A conversation

Posted on June 7, 2014 by barczablog

One of the glories of travel is the encounter with the other. It’s fun to get to another country and talk to countrymen who just happen to be abroad. But that reminds me of the Accidental Tourist. Remember the film? William Hurt as a travel writer whose books prepare people to go abroad in ways that never make you feel like you’re in a foreign country. Speaking as someone who never really traveled much, I always loved the sensation of being lost, not knowing where I am in this world of GPSs and perpetual surveillance. Today, wandering in downtown Stockholm I always knew pretty much where I was, even if there were lots of surprises waiting for me around corners.

I am trying to listen rather than talk, because I can fool people easily into believing I am someone who knows something. Words come tumbling out, even as I wittily cover my blind spots. Here I am on the blog again, but this is something I wrote when I awoke at an oddly early hour due to the near perpetual sunlight here. Yes it’s amazing to be in Sweden in June, when the nights are so short you could practically blink & miss them. Last night was roughly from 11:30 to 2 am or so, then the light came back.

Upon arrival, though I did talk, before my resolution to listen rather than talk. I talked to the cab driver who picked me up at Stockholm airport. It’s always the way. Cabbies are opportunists who have usually come from another culture, assimilate what they must to survive, while figuring out the pros and cons of where they live now, vs where they were.

Last year (NYC) it was an ex-pat Egyptian speaking to me of his home, decrying the conflicts there, happy in his capitalist paradise. I can’t recall whether he was pro- or anti- Mubarek.

This time it was an ex-pat Iranian, speaker of several languages. I spoke of Canada, and he immediately spoke of the similarities between our countries. I cringed, perhaps too negative.

Life expectancy? High in both places.

Sweden is one of the places I hold out as a vision of utopia. Yet I am watching Canada turn into another USA, imitating all the wrong models, turning its back on everything it had right before. We should imitate the Swedes.

Sweden has usually been neutral. The Canada I knew under Mike Pearson was blessedly neutral, a peace-keeper rather than an enforcer. I am not sure where we are now, thank goodness. Mr Harper seems to recognize that we don’t have the money to build the armaments to be another USA. Minus the billions of dollars worth of armaments you can’t be a bully, just a target. Yet I suppose he’s right that we do need to properly patrol our northern waters, especially with climate change turning the northwest passage into something ice-free and welcoming to ships. Will we ever have the boats to back up our brave boasts? (boy oh boy that’s a lot of B words).

Sweden seems to be the ultimate socialist paradise, the place where high taxes make sense. In Stockholm you don’t have people arguing about taxes. It’s understood that taxes are needed to build tunnels & roads & infrastructure. This is a gloriously beautiful city.
Toronto’s election campaign is ass-backwards. We don’t have a good transit system, yet our mayoral candidates are all fighting to position themselves as champions of both a transit solution –usually simplistic, as in Ford’s subway plan–AND low taxes. Tory’s seems to be more thoughtful as far as its funding goes, but still is captive of the conversation that leaves me afraid that we’re not going to do what needs doing, that saving trumps investing.

But the entire conversation is misguided. Don’t you say to the electorate “I offer you leadership to rebuild this” not “I promise not to raise taxes”.

You get what you pay for. No wonder under Mike Harris that the place was such a mess. Are people amnesiac that they forget, and want to go there again? I suppose it’s a question of which skeleton in whose closet is scarier: McGuinty?

or Mike Harris?

Or Bob Rae?

In the centre of Stockholm there are several huge bridges plus tunnels to cope with the geography, the water & hills. Infrastructure can’t be ignored if you want to live in such a place. We have been able to get away with ignoring our infrastructure issues. They don’t have broken water-mains here, because they take care of their city. Watching Kathleen Wynne argue with Tim Hudak, I was appalled that the press report that pollsters claim he won the debate. She kept speaking of the need to build infrastructure: which costs money naturally. Infrastructure is essential –especially power lines—for the cheap power Hudak wants to offer to businesses choosing to relocate here. I am not even talking about the question of their divergent views on jobs, which is what everyone seems to notice.

Remember strawberries?

Remember strawberries? (photo by Leslie Barcza before he started– munch munch –eating)

At my temporary home with family here in Sweden, I went shopping. I couldn’t help noticing. These are the strawberries I recall from my childhood. They’re real, not the bizarre fakery we now see in stores.  They taste amazing. Swedish milk and butter are astonishingly good. It may be true that the cost of living here is high in some ways –for instance the taxes—and yet the Swedes really have a clear understanding of what matters. Their produce & foods & water are clean & healthy. Their roads & trains work beautifully. Their air is clean (although that may have more to do with Toronto’s proximity to the industrial Midwest than anything we do north of the border).

It’s gorgeous (I add, the next day from downtown, where I am wifi-ing this into the blog).

In the meantime I’ll enjoy myself.

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, Food, Health and Nutrition, Personal ruminations & essays, Politics | 1 Comment

Dueling ear-worms: surrender and adventure

Posted on June 6, 2014 by barczablog

It ís Friday, a national holiday I am told. Does it matter why? People need to celebrate, and yes, people sometimes need to rest.

I didn’t realize how tired I was.

I boarded the plane Wednesday night in Toronto. When I saw that the fellow beside me on our 757 was watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty shortly into the flight I asked him (in spite of his earbuds and his naive hope for privacy, poor fellow) whether he’d seen the film before. No he told me, and I promptly spoiled some of the film for him by telling him that it seemed so profound to observe, while we were flying to Reykjavik. He sort of nodded to me politely, hoping I would shut up and not make any more quixotic invasions of his space.

As the plane had gone up I’d been thinking spiritual thoughts. On take-off while I always seek a window seat, loving the views especially on landing, I was in prayerful mode. It ís not that I was really fearful, so much as I was thinking of family, connections to those I am visiting on this trip and those from before. I sometimes find Wagnerian associations comforting, in my own internal Gesamtkunstwerk of self-celebration.  Yes when I think about it RW is more than anything the ego supreme, whether or not you know your Wagner. How do I love Mein Self? Let me count the ways.

1-Wagner? me uber alles, my loud music that drowns out all resistance. If you’re thinking but I prefer heavy metal / rap / Bollywood : if you play it loudly and proudly, you’re well on your way to being Wagnerían. If you deliberately choose it loudly to drown out your neighbours or possibly in the hope that they will be unified with you in an orgiastic celebration of a cosmic music festival?  that too is a Wagner thing. Nevermind whether anyone objects, it’s a naive sort of egomania, right?

