Anything but Bland

Well, in the clip below robbed from YouTube, there’s a little note: “comments are disabled for this video.”

‘Gee, I wonder why,’ I thought, as I imagined the comments. Half would be shrieks of vitriol, the other half would be raving panegyrics, and, in between? A void only slightly smaller that the Milky Way.

Which is how it should be, I think, and also how—someone tell me if I’m wrong, here—it increasingly isn’t. And I’m thinking this after bumping into my older Puerto Rican brother, Pablo, at the opera yesterday.

We had decided to take Montalvo to the opera, or rather to the rebroadcast of the Metropolitan’s Otello, Guiseppe Verdi’s penultimate opera. So there Pablo was: the man who had morphed over time from a landlord into a brother, who had provided more than a shoulder for me to cry on after lost auditions and the occasional marital spat. He’d been a constant source of encouragement, as well as the source of some amusement; once, during a session of extremely vocal sex coming from the second floor, Raf and I had played the last movement of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, turning up the volume at the climax, all the better to spur them on. Pablo had loved it; his anonymous young companion fled the house.

“I’m getting tired of Renée Fleming and that damned smile,” said Pablo, last night at the opera. “She’s perfect, but she’s bland….”

I knew what he meant. I had felt it myself, but had also changed in my feelings about Fleming: after seeing an interview with her, I had been impressed with how remarkably candid she had been, how much she had paid for her career, and how she had been afflicted with extreme stage fright. And is it her fault that she had done the Herculean job of becoming technically and musically perfect, as well has polishing her image to a diamond shine? Have we all done as much? Now she has to listen to us call her bland?

Pablo’s words, however, had stuck, and in the middle of the “Willow Song,” which has the word salice—Italian for willow—I could help thinking: couldn’t she do more with it? Each time she repeated the word, it was all exactly the same—lush, ravishingly beautiful, poised. What would Callas have done?

“She ruined us all,” said Pablo, giving us a ride home, and referring to Maria Callas, the great American-born Greek soprano whom you loved or whom you hated. Did she always deliver? By no means, and when it was bad, it wasn’t bad: it was awful, terrible, wincingly embarrassing. You wanted to crawl under your seat, or out of the opera house.

But when she was good, equally, she wasn’t good, she was glorious, magnificent, stupendous—you know, all those adjectives that oddly tend not be applied to you and me. Presuming, of course, you could stomach the voice. Here is the critic Rodolfo Celletti’s assessment:

The timbre of Callas's voice, considered purely as sound, was essentially ugly: it was a thick sound, which gave the impression of dryness, of aridity. It lacked those elements which, in a singer's jargon, are described as velvet and varnish... yet I really believe that part of her appeal was precisely due to this fact. Why? Because for all its natural lack of varnish, velvet and richness, this voice could acquire such distinctive colours and timbres as to be unforgettable.

Well, my take is shorter: the voice is otherworldly. If a will-o-the-wisp could sing, it might sound like Callas. Hearing her voice, I think of the sound of geese flying overhead: it’s a sound that encapsulates the chill of autumn, the cold marsh water soaking you feet, the reeds rustling and the smell of burning leaves.

Well, it was all something to think about, and we may have to, since, Montalvo’s reaction? Well, he dozed off a bit for the first part of the opera, but it was hardly surprising, since in the time it took for Raf and me to arrange the napkins in our laps, raise the glass to toast, and glance over at Montalvo, the lad had polished off a large salad, a large mofongo and a large plate of rice and beans. So there were three empty plates—had he licked them?—and there was Montalvo, waiting with dog-at-the-table patience for me to feed him French fries. Such a repast requires a little nap.

But who cannot like Otello? It has, after all, Iago (hah! That my computer should be such a Philistine!): a man so evil you could smell the sulfur in the theater. And Montalvo, having learned that we’ve just joined the 21^st century by subscribing to Netflix, asked afterward if the service had operas.

“Think so,” I said.

“I’m gonna watch ‘em all,” he said.

Well he may, because in addition to hearing opera? He’s written a villanelle, and it’s good, though lacking the—as he called it, he was angry at the time—“motherfucking iamb thing.” So it’s occasionally-iambic pentameter; here it is:

Summoning Strength

Power comes from a need not a desire,

Protect and save yourself from certain death.

Light shines through the dark in the form of fire.

My fists will turn into earth as hard iron

Exerting all my energy with breath.

Power comes from a need not a desire.

My feelings of love will never expire,

And until I die my soul will express.

Light shines through the dark in the form of fire.

I will always find the need to require

Strength that is needed at moment’s request.

Power comes from a need not a desire.

Risking your life for another to aspire

Love and sacrifice— erupting through flesh.

Light shines through the dark in the form of fire.

