African Queen: Sofonisba

The Death of Sophonisba by Giambattista Pittoni, c. 1730s. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Sofonisba (also spelled Sophonisba), daughter of Hasdrubal, the king of Carthage, appears in Book XXX of Livy's history of Rome. Betrothed to the Eastern Numidian prince Massinissa, she is instead forced by her father to marry Siface (Syphax), the Western Numidian king with whom Hasdrubal wishes to make an anti-Roman alliance. Stung by Sofonisba's marriage to his rival, Massinissa revolts against Siface and joins forces with the Roman general Scipio. Together they defeat Hasdrubal and Siface in battle, taking as prisoners both Siface and his wife.

Massinissa is still in love with Sofonisba, and she with him. After anguished reflections on her duty to the husband she married unwillingly, Sofonisba leaves Siface and returns to her former love. However, Scipio believes that Sofonisba urged Siface to rebel against Rome, and wants to parade her in chains through its streets in a triumphal procession. Massinissa wavers. Sofonisba, rather than suffer such humiliation, begs him to procure poison for her, drains the chalice sent to her by messenger, and dies. [1]

The Death of Sophonisba, attributed to Pierre Guérin, c. 1810. Image source: The Cleveland Museum of Art

Over the centuries Sofonisba's tragedy has been the subject of paintings and plays, as well as operas by Gluck (1744), Jommelli (1746), and Maria Teresa Agnesi (ca. 1750). Even to those who are familiar with Baroque opera the last name in that series may be little known.

Maria Teresa Agnesi was born in 1720 to a wealthy merchant family in Milan, a city which was then a part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. There were two exceptionally gifted daughters in the family: Maria Teresa in music and her older sister Maria Gaetana in mathematics and philosophy. Their father held regular gatherings in their home during which Maria Gaetana would give talks and debate with learned men, and Maria Teresa would perform. An admiring account from 1739, when Maria Teresa was 18, reports that she played harpsichord pieces by Rameau and accompanied herself as she sang arias of her own composition. [2]

Maria Teresa Agnesi, artist and date unknown. La Scala Museum. Image source: Pinterest

A decade or so later she composed La Sofonisba, an opera seria about the unhappy queen. No printed libretto survives, and so the poet is unknown. The work exists in a single copy: the presentation score that was sent to Vienna for the name-day of the Empress Maria Theresa, 15 October (also the name-day of the composer). The score is not dated, but it is likely to have been completed in the late 1740s; it is dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, Maria Theresa's husband, who was elevated to that office in 1745. There are no performance markings in the presentation score, but it would not have been used in an actual production (copies would have been made). However, the absence of any performance parts, printed libretto, or record of a production makes it seem unlikely that the opera was ever performed.

Title page of La Sofonisba by Maria Teresa Agnesi. Image source: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

We might speculate that one reason for a lack of performance could be the apparently odd choice of a subject for a celebration of the Empress's name-day. After all, Sofonisba is forced to marry a man she doesn't love, is militarily defeated, held captive, and commits suicide. But Sofonisba's choice of death rather than dishonor places her in the company of other noble women from antiquity who were extolled for their courage, such as Dido and Cleopatra.

Like Dido and Cleopatra, Sofonisba ruled in North Africa. And this, along with the role's low vocal range, suggests that the opera may have been intended as a vehicle for a specific prima donna: the contralto Vittoria Tesi Tramontini, who by the late 1740s was living in Vienna.

Tesi, the daughter of an African servant at the Medici court in Florence, was known as "La Moretta," the Dark One (she was also known as "La Fiorentina"—The Florentine—and "La Tesi"). Born in 1700, she first appeared onstage in 1716. Over the course of her four-decade career she appeared in theaters throughout Italy, Austria and Germany with colleagues such as mezzo-soprano Margherita Durastanti and the castrati Senesino and Caffarelli, all three of whom sang in Handel's London opera companies. [3]

Vittoria Tesi Tramontini, caricature by Marco Ricci, c. 1720-1730. Image source: Royal Collection Trust

In Vienna, Tesi performed the title roles in Gluck's Semiramide riconosciuta (1748), Jommelli’s Achille in Sciro (in which the Greek warrior-hero Achilles is dressed throughout as a woman) and his Didone abbandonata (both 1749). Although opinions on Tesi's  singing were divided, particularly late in her career, all observers praised her acting and expression.

In the early 1750s she began to retire from the stage, although in 1754 she is known to have performed in Gluck's Le cinesi, composed for the extravagant Schlosshof festival. Perhaps she came out of retirement to perform for the Empress, in whose honor the festival was held and of whom Tesi was a favorite: until the end of Tesi's life she held the honorary title of virtuosa della corte imperiale (Virtuosa of the Imperial Court) and lived in the Vienna palace of the Empress's military commander and advisor Prince Joseph Friedrich of Hildburghausen (also a noted patron of Gluck).

In her retirement Tesi became a well-regarded vocal teacher whose students included Caterina Gabrielli, who has been described as "one of the most eminent and perfect singers of her time," and who appeared with Tesi in Le cinesi, and Anna Lucia de Amicis, "one of the most acclaimed singers of the second half of the 18th century." [4] In December 1762 Tesi is known to have met the 6-year-old Wolfgang Mozart and his 11-year-old sister Nannerl during their first visit to Vienna; ten years later Mozart would create the role of Giunia in Lucio Silla for Tesi's student de Amicis.

"La bravissima Tesi," caricature by Antonio Maria Zanetti. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

On the album Arie dall'opera Sofonisba (Tactus) the mezzo-soprano Elena De Simone, accompanied by the ensemble Il Mosaico, performs seven arias from Agnesi's Sofonisba, plus its Licenza, or celebratory epilogue in honor of Maria Theresa; De Simone also edited the performance score. As a listening experience the album is highly recommendable: De Simone has a rich, low voice that easily encompasses the wide vocal and emotional range of Sofonisba's arias, and Il Mosaico offers excellent support (and the natural trumpets used in two of the arias have a nicely pungent tone). The record would be valuable alone for showcasing the under-celebrated work of Agnesi and Tesi, but the high quality of the performances means that it will recommend itself to all lovers of Baroque opera.

Elena De Simone. Image source: MusicVoice.it

According to the liner notes by scholar Robert Kendrick, the album was designed to "reveal different affects of different roles" in the opera. In this it succeeds admirably, offering four arias sung by Sofonisba, two by her confidante (and Massinissa's sister) Elisa, also an alto role, and one by Massinissa, a soprano role probably intended to be sung by a castrato. Clearly a good deal of thought has gone into sequencing the tracks as well, with adjacent arias offering contrasting tempos or tone.

However, the arias are not presented in the order in which they appear in the opera, and so the arc of the story is obscured. For example, on the album the last aria sung by Sofonisba is track 6, "Spera Roma," a martial aria of defiance from Act II, while her "Dall' eterno felice soggiorno," the only aria included from Act III, opens the album.