2-Before Wagner, theatre was a free-for-all. He tells great stories in his writings of such things as a fight between performers preventing one of his works from being staged, of performers whose hammy desire to show off detracted from the beauty of the whole. Those two stories (and he has other such examples) could be subtext for his mission to unify the components. That aforementioned word “Gesamtkunstwerk” is usually translated as “total art-work”, meaning that the parts work together. We take for granted nowadays that a film or play or opera should be a unified effect, where the director’s interpretation is supported by the designers of costumes & set, where the actors and words & music all work together in harmony. But while others may have aimed somewhat in that direction, Wagner was the first to really put the ideal into words. Imagine, now, that you are a composer, also the one who writes the words, also a conductor, also a director and a dramaturg/theorist writing pamphlets about how to stage this great work. Me, me me, everywhere me..! Yes that’s Wagner.

3-And when it didn’t work out his way when debts and debtors chased him out of the country on one occasion, when his participation in a failed revolution had him on the wanted listt: he ran away. No he didn’t take his football and say nobody could play with it. But he was very much of the opinion that if he couldn’t be king of the castle, then he didn’t want to be fart the messenger to someone else.  And no wonder so many of his opera plots involve conclusions with death as a solution rather than a tragic outcome.

The last week before departure I sat down at the piano a few times to play and sing through the last parts of Parsifal, his final opera. I like the music, enjoy the way the opera ends, and cannot deny that I get a huge rush.  And I am in good company. In the 19th century, before there were DVDs or Victrolas, your only option was to get someone to play and/or sing it for you. Debussy used to play passages of Wagner operas at parties, and on occasion would go through the entire work, playing and singing (after a fashion). How well did he sing? Great question. I can’t help wondering what he would have sounded like. Before you let yourself be captured by any humorous thoughts, thinking that this would somehow be ridiculous, ask yourself what alternative people might have had. Nobody had a clue what Wagner sounded like, at least not in places beyond what we now understand as Germany (NB the country didn’t exist yet).  They hadn’t yet heard the pieces with full orchestra. And there were no recordings. To have someone sit down with a piano-vocal score and conjure up the magic of a Wagner opera? It ís admittedly an ego-fest, a trip for the performer, in their identification with the grandiose moments portrayed in the work, captured in musical climaxes that release tension and leave your body reverberating afterwards.

Even as I write this, I am hearing the passage to which I alluded a moment ago. It ís magical when music can spontaneously come into your head. If you’re Barry Manilow and you’ve written a good song or jingle (and I am not sure that there is a huge difference, as I alluded in a piece I wrote awhile ago), you are triumphant if you’ve managed to implant your song in the heads of others, like the RNA that gives your genes a kind of immortality beyond the body in the flesh of others. Fortunately I can speak of Manilow without fear, because in my recent experience serious music wins, especially if i’ve seen the score. Wagner, for example, is so solidly in my head, both my ear and visually through the score, that I can’t hear the unfortunate jingle I alluded to, but instead hear that concluding music from the opera.  And I am not alone. TS Eliot alluded to it in “The Waste Land”.  Is it five minutes long? I am guessing, as I am not sure I can describe it objectively.

Maybe I should try..?

  • Amfortas, the grail knight whose wounds won’t heal, sings one last time in defiance of the other knights. He had promised to unveil the grail, the chalice that magically restores the other knights; but that same effect reopens Amfortas’s wound, by bringing him back to life.
  • Parsifal appears holding the spear that inflicted the wound, announcing that only one thing can heal the magic wound, namely the spear that caused the wound. He announces that Amfortas is healed: and Amfortas is healed.
  • Parsifal reveals the grail, blessing everyone present.

Is that it? I am sure I am leaving parts out. It ís a unique opera because it purports to be a sacred festival drama, something like one of the mystery plays (and it sounds more like something Biblical than rational): except it is simultaneously a dissident work for some of what it says. Jesus is tormented on the cross even now because the church is corrupt. We redeem him if we transcend our sinful selves…Or something like that.

The end of the work coming from a man long immersed in a life of ongoing infidelity with multiple partners & betrayals is more Buddhist than Christian, in its vision of a peaceful redemption by overcoming the desires of the body. That spear? It is of course an image of the phallus, Amfortas’s never-healing wound is his libido, desire.

Now one doesn’t get too deeply into this kind of deconstruction when one is listening. It ís merely nice music that makes a wee bit of sense. When I sing Amfortas’s last line to start the sequence, followed by Parsifal’s final lines, while playing the piano-reduction of the orchestra, it ís a very magic experience, one that conjures images in my head. I hear the chorus, even including the children when we finally modulate into the D-flat where they float their highest notes (heard inside my head) while playing. It ís a feat far beyond selling hamburgers or feelings.

Ah what a long digression.

I was explaining the context for hearing that music from Parsifal in my head as the plane took off, and for much of the flight. Yet one popular tune did displace Wagner for awhile.
I glanced over from time to time at my neighbour’s screen. I didn’t hear any sounds, but still enjoyed watching the video minus audio for Walter Mitty. I’d seen it three full times on pay per view in the 48 hours of rental time, plus at least two additional viewings of my favourite scene, the one where the hero runs for the helicopter. I wish I could show it to you. Even as I type this, the tune is now in my head. And I should add, it ís not David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that I am hearing, but the cover version from Kristin Wiig.

As I sit beside Mr Earbuds I am glancing over regularly. When we get to the part where Sean Penn seems to beckon to Walter, his fingers twitching almost imperceptibly in a photo, as if to say come find me, I start to watch the film, soundless but fabulous nonetheless. Until this moment my soundtrack had been the Wagner.

But now I am watching, and waiting. When we see Wiig’s character show up in the Greenland bar, a non sequitur that ís unmistakeably subjective and very Wagnerian I hear her strum those chords and sing her lines.  This is not a moment to deny libido but a moment of youthful vigor. Ben Stiller’s Mitty is so different from Danny Kayes version, boldly running after that helicopter, coming to vibrant life, as if she were strumming him and not a guitar.

It ís one of the most fabulous things I’ve ever seen in a film.

