The Complete Opera Journals (2010)

L’Incoronazione di Poppea journal entry, 1-26-10

I’m not a musician, and am downright musically foolish.  I’m only at the bottom of the arts food chain -- a writer.  (Nevertheless, everyone needs someone to pick on, so we writers like to say the poets are lower than us.)  The reason I know how musically foolish I am is because I come from a family of classically trained musicians.  But now at least I can one-up them in a single regard: I get to take a class that focuses entirely on opera. My best friend from childhood just finished his doctorate in music composition and says in all his years in music school he never got to take a class on opera.  My mom has a doctorate in piano performance, and says she never had one either.  So there!  I should say my mom is enjoying taking this class vicariously.  After her degree, she returned to the small town where she grew up and has taught privately ever since, so she didn’t necessarily retain a lot of the smaller details.  When I call her and tell her things I’m learning in this class or in Dr. Koch’s 17th/18th century class, she says things like, “That’s amazing, I never knew that,” or “Ah yes, I remember that from a million years ago!”  The fact that I’m excited about what I’m learning makes my mom happy.  And as we all know, making moms happy is important. 

Further, some months before I had any notion of coming back to school, I had reached a crisis point; I was distraught when I realized I could never fully appreciate my beloved Mozart unless I could come to an appreciation of opera.  There was a vast hole in my love unless I could love Figaro, Don Giovanni, et al.  Not only that, but my failure to understand something so crucial about him meant that my understanding of his other work would always be incomplete. Trouble is, opera just seems more persnickety (a highly technical musical term) than some forms.  I don’t think I’m going out on a limb if I say that many of us really have to deliberately work at liking opera.  It doesn’t happen by magic.  We have to decide to like it, and then study it, think about it, and labor at it.  But from personal experience, I know the best rewards often follow that kind of effort.   At first it can be awkward as you learn the conventions, the context, etc. of something unfamiliar, but eventually all of that can fall away, and you’re able to connect with the work directly.  The point is, on a purely musical/emotional level, which is the place I operate from as a writer, the timing of an opera class was fortuitous for me.  I need a grasp of opera in order to fill a gap in my emotional understanding, and thus, a gap in my writing.

Well, on to Poppea and related subjects. I find it interesting that we have Monteverdi’s first opera and his last one in complete forms, but only parts of others.  It’s awfully convenient, as though someone planned it that way as a ready-made model for college classes to demonstrate the progression of opera in the years between Orfeo and L’Incoronazione di Poppea. While I find all the salient information about Poppea interesting (that it’s generally considered the greatest opera of the 17th century, that it was the first opera based on history rather than mythology, and so on), I suppose what I find most interesting is the rapid thirty-year progression of opera’s popularity from private aristocratic performances (Orfeo) to a general paying public (Poppea). I like the idea of opera as such a fresh, exciting, complete art form, and the clearly excited public response to the combination of narrative, action, visual effects, music, etc.  And of course, Poppea, as compared to Orfeo, reveals how opera conventions changed in those years, how opera became more sophisticated in its uses of recitative and aria and arioso, of instruments and voices. I especially didn’t understand to what degree opera either catalyzed or directly ushered in so much of what we recognize as modern music, and so much of what I love about intervening periods, e.g. the development of the symphony from the opera overture, and the popularity of instrumental music in general.  Like so many things one doesn’t know much about, I suppose I had only ever thought about opera in a vacuum, as though it popped up out of nowhere with no relation to anything before or after. 

However, I am also not without my stumbling blocks. Usually I pride myself on my ability to think outside the box in regards to gender.  I am, after all, a fantasist, and we’re often known for our ability to think speculatively on that subject. So I’m surprised at how much trouble I’m having with the gender-bending pants parts, etc., which I gather originated as a result of the castrati.  The castrati seem like the “guilty pleasure” fascination from this period.  So many fascinating things happened at this time, including many things of much greater lasting impact and importance, yet we’re all inevitably drawn to the fact that some men were deprived of their testicles.  After we talked about the castrati in class, I brought it up with a friend of mine, also a writer, and as it happened, she had read a historical novel about them.  The specific question on my mind (and probably on others’ minds, too, but like me, they were too ashamed to bring it up) was in regards to the fact that the castrati were prized as lovers: who were they having sex with? A. men B. women C. other castrati or D. all of the above?  My friend said she gathered, at least from the novel, that it was D. all of the above. And yet I can imagine that “prized as lovers” makes the most sense in regards to women since a woman could have an affair with a castrato without worrying about getting pregnant.  At any rate, my morbid curiosity led me to get Farinelli through Netflix.  Quite an odd movie.  In terms of its emphasis, I think I was hoping for more about music of the period, and less about Farinelli’s testicles, but I’m probably alone in that. 

In regards to the pants parts, I heard/saw several different examples of “Pur ti miro” from Poppea, some with men singing Nero’s part in a lower range, some with women singing it in the originally intended range.  I had an easier time “accepting” it when it was performed by a man and a woman; but performed by two women, it’s just an utterly beautiful sound. Apparently I can suspend my disbelief in the realm of sound, but not sight! On the other hand, for us opera laypeople, I suppose some instances of suspension of disbelief are easier than others.  For example, it wasn’t difficult at all for me to believe the woman playing Cherubino in the production of Figaro.  Her acting is skillful, but it also seems to me that it’s just a lot harder to get used to this “pants part” convention when it’s a historical figure like Nero or Julius Caesar who we’ve been taught to think of as quite masculine. But it’s easier in the case of an “anonymous,” younger boy like Cherubino. We bring fewer pre-formed expectations to that. So perhaps Cherubino is a good entrance point for working on one’s ability to accept pants parts!         

I admit I’m recycling this last thing I want to say about Poppea from Dr. Koch’s class, but I think Poppea is the only work where there’s much overlap between the two classes.  It’s in regards to “Pur ti miro”  -- it makes sense to me that some other composer wrote it, because it really doesn’t seem to sound like Monteverdi at all, or the other parts of Poppea. It seems weirdly in the wrong opera, sort of “plopped in” arbitrarily because it was a good song.  Maybe it was, going along with the idea that arias were often added regardless of whether they made sense with the actual story to please certain singers, etc.?  It sort of sounds to me like a single released at the end of an otherwise cohesive, coherent narrative. I have no trouble making sense of the rest of the narrative of Poppea when considering the theme of love as an amoral force – only this final duet.  I wonder if this is just because over the centuries we’ve grown used to other quite different “vice triumphs over virtue” conventions?  That is, usually it’s done in the form of a tragedy, or at least with a great deal of irony. The “villains” don’t usually come out at the end and sing a beautiful, un-ironic love song.  (On the other hand, I suppose there’s always irony to something this beautiful, because of our awareness that it’s finite, and because it contrasts so sharply with the lifetime of collected pain within us.)  Or perhaps in these early days of opera such “conventions” weren’t set, and so this ending didn’t jar the audience, and they could make sense of it?  In any case, the song’s beauty is undeniable, but for my modern ears it works better regarded independently, rather than in the context of Poppea.

Mozart/Marriage of Figaro journal entry, 2-11-10

Mozart is one of the artists who has had the greatest impact on me in my adult life.  I feel very ridiculous saying that.  It sort of reminds me of an extraordinarily bad self-published fantasy novel I once saw; in the dedication the author said, “I want to thank Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway for their profound influence on my work.”  Quite aside from what an odd couple those two would make, my point is that it’s absurd for someone so low (and I mean that in every sense of the word – I’m about as low as it gets right now) to feel so deeply about someone so high. 

The funny thing is, throughout my life, though I liked all the other major composers, I had never liked Mozart, had never been able to connect with his music.  A few years ago I finally decided I’d better try to figure out what the problem was, and I embarked on a project, listening to his violin concertos, piano concertos, symphonies, string quartets, string quintets, serenades – trying to puzzle it out and find a point of emotional connection.  For a long time, I remained puzzled, sort of slipping around on the surface without ever penetrating.  But then things went too far, and though I can’t pinpoint exactly when or how it happened, I accidentally fell in love with him.  It was all a mistake, I swear, and it’s highly inconvenient with all the millions of other people in love with him, and me a jealous person.  But I fell very, very hard.  It was the kind of love that came with all kinds of wordless revelations, and the whole world suddenly was different. 

I’ve tried to figure out since then what the problem ever was in the first place.  I think part of it might have something to do with what David Vicar says in his liner notes with the DVD of Figaro: “So please can we dispense with the view of Mozart as a rococo charmer?”  (12)  Over the years, I suppose I had heard that prejudice repeated by various musicians, and it may have infected my ability to really hear the music. On the other hand, Mozart, compared to some composers, often does seem to require more dedication on the part of the listener to break through to the heart of the music. Perhaps it’s just that Mozart requires a more sophisticated ear than many composers, and my own ear wasn’t sophisticated enough until just recently. 

I had previously assumed that one explanation for my trouble with Mozart must be that he was very far from my own sensibilities.  But that wasn’t it at all. My own sensibilities are precisely his.  I can’t disagree with the work of a man who said, “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”  (Sorry, I can’t cite it because I actually copied it off of my Mozart finger puppet.  How do you cite a finger puppet?)  Also, as I already mentioned in my email about Figaro, Mozart’s unceasing comic genius seduced me.  There are so many musical jokes that can’t be explained in words.  It’s like trying to explain the punch line to a joke, which instantly makes it not funny.  Mozart’s jokes are utterly unexplainable in any language except music itself.  Vicar seems to completely object to the word “charming” being used to describe Mozart, but in my humble opinion, I don’t think it can be avoided.  Mozart is charming and funny.  It’s just that as with all truly great humor, you have to be able to read multiple layers simultaneously, perceive multiple dimensions.  The music is charming, but it’s also ten other things at the same time, sometimes including “funny” and sometimes not.

At any rate, another explanation for my past difficulty with Mozart might be similar to the well-known problem of the Academy Awards constantly favoring drama and short-changing comedy.  The respect for comedy apparently waxes and wanes throughout history, but nevertheless, throughout every age, including this one, there seems to be a persistent idea that works must be heavy, ponderous, and intense to be moving, or to say anything important.   I think I bought into that idea when I was younger, but now it seems to me like the not-fully-matured thoughts of a child.  Humor is quite capable of conveying ideas every bit as profound as ponderous drama, and frankly I think it often does a better job.  Or perhaps the idea is that humor and drama work well together in balance – each lends the other extra dimension.  There’s no real reason for “Voi che sapete” to be moving, but it is moving since we recognize the feelings of young passion from the distance of years, and also since we comprehend the sadness of the Countess’s situation as we listen to such beautiful and simple naivety.   For that reason, I like the libretto of Figaro better than the libretto for Don Giovanni.  Figaro seems to have more nuance and layers, while some of the dramatic situations in Don Giovanni seem more one-dimensional to me.  (I’m just being mean to Da Ponte because prickly writers like me are convinced we have the right to criticize other writers, whether it’s Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or some lucky bastard who got to work with Mozart.  Hey, nobody’s perfect.) 

