Pilgrimage to Jussi Björling Museet

Posted on June 14, 2014 by barczablog

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURESOne of the first things I ask students in my opera course is whether they think more in terms of a favourite opera, or a favourite singer, as it’s a medium that can be understood in at least these two ways:

  • as a series of composers and periods and styles of opera, stories told in different ways
  • as a series of big name stars, beautiful voices, larger-than-life personalities, and yes: divas.
Bjorling 1934 debut in Stockholm was as Rodolfo, the role he played most often.

Bjorling 1934 debut in Stockholm was as Rodolfo, the role he played most often.

My first opera favourite as a child wasn’t an opera but a singer, a Swedish singer, namely Jussi Björling. Long before I had any inkling of music, musicology or musicianship, well before I began playing the piano (and later accompanying my older brother, who would soon be a professional) I was already listening.

I had no idea about the words or the stories or plotlines, although I’d soon be able to name the operas & composers, and even to recognize them. I sympathize with people who are tenor-centric, because that’s how I grew up, in a house with a few complete opera recordings plus a few LPs of arias & ensembles. Björling figured prominently, because he was a favourite in the house.

I hadn’t yet seen an opera. My first was sometime around my 11th birthday, a production of Il trovatore by the Canadian Opera Company starring someone whose name I remember as Francisco Lazaro, who had the unenviable job of somehow living up to what I’d heard: Jussi Björling singing “deserto sulla terra”, “ah si ben mio” and “di quella pira”, and I knew every note of those pieces his way.  It was impossible of course (for him? for me). I vaguely recall it as a disappointment (or perhaps “heartbreak” would be more accurate). I suppose he was okay, but like I said, it was a bit like asking a boy to do a man’s job. There I was, expecting something resembling what I’d heard on the recordings.  I was in a hall with terrible acoustics, but that was one more thing i’d have to learn about.

A recital in Stora Tuna Church, where his parents are buried. The caption in the Museet says "Jussi finished his programme by singing Stenhammar's "Sverige", ending with the words "...where under the graveslab our ancestors are sleeping". This affected him so much that he only with difficulty could finish singing and then rushed into the sacristy with tears streaming down his face."

A recital in Stora Tuna Church, where his parents are buried. The caption in the Museet says “Jussi finished his programme by singing Stenhammar’s “Sverige”, ending with the words
“…where under the graveslab our ancestors are sleeping”. This affected him so much that he only
with difficulty could finish singing and then rushed into the sacristy with tears streaming down his face.”

Fast forward to the 21st century. I’ve been visiting family in Stockholm. The connection is deeper than expected. Yes I knew my brother was born here while the family lived in this city. In a curious way Björling was conflated in my head with my father, as both died in 1960, both dying far too young. I was only five years old when my father died so I hope I can be excused for making a connection that isn’t logical, just the retrospective association of a young boy.

As I sat discussing possibilities –which sights and places to go see on the trip—I wondered aloud if there might be anything commemorating Björling, and was delighted to discover that in fact there’s a museum. While there are societies to keep his memory alive (one in the USA as well as the one in Sweden), a museum can take it a step further, assembling memorabilia. Although I saw it would be a two hour train-ride north, I couldn’t resist.

I had to see for myself.

The trip was quite pleasant. The trains –like every part of Swedish infrastructure it seems—are delightful. The new cars not only have wifi but display the time & their speed. I saw 166 km at one point, which is much faster than anything we’d get in Canada. The tracks feel smooth, without any of the unfortunate rocking motions I feel in Canada even at slower speeds.

Upon arrival I was given directions to the museum when I asked; it’s a short walk in a charming little town.

Yesterday when I entered the Museet I was greeted by Björling’s voice singing one of his signature tunes.  I should have expected it, but even so, for a moment I was overwhelmed with emotion. There are several pieces that I associate directly with Björling. Most songs and arias are sung by every tenor in creation, good or bad. But there are a number of pieces that I swear nobody else sings. It’s not necessarily that the music is difficult, but these are tunes I have never heard anyone else sing. When I came in I heard him sing the song “skogen sover”, or “the forest sleeps”. Its Swedish lyricism suits the sweetness of his voice. And I heard him sing “Ah leve toi soleil” from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, something every tenor sings, although nobody with such ringing top notes.

