BaL 10.05.14 - Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro on DVD

[Thropplenoggin]

I don't like Mozart. There are other board members who have the same opinion, as me.

Then why come on a thread specifically about Mozart to say this again?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don't like Mozart. There are other board members who have the same opinion, as me.

I had appreciated much of Mozart's music from an early age but didn't rate him amongst the greatest until the BBC did a simultaneous broadcast (BBC2 and Radio 3) of the Bohm/Unitel Marriage of Figaro. For me, no other opera film/video/DVD has ever been as good as this one.

[waldo]

I don't like Mozart.

I don't like reggae, either.

(I love it.)

[David-G]

I have not seen the DVD, but I have seen the production at Covent Garden several times, including with this cast. Miah Persson was indeed terrific! And it is a very fine production - though I find Act 4 a little disappointing.

Yes, I wondered about that too!

Anyway, for my money, the ROH version with Miah Persson is terrific. Other people are involved too...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Ticciati DVD/Blu-ray is the performance that was streamed to cinemas in 2012. I saw it at Fellini's in Ambleside and it was excellent.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And I notice the return of the term "old school".

In the HIPP world, "new" means really old and "old" means comparatively new.

[waldo]

In the HIPP world, "new" means really old and "old" means comparatively new.

Unfortunately, we live in a temporal universe. Things age. My use of the phrase "old school" wasn't meant to be derogatory. I was just trying to indicate, as briefly as possible, the fact that the Bohm performance belongs to an "older" school or style of performance. The performance is, despite its individual features, characteristic of the period in which it was recorded. It just is: that's a fact.

Personally, I don't usually like that kind of performance, but I was not condemning it. It is no more or less valid or valuable than any other style of performance. The stuff I happen to like will certainly fall out of fashion in a few years, too, and though I will cling on to my favourites and bang the drum for my own prejudices - have you heard Rene Jacobs, young man? - a new generation of listeners will probably think there is something wrong with my hearing. That's how fashion works, even in classical music.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You've hit the nail on the head - the word is "fashion".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You've hit the nail on the head - the word is "fashion".

It always has been. It's how the best works of the past maintain their grip on the human imagination over the centuries. It's perhaps most obvious in Music (where we have recordings of how different generations have reinvented the works in their own images - and reinvented themselves in the image of the works) and film (can anyone under the age of thirty watch the Olivier Hamlet without thinking how datedly hammy it looks?) - but its there in poetry, paintings, novels, sculpture etc, too. (The insights of Bradley, Empson or Leavis, for example, - the nearest we get in the literary world to the "interpreters" of Music and Drama - still have valid aspects of the works they discuss to reveal to readers today; but their lesser contemporaries remain stuck in the conventions and prejudices of their own times.)

The alternative is ossification, atrophy and irrelevance.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The alternative is ossification, atrophy and irrelevance.

Or could it be the freedom to think for oneself without pressure? Fashion is often (though not always) a form of bullying by those with vested interests.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Or could it be the freedom to think for oneself without pressure?

No. The "fashion" for performing Bach in the manners of Klemperer or Furtwangler did not prevent the "freedom to think for oneself without pressure" of Munchinger, Richter, Rilling, Leppard or Marriner. Nor did Munch, Rich, Lepp or Marr create a "fashion" that prevented Harnoncourt or Leonhardt from "thinking for themselves without pressure"; nor have the early HIPP discoveries prevented the later generations of Gardiner, Parrott, Krivine or van Immerseel from "thinking freely for themselves" - sometimes, indeed, "freely thinking for themselves" under considerable pressure (as with Koopman's refusal to perform Bach's cantatas OVPP - or, for that matter, as with Rilling's "free thinking" refusal to use period instruments. Or Gardiner's using far larger vocal forces than even the most generous interpretation of Bach's requirements would suggest. Or Rattle using the BPO to perform the St Matthew Passion.)

Fashion is often (though not always) a form of bullying by those with vested interests.

Can you give an example of this?

[aeolium]

I like the Glyndebourne/Haitink DVD for the production and also the quality of the orchestral playing and singing. I didn't particularly like the McVicar ROH production even though musically it was very good.

But I wonder how often people who buy opera DVDs watch them more than once, whereas with a memorable performance on CD I find myself returning to it from time to time - in the case of Figaro the Erich Kleiber/VPO recording is one I find irresistible.

[BBMmk2]

Then why come on a thread specifically about Mozart to say this again?

I can and I have! It's called an opinion, freedom of speech.

[verismissimo]

Can you give an example of this?

A fashion that must have been practically impossible to resist (without becoming virtually unemployable) would have been the dominance of Kreisler's continuously applied vibrato. This was a fashion that continued for some 50+ years and became for many the only right way to play and sing.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Can you give an example of this?

Roger Norrington's supercilious smirk, and reinventions of history re vibrato to promote the "superiority' of his own performances.
Roy Goodman's BaL for Beethoven's Violin Concerto.
Harnoncourt's put-down of other interpretations of Dvorak Symphonies not being "accurate" enough.
Brickbats hurled at conductors who see the word "Andante" and interpret this as meaning "at a walking pace" rather than crotchet = 80, which can sound like a quick jogging speed in certain music.
None of the above prevents conductors and listeners from thinking for themselves, but is casts doubts, and where there are doubts, the sheep will follow.

As for vested interests, there's a whole new industry out there producing "old" instruments in order to achieve "authenticity". Sometimes I wonder how moderately paid musicians can afford the extra instruments that fashion pressurises them to buy. However, I concede that most who play such instruments specialise in period performance, so perhaps that isn't as issue. A few years ago. when I was choosing a new treble recorder, I was given copious amounts of information about the authenticity of certain models (available in two pitches, pushing up the anxiety levels), but in the end, I chose a Mollenhauer Modern Rosewood A442 model which sounds great, but is very different in appearance from traditional models - an ABRSM examiner said, "What's that?" when he saw it.