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After watching College Girl pretty much take over the blog in the last two weeks, I have to try to assert my presence as someone who does more than takes fire for watching Shah Rukh Khan movies and being afraid of the plague. What I’d like to tell you is that the plague squirrel story wasn’t actually over this morning, because half of that animal was discovered in the middle of the yard, not far from the barbecue. Yes, it was the half that has the tail. The dogs, apparently unconcerned about the dangers of plague, rabies, or anything else (perhaps they know there’s antibiotics and that they’ve been vaccinated) apparently consumed the other half.
I carefully waited until College Girl came home from the store and then alerted her to the need for “clean up on aisle 7.” But when she got there, the squirrel wasn’t there. Apparently her 13 year old brother and his friend had tossed it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Or so she claimed. “Which neighbor?” I did not ask. I assume they meant the 90 year old lady with the forest in her huge back yard that runs all along our back fence. She never comes out, so there’s no danger of her getting the plague. Nevertheless, I did feel a little bit sheepish about the whole affair.
It’s all a sign of what I told an old friend the other day: when you live with other people, there’s bound to be some chaos.
Oh, and yeah, I saw that mug featured below the other day in Ross and had to buy it for College Girl as a gag gift. She accepted it graciously, as you see, which probably means she’s not really that bitter after all.
Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, Dallas, February 19 21, 24, 27, March 5 and 7, 2010
Review by Dean Cassella
TDO’s mid-season offering is a delightful production of Don Pasquale, Donizetti’s most perennially favorite foray into opera buffa. The work offers a relatively light breathing space between the comic but musically heavy Così Fan Tutte and what is sure to be heavy melodrama in Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick in April.
Chronologically speaking, Donizetti is the last of the great maestri in the line of Italian opera composers who worked firmly in the opera buffa tradition (Mozart’s comedies are, by contrast, among the earliest canonized examples). This genre tends to focus on ridiculous, often scurrilous plots in contemporary settings that are full of stock characters, mistaken identities, etc. Music wise, they tend toward florid vocal acrobatics which goes by the moniker coloratura singing.
The title character in Don Pasquale is a seventy-year old man who decides he is going to marry and produce heirs, in order to disinherit his nephew, Ernesto. Ernesto, who is in love with a feisty young widow named Norina, plots with her and Pasquale’s physician, Dr. Malatesta, to convince the Don that she is a perfectly demure virginal bride, only to turn into an obnoxious and demanding spendthrift the moment the Don signs a mock marriage contract. I’m sure my readers can see where this is all heading. . . In a way, the role of Norina is really a refashioning of Rosina, the cunning, conniving belle of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia¸ who also shares with Norina the obstacle of an old man who wishes to marry her for all the wrong reasons.
Donato DiStefano in the Title Role of Don Pasquale
Veteran basso Donato DiStefano takes the title role, and his performance is brilliant. DiStefano is an absolute master of buffa roles, and has graced the TDO stage twice in recent memory: as Don Magnifico in 2004’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella), and in 2006 as Doctor Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. He possesses masterful control over a rich, sonorous voice, and is unsurpassed as an actor. In one of the earlier of his aria’s he performs a ‘strip tease’, as hilarious as it is ridiculous, as he contemplates the first meeting with his prospective bride.
Adriana Kucerova as the Scheming Young Widow Norina
Don Pasquale is a work that has only four heavy singing roles, and only one for a woman. This makes the role of Norina doubly demanding. In all honesty, Slovak soprano Adriana Kucerova, a first-timer to TDO, is one of the most compelling singers I have seen live. Her voice is at once delicate and powerful, and resonates with a hypnotic vibrato, over which she has absolute control. She is also a fabulous comic actress and strikingly beautiful, to boot. We can only hope that she will be returning to the Metroplex soon.
Indianan baritone Nathan Gunn did a fine job in the role of scheming troublemaker, Dr. Malatesta. In addition to a solid voice, he acted the role with finesse. Virginian tenor Norman Shankle was solid as the smitten young nephew, Ernesto. His voice at times seemed thin, though; in his final duet with Kucerova, his voice was sometimes overpowered by the latter’s.
