美国歌剧
与其说“美国歌剧”,倒不如说“歌剧在美国”来得适宜。因为我们必须承认,
美国的移植推广外国歌剧方面相当成功,但却缺少本土创作的作品,这是非常使
人惋惜的事。而且在这方面,美国同英国的情形颇为相似。因此有不少人怀疑盎
格鲁*撒克逊人的天才,为何没有在古典乐剧上得到发挥的机会?自从进入二十
世纪以来,纽约业已成为世界音乐的中心,无论是歌剧或交响乐,以及其他各方
面都是如此。但由于美国人自己尚未创作出一部特别像样的大歌剧出来,所以他
们很自然地要引进欧洲的艺术音乐,企求能获得灵感和启发;其最早的例证之一
便是独立宣言签字人霍普金森(F. Hopkinson)所写的一章圣乐,这篇名为
《米涅瓦的庙宇》(The Temple of Minerva)的乐剧之编制,原是纪念法国对
美国革命初期的盟谊和帮助。当该剧于一七八一年演出时,华盛顿将军夫妇及法
国公使夫妇同是听众。
其后数年,华盛顿担任总统期间,一部以本土坦慕尼(Tammany)为题材的民谣
歌剧,由休伊特(J. Hewitt)写作成功,并于一七九四年在纽约的老约翰戏院
上演。这个时期还有两件其他作品,而这两部歌剧都是由外国人谱曲。当时外国
的歌剧团,已来到美国沿海各大城市作旅行演出。一八一零年,大型歌剧团队已
在新奥尔良扎根。弗赖伊(W.F.Fry 1813-1864)的歌剧《莱奥诺拉》(Leonora)
,被公认为是美国土生的第一部歌剧。这部歌剧于一八四五年根据布尔沃李顿(
Bulwer-Lytton)所写的剧本《里昂夫人》谱成,同年六月四日在费城栗树街剧
院演出;弗赖伊非常尊重外国的传统习惯,允将其作品译成意大利文,于一八五
八年在纽约乐府歌剧院再度演出,另一作品《巴黎夫人》是根据雨果的故事写成
。
直至一八五五年才欣然看见一篇真正的美国本地作品问世,那便是布里斯托(G.
F. Bistow)所写的《温克尔》(Rip Van Windle),在美国的尼布罗花园剧
院演出,历时一个月,叫座不衰。于此可见美国人是如何企盼由自己创作的歌剧
。尽管美国人南非要本国的歌剧,然而在四十年内,仍旧一筹展。此后始有沃尔
特*丹姆罗希歌剧团所演的他本人编制的《红字》一剧。丹姆罗希生于一八六二
年,殁于一九五零年,可算是此一新时代中的施洗者。丹姆罗希一生作曲、指挥
、译述以及作演出人,直至七、八十岁,其事业仍未衰竭。
乐府歌剧院,继续对外国作品大开方便之门,对本国作品则摇头叹息,弗赖伊的
《莱奥诺拉》一剧之所以获准在该院演唱,乃因译成意大利文来唱的原故。大都
会歌院剧的门户亦于一九九三年敞开,多年之内,仍维持此传统。就另一方面而
言,美国的歌剧演员多半在国外接受训练,故表演歌剧,一切作法、演唱等仍根
据欧洲制度,其所以如此,还是因美国欠缺歌剧作曲的人才,因而对外国歌剧近
乎于盲目崇拜。
一九一零年,纽约乐府歌剧院始被说服,演出了康弗斯(F.S. Converse)创作
的独幕剧《欲望之笛》(The Pipe of Desire),另一作品《舍命记》(The
Sacrifice),以加利弗尼亚为主题。于次年在波士顿公演,同年赫伯特(V.
