Do You Remember the Ring?

La Machine, at rest: It slices, it dices.
Now how much would you pay?

I walked out of Robert Lepage’s Götterdämmerung, the final installment in the high-tech Ring cycle he produced for the Met over the past two seasons, in a fuming rage. The Met’s general director, Peter Gelb, was lucky that New York City Opera’s woes have captured so much of our attention lately, I avowed, because otherwise he might be run out of town on a rail for permitting such an outrageous boondoggle. Lepage’s stagings are dominated by “the Machine,” a gigantic contraption that creates multiple, varied settings for the cycle’s 20 hours and many scenes; the Machine also serves as a video screen, onto which digitized images are projected.

Or so said the Met. Encountering the Machine live this week for the first time, I found it to be — in no particular order — ugly, noisy, and dull. It cost a fortune, but its very size prevents the Met from programming many other operas at the same time, because there’s simply no room for the other scenery. The Machine is also notoriously unreliable, the butt of many Spider-Man-style jokes in New York, though Tuesday night’s performance went off without any noticeable hitches.

The Met is one of the few companies in the world that can afford to stage the Wagner operas, and it does so, generally, with top-notch casts comprised of the best available singers in this repertory. Replacing Otto Schenk’s storybook production may not have been the most urgent item on a new general director’s agenda, but surely if the Met — the Metropolitan Opera, for mercy’s sake — is going to produce a new Ring, ought it not be about something?

You’re encouraged to pass the time by recalling Anna Russell’s Ring analysis. Here, we get some “veddy competitive singing” on a rock “surrounded mit Feuer und Schmoke … und Schtink.”
With Deborah Voigt and Jay Hunter-Morris.

Lepage’s Ring, it’s now clear, is about the Machine. Nothing else. And the Machine exists because the Met was too pretentious or too chicken-shit to project those video images onto a flat screen. No, we needed a “flexible” screen, or screens, or somesuch, and this is the result. In the pursuit of the Machine and its special effects, Lepage seems to have neglected entirely every other goal of staging.

Yes, Deborah Voigt managed to do some fine acting, when seen in close-up during the HD simulcast of Die Walküre, but what you see from inside the house — especially from the Family Circle, where I sat — is singers who are dwarfed by the Machine and upstaged by the videos, and who mill around aimlessly. Voigt was out sick on Tuesday, replaced by the estimable Katarina Dalayman, who is arguably an even stronger actress, but there was precious little drama anywhere on the Met stage.

Was there a unified acting style? Of course not — the playing ranged from Jay Hunter Morris’ exuberant Siegfried to Hans-Peter König’s chillingly understated Hagen, both effective but neither really merging into a coherent statement. Here again the Machine is to blame, since it’s neither fish nor fowl. It is abstract in itself, and it certainly doesn’t resemble the hall of the Gibichungs or the Rhine or a rock surrounded with fire. But the video projects are realistic — extremely so.

If you’re an actor looking for clues whether to go stylized or naturalistic in your playing, you’re not going to get much help from any part of Carl Fillion’s set.

So forget about the emotional power of the Ring, and meanwhile, we in the audience can forget about any consideration of the philosophical, moral, and cultural issues that Wagner raises here. Directors in the past several decades have mined these operas for all kinds of riches — from parables of industrialization to paeans to nature, from Freud to Marx and back again.

Engagement Party from Hell: Brünnhilde (Voigt)
tries to sort out who’s going with whom.
With Iain Paterson (Gunther) and Hans-Peter König (Hagen).

Schenk’s physically gorgeous production (the only one I’ve seen all the way through) boasted precious little philosophy, but it said plenty about mythology and storytelling. Wieland Wagner’s abstract, minimalist settings for Bayreuth were about refocusing our attention on the psychological drama. Patrice Chéreau went political; Robert Wilson went personal, with imagery and gestures that made best sense to himself alone.

It will be years before New York gets another Ring to call its own. Lepage has cheated the Met, and Peter Gelb let him do it. It’s a scandal; there ought to be a general public outrage.

