Wrapping up, part one

I'm home in body but not yet in spirit, feeling somewhat lost and perpetually tired. I'm sleeping badly and irregularly, and at odd times; I need several daytime naps but fear that they would interfere with my night's sleep.

In short, I have jetlag. This is not unexpected, coming eastwards is always harder for me than westwards, and it has on occasion lasted as long as two weeks before I was fully back into the European rhythm.

What to say about New York? First, that as much as I enjoy the city, I remain glad not to live there. I find the relentless speed, the hurryness, to be exciting for a day or two, but after that it only irritates me. It's no wonder that people there get ulcers and/or spend years in therapy.

The Ring was very good, even the Wotan of the first night was much improved when he reappeared in "Siegfried" (most singers sang only once during the week, or took one major role and a bit part). "Siegfried" was excellent, better than I remember it from Baden-Baden. As happened in Toronto, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it: I usually experience it as the low point of the Cycle. These two performances have changed my opinion, it is a much stronger opera than I'd thought. I shall have to listen to the CDs a little more intently than I have done.

Presenting the Ring on four consecutive nights (as Wagner wanted) is in my humble opinion not a good idea: one has no time for anything else, and no chance to let the memory of music and staging sink in. The performances started at 6pm and went to 11 or later; by the time one had had a drink in the bar, slept and breakfasted, it was time to think about lunch (the main meal of the day) and immediately after that it was time to shower and dress for the next performance. I think it really needs at least one free evening between the operas.

The New York audience was appalling. People would continue to chatter after curtain-up until somebody shushed them, and always began to applaud while the orchestra was still playing even though many people shushed them. And a good half-dozen cellphones rang during every performance! What the fucking fuck? I can't understand the mentality of that: do people say "oh, my phone won't ring" or "they won't really mind if my phone rings"? Turn your goddamned phones off when you go into a cinema or theatre or concert hall; Christ, people, this is not fucking rocket science. And the coughing! it was a constant background hum through all four operas. Bah and boo and humbug. For shame, New York! not bloody good enough.

On the bus to JKF I lost the hat I'd bought in Lisboa to replace the hat I'd lost on the bus going there. Bah to me.

I didn't have a bowel movement worthy of the name during the entire week in NY, producing only a few rabbit pellets or at most a grape or two. This worried me to the point that I ate mostly salads during the final days, without apparent effect. You will be pleased to learn that my bowels are returning to their normal productivity.

What else? It feels strangely good to be back in a country of low-rise buildings, where the sky is a continuum around (!) the horizon (!!) rather than a stripe of blue between windowed walls. I hadn't been aware of missing the sky while I was there, but sitting on G and U's balcony yesterday afternoon I realized that I was delighted to see an expanse of sky and clouds again.

More later, some time or other. There will even be photos soonish.

One down, three to go

Das Rheingold last night was quite fine, other than a weak Wotan; this production is as good as I remember it being (we've seen this particular Ring before, in Baden-Baden in the Spring of 2004). The orchestra is not as well-trained as the Met's own under Jimmy Levine, but then again which orchestra is? The lighting is magnificent, much better than I remembered; it is both subtle and dramatic, washes of lovely colours which change slowly with the mood—or abruptly with the plot. Some of the costumes are also different to my memories. Which is fine, of course there would be changes in the course of three-year-long world tour and a changing cast.

The audience was surprisingly well behaved (for New York): only one cellphone rang during the concert, and there was little coughing and rustling to be heard. When I am Minister for Culture (which God forbid) I shall make Failure to switch off a cellphone an offence punishable by beating with rusty iron bars.

I'm finding it hard to make the time to get online, there is so much to see and do here, even if we are mostly just walking around, eating and drinking and getting a stiff neck from looking upwards. One change that registers with me is the decline of the central-Manhattan bookshop: there used to be a round dozen good (large selection of obscure and arcane titles, pleasant atmosphere, knowledgeable staff) bookshops in Midtown, but they have all gone. We found a Barnes & Noble, not bad as chains go, but in no way a replacement for a proper bookshop. Sigh. Replaced by fast-food chains and low-price computerish stuff (US$ 40 for a camera? how can selling that pay the rent on a Sixth Avenue store?)

