—

I cannot recall ever having a more intimate operatic experience than listening to Gordon Getty's touching opera based on the acclaimed James Hilton novella. The scoring is for what sounds to me like a chamber orchestra with prominent keyboard, harp, and percussion parts. As befits the poignancy of Hilton's story, Getty's approach (he wrote the libretto as well) is all very lyrical. Rarely do the dynamics get as loud as forte, as in pastoral English music by the likes of, say, Delius, but for all that there is no monotony. There are, however, stylistic similarities to the vocal writing of Britain's leading opera composer, Benjamin Britten (which should be taken as high praise). The style is tonal and traditionally melodic.

As the program notes inform us, the opera was not premiered live but was “reimagined” as a film, due to the privations visited upon the performing arts by the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe the cast is the same in the film as in this recent recording, but whether or not that is so, I would look forward to seeing the film and even more so to seeing this work staged live. Getty's creative take on the storyline — for example, having Dr. Merrivale as the narrator — and its musical transformation is frequently quite affecting.

The singers­—and Melody Moore, in particular—are absolutely convincing in their roles and sing beautifully. The chorus, British public school boys singing hymns, but occasionally used to add additional color, also sings splendidly. Dennis Doubin at the podium is in complete command and moves the opera along briskly but in a manner that never seems rushed. One reason I would love to see this staged (whether on film or in the opera house) is to see what one can only imagine listening to the recording: how the flashbacks and flashforwards embedded into the libretto are managed.

The scene (which is reprised to great effect towards the end of the opera) where Chips's wife Kathie, who will die in childbirth, says her farewell, is not at all maudlin but is nonetheless extraordinarily moving. Also striking is the use of Melody Moore to sing the role of a young schoolboy meeting the aged Chips for the first (and last) time, who intones the titular “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” in a manner reminiscent of how it was sung by the long-dead Kathie. Even more moving is Chips's final soliloquy, voiced over a boys' chorus background, in which he identifies individual former students, some of them among those who died in World War I, by name, and they respond, and this concludes with his emotion-laden final cry, “My boys.” Then there is silence. I'm not sure the abruptness of that ending works for me. I understand the dramatic effect Getty was seeking in illustrating Chips's death with the absence of further sound, but I would have preferred even a few bars of instrumental epilogue.

This is a distinguished, and extremely listenable, addition to the escutcheon of American opera. Highly recommended.

Keith R. Fisher
April 16, 2025

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Whenever a venerable literary property is reincarnated into another medium, one must initially ask if, why and how it speaks anew. This operatic version of Goodbye, Mr Chips might be expected to tap into misty-eyed nostalgia for the pre-First World War British culture of boarding schools for boys and their headmasters – as embodied by the fictitious Charles Edward Chipping. Not so with Gordon Getty, the California-based arts philanthropist who also has an extensive but underestimated history as a ‘Sunday composer'. His portrayal of this tiny, elite culturally distant corner of the world doesn't begin promisingly but builds into a quiet but penetrating retelling that concentrates on universal themes such as the value of family and the devastation of loss. Yes, certain school rituals are acknowledged in this blessedly innocent milieu. But it's peripheral scene-setting for a parable of surviving life's heaviest weather.

Getty's own libretto, adapting the 1934 novella by James Hilton (plus some of the author's later postscripts to the Mr Chips canon), initially places the show-don't-tell rule of theatre on hold: the story is more recounted than dramatised, playing more like a multi-character song-cycle than an opera. This is not ineptness but strategy: the plot is streamlined to get to the hard-won owl-and-pussycat marriage between Chips and the woman he never thought he deserved. His charismatic wife Kathie had surprisingly limited screen time in the classic 1939 film version, in which she dies in childbirth. The 1969 musical film gave greater presence to the character, updated to the Second World War, though the story, more expansively told in Terence Rattigan's screenplay, left curiously little room for music. Getty the librettist allows ample leeway to Getty the composer, whose neo-tonal language – more respected now than 20 years ago – is readily comparable to Gian Carlo Menotti's melodic but not necessarily tuneful idiom. Getty doesn't aim to please; he aims to move. Talking to their deceased loved ones is a way of life for some – and in the case of Mr Chips, Kathie answers back, making her a pervasive after-death presence. The composer's Wikipedia bio suggests why he achieves such emotional authenticity with only a few well-chosen notes: he has personally experienced significant family losses. It's all over the score, which wears its emotional depths in the understated manner appropriate to the Mr Chips character.

