REFLECTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE (Sixty years attending thousands of performances- and writing about each).  

YKB Publishers New York; 263 pages.

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Mr. Epstein is a New York enthusiast of opera, musicals and drama and he decided to share his experiences, loves and hates with us all. Therefore this book is very New York centred though Americans and (few) Europeans might have seen many of these performances as well during a visit to what I still call Nieuw-Amsterdam (Peter Minuit who bought Manhattan was the son of protestant refugees from the Southern Netherlands; nowadays called Belgium). Epstein emphasizes he doesn’t have a special education in music and his custom of reviewing most performances he saw for personal memoirs has no special distinction. That is not correct. He is fair, well-versed and has almost impeccable taste (which can be interpreted as we both like the same singers a lot). I regret he didn’t include more of his reviews as in my opinion they are well to the point.

Mr. Epstein’s love for music started in the fifties when a lot of pop singers (Crosby, Como, Martin, Sinatra) still used vocal techniques not much different from opera singing (especially legato and an immediately recognizable timbre) though they clung to a microphone. I understand Epstein’s admiration though I am a mono-culturalist for belcanto singers only (exceptions made for Piaf and dame Vera Lynn) while the author clearly remained multicultural. Nevertheless I am happy to read an American author who doesn’t warm to Sinatra’s “pleasant but not overwhelmingly beautiful ” recordings of the 1940’s while later on finding him arrogant (and boring I add). I wish I had known the author in the eighties and nineties when I often visited New York. He tells us he would have been broke if he had paid full price for tickets as I used to do. He of course knew where to find last minute tickets at Broadway and 47^th Street and moreover he learned his trade with the (in)famous Lois Kirschenbaum who almost made The Met her home (She already got a chapter as the greatest fan of the house in a book which appeared in the seventies). I had no idea she and the author simply asked for free tickets at the entrance and most of the time they were successful as many people arrived with a ticket to spare. As a last resort I read they bribed a ticket-taker if they didn’t receive a free gift. No wonder Mr. Epstein tells us the lady died rich. But Mr. Epstein reminds us that in the early golden sixties tickets for the opera were not more expensive than tickets for a movie house. Nowadays the cheapest or even discounted tickets for Broadway cost four times more than the price of a movie ticket and there are only three layers of pricing.

Epstein’s love for classical singers began with same singer the generation born between 1940 and 1950 started with and who is still the most influential opera singer of the post-war period and the name is not Sophia Calos but Mario Lanza. Little we knew of the tenor’s brief operatic career  but the magnificence of the voice couldn’t and cannot be denied. He is still one of the vocal giants; in my opinion not in opera arias but in songs and ballads. Mr. Epstein still gives “summa cum laude” to “Beloved” (insert by Nicolas Brodzky in The Student-Prince) while I once included “Golden Days” from the same movie in my list of 8 desert discs for The Record Collector (quarterly journal for recordings of opera singers). Mr. Epstein’s favoured vocal category is the tenor and he has some idiosyncratic opinions (as we all have). He thinks Caruso’s records are difficult to rate at their true value due to the acoustic process. He adores Gigli, even as late as 1951 (I find him unlistenable compared to the glory between 1923 and 1937). Beauty of sound is his main criterion. Therefore Richard Tucker is his bête noire. Harsh and guttural he calls him and he suffered  a lot during Tucker performances (I have most of his recordings and it is one of the joys of  collecting to disagree heartily with another opera maniac). Other tenors who don’t figure high in his opinion are Gedda (agreed), Vickers (applause) and Bergonzi (big surprise as he is one of my favourites). Epstein thinks Luciano Pavarotti is overrated too (sometimes) and “for some reason unfathomable to me” Epstein cannot understand why the tenor is associated with “Nessun dorma” as he only sang five performances of Turandot which is way too heavy for his voice. The reason is a simple one. During the world cup of soccer in Italy in 1990 BBC started its hugely successful broadcasts with Pavarotti’s recording and his high B flat on “Vincero, vincero”. Millions of people who didn’t know the aria were captivated and soon imitators turned up at popular television shows to discover new popular singers. The wave reached Europe and in one generation “Nessun dorma” became the most popular opera melody, eclipsing  older favorites as “Vesti la giubba” and “La donne è mobile”. Mr. Epstein is cross because he is an undulated fan of Franco Corelli (I fully agree with him); once called the Calaf of Calafs in Opera News. I sigh when I read his reviews of dozens of Corelli performances. Epstein even has a small scoop. He knew the lady who once was responsible for a marriage crisis in the tenor’s household though he refuses to reveal her name. He reminds us of biographies by Seghers (fine) and Zucker (trash). The one worthwhile nugget in Zuckers books is the true height of the tenor (1 m 79) and not 6 feet 2 inches as Mr. Epstein and most Corellistis think. Mr. Epstein compares Toscas he saw and heard performed by Tebaldi and Callas (return to the Met in 1965) and while he admires the former in 1964 he was not happy with the latter’s one year later: small and unsteady voice. He is even too positive for the strident wobble Callas’ voice had become since the mid-fifties. My late friend Richard Soper (author of “Belgian Opera Houses and Belgian Opera Singers) was a ship captain in the Mediterranean and heard her in Naples in 1949 and 1951. He became CEO of Sea link and a patron of the Met and the New York City Opera. He told me her voice during her New York performances of  1956  was not half the one he remembered. By the way, Mr. Epstein thinks Onassis contributed to Callas’s decline. On the contrary I think. I she had not met the Greek and forsaken a full career, by 1960 she probably wouldn’t have been able to utter a single sound.

