Still life

1968 Arrival in Washington DC

IS IT TIME TO LOOK BACK? I guess so. Less years ahead now. Lot of years,things,people. experiences. adventures and misadventures all jumbled together in the past.
I arrived to work on the Wolf Trap project with Mrs. Jouett Shouse,daughter of the Filenes of Boston. I reached my new home in Washington DC on the Monday after Martin Luther King had been assassinated. I seemed unaffected by the murder and neither was Mrs. Shouse or her lady companion, Princess Kotchoubey. WSe thought it terrible there had been looting. I saw it myself. I was told Abby the maid reported "Oh madam, you should have seen the new outfits in church on Sunday". I passed a house displaying a window notice: SOL BROTHERS HERE.
I, a guest at the now defunct Roger Smith Hotel,two blocks from the White House, was under curfew after 6pm for three days. We ran out of food. It was rather fun. My Canadian friends thought me mad moving to DC, aflame on TV. I saw houses smoking two blocks from the White House, black & white armed soldiers on every corner & armored vehicles on Pennsylvania Avenue. For several weeks I passed Resurrection City, plywood dwellings on the mall between the Capitol & the Lincoln Memorial. After several weeks of rain (& especial worry about the mules-not the people), the city was rased to the ground. It happened overnight. In the evening coming home from Haines Point it was there, and the next morning gone, everything green again.
It hit me. This is a powerful, rich country; it behooved me to play my cards close to the chest. I am adept at keeping up appearances, like Mrs. Bucket. My acquaintances continued to go to the opera(such as it was in those days in DC), the ballet (the same) and the symphony where one emerged always stiffnecked as the boxes were at right angles to the finally into a more positive country. n some ways anyway. This country was so young in 1968, not even 200 years old.I came from ancient established traditions. It was amusing to tilt the conversation my way by just saying: Well, in the Middle Ages....But that was being smart, and anyway had I not emigrated to find freshness, hot water, money, phones which worked?
And now I'm still here, certainly more aware and more sceptical. But I am very pleased by becoming an American.

Vanessa: lucky Vanessa.

A dress rehearsal of Vanessa. As usual I was more interested in the story & characters than the music which seemed typically late C20, easily parodied. Opera does not seem to work in English, especially as this one seemed to take place in some Northern country, seemingly very un American, although of course Samuel Barber the composer was American
Vanessa living with her niece and mother awaits her lover Anatol of many years ago. A stranger comes to the house who says he loves her but when she looks at him, declares him an impostor to be removed immediately. However he appeals to the niece whom he beds on that first night and then stays to become Vanessa's lover and eventually her husband. Erika has a miscarriage, stays in the house while Vanessa marries Anatol and moves to Paris with young Anatol.

So even though it is a marriage based on deception they both play the game and it seems to work. Perhaps Princess Diana should have seen this movie.Poor high minded Erika who wanted to be wanted only for love loses out.
The furs were great. The opera features a moment about the furs.
A woman in my building wears a fur sign with a cross over it. Against fur. Pity really as it does look wonderful.
Ah well.
A good afternoon at the City Opera.

Gertie and awful men

The past is not all that far away, sometimes anyway. Suddenly this evening in the city still warm with October heat, I think of Gertie and James her pet corgi.
In a remote part of Wales,remote even in the late 40s and 50s, I accompanied my mother to visit a cousin I had never seen. I was about nine years old. Gertie was the daughter of my uncle John dead long before my birth and so Gertie who had never married, was about the age of my mother, perhaps even older, mother being the youngest of 17 children, all of them now long gone. We took a couple of buses which wound their way round the high hedged country roads. It was hot for August but finally we reached her two up and two down as we used to say, this with a door in the middle, open of course, and a white washed wall enclosing lovely red and yellow wallflowers.
"Come in Aunty dear". They hugged each other. I was introduced first to Gertie and then to James her beloved corgi. In the kitchen with a kettle boiling on the stove she said. "Let me make tea for you. You'd like that wouldn't you, Lionel bach?" "Yes, I would, thank you"
She turned to my mother and over a lunch of corned beef, boiled potatoes and sliced tomatoes, she told of her life with her mother and her stepfather, an awful man she said who sang loudly in chapel, was a prig and a hypocrite. I listened to all this as I ate my lunch. She reached the climax of the story by sitting back and declaring to mother, "Oh Auntie, aren't men awful?" and without missing a beat she added, "More potatoes, Lionel?". I said yes of course wondering ever after that simple meal of corned beef if men were really awful.
I think now she may have been right.