At times, Act 2 seems laden with one poignant scene too many – were it not for the power of one of the opera's culminating events: when a Mr Chips adversary shows up asking for favours, what could have been a routine forgiveness scene blooms into a search for reasons to live amid hopeless circumstances. Thus the central theme is far from the durability of tradition or the value of a classical education, but reasons to carry on amid disillusioning world-changing catastrophes.

The scoring uses the orchestra sparingly. Incidental woodwind solos do much of the storytelling, though some of the more obvious touches include celesta at the mention of children and harps in moments of magic realism. Getty's dramatic compass also goes a bit off course as school politics become as weighty as the machinations of Das Rheingold.

Covid circumstances apparently prompted a rethinking of the opera into the film medium (a version I haven't seen), though the opera still seems viable for the stage. Certainly, the Barbary Coast Orchestra under Dennis Doubin and the good cast of singers would benefit from living longer with the opera, particularly in finding a mode of vocal articulation (slanted more towards speech than singing) that suits the more narrative sections. The bigger question is whether the singers can scale back their voices for the many intimate moments. In the title-role, Nathan Granner does so with a rich range of colouring from an introspective use of head voice to a more vividly commanding manner when getting things done.

Mezzo-soprano Melody Moore is less ideal casting for Kathie, if only because her ample sound puts a bit of damper on the vivid emotions at hand. Lester Lynch is better employed with Verdi, but the benevolence he exudes as Dr Merrivale (Chips's doctor) is stronger than the magnitude of his voice. As the ruthless Rolston, Kevin Short's forceful manner is a welcome counterbalance to the ultra-civilised veneer that pervades in the story. Like Mr Chips himself, this opera isn't out to change the world, but it may make a small part of it better.

February 2025

 —

Now 91, Gordon Getty—yes, he's one of the Gettys—has been composing operas for 40 years, and his latest, a 2017 stage work that premiered as a film in 2021, is an attractive adaptation of the James Hilton novella about beloved teacher Mr. Chipping at an English boys' school. Getty also penned the libretto, and his music is accomplished and, by its end, quite moving (Chipping's wife Kathie has a couple of emotionally climactic appearances). This excellent recording, by the Barbary Coast Orchestra and San Francisco Boys Chorus under conductor Dennis Doubin, highlights wonderful vocal performances by soprano Melody Moore as Kathie; bass-baritone Kevin Short in several smaller roles; and tenor Nathan Granner as Mr. Chips himself, a man whose personal tragedies color his natural optimism for his students.

Kevin Filipski
February 20, 2025

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A new Pentatone recording presents Gordon Getty's operatic adaptation of James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The composer reflects on Hilton's novella and his opera, and their beloved hero.

Chips is your operatic setting of James Hilton's 1933 novella. When did you first read Hilton's book? What aspects of the work inspired you to create an operatic version?
I think I first read Goodbye, Mr. Chips seven or eight years ago, having seen the 1939 movie on television decades before. The movie had already given me ideas for an opera, and the book convinced me, gosh knows why. It just seemed right.

There have been many stage, screen, and radio versions of Hilton's novella, including the famous 1939 movie starring Robert Donat. Did any of these adaptations influence your opera?
I try to avoid other treatments of whatever I'm setting. I haven't seen the Peter O'Toole remake, although I'm a big fan of his. I don't think the Donat movie influenced me except to suggest that the story would work.

As is your practice, you authored the libretto for the opera Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hilton's story, spanning only 87 pages, embodies a series of vignettes about Mr. Chips (Chipping), his life, and career at the Brookfield school. You include a great deal of Hilton's prose in your libretto. What modifications did you need to make to adapt Hilton's novella for the operatic stage?
An opera does best with fewer characters, and characters that remain in the story. Thus, I bring back Kathie in Chips's memory, several times, and let her inhabit Linford on Chips's last day. I keep Doctor Merrivale around as the narrator, and I bring back students on which the story had focused, and who had died in the Great War, as ghosts. I bring back Ralston, on Chips's last day, by adapting one of Hilton's short stories, and I have the same bass play Ralston and Rivers.

All this makes practical sense too. There are only so many good singers available at a given time. We tend to get better performances per dollar spent when we need fewer singers, and give each one more to sing. The best ones tend to like it that way, as it gives each one a better chance to show what he or she can do.

The original plan was for Goodbye, Mr. Chips to be premiered as a staged opera. The advent of the COVID pandemic necessitated a different approach. Tell us about those circumstances, and how Goodbye, Mr. Chips was introduced to the public.
We first brought out Chips as a darned good movie. The postponements of the stage premiere may have been a blessing, as they gave me time to retouch the score.

