1993 Year in Review : Music & Dance : The Beckmesser Awards

It was a happy, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, discouraging, encouraging, soothing, frazzling, stimulating, depressing, uplifting, bracing, painful, feel-good, provocative, dull, exciting, hysterical, lackadaisical, exceptional, humdrum year. Just like 1992.

To commemorate the high--and low--points, The Times 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

When-he’s-good-he’s-very-good-indeed award: To Esa-Pekka Salonen, when he conducts his Philharmonic in complex modern music, or older music that requires more vitality than finesse.

Most welcome guests on local podia: Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Franz Welser-Most and Yuri Temirkanov (if he’s in the right mood). Unanswered question in perpetuo : When, oh when, will Carlo Maria Giulini come back?

Year’s most symbolic cause for optimism: The appointment of Jane Alexander to salvage credibility at the National Endowment for the Arts. “I have a vision for the arts in this country,” she said, tritely if wisely, at her confirmation hearing, avowing that “every man, woman and child (can) find the song in his or her heart.”

Thinking-big-and-bright award: To the Music Center Opera for its heroic, generally persuasive production of Richard Strauss’ forbidding “Frau ohne Schatten,” which would have been a significant achievement even without David Hockney’s oddly whimsical decors.

Ongoing-virtuosity award: To the hard-working players of the L.A. Philharmonic, who, week in and out, do their noble best to make even bad conductors look good.

Most reassuring addition to the operatic-elite: Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, who proves that popular singers can impress with brains and charm as well as voice.

Most reassuring continuing presence among the operatic elite: Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who proves that popular singers can impress with brains and charm as well as voice.

Nifty-crossover award: To Bobby (son of former Met baritone Robert) McFerrin, who showed signs of being a genuine, serious conductor when he temporarily forswore pop for Beethoven with the Philharmonic.

Most bracing Philharmonic celebrations: The musical tributes to, and by, Witold Lutoslawski at 80 and Gyorgy Ligeti at 70.

Catfish-Row-can-come-to-Sussex award: To the British moguls who managed, against most odds, to produce an authentic, nearly definitive “Porgy and Bess” on television.

Diva for all reasons and all seasons: June Anderson, who gave a lovely recital at Ambassador, and, more important, sang, acted and clambered a haunting Lucia di Lammermoor at the Music Center while the world around her literally fell apart, thanks to her eccentric stage director Andrei Serban.

If-only-he-were-as-good-at-staging-as-he-is-at-writing award: To Andrei Serban, who suffered an emphatically non-supportive review for his eccentric “Lucia,” then--in a staggering, unprecedented act of self-effacing valor--wrote The Times to defend and support his critic, and then returned to stage an equally eccentric “Puritani” in San Francisco.

Most useful addition to the landscape: The multifunctional Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, even if its so-called serious programming is erratic and its early ads were preposterous.

Not-all-is-lost award: To the beleaguered New York City Ballet for its nostalgic Balanchine program in Orange County.

The virtuosic-shuffle-and-shrug award: To Misha, who actually managed to do it better without Twyla.

Jeers

When-he’s-bad-he’s-boring award: To Esa-Pekka Salonen, when he conducts his Philharmonic in essentially introspective music, usually of the Romantic persuasion.

Mediocrity-is-alive-and-not-so-well award: To the Philharmonic impresario who keeps inviting all those barely competent but probably inexpensive nonentities to lead our band or serve as soloist--and not just in the not-so-great outdoors.

Business-as-usual award: To the Music Center Opera for the bargain-basement banality of its “Ballo in Maschera.”

Hooray-for-Hollywood award: To the Music Center Opera for its illogically busy, overdressed, undersung “La Boheme” as staged by Herbert Ross and an army of assistants.

Year’s longest, silliest and most amusing operatic disaster: “Carmen,” systematically deflated, shamelessly distorted and ultimately destroyed at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre by the normally thoughtful masterminds from Long Beach.

Year’s most annoying technological quasi-advance: The overamplification that turns Hollywood Bowl into an echo chamber and, even worse, blasts justly maligned “Sunset Boulevard” to the point where the human voices could as well be supplanted by recorded supersounds. (How, one must wonder, did “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma!” make it in the bad old days without those infernal mikes?)

Most lucrative technological distraction: The fireworks that now punctuate virtually any Luftpause on weekends at Hollywood Bowl, regardless of composer sanction.