I like that Vicar says Mozart is “simply sociable,” that the “pulse of Mozart obeys the rhythms of our own bodies,” and that the music contains “the natural beats and inflections of our physical human experience” (9).  I have funny experiences listening to Mozart on my iPod – for example, at the point that I step off the bus one slow movement ends and a fast movement begins, as though the music somehow knows what I’m doing and is acting as a soundtrack to my life. I like that Mozart doesn’t even seem to mind if I step into a stall to pee; that would really annoy some composers.  The music is somehow simultaneously appropriate for all activities at all times, whether happy, sad, or merely the everyday human comedy.  At the same time, though Vicar and others call Mozart “profoundly human,” I also have to say that one of the things that awes me about Mozart is that he makes me feel things I can’t even identify.  (Granted, that’s mostly in the instrumental music.  With operas, the music is necessarily more grounded because it’s attached to a situation and lyrics.)  But both of those things can be true simultaneously anyway – profoundly human and profoundly inhuman.  That’s a bit of a paradox, but paradoxes are often true, and I think Mozart is full of them.

At any rate, I draw heavily on Mozart’s energy in my writing.  A story of mine “about” Mozart called “Exalted” was recently published online.  I also used my impressions of the first movement of Mozart’s 39th symphony as a description for an important structure in my novel.  “Exalted” is better, but here’s that bit:

Recently Lilyish had begun going to the Isle of the Ongoing Party several times a month just to hear what Apogeans were saying about Brummagem and about his strange structure on Casino that was so important to him.  This was what they were saying: 

The unapologetic joyfulness.  The unapologetic grandeur.  Golden, of course, with enormous stained glass windows of every color all around its miles and miles and miles of perimeter.  The breathlessness of it.  The sun rising over it.  The waves crashing onto its shores on the side of the island where the Puddle is deep, the light reflecting off the water and the burnished walls.  A symphony of a place that barely holds together, that threatens to shatter apart it flies so high.  A towering structure, dizzying in its heights. Ah, to glide up its walls, and then across the tops of the domes, soaring over its peaks!  Stunning to look up its sheer gleaming face.  Horrifying to drop from its apogee.  Always something you don’t quite expect around every diaphanous corner or curve: a purple waterfall spurting out of a spout, a grinning gargoyle frozen in mid-leap, thrilled with its dance.  Bravura was one word.  Resplendent was another.  Confection, concoction.  The brassy ballsiness of it.  Formidably solid, and yet gossamer and aery. The youthful energy and loftiness and majesty of it.  The height and the sheer driving force, without the trough in which to rest and take a breath.  That Brummagem Bratt cackling and crowing over the sound of the rock creaking and bending and stretching!  And just when you thought he had exhausted the possibilities, that there was no new place he could go, no natural next step, then there would be a rapid run of a thousand shining ideas, just throwaways, like a rapid burst of whiz-bangs.   

But usually I draw from Mozart in more purely emotional ways, and no one would ever notice it in my work.  This course on opera was fortuitous as I realized I could never fully appreciate Mozart unless I could come to an appreciation of opera.  I had thought that was an impossible task.  But I specialize in the impossible, and it seems it’s coming along well.

Bel Canto journal entry, 2-23-10

Pardon me if this journal entry is pretty useless.  My friend’s husband (with whom I was also friends) died quite unexpectedly this week, leaving two small children behind. Though I’ve seen a lot of death, I can say without a doubt that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced or witnessed.  I know it’s time for Bel Canto, but I do just have to add that Figaro helped keep me going this past week. On the way to viewings, wakes, masses, memorial services, and family gatherings, I’ve had Figaro playing in the car, and somehow it gives some sense of hope and redemption in the midst of the chaos. 

Well, for me, Bel Canto just isn’t Mozart.  But I must say I do very much love Rossini and Donizetti’s apparent humility.  I like the Rossini quote from class, about Mozart being the inspiration of his youth, the torment of his working years, and the consolation of his old age.  And I also like Donizetti’s quote from Wikipedia:

Donizetti, when asked which of his own operas he thought the best, spontaneously replied, 'How can I say which? A father always has a preference for a crippled child, and I have so many.'" (Louis Engel: "From Mozart to Mario", 1886)

I love Donizetti’s wit, and boy, can I identify with how he feels.  Though I guess some consider me a talented fiction writer, I’m most assuredly not a once-in-a-hundred-years genius like Mozart, so I guess I’d have to identify more with these guys – not that I’m likely to reach their exalted levels either.  I’ve always considered myself just intelligent to understand that I’m not brilliant, and to thus feel the pain of it. That’s part of why Amadeus is one of my favorite works.  Oh, how I understand all that Salieri says, and the source of his “villainy.”  True villainy always comes from love, and a sense that whatever we hold to be eternal and sacred has violated and rejected us.  I’m there now, and there’s nothing more bitter.   

At any rate, back to topic…I shall feign cheerfulness.  I have to respect these opera composers of this period churning out popular compositions for the masses.  I suppose it sort of reminds me of the hit-making sensibility of a later time and place: Tin Pan Alley.  I’d certainly be interested in seeing all of The Barber of Seville sometime.  If it hadn’t been for the events of this past week, I might have been my overachieving self and sought it out and watched it.  Judging only by the two arias we watched, the overriding tone of the opera seemed to me to be “good, light entertainment.”  Simply put, it seems “fun.”  On the other hand, I did find myself feeling slightly annoyed by Rosina’s aria.  Perhaps I’m a person who will tolerate only so many vocal acrobatics before getting a bit bored by it.

Again, while appreciating the degree of vocal skill involved, I found the mad scene from Lucia vaguely annoying after awhile.  I did enjoy the sextet, but for me, it’s interesting to think of it in relation to Mozart’s ensembles.  While the overall sound of the Lucia sextet is beautiful, it doesn’t seem to have Mozart’s attention to unique character expressed through each individual voice.  It has impressive emotional impact, but not the same kind of nuance.   

I admit that the “beautiful singing” emphasis probably just isn’t my thing.  I don’t think that’s necessarily a bias because I’m a writer and have a preference for narrative.  Rather, in general I seem to have a bias in all the arts for balance and moderation.  Somehow I guess I think of the term “idiomatic figuration.”  This will probably turn out to be a dumb, flaky analogy, but here goes: I only like playing works that were written specifically for the piano as an instrument.  I can’t stand half-assed popular arrangements that ignore 90% of the piano’s capabilities and sensitivities. Well, to me, part of the “idiomatic figuration” of opera would involve sensitivity to all of its different potentials and trying to achieve a balance, rather than an exaggeration of any one facet.  See?  I don’t think that analogy worked out very well.  But perhaps you get what I’m trying to say.  I’m sure it fits somewhere into a debate that’s been going on for the last few hundred years. 

When I think about it, the “pendulum swing” we talked about in class still goes on in current-day popular music.  For awhile there tends to be more of an emphasis on “form” (pretty singing, good dancing, etc.), and then we go into a period when “substance” reigns again (heavy lyrics, deep messages).  But hey, different strokes for different folks.  It’s good to have a little something for everybody. 

March 7, 2010                                                                           

Dear Giuseppe Verdi (or Joe Green, as my mom likes to call you),            

No, we don’t know one another, and I realize you’ve been dead a long time, but a little thing like that never stops me.  I doubt you particularly care what I have to say, but I’m writing to explain why I can’t like your work.  Oh, I recognize its brilliance, power, narrative depth, and the way that you synthesized all of the elements of opera up to that time.  But here’s the thing: because I define the aesthetic sensibilities of my own writing against other aesthetic sensibilities that I encounter (mainly in music and literature), it’s very instructive for my own purposes to think about why I just don’t seem to be connecting with your work.  Over the past several years, I’ve been gradually noticing that my sensibilities have changed from earlier times in my life, and this week I think you’ve brought me new revelations about how and why I’ve changed.

Several years ago I used to still pride myself on my ability to not only appreciate, but to like virtually every artistic expression that I came across, in any style, tone, or genre.  But in more recent times, I’ve surprised myself by starting to “pull back,” to reject certain work as being unsuitable to my own tastes.  I’ve felt guilty about it.  And yet, I’m beginning to wonder if, intuitively speaking, it’s the right thing. Maybe all those years of openness and sponging up the full range of possibilities already served their purpose, and now I’ve reached another point of development where I’m ready to define myself, my sensibilities, and my tastes; to pull back and refine.  To be patient at the plate, waiting for exactly the right kind of pitch for my style of hitting, instead of swinging at every pitch.  (Ever been to a baseball game, Verdi?)

How to put it?  I’ll be blunt. Verdi, my friend, the older I get, the less I feel the need to be hit over the head with eleven thousand tons of tragic irony.  When I was 18 (or 20 or 23), I would have loved Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore.  Back then I loved oversized Romantic sensibility, intense emotions, and heartbreaking tragedies and ironies. I loved sobbing my heart out.  In fact, if we could go back in time and tell young Elisabeth that eventually her tolerance for such things would wane, I doubt she would have believed us. Young Elisabeth would probably not recognize the Elisabeth who has taken her place.

Oh, Verdi, I just don’t feel a need to see tragedy blown up to operatic proportions anymore; my own emotions are operatic enough.  I can’t say that I’ve necessarily seen more tragedy in my life than other individuals, but I’ve seen my share, and throughout my life I’ve certainly taken the road less traveled.  I saw the death of my father when I was ten, and five years later I saw my step-father sent to prison as an innocent man, his career and his life ruined.  At 18, I moved to NYC and dedicated my life to serving others in a religious order; I left at 22 because I missed the arts so deeply, but my soul was permanently torn in two with guilt.  While there I was deeply in love with a man and wrote love sonnets to him, but he never regarded me with anything but utter indifference. I’ve visited alcoholism, suffered crushing isolation and loneliness for many years, and recently experienced the horrific death of a friend. I’m not getting any writing done these days, which is my only real source of joy. I’m unmarried with no real prospects, and getting too old to be able to have any children. Soon I must make the decision whether to try to have a child by myself, or to let go of that dream and devote the time and energy instead to a celibate life of writing.  If I get accepted next month for teaching licensure (a career I don’t want), by the time I finish the training, I’ll have at least $150,000 in debt.  Sound melodramatic?  It is, and it happens to be my “real” life.  Verdi, I’m already heartbroken, crushed, and weary.  Perhaps this is just not the right time for me to be receptive to your work.  In five years, perhaps I would feel differently. But right now, I don’t want to see a scene of a father holding his dying daughter in his arms; only a few days ago I listened to my friend’s mother describe what it was like to be the one to find her son’s dead body. And all of it, Verdi, all of it, has been utterly steeped in dark irony (just like your work) and stamped with the official seal of the indifference of the universe to mankind’s suffering. 

So couldn’t you treat me gently, Verdi?  I don’t need more tragedy.  I need faith.  

How do I explain?  In La Traviata, in one of the act finales we see Violetta’s conflict between whether to live life for pleasure or to take a chance on love. She is asking if love is real, if it can be trusted. This seems to be part of the age-old conflict in many narratives between reality and the “romantic,” between the truth of our senses and the truth of the heart.  Well, recently I went through several very dark days, wrestling in my own way over whether to trust “reality” or to trust my heart.  I had been supposed to go and stay with my best friend whose husband died (the aforementioned dead body). For the past few weeks, I had given her many words of support, and one thing I told her was that I thought of her as a sister; that of all the people I’ve met, if I could choose a sister, I would choose her.  I was very honored that she had asked me to stay with her after her family went back to Texas.  I felt needed, and I looked forward to fulfilling everything I had always hoped and dreamed that friendship could be.  I packed all of my bags, but the same day I was supposed to move out to her house, I received a message from her that there had been a change, and her parents had decided her 18-year-old sister would be staying with her instead.     

