Remembering Anneliese Rothenberger

I was saddened by the death of the soprano Anne-Liese Rothenberger in Switzerland last weekend, which aroused dormant memories of my time as a student at the University of Munich in 1961-1963.

I rented one of two rooms which comprised the apartment of Frau Berta Shovanek at Agnesstraße 45, a fifteen-minute walk to the University. Frau Shovanek was a woman in her 70’s who, like so many elderly German women, had lost virtually everything in the War, including her husband, two sons, all of her property, and her homeland, all of which were formerly operative somewhere in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. She lived from a tiny refugees' pension from the government and rented out one half of her apartment to students.

She was effusively friendly and a bit desperate for company in old age, as it seemed to me, and it took me awhile to bring her to the realization that I was not there to help keep her occupied in her declining years. Otherwise our relations were cordial enough, and I appreciated the dumplings and sauerkraut and cakes she plied me with from time to time.

One of the peculiarities of life in Germany during those years was that the whole country went into a state of complete lockdown on Sundays, which in Catholic Bavaria meant no shopping, no public entertainments, no movies, no nothing. The idea was that after church (optional) you were supposed to get yourself invited for Sunday dinner somewhere, and thus spend the afternoon on social visits with friends or family. The Museums were open, and you could also go for a walk when the weather was fine, but winters were often severe in Munich, and without relatives or friends I wound up staying home a lot on Sundays.

In those years the Bavarian Radio broadcast operetta music every Sunday afternoon. I became aware of this by hearing muffled arias and choruses sneaking through the hallway underneath Frau Shovanek’s glass-paneled living-room door. Becoming curious, I fired up my tube-driven Grundig radio set and tuned in for myself, and thus I gradually developed the habit of listening to operettas on house-bound winter Sunday afternoons in Munich.

It is hard to imagine a more perfect manifestation of musical kitsch than the German operetta. It grew out of the opéra comique in Paris around the middle of the 19th century which soon found its way to Vienna and Berlin. It frequently described a vanished European world when God was still in his heaven and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still intact and young princes fell in love with commoners and handsome young men wore beautiful uniforms and nobody got hurt much, assuming you knew the right people. In short, the world of operetta, which has as much intellectual depth to it as say Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma,  was about as far removed from modern masterwork operas like Alban Berg’s Lulu and Wozzeck as it was possible to get.

The genre was therefore popular with older people, especially I imagine with those whose lives had been ruined by two world wars. This was the older audience served by Bavarian Radio on Sunday afternoons, and the reigning queen of operetta was the lyric soprano Anneliese Rothenberger, then at the peak of her fame.

Rothenberger doubtless had her own war stories to relate, starting her professional career in Germany in the 1940’s, an initial role being Berg’s Lulu, which she sang years later at the Met. She was a fine opera singer, especially for Mozart and Strauss, but her voice was absolutely perfect for operettas, which after awhile you’d think had been written especially for her.

She must have recorded every soprano aria in the entire operetta repertory. Unhappily most of this incredible output occurred before the arrival of stereo, although there are some fine stereo recordings from the late 60’s and later. In the 70’s she had two popular shows on German tv, but again these targeted the geriatric crowd, since young people in Germany then as now found operetta music ridiculous.

Anneliese Rothenberger was one of those few celebrity artists one can think of who not only looked gorgeous and sounded wonderful, but who apparently got almost everything else right as well. Widowed after a marriage of 44 years and having recovered from cancer, she wound up in a comfy but hardly ostentatious villa on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, where she spent her later life -- the Germans say Lebensabend, life's evening -- painting vividly impressionist pictures of flowers from her garden.

There are several clips of her in YouTube. For pure perfection, nothing exceeds her Sophie in Rosenkavalier, singing with the cross-dressing Sena Jurinac:



Or you can go to YouTube directly here.

Winds of Malevolence in the Libyan Desert

1. Al Khanjar

The hot breath of this wind of abomination betrays its pacific origins. Known for its slow-moving progress as the “Wind of 40 Days,” it first appears on the horizon as a thin blue-black line which slowly broadens and extends its smoky arms. In the following days the sky is gradually covered with an immense, copper-tinted veil, studded with black spots resembling clouds of locusts and grasshoppers.

