There's no pool at home

but it's still nice to be here. Hello, Basel. I'm back from Aix, my visiting friends are on their way to Paris, and I've got two weeks of completely unscheduled time to faff away. Thought it might be nice to faff some pictures up onto the interwebs. After debating the virtues of chronology, I've decided to throw order out the window and go for a random selection.

Starting here with a little video I took of some of the trees in the park behind the Grand Saint-Jean in Aix. Though you can mostly hear the sound of the camera's inner workings, the trees made a particular sound, I'm sure you can imagine it, of all their leaves clattering together in the whooshing wind. You could hear it during the performance sometimes. Oh yeah, the performances! I haven't forgotten, since the music is still in my head nearly constantly, but it's growing fainter. There's a video online where you can watch the whole opera, and see my bass scroll in silhouette against the bright stage a few times. It's only an hour and a half, maybe you could watch it on a lazy evening indoors? It'll be online til sometime in early October. 100 days from the original performance, July 17. And, here's the link.

Since the last blog post, I saw that Shostakovitch opera, The Nose, it was crazy and interesting - Shostakovitch was 22 when he wrote it, and it's clearly his work, and also loud and difficult. There aren't so many moments of rest in the production, and the sets, designed in part by Wm Kentridge, reflected the action. Sometimes a wall, tall as the entire stage, would move forward or back, would open up with doors or windows in which the action would happen, would disappear. I brought with me the libretto on an iphone and followed it for the whole performance, which really helped; otherwise the constant stream of conversational and theatrical Russian (why aren't there repeats and da capo arias, like in Baroque opera??), clarified by French supertitles, would have pretty much left me in the dark.

An orchestra from Lyon was down there in the pit. They did a good job. I saw one other performance during the festival, a dramatic staging of my favorite book, Austerlitz, by WG Sebald. It was all in French with no supertitles, but having anticipated that I read the book again before going to see it. The staging was simple, there was only one actor, and he half acted, half spoke text directly from the book. In the back of the stage was a contemporary music group, Ensemble Ictus, based in Belgium, made up of clarinet, prepared piano, flute, trombone, viola and cello. They were playing music composed for the production, and it was mostly a succession of rhythmic chords in clusters. The whole production exuded anxiety. There is anxiety in the book, it's essentially the story of a man discovering his identity and uncovering the fate of his parents, both of whom were forced to leave their homes during the war and ultimately perished in concentration camps, but the book is so much more than that story: it's a meditation on architecture, moths, libraries, human nature. Discovery and wonder. The production did have a spare and architecturally evocative set, and it used images from the book and images from the director, who had followed the same path of the protagonist in the book, and taken his own photographs; these were all well done. But for anyone who hadn't read the book and didn't speak French, I think it was mostly an opportunity to space out and think about things. Way to hang in there, Andrew. Props to Andrew also for his zen-like patience during the several performances of Acis & Galatea for which we couldn't get him a ticket, spent sitting backstage while singers darted in and out and the music was piped in on tinny speakers.

We did do some things aside from opera performances while Andrew was in Aix, of course. There was plenty of obligatory eating of beautiful farmer's market food and poolside relaxing,

and we also took advantage of my one day off to rent a car and drive all around the area. We looked at the sea from the top of a cliff, while lunching on goat cheese spread on fruit bread and sweet ripe apricots and nectarines. We drove north in the direction of Gap and looked at a river, and an abandoned chapel. We wandered around the "ancient" part of a town in Provence in which every charming old building, including something that looked like a castle and the city hall, had been converted into residential units, either by adding a block of mailboxes outside or by building a mismatched structure (apartments, a corner store, nothing classy or matching) directly into the side of the hill or the old brick. There were TV antennae attached to the battlements of an ancient stone tower, and xmas lights strung around the oldest chapel in the city. We kept walking around thinking, oh, here, maybe now we've found the historical center! and instead of Good King René's castle, we'd find laundry strung between houses and deserted streets. Weird. I'm hoping my understanding of the situation there will change or develop though I'm not sure how I'd add more information to my confusingly incomplete picture. Wait and see, I guess.

Lest it seem I only swam in the pool while 30 km from the Southern coast of France, here are a couple shots from a delightful day spent with my housemates and one of the singers on an island called Frioul, a short ferry ride away from Marseille, swimming and floating in the clear, salty water.