Guest conductor Stefano Ranzani’s conducting was very precise and lively, and the maestro handled the score throughout with grace. Direction by TDO veteran Candace Evans was solid and sometimes even brilliant; at times, though, the visual pacing seemed to drag and occasionally one got the impression that the singers should have done something more than simply standing while facing the audience and sing. This was in contrast to the lively direction she has given to TDO in recent years (e.g. The Merry Widow and Ariadne auf Naxos).
The sets, designed by the long deceased Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, are lovely, and just what one could expect: elegant, multi-storied affairs that adhere closely to the librettist’s intentions. One can hardly ask for more.
To conclude, the production was a lot of fun. The plot and music is highly accessible and thus Don Pasquale would be an ideal way to introduce someone to opera. I attended the premiere with a thirteen year old boy, who loved it. He was especially impressed with DiStefano’s take on the Don. And as for his impression of the Winspear Opera House: “What a cool building!!!”
The Dallas Opera: February 12, 14, 18, 20, 26, & 28, 2010
Winspear Opera House
Review by Dean Cassella
This second production in the Dallas Opera’s first season in its new home was just what the doctor ordered, especially after the sumptuous and heavy fare served up with Verdi’s Otello at the season premiere. Although one could certainly could not label Mozart’s last opera buffa collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte musically light, it does deliver laughs in some of the most sumptuous and delightful music that Mozart composed.
Originally set in eighteenth-century Naples, the plot centers around a case of deliberate mistaken identity between two pairs of lovers. Two young men, Ferrando and Guglielmo are in the throes of young love with Fiordiligi and Dorabella. A cynical old man, Don Alfonso, taunts them that it is impossible for women to remain faithful, should the men leave the scene for a while. The resulting argument ends with a wager: Ferrando and Guglielmo will pretend to be called off for military duty, only to return in the guise of two Albanians and each actively try to court the other’s belle.
Jeffry Jones as Austrian Emperor Joseph II in the famous 1984 movie "Amadeus."
The opera was commissioned by none other than the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, best known in popular culture from the play/movie Amadeus.
This was Mozart’s third and last collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venetian Jew who, as a child, converted to Christianity, took holy orders, and was eventually ran out of town for taking . . .liberties . . .with certain lady friends. He then led a semi nomadic life, cutting a swath across Europe to London, and eventually settling in New York City as a greengrocer, and as the first professor of Italian at Columbia University (he also established the first Italian opera company in New York). His collaborations with Mozart occurred early in his wanderings, when he was living in Vienna and trying to make his inroads in the Imperial court as a poet and librettist. The story of Così was a allegedly based on a real incident that was making the rounds in Vienna at the time.
Last time around, the Winspear Opera House demonstrated marvelous acoustics with a full-sized late Romantic era orchestra. The current production makes use of a comparatively tiny chamber orchestra, which poses a different set of resonance challenges. I am delighted to report that the new opera house was able to handle these to remarkable effect. Graeme Jenkin’s stately phrasing was carried with both a volume and a warmth that I have rarely heard in a full-size opera house.
Così is unusual in that there are only six roles which are very carefully balanced. Soprano Elza van den Heever and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Holloway, as Fiordiligi and Dorabella respectively, have beautifully matched voices. Miss van den Heever also displays considerable skills as an actress, and Miss Holloway, who graced the TDO stage last season with her interpretation of the love-sick Cherubino in La Nozze di Figaro, treated us to her wonderfully lilting vibrato. Italian soprano Nuccia Focile sang a beautiful rendition of Despina, the cynical, deadpan maid who serves as a female counterpart to Don Alfonso, and who often reminds me of Alice Kramden on the Honeymooners. Her petite stature helped to enrich the comic potential when she dresses up as a quack doctor and a notary during Act II.
The real star of this performance, though was the illustrious bass-baritone Sir Thomas Allen who, after almost 40 years on the boards of the worlds major opera houses, boasts a rich, powerful voice and a magisterial presence whenever he is on stage. Tenor Brian Anderson as Ferrando, and baritone Michael Todd Simpson also did commendable jobs in their roles.
