Week 2 at the Online Opera: Wagner Week

I am doing a copy and paste from the Met site for those who are wondering what week 2 at the metopera.com site is streaming.  

A week of Wagner.  Fabulous

Eric and Catherine and George and Kathy Jarvis went to Germany to hear Wagner last summer.  Here is another chance to enjoy him all week.  

All week and in the comfort of your own home.

Already I can hear the thick harmonies coming.  Check out this Guardian Review as well.

Week 2: Wagner Week

Monday, March 23
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
Starring Nina Stemme, Ekaterina Gubanova, Stuart Skelton, Evgeny Nikitin, and René Pape, conducted by Simon Rattle. From October 8, 2016.

Tuesday, March 24
Wagner’s Das Rheingold
Starring Wendy Bryn Harmer, Stephanie Blythe, Richard Croft, Gerhard Siegel, Dwayne Croft, Bryn Terfel, Eric Owens, and Hans-Peter König, conducted by James Levine. From October 9, 2010. 

Wednesday, March 25
Wagner’s Die Walküre
Starring Deborah Voigt, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel, and Hans-Peter König, conducted by James Levine. From May 14, 2011.

Thursday, March 26
Wagner’s Siegfried
Starring Deborah Voigt, Jay Hunter Morris, Gerhard Siegel, Bryn Terfel, and Eric Owens, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From November 5, 2011.

Friday, March 27
Wagner’s GötterdämmerungStarring Deborah Voigt, Wendy Bryn Harmer, Waltraud Meier, Jay Hunter Morris, Iain Paterson, Eric Owens, and Hans-Peter König, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From February 11, 2012.

Saturday, March 28
Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von NürnbergStarring Annette Dasch, Johan Botha, Paul Appleby, and Michael Volle, conducted by James Levine. From December 13, 2014.

Sunday, March 29
Wagner’s TannhäuserStarring Eva-Maria Westbroek, Michelle DeYoung, Johan Botha, Peter Mattei, and Gunther Groissböck, conducted by James Levine. From October 31, 2015.

Tristan and Isolde - a Saturday morning to die for

Nina Steeme

Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times

Michael Cooper writes on or around Tristan and  Isolde when he talks about Nina Stemme in his article "Nina Stemme Takes on her Biggest Opera Assignment Yet."

Tonight, I am pretty sure that I have been poking around the internet too long when I see a note on my computer screen telling me that I have already read my 10 free articles with the New York Times for this month, and  asking me, do I want to subscribe.

But I can't help going out and finding reviews.  They all seem just too delicious to me, in my search to get informed before I go to performances.

Today's opera was a thrill for many reasons.  Sitting beside David was fun -- his first opera.  Grade VI seems like a good time to start.

I was worried about the length for him as a first time viewer, but then thinking that it is no longer than a ride from the Shuswap to Calgary, I could see that the length was no problem.

I loved sitting beside Bonnie in the opera as well -- 3 generations of us, listening to Wager.

The themes are dark and complicated, but I believe David will only hear and see what he has the intellectual capacity to understand in the arts, so there was no problem there.  He did tell his mother that one of the themes was about sex and did she feel that was appropriate for him.  I guess she felt it was, for she let him go.

I don't know if it is just me, or if this happens to other people, but there are times listening to Wagner when I can feel chills going up and down my spine, or even the hair raising on my arms when I heard some of the music.

I was interested to hear Maestro Rattle say that in the second act, when the voice of Brangane is heard off stage with her warning to the lovers, that he has to concentrate on not being overcome with the richness of the sound himself.  I was glad to hear him say that and to listen more intensely when those strains were heard.

I shake my head at myself, when I listen to the opera and to the educational add-ons.  I heard someone pronounce maestro in a new way, and then he made it plural with maestri, something I had never thought about.

Many of the melodies of Tristan und Isolde are familiar to me now.  Familiar but not boring.

Arta

Opera Questions

The Australian tenor Stuart Skelton as Tristan 
at the Metropolitan Opera.

