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.

 

back in Basel.

The time changed in the night.  Therefore it is fine for me to still be in bed right now.  I was expecting a Sunday of relaxation anyway, after my crazy week and a half, so I feel absolutely free to enjoy every lazy bit of this morning.

The rest of the week in Darmstadt was fine.  The music part was good, except for all the standing, but that's normal (it's my life).  The rest, though!  The drive up, of course.  Then on Thursday I had to get back to Basel for a Friday morning presentation at Druckwerk for my Notation class (How Music Was Printed).  Fortunately my rehearsal on Thursday night ended early.  Oh, wait, did I say early?  I meant late.  As in, quarter to twelve.  As in, nearly midnight.  My new theorbo-playing friend and I hopped in the car I rented for the trip and made it back to Basel by 2:30, which seemed pretty good.  People drive really fast on the autobahn.  There aren't any speed limits, you know.  It's pretty impressive.  We were driving as fast as seemed safe in the sad little rental car, which was only about 130 - 140 kph (about 85 mph).  He was going home to see his wife for a night, and helping me out with the manual transmission at the same time.  Thanks, man. 
By noon the next day we were headed for 4 hours through traffic back to Darmstadt, and the one performance of the opera.  Here are some pictures I took at the dress rehearsal; the opera was done with traditional Baroque gestures, there was a choreographer helping the singers with their hands and expressions. 

The woman in the bottom picture was definitely the best of the vocal group; great voice, good presence, elegant, fit the part.  But, funny, I noticed during the recitatives -- the part where the singers move the action along, have dialog, etc, and are accompanied only by the continuo group (harpsichord, cello, theorbo) -- she would just say whatever she wanted, and sometimes only vaguely stick to what was written.  Mostly her notes were right, but more importantly, I guess, she Seemed right. 
One really nice part about the production was the background "sets"; the stage set had been constructed with a screen in the back, and throughout the opera they projected old images (prints, duh) of palaces, gardens, etc from the time.  You can see an example of this in the top picture.  And from the audience, the effect was quite convincing.  Well done, creative group.
All in all, for the trouble of getting up there, getting around in Darmstadt, and finally coming back to Basel, I'm not sure it was worth it.  I know that it wasn't my problem that they hadn't secured a bass player for the opera, but somehow I made it my problem.  Lesson learned?  Probably not.

taking pictures during the recitatives.

Here are some sights from the drive back up to Darmstadt from Basel on Friday (a perfect, beautiful day, too bad we were in a car). 

fall colors

awesome 18-wheeler

A few pictures from the time in Munich, too:

rainy day

felt store

All of a sudden, I found myself a little jealous of any friend of mine who has A Job and gets to play in a hall like this all the time.  What a pleasure.  I didn't get a great picture of the Gasteig (the hall), but here's one that somebody else took and put up on Wikipedia:

 

It's maybe a little hard to tell from the picture but looking into the hall from the stage almost gave me a sense of vertigo; all the angles, and the seats swooping toward you.  Nice.