Twisted operas: Salome, Don Giovanni

I wrote this post a while ago, back in November, when David & I saw two operas in the same week!

Upon my request, having never seen a R. Strauss opera live, David and I went to see Chicago Lyric Opera's Salome with Deborah Voigt leading the cast in a stunning performance. Interestingly, Voigt was previously fired from a production of Salome in London for being "too overweight" for the director's "vision", sparking a huge uproar among opera fans. Voigt underwent gastric bypass surgery and went from a size 28 to a 14, and then was promptly cast as Salome in Chicago.

This was her first major post-surgery performance, and many were eager to see how (or if) she would be affected by her drastic weight loss. She was amazing, and probably would have still been amazing even with the extra weight. (I bet it was easier for her to dance around the stage without the extra 100 pounds, though.)

I just have to tell you, before I go on: of all the opera plots I've ever read or seen, this one was by far the most disgusting and sick.

Rewind to about 30 A.D. in Tiberias, Galilee. Herodias, Salome's mother, remarries her late husband's brother Herod, ruler of Judea. Herod is a complete creep and spends most of the opera lusting lasciviously after his stepdaughter. Nice, huh? Anyway, he's just plain nasty.

Meanwhile, John the Baptist is being held prisoner in Herod's palace prison for denouncing Herodius. Salome decides she wants him even after she hears him going off against her mother for marrying her brother-in-law. She comes on to him, but once he hears she's the daughter of Herodius, he thinks she's gross and rejects her. (Kinda judgmental of him to go spouting off against people like that, dontcha think? Oh well; it is the Bible, after all. Anyway...)

So what's a spoiled daughter of Judea to do? Salome's not used to being denied anything, and it does not go over well with her. She's seriously pissed.

Knowing her power over her lewd and perverse stepfather, she makes a bargain that she'll dance for him if he gives her anything she asks for. Panting and drooling and obviously thinking with his southernmost brain, he promises, and she dances the sexy "Dance of the 7 Veils" for him. (In this production, Voigt got down to a body stocking at the very last split second of the dance before the lights went out - very dramatic!)

After the dance, she insists time after time against his protests that she wants the head of John the Baptist on a platter. It's delivered to her in all its gory splendor, and she proceeds to hold it by its long hair kissing it, singing to it, and doing all kinds of other completely disgusting and unmentionable things to it. Herod sees her doing this and orders his soldiers to kill her, and they do. Nice story, eh? Geeeeeeeez! But a spectacular production, with lots of that edge-of-your-seat kind of morbid fascination.

That same week, David and I went to go see the Florentine Opera's performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Milwaukee Symphony in the pit. (I wasn't playing, only 2 horns.) The plot is basically about Don Giovanni (Italian for Don Juan) running around and seducing women, sometimes breaking into their homes and raping them.

The women in the cast had the voices of angels and sounded positively ethereal.

I was much more moved by this opera than any of the other Mozart operas I've seen, for some reason. Basically, DG is arrogant and almost pathologically self-assured in his advances toward women throughout the opera until he decides to piss off the ghost of a man he killed. He mockingly invites the ghost to come to dinner with him, and the ghost accepts.

Now, most of us would be a bit worried if an other-worldly spirit of someone we'd killed was talking to us, but not Don. He's just confident as ever, right up until the time that he gets dragged down to hell for his transgressions. Amazing.

At the end of this opera, however, the producers did something David and I thought was completely tasteless. After DG has gotten his rightful come-uppance in getting dragged down to hell, they show him in a white jacket and sunglasses with a smoking (i.e., fresh out of hell) suitcase, chasing two scantily-clad bimbos across the stage.

David and I thought this completely ruined the whole point of the opera, which is that Don Giovanni finally gets what's coming to him in hell. I guess it sort of goes with the last aria that attempts to end it on a happy note, but I still thought it was pretty lame.

It was very cool, though, to get to see two world-class productions of really amazing operas in one week!!

Movies & books

So....seen any good movies lately?

