musical memories

So, a little background.

Back in 1995, when I was a college student, I spent a summer interning at Glimmerglass Opera. I was on the stage crew, along with 6 other interns. Glimmerglass is a professional summer company that runs in rep, meaning that every day they do a different opera. The summer I was there we did 4 operas, all appealing to very different tastes: Don Giovanni (Mozart), Paul Bunyan (obscure 20th century Britten), Yeomen of the Guard (Gilbert & Sullivan) and Tamerlano (Baroque/Handel).

This experience was huge: it confirmed that I wanted to spent my life doing theater. Everything there was exciting, new and big.

And I also formed a very important friendship with Joanna (aka Jojo, though at the beginning of the summer she was still Joanna). She and I were the only women in a group of rowdy and somewhat lewd college boys. (To be fair, there were some women on the crew, but they were not interns and therefore had more responsibility than us.) Neither of us were particularly rowdy. Joanna had recently moved to the US, having transferred from a French university the year before. She had listened to all of the operas before she got there that summer, and during the operas she would let out a little sigh or coo every once in a while, when the music was particularly good.

She was also rather outgoing, and became friendly with some of Tamerlano cast. I remember us having breakfast with one of them at a coffee shop in downtown Cooperstown, and another time the soprano invited the crew (through Joanna, of course) to the house where she was staying for brunch.

Since we both were staying at the same residence, had similar work hours, and had only one car between us, we frequently went to work together or came home for lunch together or went grocery shopping together. Basically, we were inseparable.

The operas. In the case of this blog post, there is only one opera worth discussing: Tamerlano. I don't think I was at all familiar with Baroque opera before that summer, but I was blown away by it. So soft and lilting, so unexpectedly beautiful. As a crew member on Tamerlano, I spent the duration of the opera behind a very tall gold folding screen with 2 other crew members. At certain musical cues (once each act, I think), we moved the screen. Otherwise, we played cards or napped. On stage. I am serious.

There were two musical parts that we would wake up for and listen to intently. One was David Daniels' aria. The other was the show finale. I've found a YouTube clip of some other singers singing the finale and strangely they are wearing the same costumes as our production. (Looking at the credits, it has the same director, Jonathan Miller)It's not very long, and it is beautiful. Listen!

That fall, I went to study in Italy. My college had a very intensive, immersive junior year abroad program in Florence, where I studied art history and Italian language. It was very hard, especially going from Glimmerglass (where had I finally found people who loved the same things as I did) to a country where I barely spoke the language and didn't know anyone. How I got through that year is another post (and I did get through it, and loved it), but I have to stick to my story. Joanna (who had by then been nicknamed Jojo) sent me a ton of letters. Along with being a great friend, she knew about culture shock and she knew Europe; she understood what I was going through. And she sent me things, tapes of music she'd gotten out of the library: Purcell (Dido and Aeneas) and Bach (St Matthew Passion), to be exact. And I listened to them on my walkman, laying in on my bed writing letters or walking the Sede for class. The music was so surprisingly different from Handel (unfortunately I have little music education and have no way to discuss this. I can just tell you that is very modern to me.)

Years passed, and I stopped listening to my cassette tapes. I met Christopher, and was surprised when one day he put on the St Matthew Passion. Apparently when he was in a chorus in DC they sang it, and he loved it. He plays it regularly, and I always think of all of these things when he does.

A few weeks ago he sent me an email while I was at work. A staged version of the St Matthew Passion is being done at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and he wanted to get tickets. He had been listening to the director, Jonathan Miller, on the radio and it sounded really exciting. Jonathan Miller! The same guy who directed Tamerlano! St Matthew Passion! Needless to say, we got tickets to see it, and went last night.

It was beautiful. I guess the piece is usually performed as a choral work, very staid. Miller made it a little more dramatic, separating the two choruses and orchestras so that they each faced each other in a loose sort of circle, leaving the center open as a performing space and for the conductor. Musicians would enter the stage for solos as well, and everyone was in street clothes.

I found a YouTube clip of an older version of the production, and it just doesn't do it justice because I think the spacing is so important. I suppose you can hear the music though. It's interesting to me how connected I feel to this music. Listening to it last night brought back so many memories of different times in my life. Times that are pretty far in the past...

spring renewal

We took our walk on Friday, an hour or two lazy loop of the Botanical Garden. It was bright and the Bacitracin on Christopher's wounds somehow leaked into his eye, so he was uncomfortable. (We didn't realize that the Bacitracin was the cause of his pain until we got home and we flushed his eye and removed the bandage.) It was nice to be out though, and the spring weather was fantastic.

On Saturday we rented a car and drove to Hartford, where we saw the final performance of the show I'd designed (and abandoned). Everyone up there had done a wonderful job pulling the design together in my absence, and the trip gave me closure as well as a sense of pride. The set looked damn good, if I dare say. (Hopefully the pro photos look better than mine; it was really tough to photograph well.)