And as we fly along in our 757, watching this middle-aged guy who had seemed so scared & vicarious, I can’t help thinking that my trip really began when I saw Walter Mitty throw caution to the wind & fly to Greenland & Iceland. It seems I am on the same trip.
Nice as Bowie’s tune is, lovely as the images Stiller creates in the film, Wagner’s tunes re-surface. I don’t know that these two can’t coexist. I’ve paired them in the headline, suggesting that they’re opposites, although in a real sense Mitty’s tune is also about a kind of surrender, when Bowie’s Major Tom drifts away from ground control, letting himself be lost in his rapture of the deeps. I suppose both are adventure heroes.  Parsifal & Major Tom are Buddhist in their surrender.

I spent much of Thursday just noticing:

  • Noticing how tired I was
  • Noticing where I was
  • Noticing who I was

How drained I’d been by my trip(!).  And yet it was simply more of the same, like the trajectory of the various vectors implicit in my choices.  I had the luxury of time & space to work with, noticing that the images playing on the virtual screen that is my consciousness were a bit washed out, that the speakers or my hearing were hissing with background noise.  I didn’t eat nearly as much as usual, because I was paying attention to my appetite.  I wasn’t really hungry, yet it was just fine that I ate so little.

Thank you national holiday, I breathe and rest. It ís wonderful to be alive.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Spirituality & Religion | 1 Comment

Yapping dog

Posted on June 6, 2014 by barczablog

I m far away. Far from home. Far from work.  I’m on vacation, musing about where this compulsive blogging fits in.

Everything in a blog is necessarily about the person writing. Sure, the topic may be foreign cars or foreign affairs or just plain affairs.

But when we write about what we drive (cars), when we write about international relations (foreign affairs), when we write about relationships (affairs), we’re in there.

We’re talking about a car, and it’s about the styling –how it makes me look—the handling –how it makes me feel—or the failure to make me look and feel good.

We’re talking about foreign affairs, and it’s still domestic. I may be talking about the way this country treats its workers or that country treats its women, I am really commenting on how I feel in my own country.

As for relationships? Perhaps that’s the most honest because you can hear the baying hound most clearly.

Reviewers seem to stand beside their reviews as much as painters stand beside their paintings. The writer ostends not just a position & a viewpoint, but a persona and a presence. I alluded to this in one of my diatribes awhile ago, that writing is as much about the one speaking as what’s being said. I am never sure which is in the ascendency –writer or writings—but you can’t have the one without the other. To pretend otherwise is, well, a pretense.

catsHave I ever mentioned how much I love dogs? You’ll sometimes hear people say “are you a cat person or a dog person”, but it’s not either-or. The last pets I had in my home were cats because they were much easier to handle, namely a couple of feral cats who more or less presented themselves, because their feral mom had kitties right on the doorstep, and then tragically vanished before we could bring her inside too. The rest of the litter were given a good home, but two were welcomed. I wrote early in the life of this blog about the adventurous departure of one of the two, who likely took off through an open door when her quiet home was suddenly invaded by loud people visiting. And the second died not by choice but by the inevitability of veterinary termination. Dogs are more work, a huge commitment comparable to a child, and speaking of which, I suppose I wish I had one of those too; but then again, I wish I were young again. I loved running with my dog, I loved the way he challenged me to be faster. I loved hugging him beside me on the last day we had together, when I knew something was up, the day before we went to the vet, and he had to be put down.

I’ll have a dog again, but I am not ready yet.

When someone asks you whether you’re a dog person or a cat person, they’re really asking about you, in the same way that someone may say “what’s your sign”. Sure, it’s a conversational gambit, but it can also be a flat-out attempt to figure out who you are. It’s a relatively polite question because it tells you so little, really. The funniest such question –one I sometimes hear, that never ceases to amaze me—is “do you like music?” I am amazed by the question, I suppose, even if every answer is totally unique. People will inevitably say yes. Does anyone not like music? I have never heard a divergent answer, not once.

Ah, but what do people follow that with. Eminem or Modeste Mussourgsky? The funny thing is, this pointless question is not the end. It is very good precisely because it begins a conversation, a gentle and open-ended exchange of information. If you’re seeking a common ground, then you look for the ones you have in common. Oh you like Patsy Cline. Oh you admire Bill Evans. Joni Mitchell moves you, but you can’t listen to more than five songs at a time, anymore than you can stand to have more than five chocolates at a time. But they’d be exquisite chocolates, right?

I am recalling a song I encountered in the late 1970s, Mitchell’s Coyote. It tells a story.   There are at least a couple of versions of the song because, in addition to the studio version on Hejira. it was performed live as part of the concert captured in Scorsese’s The Last Waltz. I recall the song wistfully, because, just as the song describes a brief intense relationship between two people, the song in some ways is my keepsake from a relationship I had at the time. I don’t know where she’s gone or what she’s up to –or if she’s still alive—but hearing the song reminds me of her almost every time.  And of me, and the gulf that one finds between people.  We’re all different aren’t we?

The song is one I am thinking of now because of that one line near the end, about ego. I am sure if you don’t know the song you can find it for yourself.

Mitchell manages to bring into focus how an encounter between two people can be an encounter with self, a mirror to who we really are. I find this is true for any art, ultimately, but that the most lucid will elicit a conversation, not just about the things observed or felt, but also about the observer, who provides the context.

There’s a great moment near the end of the song when we’re played with. There’s a cadence coming –and this is obvious even if it weren’t the last of several verses, where we should by rights know the pattern by now—but it gets delayed. She uses that tension, of the expected resolution—to play with us a bit, refusing to resolve, as she speaks to the tensions of the situation.  Again, if you want to investigate, go look. Otherwise, don’t worry, it’s not mandatory. There’s no exam.

I think Mozart did something similar. “Non so piu” is an aria i’ve always connected to, since the first time i accompanied a singer (and i wonder too where she is now), not just because it speaks to both male and female, young and old.  I can see eternity in those moments near the end of the aria, when Cherubino says

E se non ho chi m'oda,      And if there's no one to hear me,
Parlo d'amor con me!        I speak of love to myself!

…But lets get back to canines. I think I am a dog person because ultimately, when I look at dogs vs cats, I admire dog behaviour more. When you speak to a cat, they ignore you, running away or just staring at you as if you’re nuts. Talk to a dog and you get a response, anything from their attention to hysterical slobbering devotion. An animal mirrors you the same way a work of art mirrors. No, we must never forget that the mirror is a living creature upon whom we project our feelings, and that the narcissistic impulse never gives us the right to treat our mirror as an object. A cat is an ideal pet when you don’t have time for the serious messy relationship a dog offers. A dog is for life –which means as long as they live—and so must not be entertained without the intention of following through.   Cats are wonderfully independent, perhaps never letting you too close, whereas dogs get closer.

