The Dapper Irishman (on the death of Ronan O'Casey)

the dapper irishman

On April 12, 2012 our friend Ronan O'Casey (known to his close friends simply as Case) was playing poker at one of the small gambling parlors south of Los Angeles. He was, evidently, an extraordinary poker player, and that day he had just won $100, about which he called to report to his wife, Carol Tavris; "I'm on my way home," he announced. Our friend Roz Leader, through whom we had long ago met Case and Carol, reported that she could just see him proudly driving away in a bright blue blazer, perhaps a purple or dark blue handkerchief sprouting from his coat pocket; Case was, with regard to dress, somewhat of a dandy.

     A few minutes later, he called Carol again to report that he had suddenly begun to feel strange, quite awful in fact. She advised him, since he was already on the freeway, to pull over to the side. The phone went dead. She attempted to call the police, but since she didn't know his precise whereabouts, a search was near impossible. A short time later, however, the police called back. A car had been spotted on one of the freeways, half on and half on the shoulder, with a body slumped over in the front seat. Having freed Case from the car and into the hands of a local hospital, rescuers flew him by helicopter to UCLA hospital; he was pronounced dead upon arrival. So, at the age of 90 ended the life of Ronan O'Casey.

     One cannot say that his death at that age was exactly a surprise. Case had been suffering the indignities of small strokes and other ailments for some time. But, as author Murray Pomerance—to whom I'd introduced Case and Carol a few years back—observed: "He seemed in some way, for all his fragility, immortal as perhaps all Irishmen are."

     By the time Howard and I had been introduced to Case at one of Roz's numerous dinner and holiday celebrations a number of years ago, he was, in some respects, a "man of the past," lovingly retelling his numerous stories of working with Michelangelo Antonioni in Blow Up (he played the dead body, a role which I describe in detail in My Year 2007: To the Dogs). But Case could also spin dozens of other stories, new and old, regarding his rich past as an actor (on the London stage in Kiss Me, Kate, The Odd Couple, and Detective Story; on TV as the well known character of Jeff Rogers in The Larkins from 1958-1963 and in films such as Nicholas Ray's Bitter Victory, with Richard Burton and Christopher Lee) as well as new events. Besides his acting career, Case had had an incredible life, was a marvelous cook, and could boast one of the most intelligent and perceptive wives, author and social psychologist Carol, anyone had ever met; she remains one of my very favorite of acquaintances.

    Beyond this, Case had "style," which many described in at his memorial service on April 22, 2012, as "grace." Case was a dynamic individual—no one can deny him that—loyal to friends, vociferously outspoken against whatever he saw as pretention—which sometimes, one must admit, could be directed at things simply outside his imagination. He was gloriously melodious of voice, charming and handsome, stubborn and, on rare occasion, plain irritating. Anything said against anything Irish—despite the fact that Case, himself, was born in Montreal—was met with a flurry of abuse. I have already reported his outburst over my dislike of the Irish Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney! Yet, when I later approached him for an interview about his experiences with Antonioni, Case came to lunch fluttering like a peacock,  sweet and appreciative of my attentions, filled with knowledge and engaging tales.

     Moreover, Case never stopped making new friends. Pomerance, who met him when he was writing a book on Antonioni, reported "I felt close to him." That was the way with Case, if one liked the man, one felt embraced.

     As Jay Perry described it at the memorial ceremony for Case at a private home on Rising Glen Road, he was for many not just a friend, but a great friend, one for whom people went out of their way, as attested to by Martha Bluming's long and charmingly written testimonial letter to Case's superb cherry pie. A lover of jazz, Case was celebrated at his memorial with a beautiful rendition of "Our Love Is Here to Stay" by the duo of Terry Trotter and Chuck Berghofer. Actor Theodore Bickel reminisced about his and Case's close friendship (more like brothers than just friends) in their early days in London and read, almost channeling Case's euphonous voice, Yeats' "Song of the Wandering Aengus." Carol read one of Case's favorite poems, ee cummings' "the great advantage of being alive," and Case's son Matt, read letters from relatives and friends unable to attend the ceremony.

     Everyone was moved to tears. And, ultimately, when we looked around the room, seeking out the ghost of the man we knew would always hover over our lives, but would no longer be a living part of them, many of us muttered to ourselves, in a language characteristic to the man, "fuck." The dapper Irishman had died.

Los Angles, April 23, 2012

Spiritual Uplift (on Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti)

SPIRITUAL UPLIFT

Leonard Bernstein Trouble in Tahiti / performed by the Pacific Opera Project, Santa Monica, California (the production I saw was on Sunday, April 15, 2012)

In early April 2012, my companion Howard heard on the radio of a young Los Angeles opera company’s plans to revive their first operatic production, Trouble in Tahiti, in a small theater space in a Santa Monica park. He immediately called for tickets.

