Since the start of the coronavirus quarantine in March, I’ve returned drawing and painting more frequently, activities I adore but didn’t always devote the proper time or energy to in past, so-called normal times. I first explored these pursuits close to two decades ago as a natural extension of my engagements with photography, dance, theatre, and writing. At once technical, instinctual, emotional, and sensual, I think of drawing and painting as extension rather than escape, an experiment without a definitive end point. This attitude was encouraged by my instructor, a professional artist and professor at a major Canadian art school, who strongly discouraged the use of erasers in those preliminary sketching classes. “Be open to everything,” she would say in her soothing caramel tones, “don’t be so attached to one road or path, or to things being perfect.” It’s an easy credo that is hard to put into actual practise, whether in pencil or any other creative pursuit, and particularly so for those of us with those insistent perfectionist tendencies; to trust the unknown, to have faith in the journey, to loosen the desire for complete control of the final outcome, and its effects – these are big things to ask in any setting, doubly so in a new one. But what might be terrible errors outside the studio become, within it, opportunities for unexplored paths, where losing, finding, forming, shaping, and re-shaping, again and again, are part of the overall process, one that is becoming a central mode of expression.
That acceptance of the unfamiliar is being discussed in the classical world with particular urgency as the reality of no full presentations until 2021 seeps into the overall consciousness. Pappano told The Stage recently that “(w)hat’s going on is that we’re talking about plan A, plan B, plan C, because everything is changing from week to week. I think the important thing is to make a decision that is not in any sense rash.” The current overtures toward reconfiguring presentation within the context of classical music are being greeted with a similar mix of sighs, scowls, boos, cheers, but largely (I would suspect) held breath by audiences. Navigating change is not, depending on one’s familial, cultural, and social baggage, always easy; in a forced situation it seems even more difficult and onerous. it might be done on tentative tiptoes, or it might be approached with an open-armed embrace. What with the figurative windows and doors being replaced, there’s concern if and how the view might be affected – and if that’s a good thing, a bad thing, an overdue thing, a thing that can lead to transformation within an industry perceived as being adverse to innovation. Reduced musical and theatrical presentations at Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, and a recent photo of a new seating arrangement via Berliner Ensemble, have inspired a range of responses, some reasoned, others emotional; some express horror, some curousity, while yet others say it’s a hopeful sign, a baby step in a much longer (and still largely unknown) journey. Baritone Michael Volle recently performed at Wiesbaden, playing to an audience of 189 in an auditorium that normally holds a little over 1,000, and noted to Frankfurter Allgemeine that “(d)as ist zwar für den Augenblick wunderbar, kann aber nicht die Zukunft sein.” (“this is wonderful for the moment, but cannot be the future.”)With the present and future wrapped in uncertainty, it is impossible to predict how a month from now might look, let alone six months, a year, three to four years – the latter being the (former) norm in future bookings for classical artists. Will auditoriums resemble what Volle saw, looking out from the stage at Wiesbaden? For how long?
At Konzerthaus Berlin. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.
Sighing looks back, anxiety looks forward, restlessness shuffles the dust of the present. Every bit of news highlights our keen desire for the familiar, even as it underlines our separation from it. As Pappano noted (again in The Stage) “we have to consider the emotional toll that (the lack of events) will take on people, the need for community.” How might that look? We won’t be able to experience the breaths, the sighs, the miniscule hums and in-beat head bobs, the audible humming and tapping feet and waving hands and fingers of insistent seat-conductors, nor the resonance of instruments and voices vibrating through thighs and hips and sternum, into temples, through ear lobes, rumbling nostrils and jaw and eyelashes; pressing one’s head or face against home speakers simply does not compare. Communal cultural experience within a confined space and time is not an everyday experience, and as such is one of the few things we desire actively and will pay for, perhaps because of this direct and sensual viscerality, however irritating and unpredictable some of its expression may be; it’s precisely that sense of the unpredictable which is so treasured. Writer Charles Eisenstein writes in a lengthy and thought-provoking essay:
Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations. Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?
[…]
To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more? Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress? Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future?
Advancement versus preservation; this seems like the crux of the issue with relation to issues within the classical world, and there are, right now, lessons which are being learned and applied, to varying degrees, and with varying degrees of success. New (and some might argue far overdue) paths are being forged in order to both advance the possibilities of music presentation while preserving the core of its unique and individual power. Perhaps, amidst the lessons corona might be able to teach us (as Eisenstein posits), a more active idea of community might not only be understood but literally and loudly lived. I want to believe this is the case as the Salzburg Festival moves forward in an altered state, through the planned (and also altered) presentations starting next month at Musikverein Wien, and the long-awaited reopenings in Italy, happening in mid-June. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin’s planned guest performance at Konzerthaus Dortmund is set to take place on June 7th, albeit in a modified form and with what Konzerthaus Berlin’s release terms “eines besonderen Wiedereröffnungskonzepts stattfinden” (“a special reopening concept”). The experience of community means connecting in many different ways and on many different levels with other sentient beings who carry their own unique experiences, ideas, expectations, and agendas, on as well as off the stage. How might one manifest (and indeed cultivate) the human kindness which is so often thrown away or taken for granted in so-called “normal” times within an ever-evolving paradigm of lived normalcy? Active kindness must surely factor into this paradigm somewhere (or one would wish it to), kindness holding hands with openness, patience embracing curiosity, gratitude on the same stair with discovery, and the cult of “genius” (and all its damaging effects) finally thrown out the window. Thus do the notions of advancement and preservation take on new meanings, as they should, within a new paradigm of The Normal. One can wish, but conscious action is required for manifestation, and it’s precisely conscious action which has now become part of our daily lives.
That union of ideas, between advancement and preservation, of joining the human with the experimental, the sensual and the intellectual, feeling and doing, is being manifest in a number of ways as halls, galleries, museums, and other public spaces try to negotiate and define the new normal. Bayerische Staatsoper (BSO) began its “Wednesday Strolls” presentations this week, a chamber music series (running to 24 June) bringing a maximum of twenty spectators in various “unusual locations” in the National Theatre, with each concert lasting roughly 45 minutes and featuring musicians of the Bayerische Staatsorchester. Its first presentation was given backstage. The initiative, on top of the BSO’s pre-existing Monday concerts, are gestures which complement the incredible amount of video offerings currently extant at their website, and acutely underline the ever-expanding initiatives of the many organizations, including the Enescu Festival in Romania, who are offering broadcast concerts from their considerably impressive archive of past festivals. Organizations have, over the past three months or so, recognized that various non-conventional initiatives are vital in community-building in both literal and figurative senses. Members of the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB), for example, have been performing short concerts outside hospitals and retirement residences over the past few months, thanks to the initiatives and coordinating efforts of Rudolf Döbler, longtime flautist with the orchestra, who has coordinated and organized RSB rehearsal visits and workshops for children since 2005. After one of these RSB charity concerts (held recently at a seniors residence in Pankow, an area in the northern part of the city), the orchestra’s Artistic Director and Chief Conductor (and General Music Director Designate of Bayerische Staatsoper) Vladimir Jurowski observed to Frankfurter Allgemeine that “Musik ist Menschlichkeit, und diese Menschlichkeit zählt am Ende mehr als alle Brillanz. Ich wünschte mir, wir behalten diese Erfahrung, wenn diese schwierigen Zeiten vorbei sind.“ (“Music is humanity, and in the end this humanity counts more than all brilliance. I hope we can keep this feeling when these difficult times are over.”)
