The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho once swore she'd never write an opera. Now she's written two. Her latest, Adriana Mater, was premiered in Paris last year, but isn't available yet on DVD. But her first is, and it's an amazing experience.
L'Amour de Loin (Distant Love) tells the story of the Medieval troubadour Jaufre Rudel and his love for Clemence, a French countess living in Tripoli. After a life of dissipation in Bordeaux he decides to dedicate himself to a perfect woman. He's heard of Clemence but never met her. He's taken by sea to meet her by a Pilgrim, the last of the opera's three characters, and dies in Clemence's arms moments after they meet.
The musical style is exotic and richly-textured, apparently keyless but far from jarring to the ears. Initially there's a huge curtain of sound, but then it develops into a wide variety of effects. The lasting impression is of mystery, but the anguish and cosmic discontent of both Rudel and Clemence are also rendered. Critics have seen the influence of Debussy and Messiaen, but it's really a complex and individual sound that's far from alienating, as modernism so often was.
What you see is the original 2000 production by Peter Sellars, but performed in Helsinki in 2004.The set consists of two metal corkscrew staircases separated by a stage covered with water. A glass boat illuminated from inside transports Rudel and the Pilgrim from one staircase across to the other.
Dawn Upshaw, who the piece was in part written for, sings Clemence, Gerald Finley sings Rudel, and Monica Groop the Pilgrim. The language is French, with subtitles in French, German, English and Spanish.
I was totally unprepared for was the power of this shimmering instrumental music, combined with strong vocal lines delivered by exceptionally committed performers. Strong, too, is the role of the chorus, sometimes Rudel's friends, sometimes citizens of Tripoli. Ancient troubadour motifs are woven into the musical texture.
The Finnish National Opera Orchestra is conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, a sufficient recommendation in itself, and he comments in a Bonus interview that the work reveals added richness on later hearings (but then what music doesn't)? The other interviews, each of about three minutes, are with Saaraiho and Sellars.
The real concerns of L'Amour de Loin are love and death, opera's most enduring topics. Saaraiho has struggled all her life against tradition, but here a subject that can know no end has finally caught up with her.
There are many version's of Mozart's Don Giovann available on DVD and Jingo has just released another in Taiwan. While not being the best available, it's full of fun and musical pleasure. Recorded at the Theater an der Wien in 1999 with Riccardo Muti and the Vienna State Opera, it's a traditional staging set in the early 18th century and dominated my the singers' elaborate costumes and, in particular, their ostentatious and frequently gigantic hats.
Muti conducts with a careful traditionalism, but also power. Carlos Alvarez sings Giovanni, Ildebrando d' Arcangelo is Leporello, and Angelika Kirschlager makes an unusually forceful Zerlina. It's altogether sumptuous to look at and sung with distinction. It is comparable to the 1991 Cologne version with Thomas Allen, conducted by James Conlon, though slightly less dramatic. Both productions are marked by an old European sense that great masterpieces can't be improved on by eccentric interpretation, and that what you need to do is employ the best talent available in every department, and the work will then display itself in all its complexity and richness.
Bach's six suites for solo cello were effectively re-discovered in the 20th century when Pablo Cassals found an old edition in a second-hand shop. He recorded them in the 1930s, and since then every famous cellist has done the same. Deutsche Grammophon has now issued on DVD the versions made by Mischa Maisky in 1986.
They're played in two rooms of a magnificent Palladian mansion, the Villa Caldogno. But these visuals do nothing for the music, which is often private and meditative, even domestic. Critics used to enjoy saying they could imagine Bach dancing with his children to some movements round his kitchen. It would be interesting to see a DVD version based on that perception.
Maisky has sometimes been called a romantic cellist, in contrast to the historically "authentic" interpreters who use period instruments, keep very strictly to the rhythm, and don't vary the tone significantly. But no great artist is going to allow himself to be stopped from expressing the emotion he sees in the music by theories of how it may have sounded 300 years ago. The notes to these DVDs quote CPE Bach (JS Bach's son) saying that performers could add to the written music so long as it was "at least as good, if not better, than the original," suggesting peformance practice wasn't as rigid as modern purists would like us to believe.
Maisky himself refers to the old Casals recording, which was very far from being "authentic" in style. Maisky says he used to think it was "crazy", but that over the years he has come to realize how profoundly it influenced him. These Casals versions are still available on CD in the EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century series.
- BRADLEY WINTERTON
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located