     On Sunday, April 15^th, the day after we had watched the HD-live production of the MET’s La Traviata, Howard and I attended this amateur production of the Pacific Opera Project. The singers, all of whom had performed in small companies and in lesser roles in professional opera groups, introduced themselves, first performing—almost as a sort of bonus and promotion for their upcoming production, in Pasadena, of Cosi Fan Tutte—a medley of works from the Bernstein songbook, including numbers from Wonderful Town and West Side Story. Although their performances were certainly competent, the actors hammed-up their numbers a great deal, and their vocal ranges were not always best suited for the musical theater numbers they performed.

     Their performance of Trouble in Tahiti, however, was near perfect—at least vocally. Using a minimal set of interlinked, painted walls, the trio of the girl (Tara Alexander) and two boys (Robert Norman and Ryan Reithmeier) perfectly captured Bernstein’s jazz-inspired riffs on “the little white house” in the numerous American suburbs where they exist. Jessica Marmey and Phil Meyer expertly played the central couple, Dinah and Sam, as they fight, battle, and wander through a day in their tortured lives, each escaping into fantasy worlds—Sam into his vision of male-bonded powe-broker and Dinah into the romance of the movie she has seen, loved, and yet mocks. Her lovely aria of a dream world of “a quiet place,” was particularly well done; indeed such longing almost breaks the heart. But this is a couple, after all, who both make up excuses, when they encounter each other in the city, why they cannot share lunch, only to sit, each of them, lonely and unfulfilled.

     The remarkable thing about this small production is that, playing where it did, in a small local park in an intimate theater with about sixty audience members, both Howard and I were absolutely charmed by this theatrical experience in way that, after so many years of professional theater and opera, one begins to forget is at the heart of the art. It is a bit like attending a high school performance of a musical or opera about which one has little expectations, but is suddenly astounded by the freshness and resplendent originality of the work. While the film version I review elsewhere on this blog was brilliantly conceived and performed, this smaller production seemed somehow to get at the very heart of Bernstein’s simple two-piece operatic melodrama. And we both left the theater filled with a new kind of wonderment for both the piece and these young performers. Sometimes one simply has to go back to the roots of how one came to love theater and opera in the first place, to rediscover the simple marvel of talented individuals standing upon—in this case—a nearly empty stage and opening their mouths to sing out the pleasures and sorrows of life. Unlike all the productions of operas we have recently seen, the singers of this Trouble in Tahiti stood outside the entrance to the theater after the performance like the minister and chorus of a small town church to greet their congregation. We all shook hands and went home spiritually uplifted.

Los Angeles, March 21, 2012

Count Down (on Verdi's La Traviata)

count down

by Douglas Messerli

Francesco Maria Piave (libretto, after the play La dame aux camellias, by Alexandre Dumas fils), Giuseppe Verdi (music) La Traviata / the production I saw was the Met Opera HD Live broadcast on April 14, 2012

In this Willy Decker / Wolfgang Gussman production of Verdi’s standard, there is no consumptive coughing, no overdressed man and women attending the red-plumaged Violetta. Bringing the story into a more contemporary period, the director and designer have established from the outset—through the presence of a gigantic, surrealist-like clock, that the consumptive courtesan’s time is short. The entire set, in fact, appears as a giant waiting room with a long, curving cement-like embankment and an elliptical mezzanine where the choruses, a bit like observing doctors, can look down upon the theater of operation, Violetta’s “apartment,” wherein she plays out the short life she has yet to live.

     In some respects, this expressionistic set overstates everything, and certainly does not allow any dramatic tension about the inevitability of the plot. But it does free up the characters to symbolically enact a ritual which, after all, is not about story in the first place, but centered on the intense musical relationships of the three major characters: Violetta (Natalie Dessay), Alfredo (Matthew Polenzani), and his father Giorgio (Dimitri Hvorostovsky).

     Dessay, a trained actress, begins the opera as a performer about to go on stage, the way many have described Judy Garland offstage just before her entry, her small frame suddenly rising into a figure slightly larger than life. Violetta, having recovered from a recent consumptive attack, is weak, not at all sure she might be able to attend the party she is throwing that night. But bit by bit she pulls together, transforming herself into the party girl in short red dress her guests—men and women all dressed in black and white suits—have come to expect. This “bacchanal,” however, is closer to a mined performance of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge than it is to Verdi’s original salon party. The champagne they drink is from empty glasses, the camellia obviously a silk flower. Dessay has not only to sing of “Sempre libera degg’io,” but, raised and lowered, on a red couch, must balance herself and dance upon the prop. She is, in short, less a consumptive woman confined to a couch than a jumping, singing acrobat. And any joys she may have in her party-life seem those that come from a successful theatrical performance than a lust for life. If Dessay was contrite, during the intermission, for having missed one of her high notes, it was easy for her appreciative audience to forgive her given her otherwise beautiful singing during her energetic apologia to the “good life.”

