The New York Times Essential Library: Opera: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Works and the Best Recordings - Softcover

Tommasini, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805074597 ISBN 13: 9780805074598

Publisher: Times Books, 2004

Synopsis

An insightful, provocative selection of the best opera performances, chosen by The New York Times's chief classical music critic in one hundred original essays

Opera intertwines the drama of the theater with the powerful emotionality of music. In this magical and illuminating guide to the best opera recordings, Anthony Tommasini delves into the ways story and music interweave to create the subtle but telling moments that move us.

Tommasini brings to life the rich history of opera performance and the singers and conductors who, over the past century, have come to own the music. He chooses masterworks, such as Arturo Toscanini's La Boheme, captured for posterity fifty years after he conducted the opera's 1896 premiere for Puccini, and Leontyne Price's Leonora in Il Trovatore, an encapsulation of the ideal Verdi soprano. For aficionados and newcomers alike, Tommasini is the perfect guide to the passions and playfulness of the opera.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony Tommasini is the chief classical music critic of The New York Times, author of an acclaimed biography of the composer Virgil Thomson, and a pianist. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

Opera lovers are notoriously argumentative, so anyone drawing up a list of the "most important" works in the medium should expect to generate plenty of debate. Tommasini, chief music critic for the New York Times, recognizes that some of the selections in this opinionated, and admittedly quirky, guidebook will prompt second-guessing, but he makes the case for each of them with passion and conviction. The result is a collection of original essays that should prove both illuminating to opera novices and thought provoking to long-time fans. As one would expect in a guidebook, Tommasini presents the pillars of the repertory—including stories about their composers, details of their plots and comments on their performance history—in a style that will appeal to informed readers without scaring off those whose knowledge of the music is limited. In addition, for readers who wish to explore further, Tommasini recommends CDs of each opera (although he may endorse the recordings of controversial soprano Maria Callas a bit too often for some tastes). Those familiar with Tommasini’s work in the Times will know that he is a strong advocate of neglected 20th century works and of music by important contemporary composers. So it’s no surprise that this book goes beyond the standards and includes a significant number of modern operas. Tommasini discusses no fewer than six works by Benjamin Britten and four by Sergey Prokofiev, as well as operas by such marginal figures as Ferruccio Busoni and Hugo Weisgall and very recent pieces by Poul Ruders, György Ligeti, Judith Weir and John Adams. Traditionalists may bristle, but Tommasini is determined to get his readers to take chances and treat opera as a living art. Some readers will no doubt wonder whether Aaron Copland’s relatively obscure The Tender Land, Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway hit Sweeney Todd or Prokofiev’s bit of Soviet agitprop Semyon Kotko belong in an opera Top 100. Others may scratch their heads over Tommasini’s decision to include Charles Gounod’s "Romeo and Juliet" but skip his ever-popular Faust. But then, such arguments are part of what makes being an opera fan so much fun in the first place.
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*Starred Review* There's no question that opera can be intimidating to the uninitiated. Yet opera is an incredibly beautiful spectacle, and now, in the age of supertitles, which allow the audience to "read" along with what the performers are singing, it has become an easy and comfortable art form for even first timers. For newbies needing listening guidance or even veteran operagoers who simply like to read about opera, Tommasini, the chief classical music reviewer for the New York Times and author of Virgil Thompson: Composer on the Aisle (1997), supplies a wonderfully helpful and engaging collection of little essays, each one approximately three pages in length, on his choices for the 100 most significant operas. His range is from old standbys in the repertoire, including Mozart's Don Giovanni and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, to such contemporary works as John Adams' Nixon in China. In each essay, Tommasini cogently discusses the composer and the history of the opera's composition, presents an overview of the plot, and highlights notable performances in the opera's history; he also cites what he considers the best recordings. Brad Hooper
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

New York Times Essential Library: Opera, The

1. JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947)

Nixon in China

Alice Goodman, librettist

First performance: Houston Grand Opera, October 22, 1987

Countless operas have originated with a librettist proposing an idea to a composer. But Nixon in China has got to be one of few operas that began as the idea of a director. In 1983 Peter Sellars approached the composer John Adams with the notion of creating an opera about President Nixon's breakthrough visit to China in February 1972. Adams, who was reared in a liberal Democratic household in New Hampshire and remains proud to have cast his first vote for the anti Vietnam War candidate Eugene McCarthy in the Democratic primary of 1968, the year of Nixon's election, was resistant at first. By the early 1980s, Adams felt, Richard Nixon had become easy fodder for humorists and a focal point for legitimate national outrage.

