High art & low taxes.

Salzburg, Austria

LAST year, the Salzburg Festival staged the mother of all Mozart blowouts: It was his 250th birthday, you know. This year, things are more normal, with a variety of composers in the showcase. Not that Wolfi is banished altogether.

You may ask, "What is the Salzburg Festival?" and you are perfectly entitled. This is, by general agreement, the most prestigious music festival in the world. (There's theater, too, but we'll pass over that.) One of the publicists here says, "The Salzburg Festival is to classical music what Cannes is to films." The comparison may be a little cheesy, but it's not inapt.

Amid the many musical performances are performances of another kind: a series of public interviews, with stars of the festival, and stars of music today. They are sponsored by the Salzburg Festival Society, and conducted by an interloper from NATIONAL REVIEW, moonlighting from the anti-Hillary wars (and other wars). The interviewees are a conductor and a string of singers. And first in the chair is that conductor: Valery Gergiev, the mercurial Russian.

He has about four specific posts--e.g., principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra--but he might be thought of as "general music director of the world": He crisscrosses the globe in an endless series of engagements. Gergiev may have replaced the late James Brown as "the hardest-working man in show business." I also think of a joke, told about another late musician, Herbert von Karajan (for 30 years lord of the Salzburg Festival): He hails a taxi, and the driver says, "Where to?" Karajan answers, "It doesn't matter: I'm in demand everywhere."

In the Festival Pavilion, Gergiev talks fascinatingly about Russia, the Soviet Union, contemporary music, the art of conducting: "A conductor is like a CEO. You need the quality of leadership." And a bad conductor, he says, can take an orchestra that has been 100 years in the making and wreck it in two months.

The worst thing a conductor can be, he later notes, is boring. That is also the second- and third-worst things he can be. He remembers attending a performance of Wagner's Parsifal in Paris, and being bored out of his mind after 20 minutes. The conductor (unnamed, of course--although I have an idea) was meticulous and correct. Gergiev does a funny imitation. But the man was completely without inspiration, letting the music lie flat on the page. Gergiev wanted badly to leave, but had to wait until the end of the first act, an hour and a half later. His departure would have caused a stink.

In the course of our talk, Gergiev mentions Puccini in a positive context, and I remark that some people--ignoramuses--sneer at Puccini as a corny melodist: a musical candymaker. Gergiev virtually spits in contempt. Yes, he says, and they say the same thing about Tchaikovsky, and even about Mozart: "The music is so pretty and simple." There are weak pieces in every composer's corpus, and you can always perform a work in a daft, undermining way.

But, he continues, composers such as Puccini, Verdi, and Wagner are popular for a reason: They speak to people in every time and place, forever.

And Gergiev himself is in love with music. But aren't they all? Don't all professional musicians love music? No, actually--certainly not like Gergiev does. He remembers being 14 and putting on a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Then he heard a Tchaikovsky opera: Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades). And then a Tchaikovsky symphony, No. 4, in the recording by Yevgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic (a phenomenally bracing recording). And he was hooked. He knew that he had to have a life in music--and, boy, has he.

Next in our series is Ferruccio Furlanetto, the Italian bass. And what a beautiful speaking voice he has! Almost as beautiful--as rich, glowing, and musical--as his singing voice. Most singers don't especially sound like singers, when they talk; they are pretty much normal. But, hearing Furlanetto say hello, you know he has to be a singer. And he's the best golfer in music, by the way.

A second "by the way": I ask him what he listens to at home. He names just one singer, and not an opera singer: Paul Simon. Forget technique, vocal quality, etc. "He sings from the heart." And the most important element in singing, says Furlanetto, is heart.

When his turn comes, Michael Schade, the German-Canadian tenor, drives up in a sporty red convertible. (The only kind of red convertible there is, I know.) And he takes us through an enlightening and entertaining hour, complete with his patented imitation of Riccardo Muti, the Italian conductor: Schade has our audience in stitches. Fourth to be interviewed is Diana Damrau, the German soprano, who in her relatively brief career has made the entire world swoon. The world is right, too.