Our experience of music is born anew within such experimental presentations and contexts. It’s been precisely the collective cultural saudade (for what else should we call it?) which has forced this rethink, one many argue is overdue. Community is, after all, quite possibly the only form of beauty left to us at the moment, and encouraging it in myriad forms seems like more than polite gesturing, but integral to creative, social, and spiritual health. Online conversations, voice calls, interactive viewing and listening parties, musical text exchanges, virtual classes and meetings, not to mention the rich, retro possibilities of live radio broadcast: such activities are all expressions of community, ones whose vibrant message, amidst the starkness of the technologies they employ, are worth warming hands and hearts to.
Various live events, including a recent panel hosted by Garsington Opera about the continuing impact of Beethoven (led by music writer Jessica Duchen and featuring tenor Toby Spence) allow for a sense of community to be fostered, however virtual, along with that deeply inhaled, ever-refreshing sense of exploration and discovery. It’s a combination that clearly recalls those long-ago art classes, but more than that, the spirit they encouraged. Reading over various comments and reactions on Facebook has been a lesson in patience, for the intransigent dismissal of the virtual, remains, for me, mysterious; it is the equivalent of painting one’s self into a corner and then complaining about the view. There is only one exit, and it involves bare feet and stains, the ruination of a perceived perfection. In an excerpt from his upcoming book On Nostalgia (Coach House Books), David Berry writes that “Nostalgia can only be lived in or abandoned: it is yearning distilled to its essence, yearning not really for its own sake but because there is nothing else to be done. Maybe it resisted definition for so long because naming it doesn’t help resolve anything anyway.” We are in a time where there is no resolution, only the stains of where we have been and the blank page of tomorrow, next week, next month, sketched as we walk, without erasers, into an unknown future, seeking community once more.
When I last spoke with soprano Chen Reiss, she was in the middle of planning a Beethoven album. At the time, she spoke excitedly about possible selections, and happily shared a few morsels of insight her research had yielded. The fruit of that study is Immortal Beloved (Onyx Classics) a delicious collection delivered with Reiss’s signature mix of lyricism and authority, accompanied with sparky gusto by the Academy Of Ancient Music and conductor Richard Egarr. Released in March, the album is the latest in Reiss’s very ambitious discography featuring the music of Mozart, Mahler, Meyerbeer, Lehar, Schubert, Donizetti, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many others besides. The title of this latest album is an intentional reference to the name Beethoven gave to a mysterious woman in his life (the identity of the “immortal beloved” has long been a source of speculation), and showcases of the breadth of complexity pulsating within Beethoven’s early writing style. Far from fantastical, flights-of-fancy lovey-dovey ditties (the composer didn’t do those), these are sounds rooted in a very earthy sensibility. Reiss’s performance of these notoriously difficult works is a heartfelt embrace of the human experience and the myriad of emotions within. What was a thoughtful listen in former, so-called normal times takes on an even more contemplative shade in the current one.
Like many in the classical industry, the usually-busy soprano has been affected by cancellations stemming from the corona virus pandemic. Just two days into rehearsals at Semperoper Dresden last month (as Morgana in a planned production of Handel’s Alcina) the production, following others in Europe, was shut down. Thankfully, Reiss did get to record a sumptuous concert with the Academy of Ancient Music and conductor Christopher Alstaedt in early March, at Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, one featuring a selection of tracks presented on Immortal Beloved, as well as orchestral pieces honouring this, the year of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. But, as with everything at present, the future is a giant question mark. Reiss’s scheduled appearances on the stage of the Wiener Staatsoper (as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Marzelline in Fidelio), with the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Mahler Symphony No. 2), and at Zaryadye Hall in Moscow have been cancelled; her scheduled performances in June (at the Rudolfinum Prague with the Czech Philharmonic; as part of the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch with Bamberger Symphoniker; a return to Wiener Staatsoper in Falstaff) have not. It’s so difficult to say what could happen now; the fingers, toes, and figurative tines of tuning forks everywhere are being crossed throughout the classical world, for a return, if not to normal (an idea that seems to bear redefining hourly), than to something that might still allow for that magical energetic exchange between artists and audiences.
Photo: Claudia Prieler
Such an exchange is one Reiss is well-acquainted with. She has performed at numerous houses, including Teatro alla Scala, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg State Opera, De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam, and, of course, at her home base in Vienna with Wiener Staatsoper, where she has appeared over many seasons. As well as opera, Reiss has made concert appearances with the Israel Philharmonic, Wiener Akademie, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, as well as with festivals like Schleswig Holstein, Lucerne, the BBC London Proms, the Enescu Festival, and the Liszt Festival Raiding. Last spring the soprano was in Belgium as part of a sweeping performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Orchester Philharmonique Royal de Liège led by Christian Arming; not long after, she jetted off to Berlin, giving divine performances in Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) at Chorin and the Philharmonie, before embarking on a multi-city tour of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Munich Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Reiss also uses her considerable teaching skills in Master Classes at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute.
The notable cultivation of a wider array of repertoire over the past while reveals an artist who is firmly determined to be her own woman – on stage, in music, and through life. Such fortitude is reflected in the selections on Immortal Beloved, not easy works, in either musical or dramatic senses, but chosen, clearly, for the arc they provide for an holistic listening experience – a theatre of the mind indeed, with intuitive heart-and-head moments. The songs reveal not only Beethoven’s approach to vocal writing, but the types of texts he was attracted to (which, as you’ll see, she expands on in our chat). Many were written in the hot intensity of youth (Beethoven was mostly in his twenties), so it follows that the texts the composer set are equally dramatic, with Big Emotions and Big Feelings, instincts that only grew in shape and complexity with time. There is a definite dramatic arc to their arrangement on the album, with the Mozartian opening aria, “Fliesse,Wonnezähre, fliesse!” (“Flow, tears of joy, flow!”), taken from Cantata on the accession of Emperor Leopold II, composed in 1790. A young Beethoven was clearly wearing his influences on his sleeve here, an instinct which weaves its way throughout Immortal Beloved, where discernible threads of not only Mozart and Haydn, but contemporaries like Johann Baptist Wanhal, Fran Ignaz Beck, François-André Danican Philidor, and notably Étienne Nicolas Méhul can plainly be heard; the bricks laid by these classical composers along the path of composition – melodic development, instrumentation, counterpoint, thematic exposition – were absolutely central to Beethoven’s own creative development, and can plainly be heard on Immortal Beloved, both in the smart vocal delivery and the knowing, quiet confidence of Egarr and the Academy.
