Lincoln had his Team of Rivals. Now we're proud to have our Administration of (Rich) Kooks!

No, we don't want to ban our kooks; we want to celebrate them.

Guest post by Conrad L. Osborne

The following was submitted 72 hours ago to the Opinion Editor of the NY Times. [Note: This was written some days ago. The DWT publishing wheels grind slowly. -- Ed.] As expected from dishonest press, failing newspaper did not publish or acknowledge. But (no surprise!) 3 days later (Sun., Feb. 12, Review Section, p.2) published own weak version of idea, minus all the good parts. Really, really disastrous. Losers imitating winner, so sad & unfair. So all of us at KLC are very grateful to good friend and patriot Richard Slade [on whose blog this was previously posted -- Ed.] for assistance in getting this vital announcement out to you, the great American public. See you at the meeting!

Contact: www.conradlosborne.com


ON NOTICE: KLC TO LAUNCH!

Now that our Cabinet is falling into place, I’m excited to be able to announce the founding organizational meeting of the KOOK LUXE CLAN ©* (KLC). Will take place real soon at some fantastic location. Membership slots are still open! Primary requirement: complete ignorance of and/or implacable opposition to any jurisdiction to which you are assigned. Certified officers/members to date: Betsy DeVos (Chairperson), Ben Carson, Rick Perry. Gen. Michael Flynn: not actually qualified (see relevant military exp., very unfortunate), but appointed on grounds of temperament. Gen. Mad Dog Matthis: not sure about him, might need to review (great name, though). Emeritus: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney.

Those posts are gone, but highly desirable ones remain! For instance:

❡ Head, Nat’l Endowment for the Arts. Prerequisite: Unswerving advocacy of privatization of all arts funding, and of (this is crucial) simultaneous elimination of tax deduction for charitable giving.

❡ Head, Nat’l Endowment for the Humanities. Prerequisite: ditto above. Also helpful: healthy skepticism about so-called “progress”--”Renaissance,” “Enlightenment,” blah-blah-blah.

❡ Head, Nat’l Science Foundation. Prerequisite: ditto that last. Also, should be on record that theories are just opinions. And against elitist “evidence.” Only fair in a democracy, right?

❡ Ambassador to Mexico. Prerequisites: Background in construction; must manage Accounts Payable. Remember the Alamo.

❡ Ambassador to Taiwan. This post temporarily withdrawn, pending review. Got to get it right! But Taiwan beautiful incredible country.

❡ Plenipotentiary Extraordinaire to court of Vladimir I. Prerequisites: 1) Must depose in advance that all poisonings, shootings, knifings, blindings, drownings, stranglings, and jailings of gov’t officials, oligarchs, opposition figures, et al. inf., are the work of American agents or disgruntled ballet dancers. Sports doping likewise. 2) Must not speak/understand Russian. I guarantee you will have an unbelievable time in Moscow!

A plus for all the above: major personal wealth, stupendously rich friends.

Fresh vacancies are bound to occur soon! But to qualify, you must be a member of the KOOK LUXE CLAN ©* (KLC)! Welcome to the meeting, if you can find it. Alternatively, gather on The Mall.

Respectfully submitted,
Conrad L. Osborne
Founder & Recording Sec’y

*Resemblance to any other organization, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.


P.S.: the title “KOOK LUXE CLAN” © 2017, by Conrad L. Osborne.

My rules: For political allies, unlimited use free of charge, but please attribute. For political foes: Use strictly prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of any accidentally remaining law.

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It's the 28th-anniversary republication of Conrad L. Osborne's famous (but not famous enough) "Diary of a CavPag Madman"

The Diary of a CavPag Madman
by Conrad L. Osborne


INTRODUCTION AND THUMBNAIL REVIEW

This review will be a departure from the accepted format. It's a forced departure that may hit some readers as an act of critical desperation; if so, the basic message is coming through. A crazy response for some crazy realities--R. D. Laing would understand.

But some of you, I'm sure, will only be indignant at all this craziness and desperation. What call is there, who needs it, isn't there enough? (No! Here are things getting crazier by the day, and here are lots of people not noticing. They include people who are paid to notice, and should be the craziest and most desperate of all, like me. Perhaps they must be paid more to keep on noticing: At the going rates, how important can it be? A point, but no excuse; if the rich pusher and the poor cop are in cahoots, I say shoot the cop first.)

Still, you want a sensible review after all, some facts and come now reasonable evaluation. So we open with morceaux of each, the more so since it gets crazy farther on. This pairing of cavpag was recorded in London two years back, and is a vehicle for the charming and currently popular lyric tenor Luciano Pavarotti. It's a cavpag package, you have to buy them both, which is sort of too bad,

BECAUSE

the Cavalleria is passably sung and quite interestingly conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, therefore conceivably desirable to those who place high value on conductorial nuance, whereas the Pagliacci is a no-account bore. (End of facts. Further reasonable evaluation, and somewhat more detailed review, can be found rather far below, for those who wish to skip the craziness and desperation.)