How may one access the film version of your Goodbye, Mr. Chips?
Folks can check with their local opera companies for screenings, and the film will be available for streaming in the next few years.

Are there plans for staged performances of the opera?
Plans for the live production premiere are in the works, with an announcement coming later this year!

The new Pentatone audio recording of Goodbye, Mr. Chips is superbly cast. Tenor Nathan Granner, who also appears in the movie version, is brilliant in the title role. Did you compose the role of Chips with Granner in mind?
I wrote Chips before I met Nathan, but realized when I first heard him that he would be hard to beat.

James Keller, the author of the liner notes for the new Pentatone release, quotes you as follows: “I am two-thirds a 19th-century composer.” Chips, a Classics teacher, is himself a proud advocate for tradition. Chips views the courses he teaches at Brookfield as “a guide to our journey in search of the beauty that holds.” On occasion, particularly with headmaster Ralston, that stance creates friction. I wonder if you find in Chips something of yourself and aesthetic approach?
I would like to measure up to Chips if I could. He's a gentle soul, but a mensch who takes on Ralston and air raids, and the Grim Reaper when he knocks, with wit and backbone and grace. I am one of his students, and hopefully the better for it.

In Hilton's novella and your opera, Chips is portrayed over a period spanning the years 1870 to 1933. Did you set the story within those parameters?
I like to stick to the original period in my settings. I gather that the Peter O'Toole movie updates the story to World War II. This makes the air raid easier to take in, as many including myself, had not realized that London had been bombed in WW I as well. I preferred to risk that confusion, and stuck to Hilton's time frame.

In the opening of Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the narrator, speaking of the elderly Chips, describes that he “would sing out, in that jerky, high-pitched voice that had still a good deal of sprightliness in it.” Your writing for the tenor has numerous touching ascents into the head register. I'm curious: Is that technique an embodiment of the narrator's description?
I like to ask high pianissimo from all my singers, and especially tenors. What a Chips might John McCormack have made! By the way, Chips never sings above A♮. Nathan has a terrific high C♮ (at the very least!), but gets no chance to show it here.

Tell us a bit about the instrumental scoring for your opera.
Chips is an intimate opera, and I use a smallish orchestra of 40 players. I tend to use woodwinds more sparingly than other composers, and to use keyboards, harp, and pitched percussion more freely. Strings carry most of the load for me, as for many other composers.

In his liner notes, Keller describes Chips as “the teacher many people would like to have.” Keller also refers to your admiration for Chips, and Hilton's novella. I'm wondering if, during your education, you encountered teachers like Chips. If so, how did they influence you?
I had several teachers a lot like Chips. One was Hereward T. Price, who taught us Shakespeare at the University of San Francisco in the 1950s. I have yet to read an annotated variorum book of Shakespeare's plays without a citation from him. He had known Robert Browning, who died in 1889. That gives an impression of his age. He had fought in WW I, like many of Chips's students, but on the German side, like Chips's close friend, Herr Staufel. (Price had been teaching in Germany, and was conscripted.) He was captured by the Russians, escaped to China, and lived to tell the tale. “A life to remember, a life of renown, a guide to our journey in search of the beauty that holds.”

 —

This is Gordon Getty's fourth opera, and Fanfare has done him proud, as has Pentatone in releasing these works in such handsome packaging, and with such detailed documentation. And here is the latest: an opera on the famous Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a novella by James Hilton published in 1934. The story has formed the basis of several adaptations for the screen, big and small (two for cinema, two for television). It follows a teacher, Mr. Chipping (“Chips”), his trials, travails, and loves, revolving around an English school in wartime.

It would be good to see this on video at some point: Getty's own essay details how certain actions on stage are used to effect sudden changes in time (the change of Mr. Chips's age from 85 to 48, for example). Also, the use of the singer who takes the principal role of Kathie (Chips's wife) to return “through” Linford is something we can hear on disc but which would be even more effective if seen. There is also the dramatic device of bringing back the domineering headmaster Ralston at the end, in a scene based on one of Hilton's short stories.

One aria from Goodbye, Mr. Chips has been reviewed before: a version of Kathie's aria in a version with piano on another Pentatone release, Melody Moore: An American Song Album (Melody Moore, with Bradley Moore on piano). It is of course good to hear the entire piece and with orchestra, and it is indeed Melody Moore who sings the part of Kathie, Mr. Chips's wife who dies so tragically in childbirth (the infant does not survive either). Kathie's first entrance, literally with the words, “Goodbye, Mister Chips!”, is radiant here.