I wonder how much Mitchell meant to talk about herself in “Coyote”. Sure, all artists talk about themselves implicitly in their art. But this one is really about self and ego. I am thinking about this today, as I think back on the song and about the wrestling with ego thing. It’s on my mind as I begin a long vacation, trying to reconcile myself to the blog. Is it a coincidence that “blog” rhymes with “dog”? “Coyote” is a canine name, a creation who may or may not be based on a real person, a place for Mitchell to talk about herself and her relationship with the outside world. When I typed the headline “Yapping dog ” I had no idea where it was going to go, only that I was thinking of ego & dogs. I like dogs, even when they bark or yap or whine or howl. Some people will turn with a snarl of their own, when they hear a loud dog. I usually want to know the dog under the snarl or the bark, perhaps because I see myself as a dog whisperer, trying to quiet my own snarling.  No i don’t propose to whisper to feral Dobermans, and maybe it’s all a fantasy anyway, a dream of my own competence.

Nirvana? I think it is a quiet place. When peace is given its chance inside the self, the world reveals itself in all its splendour. Dogs and cats lie down, cuddly and soft & licking each other. It feels like a luxury to be on vacation because I don’t usually allow it. I take a few days here and there, usually crowding the time with shows or projects at home. But I think—as I again contemplate recreation and healing—it’s a good thing.

The ego? one I am trying to understand. I’d like to get closer to this snarling dog inside me. The blog has been a project to get comfortable with the egoist, to boldly look around and speak to the various mirrors (and the mirror can actually be the intimate pet of another artist, serving as my mirror when I go see it in a theatre or gallery) and look them all in the eye.   There’s never a better time when the dog is lying quietly by the hearth, exposing his tummy submissively.

Posted in Animals, domestic & wild, Music and musicology, Opera, Popular music & culture, Psychology and perception | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Recreation

Posted on June 3, 2014 by barczablog

Eleanor Farjeon used a word in one of her lyrics, a word that always catches my eye. She is not a one-hit wonder.  She’s a two-hit wonder, and her hits are hymns. Farjeon’s contribution was lyrics rather than music. While these hymns were actually a peripheral part of her output– as a famous children’s author– nowadays it’s the hymns that are her chief claim to fame.

The first one is the advent hymn “People Look East”, written in 1928, when Farjeon was in her mid-40s, known in a setting with a wonderful old French tune.

Does it sound old? I suppose the original tune is much older than the 1920s.

Her other hit is not just a famous hymn, but also a pop song that managed to make it to #1 on the adult contemporary charts back in 1972. Okay, so in that sense hmm yes she really is a one-hit wonder. If you’re a regular church-goer and were asked to name the hymn that also made it to #1, you could probably identify it easily. I’m speaking of “Morning Has Broken”, Cat Stevens’ hit vocal with Rick Wakeman’s brilliant keyboard work. But it had been published –admittedly minus Wakeman’s clever tinkling ivories—in a 1931 hymn collection.

The single word is in Farjeon’s hit hymn, always catching my eye in the last line of the song. I’ve always assumed it’s just me, that the phrase is only problematic in my head. Here’s Farjeon’s last verse:

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day

That word “recreation” stops me every time. I think it’s meant to be understood as creating again, or a “re-creation”, something God does with every new day, and pronounced with a pair of long e’s . But I can’t help simultaneously reading it as the fun “recreation” that has a first syllable rhyming with “wreck” rather than “reek”,  meaning the thing we do for fun in order to re-build and re-create ourselves. It’s an ambiguous word, whether we’re talking about the fun we have or the fun of a supreme being.  I read that line as though God himself has his own down time, a moment to re-create himself. And before you accuse me of sacrilege or disrespect, I point you to the surprising passage in Genesis, when we’re told that, after working six days on his new creation: that God rested. God needed a rest!?? Or God stopped and so, because he wasn’t working was described to be resting. But wait, don’t mistake me for a fundamentalist. Those passages at the beginning of Genesis are among the ones I read very loosely, understanding them in a more mythic than literal sense.

In any case, the days are getting longer, and with the extra sunshine, my thoughts are turning to re-creating myself in recreation. Whichever way you read it, I’m taking a break from blogging, vacating for a vacation. I may not be far away, actually, but it doesn’t matter. Is there even a “here” to vacate? Notice that Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam actually pronounces recreation with the first syllable rhyming with “wreck” rather than “reek”.

Hm maybe it’s not just me.  

Posted in Books & Literature, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays, Psychology and perception, Spirituality & Religion | Leave a comment

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon

Posted on May 31, 2014 by barczablog

This afternoon I had the pleasure of watching the new Norbert Palej opera from the Canadian Children’s Opera Company: East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon with libretto by K T Bryski. It is a traditional folk tale with a prince & a witch, a story of redemption from a kind of curse. But I am willing to bet it has been given a modern twist, given that it’s not a princess saved by a resourceful boy, but rather a prince saved by a resourceful girl. I’d be thrilled if that were how the folk tale actually went, but I suspect it’s instead a tale that’s been adapted and adjusted ever so slightly. Not being an expert, I can’t say for sure.

The adaptation of the story by Bryski and Palej seems to be perfectly tailored for the strengths of CCOC. There are a couple of larger solo parts and a few smaller parts, but a great deal of the opera is given over to the chorus, particularly in the dramatic second act. It’s quite wonderful when the stage is full of trolls: throngs of children with fake noses. They’re not just singers but actors as well, especially adept at portraying fantasy creatures.  I wonder whether it was more fun for the audience or the trolls on the stage.

Librettist Kaitlin Bryski, CCOC Alumna

Librettist K. T. Bryski, CCOC Alumna

Palej’s score is tuneful, occasionally chromatic but very congenial, even in the mysterious parts that had a couple of the children in the audience on the edge of their seats. The eight member pit band easily made lots of sound when they wanted to fill Enwave Theatre. At times they were soft & atmospheric, Palej’s carefully chosen timbres conjuring the Nordic climate or magic & mystery, a tight performance under the inspired leadership of Ann Cooper Gay, CCOC’s Executive Artistic Director. At the conclusion one could see that Gay is so much more than the leader.  One saw groups of children of varying ages bowing in different groups, corresponding to the actual cohorts of talent, successive groups of children succeeding one another as they move from apprenticeship to leading roles.  And then –after their time with CCOC—sometimes they go on to professional artistic life. Bryski, for example, is a graduate, the first CCOC alumna to come back to create an opera for Gay & the company.