WHAT!?

Oh, you don't think it can possibly be a no-account bore? I exaggerate, I have given in to the rhetorical?

THUMBNAIL REVIEW OF PAG AS IT WOULD READ IF HONESTY WERE THE ONLY CONSIDERATION

This really stinks. Ees so bad, ees terrible. I suspect Robert Wilson's influence, in that the case passes beyond questions of competence or incompetence to the very nature of performance, of whether or not the performance can be said to exist and if so why. I say it doesn't, and this is getting to be a hateful and sophistical inquiry of a philosophical nature; there is obviously nothing evaluative to be said about something that is, literally, a nonentity. End of review.

EXPLANATORY NOTE ON DESPERATION

There is a degree of desperation, or at the least anxiety, that is always present in the makeup of a critic worth anything at all. It relates to his evaluative function. Admit it: The strongest single motivating factor is the stubbornly held conviction that something's wrong, that the critic sees what it is when others don't, and feels he must say so. He believes it is constructive to say something's wrong; saying that something's wrong is the act he most fervently believes in and regards as his contribution. Naturally he also says that something's right when he believes it to be. But frankly, that is less important, because whatever's right is already okay, right?, and besides it doesn't happen as often. Because of his astonishment and delight at finding something right, he is apt to discourse disproportionately over it, especially when he considers it important that a particular right be recognized and accepted. But he rall shouldn't. No one ever became a critic in order to say that all's well, nor has anyone ever given a damn for such a critic except for selected beneficiaries (foolish ones) of such criticism.

If one accepts this, then whence anxiety? Why first, one belongs by definition to an embattled minority. If many others shared the perception that something's wrong, then either it wouldn't be wrong or there would be nothing noteworthy about the perception. Of course the critic finds allies, he is not univerally disliked or resented. But since he frequently feels more in common with the dislikers and resenters than with the allies, there is a mild anxiet about th whole business, just on the human level.

That is nothing. The real problem defines itself when the critic arrives at the view that the somethings wrong are so basic, so pervasive, and so crippling that they render the usual evaluative norms quite useless. This type of perception is, of course, the source of all true innovation and reform in art. No creator would accomplish anything of importance without it, as one of the very few valuable critics (and creators), Shaw, observed in his wonderful commentary on the relationship between progress and "the unreasonable man."

But to offer criticism from this perspective is very difficult. How helpful (and how credible?) can itbe to repeatedly point at a crumbling cornerstone when all concerned insist that the building is structurally sound and is to be judged on the taste of some new decorative elements, a dormer or some new lintels? And indeed there may be some splendid new dormers and lintels, and some not so hot, and a number of companies in the business of the manufacture thereof, and here is the monthly Dormer and Lintel Review, and can you really keep on saying, "The dormers and lintels do not matter, because when I passed the building yesterday, it had fallen down," when here is the morning paper with a photo of the building as it once was and a perfectly intelligent-sounding article on the new dormers and lintels, and you look out the window and by God there is a truck delivering more dormers and lintels to the site, and your neighbors in earnest discussion of the new details of the building, as if it were still standing?

NOTE ON THE STANDING BUILDING MIRAGE

Here is the rubble of the building, already cold and settled in a deep hole, and here are many estimable people with a stake in the illusion of its existence. They range from the manufacturers and deliverers to media persons assigned to report on gingerbread to far-off subscribers of the Review who have in fact never seen the building but look forward to reading about the new dormers and lintels and like to buy similar ones for their own homes. My God, they will all be bloody angry if I say, "Either this building has not yet been reconstructed or it has fallen down again. In any case it still isn't standing up. I

EVIDENCE FOR ALLEGED EXISTENCE OF PAG


BRIEF RECAP OF CONCEIVABLE ARTISTIC JUSTIFICATION FOR NEW RECORDING OF AN OPERA


POWERFUL SUSPICION AS TO REAL REASONS FOR BEHIND NEW CAVPAG RECORDING


OBSERVATION IN INTEREST OF FAIR-MINDEDNESS


MUSINGS ON LUCIANO'S RECENT PROGRESS


A BACKWARD GLANCE AT LUCIANO


NOW YOU'RE GETTING PERSONAL


MOVING ALONG NOW
still pretty good, at points brilliant, but the tops of some phrases ("saro per te" in the duet, the big toughie in "Parmi veder") do have a disappointingly constricted sound. He moves with an oddly dainty gait. In the last act, he makes a point of feeling up Maddalena while leering cutely at the audience. Luciano has learned to keep on being Luciano while the opera is trying to take place. The audience would rather see Luciano than an opera, so it's total success. . . . [That's mezzo-soprano Anna di Stasio pictured in Luciano's, er, clutches. The pictures, by the way, are not from the original article. This is just part of the service that DWT provides, without additional charge.]

