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From Newsday, here is my preview of “Wagner, Our Contemporary,” the four-concert series that opens tonight at New York’s French Institute/Alliance Française.
In honor of my sister Fred Nietzsche, who went mad in Torino, and whose music is part of tonight’s program, here are a few quotes from The Case of Wagner:
[Wagner was] the most impolite genius in the world. (Wagner treats us as if—he says something so often—till one despairs—till one believes it.)
That yet other lessons may be learned from the works just named I’d sooner demonstrate than deny… That it may have the direst consequences if one doesn’t go to bed at the right time. (Once more the case of Lohengrin.) That one should never know too precisely whom exactly one has married. (For the third time, the case of Lohengrin.)
Wagner understood how to command; in this, too, he was the great teacher. He commanded as the inexorable will to himself, as lifelong self-discipline: Wagner who furnishes perhaps the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art (—even Alfieri, otherwise his closest relative, stands surpassed. Note by a Turinese).
P.S. Only 48 days until Lohengrin!
Didn’t Peppino look natty in his fur hat?
From Newsday, here is my review of the Met’s La forza del destino revival. Dig the fab-o headline: “La forza” may not be with you at the Met.
I’m not ready to join the prophets of doom re: Deborah Voigt’s vocal estate, as I feel that anyone would be undone by singing without an interval Acts I and II of Forza, which have some of Verdi’s most punishing music for soprano. (Isolde, the Kaiserin? I think their roles are less cruelly wrought than Leonora’s.) In any event, Forza might be more manageable at so-called Verdi pitch (A=430 or 432).
Indeed, what struck me most when hearing Forza this time are (1) the mind-boggling difficulty of the vocal writing; (2) the sheer greatness of the piece, which comes around oh-so-rarely; and (3) the sadness, the sadness.
To prep for my Forza review, I revisited Giuseppe Sinopoli’s recording, which is not widely admired, though I love its brooding contour and the vertiginous, hallucinatory edge of the Preziosilla scenes. Despite the revival’s shortcomings, I do plan to catch another Forza at the Met this season.
Giuseppina wrote to a friend about Verdi’s culinary requirements for the three months he planned to spend in St. Petersburg for the Forza premiere:
Quite perfect tagliatelli and maccheroni will be needed to keep him in good humor amid the ice and the furs… By the way, while I remember, if la Ristori believes she will hold superiority in the matter of tagliatelli, Verdi counts on eclipsing her with risotto, which truly he makes in divine fashion…
As for wine, here is the number of bottles and the qualities which Verdi would like:
100 bottles of light Bordeaux dinner wines
20 bottles of fine Bordeaux
20 bottles of champagne
Giuseppina described the plight of the poor in Russia to Verdi’s friend Arrivabene:
This frightful cold has not troubled us in the least, thanks to our apartments. One sees the cold, but one doesn’t feel it! Let’s be clear about this, however. This strange contradiction is a benefit reserved for the rich, who can indeed exclaim, “Hurrah for the cold, the ice, the sledges and other terrestial joys!” But the poor people in general, and the coachmen in particular, are the most unhappy creatures in the universe. Imagine, Signor Conte, many of the coachmen stay sometimes all day and a part of the night immovable on their boxes, exposed to deadly cold, waiting for their masters, who are guzzling in warm and splendid apartments, while perhaps some of those unhappy beings are freezing to death! Such atrocious things happen every year! I shall never be able to accustom myself to the sight of such suffering.
I do not know of any recording greater than the Forza Act II finale as performed by Ezio Pinza and Rosa Ponselle, who created the role of Leonora at the 1918 Met premiere of Forza. This page also includes sound files of Ponselle’s “Pace, pace, mio D-o” and two selections that always move me to tears as sung by the Connecticut-born soprano: Tosti’s “’A vucchella” and “O nume tutelar” from Spontini’s La vestale.
Actually, just listen to everything in Ponselle’s listening room.
I wish my fellow statunitensi a fine and relaxing Presidents’ Day. vilaine fille returns early next week.
In honor of Presidents’ Day, I invite you to read George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jews of Rhode Island. The Touro Synagogue offers the full exchange: the missive from Warden Moses Seixas, and the response from President Washington. I draw your attention to one sentence in particular:
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.
Can you keep a dry eye reading President Washington’s conclusion?
May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
Bartleby, the website I visit more often and with greater profit than any other, offers among its riches the inaugural addresses of all U.S. Presidents and a fine Abraham Lincoln Collection. (Be sure not to miss the many Lincoln-related selections by Walt Whitman.)
Where to start with Lincoln? The Abraham Lincoln Collection at the Library of Congress includes links to drafts of the Gettysburg Address and the only known photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg. Myself, I love the Second Inagural best:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as G-d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Warm weather is for wimps. Let it snow!
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