One could easily forget that –hey—these are children singing new music. It’s not atonal-dissonant new, but still quite challenging in places. Gay kept everyone so tightly together that one could easily forget how difficult an art-form opera is. I was totally swept up in the story, when I wasn’t watching children in the audience become successively intrigued, apprehensive (concerned for the characters onstage but never really afraid), and entranced. I heard one youngster say she wanted to see it again right away, perhaps accustomed to hitting a replay button; but a live show is not the same as a DVD.

CCOC have remaining performances Saturday night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 2:00 at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

10 questions for Brian Current

Posted on May 29, 2014 by barczablog

Next week Soundstreams present Brian Current’s opera Airline Icarus, touching down in Toronto at Ada Slaight Hall.

Current’s music has been performed across North America and abroad by the Esprit Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra (Carnegie Hall), the Oakland Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia (Koussevitzky commission), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), the VOX festival of the New York City Opera, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Winston Choi, the Honens International Piano Competition, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and others.

Raised in Ottawa, Current studied music at McGill University in Montreal with Bengt Hambreaus and John Rea later completing his Ph.D. in composition on full fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002, where he was also active as a conductor. He has since been featured conducting with numerous orchestras and ensembles, including the Windsor Symphony, the Thunder Bay Symphony,  New Music Concerts, the Kensington Symphonietta, Soundstreams, CBC’s On Stage, as well as with the Esprit Orchestra’s New Waves Festival. Since 2006,  Current has been the artistic director and conductor of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s New Music Ensemble, which performs several concerts per year of international contemporary works.

In anticipation of Airline Icarus I ask Current ten questions: five about himself and five more about the Soundstreams presentation.

Composer Brian Current

Composer Brian Current

1-Are you more like your father or your mother?

I’m hugely grateful to have two amazing parents who are both active in choral singing in Ottawa where I grew up.  They got me into piano early and made sure I kept practicing all the way through to university level. My mom now says she was onto me, but I like to think that as a kid I could fake her out by making up “the illusion of Mozart” at the piano instead of practicing the real thing. They also got me into singing as a choirboy in one of the downtown churches (my wife makes fun of me for how nerdy this is, which it was, but it was also a great introduction to organized music).  And they were also patient when I practiced with a local rock band in our basement. My dad would come home from work to the sounds of thumping 70s cover tunes below his floorboards.

I’m not really sure which one I’m more like, but I realize as I get older how supportive they both were and hope that I can be the same with my own kids.

2-What is the best thing or worst thing about being a composer of “new” music?

It’s the greatest time ever to be a composer. Musicians today are unbelievable and I regularly see people performing things that make your jaw drop. In fact, musicians are getting better and better, particularly the young players I see coming through the graduate program of the Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory. New beautiful concert halls are being built both here and around the world and we can now broadcast our music everywhere from our phones, which was not possible even a couple years ago.

The wonderful thing about my job is that when someone asks for a new piece, it’s completely free of restrictions. They’ll request a rough amount of time – composers get paid by the minute – and a specific instrumentation: symphony orchestra or string quartet or voice, Chinese instruments and electronics for example. They never prescribe a theme or an idea that is prescriptive.  You are completely free to invent your own world and composers greatly value this freedom.

The hardest part about composing is the isolation. You sit in a room by yourself for six months.  We like to think that composers dash off symphonies during a short burst of inspiration but in reality (or for me, anyway) it can easily take months and months or longer of full time work to write out a detailed orchestra piece. No matter how many pieces you’ve written before, it’s always like pulling teeth and sweating blood.

3-Who do you like to listen to or watch?

I love to relax with Netflix, Jon Stewart or books when I’m able to. In reality, with three young kids in our little place it doesn’t really happen: we do homework, dinner, take them to soccer, put them to bed, pay a bill or two and that’s your night.

As for listening, I’m excited about all the online options that are available. I like the Rdio, NPR and TuneIn iPhone apps which I stream through my stereo while doing dishes or my headphones as I bike around the city. These apps are a great way to discover all kinds of new things.

4-What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have? 

I wish I had a better slap shot. I play hockey on Sunday nights with a great group of teachers, bankers and small business owners. We’ve been doing this for years and I greatly value both their friendship and the time on the ice where you don’t think about anything but the game.

5-When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

When I remember to, I try from minute to minute to make the most out of hanging out with my kids. It may sound sappy, but I have a very keen sense of how quickly they grow up and leave you. I try to make the most out of every moment.

~~~~~~~

Five more concerning Airline Icarus

From the first week of rehearsal for Airline Icarus

From the first week of rehearsal for Airline Icarus

1-What are the challenges you face with opera?

One is the term ‘opera’ itself, which has so many misconceptions surrounding it.   What I really want is for people to have an immersive experience like no other. I want them to be in surrounded by sound and words and beauty and the performers’ courage.

2-What do you love about the story & subject of this opera?

I wholeheartedly believe in Anton’s premise and have championed it for years. It’s not just a play that is sung. It is completely its own thing.

The impulse came from reading an article in The Globe and Mail in 2001. In September of 1983, a Korean commercial flight was shot down over the Soviet Union’s eastern coast. They said they thought it was a spy plane. Rather than hit the plane directly, the missile struck its wing, and the plane “fell like a leaf for an excruciating 12 to 15 minutes.” I couldn’t help but to think about the people aboard for years after, and it still chokes me up to think about it today. It was important not to have this appalling event met with just silence.

Later when visiting with Anton Piatigorsky, I told him I was looking for ideas about theatrical works and mentioned the Korean airliner. Anton told me that he had just written a poem about the absurd little society we often take for granted aboard commercial flights and the unsettling mixture of hubris and technology: we’ll make small talk and watch movies while inches outside the window is a glorious cloudscape or freezing certain-death. Anton later proposed the perfect metaphor: Icarus. Icarus, you’ll remember, flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted and he fell to the earth in a blaze of light. His father, Dedalus, looked for him, crying: “Icarus, where are you!” and “Damn this art!”

To me, one of the most interesting parts of the myth is that Icarus disappears in much of the same way that people involved in airline tragedies disappear, and the way the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia disappeared in a blaze of light over Texas.
Deadalus’s cries of “Damn this art” (which is in the libretto) are heartbreaking, not so much because Icarus has crashed and died, but more that he knows that we are doomed to keep building things – airplanes, computers, operas – in an endless cycle of trial and error that sometimes leads to disastrous consequences.

The opera also simultaneously presents the other side of the Icarus story: that we can rejoice in the thrill of our power to create wonderful things, as sings the Pilot in his aria – No peace so great. No joy so pure – as soaring Icarus must have thought before the moment he disappeared.

3-Do you have a favourite moment in the opera?

Throughout the work, the airplane gets brighter and brighter and eventually disappears. The initial impulse of the piece came from composing the final 15 minutes, which is meant to be a lullaby for the people on the Korean airliner who fell from the sky for about the same amount of time, and also for people in general who disappear from our lives when technology goes wrong.

By the way, speaking of timing, the piece is about an hour or approximately the length of a flight to Cleveland from Toronto, Chicago or New York (depending on who you fly with).

BrianC-0054-Please put your feelings about new opera and new music into context for us.

Airline Icarus is meant to be accessible to everyone. It drives me crazy when composers and classical musicians are perceived as being elitist or Old Europe.  We are often pigeon-holed as all writing difficult or avant-garde music, which Airline Icarus is not.
There is no single “art-music” style. Canada’s composers produce strikingly different music from one another. It’s our strength as a community, and represents a huge and genuine musical diversity. Nearly all composers working in Canada today both consciously and unconsciously incorporate the music of many world cultures into their musical thinking, including popular and electronic music. Almost all Canadian composers would be surprised to hear that their music is thought of as European or elitist. We just write what comes naturally. We write what it feels like to be alive at this time and place in history, and generally try to build it as rock-solidly as possible so that it gives Canada and the world a musical legacy a hundred years from now or more.

5-Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

I’m very grateful to David Milnes, my conducting teacher at the University of California (Berkeley) who really took the time to show me the ropes and handed over the orchestra to me during the summer.

Most of all, I owe my life in music to McGill professor John Rea.  When I arrived as an undergrad I had just a vague idea that I wanted to write music, but had no awareness of the technique or tradition. John introduced us not only to how to compose, but also to why we compose, which is that we believe in a world where people create and live with courage and beauty.