I've been to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, of course I have. It's a heart-warming sight for an Apple fan: a very large store full to bursting with happy people playing with pretty stuff, and even buying things. The genius bar is a great idea, knowing that this service is available free surely takes away some of the reluctance to cross over to the light side. The store planners were clever enough to realize that they could not put in enough cash registers for all these shoppers, so there are staff equipped with portable credit-card-readers who roam the floors looking for customers who wish to buy something.

More later, perhaps.

Two hundred and fifty

... days to go until the start of the next Ring Cycle, my seventh God willing, at the Met in New York next July. It's the same Mariinsky Theatre production which we saw in Baden-Baden in the Spring of 2004 (and how odd stroke cool is it that I am currently fifth in google's results for "Mariinsky Ring Cycle").

This will be one of the very few occasions on which the Ring Cycle is presented as Wagner intended, on four consecutive evenings. This was an unrealistic intention in my opinion: five hours a night is too much, the singers wear themselves out. The Mariinsky approach is to take a huge team of young singers and alternate the roles between them, so that nobody has to sing every night. Mind you, Wagner seems to have been not entirely conscious of the nature of the Ring, he apparently thought that Siegfried would be the best-loved and most important part of the cycle, and that people would put up with the rest for its sake.

(And before you mention musicals, let me remind you first that the performances are up to five hours long, and second that opera singers do not use microphones. They fill the hall using pure, unassisted lung power. Should you ever be lucky enough to hear an opera singer taking part in a smaller-scale concert evening, you'll recognize this in the way that they can drown out the orchestra and make your ears ring without breaking sweat. I saw our own Catriona Smith singing a Bach chorale in a church recently, and would say that it was for her probably no more strenuous than attending a loud party.)

In other news one might well define Homo Sapiens Sapiens as "the animal which is never satisfied." It took approximately twenty hours for me to go from complaining about the cold in my unheated apartment, to complaining about the dried-out air and smell of hot metal in my heated apartment.

In other other news I spent the afternoon with Princess yesterday, as it was a nice day and neither of us was particularly enthusiastic about work. We had lunch in a pleasant Thai restaurant on the Wilhelmsplatz, bought presents for upcoming birthdays, and then retired exhausted to the new (already year-old) Café Königx for tea and cakes, highly enjoyable.

I related my dream, and as I got to the part where she held her foot out for a massage, she laughed and said that it was true to life. Princess postulated: granted that Freud was correct to maintain that our thoughts are as real as physical experience in their influence on our personalities and development, and given that remembered dreams are a kind of thinking, it follows that a pleasant dream is as beneficial as a nice experience in waking life. An interesting idea, it's certainly true that the positive atmosphere of this dream - and the vague unhappiness of the other - are still with me days later.

Eleven down, nineteen to go

Wonderful

Well, that was quite excellent - with only a few minor blemishes. The brass remained woefully underrehearsed, fluffing notes and entries in all four operas. Yes, it's a difficult part; but I have heard the orchestra of the Met under Jimmy Levine and I have to tell you that there were no mistakes made there. Your bad playing is either incompetence or laziness, and I see no reason to excuse either. Frances Ginzer disappointed slightly in Götterdämmerung as she did in Die Walküre, perhaps it's a question of stamina as she started well but weakened. She was definitely straining for the notes and the volume in the final act.

But it was very moving, the final scene of the gods' ruin was beautifully staged, better even than Stuttgart which has been my favourite so far.

On the whole, the Toronto Ring was very good, among the best I've seen. I would have rated it equal to New York had the brass and Brünnhilde been a touch better. To think that the shy, clumsy, prissy, wallflowerish Toronto of my youth could have matured so far as to produce this world-standard opera in this magnificent building!

I am sad that the Ring is over, but happy to think that the next one is already only 296 days away. I've restarted the countdown for the Mariinsky Ring at the Met in New York. We saw it in Baden-Baden in 2004 and quite liked the production.

The trip hasn't been all opera, of course. I have met a few friends, had sushi and fancy coffee (and why is it so damned hard to get a plain, simple cup of coffee these days? what is wrong with coffee-flavoured coffee?) and done some shopping (clothes, books that were unlikely to be available in Europe) and now have four more days of touristing and fun before flying back. (I changed to a later flight because G and U are spending the week in France, poor things.)