Why has hate and fury lead this to transpire?

Break free from the chains and let your soul dance.

Power comes from a need not a desire.

Light shines through the dark in the form of fire.

When Perfection is not Enough

It’s unfair, damned unfair, and I won’t have it.

Everybody knows that I’m totally hooked on Joyce DiDonato, but then again, who isn’t? It could be that such simplicity is the highest art, but she gives you the impression that, yes, she really is your long-lost sister. And so she’s not easy to like: she’s impossible not to like.

But Renée Fleming?

She’s certainly at the top of her game as well; in fact, both women are. Fleming is a lyric soprano about whom one writer—in a blog called RenéeFlemingAdmirers.net, and the fact that there is such a thing speaks libraries, not volumes—said….

The New York Times writes about her as The Beautiful Voice. In France she is presented as La Cantatrice Rayonnante, when in England she is bearing the name Double Creame. Die German leading newspaper has given her the tittle Schaumgeborene Sopran-Venus. To aloud (sic, very sic) to address to her as Celeste Renée was my proposition. She confirmed it favoring me with her incredible, charming smile. 

OK—be fair: I have the sense that English may not be the writer’s first language, or cradle tongue, as we say down here in Puerto Rico. The point is that Fleming has a gorgeous voice.

Ooops, sorry, but it’s not.

I read somewhere that Jascha Heifetz, when people told him, “oh, your violin sounds so beautiful,” would put his ear to the instrument and say, “funny, I don’t hear anything….” So yes, it’s true that Fleming’s voice is beautiful, gorgeous, polished, and all the other adjectives writers like to heap up. But—surprise—there are lots and lots of gorgeous voices out: it’s not that rare a thing. What is rare is the incredible amount of discipline, work, thought, stamina, and luck that went into getting that gorgeous voice to do what Fleming can do with it.

Is there anything more difficult than singing opera? Because really, there’s the sheer athletics; one tight muscle will very likely produce a tense sound. Then there’s the attention to text, and how many actors, by the way, have to master German, French, Italian, English, and—increasingly—Russian and Czech? And speaking of actors, it’s no longer enough to haul yourself onstage, open your mouth and blow everybody away. Remember Joan Sutherland, whom the opera buffs at La Fenice dubbed La Stupenda? Well, stupendous she was, but in her early days, she had one gesture; a gesture her drama coach called “generally pained expression,” or some such thing. (Every time he saw it, he would shout “GPE, Joan,” and she struggled to change it.) And as if all this weren’t enough, you are called upon—if you’re crazy enough to do it—to spend up to six hours, in the case of Wagner, screeching over 100 musicians who have the advantage—besides numbers—of sitting between you and the audience. Thanks, guys!

Oh, and have I mentioned a final detail? Yes, generally speaking, the polite British and the friendly Americans will look the other way—with perhaps a generally pained expression—as you have your off night. Because look, part of the work you’ve put in is to assure that, by and large, you have a consistent product, one you can roll out even after fighting with your husband on the phone for two hours right before the performance. But that may mean that you’re delivering “good,” but not “great.” But the Italians?

Good, you see, is not good enough in Milan. And there is a group called the loggionisti, who are about as fierce—and certainly as loud—as alley cats in heat. And here’s what happened to Fleming when she sang there:

Quite what Fleming's offence was is unclear, but certainly her opening night as Lucrezia was not the luckiest of performances. The tenor had dropped out and been replaced at the last minute. Then the conductor fainted with a thud at the end of Fleming's first aria. Finally, at the end of her final cadenza, which deviated somewhat from La Scala convention, the gods erupted and Fleming was booed to the goldfretted rafters. It lasted for the whole of her closing scene and afterwards, she wrote, "I began to shake and I shook for days."

Right—you want nice? Stay in Minnesota….

Fleming has, you see, stage fright, and what happened after that experience very nearly derailed her career. Because she knew: if she “took some time off,” she would never go back on a stage. So she had her voice coach walk her to the stage and figuratively push her off the branch and onto the stage. And then, while onstage, she relaxed and could perform. It was the days and hours before the performance during which the anxiety rose to near panic.

It’s surprising, the number of performers who are afflicted, and who nonetheless go on to make great careers, in spite of it. And though it got better for Fleming, it never entirely went away: she was petrified about having to sign the national anthem at the Super Bowl. And why not? She fluffs one line—she would wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “oh shit, who manned the ramparts?—and that will be in the first sentence of her obituary:

Renée Fleming, the brilliant lyric soprano whose career was marred by an unfortunate lapse of memory while singing the Stars and Stripes…..

Oh, and just to increase the pressure, she was singing to football fans, for God’s sake, who are almost worse than the loggionisti. I mean, at least those guys love opera….