The opera begins with a Rückblick: Merrivale reflects on how Mr. Chips changed Brookfield School, where he taught for 48 years. Mr. Chips is now 85 and narrates his story, via singer Nathan Granner, compellingly. Getty's music is reactive to the text (he forged his own libretto) and, while sometimes dramatic and more often lyrical, generally lacks just that last iota of memorability. Getty does, however, create a coherent and appropriate sound world—cozy, warm, and nostalgic—for an English boys' boarding school of yore. His music can be stirring, however, as when Rivers, at a time when Chips's job is threatened, reassures him that “the governors are with you to a man.”

There are perhaps elements of Benjamin Britten in the vocal writing: “It was 37 years ago” sings Chips just prior to Kathie's second entrance, and it does rather put me in mind of the prolog to The Turn of the Screw (“It is a curious story”).

Kathie's re-entrance takes us back to 1897 and the announcement of her pregnancy. The sense of joy Getty sets up is certainly palpable: The Barbary Coast Orchestra is disciplined yet jubilant. Later, Getty's use of percussion is most evocative as, one month later, Chips and Kathie celebrate New Year's together. As the pregnancy starts to go awry, Getty places Kathie's previously excerpted aria (“Chips, darling, it's started”) here, a real highlight of the piece and beautifully sung. The warmer scoring of the aria in the context of the full opera still includes piano but is necessarily lusher. Actually, I prefer the piano version; it seems more desolate, more predictive of what will come. Moore is brilliant in both versions: Her voice flies freely in the climactic higher moments, yet can sing conspiratorially in the lower registers and dynamics. In context, her aria is heard as an insert within Chips's ongoing narration. Kathie's death later furnishes a “hook” for Chips's prayer for Grayson's father, who was on the Titanic when it sank: Chips prays to Kathie to intercede on behalf of Grayson's father. That is arguably Nathan Granner's finest moment, although in terms of stamina (both vocal and dramatic), his huge monolog in the second act is a real achievement.

Because of the use of memory and variable time placement in the opera, Kathie can indeed reappear, as she does in the second act (Moore is just as convincing as before). In addition, there is a “dream sequence” in act II. This use of “time shuffling,” and on a more immediate level also of juxtaposition of memories, is the opera's greatest strength, structurally. It offers not just a “retelling” of the well-known story but an alternative mode of telling suited to both stage and opera, and this is Getty's greatest achievement.

Both Chips and Merrivale act as narrators, looking back in time. Of the two, baritone Lester Lynch's Merrivale is the more convincing; Nathan Granner's tenor is not always quite as substantial or confident. The scene where it is suggested that Mr. Chips should retire features Ralston (who suggests it), sung incredibly strongly by Kevin Short, who doubles as Rivers in the very next scene.

Bruce Rameker is a convincing West, who is in trouble for fighting. It's a pity that when Chips tells West he has “200 lines” it does not, in the opera, reflect back to Chips's early scene with students and how he tries, to no avail, to discipline them with the threat of lines. It is Lynch, though, who shines as the finest exponent here, alongside Moore. His Germont père in the Dresden Pentatone Verdi La traviata (with Oropesa as Violetta) was perhaps less inspired (a view shared by both fellow reviewers Fogel and Tuttle in Fanfare 46:2), but I find it hard to find fault with him here.

The chorus is used effectively, framing act I, marked “unseen” in its first instance and “offstage” in the second. (I am unsure of the difference, not having actually seen the opera, but “unseen” could imply onstage but not visible.) It is Chips who has the last word, however, in act I; a similar process informs act II. The opening chorus of the second act is a school song; the closing choral number goes back to the alma mater of act I. But it is Chips's final monolog, interspersed with responses from the boys he “calls on” and sonically backlit by the chorus, that is so beautiful. Getty just avoids the saccharine here in his melodic writing. “My boys” is Chips's final cry, and the opera's end, cutting to the quick.

All the roles here are more than creditably taken, and the orchestra and chorus are beyond criticism; all of Getty's tighter corners are negotiated with ease. Conductor Dennis Doubin paces the flow superbly, ensuring a sense of cohesion throughout the many time shuffles. The booklet includes a full libretto, plus a brief essay by Getty himself and program notes by James M. Keller. As “an opera re-imagined for film,” due to COVID restrictions, Goodbye, Mr. Chips received its premiere in November 2021 at a screening in San Rafael, CA. With his most recent opera, Gordon Getty takes his place in the pantheon of significant American opera composers.

