I know readers of Noise like nothing more than some freshly crunched data, so let's get to it. Via Sieglinde I found this Variety article about the Metropolitan Opera's boffo box-office grosses. The March 24 Barber of Seville simulcast brought in $853,836, placing it #18 in movies in theaters that weekend. Granted, a ticket price of $18 raised the grosses, but, still, it's impressive to see that Gioachino Rossini's zany comedy, in its 191st year of release, garnered a per-screen average of $3,104. As this Box Office Mojo chart shows, only two movies, The Namesake and Journey From the Fall, made more per screen on that particular Saturday. 300, The Shooter, The Hills Have Eyes 2, and all the rest did worse on average — and almost all had multiple showings while Barber played once. Remember that massive promotional campaigns backed these films. How would they have done if they had the same budget as the Met marketing department? — Alex
Wagnerism
Bonehead-of-the-Week Quiz
On a video that was shot last summer but recently surfaced on the web, a German army training officer instructing a green recruit in the proper use of a machine gun tells him to imagine himself in the Bronx. The soldier snickers. "A black van stops in front of you. Three Afro-Americans get out and insult your mother in the most vulgar way." (That last phrase sounds less prissy in German, though the use of the term "Afro-Amerikaner" is a surprisingly genteel touch, in this context.)
The gunner opens fire, and, obeying orders, also yells an English obscenity, one that likewise attacks the dignity of his imaginary interlocutors' mothers.
Here's the quiz: Officials both in the US and Germany are outraged because a) the officer is training his charge to fire indiscriminately on civilians; b) he is suggesting that soldiers should respond to verbal abuse with deadly force; c) he is eliding the difference between war and crime-fighting; d) he appears to have learned his strategy from training manuals such as "Grand Theft Auto"; e) the scenario presumably takes place in the context of a German military occupation of the US; f) none of the above.
The correct answer is f). The irrepressible Al Sharpton focused on the fact that the mother-insulters in the scenario are black, while Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión complained that the video reflected unjust assumptions about his turf. "Clearly these folks don't know anything about African-Americans or the Bronx," he complained.
Now it should be noted that the worst thing Carrión's imaginary constituents did in the scenario was to use foul language. I appreciate the borough president's main point, which is that the Bronx is a peaceable part of the city and a good place to do business, but I believe that vulgar comments on the sexual practices of mothers can still occasionally be heard on the streets of New York. The most appalling thing about the scenario has nothing to do with prejudice, or with a more thorough knowledge of the Bronx, but with the idea that a soldier is being trained in techniques of wild, panicked shooting in a densely populated area.
On the bright side, perhaps Don Imus could have a second career as a cultural sensitivity consultant for the German Army.
Here we go again
My colleague and friend Tony Tommasini has a good piece in tomorrow's New York Times in which he applauds the LA Phil for selecting Gustavo Dudamel as its next music director and then turns his attention to the ongoing director search at the NY Phil. He notes that Riccardo Muti is being mentioned as a leading candidate for the post. He says, however, that Alan Gilbert would be a more "refreshing" choice. I agree, but I have a sad sense of déjà vu, for back in January 2001 we faced an eerily similar situation: the Philharmonic was then said to be leaning toward Lorin Maazel, but Tony thought that the orchestra should consider David Robertson. Experience teaches that when those of us in the scribbling classes call for younger, progressive Conductor X to be picked over older, conservative Conductor Y it becomes all the more inevitable that Conductor Y will get the job. (In New York, at least.) Recently I joked to Tony that we might be better off using reverse psychology: "Riccardo Muti would be an audacious, visionary choice! Alan Gilbert would be a tiresome regression into the past!" The Philharmonic may yet surprise us, though. Is Riccardo Chailly remotely possible? Many people in various camps would like that outcome. Or, if the flirtation with Muti once again fizzles out, there's always the "interim conductor" option, at which point Daniel Barenboim might enter the picture. In any case, expect some sort of announcement fairly soon. — Alex
What year are we in?
