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Obama's stimulus of fifty million to the arts restores souls and credibility if not jobs
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Obama provides the art world with fifty million in the stimulus package. Even if criticized for being such an infintessimal amount it’s the principle of the allotment that matters. It’s a reversal of the trend of empowering predatory lenders and corruption. It’s a shift toward nurturing our crushed spirits, restoring our souls after a decade of shocks to humanity and demoralization.
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Do you want to see the US back to how spirits felt in the millennium? Looking toward the future with a sense of celebration or at least curiousity, not despair. I want to feel like life is a Mardi Gras again. Toss me somethin' mister.
So I agree with a William Smith at the University of North Carolina, who told the New York Times:
Mr. Obama has an opportunity to revitalize our national spirit by strengthening our cultural programs at every level. It’s hard to imagine what could be a more important — and enduring — legacy.
Indeed it’s like Brunnhilde in Wagner's Ring Cycle guarding the legacy. Physically she protects the mother of the new world and the child Seigmund represents hope. It’s not a joke, although one blogger Andrew Malcolm does have a sense of humor about the fifty million's beneficiaries. It’s a good reason to have a sense of humor again I suppose.
What a hoot! says David Gockley.
Greer emails from Lyric Chicago this afternoon:
Very interesting. I wish there were an anti-defamation league for opera singers. They always pull up the same old horns on the head picture for opera or classical music. I have found listening and talking to people about this subject informative. The large majority of folks, not involved in the arts, have the misguided notion that the money from the government pays for the entire budget of arts organizations around the country. I believe that misguided notion only helps the obstructionists, because it seems to be a favorite "whipping boy". Once I explain the amount of fund raising required to the people I have encountered , their demeanor completely changes. We, as an art community, must make sure incentives to give are not taken away. That was a problem during the terms of President Reagan. I remember it hit hard.
Seriously though. Enter, the Valkyrie. Brunnhilde. A daughter breaks the authoritarian cycle of the world and burns the old regime to the ground, Valhalla goes up in flames. She is the daughter of the patriarch, Wotan, and Erda, mother earth, the goddess who warns Wotan of the evils of pursuing the gold ring. Such pursuit brings happiness to none.
Consequently Wotan's quest for power leads him to punish his favorite daughter for trying to act out of love. He punishes Brunnhilde for acting out of love with some kind of sadistic contrapasso out of Dante, where the punishment fits the crime . . . by freezing her prone on a mountaintop, vulnerable to any rapist. Brunnhilde knows only a coward would be such an opportunist.
Yesterday Mimi Manning told me the SFO will have a whole lecture series on the Ring Cycle next year. SFO will put on each of the four parts, with Die Walkure being the second part in June of 2010. She says she's been told Wagner is one of the most written about personalities of the 19th century and it's overwhelming to try and put together an exhibit about him. She and I are looking into the exact quote at the opera library.
Meanwhile Princess Salome, are you listening? Wotan then kisses away his daughter's divine power and puts her under like Cinderella. Brunnhilde stole his fire. At least Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is dejected not triumphant. He becomes somehow human in the situation and his emotions show despite himself. He is not in absolute control and he knows it in spite of the big show he puts on, encircling Brunnhilde in flames on the mountaintop.
Musically this moment is described by William Berger, who worked at SFO for five years and wrote Wagner Without Fear, Learning to Love and Even Enjoy Opera’s Most Demanding Genius.
Donald Runnicles will conduct. Berger says: Wotan’s pathetic situation is magnificently depicted in the orchestra:
After he commends Brunnhilde to ‘One freer than I, the god’, the orchestra picks up a sad strain, which has come to be called the motif of Wotan’s dejection. It is a figure with no inherent logical musical resolution, played first by the woodwinds in a piano to fortissimo crescendo, and repeated to the accompaniment of swirling strings. The theme is then repeated two more times, now with the strings joining the woodwinds in carrying the theme to the point of unbearable tension. Just when you think the orchestra cannot get any louder, the horns, which have been laying long, low harmonies, ‘slice’ the unending crescendo, so to speak, with a new theme. This is the slumber motif, which will be quietly repeated later as the curtain descends on the sleeping Brunnhilde amidst the magic fire. In other words, Wotan’s dejection is so huge that it has no resolution except oblivion.
