There are days when the alchemy of opera produces something particularly heady, and the lines between the worlds on either side of the curtain begin to blur. I'm sure a certain amount of this has to do with what casting agents call "type", but even the fact that certain roles require not only certain voices but certain body types and personalities does not go far enough to explain the transformation, the bleeding of the composition into us and us into the composition. Our current opera is well-cast, so we knew going into it that our Susanna and Figaro are witty and loving, our Countess tenderhearted, our Count charismatic. But add us into this masterwork, and not only do the singers make the characters live - by some supreme magic, the piece itself begins to illuminate the performers. The notes and words written down 225 years ago shine through my friends and I can suddenly see her sharp mind, his compassion, his child's spirit, her deep wounds, with a clarity nothing in my daily existence could match.
This never ceases to amaze me when it happens. There are some operas that seem to create a mood no matter the people gathered to realize them. Carmen is always kind of messy, like the score itself, and just as the score rarely brings its characters together in an interesting musical way, the performers don't tend to bond. Boheme is always moving, even when the singers aren't good, and the tight-knit score seems to bring its casts together. Or are those just the particular versions of those pieces that I've been near? On the other side, I've been moved to tears by a sincere and engaged group of performers even though the piece they sang was second-rate - I found myself coaching it later, wondering when the music leaked out.
Le Nozze di Figaro doesn't play itself - by that I mean the greatness of the work doesn't make its success automatic. We get nervous approaching these holy pages and tend to err either by sentimentalizing our reactions to the music or by forcing ourselves to avoid them entirely in the name of clarity. Into the gulf between falls the piece. Why is it so difficult to begin with the word, the note, to let it teach us instead of the other way round?
Half a lifetime of lessons:
-at an upright piano with cigarette burns on the side in pre-smoking-ban university, puzzling over what to play before "Se vuol ballare" and thinking that Susanna's aria was easy and boring.
-in the chorus room in San Francisco with the other Merola coaches, singing and playing and conducting the finales, those words in my mouth for the first time.
-in the War Memorial, at the Met, holding my breath as they sang, especially as she sang (we will miss you, Flicka!)
-in that dusty hole in the floor surrounded by the greatest orchestra I have ever known, watching his corona of hair in the monitor, when suddenly at the end of the fourth act he stood up out of the chair and corriam tutti a festeggiar.
- in a little jewelbox theater in the mountains where I found out how little conducting people need once this piece is inside them, and how great a collaboration can be.
And now again, a new place, new difficulties, new joys. Tomorrow night we play it again. Look at us, we'll say, we take each other for granted, we assume everything's about us, we fight to win ancient battles, we don't think about how much we hurt each other. What we do is ridiculous, and human, and at any magical moment, out in the garden, we can recognize each other's voices, we can drop the disguise, we can come out of hiding, we can ask for forgiveness and receive it. We can give it as well.
This can happen every day; we can allow ourselves to be changed. Pace. Perdono. Alle mine date foco.
dkz
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
severe clear
Our tired guests have gone, most of them not so much done in by our evening but by the one before, spent at a variety of excessive activities, some at home, some out dancing at one ball or another, or in the case of MtMn, two straight nights of performing. We celebrated his birthday in style. He of course cooked up a storm, a vat of beef-rabbit-vegetable-and-fire chili on the stove, fresh baked bread alongside the cheese and olives. MSMB brought her signature poppyseed cake, which is a thing of heavenly beauty wrought from poppyseeds, chocolate, orange and lemon peel, and I'm sure some kind of magic. Friends brought good wine and champagne, CM brought hard-to-find beer, and on top of everything we found out it was the real birthday of our new friend PR. Conversations ranged from ancient courtships to bullfighting to the weirdest thing you ever ate (winner: a big scoop from the organ bowl after an at-home sheep slaughter in Kosovo) to the use and misuse of status updates. We belly-laughed and skirted some tender emotions, sang for the birthday men and ate too much, and wrapped the evening up on the early side. Just past midnight and the dishwasher hums in the next room, MtMn snores at the other end of the apartment, and I know our friends will sleep well in tomorrow.
It was good to have a party in our usual style, marking not only the big birthday but the smaller milestone of six months here in Vienna. I rinsed the soap from our motley glassware and thought of so many wonderful gatherings of friends in the many homes we've shared. Ten years ago, in a joint celebration of the big four-oh with two dear friends also hitting that mark, we packed about fifty people into our Manhattan apartment. We stored the beer on the fire escape and heated the place to tropical with the constant cooking in the kitchen and the crowding of the guests. My birthday always came at the end of our Berkshire summers, and our parties at the house there were epic all-day celebrations involving unbelievable amounts of wine and food, poker, and one unforgettable birthday cake courtesy of Madama Butterfly and her best friend. Dinner parties in Seattle, jambalaya and homebrew in Houston, so many nights filled with friends, camaraderie, confessions, tomfoolery, gluttony, and joy.
