Great moments in concert history
Itching to see a show? These performances are sure to satisfy your needs
It’s not easy for a recorded concert to hold your attention for long, especially as we are currently prevented from experiencing the real thing. But the internet contains some proper gems that get more interesting the longer you watch, all easily searchable on YouTube or other sites as indicated.
Diane Dufresne: Symphonique n’ Roll at the Colisée de Québec (1988)
It’s a crying shame that the rest of Canada doesn’t know Quebec’s reigning art-rock diva of the 1980s and ’90s, but this is probably because Dufresne never bothered with the Anglo markets. Before Bjork’s swan, Madonna’s Gaultier cones and Lady Gaga’s meat dress, there was Diane Dufresne and … any number of spectacular dresses, featured in several concerts now available on YouTube. In Symphonique n’ Roll, Dufresne sings symphonic arrangements of her synth hits and, at one point, wears a dress train with wheels covered in musical instruments, with a violin on her head. But the outfits are the least of it: The punk attitude, the hysteria, the ownership of the text, the unfailing musical instincts and the tongue-incheek moments all make for an exciting spectacle. Follow along with the lyrics if possible: Her knack for turning them into dramatic monologues is something to behold. There’s also a Mahler song and a Verdi aria in the program, and she shines in both.
Julie Andrews Sings Her Favorite Songs (1989)
“You could say my mom was a bit of a stage mom,” says Andrews as she introduces Noel Coward’s “Mrs. Worthington,” and interrupts the singing with memories of performing with her mother’s and stepfather’s double act. The embodiment of all that is good manners and polish, Andrews started off on the wrong side of the tracks, entertainment-wise: music hall stages in the small towns of England. She loved every moment of it, she recollects, especially the short lady by the name of Ella Shields who was a male impersonator and who would dress up as an elegant bum for “Burlington Bertie from Bow.” Which Andrews proceeds to sing (and dance) herself. There is a risqué and elaborately set up #MeToo joke a quarter of an hour later, a hot rendition of “Le Jazz Hot” from “Victor/Victoria” and a lot more lanky dancing before she changes into a silver gown for the only sedate portion of the evening. Unlike most of her movies, this is not familyfriendly and so much better for it.
La Traviata
There’s an intriguing recent Paris Opera staging of this Verdi opera available at Medici.tv, free with a Toronto Public Library card. Fronted by the charismatic South African soprano Pretty Yende, the production sets the Verdi-Dumas classic in the present time, with Violetta Valéry as an Instagram influencer, girl-about-town famous for being famous, both feted and owned by her followers in that unique way that social media celebrities are. By way of video projections, there are status updates and photo uploads happening seemingly in real time throughout the opera. In the final act, when illness strikes, millions of virtual friends are reduced to a single one in flesh and blood. In at least two operatic classics, sopranos die due to respiratory illness (tuberculosis); it can’t be long before COVID-19 becomes a dramatic device in productions of “La Traviata” and “La Bohème.”
For the Gen-X set
There are a lot of concerts for the discerning Gen-Xer online — after all, the concert as an art form was created as members of that generation were coming into youth culture. Pet Shop Boys’ Electric Tour (2013) is a fantastic hybrid of light projections and electronica, aptly directed for video. There’s New Order in Berlin (2012), geezers by now but still having it. The 1998 Depeche Mode Live in Cologne, recorded for MTV, shows Dave Gahan’s baritone at peak suavity. There’s also Arcade Fire Live at Lollapalooza in 2017; and Oasis in Manchester in 2005, before an insane number of people, as the 1990s’ last hurrah. But for the sheer propulsion, visceral onslaughts and brain food, these are two standouts: Eurythmics Live in Sydney from 1987 and the Jonathan Demme-directed recording of the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, preserved on DVD and BluRay.
Laurie Anderson Home of the Brave (1986)
This is the young Laurie Anderson: playful and childlike as she moves between instruments and guest musicians, voice and sound modulation, recorded and live. No melancholy of “O Superman” here, nor the gravitas of “From the Air” — this is as carefree and fun as avant-garde song-making gets.
Mozart Great Mass in C minor
Insula Orchestra — named after the part of the brain that turns inchoate sensations into conscious emotions — is one of France’s several orchestras run by women conductors. Mozart’s “Mass in C-minor” was its first big statement to the world. An old church was opened for the purposes of this recording for the Arte TV network and four superb soloists hired. Period instruments are different from modern symphonic orchestras: sound comes across as smudgier and more in-between because they’re differently tuned and produced by different materials. In other words, the impression of precision and sharpness is harder to achieve, and Insula and the chorus do this — but observe the conductor, Laurence Equilbey. Hers is not a style of strict beat-tracking; it’s more of a trance from the first big tutti in Kyrie on. It’s a great pleasure to observe women owning such muscular and masculine works as Mahler’s 5th (see for example, Hanna Chang when she next guestconducts the TSO) or Holst’s “The Planets” (Susanna Malkki), but witnessing this kind of helplessness before the ineffability of music, as evinced by Equilbey, is a pleasure of a different, more poignant kind.