The sound of beauty 38

THE SOUND OF BEAUTY

Bel canto is a style of opera that’s inspired CW’s exceptional new watch of the same name. Here, founder of Opera Holland Park, Michael Volpe, writes a beginner’s guide to this most sensuous of operatic genres

The Italians have a phrase – usually quite literal – for everything; la dolce vita (the sweet life), che sera, sera (what will be will be), buon appetito (good appetite) etc.

In classical music, especially opera, this practice is also prevalent. There are various types of opera characterised by a literal expression. For example, a style of late Italian opera that focused on love and murder and ordinary people’s lives is called verismo – real life.

There is opera seria from the 18th century, which was literally ‘serious’ and usually on a classical or mythological theme, or opera buffa, which means ‘comic opera’. And then there’s bel canto which translates as ‘beautiful singing’, a form of opera at the apex of the operatic repertoire and from which many famous pieces of music have emerged. Bel canto isn’t easy to define because it has many facets, and while its heyday was the 19th century, operas in this style are still enormously popular.

It wasn’t as if a sudden new singing style emerged – elements of what we know to be bel canto could be found in early operas. But it’s generally characterised by extended legato (‘joined together’) notes sung smoothly and evenly across the melodic line; the emotional matching of the music to the drama; florid, ornamental passages of dazzling singing (coloratura) and a general dedication to the beauty of the sound of the voice.

One of the composers most closely associated with bel canto is Vincenzo Bellini. He composed the opera Norma from which the aria Casta Diva was drawn and has become famous worldwide – particularly the version recorded by Maria Callas.

Bel canto is all about the beauty of sound and emotional expression, of the marriage of voice and orchestra. The tone and delivery of a note, or a series of notes by particular singers, can be the subject of fierce debate among musicologists – it is a search for perfection. Opera is an enormously varied idiom with many sub-genres appearing through the centuries. Bel canto is considered by many to be the pinnacle of operatic achievement by composers from a variety of nations, not just Italians.

It was also an enormous influence on those that came after, composers who forged their own styles but drew on the lessons of the bel canto repertoire. Today, operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti fill theatres worldwide, and these operas represent the era of bel canto most distinctly.

If you were looking for a contemporary music comparison to help describe where bel canto sits within the classical canon, you might imagine the difference between the style of rock played by a band like AC/DC with the soft, melodic version created by Steely Dan.

Many great singers believed bel canto was best appreciated by people with sensitivity and soul. Exceptional singers of bel canto are highly prized and adored. Nevertheless, through history, many have fallen foul of the purists – one creaky note could bring down boos and at particular Italian opera houses, fruit and vegetables might be pelted onto the stage.

Things are a little less brutal now but to sing in a bel canto opera is a monumentally physical and emotional challenge – and singers revere them. The last word goes to soprano Sondra Radvanovsky who summed up the dangers of the great bel canto roles when she said, “Singing bel canto is like walking a tightrope”.

Culture that’s worthy of your time Decks

In the age of Spotify, no one needs a turntable…

The History Of Turntable Design by Gideon Schwartz is published by Phaidon, price £74.95; phaidon.com appeal

Yet they continue to exist, and vinyl records continue to be made because there’s no better way of getting closer to the music you love than through a stylus, record deck, amplifier and speakers. It wasn’t meant to be this way.

Compact discs were forced on us by the music industry in the mid-’80s – not only were they more convenient (their words, not ours), but the profit margins were far greater than with boring and imperfect vinyl. But humans have the annoying habit of being quite partial to imperfection (it’s why we love mechanical watches). The first pushback came in the 1990s when club culture heralded a generation of bedroom DJs who didn’t just want one deck but two – usually the robust Technics

SL1210 – with which to practice their mixing on. A further death knell sounded for the turntable when downloads and streaming arrived – but it was CDs that were made redundant, not records. Now we have Record Store Day, sales of vinyl at their highest since the 1990s and a vinyl section in every high street clothes boutique. Now a beautifully illustrated and perfectly timed book, Revolution, The History of Turntable Design by Gideon Schwartz, tells the story of the record deck. Filled with 300 photos of every kind of deck: from something you’d have had in your bedroom as a kid to a turntable that looks more like a piece of conceptual art, it’s every vinyl junkie’s dream. If you value the crackle you hear before the music starts or still think every album has a ‘Side A’ and ‘Side B’, this is a book for you.