     It is little wonder that we find her, in the second act, having capitulated, escaping with Alfredo to the country. In the flower laden landscape of Alfredo’s world, Violetta becomes almost young again, wrapped in a flower-laden housecoat, playing hide-and-seek among the flower-covered couches. Indeed, she becomes one with the couches, becomes herself something and someone other than her former self. In this production it is immediately apparent why Violetta has given up her Parisian life; even the dreadful clock, ticking down the hours left to her, is half-covered in the same pattern, and the elliptical has become a kind of garden. The snake creeps into this paradisiacal world with her servant’s revelation that Violetta is selling her Paris belongings to support her country life. Alfred is determined to rectify the situation, rushing off to Paris, allowing the more horrific Satan, Alfredo’s bourgeois father Giorgio, time to destroy her momentary joy in life.

    For Giorgio, Violetta is, at first, nothing more than a selfish courtesan out to steal his son’s money and affections. Gradually, however, when that vision proves difficult to sustain, he employs the usual tricks of men who cannot escape the petty limitations of a societally controlled life: his beautiful daughter will lose her fiancé if Alberto does not return home. Crueler yet, Giorgio tells Violetta of her own destiny, her loss of beauty and betrayal, perhaps, by Alfredo himself. As Violetta notes, the punishment for her libertine lifestyle comes not from God but from man. Even Giorgio, however, finally comes to recognize Violetta’s sacrifice, singing in a beautiful aria (Hvorostovsky at the top of his form) of her love and generosity.

     So pure is Violetta’s love that she agrees, most reluctantly, to give up Alfredo and return to Paris, knowing now that her fate will be an early death. Accepting an invitation to her friend Flora’s costume ball, she pretends to take up once more with her former protector Baron Bouphol.

     While in Verdi’s original, the costume ball was replete with gypsies and bullfighters, the new Met version has mixed these with costumed performers from the partygoers, along with a male dressed as Violetta in mockery of her return to their world. If the whole scene is a kind of confusing mish-mash at times, it still makes more sense than the presence of these “types” at the grand ball, and their taunting tales only reiterate what we know, Violetta’s life as a grand courtesan is over. The clock itself is now transformed into a gambling table where Alfredo, who in revenge has rushed back to Paris, wins, tossing his winnings at and stuffing them into Violetta’s orifices in what is clearly a kind of capitalist rape. Even Giorgio, having followed his son to the party, is shocked by Alfredo’s behavior, but then propriety is at the heart of his torturous demands.

     The party-goers, now carnival celebrants, reenter this cold waiting room once again, this time with another women, clad in red dress, strapped to the clock. Violetta is no longer the life of the party; she has almost been drained of life.

     Sick and suffering, with just a few hours to live, she awaits the return of Alfredo who, having survived his duel with the Baron, has discovered the truth of Violetta’s abandonment and has written of her determination to see her once again. As in any grand opera, the lovers reunite to imagine the possibility of life as they once lived it, a reunification that the audience has known is impossible from the start. For a second, just before her death, the courtesan is relieved of all pain and age, until she faints away, both Alfredo and Giorgio left to face their own failures of faith in her love.

     Some of the subtlety of this opera may have been lost in the symbolic posturings of Decker’s and Gussman’s vision, but the overall dramatic impact, particularly in Dessay’s powerful performance, remains, and La Traviata seldom wavers in its musical splendor as this grand courtesan had in her past.

Los Angeles, March 15, 2012

Eveybody's Opera (on The Enchanted Island)

everybody's opera

Jeremy Sams (writer and conceiver), with music by George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and numerous others. The Enchanted Island / Metropolitan Opera, New York, December 31, 2011, premiere / the production I saw was a live HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera of New York on January 21, 2012

Perhaps for the first time since the days of Baroque opera, an opera company, in this case the New York's Metropolitan, performed a pastiche, a mix of operatic works assembled and woven into a new story. As several critics noted, this might have been a disastrous mish-mash of music and story, but with the encouragement of the Met's general manager, Peter Gelb, Jeremy Sams' selections intertwined with elements of the plots of Shakespeare's The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the opera community has a charming new work that threatens to become a standard in opera houses. Certainly I would go back for another visit to this quite satisfying piece.

     Prospero (David Daniels), having taken over the "enchanted" island of the title's name, has at first loved and then abandoned Sycorax (Joyce DiDonato), a sorceress banned to the dark side of the kingdom, now furious for the results. Prospero and his daughter Miranda, having stolen away Sycorax's spirit servant, Ariel (Danielle de Niese), spend most of their days reading books filled with the formulas of potents and magic spells, attended by Caliban, Sycorax's dunder-headed and brutish son. He, she argues, using him to gain entry back into Prospero's sight, should be the inheritor of the island! Yet it is clear, Caliban has little talent to rule anything.