Without ignoring the fact that others’ pain in these circumstances is senior to mine, nevertheless (in addition to losing a friend and watching others I care about suffer) this brought me a fresh, personal kind of pain.  I was crushed, though of course I couldn’t say anything to my friend about it.  I’ve been to her house to visit since then, and recognize that I’ve been relegated once again to being a guest, an “outsider” of sorts. She and her real sister spend literally all their time together, and I sit there politely while they discuss household matters, plans for the future, what movie they’re going to watch.  It’s not that I’m jealous or sulking – in fact, I’ve been quite busy and productive.  It’s good that her sister is with her, and I want my friend’s life to get better, whether it includes me or not.  But that does nothing to help my disillusionment.

I personally hold friendship as a very high kind of love; much of my writing focuses on friendship. Violetta sings of love as a “crucifixion of the heart.”  But not all crucifixions of the heart have to do with the romantic love between a man and a woman.  There are other kinds of love, other kinds of crucifixion that are just as painful, depending on what each of us most values. And so, it felt like a door had been shut on all of my love, my idealism, my belief in friendship, my desire for closeness, for a sister, for all of the things my heart had wanted.  I realized the stark reality: I have no sister (no siblings at all), and never will.  That particular loneliness can never be assuaged.  And I can never be someone’s sister (or even close companion) just by wishing it.  Societal conventions rule us all.  The real sister is there with my friend; the one who merely wishes in her heart to be a sister is not. And so for a few days, it seemed to me that love had failed and reality/tragedy had won, as seems to happen in your operas. (I know I’m oversimplifying, but overall, that’s what the tone of your operas feels like to me.)

But then, I came out the other side of this pain with a resolution.  I’m still tentatively working it out, but it seems to me that in the heightened emotions immediately following the tragedy, I got two different realities mixed up: the tragic reality of this world in which we live, and the reality of the heart.  I accidentally believed that the reality of the heart (the desire to be like a sister to my friend) could become true in the reality of the world.  It cannot.  And yet, why can’t these two worlds exist separately, with equal reality?  Why do we necessarily have to consider them to be in conflict, as in La Traviata, and so many other works by other artists?  I do love my friend as a sister, regardless of whether or not the societal strictures of the real world provide me with the means of actual expression or demonstration of it.  The lack of these things does not make the truth of my heart any less true or real.  Even if my friend and I never spoke again in reality, that love in my heart would remain unchanged. And so, it seems to me that I can become both more of a realist in my life, and more of an idealist in my heart.  Perhaps that sounds like the kind of split that leads to insanity, but in fact, this conclusion has brought me a great deal of peace.  (So don’t cue up one of your mad scenes just yet, despite my letters to dead men.)  

Verdi, my fiction is the landscape of my heart. And when I care about someone, I often end up casting them in that world (though in “archetypal” ways, rather than direct character portraits). This week it suddenly made sense to me why I do this.  By placing people I love there, it’s a way of reinforcing the existence of that truth – the truth of the heart, the truth of love.  In reality, I can’t always love people completely, but in that place, I can.  I can express my love completely and perfectly there.  And why should that world of the heart be considered any less real?  In many ways, I feel its truth more fully than the “real” world.  That world of the heart always remains true, just as my love for my friend remains true in that place, regardless of what happens in reality.  Life is fickle and cruel, but the heart isn’t.  I guess one can be dark and pessimistic and say that the landscape of the heart is meaningless in the end and that tragedy and cold reality always triumph; but I don’t know why one can’t just as easily say that the heart is a world of its own with its own triumphs, though its ultimate ends are admittedly more mysterious.

I’m not really sure why my sensibilities always turn in this direction – why my aesthetic preferences and expressions are comic in nature, rather than tragic.  Everyone is just different, I guess.  I know that you lost your beloved wife and children at a young age.  That was undeniably horrific, and perhaps it explains your lifelong penchant for the tragic.  And I know that you were simply writing according to your own heart and your own talents, embracing your penchant for the intense and dramatic, and writing in the genres and idioms of your time.  It’s no different now.  I’m acquainted with a lot of other fiction writers, and many of them embrace realism/tragedy/darkness in their work the darker their lives get.  In fact, this is true of my friend.  Over the course of her life she’s seen as much tragedy as anyone I’ve ever known, and her writing – much like yours, Verdi – is powerful, intense, dark, and tragic.   But in my own case, the darker my life gets (and it’s gotten significantly darker the past several years), the more my writing tends to turn to a comic sensibility – to that reality I perceive in my heart rather than the outer tragic reality.  And to tell the truth, it’s a lonely proposition to be a literary writer with a comic sensibility (though yes, I write literary fantasy).  I’m vastly outnumbered.  Nearly all of the literary writers I know write dark, murky fiction.

Speaking of that, you’ve also helped me realize part of why I love Mozart so much.  Now, I know it’s not fair to compare two very different composers, nor is it fair to compare opera buffa to opera seria.  I’m just using the comparison to explain my own preferences.  And so I will bring up again this little matter of your tragic irony plummeting me violently over the head.  At the end of Rigoletto, while he sings of having achieved his revenge, there’s a horrible irony that we as the audience know the body hidden in the bag is actually that of his daughter.  We dread the agonizing moment of truth when Rigoletto uncovers the face and finds Gilda.  A much different kind of irony occurs in Act 4 of The Marriage of Figaro in Figaro’s aria “Aprite un po’quegli occhi.” On the surface, this aria is a bitter misogynistic rant, but we as the audience know to take the opposite meaning since (unlike Figaro) we know the women’s love remains true. To me, the irony here is serving a relatively rare purpose in the arts: to make the point that love is steadfast. 

Making the point for love back in Act 3, and thus informing the meaning of Figaro’s aria in Act 4, is the towering strength of “Dove sono.”  That aria is about this very thing I’ve been talking about: the truth of the heart and the hope in that truth. For me, the most uniquely brilliant thing about that aria is the turn near the end when it progresses from sorrow to hope (from the cavatina to the cabaletta?), and Rosina expresses a soaring triumph and faith in the love in her own heart.  Everything I’ve been trying to say is summed up in that aria.  How surprisingly rare it is to find that kind of comic, hopeful sentiment intelligently expressed. That’s why Mozart is more precious to me than the gold and jewels to pay off all my debts, or all the riches in the world, for that matter.  (And the same sensibility runs through all of his work in all genres.)  I can weep at your work, Verdi, because it buffets all of my emotions with tragic events. But I can weep at “Dove sono” because it touches the deepest part of me that I consider truth, the only part of my being that I consider unassailably joyful and unchangeable. In Figaro there does also remain a sense of uncertainty, of the realities of life, and the inevitable vagaries of human nature.  And yet, to me the opera leaves no doubt of a belief in the steadfast truth of the heart, despite everything else.  Mozart wouldn’t write something as sublime as “Dove sono” unless it’s meant to stick with you as an overarching point.  The aria wasn’t an accident. 

Though Figaro can’t magically make “real life” any less miserable, it does reinforce that truth I know in my heart.  Tragedy, as in your work, Verdi, is already quite visible in the world, and I’ve witnessed a great deal of it recently.  But that inner world – that gentle, fragile faith in love, the truth of the heart (at least of the “comic” heart) often remains invisible unless manifested in the arts.  I can look about me and see tragedy all the time; but to see the secret love and faith in people’s hearts, which I believe to be no less a reality, I have to look to music, to a stage, to a screen, to a book. To me, it makes more sense to invest everything I’ve got in me as an artist to support these delicate, fleeting expressions that we each wonder if others secretly harbor.  I will do all I can to add to them within the range of my talents and abilities; to make the invisible heart visible.  This is something I already knew about myself, but experiencing some of your work has helped me to consolidate myself even more fully within that aesthetic sensibility.

Verdi, I’m beginning to wonder if I really don’t even like opera – maybe I only like Mozart.  Or perhaps only comic opera.  (Okay, probably just Mozart – I just can’t seem to shut up about the guy.)  At any rate, I can say that I’ve felt the same way about modern Broadway shows for quite some time, too; I’ve lost patience with the very bombastic, melodramatic ones.  Tragedy is just not my thing anymore. 

Sorry to have bothered you with this anti-fan letter, Verdi, but it’s been a tough few months. 

Yours,

Elisabeth Hegmann

P.S.  I really love how straightforward you were with your librettists.  I especially like, “I have patched it up, in order to write the music, but you will have to write some better verses…” and “I received the tenor cabaletta today.  It says absolutely nothing…”  (Seton 337).  Give ‘em hell, Verdi!   

Boris Godunov journal entry, 4-16-10

I suppose what I find most interesting about Boris Godunov is this idea that the chorus (the Russian people) is the most important character.  That made me think of a movie from several years ago, The Queen, with Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II.  There’s a scene in which the queen is passing through a large crowd after Princess Di’s death, and a little girl walks up to the queen and gives her some flowers.  The queen supposes that it’s yet another bouquet of flowers for the deified Diana, and is touched and surprised to find that the flowers are for her. I found the scene deeply moving, and realized that, though many different interpersonal dynamics are explored in the film, what really makes it unique is that it’s mostly about the Queen’s relationship with Britain – with her British subjects. I’d argue that the scene we watched early in Boris Godunov between Boris and the Russian people (chorus) strikes a very similar chord; not in terms of the sentiment, but in terms of the “relationship” being explored – that between ruler and people.  It’s always so refreshing to see a more rare dynamic like this explored. Let’s face it: the most commonly explored relationship in all the narrative art forms – opera, novels, films, etc. –  is love, love, love: specifically, the love between a man and a woman.  Don’t get me wrong, sexual, romantic love is a great thing.  But doesn’t it get a little old when it’s the cornerstone of every story ever told? 

Which brings me to a second thing I find interesting about Boris Godunov: that originally it had no major female roles, and that these were only added as a response to criticism in order to get the opera produced (from the Wikipedia article).  This in turn reminded me of a few comparable works in other genres. For example, the film Lawrence of Arabia, in which there is famously not a single woman (except in the brief part where women are seen sending the men off to war; regardless, no woman ever speaks a line).  And as another example, Moby Dick, which also famously doesn’t feature a single woman. Though I suppose it’s counter-intuitive since I’m a woman, these count among my favorite works.  Now, part of my love for these works may be that I simply disregard gender lines and look directly to what I admire in the realm of art and ideas; I love Jane Austen as much as I love Melville, and she certainly told stories as well as anyone in the history of literature (…all of which happen to be about the love between a man and a woman!).  And yet, perhaps the absence of women in a story also means more room to explore other kinds of themes – profound and unique themes unrelated to getting married and making babies. I suppose that’s horribly misogynistic of me. Or maybe I’m not a misogynist, but just more generally a misanthrope: men are at least 50% to blame for what women do in stories, whether they wrote it or they’re a male character taking part in the romantic canoodling!  