The docmentary

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

The USA is a nation of storytellers.

And few can match the tales told by musician Bob Dylan and film director Martin Scorcese.

So it should be no surprise that Scorcese’s exhaustive documentary on Dylan’s golden early period is as original and inspirational as Bob Zimmerman himself.

The film tells the story of Dylan’s transformation from jobbing folkie in 1961 to his ‘retirement’ in 1966, but thanks to interviews with Allen Ginsberg and Joan Baez, it also places him squarely at the centre of the 1960s counterculture revolution.

And even if you’re not a Dylan devotee – and don’t know why he was called ‘Judas’ at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1965* – Scorcese’s ability to weave a story from the wealth of footage (including Dylan playing in his high-school rock band) is reason enough to watch No Direction Home in its entirety.

No Direction Home is available on streaming platforms

* He used an electric guitar – an act of betrayal for hardcore folk fans

The book

Last Night A DJ Saved My Life

The phrase ‘DJs are the new rock stars’

has been around so long that it’s ceased being a cliche and is now an accepted fact.

How did this happen? How did the people who played records become as significant as those who played on them?

Last Night A DJ Saved My Life has the answer. Initially released in 1999 and refreshed for 2022 (with two new chapters), Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s history of the DJ is one of the most important pop culture books of the last 30 years.

The story begins with hard-up British promoters paying a proto-DJ to spin records rather than pay an expensive band: a move that the all-powerful Musicians Union angrily resisted.

We’re then taken through the dive bars of ’60s London, the hedonistic lofts of New York City and the yard parties of Kingston, Jamaica – witnessing the DJ go from support act to main event. One of the most revealing chapters is on the birth of a disco – taking it away from John Travolta and Boney M, and telling its true story.

“There are just so many elements of disco that are still relevant,” says Brewster. “Editing, remixing, all of this stuff was started by disco DJs in the early 1970s. They’ve contributed so much to dance music culture, particularly to the world of house and techno.”

In a digital-dominated world, where everyone can be a director, filmmaker, magazine editor and documentary maker, the DJ was a pioneer: using technology not just to shape music but to stretch it to its limits in a way that no traditional musician would have dreamed of. This book is a long overdue celebration of that contribution.

Last Night A DJ Saved My Life is published by Hachette

The day out

Château La Coste

There’s no better way of seeing sculp-

ture than in the outdoors. And there can be few more beautiful places to do this than Château La Coste in Provence, France.

To call it a sculpture park doesn’t do it justice: Château La Coste is a winery, spa, a venue for chef Francis Mallmann’s only European restaurant and an impossibly gorgeous hotel.

Set in the rolling hills of Provence, the complex is owned by Irish hotelier Paddy McKillen, whose passion for hospitality is matched only by his love for making art as accessible as possible. Which is why you’ll find 40 sculptures by the likes of Sean Scully, Richard Serra and Louise Bourgeois in the beautiful grounds (Bourgeois’s Crouching Spider is one of the most arresting pieces of art you could witness).

Another highlight, and one that ‘chimes’ with the theme of this issue of Loupe, is 2012’s Mediation Bell by sculptor/engineer Paul Matisse. The work is a 20ft-long hollow steel tube balanced on two columns – and the sound it creates when hit by its four hammers is closer to a vintage Moog synthesiser than the clanging you’d typically associate with a bell. If you stand between the two interior pillars, the sound becomes quieter, whereas if you go in front of the work, it gets louder.

