Remarks On The Lockdown

Public places closed,
And boredom is setting in.
How long will it last?

Addendum on Documentaries Post

As I've been binging on the Space Race (and right in the middle of finishing a Titanic/Eastland project no less!), I have made a couple of further observations about documentaries.  I did not mention these in my main post on the topic and so I will speak of them here.  

The first thing I talked about was listening to how writers use the language in the documentary.  A good writer will be precise in his language and back up his assertions with facts. 
    Sometimes you will get a piece about something in history or science that isn't very well-known.  This is to be expected as history and science are always on the move.  But beware of titles that say "The Untold Story", "The True/Real Story", "The Forgotten Story", or anything like that.  Titles like these sound dramatic and may get the viewer interested, but they make an assertion that may or may not be true.  
        I have read and reread a book called The Sinking of the EASTLAND: America's Forgotten Tragedy.  This is one of the few cases in which the "forgotten" label is justified.  The capsizing has become largely obscure despite happening right in the middle of the Chicago Harbor.  So when the book says that it's a forgotten tragedy, I can believe it.  
        Last week I saw a documentary called "Apollo 13: The Real Story".  How are the makers sure that it's the "real story"?  Most people in the U.S. know about the incident and so to try to claim that there is a real story is foolish at best. 

Which brings me to my second point.  Take note of the documentary's tone.  Every now and then you will get a documentary written by someone with an axe to grind be it political, social, or whatever.  When that happens you sometimes get conspiracy theories.  And conspiracy theories will be heavy handed and unpleasant.  Last week I tried watching a documentary called Secret Space: The Soyuz 1 Coverup.  I wanted to know about the Soyuz 1 disaster that killed Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.  The documentary indulged in the Ilyushin myth and even claimed that Yuri Gagarin's death in a plane crash was engineered by Brezhnev.  And the narration throughout the documentary was harsh and unsubtle.  
     It is true that the Soviet government tried to cover up a lot of things.  But the conspiracy theories and overall harsh tone of the documentary made it unwatchable.  

I like documentaries that are objective with their language.  If you want to say that something is the "Untold/Real/Forgotten Story" or whatever, you have to be able to back up your assertion.  While something may be genuinely obscure like in the case of the Eastland, others may seem obscure but turn out to be little more than fringe activities that had been part of an ongoing issue.  Or it may turn out be a conspiracy theory, which means someone is telling a lie.  Use language precisely.  

Fifteen Years Later

I have little to nothing to say about the 9/11 attacks.  All I can say is that I was ten-years-old when it happened.  It was also my very first exposure to Islamic ideas, which meant that I feel into the prejudice trap.  It has taken me years to recognize that most Muslims are honest people who do not want to see their neighbors blown up.  But I have also learned just how complicated a lot of issues are, and that there is often no clear-cut answer to many of the questions today.  

I'd talk about what needs to be done, but I would only go off on a riff, so I will simply for those who lost families when the Twin Towers were destroyed. 

CAVELERIA RUSTICANA/I PAGLIACCI: Two Verismo Classics In One Handy Package

The more things change, the more things stay the same.  

Yes, I know that platitude has been overused and outlived its usefulness, but boy does Sir David McVicar know how to use it to grand effect. He put together a superb production of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci; opera's most famous tragic double bill.  Tenor Marcelo Álvarez has dared to take on both the roles of Turiddu and Canio in this production, which is no easy feat. Joining him were sopranos Eva-Maria Westbroek and Patricia Racette in the roles of Santuzza and Nedda respectively, with baritone George Gagnidze as both Alfio and Tonio (again not an easy task).  McVicar's production sets the double tragedy in the same Sicilian village just fifty years apart.  
    
 I can't do a play-by-play like I enjoy doing because this one is a double-header, and double-headers don't lend themselves well to that sort of thing.


    In Cavalleria Rusticana, before the beginning of the story, Turiddu came back from war to find his beloved Lola married another man.  He seduced Santuzza and then abandoned her when Lola got jealous of them.  Santuzza was then excommunicated.  
          Santuzza confides in Turiddu's mother Lucia about what happened between them.  When Turiddu arrives, Santuzza pleads with him, but he dismisses her.  Lola enters and mocks Santuzza for her excommunication.  After Lola leaves with Turiddu for Mass, Santuzza tells Alfio about their adultery (and immediately regrets it).  Alfio confronts Turiddu who challenges him to a duel. They fight and Turiddu is killed.
         In I Pagliacci, an impoverished traveling comedy troupe, headed by Canio, comes to town.  In the comic play the put on, Canio plays Pagliaccio and his wife Nedda plays Pagliaccio's unfaithful wife, Colombina.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, Nedda is cheating on Canio with another man, Silvio, in real life.  When Canio finds out, the results are disatrous.  

