Opera Thursday: the return of the wanderer

The aria "Cara amata regina" from Monteverdi's 1639 opera ll Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland), one of the first modern operas. Janet Perry and Peter Keller are the singers; the early music specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt is the conductor.

Opera Wednesday

If you've read this blog for any great length of time, you'll know that Gian Carlo Menotti is one of my favorite composers. Here's his whimsical opera buffa The Telephone, as done for Austrian television in 1968. What you're seeing here is not an excerpt, but pretty much the entire opera - I say "pretty much" because this runs a little less than 18 minutes, whereas the opera normally plays to about 26 minutes or so. While there might have been some cuts, this is still the essence of the story.

Though Menotti wrote the opera in English, you'll see it here in German, without subtitles. Despite that, I'm confident you're going to be able to figure it out fairly quickly. It has to do with a young man, Ben, who has something very important to tell his girlfriend, Lucy. Getting her attention, though, is something else...

The singers are Anja Silja and Eberhard Waechter, with Wolfgang Rennert conducting the orchestra of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.

Opera Wednesday

From Mozart's magnificent* opera Don Giovanni, here's the great Ferruccio Furlanetto as the Don's sidekick Leporello, reciting the names from the Don's little black book (which isn't so little).  It's "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" – "My dear lady, this is the catalogue". The performance is at the Metropolitan Opera; the conductor is James Levine

*Magnificent except for the ensemble ending, that is. I've always complained that after someone is dragged down to Hell, anything that follows is an anti-climax. Up to the early 20th Century, this scene was almost always omitted (the opera was written in 1787) - I don't know why producers think it needs to be done today. Oh well.

Opera Wednesday

I've mentioned in this space before that Verdi, unlike Mozart (for example) really knows how to end an opera, and one of the most exciting climactic scenes comes from Rigoletto, in which the bitter court jester Rigoletto finds out that his plans for revenge have gone awry - the contract he put out on his boss the Duke has backfired, resulting in the death of his daughter, whom he was trying to save from that very Duke.

Here's that final scene, with two of the very best: Diana Damrau and Zeljko Lucic, with the Dresden State Opera, conducted by Fabio Luici.

Opera Wednesday

Short and sweet - Maria Callas (above) and Tito Gobbi perform the spectacular finale to Act 2 of Tosca in a special television broadcast from the Royal Opera House in London. This never gets old.

Flashback Friday: Five movies to set your motor running (plus one for the road)

Sunday is probably the premiere day of the year for auto racing fans. No, scratch that - it is the premiere day, Christmas, New Year's and your birthday all rolled up into one. It starts Sunday morning with the world's most glamorous and prestigious race, the Grand Prix of Monaco (6:30 am CT, NBC), run through the streets of Monte Carlo before all kinds of royalty and celebrity. It continues with America's most famous race, the Indianapolis 500 (10:00 am CT, ABC), somewhat tarnished to be sure, but newly on the upswing as it approaches its 100th running. And for a nightcap there's NASCAR's longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 (4:00 pm, FOX), which starts in the late afternoon and ends under the lights.

With all that, it seemed like a good idea to take a look at Hollywood's treatment of the sport. Not surprisingly, there are movie conventions that find their way into almost every racing film. There are also reminders of why so many people become addicted to cars driven fast and lives lived even faster. Herewith, five films to check out if you need a warm-up for Sunday.

LeMans (1971)
Steve McQueen, lots of cars

In the late 60s, the famed 24-hour endurance race became a focal point for American racing. The Ford Motor Company put on an all-out blitz to break the European stranglehold on the race and become the first American manufacturer to win. The biggest names in American racing, drivers such as A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney, raced at LeMans, and Wide World of Sports presented live via satellite coverage of the beginning and end of the race.

It was in this climate that Steve McQueen’s LeMans appeared. McQueen played Michael Delaney, an American driver returning to the race that almost claimed his life in a fiery crash that did kill a fellow driver and friend. McQueen’s need to come to terms with the past, as well as the inevitable romantic entanglements of the present, provided the backdrop for this often moody story that does a pretty good job of describing the thoughts of a man whose profession forces him to confront death on a regular basis.


