92 Year in Review : The Cover Thing : It’s the Beckmessers--Again

It was a happy, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, discouraging, encouraging, soothing, frazzling, stimulating, depressing, uplifting, bracing, painful, provocative, dull, exciting, hysterical, lackadaisical, exceptional, humdrum year. Just like 1991.

To commemorate the high--and low--points, The Times proudly and shamelessly presents the 24th annual awards dedicated to the spirit and memory of Nurnberg’s immortal , most noble , most misunderstood humanitarian, critic, musicologist, lutenist, poet, bon vivant and guardian of public virtue, Sixtus Beckmesser.

Let us know if we have overlooked anything.

Cheers

And-not-a-moment-too-soon award: To the Music Center moguls who, with only a couple of weeks to spare, finally managed to break ground for Disney Hall. Basic funding for the multi-million-dollar edifice complex would have evaporated, as per contractual agreement with the donor, if a shovel of dirt had not been turned in the erstwhile parking lot before Jan. 1.

Year’s most astonishing demonstration of virtuosity: Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting of Olivier Messiaen’s endlessly complex, endlessly convoluted “St. Francois d’Assise,” symphonic birdcalls and all, with a heroic Los Angeles Philharmonic in Salzburg.

They-have-it-and-(sob)-we-don’t award: To the administrators of the Orange County Performing Arts Center who, unlike their colleagues at the Music Center, think dance is something worth cultivating.

The-reports-of-the-demise-of-American-opera-are-somewhat-exaggerated awards: To the Met, for venturing John Corigliano’s “The Ghost of Versailles” and Philip Glass’ “The Voyage,” minimalist warts and all, in successive seasons, and to the Chicago Lyric for William Bolcom’s “McTeague.”

Year’s most useful additions to the international roster of enlightened conductors: Valery Gergiev, Alexander Lazarev, Dzhanzug Kakhidze, Mark Ermler, and others who used to be hidden behind an Iron Curtain. (Watch for Gergiev to land a major post with an American orchestra.)

Most promising new fiddler on any roof: Maxim Vengerov, age 17.

Thinking-person’s-pianist of the year: Radu Lupu, who, at his Music Center recital, looked like a grouchy bear and played like an inspired poet.

Come-back-we-need-you award: To the Houston Ballet, which suggested at the Music Center that the future of classical dance in America may now lie with regional companies, not with glamorous troupes from New York.

Most provocative addition to the ballet repertory: Paul Taylor’s devastating “Company B,” as performed by the Houston Ballet to the innocent tunes of the Andrews Sisters.

Most illuminating and most idiomatic performance of a historic masterpiece: “La Sylphide” as danced in Orange County by the Royal Danes.

Most illuminating and least idiomatic performance of a historic masterpiece: “The Nutcracker,” a.k.a. “The Hard Nut,” as reinvented by Mark Morris at the Brooklyn Academy and, to a lesser (truncated) extent, on PBS.

The Millo Memorial Awards to singing recitalists who keep their dates: To Barbara Hendricks for her exquisite Music Center performance, to Cecilia Bartoli for proving at Ambassador that all the fuss about her has not been a fluke, and to Sylvia McNair for demonstrating high art and charm to match before an empty house at Occidental in the wake of the riots.

Funniest, wackiest, raunchiest, most stylish opera production of the year: Offenbach’s “Blue Beard” as staged by Christopher Alden for the troubled Long Beach Opera, first in Long Beach and later at the Ford Theatre in Hollywood.

Best place to recharge aesthetic batteries: The newfangled Ojai Festival, especially when Pierre Boulez graced the podium.

The Eleanor Steber Award for vocal sensitivity: To Dawn Upshaw for the simple shimmer of her performance of Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”

Art-doesn’t-exist-in-a-vacuum award: To Bella Lewitzky, who, before giving Orange County a rare glimpse of modern dance on the day the Rodney G. King trial ended, said that the verdict was “scandalous”--then begged the audience not to regard Los Angeles as “an uncivilized city.”

Inadvertent critic of the year: A young Kirov dancer named Alexei Semenov, who, spinning out of control as the Arab doll in an Orange County “Nutcracker,” kicked a hole in that stupid little abstract Christmas tree.