There are things you can do to reduce stage fright. First, of course, you can be sure you’re really prepared, that you’ve studied the score, that you’ve put in the work. Then—especially in the case of singers—you got to be sure you’re in physically good shape: hydrated, rested, warmed up. But a surprising amount of it is mental.

It involves a curious paradox—but it’s not about you. Yes, they’re coming to see Renée Fleming, but Renée Fleming as Rusalka. And if you’re singing a song recital? Well, it’s the music, or it’s the character in the song. But it’s not you.

Mostly, it’s the inner critic that somehow, in some way, has to be, not banished, but gently told to back off. Because what will happen if the critic is screaming, “DON’T GET TIGHT! DON’T TENSE THOSE NECK MUSCLES!”

Guess what—your neck is probably tight right now….

And paradoxically, even positive comments derail you, because it’s like what the Buddhists, trying to attain pure consciousness, call the “I’m doing great, wasn’t I!” moment. Which is all to say that it’s not just tennis that has an inner game; opera has a huge one as well.

And sadly, Fleming has paid twice, if not three times. First, there’s all that work she put it in to get that voice where she—and all of us—want it. Then she had to pay again with nearly immobilizing stage fright. And the third slug to the emotional solar plexus?

“She seems so fake,” said one friend.

“Her smile could give you a suntan,” wrote one reviewer.

Guys? That’s what I meant, a thousand words back there, when I said it wasn’t fair. Because as you can see in the master class below, Fleming is both professionally very helpful and wonderfully kind and supportive. Perhaps she learned what not to do from Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who reportedly terrorized her. (If so, Fleming is not alone—seeing her on YouTube was like opening the freezer door).

DiDonato has been blessed with a kind of candor, openness that—on the face of it—Fleming doesn’t have. And yet, in comments and interviews, Fleming is remarkably candid about what her career has cost her; at one point, she muses about how much ego strength a man has to have to be “Mr. Renée Fleming.”

In one of his novels, Robertson Davies remarks that the person one has struggled to become is much more the “real” person that one started out as. Why can’t we accept that this extraordinary singer has polished her persona as much as her voice?

Don't Tread on the Banner!

WHAT!

Dammit, I can’t do everything, though I’d be happy to delegate, but really! Whoever imagined that I’d have to check in on the damned national anthem now and again—or maybe even daily—just to make sure that nobody had altered the time signature?

OK—for those of you who had better things to do in your childhood than study classical music, here’s the skinny. Most music is divided into measures, and most measures have a basic pulse or beat. That’s why you tap your feet when somebody is singing. And these measures are either duple or triple—or some variant thereof. Consider a tune you know: Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. There’s a natural stress every four notes (with the third note being slightly stressed as well). Since four is two times two, the time signature is duple.

A triple form? Think Greensleeves, which has a natural stress every six beats, with a slight stress on the fourth beat. Since six is a multiple of three, it’s a triple time signature.

And the national anthem? It is triple, not duple.

I tell you this because a friend, a professional flutist, on Facebook posted an article by Anne Midgette of The Washington Post about Renée Fleming’s performance of the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Well, I listened and was impressed, but then I usually am with Renée—she’s impossible not to like. And I think she struck a nice balance: there’s nothing worse than an opera singer pretending to be pop. First, it’s ridiculous; second, it reveals profound insecurity. You’ve spent years learning your art, and you chicken out for a sports event? Come on!

Reading the comments was revealing as they so often are. And one comment from Phillip Bush in particular caught my eye:

The real question re the arrangement, etc., is something I find surprising nobody talks about much: have you noticed that the national anthem (at least in Super Bowl versions) has been altered to 4/4 time? Fleming's version, sadly, was no exception though she did revert to 3 in the final lines (beginning with "oh say does that." Just to see if I was imagining things, I listened to all versions since 2008 and only Carrie Underwood in 2010 sang the anthem in 3 all the way through. (It should be added that Christina Aguilera's version in 2009 defies all attempts at metric--or pitch---analysis.)

Clearly a man I could call my brother! Any man who cares enough to hear seven years of our national anthem—OK, but you know what I mean—is obviously my match for neuroticism. Because I have spent most of the match scratching my head and listening to bourrées, gavottes, loures, minuets trying to figure out what dance form the damn Star-Spangled Banner is, or rather was.

Although it may not be—the Star-Spangled Banner may be based simply on a song composed in 1778 for the Anacreontic Society, a group of amateur musicians in London. And yes, the boys liked a spot of ale or beer when getting together; it might be a little unfair to categorize the national anthem as a “drinking song,” if only because most people, especially drunk, can’t sing the song.

The song is called To Anacreon in Heaven, and it turned out my hunch was right: the original song is sung considerably faster than anyone sings the national anthem today. And as a cellist who has played the Bach solo suites for forty years—wow, and shouldn’t I play them better, after all those years? Oh well….