Château La Coste says: “Behind its avant-garde design, there are mechanisms so complicated that it took several years to perfect the system. The sound emitted is at such a low frequency that it can be heard only for the first few moments, but the vibrations continue for up to 20 minutes and can be felt throughout our whole body when standing close enough to one of the outside columns.”

While the hospitality at La Coste is outside the price range of many of us, the art is accessible to all visitors. Book your place online now.

chateau-la-coste.com

Eau là là!

Inspired by Jacques Cousteau – and the French Atlantic province of his birth, the Swiss-made C65 Aquitaine GMT is both an homage to the iconic dive watches of the 20th century, and a powerful timing device that lets you monitor two time zones at once. Its pure sapphire bezel is 50 percent tougher than ceramic, while the Sellita SW330-2 movement delivers a power reserve of 56 hours. It’s also waterproof to 200m. Want to know more? Do your research.

christopherward.com

Drake

What do you give the world-famous rapper who has everything?

In the case of Drake, anything but a watch. Because when it comes to timepieces, he has every base covered (and often covered in diamonds).

To say the Canadian MC has a watch collection is like saying Roman Abramovich once had an interest in a local sports team. As you’d expect, this isn’t a collection made up of exciting indie pieces or classic gems from the past. We’re talking serious bling here.

On his 35th birthday, Drake did what any man reaching that milestone might do: he bought himself a watch. But Drake’s was a little more extravagant than the average.

His was a pre-owned Custom Richard Mille RM 056 Design with a see-through crystal case, yellow small seconds indicator, tachymeter and crown band in midnight blue. Only five of the 056 are said to have been made – no wonder it’s valued at $5.5m.

This isn’t his only Richard Mille. Drake also owns a Richard Mille RM Tourbillon 69 ‘Erotic’ – a Grade 5 titanium piece that not only boasts a power-reserve indicator and ‘oracle’ complication but a changeable display that lets you show ‘sexy’ messages on the dial. Drake’s collection also includes various diamond-covered Rolexes and a rare AP Royal Oak collaboration, but he has a powerful attachment to Patek Philippe’s Nautilus series.

First up is the Patek Philippe Nautilus reference 5740/1G, a PP ‘Grand Complication’ with perpetual calendar powered by an ultra-thin 240 Q movement – and made of white gold. As you’d guess, this is a difficult watch to obtain – second-hand models retail at £130,000+ – but its exclusivity pales compared to his second Patek.

Created by (now deceased) design visionary Virgil Abloh, this Patek Philippe Nautilus 5726 moonphase watch is wholly covered in emeralds, lending it an otherworldly deep green colour.

To achieve the effect, the original watch was disassembled, placed inside a vacuum chamber, coated in diamond-like carbon (DLC) and covered in diamonds. One of only two in the world (Abloh took the other one), you can see it in the video for What’s Next.

Whether you feel envious when you do is a matter of contention. But one thing is for sure, like the rest of Drake’s watches, you can’t ignore it.

Ken Kessler looks at the history of watch placement in films – the good, the bad and the unforgivable

Wrong place, wrong time

Two favoured, but costly, mechanisms for spreading the gospel of the watch industry are the use of ambassadors

and product placement. The former probably reaches its apotheosis in sport clothing sponsorship, where logos are applied to any vacant space where they’ll fit: from the socks on a tennis player to the rear wing of an F1 car (and even to a swimmer’s Speedo’s crotch).

Where this differs from watches is that the logos are both visible and familiar. You have to be a hermit in the Himalayas to not recognise Nike or Adidas emblems, even without the supporting text. Of even more value is that you see it on the actual garment or footwear being hawked. Watches, on the other hand (or wrist), have to be seen in close-up to register with anyone other than the enthusiasts who don’t need the preaching. Unfortunately, even after a lengthy close-up, the great unwashed will only comprehend a Rolex. Or maybe a Casio, Seiko, or Swatch. But H. Moser? Roger Dubuis? Urwerk? Kari Voutilainen? De Bethune? I doubt it.

