Summer time and the living is easy

Well, if you aren't a procrastinating writer/blogger/opera lover like I am. Remember when I used to update everyday? I'm amazed I had the tenacity.

Let's see, what have I done to keep me away for the last few weeks?

*Gone to teach at English Summer Camp, in the wilds of Buckow (right outside Berlin). If that was not the most sophisticated summer camp that I have ever been to, I'll eat my hat. We had an actual house, with our own kitchen and bathrooms, and catered meals. It was less like work than it was play English language games with the kids all day and eat really good food. And run around in the forest.

*Been to two operas (The Pearl Fishers and Attila and Erwin Schrott's Berlin Rojotango concert. The first two I wrote about for BachTrack, so I didn't talk about them here, and the third I just didn't have time to review, given the hectic schedule I had in June.

*Watched Jonas Kaufmann be Awesome and Badass in Il Trovatore (which was also hilarious) in the weird-but-I-liked-it new Bayerische Staatsoper production by Oliver Py. We had a Twitter Block Party for it, so if you follow me on Twitter, you can read my thoughts there.

*Got into a huge fight with a PR person over the meaning and use of the word "butthead". Rather lost my taste for the internet for a few days after it devolved into character defamation.

*Spent a week curled up in my armchair tearing through Ben Aaronovitch's hilarious and wonderful Rivers of London series. This is me while I read it:

It's just that good.

Oh, and I changed the URL of this blog to more properly reflect my current internet name. So there's that.

I have something up my sleeve for August, but I'm not going to say what yet. You'll have to stick around and see. :-)

Steampunk Opera: Il Trovatore

Who's looking forward to the July 5th live broadcast out of the Bayerische Staatsoper? This girl right here. Even if unser Jonas is looking rather thin and peaky.

Rumpelstiltskin Re-imagined

My boss asked me to write a play about Rumpelstiltskin for our annual English Summer Camp. Personally, I can't stand the story, so I reinvented it a little to make it less awful. It made me giggle, so I'm posting it here.

The Adventures of Lala and her friend, Rumpelstiltskin

Narrator: “Once upon a time, there was a very foolish farmer and his very clever daughter, Lala. The farmer liked to tell stories about his daughter’s cleverness, like the time she invented chocolate muffins, and the time she slayed the dragon.”
Lala: “Only I didn’t slay the dragon. I convinced him to become a vegetarian and move to Mallorca.”
Narrator: “Anyway, the foolish farmer bragged about his clever daughter so much that the King heard about it. When he asked the farmer what his daughter could do, the farmer said something very stupid.”
Farmer: “I said that Lala was so smart, she could spin straw into gold. Well, I didn’t think he’d really believe it!”
Narrator: “So the King made Lala come to his palace.”
King: “You must spin all the straw into gold or I will kill you!”
Lala: “That’s unfortunate.”
Narrator: “Lala was very sad. She couldn’t think of what to do.”
Lala: “My hair isn’t long enough to climb out the window, like Rapunzel did. Oh, what will I do?
Narrator: “Luckily, at that moment, a strange man heard Lala talking to herself and came to see what the problem was.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “What’s shaking, baby?”
Lala: *screams*
Rumpelstiltskin: “Sorry, sorry. Why are you so sad? And what are you doing with all this straw?”
Lala: “The King wants me to spin it into gold. He’ll kill me if I don’t.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “What’s unfortunate.”
Lala: “I know. And I was just going to go on vacation!”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Let me help. I can spin straw into gold. I’m magic, you know.”
Lala: “…Okay.”
Narrator: “So the magic man spun all the straw into gold. While he did, Lala talked about his Life Plans. The magic man wanted to open a hotel in Italy and have ten kids. Lala thought this sounded like a good idea.”
Lala: “Hotels are good business.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “There! All the straw is gold.”
Lala: “Oh, thank you! What can I give you as thanks?”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Is your necklace valuable?”
Lala: “No, not really.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Well, it can still help buy my hotel.”
Lala: “Then here you go.”
Narrator: “When he saw all the gold, the King was so happy that he did a little dance.”
King: “YAY!”
Narrator: “Then he locked Lala up in another room and told her to spin MORE straw into gold, or he’d kill her.”
Lala: “Men.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Hey, Lala, what’s shaking?”
Lala: “The King wants more gold or he’ll kill me.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Well, let’s get to work.”
Narrator: “So the magic man spent all night spinning the straw into gold, and Lala sat up talking to him. They decided that the hotel needed to have a swimming pool and a five-star restaurant.”
Lala: “And free Wifi!”
Narrator: “In the morning, instead of leaving, the magic man hid behind a curtain. When the King came to see Lala, he was very happy.”
King: “YAY! Lala, will you marry me and be my Queen? Then we will always have gold.”
Lala: “Er, no. You threatened to kill me. Twice.”
King: “But I’m the King! I can do what I want!”
Lala: “No, you can’t. This is my friend.”
Narrator: “And Lala brought the Magic Man out from behind the curtain.”
Lala: “If you can guess his name, then I’ll marry you. If you can’t, I’m going to go with him to make a hotel in Italy.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “You’ve got three chances!”
King: “Is you name Tom? Or Luca? Or Jonas?”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Nope! Try again!”
King: “Is your name Juliet, or Margaret, or Sophie?
Rumpelstiltskin: “Lol, no!”
King: “Is you name, well, is it…is it…Hans?”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Nope! Get your coat, Lala, we’re going to Italy!”
King: “WHAT!”
Lala: “Finally.”
King: “WAIT! I know your name: it’s Rumpelstiltskin! You’re the magician from Basel!”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Yep, but you’re still too late. Ready, Lala?”
Narrator: “Lala was done putting on her lipstick and was stuffing her pockets with gold thread.”
Lala: “Yes! Let’s go. Bye, King!”
King: “WHAT!”
Narrator: “So Lala and Rumpelstiltskin went off to Italy and started a hotel. It had three swimming pools, a five-star restaurant, and free Wifi. They got married and had ten children, and they lived happily ever after. The End!”