The emotionally turbulent “No, non turbarti” (“No, do not be troubled”), scena and aria for soprano & orchestra, features Reiss carefully modulating tone, stretching vowels this way and that with just enough oomph to quietly underline the vital schlau, a quality she feels is central to understanding the piece. “Prime Amore” (“First Love”), which follows, is characterized by Reiss in the liner notes, “a startlingly mature way of looking at love’s complexities” and is conveyed with piercing tonal purity and tremendous modulation. The melodic grace of Fidelio, Egmont, and the incidental music for Leonore Prohaska (for a play by Johann Friedrich Duncker about the military heroine) highlight the soprano’s elegant phrasing, easy flexibility, and sparkling aptitude for injecting drama at just the right time, with just the right phrasing and vocal coloration; even if one doesn’t understand each word within their broader tapestry, one nonetheless feels the threads of multi-hued emotion running through and between them. Delivered with controlled passion and a watchful eye for storytelling, the selection of songs clearly convey a keen sensitivity to both the complexity of the writing and the complicated histories of their creation. As the liner notes remind us, the circumstances in which these works were written (and only sometimes performed) were less than ideal, and were frequently the source of sadness and frustration for their composer.
However, not all the material on Immortal Beloved is steeped in poe-faced seriousness; “Soll ein Schuh nicht drücken” (“If a shoe is not to pinch”) is a jovial little number, performed with a wink and a definite smile in the voice. Written in 1795 and taken from the singspiel Die schöne Schusterin (The Shoemaker’s Wife) by Ignaz Umlauf (second kapellmeister to Vienna’s Hofkapelle, or Court Chapel), its jovial lyrics, reflected in the lilting music, fit within the overall playful nature of the work (the wife’s husband is named Sock, because of course), providing the album with some needed softness amidst its many sharper edges, ones which are displayed to perfect effect with the elegant ferocity of “Ah! perfido” (“Ah! Deceiver”). The famous two-scene aria, composed in 1796 and based on the work of Metastasio, has its roots in the mythological figures of Deidamia and Achilles. The song is an extended and emotionally varied lament over the antique hero’s abandonment and rejection of the narrator; it moves rapidly between fury, despair, confusion, and longing, feelings which inextricably fuse text and music. As has been noted, Beethoven’s Deidamia could be “a younger sister of (Mozart heroines) Donna Elvira, Fiordiligia or Vitella. Yet “Ah! perfido” contains elements that can act as premonitions of Beethoven’s later vocal style, where the mosaic of changing emotions is replaced by consistent and deepened psychology.” With “Ah! perfido” Reiss has chosen to close the album on a deliberately, and quite deliciously, thoughtful note. Indeed, there is something reassuring about Reiss’s sound across the whole of Immortal Beloved, one that blends strength, beauty, and wisdom, while showcasing an inherently intelligent approach to narrative and to creating a deeply satisfying listening experience, one which, in our current times, is more needed than ever.
Like many in the music world right now, the soprano has turned to the online world for sharing her talent, and for showcasing that of others. On her Instagram account, she hosts exchanges with fellow artists as part of collaborative digital project Check The Gate. One recent exchange featured cellist Gautier Capuçon, with whom she performed in Paris as part of Bastille Day celebrations in 2019; another featured director Kasper Holten. Her virtual performance with guitarist Lukasz Kuropaczewski, of Schubert’s “Frühlingsglaube” (“Faith In Spring”, with its encouraging text, “Nun, armes Herz, vergiss der Qual! Nun muss sich Alles, Alles wenden” / Now, poor heart, forget your torment! Now all must change”), is particularly stirring. Reiss has also been featured in broadcasts of productions streamed through the Wiener Staatsoper website. Most recently she can be seen as an elegant Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante, as well as a very cheeky Bystrouška (the Vixen) in Das schlaue Füchslein (The Cunning Little Vixen) by Leoš Janáček. Here the soprano conveyed a ferociously charismatic stage presence that alternated smoothly between thoughtful notions of innocence, experience, and everything in-between. Blake’s lines that “Mercy has a human heart / Pity a human face; / And Love, the human form divine; / And Peace, the human dress” never felt more immediate than when experiencing (however virtually) her elegant intonation and lyrical vocal prowess in handling the complexities of Janáček’s delightful and truly tricky score. One positively thirsts to experience her broader explorations into the composer’s world, and fingers are crossed for things to manifest in what is currently, as for so many, an uncertain future.
More livestreams are, however guaranteed, in the interim. On May 2nd Wiener Staatsoper is set to broadcast Fidelio, which will feature Reiss as Marzelline, a role she is well familiar with, and there are sure to be more interviews and performances on her Instagram page as well. Over the course of our conversation in mid-March, just as Reiss was preparing to leave Dresden for home in Vienna, we chatted about a wide array of topics, including Immortal Beloved, as well as the impact of the cancellations, and the possible meaning Reiss is taking from the current situation.
What was the motivation to do these not-so-well-known pieces?
Actually that was just it: these pieces aren’t well-known. There isn’t any one album that has collected all these pearls for sopranos under one roof – you have to buy an entire Beethoven edition. There are so few recordings of these works, and I thought, why not? They’re so good, they should be standard repertoire, they should be recorded as often as Mozart concert arias and performed onstage. Most are early Beethoven, taken from the time he was living in Bonn and before he came to Vienna.
With “Primo Amore” for instance, for many years everybody thought it was written during his time with Salieri in Vienna; researchers found out recently, in comparing ink and paper, that it was actually written in Bonn before he came to Vienna, and to German text, and it was never published. Most of the pieces (on Immortal Beloved) were not published in his lifetime; he did revise them and had the intention of publishing them but didn’t come to do it because he was so particular and such a perfectionist. I think that he just didn’t trust himself with (writing for) the voice – it didn’t come to him as naturally or organically as writing for piano or orchestra – so (his vocal works) were just left in the drawer. Magdalena Willmann was a neighbour’s daughter in Bonn, and he was possibly in love with her, and we known he wrote (“Primo Amore”) for her. And the shoe aria (“Soll ein Schuh nicht drücken”) is an unusual piece for Beethoven; it’s a buffa aria, written a very Haydn-like style. It’s a humouristic aria, he wrote it for her also; we know that because (Willman) was soprano and had a very good lower range, and in those pieces there are a lot of passages where he’s using the lower range for an effect, either a comic effect or to express very extreme feelings. (Willman held a position as first soprano at the Bonn National Theater.) So it is very challenging because almost in every piece there are two octaves at least!