Why then am I not angry anymore? Because, when the light of Wednesday morning broke, it became clear to me that this production is so incredibly dull that it’s impossible to sustain any kind of strong emotion toward it.

I’m not a Wagnerite — far from it. But you don’t have to enter into his cult in order to admire and to need his work, and the Met is, as I say, one of the rare places where you can get it. The musical aspects of this Götterdämmerung were, mercifully, still quite compelling — if Fabio Luisi didn’t command precisely the same majesty that James Levine used to elicit from the Met orchestra, he still did a masterful job, and the future bodes bright as he and the musicians continue to collaborate and to explore this music. It’s just a shame that there won’t be anything to look at.

But then, that’s what radio is for. The Met happens to do radio particularly well. And it’s cheap, too.

The Hall of the Gibichungs.
“Wir singen laut! Wir machen ein earschplittinge Din!”

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Live from New York, It’s Vivica Genaux!

“Before the trail goes cold,” as Dan Rather likes to say, I ought to record my responses to Vivica Genaux’s appearance at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall on 2 February, in concert with her illustrious collaborators — “allies” seems a better word, really, and “soul mates” even better — Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante, Baroque specialists who have joined Vivica on many a triumphant occasion over the years, and who performed with her on the acclaimed Vivaldi album, Pyrotechnics.

Vivica sings ceaselessly in Europe and hasn’t been taking many New York engagements lately, and this was in fact her only scheduled appearance this season. The concert then represented a status check: how she’s singing these days (not to mention how she’s looking, which is never an insignificant question with this glamorous artist) and what she’s capable of. Before a sold-out house, Vivica made clear that she’s still a terrifically exciting performer, and New Yorkers are right to regret that she doesn’t drop by more often.

At Zankel Hall, 2 February 2012

In at least one of the numbers, she even provided a little object lesson for some singers of whom New York has been hearing quite a lot. For example, her account of “Agitata di due venti,” from Griselda, really put Danielle de Niese to shame. De Niese sang the same number, with different lyrics of course, as her solo finale in the Met’s recent Enchanted Island, and she did so quite charmingly, but as an exercise in technique, the aria honestly wasn’t the best fit for her.

Vivica, for her part, breezes through “Agitata” as if it were child’s play, at dizzying speed but with no loss of accuracy or expression. The voice remains fascinating in itself, with a burnished lower register that, when she started out, frequently earned favorable comparison to that of no less than Marilyn Horne. Then Vivica tosses out the high notes, gleaming and free, across a dazzling range. It’s a pleasure to hear her.

Europa Galante brought welcome variety to the program, with instrumental interludes by composers other than Vivaldi. The concert opened with Vivaldi’s Sinfonia in C Major (RV 116), but later detoured to embrace Pietro Nardini’s Violin Concerto in A Major (Op. 1, No. 1, with Maestro Biondi taking the difficult violin part) and also Pietro Locatelli’s Concerto Grosso in E-Flat Major, “Ariadne’s Lament” (Op. 7, No. 6).

The virtue of grace and the appearance of ease — which we Baroque fans seek but don’t find often enough — were much on display, until the musicians’ ensemble seemed like a union of spirits, almost as if all of Europa Galante were a single instrument. The players remain standing in performance, which gives the audience an even greater sense of the physical harmony they achieve.

Several of the selections on this evening’s program are included in this album, which you can purchase at Amazon by clicking here.
(Provided of course you don’t own it already.)

The proportions of Zankel Hall and the crowd of affectionate listeners (including not only friends like me but also members of Vivica’s family, who’d flown in from Alaska) helped to create an even greater intimacy during the concert. Zankel’s acoustics seemed less dry and buzzy to my ears than the last time I went, a few years ago: maybe somebody’s worked on them.

That acoustic may have inspired Vivica to try some pretty daring soft singing, taking it down until a listener wanted to lean forward. In New York, where critics are so often obsessed with the size of a voice (a pretty important consideration, since some of the halls here, especially the Met, are so vast), this was, as I say, a daring calculation, but Vivica pulled it off with confidence: she knows perfectly well that she can make herself heard in a bigger room, but this is what this music told her to do at this moment in this room. And that’s how Vivaldi would want it, I think.