Jeers

Year’s most embarrassing cutback: The curtailment of the adventurous Green Umbrella Series, coinciding with the advent of the adventurous Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Most portentous slushpump exercise: The gutsy performance of Richard Strauss’ gooey “Symphonia Domestica” by Zubin Mehta and the L.A. Philharmonic.

Most cynical slushpump exercise: The slick performance by William Hall and his excellent Master Chorale of Orange County of Paul McCartney’s egomaniacally amateurish “Liverpool Oratorio”--scheduled for obvious financial reasons.

Silliest slushpump exercise: The gooey production of Kalman’s gooey “Csardaskiralyno,” a.k.a. “Gypsy Princess,” ventured by the chronically conservative Opera Pacific.

Misplaced critics of the year: The members of the Pulitzer Prize board who second-guessed the specialist music jury and gave the top award to a minor-league composer named Wayne Peterson.

Nostalgia-isn’t-what-it-used-to-be award: To a seemingly superannuated Hermann Prey, for his Lieder recital at Ambassador.

Terpsichorean hypesters of the year: The optimists at the Music Center who pitched the Kirov as a company of 175 (even if one counts the orchestra, it’s a lot smaller than that) and called the paltry “Nutcracker” from St. Petersburg “the ballet event of the century.”

Saddest-terpsichorean-comeback(s) award: To Oleg Vinogradov’s once-noble, ever-declining Kirov Ballet for a tawdry new “Swan Lake,” a hokey “Bayadere,” a tacky old “Romeo and Juliet” and--later--the hopelessly muddled “Nutcracker.”

Second-saddest-terpsichorean-comeback award: To American Ballet Theatre for limping to L.A. after a three-year absence with Michael Smuin’s flimsy cartoon version of “Peter and the Wolf”--at the Wiltern Theater, of all places.

Wrong-place-with-the-wrong-values-at-the-wrong-time award: To the impresario who decided to bring ballet back to the wide open spaces of Hollywood Bowl, set up video to project the images to the distant masses and then engaged camera-persons unable to focus or follow the action.

The-decline-is-continuous award: To the masterminds at KUSC (now embroiled in interesting legal problems), who feel the best way to serve music is to demean it.

Eurotrash-lives-in-Los-Angeles award: To the Music Center Opera, for often favoring trendy anti-traditional stagings simply for the sake of novelty.

Eurotrash-lives-in-Long-Beach award: To the Long Beach Opera for presenting Reza Abdoh’s pretentious, high-tech-zombie production of “Simon Boccanegra.”

Don’t-believe-the-credits award: To the Music Center Opera for quietly discarding the prologue set designed by Wolfram Skalicki for “Ariadne,” adding 20th-Century costumes for the prologue not designed by Bruno Schwengl, and acknowledging neither change in the program.

Curious and Curiouser

Year’s most provocative, most reverberant and possibly most defiant quote: “We will soon see whether we find a new audience or only lose this one.” Spoken by modernist music-director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Year’s best got-along-without-you-before-I-met-you quote: From Andre Previn, Salonen’s beleaguered predecessor, waxing unecstatic re his former workplace: “Los Angeles is not a city terribly geared to music. . . . It is not a city that has a core of music. . . . I don’t think the Music Center is a terribly conducive place to have concerts. . . . It’s the music ghetto.”

Year’s least politically correct quote: The comment by spokesman John Collingwood justifying the costly “business” trip by FBI director William S. Sessions to see the Bolshoi Ballet in Atlantic City: “The director did not view this as pleasure.”

The-grass-is-greener-and-so-is-the-cash award: To the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, for virtually ignoring American composers (and postponing “The Death of Klinghoffer”) yet, with a lot of help from Finland, mustering the world premiere of Aulis Sallinen’s “Kullervo.” The folksy study in grim esoterica seemed to lose something in transplantation.

Only-women-can-understand-me award: To stage director Francesca Zambello, who voiced this paranoid and myopic lament to New York magazine prior to her much-booed Met debut: “Most people who run opera houses and who write about your work are men. Clearly there’s a bias.”

The Caballe Memorial Award to a diva available only for a limited number of cancellations: The capricious recipient is Aprile Millo, who pleaded illness to skip her October recital at Ambassador and then called off the scheduled makeup date, Dec. 16, because of her “inability to find a satisfactory accompanist.”