CD cover of Maria Teresa Agnesi: Arie dall' opera Sofonisba, Elena De Simone, Il Mosaico. Tactus TC 720102. Image source: Presto Music

Kendrick's liner notes identify the character, act and scene of each aria and provide some contextual information, but the descriptions are not in the same order as the album tracks. No texts or translations are provided, although a helpful link is given to the digitized score held by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, so interested listeners can follow along with the arias from Act I, Act II, and Act III.

Finally, the album is only 54 minutes long: there was certainly room to include two or three more arias and perhaps the overture. Particularly puzzling is the absence of Sofonisba's final aria before her death, "Già s’appressa il fatal momento estremo," described in the Grove Music Online entry on the composer as "particularly moving and dramatic." [2] Perhaps De Simone and Il Mosaico hoped to leave us wanting more, or perhaps they are planning a second Sofonisba volume. Either way, I'm looking forward to the results of their further explorations.

Sofonisba's first aria, "Dubbia ancor," from Act I, Scene 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqP8GFTdumo

Dubbia ancor del mio destino palpitar mi sento il core fra' la speme ed il timore fra' lo sdegno e la pietà. Degli afflitti giorni miei, dell' incerta sorte mia il voler de' sommi Dei oggi al fin deciderà

Still doubtful of my destiny I can feel my heart beating between hope and fear between indignation and pity. Of my days of affliction, of my uncertain fate the will of the highest Gods today will finally decide

Update 5 March 2022: In his comment below M. Lapin has pointed to musicologist, historian and photographer Dr. Michael Lorenz's informative blog post "The Will of Vittoria Tesi Tramontini." It is a fascinating close look at the terms of her will, and provides far more details about her life than the brief accounts I used in this post. It is highly recommended, and many thanks to M. Lapin for bringing it to my attention.

Other posts about Vittoria Tesi:

• The first Black prima donna: Vittoria Tesi
• Vittori Tesi: Some notable operatic performances, 1716-1754
• Vittoria Tesi's colleagues: Rival Queens and castrati
• Why is Vittoria Tesi not better known?

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1. Information about the opera Sofonisba in this post derives from Robert L. Kendrick, booklet notes, Maria Teresa Agnesi: Arie dall' opera Sofonisba, Elena De Simone, Il Mosaico, Tactus TC 720102, 2021.
2. Information about Maria Teresa Agnesi in this post derives from Sven Hansell and Robert L. Kendrick, "Agnesi, Maria Teresa," Grove Music Online, 25 February 2021, doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.00292
3. Information about Vittoria Tesi Tramontini in this post derives from Gerhard Croll, "Tesi (Tramontini), Vittoria," Grove Music Online, 20 January 2001, doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27735. The date of Tesi's meeting with Mozart in this article, 13 December 1762, may be erroneous: according to Otto Erich Deutsch's Mozart: A Documentary Biography (Stanford University Press, 1965), the Mozart family left Vienna for Pressburg (Bratislava) on 11 December, returning on 24 December; see p. 18.
   
4. Gerhard Croll and Irene Brandenburg, "Gabrielli [Gabrieli], Caterina [La Cochetta]," Grove Music Online, 20 January 2001, doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.10452; Saskia Willaert, "De Amicis [De Amicis-Buonsollazzi], Anna Lucia," Grove Music Online, 31 January 2014, doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.07330

The Making of Jane Austen

Image source: Arizona State University

She was not born, but rather became, Jane Austen. (p. 1)

In her introduction to The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), scholar Devoney Looser consciously echoes Simone de Beauvoir's "On ne naît pas femme: on le devient" (One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman). All of the novels issued during Austen's lifetime were published anonymously, and in their initial appearance achieved only modest success. After her death in 1817 her novels went out of print until the 1830s. And yet today, as scholar Claire Harman wrote in her own book on the posthumous creation of Austen's reputation, Jane's Fame (Henry Holt, 2009), "her six completed novels are among the best-known, best-loved, most-read works in the English language" (p. xv). How did this happen?

We might think we know the general outline of Austen's rediscovery by later generations. A late-Victorian surge of interest was sparked by the publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in 1870 (a second expanded edition followed the next year), the Letters of Jane Austen by her great-nephew Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne) in 1884, and the best-selling "Peacock Edition" of Pride and Prejudice illustrated by Hugh Thomson in 1894:

Image source: Internet Archive

Then came the mid-20th-century revival of interest after the 1923 publication of the scholarly Standard Edition of her writings edited by R.W. Chapman, and Hollywood's heavily altered 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. After another relative lull in Austen appreciation came the six-part Pride and Prejudice BBC series in 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, which fostered the contemporary mass audience for all things Austen.

Looser's book is a well-researched and lively reconsideration of this too-neat outline. She notes that although Hugh Thomson's illustrations (which rendered Austen's characters as though they were escapees from a Dickens novel) had lasting popularity, the first illustrator of Austen's novels was Ferdinand Pickering in 1833 (a correction of other sources' identification of the artist as George Pickering). Perhaps in a bid to make the novels seem more up-to-date, Pickering portrayed the female characters in 1830s styles: elaborate coiffures, high-brimmed bonnets, leg-of-mutton sleeves, tight bodices, narrow waists, and full skirts, in place of Regency simplicity of fashion. (Looser points out that Pickering's illustrations may have provided a template for the out-of-period costumes of the 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice.)

Elinor examines Lucy Steele's miniature of Edward Ferrars. Image source: Internet Archive

Looser also highlights the work of Christiana (Chris.) Hammond, the "first identifiably female illustrator of Jane Austen's novels" (p. 62), who among other scenes in Emma portrayed Jane Fairfax's father lying dead on a battlefield—a shocking reminder of the impact of events in the larger world on Austen's characters (particularly evident in the slavery subtext of Mansfield Park and the Napoleonic Wars background of Persuasion). Looser's consideration of the different Austen illustrators and their characteristic styles and scenes is a tantalizing glimpse of a subject that could easily justify a full-length book; eager readers await.