     Passing by this isolated island is a ship bearing Prince Ferdinand, a likely suitor for Miranda's hand. Determined to marry her off to Ferdinand, Prospero plans to summon up a storm that will bring the Prince to is island and into the arms of his beloved daughter. Ariel, who is charged to carry out the spell, however, chooses—in part because of the influence of Sycorax—the wrong ship, and sets the storm upon a boat carrying four Athenian lovers, who wind up upon the island instead of Ferdinand. Confusing the two males of the foursome with Ferdinand, Ariel serves them a magic potion, which brings all those involved, Miranda, Helena (Layla Claire), Hermia (Elizabeth DeShong), Demetrius (Paul Appleby), and Lysander (Elliot Madore), into a confusing series of mismatches, each falling in love with the others, until it is difficult to know whom is madly in love with whom.

     Indeed, as in Cosí fan tutte, it doesn't seem to matter—one by one they feel betrayed, confused by the vagaries of the heart, while Caliban cooks up his own scheme to be loved by one and all, men, women, animals, and demons from the dark.

     As in Baroque opera, each figure gets his or her own say in a series of beautiful arias, some well-known, others long forgotten.

     It is only by calling up Neptune (Plácido Domingo), at first furious for the interruption, then magnanimous in his help, that order is restored, Miranda married to Ferdinand, Sycorax restored to her proper position and the Athenian foursome paired with whomever they might at the moment desire.

     The frothy results are a delight, but would not have been so amazing without the wonderful costumes and sets of Phelim McDermott and his team (who previously put together the set and costumes for Satyagrapha). Every moment of this splendid work is underlined with their splendiferous wit.

     In a post-post modern culture such as ours, it is only fitting that pastiche might come back into fashion, and if The Enchanted Island is any sign of its pleasures, bring it on. As the opera closes, even its performers seem enchanted by the experience as they joyously sing "Now a bright new day is dawning." Bringing together numerous composers, this is everybody's opera and an opera for everyone.

March 16, 2012

Celebrating Liberation (on Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring)

celebrating liberation

Eric Crozier (text, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant), Benjamin Britten (composer) Albert Herring / the performance I saw was at the LAOpera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, March 11, 2012

Benjamin Britten's comic opera, Albert Herring, as most critics have noted, is a rather light entertainment that, over the years, has been revealed to have darker and more profound messages beneath it. The excellent recent production of the LA Opera hints at a few of those more meaningful moments, but skim over some of the most important implications.

     On the surface Britten's fourth operatic work reads a bit like a Ronald Firbank story or like other works of the British dialogue fictions, filled with typological figures. Lady Billows (Janis Kelly in the production I saw) is just what her title suggests, an elderly autocrat, who literary "bellows" to all those about, demanding virginal girls and normative behavior. Her housekeeper, Florence Pike (played by Ronnita Nicole Miller) is a uppity slacker who keeps a sacred diary of all the village of Loxford's goings on, including the misbehaviors of nearly every young girl in town. Along with the head teacher, Miss Wordsworth (Stacey Tappan), the Mayor, Mr. Gedge (Jonathan Michie), and the Police Superintendent Budd (Richard Bernstein), these figures attempt to maintain the traditional moral values—however they might be defined—for all Loxford figures, particularly the feminine sex, whose virtuous model is celebrated each year in their choice for May Queen.

      The opera begins with the meeting of these important city figures, attempting to decide upon which young woman they will bestow this year's award. As they run through each of their lists, however, it becomes apparent from Florence's diary that none of the village girls is above recrimination, even though some crimes are no more important than where they wear the hems of their dress. Others have stayed out all night in barns, run off with boyfriends, or simply been gossiped about. In distress, the quintet struggles about their inability to make a choice until one of their members suggests a May King, all ultimately agreeing that the only choice can be Albert Herring, a woman shopkeeper's son, who has been carefully obedient to his mother. There is also a sizeable purse attached to the award, which pleases Albert's mother far more than he when the group announce their choice.

      At first Albert is seen as simply a do-gooder, with no personality whatsoever. But by the second scene of Act I, we begin to see him question his allegiance to obedience, and, comparing himself with the fun-loving and sexually busy couple, Sid and Nancy, realizing that he has nothing to show for remaining a mother's boy.

     Putting Albert on display, the town leaders could care less about Albert's feelings or any reality he might be experiencing within, dressing him in white and awarding him an absurdly orange wreath, which he is forced to wear throughout the luncheon. But Sid has other plans for Albert, with Nancy spiking Albert's lemonade with rum, an event which begins a series of adventures for our "hero" that ends, after another self-analysis of his life, with Albert going off into the evening to discover the life he has never before experienced.

