NEW YORK — On a recent trip to New York, it was not easy to escape L.A., despite obvious differences. The record highs on the West Coast reached 100 degrees, while mid-March lows in Manhattan descended to the 20s (with wind chill making it feel like the freezing teens). Everyone had a cold or something.
But head to Lincoln Center, and there was Gustavo Dudamel bringing L.A. cheer to a New York Philharmonic. Though he doesn’t officially begin as music and artistic director until September, Dudamel is already making the orchestra matter more than it has since the days of Bernstein, Boulez and — arguably to many — Mehta.
Across the plaza, the mammoth Metropolitan Opera has been so desperate for funding and excitement that it had turned (with likely little luck) to Saudi Arabia for help. Instead, it is earning it the old-fashioned way with a new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” This may have become the hottest ticket in town thanks to star singers, but what made it work is the direction by Yuval Sharon, the operatic magician who created L.A.’s experimental opera company, the Industry.
LA Dance Project also happened to be in town. Benjamin Millepied brought to the Park Avenue Armory his site-specific “Romeo and Juliet,” originally choreographed for Walt Disney Concert Hall and, later, the Hollywood Bowl, in collaboration with Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As further reminder, Deutsche Grammophon has just released the orchestra’s dynamite live recording of Prokofiev’s complete ballet score from the Disney premiere.
Hollywood, we all know, is tanking — what with AI, strikes, streaming, high L.A. costs of everything, talent drain, avarice, you name it. My colleague, Charles McNulty, has alerted us to the serious problems facing theater in L.A.We’re not alone. Nonprofit live performance everywhere is in seemingly desperate search for funding. Ticket sales don’t cover costs. The subscription model is over. Government support in this country may be as well.
Arts philanthropy is essential but elusive. Even so, there is a curious — and hopefully not delusional — optimism in classical music, L.A. style. We have lively leadership at all levels. “Accessibility” isn’t the term bandied about; “adventure” is. Full houses are common.
We’ve become the model, and that model tied to Dudamel’s charismatic positivity has been clearly embraced by the New York Philharmonic. The fit, though, may need time for adjustment. The announcement of Dudamel’s first New York season, while praiseworthy, brought an earful of gripes about his speaking in platitudes from hardcore New Yorkers unimpressed by uplift.
Deeds are another matter. Two programs Dudamel led in March were powerful examples of civic conscientiousness. In the first, he led a brilliantly played performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, which speaks well for a fall season that will rely heavily on Beethoven. Importantly, Beethoven’s symphonic essay on leadership and power was followed by the premiere of orchestrations by several composers of selected variations from Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” The title of the Chilean protest song pretty much speaks for itself of our divisively troubled age.
The second program doubled down with the premiere of David Lang’s “the wealth of nations,” a 75-minute oratorio for orchestra, chorus and two soloists, here the inimitable mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. As a further effort by America’s oldest orchestra to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary, Lang takes his cue from Adam Smith. The 18th century Scottish economist’s treatise about capitalism as a self-correcting process for progress may be a concept upon which our nation was founded, but the startling quotes from “The Wealth of Nations” forced a stunned audience to gauge our prospects for maintaining a just and equal society by taking partisan politics out of the picture.
Lang, who happens to be a native Angeleno (despite being a longtime force on the New York new music scene), lets each word resonate through an original musical style that is immediate, punctilious, and reflective of early American harmonic style and contemporary minimalism, that sounds both avant-garde and ageless as it speaks to our times and conditions.
Beyond that, Dudamel’s ambitious (and costly) plans for New York involve taking the orchestra out of the concert hall and making it part of the city, as he did in L.A. That includes Rockefeller Center, the parks and Ground Zero to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Youth orchestras in each borough appear to be a fanciful suggestion. His big-picture challenge for New York is his real uplift — and considerable challenge.