There was almost more action behind the scenes than on the screen. McQueen was already an avid race car driver, and LeMans was his dream project – so much so that he put his own money and prestige behind it as producer. He fought the director, John Sturgis, for control of the project – Sturgis wanted to focus on the love story, while McQueen wanted the race itself to be the star. The movie’s budget skyrocketed, much of the original action footage proved unusable, and one of McQueen’s financial partners threatened to shut down filming altogether. Eventually, McQueen was forced to give up his salary, percentage of profits, and future royalties in order to complete the film. Not surprisingly, the enterprise resulted in financial bankruptcy for McQueen.

Notwithstanding the problems, LeMans contains wonderful footage of the famed race. At a time when most people had seen LeMans only in newsreel footage or on television, the big screen provided a magnificent panorama of the sights, sounds and colors of one of the world’s greatest races.

Interesting note: there is no dialogue for the first half-hour. The engines say it all.

Bobby Deerfield (1977)
Al Pacino, Marthe Keller

As was the case with LeMans, Bobby Deerfield deals with an auto racer struggling to deal with a deadly crash. Like Steve McQueen’s Delaney, Al Pacino’s Deerfield must overcome the psychological impact of death; and like Delaney, Deerfield is drawn into a relationship with a woman dealing with her own demons. Think of it as Love Story with really fast cars.


That’s not really a fair assessment, however; although Bobby Deerfield disappointed many race fans who were expecting a movie in the mold of LeMans and were turned off by the movie’s incursion into soap opera, it eventually won praise as an incisive, underplayed character study. Pacino himself considered Deerfield to be one of his best performances from that era. While the race footage (from the 1976 Formula One season, featuring Mario Andretti, among others) isn’t perhaps up to the standards of LeMans or Grand Prix, it still packs a punch on the big screen.

While Bobby Deerfield may have failed to capture the drama on the track in the same way as LeMans had, it was a decidedly more peaceful filmmaking experience. There were no power struggles on the set, no creditors threatening to pull the plug, no tensions between the star and the director. Pacino and Keller created a credible chemistry on-screen, a chemistry they took off-screen as well.

The Big Wheel (1949)
Mickey Rooney, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

OK, so The Big Wheel isn’t going to win any prizes. The story is a typically clichéd sports melodrama, the story of Billy Coy (Rooney), the son of a race car driver who is killed in a fiery crash at the Indianapolis 500. (Do you notice a theme running through these movies? Racing movies are definitely not for the faint of heart.) Coy is determined to win the race that claimed his father’s life, and nothing is going to stop him – including a fire that engulfs his car in the climatic final scene.

Oh, and along the way there’s romance, conflict, and angst as well. “Restless! Reckless!” proclaims the DVD cover, and that’s about all you have to know. Rebel Without a Cause with really fast cars on a track that goes around and around.


This was one of Mickey Rooney’s first “adult” roles after his success with Andy Hardy, and while the plot isn’t anything to write home about and the special effects are pretty hokey (come on, that really isn’t Rooney behind the wheel of a burning car, is it?), this is still a movie to be included in the list. For one thing, it takes place at the Brickyard, and the racing footage goes a long way to capturing the look and feel of the Indianapolis 500 as it was back in the day, when the race was literally an all-day affair, a Memorial Day celebration that was equal parts sports spectacle and county fair. This is Indy as it really was – the wooden grandstands festooned with flags and bunting, the cars that were often little more than coffins on wheels, the skill and courage required by driver and mechanic alike to reach the finish line in one piece.

Anyone watching this movie who is only familiar with modern-day racing will be stunned – and educated – by how far the sport as come. It is more sophisticated, less primitive, not nearly as dangerous; but there’s also something more antiseptic about it, and that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Combine it with 1939's Indianapolis Speedway with Pat O'Brien and John Payne, and you'll get a pretty good sense of the rich history of the Indianapolis 500.

Winning (1969)
Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Robert Wagner

Winning is a throwback to another era, that of the all-around racer. Before the age of specialization, of corporate sponsorship of entire racing series, race car drivers were content to compete in anything that had four wheels. In Winning, Frank Capua (Newman) and his chief rival, Luther Erding (Wagner) battle in sports cars, stock cars and open-wheeled cars, with a climactic finish at the Indy 500.


There are no fiery crashes in Winning, although there is a spectacular pileup at the start of the 500 (the exciting race footage comes from the 1966 contest, which featured a 17-car melee on the first lap). The accident, in which there were no serious injuries, serves to shrink the field, making the one-on-one battle between Capua and Erding that much more intimate. Think Ben Hur, with really fast chariots and no horses.