Now I've straightened our chairs and spooned leftovers into Tupperware, and I've felt the expected pang tonight as the laughter got loud. I felt it later when the conversation fragmented, and I feel it now in the pleasure of remembering celebrations past. I miss Dionysus in this ready guise, loosening the tongue, slipping the bonds of time. I'll never again float through the walls of an evening, never again enjoy the fragility of a fuzzy head having gladly paid that price to attain a kind of transcendence. But there's a sweetness I savor as I survey our clean rooms, not quite ready to go to bed yet. With a clear mind I can think on the gifts of many years and the gifts of this evening, and I know that what remains will be sharper and stronger. I miss the sensation of being lifted out of myself because it's what I remember most about so many of those grand nights.
And looking at the precious details of this one small night, I know I want to remember them all. Less than that is not enough, never was enough, will never be enough.
That's clear.
dkz
It was good to have a party in our usual style, marking not only the big birthday but the smaller milestone of six months here in Vienna. I rinsed the soap from our motley glassware and thought of so many wonderful gatherings of friends in the many homes we've shared. Ten years ago, in a joint celebration of the big four-oh with two dear friends also hitting that mark, we packed about fifty people into our Manhattan apartment. We stored the beer on the fire escape and heated the place to tropical with the constant cooking in the kitchen and the crowding of the guests. My birthday always came at the end of our Berkshire summers, and our parties at the house there were epic all-day celebrations involving unbelievable amounts of wine and food, poker, and one unforgettable birthday cake courtesy of Madama Butterfly and her best friend. Dinner parties in Seattle, jambalaya and homebrew in Houston, so many nights filled with friends, camaraderie, confessions, tomfoolery, gluttony, and joy.
Now I've straightened our chairs and spooned leftovers into Tupperware, and I've felt the expected pang tonight as the laughter got loud. I felt it later when the conversation fragmented, and I feel it now in the pleasure of remembering celebrations past. I miss Dionysus in this ready guise, loosening the tongue, slipping the bonds of time. I'll never again float through the walls of an evening, never again enjoy the fragility of a fuzzy head having gladly paid that price to attain a kind of transcendence. But there's a sweetness I savor as I survey our clean rooms, not quite ready to go to bed yet. With a clear mind I can think on the gifts of many years and the gifts of this evening, and I know that what remains will be sharper and stronger. I miss the sensation of being lifted out of myself because it's what I remember most about so many of those grand nights.
And looking at the precious details of this one small night, I know I want to remember them all. Less than that is not enough, never was enough, will never be enough.
That's clear.
dkz
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
A love like that
Fifty years ago tonight, the Beatles played the Cavern Club for the first time. I never knew that before today, but there was an article about the anniversary on Google news when I got home tonight. I have a different fiftieth anniversary on my mind, and reading about the Not-Yet-Fab Four takes me back to an era I don't really remember but which seems just within reach, accessible through a photographic series of memories, the cateye glasses and cigarette-scented coats of our parents. My birthday boy showed up on the scene a few weeks after President Kennedy took office, the diplomatic break with Cuba still fresh and the Berlin Wall just six months in the future. His parents were teaching school in Detroit, having gotten themselves there by sheer dint of bravery, will, and effort. They both left dirt-poor small towns behind them; she rose above a rough family, he navigated his way through the end of WWII, and together they started a young marriage in the shadow of her serious illness. Told never to risk pregnancy, they proceeded to have five children. Mountain Man was born with mountain blood in his veins, ready to get on with it, not much caring what anyone had to say about it, about to live a dramatic life most undramatically.
I didn't know him during the bike rides to Catholic school (he and his brothers claim that they could tie their neckties one-handed while steering), the weeks in 1968 when the neighborhood dads blocked off the street with their cars and watched for looters. I never met the babysitter he drew his first pictures for. I only heard later about the night they crashed the van, the school paper, the jazz band solos, the marching band trips, the late-night gigs in Detroit. I met him backstage at a concert in college, when he said he didn't like Mozart. He irritated me so much I started hanging out in the library when he was there, just to confirm how much he bugged me. He regularly fell asleep there, exhausted from the combination of student teaching, full courseload, and regular performing with a rock band until all hours of the morning. I started studying at the other end of the long table and watching his head. He would wake up, look at me, and go to his next rehearsal. So irritating.