The “Red Priest” wasn’t immune to feminine charms, and in fact many of his works were written for female musicians at the conservatory of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Venice, where listeners were charmed by the pretty girls in performance: I remember reading somewhere an eyewitness account of an audience member who was utterly smitten by a girl musician with a flower behind her ear. Beauty was part of Vivaldi’s original staging concept, if you will. So as I looked at Vivica, always so gorgeous, in two absolutely smashing gowns, I thought, “Yeah, the old boy would have approved of this, too.”

She was surrounded by well-wishers after the performance, and I didn’t get a chance to congratulate her, or even to get a bisou. All the more reason to hope she’ll return to New York very soon.

Pretty even in a parka: At home in Alaska.

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Consumer Product Review: ‘Glee’ Valentines from Hallmark

The collection includes little stickers and a teacher card.

As a public service to my readers, I have purchased a box of Hallmark Brand Glee-themed Valentine cards at a major national retailer, with a view to telling you what to expect if you buy them.

The Glee Valentines are designed for schoolkids, presumably somewhat younger than those depicted on the TV series but somewhat older than I was when I went around buying inexpensive cards at 32 to a box — so that I could give one to every kid in my class. In my day, we didn’t have Valentines with pictures of popular TV stars on them (can’t you just imagine the Partridge Family and Brady Bunch Valentines!), but the cards were corny nevertheless, and they provoked terrible anxiety.

Matching the card to the right classmate was nothing less than an ordeal. This message was too romantic, that one not romantic enough. This picture was too girly, that one too boring. And then came the teacher card: there was only one. What if you made a spelling error? Not only did it say “Teacher,” it was larger than all the others, and so she would know if you gave her one of the regular cards. What if you had 35 friends and only 32 cards?

Can you wonder that I was such a nervous child?

Four to a sheet, recto-verso.

The Glee Valentines are manufactured in the spirit of the cards I used to give, and they’re reasonably priced, at $2.50. My customer satisfaction isn’t high, however. The cards themselves are printed on lightweight paper, four images to a sheet. There are only four designs, so too bad for you if you don’t like one of the slogans. No envelopes are included, which may be a good thing: after all, the glue on those old envelopes was cheap and never stuck, and the envelopes would be thrown out almost instantly in any case, which, in the days before recycling, amounted to needless waste.

More satisfactory are the stickers, squares emblazoned with hearts in which are printed photos of Rachel, Finn, Quinn, Puck, Mercedes, and Kurt, four different shots of each character; as well as about 10 stickers with graphics, including a heart-shaped G clef and slogans proudly advertising “I’m a gleek” and “I [heart] glee.” It’s a bit tough to peel the stickers off the paper backing, however, but the adhesive seems to be of decent quality. I put a sticker on an envelope, and it’s staying put.

And now the Consolidated Edison company will know that I’m a Gleek.

The teacher card is folded in half and only slightly larger than the student cards. With pictures of Will Schuester and Sue Sylvester on the front, it reads, “Teachers: The good. The BAD…,” and then on the inside it completes the thought, “…and the awesome: YOU! Happy Valentine’s Day.” So even if your teacher doesn’t watch Glee, he or she may understand that you meant to say something nice. Or anyway, you didn’t say “ugly.”

Among the student cards, the first design features Mercedes, pointing her finger at the viewer, and Kurt, looking quite pleased to be presenting such an inclusive image. Look, kids! Black people and homosexuals can enjoy Valentine’s, too!

Well, the actual message on the front is, “What you got is HOT, Valentine!” Turn the card over, and the follow-up inscription is “Stay sizzlin’.” On this as on all the cards, there’s plenty of room to write the “to” and “from” names.


The next design features the hunky straight boys from the show, with Finn pointing at the viewer now, backed up by Puck and Sam. “One Valentine’s Day just ISN’T enough …” reads the front, and the back continues, “…for THIS much cuteness!”