Anyway, here’s the thing: the suites contain stylized but still recognizable dances that were common at the time. And I swear, To Anacreon in Heaven sounds like one of those dances—I can see people in their elaborate gowns and their stiff, formal gestures dancing to it. And the dotted upbeat—the “Oooh” before you land happily on “say”—that’s the tip off!

So I spent the morning with bourrées, gavottes, loures and minuets, and what did I learn?

Nothing definitive, though I can tell that the base for the Star-Spangled Banner is definitely triple, not duple. Here’s a photo of an edition of 1790:

Right—so who got the bright idea of changing the time signature of our national anthem from ¾ (essentially) to 4/4?

I’m sorry to say that it was Whitney Houston—and I would rather hear chalk scratching on the chalkboard than hear Whitney Houston. But it seemed that Houston thought the national anthem was too “waltz-like.” So Rickey Minor, Houston’s musical director, and Houston tinkered around. Here’s what Minor said:

“The original version is in 3/4 time, which is more like a waltz,” Minor explained. “What we tried to do was to put it in 4/4 meter… We wanted to give her a chance to phrase it in such a way that she would be able to take her time and really express the meaning.”

Well, I went out, bought an anti-emetic, waited an hour, and then braved my way through Houston’s lip-synched 1991 performance; yes, I gagged but didn’t retch. 

My other reaction to Ms. Midgette’s article?

A surprising number of readers thought she was being backhanded, snide, or hypercritical. Though I agreed with the most recent comment, from RAMJ:

I just want to hear the anthem sung straight, the way we sang it in grade school. We were made to feel that it was a serious song with great meaning. There was no embellishment allowed. 

The simple notes provide ample challenge to most any voice, trained or untrained. There is beauty in their starkness. I love that only the gods can help the person that starts singing our anthem in the wrong key. 

I cringe at the current rate of embellishment and self-aggrandizement the anthem has been burdened with. I actually avoid listening, because I know it will be painful.

YES!

Finally, Kurt Vonnegut wandered into my brain, and what was it he had written about the Star-Spangled Banner? Well, here it is:

There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks. 

Of course, that wasn’t the way I remembered it. My version had it that the Star-Spangled Banner is the only national anthem that ends with a question—or rather, a constant, never-ending challenge as well as quest: does that star spangl’d banner yet wave over the free and the brave?

Your choice—just sing the damn thing in ¾!

Julia Child Steps Onto the Stage

OK—I could tell you that the buzz on the island is that the secretary of justice, a guy by the name of Luis Sánchez Betances, ran over to the police station last Friday night, since a buddy of his, Jaime Sifre Rodríguez, who is also a partner in Sánchez’s law firm, got picked up for drunk driving.

In fact, his blood alcohol was .215%, which is high indeed.

Sour minds on the island are wondering what Sánchez Betances was doing there, and some have even gone so far as to breathe aspersions. But relax, dear Reader, there was no impropriety involved—in fact, Sánchez Betances was there to make absolutely sure that the rules were being followed, and that no special treatment was given. He was just there for a friend! Something anyone would do!

And now, of course, warped and twisted minds are attempting to misconstrue a perfectly normal action—how dare they! Here, for example, is an ex district attorney, Osvaldo Carlo:

El exfiscal Osvaldo Carlo dijo en NotiUno que “la mera presencia del secretario de Justicia allí, sin decir una palabra, crea una presión indebida sobre estos agentes de la Policía. Porque, por qué un secretario de Justicia va a estar en el lugar de los hechos si no es para crear un ambiente negativo de la investigación. No tenía ni que decir una sola palabra. Él tenía otras maneras de trabajar con ese asunto que no fuese presentarse allí, porque al presentarse allí iban a sentir la presión del cargo”.

(The ex attorney Osvaldo Carlo said to NotiUno that “the mere presence of the secretary of justice there, without saying a word, creates undue pressure on those police agents. Why? Because why is a secretary of justice going to be there if not to create a negative environment for the investigation? He doesn’t have to say a word. He has other ways of working this affair without being there, because by being there they were going to feel the pressure.”)

Poppycock!

Turning away from such negativity, what’s the deal with Lee Hoiby?

Why, you may ask, am I worrying about Hoiby? Because over the weekend, I was watching Renée Fleming talk about Leontyne Price, who had championed Hoiby’s work. So what was up with Hoiby?

Well, I knew he had a Wisconsin connection, but I didn’t know that he was actually born in Madison in 1926, had studied with Gunnar Johansen, and had later attended Mills College. His compositions draw the attention of Gian Carlo Menotti, who showed them to Samuel Barber. Menotti also invited Hoiby to Curtis to study with him: no small thing, since Menotti was the leading opera composer of the time.

