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Melodie
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Joined: 01 Mar 2003
Posts: 1516
Location: Massachusetts
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 Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 8:00 pm Post subject: BUGS BUNNY AN APT SALESMAN FOR VANCOUVER OPERA |
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HAH!! Can I pick 'em, or what!!?? 8)
Bugs Bunny an apt salesman for Vancouver Opera
WILLIAM LITTLER
VANCOUVER—"How doooooo! Welcome to my shop. Let me cut your mop. Let me shave your crop!"
Sound familiar? Then you are one of those lucky mortals enriched by exposure to one of the rib-ticklingest of Warner Bros. cartoons, The Rabbit Of Seville, starring the legendary Bugs Bunny as the tonsorially devoted Spanish hare.
It might seem a hare-brained notion to introduce a production of Gioacchino Rossini's comic opera masterpiece The Barber Of Seville with reference to this irreverent reel of celluloid, but Doug Tuck, communications manager for Vancouver Opera, did so unashamedly in a recent newsletter sent to his company's subscribers.
Equally unashamedly, the company sent out a cartoon version of the opera to its growing Chinese-language public, and included a Chinese translation of the plot by Grace Koo Kief in the program handed out at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
You might call this missionary work. From a company with a million-dollar debt, teetering a few years ago on the brink of bankruptcy, Vancouver Opera has transformed itself into a debt-free, community-conscious, grassroots purveyor of an art form once associated with social elitism and a disdain for everything Bugs Bunny stood for.
As the company's newsletter makes clear, Bugs and Gioacchino really stood for the same thing: entertainment. There are those of us who would argue that Rossini stood for something more, but on an entry level, comic opera seeks to entertain, much as Warner Brothers' carrot-loving Lepus cuniculus sought to entertain.
Leacock humour medal-winning CBC radio personality Bill Richardson said as much in the free public forum over which he presided at the Vancouver Public Library, several days prior to opening night. The forum was part of an Opera Speaks series, caffeinated by the Vancouver Opera Guild and designed to de-mythologize the art form for newcomers.
There was also a Load-in Breakfast on the Queen Elizabeth Theatre stage at which the corporate community was invited to learn about the benefits of sponsorship while viewing the stylish Spanish hacienda built to house Rossini's opera. The hacienda, by the way, was designed by John Stoddart and rented from the Canadian Opera Company (the costumes, also Torontonian in origin, came from Malabar).
When the curtain finally rose over that hacienda, it was operatic business as usual. Leslie Uyeda conducted the Vancouver Opera Orchestra (along with the Canadian Opera Company's, the only independent full-scale opera orchestra in Canada) and Elizabeth Bachman directed a well-chosen cast in a full-scale, traditional production of a kind to be seen in a number of medium-to-large cities on this continent.
Standing in for Bugs, baritone Brett Polegato made a superior barber, able to accompany Count Almaviva (tenor John Tessier) on his own guitar. Why Polegato isn't a regular fixture on the operatic stages of his own country (his last appearances here reportedly date back four years) is difficult to imagine.
Luckily, the production's Rosina, the vivacious Tracy Dahl, has become a regular on those Polegato-free stages. Rossini intended his heroine to be a mezzo-soprano but in a cast little inclined to add much bel canto ornamentation to the music, her agile coloratura soprano made a welcome statement of style.
And yet, it wasn't the work of these singers or the overall level of the production, so much as the production's context that made this Barber Of Seville so interesting. Opera in Vancouver is democratic and community-oriented, with a commitment to service that has made its educational activities among the most extensive for an arts enterprise of its size ($6.5 million annual budget) in the country.
Currently, the company is working with 14 school districts, exposing between 30,000 and 40,000 children a year to the art form. Its curriculum-based Music! Words! Opera! program even has the youngsters creating their own operas.
Why so much attention to the grassroots? In part because Vancouver's demographics are changing, with much of its new population coming from the Far East rather than from countries with a European-based culture.
David Gockley, general director of Houston Opera, once told me that when he came to Texas, the state's opera capital was San Antonio. But San Antonio Opera failed to adapt to the increasingly Hispanic character of the city. Today the company no longer exists.
Gockley did not make the same mistake in Houston. And James Wright, his counterpart in Canada's third city, is obviously determined not to make it in Vancouver.
"We have to show the relevance of the art form to 21st-century Vancouver," Wright says. "And to help us we have a Pacific Rim Initiative, an advisory panel to indicate how this company can serve this community.
