Terri Schiavo's Fate in the Balance

Terri Schiavo is scheduled to begin starving and thirsting to death on October 15. Less than a month to live.

When I think about this case, there are times I wish I lived in a television universe. The whole thing sounds so obviously wrong that you can almost hear the voiceover: "If you have a problem...if noone else can help...maybe you can hire...the A-Team." The theme song would ring out, Mr. T would be snuck onto a plane, a plan would come together, and pretty soon Terri would be getting therapy while all the corrupt folks involved went to eat prison food.

But it's not a fictional universe. Terri's supporters still have hope and a few things to try, but nothing that will wrap up in an hour. Even if she wins, she will always suffer from serious brain damage. But she will be able to keep smiling, keep saying a few words. If she is freed from her husband's power, she can be taken out to see the sky -- the sky she's been prevented from seeing for all these years. She can live and love and laugh, as is the right of every human being.

This is a horror show, my friends. For we will all be helpless at some point in our lives: sick in a hospital, old in a nursing home. We have all been children helpless in the power of adults, and yet that has not saved children from abortion. Will we say that it is all right to murder Terri, and thus to murder us someday, should someone see fit? If people can find the empathy to see that Terri's fight is a fight for us all, we may yet save her. If she loses, we all lose.

Write a letter. Send an email. Visit terrisfight.org. If you live in Florida, consider going to demonstrate. And pray. Pray early and often.

(October the 15th is the day Terri is supposed to die. But it is also the feastday of St. Teresa of Avila. The first of October is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux. Can we believe that these two great saints and Doctors of the Church are not praying for their namesake? If we join our prayers to theirs, might God not grant us a miracle? In the words of St. Teresa, "Hope, o my soul, hope"!)

Hemispheric Opera Premiere -- Part 3

Or, "She finally gets around to the actual review." *embarrassed look* Sorry I'm so longwinded. I should mention here that the opera was part of the Festival of the New in Cincinnati. Also, Googling has revealed to me that Les Arts Florissants did perform this work while on tour from 1996 on, but apparently they did it with cuts. So I guess this was the premiere of the full opera. I will also say that, while I like opera and early music, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about either of them. So don't expect a lot of technical talk or comparisons to other performances.

However, the full opera was being performed by dint of doubling up on parts. For example, the same lady played three minor nymph parts (Oenone, Arethusa and Daphne). Since said nymphs only had a few lines each, this was no big deal. Having the other female singer sing both Eurydice and Persephone was a bit more difficult! However, the singers used slightly different handheld masks (which they only put up to their faces before and after scenes, and kept well away from their faces while singing) to indicate what role they were in. This worked well for me and was visually interesting, especially since the singers didn't wear costumes.

I was expecting a lot of recitative. I like that fine, but it's a bit dry when you don't know the language. Luckily, French baroque opera didn't seem to believe in recitative. It did believe in "basso continuo", about which I have read a great deal and of which I've heard a good bit, but I didn't really understand it until now. You know, it's really just a sophisticated form of the bass "drone" that people like to set up when someone's singing certain kinds of folk ballads. The major difference is that it's instrumental rather than vocal, and that the improv'd accompaniment is done according to certain harmonic rules of Charpentier's day (whereas we do it according to the preferences of ours!). It gives me a lovely relaxed feeling, sorta like slipping into a nice warm early music bath. (Dangerous if you're at all sleepy. So if anyone saw me yawn, it wasn't because I was bored!)

The one major and obvious problem with doing a baroque opera in a church sanctuary is that there was absolutely no way they could have included dancing. (Unless they did a galliard up and down the central aisle....) ;) Since the opera begins with the nymphs encouraging Eurydice and Orpheus' friends to dance for the bride and groom (or rather, to "rend the air" with songs and "mark the grass" by dancing it down), and this is followed by a couple instrumentals obviously meant for dancing, I really felt this absence. Since the dancing was obviously meant to warm up the audience, this had a bad effect dramatically. (Well, a neutral effect, actually. But having things neutral at the very beginning equals bad.)