"The American classical-recording industry is in big trouble. The crisis has been building quietly for nearly a decade, as Mozart and Bach have lost ground steadily to [pop names redacted].... [During decade X] serious music was plummeting from 12 percent of the market in [year redacted] to a low of less than 5 percent—and it is falling. [Name redacted] predicts that 'there will be a total collapse of the American classical-recording system within five years unless someone figures out a more economic one.' Falling sales percentages reflect the story of youth turned off by the concert hall's irrelevance, a shrinking number of serious-record stores, a union that has almost priced orchestras out of the market, radio stations dominated by pop releases, a record-buying public that responds to a few glittering names, a repertory glutted by old war-horses.... [Label name redacted] has been reducing its releases, from 111 in [redacted] to 70 in [redacted]. Only about 60 [name redacted] records — close to half [its] annual output — contain newly released material.... Perhaps five [label] releases break even in their first year.... Many important records now sell 4,000 a year where they once would have reached 7,000 or 8,000.... 'The people who make money in this business can be counted on the fingers of one hand.'.... [Best-selling budget-label orchestra X] owes its good fortune to the combination of subsidy from its board and a special dispensation from the musicians' union.... Americans are convinced the foreigners will never recoup their investment.... 'getting across to the kids'.... exposed breast.... nude blonde.... None of these marketing ploys looks like a real solution to the accelerating plunge in sales of classical records... There exists a primal apathy toward classical music in America — on the part of buyer and seller alike.... Only so many Beethoven Fifths can be absorbed. In [year redacted] the public seems to be absorbing less and less of anything classical."
Hint: I was two.
Anyone who correctly guesses which avant-garde composer committed suicide in a fit of cultural despair on the very day the above article appeared will win a miniature score of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto, an extra copy of which I bought in a moment of absent-mindedness. — Alex
Update: Fifteen minutes after the above was posted (around midnight), we have a winner: David Hanlon. Yes, the year is 1970, the date is Aug. 10, the composer is Bernd Alois Zimmermann. The article, unsigned, comes from Newsweek.
The Glass Schooner
In the past, Frank Gehry has excelled at adapting his architectural language to other expressive needs: visual art in Bilbao, symphonic music in L.A., rock music in Seattle, science at MIT. In each case, you know you're looking at a Gehry, but you also know you're using a museum, or a concert hall, or an academic center. For his New York debut, he had a trickier task: finding the right form for a business as changeable and insubstantial as Barry Diller's Interactive Corp. You know . . . they're the ones who make websites that . . . well, you know.
In the last decade or so, big-money media, new and old, has brought the New York skyline a new cluster of stylish midtown behemoths - buildings named after Conde Nast , Reuters, Time Warner, the New York Times, Hearst and Bloomberg. Gehry's IAC is both more modest - in that it only rises eight stories and lurks over by the Chelsea piers - and showier, in that it's a Gehry, it's made from curved panes of glass, and it's the color of ermine. So how does Gehry translate Diller's vaporous business into architectural form? By making it look like a fully rigged schooner on a southwesterly course. Huh?
This seems like a desperation gimmick, using a hobby for inspiration rather than responding thoughtfully to the function of the building itself. The result is pleasant and cool, but it seems destined to drift into curiosity status before long.
I've got a more extended assessment here.
Sanjaya Studies
American Idol fans out there will want to absorb this pertinent symposium on Sanjaya. I particularly like the notion that Sanjaya is the herald of an American Caligula. It's about time.... Only four days remain until Schreker Day. Fifth Avenue will be blocked off for the parade. — Alex
Operaman
For better or worse, everyone is expecting Gerard Mortier, the grand poobah-designate of New York City Opera, to transform the company, which is precisely what everyone expected from his predecessor Paul Kellogg, and from his predecessor Christopher Keene. Kellogg is now the old guard - not, I suspect a role he would have cast himself in, and not one he's particularly well suited for. When he took over a decade ago, he moved with Gelb-like efficiency to put his stamp on a company that had been slammed by the AIDS-related deaths of Keene and many other members. City Opera was demoralized, financially and artistically shaky, and on many nights the house was depressingly empty (a trend abetted by Keene's penchant for programming operas that many people enthusiastically avoided).