~~~~~~~

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Soundstreams present Airline Icarus
Music by Brian Current, libretto by Anton Piatigorsky
Produced by Maniac Star June 3-8, 2014
Tuesday to Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 4pm, Sunday at 3pm
Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St E

Directed by Tim Albery
Music Directed by Brian Current
Set & Costume Design by Teresa Przybylski
Lighting Design by Kimberly Purtell
Stage Managed by Kristin McCollum
Featuring: Dawn Bailey, Vania Chan, Sean Clark, Alexander Dobson, Larissa Koniuk, David Roth, Zorana Sadiq, Geoffrey Sirett, Krisztina Szabó, Jennifer Taverner, Graham Thomson
Post-concert chats after each performance with members of the creative team.
Tickets range from $20-$75 and are available through The Royal Conservatory Box Office at 416-408-0208 or online at soundstreams.ca.

Geoffrey Sirett & Krisztina Szabó

Krisztina Szabó & Geoffrey Sirett

Posted in Interviews, Opera | 1 Comment

A Poet’s Love

Posted on May 28, 2014 by barczablog

Writing in Opera’s Second Death, Slavoj Zizek claims that opera served a purpose at one point, before Freud & the invention of psychotherapy.  Watching “A Poet‘s Love”, tonight’s concert from Talisker Players & baritone Alexander Dobson , I had parallel thoughts about poetry and the evolution of culture.

At one time poets may have played a key role in exploring and articulating the nature of love.  As I type this I’m listening to Dana Andrews interrogate the various suspects in Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) on TCM at roughly 11 pm, a film where we watch not a poet’s love, but instead a detective’s love articulated, the love of a pragmatic seeker for truth.  As cultures change sophistication demands new ways to tell the same story.  The romantic sensibility as articulated in the time of Heine or Schumann is delicate & naive compared to the film I’m over-hearing.  Just as Zizek said opera died when we had a new way of achieving the same therapeutic objectives –via psychotherapy rather than dying divas–so too, I suspect, with poetry.  While Heine and his brethren were once fearless explorers on the unarticulated frontiers of our culture, we no longer see poets as authorities on love, even if their works are wonderful relics from a time when they took the first bold steps onto that frontier.  And so we sit through concerts, examining the anatomy of the human heart, via string ensemble & vocalist.

Talisker’s program was a strenuous test for Dobson, who sang a great deal tonight:

  • John Beckwith’s “Love Lines”, a diverse assortment of arranged songs reframed and re-thought for baritone & string quartet
  • Gabriel Faure’s “La Bonne Chanson” for baritone, string quintet & piano
  • Alexander Rapoport’s “Fragments of Verlaine” for baritone and string quintet
  • Robert Schumann‘s “Dichterliebe” in a recent arrangement by Harold Birtson for baritone & string quartet

The four very different compositions called for four different approaches, four different ways of signifying love for Dobson & the Talisker Players.  To begin, Beckwith sampled other composers, making something like a quilt or a collage of their diverse styles, from Handel to Gershwin, sewed together, although it was no more troubling than a medley on the radio, given that there was no real sense of a connection among the items, except their proximity to one another on the program. But don’t misunderstand this for censure, i quite liked it.  There were places where Beckwith made some wonderfully playful effects, boldly deconstructing the Handel into discreet sounds.  It managed to be new yet old at the same time.

It was a special pleasure to hear Dobson’s suave baritone again, particularly in the warm acoustic of Trinity St Paul’s Centre.  In “La Bonne Chanson” we encounter an impossible poetic ideal from Paul Verlaine, coming to stunning fruition nonetheless via Faure’s setting.  Dobson gave a very nuanced reading, sometimes soaring to sweet pianissimo high notes, sometimes boldly taking the stage in fearless declamations.

I was surprised that the most satisfactory of the four should be the composition from Alexander Rapoport, a very complementary piece to hear following “La Bonne Chanson”.  Where the Faure is already somewhat abstracted in its declarations of love,  Rapoport’s piece feels like a series of fragments, abstracted from another time or another life.  Dobson felt like a ghost witnessing moments from his own life, gently reminiscing over shards of experience that abruptly end.  This is actually wonderfully apt for a symbolist such as Verlaine, writing in a time known for fragments.   I’m very impressed both with the composition & with Dobson’s masterful handling of the work.

Baritone Alexander Dobson (Photo credit Jimmy Song.)

