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Showing posts with label Four Saints in Three Acts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Four Saints in Three Acts. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 10






Hoovering, dishwashing, Guardian, tea, muesli, rant at renovations next door: all done!  What a domestic soul I am becoming.  As if.

     The sharing of homemade videos is becoming rampant and the innate lunacy contained within them is becoming more pronounced; but there is a sort of defiant dark humour that is positively uplifting in them as well.

     The dark humour connected to the virus is best exemplified by the writing of John Crace, the parliamentary sketch writer, in the Guardian. 


     He was a point of sanity throughout the whole Brexit farrago and he continues to be a guide through the shameful antics of the so-called government of the United Kingdom.  If you have not read his withering condemnation of the Blond Buffoon and Dom then you should.  It might be gallows humour in these dark times, but it always manages to raise a laugh, yes, that laugh might well be rueful but it is better than allowing yourself to plumb the depths of disbelief at what the Conservatives think they can get away with!  I recommend him without hesitation, as I recommend any and all of the books that he has published.  Long may his pen show up the vicious charlatans for what they are!

     While we are on the subject of the worth of our present government, you might like to read the following:


This is a summation of the reactions of the rest of the world to the way that the Blond Buffoon and his circus have handled the pandemic in the UK.  When this is over, we must hold our political ‘masters’ to account.  It is more than likely that the Conservatives’ policy over the virus has directly led to more deaths than if they had adopted some of the measures that other countries have put in place.  There must be an accounting with an independent report that aims at transparency when apportioning blame.

     My jaundiced view has been tempered by the fact that the renovation next door continues (illegally?) with much banging and that is the last thing that you need when you have been locked up for the last nine days – with the prospect of months to come!

     Another irritation (if that is the right word for it) is that I have not managed to dislodge the various earworms of snatches of the operas that I recommended yesterday.  The bits and pieces of “Four Saints in Three Acts” by Virgil Thomson is particularly difficult not to hear.  Stein’s libretto is nonsensical and I pity the poor singers having to learn some of the sequences that they have to sing, but it is undeniably (for me) catchy.  When Stein was taxed about the fact that nobody could understand what the opera was about, she countered with the brave assertion that if you enjoyed it you understood it!  And the opera was popular and ground-breaking.  It had a black cast of singers in its first performances and the set design used the newly invented cellophane as part of the decoration: very avant-garde!  Well, for 1927 it was!  I do urge you to go to YouTube and listen and look at the fragments of this fascinating opera!

     I do also urge you to look at the classic repertoire as well.  It is easy to cheat your way through famous operas on YouTube as they often give you the famous bits, in terms of overtures, preludes and arias, in manageable bite-sized chunks.  And you never know what you might like.  I know someone whose first operatic experience was ‘Tristan and Isolde’ by Wagner, a long and dense opera.  She loved it and become an enthusiastic operaphile on the spot!  It takes all sorts.  And it has taken me a long time to honestly admit that I enjoyed a performance – which I did with the last production of the Liceu.  Some operas, like ‘Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky I first heard in a dress rehearsal and instantly ‘knew’.  It helped that I knew the dance music from it that I had given to me as one of my first EPs (extended play discs) when I was a kid, but operas like that are almost absurdly approachable.



Enough of this escape into Culture.  Back to reality.  We have now been in lockdown for 9 (or officially 11) days, so that means that we are getting to the end of the incubation period for the virus and this week may well be one in which there is a jump in the figures of those who are infected.  It has been suggested that people should think twice about ANY journeys outside the residence (yes, I am talking to you people next door!) for any reason at all.  Even bread buying, which is an almost sacred ritual in this country, is too weak an excuse to leave the house!

     We are not entirely breadless.  We do have individually sealed, square, flat, wholemeal, calorie reduced, ‘buns’ that seem to last for ever.  Whether you can actually convince yourself that what you are eating bears any resemblance to ‘bread’ is something else, but in times of crisis it is better than nothing.  Just.

     We have enough food to get us through to next week and we can assess the situation then and decide whether it worth while for (Toni) to venture out again for supplies.