Colin Clarke
February 2025

 —

Gordon Getty has come to my knowledge through several songs that have appeared in various recitals, but this is the first opera of his I have come across. Pentatone has already recorded three others, and this one, Goodbye, Mr. Chips composed in 2017, was premiered in 2021 as a screen adaptation. The reason was Covid, which struck inexorably and paralysed cultural life worldwide for many months. The fact is that many activities still haven't fully recovered. However, during the time that has passed, Getty has reworked some passages in the score, and these changes have been incorporated for this recording, which is not the soundtrack of the film but newly recorded in February, May and August 2024.

The literary source is the book by James Hilton, first published in 1933. The story takes place in a fictional village in eastern England at a public boarding school for boys, Brookfield, where the teacher Mr. Chipping works for 63 (!) years. He becomes very popular among the boys, and cares a lot for them. Chips, as the boys call him, marries Kathie, a truly loveable woman, but the happiness is brief. Kathy and the baby die in childbirth and Chips never remarries. The action covers the end of the 19^th century and the first few decades of the 20th century, and the First World War becomes a trauma for the ageing Chips, who on a daily basis has to inform his colleagues of the death in battle of former pupils from Brookfield. There are many sorrows in the play, but also joys.

The libretto is by Getty himself, and it is more epic than strictly dramatic, with Doctor Merrivale as narrator. The story progresses roughly chronologically, but with frequent flashbacks. This poses problems with the staging, when the 85-year-old Chips is supposed to enact his 48-year-old alter ego in some scenes with Kathie. One solution, which Getty suggests, is having a mime as actor while the old Chips sings out of sight from the audience. This is not a problem in a film, of course. The relatively little dialogue is in the shape of dispute and discussion, but one important case is the scene in the first act when the new headmaster Ralston tries to force Chips to voluntarily retire – something that in the end leads to Ralston himself being dismissed. In the second act, when the two meet again under different circumstances, the conversation is on a friendly basis – but in both cases this makes the play come alive. Otherwise there are long monologues – Getty calls them arias – where Nathan Granner in the title role has a heavy burden, which he carries with aplomb. He sings beautifully, with a myriad of nuances and deep involvement.

Next to him Lester Lynch as Doctor Merrivale, the narrator, also has a lot to do, and far from being anonymously neutral he radiates warmth and sympathy. Lynch is an expressive actor – and also a brilliant interpreter of art songs –and his expressivity saves the long recitatives – which I think they are – from being monotonous. The third protagonist is of course Kathie, but she dies very early and returns only in a few flashbacks. However, when she appears, hers is the most endearing and melodically memorable music. She has a long solo when in bed at the maternity hospital. She has been informed that there will be a troublesome delivery and suspects that she might lose the baby, even die. She cares for how Chips will be affected and says sensible things to comfort him. She becomes almost a Madonna figure, and the monologue is the most beautiful scene in the entire opera, celestial and deeply touching.

Melody Moore, whom I have admired since I first heard her wonderful Mimì in Jonathan Miller's La bohème at the London Coliseum in 2009, has, as I prophesized, in my review of the DVD, since risen to stardom, and is here angelic. She returns briefly towards the end of the opera as the boy Linford, who visits Chips for a cup of tea, a tradition that Chips had launched from the beginning of his tenure at Brookfield and stuck to until the very end. Ms Moore depicts the innocent boy with simplicity and warmth as if he was an angel representing Kathie. There is a fourth singer, who needs to be emphasized: bass-baritone Kevin Short. He doubles as Ralston and Rivers, two formidable characters, who need a formidable interpreter. Short is the answer: powerful, pitch-black tone and expressive. Some years ago I reviewed a recital-CD, where he presented a good dozen of ‘bad guys', and he was mostly very good at that. The present issue confirms his excellence as ‘baddies'. The minor roles are well taken.

Getty has treated the original with a great deal of freedom, adding things from another story by Hilton and also structuring the opera differently from the original – to the advantage of the understanding. He explains this in some detail in the foreword. It is worth noting that Doctor Merrivale, who in the novella is a minor role, only appearing once, has been promoted to the all-important role of Narrator.

The orchestral contributions are generally rather recessed and chamber-music-like. Solo instruments and groups of woodwind are the order of the day, and rarely is the full orchestra employed for dramatic point-making – but then with stunning effect. The San Francisco Boys Chorus do a good job and brings the opera to a spectacular start with Alma mater …, which returns as finale, tying together all the threads to a unit.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a touching opera, excellently sung and permeated by deep humanity.

Göran Forsling
February 12, 2025

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Gordon Getty, now 91, is not only a big name, he has also proven himself in the family's business sector and as a patron of the arts. And he has a hobby that is rather rare in these circles: composing. This allows him to sponsor the premieres of his own operas and their recordings - but there are worse pastimes. Getty is particularly fond of musical theater, and his accessible parlando style, which fits in quite professionally with contemporary US opera aesthetics that, like Broadway, aim to gain audience acceptance, makes him an easy success.