Austen adaptations did not begin with the BBC or Hollywood, of course. Looser offers a fascinating glimpse of turn-of-the-century amateur and professional Austen dramatizations. In 1899 the literary and theatrical Zeta Alpha Society of Wellesley College performed a Pride and Prejudice adaptation with an all-female cast, featuring alumna "Miss Willis" (Looser identifies her as almost certainly Clara Lucretia Willis, Class of '96) as a cross-dressed Darcy:

"A scene from 'Pride and Prejudice' as dramatized and performed at Wellesley," The Puritan, Vol. 8, No. 2, May 1900, as reproduced in The Making of Jane Austen (p. 103). Image source: HathiTrust.org

In The Wellesley Magazine Clara Willis' acting "in the very difficult rôle of Darcy" was singled out as being "especially artistic and finished," but the whole production was lauded:

Enough cannot be said in praise of the entire presentation. . .Every effort was put forward by the society to make the costuming and stage setting as accurate and artistic as possible, with the result that Wellesley has seldom seen more charming and finished dramatics than this presentation of Miss Jane Austen's delightful old novel. (The Wellesley Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 9, June 1899, pp. 475-476)

I'm guessing that Willis as a dashing Darcy is second from the right holding a top hat and the hand of his Elizabeth ("Miss Childs, '98"), while the other couple is Wickham ("Miss Smith, 1901") and Lydia ("Miss Ball, 1900")—at least, judging by his military-style coat and her frivolously feathered bonnet. (Looser doesn't speculate about the identities of the couples.)

There's a chapter on Rosina Filippi, an actress, director and performance teacher who in 1895 published Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-Room Performance. Filippi was continuing a tradition of adapting novels for private performance in which Austen herself may have participated: a dramatic adaptation of scenes from Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison exists in Austen's handwriting, and she is known to have appeared in family theatricals.

Looser writes that "Filippi's focus is on Austen's humor and on the villainous characters' delectable awfulness" (p. 89), such as the odious Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility discussing how little money he can get away with offering his dispossessed stepmother and half-sisters (the ultimate answer, of course, is none). Interestingly, only one of the seven scenes involves a pair of lovers, Emma and Mr. Knightley. The final two duologues showcase Elizabeth Bennet's strength of character: her refusal of Mr. Collins, and her confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Illustration by Miss Fletcher from Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen, arranged and adapted by Rosa Filippi. Image source: Internet Archive

Looser connects Filippi's dramatizations to the New Woman movement, saying that her Austen adaptations "gave expression to the idea that females are strong, capable, and intelligent" (p. 90).

The connection to progressive social movements, particularly women's suffrage, is even more evident in Filippi's later full-length play The Bennets, based, of course, on Pride and Prejudice. Given a performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1901, it was probably the first professional performance of an Austen adaptation. Playwright Filippi herself appeared onstage as Mrs. Bennet, while the actor portraying Elizabeth, Winifred Mayo, was one of the play's co-directors (the other was its Darcy, E. Harcourt Williams).

Later in the decade Mayo would become a leader of the Actresses' Franchise League, get arrested for participating in suffrage demonstrations, and publish the powerful article "Prison Experiences of a Suffragette" in The Idler magazine (1908). Mayo also became the first woman to portray Jane Austen herself in Cecily Hamilton's suffrage play A Pageant of Great Women (1909). Suffragists adopted Austen as an example of women's ability and achievement; Mary Lowndes designed a Jane Austen banner that was carried  in demonstrations, along with banners celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft (whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) may have inspired the plot of Sense and Sensibility) and Austen's favorites Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth.

Jane Austen Suffrage Banner, 1908, by Mary Lowndes. Photo credit: Women’s Library at the London School of Economics. Image source: LitHub.com

In "Prison Experiences of a Suffragette" Mayo writes of her first arrest, "I was still under the impression that you must do something illegal to get arrested" (The Idler, p. 86). Once that assumption was proved wrong, however, she seemed to have decided that as long as she was going to be arrested she might as well actually do something illegal: in November 1911 she participated in a Women's Social and Political Union stone-throwing campaign, breaking windows at the Guards Club in Pall Mall.

Her target was not chosen at random. Men's clubs were where members of Parliament, government officials, and leading cultural figures gathered. And as Looser points out, while the suffragists were marching through the streets carrying banners emblazoned with Austen's name, Austen was also being invoked by the suffragists' opponents inside the clubs as a contented exemplar of traditional women's roles. As Looser writes, "The invention of Jane Austen has been, and continues to be, a fraught public process" (p. 1).

Surprisingly, some of the anti-suffragist members of men's clubs thought of themselves as "Janeites." Today "Janeites" can be a somewhat disparaging term applied (mainly by men) to enthusiastic fans of Austen (mainly women); it is also a term avidly reclaimed by those enthusiastic fans. However, the term was first applied to the (mainly conservative) men who expressed admiration for her work, such as critic George Saintsbury, who first used the term in print in 1894, and the writers G.K. Chesterton and Rudyard Kipling.

"The Janeites," as published in Hearst's International, Vol. XLV, No. 5, May 1924, pp. 10-15, 152, 154. Image source: "Shakespeare and Beyond," Folger Shakespeare Library

Kipling's story "The Janeites," about WWI soldiers who form a secretive group devoted to her works, was published in Hearst's International magazine in 1924, the year after R.W. Chapman had completed his scholarly edition of Austen's writings and as she was becoming a fixture in schoolrooms and on college syllabi. However, scholarly and educational interest in Austen had emerged long before. According to Looser her novels had appeared on lists of recommended readings for schools beginning in 1838, and were highlighted in John Cordy Jeaffreson's Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria (1858)—so much for the Austen rediscovery not beginning until 1870. 

And so much for R.W. Chapman being the first to supply scholarly notes to Austen texts: in 1908 a Missouri schoolteacher, Josephine Heermans, produced an edition of Pride and Prejudice that involved textual comparison and correction, copious annotations, apposite quotations from Jane Austen's letters, a bibliography, suggestions for further study, and questions for classroom discussion or individual reflection. It was issued in the Macmillan Pocket Classics series and aimed at elementary and secondary school students, rather than an adult audience. But nonetheless, a scholarly and educational approach was taken, by a woman, to editing Austen's works 15 years before Chapman's Standard Edition. 

I've only touched on a few highlights from The Making of Jane Austen. Nearly every page offers intriguing surprises. My only regret is that the book isn't longer. In researching this post I discovered on IMDB.com that there were many early television adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that Looser doesn't mention, including the first, hour-long BBC adaptation from 1938 (!); a Philco Television Playhouse version from 1949 written by Samuel Taylor, later screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (it's quite the leap from Darcy and Elizabeth to Scotty and Madeleine); a Matinee Theatre adaptation from 1956 written by Helene Hanff, later of 84, Charing Cross Road fame; and an episode of the Canadian TV series Encounter in which Darcy was played by Patrick Macnee, later John Steed in The Avengers, and which was directed by Paul Almond, later producer and director of Michael Apted's Seven Up! (1964). A comprehensive critical companion to Austen theatrical, radio, film, and television adaptations is clearly needed. (Deborah Cartmell's Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: A Close Study of the Relationship Between Text and Film, Methuen, 2010, attempts this impossible project for screen versions of Austen's most popular novel.)