I can still recall the excitement when a new LP came home. My brother did the leg work, I was just the one at home jumping up and down, and then listening to Jussi Björling in Concert. Some of it is with orchestra, some with piano. This is the recording where he does his only version of Lohengrin’s narrative, where he sings Lensky’s aria, where he sings a number of wonderful Swedish songs including “Till havs” with orchestra. There are also others with piano, from a different recital in August 1960, just a few weeks before his death in September, including an encore where we hear him announce “<Devotion>” by Richard Strauss”. Was this the very last recording before he died? The voice was phenomenal even then.

This version is from slightly before, in 1959.

And I grew up.

As a young man in 1928

As a young man in 1928

I’ve never heard anyone else sing “Till havs”, a song whose words I don’t know. But it’s a song about the sea as far as I know. You listen to it and tell me you can’t tell what it’s about. It may not be John Masefield, but so what. I posted a few of these on facebook when I knew where I was going earlier this week.

From Il Tabarro, 1934

From Il Tabarro, 1934

At times I was surprised by my own emotions as I walked around looking at pictures and hearing the voice. We see him as a child with his family, discover his family tree, see his teacher, but mostly we’re immersed in the career. We see a wealth of photos from productions on either side of the Atlantic, often with familiar faces from the middle decades of the century (note: except for the last photo, all photos on this page were taken by me, sometimes through glass–photos of photos– which explains why they sometimes look odd.  Please feel free to use as you wish). There’s also a library and a video room. I was surprised to see video of his state funeral, overcome with emotion for a moment when I realized I’d been too young to see my own father’s funeral, so I watched that segment twice. There’s a small map if one wants to walk or drive to his grave-site but I chose not to. There’s art –several paintings and sculptures of a famous face who was a huge star in his time and is clearly not forgotten—as well as a plethora of cartoons & caricatures.

And there’s an organization there, a friendly and welcoming group of people. I got a glimpse of how many recordings he’s made, how many more there are to hear.

I encourage you to investigate if this intrigues or inspires you to want to know more. There’s a society in the USA, another in Sweden, and the museum itself.

I am very glad I chose to visit.

Posted in Opera | 6 Comments

Richard Wagner: A Life in Music

Posted on June 14, 2014 by barczablog

click for more information including click to buy

I just finished Martin Geck’s Richard Wagner: A Life in Music in Stewart Spencer’s 2013 translation. Published only in 2012 as Richard Wagner: Biografie you can judge for yourself how good this book must be, that its translation was pushed along so quickly. I was fortunate to pick it up from among the new releases on display at the Edward Johnson Library.

If someone were to tell me about this book I’d be a little hesitant, wondering how one can organize this enormous mass of material into something intelligible. But that’s perhaps the greatest achievement of this book, or the reason it’s so deliciously readable, so easy to digest. Each chapter takes a period of Wagner’s life, beginning with his youth, but placing the focus on the composer’s creations from that period. For his first period, that includes his play Leubald, written in his teens and placed in context with what’s to come. While we may get glimpses of the works on the drawing board, it’s all nicely balanced around the work in question: as music, as philosophy, as politics, as Wagner’s life reflected in music.
Geck positions himself in the conversation, sometimes offering his own possible interpretations of an opera. You read about Wagner in the most elegant reconciliation of the many elements of the composer that you can imagine, touching upon his revolutionary activities, his loves & his sexuality, his religion & philosophy. But it is his operas that are the real focus, especially in the musicological treatment, placing them in context with what came before (particularly Bach & Beethoven; I am especially thankful for Geck’s illumination of Meistersinger and the ways it is both new & old), and after (thinking of Mahler, Debussy & Schoenberg). We examine Wagner not just in his time nor in ours, but across the decades of responses, including correspondence & conversations with Cosima, Liszt and Nietzsche, as well as responses in subsequent decades from admirers and critics, composers and interpreters.