Damrau is sparkling, whimsical, smart, funny, striking. She has a giggle--way up high in her range--that won't quit. I have described her as a combination of Lucille Ball and Grace Kelly. She is sort of a goofball beauty, and a major talent--a first-class singer--to boot.

Capping our series is another soprano: Renee Fleming, a daughter of Rochester, N.Y. After Placido Domingo--who is also milling about the Salzburg Festival, incidentally--she is probably the most famous opera singer in the world. And, early in our discussion, I ask her about fame.

It is my view that Beverly Sills, who passed on in July, was somewhat penalized for her fame, which was enormous. Critics, cognoscenti, and other suspect types could be incredibly snarky about her. Sills was in the odd position of being wildly famous and at the same time underrated. I believe that a similar phenomenon surrounds Renee Fleming. What does the diva herself think?

She answers judiciously, and wisely: "With celebrity comes mistrust," even if that mistrust has no foundation. "People may think you have less integrity than others, or a less genuine interest in music." They also give you demerits for singing opera arias in concert, instead of non-operatic literature alone. Well, nuts to that, says Fleming, and thank heaven she does. It is also undeniable that she is the target of that age-old human shortcoming: envy. She does not seem the least affected by it, though.

We turn to the subject of vocal technique, and I'm particularly interested in her breathing: She's one of the great breathers in singing. I have frequently written, "She seems to have an abdomen from Gold's Gym." The word from Fleming herself? She insists she's nothing compared with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Russian baritone. "He must have a third lung. I mean, he can tie phrases together that have no business being tied together. He does things that are humanly impossible."

But she admits to something that happened in rehearsal, earlier in the day. She is singing Strauss's Four Last Songs with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Harding. So, Harding said to her, "Don't you ever breathe? I see all these breath marks in the score. But you just sing through them. I guess I'll just have to ignore them."

Talking about technique, Fleming says something memorable about Luciano Pavarotti: "His technique was perfect. Absolutely perfect." It may well be that the Voice of the Century was also the Technique of the Century. When you think of Pavarotti, you may remember the schlocky, mugging guy of later years. But the earlier recordings and videos will devour that image.

And Fleming will be immortalized through her own recordings and videos. (In addition, she has a dessert named after her, like her soprano predecessor, Nellie Melba. No toast, though.) At the end of our hour, I ask her a cliched question, but not a bad one: Do you have anything left on your to-do list? Any roles you want to take on, any repertoire you need to learn and perform? Fleming says that, if she had to stop singing tomorrow, she would have no regrets. She wouldn't be particularly happy about it--about having to stop singing. But she would have no regrets. She has "sung her songs," to quote an old lyric.

Above, I mentioned that I'm leaving politics alone, while absent from NR. But politics won't necessarily leave you alone, particularly at the Salzburg Festival. Take Falk Richter's production of Weber's opera Der Freischutz (please).

Carl Maria von Weber wrote this opera in 1821; Richter rewrote it this year. The opera is a "singspiel," meaning that it combines spoken dialogue with singing and orchestral playing. Richter has the characters leave German for English, to convey his special messages. Late in Act II, he has Kaspar--an acolyte of Samiel, the devil figure--say this:

"Destruction, death, corruption, rape, war, invasion, burnt children, low taxes, and religion--that is what we would kill for; that is what our hearts yearn for."

Yes, low taxes, to go with burned children and religion. Herr Richter is apparently not a supply-sider. Friends, there is much more in this production that is wrong, hateful, and vile. But I just wanted to give you that little taste. European stage directors are a closed circle, absolute prisoners of their miseducation. They love to cry against America, against liberal democracy, against Judeo-Christian civilization itself.

Oh, well: You have to wish them luck under sharia.