Good-enough-for-us awards: To the disparate and desperate powers that mustered only a rocky horror show, “Billboards,” for the Joffrey Ballet at the Music Center (even though the company offered a season of conventional repertory in San Francisco); to the folks who decreed one Greek Theatre circus for Kiri Te Kanawa (even though she sings opera in San Francisco) and another for Jose Carreras (even though he was able to give a regular indoor recital in San Diego). What’s next for the land of the plastic lotus--a triple-tenor orgy at Dodger Stadium with tix selling for $1,000?

All-ducats-are-created-equal award: To the Music Center Opera, which charges the same $95 for any orchestra seat, whether first-row center or last-row side. (San Francisco scales the less desirable locations down to $66.)

Provincialism-uber-Alles award: To the stilted guardians of stultified virtue at Opera Pacific in glamorous Costa Mesa.

With-friends-like-this award: To KUSC, which interrupts Met opera broadcasts to beg for contributions to support projects such as the uninterrupted Met broadcasts; and, worse, to KCET, which deemed only half of the three-hour “Balanchine Celebration” worth telecasting on Christmas day.

Dubious Distinctions

Cultural-diversity-is-nice-but-this-is-ridiculous award: To Esa-Pekka Salonen for presiding over a nightclubby, popsy, jazzy, free-for-all improv convocation at the Bowl as a prelude to some serious late-night Bartok.

Year’s most trying guardians of public virtue: The vociferous P.C. policepersons who think any effort embracing cultural diversity, no matter how awful, should be above criticism.

Year’s most alarming defender of L.A. culture: Peter Sellars, who told a Vienna magazine in July that he could direct opera “only in the summer atmosphere in Salzburg or Glyndebourne--relaxed yet totally concentrated at the same time.” Asked if Southern California did not provide this climate, the head of the L.A. Festival offered a circuitous reply: “In Los Angeles, 600 kids were shot in the streets since January. The level of violence is horrible. Class wars and open racism. . . .”

Operatic obfuscator of the year: Peter Hemmings, who never could quite say why the Music Center had abandoned “The Death of Klinghoffer,” and, when asked, professed ignorance regarding the possible updating of his own company’s “Rosenkavalier.”

So-who-needs-judges award: To the directors of the Pogorelich Competition at Ambassador, who managed to give away numerous concert and record contracts, plus $15,000 in secondary prize money without consulting the contest jury.

Minimalist-junk-food award: To the idealistic guardians of the chameleonic Ojai Festival, who blithely support stark Gallic intellectualism one summer, Xeroxed arpeggios ad nauseam the next.

Things-are-seldom-what-they-seem award: To Luciano Pavarotti for two historic admissions: He copies his “original” artwork from a how-to-paint handbook, and he resorted to lip-syncing for one of his televised megaconcerts.

Year’s most meaningless gimmick: The televised “Tosca” that starred some other tenorissimo, was shot in the actual Roman sites specified by the libretto and was videotaped “live” within the prescribed time frame.

The Pagliughi/Pavarotti Prize (designed to comfort weight non-watchers): To opera stars of the new generation who defy traditional definitions of romantic credibility: Deborah Voigt, Sharon Sweet and Alessandra Marc among incipient divas, Ben Heppner, Chris Merritt and Gary Lakes representing the would-be divos.

Movies-are-better-than-ever award: To the makers of “The Age of Innocence,” the meticulously detailed film that began at a turn-of-the-century performance of “Faust” in New York (sung in Italian, as was the custom of the time). Unfortunately, as Gounod’s dramatic prelude swelled on the soundtrack, the screen flashed this credit: “Music by Elmer Bernstein.”

Year’s most tasteful promotion of alfresco diversion: The TV ads for Hollywood Bowl that depicted strip joints and local sleaze emporia while dispensing this poignant message: “There are 200 topless theaters in L.A., but only one plays Beethoven.”

The-wife-also-rises awards, presented in memory of Mrs. Norman Maine: To Mrs. Placido Domingo, for staging a hand-me-down “Rigoletto” at the Music Center while her husband waved the baton in the pit; to Mrs. Jerry Hadley, for providing inadequate piano accompaniment for her talented husband’s Ambassador recital; to Mrs. Ivo Pogorelich, who allowed nepotism to raise its arrogant head as jury president at the Pogorelich Piano Competition.

Unkindest-cutbacks: The drastic reduction in new-music adventures by the Philharmonic (financially motivated, of course), which shortchanges the audience of the future (if there is such a thing) and embarrasses our adventurous music-director.

Milestones

Most worrisome changes of the guard: Lynn Harrell’s departure from the local music scene (London’s gain is L.A.’s loss); Tom Kendrick’s departure from the Orange County Performing Arts Center; Erich Vollmer’s departure from the Orange County Philharmonic Society; Deborah Rutter’s departure from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Orrin Howard’s departure from the publications department at the L.A. Philharmonic.

