Creative Ohio: Transforming Communities

Creative Ohio: Transforming Communities

Yesterday I attended a day long conference sponsored by the Ohio Art Council, with help from the Ohio Humanities Council and Tourism/Ohio. There were just over two hundred participants form throughout the State.These were primarily arts professionals, administators and managers more than applied artists or performers.  Of course, many arts administrators have another life in any of the arts.

My observations are only that: observations. I did have two underlying concerns as the day progressed. The participants were 99.9 % white people on their best behavior. I saw few people of color-from throughout the state of Ohio. I asked a friend who worked "behind the scenes" at the conference. They may think 'what's in it for them, also many of the attendees come from rural parts of the state. Huh? Are their so few people of color in rural Ohio?

They keynote speaker was an expert in community building. Terms like "place holding" and "place making" were used throughout the day. I admit not to having heard of these concepts before, but they make sense. How do you transform a neighborhood into a thriving arts district and how do you keep it a thriving arts district. Our speaker came with an account of his impressive sounding travels throughout the world investigating such communities. The pictures were attractive and the stories of some interest, but not enough to investigate what is to me the heart of the matter.

What should any community want to be transformed? Who is an outsider to attempt to do this and does the transformation meet the needs of the community as it was before said transformation took place. This was asked in plainer words by an audience member. "In Columbus, artists  are priced out of the Short North. " True, that very attractive neighborhood tends to serve White people from the the suburbs, or people who can afford the inflated housing costs in the area.. If I could solve that, our speaker said, I'd be very rich. Indeed. But should the balance between economic growth and preserving the existing community be addressed? Are you intending to help nurture the creative class? I define such a class as creative people who create-music, dance, poetry, textile, theater, weaving, the fine arts, full time and live on ramen noodles because they can't conceive of doing anything else. NOT hobbyists. I mean gifted people who are committed to producing-and selling-what they do.

Okay sure, if you want to sell your work you are going to have to have some savvy and serve some commerical intrests. But if any long term studies or conferences are going to be held I hope in the future making a community for artist to live and work permanently with the influx of new blood always possible, will be paramount.

There were four break out session, each given twice.

The Infrastructure of Place Making
Traveling the Crooked Road to Southwest Virginia
The Art of Partnerships
Evolving Downtown's Transform Communities

I attended Partnerships and Evolving Downtown

The Evolving downtown panel was the best part of the day. The session was set up as a conversation with the audience. I didn't know there was a cultural center in Hamilton, Ohio. I didn't know there was a Hamilton Ohio!  The Fitts Center is run by a hunky Australian new to the job. I wonder if his accent and bravado got him friends or not. He set up a promotional photo shoot of his artistically interesting men's room complete with standees. It got him some nasty blow back and a big tick UP in subscribers! He lamented that is theater is too small to host local orchestra, ballet and choral performances, but the guy is gung ho inviting them anyway and thinking of solutions.

When the director of the Toledo Arts Comissison said he was able to claim a large vacant downtown building for use I asked how he did it. I loved his answer. I went around and asked. I went all through the community knocking on doors. And one property owner said yes.. Another point worth mentioning, go into your community and find the cultured deviants! Th people who are considered weird in the area and who may be bizarre enoguht to join you and help. "Embrace those who want to help"

Asked what their most urgent wish is all four replied Funds fora permanent endowment.A revenue stream.

I know Stuarts Opera house in Nelsonville. I was shocked to learn that it sat empty  for 50 years, into the 1990s. The Diretor of the Opera house made it very clear. He worked in the poorest  county in the State. Yet the newly resorted theater anchors a small but attractive downtown square and  stands out amidst the surrounding blight. People come for shows and concerts. People send their kids there. Everyone wants to do more for kids. Everyone, as did the a.m. speaker, uses enthusiastic crowd isn the streets and the participation of kids as a measure of success.

So what did I learn:

Go as a guest....if you are visiting in someone else's community, be a good guest.
Invite people IN
Don't be afraid to ask. The worse people can say is No. Use that as a chance to change their minds...but know when to back off
Creative communities require people...and places to it down and visit...shops, green spaces, coffee houses, restaurants. Don't forget public performances and public art.

Don't take it too seriously. A little silly or off the wall is good,

Find balance. Drive the economic machine without shutting down the people already there
SUSTAINABILITY

  

One Verdi Opera per Day: Otello

OTELLO    

Arrigo Boito after Shakespeare  January 5, 1887  La Scala, Milan



Mario del Monaco, Renata Tebaldi, Leonard Warren, Martha Lipton, Paul Franke, Luben Vichey, James McCracken (Roderigo) Fritz Steidry conducts  Metropolitan Opera broadcast  March 12, 1955

This gets harder. It wasn't too difficult to offer impressions of the early Verdi operas. I liked Aroldo and Alzira , didn't care much for Giovanna d'Arco. But when you get into Aida=Don Carlo it gets harder to know what to say. Otello is harder still. I love this opera. I'm thrilled by it. But I seldom listen to it. So real does the tragedy become for me that I can't bear knowing what's to come, even from act I. Still, what tenor has a greater entrance than Otello's 'Esultate!'.  What baritone has a more sinister monologue that Iago's Credo.

And what soprano has the exquisite Salce and Ave Maria for Desdemona.




I avoid listening to Otello partly for what I've already stated, and partly because I fear the miracle of it won't hit me. I listened again today. I got hit.

Look at the devices used to relive tension. The Fuoco di gioia! chorus in Act I. The magnificent offstage serenade of Desdemona in Act II. Then in Act III, after Desdemona is insulted by her husband ('vil cortigiana!) Iago seduces Cassio-I intend that word, seduce-first with bel canto:Vieni...l'aura e deserto...and then piu rapido.


The final act orchestration always sound spare. Not just eerie, but haunted. Otello's suicide till keeps wit hit a degree of dignity-he remains a heroic figure, an important person, even after falling prey to Iago and murdering his wife. Verdi forbids us to regard Otello as stupid. Which is easy to do!

One Verdi Opera a Day: Giovanna d'arco, Alzira, Attila

To celebrate Giuseppe Verdi's 200th birthday I am listening to one of his operas every day, in chronological order. This is becoming a fascinating journey! Not every opera is a masterpiece, but Verdi was already different than his peers and immediate predecessors with his first opera, Oberto. He had a forward momentum mixed with drama that made a long opera blaze on. Later his characters became more reflective and more interesting.

Continuing in chronological order:

Giovanna d'Arco  Joan of Arc   1845  La Scala, Milan
 Temitocle Solera

 Susan Dunn, Vincenzo LoScola, Renato Bruson/Riccardo Chailly  Bologna 1989

This opera is neglected for a reason. It is minor-league Verdi. It would be a hit had it been written by a minor
league composer. This is not history's Maid of Orleans but Schiller's. No bad thing that, but Joan's flirtation with the dauphin and death in battle are unconvincing. Verdi was probably attracted by a battle field demise  in Austria controlled Milan., rather than the historical burning at the stake. The duet between Joan and her father-one of the most annoying characters in any opera-sounds downright jolly, totally divorced from the words. The aria Sempre all' alba is gorgeous. The rest sounds pasted together in a hurry.




Alzira    Salvatore Cammarano  1845  Naples

Marina Mescheriakova, Ramon Vargas, Paolo Gavanelli.  Fabio Luisi.  Geneve 2001

Teatro San Carlo Naples

Verdi in his old age called Alzira "really ugly". I don't agree. There are sillier opera plots than this one: wars between the Incas and the invading Spanish in Peru. Alzira herself is not an compelling character and has dull music. So does the tenor. The baritone role is terrific if there are any real Verdi baritones around (Cornell MacNeil sang it) The first act has a magnificent sextet. Alzira's not great but is by no means "ugly" 







Attila    1846  Venice
Salvatore Cammarano  Francesco Maria Piave

Samuel Ramey, Cheryl Studer, Neil Schicoff, Giogio Zancanaro. Riccardo Muti. La Scala 1989

This is an old fashioned thrilling Italian opera. There's no subtlety. All of the music is "in your face". There's
even  quasi mad scene for the title character.  Odabella is a fiery dramatic soprano-a sister to Nabucco's Abigaille. There's lovely 'dawn' music in the prologue and a great duet for bass and baritone in Act I. The tenor role is dull but Attila is a vocal joy ride for the bass and for the audience. My generation is completely spoiled by Samuel Ramey in this role. Bravo.

Gianni Schicchi Diary: Introduction

Dante

 It's my custom to keep a diary when working outside the studios, so welcome to The Gianni Schicchi Diary! 


The good people at Opera Project Columbus have asked me to direct their production of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. Tonight is the first staging rehearsal.
This one act delight is Puccini's only comedy. It is part of three one act operas (Il trittico-The Triptych) the world premier of which was given in New York at the Metropolitan Opera n December 14, 1918. The world was in the mood to celebrate one month after the armistice was signed.

Giuseppe DeLuca , the first Gianni Schicchi

Il tabarro and Suor Angelica were qualified successes. Gianni Schicchi was a bona fide hit. W.J. Henderson, dean of music critics for the New York Times, was gentle with the first two operas but called GS "one of the most delightful bits every put on the opera stage".

