Adventurers beware!

When I moved to Europe almost three years ago, it was with a bright hope that my life would take on the charmed aura of the heroine of one of those travel memoirs that I so love reading. I would move to Europe, fall into a whirlwind of adventure and romance and art and culture. I would travel, meet new people, speak new languages. For six months this was my reality, and I loved it. And then I moved to Berlin.

I am not going to blame Berlin for taking the romance and love of adventure out of my life for the last two years. That would be too easy, as though a city itself was invested with the cognisance to decide which of its inhabitants will love it and which will not. But I will say that Berlin is not an easy city to love. It's gritty and dirty, the people are rude, and the collective angst of the past 70 or so years makes any travel into the former East side a lesson in despair. Berlin is a great city if you love graffiti, hipsters and the sort of attitude that has all of its inhabitants under the age of 30 wearing ultra skinny trousers and stomper boots. If on top of this you dislike having to travel up to an hour to go anywhere interesting, than you quickly become disenchanted with it. But you stick with it because you have no other real choice.

To say that I disliked Berlin from the day I arrived would be an understatement. Circumstances forced me to move here when my original plan of going to Frankfurt fell through (or rather, was forcibly demolished by certain family members who thought it was a bad idea). I planned to stay only for the summer. And then, because family is all powerful and I didn't speak any German, I suddenly found myself with an apartment, a government stipend and a one year mandatory integration course into German language and culture. I won't lie, that course was hell on earth and the less said about it, the better. But because I believe in adventure, and that everything in life has a purpose, I stuck it out. Besides, I had Fidelio to work on, and nothing helps with depression like writing a novel about a woman saving the world. I finished my course, I finished my teaching certification, and I got a job. A wonderful job, with a fantastic and supportive boss who frequently tells me that she loves having me on her team. There is only one real problem with the set-up: being at the very start of my teaching career, I make hardly any money at all. And so I'm stuck with that government stipend.

Don't get me wrong: I have been so blessed since I came here. I won't starve. But part of the deal of being on a government stipend is that I cannot travel. I cannot leave Berlin without permission. To get that permission I have to go wait in line, make an appointment, and then argue with a bored bureaucrat in my decent but sub-par German about the necessity of whatever travel I'm going to do. And if I use up all my travel days (about 20 days per year), I don't get permission and so can't go. And there's nothing quite like being trapped in a place to make you dislike it.

But you make the best of it, you know? I go to the opera here occasionally and get to write about it. I can wander the city and explore. I can meet friends when they aren't too busy, or when they can come to me in my part of town. I go to a lovely church where the people are always glad to see me. But something is missing. All summer I have been sitting in Berlin, trying to summon motivation to do something, anything, but I can't, for the simple reason that I have no money. Every penny that I earn this summer has gone to bills and groceries, leaving me without a penny to play with. I can't even go down to Potsdam, because I can't afford the ticket. And it's hot. The average temperature in July was 90F with 100% humidity. This, in the land that doesn't believe in air conditioning.

Lately, my love of adventure and my reserves of patience have hit rock bottom. The cons have begun to outweigh the pros. And out of that, a rebellion was born. I am 27 years old. I speak three languages. I am a fully qualified teacher. And it is time for a change.

Wagner Straßen

If you get on any train or Sbahn to Berlin's Wannsee district and exit the station on the Zehlendorf side, you'll find yourself in a neighborhood of enormous, gorgeous mansion houses, a neighborhood filled with linden trees and tower rooms, elegant terraces and a soft spot for Wagner...

Residents seemed to be non-existent (they were probably all swimming down at the beach in Wannsee proper), which is good, because I'm sure I looked quite funny, taking pictures of street signs and grinning to myself.

Silent movies at the opera: Die Zauberflöte at the Komische Oper Berlin

It is not every day that you go to the opera and experience roughly two hours of singers hooked to a blank wall, but that is exactly what was on the menu last Saturday night at the Komische Oper here in Berlin. And it was awesome.



Stagings of Die Zauberflöte can be problematic. On the one hand, there's the traditional production, a la the Staatsoper: a good, solid fairy tale with extremely awkward misogynist and racist moments. On the other are regie productions, wherein it is attempted to make the misogyny and racism into some sort of lofty thing, which never works. The production at the Komische Oper manages to straddle the two while not making the dated awfulness of Monostatos and Sarastro too painful. How? With the aforementioned blank wall.

Picture a single huge, blank surface, which contains a number of doors for the characters to go through. Now picture everything you know about the silent film era. Now merge the two. The result is a wonderful storybook telling of the opera. The opera itself becomes a silent film: there are no props and no spoken dialogue. Instead, the recits become silent film piano (a riff on a Mozart Fantasie) with the dialogue projected onto the wall. And once the curtain goes up, that white wall becomes a riot of color and excitement, filled with strange projections of flowers, fairies, trees, houses, cats, and elephants, as well as an array of strangely geared machines, through which our heroes make their journey. The singers appear at different levels in the wall, standing on tiny platforms, hooked up with seat belts. In keeping with the silent film/storybook feel of the production, they were a mix of fantastical and '20s. Pamina wore a LBD and a Louise Brooks haircut (except for the brief time when she gave into Sarastro's assertion that women must be ruled by men, in which she was dressed in a black Victorian gown); Tamino a tux; Papageno the mustard yellow suit and straw hat of a particularly sleezy carpet salesman. The Three Ladies wore awesome coats and fabulous hats. The Queen of the Night was a giant spider. Monastatos was albino. The Magic Flute itself was a woodland fairy and Papageno's Magic Bells were bells with chubby dancing legs coming out of the bottoms.