Each of us, whether illustrator, critic, editor, scholar, activist, educator, playwright, actor, enthusiast, or reader for pleasure, remakes Austen in our preferred image. We may no longer throw rocks through the windows of those who don't share our ideas about Austen, but perspectives on her are still fiercely contested. And there is a constant concern that she is becoming too popular, which essentially means that she is being discovered by people who don't like her in the same ways or for the same reasons that we do. 

One writer quoted by Looser asks, "What does this mean—that we are beginning to have a Jane Austen cult? How the idea would have amused the innocent subject of it all!" (p. 202). Was this written after all of the events and celebrations (of which the publication of Looser's book was one) marking the bicentenary of Austen's death in 2017? After the twelve months in 2004-2005 which saw Elizabeth Bennet played by both Kiera Knightley (in Pride & Prejudice) and Indian superstar Aishwarya Rai (as "Lalita" in Bride & Prejudice)? After the massive success of the 1995 BBC adaptation? No: it was written in 1898, when the first wave of Austen's popularity was still building. As Looser writes in her concluding chapter,

Henry James worried that commercializing Austen had run amok by 1905. . .Today's Jane Austen societies have not stained her good character by introducing cosplay. People have been dressing up as Austen, on stage and at society parties, for more than a century. . .Every previous blow that Jane Austen's reputation has supposedly endured at the hands of popular audiences who would sully her has failed to rub her out. Reports of Jane Austen's posthumous death have been recurrently exaggerated. (p. 222)

Let's hope that it will always be so.

Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres

Image source: Allen & Unwin

Do genres even exist in popular music anymore? Here's a comparison: a list of the Billboard top ten singles of 2021, compared with the same list from the pre-Internet era of 40 years earlier [1]:

#	2021		1981
	Song	Artist	Song	Artist
1	"Levitating"	Dua Lipa feat. DaBaby	"Bette Davis Eyes"	Kim Carnes
2	"Save Your Tears"	The Weeknd & Ariana Grande	"Endless Love"	Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
3	"Blinding Lights"	The Weeknd	"Lady"	Kenny Rogers
4	"Mood"	24kGoldn feat. Iann Dior	"(Just Like) Starting Over"	John Lennon
5	"Good 4 U"	Olivia Rodrigo	"Jessie's Girl"	Rick Springfield
6	"Kiss Me More"	Doja Cat feat. SZA	"Celebration"	Kool & the Gang
7	"Leave the Door Open"	Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak)	"Kiss on My List"	Hall & Oates
8	"Driver's License"	Olivia Rodrigo	"I Love a Rainy Night"	Eddie Rabbitt
9	"Montero (Call Me by Your Name)"	Lil Nas X	"9 to 5"	Dolly Parton
10	"Peaches"	Justin Bieber feat. Daniel Caesar & Giveon	"Keep on Loving You"	REO Speedwagon

In 1981 radio was the chief way most people heard new music. It was segregated into formats (Top 40, MOR [Middle of the Road]/Easy Listening, Quiet Storm, AOR [Album Oriented Rock], R&B, Country, etc.) and genrified playlists that were largely pre-determined by program directors and heavily dependent on major-label promotion of long-established acts. [2] 

Each entry in the 1981 list (with the possible exception of "Bette Davis Eyes," a synthpop arrangement of a 1974 Jackie DeShannon song) is pretty firmly associated with a particular genre/format. Notable for their absence are any artists associated with rap; notable for their presence are artists associated with rock (John Lennon, Rick Springfield, REO Speedwagon) and country (Dolly Parton, Eddie Rabbitt, and Kenny Rogers—although "Lady" was written and produced by Lionel Richie).  [3]

Kim Carnes: "Bette Davis Eyes" (1981). Image source: discogs.com

In 2021, most of the chart entries require slashes in their description (generally rap/R&B/dance: rapped or rhythmically delivered verses over a dance beat followed by a melodic chorus); more than half involve collaborations or feature guest stars (versus one in 1981). Three tracks are throwbacks (The Weeknd to 80s synthpop, Silk Sonic to 70s soul) while only one ("Good 4 U") could be described as rock; none are country.

Of course, since 1981 the U.S. has seen demographic shifts, the mainstreaming of rap, and changes in the way the chart positions are calculated so that they reflect more closely what (young) people are actually listening to. But I think something else is going on as well.

With the rise of streaming services, video platforms, and social media, virtually the entirety of recorded popular music (yes, I know, with exceptions) is available to everyone all the time. Since new popular music is often a recombination and reinterpretation of older elements, I'd expect genre boundaries to become blurred and get blurrier over time. And no, even though I've aged out of the target audience of popular music I'm not saying that it all sounds the same. I am saying that most hit songs seem to be converging on a hybrid style that draws on elements from multiple genres, especially rap, R&B and dance.

So Kelefa Sanneh's Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres appears at a time when genre may no longer define how popular music is made or heard, at least by people who came of age with YouTube (founded 2005), Spotify (founded 2006), and TikTok (founded 2016). Sanneh acknowledges this: at the end of the book he writes,

In theory, the popularity of companies like Spotify might have driven further fragmentation, because they made it so easy for listeners to explore far-flung genres. In practice, though, Spotify and its competitors, including Apple Music and YouTube, encouraged a new pop consolidation. Freed from the burden of having to decide which albums were the ones they wanted to pay for and add to their collections, millions of listeners gravitated toward similar sounds.

[Interjection from me: I would say that rather than listeners "gravitating" towards similar sounds, instead they are being pushed by social media algorithms that have been successfully designed to give them new music that closely matches the music they've previously listened to.]

In the new streaming era, the pop charts were full of moody, atmospheric songs that combined slangy, conversational lyrics with hip-hop-inspired beats. The new pop stars tended to draw influence from diverse sources, and yet their songs were highly compatible, blending seamlessly together on the online playlists that were displacing albums as the dominant form of music consumption. . .That development shaped this book, in which. . .many of the chapters end on a note of convergence, with broadly popular performers who are eager to shrug off the weight of genre identity. (p. 452)

Even before streaming, of course, many musicians rejected the confinements of genre. But indeed, popular music genres may be headed for the same obsolescence as (alas!) the record stores that used them as ways of organizing their stock. (Perhaps, then, one reason for Sanneh's loyalty to the idea of genre is the time he spent as a record-store clerk. In my fantasy record store, everything would be shelved alphabetically, so Motörhead would be flanked by Wes Montgomery and Mozart, and Handel would be next to Hendrix (as they were in real life). You can be glad you never had to shop there.)

The genres Sanneh chooses as his focus are rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and "pop," each of which receives a separate chapter. Of course, entire books can be (and have been) written about each of these genres, so Sanneh can only provide a broad overview of each. He is an excellent, thoughtful guide to a huge range of music: his taste is broad, and he has interesting things to say about each of the genres he covers.