And Hoiby didn’t follow the fashion of the time—which was to compose highly dissonant music. Instead, his music is tuneful, lyrical, and sophisticated. And his specialty? Here’s what he told Zachary Woolfe:

“It was the singers, not the instrumentalists,” he said. “The instrumentalists didn’t know who the fuck I was. I didn’t have any instrumental music played. Singers, you can’t fool them. When they hear a song, they can tell right away if it’s going to make them sound good. And mine do.”

Here’s what Woolfe has to say about the songs:

Indeed, it seems likely that his songs-whose brilliant and varied texts, chosen by Mr. Shulgasser, range from Bishop to Roethke to Stevens to Rilke-will be what last the longest of his work. Perfectly honed little worlds, they benefit most from his modesty. Small shifts, like the opening into ecstatic brightness of the third stanza of “The Message” (set to a John Donne poem), take on a kind of humble grandeur.

In the interview with Woolfe, Hoiby said the following: “All I did was compose. I never went anywhere, I didn’t know anybody. I never went to any parties. I never met anybody. I’m basically not interested in social life, I guess.”

Well, he must have watched television, because his spoof on Julia Child is bang on. In the words of Joseph Dalton:

All of Child’s lovable foibles and self-deprecating humor come through. She puts egg yolks into a pan and then drops it on the kitchen floor and carries on undaunted. She also sets up a race between an electric mixer and a hand-cranked one. Hoiby wisely doesn’t interfere with the chef’s magic. There’s no additional jokes or layers of irony in the tuneful score, which includes a light and colorful orchestration.

And as light as the piece—and the cake—is, there’s also something tinged with melancholy about Hoiby’s work. Is it because I know that he must have been dealing with being gay in a decade—the fifties—that was perhaps the most homophobic of the century? Is it because he never quite attained the celebrity of Gian Carlo Menotti? I feel about him what I feel about Barber: at the end, he must have felt he had given too much, and gotten too little.

Two Singers, One Unhappy

Well, the first thing to understand about this singer is that even she didn’t like the sound of her own voice.

If you know anything about opera, you’ve probably guessed that the singer is Maria Callas. And though she sobbed when she first heard a tape recording of her voice, she made it distinctive, expressive, and utterly recognizable—“Callas,” people will say, within five seconds of hearing her sing.

Well, she’s a fascinating character, this Greek girl who had no childhood, but had iron discipline and a steely will. Her mother, recognizing her talent, pushes and pushes, and Maria at age five is singing, not playing. Later, her discipline drives her to spend hours at the conservatory, regularly opening and closing the building. And she succeeds—by the time she leaves Greece at age 22 to visit her father in the United States, she had given 20 recitals, and sung in 56 performances of seven operas.

She’s almost blind, and she is—well, pudgy plump or just plain fat. That, from a vocal point of view, is not a problem. In fact, there’s a school of thought that says that all that weight supports the breath. While that may be true, it can also create problems—Callas said that she felt that her voice itself was becoming heavy. And there was the other little problem—she felt the irony of playing slim, dainty heroine when she herself was, in Sir Rudolf Bing’s words, “monstrously fat.”

At any rate, in her early career she had a huge voice that was capable both of heavy, dramatic parts but also lighter, coloratura parts. OK—plain English. There are some voices that are vocally tanks—they can blast through an orchestra blaring at full volume; they tend, however, not to maneuver very well. There are other voices that are mopeds—they can zip around anything. What’s rare is to have the vocal ability to do both. 

Callas could, and astounded. Yes, even from the beginning, there were detractors—largely the old school who demanded a beautiful, clean voice, not an ugly voice with a huge expressive range and wonderful colors. And yes, she wasn’t always having her best night. True also that the voice came with a temperament—there are no recorded instances of anyone describing Callas as “placid.”

So it was a chance, when you plunked down the cash for a performance of Callas. The first question—would she show? The second—would she be any good?

So why did anyone do it? Because if she did come through in both departments, you would have an experience you’d remember for the rest of your life.

She was a phenomenal actress; here’s one director’s view:

For me, she was extremely stylized and classic, yet at the same time, human—but humanity on a higher plane of existence, almost sublime. Realism was foreign to her, and that is why she was the greatest of opera singers. After all, opera is the least realistic of theater forms... She was wasted in verismo roles, even Tosca, no matter how brilliantly she could act such roles.

Speaking of Tosca, it’s often said that she never, ever checked to see whether the stage hands had placed material to cushion her leap from the window. Other singers rush up the ladder, take—well—just a little peek. Callas scorned the idea.