Eventually I got to know the big, crumbling house on the lake that they moved to after the riots. We shared that kind of childhood, scared young parents fleeing change and heading out to the nearest small town where they found safety for their kids and long commutes for themselves. We are probably the last generation to have been left to our own devices as children. I still love roaming his streets and imagining him young, wasting his time there, on his feet or on his bike, hanging out, growing up. We are both lucky enough to return each year to the same little towns where we first tasted that freedom.
Since then we've walked plenty of roads together - through entire mountain ranges, cities, eras, crises, triumphs - and we don't seem to be nearly finished. He has made room for the unexpected in our lives and taught me to do that too. He does goofy things to make me laugh, he reminds me to go outside. He is clearly planning to get very old and prepares to be able to do that every day. He made me think I could walk up a mountain and take a canoe into the backcountry. He has dealt with the moving companies three times in a row now and doesn't remind me how much payback is owed him. Danger is his middle name. He is a huge geek and can recount his dreams, ancient Greek history, the battles of Alexander, the rules of about three dozen games, the plot of Battlestar Galactica, and the entire text of his favorite movies in astonishing detail. He plays more kinds of music than most musicians I know and is currently learning new styles. He is a born teacher. He says he doesn't like the Internet but I often find him digging through Youtube for interesting performances. He is building our house, he does our taxes, he makes me dinner, and he lightens my heart every single day.
Happy birthday, husband. Tell me there's at least fifty more years of you.
dkz
I didn't know him during the bike rides to Catholic school (he and his brothers claim that they could tie their neckties one-handed while steering), the weeks in 1968 when the neighborhood dads blocked off the street with their cars and watched for looters. I never met the babysitter he drew his first pictures for. I only heard later about the night they crashed the van, the school paper, the jazz band solos, the marching band trips, the late-night gigs in Detroit. I met him backstage at a concert in college, when he said he didn't like Mozart. He irritated me so much I started hanging out in the library when he was there, just to confirm how much he bugged me. He regularly fell asleep there, exhausted from the combination of student teaching, full courseload, and regular performing with a rock band until all hours of the morning. I started studying at the other end of the long table and watching his head. He would wake up, look at me, and go to his next rehearsal. So irritating.
Eventually I got to know the big, crumbling house on the lake that they moved to after the riots. We shared that kind of childhood, scared young parents fleeing change and heading out to the nearest small town where they found safety for their kids and long commutes for themselves. We are probably the last generation to have been left to our own devices as children. I still love roaming his streets and imagining him young, wasting his time there, on his feet or on his bike, hanging out, growing up. We are both lucky enough to return each year to the same little towns where we first tasted that freedom.
Since then we've walked plenty of roads together - through entire mountain ranges, cities, eras, crises, triumphs - and we don't seem to be nearly finished. He has made room for the unexpected in our lives and taught me to do that too. He does goofy things to make me laugh, he reminds me to go outside. He is clearly planning to get very old and prepares to be able to do that every day. He made me think I could walk up a mountain and take a canoe into the backcountry. He has dealt with the moving companies three times in a row now and doesn't remind me how much payback is owed him. Danger is his middle name. He is a huge geek and can recount his dreams, ancient Greek history, the battles of Alexander, the rules of about three dozen games, the plot of Battlestar Galactica, and the entire text of his favorite movies in astonishing detail. He plays more kinds of music than most musicians I know and is currently learning new styles. He is a born teacher. He says he doesn't like the Internet but I often find him digging through Youtube for interesting performances. He is building our house, he does our taxes, he makes me dinner, and he lightens my heart every single day.
Happy birthday, husband. Tell me there's at least fifty more years of you.
dkz
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Equilbrium
Besides me being sick, it was a perfect weekend. We watched movies, ate soup, took naps, and yesterday when I started feeling better we went for a stroll along the canal in the suspiciously springlike air. Everybody was out, their heavy winter coats open or slung over their arms, soaking up the rare light and enjoying the city in sunshine. Right before MtMn's birthday, we always feel the shift: days get brighter. The weather isn't everything, but its effect is significant. The day's length doesn't vary that much in Texas, and I like thinking that big payback for the dark winter is on the way, that light increases so naturally, without effort.
He has two shows this week, my show goes on stage, it's busy. In between we heat up dinner whenever we get home, geek out on Roman history, see who's on Skype, plan a party, plan a summer. It's all right. It's life as we have often known it. And I can feel how I've resisted this ease from somewhere deep inside, from a place that wants to go home.
