MAY 11, 2025 – This morning my sister Jenny stopped by for coffee and conversation. Though she’s married to the official humorist of the family and our niece is the professional stand-up comedian of the clan (on occasion, the two have joined forces on the big stage), Jenny is the one who can guarantee occupational hilarity.
My wife and I discovered Jenny’s signature trait decade ago when in August Jenny would take a few weeks off and hang out at Björnholm after an action-packed summer attending some high-falutin music festival or tour through the Deep South with the New York City Opera (I kid you not). Soon after Jenny’s arrival, my parents would invite Beth’s parents over (at the time, they had a summer cabin on the western shore of the lake) for supper and . . . drum roll, drum roll (or in the case of a family of string players, “tremolo, tremolo”) . . . and comedic entertainment. For effect, after the meal, we’d turn the lights down and train a single limelight on Jenny the resident raconteuse, as she told one hilarious story after another about on-stage and off-stage shenanigans. By the end of the evening, we all hurt so much from laughing we could barely stand up straight.
I was treated to a milder form of Jenny’s schtick this morning. She’s in town to play in the Minnesota Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and she had lots to say about it. In the middle of her review of yesterday evening’s performance, GK called from NY, thus doubling the size of her audience.
“Uh?” she said into the phone.
“Oh, it was okay. I don’t know that the singers had their greatest outing, but the viola section—now they had a terrific performance [Jenny plays viola], and me, personally? I played wonderfully, so for me, yes it was a really great performance.”
I chuckled. No one can tell better viola jokes than she. (E.g. Viola joker: “What’s the difference between a viola and a wood coffin?” Audience member: “Dunno. What?” Viola Jokester: “In the case of the viola, the dead guy is on the outside.”)
“You know what I noticed?” she said to GK. “There were mikes all over the place, all over the stage. Can you imagine—opera singers being miked? . . . Uh? No, no. The microphones were taped down. The singers weren’t wearing them. Otherwise, they’d sound too Broadway, but I think this business of miking opera singers has become a thing, though no one is saying anything about it.
“Oh but the audience loved the opera. They were hootin’ and a-hollerin’. I couldn’t believe it.”
Jenny was amused by this, which surprised me a little, since she’s very familiar with the Italians’ take on opera, and their reaction is known to be rather raucous if not downright outrageous. Even in this country, the opera crowd is traditionally more boisterous than the more subdued symphony crowd.
After GK left the “audience,” as it were, Jenny continued talking “opera,” but more from the perspective of the orchestra musicians—fitting together their individual parts into a cohesive whole. She described some of the challenges that were exposed during rehearsals.
“The conductor says, ‘Violas and second violins, you’re not together [at 10 after B]. You have to look at each other! Let’s try that one more time, starting at [B].’” But from Jenny’s angle, she couldn’t see the second violins. She told the conductor, who then sat in her chair and said, ‘I can see fine,’ ignoring the fact that, well, he’s quite a bit taller than she is and can see over the stand-lights and the heads of people who are blocking Jenny’s view. When they returned to rehearsing the problematic part, the violas and second violins were told to play louder[1], despite dynamic markings to the contrary. What the musicians figured out was that by playing louder, they could at least hear better, if not see better, which facilitated tighter ensemble.
Jenny conceded that generally, conductors—good ones, anyway—have the best handle on the “big picture” of an orchestral work. After all, they’ve been working with the score, the combination of all the parts. When I was a student at Interlochen, I played under various conductors over my three years there, some quite well known, so I have some familiarity with the process. Whenever I attend a concert or wantcd a video, however, I wonder, What went on in rehearsal? Does the conductor know what he’s (men are still in the super-majority) doing? Do the musicians like ‘im or hate ‘im? My only semi-reliable gauge is, How does the performance sound?
I mentioned to Jenny a couple of old rehearsal videos I’d watched lately of Sir John Barbirolli and Sergiu Celibidache. In the case of Barbirolli, the orchestra just couldn’t deliver what he wanted, despite numerous tries and multiple harangues. The long column of comments were fascinating, from—“No wonder he’s frustrated! The orchestra just won’t do what he’s asking for” to “What a complete jerk. If he’d only explain what the hell it is he wants, maybe the musicians could provide” to “He’s a genius” to “He’s an idiot.”
In the video of Celibidache (when he was quite young), the famous Romanian conductor twisted and turned and gesticulated all over the air space above the podium—in marked contrast to his rendition of a Bruckner performances at a much older age, where he half sits on a stool and moves his baton . . . occasionally; yet the musical result is very much to my liking.
“So what gives with these conductors?” I asked Jenny. Her response was that much has changed; that you can no longer be a total jerk and get away with it. Jenny is very discerning about conductor competence, but that topic was left for future discussion.
What I brought up next was musician attire—the tradition of formalwear vs. sloppywear vs. something-in-betweenwear. I was curious what effect this had on audience attention and perceptions. Some studies of this question have been . . . “wait for it” . . . conducted but with non-definitive results. Tradition says “black,” tails for the men, dresses for the women, patent leather shoes. But what does the music say? Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Barber, Bartok—none of them wrote on a manuscript, “to be performed only in black.” No editor ever added such a “note” either. It is said that by all the musicians wearing the same style black outfit, the matter of ensemble, of musical synthesis is impressed on the audience. This holds true for a live performance or a video, but a purely aural experience? Whether the timpanist is wearing formal black or a Hawaiian outfit shouldn’t matter unless . . . the musician herself is more focused—or more relaxed?—one way vs. the other.
I’m not sure exactly when Jenny realized that the “cat clock” on the wall of our porch wasn’t working, but it was well after 10:30, which is when the clock had stopped—probably a year ago or more, if anyone were to have noticed.
“Whoa,” she said, as she looked at her phone. “Gotta get ready for the opera.”
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] In orchestra lingo, members of the orchestra are always referred to as the instruments that they play. The conductor will say, “Violins, when you’re approaching D I want crescendo to forte!” never, “Violinists . . .” And “Oboe, I want to hear tacka-tacka-tacka there, not [blah-blah-blah],” as opposed to “Oboist!” or “Oboe player!” and never by name, as in “Sarah!” or “Andrew!”
