Mild Artistic Gripe

Hey, listen to this...

WQXR-FM in New York has evidently added to their enormous collection a CD where Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff is heard playing his own work on the piano. In and of itself, it's quite a find. But something about the sound quality of what was heard in Jaguars and BMWs up and down New York City at 9:15AM this morning eats at me, as it should most purists.

I found out after the piece was aired that the CD of Rachmaninoff playing his own work is actually a Zenph Sound "Re-Performance". It is marketed and sold to make you think you're actually sitting in on the other side of the glass in the studio marveling while Rachmaninoff's supposedly extra-long fingers negotiate the keyboard. It sounds incredible on the face of it. But...

Apparently what the Zenph company, based in North Carolina, does is this: An archival recording (Rachmaninoff, in this case) is scanned into a computer and analyzed by a highly sophisticated computer program, It looks for how the notes are specifically played, how the measures and notes are struck on the keyboard, and the findings are saved. The computer is then connected to a Synclavier (Streisand owns one, and you find them at piano stores and such), and the Synclavier begins to play the recording exactly as Sergei Rachmaninoff played them in the early part of the twentieth century.

I realize I am incurring the wrath of many an audiophile by saying this, but this sounds vaguely like what Ted Turner used to do with black-and-white movies in the late Eighties. For those of you not old enough to remember, Turner's company would get hold of the rights to The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and many others and colorize them--artificially adding color. And they were the most peculiar colors--I doubt Bogart's suits and hats were ever royal blue. My stance on colorization is the same as "Re-Performances." If it's not actionable fraud, it's damn close. And most assuredly, it is artistic fraud. If Sergei Rachmaninoff, Glenn Gould and Art Tatum were to peek down from heaven and see what the Zenph Corporation was doing to their recordings to please finicky audiophiles with expensive sound systems, they'd never stop throwing up.

So my suggestion to the good folks at Zenph is this: Go to Borders. If you look closely enough, you know what you'll see at Borders? LP's. Vinyl. Not very many, but they're there all right. God alone knows the Zenph people have enough LP's in what must be a prodigious collection. I think they should just start issuing LP's and take sledgehammers to their ridiculous computers and Synclaviers. Besides which, I hear LP's sound better.

Odds and Ends

-- Tomorrow, Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 9:00AM EST, quite possibly the most ironic sports talk radio broadcast in the history of the medium is scheduled to take place. A gang from WFTL-AM 640 in Fort Lauderdale will broadcast from a golf club in nearby Boca Raton...called Broken Sound. The broadcast will take on a more precise irony in the event someone trips over one the many cords, cables and wires needed mount such a broadcast.

--Last night, I ate a burger while watching the Ladies' Olympic Snowboarding competition on NBC. It must have been terribly important, because snowboarding does not often attract an NBC broadcast crew or, apparently, the Goodyear Blimp. I couldn't help but notice that one of the American competitors was listening to an iPod under her crash helmet while snowboarding. I should think you'd want to be fully engaged at the Olympics, not listening to God knows what, possibly recorded using a lug wrench and the flag of Ireland, among other things.

--Staying with the Olympics, aren't you just really fond of these prima donna athletes who complain when they don't win the gold medal? I'm thinking of the Russian skater who was whining that the American who won the gold was "not a true champion." At the time, if the silver medal was not dangling around the Russian's neck, it may well have been close at hand. Doesn't that remind of the Swedish wrestler in Beijing who threw his bronze medal on the ground and would eventually be stripped up of it? "I want gold!" he is believed to have said. He'll just get old, faster than others, perhaps. (One other thing: I'd like to think that Al Michaels was only slipping with the tongue when he went on a radio show yesterday and referred to "the Soviet skater.")