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

We decided to take a leaf from a method that Rebecca has used with her sons when she takes them to NT Live Performance.

She can ask them a question, or they can ask her a question. If she asks them a question and they give the right answer, she will give them $1. If they ask her a question and she can either give the answer, or is stumped, they still get $1, if they can confirm that they have the answer to the question that stumped her.

We decided to try this out with David. After the 5 ½ hour event, David wasn’t up to answering any questions, no matter what sum he would earn. After a good meal at home, and some discussion time, he was belting out the questions and earning cash. Bonnie joined him in the task of seeing who could ask the hardest questions. I don’t think that either of them understood that in this game, an easy question earns the same amount as a hard question.

1. At the end of the First Act, what are Isolde’s last words before being brought before King Marke?
(Answer: Must I live.)

2. What is a phrase that exemplifies the word love?
(Answer: Tristan und Isolde)

3. When Tristan was being helped back to good health, what did he tell Isolde that his name was?
(Answer: Tantris)

4. How many people fall to their knees in grief as they are singing?
(Answer: Tristan, Isolde, Kerwenal)

5. How many levels of balconies did we see at the Met?
(Answer: four)

6. Is it OK to boo instead of clap after a performance?
(Yes. Booing is a practice that started in Italy.)

7. Where did the myth of Tristan and Isolde come from?
(Answer: the 12th century. It predates Guinevere and Lancelot in the 14th century and Romeo and Juliet which came much later.)

8. How did Isolde know that Tristan had killed her betrothed?
(Answer: In a chip that is missing in Tristan’s sword she finds something she knew belonged to her betrothed.)  And a note to the reader:  David got picky on the answer to this question, for in the production we saw, it was not a sword that killed her beloved, but a gun.  We saw it with our very own eyes at the opera.

9. Whose score did the conductor look at when he was studying the music for this opera?
(Answer: He looked at the notes Gustav Mahler had made when he conducted Tristan and Isolde.)

10. Bonus point:  If you read any of the reviews before you went to the performance, give yourself a point.  And here is a review, if you don't want to go far:  Nina Stemme on a love and loss in Tristan

As I said, David hasn’t caught on that you get the same amount of money for asking and answering easy questions. Maybe he will practice that art at the next opera which is Don Giovanni and coming on October 20th.

See you at the opera.

Arta

The Opera Intermission

This moment at the opera is better old in Bonnie’s voice:

Many people wanted to talk to David at the intermission. The first person to find David said, “Hello. I've been wanting to talk to the most important person in the audience today.” This surprised David. The man asked, “What kind of music do you like?” David said, “I'm not really sure.” The man said do you play any instruments and David said I've tried the guitar a little bit and some kind of wind instrument. The man said he was in the Threepenny Opera when he was 10 years old. Then man went on, “If this is your first opera if you were a climber it's as if you chose your first climb to the top of Mount Everest.”

At the intermission I went out to find David and Bonnie. They were engaged in a conversation with Rolph and Iris Haack and I didn’t join the group. I thought instead I would walk up and down the aisles of the theatre and stretch my body. I knew that there were two full acts yet to come. Two very long acts.

Stuart Skelton, left, as Tristan and 
Nina Stemme as Isolde 
in “Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera. 
Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Another woman stopped me and pointed over to David who was surrounded by many other patrons at the Opera. She pointed at him and said to me, “Poor kid.”  

I said, “David is here at his first opera.”

She said, “I can't hear you. I forgot to change my hearing aids.” I wondered why she hasn't put in her hearing aids if she was coming to the opera but it was only a passing thought for she went on to talk to someone else.

When the show was over, people were still approaching David in the parking lot.

One woman told him she had driven 2 ½ hours from up near Revelstoke and now she was driving 2 ½ hours back so that she could see the opera. I did the math. She would have been on the road by 6:30 am to have made it to the theatre on time.

Another woman just about climbed in the back of the car with David to talk to him.  He was busy closing the door so she couldn't get in.  Ah, I had fun at the opera today.

People are amazing.

Should anyone want to go to the Encore, here is a review from the NY Times.

Arta

Treats at the Opera

Bonnie and I could see that the opera season was starting this month, and rather than go alone, it seemed like the right time to introduce David to the joys and sorrows of opera.

All of them are not in the text.

Some of them are just about getting to the opera. 

And the Met is celebrating 100 years of opera and so presenting one of its masterpieces for the opening – Wagner at his best, if you can measure that just by the length of the opera: 5 hours and 13 minutes all told.

I began preparations to get there by going to the Bulk Barn for candy: poppers, key lime yogurt covered pretzels, cocoanut jelly beans, hot tamales, and oversized butterfly gummies – I couldn’t stop myself in the isles, thinking of the joys of opening bag after bag while listening to the opera.

My next food preparation for the opera was making brownies (sans walnuts for David’s benefit).   I did those so late at night that when they came out of the oven I didn't even want to taste one.  Dropping into bed was the nicest thing I could think of.

I had hot oatmeal raspberry muffins on the counter when he woke up, so as to jump start his appetite.  Not that he took one.  But I did have them ready for him.  As well I made cheese sandwiches which should have been a highlight but they were on focaccia buns and the spice overpowered David on the first bite. I can’t hit 100% with my choices every time.  I can't even do 50 %.

I did not take pictures, but on reflection, here is one selfie that I could have done with Bonnie. I should have caught her outfit on film. She had not picked out her clothes the night before and came to my closet to grab something. I tried to manage her choices but she rejected them and picked an old miss shapen black and white  t-shirt with artistic logos on it and and East-Indian skirt that has a garrish beaded trim around the hem. She finished her outfit off with Wellington boots since it was gently raining outside. Fashionable? Not.

Functional?  Yes.

Arta

Full Saturdays

The baritone Peter Mattei, left, as Wolfram
and the tenor Johan Botha as his romantic rival,
the title character, in “Tannhäuser,”
conducted by James Levine
at the Metropolitan Opera.

I had some time to look at the internet today, trying to figure out when New York Met operas begin.

I looked for NT Live performances from London as well.

I added in the encores, since I like to go twice, even three times.

I looked for reviews for myself and for dates and times.

Tomorrow is Tannhäuser.  Here is the New York Times Review.

I read it once, but that is not enough to get me up to enough speed that I will really enjoy the performance.  So there is work ahead for me to do.  And even if I don't get prepared, why isn't it alright just to go and soak up what I can.

Coming Up
Jan 9 - Tannhauser - 4 hrs 15 min
Jan 16 - Pearl Fishers, 2 hrs, 54 min
Jan 23 - Jane Eyre 3 hrs 30 min (saw it once, going back)
Jan 30 - Turandot - 3 hrs 35 min
Feb 6 - Lulu 4 hrs 15 min (saw it once, going back -- chilling and compelling)
Feb 20 - Pearl Fishers (actually saw it for the first time in London at the Colesium)
Feb 27 - Dangerous Liaisons 3 hrs, 30 min

A big thank you to Catherine Jarvis who was the first one to tell me to go to these events.

Another thank you to friends and family who have accompanied me along the way:  Lurene Bates, Tonia Bates, Charise Bates, Wyona Bates, Fazeel Kayyum, Duncan Carter-Johnson, Alex Carter-Johnson,  The Doral and Anita Johnson Kids (Meighan, Ceilidh, Dalton), The Jarvis Kids (Rebecca, Catie, Thomas), Trell Johnson, and Ina Given.  The more names I type, the more I think of, so to the others, leave me a comment and remind me which shows we saw for it has all been fun.

Maybe the moment that goes deepest into my heart has been when another audience member stops me in the hall or on the theatre stairs and says, "I see you are here with your grandchildren.  You are lucky."

I know I am fortunate.

Arta