It seems I am still mired in the development of our inexpensive proprietary USB interface. This makes any tech news boring. I hope you will all indulge me for this discussion of music, opera, and musical theatre.
I am frequently asked about which music I like. Back in my younger days I played in a bluegrass band. Many will accuse me of being a hillbilly, but I urge them to look the instrument virtuosity required, as well as the 3 and 4 part vocal harmonies common to the genre before dismissing it as worthless or simplistic. I love bluegrass, but one cannot survive on bread alone. Before I leave the “white” blue collar arena I must admit that I am also a huge fan of Americana. This would include contemporaries from Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Doug Sahm, and Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp and of course John Prine (to name a very few). This gets me to classic minor chorded Blues and all of the modern Rock derivations, Lightning Hopkins to BB King to Duane Allman and many who I can’t mention without this writing swelling to several pages. The careful reader might notice that I have not mentioned one artist who relies on autotune.
Autotune is an invention which permits singers devoid of any singing ability whatsoever to automagically fake it as musical performers. This permits good looking “artists” to sing and dance scantily clad in music videos. Reluctantly, I have referred to them as “artists”, as it does take some talent to be choreographed. In all current pop poop, pop country, rap, and much else, I instantly hear the pitch perfect voices without vibrato and sink into the realization that this is yet another singer (or not) saddled with this modern technological breakthrough. I wish I did not hear it.
Anyone who has ever heard Lucinda Williams will never forget how she expresses herself vocally, although if you took her home to your family they might wonder about her weirdness. John Prine and Lyle Lovett are about as beautiful as fireplugs with lumps, warts, and leprosy. Lightning Hopkins is not terribly attractive either, but they all write songs which can reach heights proper to literature and poetry. As an added bonus, they can sing on key and use their voices as true instruments. Their voices have character and are able to accurately convey feelings, a quality which is currently falling out of favor. Unfortunately, lousy songs penned by lousy writers sung by incompetent singers who have perfect teeth and great asses and legs are all the norm. Worse yet, we are endlessly spoon-fed this pablum in public as normative. Yecch.
I left out classical music, opera, and musical theatre. Suffice to say I am listening to Alban Berg’s Lulu at the moment, a cheerful opera based upon Jack the Ripper truths and legends. Yup, I am dark. I am also a huge fan of music from Haydn to present time, and also from roughly 1600 back to medieval times. I probably do not understand Baroque, but I would rather tap my toes to Bluegrass. Reminds me of Sunday matinees with too many wanna be old money old ladies wearing too much jewelry and perfume pretending they are not deaf and are actually enjoying the show.
Opera, yup, particularly Germanic, particularly Wagner, and particularly Puccini when I am in a light mood. Wagner caters to my autonomous nervous system, shifting me in my seat and involving me in spite of myself. Besides all that, he is dark. Everybody dies, and many of them slowly. What’s not to like? Puccini is mostly guy meets girl, they fall in love, then the girl either dies of some slow wasting disease, disembowels herself, or finds herself thrown overboard in a bag from a perfectly good boat. Again, what’s not to like, at least most of the time. With Puccini, the happy singing nuns are few and far between. The beauty of opera is it is all so well sung as a performance goal in the direction of musical perfection. The voices are so huge, as the singers must be heard in an up to a 3000 seat or so entirely populated venue filled with the din of breathing, throat clearing, murmuring, stomach growling, and farting human beings. No microphones allowed or tomatoes are coming out of the audience. We’re talking BIG voices.
So I must preface all the below with a disclaimer. Readers of this thread may know that from time to time, I direct stage shows. Most of the time I choose straight dramas (no music). They are fun and close to real life. I have an aversion to most musicals, where the principals are so *** beautiful, singing as if loaded on Prozac all about how much they love each other and their idyllic lives. Makes me want to puke. However, I just accepted a show which is right up my alley. Jeckyll and Hyde, the Musical. No schiit. Wonderful music, 6 part harmonies, hair raising. High society folks harrumphing, hookers wiping their mouths off with their arms, a bishop who wanders through the ladies of easy virtue district with a pole as he licks their cheeks, yeah. I saved the best for last, a ten minute musical number with various London citizens/denizens wandering around with 6 murders, culminating with a neck broken with a loud snap. I just had the auditions, have the show cast, and am ready to start the rehearsals next week. I have a choreographer and music director that are suitably dark and can’t help but make me look great. I saved the best for last – the theatre is right around the corner from the Schiitr, so I will be hanging out there more. The show goes up late September.
So why did I interject that? To introduce my comments on musical theatre versus opera. I really love them both. What they have in common with stage plays is they are not meant to be read or just listened to. They are meant to be seen. First let me address opera briefly. You need powerful singers who quite often resemble rugby players, and in the case of men more like huge and rotund as opposed to merely muscled. The singers are big physically usually, a requirement to have sufficient push to sing to thousands without electronics. The sets are usually very well done and the costumes huge, heavy, and overdone. Ample makeup conceals the ladies' facial hair. Since an opera is a depiction of life’s events there would be ideally motion of the actors/singers all over the stage, addressing each other. What typically takes place in an opera is the over-costumed singer waddles to downstage center to sing to and fill the house with song. Since it takes every fiber of their strength to sing as loudly and beautifully as they can they generally remain static until their 20 minute solo is finished. (Sorry Bosie.) But it is incredibly beautiful and unsullied by electronics which sound like ass. Absolutely amazing. Seriously. Much of it is an amazing musical/theatrical experience albeit at slow speed suspended in oil.
Then there is musical theatre. Many of the books (libretti) are simply awful, with the vacuous ingenue crying as the hero of the story returns home from a voyage and dies from the tertiary syphilis he has just given her. Or animals as they frolic in the savanna. Well, not exactly but most of the stories do not make much sense. It is not often that a truly dramatic musical show comes along. Jeckyll and Hyde at least is based upon proper literature penned by an alcoholic master (think Hemingway, as well). Here is what really, really sux about musical theatre. All of the singers wear microphones. I know, I know, sounds like ass in the context of no sound system as in opera. Big disadvantage.
Ah, but the tradeoffs! Since the singers do not have to sing as loudly you can block (move) them around as they sing or speak – just like real life in terms of human interaction. You can move them all around and use the entire stage as an instrument of real drama. No more static dialog and sounds. Unlike opera there are no 400 pound divas that require two minutes to lumber across the stage. The choir can sing from offstage since they are miked. No need to costume them when they are not required and use them as an unnecessary prop. Makes sung stories far more real dramatically. But the sound sucks. I know.
All of this, although lighthearted, is no reason for me not to like either theatrical art. I still love and remain grateful for both of them.
Perhaps an analogy: Vermont Craft Maple syrup is incredible. It is too bad the Canadians package many of their craft brands in plastic bottles rather than glass. (Yes I eat pancakes as I finish this) and Log Cabin is incredibly bad.