In any case, neither women nor romance are bad things, and they’re certainly necessary parts of life, and thus necessary to portray in art – what’s bad is when writers lazily fall back on love stories with no merit or originality.  There are other stories to tell in this world, other relationships to develop, other forms of love to be explored – nationalistic love of one’s country or heritage certainly being one of them.  And yet, Mussorgsky’s critics had a point: it can’t be denied that romance sells.  It’s quite interesting that Mussorgsky had to add or expand female roles and amp up the romance to get his opera staged.  It does also occur to me that the matter has to be understood in the context of long-established operatic conventions.  I suppose an opera without important female characters was unthinkable, just as Mussorgsky’s orchestrations, harmonic style, etc. were difficult for even some of his friends to accept (from the Wikipedia article).  But that makes it all the more interesting that Mussorgsky’s original vision was to overlook those conventions.  It would seem that his vision was a bit ahead its time, and a bit ahead of what people were able to tolerate, much like Melville with Moby Dick.  At least in Mussorgsky’s case, he got to see Boris have success in his lifetime, which is always a wonderful thing. (It breaks my heart to think about Melville dying after the fall of all his fortunes, and having seen his beloved Moby Dick panned by critics and the public, with true reverence for the work only coming fully a century after his death.)

  At the same time, I’m not suggesting Mussorgsky should be criticized for agreeing to the requested revisions.  Most creative souls at one time or another agree to revisions that don’t necessarily go along with their original vision.  Sometimes it makes sense just to be practical about it, as long as it doesn’t in some way compromise the entire vision.  (In the case of Boris Godunov, it seems that none of the revisions harmed the overarching focus of the completed opera.)  Plus, once you get the door to open for you, you can sometimes later restore a work to what you originally intended – or others sympathetic to your goals can do it, as in the case of Boris more recently being performed with Mussorgsky’s original orchestrations.  And though I certainly can’t have an opinion with much authority, not being a great scholar on Boris Godunov, perhaps many of the suggested revisions ultimately strengthened the work, and were quite valid criticisms.  But they still sting like hell!

Another interesting aspect of Boris is the “argument” about what the opera is “about,” and which scene should end the opera: Boris’s death, or the scene with the Russian people.  I would have to agree with those who choose to end the opera with the scene with the Russian people – if nothing else, just because it’s the more unique and interesting emphasis, going along with the rest of Mussorgsky’s unique vision.  That’s certainly not denying that Boris Godunov is a fascinating, conflicted individual.  But that’s just it: there are thousands of brilliant works about fascinating, conflicted individuals. A work with an emphasis (and an effective emphasis) on a national, cultural group dynamic is far rarer.

Speaking of Boris Godunov as a character: I find his descent into madness more satisfying and realistic than some I’ve seen. The MacBethian style of madness has always worked well for me in the context of my own knowledge and experiences.  (Not that I’ve ever murdered anyone, but that I trace many of the tragedies of my life back to things I did wrong, or times that I should have been more responsible in some way.) I think it’s easier to empathize with this type of “madness” because it’s easier to understand it on an internal level; at some point, everyone has done something wrong that they recognized was ethically incorrect (either before or after the fact) and later regretted.  This is as opposed to works in which a character says “Oh poor me, everyone has victimized me, and now I’ve gone stark raving mad.”  I guess as one example I could cite Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia’s madness doesn’t seem empathetic to me, but only sensationalistic, providing an excuse for her to warble like a bird onstage for 25 minutes.  I’m not just picking on Lucia di Lammermoor, though.  I know that sort of sensationalism that buffets one’s senses without being particular relatable was a convention of certain Romantic sensibilities and works. (And I suppose pure, exalted, wronged women were a convention as well).  Speaking of Shakespeare, Boris’s Shakespearian or novelistic way of portraying a complete world also seems uniquely its own, portraying both humor and tragedy, as well as all levels of society, from the peasants in rags, to the monks in their monastery, to the sumptuous scenes of royalty at the Kremlin humor. (And wow, that Russian production of Boris Gudonov really is something, isn’t it?  It’s always interesting to see what was considered a priority in the Soviet heyday.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much glitter and costume jewelry in one place before.)  It was great to see some levity in the scene with the priests at the inn on the Lithuanian border, and the utilization of the folk song in that scene.  

I  never liked Tchaikovsky (nothing personal – just not that into him), so it’s interesting to learn about this other school of composers, the Mighty Handful, and their desire to find expressions that they felt were more genuine to Russian culture (Seaton 378).  Also, I’m thrilled these days when I hear of folks who held down jobs like postal worker, chemist, etc. and still managed to have a lasting impression on their art form, since God knows teaching high school is not exactly the rewarding and exalted career I had ever hoped for.  I’ll grasp onto whatever hope I can find. 

Richard Wagner journal entry, 4-24-10

First off, what was Wagner smoking, and where can I get some? 

But seriously.  In truth, I understand all too well, because that funny place in the head is where I reside also.  The same place that J.R.R. Tolkien also apparently resided, the place that compels one to create that enormous structure known as “mythology” and spend twenty or thirty years trying to materialize the godforsaken thing.  I can’t speak for those other guys, but in my case it’s not even that I want to do that, or ever had some big “ambition” to do it.  It’s just how my mind works.  There’s just this enormous, already-existing story inside me that I have to try to get out.  I’ve been conceiving it for ten years, seriously working on it for three.  What does that leave, another seventeen years or so?     

That was one of the biggest frustrations of the MFA for me: many of my fellow MFAers were primarily short story writers, which comes with instant gratification.  Short stories take little time to write, and you can instantly send them out, win awards, get published.  Things aren’t even too bad for a conventional novelist; a novel might take a year to write, but after “only” a year you have a product that you can market around to agents or publishers.  The kudos and congratulations come quickly.  But not only am I not a short story writer, I’m not even precisely a novelist.  I’m this poor debased breed of creature that conceives of an enormous original project that could take decades to complete – an enormous commitment, and an enormous gamble, for a work that everyone may ultimately ignore.  Oh, I’ve had short stories that I don’t really care about published in minor publications online.  And during the MFA, the powers that be said that I’ve got the talent, that my project has all the necessary ingredients; and yet, all the talent and originality in the world mean very little if you put all your eggs in one basket and no one chooses that basket.  I wonder how many people have conceived of these massive sorts of projects, but instead of turning out with the success of Wagner or Tolkien (or even a more mid-level success, such as a cult writer with a small but intensely devoted fan base, which is what I’ve been told I would ultimately be if the gods smile on me), their lifetime’s work vanished forever into obscurity? 

Well, whatever the case, Wagner has got me thinking deeply about form this semester.  Under the circumstances, it would be a little unnatural if he hadn’t.  Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is my birthright from my father; he died when I was ten with no life insurance or any other significant possessions – the only things he left me of any meaning or value were his LOTR volumes that he adored (and re-read every year).  I did not read LOTR for the first time until I was in my early twenties, when I became curious to try to understand more about who my father was.  And LOTR was what got me writing in earnest – not because I had any desire to copy its style (unlike many of Tolkien’s admirers, my writing bears no resemblance to his), but because it revealed to me on a more abstract level that all the artistic goals I had always thought impossible were possible.  I can’t even say how beloved LOTR is to me, how much gratitude I have to Tolkien for having the courage to take a risk like that. 

Seeing part of Wagner’s Ring cycle was a strange revelation.  How bizarre that Wagner invented geek culture.  Because of Wagner we have Tolkien, and because of Tolkien we have the entire genre of fantasy.  We have comic books, we have Star Wars.  I always find it rather funny, these guys like Wagner who state very specific goals of what they’re trying to invent and the sort of legacy they expect to leave the world, and then end up leaving a legacy no less important, but entirely different than what they’d had in mind.  I wonder how Wagner would feel if he could see comic book conventions and roomfuls of slacker gamers.

Though I had always known that LOTR owed a mighty debt to Wagner, I had no idea that it was this mighty.  Now, that doesn’t take anything away from the achievement of LOTR. For all its similarities, Tolkien’s creation is very different in its aims and the way its story world is fleshed out.  And yet its basic skeletal structure is the same as the Ring cycle.  A theme involving “the destructive force of the lust for wealth and power”? (Seaton 360)  Yes, that’s definitely the kernel of both the Ring cycle and LOTR.  But if anything, I find that fact to be a tremendous relief and encouragement.  I had always been daunted by LOTR, because it seemed like Tolkien had pulled its structure out of thin air, like a sorcerer, and that none of us merely mortal writers could ever approach such a feat.  But in fact, like all of us, Tolkien built on things that had come before.  It’s like the old saying, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”  Tolkien stole.  Good for him. 

Now, I don’t pretend to be able to create anything even nearly approaching LOTR. One of my greatest weaknesses as a writer is “world building”:  all of those details that give form and order to the story world, a skill especially crucial for any kind of fantasist.  My material tends to be purely emotional and archetypal; it has trouble finding specific embodiment. One criticism I’ve received from peers, mentors, and agents is that my story world is too formless, shapeless, vague, and random. Confusingly, I have also been praised for this – for rebelling against the tyranny of genre and form, and doing something different. Left to me to decide, I would choose something in the middle between these two groups. I would like for my story world to have more shape and purpose, though still remain unique by steering clear of over-used genre structures.   Plus, my fiction is full of absurdity and other humor – all the more need for greater structure to keep things glued together. But at the end of my MFA, I’d run out of ideas on dealing with these issues, so in my final exam essay I simply admitted I knew the problem was still there and would continue working on it.  And I have, though without much progress until recently.  

Now, not only am I weak at world building, I’m a stubborn perfectionist about it; at many points I’ve thought of possible forms and structures, but threw them out as not being “good enough.”  On that note, there are actually three guys who got me thinking about form the past few months:  Mozart, Wagner, and Thomas Edison.  (And what a strange tea party those three would have.)   

I found Wagner’s view of Mozart interesting: “Mozart he regarded as a fine composer whose librettos had simply been too trivial to produce really great results” (Seaton 360).  This is quite funny to me.  It seems to reveal some very basic temperamental difference between Wagner and Mozart.  For Wagner, form seems to be all-important and all-consuming; the form must be precisely the form of his heart, his philosophy, his intellect.  Mozart seemed to regard form more as a vessel in which to pour his heart and intellect; though form is of course important, the view seems more relaxed and above all, practical.  Wagner wanted to invent a new form, while Mozart busied himself exalting forms that already existed by filling them with his massive talent.

It’s clear that Wagner and the Romantics in general were deeply concerned with form and what to do with it.  But the things I’ve realized recently about form did not actually come from Wagner.  The trouble is that I’m too much like Wagner by temperament – not only in the sense of writing a massive mythology that takes twenty years, but also that I’m a self-centered, idealistic blow-hard, full of extremes and metaphysical mumbo jumbo. (What else are these journal entries of mine?)  And just like Wagner, I’m liable, as I said above, to be a stubborn perfectionist about form.  The trouble is, that’s not helping me, but working against me at this point. Somehow, by regarding Wagner’s Ring cycle, it made me determined to face my own problems with form. And that involves looking to folks on the opposite end of the temperamental spectrum for help, which is why I pulled my buddies Mozart and Edison into this.

From Mozart and Edison I’ve learned:  You must have a form, but the form needs merely to be workable, not perfect.  It’s important to choose the right form, and to choose a form that personally engages you, but there’s no sense in obsessing over it.  They seem to be saying: let’s stop being so philosophical, and be more practical.  (More about Edison in a moment.)