Herbert)的一剧《纳托马》,先后于费城、纽约相继演出,演员俱属上乘,且
有印地安的主题;但是,无论在赫伯特之前或之后,美国只有小型的歌剧作品。
精于轻歌剧作曲的戴科文(R. Dekoven),其作吕《坎特伯雷的朝圣者》(The
Canterbury Pilgrims)、《温克尔》等二十余部轻歌剧,由于世界动荡不安,
二十多年来演出成绩平平。因这些歌剧所根据的故事,皆与他国相同。例如帕克
(H. Parker)所作的《蒙纳》,哈德莱(Hadley)所作的《克娄巴特拉之夜》
(Cleopatra's Night),格伦伯格(L. Gruenberg)的《琼斯皇帝》,泰勒
(D. Taylor)的《国王的亲信》,汉森(H. Hanson)的《欢乐山》等,都是
相同体系。
其他如弗里姆勒(R. Friml)、克恩(J. Kern)、罗姆伯格(S. Romberg)
以及罗杰斯(R. Rodgers)等人,亦都有歌剧的发表。不过此等轻歌剧及音乐
喜剧,在美国舞台上不但不虞匮乏,且有过剩之感。
唯一可庆贺的是格什温(G. Gershwin)于一九三五年写下了《波基与贝丝》
(Porgy And Bess)轻歌剧,可说是真正美国风味的歌剧,且有独特风格。在
许多其他尝试久经尘封的今天,大有重加演唱的价值,也成为了新轻歌剧的先
驱。
=====
国内最近百老汇剧很热闹,以至于有些人把美国歌剧捧上了天。
其实百老汇远不能算歌剧(Opera),更恰当的名称应该是歌唱剧(Musical)。
无论是《音乐之声》、《屋顶上的琴手》还是现在的《蜘蛛女之吻》,《歌舞
厅》,《歌剧的鬼影》在音乐上都算不上歌剧。
《歌剧的鬼影》算是最接近的了,有主题与动机。。。
想起当年的洪湖水、刘三姐、五朵金花之类的也都是歌曲集。没有歌剧应有的音
乐本身的交织发展和戏剧性。(这里我借用“厚度”这个词)
《白毛女》象会接近一点。
革命现代京剧暂不好论。要说,也是主题显得很功利,比起哈卡图良的《斯巴达
克斯》就多了些过于迫近的东西。(拿不出去!)
- Re: 美国歌剧posted on 08/11/2004
a good intro. How about Bernstein's Candide, A Quiet Place and Mass? - posted on 08/11/2004
在纽约十年间,看过两回《CANDID》,都不是在重要剧场。
感觉上形式新颖,更象话剧,很难在音乐上留下深的印象。(恕我个
人有些古朽,但我对普罗科菲耶夫表述旋律的那一段依表赞赏。记得
看普鲁斯特里有位钢琴手表演,因为手有些生,他说:演一只现代的
曲子,再错也没人留意。。。我想说,就是《对三只橙子的爱情》也
有一支很好的进行曲,被广告引用而家喻户晓。)
至于大溪地,无论从主题和音乐风格来看,更象是歌唱剧。
当然West Side Story(Musical)很为我喜欢,另外是On the
Waterfront。(喜欢电影本身)
Mass (theater piece, S, Schwartz, Bernstein), orchd. J.
Tunick, Kay, Bernstein, 1971.
A Quiet Place (opera, libretto, S. Wadsworth), 1983. rev.
1984.
恕在下一直都无缘观摩。
文章中的观点不是我个人的意见。而这里写的却只是个人一孔之见,
不当处望A reader指正。
- Re: 美国歌剧posted on 08/12/2004
我有“Condide”1989年的录音,伦敦交响乐团,伯恩斯坦自己指挥,正在听,挺喜欢它的音乐,几天前收音机里听到On the Waterfront,也不错。
对现代作曲家,我了解极有限,伯恩斯坦和格什温大概是唯一听过的。
等对Condide有了甚么想法,再写。
- Re: 美国歌剧posted on 08/12/2004
Listening to Candide's Lament now, so sad.
Though a satire work, Candide is deeply tragic. - posted on 08/13/2004
我这里有一本大都会歌剧院的书,里面介绍伯恩斯坦是这样写的:
The most famous American musician of his generation, Leonard Bernstein
excelled equally as a pianist, conductor, and composer....
...
Success as a conductor on an international basis constantly challenged
his time to work as a composer, but again Bernstein proved persistent. Grounded in popular as well as classical music, he provided Broadway
theater with hit shows - 'Wonderful Town'(1953), 'Candide'(1956) and 'West Side Story'(1957).
Like George Gershwin before him, he also aspired to write operas, but
in this genre his only contributions were 'Trouble in Tahiti' and its
sequel, 'A Quiet Place'. He made a name for himself as an opera conductor, leading 'Medea' and 'La Sonnambula', both with Maria Callas, in productions directed by Luchino Visconti at La Scala in Milan in 1954-55. Later he conducted at the Vienna State Opera and Metropolitan Opera and made several opera recordings, along with a vast number of symphonic recordings.
'Candide', several times revised, started life as an elaborately produced Broadway show in which Lillian Hellman's book, freighted with social criticism aimed at political and religious intolerance, struggled with Bernstein's energetic, lighthearted score. In the course of reworking, Hellman's participation was ended and the playful satire of the score set free -- though it proved a mistake, on the other hand , to stage the work too flippantly. The overture and several of the songs took on a life of their own.