The libretto is by Gioacchino Forzano. The basis is an episode, a few lines really, from Dante's Divina Commedia. In the XXX canto, we encounter Gianni Schicchi, who had advised Simone, relative of Buoso Donati on amending an unsatisfactory will. In so doing, Schicchi is consigned by Dante to hell. Some of this story reflects Dante's own antipathy toward the 'peasant class' and especially of his wife's family, the Donati.

What's not to love with this 45 minute opera? You get a deliciously nasty family, a dead guy on stage for much of the action, a 'peasant', his daughter who sings a big hit:




"Un Donati sposare un figlia di villano?! cries Simone, the elder of the family.
A Donati, to marry the daughter of a peasant?!
That's just one of several great lines in this opera.

Splendida Firenze!

When the will is found and read leaving all of Buoso's property to the monks, his cousin Zita, a hateful old lady grumbles:

Ch l'avrrebe mai detto che quando Buoso andava al cimitero si sarebbe pianto per daverro!
Who could have told that once Buoso went to the cemetery, we'd be crying for real!

Gianni Schicchi arrives with his daughter Lauretta. She's usually portrayed as a sweet, innocent girl. I think she's more of a princess. Daaaaaadddy!

Schicchi's first line is one of my favorites in all opera:

Quale aspetto sgomenta e desolato
Buoso Donati certo e migliorato

What a lot of sad looks
Buoso Donati must be getting better

 I've directed Suor Angelica and yes.  I loved it and yes I cried,  nice Catholic boy that I am.
But now we get down and dirty, and we have fun. Newsflash: Opera can be fun!

Opera Project Columbus was formed to give local singers an opportunity to perform. We have a terrific cast

Alessandro Siciliani. Opera can be fun!

for this production: attractive, talented and a world class baritone for the tile role. And our conductor?
Alessandro Siciliani, former music director of the Columbus Symphony, veteran of the New York City Opera and the Met, not forgetting a slew of Italian opera houses. Alessandro is  Florentine himself. Watching him dart around at rehearsal coaching the Italian texts has been the joy of my late spring. He gets all of the inflection and double meanings unavailable at first to non native speakers.

The big challenge of this staging is not musical, its the venue. We have a small stage, and no pit. With the orchestra onstage we're going to use the house more than the stage. You may be sitting next to Rinuccio as he pours out his love for Lauretta, or Simone or Zita as they scheme away Buoso's money. Gianni Schicchi might pick your pocket.

Performances June 15 and 16.
Check back here for more dish.
First staging rehearsal is tonight.

The Biographer's Art: A Visit with Margot Peters

Margot Peters

Margot Peters has had a distinguished career, both in academia and as a biographer.

 Her subjects have included George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and poet/icon May Sarton.  Her latest book is a biography of poet Lorine Niedecker, Lorine Niedecker, A Poet's Life, available now from University of Rochester Press.

I was interested in how a biographer begins her work, and whether of not views of the subject change over time.

Margot Peters spoke to me on the phone from her home in Wisconsin

CP: What does it take to be a biographer?

MP: An organized mind. And the ability out of the million facts that you get, to see patterns.
And you have to have a narrative sense, to carry the reader. But if you can see patters out of all your research, that's when it begins to become a biography.

CP: How long does it take to find those patterns?

MP: I know that I have it when I tell myself, even if I discover things about his person, they won't surprise me. They will fit in.

CP: Many of your books deal with the theater
MP: Yes!

CP:  I know the theater is a passion of yours. The first book of yours that I read was your book on Mrs. Patrick Campbell. I had heard then name but didn't really know much about her. What inspired you to go to her?

MP:  I had written a biography of George Bernard Shaw. It's called Bernard Shaw and the Actresses-bad title!-it should have been called Shaw and the New Woman.  He wrote wonderful roles for women. He was very involved with Mrs. Patrick Campbell. He was in love with her. After I was finished with Shaw and the Actresses, which dealt with many actresses I thought, Oh-there's not a good biography of Stella Campbell. I think there should be. She's witty. A Wonderful snob, She was a great-some people say-actress, and she had a colorful life.

CP:  Could you tell strictly from your research what kind of actress she was?

MP:  I think so. There were lengthy theater reviews in those days. We're talking the 1890s--1910-1920s, Theater reviews went on and on. They'd describe the tone of voice, timbre, action, how she turned her back at crucial moments in a play. They really described very thoroughly. I think I think I have a sense of how she would have acted. The films did not help me very much. She was older, she had let herself go, she was unused to film as a medium. It was good to see her on film, but I think I grasped her acting as a young actress.

CP: When you're researching a subject do you start with one mindset about them,  then through your research change your mind?

Stella Patrick Campbell 1865-1940

MP: I think all biographers-or many of them-change their minds.  Shaw was an absolute hero to me. For his socialism, for his feminism, for his brilliance. But he was not very nice with women. He was a philanderer when he was young. He could be cruel. I had to make all kinds of adjustments in writing that book. I had to reconcile this true feminist who wrote great roles for women, with a sometimes  nastily behaving man towards women. That was a problem. He tore some actors apart. He was out for Sir Henry Irving. He felt Irving was behind times, he wasn't current with the new drama. He just ripped him apart. Later Irving said, "I'd be glad to pay for this man's funeral!"

CP:  You have reintroduced Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne to the public. Tell me who they were in context of their own times

MP: Lunt and Fontanne are a genius, as one critic said. Together-and the seldom performed separately-they created absolute magic. Their timing was perfect. Their sense of humor, their comedy. Alfred I think was the far better actor. But after he hitched up with Lynn, Lynn had to have wonderful women's roles. I  think he would be the greater actor.






CP:  Some of the plays they did were not very good. Without them they would not be performed. Was that deliberate on their part?

MP:  Noel Coward was their closest friend. One of the plays he wrote for them, Quadrille, is not good. I suspect it was one of these friendships, you did it to be all involved together. Yes, they were in some bad plays, but they had good roles--for them.

CP: Why do you think they so seldom worked separately?
MP: They started separately. The acted together after they got married. Then, I think, as this sounds really petty, I think that she was horribly jealous of his leading ladies.Helen ?Hayes was in love with him. Lynn didn't want anyone with Alfred except herself.

 

CP: As far as I know, only one of your subjects was living at the time you were working with them, and that was May Sarton.
MP: How true! Never work with a living subject!
CP: Will you ever do it again, after that?
MP: Never
CP: What's the difference between a subject living or not living.
MP: I did the living subject because I was interested in her, and her feminism and I thought it would be interesting to talk with a live person. But there quickly grew a battle between us. She wanted to talk to me, and yet she wanted to control her own life. She wanted to read and then control what I said.  She fired me twice!

I told my husband, "She's going to bury me!" She was so difficult, I really thought I could never do this. I was able to publish the book after she died.  It's a very blunt biography, but she told me most of it....all of her affairs, all of her philandering was incredible. And her temper. She was fascinating, but I would never work with anybody alive again.

CP: It a blunt biography and I know you've had some criticism
MP:  I got death threats!
CP: But people were so attracted to her. If you're into her you're really into her, you're really into her. Like Wagner.

MP: She had fans. She didn't have readers, she had fans.



CP:  Why were people attracted to her?
MP:  The vitality. I used to show a film of her to my students, called A World of Light. I taught a class called Women's Voices Women's Lives, and in that film she is incandescent. She is so vital, so alive, I thought what a wonderful woman! And it turned out she was almost empty. No, she couldn't be empty, but she had so little self.

CP: She was an actress

May Sarton (1912-1995)

MP: She was.  She overwhelmed these audiences with her beautiful voice and her poetry. She was a huge success.
CP: I  think the bluntness of the book reflects her very well. She should not have been surprised .
MP: No! She told me all of this

CP: If she read the book herself she may not have liked it but he could not have been surprised. I don't appreciate her work any less. I don't think she was a great writer

MP: I don't either

CP;  That's why I was really curious why she had such a fan base

MP: Some of her novels are good. Some of them are quite good, but that's the most you can say. Some of them are very bad. Her poetry has appeal, especially when she would read it aloud. I was interested in her because of her journals.  I said to myself, it doesn't matter that she's a lesbian, well it certainly did!

CP: In what way?

MP: Not being lesbian myself should I be writing this person?  But no, it doesn't matter. She's a human being. But she was so lesbian, she was so involved with so many women. Her promiscuity bothered me.
But it would bother me in a heterosexual.
CP: She seemed predatory about it

MP: Yes, she was predatory. Yes.

Lorine Niedecker

CP: Finally I'm intrigued by your latest book about a poet I didn't know .

MP: Lorine Niedecker. A wonderful poet. A hard, hard life. Poverty. Living alone on Blackhawk island that flooded frequently. There was loneliness. Then she makes a connection with a poet in New York and that gives her energy to publish. She had only four books published in her lifetime.  She is a wonderful poet. She's a wonderful human being.

CP: A little different than May Sarton.
When you speak of poets working alone Emily Dickinson always comes up. but if you've been to
Amherst you know there's a difference between splendid isolation and really living alone .

CP: Any final thoughts for a would be biographer? Make sure they're dead.

MP: Make sure they're dead. Number one. Don't write about anyone living. Don't choose a living celebrity. you have to split fifty-fifty with them. You can't say what you want. If the person's living, you don't gt an honest biography. Very few subjects would allow that. Do lots of research. Looks for the pattern always. I use psychology but I don't broadcast it. I don't go in to long psychological  analyses. Write well!

