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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw&list=PLv1nhJnfcwQJQG5vo39yDH3puJWLDiIpc

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PufT63ER0uY

or the Hymn to the Sun,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdIzA1SuC0

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!

     Virgil Thomson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_Mg2sEyxs

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

 

Janacek - Katia Kabanova - Liceu

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

I know that is not the conventional way to start a review, but after the performance that I saw last night, I am not only going to start by review with that injunction, but also end with it as well!

With a stripped-back, sparse staging comprising intersecting planes enlivened by projection and lighting it becomes a gaunt setting to highlight the singing of what is one of the most complete ensemble productions of an opera that I have seen.

I have come to expect orchestral playing of the very highest order from the Orquestra Simfònica of the Liceu, but last night’s performance conducted by Josep Pons took their playing to another level.  They emphasised that the music for this opera is the equivalent of a concerto for orchestra and the whole band would have been fully justified in taking a bow on stage for the meticulous and nuanced playing that they produced.

The soloists were dazzling with the signal exception of Aleksander Teliga playing the boorish uncle Saviol Prokofievitx Dikoi, wearing an absurd furry coat with top hat and cane and failing to reach the level of professional fullness of his accompanying cast.  Perhaps his cartoonish appearance and stilted acting was intentional as many of the other characters appeared more suited to melodrama or Expressionism than naturalism.

A case in point would be Rosie Aldridge’s chilling portrayal of the domineering mother-figure Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, presented as a stage villain in tight fitting black bombazine and sung with the sort vicious relish that meant that when she came on stage at the end of the performance to take her well deserved ovation there were boos for the Mother’s character mixed with the enthusiastic applause for her superlative singing and portrayal!  A true accolade! 

Her character had been fleshed out by an interlude with the Saviol character where she showed herself as a hard drinking, straight from the bottle dominatrix, at one point straddling Saviol, threatening him with his own cane and producing gurgles of delight from the prone character as the curtain fell!

In another staging detail, this production chose not to include the iconic moment at the end of the opera where, after the suicide of her daughter-in-law, with the drowned body at her feet, Marfa bows to the workers who had searched for the corpse.  In this production she remains still until her right hand shoots out, demanding the hand of her grieving son, whom she then leads away from his dead wife into the darkness of the wings.  An electric - and truly horrible moment too.

Tikhon, sung by Francisco Vas, as the ineffectual and mother-dominated cypher of a husband, was initially disconcerting because of his resemblance to William Rees-Mogg, another ineffectually destructive character: lean rectitude masking dark forces!  He sung the role with the confused passion exactly matching his confused, damaged character, expertly juggling the contradictory complexities that he is too weak to surmount.

But the evening belonged to Katia, sung by Patricia Racette, who claimed the role for herself singing with the sort of confidence and assurance that allowed her, paradoxically, to portray the self-destructive repression and lethal freedom, the sensitivity, sympathy rejected and half-understood, the full passion and hesitancy with a range of expression that was breath-taking in its scope and effortless delivery.

The recipient of her love, Boris Grigorievitx, nephew to Saviol, sung by Nikolai Schukoff, was presented as a spiv-like, gigolo, Latin lover, smooth, cigarette smoking, spoilt “rich” boy who can’t get his hands on his inheritance, frustrated and bored in a provincial small town – certainly not a man to lose your life over, but superficially attractive – and brilliantly sung and confidently acted.  The attraction between Boris and Katia was convincingly displayed and the scene of the assignation when Katia takes off her coat and reveals that she is wearing an evening dress with butterfly-like gauze ‘wings’ emphasised the incongruity of the match, and perhaps the inevitability of the fatal attraction as she was caught, insect like by her investment of the light of love in Boris.

Vania Kudriaix, the other lover in this opera, sung by Josep-Ramon Olivé, is a contrast to Boris.  Vania is a writer and finds beauty in nature and expresses himself in folk song, you feel that he has more authenticity than Boris will ever have.  Olivé possessed the role and through excellent singing, spirited dancing and a rounded performance made the character appealing and real. 

 

He was matched in singing and acting by his lover Varvara, sung by Michaela Selinger, who portrayed a repressed semi-adolescent at last breaking free from the tyrannical hold of her adopted mother with élan.  These two had some of the most lyrical sung moments in the opera and were a delight to watch and listen to.  Her first appearance, returning from Church, was accompanied by a (real) small dog on a lead – an interesting coup de theatre in a live opera, and I suppose it was to show that she was a more expressive character, to prepare us for the love affair that had already started.  But would Marfa have allowed a mere dog as a plaything, something so purely decorative and useless in such a regimented household?  I am not sure, and anyway, I think that for the dog to be introduced, it should have had some sort of continuing role as a living metaphor at other points in the drama.

The chorus has a small, but essential role in this opera and their spectral voices added to the music richness of the music.

As the sets were so stark, the lighting played an essential scene setting character.  At times the use of shadow reminded me to Murnau’s 1922 film of Nosferatu with characters throwing looming outlines, large and threatening.

The climactic suicide of Katia throwing herself into the Volga was a true spread-eagled jump – no walking down hidden stairs here on the far side of the set but a full body, break taking leap.

For me, this is the sort of production that justifies opera as an art form, a true combination of music, drama, spectacle.  The production played straight through with no intermissions, and lasted a doable one hour, forty-five minutes.  A triumph.

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

Another date filled

 

Well, the one good thing is that I have only missed one meeting or appointment - and I thought that I might have missed three.  But no, blood test and concert are still in the safe future, it is only the student representative meeting that has slipped me by, and the teacher concerned seemed far more concerned about my new pressure stocking than the meeting.  The lack of my attendance at the meeting apparently could be solved, or at least mitigated, by a short chat with one of the teachers.

