84 bars (about 3-1/2 minutes):

• Siegfried's funeral pyre is lit, and Brünnhilde jumps on her horse and rides into the fire, carrying the Ring and proclaiming her devotion to Siegfried. 
• The Gibichung Hall, where most of the shenanigans of Götterdämmerung have taken place, collapses into ruins. 
• The Rhine overflows, and the Rheinmaidens swim in to claim the Ring from the pyre. 
• Hagen, who was born and raised for the sole purpose of reclaiming the Ring for the Nibelung Alberich, plunges into the water screaming "Zurück vom Ring! ("Away from the Ring!")
• As one of the Rheinmaidens holds up the Ring in triumph, the other two grab Hagen and pull him under the water, drowning him. 
• In the distance, Valhalla can be seen burning, with all of the gods inside.

From that point, the orchestra takes control, reminding us in magnificent Wagnerian style of the heroism of Siegfried and the compassion of Brünnhilde, that the era of the gods has passed and that a new era has dawned.

I've heard that to pull off any production of the Ring successfully, the director has to work out that final scene of Götterdämmerung first. If you can do that, everything else in this four-opera, 18-hour spectacle can fall into place. 

I fear that Robert Lepage, director of the current Metropolitan Opera production of the Ring, didn't do that. In developing his concept, he seems to have been preoccupied with getting his Machine to work and meeting the stringent deadlines of getting that first performance of Rheingold onto the Met stage. In performance, it almost looks like the staging of the end of Götterdämmerung was an afterthought.

Here's what happens:

• Grane, Brünnhilde's steed, is represented by a mechanical horse, which works OK when it's accompanying Siegfried on a boat on the Rhine. But when Brünnhilde makes her ultimate sacrifice to save the world, she climbs up on this metal contraption and is pulled slowly toward the pyre -- hardly an epic gesture of selflessness.
• There's no representation that I noticed of the Gibichung Hall collapsing, which Wagner intended as a physical analogy for the end of the corrupt Gibichung line. Plenty of productions leave this out, as that point is kind of obvious, so I have no quibble with Lepage doing the same.
• The flooding of the Rhine is projected on the Machine, and the Rheinmaidens hold up the Ring. But then Hagen, who's been standing over to the side for all this, kind of stumbles into the slightly lowered area just in front of the Machine, clumsily grabs for the Rheinmaidens, and then they do an utterly unconvincing job of drowning him.
• The Machine's planks reposition themselves, and instead of Valhalla burning with all the gods inside, we see on top of the Machine various statues of the gods, which crumble. Kind of anticlimactic, especially when it's accompanied by some of the most climactic music ever written. At least the statues just crumbled. I understand that in the very first performances of this, the heads of the statues exploded, one by one, in a rather cartoonish ending for one of opera's great dramas.

In the final bars, we see the Machine bathed in blue making a wave motion. This is the first image we saw at the beginning of Das Rheingold, representing the primeval waters of the Rhine, and it's return at the very end of Götterdämmerung is quite effective. Too bad what leads up to it didn't really work. 

What's particularly disappointing in all this is that with all the things they can make the Machine do -- all the shapes it can take, the wonderful projections, the grand size of the thing -- they couldn't come up with anything that made the audience go "Wow! That was like the end of the world!"

A lot of controversy is generated by directors these days, especially in productions of Wagner, by moving around the time and place of the operas, "deconstructing" them, adding unnecessary elements, emphasizing some "message," using shock just so people will remember them, even in some cases changing the story, and all the other trappings of "regietheater." I've long contended that what directors should be doing is using the marvelous techniques and advanced technology that are available today, and that weren't there in the 19th century, to tell Wagner's story! Don't try to impose a different story on Wagner's music. Your "genius" in making such attempts pales in comparison to his theatrical genius. If you have your own story to tell, write your own damn opera. Don't burden Wagner's music with your pathetic ego trip, which your apologists defend as "artistic expression."

That said, it's obvious to me that Mr. Lepage set out to do exactly what I've suggested, and for that he deserves praise. He wanted to create a new and fantastical way to tell the story of the Ring, and let the audience take something new from Wagner's story. For the most part, I think Lepage's Machine succeeded. And certainly it's true that no production of the Ring is "perfect," because of its inherent size and complexity. But for whatever reasons -- time, money, having to worry more about the Machine than the production -- he wasn't able to get this Ring as close to perfect as we've come to expect from a house like the Met.

I'm really glad I got to see this production of the Ring so close to Wagner's bicentenary. Despite some problems with the Machine and the production, it was a thrill to hear it performed by such excellent singers and the superb Met orchestra. To all involved: "Heil!"

