It's cloudy and quiet on a Sunday morning, not that early, but all of the 9th Bezirk still seems to be sleeping. Sipping on a huge mug of fragrant tea, I look out over another day of events both personal and monumental. Either I've entered some huge and rare cone of synchronicity, or this is just what life is like.
Today marks both the Staatsoper conducting debut of a friend and the memorial service of a mentor. I have the privilege of rejoicing in the friend's fine accomplishment and remembering the mentor's unforgiving brilliance. I also have to think on the association we all share with the San Francisco Opera. Friend and I both trained there at different times, mentor and I worked there.
Tonight also happens to be the final performance of our La Boheme, and that opera will always bring San Francisco memories to my mind. The piece is completely interwoven into my early professional life. It was the first thing I ever prompted, back when the aforementioned mentor was my reluctant teacher. It was my daily work and inspiration as I was discovering a gorgeous city, navigating a wholesale change in my life, and drowning in a challenging new job.
Sipping tea. Is this a memory?
Every professional relationship, every next step was born in that house. Friendships stretch back to those days. Life in three cities happened because of them. Friends who are sending congratulations toward the Vienna debut, friends who will stand in tribute at the War Memorial, all these threads stretch back that far, intertwine, fold in on themselves.
Today begins with these delicate threads. I can know about beautiful singing in Houston and exciting rehearsals in New York as the sun breaks through Vienna's morning clouds. It is delicious to sit here slightly unsure of where and when I am. Soon MtMn will wake up and we'll ride our bikes north for a bit, and I imagine that the activity and terrain will bind me firmly to time and place, but right now life feels vertical, all at once, a slice.
Willkommen. My the angels lead you into paradise. Keep in touch.
dkz
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
hearing voices
Walking through a large repertory opera house will probably always be one of my favorite things to do. I finished up a coaching last night at 6 and opened my office window. On the Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz below, the live video transmission of Tannhäuser began, and the first burnished notes floated up to me along with the combined music of steps, conversations, and streetcars. Somewhere around the beginning of the Venusberg music I closed my email and walked into the hallway, where that same music took on a new, ghostly timbre as it traveled up from the theater five floors below. It grew louder and brighter as I passed the half-open door to the catwalk and faded as I entered a rehearsal room to check in on Pique Dame. Under the brilliant, busy piano whispered important voices, saving their effort and tone for the theater. Back in the hallway, I heard the mens' chorus from the half-open door. In the corridor that leads into the house itself, I couldn't hear anything, and then in the lobby outside the top balcony there was just a hint of Wagner, as though from a distant radio. Into the Kinderzelt, a tent on the roof of the opera house, where the children's opera rehearses: tinny upright, dead acoustics, young singers working to be understood by the kids that will fill the tent come Sunday. It was intermission when I headed back to the theater, where I had intended to hear the rest of the opera from my usual seat in the company loge. But I kept wandering, up to the catwalks for Act 2 and the backstage for Act 3. I took such joy in this evening, hearing the various musics of the house from the shadows. The intimacy of it, the privacy, was balm for my overextended spirit. The paying guests were at the party and I was a servant listening in secret, and that meant the grand house was truly mine.
Late in the evening, MtMn went down into our street to help our visiting friends get the luggage out of their car. I leaned out of our window, five stories up, and listened to familiar voices floating up to me, and waited for our guests to enter our home.
dkz
Late in the evening, MtMn went down into our street to help our visiting friends get the luggage out of their car. I leaned out of our window, five stories up, and listened to familiar voices floating up to me, and waited for our guests to enter our home.
dkz
Friday, September 10, 2010
Morning
MtMn has been felled by his first Austrian cold virus. He sleeps as I start my day perfectly thanks to his Naschmarkt trip and mad cooking skillz: homemade bread, cheese from Cheese Land, cafe au lait with cinnamon. It's a beautiful morning on a day of somber memory. Nine years ago, MtMn drove off to his stressful law office while I stretched out my morning in similar fashion. Even as I think on the large events, results, and meanings of that day, I also think of breakfast, the simple beginning of every morning, the way we help each other through that and then through the days and nights.
Yesterday was a day of simple but meaningful triumph; work got done, results were obvious, no drama was attached. If every day contains this, something wonderful will be underway, something definitely worth a certain level of exhaustion.
Maybe because today is today, maybe because of the small steps forward, but probably just because of Mozart (and the mad skillz of the Wiener Sängerknaben), this is what brought unexpected tears to my eyes at work last night:
Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden,
Die Sonn' auf goldner Bahn,
Bald muß die Nacht, die düstre, schwinden,
Der Tag der Weisheit nahn.-
O holder Friede, steig hernieder,
Kehr in der Menschen Herzen wieder,
Dann ist die Erd ein Himmelreich,-
Und Sterbliche sind Göttern gleich.
