Month: November 2017

Thomas Moore: “His Songs Are Timeless”

On November 30, 2017

When people discover that I lived in Dublin many years ago, I am always asked, since I have no Irish ancestry or family, why I chose to live there.

Romantic as it sounds (and romantic as it was at times), it’s because so many of the artists I admired in my youth were from Ireland; some chose to stay, some chose to leave, but I felt, as a young woman hungry for art, adventure, and love (and some magical combination therein), that it was important to be in the place of my artistic heroes and heroines, as if by some magical osmosis their genius might seep into my own work. I was fortunate to have spent good amounts of time working with and around artists of all kinds during my time there, and though it wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting, to quote Danish photographer Krass Clement (who himself spent a good deal of time in Dublin in the 90s), “I was a bit scared, but also drawn to the atmosphere.” Amen.

I seriously contemplated a trip to Ireland on my way back from Berlin recently. The timing meshed beautifully with the last third of the Wexford Festival Opera, an fest I have long wanted to attend, and which holds particular fascination for its blend of Irish culture and rarely-done work by famous composers. One event, The Thomas Moore Songbook, especially caught my interested. I’ve loved the work of Moore for many decades; the 19th century writer was one of the figures firmly in mind when during my initial move to Dublin decades ago. As my exposure to the music, movies, literature, theater of Ireland expanded, I became especially fascinated by such a small country, with such a difficult and very painful history, producing so very many great artists of all stripes, some wildly divergent in terms of their thoughts and feelings around the notion of Irish identity. Moore was one of the very first widely-acclaimed Irish artists to examine this question in a way that was inspiring, enchanting, and important, all at once. His work seems more important than ever now, in light of current news around borders and Brexit.

As well as being an acclaimed singer, songwriter, poet and entertainer, Moore (born in 1779) led an incredibly interesting, accomplished, and occasionally tragic life; he was one of the first Catholics admitted to Trinity College Dublin, had a brief stint living in Bermuda, and outlived all five of his children. The Poetry Foundation (who publish Poetry magazine) describes him as “a born lyricist and a natural musician, a practiced satirist, and one of the first recognized champions of freedom of Ireland.” His best-known work is Irish Melodies (1808-1834), which came to span over ten volumes and cemented Moore’s reputation in the poetry/music worlds. Composers (including Berlioz) set nine of them to music, and the works were translated into several languages including Czech and Hungarian.

Volume 2 of Moore’s biography of Lord Byron. (Book and photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

Moore was also good friends with Lord Byron, who described various Moore works as his “matins and vespers.” The two had a long association, and Moore wrote a biography of his famous friend (who died in Greece in 1824), one Mary Shelley particularly admired. My intense love of the work of the so-called “dangerous-to-know” poet in my university days led me to Moore and made me a forever fan. This love expressed itself most clearly via loss; when a very close friend of the family’s, passed away in the late 1990s, my grieving mother asked me what should be carved on his gravestone. With nary a hesitation, I choose a few passages from a poem of Moore’s, words she loved. When my mother herself passed away in 2015, I couldn’t imagine the words of any other poet on her gravestone.

Wexford wasn’t in the cards this year, alas, but when I return to Ireland, it will be for a lengthy visit; there’s so much to see, to rediscover, to reconnect with and to explore anew. The Wexford Festival Opera is at the top of that list, and I am hoping there will be more of Moore’s work presented — that is a given if Una Hunt has anything to do with it. Hunt is an accomplished broadcaster, musician, coach, and scholar, and is a leading authority on Irish music history, particularly within the realm of forgotten composers. She has been at the forefront of the new Archive of Irish Composers at the National Library of Ireland and has taught at many of Ireland’s most prestigious music academies. She was Executive Producer of My Gentle Harp, a six-CD compilation (released in 2008) that is a complete recorded collection of all 124 songs from Moore’s Irish Melodies. In 2010, she presented the Melodies at Carnegie Hall (to two standing ovations, no less) and a year repeated the concert in Russia as part of the unveiling of a sculpture honouring Moore at the University of St Petersburg. Along with extensive publishing and performance work, Una has also produced a number of documentaries for Irish broadcaster RTÉ, including a tribute to French composer tribute to Claude Debussy.