Year’s most petulant diva: The statuesque and photogenic Jessye Norman, who, unlike many an equally celebrated colleague, refused to allow The Times to take her picture in Costa Mesa.

Sartorial-schlumpf award: To Oliver Knussen, who ignored Salonen’s new dress code for gentlemen at the Philharmonic--white tie and tails--and showed up wearing an open sports shirt and a dark suit.

Nepotism-is-alive-and-(ahem)-well award: To the L.A. Opera for drafting Marta Domingo to replace the famous film director who was to have staged a fanciful “Rigoletto.” Although Marta’s husband, one Placido, will officiate in the pit, it is not yet known if a junior Domingo will devise choreography or costumes.

Out-of-sight-out-of-mind award: To the Philharmonic impresario who thought second-rate orchestras from Oregon and Mexico City would be good enough for Hollywood Bowl while the Los Angeles sought fame and fortune in Salzburg.

Coals-to-Newcastle-oom-pah-pah award: To Esa-Pekka Salonen for opening his Salzburg tenure, to the consternation of resident Austrians, with a brash, stubbornly unlilting Johann Strauss waltz.

Marni-Nixon-did-it-better award: To Luciano Pavarotti, who blithely waved his little white tablecloth in a Modena concert while clumsily lip-syncing to his own recordings for the BBC, which threatened a lawsuit.

Most unpredictable maestro: Yuri Temirkanov--when he’s good, he’s very good indeed; when he’s bad, he’s eccentric.

Year’s oddest waste of time and money: The two-week period in mid-holiday season that found the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg idle at an Orange County hotel while the rest of the world hippety-hopped through “Shchelkunchik,” a.k.a. “The Nutcracker.”

Year’s biggest pain in the ear: Minimalism.

Biggest pain in the mind: Minimalism.

Most credible rumor of the year: Philip Glass is reworking the R&H; musical “Oklahoma!,” and the song about the fringed surrey now begins with the words, “Chicks and ducks and chicks and ducks and chicks and ducks and chicks and. . . .”

Most eagerly awaited debutante: Sinead O’Connor, fearless valkyrie of pop, in her new guise as an opera diva.

Most ironic misappropriation of a quote: The line the Music Center Opera borrowed from Woody Allen to hype “The Makropulos Case”--”I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.”

City-with-a-cultural-crisis award: To San Diego, which allowed the Performing Arts Foundation to die, allowed the Symphony to teeter again on the brink of fiscal disaster and allowed the Opera to retreat even further toward dull conservatism, yet coughed up big bucks to watch Luciano Pavarotti turn a horrid sports arena into the world’s biggest indoor echo chamber.

Fastest-tenor-in-Europe award: To Jose Carreras (who earlier had turned the Greek Theatre into the world’s biggest outdoor echo chamber), for singing the Berlioz Te Deum in Salzburg one summer morning and appearing with mock prima-donna Sarah Brightman at the Olympics in Barcelona a few hours later.

There’ll-always-be-an-England award: To the enterprising Northern Ballet of Leeds, which managed to include some simulated oral sex in its box-office-smash version of “Swan Lake.”

How-the-mighty-can-fall-if-they-happen-to-be-dancers-and-like-to-eat awards: To Cynthia Gregory, erstwhile prima ballerina of ABT, for her virtually anonymous appearance in an Oscar-ceremony number; and to Gary Chryst, one of the most compelling artists ever to grace a Joffrey ballet, for brightening the chorus of “Guys and Dolls” on Brodway.

Culinary-crow award: To the critic of the L.A. Times--this one--who all but hated the Music Center’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Wiltern but loved the revival at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Milestones

Any-change-will-be-for-the-better award: To the person chosen by President-elect Clinton to head the National Endowment for the Arts in place of Anne-Imelda Radice, one of the most progressive minds of the 12th Century.

Changing-of-the-(avant)-guard award: To the Los Angeles Philharmonic for finding room at the top for Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Back-to-symphonic-basics award: To the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for finding room at the top for Christof Perick.

Back-to-balletic-basics award: To still-shaky American Ballet Theatre for finding room at the top for Kevin McKenzie and Gary Dunning after the short, unhappy regime of Jane Hermann.

Year’s most dubious victor: Gerald Arpino, who won the battle to stay at the top of the Joffrey Ballet, but may have lost the war to keep the company viable.