 
        
      

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Les Troyens: Dancing the Trojan War

Last night I attended the encore showing of the Metropolitan Opera's live performance of Berlioz's opera Les Troyens. This is a five hour French grand opera based on Virgil's Aeneid.

Conductor Fabio Luisi. My hero!

(The above clip is from 1982-not the current production)

The Trojan war is a big deal for an opera. you think Aida is a big show? Gotterdammerung? You've never seen Les Troyens. Not only is it long, a huge orchestra and chorus are front and center. And there is no tenor alive who can truly sing Aeneas.

Bryan Hymel as Aeneas

Until now. BRYAN HYMEL. Who knew? Nice young guy from New Orleans. He came late to the production, with "two hours of rehearsal." This is a well focused, tight voice with a touch of metal and no breaks way up to D above High C. No part of this grueling role seemed difficult for Hymel. I haven't heard such an ovation-well deserved-since the prime of Dame Joan Sutherland.










.

Who is more beautiful than Susan Graham? In her fifties, she's just now at the peak of her loveliness. Hers is a warm, beautiful mezzo soprano. Tomato soup with Ritz crackers on a cold night. One of those melted chocolate voices where you can just wallow.








 I don't think Cassandra is Deborah Voigt's best role. The music gives her little opportunity to soar. I kept waiting for her flash of silver voice to really peal forth.She said later she was ready to get back on her horse (Brunhilde!) Dwayne Croft-who I think is undervalued-brought a beautiful voice to a thankless role. Karen Cargill sang Anna with a voice you want to marry. What a deep, luscious sound More!

But folks. The dancing! It was long! I know its French opera where a ballet is de rigeur (am I cute or what?) This is a long opera. I don't think there's a wasted note. There's a great scene in part two where Dido and Aeneas celebrate their love. And in the midst the loving couple is on a satin settee..NOT ALONE! Aeneas' son Ascanius is cuddled up, along with  the sage Iopas (Tenor Eric Cutler-superb) and dancing dancing dancing.

Don't be mad. I like T&A as well as the next guy.  The white costumes were flattering or at least enticing. A lovely tush is always a treat. But to me this was extended coitus interruptus-the only longueurs of a long evening. The dances were great. And hot. But it did seem to go on and on and on. What I want to know is what were Dido, Aeneas, Ascanius, Anna and Iopas thinking cuddled up in satin with nothing to sing.

Never mind. Perhaps had I attended the live-live showing at 12 noon I would have been fresher and more able to appreciate the dancers skill over booty.

Oddly Normal by John Schwartz

John Schwartz is a writer for the New York Times.
He's the author of a new book called Oddly Normal: One family's struggle to help their teenage son come to terms with his sexuality.

I think every parent should read this book. Lessons learned include keeping a marriage strong in the face of problems, and stopping at nothing-nothing-to help your kid.

Joe was thought to have OCD, ACD, and every other damned D. Some teachers were stumped and some were hostile. Some were kind. Joe was tested and IEP-ed and shamed and rescued by his parents and his own fortitude. A pink boa helped.

The book begins when young Joseph Schwartz attempts suicide at age 13. Being a gay kid at school, with a long devotion to pink boas and Barbie does not make him friends. The bullying became unbearable. Something had to change. Joseph had to grow into peace and acceptance, and this book is the story of the road leading him to a productive happy life. (Yes, the book has a happy ending.)

The Schwartz family has two older children, Elizabeth and Sam. Their mother Jeanne is the ferocious warrior of this book, the heroine of the story as all mothers deserve to be.

Read Oddly Normal. It's great for any parent for any reason...and their friends. Pages 243 to 268 eill change your life!

Yesterday I spoke with Joseph Schwartz from his office in Hew York:

JS:: I've had many man e mails from parents. Its a real testament to how difficult child rearing is. Parents say, my kid isn't gay but this is my kid. Any kid who is different , but especially the parents of gay kids have sen so much of this,  so much of the kid's self-directed bullying...

CP: Adolescence is terrible enough, never mind any added complications.

JS: Right! "Ain't I got enough problems?"  Remember that a kid at thirteen, what you really want is to be like everybody else, and then you come up with these differences, and especially this big one . It can create a very pervasive feeling of isolation.

CP:: Your book is called Oddly Normal. The book opens with something terrible, a suicide attempt by a 13 year old, but there is a happy ending to the book. I hope that's still true?

JS:  Absolutely. The story's not over. Every day is interesting. But things are so much better than they were.   We've come such a long way and that's really the point of the book.  Its about the 'getting better' part.

CP: You have two older children, Elizabeth and Sam.  You describe Sam as all-boy. He's a jock, he's tough, he's outgoing, What was the effect on them when this was going on with their kid brother.

JS:: They're great kids. They've got gay friends. It didn't matter to them that Joe turned out to be gay. The only reaction ...Sam's reaction was "Huh. OK."
Elizabeth's reaction was "So that's why he was always stealing my jewelry...!

CP: In the book we meet Joseph as a young boy, and you went everywhere trying to get some answers. If you asked twenty- five people you'd get twenty- five different answers. That's what was so compelling in the book. The journey of finding out what was going on with him. Were you getting a lot of help?

JS:  We were trying to get help. Everybody contributed something but much of what they contributed wasn't useful.

CP: You discuss the possibility of a link between autism and homosexuality. This hasn't been proved at all but its the first time I heard of a possible connection

JS: It's something that seemed interesting. I had a friend at work who suggested this might be the case -someone who's son is on the spectrum and who she thought might turn out to be gay ...but nobody's got any numbers.

One of the People I asked is Steve Silberman who is writing what I think is going to be a terrific book called 'Neurotribes' , where he talks about different brains , different experiences, what's going on on the on the spectrum. He's very interested in gay issues  as well.  He said that he too had heard tantalizing ideas but he hasn't seen any research that lays this out.

CP:You write that Joseph was interested in "girl things" from the time he was a toddler. Did you get any flack from your peers or other parents   Did anyone say put him in Little League for God's sake.....

JS:: Not really. No. Luckily for us that was never an issue. People didn't want to seem to tell us how to live our lives. Or how to raise our kids. One of the very nice things about having your third kid as opposed to your first kid that you're not even paying attention to what people are saying any more. You barely remember the kid's name. By the time it the third kid you have fewer worries..and that's when life hands you something interesting. Right?

We really thought we had this thing down.

CP: You and your wife have to be exceptional parents because you weer taking
Joseph into a gay social center for teens in New York, you were doing everything you could to make him feel comfortable in the world. ...

JS: It was essential that he know -he over arching feeling he expressed to us was he just felt alone. He felt he was going to die alone. He felt he was just going to be weird. We had to show him he wasn't weird. We sent him to theater camp. Look,  we told him, its no big deal to be gay here. Then we went tot he gay center in New York. They have these amazing youth programs. He got to see kids who have been through  a lot but who were warm, open, inviting . He saw that he's part of a range . There's not just one way to be gay. There's not just one type of gay. It can be a community.and an identity. Part of who he is. Bit by bit, Joseph relaxed..

CP: All of this must have been hard on your marriage

JS:: We felt it strengthened us. We know plenty of peoples who have had problems with their kids, and its driven them apart. We were looking at what felt like a hostile world, and we had to stick together. We had different roles. I was the good cop, Jeanne was more the bad cop. We were on the same force.

We had to deal with the schools. We had to deal with therapists. We needed to move and to help Joe. For us it was a kind bonding as opposed to the driving apart you see happening.

CP:: What has the journey of the book been with Joseph?

JS: Of course I would not have even proposed the book if Joe hadn't given me his approval. We talked about it.. I told him I think it would help people,  and he said yeah you should do that.  I replied I want you to really consider it. This will not be a totally happy book for you. I'm going to talk about the pills. I'm going to talk about the hospital. And Joe replied..I said, do it!

It was also the statement of a kid who like so may of his peers  is on facebook, and who talks about his life. Its the comment of a kid who father is a journalist , who has written about his kids in the past. His older brother and sister especially grew up with the occasional first person story talking about something they've done. Whether its Sam being on a losing football team, or his college work as a nude art model!

The point is that Joe had seen me talk about the family before. He's part of a movement of the kids at the center where they talk about what they've been through to help each other. He saw this as part of that tradition. He knew what the book was going to say. I showed him the manuscript. We talked abut his complaints and how to address them. He helped me revise the book to reflect his views  He partnered all the way through.

As I was turning the manuscript in he sends me n e mail -he says, I wrote this ridiculously adorable story  for a class assignment. It's a children's book called Leo, the Oddly Normal Boy. It's about a little boy who likes other boys and who gathers up some flowers and some chocolate and writes a poem and presents it all to another boy. And what happens after that.

Its a wonderful story. It made me cry....

CP: I must tell you that I passed that around the office here and everybody cried.

JS: That's now the last chapter of the book .

So how's Joe doing with the book? Joe helped write the book. Joe is the book. He's proud of that. At the same time its a little humbling for me to put in 800 words at the end of the book that do more than I was able to do with 60,000.

CP: Parents discover their kid is different in some way. They're angry, they're pissed off.  they're scared, what do you tell them?

JS:: I tell them the only piece of parenting advice I've ever heard that's worth the words , and that is what Dr. Spock told us in his child care book many,  many years ago. Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do.


     

Author Interview: D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace

D.T. Max is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of a medical mystery, The Family That Couldn't Sleep.  

 Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is D.T. Max's  is a new biography of writer David Foster Wallace, (1946-2008) either the most original writer of the last thirty years, or a literary con man.
Take your pick D.T. Max comes down in the former camp and he'll take you there as well.

"David and I are just a year apart in age. When he published his first novel, The Broom of the System, it was a revelation to me to read such an extraordinary, funny,  masterful and overwrought piece of prose from someone my own age...When David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker asked me to write a piece about David's death, I was immediately interested, because I knew so little about David Foster Wallace. I didn't know that he had depression, I didn't know that he had addiction issues, I didn't know how funny he was." 

For those who have yet to encounter Wallace's work, Max says,

"David Foster Wallace mastered a kind of writing that really had not been done before.  Long,  winding sentences that try and capture everything about the world.  They are what it sounds like when you think. (italics mine.) They are the sound of our own minds going....David brought a wonderful knowledge of sentence structure and how a sentence should sound to this disorderly, exciting kind of mental state...the sort of David Foster Wallace mind dump."




By the time of his suicide in 2008, Wallace was the author of several collections of short stories and non fiction, and his massive novel, Infinite Jest. This 1,000 page novel runs from locker room towel snapping to very detailed discussions of experimental films made by the deceased, but still very present father of one of the novel's leading characters.  There are massive of footnotes as well, and some of the footnotes have footnotes, every word worth reading. You will stay with this book even if you wonder why it so entertaining.

"Infinite Jest is less difficult than most people think. It makes it hard at times to know where you are, but its really an absolutely wonderful story, or really two stories, partially a story about a bunch of kids at a tennis academy outside of Boston, and its partially about a bunch of recovering addicts in a half way house that's just down the hill. David wanted people to read this book. He was not James Joyce. He did not want to make it impossible for you to understand what's going on.

D.T. Max

Max recommends "modestly submitted" Every Love Story is a Ghost Story as a good primer to Wallace's work (he's right) and recommends the on line "road maps" for Infinite Jest. "These reassure you that you are going somewhere, especially early in the book when you have reason to doubt!"

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story  is no facile expose of a life of addiction and mental illness interspersed with flashes of brilliance. It's impressive literary criticism, along with the facts of a complex life.

"I didn't want to write about David without writing about David as a writer. It tries to relate the writing to the life and the life to the writing...In the years since his death (2008) he's become a kind of person people just want to know about. There's a kind of moral force around David, especially for younger people, there's a cliched "Saint Dave"...David used to say when he didn't like something he'd go straight to the bathroom, and that would make him go straight to the bathroom. People think of him as someone who had experiences and wrote about them in ways can help them be stronger, and be more centered and happy in their lives.  That's his great theme, that he's writing for you. He's writing for you as a reader, so you can take away, experience and knowledge that will help you to experience your life more fully . It's a big task. Most fiction writers don't do that, . David wanted you to emerge from his books stronger ."

 D.T. Max points out that he never met David Foster Wallace.

 "I tell people when I started this book I was in love with David Foster Wallace, and when I finished it I was even more in love with David Foster Wallace.  People ask how that's possible...you show so many of his flaws, but to me he's like a Thomas Merton . He's somebody who lived hard in the world and made a lot of mistakes. He did a lot of learning. We can learn from him. In writing the book,  I was trying to learn what David was trying to teach me, about how to live more fully in the world. Our saints today are not going to be virgins! David spent much of his life in 12 step programs. I think that's where he learned that its only those who've been there who know how to get out of the cul-de-sac that we're in, or how to avoid getting into that dead end. That to me is David's great value."



 

Interview with Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane's new novel Live by Night traces the career of Joe Coughlin, from his youth Boston as the son of the police commissioner, to his rise amid that city's speakeasies and bootleggers, to his career in hotels, gambling, off-loading and more near Tampa, Florida. Lehane's readers will recognize the masterful blend of street smarts and vulnerability in Coughlin, along with the color of Lehane's favorite era, the 1920s.

Lehane's previous novels include Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Any Given Day and Shutter Island.   Dennis Lehane's voice is among the most authentic in writing today. Having myself an ear for Boston-laced dialogue, I had long wanted an interview. Here it is, a phoner recorded October 23, 2012

CP: Your new novel, Live by Night, deals with the end of prohibition and goes into the depression years. In your previous book you dealt with the Boston police strike of 1919. What makes a particular historical time interesting to you as a writer?

DL: I'm not exactly sure. Given Day was interesting to me because I was interested in the Boston police strike, so the germ of the idea was always the Boston police strike. That led me into, as I was writing that book, to my favorite decade, the 1920s. The reasons for why that's my favorite decade are as shallow as they had great clothes. It's the grandest failed social experiment in American history-prohibition-you look at a time in which the entire country turned its back on the rule of law. We became a society of outlaws. That must have been so exciting.

CP: I've noticed in your books that even if a reader has never set foot in any of the places you write about, you immediately recognize them. You immediately  become at home. You have a wonderful sense of place. Is that something you developed ? Are you aware of that?

DL: I am insofar as its something I'm place-centric in a lot of ways. I'm someone who can become quickly depressed living in a place I don't like. I'm not one of those people who can just live anywhere. I don't get those people. That might have something to do with my psychology when it comes to place. When I do write about a place its usually a place that I'm enamored of in some way, shape or form. And I try to put that onto the page. But there have been plenty of times when I've written about places I've never been, that I thought for whatever reason sparked my  imagination and came out as  vividly as I'd hoped. I'm thinking of Oklahoma in Given Day or the Pinardo Rio region of Cuba in Live by Night.

CP:  Your ear for dialogue I like very much in that everything sounds very authentic, whether in Florida or Oklahoma, or South Boston or Dorchester.

DL: The dialogue is the one thing, I don't want to say born with,but its something I brought to the table when I started to become a writer. The reason I don't say 'born with it' is because I grew up in a place where people spoke very vividly. Boston in general, but then you get into the sort of inner city neighborhoods, people just speak very vividly. Very pronounced dialect. So, by the time I started writing, as I began down this path, the one thing I could always do is write dialogue, because I'd heard so much great dialogue my entire life, just walking out the door every day.




CP: Specifically, all of your characters speak  in very short questions. Instead of saying "Do you know what happened?" they say "Know what happened?' .

DL: The very first kind of moment I remember having as a writer -the first revelation I remember having, was connected to dialogue. It was just standing on a subway platform, I heard somebody say-this is the polite PG version, that's not what he said, he said "The hell ya doin'?" It just hit me at this moment. I think I was about twelve, he didn't say 'What" . He went right to 'the hell you doing?" . That's suddenly a moment when you just tune your ear without knowing you did it, but I remember that was a great moment for me, I remember writing it in a notebook. Wow! That's how people really speak here! Not what you see in books, you know?
 I
CP:  You were twelve years old, is that when you knew you would become a writer?

DL:  No, that's when I was kind of really walking down the path, but I didn't know I was going to become a writer til I was twenty.   

CP: But a twelve year old wouldn't think to go home with a notebook and write something like that down.

DL: I knew that I liked to write, but it was not considered a viable career option where I came from. That's why it just didn't occur to me until by the time I was twenty I'd dropped out of college, with two differed safety majors, I just realized that I was no good at  anything else.

CP: You're not Patrick Kenzie are you?

DL: Not remotely. The thing about Patrick I always say is I gave him my taste in music, and I gave him my sense of humor because you can't fake sense of humor.

CP:  In the movies made of your books, are you satisfied in the way they handled dialogue and accent and place. To me, Gone Baby Gone was really vivid






DL: Gone Baby Gone is wonderful -that's the movie where the accents are pretty stupendous. That was (director) Ben (Affleck) That was Ben sort of riding herd , and this is what an authentic Boston accent sounds like . And Casey (Affleck) being the lead -having gown up there as well. As far as I feel about the films over all, I think they're all wonderful. I can't judge them at the end of the day, but I would say they're certainly extremely faithful, and they capture the spirit of the books which is all you can hope for.

LA BOHEME FOR COLUMBUS

Opera Columbus continues its renaissance with a new way to present La boheme.

You know the drill. Impoverished students in Paris circa 1850 live in cold and want but manage to find wine, women and (obviously) song.  Puccini used Henri Murger's Scenes de la vie de boheme as the basis for his opera. So did Leoncavallo, composer of Paglicacci, who also wrote a La boheme, a wonderful opera never heard. That's another story. Call me up on the phone.

La boheme. The cold, the poverty, the wine, the muff, the death:




Along comes Opera Columbus wanting to do something new. Rent is based on La boheme and its been a smash for years. Can Puccini build a new audience?

YES!

Last night  I went to see Opera Columbus's new production of La boheme at Shadowbox, a venue in the Brewery district reminiscent of the shoe-biz 'rooms' of an earlier time. It's a lovely restaurant and bar, and a performance space with its own company, led by Stev Guyer (no 'e' at he end, please.) Stev's a favourite guest of mine on All Sides Weekend. So is soprano Peggy Dye, Opera Columbus's new Head Diva in Charge.

Together, Shadowbox and Opera Columbus are presenting La boheme, in English, sung by attractive young local artists.  (Last night the baritone had a wardrobe malfunction giving the audience a bonus.) The show is performed in the restaurant, and I do mean performed. Shadowbox has long been the home of the most creative and entertaining revues, with its artists encouraged to work the room. Musetta sang her waltz (beautifully) five feet from me. If several gentlemen nearby had coronaries, I'm here to tell you the died happy.

