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Rockwell Matters: Episode Transcript (11/12/07)

Hi, it's all Berlin all the time on WNYC these days and so therefore you might expect me to launch into something about Berlin. The trouble is most of the Berlin stuff that I'm seeing, which is Berlin Philharmonic-related, is this coming week. I did see "Berlin: Symphony of a City," more accurately entitled "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis," at Zankel Hall, and enjoyed it for what it was, which was an imagistic tone poem. I've not seen the showings out at P.S. 1, I think it is, of Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz." It did make me think a little about German film and how basically depressing it is from "Metropolis" to "M" to "Three Penny Opera" to Leni Riefenstahl's Olympics film to "Run Lola Run" to "The Lives of Others." So that's it for Berlin from me.

However, I want to talk about "Vanessa" and various issues related thereto. It came out in 1958, praised,came to Salzburg, attacked, became a footbal between the modernists and the neo-conservatives or romantics or whatever they were, and now it's back. And people who are modernist of inclination, like Tony Tomassini in the TIMES, liked it but tried to stress its 12-tone qualities, which is absurd. This is a retro, musically, piece: often beautiful, often tedious, but retro. What it really suggests is that the modernists and the minimalists -- the uptowners and the downtowners -- are on one side of the equation and the older, sort of holdovers from romanticism are on the other side. What interested me more really was the retro dramatic style of... It's kind of a campy take not so much on Puccini -- which Menotti, the librettist, is always accused of -- as on Hollywood silent films or talkies in which great tragic, over-made-up actresses emote on the screen. This reminded me in a way of my theory, enunciated in my book on Lars van Trier, that in film close-ups of feminine faces in extremis, in intense emotional situations, is almost a kind of visual music. And in that sense, a film of the drama of "Vanessa" might work better.

This all fits in, however, with the image of women as propagated in "Vanessa." You have the sort of lonely, desperate -- one might even say horny -- older woman and the young, increasingly desperate younger woman. They're both tragic heroines in the great romantic opera or ballet tradition in which any emotional stress leads to suicide, death, or madness.

Yet conducting this opera was Anne Manson in her City Opera debut. Now Anne Manson is an interesting case and she brings up the whole question of women conductors and why they haven't made more of an impact given the fact that musical talent is presumably divided equally between men and women. Manson has had an interesting career. I've encountered her very occasionally but don't really know her work that well. I thought she conducted "Vanessa" very well. And yet, where are the women conductors? For that matter, where are the women composers? Where are chick singers in rock and roll versus the boys in the band? I recently read Alex Ross and was reminded of the sad tale of the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, Pete's mom, whose husband, a famous musicologist and composer, discouraged her from writing serious classical music because women didn't compose symphonies.

It is a whole problem, and it's exacerbated with conducting, because the image of the maestro -- dated and pompous though it may be -- standing there in his tux, imperiously waving his stick at a bunch of cowed musicians is so quintessentially, even cliche-ridden masculine. There is an element of total vanity in this. Stokowski was not alone. I've seen men conductors sneak onto the stage and then, as they turn their backs to the audience, slip on their glasses. From an imagistic standpoint, Manson was interesting because she wore glasses from the start as if to say, "I'm serious, I'm not just a pretty face." She also wore a pants suit, which is the de rigueur costume for women, Marin Alsop having set the style. Yet she wanted to femme it up a bit so she had sparkles on it, which seemed like an odd mixed signal.

The problem with conducting is that you have to win the respect, not so much of the audiences or the boards or the impresarios as the musicians. The relationship is amazingly tricky, no matter what you do, because the musicians are often bitter and resentful of some person up there waving a stick. And when you have another reason to be down on them -- i.e., that they're women -- it becomes a real problem. And yet, Manson and other women are extraordinary musicians. There's no reason why, in the fairly short run, talent won't out. I expect that to happen with Anne Manson, and I look forward to it.

 — John Rockwell

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