Here, I can imagine how my anxieties would rage — hell, I can almost feel ‘em coming back to me. To whom could I possibly give this card? I couldn’t give it to a boy! And how many girls would want to receive a picture of cute boys from another boy?

At the very least, might this not suggest that I thought I was excessively cute? And at the very worst — have I mentioned that I grew up in Texas?

The anxiety mounts with the next card, which features Rachel grinning cluelessly while Quinn and Puck flash the “loser” L behind her. “Happy Valentine’s Day…” reads the front, and the back continues, “To somebody who is SO not a loser!”

That’s a backward compliment, I must say. To whom are you going to give this card? If your Valentine is not a loser, why do you need to say so? If your Valentine really is a loser, will your condescending, cheap little reassurance really mean anything?

Imagine, if you will, that Lisa Simpson gives Ralph Wiggum this Valentine, instead of that adorable little train that says, “I choo-choo-choose you.”

“I’m so not a loser! Lisa thinks I’m not a loser!” Ralph says happily, before stopping short. “Wait, you mean somebody else does think I’m a loser?” he says, heartbroken. And suddenly the whole episode is ruined. Do you really want that on your conscience, Fox?

The final design shows the auditorium stage, as Artie, Kurt, Mercedes, Tina Chang, and Finn stretch out their arms “taa-daa” style, showing at last that Asian–Americans and kids in wheelchairs also enjoy the holiday, while Rachel falls face first down the steps. “Have a fantastic Valentine’s Day…” reads the front, and the back continues, “…or ELSE I’ll sing.”

That, at least, is a Valentine that I might have distributed freely at almost any age.

My advice to diehard Glee fans is to buy the cards but keep them “mint in box.” These things are the definition of ephemera, and if you can keep them in their original condition, they might be worth something in about 40 years — not unlike the corny Valentines I used to give when I was a boy. Too bad I didn’t hold onto those things.

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Preview: Collegiate Chorale in Tippett’s ‘Child of Our Time’

A child of his time: Michael Tippett

February might have been the month I learned about Michael Tippett (1905–98), a composer whose work has never really caught on in America yet is greeted with relative enthusiasm in his native Britain. Treated at first as an eccentric amateur, Tippett by the end of his life was hailed as a national treasure — which is of course precisely what the British like to do with their eccentric amateurs. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, we remained mystified by the guy. Indeed, for a long time it seemed that we were two people divided by the question of whether Tippett’s music is any good, and my opportunities to hear any of it were rare indeed.

Opera Boston had programmed Tippett’s opera, The Midsummer Marriage, for the end of this month, in a new production to star the great Joyce Castle, but the company has shut down — a catastrophic loss for the arts in the Northeast, and not only on Tippett’s account. More happily, New York’s Collegiate Chorale will perform Tippett’s A Child of Our Time tonight at Carnegie Hall — but circumstances require me to be elsewhere, and I’ve got to miss it.

Maestro Bagwell and the Collegiate Chorale.
Photo by Erin Baiano, used with permission.

That’s a shame, because A Child of Our Time is a most interesting piece, and it’s paired on the Collegiate program with Anton Bruckner’s thrilling Te Deum, a Romantic ecstasy from 1886. I heard “bleeding chunks” of both works yesterday during a rehearsal, which whetted my appetite for more, as well as giving me a glimpse of the methods of James Bagwell, the Chorale’s music director.

Inspired by the events that led to Kristallnacht in 1938 but not finished until 1941 and not performed until 1944, A Child of Our Time reflects Tippett’s concerns as World War II began. I’m quite intrigued by his use of African–American spirituals — a form that had little to nothing to do with any of the specific events going on around Tippett while he wrote, and yet, as the composer believed, as eloquent and universal an expression as one can find of a particular kind of strength in hard times.

From Rossini’s Moïse, last December.
Photo by Erin Baiano. Used with permission.

While the writing in A Child of Our Time is angular and anxious, it’s also accessible, with intriguing harmonies and tricky rhythms. Tippett’s orchestration for the brass section struck me as especially compelling, and a good match for Bruckner’s majestic brass passages in the Te Deum — but this may be due to the fact that I was sitting in a balcony directly over the brass section during the rehearsal.