     Meanwhile, the village, having noted his absence, is in a tizzy about his whereabouts, the hypocritical quintet of village elders meeting to lament what appears is his death. When Albert does reappear at the very moment that the others sing piously (and quite beautifully) about dying, he is shockingly filthy, having spent the night in at least two pubs and, after being thrown out of both, slept for some hours in the gutter. He has also been with two women and (more mysteriously) with a man. The sexuality of those situations is not quite established except for Albert's own admission that he has done everything to which he admits "and worse," and that "it wasn't much fun." The audience's imagination is important here, for how one defines "worse" would lead us to perceive how deep his rebellion against the Victorian notions of the community leaders has gone. Certainly he is no longer in thrall to any of them, particularly to his mother, as he virtually tosses the city leaders out of his shop so that he can get on with his business. Whatever that business may now be is uncertain; but it is clear that Albert has made a big transformation, as he rewards the children candies and graciously hands a peach to Nancy.

     Conductor James Conlon argues that the exact nature of his transgressions must remain vague. And probably that was what Britten also intended. But we must remember that, although he lived much of his life as an open homosexual, for Britten it might have difficult to more thoroughly explore the issue in small town life of 1947. Today,  I would have, at least, liked a little more of the possibility of Arthur exploring something beyond heterosexual experiences. For that might even have made him a kind of exceptional figure in Loxford history.

     As it stands, Albert is simply a slow learner, a man who waited far too long to come to terms with any sexuality. Perhaps if we understood it as an truly exceptional sexual variance, we might be better able to explain Albert's slow awakening instead of merely explaining him as a kind of village simpleton or, as several characters describe him, not very bright. Let us hope at least that after his night of revelry he does not remain as a greengrocer for the rest of his life!

Los Angeles, March 13, 2012

Green Integer ON NET ("Go In")

Green Integer On Net ("Go In") is proud to announce its new series of book publications on line, a series that will include free and reasonably priced books of poetry and poetics, new and older, from around the world.

In conjunction with our educational efforts, these books will be offered free or for reasonable prices for our visitors: students, scholars, and readers of modern and contemporary poetry. Please note that any money we receive for books will go toward the maitenance of our site and for royalty payments for authors and translators. I do not receive a salary for my ongoing and quite endless activities.


Order through our website: http://www.greeninteger.com/

Books now available:
[alphabetical by author]

[ordered PDF files ship within 24 hours]

Djuna Barnes The Book of Repulsive Women [USA] free

Charles Bernstein Dark City [USA] free

Robert Bresson Notes on the Cinematographer [France] $7.00

Domício Coutinho Duke, the Dog Priest [Brazil] $5.00

JeanFrémon The Botanical Garden [France]$5.00

Julien Gracq The Peninsula [France] $5.00

Lyn Hejinian My Life [USA] $5.00

Ko Un Himalaya Poems [South Korea]  $5.00

Ko Un Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1960-2002 [ South Korea] $5.00

Douglas Messerli, ed. The PIP Anthology of 20th Century Poetry: Volume 8 [international] $7.00

Douglas Messerli My Year 2004: Under Our Skin [USA] $5.00

Douglas Messerli My Year 2006: Serving [USA] $5.00

Jules Michelet The Sea [France] $5.00

Ivo Michelis Book Alpha and Orchis Militaris: The Alpha Cycle, vols. 1 and 2 [Belgium] $5.00

Christopher Middelton Depictions of Blaff [England] $5.00

Tom Raworth Eternal Sections [England] free

Joe Ross Wordlick [USA/lives France] $5.00

Arthur Schnitzler Dream Story [Austria] $5.00

Gertrude Stein Tender Buttons [USA] $5.00

Guiseppe Steiner Drawn States of Mind [Italy] free

John Wieners 707 Scott Street [USA] free

The Conscience of a King (on Handel's opera Rodelinda)

the conscience of a king

 Nicola Francesco Haym (libretto, based on a libretto by Antonio Salvi), George Frideric Handel (composter) Rodelinda / the performance I saw as a live HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera of New York on December 3, 2011

    On the surface Rodelinda seems a somewhat confusing story about a King, Bertarido (Andreas Scholl) who has just been defeated, and presumably killed, by Grimoaldo (Joseph Kaiser). The former queen, Rodelinda (Renée Fleming) and her son Flavio have been immediately arrested and put into chains, sequestered away—at least in the Met production—in what seems like an abandoned bedroom somewhere in the bowels of the castle.

     Before Grimoaldo's usurpation of the throne he had been offered the hand of Bertarido's sister, Eduige (Stephanie Blythe), which would have made him the heir apparent to the throne, but she has several times denied him, and now that he has illegally taken over, he lusts for Bertarido's widow, Rodelinda. When he approaches her with his desires, however, she is outraged and insists upon her devotion to her former husband and the protection of his child.