I agree with Wagner that the librettos for Mozart’s operas weren’t perfect.  But would any material available to Mozart at the time have matched his talent?  Wasn’t it better that the man simply wrote material that personally interested him?  It’s better to have work from Mozart with some imperfections in the form than to not have work from Mozart at all. And it doesn’t take anything away from the overall effect of the work. Plus, Mozart had a principle on his side that doesn’t work for anyone except world-class geniuses; his talent was so great that he could fill any vessel he chose with it and turn it to gold.  I’m sure he knew that.  But that principle isn’t very useful to the rest of us.

And yet, maybe it is.  And this is where Edison comes in: if you have a superior light bulb, a merely sufficient system (form) will do.  Edison knew that it was absolutely necessary to his light bulb’s success that he create a workable system in which to “plug it in.”  Thus, the greatest reason he succeeded at the light bulb while others failed was that he created that system (a source of direct current electricity).  Nevertheless, he put most of his effort into perfecting the light bulb; in the end, a merely sufficient (not perfect) system was enough to mean success for the entire project. 

Similarly, Mozart had a superior “light bulb” that he could plug into any merely sufficient system. (Okay, some quite absurd double entendre is popping up here…and amazingly, I’m not even drunk right now. Wish I were.) Now, I ain’t Edison, Mozart, or Wagner, but nevertheless, I know I have a superior light bulb.  In the case of a writer, that means that my work is highly original, and that all the right elements of craft are in place.  Thus, I need a merely sufficient form.  I should feel free to “steal,” like Tolkien, but I don’t have to try to be perfect, like Wagner. 

Not sure any of that makes any sense, other than to myself.  The specific changes I’ve been making to my work aren’t important, but as a result of these musings on Wagner, Mozart, and Edison, I was struck by a form that I think will work.  It’s not perfect, but it’s workable, and it will add structure and order to my story world.   

I don’t know why composers help me so much on a creative level (and God only knows why Thomas Edison is hanging out with them in my mind).  Maybe since I grew up around musicians, music and theatre were so continuously present from the very beginning that I don’t know how to think without them. Or maybe my own imagination is so free-wheeling and fiction itself so structureless, that music, so structural at its base, provides me with a very necessary structure in which to think.  In any case, I don’t think I would ever solve the problems facing me in my fiction if I looked to literature alone.  I’m a musical nincompoop; I have no talent whatsoever in either playing or analyzing music. But music throws an extra dimension of light on everything in the art form in which I do excel; illuminates things for me that I’d never otherwise see or feel. 

Wagner Part II:  Romanticism and Wagner being like James Cameron

Like many young people, my entrance point in my teenage years to the art of the past (whether music, literature, or artwork) was the Romantic era.  I suppose that all that emotional intensity and pathos, the ideals, the rebellion against conventions, etc. is something that young people identify with. It’s more immediately accessible, more, well, obvious in its intent than many other eras of art.  The Romantics are the rock stars of the past, with that kind of youthful immediacy.  In Dr. Koch’s class, one guy was discouraged to learn that we were going to spend three entire classes (gasp!) on Mozart – he wanted to skip Mozart and get directly to Beethoven.  That seemed pretty emblematic to me – the youthful rush to Romanticism, to skip everything else more measured and subtle.  Oh, I know that what the Romantics did was very necessary – it’s always necessary for someone to come along and shake things up and provide new forms and possibilities in the arts.

But apparently I’ve changed greatly with age, because nowadays I tend to regard the Romantics with deep distrust.  This is probably because I regard myself with deep distrust, and I am a Romantic.  I deeply identify with them – their ridiculous blustering, their intense emotions, their endless philosophizing, their naïve principles, their over-hurried rush to tear things down.  I feel the right to laugh at them because they’re me and I’m them.  The derision I feel toward them is the derision I feel toward myself.  How stupid, naïve, and mortified I feel that only a few months ago I still believed in high ideals of close friendship, that I invested all kinds of time and energy into what I thought was true connection.  There is no such thing in this world.  But a Romantic at heart is always a Romantic at heart.  It can’t be changed (even if what I really most admire is the elegant, balanced beauty and exalted emotions of the Classicists).  And so, as I told Verdi a while back, everything that I believe survives in my heart, and thus in my art, even though all evidence indicates that those ideals are dead in my life.

Like Wagner, art is my spirituality, both in terms of what I put on the page and the experience that other artists give me.  That is the most unshakeable aspect of my being.  It is the one thing that I know.  I’m quite alone in those sensibilities – during the MFA, “art” was something quite different to all the others.  It was just…something to do. It wasn’t sacred.  It didn’t have a purpose.  It wasn’t their soul.  I quickly learned to be quiet about what writing means to me. In fact, the only other person I’ve ever known with whom I’m simpatico is my composer friend, Martin McClellan (we come from the same small town and have been friends since he was 8 and I was 12).  

I’m certainly not as extremist and Hitler-like about my views as Wagner. (Seriously, his ravings on p. 359 of the text somehow remind me a bit of the speeches of Hitler and other dictators.)  But again I’m mocking him because we’re made of the same cloth. When I was 18, I wrote rather side-splittingly funny “treatises” with absolutely identical sentiments to Wagner’s.  I recognize everything he’s saying, the kinds of words he uses – salvation, gospel, progress.  That’s what music and the arts are to me, too.  And at about 22, without knowing anything about Wagner or ever having been exposed to the idea, I came up with the theory of Gesamtkunstwerk in regards to musical theatre.  Of course, I thought it was highly provocative and original at the time.

But however much my thinking is like Wagner, I could never have resolved on “world domination” like he did. The 20th century came along and screwed us all up, made us all cautious and bitter.  Present-day Romantics are more caustic, more measured.  The Romantic movement was the last hurrah of unbridled spirituality and ideals, and thus the last period I identify with.  Once the 20th century started, that particular sense of spirituality was gone, with some exceptions of course, such as Tolkien.  That’s why LOTR strikes me as such a huge risk – it so strongly stated the case for an earlier sense of spirituality in a culture that had turned entirely to materialism.   

And yet I really don’t believe that Wagner’s sunrise was a sunset.  Understandably, like all Romantics (me included), he and his allies were impatient about seeing some instant, obvious result.  They had their sights trained on that particular operatic form that he invented.  Maybe that particular form didn’t catch on like wildfire, but his theories and the spirit in which he created the Ring cycle live on – though admittedly it can be hard to find it done really well. My friend Martin and I talk about that all the time.  We find very few modern works with which we connect, and when we do, we get very excited.  It’s hard to describe, but we know them when we see them.  Maybe Martin and I are not exactly a “sunrise,” but we share many of the same values as Wagner (well, minus the anti-Semitism), and we also create work in that same spirit, and so do many others.   

More to the point, Wagner’s spirit and theories live on in the most popular current art form: film.  It’s clear to me that Wagner invented film without actually inventing film.  Watching the Ring cycle is so odd, because it’s trying to do all the things that modern film does: visually, aurally (the bigness of the sound), etc. I understand that’s a bit of an ironic statement since film took its cues from Wagner (sewing everything together with leitmotivs in the score springs to mind).  But I stand by that statement; Wagner was apparently, in theory, trying to invent film.  Because, obviously, film did become the collective artwork that completely changed the world.  The text defines the idea as, “Universal artwork that represents the collective experience of the culture from which it proceeds and also synthesizes into one entity gestural, verbal, and musical types of expression” (359).  No offense to Artist-Wagner, who wrote operas, but Theorist-Wagner’s definition seems to fit best to film.  Wagner certainly anticipated where things were going. 

I know that we talked from the beginning of the course about opera being  analogous to film in terms of its effect and popularity – but other operas we’ve seen don’t actually resemble film.  They don’t “feel” like film.  The Ring cycle does.  And I’m not referring to the Met staging and set.  I mean the opera’s feel – its pace, imagination, “special effects,” characterization, and so on.  To talk about the “feel” of something seems like a cop-out, but in regards to the Ring cycle, I don’t think so.  It seems that a feel, an immersive experience, is exactly what Wagner was going for, by creating an entirely new way of viewing/hearing a story.  But bizarrely, the Ring cycle doesn’t resemble early film or even film in the mid-20th century.  It resembles modern film of the past 20-30 years – and even more specifically, the modern blockbuster, post-Star Wars. 

Star Wars was the film that cemented the pattern for blockbuster films, and it was also incidentally the film that brought back the popularity of the traditional film score, which had fallen out of favor during the early part of the seventies (filmic melodramas = music + drama… and Wagner wanted to write “music dramas”…hmmm, interesting).  Star Wars takes a page from the Ring cycle in many ways, including its utilization of archetypes/mythology, and its score (e.g. the use of leitmotivs).  But more to the point, obviously that movie really, really caught on, and ushered in an entirely new kind of incredibly popular artistic filmic experience, usually utilizing mythology in some way, fantastic creatures, boffo special effects, a lush score, dynamic visuals, etc.  I would argue that what the Ring cycle most resembles is the modern blockbuster, and that Wagner invented all of its constituent parts.  Like a lot of brilliant visionaries, perhaps Wagner theorized and anticipated where things were going more than a century ahead of when it happened. 

Wagner is sort of like James Cameron. But James Cameron envisions things a mere decade ahead of when the technology catches up, and thus he can execute his visions once “only” ten years have passed.  But Wagner envisioned things a full century ahead of when the technology caught up – consequently, it wasn’t really possible for him to make a blockbuster 3D film. Given the technology and the opportunity, I wonder if Theorist-Wagner would have persuaded Artist-Wagner to have the career of a producer-writer-director like Cameron, George Lucas, or Peter Jackson. It seems possible.  Wagner didn’t even necessarily want to write opera (renaming it “music drama,” and so forth) – he wanted a new narrative art form.  

And so, I don’t think Wagner’s sunrise was a sunset.  What Wagner anticipated would happen did happen, just not in precisely the way he intended. Okay, so art didn’t replace religion, and the world has not lived in peace as a result of the Ring cycle or Star Wars or Avatar. But come on, it’s just crazily unrealistic to expect a huge dramatic sunrise that bathes the whole world in glorious sunlight.  Like Wagner and his pals, I too wish that such sweeping miracles were possible in this world, but such is not the case. Instead, what happens is that the sun comes out from behind the clouds in little glimmers, and you have to be quick to catch it.  Modern-day Romantics have to be more practical, more willing to take what we can get. I would argue that many of these modern films retain that same sense of Romantic spiritual purpose, in a dominant culture which is materialistic.  Avatar, now the highest grossing film of all time, is certainly highly spiritual, both literally (the story and message) and in the immersive 3D experience of it. 

Of course, a small but very vocal and influential band of people sneer at “populist” art and say that it’s escapist, low brow, etc.  (I know these insults well – “serious” artists love to argue that fantasy, which is always mythological/archetypal/spiritual at its core, is not serious art.) But the “volk,” unperturbed, continue to speak with their dollars.  One could argue that Wagner’s “volk” do still know what they’re doing.  Wagner believed it was important that art embody “the essential beliefs and ideas that stood at the core of cultural integrity” (Seaton 360).  I would argue that’s exactly what people are trying to hold onto by embracing these films.

Probably not original musings on my part, but still very interesting to me to try to trace Wagner’s legacy, in its spirit. 

Verismo Journal, 4-25-10

Bizet

Though I certainly “know of” Carmen, and am familiar with its most famous arias, I’ve never actually seen it.  Since we’re only able to watch a few scenes of most of these operas, I’m ending up with a basic must-watch list that will probably take me the next few years to watch. All semester I feel like I’ve been writing about things with which I have only the slightest familiarity, the only exception being The Marriage of Figaro, which I’ve now watched and listened to multiple times. 