La boheme. Intimate, musical, sexy, lovey and in English. Almost in your lap. Don't miss this Sundays at 5 PM through November 18. FREE.  Shadowbox is at 503 S. Front St.

No excuse. you don't need to watch another presidential debate or reruns of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The baritone has probably bought a new belt by now for his britches, but Musetta and company remain potent and wonderful. They, with their formidable, multi-tasking pianist, will delight you. As will Puccini..

Welcome back, Opera Columbus. 

The Met in HD 2012-2013, Ready, Set...GO!

The Metropolitan Opera's live in HD presentations in movie theatres world wide begins tomorrow with a new production of Donizetti's delightful L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love). And it is delightful, an opera filled with wit and charm and opportunities for gorgeous bel canto singing. I'm not always on the Anna Netrebko bus, but God love her she seems to be the only artist who can guarantee a sell out today. I'm a big fan of Matthew Polenzani's who tomorrow sings Nemorino, the role loved by Bonci, Caruso, Gigli and Pavarotti.


It looks like a cute, down home type staging that won't get in the way of Donizetti's delicious music.

Verdi's Otello is next, October 27. The press is raving over Renee Fleming, and quacking "this is your last chance" to hear her Desdemona. If she drops the role now I'll bet she can clam to have sung it for years without one less than gorgeous note. South African tenor Johan Botha sings the title role. He had a good success with this demanding part a few years ago. Allergies apparently sidetracked him a few weeks ago. I've always liked his voice and his singing. In this rare instance I will comment on an artist's weight to say I hope it doesn't rob Botha of the energy and the passion as Otello must have. German baritone Falk Struckman's Iago is being greatly admired. His is a less than rich and beautiful baritone, but he uses his voice with terrific attention to subtext and insinuation. For a bonus, we get tenor Michael Fabiano as Cassio. In Columbus he's remembered for his magnificent singing of Verdi's Requiem here last season.

And so to Thomas Ades's The Tempest. I've loved this opera on
recording and anticipate it eagerly on November 10.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY

Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) is a collection of  twenty-four German lieder (songs) for solo voice and piano. There are 16 songs. The poet is Heinrich Heine , and the music is by Robert Schumann. Dichterliebe was composed in 1840. The songs are not really unified into a 'cycle' or common, story-telling thread. There are waltzes, dirges, quick songs, slow songs with unifying themes of irony, bad luck in love, good luck in love, bad luck in love again.

In 2005 a dear friend, pianist Ben Wiant asked me to join him in preparing Dichterliebe for performance at one of the noon time concerts at Columbus's First Congregational Church (they get mad if you refer to the 'Congo Club')

I kept a diary of our rehearsal process from the fall of 2005 to the two performances given in 2006. The performances are a blur to me. The rehearsals with Ben were a joy. I learned a lot about music, about poetry and about friendship.

Ben Wiant, beloved and patient mentor and friend

Here's the DICHTERLIEBE DIARY. If you seen bold type-these comments were added in 2012.

DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 1

September 16, 2005

My friend Ben and I have decided to collaborate on a performance of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) for performance this November 1st, and a downtown church's noontime recital series.  This is a cycle of 16 songs (lieder) for voice and piano, in German, the poetry by Heinrich Heine. The entire set was composed in 1840, when Schumann, syphilis eating away at his brain, had a feverish year writing some of the most exquisite lieder in memory. The songs do not tell one complete story., but allude to nature, love,  loss and irony. No namby-pamby. There's a need for bite here.

Why am I doing this? Does the world need me to get up there and fall on my ass? (Maybe). Because Ben is a dear friend who after thirty years wanted to play the piano again-and he asked me to join him on this adventure.And because we both love Schumann's music and Heine's poetry.. I love it more when listening to Dieskau or Fritz Wunderlich in my underwear while scratching myself or eating another piece of cheesecake, but I digress...in short, this is like Mt. Everest, something I'd like to try once before I die.

The term 'bucket list' was not in use in 2005.

I'm going to keep a diary of our rehearsals and preparation. I first learned these pieces in college at in the 1970s. I recently reconnected on line with a former teacher and mentor from those days, who, when told of this project, said "Oh, God. Do you have to?"

This is Robert Gartside, my teacher at Boston University, 1974-1978. Okay, okay, I admit I have a degree in voice without ever having one. A voice I mean. Bob is today as smart and pithy and opinionated in his 80s as he was all those years ago. He used to say, "I don't like any singer after Kirsten Flagstad  (she died in 1962). Today he and the rest of us are agog for the young German tenor Jonas Kaufmann. See? People change (!)

Ben and I had our first rehearsal the other day. We are both using scores. I find that just spitting out the German words in time is a challenge.  Of course, they are just words and incomprehensible to 90% of the audience-and me at this point. I'm from Boston myself, not Dresden. I learned some choice German phrases from my dear friend Charles, who died in 1986: "Willst du mich Stossen?" and "Wie gros ist deine Schlange?" were two favorites.  One must take the timbre of the German language, play with it (so to speak) and match it Schumann's notes. In lieder, the piano never functions without the words. This above all requires the singer and pianist to listen to each other.  Ben played the notes and I choked and yelled and gurgled along.  We got through the whole thing twice without stopping.  Did we make music?  Did we communicate the wonderful sense of the lieder? Is the pope Jewish?

Stay tuned. I'm renting a tux for November 1st and come hell or high water I'll be there. Ben will shine and I'll be along for the ride.

Here's song number 1. NO NOT WITH ME! DEAR GOD!








September 21, 2005

This is the continuing saga of my preparation for a performance of Dichterliebe (Schumann) on November 1st. Ben Wiant is the pianist.

Second rehearsal with Ben today. I learned a great deal in that hour. now I know why singers are always told never to learn music from a recording. I've been listening to Dichterliebe for thirty years, but never thought of singing it myself. I'm not a singer. I'm a good musician who loves music and singing but you either got the chops or you don't. I don't. But ego, age and friendship win out, and I am enjoying this collaboration with Ben. But listening to CDs, who notices the little notes and the subtle colors that make this music?

You have to work from the score, listen, study pay attention. Do exactly what the poet and composer ask you to do. It's all there.

As an immature jerk of a college student I thought Donizetti and Bellini were gods. I tolerated Mozart and had no use for German lieder. "Excruciatingly dull" cried Anna Russell, and why shouldn't I believe her? To this day there are people who, if they knew I developed a love for lieder in my near dotage would hoot and holler. (I have less time today for Bellini and Donizetti. Mozart and Rossini are another matter.) 

In 2005 my desert island recordings of lieder were by Aksel Schiotz, Lotte Lehmann, Janet Baker and Hermann Prey. As a grown up I would add Dieskau of course, but also Heinrich Schlusnus, Alexander Kipnis, Hans Hotter, Bryn Terfel, Christa Ludwig, Gerald Finley and Jonas Kaufmann. See? I'm learning.

 Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died as I was working on this revision -May 18, 2012. He was the meister. He brought lieder to the world in a way not even Lotte Lehmann had reached. I heard him twice-I was a very young kid at he time, and this was in Symphony Hall in Boston. I remember very little. I was too young it was too long ago to remember the sound of his voice. I do remember,even from the cheap seats, the sense that his performance was effortless for him. Music and text just flowed out of him. He was entirely natural and everything he did seemed "right". I had just gotten glasses and left them at home, so if it was hard to see, I heard. I heard many "legends" at the end of their careers: Cesare Siepi, Tito Gobbi, Richard Tucker and remember nothing about their singing on those occasions.


Performing Dichterliebe is all about listening to one another.  Ben asked me to sing with more vibrato.  Who wants to hear a fat and fifty choirboy? Well, that's one of the technical problems to handle.  Marrying the German diction to real understanding is another. For example

Die Rose, die Lilie

die Taube, die Sonne
die lieb ich einst alle in Liebeswonne**
Ich lieb; sie nicht mehr, ich liebe alleine
die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die eine...






The rose, the lily
the dove, the sun
I loved them all with the wonder of love
I love them no more
I love alone
the little one, the fine, he pure, the only one

**Liebeswonne...Is that a great word, or what? It has a more intense meaning than 'wonder of love', more like the miracle or blessing of love, and it suggests eroticism 

How to put this across? There's a tradition of singing is sehr schnell, very fast, in one breath.  It can be done if you don't mind passing out and leaving your audience as bewildered as before. Filling out each word with the voice it deserves, even if they are 16th notes (Richard Strauss said, "Every note has the right to live.") is a great challenge.  Interpretation is often saddled with unnecessary  externals. It really is internal, and quite a personal process. I need to believe in the one and only love above all, be she small and fine, and pure (at my age?) and the only one.  Nice Irish boy from Boston that I am, I feel like running to confession.  And this is only one (one!) of the sixteen songs. Just wait until the end, when the poet calls for a large coffin, large enough to be borne by giants who are stronger that the statue of St. Christopher in the Cathedral at Cologne, and in that coffin he buries his love. It's gonna take some sales job, never mind memorizing the German words.