Finally we heard the work that likely gave the title to the proceeding, namely “Dichterliebe” or “a Poet’s Love” presented in a recent arrangement for string quartet.  While it’s always nice to shine new light on a familiar work, I didn’t find this arrangement especially illuminating, charming as some passages actually were.  In places the four string players had less oomph than a piano, leaving Dobson with the challenge of making drama himself.  It’s pretty, but I don’t think it does much for either Heine or Schumann, who indeed regularly pokes his head into the action in the piano commentaries, particularly the two long interludes where he seems to comment: passages that simply didn’t fly in the new version.  Dobson was again stellar, on a night when he was singing for most of a program that ran over two hours.

As usual Talisker punctuated each musical item with a dramatic reading, tonight from  Stewart Arnott.  I think one reason I was thinking these thoughts about the obsolescence of poetry may have been because I saw literary theorist Linda Hutcheon sitting nearby.  I was thinking back to one of my first lessons about love, from that great amorist Jacqueline Susanne, author of Valley of the Dolls or as David Berg of Mad Magazine called her “Jackpot Susanne”.  No wonder i’m such a mess, using trashy novels to learn about life. What is love, and who really knows it? At one time poets were our teachers to answer such questions.  Of the four treatments, Beckwith’s deconstructive comedy felt the most fresh, while the cool distance of Faure, and the hyper romance of Schumann don’t resemble any love I’ve known or seen.  I found Rapoport’s druggy glimpses of something recollected through a fog the most intense, the most genuine.

I am grateful that Talisker keeps programming music & text in such a way so as to provoke my thoughts & feelings.  I look forward to seeing where they take us next year, but in the meantime there’s one more performance of this program to come Wednesday May 28th at 8:00 pm.

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Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult letters

Posted on May 25, 2014 by barczablog

I first encountered the romance between Franz Liszt and Comtesse Marie d’Agoult in Impromptu, a film full of famous artists in the script (Chopin, Liszt, Sand) and on the screen (Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin & Bernadette Peters).  Impromptu is really a film about Chopin, with Liszt & his Comtesse as a colorful part of background, badly misrepresented in the script.  If you’ve seen the film you might use it as evidence in the question: “why didn’t Bernadette Peters have a film career?”  Neither Peters nor Marie d’Agoult do very well at the hands of writer Sarah Kernochan, who backs Peters into a screaming shrewish corner, in one of the most unpleasant portrayals I have ever seen onscreen, making Liszt look like a fool in the process.

The bicentennial year for Liszt in 2011 encouraged a wealth of scholarly activity around the composer, something like the more recent bicentennials of Wagner & Verdi in 2013.  As I’m a complete junkie for such things, I’m not sure that my perspective counts, a devoted follower, especially of the lives of the romantic composers.

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Michael Short has assembled & translated the correspondence between Franz Liszt & The Comtess Marie d’Agoult, into an attractive oversize volume presenting all 473 letters with notes immediately below the letters.  I am in a state of shock.  I picked the book up from the library because I am always hungry for details about Liszt, Berlioz  and Wagner.

I did not expect to stumble upon a romance.  Over the course of those 473 letters, written between 1833 and 1864, we see the ups and downs of a remarkable love affair.

This is not, I must add, the reason I would expect scholars to read the book.  Correspondence of a great artist can be used to back up all sorts of positions, because they afford testimony that’s otherwise unavailable.   In addition to the simple pleasure of reading, regardless of who these people might be, there are details to the lives of famous people, sometimes including trivialities that could be important.  For example, letter 96 (by Liszt) includes the following review offered in passing:

I have finally managed to see Les Huguenots, that had not been performed since my arrival.  It contains some remarkable things.  The instrumentation and production are prodigious.

Or in letter 106 (Feb 1837), Liszt writes the following partisan report:

I have just heard Thalberg;  really it is a complete hoax.  Of all those things that are supposed to be superior, he is certainly the most mediocre that I know.  His last piece (composed recently) on God Save the King is even worse than mediocre.  As I said to Chopin: “He is a great man manqué who has turned into an artist even more manque”

Berlioz & Chopin come up from time to time, but Richard Wagner only rears his head at the very end.  The last letter, written by Liszt in 1864, is the first for almost a decade, and containing none of the obsessive romance found in most of the previous 400+.  By this time RW (or his music) had displaced Md’A as the apple of Liszt’s eye.

For the first hundred letters it’s all Liszt, Marie only appearing for the first time in letter #83.  It’s electrifying because her style is so completely different from his.  Where he’s effusively poetic she’s as direct as an amorous shark, and I can’t help envying her meal.

[Basle June 2m 1835]
Tell me immediately  the name of your inn and the number of your room.  Do not go out. My mother is here my brother-in-law no longer.  When you read this, I shall have spoken, until now I have not dared to say anything.  It is a final and testing trial but my love is my faith and I have a thirst for martyrdom.

Even so it’s hardly surprising that Short gives us mostly Liszt, given that for the most part, he’s the one whose words matter at least in the scholarly world.   Letter 113 (perhaps only the fourth or fifth specimen of her writing to this point) is one of the most wonderful letters in the book for what it might tell us about Liszt & his playing (first paragraph) even if it’s ultimately intangible and elusive information.  The  second paragraph (only presented in part) might be of more interest to literary scholars (but will they ever bother to read this book?) than musicologists, although at the end Marie seems to be telling us that George Sand is using Marie & Franz as her inspiration

    I have just received a letter from Ronchaud who tells me that the concert at the Opera has been deferred until Palm Sunday.  Would you like me to come?  For myself, I am not sure.  I fear that I might stop you working, embarrass you, be very fidgety myself, bring you bad luck.  In the end I have struggled a lot and believe that It would be better if I did not come,.  Reply to me positively: come or don’t come.  And if I am to come, get me a ticket for a ground-level box. […]
George [Sand] has fallen out with Le Monde.  The Abbe’s cuts to the 3eme Lettre a Marcie having aroused her suspicion, she wrote a perfectly nice, affectionate and reasonable letter to him [etc]
P.S. In the letter from G to the Abbe there is a very fine page about exceptional loves, noble, holy and imperishable loves, for which the inspiration is not foreign to us, I believe.

As the book progresses more and more of the letters are Marie’s for Franz, sometimes long diary entries.  Her writing is much more prosaic, whereas his flies off into poetic fancy.  This romantic tale is made three dimensional by the profound difference in their writing styles, reflecting their respective circumstances.  This letter of Marie’s from January 1840, at a time when they hadn’t seen one another for at least two years — is simple testimony to the impossibility of their lives:

Letter 170, January 6, 1835

    I have just received your letter from Pesth.  It made me cry like a baby.  How can you imagine that I am insensitive to such triumphs?  They are fine, great, poetic!  Oh if only I were there! always there!  What a pitiful role I have come to play here…..

