Interesting reality check for singers

musicprnt
Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:07:09 +0000

I usually agree with mezzo, but on this one I am with K8, I have to think anything like this a good thing. Yeah, it is likely that whoever Ms. Franklin chooses may not be at the tippy top level of performance, may not be someone who is chosen to sing at the Met or Covent Garden, but at least it is exposing people in some way to a form most people would rather get root canal without novocaine then go to. Maybe just maybe having Aretha Franklin saying “hey, folks, I find opera cool” might get new people checking it out, it sure can’t hurt.

The whole “classical” world gets so caught up in purity and propriety, they kneel at the altar of “musical perfection” IMO that they forget that there is a little thing known as building an audience and catering to an audience. A couple of years ago Anna Nebtrenko did a music video that had the typical dazzle of pop videos but she was singing legitimate Arias, and it became a major smash, it was getting more airplay and hits on the net then almost any other video out there. It happened because she is a good looking young woman and in many parts was in a bikini, but so what? It actually got people listening to the music.

I see this in instrumental music, where the cult of musical perfection has reached new heights, and I also see the downside of this, many of the best technical musicians I see have the stage presence and charisma of a rock in many cases, but the teachers and judges love them because they play “perfectly”. Well, great, but most audience members don’t care if intonation is off, they go there to enjoy the performance and performers. Stowkowski used to be greatly criticized for his theatrics (brilliantly portrayed by Bugs Bunny in “Giovanni Jones”), but he turned the Philadelphia Orchestra into a force and Fantasia introduced Classical music to a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to it yet the purists sneered.

Walter Damrosch knew this, in a book on conductors (c1941) it talked about how he used to tour with I believe the Philharmonic society (later to become part of the NY Phil) and would go all over the country, where he would mix Beethoven with “the Camptown races” and other popular songs, and according to the book, after these tours orchestras sprang up all over the country…

To be honest, if the idea is to introduce “Joe Everyman” to Opera then Ms. Franklin doing it is probably the better way, if she used the ‘professional judges’, the ones who adjudicate competitions and such, we would get the highly talented and trained singers I am sure, but I suspect they also wouldn’t appeal to Joe Everyman very much either, it would just reinforce the idea of Opera as this stodgy, stuffy art form that you need a million bucks in the bank and be on a corporate board to enjoy.