"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Sunday Classics: From Risë Stevens in "The King and I" to Patricia Neway in "The Consul"
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In 1960, the year after she created the role of the Mother Abbess in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, soprano Patricia Neway re-created the role of Magda Sorel in The Consul, Gian Carlo Menotti's first full-length opera, which she had created in 1950, including a 289-performance Broadway run.
by Ken
As I mentioned in remembering mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, after her retirement from the Met, she was tapped by Richard Rodgers for the production of The King and I he oversaw at the Music Theater of Lincoln Center in 1964. We heard a couple of excerpts from RCA's cast recording of the production in Friday night's preview. Today I thought we'd hear the musical numbers of our heroine, the widowed Anna Leonowens, who arrives in Siam with her son Louis to take up the post of governess to the King's chorus of children by his roster of wives.
Naturally, following normal Sunday Classics practice, we start with the Overture.
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I
"I whistle a happy tune": Risë Stevens as Anna Leonowens and James Harvey as her son Louis from the 1964 Music Theater of Lincoln Center production of The King and I
Sunday Classics flashback/preview, part 3: Traveling with Valerie Masterson from 1994 to 1967
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At the 5th International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton (England) in 1998, Valerie Masterson (left), lead soprano of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1964 to 1969, offered a morning of reminiscences about her career in opera as well as operetta, then posed for pictures with one of her most distinguished D'Oyly Carte predecessors, Jean Hindmarsh.
by Ken
Valerie Masterson -- whom we've been "flashback/preview"-ing for two Fridays now (first here, then here) -- was 61 when the above photo was taken. As I've mentioned, it was only four earlier, at age 57, that she recorded the role of Anna (with Christopher Lee as the King) in the Jay label's first-ever recording of the complete score of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I. We're going to hear a couple of excerpts from that recording, but first, just to register the life-distance traveled, we jump back more than 20 years, to 1972, when her career with the D'Oyly Carte company was already several years behind her, to hear one of her "calling card" numbers, Mabel's showpiece aria "Poor wandering one" from The Pirates of Penzance.
We're going to hear a fuller version of the sequence in the click-through, from Masterson's complete 1967 Pirates with the D'Oyly Carte company, but here we pick up as the beautiful young ex-pirate apprentice Frederic, encountering the bevy of beautiful daughters of Major-General Stanley on an outing to this rocky Cornwall beach, has asked whether for an outcast like himself there isn't, first, "one maiden breast which does not feel the moral beauty of making worldly interest subordinate to sense of duty" (answer: alas, no) and, second, whether there's "not one maiden here whose homely face and bad complexion have caused all hope to disappear of ever winning man's affection," which is the point at which we come in.
It turns out, to the astonishment, horror, and I dare say gnawing envy of her sisters, that there is one: the late-arriving Mabel, who gives her unfeeling sisters what-for for being "deaf to pity's name" (rhymes with "for shame!"). Note the interesting and strikingly contemporary-sounding point raised by the reproached sisters:
The question is, had he not been a thing of beauty, would she be swayed by quite as keen a sense of duty?
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, General Stanley's daughters, "Alas, there's not one maiden here" . . . Mabel, "O sisters deaf to pity's name" . . . "Poor wandering one"
Thomas Round (t), Frederic; Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Murray, arr. and cond. Pye/Everest, recorded 1972
Even in 1994 we can hear flickers of the perky young Valerie in the Schoolroom Scene of The King and I, as the widowed Englishwoman Anna Leonowens, newly arrived in Bangkok in 1862 to provide a proper Western education for the many children of the King of Siam, takes up her new duties. (For the record, where Major-General Stanley's daughters are all adopted, the King's offspring are all his, by his consortium of wives.)
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, Schoolroom Scene, Chorus of Royal Children, "We work and work from week to week" . . . Anna, "Getting to know you"
Valerie Masterson (s), Anna; children's chorus, National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
FOR THE RECORD, THE LINER NOTES REMIND US THAT "GETTING TO KNOW YOU" . . .
was a relatively late addition to The King and I. The story goes that between the New Haven and Boston tryout runs, the creative team, having made huge cuts to the show, was looking for a way to lighten Anna's character, and star Gertrude Lawrence had suggested a song for her and the children. Mary Martin, the star of Rodgers and Hammerstein's previous show, South Pacific, had come up to see the show and reminded R&H of the song "Suddenly Lucky," which had finally been cut at a late stage, with reluctance, from South Pacific. She thought it might do the trick. With new lyrics and further tinkering, it did the trick very nicely.
But the number from The King and I that I really want you to hear is . . . well, you'll find out in the click-through.
Antwerp's Central Station is alive with the sound of Rodgers and Hammerstein (and Julie Andrews)
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At the start, you'll wonder why you're being asked to watch travelers coming and going in Antwerp's Central Station. Just keep watching, and you'll understand. -- Ken
[1/28/2011] Flashback/preview, part 3: Traveling with Valerie Masterson from 1994 to 1967 (continued)
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RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, Anna, "When I think of Tom" . . . "Hello, young lovers"
When I think of Tom, I think about a night when the earth smelled of summer and the sky was streaked with white, and the soft mist of England was sleeping on a hill. I remember this, and I always will.