     Meanwhile Grimoaldo's advisor Garibaldo (Shenyang) prods his master on to more evil deeds, insisting that only the forceful, even the brutal are fit to rule. He has his own plans, moreover, to take the throne for himself, by marrying Eduige and becoming the rightful ruler.

      Only the court advisor Unulfo (Iestyn Davies) knows that Bertarido is still alive, pretending death in order to evaluation the situation and retrieve Rodelinda and his son from harm's way.

      Through her lovely arias we know that Rodelinda is loyal to her husband, denying the approaches of Grimoaldo. But when Bertarido shows up, to be hidden away in a nearby horse barn by his friend Unulfo, he overhears yet another encounter between Rodelinda and Grimoaldo in which she first insists of her love for her dead husband, but then suddenly seems to change heart, accepting Grimoaldo's proposal for marriage. What the two men hiding in the barn have not seen is that Garibaldo has threatened to kill her son if she does not give in, the knife put to the son's neck.

     Suddenly Bertarido's world collapses around him as he believes that his wife has not been able to remain faithful. Unulfo attempts to cheer him with an aria that relays the underlying theme of Handel's work: what seems unbearable today will look different in the future. Performed as it is between the two countertenors there is a slightly homoerotic suggestion in the plea that Bertarido should try to forget his wife's faithlessness.

     Unulfo suggests that Bertarido tell his wife that he is still living, an idea which, at first, Bertarido rejects, but then perceives that it will help to torture her for her deeds. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Rodelinda has no intentions of becoming Grimoaldo's wife, insisting that if she is to marry him that he must personally kill her young son, that she cannot be a mother to the boy would have been king and wife of the throne's usurper both. The ploy works, as Grimoaldo backs down, and Rodelinda is freed, temporarily at least, from any vows.

     Meanwhile, Eudige discovers that her brother is still alive, meeting him upon a pathway in the night, reassuring Bertarido of his wife's constancy. Unulfo brings Rodelinda to him, and the two are lovingly united, joyful to be in each other's company again. At that very moment, however, they are discovered by Grimoaldo, who orders Bertarido's arrestment and death.

     In collaboration, Eduige and Unulfo plan Bertarido's rescue, she secretly passing him a sword, Unulfo determined to lead him through a secret garden passage to his son, Rondelinda and escape. However, when he comes to guide Bertarido to safety, in the dark room where he lies Bertarido mistakes the intruder as one of Grimoaldo's henchmen come to kill him, and he stabs Unulfo, who, although badly wounded, still pulls Bertarido to safety.

     Grimoaldo, meanwhile is in deep torment. All that he has sought has slipped his fingers. His first love Eudige has rejected him and Rodelinda has declared him a monster. Power has not fulfilled him, and he is tormented by conscience and his dark deeds. Finding him in such despair, Garibaldo his disgusted with his lack of will and determines to put a sword through his heart. At that very moment Bertarido and his family are passing, and the former king leaps into action, killing Garibaldo and, in so doing, saving Grimoaldo's life.

     Recognizing his position, Grimoaldo is only too happy to give up the throne to its rightful king. Turning again to Eudige she finally accepts his apologies, and the happy survivors sing in celebration of the future.

     Just recounting this breathless plot nearly exhausts me. One by one each of the major performers sing marvelous arias revealing their feelings and situations. This production was particularly blessed with the glorious soprano of Renée Fleming who premiered Rodelinda at the Met in 2004. Both countertenors were splendid, while Stephanie Blythe performed with her usual high artistry. The surprise of the opera, to me, was the tenor voice of Joseph Kaiser, who as the opera proceeded changed in both costume and voice from a seemingly pompous and puffed up murderer to a handsome man of sorrow and conscience. It was a remarkably revealing performance both in its musical expression and acting abilities.

     In all this was a marvelous opera. If only the director, Stephen Wadsworth—who the singers all highly praised—had not felt it necessary to keep everything in motion by bringing in and out ancillary individuals during each aria, and arming his singers with flowerpots, books, even toys which at some point were often flung or crashed into the set. We understand that Handel's arias are structured with a beginning theme that elaborated on and repeated several times before returning us again to the original theme to be repeated once again, but that does not mean that we need be continually distracted. If the singers are good enough actors—as all of these were—to revitalize and slightly revise each repeated phrase, the music enwraps us into a kind of trance that works against this production's realist interruptions.

     Although the set was quite lovely, and the concept of moving horizontality through different sets across the gigantic Met stage worked well in several scenes, it appeared that the designers and director feared that the audience might fall asleep without the constant interruptions of everyday life. Although he is a powerful storyteller and a masterful dramatist, Handel is not Verdi.