The second half of the book is devoted to musicals and straight theatre. Once more I fully agree with Mr. Epstein’s love for (classical) musicals and one can only envy him he saw so many. In Europe we have to do with recordings and lucky we are with many complete and well sung performances (recently a brilliant one of Carrousel) but they are not a full substitute for the performances the author saw on Broadway. The older I get the more I admire Kern, Rodgers, Porter etc. and the less difference of quality I think there is between them and Puccini and Verdi. The chapters Epstein devotes to the many plays and actors he saw are less interesting for Europeans.

So far so good and then we find three flies in the ointment. The book is published by a commercial editor and he insisted Mr. Epstein notes a relevant entry on youtube every few lines he discusses a singer. It doesn’t make for easy reading. Moreover in an appendix you get these entries once more. As publishers for this stuff are almost impossible to find these days Mr. Epstein had to comply. Even worse are the many typos to be found. Ever heard of composers Masanet, Spontint, conductors Bohm and Molinai-Pradelli, singers Udavich, Triegle and Rysenek etc. etc. ? Mr. Epstein didn’t get a second proof reading of his manuscript but even then an opera lover shouldn’t have written such mistakes in a first draft. The last fly belongs to American culture wars. I think the use of Black with a capital B is racist and people don’t have to make excuses for sins of their great grandfathers. Of course the book was written at the height of woke fascism when everybody who didn’t comply to their disgusting feelings of moral superiority was cancelled and I understand finding a publisher in New York requires some sacrifices. Still that shouldn’t have led to mistakes as the author showing his regret Paul Robeson (Epstein writes “Robson” all the time) never sang Boris Godunov. Robeson never singing an operatic role was his own choice and had nothing to do with racism. His best biographer Martin Duberman tells us the singer fled to London at the idea of studying the music of Porgy and Bess. Robeson just wanted to sing songs and ballads and was too lazy (his wife’s words) to study less popular and more difficult music.

Jan Neckers, January 2025

Click here to listen to an interview of the author at age……17 !!

ITALIAN OPERA SINGING AT THE TIME OF VERISMO;

The invention of the modern voice by BARBARA GENTILE

2024    180 pp

ISBN 978 1 83765 0781

Click here to order the book with a 35 % reduction !!!!

In spite of some caveats this is a unique and in some ways even a brilliant attractive hard cover book. There have been books written about verismo before but none of them go into the fully detailed and in-depth analysis as in this book by Barbara Gentili.