In the Cards: "The Stockholm Octavo"

The assassination of Sweden's Gustav III may be one of the more outrageous events of the turbulent 1790s, but it usually falls into shadow when compared to the execution of France's Louis XVI less than one year later. Indeed, outside of the realm of historians and Verdi fans, few people in day to day life realize that Sweden had a king who was shot at a masked ball at the Royal Swedish Opera. (Sadly, the original building was demolished in 1892, showing that man's desire to knock down beautiful old buildings and replace them with dubious new ones is not a new trait.)

Gustav III of Sweden met his fate in March 1792, when he was shot in the back and died days later of septicemia. Gustav had come to the throne twenty years earlier, after the death of his father, staged a coup against the reigning aristocracy, and reformed the country's political systems so completely that by the 1790s, there were two major camps vying for power-Royalists and Patriots (the latter made up of the former ruling aristocrats that believed their country was, for lack of a better term, going to hell in a handbasket). The situation had reached a boiling point by the time of Gustav's death, and it is this cauldron sedition and treachery that makes up the background of Karen Engelmann's debut novel, The Stockholm Octavo.

The plot of Verdi's Un ballo in Maschera revolves around a love-triangle of king-soprano-assassin and, to shake censors concerned about regicide in an unstable political climate, is set in Boston. The Stockholm Octavo, takes the same story and twists it a little. Instead of a sympathetic king or courtier, we have a lowly custom's officer with an interest in card games, women, and the Occult.

Emil Larsson, customs officer and card sharp, is ordered by his superiors to find a wife in order to maintain his position. To this end, he consults Sofia Sparrow, owner of an exclusive gambling salon and a seer. She lays out an octavo for Emil: a circle of eight cards that represent the people who will influence his path to happiness and love. In his quest to find the eight people represented in the cards, Emil is thrown into a dangerous world of politics, revenge, hidden loyalties, poison, and madness. We meet The Uzanne, a baroness and fan collector with a hatred for the autocratic Gustav that is so intense it borders on madness; a runaway apothecary with working knowledge of semi-poisonous soporifics, a dedicated fan maker, a Seer (based on a real soothsayer, Madame Arvidson, the Ulrica of the opera), and numerous functionaries and hangers-on.