The Thomas Moore Songbook was a huge hit at this year’s Wexford Festival Opera; both of its presentations sold out, something Una wasn’t surprised by, but, as you’ll hear, led to more questions, and more opportunities. As you’ll hear, Una has very strong opinions about the role Moore has played in Irish culture as well as identity. Why should you care about Moore? What does his work say to us now? How can a country forget (and/or ignore) its classical composers entirely? Blame not the bard...

Dmitri Hvorostovsky: Memories, Magic, And “Significant Presence”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 23, 2017

In classical, music, opera, personal, remembrance, voice, writing

The passing of Dmitri Hvorostovsky didn’t shock me, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful. The experience of living with a loved one with cancer for over a decade has made me cynical about happy outcomes, but, my reaction yesterday was less related to cynicism than to the direct experience of seeing the baritone this past April, recalling the last time my mother saw him, and accepting, with a heavy sigh, the finite nature of humans living with terminal illness.

Dima, as he was known by friends and fans alike, sounded magnificent on that cool April evening. Part of a concert event called Trio Magnifiico which marked the Canadian debuts of fellow Russian opera singers Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov, it was, I later realized, powerful for not only the chosen repertoire (largely by Hvorostovsky himself, as Netrebko had told me in an earlier interview), but for the inherent power of a man clawing at his own fate through his art. The appearance marked Hvorostovsky’s first public performance in several months, following the announcement of brain cancer in 2015. If ever there was an occasion when one could say a man was raging against the dying of the light, April was it. Hvorostovsky didn’t seem sad, but his performance (consisting mostly of Russian repertoire) had the fiery edge of anger, an impulse I remember thinking my mother would have recognized and wholly understood. His body language, especially in one aria (from Rigoletto, an opera about a man struggling against his own dying light, embodied in Gilda, the character’s daughter), expressed rage, sorrow, an intensity of flesh and spirit — of their collision, and the chaos that created. I remember clenching my jaw toward the end of the aria in a vain attempt to prevent tears. (It didn’t work.)

When I learned of Hvorostovsky’s appearance at the 50th Anniversary Met Gala shortly thereafter, I had to smile; I was in Berlin at the time, and I had wondered, with every deep-voiced performance I had heard, “how would Dima have done this?” I wasn’t comparing so much as curious: where would he have taken a breath? How would he have finished that phrase? How would he have approached this role? Why would he have made x or y choice? I equally realized, with many heavy sighs, that I would never see Dima onstage in Berlin, or probably anywhere else, for that matter, again. There’s a bittersweet fatalism that develops when you’ve lived with death for so long, sat across from it at every forced meal, driven with it humming in the backseat to doctor’s appointments, dragged it around shopping malls at the holidays. When it forces you to its logical endpoint, somehow the goodbye feels too soon — too mean, too heartless, and you realize the unfair bargain you were forced to make and live with. It makes perfect sense, and no sense at all. Cancer is grotesque that way, and no amount of fighting language popularly attached to it will ever remove the sting of sudden loss, much less the slow, dull ache of a long one.