Soon the resplendent sun on its golden path will announce morning's arrival.
Soon black night must disappear and the day of wisdom draw near.
Oh beloved peace, come down and return to the hearts of men.
Then earth will be a heavenly place, and humans like the gods.
dkz
Yesterday was a day of simple but meaningful triumph; work got done, results were obvious, no drama was attached. If every day contains this, something wonderful will be underway, something definitely worth a certain level of exhaustion.
Maybe because today is today, maybe because of the small steps forward, but probably just because of Mozart (and the mad skillz of the Wiener Sängerknaben), this is what brought unexpected tears to my eyes at work last night:
Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden,
Die Sonn' auf goldner Bahn,
Bald muß die Nacht, die düstre, schwinden,
Der Tag der Weisheit nahn.-
O holder Friede, steig hernieder,
Kehr in der Menschen Herzen wieder,
Dann ist die Erd ein Himmelreich,-
Und Sterbliche sind Göttern gleich.
Soon the resplendent sun on its golden path will announce morning's arrival.
Soon black night must disappear and the day of wisdom draw near.
Oh beloved peace, come down and return to the hearts of men.
Then earth will be a heavenly place, and humans like the gods.
dkz
Monday, September 6, 2010
These three days
The first time I ever saw a Schubert song, I was in the basement of a house in Nürnberg. I was on a high school exchange program, and my guest bedroom was sonically insulated by thick floors and located right next to a room that housed a harpsichord and many books of Lieder. I stayed up late into the night reading through that treasure, discovering that world.
Then Saturday, I played "An die Musik" in in the city of its birth.
The first time I ever saw the word "Prater", I was curled up on the floor between stacks of books in the Arizona State University library. I'd ended up playing rehearsals for the music school's production of Cosi, and, bitten hard, I was poring over every score I could get my hands on. This score was huge, and I had just recently cracked the code of the strange use of German articles (Er? Ihr? Euch? for one person?). But "Prater" I had to look up. Later, when I finally worked on Rosenkavalier, I practiced the weird vowel combinations and alien consonant alterations (I ho hoyt a...what?) that I heard the experienced artists using.
Then Sunday, I walked in that there Prater, and I heard that sing-song talk all around me.
My first opera house was, lucky me, San Francisco's. There I learned what life in a great company could be. I watched a great orchestra develop, watched the chorus morph into something different each day. I was part of a young artist ensemble that worked like dogs and soaked up lessons from the great visitors, singers and directors and conductors. Later, I was part of the music staff, and that transition was the first of many growing up in this far-flung, professional and personal family.
Then yesterday, I took the streetcar home, having seen three operas in 24 hours, all of which included people I am training, have trained, have worked with, have known forever, was happy to finally meet, whom I have admired for years.
The details of each day are overwhelming, frustrating - but the takeaway!
dkz
Then Saturday, I played "An die Musik" in in the city of its birth.
The first time I ever saw the word "Prater", I was curled up on the floor between stacks of books in the Arizona State University library. I'd ended up playing rehearsals for the music school's production of Cosi, and, bitten hard, I was poring over every score I could get my hands on. This score was huge, and I had just recently cracked the code of the strange use of German articles (Er? Ihr? Euch? for one person?). But "Prater" I had to look up. Later, when I finally worked on Rosenkavalier, I practiced the weird vowel combinations and alien consonant alterations (I ho hoyt a...what?) that I heard the experienced artists using.
Then Sunday, I walked in that there Prater, and I heard that sing-song talk all around me.
My first opera house was, lucky me, San Francisco's. There I learned what life in a great company could be. I watched a great orchestra develop, watched the chorus morph into something different each day. I was part of a young artist ensemble that worked like dogs and soaked up lessons from the great visitors, singers and directors and conductors. Later, I was part of the music staff, and that transition was the first of many growing up in this far-flung, professional and personal family.
Then yesterday, I took the streetcar home, having seen three operas in 24 hours, all of which included people I am training, have trained, have worked with, have known forever, was happy to finally meet, whom I have admired for years.
The details of each day are overwhelming, frustrating - but the takeaway!
dkz
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Connection
Well, I'm about to start work at the Vienna Staatsoper. It promises to be the hardest job I have ever done. And here, where I've shared a lot of my mind and heart with y'all - well, there will be no sharing of the job. Can't be. Homey don't play dat. That will be strange, though, because the job and the dozens of people I need to get to know and learn to work with will take up the lion's share of my energy and brainpower.
