While fixated on the singers and the drama, we sometimes take for granted what marvels go on behind stage to make the scenery and effects run smoothly. Opera houses nowadays employ hydraulics and all manner of digital control systems to fly sets in and move pieces around. Even minimal productions like Seattle Opera's Parsifal used giant motors to raise and lower an entire section of the floor in order to create an bounding wall in another scene. A giant tower (Klingsor's castle) was made to plummet into the ground with great speed. Rugged digital landscapes were shone onto the background via a floor-to-ceiling array of projectors.

There was a time, of course, when stunning effects were created by hand. Men turning great wheels and pulleys, ropes being dragged about the catwalks, stagehands running up and down flights of stairs. But the craft was far from crude. In fact, by the time opera was in its infancy, the art of scenery was quite advanced, developed in the spoken-word theatre, naturally. One can get a sense of it in certain films, as in Farinelli: il castrato. The façades, of course, are aesthetically sound, but little has been explained as to how the machinery worked or how advanced it was. It is clear, though, that many of today stage effects owe their heritage to the designs and concepts of a few ingenious men who were pioneers in the engineering of scenery. One of my favorite antique prints does give a rare behind-the-scenes look at an early set for the operatic stage. In the figures below, a cloudscape filled with actors and singers (left) and stripped bare (right), used for Giovanni Legrenzi's Germanico sul reno (from Venice, 1675). The center wheel rotated while the entire machine/set—people and all—moved on the stage, toward the audience. Imagine it—imposing, ecstatic, and glorious in a way that few modern sets even approach. This is essentially a Renaissance acid trip, for me.

[Click each for a larger size]

On this topic there are a couple truly outstanding resources on the internet. First off, The Development of Scenic Spectacle showcases stage machinery from the 16th through the 18th century, distinguising the periods in which particular effects were created and in use. Each section contains a treasure trove of animations and video clips of the machinery's workings and implementation, along with a textual explanation of each. Also, please visit this amazing site on the Castle Theater in Český Krumlov, which documents a surviving Baroque theater in the Czech Republic with all its original (well, reconstructed in 1765 - 1766, refurbished in 1996-1997) interiors and stage mechanisms. There are gorgeous photos and most impressively, a series of 360-degree "tours" of various parts of the theater. Be sure to explore all the links from the main page, as several of the target pages contain more panoramas and info. The color cutaway illustration leads to a new page with a click-sensitive map of the theater.

Renée Fleming - D'Amore al dolce impero from Armida (1994, Sony Classical). Well, I guess you are going to have to go to hölle because I really do like—no, love—Renée Fleming. I remember watching her Met telecast in Otello when I was teen and realizing, "Oh, wow. I'm kind of watching history in the making right now." Later on, she opened the Carnegie Hall season with a concert that was televised on PBS. I reviewed it on Opera-L. It was gushy and totally genuine. Leave me alone; I was seventeen years old at the time. Her travel agent somehow took notice of my review and sent it to Renée herself. A few weeks later, I received the kindest hand-written letter from her thanking me for my generous words and my support (I still have her home address! Stalking, commence.). We emailed back and forth for a few months. I think a couple years later, in May, was her début Arabella at the Houston Grand Opera, and she arranged to have me come backstage to meet her, and look folks: Despite what you may think about her stylistic choices since the late mid-90's, Renée Fleming is wholly gracious and extremely intelligent in a way that is not pointed or calculated. Everything about her, as with her talent, is absolutely natural. As for this recording, it is taken from a capture of a 1993 live performance in Pesaro of the Rossini rarity Armida. This was before all the major press and talk show circuit fame. Before the Ferré couture and jazz album. Here she was simply an up-and-coming artist, absolutely devoted to showing off the composer's work, the drama, and the virtuosity of her own voice. She recorded this aria later on her Bel Canto album, but I prefer this version—its effervescence, its rhythmic impulse, and its sheer beauty and accuracy of the variations. I almost like Fleming's take better than either of the recordings of Callas. Callas was perhaps a bit too steely in the top and constricted in the bottom. The aria is, afterall, about love, and Armida is a sorceress. I am inclined to think that she might know about the lighter, headier tones of Love itself and stir those into her brew, instead of being outright witchy. One gets the sense that, with Fleming, Armida is levitating by way of her own vocal magic. I like that in this production, Armida is made to look like a 1960's Times Square drag queen-slash-hooker.

Speaking of, while watching John Waters's Female Trouble (starring Divine) the other night, I held hands with the Noise Band Dude* that I mentioned in the Carpenters/Sonic Youth post. Of course, I couldn't tell you what the movie's about, since things—well, progressed quite quickly. And perhaps that's the real reason why I've posted this Armida bit. Don't cringe, but guess what. I think I'm falling in love. *Noise Band Dude has asked that I make it known that he also has a severe affinity for the Taj Mahal Travellers, Sandy Kane, Albert Ayler, Lauhkeat Lampaat, and Bow Wow Wow. Do you see what is happening to me now???

ARMIDA
D'Amore al dolce impero
Natura ognor soggiace.
Dov'è quell'alma audace
Che non apprezzi Amor?
Chi, misero, non sente
La fiamma sua possente,
Di smalto ha il core in petto,
O mai non ebbe un cor.

CORO
Dov'è quell'alma audace
Che non apprezzi Amor?

ARMIDA
Gli augei tra fronde e fronde
Spiegano amor col canto;
Aman perfin dell'onde
I muti abitator.
Aman le crude belve
Là tra le ircane selve,
Son per amor feconde
Le stesse piante ancor.

CORO
Dov'è quell'alma audace
Che non apprezzi Amor?

ARMIDA
La fresca età sen fugge,
È la beltade un lampo,
Ché l'una e l'altra strugge
Il tempo vorator.
Dunque godete amanti
De' vostri liet'istanti,
Or che vi ride in volto
Di giovinezza il fior.
(Armida siede accanto a Rinaldo).