My pressure stockings are another factor.  These are stylish (for pressure stockings anyway) free gifts from China.  I only had to pay the postage (and that wasn’t very much) and I got three pairs!  It reminded me of the trip that Toni and I made to stay in Catalonia where the flight cost us nothing – except for the landing charges.  I do not understand the economic logic of giving away a flight for nothing, but I gratefully received the largess.  God knows we have paid back that free gift many times over given the amount of travel that we have run up over the years since.  But I do remain grateful for the inexplicable gift!

The pressure stockings are perhaps easier to explain as a sprat to catch a mackerel and the assumption must surely have been that I find out that the link with the supplier is real and you stand a chance of getting what you hoped for, and you buy much more stuff - and god knows, China is the home of stuff nowadays.  Was it enough for the Chinese supplier merely to get hold of my email and start sending me information, to get me on a mailing list, that they could write off the merchandise. 

 

And again, I insist that the postage was so small that I could afford to speculate and give it a go not really worrying about losing the pittance that they had asked to get the stuff to me.  They have since asked me to comment on my purchase, but I assume this is merely a device to ensure that I am still a live customer and that any giving of stars will unleash a whole catalogue of offers too good to miss!

Give my predilection to submit myself to the blandishments of the capitalist system and buy stuff for the mere sake of it, I have steeled myself to be rude enough not to reply – even though I am wearing one of the said stockings even as I type this.

The net two months should prove to be revealing, with the possibility that I will not need to wear the bloody stockings any more.  The function of them is to increase the blood flow in my right calf so that the thrombosis will be dissolved away.  To that end, my diet (low salt, low fat, no alcohol, decaffeinated tea and coffee) added to the half a tablet of rat poison that I take daily should all be working together to get rid of the thrombosis in a gradual way.  Over the next couple of months, I am scheduled to have various tests and appointments that should enable my doctors to determine the extent or otherwise of the offending clot and adjust my treatment accordingly.

I had thought that I would be taking the rat poison for life, but one doctor seemed surprised by this assumption on my part and assured me that there was a possibility that it would be discontinued in a few months’ time.

I continue to be impressed with my treatment and the thorough way in which I have made a Grand Tour of most of the hospitals in the area for consultations and tests.  The important ultra-sound scan will be in January, so I won’t have a Christmas present of my treatment being ended, but I will settle for a late gift!  At least by the New Year I should be in a better position to know how my appointments calendar will look for the rest of the year!

Meanwhile, my book “Stephen’s Health” continues to grow as each new sheet of information, results and appointments is added to the plastic pockets.  I take it with me whenever I go to see a doctor as a sort of visible token of my active participation in my treatment.  I can also refer to any of the information about my case (downloaded from the secure Internet link) to encourage those doctors battling with their ageing computers.  In one or two instances it has been very useful to point to relevant information to help the consultation along!

I feel fine, though I am not able to walk as far or as fast as I used to.  My shooting stick has been invaluable and I am now back to my normal swim and bike ride quota for each day.

My replacement watch for my Pebble, the Amazfit takes a dictatorial view of my activity and gives me reams of information that I totally ignore.  It tells me where I have cycled and how – though I am not sure that it realizes that my bike is electric; it analyses my swim, using acronyms that I do not know; it noted my ‘run’ that I did not do – and I am still wondering about that; it measures my sleep and its depth; it takes my heartbeat; it tells me (and nags me) about sitting down for too long.  And it also tells the time.  Its battery life is nothing near the longevity of the Pebble, but it is at least four or five days between charges and I can live with that.  The text it uses is too small for me to read without my reading glasses, but I am used to making sense of the out of focus – I have been doing in for as long as I can remember – so that is not something that worries me.

I now use my Matrix watch (the one that runs by making electricity out of the difference between your body heat and the ambient temperature of the watch case!) as a backup when the Amazfit is charging.  I good, if expensive, compromise about their use!

The major problem I have is making sure that the alarms on any and all of my pieces of wearable electronics do not go off as inopportune times.  I take my half of rat poison at 8.00 pm.  That is the time of the start of the operas to which I go.  The trouble is that merely switching off the phone (which I do when I go to performances) does not always stop the bloody alarm and once or twice I have fumbled with the phone during the applause for the conductor in a frantic effort to silence the thing before the music starts.  My watch merely trembles and that can easily be turned off by jabbing at the screen.  The anticipation that an audience feels at the start of the performance is given an added layer of fear by the threat of my electronic alarm orchestra playing an unwelcome additional melodic line.

And I am looking forward to this performance: Janacek, Katya Kabanova.  Let’s see just how well my ‘education’ in the works of Janacek by WNO and Richard Armstrong with the voice of, among others, Elizabeth Söderström, will be in my appreciation of the performance tonight.  I am all anticipation.

And now to get ready.  As a point of principle, I wear casual clothes to the Opera, in spite or rather because of the fact that I will be surrounded by those who ostentatiously dress up.  I am still wearing shorts and sandals (for me Summer Never Dies) but I might wear jeans tonight.  Not because of the cold, you understand, but rather because getting out of the Liceu and walking up the Ramblas late at night can be a dispiriting experience, and if you look ostentatiously like a tourist then you might well be the target for one or more sex workers to come up to you with blatant offers of gratification!   

Better to be taken for, if not a native, then at least a resident, and hobble (in my case) my stick-assisted way towards my expensively parked car!