OTAS, you found it

EMI just released “Callas Live” an 8 CD set comprised of live recordings of the golden era of her performances in the early 50s, when she was changing the face of opera. It’s amazing: Callas in her prime singing the roles that changed the face of music.

The intensity of her performances were something no other singer in recorded history can touch. Most of her studio recordings were in an era when her voice began develop a wobble in the upper notes. In the early years those notes were rock solid and the effect was overwhelming.

Callas remains the most recorded operatic artist in history. Walk into any music store and her recordings will out number all others by at least a factor of three. Nearly 50 years after her prime, she is mourned my many.

The great Ewa Podles said of her:

“People are funny, because they can’t be happy. If they have somebody like Maria Callas in front of them, they always try to find something wrong, something bad, a few mistakes, you know? And maybe she had three voices, maybe she had three ranges, I don’t know — I am professional singer. Nothing disturbed me, nothing! I bought everything that she offered me. Why? Because all of her voices, her registers, she used how they should be used — just to tell us something! She had a message for us, a fantastic message. She had such a big power, and then she just disappeared.

And in the role that Callas brought back to opera, Norma, Caballe, said:

"I remember at my first Norma Joan Sutherland said 'Oh. It's a great opera for your voice!' 'Then I asked Maria and she said: 'When you come to Paris, come to see me.''' At her apartment she only wanted me to sing only three parts of Norma; at the time I was thinking' Why is this it? There are other parts that were much more difficult'. . . 'and now after 100 Normas I've done I now know Maria was right. These were the only moments when a soprano can do it, when she can sing Norma. Thank you Maria, to come to us, and to remain with us (she cries)."

And Beverly Sills said in a 1958 production of "La Traviata" at Covent Garden, and on that night Callas was in poor voice:

"She knew it, too," Ms. Sills said recently. "She didn't deceive herself about the state of her singing. She was visibly nervous. But her use of words, the vitality of language in her singing, was amazing. She was hellbent on her own destruction, and broke all the rules of singing. But so what? That's why 30 years later we're talking about her."

Rudolph Bing, the General Manager of the Metropolitan opera said: "Once one heard and saw Maria Callas it was impossible to enjoy any othe artist, however great."

La Callas, a.k.a. La Divina (the Divine).

I haven’t talked much about work, not because it’s been uneventful: quite the opposite. Drama is at every turn, more so than any other job I’ve had. I’ve got an eccentric CEO at my side pulling me in so many directions that I’m beginning to feel quartered.

And for the last year we’ve been gearing for a major attrition battle that myself and my little team are at the forefront. We’ve begun to get a field structure in place to use the weapons we’ve developed and deliver the “final solution” – to eradicate the practices, policies and mindsets creating a nearly 200% annual turnover rate. (For each position we have, we hire two people per year to fill it.) Its costs are astronomical, but too abstract to understand by our managers. . . eradicating the attitude that we should pay people as little as possible and that our agents should be treated like pigs will take Herculean efforts.

So I’ve been working to develop the technology to deliver this solution. In part, a “People Management” technology solution, that makes it impossible to stray from new processes: Higher wages, scheduling certainty, a consistent supervisor, agents being “innocent before proven guilty” and our supervisors and managers “guilty until proven innocent”. So, literally, people cannot log into computers or schedule these people to work until these requirements are met.

Next year this will be unleashed site by site, with me and my team traveling there to deliver it. “Fuck them!” The CEO says as I explain the resistance in the field: “You will be doing your job when you are the most hated person in this company!”

That same day I wielded my new powers with the COO of 1st party work with criticism of his compensation and people practices (until 11:30 last night). Indignant push-back from was inevitable; the CEO responds: “You must get Matt’s 100% comfort level before anything happens next year.”

Excerpts: Me: “With the way you are currently staffing calls, adjusting down the PPH for IB calls will reduce the pay of our inbound agents. They will all quit and this is going to kill us. We have to pay for more training, hiring and other costs associated with the fact that our top agents will now have better opportunities waiting tables and working at Wal-Mart. Is this how we reward our people?

CEO: "If Matt is not 100%, comfortable this doesn't happen. Find a solution."

Release the Kraken!

So things at work have picked up and have to say that I’ve finally been given the authority to get things done dealing with the compensation and attrition problems I’ve been charged with. This has been a year-long battle intersects with scheduling optimization, barbaric VPs and the like.

So I’ve been consumed by this for the last year and getting people around to the fact that if you pay people more, you will have a more efficient workforce and higher profits, has been an mammoth battle. Higher pay, if properly designed, will keep jobs in the US and give you higher profits. You don’t know how foreign this is to the current mindset. It’s taken me working here for a year with 5 years prior experience in human capital issues, a professor from Columbia, and graduates from Georgetown, Harvard, and Columbia to to give way.

Thankfully, the CEO of our company is now giving me air cover and that these things that have or have not been working are all under his close watch.