baritone Hvorostovsky singer vocal opera classical Verdi Russian NYC stage

As Simon Boccanegra at the Metropolitan Opera, 2011. Photo: Marty Sohl/Met Opera

And so yesterday, as I attempted some degree of work productivity, I found myself listening to his voice blazing out of my radio, watching clips of him from 1989 (when he won the prestigious Cardiff Singer of the World competition), and being plunged into a deep well of memories, recent and far, fond and bittersweet. In trips to New York, my mother and I saw him in a variety of works, including The Queen of Spades, Eugene Onegin, Don Carlo, Rigoletto, and Simon Boccanegra. One didn’t merely hear his voice or watch him move; one experienced him and the force of his artistry, his confidence, his je ne sais quoi as a whole. It wasn’t just his considerable physical beauty — there are lots of good-looking people in opera, and always have been — but a kind of magic he conjured, contoured, and conveyed in waves. Few and far-between are the times in my life when I’ve sat in an opera house and been thoroughly, utterly thunderstruck by a perfect combination of vocal power, theatricality, confidence, ease, and … what? It isn’t easy to name. Call it star power, call it magnetism, call it presence; Hvorostovsky had it in jar-fulls, but carried it so lightly, like any star should. In a 2006 interview with New York Magazine, he commented that “(t)he sex appeal is part of the package. My voice is sensual, too, and it is part of my image and my character and my personality. It has something to do with a little magic called the “significant presence,” or whatever.”

The velvet-smoke sound of his baritone was every bit as ubiquitous in my house growing up as the silvery tones of a certain famous Italian tenor; if Pav was the soundtrack of my childhood, Dima’s filled the role for my youth. I felt what virility was before I understood it. That sound would make everything stop: thinking, activities, hearts, breath. It commanded attention. He existed firmly within the world of opera, but also without, in an entirely different category, one I think he carried inside of him, guided by his homeland, by family, by the responsibility he felt toward the composers whose work he performed as well as the spirit behind those works There’s a bitter irony to Hvorostovsky passing away on November 22nd, the Feast of St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians; it’s the day before Pavarotti made his Metropolitan Opera debut (in Puccini’s La bohème), in 1968. The sad realization that two of my mother’s very favorite singers, both of whom I saw live on multiple occasions, were taken by the same disease that took her, has forced some painful contemplations, though she’d remind me not to be so morbid, to simply “think of the music!”

The last time my mother and I saw Dmitri Hvorostovsky live together was at a 2014 recital at Koerner Hall in Toronto. My mother was suffering the horrendous effects of her umpteenth round of chemotherapy, and worried she wouldn’t be able to use the (great) tickets I’d hastily bought the day they went on sale months before. But something — her music passion, love of his work, curiosity, happiness to escape the house, worry at letting me down (or a mix of everything) — propelled her. I remember dropping her off along a bustling Bloor Street; she waited on a shady bench as I parked and ran back to meet her, trying to hide how rotten she felt, how tired she was, how fragile and thin she’d become. We slowly made our way through the venue, and she clutched her program as she carefully lowered herself into her seat. Trying to describe her face as Hvorostovsky stepped onstage is still impossible; I only remember her being lit from within. Over the next two hours, something happened: suffering stopped, disease stopped, the horrible daily details of illness stopped. There was purely sound, presence, pull — of being with Hvorostovsky through every breath, pause, roar, turn, smile. closing of eyes. We were with him.

opera baritone Hvorostovsky sing vocal stage performance Toronto Russian classical

At the Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts as part of Trio Magnifico, April 24, 2017. Photo: Vladimir Kevorkov / Show One Productions

I felt this once again in April, and I remember it now. Watching Hvorostovsky, I am in that world where everything stops; death gets out of the car, steps away from the table, is rendered powerless. It is magic.

(Top image: Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Count di Luna in Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009. Photo: Ken Howard / Met Opera)

Paul Appleby, Music Fan

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 19, 2017

In audio, classical, interviews, opera, voice

Tenor Paul Appleby (Photo: Jonathan Tichler)

What do you think of when you read the words “new opera” ?

Some may think it’s a contradiction in terms, that opera is and must be, by definition, something old, irrelevant, and fusty, full of big wigs, big dresses, buckle shoes, and powdered faces. There’s a feeling by that opera cannot possibly, with its array of seemingly outré storylines, deal with anything approaching a timely reality.