    The operas are different in style and McVicar wanted to capitalize on that.  So Cavalleria Rusticana is set in the year 1900 and is very dark and very brooding.  It is described as a backward looking piece that seems more reminiscent of early Verdi.  There is a lot of emphasis on rituals and religious ceremonies.  Everyone was clad in either black or dark grey.  Santuzza spent most of those ritual scenes off to one side, as she has been excommunicated. 
        
 

In this production, I Pagliacci is set in the same village as Cavalleria, but takes place fifty years later in 1948.  This on is described as a more forward looking piece and largely about conversation (such as one would find in a television soap opera of our day).  The mixture of comic and tragic elements and the blurring of lines between public and private lives is what makes this production work.  
    McVicar worked hard to make the Act 2 comic play feel funny as opposed to just looking funny.  You have clownish servants doing juggling tricks or slapping each other in the face with whipped cream.  There is a chicken puppet which seems to move on its own, but is in fact under a false arm (later on the chicken is cooked and refuses to stay dead).  Giving the play a lot more tangible humor makes the tragic finale all the more devastating. 

Eva-Maria Westborek outdid herself in this opera, besting her own performance of Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini just two years ago.  She was always onstage, doing something whether it was crying on Mamma Lucia's shoulder or praying during the intermezzo.  
      Marcelo Álvarez and George Gagnidze worked the hardest out of everyone in the cast.  They were in both Cavalleria and Pagliacci, with Álvarez singing both Turiddu and Canio, and Gagnidze singing both Alfio and Tonio.  Both were spectacular both vocally and dramatically.  As Turiddu, Álvarez was somewhat indecisive in regards to Lola and Santuzza.  And Gagnidze as Alfio seemed more cocky and overconfident.  And then made a smooth Álvarez went from being the heart-breaker to being heart-broken as the unfortunate Canio in I Pagliacci.  To hear him sing the famous lament that closes Act 1 was something else.  Gagnidze was very good as Tonio.  For some weird reason they gave him the final line of the opera, "La comedia e finita.",* to him rather than to Canio.  
      Patricia Racette as Nedda was also very good.  She brought a lot to the character, namely Nedda's conflicted emotions.  Should she stay with Canio, or leave with Silvio? 
     In the original libretto, Nedda is supposed to be around seventeen or eighteen whereas Canios is in his forties or fifties. In this production, they looked much closer in age, maybe a couple in their late thirties or early forties.  I liked that bit; it meant that now the things that are troubling their relationship are a little more complex.  So Nedda is not just a young wife who hates her life and wants to be free; there's more to it.  It could very well be that they were madly in love when they first married, and the stress of traveling around the time and the grinding poverty they deal with took its toll on both of them.  
      I don't like Silvio very much, but I have seen a baritone who played him very passionately before (as in, could make this one-dimensional character real).  I forget the name of the man who sang Silvio here, but his interpretation made the character seem like a cardboard cut-out and was not particularly enthralling in his performance.  

Splendid production.  Sir David McVicar has got to bring this one to Madison.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*"The comedy is over."
        


         

Incest: A Royal Pain in the Hindquarters

In my last post, I described Silva in Verdi's Ernani as Elvira's incestuous Hapsburg uncle.  Ernani is set in 16th Century Spain, which during the reign of the Hapsburg kings.  And given the incestuous marriages within the Hapsburg dynasty, Silva's advances toward Elvira in the opera don't come as much of a surprise. 

Royal incest was (and probably still might be), a common problem among many cultures.  The wife of the Inca Emperor was always his sister, and the same was generally true in Ancient Egypt.  The Spanish Hapsburgs married their nieces, nephews, and first cousins.  The idea was to keep the wealth within the family.
           The problem with incest is that when someone has sex with someone whose a direct blood relative, the chances of genetic defects being passed down to the offspring is extremely high.  That's what happened to Tutankhamen (thank you National Geographic).  His father, Akhenaten, had sex with his own blood sister.  And it didn't help that the Pharaohs had incest as a tradition for hundreds of years.  The result was that Tut was in weak health all his life, had a deformed foot, and the two children born to him were premature and stillborn.

With the Spanish Hapsburgs, the royal line was so far inbred that Charles II was unable to even eat.  His ancestor Philip II had a jutting chin, which isn't bad.  But as the royal family continued to marry their relatives, the jutting chin became more and more pronounced, and when Charles II was born, his chin jutted so far out that it was a deformity.  He couldn't eat because of it, and his IQ was pretty far down. 
   And eventually it got to a point where the Spanish Hapsburg were so far inbred that the royal line became extinct.      