There is a love story, of course – in this case a triangle involving the two drivers and Elora (Woodward), Capua’s wife, who finds Capua becoming more distant as he struggles to overcome a career slump. There’s also tension between Capua and his sponsor, who turns to Erding when Capua seems washed up. These hackneyed conventions are made more tolerable by the surprisingly affecting relationship between Capua and his stepson (played by Richard Thomas), who finds in Frank the father he never had, and works hard to bring Elora and Frank back together. In the end, it works.

This movie owes everything to Paul Newman. It was originally conceived as a television movie, but the participation of Newman and Woodward elevated it to the big screen. It elevated it in other ways as well; Newman has always been the kind of actor who could take a B concept movie and somehow make it more than the sum of its parts (see the otherwise routine Harper detective movies, for example). Newman, like McQueen and other racing buffs, had little time for the romantic elements of the plot; it was the fast driving that turned him on. Always a fan of racing, it was here that he learned to drive competitive cars, and his love of the sport translated into a second career as a professional racer.

Interesting note: Dave Grusin, who did the music for Bobby Deerfield, scored Winning as well.

Grand Prix (1966)
James Garner, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune

The Tiffany of racing movies, Grand Prix has it all. Director John Frankenheimer spent the season on the Formula One circuit, and his innovative camera mountings on the cars presaged the in-car cameras that dominate televised racing today. Frankenheimer combined this with a multishot approach to editing that often turned the screen into a montage of multiple angles and storylines running simultaneously. The result was a visual masterpiece of breathtaking racing action in a widescreen setting, which won the film three Academy Awards for effects.


For Formula One fans, Grand Prix sounds an often nostalgic note, vividly capturing many of the old European circuits that used to run along treelined public roads, with spectators standing perilously close to the track. Many of these are no longer used in Formula One, replaced by modern, more compact circuits designed to keep both the fans and the drivers safer. Safe they may be, but they’re often also flat, dull, and without much in the way of character. In Cars at Speed, his magnificent book on the Grand Prix circuit, Robert Daley mentions that auto racing’s early appeal often laid in the fact that spectators could envision themselves on the same roads as the racers, an illusion shattered with the man-made circuits of today.

While the racing action dominates Grand Prix, there is a story as well, that of four drivers battling for the Formula One championship: Garner, the American banished from Lotus for reckless driving, seeking redemption with Mifune’s new Japanese team (Garner, like McQueen and Newman, would take up racing as a serious sideline) ; Montand, the aging Ferrari champion looking for one final title while struggling with an altered perception of his sport; Brian Bedford, Garner’s former teammate, dealing with the twin specters of a near-fatal accident and the legacy of his late brother, also a world champion; and Antonio Sabato as the young Italian driver who lives only for the moment, understanding that life on the edge is what makes the whole thing worthwhile. There are, naturally, romantic triangles and fiery crashes – but without them, where would a racing film be?

Even in the somewhat soapish subplot, Grand Prix manages to sound the right notes, allowing the characters the opportunity to talk about how they cope with a job that requires you to put your life on the line every moment. The common theme is that of fatalism: you choose what you do for a living, you find a way to rationalize what happens, you live with whatever consequences may develop. You’re conscious of the risk, but if you think about it too much (as Montand’s character does in the second half of the film), you become paralyzed by it and lose the edge that keeps you alive. Phil Hill, the former world champion who appears in a bit part in Grand Prix, once said that a race driver expects to die behind the wheel. But he had thought about it so much, it no longer had any meaning for him: “I don’t believe in the law of averages. A driver makes his own averages.”

Bonus: Since I wrote this piece back in 2008, there emerged a movie that surely would have earned a spot on this list: Senna, the remarkable 2010 documentary on the life and death of the great Ayrton Senna, directed by Asif Kapadia.

The movie uses no voiceover narration, preferring instead to allow the participants themselves, along with announcers in various race footage, to tell the story of the young man from Brazil who rises through the ranks to become world Formula One champion. And Senna's story is not an easy one: his fierce rivalry with teammate and nemesis Alain Prost, his battles with F1 officials, and his role as a icon to his Brazilian countrymen - the one person in a poor and corrupt country in which they can take pride.

Kapadia succeeds in creating a deepening sense of foreboding; of course, the threat of death is never far removed from the world of motor sports, and as we approach the fateful 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, we see Senna, in an unreliable and difficult-to-control McLaren, being told by his close friend Sid Watkins, the F1 medical director, that the two of them should just chuck it and go fishing. I can't, Senna tells him, although there is no reason why he can't: multiple world championships, more money than he could possibly need, and already a status as one of, if not the, greatest grand prix champions of all time. Wisely, the film doesn't dwell on Senna's fatal accident, coming one day after the death in practice of fellow driver Roland Ratzenberger and two days after Rubens Barrichello had barely escaped being killed in practice. The crash is shown only once, but it is enough. It is, as The Sun's critic Alex Zane says, "fascinating and profoundly moving."