The boy from East Texas who never learned fear

My bicentenary pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to see Wagner's complete Ring of the Nibelung was a musical treat. While the production and Robert Lepage's noisy Machine may have fallen a little short, the cycle I attended was extremely good, musically.

The Met orchestra under Fabio Luisi seemed only a blip down from where it was a few years ago under James Levine, who I think is one of the great Wagner conductors of our time, especially when leading this, one of the great Wagner pit bands. Luisi took things a little faster than Levine in several places, which was refreshing, although I've always greatly admired Levine's interpretations of Wagner.

Of course, the Ring requires a huge cast to cover all the gods, giants, Nibelungs and all their offspring. Some noteworthy performances from the cycle I saw in late April and early May:

• Mark Delavan made his Met debut as Wotan this year. He sang powerfully and portrayed magnificently the head god's majesty as well as his very human weaknesses.
• Stephanie Blythe as his wife, Fricka, brings sympathy and emotion to her character, who is too often portrayed simply as a shrew.
• Gerhard Siegel played Mime with just the right balance of making you feel sorry for him and hating his evil intentions.
• Richard Croft as Loge was better than I expected. This is a role that doesn't require a huge Wagnerian voice, and I'm sure it's a fun role to play.
• Hans-Peter König was the only singer to appear in all four of the music dramas (none of the characters appears in all four). His often-sinister bass served him well as Fafner the Giant in Das Rheingold, Hunding in Die Walküre, Fafner the Dragon in Siegfried, and Hagen in Götterdämmerung.
• Simon O'Neill and Martina Serafin made an almost perfect Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walküre.
• The Scottish tenor Iain Paterson has the sound, the good looks and just the right amount of royal arrogance for the feudal lord Gunther in Götterdämmerung.
• Soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer was both sincere and gullible as Gunther's sister, Gutrune. I wonder when we'll get to hear her in a more substantial Wagnerian role, like Sieglinde?

I have become a big fan of Eric Owens as Alberich. This American bass-baritone is a superb singer and actor with a commanding stage presence. He really brings out the pure evil of the character. Alberich appears in three of the four parts of the Ring, and with each one his time onstage gets shorter. I heard that Owens once complained (in jest) that he's the title character of the whole shebang -- the Nibelung who forged the Ring -- and yet in Götterdämmerung he appears onstage for all of 10 minutes out of a 5-plus-hour performance!

And then there's Siegfried, the lad who never learns fear. Jay Hunter Morris hails from Paris, Texas, and he's essentially a big ol' redneck with a wonderful, thick, down-home East Texas drawl, who just happens to sing opera. But when you put him on the Met stage, you'd think he was born and raised in the heart of Bavaria. He doesn't have the really big heldentenor voice for which this role was intended, but he knows when to hold back and when to let go, so by the end of a five-hour performance of Siegfried, he's barely lost an ounce of stamina. And you can tell he's having a blast acting his part, which he does very well.

One thing I always listen for in any Götterdämmerung performance is the incredibly treacherous vocal leap that Siegfried has to take in the last act, when he's calling out to the hunting party. It's an octave leap to a high C, and I have heard many very good heldentenors miss it completely -- it is, after all, coming near the end of a very long and demanding role. Morris nailed it (as he did in the HD telecast in 2012), perhaps not as forcefully as you'd want, but he did nail it. And he does it by singing it exactly as Wagner wrote it -- with an eighth-rest right before the high C, which gives the singer just enough time to adjust his voice for that cruelly high note.

At the end of the night, when the cheers come raining down for Morris, he always acknowledges the orchestra, as many singers do, but he also always leans over and extends his hand into the prompter's box at the foot of the stage, shaking hands with another of the many professionals who support the singers and other musicians at the Met. Morris is nothing if not gracious.

The Met presented three Ring cycles this year, and as often happens, the headliners in the major roles sang in two of them, with other singers getting their chance on the stage of the Big House in one of the cycles. For Delavan, Morris and Owens, that meant skipping the third cycle. The marquee Brünnhilde (she's on all the posters and promotional literature) was Deborah Voigt, but she sat out the middle cycle, which is the one I attended.

I've always wanted to see and hear Voigt in a live performance. She was long heralded as the up-and-coming dramatic soprano who would eventually step into this most demanding of roles. I wonder if she just waited too long in her career to do it, or I've heard that her weight-loss surgery of a few years ago affected her voice. But hearing her on the radio and reports from those who've heard her in the house leave little doubt that she isn't really up to the part.