I can’t believe that Georges Bizet was yet another of these guys who died young, just when his work had reached its full maturity, never witnessing its full success.  The world has seen far too much of that, damn it.  

I guess the thing I can understand best about Carmen is that it was innovative, combining opera comique with more serious scenes – and risque (for the time) behavior.  Bizet pissed people off with Carmen, and that’s often pretty good evidence that someone produced a masterpiece.

I like the fact that Bizet takes friendship as a major subject in Les pêcheurs de perles.  As I told Verdi a while back, friendship remains one of the main themes of my own work, despite the fact that in real life (as I prophesied then), I’ve lost every single friend I had in this area.  I know I’m ornery, complicated, and difficult, and yet I guess I’m somewhat puzzled, because it seems to me that most difficult artistic sorts are nevertheless able to find like-minded souls.  Mussorgsky had the “Mighty Handful.”  Tolkien had the Inklings. In La Boheme, the Bohemians certainly have a nice camaraderie going.  But every friendship I made during the MFA, whether close or casual, has now evaporated (well, except for the support of my mentor, John Kessel, for which I’m grateful.)  I guess some of us are just meant to go it alone.  The one friend I have in the world (Las Vegas, to be precise) is my childhood friend who’s now a composer, Martin McClellan. 

I talked to him a few nights ago, and he said something interesting: that all his lasting friendships were formed either in childhood or in his early twenties (i.e. his early college years).  Perhaps he’s right, and true friendship is impossible in adulthood; if you fail to make connections earlier in your life (like me), maybe you’re just screwed.  I remember reading somewhere the idea that the older we get, the more “specific” our experience gets, and the less likelihood that we’ll identify with (and connect with) others.  We end up with a long history that gets harder and harder to “mesh” with others’ histories. I can certainly vouch for that; after having been alone for 33 years, it seems highly unlikely that I’ll ever be anything but alone for whatever remains of my life.

The point is that I can appreciate the subject matter of Les pêcheurs de perles.  In the context of what I said above, the fact that Zurga and Nadir were childhood friends makes it emotionally believable.  (I can’t imagine giving up my life anytime soon except maybe for my one childhood friend, Martin.)  The friendship duet is touching.  These lovely themes of love, friendship, and sacrifice are always beautiful in art, even though they don’t work out in life.   

Janáček

Janáček and I might have at least one thing in common: my last name is supposedly Czech, specifically from the region of Bohemia.

Our text says that verismo is a synomym for realism.  Like all “realist” art, verismo puzzles me.  It may just be that the term “realism” has always struck me as a misnomer.  It seems obvious to me that no artwork can represent “reality”; all art is a construction.  Also, I believe that rality is fairly subjective, that reality is something different for everyone.  I think I’ve always resented the term “realism” because it seems to be insisting on some kind of objective reality.  But works termed “realist” have never had much to do with my own consciousness or sensibilities – with my own “reality.” I certainly respect such works – again, I think the biggest problem I have is with the term.  Maybe if verismo were called “Tortured- Soul-of-Humanity operas” I’d have an easier time with it.  

Our text says that verismo operas “were set among the lower classes, and culminated in violence” (374). So far, so good: the characters in Jenufa are simple, hard-working folk who incidentally murder babies.  The text goes on to say, “…the composers chose plots that were unrestrainedly emotional and melodramatic.”  Jenufa makes good on that point, too.  Infanticide is about as melodramatic as it gets, and the opera is certainly relentless in its emotional intensity – in particular, the 2nd act.  And throughout the opera, there are no clear lines between recitative and aria, which contributes to the relentless drama and intensity. 

That’s part of my problem with the terms “realism” or “verismo.”  Daily consciousness isn’t relentlessly dramatic and intense; most of the time it’s just dull, but in any event, it’s an unending stream of a variety of emotions all over the scale. Even at the most trying times of my life, my consciousness has been a mix of both terrible pain as well as perceived humor and moments of relief.  That’s why I’ve always found works that incorporate humor to be closer to my own “reality”: a balanced view of drama and humor, with troughs and peaks.  A work like Jenufa strikes me as being pain and grief very purely distilled.  It’s certainly within an artist’s rights to produce such a work, and it has great merit; it causes us to examine issues and emotions in a new light.  I just don’t see what it has to do with being “realistic.”  Nor do I see how using more prose-like language, or stripping away spirituality and mythology makes something more “realistic.” Such a work is merely stating its opinion in the former case that language and/or music should sound a certain way, and in the latter case, that those things don’t or shouldn’t exist.  But it shouldn’t have the right to dictate anyone else’s truth and reality. 

I thought it was interesting that several people in the class laughed during the scene in which Jenufa loses it.  Ostensibly, they were laughing at her acting (and the way she ran into the wall in her delusion).  But it seemed to me they were really laughing because they needed relief from the relentless grief and drama – a way to release the tension. The point where they laughed would in fact have been where a scene of comic relief appeared in a different kind of opera (or film, or theatre production) – but of course there wasn’t one in this case.  (Unless the giant rock in the middle of the set is meant to be the comic relief – it is a pretty funny character in its own right.)  They laughed where they needed a laugh.  And I felt for them. I respect the artistic choice not to provide that laugh, to keep the audience uncomfortable.  But it’s very far from my own sensibilities.  My job is to give people that laugh. 

The foster mother is certainly a fascinating character.  Steva is right in saying that she’s full of gloom and severity.  (And admittedly the opera does acknowledge its own gloom and severity in that way.) It’s interesting also that he calls her a “sorceress” -- almost a kind of winking nod to that operatic archetype. One advantage of verismo, I suppose, is being able to portray a character like the foster mother who acts coldly and does something quite evil, and yet is still strangely sympathetic. Here is a woman who is compelled by social mores, feels cornered and trapped by what she feels society demands of her, which is something universally identifiable.  On the other hand, maybe I’m alone in empathizing with the foster mother, judging by the class’s reaction to both the character and to her voice!  Maybe they haven’t lived long enough to know what it feels like to violate one’s conscience in a big way.  At any rate, it would never have occurred to me to question the quality of the soprano’s voice, because it simply seemed right for the character.  Thus, the idea of “dramatic musical acting” makes sense to me - that it’s not about the beauty of the voice, but the drama of it. 

There’s a scene in Act 2 between Jenufa and the foster mother (before Jenufa goes sleep) that was strangely like watching my younger and older feminine self torn in two. Jenufa is the young idealist passionately in love, full of love for her baby and enthusiasm for motherhood.  And the foster mother is bitter, wasted by life, long past the point of being able to love. Indeed, through the course of the opera, it’s as though Jenufa’s temperament is somewhat converging with her foster mother’s (though perhaps with a better fate).  Jenufa tells Laca that she doesn’t know why he would want her - she can no longer feel or love as she once did.  The passion and enthusiasm of her youth is gone; she loved deeply and passionately, but it was never really consummated or returned; her beauty is gone; she must resign herself to milder feelings.  I identified deeply with Jenufa on these points.  I found it hard to take.  Embarrassingly, I cried in class, but no harm done since the lights were off, I guess. 

It helps me to think of Thomas Hardy being in the same vein as verismo.  The trained literary writer in me understands this kind of opera – this kind of drama.  I can analyze it with those skills far more easily than other operas we’ve looked at.  And yet, that’s part of what bothers me about it.  It seems to veer more toward literature and plays; I prefer operas that I have to understand by thinking purely in terms of the conventions of opera – not the conventions of other genres and art forms.  Verismo is just not my cup of tea.  Thomas Hardy is also far from being my cup of tea.   

One more miscellaneous point: in a work like this where an illegitimate birth is key to the plot, is it harder for a modern audience to get it in emotional context?  When we see two people fall in love in an opera from the 17th or 18th or 19th centuries, it’s still universally identifiable; when we see a character die, we still understand in modern times what it means to grieve. But nowadays, women get pregnant out of wedlock all the time, and most people don’t give it a second thought.  I’ve always felt that Pride and Prejudice loses something in a modern reading (or viewing, if in film form).  Pride and Prejudice of course remains a hugely popular story in the present day, and most aspects of the story remain very timeless and relatable; but when it gets to the part of the plot where Lydia runs off with Wickham, the violently dramatic way in which the other characters reacts suddenly becomes almost laughable.  (Even more regrettably, this is the climax of the story, where the tension is supposed to be highest.)  After all, Lydia isn’t even pregnant out of wedlock; all she’s done is run off with Wickham…and of course there’s no overt reference that she’s even slept with him (though one can infer it).  This plot point always has the effect of breaking the spell of the story for me, reminding me that it’s a work from a different time with different sensibilities.  I have to consciously remind myself that Lydia’s action means not only the end of Elizabeth’s hopes of marrying Darcy, but the utter ruin and downfall of the entire family. 

My maternal grandmother was born out of wedlock in 1909, and we weren’t able to coax the name of her real father out of her (so that we would know the name of our blood relative) until only a few years before her death at age 93. Such was the stigma of illegitimacy for her, and I suppose, for her generation. But just a few generations later, sexual mores have changed greatly. I’d argue that they’re one of the few things that really “dates” a work.   

However, in Jenufa, I think this plot point works better, because everything is so specific to the foster mother’s internal psychology.  It isn’t just assumed that we know we’re supposed to feel shocked (as in Pride and Prejudice).  Instead, because we so clearly hear all of the foster mother’s thought processes, justifications, etc., and see it all through her eyes, it’s less jarring. 

April 24, 2010

Dear Giacomo Puccini,

Well, I got the call: Martin wants to write an opera again.  Not that we have some big commission to do it.  It’s just that Martin has finally recovered enough from his disillusionment over his doctorate that he feels like being creative again.  I know how he feels; I, too, generally ignore my MFA in order to remember why I write and do it well. But I was very lucky in that I had an incredibly understanding and supportive mentor who gave me the freedom to follow my own vision. Martin had no such luck at IU.  He became so bitter that I was very worried about him for awhile; he’d lost all that youthful energy, joy, and passion about writing music that he’d had when he was younger, and which I had always loved and admired about him. 

Martin and I can’t get back the energy and passion of our youth.  And yet the joy in the act of creating is always, always still there for me, and I think it’s still there for him, too.  The only trouble is that a million years have passed since we wrote Tales That Are Told and the Jackson County Players workshopped and performed it for us.  Several months ago, Martin visited me here in Raleigh; we watched the VHS tape of the performance and nearly injured internal organs laughing so hard at ourselves.  The first act achieves Waiting for Guffman levels of hilarity.  (Wish you could have seen that movie, Puccini.)  However, the show – well, technically opera, since it is through-composed – the opera gets better and better as it goes.  By the end of the second act, Martin had become a better composer and I’d become a passable librettist.  The show is worthless as art, but it’s an interesting, very explicit illustration of two young artists learning as they went.

Well, we’re both older and wiser.  But that’s part of what I can’t understand: I can’t imagine why Martin wouldn’t want to work with a more experienced librettist.  He was 18 when we wrote Tales That Are Told, talented but green and untried.  Now he has a doctorate in music composition, is well-respected, has won awards, and so on.  I have roughly equivalent credentials in my own field in terms of degrees, awards, etc.– but as a fiction writer, not a librettist.  Martin says that he believes in me nevertheless.  Well, more power to him.  I desperately need someone to believe in me right now. 