Later yet, at a Boheme, I really can't hear Luciano's top at all, except when the accompaniment is vide or he happens to catch hold of a phrase riding nicely from below, as at the opening of "O Mimi, tu piu." To put it bluntly, it's a bust, but the audience reaction is wild--this is a personal appearance event. I begin to form a rather unappetizing image of a huge, mincing galoot with a pretty, medium-sized voice that can't make climaxes, kneading his handerchief and appealing to the audience for sympathy for all his hard work and sweet personality.

Since then I have heard Luciano sing high and small, low and large. . . .

On all the TV shows, it's of course much harder to tell about the balance of the voice. But you can tell that singing, good or bad, is tough labor (indeed, Luciano shows off the labor just a bit) and that Luciano is a genuinely likable and amusing man with a sharp sense of his own appeal. Also that he has lost weight. Artistic failures and successes cease to have any relative values, since the audience and colleagues are parts of the act and behave as if each effort produced a triumph of absolutely equal and predictable proportions.

FINAL QUERY BEFORE LISTENING TO ALLEGED PAG


PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF PAG RUMORS (MORE LIKE A REVIEW)


SO WHAT'S THE EXPERIENCE?


UTTERLY SUBJECTIVE, THEREFORE ENTIRELY VALID REPORT OF FURTHER INVESTIGATION


BUT HOLD IT A SEC


FINAL BEDCHECK (YOU GUYS HAVE EXACTLY ONE MINUTE OR I GIG THE WHOLE BARRACKS)


CAN'T YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC?


BUT WHAT ABOUT MIRELLA?


THEORIES ABOUT MIRELLA'S MIDDLE RANKED ACCORDING TO OUR FONDEST WISHES


M'S M THEORIES RANKED ACCORDING TO REAL-WORLD PROBABILITIES


WHO ELSE?


REFLECTIONS ON CAGEY CARLO AND A COUPLE MORE


CAV REVIEW


PERSPECTIVES ON PIERO


PIERO, THE ACTOR
For some reason, Piero sneers the line "Ite voi altri in chiesa." (No mere bel canto showoff he, but a singing actor.) Is Alfio an atheist? Or does he make fun of the womenfolk? Or is he just The Villain? You got me.

LUCIANO!?


WHY PICK ON THIS SET?


WHAT LONDON SHOULD DO WITH THIS CAVPAG PACKAGE
First, try to figure if there is some way you can chop this up so the pag labels don't have to be on the backs of the cav labels, or else subtract the pag price from the cav price. If that doesn't work, consult Jerzy. He can be reached in Wroclaw. He may be reluctant at first, but maybe you can break the ice with a Polish joke.



LEONCAVALLO: I Pagliacci
Nedda: Mirella Freni (s)
Canio: Luciano Pavarotti (t)
Beppe: Vincenzo Bello (t)
Tonio: Ingvar Wixell (b)
Silvio: Lorenzo Saccomani (b)
Villagers: Pacho Panocia (bs) and Fernando Pavarotti (t)

MASCAGNI: Cavalleria rusticana
Santuzza: Julia Varady (s)
Lola: Carmen Gonzales (ms)
Mamma Lucia: Ida Bormida (ms)
Turiddu: Luciano Pavarotti (t)
Alfio: Piero Cappuccilli (b)

Finchley Children's Music Group (in Pagliacci), London Voices, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Giuseppe Patane (Pagliacci) and Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Cavalleria), conductors [James Mallinson (Pagliacci) and Michael Woolcock (Cavalleria), producers] LONDON OSAD 13125 (three discs)

Thoughts on Luciano Pavarotti from all the way back in 1979, when the whole "Three Tenors" thing was still a dreadful idea waiting to be hatched

I'm going to have my say on Luciano later. However, the best piece I can even imagine on the subject has already been written, was written in fact as far back as 1979--and no matter that the career went on for another quarter-century. (My God, this was even before "The Three Tenors"!) Unfortunately, I can't offer you the whole piece, since I no longer have even my tattered old copy to type it from. (I have actually typed the whole piece out in order to share it with someone.) It appeared in the June 1979 issue of High Fidelity magazine, which unfortunately seems to exist in the digital universe only as an echo.

However, thanks to blogger Jaime J. Weinman, who writes a blog called "Something Old, Nothing New: Thoughts on Popular Culture and Unpopular Culture" and seems to be as wise as he is sturdy-fingered, I can offer you some bits that will give you the gist. Jaime apparently typed out the excerpts that follow for a 2004 entry titled Conrad L. Osborne: Best Opera Critic Ever. (I've taken the liberty of rejiggering his version a bit, to align it with my recollection of how the piece appeared in print.)

