The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: University Opera announces a new season that is politically and socially relevant to today. The two shows are a virtual revue of Marc Blitzstein and a live operatic version of “The Crucible.”
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By Jacob Stockinger
David Ronis (below), the director of the University Opera at the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music, has posted the following notice about its upcoming season on social media.
The award-winning Ronis is known for being creative both in programming and staging. The new season is yet another example of that. It features one virtual original production about an American composer to see and hear online, and two live performances of a mid-20th century American opera.
Both works seem especially pertinent and cautionary, given the times we currently live in in the U.S.
Here are the details:
FINALLY!!!
Things have fallen into place for the University Opera 2020-21 season and we are happy to announce our productions:
“I Wish It So: Marc Blitzstein — the Man in His Music”
“A biographical pastiche featuring songs and ensembles from Marc Blitzstein’s shows, spoken excerpts from his letters and working notes, and a narration.
“Oct. 23, 2020
8 p.m. Video Release
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“The Crucible” (1961)
Music by Robert Ward
Libretto by Bernard Stambler
Based on the 1953 play by Arthur Miller
March 19 and 21, 2021
Shannon Hall, Wisconsin Union Theater
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We will post more information as we get it. For now, we are very excited about both projects! Stay tuned.”
(Editor’s note: To stay tuned, go to: https://www.facebook.com/UniversityOpera/)
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And what does The Ear think?
The revue of Marc Blitzstein seems a perfect choice for Madison since his papers and manuscripts are located at the Wisconsin Historical Society. For details, go to: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-whs-us0035an
Focusing on Blitzstein (1905-1964) also seems an especially politically relevant choice since he was a pro-labor union activist whose “The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles,” was shut down by the Works Progress Administration of the federal government.
For more about Blitzstein (below in 1938) and his career, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Blitzstein
“The Crucible” also seems an especially timely choice. In its day the original play about the Salem witch trials was seen as a historical parable and parallel of McCarthyism and the Republican witch hunt for Communists.
Read about the Salem witch trials here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
Now that we are seeing a time when Democrats and others with progressive ideas are accused of being radical leftists, socialists and destructive revolutionaries, its relevance has come round again. Like McCarthy, President Donald Trump relies on winning elections by generating fear and denigrating opponents.
For more about the operatic version of “The Crucible” (below, in a production at the University of Northern Iowa) — which was commissioned by the New York City Opera and won both a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critics Circle Award in 1962 — go to this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible_(opera)
You can hear the musically accessible opening and John’s aria, from Act II, in the YouTube video at the bottom. For more about composer Robert Ward (1917-2013, below), go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ward_(composer)
What do you think of the new University Opera season?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Presidential debates should include questions about funding and supporting the arts and humanities
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By Jacob Stockinger
Well, well.
Tomorrow night — from 7 to 9 p.m. CDT on CNBC — there will be another presidential debate.
The always astonishing and amazing Republicans, led by the always astonishing and amazing Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, will debate in Boulder, Colorado.
The Ear has watched three presidential debates so far — two Republican and one Democratic.
But he still has no idea of where the various candidates on both sides stand when it comes to government support of the arts –- including music — and the humanities.
Please tell us, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, what you think?
And you too, Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum and Chris Christie and Jeb Bush and Rand Paul and John Kasich and ….
Do you want to defund PBS?
Or defund NPR?
Or will you support these important and historic cultural commitments? Why or why not?
Along the same lines, do you want to defund, sustain or enhance the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities?
Why or why not?
Some funny reasoning is going on here. Some of the candidates want to eliminate all subsidies to the arts, which are a form of economic development after all – at a time when a lot of conservatives don’t mind funding big rich corporations in the same name of economic development.
The arts create a lot of jobs and spark a lot of spending and stimulus. Or don’t the culture-challenged charlatans realize that?
Stop and think a minute about the local situation. The Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Overture Center (below), public schools, the University of Wisconsin and its School of Music — all rely in part on public funding. They employ a lot of people and generate a lot of value.
Don’t these issues deserve a public airing? Doesn’t the arts consuming public have a right to know where the various candidates stand on these issues? Shouldn’t voters know what they might be getting in those areas?
As The Ear understand its, one flank of the attack has to do with the so called left-leaning liberal or progressive bias and politics of PBS and NPR.
Plus, there is the view that the art that public taxpayer money is helping to create doesn’t defend the so-called family values that the most radically conservative Republicans and Christian fundamentalists and Evangelicals want defended.
The other flank of the attack has to do with the stance that government should be smaller and that therefore should be funding less in general.
Makes you wonder just how the radical “freedom coalition” and Tea Party people in South Carolina, Texas and California feel about having a smaller government when it comes to providing aid for victims of torrential floods and devastating wildfires. And how is that kind of help for those in need different from funding education or health care?
AUSTIN, TX – MAY 25, 2015
Extreme flooding takes place in Austin, Texas May 25, 2015.
(Photo by Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images)
Anyway, wouldn’t it be appropriate for some of the panelists to question the candidates on the issues pertaining to the arts and humanities?
The Ear is reminded of Sir Winston Churchill’s comment during World War II. Some members of the British Parliament asked him if funding for the arts shouldn’t be cut and used instead to fight Hitler and the Nazis. He said no and added, “Then what would we be fighting for?”
Tell the Ear what you think. Leave a COMMENT.
Maybe, just maybe, someone else will read it and pass it along and we will finally get a substantive discussion from the candidates about where they stand on arts and humanities funding by the federal government.
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Classical music: Oh say, Can You See Common Sense? On Independence Day -– the Fourth of July -– let us recall how the national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” has evolved. Standards of social justice and definitions of independence should also do so.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today –- July 4, 2014 — is Independence Day in the United States.
We will celebrate with food, drink and fireworks as well as parades and social events.
But make no mistake: Our celebrations have changed, necessarily, with history.
Despite what some misdirected U.S. Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia (below top), Clarence Thomas and others think with their so-called “originalism,” we all live in history.
The assumptions and interpretations of Originalism have been debunked by many scholarly professors who specialize in 18th-century American discourse and law, and whose research disproves those same assumptions and interpretations to be mistaken.
To The Ear, it is kind of like hearing the radically conservative activists of the Right Wing accuse leftists and liberals of being activist: Name-calling hypocrisy dressed up in new clothes.
Here is a link to an overview critique of Originalism, both the new and old kinds:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/new-originalism-a-constitutional-scam
It amounts to this: Whether as individuals or a society, we all change through time.
And so justice and so does music.
The Ear recalls the movements, once fringe and now mainstream, that brought us period instrument and historically informed performances.
That is why we now hear such Baroque masters as Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi so differently.
It is also why we hear many other Baroque composers and early music masters that were ignored before.
That is why we now say, “The United States is,” while before the Civil War we said “The United States are.”
Usage evolves. It has to.
That is also why we hear and sing the country’s national anthem -– “The Star-Spangled Banner” -– differently today than we once did. (below is a first edition of the national anthem from the Clements Library at the University of Michigan.)
Here is a line to an extended story with more details about the historical evolution of our national anthem in The New York Times:
Have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July.
And here is the most popular version — with more than 7 million hits and many outrageous listener comments to read — of the national anthem that The Ear could find on YouTube:
Tags: Antonin Scalia, Arts, Clarence Thomas, conservative, Early music, evolution, Fourth of July, George Frideric Handel, History, Independence Day, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, justice, leftist, liberal, Music, national anthem, New York Times, originalism, right-wing, Star-Spangled Banner, the Right, U.S. Supreme Court, United States, YouTube
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