Yet new opera has taken its seat at the opera table in many different ways. A slew of companies devoted to new works, to say nothing of the many established companies and festivals presenting modern compositions, proves there is not only an interest in such work, but a deep passion that is re-shaping the ways in which audiences are experiencing the art form. Composers have long worked to create work that is not only a reflection of the times but a commentary on them, with productions that are aimed as much to provoke as to entertain. A number of organizations have regularly featured such works, including (but hardly limited to) Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia, the Canadian Opera Company, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Salzburg Festival, Glyndebourne, and yes, the Metropolitan Opera.

Paul Appleby in Two Boys (Photo: Ken Howard)

Contemporary composer Nico Muhly, whose latest work (an opera adaptation of Marnie) recently opened at English National Opera, had his Two Boys produced at the Metropolitan Opera (who commissioned it) in 2013; the work was far from the company’s first new work, of course, but it created a buzz that made me very curious to attend.

(Another buzzy new work is on this season at the Met; The Exterminating Angel, by Thomas Adès, is based on the surrealist Buñuel film of the same name, and will be covered in a future feature at this website. Stay tuned.)

Based on a true story that unfolds in the early days of the internet, Two Boys revolves around a teenager becoming entangled in a web of obsession and murder; the work was especially notable for its integration of music and technology both within the score as well as in a carefully controlled production by director Bartlett Sher. The work offered a dramatic exploration of modern life, sexuality, and the entangled relationship between each. I came away from it bowled over by the lead performance of tenor Paul Appleby, who played Brian, a lonely figure who gets sucked into a nasty catfishing scheme with a very surprising source. Vulture’s Justin Davidson described him here as “a marvel: an intelligent young singer equipped with the elegance and expressivity of an old pro, impersonating a lost soul of a kid.”

Paul Appleby in Die Meistersinger. (Photo: Ken Howard)

For contrast, I recently turned on a 2014 Met remount of Otto Schenk’s traditional production of Wagner’s epic 1868 work Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in which Paul performs the role of David, apprentice to Hans Sachs, one of the titular Master Singers. Re-watching the lengthy work (which is more timely than one might initially think) reminded me, hoary as it may sound, of the extreme versatility demanded of singers in this day and age; nothing could be further from Two Boys in content or in staging or style, but Paul’s ease with the score, his loving embrace of the diction, the sparkle in his eyes singing — it was all magic, and reignited my excitement for the possibilities of the art form.

Girls of the Golden West music rehearsal with (L-R) Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, and Hye Jung Lee. (Photo: Cory Weaver)

It’s inspiring to think of Paul’s latest role, in another new work, this one by American composer John Adams, with a decidedly female-forward viewpoint. Called Girls Of The Golden West, it has its world premiere this coming Tuesday (21 November) at San Francisco Opera. As New York Times classical writer Michael Cooper rightly notes of Adams, “(t)his onetime enfant terrible has grown into an elder statesman.” An Adams premiere is an event, not just for opera, but for culture as a whole. Does opera have anything to say? Should it? Can it? These questions are, perhaps, most clearly confronted at premieres like the one happening in San Francisco this coming week.

They’re also questions singers contemplate, even as they dissect scores, learn marks, and explore characters. A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Paul made his Met Opera debut in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos and his San Francisco Opera debut in 2016 in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute); he’s acclaimed for his Tamino in that opera, as well as other Mozart works (including Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte), as well as those by Berlioz, Handel, Britten, and Stravinsky. Paul recently took time out of his busy rehearsal schedule to chat; along with being a classical lover, he’s also a keen Bob Dylan fan, a dedicated recitalist, and, as you’ll hear, a performer with strong opinions on why new opera matters.

(Sidenote: Paul is known — and rightly celebrated — for his Tamino, not his Papageno (both characters in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte) as I say here. Please pardon the silly / mortifying mix-up.)