My privileged perch afforded me an extra thrill: my God, it’s overwhelming to be amid so many voices raised in song! I have missed a lot of life, simply because I’m not a musician.

Rehearsals aren’t meant to be reviewed, of course, but it’s kosher to say that I noted with admiration Maestro Bagwell’s command of such vast forces, not only the Chorale but also the American Symphony Orchestra and four top-notch vocal soloists. I’m accustomed to seeing the polished final product from this group, but here I saw the process of polishing. Nothing seemed to get past Bagwell, and I was struck by his emphasis on clear diction from the chorus: in his approach, diction is linked to rhythm, which in turn is linked to energy. Get these things right, and you’ll have quite a performance.

Nicole Cabell

The ever-luscious Nicole Cabell, one of my favorite younger artists, will be soprano soloist, joined by Metropolitan stalwart John Relyea taking the bass part, and regal Marietta Simpson, the alto. A voice new to me, that of tenor Russell Thomas, had me popping up in my seat: his is a vibrant, passionate sound, and I’m eager to hear more of him.

Unfortunately, I won’t hear him or any of these fine artists tonight — but if you’re in New York and you’ve got some time this evening, you ought to try to get to Carnegie.

A Child of Our Time and Te Deum
Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall
3 February, 7 PM
For ticket information, click here
or contact Carnegie Hall.

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Songs Announced from the Stage, and Other Notes from Susan Graham

Susan Graham returned to Carnegie last night for a new recital program, once again accompanied by the indispensable Malcolm Martineau, and once again cheered on by me. Almost all the material was new to Susan’s repertory, including the first song she’s ever performed in Russian, but the mix of moods and characters was just what you’d expect from her, by turns poignant and hilarious.

Indeed, the stated purpose of the program was to present a series of portraits of women, and Susan actually has a choice in the matter — that is, having played so many trouser parts, she could just as easily present a gallery of men — she reminded us with “Sexy Lady,” a comic number written by Ben Moore for that first Carnegie recital, in 2003.

Sexy indeed.

In all seriousness, Susan is a very sexy lady in her own right, and she brings to her music a whole set of decidedly physical pleasures, both for her listener and (I presume) for herself. That’s what makes her unbeatable in French rep: the warmth and sensuality of her voice find their most congenial resting place in that music.

Thus it was no surprise that Susan and Malcolm performed La Mort d’Ophélie, by the Berlioz who understands her so well, in the first half, and Poulenc’s Fiançailles pour rire, an ideal selection, in the second half of the evening. Yet as I have witnessed the collaborations between these two artists over the years, I’ve come to appreciate that their goal is never merely to make Susan look good. With their previous program, Un frisson français, they offered a survey course in French art songs — so thoroughly that any music-appreciation instructor could use the album as a starting point for a syllabus.

This time, offering their portrait gallery of women, Susan and Malcolm effectively split the program into two parts — nice girls and nasty girls — with a change of gowns at intermission, from demure white to vavoom one-shouldered dark-and-sparkly, to heighten the contrast that ranged from the Blessed Virgin in Part I to Lady M*cbeth in Part II. But in between these two extremes the distinctions weren’t so clear-cut, and the Poulenc, for example, depicts a number of ladies whose stories are very different, one from another, and from all the other stories Susan and Malcolm told during the evening.

The Lady M piece, by Joseph Horovitz, was new to me; it takes three of the titular character’s speeches and sets them to mostly conversational music that — if nothing else — gives the singer plenty of opportunity to act one of the greatest roles in theater. Seated off to the side, and thus not lost in Susan’s gaze (as I usually am), I had the chance to admire her use of gesture, economical and true, as Lady M descended from majesty to madness.

Kennst du Midland?