"Reviewing a very mediocre recording of Pagliacci starring Luciano Pavarotti," Jaime explained, "Osborne wrote a long, funny, almost stream-of-consciousness piece about Pavarotti's ascent to pop-stardom and the descent of opera recording (and, in many ways, opera itself) into blandness. Here he writes about Pavarotti and his decline since an early, brilliant performance in Lucia di Lammermoor."

[from "The Diary of a CavPag Madman"
by Conrad L. Osborne
High Fidelity, June 1979]

MUSINGS ON LUCIANO'S PROGRESS

I think he'd want us to call him Luciano, don't you? . . .

Now here's Luciano singing the Duke in a big splash of a Rigoletto . . . still pretty good, at points brilliant, but the tops of some phrases ("saro per te" in the duet, the big toughie in "Parmi veder") do have a disappointingly constricted sound. He moves with an oddly dainty gait. In the last act, he makes a point of feeling up Maddalena while leering cutely at the audience. Luciano has learned to keep on being Luciano while the opera is trying to take place. The audience would rather see Luciano than an opera, so it's total success. . . . [That's mezzo-soprano Anna di Stasio pictured in Luciano's, er, clutches. The pictures, by the way, are not from the original article. This is just part of the service that DWT provides, without additional charge.]

Later yet, at a Boheme, I really can't hear Luciano's top at all, except when the accompaniment is vide or he happens to catch hold of a phrase riding nicely from below, as at the opening of "O Mimi, tu piu." To put it bluntly, it's a bust, but the audience reaction is wild--this is a personal appearance event. I begin to form a rather unappetizing image of a huge, mincing galoot with a pretty, medium-sized voice that can't make climaxes, kneading his handerchief and appealing to the audience for sympathy for all his hard work and sweet personality.

Since then I have heard Luciano sing high and small, low and large. . . .

On all the TV shows, it's of course much harder to tell about the balance of the voice. But you can tell that singing, good or bad, is tough labor (indeed, Luciano shows off the labor just a bit) and that Luciano is a genuinely likable and amusing man with a sharp sense of his own appeal. Also that he has lost weight. Artistic failures and successes cease to have any relative values, since the audience and colleagues are parts of the act and behave as if each effort produced a triumph of absolutely equal and predictable proportions. The thought does occur that "live" audiences are learning the lesson. [Pictured here is the famous handkerchief (see above) taking a bow.]

FINAL QUERY BEFORE LISTENING
TO ALLEGED PAG

How does it happen that a charming and popular lyric tenor, marvelously suited to parts like Edgardo, Alfredo, Faust, and Werther when in peak condition, decides that such roles as Calaf, Canio, Cavaradossi, Manrico, Radames, and Enzo are his Fach at the very time, almost to the hour, that his upper range is losing its juice and open-throatedness? The timing is devilish.

ABOUT C.L.O.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was the music editor of High Fidelity at the time "The Diary" appeared, and I was the one who asked C.L.O. if he might be interested in reviewing Decca/London's new coupling of Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci and Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. He really didn't much want to do music criticism anymore, and in general the things I got him to do involved off-the-beaten-path repertory, operas I either knew he loved (he did, for example, a spectacular piece on Charpentier's Louise) or hoped he might be curious about. Which meant that it had been quite a while since he'd tackled any standard-rep for the magazine.

Jaime Weinman sums it up nicely:

[H]is reviews for High Fidelity represent some of the best criticism ever written about opera, about recording, and above all about singing. As a singer himself (a baritone), Osborne knows an incredible amount about voices and how they work, and manages to convey that knowledge to laymen like me in a way that's enlightening, funny, and fascinating. He's tough--unlike many critics, he never overlooks a vocal flaw or downplays the importance of a singer's bad technique--but he's fair, in that he always gives a singer credit for what he or she does well and never criticizes things that aren't there. His discussions of the works themselves are just as good. I would write more about his superb writing, but then I'd run out of room to quote it.

About all the credit I can claim for the "CavPag Madman" piece is giving C.L.O. the records to review--unless you count getting the thing into print, and getting it into print intact. (In fact, this was no small feat, but that's another story. Okay, if you must know, I had to threaten to quit. I knew it was a weak bargaining chip--the next time I used it, or at the latest the time after that, it was taken not as a threat but as an offer, and accepted--but this time, at least, it worked, more or less.)

I do recall talking to Conrad while he was working on the, er, "review," and being told that it was taking a strange form, which he projected would represent "either a breakthrough in criticism or the final flipping out of C.L.O." (I suggested there was no reason why it couldn't be both.)

I'm going to give the last word here to Jaime, who began his blog post:

If I were in the publishing business, one thing I'd be trying to push through would be a collection of the opera and record criticism of Conrad L. Osborne. (This may guarantee that I'll never be in the publishing business, but let that pass.)

I couldn't agree more, Jaime. I wish I knew how to make it happen.