Robert Perdziola’s sets recast the time to around 1910. The main set resembles an Egyptian-style casino, or hotel, lends itself to the time period it seeks to evoke. I generally prefer sticking to the librettist’s original intentions, but the change in question does not seriously interfere with the work’s enjoyment in any way.
All in all, this is a fine production and one definitely worth seeing.
Next up: Donizetti’s Don Pasquale!
It’s been a long time since I’ve accepted that a lot of stuff happens to me that I don’t think should be happening. In writer’s group a couple of years back someone called me “the girl whose life was one long emergency,” but believe me, by then I was was slowing down and thinking things over before taking action. You’d have to go back when I was in my twenties to find me amidst a chaos that seemed to reign supreme. The phrase stuck with me, though for a while I couldn’t remember where it came from. I knew it was a song, just couldn’t remember which. But then just this morning I dragged it out again on YouTube, somehow, without even meaning to.
The original song is For You, by Bruce Springsteen. I don’t listen to Springsteen much nowadays — among other things, Dean hates him and always tells the most unflattering stories about The Boss’s personal life if he hears his music — but I have, always, had a soft spot the tunes nevertheless. I was listening to “For You” this morning before the boys left for school, and one of them asked
“What happened to his voice?”
“He’s from New Jersey.”
“Yeah but — that raspy sound. It’s horrible.” And this wasn’t even the infamous rendition of “Santa Claus is coming to town.”
Well, you either like that voice or you don’t, you either accept his music style or you don’t. But what does the song mean? Looking at the words, they’re even less coherent than “How Does it Feel” by Bob Dylan but the overall sentiments are the same: there’s this girl, she’s messed up, she’s trouble, she doesn’t like the guy too much but he loves her anyway and he wrestles down his feelings of rejection by pointing out her vulnerabilities. Some of the song is made of lyrics that Dean, the opera buff, would call “throwaway” such as “my electric surges free.” Now what does that mean? But other lines are pure genius. Even at the age of 15 I was struck by the image of the girl being carted off to Bellevue, which is the mental hospital, and the guy wanting to rescue her himself. It’s a repeated theme in literature, the story of the crazy girl.
I’m pretty sure I’m not as deranged as the original girl whose “life was one long emergency.” Nevertheless, I have felt that sense of continual emergency at times. I have overstated my own importance, too, I’m sorry to say. And overall, looking back, I feel a certain poignant sense of recognition when I hear this song. There’s so much of youth and confusion and desperation in there, it makes it pretty nigh on to universal.
This endearing Bollywood film came out in 2007 and takes place in trains, homes and in the Himalayas, starring two fresh-faced young people with the high energy and lack of self-knowledge you’d expect from people their age. As I write that, I rather shudder, thinking that calling them “young people” puts me outside that jurisdiction. And yet, I think that is how the film works, by allowing the viewer to feel like a more knowledgeable person, to sense the inner sentiments of the actors long before they themselves figure it all out. The audience has the experience of simultaneously knowing where this is all leading and watching it unfold. It’s like going through your own youth again, without the pain and uncertainty. Disapproving parents, mistaken feelings, song and dance numbers and beautiful costumes and scenery round out the usual Bollywood Calgon-take-me-away routine.
Aditya, a young man of great wealth but little happiness, is played by Shahid Kapoor. I don’t know why but I was completely won over by the spectacles he wore, which seemed to symbolize his emotional vulnerability and his ability to look out but not in. Kareena Kapoor plays Geet, a girl whose impulses are completely ungovernable, whose overdone eye makeup suggests that she does everything with over-great enthusiasm, an assumption not disproved in the film.