In a weird way, I’m also resentful.  Martin literally ordered me to write the libretto for Tales That Are Told when I first returned to Indiana from NY when I was 22.  But I was grateful then and grateful now for his pushiness; it was basically like pushing someone into the water and forcing them to learn to swim, to face their fear.  I was terrified.  I hadn’t written anything since I was 18, and I was so insecure (and so emotionally shattered at that point, for a variety of reasons), that if Martin hadn’t forced me, I would never have gotten back to writing so quickly.  After we started working together, I actually became filled with ambition to become the next big duo: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Mozart and Da Ponte.  That’s really what I wanted to do; I thought I was going to be first and foremost a librettist.  I had no thoughts then of ever writing prose again.  Then Martin went off to college and didn’t have time to be my collaborator anymore. (He never finished setting the second libretto I wrote for him, and that’s a relief, because it was garbage.)  I was left in the lurch.  I did try to find another collaborator, and worked long distance for awhile with a composer in New York.  But the magic wasn’t there; we didn’t like each other’s work, and there was no excitement.  So I went back to fiction, and that’s where my focus has been for the past decade.  I’ve placed all my attention on my Wagnerian mega-work, Muller’s Mile. But now Martin is ready again; essentially, once again, he’s ordering me to write a libretto.

And yet, this is emblematic of what allows our friendship to work – that I can be humorously honest about my feelings, and neither of us gets offended.  And that we seem to balance one another out in many ways. When Martin decides it’s time, it’s time.  Me, I’d probably just keep procrastinating and working on my mega-work until the end of time.  It’s nice that someone is willing to force me to churn out a relatively quick product once in a while. 

I suppose I see it as being the proper order of the universe, anyway.  The composer is more important than the librettist.  It’s the librettist’s job to be yanked around and abused, and it’s the composer’s right to do this.  It’s not a problem.  And what do I have to complain about, anyway?  In the world of my mega-novel, I’m omnipotent god.  If I were to name the two areas I would most ideally like to focus in, it would be opera/musical theatre (as librettist) and fiction (as novelist).  It’s a good balance. When writing novels, I’m unrivaled and unchallenged god over that world; as a librettist I’m a collaborator and a servant, but quite happily so.  I feel that I’m not an underling to any particular person, but an underling to music, a servant of music.  That’s a tremendous honor, not an imposition. 

Under those circumstances, what am I going to do – say no to Martin?  Of course not!  I’d have to be out of my mind to do that.  I can bitch all I want about being yanked around, but of course I’m going to put everything I’ve got into it.  I miss collaboration so badly – not just my short time writing librettos, but all the time I spent around musical theatre since I was four years old, onstage or backstage.  I miss musicians, singers, actors, I miss the chaos of backstage, the parties, the politics, the applause, the smell of theatres.  I have such reverence for actors – they’ve given me so much inspiration over the years for all my writing; I love the chance to serve them with my words.  And most of all, I love music, but words are as close as I can ever get to it.  For a writer, it’s incomparable seeing your story come to life with music.  I have no words for it.  It’s the closest thing in this world to magic, to heaven, to that feeling of “My God, what did I ever do to deserve to be this lucky?”  And that’s one of the main things that recommends me to Martin, I suppose – you’d be hard-pressed to find a person who cares more, who’s more passionate about wanting to do it.  For better or for worse, I know Martin values that more highly than technical expertise or years of experience.  I hope at least that my greater experience and knowledge of narrative will serve me, even though it’s more specific to fiction than the stage.  I do think that years of experience with craft makes me better prepared to properly do my homework on libretto-writing.  And I can certainly discipline myself to be more practical; Martin is working for a performing arts school in Vegas, and plans to find out if they’d have any interest in premiering our work. If so, it would behoove me to write something geared precisely to their tastes, rather than being stubborn and following my own tastes. 

There’s another thing to be said: Martin and I work well together.  Working with Martin is some of the best fun I’ve ever had in my life, because it’s so natural.  We’re on the same page, have the same kinds of artistic goals; it’s a joy to work together.  That’s something I took for granted when he was 18 and I was 22, but over the years I’ve come to understand how rare that is.  We just happened to luck out, knowing each other from childhood.  Not that we don’t fight and have disagreements, but we have a knack for ceding territory to one another.  We seem to have that indefinable quality one might call “creative chemistry.”  To throw that away would be ludicrous.  I’d never think of it. 

And yet…and yet.  I only hope we still have creative chemistry; time has passed, and we’ve both changed.  I know we have an unshakeable friendship.  But I would hate to find that my material no longer inspires him, that it fails to excite.  I can’t handle another disappointment of that magnitude in my life right now.

So why the hell am I telling you all of this, Puccini?  For several reasons.  First of all, because Martin suggested he and I should do some kind of adaptation or modernization to have a greater chance of commercial success, and La Boheme, more than other work, makes me think about these issues (because of Rent).  Second, because, though I’m loathe to admit it, the nature of my work with Martin in the past was much like yours and Verdi’s and others who focus on big, dramatic, powerful emotions. Third, because I tend to look to proven, timeless works for guidance in my own writing (rather than the works of the present), and I think that La Boheme perhaps offers insight into some of my past weaknesses.

And so, first of all: adaptation/modernization.  I had long been curious to see La Boheme because of Rent.  Rent is in many ways to blame for the fact that I ever wrote librettos for Martin in the first place, because as a teenager Martin was obsessed with love of Rent.  Jonathan Larson was his inspiration.  Now, the truth is, I detest Rent, and always have.  I checked it out in its heyday, during the years I was living in New York.  I owned the Broadway recording and listened to it quite a lot, tried hard to like it (mainly because the damned CDs had cost so much). And I tried hard to like it for Martin (who incidentally, in more recent years has also come to hate it).  But I just don’t like it.  I don’t like the characters, I don’t like the music. 

I told my mom my fears of eventually seeing La Boheme and not being able to like it because of my bias against Rent, and it made her sad.  She told me about one of her esteemed music professors at IU in the 1960s, a big burly man who rarely showed emotion. Well, Boheme meant so much to him that when he would attempt to discuss the opera in class, tears would fill his eyes, and he would choke up and be unable to continue speaking. 

And so, this week I did my best to watch Boheme without bias.  The trouble is, I really think that’s impossible.  Because I was enormously familiar with Rent, there was no way to watch Boheme without thinking of the comparisons, of what Larson had “borrowed” (the landlord coming for rent, the group of friends and their “occupations” – philosopher, musician, writer, etc., Mimi wanting her candle lighted, AIDS standing in for consumption, and so forth). 

Actually, I wasn’t nuts about Boheme, but I don’t think it was Rent’s fault.  I think it’s just yet another of these works that is “not for me.”  I was prepared for that.  Part of the trouble is that I already feel too deeply; I don’t need a work that causes me to sob through most of it – I think it was a ten hanky evening for me.

And I dislike the characters, resent them, in fact – both Rent and Boheme. I’ve lived an eccentric life, but far from a free life.  I never got to have camaraderie and understanding with anyone, never got to be with anyone I loved.  And I was certainly as full of longing and passion as any of these characters.  Despite the tragedy of Mimi’s death (in Boheme), I think part of the point of both Rent and Boheme (though Rent emphasizes it more with Mimi actually living at the end, songs like “Seasons of Love,” etc.) is that it’s happy that these two lovers at least found each other and loved one another for a brief time.  “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”   That’s sweet, but my youth is gone, and I never got to be young.  I never had fun.  And I never achieved any of the rather basic things most people want: love, children, friends, a partner.  It’s neither Rent’s nor Boheme’s fault that I’ve turned into a bitter, ruined wreck.  I’m merely saying that though I believe in the message of the works, that doesn’t mean I have any desire to sit through them.  I’m emotionally incapable of liking either work, because I’m a loveless human being. 

What does interest me about Boheme is its greatness, its timelessness, its universality.  I prefer to look to the past and ignore the artistic vagaries of the moment.  If something has lasted a century or more and it still fascinates people, then to me it seems worth studying.  There are admittedly some flaws with that view.  I often think with horror, for example, of the many works throughout history that may have been just as great as the ones that “made it,” but have been lost to us through bad luck. How many novels might there have been that were as great as Moby Dick, but were lost forever to obscurity through sheer bad luck proportional to the good luck of the works we preserve and revere?  And yet, the “test of time” is as good as any test we have.  It may be ruthless and unfair, but it’s also practical.  There’s little we can do about the works that have vanished into the mists of time. 

On the other hand, the “vagaries of the moment” have a certain importance in the choices one makes. Larson channeled timely issues through Rent, and it wasn’t exactly a failure.  Yet I would argue that as opposed to Boheme, Rent has not aged well.  AIDS is not the same thing as consumption, and gays, lesbians, transgender, and bisexual folks (even if they are philosophers and artists) are not the same thing as bohemians.  Larson politicized the material, made it emotionally charged in a way that’s different from the way Boheme is emotionally charged.  Though Larson certainly followed his heart and produced a work he believed in, Rent was of the moment, while Boheme remains timeless.

At any rate, the point is that in terms of doing an adaptation, I’d hate to “ruin” something beloved like Boheme (as Rent somewhat “ruined” it for me), even if only on a small scale (e.g. one performance seen only by a handful of people).  Adaptations and modernizations are, in my mind, prickly with these kinds of ethical concerns.  There are so many dangers and possible missteps. No offense to Jonathan Larson, but I think my own choice would be to do a “respectful” modernization, not a “controversial” one.  And I think I’m more likely to choose a novel or some kind of historical material rather than a work that was written for the stage to begin with. I’m open to either faithful period adaptation, or “modernization.”  The point is staying true the heart of something, only making those changes that are absolutely necessary.  More than anything, I want to do my best to be as respectful and ethical as possible. Nevertheless, no matter how hard you try, not everyone is going to like it.  I have to resign myself to that. 

This leads me to the second and third issues that Boheme calls to mind for me, since they’re interrelated – the fact that, in the past, my lyrics/librettos have been rather intense and dark. Yes, I admit it. I did it, too: these emotionally charged, over-the-top scenes.  In Tales That Are Told, I killed the child of one of my main characters in the second act.  I knew I would rip the heart out of the audience at that point, and I did.  During the performances, I could see and hear them crying.  (And who knows?  Maybe I’ll murder children again if I’m feeling ruthless and desperate enough.)  By contrast, the fiction I’ve written in recent years, though weighted with some seriousness, is much lighter. It’s hard to say how I’ve changed as a librettist over the years; perhaps when I sit down to write a libretto, it will naturally “come out” with more humor this time, unlike in the past.  Or perhaps it’s just that a libretto comes from a different part of one’s self, a different part of one’s mind than fiction.  One is not like the other.  Maybe librettos channel that more intense part of myself, while I reserve more “balance” for fiction. (Of course, recently I’ve learned that I love opera buffe – and especially Mozart’s opera buffe.  But what am I supposed to do with that fact?  I can’t write an opera buffa!  I may be inclined to ignore the “vagaries of the moment,” but not to that extent!) 