Kellogg took the following steps, which almost nobody objected to: He doubled the number of new productions and started gradually replacing dated stagings of standard repertoire, most successfully with Mark Lamos' exquisite "Madama Butterfly." He moved all weekday performances back to 7:30. He brought in several productions each year that had been developed at the other house he ran, Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY. He started systematically presenting Handel operas and other baroque works, including Stephen Wadsworth's never-to-be-forgotten staging of "Xerxes" with Lorraine Hunt (no Lieberson, then) and, in his New York City stage debut, David Daniels. Besides Daniels, Kellogg also introduced Lauren Flanigan, Amy Burton, Mark Delavan and Anthony Dean Griffey to New York audiences.
Kellogg did not make City Opera much of a force in creating new operas, but he did recommit the company to American and 20th century work. And after commissioning the atrocious triptych of one-acters collectively called "Central Park," he wisely decided not to trust his own taste in contemporary opera. Instead, he imported certified crowd-pleasers: Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking," Mark Adamo's "Little Women," Rachel Portman's "Little Prince," Tobias Picker's "Emmeline." He inaugurated VOX, the annual full-orchestra reading of new operas, some of which have gone on to full-fledged productions.
Such a catalog of good decisions makes the eyes glaze over, I know, which is why Kellogg will likely be better remembered for two more exciting initiatives, one a failure that some applauded, the other an accomplishment that many detest. The first is his relentless and unfulfilled desire to be the company's Moses, leading City Opera out of Lincoln Center and into a hall of its own. The second is the temporary solution to the acoustical problems of the company's current home: electronic enhancement, which Kellogg has always insisted is not a euphemism for amplification. Tony Tommasini, for one, has never bought it. I'm agnostic about both things. The pursuit of another house turned out to have been an enormous waste of time, especially since Mortier plans to let it drop, but there was no way of knowing that ahead of time. And I've never had the sense that the electronics in the New York State Theater have made much audible difference at all, though I'm aware that varies a lot depending on where you're sitting.
Here's my wish for Mortier: that by the time he cedes to the company's next savior, he has not only stirred up traditionalists' scorn, inspired some colorful headlines and presided over a couple of magnificent moments, but that he has also compiled something approaching Kellogg's more boring but beneficent record.
Unused epigraphs 2
"...I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck."
— Samuel Beckett, Molloy
Tomorrow's Fishwrapper
As a lowly scribe with limited financial acumen (hence my career choice), I’ve been struggling to make sense out of the news that my corporate overlords at Tribune have accepted a buyout offer from the striped-shirted, Lincoln-bearded real estate mogul Sam Zell. As a print journalist and an observer of the classical music world, I work in not one but two industries that are boldly confronting their past and gingerly backing into the future. Not even operagoers with memories of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in her salad days have a more intense sense of nostalgia than newspaper people; not even the recording industry has been more muddled about how to make a transition from a solid piece of packaging to an online product.
I firmly believe that the human need for a constant flow of good, thoughtful writing about the world around us – including the arts - is as fundamental as the craving for music. What’s mystifying is that those whose mission in life it is to satisfy the seemingly equally basic need for porn are so much more successful in translating demand into revenue.
Meanwhile, the best minds in the newspaper industry are industriously reacting to the declining number of paying customers by giving diehards less and less reason to pay for the product we’re putting out. The current strategy is bifurcated. Online, we're saying: "You like getting news for free? Great, we're doing what we can to give you more." And in print, we're saying: “You think you’re not interested in today’s newspaper? Wait until you see tomorrow’s. That’ll be really dull.” If that seems as crazy to Zell as it does to me, I’ll greet him with flowers.
Meanwhile, Jack Shafer, the saturnine media critic at Slate, is bleak about the Zell deal and the promise of a Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). This was the paragraph that caught my eye:
If I worked for Tribune, I'd say forget the ESOP and begin looking for a new job. I'll bet the company’s best journalists are already packing their keyboards. The last good journalist out won't have to turn out the lights. The electric utility will already have shut off the power.
I sure hope he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Fiddler again
Gene Weingarten followed up his piece about Joshua Bell busking in the Washington Metro with an online chat in which he remarked that this story got "the largest and most global response of anything I have ever written" (thanks in part to the classical music blogosphere). He received more than 1,000 e-mails, many from people who declared themselves in tears at the end of the article, and even I got a few missives from readers who got there via The Rest is Noise.
