Prunksaal

It means "Hall of Splendor", or if you are translating in haste for someone in the Kantine, "fancy room". I played a gig there last night, in the room of splendor of the Austrian National Library. The Nationalbibliothek is part of the Hofberg complex, the spectacular lodgings of emperors past, and it turns out that in addition to the great furniture and tracts of land, the Habsburgs also collected the occasional Buch.

80 meters long and 30 meters high, cathedral-like in dimension and jaw-droppingly beautiful, this is the former great hall of the Imperial library. Marble floors and pillars support the frescoed dome and the walls lined with centuries of thought written down in all languages. The first display case I saw upon entering the hall contained a 5th century parchment illustrating the mail routes of the Roman empire. It's like a pretend fantasy library from some great yet-unmade movie, Harry Potter meets the DaVinci Code.

See old Karl VI in the center there? Last night he was surrounded by life-size images of some very beloved Alfred Roller designs:

My colleagues and I were the entertainment for "100 years of Rosenkavalier". That wonderful piece is having a big anniversary in 2011, and a small, fascinating group of supporters had a preview of the installation last night. The Roller designs were just a taste. I stared for many minutes at some of von Hofmannsthal's original notes for the first scene between the Marschallin and Oktavian. He brought them to Strauss for an initial meeting, and as they talked together (no doubt over coffee), Strauss came up with a few melodic ideas. There they were, the opera's initial ascending horn call and the sighing violin answer, born as doodles in the margins of some hastily sketched dialogue. 

We performed in the unheated hall and then repaired to the comfort of a reception. I talked to a former Austrian Supreme Court justice, a diplomat, a professor of literature, opera lovers all. I was moved by the connection of this audience to this piece, and by their grateful connection to the performers. I walked back to the streetcar with the mezzo, a woman experienced in this opera but buzzing with anticipation over her first Oktavian at the Staatsoper, coming in just a few weeks (especially after talking to our audience members about who they've heard in that house!). 

And then at home, the messages were waiting for me. I found my brother-in-law on Skype. He was drying the big pot for the mashed potatoes that may or may not get made, waiting to hear if he should take my nephew on to choir practice or to the hospital where my mom and siblings had already gathered. My grandmother was admitted about a week ago, and Mom's gut feeling was that she wasn't coming home. Still, she had rallied in the last 48 hours, enough so that my uncle was planning to bring her home for the holiday. Yesterday things changed quickly, and now it seems that the liver cancer she's been fighting since the summer will take her soon, most likely during this holiday weekend. 

Some of the people who read this have met Alice. I wish you all knew her. She has lived a great life, an epic life. It started with immigrant parents, a mother who couldn't ever communicate well in English, two siblings who died young, the wish for education squelched by her father, a marriage ended after just five years with her beloved young husband's death, and the decision to leave her baby daughter behind in New Ulm and travel to Minneapolis for work. She was a single mother during the war, was terrifyingly poor, tough, and resourceful. She had a disastrous second marriage and a troubled third to a sad and loyal WWII veteran. She was a working woman until retirement, she took care of her grandchildren; she completed her GED at the age of 70 and nursed her husband through a long, relentless illness. She traveled the world and learned line dancing, she chopped her own ice out of her gutters, she was a terrible driver and has always been an avid card player. She came to Houston to visit me a few years ago, refused the airline's wheelchair and walked through Intercontinental, and insisted on going to Lakewood Chapel to see Joel Osteen. She's Rosenkavalier's younger sister by five years. She hasn't ever heard the piece, but I imagine she'd enjoy the music while recognizing exactly none of its privileged characters. 

It's Thanksgiving Day. My family's in a splendid room in Minnesota.

Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding

Wenn man so hinlebt, ist sie rein gar nichts,

Aber dann auf einmal, man spürt doch nichts als sie.

Sie ist in uns herum, sie ist auch in uns drinnen.