We saw the movie Borat a few weekends ago and it was absolutely sidesplitting, though I admit it wouldn't be for all palates. The humor was definitely crude, but in a brilliant and politically satiric way. It's basically a mock documentary (mockumentary?) about a journalist from Khazakhstan (played by SNL's talented Sacha Baron Cohen) who comes to the US and basically offends everyone he meets with his culture-shocked political incorrectness. Check out a preview of some of the funnier moments here: http://www.boratmovie.com/. I can't remember the last time David and I laughed so hard at a movie. What's amazing is now there are tons of people and groups that are mad at the movie producers because they were simply told it was a documentary, not a spoof, and they don't like the way they were portrayed. Ha!! That even further cements the film's brilliance, in my mind!

Let's see...recent Netflix movies have included:

• The Jagged Edge, a suspense thriller starring Glen Close who falls in love with the rape/murder suspect she's defending. I think someone told me a long time ago what happens in this movie, because the whole movie I kind of knew what was going to happen which kind of put a damper on it. But it was still good.
• North Country, starring Charlize Theron, about a class action sexual harrassment lawsuit against the a mining company in upstate Minnesota. Fantastically done, heartwrenching, inspiring.
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (a.k.a. Brangelina). Always thought that Angelina was amazing, but this movie also restored my respect for Brad (which for some reason I can't presently identify had waned considerably). Suspenseful, quirky, humorous, and lots of great buttkicking danger and entertainingly destructive fight scenes. Loved it!

So....read any good books lately?

I'm reading Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult, a real page turner about an Amish girl who is accused of (and denies) concealing her pregnancy and then murdering the baby she conceived out of wedlock. I think I've found another author to add to my "favorites" list which includes Dorothy Allison, James Patterson, Sena Jeter Naslund, Dan Brown, and Fannie Flagg. I think I saw the made-for-TV movie that it inspired, The Plain Truth starring Law & Order SVU's Mariska Hargitay, but fortunately I don't remember what happens so I'm still reading in suspense. :)

James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia was refreshingly different, albeit much more gory and grotesque than I had expected, from my usual murder mystery reads. It is set in the '40's, in film noire language and tone. As I read it, everything was in black and white, and I was instantly transported. Fascinating, but again, not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

For anyone who thinks s/he has the worst job on earth and wants a change in perspective, you need to read Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada. As part of my "quality chick lit" reading (in the reading rotation with whodunnit mysteries, legal thrillers, historical fiction, and non-fiction), it was a rather harrowing take on the tyranny of the fashion industry from the insider lackey's point of view. Although a work of fiction, the author writes from a very autobiographical standpoint as she was in a similar position as her protagonist for the editor of Vogue.

Happy post-Thanksgiving week!

Thanksgiving princesses

David and I have returned home from a brief and fun visit with my family in Cincinnati. We especially enjoyed our little niece, Jenna, who is totally into the whole princess thing. She has both Cinderella and Snow White dress-up outfits and loves dancing around in them. I was recruited several times to provide live dance piano music for Jenna and David; it was so cute when she needed a dance partner and asked matter-of-factly "would you be my handsome prince?" Priceless! Also priceless was me trying to play the Sleeping Beauty Waltz by ear - it sounded like Sleeping Beauty with sleep apnia knocking things over in her sleep. But it was fun.

Below is an adorable picture of Jenna (in the middle) at her 3rd birthday party this past October, with two of her best friends in full princess regalia:

And again at Halloween in her Cinderella costume:

The dinner was just marvelous. My dad, who I'm convinced is moonlighting somewhere clandestinely as a chef for a 4+ star restaurant, made this stuffing that had the most amazing savory flavor and light texture. I think he makes it differently every year and it's always scrumptious.

My mom again blew my mind with her seasonal decor. She had this absolutely breathtaking table setting, resplendent with a gorgeous autumn-y tablecloth and napkins tied with gossamer wire-ribbon bows. Everything on the table had perfectly coordinated harvest colors. When it comes to decorating, I can only stand in awe of my mother, who gives Martha Stewart a run for her money (without the jail time, no less!) every time the seasons change. Regrettably, I forgot to bring our digital camera on our trip, or I would have taken pictures.

I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Its message is simple and easy to understand, and can be fully appreciated and practiced by people of all faiths. I love gathering together with my friends and family and the simplicity of giving thanks - focusing on the things we have and being grateful.

This year, I am particularly thankful for my life. I love where I am now, that I have a profound sense of what I have and how precious and short my time here on earth is. I am looking forward to the new year with excitement and anticipation of many exciting new beginnings!

The Great Piano Search!

My lifelong dream has been to own my own piano, and we'd been saving for a while for it. Finally I decided it was time, and started doing the research which I had time to do because of the Mozart Festival's scant horn requirements.

What I found was that really good, used, full-sized uprights (48" or taller) often sounded better than a lot of the used grands out there. I really enjoyed the process, during which I wrote several emails to friends who were either professional pianists, owned their own pianos, or were experts on instrument acoustics. Their feedback was invaluable - thanks, guys! :)

So, a la diary entry style, here are some excerpts from those missives...if this is way too much information for you, if it doesn't interest you, or if you've already received these emails, scroll down to the end to see pictures of my new piano! :)

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October 23rd: I was surprised at how extremely sensitive to quality I was - being a mere horn player and not a 'real' pianist - and that I could tell, immediately, whether I liked a piano or not.

First, I went to the Yamaha dealer. I figured, I haven't played piano in years and until this point have never considered buying one before - plus I'm a horn player and not a professional pianist - so I might as well start with something affordable that's mass-produced and easy to find, right? Right. Enter the Yamaha Professiona Upright "U" series. The U1 is 48", the U3 is 52". This is the 48" U1:

So I tried the new U1 they had in their showroom. I hated it. It sounded like a hail storm on a tin roof. I couldn't believe how offensive it sounded to me. So I thought, well, maybe the longer strings of the U3 will be better in sound, and tried it. It sounded like somewhat larger hailstones falling on a slightly larger tin roof. I tried the other U1's and U3's, hoping that maybe a different instrument of the same models would be different. They were all abominable.

Depressed at how this was going so far, I asked the guy if I could check out the Yamaha grands, just for comparison. [I loved the Yamaha C2 - the 5'8" concert grand, but at $19,5K, it was definitely out of my price range.]

In fact, there was a sad old 1910 Steinway in their showroom (they were selling it on consignment for a 3rd party) that had been violated with an electric player piano implant. I loved the Yamaha way better, no contest. But I attribute that mostly to the electronic sacrilege that had been committed against that poor Steinway.

However, I thought it was interesting that I had to get that far up in size (and price) before I found a [new Yamaha] piano I liked. Plus, it is still early in my search to fall in love with anything until I've tried a lot of pianos for comparison.

October 25th: I went down to Chicago to see a very nice piano dealer (www.chicagopianos.com) who sells primarily new Estonias, Bohemias, and Bluthners, as well as a lot of other used intruments like Yamahas and Kawais. I loved this guy, and his website (check it out!) was incredible - really informative and educational, almost as if he doesn't WANT to sell you a piano unless you know what you want and what you're getting. His dealership was the one where I found, hands down, more quality pianos I'd want to buy than any other place I'd been to.

The Europeans (Bluthner, Bohemia, Estonia): I could not for the life of me understand why the Bluthners were priced in the 6 figure brackets, because I did not like them. The Bohemian uprights sounded nice, but the sound was a bit too dark and fuzzy - almost as if the sound was coming from far away. The Bohemian grands, on the other hand, were absolutely out of this world. BOTH the Bohemian and Estonia grands were far superior to any Steinway I have ever played. The action was orgasmically facile, and the sound.....ooooh, the sound.....(insert celestial choir chord here). And they were less expensive than the Yamaha C2 that I had liked!

Steinway: Interesting side note about what I've learned from all these piano dealers about Steinways (even a Steinway Guy I visited contributed to this!). They're amazing pianos, to be sure, but their exorbitant prices ($25K for a new UPRIGHT? You've gotta be kidding me!) reflect the prestige and name in addition to the actual quality (which is excellent, but you're paying a lot for the name).

From what I've learned in talking to many different piano dealers at this point, Steinways are like the Rolls Royce of pianos - a fantastic, historic and extremely prestigious name, but I wouldn't necessarily feel the need to take out a 2nd mortgage to own and drive one.

Kawai: The Kawais were definitely the most affordable new pianos I had seen, and I liked them better than almost all the new Yamahas (I still love the C2). The sound was warm, gorgeous, and clear. My only problem with Kawai is that most of the used ones I've played on were bright and tinny - which makes me fear that in time, after they've broken in, they start to show why they're priced lower than other pianos.

Yamaha: I tried out the 1973 Yamaha U3 [the Chicago guy] had. I loved the sound - the sound was grand quality, rich and bell-like like the C2 grand - clear, but not tinny or like the Yamadealer's new ones, which I described to Karin on the phone yesterday as sounding like the Abominable Snowman having violent diarrhea in a metal toilet. :) But the action on this U3 was slow and groggy....The Chicago Guy said, "D'oh! Our technician just hasn't had the chance to work on the action of this one yet." He promised to have his tech guy work on the action. So I'm going back to Chicago on Thursday to see if it's any better. If it is as good as the action on the Steinway Guy's U1, I'm going to buy it because its sound was just beautiful.

October 26th: Today I drove down to Chicago again, first to see a guy in Arlington Heights (NW Chicago suburb) who had a Yamaha G1 baby grand that was shockingly in my price range. It was very nice, but also very old (1968). It had a decent sound, and I was definitely tempted by the allure and aesthetics of having a grand in my home now, without having to wait to buy my ultra grand Bohemia.

So I gave the tone, touch, and overall ratings for it, told the guy I was definitely interested, and went on to the Chicago Guy to compare it to the U3 I had liked on Tuesday. I was mostly curious to see if his piano tech had sufficiently improved the action on the Yamaha 52" U3.

The touch and action was flawless, like butter. And the sound...I was shocked at how amazing it was compared to the baby grand's. There was literally no comparison. The U3 was, hands down, the better sound. I rated the piano again, and it came out on top, no contest.

I was thrilled. This piano was, by FAR, the best piano in my price range, and it sounded almost as good as some of the really nice grands I'd played on, and infinitely better than almost all of the Yamaha grands I'd tried! Incredulous, I asked the Chicago guy why this was. He said that many people want the prestige, aesthetics, and image of owning a grand, and don't necessarily consider the sound that much of a big deal. The Yamaha full sized uprights, however, are made for serious professional pianists who don't have the room (or budget) for a grand. This is why they have superior construction and sound.

Get this - my U3 has the same length strings as a 5'1" baby grand!! So I guess that helps to explain why its sound was so wonderful. Also, it's a 1973, which means it isn't going to suddenly change once it breaks in.

The best thing? Including delivery, the first tuning, and the really nice adjustable height microfiber-padded bench, it was well within our price range, under the price cap we'd set for our first piano.

And because I tried so many pianos [final count was almost 40], I'm absolutely sure I found the perfect piano for me [for what we could afford right now].

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The piano was delivered Nov. 1st, and is settling in nicely! The pitch has changed a bit and now that it's been here a while, I can schedule the first tuning soon. (You have to wait a few weeks after it's delivered for it to settle in first.) It still sounds fabulous, and I'm vastly enjoying practicing on it again! Here are some pictures.

I've been having a ball practicing! I'm working on a Bb Major Mozart Sonata, Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations (they're SO much fun, and E major is such a great key), the Brahms b minor Rhapsody which is probably way over my head but I just love it, and I just had to practice something juicy and big and impressive and romantic. I'm taking it ultra-slow - as in quarter note = 2 or something ridiculous like that - and learning it one measure at a time.

It's extremely humbling to practice the piano again. I've only played the horn for 3+ years since I moved here to Milwaukee, and as difficult as the horn can be, you can really only focus on (and miss) one note at a time. It's certainly cerebrally stimulating to have to take in all that musical information again! It's also refreshing to just sit down and get lost in the process of practicing piano. There's something so incredibly satisfying about it. It's so difficult, technical, and coordination-based in ways the horn is not. And unlike the horn, which is a "social" instrument (there are very few pieces that stand with just horn alone, whereas you can play an entire piece without accompaniment on the piano), the piano is wonderfully independent. I love that.

Anyway, that's all (hell, that's enough!) for now! Thanks, as always, for indulging me! ;)

Catching up on goings-on

Man, there has been so much happening and I haven't blogged about it at all. Ugh! I feel SO blogstipated! :) (Ha ha, the blogger spellcheck doesn't like that word!) I think that's because there's been so much I've wanted to blog about, so I wanted a big block of time to blog. (Would that be a large "blog" of time? har har)

But alas, that blog - er, block - of time somehow never happened.

So I'm going to do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version of what's been going on. (Incidentally, does anyone read Reader's Digest anywhere other than on the toilet? I ask because I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere else. They're always in the bathroom. Aren't they? I think RD knows this, which is why they put all those medication ads in there - because they know that timing is everything. If you spend enough time on the toilet to have a Reader's Digest collection in there, then maybe you need some of those medications.)

Sorry, tangent there. Anyway....what's been going on? Oh yeah. Here are just some random things that I kept forgetting to tell you that I'm finally remembering to now....

First of all, I must share with you one of the highlights of my summer. I was proud to have used an extra, formerly unused portion of my brain to outwit the neighborhood squirrels. That Masters degree finally came in handy. My Classic-era music history professor would be so proud. (Solely of himself and his own ability to spout off unintelligibly in Latin for paragraphs at a time, but that's not the point.)

This consisted of my glue-gunning several metal thumbtacks, business side up, on the roof of the old wooden birdhouse left by the previous owners of our house.

There hasn't been a single squirrel on it since! I sure told them where to take their nuts, didn't I? Didn't I? {**evil cackle**} The birdies are extremely happy and now can dine unmolested by flying rodents. The cats, indirectly, are also thrilled. They have a great view of the many birdies (Kitty HBO) through the big sliding glass doors that lead out to the deck.

We also had some gorgeous flowers come right out of our humble (and very low maintenance) garden. This was probably the most incredibly HUGE rose I think I've ever seen, and it came straight from the rosebush on our front walk which we inherited from the previous owners. I swear to whichever deity you want me to that we do nothing to maintain these roses. We try to remember to water them occasionally but that's it - we didn't even cut them back and winterize them last year (although we had a very mild winter last year so that could be why they didn't die). You can also see Black-Eyed Susans which Mimi (David's mom) gave to us from her garden. They transplanted extremely well and thrived. They were still flowering in late October!

Here's our fall table as its set now. Don't you love that little teapot light? That was a housewarming gift from my mom to us that she brought up in October when she came up to see my concerto solo. Isn't it adorable? Oh, those miniature roses are from our front walk too. They just grow like weeds, again without any maintenance from us! We love our rosebushes so much and find them so easy that we just bought and planted 3 more - two yellow peach-trimmed sweetheart rosebushes, and one fiesta jubilee pink. If they survive the winter, we will have 8 rosebushes in our garden next year! I have always heard awful stories about how much work roses are. We don't do anything to them except water them, and only when it's really hot and dry.

David bought pumpkins, but we never got around to carving them. It looks festive anyway, doesn't it? David likes to use them for pies and muffins and cooking. I was skeptical at first because most of the pumpkin baking I had done used canned pumpkin, but the real stuff is really good too.

And if you look really closely, one of the little orange candles is a cute little candy-corn candle (candle corn?) that my sis-in-law, Pamela, gave us for Halloween. We love it and think it's so festive!

Here's a cute picture of my mom and me when she came up in October...she bought the flowers for me as a soloist gift, and arranged them herself! Beautifully, don't you think?

There's definitely more to tell, but I'll divide the topics into separate posts so as not to be too unwieldy in my entries! Hope you are all having a lovely autumn-into-winter, and that you and yours are happy, healthy, and well. XO