Traveling.....

Much traveling in the past few days. Saturday Shanghai 1942, Ang Lee new movie LUST AND CAUTION with Tony Leung, a tense and true movie with notable sex scenes. Then to Paris of Moliere for THE MISANTHROPE, set in modern NY, then to Periclean Athens for ELECTRA of Sophocles, onto Rome of the Caesars with AGRIPPINA of Handel set in the 1950s. This last was amusing filled with lively singers.
It is difficult to return to the mundane but a compensation today with a hike to Anthony's Nose, quite tough, lots of ups and downs but great views over the mighty river Hudson.
More anon......

The Misanthrope

A new production of a great play, THE MISANTHROPE of Moliere. This one from the NY Theatre Workshop on East 4th Street, a company celebrating its 25 years of innovation.

I have seen some duds here and had read about this production. I didn't enjoy it but found it diverting. Using video, amplification and all the paraphernalia of modern life, cell phones & computers we nevertheless never lost sight of Alceste's problem with other people. Our age is portrayed as vacuous and hollow as the court of Louis XIV. Unfortunately the actors, all accomplished were asked to asked to do some rather silly things. Alceste covers himself in tomato ketchup, chocolate and oil. He brings three bags of garbage on to the stage found (by chance!) outside the theatre; we are treated to the actors backstage, their lives seemingly overlapping the characters. The filming was disconcertingly out of sync. with the speech and the mikes made some of the actors shrill, very loud and sometimes incomprehensible. I have seen this play before in memorable productions, at the Comedie Francaise and in the 70s set in the de Gaulle sixties starring Diano Rigg and Alec McCowen, a brilliant well spoken production. No garbage there but the brittleness of the court conveyed in dazzling Parisian terms.

Cav'nPag-NYC Opera, production from Dallas

What a treat the other day. The dress rehearsal of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, usually sung together to form an evening's entertainment. Sublime music, young hot singers and good stories given a new twist. Both about ordinary people in old Italy, they are tales of passion, a woman scorned, a husband cuckolded.
I am reminded of Congreve's "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." The very stuff of great (and mediocre) literature and art.
Santuzza has given herself to Turiddu but he has abandoned her for Lola, wife of Alfio. Santuzza begs Turiddu to return to her but he scorns her and so she takes revenge by telling Alfio the identity of his wife's lover. Alfio seeks revenge, challenges Turiddu to a deadly duel. When I have seen this in the past the killing takes place on the steps of a great church. In this production created by the Dallas Opera, the killing takes place off stage . Alfio had brought with him some dark-glassed and suited thugs who look business. Poor Santuzza lives on to a life of regret and misery. After intermission, we open in the tawdry circus arena of I Pagliacci, the clowns. My mother used to sing On with the Motley to me as a child and we had 78 records of Gigli singing great operatic arias. I gave them away to a wretched cousin who tried to seduce me once. No great passion there I'm afraid. Just a rather unhappy man with a younger wife and two boring sons. Enough of that eh?
A novelty of this production was the appearance of Lola the betraying wife from Cav. walking across the stage carrying two old suitcases, her clothes dirty and her face battered. She had been beaten and driven from her village. It set the tone for the tragedy about to evolve.
Here the love scenes beteen Silvio and Nedda are hot, they are young good looking singers with excellent voices. Singing and making love at the same time. Not easy! The whole rehearsal was a thrill for me and took me away from the wretched world in which we are forced to live.