"Vancouver is the new Venice, halfway between Europe and Asia. We are not just going to do (Puccini's) Madama Butterfly next fall. We are mounting a project called Visions of Japan, using the opera as a focus for examining East-West issues."
Opera, in other words, needs to connect with society at large if it is to remain relevant to society. Bugs Bunny understood that. So, it would appear, does Vancouver Opera.
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FROM THE TORONTO STAR:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c;=Article&cid;=1071746593331&call;_pageid=968867495754&col;=969483191630 |
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Scarpia
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Posts: 27
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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FROM THE TORONTO STAR:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071746593331&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630[/quote]
| Melodie wrote: | HAH!! Can I pick 'em, or what!!?? 8)
Bugs Bunny an apt salesman for Vancouver Opera
WILLIAM LITTLER
VANCOUVER—"How doooooo! Welcome to my shop. Let me cut your mop. Let me shave your crop!"
Sound familiar? Then you are one of those lucky mortals enriched by exposure to one of the rib-ticklingest of Warner Bros. cartoons, The Rabbit Of Seville, starring the legendary Bugs Bunny as the tonsorially devoted Spanish hare.
It might seem a hare-brained notion to introduce a production of Gioacchino Rossini's comic opera masterpiece The Barber Of Seville with reference to this irreverent reel of celluloid, but Doug Tuck, communications manager for Vancouver Opera, did so unashamedly in a recent newsletter sent to his company's subscribers. |
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I don't care what William Littler or the Vancouver Opera Association's press agents say. The truth is that the VOA, as it is presently constituted, provides merely an "unashamedly" watered down version of what opera used to be like in Vancouver. Perhaps Mr. Littler's memory, and those of the current VOA board, do not go back as far as mine does.
My opera-going began when I was a child. Back then I used money from delivering newspapers to attend performances by the Vancouver Opera Association and other arts organizations. Tickets cost about $6.00. At the time Irving Guttman was Artistic Director of the VOA, and he had an uncanny ability to select talented singers who were already stars or were on the rise. He also assembled excellent productions. Both qualities are sadly missing in the Vancouver Opera of today.
The most formative experience for me occurred a year after I began going to the opera. During the first season I attended (1962-3), I'd enjoyed a fine production of Verdi's "Rigoletto," starring the American soprano, Reri Grist, and the Metropolitan Opera tenor, John Alexander. You can hear her lovely voice on the Original Broadway Cast recording of "West Side Story," while his superb singing is still available on some CDs that remain in the catalogue.
But the next season, 1963-4, brought an extraordinary revelation of what a thrilling experience opera can be. In November 1963 the VOA presented the great Australian soprano, Dame Joan Sutherland, in Vincenzo Bellini's lyric tragedy and acknowledged masterpiece, "Norma." It was Dame Joan's debut in the title role, and she dazzled Vancouver audiences with her brilliant coloratura and her beautiful yet heroic voice. Her performance of "Casta Diva" was spellbinding.
She was accompanied by a mezzo soprano who had previously sung in Europe but was little known at the time in North America. Her name was Marilyn Horne, and she was then a protege of Sutherland and her husband Richard Bonynge, who also conducted the opera. Their duets brought down the house, and they made me an opera fan for life.
Altogether, it was a triumph for Vancouver and one of the most unforgettable experiences I've ever had in the theatre. The principal artists from this production later appeared in a Decca/London recording of "Norma" that is still available.
The next year Ms. Horne became a major star when she and Joan Sutherland appeared in a fabulous production of Rossini's "Semiramide" at the Chicago Lyric Opera, which Time Magazine raved about. Yet both of these divas continued to perform periodically in Vancouver: Dame Joan in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Lucrezia Borgia," in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and in other works; Ms. Horne in Rossini's "The Italian Girl in Algiers" and Verdi's "Il Trovatore."
"Norma" was therefore just the beginning of a feast for opera-goers that continued during the golden years of the VOA. Among the other great artists we saw were Regina Resnik and Norman Treigle in Bizet's "Carmen," Dorothy Kirsten and Richard Cassily in Puccini's "The Girl of the Golden West," and two leading Italian sopranos: Mietta Siegele as Cio Cio San in Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" and Virginia Zeani as Violetta in Verdi's "La Traviata"--roles they were famous for. The VOA also presented both Sutherland and Renata Tebaldi in concerts.