I have just come in from my morning walk around the pool.  The weather is not as clement as it has been for the past few days and it was more of a chore than usual.  As I trudged my way around (varying the direction) on my lonely circuits, during which nobody has joined me, I felt like a Rudolf Hesse figure, plodding his way around the empty exercise yard in Spandau.  Having typed that, I realize that there are too many associations with that image that have nothing to do with my present situation.  But it is interesting that I did not delete it, but rather chose to discuss its inappropriateness; or on further consideration there are elements that illuminate: the sense of isolation in an institution made to accommodate more; the artificiality of the incarceration; the politics of continuation – and I think that I am overthinking an image of an aging man in a prison exercise yard!  A bit.



The number of Covid-19 infected people in Spain has not surpassed that of China!  The largest number of cases is in Madrid, which is not locked down in the same way as Barcelona.  It seems foolish not to be truly Draconian in a situation of absolute crisis, but that is politics for you!



I have always taken a ghoulish delight in following the build up to each Olympic Games.  I am not so much interested in the sports as in the various crises: political, financial, social, architectural etc that illuminate the via dolorosa from the moment the games are awarded, to the opening ceremony.

     It used to be the almost comical corruption of the IOC members and the shocking ways in which the successful city managed to capture the games that added to the delight of nations.  The IOC has (allegedly) cleaned up its act, a little and there is more transparency about the awarding of the games, so my prurient interest has to concentrate on unrealistic timetables for delivery and the corruption in building that seems an Olympic Event in its own right.

     I well remember the tune of the BBC presentation of the Olympics in Tokio in 1964 - I am humming it in my mind as I type)


Only surpassed as an Olympic tune by the brilliant song for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992


Tokio 2020 has had its share of scandal, but is obviously going to be overshadowed by Covid-19.  If (and it’s a big ‘if’) the games take place in 2021 they will still be called the 2020 games apparently.  I like quirky things like that!  Does this mean that the next games will be three years later, not four? 

     Such considerations keep me occupied.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - DAY 9




