Category Archive: MUSIC
Tannhäuser
The naughty knight with Venus (Otto Knille, 1873)
(Richard Wagner) (1845) (Met, December 2015) An old-fashioned, rollicking and surprise-free production, beautifully sung and shockingly acted (Johan Botha can’t even manage to convincingly strum the symbolic lyre) with James Levine leading the orchestra (James Jorden in The Observer rudely suggesting that he “flapped his baton like a wounded bird”). Terrific early Wagner, with a stark and invariably crass look at a medieval gallant’s perennial struggle twixt sacred and profane love – the orgasmic overture leading on to the writhing, wriggling Venusberg – replete with smudged borders between high church and low conduct, and a fairly unsatisfying denouement. Leaves on a staff? …
Continue Reading →The Gandhi of Rock
(Pete in Toronto, 1974 - photo by Jean-Luc Ourlin)
Peter Gabriel (b. 13 February 1950) Gabes grew up in public. Precocious and vulnerable, his relatively privileged upbringing (he schooled at Charterhouse) inured him from fear of failure. This gave him, for a time, freedom to make Genesis a really innovative group, who came up with several interesting albums before they morphed into a somewhat blander supergroup. He left Genesis just as it began to take-off, with a gnostic note to the world that said “I had a dream, eye’s dream. Then I had another dream with body and soul of a rock star. When it didn’t feel good I packed it in…” And…
Continue Reading →Go See the ASO in 2016!
Photo of ASO from "The Australian"
Great season ahead for ASO, in its 80th year, with newbie Nicholas Carter. He’s a Wagner fan (yay!) and opens the season (13/2/16) with Die Walküre, Act I. Dare we dream to ramp-up Adelaide again as a second Bayreuth? It’s a natural fit – small, picturesque, bankrupt as the Master, and full of chancers! But beautiful. Like the canon on offer this season – Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Brahms, Dvorák, Handel, Berlioz, Strauss, Ravel, Prokofiev, Smetana, Elgar, Mahler, Debussy, Sibelius, Delius, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Yes…The Varnished Culture has ranked them, not chronologically, but on merit. But see and hear what you can…
Continue Reading →Otello
Set for the 1895 Paris Otello (photo Gallico)
(Verdi) (1887) (Metropolitan Opera, November 2015) (Dir. Bartlett Sher) (Film Dir. Gary Halvarson) How can you go wrong with Shakespeare, Verdi and a Drinking Song? A great source (though suffering from some tinkering), seamless music with some outstanding features, and tight structure, yet it lacks the charm of, for example, the less synoptically impressive Il Trovatore. And it needs top-notch musical control, lest it blurs into mere noise. Othello by W.S. is a difficult beast because it is the most subtle hence most delicate of dramatic flowers. Iago is perhaps the most baffling and ingenious villain (who, by the way, cops…
Continue Reading →What Stevie Wore in Adelaide
"Oh, I'm getting older too" (Photo courtesy of Flickr)
Dear Annabels, our beloved Stevie Nicks stomps a bit now and she really shouldn’t turn side-on to the audience but she is pretty as and still rocks it just fabulously. At Fleetwood Mac’s October 2015 concert, I was close enough to see up Stevie’s two (not one or three) nostrils and so I took careful note of what the lady wore. I don’t think I need to say that it was (almost) all black, but Stevie wore:- A skirt of (perhaps) microfiber, layered and good for lifting out at the sides A fitted long-sleeved velvet vest with points at the…
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