--A friend of mine is out for a weekend in Las Vegas. She is a Republican. At this hour, President Obama, a Democrat, is addressing a town hall in Henderson, NV. At the time I came in here, the President was on the dais addressing the specially selected few. As I write right now, Mr. Obama's jacket is off, his cuffs are rolled up, as per his handlers' instructions, I'm sure, and he is pacing the stage with a hand mike. If I were my friend, I'd tell him, "Slow down, Barack. The election isn't for at least two years. You can take a break from the campaign."

--Don't hold your breath for this one, folks: The film that features Diane Keaton going into a fast-food joint and pulling a loaded gun or taking a crowbar to a Lamborghini will make James Cameron's box-office records seem quite tenuous.

--Tiger Woods said he has moved away from Buddhism. To what, I wonder, besides apparent Hedonism?

An Extra Thought regarding the Winter Activities...

Taking a cue from George Carlin, I wonder how many of these Winter Olympic Games can feasibly be called Games. The longer I think about it, the less I define Figure Skating, Cross-Country Skiing or Snowboarding as games. Activities, yes. Games, not really. Bobsledding, luging and such don't seem like real games, either. Bobsledding, luging and such are modes of transportation, like yachting or canoeing, both of which are Summer Olympic events.

You watch, folks. By the time the London Games get here in 2012, surfing, free diving and possibly even bong smoking will be on the roster of events. All this being said, no doubt Messrs. Costas and Michaels will be nonplussed to know they've been anchoring the XXI Olympic Winter Activities.

A Day At the Opera At The Movies

Faithful readers will recall that about ten days ago now I went to see Renee Fleming at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa. Such is the life a jet-setting opera star that within three days Fleming was giving much the same recital (I think) in Jackson, Mississippi, where her feet had never trod. Now, within ten days of my seeing her from the nosebleed seats of a concert hall in Tampa, there was Renee Fleming, on a movie screen about two miles from my house. She was in the orchestra pit of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, introducing Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. I know this because I was in that movie theatre.

You see, Simon Boccanegra was being broadcast to movie theatres throughout the world today. Comparatively few people in this world, I suspect, can say that today they drove two miles to a shopping mall, walked into a movie theatre located within that mall, and saw an opera taking place live from America’s most celebrated opera venue. I wish for all of you the joy I felt as I walked into the auditorium and joined about a hundred other people. Most other days, the theatre is as nondescript as most like it, sitting in a mall, waiting for shoppers to kill time. Today, the mall and the world outside of it seemed to melt away for three hours and forty-three minutes. When I saw Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West in 2006, I recall thinking that going to an opera must be like getting a day pass into heaven. How right I am.

The mechanics of the broadcast itself are kind of fun to watch, I must say. Between acts, there are Steadicam shots backstage as the Met’s unsung heroes, their techs and stagehands, take down and build sets. Short of watching an alchemist at work, that is as close to magic as you can get in a live stage show. Also there are interviews with the principals and conductor (today including the legendary Placido Domingo and the great conductor James Levine). There are cameras in the orchestra pit as well. Today there was at least one revealing shot. Between scenes of Act I, Maestro Levine could be seen with his left arm casually draped over the back of his stool, waiting for the cue to resume the performance. As if Maestro Levine hadn’t done this some 2,500 times already.

The opera? Oh. I forgot there was one. Well, let me say that Simon Boccanegra contains some of the most heartrending scenes of familial love, I’m sure, in all of opera. It’s a well-wrought tale of reconciliation and forgiveness amid palace intrigue. I found myself marveling at Placido Domingo’s stage presence. He dominates an opera without chewing the scenery. Going in, I found out that the title role that Domingo was singing had originally been written for a baritone. Domingo, a tenor, makes the role all his own.

It is one thing to hear an opera, to let the rich and magnanimous voices soak into your skin like the warmest water, as I have now for the better part of my adulthood listening to the fabled Saturday Afternoon Met Opera radio broadcasts. It is quite another thing to see an opera with an audience. For the third time in my life, and the second time in ten days, the fact that I am probably the only person under the age of forty in the Tampa Bay area who actively listens to and appreciates opera was pushed to the side. I would like to think I was a part of a communal experience. But as they all do, the communal experience ended, and the audiences all over the world discharged into the February chill. The skies were just as ponderous over Tampa as they were in Manhattan. But Opera, as it does when it’s at its best, had cast away the clouds and let everyone soak in its sun.

