Whilst perusing Amazon, debating whether to buy Lotfi's new book in print format or wait until it's available for Kindle, I saw Janos Gereben's review of it and asked him if I could put it on Wagner Bytes. He graciously responded with an expanded version, plus his review of the current Berkeley Opera offering, Legend of the Ring. Thanks, Janos!
The World According to Mansouri
Reading "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey" is a guilty pleasure.
The former San Francisco Opera general director's straight-from-the-shoulder - if inevitably self-serving - autobiography is published by University Press of New England; it is available from
By Janos Gereben
Reading "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey" is a guilty pleasure.
The former San Francisco Opera general director's straight-from-the-shoulder - if inevitably self-serving - autobiography is published by University Press of New England; it is available from
http://www.amazon.com/Lotfi-Mansouri-Operatic-Journey/dp/1555537065
This 330-page delight of backstage stories from a 60-year-long international career is perhaps disquieting for the genteel reader, made to witness a tell-all orgy, ranging from the discourteously candid to the nakedly retaliatory... some with numerous grains of revelatory truth, others purely of personal resentment.
Hundreds of the past half century's best-known singers, conductors, and administrators are praised-and-demolished or just the latter. It is amazing stuff, even if one feels uneasy to be so positive about it. Yikes! I am beginning to sound like the book.
Examples of Mansouri dishing it out, picked at random:
- Santa Fe Opera founder/director John Crosby had an "unmatched tenure [of 43 years]," was "an incredible fund-raiser," but "his people skills were nowhere near his managing talents... the price he paid for his fear of human contact was the coldness of his conducting."
- Otto Klemperer: "unaware of his health problems [a stroke and a botched brain operation], I just thought he was an abusive boor... His fascination with the opposite sex took precedence over everything else." Klemperer, responding to someone with a Swiss accent: "Would you repeat that in German?"
- Zürich Opera administrator Emil Jucker "had all the integrity of the average viper."
- Kurt Herbert Adler "ran San Francisco Opera like a personal fiefdom, oozing disdain for anyone he considered inferior in judgment or experience, and his list was a long one... tightfisted... could be arrogant, aggressive, rude, and insulting - and this was just on an average day."
Written with Donald Arthur, the book is impressively diverse in its appeal: all about opera, it's a perfectly captivating book for readers oblivious to musical theater - a fascinating read about the struggles of a young man from a dysfunctional family in Iran, his subsequent adventures around the world, and skyrocketing international career.
Apparently stillborn in Tehran, on a sweltering day in 1929, and given up for dead, the baby miraculously revived on a block of ice was named Lotfollah - "kindness of God."
Mansouri's recurring adventures over the years in Iran and in Hollywood are both suspenseful and rib-tickling. In kindergarten, he played the Grand Vizier in a cast with Fatemeh, the future Shah's sister.
In Hollywood, Mansouri played Caruso in the made-for-TV movie "The Day I Met Caruso," and many years later, he was involved with the Pavarotti disaster, "Yes, Giorgio," which, he says, cost $19 million to make and grossed $1 million. He went on to direct the opera scenes in "Moonstruck," with Cher and Nicolas Cage.
Mansouri, who ran opera houses in Geneva and Toronto before, became general director of San Francisco Opera in 1988, just a year before the Loma Prieta earthquake which damaged the War Memorial. "[Administration] dysfunction, strike, recession - and then an earthquake!," he laments.
For the next decade of those trying times, Mansouri held the company together, helped to oversee the $90 million on-time, on-budget, successful reconstruction of the building in the middle of an economic downturn.
And yet, instead of losing audience during almost two years of the company being homeless, Mansouri actually brought in many new and young opera fans with productions such as the "Broadway Boheme" in the Orpheum, and great casts in the Civic Auditorium, transformed for the occasion.
Mansouri engaged Valery Gergiev and the Kirov to San Francisco for their U.S. debut, also signing Christoph von Dohnányi, Peter Schneider, Markus Stenz, Christian Thielemann, Antonio Pappano, Andrew Davis, and Yuri Temirkanov.
During his term, Mansouri commissioned new operas by John Adams, Conrad Susa, Stewart Wallace (whose Harvey Milk, he says, "the cast saved from its second-rate music. I've never even listened to the recording"), André Previn, and Jake Heggie, enhancing San Francisco's reputation for having a leading opera company. On the other hand, Mansouri manages this aside about the Harvey Milk creators:
We met composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie in New York. I found them pretentious, pseudo-intellectual East Coasters and self-satisfied. There was an aura of mirthless superficiality about them.
Then, in 2001, Mansouri was succeeded by Pamela Rosenberg, "who [in Europe] was used to realizing her visions... and then send the bill to the government." During the six-month overlap between them, Mansouri says, "she never talked to me about business. Not once."
By this time, in the transition period to the new general director, Mansouri was "barely on speaking terms with Donald Runnicles," he had named music director of the company a decade before.
At his most Dante-esque, Mansouri reserves the ninth circle of Hell for those two, listing Rosenberg's misdeeds (an appointment resulting from "a search process gone tragically wrong") and, even more, attacking Runnicles in great detail, calling him "the one problem entirely of my own making."
Besides Runnicles' siding with Rosenberg, Mansouri also holds the conductor's behavior ("weirdly insecure") and even work on the podium against him:
When he was on, his performances were very, very good. But when he was off, he was way off. Sometimes he didn't seem familiar with a score, as if he were sight-reading it, even in performance. He also had a habit of letting the orchestra overpower the voices. He cared about some operas, but not about others, which was odd, considering he always had his choice of whatever three operas he wanted each season.