In the decades that span the turn of the twentieth century, the Italian tradition of operatic singing became ‘modern’ is the main starting point of the author. Gentili “identifies and explores the formative elements of this multifaceted ‘modernity’, and its connections with the emergence of verismo, a realistic trend that affected every aspect of creative and intellectual life in fin-de-siècle Italy. This novel approach to artistic representation meant that singers had to redefine the operatic voice, exchanging the bel canto ideal of ‘pure’ vocal quality with an irreversible gendered connotation and an erotically charged expressive force. Pivotal to this shift was the gradual development of a homogeneous vocal color through the compass, an aesthetic principle that was alien to the voice culture of the previous centuries.”

What certainly is new to the study of verismo is the author’s comparative analysis of early vocal recordings and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vocal methods.

Recordings mainly by singers particularly associated with verismo composers are discussed and compared. Along the book’s five chapters singers like Nellie Melba and Emma Carelli (chapter 3) are juxtaposed demonstrating artists who adhered to or disavowed the ‘traditional’ rules that they were taught. Likewise for Mattia Battistini and Titta Ruffo.

In the following two chapters tenors Enrico Caruso, Giovanni Zenatello and Alessandro Bonci are compared in order to illustrate the different approaches  with which these singers joined the registers for instance. Chapter five deals with the ‘verismo’ soprano a new category embodied by both Emma Carelli and Eugenia Burzio. By far the best chapter.

All 45 recordings talked about can be accessed on the book’s webpage not under the “related content” tab as written in the book but simply by clicking on the “music and blog post”.

Now to the caveats : a first one is that an elementary knowledge of music (solfège, vocal terminology) is needed to fully capture what is being discussed.

Regrettably this book is not written for the opera/voice lover and/or record collector. For that the book has too much of a university thesis aura about it. It’s far too academic for the music lover in general to enjoy and I have the strong impression this book is solely aimed at scholars and students of opera history as the book’s blurb rightly states.

I also have a problem with the author’s overestimating the influence of the verismo genre and its historical singers on the evolution of singing. Gentili also ignores the utmost importance the invention of the gramophone had on singing. She also totally neglects the Russian school of singing for instance where the influence of verismo was rather limited but even in Italy there were opera artists who were not ‘contaminated’ by the ‘verismo school’ Giacomo Lauri-Volpi is a case in point.

To Gentili’s credit only a few typos/mistakes crept into the narrative. The author constantly refers to “I Pagliacci” while the correct title of the opera is “Pagliacci”. The correct spelling of the tenor role in Aida is Radamès not Rhadames or Radames, the author of The Grand Tradition is John Steane (not Stean) and sometimes ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ is spelled as “Una furtiva lacrima”.

The book contains 8 photographs but the photo captions limit themselves to the identification of the artist and the origin of the photo only. Yet the Battistini photo is remarkable because it  is dedicated to Emma Nevada, a Marchesi student. Same for the Zenatello photo which is dedicated to the renowned Dutch author, music critic and record collector Leo Riemens.

Above all this book is the result of dedication, perseverance and passion for its subject. This can be read on every page and in every word. The book in spite of its shortcomings complements our history of the operatic art form around the beginning of the 20^th century.

Rudi van den Bulck, December 2024

“If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.” (Luciano Pavarotti)

From the age of twelve I was a regular attendee of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Opera aka the K.V.O. (Royal Flemish Opera) in Antwerp. In the early seventies it was still an ensemble theater. Performances were still given in the vernacular and one was still able to cast every opera with Flemish singers. A world now gone with the wind and which has been replaced by activist woke managers.

In my youth the K.V.O. brought about 205 opera/operetta performances each season spread over 31 (!!) different works. A look at the  2024-2025 season results in 32 (!!) performances -in Antwerp- spread over 6 works. Need one say more?  Operetta has disappeared and the current director excels through countless side events that turns the house into a “cultural center” instead of focusing on its core task which is to present opera.

One of the stalwarts of the “old” house was the legendary children’s chorus founded and led by Mia Vinck.