Anyway, Eurydice shows up and is obviously a rabid anti-dancer, as she pleads for people to stop stomping the flowers and start picking them so she can give Orpheus a crown of flowers when he arrives. (Of roses and white jasmine.) Just as with the nymph's songs, we go through a few choruses and reprises here. And here is one major thing I learned from seeing a baroque opera performed: all those choruses and reprises do not have to be boring. There is no law that says composers always have to repeat the same lyrics to the same music, or the same music in the same way, or that the singers have to sing it in a boring way. Charpentier plays with his choruses and reprises, and the singers and musicians seemed to be enjoying it.

Eurydice gets bitten by a snake, which again would have been more effective with more room. Charpentier just lets her go "Oh!" and leaves it go at that, which works well. Here's the good bit: one of her nymph friends, not realizing what had happened, gives Eurydice a moral speech about how our pleasures are always mixed with pain, and that even when playing with flowers you're bound to prick yourself! Man, that was irony!

People finally notice that Eurydice is feeling poorly and Eurydice sings a bit more. Again, it was very restrained. Orpheus arrives just in time for Eurydice to die in his arms. The poor lady playing her had no room to slump to the ground, and the back pews wouldn't've been able to see her anyway, so she just kinda drooped and then put on her mask and walked away. The singer did a really good job, but I honestly think the first act needs to be performed in a lively way, dancers and all. It's supposed to be evoking the living world at its height of color, beauty and enjoyment, at a wedding which is designed to produce new life. Since the next act heads straight for the land of the dead, more contrast would have been good. But all the singers did their best in a very constrained environment.

Orpheus is definitely the main character in this opera, and it's a really good part for a countertenor. I liked this Orpheus very much. He was very good at conveying his character's grief.

There's a brief scene in which Orpheus thinks about killing himself to follow Eurydice, but Apollo tells him that shedding his blood will be like shedding Apollo's own. (This opera goes with the theory that Orpheus was the son of Apollo and a Muse.) Apollo then tells him to try going to the underworld and pleading with Hades. Orpheus doubts this will work, but goes in lieu of anything better to do with his now-worthless life.

Act two started off with something really cool -- a male singing group of misery composed of Tantalus, Sisyphus and Tityus! If this doesn't cry out for an animated version, I don't know what does. Anyway, the three hear Orpheus singing, and their torments cease for a moment as all Tartarus (including Sisyphus' wheel, Tantalus' fruit trees, and Tityus' vultures) stops to listen to the magical music. (I do think Orpheus had some nerve singing that their torments were nothing to his....) The three guys plead with Orpheus to sing again, and he does, with the same results. Hades notices that everything is standing around and not working and comes to see what's causing the disruption.

Hades is a good part, too. A bass part, of course! Charpentier or his librettist obviously had a good deal of affection for the guy, who is presented as a hardworking monarch who loves his wife dearly.

Orpheus explains that he hasn't come for the glory of defeating Cerberus or to defy Hades, but only to get back Eurydice. Orpheus' arguments that Eurydice was taken before her time are not particularly convincing (since he blames the Parcae, and the Parcae are the ones who determine your time!), and telling Hades he'll eventually get Eurydice back anyway is not worthy of Perry Mason, either. But Orpheus finally manages to sway him by reminding Hades of his extreme love for Persephone, which Persephone reinforces by her own songs. Finally, Hades gives in -- but he tells Persephone he didn't do it for Orpheus' singing, but for her eyes. Awwwwwww.

I should mention that, right in the middle of Orpheus telling about his grief for Eurydice, a loud ambulance drove right by the Cathedral. Luckily, this happened during a pause, so the musicians just kept right on playing until the ambulance had gone. It didn't break the spell. In a weird way, it actually underlined what was going on in the opera, since he'd just been saying something about her being lost. The mythological figures we were watching were artificial, but the feelings they were talking about were real.

So Hades consented to have Eurydice freed, and warned Orpheus not to look back. (It suddenly occurred to me that there's an analogy to not committing premarital sex here; if Orpheus really loves Eurydice, he has to resist doing what he wants to do until they reach their goal and it's suddenly permitted.) Everyone in the underworld rejoices, and sings that for once, Heaven will be jealous of the joy in Hell. (For some reason, I found myself looking past the stage to the crucifix....) :)

So what about the next bit? It doesn't exist. Either the opera is unfinished, or Charpentier really wanted to end on a high note. (Not the worst plan, especially if this was written to celebrate married love. It really does have that wedding feeling.)

