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Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door
Written on the train from New York City to Boston, circa 3 PM. I've done more traveling in the last four days than in the entire month of November. I feel like the yo-yo of the eastern seaboard.
There were swans in the harbor at Bridgeport, yesterday, on the train down from New Haven to New York. Half an hour ago, as we passed a cold and sandy stretch of beach, somewhere else in Connecticut, north of New Haven and I'd know if I had a map, I saw another: white against the waves where the sun was turning the water to dark reflection. (More salt marsh and sea-strand off to my right now, and the water where it wrinkles under the wind is bluer right now than the cloud-sanded sky, skimmed over with the thin parchment color that the horizon sometimes turns in winter sunset. Beach houses, stone walls, wooden pilings standing up out of the harbor where the tide has come half in, fishing boats still at the docks and others covered over with tarps for the winter. The air and the water have the clarity of immense cold. I've never been able to get the words right. I wouldn't live here, I know, but I find these landscapes incredibly beautiful; better than Andrew Wyeth. I need more sea in my life. I am starting to look wistfully at rivers.) I always thought of swans as freshwater creatures, perhaps because I grew up looking for them in the Boston Commons and the Arlington Reservoir. Are they seagoing?
I was in New York City to see, with a dear someone who does not have a livejournal, Strauss' Die Fledermaus at the Met. We'd seen the Boston Lyric Opera's production two or three years ago, in English, but never a production in German. I am pleased to report that we were not disappointed. I am starting to think that Sondra Radvanovsky (Rosalinde), no matter that she comes from Illinois, is descended from Homeric Sirens; she is possessed of an extraordinary, shimmering pianissimo and when her voice rises to full, it picks up all the overtones of a change-rung bell. Against this, it's all the more impressive that the male lead, Bo Skovhus (Gabriel von Eisenstein), held his own: I wasn't sure about him in his first few scenes, but I'd warmed to him greatly by the second act, and he turned out to have a marvelous deadpan* as well as a clear, dark-grained baritone. Marina Domashenko was an interesting cross-cast as Prince Orlofsky, in that she could never be mistaken for male vocally, but was otherwise wholly convincing as a very young Russian millionaire—an adolescent with more money than taste, and more champagne than either.** Frank Kelley is still my reigning Dr. Blind, but I liked Bernard Fitch surprisingly well in his confrontation with Eisenstein in the third act,*** and Bill Irwin stole all his scenes—as well the character should—as the drunken jailer Frosch, who improvised his lines so wildly that the subtitles were more place-markers than anything else.**** Kudos also to Earle Patriarco as Dr. Falke, whose spoken acting—with no slight to his voice—impressed me seriously; and John Del Carlo as Frank, the warden of the jail, who speaks excellent fake French. I was particularly entertained to realize that Janez Lotrič, who performed Alfred, the quintessential-to-the-point-of-parody Italian tenor, is Slovenian.
And this morning there was a transit strike, so I walked from JTS (121st and Broadway) to Penn Station (34th and Broadway) with a backpack full of dress clothes, worn clothes, three books, an iBook, assorted paraphernalia, and a pair of dress boots. On the bright side, this took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and that includes the five minutes I stopped into a Duane Reade somewhere in the '80's to buy some Kleenex and the other five minutes I was lost at Columbus Circle. I made the one o'clock train; I am well-exercised for the week; I have only one blister, albeit the respectable size of a nickel, on the pad of my left foot. (Oh, my Ugg boots. You are so comfortable. I had you before you were trendy. You are not so good for walking long distances in.) On the dimmer side, although I was warm enough to shed jacket, hat, and scarf by the '90's, and thereby get catcalled by some construction workers—"Hot-blooded, eh?"—by the time I was walking through the crowds of Times Square, I think my hands were seriously debating freezing and falling off. In the end, however, I have little to complain about. The woman from whom I bought my ticket had walked to work from 145th that morning; at three in the morning. It could always be worse!
(There's snow on the ground now, in the winter dusk. Two states ago, there was only a little slush in the streets. This looks more like solstitial New England.)