It all started in 1966. Mia Vinck at that time a “Solfège” teacher at the Antwerp Conservatory suggested to director Renaat Verbruggen to form a children’s chorus. Previous attempts at the theatre were mostly a hit or miss affaire for various reasons. Verbruggen ever the professional agreed and the debut of the chorus in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel was an enormous success. Initially the chorus was named “K.V.O. kinderkoor” yet a few seasons later it was renamed “Kinderkoor Mia Vinck”. This enabled the chorus to appear with other companies as well. Thus Mrs. Vinck and her chorus also appeared in various operas at the Brussels Muntschouwburg under Maurice Huisman. Fond memories she also has of the late Gerard Mortier who invited the chorus for appearances in Janacek’s Cunning little Vixen, Boris Godunov, Pelléas et Mélisande and seven concert performances of Boito’s Mefistofele with José van Dam in the lead conducted by the then already ill Emil Tchakarov. Mia Vinck also provided the “three boys” for Mozart’s Zauberflöte under Sylvain Cambreling (1990).

Mia Vinck was born in Antwerp (6 February 1930) into a musical family. Her mother was a “Solfège” teacher at the Antwerp conservatory and from the age of nine Mia Vinck studied with her, later she would also study the piano (First prize!) and singing with Irma Van Dijck (who also taught Alice van Haaren and Mia Ceuppens) and subsequently with Dutch baritone Willem Ravelli (Hoger Diploma voor Zang) and the Brussels tenor Frans Mertens.

Soon the piano made room for singing and as a light lyric soprano she started to sing in various recitals, concerts and masses. In 1958 at the Brussels Expo she was selected for a masterclass with Eric Werba in the Austrian pavilion. “Eine hupsche Stimme” exclaimed the famous accompanist .

 Before too long she also appeared at the Belgian Radio and Television and for a while she was  a member of the Antwerp Chamber Opera (1960-1965). From 1965 -1970 she also sang as soprano soloist with Safford Cape’s Pro Musica Antiqua. At the K.V.O. she made her debut as Ortlinde in Wagner’s Walkuere and in 1968 she appeared as Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicci under Luigi Martelli. During the same performance of Puccini’s Trittico she also sang the pair of lovers with Kamiel Lampaert  in Tabarro.

Mrs. Vinck also gave many Lieder recitals (kunstavonden), sang in Bach’s 3 oratorio (Mattheus, Marcus, Johannes) and his Weihnachtsoratorium. Her concert repertoire also included Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, die Jahreszeiten and The Seven last Words of Christ.

After the Trittico performances her stage career ended and she totally focused on her teaching career at the Antwerp conservatory and her chorus. Vinck achieved with her choir something which was never equaled since or probably will be.

Her “children” were praised for their musicality and sense of rhythm. Another major asset praised by many a music critic in those days were the excellent enunciation not only in Dutch but in various other languages.

Rehearsals are the absolute core basis for a children’s choir, according to Mrs. Vinck. Here the children learn to sing: diction and sound formation, both individually and above all in group: the holy choral sound.

She taught them not only music but especially to be musical in phrasing and intonation. Due to the great diversity, a lot is involved: knowledge of the orchestra, dramatic tensions, a sense of measure and proportion, but also patience and willpower.

Mia Vinck also coached several of her choir members for specific “solo” roles  at the Muntschouwburg and abroad.

“Het Kinderkoor Mia Vinck” ceased to exist in 1991 after a dispute with Silvio Varviso during the rehearsals for Tosca where the maestro proved himself less aimable as most people took him for. Soon after a request from the Monnaie/Muntschouwburg to form a chorus at the house was offered but declined by Vinck.

Several of her children continued to make a career in music such as the harpsichordist Herman Stinders, the famous guitarist Rafaëlla Smits, Jazz musician Bert Joris, the harpist Annemie Neuhard, Cristel en Griet De Meulder (singing), the cellist and conductor Stijn Saveniers, Kathleen Segers (singing), Joost Cuypers (cello teacher), Cecilia Crabeels (Flemish radio employee and actress), David De Groodt (guitar teacher), Pieter Bergé (musicologist), An Engels (cello), Bart Meynkens (piano), Nicole Van der Veken (actress and singing) and choir conductor and teacher Luc Anthonis, Bert Helsen (bassoon player Belgian National Orchestra), and Koen Van Asche (carillon player and principal of the Mechelen carillon school).