In mid career—the 1950’s, Callas decides to lose weight, which she does not by swallowing a tapeworm, as critics whispered, but by eating salad and chicken. And though it may have been great for her health and for her psyche, it didn’t help, perhaps, her singing. Here’s Renée Fleming on the subject:

I have a theory about what caused her vocal decline, but it's more from watching her sing than from listening. I really think it was her weight loss that was so dramatic and so quick. It's not the weight loss per se... But if one uses the weight for support, and then it's suddenly gone and one doesn't develop another musculature for support, it can be very hard on the voice. And you can't estimate the toll that emotional turmoil will take as well. I was told, by somebody who knew her well, that the way Callas held her arms to her solar plexus [allowed her] to push and create some kind of support. If she were a Soubrette, it would never have been an issue. But she was singing the most difficult repertoire, the stuff that requires the most stamina, the most strength.

Another singer, Deborah Voigt, had a gastric bypass operation and essentially mimicked the weight loss that Callas had undergone. Here’s what she has to say:

When I took a breath before, the weight would kick in and give it that extra Whhoomf! Now it doesn't do that. If I don't remember to get rid of the old air and re-engage the muscles, the breath starts stacking, and that's when you can't get your phrase, you crack high notes.

Callas would end her career in about a decade after her weight loss in 1954, and really, the last years are painful. She was a tempestuous woman, a fiery personality, a high-strung race horse in a profession where a plow horse might be better. But how the public loved it—when Bing fired her from the Met, or her rage-contorted face on being served a summons in Chicago.

And, of course, the rivalry—alleged or real—between Tebaldi and Callas. The two greatest divas of the fifties were traveling South America together, and had a falling out. Callas said in an interview that, “comparing her voice to mine is comparing Champagne to Cognac.” Someone else in the room said, “No, to Coca-Cola,” but the words are attributed to Callas. Tebaldi shot back, “I have something Callas does not have: a heart.”

What Tebaldi had was enviable. She had a very long career—twice as long as Callas’s. She had the more beautiful voice. She also lived long—Tebaldi died at 83, Callas at 53. And though there’s no way to measure the happiness quotient of a human life, much less to compare two lives, nothing can stop me from thinking that Tebaldi had the better deal. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

During a 1978 interview, upon being asked "Was it worth it to Maria Callas? She was a lonely, unhappy, often difficult woman," music critic and Callas's friend John Ardoin replied,

That is such a difficult question. There are times when certain people are blessed—and cursed—with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. Callas was one of these people. It was as if her own wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us things about music that we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities. I think that is why singers admire her so. I think that's why conductors admire her so. I know it's why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career. I don't think she always understood what she did or why she did it. She usually had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something she could always live with gracefully or happily. I once said to her "It must be a very enviable thing to be Maria Callas." And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand." She couldn't really explain what she did. It was all done by instinct. It was something embedded deep within her.   
   

A Saturday Rescued by Music

Time to tell the truth—this blogger took the day off.

It started when I heard the remarkable countertenor, David Daniels, a year ago singing via CD a concert of art songs. And it ended today, when I spent four and a half hours listening to one gorgeous aria after another, all presented by the Metropolitan Opera, coming to me via live feed from New York.

The Saturday afternoon live broadcast from the Met on radio is a thing of the past. So I was happy to pluck down the fifty bucks to get Mr. Fernández and me to a movie house, where we heard four and a half hours of stellar singing, saw Renée Fleming interview the singers, and most, heard what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written.

Readers, I have failed you. Listeners, I give you this, from a blogger still soaring on what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written, Guilio Cesare, by Handel.

Schubert revisited

Well, I’ve heard of impaired doctors, impaired drivers, but impaired bloggers?

Which is to say you might read this post with the Morton saltbox near to hand. 

I’m loopy.

Legally loopy, I’m happy to say. Nope, not writing from Amsterdam—I’m here at my familiar desk, with the wearingly constant sound truck of the guagüita de los dulces iterating mechanically its jingle for the gazillionth time.

I spent the morning doing the second part of the dental implant surgery. And any snippy thoughts I ever had about Michael Jackson’s craving for IV hypnotics I now retract, and with shame.

The stuff is wonderful.

It’s a bit like the old television sets that slowly, in the space of just ten seconds, go from whatever inanity you’ve grown tired of to just a small white dot in the center of the screen. And then….

…nothing.

Well, who wouldn’t crave the stuff?

Right. So, I lurched home in a taxi, stood wonderingly about in CVS until a white lab-coated lady put bottles of pills in my hands, and told me to go home. I dimly realized that home was up, so I started, well—up.

Did recognize the corner jewelry store, and took a chance on a left….

Worked.