Some things have to be seen to be believed.



Frankly, I found the production so impressive that I didn't once get sucked into the feminist rage pit that I normally do when seeing this opera.

At the heart of this Zauberflöte is Suzanne Andrade of the London-based performance company 1927. As they explain on the Komische Oper website, "At the heart of 1927’s practice is the desire to explore the relationship between live actor and animation to create dynamic and innovative live theatre. 1927 fuse, merge and mix creative mediums to create a unique performance style." This production is certainly that, a marriage of acting, animation and music that had the audience bouncing with glee.

But the music? What about the music?

Nicole Chevalier as Pamina won the night for the quality of her singing and acting. Her soprano was rich and clear, filling the entire house straight to the back. In comparison, Peter Sonn's Tamino was unremarkable, and Julia Novikova's Königen sounded a bit faint and strained (though to be fair, it must be rough work to sing that coloratura while bolted to a wall and dressed as a spider). Alexey Antonov's Sarastro was fine, as was Tom Erik Lie's Papageno. The weakest link was Monastatos, sung by Stephan Boving. Whether due to a bad night or bad training, he just couldn't fill the house. The strongest singers besides Chevalier, frankly, were the Three Ladies, sung by Mirka Wagner, Karolina Gumos and Caren von Oijen.

The Komische Oper orchestra, under Kristiina Poska, sounded excellent-and might I note that this was the first woman conductor I've seen since moving to Europe. Bravo, madama. Silent Film Piano was played by Peter Meiser, who married that genre's tinkly hilarity with one of Mozart's Fantasies in a way that made this girl grin.

All in all, if you're able to get out to the Komische Oper and see this performance, do. It was fabulous and awesome and, not least, fun. I can't praise it enough.

Happy (somewhat belated) New Year!

Here, have a picture of Jonas Kaufmann in sparkles.:-)

Guys, I am home in California, and it is a riot. It's also really weird. I keep hearing English and Spanish instead of German and Turkish, and it's bizarre. Luckily, I am in the land of books, yoga, tamales, books, hot chocolates the size of my arm, books, my public library, my library's classical music section, books, In-n-Out cheeseburgers, funky avant-garde indie bookstores, buskers, books, and family. And books. Did I mention those?

I'm glad I brought home my giant, empty, suitcase, because it's being filled up with all of the lovely things (yoga magazine, a selection of my favorite books, organic soaps and shampoos that smell of peppermint and lavender...). I love California so much, especially the Monterey-Santa Cruz-San Jose triangle that I live in...but I find myself missing Berlin and the students I teach. Not the cold, though. It's so warm here it's disgusting (minimum 50 Farenheit, and people FREAK OUT about it, let me tell you).

More later, if anything interesting happens. Ciao for now!

It's the most wonderful time of the year

I actually can't stand that song, but the sentiment is apt for how I feel about Christmas. Especially Christmas in Germany. Seriously, Christmas here just can't be beat. The Weinachtmarkts! The sweets! The candles! The snow! Okay, so we don't have snow yet. Whatever, it's coming.

Today I visited my first Christmas market of the season, the one in my own district of Berlin, ye old unglamorous Spandau. Here follow some of my favorite pics.

It's not a proper Weinachtsmarkt without half a million stands selling headache-inducing amounts of sugar.

Deeeeeeein ist mein ganzes Heeeeeeeerz!I'm not really sure what the point is of buying/selling a giant gingerbread heart that proclaims "I love you!" and "Kisses!" but I'm down with it. If I get home for Christmas, I'll be bringing one for each of my nieces and nephews.

Germany, that land of medieval castles, monasteries, abbeys, the Reformation, and silly young men who reforge their father/uncle's magic sword and slay dragons, is not above putting up a medieval market for their people's shopping pleasure. I may sound like I'm mocking, but as someone who spent ten years as a die-hard Tolkien fan and a medieval re-enactor, I kind of love it.

That, and they're selling this fantastic dragon puppet, which WILL be mine.

The smithy.

Booze. Or rather, enormous copper vats of Gluhwein. (Remind me to tell you my Gluhwein story someday.)

These gents were more than happy to pose for me. They probably thought I was a tourist. Ah, well.

And as they say on Loony Toons, that's all folks!

Deutsche Oper 100th Anniversary Gala: a recap

And only a week and a half late. Sorry about that, but things have been incredibly hectic over here, and then for some reason I lost all blogging motivation I'd had, and that was that. But here is my recap, for what it is worth.

Guys, German audiences can be mean. The poor woman who hosted the evening, Tita von Hardenberg, kept getting heckled like you wouldn't believe. Don't come between the Berlin audience and their opera, baby, was the message. I thought she handled herself very well, considering the shouting that started whenever she came onstage to interview one of the conductors (Donald Runnicles, Alberto Zedda and Jesus Lopez Cobos) or the management of the opera. Several of the managers were loudly booed, though I'm not sure which ones, as everyone was talking too fast and in German. There was a nice video trailer about the history of the opera house itself: long story short, the perfectly lovely building got bombed out during the war, and instead of restoring it, they had to raze it to the ground and build a perfectly ugly modern monstrosity in its place. The highlight was Christa Ludwig saying something snarky about the "rocket man" sculpture they have out front (again, my German wasn't up to catching exactly what she said, but I get that it wasn't flattering). The audience whooped and laughed and applauded her for it. That was fun.