This space, however, belongs to a net of strategies designed to keep me from getting lost in all of that. Kim Witman wrote something that scratched at me hard this week, and I hope you'll give it a look. Like her, I think that part of the reason my work is good is because I lose myself in it. However, I've also spent the last year and change getting significantly less lost. I don't want to make the mistake of forgetting to live in this city that inspired so many of the musicians who inspire me. Of course they came here for commerce, as I have done - but Vienna offers much more than that, as big-city culturally bored as it sometimes tries to appear.
For instance, in the morning when I open my window, this is what I get to see:
And today, within the city limits, we went on a stroll that looked like this:
So really, as hard as things over at Das Haus might get - how can I possibly forget to see these things? I hope I can remember if I take the time to show them to you.
So thanks for helping me live here.
dkz
This space, however, belongs to a net of strategies designed to keep me from getting lost in all of that. Kim Witman wrote something that scratched at me hard this week, and I hope you'll give it a look. Like her, I think that part of the reason my work is good is because I lose myself in it. However, I've also spent the last year and change getting significantly less lost. I don't want to make the mistake of forgetting to live in this city that inspired so many of the musicians who inspire me. Of course they came here for commerce, as I have done - but Vienna offers much more than that, as big-city culturally bored as it sometimes tries to appear.
For instance, in the morning when I open my window, this is what I get to see:
And today, within the city limits, we went on a stroll that looked like this:
So really, as hard as things over at Das Haus might get - how can I possibly forget to see these things? I hope I can remember if I take the time to show them to you.
So thanks for helping me live here.
dkz
Sunday, August 22, 2010
We're from Smoland
"Wir kommen aus Smoland" proclaims the poster at the Wien-Nord IKEA, and the smaller print goes on to extol the pragmatism of the place. Naturally, the sign seems to say, these frugal Swedes were bound to come up with the BILLY bookshelf and the ECKTORP line. The word Smoland hits me deep, because I'm from Smoland too, or at least my great-grandparents were. I stand in one of my era's great shopping emporia transfixed. Once Smoland was so poor that it was hemorrhaging peasants - they come by their practical reputations honestly. Less than one hundred years ago it made more sense to Hans and Alma Larson to get into the belly of a boat than to stay home, and so they braved the three-week journey to Minnesota with their four tiny children. Somehow history makes a line from steerage to superstore, somehow I am standing here.
See, IKEA makes the way we are moving possible. Why pack up and ship your possessions, risking damage and loss, when you can outfit your apartment with new things for a fraction of the cost? So I'm walking around with a cart and a couple of yellow bags. Closet organization, bookcases, bedding, new measuring cups (because of the metric system....Royale wit Cheese...), rugs, towels - it's all here. Several hours, many steps, one VISA card and one cab ride later, MtMn and I are lugging our treasure up to our flat in the tiny lift. It takes four trips and four hours with an Allen wrench and a borrowed hammer (German word learned: ein Hammer. Srsly.), but suddenly our place seems more like home. We put stuff away, we sweep the floor, we eat chocolate as the moonlight pours in the window.
In the morning we take a stroll and he wonders: when was the last time that most construction was built to last for as long as possible? He's moved to that question by the neighborhood buildings, mostly erected 1890-1900. They are solid, standing sure after more than a century and confidently looking forward to at least another. Our age is the one that knows it can wipe itself out - or, seen from a less frightening angle, it's the age when anyone can go anywhere and do anything. Our buildings today reflect that. We won't be here long, we can't stay, we'll change our minds.
IKEA's part of that world, part of what makes it possible, within a week of your emigration, to put your shoes away in a place made just for them. It's the great displacement turned into pride and profit. I'm its eager fan even as I feel the tug of something lost. It's easy to sentimentalize a bygone era, especially living in a city full of its architectural and artistic legacy. But MtMn and I both know from our own families the hardship and heartbreak of that time, the rigorous journeys, the enormous risks. We're glad to make our moves by choice with relative ease, and we're amazed at how quickly a place can seem familiar. We've started to be proud of our ability to locate home anywhere we are. What a change from Zemplen or Smoland or Ballinasloe of a hundred years ago, when leaving home meant something so different.
Twenty years ago I visited Ha Hamneda, Smoland, with my mom and grandma, and we danced on Midsummer's Night and walked inside the farmhouse where my great-grandmother was born. A few weeks ago, my mom showed me the trunk that Hans and Alma carried to Minnesota; filled with their possessions, it was the only thing besides their children that they brought. It's still sturdy, and will still be when it becomes mine.
dkz
See, IKEA makes the way we are moving possible. Why pack up and ship your possessions, risking damage and loss, when you can outfit your apartment with new things for a fraction of the cost? So I'm walking around with a cart and a couple of yellow bags. Closet organization, bookcases, bedding, new measuring cups (because of the metric system....Royale wit Cheese...), rugs, towels - it's all here. Several hours, many steps, one VISA card and one cab ride later, MtMn and I are lugging our treasure up to our flat in the tiny lift. It takes four trips and four hours with an Allen wrench and a borrowed hammer (German word learned: ein Hammer. Srsly.), but suddenly our place seems more like home. We put stuff away, we sweep the floor, we eat chocolate as the moonlight pours in the window.