Well, an old nurse knows what to with pills in bottles, and soon I was medicated and in bed. Of course I took the Percoset—hey, anything guys pay good money for up at the punto has gotta be good, right? And is it sane to wait for the pain to arrive? Would you stand around watching until the A-bomb mushrooms, just to see how bad the radiation was?

Right—so that was the plan. Spend the afternoon in bed. Justifiable—surgery is surgery. I have a friend who spends one entire SUNDAY each month in bed, and ardently—defensively?—defends the practice.

Made it to 1:30….

Right, so what to do. I cannot do Sudoku until Raf climbs the hallway stairs in five hours. The house is a mess, but any slight mismovement (dammit, computer, I’ve just been through SURGERY—gimme a break!) of my hands might imperil the achingly tender sutures in my mouth. (And I challenge any Impudent Reader to dispute THAT!)

So I set myself to consider Raf. It was he, you remember, who diagnosed the disjointed mishmash (hah! got away with that, so what’s the deal with mismovement?) I had produced in Iguanas as a blook. Then I went on to ponder Jaime, who had pointed out that reading on an iPad becomes a different experience. Sure, there had always been illustration in books, but in a blook, there can be music.

And there is. Handel, twice; Samuel Barber; some other stuff, I think.

Well, I’m sure somebody has gotten in before me, pitched his stake, done it better. I come late to most things.

Then I got to worry about Toney, a young nephew who adopted us several years ago on the strength of Raf’s bacalao. We raised him gently, delicately, we did—the anxious gay uncles, and then sent this quite beautiful youth out to combat the wicked world. We watched, our hands clutching lace handkerchiefs pressed to our swollen eyes, as the taxi took him away.

Feeling the need for home, or perhaps just hungry, he appeared two weeks ago. We put the codfish in the water.

And set him to work. Look, I need reviews for Iguanas. No reviews, no listing in Amazon, no visibility, whaddya got? A book that goes down—hello cliché!—like that preacher’s daughter into the electronic graveyard of cache.

So we put him to read Iguanas. OK—review for bacalao. Questionably ethically—but hungry men sink low.

Right, so he liked it. And made insightful comments. And decided I really should crank out a novel. And told me what the theme would be, and provided as well the name of the main character.

What didn’t he do?

Toney, honey?

bacalao = review.

I don’t know a thing about fiction. I don’t know a thing—I think—about writing. 

Well, I feel bad about that. Anybody who has a Facebook page called “Marc Newhouse—writer” (I nixed the word “author”—after all, writing describes a discrete, simple task—author felt like a stretch, somehow….) should really try to figure what he’s doing.

The problem? Writers writing about writing write wrong. (Sorry, just sort of feel into that…onomatopoeia? Alliteration? Hyperbole? ¿Bíjte?)

It’s a form of sadism. “Don’t come whining to me,” snarls Toni Morrison. She teaches full time and writes in the summer and fall, and only Trollope beats her for fecundity.

Oh, except for Joyce Carol Oates, often described as “the word machine”, who has written over 100 books for the world to nibble upon. “If I waited for inspiration, I wouldn’t be much of a writer!” she growls.

Why do I feel that dumping 100 plus books onto the world’s bookshelves is at least grandiose if not frankly—blatantly —narcissistic?

Well, to a brain swimming in narcotics, all this hectoring, this thrashing of the pedagogical riding crop seemed to much for me. Easier just to go to the damn computer and write.

And then I realized!  

I had screwed around with creative writing! Back in the days when I was just crawling out of the pantoja or morass of depression and agititation (oh anybody can see that that’s agitation / irritation! Really!) of job and Franny loss. Reaching into the very farthest galaxies of my imagination, it was about a agonized, near catatonic, sardonic guy into classical music confronting a nincompoop psychiatrist.

I justify this as following the old line—write what you know!

But it was—following Jaime’s insight—an interesting experiment. Was it any good? Did it work?

Be gentle, Good Reader. I wasn’t at my best….

(PS—my own psychiatrist, whose single diploma in his office is from Harvard, is excellent and insightful. His predecessor, who put me on massive Klonopin and disappeared—enjoying those festive navidades we do so well? Sin comentario….)

Session Two

The patient appeared less hostile on the second visit—no doubt the therapeutic effects of the Haldol were starting. I tried to put him at ease.

“And how are we feeling today?”

“We don’t know, do we? How could we? I barely know what I am feeling, and cannot, of course, speak for you. How are you?”

“ Is your preoccupation with Schubert, the…err….Viennese composer continuing?”

“I’m hardly preoccupied,” he said. “Deeply interested, of course. Well, who wouldn’t be? Everybody should be interested in Schubert.”

“I don’t know the composer,” I said. “Perhaps you could fill me in?”

“Certainly I could fill you in. Would you like the Wikipedia version or my version? Or perhaps,” this said with a sneer, “for a doctor who is only schooled, the Wikipedia version might be the only one possible….”