What’s that like for you as a singer? How do you approach it?
I put in ornaments – I built them in, because it’s early Beethoven and because I (recorded) it with an early music ensemble. Some of the (works) were written in 1791, 1795, around there – Haydn was still alive, Salieri was still writing, so they’re very much classical. The pitch we used to record is A=438 and not A=443 or A=442, which was used more in the Romantic time later on. It’s a very classical period (for these works) and I wanted to use ornaments, since some passages (of the songs) over two octaves. This is why I think it’s great for sopranos – you can show a very big talent of expression, of colors, of virtuosity. And with Beethoven, the virtuosity is not virtuosity for the sense of showing off the voice, but of showing big emotions: everything is bigger than life; we are pushing boundaries in every possible way, rhythmically, dynamically, harmonically. The length of the pieces is noteworthy too – “Ah! perfido” is fourteen minutes, “Primo Amore” is around fourteen minutes; no one wrote, at that time, such long songs. Mozart’s concert arias are between seven and ten minutes! Beethoven was using a bigger orchestra too. So clearly he liked to do everything big for his time.
For me it was pushing my boundaries, like “Ah! perfido”, a work which is so identified with bigger voices, like Birgit Nilsson and Montserrat Caballe and Cheryl Studer – these are big voices but I think today more and more lighter voices are singing it, and I believe this is the kind of voice that sang it in his time.
Over the last few years, that undercurrent of very dramatic, authoritative sound has been developing in your voice, though The Times described your sound as “soubrette”…
I don’t think I was ever a soubrette. I know some people say this but my voice never had this edginess, it was a light voice, a pure voice. Of course I sang roles that are soubrette-ish, like Adele (from Die Fledermaus) or Blonde (from Die Entführung aus dem Serail), but I no longer sing them – not that I can’t but I don’t find them as interesting. And I think the color of the voice… it was always an elegant voice, and in this sense I don’t know why people say it’s soubrette, I would not say it, but again, I’m very happy that they chose it as CD of the week! Everyone has a different view of voices; it’s quite individual.
You’d said when we spoke before that you don’t like being slotted into one style, a view that’s been echoed by singers I’ve spoken with since, and I wonder if that is the result of a need to be flexible now in the opera world, or of wanting to be more artistically curious.
I think it’s happening because more and more singers are taking their careers into their own hands – well, “career” is the wrong word, but singers are taking charge, yes. I think we’re tired of being told all the time what to do. When you start as a young singer, yes, you have to obey everything, you have to take every job that is being thrown at you, but when you get a little bit older, there are benefits to that, one being that you can also make your own choices and you can say, “no, I actually don’t feel like singing this role anymore, I want to do something else” and also, “I want to do my own projects” – meaning, “I no longer want to be just a team player, it’s great to be that and I love doing it when I do opera, but I also want to do my own projects where I am choosing the repertoire, where I am choosing the partners I will work with, where I choose what will written in the booklet and what will be the order of the pieces and what will be the title of the CD.” So basically, I think that it’s coming because we singers feel a need to be more, not more in control, but we want to have more responsibility over our artistic choices. And we want to present a complete product from beginning to end where we can say: this is me, this is mine, this is what I want to share with the world.
And this is why I took this (Beethoven) project. It was huge – it took me two years to realize it, to come up with the idea, the research, learning the pieces, learning the circumstances in which the pieces were written, finding the titles, choosing the photos, writing the booklet – it took a lot of time. I’m very proud of it and very, very happy because I feel that every tone that comes out of my mouth on the CD is 100% me, and no one is telling me how to sing and how to present myself, which is often the case when you do opera – they tell you everything: they choose your clothes, they choose your hairstyle, they tell you what to do on stage; how to move, how to breathe, how the lighting will be, the conductor is dictating the tempo whether it’s comfortable or not – usually you can’t say anything about it – the orchestra is playing as loud as they want to so… you’re kind of left out there … when you really have very little control of the end result, but when you do a CD and you are the soloist, you have much more control of the end result.
Some do albums because they want a broader appeal, but the songs on this album are musically complex – how were they to prepare?
They required a lot of practise and stamina – they’re long, and written… not in the most singable way, I would say. Some of them are very instrumental, some of the coloratura was composed, not for the voice but as if he wrote for violin – there are all kinds of weird intervals and sequences, and the voice doesn’t want to go there. Also dramatically they are not easy; to keep the tension, one has to have a very clear plan dramatically and vocally. “Ah! perfido” is the exception – that is an exceptionally well-written scene, dramatically and vocally, but it’s one that came later. Others, like “Primo Amore”… it is so difficult to make sense of the character, it’s like a big salad, Beethoven is throwing in every possible compositional idea that he had in there, and in certain ways, in terms of form, it’s not the best written aria! So to make sense of it was not easy. Some of these works just require you to spend more time with them – they’re not as organic as say, Lucia’s mad scene, which is pure bel canto. But I think they are very interesting!
The text is so interesting, as are the characters – strong women, independent women, women with ideals of a different world, women who want to change the world, to take charge, to take things to their hands – these are the kind women he admired, and this I why I called the album Immortal Beloved; we don’t know who she really was… maybe an ideal in his mind.
In the booklet you contrast Mozart’s female characters with Beethoven’s, which is such a smart way to contextualize the world in which Beethoven was living and writing; he would’ve known all these Mozart heroines but he went for something entirely different.
Yes, I think he appreciated Mozart very much musically but I think he was much more advanced in the ideas of the world and society as related in that specific sense, but for me, Mozart is beyond a composer, it’s musica assoluta, it’s really… the truth, like, God has spoken! It’s music itself; there can’t be anything better than that. But it’s something not human, and Beethoven is very human – he’s perhaps the most human composer. It’s wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve music in the most direct way, although not at all in a Puccini way!
What was your experience of working with the Academy of Ancient Music?
I was debating whether I should use a Viennese orchestra, and I knew I wanted an original-instrument one. The English period instruments are really so fabulous, so quick, they have a great tradition, and in recording you need people who are really “on” there. I was doing the Egmont concerts with them last summer, so I thought, why not extend it and do the whole CD with them? Egmont was the starting point, the catalyst, and the performances were around the time I wanted to record, so it just made sense. I’m very happy we did it; they sound fabulous and I really enjoyed working with Richard, his energy is wonderful.