Berliner Dom, Berlin, Germany, Deutschland, history, politics, church, state, macht

Dancing With Ghosts In Berlin

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 14, 2017

In Berlin, classical, Europe, history, music, personal, symphony, writing

Landing in Berlin from a recent (and generally difficult) trip to Italy was bumpy but oddly calming. A violent storm was brewing, its intensity on a slow, fierce climb as the evening progressed. In some strange way, the scene felt, through gale-force winds and lashing rains, like a brusque reminder: “This is nichts; there’s so much left to see and to do…!”

One of those things was, mundane as it may sound, making a trip to the grocery store; I was tired but hungry, desperately craving a paprikas dip I’d come to know and love during my frequent visits to the city of late.

Supermarkets are, for me, fascinating places, for what they reveal as much for what they conceal in terms of cultural indicators. At my regular, it’s easy to find Eastern European things; paprikas-infused everything (not just dips but jarred sauce, flavoured meats, salads) are right alongside items like tabouleh, curry, tagines — items readily available in most Canadian supermarkets, especially over the last few decades. My experience of other cultures has come largely through music as well as food, and it’s nice to be able to buy harira, chana masala, fish sauce, pierogies, piri piri, and uborkasalata all in one go. Much as people may roll eyes and say it’s a silly, small thing, it isn’t for me.

The exterior of the Philharmonie at night. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

Taking things for granted is something I’ve never been comfortable with. Distressing news from Poland recently has made me reflect carefully on my own Eastern European roots (extant on both sides of my parents’ respective backgrounds), on being a child who was raised by a culture-loving single woman in the highly unfashionable suburbs, on the role that culture plays in every aspect of my life — including its filling the many gaping holes left by absent family, chosen and not. I don’t take anything for granted; I can’t afford that luxury.

I don’t know if I would label it a luxury, but it is certainly good to have been raised without the spectre of war or obliteration. Again, that sounds obvious and silly, but for me, it isn’t. This past Saturday was Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in America, I have developed complicated feelings toward this day, mainly owing to something shared by a relative from my father’s side (who I barely knew) had shared years ago: a relative of ours perished in the Second World War, fighting, as she put it, “on the wrong side.” It has always been hard for me to know what to do with this information. Alternately, my maternal grandfather (who I didn’t know either) was an immigrant to Canada, who had been decorated for bravery in the First World War, fighting for Britain, and later went on to be a trapper. Both my parents also have Jewish ancestors, a discovery I made through investigations years ago. It’s difficult to reconcile these various facets, never having known any of my relatives. They are all ghosts, frustratingly faceless and maddeningly nameless, dancing in and through my imagination, and I feel that dance keenly every time I’m in Berlin.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim. (Photo:© Holger Kettner)

My mother let go of all her connections with my father (who had been a violinist) when they divorced, save for the one to music – the force which initially drew them together so powerfully. Daniel Barenboim, the Argentine-Israeli pianist/conductor, General Director of the Staatskapelle Berlin, and also the co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, who is celebrating his 75th birthday tomorrow, expressed things so well at a concert in post-Brexit Britain in July:

… if a French citizen wants to learn Goethe he must have a translation. But he doesn’t need a translation for the Beethoven symphonies. This is important. This is why music is so important. And this isolationist tendencies and nationalism in its very narrow sense, is something that is very dangerous and can only be fought with a real great accent on the education of the new generation.

I thought of these words recalling one of many special events I attended while in Berlin, American conductor James Levine leading the celebrated Staatskapelle Berlin in Mahler’s Third Symphony; it was, to quote one German media outlet, “Ein Jahrhundertkonzert” (“a concert of the century”). Levine was General Music Director and Chief Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC for 45 years, and has conducted close to 2500 performance of 85 different operas; among many accomplishments, he founded the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and has received a slew of awards and citations throughout his decades-long career.

