And yesterday? Well, I discovered the first opera that Mozart ever wrote—a 70-minute affair all in Latin on the story of Apollo and Hyacinth by Ovid. Mozart wrote it when he was eleven, but as the conductor, Ian Page, pointed out, you stop thinking about that. Why? Because, as you can hear in the clips below, the music is terrific.
OK—full disclosure: all of this would be enough, ordinarily, to make me hate him. But I’m over it—I told you about that beach, didn’t I? And in many ways, not to have struggled and flopped—as I certainly did, and both—is to have missed out on some good lessons.
I came upon the opera because I had spent part of the afternoon with Philippe Jaroussky and Nuria Rial, two tremendous young singers who work remarkably well together. Jaroussky, at age 35, is in his prime as a counter tenor—and he’s thoroughly in charge of his voice, which is gorgeous. And he seems to be one of the golden boys for whom everything came easy: he started singing when he was 18, and by 20 he was a professional. And his career has soared. And just to prove how spectacularly unfair the gods can be, Philippe happens to look like this….
And yes, for anyone wondering—Jaroussky sings on my team….
And Nuria? Well, she’s Catalan, and is utterly expressive in renaissance and baroque music. And with that Jackian sense of fairness that increasingly is coming out, here she is:
At any rate, I spent yesterday afternoon busy with Rial / Jaroussky, listening to this really smashing concert. And why not? The world was spinning out of control, crisis was imminent, the wolves were howling at the door. Why not spend the afternoon with some extraordinary musicians playing some ravishing music?
In fact, I’m giving you, dear Reader, permission right now. Cancel your life for the next hour and a half, put your index finger on that arrow, and surrender to some of the most beautiful music I know. And no—don’t feel guilty! Call the boss and lie outrageously—invent an excuse. Consider all the time Victorian ladies spent having sick headaches—whole days prostate! You can take an hour and a half….
You know what? In the scope of things, not much matters except for art and music. In a hundred years, no one but a few scholars will know about the great shutdown of 2013—and very few will care. But people will still be listening to Mozart and Monteverdi, and reading, of course, Life, Death and Iguanas.
And you know what I like? These musicians just don’t force it—their playing is as free and effortless as it looks. It’s the best thing about baroque music; you don’t have to work that hard, you don’t have struggle to be heard over 100 musicians behind you, twenty or thirty of whom are blasting brass players, as you labor away at the Dvorak concerto.
Which is what I felt yesterday, as I toddled my way through a Bach suite. I remembered Joyce DiDonato working with a young singer, and telling him, “don’t worry about making a big sound, just think about creating the conditions to make a big sound….”
Right—as a very bad Buddhist, I got that. Which is why yesterday I was listening to the resonance of the instrument, and not trying to make any sound louder than that resonance. Why? Because as long as the instrument is resonating, the sound is free, and is just as loud as it needs to be.
I played half an hour, and then put the instrument down. I’m halfway to where I was in my prime—in a couple of weeks I’ll be there. Let them buzz and do, as the poet said—I’m shutting down!