As the film opens, Aditya’s “true love” marries someone else and he leaves his friends, his business, and his home in Bombay and gets on a midnight train going, as the song says, “anywhere.” He meets Geet and finds her so irritating that he decides to get off in a whistle stop town somewhere in the Indian countryside — it’s dark, so you never know where they are — and she follows him against his wishes. They wind up in a number of amusing situations, such as with a crazy taxi driver with dashboard cartoonishly embellished with garlands, or in a hostelry, the “Motel Decent,” which rents room by the hour, the significance of which Geet completely misunderstands. By the time Aditya brings Geet to her family home in North India, they are friends but nothing more and Geet plans to elope with someone else. Nevertheless, her grandfather, when he meets the two, acuses Aditya of being Geet’s love interest, and says sternly, “When you’ve reached my age, you can always see what’s going on.”
In the rest of the film, the viewer gets to find out if the grandfather is indeed right. The movie seems to subscribe to the philosophy that “some things are just meant to be and will happen whether you want them too or not.” In this context, that’s a comforting, not a disturbing notion. I recommend this film to all romantics anywhere who can get subtitles in their language.
We have a wandering jackal in this house. It’s my dog, BT, who acts sweet and nice and pretends that if you let him in the front yard he’ll stay around the door and come right back but then when your back is turned he’ll take off. It’s happened not once but twice in the last 6 weeks.
The first time, I was in despair. “We’ll never find him,” I thought quietly. Another dog we’d had was lost four years ago in the same neighborhood and we never found out anything about her whereabouts. How could I ever get this dog back?
We went to the shelters and there was a flier there for “lost pet dog tracking service.” It seemed that they would use a tracking dog to find out where your dog went. We considered for a couple of hours – the trail was getting cold – and then called the lady up.
It was impressive, the woman came out with the dog, a rangy red bloodhound, in a tracking harness, set him on the scent, and he put his nose down and began to follow a looping path just like a real wandering jackal would make down the street. In the end all the woman could tell us was that the scent ended at the intersection of Bilglade and Granbury and that meant the dog had been picked up in a car at that point. Although that was good for something – we knew he wasn’t shivering on the street somewhere – it didn’t explain where the dog was.
But BT was recovered, somehow. We put up signs and checked the shelters, as the dog-tracking lady had advised, and my husband found him in the Humane Society Shelter three days after his escape. The bloodhound lady had told us that if you do everything you can – check the shelters, put up posters, and hire the bloodhound – the recovery rate for lost dogs is about 85%. I wish I’d known that four years ago.
Dean had the dog microchipped at the Humane Society. We bought him a new collar and hung the microchip tag on it. And then, last Friday, the dog got out again.
I felt bad – but this time I didn’t go to the shelters. I figured if they had the dog they’d scan him and call us. And, in fact, we did get a call in the afternoon. The dog had been located about six blocks away, on the same route he’d been using the previous time. The man who found him got the Petfinder tag and called the number, and they referred him to us. I was so grateful. I gave the kids a lecture about letting the dog in the front yard, of course. But I also realized that finding your lost dog didn’t have to be a hopeless case.
These are the steps to preventing a lost dog:
- Have the dog microchipped
- Have the dog wear a collar with the microchip company tog and a name tag with your phone number.
- Don’t ever let the dog outside of a fenced enclosure.
If the dog is lost:
- Go to the shelters.
- Put up signs in the area where the dog was lost. Put “Reward” and “Needs medication.” If people think the dog needs medication, they won’t want to keep it. All dogs need heartworm medication, so you’re not fibbing.
- Hire a dog tracking bloodhound if you can find one. It gives you a sense of having tried everything and you might be led right to the door of a neighbor who was planning to “adopt” your dog.
- If at first you don’t succeed, go back to the shelters again. Dean found BT on the second visit. Dogs have been found at shelters as long as a year after disappearing.
I’ve been helping my mother with her new twitter account, which was an interesting experience since she knew almost nothing about the application. She had set up her account, written a bio, uploaded a picture and was following 2 people with about 20 following.
“Why don’t I have more following?” she said.
“For one thing, you haven’t got a full page of posts,” I explained. “You’ve only got 7. That means people don’t know if you’re serious yet. They want to see about 20 posts before they start adding you. Another thing is you haven’t added anyone. People tend to add you back when you add them. If you don’t add them, they may never find out about you.”
“So what should I do?”
“Add some people.”
“How do I know who to add?”