So we too got to leave on a high note, after clapping a loooooong time for the singers. People didn't actually do the standing ovation thing until the singers motioned toward the musicians, which was just. I have to say, the singers were good but the musicians were outstanding. I would say more about what they did, but I honestly don't have the vocabulary. It was very interesting to hear a triple harp in a group instead of as a solo instrument, and I know I've never heard a lirone before. It must have been nice for them to get to play something that was "normal" for the time, but not done much in early music circles. I enjoyed the whole thing very much, and the short length and happy ending made the opera more accessible than other baroque operas I've heard. I will definitely be looking for more music by Charpentier.

I did have some serious questions about the translation of the libretto, though. If it says "Monarque", shouldn't you translate it as "Monarch"? Especially since 'monarch' was such a big part of the ideology of the French kings of the day? Hades is not the "Prince of Darkness", either. His Hell is not the same as the Devil's, thank kyew, nor is the Devil known for his strong love of family life. (Nitpicky, I know.)

(Here's some info on the composer of Le Descente de Orphee aux Enfers, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704). Boy, his parents really liked classical history.... Musings on Charpentier and the Guises has some great stuff, including this paper on changes in his treble clefs. This page is partly in French but includes Charpentier's picture.

There's a CD of Orphee by Les Arts Florissants as reviewed here. I haven't heard it, either, but if it's as good as what I heard Sunday, you'll enjoy it.

Hemispheric Opera Premiere -- Part Two

I mean to apologize for leaving you all stranded yesterday. I meant to get back and write the rest of the review earlier. Really. But it's just as well, as my review of the pre-opera appetizer ended up rather longer than I expected. So this is part two of the review. Skip it if you're not interested.

I haven't mentioned the nicest thing, which is that we were given copies of all the lyrics and their translations. If you can't have surtitles or subtitles, the next best thing is a script. I read ahead so as not to be too distracted during the live performance, but found myself using the script anyway. This did cause me a bit of a sore neck, though, as I kept ducking my head to catch glimpses of the script on my lap so as to follow along. The lady next to me did drop her script at one point, but fortunately nobody was singing at the time.

The first item on the program was a short piece called "Vanitas Vanitatum", by one of Charpentier's teachers, Jacomo Carissimi (1605-1674).
He was a priest who worked in Rome, and his music was so popular that the Pope forbade any of his manuscripts be removed. The first part of the piece is from Ecclesiastes -- a list of all the things the writer did and found were done in vain. Each of the five singers took their turn singing a stanza; each stanza ended with the refrain, "Vanitas vanitatum, omnia, omnia vanitas!" which was then repeated by the chorus. The big verse was the one about getting male and female singers, of course, and the music went into all kinds of elaborations and repetitions and such.

Then things moved into a different musical sound in the second bit. There was a list (not from Ecclesiastes, I think) of all the worldly goodies that were no good, which alternated between zipping along
at high speed and dwelling on things slooooowly. This was very effective, but also very clearly fun for the singers. Some internal rhyming occurred. ("inanes labores, fugaces honores, mendaces favores" -- nice!). which was some kind of Then there was an "ubi sunt" section which seemed to be a secular Latin
text. I liked this bit a lot, so I'm going to quote it all from the script they gave us. (I have to confess a sad, sad weakness for "where are they now?" as a poetic device. I really love "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" But somebody's using that blog title already....)

Ubi sunt praeclares reges
qui dederunt orbi leges,
ubi gentium ductores,
civitatum conditores?
Pulvis sunt et cineres.

Where are the noble kings that gave laws to the world?
Where the leaders of people, the founders of cities?
Dust they are and ashes.

Ubi septem sapientes,
et scientias adolentes,
ubi retores discordes,
ubi artifices experti?
Pulvis sunt et cineres.

Ubi fortes sunt gigantes,
tanto robore praestantes,
ubi invicti bellatores,
barbarorum domitores?
Pulvis sunt et cineres.

Ubi heroum inclita proles,
ubi vastae urbium moles,
ubi Athenae, ubi Carthago,
veterisque Thebae imago?
Solum nomen superset.

Ubi dictatorum gloriae,
ubi consolum victoriae,
ubi laureae triumphales,
ubi decus immortale
Romanorum honorium?
Solum nomen superset.

Heu, heu nos miseros.

The last bit was another rhyming Latin thing on how we are all leaves in the wind. It was also very nice. I think maybe this is when the speed up/slow down thing got used really heavily. (The leaves were blowing fast, then drifting, then blowing fast again.)