The insignificant becomes important, or at least notable.
     On my rounds of the communal swimming pool my eye is always open to a photographic opportunity.  As my area of life has become more circumscribed, so my attention focuses more on the details of my surroundings.  I have had to try and limit myself from choosing a theme like ‘abstraction’ or ‘shadow’ or ‘line’ or something equally unimaginative and wondering if I could do a photographic essay based solely on my limited vistas.  Most of the time, wondering is enough in itself: I find say, a portion of bark on the gnarled trees that are planted at the edges of the pool and think that a decent photo could be taken of that; or I look at the edges of the tiles and see tiny wisps of grass that have escaped the attention of pool maintenance and think that a decent angled shot, with raked light might be effective – and then I walk on, the hard cultural work done by possible selection rather than concrete outcome!
     Still, I did take one short of a bird on top of a column with chain and lock which I felt did have some resonance with my present condition, but again, I didn’t take it any further.
     One short I could take from my little circular walks would be of a crayon sheath or sweet tube or something like that.  It would be perfectly incomprehensible to a viewer, such a mundane object being the centre of attention – but for me it is, if not a welcome sight, at least a point of recognition.  Each time I circle the pool I notice it; but it doesn’t stay in the same place.  And its movement interests me.  Was it the feral cats which infest this part of Castelldefels (kept alive by the ministrations of ancient ladies in expensive cars who leave milk and titbits for them); the wind, my feet, insects or what?  I have yet to meet anyone else on my solitary peregrinations, or indeed to hear anyone else during the time that I am not circuiting the pool, so it is either nature or cat.  And then I begin to wonder just how the isolation from my normal haunts are changing my attitudes!  If I can overthink something so trivial, and yet regard it now as a part of my recognized ritual of the day, then there is something seriously wrong.
     So let’s turn to something more normal.  Because most people are not used to being off-work and at-home for extended periods of time the electronic community has provided essential lists of Things To Keep You Occupied, ranging from lists of books that you might like to read; the best Netflix series to binge watch; chores that you have put off until a national emergency gives the opportunity to get them done; games you have not played since you were a child; how to clean the kitchen now you have no excuse not to; getting back in touch with those people who were, apparently too much trouble to keep up with, and music.
    And I would like to contribute my five pence worth to the suggestions. 
     I have a second ticket to the Opera in the Liceu in Barcelona and the crisis has meant that first one opera and then a whole slew of them have been delayed or possibly cancelled.  However, the Liceu has informed its subscribers that performances of past opera will be available online and we have been given a timetable of what and when.  I must admit that watching an opera outside the opera house and on a small screen is not something that I really enjoy, though I am more than prepared to ‘get my homework done’ by watching a performance of a future opera that I do not know well on YouTube, so that when I see my (expensive) performance I am at least partially prepared and able to respond with some knowledge to what I see and hear.
     I have no intention of making some sort of ‘Greatest Operas You Have to Listen To’ list, but I would like to suggest two and extracts from those rather than listening to the whole thing.
     To the question of “What is your favourite Opera?” I would have to answer, if it is to be based on the number of times that I have seen a live performance in the Opera House, with The Macropolos Case by Leos Janacek.  The libretto is based on a play of the same name by Carel Kapek (a man perhaps better known as the author of the play “R.U.R” from which we get the word ‘robot’!) and concerns an opera singer who was forced to take an elixir of immortality, but must continue to take the elixir to maintain her youth.  I first saw this opera in a production by Welsh National Opera with Elizabeth Soderstrom in the role of E.M. (the initials she maintained in all the names that she used in her long life) with amazing sets and costume designs by Maria Bjornson.  I loved it!  But, my favourite opera?  I wonder.
     The opera that I click on the most if I am ‘casual listening’ is Akhnaten by Philip Glass.
Set in ancient and modern times, the opera is concerned with the extraordinary pharaoh who dispensed with the hierarchy of gods and determined that all worship should be centred on one god, the Aten.  The course of the opera takes us through the turbulent life of the pharaoh and the eventual destruction of the city that he founded.
     I first heard this opera on a Radio 3 performance on a Sunday afternoon and I was instantly gripped by the music as I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in the libretto.  A friend called in to take me out and I had to switch on my cassette player (ah, happy days!) to record as much as the tape allowed in my absence.  When I recorded the extract of the opera there was no commercial recording available, but I listened to my ‘bit’ again and again.
Glass is a minimalist (or perhaps post-minimalist) composer and his music is recognizable by its tunefulness and by his use of repetition.  The languages of the libretto are ancient and contemporary, and I find it gripping.  If you have never heard any of it before then I suggest the opening ten minutes
or the Hymn to the Sun,
which is the more usual extracted highlight, these will give you a real flavour of the musical style: if you these then you will like the full version!
     The other suggestion is less well known than Akhnaten (!) but it is an opera of which I have a great fondness.
     Like Akhnaten, this opera is by an American composer and like Akhnaten it is, in the widest sense, historical.
  The story of my liking of the opera in question started, though I didn’t know it at the time, with my reading a typically clever and witty article in the New Yorker published in a James Thurber Omnibus, “There’s an owl in my room”.  I was too young to understand exactly what was going on in the piece and the names of the characters meant nothing to me at the time.  The phrase that stood out for me was “Pigeons, on the grass, alas!”  Thurber was devastating in his demolition of what he saw as absurd pretention and something about the phrase stayed with me.
     The scene changes to Kettering Market and a second-hand record of “Four Saints in Three Acts” by Virgil Thomson (of whom I had never heard) with libretto by Gertrude Stein (of whom I had heard).  It was cheap and I bought it.  And in playing it I heard the words, set to music of, “Pigeons, on the grass, alas!”  An electrifying moment when juvenile reading and modern music came together!
The extract is something you will either find fascinating or absurd.  Either way it’s worth listening to.  And there are other extracts in YouTube that might take your fancy.
     Another reason for my liking this opera is because it created one of my most memorable moments in Opera.
     I have only heard “Four Saints in Three Acts” once live, and that was in a double bill by ENO in London.  I listened spellbound to something I never thought I would ever have the opportunity to hear in the Opera House and at the end of the performance, I turned, with shining eyes to the woman sitting on my right and said, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”  And she, looking into my eyes, said, “No!”  Ah well, each to his or her own!
     So, these two operas, Akhnaten and Four Saints in Three Acts are my suggestions for passing the time to keep fear about the virus out of your minds.  I’m not quite sure what they will fill your mind with instead, but it won’t be virus!