Desert people also refer to this wind also as the “Breath of the Infidel,” and in former times it is recorded that the Bedouin rushed from their tents brandishing knives, beating gongs and snapping cords of rope with magical knots to do battle with the accursed intruder. For alone among the winds of the Libyan desert, Al Khanjar—The Knife—is hot and moist at once, a poisonous wind that taints the air and all it embraces. In its evil breath old wounds and scars re-open and begin to suppurate. It scalds the skin, cracks lips open and causes instant bleeding from the nose. Bowel complaints and bladder problems follow almost inevitably; infarctions and ulcerous perforations are common.

All who encounter Al Khanjar are rendered pale and sickly. Most are overwhelmed with fatigue and apathy, and an urge for immediate self-destruction is rapidly generated. A dark melancholy spreads across the entire population, now inclined toward desperate decisions.

Winds of Malevolence in the Libyan Desert

2. Al Haboob

The peace of the late afternoon is interrupted by a sudden eruption of extreme violence. A black cloud gathers at the horizon and races across the desert in the shape of a huge ball of whirling sand. In one otiose moment the earth’s surface is scorched and laid bare as if by a host of howling demons. The clothing is stripped off the back of the unfortunate traveller, whose orifices are penetrated with a fine dust that fills the tiniest crevices and renders all food and drink unpalatable.

Unfortunate complexities ensue. Wells in outlying villages wells are sucked dry; camels urinate without warning; and sheep and goats are impaled by flying timbers, or dismembered by roof tiles or bricks falling from chimneys. Indeed the abrasive quality of this wind has been known to frost window glass, cut down telephone poles, and blow the paintwork off automobiles.

Winds of Malevolence in the Libyan Desert

3.  Al Amok

This wind begins innocently as a scirocco drifting harmlessly along the western coastal hills of Sicily. Moving westwards it quickly achieves storm force and whips the Mediterranean into a furious, seething froth. When it strikes the North African coast, fish turn ravenous in the gelid, foam-whipped water, and an army of crabs emerges from the sea and marches inland, each with its right-hand claw lifted in salute to the Crab Leader.

Meanwhile birds are stripped naked in flight and blown featherless to the earth, victims of appalling aerodynamic savagery. Masts snap and cables part in the harbor: fishing fleets are obliterated. The wind overturns automobiles in the streets and hurls children into canals. Books shrivel in people’s homes, and the furniture makes cracking noises.

When night falls, the fellahin attack each other with knives.

I can't remember where I found this great picture on the Internet. It reminded me of the late Sixties in San Francisco, where mystical-looking hippies could be found every day meditating in the Park or walking up and down Haight Street.

I found this photo here.

Not the Twat of Tangiers

Nice show last night at the Thrillpeddlers revival of Hot Greeks, which hasn't been performed in these precincts since 1972. My favorite number was "I Am Not the Twat of Tangiers," tenderly rendered by Russell Blackwood, who looked like a crazed Kabuki actor suffering transfixion by Pallas Athena's Medusa.
Miss Sheldra's performance of "No, No, Nanook" convincingly informed the audience that there might be more going on at the North Pole than one might have logically supposed.
In "Divorcee's Lament," Michael Phillis did a remarkable job of imitating original Cockette Goldie Glitter's patented facial expression, which required continual fluttering of the eyelids alternating with a look of glazed, bovine stupefaction suspended in a fabricated state of intense horrification.

Trouble in Sherwood Forest

Ridley Scott’s new Robin Hood film has proved about as popular among movie critics as the Gulf Coast oil spill among ecologists. There are three sources of disapproval: 1) the film isn’t historically accurate; 2) it doesn’t reflect the traditional Robin Hood narrative; 3) Russell Crowe is a failed gangsta.

It is truly astonishing how quickly movie critics transform into accomplished medieval historians the moment a period movie hits the screens. Apparently they dash off to consult Wikipedia, following which the urge to play “spot the anachronism” seems all but irrepressible.

Granted that the present film seen as a historical exercise is skewed beyond all recognition. Richard Lion-Heart had no interest in England, spoke no English, died ingloriously, and was thought by some contemporaries to be gay. In effect he was a more or less failed war-lord who accomplished little, unlike the incomparably more genial King Philip Augustus of France.