So the moral of the story is: I need to see more opera, somewhere by the sea, where I can buy good walking boots. But right now, I think I'd settle for some sleep.
But first, I have to light a fire.
*In answer to his friend Dr. Falke's question, "Where's your watch?" he mournfully indicates the supposed Hungarian countess who has dropped his "charming little lady's watch" down the well-endowed bodice of her ballroom gown—and proved impervious to any attempts to retrieve it. "Over there," and Eisenstein makes a gesture that, when less gloomy, has been used to appreciate many a zaftig frame. "Somewhere between Buda and Pesht."
**"Nazdrovye!" Orlofsky declares, tossing back what is clearly not the first shot of the night. Eisenstein, who has not been able to get out of drinking vodka with the Prince, raises his shotglass with ironic fatalism: "L'chaim . . ."
***Through various complications too silly to enumerate, Eisenstein has finally arrived at the jail to serve his eight-day sentence only to find another man already locked up under his name, and his stuttering lawyer—whose incompetence he has to thank for eight days in prison rather than the original five—there at the supposed Eisenstein's call. On hearing this piece of news, hardly able to believe his ears, our actual Eisenstein snaps, "Then Eisenstein is an idiot!" and quicker than he can finish the sentence, Dr. Blind shouts triumphantly, "Correct!" There is an offended pause. "Take that back," Eisenstein orders, somewhat hurt. Dr. Blind clutches his battered briefcase, draws himself up resolutely, or at least as resolutely up as a man who appears about five foot tall can draw, and on his dignity and tightly straight-faced—"I'm glad I finally got it out."
****This discrepancy was put to use in at least one brilliant gag. When interrogating the tenor Alfred about his repertoire and resume, Frosch belligerently declares, "I don't like the Met! The singers . . . the orchestra . . . And the audience," as he glares out into the house, all rag-limbed discoordination and muddled wait-for-it, "they are always watching television on the backs of their chairs!" The audience goes up; and Frosch concludes in disgust, "It's not an opera house. It's a multiplex!"
There were swans in the harbor at Bridgeport, yesterday, on the train down from New Haven to New York. Half an hour ago, as we passed a cold and sandy stretch of beach, somewhere else in Connecticut, north of New Haven and I'd know if I had a map, I saw another: white against the waves where the sun was turning the water to dark reflection. (More salt marsh and sea-strand off to my right now, and the water where it wrinkles under the wind is bluer right now than the cloud-sanded sky, skimmed over with the thin parchment color that the horizon sometimes turns in winter sunset. Beach houses, stone walls, wooden pilings standing up out of the harbor where the tide has come half in, fishing boats still at the docks and others covered over with tarps for the winter. The air and the water have the clarity of immense cold. I've never been able to get the words right. I wouldn't live here, I know, but I find these landscapes incredibly beautiful; better than Andrew Wyeth. I need more sea in my life. I am starting to look wistfully at rivers.) I always thought of swans as freshwater creatures, perhaps because I grew up looking for them in the Boston Commons and the Arlington Reservoir. Are they seagoing?
I was in New York City to see, with a dear someone who does not have a livejournal, Strauss' Die Fledermaus at the Met. We'd seen the Boston Lyric Opera's production two or three years ago, in English, but never a production in German. I am pleased to report that we were not disappointed. I am starting to think that Sondra Radvanovsky (Rosalinde), no matter that she comes from Illinois, is descended from Homeric Sirens; she is possessed of an extraordinary, shimmering pianissimo and when her voice rises to full, it picks up all the overtones of a change-rung bell. Against this, it's all the more impressive that the male lead, Bo Skovhus (Gabriel von Eisenstein), held his own: I wasn't sure about him in his first few scenes, but I'd warmed to him greatly by the second act, and he turned out to have a marvelous deadpan* as well as a clear, dark-grained baritone. Marina Domashenko was an interesting cross-cast as Prince Orlofsky, in that she could never be mistaken for male vocally, but was otherwise wholly convincing as a very young Russian millionaire—an adolescent with more money than taste, and more champagne than either.** Frank Kelley is still my reigning Dr. Blind, but I liked Bernard Fitch surprisingly well in his confrontation with Eisenstein in the third act,*** and Bill Irwin stole all his scenes—as well the character should—as the drunken jailer Frosch, who improvised his lines so wildly that the subtitles were more place-markers than anything else.**** Kudos also to Earle Patriarco as Dr. Falke, whose spoken acting—with no slight to his voice—impressed me seriously; and John Del Carlo as Frank, the warden of the jail, who speaks excellent fake French. I was particularly entertained to realize that Janez Lotrič, who performed Alfred, the quintessential-to-the-point-of-parody Italian tenor, is Slovenian.
