Friday leftover links

Sorry, I have run out of creative subject lines. Also sorry for all the edits, all links should work now, Blogger is stupid and changes them just to spite me.

• UPDATE: Rolando Villazón out of La Bohème at the Wiener Staatsoper.  Stephen Costello in (I saw him back at the Academy of Vocal Arts when I was in college, and thought he would be going places).  Too bad, but is anyone surprised?
• Jessica Duchen talks to Andris Nelsons and Vladimir Jurowski about Mahler in the Independent. I don’t agree with the lead’s (and Nelsons’s) suggestion that Mahler was initially misunderstood due to his time being insufficiently apocalyptic--painful birth of modernism, duh.  But Jurowski says some smart things.  BTW, it is Mahlerjahr and I’m about to move to Vienna. There’s a lot of Gustav in this blog’s future.  (Independent)
• Apparently Vice Magazine has sprouted a classical section.  Wait, what?  “Some major monster party boner jams on this sophomore effort by Big Boy Schumann. Serious brank-ass jimmy-hat jim-jams.” Or, “Ever see a fat kid jiggling down the sidewalk in a WHY BE NORMAL shirt and feel an overwhelming urge to pity-hug? Same deal here.”  That last one has to be the pithiest description of Havergal Brian I have ever read.  (Part of the “Anti-Music Issue.”)  (via Life’s a Pitch.)
• The Kurier has been doing a series on the past intendants of the Wiener Staatsoper.  The current entry deals with Karajan.  (Kurier, in German)
• Meanwhile, Die Presse talks to incoming intendant Dominique Meyer.  I’ll do an English roundup of what he’s saying before opening night, but I’m guessing this is just the first of many interviews. (Die Presse, in German)
• It’s August, here’s your funny cat video. (YouTube, Il Tabarro)

Jean-Louis Martinoty, Vienna’s new Mozart master

One of the odder features of Dominique Meyer’s first season at the Wiener Staatsoper is the programming of two new Mozart productions by Jean-Louis Martinoty, a French director, author and former director of the Opéra nationale de Paris (1986-9).  The operas are no less than both Le nozze di Figaro (in February) and Don Giovanni (in December). there are few operas closer to the Viennese opera public’s collective heart, so these will probably be a big deal.  I’d never heard of Martinoty before, it seems he has rarely directed outside France (a place I have spent woefully little time).  But that Figaro is already on DVD, and I found the (obscure) book.  Let’s take a look.

Bad CD Covers: Lied me down the garden path

I admit that whenever I listen to Die schöne Müllerin, I have great trouble imagining what the green-loving lady looks like.  Berlin Classics to the rescue!

I think they really captured it, don't you?  The frosty highlights are just right.  For the, uh, record, the singer on this CD is Siegfried Lorenz (not pictured).

Hyperion and Graham Johnson have done great services to lieder.  This cover photo encapsulates the mini-drama of a good lied, with more people than usual:

Jonathan Lemalu: First Maltman takes all of Opus 24, now he’s taking my light.
Mark Padmore:  I’m either  running a deeply crazy campaign to represent the fine state of Kentucky in the United States Senate or am about to break into Schumann’s WoO 121, you decide.
Christopher Maltman: I might be in the back, but check these dramatic shadows, ladies.
Jonathan Lemalu: Who said the dress code was blue shirts? 
Mark Padmore: Washington has no business deciding whether these songs should be known as WoO121 or Opus Posth. 121.  Or whether wearing the wrong color shirt would result in you being left in a bluish shadow.
Christopher Maltman: No such questions about my Opus 24.  Or my snazzy striped shirt.
Jonathan Lemalu: I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at over there anyways.

Elsewhere, Hyperion shows a charming literalism that demands their recordings be taken seriously:

"I recorded a CD of songs about death.  I should have seen this coming, dammit."

Simon Keenlyside is amused, but the other three are embarrassed.

I have uncovered evidence that the Met is doing looks-based casting:

...when hiring for Wozzeck.

“They had a nasty fight regarding the augmented sixth in 'Der Doppelgänger.' It was all we could do just to get them to record 'Die Taubenpost,' much do a photo shoot together.” (Just forget the "live" part, please.)

Many things can make one melancholy:

I suppose accidentally sticking one’s finger into an electrical outlet would be one of them.  Another would be getting stuck with this photo on one's album cover.

Oooo, look, a Szymanowski CD!

Um... errrr.... OK.  The Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess are involved here, I hope?  Please tell me they are.

In the next installment we will consider the higher budgets and bigger egos of the aria CD.

Note:  This has been done several times before, with some spectacularly tacky examples on Too Many Tristans and hilarious captions on Proper Discord.  I’ve tried not to reproduce any of their finds.

Cover connoisseurs are advised to also check out The Book Cover Archive and Awful Library Books.

More interesting things to read

I swear I’m going to write something soon. I’ve been busy arguing on the Internet. I am not usually one to do this, but it seems that this week that is changing, as we have had a somewhat heated discussion in the Tommasini post below and a quite fun one over at Parterre regarding the tantalizing prospect of a Prince Igor at the Met directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. Though I’m beginning to wish that Parterre allowed footnotes in the comments section.

Ack, some of these links aren't working right.  They should be fixed, but let me know in the comments if they don't go where they should.

• Met tickets go on sale at noon tomorrow (Sunday, August 15). Here is my season preview, if you missed it.
• And Opernwelt has a giant list of new productions from everywhere. Not complete but there’s a lot on it. Any recommendations?
• No one can agree about the new Daniele Gatti-Nikolaus Lehnhoff Elektra at the Salzburg Festival. The FAZ liked it, Die Presse didn't, the Kurier really liked it, the Salzburger Nachrichten really didn’t.  You can listen to it on ORF on Saturday, August 21.
• Except for Tommasini, no one seems to like Salzburg’s Lulu. In English, bloggers Opera Cake and Out West Arts were both disappointed.
• What is the worst recording ever made? Alex Ross proposes, others respond.
• On the other hand, I am psyched at the prospect of  a CD of Slavic arias from Piotr Beczala. He’s great and this is a neat program (Tchaikovsky and Smetana but also Moniuszko and Arensky) that makes me wonder why I’ve never heard of a pan-Slavic recital before. If you put Queen of Spades and Rusalka on the same CD, I’ll buy it no matter who’s doing the singing, but Beczala’s one of the best. No US release date yet.
• Turns out both of my favorite tenors have new CDs, here’s a video trailer for Jonas Kaufmann’s upcoming verismo album. Probably won’t be the most Italianate of Italian aria CDs to ever happen, but I want to hear it anyways.  There will be awesome decrescendos.
• Still wishing you were at the Salzburg Festival?  Maybe you'll feel better you aren't once you see what people wear there. All sorts of crimes of fashion, ranging from sassy to dull to eye-searing, are documented at extraordinary length here. There are formal drindls, of course.