Wednesday, 29 October 2014

My very first opera evening: "Die Zauberflöte", with Cristina Deutekom


Back in time
This morning I got the message:
Cristina Deutekom (82) overleden. Hebt u haar live horen zingen of een andere mooie herinnering? Laat het weten!
"Cristina Deutekom (82) passed away. Did you hear her singing live, or do you have another nice memory? Let it know!"


Netherlands, the sixties
That was the beginning of searching for more about Cristina Deutekom. I had heard her. Live. Singing the world famous aria's of Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute", "Die Zauberflote" on an evening in the concert hall of Eindhoven, Netherlands, somewhere in the late sixtees. In that time it was named Stadsschouwburg, now Parktheater Eindhoven.

(Photo: The original Stadsschouwburg)




                                  


My first opera evening 
Being a student of what is named now "Fontys Hogescholen" or "University College Fontys" but then "Kweekschool", to become a teacher, I was obliged to make choices in the cultural program of the Stadsschouwburg. Without knowing what I chose there was as I remember now, also Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, performed in a special part of the Stadsschouwburg, much smaller than the main hall, Puccini's La bohème, and ballets performed by the National Ballet of the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Dance Theater. The first big stage opera in my life is "Die Zauberflöte".
The smell of a theater, as I remember now also, is very special, becoming stronger when the curtains open. The free dynamic activity of a live performance is wonderful and emotionally nourishing, especially when one is not used to the beauty of theater, concerts, operas. In the sixties even TV was not common, only available for the few, still, though it was a growing market. All in life, and also around music was going to be more affordable, like the vinyl L.P.'s with classical music (Deutsche Grammophon). What do I mean with that: affordable? Being born after the war, in 1948, I have grown up in rather poor circumstances, compared with the luxury and high (even double) incomes and "needs" of families nowadays. There was no money for buying more than the basics in life.
Because of the economical growth which started in the late sixties people could buy more expensive and better devices. The sound became better because of better quality pick ups, and speakers. Also radios produced a better sound, but still far from the perfectionism we are used to know. So, when I heard the first live voices, I was touched, frozen, hypnotized, shocked, all together. When I saw human beings moving around on some square meters named a stage, in special costumes, I was delighted. Their freedom was not ours. We were calm students, of a nuns school.
Cristina Deutekom
Then there was Cristina, singing as I never had heard somebody singing. Her presentation was more than a voice. She was the one she was presenting. Completely the personality with the full inner passion. Not realizing then that I was listening to a new diva, I have absorbed all of that evening and it stayed unveiled till now. Reading about her developments as an opera singer that followed after that evening, I am aware of the high caliber she was and I am proud to have been one of her first listeners when she was singing Mozart's opera. Here some videos with Cristina Deutekom in her role as the Queen of the Night:




 Die Zauberflöte 

Strange for me (I remember) was the choir with singers who were dressed as Egyptians from the time of the pharaohs. I was not prepared on it, nobody told me anything about the opera, and we had no computer to google for it. A lot in the opera was a mystery for me, but what I kept in my memory is Cristina's aria "Die hölle Rache".....
Translated from the Dutch wiki page (the English page does not mention what I read on the Dutch page): "The opera contains some very famous arias, of which the Queen of the Night role ("O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn" and "der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen") with almost unsingable virtuoso coloratura notes, is perhaps the best known. If these notes are well sung, the effect is electrifying. This aria of the Queen of the Night contains the second highest note ever written for an opera: the F3. Only the G3 in the opera 'Esclarmonde' by Jules Massenet exceeds this height."
How interesting to read (in wiki) that the opera is filled with symbolism, also the deeper esoteric symbolism. The opera is obviously based on the Greco-Roman mysteries: mystery religions, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, religious schools of the Greco-Roman world. Participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). My question: Does this mean that Mozart was so much more as a personality than the film Amadeus tries to make us believe he was? Not the ridiculous shameless immature person?
Mozart was also interested in the freemasonry (vrijmetselarij) and alchemy, together with Emanuel Schikaneder, who was the (what we name now) producer of the magic flute.
It would have been nice to have known more about the opera, then, in the sixties, but fact is that now I am so much older (almost fifty years older) I understand more of life, learned more later than the most excellent study of that time (and even of the present) could offer me, with other words: even with the most excellent explanation I would not have understood the opera in its deepest levels. Will I understand it now?  It is time to start studying "The Magic Flute".

