Ilia Conquers Mass Transportation

The good news—opera is alive and well in Puerto Rico. The bad news? One flu epidemic could kill it.

I tell you this because I saw one Met transmission last year—it was Giulio Cesare with David Daniels, and it was fantastic—and I got hooked. So Mr. Fernández and I hit on the idea taking his mother, the redoubtable Ilia, to the opera.

“We can take the bus,” said Ilia, when I told her a week ago about the plan.

“We’re taking a cab,” I told her—and firmly. It’s the only way to be with Ilia.

Well, we went last week to the opera, and the audience was there, and the theater was there, but the opera? Not there, since a storm had knocked out the power, and the generator wasn’t working. So we waited for a bit in the hot and humid dark movie lobby, until it occurred to us—grab a drink next door.

“A bus just passed,” Ilia informed us, “Aha, and the bus stop is right over there….”

Ilia either learned her technique from erosion or nature imitated Ilia. Anyway, it’s the same—drip, drip, drip!

“You’re 83 years, you have chronic and crippling arthritis, and one bump in the road could lead to a broken hip. No, Ilia.”

“They seem to come by very frequently….”

Right, so we hit on the idea of going to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which happens to be located in an old school that Ilia’s husband had attended as a boy. It was when Ilia was busy communicating this on her cell phone that disaster struck.

It was a sort of maze comprised of hanging paper panels, and we were drifting around looking out of the holes that had been punched into it. Ilia, head down, walked into one of the panels, dislodging one end.

“Well, there we see why you shouldn’t text and drive,” said Ilia. Having raised six children, she hasn’t lost the habit of finding the moral of the story.

No great damage done, we then went down to the gift shop, since Ilia is also a great one for little gifts—or regalitos. In fact, Ilia could send the whole family to London for a week with the money she spends on regalitos, but what fun would that be?

“Another bus,” Ilia was quick to note, as we left the museum.

“Ilia, what’s the problem with a cab?”

“Cabs are no fun. Buses are what kids do. I want to take the bus….”

There’s no use for it—you might as well give in early in the game because guess what? If you wait, you’ll give in and be exhausted.

“Now I want to take the trolley,” said Ilia, as she stepped off the bus.

“Ilia, the way you’re going, you’re going to want a martini and a cigarette….”

“Oh, no….”

“Wonderful,” she said, climbing down from the trolley.

Well, the opera was yesterday, instead—and guess how we got there?

Ilia parted the crowd with her walker—rather the way trains get cattle off the rails. But it has to be said, she was by no means the only person in the assisted-walking department. In fact, Mr. Fernández and I were almost the only people not with cane / walker / wheelchair.

Oh, except for Ivelisse, the woman sitting next to us, who happened to be an old student from Wal-Mart.

“Why don’t more people come to the opera,” said Ivelisse, as we sat chatting.

And why indeed? The opera was Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s best opera—the singing was glorious, the story is good, and the sets and costumes were terrific. And for three hours, the rest of the world can spin around without you.

Others—including The New York Times—disagreed. Anthony Tommasini, the critic for the Times, called the production drab and muddled, as well as an “also ran.” That’s an ouch….

But what did I care? I had heard some beautiful music, I had reconnected with an old friend, and I had taken an 83-year old lady out of her apartment, where she had been cooped up all week watching bad television with her ailing husband.

“Maravillosa,” said Ilia, as she stood up after the end of the opera.

And then we headed for the damn bus.

Opening Night Gets Heated

It was, apparently, a noisy night at the opera.

I pondered in this blog several weeks ago whether I should sign an online petition asking the Metropolitan Opera House to dedicate its opening night—a more-champagne-than-beer night out—to the cause of LGBT rights.

There were good reasons to sign the petition. First of all, Anna Netrebko, the Russian-Austrian soprano at the top of the field, and Valery Gergiev, the Russian conductor, were singing and conducting. And both, to some degree, were supporters or perhaps friends with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who signed into law draconian laws against even speaking about homosexuality. More to the point, neither artist had condemned these laws. Oh, and the opera to be performed on opening night? Eugene Onegin, by that most lavender composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

There were good reasons not to sign the petition. First of all, it was mere coincidence that the two Russian artists were appearing in a gay Russian composer’s opera that opening night; the Met was hardly endorsing or even acquiescing to homophobia. Second, the opening was in New York, not in Moscow—the Russians weren’t making any money off this one. Third, the Met has never endorsed any cause in its 130 year-plus history. And, look guys, we’re not the only game in town. In the last 130 years, there have been a LOT of atrocities. The Met could have devoted every performance to a different cause, and still not be done with them….

So I didn’t sign, but 9,000 others—including Mr. Fernández—did. And yesterday evening, the opening night took place. And was Netrebko in good voice? Did Gergiev conduct with a toothpick, as he has been known to do? How was the staging, or the lighting?