At the Met, Sharon revealed Wagner’s transformative opera as a series of rituals that implied the influence of the most influential “Tristan und Isolde” production of our time. “The Tristan Project” — created by video artist Bill Viola, director Peter Sellars and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonenwith the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney in 2004 — magnifies the rituals of life and death. Sharon’s compelling rituals are of seduction (shared drink), communal feast (at a table that resembled a Sabbath dinner) and death with the promise of rebirth.
Sharon is our biggest-picture opera advocate. He masterminded “Hopscotch,” the opera presented throughout downtown L.A. and environs, with the audience riding in limousines. He does opera indoors, outdoors, out of any box you put in his way. For the Met, he used the full stage, all the way the top.
Actors performed the ritual at the front of the stage, while the singers mostly inhabited another realm in the further upper reaches of the stage (as did Viola’s video). It was a beautifully realized and deeply moving consideration of the here and now, and the not here but still now.
Lise Davidsen’s Isolde, the production’s selling point, was all she was made out to be (the Met’s advertisements showed her alone). Her voice is firm, steady and sure throughout the five hours. She never lets a listener down. She has a steely warmth but little vulnerability, almost too perfect. Michael Spyres’ Tristan nicely supplies the vulnerability, while still being strong enough vocally to partner Davidsen, who will give a rare intimate recital at BroadStage in Santa Monica on April 10.
But the Met’s desperation for conventionality — read accessibility — never quite recedes. There is little of the wild ride Sharon is known for. Es Devlin’s sets are slick but strongly lit. Choreographer Annie-B Parson’s dancers eloquently, if ordinarily, escort Tristan and Isolde to the other side, leaving their egos behind.
In his program note, Sharon quotes the doom-laden philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer as an inspiration for Wagner’s nothing-is-real masterpiece. But that ego-removing message never quite reached the Met’s showy music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Yet to Nézet-Séguin’s credit, the Met Orchestra sounds magnificent.
Not everything is importable. LA Dance Project in the Armory lacked an essential live orchestra, and the loudly blasted recording wasn’t the L.A. Phil but a very fine rendition of Prokofiev’s ballet by the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. Millepied uses the full building, following dancers with a video camera, but the gloomy Armory is no Disney or Bowl. The one advantage was that the dancers, mainly on a plain stage, could shine in a town that knows its dance.
For its part, New York had a message or two for L.A. Japan Society presented avant-garde, multidisciplinary Japanese dancer Hiroaki Umeda’s dazzling multimedia “assimilating,” a display that well overpowered the Met’s attempts at video and movement. Umeda’s U.S. tour included various cities and even, believe it or not, the Kennedy Center. LA Dance Project has also presented Umeda, but in Paris. L.A. is not paying attention.
New York also had a second message for us concerning a Japanese artist. The Noguchi Museum in Queens has a new exhibition, “Noguchi New York.” Like David Lang, Isamu Noguchi was a native Angeleno who spent his career mainly in New York. But unlike Lang, New York paid him too little heed.
“Noguchi New York” chronicles 20 sculptural projects Noguchi proposed, beginning in 1933 with “Play Mountain” and continuing through 1984 with “Memorial to the Atomic Dead,” that would have transformed Central Park, Riverside Park, the United Nations, the former Idlewild Airport and on and on. But vision-impaired developers and bureaucrats wouldn’t have it. Even the Museum of Modern Art turned the great sculptor down. Five more projects that were realized are no longer extant. Only five others remain: the last being the sublime Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum.
This exhibit brings a warning. Will a visionary L.A. take heed, or will we someday suffer a similar revelatory show of Frank Gehry projects not realized?
Everyone needs funding, and smaller companies struggle. Long Beach Opera had a hugely successful season last year promoting Pauline Oliveros, but now faces a budget crunch. We let the Olympic Arts Festival get away from us.
And arts’ weather report for April includes an unexpected spiritual chill. If you check Musica Angelica’s website for details about its traditional Easter performances of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” you’ll find only the quiet announcement that L.A.’s leading early music ensemble has canceled the rest of its season “due to the organization’s financial position.”
Our optimism remains real, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need regular Schopenhauer reality checks.
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