NOTE: Margaret Juntwait, who normally presents the Met Opera radio broadcasts, is on my list of Facebook friends. In the event she reads this, I am sorry I did not get to hear her today. But I know now, or am re-learning at least, what Margaret has known for a long time now. The opera house is a magical place.

Olympic Roundup (Winter Games Edition)

Here are some japes and pokes at the Winter Olympics, to which I am looking forward to far more than the Super Duper Ultra Mega Hyper Toilet Bowl:

n Isn’t it funny how most of the sports on display at the Winter Olympics are barely discussed in the three years leading up to them? No one hears about speed skating, ski jumping, or even the biathlon except during those sixteen days when nobody shuts up about them. Isn’t that strange?

n One of the competitors that NBC will all but have paid to have won a gold medal is a man called Apolo Anton Ohno, who competes in something called short track speed skating. I like this guy’s last name. Ohno sounds like something I’d be screaming while hurtling into the retaining wall at forty miles an hour, hoping all the while that it’s padded,

n You know how most of the speed skaters, alpine skiers and such will wear skintight snow suits while competing? I just thought of another use for them. If the athletes keep their suits, they could take them down to the Seychelles or something in the summer and go scuba diving in them. Although I do hear they have a tendency to bunch…

n I understand Al Michaels will be anchoring much of NBC’s coverage, and so I will be more than slightly interested in how much editorial freedom he will have. I would just hate to think of Al Michaels (who, like Brian Boitano, seems like a man who doesn’t take shit from anybody—ask anybody who’s seen South Park) toeing NBC’s apparent company line of all but openly rooting for American competitors. Keep in mind, of course, that thirty years ago this month, it was Michaels at the epicenter of an outbreak of patriotism when the U.S. Hockey Team beat the Soviets at Lake Placid.

n Can you believe it’s been twenty-six years since Scott Hamilton’s backflip at the Sarajevo games? God, that was amazing. Every time Scott would execute that maneuver at exhibitions, my mother would sigh with contentment and I would invariably have flashbacks. My mother had a crush on Greg Louganis, too, but that’s another story for another, warmer day.

n Such is the transitory nature of the Olympic Games that I dare you to find me ten people who know off the top of their heads, for example, the skaters in the Ladies’ Skating Competition in Calgary in 1988. I can name three: Katarina Witt of East Germany, the gold medalist; Elizabeth Manley of Canada, the silver medalist; and Debi Thomas of the States, the bronze medalist. No fair looking at Wikipedia.

n The bad news is that it does not appear as though Jamaica is sending bobsledders. But they are sending a freestyle skier. Some you win, some you lose.

n That reminds me of an anecdote. In 1992, when CBS broadcast the Albertville Games, they sent Sean McDonough (son of the great Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough) and Lesley Visser (also a onetime Globe columnist) to cover the luge competition. Evidently, between them McDonough and Visser coined this phrase: “You snooze, you luge.” I’d sure like to see a guy luging while sleeping.

n Curling evidently is very popular in Canada. During the Torino Games in 2006, one night I found myself in a hotel bar watching women’s curling—Denmark vs. Canada. There were two women on the bar along with me watching the careworn, bespectacled faces of the Canadian curlers. One of these women at the bar said, “This is what happens when the PTO goes to the Olympics.” The other lady asked no one in particular, “Are they discussing strategy, or next year’s bus schedule?” I wanted to tell them that music was once a medal event at the Olympics. I wanted to, anyway.

n Because the Super Duper Ultra Mega, etc. and the Winter Olympics are closer together than ever before, and to wrap up this little bonbon, I wonder: How much more queso dip is ingested per household during the Super Duper, etc. than on any one day of the Winter Olympics? That would be a really interesting point of discussion for anyone watching that sort of trend. For that matter, how many more orgasms take place during Super, etc. than on any one day of the Winter Olympics? After all, the Earth doesn’t stop spinning on its axis because of the little men running around in your teevee set.