However, I think his book inadvertently illustrates the truism that the popular music we listen to from the time we enter our teen years (when many of us first start developing our own tastes) until the time we're exiting young adulthood 15 or 20 years later (by which time our tastes have become more-or-less fixed) remains the most emotionally resonant for us. Sanneh reports that "I didn't start obsessing over music until my fourteenth birthday, in 1990, when my best friend, Matt, gave me a mixtape. . .carefully compiled from his own burgeoning punk-rock collection" (pp. 216-217). (Ah, mixtapes, those unique gifts of friendship and musical seduction. Sorry, young moderns, but Spotify playlists just aren't the same, especially if you send the same playlist to different people.) Sanneh's teen years (late 1980s to the mid-1990s) also witnessed the emergence of rappers such as Public Enemy, Dr. Dre and NWA, Ice-T, Eric B. & Rakim, LL Cool J, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z. Guess which are the two most energetic, engaged chapters of Major Labels?

Public Enemy: "Fight the Power" (1989). Image source: discogs.com

But perhaps because he came of musical age in the late 1980s and 1990s, Sanneh does not always do full justice to developments in his chosen genres in earlier decades. For example, the chapter on pop highlights the Carpenters, jumps to Britain's New Pop bands of the mid-1980s (Human League, ABC, Culture Club, Pet Shop Boys), namechecks 1980s and 1990s boy bands (New Edition, New Kids on the Block, NSYNC), and briefly acknowledges Madonna, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, K-Pop bands BTS and BLACKPINK, and Canadian chanteuse Céline Dion (or more properly, Carl Wilson's slim book on the Dion phenomenon, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (2007)).

But pop existed for decades before the Carpenters: it can be traced back to 18th-century ballads, 19th-century music halls, early 20th-century Tin Pan Alley. Later came the influence of Broadway and film musicals on the hit parade in the 1930s and 1940s, and the development of the American Songbook of standards. Even if Sanneh wanted to focus on pop music after the emergence of rock 'n' roll, he doesn't discuss the refashioning of the music of black artists by mainstream white singers (Pat Boone's version of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" is a notorious example). Sanneh uses Lulu's "To Sir With Love" as an example of the pop that successfully co-existed in the 1960s alongside the Beatles, Stones and Hendrix, but doesn't mention chart-topping groups such as The Association ("Cherish," "(Everyone Knows It's) Windy"), The Seekers ("Georgy Girl"), The Mamas & The Papas ("California Dreamin'," "Monday, Monday," "Dedicated to the One I Love"), or the 5th Dimension ("Aquarius," "One Less Bell To Answer"). Also lacking any acknowledgement: New York's Brill Building, the L.A. session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, or pop hitmakers Lou Adler, Don Kirshner, and Phil Spector (!), none of whom appear in the book's index.

Jerry Butler: "Make It Easy On Yourself" (1962). Image source: discogs.com

Also absent are 1960s pop performers such as Cilla Black ("Anyone Who Had a Heart," "Alfie"), Jerry Butler ("Make It Easy on Yourself"), Petula Clark ("Downtown"), Jackie DeShannon ("What the World Needs Now Is Love"), Tom Jones ("What's New, Pussycat?"), Sandie Shaw ("There's Always Something There to Remind Me"), and Dusty Springfield ("I Just Don't Know What To Do with Myself," "The Look of Love"). Most surprising, perhaps, is the glancing mention of Dionne Warwick ("Walk On By," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," and many others), the great exponent of the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David—who don't appear in the book at all, and who wrote all of the songs mentioned in this paragraph except "Downtown" (written by Tony Hatch).

Sanneh was also born too late to personally experience punk in its original incarnations. (And back then punk could never have been described as "popular" except in the sense of "carried on by ordinary people." Tom Carson wrote a memorable Village Voice piece in the early 1980s entitled "25,000 Dead Kennedys fans can be wrong," a reference to the 1959 album 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong, which is itself a reference to the 1927 song by Willie Raskin, Billy Rose, and Fred Fisher, "50 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong.") As a result Sanneh's account of 1970s and early 1980s punk and post-punk focuses on the records he played during his time as a college radio DJ two decades later, and draws on zines (primarily MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL) and other people's books.

The first issue of Maximum RocknRoll (1982). Image source: Fanzine Addiction

While I understand that Sanneh's project is to trace the histories of his chosen genres, rather than focus on specific bands, a lot is omitted. For example, he talks about the attention focussed on the punk scene's racial and sexual politics by the 1990s zine riot grrrl. But such questions were also hotly debated in the 1970s. Sanneh has a section on punk politics that discusses the contradictions in 1970s punk imagery (swastikas were worn at various times by the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten, as well as by Siouxsie Sioux), the tensions between punks and racist skinheads, and the Rock Against Racism movement. But the multi-racial punk-adjacent ska-influenced 2 Tone bands such as The Specials, The Selecter, and The (English) Beat go unmentioned, and more could have been made of the influences of reggae, dub, and funk on the music of punk and post-punk bands such as The Clash, Gang of Four, and Public Image Ltd.

(One fond memory from my misspent youth is of a concert by the hardcore punk band 7 Seconds in 1983 or 1984 at Ruthie's Inn, a neighborhood bar in a working-class black area of Berkeley. The (black) promoter Wes Robinson had begun booking hardcore shows there, and the older black clientele at the bar would generally look on warily at the spike-haired white teenagers and early-20s who would throng the stage and mosh at shows by thrash bands. But that night when 7 Seconds launched into their anthem "Racism Sucks!" I watched in astonishment and delight as the band and stage divers were joined onstage by one of the Ruthie's regulars, dancing and singing along with the chorus: "Racism sucks! Racism sucks! Ra-cism fucking sucks!")

7 Seconds: Skins, Brains & Guts (1982).  Image source: discogs.com

It's not until Sanneh's discussion of the emergence of Bikini Kill and Riot Grrrl in the 1990s that the role of women in punk and post-punk is (glancingly) mentioned. This does a disservice to the many bands from the 1970s and early 1980s that were led by (or composed entirely of) women: The Slits, The Raincoats, Au Pairs, Delta 5, The Mo-dettes, Kleenex/Liliput, Essential Logic, Young Marble Giants, The Bloods, and Bush Tetras, to name a few (most of which are not referenced).

Sanneh mentions the admiration of the Riot Grrrl bands for Joan Jett, but what he doesn't say is that the admiration was mutual. After the brutal murder of Mia Zapata, singer for the Seattle band The Gits, Jett co-wrote the song "Go Home" with Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna to publicize and help fund the investigation into Zapata's death (the song was released on Jett's album Pure and Simple). Jett also toured with the remaining members of The Gits under the name Evil Stig ("Gits Live" backwards) to raise funds for the investigation and the social justice organization Home Alive. She also produced and performed on Bikini Kill's New Radio EP, which includes their signature song "Rebel Girl."