Emil needs to find the eight people whom fate has decreed will guide him on his journey to love and contentment. His Companion, the person whose actions will shape his, is a widowed baroness with intensely anti-Gustav sentiments and a knowledge of the language of fans that makes her ruthlessness even more terrifying, in that no one takes her for anything more than a pampered woman. It is The Uzanne whom this story ultimately revolves around, and her machinations to end the reign of Gustav and restore the proper order to things. Emil himself plays only a tiny part; it is the constellation of characters moving around him, to either encourage or thwart (or both, or neither) the coming assassination. Alas for the reader, that singularly interesting premise falls flat in the telling.

There is a common rule, perhaps the golden rule, of fiction writers: Show, don't Tell. Never, ever, ever Tell if what you need to convey can be done so by Showing. Do not tell the reader "Let me tell you about X. X was born in France and grew up in a large family. When she was 18, she married the Count of S and came to live in G. She learned about the art of Z and sought out the best learning to eventually become a master of her field." Were you as bored reading that as I was typing it? This sort of writing usually doesn't make it passed the editorial stages or, if the author is absolutely unable to make a scene Showing the reader, can be made into dialogue. "I discovered the art of poisoning as a girl, and it intrigued me. Suddenly I had the power of God in my hands, to be used as I wished. Power, x. Can you imagine it? The sweet taste of secret knowledge, gleaned from years of researching ancient tomes." See, now that's fun. That's something the reader can sink their teeth into, because it adds another important aspect of a story: voice, which we'll come to in a minute.

Telling is especially bad if the author stops to tell us in minute detail what the character is wearing and how the room is set. No one cares. A brief, subtle mention of it will do.

From time to time, Engelmann falls into the trap of Telling. Not often, but enough that the discerning reader picks up on it. Her book is fast-paced, but it suffers from the narrator, Emil, pausing to tell us things that he could rather show us. This, though, is more a problem of Voice and its twin sister, Perspective, than anything else.

There are three different main perspectives in The Stockholm Octavo, and at least two minor ones. We have Emil, The Uzanne, and Johanna, the protégée and love interest. This is all very well and good, but the book itself is written in the First Person: the "I" perspective. Thus, we have Emil (who really doesn't do much besides vacillate between characters, wailing to himself) narrating the intimate thoughts and actions of events that he had no opportunity to ever see. The author uses a clever trick to get away with this: she puts a cast of characters who "witnessed" the event at the top of every chapter and passes it back as History. It works fine, but perhaps it would have been better to opt for the Third Person Omniscient, which allows the reader to get into each character's head without the narrator resorting to hearsay.

So you have an excellent premise with an unfortunate narrator and lots of awkward scenes that would have benefited from a simple change of voice.

This is not to say that The Stockholm Octavo is poorly written. Quite the opposite, in fact: it is a well-paced, well-plotted and well-told tale, with characters to love and hate. Unfortunately, there ARE technical details that keep the story from achieving that polish that comes to a truly excellent story. It reads a little like tonic water that has lost some of it's sparkle: still good, but ultimately leaving you dissatisfied.

The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann.
Three out of five stars.

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.

Same scene, two versions

I'm currently doing re-writes of the last third of my Fidelio novel. I'm currently playing around with a very tricky scene at the climax of the story: the rescue. Here's a small segment.

Version 1:
Pizarro leaped at them again, knife raised, and dropping the shovel, Leonora whipped her pistol out at last. She leveled it at Pizarro, stopping him cold.
“Make one more sound,” she said evenly, “and you are dead!”
The monster froze; the knife in his hand looked suddenly small and inefficient. Leonora watched him, her finger ready on the trigger. She almost hoped that Pizarro would try to attack them again. It was all she could do not to pull the trigger, not to kill this man for what he had done to the person she loved best. Behind her, Florestan gave a sob of relief. And then, above them, faintly, came the raucous call of a trumpet. Its distant notes echoed down the stairwell to ring faintly in Florestan’s dungeon, and to Leonora it felt like the call of an avenging angel.
“Hell and death!” Pizarro swore. “The minister!”
“Drop your knife! Now! Drop it!” Leonora’s finger was on the trigger, ready to shoot. Disgust filled her, hatred. Pizarro, with one last hateful look at her, threw the knife down at her feet. Leonora kicked it, sending it skittering across the dungeon to land in the open grave. Florestan sagged in relief, covering his face with shaking hands. Leonora held her hand out behind her. A moment passed, a long tense second as though the world was holding its breath, and then Florestan’s sticklike fingers crept into hers and clung. Leonora squeezed his hand, her heart bursting. She could feel her husband shaking with relief. As the trumpet call faded, Jacquino’s voice could be heard in the stairwell, shouting for Rocco.