Walking around the old neighbourhood is a strange experience, a mix of happy memory and present sadness. Some of my friends and contemporaries have already died, by accident or illness; many are divorced or separated and have returned to the parental nest. I thought that I recognized the fourth trumpet at the orchestra as a girl from high school, who lived three streets up the hill in a house that her father designed. It wasn't her, but the resemblance was striking. I had such a crush on her, but didn't dare speak to her because I was a nerd and she was a jockette; it would have been the death of her socially to be seen with me, so I spared myself the embarrassment of being refused. Fool. (For what it's worth, my sister who is always right says that she was a mean and spiteful bitch, so perhaps it was just as well.)

I have been channelling Proust all through the trip, seeing my memories of people in their (my) youth overlaid on their present ageing appearance to surreal and often saddening effect.

Typically Toronto: the smell of cut grass, there are no lawns in Germany; the sound and sight of aircraft flying overhead; the muted roar of traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, which is as loud and as constant at 3am as at 1pm; faces and languages (street signs) from every race on the planet; odd juxtapositions of land use and value: a two-storey brick row of houses and offices next to a thirty-storey tower.

In other news I have posted the remaining answers to the music quiz. Thanks for playing!

Perfect

That was the first Siegfried that I've actually enjoyed, I usually experience it as something to be endured between good bits. Even my father, a notorious finder of imaginary faults, gave it 10 out of 10.

I was much happier with Frances Ginzer's Brünnhilde tonight than in Wednesday's Die Walküre, perhaps she is settling in to the role. She was an unsatisfactory demi-goddess but a great newly-created human woman*. There was a self-help book published some years back under the title "Feel the fear but do it anyway," which could have been taken as Brünnhilde's motto: delighted to wake to find herself human, scared stiff at the unknown life which lies ahead, but determined to grasp it with both hands.

With each Ring, I hear pieces of music that I hadn't heard before, or understand aspects of the story that I hadn't grasped before. I had somehow not really registered Wotan's long duet with Erda that begins the second act, although it is central to the story of the entire cycle.

The production design (by Michael Levine) was excellent: a nearly bare stage, most of which was in absolute darkness most of the time, with very simple costumes (pure white except Alberich and Brünnhilde) and few props or decorative elements. The lighting (by David Finn) has been uniformly excellent, but only this opera has really put his talents to use. There was one cleverclogs moment: a treestump on which Siegfried sits and dreams in Act One, is seen turned on its side (as though we were in midair looking down at the saw-cut face) in Act Two - with Siegfried still sitting on it dreaming, except that he's now lying on his back in midair! The Gods are at right angles to reality, as it were.


* For those who don't know the story: as punishment for disobeying her father Wotan's command (to cause the death of Siegmund and thus prevent Siegfried's birth) she was stripped of her demi-divinity and put to sleep within a ring of fire, to be the wife of whichever man could brave the flames to wake her. Naturally the first such fearless hero to pass by is Siegfried himself.

Halfway

I am most impressed.

The Toronto Ring (as we shall be calling it in future) is quite brilliant so far. Great singing, good sets, good orchestra - with a few truly awful fluffed notes in the deeper brass, I hope that they are getting their arses kicked. If it continues in this quality, it will be as good as the Mariinsky Ring. It's Siegfried tomorrow and Götterdämmerung on Sunday, and I am already disappointed in advance that the Ring will soon be over.

The first act of Die Walküre last night was just perfect, could not have been better. Adrianne Pieczonka - a fine Canadian name - was brilliant as Sieglinde, gamely hopping about on a broken ankle. Frances Ginzer as Brünnhilde is good but not great, which is unfortunate as she is the central character of the remaining two operas. She has the unfortunate habit of rising to tiptoe as she belts out the high notes; she's young and somebody will teach her not to do it. The Amsterdam Brünnhilde, Nadine Secunde, was a much better singer. The planned Wotan, Pavlo Hunka, is ill so we have had John Fanning in the role: quite good. I disagree with the portrayal of the character, Wotan is not a whiner, but that is hardly Fanning's fault.

The Toronto Opera House is also excellent visually and acoustically, a large but intimate space with marvellous (clear, crisp, warm) acoustics. We are sitting in the middle of the fourth of five balconies, not exactly the cheap seats but also nowhere near the top of the price scale. I would recommend this area and the third balcony to readers who may visit Toronto, the fifth balcony would have a worse view and the orchestra seating and lower balconies would surely have different (worse) acoustics. [This was confirmed by a friend who was sitting in the orchestra level: muddy, unpleasant sound.] The "front of house" area is fully glazed to the street, with layers of balconies and stairs and a lecture area on the second level, and manages the trick of appearing small and intimate while still accomodating three thousand people.