The Brünnhilde in this cycle was Katarina Dalayman, who was superb. Despite a little bit of a shriek in her highest notes, she did a remarkable and very enjoyable job, from her treacherous opening Valkyrie Battle Cry to the closing Immolation scene.

The third act of Siegfried is always tough because Siegfried has been onstage singing for several hours before he awakens Brünnhilde, who's coming in fresh. Dalayman's big sound was a little mismatched with the smaller-voiced Morris, but they pulled off their exhilarating duet convincingly.

And the chorus in Götterdämmerung? Well, it's the Met chorus, which is simply the best. And choral writing was one of Wagner's strong suits -- too bad he didn't do more of it.

NEXT: Das ende

'The Ring' in a railroad freight yard

In commemoration of Richard Wagner's 200th birthday, I recently attended a performance of The Ring of the Nibelung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

This is the Met's relatively new production, directed by Robert Lepage, that's sometimes referred to as "The Machine Ring" because the set for the entire four-opera marathon consists of a 45-ton series of 24 aluminum planks that rotate on an axis and can be manipulated into almost any needed shape -- from the waters of the Rhine River to a rocky mountaintop to a dense, lush forest to the inside of a feudal castle. Creative use of interactive projections on the planks and effective background lighting make the Machine an amazing piece of stagecraft worthy of the Met and this monumental work of art.

Theoretically.

The main problem, to my amateur senses, is that it's very noisy! Anytime it moves, there's clanking, creaking and banging. It might have actually worked better if Lepage had changed the setting from Wagner's mythological prehistoric time to a modern-day railroad freight yard! Weirder Ring productions than that have been attempted, unfortunately.

In 2009, I saw Seattle's "Green Ring," with its naturalistic and realistic sets. That production also was set in mythological time. At one of the post-performance Q&As with Seattle Opera's knowledgeable and entertaining general director, Speight Jenkins, an unsuspecting audience member thanked Mr. Jenkins for presenting what he called a "traditional" Ring. Speight was furious!

"This is NOT a traditional Ring," he insisted. A "traditional" Ring, Speight said, would be what he saw at the Met in the early '50s, with a forest represented by trees painted on a background rather than Seattle's forest of realistic-looking onstage trees. And more important, the singers in those days simply came out and stood while singing their part -- they made little effort to act. And one of the Seattle production's many strengths was how the singers brought out and developed the characters' personalities.

In New York, the Lepage Machine, while creating marvelous images for the visual sets, too often takes us back to those days of "traditional," static opera by restricting the singers in interacting with their colleagues. The giants in Rheingold, for example, are separated and elevated by the Machine's set from each other and the gods they're bickering with, which makes their abduction of the goddess Freia look contrived. Sometimes the Machine does get out of the way and let the singers act, but their space is always limited because the area in front of the Machine, which cannot move up- or downstage, is a fraction of the Met stage's generous proportions.

Another problem with the Machine is that it occasionally malfunctions. I consider myself quite lucky that it didn't break down during the cycle I saw in late April and early May.

Lepage's Rheingold was chosen to make its much-hyped debut on opening night of the Met's 2010-11 season. At the end of the opera, the gods are supposed to cross a rainbow bridge and enter their new home, Valhalla. The effect was quite spectacular when I saw it last month. But at the end of that first performance, the bridge was nowhere to be seen, and the gods just ambled off into the wings to some of Wagner's most stirring music. Oops.

More recently, I listened to this season's radio broadcast of Rheingold shortly before my trip to New York. When the head god Wotan and the demi-god of fire, Loge, head down to the caves of Niebelheim, where they intend to steal the Ring, stunt doubles walk down a brightly lit stairway in another very cool effect. But at that point in that Saturday matinee broadcast, there was a loud thud, some clanking, then voices talking frantically, and finally someone saying something about "the conductor," although the music never stopped. Very odd. A friend in New York who attended the performance reported that a malfunction kept the stairway bit from happening, a stagehand had to walk onstage (can't be good if that happens!) to push part of the set back in place, but then a section of it was hanging down in front of the Machine as the next scene was about to begin. When someone told bass-baritone Eric Owens to go ahead with his upcoming entrance, he protested that he couldn't see the conductor. Thus the voices heard on the radio broadcast. Amazingly, conductor Fabio Luisi and the Met orchestra didn't miss a beat, Owens and tenor Gerhard Siegel made their entrances, and somehow the set snafu was resolved. But it made for some tense moments in the house.