Musical chairs award: To the bland but dutiful Herbert Blomstedt, for announcing his plan to relinquish the San Francisco post he had inherited from Edo de Waart, while De Waart announced his plan to relinquish the Minneapolis post he had inherited from Neville Marriner.

Year’s most jolting sign of the journalistic times: The demise of Musical America, our last so-called classical-music magazine.

Born-again-Brunnhilde award: To Deborah Polaski, who gave up her career (“God came into my hotel room and told me to quit opera”) and then, after some second thoughts, made her Met debut in “Parsifal.”

Year’s least jolting but still frustrating sign of the times: The refusal of any New York daily to cover Polaski’s debut.

Saddest admission of defeat: Bella Lewitzky’s reluctant withdrawal from her brainchild, the downtown Dance Gallery.

Ave atque vale (an extraordinarily, agonizingly long list, in no particular order): William Schuman, Olivier Messien, John Cage, Stella Roman, Eberhard Wachter, Louis Biancolli, Gertrude Shurr, David F. Parry, Stephen A. Rapp, Clark Tippet, Asaf Messerer, Konstantin Sergeyev, Vakhtang Chabukiani, Robert Gladstein, Brian Shaw, Alexander Minz, Burt Supree, Edward M. Love Jr., Leonard Raver, John Haber, Dorothy Uris, David Eisler, Antonio Savastano, Primo Zambruno, Barry Ingham, Rodney Griffin, Felicja Blumental, Esther Andreas, Andrew Schenck, Jay Sharbutt, Jane Pickens, Jon Wattenbarger, Eva Jessye, John Wilson, Josef Alexander, Albert Dominguez, Heidi Vosseler, Nancy Rae Fenster, Paul Gavert, Adolfo Odnoposoff, Ozan Marsh, Georges Delerue, Joseph Patelson, Charles Arthur Russell Jr., Quaintance Eaton, James Brennand, Deacon Lunchbox, Milton Rosenstock, Jose Ferrer, Alfred Drake, Robert Morley, Nils Oliver, Carl Princi, Susan Kessler, Stephen Oliver, Theodora Wiesner, Andres Bossard, Willard Rhodes, Lydia Joel, Ettore Gracis, Michael Rennison, Pierre Dervaux, Ronald Eyre, James Aliferis, Robert Collins Christopher, William Rankin, Gary Cordial, Gloria Newman, Charles Groves, Gilbert Chase, David H. Sears, Charles Eugene Grant, Ric Young, Harry Whittaker Sheppard, Heidi Vosseler Draper, John Piper, Astor Piazzolla, Allen Sven Oxenburg, Kelvin Coe, Bella Jasper, Julian Spear, William van den Burg, Pola Nirenska, Shirley Marcus, Macario Santiago Kastner, John Gutman, Peggy Z. Douglas, Bob Bowyer, Michael Carson, Barbara Morgan, Paul Haakon, Lillian Libman, Leonard Burkat, Paul Winter, Arthur Davison, Louis C. Sudler, Peter Wadland, Margarita Wallmann, Renato Cesari, Geraint Evans, David Britton, Mario Rossi, Franco Margola, William Mathias, Vittorio Patane, Paul Jabara, Frederick Combs, Paul Haakon, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., Lawrence Ayers II, Rouben Ter-Arutunian, Sylvia Bills, Werner Torkanowsky, William Masselos, Maria Alba, Charles Andrew Barber, Pola Nirenska, Jerome Andrews, Roberto Benaglio, David Carroll, John Robert Dunlap, Bruce Hopkins, Allan Jones, Helen Olheim, William Moore, Bonnie Green, Kenneth MacMillan, Hanya Holm, Joyce Barker, Roderick Jones, Henri Temianka, William Huck, Roger Wagner, Dorothy Kirsten, Miriam N. Rose, Severino Gazzelloni, Angelica Cravcenco, Ilse Sass, Dan Erkkila, Sara Compinsky, James Festa, Jorge Donn, June Joyce Lewis Fraser, Milorad Mile Jovanovic, Daniel Felipe Cariaga, Charles E. Ziff, Gerhard Bohner, Alexis Rassine, Russell P. Saunders, Ina Souez, Allen Wallace, Lou Mattioli, Philipp C. Jung, Nathan Milstein.