I’ll get to ambassadors some other time, as I find them even more ludicrous and offensive than product placement, and I’ve run out of Rennies. Instead, this issue’s ire is targeted at the second

favoured device: product placement. My anger is not about product placement per se, as I am a grown-up, and films need cars, clothing, watches, mobile phones, weapons, sex toys – whatever’s appropriate to the story. What grinds my gears is incorrect or inappropriate product placement, as you will see.

Why product placement works better than having one’s logo on some cricket player’s tush is because the huge fees paid for placing a product in a film or TV show usually ensure that, for at least one full second, maybe more than once if it’s used as a device in the story to denote the passage of time, the watch will fill the screen. Pay even more, and you might get a name check in the dialogue. But enough about James Bond.

Actually, no – let’s start with Bond, for it is the most celebrated of all product placements, even if it began as an accident. Back in 1962 when they were filming Dr. No, product placement hardly existed as a standard film industry practice, let alone an income stream. Whether by chance or design, Sean Connery as Bond wore precisely the same make of watch onscreen as Bond wore in the novels (if not necessarily the same model, which is another story). Keep that in mind, for some Bond purists to this day – at least the ones who can read – insist that 007 should only wear a Rolex. For some decades, Bond has worn an Omega, after other detours which included Seikos and Gruens. Now, I’m not privy to Omega’s arrangement with Eon Productions, so, for all I know, Omega either pays a fortune for the privilege, or it pays nothing other than sufficient watches. Whatever the deal, it has worked phenomenally well. In

the latest releases, the franchise has yielded some of the coolest Omegas ever. Probably the high point came when, in the 2006 version of Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd chooses to play smartarse by analysing Bond. She looks at his watch and asks, “Rolex?” He responds with no lack of smugness, “Omega.” “Beautiful,” she nods approvingly. As to the commercial value of that exchange, only Omega can tell us what Bond has done for sales. But that sound you hear is not a broken mainspring uncoiling. It’s Ian Fleming turning in his grave. He put a Rolex on Bond’s wrist. Omega, however, justified the historical/practical/ spiritual/intellectual correctness of Bond wearing an Omega with the observation that he was a commander in the Royal Navy – Omega The Bond franchise has certainly produced watches for that branch of the British yielded some of the services (notably reference 0552 which inspired CW’s C65 coolest Omegas ever Dartmouth) and others, not least one of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ watches at the end of WWII. Whatever a purist might argue (as for Bond driving a Bentley in the books, let’s not even go there), Omega-plus-Bond sold a ton of timepieces, literary accuracy be damned. HAPPY ACCIDENTS Dr. No wasn’t the only movie with a suitable watch. I have no idea if Sean Connery gave a toss about what he wore in that film or the subsequent instalments, but actors choosing which watches to wear in their films goes all the way back to 1926, when screen god Rudolph Valentino wouldn’t take off his Cartier Tank for The Son Of The Sheik. In 1961, Elvis Presley wanted to wear his Hamilton Ventura

in Blue Hawaii – wholly appropriate for the character he played, and the brand has celebrated its good fortune ever since with an entire line of Elvis models.

It was the same for Heuer, when Steve McQueen donned a Monaco for Le Mans. Whatever the know-it-all watch trolls might want to argue about it, or how Jack Heuer worked overtime to get his chronographs into the film, McQueen was a watch guy, and his input would trump any commercial concerns. Heuers were favoured by professional drivers. Good enough for McQueen. No arguments.