The quality of this production was varied -- sometimes the Machine and its accompanying effects were superb, as when it showed all the creepy critters crawling through the forest where Siegfried has grown up, or the "overhead" view of Brünnhilde lying asleep surrounded by fire at the close of Die Walküre.

At other times it fell short. In the very first scene, a little more convincing theft of the Rheingold would have been nice, rather than Alberich with a sack scampering up the Machine's planks to the top of the set while the Rheinmaidens just sit and watch. One sings "Haltet den räuber!" (which pretty well translates to "Stop! Thief!") but they make no effort to actually stop him as he walks right past them.

The end of Act II of Götterdämmerung is supposed to be one of opera's great "awkward moments." Brünnhilde, Hagen and Gunther have just sung their great trio (wait! a trio? in Wagner? yes, it's true, he broke his own "rules," and quite well, I might add) plotting Siegfried's death, each of them with a different reason for it. They are all quite serious at this moment, but who comes in at just the wrong time? Why, it's the happy Siegfried, Gutrune and the wedding party! It would have worked much better with an obvious glance or two between the characters that just hinted at "Oh, it's you. Plotting your death? Uh, no, we'd never do that!" In this production, the plotters just appear kind of grumpy as they take their places in the procession and the curtain falls. The final music of this scene is the sinister motif of the evil Hagen, played by the low strings and bassoons, but there's no acknowledgement of that onstage.

The interactive projections were quite ingenious at times. When the Rheinmaidens sing in the first scene of Rheingold -- they're supposed to be underwater -- bubbles are projected on the planks just behind them at exactly the moments and in exactly the places that they sing. And when one of the characters puts his hand in a projection of water, it realistically ripples out. All a very clever inclusion of technology that really sets the Machine apart.

An audience favorite is the eight Valkyries riding their flying horses during the "Ride of the Valkyries" music. Each sits astride one of the Machine's planks as it bobs up and down like a hobby horse, and as they "land" on the Valkyries' Rock, they slide down their plank one by one as if they were coming down a playground slide. Kind of hokey, but if any scene needs a little humor and hokeyness, it's this one.

Despite the Machine's shortcomings and a few production disappointments, this was actually a quite enjoyable Ring, and the main reason for that is that musically, it was superb (at least in the cycle.I attended).

Check back soon for a rundown of the performances. For rail yard workers, the Met's cast, orchestra and chorus did a masterful job of putting this train together.

Happy 200th birthday, Herr Wagner!

If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to your ultimate dinner party, who would it be?

It's a fun question whose answers can give a peek to a person's interests and beliefs. Historical figures, deceased family members, religious figures, current political, entertainment or business figures often make such lists.

My friends and family might be a little surprised at who most definitely would NOT be on my list: the 19th century German Romantic composer Richard Wagner. They know I have long been an ardent disciple of Wagner's music. He was undoubtedly the most influential composer of the late 19th century: For good or ill, he changed forever the way Western music was composed, played and even listened to. His operas/music dramas permanently changed how music is used in the theater and have always exerted a strong influence on music for film.

But away from the world of music, he was a thoroughly despicable little man. Today we'd call him sleazy. He'd be your dearest BFF, as long as you continued to "loan" him money, or a place to live, or your wife. Once that ended, you'd be among his legion of enemies, which included entire races of people who for whatever reason he thought were conspiring against him. He had no morals.

That dichotomy of unmatched musical genius and deeply flawed character are what have kept Wagner among the most controversial figures in history.

But today, we can set aside that controversy and celebrate the work of a man who has given many of us so many hours of musical pleasure and inspiration. On May 22, 1813, Richard Wilhelm Wagner was born into a dysfunctional theater family in Leipzig.

So I'll put on a recording of Act I of Die Walküre, or maybe the last scene of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg or the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde -- too many superb examples of his work to choose from! -- cut myself a piece of birthday cake, lift a glass of good German wine, turn toward Bayreuth and wish Herr Wagner a happy 200th birthday!

And be grateful that I won't have to put up with that asshole at my dinner party.

Getting ready ...

I have not posted on my blog for a month, and for that I apologize. During this time, I've been to New York to see a complete performance of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, attended a Dallas Symphony all-Wagner concert and listened to a live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra from Carnegie Hall, which opened with a Wagner prelude.

You get the idea. Lots of Wagner, and there's a reason for it. And on Wednesday, I'll start what will likely be a flurry of posts on all of the above events and more.

In the meantime, study up on singing "Zum Geburtstag viel Glück!"

