What's Up?
My first book, “A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera,” was published on September 18, 2018, and named one of the ten best books of September by the Christian Science Monitor. It was a real joy to write “A Mad Love” – a chance to share my passion for the most visceral, crazy, and emotional of art forms! Opera can be daunting and complex for newcomers, so I have endeavored to explain how music, poetry and theater fit together, to explore the genre’s most important composers and works, and to introduce some of its most influential performers. Along the way I highlight some of the opera world’s fascinating historical figures, recurring debates, and trends.
Opera is evolving and frequently surprising, and I explore the genre as the living, thriving art form it is. I discuss the operas of some dozen living composers and explore the myriad ways (from traditional to wacky) that contemporary directors stage opera. I have created a Spotify playlist to accompany the book, which begins with music composed by Monteverdi in 1607 and ends with operas written some four hundred years later. There’s no quicker way to fall in love with opera than to listen to wonderful singers perform this gorgeous music.
Life & Work
Bio:
I am a New York-based writer, photographer and pianist. My first book, “A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera,” was published by Basic Books in Sept. 2018. I host and produce a podcast called “Parlando: Musical Matters with Vivien Schweitzer,” interviewing dynamic artists and administrators who are changing the narrative in classical music and opera.
As a music critic for the New York Times from June 2006 to June 2016, I wrote reviews, profiles and essays about a broad spectrum of classical, opera and world music. Some of my favorite articles include interviews with the composer Annie Gosfield, the pianist Yvgeny Kissin and the mezzo soprano Alice Coote, as well as features about the intersection of politics and music in Istanbul, the resurgence of sacred music in Caucasus Georgia, and an exploration of what makes musicians ‘ready’ to perform emotionally challenging works. My pre-pandemic opera reviews include “La Traviata,” “Turandot,” and “Siegfried” at the Metropolitan Opera, “Tosca” at Loft Opera, and “The Rose Elf,” staged in a cemetery! During the pandemic I have been writing about online opera.
I have also written many reviews and features for The Economist, including profiles of the conductors Marin Alsop and Gustavo Dudamel. I contribute regularly to the NYT obit department.
I am a classically trained pianist, have performed at venues including Bargemusic, and particularly enjoy playing chamber music and collaborating with singers.
I was born in Mumbai, am a dual American and British citizen, and grew up in London and Washington, D.C. Early in my journalistic career I worked as a copy editor and reporter for the Moscow Times in Russia, writing stories about topics including mail order brides and the challenges facing foreign missionaries. I have written about Tajikistan for CNN Traveler and New York’s Chinese diaspora for BBC Online, and reported on festivals in Mexico and Slovenia.
I am a volunteer teacher at the Center for the Integration and Advancement of New Americans (CIANA), a Queens-based nonprofit where I teach English and Civics to adult students from all over the world. Here’s an article about why this work is important to me. I also enjoy my work as as board member of Art House Astoria, a nonprofit bringing affordable music and arts education to Queens.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Vivien Schweitzer is also under opera’s spell, and in her delicious history, “Mad Love: an Introduction to Opera,” she regales us with all you need to know.”
—The New York Times, November 28th, 2018
“Schweitzer does a good job of explaining how the music itself works -comparisons to contemporary popular music are deftly handled and often surprisingly illuminating.”
—BBC Music Magazine, November 1, 2018
“What emerges clearly is Schweitzer’s profound passion for opera, her determination to explain the elements of the art so that others might embrace it… Affection is the subterranean river that frequently bursts through the surface to splash readers and, perhaps, convince them to put down the money for tickets.”
—Kirkus Review, June 18th, 2018.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).