Prayer for a Singer

Angels of light and sound,
Gather around.

Send my voice into triumphant song
And bring my audience along.

Let my carols reach into the sky
Where the bluebirds fly.

Might my smile twinkle
Like the brightest star
Seen from afar.

The music I make
And the songs I sing
Are such exalted things.

Dear angels...

Protect my voice and my heart.
Bring me the fruits of my art.

This poem is the song I sing
When you bring
Your grace to me.

And so it is.

Evening with a Star

January 26, 2010 was like just about every other day in Tampa, Florida. People went to work, paid bills, drove children to school. It was cooler than most days in this city—in January, that is to be expected. The sun rose, the sun set, as it did the day before, and would the day after. This night, however, was different.

After sunset, about a thousand of Tampa’s most distinguished, well-to-do, patrician people converged on Carol Morsani Hall at what is now known as The Straz Center for the Performing Arts. I was one of those thousand people. At 7:35PM EST or thereabouts, Anton Coppola, Francis’s uncle, took the podium and started conducting the Opera Tampa Orchestra in an intermezzo.

Some six minutes later, a disembodied, English-sounding voice introduced the “incomparable” American soprano Renee Fleming.

To my eyes, from a seat in the next-to-last row of the upper deck of the Hall, it may have seemed like Fleming resembled her own action figure. But once her voice was raised in euphoric song, both Fleming and the emotions that ensued within me were larger than life.

It seems to me that Renee Fleming is a star. Not in the celebrity sense, but in the actual, celestial sense. Rationally speaking, this effect was the combination of her lavender strapless gown, a spangling necklace, and the spotlight that I was sitting just under. But there’s more than that, as you may expect. I have meditated long and hard as to how I should describe or even encapsulate Renee Fleming’s talent. Only two words come close; celestial is one. Sublime is the other.

For us, Fleming performed Desdemona’s aria from Verdi’s Otello. This was at the end of the first act. So high and far did Fleming’s soprano voice soar that twelve minutes later, in the lobby, during the intermission, my knees were about ready to buckle. Later, as an encore, Fleming sang Puccini’s legendary O mio babbino caro, the first time I have ever seen or heard it performed live. It was one of several occasions where I had to catch my breath at the end of the piece. I’m listening to another recording of Fleming singing this piece right now; I’m still holding my breath in.

I think what I’m driving at is this: you’ve heard the line, I’m sure: “For those who do believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation is possible.” I would brim with delight in the hours leading up to, and leading out of Renee Fleming’s recital that night. I am stunned even now at the beauty of her voice, her regal carriage, and her celestial appearance. It was like lying on your back while the brightest star in the sky twinkles at you on a clear night. But I would tell people in my office how awesome this was and be met with blank stares. It’s their loss—they can never know what it was like to be in that room on that night.

My only regret is this: After the recital, I tarried for about ten, perhaps fifteen minutes, in hopes of getting Fleming’s autograph. Climbing down the stairs, however, I noticed a reception for her was being set up in a room off the balcony. Only members of the Opera Tampa league were invited to participate. My shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and as I reluctantly left Carol Morsani Hall, I thought to myself, “I guess you don’t have to live like a star in order to shake the hand of one, but it helps.”

Author’s Note: Anton Coppola, who conducted the orchestra, also conducted the first opera I had ever attended live, Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West, on March 31, 2006, in the same venue. Last night, in addition the above pieces, he conducted the Intermezzo from Cavalieri Rusticana, one of the most divine pieces of classical music, never mind opera, ever written. I wish I had Maestro Coppola’s energy and talent when I’m 92 years old. Incidentially—this all took place on a Tuesday. It could be argued, most persuasively, that in order to see a real idol, I didn’t have to turn on Fox.