Mahler Gets Appearance In "Birdman" Scene Featuring Naomi Watts

The new film Birdman, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, has original music composed by Antonio Sanchez playing throughout the film. Additional classical music is added to several scenes including works by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Rachmaninoff and John Adams. The real standout scene comes when Lesley (Naomi Watts) is emotionally thanking Riggan (Michael Keaton) for the opportunity of making her Broadway debut in his new play. At this point, the character of Riggan is starting to unravel and things seem as though they are imploding. The vocal line that starts under the scene is "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (I am lost to the world) from Gustav Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. A full translation of the piece can be found here and a performance by Violeta Urmana (the artist used in the film) is after the jump. "Riggan Thomas, once known quite well to movie theater goers as an iconic super hero called 'The Birdman' had recently turned down a third installment of the franchise. Now washed up, he attempts to reinvent himself as a director by staging a new retelling of a classic Broadway dramatic play called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The events leading up to the Saturday night premiere prove to be one disaster after another as the original lead actor is injured while on set and Riggan scrambles to find a replacement, but the replacement proves to be exactly who he needs - a method actor who takes the job way too seriously. But Riggan has a hard time juggling between the set, his replacement actor, his equally washed up daughter, and a host of other disasters that prevent a proper staging of the play. Meanwhile, a New York Times critic who Riggan has to woo threatens to shut down production of the play before it even starts with a scathing review of the dress rehearsal. Does Riggan have a hit on his hands or will he even make it to opening night?" [Source]

What The Deaths Of Magda Olivero & Licia Albanese Mean For Opera

The latin term trado has been translated into a multitude of definitions: to hand over, give up, deliver, transmit, surrender, impart, entrust, confide, leave behind, bequeath, propound, propose, teach, to hand down, narrate, recount. It served as the basis for the word we now know in the English language to be tradition. With the recent passing of Magda Olivero (age 104) and Licia Albanese (age 105), the opera world loses yet another link to the composers of the past. These were the last remaining sopranos that originated the 20th-century's verismo period and served as an essential connection to the past for future opera audiences. Once upon a time, singers worked directly with composers to tweak the characterization and often had music written specifically for their vocal capabilities. There was something almost sacred that was being passed down for safekeeping to the following generation. Looking back over the history of slightly more than 200 years reveals a great deal about the relationship with the soprano and composer.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had soprano Caterina Cavalieri. A singing student of rival composer Antonio Salieri, Mozart wrote the role of Konstanze in his Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail for the soprano which she premiered on July 16, 1782. On May 7, 1788, Cavalieri sang the role of Donna Elvira in the Vienna premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Other works by Mozart written for her are Davide penitente (1785) and the role of Mademoiselle Silberklang in Der Schauspieldirektor (1786). Gioachino Rossini had Isabella Colbran. Born in Madrid, she studied under Girolamo Crescenti in Paris. The dramatic coloratura soprano first met Rossini in Naples where he composed the title role of Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra especially for her in 1815. She went on to sing the lead roles in his operas Otello, Armida, Mosè in Egitto, Ricciardo e Zoraided, Ermione, La donna del lago, Maometto II, and Zelmira. He eventually married the soprano in 1822 when they moved to Bologna and she sang the last role composed specifically for her, the title role in Semiramide, before the couple split in 1837. After her death, Rossini continued to credit her as being the greatest interpreter of his music. Gaetano Donizetti had Giuditta Pasta. Italian by birth, Pasta studied in Milan with Giuseppe Scappa, Davide Banderali, Girolamo Crescentini, and Ferdinando Paer, among others. She sang regularly in London, Paris, Milan and Naples between 1824 and 1837. Donizetti wrote two roles specifically for the soprano: the title roles in Anna Bolena and Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula (Vincenzo Bellini even wrote Norma for the soprano). She later taught singing with such notable students as Emma Albertazzi, Marianna Barbieri-Nini, and Adelaide Kemble. Pasta retired at her Lake Como villa and in Milan, where she devoted herself to advanced vocal instructions until her death in 1865. Giuseppe Verdi had several leading ladies to premiere his works, including Marcella Lotti della Santa (Aroldo), Teresa Stolz (La Forza del Destino, Aida), Marie Sasse (Don Carlos), Fanny Salvini-Donatelli* (La Traviata), Antonietta Marini-Rainieri (Oberto, Un giorno di regno), Teresa Ruggeri (I Lombardi), Marianna Barbieri-Nini (I due Foscari, Macbeth, Il corsaro) and Sophie Cruvelli (Les vêpres siciliennes). Many of these women were either his mistresses or, in the case of Giuseppina Strepponi (Nabucco), his wife.  Richard Wagner had Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. The German soprano combined a rare quality of tone with dramatic intensity of expression, which was as remarkable on the concert platform as in opera. She created several roles for Wagner Adriano (Rienzi), Senta (Der Fliegende Holländer), and Venus (Tannhäuser). She was to have also done a premiere turn as Elsa (Lohengrin) in 1849, but politics intervened. After her death, a two-volume work entitled Memoiren einer Sängerin was released that were reportedly her erotic memoirs. Then came the verismo composers: Giordano, Alfano, Mascagni and Cilèa. Magda Olivero often had roles created for her by these composers. Thirty-one of the forty-four composers whose operas Olivero sang during her career were still alive when she began to study. Licia Albanese sang the role of Cio-Cio San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in over 300 performances. One of her early teachers, Giuseppina Baldassare-Tedeschi, was a contemporary of the composer. "In opera, verismo (meaning 'realism', from Italian vero, meaning 'true') was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola and Henrik Ibsen into opera. The style began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism. The Italian verismo composers comprised a musicological group known in its day as the giovane scuola ('young school'). The most famous composers who created works in the verismo style were Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano and Francesco Cilea. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano, Alfredo Catalani, Gustave Charpentier (Louise), Eugen d'Albert (Tiefland), Ignatz Waghalter (Der Teufelsweg and Jugend), Alberto Franchetti, Franco Leoni, Jules Massenet (La Navarraise), Licinio Refice, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (I gioielli della Madonna), and Riccardo Zandonai." Today we have a singer like Dawn Upshaw who has championed the composers of the late 20th-century and nurtured the type of relationship with them that harkens back centuries. Many of the composers include Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, Henryk Górecki, and David Bruce. Some have even written works specifically for her throughout the last decade. But what of the Mozart, Puccini, Donizetti, Rossini, and Bizet, works that remain the most performed in United States opera companies today? Who is left among the living, that is the closest connection to these composers, that can pass on the tradition to future opera singers? On December 2, the great Maria Callas would have turned 91. As the younger generation seeks out advice from living sources that either worked with composers or had teachers that were living at the time 19th and 20th century music was written, it's easy to see the list is quite extensive. Imagine Patricia Racette working characterization on Carlisle Floyd's Susannah with the originator of the role Phyllis Curtin; Christine Goerke coaching the title role of Strauss's Elektra with Inge Borkh; Anna Netrebko seeking advice from Leontyne Price who sang the role of Leonora in Il Trovatore around the world; Pumeza Matshikiza having a working session with Mattiwilda Dobbs about her early studies with Pierre Bernac and his work with Reinhold von Warlich; or Kathleen Kim asking about the over 60 roles that coloratura Renée Doria performed during her career. Check out the formidable soprano legends that new singers should be clamoring to work with on music, after the jump. [Source, Source, Source, Source, Source, Source, Source, Source, Source]