Most promising changes of the guard: Kevin McKenzie’s coming to the rescue of American Ballet Theatre (a dreadfully disappointing “Nutcracker” notwithstanding); Erich Vollmer’s move to the L.A. Chamber Orchestra.

Happy-anniversary awards: To the Philharmonic at 75 (still young as American orchestras go); to the ever-crusty Ernest Fleischmann, who has now managed the Philharmonic for a third of its history; to the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, enjoying new artistic vitality at 25 under Christof Perick.

Ave atque vale (another painfully long list, for agonizingly obvious reasons): Marian Anderson, Rudolf Nureyev, Paolo Bortoluzzi, Olga Mitana Balogh, Frederick Wilhelm Moritz, Lucia Popp, Arleen Auger, Thomas Lorango, Bruce King, Dizzy Gillespie, Ethel Evans, Marko Rothmuller, Italo Tajo, Josef Greindl, Gino Bechi, Mario Berini, Patricia Brooks, Walburga Wegner, Cynthia Wood, Rick A. Ross, Jim Burgess, Kenneth Gaburo, Huck Snyder, Kay Swift, Langdon van Norden, Art Bauman, Michel Renault, Tom Adair, Enid Britten, Edward Myers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Beth Kelisky Olch, Lester Wilson, Harold Barlow, Howard Mayer Brown, Varujan Kojian, Sharon Disney Lund, Jan Holmquist, Kevin Oldham, Arnold Franchetti, J. Merrill Knapp, Robert Larkin, Louis Falco, Franklin Williams, William Parker, Gary DeLoatch, Blas Galindo, Peggy Sheffield, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Gweneth Lloyd, Robert Angelo Dicello, Stephen A. Love, Steve Merritt, Grace (Briscoe) Badorek, Carlton T. Jones, Alwin Nikolais, Penelope Gilliatt, Manuel Alum, Bernice Feinstein, Tony Hulbert, Jean L. Platt, Dennis Spaight, Ronald Haver, Shirley Seeley, Winifred Radford, George Smith Watchetaker, W. McNeil Lowry, Janos Scholz, Bill Baker, Marita Young, Frantz Casseus, Frank C. Campbell, Lee Schaenen, Boris Christoff, Hans Hopf, Hans Beirer, Jess Thomas, Gerd Nienstedt, Leonard del Ferro, Rolf Bjorling, Warren Ellsworth, Michael Neill, Elizabeth H. Waters, Oleg Kerensky, Jack Bittner, Osie Hawkins, Robert Di Vall, Leo Ferre, Jacques Chazot, Szymon Goldberg, Tracy Rhoades, Ernest Parham, Lynne Anne Blom, Ariel Rubstein, Harry Rubenstein, Chris DeBlasio, Maria Gentile, Elfie Mayerhofer, Scott Heumann, Christopher Gillis, Arthur Armijo, George Kochevitsky, Irene Sharaff, Harold Wright, Diana Adams, Ray DeVoll, Louis Berkman, Antonio Cassinelli, Brenton Langbein, John Moody, Elise Reiman, John Butler, Peter Mark Schifter, Robert Corrigan, Mark Jollie, James Tyeska, Erich Leinsdorf, Bruce Ferden, Maurice Abravanel, Maurice McClelland, Jacobina Caro, Curtis Fraser, Mark Freeman, Orrin Kayan, Ernst Uthoff, David Hitchcock, Wally Saunders, Franco Calabrese, Nicola Monti, Andor Foldes, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, Andrew Levinson, Margaret A. Giordano, Peter Moore, Yvar Mikhashoff, Hans W. Heinsheimer, Leslie Wallwork, Frank Royon Le Mee, Joanna Graudan, Cesare Pascarella, Kent E. Jones, Vincent Price, Ralph Linsley, Robert Black, Federico Fellini, Leon Theremin, Duncan Pirnie, Emile Ardolino, Irina Kosmovska, Tatyana Nikolayeva, Patricia Drylie, Fritz Feld, Carlos Trincheiras, Keith Lester, Edilio Ferraro, Gianfranco Masini, Virgilio Mortari, Daniel Majeske, Tatiana Troyanos, Francis L. Dale, Alice Tully, Carlos Montoya, Alexander Schneider, Patrick Kelly, Nicanor Zabaleta, Dorothy Raedler, Sam Wanamaker, Frank Zappa.