But the music is what we all care about, and so here is what I wrote down in my journal the night of the performance. It's going to be piecemeal, but it's better than nothing:

The Gala itself was great, although they were losing Florestan's left and right: first Jonas Kaufmann withdrew, and then his sub got sick, and then the sub's sub got sick, and so it was announced right before intermission that the part of Florestan would be sung by a man named MacAllister. There was general disbelief in the audience, as you can imagine. I will say that he did a fine job with the role, despite having had only a few hours' notice.

Heidi Melton (who was the mastermind behind my being able to attend, for which I am forever grateful) opened the concert with Wagner's "Dich, teure Halle". She was fabulous. For some reason, I'd expected the aria to be solemn, considering the character of Elisabeth, but it was loud and jaunty and gorgeous, and definitely going on my iPod. Melton wore a fabulous, sparkly blue dress, brand new that day: the airline had lost her luggage and her gala gowns, and so emergency shopping was done. You can read all about it on her Twitter page.

We were subjected treated to a world premier of an overture by Hans Werner Henze, who died just this week, thus making me feel a little bad that I thought his Ouverture zu einem Theater was a cacophonous mess. It was just, well, extremely modern, and I'm not quite there yet in my musical tastes. It was quickly followed by Rossini's Semiramide overture, which was a nice palate cleanser.

Afterwards, Vittorio "There's Not A Tenor in the World Who Can Compete With Me" Grigolo came on to sing and (Heaven help us all) act out Romeo's aria Ah! leve-toi, soleil! from Gouno's Romeo and Juliet. Yay. He has a good voice, I'll give him that, but the arrogance involved was (and is) extremely off-putting. And he kept coming back onstage to bow, which was a trifle obnoxious, as we were keen on getting on with the program.

Lastly, we were treated to the Falstaff finale, Tutto nel mondo e burda, which was funny and fun and loud and jolly. And then there was intermission. Thirty minutes worth of music took over an hour to hear, because each and every single piece was preceded and followed by interviews and film clips. It was an extremely disgruntled audience that hit the wine buffet, let me tell you.

Intermission, in which several women told me they liked my dress, everyone got a little hammered, and the German glitterati swept around sparkling like teen vampires at high noon. Seriously, I'm sure there were millionaires and actors and artists and assorted German celebrities there, and believe me when I tell you that I didn't recognize a single one of them. This is one of the advantages of not watching TV.

After the intermission, we all came back for a mercifully uninterrupted Act 2 of Fidelio. It should surprise no one that I am extremely picky about my Fidelios, to the point of being a bore. The fact that we were on our fourth Florestan of the night worried me. I needn't have worried, for our Leonore was Anja Kampe, and she was phenomenal. She carried the whole evening. She made me cry. Her Lenore was scared, but overjoyed to find her Florestan, and hardly ever stopped smiling. She was the only one of the singers to speak, and used the (now rare) line where she tells Florestan to have faith right before Pizarro attacks. Hers is the best Leonore I've ever seen, and I've seen every performance of Fidelio released on DVD and YouTube. Oh, she was a freaking rockstar!

Rocco was sung by Matti Salminen, who I'm given to understand is a baritone of some renown (don't laugh at me if he's extremely famous; I've only just begun to discover Wagnerian baritones) and Bastiaan Everink's Don Pizarro was virile, elegant, and scary as hell. Everink was a young guy, too; I'd have really loved to see him opposite Kaufmann, to see what it would be like to have two relatively young men at each other's throats. Alas, it was not to be.

Fernando, Jacquino and Marzelline were sung by Markus Bruek, Burkhard Ulrich and Martina Welschenbach respectively, and they were all very good. The finale was a miracle of sound and light and beauty, but frankly, if it isn't, something's wrong. The thing that I learned about Fidelio that night was the way that Leonore and Marzelline's vocal lines sort of play off each other in the finale, melding into a gorgeous whole. Again, don't laugh: there's only so much that you can get from a digital recording. Seeing Fidelio live was a real experience for me, because it taught me so much about the music that I couldn't get from a recording. It was stunning, beautiful, fabulous-and now I'm done unloading superlatives and will only say that it went by too fast and I wanted them to do it again when they were finished.

After the gala was a big reception, where they effectively killed the mood brought on by Beethoven by having a rock band perform in the lobby. It was a good band, really, but I was on a Fidelio high, so after wandering around for a bit and eating some of the Deutsche Oper-shaped cake (pictured above), I collected my coat and flats* from the coat check and left. I had wanted to thank Heidi Melton in person for the ticket, and fall at Anja Kampe's feet in general adoring veneration, but neither of them appeared. Unfortunately, I dropped and broke my camera, so the one photo above is the only one I have. Le sigh.

All in all, it was a great night and I'm glad I went.

*I made an elderly lady in the subway laugh by changing out of my heels into my ballet flats: I can't walk well in heels in general, and there was no way I was riding home in them if I didn't have to.

Preparations hassles and general glee

Running around Berlin does not rank high on my list of Favorite Ways to Spend Friday, but today was not that bad. I had to find a new slip to go under my '20s dress for the gala tomorrow-the darn thing is completely sheer, and I'd be arrested for wearing it as-is in any place that wasn't Milan during Fashion Week. So I had to have a new slip, and it had to be purple, and it wasn't happening. Not even white slips were happening. Slips, it seems, have no place in the Modern Woman's clothing arsenal, despite being imminently practical garments. I ended up trawling vintage stores by Schloss Charlottenburg, purely on a whim. And that is where I got lucky.

