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È tutto un grande addio,
un giorno Gondrand passerà,
te lo dico io,
col camion giallo porterà
via tutto quanto
e poi più niente resterà
del nostro mondo…
—Il maestro, “Fuga all’inglese”
[It’s all one big goodbye. One day Gondrand (a trucking company) will come by—I’m telling you—and the yellow truck will carry off everything, and nothing more will be left of our world…]
vilaine fille soon takes off to visit Lobo and his bipeds, her sisters K and A, and her darling friend W. But for the pensée du dimanche and some almanac-style postings to keep you amused, we go silent until the week of 24 April.
During our absence, please frequent our beloved vilaines filles and mauvais garçons, as well as the Manolo and Geoffrey Chaucer, vilaine fille’s current blogging idols. (Will you be next, gentle reader?)
Happy spring—or happy autumn, for dearest J, M, C, and the rest of you in the southern hemisphere! *smooch*
It is interesting to note that Moses… had a speech impediment. Even though Moses received clear prophecy of all that was going to happen, he initially refused the mission, for he questioned how the Jewish people, much less Pharaoh, would hear him. Some say that he stuttered because the world was not ready to hear his words…
[In the month of Nisan] we need to tap into the energy of Moses and overcome the ways we hold ourselves back from speaking our truth, carrying out our life mission, and allow our voice to be heard by others and ourselves. And like Moses’ words, our words can change reality.
—Melinda Ribner
This was the month when the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt, it will be the month in the future when the final redemption will take place, and in every Nissan there is the hope and expectation that something new and wonderful will happen… There is a heavenly influx of grace and compassion this month that enables us to go forward in our lives.
—Melinda Ribner
Why is “rejoicing” not written [in regard to Passover]? Because the Egyptians died then. And thus you will find that on all seven days of Sukkot we recite the Hallel, but on Passover we do not, except on the first day and first evening. Why? As Samuel said, quoting the verse, “If your enemy falls, do not exult” (Prov. 24:17).
—Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 52:8, quoted by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
From the very beginning our ancestors were worshippers of strange practices [idol worship]…
Before the exit from the Garden of Eden, humankind lived with an innate knowledge (Torah) of how to live on this planet and the symbiotic relationship of all things… After the exit, humankind forgot this knowing and lost its close relationship with G-d and Nature. The war against Creation was declared; humans began conquering the Earth rather than nurturing it; suppressing the female; the Shekhinah went into exile… With the Awakened One the story starts to turn, albeit slowly and painfully. The innate Torah was too difficult to hold onto so a written version was passed down. It contains remnants of life in Eden modified for life outside of Eden. We are messengers carrying this knowledge throughout history, waiting for the time that it is needed. Now is that time.
—Michael L. Kagan
From Jewish Heritage Online Magazine:
A beautiful collection of articles and online exhibits
Chag Pesach kasher v’sameach!
I arrived at Saturday’s Carnegie Hall concert by Asha Bhosle and the Kronos Quartet with the remnants of a migraine hammering at my temples; I left largely healed by the grace, gentle strength, and wide-open heart of a great lady. From Newsday, here is my review of Asha Bhosle’s Carnegie Hall début, with fleeting looks back at a few other highlights of Kronos’s “Live Mix” series.
I commend to you Alex Ross’s report on the first half of the Kronos series. He liked Alexandra du Bois’s Nachtliederen somewhat less than I. Myself, I was deeply moved by the work’s wild, feverish, klezmer-tinged lyricism and almost suffocating closeness. (Disclosure: You may recall that I wrote a program note for Nachtliederen.)
Michael Gordon’s The Sad Park I found mesmerizing—the way the children’s voices, so clear and innocent, slowly disintegrated into ghostly howls, moans, and sighs. I look forward to hearing this piece again, perhaps a few years from now when it may hurt less. Yasher koach.
Finally, you all know that I adore Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s music, and “Notes from Azerbaijan” was, for me, one of this season’s best concerts. I wish I could say more—but I still have chametz to nose out…
Later!
vilaine fille had the good fortune to attend three high-profile musical events last week. Thursday night brought stunning sets at Birdland by the pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, in trio with Marc Johnson and Paul Motian, and the trumpeter Enrico Rava, in a quintet that included the brilliant young trombone virtuoso Gianluca Petrella.