In den Gesichtern rieselt sie. Im Spiegel da rieselt sie,

In meinen Schläfern fliesst sie,

Und zwischen mir und dir da fliesst sie wieder, lautlos...

Allein, man muss sich auch vor ihr nicht fürchten.

Auch sie ist ein Geschöpf des Vaters, 

Der uns alle erschaffen hat.

Time, that's a strange thing.

When you're absorbed in your life, it's nothing,

But then, all at once, you're aware of nothing else.

It's all around us, it's inside us too,

It's flowing through our faces, in the mirror,

In my veins, and silently between the two of us...

Only, we shouldn't be afraid of it.

It's another creation of the Father who created us all. 

dkz

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

Nick's tips for enjoying the Tigers game

8:00 AM is not too early to begin dressing for the game. Nothing says "Tiger fan" like wearing your cap while eating your cereal.

If your aunt says she is a Twins fan, do not take her seriously. She has not so much as a towel with a "T" on it. However, when you sit behind an entire row of people from Minnesota, you are allowed to die a little inside. Boredom is the best choice when choosing your outer attitude. Close second: get very involved with eating your ice.

 Your team is winning, and the game is a little boring, so point out your dad's office building to the visitors. Don't act too interested when they ask questions about what you want to do in high school next year. Enthusiasm is for the lame. Save it up for when you kick their butts at both hearts and Rock Band later in the evening.

You can allow yourself a smile or two during the day, as long as you're not like totally obvious about it.

dkz

Maggie Rose's Guide to Beginning Photography

You have to ask first. You say, "Oh please may I use the camera please? Thank you!" Don't say it loud because you should ask like a lady. I promise to be very very careful. If you drop the camera it's bad because it can break and then all the pictures will fall out.

I'm gonna take picture!

(careful aiming, pressing of button)

Gooooood picture!

.

Tell everybody, "Say tscheeeee I'm gonna take a picture!" If they don't listen you can say it again real loud.

                                                  Charlie is too little to take pictures.

The lake is really really good! I drived the boat all! Bahmah! Seff! (spreads hands wide)

Can you take my picture?

dkz

summer school

So the unexpected thing that happened was this: I got nervous. After we unpacked here in Chicago, after the first good night's sleep post-Austria, after all the agenda items were checked off the list and vacation had begun, I got nervous. I watched the US soccer team win their group and those two tennis guys play all damn day and felt the whole time like a hamster was sitting directly on my adrenal glands. Yeah, I know, solar plexus, seat of personal power, indicator of uncertainty, und so weiter. GOT it - except that perhaps I don't exactly, as I notice my breath not quite making it down into my belly.

The other feature of yesterday was a lot of blog discussion on the nature of teaching and learning, all inspired by news of the evil super-capitalist movement in Texas that is turning student evaluations into employee evaluations. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the greatest teachers in my life and about how important it was for me to learn to turn myself over to them, even when they demanded ways of learning or behaviors that were not easy for me. Even when I disagreed. I was not naturally good at this, and now when I have a student that kicks or talks too much or contradicts me or does whatever he or she does to avoid walking a particular path, I have to smile - payback time! My way of handling this is gentler than some (I'm thinking of you, SDG. RIP and thank you for kicking me out of your studio, ya bastid - it was rough but right), but so often it's necessary to lead someone down an unexpected, undesired road. Very often. OK, always.

In trying to explain this, I've run into more than one skeptical reaction, even full dismissal. To some, such talk smells of guru worship, an abdication of personal power or responsibility. And fair enough - it's demonstrably possible to cross the line from saying yes all the time into, shall we say, over-agreement (bedding the teacher, ignoring the instincts that might keep you from physical harm). I was shocked the first time I saw a martial arts class of my husband's, where the only allowable response to the master was "yes, sir!" It violated everything in my little American heart. What if I don't want to? What if I'm too tired? What if I have a good reason?