Your vocal work has become more varied over the last two years or so. I wonder if making this album has made you approach other work differently.
Marzelline as a character is really difficult – there is a lot of text in a very uncomfortable zone of the voice; it’s parking her in the passaggio, with lots of text. I’m trying to sing her as round and delicate as I can. Strauss is a completely different story! He’s a composer I think is so wonderful for sopranos, and I’m so happy to sing Sophie (from Der Rosenkavalier) because it’s so comfortable in the voice. I love singing Zdenka (from Arabella) too – it’s more challenging rhythmically and very chromatic, so one has to be more careful and really look at the conductor, otherwise you lose it! Sophie is a more fun role but Zdenka is a very interesting character.
In Beethoven, I like singing some things. I love “Ah! perfido” – it’s a great piece. It sits so well in my voice, especially in terms of the range – surprisingly. This was the piece I was most afraid of, but it just feels very good! I love singing the shoe aria too – I think it’s fabulous and so funny and really well-written. And I really love the aria with the harp (“Es blüht eine Blume im Garten mein” /”In my garden blooms a flower”, from Leonore Prohaska). I think it’s a jewel…
It’s a favourite of mine too, although it really goes against what many think Beethoven “sounds” like…
Yes! It reminds me so very much of Schubert; you can hear him going off in that (musical) direction throughout this one. I also like “No, non turbarti” because of the text. It’s an aria of deception: (the narrator) has deceived (the female subject), and in such a masterful way… he’s really a master of deception, and it’s very interesting to see how Beethoven fits the music and the text so perfectly. Every sentence has two parts, the parts when he’s carrying her, and the parts when he’s calming her down. He’s schlau, as we say in German, very cunning… there is no storm coming at all! He’s talking about the storm inside him, the storm of his soul, not about a real storm, but a storm of emotions, and she’s not in real-life danger – the only danger for her is him! Then in the continuation –”Ma tu tremi, o mio tesoro!” (“But you tremble, oh my treasure!”) – he tells her, “I’ll be here at your side, I’ll save you, and when the storm is over you will go away, you will abandon me, you ungrateful woman!”
So this narrator is a bit of a drama king, then?
Oh yes… but (the words of the songs) are like a strange prophecy in terms of Beethoven’s misfortunes in love. It’s amazing that even at such a young age he was attracted to those types of texts.
In youth, every emotion is writ large, whether joy or sadness.
That’s true.
Speaking of the latter, you were going to do Morgana… ?
I’ve worked on it, yes – I learned it, though I sang it before, four years ago. So I approached it like new now – I wrote new ornaments – but we stopped rehearsal in Dresden. We rehearsed two days, with two rehearsals, and tomorrow, I’m going home.
You know, this whole virus… it makes you put things in proportion. I don’t know where the future is going, even now. The fact I’m unemployed for this month and I don’t know next month… if they’ll open the (Wiener Staatsoper) house, who knows? Thinking about the future of our profession… public finding has to go to the hospitals… it just shows the priorities, of where things go, so what’s the situation with us, the freelance artists? I’m sure orchestras in the UK are worried about that as well; a lot of the players are freelance, and it means that if concerts are cancelled, they’re not being paid.
Photo: Paul Marc Mitchell
Do you feel there Is there might be any value – as you say, you learned the role, you did the prep – is there some good you still might take away from the experience?
Every time I learn a role or re-learn a role I have new ideas, new insights, and then in the future I share it with my students. But yes, you always learn about the voice, about different styles and different approaches to a role. You never know, maybe I can jump in again (to Alcina). The prep is never for nothing, it’s just… you kind of feel that it’s not complete. You have not completed the process; you complete it only when you go onstage and share it with the public.
But I think maybe this virus is there to teach us a lot of things; maybe it’s not bad to just stop. Everything just stops for a few weeks… everybody is thinking, everybody will reinvent themselves, hopefully. The one thing I’m happy about is that it’s really good for our planet; there are no airplanes flying, the factories in China were closed so the air above China is much cleaner. So maybe it’s a way for our planet to refresh itself and maybe we need to use this time wisely. Spring is a time of rebirth, so maybe we all need to clean our closets and throw out the rubbish that we don’t need and concentrate on the important things – to understand the whole world is one community and we are a small village and we need to stick together, to help each other.
Look, I’m very sad the performances are cancelled – I was very stressed this week. The worst thing for me is the unknown; you make plans, and what gives me confidence is that I know exactly where I am at on any given day for the next two years, and I know who takes care of my kids and… there’s a plan for everything. And suddenly, the whole plan falls apart. I don’t know where I am, the kids are not in school, my mother is stuck in quarantine in Israel. You come back to the basics and you see what is really important: we are healthy, we are together as a family, we have food, we have music – and thank God we can share it. I can share the CD with my friends, with all my fans, with social media. Even with all the bad things about social media in these times, it’s giving us a feeling of being together. And, I really hope this Beethoven album will give hope, comfort, and joy to people now that they cannot hear live music.
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The damage the corona virus has wrought in the cultural world is beyond imagining. There is no way to classify or quantify the losses, ones that will be felt for decades, maybe even centuries, to come. Galleries, museums, studios, open spaces, cinemas, opera houses and concert halls are shuttered, with long-planned, eagerly anticipated events and seasons cancelled; one agency has shut down so far. The harsh realities of the force majeure clause contained in many contracts echo through every vast, empty space where people should be. The global pandemic has laid bare the extreme fragility of arts organizations and those who depend on them.
Along with extensive virtual tours, online streaming has, over roughly the past two weeks, become a way of keeping the cultural flames alive. The charming nature of many of the broadcasts affords a peek into the home life of artists, places which are, in normal times, rarely seen by many of the artists themselves. The livestreams also provide a reassuring familiarity, a reminder that the tired, anxious faces are exact mirrors of your own tired, anxious self. Artists: they’re just like us. In better times it is sometimes easy (too easy) to be fooled by the loud cheers, the five-star reviews, the breathless worship, even when we think we may know better. What’s left when there’s no audience? These videos are providing answers and some degree of comfort. It’s heartening to see Sir Antonio Pappano sitting at his very own piano, his eyes tender, his voice and halting words reflecting the shock and sadness of the times. Moments like these are so real, so human, and so needed. They are a panacea to the soul. The arts, for anyone who needs to hear it, is for everyone, anyone, for all times but especially for these times. Pappano’s genuine warmth offers a soft and reassuring embrace against harsh uncertainty.