But, as Adams has written, after the poet Alice Goodman signed on to the project, proposing to write a libretto in rhymed couplets, the opera took on a wonderfully complex guise, "part epic, part satire, part a parody of political posturing, and part serious examination of historical, philosophical and even gender issues."

The opera examines an event that was an audacious exercise in the manipulation of public opinion as practiced by two masters: Nixon and Chairman Mao. That the meeting took place at all was the point, and the opera reflects this. Not much else happens. It begins with the ceremonial arrival in Beijing of Air Force One, a "coup de theatre," as Adams puts it, "worthy of Aida," with pulsing, brassy music at once exultant and garish, complete with a sly quote of the magic sword motif from Wagner's Ring. As the scene continues, Adams and Goodman reveal the subtext of the encounter in ways that only opera can.

Next we witness the formal meeting of Nixon, Mao, Chou, and Henry Kissinger (the one portrayal that slips into oafish caricature, though many would say that Kissinger deserved it). That the Chinese are investing this encounter with a genuine philosophical import that eludes the Americans is palpably suggested by the awkward interchanges of views expressed and the contrasting takes on the concept of revolution and contemporary history. Act 1 ends with a grand banquet scene, though relentlessly insistent rhythm patterns in the orchestra and overly forced choral exhortations convey the personal tensions and political posturing that are really at play.

For many, the most crucial scene in the opera comes in act 2 when Pat Nixon is given a tour of a commune and the Summer Palace. She is presented as the embodiment of the political wife, who has embraced family values and her husband's causes, having long ago learned to shield her insecurity and depression behind a stoic smile. Yet in a long, affecting aria she conveys genuine fragility and essential decency. You identify with her bafflement about the world. "This is prophetic!" she sings as she pauses before the Gate of Longevity and Good Will. "I foresee a time will come when luxury dissolves into the atmosphere like a perfume, and ev'rywhere the simple virtues root and branch and leaf and flower."

At the end of the opera the five principals are seen in the loneliness of their separate beds, each confronting personal regrets and reflecting on opportunities lost. "How much of what we did was good?" asks Chou En-lai.

When Nixon in China received its 1987 premiere at the Houston Grand Opera, some critics and opera buffs found Adams's score, with its long stretches of repetitive riffs, lacking in purely musical interest. This was an opera conceived by a director. It seemed to some that music took a backseat, like a score to a film.

But beneath the rippling minimalist surface of Adams's music there are rhythmic and contrapuntal intricacies to savor, as well as wry and ingenious evocations of everything from Richard Wagner to Glenn Miller. And the penetrating characterizations stay with you, especially as performed by the original cast members, who recorded the work in 1990 with Edo de Waart conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's. The baritone James Maddalena captures the jerky speech patternsand uptightness of Richard Nixon, while still managing to sing with robust vocalism. The baritone Sanford Sylvan as Chou En-lai, the bass-baritone Thomas Hammons as Henry Kissinger, tenor John Duykers as Mao, and the soprano Carolann Page as Pat Nixon are all excellent. You can tell how much they admire Adams's music and Goodman's words from the involvement they project and the clarity of their diction.

 

Nonesuch (three CDs) 79177

Edo de Waart (conductor), Orchestra of St. Luke's; Maddalena, Page, Sylvan, Hammons, Duykers

Copyright © 2004 by The New York Times Company

Edition details

• Publisher: Times Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805074597
• ISBN 13: 9780805074598
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336