It's just that none of us need to be taught what we already know. Fact accumulation is simpler than ever. Why do we go to teachers?

O wad some power the giftie gie us
to see oursels as other see us

Isn't that it? The shift in perspective, the chance to look from a different angle, the chance to find out what we are avoiding by announcing what we will not do? It's not that you, the student, have no idea of what you need...but you might not know it up in the front of your brain, you might not know how to find it, and hell, you might really not have the first clue.

Typing, I think of a thousand acceptances and a thousand refusals of exactly this gift, the journey out of my own head, my own comfort zone, my own well-disguised laziness, and I'm filled with gratitude for all my teachers, past and present. Today I'll go to the keyboard, get on the mat, all those things I burn to do and look to avoid. Because that's what we do. We know and we don't know, we see and we are blind, we want with all our hearts to reach to the new place and we lie back in comfort.

Watch your back, hamster.

dkz

Arrival

I asked the Staatsoper portier this morning how long it had been sunny and gorgeous in Vienna, and he replied "seit halb zehn" - since 9:30. I've heard yesterday was lovely too, but evidently winter lasted right up until Thursday night. Today was crazy beautiful, however, the irresistible sun surrounded by unreasonable blue, everyone outside in shorts and skirts and tank tops and sandals, eating ice cream and taking pictures and getting sunburned and having brunch outside. I did that too, having strolled in triumphantly from the airport (pride checklist: easy conversation in German with a stranger on the train, strolling to my hotel with no map). The warm sun helped keep me awake through breakfast (the butter! the egg with the rich golden yolk! the grosser brauner! the tangy cottage cheese and tomatoes!). Then back to the hotel for one of those disorienting naps before Eugene Onegin. First there were reunions: unexpected, with a longtime Met colleague and a few singers, and expected, with beautiful SS who had Dienst up in the company box, where I sat.

It was a good performance. The orchestra is just mind-bending on a night like this, all impossibly warm strings and pristine winds, horns like a sound directly from someone's heart and mind. KP conducted with a light, lithe hand, and for the first time in my limited experience, there were no balance issues. The cast was mostly good, with several ensemble singers giving impressive performances, and with the great FF stopping time in his aria.

In the seat I'll occupy so often in the next three years, directly above stage left, I have a compromised view of the stage but a remarkable view of the house, and I had to keep myself from too often staring openly out at my fellow audience members. Hey, everybody, I wanted to say. For the first time, that room began to feel like home.

dkz

Chateleine

I spent twelve years of my life sitting in a hole in the floor. Okay, that wasn't the only place I hung out. I also whiled away certain hours sitting on benches (piano and park), chairs, sofas, floors, carpets, and grass. I nestled my ample frame into cars, airplanes, trains, tents, and one particularly fabulous canoe. There were notable achievements as well in the fields of standing and walking. So it's not like my life was limited.

My chosen spot, however, was aptly named: prompter's box, or simply, "the box" (that's what the cool kids said). Small and airless, it contained secrets. Gifts, sometimes - no, often, given and received. Inside, I was isolated, powerful, alone, necessary, anonymous, helpful, invisible...but that may have all been my imagination, which had plenty of time to run wild in the mostly boring hours. That said, I sat on the mountaintop a few times in that dusty closet; when I climbed out, its narrowness surprised me.

I never expected to be a prompter in an opera house, and I don't miss doing it, but it was a special privilege. With it came a secret, a surprise, a gift - the possibility of deep relationship. My relationship with music came easy, but that with other musicians - other people - has always been a trickier proposition, intimate and overwhelming. To climb down the rabbit hole with the words and music of genius, my friends all around me (above and below, on stage and in the orchestra pit), and to wait in attendance to see who might need a cue (a word, a note, a smile, a calm breath) was to experience quiet, focus, and connection for the first time. Eventually I could hardly wait to get out of that tiny space, but I had to go in to get out.

Thanks, you odd, exacting, dying profession.

dkz