Some interactors resented the obvious conclusion to the outpouring of indifference that Bell received: many of us go through our lives blinkered, hurried and ironclad, unwilling to let a chance encounter with something beautiful cause a hiccup in our routines. Others wondered whether the results would have been different in another city, another station, at another time of day. I don't know about that, but I'm sure they would have been different in a place where people had some reasonable expectation of an artistic experience: The Mall in Washington, D.C., Washington Square in New York, the square in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Thoth has found such a site in Central Park, where people habitually move at a stroll rather than a scurry.
At an American Symphony Orchestra League conference in Los Angeles last year, I suggested that orchestras should take opportunities to get out of their womb-like halls, occupy a shuttered Main Street Woolworth's, create storefront chamber music and rehearsal space, colonize a local pedestrian mall with impromptu outdoor performances. Esa-Pekka Salonen disagreed; he had once led an ensemble on a train platform for some reason, and been startled to see that the Bell phenomenon applies on a large scale, too: crowds rushing for the 7:14 don't even notice the presence of an orchestra, let alone stop and listen. So clearly, it's counterproductive to bring music where people don't expect and don't want it to be. The answer is not to retreat to the concert hall and erect a barrier of prices; it's to take advantage of those public spaces that American urban planners have fitfully and not always competently supplied (that's a whole other discussion) and find ways to consecrate them temporarily to music.
Unused epigraphs
— Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers
Reality check 2
I (Alex) have received a variety of responses to my statistical provocation below, ranging from “Way to go, amigo” to “Dude, are you kidding?” One astute reader questioned my comparison of CD sales in 1990 to CD sales in 2005, saying that cassettes were a huge part of the market back in 1990. (LPs were largely out of the picture.) Indeed, when you factor in 442 million cassettes shipped that year, my proposed increase disappears, although, when you look at all media, including downloads, it comes back. The same reader queried the citation of “units shipped,” pointing out that record companies ship more — sometimes far more — than they sell. In fact, the quoted figures are said to be “net after returns,” but it’s good to be wary of RIAA’s accounting. My aim in all this is not to promote utopian notions of a "boom" but simply to test the claim that there has been a recent and dramatic decline both in the number of classical recordings released and in the quantity sold. I don’t see evidence of such a drop. Instead, I hear rumors of a rise. The math is very simple: major labels have shrunk, but independents have amply compensated. Some of our British friends have romantic relationships with places such as EMI and Decca that Americans do not necessarily share. For a lot of us, the majors are the likes of Nonesuch, ECM, BIS, Hyperion, and Harmonia Mundi. When their new releases arrive, I put them straight into the CD player, expecting to hear something good, and I am disappointed less often than not. There's a business model for you: making good records.
Handelbangers
London is drowning in Handel operas at the moment, each of New York City's major companies is doing one - "Flavio" is at City Opera, "Giulio Cesare" at the Met - and the 250th anniversary of his death is bearing down on us, promising further overdoses. It does make me wonder sometimes whether the Handel boom isn't a bubble. I wouldn't go as far as Andrew Huth, who in today's Guardian entertainingly expresses the opinion that the devotion to Handel operas is one more aspect of the dutiful and virtuous approach to music: I like them because they must be good. With alarming flair, Huth goes on to say that we're only hearing a bastardized version of the operas, anyway, because real castrati sounded nothing like the wan and plodding countertenor or the pants-wearing mezzo of today.
Whatever gender-bending solution we choose, it won't be the real thing until some enlightened Home Secretary decides that our streets could be made safer by castrating a few hoodies and teaching them to sing.
Now there's a way to crush a whole flock with a single boulder. Huth's strategy would (literally) expose youth to opera, harness classical music's crime-fighting potential, take historically informed performance practice to its logical endpoint, restore government support for the arts, and inculcate good Italian diction in British inner-city youth. On the other hand, it doesn't address the most severe vocal shortages facing opera today. How about rounding up prostitutes and sentencing them to careers as dramatic sopranos?