And the National Socialist fixation on Wagner is discussed without degenerating into a question of blame, but rather looking at the ways in which Wagner became part of the consciousness and identity of Germans. I wrote not long ago about the failure of a major history (Abbate & Parker) apparently unwilling or afraid to reconcile itself to production & interpretation: a crucial part of the story. Geck is very different. Included in his account of each work are recent –and sometimes the most notorious— productions. For example, Geck’s caption to a photo from Neuenfels 2010 Lohengrin includes this:

The Brabantine chorus is cast as laboratory rats: creatures that can be manipulated. As such they are willing to torment Elsa whenever their superiors require them to do so.

The photograph comes after a lengthy discussion including the following:

   For me, Lohengrin is incapable of concealing its affinities with nationalism and National Socialism, for its ideological aspects not only affect its “political” dimension in the person of King Henry but are inextricably bound up with the action that is centred around Lohengrin. It is Lohengrin, after all, who installs the young Duke Gottfried as “Führer.” It was Lohengrin, too, who provided Kaiser Wilhelm II with his motto “I know no more parties” and who was able to serve as a model for the National Socialists’ attitude of “You are nothing, your people is everything.” However much we may care to stress that it is in Lohengrin’s “nature” to fail in his relationship with Elsa, and that this has nothing to do with “politics,” it remains the case that politically speaking he appears as a God-sent savior who—in the name of the “Providence” that Hitler never tired of invoking—unmasks and destroys the “false” leader of the people in order to install the “right” one.

   This interpretation is not intended as an indictment of Wagner. After all, his political ideas had a different significance in the years before 1848 than they did after 1871 or at the time of National Socialism. Nor was it possible to have predicted the disastrous turn that they would take. If it had been possible to do so, then we should also have to condemn the hundreds of thousands and even millions of Germans who, attending performances of Lohengrin in the spirit of Diederich Hessling, made Wagner’s ideological construct their own and treated it as a mainstream idea.

Between each chapter Geck offers something remarkably like Wagner’s own structuring, and very apt if we think of the book as a work of opera and its construction as a matter of dramaturgy. Geck gives us a kind of digression that reminds me of nothing so much as an orchestral interlude, an escape into a different medium, something reflective. After the youthful chapter we get “A Word about Felix Mendelssohn”, which is indeed a reflection from another angle, a charming little excursion away from Wagner that serves to illuminate the subject of the book all the same. Later “words” include Meyerbeer, Heine, Adorno, Eisenstein and Mahler. They’re like short courses that cleanse the palate and I must say very delicious. Each new chapter begins freshly with a picture (photo or portrait) that is pertinent to that period, and again offering a slightly different entry to the next section.

And now? I shall re-read the book as it’s not due back for awhile, its bibliography a roadmap for further study.

And I must find other books by Martin Geck.

Posted in Books & Literature, Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nils Dardel and the Modern Age

Posted on June 11, 2014 by barczablog

One of the journeys of my life has been to reconcile myself to fame.  Not everyone gets famous, and often it’s the wrong people.  For this Canadian it is very clear at least how it doesn’t work.

  • It is not fair.
  • Itis not logical.
  • Sometimes brilliance is rewarded, sometimes it is not.
Gulliver by Nils Dardel. Notice that the little man is a dandy

Gulliver by Nils Dardel. Notice that the little man is a dandy (photograph by Leslie Barcza)

I live close enough to one of the centres of the world (thinking of New York City) that I’ve seen how one’s perspective is distorted by being in one of those places.  NY is a place where talents compete for attention, and where it may seem that those in the limelight are automatically the best. We assume that a star in NY would be a star here or anywhere else because “if you can make it there you can make it anywhere”.