I was struck almost dumb by Rava’s austere but intense music-making and his mind-boggling virtuosity. Ribbons of supple, buttery tone, blistering squeaks, filthy shreds, long, downy-soft sighs… Is there no sound that Rava cannot draw from a horn? And, G-d, is he sexy—also sweet, gentle, and not nearly so diabolico up close as he appears on stage.
Rava has a gorgeous catalogue of ECM recordings and also appears on Gianmaria Testa’s Altre latitudini. In coming days, Rava and the pianist Stefano Bollani play gigs in Chicago, Boston, and at SFJazz.
Saturday night, at Carnegie Hall, I heard the St. Louis Symphony under David Robertson play John Adams’ “On the transmigration of souls” and Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem. It’s hard for me to say much about the Adams—I listened to one of the recently released 9/11 recordings and spent a sleepless night afterwards. I will say that while some took issue with the fragmentary, quizzical nature of Adams’ music and its apparent lack of teleology, I am grateful for those qualities. Then again, I agree with Ron Rosenbaum when he writes, contra the so-called “Freedom Tower” project,
the best thing to do would be to preserve the gaping wound, not try to cover it up, pretty it over, gentrify it, achieve some contrived “architectural solution” to the problem.
There is no architectural solution to tragedy, to history, no architectural solution that could do justice to the truth of the event other than to leave that gaping hole in the ground.
In the Brahms, the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus under Amy Kaiser turned in some of the most wondrously mellow singing I have heard. “Selig sind die Toten,” in particular, was ravishing. The childlike, otherworldly tones of the opening measures gradually gave way to rich but translucent layers of sound—the aural equivalent of Rembrandt’s washes of amber and gold, a quality I have encountered previously only in Act II of a Scala Forza led by Riccardo Muti.
The baritone soloist was vilaine fille coqueluche Russell Braun. I thought that the part lay a bit low for him, but how beautifully he articulated the text, and what quiet fervor he brought to “Herr, lehre doch mich.” Again, I warmly commend to you Braun’s recording of Schubert’s Die Winterreise, which I chose as one of Newsday’s top CDs of 2005.
Finally, I saw Don Pasquale at the Met and would have left after the first act if I hadn’t had a Newsday review to write. Anna Netrebko is talented. She has a lovely voice, pluck, great beauty… How could she go so horribly wrong? I loathed Cecilia Bartoli’s mugging in the 1998 Met Nozze di Figaro, but Netrebko’s antics in Don Pasquale were orders of magnitude more repellent. And I thought that her Gilda earlier this season was more than respectable. (Then again, when you find yourself appreciative that a musician is bothering to fake her trills instead of omitting them altogether…)
I had planned to see Don Pasquale several times, since I am indeed High Priestess of the Most Holy Congregation of Flórez, but I think I’ll limit myself to the performance with Petrova.
Oh, let’s not end on such a down note. I leave you with one of the most sublime things I know: the serenata from Don Pasquale as sung by Tito Schipa.
Donizetti’s opera teems with in-jokes—the parody of the Lucia wedding contract scene being the most obvious one. And while waltzes dominate the last hour of Don Pasquale, as befits a “modern,” urban opera written for Paris, Donizetti opens the final act with this bit of pointedly archaic heaven, complete with an echt-pastoral moniker (“Nina”), sweetly predictable rhymes, and faux guitar-strumming. What genius it took to write something so apparently simple and so utterly bewitching!
Schipa’s performance exemplifies everything that vilaine fille prizes in singing: impeccable craft, clear enunciation, simplicity, elegance, humility, heart. Buon ascolto!
P.S. Only 13 days until Lohengrin opens!
On 29 April, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City under Francisco J. Núñez presents “Transient Glory® V,” a program of seven commissioned new works. One of them is Rufus Wainwright’s “Bloom,” a setting of texts by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and others, with the Stephen Petronio Dance Company.
The evening also includes pieces by Thea Musgrave, Mark Adamo, Derek Bermel, John Corigliano, Bobby Previte, and David Sawer.
The program notes are here; tickets can be purchased at 212.415.5500.
I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some
agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving
daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I
even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if
I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I
resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for
enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the
bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed
earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and
wise in spite of themselves.
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