And this morning there was a transit strike, so I walked from JTS (121st and Broadway) to Penn Station (34th and Broadway) with a backpack full of dress clothes, worn clothes, three books, an iBook, assorted paraphernalia, and a pair of dress boots. On the bright side, this took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and that includes the five minutes I stopped into a Duane Reade somewhere in the '80's to buy some Kleenex and the other five minutes I was lost at Columbus Circle. I made the one o'clock train; I am well-exercised for the week; I have only one blister, albeit the respectable size of a nickel, on the pad of my left foot. (Oh, my Ugg boots. You are so comfortable. I had you before you were trendy. You are not so good for walking long distances in.) On the dimmer side, although I was warm enough to shed jacket, hat, and scarf by the '90's, and thereby get catcalled by some construction workers—"Hot-blooded, eh?"—by the time I was walking through the crowds of Times Square, I think my hands were seriously debating freezing and falling off. In the end, however, I have little to complain about. The woman from whom I bought my ticket had walked to work from 145th that morning; at three in the morning. It could always be worse!
(There's snow on the ground now, in the winter dusk. Two states ago, there was only a little slush in the streets. This looks more like solstitial New England.)
So the moral of the story is: I need to see more opera, somewhere by the sea, where I can buy good walking boots. But right now, I think I'd settle for some sleep.
But first, I have to light a fire.
*In answer to his friend Dr. Falke's question, "Where's your watch?" he mournfully indicates the supposed Hungarian countess who has dropped his "charming little lady's watch" down the well-endowed bodice of her ballroom gown—and proved impervious to any attempts to retrieve it. "Over there," and Eisenstein makes a gesture that, when less gloomy, has been used to appreciate many a zaftig frame. "Somewhere between Buda and Pesht."
**"Nazdrovye!" Orlofsky declares, tossing back what is clearly not the first shot of the night. Eisenstein, who has not been able to get out of drinking vodka with the Prince, raises his shotglass with ironic fatalism: "L'chaim . . ."
***Through various complications too silly to enumerate, Eisenstein has finally arrived at the jail to serve his eight-day sentence only to find another man already locked up under his name, and his stuttering lawyer—whose incompetence he has to thank for eight days in prison rather than the original five—there at the supposed Eisenstein's call. On hearing this piece of news, hardly able to believe his ears, our actual Eisenstein snaps, "Then Eisenstein is an idiot!" and quicker than he can finish the sentence, Dr. Blind shouts triumphantly, "Correct!" There is an offended pause. "Take that back," Eisenstein orders, somewhat hurt. Dr. Blind clutches his battered briefcase, draws himself up resolutely, or at least as resolutely up as a man who appears about five foot tall can draw, and on his dignity and tightly straight-faced—"I'm glad I finally got it out."
****This discrepancy was put to use in at least one brilliant gag. When interrogating the tenor Alfred about his repertoire and resume, Frosch belligerently declares, "I don't like the Met! The singers . . . the orchestra . . . And the audience," as he glares out into the house, all rag-limbed discoordination and muddled wait-for-it, "they are always watching television on the backs of their chairs!" The audience goes up; and Frosch concludes in disgust, "It's not an opera house. It's a multiplex!"
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I'm sure we'd love to see you. Bring figgy pudding.
(Actually, don't worry about that last bit.)
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I agree. I think we need to all pool our riches and influence and create a seaside opera hiking community.