*also sang the following Verdi roles during her career: Mina (Aroldo), Gulnara (Il corsaro), Lucrezia (I due Foscari), Elvira (Ernani), Giovanna (Giovanna d'Arco), Giselda (I Lombardi), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), Amalia (I masnadieri), Desdemona (Otello), Gilda (Rigoletto), Violetta (La traviata), and Leonora (Il trovatore).

Penny Woolcock Discusses Her Latest Project: Dog Fighting

"Her latest gritty film project exposes the shady world of dog-fighting....Of the many distressing scenes in Penny Woolcock's new documentary, Going to the Dogs, which explores the underground world of illegal dog-fighting in Birmingham, one stands out. It's of a young pitbull in training, not out in the city streets – this breed is far too demonised by both press and the police to go for anything even resembling normal walkies – but rather at home, strapped tightly by its lead on to a treadmill....Penny Woolcock is no stranger to the difficult documentary – previous subjects include homelessness and gang culture – but a film about dog fighting, she admits, 'took a great lump out of my heart. There was a period while filming when I felt completely lost, to be honest. I thought it was going to be unremittingly cruel, but the reality was somehow not quite as bad as I'd feared.' The months she spent infiltrating this hidden world were exhausting for Woolcock, now 64. It left her with nightmares, and migraines. For this reason, she has readily embraced the job she has stepped into next. You see, as well as being a film-maker, she is also a director at the English National Opera, and she is currently deep in rehearsals for a forthcoming production of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers. Her second career in opera began late in life, when she was invited – out of the blue, the way she tells it – to direct John Adams's Doctor Atomic at the Met in New York. She went on to direct an earlier staging of The Pearl Fishers at ENO in 2010. 'It's exhausting work,' she says, smiling, 'but I will admit, it's a welcome change from dog fighting.'" [Source] 

No Dogs, Just Fish: Leïla (Hanan Alattar) and Nadir (Alfie Boe) in the 2010 production of Bizet's
The Pearl Fishers at ENO directed by Penny Woolcock. (Photo: Dylan Martinez/The Sunday Times)