Werther Video on the arte webiste HERE (beware, you need an updated version of Adope Flash Player to view it, and you can get it here )
And remember, for those who live in Paris, or the lucky ones who can arrange a trip there, 2 performances left: 1st and 4th of February! Details from the Opera de Paris site.
(i know it is a crappy picture, but so is my mobile ;-))And there will also be a radio broadcast on France Musique (you will be able to listen live from the web of the radio):
DIFFUSION SUR FRANCE MUSIQUE LE 13 FEVRIER 2010 A 19H05 (CET ), Uk time 18,05!
Ah merci! So much beauty. Tu sais quoi? It was only the German arte that doesn't play it, even if the screen appears now. No problem with the French version. Weird. They're supposed to be one station.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, did you catch the interviews on the Opéra Bastille website? It's so much fun to watch Kaufmann creatively assemble his French from various angles. :-D
mais bien sur! sometimes i can follow him better in French then when he speeds up in Deutsch :-))) Son français est délicieux!
ReplyDeleteFor more fun and games.. and some animal torture ;-)))) see snipets from notre chere Esti :-) she's a magician with that camera!
http://blogs.arte.tv/esti/frontUser.do?method=getHomePage
Hei dear.
ReplyDeleteOn In Fernem Land I have left links to this exceptional video.
Are at your disposal
Thanks Joaquim!! i see everyone loved it and loveable it is!!1 sorry hardly time to breath these days, i'll stop by soon :-))))) Abrazos!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link - didn't see the animal torture yet, but that Esti lady is quite fascinating. I haven't quite found out yet what exactly she's actually doing. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnd Kaufmann uses the Metro with nobody noticing? Wow!
Esti makes arts documentaries, she has done a wonderful one on Natalie Dessay and accompanied her over a year i think while doing so. I find her images very sensitive and not at all intrusive. She's got a real talent for showing how people are naturally without ever intruding :-) I hope her documentary will get aired :-) It would definitely get rid of many preconceptions about opera singers these days :-) And yappy let;s not kid ourselves, opera is still a niche thing, sadly :-( Outside opera fanatics I don’t think people know what Werther is and that it played at the Bastille… And in some respects it is a good thing, why should opera singers go about their normal business like any other people. I don’t think he would enjoy being pointed at or otherwise when he goes about his normal life… opera star or no star, I’m sure they really want to have a normal life. After all, isn’t it nice that he can be such an extraordinary artist and a very normal human being at the same time? :-)
ReplyDeleteOh but I totally like to kid myself that it's not a niche thing, because it's all over the media sometimes. Or plastered in posters all over the place. I remember my best friend calling me from Berlin two years ago, claiming that Jonas K was being marketed like Knut the polar bear. And when I visited it was totally impossible to get a last-minute ticket at the opera for a stuffy old Bohème just because he was in it. And that was two years ago.:-D
ReplyDeleteOf course I agree with you and think it's brilliant he can still use the Metro. And those Esti clips are incredibly cute. So thanks again.
really?? i think it is only Germany who does this kind of marketing to be honest, and maybe Austria (you know like Anna and the mineral water, Anna and the shampoo, etc) In the Uk they wouldn't stand a chance to see anything with an opera singer's image, in fact unless they are or were 1 of the 3T they will not make any headline news in any paper... But i don't think it is this kind of marketing you were thinking of :-)
ReplyDeleteAs far as opera, i am all for as much publicity it can get! I really wish it was more popular, because then it would get more funding and we would have more smaller size opera houses around the world for people to enjoy, because not everyone can get to Paris, Met, London, etc. And incidentally i came to love opera myself from going every week to a small opera house, where there was no chance of seeing anyone with a big name... which doesn't mean singing was very very good! But it is like that, the more people like it, the more will try singing it, the more singers we will have, among which some few ones will be truly exceptional, but all the others as well mill continue making he genre loved! At least that is what i believe and have experienced :-)
And proof of ramblings... Blogspot cut my own comment because of too long!!! ;-)
ReplyDelete...
And i can go on and on and on about the subject! Don't even get me started in the subject of taking kids to the opera (and not the kid-type operas, the real, uncut thing!) ...i'll never stop! :-)
I still get the feeling that we are kind of a minority whenever at work or in other circumstances i have to say i will be away to go see an opera or that i will see 2,3 in the same week... the looks i get are between "you are an alien" or as if i had a screw loose... Always infinitely irritating! I sometimes get the feeling the looks would be less shocked if i said i was going bungee jumping!