At one of the stores, I asked the lady owner if she had a slip. I showed her my dress, to give her an idea of what I was looking for (the nice thing about this dress is that it rolls up into a fairly tiny package & so I had it in my bag). She examined it, cooed over it, and then informed me that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I'd find what I was looking for, especially if I needed it by tomorrow.

"I'll make you one," she informed me. "It'll be ready by 2 o'clock tomorrow."

That's cutting it a bit closer than I'd like, but there's something ridiculously pleasing about having something made specifically for me. I'm excited. :-)

And THEN, as if shopping wasn't enough, I had another important errand: to go to the Berliner Festspielhaus and pick up a poster. Why? Because this Twitter conversation happened:

Tinydooms (Me): "I like this @blnfestspiele poster so much that I may have to go out & secretly peel it off a wall in the night."
Berliner Festspiele (@blnfestspiele)[one month later]: "Hi did it work? Otherwise you can come to our Haus der Berliner Festspiele and get one free."
TD: "No, I couldn't get one. Where is this Haus and can I come on Friday? :-)"
BFS: "hi, yes you can. I'll deposit one at our stage entrance."

And they did! See:

Admittedly, it was a little weird to walk into the stage entrance and tell the lady on duty that I had a poster waiting for me, under the name "Tinydooms". I opened it when I got home, and there were two posters inside! How awesome is that?

All in all, my weekend is off to a fabulous start.

When I get really, really good news

I will be attending the Deutsche Oper 100th Anniversary Gala this Saturday, thanks to the ever-fabulous Heidi Melton and her generosity to this opera fan.

The program includes a heady cocktail of Wagner, Rossini, Verdi, and (most importantly for your truly) the entire second act of Beethoven's Fidelio. I may just end up crying like a little girl.

Die schöne Müllerin at the Berlin Philharmonic

There comes a time in every woman's life when she must swallow her pride and wait outside the stage door to meet her favorite tenor.

Some of you may recall that when I met Erwin Schrott, I didn't take a pic with him because I'm completely uncomfortable asking celebrities to smile at the camera with me. It's very high on my list of no-nos, to be honest (right up there with doing math and talking in the theater). But...it's Kaufmann. And I knew that if I didn't, no one would ever, ever let me forget about it. But let me start at the beginning.

The Berlin classical music scene has a great program for students/under-30s/the unemployed etc: the Classic Card. A certain number of tickets are reserved for Classic Card holders and go on sale an hour before curtain time. With this in mind, I arrived at the Berlin Philharmonie yesterday at 9:30 in the morning. The plan: beat out to twenty other people waiting and get a really good seat for the Barenboim Zyklus I: Die schöne Müllerin sung by Jonas Kaufmann, accompanied by Barenboim. And it worked: I got a fantastic, fabulous, normally hella expensive seat in Block A: right in the front. Row 9, to be precise. This is another reason why I love the classic card: the seats are always reeeeeeally good.

The program started shortly after 11. If this had been a rock concert, everyone would have been screaming, but seeing as it was the (slightly) more refined world of classical music, everyone settled for clapping loudly and squeeing to themselves. Kaufmann launched right into Das wandern ist das Mullers lust, and boy, can that man sing. He was the journeyman miller; you could see it in his eyes, in his posture. And we the audience just ate it up with a spoon. There wasn't a peep to be heard during the music: we held the coughs and sneezes for the breaks between songs, when all hell broke loose.

The best part of the whole performance was immediately after Der Neugierige. "Sag, Bächlein, liebt sie mich?" Kaufmann sang, and the piano sparkled away into silence. And then it began: a wave of coughing that grew and grew until it sounded like we were the inmates of a tuberculosis ward. Kaufmann was the first to start grinning, then chuckling, and a sheepish giggle swept the hall. Barenboim turned away from the keyboard and very exaggeratedly took out his handkerchief to cough into, and everyone just lost it. Laughter and applause swept the hall, and the concert carried on.

How can I describe the music? Die schöne Müllerin is a gorgeous, lush song cycle, telling the story of a young journeyman miller who falls in love with his employers daughter, but eventually loses her to a local hunter. The miller, in despair, drowns himself in the stream. The stream itself is a character, flowing and lilting under the miller's songs, until, at the end, it sings its own tender lullaby, soothing its "darling boy" and cursing the titular Müllerin for her cruelty. That is the song that always gets me when I listen to it, and yesterday was no difference. It's almost as though the Bächlein, as the miller calls it, is a woman, waiting patiently while the miller goes through this hellish ordeal, and finally comforts him. I could (and let's face it, probably will) write a whole story or novella around it. Kaufmann brought the entire cycle to life in such a way that I was emotionally wrung-out by the time he was done with me.

As you can imagine, we made der Jonas do three encores, and this is where it really began to resemble a rock concert more than a lieder matinee. He got a standing ovation, flowers, screeches, bravos, and general hysterical carrying-on (which, let's face it, he'd probably expected). There were three encores: the first was about a "fischlein" (I'm not good with lieder titles), then second was Der Jüngling an der Quelle, which was so sexy as to be borderline indecent. Half the audience just fainted dead away as Kaufmann caressed the name "Luise" (it's really common around here). I didn't catch the third encore because I was too bust recovering from the second. And then a wave, and a huge grin, and they were gone.