Oh, good weather, aren't you grand. (Just looked up and out the window at the pokey, puffy gray things in the sky out there.) Summer continues anyway. I spent the last three days with friends in town from NYC, we climbed an Alp (more on that later), and in about two weeks I'll travel to Venice to do 11 days of printmaking. Summers are nice, it's great to have a job with a distinct season. Will this change? Let's hope not.

festival time

Hi from France - I'm in Aix-en-Provence for the month, playing at one of the world's largest opera festivals. My production is of Handel's most popular opera, Acis and Galatea, written on a pastoral, mythological theme. Acis is a shepherd, Galatea a nymph. They've seen one another before the opera begins and spend the first few arias talking about their love, and trying to find each other. They're reunited, and sing a couple lovey-dovey arias - "Love in her eyes sits playing", and "Happy we". But alas, "no joy shall last" - Polyphemus the Cyclops sees Galatea and falls in love with her ("O ruddier than the cherry, O sweeter than the berry"), then pursues her. Acis stands up to the monster and is killed when Polyphemus hits him on the head with a rock. Galatea is heartbroken, but uses her powers to give her lover immortal life, as a spring - the source of a river. (Here is a link to the libretto.)

The venue is in the middle of the countryside, at the site of a derelict stone house; the stage is attached to the side of the building, and is in the open air. Behind the stage is a big field, with several disused ponds and stands of trees. This is a shot of the stage from the field. Below, a terrible picture of Galatea on stage, with dusk and trees in the background:

 

looking past the side of the stage, to the field; and

 

a view of the continuo section, with the stage above/behind them.

It gets quite cold at night here, and can be very windy, so many layers of clothes are necessary. More layers even than I brought, so sometime this week I'll do some searching for one more long-sleeve black thing for the concerts. If I can't find anything I may end up wearing my black raincoat during performances.

The music is really, really nice. It's clear why the opera has remained popular for the past (nearly) 300 years. Handel was born in 1685, the same year as Bach, also in Germany, and after many years of schooling, traveling, and working in many different places in Europe, he settled in England, and in fact became a naturalized English citizen. That's why so many of his pieces are in English - this opera, and of course works like the Messiah. The longer I live in Europe, and work and travel throughout the continent, I understand how old this tradition is, and how many peripatetic musicians there have been throughout the centuries. In many ways I think it must be at least similar now to how it was in Handel's time, in that you follow the work through the different countries, and meet an international crowd of musicians doing the same thing. It's nice, actually, to find myself inside that tradition.

Wretched lovers, view from the pit.

Aix-en-Provence is a charming town around 30 km from the sea. Marseille is the closest big town. It has a well-preserved old center, and while many of the shops are geared towards tourists, it seems overall to be focused on pleasant summer living. Cafés in squares, plane trees, restaurants everywhere. A big Saturday market, with perfect ripe nectarines, fresh goat cheese, gorgeous olives. Beautiful bread. Did I mention that it's nice here? I'm staying with five other members of the orchestra in a house just outside the city center, it's got a pool (!) and plenty of space to lounge around. With the big backyard and stone floors it feels like some kind of villa. In the backyard we've got a fig tree (nearly ripe), olive trees, a pomegranate bush, lavender, rosemary, and some small palms. The only downside I've found so far are the hordes of mosquitoes waiting to bite me any time I let down my guard - the first night I got bitten on my eyelid, and had to spend the first rehearsal (Hi everyone, I'm Megan, don't mind my half-closed eye) squinting at the music and trying not to scratch my face. Little jerks. I've bought a fan, though, and started wearing bug spray to bed, and that's helped.

Everyone is really nice. The orchestra is an extremely friendly bunch of people, I'm among the oldest but not out of place. I think the youngest is 21. The singers, too - occasionally charmingly obnoxious, but very very nice. Yesterday we had a wildly successful party at the house and most of the people from our production came over. Nothing like a pool and a bunch of bottles of rosé to make a good party. By the end we were dancing in the living room to French radio.

I'm looking forward to the beginning of the productions. The rehearsal schedule has been really long and taxing; on Saturday, and also today, we rehearse at the outdoor venue until 12:30 AM. Goodness me, I'm not used to this schedule. The opera is only an hour and a half long, so once the run begins we'll be done at 11 every night. Fortunately we rarely have anything during the day, so it's possible to sleep as much as we need. There are a number of other interesting operas up this week, and we have the chance to attend dress rehearsals for free. I'm planning on going to see The Nose, an opera by Shostakovich, based on a Gogol story, directed by the South African artist William Kentridge, who also helped with set design and created videos to accompany the production. (Link to a NY Times article about it.)

Well. This post seems to be going on forever. I'll add a few more pics and leave it at that.