Bikini Kill: New Radio (1993). Image source: discogs.com

Another odd omission for a history of popular music: Sanneh doesn't discuss in detail the exploitative economics of the music industry, which have come to the fore once again in recent years as it has become clear that streaming services pay to artists an infinitesimal fraction of the value of their music. It's a rich subject that Sanneh avoids almost entirely.

I realize that this post sounds like a pan, but I don't intend it to be so negative. I enjoyed reading Major Labels very much. Sanneh is an excellent writer, and I will be forever grateful to him for untangling the differences among some of the main sub-genres of electronic dance music (Wikipedia lists nearly 400 sub-, sub-sub-, and sub-sub-sub-genres of EDM). He also makes interesting connections between seemingly disparate musical forms, such as his comparison of metronomic electronic dance music to the Grateful Dead:

Like dance music, the Dead's music was rather hard to put into words: listeners describing a particularly good live set tended to wax abstract about energy and vibes. Like dance music, the Dead's music sounded rather monotonous to people who didn't like it, and who couldn't register the subtle variations and innovations that so exhilarated fans. Like dance music, the Grateful Dead's music did not translate particularly well to albums; true believers insisted that studio recordings were no substitute for hours-long live sets. And like dance music, the Dead's music was said to be enhanced by chemical intoxication—and, by outsiders, to be intolerable without it. (p. 401)

Ultimately, Sanneh's project of is one of synthesis, not fission; his church is syncretic, not factional. And the sections of the book that deal with his own experiences and enthusiasms are highly engaging. Read Major Labels for its useful overviews of the past few decades' worth of developments in popular music, and especially for the experiences of a music obsessive who became a thoughtful critic for cultural arbiters such as the New York Times and the New Yorker at a time of fundamental change in the music industry. For in-depth analysis of specific musical artists and time periods, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. And in the interests of directing readers to those sources, may I suggest that the paperback edition might be enhanced by the addition of a "Further Reading" list? Just a thought.

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1. Of course, the very idea of a Top 10, 20, or 40 was antithetical to the way I approached music in 1981: I generally listened to albums, or album sides, not individual songs, and the idea of ranking them in numerical order would have been risible. But for comparison's sake, and a sense of how far the Top 40 was from the musical taste of at least some people in their teens and 20s, here is my personal list of the top 20 songs released in 1981 or late 1980, in alphabetical order by artist:
   
   
   • "O Superman": Laurie Anderson
   • "Headache (for Michelle)": Au Pairs
     
   • "Depression": Black Flag
     
   • "Nazi Punks Fuck Off": Dead Kennedys
     
   • "That's the Joint": Funky 4 + 1
     
   • "To Hell with Poverty": Gang of Four
   • "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel": Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
   • "She's Like Heroin To Me": The Gun Club
     
   • "That's Entertainment": The Jam
   • "Dead Souls": Joy Division
   • "Change": Killing Joke
   • "Screaming at a Wall": Minor Threat
   • "That's When I Reach For My Revolver": Mission of Burma
     
   • "Ceremony": New Order
   • "Talk of the Town": Pretenders
     
   • "Pretty in Pink": Psychedelic Furs
     
   • "Shouting Out Loud": The Raincoats
   • "I Hate Music": The Replacements
   • "Tainted Love": Soft Cell
   • "Ghost Town": The Specials
   
   Just missing the list: Joan Armatrading ("When I Get It Right"), Flipper ("Sex Bomb"), The Go-Gos ("Our Lips Are Sealed"), Rick James ("Give It To Me Baby"), Public Image Ltd. ("Flowers of Romance"), Ramones ("Don't Go").
2. The average age of the charting artists in 1981 was 36, with the youngest (Robert "Kool" Bell) being 31; in 2021, the average age was almost a decade younger, with the youngest (showbiz veteran Olivia Rodrigo) being 18.
3. Parton and Rogers are in the Country Music Hall of Fame; Rabbitt is in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, won Country Songwriter of the Year in 1979, and had been the opening act for tours by both Parton and Rogers.

In memoriam: Maria Ewing

Maria Ewing, January 1977. Photographer: Jack Mitchell. Image source: The Detroit News

Mezzo-soprano Maria Ewing has died at age 71. She had an acclaimed opera career performing roles such as Carmen, Salome, Mélisande, Poppea, and Dido, but I want to honor her for an earlier role.

When I was a teenager I watched, mesmerized, as she embodied the passionate 16-year-old page Cherubino in Jean-Pierre Ponelle's film version of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), broadcast on my local PBS station. Cherubino's ardent behavior, confused feelings and obsession with sex were a mirror of my own; that he was portrayed by a beautiful woman (who, at 25, was not that much older than her character) was delightfully disconcerting. Her performance planted in me a seed of curiosity about opera; that it took almost two more decades to finally germinate and begin to develop is due solely to my own stupidity.

Maria Ewing's performance of Cherubino's "Voi che sapete" from Ponelle's film, with Mirella Freni as Susanna and Kiri Te Kanawa as the Countess, accompanied by the Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Karl Böhm:

https://youtu.be/qtDQvKB4kvA?t=3538 [ends at 1:02:03]

Lorenzo Da Ponte's words:

Voi che sapete che cosa è amor, donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cor. Donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cor. Quello ch'io provo vi ridirò, è per me nuovo, capir nol so. Sento un affetto pien di desir, ch'ora è diletto, ch'ora è martir. Gelo e poi sento l'alma avvampar, e in un momento torno a gelar. Ricerco un bene fuori di me, non so chi'l tiene, non so cos'è. Sospiro e gemo senza voler, palpito e tremo senza saper. Non trovo pace notte né dì, ma pur mi piace languir così. Voi che sapete che cosa è amor, donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cor. Donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cor.

You who know what love is, Ladies, see if it is what I have in my heart. Ladies, see if it is what I have in my heart. All that I feel I will explain, Since it is new to me, I can't understand it. I have a feeling Full of desire, Which is now delight, Now suffering. I freeze, then I feel My soul is on fire, And in the next moment I turn again to ice. I seek for a treasure Outside of myself; I know not who holds it Nor what it is. I sigh and I groan Without wishing to, I flutter and tremble Without knowing why. I find no peace By night or day, But still I like to languish this way. You who know what love is, Ladies, see if it is what I have in my heart. Ladies, see if it is what I have in my heart.

Maria Ewing's comic expressions, yearning eyes, trembling lips and sheer adolescent ardor are simply adorable. She remains for me the definitive Cherubino.

In 1978 while performing as Dorabella in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at Glyndebourne Festival Opera she met renowned director Peter Hall. Despite the two-decade gap in their ages they fell in love. After his divorce, in 1982 they married and their daughter Rebecca Hall was born. Hall, an actress and director, has written about her mother's mixed-race heritage. For more information about Maria Ewing's operatic career, please see The Guardian.