Seeking position as proofreader for Dallas Opera

A friend of mine attended the Dallas Opera's recent "simulcast" at Cowboys Stadium of a Turandot performance. She reports that she had a great time and didn't have to give a penny to Jerry Jones!

My correspondent also brought me a souvenir of the evening: the single-sheet program that was given to all of the casual opera patrons at the football stadium. It's not the booklet that's handed out at the Winspear Opera House, but it has everything you need to know about the cast, the characters, the production team and the performance.

And on the back is a handy synopsis of the plot, with the title, Turandot, in big letters at the top, and right next to that the words "By Giuseppe Verdi"!

Oops.

Of course, all but the last couple of scenes of Turandot was composed by Giacomo Puccini some 23 years after Verdi's death.

Now, I've been in the media biz for many more years than I care to admit, and I certainly understand that mistakes happen. And while those of us who proffer the written word to the public make every effort not to make mistakes, a typo here and there will not bring the world to an end.

But I know from experience how embarrassing an error in "display type" is. And while I'm sure the good folks at the Dallas Opera are embarrassed, they run the worse risk of losing credibility among the audience they're so prominently going after: younger, more casual than your average opening-night-at-the-Winspear crowd, smart and aware but who may not know precisely the difference between Verdi and Puccini, and are likely to be confused by a program sheet that lists two different composers for what they're watching.

So I'm offering my services to the Dallas Opera as a proofreader for anything they want to put before the public. I may not find every error, but I'd scream louder than Antonello Palombi if I saw something attributing Turandot to anyone other than Signor Puccini!

My salary requirements? A couple of tickets to the opera.

What's in a name?

This week, the Dallas Opera opens one of its two spring productions, Puccini's Turandot, which runs April 5-21. 

For those not all that familiar with this magnificent work, one of the first questions is, "How do you pronounce it?" Well, it's either TOUR-an-doe or -dot or -dote, but the debate has gone on for years, with all sides claiming their way is how Puccini said it.

Perhaps the most convincing argument is a 1962 interview given by Rosa Raisa, the very first Turandot in 1926, who insisted that Puccini and Toscanini (who conducted that famous premiere) said -doe. Others insist Puccini would have pronounced the T because his opera was based on a play by Carlo Gozzi called Turandotte, pronounced -dot-eh. The most common pronunciation today is -dot, so you can't go wrong calling it that.

But no matter how you say it, Turandot is a great night of escapist fantasy with some fine drama and the music of Puccini at the top of his game. 

Puccini composed the first 2-1/2 acts before he died of throat cancer in 1924. A composer who had studied with Puccini, Franco Alfano, was chosen to complete it based on the maestro's sketches. It's still the most popular ending for the work, despite some dramatic and musical problems, although others have tried. 

In fact, the last time the Dallas Opera performed Turandot, 10 years ago, it was done with a new ending by Luciano Berio. That ending did a little better job of explaining how Turandot, the ice princess, had such a profound change of heart and fell in love with the unknown prince, Calaf. But for me, the very quiet duet between the two failed to explain this change of heart to her subjects, the people of Peking. They are a big part of the whole drama, from their initial bloodthirstiness over Turandot's suitors, through their observation of the riddle scene, to their background introduction to Calaf's "Nessun dorma," as they roam the streets of Peking searching for the Unknown Prince's name. Seems like they should have some part in the final disposition of the whole thing. Alfano's ending does that, but Turandot's change of heart just seems to happen during the last scene change. Oh well, it IS fantasy-drama, after all, and it's still fun to watch and hear.

Of course, one of the highlights of any Turandot performance is the tenor's aria at the beginning of the third act (and thus, the last aria that Puccini composed), "Nessun dorma," which gained unrivaled popularity outside the opera house a few years ago when it became the signature of the Three Tenors. The triumphant cry of "Vincero! Vincero! Vincero!" at the end is about as thrilling an experience as you'll ever have in the opera house.

That ending translates as "I will win!" It has occurred to me that if you just read the words to this aria by themselves, you could come away thinking that this fellow is an obnoxious Don Juan, minus the charm. But, as always in the best passages of opera, it's the music that lets you know that Calaf is crying out "Vincero!" only because he is so confident of reaching his goal -- to win the heart of Princess Turandot. After all, he's already answered the three riddles that she poses to all of her suitors, which his predecessors invariably stumbled on, leaving them with the consolation prize -- a visit to the executioner. And he's certain that she'll never find out the answer to the challenge he posed to her -- to guess his name.

Here's an English translation of "Nessun dorma":

No one must sleep! No one must sleep... You, too, o Princess, in your cold room look at the stars, that tremble with love and with hope! But my mystery is shut within me; no one will know my name!