Except that it ain’t necessarily so. Each little cul-de-sac can have a local hero who is unknown on the world stage.

The internet may be eroding regional flavour, but it is still largely true. There have been barriers preventing some from achieving worldwide recognition. Language may be the biggest. Canadians and Australians regularly go to Hollywood and make a huge splash precisely because no one there realizes that theyíre dealing with foreigners. But what if you’re Hungarian? Or Swedish? Then the dynamics and the scope of fame will likely be different. You’re taken up elsewhere only when you have a champion, or when –like Franz Liszt–you make a splash in another city as Liszt did in the Paris of the early 19th Century: the NY or Hollywood of its day.

Nils Dardel is the reason for this digression on fame, the most impressive painter I’ve seen in awhile. His remarkable works are currently on display at The Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Dardel lived from 1888 to 1943, dying in NY.  I believe it is safe to call him a dandy, considering that he painted at least one picture where he self-identified as such. I suppose I have a weakness for dandies, or a weak stomach in the presence of those who valorize the macho ideal, as we see in futurism. What kind of art do you get with Dardel? In his early art he is influenced by the post-impressionists such as Matisse or Gaugin, add a smattering of cubism, then veers bravely into surrealism.

This is a dandy’s surrealism, the wild imagery of someone well-dressed whose sensibility is informed by good food, good clothes, good manners and all things aesthetic. We could be in a theatre or at least in a place where people play-act.

If Dardel were an American? he’d be famous. His painting is very good, highly individualized & quirky. Because he’s not from a country that is mainstream to the art-world, I suppose he is relatively unknown. Dardel’s art is on display in Stockholm’s Moderna Museet until Sept 14 2014.

Knowing that I’d be unlikely to ever see it again I bought the show catalogue.  It’s very reasonably priced, wonderful reproductions and also fascinating text.

Self-portrait, Nils Dardel (photograph by Leslie Barcza)

Self-portrait, Nils Dardel (photograph by Leslie Barcza)

 

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, Books & Literature | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Grey Gardens

Posted on June 9, 2014 by barczablog

In the 1970s two film makers made a remarkable documentary. I’d never heard of it until yesterday, but had it presented to me in all its garish intimacy. Albert and David Maysles’ Grey Gardens (1975) is a film taking its name from the estate of the same name, owned by a branch of the Bouvier family.

Yes that family, the same one that gave the world Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill. Knowing that, it shouldn’t be surprising that the mother and daughter, Edith  Bouvier Beale –both mother and daughter are named Edith–should both be remarkably handsome women.

If you’ve seen this film you’ve seen one of the precursors to reality television. It’s a documentary like nothing I’d seen before.  Yet of course I’ve seen all too much recently: on television. The camera is unforgiving, invasively close and hungry for every absurd revelation. Celebrity is captured here in the same insane colours we’ve seen in Sunset Boulevard: except this is genuine, not fiction. And it’s even more twisted by decay & spoilage. Here’s a sample, see for yourself.

The reason I was finally exposed to the documentary was in an encounter with the other Grey Gardens, a 2009 HBO meta-drama starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. The first hour is brilliant, a clever exploration of subtexts for the wreckage we encounter in the doc. Had the film-makers had a bit more nerve they could have made something as profound as their source.  Perhaps they were held back by requirements such as delicacy or even stipulations from the owners of this bizarre story: what they could or could not say. It seems odd, considering how zany this is, that there would be any stipulations, but when we come to the last 30 minutes it’s all suddenly very careful where previously it had been devil-may-care.  Maybe the deal with HBO insisted on certain proprieties, and thereby kiboshed the result.