Originally posted May 22, 2008

It was sad when the great ship went down

One of the many good things about taking some time off, as I did last week, was in catching up with items that one needs time to appreciate. Such is the case with this extraordinary video that has been making the rounds, showing the sinking of the Titanic in real time.

Now, having had a longtime interest in the Titanic, this was something I couldn't resist. However, it called for watching at one sitting to really appreciate its full power, which is why I held on to it until last week, a few days following the 104th anniversary of the sinking. It truly is an amazing video, not just for the subtle signs over the two hours and forty minutes of the ship sinking deeper and deeper into the water, but for the eerie look of the ship absent any people (a decision by the software designers; this is, I think, an alpha version of the final product), particularly in the last minutes when all the lifeboats are gone, their empty davits - which were never intended to be used - standing in mute testimony to the ongoing horror. It is, and I don't mean to overuse the word, an extraordinary experience.

Opera Wednesday - Dialogues of the Carmelites

When we have more time, I'll write at greater length about Francis Poulenc's stirring Dialogues of the Carmelites, which has a tremendous relevance to the post-Christian times in which we now live, but in the meantime here's the dramatic conclusion: the Carmelite sisters, having been condemned by the Satanic French Revolution, make their way, one by one, to the guillotine.

Just because - shocking!

Back when he had hair and was good - it's the delightfully alt hit "Shock the Monkey," by Peter Gabriel.

(An occasional series on the music I hear during the drive home - mostly to fill space!)

Just because

Heard on the way home last night:  "Voices Carry" by 'Til Tuesday.

(A new series on the music I hear during the drive home - mostly to fill space!)

Just because

Heard on the way home last night - David Bowie's Modern Love.

(A new series on the music I hear during the drive home - mostly to fill space!)

Let's start the new year right!

And I can't think of anyone better (looking) to put it into words than the lovely McGuire Sisters.  See you next year!

Gordon Lightfoot sings - er, sinks Christmas

Heard this on one of our local stations the other day, but this is the same recording, from a different station. It's true that nobody does Christmas quite like Gordon Lightfoot, right? Now that Thanksgiving is past, let the Christmas music begin!

Opera Wednesday - Copland's The Tender Land

There are few composers more American than Aaron Copland, so on the eve of this most American holiday, here's part one of Michigan Opera Theatre's production of Copland's 1954 opera The Tender Land, conducted by the composer.  It's part one of 12, so if you like it keep following the links!

Opera Wednesday: The Manchurian Candidate

I will admit that I was more than a little skeptical when my former home-town Minnesota Opera announced plans a few years ago to produce an operatic version of the classic political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.  Besides the almost-impossible task of living up to the original Frank Sinatra movie version (does anyone really remember Denzel Washington's remake?), the imaginative camera angles that were used by director John Frankenheimer (the famous tearoom scene, for example) seemed to suggest that this would be yet another example of opera companies commissioning productions that would be seen once and then (if one was lucky) forgotten forever.

But, in one of those cases I always hate to admit to, I may have been wrong about this.  The opera doesn't premiere until next March (and I won't be there to see it anyway), but some of the things I've heard and read about it are causing me to reassess my original opinion.  The synopsis that I've seen suggests a story quite close to the original (a slightly built-up role for the Janet Leigh character, but if you're going to have a female lead, that's to be expected), and the clip below indicates some quite interesting music that not only advances the plot but creates an atmosphere in tune with the story.


The jury should still be out on this until the production actually hits the stage, but I've moved from being a skeptic to having an open mind.  Perhaps I should have been there already, but given the track record not only of new opera but the Minnesota Opera in particular, you can understand my uncertainty.  At any rate, next year we should know if we have a new masterpiece on our hands, or just one more opera to forget.  I'm hoping for the former - if I were still living in the Twin Cities, I'd be certain to check it out.  As it is, if it's good, and if it goes on the road and winds up in Dallas, I'll stand in line to see it.