'Troube in Tahiti', a chamber opera including elements of popular music, never exerted the appeal of Candide but continued to fascinate Berstein because of its personal, quasi-autobiographical subtext: the composer had undergone psychoanalysis. In time he returned to amplify the story of Sam and Dinah -- rather, of their family after Dinah's death -- with the collaboration of Stephen Wadworth, and emergent stage director, who was also a friend and contemporary of Bernstein's children.
The libretto of 'A Quiet Place', larded with 1970s Ivy League campus argot and made up largely of incomplete sentences, challenges the listener and the reader, but it was what Bernstein wanted. The opera contains some of his most personal, least exhibitionistic writing. Conceived as a private statement, it holds its own among the many legacies of a multifaceted genius.
敲出来供各位乐迷参照。
- posted on 08/13/2004
A Quiet Place我也没在剧场看过。 只听过CD. 印象不深。 下面是从网上找来的。
ar
************
Opera
A Quiet Place
Bernstein managed to pull it off with A Quiet Place. He succumbed to the 'modernists' but at the same time produced an excellent opera based on the lives of 'ordinary' folks.
Trouble is a deceptively beguiling little piece, so entrancing musically with its comments from the jingle-trio chorus, the witty description of the trashy movie of the title, and the fluent ease of the word-setting that it is all too easy to overlook how sour and bleak is its depiction of a day in the life of a suburban marriage on the rocks. Competitive, macho Sam conducts his business and wins the handball cup, Dinah visits her analyst and the cinema, nine-year-old Junior is left to his own devices while his parents row, and in the evening they prefer to go to the escapist movie (Dinah for the second time) rather than stay at home and sort out their marriage. Ouch.
The initial aim of A Quiet Place, commissioned jointly by Houston Grand Opera, La Scala and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was to find out what might have happened to these characters 30 years on; the larger aim, in the words of the librettist and producer of the successful Scala/Vienna version, Stephen Wadsworth, was to write an opera about ‘non-ethnic middle-class Americans, not a regional folk opera, not a neo-European grand opera, and not a sentimental pop Singspiel... an opera in the American language as it is spoken by Americans to express their American selves’. Both aims seem to me to have been fulfilled with complete success— second time round, that is.
At the Houston premiere, A Quiet Place was a long one-acter (four scenes lasting two hours) following a performance of the 40-minute Trouble in Tahiti. The first scene was set in a funeral parlour: Dinah has been killed in a car accident. We meet the Analyst who didn’t actually appear in Trouble, Dinah’s brother Bill, her best friend Susie, her Doctor and his wife, and her widower Sam, who stands silent and apart until the end of the scene. Sam’s and Dinah’s daughter Dede, born after the action of Trouble, arrives with her French Canadian husband Francois, formerly the lover of Junior, who is now homosexual and mentally disturbed. Fierce antagonism between father and son forms the climax of the scene. The remaining three scenes encompass the working out of family tensions, culminating in heartfelt and convincing reconciliation in the garden, the ‘quiet place’ imagined by Dinah in her one-sided session with the Analyst in Trouble. The post-Houston revision turned the two one-acters into a single piece; Trouble was split in two and woven into the second scene, which became Act 2; the remaining two scenes were joined together to form a third act.
The advantage of the revision is the extra dimension it adds to the working-out of the communal trauma: a prelude becomes a memory, with Old Sam remembering and learning how his younger self helped to land the family in its current mess. The complicated and resonant emotional cross-currents put one in mind of MacMillan’s Anastasia, one of this century’s great dance dramas, and one which reached its final form by a process not dissimilar to that of A Quiet Place. One only hopes that Bernstein and Wadsworth have not settled upon the work’s final form, for the disadvantage of the revision is that the subsidiary characters, presented in great detail in the first scene/act, have been cut from the new third act—one feels cheated at not knowing how their tensions are resolved. Part of Junior’s psychosis is an incestuous relationship with Dede in childhood that may or may not be imagined; in any event, it finds an echo in their sharing of Francois, and there seems to be a parallel to it in Bill’s memories of his sister Dinah in the first scene. In the first version, the Doctor’s Wife, a wonderfully drawn character, tart, smart and cynical, admitted that she loved Dinah, adding another ingredient to an already dangerously heady brew. Thc powerfully imagined first scene at present stands out on its own. (In her lip-smackingly unpleasant biography of the composer, Joan Peyser suggests that A Quiet Place is air opera a clef, with Junior as the composer, Sam as his father, Dede as his sister, and Mrs Doc as Lillian Hellmann, who is supposed to have formed an attachment to Bcrnstein’s wife Felicia. Be all that as it may, both composer and librettist created the piece in the wake of bereavement; Bernstein lost his wife and Wadsworth his sister shortly before starting work on it, and the score is dedicated to the memory of both.)