Maestro James Levine led the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Philharmonie on 31 October 2017. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

I grew up watching Maestro Levine (who is now 74 years old) conduct, both live and on TV; for me, it was part of my own education, one which continues in so many forms. I have vivid memories of the very beautiful Idomeneo Levine led at the Met last winter, to say nothing of the many times I watched him lead the Met Orchestra with my mother. It was very special to experience the work of someone whose work I’ve followed for so long, conducting at one of my favorite venues, playing the work of one of my favorite composers, in one of my favorite cities. The concert was a reminder of the special relationship between Maestros Barenboim and Levine (the former invited the latter), both of whom have worked around one another for decades. Levine, using a specially-installed ramp, led a deeply operatic rendering of the longest work in the standard symphonic repertoire, with a combination of elegant control, deliberate pacing, and a pointedly elegiac tone through even playful movements; he carefully shaped the work’s many moments of explosive intensity into something precious and wonderfully contemplative.

The five-movement work (given an intermission after its lengthy first section) gained an immense amount of thoughtfulness; this wasn’t about throwing a giant, over-filled platter in front of you, but rather, elegantly presenting small plates of delicately-curated specialties, every morsel both beautiful and tasty. Soloist/mezzo soprano Violetta Urmana and the Staatsopernchor (State opera chorus) and Kinderchor der Staatsoper (Children’s choir), together with lustrous string and horn sections, were carefully-treated ingredients, utilizing lovely legato phrasing and modulating textures. The effect was one of a whispered grandiosity.

Maestro Levine at the Philharmonie. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

History didn’t impose on that particular evening, but in light of the news from Poland, as well as learning about histories I didn’t fully know and stories still unfolding, I’ve been confronting past, present, and future, in micro and macro ways; a Jewish conductor, leading the work of a Jewish composer, of an orchestra led by another Jewish conductor, would not have been welcome in Berlin a few short decades ago, and indeed, may not be welcomed by certain individuals now. Again, to quote Barenboim (from his website), “(n)ationalism is the opposite of true patriotism, and the further fostering of nationalist sentiment would be the worst case-scenario for us all.” Which Europe is supposedly being fought over, and died for? What should the role of culture be, especially in the 21st century? Is there any hope left? May I not enjoy paprikas and tagine together?

I want to say a hearty” ja” and “Na sicher” (“of course”), and remind myself of that mantra whispered amidst the lashing rains and howling winds as I landed: “This is nichts; there’s so much left to see and to do…!”

So very much.

Jordan de Souza: Connecting Music “In A More Real Way”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 10, 2017

In audio, interviews, music, opera

Conductor Jordan de Souza (Photo: Brent Calis)

Conductor Jordan de Souza is one of classical music’s best ambassadors.

The conductor, who celebrates his 30th birthday next year, has been making waves for years abroad, as well as in his home and native land. Originally a graduate of the prestigious St. Michael’s Choir School, a semi-private Roman Catholic boys’ school in Toronto, de Souza studied organ performance at McGill University and was conducting (at Montreal’s Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul) when he was a teenager. Jordan has worked with the Canadian Opera Company, Opéra de Montréal, Houston Grand Opera, and the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, to name a few. He’s also worked with the National Ballet of Canada. As Conductor in Residence with Tapestry Opera (a Canadian company which specializes exclusively in new works), he’s worked on a number of contemporary projects, and was Music Director for the company’s critically-lauded opera adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s short story Rocking Horse Winner last year. This past summer he made his debut at the prestigious Bregenz Festival in Austria, leading the Vienna Symphony (Wiener Symphoniker) in Bizet’s famous Carmen.

Scene from Komische Oper Berlin’s production of Pelléas et Mélisande (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

The start of the 2017-2018 season this past September saw him formally become Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin. Regular readers will know I am a big fan of the work of their work for many reasons, among them a fresh, lively approach to staging and a smart, creative approach to scores. Most recently KOB received raves for their presentation of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, which opened in mid-October, with Jordan ‘s conducting work receiving many plaudits; one review noted he let “the impressionism of the late-romantic score flourish.”(For my interview with the production’s Pelléas, go here.) Jordan is also conducting Petrushka / L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Stravinsky and Ravel respectively) this season, which is a presentation done with visionary British company 1927 Productions (and one which I loved when I attended its opening in January) as well as Tchaikovsky’s Jewgeni Onegin, both running in repertory.