CORO
Ah! sì, godete amanti
De' vostri liet'istanti,
Or che vi ride in volto
Di giovinezza il fior.

Andrea Bocelli - Wesendonck-Lieder: Der Engel from Sacred Arias (1999, Philips)

Regarding this article in the New York Times about men stepping into the liederhosen of women's recital material, I present Andrea Bocelli's version of the first song of the cycle. To be honest, I'd rather hear Stevie Wonder sing it (I mean, we're halfway there!). This is truly, madly, deeply, the most tasteless vocalism imaginable. Nothing worse than an Italian singing German, except for when it is done so with a really pinched and overactive chest voice. I would however, pay to see a man dressed as a woman singing the Wesendonck-Lieder. I mean, trannies are fiddnta take over hip hop, so why not the concert stage? Oh, boy; I can't wait for those really difficult Which Pronoun Do I Use Pre- and Post-Op moments! Das, die, der? Trannies will bust a cap if you misspeak, y'know.


Right, and I know you'll need to cleanse your palate after hearing him, so here's, like, a real singer doing it. Trust me, it totally works; I use Flagstad all the time for this, especially if I've just heard Eaglen.

Kirsten Flagstad - Wesendonck-Lieder: Der Engel

from Mahler/Wagner Orchestral Song Cycles (1959 / 2002, Decca).

Excepter - Obedience Side A [Excerpt] from the Obedience cassette (2005, Temple of Be Saint 777).

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is her junk, and she is peeing out of it. Excepter has been tearing shit up for a bit now, but this is actually from the band's first recording. It's being re-released in cassette format only, in a limited run of 100. The sleeves are hand-printed and numbered. Each side captures a full live set from Excepter (one in a bar, one at a loft).

Listening to it is basically the same as brushing your teeth with a cactus. It peals and poops itself the way a live show should, like turning on the car radio in the morning to find that you left it on full blast the night before. Chasms of fright and hiss and piss and poop. Did I mention poop? I mean the Painful but Cathartic Poop.

I am drinking some gay-ass tea right now. Obedience gives you ballz!

Sonic Youth - Superstar [Carpenters Cover] from If I Were a Carpenter (1994, A&M).

Can we talk about me for a second? I just had a truly unforgettable weekend, wherein I had a new friend over to my place before we were to go to what I believe was Konono No. 1's first live show in the US. Well, we got to chatting (La' Chat-ting, strictly speaking) and were having such a good time that we completely missed the show. Instead we watched an 8th-generation VHS bootleg of the brilliantly dark film by Todd Haynes called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

If you don't know about it, I'll let you do a little more reading about it. The short version is that Haynes created a 45-minute film detailing the rise and fall of Karen Carpenter, from her weirdo parents to her anorexia nervosa. The sets are finely constructed in a fairly authentic way. The "actors," for obvious[?] reasons are all modified Barbie dolls. That's right: Barbies. You'd think that somehow this would get in the way of the storytelling, but Jesus—I thought I was watching real people performing real actions. The voice overs are somewhat melodramatic. OK. A lot melodramatic, but fuck it—I like opera, so…

There are—among other things—spanking of Karen's bare adult Barbie butt, mini packages of laxatives, and holocaust footage. It is truly awesome and awful. While the storyline skews for sympathy towards Karen and her condition, it is done genuinely and without mockery. That said, the use of the Carpenters' actual songs (and very likely the portrayal) prompted Richard Carpenter and A&M Records to file a suit pulling it from the festival circuit it had been on for about a year. Mattel probably would've done something similar if it hadn't been banned so quickly.

My new friend introduced me to a lot of new music this weekend, too. But he mentioned Kim Gordon over and over. He seems to be enthralled with Sonic Youth and noise bands in general. How nice, then, that there might be a recording of Sonic Youth covering a Carpenters song. And fuck me hard—the title is "Superstar." [Nevermind that the track comes from a Carpenters tribute album featuring crap from folks like the Cranberries and Sheryl Crow.]

Anyway, enjoy some screen caps. Can't you almost taste the diet pills???

Marilyn Horne - Be Anything from Marilyn Horne: Opera Arias & Lieder (1995, Arkadia).

I feel so lucky to have found this disc (I got it in a trade of 20th Century classical discs with a friend) because it includes this rare cut of renowned mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne taking part in what was seems to have been a booming business during the early 1950's—using unknown singers to cover the popular hits of the day for a quick buck. The 1952 Santa Barbara recording is a version of the popular tune originally sung by Champ Butler, Eddy Howard, Peggy Lee & Gordon Jenkins, and Helen O'Connell. It later went on to be Connie Francis's last Top 40 hit.

Here one can hear the raw (but extremely functionally healthy) material that Horne would use to provide the musical tracks for Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones and a bit later, to give life to some of the most difficult contralto, mezzo, and soprano repertoire from every period of music, Handel to Berg. Notice that she never sounds operatic. It's still pop music, but the voice always stays free, open, and absolutely easy. Musical theater gals, if you must belt, here's how you do it: manage your damn-ass vocal registers and make the vowels clear and plain.

Be a beggar, be a thief.
Be my sunshine or my grief.
Be anything but, darlin', be mine.

Be a wise man, be a fool.
Treat me tender or be cruel.
Be anything but, darling, be mine.

Climb to the top of the ladder.
Be master of all you survey.
Fail and it still doesn't matter.
If you love me, everything is OK.

Be the angel of my prayers.
Be the Devil, who cares?
Be anything but, darling, be mine

Be the angel of my prayers.
Be the Devil, who cares?
Be anything but, darling, be mine.

Rovo - Emormy from Imago (2001, Incidental).