So Silva's behavior was quite common for those of royal or noble blood from that time. And it led to the Spanish Hapsburgs dying out altogether. 

Stupid and Incomprehensible Bumper Stickers

I saw a strange bumper sticker on my way to an appointment.  It was written in green and blue letters and it read "WHEN A FAT GIRL FALLS IN A FOREST, DO THE TREES LAUGH?".  If you ask me, that makes about as much sense as a Megalodon volleyball team.  What exactly does someone mean when they ask if trees laugh when a fat girl falls in a forest?  I would love to know the answer.

And then of course you've got your general share of idiotic "Coexist" bumper stickers.  These bumper stickers are popular with people who assume that education will end prejudice.  You'd have better success trying to get a great white shark to give up seals in favor of seaweed (their teeth are not designed for eating plants). 

I'm getting fed up with the "RECALL SCOTT WALKER!" stickers.  Come on!  He hasn't been caught with hand either in the till or down someone's pants.  That's the only legitimate reason to recall an elected politician.  I'm also utterly sick of all the noise people are making about him, so the moment I see a "RECALL WALKER" bumper sticker I always say "GO SIR WALTER SCOTT!", simply because I'm tired of all the shoutloud.  

If there is a political bumper sticker that actually makes sense, let me know. 

EUGENE ONEGIN: Tchaikovsky's Masterpeice

I first heard Eugene Onegin when I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school.  I also had a boyfriend at the time.  The opera was being broadcast over the radio as part of the Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network and Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang the title role.

Last night, I went with my dad to see Eugene Onegin at the Overture Center in Madison. Baritone Hyung Yun sang the title role and he's pretty good. Tatyana was sung by soprano Maria Kanyova.

The character of Eugene Onegin is nothing new.  He is every upper-class twit who believes that the world exists for his own personal amusement.  And in Act Three when he has come to St. Petersburg after wandering all over the world, he still hasn't grown up even at twenty six.

He snobbishly rejects the love of the humble country girl Tatyana Larina, but six years later after she's already been married for two years, he tries to get her to abandon everything for him.  And he rightly deserves the emotional smack in face he gets when Tatyana tells him to leave her forever.

Act One, Scene One opens in the provincial countryside.  Madame Larina, a widowed landowner, is making jam with Filipevna, her daughters' old nurse.  Tatyana is seventeen and her sister Olga (played to perfection by mezzo-soprano Jamie van Eyck), is sixteen.  They sing about love and passion while their mother listens and recalls the time when she felt those those feelings too.  The peasants come in from the harvest bringing tribute to Madame Larina and they dance. After they leave, the shy and dreamy Tatyana starts to read from one of her romantic novels, while the vivacious and coquettish Olga laughs and teases her.  Madame Larina notices Tatyana looking pensive and quiet and asks if she is ill.  Tatyana tells her that she is caught up in her novel.  Madame Larina tells her that it is all fiction.  Suddenly Olga's fiance Vladamir Lensky arrives with a friend from the city, Eugene Onegin.  While Lensky courts Olga, Onegin goes for a walk with Tatyana, who falls immediately in love with the handsome stranger.  Later, Madame Larina calls them in for dinner, and Filipyevna suspects that Tatyana has fallen in love.

           Scene Two finds us in Tatyana's bedroom where she asks Filipyevna about her first love.  Filipevna tells her that her marriage was arranged when she was only thirteen; being in love was out of the question.  She asks Tatyana if she's okay; Tatyana simply says that she's is love and asks her nurse to leave, but not without asking for a pen and some paper.  After Filipevna leaves, Tatyana, flushed with a wild compulsive love for Onegin, writes him a letter and fantasizes about who she believes him to be.  In fact, she stays up all night writing the letter.  In the morning, she gives it to Filipevna, whose grandson will take the letter to Onegin.

         Scene Three takes place in the garden where peasant women are picking berries and singing about flirting with young men.  Tatyana enters and sees Onegin approaching.  She is afraid of how he will think of her.  Onegin enters and tells her that while he moved by her sentiments, he is not a man made for marriage and will cease to love Tatyana after a while.  Translation: "I'm a man of great importance, you're just a coltish little country girl who reads too much."  Tatyana is crushed.

