Anita Epstein-Rosen Explains Carmen for You

Anita, one of the docents, made me nuts because she was so abrasive, hypercritical, and stereotypically New York. I thought it would be fun to try to capture her attitude and temperament in writing.

Anita Epstein-Rosen Explains Carmen for You

So hello and welcome to the lecture on Carmen. My name is Anita Epstein-Rosen. So. Carmen. How many of you have never seen Carmen, the most popular opera in the world? Raise your hands. Okay, most of you have never seen it. This tells me that you're all philistines out here in the desert. What, you've never been to the Met? Why am I even asking you that? You're probably too lazy to drive to the Santa Fe Puebloplex and see the latest Bruce Willis, much less go to an opera. You at least know the Toreador Song, though, right? "Toreador, don't spit on the floor. Use the cuspidor. That's what it's for." You didn't sing that in the school yard? Oy.

So. Carmen by Georges Bizet. As the opera starts, we're in Spain at a cigarette factory. Georges, talk to Anita. What kind of composer would open an opera in a cigarette factory? I'm thinking something a little more upscale, Georges, a little more Midtown. Would it have killed you to set the first act in Bloomingdale's? Frankly, I can't see the customers having a knife fight over cigarettes. Georges, let's see some real conflict between these women, let's see a half-off sale on bath fashions, maybe a knife fight over wicker Kleenex caddies and some Ralph Lauren washcloths in plum. But cigarettes? Georges, those sounds you hear are your mother's sobs of shame.

So. Carmen. A soldier named Don Jose ignores Carmen at the factory, so she throws him a flower to show she's interested. Excuse me, but does anybody believe this? If she's interested in him, she should have invited him over for dinner, maybe some brisket and a nice kugel with a bottle of chilled Manieschevitz. But a flower? I'm not buying it. Don Jose tucks the flower away and meets Carmen later in a tavern with gypsies. Georges, I'm worried. First a cigarette factory and now a tavern? They couldn't meet at the Algonquin for a nice chablis with lovely people instead of a tavern filled with people who have never been near shampoo, deodorant, and toothbrushes in their lives? All right, so we'll accept the fact that Don Jose and Carmen are in love, but between you and me, he's not for her, she's not for him.

So they go into the mountains, and Carmen's friend Micaëla tells Don Jose to return to his dying mother, which, if you ask me, he should have done in the first act; he should have said, "Mom, I'm sorry. You taught me better than to pick up a slut-rag I met at a cigarette factory. Mom, to show you how sorry I am, I'm taking you to a matinee of Mama Mia and afterward we'll go to the Russian Tea Room for a nice glass of rosé and maybe some pound cake. Really, it's no bother." Up there in the mountains, Carmen starts flirting with Escamillo, a bullfighter in a suit of lights. Excuse me, Georges, but I'm not seeing sequins, reflective metallic thread, embroidery, slippers, and a beaver skin hat anytime soon in the summer line at Barney's.

So. Escamillo. Carmen accepts his invitation and goes to the bullfight in her peasant blouse, broomstick skirt, and lots of silver bangles, which, if she got them in Santa Fe, were really no bargain. But Don Jose is at the bullring, too, in spite of having just buried his mother and not even sitting shiva, because he's so in love with Carmen. Carmen tells Don Jose that she loves Escamillo and throws the ring he gave her at him. So he does what I wanted to do since the end of the first act and stabs her to death, and the other gypsies have to figure out how to get bloodstains out of a polyblend peasant blouse.

Any questions? No? Good! Enjoy the opera.

Carmen at the half-off sale at Bloomingdale's

Mrs. Aldersflügel's second husband

I finished up three weeks' of docent training at the Santa Fe Opera and was on information overload the whole time. We learned all about production design, costumes, wigs and makeup, props, scenery construction, and everything else associated with putting on an opera. The heads of the various production shops did the sessions on their specialties, and we learned about this season's six operas from the inimitable Oliver Prezant.

For some reason, no matter where I sat during docent training, the elderly Mrs.Aldersflügel always sat next to me and repeated or commented on everything the speaker said.

Prop master: Here are some of the props we'll be using in Carmen this season.