The full opera:
Year: 1971
Concert Hall: the Hamburg Opera, Hamburg, Germany
Director: Peter Ustinov
Aartistic direction: Rolf Liebermann.
The production was taken into a TV studio and filmed, using the original sets and costume
Tamino: Nicolai Gedda
Pamina: Edith Mathis
Sarastro: Hans Sotin
Königin der Nacht: Cristina Deutekom
Papageno: William Workman
Papagena: Carol Malone
Monostatos: Franz Grundheber
Speaker: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Two Men in Armour: Helmut Melchert, Kurt Moll

State Opera, conducted by Horst Stein.





Cristina Deutekom, biography

Cristina Deutekom, also known as Christine Deutekom and Christina Deutekom (28 August 1931 – 7 August 2014), was a Dutch coloratura soprano opera singer. She sang with all the leading tenors of her time, including Carlo Bergonzi, José Carreras, Franco Corelli, Plácido Domingo, Nicolai Gedda, Alfredo Kraus, Luciano Pavarotti, and Richard Tucker.


 "La Deutekom" was born in 1931 in Amsterdam as Christine (Stientje) Engel. After some smaller roles, her breakthrough came in 1963, portraying the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Dutch National Opera. She then sang the same role at all major European opera houses and also at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1968. In 1974 she opened the Met season as Elena in I vespri siciliani alongside Plácido Domingo.


Besides the Queen of the Night, her Mozart roles included Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte and Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito. She sang the great bel canto roles, specifically in Rossini's Armida, in Bellini's Norma and I puritani, and in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.


She went on to the great dramatic Verdi roles including Abigaile in Nabucco, Lady Macbeth, Leonora in Il trovatore, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and Elena in I vespri siciliani. Other roles which were captured in commercial recordings include Giselda in I Lombardi and Odabella in Attila. Finally, she sang the title role in Puccini's Turandot.


Deutekom decided to end her stage career on the last day of 1986, after suffering heart problems during a performance of the opera Amaya in Bilbao. She turned to giving master classes internationally.


She made a return in November 1996 at the Concertgebouw Operafeest, at the age of 65 singing the Bolero from I vespri siciliani and Anna Elisa's aria Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden from the operetta Paganini, reportedly "bringing the house down". As of 2001, she was a guest teacher at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, but after suffering a stroke in 2004, she retired from public life.


 She died on 7 August 2014 after a fall in her home. (wiki information)


Sources and additional information








Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

The connection between Music and Mathematics



Introduction
Music is more than art and feelings (emotional awareness), music is also mathematics and rationalism (mental awareness). In some paragraphs I will try to explain that.


1. Frequences: healthy and not healthy frequences
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. The term frequency is also used in music, because every note has an own repeating wave, a frequency. Last week I read a highly interesting blog post about the influence of music on us, human beings, in the way it is performed. The writer uses terms as Herz, and to be able to understand the following text: Herz is the unit for frequency, each difference of height in sound is related with its own unique frequency. All in the universe has a frequency, also you, me, stones, stars, everything what exists on earth and the universe. All is one and connected. There are natural, creative, constructive frequences, there are unnatural destructive frequences which lead to demolition.

The natural frequency of Nature (and therefore also you) is 432 herz and known as Verdi's A.
Verdi (1813-1901) was an Italian classical music composer.
To understand the difference between a composition with the natural vibes (frequences) or the unnatural vibes (frequencies) on our feelings, our being, there is a video where you can compare the one in 432 herz and another one in 440 herz, click here.