Opera Wednesday: Gay and Britten's The Beggar's Opera

Continuing our theme of 20th Century opera on Opera Wednesday, it's Benjamin Britten, one of my favorite 20th Century composers, with his realization of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, as seen on BBC in 1963.  This is the complete broadcast, with the music performed by the English Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Meredeth Davies.

Opera Wednesday - The Ballad of Baby Doe

Haven't done one of these in a long while, so as I surfed through YouTube, I thought I'd offer this clip of the great Beverly Sills from one of her signature roles, "Baby Doe" Tabor, in Douglas Moore's 1956 The Ballad of Baby Doe.

I continue to contend that we should look to underperformed operas of the past before we start commissioning new operas (and using precious dollars to do so).  Once upon a time (1956 to be precise), Baby Doe was a new opera.  So I'm not opposed to new commissions; let's just make sure we don't ignore what's already out there.  At the very least, it would be nice if the new commissions had staying power beyond the initial performances.

Classic Sports Thursday

I was five years old at the time of the 1965 Bluebonnet Bowl, played between Tennessee and Tulsa in Houston. I had no great rooting interest in the game - at that age, I probably didn't root for anyone - and yet it must have made an impression on me.  For one thing, I found a TV Guide clipping on it in one of my old scrapbooks.  More significantly, I had a clear recollection not only of the game being played in a driving rain, but of one of the teams actually changing their jerseys at halftime so that it might be easier for people to tell the two muddy teams apart.

Well, you know how the mind can play tricks, especially when you're talking about something that happened almost 50 years ago with very little notice, so it was with a sense of vindication that I ran across this clip the other day - the game footage of the 1965 Bluebonnet Bowl, which indeed confirmed my memories.  Not a particularly notable game, but great fun to watch nonetheless.  See how much more interesting football can be when you don't remove the elements from the equation? ◙

So you think you don't know opera

Iknow a lot of people who think they don't know anything about opera - who, in fact, are quite sure they hate opera.  I'm usually able to confuse them by playing the overtures to The Barber of Seville (Bugs Bunny cartoons) or William Tell (The Lone Range) but, as Telegraph columnist Tim Wong points out, even modern operas have beautiful, hummable arias.

I think all of the pieces excerpted in Wong's article are eminently enjoyable - and he doesn't even mention "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" from The Threepenny Opera, which we might recognize as "Mack the Knife."  See, you know more about opera than you think!  ◙

Classic Sports Thursday - Allan Simonsen

A few years ago, Fox Sports in the States broadcast live Australia's signature touring car race, the Supercheap Auto 1000 from Bathurst, NSW, complete with Southeast-based broadcasters making the grand flight across the Pacific. Saturday night Australia will have the 53rd running of the classic (two races run in 1997 and 1998 because of a dispute -- one for the 2 litre European Super Touring formula in the usual October date and a mid-spring date for the 5-litre V8 Supercar formula that is traditionally Bathurst, mainly because of a dispute between Seven and Ten), the 43rd as a 1,000 km event (the first ten races were 500 miles but Australian metrification laws added 121 miles in 1973, abolishing the single-driver possibility that the great Peter Brock used in one of his nine Bathurst wins).

Tragic news from Bathurst history occurred in June when Allan Simonsen (DEN), the codriver of the pole-winning and eventual third-place finishing #11 Pepsi Max Kelly Racing Holden Commodore with Greg Murphy (who will be in Saturday night's classic in the #22 Walkinshaw Racing Toll Holden with James Courtney), was killed at the 24 Heures du Mans on Lap 3 going through Tertre Rouge when his Young Driver AMR Aston Martin went wide through the tricky double apex, hit the trees on the other side of the Armco, killing the popular Dane who had been set to participate in the Brad Jones Racing #21 car this season (a replacement has since been hired -- the #14 won one of the four Austin races in V8's this year (and also won with their #8 earlier in the season) - Triple Eight (#1, #10, #888) won the other three Austin races -- too bad ESPN dumped the V8's for their X Games next year at COTA).

Simonsen's lap of 2:04.956 in a Ferrari was taken during a hotlap meet at the legendary Mount Panorama circuit a hotlap event a month after the 2011 Bathurst classic, and was later surpassed by a 2:04.6187 lap in a Formula 3 car in Australia. Jenson Button also has a faster time from 2011 (1:48.88) in a McLaren MP4-26, but that was not in an official session, so it does not count.

In memory of the 2011 pole-winning team's co-driver, here's Simonsen's lap in a Ferrari that went under the 2:05 range:

2011 "Great Race" Finish (with US broadcast audio):


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