So, too, did fellow actor/racing fanatic Paul Newman strap on his Rolex Cosmograph for Winning, giving birth to a legend. When Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger fell in love with Panerais, they put the then-obscure brand on the Would mercenaries map, thanks, respectively, to Daylight and Eraser, especially on combat in the latter’s opening credits when Arnie tools up. It’s a habit missions really wear picked up by Jason Statham, who’s worn them in more than a Richard Mille? one film. UNHAPPY ACCIDENTS But back to Hamilton. It is said that Hamiltons have been used in more films than any other watches, going back to the 1930s, and appearing in more than 500 movies since. It mystifies me as to why Hamilton doesn’t produce a book of its movie roles, which would be the envy of all other brands, and for the most part their appearances have been correct, eg, in 1951’s The Frogmen. But equally, Hamilton – or some youthful prop master – committed a classic boob to rank with the Starbucks cup in Game Of Thrones. Then again, perhaps only a serious watch geek would notice. There it was, in all its widescreen glory, in a film which many thought was flawed enough. The film is Pearl Harbor. It takes place in 1941-1942. And there, larger than life, even on a 42in LCD screen, is a quartz Hamilton Khaki. Did no-one bother to check if the watches were as correct and authentic as the flight jackets, fountain pens, Jeeps, and FDR’s eyeglasses? Quartz wouldn’t arrive for a couple of decades. That’s but one example of a watch which is an anachronism. Chopard, which features so prominently in 2006’s Hollywoodland that I thought I hadn’t left Baselworld, matched Hamilton in its time-travel abilities, but it’s actually worse because in this movie, the watch is a plot device. Based on the true story of George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on TV, it takes place in 1958. The watch is crucial to the story line. So what model appears? One from the 2005 catalogue. Then there was a forgotten film which takes place in Alcatraz and the dead guy on the cell floor is wearing a Gubelin. Really? Or how about all the Richard Mille watches in one of The Expendables movies? I get Rafael Nadal wearing it during a tennis match, but mercenaries on combat missions? One day, watch brands will hear the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ and what it means to a film audience. It may be only one in a million viewers who notices the quartz watch in Pearl Harbor or all the wrong cars in Quadrophenia and The Odessa File. But for me, that’s one too many.

2 minutes 01.07 seconds Timespan

Yoga has many benefits.

For some, it builds strength and increases muscle tone. For others, the ancient practice calms the mind and brings you closer to a state of nirvana.

And then there are those individuals who use its influence to achieve extraordinary feats.

Individuals like American vocal coach Richard Fink IV, who practices a discipline called throat yoga (‘throaga’). And who currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest sustained singing note.

On November 17th, 2019, Fing sang a single ‘C’ note for an astonishing 2 minutes 01 seconds without taking a breath. Not only did he have to maintain the tone on one lungful of air but also had to reach the minimum decibel level so he could be heard at a distance of 2.5 metres.

This wasn’t his first rodeo. Previously, Fink had recorded a time of 1 minute 53 seconds after a rival, Alpaslan Durmuş, had managed to last 1 minute 52 seconds in February 2016. He, in turn, had broken Fink’s 2009 record of 1 minute 43 seconds. Fink, a well-regarded singer, has used his throaga technique to improve the vocal performance of singers, politicians and TV presenters. His work is based on understanding the physiology of the throat and lungs to improve performance.

Before his record-breaking attempt, Fink cut out sugar, coffee and wheat products. He trained intensively in the months leading up to the performance, then on the day itself, put himself through a series of deep-breathing exercises before he began.

The result was a mesmerising two minutes which can still be seen on YouTube. In it, Fink’s note sounds like it comes from a machine, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think you’d left the fridge door open. Toward the end, Fink bends over, squeezing every particle of breath from his exhausted lungs. It’s enough to take him over the two-minute mark – and into the history books.

Time machine

Some call the C63 Sealander GMT the most beautiful ‘GMT-explorer’ on the market. We couldn’t possibly comment. But what we can say is thanks to its ne-tuned Sellita SW330-2 movement, you can tell the time in two places at once – by lining up the fourth ‘GMT’ hand with one of 24 time zones on the outer bezel. So even if you’re stuck on the M6 in the pouring rain, your wrist can be sipping cocktails in Manhattan Do your research.

christopherward.com

Return Address

Christopher Ward (London) Limited 1 Park Street Maidenhead Berkshire SL6 1SL United Kingdom

Meet the Bel Canto, pg 16

CBP011929