Home is shifting.
And, of course, home is not shifting. Roll out the yoga mat, sip the coffee, read the book, do the puzzle, study the score, watch the movie, have the conversation. Years of changing scenery and new stories, a great long dizzying road trip. Huddled on the couch, strolling along the path, entwined in our bed.
dkz
He has two shows this week, my show goes on stage, it's busy. In between we heat up dinner whenever we get home, geek out on Roman history, see who's on Skype, plan a party, plan a summer. It's all right. It's life as we have often known it. And I can feel how I've resisted this ease from somewhere deep inside, from a place that wants to go home.
Home is shifting.
And, of course, home is not shifting. Roll out the yoga mat, sip the coffee, read the book, do the puzzle, study the score, watch the movie, have the conversation. Years of changing scenery and new stories, a great long dizzying road trip. Huddled on the couch, strolling along the path, entwined in our bed.
dkz
Monday, January 31, 2011
past my bedtime
We have officially kicked off the Big-Birthday-Anniversary Celebration, extended version, with the Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio. They played the Konzerthaus on Sunday night and it was a weird evening. The trio was breathtaking at times - the drummer, technically flawless, did not seem to be inhabiting the same rare space as piano and bass, whose players sighed and struck in symbiosis for two hours. Gonzalo sounded like Alban Berg had gone to Havana and partied until four in the morning, still playing at the club but getting all Mitteleuropaly homesick. Half the audience left in the course of the concert, which was just bizarre, since the playing was world-class and they are usually all about that here in Vienna. Were people expecting his dad? Was it just getting too late on a Sunday night? In any case it was strange, the best playing imaginable in that glorious gilded room, and people walking out in droves.
MtMn and I started our whole sordid affair at a jazz performance, the Art Ensemble of Chicago playing at the Kerr Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. He gave me a ride on his motorcycle at the last minute when my planned ride canceled due to a last minute dating opportunity (I hadn't learned to drive and mooched shamelessly off my friends for a decade until MtMn talk me to drive stick on the hills of Tacoma, Washington, a feat which stands as stubborn proof of his love, or at least tenacity). Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell painted their faces and blew up a storm the night that several of my foundations began to crumble. Seems right that we should begin an extended marking of our path together at another concert, this time so very classical in nature and venue but still marked with misbehavior.
We stayed up late talking about music and Vienna and anything else that kept us talking. Friday night was also too late, wonderful conversation and music at a friend's house that led to more staying up at home. So this morning's Regiesitzung will be a little foggy. In tribute to that February night in 1983 when I stayed up longer than I should have to talk about music and books in the lobby of McClintock Residence Hall, I salute every single sleepy morning of my life that has followed such a lack of judgment. Here's to knowing you should be in bed but not quite going yet, just to make sure you don't miss something good.
dkz
MtMn and I started our whole sordid affair at a jazz performance, the Art Ensemble of Chicago playing at the Kerr Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. He gave me a ride on his motorcycle at the last minute when my planned ride canceled due to a last minute dating opportunity (I hadn't learned to drive and mooched shamelessly off my friends for a decade until MtMn talk me to drive stick on the hills of Tacoma, Washington, a feat which stands as stubborn proof of his love, or at least tenacity). Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell painted their faces and blew up a storm the night that several of my foundations began to crumble. Seems right that we should begin an extended marking of our path together at another concert, this time so very classical in nature and venue but still marked with misbehavior.
We stayed up late talking about music and Vienna and anything else that kept us talking. Friday night was also too late, wonderful conversation and music at a friend's house that led to more staying up at home. So this morning's Regiesitzung will be a little foggy. In tribute to that February night in 1983 when I stayed up longer than I should have to talk about music and books in the lobby of McClintock Residence Hall, I salute every single sleepy morning of my life that has followed such a lack of judgment. Here's to knowing you should be in bed but not quite going yet, just to make sure you don't miss something good.
dkz
Saturday, January 29, 2011
well
I'm thinking of a letter I got from a dear friend a few months back, about how to stay flexible when the established ways of working don't, well, work. Cher ami, I get it now. Thanks.
Well. How to miss the deep waters all around, how to forget to drink?