The set of five Mignon songs inspired me to read Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship at long last, and I confess I’ve gotten only about 10 percent of the way, according to the handy measure on my Kindle. Without having finished my reading, or even gotten to Mignon’s first appearance in the book, I’m left knowing what I knew already: that Mignon appealed to 19th-century composers because of a certain variety of innocent victimhood. What I get from Susan’s interpretations of the songs is a direct connection to the physical: when she sings of lemon trees and orange blossoms, you can smell the fragrance. Malcolm is very much complicit in evoking the sensuality of this music, it should be said, and at times I caught him “watching” a phrase as it floated away from his piano.

Susan’s wit is part of her charm as a performer, and in the final sections of the evening, “Other songs announced from the stage” and a couple of encores, she made the promised announcements with flashes of humor, as well as putting over the comic numbers (also including Messager’s “J’ai deux amants” and Porter’s “The Physician”) with verve.

We were beside ourselves with happiness, to the point that at least one fellow in the audience was shouting out requests. He wanted to hear “A Chloris,” and Susan meant to give it to us — but according to her own schedule. She is still finding fresh insights, though she’s sung this piece a thousand times, surely, and it’s grown ever more mystical, sacred even, in the purity of its feeling. Yet she turned this mood on its head a moment later, delivering Sondheim’s “The Boy from…” and cracking us up, before calling it a night.

This was the sort of musical evening when I went backstage just because it's the equivalent of pinching myself: yeah, I really do know this person who uplifts me and who decks me in beauty. And she kissed me, too, just in case I didn’t already feel like the luckiest guy on earth. Afterward I walked alone in the warm moonlit air, with her voice still ringing in my heart. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The recording of Susan’s Carnegie recital debut:
if you listen closely, you can hear me cheering.

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Jennifer Van Dyck in ‘The Picture Box’

A girl I used to know: With Arthur French,
in Charles Weldon’s production for the Negro Ensemble Company.

The last time I went to the stage door of the Beckett Theatre to congratulate an actress, she was Billie Whitelaw and her dressing-room had just been burgled. Greeting Jennifer Van Dyck at the stage door last week turned out to be a happier affair, I think.

Jennifer had just finished a performance of Cate Ryan’s The Picture Box, with the Negro Ensemble Company. (The show closed today.) Seeing her in the small and simple confines of a Theatre Row house — not so unlike Brown’s Production Workshop at Faunce House in its proportions — seeing her in a T-shirt and jeans — pretty much what she wore in college — seeing her in a play — it was as if nothing had changed, and she’d tricked time, somehow.

She is aging awfully well. Actually, I’m not sure it’s accurate to call it “aging” at all: she’s really just existing progressively. And she’s also doing some lovely acting, centered and honest and graceful, alongside fine co-stars in an earnest if imperfect little play.


The Picture Box gives us Mackie (Arthur French) and Josephine (Elain Graham), an older couple who worked for the mother, now deceased, of Carrie (Jennifer), first on Long Island and then in some sort of Floridian paradise. Carrie’s got to sell her mother’s house — to a white couple who are far more boorish than dramatic purposes really require them to be. So one last time, Carrie, Mackie, and Jo sit and reminisce.

It quickly becomes apparent that the bonds here are far deeper than those among employer and employees, and the characters describe each other as “my oldest friend” and “like family.” Having just lost Bessie, I understand the truth of those feelings, even as they’ve made me uncomfortable sometimes: Bessie was my family, yes, but was I ever part of hers? Do I truly know her family, or her opinions? Did I know before reading her obituary that her kin called her “Beth”?

Ryan’s play was a somewhat slender vehicle for such musings, it must be said. Sensitively directed by Charles Weldon, artistic director of the NEC, the script nevertheless bore signs of its author’s inexperience. The picture box of the title, for example, turns out to be a gimmick so that the characters could look at old photos and tell each other stories they already knew, for the sole purpose of informing the audience things we didn’t know. And the plot drives toward a moment — signing some papers — that left many of us confused about the procedures of selling a house. (We talked about it, generally, as we left the theater.)