Equally as buoying have been the multiple together-yet-apart performances by numerous orchestras, including Bamberger Symphoniker’s recent presentation of a section of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. There are so many examples of this type of fellowship which have sprung up, and they are all worth watching. One of my personal favourites is a solo performance from violist Marco Misciagna, who is currently volunteering with the military corps of the Italian Red Cross (CRI). Misciagna performs outside the Southern Mobilization Centre, mask firmly in place, leaning into tonalities and, one can almost hear, breathing in and through his instrument’s strings. As an opinion piece in The Guardian noted, “When people look back on the pandemic of 2020, they will remember many things. One of them ought to be the speed with which human beings, their freedom to associate constrained, turned towards music in what may almost be described as a global prisoners’ chorus.”
Some may also perceive the recent flurry of online activity as savvy marketing, and there’s little wrong with that; they — we (if I can say that) — need every bit of arm-waving possible. Performing for a captive audience in need of inspiration, hope, distraction, diversion, and entertainment fulfill a deep-seated need for community. Choosing where and how to direct our attention, as audience members, is no easy thing (although, to be frank, my own efforts to filter out the hard-posing ingenue/influencer types have become increasingly more concentrated). To be faced with such a sweet and succulent buffet whilst facing the sometimes sour and glum realities of ever-worsening news is no small thing. Shall it be a weekly livestream from Bayerische Staatsoper or one of Waldemar Januszczak’s wonderful art documentaries? Perhaps a modern opera work from the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, or a Jessica Duchen reading her great novel Ghost Variations? Maybe a dip into the Berlin Philharmonic’s vast online archive or piano sounds with Boris Giltburg and then Igor Levit? Perhaps it’s time to mop the floor and clean out the humidifiers? Maybe time to tackle that terribly overdue filing? Shall I check Twitter yet again for the latest? Dare I dip into Facebook? is it time to update both groups of students? What words of comfort and encouragement should I choose as their teacher/mentor? Is it time to check in with my many lovely senior contacts – maybe a phone call? When the hell am I going to finish (/start) that immense novel that’s been sitting on the table acting as a defacto placemat?! Cultural options (physical media collection included) have to compete with less-than-glamorous ones, but, orchestrated in careful harmony, work to keep one’s mental, emotional, and spiritual selves humming along, and offer a reminder that the myth of individualized isolation is just that – a myth.
Professional duties remind us of the fallacy of isolation, underscoring them with various technological notifications in bleep-bloop polyphony. Obligation can’t (and doesn’t) stop amidst pandemic, especially for those in the freelance world. Writers, like all artists working in and around the arts ecosystem, are finding themselves grappling with a sickly mixture of restlessness and terror as the fang-lined jaws of financial ruin grow ever-wider. Since January I’ve been part of a mentoring program run through the Canadian Opera Company (COC) and Opera Canada magazine. This scheme, a partnership with a variety of Toronto-based arts organizations, allows emerging arts writers currently enrolled in journalism school the opportunity to see and review opera. Along with opera, students also write about productions at the National Ballet of Canada, concerts at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, presentations at Soulpepper Theatre Company. Some indeed come with theatre and dance backgrounds (or equivalencies in written coverage), a great help when covering the sprawling, integrative art form that is opera. For many, this isn’t merely a first outing in writing about the art form; it’s their very first opera experience, period. Next up (we hope) are the COC’s spring productions of Die fliegende Holländerand Aida. Lately I’ve been crossing fingers and toes at their arts (and arts writing) passion continuing; each writer I have mentored thus far has possessed very individualtalentsandvoices. I am praying they, and their colleagues, are using at least some of these stressful days to exercise cultural curiosity and gain as much richness of exposure as the online world now affords. It’s not purely practical; surely on some level it is also medicinal.
Soprano Hanna-Elisabeth Müller and baritoneMichael Nagy rehearse ahead of their March 23, 2020 performance at Bayerische Staatsoper as part of the house’s weekly Monday broadcast series. Photo: Wilfried Hösl
What happens to those voices now, of writers new and old? What happens to their potential readers, to audiences, to new fans, to old fans? Will they (we) get an opportunity to be part of the ecosystem? Will there even be one left to write about? Similar anxieties have surfaced for my radio documentary students. Tell your own stories! I constantly advise, This is a writing class with sound elements! When today’s first online class drew to a close, it seemed clear no one wanted to leave; there was something so reassuring about being able to see (most) everyone’s faces, hear their voices, share stories, anxieties, fears. I have to agree with historian Mary Beard’s assessment in The Times today, that “I am all in favour of exploiting online resources in teaching, but no one is going to tell me that face-to-face teaching has no advantage over the remote version. Lecturing and teaching is made special by real-time interaction.” Sharing stories is more crucial than ever, whether through words, music, or body, or a skillful combination of them all. As director Kiril Serebrennikov (who knows a thing or two about isolation) wisely advises, keep a diary. I started doing just that recently, reasoning that writing (like sound and movement) is elemental to my human makeup ; whether or not anyone reads it doesn’t matter. Exercises in narcissism seem pointless and energetically wasteful, now more than ever. The act of writing – drawing, painting, cooking, baking (all things I do, more than ever) – allow an experience, however tangential, of community, that thing we all need and crave so much right now. We’re all in the same boat, as Pappano’s expression so poignantly expressed. It’s something many artists and organizations understand well; community is foundational to their being.
Photo: mine. Please do not use without permission.
The ever-changing waves of my own freelance life are largely made up of the elements of writing and sound, with community and isolation being their alternating sun and moon. Quarantine means facing the uncomfortable aspects of ourselves: our choices, our behaviours, our treatment of others, our home lives, our approach to our art, and how we have been fitting (or not) these multiple worlds together. Noting the particularly inspiring German response around support for freelancers has made my continentally-divided self all the more conscious of divisions within perceptions of the value and role of culture, but it’s also forced some overdue considerations of just where a writer working so plainly between worlds might fit. Maybe it is naive and arrogant to be questioning these things at such a time in history, and publicly at that – yet many artists seem to be doing similar, if social media is anything to go on. There seems to be a veritable waterfall of honesty lately, with rivulets shaded around questions of sustainability, feasibility, identity, and authenticity, just where and how and why these things can and might (or cannot, now) spiral and spin around in viscous unity. I shrink from the title of “journalist” (I don’t consider myself one, at least not in the strictest sense), but whence the alternatives? One can’t live in the world of negative space, of “I am not”s (there is no sense trying to pitch a flag in a black hole), nor derive any sense of comfort in such non-labelled ideas, much as current conditions seem to demand as much. (The “I will not go out; I will not socialize” needs to be replaced with, “I will stay in; I will be content,” methinks.) Now there is only the promise of stability through habits new and old, and on this one must attempt nourishment. The desire to learn is ever-expanding, like warm dough in a dimly-lit oven, eventually inching beyond the tidy rim of the bowl, into a whole new space of experience, familiar and yet not.
Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.
Where is the place, I wonder, as fists pound and knuckles grind and the dough that will eventually be loaves of oatmeal molasses bread squeaks and sighs, where is the place for writers in this vast arts ecosystem that is now being so violently clearcut? What will be left? The immediate heat of the oven feels oddly reassuring as I ask myself such things, a warmth that brushes eyelashes and brings to mind the wall of strings in the fourth movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. We are all being forced into a new structure, and we cannot ask why. There is only the experience of the present, something the best art has, and will always embrace, express, and ask of us. As Buddhist nun and author Pema Chödrön writes:
All of us derive security and comfort from the imaginary world of memories and fantasies and plans. We really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. There are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down.
The pith instruction is, Stay. . . stay. . . just stay.
What is there now but the present? I think of the many artists so affected at this time, and I thank them all; their authenticity, courage, and commitment to their craft are more needed and appreciate than can be fathomed. There is a place for them; it is here, it is now, and it is our community, a grand joining of sound and soul and presence. Let’s tune in, together.
This year’s edition of the Toronto Summer Music Festival has a distinctly Russian flavour.
The festival (initially founded as the the Silver Creek Music Foundation in 2004) opened this past week with a concert by the celebrated Escher Quartet, who performed a program of works which included string quartets by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, respectively. The following night, members of the quartet joined pianist Lukas Geniušas and TSMF Artistic Director (and Toronto Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster) Jonathan Crow for “Mother Russia“, a concert featuring the music of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Moscow-born pianist Geniušas showed off his considerable technical abilities and a very expressive approach in the (piano-only) first half, his rendering of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes (Op. 32, No. 9-13) a gently modulated collection of lights and colours. Likewise, his work with members of the Escher Quartet, joined by Crow, showed off a considerable lyricism; altogether, the troupe provided a round, even sexy, approach to the jagged angularity of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57.
Audiences can look forward to further concerts with Russian works, including a presentation of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” on July 19th. Composed in 1918 when Stravinsky was facing tough times (including the recent death of his brother and serious financial shortfalls), the piece (“Histoire du soldat lue, jouée et dansée en deux parties” or (Story of the soldier to read, act and dance in two parts”, in full) was written with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, a French-Swiss writer who he’d met as a fellow ex-pat in Paris just before the First World War. The work retells the Faust myth using a litany of musical styles and folkoric elements inspired largely by the work of Russian writer Alexander Afanasyev, one of the most famous Russian folkorists of the 19th century, and a big fan of the Grimm brothers’ work as well. Originally intended as a touring work, “L’Histoire du Soldat” has been produced in a variety of styles and iterations, though most commonly with one narrator doing all the roles, with musical accompaniment. Isabel von Karajan (daughter of conductor Herbert von Karajan) performed the work with members of the Berlin Philharmonic to great acclaim in Salzburg in 2011, and then in Berlin in 2012; it’s also been presented with pantomime elements in 2013, recorded with Jean Cocteau and Peter Ustinov in 1962, and, rather poignantly, by Carole Bouquet, Gerard Depardieu, and (deceased) son Guillaume, in the mid 1990s in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Stravinsky may have written “Soldat” out of basic financial necessity, but the work has proven to be a wonderfully enduring piece of music theatre, one that showcases his changeability and elasticity as a octopus-like composer with a multitude of legs moving easily between sometimes wildly varying eras, styles, sounds, and artistic movements.
Canadian music artist Alaina Viau is bringing a new production of the work to the Toronto Summer Music Festival this coming week, featuring dynamic Canadian talent including theatre artist Derek Boyes and choreographer Jennifer Nichols. In her day job, Viau is Assistant Production Manager at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, but she’s also the founder and Artistic Director of sparky independent company Loose Tea Music Theatre, which specializes in presenting creatively-staged opera in and around the Toronto area. Viau has worked regularly with a variety of artists in various disciplines (including dance music, cinema, and visual art) to present re-imagined productions of opera chestnuts like Bizet’s Carmen and Gounod’s Faust.
The latter is especially relevant to Viau’s work with “L’histoire du Soldat”, but so is her interest in and commitment to social justice issues, especially as they pertain to contemporary presentation within the operatic form. I recently spoke with Viau about why this piece is so timely (and perhaps timeless), her decision in casting the lead role with a woman, and how her work as director of production for the TSMF presentation of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” contrasts and complements that with Stravinsky.
Alaina Viau (Photo courtesy Toronto Summer Music Festival)
What’s it like to stage “Soldat” for the first time?
Exciting! I’ve known this piece for a long time and I’m what you’d call a Stravinsky nut! I have a lot of literature on Stravinsky and bought a special edition of Rite of Spring when it came out years ago; I have new book on him, and all his letters and things like that.
How did you come to direct this?
I’d only ever heard it in the way most people hear it, with one person narrating all the roles, and then the ensemble around them. Jonathan Crow and I started talking about this project two years ago — I work for the TSO as well, and the TSO Chamber Soloists (of which Crow is a member) were doing a series of performances of this piece; it was done at Roy Thomson Hall and the Art Gallery of Ontario and at the Hearn (Generating Station), and at that time, it was just with Derek Boyes and the ensemble. It was then that Jonathan and I got talking about how we’ve never seen it fully staged, and what a shame that was, because it was originally written for a touring performance with actors and a set and such, so we said, “Hey we need to see this!”
So TSMF audiences will see a full type of production?
Yes. We have Derek, who is doing the roles of the narrator and the devil — because he does such a great job with the devil! – and we have a dancer/choreographer, Jennifer Nichols. We also decided to cast the role of the soldier as a woman — traditionally it’s a man, but… it’s an all-male show, and Jonathan and I were like, “That’s kind of shitty!” We don’t change the relationships with the fiancee or the princess — it’s any relationship, really. We didn’t feel we needed to harp on that fact; it’s a relationship that exists. I wish I didn’t even have to say that, really. The idea came through conversations on gender parity. There’s a lot of men in the show, and a lot of men in the ensemble, and we were like, “That’s a lot of men on stage! It isn’t fair; I think we can fix this.”
How much were you influenced by what you’d seen and experienced as a Stravinsky fan?
I don’t believe I’ve taken any influences in doing this. I’m sure there are some references to some of the research I’ve done, but what I’ve seen (of Soldat) I haven’t really liked. So that is a thing: I have decided not to do some things. That is an influence of sorts! I knew what I didn’t want. That is sometimes just as strong, if not stronger, than seeing things I do like, so I was able to really think, “Well I want to make this fun, engaging, with great music, and a great story” — it’s a warning story.