As you’ll hear, Jordan is an artist very much dedicated to not only his work, but to the art form as a whole, Whether it’s exploring aspects of Pelléas with Komische Oper Intendant (boss) Barry Kosky and various ensemble members, parsing the meaning of the word “Kapellmeister” for the average (non-classical) person, sharing observations on European and North American cultural climates, or musing why Berlin is, as he puts it, “an embarrassment of riches” – all these things point very clearly at a person who believes in music, at a deep level, and is excited by its possibilities, both inside and outside the theatre.

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

I spoke with Jordan during a recent trip Berlin, which occurred at the end of a challenging trip to Italy. We met in the canteen of the KOB, so you’ll hear the sounds of various KOB staff grabbing their pre-performance snacks and dinners in the background. There’s a sense of the normalcy of classical arts in Berlin which I so utterly love. Classical music in the city is not some weird thing utterly removed from quotidian experience; rather, it’s simply part of the fabric of every day life. Eat; drink; concert. Expect a piece soon about my Berlin sojourn, and the many cultural goodies within those six days; meeting Jordan de Souza was certainly one of them. I look forward to experiencing more of his live work soon.

https://soundcloud.com/catekusti/opera-queen-talk-jordan-de-souza

Travels In Italy: Dolce e brutto

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 7, 2017

In classical, festival, music, opera, personal, writing

Two weeks ago I was touring the lands of opera composer Giuseppe Verdi in Emilia Romagna, northern Italy: the place he was born and raised, the splendid home of his benefactor, the lush gardens he would walk through. Those were the good parts.

Any sentimentality or indeed, romanticism, which so many feel in traveling to Italy, has been largely scrubbed out; never, in all of my travels, I felt more aware of my status — my vulnerability — as a woman. While there are finger-waggers who will tut-tut with inevitable “you should haves” and well-meaning “if only you hads” (instincts I find frustratingly passive-aggressive if not outright patronizing) I stand by the validity of my reactions, deeply aware of the various costs of singledom as a woman, the frequently taken-for-granted privilege of coupledom, and the need to accept the wildly different realities of each, particularly within the wider context of travel experiences. I got to see a part of Italy very few people get to see, a unique experience to be sure, but one that comes with a bitter recognition in realizing that my only return to the country will be as either part of a tour, or for quick excursions to very specific places, namely Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia, and of course, Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

A rose on the property of Villa Verdi. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

In retrospect, I wonder what Verdi, a man who felt such a clear kinship with the so-called “common man,” would have made of my experiences in his country as a woman in the 21st century. Would he have been appalled, I wonder, by the cat-calls, the leering, the begging? Being a solo woman traveler opened the door to an ugly jarful of assumptions, which led to harrowing experiences: theft, harassment, manipulation, and (as was the depressingly repeated case in so many restaurants), being totally ignored. What would Verdi have made of it all? What would he have made of my wrists being grabbed by a older woman wanting money? Or waiters running to serve amorous couples but consistently ignoring my inquiries about a missing lunch and requests for another glass of Lambrusco? Or of personal items being stolen from an abode? What of the forced kissing and repeated fondling after accepting help with luggage? What am I to make of these experiences? Are they operatic? Is it “Italy being Italy” ? Should I not be bothered? Was it my fault? Did I somehow “ask for it?” Did I deserve it because I was alone?