Conductors Mia Vinck appeared with are in alphabetical order

Sylvain Cambreling

Safford Cape

Frans Cauwenberghs

Frits Celis

Willy Claes

Walter Crabeels

Frans Cuypers

August Delhaye

Lodewijk De Vocht

Frans Dubois

Jacques Maertens

Ernest Maes

Luigi Martelli

Gaston Nuyts

Walter Proost

Edmond Saveniers

Michael Schönwandt

Emile Tchakarov

Fernand Terby

Mikis Theodorakis

Dirk Vaerendonck

Silveer Van den Broeck

Rudolf Werthen

Ronald Zollman

DISCOGRAPHY

• De Wind en de Cijfertjes , kindermusical , LP Inelco
• “De wereld in” and “Van Rijswijckcantate” by Peter Benoit LP Inelco
• “Koning Tijd en de Seizoenen” kindermusical, LP Van In
• “De Blauwe Olifant”, kinderliederen LP BRT
• “De Witte”, musical LP Cera bank
• “Kerstliederen” with I Fiamminghi conducted by Rudolf Werthen  CD
• Mia Vinck zingt Benoit  LP EMI   

“There is music in every child. The teacher’s job is to find it and nurture it.” Thus the famous piano pedagogue Frances Clark. A task Mia Vinck was born for and which she accomplished summa cum laude much to the gratitude of the public, ‘her children’, the parents, and the compiler of this tribute.

by Dr. Frieder Weissmann

When I left Cuba, the famous symphony of Havana, which had 16 first violins, 16 second violins, and all the woodwinds and brasses one could ever dream of, was stil going strong. That same year, however the excellent first viola, Granat* (who is now with the Philadelphia orchestra) and the equally famous first cellist, Odnoposoff (who is now in Mexico) had both already left…. Why I too left such a splendid orchestra, readers will surely understand that I cannot discuss here and now!

It had been one of my dreams, since 1949, to conduct that very orchestra and I had succeeded in realizing it. It was a glorious; exciting, and happy time for four years. But alas, during 1953, general conditions deteriorated and although the conductor always received his full pay, quite often the men did not get theirs.

Anyway, in 1954 I left, and have not chosen to return since, although I had been announced with – amongst others- Erich Kleiber (whose assistant I once was at the Berlin State Opera at the start of my career). I was hoping and waiting for a more favorable turn of events to call me back, but that turn of course never came.

Igor Markevitch came to Havana for a short while, but the shadows which had fallen over everything quickly deepened, and the checkered career of the orchestra – as always in the wake of any political upheaval- ran its course.** By now the main first instrumentalists had left, some for the US, some for Latin America. Today they have in Havana the Orquesta Simfonica Nacional, which is in the hands of the conductor Mandici***, who was already a devout communist when he was conducting at C.M.Q., the famous Havana radio station. I have heard that there is a full season, but it does not seem to amount to anything of musical value. That beautiful, ambitious and -especially in the strings- fantastically sensuous sounding orchestra went the way everything went in Cuba. How can such things happen?

Since I left I have been mostly in Europe and -after some guest conducting in Berlin with the Philharmonic (an old friend) – at the Munich Festivals and also in Belgium and Holland. I chose to live most of the year in Italy where, from Milan to Sicily via Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples, I have found the orchestras which come closest to that marvelous sound of the Havana orchestra. A sound which I can not get out of my ears! And indeed there must be something to it, since all the famous conductors of the United States chose to return again and again to Havana : men like Koussevitsky, Stokowski, Ormandy, Monteux, and also for years Herbert von Karajan…they all came, and they loved it.

But the Italian orchestras too are superior ones, playing together as they do, the whole year. They have also – as I have just said- that mysterious uplift, that full vibrant sound, that incredible way of “going along” with a conductor, even if he conducts practically only with his eyes…just as the Havana orchestra had!

And so, longing still for Havana – for the recreation of past musical beauty my activity for the moment is guest-conducting…and that I do all over the map.

Notes

*J. Wolfgang Granat (1918–1998) 

** DIRECTORS of the Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana (1924-1958)

Guest conductors

*** spelling error of Weissmann, correct name is Enrique González Mántici (1912-1974)