And this, dear reader, was where I shelved my pride and parked myself outside the stage door for a chance to see the man up close, in person. I admit, I had a mission: I wanted to ask why he'd withdrawn from the Deutsche Oper gala, with it's performance of Fidelio. So I joined the throng of German women outside and waited.

And waited. Forty-five minutes later, Kaufmann appeared in his street clothes, bag slung over his shoulders, and was mobbed. ("Did he have a security detail?" my mom asked when I told her all this, and was shocked when I said no.) I waited until he was shunted almost literally into me, and it was then that my super polite I'm-meeting-someone-I-admire attitude kicked in. I thanked him for the performance and got my program squiggled in. And then, because I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't, I summoned my courage and said, "Can I ask why you had to withdraw from the Fidelio?"

"Yes, we tried so, so hard to get the management at the Staatsoper to cancel a Tosca, but they just couldn't. And so I'd be singing three nights in a row, and who knows what would happen, maybe an airline would strike and I'd then be six hours in the train, and it just wasn't practical. So unfortunately I had to cancel." From the horse's mouth, people. He was then pulled away by the crowd, but turned back to me a minute later and said, "You have a camera. Did you want a picture?"

"Yes, if that's cool," I replied.
"Sure, if we hurry," he said, because every single other camera in the vicinity had suddenly turned on us.

Kaufmann put his hand on my back and smiled (sort of). So I shoved my camera into a random lady's hands and got my picture. And then I took pics for everyone else. And then I left the group and went home. Shaking. Because, you know, reaction sets in after an intense situation.

Altogether, yesterday was lovely. :-)

How to Not Go Crazy in German

Hey all, long time, no see. I have a valid reason: I've been stuck all week in a remedial How to Write a Resume and Cover Letter class that my sponsor at the Job Center seemed to think I needed. It's...not helpful. This class is for people who've never worked before in their lives, and are looking for jobs as taxi drivers, hotel housekeepers, etc. The teachers both boggled at me when I showed up, but the JC is forcing me to attend both weeks.

Today was the end of Week 1. Here's how I weathered it:
Day 1: Teacher: "You're, um, rather overqualified for this. And you already have a resume."

Day 2: I didn't go because I was supposed to have a job interview, which was postponed because the head of the school got sick.

Day 3: Teacher: "Well, replace 'z.Zt' with just 'z.z' and put 'Berlin' and the date at the bottom. There, that's all we need to change."

Day 4: I queried 11 agents about "Fidelio". Teacher: "You hanging in there, Frau Franke? No, you cannot go home early."

Day 5: I queried 11 language schools in Berlin, bringing my total of language school applications up to about 45. Teacher: "HOW many applications have you sent out??! TWENTY FIVE?! Well, then. Do whatever."

"Do whatever" in my case is read/query more agents/spam Twitter/plot my escape. Next week I will try to spend it blogging more.

Only one more week of this.

How I met Erwin Schrott

I had a surprise when I went up to Dussmann's Kultur Krafthaus this evening. Dussmann's is a ginormous bookstore in Mitte, the central part of Berlin, and I frequent it because it has an English Bookshop (which is just wonderful, but anyway). The surprise? Erwin Schrott, who was going to come and do a Q&A session and sing as a promotional thing for his latest CD, Arias. "Well," I thought, "that's a cool way to spend a Friday evening." And off I went in search of some dinner to tide me over.

Sitting in Starbucks, I made a few tweets about the evening, joking with a friend that "@erwinschrott is going to be at Dussmann's tonight. Maybe I won't be the only person there under 30!" Much to my amazement, Schrott himself tweeted me back, saying "If you're in Berlin, please do come!" I was like: 0_0.

At forty minutes to the hour, I went back across the street to Dussmann's, where it quickly became apparent that the place was full. They weren't letting anyone else in. I stood surrounded by a bevy of indignant German women, trying to decide what to do. Do I stay or do I go home? Luckily, looking over the event hall is the second story balcony, so I rushed upstairs and grabbed the best spot before anyone else could.

You see where this guy is standing? That's exactly where I was, just outside the main event room, on the balcony.

This was the view I had:

To kill time, I made a few tweets with my phone:
"Chilling on the balcony, waiting for @erwinschrott. Capacity crowd; I'm actually outside."
"Lol, now people are pointing at me like "There's a girl on the balcony! What!" My spot; not moving."
"One of the employees just moved a rack of calendars and offered me a chair. "You've got the best seat: you can see AND hear!" :-)"

And then Erwin Schrott came out, and everyone applauded, and he bowed, and said, "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for coming! I'm glad you could all make it. I want to say that I was reading on Twitter about my friends coming, and I'm so sorry you couldn't find seats and have to stand on the balcony! Where are you at?" And he looked straight up at the balcony, where I was standing with about fifteen other people.

With a shock, I realized that he was talking about me. I waved at him with my fan (I carry a fan in summer) and grinned. "There you are! I'm sorry you couldn't get a seat!" cried one of the most famous baritones of our day, and WAVED AT ME.

The lady standing next to me stared at me. "Do you know him?" she asked.
"No. I was just talking about this event on Twitter," I replied. And then I tweeted, "Dude, was @erwinschrott reading these tweets?! He totally mentioned people tweeting from the balcony."