Still, the playful interaction between Mackie and Jo elicited a warm response from the audience at the performance I attended, and the principal trio of actors was marvelous. Together they created something delicate and true, in quietly assured strokes. Even the frankly impossible roles of the intrusive bigots got a boost from Marisa Redanty and Malachy Cleary’s skilled performances. (Redanty was especially good at suggesting the possibility of humane good intentions behind her offensiveness.)

To be honest, I have every reason to believe I’d enjoy watching Jennifer act in almost anything; since she was a girl, she’s been one of the most reliably entertaining talents I’ve encountered. It’s unnerving, really. And yet, as I say, it does my heart good to see her still working at something she seems so surely meant to do. That’s a great gift indeed.

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Interview: Janice Hall Would Rather Be Doing This

Kicking up her heels in Grand Illusions

Just when soprano Janice Hall’s brilliance was starting to seem almost routine (“Oh, of course she’s going to be sublime in that new opera, portraying 37 different characters and singing the Grand Inquisitor’s aria backwards”), she found a new way to dazzle us all, turning to cabaret. Most sopranos would fall flat in such a setting, let’s be honest, but few of Janice’s colleagues can rival her expressive musicianship — to say nothing of her impeccable diction, without which any cabaret number is just a plate of cold mashed potatoes.

Grand Illusions, her first complete cabaret show, proved a revelation, not only of this new dimension to Janice’s art but also of the personal need for reinvention. Dietrich evolved constantly, and so, too, is Janice evolving.

Her newest act, of which we got a preview of sorts at Urban Stages in December, finds Janice ever more assured, offering up a fascinating mix of numbers from Cole Porter to Stephen Sondheim. Directed once again by Peter Napolitano, with music director Matthew Martin Ward, I’d Rather Be Doing This opens at New York’s Metropolitan Room on Sunday, February 12, for the first of three performances over the coming months. Reached by phone in Savannah, Janice was kind enough to talk with me about the show.

WVM: The subject of your first show was an icon, Marlene Dietrich. The subject of your new show is also a legendary diva — yourself. It’s not as if you were hiding behind Dietrich before, but this change in focus really bespeaks a growth in confidence in what is still a new art form for you. How did you arrive at the point where you felt so comfortable in cabaret performance?

JANICE HALL: It’s odd – that kind of happened by itself. I decided after Marlene, I had lots and lots of concept ideas, but that was such an exhausting, intense process, immersing myself in the world of Marlene, that I decided to give myself a little bit of a breather and give myself a program of songs that I liked.

In the process, I discovered that it was kind of about me, though that wasn’t my intention. People who saw the first performance commented on that a lot, and even then I wasn’t aware of it until I watched the DVD and said to myself, “Yes this is very different.”


WVM: Do you feel comfortable now?

JH: I do, and when I go back now and look at the Marlene footage, I see — I think I tend to be overcritical of me — but I find it to be much more formal, let’s put it that way. And I was more removed from it. So I guess just by doing, I’m becoming more comfortable and more confident, as you say, about what it is that I’m doing.

WVM: It’s not that you were uneasy before, but there’s a different kind of ease now.

JH: Marlene was a little bit more studied. I wanted it to be perfect, so I was going for that, so it was scripted in a more formal way. I think it had to be, because if you’re trying to give the story of another person, there are certain facts you have to include. This one I was just on my own, and at first it was strange because I had such a form with Marlene, you’re kind of restricted in terms of what you say and how you say it. This was free-form, and at first I thought it would be simpler, and in a way it was not. Eventually a pattern began to emerge.

WVM: Was the process this time more like programming a recital?

JH: You know, I rarely ever did recitals. The answer to that is probably yes, but I can’t necessarily tell you that from my own experience. One of the reasons I never really wanted to do recitals as a Classical singer is that it really scared me to be out there and be me, without a character to hide behind. For some reason, with cabaret music, I became very comfortable with just that very thing. If I were to go back and program a Classical recital, with what I know about putting together a cabaret evening, I would find it easier. And in fact I’m thinking of doing that.

I also want to add about the structure of the show, that was one of the ways that my director, Peter Napolitano, was very helpful in looking at the overall picture and saying, “Yes, this works,” or “No, this has to go.” If anybody ever wonders why you need a director for a cabaret show, that’s one reason why.