… although it can be presented as drily didactic as well. I would imagine as a theatre practitioner you have to be careful not to wave a finger at your audience. “Fun” and “engaging” are the words I’d use to describe what Loose Tea does.
Well it is my style, and my question is always, “Why tell this story now? Why does it matter right now?”
So why “Soldat” now?
It’s a story of being too greedy, of consuming too much, of not being appreciative of what you have. That’s something I think we can always relate back to stuff in the US and what could potentially happen in Canada: we need to be aware of what we have, and not be greedy. We have to safeguard the things that matter in life. What the soldier comes to learn is, in fact, the things that matter are things that money can’t necessarily buy, that there is greater value in having some sort of meaning in life. I think that’s a tale that is always worth telling.
It’s timeless and timely and really elastic, not solely in themes but in presentation possibilities.
Yes, and what I really like is that it’s not a happy ending — he gets the princess and then screws it up again. It’s that reminder that you have to be constantly working on that aspect of yourself.
It’s a wry comment on the nature of humanity also, the nature of which seems very Russian in nature.
That too. The question is, how do you tell this story to a Canadian audience, who may not have that understanding of Russian folklore? That folklore is quite brutal sometimes.
I get excited about it, really. What I’m particularly enjoying is that I did a Masters degree in music, and it’s really nice to geek out and go back to the score, do my research, do my score study — it really helps me come to important realizations.
For the Messiaen, all I’ve been doing for months is consuming a lot of research, which I love doing, and really trying to think about how Messiaen saw the piece. He had synesthesia, and we wanted to explore not just what he saw but what role this plays overall: why do we care about “Quartet for the End of Time”? Why do we care about the visual aspect of it? And how can we make it make sense to us? Because he was very religious, and in the context of the Toronto Summer Music Festival… religion is not a really strong (theme), it’s not the strongest point to bring out in this piece.
But it’s unmissable in the music.
Yes. Although he wrote it with religion in mind, something that really inspired him, and what I think may inspire many people, is a commonality of hope of this piece.
That sense of hope contrasts with the ending of “Soldat”quite strongly.
It is what got him through his internment in the camp; he couldn’t escape physically, and the more difficult things became physically, the more he escaped into his brain. You hear it in this Quartet — because he did have a strong sense of hope and of things working out, even in an internment camp.
Hope as a concept, a feeling, a way of living and perceiving the world feels quaint, strange, and weirdly distant much of the time. And yet it’s what drives change in the world.
I thought about this after seeing Love Hate Love, a powerful documentary that had its world premiere at the tenth annual TriBeCa Film Festival lastnight. The work, directed by Don Hardy and Dana Nachman, seeks to counter society’s intrinsic pessimism with the idea of something bigger, larger, and more ultimately more important. The movie is a fantastic depiction of vision over visibility in action, viewed across three different lives and experiences. The TriBeCa Film Festival website wraps up the story nicely:
After Steve and Liz Alderman lost their 25-year-old son Peter in the World Trade Center, they took the money they were awarded as compensation and started a series of mental health clinics in Uganda, for those who have been victims of war crimes, child soldier enlistment, and more. After EstherHyman lost her sister Miriam in the mass transit attacks in London on 7/7/05, she founded an eye care clinic in India in her sister’s name. And Australian Ben Tullipan lost his legs and suffered from massive burns in a bombing in Bali in 2002, after which he made a remarkable recovery.
In a world of cynicism, doubt, anger, vengeance, and fear, the idea of hope stands as a shy, if powerful presence that can change the entire center of gravity.
I remember the first time I went to Ground Zero. I’d been there many times in the past, when the World Trade Center was still in existence. I had a ticket broker friend who worked on one of the floors of the second tower. We’d lost touch over the years but I thought of him that awful day in 2001. When I went down to the site, a mere two months after the attacks, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Tourists were gawking and taking pictures. People were softly crying. The air was thick with silence and grief.
In the ensuing months, that grief turned to rage, to hatred, to cries of vengeance. Whether you literally lost someone that day or not didn’t matter. It was Old Testament eye-for-an-eye justice America wanted. Love Hate Love takes this bloodlust -the tender open wound that weeps from an injury fear created – and flips it inside out. All the people in the film suffered some kind of loss: Esther Hyman lost her sister Miriam in the July 2005 London bus bombings, Ben Tullipan lost his legs in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, and the Aldermans lost their son Peter in the 9/11 attacks. All have turned their grief into something positive. They didn’t give in to fear or to hatred.
So while Love Hate Love could be just another Peter Pan-style exercise in feel-good-ism, it’s ultimately much more. Through interviews, photos, and recollections from friends and family, we are given a sense of these peoples’ monumental loss, and how that colors their day-to-day lives. Hardy and Nachman widen their scope, choosing not to focus on sadness, and in doing that, allow viewers to see how grief, turned inside out, actually looks. And what an awesome sight: small children whose eyesight has been restored. A boy with no legs who learns to accept his “different-ness” and runs around a mini-putt course. A teenaged boy in Uganda who slowly learns to deal with his experiences as a child soldier, drawing his past experiences in colorful, vibrant hues. It could all come off as so trite, so inconsequential. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t, thanks in large part to the skillful weaving of respective narratives, and the singularly non-political stance taken by the filmmakers. This is a film that refuses to point fingers; instead, it lends hands and opens hearts.
At the post-film Q&A session hosted by film writer and journalist Marshall Fine, the participants, all seated onstage with Executive Producer Sean Penn, seemed amazed, delighted, and deeply moved to be part of the project, and perhaps, a larger movement that the film represents. Esther Hyman fretted that she’d come off “too English” in the film, and she and Liz Alderman both bonded over birthdays (of Esther’s sister “Mim” and Liz’s son “Pete” respectively) being the most difficult days for them. Each updated the audience with advances on their respective efforts, with the Aldermans talking about the expansion of their mental health care facilities in Eastern Africa, Hyman discussing her eye care center in India, and Tullipan sharing the news that one of the young boys featured in the film whom he speaks with has since gotten out of his wheelchair and is learning to walk with prosthetics.
Whenever I’m in the financial area of Manhattan now, I look to the rising buildings, and I remember that time, ten years ago. I remember all that has happened as a result of it. Giving in to pessimism, as Penn said lastnight, is so easy. Holding on to hope is important -but believing in it, and living it, with a palpable sense of change, is hard. “Be the change you want to see in the world.”Love Hate Love shows that, despite, or sometimes because of the odds, it can -and should -be done.