No, I will say it on your mouth when the daylight shines! And my kiss will break the silence that makes you mine! ... Vanish, o night! Set, you stars! At dawn I will win! I will win! I will win!

Baseball in Europe?

On Easter Sunday, March 31, a little after 7 p.m. local time, at a former railroad station in downtown Houston, a great annual ritual will begin. 

Less than 20 people -- mostly professional athletes but also umpires, base coaches, batboys, ball girls, etc. -- will assemble on a large field, with several thousand baseball fans in surrounding seats and a few million more watching on television. 

At 7:05, the home plate umpire will signal for play to begin, and Bud Norris will throw the first pitch to Texas Rangers second-baseman Ian Kinsler. With that, the Houston Astros will officially enter the American League, and the 2013 major league baseball season will begin. 

I apologize that this long, flowery windup is only to set up a bad joke, but here goes. 

I am a lifelong baseball fan and an unabashed Wagnerian. Richard, not Honus, although I greatly admire the work of both these men, who more than excelled in their chosen fields. They're connected, by the way, because Richard wrote an opera based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which also was the nickname of the speedy, German-descended Honus.

If a professional baseball league is ever established in Europe, my dream is to buy the team in Nuremberg (or to the Germans, Nürnberg).

I would have a couple of good choices for a team name, the most obvious of which is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (or the Mastersingers of Nuremberg), after Wagner's great comic opera of the same name, which has as one of its main characters a fellow named Hans Sachs, the wise and avuncular cobbler. Although the uniform makers might have some trouble getting the entire team name on the jerseys, one would assume the players on a team with that name could sing "Deutschland Über Alles" before taking the field for each game, so I could save money on an organist. 

But my primary reason for buying the Nuremberg nine would be so I could call it:

The Nürnberg Hans Sox!

I warned you.

Ball spielen!

Now let's go to Eric down on the stage...

When athletes are interviewed after a game, how many times do you hear the same stock answers (usually to the same stock questions) about how we all worked so hard, and we just take this one game at a time, what a great team this is and what great fans we have, etc., etc.? Almost every time? And generally, they never say anything interesting or that you didn't already know.

Well, the same thing has become true in the "interviews" during the intermissions of the Metropolitan Opera's HD transmissions of Saturday matinee performances. They're all very happy and positive and effusive and excited. They all worked so hard, and they all just love every minute they're working together (that's when you start to wonder), and what a great cast and production team this is, etc., etc. And generally, they never say anything interesting or that you didn't already know.

Then there's the frequent problem of the jarring mood change, as in the recent Parsifal transmission. The first act of Wagner's final masterpiece is nearly two hours of gloomy, almost crushing depression (the fantastic music makes it bearable, even uplifting). But after the music ends and the emotionally exhausted audience watches the camera switch backstage, there's the broadcast's happy, effusive "host," baritone Eric Owens, with a big smile on his face as he stops the exhausted lead tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, for a bit of inane banter. This isn't Mr. Owens' fault -- he's just doing what he was hired to do.

And add to that the fact that, due to the international nature of casting almost any opera, but especially at the Met, many of those interviewed have accents that make them practically unintelligible. Perhaps the most interesting thing that happens in the interviews is when one of the singers commandeers the microphone and delivers a message to friends and family back home in their native tongue (as both Kaufmann and bass Rene Pape did during their Parsifal interviews). It's nice to see them speaking confidently, even if you don't know what they're saying, instead of having to watch their sometimes painful struggle to find the right words in English.

Surely the brains who came up with this incredible idea of broadcasting live opera into movie theaters can come up with a better way to fill the intermission time. Why not an expert (not too stuffy, of course) to talk about that day's opera? The radio broadcasts did that for years, but apparently that's too passe now, and they've switched to mostly interviews, too, although their questioners are a little more insightful than the singers who conduct the video "interviews."

I wouldn't mind seeing a broadcast version of the famous Opera Quiz, which has been a staple of the radio broadcasts for longer than most of us have been alive. Even just the backstage cameras showing the incredible Met stagehands changing the sets between acts, which the producers already show between the interviews, would be better.

Back to you, Mel.

Van Cliburn

I will leave it to the professional writers to appropriately memorialize the late Van Cliburn. Few American classical musicians have captured the public's attention as he did. Maybe Leonard Bernstein, whose career spanned 50 years, could come close to matching Mr. Cliburn, who was active for only a couple of decades. 