The Q&A session was hosted by a woman from the local classical music radio station, and the topics were like those in any interview: how do you make time for family; how do you pick your music; etc, etc. Despite the microphones, I couldn't hear them very well. Mr. Schrott stood up to sing twice. The first time was Le Veau d'or ("Le veau d'or! I love this aria! And he totally blew a kiss to us all in the balcony. :-)"); the second was a Spanish song accompanied by a fierce accordian player:

At the end of the evening, Schrott asked the audience to ask him questions.
"Come on, I want to know about you, too!" he cried when everyone just stared at him. He got a few shy queries. It was very sweet. When that was over, Schrott settled at a table to sign autographs, and I figured that since he'd given me a shout-out about not having a seat, I should go down and say hello. I didn't have anything with me but the flier advertising the evening, but I got in line and waited until it was my turn. Eventually, I stood there before him.

"Hola," he said to me. (The man before me spoke to him in Spanish.)
"Hola," I replied. "Thanks for giving us all a shout-out on the balcony. That was really nice of you."
And Erwin Schrott, who is world famous, leaned over the table and said, "You're the one who said on Twitter that you would be the only person here under thirty! Aren't you?"
"Yes," I said, "and I think I was."
"I think so," he replied, laughing, and held out his hand for me to shake. "I'm glad you made it! I'm sorry that you couldn't find a seat. I love it when my fans from Twitter make it down to events like this. It's so nice that we get to have more contact."
"Yeah, don't you just love Twitter?" I said.
"Yes, it's wonderful," Erwin Schrott said, and took my small flier up to sign. "And is your name really Christie?"
"Er, yes," I said, amazed that he'd noticed that my name appears on Twitter. "With a C-H and an I-E."
He signed my program "Para Christie! Erwin Schrott." I thanked him, took it up, and wished him a nice weekend and good luck in Don Giovanni, which he's doing with the Staatsoper. He told me to have "a wonderful night" and "Ciao!" and off I went.

When I got outside, I realized that I was shaking. All that excitement had done me in.

But it gets better. When I got home, there was a retweet of my tweet, by Mr. Erwin Schrott: "Dude, was @erwinschrott reading these tweets?! He totally mentioned people tweeting from the balcony." This was added: "Of course I was!" So basically, the whole pre-event time I was clowning around on the balcony, he was backstage reading what I was saying. I about fell over and died. Can you say awesome?

Mr. Schrott, you have won a fan in me. Not only are you a fabulous singer, but you are a fabulous person, too, and I appreciate your kindness.:-)

Wagner in the Ubahn

If you get off of the U7 line at Richard Wagner Platz, you will find yourself in a shockingly bright yellow and black shrine to a certain megalomaniacal German composer. Large murals line the walls on both sides of the station, depicting scenes from the operas. You can spend a lot of time walking from one side to the other, looking at the pictures. Whoever came up with this u-bahn stop was clearly a huge Wagner fanboy.

I assume that the original sketches and the other art in the upstairs part of the station date from the original Richard Wagner Platz, which unfortunately went through renovations sometime in the 1960s. (If you haven't been to Berlin, believe me when I tell you that we have some swanky U-bahn stops.) I had some time today and was in the area, so while I waited for my train, I snapped the following pics. Warning: this post is image heavy.



Richard Wagner Platz


Helpful informational guidelines


Senta and the Dutchman


Lohengrin


Tristan and Isolde


Siegfried and Fafnir


Götterdämmerung


Tannhauser

Die Walkure at Deutsche Oper Berlin

There were some strange things going on during the Deutsche Oper's production of Die Walkure, but fine singing wasn't one of them. The singers were uniformly excellent. Heidi Melton's Sieglinde stole the show with her huge, expressive voice and powerful singing (and I'm not just saying that because she gave me my ticket). She was never once drowned out by the orchestra, as were some of the others. Further, she's a good actress, and brought across Sieglinde's hope and fear and grief very well. I definitely can't wait to see her perform again.

Torsten Kerl, as Siegmund, was a little less vocally powerful; the orchestra sometimes drowned him out. Still, he had a nice rich tenor, and made a good Siegmund. The direction had him moving jerkily, like an animal, and at one point I think he actually sniffed Sieglinde-I had a really good seat, so that wasn't distance messing with me. But, well, whatever. It worked. Attila Jun's Hunding was suitably powerful and frightening, and his deep basso voice really brought home his command of the role. Scary, scary man. Catherine Foster's Brunnhilde was the strongest singer of the Valhalla set, although Greer Grimsley (Wotan) and Daniela Sindram (Fricka) were also fabulous. In short, the singers were very expressive and vocally fantastic.

The Valkyries were absolutely terrifying, but we'll get to them shortly.

If you haven't watched the trailer I posted above, then please do before you read any further. Watched it? Okay, let's go.

This has got to be one of the strangest sets I've ever seen, period. The whole opera is set in a post-apocalyptic bunker (District 13 from the Hunger Games books sprang to mind), complete with flashing lights, dropping bombs, and a scale model panorama of a bombed-out Berlin for Wotan to contemplate. I'm not making this last part up; you could see the Reichstag. Wotan wore all white, although it looked grubby and worn, even moldy. The thought "an all-white Nick Fury" sprang to mind during his monologue, making me grin a little. Fricka wore a sheet, a Marie Antoinette wig, and a tired-looking fur; Siegmund had a coat that made him look like a bear. Hunding looked like a Nazi (I keep trying to think of a better description for his uniform, and failing). Siegline was the most normally dressed, in a skirt, peasant blouse and apron. Brunnehilde and the Valkyries had black leather and studs and Eighties hair.