Wadsworth’s text, written defiantly and most effectively in demotic American, is perfectly conceived for operatic treatment: in its calculated incoherence it cries out for music—to fill in the gaps if nothing else. In a dramatic world reminiscent of part Tennessee Williams, part Ayckbourn, thoughts that remain unspoken are powerfully suggested by the score; the series of thirteen short ‘dialogues’ in the funeral parlour is handled with stunning virtuosity, each one with its own special ‘tinta’, each filled with little bombshells in the way of half-finished sentences and social gaffes. At the centre of the second act, framing the two scenes of Trouble, is an equally virtuoso double duet, with Sam and Dede in one room of the house, Junior and Francois in another, all severely starting to come to terms with the past. If there is a danger of the miasma of deviancy in this act teetering on the edge of parody, and of the upbeat Happy End of the final act in the garden seeming too good to be true, both are avoided by the power of the music. With his Wagnero-Mahlerian musical hat on, Bernstein manipulates material from the neo-Broadway Trouble with enormous skill: motifs are transmuted and developed in subtle, unobvious ways, Stravinskyan ostinatos handled deftly, the tension between two essentially different musical languages always used purposefully. The one ‘big tune’— Dinah’s garden motif— sideslips the charge of sentimentality with its sheer depth of feeling, something that doesn’t always happen in, for instance, Mass. Purely technically A Quiet Place is a tour de force.
So is the recording, especially given that it is live. The vocal lines are both extremely tricky and technically strenuous, but accuracy and stamina are not found wanting here, even if there are moments of strident, strained tone that would be the cause of re-takes in the studio. Chester Ludgin’s performance as Old Sam, a role as demanding emotionally as it is vocally, is extremely impressive—he holds nothing back in either case, and copes heroically with his fiendishly written interior-exterior monologue in the first act. Even though he is not heard, one somehow senses his presence in the scene with his younger self (Edward Crafts, ideally sonorous and confident). Beverly Morgan is vibrant, at times a little shrill, in the high soprano role of Dede, Peter Kazaras tactfully restrained as Francois, John Brandstetter fearlessly unbuttoned as Junior—he too spares us nothing. In smaller roles Clarity James is a wonderfully rasping Mrs Doc, Theodor Uppman—who created Billy Budd—makes much out of potentially little as Bill (the indefinable musical charge under his brief dialogue with Francois is one of many intriguing moments in the score), and Wendy Craft sings young Dinah in Trouble with cloudless, touching lyricism. There is a heart- (and practically every other organ) on-sleeve emotional rawness to the work that ought to make it inimical to your average WASP, but this particular one found it both disturbing—as it is intended to be—in its very rawness, and ultimately healing, and he can’t wait to see it on stage. It would be perfect at Glyndebourne, perhaps in a slightly reduced orchestration. Heaven knows what a WASPish audience would make of it, though. Perhaps if a learned programme note stressed the parallels with the Ring proposed by Andrew Porter in his review from Houston, they could take it in their stride.
Reproduced from Opera Magazine (Oct' 1988) in an article entitled 'Towards the Great American Opera' by Rodney Miles.
Here is the fulfilment of a long-cherished project. Its roots are in the 1952 one-acter, Trouble in Tahiti, in the mixed-genre Mass of 1971, in the 1977 Songfest (which the composer himself called "a study for an American opera"), in Weill, Blitzstein, Menotti and dozens of other composers who have contributed, positively or negatively, to Bernstein's vision of the Authentic American Opera. Most of all it grows out of his disappointment that American composers did not follow the lead of West Side Story.
The other side to it is that both composer and librettist were preoccupied with recent bereavement, so that when Bernstein suggested a sequel to Trouble in Tahiti he and Stephen Wadsworth immediately found themselves on the same wavelength. Marrying those grandiose ambitions and intensely personal experiences into a coherent work of art proved to be an arduous process, in the course of which Trouble in Tahiti became incorporated into its own sequel as a series of flashbacks.
Dinah, wife of successful businessman Sam, has died in a car crash, and the family is now gathered for her funeral. Their son Junior is "a crazy queer who skipped the draft" (one of several lines which amusingly defeat the translators of the libretto) and the most obvious victim of his parents' joyless marriage. He is given to psychotic states and longs for reconciliation with his father. Daughter Dede, who may have had an incestuous relationship with Junior, has married his lover, Francois; this sounds cosy. But all three are troubled, principally because of their unfinished emotional business with Sam.