Or letter 176, January 25 1840:

           This morning I received your letters from Pesth (please no more recommandirt letters) in which you detailed what you term household accounts.  I was sadly moved by all that.  The misfortune of only being your mistress and not your wife was rammed home to me as it had never been before, when I think that I have to stay far away from you on such days, such lovely and splendid days, my dear and great Franz, days of noble pride which You truly deserve!
What you say to me about permission to be unfaithful (in this connection I was posing a question, to which you didn’t reply, as is your wont) is full of heart and fills me with respect for you, although this way of feeling will always remain incomprehensible to me.  It is as impossible for me to conceive as that pigs may fly, and I can only allow of it as an inexplicable fact.  The final word in your letter Truth is useless.  I swear by our children that even a white lie has become impossible for me with you.  I hasten to rid myself of all my pent-up secrets and no confessor would ever have heard such a full and true confession.  If I do not write to you, it is simply because I do not know if it would not be better to talk.  What is certain is that my love, my veneration for you does nothing but increase and that your word ever and always will be the sole regulator of my actions.

As the years go by, his strength & independence grows while hers seems to wane, her obsession with him increasing.  Richard Wagner only comes into the picture in the very last letter, featuring in the last paragraph of the last letter of their 473 letter correspondence.  It is a letter consumed with musicological concerns, with no trace of the former romance, probably because by this point –many years later– the romance had died.

Correspondence of Franz Liszt and the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, Translated and Edited by Michael Short.  Opening this book, expect to be moved.

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Second time lucky

Posted on May 23, 2014 by barczablog

A scene from the Canadian Opera Company production of Don Quichotte, 2014. Photo: Chris Hutcheson

Presented with more or less identical performances on two different occasions, what is it exactly that can make one so different from the other? Where I whined & complained the first time, I had a wonderful experience seeing the Canadian Opera Company’s Don Quichotte a second time tonight, at the second last show of the run. All things being equal, the difference must be in my head, perhaps something I did wrong the first time. Because of course i would always prefer to have a good time (who wouldn’t?).  I want to have fun, not feel distant & estranged. Did I show up with too many stipulations? Or maybe I felt distant and estranged because I wasn’t sitting very close to the stage the first time. I’ve had this experience before with the COC & the Four Seasons Centre. I recall loving The Nightingale & Other Tales from up close, but having a completely different experience when seeing another performance, this time from afar. Tonight –sitting up close—I was just as thrilled by Ferruccio Furlanetto’s Don. He sounds wonderful, his performance a nuanced interpretation of a figure that can easily descend into mere sentimental cliché or a cartoon.

I wonder, though, if this is the same interpretation of Sancho Panza I’m seeing, or if Quinn Kelsey has grown into the role, found additional depths. He’s now a commanding presence, often more interesting than the Don, and always producing a congenial sound of warmth & full of emotion. While I also enjoyed Anita Rachvelishvili’s Dulcinée more than on opening night I think the problem was me, that I had previously been emotionally unavailable, closed off from what she and the production were doing.  The first time I’d alluded to the article I’d seen in a newspaper, writing up the Massenet opera alongside the Stratford production of the music Man of La Mancha, and how it had led me to compare the performance to a broadway musical: as though there’s something wrong with that.

Sometimes one needs to lighten up, to let go & to simply let yourself enjoy what you’re seeing.

I also should acknowledge something very positive in this production, namely the foregrounded presence of dance.

The Don & Sancho ride forth one last time on May 24th.

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Media Circus 3: critical dinosaurs

Posted on May 22, 2014 by barczablog

In one tiny corner of the media circus, ignored by most of the audience, you’ll find a nerdy subculture, the opera lovers.  Yet many of the same influences inhere that you’d find anywhere else.

And so I’ll speak of something that’s big news in the opera world. But of course that means it’s under the radar for the other 99%, a story that won’t surprise anyone except possibly those entitled occupants of complementary seats, aka critics.

The story as I understand it is this:

  1. A series of reviews went wildly off-track, as reviewers took gratuitous pot-shots at a singer’s appearance, sometimes while acknowledging that her singing was good.
  2. Norman Lebrecht synopsised it and also published an impassioned response from Alice Coote, seen not long ago in the COC’s Hercules.

    Alice Coote as Dejanira and Eric Owens as Hercules in the Canadian Opera Company/Lyric Opera of Chicago co-production of Hercules, directed by Peter Sellars. (Dan Rest/COC)

    Alice Coote as Dejanira and Eric Owens as Hercules in the Canadian Opera Company/Lyric Opera of Chicago co-production of Hercules, directed by Peter Sellars. (Dan Rest/COC)

3.Social media have been alive with responses.

It reminds me of the climactic interview that more or less ends McCarthy’s reign of terror, the moment when Joseph Welch held up a mirror, in which the senator was shown to be a monster utterly lacking in compassion. Suddenly—at least as I hear it told—the burden of proof shifted, the red scare was no longer so scary. 

Hopefully critics will be left as high and dry as McCarthy, themselves shamed for their shaming.

I’ve long been afraid of the power of critics, the damage we can do.  My facebook cover photo is taken from Louise Hay’s page, addressed both to the students I work with and the singers I review.

I could be addressing myself. faceabook_cover_photo

I hope it’s clear where i stand on Coote’s essay.  I was appalled to read James Jorden of parterre.com post Coote’s essay to facebook with the heading “Dumpy singer takes bold stance defending the right of dumpy singers to be dumpy.”  I take offense, not just because I think Coote is beautiful.  Such language debases all of us.  I suppose it’s time I revised my “steal this page” essay, but it’s really obvious stuff.  Singers are vulnerable in a way that most people can’t understand until they try making their body their instrument.  Dancers might understand this as another group of artists who create their apparatus from the human body; but they get a free pass from most of society, living as they do on a pedestal for their physical prowess, their gorgeous shapes: an adoration entirely different from what singers usually enjoy or suffer.

Critics who put people down –and not just for their physique—are dinosaurs, somehow spared the extinction that wiped out others of their breed.  I suppose some of these reptiles have a huge following –Joan Rivers comes to mind—that isn’t about to disappear. Ha… One can only hope.

But I don’t believe opera has any need of its own fashion police.

Posted in Opera, Personal ruminations & essays | 5 Comments