“Search on what you’re interested in.” We did that. She has a couple of topics. I hit the search and began scrolling through the accounts, looking for the live ones.
“How do you know not to add those first three people?”
“Anyone that talks about money or millionare or any other things that smacks of MLM is out. Large companies are out. You don’t want someone promoting a product. You want real people who interact. Look, here’s one.” It was a guy who was talking about the Cowboys game.
“Is that all I need to know?”
“No, you’ve got to know how to retweet and how to reply.” That has gotten easier since I joined about a year ago, I noticed. We covered that — just hit the keys beside the posts to retweet or reply.I showed her how she might phrase an effort to interact. For example, she might talk about the Cowboys game with the guy who posted on that.
“Of course, he may or may not answer,” I told her. “You can’t take it personally if they don’t. And retweet interesting posts. People will really appreciate it and you’ll build your network.”
She was getting ready to leave. “I hope this isn’t overwhelming.” I said.
“No, that helps a lot.”
She went out the door. I wondered if I had taught her enough. I will check back on her profile in a day or two. And that will get me back on Twitter, where I haven’t been since I started teaching.
I’d love to tell you what her account is, but I can’t for reasons of my own anonymity efforts. Just say she’s a lady about town in Cowtown, like ten thousand others, and leave it at that.
After a two-week break, it’s back to work this morning for teachers all over the country, including me.
For better or worse, I was not able to let go of thinking about the classroom while I was off. I spent much of my “vacation” doing planning activities, including doing careful lesson plans, diagramming a rearrangement of my classroom, reading books on teaching, upgrading filing and paper organization systems, and making a stoplight out of construction paper (it’s to communicate noise level expectations in the classroom as they change from red: “silent — testing” to yellow “whispering only” to green: “normal voices and discussion.”)
Am I excited? Of course. And worried. The first year of teaching is a challenge, which, back in the summer, I was warned about by a lot of people. I tend to assume that if one person tells you something, you can take it with a grain of salt, but if a dozen people give you the same caution, you probably need to listen carefully. It is hard to be a first year teacher, I will not deny that.
I now know a few things. I know that I love teaching. And that I can go to work without my household collapsing into itself. Those are good things. But there is always much more to learn. I have really only barely scratched the surface of what I want to learn about kids and teaching. The only way to find out the answers to many questions is to get out there are see. So this morning, I’ll go back to the school and start to discover more.
photo credit: ajagendorf25 via flickr photostream.
It’s funny, perhaps, but while I couldn’t care less about new Year’s Eve, when people go to parties, drink, sing “Auld Lang Syne” and cry and worry about getting old, I’ve always rather liked New Year’s Day, with its parades and its feeling of rest and renewal. After all, no one is so old, as the ancient Roman saying goes, that they don’t believe they could have just one more good year. And today, I feel optimistic, like I could have a whole string of good years, one after the other.
All through the Christmas break, resting and preparing, I’ve been looking forward with a kind of optimism. Some of that might be my job and that I love teaching. Some might just be that I’m getting a rest. But some, I sense, it that there are actual new reasons for optimism in 2010. Without going into them, I will simply note that we are in our homes, living our lives, doing our work, interacting with friends and neighbors. What more is necessary?
I think of Chinese New Year and its dragons and red envelopes full of lucky money. I wish we had lucky money to distribute. I feel in the mood to spread some of my optimism. The next best thing I can do is to list the following:
Actual Traditions Said to Improve Luck in the New Year
I look around for these. One is to cook black eyed peas (Hopping John is one popular way) for good luck in the new year. Just yesterday I learned that some believe you should cook cabbage and eat it today, for good luck with money. Finally, there is the red underwear tradition. Some say (my source was in Germany) that wearing red underwear on New Year’s day will improve your romantic prospects for the new year. I have been unable to collect testimonials on this for obvious reasons, but I put it out there for anyone inclined to try.
With that, I’ve got to go down to the store and get some more construction paper (I’m making signs for my classroom) and some cabbage (for money.) I wish everyone and all a Happy New Year, and thank you for reading this blog.
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