In any terrible situation (or series of them), there are always minuscule shards of light, and it’s these shards I have to pick through now, with the benefit of hindsight. I will always remember the free shot of espresso provided by a friendly woman in a bustling shop in Parma; the plate of sandwiches set before me in a cafe by another woman who gave me a knowing nod when she saw I was alone; the warm, expressive tone of my tour guide at Villa Verdi (the composer’s primary residence for many decades), as I struggled in my limited Italian to understand her every detail. All of us were above a certain age, all of us perhaps had some shared understanding we couldn’t articulate. I remember these moments, cherish them, and I’ve taken a friend’s advice to try and focus on good things, like these moments, and the ones provided via music and history.

Roberto de Candia as Falstaff (Photo: Roberto Ricci)

Jacopo Spirei’s Falstaff was my favorite production, and I don’t write that purely because I interviewed him about it before I left. Smart, funny, timely, and with a marvellously human lead performance by Roberto de Candia, the production (presented at the Teatro Regio di Parma as part of this year’s edition of Festival Verdi) was a true standout, and I wasn’t alone in that reaction, as chats with members of a refreshingly friendly British tour group revealed. Spirei placed the action in a familiar present, and filled the scene with very familiar people. De Candia played Falstaff as a kind of slobbish everyman, notably lacking the cutesy quality so common to characterizations. Instead, he was a kind of bar pig whom no one wanted to spend much time around — women especially; Falstaff wasn’t cuddly and harmless, he was slovenly and horrible. Only through his spectacular humiliation did he becomes semi-tolerable. The production made it abundantly clear that a character like Falstaff must be brought low in order to be raised once more, not as the phoenix, but as more of a messy pigeon who pecks around rotting porticos, and has to be kept in line with brooms and hoses every now and again.

I thought of Sir John Falstaff when I went to Villa Verdi some days later, because, as with Spirei’s magnificent production, I was being allowed to glimpse a vivid humanity which lives beneath an image. The house is located just outside the town of Busseto, roughly 40-odd kilometres north of Parma. Verdi supervised its construction, and, together with lady love (and soprano) Giuseppina Streponi, moved in in 1851. The house contains a number of mementos, as one might expect, all carefully and lovingly displayed.

Observing the bed in which Verdi died in 1901 (which had been shipped from the Grand Hotel in Milan) and various personal effects (including letters, knick-knacks, and the top hat and scarf he wears in Boldini’s famous portrait), a portrait of a good man dedicated to music and the people he loved emerges. It sounds hokey, but somehow, it wasn’t — but it was odd to walk around the living quarters of someone whose music was the soundtrack of large swaths of my life, to say nothing of my mother’s; it was ordinary and yet not, simple and yet grand, intimate and epic, all at once. Two pianos on which Verdi composed his works (early and later) were there, a clear case covering their keys. I stared at those pianos, longing to touch them. (No photos are allowed inside the house, alas.) I couldn’t rip my eyes off the second instrument on which he had composed Aida; this epic of the opera world, this contentious, difficult piece, with clashing ideologies and a gorgeously intimate subtext about loving the wrong person in the wrong time, “Celeste Aida” and the so-called “Triumphal March” — all that was done on the simple, upright piano sitting before me.

Gelling those reactions with the personal effects (to say nothing of the little section on Wagner) was surreal but also beautiful. I wish I could have had a few moments to stand in that room and take it all in, quietly, thoughtfully; it was one of the rare times during my travels in Italy that I actually wanted to be alone.

The exterior of Villa Verdi. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

A more fulsome piece about my visit to Villa Verdi and the town of Busseto is set to appear in a future edition of Opera Canada magazine, but at this website, expect a piece (soon) about a very unique version of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) presented in Reggio Emilia, which featured members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Italian entertainer Elio. Mozart’s opera has been on my mind a lot lately, because it is, as Komische Oper head honcho Barry Kosky rightly has noted, a work infused with a deep loneliness, and that quality is one which haunted me throughout Italy. Perhaps it was the absence of my mother, the social isolation that comes with being an independent woman of certain means, an overall disappointment… whatever the case: I am happy to have seen and experienced the things I did in Italy — and it will take a lot to get me to return.