I have to say i am not used to them, at home it wouldn't be seen as that weird! I have difficulties understanding why it is seen like this strange thing sometimes... Have these people never ever had music lessons in school??? They might not like it, ok, but i would have thought every school teaches a bit of music and arts and you at least get to hear about it...
Anyways, nothing pleases me more than seeing posters for concerts, operas, ballet all over town. Anyways, nothing pleases me more than seeing posters for concerts, operas, ballet all over town. But these will only tempt people to try and see a certain show, assuming tickets are still available (which is probably the reason why they are advertised in the first place I think ;-))
still proving a point here! part 3...
ReplyDeleteAnyways, nothing pleases me more than seeing posters for concerts, operas, ballet all over town. But these will only tempt people to try and see a certain show, assuming tickets are still available (which is probably the reason why they are advertised in the first place I think ;-))
I don’t think it is what fills the halls :-) It isn’t the posters that make the tickets go in this speedy way, it is the voice, the artist themselves. A practical example : two years ago the Tosca at the ROH came on sale with the tenor tbc (to be confirmed… basically they didn’t know who will sing), even when JK was announced, there were loads and loads and loads of tickets available. After the first show it sold out! And there were no posters around :-) But I know several people who after seeing it once went back again and again and others who reading the excellent reviews did the same. It happens a lot at the ROH, that if somebody is successful, they will attract more audience and the next time they come people will go an buy the tickets. It’s simple really, you liked somebody singing live, you are likely to go and see them again. With Jk it’s been just like that, some 3 years ago (and even more several years back), you hardly ever saw anyone outside the local audience, but once he himself started singing in more places (eg bigger theatres, where things get on video, radio broadcasts etc) more people heard him and more people are willing to travel to hear him again. Eg I’ve read about many French opera lovers having requested their tickets for Munich when he sings. And it’s obvious it has nothing to do with the posters :-) I get really irritated when I read about surprise success and rising star and stuff like that, pftttt!! These people have no idea how the opera world works and what drives the audiences and how hard it is to make a career. It never is an over night phenomenon, it is always the result of work , work and work and more work until they get to that level of technique and interpretation to take on that role which will make a difference in a house that will make a difference. Yes, marketing may come afterwards because people outside the theatres or the theatres themselves will want a slice of the cake, but it never ever makes a true artist. He or she will make themselves by working and working and working on their talent :-)
It happens or smaller or bigger scales with many artists and I am far from saying that all talent will triumph, I know it is not the case, but marketing is overrated :-)
I mean, does anyone believe the success of the Werther had anything to do with the marketing??? Nope, it wasn’t those nice posters that sold out the Bastille… because it wasn’t sold out before the shows started :-)
Or to give an unrelated example… the new Tristan and Isolde production at the ROH with Stemme, Heppner and Pappano determined an equally tough fight for tickets as the Don Carlo at the start of this season. Don’t think there was much marketing going on there either :-)
So here is hoping for parents to bring their kids along to opera, for schools to teach music, even for posters to bring people into the houses and many wonderful artists to keep everyone hooked for a looooooong looooooong time! (this would be my "save the world" speech if I ever won Miss Unverse… ;-))))
But really, why not opera? :-) Come on people, give it a try!
Oh wow. Please forgive me for not answering this in detail as it deserves, but I'm totally running out of time here... thanks so much for this well thought-out and passionate statement, I definitely agree on most points, about how singers have to work for their careers, and the live event itself, thank goodness, being a crucial factor. But marketing does set in at some point, if only to show the face in public space, and maybe not to sell tickets but CDs. And on a rather unrelated, way smaller scale, to just prove your show is being played at all. I've been doing a lot of (tiny, small, local or occasionally in China) concerts and performances, and we've always been wondering if the good old poster (small, in shop windows etc) was any good at all, because it didn't make a difference - it is said twenty posters maybe draw one person. But in a small town, it is the way to be visually present, if only to the people who're going anyway... Erm, talking of rambling, back to opera: I maybe totally non-representative, but yes, at our school we had the music lessons, everyone was dragged to opera/theatre/art exhibition at least once, and I do have the feeling arts institutions are doing a lot more educational outreach stuff than back then. But then funding has been constantly cut back too over the last years.
ReplyDeleteNow really, I need to stop, but I'd absolutely support your campaign! :-D