But, beyond personalities and feuds and dishing it out, there is a wealth of material, both fascinating and debatable, in "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey."
This 330-page delight of backstage stories from a 60-year-long international career is perhaps disquieting for the genteel reader, made to witness a tell-all orgy, ranging from the discourteously candid to the nakedly retaliatory... some with numerous grains of revelatory truth, others purely of personal resentment.
Hundreds of the past half century's best-known singers, conductors, and administrators are praised-and-demolished or just the latter. It is amazing stuff, even if one feels uneasy to be so positive about it. Yikes! I am beginning to sound like the book.
Examples of Mansouri dishing it out, picked at random:
- Santa Fe Opera founder/director John Crosby had an "unmatched tenure [of 43 years]," was "an incredible fund-raiser," but "his people skills were nowhere near his managing talents... the price he paid for his fear of human contact was the coldness of his conducting."
- Otto Klemperer: "unaware of his health problems [a stroke and a botched brain operation], I just thought he was an abusive boor... His fascination with the opposite sex took precedence over everything else." Klemperer, responding to someone with a Swiss accent: "Would you repeat that in German?"
- Zürich Opera administrator Emil Jucker "had all the integrity of the average viper."
- Kurt Herbert Adler "ran San Francisco Opera like a personal fiefdom, oozing disdain for anyone he considered inferior in judgment or experience, and his list was a long one... tightfisted... could be arrogant, aggressive, rude, and insulting - and this was just on an average day."
Written with Donald Arthur, the book is impressively diverse in its appeal: all about opera, it's a perfectly captivating book for readers oblivious to musical theater - a fascinating read about the struggles of a young man from a dysfunctional family in Iran, his subsequent adventures around the world, and skyrocketing international career.
Apparently stillborn in Tehran, on a sweltering day in 1929, and given up for dead, the baby miraculously revived on a block of ice was named Lotfollah - "kindness of God."
Mansouri's recurring adventures over the years in Iran and in Hollywood are both suspenseful and rib-tickling. In kindergarten, he played the Grand Vizier in a cast with Fatemeh, the future Shah's sister.
Unfortunately, the crown prince himself attended our little performance... and I got so nervous that I wet my pants and started crying onstage. From that moment, I developed a lifelong sympathy for singers' nerves.
In Hollywood, Mansouri played Caruso in the made-for-TV movie "The Day I Met Caruso," and many years later, he was involved with the Pavarotti disaster, "Yes, Giorgio," which, he says, cost $19 million to make and grossed $1 million. He went on to direct the opera scenes in "Moonstruck," with Cher and Nicolas Cage.
Mansouri, who ran opera houses in Geneva and Toronto before, became general director of San Francisco Opera in 1988, just a year before the Loma Prieta earthquake which damaged the War Memorial. "[Administration] dysfunction, strike, recession - and then an earthquake!," he laments.
For the next decade of those trying times, Mansouri held the company together, helped to oversee the $90 million on-time, on-budget, successful reconstruction of the building in the middle of an economic downturn.
And yet, instead of losing audience during almost two years of the company being homeless, Mansouri actually brought in many new and young opera fans with productions such as the "Broadway Boheme" in the Orpheum, and great casts in the Civic Auditorium, transformed for the occasion.
Mansouri engaged Valery Gergiev and the Kirov to San Francisco for their U.S. debut, also signing Christoph von Dohnányi, Peter Schneider, Markus Stenz, Christian Thielemann, Antonio Pappano, Andrew Davis, and Yuri Temirkanov.
During his term, Mansouri commissioned new operas by John Adams, Conrad Susa, Stewart Wallace (whose Harvey Milk, he says, "the cast saved from its second-rate music. I've never even listened to the recording"), André Previn, and Jake Heggie, enhancing San Francisco's reputation for having a leading opera company. On the other hand, Mansouri manages this aside about the Harvey Milk creators:
We met composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie in New York. I found them pretentious, pseudo-intellectual East Coasters and self-satisfied. There was an aura of mirthless superficiality about them.
Then, in 2001, Mansouri was succeeded by Pamela Rosenberg, "who [in Europe] was used to realizing her visions... and then send the bill to the government." During the six-month overlap between them, Mansouri says, "she never talked to me about business. Not once."
By this time, in the transition period to the new general director, Mansouri was "barely on speaking terms with Donald Runnicles," he had named music director of the company a decade before.
At his most Dante-esque, Mansouri reserves the ninth circle of Hell for those two, listing Rosenberg's misdeeds (an appointment resulting from "a search process gone tragically wrong") and, even more, attacking Runnicles in great detail, calling him "the one problem entirely of my own making."
Besides Runnicles' siding with Rosenberg, Mansouri also holds the conductor's behavior ("weirdly insecure") and even work on the podium against him:
When he was on, his performances were very, very good. But when he was off, he was way off. Sometimes he didn't seem familiar with a score, as if he were sight-reading it, even in performance. He also had a habit of letting the orchestra overpower the voices. He cared about some operas, but not about others, which was odd, considering he always had his choice of whatever three operas he wanted each season.
But, beyond personalities and feuds and dishing it out, there is a wealth of material, both fascinating and debatable, in "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey."
Janos has covered the SF Bay Area arts scene for many years, as arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and music editor of the San Jose Mercury News. He now covers music, theater, and art for the SF Examiner, and for the past decade has been Music News columnist for San Francisco Classical Voice:
No comments:
Post a Comment