What happens to these poor ladies when they turn 40, I wonder? ‘Twas ever thus in the world of opera. I’ll post another strip to decorate that point – this one is big enough already. What’s new is the increasing tendency to market all classical music with good ol’ sex.
And perhaps this is the way to attract young people. In teaching opera, I learnt that, at first, no sound whatsoever is as compelling as a glamorous clip. Show them something like Franco Rossi’s Carmen movie – the scene in which Carmen seduces Don José. Keep away from fat ladies. Even fully mature female voices (Fleming, Callas) tend to remind them of their mothers.
The marketing is of a piece with the re-location of classical music to a genre within a mass marketing world, as if a ‘taste’ for it were the equivalent of (say) a taste for Cajun. The few specialist shops that remain are places that check your postcode at the door; you will be attended to, if at all, by scented and disdainful young men.
The upside, for old hands, is the undreamt of availability of a vastly expanded catalogue at vastly cheaper prices. This morning on the ABC, Andy Ford interviewed David Patmore, author of a 900 page booklet on orchestral conductors which comes bundled with four Naxos CDs and (I find) can be bought for the sum of A$43 – that includes postage. Oh, and access to a website with 2oo more samples of historic recordings.
If you want it, don’t try Discurio, Naxos’s preferred Australian retailer. Now that HMV as such has been folded into the mix, you can buy the set, with its examples of Furtwangler, Stokowski, Beecham, et hoc omnes at Sanity.com.
Maybe the naked Rhinemaidens get mentioned in the next entry. Netrebko herself says she wants to do Salome, full monty.