Well, readers of The New York Times this morning won’t be able to tell you. What they will find is the story with the headline: Gay Rights Protest Greets Opening Night. Here’s the Times’ description of the event:

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Sister Lotti Da, passing out leaflets, was among the demonstrators in front of the Metropolitan Opera on Monday.

After the lights dimmed for the Metropolitan Opera’s Russian-themed opening night gala on Monday evening, the first solo voice that rang out in the house was not of a tenor or soprano, but of a protester criticizing the recent antigay laws signed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Putin, end your war on Russian gays!” a man shouted in the vast auditorium, which was packed for the black-tie gala opening of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” before turning to two of the evening’s Russian stars: Anna Netrebko, the popular Russian diva, and Valery Gergiev, the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. “Anna, your silence is killing Russian gays! Valery, your silence is killing Russian gays!”

Was it true? I had looked it up, and discovered that Netrebko had issued a watery statement of support—not mentioning the laws or Putin or homosexuality, but valiantly coming out and stating that she supported equality for everybody! Wow, talk about living on the rim of the volcano! Brave move, Anna!

OK, so what about Gergiev? Here, the water is murkier; in an article from March of 2009, The New York Times said: 

“I don’t know of any case in musical history, except maybe for Wagner and mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, where a musician has been that close to a powerful ruler,” Richard Morrison, the chief classical music critic of The Times of London, told me.   

And it may be that, in Russia, you have to be a politician to be a musician. Gergiev’s passion was to rebuild the Kirov—which had a fabled history—into a glittering opera house. And to do that, he needed swagger, and the nerve to say to politicians what he said to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Here’s The New York Times again:

Gergiev arrived with Irina Arkhipova, a great singer already advanced in years. Representing the Bolshoi, she had one overriding mission — to obtain financing for the Glinka competition for young singers.

Recalling the meeting, Gergiev emphasized his persuasive bluntness. “The prime minister had 15 minutes, in between Chechnya war meetings,” he recalled. “Arkhipova ate 10 minutes talking about the Glinka competition. She wanted $10,000. I saw that the next person was waiting outside the door for his meeting. It was my turn. I said, ‘Viktor Stepanovich, if you don’t give $10 million now to each theater, both will be lost.’ The most upset person was her. She thought she would lose her $10,000. I said, ‘You don’t know that the salaries are so pitiful that the only ones who can survive are those who work in the West.’ He said, ‘Where am I supposed to get $10 million?’ I said, ‘It’s the money you spend in one hour in Chechnya.’ He said: ‘It’s nothing to do with Chechnya. Why do you speak of it?’ I said: ‘The money disappears. It wasn’t you who built these opera houses. It is a glory of the nation. You should come see. And maybe first the Bolshoi — they are in even worse shape.’ He at some point shockingly realized that I was telling him directly and openly what was going on. We spent one hour extra there. The prime minister immediately gave $10 million together to the two houses. A very Russian story.

In the same interview, Gergiev says that Russia is a big country—you need a loud voice to be heard. And you need to get into bed with some unsavory characters, because an enemy in the Kremlin is far worse, and more powerful, than an enemy in Washington. In short, that $10 million for the Kirov—now called the Mariinsky—doesn’t get given to a guy who protests human rights abuse.

According to Anthony Tommasini, the Times’ music critic, it was not the best of nights at the opera—not the least because the director pulled out at the last minute, and was replaced by Fiona Shaw, who had never directed at the Met, and who anyway was directing elsewhere at the time.

Tommasini points out that street protests are one thing—protests within a theater another. Very true—if the protests had lasted long, the Met could have gone into overtime, and that, dear Reader, is something you don’t want to do. But the protesters left gracefully.

So let the Met off the hook on this one, guys. But the Sochi Olympics?

No frigging way….  

A Voice of Incomparable Price

One of my favorite authors once wrote a line to the effect of “the person you have become, through sheer hard work and adversity, is just as much if not more the true self than the person you started out as.”

Robertson Davies wrote the line referring to a young soprano, but the person who brought the line to my mind was an old soprano: Leontyne Price. And what an amazing soprano! Take a listen to a relatively unknown aria—Song to the Moon, from Dvorak’s Rusalka.



OK—now you can hear why BBC’s Music Magazine in 2007 listed her among the 20 best sopranos. (She came in number four, after Callas, Sutherland, and de los Ángeles.)

And she has an interesting story—she was born in Laurel, Mississippi to parents of limited means. Which, oddly, may have been a break; the schools were strictly segregated, but she has fond memories of the teachers, all of whom were devoted to their students. (In one anecdote, Price admits that the Home Economics teacher had told her, “Leontyne, you’ll never be a great housekeeper.” Somehow, Price manages to make this remark self-deprecating and funny—as she is all throughout the interview.)