The piece in general was an interesting blend of depression and verve, sorta like The Anatomy of Melancholy as a song. But I find it hard to imagine that the composer ever spent much time being depressed. He was just enjoying himself too much for that. I would like to hear this piece again, and I think a lot of groups would enjoy doing it. (It didn't seem too difficult in range, etc., but that may have been the skill of the singers and musicians, of course.)

Here's a review of a Carissimi CD which includes a lot of good information. This recording seems to include a fuller version of what we heard (which was apparently just one part of a whole oratorio. What we heard was the section from "Dixi in corde meo" to "Omnia vanitas". You can also hear this with other Roman pieces about vanitas on Tragicomedia's album Vanitas Vanitatum, as reviewed here. I haven't heard any of these recordings myself.

Hemispheric Premiere of Three-Hundred-Year-Old Opera

Yes, friends, there are times when I wish I lived nearer New York or some major city. When I reflect that I've never seen the musical of The Scarlet Pimpernel be performed even though I loved it from the day the concept album was released, I feel a tad bit of cultural deprivation. When I read about folks' trips to the Birthday Weekend for Sherlock Holmes fans and how they go to more plays in a few days' span than I attend in a year, well, there's a definite touch of envy. But then I reflect that if I lived there I wouldn't be able to afford an apartment on my own, much less going out. I look around me at the wonderful events and artists we do have. And I realize there's no way I'd've been able to afford or get into the event I attended yesterday if it had occurred in New York City instead of Covington, Kentucky's beautiful Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption.

Yesterday, you see, was the first time in this hemisphere that Charpentier's La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers has been staged, courtesy of the Catacoustic Consort. It was my first time to get to see any baroque opera, and I have to say that it was a revelation to me. As a work of music and theater, this opera clearly should not have been so neglected. The same can be said of Charpentier. (And the whole thing only cost me twenty bucks.)

I suppose I should first mention the venue. Covington is of course right across the river from Cincinnati. It used to have a great deal more money passing through it from the Ohio River shipping trade. The Cathedral dates from back then. It seems to have a great deal of German influence, stonecarving and woodcarving; but then, Cincinnati and Covington used to be full of German immigrants. The result is a relatively small but tall Gothic church with the full complement of stained glass galore: clerestory, rose window, curvy bit of nave, etc. The interesting thing was that, besides the life of Jesus and a huge complement of saints, there were some amazingly didactic church history windows. There's a huge one on "The Council of Ephesus", surrounded by Marian theologian-saints, and a tiny one under the huge pipe organ dedicated to "Pius X Reforms Church Music". There are stations of the cross in mosaic which, thanks to some trick of perspective and mosaic-color, look like windows onto Jerusalem when approached from the side. There was a huge plain wooden crucifix hanging to the rear of the central altar area, and a gorgeous triptych painting of a Mass and Melchizedek with Christ in the center panel in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. (There was also a huge font in the middle of the main aisle just when you entered the church, with one of those blessed-oil curio cabinets and the now-standard pond. I don't think it's all that dignified to see pennies at the bottom of said ponds, but what did they think people would do? Fountain equals pennies, folks.) In short, it was an amazing place, and the acoustics were wonderful. I would really like to hear Mass there.

I don't think I've ever attended a secular concert in a Catholic church before, so I immediately faced a dilemma: genuflect or not? Nobody else was genuflecting and I didn't see a tabernacle (it was over in that chapel, of course), so I decided on "not". (I'm sure the good parishioners of St. Blog's will correct me on this point if I was wrong.) The singers and music stands were set up on the dais in front of the central altar. The musicians' chairs were on the floor at the foot of the dais. This meant that unfortunately I couldn't see much of the musicians, as I was a little too far back and too far to the center to get a good angle on them. But I had interesting pewmates. The women next to me were talking about weddings (though I thought their suggestion that all children be banned from them a bit harsh!). The women behind me were a music student and her mother, who spoke only Spanish. The man in front of me was wearing his best ruffed black shirt, though I never got a chance to ask if he did Renaissance faires, SCA, or just liked the post-Medieval grace of retro clothing. It was a good-sized crowd (enough to fill one arm of the church). We waited, watching things get set up and waiting for the program to begin.

More here later. Gotta go.