Now he is doing the same with his fourth opera, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” which, as a Christmas feel-good piece, naturally serves Anglo-American traditions perfectly. This is a novella by James Hilton, published in 1934 and still popular today, about a teacher who is initially strict because of his insecurity, but is then transformed into a caring and loving educator through the love of his wife, who dies in childbirth. Mr. Chips becomes an English teacher who is held in high esteem by many generations of his students and who, at the end of his life in the First World War, remembers all of his pupils.

The hopelessly sentimental story about “the teacher we all wish we had” was made into a film in Hollywood in 1939 with Robert Donat and Greer Garson, and a second time in 1969 as a flop musical with the completely untalented singer Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark. Nathan Granner can certainly sing with his soft, flowing tenor in the title role of the opera. And otherwise the piece largely follows the familiar, heartwarming path, offering Melody Moore, a favorite Getty vocalist, who was quickly eliminated from the piece, beautiful singing material as the wife and in another role, as well as the San Francisco Boys Chorus. While the Barbary Coast Orchestra under Dennis Doubin provides unobtrusive, film-music-like accompaniment.

Manuel Brug
January 18, 2025

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[Review]
It was no surprise to me that this was a delightful and exceedingly attractive collection of choral works by Gordon Getty, born in 1933, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The human voice is at the center of Getty's love of music, and he knows how to write works that are gratifying to sing as well as to hear. He is also an accomplished poet, and some of the settings here are of his own poems. Other poets include Keats, John Masefield, Edward Arlington Robinson, Lord Byron, Sara Teasdale, and Ernest Christopher Dowson. Getty's settings are always carefully attuned to texts; the music enhances the words and never seems in conflict with either their meaning or their rhythm. It is this specificity of word-setting that is an important component of the works on this disc.

Getty occupies a unique place in today's world. His music can only have been composed recently, but it is not “modern music” in the traditional sense. Although his idiom is firmly tonal and fits comfortably into an earlier choral tradition, it would be unfair to call it old-fashioned. Getty is comfortable experimenting with innovative sonorities and colors, while being firmly rooted in tonality.

Without meaning to accuse him of imitating others, because I don't believe he does, I am comfortable calling up composers who occupy a similar place on the musical landscape—Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and Nicholas Flagello. If you find their music appealing, you are likely to find Getty's equally so. His setting of Byron's “The Destruction of Sennacherib” wonderfully echoes the pulse of the poetry and also reflects the initial energy of the poem's Assyrian attack and ghostly appearance of the Angel of Death. The ethereal, dream-like atmosphere of Dowson's “Cynara” is captured perfectly, particularly in its delicate orchestral accompaniment.

The major work here is not Beauty Come Dancing, the piece that gives the disc its title, but the first track, a 16-minute setting of Getty's own text, “The Old Man in the Night.” Its companion, The Old Man in the Morning, is just over three minutes long. There is a haunting sense of reflection that runs as an undercurrent in both pieces, effectively communicated through the choral writing and hypnotic accompaniment. A nice contrast is provided by Getty's fairly traditional but still inventive setting of Shenandoah, lovingly sung by the Netherlands Radio Choir.

The performances are uniformly excellent. James Gaffigan is an American conductor whose career is growing rapidly, and rightly so. The choir and orchestra perform with commitment, a wide range of colors and atmosphere, and pinpoint intonation. Pentatone's recorded sound, heard in two-channel stereo, hits the sweet spot between clarity and warmth. Fine, helpful notes and full texts round out a terrific production. 

November 2018

[Interview]
In my prior professional life as executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington (1981–1985), president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1985–2003), and president of the League of American Orchestras (2003–2008) I had a number of occasions to be aware of Gordon Getty as an extraordinarily generous philanthropist to musical organizations (orchestras, opera companies, music schools, etc.). On a couple of occasions I had the pleasure of meeting him, particularly in connection with a donor-cultivation event for which he generously offered his home in San Francisco on behalf of the League. What started out to be a brief conversation during which I merely intended to thank him turned into a long evening, both in his home and following at dinner at his restaurant, where I discovered his passion for vocal music, great singers, and in particular historic vocal recordings (a passion shared at that dinner by the then chairman of the NEA, Dana Gioia). That enthusiasm is evident in the music he writes, and I was pleased to accept Fanfare's assignment to interview Mr. Getty.