I'm in the imperial-scarlet-and-cream Loge watching Magic Flute. I quote this opera a lot in these pages, because we are almost always performing it. This is the definitive good ensemble night. The only guest is a recent ensemble member, and everyone else is in-house (except for the choir boys, but they're from only a few tram stops away). The orchestra is sweet and light, the cast is true, the music is lovely, it's all as it should be. Oh, such a flute is worth more than gold and power, for human happiness increases through it are the words I hear before I head upstairs and turn my computer on. From Italy I hear dear CG digging into a major role debut several Alps removed from me, and she tears it up (Richard Wagner, I don't know if you smile much where you are, but I bet she got one out of you!). Back down to the Loge in time to see the prince and princess reunite, the cute little feathered people get together, and the audience go crazy.
I'm in the Kunsthistorisches Museum looking at van Eyck, I'm in Cafe Schwartzenburg reading my Kindle, I'm at the Naschmarkt Deli catching up with a friend, I'm on Skype with my family. I'm back on Facebook with several hundred people who really, truly are my friends.
Because, well, Vienna, I'm done knocking on the doors of your temples. They've been open the whole time, haven't they?
Well, well, well.
dkz
Well. How to miss the deep waters all around, how to forget to drink?
I'm in the imperial-scarlet-and-cream Loge watching Magic Flute. I quote this opera a lot in these pages, because we are almost always performing it. This is the definitive good ensemble night. The only guest is a recent ensemble member, and everyone else is in-house (except for the choir boys, but they're from only a few tram stops away). The orchestra is sweet and light, the cast is true, the music is lovely, it's all as it should be. Oh, such a flute is worth more than gold and power, for human happiness increases through it are the words I hear before I head upstairs and turn my computer on. From Italy I hear dear CG digging into a major role debut several Alps removed from me, and she tears it up (Richard Wagner, I don't know if you smile much where you are, but I bet she got one out of you!). Back down to the Loge in time to see the prince and princess reunite, the cute little feathered people get together, and the audience go crazy.
I'm in the Kunsthistorisches Museum looking at van Eyck, I'm in Cafe Schwartzenburg reading my Kindle, I'm at the Naschmarkt Deli catching up with a friend, I'm on Skype with my family. I'm back on Facebook with several hundred people who really, truly are my friends.
Because, well, Vienna, I'm done knocking on the doors of your temples. They've been open the whole time, haven't they?
Well, well, well.
dkz
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Bald, Jüngling, oder nie
Out the window to my left, snow quietly accumulates on the green roof of the Staatsoper. The sounds from the Kärtnerstrasse below are muffled and slushy, and you imagine you can get the scent of the fresh snow even from this side of the double-paned windows. Through the doors and walls float the morning's collection of notes and characters: a determined noblewoman, a party animal, a grieving father, the birdcatcher, the messenger, the princess. On the piano are the collection of notes for later today, Mozart and da Ponte, some for the shallow end of the pool with a beginning conservatory class and some for the big boys and girls upstairs. In my mind is the usual collection of joys and irritations, little hooks to hang my mind on, insubstantial, fascinating, meaningless and dear.
If these collected thoughts and sounds are gathered together, they have just substance enough to push other fragmented images into the darkest corners, nearly out of sight. Tired travelers making the walk from the cramped plane to the carousel, all those eyes scanning for familiar suitcases packed with shirts and shoes, books, watches, gifts, all those waiting with plans, work to do, children to embrace, dinners to eat, wrongs to right. How many times have I - no, how many times have we all - no, no, no.
A shameless, helpless plunge back into work: hiding from the world? helping it? Everybody keeps practicing.
Mi portasse una speranza di cangiar l'ingrato cor.
I'm strong, and I know it, and I'll stay strong, and that's all, and that's enough.
Dich leitet Lieb' und Tugend nicht.
Across the street, the white roofs of Vienna match the clouds exactly. The whole town seems attached directly to a cold, unblinking sky.
dkz
peace to Moscow and all places suffering from fear and violence
If these collected thoughts and sounds are gathered together, they have just substance enough to push other fragmented images into the darkest corners, nearly out of sight. Tired travelers making the walk from the cramped plane to the carousel, all those eyes scanning for familiar suitcases packed with shirts and shoes, books, watches, gifts, all those waiting with plans, work to do, children to embrace, dinners to eat, wrongs to right. How many times have I - no, how many times have we all - no, no, no.
A shameless, helpless plunge back into work: hiding from the world? helping it? Everybody keeps practicing.
Mi portasse una speranza di cangiar l'ingrato cor.
I'm strong, and I know it, and I'll stay strong, and that's all, and that's enough.
Dich leitet Lieb' und Tugend nicht.
Across the street, the white roofs of Vienna match the clouds exactly. The whole town seems attached directly to a cold, unblinking sky.
dkz
peace to Moscow and all places suffering from fear and violence
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