Naturally Philip never invaded England, as depicted in the Omaha Beach invasion sequence beneath Dover Cliffs. Philip was far more concerned with breaking up the Angevin Empire, whose fate was sealed at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. And Magna Carta was of course a revolt of the barons, not the peasantry, who couldn’t get a decent insurgency off the ground until the 1380’s.

History coincides with celluloid phantasy only in the person of King John. Generally viewed as a jerk who lost his empire, he was interdicted by the Pope, lost authority to the barons and was respected by no one. Within his kingdom, however, the basic antagonism was between Normans and Saxons, not between “England” and “France,” as was touched upon more successfully in Anouilh’s Beckett play.

That’s just to mention the larger, aristocratic narrative at the butt-end of the 12th century. One reviewer was distressed at the drabness of medieval country life -- but that part at least seems reasonably authentic -- colored cloth was unavailable to the masses, who must have been pretty filthy after working in the fields all day, where almost all of the population was employed. Americans would probably be as happy living in a medieval village as when suddenly teleported to somewhere in North Korea.

But the larger point is that all these historical issues just don’t make any difference. Films about the Middle Ages should be understood as acts of the imagination -- as medievalism, not medieval history; as food for thought, not for their accuracy in historical representation.

Who cares if King Phillip of France never invaded England? Isn’t it more interesting to ponder how it would have looked if he had been stupid enough to do so on Dover Beach? Would he have used D-Day-type landing craft? Wouldn’t you have deployed your archers upon the cliffs? Could a skilled archer really have shot the fleeing Godfrey of Boulogne through the neck at a hundred yards? And wouldn’t the siege of a Norman castle shown at the beginning of the movie really have looked something like that?

What I tend to think more distasteful is the depiction generally of all this aberrant male behavior: guys endlessly stabbing each other with spears or showering opponents with projectiles. But it’s of course exactly these battle scenes which make the movie really interesting.

Seen as a work of imagination, Ridley Scott’s movie takes on a different significance. And if it doesn’t follow the traditional story of Robin Hood in Merrie Olde England, are modern viewers really so keen on seeing a bunch of operetta bandits prancing around in green tights in the woods? Must we absolutely have to watch Robin and Marian screwing each other to confirm that they’re in love, as one reviewer was kvetching -- does there always have to be a sex scene to authenticate romantic love?

It has also become fashionable for journalists to dump all over Russell Crowe lately -- British reviewers question the validity of his movie accent, which for Americans is recognizable only as a kind of sullen grunting noise. But despite his proletarian demeanor, nobody seems to question his acting skill (just compare him to the disastrous Kevin Costner in the last Robin Hood film), or that of Cate Blanchett, who is a welcome relief in all this heavily gendered mayhem, but to which she too eventually succumbs.

Saturday Gallimaufry

1. They sleep with the sloths at http://slothrescue.org/index.html.

2. Got Medieval suggests that Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film may be the absolute worst medieval movie of all time.

3. The British Library has put online the orginal manuscript edition of Alice in Wonderland.

Abolish Lords? No Way!

Intelligence received this morning from London speaks of a constitutional reform measure proposed by Lib Dem coalitioning Deputy P.M. Nick Clegg to replace the House of Lords with an elected legislative body.

What a detestable idea! Not only would such a misguided reform abolish one of the most stylish and marvelously ineffectual parliamentary bodies in the world, but, as unicameralist Matt Yglesias suggests, based on the American experience it would exponentially compound the difficulties involved with attempting to pass effective legislation.

More Lords photos here.

Chaucer Unmasked at Kalamazoo

News has reached us from Kalamazoo of the solution to one the greatest problems confronting historians of the Middle Ages in modern times: the secret identity of him who is authorially responsible for Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.

You may learn for yourself by viewing In the Middle's entry for May 14th.

Reason for caution

I have no idea where this artwork originated. I lifted it off a facebook photo album from Rumi Missabu, who thinks it would like fine in her living room, but worries that the movers might not be able to get it through the housedoor. Personally, I think I would be more concerned that it might start to tumesce.