We spent the night in Amherst, MA, at the home of family friends, and on Sunday morning I had pure alone time, the first in ages. Our hosts were out of town for Passover, so the house was ours, and while Christopher slept I sat on the patio with my journal and just wrote and enjoyed the sunlight for a few hours. It was rejuvenating and relaxing, exactly what I needed.

When Christopher got up, we headed into Northampton, where we found a new wallet for him before wandering around the Smith College campus. For those of you who don't know, this is where I went to college, and the campus looks very different than it did 11+ years ago when I was a student there. Most confusing to me is that my house (or dorm) has been gut renovated and the houses around it have all been moved to different spots, a few were torn down, and this massive student center was built in the space that was left. I can't remember anymore where everything used to be, but the area I knew best just doesn't feel very familiar. It's rather disconcerting.

Spring is here! Going 3+ hours north was a little like going back a few weeks in the life cycle of the plants in NYC; here there are more blossoms and the leaves are just about out. In Massachusetts the leaves were just poking out, the peonies in our friends' garden just sprouting.

I'm glad. I need this weather and the cheer that comes with it.

reunions

College reunions. Are they worth it? There seems to be so much hype, so much pressure to reconnect with these people that you spent so much time with, people who were there for a fundamental time in your life and who you supposedly bonded with. But 10, 15 years later, it seems so empty.

O.K., maybe I'm a bad example because I didn't have any of those quintessential college friendships. I didn't have a group of friends who knew my innermost secrets. I spent most of college trying to find a niche for myself and learning who I was and immersing myself in theater design. And that worked pretty well for me. Not that I was lonely, but I never felt that I had made any lifelong friends.
Of course, one's preceptions rarely are the truth. Here I am, 10 years later, and I'm still in touch with some people I went to college with. Some of them live in New York, and we see each other occasionally. Some of them live elsewhere, and we email. I like these connections. I really like seeing what happens to people, how they grow and change and find different paths for themselves.

I enthusiastically signed up for my college reunion. I'm not sure what I expected. I was really excited about the parade of alumnae and how we'd all wear white dresses and cheer for each other. The campus lit by lanterns was also high on the list. I knew that one of my friends would be there with her husband, so we'd be able to hang out, if nothing else.

It rained, so the parade and the lanterns were cancelled. I did get to hang out with my friend, and a saw a few people I'd lost touch with, and that was fun. But I somehow hadn't counted on seeing so many people who looked familiar, and then having to make small talk with them. I felt like I was on auto-pilot, introducing Christopher, explaining that I was now a set designer and that we lived in Brooklyn. And then there were a few people who I saw across the room but never connected with. It felt so fake and boring and too quick at the same time. The joys of that weekend were when no one cared about those life details and we could get drunk over a geology lesson with an old friend or when I got to hear about my Italian professor's retirement plans.
My point is, now that we've also been to Christopher's reunion, that this seems to be par for the course. Our reunions were very different - clearly a women's college knows that their alums are impressed by lobster dinners and traditions - but in the end we had very similar experiences. Unlike me, he had a group of friends that he has kept in touch with, but there was still some disconnect. And maybe that was because we all grow in different directions after college. Or maybe we're at different stages in our lives (we seemed to be the only childless folks at his reunion). Or maybe it's really hard to relate where we are now to who we were at 22. I mean, who was I 10 years ago? I feel like I've grown so much since then. I'm not sure what 2007 me would say to the 1997 me. But then, that's all probably part of growing older. Will my life 10 years from now be as drastically different? Probably, just in different ways.

back to school

So I now have a job for three weeks that requires me to blog. What do you think of that? We're supposed to blog when we get home at night and send our entries to the blogmaster, who will eventually organize it all and post it on the main site. It's not a public blog, just a site for everyone on the project to see once we're done. Cathartic but a little dangerous, in my opinion.

We went to my college reunion last weekend. It was not as exciting as I was expecting, mostly because it rained the whole time and so the major events (alumnae parade and the campus illuminated by lanterns) were cancelled. I was really looking forward to showing Christopher that crazy female energy, the pep rally that these events can be, but it didn't work out. The parade was moved to the gym, and instead of us walking in it, the class officers walked. LAME.

It was also very cold and so I changed out of my white outfit as soon as possible after we bailed from the dumb speeches.

We went to a very interesting lecture on geology and wine, which included a wine tasting. We sat with an old friend of mine and her fiance, and we all got extremely drunk. Another woman started passing out baby pictures, and somehow our table was dubbed the "happy table" by the professor. Oops.

(If you're familiar with wine tastings, usually you spit out the wine you don't drink, but there weren't any spit tubs, so everyone there just drank the wine in their glasses.)

We stayed with old family friends in Amherst, which was very low-key and fun. They just opened an ice cream store in Greenfield, so we got to see that and taste their goods (highly recommended) and visit with them a little.

On Sunday morning we went to the Smith graduation, just to hear the speaker: Gloria Steinem. I thought she was incredibly inspiring and energizing, but Christopher was offended that she referred to the "patriarchy." I told him that the speech wasn't really meant for him, it was aimed at the graduating (female) seniors, and that made him even more miffed. He doesn't like being excluded.