Let me read you the surnames of the singers: Forbis Pieczonka Ens Hunka Bullock Ginzer Németh Makerov Vilsmaier Phillips Baggott Stannard Szabó McHardy Yang. Typically Canadian, the lot of them.

In other news I still hope to find a way to get online at a reasonable speed, I don't have the patience for blogreading on this dreadfully slow connection. It's hard to imagine that people (myself among them) actually used to do business at this speed.

In other other news we are watching Six feet under on DVD. Brilliant, wonderful stuff. Highly recommended - but have a large box of tissues and a good friend handy.

Seventh

Had an e-mail from my mother this morning, in reaction to an e-mail that she had just received from the leader of the operatour group.

The Mariinsky Theatre's Ring Cycle production which we saw in Baden-Baden two years ago, will be performed at the Met in July of 2007. Do we want to see it again?

A week in Manhattan, with the Ring? Oh, well, I'm not sure, let me think about that for a moment: YES!!!!!!!

I had mailed Sass about the possibility of me buying her a beer in Toronto in September, she expressed wonder that some people know what they'll be doing eight months in advance. I know what I hope to be doing (God willing) eighteen months in advance. Being an opera fan requires taking the long view: we must decide now, and make a downpayment next month.

A little nudge for any east coast-ish North Americans who might be curious: the Mariinsky Ring really is superb.

In other news I was standing in the kitchen just now, preparing a little tray of supplies for my midmorning break. A cup of coffee (still black) and a glass of water were on the tray, I opened the refrigerator and took out the milk - and watched myself pour milk into the glass of water, thinking as I did so "Something's not quite right here..."

In other other news the sky is already brighter, the days already longer than at Christmas. I noted with surprise yesterday evening, on the train home from a meeting, that the sky was not yet black at 5:45pm. Spring is not far away.

Two hundred and fifty

... days until the start of the Ring Cycle in the new Toronto Opera House (I refuse to call it by its corporate-sponsorship name) and I am starting to get excited. It'll be my 6th Ring, God willing (New York, Amsterdam, New York again, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Toronto); and while that may sound like a lot to non-opera-goers, for the cognoscenti it marks me as a rank beginner. Many of the operatour crowd have seen a dozen or more Rings, and we met a man in Baden-Baden who claimed to be seeing it performed live for the forty-third time.

The Ring is a sheep-from-goats-sorter of the highest order, one knows within minutes whether one will love or hate it and there really is no middle ground. Personally I love it (obviously), I think it contains some of the most marvellous music ever written (e.g. the very beginning, as the curtain rises on the Rhinemaidens). Parts of the Ring have colonised my life: every time I'm on a train that goes through Hagen, I sing (sotto voce) Alberich's "Schläfst Du, Hagen mein Sohn?" from Götterdämmerung; every time I gather up the dirty laundry I hug it to my belly, kick up my heels, and cry "Hee hee!" in imitation of Graham Clark as Mime, gleefully brewing up poison in the Amsterdam Siegfried.

The story is full of minor absurdities, as is true of most operas, but is still dense enough that it remains interesting after repeated hearings. At every Ring I have felt that I heard some piece of music, or understood some aspect of the story, for the first time.

I'll admit that there are a few parts that you can safely sleep through; but that is true of many things - even of Proust. A Ring Cycle is hard work for performers and audience alike, sixteen hours of music over four nights, so many people do nod off. The Baden-Baden Ring in the Winter of 2004, a touring production from the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, was the only case yet where I stayed awake for the whole Cycle, a mark of its excellence. The Baden-Baden Ring was superbly sung, played and staged (brilliant design by George Tsypin) but two years later I remember how good it was rather than any specific moments of goodness.

I wasn't very impressed by the Stuttgart Ring at the time, although it did have its moments (among them Angela Denoke as the finest, most believable Sieglinde I have yet heard); I found that there was an awful lot of wilful cleverness on the part of the directors, often at the expense of the story; but in retrospect it is one of the productions that I remember most fondly. My favourite Ring memory is of the final moments of the Stuttgart Götterdämmerung: in contrast to the usual mob scenes, Brunnhilde dismisses the chorus and surviving singers one by one, gently waking the dead Siegfried who looks around with the innocent wonder of a child before she sends him off, to finish up alone at the front of an empty stage as if on the edge of a cliff, singing out into the auditorium. Magnificent.

I wonder what the Toronto Ring will hold?