Dom zu Coln...Colgone Cathedral

Ond holt mir auch zwolf Riesen
Die mussen noch staerker sein
Als wie die starke Christoph
in Dom zu Coeln am Rhein

And also get twelve giants
They must be stronger than
The powerful Christopher
In the cathedral at Cologne

 .    
September 23, 2005

Another rehearsal today. I didn't have any voice. Nope. Nothing. Nada.
Still, Ben and I worked together well.
What continues to strike me is that all great composers of the lied do all the work for you.  If you can really bear down on the German and draw out the colors of the language, you have it made.  If you make the affect with your face, or hands than you are clowning, not performing, and certainly not performing Dichterliebe

Lesson learned: Study the score. True, it's all done for you but you have to know how to look. Why this chord and not that one. Does his German word have more than one meaning ? Really, this lied stuff is not for the timid (or lazy)


Today we began with song 9

Das ist ein Floten und Geigen
Trompetern schmettern darien

--(schmettern-now there;s a word to tip your hat to!)

The flutes and fiddles
and the trumpets blare

Crisp and enthusiastic pronunciation of the German do so much of the work for you.
This is no time to be precious or cute

That's why the stereotype of the fat lady singing an oh-so-precious-oh-so boring song recital is a hoot. This is pretty earthy stuff, requiring among other things a great deal of energy.

I picture myself as a bug infested lumberjack lost in the Maine woods during black fly season.  Looking for "her" and finding "she" is always out of reach and probably a figment of my imagination due to an overabundance of bug spray (which is powerless against black flies-trust me)

I tried to read a very learned treatise on key relationships over the weekend. I got a headache and watched a Peter Sellers movie instead.  The author had one stupid remark...only tenors should sing this piece., since re-arranging the key structures dilutes the piece. "It is surprising that any artists would wish to perform something outside their vocal range.: Tell that  to Lotte Lehmann, or Fischer-Dieskau or Herman Prey or Fritz Wunderlich.  You want to hear Dichterleibe as a peasant who feels the earth unconditionally and poops in the woods.

Nobody can read these poems and listen to this music and do the tight butt cheek hand clasp stuff., with the cool gaze at the audience.  This is earthy, sexual and beautiful. And maybe beyond me!

September 26, 2005

Bill Scharf, one of the great people of life has sent me a recording of Dichterliebe with the Russian bass Alexander Kipnis-accompanied by Wolfgang Rose

 Bill Scharf became a dear friend. He died in 2009 at 89-he was an avid collector of recordings and books relating to all aspects of music. I spent a number of happy hours listening with him in his Westerville home. Bill was very generous about supplying recordings and was supportive of many  OSU music students. I was on a committee which arranged the donation of his collection to the OSU Music Library. Bill was so proud of many things, family of course, and would always tell me "I heard Flagstad and Melchior in Tristan at the Cleveland Public Auditorium in 1937!"
God rest Bill.

Kipnis was a huge name in music. He is the father of Igor Kipnis.




Kipnis has long been on my radar. How do you ever answer the question, who has the most beautiful voice? Leontyne Price, Carlo Bergonzi, Cesare Siepi-and certainly Alexander Kipnis.  What a magnificent, towering black bass voice this was!  His operatic performance must have been sensational.

At first hearing, Kipnis's voice completely overwhelms.
It's like hearing the young, wild Callas-l. You can't turn your ears away. But for all of his big, fat juicy voice, Kipnis aims right at the words, dead-on! No slipping and sliding. You don't get seasick listening to Kipnis.  He nails you to the wall.  He really enjoys the words: liebe (love) heilgie Strome (holy river) brust/Himmelslust (breast-heaven's love).



Here's what the Germans would call eine kleine pause: INTERMISSION

Sills and Troyanos as Romeo and Giulietta, Boston 1975

I got a present in the mail today.  I've been sent a recording of Bellini's opera I Capuletti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) a performance given in Boston on June 7, 1975.  I was there. Beverly Sills was Giulietta. The late Tatiana Troyanos sang Romeo.  Troyanos was very highly strung. She was a wreck all through rehearsals. Sills was cool and kept saying, "Jesus Christ Tatiana! You're the best in the business! Calm down!"

Opera is like a day care center in more ways than one. If one gets sick, they all get sick.

Everybody got sick: Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence and half the chorus (most of the chorus was actually hung over) By third night all was well. This is a wonderful souvenir, and very moving for me to hear it again thirty (!) years later, with Sills, Troyanos and Sarah Caldwell all gone.


I loved the finale. Capellio, the father of Giulietta, comes upon R&;J's dead bodies and cries out "Killed! They are killed! Killed by whom?" and the chorus shouts, Da voi, spietato! By you, wretched man.
Ain't opera grand?

October 5, 2005

Well, here's another problem.
How to sing the entire cycle straight through without losing your voice?
I'm croaking a bit anyway (how could anyone tell?) but hell, at least some of the time
there's some tone there, some spin and some warmth.
I said to Ben today, Let's do the whole thing, start to finish, no stopping.
We stopped a few times, pushing and shoving our ways through the sea wall of this thick and shifting
tonality.  I remember when we first discussed doing this. I thought I knew enough
about German so I could learn to do this well. I'm a pretty good musician. I've been listening to
Dichterliebe since I was fifteen. How hard could this be?

After one hour of rehearsal, I'm done. I need a week in intensive care.
Just the concentration required, the ability to listen and express what's going on between he bars is an
enormous challenge. Nobody should throw away their Fritz Wunderlich albums, but
this si a wonderful mental and spiritual exercise and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

So-never mind there are two pieces back to back I can't sing because they are too f-ing low.

When I say I can't sing I mean I have no core tone to the singing voice. I can sing in tune, I can carry a tune, I understand the German. You need to absorb this music and these words to really internalize them so you can express your view of the piece. Which means you need to have a view of the piece. I tell younger singers-learn everything about the world in which the work was created.
   
October 14, 2005

Lotte Lehmann as Leonore in Fidelio*

Okay, so I've spent the whole week opening my throat. Damned near gagged with a bulldozer. Finally I know how to squeeze out more sound from the abdominal muscles and use compressed air-the power-through the cords. I'm not saying the sound is pretty, or expressive, or nice.  But there is some sound just this side of a steam whistle.

Today I got some minute word by word coaching on the German.  I'm the macro type myself, but
this type of work is critical. One needs to breathe where it makes sense musically, and usually it will be where it makes sense in the words, an afterthought or a qualifying sentence.

Yesterday I as asked to substitute teach a class on lieder for undergrads. It was Pat Woliver's song lit class. He took the day off to sing Yom Kippur Services. I told these young people, if you are going to sing this music, then aside from technique and language you must have courage.  Don't be afraid to be overly emotional in your approach. Move your bodies, move your faces. Be aware that your eyes are very important points of contact for the audience

The young singers here tend to be musically impeccable and sing very well. They are also of the butt cheeks clenched don't move a muscle school. Bodies must be relaxed so that he audience has no sense of physical struggle. Marilyn Horne advocated the clenched school as a means to increase physical support. To me that deflects the the muscles in the lower belly-diaphragm-but who the hell am I to second guess Marilyn Horne? I tell the students to be emotional and be active knowing they will go overboard and its easier to take emotion away than to add.

One of the reasons the song business is dying is that you have nice people getting up and singing in German. They don't speak German. The audience doesn't speak German. But there we are doing two hours of German. So you have to integrate yourself into the language so completely you could tell the story blindfolded (or gagged) Do I think you need to be a native speaker to excel in lieder. Not necessarily. It helps, but if you sing with no imagination or no way to invite the audience in, it doesn't mater what the hell is your native language. You are up there to tell a story. If the song is about love, what do you know about love? Love and sex (as in fucking) often go together in this literature, but here's no such thing as a vulgar lied. Unless an artist makes it so. (Don't). What do you know about death? Loss? pain? unrequited love? (the worst!) Song literature is full of this.

I knew the students would not know Lotte Lehmann  (1888-1976) and they didn't. I showed a DVD of one of her masterclasses, from 1961. I said,This old lady was the greatest exponent of German song. She had an imperfect technique.By the time she came to the States her voice was past its best. How did she manage to pack concert halls here for years? Because she believed every word she sang. She gave something of herself to everything she sang. She was unafraid. So must you be.

Some of the students didn't like Lehmann at all. "Too emotional"! God love them.  




 Sing everything the composer has asked you to sing, nothing more. Then gently you can begin to feed your own life experiences into the music and text. If you sing everything as written and gradually ad  your heart, you'll be fine. But doing one without the other is doing half.

October 16, 2005

OPEN YOUR THROAT!

I had a voice teacher say this to me the other day.

Karen Peeler, friendship and smarts

While learning Dichterliebe and working with Ben, I was pursuing a DMA at Ohio State. I had to go in as a voice major, God bless us and sapre us, because OSU had no program in opera production-the thrust of my studies and certainly my interest. The Dichterleibe project was not done for academic credit. It was for love and a learning experience only-and it repaid me enormously. The voice teacher was Pat Woliver, then and now a supportive, smart, inspiring friend and mentor to many young musicians.

Pat Woliver, artist and mensch

Why a D.M.A for me? I don't intend to teach (but you never know)
Karen Peeler is a  voice pedagogue extraordinaire is the last word in friendship and smarts. She encouraged me to do this-she made it possible, she was patient and thorough. God love her.

 I heard it a lot in college over twenty-five years ago. I even heard Maria Callas say it to a terrified young soprano in her Julliard master classes forty years ago. For the record, it was the only time I heard Callas in the two classes I attended be anything but patient and kind.