Mrs. Aldersflügel: Ja, props for Carmen. I haf zeen Carmen all over vorld. Many times. Oh, many, many times. [heaves a sigh for all good things past]

Prop master: One of the wonderful things we've fabricated is a trick dagger with a retractable blade and a bladder for fake blood.

Mrs. Aldersflügel: Jawohl, a knife! Like flick knife I used on mein second husband. Blood was real, though. [to me] Dey never found out who did it.Vat you tink about dot?

Me: [Scoot down the bench away from her. Accidentally bump hips with Anita the Pill, who is always spoiling for a fight. Scoot away a few inches so she won't hit me.]

Prop master: You must also be sure to point out the severed heads of Jokanaan from our various productions of Salome.

Mrs. Aldersflügel: Ach,Salome. Heads mit blood. Salome vass mein sister's name also. She did not decapitated her husband, but I had femur of mein second husband and clubbed brother-in-law's head mit it after dancing mit veils like Salome. Actual, I used towels. Veils vass being dry-cleaned mit brother-in-law's toupee. Vat you tink about dot?

Me: [The hell with this. I'm scooting way down the bench. End up next to the man who has seen every production of Carmen since 1915, who thinks I'm flirting with him.]

Mrs. Aldersflügel: You! Docent all the times taking notes! Vy you scooting avay so fastly?

Mrs. Aldersflügel considers her third husband.

And don't put your lips on John the Baptist's head!

I've been going to the Santa Fe Opera for 45 years. I've seen 98 different operas and attended 160 performances. I've seen The Magic Flute 12 times (they haven't gotten it right since 1968).

Yesterday morning I took the backstage tour at SFO for the first time. I was with a nice couple, Keith and Laura, from Shawnee, OK, who are staying at the Glorieta Baptist Assembly. He teaches at Oklahoma Baptist University. They're Baptists.

There were Rules. No photography. Don't even think about eating. If you need to pee, go now, because we are not stopping. Do not speak at all in the costume shop, because the stitchers needed to concentrate. And no drinking anything anywhere, even though it's 98º and the relative humidity is 4%.

The tour was interesting but not very detailed. The docent would point out stuff—"This, of course, is the fledamora plankstaff, complete with state-of-the-art street elbows and bell-top flow flanges"—but wouldn't elaborate on what exactly it was, what it did, and why no self-respecting opera house should be without one. She made much of the fact that there's no curtain, and all the set changes are made in full view of the audience. Keith and Laura were not impressed.

She also pointed out that there's no back wall to the stage, but didn't give examples of why not having a wall would occasionally be a good thing; so I told Keith and Laura about using the lights of Los Alamos as the lights of the harbor at Nagasaki, the Flying Dutchman's ship rising out of the sea during a lightning storm in the Jemez, and the Queen of the Night's entrance in the 1968 production of The Magic Flute.

We went to the Stieren Orchestral Hall; the docent said it was used for rehearsals. I added that the preview lectures are also held there. Keith and Laura seemed to appreciate my annotations, but the docent may have thought I was a know-it-all.

I asked whether it was true that the opera had the prop head of every singer who had sung Jochanaan in Salome, and the docent said they did, but we couldn't see them. Ratz. That was the main reason I went.

Aubrey Beardley's illustration for Oscar Wilde's play

We had only a couple interactions with the workers. We talked briefly with a wigmaker, and I learned enough that I never want to take up that job. The opera uses real human hair, and all the wigs for the principals are handmade. The process requires meticulousness and patience. We also got to talk with a journeyman who was painting a piece for The Marriage of Figaro.

We saw one of the costumes from Lucio Silla, and the docent said that they always use "muslim" when making the first pattern for the costume. That's one way to bring peace to the Middle East, I guess.

Architectural costume designed by Paul Brown. Photo by Beatuy by Noel.

She also showed us some swatches for this year's production of "Don del Lago," an opera apparently based on Mafia activity in the Scottish Highlands (Prendete l'haggis. Lasciare la sciabola. "Take the haggis. Leave the broadsword.").

It was fun, and I got my $10 worth. Maybe next season I can volunteer as a docent. I bet I'd be boffo.

