I have a dear friend who is enjoying a semester long sabbatical from his teaching obligations, spending the time in Berlin, where he is earnestly studying the German language. Of course, as a classical scholar he learned that language in graduate school so that he could easily read one of the major languages of scholarship. So why this study? So that he can learn German well enough to understand the words sung in every one of Wagner's operas while being performed, especially the Niebelungenlied which he considers the single greatest achievement in culture since the beginning of time. And this is a man intimately conversant with the masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature! Shocking, and nonsense, is all I have to say. Furthermore if you have to go to something Germanic I opt for Der Rosenkavalier. Now most persons would find this nonsense I suppose. But I am transfixed whenever I hear the duet between Octavian and Sophie when he presents her with the rose (he is as custom demands the surrogate for a rather buffoonish older somewhat impecunious aristocrat who hopes to marry the beautiful young heiress who pursues the old man's suite with a gift of a silver rose; he is the rose kavalier, get it?). The duet is one of the most sublime moments of harmony I can imagine, intoxicating, and obliterating the ego of the listener who loses him/herself in the music. It so happens that years ago when I first suffered a severed attack of kidney stones, and suffered the pain beyond all others, I was waiting for the time to go to my appointment with the doctor who had prescribed for me over the phone Demerol. This I had staggered to my pharmacist to pick up, groaning and moaning with the pain, and now I was sitting at home waiting for the Demerol to take effect. I was listening to the opera and trying to conquer my feelings, when suddenly the moment arrived for that magic duet when the beautiful Sophie and the handsome young Octavian (sung by a soprano as well) meet, and the sopranos soared up up into the stratosphere of high exquisite notes and just then the Demerol kicked in. Music has never been the same for me since, and no other piece has ever captured me as this opera has, that scene and then again the great trio at the end. Not only that but instead of a heavy handed saga of gods and goddesses, pathetic in their helplessness unlike their Greek counterparts, one has the delightful story of a beautiful woman in her thirties who is having a love affair with her nineteen year old ravishingly handsome cousin--what a setup!--who has the humility, good humor, and graciousness to recognize the moment when the boy has out grown her, and then even more glorious to stand together with him and his new young and beautiful love interest (who has rejected the older suitor in favor of the bearer of the rose), wish them well, and depart the scene. It is the stand-in moment for that day when we retire, renounce, and ready ourselves for end. a sequence of events of far greater significance and humanity, about which the Countess has sung so nobly, so wisftully, so beautifully in the first act. Call me frivolous, childlike, certainly no great student of music, but there you have it. I'll take Der Rosenkavalier any day of the week.
No more words from me from now until probably Sunday the 30th. I am off the frozen wilds of New England.
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