Der Rosenkavalier at Garsington Opera

Miah Persson as the Marschallin and Hannah Hipp as Octavian at Garsington Opera. Photograph: Johan Persson. Image source: The Guardian/Observer

Staging Richard Strauss' and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier (The Rose-Bearer) is one of the most difficult tasks in opera. First you must cast four superb singers who are also excellent actors. And then you must put them onstage and stay out of the way.

Garsington Opera's 2021 production of Der Rosenkavalier is beautifully sung by an exceptional cast, and Strauss' score is ravishingly played in Eberhard Klokeby's reduced transcription by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Jordan de Souza. Unfortunately, director Bruno Ravella fell at the second hurdle. Unable to resist the temptation to "improve" Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto, instead he makes staging choices that distract from the action and work against the drama.

A quick synopsis (you can skip the next three paragraphs if you're familiar with the opera): The libretto sets the opera in Vienna in the mid-18th century. Act I takes place in the boudoir of the Marschallin, the aristocratic wife of the Field Marshal. While her husband is away the Marschallin has spent the night with a young man half her age, the enraptured 17-year-old Octavian. As they are relaxing over a post-coital breakfast a distant relative of the Marschallin, the boorish Baron Ochs (which literally means "ox"), bursts in. Barely avoiding discovery, Octavian hides and hurriedly disguises himself as a chambermaid, "Mariandel." The deeply-in-debt Ochs has come to announce his betrothal to the young daughter of the rich merchant Faninal, and to ask the Marschallin to choose one of her relatives to present the traditional silver rose to his fiancée. He is distracted from his task by the pretty Mariandel, though, and while explaining his request to the Marschallin is simultaneously trying to arrange an assignation with the maid. The Marschallin, playing with fire, suggests her cousin Octavian as the rose-bearer.

The Presentation of the Rose: Madison Leonard as Sophie and Hannah Hipp as Octavian. Photograph: Johan Persson. Image source: Garsington Opera

In Act II, Octavian presents the silver rose to Faninal's 16-year-old daughter Sophie; as soon as the two young people set eyes on each other they fall in love. When Ochs arrives to sign the marriage contracts, Sophie is appalled by his crude behavior and refuses the marriage despite her father's threats. Octavian rises to her defense; swords are drawn and the Baron receives a scratch. After Octavian is forced to leave, the Baron receives a note from Mariandel asking to meet.

In Act III the Baron has arranged for an intimate dinner with Mariandel at a seedy inn, but of course it's a trap set by Octavian. Faninal, Sophie, and the Marschallin all arrive at the inn; Ochs, exposed and humiliated, flees. Sophie senses that there is a disturbingly intimate connection between Octavian and the Marschallin; Octavian is torn between the two women he loves; and the Marschallin recognizes that the time has come for her to give up Octavian.

Where does Ravella go wrong in staging this story? Let me count the ways.

Ravella and designer Gary McCann have changed the opera's roccoco 18th-century setting to the mid-century modern 1950s. This would be fine if there was a dramaturgical reason for the update. Instead, the main impetus for the change seems to be that it allows the Marschallin (Miah Persson) and Sophie (Madison Leonard) to be dressed in glamorous Dior "New Look"-style frocks instead of elaborate 18th-century gowns.

Madison Leonard as Sophie and Hannah Hipp as Octavian. Photograph: Julien Guidera. Image source: theartsdesk.com

But the 20th-century setting introduces a host of incongruities. Horses and carriages play essential roles in all three acts, for example. In Act I the Marschallin is alerted to the arrival of Baron Ochs (Derrick Ballard) by hearing his horse and carriage in the courtyard, and at the end of the act her servants tell her that Octavian (Hannah Hipp) has left by leaping onto his horse and riding away at a gallop. In Act II Octavian arrives at mansion of Herr von Faninal (Richard Burkhard) in a line of carriages, and when Ochs is wounded (or in this production, "wounded"), Faninal tells his servants to ride his ten carriage-horses to death to fetch a doctor. And in Act III, the Marschallin eases Faninal's distress by offering him a ride home in her carriage. Needless to say, none of this is very likely in 1950s Vienna.

In this production Octavian is dressed as some sort of military-school cadet, and carries a sword. But that doesn't explain why Ochs is also carrying a sword when he goes to Faninal's mansion. In the 18th century, of course, aristocratic men often carried swords, especially at formal occasions, but by the 1950s swords were hardly ever worn except with ceremonial military, diplomatic or scholarly uniforms. Ochs has no military rank and is certainly no diplomat or scholar. He has to carry a sword, though, because Octavian would not draw his against an unarmed member of his own class.

Finally, Sophie has been in a convent while her sight-unseen marriage to Baron Ochs has been arranged by her father. It's a straightforward deal: the Baron gets the young, beautiful Sophie, plus Faninal's money to pay his enormous debts; Faninal and his descendants achieve high social standing. But is this plausible in 1950s Austria? Rich businessmen already had high social standing: they were seen as leading the "economic miracle" that was pulling Austria out of postwar immiseration and famine. At the same time, the status of the Austrian nobility had been significantly diminished. Noble titles had been abolished in the aftermath of World War I, and one scholar has written that World War II left Austria with "a social structure largely free of the quasifeudal shackles of the powerful old conservative order." [1] (By the way, according to Hofmannsthal's libretto Faninal has gotten rich by supplying the army, but for a decade after World War II Austria was occupied by U.S., British, French, and Soviet forces, and essentially didn't have its own military.) In short, Ravella's staging doesn't engage in any way but the most superficial with what would have been the actual circumstances of the characters in the time period he's chosen.

Worse, though, than the multiple anachronisms introduced by Ravella's choice of period is his mishandling of the stage action. Ochs is far too clownish, signalled by his mass of unruly red hair, superabundant Victorian-style whiskers, and loud suits. In his memoirs Strauss himself wrote of the Baron, "Most basses have presented him as a disgusting vulgar monster with a repellent mask and proletarian manners. . . This is quite wrong: Ochs must be a rustic Don Juan of 35, who is after all a nobleman, if a rather boorish one, and who knows how to conduct himself decently." [2] This Ochs is simply a buffoon, which flattens the character.

Colin Judson as Valzacchi, Derrick Ballard as Baron Ochs, and Kitty Whately as Annina. Photograph: Johan Persson. Image source: Garsington Opera

Ravella's revisionism renders the Marschallin's private moment at the end of Act I less poignant. We've learned that, like Sophie, the Marschallin as a young woman was brought straight from a convent and "thrust into an unwelcome and cruel marriage to a rough, unloved, middle-aged nobleman," the Field Marshal. [3] This memory leads her to reflect on the passage of time and its inexorable cruelty. Traditionally as the curtain closes the Marschallin gazes into a mirror with deep melancholy and then slowly lowers it or turns away. In this production the Marschallin sprinkles a bit of perfume onto a handkerchief and inhales the scent, smiling wistfully. The perfume is likely attar of roses, a drop of which (we'll learn in Act II) is placed in the center of the silver rose presented to the brides of the aristocracy. But if she is remembering her betrothal to the Field Marshal, why would she smile, even wistfully, at the memories evoked by the scent of roses?