The Quiet Place is a realm of remembered shared intimacy, the opposite of the restless emptiness Sam and Dinah inadvertently drifted into. It is now the goal of the rest of the family, who have to rediscover how to communicate. The relationship of father and son is the most sustained idea in the opera. In Act 1 Junior scandalizes the funeral gathering with a decadent stripping song. In the flashbacks of Act 2 something of the background to his present torment is sketched in; young Sam wins a handball trophy and young Dinah returns from a movie (Trouble in Tahiti), half scornful of its absurdity but half dependent on its glittering alternative to drab reality—both of them have avoided going to see Junior as the hero in his school play. In Act 3 Old Sam mellows, having read touching extracts from Dinah's diaries. For the first time he welcomes Francois into the family, and after an unexpected and vicious argument he finally takes Junior into his arms.
However you tell it, the story has the look of a Richard Strauss Intermezzo gone to New York and coated in self-indulgent breast-beating; and a parable of middle-class American alienation, however believable, may not be everyone's idea of a promising opera text. But I have to say that that final reconciliation is intensely moving, even though it seems in part too obvious (any devotee of American soap could see it coming) and in part too obscure (what is the 'gun' which looms so frighteningly in Junior's earlier ravings, and which he now symbolically hands back to Sam?). Its power must have something to do with the extra-ordinary precision and commitment of the whole performance, and it is certainly heightened by the timing of final argument—after the apparent reconciliation. It also has to do with an underlying strength of the whole opera—the fact that the breakdown of communication is a ready-made metaphor for Bernstein's music, undercutting most of the reasons that might be advanced for resisting it. Which is to say that a stylistic mishmash, a sense of rootlessness, ennui, embarrassment, superficiality, vulgarity and so on can all be taken as part of the self-conscious role-playing which afflicts the characters—they represent the problem the family has in saying anything truly heartfelt. And if the ending hardly transcends all that the reconciliation on stage is, after all, only a beginning.
In any case this must surely be one of Bernstein's most impressive scores. Certainly the orchestration is as characterful as you could wish—punchy and seductive by turns—and the ideas are for the most part strong enough for their purposes. A pervasive descending motif recurs at pivotal moments— "an old certainty", Stephen Wadsworth calls it—perhaps slightly too close to the "Prize Song" for comfort, but no more so than some of the lump-in-throat bits of West Side Story are to the 'Redemption' motif from The Ring. Indeed, anyone who knows West Side Story will also know whether they find an aftertaste of saccharine in Bernstein's would-be heartfelt music. My own resistance to the Bernstein of the Mass and Songfest is fairly high. But in A Quiet Place I have to confess particular admiration for the melancholy mindscapes of the postludes (even if they do owe something of their effectiveness to the example of Wozzeck) and his sleazy Broadway idiom is at its sharpest for the representation of Junior's outrageousness and Dinah's suburban blues.
That is not to say that this is an unblemished masterpiece. The First Act drags rather (as first acts so often do) and one spends a fair amount of emotional energy getting to know various of Dinah's associates only to discover that they play no further part in the opera. Sam and Dinah's Act 2 duet seems to me not to match the quality of the set-piece solos, some of the gnomic utterances of the Brecht/Weill chorus seem contrived, and the symbolism of the garden (= the Quiet Place = the formerly shared, now longed-for intimacy) is hardly subtle. Also I wonder quite how a stage production would cope with a scenario in which nothing actually happens and where the dialogue consists largely of comic-strip thought-bubbles.
But Bernstein considers this "emotionally the strongest thing I have ever written"; I think he's right. And whether or not the goal of the True American Opera is an attainable, or even desirable, one, I think A Quiet Place does take a definite step in that direction.
The performance is inspired. Long stretches of rhythmically displaced, dovetailed dialogue must be the devil's own job to co-ordinate, and the cast bring to it a confidence and razor-sharp precision astonishing for a life recording. Wendy White as the young Dinah recounts her visit to the movies with terrific panache, and Beverly Morgan is superb in the flighty virtuousity of Dede's lines. The male roles are not all sung with that degree of distinction, nor am I convinced that the writing for them is quite so memorable. Nevertheless, they are well enough done to engage a measure of sympathy for the characters. The Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra play magnificently and Bernstein's conducting has a charisma without which one suspects the whole thing would make far less of an impression.
Incidentally, the two CDs last 74'57" and 74'09"—bravo to that. The sound on the three LPs is superb in terms of balance and realism—again a marvellous achievement for a live recording.
DJF
From 'Gramophone' magazine http://www.gramophone.co.uk
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation