Yeah. I’ve been away for a while. Have you missed me?

I’ve been spending lotsa time in a darkened theatre. And if you’re smart, that’s what you’ll be doing too! Because The Mikado opens in 24 hours, and you’re going to come and see it. Aren’t you? (imagine a pathetic look on my face–I know, not hard to do, right?)

We had our final orchestra dress rehearsal last night. Actually, it’s not much of a rehearsal. It’s a performance. Opera Pacific calls it “Youth Night”, and invites a couple thousand schoolkids to come to the Orange County Performing Arts Center and see the show for free.

I love Youth Night. You would think they’d have a hard time sitting still for hours on end (and some of these operas can be long; I remember Otello ran almost 4 hours), but the kids are invariably our finest audience. They are supremely enthusiastic and always a rewarding crowd. Maybe there’s hope for the future after all.

The Mikado only runs for four performances (this Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday), so call Ticketmaster and git on down to see it. All you people who keep saying you’re going to come to see one of my shows (yes, that means YOU), this is it.

Aside from that, I’ve been working on Pick Up Ax. We have been interviewing directors, and have a read-through of the show this afternoon.

Things That Make You Go “Hmmmm”.

Show of the week:
The Mikado

Epigram of the week:
“We’re all in the gutter…. some of us are just looking toward the stars.”
– Oscar Wilde

Operetta of the week:
The Mikado

Quote of the week:
“A woman is like the wick of a candle. If you raise her in your respect she will shine on you, but if you lower and deprecate her she will leave you in the dark.”
– translated from a Ghanese artwork I saw at the Seattle Art Museum

Event of the week:
The Mikado

Hmmm…. I think I see a pattern developing.

Over-Written Thought of the Week

Last week I spent a bit of time listening to reports from New York on the 550 point nosedive the Dow Jones Industrial Average took. It’s ironic that this comes 10 years (almost to the day!) after the famous Black Monday stock market crash in October of 1987.

Can you imagine? 660 billion dollars evaporated in just five hours. And that’s just in the U.S. Hong Kong’s stock market has dropped one-third of it’s value in the past couple of weeks. The worldwide total for this slide is probably several trillion dollars. I can’t fathom that kind of money.

But in the end, it’s just money. From personal experience, I know how easy it is to get wrapped up in things material. The green has its own pull, Lord knows. But Kaufmann had it right: you can’t take it with you. Right?

So it struck me that while many were transfixed by the paper loss of gains which were unrealized anyway, that around the country an equal number of people were just trying to figure out where their next meal was going to come from, or where they were going to sleep tonight. Or perhaps how they were going to live with themselves. Or the disease which afflicts them.

The crosses we each have to bear may be different, but our need for compassion and human kindness in times of trouble is not.

A German poet named Rainer Maria Rilke tackled this idea in 1906, forseeing the human disasters of the our generation (or perhaps those of her own). This text, as translated by Stephen Mitchell and Albert Flemming, is a powerful one to which I often return.

It is the individual voices of a beggar, a drunkard, a suicide, a leper (an AIDS victim in today’s parlance), and an idiot (retarded person). Not only are they all around us, but they are us. This piece was performed several years ago by the Pacific Chorale and Pacific Symphony, and I’ve always respected John Alexander for programming a piece in Orange County that starts out by telling the rich and fortuate to shut up and listen.

In my finest Serling-esque fashion, I submit it for your approval.

VOICES

Opening

The rich and the fortunate do well to keep silent,
for no one cares to know who or what they are.
But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind, or: on the verge of going blind, or: nothing goes well with me on earth, or: I have a sickly child, or: I have little to hold me together…

And chances are this is not nearly enough.

And because people try to ignore them as they pass them by: these unfortunate ones have to sing! And at times one hears some excellent singing.

Of course, people differ in their tastes: some would prefer to listen to choirs of boy castrati.

But God himself comes often and stays long, when the castrati’s singing disturbs Him.

Song of the Beggar

I am always going from door to door, weather in rain or heat,
and sometimes I will lay my right ear in the palm of my right hand.
And as I speak, my voice seems strange, as if it were alien to me,
For I’m not certain whose voice is crying: mine or someone elses.

I cry for a pittance to sustain me. The poets cry for more.

In the end I conceal my entire face and cover both my eyes; there it lies, in my hands with all its weight and looks as if at rest, so no one may think I had no place whereupon to lay my head.

Song of the Drunkard

It was not in me. It moved in and out.
When I dared to stop it, the wine won out.
(What it was, I no longer remember.)
The wine then offered this and offered that, till I became dependent on him, I, fool!

Now I am part of his game, as he throws me around in utter contempt, and surely he will lose me this day to that scavenger, Death.

When Death wins me, soiled card that I am, he will use me only to scratch his sordid scabs and toss me away into the mire.

Song of the Suicide

Well then, one final look around.
How they have always managed to cut my rope!
Lately I was so well prepared that in my entrails
I sensed already something of eternity.

They keep on offering me the spoon: this spoon containing life,
No, I want none of it, not now or ever, let me go…

I know that life is altogether good, the world itself a brimful pot, but my blood refuses to absorb it, instead it goes right to my head.

What nourishes others makes me sick. Do realize that I scorn life.
For at least a thousand years to come, I will have to diet.

Song of the Idiot

The do not hinder me. They let me go. They say, nothing could happen. How good.

Nothing can happen.

Everything comes and circles uninterrupted around the Holy Ghost, around that certain Ghost (you know)–, how good.

No, one really must never think that there could be any danger involved in this.
There is, of course, the blook. Blood is the heaviest. For blood is heavy.
Sometimes I believe, I can no longer–. How good.

Ah, what a lovely ball that is: red and round all over. Good that you brought it. I wonder would it come if I called?

How odd everything behaves, driving into each other, swimming away from each other:

friendly, though a little confused: how good.

Song of the Leper

See, I am one everyone has deserted. No one in the city knows of me.

I have fallen victim to leprosy.

I beat my wooden clappers and knock the pitiable sight of me into the ears of everyone that passes near me.

And those who hear the wooden sound avert their eyes, look elsewhere, not wanting to know what has befallen me.
Where the sound of my rattle reaches, I am at home; perhaps it is you who makes it sound so loud, that no one dares to be too far from me who now avoids to come to close to me.

So now I can walk for ever so long without encountering a girl, a woman or man, or even a child.

Animals I do not frighten.

After the darkness of the above sections, the poetry takes a decidedly more upbeat tone and Rilke shows us that all is not lost. There are three more sections, but I will save them for later. It’s past my bed time!

Happy Thanksgiving!

As one of my friends recently stated with such elegance: where the hell did the year go?!

One day I’m celebrating my birthday in January (hint, hint), and the next day they’re putting up Christmas lights in the parking lots at local strip malls. I mean, I like to sleep in as much as the next guy, but this is ridiculous.

Washington Week in Review

I made my first post-certification dive this week. Eron and I spent an hour at 40 feet exploring Shaw’s Cove in Laguna Beach. The visibility was only 15 feet or so, but that was fine by me. You’ve gotta get up close to see anything anyway.

I was pretty impressed with my air management. Eron has made something like 300 dives, compared to my three. But when we came up I had 500 psi compared to his 700. Not bad. I’m also getting a lot better at using breathing to go over and under obstacles.

Theatre

It’s that time of year again! No, not the holidays. Grad school application time! This year I’m applying to Yale, American Repertory, UC Irvine, UCSD, UCLA, New York University, the Old Globe, University of Washington, ACT, CalArts, University of Missouri, and others. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

I received a contract to sing in La Boheme with Opera Pacific. This is especially cool because now I’ll have done the ABC’s of opera: Aida, Boheme, and Carmen. The bad news is that rehearsals are right on top of the holidays. Oh well.

I was cast in a production of David Ives’ All in the Timing, but for scheduling reasons I couldn’t accept the role. Why is it always feast or famine with these things? Anyway, I am still going to be working on the show, as music director. Part of the show is an a capella take-off on the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach.

Speaking of La Boheme. Funny story. Well, actually not funny at all. But one day I’ll be able to look back on it and laugh. I had tickets to see Rent last week at the Ahmanson. I left Irvine at 6:30 pm which would normally give me plenty of time to make the 45 minute trip. Well, an hour and a half later when the curtain went up, I was still 35 miles away stewing in traffic. Needless to say, $140 in tickets went to waste that night. Doh!

The Museum of Tolerance

Last week I went to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, which I highly recommend if you’ve never been. And if you have, go again. The museum focuses on the history of racism in America and also on the Holocaust. It’s amazing to listen, in person, to testimony of an actual Holocaust survivor. Not a videotape, but someone who was really there answering your questions about it all.

I also found a reminder, in their computer system, of a guy named Raoul Wallenberg. Have you ever heard of him? You’ve probably seen Schindler’s List or read Kenally’s book. Schindler saved a only thousand people, plus he was a German and profited from the war. Wallenberg on the other hand was a low-level Swedish diplomat who personally saved over 100,000 people, mainly Jews. He would literally walk into train depots or holding areas, gather up the people, and walk out with them under the noses of and in complete defiance of the Nazi soldiers. He did this time and time again. He used his drafting skills to create a formal looking “Swedish passport” for Jews, and went around claiming that they had been granted provisional Swedish citizenship and were therefore not deportable to the death camps. He went head-to-head several times with Eichmann, who tried to have Wallenberg killed.

After the Soviets captured Eastern Europe, Wallenberg wanted to try and establish reparations for the Jews. The Russians put him on a train to Moscow, but not as a diplomat. On arriving in the Soviet Union he was imprisoned. No government, not even Israel, ever took any significant action to get him out, and he was never heard from again.

This story always saddens me. How could someone like that be forgotten? I recommend a book called The Wiesenthal Files by Alan Levy, ISBN 0-8028-3772-7. It chronicles Wallenberg’s amazing heroics. Someone should write a stage play or screenplay about him. Who knows, maybe they have.

That’s all for this week. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!