      Nonetheless, with such great singers I would love to see the Met look into yet more Handel and other Baroque operas. Rodelinda was a joy.

Los Angeles, December 9, 2011

Separating Language from Meaning (on Philip Glass' Satyagraha)

separating language from meaning

Constance DeJong (vocal text), Constance DeJong and Philip Glass (libretto), Philip Glass (music)

Satyagraha / the production I saw was an HD, live production broadcast from The Metropolitan Opera in New York, on November 19, 2011

 In many respects Philip Glass' pageant opera, Satyagraha, is one of the most frustrating of all opera experiences. It is not that the work isn't, at times, musically splendiferous and even powerful—at least in the MET high definition live broadcast I saw in 2011. But Glass takes away so much of what opera is really about drama, language, and, at times, musical comprehension—that it is difficult to get one's bearings.

     I don't mean that the opera, itself, is difficult. The plot, if it can be said to have one, is quite apparent if you have a program. The seven scenes in three acts of the work represent significant moments in the early career of M. K. Gandhi, as he transformed himself in South Africa from a Western-dressed lawyer to a political advocate for the poor and suffering. Beginning with an imagined scene from the battle field of Bhagavad Gita (The Kuru Field of Justice), Glass and his co-librettist, Constance DeJong, take us from 1910 to 1913 in Gandhi's life, exploring his attempts at collective farming on his Tolstoy Farm (named after the great author and social experimenter), through the "vows" of South African Indians to resist registration, to Gandhi's return to South Africa greeted with violence, from a view of his newspaper activities on Indian Opinion in which he first expressed his concepts of "satyagraha" ("insistence on truth"), to the 1908 protest against the Black Act, in which his supporters burned their government certificates, and through to his final strike march to the Transavaal border, where many were arrested.

     Each of Glass' acts are overseen, furthermore, by an historical figure who influenced Gandhi or over whom he would have an influence. From the past, we see Leo Tolstoy, from the present, Gandhi's close friend, the Nobel-prize winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, and from the future, Martin Luther King.

   The program notes explain in some detail what we are experiencing. However, that experience itself is much less lucid. As Richard Croft (playing Gandhi) explained in an intermission interview, it is difficult to act because what is occurring is happening inside, not in the actual drama on the stage. The chorus, and more important, the Skills Ensemble, often play out—in a highly imaginative use of masks, puppets, and through staged acts—what is symbolically occurring, but the actors, somewhat like those of Wagner, are allowed little movement. Yet, unlike Wagner's figures, the major actors here are not even communicating with the audience in a language they can comprehend, since they sing the entire opera in Sanskrit, quoting spiritual fragments of the Bhagavad Gita.

     I am sure that when he first got the idea to use the language and images from a book which Gandhi knew intimately, it must have seemed a brilliant concept to separate language from meaning, but it ultimately cuts us off from true communication and, more importantly, given Glass' minimalist repetitions, presents us with long passages in which we only have a vague idea what is happening—not that it would help to know, at any moment, that Gandhi, for example, is reaffirming his ideals...or whatever. We sense the emotional impact, and Glass' simmering music often seduces us, but, nonetheless, it is sometimes a long endurance test, particularly in the last act, when Glass almost sentimentally links Gandhi with the future American racial revolutionary King—over and over again, so that eventually we must ask whether Gandhi or what he has wrought.     

     The most successful act of this opera is Act II, when puppets, chorus, and major singers all come together to create the horror of the wealthy Dutch landowners and the busy industry of putting together the newspaper, and the dramatic bonfire of government issued certificates.

     The cast, including Croft, Rachelle Durkin as his secretary, Miss Schlesen, Kim Josephson as a supporter, Mr. Kennenbach, and Alfred Walker as Parsi Rustomji were all quite adept, and the Met chorus was absolutely stunning in its ability to learn the Sanskrit score while counting Glass' tricky rhythms. The costumes and settings by Julian Crouch and Kevin Pollard, as well as the stage direction of Phelim McDermott and conducting of Dante Anzolini were all spectacular.

     The Met audience seemed thoroughly charmed by the opera, remaining through the entire series of applauses. Yet, for me, that was just the problem: long on charm, the opera was too short on substance, despite focusing on such a substantial historical figure. But then it is difficult, if not impossible, to think without language.

Los Angeles, November 20, 2011

So Are We All (on Mozart's opera Cosí fan tutte)

so are we all

Lorenzo da Ponte (text), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (music) Cosí fan tutte / LAOpera, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (the performance I saw was on Sunday, October 2, 2011)

 Despite the often splendiferous musical beauty of da Ponte's and Mozart's wise comic satire, there is something patently unfair about the major series of events. Yes, we easily conclude with Don Alfonso, "Women are like that," but so too, do we comprehend, are men. And it is the men in this opera who truly step out of bounds in testing their sweetheart's faithfulness.