A la bataille

The nimble English gunner with linstock the devilish cannon touches.

             -- Shakespeare, Henry V, II

Things Which Boston Has That San Francisco Doesn't

1.   Dunkin' Donuts,* ubiquitously.
2.   Durgin Park Restaurant.
3.   Windows with small rectangular panes of glass embedded within them.
4.   Red-brick buildings.
5.   Elm trees (Ulmus Americanus), of which there are very few left on Boston Common.
6.   Tons of college students.
7.   Charles River.
8.   Boston Public Library.
9.   Symphony Hall.
10. Jordan Hall.

*   Dunkin's Donuts are of course named after St. Dunkin of Duffnott, a corpulent Irish monk of the early tenth century who discovered that by placing a hole in the center of a pile of honey oat cakes, they could be neatly stacked. St. Dunkin is remembered also for a highly sophisticated argument for the existence of God which states that if fresh donuts and coffee exist, how could God not exist?

Boston – May 3rd

This weekend a water reservoir pipe broke in Weston which supplies water to Boston – culminating in a “boiled water order” for the entire city. What this meant practically for the intrepid tourist was that Dunkin Donuts did not serve coffee for two days, and otherwise one had to rely on bottled water. No big inconvenience, but it did occur to me that this was the first time in my 70 years in America that I had received warning that the water was not safe to drink.

In the morning I worked in Bates Hall at Boston Public Library on my book review due Thursday in San Francisco. This is the most beautiful place to read books I know of, and the BPL, which has a Venetian courtyard to read in when the weather is nice, incorporates the pleasures and responsibilities of literacy more than anywhere else I can think of.

Lunch followed at Durgin Park, and in the evening a great chamber music concert at Jordan Hall by the excellent Borromeo Quartet. They played pieces by Hugo Wolff and Gunther Schuller off laptops (Macs) mounted on music stands, which I had never seen before.

What made this trip especially rewarding was the pure joy of hearing good music inside Sanders Theatre, Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, beautifully maintained architecture from a century or more past equipped with perfect acoustics, probably because no one built in those days with that in mind .

Back to San Francisco the following day, reading the book I was assigned to review on the airplane, after a perfect vacation.

Boston – May 2nd

Two great concerts today. First Bach’s G-major Mass at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, beautifully performed by the Chapel Choir and orchestra. There are some fine moments in this seldom-heard work, for example the fugue at the end of the Gloria at In gloria Dei Patris. I hadn’t been inside Marsh Chapel in over 50 years, and it was also satisfying to see that the place hadn’t changed in the slightest.

But the musical highlight of this trip was a Bach program at Symphony Hall with the Handel & Haydn Society directed by Harry Christophers. Two cantatas, two a cappella motets including the fiendishly difficult Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, a double violin concerto and the Fifth Brandenburg – in reality a trio sonata for violin, flute and harpsichord, with a string ensemble murmuring sweet nothings in the background. (It breaks for an absolutely insane, five-minute harpsichord solo extravaganza in the last movement – not really a cadenza, rather a virtuosic excursus inserted into the piece just for the sheer hell of it. What musicians those must have been at Kothen.)

The performance was absolutely flawless, in the best early music period practice, and Christophers’ direction was a revelation – he organizes Bach in larger phrases of 4-8 measures, which I’d never really heard anyone do before as effectively.

I sang with the H&H for two seasons in 1957 and 1958, when it was still a quasi- Victorian choral society. Now it is a small semi-professional chorus with a period orchestra, as good a Baroque performance ensemble as any in the world.

I was lucky enough to have a ticket in the second row center, placing me almost on stage among the musicians. Where do you get that for $35 in San Francisco!

Boston — May 1st

My second day in Boston found me hiking down Long Wharf to walk off another meal at Durgin Park, and afterwards exploring the 400 block of Beacon Street, where I lived with my parents at No. 468 from 1945 to 1947. Our redbrick apartment building, now given over to overpriced condominiums, is located almost at the corner of Mass. Ave, and Harvard Bridge is still but a stone’s throw away. Not a single one of those buildings seen in my picture above was there in 1945 -- the gold dome of the State House could be seen for miles.