Synopsis of the opera Non puoi arrivarci da qui

Non puoi arrivarci da qui (You Can’t Get There from Here)

Atto I

Peggerina enters with her mother, La Signora Margarita. They discuss the possibility of going to Memphis, Tennessee, to attend the annual Donor Appreciation Event sponsored by the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. (Spero che servono torta. “I hope they serve pie.”) Margarita encourages her daughter to go online and book airline tickets. (Non si preoccupi. Pagherò per tutto. “Don’t worry. I’ll pay for everything.”) Peggerina says she can’t do anything, for a problem has arisen. (La connessione internet è giù; il gatto è stato a giocare con il cavo. “There’s no internet connection; Flicker’s been playing with the cable again.”) They weep.

Atto II

The internet connection restored and Flicker sent to play outside, the two continue their search for flights from Albuquerque to Memphis. (Vogliono quanto? “They want how much?”) Peggerina says that Southwest does not fly to Memphis, and their partner, AirTran, flies to Memphis but doesn’t serve Albuquerque. (Si tratta di un sistema? “Is this a system?”)

They find an inexpensive flight that lasts nineteen hours, taking them from Albuquerque at 5:30 a.m. to Chicago O’Hare to Charleston, South Carolina, to Little Rock, and arriving in Memphis at 12:45 a.m. Peggerina is distraught. (Porca puttana su un biscotto. “Holy crap on a cracker!”) Margarita tries to comfort her sobbing daughter. (Calmati. Troveremo un modo. “Oh, calm down. We’ll find a way to get there.”) Peggerina is doubtful. (Io non sto prendendo un autobus che è certo. “I’m not taking the bus, that’s for sure.”) Margarita encourages Peggerina to seek an alternate route, perhaps through a different airport. (Possiamo andare per la città con un altezza di 1,609.344 metri? “Maybe we could go through Denver?”) Peggerina demurs. (Ogni volta che vado attraverso Denver perdono il mio bagaglio. “Every time I go through Denver, they lose my luggage.”) While Peggerina sobs, Margarita gets another cup of tea.

Atto III

Peggerina offers an alternate plan. (Siamo in grado di guidare. Interstate 40 ci porta direttamente a Memphis. “We can drive. It’s a straight shot on I-40.”). This time it is Margarita’s turn to object. (Non c’è niente da vedere lungo la strada. Mi piace scenario. “Are you kidding? There’s nothing to see. I like scenery!”) Peggerina says they can take the side roads. Margarita says that Delta flies to Memphis and urges Peggerina to continue the research. She finds a flight leaving Albuquerque at zero dark thirty and, after a brief layover in Atlanta, arriving in Memphis well before the reception and dinner. Margarita is ecstatic. (Prenota esso, Danno. Qui è la mia carta di credito. Fare con quello che volete. “Book it, Danno! Here’s my credit card. Do with it what you will.”)

The two rejoice and practice an aria to sing during the flight. (Novanta nove bottiglie di birra sul muro. “99 bottles of beer on the wall.”)

A Grammy winner in our store!

Back in 2008, I wrote about meeting Sasha Cooke, the mezzo soprano, who was singing Kitty Oppenheimer in Doctor Atomic at the Met. Well, Doctor Atomic won a Grammy for Best Opera Recording!

Here is Sasha with her Grammy.

And here's a clip from Dr. Atomic.

I am so happy for her!

I'm not a peasant, but I play one on TV

The Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Life Is a Dream by Lewis Spratlan, and we're seeing it this Friday. To prepare myself and to revisit a play that I read as an undergraduate (but which I have absolutely no memory of), I bought a copy of Life Is a Dream (La vida es sueño) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and translated by Gregary Racz.

Gregary Racz's translation of La vida es sueño is, as Racz explains in a note on his translation, "the first attempt to render the drama entirely in analogous meter and rhyme since 1853, when both Denis Florence MacCarthy and Edward FitzGerald, with varying degrees of success, contemporaneously produced full-length English language versions of the play." A reviewer of Racz's translation wrote, "With Calderón utilizing 'a variety of metrical and rhyming patterns,' Racz's attempt to mirror that in the English is particularly noteworthy. Obviously, a bilingual edition, with the Spanish text facing the English one, would be the ideal solution, but fortunately the Spanish text of the play can readily be found on the Internet, and Racz's version does effectively give a sense of the sound and feel of the original for those who want to focus solely on an English text."

