Finally watching the masterpiece

How did I live before La Dolce Vita? And why?

In which everything is happy

Yesterday evening was perfect. After work I called my dad to wish him a happy birthday and had a nice conversation while he was cleaning house at canasta with the grandparents. Then I stopped by the San Francisco Public Library to browse and pick up some music to play through with G. and D. (violin and cello) on Saturday evening. There were some exciting things, including modern pieces by women composers, but both of them looked just a little too modern and difficult for reading. I settled on a Fanny (Mendelssohn) Hensel, an Edouard Lalo, and a Frank Bridge.

I dropped the scores off at my car and decided to check out Hayes Valley for possibilities of solo eating (though I had half expected to skip food altogether -- lunch had been sufficiently meaty). The nice bookstore Bibliohead drew me inside, and I was tempted by a piano-vocal score of Rheingold. Would I actually make time to sit down with it and follow along with a recording, absorbing the language and the shapes of the lines? In anticipation of a live Rheingold at SF Opera next June, hell yeah.

With the score and an anti-No Child Left Behind article I'd picked up at work, I was fully armed for some solo eating. I decided on the kebab place and had a nice chicken gyro. (Well, I mean, you asked what I did last night, didn't you?!?) The article didn't say much new, but it's still always nice to remember that a mandated focus on math and reading forces other things to atrophy (and especially in the most challenged schools, further widening the divide between the have-already-had-for-a-long-times and the still-have-nots).

I encouraged my dad and the other Georgians to vote for Hillary. All I could get was a promise they wouldn't vote for Mitt. It is time for the men to concentrate on fingerpainting and macrame.

Hands washed, chicken bits toothpicked, and lipstick applied ("Middle-Georgia Peach"), it was time for Davies Hall and the San Francisco Symphony.

I am totally converted. I had been pooh-poohing symphonies: "Give me the precision of recording devices! Give me the immediacy of earbuds!" And "Give me a singer, for crying out loud, and some postmodern scenery!" An evening at the symphony seemed a torture of staying awake.

Not so anymore. The San Francisco Symphony has reinspired and reinvigorated me. The beauty and genius of this music, the body-shaking excitement of real instruments right before me . . . Last night, Louis Lortie on the piano in Liszt's Totentanz, playing alternately with affection for and mischievous camaraderie with the orchestra. Several people stood afterward, and rightly so; among other things, he combines fiery capability with a very likable modesty. (Somewhat by chance, I'm seeing him perform an all-Liszt recital next March, which I now anticipate with considerable enthusiasm.) Lortie returned to the piano for Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, which I'd never heard before (being generally frightened off by choruses), but I was delighted by its opening piano solo and clever spare writing for orchestra. The addition of voices became a happy icing on the cake.

The second half of the program was Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. Somehow I had forgotten that its original form was as the score for the Eisenstein movie I watched that black February back in 1997 or 98 -- possibly the same day I watched 8 1/2 and (coincidentally) plummeted into several years of despair . . . Live, the Prokofiev was glorious, the thirteenth-century Russians never more rousing, the frantic battle on the ice never more exciting. Nancy Maultsby mezzoed beautifully, proving again that you don't have to cram your chin between your bosoms to be a contralto.

* * *

P.S. As I was leafing through the program before the concert began, I noticed that the symphony was performing Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture on Halloween. Suddenly desperate to hear this amazing piece (really perfect upon perfect upon perfect, and no amount of overplaying or overloving can harm it), and knowing for sure that Paul has no plans that night, I ran downstairs to the ticket office and bought me a ride.

Appomattox

Philip Glass's new opera Appomattox is not a great opera, or even a good opera, but of course it is immeasurably superior to the dozen or so operas I have never created. Going into it, I knew it was not the best opera for me. Glass is pretty in movies but can be pretty dull on the stage. Based on the little bits of his operas I've heard, I've gathered that language is not very important to him. And an opera on the Civil War? Premiering in San Francisco? I thought to have left Robert E. Lee etched on a stony monolith far behind me . . .

The opera begins with the wives of war. The wives of Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and Lee sing over and over again that "war is always sorrowful." From the beginning, Grant's wife, played by Rhoslyn Jones, seems to be the noble star of the show, especially compared to Mary Todd Lincoln (a caricature of petty given little chance to shine) and Mary Custis Lee (played by Elsa van den Heever in the most terrible make-up and costume this side of the mighty Mississip). Glass's vocal lines are slightly more melodic than I had expected, but still the sorrowfulness of war (an awkward line, especially over and over) becomes heavy-handed. There are some audience titters as the subtitles underscore the line over and over.

Lincoln arrives, played wonderfully by a bass I've had the pleasure of dining with several times, but is overshadowed by the understated, slightly less iconic figure of Grant. Grant is a tired old man in a beard, plagued by subtle demons we never see. Glass seems convinced the both Grant and Lee are somehow better than the men of today (as he says, "there are no people in public life today with the stature or moral stamina of these two men"), but despite this grumpy-old-man idealism, Glass's Grant does ring true. Andrew Shore played Grant with the quiet dignity and humanity all of us are born with.