Conductors often stretch this out to the limits of human endurance, and who can blame them? (page 245)
Wotan must have known in his soul that this is not the order of the world. Life should not be so crushing when everything he does is to build security and power to protect him and his world, and she was supposed to be an extension of his world like his spear held high. She had pled with him that she was not his intellectual equal. No indeed.
So Wotan forsakes Brunnhilde and chooses to punish her sadistically for not following the letter of his word. Yet she was only acting as his daughter, also the daughter of the moral force of goodness and purity and reality, Mother Earth, Erda, a contralto. Yet still a goddess, she knows how to save herself by talking then not of love and forgiveness but talking in terms of power. She speaks his language. Brunnhilde beseeches Wotan not to expose her to cowards by leaving her prone and in a state of sleep; she begs him to ignite a ring of fire around her sleeping body, which only the bravest would penetrate. Lesson here, if faced with an authoritarian, tell them they are right if you are trying to argue.
Talk in terms of power, bravery, dominance, testosterone, patriarchy . . . moreover nobody wants to be bested by a girl and even girls know it. Look what Tosca says to Scarpia when she stabs the corrupt police officer. Here is the kiss of Tosca, she says. You are killed by a woman, she tells him as he dies, begging her for help. In New Orleans there’s a saying. Ya You Right. Or if it’s Porgy & Bess, set in South Carolina, if you speak, address the authority figure as “boss”. Yes boss.
Dr. Bolen continues. Having power over others is an effort to compensate and retaliate for abuse, rejection and humiliation.
Look what Salome did, when John the Baptist rejects her, she has his head. Except Salome was one of the young and beautiful; In contrast Alberich in the Ring Cycle was innocent to think he could have one of the Rhinemaidens, the beautiful. Instead he goes for the gold ring they guard. They deny him something he would treasure, he denies them their treasure. Eye for an eye. But the precious thing turns to a curse in the wrong hands.
The writer Jean Bolen, M.D. gives the example of a workaholic. An anything a holic, who cannot enjoy the company of friends or family. However the assumption is they would be enjoyable. However to me becoming a workaholic is self preservation. Maybe it’s instinct, to tune out dysfunctional others, to protect oneself from neverending torment and pain. But what a way to survive. It’s a means though, not an end in itself. The point would be to work into relationships that you do enjoy, where you love to be around those you work with or spend time with, tell stories about what you have in common, have curiosity about each other. What’s so wrong with that? Family can be anyone. Creative types often say the other actors or performers are their family.
Similarly Wotan’s ways are means to ends. Couldn't it be a Protestant work ethic, delayed gratification. Work hard now and the reward comes later. End justifies the means? The builder of Valhalla, he binds others with contracts and uses a trickster Loge to finagle. Wotan sells out his sister in law to the giants, the laborers, for example. What’s not to like? Beautiful young Freya doesn’t like it actually. So Wotan once Valhalla stands offers payment in gold instead, taken from the dwarf who lives under the Earth. He shouldn’t have stolen it from the Rhinemaidens in the first place. Again, what’s not to like?
Wotan builds a fortress but it will bankrupt him in more ways than financial. He loses his soul.
So in closing, here are some feel-good photos I took in New Orleans. It's an artist at work in his studio in the French Quarter, which he calls Bohemia Central. I include a photo of Tony Green's friend piano player Tom McDermott. Tom poses under the street sign at Desire, where he and I had a vegetarian lunch of potato leek soup one day near the river in the Marigny.
Tony scraping frames he bought for his work . . .
The view of the nunnery courtyard from Tony Green's studio in the French Quarter on Governor Nichols Street.
Tools of the trade . . .
The writer with Tony Green . . .
The writer sits on Tony Green's veranda, photo by Tony Green . . .
Chai, gingersnaps and figs . . .
After potato leek soup at Cafe Picasso with piano player Tom McDermott . . .
End of Sacrifice of Brunnhilde part II, to be continued
Photos from New Orleans by Cindy Warner except as noted
Francesca Zambello to direct Die Walkure
Wotan shares his dressing room
Greer Grimsley Impressions, Passions, Stand by Me, Dreams
Tosca and how opera's embattled stay in fighting shape
Fred Matthews sang Porgy & Bess 756 times
Fred Matthews produces Cavalcade of Stars III February 2009
Opera announces 2009/2010 season
Contact the writer at SFOperaExaminer@Yahoo.com
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