Storrow Drive had not yet replaced a spacious green park that ran along the Charles to Longfellow Bridge; today about half of it remains in the area near Hatch Shell. I remember a big celebration held to celebrate the end of WW II, with fire-boats ejaculating Charles River water skywards while the Boston Pops, awash in patriotic fervor, played with inspiring vigor the Coast Guard march Semper Paratus in the Shell. This is the first music I can remember having heard, and the melody has continued to march around inside my brain ever since.

From those years I remember walking east down Mass. Ave with my Dad. At the bridge crossing over the Mass. Turnpike there were multiple train tracks, and it was great fun to hang your head over the rail as the steam locomotives passed under and shot up a huge cloud of steam and cinders. I remember the smell of the burning coal to this day.

Saturday evening was devoted to a student performance of Shakespeare’s Pericles at Adams House. I wanted to see it because it was one of the few plays by Shakespeare I hadn’t yet seen. Like most student productions the show was oddly hyperkinetic, which provoked a good-spirited and lively entertainment, but at the cost of squelching the hoped-for enjoyment of Shakespeare’s language.

Boston — April 30th

My room at the Hotel Self-Storage, known more commonly as the Huntington Avenue YMCA, proved to be quite hospitable, since it was pleasantly empty. I generally stay here when visiting Boston, because of its perfect location near the things that interest me — 31 minutes on the T to Harvard Square and 15 minutes per pedes to Copley Square or to Museum of Fine Arts, and five minutes to Symphony Hall and two minutes to Jordan Hall. And all for only $50 per night.

I went first to Durgin Park for lunch, walking east from the State House down Beacon St to Quincy Market. This restaurant, my personal favorite anywhere, due largely to the fact that it serves very traditional New England fare, the kind of stuff I grew up with — fresh cornbread with every meal, delicious fish chowder, Boston baked beans, Yankee pot roast, and Indian pudding for dessert. Durgin Park was founded in 1827 and has neither moved nor changed much since. The decor is late 1890’s American proletarian, and the menu is about the same as it was in the 19th century.

In the evening I attended Jim Marvin’s farewell concert at Sanders Theatre. Jim is retiring after 28 years' directing the Harvard choral organizations, most notably the Harvard Glee Club, in my experience the best men’s choir in the country. I’ve been a fan for 50 years. Due in large part to Jim’s commitment to early music performance, the Glee Club has turned into an altogether exceptional performing group and a unique cultural asset.

Prof. Peter Gomes, who seems to have become the University’s toastmaster general, delivered a 15-minute Festrede, and then we were off to the races with two hours or more of the finest choral music imaginable. Ostensibly a concert given to honor its director, it was more like Marvin presenting a showcase of his accomplishments over 30 years, during the course of which he has completely transformed choral music at Harvard. (If you're old enough to remember G. Wallace Woodworth and Archibald Davison, you'll know what I mean.)

You can see a YouTube interview with Jim Marvin here, and a clip of his retirement concert here, albeit it with terrible audio.

Picture of Sanders Theatre/Memorial Hall from Wikipedia, "Annenberg Hall."

Boston - April 29th

Arrived at Logan Airport late Thursday evening after an interminable American Airlines cattle-car flight from San Francisco. Amazing how they’ve made air travel a miserably annoying experience: it was like being encapsulated in an MRI tube for 5.5 hours. I suppose next they will have passengers hanging on an overhead strap like the NYC subway, and charge you an extra $100 if you want to sit down. How fondly I remember the golden era of air travel, when there was plenty of wiggle room for your legs and uniformed stewardesses would slap a free drink into your hand before you even landed in your seat.

I took the subway from Logan to Park Street, where we were tossed off the train and marched out of the underground because of a sudden electrical fire. There was a thick black of smoke hanging over Boston Common that smelled like a fire in a rubbish dump, and a couple hundred stranded subway passengers milling around at Park and Tremont Streets.

Knowing that I’d never get a taxi and that it would take hours for the MBTA to arrange relief buses, I hiked all the way from Park Street Station to the YMCA on Huntington Ave near Symphony Hall, schlepping the luggage cart I borrowed from Francesca behind me. I made it in less than an hour, and actually it was rather pleasant to shake off the forced incarceration suffered on the flight from San Francisco.