Does that sound like a band name to you? Brunnhilde and the Valkyries. It totally should, because that's what they looked like. I've never seen anything quite so fantastically camp. The women playing the Valkyries had some fierce voices going on. The set just didn't do them any favors. They looked like a goth girl band circa 1984, all big hair and punk rock leather and chalky white face paint. It was awesome. They rose out of the ground like Lady Gaga's backup dancers, swung around their spears, leaped upon the gurneys containing the bloodied bodies of the heroes they'd collected, and generally behaved like a pack of teenagers at a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert. They sold it, though.

The confrontation between Brunnhilde and Wotan was suitably heartbreaking and terrifying, and both of the singers owned it completely. Poor Brunnhilde. I keep wanting her to tell Wotan to jump in the river and stomp off to become a vigilante, but she never does.

I have some problems with the storyline of Die Walkure. Not the twins hooking up (stranger things have happened in mythology), but largely with the Wotan/Brunnhilde dynamic. For the life of me, I'll never understand why Wotan feels he has to punish her so harshly. Really, I think he's a bit of a bastard about it. She disobeyed him, sure. But did backing up her brother really warrant her being abandoned on a fire surrounded rock, to be prey of anyone who felt like "taking" her? (I'm always appalled at the connotations of that phrase.) No. I have no sympathy for Wotan; he brings all of his woes upon himself. I'm totally on Brunnhilde's side when she decides to torch Valhalla in Gotterdammerung.

Also, Fricka is a bitch.

All that said, this was an excellent performance, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Next time you come to Berlin, you'll definitely be in for some fun if you decide to check it out.

How to Have a Pillow Fight in German

Pillow fight auf Deutsch is Kissenschlacht. If you're me, though, and trying to explain how you spent Saturday afternoon, you inevitably end up saying Kussenschlacht, which means something entirely different. (I can only say that the logic behind that is kissen=kissing and kussen=cushion auf Denglish. Moving on.)

Bright and early on Saturday morning, my brother called to tell me that he'd learned something "relevant to [my] interests": namely, that there would be a flash mob pillow fight at the Brandenburg Gate that afternoon. Being dignified and refined only half the time (if that), I called a few friends, grabbed an expendable pillow, and ran out the door.

The closer I got to Mitte, the more people I saw with pillows. By the time I hit the Friedrichstrasse bahnhof, plenty of people were walking around with enormous cushions and diabolical grins.

This is what I saw when I got to the Brandeburger Tor:

Not too many, I thought, but a respectable number. I was forty minutes early, so I guessed more people would show. The police certainly thought so, for they'd heard about the thing and were out in force:



At five minutes to three, some of my friends arrived:

And then, at 3:00 on the nose, this happened:

It very quickly morphed into this:

It was in fact snowing that day, but you couldn't tell for all the feathers flying through the air. People ripped their pillows open so that there were feathers everywhere: ankle-deep on the ground, blowing like a hurricane through the air, in your hair, in your mouth, in your shoes...everywhere. It was brilliant.

When it was all over, about 3:30, my friends and I left. Our hands were frozen solid, Britta had lost her pillow (someone snatched it right out of her hands) and we were so befeathered we looked like Papageno's hipster off-spring.


And that, my friends, is how you have a pillow fight in German. :)

Berlin makes me laugh so hard sometimes.

Truly, this city has some of the most awesome signage. I've taken to carrying my camera around lately, because beauties like the following just seem to appear out of nowhere.

Basic Translation: "Mozart...or Beethoven? Which composer wrote only one opera but nine symphonies? This, and two hundred other questions are in your daily copy of Die Zeit [a local newspaper]."


Note: this is the sign for the Wotan Apotheke. Apparently, their products are fit for the Norse gods. I wonder if they play Wagner inside? I would.

How To Get Your Hair Cut in German

Let me tell you about the Wizard of Charlottenburg.

First of all, he's not a wizard, but a hairstylist. A really, really good hairstylist. He owns a tiny salon in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, called Vor Hair-Nach Hair, and was probably trained at the Hair Stylists' School of Ballet, because he just swoops and swirls and flicks and snaps: it is absolutely hilarious to watch him at work. Also, he's really sweet and really knows his stuff: I've never felt so safe in the hands of a stylist.

This is how you get your hair cut in Germany:

1. Make an appointment. If you're like me, you're not comfortable calling people auf Deutsch just yet, so you go in person. Stylist will ask what you want, will ruffle your hair and tut to himself, and ask you when you want to come. Then he'll ask what time. No "I have a spot on Wednesday at 3". Name your day and hour, and if that works, he'll pencil you in. If not, keep naming times until he nods. Eventually you'll get it sorted.

2. Be on time. Hang up your coat and sit where he tells you. He will toss a sheet over you and swirl about, eyeing your hair, occasionally tousling it, and tutting to himself. At last he will inform you that you clearly haven't had a haircut in ages and what is wrong with you, woman? Then he will twirl off to get the hair coloring stuff needed to begin the transformation.

3. Your stylist will then proceed to swish and flick and dab your hair with two separate white creams that smell disconcertingly like the Fruity Pebbles cereal your mom never approved of when you were a child. Brushes and aluminum foil sheets will fly through the air as your stylist bops along to the indie electronic music coming from his stereo.

4. You will then be handed a stack of magazines and ensconced under a portable hair heater (I have no other words to describe it). There's no sound involved like in the States, just waves of dry heat.

5. Your stylist will occasionally come and jab at your foil-wrapped head to see how things are progressing. He may mutter "Scheisse!" a few times, but tell you things are okay. Trust him. He is a Wizard.