The unnatural 440 herz is a destructive frequency, that pollutes the individual and social existence ofhuman beings (and animals, plants, all life). In a paper entitled ‘Musical Cult Control’, Dr. LeonarHorowitz writes: “The music industry features this imposed frequency that is ‘herding’ populationsinto greater aggression, psycho social agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illness.”


For all the details about this article go here.







 2. The positive effects of healthy frequences (classical music) 
In the "The Vancouver Sun" I found an article about the positive influences of frequences. You can read the full article here.
Shortly: Though it is excellent to be a listener, a way of practicing music in a passive way, it is proved that active practicing a musical instrument, studying music, even in a most simple way, offers many positive effects on the healthy psychological human development. 

Dr. Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh has been heavily involved in research on music and cognitive performance. She gives far more credit to the active playing of instruments than simply passive listening.

In her 2006 article published in the Educational Psychologist, she explains that “young children provided with instrumental instruction score significantly higher on tasks measuring spatial-temporal cognition, hand-eye coordination and arithmetic.” Part of this is due to the amount of overlap between music skills and math skills. For example, Rauscher says the part-whole concept that is necessary for understanding fractions, decimals and per cents is highly relevant in understanding rhythm. “A literate musician is required to continually mentally subdivide beat to arrive at the correct interpretation of rhythmic notation,” she writes. “The context has changed, but the structure of the problem is essentially the same as any part-whole problem posed mathematically.”

The visual and spatial skills that a child exercises every time he practises an instrument and plays music strengthen his mental-physical connection.

The link between the physical practice of music and strong mathematical abilities are demonstrated in studies that show that kids who play a musical instrument can perform more complex arithmetical operations than those who do not play an instrument. The slow work of practice, the attention to detail and the discipline it takes to learn an instrument are also excellent preparation for the practice involved in building strong math skills. 
3. Johann Sebastian Bach and the mathematics of a genius
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer of Classical Music. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth.
Analyses of music, classical music, prove that music is not only "Art", and it is much more than "feelings". Musicians/composers need to be gifted with the talent of sensitivity, emotions, creativity, emotional intelligence, but they also need to be gifted with a rational intelligence, a strong excellence in mathematics, algebra, arithmetic: this must not be understood as a must to study it to be talented with it, naturally, so: gifted, without studies. Bach did not study it, he knew without knowing, or learning. This was a part of his being, as a genius.

Bach has been working with numbers, aware or not aware, but analysts of his music notice it. Bach was a genius. Damian Thompson writes in "The Telegraph": "Bach didn’t invent musical numerology: from medieval Masses to the eerie atonalism of Anton Webern, composers have used sound to perform feats of maths and logic that are among the great achievements of Western thought, not just “art”. You don’t have to be a musicologist to experience this; we’re not talking about formal equations that you either get or you don’t. A smattering of basic musical theory is all you need to recognize that the greatest fugues perform mind-blowing somersaults."




Classical music in schools
Damian Thompson: "The problem is that most schools don’t teach the rudiments of “elitist” music. They regard it as the province of middle-class nerds who, if they’re that keen on learning about keys and intervals, can damn well persuade their parents to pay for private lessons."
"This makes me angry, because it could so easily be put right. But it won’t be – not even by this government, which is so desperate to stretch young brains in other subjects. As a result, the ears of most British children will never be unblocked, and they’ll be deprived of an experience that no equation can provide: that of actually hearing a mathematical miracle."
4. Summery
All together it is obvious that music is a must in the education of children, in the healthy development of children, and a must for all human beings to stay healthy or to become healthy. The harmonious sounds of Classical Music are a must for the needed change in life on earth to stop the negative spiral, to create healthy human beings, to stop (physical, emotional, and mental) diseases/illnesses. 
Classical Music is not there for the elite, it is there for all.
Because I am very interested in Anthroposophy and Steiner, the Steiner or Waldorf schools, I started collecting a long time ago information about it in my community "Anthroposophy ~ Rudolf Steiner". therefore I know that on Waldorf schools music lessons and practicing music belong to the school program for all children. 

A very nice video:









Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)