In a curious mirror to their source, they are undone, it appears by vanity, ego, and old-fashioned ham. It’s much too long. We were sitting there laughing through a last half-hour when we kept wishing it would be over. Drew Barrymore is an actor who carries on her family’s tradition of bravura virtuosity, but likely was the reason the project came undone in its final half-hour. The scene where the young Edith confronts a visiting Jacqueline Onassis is painful to watch for all the wrong reasons. A director with more backbone would have found another way to deliver the lines “I could have been the First Lady” than screamed into her face from three inches away.  Michael Sucsy is the director and co-writer with Toronto’s Patricia Rozema (I have to assume that everything good in the film comes for her). It doesn’t help that Barrymore shares the screen with Jessica Lange, who is her usual study in subtle integrity. On the few occasions when Lange’s delivery diverges from what we’ve seen in the original doc –and yes it’s possible to compare because several moments in the original are replicated in the new film—she makes choices of profound subtlety and stillness.

It’s a very subtle and deep problem because the younger Edith is herself a histrionic ham, someone that Drew must have felt called to play.  In the first hour especially it’s magic.  But I wonder if Barrymore considers whether a histrionic ham can be herself underplayed. That moment with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (did i miss any additional surnames?) likely could have worked quietly, given the immense pain pulsing under the surface.  Or maybe the purpose was to make Jeanne Tripplehorn look good in her dignified portrayal of the former First Lady.

I recommend this film both for the brilliance of the first hour, and for the laughable last one. And speaking of ache, while the story is a painful study in what might have been –thinking of the stifled talents of the younger Edith—the same applies to Drew Barrymore, a bright shining light that continues to be misused. She needs a director willing to stand up to her.  I’ve seen the same thing with other loud talents –Al Pacino comes screaming to mind– who are loved the way family members are loved: in spite of the horrible things they do.

I keep dreaming that they’ll find the right vehicle.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A risky business

Posted on June 7, 2014 by barczablog

The risky business?

Posting here after going out to a karaoke bar with my daughter, here in Stockholm.

I couldn’t help noticing how unconditional the crowd were. They would have been fine if i were tone-deaf.  So i could sing in tune…? doesn’t matter.

I sang “Space Oddity”, which shouldn’t surprise you after what i wrote recently.  They didn’t have anything by Wagner on the list, so what choice did i have…? But seriously, “Space Oddity” seemed very apt.  I’ve never sung it before, had no idea if the first lines –when Bowie (and Wiig) sing it in a lower octave, before going up into space that is–might be too low for me.  I growled that part, not unlike Mr Bowie come to think of it.  When we got to go up, i was more in my element, albeit inebriated.

Earlier, we’d been to see the X-Men movie Days of Future Past, a film that reminds me a lot of a Moody Blues album from my youth.  Yes the film is supposed to take us back, so it works on several levels.  That title probably was used somewhere else.  If you were as unconditional and nice as the lovely folk in that Swedish karaoke bar, you wouldn’t judge me for not knowing this.

This is not like other Marvel films, being laden with talent.  They wrote a great script, and perhaps knew that it was going to be knocked out of the park so long as they didn’t take short-cuts (haha like my cheap city: go big or go home whether we mean infrastructure or a quality film): in addition to the usual talent (hello, we’re talking Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen & Patrick Stewart for starters), add in Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender & Ellen Page.  It’s by far the best such film i’ve ever seen.

No really.

I’ve been thinking about comic book films, horror & suspense, fascinated by how seriously they’re sometimes taken by directors & the money devoted to them by Hollywood. Sure, it’s commercial, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be art.

A film like this one reaches people in a very special way, a society traumatized by income disparities, unemployment, climate change & the irrationalities of international politics. It’s a terrifying time in so many ways.

No wonder we need movies that grab you and scare the pants off you, to distract you from the other things that are scaring the pants off you.  I came out of this one –after i got over the terror– smiling.  I hope that doesn’t spoil the film for you.  It’s hard to see how it going to get where it needs to get.  And yes i cried as though i were sitting through Parsifal.  

Welcome to the waterworks.  Don’t say i didn’t warn you.  It’s a stunning powerful film, particularly if you like superhero movies.  And if you don’t it could still surprise you.

No wonder i had no fear about stepping up to the microphone.  I’d already faced terror in the movie theatre.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Reviews | Leave a comment

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