There are new lovers now on the same silent hill, looking on the same blue sea. And I know Tom and I are a part of them all -- and they're all a part of Tom and me. . . .
Valerie Masterson (s), Anna; National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
YES, THE SONG IS "HELLO, YOUNG LOVERS," BUT IT'S REALLY NOT THE SONG ITSELF I WANT YOU TO HEAR
When I wrote about the vicar Dr. Daly's first song in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, I suggested that while the ballad itself, "Time was when love and I were well-acquainted," is quite lovely, it's the introductory recitative, "The air is filled with amatory numbers," that really gets to me, that rises to the level of musical magic. I would say the same thing about Anna's remembrance of her dead husband in The King and I. While the song proper, "Hello, young lovers," is just fine, and became justly famous, the emotional dynamite is in the introduction, or verse, or recitative -- however composer Richard Rodgers thought of it.
Melodically and harmonically, what Rodgers does here looks ridiculously simple, even obvious. The only thing is that nobody else did it, or I think could have done it -- with a tip of the hat to the simple but simply magical orchestration of Robert Russell Bennett. Rodgers's lyric-writing partner Oscar Hammerstein II could write corny, and I think there are traces of that in the song, but not here. The words are not only simple and beautiful but emotionally explosive.
It's all so stunningly written that the performers don't have to do much more than, well, just do it, unless you count the small (I'm being ironic) matter of meaning it, as it seems to me Valerie Masterson does so hauntingly in this recording.
Now we're going to jump back to 1967 and hear, well, not quite the full scene, but more of the early scene from The Pirates of Penzance, starting from the moment when young Frederic announces his ex-piratical presence to General Stanley's daughters, who are about to roll up their stockings, unaware that they're in the presence of (gasp) a man!
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, Frederic, "Stop, ladies, pray" . . . "Oh, is there not one maiden breast?" . . . Mabel, "O sisters deaf to pity's name" . . . "Poor wandering one"
Philip Potter (t), Frederic; Jean Allister (ms), Edith; Pauline Wales (ms), Kate; Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 4-8, 1967
As we've heard in Masterson's Julius Caesar, Faust, and Traviata excerpts, the voice retained most of the brightness and flexibility of her D'Oyly Carte years for a couple of decades. Here, from the 1982 G&S program with tenor Robert Tear from which we've already heard excerpts, is a 1982 "Poor wandering one" (without chorus).
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, Mabel, "Poor wandering one"
Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Kenneth Alwyn, cond. EMI, recorded June 23-24, 1982
NOW WE HAVE TWO BONUSES (WHICH I THINK SOUNDS MORE DIGNIFIED THAN "LEFTOVERS")
I made these two audio clips thinking I might find a place for them in a flashback/preview that has already grown to more-or-less full post length. I hate to waste them, though.
First, from the complete King and I recording, we have the lovely "March of the Siamese Children." I imagined using it to lead into the Schoolroom Scene, but for technical reasons that didn't work out.
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, "March of the Siamese Children"
National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
Finally, another excerpt from the 1972 "Gilbert and Sullivan for All" series, recordings made in conjunction with the hour-long film versions of eight G&:S operas (plus the Burnand and Sullivan Cox and Box) featuring the touring troupe of that name assembled by former D'Oyly Carte tenor Thomas Round, with (by then also former) bass Donald Adams. Masterson sang four of the heroines: her old standbys Mabel, Yum-Yum (The Mikado), and Josephine (HMS Pinafore), all of which she recorded complete during her tenure with the D'Oyly Carte company, plus a role she hadn't sung much, the "strolling singer" Elsie Maynard in The Yeomen of the Guard.
As you may have suspected from "Poor wandering one," these are not among Masterson's happier recordings (that 1972 "Poor wandering one" is significantly less easily and luminously sung than the 1967 and 1982 ones we've also heard tonight), which I suspect reflects the conditions of haste and lack of care under which they were made. Nevertheless, given her suitability to the almost totally serious role of Elsie, here she is with her performing partner and fiancé, the jester Jack Point (sung by John Cartier, longtime backup to D'Oyly Carte principal comedy baritone John Reed, whose contributions are one of the most interesting things about the "Gilbert and Sullivan for All" series), introducing themselves to (hopefully) interested onlookers.
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Yeomen of the Guard: Act I, Duet, Jack Point and Elsie Maynard, "I have a song to sing, O"
John Cartier (b), Jack Point; Valerie Masterson (s), Elsie Maynard; Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Murray, arr. and cond. Pye, recorded 1972
I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO GET TO VIOLETTA's BIG SCENE FROM ACT I OF LA TRAVIATA, BUT . . .
As I said, we're already pretty well over the border for a flashback/preview. I did kind of want to have Violetta's "Sempre libera" on hand here, since a lot of people think Sullivan had it in mind when he wrote "Poor wandering one," but, well, you can't always get what you want.
I still don't know when we're going to get to the promised Valerie Masterson post. Or maybe we'll just keep doing flashback/previews.