You can't sing with your mouth closed. It is possible to open up wide and have the back of your throat sealed up there. That's what I've been doing. Thus the sound is breathy, unsupported and has no vibrato. I was never able when younger to make the physical connection in my own body to produce the sound properly.  It might be pitched speaking but singing it ain't. And I'll say it again, Dichterleibe really is a ball buster.


The physical mechanisms have to be in first class shape (get thee to the gym) to get through this. Today, after a weekend of practising the "beginning of the yawn" without gagging, I went to rehearsal with Ben and opened my throat. For about three minutes the sound was focused and rich and terrific. After three minutes it was breathy, constricted, tight and horrible.  But hell, I got those three minutes I never had before. The great tenor Mario del Monaco used to shove a spoon down his pupils' throats getting to the gola aperto. Gives a whole new meaning to "gag me with a spoon."

Many consider Ich grolle nicht to be the heart of the cycle


I won't complain
Even if my heart is breaking'
Love lost forever
I won't complain


Even though you gleam with the glory of diamonds
(Wie du straehlst in Diamantenspracht-say THAT three times fast)
No gleam falls into the night of your heart.








I can't sing this. I know the notes, the words and the mood and its too low for me, its too high for me, it's a killer and I'm all over the place. It is song 7, with 9 to go.
I can't really sing song 6 either, ain't that a kick? The exhortation of the Rhine "With its great
Cathedral of the hold city of Cologne" so far requires more support and gut strength than I can muster without passing gas. But I'm working on it. The singing, I mean..

October 18, 2005

The good news is we are not cancelling, which might not be good news to the many.  We are postponing.

This entire project began as an invitation to Ben Wiant to play a piano recital at First Congregational Church, Columbus. Ben has been the go-to guy for piano tuning for decades. He had been a pianist in his youth and wanted to get back to playing. He also wanted to work on 'Dichterliebe' and he invited me along for he ride. during the process I benefited enormously from his impeccable musicianship. Ben approached this score with talent, dignity and class. He wouldn't let me say, "No I can't do this". He only said, "Yes you can. Now go work on your German." Or, "Yes you can. you are out of tune here-stop and tune it." I benefited from his talent. I have benefited from his friendship for more than twenty years. Thank you, Ben. What are we going to do next?

What might be mediocre and a stunt could be serious music making and fun if we do it after the holidays. Not that Ben, bless him, has any problems. But me, at 200 plus pounds and nearing a certain age, well...
(Bob Gartside e mailed me: "You're still young!")
I have the German and he intent but not yet the stamina to do this justice.
So we practise and work and we wait. You know, the gift of a piece like Dichterliebe is that every time you finish a one or two page song, and turn the page, it's like receiving a present! The next page is always something that looks small, but is large and miraculous.  All that emotion and beauty in a few notes and a few German words. It's very humbling. I suspect neither been nor myself wants to interrupt a rehearsal process that is affording us both, he at the keyboard, me not at the keyboard,a lot of growth.

So we wait.
Diary continues, though.

Charles Panzera

I've been producing a radio series on the art song for fifteen years. I know something about the song literature, how, why, who. I love to go back to 100 year old recordings: Giuseppe Borgatti, Georges Thill, Lili Lehmann singing in their own language. I knew of the French baritone Charles Panzera, but Ben insisted I listen closely to his recording of Dichterliebe. Panzera (1896-1976), born in Switzerland was a lyric baritone. (He was not to my ears the baryton- martin  you hear in French baroque music and sometimes as Debussy's Pelleas-with the high extension and the lighter vocal technique.) Panzera recorded Dichterliebe auf deutsch-in 1935, with Alfred Cortot no less. This to me is the perfect singer/pianist collaboration. There are no affects. The piece is performed by both artists from the page. You can hear the beauty of Panzera's voice, his love for words-and Cortot matching the vocal texture perfectly.

Here's the whole thing. You need to hear his:






November 3, 2005

Two days ago Ben and I were supposed to perform at First Congregational Church.  We postponed several weeks ago, but some people did show up.  I'm sorry they were inconvenienced.  But hey, at least people are interested. Which may or may not be a good thing. We had another rehearsal yesterday.

It's becoming physically easier for me, less of a workout. I couldn't do it now! I'm more pumped at the finish than exhausted.  What to my ears sounds too bright and over focused still doesn't carry that well against the piano in the rehearsal hall. Which may or may not be a good thing. We had another rehearsal yesterday.

Most of our rehearsals were in the choir room at First Congregational Church. I'll never forget the kindness of the folks who had offices along the corridor. Never once did they call the cops or animal control when listening to me singing.

Like all important works of art, Dichterliebe feeds anyone who really wants to dig into it and discover what's there. You can't be bored and you are never, but never finished.  Just when I think I've caught the right tone of irony, or or joy, or anger, the piano contradicts what I sense is going on.

The irony of a lot of major keys and bright colors, of mood changes, of the protagonists happy and bitter, (not defeated, bitter) in the same verse, with a fee degrees of separation, is overwhelming. I wonder if Schumann or any other composer expected their work to provoke so much study, centuries after their deaths. Mozart usually wrote on spec. Once a work was performed he was on to  the next one, for cash. Did he think people would be writing books about the Jupiter Symphony in 2005? They are.  Did Bach, who had to produce a slew of music for each Sunday of the liturgical year, think his cantatas would be sung 200 years later? I wonder if Mozart of Bach would have cared. Bach was a salaried employee for many years. Mozart wanted to be, and never in his best years could he attract enough patronage.

Sometimes the larger orchestral works and the big operas overwhelm a listener in their complexity. With lieder, its two people, voice and piano.  Should there be more transparency?  Is it easier for the listener to hear what's going on? you'd think so. Forget it. A one page Wolf lied is as confounding as all of the Goldberg Variations.  I love what Janet Baker says: The preparation is the best part. Sometimes the audience gets in the way. (Not really)

Another "kleine pause" here. I want to remember soprano Evelyn Lear who died on July 1, 2012. She was the world's most gorgeous Marschallin. I'm listening to her 1974 Met broadcast of Rosenkavalier kvelling to her vocal beauty. She is remembered in more detail elsewhere on this blog. Her lieder were sensational.



December 1, 2005

Ben and I got to rehearse today for the first time in weeks.  I hadn't opened the score since our last meeting. (I know, I know) I came away a tad discouraged.

One of the purposes of this blog is to work out for myself, in writing, what I hope to accomplish by studying Dichterliebe. I told Ben that we had been rehearsing long and well, except for this hiatus

Now, I said, we have to sit down over coffee, away from the piano, and really decide how we are going to perform.  In rehearsal the piano is loud and the choir room very "live." I can't keep up vocally, and there's a lot of banging going on.  We have work shopped the music and the text. Both of us know what's going on here. Now we have to bring it together.  I said I have to match with what limited voice I have to the tone you are using for the piano.  (I'll say it again, for lieder you have to listen as much as you have to sing.) If our attacks are going to be forceful, or tentative, or shaded, let's decide that so that I can color he words to match what you're doing. We'll go over the words carefully, , but yikes! that's difficult here. The songs are each quite short. What moods Schumann cast don't last very long, and the shifts between the bitter, the elegiac and the emphatic are quick.  Very little time to prepare. The physical action of throwing out the text is a challenge.

Ein Jungling liebt ein Maedchen



The tune recalls  a toothpaste commercial from the 60s:
"Ultrabrite...gives your mouth...sex ap-peal!"
You scamper along, telling of the maiden who marries the first guy to come along. The boy is upset but it still flows until a complete shirt in the last lines:

Und wenn sie ist passieret
Den bringt mein Herz entzwei

It's an old story
but remains new
And he to whom it happens
It breaks his heart in two.

...and you finish off with this heavy-Beethoven like declaration of 'Hertz entzwei"-changing key in two phrases. Just the technique needed to go from Schumann to...God!---Spontini in two phrases is formidable.

All you can do is keep workin'.

February 7, 2006

Francesco Tamagno...in my dreams!

One of the reasons I haven't posted here in two months is that until last week my score has been gathering dust.Ben and I did manage a rehearsal last week.  I had no balance with the piano at all.  By the fourth song I was either shouting or croaking.  In voice lessons I'm taken to high C, and you know what? A lot of it ring and juice and squillo.  It's like there's a real voice there.
My life as a singer, though, is firmly anchored in fantasy-land. I can picture myself as Vickers or Domingo or Tamagno as Otello but I open my eyes and there I am sweating like a pig on my new elliptical machine, reading sweaty back issues of Opera News.  I tried to listen to CDs. Do not do this.  I nearly nodded off during Parsifal.

Back to Dichterliebe. You know, this is music I respect but do not love (Nor true these years later. I love it a lot) It's a bit like kissing your sister.
But if I had several weeks to do nothing else but dig into this score, and sing chunks of it every day, no doubt I'd be happier with it and making progress.
Ben and I really need to work on balance. I have to apply the new technical points I am learning.  A good sound is possible. But God, what you have to do to make music. I know what the music is telling me, but getting it out of my throat is a struggle.

No one said it would be easy. Lieder ain't for wimps.

 February 16, 2006

Ben and I have begun working again, under the eye of a superb vocal technician who is taking us through the entire cycle note-by-note.
I'm not a micro detail person at ll, far from it.
I don't pick up socks.  I leave underwear on the floor and drink milk out of the carton. Not good when you are trying to communicate the secret locked into music and German poetry. So being stopped every three notes is new to me.  To my relief, I'm far from rattled by this.  It seems a note by note approach is the way for me to go, to embrace the work in a technical sense.  "More space...breathe lower...Why are your larynx so high...you are getting too edgy...stop it...Oh, your epiglottis is wrapped around your neck (I had to look this one up)...Thee there are the in b flats in the middle of the page. Piece of cake note, right? Middle of the register! Yes?"