If you recall the movie the “Clash of the Titans” the phrase “Release the Kraken!!!” reminds me of who I am and what I’m charged to do. Yes, the Kraken is me and I have to do battle with the luddites in the field on issues held dear to all our hearts.

The ex continues to haunt from time to time with random phone calls reeking of pity and guilt. I’ll have nothing to do with it. And after this tumultuous sort-term relationship, pathetic messages, and haunting my vacation to p-town, I’d had it. (His tenacity to be my friend -with a million stings attached- continues)

He left a message while my phone was off telling me “I’m doing well, I haven’t been drinking tonight, and am so glad you were nice to my friends in p-town”. I could care less. And after explaining he want to see La Gioconda and that “it reminded” him of me, I realized that he continues to try to spin a web around my life, for he is not an opera fan. Fed up and frustrated, I had to take drastic action.

I sent him a text message: “Nobody can stand you. Stop calling. Bye now.” Ordinarily I wouldn’t have been so blatantly cruel, but politeness has only fanned the flames of his obsession. I wanted to make things obviously clear that two months of being incommunicado has gone nowhere, my friends actually don’t like him at all and he has crossed the line.

The response was cryptic: “Get a grip. You don’t know ho” so I’m not sure if he was too wasted to type the rest or if he was calling me a “ho” (whore), regardless, my hope is that he got it and it ends.

I genuinely can’t stand him, and his roundabout ways trying to get to me have now worked my last good nerve.

Bye now :p But only time will tell.

Just a few blocks away today, a small plane hit a high-rise building. It’s amazing how jumpy we are after the World Trade Center was destroyed. Immediately, we tune into the news to be reassured it was a “small” plane, not hijacked jetliners; it was a “typical” residential high-rise on the UES, not an iconic skyscraper in Midtown or Lower Manhattan; only a few people died, not thousands. . . Of course! No, we don’t verbalize these emotions, or even really allow ourselves to feel them -- that would be a sign of weakness-- but we certainly think it, for a moment at least, before their dismissal. Then people from all over the country call you to ensure you are “all right”.

Of course I’m all right! (Errrr. .Thank God.) Why wouldn’t I be?!





















Unforgettable?

I’ve been trying to reign in my budget, these days. So this weekend I only went to Lincoln Center once, spent a mere $100 on Satruday night drinking, and treated 5 of my closest friends (what are their names again?) to dinner on Friday night, unbeknownst to me. During this time not once did I a) hire a limo to take me downtown b) buy those $200 jeans I wanted and for the record, I wanted to see a move and c) didn’t go, just to save the $10.

So through this frugal lifestyle I’ve managed to be the only one among my friends and relatives at the age of 31 to a) not own the place I live in b) have a laughable savings account and c) pay over $2,000 a month in rent for a mouse-infested apartment.

What the fuck?! Alphabet soup.

My first ticket of the season was La Gioconda, an opera written at the twilight of what is known as the Bel Canto era. It is in every sense a diva’s opera – a grand, loud, long, epic tale of love, betrayl, murder and suicide. It is one of the great operatic melodramas and also contains the famous “dance of the hours”, a ballet now made infamous by Disney’s “Fantasia”.

For all that’s being done to update this intransigent art-form – new stage designers, cinema folk directing it, puppets, weight loss of the great dramatic sopranos, etc. – we are, in performances such as this, reminded that the genre is essentially music.

Starring were a great dramatic soprano and mezzo soprano Urmana and Borodina, respectively –they shook the dust off the rafters. The drama was in the sound and ooooh what a sound it was. In the last act, singing the famed aria “Suiciado!”, where Gioconda contemplates suicide, and vocally forces onto the audience her feelings with such power and intensity that it mattered little that it was coming from a 300 pound woman standing on stage. From all the way up in the balcony, my ears were buzzing. I would much rather hear this that some tiny soprano squeaking out Butterfly.

I was sucked in. Having worked late every night this week I was convinced I would not make it through the second act. But I made it through all five and and left the house after midnight beaming with energy.

The first arts page headlines “The Divas Take On La Gioconda” marks this as a true triumph.











Urmana (left) and Borodina in La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera

Rob, someone who I sing Liza’s “Old Friends” song with on a regular basis, hit the big 40 last week. And with friends in Westchester, Manhattan, and Jersey, the central location to celebrate at was my place on the Upper East Side. So my weekend was obsessed with planning, cooking, preparing for this epic birthday. I spent Friday shopping, Saturday decorating and Sunday morning cooking for the guests. We cooked a dozens of appetizers, food, and dozens of drinks to commemorate it.

Thank God for the preparation because at its height, there were about 20 – 30 people here. We had a ball.

The party collected some of the best folks the New York area had to offer. All races, creeds, colors and ages came out for the occasion –Polo Ralph Lauren designers and filmmakers, to simple folk like myself, we had a ball. Nothing like a couple of gallons of Vodka, beer, wine, and whiskey to grease the wheels, too. All friends, old and new, had a great time.

There are few other occasions that brought together a group that universally loved each other. How did we meet, who knows. But as they say: “You gotta ring them bells!”