In the morning we take a stroll and he wonders: when was the last time that most construction was built to last for as long as possible? He's moved to that question by the neighborhood buildings, mostly erected 1890-1900. They are solid, standing sure after more than a century and confidently looking forward to at least another. Our age is the one that knows it can wipe itself out - or, seen from a less frightening angle, it's the age when anyone can go anywhere and do anything. Our buildings today reflect that. We won't be here long, we can't stay, we'll change our minds.
IKEA's part of that world, part of what makes it possible, within a week of your emigration, to put your shoes away in a place made just for them. It's the great displacement turned into pride and profit. I'm its eager fan even as I feel the tug of something lost. It's easy to sentimentalize a bygone era, especially living in a city full of its architectural and artistic legacy. But MtMn and I both know from our own families the hardship and heartbreak of that time, the rigorous journeys, the enormous risks. We're glad to make our moves by choice with relative ease, and we're amazed at how quickly a place can seem familiar. We've started to be proud of our ability to locate home anywhere we are. What a change from Zemplen or Smoland or Ballinasloe of a hundred years ago, when leaving home meant something so different.
Twenty years ago I visited Ha Hamneda, Smoland, with my mom and grandma, and we danced on Midsummer's Night and walked inside the farmhouse where my great-grandmother was born. A few weeks ago, my mom showed me the trunk that Hans and Alma carried to Minnesota; filled with their possessions, it was the only thing besides their children that they brought. It's still sturdy, and will still be when it becomes mine.
dkz
Friday, August 20, 2010
In der Fremde
I've been dying to write an entry here every time I sit down in a cafe with free Wifi, and each time I've been unable to begin. It's impossible to know where to start, and even as I write that sentence fragment I'm struck by how unoriginal it is, how universal this experience of displacement and search for equilibrium. I think of my many dear friends who have taken on the minstrel's life, and I'm grateful for their courage and humor and amazed by their patience.
My husband and my best friend are still asleep a few blocks away, and I don't want to stay away too long, but let me say these things:
Vienna is a land unto itself, imperially snobby and gracious down in the bone, calmly international (but not to the extent it imagines), not very German at all (in contrast to my expectations). We went down part of the Danube in a boat yesterday and the landscape's beauty caused me to gasp.
It is remarkable to live in a place that is proud of itself for its ability to provide a good quality of life for nearly all its citizens, where homelessness and hunger are seen as unacceptable. Of course, the Empire had to die and shrink to make this possible. Hm.
The operatic drama of customs and paperwork is a blessing, like having to make funeral arrangements - it keeps you moving and planning through the fatigue and confusion of your first foreign weeks.
Making dinner in a new apartment makes it home. But having Internet and a home telephone will make it even better.
I don't miss home yet, Texas or Minnesota or Michigan or New York, because I'm used to being away from all those places. It's coming, though.
Today we are going to look at Roman ruins, Biedermeyer furniture, and Nazi tanks. Tomorrow: IKEA.
Music is about to fill my days in a way it never has.
This entry sounds a little tired, which is fair enough.
dkz
My husband and my best friend are still asleep a few blocks away, and I don't want to stay away too long, but let me say these things:
Vienna is a land unto itself, imperially snobby and gracious down in the bone, calmly international (but not to the extent it imagines), not very German at all (in contrast to my expectations). We went down part of the Danube in a boat yesterday and the landscape's beauty caused me to gasp.
It is remarkable to live in a place that is proud of itself for its ability to provide a good quality of life for nearly all its citizens, where homelessness and hunger are seen as unacceptable. Of course, the Empire had to die and shrink to make this possible. Hm.
The operatic drama of customs and paperwork is a blessing, like having to make funeral arrangements - it keeps you moving and planning through the fatigue and confusion of your first foreign weeks.
Making dinner in a new apartment makes it home. But having Internet and a home telephone will make it even better.
I don't miss home yet, Texas or Minnesota or Michigan or New York, because I'm used to being away from all those places. It's coming, though.
Today we are going to look at Roman ruins, Biedermeyer furniture, and Nazi tanks. Tomorrow: IKEA.
Music is about to fill my days in a way it never has.
This entry sounds a little tired, which is fair enough.
dkz
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