Version 2:
Pizarro leaped at them again, knife raised, and dropping the shovel, Leonora whipped her pistol out at last. She leveled it at Pizarro, stopping him cold.
“Make one more sound,” she said evenly, “and you are dead!”
The monster froze; the knife in his hand looked suddenly small and inefficient. Leonora watched him, her finger ready on the trigger. She almost hoped that Pizarro would try to attack them again. It was all she could do not to pull the trigger, not to kill this man for what he had done to the person she loved best. Behind her, Florestan gave a sob of relief. And then, above them, faintly, came the raucous call of a trumpet. Its distant notes echoed down the stairwell to ring faintly in Florestan’s dungeon, and to Leonora it felt like the call of an avenging angel.
“Hell and death!” Pizarro swore. “The minister!”
Pizarro threw the knife down at Leonora’s feet. The hatred in his eyes made her stomach turn, and suddenly it was all that she could do not to kill him. Oh, how she wanted to pull the trigger and see this man fall! Her finger was on the trigger, ready to shoot. She could kill him now and end his reign of terror, avenging her husband and the men upstairs. It would be easy, so very easy. A long, tense second passed, as though the world was holding its breath, and then there was a rustle, a small movement from behind her, and Florestan’s fingers clutched hold of her jacket. His touch steadied her. Leonora stepped back from the black abyss. She kicked Pizarro’s knife and sent it clattering across the floor to land in the open grave.

*

I'm leaning towards Version 2, myself. It seems to flow better. Any thoughts?

Let them eat cake

Something magical is happening in Brandenburg right now. The air is suddenly, for the first time in months, warm and sweet-smelling, the sky is marbled blue and white, the trees are beginning to show blossoms and buds. At work today I was able to sit alongside the river during my long break, reading Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and eating homemade sausage rolls. I fed the leftovers to the ducks and took a long, leisurely walk while the sun warmed my shoulders and the prettiness of it all warmed my heart. And then I tripped and fell over and bonked my head and strained my wrist. Which was embarrassing, to say the least.

Still, a sore arm cannot dampen the joy of springtime, and I was in the mood for something good to eat (reading anything by Julia Child will do that to you), so when I got home this evening, I embarked upon an orgy of cookery. I made cake.

Now, I cook a lot, but I am not always a successful baker. Cakes seem to dislike me, even thoughI love them. But this cake was special. I found it online, via Tumblr, where someone had posted a gorgeous photo of it. Pretty photo, pretty day, pretty cake. Lemon-Rosemary-Yogurt Cake.


The ridiculous thing is that I had all the makings for it right there in my kitchen, ready to go.

Here is the recipe, and the link to the website, Baked Bree, where I found this recipe. I've copied it into the big Moleskine notebook where I write all the recipes I really like (sort of a "mom's cookbook" for the single girl), but I have to share it, because it's so wonderful.

Lemon Rosemary Yogurt Cake
Ingredients

3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup Dixie Crystals sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup Mountain High Vanilla Yoghurt
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
Glaze:
1 cup Dixie Crystals powdered sugar
3 to 4 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Rosemary sprigs (optional)
Instructions

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add lemon juice, zest, and vanilla. Add yogurt, and add eggs one at a time. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and rosemary. Mix for an additional minute, scrapping the bowl, until everything is smooth and combined. Pour batter into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Take the cake out of the pan, and cool completely on a rack.
Make the glaze by whisking powdered sugar and lemon juice. Add more sugar and lemon juice as needed. Drizzle over cake and add rosemary sprigs. Let glaze stand until completely set.

http://tinyurl.com/ctwrnaa

As Julia Child would say, Bon Appetit! :-)