  

Act Two, Scene One takes place a few months later.  It is Tatyana's eighteenth birthday and her family is throwing a grand ball for her.  All their neighbors have come to celebrate, including Eugene Onegin.  Lensky persuaded him to come with.  Onegin dances with Tatyana, but some of the neighbors have heard about what happened in the garden.  Onegin gets fed up with their talk.  He's bored and blames Lensky for his boredom.  To get back at Lensky, Onegin flirts with Olga and dances many dances with her.  This arouses Lensky's jealousy and he confronts Olga.  She tells him that he is overreacting.  This encounter is interrupted by Monsieur Triquet; a French neighbor and Tatyana's tutor.  He serenades Tatyana in French.  Afterward, the dancing begins again and Onegin dances with Olga again.  Lensky decides that he's had enough and challenges Onegin to a duel.  Madame Larina begs them not to fight in her house.  Lensky believes that Olga has betrayed him and dumps her in front of everybody.  Although Onegin asks Lensky to not make a scene, he accepts Lensky's challenge, and between the two of them, they ruin Tatyana's birthday.  Olga pleads with Lensky but her words fall on deaf ears.

                  Scene Two takes place at dawn.  Lensky and his second, Zaretski, are present.  Zaretski wonders why Onegin is late (he follows the rules of dueling to the point of absurdity).  Lensky muses on his short life and imagines Olga going to his grave to mourn him.  Onegin enters with his valet, Guillot, acting as his second.  Both Onegin and Lensky believe that they have acted foolishly and wish they could reconcile and be friends again, but they are both too proud do so.  The duel proceeds and Lensky is killed.

Act Three, Scene one takes place six years later at the palace of Prince Gremin where a grand ball is in progress.  Onegin is twenty-six and depressed.  He has been wandering the world in search of entertainment and escape from the memory of Lensky, whose bloody ghost Onegin believes still haunts him.  He has no job, no wife, no obligations, and no purpose.  Suddenly, the elderly Prince Gremin enters with his beautiful young wife on his arm.  Onegin recognizes her as Tatyana, the same girl he rejected all those years ago.  Tatyana recognizes him and prays for strength.  Gremin tells Onegin that Tatyana is his wife and he is just crazy about her.  He got fed up with all the phonies he saw around.  Then Tatyana came along and she is the complete opposite of the aristocrats and he saw it.  He then introduces Onegin and Tatyana, but Tatyana says that she is tired and leaves with her husband.  Onegin suddenly realizes that he has fallen in love with Tatyana.

             The final scene takes place in Tatyana's boudoir.  Onegin has sent her a letter, just as she did to him.  Tatyana is troubled by the old passion and weeps.  Onegin enters and throws himself at her feet.  Tatyana regains herself and tells him to get up.  When Onegin declares his love for her, she questions him.  He broke her heart once before.  Why does he come running to her now?  Is it her position?  Her husband's reputation?  Why should she believe him when he's proven himself to be a self-centered young man?  Onegin says he made a mistake and loves her.  Tatyana weeps and laments that love was once so close but now the past is past.  She admits that she still loves Onegin, but she is married now and will be faithful to her husband.  Onegin tried to force her to come with him and abandon her husband, her duties, everything for him.  Onegin continually begs Tatyana to give in, but finally she shouts "Farewell forever," and leaves Onegin to his despair.

The settings and acting were something else.  The first scene of Act One was the exterior of the Larin home. Just before the curtain rose, Onegin walked out onstage looking bored and annoyed.  Then the curtain rose to reveal a transparent screen in front of the scene one set.  Onegin stood for a moment, then left the stage.    On the left was the house which people went in and out of, and there was a table on the far right where Madame Larina and Filipevna sat making jam.  This production had Olga behaving like a little girl and several times she snarfed some of the jam.  There were autumn birch trees and fallen leaves as well.  The peasants' dance was something else.

                Scene two had Tatyana's bed, bookshelf, desk, and chair simply out of a platform in front of a screen.  When the letter scene is over, the platform is removed and we're back to the exterior of the house, as if Tatyana had wandered outside while she was fantasizing about Onegin (they actually showed her becoming aware of being outside in her nightgown!).  Filipevna is simply surprised to see her out of bed so soon.

               Scene three took place in the garden.  The screen rose to reveal to the peasant women picking berries.  there were two rows of berry bushes and what looked like those log chairs or whatever they are that you'd find at a summer camp.  When Onegin gave Tatyana what is often called his sermon, she sits on one of these little chairs.  After Onegin's lecture, she runs off.

               Now this production divided the second act between acts One and Three.  The first scene of Act two took place right after the Garden Scene.  This scene was the ballroom of the Larin house.  During this scene, an amazing waltz plays.  The walls of the room were a yellowish color.  There was a refreshment table in the background and over that was a wreath that resembled  a Christmas decoration.  There were also dining tables in the scene where guests sat and gossiped while couples danced.  Some of the men left the room and came back at the end of the waltz with several bottles of wine. In this production, Monsieur Triquet looked like Harpo and Bilbo put together and clad in goofy 19th Century costume.  When Onegin and Lensky's fight really got ugly and they began physically fighting with each other, several men pulled them back and really restrained them.