Pleae consider visiting my 'new' poetry blog smrnewpoems.blogspot.com
 

Friday, July 08, 2016

Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!


Never ask a swimmer what he is thinking about as length after length is completed: he might tell you!
            Which is a lead up to my telling you what I was thinking about as I swam my way through my daily metric mile.  I would love to admit that poetic ideas swirl through my mind as my flailing arms create more substantial currents in the placid salty waters of my local pool; or that the themes from my Open University courses course through my mind – but that would be, generally, a lie.
            What actually went through my head was the phrase, “Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!”  If I could work out why this, admittedly delightful, phrase went through my mind, I feel that I would gain a valuable insight into my basic motivations and understand my character with a clarity which is so sadly lacking in my day to day existence.  But I can’t.  It came out of nowhere and, once I had thought of it, like one of those irritatingly compulsive snatches of music that you dread hearing because you know that you will be hearing in your mind for the rest of the day, it battered its way back and fore in my brain for the rest of the swim.
            I know swimming is essentially boring, but it’s not so boring that the repetition of an out of context phrase is enough to keep you stable.  I had to think of context and I soon realized that my knowledge of this phrase comes from an opera.  Admittedly an opera that I have seen on television rather than in an opera house, but one that was deliberately provocative and created ‘problems’ in Cardiff, prompting a far-right, so-called Christian demonstration outside the Millennium Centre shocked at the language and themes in the piece which was based on a musical interpretation of ideas suggested by the Jerry Springer show.  The actual phrase was part of the lines sung by a participant in the show called Baby Jane who enters singing,
This is my Jerry Springer moment. 
I don’t want this moment to die. 
So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians. 
I don’t want this moment to die
I had actually remembered the line as “Coat me in chocolate . . .” which is not as effective as the ‘real’ line, but that is not the point.  My mind did not stay on this, shall I call it ‘concept’, and instead as I continued my swim I began to think about other odd lines in operas.
            Probably my favourite odd line in opera is from Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten which is, “And a box of Swan Vestas!”  An opera which stays in my mind from the Welsh National Opera production in Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, because when Albert’s flowered circlet (he had been crowned Virgin King of the May) was thrown into the audience, it was caught by my friend Robert!
            “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was the title of one of James Thurber’s wonderfully funny occasional pieces written for the New Yorker.  As Satan said to an insufferably smug member of the angelic throng in an unpublished extract from Paradise Lost that Milton never used, “Not to know Thurber is to argue yourself unfunny, the lowest of your throng!”  It was with unparalleled delight that, having bought an interesting looking second-hand record in Kettering market, I discovered not only the music of Virgil Thomson, but also the ineffably pretentious libretto of the one-and-only Gertrude Stein and the fact that “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was one of the more memorable lines from the opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Thomson and Stein!
            When I finally got to see a production of this somewhat obscure opera in London with the ENO I was overwhelmed and turned to the staid lady sitting next to me and said breathlessly, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”  To which she replied, “No.”  Ah well, each to his or her own. 
And “pigeons on the grass, alas!” by the way, is one of the more comprehensible lines in this opera.  For odd quotations you are spoilt for choice in Four Saints in Three Acts, but if I had to choose just one, it might be, “Having happily had it with a spoon.”  And if that doesn’t make you want to find out more and listen to it, then you are made of sterner stuff than I.
I will end with a line that I did not hear in the whole opera, but heard in an extract, “Life without hats?  How extraordinary!”  That is a line where context really makes it.  I have forgotten the composer, but I know someone who will know, if I can be bothered to ask.  Or there is always Google, or ‘research’ as we used to call it!
            Now off to Terrassa for a Birthday Celebration for which, for once, all the presents are ready and wrapped!