Well, that's pretty cool! As I read, I noticed that most of the verse was iambic tetrameter.

What's life? A frenzied, blurry haze.
What's life? Not anything it seems.
A shadow. Fiction filling reams.
All we possess on earth means nil,
For life's a dream, think what you will,
And even all our dreams are dreams.

And as I kept reading, I thought, "Why is this making me nuts? The translation is acclaimed, and Racz seems to have captured the sound and feel of Spanish. Is it me?"

Then I answered my own question: "Yes, you peasant, it is indeed you. You keep thinking about a certain poem by Longfellow, which is also written in iambic tetrameter, and at the end of every speech in Life Is a Dream, you want to say, 'Excelsior!'"

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

P-Doobie and Michele take a vacation together!

Michele and I had a blast on our vacation to San Diego and Escondido last week. 

Michele surprised me last year with tickets to Madama Butterfly, starring my ultimate hug-honey (after Michele and Natalie Dessay), Patricia Racette, who is an amazing singer and actress; I've been following her career since she debuted at Santa Fe as Emmeline in 1996. We had great seats, and the performance was wonderful (review here). I was emotionally drained at the end. 

Carlo Ventre as Pinkerton That Dope and Pat Racette as Cio-Cio-San

Our hotel was downtown in the Gaslamp District and right around the corner from the opera. It's luxurious enough that you feel pampered, and affordable enough that you don't feel you need to subsist on beef jerky and diet Pepsi from the Conoco station up the street. 

We also strolled around Hillcrest and went to the Ace Hardware Store, which is the coolest hardware store on the planet, and to the Obelisk Bookstore. The Obelisk seems to be scrapping along. Support your local independent bookstores!

We bought bucket hats at the Village Hat Shop so we wouldn't burn our noses and ears.

Two stylin' babes

We also went to Balboa Park and enjoyed the flowers, trees, butterflies, and photographs by Lou Stoumen and Edward Steichen at the Museum of Photographic Arts.


Times Square in the Rain, by Lou Stoumen

Michele's patient butterfly


A yellow columbine in the park

Tree trunk

After "a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk / along the briny beach" in La Jolla, we went to D. G. Wills Books, where I saw this label on a shelf.

LITERARY CRIT., CULTURAL STUDIES & UNIDENTIFIABLE SOPHISTRY

Further comment is superfluous.

Our visit with Chuckbert and Mr. Bears was a delight. We drove to Ramona and Julian and enjoyed shopping for bread, having a peaceful lunch in the garden of a converted cottage, eating pie, and poking around the shops. 

We also got to help celebrate Karl's birthday with the traditional homemade mac-n-cheese and brownies. Mmmmmmmm!

On Saturday we went to La Jolla for a little gallery hopping. We went to the Martin Lawrence Gallery. And There. They. Were. Lithographs by Robert Deyber. We spent lots of time talking with Teresa the Curator. Then we walked around La Jolla. I thought a lot about the lithographs. Then we went back. I bought "Bag of Tricks." 

A rebus

Ike was glad to see us when we got back yesterday. Flicker said, "Oh. You were away?"

"Doctor Atomic" x 3

On Friday as I was driving on my little roadtrip, I listened to John Adams's opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Doctor Atomic, on XM Vox. It was musically interesting but difficult. The libretto, which used many actual writings of the Manhattan Project principals, had some neat lines, including this one, which still holds true today: "Anyone could have found Los Alamos just by following the trail of beer cans from Santa Fe."


When I went into the store yesterday morning, I found a note from one of the staffers. A customer from the National Institutes of Health was looking for the libretto for Doctor Atomic, because she was going to see the opera at the Met in October. I couldn't find a libretto online, so I suggested she check at the Met's gift shop.

