William Sharp is an extraordinary singer.  His voice has beauty and power,
his interpretations are intelligent and moving, he is equally at home in
oratorio and musicals.  And, as demonstrated tonight in Davies Hall, he
handles abuse very well.  For the premiere of David Del Tredici's song
cycle "Gay Life" (which is quite without gaiety or life), Sharp was put
in front of a 110-piece orchestra, with a headset and a huge microphone an
inch from his mouth, and he was required to sing for 54 minutes nonstop.
On three consecutive nights.  Even tonight, at the third performance, he
was doing well.  It must be a new record, the equivalent of singing Hans
Sachs in the third act of "Die Meistersinger" six times over.  To what end?

Del Tredici messed up a promising work, going from what sounded four
years ago - at the first performance here of the initial piano version -
"hauntingly beautiful," to a grotesquely overblown, overlong, overdumb
piece, received with yawns, snickers, and a short, perfunctory applause -
the San Francisco equivalent of booing.  Ever since his 1955 debut in
San Francisco (as a pianist), Del Tredici had a good run, through music
directors (from Enrique Jorda to Edo DeWaart) and both subscription and
new-music festival audiences.  And now, when Michael Tilson Thomas is
supporting him with all his might, Del Tredici laid an egg.

Think Andrew Lloyd Webber meets Respighi meets Melachrino meets (closing
the loop) a Broadway pastiche.  Think loud and bloated and excessive and
nervous and uncertain and music-for-the-circus (albeit with a nice quote
from "Tristan und Isolde"!) and over 100 repetitions of the phrase
"remember me" in an endless conclusion, which created a large-scale
squirming and audible calls for "quit it already." It was not a happy
event.

At one point, as Sharp was singing the phrase "lay his head on your heart
in peace," the orchestra did an "1812 Overture" bit, complete with timpani,
xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, tubular bells, glockenspiel, crotales,
crash cymbals, tam-tams, triangle, tambourine, cowbell, ratchet, whip,
castanets, guiro, glass wind chimes, woodblocks, temple blocks, snare drum,
siren, wind machine, celesta, and more.  all "in peace," to be sure.  Del
Tredici must have gone the rabbit hole once too often.

The text that worked in the early, modest version doesn't anymore.  There
have been some big changes in what is included and what is not; the final
lineup:  "Ode to Wildwood" (Michael Calhoun), "In the Temple" (Wilson Hand
Kidde), "Personals Ad" (Allen Ginsberg), "After the Big Parade" (Ginsberg),
"Here" (Paul Monette), and "Memory Unsettled" (Thom Gunn).  Maybe "final"
is not the right word.  Originally scheduled to run 38 minutes, "Gay Life"
came in 45 minutes at the Thursday premiere, 50 on Friday, and 54 tonight.
The monster that ate a fine song cycle is still growing.

(Back in 1997, I wrote - of the piano version - that "Here," with "a
cascade of feelings, open to parsing several ways, contained the most
clearly ravishing music of the cycle so far.  The twice-whispered `here!'
at the end ranks with some of Mahler's great endings.  The Lorca song [no
longer in the cycle] is `Ballad in Yellow' - composer and singer getting
a variety of stunning effects from `Over a sky/Made of daisies/I walk'".
etc.  Gone, all gone, leaving only tripled winds, a battery of percussion,
the damned amplification, and a composer getting lost on the way.)

MTT successfully (if partially) compensated the audience with grand
performances of music at either side of the Del Tredici - Sibelius' "The
Swan of Tuonela" (with gorgeous solo work by Julie Ann Giacobassi, English
horn, well supported by cellist Peter Wyrick and violist Geraldine
Walther), and Strauss' "Don Quixote," with Walther and Michael Grebanier.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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