I had forgotten his dislike of the word perhaps. 

“A bit of hostility still remains,” I said, deciding to confront him at last.

“I am not hostile. I admit to acerbic. Rebarbative as well. Prickly, should the previous words be too advanced for a Harvard graduate. But hardly hostile.”

I let this pass….

“Schubert?” I say.   

“Ah, Schubert,” he says, his face relaxing. “Viennese, as we know. His father, a school teacher. The mother, the daughter of a locksmith. Dates: 1797 to 1828, he died at age 31—having two years less than Mozart. Cause of death: typhoid fever, though he was also afflicted with syphilis. A terrible businessman, who barely got anything published, and that on unfavorable terms—unfavorable for him, not his publisher. Known perhaps best for his lieder—art songs, in German. Prolific—600 plus songs, nine symphonies, 15 quartets, a string quintet that is assuredly one of the greatest chamber works in the whole canon of Western music. Six masses, and 21 piano sonatas. He dies in virtual obscurity, broke, but surrounded by friends who deeply admired him. Oh, and just incidentally, he composes the two greatest song cycles in the world. That enough?”

“It seems a bit manic,” I venture.

“Your word, doctor. Mine would be possessed, a genius that may never come again….”

“Thank you,” I said. “So now I know Schubert.”

He jumps to his feet. 

“You know NOTHING about Schubert!” he roars. “I’ve been giving you the briefest sketch of his life. People spend their LIVES trying to understand Schubert, and there are mysteries that will, I believe, ever remain locked. What have you ever heard of Schubert’s music, my good philistine doctor?”

“Not much,” I say. “Didn’t he write the Unfinished Symphony?”

“Of course,” says X. “Dismissed by some, beloved by the masses. I personally like it….” 

Ahh—perhaps the basis for a clinical bond!

“So perhaps we could have your version of Schubert?”

“Mine is of little interest,” he responds. “My good doctor, have you no curiosity? Wouldn’t you like, for once in your life, to enter into a masterpiece? To experience something that is greater, truer than anything you or I will ever do? I could play you one song—ONE song—that had he written nothing else would have established him as one of the greatest composers of all time.”

“I’d like to hear it,” I say, though really, I don’t much like classical music.

“Nothing easier,” says X, and pulls his iPhone from his pocket. He fiddles with it, and then shows me the following clip from YouTube. We listen, and blessedly, it’s short.

“So,” says X. “You now have been initiated. You have heard one of over a thousand compositions of Schubert. Your impression, please?”

“Well,” I say, “speaking clinically, it sounds deeply sad. Depressive, I would say.”

“You know, doctor, I am far less interested in your clinical impressions than in your reaction as a man, a person. But I am perhaps being unfair. No one can grasp the song without knowing the lyrics. Let’s listen again, this time with the lyrics, German and English.”

He hands me the liner notes.

Heil’ge Nacht, du sinkest nieder; Nieder wallen auch die Träume Wie dein Mondlicht durch die Räume, Durch der Menschen stille Brust. Die belauschen sie mit Lust; Rufen, wenn der Tag erwacht: Kehre wieder, heil’ge Nacht! Holde Träume, kehret wieder!

“And now,” he says, let’s turn to another singer, with the lyrics in English. Much slower, and a bit more operatic. Well, it would be—Fleming, of course. But here, she does a fine job
.

We listen again. And I am still more mystified. 

“The title of the song, by the way, is Nacht und Traume—Night and Dreams. Tell me, my good psychiatrist, isn’t that rather up your alley? You do do stuff with dreams, don’t you?”

“I’m feeling a little out of my league,” I say.

“I’m delighted to know that,” says X. “It’s a poem that is seemingly simple, and yet Schubert brings out the most amazing depths in it…. Consider it just as a poem.”

Holy night, you sink down; Dreams, too, drift down Like your moonlight through space, Through the quiet hearts of men; They listen with delight Calling out when day awakens: Return, holy night! Fair dreams, return!

“Really, not much to it. But I listen to it often, on those many nights when Holy night does not  drift down. I suffer insomnia, you see….”

“Ahh,”  I say, “a sedative may be called for. Something more than the Dalmane. But tell me, what does this song, this poem, mean to you?”

Again, as he had in the first session, X dissolves in tears.

“Dreams,” he says, weeping. “Have you never had dreams? And had them die? And wish, more than anything else for their return? This is Schubert, in his moment of darkest sorrow—lost and yearning—imploring God to return him to his path, and restore his dreams. And filled with despair, he manages to suggest the possibility of hope, of redemption. A feeling I, frankly, do not share”

Clinical note: Will add halcyon 2 mg. for sleep.