Other dramatic moments small and large are similarly undermined, especially in Act II. The Presentation of the Rose is underwhelming: when Octavian arrives to present the rose he is alone, despite the line of carriages in which he and his retinue have supposedly arrived. During the love duet between Octavian and Sophie, a Cupid figure appears and lounges about onstage. The Cupid first makes an appearance in Act I as a sort of substitute for Mohammed, the Marschallin's young African servant. This choice could have worked, but introducing Cupid during the Presentation of the Rose is ham-handed and pulls our focus away from the lovers. The music itself, with its sensuously intertwined voices, tells us that they're falling in love.

The music tells us, but perhaps due to pandemic protocols the singers remain far apart and generally look at the audience rather than one another, undercutting the sense of their dawning mutual passion. The need to maintain proper pandemic distance is also perhaps the reason why the Baron and Octavian don't cross swords (the Baron doesn't even draw his) before the Baron is "wounded" by Octavian and cries out "Murder!" And speaking of pulling focus, the milling about of Faninal's army of servants is often distracting, as is the frequent rearrangement of the furniture over the course of the act. McCann has dressed Ochs's servants in a motley array of costumes, some rudely rustic. For such an occasion even impoverished barons would dress their servants in matching (if well-worn) livery. And why does Ochs bring his own (drunken, lecherous) priest? Surely he and Sophie are going to be married on Faninal's schilling in St. Stephen's Cathedral with the archbishop presiding.

Another mis-step occurs in the Act III inn scene, where "Mariandel" is far too bold and sexually aggressive with the Baron. The Baron is taken aback, but why? He's invited her there to seduce her, after all. This also begs the question of what Mariandel/Octavian would do if the Baron responded eagerly to her/his provocations, as he well might, and it contradicts the character Mariandel must assume in front of the police sergeant as an innocent young woman being drawn into the sexual snare of a powerful and unscrupulous man.

I don't want to be too hard on this production. Even if Ravella's direction is often misconceived, it's remarkable that a small house such as Garsington (full capacity 600 seats) was able to mount a staging of this demanding work with international-level performers onstage and in the pit.

Miah Persson as the Marschallin. Photograph: Johan Persson. Image source: Garsington Opera

This was the first assumption of the role of the Marschallin by Miah Persson, who earlier in her career was a famous Sophie (I saw her in that role in the 2007 San Francisco Opera production, with Joyce DiDonato as her Octavian). Persson has personal glamour to spare and looks smashing in the 1950s-era costumes. Her portrayal, though beautifully sung, doesn't yet quite convey the inwardness and vulnerability of my favorite Marschallin, Gwyneth Jones. But those additional dimensions of the character may develop over time, and in this production their absence may be largely the fault of her director.

This is also the first time Hannah Hipp sings Octavian. She may not quite match Brigitte Fassbaender's early-Elvis charisma in the role, or Elīna Garanča's uncanny impersonation of a 17-year-old boy, but she is convincingly ardent in Act I, giving voice to waves of emotions Octavian hasn't yet learned to control (or at least conceal). In Acts II and III, it's true, the sparks that are supposed to fly between Octavian and Sophie seem more like embers, but the two singers' expression of passion is not helped by pandemic distancing protocols or their director.

Hannah Hipp as Octavian and Madison Leonard as Sophie. Photograph: Johan Persson. Image source: Garsington Opera

Madison Leonard is wonderful in her role debut as Sophie. She is convincingly girlish in both looks and manner, but has the vocal resources needed for the role's spectacular high notes. And her sorrowful realization in Act III that she is not Octavian's first love was most touching. I will be following her career with great interest.

Derrick Ballard sings the role of Baron Ochs quite well; he does not bark or bluster his way through, and is lacking only the role's very lowest notes (which for comic effect are written to be almost impossible for anyone to reach). He does everything asked of him by Ravella, and is not to blame for the director's and designer's misconception of the character as nothing more than a loutish bumpkin. But that characterization neutralizes the threat he represents to the Marschallin in Act III once he figures out who "Mariandel" really is and what Octavian was doing in the Marschallin's bedroom so early in the morning. Without that threat, Ochs' dismissal comes too easily.

A final word about Jordan de Souza's conducting of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Der Rosenkavalier is a long opera that can bog down at points (particularly in the first half of Act III). De Souza shapes each act's long dramatic arc beautifully, while allowing details in the score to emerge without calling undue attention to themselves or halting the flow. And he achieves such a full, lush Straussian sound with the Philharmonia that unless it had been mentioned in the program I would not have realized that they were employing Eberhard Klokeby's reduced transcription of the score for mid-sized orchestra (likely another pandemic concession). De Souza and the musicians and singers he leads provide a very assured performance of Strauss's sublime music.

So there are many musical and visual reasons to enjoy this production, and I would urge curious readers to explore it for themselves. Garsington Opera and OperaVision are generously making it available for free through April 30, 2022; production details and a video link can be found on the Garsington Opera website. A trailer for the production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6JsN7BmJp4

More posts on Der Rosenkavalier:

• Glyndebourne: The 2018 Glyndebourne revival of Richard Jones' production set in pre-WWI Vienna.
• The Marschallin's farewell: Der Rosenkavalier at the Met: A review of the DVD of Renée Fleming in her final appearance as the Marschallin, partnered with Elīna Garanča in her final appearance as Octavian, in Robert Carsen's problematic 2017 production at the Metropolitan Opera.
• The Rosenkavalier Trio: A review of Michael Reynolds' book Creating Der Rosenkavalier: From Chevalier to Cavalier (Boydell Press, 2016), which details the important contributions of Count Harry Kessler to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto, including a hitherto unsuspected source.
  
• Opera Guide 3: Der Rosenkavalier: A brief history and synopsis of the opera, with recording recommendations.

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1. Radomír Luža, Austro-German Relations in the Anschluss Era (Princeton University Press, 1975), quoted in Harry Ritter, "Grasping Toward Austria: The Anschluss - Book Review" (1979). History Faculty and Staff Publications 27. https://cedar.wwu.edu/history_facpubs/27.
2. Richard Strauss, Recollections and Reflections (Boosey & Hawkes, 1953), a translation of Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Atlantis Verlag, 1949) by L.J. Lawrence, pp. 160-161. The translation I quote is from a different source that I haven't been able to identify.
3. Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss: A critical commentary on his life and works, Vol. 1 (Barrie and Rockliff, 1962), Ch. IX, excerpted in Alan Jefferson, Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Cambridge Opera Handbooks, 1985), p. 41.