           Scene two  took place in a grove of trees at dawn.  There was a little light streaming through the trees.  Now, I've seen the duel on YouTube before, but the part where Lensky and Onegin actually turn and shoot still sent shivers up my spine and Onegin's gunshot still startled me.  That's simply a function of seeing the performance live as opposed to online. 

               Act Three, Scene one began with a polonaise and had Onegin being changed onto his good clothes for his appearance at the ball.  The setting had dining tables and large columns, plus a couch on the far right.  Gremin wore a military uniform while Tatyana wore a pink dress and a tiara.

       In my humble opinion, the most beautiful love song in all of opera is not sung by a young tenor, or young soprano, or young mezzo-soprano character, but by an old basso character who has seen so much over the years.  Bass Harold Wilson was perfect as Gremin.  At the end of the scene when Onegin sings that he is now in love with Tatyana, he immediately sits down and writes her the letter.  Then he give sit to a servant to take to Tatyana.

               The final scene in the boudoir was represented simply by curtained windows, bookshelves, a desk, and a couch.  Tatyana sat on the couch and wept after reading the letter, and Onegin saw this and threw himself at her feet.  She questions him and he protests saying he loves her.  She Admits she still loves him, but asks him to leave.  In this productions she tore his letter to shreds in front of him.  When she says her final farewell, she runs of and leaves Onegin collapsing and miserable.

On the whole, this was an awesome performance.  Russian Opera is different from other European opera but it is great.  I'd suggest this one for anyone whose new to opera, or else just a Tchaikovsky fan.

"Hansel and Gretel": Not Just A Children's Fairy Tale

I'm pretty sure most people in this country have heard of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale known as Hansel and Gretel.  It's the story of two children whose parents turn them loose in the forest where they become lost.  They come across a gingerbread house and feeling a sense of relief, they start to eat parts off of it.  An old woman comes out of the house and invites them in.  She feeds them sweetmeats and puts them to bed.  Unfortunately, she is an evil and scheming witch who eats children, and she plans to cook and devour them.  In fact, around her house are the children who have fallen into her trap before and were turned into gingerbread.  When the witch wakes Hansel and Gretel up the next morning, she puts Hansel in a cage and feeds him more and more.  She tells Gretel to cook the meal for him.  At one point, the witch tells Gretel to crawl into the oven to check to see if it's ready.  Pretending to be dumb, Gretel claims she doesn't know how and asks the witch to show her.  The witch gets exasperated and climbs in while telling the girl that it simple; and at that point Gretel hoists the witch with her own petard and shoves her all the way into the oven and then shuts and latches the door.  She then releases Hansel from the cage.  Meanwhile, the children who were turned into gingerbread come back to life and find that the witch herself has been turned into a giant gingerbread cookie which the children proceed to devour.  Hansel and Gretel return home and are reunited with their parents.

I have a feeling that this isn't just some story written for children.  While no witches exist who can turn children into gingerbread, there are in fact enemies out there who prey on children.  They are pimps, drug dealers, and others who use children for their own gain; namely money. 
I started reading a book yesterday called Please Forgive Me, God. It is the account of a Catholic nun who runs a shelter called the Covenant House for street children.  These were kids who escaped from troubled and abusive homes and wound up on the street.  The street is a cold and scary place for children to be; no food, no shelter, no one to love or at least relate to, all sorts of troubles.  So when someone comes and offers them a place to stay and food to eat, they accept without question.  But sooner or later what was supposed to be haven becomes a hell for the children.  The person whom they viewed as a savior is now their tormentor.  A young girl would be raped, beaten, and thrust into a life of prostitution.  A boy would be used as a trafficker, a drug dealer, or some other sort of criminal.  And it is all done to make a profit off of the children.  The captors want money. 

So there are witches of a sort out there.  They lure children in with the promise of food, shelter, and care, and then they abuse them and catapult them into a life of crime; just as the witch lured children into her gingerbread house with the promise of safety.  
I'm absolutely certain that the kids at the Covenant House can relate to Hansel and Gretel.  They were lured into a trap by someone who made a false promise to them.  Sometimes these street kids can summon up the courage to face their captors and find help, but unfortunately others don't.  Hansel and Gretel isn't just a mere children's story about two kids in lost in the woods; it's also a warning to children about dangerous people who are like the witch.  They may not pop you in the oven, but they'll threaten you with violence unless you obey them.  And they want to make money from all of it.