 No.

Get a good breath under the middle notes! Voices can be weaker in the middle range and that is the heart and meat of any voice.  Forget the high notes. (I don't have them anyway) and stop growling your low notes. Und so weiter.

I never had a flippant attitude when Ben and I took up this project last fall. But if you spend time listening to recordings it all sounds much easier than it is. It's a mistake to judge yourself against Lotte Lehmann or Fischer-Dieskau. I'd love to have their rehearsal tapes. I have not a natural voice, but a manufactured one, note by f___ing note. Thank God, I don't really have talent as a singer, and that my passion for music has outlets in radio, pre-concert talks and stand-up. 

February 23, 2006

Today Ben announced that we need to schedule an actual date to have at least a run through in front of an audience.


He said, it's only twenty minutes and I'll make a cake.
But its still a few weeks off, thank God.
At today's rehearsal we did the entire work straight through.
We'll need to do this several times per week, or at least I will, for the stamina.
Rule #1: Don't try to jump a three foot wall before you jump a one foot wall.
In my case, my tummy gets in the way of looking at my feet so the height of the wall doesn't matter, but you get my drift.
The gift of this cycle remains with me.  Every time I turn a page, I'm astonished and thrilled all over again.  Ben is good at micro details.
Hold that note three beats, as Schumann wrote. This is not the place to get artsy.
I play a chord on the second beat dissonant with what you're doing and we have to bring that out. Stop putting umlauts on every  vowel except the ones that have umlauts.

For myself, I notice my German has a faux French or Italian accent.
I was pretty shocked when stopped at the first word, "IM wunderschoenene monnat Mai", since I was singing "EEEM wunderschoenen.." Other words like stumm and fluss get the same treatment. About the only accent I couldn't muster, besides German, is Boston Irish and you'd think I'd get that right.

I was looking for an experience from which to lean and grow, and In boy have I found one. An honest and lengthy study of the lied forces introspection and self examination, in addition to developing musicianship.  I'm often asked to help young singers. I'm getting a good idea of what I'm asking them to do, and how difficult and exhausting it is.

The problem is to do the text and music as written while still being a musician , linguist, actor, interpreter and technician.  Sometimes I can manage one or two together, but no more so far.  It is an exhausting challenge, and I suspect even the greatest artists approach music and text with the humility that only makes them greater. 

 March 3, 2006

The other day Ben and I worked in the sanctuary of the church.  We couldn't find the lights so I ever sensitive said to hell with it  and we;ll make do with the overcast skies trying to stream through the stained glass.

I'm getting to the point where I m hearing Dichteliebe in my sleep

Well fragments of it anyway. Most of the time I hear Judge Judy or one of the Real Housewives Horror Shows-which mercifully did not exist in 2006. But they are like a train wreck, no? Impossible to look away.

I'm not tired of it at all. A great work is savored over a life time. I've always believed that art in any medium repays tenfold the attention given it,  and that's been the case for me.

Trumpeting out das ist ein Floten und Geigen, flutes and strings are heard and trumpets blare, well by this time the trumpet such as it is is shouting and rasping away.  Its so easy to forget any technique you may have in the first few minutes of a performance. No, no forget but neglect! It never became automatic for me. That takes years. 

Phyllis Curtin

I love #10-Hor'ich das Liedchen klingen and esepcailly # 12 with its exquisite last line:  when the flowers in their beauty complement the poet's despair:

Sei uns'er Schwester nicht bose
Du trauriger, blasser Mann

Do not be angered at our sister
You sad, pale man

Singing that line is a gift, as is listening to the piano postlude. I prefer to savor Dichterliebe in its small, exquisite moments.

There are rests, quick dissonances and changes of mood that are easy to miss at first hearing. But as you work through you begin to get "it". Music is like life. You never "get" all of it. I love what Phyllis Curtin said, "I was sitting at the piano one day singing over some Poulenc melodies and thinking to myself oh! I 've finally understood this. Then I realized I was 75 years old and had no voice left!"

April 5, 2006

Ben and I are preparing an actual performance for The Ladies.  God bless them, well-to-do matrons who have supported the local symphony -and indeed, founded it-for fifty now sixty years. There'll be a lovely suburban living room filled with spring suits. VO5 hair spray and cocktail jewelry.  There'll be plenty of smiles and a table filled with lime green jello molds.  Not a chocolate cake or a pastrami sandwich in sight.

(Years ago I spoke to such a group and as offered a vegetable concoction and the Head Lady said: "For God;'s sake, Helen, you can't give that to a MAN!"  And out came a large, greasy roast beef sandwich. I tried to demure, but no. The room gasped in delight as I wolfed down every bit of the thing ("God love him, they don't pay him much and he probably never gets a decent meal"...I weighted 220 lbs at the time.)

(And if you think I'm making fun of The Ladies, I'm the first to tell you that without Ladies anywhere in this country there would be no performing arts. Local societies always start with them, and grow because of their generosity and devotion and because wisely the husbands do as they're told.)

Sometimes a husband finds himself stuck in the crowd for one of my talks. I always say, Oh God sir, what did you do wrong? It's either buy her a diamond ring or come hear Christopher of a golf perfect weather afternoon! The husbands get a good laugh. I don't know what awaits them at home. An hour with me on a sunny day should be penance enough.

Back to Dichterliebe.  Ben and I have been preparing for this since last fall.  I never wanted to do an actual performance because I don't want to be judged as a singer. As an amateur in the best sense of the word-for love, yes. The rehearsal process has been lively and instructive. It's been an oasis for me in the midst of writing scripts, ducking management, school work and watching too much TV. I finished the doctoral program in 2008. You have to call me DOCTOR Big-Butt, now.   The cycle is a gift, as is all music and all poetry.  The more you hear it the newer it gets. Small things that were not obvious to me. Holding notes for their full value, especially when set against dissonant chords. Making the words "schmerz", "Engel:, "Rhein", "Blumen", "Herz", words used so often by Heine-have a different meaning that matches the musical setting.  Expressing the WHY even when there is nothing to sing, especially in the pauses between songs.  Patrick Woliver, one of my patient and fantastic teachers reminds me: "Remember you are the face of this work even when you have nothing to sing.  There's no time off until the cycle ends."

I don't regret not being a singer. I don't regret that finding an instrument to express what I've learned to be true of Dichterliebe, based on the music and text, has taken so long. Music is always a journey.

On to The Ladies....

April 18, 2006

WE DID DICHTERLIEBE!!!!!   or
We DID Dichterliebe!!

Ben and I performed Dichterliebe the other day for the Ladies of the Worthington Columbus Symphony Support Unit.

Our hostess, Mrs. H said to me "I'm on the young side of this crowd and I'm seventy-nine.  he last time you spoke to us was at Liselotte's house. She died, you know. Went in with an aneurysm poor soul. They were working on her and she said Le me alone! I'm ninety-two and I want to watch my soap operas. So they left her alone and she passed away watching The Young and the Restless. Do you want another brownie?"

Ben and I did the whole piece soup to nuts.
The Ladies, over thirty of them  in one living room mad cooing noises and whispered "adorable" and "too fat" behind the smiles.

Ben was adorable. I was....I've since slimmed down. Under 200 lbs for the first time in thirty years!

Even with some adjustments for hearing aids and a plethora of hair pray,  it was a lovely morning.  Ben and I worked hard.  Ben and I worked very hard. My German wasn't awful, and if I didn't sound like Dieskau I  made music and told the story.  Unrequited love and the struggle between our physical and emotional selves.  I came into my own telling The Ladies "Listen for the words HERZ, SCHMERZ, and GELIEBTER.  here's the whole history of music right there!"   

The Lady to my left, sitting now 2 feet from me, fell asleep by the third song. She was the youngest there, around my age. Mouth open snoring away. Looks of disapproval were shot her way, not by me. Ben and I ignored it and went on. Occasionally a bit of sleep apnea snorted and growled. We tried to make it part of the show. This Lady told me she had never enjoyed music so much! I'll bet!!

After this, how about the Hermit Songs or Fiancailles pour rire?
I'm bitchin; to go on, and Te Ladies will always be with us.
Even Liselotte, who is in heaven watching The Edge of Night. 


HERE ENDETH THE DIARY

Postcript

Ben and I did finally perform Dichterliebe at Columbus's First Congregational Church. We had been invited by (then) Minister of Music Timothy Smith. Ben is a member and I'm often there for concerts and an occasional service. Good people in a beautiful space. I had come to know the clergy and staff a bit so I was confused that not one of them spoke to us before the concert, and there was no sign of Tim Smith, who after all, had  extended the invitation. Oh, well. On we went-about 100 people in the church, mostly friends of Ben. Afterward lots of hugs and handshakes-NOBODY told me I was a fine singer but several noted my love for Dchterliebe came through. THAT was a lovely compliment.   

Later I discovered why Ben and I had been avoided by the Church staff and Tim Smith was a no show. Tim's father had died very suddenly the night before. "We didn't wan to tell you that before the concert." It was lovely and humbling when later I was told "Your concert was a nice prayer for Mr. Smith." Isn't that what music is for?