I was only 4 years old when Van Cliburn took the world by storm and set the Soviet propaganda machine on its ear with his victory in the first Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. But I remember what a stir that news caused, not just for my parents, who were very much in tune with such things, but among everyone else around me. 

And to top it off, this was no blustery, in-your-face caricature of a Texan, but a shy, gracious, unfailingly polite young Texas gentleman. A friend of mine who once met Mr. Cliburn at his Fort Worth home can vouch for that aspect of his personality.

But one of my cousins can attest to the influence he had, not only on international politics, but on a generation or more of aspiring young musicians, of whom she was one. Van Cliburn showed her that a kid from Texas could make it as a successful concert pianist. And even if the Cliburn-inspired dream of an 8-year-old Dallas girl would never quite come to fruition (I believe she got as far as a bachelor's degree in music), his greatest gift to us all remains -- the hope inspired by his music.

Christmas in February

'Tis the season, as they say.

February is when many orchestras and opera companies announce what they'll be performing in their upcoming season. So while classical music geeks like me can't usually travel to see and hear everything that's going on, we can take a vicarious interest in what we could go see in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston or wherever.

So if you won the Classical Geek Lottery, you could start making plans for:

• New York Philharmonic: Glenn Dicterow is retiring at the end of the 2013-14 season after 34 years as concertmaster of one of the world's top orchestras. He'll be featured as a soloist in several works, including Beethoven's Triple Concerto. He'll be joined in that work by pianist Yefim Bronfman, the Philharmonic's artist-in-residence who recently performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 with the Dallas Symphony.
• Carnegie Hall: The venue with some of the most amazingly diverse programming anywhere plans a three-week festival called "Vienna: City of Dreams," which will include orchestral and operatic masterpieces, chamber music and lieder by Viennese composers from Beethoven and Schubert to Berg and Schoenberg, plus seven concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic.
• Philadelphia Orchestra: In its second season under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphians will honor the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss in several concerts and have commissioned three solo works for three of the orchestra's principal players. They'll also open Carnegie Hall's season.
• Chicago Lyric Opera: A relatively conservative season includes new productions of Wagner's Parsifal, Verdi's La Traviata, Rossini's Barber of Seville and Dvorak's Rusalka.
• Chicago Symphony: In the fall, several concerts will celebrate Verdi's bicentenary, including the Requiem and a concert performance of Macbeth. Next year, they'll do all nine Schubert symphonies and in June, guest conductor Jaap van Zweden will lead Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.
• San Francisco Opera: They'll do a fall season of five operas, including the world premiere of Tobias Pickers' Dolores Claiborne (based on the Stephen King novel). They'll also honor birthday boy Verdi in October with a performance of his Requiem.
• Houston Grand Opera: A world premiere, Ricky Ian Gordon's A Coffin in Egypt, and a North American premiere, Mieczyslaw Weinberg's The Passenger, lead the well-regarded HGO's seven-production season, which also includes Das Rheingold, introducing a questionable production of Wagner's Ring that will span four seasons, much as the Dallas Opera did several years ago. And Houston doesn't forget the old standbys, with Aida, Carmen, Rigoletto and Die Fledermaus.
• Austin Lyric Opera: This small but scrappy outfit will have a three-production season that starts with a couple of heavies: Verdi's Don Carlo in November and Puccini's Tosca early next year. They'll lighten it up in May 2014 with Donizetti's Elixir of Love.

And closer to home:

• Dallas Symphony: A President John F. Kennedy Memorial Concert is planned for the weekend of Nov. 22, and we get a Beethoven festival in May with the Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and the Fifth Piano Concerto. I think it's interesting that a group that for years has scheduled instrumental soloists almost exclusively now has a season that will include vocal soloists in six sets of concerts. I know they're trying to be frugal, so are vocal soloists cheaper than instrumentalists? Or maybe it just reflects Maestro Van Zweden's clear affection for opera music.
• Dallas Opera: Back up to four operas from this season's three, the company is offering Tod Machover's Death and the Powers, starring a gaggle of robots as well as a handful of singers, and Wolfgang Erich Korngold's Die Tote Stadt with tenor Jay Hunter Morris, framed by Carmen and The Barber of Seville. Each production will have its own conductor, absent the company's soon-to-depart music director Graeme Jenkins.

And, like waiting to find out what movie won the Best Picture Oscar, they save the biggest one for last. The Metropolitan Opera announced its 26-production 2013-14 season today. And the biggest news from that actually came out last fall: that music director James Levine would return to the pit after a two-year absence caused by debilitating back problems. He'll conduct a new production of Verdi's Falstaff along with Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and Berg's Wozzeck.