Perhaps the most sensational new arrival was Placido Domingo in Puccini's "Tosca." His singing of "Vittoria!" and "E Lucevan le Stelle" brought down the house, and he subsequently returned as Des Grieux in Massenet's "Manon." A year or two later he made his debut at the Met and became the superstar tenor he's been to this day. But Vancouverites were fortunate to see and hear him in his youthful prime and on his way up the international operatic ladder.
Since those great years from 1962 to the early 1980s The Vancouver Opera has fallen far below the artistic standards that Irving Guttman had established. Several years ago I attended a VOA travesty of Verdi's "Rigoletto" that was by far the worst production of anything that I have seen in more than 40 years of opera-going. The tenor was hoarse, with precarious high notes; the baritone's voice sounded like the unloading of a gravel truck; and the soprano was consistently off pitch.
None of them could act, which was especially unfortunate because the so-called director's "concept" called for a minimalist staging and invisible walls, which everyone habitually walked through. The conductor and orchestra scrambled to keep up with the wayward vocalists. The ticket price for this grotesquerie was $55.00.
Needless to say, I have not wasted any more money on a Vancouver Opera production since then. Comments I've heard from fellow opera fans have done nothing to change my mind. They've laughed at the VOA's attempts to present operas by Richard Strauss with an "orchestra" of 70 odd players. (Vancouver no longer has a symphony orchestra large enough to do justice to late romantic music; mismanagement has reduced it to a large chamber ensemble.)
Apparently the Vancouver Public no longer has enough taste to realize how bad things have become. Discerning opera fans, however, now head for Seattle, which has an excellent opera company and symphony orchestra.
As for the VOA, Bugs Bunny is probably an appropriate advertizing figure for a cartoon travesty of opera, but Mickey Mouse would be even more apt. The Vancouver Opera has been giving Mickey Mouse versions of great operatic works ever since they dumped Irving Guttman, the person who gave us outstanding lyric theatre for two decades.
My advice is: don't pay attention to William Littler or any other so-called "critics" (or schills). Above all, don't waste money on the VOA. Spend it more wisely elsewhere. The VOA doesn't "connect" with anybody any more. It may have "teetered on the brink" of financial bankruptcy "a few years ago," but it's been artistically bankrupt for twenty years.
Doug McCallum,
research historian and author of
"Vancouver's Orpheum: The Life of a Theatre"
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"If music be the food of love, play on"-Shakespeare. |
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Scarpia
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Posts: 27
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Scarpia wrote: | I don't care what William Littler or the Vancouver Opera Association's press agents say. The truth is that the VOA, as it is presently constituted, provides merely an "unashamedly" watered down version of what opera used to be like in Vancouver. Perhaps Mr. Littler's memory, and those of the current VOA board, do not go back as far as mine does. . . .
My advice is: don't pay attention to William Littler or any other so-called "critics" (or schills). Above all, don't waste money on the VOA. Spend it more wisely elsewhere. The VOA doesn't "connect" with anybody any more. It may have "teetered on the brink" of financial bankruptcy "a few years ago," but it's been artistically bankrupt for twenty years.
Doug McCallum,
research historian and author of
"Vancouver's Orpheum: The Life of a Theatre" |
Well, it's been well over a week since I posted the above critique of the Vancouver Opera and its Bugs Bunny ad campaign (!!!), so I guess it's safe to assume that the VOA doesn't feel like offering a rebuttal. I think we can consider this "case closed." To those living in the Pacific Northwest: if you want to see good opera, try Seattle or Portland.
_________________
"If music be the food of love, play on"-Shakespeare. |
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Willma
Joined: 07 Mar 2003
Posts: 804
Location: Boston
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:38 am Post subject: |
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| Scarpia wrote: |
My advice is: don't pay attention to William Littler or any other so-called "critics" (or schills). Above all, don't waste money on the VOA. Spend it more wisely elsewhere. The VOA doesn't "connect" with anybody any more. It may have "teetered on the brink" of financial bankruptcy "a few years ago," but it's been artistically bankrupt for twenty years.
Well, it's been well over a week since I posted the above critique of the Vancouver Opera and its Bugs Bunny ad campaign (!!!), so I guess it's safe to assume that the VOA doesn't feel like offering a rebuttal. |
What IS your advice - to pay attention to you? They haven't offered you a rebuttal? Why should they? You don't deserve it. It seems to me that the VOA is trying to connect with real people - exactly the point you fail to grasp. They're running their operation in the black so they must be doing something right.