As I said in my introductory remarks, I was so thrilled to discover someone who shared my own love of historic vocal recordings, and singers like Ivan Kozlovsky, Fernando de Lucia, Mattia Battistini, etc. Where and when did that affinity develop for you?
It was about when my voice changed at age 12 or so. We had just moved to San Francisco. My older brother Paul and I both got the bug. We could buy originals from Caruso's time as cheaply as new releases. Björling, Pinza, Milanov, and Flagstad were still in mid-career. Our favorites included those four along with Caruso, Ponselle, McCormack, and Chaliapin from the past. We branched out from there when Tebaldi, Di Stefano, and LPs arrived a little later.

It seems to me that vocal music, the singing of the human voice, is central to your own compositions. While you have a small handful of instrumental and orchestral works, the overwhelming majority of your compositions are for voice. Why do you think that is?
I got the poetry bug too. Poetry, and prose too, are their own music. A composer adds nothing but a detachable frame. Somehow that's what I'm driven to do.

Some critics have been resistant to the conservative, mainly tonal musical style that you have exhibited from the beginning. Others (and I will admit that I am one of them) have reacted much more positively, even enthusiastically. I presume that this was not a matter of intellectual choice for you; you didn't say, “Should I write in this style or that style, with this musical grammar or that musical grammar?” I presume it was a natural outcome of your own musical sensibilities. How would you describe those sensibilities? What is truly important to you in music?
Right. I knew by the fourth grade or so that modern art and music were not for me. It seems to me that the job of art is not to reform, but to remind. We need that now.

I read the remarks in the booklet with the Beauty Come Dancing recording, where you say “I have yet to set the work of living poets, except me, because I prefer to avoid disagreement.…” Would you care to amplify that a bit? And perhaps share with us the poets whose work you really enjoy setting.
I suppose my last answer gave another reason why I haven't set living poets. I set what moves me most. But length is a criterion too. Masefield, a supreme poet, specialized in narrative verse spanning 10 to 60 pages. I haven't yet found anything of settable length by him, other than “Ballet Russe,” which is on the new recording too, that I felt I had to set.

Although there is a very strong lyrical bent in your music, there is also considerable drama. Is balancing those two elements important to you—in any one work, or in your overall output?
Absolutely. Music, with or without words, is show business. The listener must be hooked, given slack, and reeled in at the end like a fish. The composer keeps integrity, even so, by playing angler and fish at once. I have yet to meet a composer, though there must be some, who writes for the audience and success. We love both. But we compose what hooks us, and reels us in, and then take our chances with the audience.

Three of the poems that you set on this collection are by you: “The Old Man in the Night,” “The Old Man in the Morning,” and the poem that gives the disc its title: “Beauty Come Dancing.” Do you find it more difficult or less difficult to set to music your own words? In the case of these three poems, did you write the words with the original intent of setting them to music, or did the musical setting come later?
Those three poems were written first, and meant to stand alone. There was no concession to settability, although I expected to get around to that. Setting myself and others is much the same. One advantage in the first, at least in principle, is that I can tweak the lines to make the music fit. I'm not sure I've ever done this with my verse, where word choices are more critical, but I often do with my libretti.

Are there any types of musical compositions that you have not yet gotten around to but wish to (such as symphonies or concertos)? Or are you so strongly attracted to vocal music that you feel you will probably continue to focus on that idiom?
My hunch is that even if I were 50 years younger, I might never write a purely instrumental piece lasting more than 10 minutes or so. I don't put much stock in architectural key structures, say the sonata form, although Beethoven, Schubert, and some others made that work magnificently. Text gives the scaffolding to pull operas and other vocal pieces together.

What major works might you be thinking about, or working on, now?
My new opera, Goodbye Mr. Chips, is just finished. I have my eye on several poems, including one by Dowson which I rate above “Cynara.” I'm also setting more old folk songs.

Henry Fogel
November 2018

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The score of Gordon Getty's “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” breathes all the unpretentiously sweet melancholy of its many predecessors – from James Hilton's 1933 novella of the same title to subsequent adaptations as, among others, radio plays and lavishly cast movie musicals.

Yet it is not exactly the feel-good opera advertised in Pentatone's press release; rather, the eponymous Mr. Chips – “the teacher we all wish we'd had” – is a painfully grieving figure, an anachronism of sorts, happily projecting his nostalgia onto the devastating realities of the 20th century and its incumbent wars. A product of Old Europe, he does not belong in a world that has drastically outpaced his Victorianist ideals, let alone his antiquated sense for the Latin pronunciation of “Cicero.” Humor saves him from obliteration, but Mr. Chips is, in essence, of the same stripe as Korngold's Paul in “Die tote Stadt” – someone who just can't let go.