What's notably absent from the Met's lineup is anything by Wagner. My source in New York tells me they had originally penciled in Parsifal and Tannhäuser, with Levine conducting, but they decided he wasn't up to it. Too bad. I guess you don't always get everything you want for Christmas.

Cafe Isolde NYC

This humble blog usually rocks along with a handful of hits every day, which is fine with me. Then occasionally there will be a spike. Last weekend, I got more than 100 hits on a single day, even though I've been lax lately in updating the blog.

If the statistical elements of Google's Blogger program are to be believed, almost all of those who came here via a search engine were looking for some form of "Cafe Isolde NYC."

So I tried that search myself, and sure enough, the first link is to an item I posted here in November called "Elementary, My Dear Isolde," in which I talked about the TV show Elementary. In the first two episodes last fall, there was a scene involving Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and another in which the show's main characters walked past a sidewalk cafe in New York that had a sign reading "Cafe Isolde."

So welcome to all of you who are looking for Cafe Isolde in New York City. As best I can tell from my own meager Internet searches, there is no such eatery in the Big Apple, although sometimes smaller restaurants fly under the radar.

If anyone knows about such a place, please let me know. But I'm not sure I'd drink anything they had to offer!

Turning their backs

I asked the DMN's Scott Cantrell if he knew why the Dallas Symphony Orchestra musicians turned their backs to the audience during the last ovation of Thursday night's concert. This was after a particularly well-executed performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

He did a little checking and posted an item on The News' Artsblog, which you can see here.

Why Mozart still rocks

The progress of musical expression since the late 18th century -- in "classical" as well as popular genres -- can leave folks in the 21st century thinking of the music of Mozart as, well, simple or even quaint.

But in concerts this weekend and next, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and maestro Jaap van Zweden are only too happy to show you otherwise. They've scheduled a mini-Mozart festival that samples a marvelous range of this Austrian genius's tremendous output.

I attended Thursday night's opening of this weekend's concerts, which are reprised on Friday and Saturday (Jan. 18 and 19). They open with the overture to the Abduction From the Seraglio and then are joined by the superb violinist Augustin Hadelich in the Turkish Violin Concerto. He responded to the tremendous ovation Thursday night with a skillful encore of a Paganini caprice.

The second half of the program is an interesting set of bookends: Mozart's first and last symphonies.

He wrote the Symphony No. 1 at the age of 8 in London, while on one of his many childhood "prodigy" tours of Europe. The story goes that his father became very ill when they were in London, and young Wolfgang was forbidden to practice so as not to disturb the ailing Leopold. So to pass the time, Wolfgang decided to write a symphony. Pretty much what any 8-year-old will do when he's bored! And while it's obviously not the work of a mature composer, it is surprisingly fresh and innovative.

Mozart's final symphony, No. 41 (Jupiter), is of course one of the early landmarks of the symphonic literature. And in the hands of van Zweden and the DSO, it is as thrilling as ever. Few orchestras in the world today are as good at bringing out the subtleties and nuances of great music like this.

Next weekend (Jan. 24-27), we get another all-Mozart program, with the Idomeneo Overture, the Piano Concerto No. 24 with soloist Yefim Bronfman, the Adagio and Fugue, and my personal favorite Mozart symphony, No. 40.

If you want to know why Mozart is still important, get over to the Meyerson this weekend and next.

Still a phenom at 70

I recently mentioned the Sinfini Music website, which has an interesting piece on one of the current-day legends in classical music: Daniel Barenboim. You can see it here.

The post went up in November in honor of Mr. Barenboim's 70th birthday.

I particularly like the snippet of a rehearsal of Schubert's Trout Quintet, with the incredible cast of Barenboim on piano, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman on violin, Zubin Mehta on bass, and Barenboim's late wife, the incomparable Jacqueline du Pré, on cello. All looking young and vibrant.

I've seen Barenboim in person once, back in 2007 at Carnegie Hall, where he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave overture, Schumann's 4th Symphony and a variety of concert pieces from Wagner. A pretty good lineup from one of the world's great orchestras led by one of the world's great conductors.

Of course, as an unabashed Wagnerian, I was especially interested in that part of the program. Barenboim is regarded as one of the best interpreters of Wagner's music, and the VPO a generation or more earlier had helped create what Gramophone magazine called "the greatest recording of all time" -- the first studio recording of The Ring of the Nibelung, conducted by Georg Solti.

And yes, that Sunday matinee concert at Carnegie Hall with Daniel Barenboim exceeded my high expectations.