Perhaps a better spokesman in your mind would be Miss Piggy. After all, she's got the looks and the attitude that has been associated with opera for years. Bugs is definitely friendly which puts him at odds with the opera crowd.
Well, it seems I'm not the only person who has problems with your view of the world - or your style! Glad I checked this out!
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Although, in his life, he was often called the imbecile from Illinois, history has proven otherwise. |
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Scarpia
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Posts: 27
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Willma wrote: |
What IS your advice - to pay attention to you? They haven't offered you a rebuttal? Why should they? You don't deserve it. It seems to me that the VOA is trying to connect with real people - exactly the point you fail to grasp. They're running their operation in the black so they must be doing something right.
Perhaps a better spokesman in your mind would be Miss Piggy. After all, she's got the looks and the attitude that has been associated with opera for years. Bugs is definitely friendly which puts him at odds with the opera crowd."
Well, it seems I'm not the only person who has problems with your view of the world - or your style! Glad I checked this out! |
Well, Willma, you really are on a rampage, aren't you? And it seems that I'm the latest victim that you've decided to pester by jumping on your various hobby horses and neighing at me.
What you wrote here is just silly. You make no rational effort to understand what other people write before you fly off the handle and into one of your uncomprehending fulminations.
"What IS your advice - to pay attention to you?" My advice was obvious to anyone but you. People should pay attention to it because I started going to the Vancouver Opera from its inception and for more than 25 years after that. For most of those years I was a regular season subscriber and a member of the Opera Guild. Anyhow, they don't have to take my advice. They're free to waste their money if that's what they want to do.
When were you ever in Vancouver, Willma? How many VOA productions have you seen? Which ones did you see, and when did you see them? Hell, I know perfectly well that you've never seen any of them. Yet you claim to know more about the subject than I do!
BTW, you go on and on elswhere about the decline of the Boston Opera and then project that jaundiced outlook on the rest of the world, and yet you have the nerve to cavil at what you think is my "view of the world." That's hypocrisy, Willma. So, tell me, what support did you give to opera in Boston, compared to the 25 years of support and membership I gave to the VOA?
Give me a list of the productions you attended. In fact, give me a list of all the opera performances you've ever attended anywhere, and I'll give you my list. Wait a minute; let's go further. Give me another list of the opera recordings you own, the books on opera you've read, and anything else you can think of that pertains directly to opera. In return I'll give you my corresponding lists. But I'll bet that your lists will be very short, if not non-existent.
"It seems to me that the VOA is trying to connect with real people - exactly the point you fail to grasp." No, Willma, I didn't fail to grasp any point. I said, on the contrary, that the VOA is precisely not connecting with people. BTW, how do you define "real people?" As opposed to what exactly? Unreal people? And who are they?
"They're running their operation in the black so they must be doing something right." Opera isn't a business; it never has been, never will be. The purpose of any opera company is not to operate "in the black"--even the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala and the other great opera houses of the world have never done so, nor do they do so now. Opera Houses are not commercial enterprises, but artistic institutions.
Their purpose is to present great operas at the highest possible artistic standards and to appeal to the highest possible aesthetic sensibilities, while covering their costs through a combination of box office receipts, government grants and corporate subsidies. That's how every great opera company functions. They're not supposed to make a profit. They're supposed to create art.
My point was that the VOA is doing just the opposite. Business concerns now outweigh artistic ones. They present the lowest possible quality and appeal to the lowest common denominator. They cut corners to "stay in the black," while ripping off ticket buyers. The true opera fans have deserted the VOA, as I previously mentioned, and they look for quality productions in other cities, as I have done. Like other cultural organizations, The Vancouver Opera employs highly paid "fundraisers." Those people are obviously not doing their job the way that their counterparts in other, better opera companies are doing theirs.
Bad standards of production may get by for a while, by taking in a lot of uninformed people, who think that this is as good as opera can be. But in the long run they will become bored and stay away. If they've been shown merely that opera can't be any better than the travesties that a bottom line, business as usual operation dictates, then they will eventually find some other form of entertainment that gives them a bigger bang for their buck.
"Perhaps a better spokesman in your mind would be Miss Piggy. After all, she's got the looks and the attitude that has been associated with opera for years. Bugs is definitely friendly which puts him at odds with the opera crowd."