“Lana Turner Has Collapsed,” from Madame X.
(Also known as the act I haven’t seen yet.)
Pygmalion Theatre Company, Salt Lake City, UT, May, 2011

WVM: I’m always struck by a kind of seamlessness in your vocal production when you sing cabaret, and that’s also an asset in opera, of course. Where does your Classical training help you in cabaret, and what’s been the biggest technical adjustment you’ve needed to make?

JH: I do get that comment, and it makes me very happy, because it doesn’t necessarily feel seamless to me. It’s becoming more and more so, but the biggest challenge I’ve had in transferring over has been not trying to go into what I call opera voice. You do have to go into your head voice at some point: I’m not a belter, I’m never going to be a belter.

I’m learning how to mix my voice in new ways, but I’m also sort of relaxing and letting my soprano voice come through, but I don’t want to do it in an operatic way. So that’s been the biggest challenge, moving smoothly from my chest voice to my head voice.

Now, in terms of how it helps me, my background, I think the discipline aspect of being a Classical singer is a natural advantage to me, in terms of doing this music. It isn’t something I think about: it’s just the way I’ve been trained, it influences the way I learn music.

Frankly, I don’t know how people who don’t have that training learn music, and I’m constantly amazed at people who don’t read music at all and yet they learn just fine. I don’t understand how that happens, because my process is very different. But for me, the discipline of having to be a Classical singer is very valuable for me in this.

WVM: The title of the act turns out to be a very funny song [by Napolitano and Ward], but it also suggests or advertises that you’re performing songs that are personal favorites. People are often surprised to discover that Classical musicians like pop songs, so can you tell us how you first discovered one or two of these numbers, and how you came to understand they might be right not just to listen to, but also to sing yourself?

JH: When I was a teenager, I was listening to all kinds of different music. I’m sure that a lot of people think that my incorporation of Piaf songs or Kurt Weill songs came from my years of being in Europe, but in fact, they came from my teenage years, when I discovered Lotte Lenya and Edith Piaf and all these strange European singers. They achieved a certain iconic stature later, but at that particular point they were pretty obscure. I just found this music and listened to it. I listened to the pop music of my generation, and I’ve always been a very eclectic music listener.

So some of these songs have been things I’ve had in my ears for years. In a couple of cases, they were songs I didn’t feel ready to tackle until now. One of them is “Pirate Jenny,” of course. It’s such a difficult song because people have certain expectations. And yet those expectations have become almost stereotypical, so to find something that’s original with the song or unique to your interpretation yet remaining true to the integrity of the song is a real challenge.

Fort Worth Favorite: Janice, with David Adam Moore,
in Eötvös’ Angels in America, 2009.

WVM: Darren Keith Woods will kill us both if we don’t mention that you’re still an opera singer — performing in Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers at the Fort Worth Opera Festival in the spring. What can you tell us about how you’re getting ready for that show?

JH: Actually, that process is going to start in full, as soon as I get back from Savannah. I’m going to throw myself into that. So far, I’ve read the libretto, I’ve listened to the recording, I’ve had my costume fittings now — we did a whole wonderful afternoon of costume fittings on Sunday. That is also going to inform me a lot, in how I go about this.

But the biggest challenge for me now is simply cabaret voice and opera voice. If I’m working a lot in cabaret voice, it’s like if you’re an Olympic athlete and you’re not quite working at that level for a while, you have to get back up to that level. Just singing in my daily voice, I’ve got to get back up to that point. Because you lose stamina if you’re not at that level.

So that’s the challenge, but it’s a fabulous character to be playing, and I’m very excited about that aspect of it — as well as the musical aspect!

Janice Hall in I’d Rather Be Doing This
Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd St.
Sunday, February 12, 4:00PM
Monday, March 5, 7:00PM
Wednesday, April 18, 9:30PM

Heggie’s Three Decembers
Fort Worth Opera Festival
May 13, 18, 20, 26, 31; June 2, 2012

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