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Last May was her memorial tribute by the Metropolitan Opera Guild at Town Hall.

Here is my tribute.

To go from the sublimity of Régine Crespin’s book to the reality of so much else written about opera:

There is a particularly nasty cabal of NY opera editors, writers and critics who do not believe that anyone outside of their clique should be allowed to write about opera.  They want to take over the field (and we might as well kiss the field good-bye if they attain their goal[sssssss].)  Their specialty is defamation of anyone who isn’t one of them.  They do great harm to the field even as they advance their individual careers.

And now it seems as though they have an ally in the red hot citadel of the Manhattan opera world.

More on this story as it unfolds. . .

I’m reading the late Régine Crespin’s memoir, On Stage, Off Stage, published in English translation by Northeastern University Press in 1997.  OK, I’m reading it a little belatedly.  But better late than never.

What a superb memoir!  Crespin and the translator  both say she wrote it herself, so I guess she did, although divas don’t always acknowedge the help.

But it certainly is written with sufficient idiosyncracy to make one believe that she did do it on her own.  Yet it’s not incoherent or overly whimsical the way any number of celeb memoirs that read as if home-made are.  She really gives the impression of having taken a deep look at herself (and in terms of help, she does acknowledge her analysts!)

Last week I attended the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s luncheon honoring Marilyn Horne, and I want to write it up for City Arts on-line this week.  But first I have to share something funny: Peter Gelb sent his regrets, saying that he was detained by an orchestra rehearsal.  But at least it wasn’t a singer problem, his message added: “It’s still too early in the day for them to figure out what’s wrong.”

A “Marina” wrote, alerting my attention to a NYT piece from 2007 on Gelb’s change in cover policy:

www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/arts/music/20oper.htm

From the point of view of audience appeal, I don’t know whether it was a good idea or not to have opera stars be hosts for the Met’s HD telecasts.  But it’s certainly fascinating to watch their on-camera schmoozing.  They are are still not very good at it-clearly feeling their way.  These are people–mostly women it seems-who are extraordinarily skilled at one type of “act,” now being asked to try a completely different performance art. 

But surely their handlers might advise them to get a little coaching if they haven’t already.  They are still visibly self-concious before the camera.  They do too much.  Their presentation would profit by more graceful, less abrupt movements of head and hands.  Definitely a more relaxed stance is required.  Also, a less jittery rapport with their subjects–less jumping the gun before the subject has finished his/her reply,  less interrupting.  Overall a bit less flamboyance on the part of the divas-turned hostresses; cede the flamboyance to the star subject, and then when you’re being inerviewed because it’s your performance that’s being HD’d, be as flamboyant as you want.  As well, some of them need wardrobe consultants.  But their gutsy gameness to try this is courageous, and as I said, for me compelling.

So far I’ve only watched the HDS on TV – I may go to the Nov. 2 Bolena repeat telecast.

The Met’s big-time dissing of Croft brings up a larger issue: Gelb’s apparent policy change from the Volpe era, when a cover was always given a single scheduled performance.  That was a great system.  Some cover performances were downright revelatory.  For instance in 2006, Greer Grimsley’s Scarpia and Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin were better than James Morris and Ben Heppner in the same roles.

It may be that the Met’s pursuit of superstars at all cost has begun to backfire.  The Mattei subbing is a question of adding insult to injury, because it’s not as if Mattei wasn’t already at the Met performing his own scheduled Figaros. The Met just did not want Croft to perform, even at the expense of a less artistically organic opening night.  Pulling a few all-nighters cannot compare with the weeks of rehearsal that Croft had.  And the entire ensemble integration was undoubtedly affected as well.  As Tomassini writes, “It is impossible to know how much the last-minute casting shuffle affected Mr. Grandage’s intentions.”

I was astonished to read in Tomassini’s Times review of the Met’s new Don Giovanni that Dwayne Croft had been assigned to cover the lead Don, Mariusz Kwiecien (Croft finished the dress rehearsal when Kwiecien hurt his back last week) but was not scheduled for even a single performance of the work. The Met, in fact, seems determined that Croft not get the chance to pinch hit before a paying audience. For when it was clear that Kwiecien was going to have to cancel at least part of his run, the Met did not see fit to allow Croft to step in. Instead it tapped Peter Mattei, even at the cost of forcing Mattei to move out of some scheduled Figaros in the Met’s Barber of Seville. This despite the fact that, as Tomassini notes, Mattei had no familiarity with the new production, whereas Croft of course did.

Croft is a great baritone with years of experience,  a career developed at and by the Met in large part—he began there 20 years ago in bit roles but was soon singing leads.  His voice is still in fine fettle, but what the Met is now serving him are slim pickings indeed.  While Kwiecien, Mattei, and Gerald Finley (who sings Don G at the Met next year) are certainly nothing I’d turn out of the theater, I would have been just as interested in hearing Croft sing his first Met Don since 1997.

In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, I review Judith Chazin-Bennahum’s René Blum & The Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life. It’s been a long time a’coming: a chronicle of the life and career of the polymathic one-time artistic director of the Monte Carlo opera house.

Leggy leggy New York City Ballet ballerina Teresa Reichlen on the cover of the new, Summer 2011 issue of Ballet Review.  And even though there’s a great deal of interst within its covers, please don’t miss my article on my vaudevillian grandparents, “Sallie and Joe.”