6. When your hair is deemed ready, you will be given a very hearty shampoo that will make you want to screech, "Be gentle with me!" Delicate the Wizard is not. He will put some sweet-smelling product in your hair and react with horror when you tell him you don't normally use any. "This is YOUR HAIR; you must wear it with pride and dignity!"

7. You will then receive your haircut, during which hair will fly as he parodies Edward Scissorhands and lectures you on the necessity of both regular haircuts and regular haircuts from good stylists, geeze! Just let him do his thing; he's a professional and is going to make you "look damn good".

8. Haircut completed, he will then put brush and dryer into your hands and watch you try to style your own hair. Then he will take them away and show you how you're doing it wrong, and how to do it correctly. Then he'll make you try it again. And again. At last, he will be satisfied that you look good and know how to take care of yourself, and will let you leave. Three hours after you arrived, you will go out into the world looking like a princess.

I have never gone to get my hair done and come out with a book plot and its main character before, you guys.

Back in the land of the blogging

It's been one week since I last posted, and so much has happened!

Last Saturday, I officially entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. We'll see whether or not I advance to the next round. Fingers crossed.

One of my good friends came to visit from England for a few days, which was great fun, even if we were frozen back inside by six o'clock every evening. Berlin has decided for the first time all season to act like it's, you know, winter, and so all of a sudden there is snow and ice and sleet and negative temperatures. This, luckily, allowed us to enjoy Purcell's Fairy Queen (bizarre baroque extravaganza) and Fidelio, which my friend had never seen. We also managed to out ourselves to the German populace as nerds while in the S-bahn, giddily discussing the antics of Goethe and Beethoven and Beau Brummel and various Victorian serial killers. Good times. :)

Lindsay also introduced me to the absolutely hilarious BBC radio show, Cabin Pressure, about a perpetually skint airline of one plane and four workers. It includes gems such as this: "Listen to this! This chamber orchestra we’re picking up – listen to what their conductor’s put under ‘Any Special Requirements’: “The first violins will not sit together; the second violins will not sit apart. The harpist will ignore you unless your aura is orange; there is nothing you can do to make your aura more orange. The tubist must on no account be given alcohol; the conductor must at all times be given alcohol. He will also require the toilet to himself for an hour before landing. And, most importantly, the bassoonist, Madame Szyszko-Bohusz, will be working under the presumption that you are trying to kill her unless proved otherwise, so avoid approaching her with blunt instruments, sharp knives or hot liquids.” Terrific! How am I supposed to serve her dinner?" Check it out:

Die Zauberflote at Staatsoper im Schiller Theatre, etc.

"Die Zauberfloete" is supposed to be a fabulous blend of whimsy, philosophy, and really cool music, right? Well, yes. It also happens to be one of my less-favorite operas, and one of my dad's favorites. I saw it the other day at the Schiller Theater, in what the program informed me is an eighteen year old production. It shows. Musically, it was impeccable, but overall the production seemed tired, like a tasty cake that's been left out for too long and grown stale. Pretty enough, but not palatable.

This "Flute" was a very traditional production: Papageno was in feathers, Sarastro and Company were all Egyptian, Monostatos was in blackface. Tamino was a goob. Really, I don't think that Mozart and Schikeneder intended for their tenorial hero to come across as a meathead, but they certainly succeeded in making him such. Is it just me, or do Mozartean tenors seem to have problems with characterization? Tamino is a goob, Tito is way too nice, Don Ottavio is a schmuck. Methinks the great man preferred baritones as the heroes.

There are a few things that I dislike about "The Magic Flute", the main being Sarastro's attitude towards women. "Women are a little crazy; they need men to show them what to do." I don't think I'd have such a problem with it if my dad didn't still subscribe to this theory, and if he hadn't been quoting it at me all week. But I digress.

There were a few things that I hadn't expected in this production: the Three Ladies popped out of the dragons' mouths (there were three dragons), thus leading to the idea that Tamino had been cornered for a reason; unfortunately, this was never explored any further. Papageno and Papagena managed to produce about fifteen feather-covered children in three minutes, who then proceeded to invade the stage and make everyone laugh. But my absolute favorite part was during Papageno's suicide attempt, when he gives three signals, calling Papagena.

"Eins!" he said, and blew his whistle. "Zwei!" and blew it again.
"DREI!" shrieked a little girl in the audience, and everyone lost it.

The singer playing Papageno, Gyula Orendt, looked out at the audience for a split second; the little girl, whose voice gave her age as about five, helpfully called out "Drei!" again.
"Drei!" he repeated, once everyone had stopped giggling.

Also funny was the little boy who spent the second act hanging over the back of my chair, right between my dad and I, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. He was four, his mom informed me, and had seen the children's version, but wanted to see the real thing. He was completely, totally glued. Adorable.

Musically, the production was impeccable. Sarastro was sung by Alexander Vinogradov, whom I saw as Basilio in "Barbier" here in October. He seems to be a fixture at the Staatsoper; he's very good, so I'm glad. Tamino, sung by Stephan Rugamer, was less good, but this is more character-related than anything, so I'll let it pass. Katherina Muller's Pamina was just fabulous, full-voiced and spunky. The Queen of the Night was sung by Iride Martinez, and she pwned everyone.

Bottom line: four out of five stars to the singers, and two out of five to the production. Dear Staatsoper: hire yourself a new director and get a new "Flute". You've earned it.