But wait! There's more. That afternoon my friend Candace, a voice teacher and good friend to the store, came in and said, "I have someone I want you to meet." She introduced me to Sasha Cooke, who will be singing Kitty Oppenheimer in the Met's production of Doctor Atomic this fall! Sasha was browsing in our atomic history section for books that mention Kitty. She had already read American Prometheus but hadn't read 109 East Palace. I gave her our good-singer's discount and asked her to sign my daily planner. Pretty cool, eh?

Tossing off the high C's and C notes

Saturday Michele and I went to the Lensic in Santa Fe for the last live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's season, La Fille du Régiment. We were in the next-to-the-last row, so I couldn't wear my custom-designed suction cups, catapult myself to the screen, and attach myself to Natalie Dessay, my ultimate hug-honey after Michele. Juan Diego Flórez has received some fairly ecstatic press for nailing all the high Cs in Ah! mes amis (including a solo encore). You may have to subscribe to the online NYTimes (free), but you can also hear an excerpt of the aria at his website. The opera was a delight; the singing and the acting were superb.

Natalie Dessay as Marie, la fille du régiment

Before the opera began, we enjoyed listening to the people sitting behind us.

"Do you speak French? It looks like we're in for a lot of French today."

"I don't speak French."

"Well, we're in for a lot of French today in this opera by Donizetti. Wait. Donizetti. That's Italian. Then why are we in for a lot of French?"

They then started talking about their travels. "No, they're not dead people! What they are is mummies." I was glad to have that distinction clarified.

At all the operas at the Lensic, I noticed a woman who seemed to know everyone, and everyone appeared to know her. I figured I should introduce myself, just in case we should know each other. So I went up, introduced myself, and shook her old cow hand. She introduced herself to me. Well, the woman is richer than God. She raised $9 million to renovate the Lensic, owns the Eldorado Hotel, and does other philanthropic work. I thanked her for all she does. Yep, she's someone worth knowing.

Weee-eeeTUN my wuv, a wonging buhns deep inside me

We are Wagner virgins no more! Michele and I went to see Tristan and Isolde live from the Met yesterday at the Lensic. But first we had a hearty late breakfast at Tia Sophia's so we could enjoy the opera without having to worry about staving off the hunger pangs of midafternoon or the second intermission, whichever came first.

Throughout the first act, the guy next to me kept saying, "Wow!" and we agreed with his assessment (but not with his rudeness in talking out loud), because Deborah Voigt, whom we heard in recital in Santa Fe, and Robert Dean Smith were excellent vocally and were good actors in a park-and-bark. I also liked Michelle DeYoung; I love mezzos. The opera didn't seem 20 minutes long to us, but, as I said, we are Wagner neophytes.

By the second act my enthusiastic neighbor had left the embrace of Polyhymnia and was deep in the arms of Morpheus.

At the second intermission, many in the audience were outside fortifying themselves with the snacks they had brought. We noticed jelly bread, granola bars, pastries, and such heartier fare as ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Inside, the ushers were remonstrating with an elderly gentleman in front of us for bringing in his thermos of coffee into the theatre. He remarked mildly that he had already finished his coffee and was just screwing the cap back on.

We also saw our former neighbor, Ginny R., who said we should read Wagner's biography, because all his operas about "sex and dirty stuff" will make suddenly make sense. She says hi to everyone.

The woman who directed the production for the cinema was roundly booed during the credits. I thought the effects were interesting, but after a while, it seemed that we were watching a movie, and all sense of seeing a live opera was pretty much lost.

After the opera we went to the creperie at The La Fonda Hotel, near the banks of the big Rio Grande River, for a snack. I hate it when the waiter asks, "Are you still working on that?" as if what what's on the plate is a pile of building rubble I'm trying to move. Our waitress yesterday didn't even ask that. She removed Michele's plate because it was obviously empty and Michele had put down her fork. The waitress, plate in hand, then stood in front of me as I continued with my Nutella crepe. Finally she asked, "Do you want me to take your plate?" I said, "No, thank you. I'm still eating." She looked down at at my plate and the half crepe remaining and said, "Oh! I'm sorry!" hustled away, and hustled back with the check.

Here's the link to What's Opera, Doc, because I had trouble uploading the video.