But I do injustice to Shore's abilities as an actor. Shore carried Grant entirely -- voice, gesture, posture, expression. This subtlety was missing in the caricature of Lee (though it may be good to caricaturize Lee) by Met veteran Dwayne Croft. (I could detect no similarity between the Dwayne Croft onstage and the headshot in my program, however. A decades-old headshot? Or good make-up?) Shore's Lee moved around with operatic claws, these fake hands that are supposed to convey strength and passion.

As Julia Grant, Rhoslyn Jones did perform on a different level from the others. This was a largely a new cast, a young cast, often unable to match the gravitas of our esteemed singers moving through their forties (or living in our memories). Jones sang with strainless grace and incredible focus of character and moved in a dress as only the great divas can.

* * *

I am . . . unable to go farther. I haven't the strength or discipline to criticize the heart of the opera, its lack of intellect, the soullessness of most of its characters, its sloppy aesthetic (beautiful metal walkways marred by cheesy 19th-century photographs and too-literal costumes; dead horses moving up and down on ropes; fire seemingly left over from Tannhäuser), its terrible heavyhanded descent into "and later times," where we find out (who'da thought?) that the Civil War didn't exactly end racial injustice in this country, and where possibly the longest aria goes to KKK member Edgar Ray Killen -- and Glass relishes, relishes this aria recounting the murder of a black man (and possibly a communist and a Jewish man). I shudder at the thought that it might enter bass-baritone anthologies.

* * *

What I do have the strength for is whining . . . I had miscalculated. I thought that the joy of going to these concerts and operas would greatly outweigh the loneliness of going to them alone. It falls a little short. I am lonely. I feel alone sitting alone. At times, I feel like the whole audience is actively choosing not to be my friend. I feel invisible as I walk around the lobby.

Eh, snap outta it.

P.S. A friend, a good friend, joked that I should win the Nobel for Most Boring Blog. Please, please write to the Swedish Academy on my behalf!

And

Ideally, I would love everything that came my way exactly as long as it wanted to be loved.

Pretty boring, that.

I am so pleased. I managed to learn all the notes of the first movement of the second Mendelssohn trio this week! "Learning the notes" means solving fingering problems and being able to play the music at a low but measurable tempo (currently quarter note at 72).

On Sunday night I met with the clarinets. I was feeling a little sulky; it was my only commitment over the weekend, and it seemed like I wanted nothing more than to claim those final two hours of the weekend all to myself. (There are movies to watch and video games to play, after all.) Doubly unattractive was that a stranger was going to come to coach the two clarinets on the Mendelssohn Konzertstuck they're playing with orchestra next month. But I gathered my music (including the Gary Schocker that I am never in the mood to practice) and stood on the street waiting for P. to pick me up.

The clarinets were lovely, and the coach was lovely. After she left, P. handed out some music (Wilder? Wilding? Wild?). I was in a good mood by then: "Oh, heavens. Paul doesn't read wacky modern music. Paul doesn't read handwritten music." I sat down and played the first line; it sounded cool and jazzy, not atonal. "Dear god, Paul can't read jazz. Paul only reads major and minor chords." But we read through several movements, and my mind and fingers surprised me; Paul did in fact read jazz.

A reminder, when I feel utterly useless, when I feel like my greatest musical fans are the people farthest from me, when I feel (in fact) some shame and embarrassment that I merely play classical music, or that I'm merely an amateur, or again, that I'm wasting time in some semi-creation that that no one really cares about . . . my own pleasure. It can be enough.

Rubbed lengthwise against a tree

Saw San Francisco Opera's production of Tannhäuser last night. Overall, I enjoyed the four-hour experience, but I find I have become a grumpy old man in a box seat on The Muppet Show. One expects perfection from something as large as San Francisco Opera (and as expensive, though I realized that my one ticket wouldn't pay half of what one orchestra member deserved for the gig). The last thing one expects is to be reminded of the dramatic productions from one's elementary, middle, and high schools. These arms and their juvenile gestures must be cut off!

I'm unequal to the task of fully reviewing. Janos Gereben has reviewed the production well. I might add that Ji Young Yang was indeed magically refreshing, the choreography of the harp was ridiculous (wholly inexcusable -- where are the artists of yesteryear?), and, most importantly, until last night, I had never seen a young boy picked up by the shoulders and feet and rubbed lengthwise against a tree.

I cannot emphasize that last bit enough. A boy was picked up by the shoulders and feet and rubbed lengthwise against a tree.

In other news, I was revisited by a though-feeling that came to me at the symphony last week. Going solo is fine, sure, but I hella deserve a companion at these things. Paul should not have to go to the symphony alone. He deserves to be accompanied by a slight, dark-haired pianist with fine but nearly mousy features. Paul should not have to go to the opera alone. He deserves to be accompanied by a stocky, curly-headed blondish Australian baritone. (For the ballet, naturally, Paul deserves to be accompanied by a red-headed marble column.)