Now, that paragraph is totally irrational, Willma, not to mention leaving yourself wide open to ridicule. Your association of Miss Piggy with millions of operagoers shows a disturbing amount of hostility toward those who keep opera alive by their support and enthusiasm for it. You seem to suggest that they're all pigs. You say that "Bugs is definitely friendly which puts him at odds with the opera crowd." Would you please explain how "being at odds with the opera crowd" will help the cause of opera?
Besides, here again you're just giving us another example of the chip on your shoulder regarding anyone who really enjoys opera. If you ever go to opera performances, which I doubt, what do you occupy yourself with? According to your own admission, I can only assume that you pay little attention to the performance, but instead sit there thinking dark thoughts about that nasty "opera crowd" around you, while glaring at them in the darkness of the theatre.
Saint Paul once wrote, "When I became a man I put away childish things." Well I couldn't help thinking about that when I first became interested in opera at the age of 12 and decided to put away comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. Much as I'd previously enjoyed them, I felt it was time to move on to something better. So I began listening to the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts instead. Unfortunately the VOA has not made the same decision. In fact, they want to regress to the point of turning opera into cartoons, as I observed in my initial response to their silly puff piece.
"Well, it seems I'm not the only person who has problems with your view of the world - or your style!" You are the only person who has those problems, Willma. There's nobody else posting on this thread!!! Except maybe in your fantasies.
Willma, we must now come to a parting of the ways, because, speaking of better things, I don't have any more time to waste in trying to talk sense to you. In another thread I told you I would no longer reply to your posts if you continued to impose your narrow-minded preoccupation with Boston on the rest of the planet. Now I'm just tired of even reading your posts on any subject whatsoever and will simply ignore them all in future. I will not reply to you again.
The harsh truth is that you don't show any real interest in opera, or any enjoyment or knowledge of it. You attack audiences for being like Miss Piggy and singers for being overweight. You attack other members of this forum for their opinions without offering any positive views or insights of your own. All I get from you is hostility and aggression.
Incidentally, I wonder why you and your musician friends prefer to sit around Boston complaining about your lot, instead of moving to some more culturally vital city, where there is some demand for performing artists. After all, when people decide to become musicians or actors, or opera singers they normally accept that they will have to lead a roving life. You might want to ask yourself the same question. If Boston is in such desperate straits, why do you stay there?
In any case, don't expect any further replies from me. Goodbye.
Doug 
_________________
"If music be the food of love, play on"-Shakespeare. |
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Willma
Joined: 07 Mar 2003
Posts: 804
Location: Boston
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| Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Scarpia wrote: |
want to do.
Give me a list of the productions you attended. In fact, give me a list of all the opera performances you've ever attended anywhere, and I'll give you my list. Wait a minute; let's go further. Give me another list of the opera recordings you own, the books on opera you've read, and anything else you can think of that pertains directly to opera. In return I'll give you my corresponding lists. But I'll bet that your lists will be very short, if not non-existent.
I wonder why you and your musician friends prefer to sit around Boston complaining about your lot, instead of moving to some more culturally vital city, where there is some demand for performing artists.
Doug |
Doug! Did you know that Charles Dickens was paid by the word? If only you had something to say, you'd be a wealthy man!!!
But, I must decline the list-off. It is far to - too - two (WHICH IS IT, DOUGY?) intimate an experience, the comparing of "lists" (How childish can you get!). Besides, I thought you didn't want anything to do with me - and I'm sure you don't. I think you just want to show your lists because you think you got big ones.
I stay in Boston because I like Boston and so does James Levine. Ever hear of him? Probably not - all caught up with writing reviews in the Vancouver News. Keep at it. I think you got those people snowed.
Money and art have a very close association. That's why the opera world is caving in and accepting Bocelli - because he's a money maker. He's a commercial success. What an oddity. He has a natural, non-operatic voice. I can't imagine any organization more aggressive then the MET in pursuit of money. They're worst than Jehovah Witnesses.
And let me tell you one final thing, dear boy. We don't use words like "crap" here. We're refined and know how to make a point without becoming crude.
I don't mind talking to you Doug - really. But life for me just isn't grand opera. Take it easy. Put down your pompoms. After all, you're dragging around big lists and they just might do you in - and then, the lights will go out in Vancouver.
_________________
Although, in his life, he was often called the imbecile from Illinois, history has proven otherwise. |
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