NOT LETTING GO
As his own librettist, Gordon Getty adjusts the plot to, essentially, operatic needs. The action is split into a frame story, and a metadiegetic level of Chips reliving his own memories. It oscillates between his 85-year-old self and episodes from his youth, most notably the tragically ending marriage to Kathie Bridges.

Evidently, the staging of embedded narratives is tricky. But on CD, the layering of storylines proves quite compelling, their friction, so to speak, adding to the main character's psychological complexity. Kathie in particular is the driving force behind any of Chips' actions. After her premature death, Chips projects the memory of her onto his very own idiosyncrasies, as when he reacts to his students' pranks: “How Kathie would have laughed!”

“It was as if Kathie had become a part of him,” the ever so sympathetic Dr. Merrivale comments. Again, one distantly senses the echo of Paul's pathological remembrance of Marie. Even the doppelgänger motif is of note, with the soprano being required to sing the double role of both Kathie and Linford. But overall, Getty does not draw the drastic consequences of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

A CLASS ACT
The music very much aligns with Getty's professed self-assessment of being “two-thirds a 19th century composer.” It comfortably stays committed to the tonal language of the pre-avantgarde, though the deployment of chromaticism and an usual array of instruments make for a gently modernist touch to the score.

The piano, for instance, is something of a psychological barometer. It rises to prominence in the sombre keys played after Kathie's death. At the same time, its syncopated rhythms, together with the strings, effectively cadence the flow of the narrative which, for the frame story especially, relies on the conversational, and relatively fast-paced nature of the libretto.

Getty thus sets the tone for a chamber-like intimacy, far from the grand gestures of full-scale Romanticism or the transitional styles of the early 1900s. Accordingly, the orchestra boasts a reduced brass section but, in a modern twist, expands on the percussion. The result is a somewhat theatrical, if not cinematographic feel casting the orchestra into an subtly devised mood-painting role.

FAREWELL, MR. CHIPS
The Pentatone recording relies on the unmitigated enthusiasm of its principal singers.

First and foremost, Nathan Granner is a stunningly charismatic Mr. Chips, phrasing vividly yet coating every expressive nuance with his recognizably honeyed tenor sound. The absence of any self-contained arias may not do justice to his mere vocal skills; but his interpretive acuity asserts itself in many places, most notably perhaps in the extended lyrical solo of “I'm afraid that six Brookfeldians have died this week.” Standing in the chapel, Chips reads the names of Brookfield alumni killed on the Western front when an air raid siren suddenly goes off, and explosions are heard. The scene masterfully crescendoes into the boys' choir chiming into the already cacophonous soundscape, and Nathan Granner's solemnity is increasingly interspersed with quivering moments of anxiety.

Granner finds his equal in Lester Lynch's wonderfully empathetic Dr. Merrivale who, in the novel, is a secondary character at best; yet with Gordon Getty, he assumes the primary function of being the narrator. Though the part does not call for vocal extravaganza, it requires sustained gravity, malleable diction, and a pitch-perfect sense for dramatic timing. Lynch provides all of the above, and his characteristically fast vibrato adds an air of venerability to the kind doctor.

Finally, Melody Moore's interpretation is pivotal to the drama's strong emotional impact. Her role, and especially the ariose “Chips, darling, it's started,” are Getty's most traditionally operatic creations per se, with her long monologue arching into ethereally sustained tones, and a resounding climax. The American soprano's often diaphanous voice is also apt to suggest an otherworldly presence; after all, Kathie makes ghostly comebacks until the opera's grandiose finale in Act two.

AN ALL-AMERICAN AFFAIR
An all-American affair, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” is further enlivened by the irreproachable performances of Kevin Short in the double role of Ralston and Rivers. But only thanks to the remarkably warm colors drawn from the Barbary Coast Orchestra does Gordon Getty's quirky schoolteacher emerge whole from what could easily be perceived as a somewhat fragmented compilation of tangentially related episodes. Conductor Dennis Doubin is not to be rushed, and one readily appreciates every bit of patiently shaped melody, whether instrumental, vocal, or in conjunction with the stirringly glorious San Francisco Boys Chorus.

“Mr. Chips” escapes every attempt at conventional categorization. Despite its modern facture (with some limitations), its two-hour run betrays a deeply felt nostalgia for things well beyond the scope of opera. Chips' death scene, in particular, is transcended by some life-long yearning for a world sadly gone by. Gordon Getty conjures the memory of it.

December 18, 2024