Of course, there are other factors that affect this.  If I adapt something, obviously I have to remain true to the spirit of the source material, and that will dictate the degree of humor it contains.  Collaboration affects these things, too; you feed back and forth off of each other.  Back in the day, Martin’s music was very dramatic, a bit dark, and perhaps that’s why my lyrics came out as they did.  I don’t know how Martin’s music may have changed over the years.  In any case, I need to be mindful to write material with a tone that suits his style, that caters to his current strengths.  I need to find these things out. 

But no matter what tone the material takes, it’s a virtual guarantee that there will need to be some kind of relief or humor.  One of the hugest weaknesses of Tales That Are Told was that every aria, one after another, was glum.  There was so little variation that it became unintentionally humorous after awhile.  One thing I liked about Boheme (and one major thing I learned from it) is that though there are long stretches that are emotionally relentless, they’re alternated with scenes of greater levity.  The opening scene with the burning of Rodolfo’s drama for warmth is quite humorous.  This is followed by the emotionally charged scene of Rodolfo and Mimi’s proclamation of love for one another, which is in turn followed by the more light-hearted second act, with Musetta’s appearance, her solution for the payment of the checks, etc.  Even Mimi’s death is preceded by a scene where the men are goofing around.  There’s a lot of balance.  This tells me that even if the part of my mind that creates librettos proves to be as intense as it was when I was 22, I need to consciously add greater humor and levity for practical dramatic reasons.  

Yours,

Elisabeth Hegmann

P.S.I have a magnetic finger puppet of you.  You look like a waiter in a French restaurant.  When I walk by you on my refrigerator, I feel like I should complain to you about dirty forks.  Verdi, Mozart, and Beethoven live with you on the fridge. The four of you are a bit like the bohemians in La Boheme, except instead of a garret, it’s a freezer door. Verdi looks like Santa Claus on acid, Mozart is wearing gold lipstick and looks like a drag queen, and Beethoven looks really, really pissed off.  Which is to say he actually looks like Beethoven. 

Wozzeck journal, 4-28-10

 I’ll keep these final entries short, partly because I’ve rambled on way too long already, and partly because I never have much to say about anything beyond the end of the 19th century.  My sensibilities seem to resonate with earlier times; I have little enthusiasm for works in any genre from the start of the 20th century to the present (except some films). My basic view of life is spiritual, ordered, and rests on an unshakeable intuitive faith; it’s no surprise that atonal music and expressionism fail to inspire me. I guess the problem is that I don’t agree with virtually any of the dominant thinking of the 21st century, including the various college disciplines (psychology, sociology, etc.).  My journey through my B.A. and M.F.A. was extremely painful and combative (although I kept the combat to myself as an internal battle – probably part of why it was so damned painful).  The irony is that I pleased everyone by doing good work while ultimately agreeing with virtually nothing.  I’ve been able to form my own views, to clarify how I feel about things and why, which is enormously valuable – it’s just that I formed most of those views in opposition, which gets rather exhausting.  My own ideas, experiences, and opinions aren’t supposed to be important, and I know that.  But at this point in my life, I insist that they are, damn it.  That makes me an egotistical self-important bitch, but I can’t say I really give a hoot what anyone thinks of me anymore. (Boy, the idea of me teaching high school should be interesting.  Can I put on an act, spout things I don’t actually believe for eight hours every day?  I’d better, since it appears to be my last shot at not living on a cardboard box on the street.)  I’ve enjoyed this past semester in Opera and 17th and 18th century music, because I mainly got to look back to time periods with artistic sensibilities that make sense to me.  

Berg and company are another thing about which Martin and I feel similarly.  As I recall, we’ve had conversations where he nearly started foaming at the mouth over the 2nd Viennese School (though if I remember correctly, part of what angers him is that he believes that Schoenberg’s ideas helped destroy symphonic music as a popular art form). The quote from Schoenberg in the text helps me understand my own basic difficulties with him: “…a work of art can produce no greater effect than when it transmits the emotions which raged in the creator to the listener, in such a way they rage and storm in him” (Seaton 394).  In essence, that’s the exact opposite about how I feel about art and its purpose, and it’s the exact opposite of my own goals as an artist.  There’s no way to reconcile myself to this view in any way.  This is a case of agreeing to disagree with Schoenberg, and nothing else can be done about it.  

Nevertheless, I will always defend the right of an artist to convey anything he or she wishes, no matter how unpleasant (and have had to do so on many occasions).  That’s the great thing about the arts; no matter how deeply I disagree with a certain expression, it’s my responsibility to defend it, because it’s part of the range of human experience and empathy. And regardless of how I feel about Berg, Schoenberg, and company, it’s important that I know about them. It’s interesting to me that Romanticism led in this particular direction, but not surprising; when you start tearing down all the walls, others are going to come along and tear out the doors, the floor, the ceiling, the plumbing.

About Wozzeck: I do really like that drunken philosopher in the pub.  My immortal soul stinks, too, buddy!  I’ve always had a great fascination (for lack of a better word) with the toll that World War I took on the collective unconscious of the world.  It was like the western world as a whole was permanently wounded, permanently disillusioned by the horrific losses and the knowledge of the unthinkable destruction we were capable of carrying out from that war onward.  Of the many dark artistic sensibilities that followed WW I, my personal favorite is absurdism.  And there are a lot of absurdist sensibilities in Wozzeck.   The distorted folk songs are a really interesting effect – everything twisted as though from Wozzeck’s point of view.  I don’t necessarily believe that atonality was the only choice to convey this character’s insanity and madness; there are so many points of view one can take on a story.  But it’s certainly an interesting choice. 

The orchestral interludes between sung sections were deeply disturbing and unsettling, contributing to a rise in the general tension.  Also, the opera seemed to lack the natural narrative transitions we’d expect.  Of course, recitative is long gone in all the operas we’ve watched since Wagner; now they all have this continuous interwoven texture (which, not surprisingly, I don’t much like).  Before Wagner, the recitative signaled things like transitions and pacing to the audience. But here in Wozzeck, not only do we lack these “signals” of the past, but we also seem to lack any kind of “natural” narrative transitions we’ve come to expect in dramatic works.  As one example, when Wozzeck kills Marie, I don’t recall there being any explanation as to how or why they were together in the woods.  They’re suddenly just there, and then he kills Marie.  These “blank spots” in the story seem to mirror the shattered nature of Wozzeck’s psyche. And at the end, the reaction of Wozzeck’s kid was downright creepy.  If Wagner’s sensibilities are akin to the later fantasy genre, Berg’s sensibilities in Wozzeck strike me as being akin to horror films – a genre that also prides itself on peeling back the outer layers to show the ugliness and madness that lies beneath.  (If that’s what one believes.)

Postmodern opera journal, 4-29-10

I wish I felt like I had something smart to say to wrap things up, but I just really think I fail to “get” these modern movements and schools of thought.  I suppose some of my views have been influenced by Martin over the years.  (He really hates minimalism and Philip Glass.)  The idea that composers have migrated over to where the money is, in film music, and away from opera, makes sense to me.  That’s what Martin is doing in Las Vegas – trying to get closer to L.A.  He always has been far more practical than me; he’s also talked about the fact that he would write things for purely commercial reasons, even if he got no personal artistic satisfaction out of it whatsoever.  I admire the fact that he wants to try to work at what he actually does. Unfortunately, I’m more of the artistic sort who feels forced to get a job I detest, but which is steady, so that I’m free to write whatever I want to write.  I’m just not a competitive sort.  I can’t fight the other people who are better at promoting themselves.  

But those are dull practical conundrums. What interests me are creative conundrums, and the biggest creative conundrum for me is how to look to modern works for a cue on what directions I should go when writing a libretto.  It seems clear that I should have an awareness of the present, and make shrewd decisions accordingly.  But the trouble is, I just have no affinity for modern work at all (nor am I known for my shrewdness).  I suppose I have to look, by necessity, more at current musical theatre than opera, which is a shame; the style, tone, and subject matter that would suit me as a writer seem to be located more in modern musical theatre.  I say “a shame” simply because I prefer opera as a genre.  For one thing, I dislike spoken dialogue interspersed with songs; I far prefer a work to be sung through.  On the other hand, it’s clear that the lines can be blurred, as with Rent. Regardless of how much I dislike that show, it’s nevertheless instructive on a variety of levels.  But all of this is a problem I can’t solve today.  I have a hundred ideas on things to write a libretto about, but I don’t have the right idea yet, and it won’t come until I have some space to breathe and focus. 

I know Poulenc’s name somehow, but can’t place it, and it’s driving me crazy.  I suppose my mom probably had a student working on a piano piece by him at some point.  At any rate, that was a mighty interesting scene from Dialogues of the Carmelites.  What a great idea to have the nuns singing as a chorus, and have their numbers shrink (and the sound diminish) as they’re each beheaded.  (Not the most cheerful thing to watch, but effective.)  The sound of the guillotine as part of the music is great, too, as is the bare staging.  Far more effective than if things got a bit too literal in the staging and the set.

Nixon in China, Jackie-O and Satyagraha, though very different, all seem to have certain similarities.  Not just the music’s minimalism, but an ambition to say something serious, big, and philosophical about the modern world.  This inclination seems natural, the subject matter apt.  And it’s interesting to me that the concern with celebrity shows up repeatedly.  That’s a theme that appears (unbidden) in my own writing as well, as it’s a subject that fascinates me.  Apparently it fascinates all of us.  But all I can say on a personal level about these three works is that what I saw neither moved me nor interested me. 

Glass seemed to be capturing a bit more of a minimalist “meditative” state in Satyagraha than Adams with Nixon in China, which had a bit more of a sense of driving forward as a traditional narrative.  That makes sense, I guess, since in the commentaries by the director and others on Satyagraha, the meditative quality was a lot of the point.  I understand that it’s possible as well as perhaps an interesting experience to contemplate and meditate on texts and plots one doesn’t understand, to simply hypnotically experience whatever is happening; but I must say I really prefer to contemplate and meditate on texts and plots I do understand.  Those giant newspaper puppets were pretty awesome, though.  I wonder if they would let me borrow them for Halloween?

I found it interesting that Nixon in China uses the conceit of showing the inside monologue of different characters onstage.  This tells me that trends on the stage have gone hand in hand with certain trends in literature that I happen to dislike.  That is, things have moved away from omniscient point of view, and toward a variety of limited, subjective points of view.  I understand the need to experiment, but the effect doesn’t move me or interest me.  It also seems natural that things are moving toward multimedia experiences, as with Jackie-O.   Trouble is, multi-media doesn’t really seem to enhance an artistic experience for me or make it more powerful.  Instead, it dilutes it.  An old-fashioned purist I am, and an old-fashioned purist I will remain.

I grew up with West Side Story, along with all the Broadway standards.  From childhood through my teenage years I was in or stage managed something along the lines of 50 musicals, though never West Side Story, quite amazingly, considering how frequently it’s performed by high schools and community theatre groups.  In any case, it’s not one of my favorites (boy, am I a bitch in this entry – I seem to have become the Simon Cowell of Music 330), though I do understand how groundbreaking it was in its subject matter at the time and the dramatic way it handled it. The biggest instructive point for me is probably the fact that even back then it was blurring the line between musical theatre and opera.  That just goes to show that when Martin and I go ahead with our project, I can borrow freely from either form as I see fit.  That gives me a little hope that I might be able to come up with something I actually like, and that I won’t have to have a giant Campbell’s soup can onstage.  I mean, the can is kind of awesome.  I just don’t happen to want one.