So Price, as an older teenager, worked cleaning for a prominent white couple—who were sufficiently impressed to ask Price’s parents if they couldn’t send her off to Juilliard. With their help—as well as a benefit concert from Paul Robeson—she got there.

Like Marian Anderson, born thirty years earlier, Price made her career in Europe before attacking the United States. And when she got there, as she tells New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini, she had faced some of the toughest critics and audiences in the world. So when she was to make her Metropolitan Opera debut—was she fazed? Yes but mostly no. However, she did have a little prayer: Jesus, you got me into this; now, get me out!

Well, Jesus came through—she got a 42-minute ovation; it was one of the longest ovations at the Met.

Asked to describe her voice, Price admits to being a spinto—a rare breed of soprano who has a flexible, lyric voice that can be pushed to a more dramatic, powerful voice. Here’s Price singing Vissi d’Arte, from Puccini’s Tosca.

And just to hear a dramatic soprano perform the same aria—here’s the incredible Birgit Nilsson, a dramatic soprano who could single-handedly take on an orchestra of 120 furiously playing instrumentalists, plus a chorus of dozens, and still make herself very much heard. Oh, and do it for five hours, and repeat the whole thing the next day.



She had thought, initially, to be a recitalist, and she had a close friendship with the composer Samuel Barber, who wrote his Hermit Songs for her. And though another one of Barber’s masterpieces, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, was premiered by another soprano—Eleanor Steber—Price has a special affinity for the piece. Like both Barber and the lyricist James Agee, Price’s father had just died. And so this piece—a nostalgic look at parents on porches, small-town life, kids playing amid the sounds of crickets—had special meaning for Price.



And it was for Price that Barber composed his second opera—an opera that still attracts controversy: Antony and Cleopatra, which the Metropolitan Opera commissioned to open the new hall in 1966. It was a fiasco—Franco Zeffirelli created a ghastly stage setting, the orchestra was under-rehearsed, and the stage machinery was acting up. At one point, Price got stuck in a pyramid and couldn’t get out. But there she was—still singing away!

Barber never quite got over it—he drank more and more, and wrote less and less. Price shook it off and went on with her career—she sang her last performance in 1997—and she was seventy at the time. That, for a singer, is extraordinary.

I’ve no idea how old she was when she did the interview below with Tommasini, but she’s clearly no spring chicken. Yet she sings in the shower every morning, and gets up to the F above high C. Then she tells herself two things—if she can do that F, her high C will be right there. Oh, and also that yes, she has the energy to go downstairs and eat breakfast.

She is, after all, an extraordinary artist—noble, funny, self-deprecating, and yet keenly aware that she has had both a great gift and has worked mightily to use it well. W. Somerset Maugham, in a short story, portrayed a great singer as a kind of monster of egotism and ruthlessness.

Price is the absolute opposite.

When a Thing Doesn't Have a Name

Were they or weren’t they?

Well, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times weighed in on Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s opera “David et Jonathas,” and the verdict? Yeah, David and Jonathan were an item.

We’ll never know, of course, and there are days I wonder whether we should care. It’s also true that nothing exists in a vacuum, and the culture and mores reigning in tribal Jewish culture over two millennia ago are completely distinct and separate from ours today.

So what was between Jonathan and David? Well, whatever it was, it was major; here’s 2 Sam 1:17….

Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.(NASB)[6]

Strong stuff. And of course there are the famous words that David spoke after Jonathan’s death:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"

Wikipedia presents several views on the question of what was up between these two guys. The traditional view is that it was platonic, but it may have been homosocial. And yes, my red squiggling computer, I didn’t know the term either. After wading through a lot of psychological jargon, I happened on the common name for a homosocial relationship….

…bromance.

Right. So they were intense friends, but that never turned physical. Or did it? Some scholars argue that it was edited out of the Bible—don’t turn to me for any answers.

Whatever it is, or was, guys have had strong relationships for thousands of years. Remember all that gushing stuff that Lincoln wrote to his friend Joshua Speed? Do that today, and everybody will assume that you’re gay, but it may have been the custom of the time.

I think today of my father, who had a deep relationship of decades with John Bunch, the chief engineer of the City of Madison. They spoke daily, they saw each other about every week, both families went camping together. And though, yes, the two wives got on well enough, it was the two men who were the emotional heart of the relationship. As I write, I can see my father sitting on the floor—something he never did—next to John Bunch, sitting in a big easy chair. Bunch is repetitively caressing Jack’s knee. I, 17 and very closeted, am wondering—what’s up with these guys?

The truth is I don’t know, though I very much land on the side of “nothing sexual.” But then there was my mother, who did have a lesbian relationship for a year. And that would have been in the early ‘40’s—not particularly enlightened years. So maybe Jack and Bunch, on one of those bourbon-drenched nights, did get it on; it wouldn’t surprise me.

OK—it would.

Nor do I think it likely that David and Jonathan got it on.

Just don’t get me started on Walt Whitman….