     To be fair, the two young soldiers, Ferrando (Saimir Pirgu in the production I saw) and Guglielmo (the handsome Ildebrando D'Arcangelo) begin the opera singing endless praises of their loves, Fiordilgi (Aleksandra Kurzak) and Dorabella (Ruxandra Donose). We immediately recognize their naiveté; and when I say we, I think I can speak for the whole of USA culture given that the current divorce rate is 50% which rises substantially with second and third marriages. Although divorce may be caused by many things other than unfaithfulness, it appears that, in the US at least, Americans are fickle.

      But the young men are easily challenged and persuaded into obedience to their friend Don Alfonso (Lorenzo Regazzo), who, without much difficulty, convinces them to lie to their sweethearts by pretending to go off to war, and to themselves play cheats. After all, to dress up in the costumes of other men, taking on their very different personalities and to court each other's fiancées certainly suggests that they are willing to be guilty of behavior they do not hope to find in their fiancés Costumes are extremely important in Cosí fan tutte (and, of course, in the whole of the commedia dell'arte tradition, on which much of this opera is based); a slight costume change, an attached moustache, a bit of acting immediately convinces others that a familiar figure is someone else. Even women like the maid Despina can easily dupe their employers, dressed like a man (she becomes in the opera both a mesmerist doctor and a notary). In short, by donning costumes they temporarily become another person, and so too are these young soldiers allowing themselves in their transformations to become unfaithful seducers of the two sisters they proclaim to love.

     Moreover, Mozart gives his sweet heroines a great deal of reverence and fortitude in which to protect them. The celestial song they sing as their lovers go off to war, "Soave sia il vento" ("May the wind be gentle") is almost enough to convince the most hard-hearted realist that these two mean what they say. And to back it up, Fiordiligi sings the powerful "Come scogli" ("Like a rock") pledging her love to Guglielmo.

      The weaker of the two is obviously Dorabella who must be reminded consistently by her sister of the role she should play, and seems, quite early on, more distressed by being left alone than by the absence of Ferrando. Yet, despite her obvious interest in the two strange Albanians who suddenly appear in the sister's home, she also remains impervious throughout Act 1.

      The Albanians, on the other hand, although declaring their love for the two beauties, seem more interested in their own prowess than in the women they are trying seduce. A great part of the humor of da Ponte's text lies in the constant metaphors that point up their endowments, Guglielmo, in particular, pointing up his masculine attributes in "Non siate ritrosi" ("Don't be shy").

     In the production I saw this was reiterated by their attempt at suicide by arsenic poisoning, wherein their dying bodies were laid out upon a chaise longue, the two men almost on top of one another, hinting at a greater interest in their own bodies than in the two of what they later relate as "the fair sex." If nothing else, the scene suggested an long homoerotic embrace between Ferrando and Guglielmo, made even more apparent when the women come to revive them, all four crawling over and under one another.

     Clearly they are not "playing fair," forcing the women to brush against and touch them—often in somewhat lewd positions. These are beautiful young people, all four of them, and like most young people, are easily aroused.

      What Mozart and da Ponte also make clear is just how boring these wealthy sister's lives are. Except for the excitement through sexual flirtation, there is little do in their house, as Dorabella, in particular makes clear. Despina serves them meals and sweets such a chocolate, they play puzzles, and, mostly, sit discussing their situations. Might it not be fun to do something else since their soldier's have gone off?

      Even when Dorabella despicably gives in, exchanging a necklace, containing Ferrando's picture, for a gift from the Albanian Guglielmo, Fiordiligi runs away from her temptation, desperately trying to regain control of the situation through her consciousness ("Per pietà, ben mio, perdona," "Please, my beloved, forgive"). Her brief decision to dress up like a soldier and run off to war to find her lover is absurdly touching, if ludicrous. There is, obviously, no war, and one wonders to where she might run. And if she were to find Guglielmo, how could she show him her love dressed—like Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl—as a man? The opera, fortunately, does not take us down that path. Instead, Ferrando challenges her again with suicide. What is a woman to do, given that she has already tried to save him as chastefully as she can? Her only choice apparently is to give in.

     The men, all ego, are furious with the obvious turn of events, but fortunately Don Alfonso is wise enough to insist that they accept the natures of their loved ones, without mentioning their own  obvious failures and deceits. "Marry them," he advices, and so, apparently they do, both symbolically, with the fake notary marrying Dorabella and Fiordilgi to the Albanians (each linked to the opposite of their lovers in their previous existences) and then, again—at least in promise—to the miraculously returned soldiers. What does it matter, truly, who marries whom, when a simple moustache and coat can alter any personality. And, in that sense, Cosí fan tutte, is neither a celebration of faithfulness or even a return to order, but a joyful tribute to sexually-inspired love.

Los Angeles, October 3, 2011